How to Create Your Dream Job with Danielle Cobo

Welcome to another episode of “Dream Job with Danielle Cobo”!

Today, I am going to share why saying “yes” will elevate your career. You will hear a personal story about how I created my dream job and presented a business plan to the VP of sales at 25 years old, then interviewed for a leadership position with a Fortune 500 company with no direct management experience. I also share leading a team through corporate restructuring to #1 in the nation. 

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Always Say YES To Your Career

There is going to be times in your life where people are going to approach you with opportunities that you may not have even thought about or you've thought about them and you didn't know if you were ready for it or if you've had the experience for it, or if you can do the job or if you're the right person for it, and you get to choose to either say yes or say no, and when you say no, you're saying no to yourself, you're saying no and you're living in your comfort zone, or you get to say yes because I can tell you that there are people out there that say no to things and They believe that you have something deep down inside and why you should pursue that opportunity.

I hear from clients all the time about these insecurities that they have, and I can tell you everybody has insecurities: VPs, CEOs, the top of the people that work in your organization, all have insecurities. Now, you may not see them. They all have them, and they've all had them at one point in life, I can tell you I've worked with VPs and I worked with CEOs, and they will share with me that one of the scariest times in their life is when they leveled up their career and they step into a VP or CEO role because deep down inside, they questioned whether or not they had the experience, whether or not they can do the job, whether or not they thought they were the right person, and here's why. 

There's no school out there that teaches you how to be a vice President of an organization. There's no school out there that teaches you how to be a CEO. Yes, there's programs, there's leadership programs, and yes, there are MBA programs, and you can learn a lot from these programs, and when it comes to these types of executive roles, every role is different. Companies are different. Business models are different, cultures are different, and there's no real schooling for that. So you get to choose when someone approaches you, you get to choose, to say yes to your career, and you get to remind yourself that you're being approached. But with this opportunity because somebody believes in you, somebody believes that you are the right person for this job, and I'm going to share something with you. I'm going to share a time where I chose to say yes. 

Take The Risk And Plan Your Next Move

I chose to say yes, I chose to take a risk, and what happened was I had to create a business plan. She provided me with a SWOT analysis, and for those of you that may not know what a SWOT analysis is, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. She created the SWOT analysis, and she basically said, here's each person on the team, here's their tenure, here's their sales experience or their rankings, and here's maybe a couple of opportunities. I didn't know in detail. These individuals and the funny part is on one of the people that was on the team. It said, LOA, and this just goes to show you my whole hack of experience being in management because I have to look up what we stood for, which is leave of absence. So this individual was on a leave of absence, and I had no idea what that meant. But I looked it up. I took the initiative, and so I had to create this presentation. 

Now I'm going to tell you about uncomfortable talk about pressure. I had to present a three hour presentation in front of six people, and these six people were on the executive leadership team. So here I was. I didn't have direct management experience. I didn't work for this organization. They weren't promoting me within, and I had to present a three-hour presentation in front of the executive leadership team. Okay. So what did I do? I said yes, and I'm pursuing this opportunity.

What are the steps that I took to really set myself up for success? I immediately had one week to prepare for this interview. The first thing I did was I reached out to my mentors. I had several mentors that I really leaned on throughout my career that have helped me step up to different positions that I've pursued, and so I reached out to him. I said, hey, I'm going for the dream job that I've always wanted. Would you mind setting up a time for me to ask you some questions? And here's the thing. This is another opportunity where you get to really take a risk. You get to say yes. I was giving that person an opportunity to help me, and this is where you need to shift your mind, because I'm telling you that it's helpful. I thoroughly enjoy it, and there's people out there that thoroughly enjoy supporting other people and helping them pursue their dreams because there's somebody that helps them. So that week that I was preparing for that interview, I reached out to several of my mentors. I asked them questions, and I asked him, like, what's one thing? What are the biggest challenges of being in a leadership role? What are some of the things I may not know since I've never been in this position, and they really helped me understand how I can prepare for this big interview? Now I was able to listen, and I was able to really lean on them for their expertise, and I got to remind myself that this person believed in me because I was already showing these leadership skills.

Benefits of Watching Motivational Video

I was already showing that I can make a positive impact. So one thing that I did that was really unique is, you know, I was obviously nervous to walk into this interview here. It's a three-hour presentation in front of six of the executive leadership team. It was scary, and so what I did is I actually found some motivational videos on YouTube and one of the motivational videos that I found on YouTube with a video about all these incredible people that have failed in their career, have failed at one point in life and continue to say yes and continue to take it and ended up being wildly successful. I'm talking about Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, the girl that wrote the Harry Potter books. These are people that one point in their career failed. People told them that they couldn't do things and they could have chosen to listen to them, or they could have chosen which they did to say yes to take risks in their career and pursue their dreams. 

So I watched this motivational video, and then I walked into this interview and I walked away getting the job. I can tell you that my first year as a leader, I don't think it was that great. I mean, I built some relationships, but I was not that great. It was a very interesting year.

The Most Difficult Part of Being a Leader

There was a lot of change management. We actually went from corporate restructuring, where four out of eight people on my team got displaced. They were no longer with the company, and it was not an easy thing to go through. I wouldn't say that I was the best leader at the time, and it was probably the best learning experience that I had because the experience that I had within that first year of, like, anything that could be thrown right. I had a leave of absence. I had open territory. It had to hire people. I had to let go of people that weren't a great fit. I had to go through restructuring of an organization and, like, how do you be empathetic and support those people that are losing their positions and still keep up morale with your existing team? Because we still had to move forward? Was it easy? No. It was really hard, and I wouldn't say that I was the best at it.

This Is The Time To Say YES

I said yes because somebody believed in me, and I eventually got to believe in myself, and because I developed over time, I continue to lead all my mentors. I continue to take leadership courses. I really invested in trying to be an amazing leader. I took that team to number one, I went from having no leadership experience to within two years, taking a team to number one and working for an amazing company, Fortune 500 company, and eventually, in three years, I was promoted to a senior manager, and I was actually mentoring new managers that were coming on board. I got to mentor people. I got to mentor first level leaders because I said yes, even though I may not believe it in myself, even though I had insecurity that I had doubts and was I the right person for the job? And I do have direct leadership experience, and I had a lot of insecurities. I still said yes.

So I asked you today, Are you saying yes? Are you saying yes to your career? Are you saying yes to life? Are you living in your comfort zone when you say yes? And when you get to let other people believe in you and you get to lean on them, even though you may not feel it yourself, you get to thrive in life. You get to experience things that you may not even imagine. 

So I encourage you today. Say yes. This is your time. This is your time to say yes. This is your time to thrive in your career. This is your time to thrive in life. Live life. I can tell you from experience that several years ago, I didn't have great work, and what I've learned over time is I get to say yes to things.

Self-Care Is A Priority

The only way I can support my clients is when I take care of myself. Because when I'm re-energized, I get to share that energy with others and my second priority is my family. My husband needed a break. My husband works a lot and he needed a break, and I wanted to be there for him because I love him and he's my husband. And I got to say yes. I got to say yes to life, and I could tell you that one day off, I like, re-energized get to do, I feel so good and because I feel so good because I'm re-energized, I get to pour into helping my clients step into their dream job on the salary they're worth to build a career plan to help find work life balance. These are the things I get to help my clients do. 

Today, I am going to share why saying “yes” will elevate your career. You will hear a personal story about how I created my dream job and presented a business plan to the VP of sales at 25 years old, then interviewing for a leadership position with a Fortune 500 company with no direct management experience. I also share leading a team through corporate restructuring to #1 in the nation. 

Highlights  
💫 You get to choose to say “yes” to your career

💫 How to create the job you want  

💫 Stepping into a leadership role for a Fortune 500 with no direct management experience

 💫 Link arms with mentors to support you throughout your career

Transcript

Danielle Cobo

Hey, beautiful. Welcome to Dream Job with Danielle Cobo podcast. I am Danielle Cobo, an elite career coach, and I believe every woman has the power to step into their dream jobs, earn the salary they are worth and live the life they desire. Each week you join me, you're going to hear from the inspiring women who have overcome adversity and levels up their career. You're going to learn how to eliminate that inner credit that is holding you back from pursuing your dreams, how to build confidence, create healthy boundaries to transition, burn out to reenergize and gain clarity on how to accelerate your career. It's never too late to pursue your dream jobs. The time is now. Are you ready? Today, we're going to be talking about saying yes, saying yes to your life, and saying yes to your career. There is going to be times in your life where people are going to approach you with opportunities that you may not have even thought about or you've thought about them and you didn't know if you were ready for it or if you've had the experience for it, or if you can do the job or if you're the right person for it, and you get to choose to either say yes or say no, and when you say no, you're saying no to yourself, you're saying no and you're living in your comfort zone, or you get to say yes because I can tell you that there are people out there that say no to things and they miss out on so many exciting opportunities that they didn't even know maybe existed. There's going to be times where people approach you in your career and they're going to approach you with opportunities that either you thought about or you didn't think about and they're approaching you because they will leave in you. They believe that you have something deep down inside and why you should pursue that opportunity. I hear from clients all the time about these insecurities that they have, and I can tell you everybody has insecurities VPs, CEOs, the top of the people that work in your organization, all have insecurities.

Now, you may not see them. They all have them, and they've all had them at one point in life, I can tell you I've worked with VPs and I worked with CEOs, and they will share with me that one of the scariest times in their life is when they leveled up their career and they step into a VP or CEO role because deep down inside, they questioned whether or not they had the experience, whether or not they can do the job, whether or not they thought they were the right person, and here's why. There's no school out there that teaches you how to be a vice President of an organization. There's no school out there that teaches you how to be a CEO. Yes, there's programs, there's leadership programs, and yes, there are MBA programs, and you can learn a lot from these programs, and when it comes to these types of executive roles, every role is different. Companies are different. Business models are different cultures are different, and there's no real schooling for that. So you get to choose when someone approaches you, you get to choose, to say yes to your career, and you get to remind yourself that you're being approached. But with this opportunity because somebody believes in you, somebody believes that you are the right person for this job, and I'm going to share something with you. I'm going to share a time where I chose to say yes. So I was interviewing for Fortune 500 Company, and when I was interviewing, I was interviewing for a rep role. I was in the field, and I was pursuing this opportunity, and while I was in this interview, I was sharing with the hiring manager. I was sharing. This business proposal that I had put together now earlier in my career. Mind you, I was 25 years old when I did this. I saw an opportunity with the company that I was working for is an opportunity to create a position that would set their Salesforce up for success, especially new hires. There was a gap in this company, and the gap was training. There was a gap on how to onboard new employees, on how to set these employees up for success and ramp up their onboarding opportunities, and so what I did was I created a business proposal. I wrote down the job description, the title, I researched when it came to the salary. I created a Commission structure. When it comes to how quickly these sales representatives would be on boarded and hitting and achieving their quota would be a direct correlation to my Commission structure, and, of course, I was presenting this because I believed that I was the right person for this job, and I had a passion for coaching and teaching and really mentoring people. I was mentoring people in the field, and I found opportunity within the organization to create the position. I was 25 years old when I did this, and I sent three copies out. Of course, I ask my manager at the time, like, I want to send it to you and with your permission, because you need to follow a chain of command, you need to be respectful with your permission. Can I present this to the VP? So, I sent it. He provided me permission. I sent it to the VP, and the VP flew out and met with me, and we went over this position together and the company. Now I ended up leaving the company, actually got recruited into a different industry, into a different company, and I ran into that VP years later, actually ran into in Cobo when I was on president's trip with another company, and he said you know what? I remember the position you created, and I was so happy that you presented us with the idea because there was definitely a gap, and we created that position. Now, even though I didn't step into that position, I got to make an impact. I got to make an impact on that company, and my legacy was not only the success that I had in that company, my legacy was that I took the initiative. I stepped out by the comfort zone. I presented an idea, and you know what? They could have either said, no, not at this time or yes, but I would have never known if I took that risk. So I was presenting this business plan when I was interviewing for this Fortune 500 Company, and I was interviewing for referral, and the hiring manager looked at me and she said, have you ever thought about management? And I said, yes, that's like my dream. I want to be a leader. I want to make an impact. I want to inspire and empower people, and I don't have direct management experience. I've mentored a lot of people, and this is a position that I created for the last company that I was with, and I don't have direct management experience, and she said, would you consider interviewing for this position anyways? I said, yes.

Now, I could have chosen to pursue this rep position because the reality was, if I didn't get that leadership position right, then the red position would have opened up, and I didn't want to have been able to work for this amazing company that I got to work for. I chose to say yes, I chose to take a risk, and what happened was I had to create a business plan. She provided me a SWOT analysis, and for those of you that may not know what a SWOT analysis is a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. She created the SWOT analysis, and she basically said, here's each person on the team, here's their tenure, here's their sales experience or their rankings, and here's maybe a couple of opportunities. I didn't know in detail. These individuals and the funny part is on one of the people that was on the team. It said, LOA, and this just goes to show you my whole hack of experience being in management because I have to look up what we stood for, which is leave of absence. So this individual was on a leave of absence, and I had no idea what that meant. But I looked it up. I took the initiative, and so I had to create this presentation. Now I'm going to tell you talk about uncomfortable talk about pressure. I had to present a three hour presentation in front of six people, and these six people were on the executive leadership team. So here I was. I didn't have direct management experience. I didn't work for this organization. They weren't promoting me within, and I had to present a three hour presentation in front of the executive leadership team. Okay. So what did I do? I said yes, and I'm pursuing this opportunity. What are the steps that I took to really set myself up for success? I immediately I had one week to prepare for this interview. The first thing I did was I reached out to my mentors. I had several mentors that I really leaned on throughout my career that have helped me step up to different positions that I've pursued, and so I reached out to him. I said, hey, I'm going for a dream job that I've ever wanted. Would you mind setting up a time for me to ask you some questions? And here's the thing. This is another opportunity where you get to really take a risk. You get to say yes. The thing I was giving that person an opportunity to help me, and this is where you need to shift your mind, because I'm telling you that it's helpful. I thoroughly enjoy, and there's people out there that thoroughly enjoy supporting other people and helping them pursue their dreams because there's somebody that helps them. So that week that I was preparing for that interview, I reached out to several my mentors. I asked them, questions, and I asked him, like, what's one thing? What are the biggest challenges of being in a leadership role? What are some of the things I may not know since I've never been in this position, and they really helped me understand how I can prepare for this big interview? Now I was able to listen, and I was able to really lean on them for their expertise, and I got to remind myself that this person believed in me because I was already showing these leadership skills. I was already showing that I can make a positive impact. So one thing that I did that was really unique is, you know, I was obviously nervous to walk into this interview here. It's a three hour presentation in front of six of the executive leadership team. It was scary, and so what I did is I actually found some motivational videos on YouTube and one of the motivational videos that I found on YouTube with a video about all these incredible people that have failed in their career, have failed at one point in life and continue to say yes and continue to take it and ended up being wildly successful. I'm talking about Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, the girl that wrote the Harry Potter books. These are people that one point in their career failed. People told them that they couldn't do things and they could have chosen to listen to them, or they could have chosen which they did to say yes to take risks in their career and pursue their dreams. So I watch this motivational video, and then I walked into this interview and I walked away getting the job. I can tell you that my first year as a leader, I don't think it was that great. I mean, I built some relationships, but I was not that great. It was a very interesting year. There was a lot of change management. We actually went from we went to corporate restructuring, where four out of eight people on my team got displaced. They were no longer with the company, and it was not an easy thing to go through. I wouldn't say that I was the best leader at the time, and it was probably the best learning experience that I had because the experience that I had within that first year of, like, anything that could be thrown right. I had leave of absences. I had open territory. It had to hire people. I had to let go of people that weren't a great fit. I had to go through restructuring of an organization and, like, how do you be empathetic and support those people that are losing their positions and still keep up morale with your existing team? Because we still had to move forward? Was it easy? No. It was really hard, and I wouldn't say that. I was the best at it, and I learned, and you know what I get to share with you because I said yes because somebody believed in me, and I eventually got to believe in myself, and because I developed over time, I continue to lead all my mentors. I continue to take leadership courses. I really invested in trying to be an amazing leader.

I took that team to number one, number one in the nation. I went from having no leadership experience to within two years, taking a team to number one and working for an amazing company, Fortune 500 company, and eventually, in three years, I was promoted to a senior manager, and I was actually mentoring new managers that were coming on board. I got to mentor people. I got to mentor first level leaders because I said yes, even though I may not believe it in myself, even though I had insecurity that I had doubts and was I the right person for the job? And I do have direct leadership experience, and I had a lot of insecurities. I still said yes. So I asked you today. Are you saying yes? Are you saying yes to your career? Are you saying yes to life? Are you living in your comfort zone when you say yes? And when you get to let other people believe in you and you get to lean on them, even though you may not feel it yourself, you get to thrive in life. You get to experience things that you may not even imagine. So I encourage you today. Say yes. This is your time. This is your time to say yes. This is your time to thrive in your career. This is your time with thrive in life. Live life. I can tell you from experience that several years ago, I didn't have great work, and what I've learned over time is I get to say yes to things. So when my husband approached me a week ago and said, hey, I'm taking the day off of work, I'm first out, I'm exhausted. Would you be willing to take a day off to? And at first I said, no, because that's what I've always done. Like I was like, no, Babe, I have work. I have client meetings. I haven't have that, and then I said, you know what I'm going to say yes, because what's important to me, my number one priority is my well-being and the only way that I can pour in. The only way I can support my clients is when I take care of myself. Because when I'm re-energized, I get to share that energy with others and my second priority my family. My husband needed a break. My husband works a lot and he needed a break, and I wanted to be there for him because I love him and he's my husband. And I got to say yes. I got to say yes to life, and I could tell you that one day off, I like, re-energized get to do, I feel so good and because I feel so good because I'm re-energized, I get to pour into helping my clients step into their dream job on the salary they're worth to build a career plan to help find work life balance. These are the things I get to help my clients do. So again. Are you saying yes? Are you saying yes to your career? And are you saying yes to life? I look forward to you on next week podcast with Dream Job with Danielle Cobo, I encourage you to go to my website. There's a lot of information there on how I help my clients with their career, whether it's looking for a new job and attracting their job, or whether it's building your career plan to step into that next level within their career or whether it is, you know, having work life balance, like taking, like, burnout to fire up, and if you want to do those things, I would encourage you to go to my website. Its www.daniellecobo.com, and I would also encourage you to find me on LinkedIn on Facebook, It's Danielle Cobo, and on Instagram is Danielle Cobo. I'm in a lot of places and you get to see not only who I am at work, and you also get to see who I am as a person in my family and just the joy of life that I get to live that you can live too. So I look forward to seeing your next week's podcast.

Thank you.