E. 7 - Multipotentialites: Blending Ideas, Interests, & Experience with Sara Kobilka
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[00:00:08] Melissa Vining: If you're a high performer looking to grow and make an impact, but feeling stuck, underappreciated, and burned out at work, you're in the right place. I'm Melissa Vining and this is the Job Search for High Performing Misfits podcast. I help high performers leave draining jobs behind, reclaim their careers and land roles and organizations where they can thrive. Tune in for tips, insights, and inspiration for your journey to fulfilling work that fits you.
[00:00:38] Melissa Vining: Hello and welcome to the job search for High Performing Misfits podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Vining, and today I'm talking with Sarah Kobilka, who is the owner of Renaissance Woman Consulting, educator, scientist, journalist, coach, entrepreneur, and all around multipotentialite. Sarah has built a career around cross pollinating ideas from across industries, from broadcast journalism, to education, to DEI, and beyond. She helps fellow Renaissance people build unconventional careers that fit them. So if you've ever been told you do too many things or if you've struggled to explain all of your seemingly disparate experiences and how they connect, this is going to be the episode for you. And Sarah, I'm so excited to have you here.
[00:01:24] Melissa Vining: Can you start off just by telling us a little bit more about your background and how you came to embrace the title of Renaissance Woman?
[00:01:30] Sara Kobilka: Absolutely. Yeah. As a business owner, you're often asked the question of, you know, give your elevator pitch. And I always say, how tall is the building? Because it's really hard, when you're someone who has so many interests, to narrow things down.
[00:01:47] Sara Kobilka: I started off as a Renaissance child, I'd like to think. I was interested in math, honors math, advanced science, but I also loved journalism and theater and music, and I had all of these interests and I went to a school that really supported that. They said, do everything, be everything, be involved. I was pretty overwhelmed by the time I got to my senior year with everything I was involved with.
[00:02:15] Sara Kobilka: But then come say sophomore, junior year when we were starting to think about college, they're like, and now you have to pick. You can pick that right side of your brain or the left side. Are you going to be a journalism theater person or are you going to follow that math and science interest? And I kind of was like, well, you know, I like being on stage. I like performance. I like telling stories and being paid to talk. So, okay. You know that math and science was nice, but I've got the AP math test, I don't have to even take it in college. All I needed was one lab science to graduate. So I was like, okay, I'll say goodbye to that side of me, and I'll focus on journalism. In particular, broadcast journalism was what I wanted to do.
[00:02:58] Sara Kobilka: And so I got to college. And very quickly I was like, wait a minute, I miss that. I miss one plus one equals two, next question. As opposed to, and how does that make you feel? What are the ramifications of that? Like, I wanted to have those different sides of me, and that was when I actually decided to add a second degree.
[00:03:17] Sara Kobilka: So I was doing broadcast journalism at the University of Missouri Columbia, MIZ, and then I decided to add an atmospheric and oceanic science degree as well. And that allowed me, from a career perspective, when I got out into the workforce and I was looking for my first job in TV, I could be a meteorologist or I could be someone who is a reporter or an anchor, that sort of thing. So it opened up opportunities for me. Just a very logical thing to do, but it also felt more real to who I was, and it allowed me to combine my interests and use my whole brain instead of being that left brain or right brain person.
[00:03:57] Sara Kobilka: And as I continued through my career, TV was fun. The 2:00 AM alarm clock was not fun because my last job was morning and midday meteorologist in Des Moines, Iowa, and I realized, oh, I gotta get out of this, this isn't the right fit for me. And what about my job do I like? And I really liked engaging with people, and I liked working with children when they would come or we'd get to go and be live at the schools for our weather events.
[00:04:25] Sara Kobilka: And so, as I went through my career, each step of the way, I kept asking myself, you know, what do I like about what I was doing previously? Okay, what can I find as a next opportunity that will play up on that interest, that love, that passion. And so that's taken me through a lot of different industries. As you mentioned in my introduction, I went into nonprofits, I was in higher education, and then now I found myself being a freelancer, getting to work with people from all of those previous industries.
[00:04:57] Sara Kobilka: So, not a short answer. How tall is the elevator for my elevator pitch?
[00:05:02] Melissa Vining: Of course. Yes. So I know you mentioned a little bit about the Renaissance woman concept already, and I mentioned the word multipotentialite at the beginning. So I'm interested if you can expand upon those a little bit, for anyone who maybe is not as familiar with those terms or never heard them before.
[00:05:19] Sara Kobilka: Absolutely. So the Renaissance woman is kind of a cheeky feminist play off of the concept that is more well known, which is the Renaissance man. So when people think of a Renaissance man, Leonardo, I always want to be DiCaprio, and I'm like, nope, wrong D da Vinci, is the famous one. He is famous from the Renaissance time period in Western Europe when there was this revitalization of society. And he's famous because not only was he an artist, which a lot of people know him for, but he was also a scientist. He was interested in a wide variety of things, and he kind of followed that idea that I have of rejecting that you pick your left brain or your right brain, your creative side, or your scientific side. That's a false choice, false dichotomy. You can use both sides, and in fact, it makes you, I think, a stronger person.
[00:06:14] Sara Kobilka: Multipotentialite is a more recent term that people will talk about, and that again, is talking about somebody who excels in a lot of different areas that don't necessarily seem like they overlap. You might be a really good flutist and you might also be a meteorologist.A lot of us embrace terms like lifelong learner, because we love to learn about stuff. I have a friend who describes it as brambles. So instead of a tree going higher, this is like brambles, which are plants that grow wider. And you're expanding the breadth of your knowledge. You may have depth in a lot of different areas, but it's really about that breadth and interest in a lot of different things that kind of makes you fall into that category. I've also heard "Jack of all trades," or "Jill of all trades," are other terms that people will throw around.
[00:07:07] Melissa Vining: I think some of the audience might be able to relate to this concept, and maybe they haven't like thought about it in this way before, or they don't really have the terminology at this point. So if they're kind of listening and they're thinking, oh, maybe that's me, can you expand a little bit on some of the traits that you often see that people have when they fall into this category?
[00:07:30] Sara Kobilka: Yeah. I think that one of the things, and I actually just had this happen yesterday, is you are a person where people are like, wow, that conversation went in a lot of different directions. So if you're somebody who talks to people, and you start in one spot and then you end up in a totally different spot, and if you were to map that conversation, it would look like a zigzag, but each of the points had some sort of connection that took you to the next point. I think that's something that oftentimes happens to Renaissance people.
[00:08:03] Sara Kobilka: I know you do this as well. I'm a career coach, but I have my own career coach who supports me, and the group that I'm part of is full of fellow Renaissance people. So they're career coaches, they are also, maybe they're writers or illustrators. They also teach group fitness classes. A lot of us teach workout classes, actually, ironically, or they design curriculum, and so they just have all of these different interests in a lot of different areas.
[00:08:33] Sara Kobilka: And a lot of them are also neurospicy people with ADHD diagnoses. Oftentimes can be this type of person who jumps around to interests in a lot of different areas, digs really deep, gets super into it, and then, you know, maybe moves on to the next area of interest, but finds ways to connect what they learned in one area to another area.
[00:08:56] Sara Kobilka: I think that's what what I would say for me, when I'm talking to people as a career coach, working with people who fall into this category, and we can talk more about this later, is like, that's the superpower of the connecting the dots of the bringing in of the outside ideas, to really expand and grow in a different area.
[00:09:16] Melissa Vining: Yeah, exactly. That really is the key, and I think that's often hard for a lot of people. So I definitely want to talk about that later. But before we do, I want to ask you a little bit about some of the strengths that you see that these Renaissance people or multipotentialites are bringing? Because I always try to help people frame their job search in terms of their strengths, so they can go in the right direction. Kind of like you were saying, like, what is it that energizes me? What is it that I love about this? But also to be able to communicate that in, you know, something like their resume, their interviews, and all of those things.
[00:09:52] Sara Kobilka: So I have a free newsletter. It's called, Take It With You. And initially I started it for people who are looking to change from one industry to another, and are having a hard time translating, how do those skills translate into this new industry? In particular, I worked a lot initially with people who came from my background of being in TV news, because that seems like a very niche industry, to say, I'm a meteorologist, and I want to be your social media person, or I want to work in HR, or I want to do communications for a university. People are like, don't you just like stand and talk about the weather? Like what other skills do you have?
[00:10:34] Sara Kobilka: And so what I really like to have people focus on is finding a way to translate their skills for someone else, and looking for some of the adjectives in the descriptions of jobs that you can talk about how you have that, and you can tell the story of how you have that. And so when I'm thinking about a strength of someone who is a Renaissance person or a multipotentialite, one of their strengths, as I said before, is connecting the dots.
[00:11:11] Sara Kobilka: So I can be working on a project. Maybe I am really digging into some work that I've done for AAAS, which is the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I did this whole thing, wrote this very long paper for them about cross-disciplinary research collaborations, read all these really interesting articles. And then next day I'm working on a project, training people on how to engage young children in science activities.
[00:11:42] Sara Kobilka: And I think we do this really well as Renaissance people. I can think back to this article that I read for this report on multidisciplinary science and be like, oh, that idea would totally apply to this very different unique realm. And so a lot of times businesses want people who are creative, who can think outside the box, and we're very good at thinking outside the box, because we do a lot of operating outside of boxes.
[00:12:10] Sara Kobilka: I'm anti-niche, that's one of the things I list on LinkedIn. And it's not that I don't think that I have niches where I have expertise, but I don't get stuck in one or two niches. I have all of these different niches, and I listen carefully to the conversations, and I'm a voracious reader, and I listen to podcasts, and I watch shows, and I pull ideas from all those different areas and see their application in a new space. So I bring those outside the box ideas, because I'm paying attention outside of the box.
[00:12:43] Melissa Vining: I love that. So on the flip side of that, what kinds of challenges do you find that Renaissance people will often have when they're thinking about their career development, or their job search, or whatever the next step is?
[00:12:57] Sara Kobilka: I think the biggest challenge is there are so many possibilities, how do I narrow it down? Because when I am looking for my next opportunity, I could list 20 different things that I could do. One of the things that I like to give permission to my clients to do, especially if they've had longer careers, and they've worked on a lot of different projects or a lot of different places, we could be seen as flighty. We can be judged, particularly by older generations who grew up on this idea of the, you know, the company man, who stays in the company long enough to get the watch, or the person who was so competitive and climbed the ranks and then they got their name on the door. That's not what we want. We want to jump around.
[00:13:45] Sara Kobilka: We need to feed our desire for exciting and new and things that inspire creativity. We get stuck in one thing for too long, and we kind of get bored and maybe we get a case of senioritis and we don't want to continue to work on that project. We want the new and sparkly thing. So that can be a problem. Finding ways to make your work new and sparkly is a challenge. But sometimes just letting, giving yourself permission to not work on a project, and focus on something else might actually lead to inspiration for the project that you're working on.
[00:14:22] Sara Kobilka: But, circling back, because I always have to circle back in conversations, to what I was saying about giving my, clients permission. I have what I call my master, or I prefer kind of more the term main, resume. And that resume is eight pages long. And that is okay. People are so fixated on, okay, it has to be one to two pages. Yes, what you submit as part of an application is going to be that short, but that doesn't mean that you can't keep all of this information in a single document.
[00:14:54] Sara Kobilka: And then when you apply, you take that heading that says like experience, and then you just say select experience, or relevant experience. And then you cut it down and you say, which of the things in my background actually apply to this job, and will be fairly easy for someone looking at the resume to make the connection of, oh, okay, I can kind of see how that fits. I see the verbs being used that we're using in our job description. I see some of those adjectives there.
[00:15:27] Sara Kobilka: And that's the technique that I use with my clients, it's called the VAST technique, which is verb, adjectives, strategic translation. And it is really focusing on those verbs and those adjectives to show them that, yeah, I've got the skills you need, even if my job title doesn't match with what you are particularly looking for. So, it's okay to keep that giant list. Then you cut it back and you share the most appropriate things.
[00:15:57] Sara Kobilka: And you really, I think Renaissance people really have to rely on a strong cover letter. More than a strong resume. Your resume has to get through a computerized system a lot of the time. So yes, that's where having those verbs have that one-to-one connection is going to be really helpful for you. But when it comes to actually telling the story, making that translation happen for that person to decide you are the right fit for them, that's where you have to be a storyteller. And that's where your cover letter, and any interaction you can do with that person on LinkedIn, social media, even in an email, that's where you really tell your story.
[00:16:36] Melissa Vining: Yes, definitely. And I give that same advice about the the master resume, or the main resume like you called it, because it's also such a time saver for people. Like now you don't have to go reinvent the wheel every time, right? You can just cut out the things that you don't need for each application. So I'm very glad to hear that you're talking about that too.
[00:16:57] Melissa Vining: And I think this is a perfect kind of segue into the storytelling part that I wanted to ask you about, because that can be a challenge, and I think, like you said, that's one of the main things that someone needs to do, especially someone who is a Renaissance person and they're doing all of these different things, they have to be able to tell the story so that the other person can understand it, and doesn't have to get confused or make the connections on their own, because oftentimes they're not going to make the connections on their own, right?
[00:17:28] Melissa Vining: So what kinds of strategies do you have, or what kinds of advice, or how do you work with people on narrowing down their story, and figuring out how can I tell it in a way that makes sense for the other person?
[00:17:41] Sara Kobilka: Yeah, that's a great question. So I have that VAST technique that we work through. We go through, and I have them copy and paste the entire job description, plus the about page of the company that they're applying for, and I don't do this, like if you're sending out a hundred resumes, it doesn't work, right? It's quality over quantity. And I think I heard you maybe even say that exact same language in one, in a previous episode. For the ones that you really want, for the ones where you're like, I am the right fit for me. This feels really good. That's the one where you take the time and the effort and you don't rely on AI doing it for you.
[00:18:20] Sara Kobilka: We copy and we paste the job description, or, or we print it out, and you use a highlighter, or you use the highlight function, and they highlight every verb in the job description. And then we do the math side of things, and we do a statistical analysis. And we say, okay, remember in math class, when you learned what the mode is of a number set, the mode, which is different than the average and the median, the mode is whatever is repeated the most number of times. So if we find that they're saying "lead." Okay. Where you have managed, you change it to lead. Okay, so then we're meeting their language. And that's what, if you used AI, that's what it would be doing. It would be looking for the verbs and then making sure you match. So you're doing what AI would do anyways.
[00:19:07] Sara Kobilka: But then we go back and we look through at those adjectives. And those adjectives tell them what kind of person do they want for this job? So yes, there's some of those like "detail oriented," "ability to work in a fast pace," yes, some of those, your English teacher from fourth grade might say, that's not an adjective. So we're a little flexible about that. But things that come across as adjectives and we take, for example, "able to thrive in a fast-paced environment." Then we come up with a story. And we just get a blank sheet, Google Doc, Word Doc, sheet of paper, and we come up with a whole nice, however long they want it to be, story.
[00:19:50] Sara Kobilka: I'll oftentimes, I'll be working with them virtually, and I'll say, okay, tell me a story about a time where you had to really be on top of things because things were changing a lot. And in TV, oh my goodness, the stories that they have to tell. Well, there's this one time when this famous person was shot, and I was initially sent out to cover a story about this dog shelter, and instead they called me, and I drove to the mayor's office and I interviewed seven people, and I was live on TV in 45 minutes. They'll initially start to tell me there's these "ums, ahs," all this sort of thing, and so I'll write down notes about what they said, and you could use AI to take and like summarize your notes, or you could record a Zoom meeting and, and take the transcript. Then we add more details. We're like, okay, what year was it? What month? What day? Where were you? What time of year was it? Was it spring, summer, fall? We think back to when we were writing stories in elementary school, and the teacher was talking about, what's your setting? Who are the characters? What is the challenge that they encountered? And so we'd look at that from a storytelling lens, and we flesh out all of those really good details. That's in one sheet.
[00:21:03] Sara Kobilka: We say, okay, so here's that story. We're going to leave it here. But now when we go to write your cover letter, let's shrink that story down into one paragraph. We'll pull out the highlights of it, and let's see if we can use the language that is used in the company's language. So whether it's on their about page, maybe you look at their social media, how do they talk about themselves, and kind of reflect back to them their own language. So you're translating literally into the language, the jargon, of their particular company, and that sends a subconscious message to them that, oh, this person speaks our language. They're, they're kind of like one of us already. We want them to be on our team. They'll be a good fit.
[00:21:45] Sara Kobilka: And then the double bonus you get from that is not only have you written a little paragraph that you can use in cover letters, and again, you can copy and paste from one cover letter to the next, and tweak it a little bit for different companies, but you've come up with ideas for stories that you can tell during the interview. So you're doing double the work at once, and then when you do get asked that question in an interview, you're not saying as many "ums, ahs," taking as long of a break, because you've already kind of mentally thought through the story and pulled some of those important facts out for yourself.
[00:22:18] Sara Kobilka: And if it's a virtual interview, I'll even tell people, you know, like print out some of those like key details. Don't write full sentences, you don't want to sound practiced, but some of those details that you're worried that in the moment you're going to like freak out and forget them. Print it off, put it directly to the right or left of your screen, and there's your little cheat sheet, and if you need to, oh, what year was that? Or what state was I in? Or what TV station was I working at? There you go. It's right there for you.
[00:22:44] Melissa Vining: Yeah, that's great. I think this is such a good mindset shift for people, because they might be thinking, oh, how am I going to make all of this make sense? And really, you can think about it as, I have all of these different experiences that I can pull from. So there must be something that I've done that relates to what they're looking for.
[00:23:02] Sara Kobilka: Yeah, and those adjectives that they tell, those are, those are the keys. And you can almost always come up with some story. And I even tell people, it doesn't have to be just from a job. If you are in your twenties, it could be from working on a team in college. If you volunteer in your community, it might be something that you do in your volunteer work. So don't feel limited, especially if you don't have that really long career that, oh my gosh, I don't have things to tell, you know stories to tell, because I worked at Dairy Queen, like, that's all I got.
[00:23:35] Sara Kobilka: Like, it's okay. Don't worry. You got stories. You've been around people, you've done work with people, you've collaborated with people. And oftentimes, it's those skills. I hate the term soft skills, the connotation, there's some sexism to it, all those sorts of things. Those are like the mandatory needed skills. And so that's what we draw from.
[00:23:56] Sara Kobilka: And this "showing not telling" is actually a concept from journalism. I was taught in journalism school "show, don't tell." And so, if you are a person, and I've been someone who's hired people before, when I get cover letters and they're like, "I am a detail oriented person who thrives in a fast paced setting." Before it wasn't written by AI, it was written by somebody who read the job description and copied back to me exactly what I said. And I'm like, I don't want you to reiterate what I said. I want you to make it interesting for me. I want you to stand out. I want you to be unique and a real human being.
[00:24:32] Sara Kobilka: And so this is where AI can't come up with these stories. It can help you organize the stories, but it doesn't know your life, and it doesn't know what you've been through, and it doesn't know the juicy details that makes it more interesting to listen to. So find the time and the place to use it to help as an organizational tool, but then when you're actually telling the stories, tell the stories yourself. And if you need to grab a friend, grab a friend. Tell the story to them, ask them, are there any details that you're wondering about that I should like, add a little bit more, to help this story make sense? And they can help you out.
[00:25:06] Melissa Vining: Yeah. So I want to go back to one of the things that you said earlier about trying to fit yourself into a box. Because a lot of the times, the multipotentialites or the Renaissance people, they're outside of the box, which is great. And that's something that can really make you stand out in a really good way.
[00:25:24] Melissa Vining: And I think a lot of the times, you know, especially in someone's early career, they might be thinking, okay, I need to fit into, into this box. Kind of like what you were thinking when you went into the college experience and the early career part. So for someone who might be trying to make some kind of shift in their career, like a career change or just the next step, sometimes this is an identity shift too.
[00:25:52] Melissa Vining: So I'd like to talk a little bit about that because that can be a big part of the struggle with this, is just figuring out, okay, maybe I do identify as a multipotentialite, and what does that then mean for me in my next steps? So how do you help people navigate through that identity part of it, or like the acceptance of the identity, or the shift in the mindset around that?
[00:26:18] Sara Kobilka: That's a wonderful question, so I think I'll answer it in two parts. First part is, just the idea of your career, and reframing your career in general. So I call my newsletter "Take It With You." And in that newsletter, not in every single thing, but in a lot of what I write, I use the analogy of a multi-stop trip that you are on. And so when you're thinking about it in terms of traveling, and traveling to multiple locations, you can think about each job you have, you can think about each project that you're assigned to, as just one leg of the journey.
[00:27:08] Sara Kobilka: When you have, especially older people in your life, whether they're a supervisor, family, who are giving you advice, and are coming from more of that mindset of the company man of the, you find that job and you stick with it the rest of your life, research on different generations has shown that the younger you are, the less likely you are to want that, which is good. But there's also still that sense of, I have to find the next perfect thing. And perfection doesn't exist.
[00:27:39] Sara Kobilka: It's what's the next stop on my journey that I can make where I can learn a new language? Or where can I stop, and I can put more skills in my "skillset suitcase," which is what I like to use as a term. You've got all these skills in your "skillset suitcase." Can I add even more? Can I get a souvenir? Souvenir in the terms of maybe I'm going to get certified, the company's going to pay for some sort of training and advancement that I can have, and sometimes you just learn good lessons that you pack into your "skillset suitcase," which is dealing with a difficult boss, managing, or working on a difficult team. Taking on a project that fails and how do you overcome that?
[00:28:25] Sara Kobilka: So I even sometimes tell people that I'm working with, who are going through really difficult, stressful situations. You know, take note of how you manage these situations now, maybe just write a little bit here and there. Maybe pull up that draft that you have of stories for your cover letter and for answering questions during an interview, and take this as a learning opportunity. Because we are lifelong learners when we're these Renaissance people, multipotentialites, we're always looking for opportunities to learn. And so take a little bit of a step back and say, okay, I tried this. This is an experiment. I'm trying this. What are the variables I can switch and what can I learn from this? And then this will be, if nothing else, a story I can tell in the future.
[00:29:11] Sara Kobilka: And then, the other way that I think we have to deal with the mind set shift is our identity. This happened so often with the folks I worked with initially in TV. They are a broadcast journalist, they're a TV reporter or anchor. And one of the unique things with that kind of position where you're actually out and seen as like a public figure, is that your family and your friends latch onto that and they're like, I know the TV meteorologist, my daughter on TV, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so when you want to shift into a different career, they lose that ability to talk about how they know this famous person. So you have that double difficult thing.
[00:29:56] Sara Kobilka: But what I like to remind them is that you are not the job title. Meteorologist is not who I am or Anchor is not who I am. I am a weather storyteller. I am a weather enthusiast. I am a scientific communications cheerleader. And those things come with me. And for the storyteller element is a really big part of anyone working in the news business. And you don't lose the fact that you are a storyteller. You're going to be telling stories in different settings. But that doesn't mean that you aren't still a storyteller. So it, your identity becomes about what you do, not the job title itself.
[00:30:44] Sara Kobilka: If you're really worried that your resume is being thrown out because your job title was meteorologist, okay, change it to weather storyteller, if you really are worried about that. I wouldn't worry about it personally, if you've added those verbs other places. I don't think that a computerized system even knows. It's not been programmed to be like, throw out people who list meteorologists as their job title.
[00:31:11] Sara Kobilka: No. It's looking for those verbs. That's what it really wants. And then when a human being sees it, they're like, meteorologist, oh, that's interesting. Like that actually makes you more interesting, and they want to read what you're saying because they want you to pull back the curtain of like, what really happens in the TV news business when the camera's not on? All that sort of stuff. And that's the TV side of things. But that kind of thing can exist in many other different areas. So it's about what you do, and not the job title that you've had.
[00:31:42] Melissa Vining: That is great advice. I also wanted to ask you for someone who maybe is thinking, okay, I don't want to necessarily just go out and find a job because a lot of the times you're looking around, maybe nothing looks like it's quite the right fit for you. You are outside of the box, right? So if someone wants to do more of the career design and they're thinking, how can I just build something that works for me, instead of having to go out and find it? What kind of things do you do with that person? Like how do you help them approach that process? What strategies do you use to help them with that?
[00:32:21] Sara Kobilka: I named my company Renaissance Woman Consulting, because I did want to do consulting, but I certainly didn't want to limit myself to that. But I felt like Renaissance Woman by itself wasn't a good title for a company, so I threw in Consulting. But I do consulting, freelancing, contract work, all that sort of stuff, and so many people who are in that industry are like me. They're the Renaissance people. They never quite felt like they fit into the corporate world, into the museum world, into the higher education world. I've worked in all of those worlds, and it's true, I didn't feel like I fit.
[00:32:56] Sara Kobilka: I wanted to kind of be my own boss. I wanted to set my own hours. All of those things are very appealing. I wanted to work as much as possible remotely. So the big thing though, is that if you move into that industry, you have to know that unless you've laid a ton of groundwork and are perhaps even doing some of this freelance stuff on the side while you're still fully employed in another job, it does take time to actually make a profit. Starting your own business, it just takes one to even, a lot of times the number I hear thrown out is three years, before you're really kind of got your feet underneath you, you're feeling steady.
[00:33:39] Sara Kobilka: And you know what? Political upheaval could change everything. I'm dealing with this right now because a lot of the work I do in science education and science communication and DEI was funded by grants, and those grants are no longer available. So I've had to really rethink and reinvent and be extremely flexible with what I do. The other thing is you don't have that health insurance, that dental insurance, some of those things that some people have to have. I have the flexibility of having a husband who can have me and my children on his insurance. And so that is what led me and gave me the privilege and the freedom to explore this and try this and not have it make a ton of money in the first year.
[00:34:24] Sara Kobilka: So I really have the clients I work with think about what are your basic needs? Do you have to have health insurance? Well, you better do a lot of research as to whether the open marketplace is something that you can be part of, that there are insurance plans that'll cover what you need. Just know that there's a lot of, a lot of variability and a lack of stability in the first year. And even beyond that, you just have to be somebody who can be flexible, but can also self-motivate. Because once you take away those structures that come from working in an industry, non-profits, things like that, the only one you're reporting back to is yourself.
[00:35:05] Sara Kobilka: You don't have to be strict with yourself, in fact, you have to give yourself a lot of grace. You have to extend that grace to yourself because things aren't going to work, but you have to be prepared to put the kinds of structure into your life that you need to get stuff done. Otherwise, if you're just chasing the shiny, sparkly things, usually the shiny, sparkly things are not yet ready to pay your bills, and your bills don't go away. And you might have to even, you might even get that shiny sparkly job and then they don't pay you. They're like a month or two late in paying you. And so there's still a lot of things that are out of your control, even when you are completely working for yourself.
[00:35:45] Sara Kobilka: So it's a give or take. Find community. Find a career coach who specializes in freelancers. Find a career coach who has experience themselves in that world. Or just find friends, join coworking sessions, meet people at coffee shops, but just don't try to do it on your own, because if you try to do it on your own, it's really hard, and it's a whole new world wild west out there, when you do get out of the more structured environments that you're used to.
[00:36:16] Melissa Vining: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I know something that you talk about a lot in your newsletter is mindset around, the job search and career exploration and all of that. And I think that we've really woven that into all of our conversation so far. But I want to talk a little bit about that specifically because having the right mindset in the job search can really kind of make or break it. And that's true of anyone, whether you're a multipotentialite, whether you're career changing, whether you're just doing a normal job search.
[00:36:50] Melissa Vining: And this is a process, right? Especially if you are trying to make a shift or a change or you're doing this exploration. It takes time and there are a lot of ups and downs in the process too. So sometimes it takes longer than people expect, and I think that's kind of the typical thing that happens, like a lot of times people think it's going to be quick. I'm going to go ahead and, and make the change or get the new job, and then they get discouraged because it's taking so much longer, which is actually normal.
[00:37:21] Melissa Vining: So how do you help people just adjust their mindset around this? What kinds of things do you suggest to help them be more realistic in all of the ups and downs that come with this?
[00:37:33] Sara Kobilka: It is hard, and the last year in particular has been even harder for a lot of the industries that the people I'm working with come from and want to move into. I will say that almost every single job that I found when I changed industries happened because of what some people would call a four letter word: networking.
[00:38:00] Sara Kobilka: And part of the shift that I really have to work with my clients on, and that I encourage everyone to shift their mindset about, is thinking of networking as this icky, performative, extractive thing where I'm going to connect with these people to use them. They're going to get me a job, they're going to introduce me to someone, that sort of thing.
[00:38:26] Sara Kobilka: And instead, we have a pandemic of loneliness going on right now. This happened even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but got even worse during that time, especially for people who were in lockdown. I was in New York. I lived 45 minutes away from where the very first person in the US had COVID. So it was a very scary time. And I also had two very young children, so we were in lockdown. I was feeling really lonely. And so I look at networking instead as community building. And I'm finding communities of people, and I am looking at how can I help other people.
[00:39:11] Sara Kobilka: And research has also shown that when people are dealing with depression, when people are dealing with loneliness, one of the best things that they can do is get outside themselves and think about how can I help other people? So when I connect with people, I am looking for things like people to learn from, to learn and grow. Looking for people that I can support, that I can help. Maybe I can connect someone to help them with their find their next job. Or find a connection for a story they're writing. Or help them meet up with someone who could be a collaborator for research they want to do. And also just maybe I can connect with them so that they feel like they matter to someone, that someone cares about them, that someone thinks about them.
[00:40:01] Sara Kobilka: I keep my connections. I try to refresh them. I have a three part series in my newsletter using gardening as a metaphor. And so I talk about planting seeds, meeting new people. You never know what's going to happen. Some of the seeds never even do anything, and that's okay. You only need one job when you're a job seeker. You don't have to find a hundred jobs. You may have to send out a hundred resumes to get that one job. But again, like we said before, it's that quality over the quantity and reaching out.
[00:40:32] Sara Kobilka: And reach out and build that network, because almost every single job I've gotten came from people I already knew. Somebody put in a good word for me. Someone suggested, hey, give her a try. Or with my career clients or with my clients for my science curriculum writing or anything pretty much, it's somebody else told someone about me. And it might be somebody I haven't seen in years. That's always fun and exciting for me. They'll be like, oh yeah, I saw your post on LinkedIn that you were doing this, and then I heard about this project, so I'd like to introduce you to the person who's doing this project. So do not underestimate the power of the people that you know.
[00:41:16] Sara Kobilka: Everybody is so freaked out about, oh my gosh, these computer systems, my resume is being fed in with a hundred other people, how can I possibly make it through? It's people. It's somebody speaking up for you. It's somebody that you want to support and who then wants to support you. And if we're building up each other, if we're weaving a safety net, then we can catch people when they fall, when they lose energy, because life is taking them down. Whatever's going on, we can collectively catch them in a way that one person couldn't catch them. And then we can lift them up. And if we're all working together to support each other and to build community and to be genuine and not fake, and let each other know, sometimes it's rough and sometimes I want to celebrate. I don't know, that's the world I want to live in. That's where I want to be.
[00:42:05] Melissa Vining: Yes. Yes, and that is even more true right now because like you mentioned, we've seen the job market change so much in the past couple years where there's more competition, there's fewer jobs in a lot of cases. There's more layoffs in different industries. And the rise of AI has created this crazy space where we have to actually be more human in order to find the opportunities now.
[00:42:33] Melissa Vining: So the networking piece is one of those things that will really help you stand out, and especially for someone who, maybe you're telling your story as best as you can, but it's still maybe not quite like what someone else in that specific industry, in that niche, right, would say. But if you have the connection, now all of a sudden you go to the top. Even if your background is a little bit unconventional.
[00:42:59] Sara Kobilka: Yeah, they can be your advocate, your supporter, your storyteller, your sponsor. There's a lot of research on that too that says it's those sponsors that get those opportunities for you. And then just find those opportunities to be in community with other people, whether it's in person or virtual.
[00:43:19] Sara Kobilka: If you are someone who is introverted, you don't have to go to a big networking event and stand awkwardly with a glass of wine, making small talk with people. Like that's not your thing, and that is okay. Find those one-on-one opportunities to connect with someone. Go to a local garden and walk around, or go for a walk with your dogs, or have a Zoom coffee meeting with someone. Offer them a $10 Starbucks card and say, hey, you want to meet up for half an hour, and we, we can just chat?
[00:43:51] Sara Kobilka: And let them know ahead of time, if you're trying to get them to do those kind of informal informational interviews, give them a list of, if it's 30 minutes, maybe three questions that you want to ask. If it's 15 minutes, one or two, then they can come in prepared, and neither of you has to really waste your time. Sometimes it feels weird to be like, these are the things I'm hoping you can do for me. But it actually, when it's somebody asking you that, it feels better because you're like, ah, I'm going to schedule this meeting and we're going to hum and haw and talk small talk about weather, which don't do that with a meteorologist. We're really bad at small talk about weather. But if I know what you want, I can pull the resources, I can have them ready for you. It's good use of my time.
[00:44:35] Sara Kobilka: People want to help other people. They want to lift other people up. There's a lot of goodness out in the world. The majority, I think, of people in the world are good. There's people going through stress who just have so much on their plate that they don't have the capacity to help you right now, and you don't take that personally, know that they've got things going on too, just like you have things, but you're going to find those people who want to support you.
[00:44:59] Sara Kobilka: A way that I do that is I do LinkedIn sprints. So LinkedIn is like a big platform, and not all industries have been super into it. Business has really been into it for a long time. But say higher education or TV news folks, that hasn't been the place where you went to engage with other people. It was conferences, it was this, it was that. But now it's the place where a lot of people are engaging, not because it's this database to find a job. I don't think it really works as that at all for most people. It's a place to build community.
[00:45:33] Sara Kobilka: And so I do LinkedIn sprints where I pick a targeted audience. So, my last sprint was specifically for job seekers. Before that it was for STEM folks. Before that, it was freelancers. And my upcoming one in August is for educators, both formal and informal. So we already have a shared interest. And then what we do over the course of six days, we start on a Friday and then go through the next Friday. Each weekday, we make one post. And then we engage with three posts from other people. And not just like, good idea, like you have to actually make your comment long enough for the algorithm to actually give you credit for it. Plus it just feels better to have a little bit of a conversation going on. And then you engage with the people who engage with your post, and suddenly you've got this community of people supporting each other.
[00:46:23] Sara Kobilka: It's six days of posting. We have a pre-meeting where I kind of get them prepared. We have a reflection meeting afterwards. We talk about what was the experience like, what did we learn about ourselves? And then, the real exciting thing for me, is that after the sprint's over, I still see these people supporting each other. I still see them commenting and uplifting each other, and that's what I want. That's where I want to train that algorithm to show me these people's things so that I can support them and uplift them. And then they're posting later on, hey, I found this job, or I found this new client, and thanks Sarah and fellow sprinters, this was part of what got me there.
[00:47:02] Sara Kobilka: And it's a sprint workout. You catch your breath at the end, you're like, oh, I don't want to post again for the next week. So this is not the marathon mindset you need for the actual job search. That's gotta be a long-term thing. But even those long-term marathon runners will do sprint workouts because that challenges their cardiovascular system, it gets a stronger heart, their lungs can take in more oxygen. So interspersing, there's another um, metaphor I like to use is workouts, and interspersing that work of challenging yourself, pushing a little bit harder, and then giving yourself that time to catch your breath, let your muscles recover, eat some carbohydrates, drink some water. All that sort of stuff that you do to recover from working out.
[00:47:46] Melissa Vining: I think this concept of community is so important, and there's actually been some studies around when people do their job search in community, they find jobs faster too. So I think it really helps you be successful in whatever the goal is that you're trying to work towards, right? It's, it's thinking about who else is working towards this? Who else can, you know, help us do this together. When we, what's the, the term like the boats rise together or something?
[00:48:19] Sara Kobilka: Yeah, lift, rising tide lifts all boats.
[00:48:21] Melissa Vining: That's it. Yes.
[00:48:23] Sara Kobilka: And they've even found specifically that when it comes to finding jobs, that it's not your first degree connections who find those jobs for for you, because they're people who are in the same circle as you. It's usually the people who are that second degree, who are peripheral, because they're in different circles than you. So if you think of the Venn diagram, those overlapping circles, yes, you have that overlap, and that's where your shared commonality of language comes from and why they can understand your story, but they've got this whole other set of people that they know and opportunities that they know about that would never even come in front of your eyes, on your feed, or that you would get an email about.
[00:49:05] Sara Kobilka: So it's those acquaintances who are more likely to actually help you find that job than your best friend, your colleague for 15 years, that sort of close, more intimate relationship. So it's really working all of those different levels of finding new people, planting seeds, cultivating the people who have been there for a long time, those perennial plants that keep coming each year, don't forget about them, they need water too. And then where do we expand? Where do we go next?
[00:49:36] Melissa Vining: Right. Yes. And I know you talked about your LinkedIn sprints and how that is helpful in building some of that community. And you are also working on building a community for Renaissance people. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about that?
[00:49:49] Sara Kobilka: Yeah, so that's my sparkly thing that I want to work for. That is still kind of nebulous. And I actually am working with my career coach, Jenny Gritters. She is wonderful. If anyone's thinking of going into the world of freelance, she had a podcast a number of years ago with Wudan Yan, that was called The Writer's Co-op. And they talk a lot about like getting started as a freelancer and then she's transitioned to doing her own work and her own trainings.
[00:50:18] Sara Kobilka: But I'm part of an eight-week intensive trying to say like, what's next? It's called Create. So I'm going to create something. Don't know what it's going to be just yet, but with that idea of community at the heart of it, I want to build what people need. Like there's no point in creating some sort of program that isn't what people actually need to support themselves.
[00:50:38] Sara Kobilka: So I know that Renaissance people need community. We need ways to connect with each other because, especially if you're not around a lot of fellow Renaissance people, you can feel like the misfit, the odd one out, that people are like, I don't get you, you're kind of weird. And so we meet each other. I once gave a talk called Normal People Bore Me, because I don't want to talk to the person necessarily who has two and a half kids, and works for the local whatever popular industry, and follows the local sports team. I could chat with them, but it doesn't go very deep.
[00:51:10] Sara Kobilka: So, I really want to build something that's of value. That whole lifelong learning is part of what I want to tap into. Maybe there's a podcast, maybe there's virtual meetups, and so I'm going to have a LinkedIn post about that. And I think what I'll probably do initially is just put together a Google form with some questions to try to inspire ideas, and then I'll have contact info for people. And as I kind of come up with things, and I need beta testers for my new project, I would love to invite people to come on the journey, and be part of that community, and build that Renaissance space together to support all of us and lift all of our boats.
[00:51:51] Melissa Vining: Excellent. So finally, if people want to connect with you and learn more about your work, and maybe explore some of these communities that you are running, where can they find you?
[00:52:03] Sara Kobilka: So of all the social media platforms, if you can't guess already, LinkedIn is the place where I put the majority of my effort. I spend a little bit of time on Facebook. I have an Instagram account that is not paid attention to very much. I'm there because I felt like I was supposed to be there, but I don't do too much with it. LinkedIn is really the place to be with me.
[00:52:23] Sara Kobilka: I encourage for people if you have, you get five free notes to add with a connection request for each month. And so add a note, let me know how you found out about me, let me know that you heard on this podcast, and I'd love to connect with you there. And then my newsletter is free, so you can sign up for my newsletter, find out about what's going on, find out about my upcoming LinkedIn sprints if you want to participate in that. I'd love to have more folks join and, and join that community that I'm building.
[00:52:54] Melissa Vining: Perfect, and we'll put all of those links in the show notes. So for anyone who's looking for that, you can find it there. So thank you, Sarah, for being here. It was so great to have you.
[00:53:03] Sara Kobilka: It was so much fun, Melissa. Thank you so much for being an awesome fellow, uh, Renaissance person.
[00:53:10] Melissa Vining: If you love this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe. Leave me a review and share it with a friend so we can help more high performing misfits find work they love. See you next time.
