Start your career where you can grow.



Sarah decided to take the road less traveled and instead of taking a job
with a major company she opted to take a job at Startup. In the basement of a house.
She was interested in where could she learn the most and where could she learn
the fastest?



Keep making
changes to your life until it’s the life you want or the life you deserve.



The above quote is Sarah’s favorite. When I heard this quote, it made me
think that it predisposes her to have what I call disruptive internal
conversations. Although she attributes it to her friend, Drew Dudley. This quote,
“Keep making changes to your life until it’s the life you want or the life you
deserve” primes the person who is thinking about it to make continuous course
adjustments. Using inner conversation self access if your life is the one you
want or the one you deserve, and if it is not change it.



Learn to see the person and not the stereotype.



Sarah and I had a beautiful conversation about learning when to compete
and when to collaborate. She learned, “if you compete against other people
you're never going to learn, and you're never going to be a true part of a team
or get anything legitimate accomplished.” There were times in her career when
she felt like she was being asked to educate her future boss. Today, she thinks
her life would have been easier had she been more generous. She had to learn to
see the person and not the stereotype. She admits she is still learning to meet
people where they are at, but it is a good reminder to see the human in people.
See their fallibility.  



Team versus
Family.



One thing I learned from Sarah was that although you should not think of
you work team like family, they are like family in one particular way, you do not
always get to choose who is on your team. I do however think that it is the
same on teams. The coach decides who is playing and who is not. The important thing
to remember from our conversation is that teams, always have the best players
on the field. Some people may not be on the team, but they can still be part of
the family.



There is no
such thing as hacking growth.



Sarah reminds us that there are no silver bullets. That growth is as she
put it, an exercise in being
stubborn and resilient and trying things until they work”. It is not this cool
thing you see in the movies it is hard and sometime difficult work



Imposter Syndrome is common.



We had a great conversation
about how some of the most impressive people have Imposter Syndrome and we need
to recognize that doubt is part of us focusing on relentless improvement.



I hope you enjoy my conversation with Sarah because there are lots of nuggets in this episode.