Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Add Up L&D. Now listen, I'm not trying to copy Kylie Kelsey's Podcast 5, but I'm bringing back one of my absolute favorite humans to grace the show, Doctor Jarrett Carter. Y'all might remember him from a past episode where somehow we ended up talking about Beyoncé, which I love, and instructional design in the same breath. I'll buckle up because this one picks up right where we left off, with wisdom, laughter, and
a whole lot of honesty. Since we last chatted, Jarrett finished his doctorate, navigated burnout like a boss, stepped away from a high level leadership role, and launched his own business. Yes, he's that kind of awesome. In today's episode, we dive into everything from setting boundaries and redefining success to building authentic leadership identities. And of course, why networking
doesn't have to feel sleazy. It's a it's part therapy session, part leadership master class, and a full on reminder. A full on reminder that titles don't define us, our purpose does. So get ready to laugh. Maybe tear up a little bit and feel truly seen because this is real talk with one of the realists. Welcome back, Jared. Hi, we're ispring, an international team of e-learning enthusiasts who help more than 60,000 clients across the globe succeed with better online
learning. Our two flagship solutions are ispring Suite and ispring Learn LMS. Ispring Suite is an intuitive, all in one authoring tool for creating engaging e-learning content, and ispring Learn is an innovative online training platform for onboarding, upskilling, and certifying your teams.
We also provide tons of free resources for aspiring and experienced e-learning professionals, conduct weekly webinars with top industry experts, and organize annual e-learning conferences, challenges, and championships. We'd be happy to get to know you and pick a solution that fits your needs best. Go to www.icepringsolutions.com to learn more about us, download our resources, and connect. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another fantastic episode of Add
Up L&D. I'm not going to lie, I'm not copying Kylie Kelsey's podcast, but I'm so excited to welcome back Jarrett Carter to the show today. Jarrett, hey, welcome back. Thank you for having me. I'm really, really excited to be here. I'm excited because we were just talking. You've been on a journey since we last spoke, so why don't you tell us about what you've done, what you're doing, what the
future looks like. Just tell us all the things that you've been doing since you were last on the show. It feels like over a year ago. It was a while ago because, and this is going to be the most hilarious marker of me to remember how long we were discussing Beyoncé and right had just come out. And this is full circle because just a couple of weeks ago I was at the July 4th Cowboy Carter show right outside of DC. So. Nice, I'm so glad we can use Beyoncé as a marker for when.
We left. Exactly, Exactly. But yeah, a lot has changed. So in that time I finished my doctorate and, you know, at that time, right, Major, just that was done. And, you know, one of the things that I had to be honest with myself when I finished was that if we don't talk enough about this, I was excited for a point. And then I just like slid into this through, right, like in terms of my own mental health and everybody around me was so excited, but I was just kind of going through it.
And what I realized was that I was burnt out. And I made a promise to myself back when I was in my doctoral program that, you know, with, with COVID and everything that happened then, I kept putting money in savings, you know, to be able to at some point be able to slow down, take a step back from full time work and, you know, engage in some work that I think, you know, are more like passion projects or things that deeply, deeply aligned with what I wanted to do.
I put that on the back burner because I also after I spoke to you, I was promoted into a new role, associate vice president of integrative learning design. I think when we spoke before, I had just just started. So we were doing a lot of cool things and I wanted to be a part of it. But we were coming up on two years since I have finished my program. And I realized, hey, I didn't quite keep this promise to myself.
And I think that a lot of the burnout symptoms were there and it wasn't any one person's fault. But I think that, you know, my whole career, I was, you know, at the same time working full time. I was generally taking classes for this, that or the other. I was off the freelancing on the side. I was also active in my different communities outside of
work. And during the pandemic when everybody kind of had that slow down moment, you know, making sourdough bread or what have you, I was taking qualifying exams, which is actually the more stressful part of the document, the dissertation defense. When you get to that stage, if you've done everything right, that should be a slam dunk. But the qualifying exams are really mind numbing. So I was working 70 hours a week plus doing qualifying exams. So I realized that I had to slow
down. And so I made a really crazy, I think decision to step, to step away from my role at University of Maryland Global Campus. And it was a difficult decision because that has been the most mission aligned chapter of my career. I'm glad that I was able to stay on as graduate adjunct faculty in the learning design and technology program. So I'm still connected in that way. But I have been engaging in a
few different projects. The biggest one being I've started my company, it's called Collaboratix. It's going. I love that name by the way. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to something that was futuristic, but also in, you know, still stress the collaborative nature of the work that we do because I think that we are stronger together.
And I think that it's really important that anything that I do, even if I'm doing a solo, that I'm still collaborating with people or what have you and helping people to work Better Together. So a lot going on right now. So, you know, learning and development work we're going to be doing, we're going to be doing leadership coaching, whatever else comes because the life of an entrepreneur means that, you know, I'm not going to immediately say no to a whole lot. And you're pivoting very
quickly. When you're an entrepreneur, you're like, does this just kind of fit? And this might be good to have in My Portfolio to share with other people. So I totally understand that. Let's go back to the burnout piece because I think that's a great way to start the episode as being so transparent about everything that you, what society puts on us, the pressure, especially in academia, what we need to do in order to be seen as accomplished.
And I think a lot of that doesn't align with the human experience or definitely does not align with the human experience. And I had a similar situation to you when I was at Amazon. I was, I was working full time. I have my side hustles. I have this podcast, which is a huge passion project of mine and, you know, taking care of my family and, you know, dealing with trauma and grief and, and
all different kinds of things. And it just like my body just literally, I'm like, I can't, I just can't do it anymore. I can't tell my mind to keep going, so I think one of the things I want to point out is how much it impacts your health and how much it also makes you reflect on what's really important in your life. Absolutely. I think that oftentimes we're slow to catch a burnout too, because it could be a lot of a good thing as well, right?
That, you know, I think sometimes we associate burnout with, oh, I don't like what I'm doing, Therefore, you know, I'm feeling these things. But sometimes we overextend ourselves doing a lot of different things that we love. And that was the case for me. And you know, what I've learned is that for me, burnout is not something that I can acutely detect when it happens, right? For me, it was a bit of a slow, it was a bit of a slow decline, right? You know, it was slow burn, right?
You know, I wasn't sleeping like I should be. You know, I found that, you know, I was spending more money and I realized I was spending the money on like junk food or like, you know, food delivery because I was too tired to cook or what have you. And it wasn't just a time thing, but just even just like my brain's bandwidth to like even think of things, right? Like I would have people approach me about, oh, there's this cool contract opportunity we want to do. Do you have time?
And, you know, it's something I really wanted to do, but you can't do that while you're in school and you're working full time or what have you. I think for me, one of the wake up calls for me, frankly, to be fully transparent was also, you know, I'm thankful that I have health insurance. And so I go to the doctor, you know, often and was beginning to see that some of my health key health metrics were not trending in the right direction either, right.
And it wasn't again, something where my you know, my doctor was asking me like, oh, are you know, are there negative things happening? You know, what have you? And I said, I love what I do. You know, I love what my schedule is filled with, but I didn't have good boundaries up right like we mask kept saying it yes to everything. Yeah, we mask some of those things because we don't want people like in this like you're like a, you're an associate VP.
Like there's no possible way. You could be burnt out or you could have issues. It was like you do everything, you know, that kind of, that's how I think about it. It is. And I and I think that in our society, and you mentioned this earlier of you know, we base a lot of our expectations for ourselves and our success around what we do occupationally, right?
You know, often times when you meet people, especially here in the DC area, one of the first questions you're asked is what do you do for a living or go on a date? Often times, right, Right. That comes up so often, so funny, funny Side Story I have to tell you, Speaking of days occupation, so DC is so unserious when it comes to this, that when the student loan forgiveness programs were happening during COVID, if you remember, there was an income
cap, right? You, if you made more than $125,000, you know you didn't qualify, right? One of the subtle questions people began asking our first dates was trying to figure out if your loans were being forgiven or not. Because if you said, Oh no, I didn't qualify, that meant that you were making good money, right? That is crazy.
I would never in my life think of to ask somebody that and the fact that also to let's not get into the qualifications and like if you're making $125,000 that without taxes, that is not how much you're making. But yeah, that's, that's that's crazy. That's crazy. How did student loans become a part of dating culture? It's it's crazy to me. And so, you know, a lot of our identity, you know, is wrapped up in that. And, you know, we never ask the questions.
We think about satisfaction in life is like, you know, but also who am I in the way that I show up to my family, to my friends, to my communities, to my neighbors, right? Like those things are just as important. And you know, of course, you know, the job pays the bills and you know, this was a transition I have been plotting for a couple of years now because obviously mission alignment is not currency that I can use to pay my mortgage on the 1st.
But you know, it, it had me thinking about the different ways in which we show up and where we derive satisfaction from and, you know, all the different things that are on our plates, how we measure our success and our productivity. I mean, I think about how often when my friends and I would go to brunch and we would say, how was your weekend or whatever? And we're measuring our weekends and productivity like, oh, I got through the To Do List. I did this, I cut the grass, I
did this. I was just telling you before are. They millennials or elder millennials? Because I feel like our our self worth is tied to productivity. I I think millennials, well millennials, we have been like uniquely positioned for all of like the world falling apart. Like we are traumatized. We are traumatized. I don't know why my parents chose my birthday or I feel like that was Oh my goodness. They didn't know, they didn't know.
But yeah, you know, it's so interesting that you said that because I work a lot on the weekends with the podcast and stuff. And like if I, if I have like 3 or 4 things in my head, if I don't get it done, I feel like I'm behind. But I just have to do that for my my own self. But very, very true. Like we are, we tie a lot of our self worth to our productivity and a lot of our identity to our roles.
Yeah, like it's who we are. I mean, part of my brand is like my whole brand is L&B and jobs and stuff, but that's not all of who I am. And I'm. Sure, I say. The same thing. It is and that was and that was part of the reason why I thought
about this trend. You know, this transition is that one thing growing up that my mom always taught me in my siblings is that, you know, the whole question of what do you want to be when you grow up in and of itself is a bit problematic because it presumes one thing, right? It presumes that you're taking one full time job that will typecast you, you know, into like your career identity, right? And people see you singularly
through that lens. And part of this transition has been wanting to explore a multitude of different things at the same time while still honoring my boundaries and my
time and things like that. So, you know, what I'm excited about in particular is like being able to do to still do things around learning and development, being able to still teach, being able to explore leadership coaching, which is not something that I've even had the time, you know, to put a lot of time into, even though I got the certification a couple of
years ago. So, you know, being able to do all those different things and like be a little a little bit more intentional with how I even cultivate my own professional identity. It's something that I'm really excited about versus knowing me as just, oh, that's Jerry. He's, you know, an associate VP at this university or he's an adjunct faculty. Here I am now many of those things while still trying to balance them off.
Yeah, you know what though? I mean, like, if you think about it like these roles that you've had, including that that most recent role to have prepared you for what you're doing now. So tell us about your new business, what what you're focusing on, what you're doing so that people listening be like, oh, I need to call Jarrett and get his help with with this, this and this. So tell us all about that. I'm sure we could talk about burnout for days just so you.
Know y'all? Y'all got an insider look into the personal life of me and Jared Carter? Because we are. We are being honest. We burnout quickly when it comes to all the things that we do, but let's tell us about your business. Absolutely. So you know, as I mentioned before, collaboratics is going to hold a few different things.
The first part that we're launching with is True Rise Leadership Solutions and True Rise is looking at, you know, how do we, to your point of authenticity, how do we show up as leaders authentically in the work that we do. I spent earlier this summer doing a lot of research on what are some of the challenges, for instance, that for, you know, newly incoming leaders face when they come into the role, their
roles, right? And of course, with L&D professionals, we can guess some of those things, right? The procedural things of, you know, onboarding and, you know, those logistical items. But there's this inner core part that I think that we don't talk enough about, right? Which is like, how do I cultivate my own leadership
identity? And you know, thinking back to when I had my first supervisory role, they were different leaders I was enamored with, but it almost fueled my own imposter syndrome because I felt like I had to emulate them. Right. I had to, absolutely. Mimic them, right? And so I come into this role thinking, well, I'm not this person. I'm not that person. How do I show up?
And you know, coaching for me, getting a coach is one of the best things that my supervisor at the time did for me because it helped me to understand, yes, these are the research based frameworks for leadership development about how do you engender a positive team culture, How do you bring up the best in people, but also how do you do that in a way that is
uniquely you, right? And often times we separate who we are outside of work and who we are at work, forgetting that we can leverage both in the ways in which we show up, right? There are certain ways where, you know, one of the limitations of mentorship. And I, I have a team of mentors I love. My mentors would not be where I am without them. But what I go to them for is a little bit different than what I go to a coach for, right?
Because for mentors, I want to hear about how they did what they did and sort of widen my toolkit that way. But when I was working with my coach, it was OK. These are the frameworks. These are the success stories. But how do we pull the unique things about Jared to be able to
show up in that work? And so one of the examples that come to mind is when I first inherited this supervisory role, my very first supervisory role, I had inherited this high profile project that was already way over budget, already behind and had. Like bottom of the ninth, two outs and you're up to bat. Exactly.
And then on top of that, I was, I had some stakeholders that let's just say didn't have, there were not positive politics that I inherited, right, in terms of the relationships that I had. So I had to quickly figure it out. And at first I was trying to again, mimic what I saw. And it wasn't to my coach said, you know, talk to me about, you know, when you're planning your family's Christmas Eve party and people have differing ideas of what to do, like, how do you show up then?
And what we kind of worked on was then of action plan of like how I was going to build relationships through trust and authenticity, right? You know, there are certain things I broke the rules on. You know, I am somebody that if I'm on a project or I'm leading a project, and if you are somebody that I report to, I'm going to give you the good, the bad and the ugly. But I am going to tell you how we're addressing the bad and the ugly, right?
But I don't want you to hear about it from somebody else. I'd rather you hear it from me. And exactly. And sure enough of the assistant Dean at the time, like 2 months into the meeting, she said, you know, I want you to know that I really appreciate the fact that a lot of people come to my office and are trying to play politics and sugarcoat everything. She said I appreciate that I always know where things stand when you leave the office.
And so she said, you know, there's a certain trust that she had in me that, you know, she trusted my judgement on certain things where things were happening quickly. We need to make quick decisions. She was on vacation and she said, you know what, let Jarrett make the call. And so those are things where if I was trying to mimic what I saw other people do, I wouldn't have realized that. So when? I got. That coaching, Exactly. That level of trust.
Exactly. So the goal here is how do we find out the the intrinsic characteristics of you as a person, how they show up as a leader and then the individual ways in which you lead, of course, bringing in, you know, evidence based leadership principles. But I think that when you bring those two together, that's how we show up the best as leaders. I love that and I love the thing
you said. Like I definitely from a leadership perspective, I, I know the good ones that I had and I know the, I know the really bad ones, the toxic ones that I had. And I know like, just from, you know, growing up and like getting to this point to a director level, like I, I never like you. It wasn't on my bingo card. It wasn't on my bingo card last year to be the director at Ed tech company of marketing. But I've learned so much in the role with managing my team and.
Taking myself out of the trenches and trying to do that. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but just seeing people for who they are and meeting them where they're at and taking all that I've learned from my other leaders, like what are the things that they did well? And I really like that. That may align with my mission and may align with my values or the things they didn't do well. We're going to make sure that there's preventative measures in place that those things don't
happen. And I just want to, I think I want to ask a question to you because this is something that comes up quite a bit. Our team is fully remote and your team fully remote, I'm assuming. So that creates more of a challenge in possibly developing some of these relationships. The trust, I'm not going to assume and say completely just, you know, it doesn't happen because it does. I mean, we've never met a
person. You and I are like, you know, we can, we know we can text each other and we'll be there for support is what I'm saying. So how do you kind of deal with that as a leader when it's your remote and you have people everywhere all over the world or, you know, all over the country? How do you get people to like connect? I'm really glad you asked that question because I think that even with the growing hybrid work environments, that's becoming even more of a
challenge, right? Because, you know, in my last role, I had a lot of fantastic team members. Some of them were in the building two or three days a week. Some of them had never seen the building before. And so you even have that. There's a building. Right, right. And so you have that disparity of people that I might see in the hallway and converse with, how do I make sure that the people who are fully remote that we have a similar rapport with.
And I have, I can't say that I have totally figured it out, but what I have found that works is that there is no single solution for every team because I think much in the ways that our buildings were not designed uniformly across, you know, different companies, right? Different buildings were designed differently for the culture. I think that our online infrastructure needs to be responsive to, you know, our teams there, right?
So it can be things like I'm very intentional when I was doing my one-on-one, particularly with my remote team to not just, oh, let's just get straight to business, you know, to the extent that they wanted to share about, you know what. There's something I do. I got to stop doing that. Well, it requires intentionality, right? Yeah, it does. And that's also authenticity as well, because you I am generally interested in what other people
are doing. I know you are because I like I said, we've never met in person and we know so much about each other's lives that probably more than some people that I see face to face, you know, more often. And you know, but what I found is that, you know, even building in that time to say like, how was your weekend? And you know, and not putting them on the spot to make them share more than they wanted to
share, of course. But, you know, if they want to talk about, you know, attract me that one of their kids had or whatever, you know, being, you know, learning about that and, you know, learning the names as they're telling me stories that, you know, it became less generic about, oh, how's your daughters track me doing? And, you know, being a little bit more specific to say, Hey, how's how did Kaylee track meet
go? And then also my for myself as well, right, You know, being a little bit more of instead of just saying, yeah, I had a good weekend, you know, saying, oh, I had a good weekend. I was at the Cowboy Carter concert or I would. You know, I did this or I did. Always going to work Beyoncé into our episode. Just always, anytime. Every single time. When the Act Three album comes out, I'll be back and I will work in some sort of rock music influence or what have you.
But yeah, like helping people to see, you know who I am. So it was to the point that, you know, there was 1 remote team member I had where we actually intentionally extended our one on ones to be a little bit longer because I had to recognize that, you know, as much as I say I'm just a team's chat away, you know, we were in the building and you see my
doors open. You're more likely to walk in and ask me a question than you are if you see that my team's icon is showing green and it's just like, well, is he actually free? You know, is he doing this or is he doing that? So I think that in the same holds true for the team, team wide as well, right? There are some teams that I've LED where early in the pandemic where we would do virtual happy hours or we would do game nights or what have you. And then I shifted and began
managing another team. And a lot of them that was harder to do because that's when their kids were getting off of school and they needed to go get their kids from the school. But so we would do maybe lunchtime socials or early morning socials. So it, I think that again, I think it's one of those things where you kind of have to learn your team and see like what they respond well to and then kind of like that positive reinforcement, just keep doing
more of that. But it's something that I think we have to be really intentional about. And I think hybrid is going to add to that delicacy of that balance even more because now you have people that you're seeing in the building and that you don't. Yeah, that's it. It definitely is a huge challenge, but you can definitely feel the connection through the screen. Like people are like you can't feel that. I totally feel it.
Like some of my very best friends that I collaborate with daily, weekly come from LinkedIn world. I mean, in the maybe we should, I should have you talk since you went from like you got your supervisor role, you were an associate VP, now you're starting your own business.
Talk to us about how important it is to network and how that helps you get to the this point in your life where you're like, you feel good enough about yourself and you have the confidence and then you push the imposter system aside. How does how do you get there? How do you do that? It is so funny you said that because I'm actually, so by the time this records, everything will be fully online. But I'm refining a couple of content pieces that I'm going to
be posting. And one of them is you have to give people the opportunity to help you, right? And I think that it's so easy for us sometimes to feel like, oh, I'm doing this thing. I'm waiting for somebody to come save you or come help me. But if we don't invite people in and tell them what we're doing, they're never going to have the
opportunity to help. And networking has been my Achilles heel for the longest time because again, it was something where, you know, I was taking my cues from salespeople, right? And so, you know, and my authenticity self, I like, I struggle with reaching out and pretending that I was really just thinking about you. And the truth is I'm trying to make a deal, right?
And so it was something that I struggled with until again, kind of the same coaching frameworks took some time to step back and reflect on okay, outside of work, if I need something, if I need to network, how do I manage my relationships right? And you know, one of those things is, for instance, like my friends know that, you know, I'm not always quick to text back
because I just can't. But I. Know, like, I mean, I know you're mine is it's like sitting right here and like people, I'm like when I'm right, it's not going off. When I'm in a podcast recording, my sister's calling me telling me that she's excited to see me because she's on the way down to the southeast. And I'm like, you had to call me for that. Right, so. Like those distractions, like that's a conversation for another day.
But yeah, networking. That's a whole, yeah, that's a whole conversation in and of itself. But I was thinking about then like, So what with my friends, how do I network, right? You know, take away the business side of it and I'm the friend, though, that will send you a random text at like 2:00 in the afternoon and say, hey, I was just thinking about you. Hope all is well and there's no I. Love those texts from you by the way. Thank you.
But it honors my authenticity of in that moment, I really didn't want anything. But as Brené Brown would say, you know, you're you're putting gems in the jar, right? Or you putting those pebbles in the jar, right? So that when I do reach out and I'm a little bit more upfront about like, hey, how are you doing? I just started a business and I was wondering if you had any connects here because I was cultivating those relationships
all along the way. I can then more authentically reach out versus, you know, I'm sure you get this all the time on LinkedIn, the people saying, hey, I just want to pick your brain for 5 minutes. And then they're pitching a half million dollar product and saying, you know, how soon can
you contract this? And I'm saying there's a whole budgeting season for this, like, you know, so I've learned that, again, it's one of those things that, like, it's super important, but it doesn't mean that you have to do it in the ways that you've seen other people do it. And I might get in trouble with this with some of my colleagues, but you know who a good brainstorming partner is to figure out your approach. Who? ChatGPT. Yes, I agree with you.
I do not disagree with that. Because I. Mean I'm not going to get to the point like that guy that asked ChatGPT to marry him. I mean, we have a really good rapport with each other, but no. Yeah, we have a good report, you know, chat, she refers me by the my first name. I love even the audio. Like I can brainstorm in the car using Bluetooth and we'll just be conversing back and forth.
I love it. But I will tell it like based on everything you know about me, this is, you know, there's this networking reception I'm going to, you know, I hate these. What are some things, right? And it gave me a lot of actually really good advice that was contextual to the event that I was going to. So now I'm a little bit more open about going to some of these networking things.
And then you realize, you get out of your head and you realize that the majority of people want to help, right? And the majority? Know somebody that knows somebody, they're going to connect you to something else. Yeah, I think that we just the fear so much then to that like just just getting started just have a little chat. But going back to the LinkedIn message with Sharon, you would not believe the cesspool of dare I say shit that I get in my
LinkedIn messages. Jen, we'll have to edit that out or bleep it or whatever. But I think the other part of networking is making sure that you understand where the other person is coming from and what their journey has been. Because at least five times a week, if not more, I get, can you review my resume? And they don't even say hi or can you, can you provide us some support with, you know, we're
starting a new Ed tech company. Can you, you know, and then they want my services for free And I'm like, that's my time. Right. That's sorry the puppies. I was like, that's my time. Exactly. You know, and, and I, I cannot, I dare I say hate. I just, I totally dislike the fact that people, number one, they don't honor your time. Number 2, they don't even think about compensation and #3 when they do compensate you, some people don't pay you on time. They don't.
And one of the things that I've learned too, and this is a little hack that I've learned when people come to me with those kinds of things because to your point, you know, I've had people out of the blue that I haven't spoken to a year as, oh, I need a letter of reference for this particular job. Oh, when is it needed? Oh, this week, today, tomorrow, right? And I'm sitting here thinking like, put yourself in the other person's shoes for a moment, right? Like I was just coming back from
a conference. I was already behind on this, that and the third. But one of the things that I've also done even in terms of like when I am able to help, right, is giving people an action item to show that they're actually invested in this too. Because one of the things that I found is that sometimes people reach out and they want all this free advice, they want all this, but they're really just kind of mining. They're not actually doing
anything with it, right. So to your point on the resume review, I, I've had a couple of like, you know, maybe like a friend of a family member or somebody like that, reach out and right. But then what I'll say though, even then is, hey, here's a cool article on like these are the key things that your resume needs to include. First of all, this is a resume template that I've used. Go back, apply that. And then let's talk. When I tell you that 90% of the time they don't come back.
Yeah. You know, but you have to be, you have to be respectful of other people's time. People want to help, but you have to help them help you Don't make somebody a reference, right, right. Don't make somebody a reference for a job. And then I get this random, you know, 2O2 number calling me and I'm in Trader Joe's thinking that that's, you know, my dry cleaner saying that my clothes are ready. And then it's saying so and so is applying for a job and they
answer me all these questions. Then first I'm trying to understand what is the job? Who is this reference for? It's little considerate things like that. That is just help them help you. Yes, exactly. Help them help you for sure. And I think it's, I know, but we are not the saviors. No, as much as I wanna be like a St. or whatever, I can give you all the advice in the world. I can share all the resources, and I love sharing resources and
crowdsourcing all that stuff. What I cannot do for you is do the work for you to get to the point where you need to be. I love being the person that you think of when you need some support. I love being that person and I will be here to listen to you, but I am not going to be the person that is responsible for doing the work for you. If I am doing some of the work for you and support, you're going to pay me. Exactly. Exactly. That's always such.
A hard one at the other way around as well, right? You know. Right, right. Yeah, you're asking people to provide for one thing if I'm quickly. This is Real Talk episode. I'm putting Real Talk at the beginning. Of this is real talk and I love it because I do.
There's also the fact that even if I'm able to do something quickly, you're not paying me just for the time that it took me to do it. But all the energy that I've put in perfecting my craft to be able to get to the point that I can quickly spit out certain things, right. And so, you know, when you get into the when you're getting to the place of like people doing the work for you or these really detailed ass, you know, it's not fair to expect people to do that
for free. Because understand too that that's time that I'm taking away from either my career, that's time I'm taking away. That could be at the gym, that could be with my family, that I can be with friends or what have you. And so I have to be also very intentional in where I shift my time. For sure, for sure. Oh my gosh, you could probably talk about this all day long. I know every time we talk.
It's like enlightening. Every time we talk, I don't even feel like we're recording a podcast episode. I feel like we're sitting here just talking to each other. I'm drinking my little protein milkshake and we're just hanging out talking about Beyoncé and being entrepreneurs and all that stuff. But we're coming up on the end of the episode, as sad as I am about that, cuz I have a feeling those who are listening right now, they want more.
So we're gonna leave them wanting more from you, Jared, and they can reach out to you. So people who are thinking about, I love transitioning teachers. I am a transition teacher and they're thinking about possibly starting a career and learning and development or maybe possibly going out on their own. What are three pieces of advice you've already given some that you have for them to get started? And I'm really sorry that my puppy is playing with his duck toy.
That sounds like it's dying. So three pieces of advice, Jarrett, tell us. Tell us what they are. So #1 you know, derive a little bit of a derivative of something I had said earlier is that we are entire complex human beings. And I think that oftentimes our imposter syndrome comes in because we're trying to see ourselves in this fixed capacity, and we don't. And we miss the forest for the trees of seeing who we are totally.
If you are the family planner for all the family reunions and the Christmas holiday parties and what have you, you have project management skills, right? If you are often the one that's mediating family disputes or whatever, that's conflict resolution, that is, that is, you know, that's leadership, right? And so think about how you show up as a totality of yourself and then advocate for yourself from there, right?
A lot of times, you know, when I talk to transitioning teachers, you know, they're looking at Oh well the job description says this, I haven't done that. When the reality of it is that I could never. I did 1 field work placement in an elementary school and that killed all of my dreams of being an. Elementary school teacher. And so I have, you know, I've hired transitioning teachers and
they have been fantastic. But the one thing I've seen in interviews oftentimes is again, like sort of trying to do a 1 to 1 transfer thing because my experience doesn't match the letter of what you have in the job description. It's not there. I promise you it's there. The next bit of advice I would say is, you know, get out there and talk to people. You know, there are a lot of people who I think are on similar journeys.
You know, even myself with this business, I have a few people that I've been talking to and we've been accountability buddies with each other, sharing back and forth resources. The reality of it is that there is room in the pie for all of us to eat. We don't have to compete with others or what have you. So, you know, network, you know, find, find your people, find the people who will encourage you at parts where you may be discouraged.
And the last thing that I will say is think creatively about again, how you how you present yourself, how your, how you search for jobs. You know, AI is changing a whole lot in terms of even the ways. Even get an AI. We can do a whole series on AI. We didn't. Even get into that part. But I feel like the audience right now is also getting a glimpse into what our phone calls sound like because we've literally been on the phone for like two or three hours and probably could have recorded
like 12 episodes. Yes, absolutely. I think we should do it more like this. First of all, I want to say I admire you. And I'm not just saying that because we're on air and recording. I truly admire you. And I know you reached out to me like it was back in February or March and I was having a really bad day that day and you reached out and said hello. And that changed my whole, my whole day. It's like literally just a text message from a friend saying, hey, I'm thinking about you.
It changed my whole perspective of the day and I had a better day after that. I was like, thank God for Jared because I was asked about to. Hurt somebody. Thank you. Well, now, now I need now I need to reciprocate and tell you something you did that I don't know that I told you you did for me too. That made a big deal. You texted me the week after I put in my notice at my job, Right?
And you know, as I said, you know, I have a lot of fond feelings for UMGC and you know, it was a difficult decision. So I began to get into my head a little bit once because there's something about putting in a resignation letter that like you begin pressure testing your whole plan. And I said, nobody's going to want to work with me anymore because, you know, I'm just as freelancer now before, like it meant something that I was in this role.
So when you had texted me and you said, how are you doing? And I said, you know, I told you that I was leaving or whatever, And then you still said, I want you on the podcast. And I said, just so you know, I won't be work. I'm not going to have this fancy title when I when we were recording, you were said no, that's why I want to have you here. And I think that again, in a place like DC where our our job titles are currency, our job titles are even currency. Going back to dating, like
that's a whole nother thing. When you explain, I have to explain what I do now on a date that was actually incredibly validating and that picked me up for like the rest of the week. So I'm so glad that. I don't care what your title is, you're gonna come on the podcast because it's gonna be a freaking awesome. This is a great episode. There's so much packed into this, like 30 minutes that we chatted that people can take away that's gonna resonate with them. So tell people where they can
connect with you. Where can they find you, Jared? We're gonna have everything in the show notes, you know, send us the website to your business. We want to have it all there. So tell us where. Tell the audience where they can find you. So first of all, LinkedIn is like, and I think it's where you and I first even got to meet each other, right? So LinkedIn, I'm going to be, I'm going to become more active there again.
So you find me at jaredcarteryoucanfindmealso@jaredcarter.com, which will have links to collaboratics to true RISE leadership solutions. I am also getting into my content creator bag as the kids would say. So I if you find me on Instagram, it's DRJARCARI. Might be renamed that afterwards, but it should redirect. There's going to be more content. I'm going to begin posting there as well. I did my test for I did the shitty first draft over the weekend.
I just did a a a point of view video of me making macaroni and cheese for a game night just to see how all the apps work and it came together to work. There's going to be in the month of August, there's going to be daily post on some daily reflections as I can't. Wait. I gotta sign your. Instagram, I can't wait. Well, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure talking
to you. It's always it's always uplifting and lightning and like, you know, truth bombs like we need the real talk like there's so many times where I could have used some real talk instead of some sugar coating just to provide perspective. So thank you for being my friend, being on my show. And I never care what your title is. You know, all kinds of people walks alive, come on the show and everybody has a story to
share. So I'm so glad you were able to come back and and talk about where you're at. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for spending a few minutes with Holly. She knows your podcast queue is packed. If today's episode sparked an idea or gave you that extra nudge of confidence, tap, follow or subscribe in your favorite app so you never miss an episode of Ed Up L&D. Dropping a quick rating or review helps more educators and learning pros discover the show, too.
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