Let Go of the Future You Think You're Going to Have | Ep. 001: Ally Bubb

Join host Lynn Debilzen in the inaugural episode of Redraw Your Path! 

In this interview with Ally Bubb, Lynn hears how Ally redrew her path several times, including transitioning from the corporate world to becoming a transformational coach and founder of 'Best Ever Mastermind.' Their conversation touches on:

• The power and influence of community in overcoming your fears
• How to shift your plans when your planned-out life isn't as you thought it would be
• Finding answers in the gray space of life

Tune in for a dynamic discussion on life and growth. About Ally:
Ally Bubb has a punk rock soul cleverly disguised in a middle-aged mom’s body. She combines enthusiasm and authenticity into her work as an executive career coach and speaker, teaching people to tell compelling career stories and step into their next level of leadership because when people genuinely love what they do, our workplaces, homes, and world are transformed. After 20 years in corporate technology roles, she is passionate about fixing the leak in the tech pipeline by equipping women and non-binary individuals to leverage their distinctive strengths in leadership creating more equity at all levels. Ally is the founder of the Best Ever mastermind, a transformational coaching program that enables people to make their biggest dreams reality. She is also the bestselling author of Success Authentically and Change Authentically. Ally earned a B.S. in Management of Information Systems from Michigan Technological University and a M.B.A. from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is an entrepreneur, coach, keynote speaker, and author, as well as a thrift shopper, nature-lover, cat cuddler, and parent to two spirited kids. Work Authentically is reinventing the world of work by teaching people to leverage their unique style, approach, and way of being while helping companies to bring more humanity into technology by leveraging people-centric approaches through presentations, workshops, and individual and group coaching.

Connect with Ally:
Website: https://workauthentically.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allyson-bubb/
Join the Best Ever Mastermind: https://workauthentically.com/best-ever/

Connect with Lynn:

• www.redrawyourpath.com
• www.lynndebilzen.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynndebilzen/

Transcript

0:01

Hey friends. Welcome to Redraw Your Path, a podcast where I share stories of people who have made big changes in their lives and forged their own unique paths. Guests talk about their moments of messiness, fear, and reframing. On their way to where they are now. I'm Lynn Debilzen and my goal is to inspire you about the shape your life could take. So let's get inspired. Hey, lovely friends. I'm really thrilled to share this conversation with you today. Today on the pod, I have Ally Bubb as my guest. She is one of my favorite people and has been really pivotal for me this year, and you'll, you'll hear why. But a little bit about Ally, Ally Bubb has a punk rock soul cleverly disguised in a middle aged mom's body. She combines enthusiasm and authenticity into her work as an executive career coach and speaker, teaching people to tell compelling career stories and step into their next level of leadership, because when people genuinely love what they do, our workplaces, homes, and world are transformed. And I believe that. After 20 years in corporate technology roles, she's passionate about fixing the leak in the tech pipeline by equipping women and non-binary individuals to leverage their distinctive strengths in leadership, creating more equity at all levels. Ally is the founder of the Best Ever Mastermind, a transformational coaching program that enables people to make their biggest dreams reality. Little plug here. I am in the Best Ever Mastermind this year, and it has been really amazing in a really supportive space. For me to make some big changes and grow. All right. Plug over. She is an entrepreneur, coach, keynote speaker and author, as well as a thrift shopper, nature lover, cat cuddler and parent to two spirited kiddos. And yeah, it was a blast; hope you enjoy. Hey, Ally, I'm so excited to talk with you today. Thank you for being here on Redraw Your Path. I'm so excited to be here today, Lynn. I can't wait to get started. Awesome. Well, the first thing I ask every guest is to give me some context about where and how you grew up. What's your foundation? Oh, I love that question. So I grew up in what I didn't know at the time, but was kind of a non-traditional youth. I only lived it after the fact when I started comparing stories with friends in college where I went, oh, didn't everyone do this? And the answer to it was usually crickets. Oh. So I grew up in very rural location. In Michigan. It was one of those things where, uh, if there had been a high school in my town, I would've graduated with 15 kids in my class. Mm-Hmm. Uh, but there wasn't, and so, you know, we all bused to the nearest one. And so it was more like 60 kids in a graduating class, give or take. And so. I spent a lot of time outdoors. My parents were very nontraditional in that they were both teachers and so they had their summers off, and so we spent our summer, we did a lot of camping. We had a really large garden. We sort of knew all the best places to go, whether it was to pick apples or whether it was strawberries or blueberries or sort of all of the various different things that were in season. And so we had, uh, a lot of fun just kind of being outside. And I know that that too brings with it, you know, run-ins with bears and all sorts of wildlife. It was one of those things where I didn't fully appreciate at the time what a different background and foundation that gave me because it of course gave me a great appreciation for the outdoors, but it also gave me a great appreciation for the power of small groups because our community was so small, you kind of didn't have a choice really, like you had to stick together to band together. It didn't matter what happened in town, you know, um, people always rallied around each other when they needed it. And so when somebody's house burned down, everybody just kind of collected, okay, well here's some spare pots and some spare clothes, and you know, like, let's start rebuilding that life together. And when somebody was struggling with. Some other challenge. You know, we all showed up and here we go and somebody breaks their leg and everyone shows up with potluck style. Like, okay, well you've got meals in your freezer for a month. And it gave me a really great appreciation for the importance of, and the value of a tight-knit community. Yeah, it sounds like I was, I was going to say that word community is very present there. And then I love how you describe your summers because. Knowing you now, I know how you love to spend your summers with your kids, and so it sounds like that focus on creating really strong and fun memories still lives with you, and that summertime is heaven on earth, it sounds like. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Love that. Love that. So how and where are you currently spending your days? Wow, that's a question. So now I, uh, I spend my days, I live in Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It's a different lifestyle, of course, than when I was growing up, but one that I feel still holds to some of those foundational things for me. And so, like you said, Lynn, I had deliberately found a way to carve out space so that I can create some mini summer adventures with my kids and to really use that time to have, uh, a deeper connection with them, especially outside of the world of screens. And it's one of those things that I, I so appreciate. And yet I also love the fact that I'm close to so many amazing things. You know, all of the offerings that a city has, especially kinda a small, big city like Milwaukee, where you can still get everywhere you need to, and yet access to some of the most amazing shows and programming and all of those things. It still has that sort of small townish feel to it in a lot of ways, so I love that about it. And so I have been here in Wisconsin for, gosh, more than 20 years now, and a lot of that is the result of I met my future spouse. He, he fell in love with Wisconsin before he fell in love with me. And so, um, I had no idea that my path was gonna take me here and keep me here as long as it has, but it's been one where I really enjoyed the journey. Really enjoyed adopting a new place as. As my own and, um, and really leaning into it. And it's been an amazing place both for my career as well as for starting my own business, which is where you find me now as a coach. Um, helping people step into their next level of leadership, helping them to really imagine a bigger future for themselves than maybe what they see today and, and really lean into the best ever version of them. Perfect. I, I love that. And really supporting others to thrive. And I know you do that because you've helped me do that, and I like ask those questions together because one. Sharing with listeners where you began and then sharing with listeners where you are now. Those are kind of the bookends, right? And we know oftentimes we think that the story of others is linear and we think that it's clean and like that's where they started. Here's where they're at, and. It turns out there are a lot of different turns and curves and messiness along the way. So I appreciate you starting back in Michigan and fast forwarding today, and we're gonna kind of do some of that rewinding and fast forwarding through the rest of this conversation. So most of us grow up with external pressures or expectations placed on us, whether they're, I don't wanna label them good or bad or whatever, but we kind of grew up with these molds that we didn't really ask for. And I'm curious, what were some of those for you and what path were you expected to take, if any? Yeah, I think those expectations, sometimes we're aware of them and sometimes we aren't. But boy, can they really change the course of our direction in life. So for myself, I have, uh, one sibling, a brother. He is, uh, like a year and a half older than me. And for us, one of the big expectations as children, it was not, it was never a question of if you're going to college; it was always stated as when. And, and that was a really important, I think, differentiator for us because that expectation is not necessarily true for everyone else that we grew up with. And so we had it put upon us very early, like, you're gonna college, this is happening. And of course, what do you do after you go to college? Well, you get a great job, which means steady and stable. And you work it for, I don't know, 30 or 40 years, and then, if you wanna, you can do something else that you like. And so there was, there was this known expectation around it. I think it's really interesting. In my family, particularly, most of my relatives, my grandparents and, and great-grandparents were higher educated. So college degrees and usually advanced degrees beyond that. Master's degrees, that sort of thing. Mm-Hmm. And so that too is one of those. Expectations that was placed upon us of like, yes, of course you're going and you're doing these things. And, and I grew up at also an interesting point in time where, so I graduated my undergraduate degree in the year 2000. And so that was also at the point where companies were starting to move away from pension plans. And you know, those things were starting to become less, less and less common, or less and less generous. And so it was a very interesting thing of like, what does a stable, steady, safe job look and feel like? And of course, over the course of those years, it was figuring that out. But that expectation, I think is probably the biggest and the strongest one. The second expectation that was both stated and implied with, really everything was an expectation of working hard. Mm. And that hard work sometimes manifested itself in physical labor. As I mentioned. You know, we had a really large garden and growing up we were expected to help with that or we had to haul wood to fire our wood stove all, all winter so that our house would be warm. That hard work translated not just from those physical activities, but into, you work hard at school, right? Mm-Hmm. Apply yourself. You, you really give it your every effort. If you're gonna be on a sports team, you need to not just show up, you need to give it your full effort and your full attention, and that that expectation of hard work. Imagine it, it's a little bit, if you've seen the movie Rudy from the nineties, uh mm-Hmm. That movie, uh, it was, you know, very focused on football. But Rudy's, uh, superpower really was focused on that perseverance, that ability to work harder than anybody all the time. And there was a lot of that expectation put upon us. And so, you know, I, I think that too played into a lot of the choices that I made, those two expectations. Yeah, that, and I just hear the powerful framing that that probably provided for your life is like no matter what, you're gonna work hard at it. You're not gonna give up, you're gonna just keep going. You know, you might be sore in the garden, but who cares? Everyone else is sore. You just go for it. So it's interesting, I'm, I'm super excited to hear about your turns and how those expectations played a part because yeah, like the college expectation, the stable job, gosh, that feels elusive today. Oh, um, yep. And just the hard work. So Ally, when you think about your path, what was the first big way that you redrew your path? And that doesn't mean that you like strayed from those expectations necessarily. Mm-Hmm. But what was kind of the first big turn that you saw your life taking or that your life took? Yeah, I, um, I think probably one of those pivotal moments happened early in my college career and, uh, and I will say I did not fully know exactly what I wanted to do as I was starting to prepare for college. But ever since I was a kid, you know, around the age of 10 or younger, I had this vision of myself. Wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. Whatever job where I got to wear a suit and carry a briefcase, I wanted that joB.. So I picked it maybe more on fashion and style than I did on, um, skillset, but it was one of those, one of those things that just was in my head from very, very early on. And so of course as I kind of got closer and closer to going to college, I kind of went, okay, well what, what in the world, what major would get me that job? And so I, I picked business as my major and for lack of anything else. And because a lot of my careers were not necessarily like, well, what, what in the world does an actuary do? I dunno. Right? Like, there were so many things that seemed mysterious, but one of them that seemed like people always needed people were always talking about was an accountant. Mm-Hmm. And so I had picked accounting to major in. I'm so thankful that my college advisor, who I met right away, like my first day, he helped, helped me in chart a path. He asked me, what's my goal? And I said, well, my goal is I wanna get through college in four years. I can't afford literally, to hang around for longer than that. If I can go four years or less, that's my goal. And you know, we talked about what I wanted to major in. We looked at accounting and as luck would have it, I could start taking those classes right away. And so. I dove in. I built out basically a four year plan because at that time you can, you could see what were all the classes that, um, were coming up next, flipping through a paper catalog. It was a lot of fun mapping it all out. Mm-hmm. To figure out, okay, what does this look like? Building out the plan to make this happen. And I got into accounting and the first one was okay for me. And then the second class that I took. It finally dawned on me, not only did it not feel okay, but I actually physically hated it. Oh no. I dreaded going and it was an amazing teacher. The teacher was great. So it wasn't the teacher, it was the actual subject matter. Mm-Hmm. And so it was, it was one of those devastating moments of, oh my gosh. I think this sucks. I think I would be miserable. I cannot imagine spending 30 years, let alone two weeks doing this. Mm-Hmm. And, you know, uh, especially after having drawn out a very beautiful four year plan to make that happen, I, I didn't know what to do. And so that was the first point where I had to start to redraw my, to really think about, whoa. What does this mean, if that isn't the thing anymore. If that doesn't capture my interest, there's no way I can move forward. And so I talked with some people among them, my brother, who, uh, recommended to me, he said, you know, have you tried anything with computer? And I said, well, haven't. And in fact, my actual, my sassy response to him was, no, that's for nerds, because that happened to be his major as well. I, okay. I mean, and sign up for one. You might like it. Who knows? It's okay. You know, like it's still your first year. You've got time to figure it. And I went and talked to my advisor, because why would I take the advice of my brother, who clearly knows nothing? And wouldn't you know, My advisor said pretty much the same thing of, yes, don't panic. It's okay. Why don't you try one? And then he actually recommended two different classes. He said, take one here and take one over there because they're different styles and you might find you like one over the other. Okay, great. And. They were both right as it turned out. And just by redirecting me slightly, I was able to start to take classes that I was really enjoying and that were really fun. And I found, I discovered that for me, my passion was not necessarily in the technology for technology's sake, but much more around taking that technology and solving a business problem, something that people need, finding a way to use it to make work or life better. Those were all things that got me really excited. Once I ended up in that, I was able to reconfigure then that four year plan that I was still so desperately clinging to, to say, okay, so what does that plan look like in a world where I focus my energies on this, instead of that other thing? Wow. Well, one, I wanna acknowledge that the fact that you paid attention to yourself in that second accounting class and what was going on for you, was that hard at all? Was that, like, did you have any conflicts listening to yourself, or did you kind of tune in right away and know, oh, this, this isn't, this isn't my thing. Oh no, I was, I was torn. I was very torn. It was one of those things where I went, oh my gosh. Everything I thought I knew, but on paper accounting makes the most sense and I've already mapped it out on paper. I working, this is the thing, right? I was wrestling with myself. It took me weeks, almost as soon as the class started, I knew, I knew something like was not right with it, and I kept going, okay, but. Well, maybe it's just because I'm so busy with some of my other classes and I haven't dedicated the time to really study this, and I haven't really, you know, I, I tried to rationalize a lot of it until finally one day it was just that full body moment of, oh my gosh, mm-hmm, I wanna throw up in my mouth going to this class. Oh, no, I can't, I can't do it. That was the moment where I went, okay, there's more. There's more here, and I need to pay attention now. Yeah. That's so powerful and that visual, I, uh, the feeling is, I wanna throw up in my mouth. Were you wrestling with any sort of like narratives that you had to rewrite at the time or any of those expectations that you had from growing up? Absolutely. It sounds silly, right? That idea of, but I'm gonna be like a business woman with a briefcase. Even that piece had become such a part of my future identity. Like, that's why I'm gonna school, that's why I wanna do this work. And, you know, to, to start to go, wait a second, is that, is that really the thing? And you know, like at the time I didn't necessarily. I have all of the tools I needed to be able to really do a deep interrogation of what was going on and, and what were those things. But it was, it was definitely some moments of, okay, wait, could this be like, are there other possibilities? You know, sometimes we think, but this is the only way for that to come true. And ironically, actually, several my jobs after, after college, when I had my technology degree required me to wear a suit like it was professional dress required. Oh gosh. Oh gosh. And so, so like the dream happened in such a funny other way, but there is still that moment of, oh, it's, it's only, it's all this or nothing. Yeah. And so that was, that was one of my first moments of like, what if instead of the black and white, the all or nothing, what if the possibility exists somewhere within this gray space that we don't know about yet. And that, as you can imagine, was hard for me to get my head around and my heart around. Uh, what, with being the sort of person who mapped out literally four years at a time. Yep. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Well, and I just wanna pull that question out for listeners too. What if the possibility is in this gray space? Because sometimes we're so married or married, like attached to the path that we think, or the path that we have planned out on our four year plan. And sometimes just zooming out and thinking about what the possibilities are. Um, yeah, it can be hard to zoom out and then it can be hard to explore, so the fact that you did that I think is really powerful. And I'm wondering, you know, my brain is going to, Ally, did you watch the movie Cocktail growing up? Because Tom Cruise being attached this idea of a suit and briefcase, and going into Manhattan everyday, just stands out to me. well, um, interestingly, as part of my growing up, I, uh, was actually not able to watch most eighties movies, but I assure you I had the cassette soundtrack and Oh, yeah, sing you the entire cocktail soundtrack right now if required. I love this. I love this. And, um, it all makes sense. Was it you weren't able to watch those movies? If you ever wanna borrow it, I have it on vhs. I watch it regularly, multiple times a year at our cabin. So yeah, the briefcase, the image of the briefcase and the suit just stands out to me and, and just like being kind of attached to, that's my future. Right? Yes. And, and it turns out that was your future, just in a different path to get there. It's one of those interesting things where sometimes when you let go the future that you think you're gonna have, that's when that future starts to come back around to you. Yeah, it's that, that letting go process. So you had then this like career in technology where you wore a suit. I'm sure it was like very classy and fashionable knowing you, and you carried a briefcase maybe or maybe not. Um, but you had this career in technology. So tell me about the second time you ended up redrawing your path. Absolutely. So. I, for a long time really loved my career in technology. You know, I was doing interesting things. Um, I always seemed to find or sought out roles where I could be kind of in between technology and business. In between technology and people so that you know, the tech that was being built was gonna best serve the people who were gonna use it. The tech that was being built was gonna make life better, made work easier for whoever was the group that was needing it. And. Because I found roles that I could really lean into like that. It made it a lot more fun. You know, 60 hour weeks didn't feel that long when you're doing something that you really enjoy. And so it created opportunities for me. I was able to move up a path, you know, when you imagine sort of a career ladder, I was going rung by rung by rung, up, up, up. Mm-Hmm. And into middle management. And then it stopped being so fun. And it stopped being interesting and it stopped being kind of all of the things that had pulled me along up to that point. And, and it was one of those where, you know, at first I wondered to myself, maybe this is something where I just need a different assignment or a different friend group to work with a different technology problem to solve, a different insert-all-of-the-various-things. I started first started by trying to figure that out and, you know, try some different roles, move into some different spaces. It was one where none of those things seemed to really get to the core of what was wrong. Mm-Hmm. It infused a little excitement at the start, but it continued to be one of those things where, boy, you know, I just. I used to always wake up super early in the morning and I couldn't wait to get going. And like, very morning, morning person energy. And it, it became one of those like, Ugh, I can barely drag myself outta bed and I can barely get moving. And then I started to have unexplained illnesses. Mm. You know, things like recurring dizzy spells, vertigo, and you know, I'd go to the doctor and we'd do the test and I am so thankful that it came back as everything's fine. Well, not everything, friends. Yeah. Because, it was something. And so I started to see the physical manifestation of me being really misaligned, really unhappy, really. And yet, you know, if you were to get out your yellow legal pad and take a look at all of the reasons why I should stay, those reasons were way, way bigger, way longer than any of these. Well, yeah, but I get headaches sometimes. Well, uh, you know, stress is really starting to wear on me and I'm feeling really burned out and exhausted and kind of all of those pieces. And so it finally became a thing that my body would no longer let me ignore. You know, I've been very good at saying yes, but yes, but, mm-hmm. This, this is the path. This is the thing I've chosen. This is that really great, amazing, stable, cool, awesome job in the world of technology. I had, you know. A title, like one of the most marketable titles in the industry at the time that I, I finally reached this point where it's like, what am I thinking? Why would I give this up? Like this is the stepping stone into the final realms of leadership and into all of those things that I thought I wanted. Mm-Hmm. And I finally had to start like asking myself some really hard questions. And the crux of it really was, I no longer felt like I was the person I wanted to be. Like I was showing up as what felt like one of the worst versions of myself, both for my coworkers while I was at work, but especially for my family when I got home from work. And I really was completely miserable in both spaces because of the fact that I felt so misaligned and there was a very, very heavy feeling around that. One failure and, and two, this idea of like, I'm a smart, capable, briefcase carrying woman. Right? Like, how can I not figure out what to do? Mm-Hmm. And it became this like, oh, no sort of moment. Um, but I couldn't ignore the fact that I really, truly knew it was, it was deeper. It wasn't there was no job specifically that I could simply slide into and have it fix everything because there were so many pieces that were no longer working for me, pieces that I hadn't wanted to explore or think about in terms of what does success really mean to me? You know, it doesn't have to be the expectation that was placed on me as a child. Yeah. It's asking questions around, well, who do I wanna be and what kind of work do I get meaning and fulfillment from? And what kind of impact do I wanna have on the world? And these aren't easy questions that you can always immediately answer. And so the easier thing is, of course, is to avoid it and go on another busy day at work. Yep. And I had avoided it for way too long and, um, and so, I finally decided that for me, and this is not the right choice for everyone, and in fact is not what I typically recommend that my clients do when I'm coaching them, but for me, the right choice at the time was to quit that amazing, awesome, wonderful job that on paper seemed perfect, and instead rebuild a life from the ground up that I wanted. Which is, probably terrifying? If I can put myself in your shoes. Yeah, terrifying is the best word I would use to describe it. It was every fear that that could come to the surface did and made worse by the fact that I had, um, many, many coworkers who I thought were my friends who I thought cared about my, my wellbeing and my what's best for me. And many of them came to me and said, you are making a huge mistake. You're gonna regret this. You'll be back within a year, you. And thankfully for me, I also had a very, very small, I can count them on one hand, handful of people who said, you're doing the brave thing. Even if you don't know what this thing is yet, and you are, you know what's right for you and you've gotta trust yourself even if no one else understands. And like to have just a couple of voices like that really helped me move forward with it when, you know, everything in in the external world was telling me, no, don't do this. Wow. Do they know that impact that they had on you? Yeah, they do. They do. Those, those people I have thanked multiple times in multiple ways. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I resonate so much with your story as, as you know, and just the couple of voices when you're in this auditorium of voices that are saying, but no, what are you doing? And sometimes it's your most trusted voices that are questioning what you're wanting to do. Can I ask, like, when you think about those expectations that were given to you, I heard you use the F word,failure. So like what was going on there and how were you grappling with that and kind of rewriting the narratives and working through things in your head and in your heart. Yeah, it was of course a really challenging time, you know? I deeply empathize with anyone who goes through a transition point like this because of the fact that it is sometimes so hard to kind of work your head around. But there were a lot of pieces that I, I needed to start to unwind. There was the identity piece of, well, who am I if I'm not, insert-job-title-here? Mm-Hmm. And, answering that question... Oh, wait, we are such wonderful, amazing, unique, complex humans. And yet, we so often get reduced to just a job title. And um. I was also really proud of the very hard work that I put, the expectations that been placed on me to get the, I had the age I was, and so there was also then the expectations piece to go, okay, wait a second, but at what point I say I wanted to do this job for, you know, 30-40 years and then do whatever I really feel like, and I followed the prescribed career ladder, uh, as a person in, you know, this industry following this sort of path. At what point. What the marks that I found to be successful, what were the things that I found most meaningful? What were the pieces that I most enjoyed, and as I was doing some of that unraveling as I was facing my failure and going, this did not end well for me, I think this, this was kind a massive implosion and, and I can laugh about it now, but at the time, I assure you I could not, you know? Yeah. Because it was really hard to go, wow, I failed at the one thing that I thought I would be doing for the rest of my life, you know, working for a living, and I am grateful. You know, sometimes the people, the people who have seen you and and know you can help just put the tiniest little seed in front of you, like plant a little seed, and then it just starts to grow. And what I thought was interesting is as I was kind of going through this exercise of figuring out, again, you know, not just. Who am I and what do I define as success, but also where do I wanna go and what does, what does the next thing look like versus what does the past look like? What was the dream 20 years ago? Because it's dramatically different. And as I was working through that, what was interesting to me was people in my network kept reaching out to me for the things that I really enjoyed doing, the things that I loved. It was coaching and mentoring and developing others. It was helping them develop a strategy to reach whatever is their next thing, um, success-wise that they're going for. They continued to do that, and I didn't connect those dots right away. For myself, you know, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. And I finally had a friend say to me, you know, this is a job, right? You can, you can charge people for this, right? Right. And I said, well, I don't think it's, this is just me doing something that I really enjoy and how could work be so fun? It has to be hard, right? And so I did a quick Google search and it turns out, yeah, coaching is a whole thing, right? And, and that was an aha moment for me because then I discovered, you know, I'd been working through all those layers and I discovered I had more layers of expectation underneath that. A lot around entrepreneurship and well, the kind of person who is an entrepreneur. And I had never identified as that, that was not, you know, part of the expectations from back when I was a kid. It wasn't, you know, go out and build the job of your dreams and create a company. It was, you go work for someone else and you do the stable, steady thing. Yeah. And so I discovered that I had a whole nother round of unwinding deprogramming to do around what that looked like for me. How long, Ally, would you say that that took for you to kind of from the point where, wait, I'm having vertigo and I don't know what's going on to like, I'm gonna deprogram myself and like start, like throw everything out and start anew. Like what time span went by? Yeah, that's a great question. So it took from the time that I started noticing the things that were happening in my body to the point that I finally got brave enough to actually leave. Took about a year, and then it took another, I would say, six months of really sitting with myself, asking myself those hard questions. Um, listening to my intuition, which was one of the many pieces that I had been ignoring. That's what was creating so much misalignment for me. Mm-Hmm. And, um, and really like being able to do. The deep work of both sitting with the questions, answering the questions, but also, you know, starting to go, oh wow. It was the exact question as college, right? Like, what if. All the possibilities are in this murky gray area in between. I'm only a corporate citizen or only a not working person. Right. Like what if there is something in between those two? Yeah. And, and what might that look like? And that, that really definitely took, I spent a lot of time, about six months of it before I gotta that point. And before I kind of had the urging from some friends to say yes, yes, you can do this start your own business. And, and again, I know the timeline can be really different for a lot of people. Sometimes, you know, you recognize that you wanna do something different and you can slowly work towards that as you stay in whatever thing you are working on right now. But it doesn't always work that way for me. Yeah, I really needed the full, the full time and space because there, there felt like a lot of. Expectations to unwind from myself and of course, really sit with what is that future I want to be building? Yeah, there's so many layers and, and that darn murky gray space. Gosh, it's so like dark and messy in there and so murky. And sometimes, you know, for some people it takes a weekend to wade through and for other people it takes a decade and um, yes, I think both are okay. Right? And, and that, that's why I'm excited to talk with you and to talk with others who have gone through that murky gray space. And just to show listeners that like, hey, that's like an okay place to be and there's gonna be a point at which you're not in that gray space anymore. And then you might be back in there, and that's okay too, but it's from that discomfort that really gives us a space to grow. So I so appreciate you sharing all of this and this story with listeners. And I know we're bumping up on their earbuds and they're, they're like, you know, speeding up. And what advice would you give to others who are considering redrawing their path, Ally? Yeah, this is such an important one, I'll say, really in two areas. And the first is giving yourself that time and space to listen to yourself, to remind yourself. Like that really lights you up inside. Um, and like you said, Lynn, sometimes that is really easy to figure and sometimes it takes a long time and is hard to do. And I want to encourage people forward to keep doing that. I can't even tell you the number of books that I read over the course of trying to figure out some pieces for myself. Mm-Hmm. Because I wanted the wisdom from others who had been there. I wanted that insight and it helped me to ask better questions of myself. And so, again, that of course can take longer. Do a deep dive that deep. But for me, that was the best approach. And everybody's gonna find something that works right? But whatever it is, keep exploring and keep listening to yourself. You can feel it in your body when you're making aligned choices. When you are, you know, um, you doing something that really ignites the spark of passion within you. You can feel it. And, um, the second piece of advice that I would give is research can only take you so far. Mm-Hmm. And so the other side of it is action. You know, taking the smallest step. What if I hadn't taken that accounting class back in college until like my second or third year? That is not the time I wanna find out after I have this perfectly laid out plan and all these visions of me with my briefcase going places to discover that, oh, accounting. Not for me. You've gotta put yourself into the spaces that you're exploring because it's not always the first thing that you think necessarily. Oh, well. My career was in this other space. Right? Mm-Hmm. It's when you get there and you start having conversations with people and when you start going, oh, I had no idea it was like that, or discovering for yourself. Wow. I have a full body reaction to that. And it's not a positive one. Yep. Right? Like you don't know it until you start to experience it. Mm-Hmm. And so my big piece of advice is yes, of course, yourself, listen to what you are hearing from yourself, and try it out. Take some small action, some small step, you experience it and then you'll get more clues, right? That is such a sage wisdom. Just, gosh, listening to yourself and realizing, you know, we become so disembodied and so disconnected thinking, oh, this vertigo must be, this headache must be something else. So listening to yourself and then taking small steps and trying things out, that action is going to lead to more knowledge and more confidence. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that with listeners. I'm wondering where can they find you and is there anything you wanna share? Yeah, absolutely. You can find me. Uh, my website is workauthentically.com and you are more than welcome to check that out. I would love to connect with listeners on LinkedIn as well, so feel free to reach out to me there. I, uh, as you know, Lynn, get a lot of passion. I am, I cannot imagine a better day than spending it with people who are really excited about, and at the same time struggling with the challenges of, okay, how do we take these big dreams that we have in our head and try to make them a reality? Mm-Hmm. How do we live into the best version of ourselves? MOst of us know who or what that looks like. And myself included, I fall short on a regular basis because work and life and all the things come at us. And so the program that I have developed that I'm so proud of and that I'm so excited about is called Best Ever. And it's really a program that's that's designed. For people who say, yeah, I want to live my Best Ever life, and I feel like I've a lot of barriers, challenges. It's a transformational year long mastermind where we get together and as a group, we walk through the entire year. We build out a plan to make sure you have a coach, but you also have a group of people who are keeping you accountable and cheering you on and supporting you when you need it. You know, I think the absolute worst thing that ourselveis to settle for an okay lifefe, a fine life. Mm-Hmm. Right? Like, yeah. Who steps out to create that? The answer is no one. Um, that's not really what any of us want. And yet most of us when asked would say, Ugh, fine. Right? Like, how are you? Fine? Like, no one's ever, like, I'm the best I could be. Except you and I! And so, when you think about going from fine to WOW, That's not always easy to do by yourself and that is why I created Best Ever. And you can of course learn more at workauthentically.com/best-ever. Thank you, Allie. I love that. And I just have to put a personal plug in. I have been in this program this year and it has been transformational, supportive, uncomfortable and fun, and I've made some huge life changes that I don't honestly, Ally, I don't think I would've been able to do. And you were the one that helped me wake up from, um, a job search that wasn't really gonna get me to my best ever self and realize, oh, like my, my dream has actually always been this. And, um, and so I appreciate you and, and honor you and what you're doing and would highly recommend to anyone out there thinking about making those big changes. So thanks Ally. Thanks for coming on, Redraw Your Path and I will share your information in the show notes with listeners and I appreciate you taking the time. It has been so much fun talking with you today, Lynn. I had a blast. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Hey, thanks for listening to Redraw Your Path If you like the episode, please share and subscribe. That helps more listeners find me, and don't be shy. Reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to know what resonated with you. Can't wait to share more inspiring stories with you. See you next week.