[00:00]

The truth is you may not need a full 180°. Maybe you don’t need a whole brand-new career. You just need a small tweak. I’m here to help you find the holes in your boat so you can fill them in and sail on, right? I want you to be happy. But maybe you do need a brand-new boat. Or maybe there’s just no saving it, right? And so if that’s the case, I’m going to help you figure it out.

[Intro]

Hello and welcome to The Career Shake Up Podcast. I’m your host, Kristin Szalajko. I’m a certified professional career coach who specializes in career exploration. I believe everyone deserves a meaningful career they love. I know it can be hard to find that career, and that’s why I’m here. I’ve developed an easy formula to help you identify the right career path for you. Let’s shake up the way you view your career. I’m going to challenge you to look at careers in a brand-new way. Whether you’re stuck in a job you don’t like or just starting out on your path, my goal is to empower you to take control of your career.

[1:00]

Welcome to the Career Shake Up Podcast. I’m so happy that we have found each other. This is our first episode, and this is going to be great. I’m Kristin Szalajko. I’m your host, and I’m going to tell you about myself in just a second. But first, I actually want to start with you. Obviously, I don’t know you, but I can certainly take a couple of guesses. My guess is you’re an adult. You’re working in a career, and you just don’t like it. You don’t feel like your career is a good fit. You’re not sure there’s something else out there for you, and you sort of feel stuck. Most of us have been there at some point in our lives, and you just feel like you have a career that doesn’t fit you.

The problem with that is sometimes we feel like we have so many options, we don’t even know what we would do if we left. Like you have a lot of interest. How would you narrow it down? Or quite the opposite. We feel like we just have no options. I have no other interests. I don’t have any other skills. I’m stuck. What would I do? And that can be paralyzing. Just absolutely paralyzing.

So what happens is we get fearful that we’re going to make the wrong choice. There’s no other option for us. We’re going to disappoint everybody around us, our family, our friends, maybe our spouses, and our kids. And we just feel stuck. We feel like there’s no other place for us. And so, we just kind of succumb to misery is going to be our only option. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not that you deserve a career that suits you, and a good career, quite frankly, is within your reach.

[02:30]

So now a little bit about me. I’m a certified professional career coach. I’ve done this for a couple of years now, and I help people figure out what career is the right fit for them. That’s what I do. I wasn’t always this, so I do this on the side. In my day job, I’m a paralegal. I work for a commercial real estate investment trust. I help them with their litigation. So really, I help kick people out and handle bankruptcies. Right? So, I’m like the necessary evil at the company.

I actually really enjoy my job, but the problem is I have four kids, and after I got pregnant with my third, I wanted to come home. I just felt this call that I needed to be home and financially it wasn’t possible for us for me to just quit. But I didn’t know if my company would let me work remotely. I just couldn’t see how it could work. Right? The company wasn’t set up for that. So I actually went to my bosses and asked if working remotely would be possible, and they told me no, and I was devastated. I’ve been there for quite a few years. I really loved the job, and if I didn’t do that, what would I do?

Honestly, I had just no other options. It was really stressful. But I was really determined that I needed to be home with my kids. At the time I was working, I was gone for ten and a half to 11 hours a day. You know? Between commute, lunch, and working hours, I was just gone a lot. And that takes a big toll on you as a mom. So, I actually just kind of went down this rabbit hole. Took me a whole year. I read book after book on finding your passion and your purpose and how to figure out the right job for you. And some of the books I read were helpful, but some of them were just fluffy and ridiculous. But I actually ended up finding a lot of really great information and I started to put these pieces together like a little puzzle and I got frustrated. I was like, why is this so hard to figure out? It shouldn’t be that difficult. And a lot of the information you need is very simple to understand, but it’s not put together in a simple way. And so that’s what I did. I went out and put this together in a really easy way so that people can understand it.

In the end. My company actually told me I could work remote. I was totally shocked but so happy, of course. And this was pre-COVID. So I went remote. But I was bound and determined to help other people figure this out. So I’m doing it on the side and coaching a few dozen people in my free time and helping them figure out what to do. And I love it. I think the formula is easy and it works.

[05:05]

That’s what I’m here for to you. If you’ll just listen to the podcast and follow through on the challenges and the direction I give you, you’re going to find yourself on the right career path. Look, I’m all about meat and not fluff. I don’t like to waste my time. I like to get quick to the point. And so that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to just give you quick actionable stuff. And if you could follow through on what I tell you, I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, you’ll find a career that’s a good fit for you.

So, we’re going to do weekly episodes. Every few episodes we’re going to interview someone in a different field to kind of get a feel for what their day-to-day looks like and help you know if that’s maybe something that you want to explore. So if there’s something specific you want, a specific job you’re interested in, email me, shoot me a message and let me know and I find someone that we can get on here and talk to them about what their job looks like.

So if you have any questions, of course, email me. KristinSzalajko@gmail.com. I know my last name is tricky, you’ll see it in the episode description. So I’m going to give you, like I said, this formula, this process to follow. So if you’ll subscribe and if you even want to sign up for an email list, I’ll send you all the worksheets that I’ll mention on here that will help you kind of complete each step. And of course, if you subscribe, you’ll find the episodes as they come out.

As we do this, as we work together, I’m going to help you move in a clear direction towards this career that you love. I want you to be empowered and feel like you’re in a career that you love, and you know how to get there. My goal is to give you this tool, this formula that you can use over and over and over again. Because maybe at the end of this, you find a job you love. But we can’t predict the future, right? Something may happen in the future that will force us to change our path. Maybe our current job suddenly doesn’t exist anymore because of technology. And now we suddenly have to find ourselves a new job again or our life situation changes, or, you know, an opportunity is presented to you that you just would have never anticipated. That happens in life, right? And so, I’m going to give you this formula that you can use again and again and again, and you’re going to know how to evaluate a career, know if it’s the right one for you, and you’re going to feel confident that you’re making the right decision.

I just really want you to stop feeling like you have to live a path that’s not your own. And I don’t want you to live with regret. Maybe regret for the decisions you’ve made, but maybe regret for the decisions you haven’t made and the fear that kept you back. I want you to feel confident that you can move forward. Right? So that’s what I’m here for. The truth is you may not need a full 180°. Maybe you don’t need a whole brand-new career. You just need a small tweak. I’m here to help you find the holes in your boat so you can fill them in and sail on. I want you to be happy. But maybe you do need a brand new boat. Maybe your boat there is just no saving, right? And so, if that’s the case, I’m going to help you. We’re going to help you figure it out.

So, let’s get you some quick wins, come back next week, and we’re going to just jump in right away to what the formula is to a happy career. There are a few key steps that you need, and so we’re just going to jump right in. All right, that’s all I have for you today. If you want to find the show notes, there at www.kristinszalajko.com/episode1 and I’ll put the link to my email list on there if you want to get all these worksheets that I’m going to have for you as we go forward, and, of course, any information that we may have. So until next week, have a good week.

[Outro]

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you’ve found value as you listened. If there’s anyone you feel can use this episode, please go ahead, and share it with them. Also, you’re likely listening to this on the go. When you find a quiet moment, could you be so kind as to leave me a review? That will help others find me as well. Be sure to come back next week for the next episode. Same time, same place. Have a great week. Bye.