In this video, i want to tell you about my weird career path,
the lessons i learned along the way and how i found my dream job!
I hope my story and my lessons learned will help you
in your career and perhaps in finding your passion!
When i first learned computer programming in grade 7,
I loved it! I was good at it, i found it to be easy and ultimately that is what
led to my decision to become a computer engineer. But five
or six years into my job as an engineer, I realized that i wasn't loving
it. I was spending eight hours in front of a
computer, but i wanted to spend more time in front of people!
I considered doing an MBA - which is a very original idea for an engineer!
But before i invested a lot of my time and money into an
mba, i wanted to be sure that i genuinely wanted to pursue it
and i wasn't just jumping on the bandwagon. After all, I did not want to
waste yet another degree. Since my husband has
an mba, i asked him a lot of questions about
what he learned in business school. I realized that i have no interest in
finance, economics and a bunch of other business
stuff. The only parts of mba that i cared for were HR and
marketing. i could study and become an hr manager,
but within hr, there are a lot of things that i didn't care for
like payroll, hiring and firing. the only hr thing i cared for was the training
side of things, the leadership and development side of
things. So my dream job was to become a corporate
trainer. i remember when i was working for nortel
as an engineer in 2007, i attended a two-day course called
"crucial conversations". at the end of that course i walked up to
the two ladies who delivered that course and i said to them, "I want to do what you
do". I'm going to pause this story for a
second here just to make it clear that i have simplified my story because
i didn't want this video to become a one hour video.
all these things that i mentioned actually happened over a span of
three or four years. so it was something like this...
i'm doing my job as an engineer and i'm thinking hmm...
maybe i should do an mba. and then, i'd do nothing
for many months and then... maybe i should start looking at gmat preparation...
and then again nothing for months and then talking to my husband about mba and
then narrowing down my interest to hr and
training. so all that happened over many many years so this
process of narrowing down and finding down exactly
what i want to do wasn't easy. there was a lot of confusion,
there was a lot of doubt, and it took a long time for me to narrow
down to what exactly it is that i want to do. now
i'll go back to where i left my story: so i said to the two ladies who
facilitated the course that i want to do what you do. But you see
it's not easy to just quit your job and follow your passion
because you still need the money and you still have the sunk-cost mentality
meaning that i have spent four years of my time
and my parents' hard earned money to become an engineer
how can i just throw all that away? so i decided to play it safe.
i decided to take up an online certificate program
in adult workplace learning and it was a self-paced program so i decided i would
take one or two courses at a time while still
continuing my job as an engineer and slowly work towards getting my
certificate. and that's what i did. i was also a part
of toastmasters for about eight years during this time
where i practiced my public speaking. going to my toastmasters meetings was
very enjoyable, and it reaffirmed for me that public
speaking and becoming a trainer is what i was
born to do! it took me two to three years to finish
my adult learning certificate and when i did and i graduated i thought
this is it! i have arrived! what a fool i was!
i started applying online for training jobs. i remember i spent
hours trying to craft the perfect resume and the perfect cover letter
and customizing them for every single job that i applied
to and then have my husband review it and then
send it in. i think i did that for over 50 jobs.
and guess what? no luck! pretty much every training job that i
applied to, required previous training experience which i
didn't have. so i would just write about my training
experience within toastmasters. i also applied to two or
three volunteer training positions but surprisingly, i had no luck there
either. this painful saga of running on a
hamster wheel and not getting anywhere continued for about three years. then my
daughter sanya was born and i became a full-time stay at home mom
and i gave up chasing my passion. i had no time
and also i was fed up of trying. when sanya turned one, i joined
toastmasters again. that 1.5 hour toastmasters meeting every
week was a very welcome break from my duties
as a mom. then in 2015 i participated in the
toastmasters humorous speech competition. i won the
club level contest, then the area level contest. at the area
level contest, a gentleman named Harvey - who had won
previous speech contests himself - approached me and kindly offered some
advice to improve my speech for the next level of the competition
which was the division level. i used his advice and i won the division
level contest. Harvey was there too. he had some new
advice for me to further polish my speech for the next
level which is the district level of the competition, but he didn't have time
to share it with me right then so he gave me his business card and he said
"email me and i'll give you some more feedback".
when i looked at his business card and read the words
"leadership training facilitator" on it, my eyeballs popped out of my eyes!!!
i wanted to be what he was! so after i had won the district competition,
i asked Harvey to meet me for coffee so i could pick his brain
about how to get a job in his industry. that coffee meeting
ended up with harvey giving me a job offer!
he didn't even know about my adult learning education
but because he had seen me stand on stage and speak in front of
300 people and he perhaps also noticed my passion for becoming a trainer
he gave me a job. initially i was hired to do sales for the leadership training
program. i wasn't necessarily interested in doing
sales, but i said yes anyway as it would help me to learn something
new, something that i had never done before,
and also to get my foot in the door. doing sales ended up being a very good
decision because doing cold calls and meetings
with ceos of companies put me so much outside my comfort zone
and it is only when you go outside of your comfort
zone that growth happens. i didn't make a lot of money
doing sales but it improved my confidence so
much and to me confidence is a way better currency
than money. i now feel like i can talk to anybody easily
no matter how high up they are in a company. so even though i ultimately quit
my sales job as it wasn't bringing me joy,
i'm grateful for the opportunity and for the immense
growth that it provided me. it was a worthwhile
two-year experiment. during these two years,
every six months or so, i kept on reminding Harvey
that i still very much want to teach the leadership workshops myself.
when harvey's co-trainer and the other franchisee of the company
Ken decided that he didn't want to teach the workshops anymore,
Harvey suggested my name. Ken asked me to do a trial class
in october 2017. i said yes immediately! i worked very hard on
preparing for the trial class but call it my bad luck or call it
whatever you want, the day before the trial class i
developed a flu and a fever. i could have postponed the trial class
but i didn't want to give Ken any reason to not hire me. so
i loaded up on meds, i drove to the class location
and did the best i could. and i got the job!
that was one of the happiest moments of my life!
it took me 10 years to realize my dream. i have been a leadership and management
trainer since then and i love it! so the seven big career
lessons that i've learned are: number one: do not have
sunk cost mentality. just because you made a decision
in the past - for me that decision was to become an engineer -
that past decision doesn't mean that you have to suffer in the
wrong profession for the rest of your life. also,
time and money invested into education never goes to waste.
because of my engineering and coding background, i am now able to share some
stories in my management workshops which bring my own unique flavor to them
and people appreciate them. lesson number two: networking is the best
and fastest way to get a job. build your network. hang out with people
who are already in the industry that you want to be in.
join organizations that would allow you to make these connections. for
me this organization was toastmasters. lesson number three: be persistent.
sometimes it can take a long time to realize your dream
for me it took 10 years. if i didn't have kids, maybe it would have taken seven
years. if i didn't have sunk cost mentality,
maybe it would have taken four years. but that's okay. i'm so
grateful to have my kids. i'm also grateful for the struggle i had
to go through because that makes me appreciate my job
so much more! lesson number four: follow your passion
it is my passion that allowed me to persist for so long.
passion lies such a fire inside of you that you only see your dream,
not the obstacles. but keep in mind that passion can change from time to time.
and also, you can have more than one passions. over the last two years my
second passion has been meditation and to make meditation easy and
accessible for busy people, which is why i started my youtube
channel and called it crushing meditation.
my new passion is to help people with growth and self-improvement,
which i'm trying to accomplish through these videos and to reflect this,
i have changed my channel's name to Grow with Supreet.
so follow your passion. i would even go so far as to say
follow your passion and don't follow money.
because if you follow your passion and work hard,
money will come. if money doesn't come, some great lessons will come.
lesson number five: don't measure success with money alone. i would call my sales
job a success even though i didn't make a lot of money
because of the growth in my confidence, networking and other skills, and the
connections i built. also, as a youtuber, i haven't made any
money yet but i have learned and grown so much!
and also, you can't put a price on the satisfaction i get
from knowing that i have helped people. lesson number six:
be willing to experiment and fail. for me, saying yes to the sales job was an
experiment. my thought was, let me do this for one year and put in
my very best effort and see how it goes. maybe i'll end up
loving this job. that did not happen. some might look at
this and call it a failed experiment, but i'm
so glad i said yes to it. in my opinion and there's a quote which says this:
"there are no mistakes only lessons". and finally, lesson number
seven: formal education is not everything. when
i was in my 20s, i used to give a lot of importance to
degrees and which university did you get that degree from.
but now i know that your experience and your attitude
are way more important in getting a job and in becoming successful.
from my personal experience as well as the discussions i have
in my leadership training workshops with managers and owners of companies,
i know that formal education is just a tiny piece of the puzzle. what is one
career lesson that you have learned? comment below! take
care and see you in the next video!
okay guys recording please be quiet please don't
do tuk-tuk with your feet. no. no spinning i said.
okay do you want more cheese pizza? go get it
yourself. take one slice. take your plate with you.
i'm waiting for you to come back and sit before i start recording, okay sanya? so
make it fast. just don't make noise. don't play alexa.
still recording, shhh..
go