From Confusion to Clarity: How Advize is Changing Careers

Jaclyn Strominger and Emily McSherry dive deep into the transformative power of career guidance in this engaging episode. Emily, the CEO of Advize, shares her journey of creating a mission-driven platform designed to help students navigate their career paths with clarity and confidence. Through innovative video-based coffee chats and professional interviews, Advise bridges the gap between education and the evolving workforce landscape, particularly at the intersection of AI and technology. We discuss the challenges students face in finding meaningful internships and how Advize aims to make career exploration more accessible and less daunting. Tune in to discover how Emily’s personal experiences shaped her vision and the exciting opportunities that lie ahead for students seeking direction in their professional lives. Jaclyn Strominger welcomes Emily McSherry, the dynamic CEO of Advize—a mission-driven platform that is revolutionizing the way students connect with career opportunities. Throughout the conversation, Emily shares her personal journey from a small town in Texas to the forefront of education and workforce development. She discusses the inspiration behind Advize, rooted in her own experiences of feeling lost despite multiple internships and accolades. Emily emphasizes the gap between academic learning and real-world job expectations, advocating for a more structured and accessible approach to career guidance through technology and AI. The episode highlights the importance of mentorship and networking, as well as innovative solutions like video-based interviews that can demystify various career paths for students, making the process both fun and effective. Jaclyn and Emily dive deep into the challenges of starting a business, the importance of experimentation, and how to navigate the complexities of the education sector—all while keeping the conversation light-hearted and engaging.

Takeaways:

• Emily McSherry shares her journey from feeling lost in her career to creating Advize, a platform aimed at helping students navigate their career paths more effectively.
• The importance of networking through informational interviews is emphasized, as it can provide clarity and opportunities that many students lack.
• Emily believes that video content is a powerful way to share career stories and insights, making information accessible and engaging for students.
• The conversation highlights the common misconception that a specific major determines career success, encouraging students to explore various options.
• Jaclyn and Emily discuss the challenges faced by startups, particularly in the education sector, where closing deals can take a significant amount of time.
• The episode concludes with actionable advice for listeners on how to utilize tools like Advizehub.

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Transcript

Recording Started

Introducing Emily McSherry

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we spotlight visionary leaders who have mastered the art of growth, purpose, and powerful connections. I'm your host, Jacqueline Strawminger, connector, high performance coach, and creator of the Leap to Your Success Framework in Two Steps DS. Each week we dive into bold insights, real conversations, and powerful strategies to fuel your growth, deepen your relationships, and ignite transformational momentum. And why? Because you were meant to be unstoppable. Now let's leap into the podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success. I am your host, Jacqueline Schuminger, and as you know on this podcast, we hear from amazing leaders and influential people who are out there doing the work and having unstoppable success. And today I have the absolute pleasure of introducing you to Emily McCherry. Let me tell you a little bit about Emily. She's a CEO of Advise, which is a mission-driven career platform and nonprofit helping students build clarity through structured video-based coffee, chat, professional interviews, and with technology and AI, which I think is absolutely fantastic. She is especially energized by the work at the intersection of education, learning, workforce development, AI, technology, and or talent strategy. So welcome, Emily. It's so excited to have you on. Love this platform that you're building. So welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Thanks. Yeah, excited to be on the show and chat with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So tell me, Emily. So we were talking a little bit before. Getting started, what first of all drove you to create advise?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yes, I would say a combination of things. I think like a lot of businesses, they come from your own pain, is probably like the primary driver. So for me, I grew up in when I was younger in rural Texas. So there were no stoplights in my town. But I was always an ambitious, excited kid, like wanting to learn and do as much as possible and build the life I wanted and all that. But I didn't really have like the network around me, right? And you, you kind of are you're very influenced by who's around you and what you see and what's in your in your sphere. So that being said, I I felt like I ended up doing all the right things. I I moved to Arizona with my family. I got a free ride to college. I was a state champion athlete. I did like five internships. I was a double major kind of, you name it, but I still left college feeling extremely lost and confused about my career, which I felt like was not right. Um, especially because I felt like there's so many people out there that have it way hard, obviously like way harder than me, right? Um and so then I spent about seven years in the recruitment space. That's when I moved out to LA. And that's when it kind of hit me because all of a sudden I had access to talking to professionals about their job day in and day out. And I was training recruiters how to become experts in careers by doing this exercise. And I was like, wow, we don't, we don't get taught this like at all in any phase of this. If anything, you might talk to a professional here or there, but how can you do that in a scalable way to have enough knowledge to feel like you're setting the right goals and you're having confidence? Because the anxiety I felt as a student, and I kind of just landed in the best thing that I could based on what knowledge I did have, um, it's even getting harder and more difficult now. Um, so I would say that's that's really the main thing is realizing there's this gap of how do we get this knowledge from the workforce to students in a way that's effective, more fun, scalable, and then also measurable for the universities, really. Because I wish I had it. And then the almost a thousand people we've interviewed wish they had it too.

Emily's Journey into Career Development

SPEAKER_01 4:04

And I would think that, you know, whether it's the professional and or the student, I would think they want it. And I'm and I'm with the the thought that's heading through my brain is literally the conversation I just had with my daughter, where she said, I'm looking for these internships. And she's and she said, My roommate has known what she's wanted to do, I think since she came out of the womb. She's like, I have all these ideas and things, but I don't know exactly what I want to do. I have, I have, and I said to her, pick up the phone and start calling places that you think you might want to work. Have informational interviews, which is like what you're doing. I mean, so exactly people don't know what they don't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yep, exactly. I mean, you could even put yourself in your in a freshman's shoes, and they probably pick their major based on maybe what their parents try to help them do or what they again, maybe some research that they've done online, but a lot of the time they're not really sure what that actually leads to and like what's what's at the end of the rainbow. And what my business partner and I like to compare it to is if you or I were to go online and want to bear up by a pair of jeans, we could probably watch a thousand videos of people talking about wearing the jeans, what jeans they chose and why, and which ones they'd recommend if they did it again. But there's none of that now that exists out there until now about careers.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

And the interesting thing is that there are also so many different careers and career paths and opportunities that I think, which I love what you're, you know, that will net, you know, because there's so many that are out there, you can actually make them or expose them, so to speak, like for people. Because you don't wake up one day thinking, I'm gonna have a career in logistics. Right. It's like, oh, I want to do that, right? You know, but there's so many things that people can do.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

And it's hard to scale it, which is really why we believe in the video piece. I I'll go out there and say that nothing will beat a one-on-one conversation with a real person, especially to build your network and especially to get a job. But the scaling in terms of information and storytelling, I think video is the only way because things are rapidly changing so quickly. Like, how else are you supposed to capture these stories and information so you can come to your own conclusion? And a lot of people get inspired by other people's stories, right? Like a lot of people kind of land in something or sometimes get a little bit lucky because they met that teacher or they met that person or their parent just happened to connect them with somebody. But we want that to be available for any student for free. Um, and hopefully accelerate that process and make it a little bit more well fair, especially for those who don't even know that's something that they're supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Great. That's interesting. So I love what you're doing. I think it's absolutely fantastic. So I'm curious though, you know, getting started, right, is never easy. And, you know, this is one of the things that we love to share on this podcast. Like, you know, what was that like for you? And, you know, what were some of the hurdles and how did you combat them?

Starting a Business: The Journey of Experimentation and Growth

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah, I think especially I think at any age, but something I had always experienced was always wanting to be this like future version of you that has something like this, but you kind of get stuck. And I think a lot of people get stuck in having the perfect idea or having the perfect time. And I think one thing that helped me was starting little experiments in other businesses before this, right? Like I had a coaching business at one point to help like younger people with their getting their values aligned and their career and stuff like that. And so that helped me build confidence. Doing events, I think any experience or doing something out of your comfort zone is good. And it also gives you a signal, right? Like, so if you're feeling really stuck, the worst thing you could do is not take any action because you're you're not getting any feedback. You're not getting any feedback that, yeah, this is good or no, this is bad, and then you can't move forward. So, like I think just taking action and experimenting is very important. And then I also think people when they think about starting a company or a business, they think about going from zero to a million, like that, right? Meaning maybe I should take out a loan, or maybe I should do this, or maybe I should like they want to go all in before they really are confident that they might have something that might actually work. Um so specifically, I mean, you know, kind of like the lean startup method. That's a very common like terminology these days about entrepreneurship. And it's a way to test an idea or test your assumptions before you go build something that's really expensive. So an example might be I don't know, I'll take my phone case. Maybe you have a new idea for a phone case, right? Instead of going to a manufacturer and saying, print me a thousand phone cases with this idea that I think I like, that I know I like, who are the potential people that are gonna buy it? Right? Like, what's my assumption around that? And if it's not true, then I'm screwed. Like I really need to figure out what those assumptions are and test those. So maybe I'll go talk to 20 people that I think would buy this, and I'll ask them some questions about what they like and what they would buy. And then I have some evidence that makes me feel better about actually going forward. So conceptually, that's I think a really important thing that can help people move an inch without having to quit their job or go whatever. Um, you can do that with a job, with a family, anything at the same time, and think about it as an experiment. For for me, I think one thing that I always knew I wanted to do, even when I got my first job, was I knew I eventually wanted to have a company that did something that was good for the world and I could make money. Like that was really like my dream. So I think I was always kind of like looking out for that opportunity. And in business school, I got a little bit lucky because they have a capstone thesis that is entrepreneurial in nature, if you choose that tract. And I kind of just got through in with a random group of UCLA MBA friends or people that I kind of knew and some I knew, and we spitballed ideas and we had to come up with an idea in a week. And my team wanted to do my idea. So that was cool. So it's kind of like that just kind of lined up, and people are like, you know, that's really interesting. Like I want to work on that for a year, a year and a half. And then in those classes, that's what we did was what I was talking about earlier. We did the experiments, we did the research gathering, we thought about prototypes. Um, and all of that helped build confidence to do it after school. Um so I think that was that was really important. And then I think you had a third point about like hurdles. Um I yeah, I think the biggest hurdle, especially well, I would say like the biggest one of the biggest hurdles for me is obviously there's risk, some risk involved when you go and have a business and there's trade-offs, right? So, like my biggest trade-off at the time was well, if I don't have my normal job and salary, I can't live in LA and have a startup, right? Unless, you know, I'm not one of those trust funds, you know, here you go, I'll support you, whatever you want to do. So next thing I know, I'm living with my in-laws on the East Coast with my husband, right? And that was like all good for various reasons. But that was something that I had to be able to, you know, like go and do, right? And say, I care about this this much that we're gonna cut all our costs and go do that. Um, and still two and a half years in, right? It's, you know, even though the business is having success, I'm still not making what I can make in another job. So those types of hurdles that go with your your personal life, I feel like are really hard, but can be um, I would say like compensated if you have that evidence and you have more of that confidence and excitement based on what you've been doing and getting to like that next step you need to get to by the time you need to get to it.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Right. Yeah. So I I I love the it's it's like taking that step and you know, obviously getting uncomfortable knowing that you have to make a change with what you're doing, right? So, you know, having to make a move, obviously being realistic with the fact that if I'm not going to be in job X, right? Um, what I I'm kind of thinking, you know, a lot of people are afraid to take that step, right? Are afraid to make that move. So when you were with having a business partner, um you know, what did that look like in terms of you first, like the two of you guys coming together and then, you know, have you set like certain milestones that you want to do? Like, you know, if we don't hit this, like how does that look? I mean, it's it's a we I know we we all know it's a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's kind of how we've operated, right? Like the first year was get someone, get, get a couple schools to pay for this thing. Like I got, and so that was my that was my main goal for the first year was can I get four or five schools to just pay us? And at the time it was just it was just me. And I had mostly built the platform, like from like less than a thousand dollars. Like that was my prototype, that was my MVP. And I thought, you know, if I can get any these like couple of schools that are also really hard to sell to to buy that, that's like step one. And so when I did that, it was a lot easier to find a CTO and business partner, right? Because then I went out and I started, I wrote down my list of like all the skills and things I needed, like the personality I was looking for, and you know, their motivation is a big part of this because we're not just a fast growing multi-million dollar kind of business, like we're in like education, right? So it's someone needs to care about that. And so it was a lot easier for me to go scout business partners when I had a couple that didn't work out when I was like in the school time and I kind of knew what I needed that then um through kind of kind of some hard lessons there. But then I could go say, Hey, I've I have we work with UCLA, we work with ASC, we work with Berkeley, and we work with Sacramento State, and I did that on my own. So I would really love some help with someone that is gonna help me do that a lot better because right now I'm like trying to figure out the website, and I don't really I'm not that's not my thing. So um so yeah, that was kind of my strategy, and that's that's what worked for me. Uh specific strategy, YC Combinator has a free founder matching tool. So you can make a profile and get matched with people and you can just interview them. So that's how I actually found my business partner now.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

That's and what was that site?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Um YC Combinator.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Oh, okay, yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, YC.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

That's actually really great. That's a yeah, that's a really fun, that's a really good way to do that. And that's actually, I mean, this is a huge thing. It's you know, being able to um identify obviously what's actually working, but also know you're always gonna have hurdles to get through that. I mean, obviously there's gonna be stepping stones in getting through that. So talk to me, like what is your big what is like your next biggest hurdle to get over?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, the next biggest hurdle is going from about 10 paying universities to I would say sustainable cash flow and revenue, right? Um what's really challenging about the market that we're in is a whole a deal could take a year to close and a year to implement and get the results. So it's really hard to move quickly. Um, and it takes a lot of patience. So I I would say like the investment landscape is also really hard right now, right? Um if we were, I don't know, a couple years ago or during COVID, I think we'd be getting checks pretty easily right now. Um, and education and online education was thriving because everyone was at home. But now with AI and the uncertainty and the job market, et cetera, people are not as willing, right? I I was in ed I was in New York City pitching as a finalist for EdTech week a couple months back, which was really great. Talking to some investors who came up to me afterwards. And they say they're angel investors, which means that usually they would be like on the earlier side before you have a ton of revenue, who are now asking, come back and talk to us when you have a million ARR or annual recurring revenue. So that puts people like me in a position where you're like, well, how am I gonna get to a million AR if I have no money? So it's that. It's like getting through that gap phase uh to the other side through sales. Um, one of the other things that we're doing is we did open up the nonprofit side of the business for grants because there is a huge mission-driven part of our business that can pay for operations, kind of like all that other stuff, um, while we can still keep the tech uh side open and for profit.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah. So with what you're doing, are you? I mean, we're talking about schools. Are you also talking in and exploring any of the trades as well? Because that's a huge that you know, there's the gap between, I mean, there's, you know, do you go to the four-year college, you go to the two-year college?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Right. We want to get into trades. We haven't specifically dug in yet. Um, I would say a challenge from a content perspective with trades is those profiles typically aren't on LinkedIn, and that's typically how we source our content. So um, we do have a volunteer program that we just started where we actually have a couple people very passionate about trades who are recruiting all their friends to interview with us, and that's kind of how we're just uh you know, starting to dip in a little bit, and we're very, very open and pro-trade. And um, we're also pro-bringing this earlier into high school, as you're kind of implying here, because that's when I've heard parents and students, especially today, thinking about well, which degree is worth it? Where do I want to go? And I just want to know what all my options are, not just what is this bachelor degree and this major lead to, because traits you can make, I don't know, up to 200K and do something with your hands and not be stuck behind a computer and not be replaced by a robot for now.

unknown 19:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

But so uh, I mean, it sounds pretty sounds like a pretty good option to me. I think if my kids were in that age group and that was something they're interested in, I'd definitely be exploring that with them.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah. I actually I it's it's it's I think it's a really interesting thing because I look at some of some of the things that are out there now. I mean, with I have two kids, one's about to go to college and one's in college. And I'm still blown away by all the opportunities that are out there for people that like for people jobs, right? And I think that's also one of the things that I think is really important for for us to you know, remember, uh a robot is not gonna take the place of a human in so many different ways. Like AI is a tool. Um, and how do we use it as a tool? And things, you know, you can't, you know, we're not as um advanced as um Rosie and the Jetsons, you know, if you've ever watched the Jetsons, right? You know, they're not gonna have that maybe that mind yet to their, you know, it's not gonna think, it's not that personal connection and human connection is something we obviously, you know, need. But there's so many opportunities out there. And I still think there's always gonna be other opportunities that are going to um be made or new things that we haven't even thought about because it's new.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I'm pretty sure if I went back in time when the car was being invented or the washing machine, everyone thought all the jobs were gonna be gone then as well. Um not to oversimplify it, but I do think that. And um, I think one job in particular that's everyone thought would be wiped out would be radiology, or you know, the people that do the x-rays at the hospital, because people are like, well, a machine can analyze an x-ray perfectly compared to a human. But my brother's training to be a radiologist, and those people are getting paid so much money because there's also other things you have to do, right? You need to talk to an elderly person who maybe broke their foot and help them up on a table. You need to deliver good and bad news to people. Um, you need to assess a situation that might be that might not show up in the records. So there is that element that I think people sometimes forget about.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Right. Right. I yeah. And I also think, you know, it's like I I can kind of compare it to, you know, when um, you know. movies, DVDs, you know, whatever. You know, we still have m movie theaters. Maybe they're not as prevalent, but right, there's still a movie theater, but we still have what we have in the house. Like things, things evolve and change, but we and we still have radio, right? So, you know, somebody thought the radio's gonna go away. It's still here.

Navigating Career Education

SPEAKER_00 22:18

I do think the one thing though that is different about this time is it really is impacting our culture and our so and our social interaction more than any of the things that we just talked about. Yeah. Um especially for students, right? And I think that's another thing I talk to these universities about a lot is before they go talk to somebody, which they're it's even harder for them to do today, like use a stepping stone to get comfortable, hear how people talk about their business, hear how people talk about their industry. So you're not going in blind and don't feel kind of silly or young when you go talk to somebody. So you have some some context. And then the other thing that's strange that's going on is the market is generally performing quite well, which usually means like jobs are performing well. But things are possibly becoming more efficient and performing better, but it's not because of more jobs. So it's just an interesting time to be watching stuff and navigating careers and education and all this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

A lot's going to be happening in the next who knows how long yeah so you know going back to you know what you're doing with advise and you know getting into schools and you like is it you know do you want to you know be in every university?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Is it you know more than just an app yeah I would say our sweet spot right now and yes of course I'd want to be in every university um and also Kate you know I think also K through 12 has a spot as well like the real vision is changing the way people can research jobs right and creating this ecosystem that if you want to know what it's like to be a project manager you can go see somebody who's a project manager talk about it in any industry and do it in a couple minutes instead of a couple hours before you go talk to that person. Like that's really the change there. And then the app really I would say our biggest impact with the best results right now is we have this classroom assignment tool. We call it like a career assignment. So basically an educator, faculty member, career advisor, career coach, even a parent whoever um can go in and say we want you to watch X amount of content we want you to watch from Y people or just keep it open for 20 minutes, 30 minutes you set the parameters. And then you also set what questions you want the students to reflect on. And they reflect by typing in answers. So what's cool about that is it's customized and measurable career education at scale. And so like a first year program at a university could send that to thousands and thousands of students and they all complete it in 2030 minutes. And the students say they get you know 30% of them their anxiety goes down. They on average increase their career confidence by 45%. They learn things like oh I didn't know that my major is not going to determine everything in my future so I'm feeling a lot less pressured or I'm sure I want to stay in my major now. So that tool allows the educators to scale that knowledge really effectively without having to try to address every need for every student in this one class or just like one person who's working at the school and hasn't been outside of the school in a while themselves, right? So um that's specifically what we're trying to get into as many places as possible because we we see it working and we know it has really good impact and solves this big problem.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah. Yeah no I absolutely absolutely love it. So you know I could probably talk to you for hours on this topic because you know knowing that my kids are in like going into this area right now.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

But let me ask like how can people learn more about you and advise yes so advise our website is advisehub as and boy dot com. So you can go on there access the free part of the site if you would like also sign up to provide an interview if you would like um or just reach out. And then for me I'm a big LinkedIn LinkedIn girly so um just if you look up Emily advise on LinkedIn I'm there. And then you can follow advise and we have a weekly newsletter that comes out with case studies, kind of what's going on and that's probably the best way to stay informed and stay in touch.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Well that's absolutely fantastic. I love it. So listeners please do me the favor go to advisehub.com and sign up just get the information get on the newsletter actually and please actually put in to have an interview like that was so important. It's gonna it'll help fuel so many different careers and help impact so many different people so please make sure you do that and then of course connect with Emily on LinkedIn. And then I would love for you to do me one other favor um because it is all about getting in the right rooms and learning how to work those rooms uh go to our brand new school um community called Unstoppable success where we actually have courses on working the right rooms so that you know how to work them properly. So Emily thank you so much for being an amazing guest listeners thank you for listening I'm Jacqueline Stominger this is Unstoppable Success and keep being unstoppable Thank you so much for joining me on the Unstoppable Success podcast where we don't just talk about growth we leap toward it. If something today lit a fire within you sparked a new idea or gave you the extra push forward please don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode and podcast with a friend colleague or fellow high achiever be sure to subscribe rate and review and most importantly connect with me Jacqueline Schuminger at leaptoyourcest.com for coaching community and your next bold move keep leading with intention keep building your network with purpose and most of all keep leaping because you were meant to be unstoppable