Side Mirror: Caroline Rae on building a career on your own terms.

Caroline has coached hundreds of experienced leaders, founders and creators to build a career on their own terms and secure opportunities they believed were 3-5 years away.

In every high stakes arena that her career has taken her (from tackling health inequality to 10 Downing Street to co-founder to coach), she's witnessed the career trajectories of countless brilliant humans stagnate or burn out. Caroline is committed to helping clients say goodbye to toxic careers and say hello to more impact and fulfilment in work and life.

Caroline and I caught up recently to discuss her coaching practice and the topic of how we can attract and secure career & life opportunities we thought were 5 or more years away. Caroline also shared some of the context of her own fascinating career story, her personal experience of burnout and the exciting lifestyle experiment that she and her husband are currently doing.

We had a fun conversation with lots of practical tips and helpful paradigms. I'm pleased to share it here and I look forward to hearing what resonates with you.

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Episode recorded on 4 October, 2023.

Transcript

Ed Eppley: 0:00

I am sitting in lovely Siesta Key Florida.

Sherene Redelinghuys: 0:02

I'm coming from Bangkok in Thailand,

Daniel van Treeck: 0:05

Prague in the Czech Republic,

Osman Abdelmoneim: 0:07

Cairo in Egypt,

Holger Drott: 0:08

Auckland, New Zealand,

Shannon Faulkner: 0:09

London, England.

Andy Follows: 0:10

Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host, Andy Follows. Hello, listeners, and welcome to this side mirror episode of Career-view Mirror. If you're a regular listener, thank you and welcome back, you'll be aware that most of our episodes feature interviews with people with a link to the automotive industry who kindly share their life and career journeys with us. We celebrate their careers, listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. We also publish these side mirror episodes in which we introduce guests or topics related to careers or developing ourselves or people we lead parent or mentor that we trust you'll find valuable. For this episode I'm joined by Caroline Rae, Caroline has coached hundreds of experienced leaders, founders and creators to build a career on their own terms and secure opportunities they believed were three to five years away in every high stakes arena that her career has taken her from tackling health inequality to 10 Downing Street to co founder to coach she's witnessed the career trajectories of countless brilliant humans stagnate or burnout. Caroline is committed to helping clients say goodbye to toxic careers and say hello to more impact and fulfilment in work and life. Caroline and I caught up recently to discuss her coaching practice, and the topic of how we can attract and secure career and life opportunities we thought were five or more years away. Caroline also shared some of the context of her own fascinating career story, her personal experience of burnout, and the exciting lifestyle experiment that she and her husband are currently doing. We had a fun conversation with lots of practical tips and helpful paradigms. I'm pleased to share it here. And I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. Hello, Caroline, and welcome. And where are you coming to us from today?

Caroline Rae: 2:21

Hi, Andy, thank you for having me. I am joining you from Spain. I'm based just outside Alicante on the beach.

Andy Follows: 2:29

That sounds wonderful. And thank you very much for joining me. I think it's absolutely fabulous that we've got you on the show, as it were given what you do for a living. I saw a post recently on LinkedIn that explained that you've only recently moved to Spain. And it's a little bit of an experiment. So can we talk about how long you've been there? And what's the story behind that.

Caroline Rae: 2:51

So we're just I'm just into my first full month here now. So we landed a month ago, my husband and I, and it was part of my vision. So one thing that had always been part of what I'd set out to do, when I set up my coaching business was in my mind, I thought I would like to be able to work actually more with sort of clients all over the world. Because I think that's a really fun thing to be able to do is to be able to work with people from all different areas of the world. And of course, online coaching was something that was starting to gain some traction back then. So my intention was always I want to work with people online globally, and started to do that. But a lot of my clients, we're still based in London, which is where my houses, I guess that's where I'm faced is in life. That's and more recently, I had set the intention with my coach, because as you know, our deal or coaches work with coaches to make sure that moving forward, but I have read on my vision in June this year. So three months ago, I had done that. And one of the intentions that I'd set in that vision was that I would experiment with this idea of living and working overseas, and very specifically, being able to have a balcony that overlooks a beach and was somewhere warm. And my idea was that I wanted to be able to you know, get up and sit on the balcony in the morning and swim in the sea after work. And it really was sort of no more than that, in my intention. That was the intention that I put out into the world. And with the aim of doing an experiment was because my husband and I wanted to check that you know, the reality of that lived up to the expectation because I think you can get this grand idea that it's all going to be perfect and wonderful and you know, sunsets and sunrises and dreams. But we wanted to test it because of course, you don't know what it's like to sort of live and work. I didn't know what the business if the business would be able to sustain that you know if I'd be able to have the right mix of clients and so that was the intention and it was the The earliest in my mind, I thought that would be possible, was maybe early to mid 2025, for lots of good reasons. You know, obviously, my husband works. And I thought the business needed to be a bit further along, and like mortgages and bills, and all those things, you know, practical life things, I thought it would be the mid 2025. Before we could do that. And then some things shifted for both my husband and I, in terms of our work, and in terms of what the business was doing. And all of a sudden, we had a window. And because we'd had I'd had set this intention, and my husband was on board with this idea of the experiment in particular, and the bigger vision two, we just realised, like we we could do this now. Like, we could do this experiment now. And so we set out to make that happen. And we made that happen, sort of within six weeks. So here we are doing the experiment. I'm really enjoying every minute of it.

Andy Follows: 5:59

I'm excited to be tapping into you actually, during the experiment. That's cool. I love the number of times you use the word intention or intentionality, or the intention, so powerful to be deliberate. And I'm sure we'll talk about that in some of the work that you do later in this conversation. I'm also curious and you don't have to answer any of these questions, of course, as I said earlier, before we started, but I am curious about some of those mundane practicalities that I wonder if some of the listeners might be thinking, Okay, well, hang on a minute. What have you done with your house in London? And how long are you planning on doing this experiment for you know, how some of that working out?

Caroline Rae: 6:37

Yeah, I think once we've said, Okay, let's, let's see if we can make this happen. We ran into a sort of three big challenges. The first was budget, because of course, we were doing some incremental saving towards a pot that that pot in our mind was, you know, we had a while to go. So the first thing we ran into was budget, the second thing we ran into was Brexit. So I hadn't fully understood that you could only do 90 days now, in a six month window in Europe, we're going to we were like, oh, we'll go to January. So we'll go mid September, and we'll stay till January. And that's a good ride that feels like a good ride, and it's through the winter. So that'll be nice. And then we suddenly were like, oh, we can't do that. And I have to say, I've been travelling for work in Europe already as well. So that reduced this sort of this idea of our experiment felt suddenly like, oh, it's going to be a bit smaller. And then the next thing that we ran into was just that when you try to do anything outside of the norm, so whether it comes to travel, not living in your house, every day, things start to crop up. So for example, travel insurance coverage only is for a certain duration, and then you have to start paying extra, you can't leave your house for an extended period of time on its own, and then that, you know, your insurance gets invalidated. So we started to run into all of these, I guess blockers. And that was a really interesting because it started to give us some really useful data about, if we did want to make a move like this more permanent, what might we need to put in place to do that. So where we ended up with sort of working through those challenges was the first that we ended up being away, we're away for 75 days, because of some of my client work, I have didn't get home to London. So that's helped with some of the insurance policy challenges. And a friend of ours was coming back from travelling and wanted somewhere to stay. And so he is also house sitting for us as well, which also helps with these things. But it was really interesting to just see how the minute you try and do something that is not in the norm, you start to have to be quite creative about how you approach things. With the Brexit challenge, what that actually was very helpful with was, we started to then look into what visas are available if we wanted to have a longer stay. And so there's some really interesting visas, Spain and Portugal have a digital nomad visa where you can come and stay and work remotely for a year. We also went on a big war in about, you know, how do you secure a European passport, which was an interesting, you know, like move to Ireland for five years, or my husband has Polish heritage. So we're now looking into that as well. You know, you started to get quite creative. And then on the budget side, what we did there was we sold the car, that was how we resolve the the sort of budget issue. And then with the other pieces, sort of insurance and visa, we just got quite creative about how we did that. I think also Andy, there was a bit of acceptance around like, this is not how I envisioned it. And this was something that I needed to work through a little bit like this is not how I imagined it unfolding. But it's unfolding and it looks a little bit different. And that's brilliant, and I'm ready and so we either grab the opportunity in that slightly different form. Are, we take it and run with it. And I think that's where I'm really setting that intention can help you recognise, like, Oh, I am ready for this opportunity. Even though it looks slightly different from what I'd envisaged,

Andy Follows: 10:11

thank you for sharing that, that stimulated a few thoughts. For me, the best way to learn something is to start a project. And then just get on with trying to make it work. And this is a great example of you starting a project and then having to learn about the insurance about the travel insurance, about the home insurance, all these aspects about the visas, you have to but you've got a vision at the end of it, that's motivating you to find your way through these little challenges. It's great to have the vision because the vision is what motivates you. But the vision is only an estimate, the actual process of getting there or how it plays out. Of course, you haven't nailed that you haven't managed to envisage how every step of the way is going to be, you've just got this motivating idea of where you want to get to. And that just keeps you going. And then you've got to tackle all of the fresh stuff that you hadn't thought of or that doesn't play out as you thought. So well done. And congratulations. Can we just briefly cover your career story and how you became a coach, how you got from starting out in work to eventually deciding to do what you do. Now.

Caroline Rae: 11:22

I guess the sort of theme of my career is really, it's interesting that it ties into what I'm doing with coaching, but is taking a vision, or an ambition or an idea. And turning into reality. And doing that fast. You know, the theme of my career has been building something from nothing. Essentially, I started out in behaviour change marketing. So we're using behavioural economics and psychology and policy together to tackle some of the big health challenges that we have in the UK. So things like smoking, childhood obesity, some of the other social issues like financial literacy. And that was really helpful, my role there was actually about bringing together different partners who could help have more using their resources. So bringing government with commercial sector, with the charity sector together, to pool resources to be able to support individuals and communities to make these changes. So for example, this is not always a favourite for people, but, you know, working with retailers or working with soft drinks companies, to allow us to communicate to the consumer at points where, you know, government or charity doesn't have that opportunity. So if you're standing in front of a row of soft drinks, being able to drive people's attention towards Diet Coke, rather than coke. And it's always interesting, because, you know, ideally, what we want to do is move people from coke to water, but we know that you have to, and you we, you know, we know this as coaches as well, but you have to start those incremental shifts and kind of get the awareness to people. So it was quite challenging environment, often in terms of, you know, health professionals wanted us not to work with people, you know, commercial sector who was viewed as you know, bad. But in order to kind of create the mass change that we wanted to, you know, it was important to recognise the role that all of these different organisations have in a consumer individual's life and being able to access those touch points. And I also worked in mental health as well, I worked in a positive wellbeing campaign in Scotland, way back about 20 odd years ago. And that was really interesting. I think, firstly, for me, and understanding that was the first time that I had understood that mental health is a spectrum. It's not just mental illness, the whole spectrum from flourishing, right through to not doing as well and sort of mental illness and the difference in that that was a real eye opener for me. And then I moved into through that partnership working, I moved into policy partnerships. And so I find myself randomly working in Cabinet Office, I'd been sort of recruited into a partnerships team that they had there. And we worked on policy initiatives for 10 Downing Street, prime minister and deputy prime minister then so that was back in the good old days of the coalition, where we again, it was that bringing together of industry, policy professionals and trying to create ways to have a better impact on society, depending on you know, what the challenge was. And that was really interesting for me, and just in terms of when you're working in environment, with ministers and prime ministers and all their advisors and all the brilliant, you know, civil servants and CEOs of these big corporates, you're, you're sort of running with the fastest really, in that sense. So, you know, you're not turning down a call from any of those people, even if they call you at 11pm. And that was a fantastic, really interesting, fantastic opportunity for me, especially as a girl who grew up in a village of 800 people in Scotland, sort of finding myself, you know, like hanging out in number 10 was quite a, like unexpected, I think it was, it wasn't on my bingo card for my career, I guess. And also what that meant was, I'd always been someone who worked very hard and sort of bought into the, you know, if you just work really hard, and you do the right thing, and you just get on with it. You know, that's what I had been told. But I worked in that career and that, but I was in the cycles of burnout. And I think what was really interesting is I didn't know that at the time. But there was lots of impostor syndrome coming through. But I had this brilliant time. And I also as part of the work that I did at 10 Downing Street, I also set worked in a initiative called Tech City, it helps entrepreneurs to scale and grow their companies in the UK. So lots of high growth, high tech, again, people running fast in their careers. And I helped set up a company raised some funding for that, got it spun out of government and set it up, and did some work there. And then quite soon after that, I burned out. And I was in this really interesting position where lots of people were like, wow, you have such an incredible job. And it's like, look at all this cool stuff you get to do and you get to work with all these cool entrepreneurs. And you know, you're working with these ministers and captains of industry, and, but something just didn't feel quite right. And then increasingly, I was just working and overworking. And my friends were like, are you okay? Like, like, I'd leave the dinner table out with friends to take calls, and not even care about it. Like I just was of the view that they don't understand what's required for this job. And my husband was starting to sort of say, this is having quite a big impact on us. But I couldn't hear any of it, I was just like, you don't understand what's required. And eventually, I realised, there was a couple of things that happened at work that was very out of character for me. And I suddenly realise, okay, something needs to change. I don't know what, but something needs to change. And a friend recommended that I go work with a coach. And in our first session, she got me to do my core values. And so I sort of quickly did that. And we talked about why they were important. And then she asked me that how many of these are in your workplace, how many of these are showing up in the work you're doing? And not one of them was present. And suddenly, all the light, it was like the floodlights came on. And I suddenly just was like, I get it. It's not that I'm terrible at my job, or it's not that I'm, you know, it's not that these people are terrible, or that I'm terrible, like, I'm great. They're great. It's just this the homelessness match. And that, for me, was the moment that I realised that not that I would be a coach, there was a bit of a longer journey to that. But that was the moment that I suddenly realised, oh, knowing your values, being very deliberate about working in environments that satisfy them support them, is really the most important thing. And I think that's where the seeds of intentionality started in terms of building a career from there. It was a bit longer before I sort of got into coaching. But that was that's the kind of summary of how where coaching entered my entered my life.

Andy Follows: 18:15

Yeah. And also that intentionality coming up again, and you taking control. Marvellous. So let's talk about then how you went from your this coaching, the floodlights coming on during your first coaching session to you deciding actually, I'm going to become a coach myself.

Caroline Rae: 18:31

Yeah. So I had that moment of realising like, Oh, okay. And it also suddenly then made sense in previous roles, why those had been really brilliant roles, or, and where they had maybe started to, you know, miss a line or so that's suddenly, my sort of career trajectory, to that point in in more technicolour as well. I had gotten this information about oh, okay, this makes sense. And then I started to think, Well, what what do I want to do. And at that point, I was very, very burnt out. So I am, you know, not sleeping, just running on fumes, like all of the things that happen when you start to burn out completely focused on work, not much space for anything else. So it took a while for me to think about what do I need to do and I also felt very attached to this company that I'd helped bring out of government raise funds for was a you know, finding a co founder of felt very attacked, it was very hard to sort of think I need to walk away from this. So I did have some conversations about how things might look different. But in the end, I decided to move jobs and move into back into the sort of behavioural marketing world. And just it was an environment that I knew I knew I could be really impactful there. I knew that it would be, like supportive and nurturing and rewarding. It really aligned with my values as well. On reflection, what I would do, knowing what I know now is I would finish that role and take a big break. Because I think I had this belief that like, I couldn't just leave and not do anything I had to leave to something else. And I think that's an old baked in, you know, my mom was always like we weren't, we work in this household, you have to have a job. You know, I think that's an old belief. So the idea of leaving and just not doing anything felt not available to me. So I moved into this other job. And that was great. And I've continued sort of leading teams, and I realised that I really enjoyed helping, you know, the teams that we're working with really think about where they wanted to go in their careers and how they could do work, that was aligned with their strengths. And even if that meant we were having conversations about what they might do longer term, like beyond the role, and the company that I was working in. So I decided that I would invest in coaching. So I paid for myself to train as a coach. And the intention that I had was to be a better leader, that's what I wanted to do, I just wanted to be a better leader, like I wanted to get better, is something I enjoyed. I know that it can be incredibly challenging, you know, when things are going well, and your team are doing great is great. When it's not, it's really quite hard. So I wanted to be a better leader. And that's why I trained as a coach, I had no intention of being a full time coach, my intention was to just be a great leader to help lead and develop people. And then I did some coaching on the side, as you know, when you're training, and it's you have to keep up your practice. And you know, make sure that you're working with people outside of my team as well. But yeah, definitely no interest in full time coaching, it just wasn't something that I had in my mind. Like, I'd certainly not had any intention about doing that. And then around March 2018, so a couple of years, after I'd qualified, I decided that maybe I will give this a bash, actually, I feel like one of my core values is freedom. The other one is progress. And I think in my mind, I felt like this might create more freedom from for me and not being you know, in these high pressure, very demanding, and very rewarding roles. But I felt like I wanted to see what I could create for myself, again, sort of that building, taking vision and building it. I was also very inspired by the entrepreneurs that I was working with, you know, I've been working with entrepreneurs for over 10 years at this point. For me, what's really interesting about entrepreneurs is they know the problem they want to solve, even if the path is uncertain. They just keep that vision in mind. And then they keep going and they keep experimenting, and they keep building. And the problem that I realised I wanted to solve was I wanted to solve, like, I don't think we should be experiencing burnout, I don't think we should be experiencing like disconnect. And we shouldn't be working in jobs that make us feel awful and disconnected inside. And we have the opportunity, you know, I recognise this and privilege and in that, but we have the opportunity more than ever before to be able to take ownership, we can take ownership of our career and life. So I sort of left my high paying job and took the plunge around June 2019. And my as I said, My intention was I wanted to work with people all over the world. And I wanted to find a way to do that online. It was quite fledgling then. And then suddenly pandemic arrived, and everyone got very comfortable being on video. And that really, again, just collapsed. That timeline so wonderfully for me.

Andy Follows: 23:43

Yeah, that would have been a real accelerator. And so here you are now four years on from that, unless you explained at the beginning, the pilot has been accelerated by, again, another chance event. I like how when you another example, when you started qualifying as a coach, the vision that helped you go on that journey was the idea of being a better leader. The way it's played out, that wasn't in your mind at all. But here you are. Yes. So it's another example of okay, so you put the vision up there, you follow it, and you can't really be too fixated on how it's going to play out. Just go with it. I think it's been a lovely introduction for all of us to hear a little bit about yourself. And I've been debating whether to ask this question, but who was the Prime Minister when you were when you were working there? Who were the people you were actually supporting?

Caroline Rae: 24:37

Yeah, so the Prime Minister was David Cameron. And Nick Clegg was the DP and Deputy Prime Minister that that and so it was this sort of coalition time and then later, it was just David Cameron. When they got elected in Philly. I think it was 2011 I believe, or 2012. And then, the sponsor of the team that I was working was David Cameron's special visor sort of Chief Special Adviser who's a chap called Steve Hilton.

Andy Follows: 25:04

Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by ASKE Consulting who are experts in executive search, resourcing solutions and talent management across all sectors of the automotive industry in the UK and Europe. I've known them for almost 20 years and I can think of no more fitting sponsor for Career-view Mirror. They're the business we go to at Aquilae when we're looking for talent for our clients and for projects that we're working on. ASKE was founded by Andrew McMillan, whose own automotive career includes board level positions with car brands and leasing companies, all as consultants have extensive client side experience, which means they bring valuable insight and perspective for both their employer and candidate customers. My earliest experience of working with Andrew was back in 2004, when he helped me hire regional managers for my leasing Sales Team at Alphabet. More recently, when Aquilae was helping a US client to establish a car subscription business, ASKE Consulting was alongside us helping us to develop our people strategy, and to identify and bring onboard suitable talent. Clients we've referred to ASKE have had an equally positive experience. Andrew and the team at ASKE are genuinely interested in the long term outcomes for you and the people they place with you. They even offer the reassurance of a two year performance guarantee, which means they have skin in the game when working with you. If you're keen to secure the most talented and high potential people to accelerate your business and gain competitive advantage, do get in touch with them and let them know I sent you. You can email Andrew the team at Hello@askeconsulting.co.uk or check out their website for more details and more client feedback at www.askeconsulting.co.uk. ASKE is spelt A S K E. You'll find these contact details in the show notes for this episode. Okay, let's get back to our episode. So what I like to think is that we've done enough in this few minutes to paint a picture of you people have understood your journey they've seen the serious environment you've been in, you've mixed business and politics, if you'd like you've been at the centre bringing those parties together, you've also been in the startup world, you've experienced burnout yourself, and you have been vulnerable with us today and shared it with us. So now we've got this rounded picture of you if you like and it makes a lot of sense that you're using all of that experience plus your coach qualifications and practice to then help people. And we talked about a few things that we could highlight in this conversation. And one of the things you do with people is helping them to understand when it's or why it's time to let go of the career ladder, which is a term that we're so familiar with. And instead embrace the career relationship. And I was excited about this. I want to hear more about how that works. Because it sounds intriguing.

Caroline Rae: 27:58

Yeah, you know, careers are enormous parts of our life. And sometimes they can be the main thing. And I think in some seasons, that's okay. So I think when you're 20, you know, you can run it pace, you get a lot from your work, your office and getting social life from your work. But I think what happens is sometimes we can just have that model, and then continue to apply it throughout our life. And what I know from the work that I do with clients is that we need different things from our career in different seasons. And so when we're thinking about the career relationship, and the reason that I think this is a useful framing, when we think about our careers, most of how we think about success and ambition is through the lens of our career solely through the lens of our career. We're not thinking about being ambitious for our life, as well as our career. And I think when we think about how our relationship is with our career, it's the same as any other relationship. So whether it's with our partners, whether it's with our family members, whether it's with money, whether it's with ourselves, it's the same set of questions that you need to ask yourself, and I think the questions we ask around our career are completely around progress. You know, the currency of it is progress and competition, really, that's when we when we think about careers, that's, you know, we always have to be beating ourselves, getting to the next level, getting the next pay rise, you know, getting the title. And for me, these are external tick boxes. These are sort of how we've been taught to think about success. It's all external. And that's completely understandable that you have any role models that sort of thought about, what do we want our life to look like? Not just what success in our career. I mean, I don't know what your role models do our best certainly, at home work was definitely hard, like work was hard. It wasn't that enjoyable. Like I didn't know anyone who was like, I feel really satisfied and award it from my work it was it was hard, it was something you had to do. And even if I think about, you know, like Wall Street with Michael Douglas, you know that lunches for wimps. And you know, there's all these raw, like, sort of working go, there's only role model, none of which were, I want to think about my life in the right hands. And I want to think about I'm thinking about, is the relationship with my career? Like, do I feel like it's reciprocal? Do I feel like, am I putting in all the effort and not getting the return? Am I putting investing time and energy into developing that relationship and nurturing that relationship, whether it's learning skills, or whether it's, you know, networking. And so I think that framing around it, calling it a career relationship can really distinguish between the external tick boxes, and I'm not knocking them, you know, we work hard, and ultimately, the currency of worked between you and accompany the exchanges money, but the other bits are the bits that make the difference between something feeling and something feeling. I'm not saying that every day is going to be incredible. But for the most part, progress, rewarding autonomy here, these are the things that my clients want, they want more autonomy, they want more fulfilment, they want to be working on stuff that really energises them. Yes, they do want the pay and promotion. But that tends to be secondary, I don't know if you have a similar experience with your clients being more experienced being more senior.

Andy Follows: 31:25

So I'm so struck by what you said, Caroline, that now you put it like that the number of influences, we have the imaginary the role models about going to work, the reinforcement of work being front and centre of career progression being the goal, I'm just thinking of the LinkedIn, you know, the daily feed of people who've got they've got a promotion, they've got a new position that is a, you know, that's a standard kind of template on LinkedIn, that you notify people when you've got a new position, and everybody celebrates it, and it's so ingrained, and no, there weren't any, you know, I don't recall people who were modelling a more rounded experience. And if there were, they would have looked a bit odd, and I would have probably blocked them out as being a bit weird, you know, bit of a tree hugger or something, might have thought at the time, you know, they can do their own thing, but I'm going to focus on Korea, and I was very focused in my 20, you know, early 20s. Well, and probably up until a lot later, and you've just brought to mind a significant thing that happened probably when I was about 40, in 2008. So it was a little bit late to the, you know, to be having this different idea. But just from something I was reading someone's email newsletter, and it said, Do this exercise it said, sit down, and just describe what you'd like your life to be like, not what job you want, not what title not just what do you want your life to be like, and I spent some time just writing out what I'd like to get up at this time, I'd like to have coffee, I like to read the paper, I'd like to take my kids to school, I'd like to go to the gym at the rock star times, which in my mind was sort of 930 and 430 when everyone else is still at work. And I'd like to travel, I'd like to be meeting lots of new people, I'd like to be helping people, I'd like to be leveraging my skills to help other people, it was just very much a brain dump of what an ideal life would look like. And then working towards that. And it's as simple and as hard as you know, it's very simple, naive, almost, it seems. That's all you've got to do. And then you've got to work towards it. So I'm on board with what you're saying and a little bit shocked at how you're absolutely right. It's just so much bias towards presenting. And it's suppose it suits some people that we do come out of school, we get trained to go into the workplace, and then it helps everyone if we just get our heads down, and we do our best. And we like the treats of job titles and pay rises to keep us going. And that that funds everything.

Caroline Rae: 34:09

Yeah, and I You're absolutely right. And I think there's something really I just want to come back to that point about the role model, if there was any who had more of that balanced, rounded view. And similarly, I would have been the same I'd have been like, well, that's not, you know, the tree hugger analogy. I think there's a good one. And I think the reason that that's important is because we might know those things. Like I often ask clients, what do you really want in this season of your career? And I thought Do you really want and most of them, they don't know the answer. And they have to really dig for that answer. And so once they start digging, often it'll bring up quite a lot of emotion. I had a client the other day brought up a lot of emotion for her and I said what's the emotion? And she said, I've just I've never said it out loud before. And then we got into the shoots most kids she's like, but I was the first to go to university. So I should continue in, like, you know, I should make the most of my career and I are more now than my mom ever did. So I couldn't possibly make some moves that might look like I'm not wanting the promotion or the pay rise. So all these sorts of the conditioning starts to start to come out. And the reason I think it's important to recognise that is because we can set the vision or the intention for how you want to spend, you know, that ideal life vision. And we can set that, but it's the reason that it's hard, it's simple to say and hard to do, is because we haven't had those role models and stepping outside of that norm is confusing for people. And it can feel a little bit isolating sometimes, like you're sort of forging your own path. And it's hard not to feel like oh, you know, like, for example, when my, when I set up my coaching business, I got the opportunity to do fractional director of coaching role in a startup that was scaling really fast. So build a coaching capability for them. And I sort of said to my mom, I said, Mom, I got this new contract, it's going to be X number of days a week, I'm really excited about it. And in her mind, she's like, I could hear her sign with relief, even though I've been in my business for you know, two, three years very successful so far. I can hear her sigh with relief, because she's like, in her mind, she's like, that's, that's a nine to five. I recognise what that is. It's not this risky. I'm not sure what my daughter is doing, even though she's well into her 40s. Still sounds risky. Every now and then she'll back to you need some money? And I'm like, I'm good. I don't need any money. Will you tell me if you need someone asked? Yes, I will. But she put my dad on the phone, which she doesn't often do. But she's she's actually Karen's got some news for you. And my poor dad's probably thinking it's something much more exciting. And I was like, oh, yeah, I've just I've got a job. And he's like, okay, like, he's been less than the work. We work hard here camp. But it was just interesting that that was a very exciting still. Now, that's a very exciting piece of news. It's comforting news for my mom. Because again, in her frame of references, you get a nine to five, you work your nine to five till you're 60 or 65. And then you retire. And that's what you do anything that looks like I'm taking a sabbatical to Spain for three months, or I'm taking a sabbatical, I'm gonna go around the worlds for 12 months, or I'm gonna switch jobs because this one's not working out for me. So I'm gonna go over here, that they don't say anything about it, but I know that they're like that. So I think that tree hugging piece is important to just recognise that it's not easy to forge this path, because we haven't been role modelled it. And even if you know the tools, and the strategies, which is often what you and I help clients with, as well as the, the sort of thinking piece, it can still be hard to, you know, make those consistent moves every day. And I think that's why that intention pieces, the vision is like the loosely held, but it's not the plan. And you need to kind of work back into what are the daily actions? How do you support yourself? How do you resist this magnetic pool of being easily understood? Yeah, a promotion is easily understood

Andy Follows: 38:10

it is, and you stick it on LinkedIn, and you get a new title, and your ego, your ego loves it. It's clapping in the background, and it's jumping up and down and saying, you go, you take that and then a couple of days into it, everyone's moved on and you're stuck with this new job that may or may not be more aligned with your values may just mean more work. And I think one of my thoughts about having you explain right at the beginning of the conversation, exactly what you're doing now is to because you're role modelling, what I think a lot of people dream of doing particularly since COVID, particularly since hybrid working and virtual working in the concept of digital nomad was a phrase that I think that's fairly fairly recently coined term. So people I'm imagining will be super curious about, I thought be great, let's, let's start with that. So you've got that you are indeed role modelling that also on this topic, staying on this topic of career ladder versus career relationship, career ladder, such a well worn phrase isn't everybody knows what that means. A ladder just goes up. Yeah. And often I'm having conversations with my guests on Career-view Mirror, and they'll they'll move sideways. And we've coined the phrase investment or one of my guests said, I did an investment move. And that's what he called it an investment move. And I love that. And I think your idea of getting away from a career ladder and a career relationship takes away the stigma of I can move sideways or down or across. It really doesn't have to just go up with this ladder. So when you've got people coming to you, because again, the reason they've come for coaching might not end up being the what unfolds when they start to talk to you. And I could imagine your client, you know, you're getting through layers and layers of stuff that has been pushing down on her watch She really wants. So how do you start to open somebody up to be able to take ownership and become intentional and set a vision and set those paths that they want to follow?

Caroline Rae: 40:12

I think clients tend to arrive in a couple of different moments. So the sort of common theme is that they're, they have all these external bubbles of success. And again, I'm not knocking those, we work hard for our careers, so we should be rewarded. But they have the partnership, the directorship the C suite role, and they have the salary and they have the teams, the business, whatever it is. And it all looks good, but it doesn't feel good for them. And I think what's interesting is that they want to just connect back to when the challenge felt energising and not draining, I think that's one place where they arrive. And then the other sort of bit that they all have in common is they know there's something better out there. They're sort of ready for more. And I think I always sort of say that feeling stuck, doesn't feel good or feeling like something's not aligned, doesn't feel good, but it's a great opportunity. It's a really great opportunity to look at. Why is that? What's going on? Where's your time, energy attention, what work you doing? How aligned is it to your values. So I think, firstly, helping them reframe this feeling that they have as normal and an opportunity is a sort of where I tend to start. And then really diving into one of the things that I'm always mindful of, is when people start to feel like that their confidence can start to erode. When they feel stuck, and they're not, they're not growing or stretching in the right way, the confidence can start to erode. And so why might often hear things like, like I'm too young, or I'm too old, or I need to keep going in this industry for another 10 years, because you know, I've got all these responsibilities, or I have a gap on my CV. So again, some of these beliefs come forward. One of the lessons that I learned and one thing I always like to be mindful of is making sure that what we're actually talking about is building a bridge to where they want to get to, what we don't want to be doing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. So really thinking about, if you think it's 10 years away, this moves that you want to make, that may be true, it may be 10 years away, I suspect it will be once you start getting clear, and start taking action, those timelines have collapsed. And I've seen that from my clients, my own experience, like things move fast when you're ready for the opportunity. And you're intentionally making those moves. But I think the things to overcome are some of the challenges, but you probably have a similar experience to it. But the challenge when you've been in your career for a long time, is really narrowing down the work that you want to do. Because once you've worked 2025 years, we can do a lot of things. And we have a lot of strengths. And we have a lot of skills. And I think that I think it was Matthew McConaughey who said, you might be good at 20 things. It doesn't mean you should do 20 things like you might be strong or or have developed your skills into anything, it doesn't mean you should do it. And I think that's important too. So with my clients has always tried to narrow down. So what are the things that you would be happy to never ever do again? What are the things that you can do? But really, you don't enjoy doing them? And where are you most energised? Where do you have the most impact? Where are you most effective as a leader and like really narrowing that down because that's where the joy is. That's where the reward is. That's where the high performances. And so the challenge is actually stripping back in order to get clear about where you want to go.

Andy Follows: 43:47

The phrase that resonated with me was, when you notice that the challenge is draining, not energising that's a telltale sign. And then you saying, okay, being stuck, let's reframe that as an opportunity to decide on what to do. It's an opportunity to take some action. And throughout this conversation, we've been talking about intentionality and having a vision. And I'm thinking if you and your husband hadn't already worked out what the vision was, you might well not have noticed, when things changed recently, and that shortened your timeline, you might not have noticed that because you wouldn't have had sufficient clarity about what it is that you were aiming for. I have a sense that some people will struggle to imagine and to really set these visions for themselves. So you've suggested a very practical way of Okay, so let's have a look at what you've done so far. And what parts of the job do you really have, what parts of the job really do still energise you? And if we were to strip away the stuff that you don't like, what will we be left with, for you to focus on? So that's a very practical approach. Do you have an approach for that? The stuff that adults find quite challenging this sort of, well just imagine what you know, if you're daydreaming, what would you love to do? What would your ideal life look like? I think people find it difficult. Do you find that people find that difficult? And you have to really coax them? Or do you not tend to go there? Because you can do it more practically? What's, what's your response to that?

Caroline Rae: 45:18

Yeah, I think I mean, it really depends on the individual. I think some people know what know it instinctively. And they just need someone to ask them the question. And what I observe there is often it's almost like they'll sort of whisper it. And it's the same. I also noticed this with sort of female clients in particular, who who will say, I'm actually quite ambitious, because it's not something that is rewarded to say, you know, I'm ambitious for my career. Some people know, sort of, clearly, and some people will have lots of great ideas about it. And so it's more about how to then bring this expansive vision into something that's more intentional. So when those opportunities arise, so that bit, building the bridge, so okay, if you want to so one of my clients I was working with wanted to set up a wellness retreat in Southern Ireland. And she has a story around that, that makes that an incredibly powerful and important vision for her. But then we and then we start to talk about, well, what would you need? You know, what do you need from your current job to be able to do that? You know, is it about earning more money? Is it about skills development? Is that about, you know, building out your network? What are the things that you need from your current role to help you to do that? What do you need to think about in terms of family? What do you need to think about in terms of money, we all have to pay our way in the world. So I think for some people, it's about bringing big vision, not It's not sort of shaping that, but it's bringing that, okay, so, two to two to three years, three to five years, 10 years. So we can start making it a bit more tangible, because I think what happens and I don't know, if you see this, it's sometimes we have these visions, and we just automatically because of our conditioning, or because of our nervous system will be like, you know, our brains are sort of wired to be that, well, we don't need to do all that to survive. So we don't need to stretch ourselves down. We're not gonna do that. And that's one of the reasons that my husband and I, we agreed on this experiment, because my husband is not, so I'm someone who has is visual. So I can I can envision the thing, I also have quite a bit of history and travel, and my husband does too, but he can't visualise the way that I can. So he will say that when we were talking about this experiment, he was I can't, I can't visualise it. So he sort of signed up to in principle, but it's very hard for him because he can't visualise it. You can't see how that would work. And so many of my clients are also that way where they're more, you know, they're more like return, or that's how they kind of work stuff through. So with them, or more structured approach is the right way to do is, but you have to start building that bridge between the vision, and what does it look like? And how do you start making the moves?

Andy Follows: 48:16

That's wonderful. And what what that's made me think, is, you're building bridges, but you can start the bridge at either end. So for those people who are really visionary, you can, you can start the bridge at the visionary end and build the bridge backwards to now. And for the people who aren't visionary, you start the bridge from where we are here, and you build it out in the direction that they're confident they want to go to without having been they don't need necessarily to be visualising something. Cool. Something else. Yeah, thank you. The reason I think I really pick up on the bridge is because I have this idea that when we're talking about career moves, or I guess life moves as well, we tend to look at it as though we're, I think like a frog on a lily pad. And we want to get to another lily pad that's over there that requires some kind of a leap, a leap of faith, we have to jump over the water, we have to take a risk. And that's quite limiting. Whereas if we build a bridge, or a Gangplank as I like to call it, and we just work out from start from where we are now and we just move in the direction of the stuff we love doing the stuff that we're good at the stuff that actually people pay us to do. And we expand in that way, then we'll still get to where we want to get to, but we won't really have taken a big what we perceive to be a big leap. I remember being asked when I left the corporate world, you know was what a big jump that was. For me I built a Gangplank so I was getting off a cruise liner and I was getting onto a yacht a smaller boat if you like but there was a Gangplank between the two. I wasn't there was no jumping involved. It was it was a very You very measured kind of disembarkation from the cruise ship onto the speedboat alongside so I like helping people I love that you're we're on the same lines there with the looking at that. Something else that you talk about is three things that we're doing what most likely doing are wasting our time and energy and stealing our leadership impact and actually affecting our career progress and how we can stop those. So should we talk about what they are?

Caroline Rae: 50:30

Yeah, I love that analogy of the gangplank. I think before we dive into the leadership, how did you navigate the the sort of shift? Were you sort of comfortable in saying that you were Did you but I guess I'm asking, Did you bump up against any of those sort of external norms that we were talking about around people sort of saying, Oh, you're leaving your very successful corporate career?

Andy Follows: 50:54

Oh, it was agonising. Yeah, it was a long journey. Because I'm very, I consider myself to be risk averse. Because of stuff that happened when I was a teenager. My dad's business failed, we lost everything we moved house and I talked about this in one of our side mirrors. So having the good job and the salary and the pension and you know, all the trimmings it was was very nice and being well appreciated. So it was quite an agonising when I had the realisation that, well, I need to leave because this isn't fulfilling enough for me. And I did need to take a step out, I didn't immediately leave BMW, I took a job with Tesla first because I needed something to help me resign from BMW a bit like your your mum, saying, oh, you know, that's sensible. I had a job. And I thought this would be my last corporate gig before I really take the plunge. And then even then I needed it was only when my former boss from BMW said I if you if you're leaving Tesla, you can come and do some work for me back in the region, you know, facilitation and leadership development work. So that was enough then to help me resign from Tesla. But yeah, people, people, I think what hurt was what it was, it didn't sit comfortably when people thought, Oh, you're taking the lifestyle. Right, you know, see? And I'm thinking yeah, I'm not planning on being poor. Seems to be there. The assumption that, okay, if you're gonna have a nice life, then you must clearly be shunning all worldly goods. And I wasn't ready for that. So, okay, yeah, that was the option. Okay. Right. So you've decided to be poor, but happy. Nice. And I'm thinking I hope you're still inviting me round. We can still be friends. So there was definitely yeah, some some of that psychology going on. If that doesn't answer there.

Caroline Rae: 52:53

Yeah. No, I was curious to know. And I think the lifestyle business. I mean, I have a lot of things to say about that as well, like this idea that you're doing lifestyle business. And I mean, running any business of any size is hard. It's not for the faint of heart, nodding furiously here. Yeah. But it's interesting, because again, like the heroics of entrepreneurship, are endurance, sacrifice, Bernie. Any sort of entrepreneurship journey. It has those heroics. And I think they're so outdated and outmoded. And I think there's room for new heroics. But yeah, I think the idea of a lifestyle business is just really irks me, or often, you know, I've heard people say, well, like, you know, to a female business at my house jewellery business coming on, and I just think, is just so patronising. But this

Andy Follows: 53:50

whenever I have these conversations, it's wonderful. Because I have this it starts a movie in my head. So anything you say, there's a movie playing, and you just punch somebody on the nose in this. It's like, it's like one of those sort of bridesmaids movies. It's a bit silly. But there's a scene where you just whack this irritating

Caroline Rae: 54:12

I have no idea. Yeah, very true. But this does bring me on to the sort of things that were that we do that get in the way of our impact. And it is these heroics. It's this idea that I think there's a couple of things for me that are really important. I think there's the three things really are. The first is that we focus on time management, and how productive like clients will have to come under, like I need to be more productive. I need to be more focused, you know, I'm working all these hours. And what they're not focused on is yes, there's tools for how to carve up your day and there's tools for like helping you be more focused. You can't manage time, like five minutes is five minutes. We can't make it six yet. I mean, we might be Quick, rough be able to in the future, but five minutes is five minutes. And when you're in a senior leadership position, the thing that counts isn't whether you can do all the work that you need to do in five minutes, it's the energy that you bring to that five minutes. That's what people remember. It's the energy that you bring to that five minutes. So you can, you can turn up in a room for five minutes, try and get out all the things you need to do, and then leave. And what people remember is like, Well, that was a bit chaotic, or I didn't really get everything or, or you might not have had your opportunity to say what you need. But when you show up with again, I'm going to use the word intention. But when you're clear about how you want people to experience you, in the five minutes that you have as a leader, like, I'm always thinking about how do I want my clients to experience if I'm doing a workshop, or I'm doing a facilitated session? Or even just a one to one session? I'd like how do I want my client to experience me, you know, in a one to one session, I want them to experience me as calm and considered and supportive and empowering and energise it when that's right for the client. In a big room, I'm going to be probably doing a dance around the back, you know, before before, before I get out there, I'm going to be energising myself, but I'm never going into an environment where I'm not thinking about, like how do I want these people to experience me? Like what do I want them to take away? How do I want them to feel? How do I want to feel? Because one thing that I think people don't have a challenge with, but tend to overly focus on is content. People are always like, I need to prep all the content, I need to make sure it's perfect. I need to Yes, prep your content, but you're highly capable, highly experienced individual, you know what you're talking about? You don't need to be tweaking your slides. Before you go into the session. Focus on how you want those people to experience what's the energy you want to bring to that session? What do you want to get from that session. And so I think because we're in this world, where we're just running from meeting to meeting, to the next meeting to the next meeting, and our stress is increasing throughout that, you know, the cortisol is flowing throughout that leaders are not putting in time to transition. So I think understanding how you want people to experience you building in time for a transition, because when you're not transitioning, you're bringing like the last meeting into the next meeting. I guess that's two things. One is like trying to manage time, not focusing on how you want people to experience you the energy that you're bringing to the room. And then I think the third one, which is really unhelpful is waiting for people to recognise you. Now, this isn't true for all my clients, but like, waiting for your company to recognise you waiting for like, we don't wait, I will say to you, we don't wait, we don't wait for our boss. We don't wait for our company. You go ask another great Scottish phrases shy bears get notes. Now, shall I get no, yeah. I wasn't great. For you know, I've totally bought into your hard work speaks for yourself. When you're a senior leader, it doesn't. That's not what speaks for you. No one sees that hard work in any detail. It's how people experience you. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. And I know some people are like, I don't want to play the game. And I get that. It's not always that fun. But if you're not focused on how people experience you, and what people are saying, as well as, of course, quality work, we want to do quality work. But your hard work will not speak for you. You need to think about that.

Andy Follows: 58:36

Yeah, it's so common that people show up with that. And they are so attached to that belief that no, if I work hard, and keep my head down, that's how to get on. And it's my managers responsibility and the organization's responsibility to spot that and to do what they do, which is a little bit like when we were at school. That's how it worked at school. Yes. And nobody formally hands over the baton, when we start in the workplace to say, Oh, this is the baton of responsibility is being handed over to you now to manage to own your development to own your career progress. I say, treat the workplace if you're in a corporate easy example. Treat it like a marketplace, and you are selling your value to that organisation. Yes. So you need to know what your value is, know what it is you're selling. And who in the organisation needs to know that you sell this stuff. And it's really good quality. Because that's what self promotion is. And people you know, don't like to do it. But you have to make sure that the right people in the organisation know Oh, this is Andy, he sells this and it's really good. Yeah. And that's all self promotion is just who needs to know, for your little business to do well in the corporate who needs to know know about it? Who needs to come and buy from you? Who needs the stuff that you do? You know, who are your potential customers in the future?

Caroline Rae: 1:00:06

Yeah, I really liked that framing. I really like that frame and like your career is your is your business of one? Yes. It's your business of one. And you're a highly paid, you know, service provider who wants to be more highly paid and get more great work that you like, on your terms? Yeah, your terms? Absolutely. So I yeah, I really love that framing of the marketplace. And again, I think that's something we're not taught, we're taught that you get the job. And you you sort of do what you're told, and then you can you just keep progressing. There was no, where do I create the most value? There's no, how do I articulate that? Well, and also, how do I articulate that in a way that feels like me, and not like, you know, clients will often talk about the people who are talking, and they're just talking for the sake of it. And I'm like, we all know those people, we know those people, like, you know, they're doing their thing. But they're, they're making noise and they're being recognised for it, and you're working your socks off and not. And so there's something to be learned. I'm not saying you have to talk for the sake of it or have no substance. I'm not saying that all those people have no substance. But there's something to be learned from that. And that's something to reflect on there. But again, it's this, being able to get into the practice of that and being supported. I think this is where coaching can really come into its own is, when you're working with a coach, you get the insight, so you'll get the insight about your strengths, or your value or the your vision for your life. And that's highly valuable. But the implementation is the hard bit. The implementation and integration. That's the where it gets hard, because we haven't been role models, it is hard to stick to, you know, we we know there's the intention, action gap. So you can sort of set the, you know, like habit building is hard for a reason, again, because it's high energy. And I think that's where coaching can really like, how do you get comfortable articulating your value, when you've never done it before? And like, how do you get practice, so building the evidence and expanding your capacity for action? And being supported by a coach to do that? I think that's really where that's where the gold is,

Andy Follows: 1:02:10

yes, I can totally understand that. We can't underestimate how much help we have to give people to go from the conceptual to the practical or practical application. And so what you're saying is, okay, conceptually, this I love your phrase there that we're our own business of one. So if people could listen to that, and I hope they'll think that's a good point, I can see myself like that. But then as you say, okay, so what do I do? What do I say when how we have to literally go down? And we can do this, as you know, okay, well, let's roleplay it together in the session. How are you going to approach this with the person? What words might you use? How might that land and so on? And that is bridging that gap and bridges again, bridging that gap? Yeah, it makes perfect sense, Caroline. So that's helping people and then timing. You've said to me before that midlife is a good time to make a power move. So we're perhaps I don't know if we need to go into details about what midlife because that could mean different things to different people. But yeah, say a bit more about that.

Caroline Rae: 1:03:17

Yeah, I actually really don't like I mean, midlife is a rebrand, I think it's the first thing I'll say about it. But I think anytime is a good time to, in my view, to start getting really into, like, understand your values get intentional about the career and the life you want to build. But I think what's really interesting is once you've had 20 years experience, you know, I'm still working with clients now that have have this, like, I want to say prove it. And this is I'm not being negative on the company, I often fall into this trap myself, but like I sort of like I still need to prove myself. And I just think when you're 2025 years of experience, like you've got so many skills and strengths that the challenge is actually to narrow down not broadened out. Like you're not in a previous era, like you're in I need to make I'm here not because I need to get our job, or build my business of one. You're here because it's about making the right moves. It's not just I need to get more experience or I need to do and not to say that you won't develop and grow. But that mindset of like, oh, is it possible? Like I still need to prove myself, you know, I have clients a lot. Here's how I feel quite generalist. We feel generous because you have a lot of strengths and skills. Let's narrow that down. We're negotiating from a place of strength when it comes to the next moves that we're making. I often call it like the villainess era of seven thinking about

Andy Follows: 1:04:34

why I like it already, it sounds exciting.

Caroline Rae: 1:04:36

Yeah.

Andy Follows: 1:04:39

Tell me about the villainess era.

Caroline Rae: 1:04:42

Yeah, like we're not we're not here sort of put your hands up saying please may I have a job like we're negotiating from a place of absolute strength, complete clarity on what we the value that you bring, we bring to the table. We're not settling for roles or moves or opportunities that have read flags in them, we're paying attention to those red flags. But we're not settling, we're not settling at this point, you know, we're not trying to just build experience as you are in your 20s, try to learn and grow as fast as you can. We're in a place of authority and credibility and deep experience. And so, again, I think this model that we have, when we're in our 20s, we sort of continue about the world of work and how we have to behave. And like we have to always be proved pass the test, we need to pass the next test, the promotion, test, the pay rise test, and then landed a job. And now I have to prove myself, and I'm like, you'd have to prove yourself, you've just been recruited into that role, because you're highly experienced, you don't need to prove yourself, what you need to think about is what impact do you want to have? How will you do that? What are the steps that you will take? Who do you need to talk to? So again, it's this shift, but the villainess area is definitely not about passing tests or proving them. So I'm cheating myself. It's, it's we're really in a position of power now. And the dynamic looks much different. So for me, that's where you start really making those moves in a different mindset altogether.

Andy Follows: 1:06:10

It's fascinating how much what that's made me think about is, so we've got, we've reached this point in our career where maybe, as you say, 20 years, so we've got all that knowledge, skill and experience those 1000s of days, we've shown up that actually, I think we forget, it looks less looking back. But it's day after day, hour after hour meeting after meeting interaction after interaction where hopefully, if we've been paying attention, reflecting and learning from it, we have come a long way. And we haven't even realised how much we know, we can make the most of that if we have the right mindset towards it. But if we don't, we can really reduce our potential impact. And we can reduce the value of that through our own poor appreciation of it or lack of appreciation of it. And again, it comes back so much to reflecting and being clear on what we want, and what we bring. And then facing the world with that our own clarity, being able to face off to people with no, I know what I bring, I know what I want this sort of conversation about what you need, problems that you have, that I could help you solve that I know I can help solve that I can demonstrate I've solved. And let's see if we can work something out. That's a good fit for the organisation. And for me, and it sounds so simple. Because it is conceptually but that's the that's what has to happen.

Caroline Rae: 1:07:37

Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. And you're right, it is simple. And yet, it's simple to say how to do. Because we're very attached to all of that, you know, we've been taught that more is better. So that part of it is being clear about what I want, what I bring, but also what I'm very happy to not like I'm very happy to say that's not me, you won't get the most value from me that this is where you get the most value from me. I know people who are brilliant at doing x y Zed, but that's not me. So it's also being comfortable with saying and that is that is the harder part. Because what we've been taught is the only route to success is to be a plus in all the things. And so being able to say, that's not me, that's not my strong suit. That's not where I create value. It's something to get comfortable with. And it's not that easy.

Andy Follows: 1:08:28

And that's something you help your clients. Yeah, absolutely. Get clear on it. So anything else that you'd like to put on the table, Caroline, that you'd like to talk about that's important in people taking ownership of their careers?

Caroline Rae: 1:08:45

I think I mean, I think it's been such a great conversation. Thank you. I think for me, you have heard me talk about being intentional, a lot. And I think the reason I do that is because it does help you build that bridge, you know it, it allows you to focus on what's important to you. It helps you expand capacity to take action. As you said, if we my husband and I hadn't had that vision and been started to make move towards it, we might have missed it altogether, or it just wouldn't have been in our consciousness. Or because we haven't been taking moves towards it, it would have been harder for us to move as quickly as we did from the opportunities here to setting foot in Spain was six weeks. And so that was a lot of movement in a short space of time. So I think for me, it helps you focus on what's important to you. It expands your capacity to take action and builds the evidence, like we're good at getting up to the next mountain. But we never looked back at all the mountains that we've climbed already. And so I think building the evidence of your capability to create results on your terms, whether it's life or career. That's really what in being intentional does it helps you focus on what's important, expand your capacity to take action, build the evidence to create results, and they compare Hold on each other, those three things compound on each other. And you, I think that you need that Trifecta to build a career in life on your own terms. And I think the final thing that I would say is that you can be grateful for all the success that you have. And you can still want more, you can still want more, you can still better. I think that ambition and desire for more and better doesn't need to be formed from lack. I think it can come from, like, I'm really grateful and I'm capable of more I can create more, there's more and better for us. Still, I'm a big believer in that.

Andy Follows: 1:10:37

I thought it was a wonderful spot to end on a nice little speech at the end. If you like Caroline, thank you so much for joining me.

Caroline Rae: 1:10:44

Thank you for having me.

Andy Follows: 1:10:45

I was excited to have this conversation. You're very welcome. I was excited to have this conversation. I'm really looking forward to it because I'm so into this topic, and I knew you would have such wisdom to bring and also practicality and you're a role model. So it's you're doing and I hope you're inspiring I hope people who are you know, you cannot fail to have noticed the the articles about hybrid working and digital nomads and people going out and doing things that look so much fun. And you're modelling that and and hope that people listening or thought, well, I'd love to have a coaching session with Caroline, I can imagine her really being able to help me. So we'll put some details in our show notes about how to people if people want to reach out to you. How should they do that?

Caroline Rae: 1:11:28

Yeah, they can you can reach out to me over on LinkedIn or@furillo.com, which is we'll be down in the link below. But yeah, I'd really love to connect with people. I just, you know, even if you have any takeaways from this session, like let me know. Let me know what your takeaway is. Shout out the you know, Andy in the podcast, but let me know what your takeaway is. I'd love to hear what resonates what questions you have. DMS are open.

Andy Follows: 1:11:56

Okay, thank you very much indeed. It's been a huge pleasure.

Caroline Rae: 1:11:59

Thank you, Andrew. It's been great.

Andy Follows: 1:12:05

You've been listening to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR with me. Andy Follows. I really enjoyed this conversation with Caroline. And I hope that it'll encourage you to be increasingly intentional about your life and career. If you'd like to reach out to Caroline, you'll find our contact details in the show notes to this episode. If you enjoy listening to our episodes, please, could you do me a huge favour and share them with someone who lead parents or mentor or a friend do you think will also appreciate them? Thank you to Caroline for joining me, thank you to our sponsors for this episode, ASKE Consulting and Aquilae. And thank you to the CAREER-VIEW MIRROR team without whom we wouldn't be able to share our guests' life and career stories. And above all, thank you to you for listening.

Osman Abdelmoneim: 1:12:44

No matter how hard you try. No matter how hard working you are, you're never going to be able to do it on your own. It's just not possible.

Paul Harris: 1:12:51

You know, at the end of the day, you're steering your own destiny. So if it's not happening for you, and you're seeing what you want out there, then go out there and connect.

Sherene Redelinghuys: 1:12:59

Don't rely on others. You you have to do it yourself. You have to take control.

Rupert Pontin: 1:13:05

If you've got an idea if you've got a thought about something that might be successful, if you've got a passion to do something yourself, but you just haven't quite got there, do it!

Tom Stepanchak: 1:13:15

Take a risk. Take a chance stick your neck out what's the worst that can happen? You fall down okay, you pick yourself up and try again.