Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
Speaker 2: and speaker.
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
Speaker 3: and course creator. We are two working parents who love
Speaker 3: our careers and our families.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
Speaker 2: how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
Speaker 2: From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This
Speaker 2: episode is airing in mid September of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Sarah is going to be interviewing Erica Arisbaddan, who is
Speaker 2: the former CEO of Barstool Sports, so she has a
Speaker 2: lot to tell us about careers and business and life.
Speaker 2: She is the author of a book called No One
Speaker 2: Cares About Your Career, right, Sarah? Is that how? That's
Speaker 2: the book?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: And I love the title. I feel like it's so
Speaker 3: descriptive and just very honest. It's a very honest book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the idea that like nobody cares about your career,
Speaker 2: I guess it's more not that like nobody has any
Speaker 2: interest in it whatsoever, but more that you are the
Speaker 2: one who kind of has to take charge of it
Speaker 2: because there's not some career fairy godmother out there looking
Speaker 2: out for you or designing your career path or telling
Speaker 2: you what is the best next step. You kind of
Speaker 2: have to figure that out for yourself. But that is
Speaker 2: part of taking your career seriously, which is something that
Speaker 2: we definitely advocate here on this podcast. So, Sarah, did
Speaker 2: you have a clear vision of what you wanted your
Speaker 2: work life to look like before you started working?
Speaker 3: To some extent, yes, I feel like that vision has
Speaker 3: shifted over time. And honestly, if I didn't have my
Speaker 3: blog actually see in writing what I thought my vision
Speaker 3: would be, I'm not sure I would remember this. But
Speaker 3: I even noted back like fifteen years ago or more
Speaker 3: that I wanted to do be a part time pediatric indocronologist.
Speaker 3: So I must have had some other ideas in mine.
Speaker 3: I might not have wanted to voice them because that
Speaker 3: would have felt risky at the time, But I kind
Speaker 3: of always knew I wanted to do a lot of
Speaker 3: different things. I knew I wanted to do medicine, I
Speaker 3: wanted to see patients, I wanted to do pediatric indochronology,
Speaker 3: and I do feel like along the way, I have
Speaker 3: then played with things. We've done career crafting episodes where
Speaker 3: we talked about various things. But I do think the
Speaker 3: true it's so true what Eric's title says, which is
Speaker 3: that like, no one is going to hand you on
Speaker 3: a silver platter, like this is what your day to
Speaker 3: day life and career will look like. And here's a
Speaker 3: step you could take, and here's a leadership position you
Speaker 3: could take, and here's.
Speaker 4: A pathword upward for you.
Speaker 3: Like there may be some mentorship that help you see
Speaker 3: what possibilities there are, but the only one that's really
Speaker 3: going to be invested in what that path looks like
Speaker 3: and it's going to have to actually take those steps
Speaker 3: to put themselves out there is you. So that's why
Speaker 3: I was really attracted to the title of this book.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm excited with this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely when you build your own business,
Speaker 2: this becomes apparent very quickly. Like you know, it's not
Speaker 2: like school where tenth grade follows ninth grade and if
Speaker 2: you do these requirements, you will move on to the
Speaker 2: next level. I mean, it's unclear what the next level is,
Speaker 2: and even if you have a picture of it, it
Speaker 2: doesn't always mean that there's some straightforward thing that will
Speaker 2: get you there. You can definitely take steps backward, try
Speaker 2: things that don't work. You know, it's just all risk
Speaker 2: taking and you hope some of it pays off eventually.
Speaker 2: But that's why you got to keep thinking about it,
Speaker 2: because again, nobody else cares about your career, but you
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of stuff in life that
Speaker 2: nobody's going to care as much as you are, and
Speaker 2: you just I think that goes both ways. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like, oh, well, I better take it
Speaker 2: seriously then, and it's also like, well it's kind of liberating.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know why we have this. It's
Speaker 2: kind of I don't know if it's an American cultural
Speaker 2: thing where people always have to claim that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of opposition to whatever, Like nobody told me I
Speaker 2: could do this, or you know, I people said I
Speaker 2: couldn't do X, Y or Z. I'm you know, for
Speaker 2: most of it, probably nobody really cared.
Speaker 4: Everyone's still busy paying attention to themselves.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, no one cares. So that'll be our
Speaker 2: takeaway from this nobody cares about your career, so you should.
Speaker 2: So let's hear what Erica has to say.
Speaker 3: Well, I am so excited to welcome to best of
Speaker 3: both worlds Erica Ayers Badon, who was former CEO of
Speaker 3: Barstool Sports, a company many of you may have heard of,
Speaker 3: and the author of Nobody Cares about your career, which
Speaker 3: is really what we're going to talk about during this
Speaker 3: interview today.
Speaker 4: So welcome Erica.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me so.
Speaker 4: Excited to talk.
Speaker 3: I was attracted, especially honestly to the title of your book,
Speaker 3: and we'll get to that in a minute. But just
Speaker 3: in case people don't know about you or don't know
Speaker 3: about Barstool Sports, can you give us the like three
Speaker 3: minute version of your career journey. I know that's asking
Speaker 3: a lot because you've been you've done a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's good.
Speaker 5: I think everybody should do a lot of things in
Speaker 5: their career. So my career has predominantly been in the
Speaker 5: intersection between technology, the internet, content, advertising, and commerce. Like
Speaker 5: that's really where I've lived my professional life. I worked
Speaker 5: at a lot of really big companies like Microsoft and
Speaker 5: AOL and Yahoo. I have worked at a bunch of startups,
Speaker 5: a lot of you know, which were disasters.
Speaker 1: One was part of an IPO and then was a disaster.
Speaker 5: And about a decade ago, ten years ago, I took
Speaker 5: the CEO job at Barstool Sports, which was at the
Speaker 5: time a very small, like fledgling, little renegade brand in Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 5: which started as a newspaper became a very janky app
Speaker 5: and a website and it was all about opinion and
Speaker 5: perspective and personality, mostly about sports. And I joined that
Speaker 5: company in twenty sixteen. It had twelve people, no p
Speaker 5: and L, no business system, and we grew it and
Speaker 5: sold it for five hundred and fifty million dollars in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three. So we had a huge, crazy, big run.
Speaker 5: It was wild and exhilarating, very funny. We grew it
Speaker 5: to be one of the ten largest brands in the
Speaker 5: world on TikTok and an ultimate real powerhouse in American media.
Speaker 5: So that's kind of the Barstool Sports of it all.
Speaker 5: And now I'm the CEO of a company called Food
Speaker 5: fifty two, which is a lifestyle home and food brand.
Speaker 3: Amazing, what an incredible journey all that experimentation led you
Speaker 3: to like an amazing success story, and yet you decide done,
Speaker 3: let me keep going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, maybe I'm an idiot. I might be
Speaker 1: an idiot.
Speaker 4: That is amazing.
Speaker 3: I'm always inspired by that into somebody who clearly like
Speaker 3: might not have to continuing to be chugging along, and
Speaker 3: yet they're impassioned, they're excited, and everything just ends up
Speaker 3: like falling into place for them to continue pushing.
Speaker 4: So super exciting.
Speaker 5: That's awesome. Yeah, I do like to work. So here
Speaker 5: we are all right.
Speaker 3: Well, on the note of work, you had a lot
Speaker 3: to say, like a lot to say your book. There's
Speaker 3: just so much in there. I'm super excited to talk
Speaker 3: about it. Just so much useful and interesting stuff and
Speaker 3: so many stories. So let's start with the title. Where
Speaker 3: did you come up with? Nobody cares about your career?
Speaker 3: And I don't know, is that something you've always kind
Speaker 3: of been passionate about the idea that you have to
Speaker 3: take charge of it on your own or tell me
Speaker 3: a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: The title?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was funny. So I you know, I wrote
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 5: I think the publisher expected like a fairly short book,
Speaker 5: and it kept like getting longer and longer. And longer
Speaker 5: and longer, and we edited quite a bit out of
Speaker 5: it actually, So the book was pretty dense in a
Speaker 5: good way, I would say, And I didn't know what
Speaker 5: to call it. And nobody cares about your career wasn't
Speaker 5: the intended title at all.
Speaker 1: It was just one of the chapters.
Speaker 5: And it's something that I've said to myself really since
Speaker 5: almost the beginning of my career, and it's just always
Speaker 5: been a mantra I've had in my head, which is
Speaker 5: that you are the one who can make a difference
Speaker 5: in your life and in your job and in your career,
Speaker 5: and that it is a complete and utter waste of
Speaker 5: time to live a life or have a job, or
Speaker 5: be in a career or be on a track that
Speaker 5: feels good or looks good or says a certain thing
Speaker 5: or is a certain way to somebody else. You really
Speaker 5: need to do things that make you happy and create fulfillment.
Speaker 5: And that you are ultimately responsible.
Speaker 1: For your career.
Speaker 5: You're responsible for the path you take and also what
Speaker 5: happens on that path. So that's really where the title
Speaker 5: came from. And you know, it's fun. I think it's
Speaker 5: a good message for people. I think you kind of
Speaker 5: see it, it seems negative. It's actually, in my opinion,
Speaker 5: very positive because it's supposed to be very freeing. This
Speaker 5: book is designed to be freeing and to empower people
Speaker 5: to say, Hey, what makes me happy and energized? How
Speaker 5: can I push myself? What iterations of myself can I
Speaker 5: be and become? And hopefully this book is helpful along
Speaker 5: that path.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think the word empowering is exactly what I
Speaker 3: was thinking, like, Okay, no one else is going to
Speaker 3: take charge of this, and therefore it's on me and
Speaker 3: I must be empowered to move forward, empowered to make decisions,
Speaker 3: and empowered to take responsibility for my actions, which is
Speaker 3: a major theme in this book that we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about. And in fact, you spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time talking about failure and mistiqus. So before we even
Speaker 3: get into how you recommend others with failure along the
Speaker 3: course of their careers, can you tell us about what
Speaker 3: kinds of failures you've had or have there been struggles
Speaker 3: that kind of inspired this passion around failure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I like failure. I call it fail always mode.
Speaker 5: Success I think can make me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable,
Speaker 5: and I think the reason I think failure is really important,
Speaker 5: and the book talks a lot about my failures and
Speaker 5: just failure in general. Is that what failure really is.
Speaker 5: It means two things, in my opinion. One is, or
Speaker 5: in the best case, it means two things. One is,
Speaker 5: you're putting yourself in an environment where you don't know
Speaker 5: exactly what to do, so you are in a new environment.
Speaker 5: You are learning things, You're pushing yourself. You're putting yourself
Speaker 5: in a place where it's not all perfect and you're
Speaker 5: not the expert and you have to figure some stuff out.
Speaker 5: So it indicates that you are in an environment that
Speaker 5: is not comfortable.
Speaker 1: And then the second is it's indicating that.
Speaker 5: You're trying, you're experimenting, you're trying to figure things out,
Speaker 5: and failure if you think about exercise, you think about sports,
Speaker 5: you think about experiments. I read a social post the
Speaker 5: other day that the inventor of the dice in vacuum
Speaker 5: had like something like five thousand prototypes. He built five
Speaker 5: thousand vacuums that didn't work until he built the five
Speaker 5: thousand and.
Speaker 1: Whatever one that became the dice in vacuum.
Speaker 5: That is also failure, right, It's knowing that you're trying
Speaker 5: to do something, you're trying to become something, You're trying
Speaker 5: to figure something out, and you don't know exactly how
Speaker 5: to do it, but you do have the willingness to try.
Speaker 5: And that's really you know, this book is about, in
Speaker 5: a nutshell, you need to put away your insecurity, which
Speaker 5: is I'm not good enough, I don't know enough, I'm
Speaker 5: not ready. And you need to put away your ego,
Speaker 5: which is I'm too good for this, I'm above this,
Speaker 5: I'm better than this. You have to put both of
Speaker 5: those things away and kind of show up with yourself
Speaker 5: to tackle the problem that's in front of you, and
Speaker 5: that can really great things can come of that.
Speaker 3: All right, we're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 3: then we're gonna talk more a little bit on the
Speaker 3: subject of failure.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: All right, we are back, and I want to get
Speaker 3: a little bit into specifics. So, first of all, if
Speaker 3: you can think of an example from your career where
Speaker 3: there has been perhaps a fail and how you handled
Speaker 3: it or maybe even learned from how you handled it.
Speaker 3: Maybe you failed at handling your fail and then that
Speaker 3: taught you something as well. And then like maybe a
Speaker 3: scenario where someone works in a corporation and they realized
Speaker 3: they messed up, Like, how do you handle it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean I fail all the time, So how long
Speaker 5: do you have I've had all sorts of different failures
Speaker 5: in my career. I handled things the wrong way. I
Speaker 5: managed people in a way that I had wished I
Speaker 5: had managed them differently. I was confronted with situations where
Speaker 5: I did one thing, but in hindsight I was like, Oh,
Speaker 5: I knew in my gut I shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 5: I should do it a different way. I've had really
Speaker 5: every imaginable failure there is. You know, I had a
Speaker 5: big part of my time spent at Barstool trying to
Speaker 5: make a TV show that our board really felt like
Speaker 5: we needed a TV show. And I spent a year
Speaker 5: of my life forty percent of that year trying to
Speaker 5: get Barstool Sports on ESPN. And it didn't feel good
Speaker 5: the whole time. It was painful, it was cumbersome, it
Speaker 5: was fraught with pitfalls. It kept going back to the
Speaker 5: same place that was like, this doesn't seem like a
Speaker 5: good fit, this doesn't seem like a good fit. And
Speaker 5: still I kept pushing, pushing, pushing to make it happen
Speaker 5: because it's what I thought I was supposed to do,
Speaker 5: and it ended up being a total disaster. The show
Speaker 5: ran for one night, it was canceled, it became this
Speaker 5: whole big brew haha with ESPN and barstool. But it's
Speaker 5: a good example of if you keep going on a
Speaker 5: path that you're pretty sure you're not supposed to be on,
Speaker 5: and you are not listening to the signs that are
Speaker 5: like get off this highway.
Speaker 1: Get off this highway, like take the exit. Take the exit.
Speaker 1: It's going to end up probably bad.
Speaker 5: And you knew that it was not going to end
Speaker 5: up well, So that would be one big example of
Speaker 5: a failure. I tend to believe that people are optimists,
Speaker 5: so that even and I'm an optimist, so that even
Speaker 5: when you do fail, I'm kind of getting to your
Speaker 5: second question, you'll probably rationalize that it was good that
Speaker 5: that happened because something else good came of it. So
Speaker 5: that's also a reason not to be afraid of failure,
Speaker 5: is that you're going to say that this was for
Speaker 5: the best anyway, so you might as well just do it.
Speaker 5: I think when people in a corporate setting are at
Speaker 5: work mess up on something and I write a lot
Speaker 5: about this, like what happens.
Speaker 1: After you screw up? What do you do after you
Speaker 1: screw up? Because everybody screws up? First of all.
Speaker 5: My perspective on that is that when you mess up,
Speaker 5: the best thing you can do is to reassess. You
Speaker 5: need to be able to step out of the situation
Speaker 5: you're in, and you need to be able to say
Speaker 5: what went wrong here critically thinking, really critically, being critical
Speaker 5: about yourself of.
Speaker 1: What did I do wrong? What went wrong? What should
Speaker 1: have been done? Differently?
Speaker 5: I think a lot of times when things go wrong,
Speaker 5: especially at work, people tend to blame everybody else, and
Speaker 5: it's just about deflecting so you don't look bad. The
Speaker 5: people who look great after a mistake, and I write
Speaker 5: a lot of about this are the people who own it,
Speaker 5: who say this didn't go great, and here's why this
Speaker 5: didn't go great. This broke down, This broke down. Don't
Speaker 5: be personal, don't lay blame other places, just address it
Speaker 5: and then quickly get to what can you do to
Speaker 5: fix it? This doesn't account like all the feelings, like
Speaker 5: when stuff goes wrong at work, like the feelings kind
Speaker 5: of last a little bit longer than maybe the solution
Speaker 5: or the then the time you want to get to
Speaker 5: the solution. So I also really I think it's important
Speaker 5: to feel failure and be like ooh, like that was
Speaker 5: a tough lesson that didn't feel good, but still to
Speaker 5: get back up on the horse and get moving and
Speaker 5: move forward.
Speaker 3: I love that You've also had a great story in
Speaker 3: your book. It was like a It just was just
Speaker 3: perfect for me because I was like, yeah, that's you
Speaker 3: had a party and there were talks being given at
Speaker 3: the party.
Speaker 1: Oh, my most epic failure, and I could just.
Speaker 4: Picture it so easily.
Speaker 3: But then to like own it and be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm never ever doing it again. I take full responsibility
Speaker 3: for it. Here's why we can't do this. And then
Speaker 3: you never ever had that happened at any event you
Speaker 3: ever were part of ever again, I'm assuming completely.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think failure happens all the time. I had
Speaker 5: a business meeting this morning, I had a conference call
Speaker 5: this morning, and we had a huge screw up on
Speaker 5: the supply chain, and instead of addressing it and saying, hey,
Speaker 5: there's something really broken. We screwed up on the supply chain,
Speaker 5: the person in charge of it was just burying everyone
Speaker 5: in data like, here's no, no, really, like at the
Speaker 5: micro level, here's what happened. Here's all the widgets, all
Speaker 5: the data points. And I'm like, how is this helping
Speaker 5: anyone move forward? Like, let's step back, let's admit something.
Speaker 1: Went really wrong. What went wrong?
Speaker 5: And what are the three things we're going to do
Speaker 5: to solve it right now in the middle of the crisis,
Speaker 5: And what are three things we're going to do to
Speaker 5: make sure this never happens again. And I think it's
Speaker 5: just really good to have that skill because the reality
Speaker 5: is work is hard, and a lot of bad stuff
Speaker 5: can happen at work, and things don't go the right way,
Speaker 5: or products don't land the way they're supposed to, or
Speaker 5: goals aren't met. And being able to be like, okay, wait,
Speaker 5: I'm going to reframe this thing so we can do
Speaker 5: something positive about it, I think is a really important skill.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Well, We're going to pivot a little bit and talk
Speaker 3: about one of everybody's favorite topics when it comes to work,
Speaker 3: which is bosses.
Speaker 1: Ooh, I love bosses.
Speaker 3: Okay, so difficult bosses or bosses maybe where your styles
Speaker 3: are incredibly different or I think your words you're misaligned.
Speaker 3: How do you advise handling it? And I guess when
Speaker 3: would you at some point decide like time to move on?
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, I have a lot of opinion on this.
Speaker 5: I have a whole matrix of bosses, the friend boss,
Speaker 5: the absent boss, the micromanaging boss. In general, I hate
Speaker 5: having a boss, so I want to just disclose that, like,
Speaker 5: I'm from the camp of people that never wanted a boss.
Speaker 5: But I don't think that having a bad boss necessarily
Speaker 5: has to be bad for you. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of really good things in my career is a good
Speaker 5: example of this. A lot of really good things can
Speaker 5: come out of having a really bad boss. And the
Speaker 5: reason I say that is a lot of times, to
Speaker 5: the title of nobody cares about your career, people put
Speaker 5: too much emphasis for their career in their boss's hands.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you give.
Speaker 5: Your career to your boss to decide are you on
Speaker 5: the path, are you off the path?
Speaker 1: Are you doing a good job, are you not doing
Speaker 1: a good job.
Speaker 5: And I don't really actually think that's your career has
Speaker 5: nothing to do with your boss, like your career should
Speaker 5: be for you. But I think it's important to understand
Speaker 5: what type of boss you have so that you can
Speaker 5: best navigate and be successful with that boss. So in
Speaker 5: my mind, I had a lot of absent bosses, And
Speaker 5: absent bosses are people they don't really care about what
Speaker 5: you're doing on a day to day basis you're doing
Speaker 5: a good enough job, They've got other fires to fight.
Speaker 5: They're just going to like, let you be, leave you alone.
Speaker 5: Sometimes people don't like that because they're like, I'm not
Speaker 5: getting the attention I want or I'm not getting the
Speaker 5: direction I need. My point of view on.
Speaker 1: That is screw it.
Speaker 5: Like take the opportunity to take as much work as
Speaker 5: you humanly can, as many projects as you can get
Speaker 5: yourself involved in, and use the absentness of your boss
Speaker 5: to create more opportunity for you. So that for me
Speaker 5: is like one way you would handle an absent boss.
Speaker 5: People have bosses who are idiots, and I've had a
Speaker 5: bunch of bosses who are idiots. And the other piece
Speaker 5: of having an idiot is you can spend all your
Speaker 5: time either complaining about your idiot boss, which is kind
Speaker 5: of dangerous because it eventually is going to get back
Speaker 5: to them. And two that doesn't really help you or
Speaker 5: that person or two. You can use their deficiencies as
Speaker 5: ways that you can show strength. So you know, I
Speaker 5: had a boss who I would describe as an idiot,
Speaker 5: and I at first was annoyed and like kind of
Speaker 5: bitter about it, and then I was like, you know what,
Speaker 5: I'm going to get invited to every meeting this guy's
Speaker 5: getting invited to because I know so much more, And
Speaker 5: what an opportunity for me. I could have written this
Speaker 5: off as a really bad thing, it actually was a
Speaker 5: great thing. It put me in a position to do
Speaker 5: a whole bunch of things and be seen by a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of people who never would have otherwise cared
Speaker 5: or known what I did.
Speaker 1: I do think it gets to inside.
Speaker 5: This is super long winded, but I do think that
Speaker 5: micromanaging bosses and toxic bosses you should not stay with.
Speaker 5: And I think it's fine for your boss to be absent.
Speaker 5: I think it's kind of dangerous when your boss is
Speaker 5: your friend. I think it's okay even if your boss
Speaker 5: is an idiot. But if your boss is really toxic,
Speaker 5: which means to say they don't have good intentions, they're negative.
Speaker 5: They're creating an environment where you cannot succeed or your
Speaker 5: boss is just on you on every you can't move
Speaker 5: because your boss is so suffocating. I think both of
Speaker 5: those scenarios are scenarios that you should stay in long
Speaker 5: enough to learn it and know it, but don't stay
Speaker 5: so long as you become affected by it.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, and I'm sure there are plenty of
Speaker 3: listeners who see themselves in most full of these scenarios, definitely,
Speaker 3: no matter where they are in their career journey.
Speaker 4: Early, middle, early, yep.
Speaker 3: So now I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: a very best of both worlds centered topic, which is
Speaker 3: that you talk about how there's some challenges that a little.
Speaker 4: Bit unique to women in the workplace. Yes, so can
Speaker 4: you share a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you're talking about this. And everyone ignores
Speaker 5: that chapter in the book. So I have a chapter
Speaker 5: in the book that's called for the Girls, and really
Speaker 5: what it is about, and it's not just for girls.
Speaker 5: I think it's for anybody, and especially men should read this.
Speaker 5: But what the chapter is really about is the things
Speaker 5: that women in particular, and I'm a woman, so I
Speaker 5: speak to that go through at work. And the first
Speaker 5: thing is that I've been working now almost thirty years.
Speaker 5: And you know, most every woman who's been working five years,
Speaker 5: ten years, twenty years, thirty years, they've gone through some
Speaker 5: similar things. One is a glass ceiling right where you're
Speaker 5: in an environment where women are not particularly welcome, or
Speaker 5: that seat at the table is not particularly appreciated or assured.
Speaker 5: I think the second piece of that is just sexual harassment,
Speaker 5: which at the beginning of my career, sexual harassment was blatant,
Speaker 5: like for women who were in business ten years before me, it.
Speaker 1: Was like promoted.
Speaker 5: Now it's more insidious, where you know, you can't be
Speaker 5: as blatant as you know to hit on someone in
Speaker 5: the office. But there are ways where you can be
Speaker 5: put in an environment which I call the gray, which
Speaker 5: is there's some opacity. There's double meaning for most everything
Speaker 5: where you're in a situation where it may be a
Speaker 5: work thing, but someone may have ulterior motives or different
Speaker 5: intentions for you. And this is something that's very unique
Speaker 5: to women at work, and that women have to understand
Speaker 5: how they navigate. And then there's all sorts of other stuff,
Speaker 5: being pregnant at work, what happens after you have a
Speaker 5: baby at work, what happens if you're dating someone at
Speaker 5: work in all those scenarios. So I have a lot
Speaker 5: of opinion about it. I don't really think about my
Speaker 5: gender a whole lot in my job, and I love that.
Speaker 5: And I don't think your gender should help you or
Speaker 5: hurt you at work. I do think understanding the things
Speaker 5: that your gender brings you is really important for women.
Speaker 5: It's very often a sense of empathy, it's a sense
Speaker 5: of vulnerability, it's an ability to communicate, and I think
Speaker 5: it's important to harness those skills to be most successful
Speaker 5: as it relates to being a woman at work. There
Speaker 5: are things that are disadvantages to women at work, which
Speaker 5: is one is we tend to do all the work
Speaker 5: at work and do all the work at home. And
Speaker 5: how do you do the best of both worlds? Like
Speaker 5: that's tough? How do you navigate your second shift versus
Speaker 5: your first shift? But I do think it's important that
Speaker 5: women recognize same as when you encounter our problem, like
Speaker 5: where am I? What are the advantages to me in
Speaker 5: this situation? What are the disadvantages? And where do I
Speaker 5: want to get to and how can I navigate to
Speaker 5: get there?
Speaker 3: Definitely tricky territory, and I was very excited to say
Speaker 3: that you included that chapter in your book. We're going
Speaker 3: to take another quick break and I'll be right back
Speaker 3: with one more sort of related question. All right, we
Speaker 3: are back, and you mentioned it briefly, but obviously sometimes
Speaker 3: men add to their family as well, but maternity leave
Speaker 3: is still primarily taken more by women, although increasingly by
Speaker 3: both genders. I also feel like a lot of people
Speaker 3: find this podcast just as they're about to maybe enter
Speaker 3: maternity le for the first time, and it just seems
Speaker 3: so scary. Do you have tips for that very special
Speaker 3: situation of someone who's left the workforce for maybe a
Speaker 3: few months and is coming back, like how to steal
Speaker 3: themselves out? Yeah, tell me about your thoughts there.
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about this in the chapter.
Speaker 5: And look, coming back to work after you've been on
Speaker 5: maternity leave is a really apprehensive time. It's apprehensive for
Speaker 5: who's going to take care of your baby. It's apprehensive
Speaker 5: in terms of what's expected of you now at work.
Speaker 5: You've just come off this time where you've you know,
Speaker 5: I know when I had my kids.
Speaker 1: You're kind of.
Speaker 5: Isolated in a little bubble and it's a really magical time,
Speaker 5: and then you're kind of back out into the world
Speaker 5: and you feel a little fragile. So it's also you know,
Speaker 5: it's an apprehensive time for who you are as a
Speaker 5: woman and how you're feeling, and you can often, I think,
Speaker 5: feel really fragile and uncertain, and it's important to honor that,
Speaker 5: but also it's important not to let that hold you back.
Speaker 5: I get a lot of questions in my DMS about
Speaker 5: re entering the workforce after taking a maternity leave or
Speaker 5: taking a break, and the first thing is, hold your
Speaker 5: head high and do what you have to do. So
Speaker 5: if you need to go to the pumping room and
Speaker 5: you're carrying around all the equipment and it's like the
Speaker 5: most like embarrassing, like, eh, I've all this stuff, I
Speaker 5: got to refrigerate it, like it's cumbersome, But hold yourself
Speaker 5: high and hold your head high that the fact of
Speaker 5: caring for a child and producing milk for a baby
Speaker 5: does not make you any less viable in the office,
Speaker 5: and you go into that next meeting as though nothing
Speaker 5: had happened the fifteen minutes prior. So that would be
Speaker 5: my first piece of advice. My second piece of advice is,
Speaker 5: I think a lot of times when women re enter
Speaker 5: the workforce after having a kid or they come back
Speaker 5: from eternity leave. You tend to want to overcompensate because
Speaker 5: for some weird, screwed up reason, which is probably that
Speaker 5: we're made to feel this way. You feel guilty that
Speaker 5: you've been gone for three months, four months, whatever, and
Speaker 5: then you start yourself on this track of you know,
Speaker 5: you get up, you care for your baby, you care
Speaker 5: for your fan, you commute, you get to work, or
Speaker 5: you go on zoom and do work. Then you shut
Speaker 5: it down, you shove food in your mouth, you say
Speaker 5: hi to your partner, you care for your baby, and
Speaker 5: then you get right back online again. I think that's
Speaker 5: of the mistakes I've made in my life. I think
Speaker 5: that's one of the greatest mistakes I made, which is
Speaker 5: like my kids are in the tub, I'm on my phone.
Speaker 5: Like answering work emails, like set boundaries early for yourself
Speaker 5: and even and especially when it's scary for yourself, because
Speaker 5: the reality work will take up every orifice of your
Speaker 5: time if you let it. And this feeling that you're
Speaker 5: accessible at night every night. Now, yes, some nights you
Speaker 5: have to work late and you have a big project
Speaker 5: and blah blah blah, but the fact that you're expected
Speaker 5: to be available at night I have a huge issue with,
Speaker 5: So my advice would be to set really clear boundaries
Speaker 5: on that.
Speaker 1: And then the third is when you're at work, make
Speaker 1: the most of work.
Speaker 5: So if you're there for six and a half hours,
Speaker 5: crush the six and a half hours. If you're there
Speaker 5: for nine hours, crush the nine hours. But at that
Speaker 5: ninth hour or seventh hour, whatever hour, shut it down,
Speaker 5: get out of there and go live your life. And
Speaker 5: I think sometimes when you have kids, you feel depleted
Speaker 5: because you're supposed to be everything to everyone at all times, always,
Speaker 5: and it's a lie, like it's it's not going to
Speaker 5: work and the only person and the person who is
Speaker 5: going to suffer and give up the most because.
Speaker 1: Of that is you.
Speaker 5: So just really making the boundary stick, not for anybody
Speaker 5: else's reasons, but to preserve yourself, I think is really important.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Erica, if I had we don't do
Speaker 3: sound effects on this podcast, but like if we did,
Speaker 3: I would have the standing ovation one be going a
Speaker 3: hut right now because I can't tell you what you
Speaker 3: just said in the last two minutes is probably going
Speaker 3: to change some people's life, Like I mean, you giving
Speaker 3: that kind of permission from someone who is where you
Speaker 3: are right now in leadership and everything.
Speaker 4: It's just so incredibly valuable.
Speaker 2: So thank you.
Speaker 4: That was amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so nice. I have a quick story on that.
Speaker 1: I know we're probably out of time.
Speaker 4: But no, tell the quick story.
Speaker 5: I had a woman who worked for me. This was
Speaker 5: actually really interesting. I had two women who worked for
Speaker 5: me recently, and one was a available at all times,
Speaker 5: all hours of the night, like I'm like, working, working, working, working, working,
Speaker 5: and the other woman was a working mom with two
Speaker 5: kids I think under four. And what was interesting to
Speaker 5: me is I stepped back and looked at them and
Speaker 5: I said to myself, Wow, credit to the mom where
Speaker 5: she shut down every night at five o'clock. And she
Speaker 5: conditioned because she's shut down at five o'clock, you knew
Speaker 5: you weren't going to get an answered until the following morning.
Speaker 5: And I think we're all successfully and secure in a
Speaker 5: way where you're afraid to do the action of shutting
Speaker 5: at five. But all it did was train everybody else
Speaker 5: not to bug her until eight thirty the following morning.
Speaker 5: Versus the woman who was always available, she was disappointing
Speaker 5: people because they were like, you're always available, why aren't
Speaker 5: you available to me now? And the reality is, when
Speaker 5: I stepped back and looked at these women, the working mom,
Speaker 5: I think worked probably forty fifty percent of the time
Speaker 5: as the other woman, but got as much done and
Speaker 5: did it with greater discipline. So I think there's this
Speaker 5: fallacy like the more you work, the more you work.
Speaker 5: Like I don't believe that at all. I think you
Speaker 5: need to make the most of the time you have
Speaker 5: and you have to be a maniac about that time.
Speaker 5: But beyond that, you've got to go live your life,
Speaker 5: and I think you can be fabulously successful with that.
Speaker 4: That is amazing.
Speaker 3: Well, one last thing before we go, oh well, other
Speaker 3: than you telling everybody, of course, all about where they
Speaker 3: can find everything, we'll get to that. But we share
Speaker 3: a love of the week every week on this podcast.
Speaker 3: I hope your team share that with you, but if not, you.
Speaker 1: Can They didn't.
Speaker 3: They didn't, Okay, So it can be off the cuff,
Speaker 3: and I will have to go first because I will
Speaker 3: give you time to give yours and okay, I just
Speaker 3: thought of mine.
Speaker 4: That didn't take too long. Okay, But it can be
Speaker 4: a product.
Speaker 3: It can be like a season, a beverage, a shoot,
Speaker 3: like I don't care, a book whatever.
Speaker 4: Okay, So mine is I had.
Speaker 3: I don't get a lot of patient gifts because I
Speaker 3: don't know, like it's just not necessarily in the culture
Speaker 3: what I do. Plus, I take care of patients for
Speaker 3: so many years and it's not like they're aging out
Speaker 3: for that long. But somebody was going to college and
Speaker 3: the mom gave me a lu Lavo candle and it
Speaker 3: was just I mean, obviously that's a lux gift and
Speaker 3: I would not expect a patient to give me that,
Speaker 3: but like, it was just so nice and I have
Speaker 3: it on my desk and now every time I smell it,
Speaker 3: I just feel this gratitude for like the privilege about
Speaker 3: knowing I don't know, it was awesome.
Speaker 4: So that is my love of the week.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. That's a great love of the week.
Speaker 1: My love of the week. When is this coming out?
Speaker 4: I think it's in like two in mid September.
Speaker 1: Let's say mid September, okay, or end.
Speaker 4: Of September something like that. Sorry I should know that, but.
Speaker 1: Okay, my love of the week.
Speaker 5: Well you I'll tell you this one and then you
Speaker 5: can tell me if it's too dated. Okay, So my
Speaker 5: love of the week is I've been watching in.
Speaker 1: The US Open.
Speaker 5: I love to watch tennis. It is the most inspiring sport.
Speaker 5: I think it's one of those sports where the female
Speaker 5: athletes are even better than the men athletes.
Speaker 1: Like it's so fun to watch.
Speaker 5: And there's this announcer, this Australian woman named I think
Speaker 5: her name is Renee Stubbs, and I had never heard
Speaker 5: of her before. I'd never seen her before, I didn't
Speaker 5: know anything about her, but I loved her attitude. She
Speaker 5: was on the broadcast and I think she's a former
Speaker 5: tennis player herself and a former coach. And everyone was
Speaker 5: talking like all nice and the platitudes about like oh,
Speaker 5: Coco golf had lost to Emma Navarro and.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, Coco so great, Coco so great.
Speaker 5: And she was like, yeah, like, I don't think she
Speaker 5: had the confidence and her swing wasn't high enough, and
Speaker 5: and I loved that she had the balls, I guess
Speaker 5: for a lack of a better word, to speak her
Speaker 5: mind and with such clarity and specificity.
Speaker 1: So she's my love of the week.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: That's not going to be dated, that's everlasting. That's evergreen
Speaker 3: right there.
Speaker 1: So that's perfect.
Speaker 3: Plus I just love the image of you like watching
Speaker 3: sports and listening to the commentary and like with what
Speaker 3: all you know and what you've built, like your analysis
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so fun.
Speaker 5: So I DMed her and I was like, will you
Speaker 5: come do I do these like daily work videos? And
Speaker 5: I'm like, will you come do the daily work videos
Speaker 5: with me? And she said yes.
Speaker 1: So I was like, that's so fun. That is so amazing,
Speaker 1: double love of the week.
Speaker 3: Super super cool. Well, this has been so much fun.
Speaker 3: I'm serious, I'm going to like play that part on
Speaker 3: a loop. That ending part, it was just so perfect.
Speaker 3: Good good, And tell our listeners where they can find
Speaker 3: your book. Remind us all of the title one more time,
Speaker 3: and just where they can find more about you.
Speaker 5: Okay, great. The book is called Nobody Cares About your Career.
Speaker 5: You can find it wherever books are sold. And I
Speaker 5: did the audio book, so if you are a busy
Speaker 5: woman and you don't have a time to read a book,
Speaker 5: which I would totally understand, you can just listen to it.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a good listen. I'm I'm biased, obviously.
Speaker 5: You can find me at Erica, which is Erka or
Speaker 5: at Erica Underscore. I'm at Erica on Instagram and then
Speaker 5: on TikTok at Erica Underscore.
Speaker 1: You can find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4: Amazing, what amazing handles you have. That is great.
Speaker 1: I worked hard for the handles.
Speaker 4: You deserve them. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Well we are back. Sarah did a great interview there
Speaker 2: with Erica Arizbadan, who is the former CEO of Barstool Sports,
Speaker 2: the author of the book Nobody Cares About Your Career.
Speaker 2: Lots of great advice there. So this question is from
Speaker 2: a listener who is considering hiring a career coach. She says,
Speaker 2: have either of you ever used one? Do you have
Speaker 2: thoughts on them? And what kind of role they could
Speaker 2: play in career growth. The context is that she is
Speaker 2: currently in a midpoint in her career. She's been in
Speaker 2: law for about fifteen years out of the baby years,
Speaker 2: her kids are in school, she is free of student loans,
Speaker 2: and she is still under forty. Wow, she's accomplished a lot.
Speaker 2: It's an exciting prospect to have things feel open, but
Speaker 2: she's wondering what she should do if she needs to
Speaker 2: find her passion or find ways to maximize her current role.
Speaker 2: She seems to get a lot of ads for career
Speaker 2: coaches through professional organizations and podcast feeds LinkedIn wherever she
Speaker 2: is on social media. So she's curious if we have
Speaker 2: any insights or experience with coaches, what they might be
Speaker 2: able to offer in the quest for career happiness. Her
Speaker 2: instinct is skepticism, but it's good to be curious. Sarah,
Speaker 2: what do you think?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I have a mix as well.
Speaker 3: I think part of it is, are you out of
Speaker 3: place where you feel like really exploring what you want
Speaker 3: with another person in scheduled sessions with specific exercise would
Speaker 3: be helpful for you? And would you be unable to
Speaker 3: do that work in a maybe less expensive context. If so,
Speaker 3: this might be something to explore. I would be aware
Speaker 3: of any coach who has any part of their platform
Speaker 3: in teaching others to coach. I just that really scares
Speaker 3: me because it gets very pyramidy. Or a coach who
Speaker 3: wants to tell you how to kick butt in your
Speaker 3: field but has left that field to coach specifically. Maybe
Speaker 3: that's okay if they're clearly in a later phase of life,
Speaker 3: like Listen, they put in thirty awesome years and they
Speaker 3: accomplished great things and now they've moved on to coaching.
Speaker 3: But if it's like, no, they did that for five
Speaker 3: years and now they're coaching, I think there's some concern
Speaker 3: sometimes to be found. Again, this is not universal. I
Speaker 3: mean I can think of some specific people who do
Speaker 3: things more in the coaching realm who maybe have specific
Speaker 3: protocols or things they've developed to share that can be
Speaker 3: super super valuable. But yeah, I just think you have
Speaker 3: to be a little bit careful. Definitely talk to others
Speaker 3: who have worked with said coaches if you can, Like
Speaker 3: a great coach should be able to even offer not
Speaker 3: just testimonials on their website, but maybe like, oh you
Speaker 3: can chat with this other person in your field and
Speaker 3: see if it was helpful for them, and then just
Speaker 3: always reevaluate. Hopefully you don't have to pay a ton
Speaker 3: of upfront costs, so if you invest and you go
Speaker 3: to a couple sessions and it's not helpful, then you
Speaker 3: can decide that maybe to go another avenue, either finding
Speaker 3: another coach or doing something different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get a lot of pitches from coaches, and
Speaker 2: I think we are very very wary of most of them,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of like up selling and these
Speaker 2: sort of things like you have to buy this package
Speaker 2: and then you have to buy this other package, and
Speaker 2: it's more about the coach as a guru as opposed
Speaker 2: to what they are going to do to help you.
Speaker 2: And if you are bothering to pay for this, it
Speaker 2: really should be all about what they're going to do
Speaker 2: to help you, so as opposed to I don't know,
Speaker 2: you all stand around and worship this particular coach in
Speaker 2: their guru status. So yeah, I'm pretty skeptical as well.
Speaker 2: It can work, just you know, I would definitely only
Speaker 2: go through like personal recommendations of someone who's seen really
Speaker 2: good practical results, concrete results as a real result of
Speaker 2: working with the person I do. I want to suggest
Speaker 2: one other option though, for this person, which is that
Speaker 2: I know somebody who was thinking, like do I need
Speaker 2: a career coach whatever, And what she realized is that
Speaker 2: she knew what she needed to do and like the
Speaker 2: exercises she should think about, and like the what she
Speaker 2: should investigate, and like different things she could do to
Speaker 2: help in her career. She just needed someone to push
Speaker 2: her to do it. But if that's the case, then
Speaker 2: maybe what you need is an accountability partner or a
Speaker 2: goal group or sort of mastermind group of folks. Maybe
Speaker 2: you can find other people who are also ambitious, who
Speaker 2: are in similar or stages of life with you, who
Speaker 2: might meet up regularly to discuss your ideas and next steps.
Speaker 2: And so you know, not only would that be like
Speaker 2: lower cost, I mean just in the sense that you're
Speaker 2: like getting together with people, it could also be a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. Like it could actually build your professional
Speaker 2: network in a very good way. Like these people would
Speaker 2: be kind of your cheering squad and you're the cheering
Speaker 2: squad for them. You'd be very close together. So I'd
Speaker 2: throw that out there as an idea as well.
Speaker 3: I love it, and hopefully something like that if it's
Speaker 3: a collection of your peers, wouldn't be a crazy financial
Speaker 3: investment either, so bonus, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
Speaker 2: Sarah has been interviewing Erica Arizbadan, who's the former CEO
Speaker 2: of Barstool Sports. We will be back next week with
Speaker 2: more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
Speaker 3: or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and you can.
Speaker 2: Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has
Speaker 2: been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us
Speaker 2: next time for more on making work and life work
Speaker 2: together