SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean American podcast. I'm excited for you to hear this story and the lessons from this story and the tips that Jet stubs, who you will learn a lot more about, once you get into the episode. In the show notes, I've provided the link to the ideal job worksheet, a resource that I mentioned in the interview with Jet. So just click on the link in the show notes and you will be able to access that worksheet. All right. I won't keep you waiting any longer. This episode is too good. And I know I'll hear from some of you after you've listened. So here's my interview with Jet. Jet, welcome to Carry On Friends, the Caribbean-American podcast. I am so happy you're here. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Thank you so much for having me, Carrie Ann. I'm so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Awesome. So why don't you tell the community of friends a little bit about who you are, Caribbean country you represent, and all that good stuff?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

So I'm Jet Stubbs. I'm a career coach and a business coach. I have the Happy Career Formula podcast. I am from the Bahamas. I live between the Bahamas and Toronto, Canada. So I was an international student. I went to university in Canada. When I graduated, I had 90 days to find a job or leave the country. So that was a really intense time. I was really scared. I wanted to be able to stay in Canada, but I wasn't sure how to make it happen. And I realized so many people who are international students get caught in this cycle. Like I needed to pay off tuition, but I needed a job to be able to pay off the tuition. And I just got caught in a cycle. So since then, what I was able to do is I went from 0% response rate to over 100 job applications to getting a 70% response rate to 10 job applications. So I got a seven out of 10 response rate. And people are like, oh, you say 70%. That's because I've been able to replicate that since then and I've been able to help other people get up to 80% response rates to their job applications. So imagine applying to a job, and instead of like not hearing anything, for every five jobs you apply to, you get anywhere between two to four interviews, and you're getting multiple offers at the end of that. And so after a while, people who had a lot of experience were coming to me and they were struggling with the corporate work environment. It could be anything from like a toxic manager to something more severe like discrimination. And they were coming to me with questions like, How do I change this? How do I build something that aligns with who I am as a person? And that led me to say, Hey, have you ever tried entrepreneurship? And I said, I don't know everything, but I can teach you what I have learned so far through my parents being entrepreneurs who started from scratch. Both of them didn't have access to university education, as a lot of people from a certain generation in the Caribbean just didn't and still don't. So I started to teach entrepreneurship and people started making money, and then they just sat me down and said, I need to pay you for this. And so that's how I ended up becoming a career coach and a business coach.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

That is a good journey, right? I mean, 90 days. We're gonna get into like, wow, what you had to do to get it in 90 days. And also, I love when people find business opportunities when someone says, Hey, I'll pay you to do this for me. That's how I got into podcast production. I didn't think it was gonna be something, but somebody said to me, Yeah, I'll do it if you do it. So um glad that we have that in common. So tell me about these 90 days. I assume you were able to get a job in the 90 days, but talk to me a little bit about that process.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, so the problem was it was the 2011 recession. My parents' business that was helping me go off to school wasn't doing well. They couldn't finish paying off my tuition, and I needed the tuition letter and completed letter of like graduation to get the work permit. I needed the work permit to get the job. And I was stuck in this cycle. And the key was to get a job to get out of it. And that way I could negotiate with the university, negotiate to get the opportunities I want, and be able to afford to live in the country. But I'm from the Bahamas. I didn't want to just live in Canada and be struggling day to day, like making minimum wage, struggling to make it work. You don't want to go and pursue that better life, pursue that dream just to be scraping by. You want to be able to afford to visit family and do more. So I said, okay, if I'm going to try this, if I'm going to make this work, these are the requirements that I want to be able to achieve. I want a job that will give me a certain amount of vacation time so I can visit my family, right? And still go on vacation. Because visiting your family isn't always vacation, right? With the amount of stuff they could ask you to bring back for them, the amount of people you need to see, it isn't always vacation.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Listen, we're gonna push pause right there. Because I did the ideal job worksheet for carry-on friends, and that is something that oftentimes people overlook when it comes to finding a job. How much PTO do you get? I mean, and it's a negotiation, right? Maybe the pay isn't where you want it to be. How about them extra vacation days? Can you throw in a little bit of those? Right? So I'm so glad you said that, but yes, continue. I love it, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah, so I knew what I wanted and I sent out these job applications. I sent out over 100 job applications the first time. I spent about two months before I had the 90-day deadline sending out 150 job applications. And you know, that means I'm just there like trying to finish up my exams, applying, applying, applying, thinking, okay, if I send out enough, it's a numbers game. Eventually somebody's gonna get back to me. Crickets. I was devastated because you think, you know, you get your education. If I do my part, if I do what I'm supposed to do, hard work, education, trying to build my experience while I'm in school, then somebody will see me and give me an opportunity, and then it will work out, and I'll have this chance to build this career where I can grow and build a lifestyle that I want. And I think that is something that a lot of people who are who paid for the expensive degrees are coming to terms with that it doesn't work like that. It's one skill to know how to do the job, it's an entirely different skill to sell yourself to get the job. And so you need to learn the skills to sell yourself. So that's what I did during those 90 days. I went to every free immigration seminar. I didn't have work clothes, like I didn't have a suit. I was living on a low student budget, so I didn't have the money to go and buy these things. At this point in time, I had a part-time job that paid me 500 Canadian dollars per month. I had a friend took me in and I was paying them 450 in room and board for the month. So I had $50. That was supposed to cover bus pass, anything I needed for the month. So I didn't have anything to stretch to make the work.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Listen, if this isn't the struggle, like how you make it work on $50.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Food banks, when I needed clothes for interviews, I went to like newcomer clothing drives where they were giving away clothes, but a lot of people from the Caribbean were very curvy. Like I could not fit in some of those square clothing, so it was a real struggle.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

When you're full of sheep.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

So that was a that was a whole other struggle. I didn't eventually have to like save up about two months of the pay, and then a friend gifted me some money so I could buy like the cheapest suit I could find so that I could go into interviews. But the biggest part was really learning how to sell myself. So instead of applying to any job, what I was doing, when I was applying to any job, I was saying, I don't know what I can do. Here are the skills that I have. You as a company tell me what to do. And I was just saying, I think I can do this, I think I can do that. That's what my job applications were saying. A job description is basically a company reaching out and saying, I have a problem. I'm willing to pay somebody to help me solve this problem. And when you send them a generic application, it's just like, hey, I think I could maybe help with this. This is what I've done in the past, a list of duties I've done. Can you tell me if you think I can help? And that's not a compelling message. So what I shifted to doing was saying, okay, I'm going to create 10 tailored job applications for 10 jobs that I'm actually genuinely excited about, create tailored cover letters and resumes. And my resume isn't just going to list the tasks that I've done, it's going to list how I've helped companies in the past. So my resume shifted to saying, this is a history of how I've helped people, and this is a history of how I've helped companies achieve their goals. So you have a similar problem within your organization. I can help you achieve your goal too. And that was a big shift. So that is how I went from that 0% response rate to that 70% response rate. One popular formula that I use, but it's very easy to teach and talk about, very hard to implement in practice. It's called car or star, where you go challenge, action, result or situation task, action result. So you're going and saying this is the problem the organization was having, this is the situation that they were in, this is the time frame that they had to solve the problem. These are the actions I took, which is includes your skills, qualifications, and experience. That's where people usually stop. And what you really need to do is add the result. This is how it benefited the organization. This is how it benefited my manager, the organization at large. This is how I made my small contribution to this bigger goal. And you need to be able to talk in that language. Because even if you're applying for the most entry-level job, if you can understand the role that you play to help the CEO achieve their goals, you're more likely to get hired. And that's the difference in the conversation that I started to have. After I did that, I landed a job where I was 21 in an organization where they considered young staff 25 to 30. And I had the opportunity where I got promotion. So within my first 18 months, I was like indirectly leading a team of four because I continued to use that language when I joined the organization.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

I love that. And I like that you brought up STAR and the other acronym because, as a pro tip, that's what I've used in my other organizations to interview people. So when we are training um interviewers, and we usually have like, especially college hires, you have like a search committee or a round of people. We're teaching them how to use STAR to ask questions, and candidates are graded based on their responses to the situation, all of these different things, their action, the results. So it's also a pro tip. Um, so thank you for sharing that. So now, what brings you to carry on, friends? I love what you are doing, and this interview is going out at the top of the year, which is the time when everybody is ready to make a job switch. They want a whole new career life, every new life. And so first with happy career formula, it helps new entrepreneurs, seasoned professionals, recent graduates discover how to choose a career by aligning their interests into either a job, freelance business, our service, so we can live life on our terms. Don't that sound good? So tell me how, give an example of how you are able to do this so the people then can come to Jet and say, Jet, I need help ASAP. So, you know, let us kind of go through how you are able to help people achieve this transformation.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So it started after I got that first job. I got into this situation where although I was receiving promotions, receiving all these amazing opportunities, it was super toxic. My mom had been stabbed in a robbery and lived, thankfully. But and this was back home. My supervisor. Are you writing a book about your life yet?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Because and I mean, here's the thing about Caribbean, we're laughing, right? But let's take a moment to acknowledge, right, the things in your life that you've gone through. You've left your warm, warm country, come to a very cold, cold country, and you are going to school. You now have to figure out financial aid. Because trust me, when I first came here, a few like after two years of moving to the US, I went to college. Listen, Caribbean people are understanding financial aid do not go together, and figuring out how to pay for school, and then now you have 90 days to get a job or leave this country, that is pressure. And then you get in $500 from a job and about more than half of it gone to rent. Like, I mean, in this what how much minutes we've been talking, you've you've touched on most areas that people, Caribbean immigrants and immigrants across the board experience. So I just want to take a moment to say, like, this is a testimony, right? This is a story to help other people achieve a lot. And now your mother, you're in a faraway country and your mother goes through this. I cannot imagine, but continue. But I just wanted to take this moment to acknowledge that you've been through a lot and you're using this lesson to help other people.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Yes, that is why, because it was just really toxic. My supervisor was prejudiced. Every time I said something that sounded like I was from a foreign country, she would make a buzzer noise and make me repeat the word until I said it correctly, which meant that it had to sound 100% Canadian. I couldn't say anything. So people are like, Oh, you don't have an accent. I'm like, oh, it was like, I know every word that I said that made it sound like it was foreign. I was dealing with this while getting the promotion while being the young one of the youngest staff inside of the entire company. So when I would walk into rooms, people would be like, when is the staff member coming? And I was living alone in a city, you know, I didn't have any family, and it was just really toxic. I was making money, but I realized you can be broke and be unhappy, and you can make a lot of money and be in a really toxic situation and still be just as unhappy.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I want to go back to something that you said earlier. I'd be remiss if I didn't have this conversation. So we're gonna go back to the boss who was buzzing you when you say anything with a like an accent in there. Talk to us through that process of I mean, you you share that experience, maybe other people are having that experience, someone with an accent. How did you get through that particular experience? That is beyond microaggression, that is straight out like abuse. Talk to us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, so that was a really tough situation. There was a lot of days where I was crying at work, like crying in the bathroom. I got physically sick. That's one of the points where I knew I need to make a change. I started uh vomiting, like stress vomiting, and like my body was just falling apart because this around the same time, this actually was happening at the same time. So my my mom was stabbed. I went back to go help take care of her, and then I was coming back to deal with this racist bus. And I needed the job. I needed the money, I needed to be able to help my family. I couldn't just quit. This was the highest paying job out of the seven jobs that I had been offered for an interview. I was in how long it took me to find another job, and I was still paying off my tuition debt. So I didn't have a fallback plan, I didn't have a credit card to turn to. I was living paycheck to paycheck at that point. And the idea of going to my company and saying, hey, my boss who's been at this company for 25 years, and I was 21 at the time, um, is racist and like is saying these things to me. I was terrified. I was like, I can't, I can't do this. But I was working in an environment where there were actually a lot of people from international backgrounds who were our clients, and they were being negatively affected by this, and they didn't have as much power to speak out about it. So I eventually, with some support, I had one colleague who was junior and from an Indian background, and she said, Hey, listen, our boss's boss is like I used to work with her closely. She's good to talk to, she's white, but she'll understand. I gave her a heads up, you'll be coming to speak with her. You should have this conversation, you should tell her what's going on. And it was mixed feelings because there's intention and there's execution. So my direct supervisor genuinely thought that she was trying to help me. She was like, I'm going to help you not sound like a poor Canadian.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

But they said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Anyway, continue, continue the story.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yes. So she genuinely thought she was trying to help me. She said I would represent myself and the organization better. When I first moved to the city, I didn't have someplace to stay for a few days. I didn't have, like I told you, I was going from living off of $500 per month. That $50 was not going to give me any place to stay. That was basically my greyhound trip to the different city. And so when I got the job, she said, Where are you going to stay? Like, you don't have people. And so she invited me to stay by her mother's place and had given me a place for like a few days until I could afford to get my own place. And so there were so many good intentions there, but there was also this idea she was referring to indigenous people, like, or at least her mother was like she grew up to them being referred as savages. She was doing all of these like horrible things with to me at work, telling me I needed to not sound like a poor Canadian making this buzzer noise, even when I was making presentations in front of like 30 or 40 people, like and doing the buzzer noise. And so what ended up happening is people ended up seeing what was happening and reporting her. And I didn't know that these reports were happening. They weren't coming back to me and telling me that they were making reports, but people just started making complaints against her on my behalf. And I know not everybody's in an environment that is that supportive. So my direct supervisor's boss, so somebody two levels up, was very supportive, and there were a bunch of complaints validating what I was saying, coming in that I had no idea that were coming in. And when I finally like made that HR complaint, HR is not really on your side. HR is on the company's side. That is very important to know. Like you can't talk to them like they're your friends. They are the friends of the company and they are defending that company. And so you need to document things for yourself. But I was in a very good place where leadership within the organization ended up going to diversity training. They shut the entire office down and said, We're all going to diversity training, we're bringing people in. And it was a major shift within the organization, too, because I was working in a place that was so close to like senior leadership within the company, even though I was very junior, they weren't aware. Like I was surprised. The CEO was a man of color. And because he was in such a privileged position, he thought racism wasn't really a thing anymore. And that to me was like, whoa, until he saw me break down in tears during the diversity workshop because I just couldn't hold it in. And he was like, I didn't know these things were still happening because they weren't affecting me because I am in a place of privilege now. And I wasn't actually like they were rejecting the funding for the diversity office because they said, this isn't a real issue. We're not getting a lot of complaints about this until they saw it hit so close to home. And then HR and all these different offices were like, what you did is going to change the direction of how senior leadership is funding the diversity office. But with that being said, they also said this is going to follow you during your time within this organization in good ways and in bad ways. And I did shift. I left that department. I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I wanted to change, I wanted to start fresh. People were like, if you stay here, you can grow with it, you can have all these amazing opportunities. But I was like, my health, my well-being, having people not question me on a day-to-day basis is very important because my supervisor, who had been at the organization for 25 years, had friends. And she was telling them, Oh, this junior employee is like so ungrateful and saying I'm racist. Can you believe that? And like, I was the first employee she had ever supervised. So I was the one who came in making complaint. I was clearly the entitled millennial who just didn't know what they were talking about and was giving a hard time to the more like senior baby boomer generation. And so it was tough. It was, it was tough. It's not something I'd ever want to go through again. But if I did, now that I'm not 21, now that I have more experience, now that I know what I can offer and I know that I can go and apply for a job, I have more power if I were in that situation and I would say something back much quicker. But to be honest, I had another senior leader, like a white female, come into my office and said, I read your HR document. I heard what happened to you. I'm surprised you haven't punched anybody in the face yet. And I'm surprised, like she's like she's shocked.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

She's also talking from a place of privilege. So you know what I mean? Like but but I but your experience, you know, covers. The nuances of diversity, equity, and inclusion, D E and I, and all these other things that a, if you do speak up, there's this indirect retaliation or hostile environment that can be created because of speaking up. Two, we all have to check our own privileges. We all have a level of privilege, black or you know, white, whatever. You know, I check my privileges at work. You know, I have to be checked on them as well. You know, so for your CEO, yes, he's at the top of the food chain, but he didn't see it because he's privileged. And that happens across the board. So, you know, if you are a minority in the general working class and you move up managerial levels, you know, there's a saying, new levels, new devils. For every level, you're going up, you're more exposed to more attacks. It's the nature of it. And it's like, how do we prepare for that? So I think, you know, going back to your original point, finding what is ideal for you from a career or a job and experience will tell you the things to look for or to be, you see these red flags and to deal with them.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

There's one thing that you said I just want to touch on first is the idea of it getting harder as you go up the ladder. And that's one thing that I would say is very true to my experience. The more senior the position I got as like a woman of color, as an immigrant, as somebody who was much younger than anybody else in the room, the more complicated and the more tension I felt within rooms, even rooms where people were, in theory, trying to be welcoming. There's always this disconnect. And that is true for a lot of the people that I work with that as they start to design a career that aligns with who they are, they get to choose who they work with and create more welcoming work environments for themselves. And whether that's for a business or for with a company. And I realized I needed to create a career that aligns with me and who I am and where I'm at and create opportunities because I knew I had potential, but I didn't know how to explain that well to people so they could see it. I didn't want to create a career where somebody else was totally directing and choosing everything that I was doing, how I was doing it, when I was working, when I could and could not show up to work, how much vacation I could and couldn't take, regardless of how it was affecting the job. I wanted to be able to perform my job and then have the freedom to live the life and the lifestyle that I wanted. So, how did I go about making that a reality? I created what I now call the happy career formula. So I wrote down a list of the things that I wanted out of life. I wanted more vacation time. I wanted to be able to see my family, I wanted to be able to afford to help my family. I wanted to be able to continue my education, but I wanted my job to pay for it instead of me paying for it. And I wanted, I had a list of things and I made that. If I was going to stay here and make this home or home number two, what would I need to make this work? And I made that in every area of my life, from emotional to financial to physical health and well-being. I wanted to be close to a gym and be able to afford a gym because gyms in big cities are like a whole budget in and of themselves. And so I needed to find a way to make this work. And so that's part one of the Venn diagram. That's the top left circle. Then on the top right circle, you have demand. So there are the things that you desire out of life. Everybody has this tension between where they are now and where they want to be. You have this tension, Carrie Ann, I have this tension. Companies have this tension between where they are now and where they want to be. And usually when we're paying for something, we're paying for something to ease that tension. You're bored on an evening, that's why you pay for that Netflix subscription every month, right? So you can watch your shows. If your pipe bursts in your basement, you pay for the plumber to come and fix it quicker than you trying to fix it yourself because you want to pay for that plumber's knowledge. You go to the doctor because the doctor prevents illness. You go and like pay for guitar lessons because you want to learn something fun. Everything that we pay for every time we give out money, you're paying to have some sort of problem solve to ease that tension between where you are now and where you want to be. So you know your own desires and that's where you start. But then if you want to make money, you need to start fulfilling other people's and companies' desires. So that's the second part of that Venn diagram. What do other people want that they're willing to pay for? Which do they want or need? And you need to start to look at that. And usually we think, oh, it's just a job description, but a job description is an outline of a problem. So maybe you don't have all the skills listed in that job description, but you can talk about how you could solve that problem in a different way that will compel people to pay you more money with more flexibility if that problem is more valuable. So when you're going for an entry-level job, a company is just saying, this is what you should do. They say you're going out and saying, This is what I've done in the past, this is a list of tasks that I've done. Now tell me what tasks you want me to do. When you're going for a CEO or that six-figure job, what you're doing is saying, tell me your problems. I have skills, qualifications, and experience so that even if you don't know how to solve your problems, I can solve them for you. With an entry-level job, they're giving you manuals and instructions and they're saying, do this, do that. When you start to shift to make more money, you're starting to take control of the value of the problems that you solve. And that's one of the things that I help clients do. So the first piece of that Venn diagram is desire, which is your desires, what you want out of life. The second piece is demand, which is other people's desires, the tension between where they are now and where they want to be. And everything around you, everything that you touch, the table that you're using, the glasses that you're wearing, the headphones that you're using, is something that you paid for because it creates a benefit in your life. Companies pay for things because it creates a benefit in their life. So you can get creative about the types of problems that you choose to solve because almost any and everything can make money. It's just the quantity of money that it can make, and you need to figure out how valuable that problem is to that other person or that company. And then the third piece that we usually get stuck on is skills. You need skills to be able to solve the other people's demand, to help them achieve their goals. And a lot of us think, hey, if I don't have all of the skills, if I don't have that complete circle filled out, then I can't do the job. But you can break it down into baby steps. So one of the things I did is I made a 10-year plan when I graduated. And I said, this is where I want to be in 10 years. That shifted and that was totally okay. But I made that initial plan and I said, these are the skills that I'm lacking. And then I started to look at jobs that I could take so I can be paid to earn those skills on a real job. And it's taking that baby step to say, okay, I have most of these skills, but this job will give me this additional skill. So the next time that I take a job, it can get closer and closer to the job that I really want. And within like three to five years, you could have a totally different career setup. You can be making more money. I've had clients go and like double or triple their income within two to three years because they've been able to sell themselves more effectively. And so what's important to note is the overlap. So Venn diagram, you know, it goes you have the top left circle, the top right circle, and the bottom one in the middle. And there's those three points of overlap and the sweet spot in the middle that is your happy career. If you know what you want out of life and you know other people's demand, but you don't have the skills to help them get to where they want to go, then you're a dreamer who lacks the skills to get to where you want to go. If you are someone who knows what you want out of life and you have the skills to help you do the things that you want out of life, but you don't know how to get other people to pay you for it, then you're probably a starving artist. You're a missionary, you're out there doing the good work, but you're not making the money. You need to cover your bills effectively. And if you are tying your skills to other people's demand, but you are not acknowledging what you want out of life, then you are an unhappy professional who's probably stressed out and saying, I need my coffee every morning and I need this every morning to make it work. And so I help people avoid those three traps of the starving, starving artist, the unhappy professional, and the dreamer to achieve their happier career by aligning in the middle. And it's it's about doing it in a practical and systematic way, where you're acknowledging what you want, what actually matters to you. It's not about I will achieve X and I will be happy. It's about designing a life where you enjoy the journey of your life and you're enjoying your day-to-day.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

You said something when you're looking at a job. Oftentimes people look at job descriptions and say, Oh, I can do this. And we shy away from the parts of the job description or like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna have the experience for this. Based on what you're saying, you're like, no, no, no, go for the job, dear. Let it pay you to know those parts. Because, you know, especially as women, they say like women will look at a job description and they won't apply because they can't do like maybe 20% of the things on the list. Whereas guys we be like, McKenna, this, I'm gonna apply. And so basically, you know, this idea of applying to roles that, okay, maybe I don't know how to do all the things, but I know that based on my abilities, my ability to learn quick and ability to sell myself, yeah, I'm not vice president level yet, but I know I can be this in just give me two months, three months, four months, whatever time, and I could do that. So it sounds like that's part of what you're saying, stretching and leaning into those roles. So they could pay us to get these skills, yes?

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Exactly. It's really important to lean in what you into what you know how to do and use that because a lot of people are thinking, oh, these companies are getting people who meet 100% of the qualifications, and that's usually not the case. That is not what's happening. I know that for a fact.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

It's not true, it's not true.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

And usually they're struggling to get a good person. So you coming in and meeting 80% and saying, This is my plan so that I can learn the rest of that. Are you willing to pay for this certificate? Are you willing to do this so that I can learn all the skills so I can be 100% of that employee that you need and ideally grow within your organization to do even more in the future? That's an ideal employee for most organizations. You don't have to know everything, but you have to be willing to go in and problem solve and be the junior problem solver or the co-problem solver for your manager. I often explain going into an interview as imagining that there is a big Lego in the center of the table. You're on one side and the employer is on the other side. And the employer is looking at their side of the Lego and you're looking at your side, and you're getting so tunneled vision that you're not thinking how they think. And what you really need to be doing is standing up, walking over to the employer's side of the table and saying, hey, look, this is how we can solve this problem together. Let's turn this Lego around. Let's look at it this from different angles. This is how we can collaborate, and these are the pieces of the puzzle, these are the building blocks that I'll bring to help you get to where you want to go. That's the type of people that everybody wants to work with. Like who help you get to where you want to go, who help you solve your problems and achieve your goals? That's who everybody wants to work with. So let me ask you a question.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

As a Caribbean in the in North America, Canada, US, it doesn't matter. What is the struggle that you find is the one that comes up all the time when when it comes to career for people of Caribbean heritage? What's that thing? What's like the top one, two things that you see like people of Caribbean heritage, whether born in North America or uh, you know, born in the region live here, struggle with when it comes to finding the happy place in their career or anything in career altogether?

SPEAKER_00 33:32

I think that it's a combination of like this idea that we're is drilled into our heads that education plus experience plus hard work equals success. And that is how you achieve success. And what? Yeah, so that is the formula that we think equals success, and it just doesn't work. The truth is there are a lot of people who are working on factory lines who aren't making the money that they want. They are doing the work, they are working hard. There are a lot of people who are working hard every day who went and got that education. You have people with master's degrees working at Walmart in the minimum wage job, not a higher level job. You have people who have worked hard, who have put in that education, who now have that tuition debt and have tried to build out their experience and are putting in that hard work, but it's not turning into the career they want. And so they end up feeling like you did what you were supposed to do. You did what your parents and those around you, it with very good intentions told you to do because that's what they were told they were missing. They were told they were missing the education, they told they were missing the piece of paper. And that was not true. And so you feel like you did what you were supposed to do, but why isn't it turning into the career professional growth that you want? Why isn't it turning into the opportunity that you want? And then you feel stuck when it's time to talk to employers about what you want. And so many people will say, Oh, I don't want to work with uh a coach right now, or I don't want to work on selling myself. What I need to do is go get another certificate. I need to go get another degree. I need to go and get this other opportunity in this.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

I've heard it so many times before. I I have. I've had friends, and I'll be like, You're going to get the degree to do what? There are very few careers, and I've said it before, that I feel like, yeah, getting advanced degrees is beneficial. You're in finance, right? Because a lot of those you need, you know, maybe governmental and other regulatory certification, of course, medical for others.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

And yes, exactly. And that's how I explain it to people. You, it's one thing to get a degree, it's another thing to get approval from a professional body or a governing body that regulates a profession that says, okay, I'm going to give you acceptance into my profession, like nursing or to become a doctor. Um, lawyers are oversaturated, though. There is a bar, but there are too many lawyers almost everywhere. Anytime somebody comes to me and they're like, I want to be a lawyer, I sit them down and I say, okay, we need to go through statistics and you need to go into this with your eyes open because there are too many lawyers. And most lawyers I know are now leaving the field because they're not making the money that they made in the heyday when there weren't enough lawyers.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

And it's not to discourage everyone. I really, I think it's really important, and that's part of why I wanted you to be on, that we take a more proactive approach to our career and defining what we want from our career separate and apart from our parents' vision. We want to consider that and use that like, you know, my parent, and from all of that, my parents really want me to succeed. But how am I going to do that with what I have in the market that I have to work in and with the tools I have to work with? So um it's the degrees, and if we work hard, we'll get this job, and it's not always quite the same. And so there's this what I've also recognized that once that realization comes in, there is um resentment that tends to build up a lot, right? Resentment to maybe culture, resentment to parents, or resentment, period, or disappointment because expectations have now not been met based on what I've been told. And so bouncing back from those disappointment, how would you advise someone to kind of get out of that place of disappointment and propel into finding that career that we love?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

So I find people will start to feel a disappointment when they see other people who have less education or who didn't get all the degrees accessing better opportunities. And they're starting to think, okay, but this person didn't do all that work. They didn't follow that formula I was taught, which was education plus experience plus hard work will equal success. So what formula are they following? What formula do they know that I don't? And why did I work so hard to get here? And here isn't where I thought it would be. And how did I get so far away from what I wanted for myself and for my life, even though I was following a path that I thought would work? So, yes, it's natural for that to create a deep resentment because you probably worked really hard and put in some long hours and some hard nights, and now you think you should be proud and you should be creating something that's beautiful, and it's not turning into what you want. So, what I always tell people is you need to shift that formula. It's not the old way, the old way that our parents were taught that isn't wasn't even fully accurate within their generation is education plus experience plus hard work will equal success. But the new way, the real way, is to solve problems people care about and ask for what you want in return. And that is the pathway to success. And that doesn't just help you in your professional career, it helps you in your personal life. So so many people are out there and they're getting married and they're doing things, but they're not actually sitting down with their partner and saying, hey, what do you want out of life? What's the life that you want to build? How can I help you build that life? This is the life that I want to build. Let's build this together. So many people are building out on ideas the same way they built out their career based on this idea that education and experience will lead them to where they want to go. They're building out this idea of a marriage or a relationship or even their friendships on ideas of what they think it should be instead of having discussions about the tension that we all have between where we are now and where we want to be and how we can help each other get there. That's how we start to build networks, that's how we build communities, that's how networking starts to feel a whole lot less sleazy and salesy and starts to feel organic by having deeper conversations between the gap that we have between where we are now, where we want to be. All right.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

So as we wrap up, so why don't you give us two tips to expand our career options that you want to leave the audience with?

SPEAKER_00 39:45

For the two things, the first thing that I would say is to shift how you think about your formula for creating success. Move away from the old way of education plus experience plus hard work will equal professional success. And shift to the new way to solve problems that people care about and ask for what you want in return. The more the people care about the problem or they need that problem solved, the more they're going to be willing to pay you for it. People will pay a lot of money for things. People will pay $40,000 for a car because a car solves a valuable problem for them, or they'll pay $5 for a bracelet or $10,000 for a bracelet if they've got that money. You just need to think about the story and the narrative that you were putting around, which you were giving to them and the meaning that it will create for their life. The second thing that I would want to leave people with is to think about that happy career formula. So think about that Venn diagram. You want to think about what you want out of life, how you can help others achieve what they want out of life. So your desire, others' demand, and the skills that you have now, or the skills that you can learn to help people get to where they want to go. Because you don't have to know everything. Sometimes you can be a leading learner. You can go into a new organization or a startup and say, I'm going to take ownership of learning these things that this company needs to do and building out a way or a process for this to happen. And you can be the person who is leading the pathway for other people who are going to come behind you. So you only need to be a few steps ahead. That few steps ahead could be like 10 really good YouTube videos or a few cheaper courses. It doesn't need to be some expensive degree because you need to think about hands-on learning. And books should not be overlooked because you can learn so much from some good books and think about it. A lot of us who went to like higher education will say that we paid them to walk through those chapters of those books and test that we memorized it. So what if you just read those books on your own? So those are the two things I'd want to leave people with. All right.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

So thank you so much for being on the podcast. Why don't you tell everyone where they can find you and connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 41:52

So it's Jet Stubbs, and I have my own podcast, the Happy Career Formula with Jet Stubbs, where I talk about career advice and business advice and how to transition to building out that career you want while also working on building out a business on the side. So you can do a job where you're happier while creating more financial opportunities for yourself by growing a business. And you can find that everywhere podcasts are available. The happy career formula with Jet Stubbs.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jet, for being on the podcast. And as I love to say at the end of the podcast, walk good.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Thank you, Carrie Ann.