Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby!

Episode Transcript

Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby, the podcast where we discover what skills can help you live your best life. Now let’s talk about skills, baby.

With me today is Sari Wienerman and Michelle Smith, the co-hosts of the Got Skills podcast. Today, we’ll be chatting about the making of Got Skills. Got Skills is a spin-off to the Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby podcast. Each episode is an under 10 minute deep dive into a key takeaway from an episode of the podcast focused on actionable ways for professionals to scale up. Sari, I’d love to start with you. Where did the idea for this podcast come from?

Sari: Yeah. So Got Skills really was born out of wanting to take all of the amazing content that’s being discussed in Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby and frame [00:01:00] it for job seekers. Frame it for people who are not necessarily professionals in the future of work or the skills space, but people who could every single day benefit from the kinds of conversations about skills that were happening on the other podcast.

So we wanted to be able to take those amazing learnings and really concentrate on how the key takeaways affect a person who is looking for a job, in career transition, or really actually it’s anybody who works, which is everyone. Anybody who lives, anybody who breaths, everybody’s got skills in some area.

And so being able to talk about what those skills are that you’re utilizing, how to identify what skills you have and what skills you use, maybe even what skills you want to learn, and then further how to actually talk about it. Because the biggest thing that we see in this future of skills-based hiring and learning arena is that there’s different languages being used [00:02:00] by employers, by job seekers and by educators.

And so everybody’s kind of going around using their own understanding of what they think needs to be discussed, their own vocabulary. And we want to be able to dissect it from each perspective so eventually everyone can speak the same skills language.

Kelly: I love that. Now I feel like I want you to go back a little bit because you and I did a bonus episode for the end of season two for Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. And in that bonus episode, we talked a little bit about when you and I, and you had had this idea. And I feel like I would love for you to share that story as well, because it not only had to do with what was going on with the podcast at the time, but also something that you were thinking of that is so related to where in my mind, all intertwined.

Right. All interconnected.

Sari: Absolutely. So, okay. Let’s like flash back, right? March 2020, the pandemic starts. And in my life I had [00:03:00] been performing and auditioning and singing, acting, dancing, doing all of that. And at the same time, working as a podcast producer. And specifically in the workforce space, which is how you and I met Kelly, and when this happened, everybody around me including myself had this like really big reckoning with what skills we had and what skills we needed to use and what work we were going to get. Because the theater industry completely shut down. And I was in a place already that with all the work that I had been doing that was workforce related and centered around the job seekers experience, I was constantly thinking about, how do you tell your skill story?

How do you transfer skills from one job to the next? What are the things that are the through lines that help you move throughout your career. And not only that, I had the very specific angle being an artist and especially a performer, right. [00:04:00] Where a lot of most people performing, we’ve got a million jobs offstage, just so that we can have those few jobs onstage.

And so when this happened, I was like, this feels like a really important time for like the intersection of all the things that I think about and I’m passionate about to like magically come together, because I had all these people around me that were like, what do I do? How do I get a job?

And I was privy to all of these conversations happening in the workforce arena, where the kinds of skills that better set you up for work somewhere else, those kinds of skills are the ones that artists in particular are really good at, right? It’s empathy, it’s storytelling, it’s listening. All of those things. All of these people around me, we all excel at that, but it was the way it was talking about them and also understanding that that’s what people in the workforce need out of their employees.

And there was this huge disconnect. And so I started working on what [00:05:00] ended up being a course called, Make It Work, where I was basically helping performers find work off stage. And you know, it’s something you need during a pandemic or not. I was able to work with you on a lot of those actual skills-based things and find those resources that would help these performers who took this course figure out what skills they had, what skills maybe they wanted to target, but then also how to like, explain that that’s what they’re good at and explain how that applies to other work.

And after having run the course, I ran two really successful cohorts. It was really awesome. Having been at the same time, working on producing Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby, I was really in the mindset of this is fascinating stuff, but I also want the people who aren’t the experts at it to be able to join the conversation because all of what the amazing guests on this show we’re talking [00:06:00] about, were things that people actively looking for work needed to hear and needed to understand in those moments.

 It kind of became like the perfect way to combine everything that we all do well and make a digestible show that focused on the job seekers.

Kelly: That is such an amazing story. And so heartwarming too, not only because of how it all came together but just your passion around this and you’re passion for helping people. And you’re right. It is so amazing when all of the pieces sort of fall in line the way that you never expected. Most often, especially in job searching times, we never actually think that that random experience in some cases many years ago would ever mean anything. And things you might come across something where, when my parents bought a bakery as an example, I helped them [00:07:00] with the operations of the bakery.

And I had to take over a QuickBooks account in 24 hours. And it just so happened like 15 years prior to that, I used to do QuickBooks for my father’s dental office. And who would have ever thought that, first of all QuickBooks had not changed that much. Whether or not that’s good or bad, I will not say.

But that you could just pick that up and be like, ah, yeah, I’m figuring this out. It’s totally fine. It’s just fascinating that you say that that’s happened to you and how many other people that’s likely happened to that you’ve all already helped through your course. And now that you’re talking about this on Got Skills, how this is also just impacting so many more lives.

So anyway, thank you for sharing that story. So how did we end up roping Michelle into this?

Sari: I I really want to send it over to Michelle because I think Michelle is working on this, like [00:08:00] literally from the inside out. I feel like her new job at Amazon, which I’m going to let her explain, is putting her like on the front lines with people who are in a career transition moment, people who are learning, people are looking to develop and skill up and focusing on what exactly is important in those moments. Right? It’s like, we all can kind of think of like, oh, maybe in the future, I’m going to take that class. Or maybe in the future, I’m going to work on this. But Michelle works with students who are doing it right in the moment. So Michelle, explain more of that to us.

Michelle: Sure. So my day job is I am an apprenticeship program manager with Amazon, so I work within our mechatronics and robotics business unit to help train really like students or people with no technical background, how to eventually be able to work with and maintain and make sure all of the robotic arms and artificial intelligence technologies in our buildings are [00:09:00] operable. And it is really just kind of funny stepping back from that, this is a newish role for me, and I’ve been a part of this like skills and future of work conversation for just about a year and a half. And it’s just been really interesting for me to see, coming from a knowledge professional background where I came from management consulting and it’s cool to see tha twhatever field you come from, I worked with people who in that field as like very tenured executives were intimidated by a job transition. And I see the same exact thing and the students I work with, it really doesn’t matter what level you’re coming from. It can be really scary to make a change, even when you think you want it.

So that’s exactly why to what you were saying, Sari, people push it off and off and don’t figure out like what’s the best way to pitch themselves or really identify what works for them. So it’s really interesting to have that conversation with students. I mean, this is what they do specifically, I’m not as tech savvy as these folks are [00:10:00] and it’s hard to kind of call upon the resiliency that you might’ve learned in the past, or like other ways to advocate for yourself.

So that’s what I really work with them on is kind of that life skills side of it to help them get through and then have this technical skillset on top of it. I do a lot of what we talk about in a very hands-on way. So it’s been so much fun to kind of loop all these learnings in and apply them in real time.

As well as having the conversation with Got Skills.

Sari: I’m glad that you used specifically the term life skills there, because as we know that is something Kelly is always sharing, right. That really the skills we’re talking about are life skills. And that I think is the through line, I think for all three of us in the work that we really are passionate about, is that the skills needed to be applied to work are actually just life skills.

And I don’t even want to say just. They’re life skills that are important everywhere. And we’ve talked about this [00:11:00] even in the ramp up to season three of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. There’s so much in our narrative, societaly, that’s trying to separate out work and life.

There’s so much that is telling us that you have to be able to balance them, that one might be getting in the way of the other or vice versa. And I think we kind of want to dispel that narrative. So that work in life are just like this. They just exist together like they’re blended on a pallet.

There are different colors that like are blended together on a palette. Sometimes one color is a little stronger. Sometimes the other might be a little stronger, but they’re always there. There’s things that you do at work that also enhance your life. There’s things in life that enhance your work. It’s a back and forth situation. And I think that’s something we all really get to witness because of the way that we think about skills.

Michelle: Yeah, [00:12:00] exactly. And I’m trying to think, as you were talking about that kind of blend of exactly like our professional lives and our personal lives an article came up in my mind that I think, I don’t know Kelly, if I got this from you or just like somewhere recently. But it was talking about how we have spent really the better part of the last century planning our lives around work. Planning where we live around where our office is located.

Those kinds of things. And it’s just really interesting how there has been greater flexibility in that over the past decade or so. And we’re really seeing that open up significantly in this post pandemic era. And to include the students that I work with, I have so many folks who are like, oh yeah, I went into this program because you know, I’ve lived in Las Vegas my whole life, and I really want to move to Alaska.

So this is what I’m doing now. Like, wow, that is a big change, like, okay. And then it’s also so exciting to see that. I think it’s just something that people didn’t always think was realistic to be able to plan what they wanted in their lives to integrate with work. And it’s more and more possible for really [00:13:00] all of us when you take that time to distill what you want and what you have to offer.

Kelly: So true. So tell me, you guys, for the audience, I’d love for them to know a little bit more about what’s happening behind the scenes. When you create these episodes, can you walk us through what that looks like?

Sari: Yeah. So, working on the Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby episodes, producing and editing those. I’m already getting that like firsthand account of what the conversations are but when we’re ready to make a Got Skills episode, we’re going into each of those already made episodes and we’re looking for that one big takeaway. There’s inevitably so many because the conversations are so rich, but we’re looking for one that we can really isolate that is going to have some sort of actionable like energy about it. There’s something that right away, a listener can take from it and apply in their own life and [00:14:00] work on.

There was a version of this podcast where each episode had instructions for like an actual activity, and that ended up getting nixed on the cutting room floor. So people listening are probably happy about that. The idea being, we were able to take these really awesome learnings that these experts talk about and have applied somewhere in their field and make them really, really relatable to literally anybody who has work to do, has some barometer of wanting to be able to move in some direction with that work. And so we listened to it. We grabbed the quotes that we think are like the best.

And then we start to build in the narrative, the through line through it we’ll go back and forth with editing and working together to really make sure that the way we’re understanding these conversations, having that little inroad to this type of work, is being [00:15:00] explained to somebody who doesn’t listen to these types of conversations or read these articles, or have that type of conversation in their everyday life.

Kelly: Okay. So how did you guys decide that these were going to be such short episodes? And I think we’ve been hearing so much positive feedback about that. Like how did that come to be?

Sari: Yeah. I mean, we just really wanted it to be something that a listener could it enact in life right away. And so when there is a longer length of thing to listen to, it’s easier for bits of it to drop out and be wanted it to be like this very concentrated. I mean, it’s scripted, right? Like everything to a T we’re getting it in as short amount of time as we can so that it doesn’t feel like a laborious thing to be like, oh, I’m like nervous about having to figure this out in my life. Like, it’s a very quick, gets your gears thinking, gets you inspired. And then like you get to move.

Kelly: So [00:16:00] awesome.

So what is next for Got Skills?

Sari: I think a little bit of that is in development right now. So it’s developing truly as we speak. Definitely, we want to be able to work on some content that might not be completely related to a previous episode. But that will be completely related to some sort of job seeking or career transitioning activity that you would want to complete in the moment.

And then just being able to dive deeper into all of these conversations and continue them and be able to hear from listeners, who’ve been able to implement these things and work their feedback into future seasons.

Kelly: Ooh, that’s a great idea, Michelle?

Michelle: Yeah. For me, what I’m excited by is the more friends and family members that I have just in my own circle that [00:17:00] learn about my work with Got Skills and really our work over the past few months get really excited and they say, oh, I know so-and-so who is looking for a new job or is transitioning industries.

And they should really listen to this. So I’m like, well, please do that would be great. And also I’m excited to hear the second half of that story as people transition and learn what’s most helpful that they use based on the conversations that we’ve been having. So I think that’ll be really fascinating to see and to just continue to kind of spread the word and like kind of tear down that intimidation factor of making the life changes.

Especially when you are really itching to do one and really think that you’re as ready for it as you can be. I think being ready for big life changes is hard, but you just have that inkling that you want something different and don’t know where to start. I’d love for us to be that starting place for people.

And to see that happen more and more.

Kelly: Wow you guys are so awesome. I am loving hearing about this. I hope everyone else is loving it as much as I am. Well, thank you, Sari and [00:18:00] Michelle for joining me today and for all of this amazing work. Just so you guys know, Got Skills as a Growth Network Podcast production. We’d love for you to come hang out with us on social we’re on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram, and you can find more information at skillsbaby.com/gotskills.

Hope y’all have a good day. You’ve been listening to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby, a Growth Network Podcasts production. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and share it with your community