Finding Your Inner Gem: Sarah Freeman Smith's Guide to Career Transformation

In this empowering episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we are joined by the remarkable Sarah Freeman-Smith, a visually impaired author, motivational speaker, and advocate for the inclusion of individuals with disabilities. With over 25 years of experience in human resources, Sarah shares her inspiring journey of resilience, purpose, and transformation in the face of adversity.
Sarah opens up about her extensive background in recruiting and her passion for helping others find their calling. After facing a life-altering diagnosis that threatened her career, she turned her challenges into opportunities, becoming a disability advocate and motivational speaker. Through her personal story, she encourages listeners to embrace their worth and pursue their passions, no matter the obstacles they face.
In our conversation, Sarah discusses her book, "Turning Stones into Gems," which serves as a guide for individuals seeking to uncover their true potential. She shares insights on the importance of self-belief, the power of prayer, and the process of transforming challenges into opportunities for growth. With practical advice and heartfelt anecdotes, Sarah empowers listeners to take charge of their careers and lives.
Join us for a thought-provoking discussion filled with motivation, insightful tips for career change, and the reminder that everyone has the potential to shine like a gem.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The journey of transforming adversity into advocacy
- Key insights from Sarah’s book, "Turning Stones into Gems"
- The significance of self-belief and positive self-talk in career transitions
- Practical steps for pursuing a purposeful career change
- The importance of community and mentorship in personal growth
For more information on Sarah Freeman-Smith and her work, visit www.urjems.com and explore her resources for personal and professional development.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream on the Kings with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today I am joined by author, speaker, career, and book consultant, recruiter, and advocate for the inclusion of people with disability, Sarah Freeman Smith. Sarah is visually impaired, and we're going to be talking to her about her work and everything that she's up to and going to be up to. She has an extensive uh HR background. So, Sarah, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Oh, thank you so much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Okay, great. Well, um that was a mouthful with that introduction with all the hats on. Don't know how I balance them on my head, but thank God he has equipped and enabled me. But I have been a motivational speaker for quite some time, well over 20, 25 years, but I have an extensive background, as uh you you stated in human resources, especially on the recruiting and talent acquisition side. And I love just inspiring and encouraging people to really fulfill their purpose or their calling when it comes down to work. Because oftentimes uh people land into their their jobs because it was the only company that that offered me the job or it pays well, but it's really not where they have their passion and even their calling. They they they don't think that they can make a good living. So when I was starting out in recruiting, I reached out to uh a lot of the marginalized inner city neighborhoods because I grew up in the inner city myself and wanted to give them opportunities to get and find uh jobs within the downtown and bigger opportunities with progressive companies. So that led me to just encourage and tell people you don't need to let your circumstances or surroundings define your destiny. And that led me to writing my first inspirational book called Turning Stones into Gems, Learn How to Find Purpose in Your Life and Career. And then I, of course, did some writing workshops helping people to learn how to write and self-publish their own books and market them because I was doing that back 25 years ago. And then I took off uh time to kind of devote more into a corporate career after about three or four years of promoting and doing workshops with uh my book. And as God would have it, sometimes we have an idea what we want to do, Curtis, but in the end, God has bigger plans. And I started losing my vision mid-career, right in the prime of my um of my career when I was getting promotions, and they couldn't find out why my vision loss was occurring. And after several years, numerous tests, it was determined I had a genetic condition, and unfortunately, it would lead to total blindness, and they had no cure. So that stopped me in my tracks, you can imagine. But after a little bit in my pity party, uh, I had to get up off that couch after God clearly spoke to me. And I'm whining, saying, Why me, why me? I do all these things. Um, you know, active in the community, active in my church, active at work. And now I can't do my job because I have to rely on my vision. Well, God said, why not you? And it is not about you. It is, I'm going to go through you to be a blessing and an encouragement for others. And if you really want to have a pity party, let's go to MD Anderson's Cancer in Research Hospital and start from the infant ward. And you're sitting here just because you can't see clearly today, but you could see for all those other years. So that turned from a pity party into a propel party, Curtis. And that got me not only to continue to recruit and use assistive technology accommodations to um uh enhance my career, but also become a disability advocate because I realized many people put biases and prejudices that individuals with disabilities could not work in the workplace, and I wanted to prove them wrong. And I got involved in disability support organizations and things of that nature, which I still do to this day. So that's why I wind up wearing all these multiple hats. And I'm in I'm a seasoned late blooming baby boomer, as I call it. I got out of the corporate world about two and a half years ago, but that didn't stop me. God said, I'm not through with you yet. So reinvent yourself and start doing some other things, and that's what I'm doing now: speaking, doing career coaching, helping people to write and self-publish their books and on and on. So that's who Sarah Freeman Smith is.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Well, let's talk about the title of your book, Turning Stones into Gems. Uh tell listeners about your book, you know, what they can expect when they read it, what you expect them to take away and why you decide to uh have that title.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah, great. Actually, turning stones into gyms, it's about it's similar to like a diamond in the rough. As a matter of fact, when I go and speak, I bring a geode, and a geode is a crusty old, ugly-looking rock that looks like you can get one in your backyard or somewhere. But when you crack it open, it's a beautiful quartz crystal on the inside. And so what I am trying to let individuals know is society judges us by our outward appearance, but truly our worth and our value is from the inside. But guess what? If it took all those years to build up all that crusty, hard rock debris, it's gonna take a minute to get rid of that to get to the true value and your self-worth. So turning stones into gyms is letting people know that you all are valuable and precious gyms. It's up to you. If you want to stay in the rock pile, guess what? You're gonna be treated like a rock. But if you know that you're a valuable gym, you are going to go hang out with other gyms. So it's about the process that I had to go through because I wasn't uh self-fulfilled in my role because when I was doing recruiting way back in the day, it was more for material gain, status. Hey, I can make good money. I'm gonna get on the cover of Forbes magazine with my corner office and my own company and on and on. But I really didn't feel fulfilled because I was just checking off the boxes. And until I really got off that merry-go-round of helters, kelter, you know, corporate running, running and always trying to do more and get the nice job title, I suddenly realized that it really wasn't about me. What I was wanting to do was to encourage and inspire others to go out and fulfill what they truly have been called to do. And God clearly had gifted me with the gift of inspiration. And I just had to take the courage to take that leap of faith, which meant get out of the busy corporate sector, sit out on my patio, take a journal, start praying and meditating and focusing on what God wanted me to do. And he just poured out turning stones into gems, a six-p process. And the peas are basically all the things that I had to do to get to who I am even today, because when I got out of the corporate sector a second time, I had to go back and say, okay, wait a minute, I need to look at my plan again. And the peas stand for the first and the most important is the power of prayer. You've got to pray. And whether I I'm truly a believer in uh in God, but if one doesn't believe in God, you're gonna have to find some way to pray, meditate, reflect, and get into a quiet space. That means turning off the TV, social media, doing all those wild and crazy things that take you away from really going inward and reflecting on the inside. And once you begin to pray, that's a two-way conversation for me. It's not just asking God, give me, give me, give me, and be my magic genie, but it is praying your requests and not your answers. And what I mean by that is we're also used to say, this is what I want, and I just want you to just package this. I need the nice, shiny car, I need a really cool job. I really need that's what you want, but you've got to play, pray the request. I need to have reliable transportation. It may not be that beautiful Mercedes, but it may be that reliable transportation that the God will provide. So being able to sit still, listen. And when you do that, guess what? God answers and he always begins to reveal a plan. It's been there all along. We just didn't pay attention. And I use myself as an example. You know, I didn't realize how God was orchestrating my life from even in my early childhood. So once we get past the prayer phase and the power of prayer, you got to go to planning and God will give you the plan. But a plan is worthless if you don't act upon it. People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan and follow through on the plan. And guess what? There will be hiccups, there will be detours, but don't lose sight of the original plan and the planning process. So going through that, and that's the hard part too, because sometimes it may mean I may need to leave a toxic situation, job, group of friends, could even be toxic family members, circumstances, whatever that's holding me back. And that's that's that chiseling away at that debris like a diamond in the rough. You don't look at it initially and think of it as a diamond, but God look what it has to go through before it becomes that brilliant stone. So that's the two first two P's. And then you've got to know what your passion is, your calling. And God equips us all with a calling. Some of us tend to not recognize it because we're so busy, and then there's others that we know it's there, but we just don't feel like it's gonna be sustaining. But being able to trust and step out on faith and take that leap of faith and follow through on that passion. And then you go through the patience stage because we all are in a quick hurry kind of society, and things just are not gonna happen on our timing. We have to learn that there will be some detours and some interruptions, but that doesn't mean you have to give up and stop. So learning to understand that that patience is to help build us up and not break us down. And then the other P is perseverance and persistence. In other words, you cannot quit. That's the easiest thing to do, is throw up your hands in the air and quit. But knowing that you have to persevere, you have to push through. And once you achieve that, you will get the success that you desire. And the last and the most, I think, important P is to pave it forward or pull someone else along the way. When you've been blessed, do not sit on your blessings. You've got to share them with others because it's by giving back and doing something to help others along those. It helps people to go through a career assessment because again, if I'm doing something that I'm not satisfied and don't feel like I'm making an impact, then perhaps you need to re-look at what you're doing. Some people go, I'm good at numbers, but I hate being an accountant. Well, there's so many other things that you can do that with that ability to, you know, love to work with numbers, and you don't have to be an accountant, but you don't know what you don't know. So I offer uh a tool that's a career assessment tool that's free online uh through the Department of Labor. And then I also have people take a look at their uh action steps, uh going through a planning process of prioritizing and focusing on the things that are most valuable in moving away from the things that's not adding to them. So those are the things that I also put in the book along with some resources. And at the end of it, I talk about the power of journaling and I provide a 30-day uh journal in the back of the book as well as the uh action planner and some resources of books. So it's a very, very uh powerfully packed resource guide, but it's also a testimony of what one can do when you just stop and get out of your way and allow God to take control.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Well, what are what are some of the common challenges people face when when trying to uh perform a purposeful career change?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Well, to be honest with you, um Curtis, it's it's a common problem we all have. It's our own self-talk. Unfortunately, the negative things that we tell ourselves, oh, I'm not gonna be able to get that job. Oh, I would never ever be able to accomplish that. We begin to believe what we think. And if you pour in those negative thoughts, we live up to those negative expectations of ourselves because we go into that interview going, they're not gonna hire me. All the other people they hired here had a degree, and I don't have a degree. So I'm just, and if it's not our own self-talk, guess what? It's the friends and family around us that also give us that negativity that said, I don't know why you're going over there, because you know every time all my friends, nobody's ever got a job over there, and you think you got and you stop yourself from even going through the process to accomplish it. So it is eliminating the negative talk, whether it's from yourself or from others. And I have a saying, I don't need any help putting putting me down. I'm doing a real good job all by myself. So why do I need you to put me down? And Eleanor Roosevelt says, People do not put you down unless you give them permission. So I walk away. If you can't tell me something positive, why am I sitting here soaking up all the negative things that you're telling me that I'm I'm not gonna be able to do? So recognize some of the things that could very well be holding you back. But that's the number one challenge. And that's hard because guess what? It could very well be a close family member. And unfortunately, if they can't build you up, sometimes we have to love people from afar and just distance yourself, but make sure you allow yourself to pour in the belief and positivity God believes in you. So I don't need to have uh another 20 other people check that box off for me. So learning to uh pour the positivity back into yourself and not diminish your capability or your shine.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Well, what would you say to someone that wants to do a career change but they're unsure of their purpose or where they should go with the career change?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Oh, they first should try the best thing to do is to reach out. And believe it or not, there are a lot of career coaches, especially if they're on LinkedIn, that they can reach out and begin to ask some questions just to find out, hey, I'm in this situation, this is what my background is, and I'm a little clueless right now as to what my next step. And I need a little bit of guidance in finding out. A lot of them will offer, you know, free consultation. So don't think you're in this thing alone, especially if you're unsure. Lean in on uh individuals who have that type of background. So approaching career coaches, or there's so many resources online, you know, just type, type in, you know, this is my background and this is what I uh I know that I don't want to do, but I need some ideas as to what I can do, and then begin to kind of look at some of those online resources and things. There's so many books and and and various resources that won. But I always tell people, don't be afraid. The power of asking, you would be amazed. You could just simply reach out to someone at your own job and say, hey, I really, really want to grow and get better and get promotions, but I noticed that you've excelled in in the company. And I'd love, even if we could just have a cup of coffee, if I could just ask you a couple of questions. What how did you get started? What did you do that made you, you know, take this first step and get to where you are? You would be amazed how many people want to help individuals. So being able to reach out and ask um, you know, help from others that um you definitely admire and respect or have that expertise.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Well, how do you address the balance of pursuing passion and uh considering the practical aspects of a career change?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Well, for that, you have to sit and first of all, assess exactly what you want to do. In today's time, so many people can do as what we call side gigs, and where you still keep your day job is I I like to put it, but maybe there may be something on the side that you could carve out that you could still try to pursue and develop. Don't just assume that that next leap has to replace that full-time income. That's one aspect. I also tell people don't forget about the power of when you're unsure. You could also identify, let's say, within the nonprofit realm, some organizations that you believe in what they're doing. See if there's something maybe that you could volunteer and offer some of the capabilities. They are always so lean and so short of individuals. And when you volunteer, guess what? You get to tell them how many hours you have available. And if it's only four hours a week, so be if it's four hours a week when you get off from work late night, you know, if it's the marketing aspect or whatever that may be, but starting from just those small baby steps to pursue. And secondly, if it is something that there are a lot of individuals, most professions have professional organizations and looking to see if they have uh monthly, quarterly meetings of that nature, begin to network with others that are doing things that you aspire to do. And most of them, you may not have to join the organization and pay a fee, but they usually have a meet and greet setup where you can uh, you know, meet with them either face to face or there's some uh online, you know, kind of networking kind of uh uh of a situation that you can become involved and introduce yourself and say, hey, this is what I'd like to do. And I have uh identified this is the career that I'm looking for, and I'm just hoping I can meet and learn from some individuals to find out what could be some of my first steps and next steps. So uh don't try to replace it all at one time. It's just one baby step at a time.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that let's need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Well, right now, my husband and I, uh, as I mentioned, uh, helped uh very early on, about 25 years ago, when I wrote the first edition of Turning Stones into Gyms. We started doing workshops and helping people say, Hey, how did you get your book? And you know, Barnes and Noble and Amazon libraries, et cetera. And so we put together a book called How to Self-Publish and Market Your Own Book. And that was, I think our third edition was in 2005, 2006. And now, 20 years later, we are in the process of updating that because so much has changed. Social media wasn't even as prevalent, it was around, but not being utilized as it is within the publishing arena. So our book basically gives people options. We talk about uh the advantages and disadvantages. Some people need to self-publish their own book, that's great, but then there's other people that the traditional publishing or a hybrid um uh publishing route may be the best. So we are hoping that the book will be out by the end of uh this quarter and have the book available in the spring because every life has a story and never underestimate the value of the story that you have to tell. That was my big mistake. I didn't think that my story would have an impact on anyone. And once I did write the book, I was just amazed at how many people would come up and say that they could relate and they were so grateful to uh, you know, read the book and be encouraged and inspired because they too had similar situations and just didn't know. So never ever underestimate the power of the story that one's life has. And so we hope to be able to start doing some workshops and helping fruition with how to self-publish and market your own book. Oh, fantastic. They can reach out directly at uh our my website, which is www. And it's you as in United Rs and Robert Jims, G-E-M-S. URGMs.com and the email address is info at urgems.com. And it also would show it, it has uh our books. My uh Turning Stones into Gyms book is not only available on my website, but at any place where you can get your bookstores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all of those places, and then reach out uh as well. I can offer and still offer a free two handouts if they will go to the shopping cart and they can download a copy of the 30-day prayer and gratitude journal along with the action planner. All they have to do is submit an email for me to send it to them and they will get it and get started.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Well, close us out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

I sure do. I always want to impart on people, uh, as I stated, I I am a seasoned individual. Um, as a matter of fact, I age is a number. I am 71 years old, and I am still doing things today that I know if it had not been for the fact that my vision deteriorated, that I would be sitting doing nothing. So if I can do what I can do, I encourage everyone. You bully yourself, and bully is in my book. It's an acronym, B-U-L-I. I want them to believe in themselves, understand yourself, know what you're capable of doing, love yourself, and most importantly, invest in yourself. Pour something back into yourself. Because with those ingredients, you can see it, you can believe it, and ultimately I know that you can achieve it. So what's your excuse? If I can do it, what can't you do? Go out and believe and be the gem that God blessed you to be.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

All right, ladies and gentlemen, you are gems.com. Please be sure to check out everything that Sarah's up to. Go pick up her book and you know, keep in touch with her and keep up with everything that she's doing. Follow, rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. Go sign up for the Living the Dream newsletter and leave a review and follow us at www.curveball337.com and please share the website to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Sarah, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Oh, thank thank you, and likewise keep doing a great job.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.