When jobs searching becomes a bit much, how do you keep your sanity and easily identify red flags to watch for?
In this episode, I spoke with Erin Hundtofte, an HR Specialist who specializes in benefits management. We discuss how job searching post lay off can be very taxing to your mental and physical health, what to look for to avoid being phished by apparent recruiters, what an ideal company would look like, and so much more.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast
Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com
Get in touch with Erin here:
Social media:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/erh_visual_arts/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinhundtofte/
When jobs searching becomes a bit much, how do you keep your sanity and easily identify red flags to watch for?
In this episode, I spoke with Erin Hundtofte, an HR Specialist who specializes in benefits management. We discuss how job searching post lay off can be very taxing to your mental and physical health, what to look for to avoid being phished by apparent recruiters, what an ideal company would look like, and so much more.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast
Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com
Get in touch with Erin here:
Social media:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/erh_visual_arts/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinhundtofte/
00:04
Hi, welcome to the Reboot Loading Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie. Hello everyone. On today's episode, I have Erin Huntupta. She is a resident of the Seattle suburbs, has been there for most of her life. A former coworker of mine, we were laid off at the same time from our last job. She is currently hosting an exchange student from Italy. She's a very active board member of her choir, as well as
00:33
an avid watercolor painter for the past year. And I've seen some of her work. It's beautiful, love it, and I can't wait to see more. Welcome, Erin, to the Reboot Loading Podcast. Thank you. So good to have you. So tell me about where you are right now. How has the last half of year been for you?
00:53
Yeah, the last six months of being unemployed, you know, it's been a mix. I am grateful that I was not the one who was left behind to go through a really gritty benefits renewal. I'm grateful that, you know, with layoffs with a company that's struggling, I'm grateful that I've been laid off, you know, a month after our exchange student got here. So I've been able to spend a lot more time doing side trips with him and, you know, doing things spontaneously in the middle of the day.
01:22
that I wouldn't necessarily have felt justified to take off work to do. But being able to take him on a spontaneous overnight trip to, you know, scenic places in the state and that sort of thing has just been a real pleasure. Looking for jobs is soul sucking. It always, it all, I mean, there, there's no two ways about it. It just always is. And I've somebody who has
01:48
been on the market several times for a variety of reasons. And, you know, you just never know how long it's going to take to find that next job or whether that next job is going to be the oops job or the one where you can stay for the rest of your career. You know, somebody asks, how's the job search going? And you don't really know until you have an offer on the table how it's going. Yeah, you're 100% right there. And I love this whole sucking part because that I couldn't have said it better.
02:17
That's the best way to describe it. You know, it's demoralizing. Nobody likes being in this position. You know, you see those posts on LinkedIn where people talk about recruiters who berate them for being unemployed. It's like, can you help me fix that? So it's been an up and down battle and I'm right there with you. I'm six months out as well approaching seven, actually, which is crazy. And it is, it is demoralizing. I've seen.
02:46
those posts as well, I've dealt with it as well. A lot of times I will have like a recruiter reach out to me, especially in the beginning of this process, when I didn't really know better, they would reach out, ask for information and I would provide it willingly. I'm like, yeah, hey, here's my resume, here's my contact info. Yep, never hear from them. Or what would start happening is I would hear from them and then they would...
03:12
probably within a couple of hours sometimes, maybe within less, it was less than 24 hours. They would say, oh, the position's filled. Right. And I've had that happen so many times that now they ask me for info, I'm like, how about we figure out if this really aligns with what I'm needing first? And if I ask extra questions, they usually run, so. Exactly, and that's a good way to determine whether you're talking to a real recruiter.
03:41
or somebody who's fishing for information and using the recruiter persona as a cover. And I've encountered a lot of those. It's just a scam that's going around and it's a good one. It's hard to find out which ones are not legit. Yeah, it's so unfortunate because like you said before, it's demoralizing being in this position, especially now you're adding the extra added stress of looking for people to help.
04:09
and looking for those resources that can help you coming up on the other side of something that's very fishy. Yep, for sure. Also, I've found that anytime I've used the Open to Work tag on LinkedIn, I immediately get six or eight inquiries, messages from the Open to Work.
04:30
hashtag where it's people again trying to fish for your information and some of them are appear really legitimate and clearly are not. So my recommendation is when you get a contact out of the blue on LinkedIn messaging, do your due diligence before you respond. So click on that person's profile, click on the company's profile that they supposedly represent. Some of these people are
04:58
marking themselves as employees of legitimate recruiting agencies, but the employee themselves is not legitimate. If they've got recommendations on their profile, read them. Look at what kind of voice is in each of them. Is it the same voice in all five? Maybe that's not a legitimate set of reviews. That sort of thing can help you determine whether you're being phished or whether somebody is truly trying to hire you.
05:25
And it's something that's it's crazy. We shouldn't have to be looking for that on LinkedIn. We're just trying to find a job. Yes, 100%. And I like how you said it earlier, it is soul sucking. And this just adds to that soul sucking process. Because you're out there, you're you're very naive at first. I feel like in the last six, seven months, I'm so different in how I'm approaching things. You know, we're looking at things through a very different lens now. Oh, yeah. We've learned so much. And we
05:54
have this, you know, that hindsight that's helping, you just know how to approach these better. On the same line there of, you know, this is very stressful to deal with. A lot of these things really tax our health and not just our mental health, our physical health. I mean, they play a role together. I know that's something that you and I both are passionate about is just how we can make things better from the mental health aspects, physical health in the workplace.
06:24
100%. Yeah, so in administering benefits and leaves of absence, I found that the number one reason for leave of absence is fabulous, you know, parental leave, paid parental leave. Parents are celebrating a new addition to the family. That's awesome. It's always exciting to administer those leaves. Number two, in my experience, is burnout. So the number two reason that people need extended medical
06:53
time off work is because work is so intense and has been for so long that they are burned out and simply cannot work anymore. And it's an embarrassing reason to reach out, but it is totally legitimate one. Unfortunately, I've also seen instances where burnout, if somebody tries to push through it, can also trigger health condition. So we're in the autoimmune club, so you know
07:21
I had celiac disease triggered during the first year of the pandemic and I know the trigger and you know it's just toxic work environments. It's one of those things where you know that working in an environment where you're asking for help and you get pushback consistently.
07:45
It's a red flag that means it's probably time to look for a new role because continuing to work in an environment where they're piling on work or the company's growing, which makes your workload grow and they're not providing additional support when you're in an employer in a company like that, the employer is looking to see how much they can get out of you. So there are companies that will churn and burn.
08:10
they work you into the ground and tell you need to go on medical leave. Maybe they fire you, maybe they give you a severance, but they replace you with somebody who's fresh instead of allowing you the time to recover or instead of providing the support that you need in the moment. Some companies get this right, some companies do support their employees when they go out on leave, some employers really try hard to provide work-life balance and some are just there to make a buck.
08:38
for the investors and for themselves and don't really care how many people they turn through in the meantime. I've seen all of the above in just my own experience. And there have been companies that I've worked for where they will say, oh yes, we take this very seriously and we would have all these videos on it. And they would tout this very mental health culture that I didn't see it at all. And then-
09:06
When there were times where I was going through something really rough, like a death in my family, I didn't even know what my options were. I was asking for some opportunities to just work from home a few days. When I actually submitted my resignation and then we did like the, what is it? The exit interview. The exit interview, yes. They were asking like, did you know that you could maybe go on short term leave? And I was like, that was never given an option to me. Like I had no clue what.
09:35
options I had. And coming from a company that was basically saying like, oh yes, you know, and I'm going to my boss saying, I'm dying myself here, like, what can I do? And just being met with more stress. And on the flip side, I've been in companies where, thankfully I haven't had to use those sorts of benefits, but I have seen them do a much better job. Yep.
10:01
The other red flag that I have run into is, you know, there are some companies that do a great job of administering leave and of educating their employees about leave options that are available. No sweat. Some companies are truly very supportive, really educate managers about disengaging and not reaching out to that employee while they're on leave. And some employers will say, you cannot.
10:28
tell this person that their job is protected. Yes, they are going on FMLA job protected leave. It's actually in FMLA, Family Medical Leave Act at the federal level. It's written into it, into the act. It says specifically that FMLA leave is job protected, but an employer that does not want their leave manager to state that FMLA is job protected leave.
10:57
probably wants to lay off a bunch of people on leave. Honestly, I hadn't experienced that until this last layoff where I saw people who were on leave or PTO even. It seemed like it was more of those type of situations and those people were getting let go. And you can't help but think if there is some discrimination behind that. I mean, I know there are the laws in place and all of those things, but there's always a loophole.
11:25
there's always a way around it. It didn't seem fair to me, especially seeing a lot of the people and what situations they were in. And then when I started going out and doing my own research and Googling into a rabbit hole, I'm like, there really isn't anything that can be done. There are legitimate situations where a company is struggling and they're eliminating a whole class of positions. The roles are gone. Those are legitimate.
11:51
you know, if the position doesn't exist anymore, then it doesn't matter what your cause for leave is. If you're on leave, you don't have a position to come back to. Now, in theory, an employer has a responsibility to provide an equivalent role for the person in the company. If their job is eliminated, FMLA says you should, as the employer, provide an alternate equivalent role, even if it's not the same
12:21
where it gets squishy is when an employer you don't see whether that employer is going to thrive and be successful and is just eliminating this position but has the ability to put that person in another role or you don't know whether this company is just trying to get rid of the expensive people who are on leave using the benefits and not
12:50
working, not producing. So it's tricky until after the fact when you can see how is this company doing? Oh, they have another round of layoffs. Maybe they didn't have a position to put that person into in the first round of layoffs because they knew that this next round was coming. But it's really hard to know that when you're the person being laid off and all communication has
13:19
it's really a good idea to talk to an employment attorney. And especially if you were on leave or in a questionable situation, talk to an employment attorney and say, here's the situation, are there red flags that you can see? It's probably worth $500 to talk to an attorney for an hour to go over your severance agreement, to ask your questions about whether...
13:45
there's a case to pursue because you've been discriminated against or whether this is just a situation of tough luck and move on. Yeah, I mean, that's great advice as far as getting the proper resource in place to help. Because I think when we were laid off, that came up a lot. It was, what do we do now? We get all these documents, there's so many documents, and there's so much legal jargon in there that a lay person cannot understand any of that.
14:14
Right. I consider myself okay smart and I'm looking at it going, is this even in like a legible language? Right. Like, is this just in like, what is that font? Wingdings or? Yeah, legalese. There just needs to be a font called legalese. Right. It was so frustrating because you feel like you're just on this little island all alone, have no idea what you're doing. So I definitely agree with that and getting...
14:42
getting that proper resource and knowing what that is, an employment attorney. Yeah, and I think that the couple hundred of us who ended up in your Slack group are really fortunate because we were all in the same boat. We all had pretty similar severance agreements. They differed a bit depending on how long we had been working at the company, but we were all basically in the same boat and able to ask.
15:10
questions and see other people's questions and go, oh, I hadn't thought to ask that. So just connecting with your fellow former colleagues is an enormous benefit when a bunch of people are laid off at once. You're all going to have the same questions. You're all going to need the same resources. So being able to have a place where we can come together and say, am I crazy or is this a little bit off or, you know, hey,
15:39
are you aware that you need to convert these benefits within 30 days of the end of employment? Well, what is the end of employment? Was it back in September or was it the date that the paydays ended? You know, that sort of thing. It's not intuitive to most people. So being able to have a resource where you know you're safe. These are people that are in the same situation, are also
16:08
willing to help. You know, people are providing the knowledge and expertise that they have within a group where we're all unemployed looking for work. Unfortunately, we've seen that balance shift over the last six, seven months where most of the people from our cohort of layoffs are back in jobs now. Yeah, there's a handful of us who are not. I love the fact that we have
16:35
a safe space to go to talk with others. It's definitely something that I would recommend if someone's in the position of being laid off, finding a group, any sort of support out there. There's so many. Listen to this podcast. That's another one, but it will help so much in processing this information. I've seen so many other larger companies that have done layoffs. I've seen them come together on LinkedIn.
17:04
And it's been so great to see because I feel like there is a lot of camaraderie around it. And it's also like, you know, misery loves company. We're all trying to just get all of our grumpiness out and process through all of these emotions. And it's really great. It's really important to have that type of space that you can vent about things. And one thing I do want to say is that Aaron has been the most helpful human being.
17:33
in the universe, I feel like. During this process for our company and everyone that was in our or that is in our group, when we had so many questions, especially related to benefits, she jumped in, she created her own little channel in there and was like, I'm going to answer all these questions. And she has been so helpful in guiding us into these directions that we otherwise would probably have lost our minds by now. So.
18:00
I know I'm not the only one who is appreciative of this. Everyone has been posting about you on LinkedIn. I mean, there's so many of us that are so grateful for everything that you've done. And that's what still boggles my mind because I'm like, why is Erin still out here? Like, somebody needs to scoop her up because she is like the best, the absolute best. And I know there's some, there's at least 200 of us that will agree with that. So.
18:30
Well, and the cool thing too is being in this group of former colleagues, we all know each other to a degree. You know, I don't know everybody, but I've seen everybody's names. And that's the joy of working in HR is you see everybody's names. Yeah. Even if you don't know the person by sight or what they do. I started at our previous company pretty early on and got to see it grow from about a hundred employees to about 500 and then shrink again.
18:59
So those kinds of things where you get to know people a little bit from working with them, from just seeing what life throws at people and how they react to it, and being able to go to those familiar faces, familiar names in a time when you're struggling can be hugely beneficial. You know these people, you know their personality, you know you can trust them. And when somebody needs help, having a place where
19:28
They can go and say, hey, I just posted, here's this link on LinkedIn, can you please support this post? And we do, we pile on, we repost, we comment. We try to get people hired and in some cases it's worked and in some we're just still trying. It's just been amazing. And I feel like I would have been totally lost, probably even more depressed if I didn't have that support. So I don't think you realize how...
19:57
much you have impacted a lot of us. On behalf of all of us, thank you so much. And with that said, I'm just curious to know with your process of applying to jobs, looking for what is important for you, what have you narrowed down as being the most important factors for your next place of employment? You know, I've worked in companies that have been amazing. I've worked in companies that have been toxic and everywhere in between.
20:26
And the toxic ones are just not worth the pay, not worth the time. You don't automatically know when you apply for a job, what is the culture like? Is this going to be a good experience if I get this job? But there are some tools out there. You can look at reviews. Glassdoor is a great resource. Most people know about it. So hopefully if you're interviewing for a company, you're checking Glassdoor reviews pretty thoroughly before you have that interview. You need to know going in.
20:54
What are the pain points? What are people complaining about? What are people praising? As a benefits and HR person, I look at the benefit reviews pretty closely to see what kind of benefits they offer, because that can say a lot about whether a company values its employees. If a company goes out of its way to state in many different ways that they value their employees as their greatest asset.
21:20
and you see it demonstrated in the structure of the benefits, and you see it reflected on Glassdoor reviews, that's the company to fight for. That's the company to go after with your heart and soul and really throw yourself into the application and the interview process. The ones where, you know, historically the company has four to five star reviews and maybe just the last six months, all of the reviews are one or two stars.
21:50
Something's happened. You'll probably see in the comments what that something is. You know, if you see a company that has these recent red flags, it might not be the best place to be right now. If they've had a bunch of series of layoffs, you don't really wanna end up in another layoff in six months. But if it's a company where consistently the reviews are positive, people rave about it, that's where you wanna be. In my...
22:18
job search, my preference has been for fully remote tech companies. I love startups. I love coming in at that early stage, series A, series B, maybe even in that 10 employees stage where everybody's putting their heads together and imagining, what can we be? What do we have the potential to turn into? How do we get there? And establishing that culture and that priority from the beginning and
22:48
figuring out how to carry it through as the company scales and grows, especially in a fully remote culture. How do you help employees connect? How do you provide an environment in which employees can thrive without being in the same geographic area, much less the same building? That's something that I really love too. I'm so excited to hear you say that because I don't find too many people that share the same sentiments where I...
23:16
thrive better in a chaotic environment. And so, especially with smaller companies, startups, where you can really see and come in and make a big impact and watch the growth of it, it's really just so satisfying that process and being able to be a part of that process. Of course, there's a lot of chaos.
23:41
in there, but that's the part I love. I mean, I like the craziness of it, but I do like, like you said, putting your heads together where you have everyone just coming together and there's not really not just in these siloed positions where they can actually wear many hats and look a little bit over the side, knowing where their lane really is, but they know that they can go out of it and and assist somewhere. Yeah, and you know, I've made a point in my career of diversifying.
24:10
So on the benefit side, I've worked in third party administrators, TPAs. I've worked in brokerages, I've worked for carriers, and I've worked on the HR side and in HR, you know, working for small companies, you're a department of one. So you become a generalist. So where it says HR manager on my resume, it always means I'm doing everything HR, maybe everything except recruiting, probably also payroll.
24:40
things that I may not have the greatest expertise at, I may need to do them anyway. My favourite thing to do is to come into a company when it's at that early stage, help create that foundation, and then move back into my specialty of benefits. Because as a company grows, my expertise isn't there anymore on the generalist side. Generalists are a dime a dozen.
25:04
But somebody who has a strong specialty that they can move into once they've done the initial setup of the HR function and started hiring other people who are more skilled in HR specifically, that's me. That's what I'm able to do. I come in and set it up, get out of the way, and focus on benefits. That's great that you know where your strong suit is and you are willing to provide help elsewhere.
25:34
but you know that this is where you're supposed to be. And it sounds like that's your favorite part of it. Oh, totally is. Yeah, there's a lot about employee benefits as an industry that's broken. You know, I'm not proud to be in the only first world country that does not have socialized medicine. You know, I frankly would love to find myself needing a new career path because we suddenly have socialized medicine and now benefits.
26:01
is not a field that is needed anymore. I don't see that happening. You know, in the meantime, I just enjoy taking a topic that is opaque to a lot of people, especially when you're in a tech company with a large population that are from overseas and they don't come from a culture where they know anything about insurance.
26:25
Those kinds of things, those kinds of conversations are immensely valuable to me. I love talking to people who know nothing about U.S. benefits and explaining how they work. This is complicated stuff. When I was hired by Merrill Lynch straight out of college, they spent three weeks training us in a classroom, you know, eight hours a day with classroom instruction and discussion about all things benefits, and then put us on the phone.
26:54
you know, taking 80 to 150 calls a day from people asking questions about their benefits. So, you know, I knew nothing about insurance when I started and quickly became an expert, quickly became the active health and welfare specialist. So if an active employee called and needed to escalate their call, it came to me. So became really that resource early on.
27:22
who could answer the more complex questions. And I kind of geek out on the details, on the fringe cases, on the exceptions, on the unusual situations. So I like to look for those when I'm in a job. I enjoy taking things that are complicated and making them simple. I do want to ask you about, in all that we've talked about as far as mental health, return to office, what—
27:49
are some things that you would like to see change in this process of how we're having to look for jobs right now and all of these things that we're encountering. But what's some other things that you're just like, ah, we need something to change big time. You know, I've had this writing prompt on an open word document for a few weeks now, and I've been thinking about this for several months at this point.
28:19
and I'm still trying to articulate it to a degree. When our exchange student came home from school one day and I said, I lost my job today, he got this really confused look on his face and said, so you can just lose your job? He's never known anybody to just lose their job. He's from Italy, about 80% of people there work for the government. Private companies are...
28:47
not so common. I mean, you've got the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, but for the most part, people work for the government. And there are a lot of protections for employment in Europe and in many countries around the world that just don't exist here. My writing prompt is, are idealism and capitalism incompatible?
29:12
I'm an idealist at heart. My whole career I've been looking for that company where I could go make a home for myself. I want to work for the company that values its employees as its number one asset, which everybody says they do. I wanna see it in practice. There are companies that from the beginning, their strategy is to avoid venture capitalisms in order to retain the ability
29:42
decide the future of the company. So when you give ownership of your company to venture capitalists, you're beholden to them. You have to do what they tell you to or they'll pull their funding. Venture capitalists are there to make a buck. They don't really care about your employees. They want your company to be successful and if that means laying off half the staff, that's what you gotta do.
30:06
There are a couple of unicorn companies out there that I like to use as kind of a role model for what I'm looking for. They are both in the Seattle area. Dan Price at Gravity Payments made himself famous. He started Gravity Payments from his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University, and he was quickly made a millionaire.
30:28
But one of his friends worked for him and they were on a walk and he was talking to this friend who was pretty stressed out. She was having to work multiple jobs to pay the bills and really wanted to start a family but didn't have enough income to feel like that was an option. And he started doing some research and found, and I'm probably mingling some of the details, but he found research that basically said happiness.
30:57
increases measurably up to a point with the increase in a salary. And the magic point at which additional salary didn't really make a huge difference was about 70k. And this was a while ago, so that number has likely changed since then. But what he did was he cut his salary in order to make the minimum wage at the company 70k, regardless of what you do. The floor is 70k.
31:27
People on the higher end of the salary range, in some cases got really angry and left. Like somehow they were getting less of the pie because their salary didn't increase when the janitors started making 70K. A lot of people got really angry with Dan, but the company has been wildly successful. When your leader demonstrates that they value employees above all else, employees give back.
31:56
Another company in the Seattle area is called Parametrix. And I have a friend from university who was a few years older than me and has been at Parametrix since she graduated university. So more than 25 years she's been at the same company. Very happy there. What this company does differently is they have company ownership. If you're an employee you get to buy ownership in
32:26
Instead of bringing in venture capitalism, they allow employees to invest in the future of the company. So employees become invested in the success of the company. And that's a model that I think is perhaps more true to the idea of capitalism. So yeah, I'm looking for a company that does things differently within the framework
32:55
of our capitalist society where I'm looking for the company that values its employees enough not to give away ownership of the company to investors. It's very powerful because just knowing our history and especially with a lot of startup companies, they are using venture capitalists to cover their costs. It is really hard because it's hard to make connections with people and then knowing that
33:24
It's not really within their power because they are, like you said, beholden to someone else that's really paying for everything. It's a very tough situation to be in. And that's something that I've struggled with and saying, is that a space that I want to go back to? Is that? And that is definitely something that is on my list of things that I'm looking at going, does this really align with what I'm looking for next? I'm like you in the sense of
33:51
I am an idealist. I'm always arguing that whenever anyone says like, you can't love your job or you can't work for a company that you're truly going to love. It's just, it's a job. Yeah, just deal with it. Go home. Right. I'm not that person. Wherever I am, my work ethic becomes, I mean, that's my personality. Like, I put my heart and soul into something. So I'm not necessarily somebody who's very good at hopping from one job to another. Yep.
34:21
And so it's really important for me to kind of have these values that I have and make sure that the companies are aligned. It becomes difficult though, especially when you're in a position where you've been laid off for so long and it's just make a choice. But at the same time, it's like, I'm not necessarily turning anything down. Right? No, I'm not. But I do feel like whatever energy I'm putting out there, I think those people are.
34:47
picking up on it going, she's not really wanting to be here, you know? I'm not a very good actress, let's just say. I'm not good at hiding my facial expressions. I do not have a poker face whatsoever. So if you're asking me something and you're telling me about the culture or something, you're going to see it on my face if it doesn't align with what happens and what I need. But I think it's really unfair at this point where you're in a position of...
35:16
being laid off for so long that you just have to settle. Yep, it's a dangerous position to be in too. You know, in our household, we're fortunate that my husband is still employed and he's being paid better now than he ever has. We've been together 17 years and we've taken turns being the person who makes more. It's a good position to be in when we've got an extra person in our house. You know, I've been able to survive on unemployment so far.
35:45
But his company is in an industry that's pretty volatile. It's likely that they're going to lay off a lot of people. He doesn't think that his position is going away, but it could happen. And so there's this competing stress of, how do I end up in a company that I'm going to like without taking a step back in terms of salary by 30 or $40,000?
36:13
when I'm in the second half of my career and trying to save for retirement. But how do I avoid ending up at a company that's going to make me ill because they want to work me into the ground and then dispose of me? I'm not somebody who goes to a company as a consolation and looks for the next role. When I say yes to a company, I'm all in. So I want to be all in at a company where
36:42
I can thrive and do good work and be appreciated and make a home for myself. The trick is how much time is left on unemployment, how much time is left before I have to settle. And then I'm in that position of potentially saying yes to a job while looking for the actual job. And that's not where I want to be.
37:09
when you've been there for a long time and you've built up a certain tenure in that space, I keep saying, you know the game shoots and ladders. So if you're familiar with it, you've got one really big ladder that goes from the bottom all the way to the top and then you've got one really big slide that goes from the top all the way down to the bottom. And I really have felt like I hit that slide at the top and I've gone all the way down to the bottom now. I think a lot of us do.
37:38
and it's just this place of uncertainty, not really understanding what the future holds. For six years during the recession, I was unemployed or underemployed and making ends meet by running my own business as an artist. I would love to do art as a side hustle without that need to sell to make the bills. So I do watercolor and
38:08
It's not a business yet. It may be. It may be a side hustle in the future. But there's a lot about trying to sell your creative mind or the result of your creative mind that just leaves yourself open for being crushed. I feel like if you get yourself into or in front of the right audience, then you're golden. Yep. But it's...
38:35
The hustle, the grit and everything that you have to put into finding that right audience and finding things that will appreciate it. But I still feel like anytime I see anyone that is wanting to pursue something, especially on the creative side, I'm like, go for it. I want to see your paintings everywhere. I think that when you said that you had just started doing that, I was like, there is no way.
39:02
Erin, I want to say thank you so much for talking with me today. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I would love to have you back on. So would you be interested in coming back? Absolutely. Awesome. I will have all of Erin's contacts information in the show notes below. But again, thank you so much for joining me and awesome conversation. And I look forward to speaking with you again. Thank you. Appreciate it. It's been fun. If you're interested in becoming a guest on my show.
39:31
All the information on how to contact me is available in the show notes. Would love to speak with other laid off individuals, mental health professionals, recruiters, business and career coaches, and resume writers. Also, if you're enjoying the content and would like a shout out in an upcoming episode, a link in how you can support this podcast is available in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening and until next time.