118: Speaking From Experience with Alisa Goldschmidt

On this episode of the Career Clarity Show, we are doing something that I love to do and I don’t do often enough. We are talking to Alisa Goldschmidt. Alisa is someone who has gone through a career change –  a real deal person just like you. She came to us at Career Clarity looking for some support and guidance. She has an incredible story of navigating transition and having some ups and downs. 

If you are listening to this podcast and thinking to yourself that we often feature experts, but could really benefit from hearing the story of somebody who has gone through this themselves, then you are in for a treat today.

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

Show Notes:

• Alisa on LinkedIn
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Career Clarity Show. I am your host for today, Lisa Miller. And I’m delighted as always that you are with us back today. And today on the podcast, we are doing something that I love to do and I don’t do enough of and I am so excited for today we are talking to someone who has gone through a career change a real deal person just like you somebody who came to ESET Career Clarity Show looking for some support and guidance and who has an incredible story of navigating transition, having some ups and downs. And because it is so seasonally relevant right now honestly, also having Corona and the pandemic have some impact on exactly how this unfolded. So if you are listening to this podcast and thinking to yourself, you know what, Lisa, you have a lot of these highfalutin experts on here who are fine, but I want to hear from somebody who has gone through this themselves. Then you are in for a treat today on the Career Clarity Show. Our guest on the podcast today is Alisa Goldschmidt. Alisa is wonderful. She came to us a long time ago. And I’ll let her share a little bit more of that story here in just a moment. Before she was 100%, all in on making a change. And as happened during the time of COVID. Corona made some decisions for her like it made some decisions for a lot of us. So I’m so excited to have Alisa share her story of how this all started, how her career change process went, the decisions that she made the ups the downs, trials, tribulations and of course, how she’s landed. So with that, Alisa, welcome to the Career Clarity Show. Thank you, Lisa. I’m thrilled, thrilled to join you very excited. Well, I am so thrilled that you were willing to share about your real deal career change story, because yours has some layers to it that I think are gonna be so helpful to listeners. Good. I hope so. Yeah. Well, let’s start your story back at the very beginning, and where do we find our hero? Where do we find our hair? When shall I say in the beginning, when you started to consider making a shift in what was going on in your career.

Alisa Goldschmidt  2:49  

So I think I started thinking about making a change, probably three, four years ago, I have been in marketing my entire career. 20 plus years. And most of that time has been in the technology sector. Some had some side side gigs, not side gigs, but other industries briefly, but mostly in tech, I was part of the.com boom and bust I was working during the recession. But always pretty much in a b2b marketing role in a software company of some sort. As a result of sort of working during those times, and others I have had the experience I was about to say fortunate or unfortunate depending how you look at it at times, of being laid off several times. I think I’m up to maybe seven times seven or eight times being laid off in my career. So no, it’s not something I’m especially proud of it just is. It’s It’s It’s part of being a marketing and technology. Because until maybe the last three, four years marketing always was the one to be cut First, there was no understanding of why you needed to invest in it. Also, marketing spends money. So if you’re trying to cut back, that’s where you cut. So I was often on the chopping block. So I’ve I’ve looked for a job sometimes I’d like to say I’ve looked for a job at almost as long as I’ve worked because it’s I’ve had these several several, you know, time periods where I’ve been laid off anywhere, you know, unemployed anywhere from like, you know, a couple months up to, you know, probably 1516 months of unemployment. So I’ve done it all. I also have the dubious honor of having filed unemployment in multiple states. So if you ever need to know. So I had started again, probably about three or four years ago, I was working for a startup. And I just was burned out on coming up with new ideas. I was burned out on marketing to ITP Which is what this particular software did. I marketing, in my opinion, the head had become all about making Google happy. And that was it. You know, you weren’t writing thought leadership pieces or things for the educate. You were writing them to make sure that you were picked up on Google. And there was so much focus on that. And it just kind of discouraged me, like, I was like, what’s the point of all this experience and, you know, creativity and enthusiasm that I might have had when all it comes down to basically is making the bots happy. And so that that informed my unhappiness in my in my role, again, it was partially, I’d say a lot of it was what I was doing, some of it was the company itself, I was not in a very supportive environment. And there wasn’t a lot of room for ideas. So it was a combination. And but it was sort of tough, okay, you know, I’m, I’ve been working all this time, marketing and technology, what what am I going to do, that’s all I know, or even if I, you know, as far as someone wanting to hire me, also, I was at a point in my career, I didn’t want to start at entry level, again, like I needed, you know, I’ve worked a long time, I’ve made my way up the salary ladder, and I wasn’t really willing to, you know, cut my salary by more than half and have to live with six people on a one bedroom apartment, like, I’m, that’s not, that’s not my life anymore. I’m not 25 anymore, I don’t want to do that. So there was a lot of eye camps. But then, you know, I started looking at what skills I did enjoy using in that current job and what where the market was going, and start looking at slightly different opportunities. And while during this time is when I met you, Lisa, through one of your podcasts, and then we chatted on the phone and things like that. And again, I was dipping my toe in the water of working with the Career Coach, and you know, just not sure. And I think the other thing was, during that time, I was very, you know, overall discouraged, like, not mentally in a good place, I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing, I wasn’t enjoying the company, it was that it wasn’t enjoying the people that like none of it made me happy. It was, you know, just it was not good. And, but it was a paycheck, you know, it was a decent paycheck. So I didn’t want to take that for granted. But I’m sort of then to have the energy and motivation to do something and work with a coach and do the work, so to say was, was sort of not high on my radar at the time. So that was where you found your heroine is you said,

Lisa Lewis Miller  7:50  

well, and I think that that’s so true of most people that we first encounter is that you’re, you’re in this space where you know, you’re not happy. And you know, you don’t love what you’re doing. You’re not 100% sure what you want to go into next. And you’re not sure how committed you are to making a change. Because you’re kind of in this liminal space between I know, I’m not happy, but I don’t have a vision of what would make me happier, to kick my butt into gear to take action and be motivated and start to really mobilize. And so you we’re in that same liminal space of, I’m kind of limping through, and I can keep limping through and this job for a while. But I know this isn’t going to be sustainable. I know that this is not a long term source of happiness and fulfillment for me.

Alisa Goldschmidt  8:40  

And I think the other thing I didn’t mention, and I suspect there’s others that have felt this, you know, as I mentioned, I was in a startup, but I had a lot of equity as part of that. And the reason I had stayed, I mean, I ended up being at that company five years. The reason I stayed as long as I did, was because of the potential payout if they if the company was sold, and that was always part of the company plan. So you know, I knew about two and a half years in that I wasn’t super happy, but I kept telling myself it was worth sticking around. So sort of golden handcuffs in a way, as well as all those other things you mentioned.

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:14  

Totally. And, you know, we have an episode of the podcast that I’ll try to put into the show notes from a guy who has been in startups six times and he loves startups and he talks about all of the the benefits and all the cool opportunities that you get being early stage within a company. But at least I think you’re really rightly pointing out that there are some drawbacks to and this deferred compensation model where you essentially take on a lot of risk personally with the hope that the business is going to get sold at some level and you’ll get your equity payout and it’ll all have been worth it can be a really painful model and it can be a really, it feels like your hands are tied and it can keep you suffering and stuck in a Place a lot longer than you would ideally want to be.

Alisa Goldschmidt  10:04  

Yes. And as a side note, I think I can’t remember the guys name. But I did listen to that particular episode, I think it’s the same guy. And I found it, I found it super helpful. So since I’m just recommending to others who read the show notes, that was a really good episode as I was job searching so.

Lisa Lewis Miller  10:20  

So we hit this point where you were feeling listless about the work, and not totally sure where to go next. And what was the impetus for saying, Okay, I’m all in, it’s time to do search, it’s time to get some support.

Alisa Goldschmidt  10:39  

So right about that time, the pandemic hit. And so you know, everybody’s working from home. So I’m also rather extroverted, that did not help my already negative feelings about my job, I was just cut off from everything. On the flip side, it gave me some time to start looking for a job. I actually, as you may recall, got a job offer in the early days of COVID, that they had to rescind once things got really bad. So I thought I was already out of that other job, but then it didn’t happen. So ultimately, my company laid me off at in July 2020. I was, you know, terrified, in some ways, because I’ve gone through this before everybody’s being laid off. And no one was hired, you know, as all this no one is hiring. No one is this. This is a terrible time, we have all these things. For me, it was a mix, because it was also a relief. And I was fortunate and I was able to negotiate a pretty decent severance since I’d been there for quite a while. So that was like, a Christian. So right before that happened, you and I had talked and I was like, Okay, I think I’m ready. Like, I gotta do something like, I got to feel like I’m making doing something besides complaining all the time, I’ve got to be putting, I have to do something to make a change. And and then, you know, I don’t know, a week later, I got laid off. So I think I was like, Alright, let’s do this. So you know, I at the time, I’m motivated. Let’s, let’s get after this. So that was that was for me the turning point, I think it was pretty much already there. But that was the getting laid off. And having, frankly, the severance and just feeling like I’ll be okay. Gave me a little bit of push to

Lisa Lewis Miller  12:29  

it. It always feels like such a paradox of you don’t want something crappy to happen in your life to be the kick in the pants to get you started. But so often it is the best form of motivation and momentum creation that we could ask for. Yeah. So that you had this painful and probably trauma re inducing experience of Oh, no, I’m going through this again. All the news articles are making it sound like this is the worst time in the history of the universe to be looking for a job. But I need to be looking for a job. And you’ve mentioned earlier in our conversation about some of the mindset pieces and how you’d been feeling low motivation and kind of struggling with your job. And I’m wondering, when you started working with a Career Clarity Show coach, you worked with Nikki, which was so fabulous. Knowing that you’re the kind of person who has done job searches before who has had to be on the hunt before, who knows the mechanics of that? What you what was different about the mindset pieces when you were approaching your search and your discernment journey, right? Because it wasn’t just that you were looking for a new job, but you’d been thinking about a new vocation and a new career path for a while. So that’s a lot of big changes in questions and transition to be navigating all at once.

Alisa Goldschmidt  13:57  

Yeah, and I would absolutely agree there was some trauma, not only just that being laid off is a huge trigger for me. I mean, you know, in March and April, when all the big news, I mean, I was really stressed even though I didn’t have any reason to think that I was going to get laid off, but just that for me is always on the other side of the horizon. So and then I think, because of the negative experiences I had been having, I also came away with you know, pretty damaged sense, a sense of confidence and self esteem, you know, all of those things had been, you know, I was pretty bad or down so it did take a little while but again, my and you know, I’ve said this to friends, like I could keep complaining and now I didn’t even have a job to complain about, but like, nobody’s gonna get me out of it. Nobody’s gonna come like riding up in their white horse and offer me you know, a job or, you know, I’ve got I’ve got to work at this. Um, and I think in addition to all those challenges, I’m also older. And that is a whole other issue that’s out there in the marketplace, especially in the tech industry. And so I just I had a lot of challenges. And so I just my decision was, I need to figure out what I’m not going to just end up in the same place in the year. I think that was, when I look back at maybe my last two or three jobs, I kind of kept ending up the same point, I kept them ending up in like, the small to medium sized tech companies doing the same thing. I get burned out or annoyed. And then I go to them, and it just I’m like, I can’t do that anymore. I can’t, I’m just gonna end up with the same I don’t know, I’d read job descriptions for jobs that I’m paper I was qualified for. And I was just like, Oh, no, I can’t there’s like, I can’t, I can’t do it anymore. So, um, you know, I think for me, the difference. So that was my mindset, like I’ve got to make, I’ve got to do this on my own, I’ve been given some time. And I don’t think that I was all like, Yay, and the Oh, this is gonna be great. And I’m not, you know, Mary sunshine like I can be, you know, it was challenging. But again, I felt like, at least I was doing something to move myself forward. And I’ve been given a little time to work on and work on myself. So on the one side, I’d say, Yeah, I had to find a job ASAP. Like, there was sort of that desperation, scarcity mode. But there was the other side of me, but let’s make it right. So. And then I think the other thing is that I was going through, I have had aspirations of my whole life of doing something entirely different. And that is becoming a librarian. And, you know, every few years, I go through the cycle of wanting to do it, and looking into grad school and all those things. And I have to say, this is one time, I’m especially glad I didn’t do it, because all the library’s closed. So but you know, it was sort of like, okay, that’s still not going to be a good option, but let’s find something that will be so. And I think, you know, the work the work that, especially at the beginning of working with Nikki, it is not easy stuff. And it’s, it’s not something again, like you said, I’ve dealt, I can look for a job, I can write a resume, like I can do these things. But it was the work at the beginning, were really drilling down on values, and what’s important, and what’s, you know, all those things that we don’t ever spend time really thinking about, and the fact that I had to spend a lot of time and then the worst part is that I had to prioritize things. And I had to make a deal breaker list. And like all the like I I was so clear, not, you know, Career Clarity Show Yes, I was really much clearer. So again, I sort of had things that I was like, Oh, my God, I knew what it was. And I think that that was probably the one of the most powerful parts of working with Nicky. And, yep, do not be under the illusion that it’s fun or therapy. It’s a little of both. You know, but I mean, it’s and I think also for me, because of my personnel, how we’re personality and how I work. I liked that there was structure around it like it wasn’t. Let’s meet for an hour and chat and where are you? There’s, there’s a structure program and expectations and, you know, things like that. And that the way I work that helped,

Lisa Lewis Miller  18:35  

well, can we dig into the structure a little bit because I feel like as you’re talking about this process of both having some of those feelings of scarcity and desperation of I gotta find a job right away, and having the feelings of, I want it to fit, I want it to be good. I don’t want to just settle for anything. Let both the courage that it takes to be willing to bet on yourself and not immediately go back into like, this is what I know, this is what I’ve done for 20 years, I know I can get another job in this and resign yourself to settling for that as a triage strategy. Plus, the the savvy, risk management and financial planning to set yourself up to have that as an option to look for something new and different, is wonderful. But I want to talk about the process of actually how you you were navigating the if not this, then what? After two decades in the marketing space. So what what was the process of discernment like for you had you had some secret aspirations beyond being a librarian of things? You’re really curious. It’s not a secret anymore. Now. Your public secret of your life dream? Did you come in with fully formed ideas? Did you come in feeling like a blank slate

Alisa Goldschmidt  19:47  

I came in. So I came in, I wouldn’t say fully formed ideas, but I had sort of started making moves. So in my previous role, or my previous company, Yes, I was. I ran marketing in marketing, but I also managed the sales and marketing tech stack. And for people that aren’t familiar, so in the world of sales and marketing, and especially in technology companies, there is just literally 1000s of technology platforms that companies can use and are pitched every day. We were small companies, we didn’t have a ton, but the core of everything, and this is in most companies, your CRM, your customer relationship management platform, we use Salesforce, that’s the big player in the space. So I’ve used Salesforce for 20, some years, but I’d always been a user. And I decided I wanted to sort of go to the next level and become an administrator. It’s a pretty robust tool, and pretty complicated. So it took, and my previous employer, you know, didn’t really encourage or have much interest in supporting me in that. So I did it on my own. And this was at the beginning of last year, so I was still working was before COVID, I actually took my certified administrator exam on the last Saturday. And before everything shut down in March, it was like March 14, or something. So I had started to do that, because it was something I wanted to do for myself. And I knew that I needed to validate my knowledge, if I wanted to get away from doing the same kind of marketing stuff I’d done all the time. So did I know what that looked like? Exactly afterwards? No, but that that was something and I passed the exam the first time, which doesn’t happen. I mean, lots of people take it multiple times. So I was very proud of myself for that. But I had that, like, I could walk away and say, Okay, I’m a Salesforce certified administrator. And, you know, oh, by the way, did it, you know, did the training and everything on my own. And I passed, so I kind of had that feather in my cap as a beginning.

Lisa Lewis Miller  22:02  

But I imagine when you took the Salesforce administrator exam, and knowing what I know about you, your immediate thought was not I want to go be a Salesforce administrator and be playing with custom objects and naming conventions for, you know, eight hours a day, every single day.

Alisa Goldschmidt  22:19  

No, that’s that’s absolutely true. Yeah, no, I I knew well, also, because I’ve worked in companies that had full time Salesforce administrators, and it is a thankless job. Sorry if anybody out there is an admin, but I think you’d probably agree. It’s very critical, but it’s often thankless. And I am, I enjoy people and, and talking and communication and processes so much more than sitting in front of my computer all day and playing with custom objects. So again, I did not want to be a full time administrator, which is a job in of itself. But I got the certification to validate that I knew what I was talking about, and that I had capabilities and skills. But I did not go out looking for Salesforce administrator jobs. I piloted a few and I read them, I’m like, that’s just not me.

Lisa Lewis Miller  23:10  

Yeah, how’d you get from a marketing person with this Salesforce certification to the concept of the work that you do now, which is in revenue operations?

Alisa Goldschmidt  23:21  

Yes. So I now do work in a function called revenue operations, which is a function at a sort of, somewhat of a new name for an add function that has been around for a while, but it’s a it’s a brings together different several different functions under one roof. I was very fortunate is that I came into looking for a job in rev ups at the right time. I mean, that’s I had the right skills at the right time. And honestly, like, I couldn’t have predicted that I, I just it was timing. So I knew I had all these skills. I knew I had sales operations, skills and marketing operations skills, and I had all this tech stuff. But I also understood marketing, and I always worked with sales. So I kind of had a very robust background in a lot of different ways that fit very well with revenue operations. And the fact that I had a Salesforce administrator exam, administrator certification. Just kind of again, validated, I knew what I was talking about, and that I could go you know, dive in and work so i think so it’s interesting because when I interviewed for jobs, there were people that did not care that I had all this marketing experience and that most of my career even though it wasn’t a standalone function. I have been doing this job in one some way or form all these years. Anyways, portions of it. I was doing sales operations. I was doing marketing operations and some people didn’t care That I had all that experience and other people were like, Oh my gosh, this is like, you bring so much to the table. You. Yeah. And And that for me after especially having a really rough previous years to have somebody say that. But I think one of the not only what I brought to the table, but I think a key thing I learned when I was working with Nicky was how to communicate my value. And that was something that I, you know, again, I communicated before I can talk to people that wasn’t it, but being able to succinctly communicate my value, when honestly, my resume doesn’t, you know, you have to it doesn’t immediately jump out at you, although I worked on that. But that was a huge win. When I have people say, Wow, it’s great talking to you, you bring so much value. I don’t think you’re a great fit for this. But I think, you know, I know x, y and z. So that was, you know, I had lots of days where I was like, I had a great conversation, but I’m not a fit. And I guess that’s a good thing, even though Sure, it was disappointing, but I didn’t, I didn’t want it. And then there were other roles where it would have only been doing half half of what I brought to the table. And I would have had to leave all that other, you know, the other half behind and that wasn’t going to serve me well either. And pigeonhole me, I mean, the beautiful thing about revenue operations is it’s, it crosses so many functions. And and as in as a growing company, you need someone that can work strongly cross functionally that can build relationships. And I’m really good at doing that. So which is why I never wanted to just be a Salesforce administrator and sitting behind my computer eight hours a day. So

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:50  

that makes so much sense Alisa, and I’m hearing a couple of themes in your story that I just want to make sure to highlight and one of them being that when you discover the world of revenue Ops, as you said it, you had been doing this work in some form or function for your entire career. And another guest that we have on the Career Clarity Show, Lindsay Pollack is a workplace expert. And she talked about the fact that for most people who are making a pivot, right, most people who are making a, what looks like a meaningful external change in their career trajectory, they usually had 60 to 80% of the experience that they needed to do that work already. And it was just getting that little marginal extra to prove and show that they are completely capable of stepping into the new role. So I love that you were able to find something that was a de facto pivot, we’re sure because it was not doing straight up marketing, and not just trying to play the game to please please the Googles to make sure that you show up where you need to on the search or with your paid ad. But it was also it was like something old and something new in a lot of ways. And I knew that that’s a really important thing for people to hear is that you can make a meaningful change without having to flip the table on your entire life. Mm hmm. But the other thing that you were talking about that I think is really important to highlight is that when you were in the process of having conversations with people about potential opportunities, by the time that you were in those conversations from the way you’re describing it right now, your confidence was at a level where if it wasn’t a great fit, that was not debilitating for you, you didn’t walk away from that conversation saying, Oh, my gosh, I just put my heart on the table, and then I’m not the right fit for them. How do I how do I contort myself, right? How do I vote half of myself off the island, so I can be what they want, even though I know I have more to bring to the table, the way you’re telling that story indicates such a sense of self trust and self confidence that I deserve to work at a place where they see and value all of me. And even if it’s in a pandemic, I know myself well enough to know that if I take something where they’re only getting a fraction of me, or they only appreciate a fraction of me, it’s not going to be worth it, it’s not going to be sustainable, it’s not gonna feel good. So I just want to highlight both of those because I think they are independently big revelations, that if you don’t walk into your search with a certain sense of confidence and self trust about what your non negotiables are, your search can go off the rails really easily.

Alisa Goldschmidt  29:31  

Yeah, and I’m not gonna, you know, I don’t want to paint it that I turned down interviews that weren’t, you know, anything like that. I mean, I talked to anybody that wanted to interview me, I approached that, you know, to the, you know, I did all my prep. I mean, I was always very prepared. But I very much approached it as a conversation. And, you know, sometimes they had very formal questions, and it was very dry and they didn’t have a personality. But at other times, I mean, there’s one one I’m company and in particular, that I interviewed with this guy, and, you know, we hit it off. I was a finalist. But he didn’t pick me. But he liked what I, you know, he liked who I was, and what I brought to the table so much that he made, you know, he and I had a video call for him to tell me that he wasn’t moving me forward. But he said, You know, I respect you so much. And you bring so much to the table, and I just wanted to let you know that whatever I can do to help you find the right thing. And he and I still keep in touch. And, you know, someday, I hope I work for him. But that to me was huge. Like, again, because I conveyed my value. It just wasn’t the right. And and he was right. It wasn’t, there was a, there was some other things that wasn’t the right fit for the experience I had at that point. But I really went on to work for him. So it’s like, well, but you know, and I’m glad, you know, he didn’t push it either. Because I think either, both of us would have been disappointed. But um, I think and I think having all those conversations that you can have, you also learn along the way, like, what sounds good What, what to ask somebody else to see if they’re telling the same story? Well, I’m

Lisa Lewis Miller  31:16  

hearing you bring that up. I know what you were searching because of the way you had felt in your previous position, not really being fully utilized, not being fully appreciated, that it would be talking about that Career Clarity, Show four pillars of career fulfillment methodology, we talk a lot about the personality fit pillar and how important it is to find an organization that has similar values, and a supervisor or a hiring manager who enables you to show up, you know, at your brightest megawatt brightness, and to be in a place where you feel psychologically safe, and you feel like you can contribute at your fullest potential that you want to. And when it comes to screening organizations, for how well they’re going to feel like home and how well they’re going to feel like a good fit and a safe fit. I know that was so important to you and your search. And I know that’s an incredibly difficult thing to do in the process. And especially when you’re feeling like there’s an extra layer of pandemic pressure on top of everything. So, if your story strikes me so much, because of the confidence that you went into these conversations with, this is a conversation, this is not an a mismatch power dynamic, or I am sitting here like the puppy waiting to be picked, you know, at the kennel. And you had this very even conversational dynamic. But it also really strikes me that screening for a good fit on both sides, and finding a place that felt like a good culture fit and a good personality fit was high on your list of priorities during a fairly stressful

Alisa Goldschmidt  33:01  

time. That’s not easy. I mean, I think there’s, there’s only so much you can learn ahead of time and, and you do as much as you can, and you ask as many people and you know, you do, again, that’s you hope for the best. But I think a lot of that comes through and the people you talk to, you can just, you can just tell if you click and if you click with all the people you talk to, I mean, if there’s just a good, you walk away with a good feeling, you know, chances are that that’s and and i i am so grateful and fortunate that I truly did end up at a place that is all those things that you said that the culture fit is great for me, I can, you know, be myself, they appreciate all I bring to the table, I’m valued. I’m, I’m acknowledged, I’m heavily utilized, you know, all those things. I was the first revenue operations hire they’d had at a company that had been around many years already. So I had had been there five months. So a lot of challenges to overcome, but the culture is very much we help each other out. What can we do to help What can you know, it’s just there’s a couple other people that were hired at the same time and we sometimes like contact, you know, message each other and like, are they for real? You know, is this really is this is this really as good as it sounds? And I’m not saying that it’s like not without challenges. I mean, it’s still a job but it’s just so night and day from a situation that that I have previously and and it is so much more in alignment with who I am and where I want to go. So and you know the other thing I want to tell people is that you know, it took me seven months to find a job so I don’t want anybody to think that you know I worked with Nicky for a couple months then boom I got a job like it just that’s not how it works. And there was placings I interviewed for that I really wanted that didn’t work out. Again, you know, as I told Lisa, before we got we started recording, I guess things do happen for a reason, because I absolutely felt like I feel like I landed in the perfect place for me, but I couldn’t have known that, you know, there was there was disappointments along the way, there was down days, there was, you know, week, you know, a couple times where I took like three or four days off and just like tried my best to just ignore everything just to regroup. So it’s, it was definitely lots of ups and downs. But I think, you know, it did pay off, and especially as someone that’s a little older, and we owe it to ourselves, to get that clear, like, we’ve paid our dues. Like, you know, we’ve paid our dues. We’ve worked hard, we’ve taken, you know, crappy roles with crappy managers. And to the extent we can hold out for the right thing, it’s, we deserve it. And I know everybody’s situation is different. So I don’t want to like, downplay that, sometimes you just need to get a job. But to the extent that you have this preparation and knowledge about yourself and are confident it will it, that job will be the right one.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:14  

I love that. I think that’s such a note of encouragement and hope for us to bring this conversation to an end on because it can feel really scary and really discouraging. And especially if you know that there are there factors that might create bias against you. Whether Yeah, ageism, whether it’s sexism, whether it’s racism, whether it’s another form of discrimination, it can almost feel futile or hopeless, or like, why bother. And so to hear your story and talking about how you would take every conversation that was offered to you and every interview possibility to get to know somebody and to share your story and talk about your value, and the persistence and the grit that you brought to the table, to not just land a job, but to create a career change in the middle of a pandemic in only seven months, is quite the accomplishment. Thank you. So I hope everybody listening has taken some great nuggets of perspective and hopefulness and advice out of our conversation. And Alisa, thank you for coming on the show today. And I wanted to end us in the place of asking if people have been inspired by your story and they like to connect with you. What’s the best way for them to do that?

Alisa Goldschmidt  37:35  

Find me on LinkedIn, just send me a connection request, tell me you know, put something in there. So I know the the context from which you’re reaching out to me and happy to connect, you know, happy to hop on a call if you want some more information or just to chat through. I very much know I’m happy to help anybody that I can just with connections or just work, you know, being supportive because it does take a large city, not just a village

Lisa Lewis Miller  38:04  

That is so true, at least that you are a gem for offering yourself up as a resource. So if you’re listening to this, go check out the show notes. We’ll put a link to Alisa’s LinkedIn there. So you can connect there I’ll put a link to the Lindsay Pollack episode of the podcast. We’ll include a link to that startup episode of the podcast and I will link to an episode of the career warrior podcast that I was on where I talked about how to do cold outreach messages. So if you reach out to Alisa, you can use the best practices from that to make it easy for her to say yes to and easy for her to respond to. So Alisa, thank you again for coming on the Career Clarity Show and sharing your story and your brilliance and congratulations again on landing in a spot that is such a good fit for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. 

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