Episode 24: Transcript

"Getting a new business card is not a career change." - with Emily Benson, PhD

Doug French: So I told you I had like … Ugh, look at this, this cat. You know, full extension, full extension.

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: I really hope you leave this in because fully a tenth of our podcasting recording involves you saying, “Hold on, I'm going to take care of the cat.” Oh, my God.

Doug: This cat is a full four-foot extension on my front picture window, clawing at my screens. “Yes, I told you it's cold out there, didn't I, you snow leopard.” So we should talk about Emily.

Magda: Yeah, we should talk about Emily.

Doug: How many Emilys is that, by the way? If we get 10 Emilys, do we get a free sub?

Magda: I think so. I think that's the perk of being 50 is that there are a lot of Emilys. So today we're talking to Emily Benson, MBA, PhD, who... 

Doug: Yeah, lots of alphabet.

Magda: Those of you who've been with me for a long time recognize that Emily and I did a project together kind of at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, where we helped a lot of women who had been sort of forcefully ejected from their employment in the pandemic, either because the jobs that they were in disappeared, or because they were forced to leave the workforce because they had to deal with kids or parents or families or something like that in the middle of the pandemic. And help them find jobs in new industries, and so we did this project called The Victory Career Project. So Emily came at it from the perspective of somebody who had been doing career coaching while she was also a professor of management. And so she was doing career coaching while we were doing the project. She has continued to do career coaching, but she sort of ended up in this, I guess, niche of mostly women and academics who were trying to figure out how to either leave academia or get into better positions in academia.

For people who don't have a lot of contact with academic people and with universities, the situation for people who work in higher ed has gotten pretty dicey over the last five years. There are just a lot of budget cuts. They're being asked to do things that are kind of not reasonable. There's not a whole lot of reward to it. There's a lot of sexism. There's a lot of racism. It's just kind of miserable in a lot of ways. So a lot of people who are academics, either new academics, lifelong academics, people who thought they were going to be college professors since the age of three, are now trying to leave academia in droves. And Emily has been helping a lot of them.

The other thing is that in the pandemic, her parents, who own a big construction company in her hometown, really needed a lot of help, because they are starting to figure out their plan of what happens when they decide to leave the business. And they hadn't had really a super formal HR department at all. And they just needed to get things into order. So they kind of begged her to come work for them as HR for their company. And so she now is at Bensonwood. So she's now on both sides of the equation at the same time because she's doing career coaching for people who are looking for new jobs. Most of them are our age just because, you know, she's that age, right? And so she's attracting people that are like her. But she's also seeing a lot of resumes and doing a lot of interviews and hiring people for her parents' company, and so she sees what it's like trying to hire people. And that's why I wanted her to come on, because I thought she had this very unique perspective on looking to job switch and maybe career switch at this age.

Doug: So she can offer some perspective to people we know, many of whom tried to get jobs at our age and have just completely struck out, which is really hard not to internalize.

Magda: Yeah, it is very hard not to internalize, right? Like you think you're not good enough. And I think Emily addresses that.

Doug: You know, you just wonder if your best years are behind you.

Magda: That's kind of a crushing thing to think, though.

Doug: It's the worst. She has this demeanor, though. I think she's very pleasant and no-nonsense. She walks that fine line of being someone you know you can trust.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: And doesn't kind of buy into the emotion of it in a way. Either that or she very skillfully hid that side of her from us. But her professional demeanor, at the very least, comes across as very reassuring and very knowledgeable. She's reassuring because you know there's something behind what she says. She's not just blowing smoke up .. your old address.

Magda: You know, she's just seen a lot of people have interesting career shifts and changes. And she doesn't think anybody is going to fail, even if the original industry or the thing that you think you want to switch into doesn't turn out to be for you. That doesn't mean you failed. It just means you're going to do something else.

Doug: Now, granted, that sounds awfully Pollyannish. “You're always going to come out fine.” You might not. I mean, I just watched Nomadland, and there's a lot of people out there our age who are working itinerant jobs and living in their vans. You know, weird shit happens to people.

Magda: Yeah, it really does.

Doug: You've got to put aside however jaded you are and recognize that there are still opportunities and people find the next thing, but it takes work and it takes luck and it takes a lot of things that are beyond your control.

Magda: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Doug: And you know, she can also be my parents’ emergency contact now because she lives even closer to them than you do.

Magda: Her parents. I'm taking care of your parents.

Doug: The strategy of this podcast is to keep finding guests that live closer and closer to my parents. So they can stop by and change a few light bulbs on the weekend since I can't get there without a 13-hour drive.

Magda: Right.

Doug: But ever since she told me about Bensonwood, now it's like I can't help but think of that the sexy Netflix show everybody was watching during the lockdown.

Magda: I don't know which one you're talking about. There were a whole lot.

Doug: What was it called? You know, there was one in particular that everyone went nuts about. And thanks to that show, we know what an intimacy coordinator is.

Doug and Magda: Bridgerton!

Magda: Oh, so Mike just stumbled on the show, Bridgerton. He started watching it, and I kind of watched it, but it was a little too tense for me. So he watched the show, and then he discovered that it was books. It's like 800 books that she wrote. And Mike has read all of them. I don't know why, I just think it's really funny.

Doug: Are they like bodice rippers?

Magda: Yes, they're absolutely bodice rippers. And sometimes he's like, “You should read this one, you'll like it.” And so I've read, I don't know, like maybe six of them.

Doug: And what do you think?

Magda: She's really good at creating a world. I'm not quite as into her dialogue. You know, there's a lot of romance out there. And so I wouldn't say that there's anything so special about this author that puts her like head and shoulders above everybody else. But I get why people read all of them. And I get why they got made into a series.

Doug: I'm just googling it now. Is there actually a character named Lady Whistledown?

Magda: I'm pretty sure there is. I haven't read one of the ones with Lady Whistledown in it.

Doug: Prudence Featherington. Good God.

Magda: So, you know, on Days of Our Lives, they have a gossip columnist in the Salem Spectator who goes by Lady Whistleblower.

Doug: You have a plane to catch. Shut it down.

Magda: I knew you'd like it.

Doug: I wish you had a plane to catch every time we start talking about Days of Our Lives.

[Theme music.]

Magda: What Emily and I were talking about before is that changing careers when you're 50 feels so much more high stakes than it has in the past. People in our generation and the generations behind us change careers all the time. I don't know if people our parents' age felt like they had the freedom to change careers, but I think a lot of them also worked in the same place for 30 years. So by the time they were 50, they had this really long established career. And maybe they had a pension or retirement fund, so they could think in terms of, I'm going to work five more years, I'm going to work 10 more years. And I don't know that we necessarily have that same expectation, considering what has happened in the economy, what has happened with working, what has happened with labor relations, all that kind of stuff, and, you know, investing and how many 50 year olds you know, who are actually on track who could retire in five years? I don't know very many.

Emily: No, it's true. And I know so many people that are going through massive career changes. I guess first I do want to just acknowledge that I feel really privileged to have had one career, let alone, you know, be into a second slash third. You know, not everyone gets that choice. There's plenty of people who are just in survival mode and have to work just for money and they're not adding up to a career. But it is, it's very disorienting to go through it, whether you choose it or you're forced into it or just the writing is on the wall one way or another and you have to make a big decision.

Magda: We should say that you had a career as a professor for a long time. You were a professor of management and I think you sort of just fell into the career advising thing because you had some thoughts about it and were getting a lot of questions from people.

Emily: Yeah, that's a big part of it. I was always interested in careers. My dissertation was related to careers. I loved the advising portion of being a professor and helping students figure things out. My first career coaching business was focused on college seniors and recent grads who are going into their first job, and I had a business partner and we had a good business. But as you know, six or seven years into that I was starting to get questions from you know, people my age, in their 40s, late 30s at the time. 

Doug: Who are real seniors. And they wanted college seniors, but they’re boring.

Emily: Yeah, well the real issue, Doug, was the dealing with the parents. Because it was their parents paying for the coaching and that was what I was getting burnt out on. 

Doug: Well, you know, my parents are just up the road from you so you could definitely ring them up anytime you like.

Magda: That's kind of a good point, too, because you're not a career coach who is a recruiter, right? Like, I mean, recruiters aren't career coaches, but you weren't somebody who they could pay and you would get their kid a job. And I think that's kind of hard for people to understand. So I imagine that they were wondering, where's my money going?

Emily: Right, right. “My kid still isn't listening to my advice. So you're really not helping.”

Magda: Right. I mean, maybe this is not for this show, but I'm wondering, like, a lot of career changers who are in their 50s are going back to their college career services for advising. And I know that college career service people tend to be understaffed, underfunded, all that kind of stuff for the need that is out there. Because traditionally, companies have come to recruit for a lot of positions to colleges or the students are applying to grad school or whatever. So there's kind of a very discrete set of tasks that career development does for people leaving college. And then now, I don't know if it's suddenly or just more, especially since the pandemic, it's people who've been working for 10 or 20 or 30 years who are now going back to the college, which they have all promised you can come back. When I go on college tours, and the very bright-eyed bushy-tailed college students are like, “...and you can come back to career services for the rest of your life.” Like that's an unusual thing.

Like that's what they're all saying. And I don't know how career services at a college could manage to serve everybody well at all.

Emily: Yeah, I can't either. I don't think it's out of career services. It's various alums who are organizing all kinds of networking events and speakers online and things like that.

Magda: But yeah, I've been following along with a lot of that. I think it's been interesting. It seems like there's a surge in Seven Sisters getting together, and I think we probably should mention that you and I both went to Seven Sisters Colleges, but also just women's colleges in general. There are other groups that are having all of the women's colleges try to get in on it, which is interesting because I think culturally some of those schools that are not the Seven Sisters have been supporting in different ways for years. They've maybe gone into different industries, that kind of stuff.

Emily: I'm excited about that. I hope that happens.

Doug: Well, do you think this is the result of the times? Because I think what I'm really interested in at this point is just the span of your career in this position. If you think about the last 10 years of people our age trying to switch careers, what do you think the most important change or most important challenge people our age have come across has been?

Emily: The people that I'm mostly talking to or coaching, a big group of them are academics or former academics, and the massive identity shift that you have to go through, making a change from a career that, you know, where you really do identify with it closely. And every conversation you're having almost is, “yeah, I'm a professor, you know, this is what I do. And I'm tied to this institution.” So extricating yourself from that identity over time and into something new is just extremely disorienting and frustrating and exciting too.

Magda: I think academia is one of those industries that really becomes an echo chamber and it's like gaslighting to make you think that that's all you're suited for. And people who have gotten out, I mean, you got out of academia, right? You know, it's not the case, you're not stuck there. But it's really hard to see when you're you feel like you are stuck there, or even like you're just afraid to try and I know that one of the things that you and I focused on, the two of us did a project at the beginning of the pandemic when a lot of women were leaving the workforce and having to leave the workforce because of that whole big clusterfuck of the schools shutting down and people not being able to go to the office and nobody having childcare and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things that we were fighting against a lot and that you kept emphasizing is you don't necessarily need to retrain to go into a different position, a different industry–because some of the industries that the people we worked with had actually disappeared in the pandemic, so it wasn't like they just needed a better job, or a different job, it was like they needed to jump industries. But you don't need to retrain, you just need to figure out like, what skills do you have that you use every day in your current job that can translate to some other setting? And that's what I think is really key about this for career changers right now. Like, you know, I know people who are looking back being like, I've been doing the same thing for 10 years. And if I want to switch, I have to take an entry level position. And that's not true at all. Everything you do is a skill that's translatable to something else. Give me that look like you guys can't see that I was waiting for the question.

Doug: 2000 syllable preamble, but yeah, please.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, the impulse is, especially if you're like me too, I'm the same way. It's like my first impulse is like, buy all the books, take a class, you know, think my way through this thing. And it's not necessary, it's expensive, it gets you stuck in your head. And it really matters, you know, who you know, and who you're talking to. And when you've been in one industry for a long time, you don't realize it because you think, oh, I'm connected to, you know, hundreds of people. They're all having the same conversation as you. They're all to have the same skill set as you. You need to just branch out and meet people in other areas and start having different conversations and new conversations to understand how your skill set is going to translate to a new context.

Doug: You find yourself saying that a lot? Oh. See, I have a question prepared.

Magda: Oh my God, I'm that young guy who gets up during the Q&A and is like, well, I have a comment more than a question.

Emily: By the way, I work with my ex-husband now, too, at my family's company.

Doug: Oh, you do?

Emily: Yeah, so I enjoy the dynamic between you two.

Doug: How long were you married?

Emily: 10 years. It's actually, it's been great to work together. It's been, oh, you remember why we did get along at the time. We're very good partners in certain things.

Doug: I'm really glad for that. I got to say I've people have asked a lot about that and I do feel very lucky. I wanted to ask because you talk about the reassurances when people come to you and they definitely have been fed a narrative. There's the whole idea that you're going to command a salary that people are going to scoff at. Since you're both so used to dealing with the ceiling that women have in the workplace in terms of being parent-tracked. What parallels do you see between the ceiling for women in the workplace and for older people in the workplace?

Emily: There definitely are barriers, right? There's ageism, there's sexism, there's racism and all of that. But I do think one thing to remember about what's happening right now in the world is that, you know, as much chaos as we feel that we're in as individuals, organizations are having

a massive amount of chaos as well. And businesses are having to pivot and restructure and rethink. And any business worth its salt is recognizing that you can't have only 25 year old white guys trying to recreate a business and turn it in a whole new way and in a new direction and get everyone on board and be professional about it and handle the level of stress that that takes and the vision and the creativity that that takes. You know, you need a variety of skill sets, you need fresh eyes on it, you need professionalism, you need people who can stay calm under pressure. So there's a whole, just, need for people who can come into something, be very professional, but look at things in a different way to help businesses get back on track.

Doug: So you mean the entire workforce is not just 25-year-old bros wearing Patagonia fleece vests?

Emily: It's not. I only have five people on my team and we range from early 70s to 25, men and women. So, you know, it's so much fun.

Doug: Now, when you talk about people in their 70s still working, first of all, how depressing is that? I mean, I'm glad that this person is thriving in your business. And, uh, you know, there are plenty of people who want to work that long. I mean,

Magda: Okay, do you really think it's depressing? Because I think the idea of not working when I'm 70 would be depressing.

Doug: You know, you're right. I think I'm leaning into the whole, “at 65 you get to stop and just hang around and enjoy your life.” And as we've discussed many times, that's a myth because there are people who love to work as long as they want and don't want to be ushered to the door when a certain time comes.

Magda: Okay, Doug, can you honestly imagine that you're not still going to be doing something creative when you're 70? Like if you, if somebody said to you, okay, retire when you're 65 and enjoy your life, like that's not going out and playing golf every day. Or if it was for you, you would then become like the coach of the high school golf team or something like that. Can you imagine not creating stuff, not writing, not podcasting, not all this kind of stuff? Because I just don't see that as part of your personality. And I think there are a lot of people our age who are like you, who are not going to stop working, whether they get paid for it or not, until they're like, well, that's the point.

Doug: Exactly. I'm going to be writing. I don't know if I'll get paid for it.

You know, I will also be as inert as possible. I'll be telling you that.

Emily: Straight up. We'll be all working for our choice and not the paycheck at that point. But I am talking about succession planning. My father still works full time in the business. He's 75 and he's, you know, extremely dynamic and creative and has no real interest in fully retiring.

But, you know, as we talk to these succession planning experts, they do talk about cultivating your other interests and the things you're going to start doing as you transition out and what's going to be just as fulfilling to you.

Doug: Yeah, we've talked a lot about that too, about families who are in business together who have an event and it sets into motion several processes at once because you have a business succession. You also have a wealth transfer. You've got all sorts of things that can be a bit more problematic if you don't have a lot of stuff in place. And we can talk about that. And I'm interested. Because you've come across as someone who's got all that figured out, basically, because you've... No? Okay, she's nodding. She's shaking her head.

Emily: No, it's a learning process. We're learning it, you know, it kind of crept up on, I think, my parents that now all of a sudden we have a business that employs 140 people. And, you know, we have got all this property and different buildings, but they don't identify themselves as someone who has, you know, a large business that needs to have a strong plan in place for–

Doug: Will they talk about that kind of thing? I think that's a real issue among parents. Can you have frank discussions about how generations are going to pass with your folks?

Emily: Yeah, we're starting to. It's difficult. We have a couple executive coaches we're working with and some good support system to work through it because it's, yeah, it's not comfortable.

Doug: That's another issue, being in business with your family, because you do need to find a way to transcend those barriers.

Emily: Absolutely. I feel lucky because I'm not trying to make my career out of this business, which many times second generations are. So I'm just there to help at this point. I don't have an agenda, which I feel grateful for, but it's still a lot to navigate.

Magda: I think it probably gives you more skills in your tool set to be helping people who are going on to another career to understand that getting the job in the new career isn't the whole thing. Like some of it is, how do you think of yourself? You know, you didn't work for your parents before. And now suddenly you're in a pretty high powered spot in their company. And that sort of is a different identity.

Emily: Yeah, that is a big lesson that I kind of knew, but I didn't, you know, know it in my body, the way I do now that just changing jobs and, you know, getting a new business card with a new job title. That is not career change. That is one little blip of a process. But there's so much to it of, you know, learning a new language, getting to know new people, taking on all kinds of new challenges, pushing yourselves in ways that are really uncomfortable after you had been in kind of a holding pattern of doing a job a certain way for many years. I was very blessed that you know, my parents were like, “Hey, can you help us? Here's a job.” I took the job and then my career change started and it was really hard, it was very disorienting. And I still, you know, I have to really recognize what skills I need and push myself to go get those skills. And yeah, I'm still in many ways, two and a half years in, in the midst of a change.

Doug: Yeah. I wanted to talk a bit about your transition itself. I want to hear more about where your head was before that change happened. I mean, I know in my position, I just feel you feel bulletproof when you're 25 and then you just, you know, so much more about how the world works and how fickle it is, how fickle and feckless that's where we are.

So when you have so much more to think about, how do you bring your own experience into that level of reassurance?

Emily: When I kind of realized I had to make a change, it was still a big decision. I started to do some of the process of networking and talking to people and exploring what my other options were. I probably would have benefited from another year of that kind of, I guess, softer transition, which is what I push my clients to do. Applying for jobs, you know, really you don't learn anything from that. Half the time you don't hear back. The longer it takes, honestly, the better in many ways. They're more prepared for it. You know, they've got a much better perspective on all the options that are out there for them. They probably have a choice that they've narrowed the field down and they've realized they could have had actually six or seven options. So the longer, the better, honestly, in many ways, in terms of the mental preparation. 

Doug: And were you divorced at this point?

Emily: Yes, and remarried. So, yeah.

Doug: Oh, there you go. And how old are your kids?

Emily: I have one son. He's 16.

Doug: So that's not too busy a time in a kid's life, right? 16. That's another question. When you think about your options, I mean, your family's clearly there. You've been there for a long time, but did it ever occur to you that relocating was even an option? When you have more complicated personal life like that, how does that add to the complications of making your switch and how do you navigate those?

Emily: Yeah. I mean, I wasn't planning to relocate and, and honestly the bigger worry and the biggest one that my clients face, too, is health insurance.

Magda: Of course.

Emily: What they can do and where they can go. And that.

Doug: This was during COVID too, right? All this was happening while during lockdown.

Emily: Yeah. Yep.

Doug: Jeez.

Emily: Yeah. But that I think is the biggest limiting factor in career change in this country. People want to be entrepreneurs. They want to try things.

They want to be creative. They want to do something cool and interesting. And then that just like narrows you right in.

Doug: Yeah. Has the marketplace helped that at all?

Emily: I think so to some extent, but it's, it's not great. It's still expensive.

And if you have family and kids and there's just a lot of factors to consider there, some States are better than others for what they offer too. So that's that to look at.

Magda: Yeah, I'm trapped in the middle of that right now. Because marketplace insurance was super, super affordable and good in Michigan. And it's really not affordable or good at all in Massachusetts.

Emily: Oh, interesting.

Doug: Well, what changes have you considered? I mean, as the New Year's coming along, I'm already getting told by the marketplace that it's time to reapply for your annual nonsense.

Magda: You and I are going to have to have a discussion about this anyway. I don't know that we want to have it on recording.

Doug: We've talked about all that. I'm just saying this is actually a good conversation to have because that's another aspect that this podcast hopes to address. The whole idea that there was a time when things were just, you could look forward to a bit more stability in that realm in your fifties. And now you have to reapply every year, assuming you're out on your own like you and I are. If you work for a company, that's another thing entirely. But if you do have these aspirations, you have to be constantly vigilant in terms of what policies are available, what's no longer available, what's more expensive, what's covered and what isn't. Yeah, well, my deductible is about 250 grand. Is that good?

Emily: If you are working for an organization and getting insurance through a company, what they offer varies wildly, too. And still, you know, education and government and, you know, those kinds of jobs still have the best insurance.

Magda: I was watching a discussion of somebody who was about to leave a job in government to take a similar job in private industry. And she was very excited about it. And she had said “the salary is the same.” And everybody on the post was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, if you're leaving a government job to take a job in private industry, and the salary is the same, you are about to lose money because the benefits! Like, I don't know that people necessarily think about that immediately. But there were enough people who I guess I'd gotten trapped in that same situation that they were like, whoa, danger.

Emily: That definitely comes up, but it's often not necessary. It's not what I want people thinking about first and going into the process thinking about. Honestly, get a job offer first and then we can worry about if you're taking a pay cut as we go through the negotiation process. I mean, people can't afford pay cuts right now. Everything's so expensive and you shouldn't have to.

Magda: The artificial holding down of minimum wage has echoed all the way up through everything, too. Like very, very, very few people are being paid in their position what they should be paid relative to what that position was paying 30 years ago.

Doug: Yeah. We've done really well to establish that working for yourself sucks and working for somebody else sucks.

Emily: I hope that's not the message.

Doug: We want to look at this with eyes wide open to recognize there are just a ton of challenges out there. And I assume you see yourself as someone who can reassure people that success is possible. If you were to look at your best cases among the people you've counseled, amid all of the gloom and doom of which there is plenty, how do you keep the lights on in terms of recognizing that there's hope and recognizing that there are options? You have to work harder to find them, but they're there.

Emily: You know, for many people our age who are smart and went into a career, we've experienced a level of success. We had some goals that we were going after and we checked some boxes off on those paths , typically. That's often my client base. So now it's about success on your own terms and what do you really want to do now? You know, you were following this linear path that was set up and you knew what you had to go after, the promotion or the raise or tenure or whatever it was. It didn't make you the happiest person in the world, but that's okay. So now let's go back and figure out what do you want success to look like now in this phase of your life. We're talking about, you know, this age group where our kids don't need us so much anymore. We're not, you know, anywhere near retirement. Like that's a long stretch of time for most of us. You know, we've got a couple, few decades here to do some cool things. We have a whole skill set that we've built up over the last few decades. We know how to be a professional. We know how to achieve things. We know how to mentor people. We know how to be leaders of some sort.

And now how are we going to use that in a new context that is more on our terms than maybe our first career was?

Doug: And I think a lot of that involves how we express ourselves, how we convey our ideas, how we can describe who we are, what we do, what we can offer. Like I've told the kids many times, you can have all the ideas in the world, but if you can't articulate them, they're just going to sit there in your head. How can people train themselves to look back on their careers and tell a story and then tell the next person who might employ them how that story involves them, what the next chapter could look like?

Emily: That's it, right? Formulating the story. That's huge. So, you know, we go into all kinds of looking at your strengths and some defining moments of your past career and how are you going to tell those stories and talk about them and all of that; you know, and then looking forward into the next part, that's kind of interesting, too, of there's not as many sort of clear archetypes and rites of passage, right? Once you're going into, you know, past 45, into retirement, what are the touch points that we're all experiencing? At the same time, there's really not many. So we have to sort of set our own guideposts that we're working towards.

Magda: It's interesting to think about what makes a job, a great job for somebody who is in their 50s. We've been thinking about little individual parts of it together, right? Like I've been having a lot of discussions about what kind of job tasks should you do while you're in perimenopause that maybe you wouldn't have been great at before and maybe you're crappy at the things you used to do before, just because of the hormonal changes, right? A lot of it is if you had ADHD before, it's exacerbated now. If you didn't have ADHD before, you might think you have it now because you're having the same attention prioritization issues. But there are also the kinds of benefits and aspects of the companies that you maybe didn't need to look at before. Everybody I know this age is having people around them that they care about die or get sick, and they need to be able to take time off or flex time, not have to have their butt in a seat for eight hours a day to be able to manage the death rituals, the funerals, cleaning out of the houses, all of the stuff, all these other things that we've talked about. Like those things have to be able to be accounted for in a working situation. And I'm not sure that companies have any kind of understanding that people in their 50s have needs at all. I think they think that by this point, we are just automatons and that we're kind of  bulletproof, and no matter what happens, we stay at our desks and just keep pumping out whatever it is that we're supposed to pump out.

Doug: Though either they have no understanding or they have a lot of understanding. And that's where ageism comes in. The whole idea of just like, I'm not going to invest in this woman because she's going to leave and have a family. I'm not going to invest heavily in this 50 year old because they've got responsibilities with their adult children, with their elderly parents. Companies are amoral. All they care about is the bottom line. But when you see a company saying, you know what, at your age, you're going to want more money than we think you're worth, and you're also not going to have the time that we want you to have to dedicate fully to this operation. How do you combat that?

Emily: Well, as an executive in a company that I hope is not amoral, you know, there are companies out there with good cultures and policies that are people friendly. Doing your due diligence is critical. And that's why, again, why talking to people and getting to know people in new spheres, like, where's the good company? Sometimes, my clients who don't know what they want to do, but are maybe stuck in a certain geographic region or something, it's like, just find out who's the good employer, like who's happy in their job, whatever it is. We have a company here, Badger Balm, they make like salves and lip balms, and

Magda: Oh, we bought a lot of Badger Balm when our kids were little!

Doug: Oh, balm! ‘Cause “Badger Bomb” sounds like pest control.

Magda: No, it's Badger Balm. I used to love their, like, it was a version of Vicks VapoRub, right? It was just all natural. Vicks.

Emily: Yeah. Anyway, they're a fantastic employer. They have a bring your baby to work policy. They have organic food for lunch, you know, free lunch every day. So finding those pockets of good employers doesn't even matter what you're doing, right? You're gonna have a potentially easier lifestyle. 

Doug: Well, that kind of fits the trend in general about how, you know, 10 years ago, it was all about, in social media broadcast to everybody, be as big as you can have as many followers as you can. We've since realized that has doesn't have nearly the value as the engagement of a smaller community that will give you a 70% open rate on your emails, like, like, we're happy to say we have, when you work locally, and you can find a smaller company, which clearly, as you say, is more moral than someone who just is a victim of the shareholder economy and is beholden to people who are like, why aren't your margins bigger this year?

Emily: Yeah. You have to dig a little bit maybe. And it might be a business you would never have thought you'd want a job in, but that's worth it.

Doug: And where do you dig for stuff? Where's your data set that you start with in terms of winnowing down given the filters you need?

Emily: I mean, you start talking to people. I'm thinking of a woman that we worked with, Magda. Christine. We had her working on LinkedIn, she was linking to everybody she possibly could. And finally, she just, when she had a big base of people on her LinkedIn, she literally was just like, “Hey, where do you guys think I should work?” And she got all these suggestions. And one of them ended up being fantastic for her. So talk to people, tell them you're looking, you know, people can't help you unless you tell them, I'm looking right now I need to make a change. “What do you think I should do? Do you have ideas for me? Can you introduce me to someone?” All that stuff.

Magda: Well, I remember in business school, they said to us specifically that when you're looking for a job, you are going to find a job from networking, but not from your friends, from the next circle out from your friends, because if your friends had a job to offer you, they already would have. And so it's just them asking other people. However, the assumption there is that you've let your friends know that you're looking for a job! And I'm not convinced that that's true anymore. It might have been true 10 or 15 years ago that your friends are not the ones who are going to offer you a job. I don't think most people our age tell anyone when they are looking for a change at all, because I think we feel guilty about it, or I think we feel ashamed. We have been told constantly, “Don't look too hungry, don't look desperate.” And saying, “I'm looking for a job” sounds really desperate to us, even though it's not at all, right? It's saying, “I don't want to do this anymore. Talk to me about your career or give me a job.” To people our age, it feels like too much vulnerability, we're scared to do it. And it feels wrong. And it feels like we're betraying people. And I also think enough people have known people who have gotten in trouble at work for saying something on social media that they shouldn't have.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, like a lot of things. I also, I tell people just blame COVID for everything. Like, “COVID made my job harder.” Like, “I'm kind of thinking about a change. I'd love to chat with you.”

COVID did make a lot of things more difficult and not as interesting or changed the game in some way so that we don't want to be there anymore. And that can open up just a lot of conversations because there are more people having that conversation still. I think my industry really shifted because of what the world's going through and it's not as healthy for me anymore.

Doug: Actually, I'm glad we're talking about this, too, because the other issue that a lot of people our age consider is the nature of the industry or the nature of work in general. There's a perception that people our age can't keep up with the speed of technology, aspects of technology, AI. In many cases, it can feel like you're paddling to stay in place. So what perception have you confronted in terms of that?

Emily: Yeah, I mean, it is a stereotype that probably does hold up in some cases. And, you know, I'm probably not as adept with AI as some of the younger people that are using it every day. But we have also been through hard times. I was just listening to your episode on 9/11. You know, we dealt with that and the level of stress that that maybe put on us in our professional and personal lives. So, you know, drawing from other hard things that we've been through in our past to get through whatever changes coming up next is really critical. Technology is moving fast. I mean, I think some companies maybe need a little bit of a slowdown, too, that older people can bring that perspective to. I really find that's a good tension to have at all times in an organization. You know, the yes person, the go, go, go, go, go, and the like, reel it back, no. And, you know, you need that balance in an organization. You need all the perspectives.

Doug: Could we please stop moving so fast and breaking things?

Magda: I think it's also a misunderstanding that young people all know what to do with AI. I think maybe some other technologies they hop onto faster, but I don't really think anybody knows actually what to do with AI yet. I think younger people may know all the language to talk about AI and they may have tried it out and somebody higher up in their organization may have figured out what they should be doing with AI every day. There was all that talk about people being “digital natives” and how like, us poor Gen Xers are going to have to catch up because we weren't digital natives. I don't think anybody's an AI native who knows what to do with it. I mean, I have ideas of what to do with AI, too, but you know, I'm not going to tell other people–

Doug: Oh, I bet you have amazing ideas of what to do with AI.

Magda: Oh, yes. AI can stick it up AI's rear, is what my idea is.

Doug: That's your title right there.

Emily: I’m talking about people who are doing, you know, because I did a qualitative dissertation, and they did all of their interview transcripts and data analysis, all in AI. You know, something that took me three or four years is supposedly taking a few months. I don't know, maybe.

Magda: Yeah, but I don't think that's something that young people just, like, automatically know how to do. I think it's if you're in your job, and you encounter AI in a way that intersects with something that you have to do in your job, you can figure out how to use it.

Emily: And regardless of what age you are, by the time we get to our 50s, we should all be semi good at change management. Whether we went through a divorce or career changes or global catastrophes, whatever it is, we've been through a lot.

Doug: Yeah. How can you use that to your advantage? I would think one of the things that has become apparent to me is just how much more marketing is endemic to everything we do. And I'm wondering the discussions you have in terms of like how best to market yourself, how to change someone's mind. How to recognize these talents and dealing with disaster and working your way through it, how that can be a plus when you're talking to people about where you might land next.

Emily: Yeah, it's huge. And I think remembering that the marketing process of yourself has very little to do with your resume, or your cover letter, you know, it really is crafting those stories, like you talked about, Doug, and then getting out there and in front of new people, and asking them a lot of questions as well. You know, that's a part of marketing yourself is being curious, digging in and just listening to other people.

Doug: But I think our generation also has the benefit of having convinced a lot of employers to hire them in particular positions that didn't exist during the big technological boom, you know, 20 years ago. I know a lot of people who started out writing their own blogs and doing their own social media and then convinced employers to become social media managers for their company. And the employers themselves really didn't know whom they were hiring or what they were hiring it for. So they were inclined to delegate a lot of those responsibilities and let the person in the job fill out the demands of that job.

Emily: Talking about those experiences you had in the past of creating not just jobs, but whole industries. I mean, the two of you were part of creating a whole blogging industry. And there's a lot of people in that kind of position. So talking about the past is going to serve you well. And, and the kinds of thinking you had to do to build out, you know, what your work was going to look like, and how you figured out what it was going to look like. It's hard to go into a brand new job title in a brand new industry and know exactly where you're headed. But thinking like, “I've done this before. So here's what I'm going to be looking for. And here's how I'm going to figure out what the steps are to make this happen and get this job off the ground.” A good employer will recognize that as an extremely valuable skill set. You know, during the pandemic, I had a couple of clients who ended up in, um, tracking where COVID was. That was a whole just industry that popped up real quick and then died. And now I can't even remember what it was called! You know, industries pop up and then die again really–

Doug: Please tell me you're not counseling people to get into crypto now.

Emily: I did have a student who paid for his entire college education though. That was 10 years ago.

Magda: Wow.

Doug: I got one word for you: Dogecoin.

Magda: Did the school accept the crypto as payment? Or was this before the whole thing came up? So he was actually able to cash out?

Emily: Yeah, he cashed out. Yeah, it was amazing.

Magda: Wow.

Doug: I love that story. So much wealth was just invented and then brought in a bunch of suckers to cover the cost.

Magda: He was in the exact right place at the exact right time.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah, it happens. And I think AI going back to AI, that's probably still a question mark in a lot of ways, right? Like what aspects of this are actually going to turn into something that has legs?

Magda: I think the discussion about AI is either “We help you cheat,” right? Because that's what it really is. Or “The entire earth is going to blow up in 12 days,” right? Because somehow the AI is going to, like, eat itself. And humanity is dead. Like, it seems like there's not a whole lot of “how to use AI in a productive way that's not going to completely change your way of life, but is going to make some things easier for you.”

Emily: If AI is going to eat us, then we should definitely not be afraid of a career change, because it's really not going to matter that much.

Magda: That is very true.

Doug: If you go into every interview saying, “I don't care if I get this or not, because AI will eat us all anyway. So I don't care if you hire me or not, because we'll all be dead.”

Emily: You know, going into career change with a little bit of that of like, “none of this is life or death,” right? I know some people are desperate at certain times, and they need to do something for money. But if we're not just making the change for money, you know, if we have something we're doing, we're just tired of it, go out and have fun with it. You know, it's like being on the dating sites when you're not really looking for a serious boyfriend, right? It's a lot more fun than when you're when you're trying to find your husband.

Doug: Is that how you found your husband? How did you find him?

Emily: I did find him, but I wasn't necessarily looking.

Doug: That's how it works, right? You're not looking and there he is. How long have you been remarried?

Emily: Two and a half years.

Doug: Congratulations! You can give Magda a sense of what her life will be like in two years plus.

Magda: Well, part of why I was so happy about getting remarried was seeing friends like Emily, who had gotten remarried, and that it was great. You know, you weren't tainted forever just because you got divorced.

Emily: No, no, I mean, so many friends now are going through divorces. So many probably should have done it when we all did it, you know, however long ago, but they're finally doing it.

Magda: I felt sort of weird getting divorced when other people at our same stage in marriage and age were not. But now it's like I was out the other end a long time before other people were.

Emily: Yeah.

Doug: Well, again, it just shows you that comparison is bullshit. You just live your life and deal with events as they happen and pursue happiness however you can. In fact, when you talk about going through a divorce, I mean, that's a traumatic event that people overcome. The stakes can't be that high if you've been through something that traumatic and that life-altering. A job search is a walk in the park and also it can be fun if you game it or if you look at it as a puzzle as I love to do and as Magda likes to do. Just because a rejection isn't necessarily a personality flaw. It just means it wasn't a fit.

Emily: Totally. And I will say, you know, giving up academia was in a way a divorce for me because my identity was so tied to it. And I really loved my job. I had romantic feelings towards it in a way. I love the Ivy Tower kind of vision of that and the research aspects of it. I really miss and hold onto in different ways. But I think, you know, if you never get your heart broken, it's probably a pretty sad life you've lived, you know, whether it's a marriage or a job or whatever.

Doug: Such a weird paradox, right? If someone's in a position where they're considering a career, we've kind of covered a lot of stuff in the last hour. Every situation is different. You know, there's no cookie cutter approach, but if there were something universal that a common person in our position, you know, what's the first thing that anyone in that position should learn from you as far as how the process could play out?

Emily: I think the most important thing is to start the change right now. Again, it's not about the job title change. Don't put it off. Start setting better boundaries in your current job. Say no to new things. Go home early. Start going to different events. Meet new people. Change your gym. Read a book on a different topic that you've never read a book on. Whatever it is, just start the change process right now because, again, the job title's kind of the least of it, and you're in control to a certain extent right now. Don't let the external factor determine your change. Start it on your own terms.

Doug: “Change your gym?” Like, you can't just change your gym schedule? You actually have to go across town to the other gym?

Emily: Well, I had a client who got a new job from someone she met at her gym, so you never know where you're going to meet people.

Doug: Especially, yeah, and then you break up and you have to go to a different gym.

Emily: You know that you're going to meet the person who's going to introduce you to someone who's going to be like, tell you about a career or a company that you've never heard of. All of a sudden you realize that's the right fit. So you've got to get out and start moving and changing and doing that work right now.

Doug: Do you spend much time thinking about what your trajectory will be like in five years? I mean, when your kids are grown and you might have a little bit more leeway as far as what's next and how does the physician heal herself or at least keep her own tenants in mind for what the next chapter will be?

Emily: Yeah, I mean, I do spend time thinking about it. I'm definitely happy where I am right now and helping and I see, you know, some things I want to accomplish in my current position. So I'm not in any hurry, but there's a whole biotech industry cropping up. I guess it's kind of migrating from Boston into New Hampshire.

Doug: As are so many things.

Emily: Yeah, exactly. So just trying to, you know, figure out what, what new industries are coming up and becoming important and where, you know, where again, I can use my current skill sets and the ones that I'm continuing to develop. I'm trying a lot of new things in my current job too, so that I know what I like and what I don't like. So that's the kind of work I'm doing. It's definitely a thing to get the executive coach that I work with a lot, his book is titled Trapped in the Family Business. So we're always talking about how I don't get trapped. And as long as I'm staying, it's on my own terms. And I'll have options on the other end of it, too.

Doug: Okay, so we've established that Dr. Benson is in the mafia. And she should never go against the family. So I hear you blink twice if you're safe.

Emily: Yeah, the ties are strong. The ties are strong for sure. Never go against the family. So yeah, it's real. I mean, you have had a lot of conversations on your podcast about the desire to help your parents, you know, as they're getting older. And my parents are very physically healthy. But, you know, the business does need some help in getting it set up so that it can survive and thrive past them being there, it does need that attention. And I do have a sense of responsibility for helping with that, for better or for worse.

Magda: I mean, I have like 40 other lines of questioning that would take us down another hour, we could talk about what's different for women about trying to go out now, is this a natural breaking point, where we feel like we deserve to change careers? Do we want to change careers? Have we felt guilty before? Are we feeling more guilty now? Or the hot flashes making us want to leave, like what's going on, right? But I think that's too long of a conversation. Well, and also another symptom of perimenopause and menopause for a lot of people with uteruses is ramp up of anxiety. And so I think that that can probably intersect in feeling both less comfortable in your current job and career, because you're feeling anxious, and maybe you weren't feeling anxious before, but also being afraid to jump out and start to make that change, too. And it's not that you, the person, are more scared of it. It's that you're in a phase of life when you're having more hormonally-related anxiety. It kind of doesn't matter if you're still too scared to make a move.

Emily: That's kind of the nature of being a woman. There's always some new phase of biology that we're contending with that we have to balance

with our careers. And I wonder if in some ways women have a little bit of advantage in terms of wanting a big career change in your 50s because we've navigated so many other kinds of changes and always had to think about our health and our physical needs and our kids’ needs and in relation to our careers. I don't know if we have an advantage, but if maybe we could think of it that way, it might it might help or think about how to leverage that those past experiences.

Magda: It kind of makes me think about that. I remember that woman from the 80s who was about, I can't remember her name, but she would always say, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Doug: Morgana, the kissing bandit.

Magda: I don't know who it was, but I think like, to me now it's like, well, okay, that's every day. For everything, feel the fear to do it.

Emily: Whether women or other minorities, too, you know, we've all had to do a lot of that.

Doug: How much of your job would you say follows along the line of, if not a therapist, but like a cheerleader? Just the whole idea of saying, I know you're in your head right now. I know you have these barriers. I'm looking at your resume from the outside. I can look at this from a much more dispassionate view. You have this, you have that. Lean into this. Is that a big part of your interaction with people you counsel?

Emily: Yeah, that's probably 95% of it. I mean, there's only so much practical advice I can do, you know, in this crazy world where everything's shifting and changing, and they're in different industries and experiencing different things. So it is more helping them kind of sort through what they're going through, give them some confidence to go and try something new, unpack it after they did something new. Okay, what meaning did you find in that? And work through the fears and get set up for kind of the next scary thing that's on the list of to-dos. You can go and kind of find a list of the step-by-step process if you just Google, how do I career change? But getting someone to be there as a support system through those steps is what people need.

Doug: Oh, I love that. In a profession that has a lot of competition, I think ultimately your ability to support someone in a very personal way is going to make you stand out among a very robust industry. I keep thinking of, are you a Ted Lasso fan by any chance?

Emily: Yeah.

Doug: I keep thinking of that when they all, when they went on a double date. Rebecca went on a double date with, with Roy and Keely, you know, they, she asked him, “What did you think?” And he's like, you know, he's fine. “And don't you fucking ever settle for fine. You're amazing. Get someone who makes your toes vibrate.” So I think that applies to the job too. I think sometimes everyone needs to be beefed up. Everyone needs to be pulled aside and say, don't you ever forget you're going to have bad days and you're going to forget this, but I'm here to remind you that you've got everything you need.

Emily: Absolutely. It's a, it's a totally nonlinear process. So that, yeah, riding the roller coaster of it is challenging and, and people need to be reminded it's supposed to be a roller coaster.

Doug: Yeah, and it's enough of a roller coaster for anybody, uterus or otherwise. I totally understand that when you're also, you know, going through whatever your body is throwing at you, that's a double roller coaster, which is that much more likely to make you vomit. Okay. Again, podcasting is great. If it lands, it lands, and if it doesn't, it lands on the floor. Well, Emily, it's been great to talk to you. I know a lot of people our age are going to benefit from this discussion. I think there are some universal hurdles that we all deal with. There's the ageism, there's imposter syndrome, there's an inability at least to kind of make sense of your life and build that story that's going to sell the next phase of it. I'm so glad you've spent some time working with people who need that help and thanks a lot for talking to us today.

Emily: Thank you. It was really, it was really great to be here. I've been listening to your podcast. All the discussions are really rich and needed. So I've been getting a lot out of them. 

Doug: Absolutely. Thank you.

Emily: You can find me on LinkedIn right now. I have, you know, as I mentioned, I'm kind of coming out of two and a half years of intense change process myself. So I'm kind of moving into a new era of career coaching where I feel like I actually have more to say about the internal transition. And I'm excited to move into some new ways of coaching and new perspectives that I'm bringing into it. Connect to me on LinkedIn.

Doug: And you can find her as the matriarch of Bensonwood.

Emily: Absolutely. Check out our beautiful home.

Doug: Hosting state dinners for visiting royalty. Oh my goodness. Well, and thank you for listening to Episode 24 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles, LLC, and it's available on all the usual podcast platforms and at our Substack, which is whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter every Friday. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, and many of you do, please leave us a review there. It really helps us out. Thanks again for listening. We're off next week for Thanksgiving. Have a great American Thanksgiving I should say to all my Canadian friends. Talk to you next time. Bye-bye.