Start your career where you can grow.
Sarah decided to take the road less traveled and instead of taking a job with a major company she opted to take a job at Startup. In the basement of a house. She was interested in where could she learn the most and where could she learn the fastest?
Keep making changes to your life until it’s the life you want or the life you deserve.
The above quote is Sarah’s favorite. When I heard this quote, it made me think that it predisposes her to have what I call disruptive internal conversations. Although she attributes it to her friend, Drew Dudley. This quote, “Keep making changes to your life until it’s the life you want or the life you deserve” primes the person who is thinking about it to make continuous course adjustments. Using inner conversation self access if your life is the one you want or the one you deserve, and if it is not change it.
Learn to see the person and not the stereotype.
Sarah and I had a beautiful conversation about learning when to compete and when to collaborate. She learned, “if you compete against other people you’re never going to learn, and you’re never going to be a true part of a team or get anything legitimate accomplished.” There were times in her career when she felt like she was being asked to educate her future boss. Today, she thinks her life would have been easier had she been more generous. She had to learn to see the person and not the stereotype. She admits she is still learning to meet people where they are at, but it is a good reminder to see the human in people. See their fallibility.
Team versus Family.
One thing I learned from Sarah was that although you should not think of you work team like family, they are like family in one particular way, you do not always get to choose who is on your team. I do however think that it is the same on teams. The coach decides who is playing and who is not. The important thing to remember from our conversation is that teams, always have the best players on the field. Some people may not be on the team, but they can still be part of the family.
There is no such thing as hacking growth.
Sarah reminds us that there are no silver bullets. That growth is as she put it, an exercise in being stubborn and resilient and trying things until they work”. It is not this cool thing you see in the movies it is hard and sometime difficult work
Imposter Syndrome is common.
We had a great conversation about how some of the most impressive people have Imposter Syndrome and we need to recognize that doubt is part of us focusing on relentless improvement.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Sarah because there are lots of nuggets in this episode.
You can find Sarah at the following links
Here Personal Website: https://sarahstockdale.ca/
Twitter: @skstock
Her company: https://www.valkerie.io/get-in-touch