Career Building (ft. Jena Dunay)

Jena Dunay:
I remember that there was a moment where I was annoyed with my clients, and I said, mmm, I’m in a helping profession. If I’m annoyed with, like, 99% of my clients that don’t deserve it, I may maybe need to rethink if this is the right place for me right now. And so that was a large part of it for me, was realizing this one on one work is really draining. I was helping people go through layoffs. It was very emotional. I took on probably too much. I didn’t have enough of a delineation between their story and my story. And I have learned how to move away from that now.

Jena Dunay:
But there was a point where I was like, I’m just over this. I’m over my clients. And that’s, you don’t really want to be that spot if you’re helping people.

Dana Robinson:
Exit Plan is a podcast for business owners and those who want to be business owners. I’m always in search of the lesser known stories of entrepreneurship. In the Exit Plan podcast, you’ll hear stories from startup to sale and hear from the professionals who helped business owners achieve their exit. Hosted by me, author and private equity manager, Dana Robinson, along with my co hosts and guests, you’ll hear real stories, tips, and tools that will help you plan for the exit you want, whether you are still working at a day job or running a business. Let’s get started with this episode of the Exit Plan podcast.

Dana Robinson:
Hey, everybody, it’s Dana Robinson on the Exit Plan podcast, coming to you from my humble studio and bringing to you Jena Dunay. Excited to have Jena on the podcast, introduced to me by my book coach, Jeff Goins. Thank you, Jeff, for the introduction and thanks for joining me today, Jena.

Jena Dunay:
Well, thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here, and it’s great to hear a little bit more about your book and what you’ve been working on, too.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Well, thank you. I’ll do a quick commercial, and we probably, my editor will probably insert another commercial. It’s launch week for my book, the King’s Flyswatter. It is a book about how entrepreneurship actually flows from your job. So you basically learn the things that you need to know to become self employed at your job. And that means your job is this really fertile ground for grabbing tools, building contacts, relationship skills, all while you’re at a job that you might not even like. And I tell my stories, and as well as the stories of entrepreneurs that I know about how most entrepreneurs aren’t, these big, fancy stories that you see on television, they’re really humble beginnings.

Dana Robinson:
Dana Robinson here. Quick plug for my book, the King’s Flyswatter. You can see it here behind me. If you’re watching this, I’ve got it in my hand. It’s a beautiful hardcover book, printed to make it giftable, something that you can share with a family member buy as a gift.

Dana Robinson:
So this latest book, it’s a fable about a person who has a really crappy job. Let’s just start there. This is a book that most people can relate to because we’ve all had crappy jobs. This is the story of Ubar, a servant in the court of a babylonian king who masters his boring, monotonous job and then learns to listen to the king, hearing him rule the kingdom while quietly swatting flies behind a king. Eventually, Ubar becomes the wisest and most successful man in the kingdom. The story is fun and it’s easy to read, but it’s not mythology. It’s my story. And as I shared the idea with colleagues and friends, I learned that it was their story. And guess what?

Dana Robinson:
It’s your story if you’re at a job of any kind, one that you love, one that you hate, one that’s just enough to get by. This little book gives fresh perspective on how to leverage that job to get you something greater than a paycheck. The lessons in this parable are entrepreneurial lessons, but not what you might think from the current entrepreneurial zeitgeist. If you or someone you know are looking for a real pathway to entrepreneurship, here’s the secret. Your job is the way out of your job. It’s counterintuitive, but once you see how it works, you can’t unsee it. Learn the way of the fly swatter from the parable of Ubar and from the stories I share from my 30 year business journey. You can get a free copy of The King’s Flyswatter by going to danarobinson.com.

Dana Robinson:
So the goal with the Exit Plan podcast is to get people on who help people through their business cycle, leveling their business up, exiting into entrepreneurship and exiting out of entrepreneurship. So I’m excited to have you talk about your own journey, and then let’s talk about the things that you’ve learned that you do help others through with their businesses.

Jena Dunay:
Amazing. Well, it’s kind of funny. You were talking about you learn a lot of skills when you’re in your day job because that definitely was me. And one of the ways that I got into entrepreneurship was I realized I didn’t like my job and I wanted to help other people figure out jobs that they really like to do. So I actually started my career out working on Wall Street. I was an investment banker. I have some PTSD from that season of my life. Yeah, no, it’s okay.

Jena Dunay:
We’ve recovered. We’ve recovered. So I did that for a little bit of time, and then I actually transitioned to the New York Stock Exchange, which is actually a really, really great place to work for me. Early in my career, it wasn’t as insane as maybe you see on television. I was on the IPO team, and so I got to see these awesome companies go public. So that kind of scratched that entrepreneurial itch at a really kind of formidable years in my career. And while I was there, they just exposed me to a lot of different areas, different departments. So kind of to your point, I got to see and use it as that fertile learning ground for what was I good at? What did I like doing? What did I not like doing? And actually, while I was there, they, like, threw me in front of a camera one day, and they said, you’re going to now report live from the trading fork.

Jena Dunay:
Good luck. And so I. It was really fun. It was awesome. Whenever a company would go public, I would actually do a webcast back to their employees that couldn’t come to the trading floor that day. And so it wasn’t on, like, you know, it wasn’t on any crazy platform, but it was really fun for me to practice, wet my chops in that area. And it was definitely not a part of the job description that I originally signed on for. So when I was there, I realized I was really bad at finance, but really good at the content creation, at the develop, developing those things, the relationship building.

Jena Dunay:
And so I made a pivot and ended up at a startup, which was called themuse.com dot. It’s a career advice site, great career advice site. And while I was there, I realized I wanted to start my own thing officially because I watched people do it, and it was time. And so then I started recruit the employer at that time. So, yeah, crazy beginning part of my career.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, but it’s the story that rings true. And, you know, I started this podcast eight years ago with a partner, Nate, and our thesis was we would find entrepreneurs who had a cool life to tell their story. So it was called the opt out life, kind of like alternative thinking about business. And we really found that over the course of 100 entrepreneur stories that it’s really consistent that almost no one has, like, a crazy idea, a stroke of genius, and then makes millions of dollars. It does happen. We told a couple of those stories. We told the story early on of Doctor Squatch, and that would, that turned out to be one of those giant, last year they had a Super Bowl commercial.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah.

Dana Robinson:
So it does happen, but it’s just not common.

Dana Robinson:
You can’t plan on it. You can’t teach around it, you can’t bet on it. If you say 90% of entrepreneurs learn their skills at their job, so turn back around to the job that’s right under your nose and start being a different kind of employee, one who actually works for themselves right now, you know, even if it’s only in your own head, that shift is really important for you. For example, you learned what you didn’t like and you learned something you didn’t even know about yourself. If you hadn’t had the ambition and the sort of like, willingness to go, okay, I’ll do anything, you know, give me a, put a mic in my hand. That could have been horrifying and embarrassing and all that turned out to be leaning into a new skill. So I love that story. I think it totally resonates with what I found in my interviews, but also in my experience and what I try and flesh out in the book to kind of be that, aha.

Dana Robinson:
For people where they go, oh, wait, I stopped sitting at work doing the minimum and dreaming about when you can work for yourself or even how, how do you get promoted these days? I mean, you probably speak to this, how do you get promoted? I’ve been a general manager and had people who want to get promoted, and I am not equipped to give them the skills to get promoted. I need to find someone with those skills. So I need people to take the initiative and gain the skills to become promotable. And that’s the same mentality that you say, where in this ecosystem can I squeeze a skill, a relationship, a mentorship, a learning opportunity, any of that?

Jena Dunay:
Yeah, I just took as many opportunities as people would give me and I just raised my hand a lot. And I think when you’re at any point of your career, quite frankly, but especially in your first ten years of your career, that’s your job. Your job is to learn as much as possible, learn about yourself as much as possible, and learn how to be valuable, to be to others as much as possible. So whether you decide to stay in corporate or you decide to pivot out, your job is to figure out, how do I be valuable to somebody else? And ultimately that’s going to, you know, it’s allowed, to allow you to be successful over the long term.

Dana Robinson:
It’s all the great stuff you get to take with you. It’s up here. You can leave. You know, I call one chapter the ethical thief. You’re never taking the customer list, you’re never trying to, to do wrong by your employer, but you get to leave with all of what you’ve built into your. Your skillset and your true friendships and relationships that become lifelong lifelines for building your future career or your future entrepreneurial path.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah, I still talk to people that I worked with at the New York Stock Exchange all the time. They were great people, great people in my corner, great mentors. And that was, you know, over a decade ago now, which is crazy to say, but, and I think, too, whenever you’re learning a new skill, don’t be afraid to, you know, be bad at it at first. I think a lot of people are so scared to try something new because they’re afraid they’re going to fail. And you kind of said, oh, it wasn’t, you know, wasn’t embarrassing. I actually did embarrass myself when I was down on the trading floor. I fainted one time in the middle of a presentation. So you can still faint and recover, and you’re going to be fine.

Jena Dunay:
I promise.

Dana Robinson:
I love it. Something you turned out to do well was the impetus for a. For a. Yeah, panic attack, maybe. I mean, this is, you know, putting a lot of pressure on yourself to do this thing that you’re stepping up and rate, as you say, raising your hand for anything someone says. Let’s try this. Well, tell me about the business that you decided to start, and what are some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way with the business?

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. So when I got into career coaching, which was predominantly what I did for about five years, I realized that people kept asking me a lot of questions about how I made so many career pivots. Right. So how did you go from one finance company to a different finance company to then work for a startup? Like, how did you do this? And so, over time, I started coaching people one on one, and then I developed a system which I now call recruit the employer. And so I did that for about five years and enjoyed it. I built a following on LinkedIn. I’ve had a podcast. So a lot of these things that we’re talking about, ultimately helping people in a mid to senior level range get their confidence back and find their dream job.

Jena Dunay:
I realized at some point, though, that I had created a company and business for myself that I actually didn’t like, and I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of it. And so I’m actually an interesting case study in being what I call an entrepreneur looper, where I got into entrepreneurship and an opportunity to get back into corporate came along and I took it. And then now I’m back, actually spit back out into entrepreneurship, into phase two of that old business. So it’s an interesting kind of trajectory that I’ve been on since launching into entrepreneurship and then now launching back into it. So, yeah, very odd.

Dana Robinson:
I think it’s not, not as uncommon as you think. I went back to work for a company, and I’m a horrible employee, as w two employees go. I’m incredibly fiercely independent and say things I shouldn’t say, and I relate, play games or manipulate. But I went back to learn some skills, really, like, it was an opportunity to do on the job learning. I wanted to know, what’s a private equity fund doing in a roll up scenario? Want to operate, but I want to operate the business under the, you know, the sort of learning environment of professionals. And so I call it looping. I burned the boats, sold my law practice, you know, extracted from a couple of entrepreneurial ventures, and said, I’m going to work for somebody and for you, I guess. Let’s talk about the, you started a business.

Dana Robinson:
Did it get out of hand and become working a job that, that I’ve heard the story. There’s a phrase for, you know, that when you work for yourself, you work twice as much as you did when you work for someone else and you often get half the pay. I’d love to know like that. Let’s talk about that first venture that you spun back out of.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. So it was a lot of work, to your point, double, double the amount of time. I did enjoy most of it, but I remember that there was a moment, it was in 2020 where I was annoyed with my clients, and I said, mmm, I’m in a helping profession. If I’m annoyed with, like, 99% of my clients that don’t deserve it, I maybe need to rethink if this is the right place for me right now. And so that was a large part of it for me, was realizing this one on one work is really draining. I was helping people go through layoffs. It was very emotional. I took on probably too much.

Jena Dunay:
I didn’t have enough of a delineation between their story and my story, and I have learned how to move away from that now. But at the time, I think there was a point where I was like, I’m just over this. I’m over my clients, and that’s. You don’t really want to be in that spot if you’re helping people. So that was one of the reasons I love that.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. I remember when I knew I was trying to phase myself out of the law practice for years, but the point at which I looked at work, that was normally easy and interesting, and I just said to my law partner, Kayla, I can’t. I just don’t. I don’t want to look at it. I’m avoiding it. And that’s when I knew. I was like, okay, you know, the. I’d moved through the cycles and was, you know, no longer interested.

Dana Robinson:
And that recipe for not giving good advice and not being a good lawyer, not being a good consultant. So. So you pivot, you go back to work. What was the impetus? And let’s talk about, like, what the why and what resulted from that move.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. So I always used to tell my one on one clients that never run away for some, from something, always run towards something else. So I was kind of open handed about what it was going to look like. I actually never thought I’d go back into corporate, even when I was hating my business. That felt like a job at that point. And I had a mentor of mine, and he said, how’s it going? How’s business? And I said, I’m so sick of myself. I’m just sick of myself. I’m sick of seeing my face on LinkedIn.

Jena Dunay:
I was really active on LinkedIn at the time, back to being active on LinkedIn, but I’m not annoyed with myself yet. I said that to him, and he said, there’s this CEO that I know of, this multifamily office that’s looking for kind of a unicorn person that I think your background could be really interesting. And so push came to shove, they ended up hiring me to be their chief learning officer, which at a family office is kind of a newer concept. And so I was in charge of helping to, you know, formalize and programize, if that’s the right word, create a program, if you will, for our high net worth families that we’re looking to understand. How do we. Basically, the question they’re asking is, how do we not screw up our kids now that we all. We have this money? I mean, we didn’t grow up with money, but how do we not screw up our kids now that they have money? And so I worked on kind of some one on one basis with some of our clients there. It was really interesting work, and I really did enjoy my, the leadership team there was just so amazing, and it was a great place for me.

Jena Dunay:
To your point, take notes about what does it mean to lead, well, a growing company when you have challenges and growth. And so it was just a great company to be a part of. I was so grateful for the experience.

Dana Robinson:
That’s it. That’s great. And multifamily offices, you know, they have a variety of flavors. Was this one that had investments in companies where you got visibility into their acquisitions and the companies they were invested in?

Jena Dunay:
I did a little bit. I was much more on the, what I call the feely side of the business because I dealt much more in. Hey, how you guys doing? How’s your family doing? Much more than the hard financial part of it, but this family office definitely did all of that, all of the pieces of what a family office could be. But I really served the families in helping them think through not just their financial strategy, but their family strategy.

Dana Robinson:
That’s fun. Were there pieces of that experience that became part of the new thesis for what you would do when you decide you were going to take the next step and go back out to self employment?

Jena Dunay:
Yeah, there was a couple of things about why I left. That kind of answers your question. First thing is, I had a daughter, so I’m a mom, and it’s my favorite job. I know that’s a lot of people say that, but it truly is my favorite job. And I had to travel a lot for work. And so there came to be this point where I was saying, well, I’m leaving my family to go help another family. This is not tracking. And so it was a lifestyle decision to go back into entrepreneurship, number one.

Jena Dunay:
But then, quite frankly, number two, a lot of the families that we served, the way that they generated their wealth over long periods of time, was through owning companies and building companies and potentially selling them. And so I said, well, I think that this might be a better move for me to build something of my own. And I have this experience. I think I can create something new and innovative in this space. And so that’s what I’m setting out to do. So it’s a much more ambitious goal than the first time, which was, hey, I hope to help some people on a personal basis, but now I’m really trying to build something that’s a lot larger and that can impact a lot more people.

Dana Robinson:
That’s actually a great segue into where most businesses find themselves. I think most businesses don’t understand what they’re actually delivering so the typical business that I have exposure to is a service business. Lawyers, accountants, consultants, coaches, h vac and plumbing, landscape maintenance. These are areas that I’ve been involved with from a private equity standpoint. They’re businesses that get stuck because of a belief that they’re delivering a service, and then they’re on the service treadmill where they’re constantly kind of trying to like, Chase, how do we deliver the service and the professionals that come in and buy those and fix them? Stop the hamster wheel by productizing. So you come into the business and you say, what are we really delivering here, and how do we price that and then deliver that systematically? And it gives you a product instead of a service that becomes the thing that you can deliver without me stealing your thunder. You had a business where you were on the hamster wheel, you took a break, worked for this other company. Is there anything you’re doing in the new business that I just spoke to?

Jena Dunay:
Yeah, I mean, definitely productizing the service. I had kind of dabbled in that a little bit, but it was still me, the brand, and so a couple of things that I’m doing differently this time around. I had no recurring revenue. Big problem if you’re trying to build something meaningful. Um, and so you’re not driving yourself crazy every month at the beginning of the month. Right. First thing. Second thing is, I didn’t want to be the face I knew that was going to be really hard down the road to sell a company.

Jena Dunay:
That’s me, the brand. You’re seeing that happen with personal brands right now, they can’t really get out of it. Um, and you’ve created this awesome cash cow, but you really don’t, can’t have any type of liquidation event. So that was the second thing that I have changed. And then the other piece of it was I really hadn’t leveraged the first time around. B, two b partnerships. I really was focusing on b, two c. And quite frankly, whenever you’re looking to change jobs, nine to fiverrs don’t have maybe the same appreciation or understanding about coaching and how, what, how that could really impact them in a way that maybe an entrepreneur would.

Jena Dunay:
And so I just felt like I was on that hamster wheel of trying to teach people what the value of it was, where if you go into the b two B side, it can be a little bit more scalable, impactful, and you can. It’s just better financially for the company.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. In fact, you just spoke to what most buyers want when they buy a business. An interesting, I’ll use it as an observation, maybe a teachable moment when people say, what do I need to do in order to reframe the business that I own into something that I can sell business to? Business recurring revenue owner is not the face of the business, so that it has portable management, so a business that can be sold without the owner. These are almost the pillars of a business that can sell to a professional buyer. So private equity group or strategic buyer. So you’re doing from the outset the things that need to happen in order for you to have something that you can eventually sell. And a lot of people don’t think of that in advance. And I wonder, like, was that part of your coming at this from a family office and saying, hey, they buy businesses.

Dana Robinson:
I want to be a business someday that can be bought.

Jena Dunay:
My thought process was, I want to be one of their clients one day. That was my big, audacious, hairy goal. They’re going to laugh if they hear that. But that was, I was seeing a lot of these organizations or our families that had built these companies that have a lot of those attributes. And I was saying to myself, okay, I can see. Plus, I’ve read, done research, and I’ve done some analyzing, if you will, on what makes a company sellable. But I was seeing those companies be sold because of those attributes. So, yeah, for me, it was a little bit of everything, a little bit of my own research, observation, and just having the school eventually, maybe to be one of their clients, put it out into the universe, if you will.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, no, I think it’s a really important observation for people, because if you’re just starting out in a business, it’s very easy to just start doing the service where you sell your service, get a customer, and then you get another customer. And the cycle of business is pretty simple. You get a lead, you close a lead, you deliver your service. This little three part thing is almost a description of everybody’s business. The more that you can systematize those things, the better. You can’t systematize any of it until you take the delivery that the ultimate product and make that a product. Where you say, this is how it gets packaged, here’s how it gets priced, here’s how I can measure my KPI’s around that product. And then you can easily build a sales system, which is lead conversion, and then you can generate your marketing, which is generating some leads.

Dana Robinson:
And most people don’t approach their business like building it that way from the beginning. They just start doing, and this is super common with lawyers lawyers go on their own and they clients, and every month you need another client, and then you need another client. So it’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to break out of.

Jena Dunay:
I think a lot of professional services really struggle with it. Whether you’re a coach, consultant, lawyer to your part point, I feel like you’re not really taught that, you know, how to think about it differently. Like, my college, I went to a good school, business school, and they didn’t really teach me about any of this stuff, and so I had to really learn it on my own by trial and error, and then realizing, wow, I am literally creating a job for myself. A job. And I tried to get out of a job, and now it’s time to create something that’s actually going to have a meaningful impact on lots of people, but also on me personally. And that’s okay to want both.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had people ask, what does scalability mean? And it means that you are not required in order to double or triple or quadruple the business. Right. So, again, building that with the. You’re not the face. There’s a product. You know how it can get delivered.

Dana Robinson:
You can train around the delivery of that. Then you can expand the business. Without more Jenas.

Jena Dunay:
Yes.

Dana Robinson:
Or without more Jena. You can hire more Jenas to expand the business.

Jena Dunay:
And, yeah, it’s even made me think differently about some of my marketing. Right. So I had a podcast before, but it was me, like, okay, do I need to maybe hire somebody else to do a podcast in the same genre? So it’s not just relying on me and what do I do to go find. So it’s a different game now versus I did everything. So now I’m thinking about it bigger than I did before, which is a good thing and a bad thing.

Dana Robinson:
Right?

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Yeah. There is some ease of just being the person that does everything but it building a business where you’re thinking, how does everyone else do the thing? So that all I’m doing is architecting. That is the best way to become an owner, not an operator. And you’re bridging both in the beginning, but you’re building it so that your escape velocity is a lot lower. You’d be able to get out of that gravity pretty easily. Yeah.

Jena Dunay:
Did you experience that too, whenever you were going back into corporate and then coming back out of it? Was it hard for you to be in corporate?

Dana Robinson:
I’m curious, you know, being in corporate, an environment with a lot of smart people, I enjoyed. So I did my best to really look around and say, like, I’m getting this experience a little bit. I’ll tell you an economic story. When I was an undergrad, I had this attitude that B’s or C’s get degrees and just getting through. I was an entrepreneur out of business, and so getting my degrees was kind of like, you know, it just needed to get it done. When I went to law school, I looked at the cost, and it was $283.50 to sit through a class, you know, so I said, I’m paying a lot to sit here. I’m going to extract all of the experience I can out of this. And as a result, I was a good student.

Dana Robinson:
I didn’t go in saying, I’m going to get a’s. I went in saying, I’m paying a lot. I’d like to expect a lot. So my experience back in corporate was more of a trying to, you know, you sort of endure the restrictions and the corporate ness. There’s pettiness sometimes, and, you know, you’re in an environment where people have not been entrepreneurs and don’t understand somebody who acts like they don’t need a job. But I didn’t need a job.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah.

Dana Robinson:
But to be with really amazing talent and people that know their job and work hard, who you can learn from, was worth the pain, I guess, as it were. And, you know, I was this way. And, you know, when I got out of law school, I, I thought I, I could go on my own, I guess, but I didn’t know how to practice law, so I would work for a law firm. I mean, that law firm, I threw my everything into it. I was trying to recruit clients and, you know, on committees and trying to do everything I could to grow that firm. But, you know, I was incredibly curious about, how do we run a firm? What is the client? What are we selling? How do we land clients? You know, sort of looking at the business of the business while I was there. And that one was a four year cycle, and it stretched me beyond my, you know, my desire to stay an employee. But, yeah, I totally encourage people who want to be entrepreneurs to go find job.

Dana Robinson:
If it’s not there where you’re at, certainly look around before you quit a job you hate and say, what could I really do if I was here to just extract any skill or anything I could get out of this? And if it’s not there, find one. And then even when you go there, do everything you can to deliver value to that employer. But with a new mindset, be thinking, it only took me four years of working for a law firm to extract all that I needed for a 20 year career that made tons of money and, you know, like, made me an expert in a field. It only took two years at an h vac and plumbing roll up to gain the skills that I need to run a private equity fund that’s rolling up, you know, blue collar businesses right now. So sometimes it’s not the ten years, but you’d better double down. You’d better work harder than everybody else. You’d better really, like, get your head into that game if you’re going to get the, you know, treat it like currency. You’re, you’re filling your bank with this non financial currency of relationships and skills and knowledge and all of that.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah.

Dana Robinson:
And it’s worth it to fill that safe, that, that vault up with value that you’re going to extract for the rest of your career.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah, I think it’s kind of switching to that ownership mentality, which a lot of people don’t necessarily do. But I know entrepreneurs, people who are naturally entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial minded, are going to be owners of their career. They’re going to be take initiative. And so that’s like one of the number one things that I talk to job seekers about when they’re transitioning jobs is you need to not look at yourself as just a cog in a wheel. You need to look above that cog in a wheel and actually understand how you contribute to the overall picture and then show that you can create value for an organization in that way and know that you’re an asset to an organization, not just someone who gets paid. And so when you have have that mindset shift, if you are a nine to fiver, it is a total game changer in your job search process, in how you approach your career, how you approach promotions, how you think about how to get ahead. It’s not just playing the game, it’s like owning your own skills and capabilities, which I think is a really, really powerful thing that nine to fiverrs, even if they don’t want to go into entrepreneurship, can steal from entrepreneurs.

Dana Robinson:
Yes. And to some extent entrepreneur, not entrepreneurial. Some of that is risk aversion, or lack thereof. So they say entrepreneurs are great at creating wealth, they’re not great at keeping it. We tend to be impulsive, take risks. That doesn’t mean that you like, for example, someone who’s risk averse and therefore may never be an entrepreneur, can perform at a job as well or better than me. As an entrepreneur, there’s nothing special about being you know, naturally a risk taker, because at a job, you, you have the, you’re not taking risk. Right.

Dana Robinson:
You’re, you’re, you have an employer. You don’t have to have the stress that a lot of people are like, I don’t know what to do when I don’t have a paycheck coming in, keep that in. But, but, you know, borrow the rest of the kind of entrepreneur mindset about, like, I, I own these relationships, I own these skills. I, I’m possessing these things for my benefit, even though I’m benefiting the, the organization I work for.

Jena Dunay:
I think the relationship piece is such a large portion of what makes somebody successful if they do, staying into a nine to five. And I think a lot of times when people are going through maybe a job transition, they’re not, they don’t think about having, building those relationships until they need them. And that’s the wrong time to be building those relationships. Obviously still do that, but you should really be nurturing relationships throughout your entire career. And that’s the one thing I did a lot of things wrong in my career, but the one thing that I feel like has made me able to make so many pivots is the relationships that I have built and then kept year over, year over year. That helped me when I went into entrepreneurship, that helped me get out of entrepreneurship and now back into it. You know, when I was thinking about making this change, it was a very large change for our family. For me personally, the idea of jumping back out on my own felt a little scary, like, will I be able to do it again? Is this too, going to be too hard? You know, a lot of those fears that come up, but I tapped people from different seasons of my life to tell them what I was thinking about doing and to get their perspective.

Jena Dunay:
And that perspective was so valuable for me. And they’ve been cheering me on from the sidelines as I’ve been trying to build this thing. And so it’s your relationships, I feel like, are the most critical part of a career well lived because it’s the people that really make it, but it’s also the people that can help make you, too.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. So let’s talk about networking and relationship building, because I think it’s a thing that whether you’re looking to move up at work or move out, whether that’s out in lateral or out and entrepreneurial, you have this job that puts you in contact with people all throughout your industry. And I think the people who don’t have the right mindset are only thinking about who do I need to know and impress to maybe get a promotion? Who’s important to me is a very small ecosystem, but the reality is that they really could leverage the position they’re in to have a much more expansive network. How did you do that in your career when you’ve had those jobs?

Jena Dunay:
Yeah, I think probably a lot of what you did, you were very curious. I was just really curious about who I was working alongside. So whether they were junior to me, lateral to me, different department, super senior. I just talked to them like a regular person. I know that sounds really stupid, but a lot of people don’t think to do that. So I was just really curious about my coworkers lives, what was going on with them. I wanted to know how they got into, what they got into, and so I just asked a lot of questions and acted like an advocate for them when maybe they tried to get into a different position or rise up or whatever that may look like. And so I think it was thinking about them first, before me first, to your point, right.

Jena Dunay:
So a lot of people internally will think, oh, I just need to build a relationship with the CEO, so he gives me XYZ role. Ah, wrong way to look at it. I would find mentors at all different levels in your industry, outside of your industry, in your company, outside of your company. I mean, I had mentors, formal and informal mentors inside of my company, every company that I was at and externally, whether it was me asking it or it was gifted to me based off the company that I was a part of, those were such great relationships because it helped me navigate whatever internal politics were actually going on. But it also allowed me to see what other people did in their careers that was exposing me to different ways of operating. So, I mean, relationships and just being super curious is like the best way to build your own skills to get to know people internally. And ultimately it’s going to help you because people like people that are likable. And so it’s not going to hurt you in the long run to be curious about people in different departments.

Dana Robinson:
So absolutely curiosity and generosity are the two features of great relationship building. It’s true about friendship. We just naturally tend to be like, I’m curious about my, what my friends are up to, and then I’m generous when they say, I need some advice, some help, or whatever that carries over. And I can think of people I’ve seen in organizations where they’re like, hey, do I need to know that guy is that important person? And I’m like, the fact that you’re asking that is telling me that you probably are. You shouldn’t know that person. You should just shut up and do your job. You’re never going to get ahead. The curiosity says, I’m not here to impress you.

Dana Robinson:
I’m here to learn from you. And people love that because most people have progressed, have learned a bunch of things we don’t even know. We don’t know. And then the generosity is just not to say, I need to impress you and tell you what I do. No one knows. They don’t care. They want you to be generous and say, I learned this thing. It might help the company, might help you.

Dana Robinson:
Can we do something with what I’ve just learned? Can I be generous with you? And then in the organization, that’s the way to begin to break down those strange false barriers of hierarchy. But then think of the industry. When you go out to a trade show, instead of walking around thinking that, why am I here? Who do I need to impress? Why am I sitting in this workshop? You’re marching around with curiosity and generosity. So the moment someone needs something from you, wants to know, you’re like, oh, I’m a connector. I’ll get you. You know, I know someone that can do that for you. Or you’re curious and you’re like, how do you get to do that? That’s cool. You know? And people are always surprised when someone’s curious because people are so busy talking, they’re not listening.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. I think something else that you said that was interesting was around the hierarchy piece, where I think another thing that people can do when they’re thinking about relationships is not to get intimidated by hierarchies. I think that also trips people up where they’re like, oh, I can’t talk to that person because he’s the CEO or whatever that may look like. And they kind of fall in line into these very rigid formations, if you will, and don’t feel like they can go outside of that. And so I think a benefit of me working at somewhere like the New York Stock Exchange early in my career is I was exposed to, you know, I worked on Alibaba, which at the time was the biggest IPO in the history of the world. And so that kind of, like, level, you’re just like, they’re just people ultimately, at the end of the day. But, you know, you see them on the Wall Street Journal or you see them in these, like, really fancy big lights, and at the end of the day, they’re just a person. Jack Ma is kind of short and, like, he’s just a really nice guy.

Jena Dunay:
So I think it just normalizes the celebrity nature of what happened, how you perceive maybe certain leaders at your organization. And I think that actually really helped me later in my career. And even when I was working at, you know, the family office, where I was exposed to really impressive leaders that sold really large companies, some that you maybe have heard of. And I was able to build rapport in an easy way because I didn’t treat them as if they were anything special. Not that they weren’t special, but I wasn’t treating them as if they were some holy grail that I couldn’t touch. They’re just a person. At the end of the day, they got problems, they got issues, they got challenges. They got things that they’re working on in ways that they’re lonely.

Jena Dunay:
So I think that just humanizing leaders is also a great way to remind yourself that you can bring value to somebody, even just by talk, even if you’re so many rungs apart from each other.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that you’ve got, you know, a lot of experience around helping people through their careers. We’re talking a lot about, you know, they. I always end up defaulting toward, like, how to use a job to get out. But you’re counseling a lot of people over your career about. About choices moving laterally. How do they take the career where they’re at and pivot for anyone who’s listening right now, let’s talk about your avatar of who you coach.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. So I think so specifically, who my company coaches is really around that senior level person, mid to senior level person that’s looking to make a strategic career change. So it’s somebody who’s maybe been in a manager or director level role and wants to go out because they’re burnt out, maybe at the place that they’re at, they can’t find a way opportunity to get promoted, and they’re really looking to be strategic and not just find any job, but the right job. And so what a lot of people do is they go straight for their resume. They say, oh, I need to redo my resume. That’s what I need to do first. And I usually tell people, that is the wrong order. It’s not that you shouldn’t have a resume.

Jena Dunay:
It’s just the wrong order in which to do things. And so if you’re thinking about making a career change, you first got to figure out what you want. Do you actually want a new job? Sometimes people, when I was coaching, people, um, we would uncover that they actually did want to go out on their own and they were never going to be happy in another, in another job. And so, um, it’s, you have to get clear on what you want first, because if you jump just to the deliverables, it’s not really going to be helpful. Um, you’re going to be creating something, a marketing material for something that you’re not even interested in doing. And so taking that time to get clarity first and then actually to start talking to people. So I would rather people network before they even get a, get their resume done. One, because it’ll force you to get your resume done when someone asks you to do it.

Jena Dunay:
And two, it’s just a great way to uncover what do you actually want and what’s out there for you and to get your name out there. And it’s much more effective to land a new job that way than trying to go through the application systems. You know, they’re, they’re a bear these days, to say the least, and they’re not impossible to get a job through. But I actually have never gotten a job through applying online. Actually got rejected from the muse, from applying online. And I said, well, I need to work there. I’m going to figure out a way to get there. And so I had a friend of a friend of a friend know, the CEO, and she put in my resume, and that’s the only reason I got the job.

Jena Dunay:
And so it just shows that your network really is the most important piece to this whole entire puzzle.

Dana Robinson:
Interesting. So, I mean, I’m around a cadre of peers. We’re in our, you know, the late forties to early fifties. That’s probably close to the target. I know someone who spent years in a particular mid level management role and then took us a short sabbatical after one of the companies they worked for sold. So they got a little transaction bonus, took a year off, coming back to the market, just not really wanting the same old job, applying for 200, 300 of the positions they’re incredibly qualified for, and that they don’t want that job and then not having anyone hire them, it’s, you know, let’s solve that problem, because I know a bunch of those people do they need to stop thinking about resume and job applications entirely and just re approach the professional sphere as a, I’m exploring my options. What’s the, you know, what’s the strategy for my, for that, that person who tends to be like ten people in my life right now?

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. So, yes, if you’re applying to 200 jobs and you’re not getting, usually it’s a couple of things. If you’re applying to 200 jobs and you’re not getting an interview, stop doing that, because that’s just not a good. That’s like the definition of insanity, right? We don’t want to keep going down that rabbit hole. If you are getting interviews and you’re not landing it, it’s usually a messaging problem. It usually has to do with, and it honestly is a messaging problem probably throughout the entire thing. If you don’t know how to communicate your value in a very clear and concise way, similar to how an entrepreneur would have to pitch their business in a very short period of time, you have nothing. And so a company needs to understand how you’re going to bring them value.

Jena Dunay:
And usually it’s in one of three ways. You are going to either make a company money, save a company money, or make someone’s life easier. I don’t know any job in the entire world that’s within an organization, whether you’re a janitor or the CEO, you’re doing one or multiple of those things. And so if that just even gives you a framework to even start to think about how do I bring value to a company? I think so many people think about their skills as things I’ve done and not ways I’ve added value. And so framing up that conversation to be more, this is what I’m really good at. This is how I know I can bring value. That’s a better way to approach that conversation. And if you can make your digital materials reflect that, that’s really important.

Jena Dunay:
But it’s not the most important thing. So yes, go back to networking, and please make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, because recruiters use LinkedIn as a search basis for talent like yourself. So if you do not have a solid LinkedIn presence, that’s a problem. And if you’re not posting on LinkedIn and you’re looking to be seen as a thought leader or an expert in your field, which at that level, I think is an important piece of it, that’s also something you should be thinking about. Not everyone has to do it. But I do think that if you’ve had that many job applications and you haven’t got anything back, try something different.

Dana Robinson:
And then if you’re helping somebody who’s thinking, I’m not entirely loving what I’ve been doing, how do I leverage whatever I’ve got to the next step? I mean, is there, do you re approach the personal brand and what’s on LinkedIn so that they don’t look like a cookie cutter of what their maybe past resume looks like.

Jena Dunay:
Yeah. And that’s why I think that leveraging your network is, especially if you’re a career pivoter, you definitely shouldn’t be applying online because it’s not going to go through any systems. And if you’re trying to reframe that conversation, you definitely have to make it so that it’s a little bit more nuanced for that pitch pivot. It’s harder to do digitally and on your marketing assets if you’re making a total pivot. So that’s why having those conversations is going to be so important. And by having informational interviews with people, so reaching out to people and saying, hey, I love what your company does, I’m interested in pivoting into XYZ. Would you be interested in hopping on a phone call? Right. And having those conversations? I did a ton of those earlier in my career.

Jena Dunay:
And you’d be surprised at how many people agree to hop on those phone calls. Right. Um, we’re all busy, but everyone likes to help somebody else out. And so I would definitely recommend trying to do that to even understand what it is you need to know to be successful in that interview, but also just to get to know people. You never know might be an in.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it’s less threatening because it’s not technically a job interview you’re exploring what, how might I, you know, what advice can you give me? I’m curious. What, I don’t know, I want to do x, y and z that you know more about. You know, what are the skills that I need? And it might be you’re asking the question because you think you have those skills, right? Explore with someone in a non threatening way.

Jena Dunay:
100%. And I think that too. Thinking through how you’re going to approach that conversation from the beginning is so important. Right. And so I think a lot of people get really nervous during those networking calls because they feel like they have to sell themselves. But really, your job is just to be curious. That’s your only job during those calls. And then your follow up can be like, well, if you hear of any job opportunities, I’d love to be considered.

Jena Dunay:
How does your company go through the process of, you know, is the best way to apply online? Is the best way to apply through you? Sometimes companies give referral bonuses, would love to help out if possible. So it’s, it’s, it’s providing value while also at the same time selling yourself, but not really selling yourself.

Dana Robinson:
I love it a little bit more. Just thinking through, like, your, you know, while. While I have you and while people are listening, who are thinking, what can we get out of Jenna that’s going to help us with our upward trajectory? What are some of the other keys that you would say if someone’s like, you got five minutes of their time that you know from your experience that you know that you need to pass on? You only. You only have a little bit of time, they’re not going to hire you, but you want to send them off with the best of what you know, that you, as the founder of recruit, the employer, can say, you should use me because I’m gonna, you know, our group’s gonna get you there. Like, not me. You use. You use the company, right?

Jena Dunay:
We’re talking about the company, not me, not you.

Dana Robinson:
They can’t. But. But you really, really want to help them, and you got five minutes. What’s the best advice you can give them?

Jena Dunay:
You need to work on your confidence. 50% of the job application process and 50%, actually, I’d say 70% of an interview is your confidence level. If you don’t feel confident going into an interview, you are going to come across as not being confident. And even if you’re incredibly qualified, it doesn’t matter because you’ll not convince anybody on the other side. So telling your story in an effective way will make you more confident. So you got to know your pitch really cleanly and very clear about how you bring value, and you got to be able to say it on command 24/7 that’s the number one thing that you got to figure out, because it’s going to build your confidence, which in turn, is going to make you be a better candidate long term for that company that you want to work for. Right. So who doesn’t want a confident candidate? I think a lot of the reason why I personally was successful in each one of my career changes is I knew that I didn’t know how to necessarily do all parts of the job, but I was confident in my capabilities, and that came across in all of the interviews I had.

Jena Dunay:
And they’re like, well, this girl believes in herself. Then we’re going to have to believe in her, too. And so every single job I’ve ever had that I was hired for, I’d never had tons of formal experience. And so I just would say that’s an encouragement to somebody that’s listening on the other end that’s feeling beaten down by the job search process, you can build your confidence back up. Know that your story is really valuable, but be able to tell it really well. If you do those things, you’re going to be much more successful in the job search process.

Dana Robinson:
Boom. I love it. Jena, that was fantastic. If someone wants to connect with you, obviously they can look up Jena J e n a d u n a y on LinkedIn because you are slash Jenadunay. But is there a website we can send people to recruit?

Jena Dunay:
recruittheemployer.com head there? You can sign up for our newsletter. We do a weekly newsletter that showcases 150k plus job openings. That means salary wise, so we have make sure that we focus on ones that are in your pay range. Career advice and then also we do some company deep dives to know what it’s actually like to work for somebody before you actually work there.

Dana Robinson:
Awesome. Well, thanks for the career advice and also for understanding your entrepreneurial journey and giving us some of the lessons that you’ve had along the way. Appreciate it. And everybody else, don’t forget to send questions down to the hello@danarobinson.com that I can pop up in weekly office hours. And we’ll see you on the next podcast. Thanks Jena.

Jena Dunay:
Thank you so much for having me.

Dana Robinson:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Exit Plan podcast. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to hit me up with questions or comments by emailing me@hellorobinson.com or leave comments and questions by calling 858-252-7785 call 858-252-7785 and leave a message.