Recession Proofing Your Career w/ Sami Gardner

Sami Gardner is not your typical career coach. Her unique background and skills have allowed her to build multiple income streams while traveling the world as a digital nomad.

Hold onto your seat because we cover a lot of ground in this one and practically anyone who listens should easily be able to find at least one take away.

• Discovering your why
• Being an introvert
• What is a digital nomad
• Career volatility
• Changing your narratives
• Confidence
• How to stay fresh

samigardner.net
LinkedIn
Career Kickstart Podcast (also on Google Play, Spotify, IHeartRadio, and more) 

Music: 80s Motivational Chiptune by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

If I can help forward people who are recently in recovery, get a job. I can help a software engineer, get a job.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

This is where I helped it point to the first. That was a great way to do it without sacrificing their future possibilities. I'm your host of Lucas, certified financial planner, and founder of Global Financial Clients, where I help educate, coach, and build strategies with websites to help them take their financial confidence to the next level. This podcast is for informational purposes only and are not to be considered recommendations. Hello, thank you for joining Tech EPersonal Finance Bootcamp. Today I am really excited to have Staman Gardner on the show with us today. Stamin Gardner is an experienced educator who has spent the last five years researching, teaching, and speaking on career development, branding, and LinkedIn. Everyday professionals in Silicon Valley startups have utilized her diverse skills and insights into the job market, LinkedIn marketing, and professional branding. With the Masters in Library and Information Science, she combines a research and instruction skill set with practical experience gained through organizing events like Transform, Employment Expo, hosting the Career Kickstart Podcast, and writing the job prep curriculum for Europe's number one tech boot camp. She has trained job seekers, freelancers, and companies on how to use LinkedIn at international conferences and speaking engagements in Lisbon, Berlin, Los Angeles, and Medellin. Thanks, Sammy. Thanks for joining the show. I'm really excited to have you today.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Oh, well, thanks for having me on the show, Lucas. I'm excited since I had you on my show. I've been raring and ready to go to return the favor.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. And I think my editing process isn't as robust as yours or my kind of timeline. So you might actually, even though we're recording this about a month after I was on your show, I think this one will get out possibly before yours. It'll probably be in a week or two that this will be pushed out.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Nice. No, that works. I'm on a summer hiatus. So you know what? I'm happy to have you lead the gate and then you know I'll follow afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yep. Awesome. And so before we dive in too far and start sharing any uh awesome tidbits about your background, I'm just gonna ask the first question and we'll see where this conversation leads. Cool. Yep. So uh you have a master's in a library in information science. So what the heck? How how did you find your way to the tech community and serving tech professionals?

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Yeah, no, good question. Because when people think, you know, library science are like one, a library is a science, and they're like, two, did you just spend a long time getting a master's degree learning how to check out books? Um the thing is that libraries, especially nowadays in the new millennium, are a lot more tech focused than people realize. But for me, I specialize in library school working in higher education. So I started after I graduated, I was the librarian, uh the library coordinator at a tech college. And since we were a little understaffed at the time because somebody had left the career services department, um somebody suggested that I help and I kind of take over this internship program, which was struggling. Now I found that I actually really enjoyed it. I was able to get not just like keep it going, but I managed to get about 30% of the student body into this internship program where they were, you know, working with companies in the area, they were doing projects or they were volunteering, um, and I was able to like really get a lot of people some good experience before they graduated, and I found that I really enjoyed it. And I had a mentor in the career services department, and when there were you know more opportunities and openings in the career services department, she you know asked if I was interested, and you know, with being in a small sort of college and everything like that, you know, there wasn't as much room for advancement in the the library. And I kind of because I've always liked helping people. It's one of the big things that really drives my career is that desire to help and make not just help but make a direct impact. And I kind of got like a rush off of helping um these folks because I was working with a lot of non-traditional students, so a lot of them were veterans, you know, a lot of them were first generation college students. So I wasn't just helping them get an internship, a lot of times I was helping them get an internship that led to them being hired, that led to them making maybe double their salary, you know, that didn't just help them, it helped their family. It kind of, you know, had the the rising tide that lifted all the boats. And I really liked that impact. So when the opportunity came to sort of get into the career services, I kind of saw it as an opportunity to be sort of like an embedded librarian, if you will, a career services librarian, you know, and do a lot of research in the field, see what were some better practices, see how I can make reference materials, all the skills that I used as a librarian, but I was focusing them into this very practical demographic. And once I started doing that, it was just kind of like, bam, I found my thing and I just ran towards it.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

That's awesome. And so obviously I'm a financial planner, so I really enjoy helping people too. But one thing that surprised me about my background is I wasn't very outgoing or talkative. So I think I I surprise a lot of people with my uh career decision and the path that I took, and surprisingly, I feel like I've been doing pretty good at it, and and like you, I I do get like a huge rise out of just helping people and making that like huge impact and being able to see it too. For yourself, do you feel like you could have ever seen yourself kind of going down this path in the past? Were you always a people person and outgoing and willing to dive in and help people?

SPEAKER_02 6:24

The funny thing is, is that no, like I am I'm I'm an introvert in a lot of ways. Like I consider myself a social sprinter because people are really surprised when they're like, what do you mean you're an introvert? And I'm like, well, like, you know, like I'm really good when I put myself out there with the people and everything like that, but I mean, in my heart of hearts, like I'd rather be in a bathrobe watching Star Trek. Um So and when I was younger, like I was, you know, in a lot of ways very shy. It took actually between um my undergrad and my graduate degree, I actually had to take a bit of a sales job um to save up money and everything. And it was that sales job that really forced me to get out of my shell in a lot of ways. And then when I went to library school, I found that among all my classmates, I was a social butterfly, which had had never happened to me before, but I was but I was super engaged in the material. Like I I had, I guess I found my tribe, if you will. So I found a bunch of people who also were bookish and curious and wanting to help the community. So it was easy for me to find projects and try to organize meetups and stuff like that. And those were all skills in my grad program that I eventually later used. But no, you the thing is that you can learn to be more sociable, you can learn to be more outgoing, you can learn these sort of skills, especially when you have that motivation of you kind of have found your why and you found your people. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

No, yeah, and again, uh, I think it's pretty similar where my background, no one would have ever expected it. And yeah, I kind of surprised myself on a regular basis. Like we're recording a podcast right now. I I try producing a lot of content as I know you do, and I encourage everyone that's listening to link up with you on LinkedIn and kind of follow you because you're always putting out either video content, you're writing blog posts, all these great ways of providing opportunities and resources for people to just kind of level up regardless of whether they work with you or not. So it seems like a lot of stuff that you post, I always feel like, man, that's like a lot of like the way I think about stuff or how I approach planning. And it makes sense, you're helping people plan for their future too, and you're just doing it on the career level, and I'm doing it on the financial side of life. I I imagine there has to be people listening to this too that early on they just thought they were like a hundred percent introvert, and and maybe they have started like realizing that there's certain things that fire them up, whether it's their community, their tribe, that really gets them going. And I encourage you to just kind of hold on to that and find out what those things are, find in those things that really excite you, and then gravitate towards those. I know it is scary, and I'm sure it was scary for you at first, up until you had that epiphany and that, oh, you're you're actually one of the social butterflies now.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Um but it's Yeah, it was weird, I will admit.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, and yeah, that's a lot of what I found too. And it I'm sure there could have been many points along your journey where you could have been like, uh, no, this feels a little too different. I'm not gonna go down that road, and and maybe you would have never ended up where you ended up. And and you're doing a lot of cool things now. I guess that could lead to the next question. So one thing that we didn't mention in your intro is that you're a digital nomad, and that may be kind of a new term for a lot of people, but where where are you today, like located physically in the world, and when did you discover that you could create this type of lifestyle for yourself?

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Okay, well, right now I'm currently in this beautiful little mountain village in Bulgaria. So it's called Bansco, and it is completely delightful up in the mountains. And the thing is, is that I'm a small town girl. Not only was I, you know, born in a small town, I was raised in another small town in Arizona, like, and I was that kid who would be part of the Geography B, and I would look through the encyclopedia and read, you know, look at the globe, and I would just look at all these other places. You know, like the town I was born in has 4,000 people in it, and that's considered the big town of the county. You know, my yeah, my other hometown in Arizona where like you know, I had my formative years, like when we moved there in the late 90s, like it was pretty much like an intersection with like a gas station and a bar, you know. It was really just nothing, some pecan groves, you know. So I I always had that sort of like like you know, dreamy, you know, look in my eyes, and I would look at the horizon, you know. My mom used to joke that I was a little she called me Traveling Sam because I whenever we went to go see my grandparents, like my brothers and sisters would be scared of going on the airplane, but I didn't even like I was like, you know, nine being like, oh, I don't need a flight attendant to help me just walk into the airport being like, nope, I got my ticket, I'm ready to go, you know. And it for a long time it felt like that was out of reach, you know, because where I'm from in Arizona, like there's there's well, there was the copper mine, it shut down, but like most of the time, yeah, people either worked in the mine or they're married to someone who worked in the mine, um, and there wasn't a whole lot of options. So, you know, moving to Tucson, that was like the big city, you know, when I was younger, I was like, yeah, look at this cosmopolitan place. Um so, you know, I kind of like always kind of wanted to to travel, but I, you know, I researched stuff on working online. I'd I've always been a little bit of a hustler, so you know, even when I was in high school, like I would do babysitting or I would make websites for small businesses, and I would do all these random different things, and I knew there was a way that you could work online, and maybe that could lead to travel, but I just didn't know how to do it. Um, and it was only, you know, after I had stopped working at the tech college, and I decided that I really wanted to do a little bit more with giving back to the community. So I started working as an employment specialist in a in an AIDS foundation because I guess working with college students was enough of a challenge. So I was working with this uh grant that helped um homeless and at risk for homeless um young people. So I guess I'm I yeah, I'm always looking for a harder challenge. That's why when people are like, can you help me? I'm like, if I can help homeless people who are recently in recovery get a job, I can help a software engineer get a job. Um I've worked with Africa.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

That's a huge selling point for sure. Like you need to lead with that.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

I know I should. Um, but yeah, so I but I was doing some real good work for the soul, and I'm really proud of what I did with one of my grands, which is called the Anchor Project. It was like an inner city drop-in space working with all sorts of people, but nonprofit works, while they're good for the soul, they put a lot in your karma bank, they don't actually put much in your wallet. So I needed to find another way to supplement my income. And years prior, I had met a digital nomad woman, which for folks who don't know, a digital nomad, that's just a cutesy name for someone who can work online, so they decide to to travel, you know, either part-time or full-time. So I met this woman who was like a digital nomad, and I was like, What? What is such a thing? And years later, she told me how she reached out again. We had met in a Zumba class, which had gone off, um, but she reached out saying that she was working with a a German tech boot camp that needed career specialists for their American client. It was just a very small contract, and would I be interested? And then I was living on the south side of Tucson with you know two other roommates. You know, one of my roommates was, you know, trying to get a bike business up and running, so half her kitchen was just devoted to like bike mechanics, you know. I looked around and I was like, yeah, I could really use some extra money. This would be good. As I was really fulfilled by my job, but you know, I was like, yeah, anything to do that. Um, so I ended up, you know, working working with this tech boot camp, and as grants, as they do, they end. And I realized I saw the writing on the wall, and I kind of realized that we were not going to be refunded. And I'm a person who has dealt with in my past, because I've worked for universities, like before I did career services, I was a librarian for five years. So I've dealt with budget cuts, I've dealt with grants ending, and I didn't want to be like so many other times where I'd have a manager who really liked me, be like I'm gonna try to save your job, but you know, if there's not money in the kitty, they can't do anything for you. So I wanted to be proactive. So I reached out to the tech boot camp. I was and a couple months before I started my own like private career coaching practice, um, and I was doing resume writing, I had really seriously built up a business presence online. I had taken, you know, um, a part-time business course, so I was doing a lot of stuff on top of my full-time job, and I was like, you know what, this is a really good time. I was also in a place where I was just subletting the room from my my friend. I I I'm usually the person that always has like a geriatric dog or like a three-legged cat or a hamster with diabetes or something like that, but you know, that something a creature that needs me. Um but at that moment I didn't have an animal, I didn't have a partner, I didn't have a lease, and I was like, dude, I need to go before something ties me down. So I I gave my notice. Um, there's some other personal things happening where I wasn't able to get PTO to take care of my grandma who had broken her hip and stuff like that, and I was like, you know what? I can work online, I can go back to my small town in New York, I can take care of my grandma, and then I can see where the chips fall. So I ended up doing the notice, being able to renegate renegotiate my contract with the German company. I got more, more time, a bigger retainer from them. I was able to do a bigger push with my marketing and get more career coaching clients, and then after my grandmother was in a better place and on recovery, I ended up taking a backpack and a little carry-on rolly bag, and I went to Brazil. And that was the first company, the first country that I went to on my my journey. That was in May of no, that was in June of 2017, the end of June. And that started the whole thing. Since then I've been to, I've lived in and traveled to over a dozen dozen countries, I've done speaking engagements all over the world, and it's been really crazy to think about, you know, a girl that grew up next to a copper mine thinking, oh man, I either need to learn how to, you know, dig some copper up or marry somebody who digs copper up, to being like, oh, look at it's a lovely day in Bulgaria, and I'm gonna do a speaking engagement here next week. Like, who would have thunk?

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah, I'm uh one of my questions later is gonna be like a time travel question, but it's crazy to think that how quickly your life can shift. And what, 2017 wasn't that long ago, and you've already been to over a dozen countries, and and like you said, your life is just transformed and totally different than what what you probably would have even expected just three, four years ago.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Uh yeah, you know, the thing is that I I guess the secret, and this is what I tell my clients, is that a year before I decided to do this journey, because I was working that nonprofit, and in this grant, they did a lot. Like I was doing career services on paper, but nonprofits, you do a whole bunch of things. So in addition to writing resumes, I also did HIV testing, I did outreach, and I was also helping, I know, right? Serious stuff. I'm actually very handy.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Um so I was injured yourself while you're out on your own in different countries.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Yeah, I sure can. I can do a really good safer sex ed demonstration with you know condoms and bananas and the whole work. I don't put that on my LinkedIn though. Um during this time I was also facilitating helping facilitate these um cognitive behavioral therapy workshops, which if you don't know what that is, it's how you can kind of help reprogram your brain a little bit if you have anxiety or to give you confidence. And as I was kind of some of our participants might not have been paying attention, but I certainly was because I thought this was really interesting material. Like I come from a country family, like, you know, feeling like we love each other, we're a loving family, but like emotions, feelings, like my mom always says like therapies for rich people, you know. Um, but I thought this is really interesting, so I kind of went on a bit of a personal development journey, and I really thought about what did I want with my life? What, like I guess, narratives am I telling myself to stop myself from doing things? And also, you know, I kind of had this millennial, common millennial problem where I graduated, it was tough, like the railroad sucks, blah blah blah. And I had a real poor me story. But when you're working with people who are homeless and have HIV, like you kind of look around, you're like, girl, get a grip. Your life is fine. Like, you have everything you need to succeed if you want to. So that was in the year before that, where I was really getting my like, I guess, mental game together, so I could actually, you know, have the confidence to one, be like, I'm gonna do this thing, and two, actually do it. Of course, I have the benefit of having a very large loving family. So when I was talking to my parents, to my siblings about it, my dad was like, do it. You are young enough to where you can make some money, go broke, make more money, go broke, whatever you gotta do. Like, this sounds like a great thing. My mom was, of course, worried that I'm gonna get kidnapped, like everywhere she can everywhere I go, she's like, they're gonna kidnap you. Um, you know, but uh, and my sister was like, no, if this fails, you can be my live-in nanny, and I really need that because she has three kids. So I had the full backing of my family, which really helped. Thank goodness I've never had to like call them from I don't know, Morocco being like, Hey, can you send me money? Because I'm stuck in Africa. Like, I've never had to do that. But you know, I kind of made sure that I did some some stuff before I left and started my business. Business to really kind of prime myself for success, for implementing, for really kind of, you know, taking this dream and then just sprinting with it.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

No, yeah, that's awesome. And one of the things you mentioned is, and you mentioned it in this order, having the confidence to go at your dream, and then and then just doing it. I love that kind of the way you phrased it and the organization, because I feel like it is important to first be confident that you can actually achieve whatever that goal is, because it makes everything else just that much easier. It's very hard for me. If someone came to me and needed help with their financial situation, I imagine this is the same way from a coaching aspect, but if they don't actually believe what they're trying to achieve is possible, it's just a nightmare and it's something that they are gonna struggle to actually achieve until they start to reprogram themselves maybe to have that confidence and make sure that it's gonna allow them to fight through any adversity that they may see because I'm sure even though it sounds like you're loving life and really enjoying stuff, I imagine there had to be a couple of like, oh no, like what just happened, and and something that you had to power through on your journey. Do you feel that kind of having confidence is really important to have that before you even start to really focus in or make drastic life changes?

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Yeah, I mean you, and for folks who kind of kind of have this connotation between confidence and being cocky or arrogant, I can reframe it as being having faith in yourself, having faith in your abilities, your resilience, your own grit. Because at the end of the day, nobody's going to push for your dreams and your goals as much as you will. So having that baseline of faith in yourself is so important, especially if you are like, let's say in a job interview or you're doing sales or you're starting a business. Like you can't convince somebody else to take you on the team or you know, to become a client or something like that if you seem unsure. You know, and the thing is that confidence can be learned. It's like playing the piano. Like you can, of course, you have to do that through action because that's how you create confidence, because the first person that you have to prove yourself to is you. You know, if you're somebody who has had a long history of saying, I'll do this thing, but then you don't do it, then it's hard for you to believe in you. So even if you take little steps every day to do a thing, whether it's building a better habit, like, okay, you're gonna journal every day or make a list of things to do, just keep that habit. Or even if it's something as simple as I'm gonna make sure to drink seven glasses of water a day, you know, the more that you can show yourself that you mean it, the more that you're gonna step outside your comfort zone and know that you can do it. And I've had times where I'm like, oh gosh, like one time I missed a flight and it was midnight in Munich, and I was just walking around Munich, Germany, being like, oh gosh, I gotta find a bus, I gotta do this, like, how am I gonna get to Hamburg? And of course, at that time my mom calls me, and her immediate thing is like, you're gonna get kidnapped. Um, you know, so I'm having to talk to my mom. 25 cents a minute, calm her down because she won't get off the phone. She's like, No, you're wandering around the streets at midnight. If you get kidnapped, and you know, she's trying to like talk to my dad, trying to get him to get his colleagues on the phone who like work in uh Heidelberg because my dad works for a university, and my dad's like, they're not gonna be able, they're they're totally different places, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

So I've had to think exactly.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

So I've had to think on my feet. Of course, I made a mistake of you know investing in Bitcoin, so that was a time where I was like, ah, I guess that magical fake currency wasn't a great idea, you know. So I've had times of where I was like, maybe that wasn't the best decision, or I have to think on my feet, or you know, you have times where a deal doesn't go through, or whatever. But the thing is, is that if you have a baseline faith in yourself, in your abilities, in your, I guess, you know, your own powers of you know your skills, your your your own network, what you've accumulated in your life as a skill set, as an asset, as a resource, then that's a thing that allows you to take audacious risks that can that can uh pay off. They have a saying in uh in Russia that's that roughly goes, he who takes risks is the one who drinks champagne. So that's the thing. If you stay at home and you don't do anything and you don't reach for stuff, you know, you you can't get that thing that you want. You know, you're not gonna be able to achieve those goals. And the thing is, is that some people are like, oh, well, that wasn't very long ago. And I'm like, I'm not an overnight success. I was building up the skills to work online and network to do these things for years and years and years. It's just one day I was able to be like, you know what? I it's it's put up or shut up. You know, um, I'm not gonna be dependent on one income stream anymore. That's what I realized, you know, in December of 2016, when I was pretty much sure this grant's not gonna be, you know, refunded, you know, I've been relying on this income, you know, I've already managed to kind of, once you make one dollar online, you know, it kind of gives you the faith that you can make more, you know, and I'd really enjoyed working with a German company, and I was like, you know what, this is this is the time to do it. There's not gonna be another time in my life where at the time I was like, you know, 27, 28, something around there. I'm like, when's a better time to have a free will and journey across the world besides your 20s? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah, well, and like you said, like there's a lot of opportunities that were popping up, and it it sounds like awesome timing, but none of these things would have been possible, or you wouldn't have had the confidence if you wouldn't have been having these experiences and diving in and getting all that additional education and background and work that you're kind of pouring into the the rest of your journey up until that point, because if you hadn't done that, maybe one of these things shows up and you're just you don't have the confidence that you'll be able to achieve it, or you're you're you're just like, no, no, I'm I'm I'm not ready for this yet. I'll wait another couple years, but you never know if there's gonna be opportunities like that again. And and so that's awesome that you kind of reflect on just not being an overnight success. I think no one really is. There might be some random scenarios, kind of like winning the lottery, where that could be the case, but for the most part, even the most successful people really have ran into a whole bunch of adversity and just really had to power through it in order to make things line up and to work and and for them to be able to show us the story that exists now, but um, obviously that's after we already know how not necessarily it ends, but where where a lot of that success starts to happen.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Mm-hmm, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, so I know that you actually have a niche for your coaching for user experience professionals. And so what is it about that niche that really excites you?

SPEAKER_02 29:33

See, I love working with techies and I love working with creative people. You know, I've worked the thing is that while I'm very specialized on LinkedIn, I have worked with everybody from social workers to librarians to artists, you know, to um electrical engineers. So I've I've ran the gauntlet of different people. But what always what I really enjoy about UX designers and everything is that they have that perfect, like for me, balance between technology and creativity. And they're usually really interesting people. So I always enjoy my sessions with them. And working with the tech boot camp, you know, those that was something where I really was able to dive deep into what these people need for their careers, what is the challenges in their careers? And I noticed looking around that there wasn't, there wasn't any other coaches who were really responding to the needs of this community, and I really believe in design thinking. I feel like it is something where a lot of tech companies, they they have they only think to the the next sprint cycle or the next quarter, and I feel like the more that they have these sort of more thoughtful design thinking types, the better off these companies will be, and the more likely that technology can do a lot to help the world as opposed to just make profit. So that's what draws me to them. Um I also find that they they usually come to the field after doing something really random, so they have some good stories. I don't know, I guess we just gel.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

No, yeah, that's awesome. And I have a few user experience clients, and yeah, I think actually what you're explaining sounds a lot like their background as well, so it's pretty cool. I'm like you were my my focus in niche isn't on a specific segment of the tech space, so I I help most tech professionals, but I still do help other people. So I have people that work in banks, I have people that are electricians, so it's it's I kind of run the gamut on that side too. But as far as focusing in on and knowing the qualitative uh features of my my clients' background, I know I enjoy working with the tech's people because of their kind of relentlessness of wanting to constantly grow and their self-development. So that's something I find uh for my niche that I focus on. One of the things that you've said is, and I think this probably is helpful for you with your coaching, is you had to deal with kind of tick and time bomb of grants and running out of funding for your employment. And so your your employment was a little bit volatile, and maybe it still is, but I know that you mentioned that was something that was always on your mind before. Do you think that helps a lot with knowing how some tech companies are very volatile, especially if they're startups, or even just they grow so quick that they overgrow it then they have to start cutting a lot of positions. Do you think that's helpful with that background helping people find their their next career spot?

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Yeah, I feel like what it really helped me was that it it taught me through the school of hard knocks and tough experience that the job market has changed. A lot of people have been taught last centuries job hunting techniques, job development, career development techniques, when the thing is that we're no longer in the age where you work for a company for 40 years, you retire, they give you a watch, you get a pension. Like that's just you know, uh I mean it'd be great if that comes back, and certainly in some countries that is still the case. However, you kind of have to think like a freelancer. So working in nonprofits, working in education, always having to make sure that you're developing yourself, you have a portfolio, that gave me an edge that I think some more established career coaches don't always have. And it's also something with tech, you know, if you are in a in a job for more than five years, like they, or with a company for more than five years, they wonder if maybe you lack ambition. You know, it's one of those things where you also have to understand that there's a lot of companies, like Fortune 50 companies, um, where they'll do layoffs, they'll do like company-wide purges every 18 months. And if you get too comfortable, that can mean that every time you experience a setback in your career, you have to start over. But if you're always kind of doing some maintenance where you're, you know, you're keeping known in the field. I mean, you don't have to be like me where I'm blogging and doing different things. I do that because I like it. I like podcasting, I like writing, you know, I like going to these conferences and stuff. But a lot of people, they don't keep up a portfolio. They get into a job and nobody really sees them in their industry, you know? And for me, like I've learned enough to where I'm like, okay, everything I teach people, I have done myself. I have tested, not only have I tested it myself, but through working at colleges, nonprofits, tech boot camps, I have tested these tactics on people from very different walks of life. From people who might be a runaway LGBT teenager to, you know, um a professional woman going out for executive positions. Like I have tested these tactics, and I think that's the thing that's been so helpful with my background, even though it was at the time not fun to always have to be like, oh gosh, it's you know, grant funding season, are we gonna be around? You know, that wasn't pleasant, but it gave me the sort of experience now that I can really counsel people through these times and help them create a career that is recession proof, that is budget cut proof. So if they do get a layoff on Friday, they can have you know their feelers out and have like a recruiter screening by Monday, as opposed to having a shell-shock expression, wondering what you're gonna tell your partner when you go home that day.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Yeah, no, that's a good point. And like even my last position before I started my company, I quit and kind of put in my two weeks, but I was still shell-shocked when I got home and uh I gave two months' notice, ended up being two days' notice, and so like after that second day, I was shell-shocked, and so uh I can hardly imagine what it feels like for someone that something totally comes out of the blue and it wasn't their own choice like it was for mine to kind of run with that decision. But I think it's important, like you said, to kind of have that game plan and that behind the scenes prep because you never know when you're gonna need to lean on that and call it into action. And uh you don't have to be ultra aggressive with it, but just general maintenance would put you a lot further ahead than your other coworker that was laid off down the street. And if you're if you're not willing to relocate and there's not a lot of remote opportunities, you're gonna have to be vying for the same positions essentially than all these other people like you that just got laid off. So, what are you doing to give yourself that leg up? So I think that's good insight to have there.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Yeah, it also keeps you excited in your in your job, in your industry. A lot of people feel kind of stagnant, and it's because they might be doing the same thing over and over. But if they're maybe doing an extracurricular project or they were on a committee or doing some sort of development, going to conferences, they would not just have more updated skills, they would also be a lot more excited and reconnect to why they actually got into this field in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Yeah, and I think burnouts a real thing, and it's not any for any particular profession, it seems to happen across the board, and it's when when you start to lose that excitement or that feeling of newness and exploring and all of that, which I imagine that you don't run into that too often since you're constantly traveling all over the world to cool places and uh interacting with all different sorts of people and providing value across the board. But most people that burnout is a real thing regardless of the career or industry you're in, because we we get used to stuff and and it feels good at the time, but you go a couple months, a couple years of just doing the same thing and not having that growth, and that's really where people start to have that burnout.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Exactly. They feel like a little hamster in a wheel and they don't have anything new in their habit trail.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah, so this is that time travel question. So if you could be like Bill and Ted and find a time traveling phone booth, what financial mistake would you go back in time and warn yourself about?

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Oh yeah, that's simple. I mean, I I would probably not sign leases or contracts too early in a relationship. You know, sometimes when the love is fresh and you want to live with each other, you don't realize, hey, maybe we should have waited before we like, you know, signed a document that binds us.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yeah, was so it sounds like a little bit of a messy situation as far navigating that. Did it end up being a financial burden, or is it more just a pain in the butt to deal with?

SPEAKER_02 38:56

It was it was a bit of both. You know, when you're young, you know, you wanna you wanna play house and stuff like that, but then you maybe don't have the best idea about money, and maybe you should talk to a financial planner like you and gotten some insight. Or just as it always turns out, listen to my father and my mother. That's the thing as you get older, you're like, oh God, mom is always right, isn't she?

SPEAKER_01 39:22

That's one thing that I noticed once I kind of turned into like my twenties and was an early adult and started figuring things out. I did start recognizing, like, oh, like I understand why my parents were such a pain in my butt. Like they they actually experience a lot of the same things that I'm uh having to go through and experience. And yeah, like I'm sure a lot of people dated a lot of other people and felt like they were gonna get married and all that. I remember thinking that stuff back when I was like 16 and whatnot, so it just shows that yeah, it's it's worth as great as the feelings are, or whatever you're thinking at the time, a lot of that stuff is kind of emotion and adrenaline from the relationship, but sometimes you do have to think a little bit practically and for something like that, like relationships. I found and and what ended up working out well now that I'm married and and have a great family and all of that is not putting that type of pressure. I think with my wife, she was like the first one. Like, I didn't try to go over the top and try to impress and and put all that stress on myself, and like obviously it ended up being a really great relationship, and things like form in without me like trying to buy her stuff all the time or or trying to impress her. So there's a lot of things that happen with relationships where we put a lot of unnecessary stress on a relationship, and and sometimes that could be the worst thing to do. Maybe the relationship would have worked out if you didn't create all these additional stresses.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

Yeah, exactly. Well, they even say for the stats on divorce that financial issues are the things that people fight about, you know. So you always want to make sure, whether it's your career or relationship or anything that you're doing, that you do take your own due diligence, you kind of take care of yourself, you you stand on your own two feet, because we have the society that we really value romance in a way that sometimes is um unrealistic, you know, where you have to also think they can't complete me. We should be people who are in a partnership as opposed to, you know, I don't know, a yin-yang or something.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Yeah, nope, that's a good point. And I think that was something that, again, like for this particular relationship, that was the approach I had all along where that wasn't the case when I was a teenager and and early in my college. Um, so no, I think that's a good point that you want to be like a self-sustaining person and entity and not have to rely on it. But there is a lot of benefits and cool things that happen when you when you are full that you're able to bring to the table. And and same thing for your spouse or partner, that you know, it's it's a good thing when you're not relying on the other one and you're not using each other as crutches on different aspects, and sure people have different strengths and weaknesses. Uh, that's a little bit different than what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Yeah, exactly. Love is great. Like, I'm not cynical, I'm also not life coach, everyone, like, and I make that very clear to people. Um, but yeah, you always want to make sure that you kind of have your eyes open in these situations, and that's for like whether or not you're doing like a business and you're doing a business partnership. Like, always make sure that you you know what you're getting into, and you've really looked over your budget before you're like, oh, this is a great apartment. It's like, oh gosh, can we can I afford this separately? Can we afford this together? What if something happens? Yada yada yada. So that would be my time travel moment.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

I actually had a client that had a similar situation, but it was with a house purchase, and yeah, just super messy trying to unwind that. It's going on months and months since the relationship ended, where uh there's still a lot of unresolved issues, and since it is a home purchase, those mortgages are a little bit trickier, especially if someone doesn't want to sell the home, but they can't afford the home necessarily directly on their own. So yeah, it it can get really messy. So just think about how serious those contracts are. Like maybe if it's a cell phone thing, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but still it's a contract. And so just think outside of that the lovey-dovey feelings and s figure out whether it makes sense. Like if it's gonna be the same amount or roughly the same amount for you not to be joined on those contracts, what's the benefit of joining those contracts? You don't want to try to handcuff someone because of some word contract things, or or have that be one of the reasons why you don't want to separate either is because of all these different messy things that are intertwined. Like you want the relationship to stand on its own, not uh due to some of these unique things. So, yeah, that's really great perspective. And yeah, I'm I I enjoy time travel, but at the same time, I I respect. The fact that we get to where we're at due to kind of our previous experiences. So it's always fun to think about those time travel things. But yeah, maybe, maybe we wouldn't change any of those things in the past.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yeah, no, I mean that definitely was the catalyst in everything where for me I was that's part of why I was subletting a place and part of why I was doing a bunch of different things and why I was like, you know what? Relationships end. I'm kind of living lean. Let's see where it goes. So it's a time travel, but in the end, I probably wouldn't change it because I don't know if I would be here right now enjoying this like sort of international lifestyle that I get to enjoy now.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

No, yeah, that's a good perspective. I'm glad we we stretched this out a couple extra seconds to kind of get that could have been a catalyst uh for you being where you're at and uh having an awesome life. So I know that you've recently been posted on LinkedIn that you have a few client spots opening. So let us know how you can potentially help someone and then also how they can best get in contact with you.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Okay, awesome. So for me as a career coach, like LinkedIn is where I'm at. That's where you can get the hot and cold running career advice. I try to make sure that there's a lot of different options despite whatever someone's budget is. But one of the best ways for a tech professional where they're there are in UX, their web dev, whatever, project management, the best way to work with me is really one-on-one. Right now, I do have client openings. One of my best packages that I have right now that I'm really excited about is called my career brand accelerator. So that's where I work with people over four different sessions where we go through your vision and your mission, we go through your strategy and how you are presenting yourself, interviewing, professional development, and we really go through it all. So by the time you're done with this program, you not only have a resume that really is tailored to what you want, you have an idea of what you need to do to go get it, and you've done enough in-depth thinking about your goals to where you're not just going to get another job where you're like, meh, you're getting something that you should really find some satisfaction with. So the Career Brand Accelerator is something that you can find more information out at my LinkedIn. So it's just Sammy Gardner, career coach, is where you can find me on LinkedIn. You can also go to my website, which is sammygardner.net. And I also have career courses, workshops, worksheets, ebooks at my academy site, which is called career kickstarteracademy.com.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Awesome. Yeah, I encourage everyone listening that at the very least go and connect with Sammy on LinkedIn, um, even if you don't think that you're gonna be in need for these services, because she's always providing awesome tidbits. Um I know she says she's not a life coach, but she does have a lot of great perspectives. And so I think that just go in and following and and if you do see something, throw a like on it. Whatever, whatever you find valuable. I I imagine that you always are gonna find something valuable from time to time if you connect with Sammy on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Thank you, thank you. I try. I like to be positive, I like to give a lot of action tips. I'm really oriented towards actionable strategies that anybody can use, whether it's just a quick tip that can just improve your chances of getting your resume through an applicant tracking system, or maybe a thoughtful journaling prompt where you can kind of delve a little bit deeper into what you want for your career. I try to mix it up so there's something, a little bit something for everybody, whether or not you're in the tech field.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Yeah, yeah, and I think this interview just is a good reflection on kind of all the various aspects, the ways that you've been able to help people. And yeah, some of them are unique ways that you wouldn't think would translate, but at the same time, they make you a little bit more unique in your approach and your experience because you have helped homeless people get jobs. It's I'm I'm sure there's not too many people that can say that and and have that experience. And I'm sure it took a lot of skill and finesse and to be able to accomplish those types of things. So I think this interview, if nothing else, just reinforces how how beneficial and how many great insights that you provide. So I really appreciate you being on today, Sammy, and yeah, I encourage everyone to reach out to you.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Uh well, thanks for having me on, Lucas. This is a great chat.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Hopefully, Sammy provided a lot of information that you can take at least one piece and apply that to your current situation. And I'm gonna give you a financial takeaway, and so it relates to what Sammy mentioned where she actually uh mentioned owning Bitcoin and that it just wasn't a good time for that investment, and maybe it was a poor investment choice. I'm not gonna dive into the cryptocurrency aspect of it because I feel like that's a whole bag of worms that requires its own show. But what it does highlight the general subject matter of investing with short-term money or emergency funds that you may need. Investing as your short-term money or emergency type funds is never a good idea because you never know what's gonna happen or where that investment's gonna be, even if it's gonna be liquid, so it may have dropped in value or it just might be hard to sell, which is the case a lot of times for real estate. So just be aware of the risk that you're taking. And if it is really short-term funds or something that you will be relying on in case emergency pops up, make sure that you're not taking unnecessary risk because your investments are meant to be long-term investments and grow for you and help you out, not lose value significantly, which becomes much more probable if you uh shorten the time frame for them to be able to work for you and lose a lot of flexibility and control of when you may need to access those assets. So uh hopefully that's a takeaway that you can apply to your situation and make sure that you're void. Thank you for listening to TechE Personal Finance Bootcamp. Remember, if you like what you've been hearing to subscribe, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. I'm also still taking suggestions for future episode topics and guests. If you want to take your connection to the show to the next level, you can find me on LinkedIn or on Facebook.