Betting on You: Taking Risks to Advance Your Career with Laurie Ruettimann
If you're seeking ways to improve the quality of your life and make it more fulfilling, then this episode is for you. In a world where businesses prioritize profitability over employee satisfaction and workers become increasingly isolated, ensuring your well-being is imperative. Although taking risks can be intimidating, the same logic also says that in our brave new world, there are more opportunities than ever before- so what if things go wrong? It is actually easier than you think, despite how it sounds. In this episode, we offer tips on how to take risks, so you can build a thriving career and fulfilling life.
In This Episode You Will Learn About:
Safeguard your well-being
Taking risks and betting on yourself
Smart and healthy ways to advance your career
"Your work is not your worth" - Laurie Ruettimann
FREE Crush Your Quota Masterclass and Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
FREE Attract Your Dream Job Masterclass and Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
FREE Business Building Checklist: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
FREE Burnout to Fired Up Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8Um
Schedule your Career Discovery Call Today: https://bit.ly/3OnuLLO
Book: Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250269806/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_CT444MQHQ5BCAYSBSQ6F
Let's Connect!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellecobo/
DREAM JOB FB Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2826110370979215/
About The Guest:
For over 20 years, Laurie Ruettimann has been telling work-life stories and building groundbreaking solutions to drive better employment experiences, increase retention rates, and improve job satisfaction. Laurie is a former human resources leader turned writer, entrepreneur, and speaker. Her work has been featured on NPR, The New Yorker, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Vox. Her book Betting On You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career was published in January 2021.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurieruettimann/
Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts
"Danielle is so Uplifting." <-- If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more women -- just like you -- accelerate their career. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dream-job-with-danielle-cobo/id1571797640
Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. I’m adding a bunch of special release episodes and, if you’re not following, there’s a chance you may miss out. Follow now!
The challenges of advancing your career
I have a degree in creative writing. And I thought I was gonna go to law school. But even back then, in the 90s, I had too much student debt. And I'm like, I can't afford to go to law school. My university hooked me up with a paid internship and an HR department and said, you'll see sales, you'll see marketing, you'll see operations, you'll figure it out. And I did figure it out. It turns out, I like human stories. I like the struggle. I like the drama. I like the gossip. I like it all. I'm really fascinated. And I like the idea of work. I think it's fascinating why we do what we do. Maybe I should have been a psychologist, I'm not sure. But I did this world of HR for about 15 years. And I finished that corporate career at a very tiny company called Pfizer link, just a small company nobody's ever heard of right. And I was laying people off for a living. So I was George Clooney, when George Clooney was a thing. I mean, I was up in the air, going to really cool locations, and also Kalamazoo, Michigan and Paducah, Kentucky, and Lincoln, Nebraska. But I was traveling on a corporate Amex card and it looked like a really good job on the outside, even though I was doing terrible things. But I put my health on the backburner. I was 29 years old, and I would sneeze and throw up my back. And I never got any sleep. And I was on antidepressants. And I was trying to start a family. And that wasn't happening for me. And my husband was like, Why are you always talking about work? And it just became a thing where I'm like, I gotta figure this out. And so I went on a journey to figure it out. And that's what starts my book Betting on you. And I will, spoiler alert, tell everybody, I didn't quit my job right away, because that's not what adults do. That's kind of my humble career beginning. And it took me to being a writer and a speaker and an entrepreneur, quite the journey and a lot.
What it really means to bet on yourself
For years, I saw people who didn't deserve it. To get ahead. I was at an airport one night when I was working with Pfizer and in between flights, and what do I eat Starburst, and I drink a can of Pepsi because I'm trying to catch a flight. And so I go to the Hudson's right. And I get an US Weekly because God forbid I put anything in my brain that is nutritious. And so I'm flipping through looking at Miley Cyrus looking at all these celebrities who just have what I want wealth, access, fame, but even what appears to be a stable life with loving partners, even though all of that's fake, my brain is not processing any of that. And I asked myself: Why not me? And the answer is why not me? Why the hell not me? My employers, whoever they were always had money to put themselves first. Because the purpose of a corporation is to exist tomorrow to make money for its shareholders and owners. And I got Why am I not investing in myself? Why am I not betting on myself? And there are a lot of reasons right trauma, a family of origin drama stories, I tell myself, but slowly, I just started to talk to really good people who are killing it in this world. And asking the simple question, how do you do it? And I started to reverse engineer around four components that I write about in the book. And it's not like, I did these four things, and it changed my life. My life is still a mess. And along the way, it's like anybody else I'm human. But what I have right now is a life that's mine. I am a self-leader, I put myself first which means that when I'm making good decisions, I make good decisions for other people as well. I am inclusive, I'm focused on my wellbeing I'm always learning and I take better risks. And in those four swim lanes, I figured out how to be successful. last fall. And I just hope that I'm modeling good and healthy behavior and honest behavior, authentic behavior. So other people can do it too.
Betting on yourself is an evolutionary process and an ongoing process. But I had this moment where I realized nobody's coming to save me. I'm the oldest of four children, I don't have an older sister, I don't know if anybody, my mom is a retired Chicago police officer. My father was a working class, man, they split when I was young, it was always me just kind of going through life, the school of hard knocks. And yet, I always waited for my own HR department to bail me out. There's no HR, there's nobody coming, you are coming for yourself. Once I kind of said, Alright, I gotta figure this out. I gotta figure out how to be happy, how to be healthy, how to move, how to have a family that I want, how to have a career and a life that I want. I started being curious about it and going to people in my life who truly were killing it, and asking for help. And I think that is the key right there.
So often, as working individuals, we advise other people what to do, we give out advice. But there's this really interesting thing we have a company is called an employee assistance program. And before COVID, the utilization rate was around 8%. And with COVID, where everybody's having a mental health crisis, it's only 16%. People are either freaking out silently or they're going into health care, but they're not using a coaching program that's free and available. You don't have to have an employee assistance program, you can just go and have like a next level mentor conversation with someone who's doing it right in your life, a member of the clergy, someone you participate in community with, just ask them questions like How are you doing it? How do you manage your money? How are you dealing with your student loans? How are you dealing with the fact that everybody at work is earning more money, and apparently, there's this thing happening called the Great resignation, but I'm too scared to quit.
When you start to have those conversations, it demystifies the conversation, it removes shame. And it just brings you around to connecting with someone on a human-to-human level. And then you figure it out together. But I would be lying to you, if I told you there was like a four-step process by focusing on being a self-leader and taking individual accountability, but really prioritizing your well being by learning and always being open to new ideas. And then by taking better risks. Oh, there's kind of like a little methodology in there that you get ahead, at least I got ahead. And the people I coach in my practice, are getting ahead, too.
Wellbeing is a choice
Well, a lot of people talk about well-being right now. And well-being is incredibly important, but they talk about it in a consumer-driven way. And well-being is a state of mind. And it's a choice. And I write about this in Betting On You. Often we talked about how tired we are and how exhausted we are. And I sneezed and threw out my back at one point in my career. And I would just offer that nobody takes on the world and does anything of any great importance by eating breakfast off their toddler's plate, you got to fuel your body, you have oh my god, right? Have we all been there, like just grabbing what we can to get some food in us? That is no way cognitively, to do the amazing work that we want to do. So again, it's hard to hear that wellbeing is a choice. But it is and we can make some better choices. Nobody can make those choices for us. Even if they're incrementally better, at least they're better. So that's number one.
Learning means growth
Number two is that learning is everything in this world. And I've already said that when you're learning you're growing, when you're growing, you're thriving. But all learning is worthwhile. Because when you're learning, you're curious, you're on fire. And you can take that cognitive framework and apply it to work, apply it to projects, but more importantly, apply it to yourself.
Making better choices
I think the third thing I want to encourage everybody to do is to start taking better risks. And again, I write about this in my book, instead of taking risks and wondering why we keep failing, maybe take two seconds, and try to figure out how you're going to fail before you do the thing you're going to do. It's an old exercise called the pre-mortem. And it can be applied to project management. It can be applied to our careers and interview. How are you going to fail before you interview figure it out? Because if you can at least guess and correct some things, you give yourself a 30% greater chance of success. It's an awesome competitive advantage.
