EP #70- Career Advice for Young Professionals with Kristy Hurt, Executive Recruiter & HR Consultant

(gentle music) We all have the power to make our lives as interesting as we decide we want them to be. So I think dwelling in your unhappiness about your job is a pointless place to be. So I think you have to definitely get yourself into a more positive mindset and start thinking about the future and how you can transition your experience into something that you think you're gonna like more. Welcome back to another episode of Every Day in Dwarfens. This week is dedicated to talking about the relationship between our happiness and feelings of satisfaction in our work. I had the pleasure of bringing Christy Hurt an HR executive and founder of the CoLab, which is an inclusive networking community for people who work in fashion, beauty, wellness, and retail to talk about the nuances of excelling in the working world. Christy shares valuable career advice from best practices for recruiting and finding a job to navigating the tough transitions that come with entering the working world as a young professional and how to understand your worth so you can become your best advocate. We also talk about ways to strike an optimal work life balance and how to find meaning in your career if you're feeling a bit lost or unhappy. I know that something that I've discussed with a lot of my friends and peers and colleagues is the importance of finding ways to not make work your entire life and how can you integrate what you do into your own personal life and find that sweet spot. So I felt like this conversation was particularly valuable for not only myself, but also my community. So if you like what you hear, make sure to follow along this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer and give it a like, rate, or review. Hi, Christy. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I think this topic today is super relevant and very important to discuss as someone who newly entered the working world and a lot of my listeners are also recent graduates or finishing up college and exploring this new path in their lives or they're entering the professional world, which is so daunting and also so different from what it's like being a student. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's also changing a lot. So it's a good time to graduate and start the workforce because it's completely different than it was 10 or 20 years ago. That's for sure. Yeah, definitely, especially when I talk to my parents and how they navigated that scene, it's completely different now. And I think there's a lot more opportunity now to really advance in your career and build the kind of career that you want. But before we get into that, I'd love to start off by talking a little bit about your background and if you could share a little bit about how you got into the HR space. Yeah, sure. So I'm Christy Hurt and I'm a human resources professional with my own practice. And I started out learning about recruitment and HR by running stores for Kate Spade when I just graduated from college. I had worked in retail while in college. I was a pre-med major who decided to switch to Spanish and graduate and moved to New York City. I grew up in Texas, born in California. And I really wanted to live in New York City. I'd visited a lot as a kid and came also during college and really wanted to explore what starting a career in New York City would look like. And because I didn't have a lot of business mentors in my life, my dad was a pilot. My mom was a music teacher. I didn't really know what the options were outside of the things I'd already done before. So I started out in a store where I was promoted very quickly to run multiple stores for Kate Spade and open source for them. But that also included recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training. And so I really got interested in human resources as a career when I was in that first job. And I spent quite a bit of time there. I decided to pursue an MBA with a focus on organizational development while working full time. And then I was very lucky to land a recruitment and development HR role at LVMH Group where I spent over five years really learning all of the different areas of HR. And then after getting married having kids, I actually left and started my own firm. I think it's really fascinating how your job at Kate Spade kind of ignited that interest around HR. Because maybe it wasn't necessarily what you were expecting. When you thought you were going to be managing stores and really running the show, HR kind of naturally just came about when you started recognizing that you had to onboard talent and find people. And it seems that experience indirectly informed your passion for going into the human resources area. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I also think too-- I don't want to make assumptions about what gives people energy. But being in a store and working physically especially in a small growing brand, in our case, we were doing a pretty high volume of turnover, of merchandise every day with a fairly small team, which translated to me running around physically being on my feet all day every day, opening boxes, unpacking boxes, lifting heavy boxes, selling to customers, managing people, and also managing-- I mean, at the time, we paid more than minimum wage. But the sales associates didn't make a ton of money. And so we would often hire part-time college students from NYU or other colleges. And there it was a constant revolving door staff. Sales associates tend to come in, sell, and leave. They don't stay that long. There were a lot of reasons why I didn't see myself staying in the retail environment long term. I think it was a really, really great opportunity for me to learn the business, understand the customer, the product. It was a super fun job to do for me in my early 20s. But by the time I applied to business school, I was ready for something with more corporate hours, Monday through Friday. The thing about retail is you work holidays, you work weekends, you work late hours. So it can be a little isolating, depending on what your circle of friends or your family are doing. So for me, that was definitely a motivator to get into a more corporate Monday through Friday type of environment. And when thinking about all of the different areas of the business that I could have potentially gone into, whether it be like sales or licensing or PR or HR, I thought HR is actually a really good fit for me. So it was kind of a combination of reasons, but then also a process of elimination that got me there. So it seems like now when you reflect on the journey of your career, it's easier to kind of put the dots together and understand why you made certain career transitions and what led you to the next step throughout your career development. But if you were to go back in time and tell yourself something that you wish you knew then, what would you say to your younger self around navigating those transitions? Because I think it's easier to reflect on the sequence of events now after it's happened and understand how everything fits together and how you've built your career to date. But as you're navigating those changes, how do you trust that you're making the right choice for yourself and how do you recognize when a role is right for you or you're not necessarily enjoying it and you need to make that change? Well, I mean, careers are like to use your own adventure. Whatever decision you make, it leads you to the next thing. And I think at some point you have to accept that the universe is really designed to help us and give us exactly what we need. So I think you have to trust your instincts. If you feel like you want to be a banker or an analyst or a consultant or a store manager or a marketing assistant, you need to trust that. And I think by reading job descriptions and really studying the careers of other people you admire or also reading company websites and job pages and job postings of companies that are hiring in areas of interest for you, that's really the best thing you can do. I mean, interning obviously from as early ages you possibly can is key to really understand what something is. Sometimes what you think it is and what it actually is on a day to day basis is very different. So just getting that experience talking to as many people as possible, thinking about what really lights you up inside. I used to years ago I launched a subscription-based networking community called the Collab for professionals at all stages of their careers. And we did a talk-- I want to say it was last year with someone who worked in fashion and retail for many years. She also worked in media and now she's currently working at Meta. And she works on the shopping part of the business for Facebook, which is now Meta. And she is also, as a side hustle, an influencer. She's Filipino. She's a mom of two. And she's a working mom of two. And so she has actually-- she started her Instagram at a really good time when the algorithm was really working in her favor. And so she was able to scale close to-- I think 150,000 or more followers. So she was able to learn a lot about influencer marketing and social media through the process of becoming an influencer herself. Well, at the same time, having a full-time job, working in that area of the business for other brands and now eventually for Meta. And one of the things that stands out to me that she always talked about was this idea of what lights you up. And I think that you have to think about that. What gives you passion? What do you love to do? In my case, I love connecting people I love, connecting people. the dots, I love helping people figure out how to get to the next phase of whatever it is in their life that they're looking for. So I think if you really listen to your heart and think about what makes you happy, that's the dream because if work doesn't feel like work, then you've won. Exactly, and I think it probably takes a long time to get there as well because you need to try out as many different things as possible to figure out what you like and what you don't like. And I think a challenge a lot of people face when leaving college and leaving a more academic environment is not knowing what they like because the working world is so different than what we're used to undergrad, like being a student. The routines that we're in, the schedules that we have, like when you're transitioning into more like a corporate job, it's completely different. And so I think it's so important to take the time to figure out like what you like and what you don't like and maybe to your point really follow that intuition and that instinct always kind of gravitating towards the things that you like and understanding that, you know, maybe the impact that you want to make can be take, it can take different forms and recognize that, you know, the things that you're interested in doing can, you can do it in many different ways as well. So for example, like maybe, you know, you're passionate about helping people, but that can be done in so many different ways. There are people that want to become doctors, you can be a lawyer and help people out in that way. And you can also, you know, work in the profession that you do in HR and you're helping people find the right fit and navigate the job market. So I think it's also important to recognize that no matter what you do want to do, there's lots of different roads to get there. Yeah, definitely. And I think that you definitely know, even if you don't know exactly what you want to do, you can answer a certain questions for yourself, like, what is my top priority? Is it money and security or is it joy? You know, like, and that's the thing, you know, some people, money and financial security is the number one goal and they might go into an investment bank or a hedge fund and learn that business because they feel that that's going to ultimately earn them the most money and then give them the most freedom to do whatever they want later in their careers. There are other people who would absolutely hate that environment. Wouldn't want to spend one day in that type of environment or job and are just really wanting to be around creative people or designing product or working with fashion and they don't care that it doesn't pay nearly as much or substantially less, especially starting out because that is what lights them up and that's what makes them happy and they would never prioritize money over what they love. So I think that you have to really understand what different careers are, what the career trajectory and financial picture looks like. And there's plenty of information out there about this and not all of these options are available to every single person, but I think getting the best education that you can get and continuing to learn whether it's through a master's program, MBA, JD or even just continuing education in an area of interest, for example, like sustainability, whatever it may be, continuing to learn and meet people that have shared common interests will help lead you to the direction where you want to go. I totally agree and I think that's a very important reminder just recognizing that learning doesn't stop once you're outside of a traditional academic environment. And I also think that once we enter the working world and let's say, for example, I'm working in consulting and right now this is what I'm doing, but it's something that I'm not sure if I'm going to do forever. And specifically in that industry, it's not something that people typically tend to do forever, which I think is an attractive quality around going into consulting postgrad. But I've recently seen a lot of people in various different types of jobs within their first few years of being in the working world actually transition into different roles and going to different companies. And they've been exploring the recruiting scene now in a different environment. And so I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what the differences might look like from recruiting for jobs and internships when you're in college versus when you're in the working world and you do have a job, but you're looking to change and move into something completely different. How does that recruiting environment look differently? I think when you're first graduating from college, companies want higher someone smart and curious who has some basic skills and is personable and willing to learn and can be there at a certain time when they need to be there. And so the expectations are actually quite low. However, there are a lot of people that can't even do that. So if you can do that, you're in a good place. But once you've started in your first job and you've been there for a couple of years and you want to start to explore opportunities in a different industry or something entirely different, you have to think about what you've learned in your last job and how those skills can translate to something new. So for example, consulting. If you are consulting with retail companies and even if you can't disclose what the names of the companies are, you could potentially disclose some information about them that would eventually lead you to a job working for one of those types of companies on the brand side. So I see a lot of people doing this and consulting. So let's pretend you were working for, I don't know, doing a big project for like Bed Bath and Beyond and you had to sign an NDA that says you cannot disclose that you worked on Bed Bath and Beyond project for whatever reason. But you can say that you worked for a multi-billion, I don't know how big the company is, but multi-billion dollar, you know, home retailer with a store footprint of whatever and an e-commerce business of, you know, in the hundreds of millions, whatever. You can describe it in a way that then makes your resume very appealing to a home brand looking to hire someone to do something similar. Like let's pretend you worked on a supply chain project or let's pretend you worked on like, you know, a project where you were evaluating how productive each of these different locations are and you ended up making recommendations to close or in locations and open ones that maybe didn't exist. Then you could go to say, I don't know, let's say another home retailer like Wayfair or you know, Pottery Barn or some other like competitor, I don't know, I'm not thinking of any good ones right now, but or direct competitors, I mean, you could then, you know, pitch yourself to them and maybe they would want you to work in their retail, you know, corporate retail development office because they have a position, which is like retail manager of operations and real estate or something like that. And then you could say, oh, I worked on exactly this project for a home retailer. I know a lot about the Syngestory and I've studied every single one of your competitors. I know where all of the markets are that are doing well and which ones are the most productive and they would be so impressed, they would hire you in a heartbeat and it would be done. So I think you can't expect to do like complete 180, you know, you can't expect to be working in healthcare and then suddenly get a job, you know, in fashion or beauty with zero experience whatsoever. You could potentially get an assistant role or a coordinator role, something really junior, but I don't think you could expect to go into a job at a more senior level at the same salary if you are doing something completely different that you have no experience in because that as you gain more experience in your career, the expectation is higher and higher, meaning to earn that manager level salary, you have to have a manager level experience, you know, which is typically like five to seven years of relevant experience. So you can't just keep, you know, changing industries and changing focus, which is why I always recommend that people, you know, as soon as possible focus in on a specific area that they're really interested and even if it's one general area like marketing, you know, you could learn digital marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, SMS marketing, but also brand marketing, copyrighting, voice, you know, you could do all of those things and those are all very different jobs, but at least if you're in within marketing for beauty or marketing for fashion or whatever, it's easier to kind of find different jobs and kind of pursue different aspects of your interest within that scope, but I think going from industry to industry job to job like that could be a little bit, you know, difficult in terms of gaining momentum in your career in terms of salary and title, but it's not unheard of, you know, and I think especially for really bright people who are extremely entrepreneurial, often they'll, you know, dabble in a couple of different things and then they'll start their own business and if that's wildly successful and they end up scaling it and selling it, I see a lot of people becoming serial entrepreneurs and just doing not again and again, which I think is kind of, I feel like among very high achieving people that's kind of the dream. Yeah, I think that's a good distinction that you make as well, not wanting to necessarily hop around between a million different things and not have that, you know, allow you to gain the momentum that you'd like for your career to really grow and, you know, gain that status and recognition and compensation, but then at the same time it's like, well, how do you balance just the nature of exploring as much as you can, especially when you're early on in your career? And I think Someone once told me that, you know, she had graduated college and she was like, actually Stella, like, every like most people post grad actually hate their jobs and they graduate. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I think I've kind of heard a mixed bag around that, but what happens when you do really dislike your job right out of, you know, right out of college and in the working world? That is a really stressful experience because not only is it a big transition to leave college, move to a different city, make new friends, like try to have a life, like acclimate to what it's like having a nine to five job or more, but it's also really difficult when, you know, your life can kind of become your work. And if you don't love your work, then it can be really hard to just feel like you're enjoying the weeks. And so how would you suggest young professionals navigate that transition and those difficulties around just not liking the work that they do? Well, I think there are a lot of different components to our individual happiness, right? And I think it starts with getting sleep, not drinking too much or partying too much, exercising every day, even if it means waking up at 5 a.m., but hopefully you won't have to. And you can maybe do it on your lunch break or do in the evening or do it at a normal hour in the morning, but I think that these are all things that we all know are proven to make us much happier people. So that's the first thing I would say is, are they doing those things? You know, it's hard, I think if you're working a lot and you move to a new city and you don't know anyone where you are, I think that can be very challenging. But if you don't like the actual day-to-day work that you're doing, I mean, the only real options are are there opportunities to work on different, like if I keep thinking about the consulting, if someone were consulting and they didn't like the specific clients they were working on or the industry they got, you know, they were given, you know, there's a possibility that you could express interest in working on different types of clients in the next cycle or whatever that are maybe more your topic of interest. But I also think that if you don't want to do what you're doing long-term, I think you can also look at as a learning opportunity and think to yourself, okay, I'm going to do this for two years or 18 months because I committed to it, whatever however long you committed to doing it and think of it as a learning opportunity and spend your time researching and thinking about what you want to do next, you know, I mean with the internet, we have access to so many things, so much information, so many things are virtual now. You know, we all have the power to make our lives as interesting as we decide we want them to be. So I think dwelling in your unhappiness about your job is a pointless place to be, so I think you have to definitely get yourself into a more positive mindset and start thinking about the future and how you can transition your experience into something that you think you're going to like more. Mindset is so crucial and I'm really glad that, you know, the first part of your answer was kind of doing an internal audit of well, are you doing the things that are necessary that need to be done to take care of yourself because I think that really is the first step because then when you feel like, you know, you're establishing greater happiness and well-being in your day to day, then hopefully you can show up as a more positive person in your work environment and that might actually have like a ripple effect and create a more positive working environment. But then again, it's like, well, if you really don't like the work that you're doing, then that requires, you know, some more thought as to where you want your career to go. And I think there's also something interesting to be said around, you know, of course, like there's the gender, like pay disparity and the gender gap and I think women in particular have a more difficult time negotiating their salary and, you know, being able to ask for what they want and what they deserve. And I know we talked a little bit offline about some of the nuances behind that and, you know, the role that happiness can play in, you know, our ability to ask what we want and be assertive and decisive with that. So I'd love for you to share your perspective on negotiating salaries and also just negotiating, you know, your role when you're moving into a new job. So I think the best thing you can do in order to understand your worth is to really talk as many people as possible, read as much as you can about career paths and what different jobs pay because still today companies don't always disclose what the compensation they often don't disclose what the compensation is and what most HR people will ask candidates now is what are your salary expectations, which is legal. It's illegal in New York state to ask someone what their salary history is or what they are currently making. Often candidates volunteer that information, even when not asked for that information and I'll often tell people, you do not really have to tell me what your current salary is, but I do need to understand what your expectations are. And typically if a candidate is qualified and at the right level for whatever job it is that I'm recruiting for, they will usually ask for a number that is within the range of the client's budget. However, the client's budget is not a set in stone number and the reason why that's really important to understand is because what sometimes candidates will say is, well, what is the job pay? And I'll say, well, you know, it's different for every person, which people don't like to hear. But if someone asks for a hundred and they're qualified, they'll probably get a hundred and if a person asks for, you know, 130 and they're qualified, they might get 130. But the budget might be 120. And if the person who asks for less gets the job, they're likely to have less experience and probably not yet at the point in their career where they should get 120. Whereas the person who's going to get 130 might be more senior with more experience than what the client thought they were going to get, but they decided to stretch their budget because they really want that person. Reson the more junior person who makes a hundred, perhaps they decided to give an opportunity to someone who they didn't think would have enough experience, but they were so impressed by this candidate that they decided to take a chance on them. But just because they're getting 120 or 130 doesn't mean that they're selling themselves short. They were actually given an opportunity with a much bigger responsibility than they might have otherwise given. So the point is, do your research and when you ask for whatever compensation you ask for, give a realistic number, I often say, you know, 20% more than what you're making currently is a really good number to ask for, but 20% total compensation. And some of the things that are a little different from job to job, sometimes the base is higher or lower and the variable pieces higher or lower. So different kinds of jobs pay differently. So these are other things that are really important for you to know about. Also things like pay time off, you know, some companies have unlimited pay time off. Some of them have fully remote schedules. You know, I know in my case if I, you know, could work fully remotely from anywhere and that means I could go spend a month in Puerto Rico, go spend a month in France, go spend a month in Asia, while working any hours I choose to work, that gives me so much more life experience and freedom. That is worth a lot to me. So I think things like, where is the office, how much do I have to be in the office? What is the pay time? You know, those are all things that are really important to evaluate as part of your overall quality of life and compensation package, even if it's not really about money. Also benefits is so important to ask about, you know, medical, dental vision, how much, first of all, how good is the plan, who is a provider, and how much of that plan does the company pay for versus how much you pay for? Because if they cover 100%, that is huge. If they cover 80 or 70 or 50%, that's very different. You know, so these are all really important factors to consider when you are evaluating a job offer. These are things that I wish I had heard when I was going through the recruiting process because I felt like in college, it was very much like, you have to do all these applications and I was recruiting in particular for consulting. So it was just studying up on the case interviews and doing so many practice cases. And then it was like when I finally got the offer, then like, I took it and I was just like, we're going to see where things take me and I felt like that was kind of the narrative that a lot of people were dealing with in college. Just the first goal was to secure the job and then everything kind of falls into place, but it's so valuable to have these conversations now and to also know this, you know, prior to entering the working world because it really is so much more complex than I even realized. Like it's so far beyond just pay, really looking at like the benefits and the compensation and how all the pieces fit together and, you know, how your job can also best support your quality of life, I think is so important. And it parent me now that it's just beyond, it's beyond just your base pay, which is really interesting. Yeah, and I think a lot of people don't know that and it's also very privileged to be able to make those kinds of choices, right? Like that assumes that you have multiple options, you know, which those are the kinds of people I do tend to work with. You know, I tend to work with people who are experienced in their careers. So keep in mind that as a headhunter, I tend to recruit for director level and above positions. Director level typically means minimum 10 years of experience. Sometimes more. You know, I do a lot of sea level recruitments. And so I'm dealing with people with like 10 plus years experience, often 20 plus 30 plus. So I'm dealing with people who are very experienced. They are experts in their area, whatever it may be, and they do have choices. You know, these are people who have already spent years working for major global brands in a very specific area. They know what they're doing. You're coming in here to lead an apartment. Those people do have options and they do have choices to make. When you're coming right out of college and you're just trying to get a job, your first job, all of those other things, yes, they will affect your life. But do you really have a choice? Probably not. I mean, yes, if you got two or three different consulting company offers at the same time, you would want to line them up and see how they compare in all those different areas and make your decision. But I think anybody would obviously do that if that were the case. But if you went through the entire process and you got one offer and it was a good company, obviously you're going to take it. Are those things negotiable? Usually not, especially not at your level. I mean, I think you have to, it is a good idea though to really understand what the different components of your offer are because sometimes little things are negotiable. Like if you said, I need to do Fridays remote because I take care of my grandmother in Connecticut and I go out there Thursday night. I can work, but I have to give her medicine like Friday, Saturday, whatever, whatever thing it is. That's something they would probably agree to. You know, if it's a very specific ask that doesn't really affect them, but that's huge. If you don't have to physically be in the Manhattan office on Fridays and you can work from anywhere on Fridays, I mean, obviously don't make something up, but that is something that I think you can negotiate regardless of your bargaining power. Something very small. So I think you have to know going in if there's anything like that that you do want to ask for. Definitely. And I also think that COVID, it's just a very interesting time now to be having this conversation because we're still in the middle of this pandemic and COVID was this catalyst for just changing the way the working world is and will continue to be just given the fact that we've all had to work from home and we all had to pivot to doing remote work. So I think in a way, you know, it really sparked the conversation for better understanding work life balance because it can be very hard to have that distinction when you're working from home and that's your place of rest and being with family and friends. But also it allowed for such greater flexibility to be able to work remotely and go anywhere and be able to try to integrate your work and your personal life in a more healthy way. So I think COVID now has kind of changed the scene forever. So to speak, and it's it's also, you know, important to recognize that we're now entering a completely different working world than two or three years ago. And so now moving forward is going to be different like forever, which is kind of crazy to wrap my head around. Well, I'm not so sure about that. I mean, I actually think that COVID is coming very close to an end. I know that COVID is going to exist forever, but we're not going to keep functioning the way we have been for much longer at all. So already in New York, they're not checking vaccination cards at restaurants, they're not checking vaccination cards at events. You know, sooner or later, probably in the next month or two, we're going to start seeing fewer and fewer people wearing masks. People will still get COVID, but people who are, you know, vaccinated and boosted are generally not getting very sick. And it's just becoming like a cold or a flu that we all deal with on our regular basis. So I think that companies that have long-term leases or own their buildings or have a physical space that hasn't disappeared are going to start requiring people to come back into the office. And I know that actually my sister who was working, who was hired into a job fully remote, was just told that with one week's notice, she needs to start coming in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And that was a complete shock because of course she had already planned all these trips, where she was going to, you know, work remotely from all these different places throughout the year. And now she can't do that. Or else she has to find a different job. So I don't think, I think it's short-sighted to think that COVID has changed the way we work forever. Yes, a lot of systems are in place now where it's more acceptable in some cases to do things remotely. But depending on the company culture, I think there may be way more returning to work than people think. And people should be prepared for that because working from home, working remotely is really a privilege and it's not a guarantee. And, you know, I think companies want people to feel really committed. And I think to feel really committed to your company, often you need to bond with the people. You need to spend time with the product. You need to meet with your peers. You know, I don't, I'm not, I mean, I've been working from home since I started my own company many years ago. So, you know, I certainly would not be eager to jump back into the office. But I do see a difference between people who have been hired remotely and are working fully remotely the entire time they don't feel is connected. It's just a reality. It's a reality of working fully remotely. I read an article recently about how often managers will forget to promote people who are fully remote because they don't even remember that they're there. So, I think it's actually probably better to be at least hybrid in the office. And I think that that's probably the ideal scenario for most people. Yeah, and that's what I meant around COVID changing the way that work will unfold in the future. And thank God we're not packing March of 2020 where it was really, you know, a huge concern. And now it does feel like things are kind of opening up and returning more to a sense of normalcy. I know, you know, for example, with my office, now it's fully reopened. And we're not required to come in, but there's the option. And I think having the option is really, really nice. And so it'll be very interesting to kind of see how things evolve in the next few years as we're kind of transitioning a bit more out of COVID. I want to transition and talk a little bit more about the CoLab. And I know you mentioned this a bit earlier, but can you share with my listeners what the CoLab is and what opportunities are presented, you know, when joining the CoLab and how to get involved? Yes, absolutely. So as I said earlier, two years ago, at the very beginning of the pandemic, I started this networking community called the CoLab. So we are an inclusive professional networking community for people who work in fashion beauty, wellness, retail, and even tech. So it's becoming more and more professionals who work for brands, consumer brands. And my background, of course, is retail fashion and beauty. So a lot of our members are in that space, but there's quite a lot of variety and depth there from people who work on skincare brands or makeup brands to people who work, you know, for retailers like Saxe with Avenue and have even transitioned into companies like Apple and Google. So we really have quite a wide-ranging group of people and they're a very early career all the way up to very senior level and their careers. So what do we do? We have an internal stock communication where we have opportunities for people to connect in lots of different areas. So we have warm connections. So let's say you want a job at Tory Burch. You can say, "Hey, I saw this job at Tory Burch. Does anyone know anyone there?" And then maybe five people say, "Hey, I work at Tory Burch or who do you want to meet? I can introduce you." So it's a way to get warm connections. We have, of course, internship listings, job listings. So you can get access to job listings that people in the community can actually recommend you for. So rather than just applying blindly through their website or through LinkedIn, you can get someone who will send your resume directly to the hiring manager often. We have a newsletter that goes out to all of our members. So we feature a different member every week. We have a career stories podcast where we pair up two members to interview each other about their careers and then we edit it and break it up into two different stories. So we're telling all these career stories of different people and different functions and different areas of the business for people, early career people and even senior career people who want to transition into the industry can learn about these different career paths. We meet virtually in our cafe. We call it a cafe. Every Wednesday at one o'clock and we do a mentor series on the second Thursday of every month. Where are we learned from a different executive about their career paths? So so far this year we've had somebody and a designer in the metaverse. We've had a ready-to-wear designer who's worked for major global brands. We had a brand directors work for major global bands and magazines. So basically members get access to incredible people who work for these companies. We're also starting to do in-person events as well. We wrote a book which was a collaboration and career advice from 110 of our members which has provided lots of opportunities for us as far as brand partnerships. We are continuing to do partnerships with new brands. We just did an event with DVF. We did several events with Veronica Beard which hosted our book party. So it's basically opportunities to learn about brands and careers and network with other like-minded people who work in the industry. That's amazing and so accomplished. I love that you have this internal podcast or sharing people's career stories and I think obviously I'm very biased to podcasts because I have my own but- It's a very educational and entertaining when you get people together to talk about their life experiences. And in particular, they're careers because when you get someone to kind of talk about their own experience and how they went through that, I think it's really inspirational. And also, there's something actionable you can take from that. So I am so impressed with what you're doing and will continue to do with the colab. And everyone should definitely check it out. What is the website or like the Instagram that people can go to? Yeah, so it's join the colab.com with 1L. So join the colab.com. The Instagram is join the colab. The Twitter is join the colab. Facebook is join the colab. Everything's joined the colab. I am maxed out on my LinkedIn connections. So the best thing to do if you go to my LinkedIn, you can email me. But honestly, if you want to talk to me, just join the colab. And I should also mention that it's only $18 a month. I really truly wanted it to be inclusive and accessible for young professionals. It is absolutely a great investment. Just instead of buying that extra Cosmo by list, or that Martini, or that Nagroney, whatever it is, literally it's the price of one cocktail a month. So even if you come to one event a month or you get one good lead in that Slack channel for a job or a connection that ends up leading you to something really positive, it's certainly worth it. Sometimes I think it's actually too inexpensive. But it's hard to make something really inclusive without making it really accessible and affordable. So we do need to scale in order to make this sustainable for all of us who are working very hard to run this and make it as amazing as it is. But I really believe in it. I really believe in it. And I do believe that we will scale to a size where I could potentially even work on this full time. But I have to say, I do love the search practice that I have. I also do HR consulting for a couple of brands. And all three of these different things that I do really complement each other quite well. So I'm happy to keep doing all of them. Yeah. And you're kind of an example around what you were talking about earlier where you can be interested in one thing broadly. Like for example, you'd given marketing as an example. And you talked about like digital marketing, brand marketing, and everything can kind of fall under that umbrella. But you can job craft your career to find the most meaning out of it. And I think in your case, you're very entrepreneurial. But everything kind of falls under this umbrella around connections and people and HR. And so I think that you're just kind of this living example of to what you're preaching about around finding meaning throughout many different avenues in your career and finding your path and making sure everything kind of comes together seamlessly and recognizing that you can follow what you're passionate about. And that can take many different forms. But you want to make sure that it kind of is integrated in this one story. Yeah. And it all came together for me at some point. I think I also do a lot of career coaching for individuals who want one-on-one in their careers. And I work on a lot of resume and LinkedIn reviews and helping people define exactly what it is they're looking for and explain how the whole job search process works from the other side of the table. And I do really love that. I love helping people. And I make that service really affordable because I want people to be able to afford it. And I think a lot of people, especially early in their careers, cannot afford a career coach, even though we all probably need it. But again, I got to it from trying out different things. First, as a store manager, then a regional manager, then an HR manager, then rotated through a bunch of different HR roles, learning the business, working with outside search firms, understanding how that worked, realizing, OK, I can start my own. And then shifting from HR consulting, adding the search part of the practice, adding the career coaching part, then eventually adding the colab. The colab is great because I get so many resumes every day. And I don't have time to talk to every single person. And I think one of the common misconceptions that people have is they think that headhunters actually work for the candidate. So I get these resumes every single day. And they'll say, I'd love to talk to you about my next step. I'd love for you to help me find my next step. And I will usually respond and say, great, thanks for sending me your resume. I'll keep you in mind if I get an assignment. If a client hires me to recruit for a specific job that matches your profile, I'll keep you in mind. But they want to call and pitch themselves to me and have me find them a job. But that's not what I do. I work for the client that's hiring. So I'm only really interested in talking to them if I can fill a job that someone's paying me to recruit for. Only then do I have the time to meet them. It's not that I'm not interested in talking to them. I'd love to talk to every single person in the world because I think I'd learn so much. But I've limited time in my day, and I have to focus on meeting the candidates that are qualified and ready for the job that I currently have. And so I think that that's a huge misconception. But now with the collab, I can say, I don't have a job for you right now. However, if you want to get to know me and my network, join the collab, get access to jobs, clients, expand your network, get visibility. All the things that are ultimately going to lead you to your next step, I've created for you and provided for you for an extremely low price, join that. And then if they don't want to join that, because some people are very close-minded about the way that they think they want to get help, they'll say, well, I don't want to join anything. And then I'll say, OK, well, I can also help you if you want an hour of my time. I can help you with your search. I can talk through it with you, help you in any way that I can offer warm connections, opportunities, think about ideas, brainstorm with you. But you're going to obviously have to pay for my time because as a self-employed person, if I'm going to give you my time, I need to be compensated for that. So I think that that is something that people have very unclear understanding around. But head-unders work for companies that are paying them, and they usually only really have time to interview and speak to candidates that are qualified for the jobs that they're recruiting for. If I ever-- if I love the collab, though, because it gives me an opportunity to get to know them, and then often, they're more top of mind for me when they do join the collab, because then when jobs come up, I often remember them. So I'm much more likely to remember people who join the collab and engage. It's just really hard to remember thousands and thousands of people otherwise. Right. That makes sense. That makes sense, and also just understanding some of the misconceptions around what it's like being head-hunter, because I think people think the former that head-hunter's will find jobs for candidates. But it's really the head-hunter's working for the client. And when there's an open role, then they know who to seek out to fill that. As we wrap up, I have a few final questions. The first question that I have for you is, what is the best career advice that you'd ever been given? So I have two different points. One, one of my first managers told me, just do the job you have as well as you can, and the next thing will come along. And I think that that's really true. I think if you work really hard and you do a good job, people will constantly be tapping you for other opportunities, either on bigger teams or for promotions. So just even if you're not sure if this is the job for you long-term, just work your hardest and others will notice. So that is really good advice. One of the things that I said earlier, which is my personal advice, is that it's really important to define who your career icons are and study their career paths and how they got there. Because I think that by watching other people and seeing the steps that they take to get where they are today, you can create something similar for yourself. Otherwise, we have no idea what to do. Yeah, I think also mentors are just incredibly important. And I wouldn't be here today without people advocating for me and really being a champion in my life. My next question is, how do you define work-life balance and what are some things that you do to achieve that in your day to day? Well, I mean, I think my whole self-employed career, which started when my twins who are now 14 were one year old, stemmed from me just wanting to work from home when they were little. And I always had either part-time preschool or part-time help. But I didn't want to leave my house at 7, 30 in the morning and get home at 8 o'clock at night. That, to me, which is what I did in my corporate job, didn't feel sustainable with young kids. And I ended up having one more. So I have an 11-year-old and 14-year-old twins. So now they're much more independent. They go to school by themselves. And they come home by themselves. And so I have a lot more freedom than I did 10 years ago. But I started my whole business so that I could have more work-life balance. I mean, I also always wanted to do my own thing. And I've always been very entrepreneurial. But I find that without commuting and being able to work around when they were younger, the pick up and drop off schedule and stuff like that, it allowed me to be much more productive. One thing that I did before the pandemic, and it's something I'm really eager to start doing again, is prioritize exercise and fitness. So I didn't for a really long time when my kids were little. And at some point, I think it was around 2015. I decided that if I didn't schedule it, it into my day as my number one priority that it would never happen. So I would literally, I was very lucky because I love yoga and I lived right around the corner from yoga studio and I would literally schedule a class at like any time I could go. Usually it was like 9, 10, noon or four or something like that, but it was like a time when my kids were in school and I would go no matter what. Like no matter what was going on, I was like an important meeting on my schedule that I could not change under any circumstances. It was a three minute commute. I could go, leave three minutes before the class and get there on time and do the class and be home three minutes later. And I just, not only was I in the best shape of my life, but I felt amazing and I have to say I have really fallen off the wagon on that and I did and continue to do zoom yoga, but I usually do it once a week or sometimes twice and I really, you know, need to be doing it more frequently. It's just so much better for my mental health and for achieving work life balance. It's really, really important. So I'm also really big on getting sleep. So I try to sleep. This is a really tough one. I try to sleep eight hours a night. So right now I am not achieving that, but I try to get like start winding down by 10. Usually not asleep until 11, 11, 30, but I'm trying to go to bed earlier because I do have to wake up at like six or six 30. So I think getting sleep is really, really important. And then frankly, my priority is, you know, my kids like feeding them, supporting them and whatever they're doing, but when they're gone, it's really for me, my priorities are work and fitness. So, you know, pretty much working all of the time that I can. But I'm also one of those people who almost refuses to like even look at my email in the weekend. You know, like, it just feel like it would be very easy to just work all the time, especially when you're self employed because you never really get time off. But I'm kind of like of the mind that, you know, the work can always wait till Monday. And on the weekend, I really want to be doing other things that bring me joy. Like seeing art, going to events, going to dinner parties, seeing friends, seeing family, playing games with my kids, you know, so whatever it is that is more fun because I think otherwise it just feels like, you know, you're spending too much time doing work. You need a separation between the weekend and the weekdays. Absolutely. I agree. I think that you need that time on the weekend to recharge so that you feel ready to start the work day, come Monday. Like, you need that separation. And you kind of already answered my last question, which is something I ask every single guest that comes onto the show. What is something that brings you a bit of endorphins? Yeah, definitely yoga, but also just people. I mean, I think that sometimes it can be draining, but I am definitely an extrovert who gets a lot of my energy and inspiration from other people. And I love meeting really smart, interesting people who inspire me. So I think I'll leave it on that note. Me as well. And I love that you answered that because there's a lot of research out there that shows that the number one predictor of our well-being and our life satisfaction is from the strength of our interpersonal relationships. So people do bring endorphins absolutely and yoga for sure. I absolutely love yoga. And I think it's great that you are in a very disciplined routine. And the best we can do is just try our hardest to keep that up every day. So it'll be, I think, easy for you to get back on the wagon. And it's something I'm trying to work on as well as getting back into more of a structured yoga routine. But thank you so much, Kristi. It was an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. My listeners now know where they can find you and where they can join the collab. Feel free to reach out to Kristi. Don't hesitate reaching out to her. And I hope you get to get some more amazing career advice. Thank you, Stella. This was really fun. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening and remember to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things that bring you endorphins every day. See you next time.