Finance leader Liz Stapleton Zerella's moxie landed her a rare senior job share arrangement at Clorox with partner Michelle Shalauta.

What the duo did next is remarkable. If you're wondering if job sharing will negatively impact your career progression, not only does research prove the opposite—According to The Job Share Project, over 70% of job share teams who apply are promoted together—but Liz and her job share partner Michelle successfully navigated a nine-year partnership in four roles while also winning promotion as a job share. As if that weren't impressive enough, they worked in a predominantly male division of Clorox in finance where job sharing was unheard of. 

So friend, take that to heart. Both are possible for you too. We had this phone meeting before this podcast was even a thing, and I think you'll find our conversation unique and special—like being a fly on the wall for two former job sharers who’ve finally connected as part of a secret society of job sharers to dish on what it was really like. I hope you enjoy it! 

Links mentioned:

• Fast Company article: Is Job Sharing the Solution to Our Flexible Work Problems?

Episode Website: workmuse.com/11
Transcript here

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

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Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

A pep talk and my 4-step process to help you get unstuck and get into action to make your big moves and achieve your goals.

Inspired by the advice my dad gave me early on when I was pursuing an acting career and the dual sandwich caregiving challenges I've faced over the past several years, this episode's pep talk with practical advice is intended to inspire you to move through your fears to take the actions to achieve your goals. So settle in and listen up to Episode 10 for my good old-fashioned pep talk and how to apply this 4-step process to get unstuck, do it faster, and do it scared...

As a reminder, the doors to Job Share Academy, Work Muse online training & coaching program taken in a supportive, hands-on cohort, including weekly group coaching with yours truly, are closing today.

Links mentioned:

• Last Day to Enroll in Job Share Academy: Details & Enroll HERE

Episode Website: workmuse.com/10
Transcript here

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

Go behind the scenes of Job Share Academy with program alumna Elizabeth McQueen. 

"You can be ambitious AND you can spend a lot of time with your family AND you can be successful, you just have to figure out HOW you want to do it and WHO you want to do it with. Job Share Academy opened my eyes to the fact that it can look a lot of ways. If you're willing to put in the work, you can make something cool happen."  - Elizabeth McQueen

Work Muse online training & coaching program Job Share Academy is taken in a supportive, hands-on cohort, including weekly group coaching with yours truly. The doors to Job Share Academy have just opened up for a limited-time enrollment. If you are curious about what taking the program is like, Elizabeth gives an in-depth view into what taking the program looks like, on a practical basis in Episode 9.

Job Share Academy student Elizabeth McQueen talks with me about her experience inside of the program and how she used job sharing first in a volunteer role as PTA Co-President, and then, in her current role as a co-host and co-producer of Pause Play podcast for KUTX. Elizabeth was curious about the idea of job sharing and how it could help her manage the partnership that she had, but also how she might apply job sharing to her life in the future.

Links mentioned:

• Limited-Time FREE Masterclass Signup: 3 Insider Secrets to Share Your Job and Lose the Guilt of Putting Work First or Family First—Forever
• Pause/Play podcast
• CultureMap Austin: Austin music podcast tackles Ticketmaster, climate, and more in new season

Episode Website: workmuse.com/9
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

Working in a cross-generational job share propelled Mary Kaye Stuart and Sommer Hruska's success at work.

Their job share proved a solid succession planning strategy for their employer, while giving both better mental and physical health.

When you think of job sharing, you might not have considered sharing a job with a partner whose background is very different from yours. It was a pleasure to interview my guest co-hosts Mary Kaye Stuart and Sommer Hruska in Episode 8, not only because they are Work Muse clients, or because I go back a long time with Mary Kaye, but because their job share is such a beautiful example of an intergenerational or cross-generational job share—in this case, pairing a Boomer and a Gen Xer. The duo credits their generational differences with making their job share more effective. 

Mary Kaye and Sommer detail how they navigated their relationships with clients and coworkers, and why if they loved their jobs, they decided to job share in the first place. A doctor's sage advice for longevity and a young mother's determination to find more time for her children and homestead might have been the impetus. However, job sharing led both Mary Kaye and Sommer to enjoy other parts of life society "doesn't deem as worthy" like exploring passions such as writing and being truly present with one's children and self. 

In our live-to-work society, Mary Kaye and Sommer's story is the wake-up call many of us need and makes the case for considering different ways to work like sharing roles.


Links mentioned:

• Jobshare Jumpstart: A LIVE Job Share Creation Bootcamp 

Episode Website: workmuse.com/8
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

Debunking these 7 job share myths is key before proposing a job share to your employer.

Don't let other people's misconceptions stand in your way of job sharing. 
These commonly held beliefs hold a majority of people who've heard of and thought about job sharing, from ever following through to create their job shares. Similarly, the same misinformed beliefs are why most employers turn down a job share, losing out on the productivity, engagement, and solution-driven results job sharing can bring. 

In Episode 7, I first break down which of your stakeholders need to understand the realities of job sharing. Then, I unveil how knowing these truths will help you implement 3 key essentials to putting your job share plan into place. Finally, I guide you through a deep dive into each of the seven myths to debunk each, myth by myth, based on research from the most comprehensive study to date. With nearly a decade of hands-on experience in job sharing and the same working with future to current job sharers and employers, I can confidently confirm that these myths and realities hold. 

There's one thing I know for sure: being prepared with facts will help you overcome many of the objections to job sharing you'll likely face when proposing a job share.

Links mentioned:

• The Job Share Project Key Findings

Episode Website: workmuse.com/7
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

This powerful visualization exercise will help you envision what it's like to work in a job share in under 15 minutes.

There are several barriers to job sharing that those interested in sharing roles need to overcome, but the hardest barrier to overcome might be you. It takes people a while to wrap their heads around job sharing. After all, there are two people, meaning two personalities bringing two sets of ideas into one full-time position. They're sharing their income, profession, and personal lives, even. It can seem brilliant but tricky to pull off successfully until you've experienced job sharing firsthand.

So before you come across any outside obstacles or barriers to creating your job share, I need you to make sure you are not standing in your way. Visualizing the day-to-day life of one week as a job sharer with this powerful exercise will enable you to slip into the job share mindset and embrace what it's like to job share in less than 15 minutes.

Links mentioned:

• FREE Guided Audio Visualization Exercise (to accompany Episode 6)
• Work Muse Job Share, Live Life + Slay Work Facebook Group

Episode Website: workmuse.com/6
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

Best of the Best: A 10+ year job share superteam dish their best advice for women interested in job sharing.

They thought about it for years—corporate turned entrepreneurial job share team Gabriela Mercado and Gabriela Proctor open up about how they persisted for their job share's approval and what they'd do differently today, so you don't have to. 

You might be surprised to learn how job sharing can positively impact your career and income. Tapping into one another's strengths gave the duo the "perfect formula" for career success so much so that, unbelievably, the minute GX2 (their job share nickname)  began job sharing, not only did they make more income than working full-time, but the job itself became a fun adventure.  

In episode 5, GX2 shares how they took their job share from the corporate world into their entrepreneurial journey. The duo expands upon how job sharing impacted their household labor and Mental Load while allowing them to lean into the parts of parenting they enjoyed most but were previously unable to do, like volunteering for field trips once they found themselves able to "move through both worlds fully and more intentionally."

GX2's message to you: Educate yourself, create a plan to job share, but don't wait—instead, go for it.

Links mentioned:

• Work Muse Job Share Project Case Study Videos

Episode Website: workmuse.com/5
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

To beat imposter syndrome and manifest your job share, you have to believe you can job share.

Once a skeptic, I've become a believer after leaning into manifestation during my most challenging season of life. You might be thinking, "Easy for you to say, Melissa. You're one of the lucky few who've job shared."  I know it may be easier said than done, but I also know there are more job sharers (past or present) out there than you think—probably even in your circle.

There's a dirty little secret that plagues nearly all job sharers, including me—it took us longer to job share than we would have liked. Much much longer. Had we faced down our fears of the "right timing, the "right boss," or the "right job" sooner, we could have reaped job sharing's massive personal AND professional benefits sooner.

In Episode 4's Mindset Minisode, I distill two personal obstacles you need to understand about job sharing and a powerful 1-minute exercise to help you manifest your (fill in the blank—job share/promotion/new job/work-life goal/flex work practice). I also divulge the mantra I've adopted over the past year that keeps my imposter syndrome from ever rearing its ugly little head.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Work Muse Job Share, Live Life + Slay Work Facebook Group

Episode Website: workmuse.com/4
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

One mom's mic drop moment when pushed to the brink: 

Karen Browning reads her pandemic resignation letter and opens up about being forced to choose between career and caregiving at the height of the pandemic.

In the summer of 2021, Karen summoned up the courage to vulnerably and transparently spell out what she had needed from her employer and what they could have done to keep her in her letter of resignation—in the hopes of helping those coming behind her at her organization. Today, she's sharing her letter with you should you ever need the same.

In Episode 3, Karen sat down with me for a frank discussion about her experience, what women are facing now, and what they can do about it. As a society, we tend to push through difficult times without taking sufficient time to reflect. While the pandemic is behind us, as Karen says, "We are so different on the other side." An optimist at heart, I believe, as does Karen, that it changed us for the better. As we face a tipping point with layoffs and chronic stress, you can learn a lot from Karen's experience about putting yourself first and creating the life you deserve.

UPDATE: 4/24/24 - Deloitte just released its 2024 Women @ Work Global Study and once again, women feel MORE stress now than one year before, and an "always on" culture remains.

Links mentioned:

• Work Muse Job Share, Live Life & Slay Work Facebook Community 

Episode Website: workmuse.com/3
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌  

A simple strategy to decrease your overwhelm, stress, and burnout by applying job share principles to your daily life.

What if I told you women were more stressed now than they were at the height of the pandemic? Would it surprise you to learn that the main factor is burnout?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret today in this Mindset Minisode: job sharing is the antidote to "quiet quitting."  While the term is no longer shiny and new, it's time for a "quiet quitting" reframe as boundaried working.

In this episode, you'll learn how you can apply the job share principles to your daily life to set boundaries, delegate tasks, and foster transparent communication to combat burnout effectively. In doing so, you might even discover a more frictionless (and equitable) co-parenting relationship. What?! What!! So get ready to discover how to banish burnout with job sharing.

UPDATE: 4/24/24 - Deloitte just released its 2024 Women @ Work Global Study and once again, women feel MORE stress now than one year before, and an "always on" culture remains.Links mentioned in this episode:

• FREE RESOURCE: The Work Muse Guide to Job Sharing

Episode Website: workmuse.com/2
Transcript here.

Send Melissa a Text Message.

>> Grab your Summertime Video Playlist 📹 HERE << your perfect beach viewing to learn from REAL job share teams to kickstart your job share plan! 👙☀️🏖  While everyone else is checking out for summer and abandoning their goals, you'll be ready to make your BIG moves come back-to-school time! 📈👩🏽‍💻

RATE, REVIEW & FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS

Thank you for supporting my bootstrapped social good company and mission! 

“I love Melissa and Jobshare Revolution.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider leaving me a 5⭐ rating and review! Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate 5⭐ , and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. This helps me support more people—just like you—to find TRUE work-life balance. 🙌🙌