[00:00] Melissa Bassano: How is this guy going to help me? He’s been a banjo teacher for 40 years. He’s not a senior level executive. And in my eyes or my frame of thought, I’m thinking, imagine the people that he’s met in 40 years. So when you shift the way you think about the people that you’re reaching out to, it now suddenly becomes relevant and you have a great relationship with him.

[00:24] Melissa Bassano: And lo and behold, His daughter in law happened to be vice president at a company she was interested in and made that connection.

[00:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome listeners to a co recorded podcast. So this is Jim Harshaw. I am the host of the success for the athletic minded man podcast. We’ve got. Melissa and Brittany here. And for the listeners of your show, you guys need no introduction, but I will, uh, we’re going to publish this on your podcast and on my podcast, which is pretty cool.

[00:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So for your listeners, I will introduce myself and from my listeners, I’ll have you guys introduce yourself. So my name is Jim Harshaw. I am an executive life coach. We coach motivated professionals to gain clarity, consistency, and focus. In business, in life. And we use a unique framework that is inspired by world class performers so that our clients can lead meaningful lives of purpose and impact.

[01:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So I’ll turn it over to you guys for an intro.

[01:19] Brittany Fowler: Hello everybody. My name is Brittany Fowler and I am an executive career advisor, and I’m also a spiritual coach as well. I really thought that my career was going to go in the direction of being a college professor and maybe running a university someday.

[01:33] Brittany Fowler: Very, very passionate about education and I specifically taught in the realm of science and concurrently to doing that for almost a decade, I opened up my own coaching business and that really took off and I’m very, very glad that it did because that is exactly how I fell into what I’m doing now. as an executive career advisor.

[01:52] Brittany Fowler: And I work alongside Melissa and we are very fortunate to also have this amazing podcast as well called The Job Chicks. And I’m very excited for the future of my career because I am always so inspired to educate and help other people be the best version that they can be in their career and life.

[02:12] Melissa Bassano: And I’m Melissa Bassano.

[02:13] Melissa Bassano: I am also a co host of The Job Chicks podcast. And my career started way back in 1994. I was an interview coach, actually. I worked for the Miss USA organization for about 25 years, as well as being a coach. I had a coaching business on the side as well, and came to Browning Associates, where Brittany and I both work as career strategists and coaches.

[02:38] Melissa Bassano: I’ve been with Browning for about 12 years and I love what I do. I have done nothing different in my life. I enjoy coaching for the last, I can’t believe that I am saying that it’s been 30 years this year.

[02:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You don’t look old enough to be saying 30 years.

[02:55] Melissa Bassano: I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But yeah, I love what I do and I really love our podcast because Brittany and I are able to banter back and forth and give our audience what our clients really hear on a day to day from us and it helps them make a strategy for their own careers.

[03:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So Brittany and I got connected through a mutual client of ours, Chris Bailey. Shout out to Chris, he’s an incredible individual. And Chris said, Hey Jim, you know, Brittany and Browning Associates, they have such an amazing process and it’s so similar to what you teach and how you coach. You guys have to connect and Brittany and I connected and we realized we’ve got to record.

[03:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Bring as much value we can to both of our listeners through a conversation between us, so we can cross pollinate, like how we do the work that we do. And we both get amazing results. We come about it from different perspectives and in a little different format, but there’s a lot of commonalities there.

[03:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So I, you know, our goal, we agreed mutually, and this is for the listener. We are trying to bring you the most value possible in the next 40 minutes or so. In terms of if you’re looking to make a career transition, maybe you’re in between jobs, or maybe you’re just thinking about a career transition. It’s like, where do I start?

[04:15] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And here’s the thing. You could probably go about it alone and it might be okay. It’s going to take you a lot longer. You’re going to make a lot more mistakes. You’re going to probably end up in a career or a job that it is not where you would have landed had you worked with any one of us. We are experts at what we do, right?

[04:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Just like Tom Brady, when he was He had a fitness coach. He had a nutrition coach to make him go from good to great. That’s what we help our clients do. So Brittany, Melissa, I would love to hear from you. Like, how do you go about it? Whenever you start working with a client, how do you go about helping them?

[04:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Make a career change. Like what does that process look like? Where do you start?

[04:56] Melissa Bassano: Well, I feel like a lot of it is talking to the client to figure out, are they happy with the career that they’ve made and do they want to change industries? And a lot of people in the beginning will tell you, yes, I’m burnt out.

[05:12] Melissa Bassano: I want to change my industry. However, when you dig deeper and you ask really thought provoking questions, it’s not necessarily the industry that they want to change. It’s they’re burnt out. They’ve had a terrible boss. They had a toxic work environment, and they actually really enjoy the industry that they’re in.

[05:33] Melissa Bassano: They just did not enjoy the circumstances around it. So once you dive a little deeper into what the reason is for the change, it becomes clearer that it’s not necessarily an industry change, it’s really just a job change to a better environment. So I think really asking those thought provoking questions is what’s important in the first few meetings.

[05:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, you hear so many people talk about, uh, this quote I love is people don’t leave jobs. They leave bosses. And I think it’s just like, you’re right. That speaks to it. They maybe don’t necessarily deep down want to leave that industry, but maybe they think they do. But here’s the point I want to point out for my listeners and for your listeners is this concept that I’ve identified through years of coaching, through hundreds and hundreds of podcast episodes.

[06:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’ve interviewed Navy SEALs and astronauts and CEOs and New York Times bestselling authors, and I’ve always asked them the same question. I started out by asking them the same question. I ask it in kind of different ways now, but, um, cause I was getting the same answer over and over. I’d always say, what’s one habit you most credit for your success.

[06:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for, you know, the New York Times bestselling author, you would assume it’d be some kind of writing habit. For the Olympic gold medalist, you would think it would be some kind of training habit, but it never, it never was the thing that they’re known for. It was always some version of stepping back, getting out of the rat race, out of what they do, you know, Stepping back and asking specific questions that helps them get clear on what the right next steps are.

[07:05] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And they say like, you know, I do journaling, right? Journal every day, or maybe I work with a coach or I work with a mentor or once a year. I had one guy tell me once a year, my wife and I take a retreat, like a two day retreat. We just go away. and evaluate how last year went, what worked, what didn’t, and how to move forward this coming year.

[07:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So it’s like, it’s always this stepping back. And I turned that question on myself and I said, okay, when I was wrestling as, as an all American wrestler, like, what was the one hour that was the most valuable time spent? It was never, you know, you would think it was like, okay, it was probably in the training, in the wrestling room, practicing, it was in the weight room, or it was watching film or something like that.

[07:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And it never was. The single most important hour that I ever spent any wrestling season was when I sat down with my coaches in the beginning of the season and said, you know, we talked about what are your goals for the year? What’s the plan? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What do we need to work on?

[08:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And that one hour, Led to everything else being more effective. And so I’ve coined this term to describe this concept. It’s called the productive pause. So the productive pause is defined as this. It’s a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind.

[08:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I think Melissa, that’s what you’re talking about. It’s like. You’re not just saying, okay, let’s start submitting resumes. No, you’re like doing a productive pause. You’re stepping back and saying, okay, what is it about your job? What is it about the industry that you think you don’t like? And you’re helping them get clarity first.

[08:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So it sounds like you’re starting out with clarity.

[08:39] Melissa Bassano: Absolutely. A hundred percent, because if they’re not clear on, I really do love what I do. Or, I just am tired of it. I want to move on to something different because I really don’t like this industry anymore. They really have to know that 90 percent of the time, maybe even 95 percent of the time, it’s burnout and toxic environment and they still love their industry.

[09:02] Melissa Bassano: So I love the pause because I feel like, It gives people time to reflect on really what they want.

[09:10] Brittany Fowler: Yeah. I call it the art of the pause. In fact, when I do public speaking engagements around conscious communication, the art of the pause is one of my strategies that I bring to the audience because, you know, you are all about the athletic mind.

[09:23] Brittany Fowler: So you’ll probably relate to being in the pocket. So athletes and musicians can relate to what that phrase means, being in the pocket, that moment of pause. Not necessarily let me take a long time to reflect or work with a coach, but the art of the pause can actually even come in before we communicate or we respond to something.

[09:41] Brittany Fowler: And although that that’s true in, you know, everyday communication, when you’re making a change in your life, whether it’s your career, your love life, whatever the case may be, you’d need that reflective moment. A lot of people don’t. Understand why would I pay for a coach? Hmm. Yeah. But the coaching element of it is really everything because if you don’t know how to reflect and you don’t know how to ask yourself these thought provoking questions, then sitting there in silence isn’t really gonna do you good.

[10:14] Brittany Fowler: So that coach understands what questions to ask. And Melissa, I know you can relate to this. A coach also has to be honest with you because we lie to ourselves. We try to say things are okay and that that’s not the real problem because a lot of times we don’t have that, that sense of safety where we can admit things openly and a coach allows you that safe space to say, You know, it seems like it might actually be your boss and not your industry.

[10:40] Brittany Fowler: And then for the first time, they can say it out loud, like, wow. And just that paradigm shift in that moment can help them have hope for their future. Okay, maybe I don’t have to change industries. Maybe I have to look for a different type of company and company culture.

[10:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, there’s a great quote. I think Donald Miller is at least where I, where I heard this first.

[11:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s a great business coach. And he said, we are on the inside of the jar trying to read the label. I think it’s such a great, like a great analogy, a great metaphor. It’s like we’re on the inside of the JAR train to read the label. There are certain things we can’t see that a coach can, especially a trained coach and a trained coach who can help see your blind spots, help you look in the mirror in a way that you’ve never looked in the mirror before to help you get clarity so you can figure out, you know, just what are you missing?

[11:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like in the, in the military, they call it an after action review, you know, that you, you pause. You do this after action review and you say, what worked, what didn’t work, what do I need to do differently? But you can’t do that without having somebody outside of you, outside of your own head. And the listener, you know, Melissa, Brittany, and myself, like we get inside our own heads too sometimes.

[11:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And you’re stuck in your own head and you have these circular conversations and you feel stuck and you need somebody outside of your head helping you out. Unwind these things and sort these things out. So, okay. So you guys start with clarity. Then what does the process look like next? You start throwing resumes out there and is that what we do?

[12:10] Brittany Fowler: No, gosh, no. A lot of steps before then. Part of the clarity, which I don’t want to skip the importance of this. is a lot of people can’t separate the difference between what I’m really good at versus what I’m really good at but passionate about. So you find a lot of people in their career, they have fallen from role to role to role because they’re just really good at it.

[12:32] Brittany Fowler: They’ve never actually had the opportunity to pause and say, but do I like this? So we give them that opportunity to say, let’s sift through everything you’ve done and make a pile of what you love doing and what You don’t necessarily love doing because before we move forward, we want to make sure that we’re moving forward and reaching that next career summit, bringing you sustainable happiness and fulfillment, not just giving you the same of what you’ve already received.

[12:57] Brittany Fowler: So that element is crucial before we start to brand who you really are, but we’re really branding your future self when we’re doing so, right, Melissa? Absolutely.

[13:10] Melissa Bassano: It’s really a process. You know, the resume piece of it, where people think that that’s exactly what they’re going to do is they’re going to reach out to their friends and say, Hey, I’m looking for a job.

[13:21] Melissa Bassano: Here’s my new resume. And that’s actually the last step that we do, because there’s so many things before that in figuring out where you want to go. If you have that clarity from the beginning, It’s now starting to have conversations with people and it’s not about the job. It’s about having good conversation and getting connected to other people.

[13:46] Melissa Bassano: You know, every connection has opportunity. I’m a big believer in echo. Every connection has opportunity. And that means. You may talk with your next door neighbor who you don’t think is maybe even at a senior level, but you’re having good conversation with them and they may have a brother in law who’s in your industry who you can have a good conversation with that they can connect you to.

[14:10] Melissa Bassano: So for us, that’s what it’s all about is making those really good connections to have better conversation around your industry and where you want to go.

[14:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s interesting you talk about the connections and I want to hear you talk more about this concept of Echo. Every connection has opportunity. So right before our interview here about a half an hour ago, I got off of a mastermind call with a bunch of my clients were on this call.

[14:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s an optional call. No one’s kind of, you know, Putting their feet to the fire to require them to be there. But there were at least three different comments and I captured these. I’m going to read these real quickly because this is the value of connection. This is the value of being around other people, reaching out to people, connecting with people.

[14:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So, uh, one guy said, I love this group. The value of the feedback is amazing. And listen, I’m not pitching my team. By course, this is our program. I’m pitching, get around other people. So he said, I love this group. The value of feedback is amazing. The more guys I meet in this group, the more I get to know, the more I’m continually impressed.

[15:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I can’t leave this call optional for me anymore. It’s easy to skip, but there’s so much value when I show up. And that’s the point. You just have to show up. You have to do the outreach. You have to connect with people because I have a client who I worked with years ago, and he was going through a career transition.

[15:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I said, you know, talking about. You know, who you can reach out to and connections and meeting people. And he’s really not like, doesn’t come, come natural, like networking. He doesn’t like networking. I was like, well, how about connecting? Do you like connecting with people and building relationships and reconnecting with old friends?

[15:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And he said, yeah. And so, you know, he had kind of made some action items on that. He came back to the one call and he’s like, I’m just having this epiphany that magic happens. When I connect with people, like that’s it. Like magic happens when you connect with people, right? Every connection has opportunity.

[15:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So Melissa, tell us about this concept of every connection has opportunity.

[15:55] Melissa Bassano: Well, people in a job search think that when we tell them they’re going to make a list of people. They think they have to make a list of people who are in their industry, who are C suite, and those are the people that they think, in quotes, can help them.

[16:11] Melissa Bassano: And it’s actually not those people that can help you or want to help you. It’s the everyday person. It’s your neighbor. It’s your banjo teacher. It is your trainer. It’s all of your barber. Anybody who you’re having regular conversation with and also interacts with a lot of people are the people that are going to make the connections for you.

[16:35] Melissa Bassano: When we first start working with clients, we ask them to make a list so they can start having conversations. And inevitably, their first list will always be C suite or senior level people. And I have to dial it back for them and say, okay, that’s great that they’re on your list. But let’s talk about Other people that you can just have good conversation with.

[16:57] Melissa Bassano: People maybe you haven’t talked to in three to six months or three to six years and you want to call and have a good conversation with them because you want to get that conversation moving because you just don’t know who they know. You know, I had a client who She wasn’t grasping the concept because she really was thinking it was senior level people that she had to be in touch with.

[17:21] Melissa Bassano: And there was someone on her list that she kept leaving off the, the call list. And I said banjo teacher before, because that’s who exactly Yeah, I was thinking banjo

[17:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: teacher. Come on. It was a

[17:33] Melissa Bassano: banjo teacher. She’s

[17:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: really stretching now.

[17:36] Melissa Bassano: This is a real story. He’s been a banjo teacher for 40 years. So she’s thinking, How is this guy going to help me?

[17:44] Melissa Bassano: He’s been a banjo teacher for 40 years. He’s not a senior level executive. And in my eyes, or my frame of thought, I’m thinking, imagine the people that he’s met in 40 years. So when you shift the way you think about the people that you’re reaching out to, it now suddenly becomes relevant. And she had a great, she had a great relationship with him.

[18:05] Melissa Bassano: And then she just initiated this great conversation. And lo and behold, his daughter in law happened to be vice president at a company she was interested in and made that connection. And it’s a real story. So I use these stories all the time. I could tell you a million of them. But that one sticks out to me because it was a banjo teacher.

[18:28] Melissa Bassano: And most people would think, how is this guy going to help me? When in actuality, he knows a lot more people than you think. So never underestimate who’s in your network. Your network is where your wealth is.

[18:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: A lot of guys come into my program and they have limiting beliefs. And some of them know, some of them don’t know.

[18:50] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But they come in and they’re capped by sort of these default thoughts about what is possible for them, what they can achieve, what roles they can get, what they can do in their career. And, and I find that that, that is a big piece of this is, is unlocking limiting beliefs. If you have these limiting beliefs planted into you from childhood about what, what’s possible for you, or if you have limiting beliefs planted into you from prior failures, then you’re going to limit what is possible.

[19:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Do you guys have any experience with helping people? I first identify and then work through limiting beliefs.

[19:32] Melissa Bassano: I’m going to let Brittany take this in one second, but the one way that I identify this type of person is I call them the yeah, but people, you know, it works for everybody else, but yeah, but that doesn’t work for me.

[19:47] Melissa Bassano: And that tells me immediately they have limiting beliefs, but I’m going to let Brittany expand on it.

[19:54] Brittany Fowler: So there’s two things that come to mind for me. One is storytelling and number two is data. But if you can use other people’s challenges and triumphs, Real ones, real tangible ones. I’m going to throw Chris Bailey out there since we already named dropped him.

[20:10] Brittany Fowler: But, you know, if I have a client who’s struggling with something similar to Chris has fairly recently, I’m going to say, Hey, listen, so I’m, I’m actually working with someone else right now. And you’re kind of reminding me of them. And I tell a story about how they were In a similar boat, they had the same challenge.

[20:28] Brittany Fowler: They had a triumph. And when you storytell with people, it makes it more real for them to be able to come overcome those challenges. So storytelling is one. Data is very helpful for me because a lot of people will push back with the yeah, but. And I have to come so confident to the table to say, What you’re saying, there’s no data for me, the data that I’m collecting, there’s no data that says that your belief holds any weight.

[20:59] Brittany Fowler: And let me explain why. So for example, when I have clients that go down the rabbit hole of just cold applying on LinkedIn, I’ve collected data for the past two years. I have no data that shows that that method is effective. So as your career advisor, I cannot say that that is time well spent. Okay, Brittany.

[21:21] Brittany Fowler: Well, if I’m going to trust that you’re right with that, then what should I be doing? Let me show you what the data says. So I like to bring realism into the equation with statistics and such, because then that can help people shift things without just like philosophical quotes.

[21:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, those are great. I love data.

[21:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I love storytelling. There’s another thing that we do that is probably a little bit somewhere in between both of those. There’s a concept in cognitive behavioral therapy. And by the way, I’m not a therapist asterisk there, but there’s a concept in cognitive behavioral therapy that is called cognitive restructuring.

[21:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And, and I’ve taken that concept and created an exercise that we call a cognitive conversion. And this is having this mindset shift into what is possible. And so we start out by identifying a limiting belief or something that is, you know, it’s just this, yeah, but right to, to highlight what Melissa said, they have a, yeah, but around something.

[22:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And we say, okay, what is the objective evidence that And we have them identify, you know, they write down and identify would have, what is just supporting evidence of, of this, right? And well, here, there’s this and this, and I never achieved this. And this is what usually happens when I try that. And then we say, what is evidence to the contrary?

[22:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What is other evidence, right? And it might be yourself. You know, stories that you tell yourself or things that you’ve experienced before that are actually contrary to this belief. What is the data that’s out there? What is other information that you can pull in that is contrary to your belief? And we take those two, right?

[22:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s some truth, some stuff that’s actually, okay, yeah, this, this justifies my limiting belief. And I never really considered this other stuff that actually is contrary. To supporting my limiting belief. And then we identify a new belief and actually write down what is the new belief that we can actually carry forward.

[23:09] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And that is such a breakthrough and is such a, it’s a thing that, that really we all need to do. And it’s an exercise that has to be revisited. You can’t just do it once. And then we’ll, we’ll take that. And then we have some other exercises and things where we’ll use the mindset is such a big piece of this.

[23:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like. If you just don’t believe that you can get that job that you want, start that business that you want, get that promotion, make that career shift. If you don’t believe it, it’s going to be a lot, I mean, you may stumble into it, but it’s going to be a heck of a, it’s going to be so much harder. So you have to.

[23:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Reinforce this stuff. You have to do the mindset work. I have these mindset work books behind me, like there’s one called The Confident Mind written by a guy, one of my podcast guests. His name’s Nate Zinser. He was the director of performance at West Point for 30 years. He was, he spoke at my retreat for my clients twice.

[24:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And these concepts in there, these are things that he’s done with Olympians, with people like Eli Manning, who was a two time Super Bowl MVP, like he was their mindset coach and he did these activities with them as well as tons of soldiers over the decades. And you have to have, you have to actually do the work.

[24:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You have to actually do these exercises. So for example, one of them, which is something I sort of started doing even before I met Dr. Zinsser, and I realized this is something that sports psychologists and performance psychologists do is. Identify your wins, identify your successes, write down all the awards you’ve received, write down the recognition you’ve received, write down even the compliments you’ve received, and document this stuff.

[24:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Keep a running tally of this. And then recording a voice memo on your phone, like an audio of you reading this, speaking to that little voice inside of your head. That is justifying your limiting beliefs and you have to listen to it repetitively. You have to listen to it. I did this for a lot of years because I limiting beliefs around me being able to start my own business.

[25:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I had some successes and failures in business in the past. And, you know, I just wasn’t sure if I could, you know, start this business on the side whenever I was working full time, 60 hours a week with four kids. And, and I had these limiting beliefs and then I did this and I was listening to it every day.

[25:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I realized this This is actually later on, I learned this is something that Dr. Zinsser has his clients do. But it’s, you have to have a practice, otherwise it’s just something you do and you have this, you know, logical epiphany, but it’s not connected to your heart and to your emotion.

[25:41] Melissa Bassano: Yeah. It’s something I think that is, for me, is intuitive because we were talking about this earlier.

[25:47] Melissa Bassano: I’ve had cancer twice. And one of the things that I did during that time when I was going through treatments and then after was exactly what you just said, was recording myself, telling myself that I’m healthy, that this is just, you know, a small blip in my life and I’m going to get beyond it. And I’m healthy, I’m happy, I’m prosperous.

[26:11] Melissa Bassano: And I would really just talk to myself and say, I have all these Wonderful things to look forward to. And every day in every way, my life gets better and better. And I would listen to it every single day, every single day. And it really helped my mindset as a survivor, because it comes along with so much anxiety.

[26:30] Melissa Bassano: Afterwards, you know, you hear the words cancer free, that’s great, but you have a lot of PTSD and all this anxiety that you have to work through. And that was an exercise that really helped me overcome that.

[26:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Wow. That’s powerful. I mean, yeah, you’re talking, the listener, like this is someone who stared death in the face.

[26:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: twice and put these into practice and that story could define you, but you’ve, you’ve moved forward. Like you told me before we hit record, like I’ve moved forward and created this amazing life. And, and for listener, like you go, yeah, but, but who does that kind of stuff? Well, people who create the kind of life that Melissa has created after something so traumatic.

[27:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s a guy named Aaron Donald, just retired from the NFL. He was a pass rusher, one of the greats. And. He was mic’d up during a game and it was like, there’s this, this audio clip of him just before kickoff, guys are still kind of on the field warming up and he’s walking up and down the sidelines.

[27:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: talking to himself, talking out loud to himself. And he’s going, you want to be great? Today’s the day you want to be great. Go for like, today’s the day you’ve been waiting for you. You welcome this. You love this. Like be great today. Go do it. And he’s just like amping himself up, like speaking the thoughts into his mind, like overriding his limiting beliefs.

[27:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like, ah, Jim, he doesn’t have limiting beliefs. Yes, he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t be doing that, but he’s one of the greats. And this is the kind of habit that you have to put in place. And if you want to make a career change, unlock your potential, like, you know, these, these are the things that the great ones do.

[28:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: They, it doesn’t just come easy to them. You know, my podcast used to be called success through failure. So if you go back and listen to any of the episodes prior to January 1 this year, You can hear, you know, the focus was really on failure and overcoming failure, learning from failure. And I got to interview all these amazing people and talk about their failures.

[28:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And you go, yeah, but that person didn’t fail. Nope. They did. They had these amazing, incredible failures that They weren’t like smiling going, Oh, well, no problem. I’m just going to march right through and everything’s going to be great. And my story is going to be, you know, end up with me on the podium and successful.

[28:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s like, no, they had doubt and fears and uncertainty through this as well. And they also had habits and routines and a mindset and a voice that would help them override those limiting beliefs and negative thoughts.

[29:02] Melissa Bassano: I actually just posted something today, I’m sure Brittany saw it on LinkedIn and one of our other social media pages and it, you know, I do Fearless Fridays and I really put a quote up about fear and today was, I don’t always feel fierce and fearless.

[29:19] Melissa Bassano: But I know I’m a rock star at being human and allowing my, and allowing those feelings to actually happen. So I know the next day I’ll be fearless and fierce. And you have to feel that sometimes the failure, And that inner monologue, you know, everyone has an inner monologue. Even people like Tom Brady or the most successful people have an inner monologue telling them that they’re not good enough at some point in their life.

[29:47] Melissa Bassano: And it could be, you know, the day before he’s about to play in a Super Bowl. And he’s questioning, you know, am I good enough for this? Am I too old for this? You know, but the real piece of it is turning that around, turning that inner monologue around. Two, I am fierce. I am fearless. And knowing that live in your humanness, but know that you can achieve it because that inner monologue needs to change to make sure that those positive thoughts are sticking in there.

[30:19] Brittany Fowler: Absolutely. What you don’t change, you choose. So we know that challenges are inevitable. Even the most well mastered people are still going to face challenges. And when those challenges come, you have a choice. Are you going to let that challenge overtake you? Or are you going to face that challenge?

[30:37] Brittany Fowler: Because the only way out is through. You got to get through that challenge. And I believe that to an extent, you have control over how long that challenge is in your life, based on that mindset. Because what happens is, When you don’t face that challenge with a positive mindset, you let that challenge overtake you.

[30:56] Brittany Fowler: And this is where people get stuck. And there are people who are stuck for years. And we know that there are people who unfortunately are stuck for life. They live a life that is not well lived because they let that one challenge be their identity for the rest of their life. So every time you’re faced with a challenge you have to remember that it’s a choice for how it is you’re going to approach that.

[31:19] Brittany Fowler: And the self talk, this inner monologue that you guys are talking about That’s its own separate personality from yourself and that needs to be fed with the proper skills. And again, this is why a coach comes in handy because the coach is able to actually provide you those skills to start integrating in your inner monologue.

[31:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And, you know, there was a point in my life where, where I was stuck and I really didn’t know if there was a path forward for me. So I had, after my wrestling career was over, I got into coaching coach for about a decade. And then I got out of coaching, started my first business. That was successful, sold that, started my next business, raised some angel capital and started a software company.

[31:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And about two years into it, We had revenue, we had customers, uh, but not enough to keep the lights on. So end up having to shut that down. And I found myself stuck. I found myself at this low point where, you know, we had a ton of debt. Cause I was like, you know, we were all in on this business and it didn’t work.

[32:18] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I was so single minded focused on this because I had to make this work for my family and so wasn’t connecting with my wife, wasn’t spending enough time with my kids, it wasn’t working out. I was like, so. We call off the path. My program is called reveal your path. We call it off the path. So off the path that, you know, I didn’t know it was next for me or even how to figure out what was next.

[32:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I didn’t know what the right goals were. I didn’t have clarity on what I even wanted. And I remember laying in bed one night thinking to myself, like, how do I figure this out? Like, how do I get unstuck? And I realized. that I had already lived this once before. And so there was a blueprint for this. And the way I lived this before is when I was in high school, I was, you know, wrestler was my thing and, you know, failed at achieving any of my goals as a wrestler, got to the University of Virginia, got recruited to UVA.

[33:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I just felt like, Stuck when I got there. I thought I’m in over my head. I don’t know if I can succeed here. Wrestling wise, because everybody on the team was a state champion or a three time state place winner. I was none of those. I was just a recruited walk on, non scholarship athlete. Academically, it was the number one Public university in the country.

[33:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Um, I had good grades, but not good enough to get into a school like UVA. So wrestling opened the door for me. And so I felt like I was in over my head there. And then socially, like I was a blue collar kid. My dad was a construction worker. Mom was a secretary and you know, this was all new and, and really didn’t know if I was going to be able to cut it there.

[33:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And this is this sort of elite white collar school and I didn’t fit in. And You fast forward five years, I redshirted my freshman year, competed the next four years, and I ended up winning three ACC championships, ended up on the podium at the national championships as an All American. I was invited to live and train at the Olympic Training Center as an Olympic hopeful.

[34:09] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I got two great degrees. I got an undergraduate and a master’s degree from a great school. And on the social side, I found balance, you know, on that side as well. So, like, a complete transformation happened there. And I thought to myself, sort of, you Later in life, I’m laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, stressed out, thinking like, how do I get unstuck?

[34:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m like, what was in place then that’s not in place in my life now? Like what was in place then that allowed me to have clarity, consistency, focus, unlock limiting beliefs, push through and go from sort of average high school wrestler to one of the best in the country at what I did, there’s a framework there.

[34:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And this framework is what helped me get unstuck. This framework is, is the backbone of our coaching program. And there’s four things. And so. And I think this aligns with what you guys do, especially this first part. The first part is getting clarity on what is it that I actually want? Like, what do I actually want?

[35:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like, if I take off the limiting beliefs, take off the guardrails, dream a little bit, like, what do I actually want? So you get number one, you got to get clarity in terms of what you want. And we have sort of different ways that we go about that. We don’t come right out and say, Hey, what do you want? Cause they don’t know.

[35:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like we have some different ways to sort of extract this from our clients. So. Number one is clarity on, on what I want, you know, the vision, and then what are my core values? Like, what are the things that I actually value in life? And some, you know, most of us know this at a superficial level, but until you do the deep work to really uncover why, they’re just words on a page.

[35:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so we, we make these actually clear and meaningful. So that’s step one. So step one is like, you have that level of clarity when you’re, you’re an athlete, like Win, lose, it’s black and white. You know, we, we have that and we have to get that in life too. Then the second step is these, uh, what we call aligned goals, creating goals that align with the vision goals that align with the values.

[35:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I think that’s what you guys do is create these goals in terms of career goals that align with what they actually want, as opposed to. What they might fall into or what their parents want for them or whatever society tells them that they should want. And so number two, we have to get them very clear.

[36:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There are goals that align with the vision and the values. And we create goals in four areas, relationships, self health, and wealth. So relationships, self health, and wealth, and the wealth is the career piece. And then we create what we call micro goals and we score them. We track them because. You know, in sports, which is kind of the analogy that we always go back to, like there’s a scoreboard, there’s a win loss record, you’re tracking your bench press, you’re tracking your 40 speed, like whatever it is, there’s metrics and we have to have those metrics as well.

[36:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And then, so the first part is vision and value, second part is aligned goals, the third piece is what we call the environment of excellence, like being around other people who have similar aspirations, like, You know, when I trained at the Olympic Training Center, I was around world class athletes. So the standard just goes up.

[36:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: The bar goes up. The belief in terms of what is possible just goes up. Cause you’re around a bunch of other people who believe at this high level and they’re actually doing these things. So actually maybe I’m kind of one of them now, you know, so we have to have this environment and we have to have, you know, part of that is also the coach.

[37:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like we talked about having a coach, this person who kicks us in the rear end, if we need a kick or helps us course correct, if we need that. And then the fourth and final piece is you have to have a plan. To actually follow through on things. And that’s again, where a coach comes in. But like when I was wrestling, if I lost a match on a Friday night and I’m sitting in the corner feeling sorry for myself, you know, coach comes over after the match is like, Hey Jim, you know, I’ll see you tomorrow morning in the weight room, 8 a.

[37:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: m. Be there like, like it or not, there’s a plan to follow through. And that’s what I think you guys do. You’re holding people accountable, helping them, guiding them, helping them have that clarity. And that’s what we do is we help them put this infrastructure. Sure. into their lives so that they can get clear on what they want, execute upon it, have a supporting staff around them in their environment of excellence, and then actually follow through even when the kids get sick or the car breaks down or they go through the holidays and you know, eat too much, drink too much and are so off the path.

[38:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like, you gotta still have a plan to follow through and execute.

[38:12] Brittany Fowler: I have a question for you. So, Melissa and I see this a lot and that has to do with the time frame. And this might, in some ways, be Go along with being off the path. It could also be limiting beliefs. It could be like a ball of all of it We see a lot of pushback with time frame and people say hey Like we’re following what you’re saying and it has taken us five months.

[38:37] Brittany Fowler: I wanted this to take three months

[38:39] Melissa Bassano: Yeah,

[38:39] Brittany Fowler: what advice would you have for people who are on the path? But it’s taking longer than they initially intended to

[38:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, so That’s it. Like we all want results. Like we, I had done been doing the work. I should get the results and, and you’re right. And you should assume that those results are going to come, but they’re not always going to come in your time.

[38:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And we talked about this and this is a, going back to sports is like, you’ve got to focus on the process, not the outcome. You can control the process. You cannot control the outcome. You can’t control the outcome of a football game. If you’re a quarterback, you can’t control the outcome of a wrestling match, if you’re a wrestler, you can’t control the outcome of a swimming race.

[39:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If you’re a swimmer, you cannot control that. Here’s what you control. You control the food you put in your body. You control what time you go to bed. You control. If you show up early for practice and stay late, you control. If you rehab your injuries, you control the words that you say to yourself. You control the process.

[39:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You don’t control anything else. Um, and I’m preaching to the choir with you guys, but like, I want the results now too. I always have to go back to, okay, if I’m not getting the results, what can I adjust in my process? Is there something if so great, adjust it. Right. What did you say? If you don’t change, it’s a choice.

[39:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. What

[39:54] Brittany Fowler: you don’t change, you’re choosing.

[39:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What you don’t change, you’re choosing. And so you, if you’re not changing your process and maybe your process is great, you’re working with your coach or dialed in and the process is great. Keep going. And the results. And when we don’t know, but you can always go back, you know, review the tape, review the film.

[40:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What am I doing? Right. Okay. Hey, listen, I reached out to these 20 people and boy, I got traction with these three got really got traction. What can I learn from that? How can I replicate that? You know, what’s the data that I can use from that to continually improve the process?

[40:25] Melissa Bassano: Yeah. There’s two things I think that are important that you’ve said was consistency and accountability.

[40:32] Melissa Bassano: And as long as you are consistent and you hold yourself accountable, the results will come in the time they’re supposed to come. You can’t set that time frame and say, you know, in three months I’m going to have this million dollar a year job and this is what it’s going to look like. It’s okay to make a list, but that time frame Really is indicative of the consistency and accountability, and then that timeframe will happen.

[41:02] Melissa Bassano: But I think those two things cannot exist or have to exist in order to have success.

[41:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Absolutely, Melissa. There’s a great story and there’s a book written about Elon Musk and it was written, it was written in like 2019. So it’s like ancient history and what he’s accomplished, of course. And I know he’s a controversial figure, but I’m just going to use him as an example of somebody who’s just achieved absurdly incredible things.

[41:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And. to build. I think it was his first rocket engine. He wanted to build it in 18 months for, I forget how many millions, like, I’m going to make up a number. I don’t actually remember that. It was like 10 million or something like that. And it might’ve been a lot more than that actually. But, and he ended up building it.

[41:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It took like four years and like three times as much money. And But he still did it, right? We look at this guy as somebody who’s, you know, he runs six multi billion dollar companies and like, yeah, everything he touches is successful. Like, no, it’s actually not. He’s probably one of the greatest failures of, in, in history.

[42:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If you actually read what, what he’s, he’s done, but it’s this, and you can look at any successful person, right? And you see that. It doesn’t always come on the exact time frame. Sometimes it comes faster, but usually it takes longer, you know,

[42:15] Brittany Fowler: and with any challenge, going back to challenges are inevitable with any challenge.

[42:20] Brittany Fowler: It really forces you to reevaluate your beliefs. It’s a, it’s a period for you to reevaluate your method. And we can learn so much about ourselves and what we’re capable of in those periods of challenge. So just because a challenge arises doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. The only way out is through.

[42:40] Brittany Fowler: You just have to persevere.

[42:42] Melissa Bassano: Can I tell you my Elon Musk story?

[42:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Please.

[42:45] Melissa Bassano: So this goes back to Echo. Every connection has opportunity. And we had a hurricane. I’m going to say maybe two years ago, we didn’t, but Florida did in the Naples area. And one of my former clients, uh, her husband, uh, was a doctor and they were trying to get medical assistance to people, but they were completely offline.

[43:06] Melissa Bassano: And. She was thinking, okay, who do I know who can help me? So she’s always, I always say every connection has opportunity. So the first person she thought of was me. So she called me and she said, okay, I have a crazy question, but I think you can help me. She said, do you know anyone at Starlink? And if there’s anybody who’s going to know somebody, it’s you.

[43:30] Melissa Bassano: I said, well, as a matter of fact, I don’t know someone personally at Starlink, but I know somebody who knows somebody at Starlink and I connected them and within 24 hours. I was on all the text messages from Starlink and SpaceX and all. It was incredible how they got the device to her. They were able to get her area.

[43:55] Melissa Bassano: They got the satellite moved over to that area so they could have So Internet. It was the most incredible thing. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. It was the most incredible thing. It all comes down to every connection has opportunity. Who would think that, you know, her executive career coach in Boston would have a connection to Who knew somebody at Starlink and was able to get this done.

[44:21] Melissa Bassano: So when I say every connection has opportunity, I truly mean it.

[44:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, such a good

[44:27] Brittany Fowler: story. I think it’s also a testament to networking with the intent of building your network, not networking with the intent of getting a job. Because you never know Who you’re going to need to give a call to in any given time for anything, so meet as many people as you possibly can write notes on who they are.

[44:48] Brittany Fowler: And I know I’ve said this on the job chicks podcast before, but it’s just so true. You don’t know who you’re going to need to know and when you’re going to need to know. Know them, but being able to pick up your phone and say, Hey, I think, you know, someone who knows someone it’s just so invaluable for community, the sense of community as a human being.

[45:05] Brittany Fowler: We should all be interconnected as much as we possibly can for life, not just a job.

[45:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So why don’t we bring this to a close with some action items. I think there’s a lot of great stuff that we shared here. And I think it would be helpful to give the listeners like one thing. I’ll give one thing and one or two things.

[45:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You guys can give one or two things and I’ll let you guys start. And uh, so we can give the action, some kind of action item, something that the listener can do in, let’s say the next 24 to 48 hours. To start moving on what we shared here.

[45:35] Melissa Bassano: Sure. I’ll go first. Of course, piggybacking on echo. Every connection has opportunity.

[45:41] Melissa Bassano: Make a list, start making a list of say 20 people that, you know, that maybe you haven’t talked to in say three to six months or maybe even three to six years, but you know, They would be happy if they heard from you, if they got a message from you, and just connect with them. Have a great conversation with them.

[46:00] Melissa Bassano: It doesn’t have to be about something specific. Just reconnect with them and start learning how to do that because you never know who’s in their network or who’s in your network that they might need. But I think that’s a really good first step is just making that list and start making those connections again.

[46:20] Brittany Fowler: I think my piece of wisdom I want to drop here is, be very mindful of who you’re surrounding yourself with and receiving advice from. Aim to surround yourself with people who are living lives that are that you aspire to be in parallel with. I think we oftentimes take advice from the wrong people and we often take advice from people who are doing less than us or who have not gotten as far as us.

[46:51] Brittany Fowler: And I think that that’s more detrimental than you think. Another testament to networking with people, you know, reach out to folks who are doing what it is you want to do and get really good with it. Interviewing them. Pick their brain about what they’ve learned and how they’ve gotten to where they are.

[47:07] Brittany Fowler: That is my piece of advice for today. Yeah.

[47:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Environment of excellence. That’s so true. And I’ll wrap up with this is, and by the way, most listeners are not going to do anything we’re suggesting here. But for you, you, the one listener who’s out there with the one who I’m in your ear right now, we want you to do this.

[47:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: We want you to take action on it because this is the stuff that, that we. paid to have people actually do with us because most people just don’t do it on their own. And so that’s what a coach does. They get you to actually do the things that you know, that you need to do. And, and what I’m going to say is.

[47:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Hit the pause button, do a productive pause and actually script out what your ideal life looks like. And listen, I, it’s going to be scary and you’re going to say, yeah, but yeah, yeah, but I can’t do like, don’t worry, but just ignore that stuff for the, for the moment. Write down what your ideal life looks like.

[48:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What does your morning look like? What does your day look like? What kind of job do you have? And maybe you don’t even know what kind of, do you just kind of know what your job feels like? Script it out, write it out. Don’t worry about it being perfect. It’s not going to be, you can come back and edit it tomorrow or next week or next month or next year, if you, it’s not something that will ever be really perfect, but just script it out.

[48:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Because when you do that, just the act of doing any of the three things that we just talked about right here, the act of doing any of these is going to, it literally could be the pivot point, the catalyst that would change your life. And that is not an exaggeration. So Melissa, Brittany, it was so great coming together on the show and getting to share, um, you know, your stuff with my audience and thank you for letting me share with your audience as well.

[48:49] Brittany Fowler: Thank you. Thank you.

[48:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Thank you.

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