You Deserve a Break – And a Free Mug!

July 27, 2023
Season 3
Episode 129
 Career Pivots, Featured, Job Search, Podcast 0:22:08

July 27, 2023 / Mom &… Podcast Episode 129 / No Guest

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Sorry for the rough audio in this one y’all – Not sure what happened with Missy’s sound but we’ve recorded a few episodes since (coming soon!) with no issues. Just pretend she’s calling into the show from some exotic location!

Show Summary:

 Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away. ← Sing it with us! 

We are so lucky to do what we do, and still pinch ourselves every week when we interview our amazing guests. Even when you love what you do, though, it’s important to take breaks. We are giving ourselves a little vacation, with a month off while Susanne takes her daughter to college, and we both take some trips with family and friends. 

While we’re away, we have some homework for you: catch up with any episodes you’ve missed so far this year, or go back and re-listen to some of your favorites. We listen to every episode several times over before releasing them, and we still sometimes forget things. 

Speaking of forgetting things… we have an opportunity for you to WIN A MOM &… PODCAST MUG: Can you find the episode where our guest recommends going back through all of your past job roles to identify what you liked or didn’t like about each? We are struggling to remember which episode that was, and we’d really like to thank the guest. Her advice helped Susanne find clarity and… a job!

Topics From This Episode:

Look, Listen, Learns

  • No LLL this week!

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Watch this episode on our YouTube Channel!

Musical Notes

Our delightfully happy intro and outro theme music, “We Will Get Through This” is performed by Young Presidents, and used under license from Shutterstock.

Transcript is auto-generated by a robot. Apologies in advance for misspellings or errors.

[00:00:00] Susanne:

Welcome to the mom and dot dot dot podcast, the podcast that helps you make your ellipses count. I’m Susanne.

[00:00:12] Missy: And I’m Missy. And today we are moms who are dot dot dot about to take a little summer break. So we’re going to do a mini episode, maybe the miniest episode episode we’ve ever done.

Do you think?

[00:00:24] Susanne: I don’t know. I don’t know. You have a hard stop at five. We’ll see if, we’ll see if we can do

[00:00:29] Missy: we’ll see if we do it, but I think it might be a very short episode, people. And we’re going to share some exciting news.

And then we’re giving you a summer project, just like your kids get summer projects. And by the way, you’re running out of days to nag your kids to finish their summer project.

[00:00:44] Susanne: I am in

[00:00:44] Missy: My kid’s summer project is, uh, applying to colleges or getting ready to apply to colleges. And it makes my stomach hurt. Just think about it.

So that’s where we are. The project we’re giving you is way easier and more fun than that, though. And we’re going to give you a whole month to do it.

[00:00:59] Susanne: Yes. So, the assignment. what’s that TV show or that movie? If you so choose to do it or whatever.

[00:01:06] Missy: Uh, if you choose to accept.

[00:01:08] Susanne: I

[00:01:08] Missy: Your mission, should you choose to accept it.

Mission impossible.

[00:01:11] Susanne: your mission should you choose to accept it is to go back and listen to four episodes that you may have missed over the past few months. So we’re going to make it really easy on you because we’re taking the next four weeks off.

So you will not get behind. You have time to go back and check out some of the ones that you may have missed. since we like to be extra helpful, we’re going to give you a list of some of our favorite episodes that have really, really, especially I gotta say for me have helped me out a big time since the new year.

So.

[00:01:42] Missy: And if you have listened to every episode, we’re really grateful. We thank you so much. That’s very kind of you. Um, you can pick favorites. Um, yeah, it’s probably our moms.

but my mom watches. If you’ve watched every episode, um, you can pick a favorite and listen again. And I mean, we do the interviews. We were just talking about it. We do the interviews. I read the transcript when I make the show notes. Suzanne reads the transcript and edits the episode. And then we listen to the whole thing again, and we still forget stuff, even stuff we love so much.

And that was our favorite,

[00:02:15] Susanne: Speaking of which, bonus points to any of you who can help me remember the episode where the coach we were talking to you asked us to take a look at all of our past jobs and Break them down into the elements that we liked and that we did not like and that we would, you know, want to incorporate into a future job.

I want to thank them so much, but I cannot for the life of me. Remember which of our 100 and. 28 episodes it was, and I’m hoping maybe one of you does, or maybe that will just happen to be one of the episodes you go back and check out. And seriously, I think we’ll send a mug to whoever can help answer this for me, because I really want to go thank this person because the exercise was so helpful.

I had spent Probably a decade telling myself that I did not want to go back to advertising. I did not want to go back to client work, and I just had made this a weird little loop in my head that was limiting a lot of the choices that I’d been considering, but when I did that exercise and I pulled up parts of the jobs that I’ve had over the years, I actually love the parts about working with clients and managing budgets.

and the project and helping clients solve problems. What I did not like was working 60 plus hours a week and not having boundaries, which I’ve learned, thank goodness, through a lot of our episodes about how to do. And there was elements of tons of airplane travel, which that does not have to necessarily apply to Uh, marketing, advertising or agency jobs.

So ended up that I was probably really limiting myself from the things that I was even looking at. And I just recently started a job with an agency doing some client work. And I’m just so excited because it is all the things that those blocks that I pulled apart that I liked and none of the stuff that I did not.

Um,

[00:04:10] Missy: So great.

[00:04:11] Susanne: yes, I’m so excited. So if you know who that was, I want to thank them. So please help remind me which episode that was.

[00:04:19] Missy: Yeah.

[00:04:19] Susanne: Oh,

[00:04:20] Missy: Well, we can’t remember what episode that was, but you do remember some of your other favorite episodes,

um, that really helped you kind of get to this point and know that you were ready to take the leap and take on some work,

[00:04:32] Susanne: Yes. Well, one of them, and this is technically not within this calendar year, but it’s within the past 12 months. Episode 95 with Shelly Hayes McMahon, who’s a friend of mine. the episode was actually about voting rights. Um, but Shelly’s just a magnificent person in so many different ways. And… She had followed up with me a couple months ago when I was considering another role and offered me the gift.

I think I’ve mentioned this a couple of times on the podcast, the gift of, uh, of our resume, her friend, April Willis does all kinds of coaching, and she also does resume services. And we will link to her in the show notes, but

[00:05:12] Missy: and hopefully have her on a show in

[00:05:14] Susanne: I know. How have we not invited her to be on the

[00:05:16] Missy: I don’t know.

[00:05:17] Susanne: dongs.

Well, we will do

[00:05:18] Missy: to get that done.

[00:05:19] Susanne: We’ll do that. but just the reminder from Shelly, I did not take her up on the gift of it. I ended up paying April for the services myself, but the fact that Shelly saw value in me in investing in myself to get that resume done, I just, that just meant a lot to me. So I, Good.

Surround yourself with friends like a Shelly. And, uh, I do think as, as we come upon another voting season, and there’s always something that’s a voting season, it feels like, um, that’s another episode, episode 95. It’s a good one to take a look at when we look at, uh, racial equity when it comes to voting and gerrymandering and all those types of things.

And what about you, Missy? What’s, what’s one of yours? We’ll go, we’ll ping pong it.

[00:06:04] Missy: So one of mine is Addie Swartz, which was episode 113. She founded Reach Higher. She founded a lot of things. She’s our guest who like founded a company on maternity leave.

[00:06:15] Susanne: That’s right.

[00:06:16] Missy: Amazing. and she created the definitive return to work playbook, which I found incredibly helpful at the time. I wasn’t sure I was ready to return to work. I have taken on a small role. And for many of the same reasons Suzanne did, I, something came my way that checked the boxes of the things that I did like, and I enjoy doing, and I’m going to be helping plan some conferences.

I can’t, I’m not trying to be secretive, but I can’t. Lay it all out there yet. Cause it’s still in the works, but, I’m going to be helping plan some conferences and working with writers, which is amazing and calls on some of my past experience and, Addie was one of the first episodes we had that made me think about sitting down and going through and looking at what I would like to do when I was ready to return to work and what I needed to do to make it work for my life.

[00:07:06] Susanne: What if Addie’s the one that I’m searching for?

[00:07:10] Missy: Maybe it is. I don’t remember her saying exactly that, but it really could be.

[00:07:14] Susanne: It could be.

[00:07:16] Missy: Okay. What’s one of your other favorites?

[00:07:18] Susanne: Oh, my goodness. Let’s see here. So, oh, this will be a quick one because we’ve already been talking about Briar Daugherty a lot. In fact, it was one of our most recent episodes. Was it the last episode? 128? And also she was episode 125. And as I mentioned in episode 128, we were going to have her back to the show anyway, but it just happened to be that I had used her services in her job seeker membership.

What is that thing called? Yeah.

[00:07:47] Missy: Seeker Membership. Yeah.

[00:07:48] Susanne: Job seeker membership, um, I thought I was just going to be in there for the heck of it and just, you know, preloading on some information, but it ended up that I needed it ASAP for the job that I ended up interviewing for. so Briar’s just been amazing resource. And I just, even after that first recording with her, I was, we joked, we were going to call it the mom and dot, dot, dot Briar podcast, because she just has such a wealth of information and she just is.

I mean, if you are listening to her talk for 45 minutes, you’re getting 45 minutes of information. There’s no fluff. It’s just like good, good, good stuff.

[00:08:26] Missy: No fluff.

[00:08:26] Susanne: so if you are, I say, if you’re searching for a job. But I really would recommend, even if you are considering searching for a job, this would have been really useful information to have not 10 PM the night before my interview to actually be thinking weeks, days, at least ahead.

Um,

[00:08:47] Missy: mean, I think anybody at any time could need this information. You never know.

Like it’s great information and it’s great to know that it exists out there where to find her and where to find us. You can go to back to this episodes and bookmark them and know it’s there if you need it.

[00:09:01] Susanne: Yes. Highly recommend. And I mean, that’s a good little summer project too, listen to our podcast in 1. 5 speed, you got extra time. And so, yeah, go do some of those exercises.

[00:09:12] Missy: All right. Well, another episode that I really loved, it was Siobhan St. Prue. And what I loved about her, it was episode 114 and, she is a go getter. If y’all remember, she is the one who founded Saint’s House and she really just saw a need and filled a need and she has no qualms about asking for what she needs and going out and getting what will make her project work.

I just, I think about her a lot when I’m like, Oh, I don’t know if I have my ducks in a row. I’m like, I don’t need my ducks in a row. I just, I know there are ducks and I’m going to go after it. And uh, she’s so, she’s so encouraging. I thought she was funny and kind and

if you need that little push, she’s a great episode.

[00:09:54] Susanne: That’s true. You don’t have to wait till everything’s perfect to take that next step. You just kind of take the step and figure it out as you go.

[00:10:02] Missy: Becky blades too. I’ll find that

episode number. She’s our stardest. It’s that Stardust Street idea, and I love it

so much, and it has really encouraged me just to take the leap when it’s time to take the leap and not dwell too long on all the little what ifs.

[00:10:17] Susanne: And don’t be afraid to start more than you can finish. You don’t have to finish everything. You can try a lot of

[00:10:22] Missy: finish it! Yes! So freeing! That’s so freeing!

[00:10:25] Susanne: It is. Oh, okay.

[00:10:27] Missy: favorite, I think?

[00:10:28] Susanne: I do. I just, it all comes, it all comes back to Laura Vanderkam, really, episode 105. Um, we had talked to her as she was leading into a program called Tranquility by Tuesday. Um, one of the biggest things, well, there was two big things I got out of that, was the program made me get a bedtime.

Which that was really helpful. It’s a good habit. Um, and then also just this idea of time tracking. I got to say, I do not do it on the regular now. Well, actually, I do a lot of time tracking now because I have to build, uh, I’m on a contract basis. So I have to build my time. So I, so I am very, I am very conscious about the time that I’m spending in that sense.

and because I’m so busy, I don’t even have. A lot of time to spend on social media. I’m worried about what I’m doing there. But for a period there, I was doing an excessive amount of scrolling. And that is. Part

[00:11:21] Missy: We all do that sometimes.

[00:11:23] Susanne: yes, well, but becoming more conscious of that, because you cannot make changes or make really intentional decisions, unless you know what you’re working with.

And so the time tracking, even if you just do it for a couple of days is really helpful. It just gives you actionable data to look at and say, what am I working with here? And what I was working with was more hours. Disposable hours per day than I thought I had that I was doing non nutritious things with, uh, whether it’s social media or just kind of looping around to one thing to another.

Um, that really made me realize that I do have time to, even if it’s not a full time job. To start considering doing some work that is a little more financially hopeful than all my volunteer gigs. Um, so yeah, so that was, I think one of the first things that really kicked me into motion was, uh, that episode one Oh five with Laura.

[00:12:22] Missy: Yeah. That’s what I took away from her episode too. It’s just that I have a lot more time than I was pretending I had. I just wasn’t using it all really well. And I don’t use it all really well every day still, but I learned a lot from that. And when I am in my best gear, I call back all of that. I mean, I get, I can get so much more done when I’m focused on it and I don’t track my hours every day.

But, I learned a lot from doing it for, I think I did it for like a week and a half. and I think I may do it, who’s not Laura, but her podcast partner,

[00:12:54] Susanne: Sarah heart hunger.

[00:12:56] Missy: Sarah Hart Unger, who is another really fun episode, especially if you’re a pen or paper nerd. Um,

Sarah said she only does it like she does quintiles, not quarters, but she’ll track for a little while in each quintile and think about her time and that.

And I think about that all the time. Like my summer season has been. Vastly different from what my fall season will look like. And so I think about my time now a little differently than I will think about it in the next quintile. And I love that.

So we’ll put that episode number in there. And then I just wanted to call out Yael Schonbrunn’s episode.

It’s episode 116. I’m getting her newsletter now. So we’ll put the link in the show notes to her newsletter. It’s brain stuff. You all know, I love the brain stuff. And

she is a psychiatrist, a psychologist. and so smart. Her newsletter is just fascinating. Even if it’s a topic that I’m like, Oh, isn’t really, I didn’t know if I was interested in that.

I read the whole thing. Super interesting. And her book is Work, Parent, Thrive, talking about how to balance all of this stuff that’s going on in our world and thrive. And she was another one who really encouraged me that It can be done. We can go find some meaningful work and thrive amongst our parenting duties and our passion projects and everything.

So,

[00:14:14] Susanne: can I do a little shout out related to meaningful work?

Um, the, the client that I’m actually working on now could not be more aligned with everything that mom and dot dot dot podcast is about. So I just want to give them a little shout out. Because I don’t want to say this, that I would do this for free.

But I mean, this is the kind of, this is the kind of work that we love to do. Even volunteer work for,

[00:14:41] Missy: And tomorrow, hourly rate cut

[00:14:43] Susanne: yeah, exactly. No, but I mean, this is the type of thing that is a passion project and very near and dear to my heart. So anyway, it is called ready to work. We’ll put a link in the show notes. The website is ready to work SA for sanantonio.

com and it is. This amazing the city is funding for like 28, 000 people to help them get ready to work. It’s a training, education, employment program. It helps guide people through the entire process. If you need resources like childcare or transportation, they help Connect you with those, they help you work with coaches that help personalize your career and training plan and they enroll you in courses.

depending on what timeline that you have available, or what resources you have available, they can, help you decide what type of courses are most appropriate for you. They help cover the cost for those prepare you for job interviews. And it’s just like, oh, my gosh, all these things that are so.

Incredible and I’m sure I will be talking about it more in the future, but, the whole goal that I’m working on is. It’s so nice not to like be trying to take money from people, you’re trying to like give money to people. Like let,

[00:15:59] Missy: It’s much more fun.

[00:16:00] Susanne: yes, trying to find people that you can give things to is just such a wonderful thing.

But it’s sadly hard to find people who, you know, because we know what it is. Your mindset could get really limited. Based on, you know, all the things that you think aren’t possible or all the things you don’t even know that you don’t know about what is available out there, the resources that are available, we, how long did it take us to try to convince people that like, there’s no shame asking for help, or even professionals can benefit from coaches.

it’s, it’s, you kind of have to be vulnerable to say that, yes. I could use help. Um, so there’s,

[00:16:40] Missy: And I find in my advocacy work that People they don’t know what’s out there, but even if they know what’s out there, sometimes they think there’s a catch,

like you want to give this to me, but then what do I have to do?

[00:16:53] Susanne: Yeah.

[00:16:53] Missy: And I think that they have been in, in the system or whatever, whether it’s the foster care system or some other system, and they have felt like they’ve been had before.

And, it’s hard sometimes to step back and go, this is a good thing and just accept it.

It’s really hard.

[00:17:11] Susanne: Yeah, there’s no catch. There’s no catch. Everything is designed to try to help you to

[00:17:17] Missy: So great.

[00:17:18] Susanne: step without being scared, without worrying about where those resources are going to come from. So anyway, I’m still learning more about it. Hopefully I did not misstep on any of the marketing talking points. I might be getting fired. They’re going to say, oh, you’re willing to volunteer and you said all our stuff wrong. Okay. Bye and I mean, I would love to bring actually some people from the program onto the podcast to to share some of the stuff

[00:17:43] Missy: we absolutely should. Yeah.

[00:17:46] Susanne: so, yeah, hopefully we will talk more about that in the future.

But since we’re going to be away for a month, I didn’t want to waste a month of y’all not knowing that this is something is available for people who are residents of the San Antonio. City area, if you are in the military, they give you some exceptions for the boundary on that. Um, I mean, not Chicago, but within reason, um, and there’s also, you can go to the website.

There’s some income stipulations and, uh, other. Factors that, you know, you meet these criteria and then you’re eligible for the program, but it’s pretty darn reasonable and there is no catch. So we highly

[00:18:25] Missy: it feels like a job Taylor made for you.

[00:18:28] Susanne: I’m so excited. I

[00:18:29] Missy: there waiting for you.

[00:18:30] Susanne: I know, isn’t it bonkers that everybody keeps on saying, it’s perfect, except for it doesn’t involve sex ed.

And I’m like, not yet. No, it does not involve sex ed. It does not involve sex ed, but yeah, everything other than that, I’m just like, Oh, it could not be more perfect.

[00:18:47] Missy: so many boxes.

[00:18:48] Susanne: Super excited and so,

so, yeah, highly recommend y’all checking it out. We’ll have a link on the show notes.

[00:18:54] Missy: fantastic.

Well, I’m excited for you. I’m

excited for us. It’s like it’s been a big year so far, and it’s only July.

[00:19:01] Susanne: I know, big year, but we deserve a little break and y’all deserve a little break too.

That’s why we made this assignment pretty easy. You get a, you get a month off to take time to maybe go back and hear some of these episodes that we talked about. And hey, you can earn yourself 1 of these fancy mugs

[00:19:17] Missy: Yeah, if

you can find

[00:19:20] Susanne: you can find the episode that I referred to earlier. But yeah, so I think we both in the next month ahead.

I’m I’m. Trying to get all caught up to speed on the new client, taking my daughter to college in a few weeks, doing a trip to Seattle for a week. And so by time we come back and are talking to you again, there’s gonna be a lot of big changes in our lives.

[00:19:44] Missy: yeah. I think then I’ll actually be able to tell you what I’m doing for this new little part time job that I took on, too. By

then I should have more details ironed out. Yeah, it’s gonna be a big month, and we’re gonna

start school, and it’s just nuts.

And we’re going to keep podcasting. I think we should say that because friends have asked us

like, Oh, you’re both working now.

I didn’t think of that until just now as we’re getting ready to wrap this up, we are going to keep going. We love this.

[00:20:10] Susanne: Yes, we love this and it has helped us so much and opened our eyes to the possibilities so much that we are hoping that we can do the same for some other listeners out there. So, yeah, and we just have so much fun. We’ve got the best guests in the world and they’re so fun to talk to on a weekly basis. So, yeah, I’m

[00:20:28] Missy: I know. Every time we have an interview, I think I can’t believe we get to do this

today. Like, I can’t believe we get to talk to this person today.

And yeah, it’s so much fun.

And then every week we think, oh, that’s the best thing we’ve ever heard. So it’s really great.

[00:20:43] Susanne: Yes, I know we’re lucky we’re so lucky and we’re

so grateful for you for sticking with us for gosh going on three years now. And yeah, so everybody have a wonderful summer. We will talk to you in

September.

[00:20:58] Missy: It’s the end of August. We

don’t know

when our first, I mean, it’s like four weeks from now, whatever that is.

We’ll

[00:21:04] Susanne: calendar. We don’t know.

[00:21:06] Missy: Yeah, we’ll figure it out. We promise we’ll be back when we say we will, whatever

[00:21:10] Susanne: Yeah, we’ll be back in four weeks. All right.

[00:21:14] Missy: So have a great rest of your summer.

[00:21:16] Susanne: right. Talk to you

soon. Bye bye.

Thank you so much for joining us for the mom and dot, dot, dot podcast. We hope you enjoyed today’s show. And if you know someone else who could benefit from the episode, please be sure and share it with them. And while we’re begging, please subscribe and rate us wherever it is you listen to podcasts. You can find links to all the things we discussed today in our show notes or over at our website, momandpodcast.

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