Women Talk Shop

This is a story about courage, self-reliance, and how it’s possible to build a career in defiance of societal norms. Societal norms are nothing to celebrate because they exclude most people from participating in them. Honestly, most societal norms exist because they benefit a privileged few and in a professional context, privileged people benefit from systems of patronage. In systems of patronage, privileged people grant each other positions of power, and then they go on to make decisions throughout the course of their careers that uphold societal norms because they serve the privileged, and they grip so hard onto that privilege because it’s so comfy cozy to hold. Societal norms are not only exclusive and in most cases racist, classist, sexist, and capitalistic, they’re also boring. In this episode, I’m talking to Vivian Kay, an entrepreneur who has started and scaled two six-figure ventures and one seven-figure venture despite the societal norms that exist to work against her, including but not limited to white supremacy and racism. If you’re listening to this episode and you’re in a job that you think you have to do, to keep up the status quo and problematic societal norms, I want you to pay close attention to how Vivian approaches entrepreneurship with a sense of curiosity and a personal commitment to self-reliance and resourcefulness. I think you’re really going to love this episode. Let’s talk to Vivian.

This is a story about why we need to flip the script on personal coaching, LIFE COACHING, so it earns the respect it deserves. My guest today is really special to me because she’s truly helped me, on a very personal level, through some of the many challenges I’ve faced as an inexperienced and naive self-employed woman. My guest today is Stephanie Rourke Jackson, an IPSAT certified life and leadership coach who is also one of the warmest and most genuine women I know. What I want you to really hear in this episode is how life coaching is structured and deeply personal when you work with someone who is trained, qualified, and accredited in coaching. The coaching marketplace is really, really saturated with untrained, unqualified, and non-accredited coaches who may be great cheerleaders and hype beasts, but not as well prepared to heal the traumas that lay beneath the surface and present as imposter syndrome and fear of failure. In my opinion, Stephanie and her style of coaching is the standard worth investing in. And life coaching is an investment. But the return on investment is massive if you work with the right person who can help you reap incredible results. In this episode, you’re going to hear about the true benefits of life coaching and why this particular form of therapy should be normalized and destigmatized as a frivolous, unnecessary expense — especially for ambitious businesswomen. Let’s talk to Stephanie.

This is a story about how a sense of belonging heals the wounds of loneliness for women. Loneliness is a human condition that has existed forever. But, if you’re an analyst of social, challenge, and change like me, you may have discovered that feelings of loneliness are increasing rapidly, a result of many factors that are different for everyone. I struggled with a serious bout of loneliness that lasted about two years, my first two years of self-employment, and feeling so lonely made it extremely difficult for me to focus on anything else. Loneliness made me behave in ways that didn’t align with my true self; I stopped seeing friends, I stopped taking care of myself, I stopped doing things that bring me joy, and I became really snappy and defensive when people tried to come into my life. I was really hurting so in many ways, I think my loneliness led to depression and for two years I didn’t know how to get out of it. In this episode, I’m talking with Rebecca Gill, an extremely warm and compassionate woman with a portfolio career. She runs a business called Shop Thing, which is an incredibly smart retail service that sends personalized sale items to your phone via video, check it out at shopthing.com, and Rebecca also runs Her People, which is like a new-age community centre for women who are struggling with loneliness, like I was. Let’s talk to Rebecca.

This is a story about how the recruitment industry is broken in Canada and in desperate need of an overhaul. In Canada, it seems like it’s nearly impossible to get the attention of a recruiter and even more difficult to hold their attention long enough to benefit from their help. In this country, for some reason, the recruitment industry is not the tie that binds qualified candidates and talent-hungry employers. From the candidate side, recruiters seem more like elusive lovers who seduce but loathe to enter into relationships. My guest today is an English woman living in Canada and has struggled with getting the attention of recruiters for over a year and a half since immigrating here with her husband. Nicola Lockwood-Hall came to Canada with an exceptional resume. She studied Law at Oxford University and got her MBA at Cambridge. She practiced corporate law for six years before becoming a senior consultant at Ernst & Young and then moved on to lead Talent & Organizational Effectiveness for LexisNexis. Then, she became a very successful self-employed consultant in South Africa, working with global organizations who deeply valued her expertise, before coming to Canada...where she couldn’t even get a return phone call from a recruiter much less a coffee meeting or referral for a position far too junior for her level of experience. The part of this story that irks me the most is how many times Nicola has been declined for an interview because of her lack of Canadian experience. For a country that markets itself as diverse and democratic and welcoming to all, this is one hell of misrepresentation of our supposed values. Let’s talk to Nicola.

This is an episode about the true value of personal branding with visual communication, and you’re in for a treat because I’m talking with the veritable leader of personal branding and personal style, Monique Bryan. Before we get into the episode, I want you to open up your Instagram app right now and follow @moniquebryan_co because, not only does Monique do daily lives and give away a ton of free information, also has a uniquely special energy that can brighten your day, any day. You’re going to hear a conversation about personal branding that is going to shift your mindset on the importance of personal style as an expression of who you are within the context of work. And this is really important — personal branding with personal style isn’t a frivolous expense or use of time, it’s a critical factor in how people perceive you. And if you’re a professional woman, whether you’re an employee or an entrepreneur, how people perceive you has a direct impact on your opportunities. They are directly correlated. And do you want to know what the most surprising thing is about personal branding with personal style? That we most often don’t represent ourselves well with our personal style, because we typically don’t think very strategically about the clothes we wear and what they say about us. Most of the time, we’re just trying to get clothes on our bodies and get out the door. Monique has built an incredibly successful business as a personal branding consultant for coaches, speakers and business owners, and today you’re going to hear the details of what her work entails, and the true value of leveraging personal style as a business tool. Let’s talk to Monique.

This is a story about using your transferable skills to go for it anyway — when you don’t really know what you’re doing. I would estimate that over half the clients I work with on career branding are senior-level managers who want to change industries but they’re not sure how to do it, or if they even can. I know that you totally can change industries if you want to, and you can also change job types — in fact, you can do whatever you want if you allow yourself to think creatively about all the different ways that your skills can be applied. That’s the first step. The second step is changing your mindset around change being a dangerous and risky pursuit to become more flexible. In this episode, I’m talking with Laura Bryce, co-owner of Dresst.ca, a Canadian clothing rental brand that Laura and her partner, Kelly Pigeon, started after 10 years building a career in an entirely different industry. Kelly and Laura didn’t just change jobs and industries, they changed job types too, from employment to entrepreneurship, with a gut feeling and loads of gumption. Most of the conversations I hear about women entrepreneurship are sugar-coated and gloss over the strategic thinking involved in building a business. I’m excited to have Laura on the show because she does a really good job of explaining the step-by-step process she and Kelly took to build Dresst.ca to become a successful brand in Canada by not working hard to reinvent the wheel. Let’s talk to Laura.

This is a story about reframing the recruiter-candidate relationship to become significantly more personal and supportive. How many nightmare stories have you heard about ridiculously bad experiences with recruiters who don’t reply to emails, have no critical feedback to offer on your CV, and seem all too willing to just leave you to look for new career opportunities by yourself? There are exceptions to the rule, of course, and today I’m talking with Maria Meally who is one very notable exception, and I’m so eager for you to meet her. Maria is the owner of Theory Y Search, a recruitment agency for the financial services industry in New York and Toronto. She’s from Ireland, moved to Toronto and lived here for 7 years, and then recently relocated to Brooklyn, where she lives today. What she does so differently is take into account how critical it is for her to form meaningful relationships with her candidates and her clients because recruiting really is a business founded upon relationships, but very few recruiters invest in them. And I just don’t get why not! Neither does Maria, which is why she operates her business differently. Working with her is like getting a therapist, a recruiter, and a life coach in one. I am so passionate about this topic and I think it’s so overdue for the recruitment industry, particularly in Canada, to be disrupted by recruiters who think differently about their work, play the long game and are fiercely committed to relationships and supporting the self-esteem of their clients through the job search process. Let’s talk to Maria.

This is a really special episode because it’s the first international episode of Women Talk Shop! Today, I’m talking with Kate Surala and Sarah Wagner, the co-authors of a new book called Unleash Today, a non-fiction book that empowers young women to unleash their full potential in the workplace. Today we’re talking about the little things that add up to make a huge, negative impact on our self-esteem in the workplace. Women tend to overcompensate for our relative inexperience as professionals by working doubly hard and thinking we need to do more, be more, and take on more than men in order to prove ourselves. And, when we aren’t PERFECT at work, or we don’t perform PERFECTLY every day, we shame ourselves and minimize the good work we have done, and all the things we are capable of, as forms of punishment that prove our low self-esteem justifiable. In other words, we look for confirmation bias that we’re not good enough yet, so we need to work harder. This is a pretty thick conversation that ultimately relays back to the importance of self-promotion so sit back and enjoy the conversation with Kate and Sarah, and please share this episode with a friend who you think is way more impressive than she gives herself credit for. Let’s talk to Sarah and Kate.  

This is a story about the value of investing in relationships and being a genuinely kind business woman EVEN when you’re in a powerful position, and especially when you’re in a power position. There’s a common stereotype of women who have successfully climbed to the top of a corporate business ladder — that they’re ice cold and driven exclusively to perform, and have little time for niceties and kindness towards the less powerful people who surround them. This stereotype is sexist and meaningless. It’s not justifiable to judge a woman who isn’t motivated to nurture her work friendships or be affectionate towards her colleagues. However, the value of nurturing our work friendships isn’t so that we can easily use people to get what we want but rather so that we can better ourselves with the help of others — not to climb higher but to perform better... as the best version of ourselves. My guest today is Katie Green, the CEO of August Strategy, a strategic communications and brand development company, and former senior director of global communications at ALDO Group. Katie has built an incredibly successful career for herself and has always led with kindness and invested in her relationships. Katie and I went to the University of Ottawa together and were both in the same communications program, so I’ve seen her grow from our lecture halls to becoming a global communications leader, and in my opinion, she’s always been the standard to strive for in terms of how she conducts herself as both a good person and an incredibly smart businesswoman. If you tend to shy away from work relationships, or aren’t really sure how nurturing your network can pay you back in spades, this episode is for you. Let’s talk to Katie.

This episode is about how self-esteem and resilience intersect with failure in business. You’ve heard me say it before but I’ll declare it again: business is in fact very personal, and I think that business growth and success are only possible once failure has occurred and our feelings of self-worth and self-esteem have been challenged so many times that failure becomes normal, and expected. It’s at the point, and only at that point, when failure feels normal, that we can acknowledge it and make the decision to get on with business anyway. That’s how we build resilience and our self-esteem authentically, over time and with failure. In this episode, I’m talking with Joanna Track, the founder and executive publisher of Bullet Daily Media Group which publishes The Bullet, and NewsworthyCo Inc., which offers “editorial as a service” to organizations around the world. Joanne was also the founder of Sweet Spot and eLuxe here in Canada. She’s a brilliant businesswoman with incredible foresight for future trends in media and commerce. She’s also experienced her fair share of failure and feelings of self-doubt, which I think are likely contributing factors to her continued success in building her third successful venture. Let’s talk to Joanna:

This is a story about following your gut instinct and forging a career with your natural gift as the guiding light. My guest today is Jam Gamble, a connector of people, ideas and energy, and one of the best public speakers I’ve ever witnessed, both on Instagram and in real life. Jam is the founder of Slay The Mic, an incredibly successful coaching program that helps people grow from anxious to perfectly comfortable using their voice and becoming confident public speakers. How many people do you know who are nervous about public speaking? It’s more rare to know people who are comfortable with public speaking so that’ll give you an idea of why Jam’s program is so damn popular. In this episode, you’re going to hear Jam tell her story about how she tried forgetting about her love for public speaking, and pursue a career that was more along the lines of “the right thing to do” and better satisfied the people around her in society. She tried to do the right thing and walk a straight line but her gut instinct wouldn’t quiet down and ultimately motivated Jam to do her own thing, which has really paid off in the end. Most of us dream about having our careers and our passions align, but few of us actually take the leap and make it happen for ourselves. We’re scared! I get it; being scared makes sense when there’s so much damn pressure in society to conform. But Jam’s a really strong example of a woman who followed her gut instinct and forged a thriving career for herself in the new economy, online. Let’s talk to Jam.

This is a story about the art of self-promotion at every age and stage of entrepreneurship. Do you ever fall into the trap of thinking that you’re too late to try something if you didn’t do it first, or a long time ago before anybody else started doing it? If you have perfectionist tendencies, I would put money on a bet that you think you need to do something first and better than everyone else if you’re going to do it all. This entire season is about the art of self-promotion among professional women and today I’m speaking with someone who has already been running a successful communications company for a long time. She’s not a new entrepreneur, she’s a seasoned and established business owner with a full staff, a long list of devoted clients, and hard-earned confidence. Andrea is a really successful communicator who has earned her keep by promoting other people and their accomplishments her entire career but she never really thought about doing the same for herself until recently, when her mindset shifted and everything changed. If you think it’s too late to start promoting yourself and that other people would think it was strange if you starting sharing your accomplishments now, I’m happy to introduce you to Andrea Lekushoff who just started promoting herself and her business now, after decades of being in service to others and just deciding one day that it was her time to shine. Keep listening to hear how Andrea has grown her business and changed how people perceive HER after years of having an established reputation already, only to make it even better. Let’s talk to Andrea.

This is a story about just how personal business is for women. I could have never guessed that being an entrepreneur would be so difficult because the difficulties aren’t always predictable. Things like how to write a really great proposal, then sell the proposal and turn it into a legally binding contract, then create an invoice and set up automatic payments, and how to accept credit card payments — these are some of the things that add up to make entrepreneurship really challenging for a newbie. We all have different experiences but many of us think it’s only ourselves who don’t know how to perform the functions of business and everybody else has it all figured out. If we don’t speak openly about the challenges we face with one another, we risk becoming isolated and suffering in silence when we could be learning skills from other women who have faced our challenges before and are totally willing to lend a helping hand. Today, I’m speaking with Dayna Lapkovsky who started frank, a community coaching program for Canadian women to learn and teach skills and ask for help with our barriers to success. Frank offers non-traditional networking in a way that suits the nature of women, to be communicative and collaborative. Frank is based in Montreal and offers women across Canada the opportunity to tackle what’s at hand with an action plan and the help of an expert facilitator. The thing I love about frank the most, and kudos to Dayna for building frank this way, is how it offers women the opportunity to hear an outsider’s perspective on problem-solving because sometimes we just need somebody to tell us what to do because they know best. *Important: We recorded this interview earlier this year before lockdown and Boycott Facebook, so if you love what you hear and you want to learn more about frank’s fall and winter programs, make sure you visit frank-talk.com. Let’s talk to Dayna.

This is a story about how your effective self-promotion can create and attract totally unexpected opportunities for your career. I’ve talked about the importance of self-promotion a lot on this podcast and I still think it’s the single most important skill for professional women to hone. Effective self-promotion isn’t going on and on about how amazing and special we are but rather the art of communicating what we do, why we love to do it, and what we are really interested in doing next. In this episode, I’m talking to Amrita Gurney, the VP of Marketing at CrowdRiff, a 6-year-old tech company in Toronto that works with travel and tourism brands, a highly visible public speaker on women in technology, and recently, an angel investor. While we were working together to produce this episode, Amrita shared with me that because she is a woman of colour, she spent much of her life feeling like she didn’t fit in, especially in the tech workplace. She didn’t have leaders that looked like her, and her personal strengths — being a sensitive, empathetic, creative, and expressive woman — were not valued in the first decade of her career. She experienced misogyny, racism, and a lot of gender bias. Today, Amrita’s aim is to help more brown women, and all women from underrepresented communities, have easier access to angel investment opportunities and also to see themselves as people who can be angel investors too. For her, the transformation happened once she started promoting herself and advocating for the changes she wanted to see in tech by public speaking. The more she promoted herself, the more public speaking opportunities she attracted, and the more frequently she began to give voice to women of colour in technology. And that, my friends, is how it’s done. Let’s talk to Amrita.

Everyone who hears this podcast should walk away with a much, much clearer understanding of how to write a resume, why certain things are more important than others, what information is critical to include and also what information can be left off your resume, and also how your resume functions as just one tool in a holistic professional portfolio, albeit an important one and, dare I say it, a necessary evil. Key Takeaways: Your resume is like your defence attorney. It exists to make a strong case for why you’re a powerful candidate. The strongest case will be made with quantifiable evidence that communicates your ability to move the needle forward for a company. The first page of your resume should include a really clever and concise candidate summary that reads like the back cover of a novel to give the reader a clear idea of everything you bring to the table in 15 seconds or less. The first page of your resume should also have a list of key skills that align with the keywords on the job description for the position you are applying for. You can find the keywords by reading the job description with a critical eye. The second page of your resume should list your professional experience, educational background, and continuing education. Your resume should be sent in a word document, not a PDF, and the content should be typed in a single column to read top-to-bottom. ATS hates text boxes, extra columns, and unnecessary information. You want to keep it tight. Finally, you don’t need to include your references, your hobbies, or anything else on your resume because all of those things can be shared with the other marketing tools that comprise a polished professional portfolio, and I’ll be talking all about those in upcoming episodes in this series.

I’ve done some research to try to bring you the most relevant information about what this all means for our job, and hopefully answer some questions you have about the fate of your career, and what you can do RIGHT NOW to keep yourself in a good headspace about work. I’ve consulted a broad scope of content from various publishers, like Harvard Business Review and Globe & Mail, and case studies and articles published by economists and business journalists, and people who are very credible and capable of speaking on the topic. In this episode, I breakdown what the economists are saying, how we may get out of it, what this all means for our jobs, why we as professionals are NOT powerless right now, and, finally, how I think we can all plan to help create the silver lining — for our own careers, and hopefully for the future of the economy as well. Key Takeaways: Economists don’t have a clear picture of what is going to happen yet but the numbers aren’t great and it does look like there’s a bumpy road ahead. However, it is critical to the government, banks, policymakers and the financial markets that people are working and actively developing their careers. Here in Canada, the government is doing a lot to help make that happen and I’m confident there will be more to come. We are NOT powerless right now in maintaining a reasonable amount of focus on our careers. YOUR power right now is to get your ducks in a row and be totally prepared for when we start working towards the economic upswing. If you’re looking for something to do, you can work on your professional portfolio. I personally think it’s the smart thing to do.

This week, I’m sharing some business decisions that I made in my first few years of business — some that were super smart and others, not so much. But how would I have known? When I decided to try self-employment, I had no business education or experience to my name. All I had was an idea and blissful ignorance about what I was in for as an entrepreneur with zero funding, few assets, and nothing to lose. This episode is for everyone who has an idea, blissful ignorance and nothing to lose too. Key takeaways: Don’t hire an accountant; learn how to manage your own money. Don’t join a co-working space; they’re not worth your money if you work alone anyway. Don’t give your business any other name than your own; hurry up and build your personal brand. Do know that you’re in sales; you’re a salesperson above all else. Do find a niche application for your service or product; use your intuition. Do know your message and stick to it; repeat your message always, it’ll be good for PR.

Today, I’m talking about the shady business coach business which we’ve all come to know quite well on Instagram, especially, and here’s why: We’re in the middle of a global pandemic and I’ve been watching a whole slew of shady business coaches ramp up their efforts to sell their programs using extremely problematic fear-based sales techniques. I just saw a business coach on Instagram berate her followers for not thinking more strategically about how to capitalize on the COVID-19 crisis. To me, leveraging COVID-19 to persuade more people to invest in your business is just as unethical as the guy who bought all the hand sanitizer to re-sell it for a profit on Amazon. And we all know what happened to that guy, he got charged with price gauging and became an international case study on what not to do in a time of crisis — trying to capitalize off of people’s fears and vulnerabilities are exceptionally unethical tactics and business coaches attempting to do the same on Instagram are no better. You could call this a buyer-beware episode because there are brilliant and helpful business coaches that are super worthy of your investment and others who are like modern snake oil salespeople in using deceptive marketing techniques to sell to you. Are you confused by which business coach is more legitimate and worth the investment of your money than the next? Listen and learn how to distinguish between the great and shady business coaches of the world. Key takeaways: Learn how to spot a shady business coach on Instagram Learn the qualities and techniques to look for in a really great business coach Hear the common techniques that I see some business coaches use on Instagram that I consider to be quite shady. If you’re employed and not totally loving your corporate office life these days, and find yourself longing after business coaches on Instagram promising you the secret to making a million dollars in just 14 months, this episode is for you. If you’re self-employed and feeling like things should be easier by now, and you should be earning more money by now, and you should have more clients by now, and that your calendar should be filled with way more appointments by now — this episode is for you too. It’s true that the internet and social media are new channels with new opportunities for growth that didn’t exist before. But I want to clarify the mystique a little so you can feel more informed about what’s behind the curtain of coaching and business ownership before you spend any of your hard-earned money on coaching, or mentorship, or an expensive coaching program that promises you the stars and the moon.

In this episode, I’m sharing my personal tips for working at home like a pro. When I started my business, learning how to work from home was a huge adjustment. I know many of you are adjusting to working from home for the first time, and due to circumstances that are way beyond your control, so I hope you find these tips helpful and also quite enjoyable. The enjoyability factor is a big one because working from home can feel isolating, especially if you’re like me and thrive with social interaction. Not having colleagues around to chit-chat with suddenly can feel quite jarring. We’re all feeling a little unnerved right now anyway. I promise you that these tips I’m going to share with you will help you with productivity, your mood, your sense of isolation, and your fear of failure because I’ve had to figure out what works from my first-hand experience. And I don’t only work from home — I’m single and I work alone too. And, like I said, as an extremely social creature, I had to find out the best methods for working from home to ensure I didn’t go crazy with loneliness, drop the ball with work, and completely change who I am and interact with society. I just want you to know that I understand that the transition is tough, and it’s not super easy to just go from working in an office to working by yourself at home and expect everything to be the same and totally normal. It doesn’t work like that. Also, there’s more to working from home in an effective and enjoyable way than having the option to wear sweatpants and watch TV. Way more, and in fact, I would highly advise you against both of those things. So I guess you could say this is an episode on my ways to work from home in a strategic way so that you can be effective, enjoy yourself, and take this COVID-19 as a situation that forces you into finding your self-motivation and dial-up your work ethic, and really work towards doing your best. You owe it to yourself to feel proud of yourself even in trying situations, and that’s what this episode is all about   Key takeaways: Have a morning routine dedicated to creating order in your home Don’t drink wine or smoke weed at lunch Do your workout either first or last, not in the middle of the day Manage your tasks with two three-hour highly focused work sessions Give yourself two 30-minute email and social media sessions Facetime with your friends and family Play a game with deadlines; give yourself one laundry cycle to finish three things on your to-do list. If you have more working from home tips you’d like to share, send me a DM on Instagram @RebeccaPerrin.

You guys know I’m a stickler for self-promotion, I talk about it all the time on the podcast. But why bother with self-promotion when you’re simply a corporate professional working at a corporate firm, with a relatively mundane and boring job, and not much to talk about — certainly nothing interesting, right? Wrong! Trust me, your job is not as boring as you think it is. There are a lot of misconceptions about who “deserves” to be telling career stories and what those stories “should” be all about. In this episode, I talk about how to change your mindset about leadership storytelling and consider how sharing even a “simple” story can have a positive influence on your professional reputation. These are the things you have to know as a career woman with goals, especially if you have an online presence on LinkedIn. Listen to the episode with an open mind because you’re going to learn three “simple” story ideas that everyone can write and use to develop their career brand, and have a positive impact on their professional reputation. What your daily life is like on the job Recent industry changes or innovations that you think are interesting to experience People in your industry who you think are doing cool things Plus, I’m giving away one fully paid scholarship to Love Your LinkedIn! One lucky listener will win full access to Love Your LinkedIn (value $298). Listen to the episode to find out how you can enter to win and good luck! Subscribe & Review in iTunes Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. ! Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. , select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favourite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

This week, we’re taking on the complex topic of crying at work. There’s a lot to unpack here: sexism, institutionalized misogyny, the habit of blaming others for our feelings, and how we expect everything around us to change so we can be happy again. If you’re the type of woman who cries when things get tough at work and then you feel embarrassed by it, this episode is for you. Hear why there is no logical reason to feel shame for feeling emotional at work, understand how sexism and misogyny play a huge role in creating our shame, and learn one smart way to manage your emotions and become much better at communicating how you feel with words.

This week, I tackle how to deal with being fired from a job and how difficult the experience can be. And I should know — I’ve been fired more than once. Being fired, or laid off, can feel embarrassing, confusing, humiliating. Worst of all, in my opinion, is how being fired can steal away your sense of career direction for a long time. Being fired more than once was extremely difficult for me because at the time, I internalized the experience and turned it into a personal judgement of myself. For the longest time, I thought I wasn’t good enough to do the jobs I really wanted to do, disliked by the people in my industry, and totally unworthy of achieving my ambitious career goals. In fact, I carried those negative judgements with me for years before learning how to navigate my way out of the pit of despair. The result? This podcast, a career coaching business, and really realistic and TRULY HELPFUL ways to deal with being fired.    KEY TAKEAWAYS:    Your being fired may be a scapegoat for larger problems at the company that have nothing to do with you.  Your being fired may have been a dumb mistake made by the company. Even if they should have kept you on, learning how to tell that story in a future interview in an elegant and informative way (not bitter or arrogant!), will serve you and your future career self.  Your being fired may have little to do with your skills and talent, and more to do with a personal conflict you have with your boss. If this is true, the sooner you can take ownership for your part and apologize for contributing to a conflict, the sooner you can move forward and feel much better.  RESOURCES: Registration for Love Your LinkedIn is now LIVE and class starts on February 29, 2020. Go to to register for only $298. 

This week, I’m talking with Chanèle McFarlane on what it’s like to transition BACK to corporate employment years of self-employment. We often hear about the joys of “going freelance” but rarely about “going back to corporate. There are many joys to be experienced in leaving freelance behind for corporate work. Chanèle is a bright light in the personal branding profession and I can’t wait for you to hear how intelligently she approaches the intersection of personal style and career development. Plus, what the heck is a portfolio career? After years of struggling to settle on an “official” title for my career type, learning about the ins-and-outs of a portfolio career seals the deal.    PLUS:  Registration for Love Your LinkedIn is now LIVE and class starts on February 29, 2020. Go to to register for only $298.

I’ve received questions on how to respond to recruiter on LinkedIn who don’t disclose the salary, how to market yourself for a new job when you don’t have any experience, and how to inform people about your new business after leaving corporate life in a way that brings in new clients.  I’m also talking about some really interesting things on News With Rebecca, like how women now hold more payroll jobs than men in the US but it’s actually hurting the economy, how Gen Z are shopping sustainable retail and happy to spend extra money doing so, and how companies are spending $325 Million on employee engagement software in a desperate attempt to find talent amid the Gig Economy boom. Get full show notes and more information here: . 

This week, I talk with Jenny Hargreaves, Founder & CEO of Tellent, a Toronto-based flexible job board and resource for professional women to pursue flexible careers.  When we talk about the new work economy, we’re talking about flexible work. And in my opinion, flexible work is the answer to the number one pain point that professional women experience when they’re newly self-employed or have just “gone freelance.”  And that pain point is how to sell.  When I’m coaching new entrepreneurs on how to get started off — the first thing I coach them on is to change their work mindset to focus on sales.  At least for the first three years.   No matter what you do for work — whether you’re a writer, an HR consultant, a chef, a caterer, a project manager — whatever it is, the first three years of entrepreneurship rely heavily on your ability to sell your services and develop your business.  But sales and business development don’t come naturally to everyone, they can be a huge barrier to success for women in business who haven’t been trained in productizing their services, cold-calling and prospecting new clients, asking for the sale, knowing how much money to charge, how to write a proposal, how to write a legally-binding contract, how to create and send invoices, and the list goes on.  Finding new clients and selling them your services is tough, especially if managing the sales process doesn’t come naturally to you.  And if you are currently self-employed and struggling with sales, OR somebody who wants to leave full-time work, or has to leave full-time work for anyone of a variety of reasons — like maternity leave, for example — flexible work is the saving grace you’ve been hoping for.  Just wait until you hear what Jenny Hargreaves and the Tellent community are doing with flexible work, it’s a game-changer for those of us who are already self-employed and the thousands of women who REALLY want their career to change shape in the near future.  It’s all happening.    Key Takeaways:    Flexible work is the answer to the number one pain point that professional women experience when they’re newly self-employed or have just “gone freelance” — a lack of confidence in selling.  Flexible work is equally beneficial to companies as it is individuals, giving them access to top talent committed to a career in the new work economy and project-based or temporary contract work.  Just in from the World Economic Forum: The jobs of tomorrow are those that women happen to particularly skilled at.    Resources: How To Access The Tellent Talent Ecosystem  Talent Ecosystem: Website: Social: @wearetellent LinkedIn:

This episode is all about how to get a job in 2020. It’s common for business media to cite a confidence gap holding women back from positions of power and leadership roles, but I disagree with that. I think the only thing we have is a self-promotion gap, and that’s not our fault — it’s just not something we learned to do growing up or in school. The biggest injustice that women have dealt with for far too long is the idea that we have to be more, and bring more to the table, and be better before we can get what we want. It’s simply not true. We just need to get smarter about how we promote ourselves to the world. The entire point of career branding is to sell yourself so you can get a job. Just like Nike is a brand with products, you are a brand with products AKA skills, that you need to market and sell to your ideal customers AKA your ideal clients or employers. Career branding is your own public relations strategy. It’s for improving the perception of YOU in a competitive career marketplace. In this episode, you’re going to get a simplified breakdown on the complexities of career branding so you totally GET IT, and know exactly what you can do DIFFERENTLY than you have probably been doing to-date to grow your career and/or get a new job. This episode covers career branding in a way that makes sense to both employees and self-employed professionals whose new “jobs” are new clients. No matter what you do for work or how you earn an income, this episode is going to coach you to think differently about self-promotion and how you think about growing your career. Also in this episode, introducing News With Rebecca: I’m kicking off the episode with a new segment called News With Rebecca. I’m pretty much an amateur news anchor for my friends in WhatsApp group chat and talking about what’s going on in the world is my favourite pastime. This week on News With Rebecca, I’m talking about:   The Iranian missile attack on Flight PS752 Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan moving to Canada NikkiTutorials and her “I’m Coming Out” YouTube video   Resources: The waitlist for Love Your LinkedIn is now open. This is my career branding course that will teach you how to design YOUR career brand and put it into action with just one of the marketing tools I talked about today. Love Your LinkedIn is a self-directed online course, meaning you’ll listen to audio lessons from me and then go through the workbooks and exercises I’ve created for you. Each week we’ll meet on a webinar for live coaching, and you’ll get one 30-minute private coaching call with me too. The entire course is four weeks long and costs only $298 because I want to help as many of you as possible get off on the right foot with career branding in 2020. Class starts in February, you’ll have to standby for the exact date but It’ll be soon — trust me. If you want to put your name on the waitlist, go to . Watch: A 13-Year-Old Gave An Emotional Speech About His Dad Who Died In The Iran Plane Crash:

Let’s talk about imposter syndrome and a fear of failure. They’re both so heavy and so negative and, frankly, so annoying to have to deal with. It doesn’t matter if you’re a junior coordinator or a senior vice president, we’re all struggling with imposter syndrome and how it negatively impacts our ability to stay in action and moving forward in our careers.  In this episode, Rebecca works to improve your relationship with imposter syndrome by breaking it down, easing the shame associated with low self-esteem, and sharing her action plan for getting on with it regardless of lingering self-doubt. You’ll also learn a communications strategy for moving past imposter syndrome by changing how you talk about your work (hint: by making your god-given gift the focus of conversation and not your damn job title!) If you’re sick of feeling burdened by imposter syndrome and a fear of failure, and just want to move forward in reaching your goals in 2020 — but don’t know HOW to do it — this episode is for you.  Key Takeaways:  Learn what imposter syndrome actually is, by definition Understand how imposter syndrome interacts with fear of failure Discover how imposter syndrome creates “numbing out” compulsive behaviours Hear Rebecca’s personal strategy for overcoming imposter syndrome Try a new communication strategy for changing how you talk about work despite imposter syndrome still being present   Resources: Registration for Love Your LinkedIn is now open! Learn how to edit your LinkedIn profile like a genius. Go to to register. The class starts on January 31st, 2020. Does career branding feel like a mystery to you? I've got you. Sign up to receive a complete breakdown on how to create your career brand from scratch with the step-by-step strategy nobody else is openly sharing. To download the Holistic Career Brand Starter Kit, visit .  To listen to the episode of Kara Lowenthiel’s podcast referenced multiple times by Rebecca in this episode, head on over to and search for the episode titled UFYB 91: Numbing + Compulsive Behaviour Vol. 1 and then listen to Vol. 2 too. 

Well, the holidays are over. Most of us are going “back to work” today with our NYE 2020 buzzes worn off and reality firmly set in. Returning to work after a holiday is always sobering and sometimes stressful too but this year (#2020) the pressure to seize a new decade with vigour, clarity and confidence feels exceptionally strong. So, what if you hate your job?  I’ll cut to the chase: it’s more normal NOT to love your job than to be obsessed with it. Not all of us can expect to feel a sense of purpose and fulfillment that Ruth Bader-Ginsburg surely does when she rises for work each morning. No, many of us are effectively “paper pushers” caught somewhere between our last jobs and the ones we ultimately want. But spending time hating your job is a wasteful mistake. The way I see it, having a temporarily lacklustre career affords us the time to think strategically about the future, write a mindful plan of action, and lay the seeds of change for creating loveable careers for the longer term.  In this episode, I discuss:  How to get a grip on your perfectionism to shop shaming yourself for your performance at work.  How to stop falling into the trap of wanting/needing external validation. How others see you, and judge you, at work is irrelevant and the sooner you truly know that — the better. Learn instead how to collect evidence that showcases your effectiveness on a daily basis. With the facts down on paper, you’ll feel authentic confidence that you know how to do your job really, really well.  How to broaden your perspective for a 3, 5 and 10 year action plan rather than focusing on the minute day-to-day bullshit you encounter on the daily at work. Start thinking like a CEO and less like a minion by thinking about your career from a higher-level.   Resources:  Instagram: @rebeccaperrinEmail:

In the inaugural episode of Women Talk Shop, host Rebecca Perrin talks about why working on changing our career mindsets is super smart as we head into 2020. We modern career women are about to embark on a new decade full of hopes and dreams for our professional lives. However many of our careers are beyond chaotic as we struggle with imposter syndrome, a crippling fear of failure, and a truly disastrous lack of job security. Listen to this week’s episode to take a crash course on the future of work, why career branding is about to take on a life of its own, and how you are destined to be the CEO of your future self at work.

Welcome to Women Talk Shop, the best podcast for changing how we think and talk about work. I’m your host Rebecca Perrin and this is the pre-launch introductory episode of Women Talk Shop. In this episode, you’re going to hear what to expect and what to get excited about when the podcast officially launches on December 30th, 2019 with weekly episodes published every Monday afternoon in 2020. Today is December 15th, 2019 so we’re just two weeks out. By the way, here’s a hot tip on the podcast name ‘Women Talk Shop.’ Just in case you didn’t know this already, “talking shop” is a colloquial phrase for talking about work. So, this podcast is about how women think and talk about work… but in a totally not boring way. For example: We need to talk about how chaotic our careers are. Of course everybody is busy all of the time but nobody is talking about how chaotic our careers are, and chaos is very different from busyness. Chaos is not knowing how long you will be employed, what your average day looks like, what you’re responsible for really, how to develop your skills, having TIME to develop your skills, knowing how you got here and where you’re going to next. Chaos is just crazy and probably the best word to describe the average careers of women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. We also need to talk about our career confidence or lack thereof, the widespread dumpster fire of emotions that we all know as imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and how the heck we all got here. So Women Talk Shop is going to be a safe space to share all the thoughts and feelings we have around our chaotic careers and confidence complexities, but it’s also going to be your favourite place to get mini-trainings on career branding — how to create one from scratch, and how career branding is your smartest strategy for the future of work. I’m a Virgo so I’m a huge fan of being practical. My approach to career branding and life coaching is about 80% tactical and 20% emotional so, you can expect to learn a lot of super helpful information that you can implement into your career brand portfolio, like your LinkedIn profile, your resume, and how you talk about yourself in sales meetings or interviews. The way I see it, Women Talk Shop is this perfect storm of communication strategy, career brand coaching, and positive thought-work for changing how we think and talk about work. Like I said earlier, I’m your host Rebecca Perrin and I’m a communication expert, a certified life coach and career brand marketer. I studied communications and media at University of Ottawa, got my life coaching certification at George Brown College in Toronto, and my certificate in career brand management online through Coursera and SUNY. I have 15 years experience as a writer and digital editor for some of Canada’s top lifestyle magazines and media brands, 3 years experience as a self-employed marketing communication consultant, and almost two years as a career brand coach to ambitious women all over Canada. I am so excited you’re here and I can’t wait to see you back here on December 30th when we kick-off with Episode 1 called “Put Yourself First This Year”. I know for a fact that it will inspire you to change your career mindset based on facts about the future of work. This episode is not sponsored but I am interested in working with brands and partners who align with my mission to help more women change how they think and talk about work. Email hello@rebeccaperrin.co, that’s hello@rebeccaperrin.co, to get in touch with me. And my email is always open to listeners with questions or comments, episode ideas or introduction to new friends. If you’re not on my email list yet, I suggest popping over to to get your name on the list so you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you soon….