The Salesforce Career Show

Don't Quit Your Job. Do This First!

• Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant • Season 3 • Episode 64

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Quitting vs. Conquering: How to Navigate Career Decisions in the Salesforce Ecosystem

In this insightful episode of the Salesforce Career Show, hosts Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant are joined by industry experts Tom Graber, Brandon Stein, Reid Marquand, and Josh LaQuire to tackle one of the toughest career questions: Should you stay or should you go?

They dive deep into the reasons why people leave jobs, how to evaluate if quitting is truly the best move, and what steps you should take before making a final decision. Whether it’s about growth opportunities, compensation, leadership, or workplace culture, this episode is packed with real-world insights and practical strategies to help you make career decisions with confidence.


Key topics include:

  • The top five reasons professionals leave their jobs—and how to address them.
  • How to evaluate your career growth potential before deciding to quit.
  • Compensation: Are you truly underpaid, or is there more to consider?
  • The importance of work-life balance and how to determine if it’s the job or your habits.
  • Toxic environments vs. personal responsibility: How to assess the real issue.
  • Leadership challenges: What makes a bad boss and how to manage up.
  • Actionable strategies to take control of your career and future-proof your success.

Before you make a move, listen to this episode and gain the clarity you need to make the right choice for your career!

This episode is brought to you by Josh Matthews: thesalesforcerecruiter.com

For more terrific content, join our social network and get connected to our Salesforce community.

Chapters:

00:00 - Welcome and Career Decision Framework Introduction
00:12:45 - The Top Five Reasons People Quit: Breaking Them Down
00:27:50 - Career Growth: Are You Really Stuck or Just Not Taking Initiative?
00:42:15 - Salary vs. Reality: Are You Actually Underpaid?
00:55:30 - Work-Life Balance: Is It the Job or Is It You?
01:10:45 - Toxic Workplaces: When to Leave and When to Adapt
01:25:00 - Bad Leadership: What to Do When Your Boss Is the Problem
01:40:15 - Final Thoughts: Stay, Go, or Take Control of Your Career?

Announcer:

And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce Career Show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.

Josh Matthews:

Vanessa Grant. Okay, guys, everybody, welcome to the very late start of the Salesforce Career Show. We just had a 20-minute practice round because I did a bonehead Josh Matthews thing and didn't click the second button that you have to hit to go live. So I apologize to all of you. You might have to listen to this on the podcast or on the stream on YouTube down the road or on our channel. So deep apologies if you hung out and you're still listening. Thank you so much. So here we go. We're going to go ahead and get cracking.

Josh Matthews:

Welcome to the Salesforce Career Show. I'm your host, josh Matthews, with me is Vanessa Grant, and we have four incredible guests, including my friend, tom Graber. Tom has been a recruiter for many, many years. We became friends and colleagues back in our Robert Half Days in the early 2000s and he used to be talent acquisition for Salesforce. We also have Brandon Stein. Welcome, brandon. You guys know Brandon. He's been on a couple of our shows. We've got Reid Marquand, who's been a regular contributor over the past year, and we've got Josh LaQuire, one of the smartest people I know. So welcome everybody to the show.

Josh Matthews:

Today we are talking about what should you do if you want to quit. That's the deal. Should you stay or should you go? And there are a number of reasons why you should stay, a number of reasons why you should go. We're going to explore all of them and, more importantly, we're going to provide some guidelines to hopefully help you really make the best decision that you possibly can. That's going to help you in the short term, near term, but is also career focused, and by that I mean the long haul right.

Josh Matthews:

Careers are a marathon, so do you need to bail out in the middle of this marathon for good? Go for it. It's called retirement, but if you're going to stay in the race, you've got to pace yourself and make some good decisions, including hydration and working for good companies. So we're going to help you with that and with that, we'll just do a couple quick updates One about our contest from last episode, about the Salesforce MVP program and what you can do to support your favorite Salesforce professional, and then we're going to go ahead and dive into all this quick, quick, quick talk. Okay, ahead and dive into all this quick, quick, quick talk. Okay. So, vanessa, can you share with everybody when the last date is for registering or recommending someone for the MVP recognition?

Vanessa Grant:

Yep, the last day that you can nominate a Salesforce MVP is February 7th, and you can always self-nominate yourself as well, so you could either nominate somebody else that you really admire in the community, somebody that you feel has contributed a lot, or, if you're like I, need to get acknowledged because I do a lot and you know, if you, if I, if you can't toot your own horn, then who can Toot your own?

Josh Matthews:

horn.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, I mean, you know, toot, toot, toot. Well, I think that's great. I've definitely got. My recommendation has been submitted. I put out a post. I think we got three or four more folks who put in some submissions, Pretty pleased with sugar on top, let's send a beautiful, lovely contributor to our show for many, many years, vanessa Grant. Next month is her last month as a regular contributor. We want to send her off with the best chance possible to receive an MVP award for all of her hard work over the many years that she's served, on her own dime and on her own time, thousands and thousands of Salesforce people. So thank you, vanessa, and if you would like to contact me, you can ping me on LinkedIn. It's just forward slash, joshua Matthews, with two Ts. You can ping me and I will get you some information. That makes it much easier for you to go ahead and make that submission happen. Next update is going to be around our contest which we held with Mr John Klein with People First Leadership, and John has filled up the queue with 12 winners $28,000 worth of leadership and communication education. I actually took a look at the list and happened to know one of them. He's a great guy. I think he's going to get a ton out of it, and we'll probably do a little once a month update, maybe have John back on, or even some of these folks who are on his program, who are going to get better at their communication, leadership and therefore, their careers. They are investing in their careers, and if you're listening to this show, that means that you're investing in your career too, and we appreciate you. By the way, if you happen to like this show, give us a thumbs up on your favorite platform. Comments always help too, and if you'd like to actually apply to either be a co-host on this show or to be a guest of a guest spot, you can visit salesforcecareershowcom. We'll describe our upcoming shows and there are all these little forms that you can fill out for any of that stuff. Okay, at the end of the show, if there's time, or a little bit later on, I may share a couple little updates to one of our programs early in the year, which was all about efficiencies, time management, planning and getting the most out of your 2025. So stay tuned and we'll cover that, but first we're going to go ahead and cover some of the core reasons why people quit their job. We're just going to crank through this so that we can get to the good, meaty stuff. If you're listening and you've ever quit or you've been thinking about quitting, you already know what your reasons are. Here are the top five reasons. This has been vetted. I ran it through perplexity AI. I double triple checked so this is pretty accurate. Number one reason I can't grow here Raise your hand on the show, let's see. Anyone have to leave a job because they could no longer progress. And I've got one, two, three, four, five, okay. So everyone but Vanessa has left a job because they couldn't grow anymore. How about this one? They don't pay me enough. Anyone ever leave because the compensation wasn't in line with what you felt you earned, you deserved. I've got one, two, three, four, okay. And then five, okay, five, another five. This is this is hitting. How about I need a better work life? Brandon's raising his hand this time in our little practice session. He didn't raise his hand. Okay, five, another five. This is hitting. How about I need a better work life. Brandon's raising his hand this time in our little practice session. He didn't raise his hand, so his arm's working again, so that's good to see. So I got another five on that.

Josh Matthews:

This one which is a little bit controversial is the environment is toxic. Yep, we've got a couple who've left there. Four out of the six have left because of that. There are four out of the six I've left because of that. And the big one leadership sucks. Yeah, we got double hands. Yeah, one, two, three, four, yeah, five. Okay, so we are all, I think, either very close to 40 or getting darn close to 40. So we've got about a 20-year range of people here on the live show.

Josh Matthews:

By the way, if you're listening to this podcast and you would like to see what we look like while we're chatting in all our six little boxes here, you are welcome to join us on either the YouTube channel or you can visit the recording on LinkedIn. Just connect with me and I'll share it with you, or you can just search for it and it will probably show up. So what I'd like to do now, folks, is just dive in to topic number one, or the reason number one, which is I can't grow here. Right, I can't grow here. Let's start with Mr Tom Graber. Tom, you're a recruiter. You've interviewed thousands of people. You've interviewed, I'm imagining, hundreds of Salesforce professionals. In your career, you've been in tech. When I first interviewed you over 20 years ago, or about 20 years ago, you were an IT director at the time. So you've been involved in technology for many, many years and I'm kind of curious, as a recruiter, where you stand. Do you believe that I Can't Grow? Here is the number one reason that people cite for wanting to exit their role.

Tom Graber:

Yeah, and I think it has multiple dimensions. I think when I've been tracking through various ATS systems that I've set up, becoming a talent leader and the ability to learn and grow is always one of the top ones. It's up there with culture, with how the team is constructed, and that really is about communication and equity. They want to contribute to something bigger themselves. They believe in mentorship and when you get down to it because when you look at the competitive nature for something like software engineering, they're all relatively going to pay pretty well but being acknowledged in the ability to learn and grow I mean look at the top engineers in the world for whatever company or consultants, in that they kind of wake up and live and breathe that ability to learn more, not just from an added value, but it's just innate in them.

Josh Matthews:

Absolutely. Those are good points. Yeah, go ahead. You got something else to share, go for it.

Tom Graber:

No, no, it's just really. I think it's the top people in their field always want to continually learning.

Josh Matthews:

It's not like I know everything.

Tom Graber:

I'm just going to write it out from here.

Josh Matthews:

Yep, mr Stein, mr Brandon Stein, what can companies do to ensure that they're helping their employees to grow, grow their career, grow their responsibilities and their revenue and lifestyle?

Brandon Stein:

Yeah, I think stretch assignments right. You have to trust your employees implicitly and sort of trust until there's reasons not to trust them and that comes from leadership, right. I think that leadership implicitly needs to provide that leash and runway and it goes back to those points earlier right, giving those responsibilities and stretch roles right and fostering that growth and inspiration and stretch roles right. And I think if people feel motivated and the right incentives and carrots are in place to allow people to spread their wings, it really starts from the top down right and people lead by example and if they see leadership inspiring with those roles and those carrots and incentives, they'll spread their wings and follow leadership that creates that culture of trust and then those opportunities to really stretch and grow.

Josh Matthews:

I agree. Anyone else have some ideas and thoughts on what companies can do to keep people and really offer them a path of career development?

Josh LeQuire:

I think you can do this through your performance review cycles that you may have at a company, and do this in a way where you're recognizing and giving accolades for the work that was done, and just the simple act of recognition where there's hey, good job. Or look at all you did, you know, just highlighting that gives people encouragement and validation to say my work here has value and I did something. And then in the second part of that, you can also use that as an opportunity to say well, you've been here for three months. Threeently, proactively work with your colleague or your team to map that out and achieve that vision and actually follow through on that. Not just say it, but do it.

Josh Matthews:

The follow through is key, right? I mean, everybody, like so many companies, have some sort of OD group or HR group that's around career development. But people can be very resistant to some of those programs. They can include tuition reimbursement, certification reimbursement. You can ask to go to conferences to learn extra things, or maybe get a small, get some petty cash so that you can invest in an AI training course or something like that. But whose responsibility, mr Marquand? Whose responsibility is their career growth? Is it their boss or their company, or is it them?

Reed Marquand:

I think it's someone in HR. No, it's your own Right. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about your topic today, josh, and what I would say, what I shouldn't say, sort of thing.

Josh LeQuire:

You, can say whatever you want. One of them?

Reed Marquand:

was you really have to be the champion of your own career? I mean the squeaky wheel, whatever you want to do, there's there's extremes to everything, right, but I think if you want to excel, then you're going to. You know you're going to have to look for those challenges, you're going to have to step up, you're going to have to offer something. One thing I was just thinking about from the last question was people can do brown bag lunches, they can cross train, other things like that, whether it's necessary at the company for coverage or whatnot, but you can always offer something up. Say hey, at 1215 over lunch hour, I'm going to be showing a demo of what I built last week. Whoever wants to attend can attend, right. So I think some of those things really really highlight the abilities within a company.

Josh Matthews:

But coming back to it, you really have to self-promote to a point. Yes, self-promote, be proactive. And I'll tell you, like Tom and I we were both I mean, I think I might've I don't think I had a promotion yet, but when when he joined the team. So basically he joined Robert half technology in in Portland. I was right, I was on the software side, he was on the tech or IT side, you know net network systems, things like that, and we each had our own little team.

Josh Matthews:

But for us to get those promotions, do you remember what we did, tom? We we set up, you know, some eight week MBTI training for the entire office. We just joined at the hip, we put it together, we delivered it and we started dressing sharper. We just started to act like, we started to dress like we were in that role already and then we started to assume responsibilities. We looked for where is there an abdication of responsibility, right? A bang on about this every other episode. What Jordan Peterson says if you want to grow, look for where responsibility has been abdicated, assume that responsibility and then produce it right. So I've got a few things here, just three basic points that you can do. Okay, if you can't grow your career before you quit your job. One have you had an honest conversation with your manager about your goals? Have you asked them? You know I would always go to your manager first and then HR, like kind of way down the road, right that relation. Once you start getting HR involved, it can put a little bit of a wedge between you and your manager. So if you have a decent, it doesn't have to be a great relationship, by the way, it doesn't even have to be close relationship, but you have to have a relationship, one where you can go in, you can talk to them and just share.

Josh Matthews:

Hey, I've been a consultant here for two and a half years and I'd like to talk about. I believe I'm ready to take on more responsibilities, more learning. My real goal it took me a while to figure it out is I want to be a solution architect and I want to know if one. I want you to know that that's what I want. I think it's important that you know that. And then I wanted to ask you what will it take, what can I do here to give myself the best shot? And, by the way, I'd love to be a solution architect here, and I know I'm not there yet. I'd love to do it here. Can you help me get there? So you just have to have an honest conversation. We kind of talked about number two, which is just take on new projects. Reid, I think you brought this up and I think it's great. Take on new projects, take on challenges to prove that you're ready for more.

Josh Matthews:

If you're on a team let's say there's five people on your team and five people have the same job and you're not the one doing more you're either more efficient, you produce more, you solve more complex problems, you're the go-to for the client communications. You're the person that they're tapping hey, can you check this email before I send it? Hey, can you sit in on this discovery call with me? If people aren't doing that already, the chances of getting a promotion aren't going to be extremely high, unless you're in a very siloed tech world and whoever's the decision maker has seen it. But if you're on a team, you've got to be better than the rest of the team or you're not. The obvious choice, right? And then the last one is have you taken advantage of every available tool mentorship programs, certifications, tuition, reimbursement have you demonstrated a willingness to invest unpaid time to get better at your job so that you can be worth more for your time. It's really straightforward. And if the answer is no to any of these, we can't put the pressure on the company. We've got to own it. Growth starts with you, right, take control. And, by the way, if you're going to not fix this at this company, you're going to drag those problems into the next company.

Josh Matthews:

I've got a candidate right now. He's got a job offer through me, through my client. He wants a leadership role. He has exhibited leadership qualities, by the way. He's a great guy. I think he's fantastic. Okay, we're going to offer him a little bit more money and we're going to offer him investment in his ability to become a leader.

Josh Matthews:

There's no guarantee. He has to prove it. People have to start reaching out to him. If they're not doing that, in six months he might be stuck as a senior consultant instead of a lead, or senior managers, junior solution architect or what have you. So he's willing to take that risk to leave a company because he knows that he's going to be invested in Now. He hasn't accepted the offer yet. Jury is out, so we'll find out, hopefully tonight. Maybe he's even watching the show, I don't know, but we'll find out soon enough. But that's the kind of situation he can stay. He's been given kind of a promise hey, down the road, we're going to make you a leader, but nothing's in writing, you know. Versus another company that's going to be like yes, we'll invest in you, but you still have to do a great job or you don't get the job.

Vanessa Grant:

Fair enough, yeah, yeah, any any stories, guys, any experience I was going to. Yeah, I was going to say a couple of things. One, I think, yes, the whole, like find places where responsibility has been abdicated, like that's, that's great and all. But I think what I, I certainly what I encourage folks that I do mentorship for, is know where you're going, at least have the have your, your, your, your Northern light kind of thing. Cause, yes, opportunities are going to present themselves all the time, particularly if you're like I want opportunities, people you know well, ok, you want some opportunities, here's an opportunity to do this, here's an opportunity to do that. But I think there's something different between proactively guiding your career versus just taking opportunities as they come and kind of letting other folks maybe push you in other directions toward your career. So that's one thing. And as far as stories go, I'll throw a couple real quick. And that's where you know I think, yes, I've done a lot to you know, say, yes, I will take on all these responsibilities and these are the things that I want to do and goals and all that other stuff. But I think there's also a place for managers that, if they want to encourage the growth of their folks and also keep their folks.

Vanessa Grant:

I had, you know, my first boss.

Vanessa Grant:

Really, I stayed at this company for like 17 years. I started as an intern and when I left, 17 years later, as the VP of business ops. But it was from the time I was early in that career that my my boss she, for some reason, she, she saw me in a way that people you know, I guess. See, she saw a lot in me and I remember she said during one of our reviews that she really saw me on a path to being a COO and so she started getting me involved in the finances of the company in my mid twenties and that got me on the path to being the VP. I was before I even turned 30. And then I also, later on in my career, when I was contracting, I actually had somebody drop the five brands so I could go to Trailhead Academy and get my admin certification in a week and I'd been doing Salesforce for close to a decade at that point. But somebody actually investing in me because they saw what I could accomplish, or just a little bit more technical, was a big boon.

Josh Matthews:

That's great. That's really good stuff, vanessa, and we're all glad that someone believed in you and pushed you into that. Get certified in one week thing that's awesome. That's awesome and hard to do. Josh LaQuire knows all about that. Go ahead, reed.

Reed Marquand:

Yeah, I think one thing people may look at like oh, I can't, I can't drop everything, get a certification one week and all that stuff. You don't always have to do the biggest bang possible. Sometimes it's just facilitating conversations, like you do here, Josh. You're not providing the entirety of the show, You're bringing in together a cast of characters and trying to help people with their Salesforce careers. So sometimes the biggest initiative you can take is just trying to facilitate and make something happen, not necessarily oh, I got to go build this great demo that I have no idea how to build. Yeah, bud.

Reed Marquand:

I'm a big believer in creating centers of excellence, and most of those start pretty small. They're not so excellent at the beginning. So, anything you do to gather intelligence and help your fellow workers or your clients or what have you. I think that's a great place to start. You don't have to go with the biggest thing ever because some people can't eat the elephant. If you will, they got to imagine in smaller bites.

Josh Matthews:

You know what I love that and it's so true. I mean, look, when I think about good leaders, what do they do? They elevate people with them. A great leader is like high tide and it lifts all boats, and if you want to grow into a leadership role or just grow your career, well, you can do a couple of things. One you can attach yourself to great leadership and so, where you are, you might be having behavior of maybe you're a consultant and you're reporting to a solution architect or working side by side, and that individual is not exhibiting the best practices or best qualities of a solution architect. You should definitely ask to work with someone else or leave the company, because you'll just develop the bad habits yourself. And if you can be in a position as a consultant to maybe help a junior admin or someone who's new, when you can demonstrate that you can help elevate someone else's career, knowledge, skillset, communication abilities, recognition I mean honest to God, guys, half of this stuff is just hey, josh LaQuire, congratulations on XYZ right, and I just wanted to announce that to the whole company on Slack because you just crushed it. You can be the janitor and I don't know how many janitors are on Slack, but in this case, the janitor's on Slack and they're pushing out a message to the entire company about how awesome Josh LaQuire is right and that's fantastic. People see that. They know that you're going to be a force of positivity, encouragement, so it's really good stuff.

Josh Matthews:

We're going to jump into number two. Number two is they don't pay me enough, so you're underpaid. And I'm going to start this one off. Before we go around Robin and just say you're underpaid, prove it. Like how do you know Right? Was it water cooler talk? Did you get on salarycom and actually believe that stuff? Did you look at Mason Frank's salary guide and actually believe that stuff? Like, where are you getting your information from? How good was your prompt? When you asked chat, cheap PT that barely accesses current data anyway, did you go to perplexity? Did you verify? Did you double check it? And, by the way, did you evaluate yourself? You might be gay. Let's say you're making $120,000 in your job and you think that you're underpaid because your friend is making $135,000 for the same title at a different SI partner.

Josh Matthews:

Okay, here's a story. I've got another offer out today. That is for a company that specializes in small SI. They have a very focused specialty and they offer 35-hour work weeks. Guess what? Whoever accepts that job? Our candidate accepts that job. He is taking a pay cut for this job because he's going to go from 55 hours of work or a little bit more to I don't know what it is, I don't even want to share, but he's going to take a pay cut to take this solution architect gig. But he's done at noon on Friday and they don't take calls and you don't work weekends, and at five o'clock it's done. Everyone can wait.

Josh Matthews:

So we need to really draw in all the information. How do you know you're underpaid? Prove it. Prove it to yourself first. And here's another thing prove it. Prove it to yourself first, right. And here's another thing. A reason such as like well, my kid's going to private school, now I need to make more money. Or you know I I'm taking up golf and that's 600 bucks a month, you know? Or whatever it is like. These are not valid reasons. I'm sorry your car broke down. You need to buy one. You don't deserve a raise, right? That's not what it's based on, brandon. What are some other things that people should probably consider before they quit because they're not getting paid enough? And there's a real obvious one here, but I'm kind of curious what you think off the top of your head.

Brandon Stein:

I mean those are all trade-offs, right, josh? That are personal, right? You want to go to private school or make those personal decisions. Those are not your employer's problems, right? Those are your personal decisions.

Brandon Stein:

I mean you can collect data, do benchmarks, talk to your friends, right? We all talk and have peers in industry and there's no better evidence out there in the market than actually going to the market and assessing your value, right? And if you're interviewing and you're talking to Josh Matthews and other opportunities and you're collecting data points and you have interviews and you're talking to Josh Matthews and other opportunities and you're collecting data points and you have interviews and you have offers, like there's no better evidence than an offer or two or three to come back with and say, okay, this is my market, this is what the market is saying I'm worth. Sometimes it's good to just have that validation in the market and sort of use that as a benchmark. I'm not saying you have to use that to go back to your employer and say you know here's kind of where, where I know. I'm not saying you have to use that to go back to your employer and say you know, here's kind of where I know I'm at in the market. But it sometimes is good just to know deep down inside, like what you could go get in the market.

Brandon Stein:

Now, if you're at the point where you are thinking of leaving or you have a competitive offer out in the market and your employer is calling your bluff and saying, hey, I don't think you're worth that, you can say, actually, you know, I do have an offer for the same. You know, for a manager title for 20 grand more. And here it is, here's the paper, like there's no better proof than something in writing. But before you get to that point, it is helpful sometimes just to kind of feel the market and I had an early mentor in my career that told me it is very helpful every two to three years just to kind of assess the market and kind of see where you're at, just kind of understand the data every couple of years, just to kind of know where the market's at, just to kind of know where you stand.

Josh Matthews:

That's right, and we've had a lot of fluctuations the last few years, haven't we. Yeah, exactly, it's just kind of, it's just kind of good to calibrate and kind of know right, if it, if it is a good time to make the basics, have you even asked for a raise before you decide to quit for more money, and how do you even ask for a raise? Yeah Well, you listened to the podcast episode that tells you We've got that.

Tom Graber:

Yeah, I think, before we get there. Yes, Having an open conversation. I think this is with the quit or conquer thing. Hopefully you have a leader that is a good mentor to you as well and cares about your trajectory. That's one of the things that keeps people there the longest. And I agree with what Brandon was saying about checking the waters. I also think it's important to calibrate. I also think it's important to calibrate. So, for the example of someone saying hey, my three friends are Salesforce admins and I know they got jobs at XYZ and PDQ companies and they're making X and they work for large enterprises with a very complicated deployment, with lots of moving parts, lots of integrations, and you're a company of 120 people that is using Salesforce to its best for what you're doing and you may be the most knowledgeable person at your company for Salesforce at your company. However, your friends might work for companies of 20,000 people or larger and they might have more complicated systems.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, they get higher bill rates, they make more money. And by the way, I mean, brendan, you're a former Deloitte guy, right?

Josh Matthews:

I am yeah, absolutely yeah so you know the Sunday to Thursday flight schedule that you're going to be walking away from family. There are all these nuances around. Well, what are their benefits? You can look at the dollar. My base salary is this Okay, but you get 20% bonus. They get up to 5% bonus, right. Or you get 100% free health care. They're paying $6,000 a year, right. You get tuition reimbursement. They get certification reimbursement. You can go get an MBA for half the price. They're going to get 300 bucks a couple of times a year. It's all trade-offs.

Brandon Stein:

I go back to that trade-off. People may look on the surface hey, you make a lot of money. But I say, hey, I'm working 80, 90 hours a week. That's a trade-off that eventually drove me out of the big four because I didn't want that lifestyle. But people on the surface may say, hey, that's the compensation I want. So different times in your life where you may want that type of opportunity Exactly.

Josh Matthews:

And Vanessa. Let me just ask Vanessa something here. We're going to keep things moving fast here. So, vanessa, talk to me about maybe your experience or some insight around, like just the question have you earned a raise? You know you want to raise. Have you earned it? We kind of talked about this with career growth, but why would it be any different for this, this reason, to leave as well?

Vanessa Grant:

Have you earned a raise? Well, I mean, I think, and certainly we've talked here about how it's important to track your accomplishments regularly and be able to quantify. So I remember going to bat actually for my team and I was trying to go to my boss and say, you know, we need more budgets so that I can pay my team members more. And a lot of that was, hey, I just pulled the numbers from Salesforce, this is how many of this thing that we processed in this year and then the next year we've had a X percentage of this and saying stuff like that, does you know, along with all the additional responsibilities or whatever it might be to help build that case, but you have to be able to build the case.

Vanessa Grant:

I mean, of course I would say just existing in your job is probably not the best route to get that significant raise. But if we're talking about, like you know, the whole, one of the reasons that certainly I was compelled to leave once I should have but didn't, but now I'm much better about doing that is I remember I'd been at a company for so long that every time somebody new came in with at the same level that I was, they were making tens of thousands of dollars more than me because I'd been at the company for so long. And that's when I realized, oh, I've got to. Actually, if I don't say anything, I'm just going to get the 3% raise every year and go yay, didn't add up in the long run.

Josh Matthews:

It's a real thing, guys. You know it often happens that the market will change, so you get. So there's kind of a couple. There's a lot of forces at play. I'll just kind of share two of them. So the first one is you come in, you're new. We talked about this last fall.

Josh Matthews:

You come in, you're new and three, four years later they still look at you like you know. Maybe you're 25 years old when you took a job. You know you've been with the company three and a half years. You're going to grow a significant amount in your 20s, probably more so than in your 50s. It depends on you know what you put into it.

Josh Matthews:

20 somethings in their first jobs tend to put a lot into it or else whatever. They bail and do something else. But the ambitious ones will learn a lot. They're starting from no knowledge and they're capturing tons of information quickly. So they're going to adapt very quickly and they're going to grow. And then the managers look at them. They still see the little 25-year-old. They can still see them as new and that's why there's a lot of movement in their 20s.

Josh Matthews:

It just happens because they need to grow and they have a desire to grow. They want to grow fast, but the companies that hire them, that take a risk on these new folks they might even invest in them don't actually have the budget or don't have the vision to see that this person is now on the open market worth 120 grand instead of 60, the 3% raise isn't going to cut it. Thanks for the 10K bonus. I'm 50K behind. I'm three and a half years doing this stuff. I did just graduate from Talent Stackers yesterday. Guys, I'm crushing it and earn more money. I'd like to ask you, josh, what do you think around this whole underpaid thing?

Josh LeQuire:

I think there are a lot of dynamics at play. I think it's a complex topic. It's not as simple or as obvious as it seems. I think, josh, you led into the conversation talking about how do I measure against colleagues in the same role, in the same industry, even in the same workplace? And I think there's an element there, right, it's human psychology is, you know, our pay is sort of a measure of our worth, right, and am I worth? You know, I see my colleagues in these different areas. Am I worth the same or not? I think another dynamic we've sort of touched on but haven't really called out directly is for lack of better words, hourly rate. I think you know you can work a job for 130, 150 grand or whatever that amount is. But you know, if you're working 30, 40 hours a week, you know per hour that's, that should be a pretty reasonable rate. If you're working 50, 60 hours a week, you may actually be paid less per hour than some people working with half of your salary.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, yeah.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah, and burnout kind of comes with that too. When people are overworked and they feel like they're underpaid, they say I'm out the door, there's nothing that's going to salvage that. I do think the other aspect folks have brought up that's certainly true is compensation comes in many forms. It comes in the number of hours per week, it comes in the benefits for 1K, matching of insurance and stuff that small-scale solopreneurs or small entrepreneurs can't get on their own, and I do think that when it comes down to it, you have to separate you brought this up earlier, brandon separate your personal finance decisions from your work pay. That's 100% true. Your employer's not responsible for your personal financial decisions. I think that's challenging for a lot of folks too. Admittedly, we'll say my son's 16. In 10th grade he's taking a personal finance class, which I think is freaking amazing. I didn't have that growing up. Nope, I went to college, I got a credit card and I was like free money.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah, I don't think I ever have to pay it back and learn that lesson the hard way.

Josh Matthews:

I bought a rickenbacker. I got I had a 900 credit card. I was like, okay, let's max this out. I went out, bought a really nice rickenbacker guitar and then took my two roommates. We were living on hate street in san francisco. I was like I'm taking you guys out for like salmon, which was like really fancy. Like 1992, san francisco, 19 year old josh, 20 year old josh with his new guitar, his his credit card, taking his roommates out for dinner and then that's it. And then I didn't pay on that thing for years and it's totally like I was just an idiot.

Josh LeQuire:

Josh, I did the same. Thing I bought a drum set.

Reed Marquand:

Oh, there you go.

Vanessa Grant:

My first credit card.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah, there you go. My five roommates would very quickly be like you're never playing those things again. So you know I had to get rid of those very quickly after that.

Josh LeQuire:

So that was, you know, a foolish thing, but all this kind of comes together too. I think there's another point that's really interesting to call out the market right. Like Josh, you remember a couple of years ago you couldn't find Salesforce talent. I remember interviewing people from my company. I remember interviewing this kid who was freshly minted out of you know, code Academy or something, demanding to get paid $250,000. And I was like dude, first off, good luck. I hope you get that wherever you go. Second off, when the economy turns like you have a target on your back, like you're gone first because you came in here entitled yeah, so be careful with that.

Josh LeQuire:

Like you're gone first, because you came in here entitled yeah, so be careful with that. Like economies go up and down, I think a lot of people in our business know today that it's much harder to get a good job and it's much harder to get that pay. So don't be an idiot. You know, when you go into a workplace demanding Don't be an idiot by Josh LaQuire.

Josh Matthews:

I think that's exceptional advice. We'll wrap up with a couple more little quick things on this one and then we'll jump into our next number or top five reason We've covered. Have you earned a raise? Here's an interesting one. It's kind of a weird one. Have you calculated the full cost of joining a new company Taxes, commuting, daycare, pet sitters, these sorts of things.

Josh Matthews:

You might leave a 100K job for 120K gig, but now you're commuting oh and it's 45 minutes, and you drive God forbid a 1999 Land Rover. So you get six miles per gallon, right, and you need to dress sharp. Let's say it's a fin serve company, so they want you showing up in a suit. Now you're wearing. Now you've got dry cleaning. That adds to time. You've got the driving that adds to time, right, that's less time with your family, that's less time doing things that you want to do.

Josh Matthews:

It might be great for your career, it might be good for the money. Or maybe you are used to letting your aged golden schnoodle whatever it is out the door to go, your little incontinent nine pound dog out the door every hour. Well, that's not going to happen. You got a backyard. Are you sure the falcons aren't going to come steal it, so you might need a pet sitter. You know what I mean. And you've got to take all of these other things into your head. You might join a company that's like look, we're going to give you a really low base salary, but we're going to pay you all these massive bonuses based on utilization. And then you find out, oh wow, I'm getting taxed like way more on that second half of my compensation and, josh, it's not just quantitative too.

Brandon Stein:

There's political capital and qualitative pieces. When I was at Deloitte for eight years, all that political capital I was leaving behind. I hesitated to leave because it was relationships and political capital that I didn't know. I didn't know how to monetize that. I was like there's a lot to those relationships that I felt like I was leaving and there was, there was value. Right, that value was not something I could quantify to go leave for another job. So it's not just the dollars to the new job, but it is the you know, the qualitative pieces of making that transition to.

Josh Matthews:

And now you know why Brandon Stein is on the show right now. I love your insights, man. There are always stuff that I would never even think of.

Brandon Stein:

You got to think about that, right, like, the longer you're in a job, the harder it is for you to leave, because of those intrinsic relationships and what that transition is going to look like. Right, it's harder to leave the clients. It's harder to leave. Working with Reed, working with Vanessa If you're there for six months, it's a little easier, right, because you don't have that in Venice. Right, for eight years, it's going to be harder for me to leave Josh. Right, it's going to be a little trip at the client. Ndas and non-competes like that is a lot harder to unwind, a lot harder to unwind.

Josh Matthews:

And there's the friendship thing too, right I mean. And it's more important to be in general. This isn't sexist, so everyone calm down. But in general women will stay in a role longer, much more than men, if they feel that there is a social group for them in the workplace that's theirs. If they've got friends there, they'll be way more comfortable and they'll stay a long time. Women stay in jobs a lot longer than men. Part of it has to do simply with. It's not really about ambition what's the word? I'm sure it'll come to me it's more about just this sort of like around drive and a willingness to propel yourself and like stand up for yourself and be the loud voice in the room, and things like that. Stand up for yourself and be the loud voice in the room, and things like that. Men move around more than women do Women. And again, this is a generalization based on fact. So you know, don't get your panties in a bunch, but go for it.

Vanessa Grant:

Yeah, I mean I don't know if anybody else has been at a job as long as I have. I started off saying job that I, that I was paid for. I was there for 17 years. Granted, I made it from intern to VP, but it was hard for me to leave and it wasn't, I don't even know that it was. Yes, of course it was a lot of the friends and a lot of the, the network that I had within that, that organization, and it was, you know, about 250 people at that company. But also, I think when you, when you're at a job for a really long time, you become so competent at doing that job, you know that job like the back of your hand and I think for a long time I had I don't know if it's the imposter syndrome, it wasn't, I don't wouldn't call it imposter syndrome. It was a little bit different. Where it's the, I didn't know that I would be able to do other jobs as well because my skill set was so honed specifically for the work that I was doing.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, yeah, I get that. No excellent points. I mean, I had never had a coworker before or since like I had in Tom Graber, so it's awesome that he's here. If you're watching the video, it looks like he's working out of a music store. It's not, it's his house, he just owns a lot of guitars. But, like I, I haven't had a colleague like Tom Graber. You know, in in well over a decade. I mean, I've had employees which are fantastic, like everyone knows, steven Greger, like fantastic.

Josh Matthews:

But that just general camaraderie, because we spent so much time and we went through some really hard stuff. We went through global financial crisis. We went through, you know, leadership transitions. We went through software implementations and changes and cultural changes within. You know leadership transitions. We went through software implementations and changes and cultural changes within. You know what is a Fortune 500 company, and we went through it together and it felt great.

Josh Matthews:

I mean, we used to do all sorts of fun stuff right, we used to drive around and we were. We had a blog we blog about. We were trying to find the best Lebanese restaurant and the worst Chinese food in town and we blogged about it early and we did. We all found the worst Chinese food in town and we almost all went to the hospital. So it's a very real thing. The social, the social aspect.

Josh Matthews:

Let's jump into number three, which is I need better work life balance. I need better work life balance and I'm going to I'm going to launch this one a little bit with like it newsflash. It might not be the job, I mean, how many people do you know? I mean, I can count people who are like highly organized. I'm talking about like friends of mine. Well, actually all my friends are fairly organized. But if you look at a company, right, how many of those people in that company are actually highly organized, reliable, dependable? Say, they're going to do something, do it, do it on time, without much fuss, without many complaints. They're efficient, right. They're going to take that skill set to their personal life too, right.

Josh Matthews:

It's like I've blocked out time to study AI over the next month. You know, 20 hours. It's on my calendar. I've got time to get back into guitar. I mostly play piano and drums. I'm getting back into guitar. I've got 30 minutes of that scheduled five days a week. So if you could be scheduled and you can actually stick to it and you can socialize it in your family and all these things great. But people can't overcommit. Now, vanessa, you've had experiences of challenges or difficulty saying no in the past. Correct, yeah.

Vanessa Grant:

Still a problem.

Josh Matthews:

Still a problem, and so overcommitting might be the problem. It's got nothing to do with the company. They're just saying like, hey, could you do this? And you're telling them yes, and they believe you. So it's not your boss's fault that they asked you to do something extra, or you know the same, not knowing how to say no. It's a whole other topic.

Vanessa Grant:

I think it's a combination. I mean, it's also, you know I, I feel sometimes, having been in consulting for a number of years, it's almost like Groundhog Day, where it's you do get a lot of the, you know the oh, we got to get 110% and do less with more, or, you know, do more with less, kind of thing. But certainly I'm also bad at setting boundaries and I train them to take advantage of me, like I have, you know I, this week. I've slept like six hours in the last two and a half days, you know, just because, well, we need this thing done, and instead of me pushing back and saying like, well, you can't have it because I don't have enough time to do it, okay, well, I guess I'm going to do it, and so that's on me.

Josh Matthews:

Yes, that is on you. And, and you know, and there are companies that are going to be horrible for life balance. They just exist. Usually you know going into it, and if you don't know going into it, you haven't done your investigation enough. Again, go to Salesforce Ben. Look at the Salesforce career checklist penned by me a couple of years ago. It'll tell you exactly how to figure this stuff out, how to ask good questions during interviews. What am I going to find out three months from now that I'll wish I'd known? Now, right, you've got an offer on the way. Great, your offer's in hand. Now you call them up and you say by the way, how many hours a week does the average person work? Right? It's not a first interview question, but you might want to investigate that before you sign on the line that is dotted. I strongly recommend that you investigate with more than just the person who's extending the offer to you, what it's actually like to work there, and you should try to get a good feel for how much pushback you can have.

Josh Matthews:

Now. If you're new in your career, you're much more likely to be a yes person. You're much more likely to say no, unless you're one of those zombie people who just think everything should be handed to them, and if that's the case, good luck to you. You should just quit and go move back in your parents' basement. But if you're an ambitious person and you want to crush it right, you should probably get good at time management, estimating how long things will take. You can do it in two weeks. You can just be like stopwatch. Great, I'm starting this task. Stop, record it. Next, there's software for it, right, I think it's called time or timer software, and it just tracks where you're spending all your time on all of your apps and everything. So there's software for that. Guys, you can figure out where you're spending time and whether or not you're efficient or not.

Josh Matthews:

But blaming the company before you investigate it with yourself is potentially a mistake, and here's why we're talking about this. This is the whole reason for the show. What happens if you leave a job too early? What happens if you left meat on the bone, right? What if you leave a company because you've got a reason that hasn't been validated and you're going to face that same challenge in the next company you go to and you might think it's their fault again, when it's really yours, because you haven't taken responsibility, pushed back, asked more questions, set expectations more fairly.

Josh Matthews:

You know what, mr and Mrs Boss, I would absolutely love to do that. That's a fantastic idea. I want, mr and Mrs Boss, I would absolutely love to do that. That's a fantastic idea. I think if we could get this to them by 12 o'clock on Friday, I could see how everyone's going to be happy, out of curiosity. How can I do that? How am I supposed to do that? This is some old Chris Voss stuff, right? Never split the difference. How can I do that? And the reason I ask is you've also given me this and we're at the tail end of that and we've got so-and-so is out, and so what I'm estimating is 20 hours of work in the next. What we've got is 12 actual work hours. I can work all night. I don't think you want that. I'm pretty sure my family doesn't want that, and I wonder if the client knew that that's what I had to do if they would want to affect all of those people as well.

Josh Matthews:

We talked about this on the last show with John Klein, right? So getting really good at communicating what your needs are, setting boundaries, investigating the company beforehand, but if you leave a job too early. Tom Graber, what's the worst thing that you can see? Obviously, from a resume. We all know what they are. They live down in Australia. They've got big giant legs and funny little dog faces. What are those things that people do? That's the biggest mistake that they could possibly do for their career. Tell me.

Tom Graber:

Are you talking about Jermaine Clement?

Josh Matthews:

Oh my God, how did you know? No? I'm talking about kangaroos.

Tom Graber:

Yes.

Josh Matthews:

Kangaroos are hoppers. They jump around from job to job. They never settled down. They can't spend two years in a single company, god forbid. They think that every time they take a job that they're leasing the job on a one-year lease. And I don't know if anyone here has ever done a one-year car lease, I haven't Know why, because it's stupid and extremely expensive.

Josh Matthews:

And so is staying in a full-time job for a year and then going into another full-time job for a year. It's a dumb move. And if I look at a resume and you're 42 years old and you've had 11 jobs in the last nine years, or nine jobs in the last 11 years, it's not going to go good, buddy, I'm sorry, it's already a problem. So you can cover some of this stuff by writing the little word contract next to the job. If it's the truth, because there's nothing wrong with 11 jobs in nine years, if they're all contracts, but don't expect to get hired for some long-term full-time thing. You should probably stick to contracting. So it's bad. And there are really smart, lovely, wonderful, sharp, interesting, capable people who have woken up just a little bit too late to that fact and what they haven't done and what they need to do is some serious self-reflection to get a handle on why they leave. And generally why people leave is they have pressure, they feel pressure, they feel pressure from a spouse, they feel pressure from a boss, they feel pressure from a client and they feel pain. And that pain becomes persistent and pervasive and it starts to hurt and they start to wonder if they can ever even do it. And I'll tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a quick story.

Josh Matthews:

I was working at a restaurant in Park City, utah. It was actually in Deer Valley and I think it was springtime. It was a five-star, four-star restaurant, whatever. It was a fancy place and I'd been a waiter for years. I worked in some really nice places. I got to serve Robert Redford and Gabriel Byrne and some really famous people, which was kind of fun. And I got to serve Robert Redford and Gabriel Byrne and some really famous people, which was kind of fun, and I got free dinner and I was poor, so that was great.

Josh Matthews:

I was in this one restaurant and the place was empty and I had one family and the table was headed by a father. It was the father, his wife, two little girls, and he was being so mean and rude to me and I was a pretty nice guy and a very experienced server at the time and he kept like just giving me evil eye and talking sharply and dressing me down. And you know those movies where, like, some incredible scene unfolds and then it ends and it snaps back and it's just the person's imagination. That literally happened to me. I walked over to him, I picked up these heavy these were not plastic pitchers, these were like heavy, heavy glass, leaded glass pitchers and I walked over to him and I swung my arm and I smashed it across his head. And then I woke up and I'm standing right there holding the pitcher, looking at the table, and I took a breath, I turned around, I put it down, I walked into the kitchen, I took off my apron and I walked out because that environment, that kind of behavior, that that that was happening. I don't know what the situation was. Maybe I'm sharing too much here, but it was too much. I had to go. There is nothing that would have kept me there because I felt it was dangerous for me to stay in that in that moment, in that in that job. Now, I was a young kid, I was like 20 years old or whatever, right. So don't judge me too harshly on a story like that.

Josh Matthews:

But we have our reasons. We quit because we're in pain, because it hurts, because it sucks. You got to get out of here and we don't see any light. Where's the light? Well, the light is you. The light is you. You take a moment and you start investigating, asking good questions, take some ownership and get a coach, get a psychologist, get some therapy, have a friend, get some support. Just get some support. Guys Coming to this show, you're going to get support, you can come on, you can ask some questions. We'll support you. That's why we're talking about all this. To begin with, better work-life balance. What are some reasons why someone might not, or why someone might feel burnt out that have nothing to do with the company that they're working for?

Reed Marquand:

Some of the obvious ones is a commute, like you already mentioned.

Vanessa Grant:

New baby.

Josh LeQuire:

I do want to kind of touch on what Reid just mentioned. A friend of mine, his brother, is a high up executive at Amazon Web Services making really good money. But for two years since COVID he's been working from home. And now Amazon and I've heard this story multiple times from multiple people is now saying come back in the office Like the feds this week, yeah, and he's basically saying I'm not doing it and quit his job. I think in that case it's not unreasonable, right, like if you extend a benefit to an employee that you rescind that benefit. Then you're going to have some attrition.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, I think that's a great point. It's not the same job anymore, is it? Yeah, they else, though, right, like Vanessa, you don't sleep enough, like you know. Are you burned out because you're not eating well, because you're not sleeping enough? I, I struggle off and on with my sleep, you know, I think I figured it out, like over the last month, and that's great, but sometimes I really struggle with it. That's not my employer's fault, you know. That's my own chemistry or habits. You know what about exercise? You know, are you exercising? Well, I don't have work-life balance. I'd exercise if I had life balance. Well, you might have a clear head if you exercised and accomplished everything in 70% of the time, because you can work quickly and you have the mental energy for it, right, so you've got to invest in these things. Any other reasons, or any other reasons why someone might feel like they don't have work-life balance, but it's actually within their control?

Brandon Stein:

I think a lot of it's self-inflicted, right? Vanessa was saying like you're a yes man or yes woman and you overexert and overextend and a lot of that's intrinsic. And so when people are stressed, Josh, a lot of that pressure is intrinsic. They do that to themselves. And so if you're not prioritizing your mental and physical health I don't care if you're working a 30 hour week or an 80 hour week you should schedule your workouts, your mental, your yoga, your nighttime reading, whatever it is you need for your mental and physical breaks. You schedule them like any other work, meeting, and make it a priority and do not give yourself an excuse, right, Because it's really easy to just let that stuff slide, whether it's a 30 hour week or 80 hour week, and and that way you're, you're always prioritizing that stuff and and not give, not give yourself those types of outs, right.

Josh Matthews:

I love that. It's like don't cheat yourself out of health. That's what it is.

Josh LeQuire:

It is I'm going to throw something in here that we've kind of talked around but we haven't actually hit. Sometimes people in this you know I'm 44 and learning this about myself you look 30, sometimes people don't know what they want and who they are and they take on a job thinking it's what they should be or something they want to be, and there's this internal struggle of me trying to be this thing I think I'm supposed to be but it's not me. And not being aware of that right Like this causes great inner turmoil and I think that's something that's really difficult to put your thumb on. I think a lot of people. That's why they change careers. And, josh, we talked in one of our last shows, I think maybe the last one I was on with you some of the most interesting people I've ever met are those into a second career. You know who actually kind of figured out my first career didn't fit and I tried something new and made it.

Josh Matthews:

That happened with me. My server career waiting tables didn't work out for me, so I'm a headhunter.

Josh LeQuire:

Exactly, but I think it takes a lot of self-awareness as to like what really animates you and drives you. Are you taking on a job or a career that fits or doesn't fit?

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, it's. Where are you like? Where are you aiming? Guys, we do talk about this on the show a fair amount, but it stands to reason to bring it up all the time. Where do you want to go? And now, why do you want to go there? And now, how are you going to get there? And, by the way, who's going to help you? And what are you willing to give up to get that? You, and what are you willing to give up to get that? You don't get that without the give up, right? I mean, I want to learn AI like crazy over the next month. Guess what I'm giving up. Well, I'm going to give up probably 20 hours of television because I like TV. I really do. People never say I love TV. I love TV. I love TV. I don't like commercials, I love good television. I'm talking like platform shows, netflix shows and things like that. I love it. Get sucked in. It's my relax time, but I'm going to give up some of that so I can invest in myself.

Brandon Stein:

Josh, can I share a story? So I called Josh a week or two ago as a confidant, as a friend and as a colleague and I said what makes people go out on their own and start their own business? Right, and it goes back, reed, to something you said in the first 10 minutes is nobody is going to care about your career more than you. And once you realize that no company, no title, no job to Josh's point is going to define you, once you've realized that you've come to grips that no one else and no other entity, no other company can define you but you can control and you can care about yourself.

Brandon Stein:

That, I think, ultimately, is what drives people to go start their own business or become an entrepreneur, or go set up a single shingle or go, you know, become a solopreneur, right, whatever it is. And so Josh and I had that conversation a few weeks ago, kind of confidentially, but that, that, that piece, sometimes it takes some people realize it in their thirties, forties, fifties. It just depends at what life stage you're in, but it goes back to no HR department, no, no, no boss, no one, not even your spouse, your parents, is going to care more about your career than you are, because you're the only one that has the agency and the power that can make those decisions and care about it.

Josh Matthews:

Amen, amen to that man. Yeah, like, don't be a victim, right. And the trick there is really simple. You just pause and say, okay, I feel like a victim, that's okay, you can accept that. It's okay to feel like a victim. The trick is to not behave like one right, because the sooner you stop behaving like a victim you can feel like. Because the sooner you stop behaving like a victim you can feel like it. The sooner you stop behaving like a victim, the more control you're going to get over the challenges that you're facing and you can actually do something about it. By the way, it's going to mean doing things differently. That might feel uncomfortable. That might not feel nice. I still have a challenge with interrupting people lifelong. I mean, I was notorious in the day. I'm getting better at it. What's that bud?

Josh Matthews:

is the day today or no, no man, I just I, you know, I like, like, and I'm talking mostly in my personal life. I I interrupt people when I'm interviewing them because I need them to stop talking and I got a lot to get through, or their answers are too long or I'm bored, you know.

Reed Marquand:

I think it's also because you're excited. You want to add to that conversation.

Josh Matthews:

Well, it is. But generally, if I interrupt, it's just going to be because I need to know more information. I'm going to interrupt. Great, I get that. Let me ask you this. And now I'm back to listening mode. It's not because I need to tell someone my thing. That's what this show is for, Haven't you noticed? It's really about, like getting more information out of them in an interview.

Josh Matthews:

But I sometimes that crosses over to personal life. Now I am so much better and it I'm paying attention to it all the time, it still physically hurts. It's a physical pain. It's not like a thought, it's a physical chemical in my chest, Like I need to move on, I need to go do this, I want to do whatever it is. So I'm getting better at that. You just get comfortable with the pain and then the pain goes away and it gets softer and softer and softer. It's okay, it's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with working yourself, working on yourself. I'm 52. I'm still working on myself. It's nothing wrong with that, it's good. And it's okay to own your faults right. I'm imperfect. Everyone on this room is imperfect, exceptional people. You know you really are. Let's keep moving. We've got two more to get through and I know we started this show a little bit late. My bad, but let's dive into this one.

Josh Matthews:

This is an interesting one. It's a toxic environment. It's a toxic environment. I'm going to go to you read in just one moment, but before we go to you, toxic gets thrown around so much that it's subjective. Okay, it's just been thrown around too much and we all know who has been throwing it around. I think they all live in Portland or something. But we all know that it's been thrown around way, way, way too much. It doesn't mean it's not real. There are real situations. Way, way, way too much. It doesn't mean it's not real. There are real situations. So I would like to define. Let's define, you know. Basically, you need to define what toxic means to you. Okay, but let's let's kind of cough up some of the reasons that we think might be examples of toxic environments. Go ahead, read.

Reed Marquand:

So I pulled this up. I wanted to find the quintessential example of it, so I'll read this to you verbatim Thanks, nothing will destroy a great employee's morale and inspiration faster than watching their employer tolerate and reward a bad one. And I think a lot of times you'll hear toxic environment, whatever, and they think bad boss. It's not necessarily that there's always a bad boss. It's maybe that there's a distracted boss, or I think, vanessa, in your first 20 minutes that might've been on broadcast you were mentioning a situation where your management was aware of someone who was not quite cutting and it was dragging the team down and they just hope that they leave or whatnot. So I think there's all sorts of things that could be toxic.

Reed Marquand:

As you said, josh, I think it's thrown around too much these days. Irrelevancy but that's one of my definitions of what a toxic environment is is seeing a place that continuously lets someone who is the demoralizer, the late one, they never get their work done, always rides on others. Everyone else is the hero to save them. I think those are the places that I consider that sort of toxic environment. I'll let others weigh in here now.

Josh Matthews:

Thanks, for sharing Reid.

Vanessa Grant:

Yeah, I'll throw in the micromanagement. I mean, I think that's the quintessential toxic environment. And to finish that story, reid. So they were trying to get rid of that person on the team as opposed to just getting rid of them. They set up six hours of Zoom meetings a day that we all had to be mandatory on camera for full team meetings and it was everybody wanted to leave, everybody wanted to leave at that point and that's the kind of that quintessential toxic environment example. For me, it was like you know, if you don't trust us enough to not force us to like literally co-work on camera for six hours a day, like whew.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, but that those like those decisions come from somewhere. Right, like they come from somewhere. You know there could be a number of people that are abusing, abusing remote work and they have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors and to their clients to ensure that the work gets done. I hear what you're saying. I know that it feels toxic to you. It sounds like it felt toxic to a lot of people, but an argument could be made that it wasn't toxic. I'm just saying I would debate this.

Josh Matthews:

I'm not saying that you're wrong, vanessa, and I believe you. You tell me that it was a toxic environment. Trust me, I'm all in. I'm on team Vanessa, and you know that. But we're talking to a lot of people that, and right now, hundreds of people are listening to this program maybe not right in this moment, but they're going to be listening to it not right in this moment, but they're going to be listening to it and I want to make sure that they've got a real setup, like just because you're on meetings all day long, or because they want you on a bunch of team meetings on camera. That's not good for you. Some people don't care, I don't care. I'm on six hours of video calls every day, I don't care.

Vanessa Grant:

If it were meetings, it'd be different, Josh.

Josh Matthews:

No, literally we were all working in silence, like on our own thing, and we just had to be on camera for six hours. Oh yeah, that's kind of gross.

Vanessa Grant:

Yeah.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, that's a little weird.

Vanessa Grant:

I hate to do it, but I got to run. I will say I guess it's Salesforce related and also, josh, since you're doing your AI journey.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, guys, this is not the end of the show. Vanessa's just going to pop out. We cover the rest of the stuff. Yeah.

Vanessa Grant:

The virtual classes at Trailhead Academy are, you know, for AI? They're available. I'm about to take my Get Started with AgentForce for zero dollars. You get a nice little certificate at the end that you could throw up on LinkedIn. So if you want to use your hours someday to get started with Prompt Builder or AgentForce or anybody out there, those classes are free until the end of the year and they offer them multiple times. Throwing that out there. Thanks, thanks all.

Josh Matthews:

Thank you, vanessa. Yeah, and that's great. I mean, there's free resources. You definitely want to do it. I'm not a fan of everyone throwing all their certifications up and all the chatter around that on LinkedIn. It's like, come on, yeah, you know, just own it and like, if you need that acc, you're going to get tons and tons and tons and tons of likes. You've shared no value other than a small accomplishment that you've made. So I, you know, I'm not a fan of that, and if you're the person who does that, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying, personally, not a big fan, but off you go, young lady, good luck tonight. Okay, toxic environment guys. Here's something that I would ask people to consider. Is it bad communication, right? Is it harassment? Are you getting bullied? Is it the whole company? Is it the entire leadership team, or is it just one boss? Tom and I had a toxic, toxic manager. You know who I'm talking about, mr Tom. I mean.

Tom Graber:

I was sitting in park city enjoying a brunch with my daughters and wife and a guy a waiter, trying to sell me his old reichenbacher came over with a very heavy glass, hit me upside the head. It kind of ruined my day if you were paying attention the whole time.

Josh Matthews:

Oh, yeah, this is not a soundbite, but close enough.

Tom Graber:

In all seriousness. Yes, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, and it does happen. I think one of the things is there was an article written about fire, the jerk and jerk wasn't the word where sometimes in tech companies, people will come in and this guy will be an expert on something and he has a very abrasive way of working and the turnover was really high with him, like, well, he's brilliant. Well, because that's who they knew, that was the devil they knew. Yeah.

Tom Graber:

And if they started interviewing other people, they realized, hey, not everyone that has that role is a complete jerk. In fact, one of the concepts I was floating when we had to deal with this person the word toxic came up a lot and I said what we need is a Pied Piper. Pied Piper is someone who's so well liked and respected that, rather than losing all of our candidates to these interviews with this abrasive person, this guy has a lot of people that would love to work with them, just from previous experience, and they're the kind of person that goes to a company and people follow them, and it's like you hear this about people like leaders go to a certain company, like a guy goes from Lamborghini to Ferrari and the whole team follows him over, and the same can be said in any sort of company. So I think identifying is one. There's this exceptionalism. People have to it.

Tom Graber:

I think it was mentioned before. I think you said said it wait, maybe. So I forget who said it, but sometimes it just is one person that's allowed to get away with it, that really does it, and then everyone else. It kind of has a trickle-down effect on the way people go and I think you have to inspect what you expect. You have to understand how people are talking to each other by auditing their meetings, sitting in on it, finding out what makes a tick. Now, I think what a lot of companies have been doing I've seen for the past five years is 360-degree reviews that you pick out people that are your subordinates, they're your superiors, that have working relationships, that are in the location, whatever it is, and you get a view of the person, a 360 degree view, the pluses, the minuses, and that and, ideally, anonymously.

Josh Matthews:

Absolutely Right, these are really good. I think it's really important here. Folks Like when you're thinking, and this is going to be a big one, it might frustrate some people, it might piss them off, I don't know, but I just want to say this, and Tommy's done this You've interviewed people where the last three jobs that they had were toxic. Right, and I'm telling you, if your last three jobs were toxic, it's not them, it's you, for real. It's not them, it's you Okay, because they have a company, they make money, they hire people and they're successful. And you're bouncing from job to job to job, complaining about every environment, and the common denominator is you, and I don't mean that in a crappy way, that's just knowledge. Okay, so if and here's an example I talked to I talked to a potential candidate the other day and he said, for each of his last jobs, oh yeah, that place was toxic.

Josh Matthews:

Oh yeah, that place was toxic. Oh yeah, that place was toxic. And I just said okay, man, talk to me about what's going on. I, I've seen this before. And I asked him. I said do you happen to have, do you have, a condition? Do you? You know, you don't have to tell me because it's medical. But have you in your life ever experienced severe trauma? And he said, yes, my whole childhood. He said, okay, so you, you have PTSD or complex PTSD? And he said, yes, I have complex PTSD. I was like, okay, now that's serious. That's a serious, serious condition, okay, and it requires a lot of treatment and therapy. And whoever's making noise? If you could mute your mic, please, that would be helpful. So am I going to be like, hey, it's you buddy, yeah, it's your fault. No, it's not his fault. He didn't ask for what he experienced that then becomes expressed in his work life as an adult. It's not his fault. I ain't mad at him, right, but someone keeps making squeaky mouse sounds like an r2d2.

Josh LeQuire:

uh, is that you, tom?

Josh Matthews:

Graber, is that you? I don't know, I don't know.

Josh Matthews:

I'm just going to mute everybody. So it's not his fault and I'm not mad at him. I can't place him. But I was able to have a really open, vulnerable conversation with him about what he's doing to ensure that his next role is a successful one that allows him to to hopefully succeed, because there's an opportunity out there for everyone and I really do believe that, uh, everyone, except for about 10% of the population, If you agree with some of the old French IQ studies back in the day. But for the most part, you know there's an opportunity for people. So I I can come off kind of brazen, but I really do mean that there are people with very real mental health challenges that it's not their fault. And then there are all the pretenders, the fakers. They're just short on patience and they're just not good at communicating and they're just impatient or they're prima donnas or they want everything handed to them. That's who I'm talking to.

Josh Matthews:

Don't throw around the word toxic people, please. It's a very dangerous word. Someone calls you toxic. Think about what that might feel like for you, right? And I would say have you gone to this person and, without using the word toxic, say, hey, some of the aspects of this company are causing me some discomfort, and I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I'm witnessing signs that possibly others are feeling this way too, and I want to help. I really, really want to help, Okay. So can we talk about this? Can we talk? I can share a couple scenarios that I'm talking about because I'd love to see a slight change in behavior, and I just think about Jan from the office. Jan did this with Michael all the time in the office, you know, try to try to help him. She just like kind of blow it off and go to him and be like hey, man, you can't really act like that, you know. So I really, I really like that, and it's a big word. Please be careful throwing it around. And before you call your workplace toxic, is it just your one bad boss?

Josh Matthews:

Tom and I had such a bad boss, and I'll just say I got him fired and it's because I caught him in numerous, numerous, numerous lies. And tom taught me something years ago. He said information is power. Information withheld is twice as powerful. Now I don't like to play politics. I'll play them if I have to, but I don't like to play it. I like to just go to work, get my stuff done and have some fun, right?

Josh Matthews:

And this guy was such a nuisance. I mean, we had turnover in our teams. It was one new person every six weeks. Can you imagine that? A new person every six weeks? Because they couldn't stand working there or they weren't given the tools to succeed. He had to go. And finally he said something and I caught him in a lie and an opportunity presented like a real one that I could prove, and I brought it casually up to his boss's boss and within a week he resigned to his boss's boss and within a week he resigned. You know, he quote unquote, resigned. And guess what, Tom, didn't life get a little bit better after that?

Tom Graber:

It was, it was better. And I will say something as a caveat to that is it's good to have checks. You know, go out lunch, drinks or whateverworkers vent there. Maybe you're just having a bad week. But one thing that you have to remember is you don't know who other people know, and what I mean by that is if you say, oh gosh, this guy Sam, oh, he's so toxic, blah, blah, blah. And you go into this person and they talk about him. They could be his next door neighbor, he could be his best friend from high school, he could have worked and he could have worked with them at a previous company, and they still play golf every weekend. So when you say something like that, be aware of the context of what you're saying. Because he said that toxic is. It's a very loaded word. It's over the past five years, it's become very heavy and weighted, yeah. So if you say something like that, they're gonna go hey guess what?

Tom Graber:

part three, right, hey, I was talking to josh and he was saying you were toxic and he's been telling everyone at the office.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah. And so you, you can't in in confidence, get around kind of saying that you have to talk smack about people at work in general, like keep it to yourself and talk to your manager or address the issue directly with them. That's it. That's it. Get rid of all that behavior, yeah.

Tom Graber:

And if you're going to go back to our office references, Chili's is the place where business happens. It's more efficient than going to a McDonald's now.

Josh Matthews:

That's right.

Tom Graber:

My plug for Chili's.

Josh Matthews:

Guys, we're going to talk about the last one, which is the leadership is terrible. That's your reason for leaving and I think that that has been probably one of the most common ones that I've seen out of. I don't know however many people I've talked to in the last 25 years. Brandon, look, most people know what makes a good leader, but the question I would ask people is what's so bad about the leadership?

Josh Matthews:

Again, this guys, there's a theme to this right Articulate the specific issue, research it, confront it, have options and move forward one way or the other, but it's articulate what the real problem is. So what are some of the different like? Is someone lazy? Are they unethical? Are they emotionally checked out? Is it just not your style? Like Vanessa said earlier, like micromanagement is toxic, I completely, 100%, disagree with her. Micromanagement is a style of management for people who aren't familiar with doing lots of repetitive tasks and delivering results. Let's say you're in sales. If your numbers are good, no one's going to micromanage you, period. If you're not producing what you're asked to produce, you're going to get micromanaged. It's not toxic, it's just a style, right?

Brandon Stein:

And it tends to, especially in client service or professional services, it tends to type A delivery. Top tier professionals tend to be, you know, control freaks and they like to micromanage. They'd like to deliver and control right and they tend to sort of, you know, they like to control their client delivery and they tend to be kind of hard to work for. But they're good. They're good at what they do and that's why they're hard to work for. They have high delivery standards and that's kind of the consulting mindset.

Brandon Stein:

I'm a big Scott Galloway fan. He is a NYU professor, he's a marketing guru, he produces a podcast, he writes a lot of books he says he has. He writes a lot about leadership, right, and he says greatness is in the agency of others. Right, and I truly believe that, instead of talking about what bad leaders do or what not to do, but greatness is in the agency of others, good leaders, right, know how to promote others, know how to delegate, know how to give other responsibilities and grow other people.

Brandon Stein:

So you try to attract and surround yourself with other people that grow, that get promoted, and he's all about surrounding yourself with other great leaders and how you do that is you see how they grow their careers, how they sponsor others, how they true leaders. They know to be better and to grow and to succeed and to scale their businesses and to grow their startups or to grow their consulting practices. They truly need to surround themselves with other great people and they believe that greatness is in the agency of others, so they are going to allow other people to be great, which allows them to succeed. They get that right, and so he's a big proponent of leadership and identifying other greatness and surrounding yourself with other people. I'm a big Scott Galloway fan, so instead of talking about like bad leaders and how to identify toxicity, let's talk about just turning that backwards and identifying like what good leadership looks like.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, I love it, Reid. What are your thoughts on this?

Reed Marquand:

Well, I've had lots of thoughts about certain things and I don't know if it's all toxic and I know that's not the theme of your show, but that's seeped in here right. I do feel there's nepotism, cronyism. You can kind of spot that easily sometimes. But to some of the I think, tom's comments, you never know who knows whom and who talks to who, and buddy, buddy. So there's something to minefield there.

Reed Marquand:

I think some of that I've seen are echo chambers. You know some management structure that has said something. That sort of bounces around, it becomes a truth and you as maybe a outsider to that group, you say that's not right at all. Or here's the latest technology or research or what have you. So it doesn't necessarily that all these bad leaderships are just bad guys. I think we kind of go in that direction a lot of the time. Sometimes it's that they're in over their head. Sometimes they there, you go, they got hired on, and I mean facing that title or whatever I think brandon or josh said earlier, and they, they shouldn't be there. It's not that they're a bad person, it's. This was not the right place for them, sure sort of thing.

Reed Marquand:

So and I've been in places where I've I've not always done this, but I've gotten better at over the years is sometimes coaching up and sometimes that is not the easiest thing to do. Manager doesn't want to hear how to do their job. If you can go to your Chili's or whatever and have those moments where it's it's less boss and employer and more just two guys out or two people out having a conversation, I think you can imply some things without being overtly you're doing this wrong or what have you so?

Josh Matthews:

you, can I? Okay, I hear what you're saying. Sorry, did I just interrupt you? You did, but I think it's your show, josh. Yeah, it is my show, I'm going to jump in. So I look, I I think you're right.

Josh Matthews:

But here's the problem when I face bad leaders, they're generally either incompetent or arrogant. Right, and God forbid, they're both. That's really tough and you've got to figure out how to communicate. Incompetent, but maybe there's incompetent and sensitive, right, you don't want to break their spirit. So encouragement and hey, you know what that soft approach of like. Hey, you know what.

Josh Matthews:

I just saw this really cool YouTube on how to get more out of your employees and I watched it. I was like, oh my gosh, reed's going to love this. Can I send it to you? And then maybe we can talk about it on a Monday meeting. What do you think? Like? You can do little things like that. That's the soft sell with the arrogant folks. It often requires a demonstration of success, of of of strength and resilience, but you have to appeal to the ego at the same time. But a lot of arrogant people will not, or people in leadership, they will see ass kissery from 10 miles away and they won't want it. You know they might kind of temporarily like it, but it's not authentic, right, and there's a there's a style of of community. Communicating with those folks we're beating around the bush isn't going to get you anywhere because they're just going to think like that guy. I just had lunch with Reed and Reed implied I wasn't doing a good job, screw Reed, so you've got to be like Reed.

Josh Matthews:

I wanted to talk to you about a specific and you pick out a specific behavior. And this is how you do it you pick out the event, the specific event. You can allude to others, but you want to keep it really straightforward and small. And you say, when we were in that team meeting, I'd shared an idea and you kind of cut me. You know, I don't know what was going on, but you didn't seem very open to that idea and you shut me down. And you shut me down in front of the whole team.

Josh Matthews:

And frankly, I need you to know that when you did that, that embarrassed me and that doesn't, by the way, that doesn't mean I don't have thick skin, but I like to call it like I see it. I figured you'd want to know because you seem a direct person and I thought I'd share that with you. Now you're sharing what they did right and what the impact was to you. You're not saying you did this and you made me feel bad and you blah, blah and you embarrassed me. You know, it's just like when you, when you jumped in it, made me feel this way.

Josh Matthews:

That's a softer way of saying it, but you're being direct and, by the way, I don't like that. So I would ask, if there's a problem with one of my ideas, if you could maybe socialize with that with me in private, you know, or on Slack or somewhere, not in front of my peers, whose respect I have earned and want to keep. That would mean a lot to me. Do you see what I'm saying? It's direct and head on, but you're not using you and you and you. You see what I'm saying, so it's less painful for them. What do you guys think about that style of confrontation.

Josh LeQuire:

I think you have to put people. If you want to provide honest feedback and build stronger relationships, you have to deliver feedback in a way that somebody will receive and if you come out firing shots and are accusatory, you're going to turn off the other party and turn them away and there's no conversation. It now becomes a battle where everybody is entrenched in their camp and builds stronger defenses and fights back. So feedback, two-way dialogue, is, in my opinion, a hallmark of great leadership. Great leaders will ask for feedback and will say how can I do better? And I think it kind of flips the conversation we did start with. And I do deeply appreciate the personal accountability side of this that you're highlighting, josh.

Josh LeQuire:

I think that's critical because that's a big piece of honestly being receptive to good leadership and actually identifying good leadership. But the flip side of that, too, is good leaders should really. A lot of people are thrown into leadership positions. You'd identified micromanaging as a way to get people to perform and deliver results as a style of management. Yeah, that's definitely true. Micromanagement is also people getting thrown into leadership positions early in their career, not having a lot of leadership experience.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah, it's the go-to, isn't it?

Josh Matthews:

Step one you're in manager, Congratulations. Module one is your introduction to micromanagement.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah.

Josh LeQuire:

So, we encountered this all right. So you as a good, you know kind of team member, have to recognize and in some cases, you know, have a little bit thicker skin or a little bit more kind of fault tolerance and you have to look at. There's one of the things you brought up earlier in our conversation, Josh having a longer term lens and not leaving the job prematurely. Large organizations, leadership turnover is quite frequent. It could be every six months, every year. So if you don't like it, just hang on for a little bit, you might.

Josh Matthews:

Oh man, that's so true. Did you find that to be the case for you, Brandon?

Brandon Stein:

Just in prior roles.

Josh Matthews:

Yeah, probably at Deloitte. Did you have a new manager every six months, or was it pretty stable when you were there?

Brandon Stein:

No, I mean it's pretty chaotic right. Salesforce is the same way and Deloitte. It's like a war of attrition. If you just kind of hang on and you hang around long enough, you'll get promoted, right.

Josh Matthews:

So it's like the weather in Portland wait five minutes, it'll change, right? Yeah, that makes sense. I think we're at a point where we can summarize this for folks and then maybe share some last minute stories and talk about what's coming down the pike. The bottom line is you've got to protect your career. No one's going to do it for you as well as you can. No one's going to do it for you as well as you can. And protecting your career is thinking even as a 25-year-old. What kind of opportunities do you want available for you when you're 40? What can you do?

Josh Matthews:

There's a great book I've got on this little bookshelf right back here and it's called Recruit Rockstars. It's by Jeff Hyman and one of the things I really liked. He said he's like we don't even look at, we don't even talk to candidates about jobs they've had if they haven't been in that job for two years, because what do they know If you haven't gone through two seasons? How are you like? What do you really know? You know, and I can think about what I know about the jobs that I stayed at for less than a year is that I didn't like them and that's why I'm not there. And what I know about the jobs that I stayed at for two years or more is I liked them a lot. They weren't perfect, but I liked them a lot. I had a president I reported to in a large organization and she was great. And she told me she said, Josh, I think about quitting every three months, but I don't, because the other 89 days are pretty good.

Josh Matthews:

It's going to happen. Folks, you're going to want to quit. We talk about this on the show all the time, no-transcript. You want to know why some people have these long, storied careers at a company. It's because they didn't quit. It's like trying to grow a beard Just don't shave. It's harder than you think. I don't like how it grows in or my face feels itchy or whatever, but it's no different. So you want to challenge. Stay in your job for two years before you even start thinking about moving.

Josh Matthews:

Do everything you can to demonstrate your value to your employer and to your clients and to your team members. Communicate with the right people, Reflect on your role in any issues, and I think everybody in this room has done a very good job in their careers, because you've all had wonderful careers. And how can you not when you're not like gosh, you know what. Maybe I should read a book and get better at this, or maybe I should take a course and get better at that. Or maybe I should stop interrupting people or stop hitting people in the head with water pitchers, Like.

Josh Matthews:

Whatever it happens, Whatever it happens to be that you can work on, maybe I could assume more responsibility. Maybe I could teach these other people. Who could I elevate today? Whose day could I make? How could I make my boss's job easier? How could I communicate my value to him on a weekly or monthly basis so that I'm the obvious contender for the next promotion or the next raise?

Josh Matthews:

These are all within your control. I really believe it. I really believe it. I don't believe in fate. I believe that we all have talents that we're born with. I am not one of these. I am a nature over nurture guy.

Josh Matthews:

In case that's not apparent, by the way, science is on my side. Here you come out how you are and you're given this bandwidth of happiness, a bandwidth of sadness, whatever potential mental things that could happen just chemically with you. You come out like that. Then you enter the world and you learn Wherever you are in life. If you're listening to this show. You're already a step ahead of the game because you're listening to a show that is designed, hopefully, to help your career. Congratulations, You're already winning and doing the right thing. Keep it up and, if you like the show, give us a thumbs up and subscribe, but for real, like you're already doing the right stuff.

Josh Matthews:

So why would you not take that knowledge and bring it to the workplace? In other words, you know, it's just like what's the glass house, what's your stuff? Figure that out and then investigate and then socialize it and address things in as direct a way as you can. I'd love to get some final thoughts and, by the way, we will be back in two weeks live. This time we're going to start on time. I apologize for the 20 minute delay on the live show. I hope we haven't lost some listeners permanently. Let's go. Some last words of wisdom. We'll start with Mr Reid. What are some final words of wisdom that you have for anyone who's thinking about quitting?

Reed Marquand:

Well, I take it back to this quote that I said earlier. I had it up on my screen so long we had the whole show going. Let's talk about an employee losing morale because of their employer. Well, as we talked about quite a bit during the show, you're the champion of your own career, so you are both employee and employer in that situation. That analogy that far is if you can't be happy in what you're doing, then you have to make a change, whether you need to go, work out or take. You know, as you were saying, with the perplexity and the AI classes, I'm doing a bit of the same, josh. You know, expand your reach. You got to find your happiness. You got to find your anchor. So I probably ended up rambling here, but be the champion of your own career and, you know, take responsibility.

Reed Marquand:

I think you would tend to agree with that one quite a bit.

Josh Matthews:

Wonderful Mr Graber.

Tom Graber:

The old adage get out in nature every once in a while. I think that's everyone who's talked about overcoming depression or things. I don't care how quick it is 15, 20 minutes Get outside, do something. Find a park I think that's good. Find a safe place to vent and realize everything is temporary.

Josh Matthews:

Wonderful words. Thank you, tom, mr LaQuire.

Josh LeQuire:

Yeah, I'll kind of sort of rehash some of the things we were talking about earlier. You're the captain of your own ship, but know what you want and find that out. If there's tension between you and your employer, your job, and you're feeling like you got to quit, step back, take a breather, go out in nature. I think it's great advice Reflect, figure out who you are, what you want and whether it's the job, the employer, that is the problem or it's you. And before, as Josh said, suggested earlier, if there's something you need to shift in yourself, give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is you come back a month or two months down the road and decide you want to leave. Or maybe you made the greatest decision of your life to stick around there you go.

Brandon Stein:

Thank you, Josh, Mr Stein call a long lost friend that you haven't connected with in many months or many years. That's always been a nice lifeline right. It's just to reconnect with someone you've lost touch with. That always kind of grounds you and reminisce about something that kind of takes your.

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