Bossed Up Podcast
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About this Episode:
Community, connection, and collaboration. Baily Hancock identifies these 3Cs as the keys to our survival as a species. A community architect and strategist with more than three decades of experience, Baily’s prioritization of these concepts within both her own career trajectory and her client work has positioned her as an expert in helping organizations conceptualize, launch, and grow successful communities.
In this episode, she shares what she’s learned about leveraging your community and leaning on your connections when you’re navigating major career pivots - including transitioning from full-time employment to entrepreneurship, and back again.
THE REALITY OF REINVENTION
The need to pivot or reinvent oneself might take the form of a monumental status change like parenthood, an involuntary redirect like being laid off, or a personal decision to change up your career.
Whatever the cause, it’s usually an unmooring experience, and it’s often exhausting. In 2021, Baily experienced the need for reinvention, and it led to a very relatable decision to make yet another pivot: she found a full-time job that leveraged her community-building expertise and left her consulting business behind…at least, for the time being. Just a few short years later, she’s returned to entrepreneurship after being laid off from what she had originally considered the “safer” path.
But in addition to accepting that navigating a career swerve might be a slog, it’s also good to remember that there’s only one constant we can bank on: change. Reinvention comes for all of us at some point because we’re always moving through phases in our lives. Single to coupled up, child-free to child-raising, employee to unemployed—transitional phases are innumerable and inevitable, both in our careers and in our lives in general.
When Baily starts to feel the drag of reinvention, or like she’s a pawn in someone else’s game, she looks back and thinks of all the changes without which she wouldn’t be where she is today.
When she taps into that hindsight, there’s always one major throughline: community.
DON’T RUN - REACH OUT FOR SUPPORT
Community is Baily’s one big non-negotiable, both in life and in work. How she chose to approach her recent layoff really exemplifies her dedication to cultivating connections.
We all have different ways of dealing with life’s swerves. Me? I’m definitely prone to the hibernation approach. While Baily points out that our natural reactions in these instances are the ones that will serve us best, she also stresses that at some point, we need to come out of that protective shell.
When Baily’s latest career pivot turned up, she turned straight to her community. Whether you do this privately or share your experience in a LinkedIn post, reaching out to your established community is always going to pay dividends.
Of course, it has to be authentic. Baily stresses that she wasn’t just reaching out to people she hadn’t connected with in years to ask if they had any leads. Rather, she was—to use her analogy—reaping the harvest of the community she had watered and fertilized for years beforehand.
Her regular, genuine engagement with her professional community meant that seeking out “her people” at that trying time produced healing conversations that helped her stay grounded and optimistic when, like anyone, she was dealing with days of pretty heavy self-doubt.
EMBRACE - AND SHOWCASE - YOUR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Connection and community are the throughlines in Baily’s life, and that recognition of her expertise helped her build out her career as a thought leader in this arena.
Here’s the great news: anyone has the potential to become a thought leader! It’s a matter of nailing down what’s really important to you—what’s your thing? What subject can lead you down an hours-long online rabbit hole or to talk a friend’s ear off? There you go: that’s your subject matter.
Being a thought leader isn’t about being the only person who’s interested in something, or the only person who knows a lot about that thing. Instead, a thought leader is someone who excels at discussing their topic from their own perspective, in their own style.
The trick is getting your thoughts on your subject matter out there for wider dissemination. If you never go beyond chatting with a girlfriend over coffee, you’re seriously limiting the leadership you can offer.
Trust yourself and your knowledge. Don’t be afraid to call yourself an expert or identify a topic as your area of expertise. The more you share about what you love, in whatever medium resonates with you, the more people will think of you when they think of that topic. And that’s when people start sliding into your DMs to ask you questions and offer you jobs or podcast guest slots that are right up your alley.
And speaking of podcast guest spots, Baily’s latest foray into her own area of expertise—teaching people how to connect, collaborate and build community—is her new Podcast Guest Playbook. She collected all the tips and tricks she’s amassed over the years, guesting on more than 40 podcasts and hosting two of her own, into a guide on how to ID your own area of expertise and the stories and experiences you can tell to really engage listeners and solidify yourself as a Thought Leader.
THE SAFEST PATH: EMPLOYEE OR ENTREPRENEUR?
Before we parted ways, Baily and I tackled one more question that’s on many peoples’ minds, especially in this era of side hustles and remote work: what’s more secure—a standard “9-to-5” W2 job or entrepreneurship?
In the past five years, Baily has worked on both these tracks, and she doesn’t rank one option above the other. A regular paycheck is great, of course. It’s nice to know exactly how much money is going to be in your account every two weeks. When a W2 job is a good fit and you’re valued, it’s a great option. If it stops being a great fit for your skills and interests, the relative freedom and choice of entrepreneurship start to look shinier.
But the idea that a regular paycheck is more “secure” than the variable income of working for yourself isn’t realistic, as Baily’s layoff after two years exemplifies. Working for yourself and having multiple streams of income can turn out to be just as secure because it means the pivot you need to make pertains to only part of your livelihood, rather than all of it.
At the end of the day, solidifying that throughline—the expertise that comprises your thought leadership—is the trick to making your current phase, be it employee or entrepreneur, really match with your goals and values
Baily and I cover a lot in this episode, and I’d love to hear what resonated with you the most. How did our conversation get your brain churning with ideas for leveraging your community, building on your connections, and fostering collaboration in your career to catalyze your desired impact? Visit our Courage Community on Facebook or the group on LinkedIn to join in the conversation.
