 Welcome to It's About Time on ThinkTech from our downtown studio at the core of Honolulu. My name is Becky Samson and I'm a professional speaker, author, and coach. So are you looking to improve your career skills, wondering if you are in the right job for who you truly are, and looking to go after your dreams? Today we're going to be talking to Jay Smith, a professional career coach, who will help you find the right career fit so that you have successful, passionate, and most importantly, a happy life. So today we're going to be talking about, are you the right fit? And we're talking about career exploration in entrepreneurship. So welcome my dear friend, Jay, to the show. Glad to be here. Thanks for coming. Absolutely. It's fun to have you here. You're like my first local, local friend, right, to come onto the show. So tell everybody kind of your backstory. What brought you to Hawaii, because you're not originally from here at all. So I moved around a lot, but I claim Virginia's home. And years ago, actually, I really learned a lot about BYUai and what it has to offer and what they kind of focused in. And I thought it was just really, really fascinating. And it just caught my attention and it got me out here. So as soon as it took me, you know, a little over 10 years to get here, but finally I'm out here and I'm really excited and I'm loving it. Awesome. And I know that when we were on the way here, you were telling me about the fact that you did some studies in a business college as well, right? Talk about that and what got you interested in going into business. Yeah. So originally I was interested a lot more in politics and international relations. I did a lot of work with the Holocaust museums and the Rwandan genocide and a lot of the more political aspects. But I also found out that I really like business and I really like the finances and the money and I've always been working at least a full-time job, if not more than that. If not more, you're always working so hard. Yes. Actually, so after that I started working, I started going to LDS Business College over in Utah and I was going full-time to school. I actually was taking so many classes that I had to get special permission to take as many as I was. And I was working full-time at a car dealership and I was working part-time redoing the student leadership system at LDS BC and it was quite a few hours. Well, and you're doing a lot of the same things now too. I know whenever I ask you, you are helping a lot of students. You're helping people network because that's one of the things that you've expressed to me that you absolutely love is network. And finding the right career and finding the right fit for you to begin with is the connections that you make with people, right? Oh yeah. One of the things that I very early on love to do is connect the right person with this other person and someone's looking for a job and this guy's looking for somebody to be able to come in and work a lot more hours and just connecting those two people, helping them out, helping them out. Everyone's really happy. I love doing it back in Utah. It's been a few years and I suddenly popped in my mind that that's what recruiters are. They get paid for that. So I started doing that and I really loved it. I've been doing that a lot and even after I stopped working as a recruiter, I've just continued to really love and really be passionate about building those relationships, making those networking. That way when somebody's like, hey, I'm really interested in working for Apple, like actually I knew one of the junior vice presidents really well. He's really well connected with Apple. Let me connect you with him and see if we can find you a right fit or I was really interested in Microsoft and that's something really cool and I can connect you there. I'd love to work in real estate, but I don't know too much about that. Well, I know this other person right here. I know, which I think every single time I talk to you, like, thank you, I've got a couple more people for you to talk to. Which I think is one of the most powerful things that you can be is if you're in any kind of business where you're in the relationship business or trying to move forward in your career or in your life or whatever, it is those connections that you create and making sure that those connections and those relationships are strong. So tell everybody kind of what are some of the things, because I know you work with a lot of people that are looking to get into their career or are in their career and trying to better their career, or I also want to kind of touch into the entrepreneur if they're wanting to go in their own business. What are some of the problems that you see right off the bat with people that are, you know, trying to make any of those changes? Yeah, so I think one thing that I see right off the bat is a lot of people look at a couple different aspects of their future career. So they'd look at whether or not they're good at their career and they would just focus on that, or they would focus on what would I enjoy doing, what am I happy doing? And they focus on that, where they look at what I'm really passionate about and they focus on that. But to really have a successful career, you really need more than just one thing. One of the things that I talk to students a lot about is when they're looking at figuring out what they're interested in doing or what would be a good fit for them, I have them go over and I make, write a list of 100 things that they like doing. And then 20 things that they're really good at, and then five things that they are truly passionate about, something that just like brings them purpose and gives them just like purpose in life. When you can find a career that overlaps in all three of those areas, that's the right career for you. Okay, so you're suggesting 100 things that they like? What was the next one? 100 things that they like, 20 things that they're good at or skills. Good at, okay. And then five things that they're passionate about, five things that they love doing. Actually a little bit harder than you might guess. It doesn't sound too hard, but then you start writing and you're like, well actually, this takes a little bit. The problem is like so many people, they'll take something that they like and something that they're passionate about and they'll find this career and then they're not good at it and they can't make any money. So talk a little bit about that because one of the things that I first got introduced with you, we're actually in a class together. And one of the first interactions I had with you was when I was taking the MBA, MBTI, explain to people what that is and why is it so important because that's, you've been able to teach us a lot during the semester, to why it's important to find that right fit and why something like the MBTI is important to complete so that we know we've got the right fit. Not just, we're kind of guessing. Yeah, absolutely. So what is it and why would we use it? MBTI is a personality assessment tool. What it is, is it looks at the different skills, looks at the different personality characteristics and traits that we have. For example, one that everyone is really familiar with is extroversion and introversion. That's one of the things that it looks at. So they're able to look and see what your preferences are, what you prefer doing or how you prefer to do things. And it helps you look at kind of like a deeper look into who you are and what kind of things that you're good at and what kind of things that you enjoy doing. And then we can look that and take that and apply it into career counseling, into career coaching. And so one of the things I know that you talked, we talked about when you said that with me about mine, was there's a natural way of my natural way of doing it or what I think I would prefer doing. I mean, talk about that and how it's something that comes easy for you that you have to develop. Yeah, absolutely. So it's all talking about preferences. Now to really understand preferences, one way to do that is to write your name. So you sign your name with your dominant hand. And then go ahead and sign your name with your not dominant hand. And the amount of efforts and the energy that it takes for you to do it with your non-dominant hand is actually quite difficult. It takes you a lot more effort, a lot more time, energy. It's not as comfortable, it takes a little bit longer to do. And that's what we're looking at with MBTI. So for example, extroversion and introversion. I prefer extroversion. So talking to people, being really social, communicating, networking, all of those things come very easily and very naturally to me. Whereas writing and that inner looking inside and that reflection process are sometimes a little bit more difficult for me. And one thing I would like to mention too is it's not right or wrong. Oh, absolutely not. That's something I really loved when you said that with me. It's not right or wrong. Let's just figure out what comes natural and easier for you so that we can find the right fit so that you don't feel like you're always having to push, you know, push yourself to do things. But what just comes natural and in easier? Yeah, absolutely. And with MBTI, a lot of people take it as almost kind of like a, you're put into this box. And this is who you are and this is who you will be. And that's it. But it's not that at all. This is almost more like where you are starting from. Starting point. So you can experience, you can change and I can focus and work a lot more on those things that aren't necessarily natural to me, like writing with my left hand. And if I put some time and some effort into it, I can write really well with my left hand. And that kind of gives us the ability to grow and to change and develop these different skills. So with career stuff, whether that's looking at the right career or if you already have a career picked out and you're trying to make sure that this is the right fit, it's more of understanding the concepts that you're looking at. So MBTI gives you a four letter code. So ENFP, INTJ, something like that. So even if you are an ENFP. That's a foreign language for most people. Yes, yes. So there's four categories, right? Yes, there are four categories. Four categories. So it's extroversion or introversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling and judging and perceiving. And you can get online and look up. There's a lot of really good information out there for you. And there's actually a free website that you can go through. It's not quite as accurate as really going into detail and the actual MBTI, what I typically work in. But it at least gives you a rough general idea of what's going on. Well, and one of the things that I saw very valuable was for me to sit down with you because I know when we sat down, some of them became really easy for me to go, okay, this is who I am. Yes. But then, and I know myself pretty well and I've had, you know, a little bit of experience behind my belt. But there was other ones that I really struggled and talk about how valuable it is to have a coach or somebody that knows much deeper how to kind of pull those things out and go, okay, what about this? Because you were really, really good at asking me questions going, well, Becky, what about that? And what about this? And what about that? It's not just taking a test. You guys also sat down and went through the whole assessment with us so that we could get a better idea of going, okay, that, yeah, that fits me or that doesn't. Yeah, absolutely. I remember with you, it was a little bit, it's different every single time. Yeah. When I sat down with you and I talked about it, you had already developed your not natural preferences to the point where to you, it was almost really hard to tell which one was your preference because you used them both so much and so naturally, it was hard to see where the starting point was. So that's one thing that's kind of important to look at. Another reason why that is important and why that's really helpful is when somebody is mistyped or they think there's somebody else and they start to put themselves in their own box, just going through the test. And I would say a lot of people would have identified with that as feeling like there's just something off in my life. And it's because they're trying to be somebody that they're not, right? Until we can kind of get you into that one, into that groove, so to speak, yeah. So another example of that, so there's perceiving and judging. Perceiving is a lot more flexible. They like to explore the world and they like to take things how they are. Judging is more decision making and they want to make the decision and organize things. My wife originally, close to 10 years ago, thought that she was perceiving where there was a more flexibility because she was very much go with the flow. When we looked at it again and we saw that she was actually more judging, it really helped her out a lot because she was able to notice and tell that she actually wanted these decisions to be made in this future, like that was just really stressing her out. Yeah. Let's talk more about that and we come back from the break because it's so important that we know what comes natural and what we're pushing maybe, right? So okay, we're going to be taking a short break. I'm Becky Samson and you are watching It's About Time on Think Tech Hawaii. And we're talking to my dear friend Jay Smith with Are You The Right Fit? Career Exploration in Entrepreneurship. So stay tuned, we'll be right back. Aloha, my name is Victoria and I'm a host at The Adventures in Small Business. This is a collaboration between U.S. Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office and its partners where we showcase the stories of local entrepreneurs and small businesses, talk about how to start a business, talk about great tips for small business owners. Please join us every Thursday 11 a.m. at Think Tech Hawaii. See you soon. Mahalo. Hey, hello, everyone and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii Studio. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of The Pretty Matters Hawaii We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know, issues that can protect your family, protect yourself, protect our community, protect our companies, the folks we work with. Please join us and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. So we're back and I'm Becky Samson and this is It's About Time. And I'm talking to my dear friend Jay Smith about Are You The Right Fit? So career exploration and entrepreneurship. So we before the break, we were talking about the the test, personality test, MBTI, right? And we were talking about finding the right fit because it's one of the comments I said at the break was is a lot of people sometimes will beat themselves up because they don't feel like, well, why can't I be better at this and why can't I be better at that? But talk about how it's not beating ourselves up. It's just learning more about ourselves so that we can get into that right groove so it comes natural for us instead of having to force it. Yeah. So it's really about making sure that you have the right fit. It's about finding, just like you said, finding that groove, finding that that motion, that flow. Once you are in that flow, you can do amazing things. It's just trying to figure out where that is. You take somebody who's incredibly intelligent, really passionate and really capable of doing a lot of things. If they're in the wrong job or in the wrong fit, the wrong career and the wrong profession, they're not going to be able to excel. They're not going to be necessarily passionate or they're not going to be good at or they're not going to be enjoying what they're doing. And when you don't have those things or even you're missing one or two of those factors, that success is just not going to be there. Yeah. You know, the thing that just came to me when I was a manager many years ago, when I first learned about this, that was one of the things is I took all of my staff and put them through similar. And I can't remember if it was MBTI or if it was another one. But talk about how important it is, even as a manager or if someone's watching and they own a business or they're managing a business, how important it is to know, have them take these tests so that they know what team players are on. And maybe some of their employees are just in the wrong position. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot of different of those personality assessments or skill assessments that are used in business. In my time when I worked in career development, we used different ones at LDS Business College. We used different ones. I worked with AFLAC for a little one. And they even have one that's all focused around different kinds of birds for your personality matching with the culture. And why they use that and why they really spend that time and those resources is because they get the value out of that. They're able to look at whether it's internally and they're trying to look at the different people and how they work, interact with each other. For example, efficiency. Efficiency, yeah. Or effectiveness as well. You can take a group of people who are very diverse in different personalities and thoughts and how they go together. And they may take a little bit longer to work together. And it may be a little bit on the rougher side of things. But the outcome, they're going to fill in each other's gaps. They're not going to have the same blind spots. And they're going to come out with something that's really, really effective. It's really powerful what they come out with. Versus if you put a lot of really like minds and really similar personalities, they're going to work together phenomenally. They're going to all get along really well. They're going to work really hard. They're going to work really fast. And they're going to be able to get a lot of done. But at the same time, they're also going to miss out and lack a lot of those same blind spots. They all have the same ones. So they're all going to miss the same things. You get a lot of people that are all really good at talking and communicating and socializing and networking. Who's doing the work? Who's doing the work? Who's checking the emails? Who's writing the memos, right? So it really depends on what you're trying to do. And being able to understand and have a deeper knowledge of your human resources really helps you to be able to work together effectively and also being able to help motivate them. A recent presentation that we were working on was all about motivation. And being able to understand what different people and what kind of motivation different people liked. And because it's all different, being able to understand who you're working with is really essential. Especially when you're an owner or a manager, right? Or a supervisor over a group of people. Sometimes it gets very frustrating. But if you have a greater understanding of how they function and how they think, because people are just different. I love that. You brought that up. The motivation is everybody's motivated by different things. Most people are motivated by the stick, right? So to speak, instead of the carrot. I learned that many years ago. Most entrepreneurs are motivated by the carrot. But in general, most people, you know, a punishment will keep them doing something that they need to keep going in the motivation. So that's really important too. And I know that if they understand their employees, let me give you an example. I was a manager for six and a half, seven years. And for the first couple of years, I just kept hiring people that were a lot like me out there and outgoing and connecting with the tenants. But what I realized is that none of the busy work or the detailed work was getting done. And it was so frustrating because I was having to come back and do all that detailed work, which is not my natural, you know, I just want to go out there and connect with people. Oh yeah. Until I found this one gal and she is such a make sure that all the T's are crossed and the eyes are dotted and all of that stuff. She's not a social. She's not out there. She just wants to put her, you know, head down and do the work. And we made an amazing team. But it took me several years to realize that. So I mean, that's something that if someone's watching this and they're struggling within their own team or within their organization, you know, really step back and go, look, we all have our strengths. We all have our weaknesses. Let's find people. We've talked about that on the show, too, is that find people that fill in those gaps. But that is comes from awareness of educating ourselves, you know, how they function. And just because they function differently doesn't mean it's going to be right or wrong. Absolutely. Just keep going back to that. Oh yeah. And you see that all over the place, especially in entrepreneurship. A lot of people when they're considering an entrepreneurship, they aren't sure if it's the right fit or they aren't sure if they're going to be capable of doing that. And a lot of it with entrepreneurship is you have a lot of these people who are idea people who want to get things started, who want to go out there and do things. Change the world. Change the world, right? And they're very action-oriented. A lot of times, the majority of them, at least, they get out there and they start these great ideas. But then they have a hard time finishing and following through with them. Yeah. So making those connections and getting people to work with you is extremely important. Almost every entrepreneur or business owner that I've talked to, one of the first things that they all say that they wish they had done earlier is hire somebody or hire their first assistant or hire their first whoever it is. But they wish that they had hired people earlier on because they needed somebody to do all of those things that they weren't capable of doing. Like when you were doing those detail-oriented things, it really, not only are you not as good at it, but it also drains you. Exactly. And that's the thing that I really want to make this point, is that if people are in that place in their life where they're feeling like, what I'm doing is just raining from me, you might want to consider you might not be in the right fit. Yes. Right? I mean, I know when I'm in the right place, when I wake up in the morning and I am like, ooh, I'm so excited. And really, it brings energy to your life. Like, I talk about it lilies and leeches. Because the lilies in life, I mean, those opportunities and those people in our life that help bring energy. And then there's also activities or things like detailed work stuff that just leech energy from me. And I just realized, I mean, granted, we can't always have everything, roses, and whatever. But if we can spend most of our time in that space where we're really good, and we have other people doing the things that they're really good at, because they're not going to be good at what we're going to be good at. Right? And it's understanding that. And I think the assessment and, I mean, you've seen a lot of things as you've come through and you've seen, especially with the kids that you're working with, or I shouldn't say kids, the students that you're working with, where they're just starting off their life. I mean, look at how much more valuable that would be. And what a blessing it is that you're helping them at the beginning stages instead of several years down the road where they're just like, ah, this is not what I want to be doing. And I've wasted all this career, I mean, all this schooling, everything. You know, you might as well learn now. If you're not happy, then it's okay. You can go learn and adjust and re-go out there and try to find something that works for you. So you're waking up every day and not hating Mondays and looking forward to Fridays. Yeah, you wake up and you're like, oh, work. No, no, it's probably a sign that some things need to change. That is a sign, for sure. Because I think most of the last 10 years of my life, I haven't even known what day it is. I'm like, what day is it again? Just because every day I'm doing things that I love. For the most part, for the most part. And there's always going to be those little exceptions here and there and those things that you don't enjoy doing. But really like, looking at that and having that right fit. One is really important for you as an employee or as an entrepreneur or a business owner, whoever you are, to make sure that this is the right place for you. And if it's not, how can you work on changing that? Or if you are the manager and you have other people working with you who are feeling the same way, how can you change that? Because they are not going to either want to stay there or they shouldn't stay in there. You're not going to get the best out of them anyway. Yeah. You're just not. And one of the things I really like too about the MBTI is that assessment, it gives you a printout at the very end of different careers and everything that would be and I remember looking through them and it gives you graphs. Doesn't it give you graphs of 90% likelihood that you'd be excel at this or whatever. But I remember looking at that and just going, I'm on the right track. You know, I'm doing the things that naturally come from me with not only taking the assessment, but then meeting with you and then meeting with another coach to really hone in on what was really good for me. Yeah. I mean, they did a bunch of studies on to look at where these different types of people were commonly working. And that's something that we pay attention to when I'm helping these students out is are you in the right fit? And if they're on the bottom of that graph, that's okay. Because there's still people that are happy in those jobs, but they need to understand like why might that be? And what kinds of roadblocks might be coming up? And just using common sense to look at and be like, okay, is this the right fit? Is this going to be the right fit? And one of the big things I do is there's a whole process that you can go through to find out ahead of time your freshman year or when you graduate and not five years down the road when you're going, why in the world did I do this? Yeah. Well, one of the things is we kind of wrap up. I want people to know, I mean, you do trainings, right? Yeah. On this and you can come in and teach employees and things like that on it. How do people get a hold of you? Yeah. So the best way to reach me, I'm actually reachable through a lot of different things, but my email address or phone number, so. Okay. What's your phone number? 8046381237. My email is Jay, just the letter J at netbelieve.com. I know I loved when you gave me that email. I was like, that's a great email. It's only one of the only ways I can get my entire first name and nothing else on my email. Jay at netbelieve.com. Yep. Love it, love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your wisdom. I mean, man, you know so much about this subject and I know you've been a huge help for me as I've kind of said, oh, this is who I am and this is who I'm not. I shouldn't be doing that. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. We're happy to have you. So we're out of time, so we're going to wrap it up. I'm Becky Sampson with It's About Time on the Think Tech live streaming series. We've been talking to Jay Smith and he is a professional career coach and we've been talking about are you the right fit? Career exploration in entrepreneurship. I wanted to thank Jay for coming on today and sharing his valuable insights into what it takes to be successful. So thank you, Jay. I know that it will benefit a lot of people today. And thank you to our broadcast engineer and floor manager and to Jay Fidel, our executive producer who makes this show possible. And of course, I'll see you on Wednesdays for more of It's About Time on Think Tech. I'm your host Becky Sampson. Mahalo, everyone.