Hey, Hey, ba fam, I have been waiting to tell you, guys. I have been sitting on this news forever. But for the first time in Brand Ambition history, we are going live, y'all. We are going to be live from Newark, New Jersey. It is all happening October tenth at six pm. If you want to get tickets now, tickets are limited. We picked the best venue. It's a historic black owned bookstore in Newark, but seating is limited. This is going to be an intimate evening with me and Tiffany live in person.
It may be the only chance y'all get I'm not gonna lie to see us together live in twenty twenty four, so please come get your tickets. We want to make sure that the crowd is packed with true be a family. Okay, So if you want to get tickets, run, don't walk. Run to Brown Ambition podcast dot com to get the link right there and let us know that you're coming. Tag us, send us your receipts, send us your order. Maybe we'll send you some BA wag. We'll have some
BA swag at the event. Even we are going to be celebrating nine years of the show, y'all. Nine years. We're like geriatric podcasters in the very best way. But we cannot wait to see y'all in Newark. So go ahead Brown Ambition podcast dot Com to get your tickets to see me and Tiffany live for Brown Ambition Live in Newark, New Jersey. It's all going down. Like I said October tenth, get your tickets again at Brown Ambition
Podcast dot com. Ba fam, what's up? It's Mandy and the stew writing solo today, but it is one of the best days of the week because it's time for the b a qa a the v a qa which say the ba qa with Manda the ba qa and no Tiffany, but it's still the ba qa aba fam. Okay, I have got a very juicy question from my inbox because if y'all haven't heard, I'm kind of low key, high key an incredible career coach. I'm just going to own it and stand in my power. And I have
a career Pivot masterclass that I have been doing. Oh I don't know. I think I've done it three times and I don't know why I haven't done it sooner, because it is definitely the thing that y'all have asked me for so often when I have done whether it's negotiating webinars or professional branding webinars, I hear from so many women who are wanting to pivot and choose a new course in their career but really don't know how.
But now that I'm doing it, I get some incredible questions from and a lot of BA fam is always in the audience at my webinars, so I get some incredible questions from just women who are going through it. And I wanted to take an opportunity to feature one of those questions today because I got it yesterday and I've just been I've been niddling on it ever since. So this question comes from let me say, let me call her Natalie. Natalie says my question, Oh, she says,
I'm looking forward to your upcoming webinar. I love you In Tiffany on Brown Ambition, I listen every week. My question for you is an immediate need. I just found out that I am being laid off. My last day is in November. But thankfully I've had a feeling that change was coming. Thank Jesus for the note. So I started applying here and there in June. Needless to say, I've ramped up my job search since my last day with my current job is going to be November fifteenth.
I work in banking in an operations role. I'm looking for jobs that fit my current skill set, but of course asking for more money to keep money coming in. However, I'm also relaunching my business, which is consulting business, but I have no revenue yet. Do you have advice on how to pivot my current skills to apply to higher paying jobs that are transferable? What would that look like in a resume revamp and or for the business relaunch? Advise me on how to navigate while I'm on the
job search. Should I look for jobs that sharpened my skills for the business, even though it may be less of a salary sense I don't have. I don't have as much to experience there as I do with the business as I do with banking and finance skills. I hope I'm not too all over the place, but a lot is going on right now. I look forward to hearing from you, Natalie. Okay, I need to take a drink of water and take a little break. We're gonna hear from some sponsors and I'll be right back with
my answer to Natalie's career question. I think the one thing that I've learned this past year and from my own life and just from everyone else, is like this is the time. Like sometimes stuff just happens, and it's not just one thing, it's all the things happening all at one time. And the way that I wish life
came with like a red buttons. You can like get your you know, your mama, your auntie, whoever is your support system, just like immediately ship them to you or have them teleport to you so that they can support you in those really tough moments. Because I'm just like, where's the grown up at? Where's the growl up who's going to figure all this shit out for me and make it seem doable. But I can be that grown up for you, Okay, Natalie, We can be each other's support.
So I'm so glad that you reached out with this question. I want to start by saying, I'm really sorry to hear about your job. It's never easy to be told that you're going to be let go. It's some consolation that you have, you know, you have a heads up. I love that you were so smart and I hope that BAFAN, those listening are understanding that the signs are often there when things are not going the right direction at work, and it's up to us to sort of
know when it's time to start looking. And I love to hear that you started looking back in June. So hopefully that means that you've got some interviews already under your belt, so you're not going into the job market rusty with your interview skills. Hopefully that means that you have reconnected with former colleagues or any associates, any peers
that can potentially connect you to new opportunities. Now, I know that launching a consulting business, or you say, relaunching a consulting business, may seem like a good opportunity right now. I would I would absolutely encourage you to look at that as being one way to bring in revenue, especially if you're going to be in between jobs for a while. I mean, November is still you still have a couple
of months here. But I love having I love having an additional source of revenue so that you can sort of have something in your control, right. So I do like the idea of you trying to stay at this business consulting business without knowing more details about what kind of offerings you're going to have other than just consulting.
I'm a little bit worried that there's not enough clarity there, or there's not enough focus that you're going to be able to really be specific about here's my offer, here's why you want to work with me, and here's how here's why you need my services. I do work with a lot of women who flirt with the idea of starting a consulting business and have a really hard time consolidating what course and what value they can bring to the table and matching that with the perfect client who's
going to need those types of skills. So if you haven't yet, I would say, sit down and really think about the types of skills that not just that you can offer, but start speaking to the types of businesses the type of your perfect client. Try getting on the phone with them fifteen to thirty minutes and just ask them what their main pain points are and start to really put together and offer for what matches the feedback
that you're getting. It sounds really old school to pick up a phone and talk to a human, but when I was launching the Mandy money Makers, which is my career coaching community. That's what I did for about six months. I just got on the phone with women of color and I asked them what their career challenges were, and what they were looking for and what they needed, how they were feeling. And that is how I created the business that I did, you know six months later. It
was just based on that feedback. Now, you ain't got six months. We all don't have six months, but there's something there and I just want you to take the time to be curious. It can also help you, especially when you're trying to think of like a consulting business. It can be isolating. It can feel like you can spend oh my god, I see all the time. You can spend all this time building a website, but you still don't even know what your offerings are or you're
not really clear on it. So getting out there and actually speaking to people and letting them tell you what they need and how you can serve them, that can help, like get your juices flowing. It can help you find some momentum. It can help you even come up with ideas for services that maybe you didn't think about. So
that's what I would say about the consulting businesses. Take this time to start trying to identify your ideal client and figure out what their needs are, and then just find the intersection of what their needs are with your key with your core skills that you can offer, and then that's your consulting offer. Okay, So as far as pivoting, you say, how to pivot my current skills so I can apply for higher paying jobs that are trained insferable. So I don't think you ask about the resume. What
would that look like in a resume revamp? If you've listened to the show for any amount of time or follow me on social media, you know that me and resumes we don't get along. I don't like them. I think they're wastes. I think, well, I like them for what they are. They are a tool to summarize someone's professional experience. But they are not the end all be all, and they certainly are not the end all be all.
They aren't the end all be all of getting you a job, and they certainly are not the end all be all of getting you a job that pays really well. It can be a tool, but I wouldn't focus so much on spending a lot of time tweaking a resume or changing words that may make you more appealing for higher paying jobs. It really comes down to your skills. Do your skills align with higher paying jobs? Are you
finding open roles? And are you interviewing for roles that are paying you higher than what you're making now and that you have the skills to match. That's really what it's all about. And and if what you're finding, I mean you're in an operations role in banking, that can mean a bunch of different things, but your interview process really look at that sort of as like a researcher would.
You're gathering data. So what are the companies that you're interviewing with, What are the recruiters telling you they're looking for? What skills? Are you hearing a time and time again? And are there any Are there any parts of the interview that make you feel uncomfortable because you don't feel like you're able to offer what they want? And that is where you're going to find your opportunity for growth. And that's where you're going to find out where is
your skills gap? And then how can we start to close that gap. Sometimes it's not actually a skills gap. It's just that sometimes we haven't ever had experience articulating our experience in a certain skill set. Maybe it's something that comes so easily to us that we didn't even realize, Oh that's a skill, Like I know it sounds silly, but it's true. Oh you know, calendar maintenance, product efficiency testing,
user experience testing. Like, oh, I just do that anyway, But those are skills and it may That's why I like the idea that you're interviewing, because it gives you a chance to see what are people asking me? And anytime you feel uncomfortable or you're like, damn, I really
should have said this differently, you can practice. You can create a little, you know, loose script that you can follow so you can really drive home the fact that, oh, not only do I am I competent in this skill, but here are the here are the key examples for my career that I can point out to show you how I've demonstrated my competency with that skill set. Okay, you say, should you look for jobs that sharpen your skills for the business. Well, that's where I would say,
like skills for the business. But I'm not sure you're clear yet. On what type of business offering, like what kind of consulting you want to do. Of course, any job that you take, I imagine you'll take away some you know, some learnings that you can use for your consulting gig. But I don't know that it makes sense to like look for a job just because you think it will make you a more like a better consultant.
I would focus more on finding work that you can excel at and that pays you what you want to be paid, and it would be great, like if your business was in alignment with at least the industry that you're working in, Like if your business is and this is often what happens with consulting businesses is that you're getting paid by a company to do something all day,
and consulting is and then you develop an expertise. So if you've been doing that for ten fifteen years, it's a good you know baseline, but it could be less, you know whatever. Don't get too caught up in how many years on the job you've had. But when you have an expertise in something, then yes, people will hire you to share that expertise and boom, you're a consultant. But you need to have the expertise you need to be doing the work, and without knowing everything about your background.
I think sticking to focusing on finding a role that can really leverage the skills that you have and maybe even help you acquire some new skills that are going to be capable of getting you those juicier paychecks down the line that can all feed into your consulting down the role. And I just want to caution you because in the parathetical you say this may mean taking less of a salary since I don't have as much experience
here as I do with banking and finance. Don't sell yourself short before you even get out there and start getting considered for these roles. I think if this is like a hard pivot, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about, going from banking into something else that is a mystery to me. But even if it is a pivot, don't discount your experience and go into it already expecting less.
There's no reason to talk yourself out of getting the pay that you deserve before you've even like heard it or seen it, heard it from recruiters, or seen it in job listings for roles that you want to go after, Like, just just try to avoid doing that. Just because you're making a career pivot doesn't mean that you are, you know, less valuable, or that your experience is not applicable to the role that you're taking, or that it doesn't transfer.
Of course, there are specific skills that you just can't learn on the job, and yeah, if you want to go become a brain surgeon, you're going to have to start from the bottom. Like, I get that, But it's all about the story that you're telling yourself and telling a recruiter or a hiring manager to make them get excited about the skills that you have obtained and make them see the connection to their biggest pain points and
how you're going to solve their problems for them. So just think about the story that you're telling yourself before you even get in front of these interviewers so that you don't go in there selling yourself short, you know, or expecting less, and then you end up getting a low ball offer and you're like, oh, I should be grateful it actually happened. I'm actually getting to pivot, So let me just go ahead and take less because this was all I wasn't sure it was gonna happen anyway,
and I don't want to rock the boat. No no, no, no, no, don't do it, okay, And that's why, you know, that's one of the reasons I exist, is to just be here to remind you who the f you are and what you are worth, so that you, yeah, you don't sell yourself short. Okay, Natalie, that was a big, juicy question. Thank you so much for answering it. If y'all want
to check out my Career Pivot Masterclass, you can. I don't know when the next time I'm going live will be, but go to Mandy money dot com Slash career Dash Pivot Dash Masterclass, and I'm so glad Tiffany is not here to give me shit for not buying the domain. A nice little snazzy domain. But mandymoney dot com google it career Pivot. You'll find it if you really want to find it. You know, if you wanted to, he would, and if you wanted to, you would find my Career
Pivot master Class. It's entirely free. I love doing it. Thank y'all. Be a fan for listening, and we will see you next Friday for our next ba QA