The Career Butterfly

You might not think of payment processing as a sexy business, but CEO/Founder Samantha Ettus disagrees. She's disrupting the industry with her new company, Park Place Payments, and helping women achieve financial independence in the process.

Park Place Payments is dramatically growing its salesforce in 2020 and is specifically looking for women re-entering the workforce because Sam knows how many incredible women are on the sidelines after leaving successful careers. She also knows that the Account Executive role fits the needs of busy moms. You can work from anywhere on your own schedule - and isn't that what we've all been asking for?

Sam knows so much about what women are asking for from the years she has spent as an author and speaker on these issues. In this episode, she also shares wisdom from her book The Pie Life: A Guilt-Free Recipe for Success and Satisfaction. In this book, she divvies life into 7 slices - Health, Career, Family, Relationships, Community, Friends, Hobbies. Her secret to success? Live in all 7 segments and do it without guilt!

Interested in Park Place Payments? Check it out and let me know! I would love to interview a listener who becomes an Account Executive!

Who am I to go for this? Do I even deserve to be standing in this room?

If you ever have those thoughts, you're in good company as ~ 70% of us suffer from impostor syndrome at some point in our life. There's also evidence that it's likely to rear its ugly head during times of big change which might explain why many of us have experienced it recently.

Life coach Micha Goebig dives deep on impostor syndrome in this episode, including breaking down the four different types: Perfectionist, Natural Genius, Soloist, and Expert.

She also shares how it's really all about owning your own achievements, as well as her tips on overcoming these thoughts.

I've learned in doing this podcast that everyone's career pause is unique. They vary in length, reason, and many of other ways.

Today's guest, Sally Gasper, is unique because her pause came right at the beginning. She had always planned to be a teacher, but she married young and had five children in quick succession. As her children grew to be school-age, she chose to homeschool them and truly enjoyed her role as their teacher.

As they grew older, however, they transitioned into traditional school and Sally found herself still dreaming of becoming a teacher. I loved hearing her story about how she returned to college and graduated just before her 40th birthday. It wasn't always easy and she shares the struggles with financing her degree (fortunately, aid was much more plentiful than she expected), rebuilding her self-confidence (online courses were a surprising help for this) and adjusting to new roles at home when she took a full-time job as a high school teacher.

Today, she has a full life as an English teacher at a STEM high school and wouldn't have it any other way.

If you're looking for a job - or thinking about it - you don't want to miss this week's episode.

Lynn Juve is a job search strategist. She's the first person I've ever met with that title, but you can think of her as a career coach with the very solid focus on landing you a job.

You'll want to tune in to hear:

• Why she thinks a lot of us have a hard time defining what job we're looking for
• Her best advice for people who've taken a long break from high-tech
• Why you should be cautious in accepting advice from well-meaning friends and family
• Why your LinkedIn profile needs more than just job titles
• How to answer that question that seems to accompany most first interviews - What salary are you looking for? And, yes, she thinks you should answer with a number.
• Which websites will help you determine your salary worth
• How to network - even if you don't yet know what you're looking for
• How the expectations around negotiations have changed in the last decade

Dahianna is one hard-working mama. With 3 young kids and a three-year career pause, she returned to work as a legal secretary making as much money as she had in her previous career as a paralegal. But that isn't the end of the story. She's happy with her career, but she also wants to be there for her family so she's a woman in transition.

Although she's still hard at work at the law firm, she's also launching a Virtual Assistant (VA) business where she'll be able to use her skills to help other entrepreneurs who need part-time assistance. Even better, she can do it remotely on a flexible schedule.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Free Mama Movement

Liesl left her career in wireless telecom to stay home with her first child, but it wasn't long before she realized she needed more adult interaction. The choice she made ended up having a huge impact on the rest of her career choices.

She decided to return to school and found the fulfillment she was looking for in finishing an MBA program she had started a few years earlier. Along the way, she found an interest in organizational behavior and eventually transitioned from student to volunteer assistant to consultant working in that field. Eventually, that work led her to the opportunity to teach as an adjunct professor at Seattle University.

She continues to teach and consult, but now that her kids are older, she has recently added coaching to her work.

Her advice to other women who pause? Stay connected, keep the doors open, continue to explore your own interests, and find good mentors. All of that helps keep your options open when your phase of life changes.

Mentioned in the podcast:

Playing Big by Tara Mohr

Let's take a pause and see where we've been this year. I am thrilled to have had you on this journey for all 52 weeks. Today, we look back on who I interviewed and what we all learned together.

I'm taking the last week of 2019 off, but will be back on Monday, January 6th.

Signing off on 2019 and looking ahead with excitement to 2020!

Stacy Juba was lucky enough to start her career in a field that easily lends itself to freelance work. While she started as a newspaper writer, over the years, she's transitioned these skills to everything from a freelance writer to a published author to an editor and writing teacher.

Her books cover a wide range of genres including children's (The Flag Keeper), young adult (Dark Before Dawn), chicklit (Fooling Around with Cinderella) and mystery (Twenty Five Years Ago Today).

A mom of two kids, Stacy has found a way to turn the dial up and down on her work, depending upon their ages and needs. That is a recipe for success!

For more information about her books, visit her author page, or her Hockey Rivals Books.

For information about her free writing resources, editing services, and classes, visit Shortcuts for Writers. Writers can also find Stacy in her private Facebook group and YouTube channel.

Jen doesn't define herself by any one of her jobs or side hustles. It all blends together into her whole identity. Even in her initial career as a marketer for startups, she consulted on the side. It was that side hustle that led her to where she is today as an executive coach.

Think she's given up side hustles? Definitely not. Today, she side hustles as a fitness coach!

Jen's suggestions for finding your own side hustle: Look for something that aligns with your gifts and passions (for Jen, that would be fitness or working with dogs). For you, that might be tutoring young kids, working with non-profits, content creation, or anything else that fuels your passion.

Mentioned in this episode:

Atomic Habits by James Cleary

There is no easy route to becoming an entrepreneur, but I think Aireka Harvell's had some very unique challenges.

Despite running away from home at the age of 14, she was able to fall back on strong childhood values to turn her life around at the age of 18. A young mother, she quickly had 3 children and opted to take a career pause after the birth of her third child.

It was this career pause that allowed her to return to college where she graduated and eventually went on to earn a Masters degree as well.

She spent the bulk of her career with AT&T where she moved up the ladder to a six-figure salary and responsibility for a team of 180 people. Despite her success, she also had a strong entrepreneurial spirit burning inside of her.

It was a conversation with her son about something that she wished she'd known was going on in her community that led her to say "I want to know about that" - and Nodat was born. Today, it's a local loyalty coalition program that benefits small businesses and their customers. With the support of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, a $20k scholarship from Google for Startups, and financial support from the community she's cultivated, she eventually left her corporate job to focus on Nodat full-time.

In addition to being a single mom of four kids and a startup founder, she is a speaker and the author of Find the Beauty in your Now. She also co-founded the accelerator Twende to support entrepreneurs of color.