I Do This for a Living
A show that asks how we can give as much time and energy to the things that matter as we do to the things that pay. I Do This for a Living is hosted by Serenity Bohon - sarcoma survivor, writer, and day jobbist, forever starstruck by anyone who finds meaning at work and in life.
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I Do This for a Living
How Will You Change the World with Serena Zorrilla Berrey
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Serena Berrey is five years post-college and in a job she LOVES because she didn't waste her time in misalignment. As an Executive Recruiter, Serena has tons of motivational advice, including starting your day right, surviving any day in the industry of your choice, and filling your cup before pouring it out. Serena has hot takes and hot tips for interviewing with recruiters, networking constantly, and always finding ways to feel you're moving forward. This episode is getting me through my own survivable but challenging work days. It's worth a listen, a relisten, and some notes!
Chapters
1:12 Serena: Obnoxious Optimist
8:41 How are you going to change the world
26:09 ADHD: Attention isn’t the problem
30:00 Don’t Stay Just Because (Hot Take 1)
49:55 Always Be Networking
57:23 Fill Your Cup First
1:03:58 Diagnosed: Type I Diabetes
1:14:25 Be Curious
1:23:20 When They Ask About Your Weakness (Hot Take 2)
1:27:12 Get Outside
1:29:07 Today is Survivable
1:38:44 The Best is Yet to Come
1:41:00 It Worked For Me
Links
Serena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/serena-berrey/
Serena quoted Serenity’s book, The Thank You Room: https://www.serenitybohon.com/thankyouroom
This episode is sponsored by H34Contracting.com
I Do This For a Living is independently produced.
Welcome to I Did This For a Living, a show that asks how we can spend as much time and energy on the things that matter as we do on the things that pay. Sometimes the things that matter pay. And we'll talk about that too. I can't wait to get into today's episode, but first, I have something very exciting to say. Today's episode is sponsored. It is sponsored by H34 Contracting. If that sounds familiar, you might have heard last week's episode in which I interviewed the owner, Jason Benson. Besides having an awesome conversation, you must go listen. We talked for a brief moment about a custom library he's building for a client, something on my wish list as well. I have this whole vision for a wall of books, a comfy chair, and a kids' table because I pretend that I only want this for my grandkids. Anyway, if you have a remodeled dream, I hope you'll visit h34contacting.com, delivering exceptional quality and craftsmanship in and near Casper, Wyoming. If you reach out to Jason, please tell him that you heard it on I Did This for a Living. Help me thank this wonderful and generous sponsor. Okay, today's guest. You have heard of her. Sort of. Well, you may have heard of her because she's awesome, but you you might have heard of her on this podcast because in an early episode we interviewed her mother, Dr. Dina Barry. Dr. Dina Berry has three daughters. I asked them all, but Serena, the oldest, uh volunteered first. So you're gonna get to meet a really wonderful person today. Uh I mean, it's a it's a motivational speech a minute. I mean, it's so many things that I want to frame and put on my wall and add to my little, you know, flip chart of motivational um things that get me through the day. Uh Serena is an absolute delight and so inspiring, and I cannot wait for you to meet her. So let's get to it. Serena, welcome to my show. Hey, hi, hello. How's it going? Well, I'm so excited to have you. Uh I actually feel that instead of saying welcome to my show, I should say, world, I bring you Serena Zarella Barry. You will never forget her after this episode. I'm so honored. This is the beginning of everything for you. Lest you wonder. So happy to be here. This is it. This is your launching pad. Okay, so Serena, I'm gonna let you do it. How would you introduce yourself to my audience?
SPEAKER_00I don't know how well you know the show, but every week. Oh my gosh. Yes. I'm also a big podcast girly, so I love to work out, do a little walk and pod, you know. Um, wow, I can be summed up pretty easily, I think. I would describe myself in two words, an obnoxious optimist. And that's really all you need to know. I know, just kidding. That will be the theme that we will come back to. Um, I just believe that this world is like ours for the taking. One of my favorite things I ever heard on Instagram was like if you were to come to this just black space in the universe, and someone came to you, God, whomever, you know, and said, you know, I'm gonna, you can either stay here in this darkness forever, or you can experience love and excitement and passion and heartbreak and, you know, loss, but this extreme embodiment of love. And like he just lists all these things and he's like, so which one would you like to choose? And of course, they go with the ladder of send me to this place called Earth where I get to go through all these things, the good, bad, the ugly. And I just think it's all such a cool journey that we're on. And so I try to look at every outcome of life like that. You know, more than anyone that I've been through some things. So, you know, all for the better though. An obnoxious optimist is how I would describe myself. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_01That's so good. That's so good. I don't know if I like the obnoxious part because you know, I love you so much. But I I hear you. I get where you're going with this, and I think we're on track. I think you're on track with that introduction. Um, kind of along those lines, what is important to you, Serena? Like you can answer this a couple ways, but I'm thinking, what is important about who you want to be in the world? Or just what's important to you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I really want to leave everything and everyone better than I found them. One of my favorite compliments is when someone is like, wow, you just filled my cup today. You know, you get coffee with a friend, or you meet up with someone, or you have an interview with someone or a call, and they they say something like, I really needed that. That really filled my cup. Yeah. I love that. And so I want to leave everyone and everything better than I found them. That's very important to me. And I think that's really behind the way that I carry myself and all that I do.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that takes some energy, girl. Are you just a bottomless pit of energy all by yourself? Or do you have a great way to fill your own cup?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Okay, great question. Um so people think I'm crazy for this, and we might get into this, we might not, but with my type 1 diabetes, it's very important that I wake up every morning and I do something active. It helps with my just keeping my day in balance, honestly, just makes my life so much easier. And so my favorite way to recharge is actually like in the morning. I love to wake up in the morning, and people are always like, How do you do that? Well, it's really based out of a place of necessity more than anything. But now it's been my really my only quiet time that I have. And that used to make me weirdly super uncomfortable. I'd be like, I hate how quiet it is. There's no one to talk to at 5 a.m. Um, but I realized that again, going back to maybe the cup analogy, you can't pour from an empty cup. So, what are ways that I can like really pour into myself? And, you know, you hear things like show yourself some self-love. And I always thought that was like face masks and like getting a pedicure or whatever. Um, but it's actually telling yourself like the time and space that you give others and the energy you give others. You should also tell yourself you're worthy of that too, and prioritize that. If you wouldn't cancel a date on your friend, don't cancel a date on yourself, sort of thing. I find that that really helps fill my cup and really helps give me more energy. And honestly, not to sound cheesy, but like remember why I show up the way that I do and and kind of where that comes from. And so I really like my quiet mornings. I do have to recharge. It's not just like a bottomless pit of energy. Um, there is a lot of caffeine in that mix and that combination though. So a lot of caffeine. Is it really is it truly 5 a.m.? Yeah, 5, 5 30. Yeah, it is. But I also go to sleep at like 10, you know. I'm I'm in bed by 10. I'm a zillennial, you know, so it's not like I'm staying up till midnight anymore. I could, but I need 48 hours notice, sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01A zillennial? I have not heard it put that way. So you're like on the cusp, you were almost a millennial, but you're okay.
SPEAKER_00So I'll be 28 this year. And yeah, that's like smack dab in between. I really relate a little bit more with the millennial things, but also I would like to think that I'm still hip like a zelennial and get a lot of those references as well. I think really our generation is a lot of that. Like I remember what life was like without a phone, without computers. Really? Computers being really, you know, like making the mixtapes. We didn't have streamable music, but then now I do have streamable music and I have AI and I have, you know, it's like this weird in-between, who am I? Okay, okay. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay, Zillennial. I love it. You I think you're my first. So I I want to get, I'm like, okay, I gotta get some people who don't have the same like references as me and have some younger ones. We gotta get, we gotta hear from the younger generation. So I'm so grateful to you for being that guinea pig on I Do This for a Living. Okay, let's go to kind of one of my favorite sections, Astronauts and Rock Stars, where I like to talk about the beginnings of you and what you understood about work and all that. And that that's kind of the first idea is what was your early understanding of what work even is? I really like to understand when you first kind of got a grasp of, oh, people have to work and have jobs, or if you ever got that grasp, or you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay, well, that's a great question. I love that question a lot because originally, so I'm the oldest of three girls. My mom was on one of the first, what I do this for a living podcasts, um a doctor who went back to school um later in life with three young daughters and was just kind of a badass for lack of a better term. And my dad was also the badass who supported her through that and was kind of like, let's get our bag. This is an us thing, the family us. So we've got to support mom, we've got to support dad, we support you. Like it was always just a very supportive environment. And so for that reason, it wasn't always work. It was always um, how are you gonna change the world? Oh my gosh. That was really the way that it was, I guess, presented to me. A lot of I remember teachers and things, they would say, What do you want to be when you grow up? And my dad would be like, How are you gonna change the world? Oh my gosh, Jim Barry. Totally. Who asks a four-year-old that? I don't know. Jim Barry does. Um, but I love it because it was so great. So instead of, and not that any of these things are bad, right? But it's like a lot of kids would come home with like, I'm gonna be a firefighter, a doctor, a lawyer. Um, I would be like, I'm gonna be a famous golfer. I'm gonna be a motivational speaker. Like, I just I don't know. I had like these kind of, I'm sure my teachers were like, what's happening? Um, yeah, like abstract thoughts of that. And so really the whole idea of money never came into the picture. I mean, we were pretty like middle class growing up. Um, and so definitely had a reverence for it and knew how to like bargain shop and be smart with money. And I knew that money mattered and that my parents worked really, really hard. But I also knew that that was not their whole identity. And so more like, how are we gonna change the world? So that's that's kind of how I was presented, the whole idea of work, which I love. I hope that I do that with my kids. I think that that's it's it's a necessity, but it's not everything, you know, and kind of having that balance.
SPEAKER_01So I I this is where someone says something so ball, I just like want to go. Oh, and that's our show for today. I just think that's so good. I've not heard a single person say that yet about that. Um, I talked to Nathan Brandsford, um, a guy in publishing and writing and stuff at one point, and he one time did this blog post where it was just a question, why do you write? And people just the answers just poured in. And I remember saying, to change the world. I write to change the world. And I told him in that episode that has diminished for me. I've kind of thought I'm not I don't really have what it takes to change the world, but uh, and I have these other things. And so I really appreciate Serena Zarillaberry coming into my life and reminding me that isn't okay, wish. Like you might as well think that big and and think of yourself as that capable of having something to say and something to offer. So thank you for bringing us back to that. That is good. Okay, so okay, so the professional golfer, motivational speaker. Are those kind of like your earliest memories? This is what I want to be when I grow up. Yes. Okay. How long did it last?
SPEAKER_00Uh honestly, still chasing both of them, maybe? No, I'm just kidding. Um, the professional golfer thing college kind of burnt that out of me. I played collegiate golf. Um and it was so fun. It was so great. Um I think that's actually why I didn't I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want to lose that fun and that spark. And I think sometimes when you're at the competitive level, it's so easy to kind of get burnt out of that. Um you it's hard not to want to win, and then it's hard not to be heartbroken when inevitably that doesn't happen sometimes. So um, that was a roller coaster emotions and another theme that you'll see throughout, I feel my highs very high, and I feel my lows very low. And golf is a game of very, very many highs and lows. So um, for me, it was a the reason I'm probably not pursuing that at this point is just to protect that love that I have for it. Um, again, growing up on a golf driving range and golfing my whole life, I met my husband Manuel through the golf team at Drury. Um, there are just so many special aspects around it, like so many memories with my sisters golfing and with my friends golfing and my dad, you know, um, that just protecting that, I kind of was like, well, this needs to be this needs to stay a for fun thing for me. Um, and then as far as a motivational speaker, I think it's not that deep. Like I think you can be a motivational speaker in your everyday. I could call up Pizza Hut right now and I could motivate them, you know? And cool. I can do that. Like it doesn't have to be something on my LinkedIn, you know? Um, and I think that's great.
SPEAKER_01We do have Sabrina has amazing LinkedIn posts, y'all. So we get a link to that. Make sure we get you some followers there. We gotta go back for a second too. You mentioned it in the your early understanding of work, the rock pile. Is that what it was called?
SPEAKER_00Yes, the rock pile.
SPEAKER_01That plays in a lot. So what what what was it? What was it that you grew up on?
SPEAKER_00Yes, so I grew up on a golf driving range. So my parents, when they they were married in '96, 1996, and they bought 30-ish acres of land uh as a newly married couple, took out a loan, bought some land, and my dad gave golf lessons on it, sold buckets of balls out of Kirksville, Missouri, um, right across the street from the airport there in Kirksville, um, for probably like eight years, I think. So they were very entrepreneurial. Now that I'm newly married, thinking about me and Manny being like, we're just gonna do this. We have no money, we got a kid on the way. Let's just buy a whole bunch of land and have people come hit golf balls into a field. That'd be so fun. No, I'm kidding. You know, he had his PGA license and all that good stuff. So he was certified to do that. But um, it's really interesting how, you know, when you're you always think of your parents as your parents. And then now that I'm like living the timeline that they would have been on and going things that they would have gone through, I'm like, that was actually like that took a lot of courage. That's crazy. So they were very entrepreneurial. Yeah. Uh opened the golf driving range. My mom was a high school teacher before med school. And so my sisters and I, uh, my two younger sisters and I grew up literally, there's videos of us six months old hold holding golf clubs or filling up to put us in the golf, you know, bucket and we'd be scooping golf buckets for the customers.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, tell the story. What is that story your mom tells? Where your dad had you like chanting some work mantra. You were do you know what I'm talking about? I don't think so. It was like, oh man, we gotta try to find out what that was. It was like work hard. I don't know what it was some work mantra, and you were digging golf balls. I don't even remember the story now.
SPEAKER_00Something about the rock. They just pop us in there. He'd give us, I think it was it was like a penny, a golf ball. He would be like, if you girls go pick up the golf balls when everybody went home, and it was like a penny for every golf ball you could collect, and that's how we made money, that's how we built our social skills, you know?
SPEAKER_01A five-year-old. I'm seriously texting your mom right now. Okay, Dina, I'm texting, I'm podcasting with Serena right now. What is the chant about work that you heard Jim teaching the girls that time?
SPEAKER_00Okay, now I have to delete. It's probably so ingrained in me that I'm just like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We'll see if we can get the answer to that at some point if I even see it come through, because I do have do not disturb on. But um, so the motivational speaker thing, that's awesome. You're just gonna do it basically from now on. I mean, from now till forever. You're just our one. That's for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm just gonna put it wherever it's like.
SPEAKER_00You're looking to pay me, like, yes. I I hope to to light you up.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, exactly. The pizza me, I love it. I I always say I ask questions of anyone who will, you know, or you cannot say how are you, Serenity, without getting a bit of an earful. There's always more to it than that. So I hear you. Um, okay. So would that fall into a daydream? I I like to ask, what's your longest running daydream? Would that be it? Or is there even something more dramatic?
SPEAKER_00I mean, honestly, yes. I think that that would be my longest running daydream. Okay. It's to because, right, your your daydream or dream job or whatever you want to maybe call it is like, how can I do what I love and get paid for it? I know you talk about that all the time. And it's like, so how can I do what I love? Which is again pouring into people, pouring life into people, speaking life over people, getting people excited to be alive on this earth and get paid for it. Um, but weirdly, the reason why it has transitioned from daydream to everyday life is because I realized maybe I don't need to get paid for it monetarily. I think that sometimes the pay that I feel I receive is a lot more like emotional. Um again, when you get that compliment of like, wow, I really needed to hear that. Thanks so much for listening to me. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story because that really touched me as well. Um, I think that's the pay now, you know? And so it's kind of transitioned from daydream to real. But I feel like that is kind of my everyday life now is you know that's really good.
SPEAKER_01Just before we started recording, I was just staring at that mug that I have referenced in earlier episodes where it's a quote by the author, Benjamin Green Gables, and it says, the work for which we are fitted, which we feel we are sent into the world to do, what a blessing it is, and what fullness of joy it holds. I think that's what you're getting at. It's like, I know, I know what I can do and what I'm here to do, and I can do it anywhere, anytime.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01For any reason. Yeah. I can do it within within the job, whatever. So it's really cool. Good for you. You're kind of young to get that. I've been all angsty about this my whole life, Serena. I really want, I really want to be able to do only what I feel fitted for and which I feel sent into the world to do. I don't want to do that other stuff. Don't want to do it again.
SPEAKER_00But yeah. I think we're gonna get the hack. The hack is totally to find something that pays your bills and also allows you to still do that. You know what I mean? Right. So I I think that that's the true key. The unlock.
SPEAKER_01She doesn't remember. She said she needs more clothes, so I'm saying it was something at the rock pile. Well, golf balls. So the key say that again. Scoop and golf balls. Yeah, something golf balls. Say that again, the key the the hack.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think that the total unlock is to know what you're called to do and be able to do that within what you're getting paid for. What's what's paying the bills, and can you do what you know you're called to do within that opportunity? That's like the true chef's kiss, if you ask. It is the chef's kiss.
SPEAKER_01It is the chef's kiss. Oh man. Yeah, I want to talk about that more because I've been I've been I feel kind of gaslit sometimes by the world when I say, like, I don't feel I belong in this, you know, the the different day jobs I have had. I feel I belong in this, and I truly feel this major dissonance and disconnect. And it's I kind of get it's about mindset. You you just need to change your mindset. You just need to be what you're supposed to be within that. And I still feel so much resistance and rebelliousness within me. But it seems like you've really found the peace of mind. Like, no, yeah, I get it. I can be the full me, the correct me, the me that I meant to be right there in the job. Yes, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00And I also I do think that I am in an insanely lucky unicorn job. Because I do, I do agree, you probably have been gaslit with people just saying, like, it is your mindset, it is your mindset. There's a little bit of that, but there's also the sense that you can't, what is the saying? You can't fit a um a round peg square hole kind of thing. Right, a round peg. Square hole. I'm so bad with sayings, whatever that is. Me too. And so it's like sometimes you just need a different environment. And I, by the luck of God, have found that because I think in a lot of my opportunities prior, I'm like, man, I have freedom, but why do I still feel stuck? You know, and um, not until this opportunity have I been like, oh, it really did require a different makeup of a position for me to be able to feel this type of freedom. Okay. So you're not crazy.
SPEAKER_01Okay. We don't have to don't let's not get into it right now, but what like if if it flo if it flows naturally, would you be willing to talk a little bit about some of the misfits? Like what kinds of things with work were a misfit and why? Okay. We may be able to talk about that a little bit. Because I I've noticed, I feel like a lot of people can relate to my feeling that this doesn't feel quite right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But most of the people I've interviewed, even if they were in a job, maybe that's not they aren't that comfortable talking about it in their current job. It's not that safe even to be like, oh, I really hate my job, you know. So but if someone has if you have stories of some miss some sort of misalignment. Yes. Yeah. So maybe we'll get to that a little bit. But I definitely want to get to the thing that fits as well. Um, let's talk. Oh, okay. I like this question too, and I'd be interested because you are such a big personality. So I'm thinking surely at some point, did anyone ever tell you what you should be?
SPEAKER_00You know, not really, but I don't think I let them. I mean it was like, I love you so much. Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby? I'm the boot I'm gonna be, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't think I let them. So good. Okay. Um, all right. So let's get you from Little Girl at the Rock Pile to to real life. Uh, sort of, how did you decide on education, a major, etc.? You can go as far back as you want to get us through that to that story, but yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So I always knew I wanted to go to college because I always knew that I wanted to play some sort of sport in college. And so um it was either gonna be basketball or golf for me. Um, there was so much more money and life balance in golf as a woman. Um and so that was the direction I ended up going. Um, so in terms of where I was going to go, again, I I it's so weird. I'm like a dreamer, but I'm also so practical. So it's like I knew I wanted to fly, but within driving distance to come back home if I had a bad week, you know? And so I was really looking like within probably five hours of where my parents lived. And um I did really well miraculously my senior year at state golf. And so I had a couple colleges that were reaching out to me trying to pursue me to come play golf. And um I just remember really loving Springfield, Missouri. Um, and just the vibe there, the team there. I had known some girls who I played with in high school who went to Drury, who loved it. And I also knew that I wanted to major in something called strategic communications because I knew communications was going to be broad enough that I could go any direction. I knew as a whatever 18-year-old that I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I wasn't gonna take like more of a typical track. Um, but I knew I still wanted that education and I still wanted that strong bachelor's, and Drury University had a really strong uh communications program and golf program. So um that's kind of how I decided on Drury. Uh like I said, played golf. The the education that I got there was amazing because they did a lot of entrepreneurial stuff. Um, you got to like create your own application, you got to create your own passion project, um, like your senior thesis project was with one of the nonprofits in the Springfield area. So I got a lot of like hands-on learning, which I really appreciated. Um, because I I always kind of felt um not dumb, but I struggled with the book smarts sort of thing. Really? Within like my emotional intelligence, I was like, put me in front of anyone, put me in a high pressure situation, put me in a high pressure game or environment, and I will thrive. But um I think a lot of my like energy comes from um I am a little bit, what do they call it, like neurodivergent. Um, I actually waste diagnosed with ADHD. And I always thought that was like, oh, I can't pay attention. And attention isn't the problem with ADHD, that's a common misconception. Um, it's actually that you really hyper-fixate on things, especially things that are interesting to you, and you struggle to fixate on things that aren't because you're so hyper-fixated on the things that are. And so, with that said, there were certain subjects like English, communications, science that I really loved, history. And then there were things like chemistry, math that really sometimes made me feel stupid. And so I loved like stepping into that communications major because it was so hands-on. It was strengthening my strengths in an environment that wasn't just notes and class, notes in class. It was like in the world applied. So um, that's the first time I felt like really smart was when I went to college. And I was like, oh, it wasn't hard. I was just a fish trying to climb a tree.
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah, no wonder. Oh, I love that's such a better story. A lot of kids, you know, do just fine in high school, and then college kind of throws them because it's so such a different kind of studying and stuff like that. I also that I can't tell you how many times neurodivergence is coming up on this podcast. Like we all, we all kind of we're all on a spectrum. Um but the eight that's like that hyperfixating and what interests you. Okay, now I'm going, um, isn't that all of us? Like, what is what does a normal person do? What they just are kind of meh about it all, or what? Because that's all I know is hyper fixating.
SPEAKER_00Totally obsessing and obsessing almost an obsessor. Yeah. Which I love it. Oh my gosh. I'm so I'm not like cute passionate. I'm like, can't think of anything else. This is all that's on my brain, type passionate. Um, so are you trying to change something about that? Or no, I love it. You just lean there. Since I was diagnosed, um, because really it was showing up in a lot of anxiety. And it was anxiety that I knew was irrational. I could feel that it was happening, and I would be like, this is so irrational. And it was because I was really hyper-fixating on my anxiety, which is why I eventually ended up going um to therapy with a sports psychologist, which was really helpful. Big believer in therapy. I love it so much. And uh yeah, ultimately we just kind of talked about how to harness that for the good and how to say, okay, you know, like I'm having the anxious thoughts again. These don't define me, they're not who I am. I always figure it out, and I'm gonna figure it out again, and then like moving on to the next thing. So I was putting a lot of my uh ADHD energy into anxiety, and now I'm putting a lot of my ADHD energy into success and things that are actually helping me. Amazing. It's really kind of a superpower, it's just a matter of, you know, figuring out how to how to use it strategically.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Okay, I I was gonna kind of go to so what do you do for a living? But I think this is where I want to hear your kind of herky jerky journey to this unicorn job that you're in. Tell that however you want to tell it. What were kind of some mismatches? What wasn't really working in your work life?
SPEAKER_00Okay, after school. This is gonna be a hot take.
unknownI love hot takes.
SPEAKER_00You know, I did always hear you just need to find a job and stick it out for three years. Just find a job and stick it out for three years. Cause mind you, so I graduated in 2021 and it was like, get a job, stick it out. You're always gonna hate your first job. Your first job's never gonna be good. You're never and again, I'm very much like, you know, don't don't tell me that. I'm gonna be the I'm it's gonna be different for me, right? It wasn't, spoiler alert. But what I will say is people were like, stick it out for three years, stick it out for three years, you're not gonna love it. It's always gonna suck. So pretty much what happened is I graduated, yay. Um, and at that time I had a lot of crazy things going on in my life, as you know. So fun faculty. Yes, I was engaged to be married to someone else, not Manuel, not my current husband, but I was engaged to be married. And um, about six months before that wedding, in the final semester of my senior year of college, I decided to call off that engagement. And for anyone who's gone through that-is like it was an easy decision. Oh my gosh. Yeah. If anyone's gone through that, know someone who's gone through that, you know that it is painstakingly horrible. All the emotions involved, all the people involved, and really where I'm going with this, all the all the changed plans involved really rock your world. I mean, everything you thought you were for the past four years, um being with this person, um, also being in a very uh controlled environment in college. You're getting ready to go into an uncontrolled environment, and everything about who you thought you were gonna be and where you were gonna go, it's a complete disarray. I mean, like you just are like, holy crap, what am I gonna do? So, with all of that said, I was interning at patio, which is like Veterans United. And so it's home loans, they sell home loans. So I was interning um at the time with them, and they offered me to come on full time as my life was falling apart. And of course, I'm thinking, I'm doing the math, I'm like, I don't want to move home. No offense. Like, you know, I'm like, I don't want to be that person who moves home because everything fell apart. I want to be tough, I want to get through this, I want to find myself again. So to do that, I know I need to make money to pay rent, and I'm just gonna take this job because I love the people here, still do. I love everyone that I worked with. They were so impactful. The people were the best part. Um, and how bad can this be? How bad can this be? How bad can my first job ever in the real world be calling 150 people a day? Cold calls. We're talking freezing. We're talking someone could have been drunk at 2 a.m. and liked something on Zillow, and now I have their phone number and I'm calling them at least five times for the next year type cold call. Um, and so we had a minimum of calls we had to make a day. I think it was around 100. They really wanted you to hit 100 cold calls a day. Um, I learned so many new cuss words. No. I came home every single day sobbing. Like I mean, because it just took the people pleaser in me and it said, Oh, I remember actually my supervisor at the time, and he was right, said, the Serena you are is great. You need to leave her at the door because she ain't gonna make it in here. Because I just it was so ruthless, and people were so horrible that I had to almost like, what do they call that, disassociate from the positive happy vibe, Serena? Because I knew I was gonna be told no so many times, cussed at so many times, hung up on so many times.
SPEAKER_01But of the hundred calls. The serenity that I am does not enjoy you being told. That's one of the things I hate about work often is that we like have to become different people. I do not enjoy that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Go on.
SPEAKER_00And you know, I again, here comes the obnoxious optimist. I do think at that time there were there was a lot of truth in that. Um, what I learned from that is you are going to be put in positions in life and in work where people are gonna tell you no, and it's not a reflection of who you are. Okay. It's a reflection of them being on their way to work and then being hung over because they just like the house at 2 a.m. on Zillow and they're not really serious about buying, and you've called them for the sixth time this week. You know what I mean? Like there it was a them thing, not a me thing, and so it helped me separate that. But, anyways, you know, of the hundred people you'd call, 20 would pick up, 15 of them would cuss you out, but five of them would let you talk to them a little bit about it, and you might get one pre-qualified home loan out of that. And I was trying to get, you know, maybe, maybe a week, maybe a day, maybe a week. It was sales. So that's the gist of this. And so I knew very quickly that this was not going to be something that would continue to be fulfilling for me. But with that said, I knew there were lots of things that I could learn from this. And actually, a lot of the way that I carry myself today, a lot of the resilience that I have today came from the lowest time in my life, from the lowest job of my life. It came like this resilience that I have. Um, and the ability to say, oh, they must have something going on. It couldn't be me, right? No way. Healthy delulu, as we say. So that was my first job. And I knew, like, like I said, very quickly, um, about six months in, I was like, wow, three years is a long way from now. And uh I can't be that person who just tough it out. As a tough person, that took a lot for me to say. I don't think I'm just gonna be able to tough this out. So um, what I did was, you know, I started looking. I think the advice that I would kind of sneak in here to anyone who is unhappy where they're at. A lot of that unhappiness comes from feeling like you're not getting anywhere, feeling like you're not contributing anything, feeling like you're not fulfilled. And if you can take one action every day to make yourself feel fulfilled, even in those moments of hopelessness, those days of hopelessness, those jobs of hopelessness, that's what's going to get you through until your next opportunity, your next big break, because it is coming. If you're listening to this and you're listening to the prophecy by Taylor Swift, and you're like, why is my job like this? Like, better things are coming for you. The best is yet to come. And when you are so hopeless, it can seem like I'm never gonna get out of this. I'm never gonna find my thing, I'm never gonna find something. What if I failed? I can't pivot. This pays the bills, this is comfortable. I owe these people something. You know, I think what filled me with hope during that time was what can I take from this every single day? What can I learn from this H E double hockey sticks?
unknownWhat can I learn?
SPEAKER_00And what am I gonna do about it? And so, with that said, at the year mark, I made it to the year. And if you can help it, my advice, even as a recruiter, is never leave something unless you are in danger, right? Until you have the next thing lined up. And so I had another, I would say, warmer sales call um job lined up with um another sales company. And again, this is where the hot take comes in. I did that, and at month six, I was like, okay, this is a little better, but I'm still cold calling people. People are still angry with me. People don't really want to talk to me. I'm not loving this. Like, there's gotta be something else, you know? And so again, here's maybe a little nugget of career advice. So as soon as I started to feel that again, again, I'm not a quitter. I think a lot of people, if you're quitting because it's hard, that's one thing. I was quitting wanting to move on because I knew it wasn't where I was supposed to be. Right. I knew that in my gut. And so that's when I was like, okay, took to Facebook. I was texting my connections, I was reaching out to people I had interned with, I was posting on Facebook, I was posting on LinkedIn, um, connecting with two people a day on LinkedIn and sending them a custom message that was like, hey, um, I remember I interned with you in college. Are you guys hiring? Um, or do you know anyone who is hiring? Like, that's where you'll see kind of the networking was happening really early in my career of like just trying to find something or someone who knew somebody because people are hiring. Um, it's just a matter of finding who they are. And so, Serenity, that's when you were like, Oh my gosh, my company's hiring. Yes. For a marketing position. Yes. And then that did feel more like you. Yes. That was like the first time in my professional career where I was like, okay, I can do this. Like, this is fun. I like this. I like my team. I like what we're doing. I love the mission. I love the flexibility. I love that I can work from anywhere. And I'm kind of changing the world with some cool data. You know, we were doing market research, and that was really great. And so, um, they, of course, you know, went under and or stopped or whatever. Um, and so they did mass layoffs. Um, but that was the first time that I was like, okay, we're on something here. This ex this exists in some capacity, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we gotta talk about that networking thing for a second, this realm, because I don't know if a lot of people know this. Um the best jobs or the right jobs or whatever sometimes do not even get posted, right? Because it's happening uh through networking. And so it really is the best way to to keep your doors open and to keep in touch, keep in touch with people because as a recruiter, as an executive recruiter, I can tell you the jobs that we are hiring for, that we are this is kind of you're not supposed to say it like this, but just for simplicity's sake, I'm headhunting people.
SPEAKER_00We're not posting our jobs. We don't want hundreds and hundreds of applicants. I'm going through on Facebook groups and community groups and LinkedIn, and I'm trying to find this perfect person and headhunt them and reach out to them. And so we aren't even posting it. And if someone was, you know, telling me, hey, can you take me out to coffee and I want to tell you what I do, and I'm all of a sudden connecting the dots that what they do is what my client needs, I'm like, let's go. Mutual interest here, like everybody's happy. So networking is something that I accidentally did out of desperation that actually reason why, you know, I finally felt hope um year three out of college.
SPEAKER_01So and then like it became your job to be a networker. Go back to you said, okay, as a recruiter, I would tell you don't leave a thing till you have a new thing. Yeah. Now, just as a human, I think, we would say that because you need to pay the bills. But do you mean it in another way, since you said as a recruiter, I would tell you this? Like, do you mean that gap would not look good? Is that kind of what you're saying?
SPEAKER_00You know, so gaps every now and then, explainable gaps, especially, like where you didn't feel safe, where there's other deeper, darker things going on. We understand that happens. I'm not gonna frown or turn away an amazing candidate just because they had a three-month sabbatical in between positions. Okay. But what I will say um is it behooves you to be what we like to call gainfully employed when you are looking. It's a lot like dating. And my cover and I joke about this all the time. It's a lot like dating, right? You have to play it cool. There's like this perfect balance between, hey, I'm interested, but I also have other options. Oh my god. I'll go on a second date with you, but I don't need a second date if you're not into it. You know, it's like letting people know your intent while also saying, I have other things going on for me. And so when someone is coming to me gainfully employed, and they're like, hey, yeah, you know, this really looked interesting to me, and that's why I'm reaching out to you. These are maybe some of the reasons why my current job isn't great. And honestly, you can tell me that. You can tell me the good, bad, the ugly of your current job. Say it eloquently, of course. But if I can understand where you're coming from, of like, oh yeah, my boss is a jerk and he takes credit for everything that I do and he yells at me, I'm gonna be like, oh, I get that. And I understand why you want to leave, you know? So it's like never be afraid to tell a recruiter why you want to leave, but it also is nice because I know you're desirable because someone else is employing you right now. Okay, and so there is, I hate to say, like some aspect of that. Not all the time, but it's like a good general rule of thumb. Very good.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that's helpful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you came to that company that I was working at. You had another job between that one and the unicorn, didn't you? Yes, and that one What I'm talking about. Not talking about that one. Okay, we're not gonna be that was that bad.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh wait, oh wait, no, that was Khalib. I'm sorry. Okay, okay, okay. Yes, yes. So I worked for a company for a year and a half that I did like. And it was probably the cloth and that was right before my unicorn one. Okay. Sorry, I'm getting my dates. Again, I when I knew something wasn't it, I was kind of like, okay, what's next? How are we gonna get there? What is it gonna take? And so I After our mutual company was like, hey, everyone's done. I started working for a really cool company out of St. Louis and I sold continuing education for physicians, for healthcare workers. Oh my gosh. Which was super niche but really fun. So we did marketing to make sure that, you know, doctors, aestheticians, physical therapists, whatever they might be, anyone in the healthcare field, nurses, if they needed to re-up their certification hours, they knew exactly what they needed to do. They got a discount to do it. And we were like the one-stop shop for that. And so I was on the marketing and sales team for them, which was really fun. And that's kind of where my blend of marketing and sales really like kissed for the first time. Okay. You realize sales is what do they need and why do they need it? And marketing is what is their pain point and how can I make that look pretty? So it's like they really go so hand in hand. I just have a really old quote.
SPEAKER_01It's uh that someone re brought into the world, but it's like people don't need a shovel, they need a hole. Like that that's what marketing is. It's not no, it's not trying to sell someone a shovel, it's trying to discover the person or convince them they need a hole. Yes. And you gotta have a shovel to do that. So it's the pain point thing. Is that so good? That's I don't need I didn't even say it right. I'm like you. I cannot do cliches. No, I know I know it wasn't shovel and hole, but it was something like that. Yeah. Somebody tell us. Somebody tell me. Um, I need a like a fo I need a forum or something where people can give feedback on this on this podcast and they can tell me what the real marketing term is. But yeah. Um, so I was thinking of the other job that will not be spoken of um when I so she has had so this is what I'm getting at. You have had for as young as you are, lots of icks. And now you're in this thing that you really like, or we're gonna talk about in a second. But so go back to your hot take. Would you actually tell people that three years thing is BS? Don't even fall for it. You do not have to do that. Would you say that?
SPEAKER_00Straight out of college, yes. And you can quote me on that. Okay. Do not waste time where you know you are not going to grow and that's taking your spark away. I mean, you oh man, and that's just so tough, right? Because you do have to make money and you don't want to be a job hopper. But what I think is worth saying is you can't just expect a 21, 22-year-old to graduate college and know exactly what they want to do. Right. And I wish someone would have told me, I'm so proud of you for taking the leap because I feel like I expedited all the icks, and that's why I'm sitting here as an almost 28-year-old who loves my job. Because I was just like, not for me, and not because I'm quitting, but because I know that the value does not necessarily exist here past a certain point. And I need to be doing the work before I get to that breaking point to have my next thing and hope and pray. And every time I did, I hoped and prayed and had the intention of wanting that to be it. But when it wasn't, I also had to be honest and be like, how can we efficiently pivot out of this into the next thing? So how can we efficiently pivot?
SPEAKER_01Yes. And everyone remember too that she said, because it's not always that easy to jump, unfortunately. I wish it was. Um, but you also talked about do one thing every day that does fill your cup, fulfill you or feel light you up. And I think you meant that in a sort of a work way. So send those networking texts, send those networking emails. What I'm doing, start a freaking podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like write that, write that newsletter. Those things that that make me come alive are really you know saving, saving my life. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Do those things so for you as a person. I think, yeah, that's such a huge, such a huge shake. And help you and do the things that make you feel like you are taking a step in the right direction too.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00With maybe where you're struggling. Because nothing feels worse than feeling stuck and feeling like you're just staying stuck. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever had this experience? I feel like you're kind of saying it. Um I've been in jobs where I could see the levels above me and I didn't want to go to them in that job. And that made me realize, okay, if I don't want to grow here, why would I want to stay here?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Right? Yeah. Is that good? Wow. That's it. Yeah, absolutely. I actually hear that a lot with candidates. I'll be like, well, why are you looking? Is there something wrong? No, actually, nothing's wrong. I love where I'm at, but I know in a year from now I'm gonna want to grow or make more money or have more responsibility, and there isn't room for me to do that, or I don't like what's gonna come with that. I hear that a lot, actually. And that's a perfectly fine reason to pivot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you we've pivoting sounds more than quitting, right? Pivoting does, although I just yeah, I don't know why people are so scared of the word quitting, frankly, because can you imagine if there was no quitting ever? Everyone would just stay in exactly the station in life that they're born. I mean, we quit things all the time, but it's it's pivoting, it's moving on, it's this or that. Yeah, but yeah, I, you know, I kind of like the word quitting because I can be kind of rebellious like that. But so you so we've said you're an executive recruiter. That's what you that's what you do for a living. I think, I think you might need to tell people, you kind of did. You're basically a headhunter. Why do they avoid that word? Is it just sound?
SPEAKER_00No, no, it just kind of sounds violent, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, but that's what you that's what you do. Um you've kind of told us how you got there. Sort of. Is there a is there a good is there a good story for how you actually got into this role? Was it it through networking?
SPEAKER_00Was it I think so. Yeah, it actually was through networking, funny enough, like very accidental networking. And my current boss and I like still laugh about this because it's very funny. Um but I moved back to Columbia because I married a Dominican and he was like, oh my gosh, I love the Midwest. I love Missouri, I love your parents. Let's go to Missouri. I know. What does he think? No, just kidding. I love it. I'm confused. And so we moved to Columbia, and I was still working in my remote job that I liked a lot. That was the sales and marketing chef's kiss that I just told you about for continuing education. Honestly, I was pretty happy there. Um, I had a lot of flexibility, great PTO, great benefits. Um, and I I was just kind of chilling. Uh, not necessarily looking in any type of way, but always be networking. Again, I love like great advice is just like stay active on LinkedIn, not just when you need to be. Befriend two random people a month, a week, send them a note. If you liked one of their posts, send them a note. Love this post, would love to connect. Go on there, it'll recommend like people you have in common, connect, send a couple connection requests, maybe even without a note. Just connect. Like it's it's so easy to do and it's so valuable. And so what happened was I moved to Columbia and I ended up dog sitting for this couple in Columbia because oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with dogs. That's how I should have introduced myself in the beginning. I am a dog-obsessed fiend. They are my children. And so my golden retriever and my new fiend really loved these two Bernese mountain dogs. And so they were just like this group of four best friends. We would dog sit for them anytime they left town. And um, she was connected with a recruiter here in Columbia. And so one day, the girl who I was dog sitting for was like, you know, I would love to introduce you to this person who asked me if I knew anyone who was really talented. And I just feel like you have such a good personality and you're so talented. And I don't even know what you do. And I want to introduce you to. And I, you know, this is how I'm remembering it, right? Like I'm probably paraphrasing a lot of it for the sake of the story, but I was like, oh yeah, let's do it. And so I go and I get coffee with this woman. She is my now boss. Spoiler alert. Her name was Kelly, is Kelly. Um, and so we went and got coffee, and we talked about her dreams to open her own boutique recruiting agency. Because at the time she was working for a company here in Columbia called Permanent Equity. And so they're a private equity company that holds permanently. So they they help mom and pops instead of like buying to acquire and sell, they buy to hold and they care about the business. And so a lot of times when you buy and hold a mom and pop, they might need a CFO and they don't have one. And so they would call Kelly up and say, Okay, Kelly, we just acquired this company. We're so excited about them. We've done kind of like a recon of what might make their executive team stronger and they need a CFO. Here's the eight criteria. Can you go find them a CFO? And she would do that for this permanent equity company and all of their portfolio companies that they were investing in. Anytime they needed a leader, Kelly was the girl to go find the leader. She did such a good job of that that eventually companies outside of the portfolio company were like, hey, could you hire for me? Could you hire for me? Could you hire for me? So all of a sudden, she's getting this outside interest outside of the portfolio companies. And so what she had pitched to me was, I need someone who knows sales, I need someone who knows marketing, I need someone who is teachable, coachable, my God, and who knows nothing about recruiting. Why did she want that? I think you're my girl. Because she is like, I want to teach you everything that you need to know and more. I will mentor you, I will build you up, I will teach you how to do it. You're right how to unicorn. I know. I will teach you how to do what I know. What do you say? And she had said it, you know, it may happen, it may not at that time. She was like, we're just getting all this interest right. And uh it may happen, it may not. It'll be in, I don't know, six months from now. Maybe at the end of the year, I'll follow up with you. And so I was like, hmm, I have no idea what recruiting is. I know I've had my fair share trying to find a job in the past. And I told her, I was like, you know, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at, but like, yeah, let's stay connected. And if you like what you see here today, like, I like you. I remember just loving her as a person and loving that like coaching mentality of like, I'm gonna pour into you. That is so invaluable when you're in your 20s. And so I was like, Bet, let's do it. And so December rolls around, November, December, and she's like, Remember me, you know? Like, let's do this. And so that's where 10th Street Talent was born, which is my current company. Um so we didn't know. You're basically on the ground floor. Yeah. So it's a startup, which is also just like everything I ever hoped and dreamed. Like it's just so amazing. It's so amazing. Um, and so that's that's kind of how this unicorn opportunity came to be. I knew sales, I knew marketing, I was coachable, and I knew nothing about recruiting. And I was like, I am your girl.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what about that's one of my questions always is what does it take to get there? Would she have did she want you to have a degree? Was she glad you had your degree? Did she care?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question. You know, she didn't ask. Honestly, this is what's wild is um this this goes to show the power of the word of mouth, probably, and and that can that mutual connection that we had with my friend that I dog sat for. Um, she, I don't think, ever looked at my resume.
unknownOh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00She might have looked me up on LinkedIn and of course, and actually I've never asked her, but of course I had my education on my LinkedIn. But a lot of the questions that she asked me were about my skills and my experience and like my mindset, like asking me questions that helped discover things about me. Um so she never asked me about that. That is that's exactly that answers that question. Yeah. Um sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. Even when I'm interviewing candidates, sometimes a client might be like they need to have their, you know, like for a CFO, they need to have their CPA. Okay, makes sense. Yeah. But sometimes for like a business development director, they're like, you know what? If they hit all the other criteria education, we'd love for them to have graduated high school. And sometimes we might not even talk about it, you know.
SPEAKER_01So Okay, now look at me just nodding and smiling a moment ago when you said a CFO needs a CPA. No clue. What's a CPA? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Oh it's like a um it makes you a certified accountant, a certified public accountant. Oh, okay. Yeah, sorry.
SPEAKER_01CFO is financial. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, now I'm with you. I wasn't tracking because I was hearing CEO. I'm like, what do they have to have? They just have to have they just gotta have the guts to run a company. That's it. But okay, CFO needs a C P A. Got it. Okay, now I'm with you. Tracking. Um Okay, so what's a day like? What are three things you do almost every day? Or four or five or one, but give us a picture of your day, Serena.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, the first thing that I do is I do wake up early and and I wake up early and I give God my day. And the reason why I've been doing that probably for the past year is because I'm like, anything good or bad, you've got it. Like anything bad that happens to me, you've got it. Anything good that happens to me, you've got it. I don't have to carry the weight of any of it. Here's the day. God, I give you this day. And it's so easy, right? Because especially at 5 30, it's so easy to I have it on my phone. It's my screensaver. God, I give you this day. My I I title my alarm that. People who follow me on Instagram, I'll screenshot it sometimes and post like my next morning alarm and it will just say, God, I give you this day. And it's just so easy. So that's the first and most important thing that I do all day. Um, the second thing is I do something for myself, which is usually going to the gym, getting a coffee, um, walking outside with my dogs. I have to do that. That's so important because you, in order for you to show up to work as the person that you need to be, that your boss and your coworkers and your clients, your candidates want to see, again, you have to pour into your cup so that you can pour into other people's. So I think that's really important. And for me, the gym is that listening to my podcast, listening to my I Do This for a Living, listening to some Cardi P. Listening to some murder mystery. It just really invigorates me, you know, to get the day going. Um, and then let's see. A lot of, I guess a lot of it is around mindset. Um and then I I guess I just get into the office and I remind myself the joke between Kelly and I is today is another survivable day in recruiting. Oh my gosh. Because it it's very high stakes. I mean, it's like dating and it's like real estate, where it's like you are trying to find the one. It might take one month, it might take five, you might get someone to the end stage and they have a family member pass away, or they decide they have another offer, or they get countered at their current company and they want to stay and they change their mind. I mean, you are investing so much into these candidates because I care so much about them and about my client. And they could change their mind at the end of the day. I mean, people are so complicated. That's like the best thing about us and the worst thing about us. But I'm dealing with the most complicated product out here, which are people. Um so then reminding myself today is just another survivable day in fill in the blank for me and recruiting. That's again, whatever happens today. I always figure it out. We always find a way.
SPEAKER_01Serena. You're gonna have to add something to your morning, okay? Call or text Serenity and give her some of this juice. I need it. I need it. It's so positive.
SPEAKER_00Sponsor me.
SPEAKER_01I said it's Alani. Sponsor me. Yeah, totally. A lot of casting. I just think it's um, yeah, it's amazing. Uh, and it's inspiring. And yeah. I think as a non-morning person, I s I save a lot of that for later in the day. And the what like the walk, the and I think I gotta figure out for a while I was waking up to journal and that helped me. I'd wake up and I'd be like, I'm gonna go straight to my journal. And that helped. But it's like I just stopped, I I like liked the sleep better. So I sleep, and then I still will wake up thinking, I'm gonna journal today and I'm gonna walk today, but I do them later. And I just wonder if I need to put something back in the early morning. Cause like you say, show up at work already having filled my cup. I think I need to do that. I think that's really, really good.
SPEAKER_00Have you read the Make Your Bed, a Navy SEAL? Yes. I always make my bed. Ah, same. And so it's like if you make your day, if you make your bed, go out in the day, anything can happen, good, bad, ugly. At the end of the day, you did accomplish one thing and it was making your bed. For me, I think that people can do that in so many different ways. So it's like the day can go where it may, but I walked today. I spent time with my dogs today. I moved my body today. I got sunshine this morning. Like, you know, it's just, and I know not everyone can do that too. Like, you know, my mom goes into work at who knows. Ungodly hours. People who are in healthcare, it's a lot harder, I think. For like her and Manny and John, you know, you're going in so early sometimes that that's impossible. But where you can fill in your cup before stepping into more of a transactional sort of environment, you know.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, absolutely. Um your mom texted back, and this is what it was. It wasn't a chant. It was that your dad called the thing the pile of accountability. Oh my god. Like when he would have you messing with what are you doing with golf balls or something? And it was a pile, and he would say, It's the pile of accountability.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So he'd have us as little girls, mind you, probably like six or seven years old, he would say, you know, what's your goal? And we'd say, Oh, I want to hit of these five balls, I want three of them to hit in the flag. Hit it in the flag. You've seen it at Top Golf, right? Like it was a very similar sort of vibe. Um, I want three of these five to hit in there. That's my goal. And so he'd be like, okay, that's your goal, go for it. And if you did it, great, high five, we got ice cream. If you didn't, you had to do 10 push-ups to earn back your chance to try again to hold yourself accountable to the goal you had set. Oh my, and we loved it. Like, how sick is that? I loved it. I was like, let's go. Oh my gosh, I love a goal. I love ice cream. I'd do anything for a Dairy Queen cone, man.
SPEAKER_01Like, okay, Jim Barry, I'm putting it out there right now. You gotta be on this show too, because you came up in your mom's episode because his response when she said, I think I might go to medical school. And he was like, Really? Do it, go for it. Just, you know, it was so inspiring. And then this the pile of accountability. Let's let's rewind to a story we I can't believe we haven't told, but it um I think you would say that it defines you a lot. Yeah. Your diagnosis when you were very young. Yeah. Yeah. What tell us about that? Because you okay, you said a little bit ago that that first awful job is when you learned resilience. But I think you learned some resilience a little earlier too.
SPEAKER_00It is, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01So what what's that story? What do you what's your diagnosis and how did how'd that go down for you? I know it kind of more from your mom's perspective.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. So I think I was 11 and um all around a pretty healthy kid. I mean, we were going, going, going, gone. We were probably in five different sports and a play, and you know, we had singing lessons, piano lessons, soccer, basketball, golf, track. You know, we'd go meet up with grandma Barry. We had church things, we had church camp, we had school, we had before school practice, like, you know, there were always so many things going on and we lived a very busy life. And so I think at that time, I remember I would, well, TMI for all of you, we're gonna be besties because I used to wet the bed as an 11-year-old. And I remember, you know, 10 and 11, I couldn't go to sleepovers with my friends because I would be like, um, dad, like my friends aren't peeing themselves at night. This is starting to get a little weird, you know? Like you're growing up, especially as a girl, you're like, I know this is weird. This isn't right. Um, and so like it was just this odd thing. Like, there were just odd little things that kept happening. So I would wet the bed, I would drink a crazy amount of water. Like when we would finish a milk or um orange juice gallon jug, I would like sneak into the kitchen, rinse it out, and just drink water out of it because I was so embarrassed at how much water I was chugging, peeing the bed, having to pee all the time. Um I remember in math class, so this was fifth grade, and math was the subject we had right before school, and my hands would like be really trembly and like I would get the cold sweats and feel really faint. But again, I was a and am a pretty tough person. Like genuinely pain wise and emotion wise, I am tough. And so I just remember being like noted, but I'm not gonna complain about it. Like, what am I gonna do? Go to the nurse until the day of my diagnosis. Um, you know, my parents were aware, but a lot of it was because. Because I was downplaying it. Like, hmm, I'm really thirsty and I'm peeing the bed every night. But other than that, I'm fine. But it's like weird things were happening. I was losing a lot of weight. Like I was really, really thirsty. Um, I I wasn't making sense sometimes. And there were just like these weird things, right? So, anyways, um, one morning I was going to school and I I was trying to cut a grapefruit very independent girly. And I couldn't do it. And I just collapsed. And I remember my dad coming in and being like, Are you okay? And again, you're just kind of like, Yeah, I'm good. I don't know what's going on. I can't cut this grapefruit. Okay, well, I'll cut it for you. Let's go to school. Like, here's a Gatorade, everything's gonna be okay. Call me if you need me. And so that day I kind of like collapsed in class, and my two guy friends kind of walked me to the nurse. Luckily, my mom was in rotations or residency, I don't really remember, with pediatrics. And they got me in that day, thank God, because I had gone, I was going into something called diabetic ketoacidosis. Oh my gosh. Which is where your blood has so much thick sugar in it that it becomes acidic and starts poisoning you from the inside out. I mean, that's like such a dramatic way to say it, but I'm not a doctor and that's how it works. So first you start getting sick because your body is just this whole time you're peeing with type one early onset because your body's trying to dump this glucose. It's trying to get rid of all this glucose. You're not supposed to have this much sugar. But I had stopped making insulin, which is what brings your blood sugar down. A normal human, it does an amazing thing for you and it constantly calculates it all the time. And mine was malfunctioning. And so, um, yeah, they got me into the hospital and they were like, we're gonna have to take you down to Colombia. Um, you can't eat for the next, you know, 24 hours. We're gonna monitor your fasting blood sugar. And I got to Columbia and was entering DK, and they said, You have type one diabetes. And at that time, there just wasn't a lot of research around it. There was no social media, you know, and um I had heard diabetes and I was like, something right. I don't have diabetes. You know what you think when you hear diabetes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would have thought that's what old women in nursing homes have.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. And so, uh, and they're actually very different diseases, not related at all. Fun fact, so crazy that they're called the same thing, but um yeah, not related at all. Yeah. That's what you're saying? At all. Okay. I mean, they all come down to maybe blood sugar issues, but like as far as what they stem from and what they need for a person, like they're just very different. And so it I was just super uneducated. I was a child. And for a doctor to come in and say, your life will never look the same. I mean, I think he said something along those lines. My gosh. Your life will never look the same. You will never go to the moon, you will never be in the army, and sports are gonna be really difficult. And I remember just looking at my dad, and that is the first time in my entire life I have ever seen my dad cry. And one of very few times, because I just remember they were like, What is going on? And I just remember being like, we're gonna figure it out. And and that was naive. You are an obnoxious optimist. I know it's sickening, and I'm sorry. And you know, as they as they started to tell me that comes with, you know, 12 shots a day. And that comes with sleepless nights. And back then you had to manually check your blood sugar every you know, hour and a half, two hours, and I had to sit out of some things, and I had to learn some things, and I had to calculate everything. And something funny they say about type one diabetics is that your constant state of being is dying. And in order to not be dying, you have to constantly think about these things. My constant state of being right now is my body trying to kill itself. Because if I were to unplug from this insulin, it is like oxygen. And if I do not have insulin, I will die. I mean, like within, you know, whatever day. So it's just kind of wild. But you know, a lot of those things, I remember praying to God like for probably the first five years, like, God, please take this away. You're a good God. I know you can do this. Take it away. And I remember looking up about year four and being like, I'm I'm pissed. I'm like, I'm praying, I'm trying, I'm trying to be positive. And realizing that was very terrifying of like, oh, I might have this forever. Like, this might be my life. You kind of think the first couple years are just like getting through it, and then eventually you're kind of like, this might be what I'm stuck with, and what am I gonna do now? And you realize it's like the choose your hard. Have you ever heard of that? It's like it's hard to be sick, it's hard to be healthy, choose your hard. And it's like I at a very young age, at 14 probably, was like, okay, I could not care, and I could just eat whatever I want and not check and not, you know, just go on living it and ignore it and die. Or I could go on living and like, yeah, type 1 diabetes, like I don't live with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes lives with me. I'm the driver, I get to decide. And I think that challenges in our life can be a lot like that. They can be defining or they can shape you. And I I prefer more of the latter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I I love I love that your obnoxious optimism was the first thing that happened. You were kind of like, we're gonna figure this out. And then it was a it was later down the road when those prayers of take this away, you realized I don't think he's gonna. And that's when you really had to you had to reach deep, find a new, a new framework. Okay, how am I gonna look at it now? If before I was looking at it like I can be optimistic and grit my teeth through the part where I have to have this, but then he's gonna take it away. But then when there came a point where you knew it wasn't maybe gonna go away, then you found a new way to cope and way to drive. I love it.
SPEAKER_00And I think that along with even your job, like nothing is linear, especially in a struggle. I think that there are still days where it like brings me to my knees, and there are still bad days at work. It's like bad things happen. It's just like, how are you going to carry it? And knowing that there are going to be bad days and it's kind of accepting this was a bad day. This is awful. I don't love this for me. I don't love this for me.
SPEAKER_01Oh god. Yeah. So let's I just yeah, I wanted everyone to know that about you and how you tell that story. And it it's good. I I did I like I said, I know it from the mama's perspective, and whoo, I we just it hit real hard. It was like, oh gosh, our our baby's life has changed forever. Like, and it sounds like the doctor really wanted to make you know that, which is great.
SPEAKER_00Which you kind of get it. Like, I mean, uh the only reason that I was positive at my diagnosis at the time was because I was so naive to how devastating the disease actually is and how scary it actually is. You got to uh yeah, learn slowly.
SPEAKER_01You learned slowly how and got to accept it as a kid. My my kids were the same way when I was diagnosed with cancer. They hardly knew what the word meant.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01You know, I remember one time John writing me a note, I'm sorry you have cancer, and he spelled it with an S. Like he didn't even know how to spell it. And I was like, I really love that my, you know, seven-year-old doesn't know how to spell cancer. It's not really, you know, so yeah. Um let's talk, let's let's get back to your your unicorn job that um doesn't maybe require as much resiliences because it's still it's mostly wonderful. Although you did have a really awesome LinkedIn post a while back about what did you call it? You didn't call it imposter syndrome. You said something like my job makes me feel dumb every day or something.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Do you remember that? Yep. Is that how you said it? And that's my favorite thing about it. My job makes me feel dumb every day, and that is my favorite thing about it. What does that mean? It challenges me in the ways that make me like a better person. Oh my gosh. I I think that it's important to be reminded what you don't know because then you get to stay curious. And I think that remaining curious is like half of the fun in life and work in relationships. Um, actually, when Manny and I got married, uh we we had to do the old like premarital counseling sort of thing through our church. And they were like, one of the top three ways to ensure that your marriage stays passionate and fun is like to be curious about each other. And I try to take that into everything that I do now and especially into my work. Um, when I see someone's background that doesn't make sense to me, when um maybe I get feedback from a leader or a coworker that I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Um, instead of being judgmental, be curious. Yeah. And so I think that that's really important. And that's one of my things that I love. I'm always having to challenge myself to lean into something that makes me uncomfortable. And I really do think that that is where growth happens, and actually something I've prayed about my whole career is I want to be somewhere where I can grow. And so having that opportunity, both professionally, personally, education-wise, what is a CPA? I didn't know that two years ago. So it's like, yeah, I'm always getting hit with new things, taking it with grace. I probably have to work twice as hard as my fellow recruiters because most of them have been doing it for I think minimum of 10 years. Oh my god. So they are rock stars, and I can go to them with anything and they coach me and they have taught me everything that I know. So when they are in a situation that's difficult, maybe a candidate's asking to negotiate something weird or a client's asking for something that we maybe can't deliver on 100%, they know that that's the problem. And for me, it's like, okay, that's the problem. And then also again, wait, what's a CPA? Like what, you know, I have to do this background research to even get on the level that they're playing on. Um, and again, that's I think where a lot of the growth happens, which is great.
SPEAKER_02But also exhausting sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Also exhausting, totally. And yeah, we I talked about that with an early guest, Josh, when I said, What do you wish about work? And he said, I wish I always knew what to do. Like I always knew the answer. You know, he's in tech. And then he said, But I guess then you'd get bored, you'd never be challenged, you know? So sometimes the things we wish aren't really what we want. I love that about being curious about your spouse too. Uh you I always heard as a teenager on TV my parents didn't say this because we had anyway different ways of talking about it. But the cliche, don't marry someone or or date them thinking you're gonna change them.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So if they're already like they're they're not what you want, don't think you're gonna change them into something else. But I think it's another you should also marry a person not thinking they're never gonna change because people do change and evolve. And you better be in it for that ride, you know, be a see if you're see if you're willing for that. Like if you marry someone thinking they better not ever change, you're gonna be in trouble too. Because people do. People do. Um okay, so so you've already told us that you're a zillenial. Because I was going to ask if your generation, if stereotypes of your generation play in for you, like do you feel so gen Z when it comes to work? Do you have any perspective on that? Like you're you it sounds like you work with people who are in a different generation than you. Do you see differences that seem to be generational?
SPEAKER_00Yes, one hundred percent. I I think that is probably one of the most difficult parts of my job, which I understand, but I don't sometimes. Um I when when a CFO hops on the phone with little old me, little do they know that little old me is the one thing standing between them and a $250,000 a year salary. And that and that's true. And so there were times in the beginning when I first started this job where I walked into every meeting feeling very insecure. Like they're gonna think I'm too young, they're gonna think I'm incapable. And honestly, you kind of get the dud every now and then who will think that, unfortunately. Always be nice to your recruiters, people. They hold the power, truthfully. Um and so the first part of that was I was really sensitive to is this person taking me seriously? Do they like me? Do they think I'm good enough? And something that my mentor Kelly told me is you don't need to be liked in that call. You need to be respected. And to be respected, you need to know what you're talking about. So the more you educate yourself, the more you know what you're talking about, the more confidence you're gonna have. And they cannot take that from you. And so that's why before every call, before every interview, I am making sure I know their experience front to back. I'm making sure I know my clients' needs front to back. I know the history of the company, I know what they do, I know their profit margins, I know where their pain points are, why they need this hire, why this hire is happening, so that I can walk into that as a zillenial, but hold my head high and say, asking the hard questions. Oh my god. Because I I like to come in with some hard hitters.
SPEAKER_01So do you know, do you know um the unwritten things about a company that you're trying to like would you do you know if the boss, for instance, has a strong personality? Sure, yeah, yeah. You know things like that? Do you yeah? And you're able to are you able to talk freely with someone who you're recruiting and say it's a like high demand culture or something.
SPEAKER_00I could, but I will say um our company is in a really cool spot where we get to be really picky with who we take on as clients at this point. So in my first year of working there, you know, you kind of you're excited and you'll work with anyone and everyone. And now we kind of have like a, hey, like if you're gonna be our client, these are the types of things that we wanna see. And so luckily that's not really a reality for me because we do such a good job like vetting who we're hiring for on the front end. So everyone we work with is very wonderful. Now there are certain situations where, and I haven't personally been on any of these, but where it it might be a higher demand culture, or, you know, maybe the dress code is a little bit more professional and um, you know, you can't cuss in the office. Um, whereas other places are maybe more up and coming and it's a young group of leadership and they are kind of throwing an F bomb every now and then, whatever it might be, you know, it's like you can kind of help give them an idea of the culture fit because you want it to be a fulfillment on both on both sides. Um, our guarantee is actually if I hire someone for you, dear client, I can guarantee that they will stay at your company for 120 days. They will be happy and they will stay. And if they don't, I will rerun the search for you. And so I need to make sure that they have a really good understanding of the boss. They interview with me twice, really in-depth, hard-hitting interviews. Then they'll interview with the head hiring client and then probably the rest of the team for like a final on-site. Um, we do things like personality assessments, like multi-science personality assessments that help get an idea of them at their best and their worst and how they show up during conflict and how you can best support them and onboard them. And um, that's really helpful because the more you can understand them. Going back to our saying from earlier, you're not gonna fit a circle into a square peg, you know, it's like you want to make or however the say goes, you don't you want to make sure that there's good alignment on both sides. That's very important. And that's really where a lot of that effort and emotional like caring comes in is I you develop a relationship with the candidate and the client, and you want it to be a mutual fit, and you hope it is, and you not only emotionally culture fit, but also from the skill set side of things, try to find that match. So okay.
SPEAKER_01So as far as cliches, I liked your goldfish climbing the tree one. That was great. That's a good one. So tell me once and for all, maybe not once and for all, but the question, what are your weaknesses? And then people do dumb things like, Oh, I'm such a perfectionist. That's my weakness. What's the truth? What do you want to hear when you're asking someone about their weaknesses? Do you even ask that?
SPEAKER_00Okay, another hot take.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00A recruiter should not be asking you that. Yes. Why would you yeah? Yeah, that's really tough. Because um, and and we at my company, again, why I love it. I love the mission behind it. We know that you are giving us an hour of your day. So as much as you have prepared for this interview, I'm preparing for your interview. So I know what you did eight years ago. And I want to know why you left. And I want to know, you know, oh, I see that one year you were in charge of eight million in revenue, and then the next you were in charge of 10 million in revenue. How did that happen? What was the success story behind that? And then why do you think it wasn't 15 in revenue? Could you have gotten there? What was holding you back? You have to give your candidates the due diligence of I respect you and your time, and you are giving me time, and I need to come ready knowing some things about you. Asking what are your weaknesses is a really vague, open-ended question that can sometimes insinuate, I really don't know anything about you, and I'm hoping you're just gonna give me something. So good. So, why I mean, like honestly, say a silly weakness. If if they're asking you that question, you can come with, I'm too organized, I'm too positive. Oh my god, because they they should not be asking. Yeah, they should not be asking you that. They should do the due diligence on, you know what you could actually say back if you really wanted to get them. And I'm giving you this advice as someone who would be able to answer it. If someone said to you, Serenity, what are your weaknesses? What would you say your weaknesses are? I would say as a candidate, what do you think my weaknesses are given my experience? Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02So good.
SPEAKER_00Like you will see them go crazy. Okay. So hot. If you're desperate for a job, maybe don't do that. Because you also want your recruiter to like you. You really do. There is a lot of that. Um, I want to make sure you're a stand-up person. So if you if you're stopping, you know, I don't know why. But also, I just want to ask you that question. I wouldn't.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna join your hot takes game and say, try not to ever interview when you're desperate, because you will say whatever it takes. The the things I have said I would love to do for you. I once was asked, I look I can't, I was gonna save this for like my next book, but I just love it too much. But a person who I was interviewing for a job and they wanted this certain kind of person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I kind of knew it wasn't me. Like that particular skill they were looking for or personality trait was not me. And I wanted so bad to say, I fight my nature eight to five every day, and I will do it for you too. That's it. That's what I wanted to say. But oh my gosh. Yeah, I love that. I love that advice. They should not be asking you that. And here's how to put it back in their face. Okay. Let's go to a little bit of a function, let's go to some fun sections. Let's see. What I don't know how long have we been going a bit. So we're gonna just do a little bit more. Yep. And then I'll I'll cut if I need to, but I hope I don't have to. Just maybe it's me. So these are just things about you, Serena. What what do you like to do?
SPEAKER_00Oh, so many things. I love to be outside. I love to be outside. That's one thing that I also really like about my job because Kelly knows that we put a lot into our people and our job and our work. We also have the opportunity to like take a walk, to go grab a coffee. Nice. Like you can, if you need a second, like if you need to recharge after back-to-back interviews, like I love to be outside and to just like reset and remind myself look up at the sky. There is bigger things in this world than the crisis I'm experiencing right now. Whatever it might be. So yeah, I love to be outside, love to golf with Manuel. Um, I love, love, love to walk. I love a hot girl walk. That's a zillennial thing. I will coin that. I love a hot girl walk. What is a hot girl walk? It's pretty much just. Going on a walk and feeling good about yourself. Oh, hot girl. So anytime you go on a walk, you can just say, I'm going on a hall girl walk. So it reminded me, we'll go on a hallgirl walk.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's I can't wait to ask Manny how his last hot girl walk was. That's gonna be fun. That's gonna be I thought you meant it's been very, very hot in Missouri. And I've been walking like when it's you know, hitting, getting up close to 90s, sweat pouring down my face. My daughter-in-law does hot yoga. And so I just tell myself this is a hot walk, like she does hot yoga. I can do this.
SPEAKER_00We're sweating, we're purging. Yes, anything outside. Oh my gosh. Love to travel. We travel a lot. We go see his family, obviously, in the Dominican, and um just being in the sun, like that's just really something that connects me. I think that comes from being a golfer and getting paid to be outside for a minimum of like four hours a day, every day, and then going to, you know, my first nine to five. I was like, wait, what is happening? Why am I caged in this building?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So love to be outside. I love to walk. I love to be outside. Um, those are two things.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I I was I was leaving work. I was, but I have to ask this one more question because you have hint you have hinted a couple of times a very your job is very big and heavy. I mean, it's it's a big freaking deal. And do you I when I have that, when I feel like, oh my god, what I have to do tomorrow is so overwhelming. The Sunday night blues can hit very, very hard. Do you get those or do you really not andor have a good way to fight them? That the the almost performance anxiety, like tomorrow, what if everything falls apart tomorrow and I can't do what I what is asked of me.
SPEAKER_00Do you ever feel like yes, but it's usually because I'm putting it on myself. That's kind of where the joke that my mentor and I like I told her in one of our last one-on-ones is like today is just another survivable day in recruiting. And it's important, but nobody's gonna die. You know? And so uh I think that's one aspect of it is reframing it, reframing the urgency. I think one of the best things about me as an employee is that I will always give 100% and I will always have really high urgency. And sometimes that's what hurts me and gives me maybe the Sunday night blues. Um, but then on the other hand, because it is very similar to like sales and it's based off of like appointments and interviews, I think um I'm really blessed to be able to structure my Mondays in a certain type of way. And so usually my Mondays are a lot more like get ready for the week, ease back into it, you know, make sure that I followed up with everyone, make sure that my, you know, my CRM, like my sales pipeline is really clean, and what is my attack for the week and how can I make these next five days super intentional? Um, and so I try to do that where I can where it makes sense now. If that's fabulous, final offer stages with a candidate. I'm about to get them that offer as quick as possible. I'm always doing my best to like get it done. But um, you know, everybody else is usually busy on a Monday too. So it's just kind of one of those things.
SPEAKER_01You're in what do you call in general it's client services? I would say so, yeah. Because I'm the company. Yeah. The company is the client and you're trying to get them the right person. So that company does not have other recruiters trying to fill that same spot, right? So you're not in competition.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, correct. We're like solely exclusively their talent partner. Okay. Because we don't just do hiring, like we're not just slinging resumes. I'm like vetting them, researching them, we're looking at their social media, we're having them fill out a career history form, we're doing reference checks on them. I'm spending hours with this candidate before they ever meet my client. I'm like the crazy gate. If you're crazy or you're unqualified, you're not gonna meet my client. So cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. I happen to know of you that you could talk probably talk about anything and be an engaging conversationalist about anything. But if you got to choose, if you're at a dinner party and you get to choose, like what is a thing you could talk about for long periods or over and over, or that tends to always come up if you're leading a conversation? Anything?
SPEAKER_00You know, funny enough, sickeningly enough, probably my type one. I have such a weird romantic relationship with it in in the past two years. Where I have No, I was like afraid.
SPEAKER_01I was when I brought it up, I'm like, I bet she's sick of talking about this. No.
SPEAKER_00See, I love it. I think that it makes me so much of who I am. And I get a lot of inside scoop on how our bodies work so freaking miraculously.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I think what is it? The stat is I have to think about 48 things every single day in relation to my blood sugar, one of them being food. There are 48 things at play 24-7 that are affecting your blood sugar. Now I read that on Instagram. Who knows? Don't quote me, guys. But that's a lot. And so it's like, it's so crazy that your body is just like petering along, doing the thing perfectly. And I'm over here like beeping, cyborg, the the my thing's popping out. I gotta change my needle. What's going on? I gotta eat something. We're in the middle of nowhere, and I gotta like ding ding ding, you know, my pump has 5% battery. You know, there's just so many things. But I love to talk to people who are curious about it and educate them on it because I think it can also help give them an understanding for how miraculously their body works. Um, Manny would tell me all the time that otherwise he would take for granted. He's like, I had no idea. When your pancreas wakes me up at 4 a.m., you would think I would be angry, but I'm not. I feel bad for you. And then I'm like, thanks, my pancreas works. That's so great.
unknownThat's cool.
SPEAKER_00I'd love to talk about it. I think it's I think the human body is such a miracle and it's so amazing when everything is going right. And so I love to talk about type one, actually. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When do you feel most like yourself? Who you are, what you believe in, what you're doing are all aligned. Mmm.
SPEAKER_00When do I feel the most like myself? Oh my goodness, that's such a good question, Serenity. When do I feel the most like myself? Honestly, when I'm on a walk with me, any of my dogs, the weather is a crisp, you know, like 70, the sun's setting over the fields. Like, I just feel like I'm so connected to nature, to God, to the love of my lives. Dogs, dogs are so cool because they're such a great representation of like unconditional love and delight. Like there's the saying that says, The Lord delights in you. And one of my very old mentors from when I was really young, you know, I would be like, What does delight even mean? And he's like, you know, when a dog just comes up to you and just kisses you on the face, that's delight. Oh my gosh. And the Lord delights in you. And so I just I feel like everything all is well in the world. Like when that's the setup, all is well in the world. You got your comfy walking shoes on, maybe a water bottle, out with the dog, sun setting, weather's beautiful. That's like I'm in my element. Talking about life, talking about our feelings, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Oh my gosh, a good big long conversation with Michael can fix me. Yeah. So I love it. It gives me hope. It's like, oh, we hit we still have things that we're dreaming about and thinking and planning. And yeah, I love it. I love that too. Um, do we have time for a few more? Oh gosh, yeah. Okay. I do. Do you do you feel like a grown-up?
SPEAKER_00Oh my. Um, how old you are. And it's so funny because it's so true what they say. You want to be a grown up, want to be a grown-up, want to be a grown-up. I feel like everything that I'm doing today is like, I want to feel how I did when I was a kid, I want to feel how I did when I was a kid, I want to feel how I'm talking well. Um so not yet. Not quite. Oh, look at that. I would say not quite. I wouldn't say and it's because I fight it. I fight it a little bit. I love, I love that there is still so much to learn and know. I love that I don't have it all figured out. I love that. I'm just trying to do the next right thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that's the so do you know do you know what you want in life? Or do you look maybe not that far ahead?
SPEAKER_00Or do you have it? I literally feel so content. I'm not trying to be cheesy. Um, you know, I rent a three-bedroom house, I've got two cute dogs, we have vehicles, we have amazing jobs, I live close to family. Um and I always figure it out. Yeah. I think that's important to remember. Like, even when these hiccups happen, when bad things happen, it's like I always figure it out. And I look messy, but I do. And like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, obviously, we want to have kids, and those things will just come in such due time. And um, yeah, I really love like my day-to-day life, like finding the little things. I one of my biggest things is like to romanticize your life. I love just feeling like I'm in a movie. Like, get my get my coffee in the morning. I'm like, thanks, girl. Play the theme song. Let's go.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right. Like, be like Kronk in Emperor's New Grove. Play your own theme song. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00And I truly never thought I would be, yeah, like where I am. Honestly. I would my career journey specifically was so miserable for so long. That every day I wake up and I'm like, I get to go to work today. Oh my. And I'm like so pumped that I like it. I like who I work with. I like what I'm doing. There is a mission within it. I can have my life outside of it and they all coexist harmoniously. Yeah. And like, it's just great. So great.
SPEAKER_01What did what did Nasyn Brandsford call it? Oh no, I've forgotten. Um, ecosystem. Yeah. Your ecosystem is in place. You got all the pieces and they work together and they feed each other, and yeah. Yeah. Love it. If you bumped into yourself as a high school junior or senior, which I know are big years for you in your life, and could drop a hint, what would you say? And you're dropping a hint like brace yourself, or you know, like, or such and such is gonna be so good or something.
SPEAKER_00I have like the easiest answer to this, actually. Um it's a quote that changed my life, and it's so simple. I would hug her and I would say, the best is yet to come for you.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. Because I love that you would hug her.
SPEAKER_00I would. I would hug her. Being in high school as a girl, it's tough out there. Oh yeah, yeah, I would hug her, and I would hug her because, and again, I know we can only cover so much, but it's like, and we all have our things, don't compare mountains, right? Uh my favorite author said that. Hey, Serenity Bohan. Oh sweetheart. We all have our mountains and our challenges, and I had a lot between those times and now, and I have earned and scrapped through everything to get to where I am. And I know that she has like some hard stuff to get through, and I would just remind her that the best is yet to come.
SPEAKER_01I love it. I love it. And I love that you would hug her because I just I love that the that therapist, that therapy tool to go back to the hard, uh, a hard time when you were a kid and be there for that be there for that person, be there for that kid, and tell them, Yeah, it's we gotta I love it. That's a great way to take care of ourselves. There's a movie called Disney's the kid where a scene actually happens like that. And I mistakenly watched it for like the third time. I'd seen the movie before, yeah, but I was watching it on the plane to Hawaii. I sobbed, like I've got my headphones in, and that scene came and I wept. Michael and Jake are like, what is happening? I'm like, I mean, it was bad. It was like, okay, that's maybe not the airplane movie for me. But and that's why, because he gets to go to himself as a kid and make it better. A bad moment. Okay. Let's go to the the ending, the wonderful It worked for me. Yeah. Something big or small that worked for you once, like an aha moment, or that regularly works for you to help you find more meaning in life. Mmm.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, that's such a good question. Um, unfortunately, it can get expensive, but like treating yourself to something. For me, I am a material girl in a material world. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. Um, but it it really can be like so easy in terms of like there's a really cute like mom and pop Italian restaurant right next to my office. There's a coffee shop next to my office. It's like if for $7, I can just go again remind myself like it's gonna be okay. This is a small little snippet of joy in your day. Like, I'm gonna do it because that's what I would do. You know, if you texted me, or my sister, Haley or Jaden, texted me, or Manny or my best friends from all across the world texted me, it's like and said, I had a bad day, or oh my gosh, can you hop on the phone? What would I do? I would drop everything. I would probably door dash them something and I would listen to them. And so it's like I will get in my car. Sometimes I'm feeling music, sometimes I'm not. I'll journal about it, or sometimes I'll just cry, you know? And it's like, and then I treat myself and I do what I would do to my friends. Treat yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that's the real that's it right there. Do treat yourself like you would treat your friend. Yes. I love that message.
SPEAKER_00It's such a good idea. And again, yeah, I just feel like we have to get out of this idea of like self-love as like you have to go get a facial or get a pedicure or like do these really insane things. It's like it could be just like the smallest amount of dopamine to trigger because you are worth that. And I don't know, that just like really helps me. I just like romanticize that a lot. Um, and so one in a day, you know, just being like, I did everything I could do today. And usually that's true for me. I'm not someone who half-asses anything. And I know that and I respect that about myself. So if things don't go your way, it's like the whole bus thing. Have you ever heard of that? Where it's like, if you see your bus, run like hell to catch your bus. And guess what? If you don't catch it after running like hell, it wasn't your bus. Whoa. But you can't pray to catch the bus and walk to the bus or lollygag to the bus. You've got to pray to catch the bus, run like hell to catch the bus. And if you don't catch that bus, it was not your bus. So some days you just have to pass it up and say, my next bus is coming. And I'm really leaning into that this year specifically. I have not always been good at that. But giving myself the benefit of the doubt has been a really big aspect of that. I know I try hard. You know you try hard. If you're listening to this, you're a good person, most likely. Yeah, that's so good. And like having that faith in yourself and knowing that you're deserving of like a little treat, whatever that looks like.
SPEAKER_01So I love that. I used to, in one of my um hard or jobs, people would ask me, How was your day all the time? And I would just flinch, like, don't ask me how the day was, because the day owes me nothing and tends to work real hard to make me hate my life. But I would try to turn it in my head. How was I to the day? That's how I tried to switch it. Serena. Did I do no? I tried. I wasn't always great at it, but yeah. So okay, that was beautiful. Serena, Cyrilla, Barry. Thank you so much for being on my show. I have you've been on my list the whole time. I couldn't wait to have you. I want to have you again. And as I said, world, you have met her. I know you'll never forget her. Please make room for her, this shining light. So thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. What an honor. Truly an honor. Love you so much. And thanks for having me. You've been along for most of this journey. So I'm happy you got me to this unicorn job that I have today.
SPEAKER_01So And now you're my inspiration. You're the wind beneath my wings, Serena Zarella Barry. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Bye.