Kenzie 0:04
Your approach is not a one size fits all. I would say it’s a launchpad, you set up a lot of tools that we can use for life. And my only mistake in this program is not starting soon enough, and really see this as an investment and not an expense, you will see a return in your life and your personal and your social life. At work in your relationships, you will see it if you come in and do the work.

Blake Schofield 0:45
Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment, mom to three, USA Today top 10 professional coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand women’s perspectives and empower them to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment.

Blake Schofield 1:18
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Bridge to Fulfillment. I’m really excited to have my client Kenzie on today to share her personal journey in the bridge to fulfillment and honestly what I would say is a journey of self empowerment and really learning about who she is and the power that she has to create what she wants in her life. So with that said, I’m going to turn it over. Welcome Miss Kenzie. I’m so happy to have you today.

Kenzie 1:44
I’m thrilled to be here. Blake, thank you so much.

Blake Schofield 1:48
Yeah, absolutely. So, lady, this is always fun. When we get to this place, you and I were just talking a minute ago about reflecting on the journey, which I think is always a fun thing to do before we come in. And I know you’re gonna have so much great wisdom to share in your experiences and really help other women. But before we kind of dive in, can you share a little bit with the audience? Who are you tell us a little bit about your background and, and then what was going on when we connected.

Kenzie 2:11
I’ve been in the healthcare industry as a leader for about six years. And I have been with the same organization for several of those years. Since I’ve started my career out of college, I always felt like I was in the wrong role. Wrong job. You know, I kept getting pay raises kept getting promotions, so I thought I couldn’t go anywhere else. I definitely thought if I had to step into a different role, it would mean as serious pay cut 10s of 1000s of dollars. And I was comfortable. But I again, I knew that I wanted something different. I wanted to learn new skills, something more, but I honestly thought I couldn’t do that. And how I found you. You really can’t make it up. I was it was Sunday night. And I had the Sunday scaries completely. And I just put on my phone trying to fall asleep this podcast that I listened to just sometimes. And it was a career podcast and you were on it Blake and explaining about how it was like you were talking to me. There’s all these women who thinks that they need to go back to school, or they need to step into a different role. And just to learn something new, or to transition into a career or a different role or a different industry. And I honestly thought yes, there’s no way. And then I immediately actually got on online and set up a call with you.

Kenzie 3:41
And at first, I was a little bit of a hard sell.

Kenzie 3:42
So when I looked at this, I thought it was I looked at it from an expense standpoint. I didn’t know if I was ready to do it. I thought you know what, maybe I’ll try this on my own. I have friends that come to me asking for resume advice. I think that I’ll be able to go in and impress people with my experience and my skills. And I learned pretty quickly that I wasn’t able to do that I had applied to several jobs and got several rejection emails. And I kept thinking about our conversations that we had in the past. And there was a time where I was just at a very severe burnout. And I reached out to you it was the beginning of this year and it was my my goal to land into a new role. But actually through this program, I gained and learned so much more than that.

Blake Schofield 4:32
You said you felt like you were in the wrong role. What were the signs and symptoms that told you that? What were you experiencing?

Kenzie 4:41
Misalignment. Times of high achievement, high success and sometimes have really low lows of I don’t want to go to work. When I am at work. I am disengaged. But I’m a high achiever. I’m a high performer I like to accomplish things but I just didn’t have that fulfillment. And I truly felt stuck in that. If I wanted to find that I would have to completely start from scratch.

Blake Schofield 5:12
Was it this element of like, I love to achieve. But these goals don’t feel exciting to me like the stuff I’m supposed to be achieving, I don’t really want to achieve. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I got to that place to where it was like, I have these things. But it either is not a high anymore when I achieved them, like if I’ve done it over and over again, or I don’t really want to do this. So you said you were hard sell you felt like you could do it yourself. I hear that all of the time. And I think sometimes it’s a misnomer. We were talking about this a minute ago. It’s a misnomer that all we do is help women transition into a more fulfilling job. And that the signs and symptoms you have are just that you just need to move a job one day, right? If you have all of these signs and symptoms, it’s so much greater than just you’re in the wrong job, and you need to change jobs. And I talked about the breakdown cycle and why that happens. And that if you keep making changes, and you don’t fix the root cause you will end up back in the breakdown cycle. And it just gets worse and worse and worse over and over and over again. What I always think is fun is I have women tell me how much they enjoy these success stories. You said the same, right? You listened to quite a few before you came in. And I consistently have women say, even despite everything I learned the program was still different. It was still so much more than I got out of it than I thought. So I’d love to hear your perspective. When you came into the program. What was your goal? What did you think you were gonna get out of it? And what has transpired and was different than what you expected?

Kenzie 6:35
Yeah, my goal was to find a new career, a new role change into a new industry have a clear trajectory of what my next five years would look like. I was ready to learn how to network, how to brush up my resume and get it out there. But the approach was so much more holistic than that. And I didn’t realize how much I really needed that you are very and you say this throughout the program, Blake is you’re very strategic, and how you have everything set up in the order that you have it set up. And throughout the program, I had these aha moments of, oh, now I realize why we worked on our boundaries in the beginning. And you know, A, B and C, it lifts this huge weight off your shoulders. When you’re feeling so stressed at work, that you feel like you don’t have time or you can’t move forward. So that it’s just it helps alleviate those mental blocks that I didn’t even know that I had. And now now I’m in my role. And well, one, if you’re like me and like to hear results, actually, in our first week, I reached out to you to talk about how I would bring up my salary to my leader, that conversation covered the investment of this program, and then some, so that alone, and then just learning how to set better boundaries, my own leadership development in my current role that made me feel like, okay, now I know my value, I know my worth, I know that I can wait until I find the perfect role for me, I don’t have to be so desperate and taking anything because I’m so burned out of my current job. So that is huge. Because I know if I didn’t have this program, I probably would have just reached out to somebody acted very desperate, because I was unhappy in my role and been very down the road upset and even more unfulfilled. And just in that spiral again.

Blake Schofield 8:38
So if I understand correctly, you just want to make sure the audience understands. And the first week you came in, and you said, I feel like I’m being underpaid in my role. And I want to go ask for more. So you and I partnered together. And so what you’re saying is in the first week, you got enough of a raise that paid for this program and some right without even moving other jobs. Okay. And then secondarily, you said, you know, then from that you learned a lot of leadership skills. And you learned that you had a lot of mindset blocks that you didn’t realize you had, can you maybe share because there are probably some women listening that’s like, what does she mean by that? Could you share some signs and symptoms of what you are experiencing that you now understand were mindset blocks or leadership opportunities for you that you didn’t realize in the past?

Kenzie 9:21
Two things that come to mind are not knowing my worth. And when I listen to these podcasts, or when I even started the program of that’s not going to work for me, because I had faced rejection in the past from these emails. When I tried to apply for jobs. I thought, yeah, I’ve tried this before and I was rejected. It’s not gonna work for me. The other thing was being okay with rejection. So for me in a confidence thing, I want people to like me, I feel uncomfortable when I’m rejected. But now, you know, as I’m interviewing for jobs currently, I’m like, if I don’t get this I know I have a job right? No, and I know there’s something out there for me. So just that mindset shift, because I think a lot of women especially, are just trained to think like, Oh, I’ll go with the flow, or I have to be liked by everybody. And there’s so many times in this program that you realize, Wow, what I actually bring to the table is very unique. And not everybody can do this. Because I that was my thought, I really thought that I wasn’t that special. And, you know, there’s so many other smarter, better people out there, that’s going to take this role. And that’s just not going to work out for me. But I realized now that I have a lot of value, and I eventually will find that right role.

Blake Schofield 10:42
So you said it helps you uncover and know your worth? How is that different than how you were operating before? Like for a woman listening? I think often women say, Now I know my worth, I know how to articulate what I want to need. But I think often when we don’t have that we don’t know that we don’t have it. You know what I mean? Like did you know part of the problem was you didn’t know your worth?

Kenzie 11:01
No, going into it. I didn’t. And part of uncovering like the secret sauce, transferable skills and working with you on that. Blake, you really helped me see. And through some of the calls to you helped me see that not everybody’s like that, and you are unique. You have your own, you call it your fingerprint of your skill sets. And that is so true. And as I’ve gone through the program, I’ve thought about how, oh, the reason why I do this so well is because of my skill set.

Blake Schofield 11:32
Yeah, I often get the question from women, I don’t understand how you can do this, and how it works. And I think most of us have been brought up especially if you’re a high achiever type a planner, that everything is black and white, I plan and I get everything, my ducks in order, and I accomplish x. Right. But what I think often my clients learn through this process and through being able to live with more ease, and more ability to not have to try and control everything. Is that wonderful surprises come your way, like would you have ever imagined coming in this program, then in week one, you would have not only paid off the program, right? From what you got from it that made more money off of it? Would you have ever imagined some of the things that came your way?

Kenzie 12:17
Yeah, no, I would not have imagined the things that came my way. And that I wouldn’t have even known or felt confident enough to have that conversation. And how you helped me have that conversation was in a respectful way that also advocated for myself. And that helped me learn moving forward to advocate for myself, there’s a way to do it, and still be respectful, and not come off as demanding, because I think a lot of especially women don’t want to come off that way. And that’s one reason why women are paid less than men.

Blake Schofield 12:53
100%, I was just just recently did a podcast with another client. And she was talking about how many times she had asked him her career for things and had been turned down. And she felt really undervalued for that it sort of echoes some of what you’re saying where I’ve done this before. And it didn’t work for me. But what she didn’t realize in that circumstance was it was how she was asking that she wasn’t clear that she didn’t have a strategy that created that positive movement forward. And it sounds in many ways, echoing some of what you’ve learned about how to understand and have clarity and what you want, and clearly articulate that in a way that gets you the future or the results that you’re looking for.

Kenzie 13:31
Yes. And I know if I didn’t do this program, I probably would have continued applying to Oh, wide variety of jobs, and ended up in a role that is very similar to where I’m in now in that I don’t have passion or interest in next steps for the role. And this role, really, or this program really helped me narrow it down on what I really wanted to be fulfilled. And now I’m ready to to run with it.

Blake Schofield 14:03
Yeah, I love it. And you’ve been having some great momentum and your job search. And like I said, as we talked about, it’s like you got to the end of the program. And I think sometimes you hear from women, what happens if I get to the end of the program, and I don’t have a job yet, right. And I often say one of three things happens. Number one, you’ve already landed your job. Number two, you got it, you’re on a good trajectory, you’ve learned the skills you need to learn and you just need to keep applying them which is exactly where you’re at. Right. And then the third one is, well, I feel like I’m getting a ton of value and there’s more I want to learn or get support from and then you can enroll in a back end month to month program to continue to get the support that you need. But I love it as we went through your journey. It was like no, we have evidence that shows consistently that what you’re doing is working, that you have great momentum and it’s just a matter of time until that right roll right locks in that you move into it. And so I couldn’t be more excited for you. And for when that moment comes we’ll be able to do the negotiation and just finalize the path for you. That said earlier I asked you so often I hear from women and that they’re struggling with, they don’t have clarity, or they don’t know how to do things or maybe just like you have, they’ve tried it on their own and it didn’t work, right. And there’s this whole question of like, well, how does this work? How would you describe how this works and how it’s different than doing it on your own?

Kenzie 15:14
It gets down to, like you always say, it gets down to the root cause of why you’re looking for a new job, or why you’re unhappy. And then you start to shift into what do I want for my next role? What are my non negotiables, and I would have never thought of doing that on my own. Also, just being more mindful, working on your daily affirmations. All of those things, again, like that holistic approach that I didn’t think I needed, helped me understand. And actually, I was in an interview, and I talked about my holistic approach and my job search. And I heard back from one of my interviewers twice, about how impressed they were, with that response and how I’m being very thoughtful and moving into the right next role, not just any role.

Blake Schofield 16:06
So you mentioned earlier you are, you’re maybe a little bit more challenging and starting the program, right? It wasn’t just this immediate, yes, I want to do it, there was the element of right, you had started to look at right and do the MBA sort of direction, which by the way I consider doing myself, so I totally get that somebody’s gonna do that. But then you’re also you are earlier in your career, right? You’re on more of the early realm, we have women kind of where you’re at all the way up to 25 plus years of experience. And you actually had a question on whether you were too early in your career to do this program. Do you remember that? Yes. What was your concern about doing this work early in your career,

Kenzie 16:47
My main concern was having enough to talk about and position myself to look into a different industry. I was worried about one my age and people would see that because I’ve had that happen in my career before. And to just that I didn’t have enough experience in one area. And as we dove into all of this work, I realized, I have a lot of experience I can talk about in my six years of my career.

Blake Schofield 17:16
And how was that being on calls and being able to network with some women where you were in your career, some women in you know, 10 1215 years, some women that were further on? How was that experience for you?

Kenzie 17:29
It was surprising in that we all had a lot of similar questions and similar experiences. Even though we were in totally different industries. We were in different parts of our career held different titles, different levels, it is amazing to realize how you are not alone. I always thought that this was just me. And then when I heard your, your interview on a podcast for the first time, I was like, is this woman reading my mind? And then it just kind of kept going like that, as I met more people of like, oh, yeah, I had that exact question, or I came across that. And I didn’t think I could move forward in this way.

Blake Schofield 18:17
Knowing what you know, now having gone through this, do you think that you need to be further along in your career to have equal amount of benefit? Or do you think that there are different variations of how you can benefit based on where you are in your career?

Kenzie 18:31
I think the latter, there’s different variations. And your approach is not a one size fits all. You help people you meet people where they are, and everything that the program you go through, it’s like I would say it’s a launch pad. So I’ve done this work for three months, I’m not done doing it, you set up a lot of tools that we can use for life. So really investing in this when you are younger, this will help me even more, because I’ll be able to go back to this work if one if I’m ever in the same situation. Or just if I need to refresh or if I’m ever feeling tired or burnt out in my role, getting back to these foundational skills that I learned throughout the program. So I would even argue that it’s more valuable when you’re earlier in your career. Because you have this and parts of this program you have access to for life once you invest in it. So that was really helpful for me to know when I decided to invest in myself, knowing that I still had access after the three months.

Blake Schofield 19:44
I 100% agree with you. I’ve seen my clients across the board, right, this program is beneficial. I don’t care where you are, even if you’re five years away from retirement. But when you think about the trajectory of your career, I think that a lot of what we teach in this program are are lifelong skills for you personally for your career for your own personal leadership for your ability to create what you want. And so when I look at that, and I sometimes see people younger in their career saying, Oh, well, I’m fine just figuring it out, or I can just do it on my own, or I’m too young, or to your point, maybe it is that you don’t feel experienced enough. I often say, oh, my gosh, if I had had these tools, if I had had these tools earlier in my life, what could I have done with them? Because it’s not just about this one circumstance, it is exactly I love how you use the word Launchpad. I often say they’re foundational, lifelong skills. And you’ve actually given yourself a tremendous leg up, because you now know them in a way that like very few if I would say almost nobody, at your stage in your career will know. And for a high achiever to be able to do that, to me, gosh, that’s one of the greatest things and like, you can give me a leg up, right and get to the next level. I’m always for that I always want to be in the room where I’m going to be challenged, and I’m going to be moving forward. And so I love hearing you say that, because that’s my perspective. And that’s also what I’ve seen and heard from my clients that do come in that are earlier on a new career was there was a lot of trepidation about is this right for me? And am I too early in my career, and then on the back end is like, oh, my gosh, what I’ve learned and what I’ve gotten from this is lifelong skills, that will enable me to move further faster and with more ease in my career,

Kenzie 21:18
One other thing that I was worried about when we were talking before I had signed up, was you say that your average client gets a 10 to 20% pay increase? And I asked you, I said do you really think that’s possible for me being that I only have five, six years experience? And you said, oh, yeah, I don’t see that’s a problem. Well, as I’ve talked to organizations, I found out that you are right, I totally thought that wasn’t possible for me at all. And in that, it’s pretty amazing to to know and realize that even with my years of experience, I can still set myself up. But like you say, it always starts early on. And knowing how to position yourself in this program helps you do exactly that.

Blake Schofield 22:07
So I often say you don’t know what you don’t know, if I had to say to you, what are the top two or three things you’ve learned in this program that you didn’t know, back when you were unfulfilled, frustrated? Thinking you had to do it on your own job searching and getting rejections or not feel like you were having traction, what you were doing? What are the top two to three things you didn’t know that you now know?

Kenzie 22:32
Knowing how to reach out to people and network that was something that I really worked through in this program, and pushed myself to do it. And wow, did I realize how beneficial and actually how much fun it was, and is I’m still networking with people, and how I’ve learned how I’ve practiced my interview skills and conversations with them. So when I did interview, I felt much more ready. I didn’t think I ever could do that. The other thing I would say and I said this before was mental blocks, I spent a lot of time just staring at job boards. Before coming into this program. I was really probably more stressed about what I wanted to do next in my career than my actual job. I work for an organization that really does care about people. I like my supervisor. And that was one other thing that I thought like, oh, maybe this isn’t right for me, because I really do feel valued in my organization. But I know there’s not another role that I’m interested in. And I know that I don’t want to keep doing this work. So I would say even people who aren’t clear on what they want to do next, this program is for you, as well, because that’s where I was spending a lot of my time and my mental spiral, trying to figure out what can I do next that won’t sacrifice my income because I have commitments that I’ve made, I have a lifestyle and I didn’t want to sacrifice that either. Let’s just kind of go into what has changed you said mentally you now feel differently on a day to day basis. You aren’t desperate to leave you want to find the right move. Have some unexpected changes happened in terms obviously you got a bump and pay etc but have some other unexpected things come from what your day to day work and life balance looks like now. Yeah, I am not exhausted. At the end of the day and week, I’m working the same or less amount of hours and I come home and I have capacity to exercise. Learn read, be with my family, be with my dog, doing the things that I really enjoy doing and starting to build those skills like my at home boundaries and skill sets. For my next role to that I didn’t have before like in the beginning of the program. I felt very guilty about closing my door setting boundaries, leaving work early and one thing very in the very The beginning of the program that I heard and retained was, you’re actually more valuable if you can get your work done in less time. And I didn’t see it that way. I always thought as I had to sit here, because everybody else has to sit here for 40 hours. And I’ve really leveraged that. And I use that now, like I left at noon today. And so I could come and chat with you here. And you know, I’ll do a little work from home. But then I’ll do things here too. So it relieves a lot of stress. And time.

Blake Schofield 25:33
Awesome. All right, ladies. So right now you’re in the middle of the job search. And going through that, tell us a little bit about what that experience has been how it’s been different than what you did before? And what are you most looking forward to?

Kenzie 25:46
Yes, so as I mentioned before, the networking piece, reaching out to people learning more about them and their roles and how they made transitions. Also one role that I’m in interviews for right now, they picked me out of a group of probably at least 100 applicants, and the hiring leader wanted to interview me right away. But even if I don’t get that role, it won’t break me where in the past, it probably would have, I probably would have sat and felt bad for myself and said, I’m just gonna quit this job search. But even if that happens, like I said, there’s the right role out there somewhere for me, this program helped me understand that

Blake Schofield 26:27
Awesome, I love it. So is there anything I have not asked you that I should have, or that you just feel on your heart that you want to share?

Kenzie 26:35
I would say the one mistake that I made was waiting to invest in this program, it probably took me from the first time we talked to the time I signed up, like three or four months. And that was my only mistake in this program was not starting soon enough. And really see this as an investment and not an expense. Because that was where I made a mistake as well. You will see a return in your life and your personal and your social life, at work in your relationships, you will see it if you come in and do the work. So I would certainly say if you’re like me, and you want to know exactly what’s going to happen, take the leap, invest in yourself if this sounds like something that you you can relate to.

Blake Schofield 27:28
Thank you for sharing, I think as women we’ve not been educated, or we haven’t seen a lot of examples of women investing in themselves. And so a lot of times, especially if we come from more of the type a planar mentality, we think everything is black and white. And investing is one of the things that I consistently see is not it’s very gray. And that every time I’ve invested I’ve gotten back far more than I expected sometimes exactly what I expected, sometimes things that are completely wild and totally unexpected and much bigger benefits. And the reason I actually went into the investment, and Kinsey’s over here nodding your head at me right now. And I just think it’s part of my heart to help women understand that you deserve to invest in yourself that the people that you love, deserve for you to show up as your best you and you would invest in them. You would invest in your husband going to do what he wanted to do, you would invest in your kids and the soccer league or the coach to help teach them. But somehow, in our own mentality, we feel it. And I’m not sure why that always is. But we feel like things when we invest in ourselves. It’s an expense, and it’s really not so I don’t know, that’s my heart. What are your thoughts from that, Kenzie?

Kenzie 28:41
100%. Even this program, I realized, Hey, I’m gonna have more people helped me. And I just feel so much better in my personal and professional life because of that, and this program helped me see that asking for help really is a strength.

Blake Schofield 28:59
And that we go much further, much faster when we have support from people to help us right, see our blind spots, uncover or show us paths we didn’t know were possible. So I just appreciate you sharing that because like I said, my heart is across the board. I look at women, whether it’s your career or your life, or your house, or whatever it might be, if you are not investing in getting support and and having people who have an expertise and things help you and continuing to grow personally, I feel like so often. That’s why I see so many women burned out and exhausted and frustrated. And honestly, in some cases giving up on their own skills because they’re trying to do far too much themselves. And they believe just like you did, and just like I did for more than a decade, if I can’t do it myself and no one can help me and that is just the biggest lie. And it’s either that we feel guilty or selfish for asking for help or that we should know how to do something. Or like what you said we will Got it is an extensive set of actually recognizing this thing is the thing that’s going to be a launchpad for a better me, which will enable me to write, be happier, have better balance, take better care of my health, have better relationships, make more money, be on a career trajectory that I get to drive and own. And those are the things I see consistently over and over again. And I think they’re the intangibles that are really hard for someone who’s never invest in themselves to understand. Alright, lady. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the verge of fulfillment. It’s been such an honor to be in this journey with you. And I just really appreciate what you’ve shared today in your personal experience, because I know it’s gonna really help other women just like you who have gone through the same struggles to really see what’s possible for them. And thank you guys for listening. Until next time, have a great week.

Blake Schofield 30:52
Thanks for joining me today. Rather than hope the grass will be greener, identify what the right next step is. We can help you do just that. Get clarity on where you are in your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optimal paths to get there, and the right next step to take. Start your complimentary personalized career fulfillment plan at www.thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan . Again, you can get your personalized career fulfillment plan at www.thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan . Thanks again for joining and have a great week ahead.