Career By Design┃Irene Hoheusle | Ep. 28

What does a real ‘career by design’ strategy look like?

Most careers don’t start with a plan, but they don’t have to stay that way. In this episode, Katalina Dawson sits down with Irene Hoheusle from ARM Compliance Business Solutions to break down how to build a true ‘career by design’ strategy. They talk about defining career success, overcoming career stagnation, and using self-advocacy to move forward with intention.

If you’re thinking about how to design your career path or push past fear in career advancement, this conversation will give you practical, real-world direction.

Ready to take control of your next step? Let’s dive in.

Podcast Website:
https://careerpathpodcast.com/career-by-design-strategy-hoheusle

Guest Website:
https://armcbs.com/

Guest LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/irene-hoheusle-8a62274b/

career by design strategy,
defining career success in financial services,
self advocacy,
career stagnation solutions,
professional development,
career advancement,
receivables management

#careerbydesignstrategy #careerpath #careergrowth

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Career Path. I am your host, Catalina. Today we have a very unique episode. It is titled Career by Design. So this isn't about trying to find yourself along the way in a career or you know building different things along the path, but actually having a vision of what you want to do and creating your entire career path around that. And to talk with me about this topic today, I have Irene Hoheisel, who is the compliance advisor of ARM Compliance Business Solutions. Irene, thank you so much for being here today. It is such a pleasure to have you on.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Well, thank you, Kat. I really enjoy talking to you and I'm happy to be able to talk about this. Thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, of course you are. Such a pleasure. I mean, I absolutely adore talking to you. And it's also really fun because I feel like I almost have the quote unquote full set of ARM compliance business solutions because Sarah's been on, and of course Deborah's been on. Now I get you, and I think there's only one more team member, and then I will have the full set as all different guests on my podcast. So it's so exciting to have you on. It is great to have you here. So we're gonna start with a question I always start with, which is can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Well, sure. Well, like you said, I'm Irene Hohaizel, and I have the pleasure and honor of working with people like Sarah Wogeman at Armed Compliance Business Solutions. I love being a compliance officer. I've been in the debt collection industry for over 30 years. I'm a first generation Italian from New York. So I do have a little bit of a different accent, a little different mindset than a lot of people. But now I'm just a Kansan with a Brooklyn accent. That's all I am. And I do love to share my opinion. As far as how I've got where I am today, well, to be honest, this wasn't my career path at all. Um, I mean, originally I wanted to be a ballerina, so that wasn't gonna work. But we don't wake up and decide to be in the deck collection industry. That's not usually how it goes unless you're born into it because your family owns a business. We want to be astronauts. And when we're five years old, we want to work at McDonald's, we want to work playing with toys. And I can't say now playing with toys might help because everything's electronic. And if you want to get into that field, maybe it will help you. But overall, we don't know what we want to be. We can go to high school and still not be sure. We could even go to college. How many people get a degree and don't use it? How many people get a degree and it has nothing to do with the career they wind up ending in at all? Even though I'm a true believer in there's no such thing as wasted education. That's not that's not a real thing. So I got into this, it was kind of like a lovely accident. I got a job at an agency back in 1997. I found I'm good at this. And then after a while, I found I was really proud of being good at this. And I wanted to learn more. I had desire, I had ambition to learn more. I made it my business to learn more and then to apply what I learned. And before you know what, I'm running the collection department for multiple offices. I'm head of all compliance, I'm creating and training all the training for everybody in every department. Um, I got good and I found my career. It was really an accident, but I paid attention. So it made it different.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Yeah, I a lot of people say the same thing. You fell into this career one way or another. So I I've heard that story before, but it's also every time I hear it, it's a little bit unique of how you got to the industry. So it's fun to hear your background. And especially I very much vibe with the like when you were younger, you never thought you would be here. Like, I definitely, especially even today, I'm sure you can see I love dinosaurs. And as a little kid, I used to say, like, oh, I really want to work with dinosaurs. I want to be like a paleontologist. I don't do that today. It's more of a hobby thing. But yeah, let's dive into this topic of career by design. So, of course, at some point we fell into this portion of our career. But in order to truly design your career, you kind of have to have a vision of what you want to be or where you want to go to create the path around it. So, how do you do that? How would you form your vision of your career?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Well, those of us that are lucky, which I think is the rare case, and know what they want to be and lead towards that. I mean, that is great. But even those people had to work hard, had to get the education, had to learn things. So you have to ask yourself questions when you're trying to figure out, you know, how far do I want to go in this career? I mean, it might be questions as simple as being in this career will allow me to spend time with my family? I want to travel. Will be in this career marry me to my desk where I could never get anywhere? Or will this career actually help me with travel? That's part of the career. Do I like this job? Am I actually interested in this? Do I want to do it for the next 30 years? Or do I want to do something else where I'm not bored and I'm not feeling like, well, this was a hole that I dug for myself? Do you really want to put in the work? Some people are very happy just where they are, some people aren't. So you gotta be realistic. It's probably not gonna be easy. It's probably gonna take time. Are you ready? Are you committed to that? Are you committed to getting the education you need? And when I say the education, I don't mean formal education. Some careers need formal education. You want to be a doctor, you better be educated. I'm not going to some fly-by-night doctor who didn't get an education. But sometimes the education could be real life education. Sometimes it could be learning from others, whether it's learning what to do or what learning what not to do. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But committing the time to doing it, I hate to say it, and I might get people mad at me for saying this, but there's a lot of people in our industry or in any industry, the younger people, who kind of feel like I'm entitled to this. You know, hey, I got my degree in this, and now pay me a lot of money, I'm titled in this. Or I I I learned this. I took the time to learn it, so now I need to be the boss. I mean, I I need to set my rules and ask what I want. And that's not really realistic in business. Now it is to a point more than it was before. I'm a baby boomer. I was raised to believe you work your butt off and you will succeed. You work hard, you will succeed. You keep your mouth shut and do your job, you will succeed. I don't believe in that anymore. I do believe about the work hard part. You have to work hard. Nothing is going to come easy for most people. So you do have to work hard. Education could mean something as simple as talking to the right people. It could be practice, it could be putting things into place. It's not just going to school and getting the education. That could be part of it, but that's not all of it. And we have to stop thinking, well, I did the degree, I got the education, so I'm entitled to this position. You need to promote me. The questions you might be asking yourself is do I want a remote job or do I want to be on site? Or do I want a hybrid of the two? What's what what do I really want?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Like what what if I'm going to be a doctor, I can't have a remote job. It's not going to work. 100%. Yeah, unless my office is in is is in my garage, I'm probably not going to be a very good doctor doing that. I'm going to have to have a regular medical facility with employees and everything else. So knowing what you want is going to help you to commit to the time and the education you need. Because if you're not being realistic from the very beginning, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. You're going to look back one day and say, this isn't what I signed up for. This is not what I want.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

And now you waste all this time. It's it's finding like what is what is realistic for me. And then by extension, defining your own version of success. Because what you might think is success is not the same as everybody else. It might be, you know, like I would rather have lower pay, but like you were saying, I I need to work from home because me being with my family is the most important or whatever it is. And I did a whole episode of the podcast where we talked about how you define success can also change the older you get and kind of like I guess exploring that and thinking about it. Because like right now in my career where I travel so much, I love it. But I really want to be a mom one day. And when that happens, I'm not gonna be wanting to hop on a plane like every month. So it will definitely evolve a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Well, look at someone who wants to be a teacher. There's many reasons. I have a daughter who's a band director, and she always wanted to do something in music. She's just unlike me, she's very musically inclined. And she wanted to do something in music. And um, I told her, You live in Kansas, they don't pay well for teachers in Kansas. She goes, I don't care. She's been a teacher now for what, 15 years? She's well known in the industry. She does so many different uh uh um educational courses at conferences and things like that. She's a leader in her school, but the big thing that she loves about it is she loves the kids. She loves teaching the kids. And when it comes to her home life, because she's got three children, she loves having summers off. She loves spring break off. She loves when the kids are off school, she's off most of the time off school. Does she make a lot of money? No. Is she happy? Extremely. She considers herself very successful. And I look at her and I'm like, good for you. I have another daughter, two other daughters who went for statistics of all things. You think, talk about that? Must be the most boring subject of all. The older one, who's like a genius in statistics, she wanted the family life. So, yes, she does work for a school. She's head of the math and science department at a college, but she wanted the same thing. She wants to be home with her kids. She just wanted that. And she, to her, this was her success. And she's an extremely happy 43-year-old. Then my youngest daughter, who's just under 40, she decided, no, I want statistics, but I want to make money. And she does. She has made herself extremely successful. She makes a lot of money, but she married a man who makes decent money too. And between the two of them, they're able to call the shots a little bit. So because they're in the position they are and respected like they are, they can call the shots. They are home with their son more often than others are. She was able to say, Well, I want to work from home. If you want me, I'm going to work from home. She's full-time working from home. So she gets to be with her child. So yeah, what is the goal that you want in this life is going to define that success? Because for someone it's just a it might just be a title. I want the prestige of a title. I'm searching to be president of this company. Okay, are you qualified to be president of the company? Did you ask and find out what the president of the company actually does and know if this is something you're going to be happy in? It'll take up too much of your time. Just because it might make the dollar signs might be there doesn't mean that you're successful. I don't consider successful just dollar signs. Yes, it's part of it. I want to be able to function and not worry about my future and be able to retire and be comfortable. But that's only part of the success. Your success may be defined differently, and that's going to be your career path. Because if you're just going for the money, your career path might succeed in that one aspect, but doesn't mean that you're happy with what you're doing. So yeah, I gotta love what I did. And believe it or not, I actually love this. Isn't that strange? I love this. I'm good at it.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

That's not strange. I love what I all of us we we love different things, and that's that's what's so beautiful about it is things can get done because people have those different passions. Like I could never be a surgeon, I would pass out, like I would not be able to handle that. But people are fascinated by that and they love it. So go ahead, go do it. Love what you love, and and it's beautiful that we have that.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Well, I think that if you if once you know more or less, well, this is the direction I want to go, once you've answered all those questions for yourself and you go, no, that this is where I want to be. If you're in a working for a company that you love, that you like, you just feel like you're getting stagnant, like you're not moving forward, do something about it. I mean, or if you're working for a company that you feel I can't do anything about it, well, maybe it's time to start looking to work for a different company. But if you're working for a company you like, you enjoy the job, you enjoy your bosses, but you want to move forward and you're not, it's time to make an appointment to speak to the decision makers. It's time to make an appointment to speak to somebody who has the authority and ability to help you in your career path. And then to be totally honest with them. Look, I love it here, I love what I do, but I think I could offer you more. What do I need to do to prove to you I'm a good candidate for X position? How do I earn this position? What are the next steps? And see what they say. They might come out and say, Well, yeah, uh, you know, I I don't think you're right for that position because of XYZ. Okay, what if I took courses to learn how to do that better? What if I found a mentor and helped me do that better? How long would you give me to prove that I could succeed there? And they might say, Okay, well, if you could show me in six months that you could do that, I'll consider you for the position. Working now. Do it, do what you said. And go back in six months. If no one, if if month seven is rolling around and they haven't said anything, make another appointment. Go back and say, hey, you know, this is the career path you put me on. I feel I've succeeded. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

And don't brag, just give facts. So this would be kind of the second part. There's the forming that vision of your career, but once you're in it, it this is the kind of the designing of your career path within it, um, which sounds like what you're saying is all different versions of advocating for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Oh, definitely. You have to. You have to advocate for yourself because um you are the person who knows you best. I I could leave a room, I can never leave myself. I'm always gonna be there. No matter what I do, I'm always gonna be with me. So I need to make sure that I like me and I'm happy with me and I'm proud of me because I can't run away from myself. So put yourself in a position where you feel proud. But there's a difference between bragging and advocating for yourself. Saying I can do this or I can learn this so I could do this is different than saying, well, I did this and I did that, and you should this and you should that. That's not advocating for yourself. That's bragging. Being a, let's say you're in a in a lower leadership position, but you're in a leadership position and you want to move up. If you're always kicking your, your, your, your uh employees under the bus, no one's gonna want to improve your career. No one's gonna want to say, well, you know, you're a great leader and you need to move forward. I could say, I've been here for 10 years and I deserve it. That means absolutely nothing. I know lots of people who have been in their job for a very long time that would make terrible leaders. They might not even want to even want to be a leader. You don't promote people just because of tenure, you promote people because of their abilities, of what they could do for you, of what they offer. And if I could offer something and I don't even know I'm supposed to be offering it, and they tell me you need to do this, I'm gonna learn how to do it if that's really what I want to do. Well, you know what? They might scare me off of it. They might say, well, you need, you know, you want to be president of the company? Well, the president needs this, the president learns that, the president has to have that. And I might be thinking, all right, that's too much. I don't want to do that. How about I'm vice president of the company? But there also might be, oh, I can do that. I can handle that. I already know that part. You might feel like actually better when you're done. It's just like going to a convention. I'm I'm a real big, real big believer in networking. And not just because it's fun and the people you meet are great, and there's no such thing as too many friends, but I'm a big believer in helping people, you being the mentor, and being helped, finding a mentor. If throughout my career I've spoken to so many people, I could throw names around all over the place, that I ask questions. And if you see somebody where you want to be and they're approachable and they're friendly, what's wrong with having a cup of coffee with them and asking? So, how'd you get there? What did you do? What mistakes did you make? What do I need to avoid? Well, give me some advice. And it's amazing how not only do you create this close relationship where they're a mentor in the future for you, or you might recommend them for something else, or they might even wind up being a peer of yours in the same company one day, who knows? But you're learning so much without making all the mistakes. My dad was a crazy Italian, and he used to always say, there are people that are educated, there are people that are intelligent, but not everybody is both. And it's true because I can get as much education as I want, and I could not have common sense. Or I could be my father, who never made it past eighth grade in Italy, who was one of the most intelligent people I ever met in my entire life. But was he educated? As far as the idealistic definition of education, no, he only made it to the eighth grade. Was he educated in his career? He was a body and fender man. I'm Italian, everybody owns a shop. He was a body and fender man, and he was one of the best at it. He was one of the best welders, and he was one of the best fathers. Did he learn that through school or did he learn that through desire, ambition, personality? So even as a leader is looking for somebody, when I was promoting people, because I was a vice president for a company for many, many years, if I was promoting somebody, that's what I was looking for. I wasn't looking for, okay, what did you do so far? That's some of it. I'm looking for what are you capable of doing in the future? Prove to me that you're capable of meeting the requirements I need for this position. And if you can't, prove to me you're willing to learn and that you can. And I think that people forget that.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

So for somebody who might be timid about doing this, about advocating for themselves, about taking those steps, what kind of advice would you give someone like that?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Well, I have I have a my youngest daughter. She was always somebody, she was like always a she still is a sweetheart. She's 38 years old, she's still a sweetheart. But my daughter Maria was always getting walked on by everybody in her personal life. She was always very like, I just want to make you happy. I want to avoid any conflict or any type of argument. And she was like that for years. My sister used to yell at her, Maria, you're too nice. Stop being so nice. And I would say to her, and she, and my sister was worried, and she'd do the same thing in her business career, and she doesn't. In her personal life, she's still a little bit where she just wants to make everybody happy. She's a very nice person. In her business life, no Mr. Nice guy anymore. She's the person who will go in that room and say, No, this is not, this is what I want. What do I need to do to get there? You tell me how I earn this position. And she has excelled so much. I told you I have my three daughters, and this is the one that makes all the money. And that's why. Because she knows her worth. She knows what she's capable of doing, and she's not afraid to put herself in a position where she has to learn something new. She's not afraid of that.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

She knows she knows she could do that.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

But you said something I think also. I'm so sorry. I keep talking over you, I think, because there's that little bit of delay and you're breaking up on my end. So I hear a pause and I start to talk, and I apologize. So go ahead, wrap up what you were saying, and then I'll jump in.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Okay. Well, uh what I'm saying is that Maria was a person who surprised us all by learning where to be that soft person and where to put her foot down to be the business person. And she has become very successful because of it. And you have to be able to separate your personal life from your business life. They're different. Stop trying to put them together. They're different. Shut off your business problems when you go home, shut off your personal problems when you're when you're on the clock. And you'll be more successful because we can very easily meld the two together and make ourselves miserable. And that's not success.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah. And I think you made a very important distinction there too. When you said, like the no more nice Mrs. Nice Girl or however you phrased it, you didn't say that she just bulldozed, but you said that she asked how she could earn it. Just like you were saying before, there it there's no sense of entitlement, but rather a sense of earning an ownership within the role. So I love that distinction. But I also um want to go back to kind of what you were saying. And I would I would categorize that as like trips along your career path that you could make, any sort of like trips or faux pas. So what are what are some other things that you might come across that are mistakes or things that you would need to overcome?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Well, I think part of the problem is not being observant enough and to recognize that you're making the mistakes. It's okay to apologize. If you find that you've done something wrong, go ahead and apologize once. Apologize once. You're not gonna sit there and beg and say, Oh, I'm so sorry. I really shouldn't have done. Oh, I'm so sorry. You apologize once and then you come up with a solution. Every time you make a mistake, it should be a learning experience. I don't believe first mistakes are mistakes. I believe they're they're opportunities to learn something new, opportunities to be better. They say that, you know, once you succeed, you're not counting the 200 times that you failed before you became successful. Because we learn from our failures too. So don't be afraid of them. I think fear is a factor. People are afraid to approach their boss. People are afraid to make a mistake, people are afraid to put themselves in a position where they're going to be afraid of something. And, you know, fear is just fear. How many times have you tried to do something, you're excited, but you're too afraid, you turn around, you don't do it, and you go back later and you say, I wish I would have done that. Compared to I did something, I was afraid, I got the courage to do it, because courage definition is having fear, but doing it anyway. And I try something, I did it, and I'm like, oh my God, that worked. And sure, there'll be times to say, I shouldn't have done that. But what'd you learn from it then? What did you learn by doing it and failing? I mean, and when you fail, forgive yourself. I think some people don't. They they they harp on it. It's like, oh, I can't believe I said that to her. I can't believe I said that to her. Now what is she gonna think? And you go to bed and you're thinking, oh my god, I can't believe I did that. You did it. It's done. It's in the past. Instead of looking at, I can't believe I did that, learn not to do it in the future. Think to yourself, how can I avoid that in the future? Or how can I have done it better so you're prepared. You know, in role play, I taught so many collectors I can even count. When we would do roleplay, to me, the reason of roleplay was twofold. One, so I could see if they could if they're learning, if they're picking up on it, if they're copying. But the other thing is to make them feel better. I had a collector once where I roleplayed and I made up the craziest scenario. We did the same roleplay on On the same account, probably 16 times. And every single time we just elaborated a little more on my crazy scenario. But it was the same scenario that you would think would never happen. Then she picked up the phone and called them. And oh my god, it was the closest thing to that scenario. I couldn't believe how we're all laughing in the background because I had all the collectors on headsets listening. And we're all laughing. And she got through the call great. She goes, I knew exactly what to say. I said, You didn't seem nervous. She goes, I wasn't. It was basically what we practiced the last 15 times. So it was kind of funny that that happened because that usually doesn't, but it just shows that, you know, the more you practice something, the more you do it, the less fear you have of it. So if you're afraid, the best way to get over that fear is do it. If you're afraid of making a mistake, make the mistake. Just don't blame somebody else. Take the blame for it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yes. And and yes, you made me think of there's this judge kind of like a judge duty. And she would often say when some when somebody would do something or like accidentally talk over her, whatever it is, they'd say, sorry, when she said, Oh, don't talk over me. Sorry. And she'd say, Don't be sorry, just don't do it again. Don't be sorry, just don't do it again. She's like, it's not gonna help anyone for you feeling sorry. What's gonna help is learning from the situation and moving forward. And that's exactly what you were reminding me of right here.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Sometimes you have to be firm. The old phrase firm but friendly, that that's a good phrase to use in business. But my father used to used to use that a smart person learns by their mistakes. And then he would follow it up with, but a really smart person learns by someone else's mistakes. If we only have to learn to ourselves, we're gonna be making mistakes every five seconds. But if we learn by others' mistakes, we pay attention. I said before, ask questions to peers, network, ask people in the position you want to be and how they got there. Learn by their mistakes so you don't make them. You'll make your own mistakes, but you don't have to make every mistake. Stop reinventing the wheel every time you do something. Or then we're back to fear. Well, I'm afraid they're gonna figure out I want this, or I'm afraid they're gonna think I want their job, or I'm afraid they're gonna think I don't know something that I probably should know. That's not how mentors feel. If you're speaking to the right person, they know that I might know stuff you don't know, and you might know stuff I don't know. But when we start talking, we realize how we could teach each other. And that even is if someone's way above you. I had a boss who, two sisters, and one boss would be, okay, I get it. The other boss would be, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because one was listening and one wasn't. And as time went on, they all learned to listen. But it's because I didn't brag, I didn't treat people like, like I said before, throwing them under the bus like take credit for what they're doing. You might get away with that for a while, taking credit for what other people are doing, because you're trying to prove I earned that position. I want to be the boss, so I'm earning it. It comes back to bite you. Whether it comes back to bite you by someone else finds out that it was somebody else who did it, not you, and they tell the boss and now you look bad, or because you said you did this and you didn't, so now they expect you to do it again and you don't know how because somebody else did it. One way or another, it's gonna come back to bite you. Being honest with yourself is one thing, being honest with others is one thing. I mean, you don't have to volunteer every piece of information, you don't have to go so overboard, but know what that person wants. And I'm gonna say another thing too. When you when you're using a mentor, learn their personality because if anybody's in debt collection, actually speaking to consumers, you know that they all have different personalities, so you have to approach them all differently. Well, it's no different with your bosses. If you go into a boss's office because you want to have that meeting with them about, I want to talk about my career path, I want to see what I need to know to earn a new position. That's great. But if you're going to the boss that doesn't listen to you and you're saying I, I, I, I, they're gonna just shut right down. With that boss, you have to say, you. I know you would like to have some, I know that I I could do this for you. I know you believe that in me and I want to be able to make you happy. You, you, you. But if you have that person that is a pleaser, then it's okay to say I. I think I could do this for you. I think that I can make that there's I know that I could be in a position to help you. There are different ways to approach people in your business world, the same way you approach in your personal world, as far as how you recognize personalities. Anybody who's a mother could tell you. Mother of multiple children. I have three. They are so different. They have the same core values, but they are three different personalities. I have to approach them a little differently. Totally differently. I have one that is so smart, she's a genius level. I mean, she's she's got an IQ that's above most people in the world. She's actually got a genius level IQ. And when I would talk to her when she was four or five years old, she understood what I said. And she would look at me and she'd nod. And she'd say, Okay, mommy. When I spoke to my three-year-old, who was her young her the next sister, I couldn't even get her eyes to look at me. I'd be like, Jamie, look at me. And her eyes, her face would look at me, but her eyes, I couldn't even get her to pay attention. She was all over the place. If I told her don't touch that it's hot, she was the one who had to still touch it to figure it out. I mean, it's they're different personalities. I had to approach them differently. I had to sit that one down and make her look at me. With the other ones, she could do anything she wants, and she'd still get, she'd still get what I said. It's that way with anybody you speak to. You want to ask a boss how you want to succeed, know your boss enough to know how you want to approach them. Because if you approach them wrong, you're gonna leave that meeting feeling disconnected, feeling like, well, that was a failure. I wish I didn't do that. Instead of feeling, all right, well, now I know what to do. I know the next steps. Now they know what I want. I know how to move forward. And if you don't have that boss that's gonna listen at all, it's time to look for a different job, whether it's the same career someplace else or a different career someplace else. But the someplace else part is what counts in that sentence. We're afraid to do that.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah, be the designer of your own career, even if it means leaving what you're doing now. Unfortunately, we're actually out of time already. I knew it was gonna go so fast today. But um, as a quick recap, for designing your own career, it sounds like there's a couple of steps along the way. First is that forming your vision of the career, which starts with defining your version of success. And even if that kind of morphs throughout your life, define it, figure out what you want. And not only that, but is it realistic for you? And then you can kind of figure out how to get from A to B once you've set that vision forward. Once you're there and you're ready to go to the next step, which is designing your career, you have to make sure you advocate for yourself, even if that means pushing through fear along the way, even if that means kind of having a no more Mrs. Nice version of yourself to stand up for yourself. But at the same time, being humble, you're not entitled, but you're earning and you're learning. It's not just about working hard, it's about working smart and strategically along the way. And there's a huge importance of networking built into that. And then this the trips that you could take along the path is that like feeling entitled. Make sure you don't feel that way and you're actually doing the work and don't fall into the idea that time drives entitlement. It doesn't. It's the continued growth that yields it. Um and the danger that you mentioned of staying stagnant or getting pigeonholed. Ultimately, everything wrapped up. You said knowledge is everything. And your quotes from your father are stunning. I adore them. And the fact that even if you don't know what to do, you can learn what not to do. That's huge. Just keep learning, keep growing. Did I wrap that all up correctly in a nice bow of what you said? I think you did a wonderful job, Kat. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Irene, I want to thank you so much for coming on today, for sharing so much about your story, your life, even your family, and using them as phenomenal examples of ways you can design your own career and create success for you. So thank you so much for being on today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Well, to any of our listeners, if you have any questions, topics, or things you would like to see us discuss, please leave them in the comments below. We will always do our best to try to get to all of them. Otherwise, we will see you in our next episode. Thanks so much. Bye.