Career Relaunch®
Joseph Liu
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Finding Validation Beyond Work with Colby Chilcote
Leaving one of the “best places to work” in the world like Google is a really tough choice, but that’s exactly what former Google marketer Colby Chilcote chose to do when she left to become marketing director at Huron Pines, a nonprofit organization in northern Michigan. In this episode of Career Relaunch, we’ll talk about finding meaning outside of work, coming to terms with difficult decisions, and trusting yourself especially when you’re making seemingly unconventional career moves. I also share some thoughts on how my sources of validation have evolved over time. Key Career Insights As an employee of a large company, sometimes you have to step back and recognize that your job will go on with or without you, which is especially important to remember when you have personal events or situations arise that demand your attention. Having a stable job at a reputable company can be a major source of validation, so if you lose that, you have to think about other ways you can still feel complete. Sometimes, other people can more easily see how unhappy you are before you’re able to admit it to yourself. Just because others think you’re at the perfect place to work, it doesn’t mean you should feel the same Resources Mentioned Colby was featured in this March 2019 Fast Company article, I took a huge pay cut for a more meaningful job, and it was nothing like I expected. Listener Challenge During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I challenged you to think about where you seek validation from. How much of your own sense of validation comes from within? How much it comes from others? And are you happy with this blend? Take a moment and jot down what makes you feel good about the choices you’re making in your career and life. Decide if those sources of validation feel right. If they are, use them as a guide whenever you’re wondering if you’re really on the right track. If they’re not right, make a choice right now to adjust them. About Colby Chilcote, Marketing Director at Huron Pines Colby Chilcote is Marketing Director at Huron Pines, a nonprofit organization that protects the health of the Great Lakes through the conservation and restoration of Michigan’s natural resources. Colby started her career at Google where she worked for a decade in marketing and online advertising, helping small businesses and nonprofits build an online presence. Colby holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Notre Dame. She lives and works in Northern Michigan where she enjoys exploring the woods and freshwater with her husband and two sons. She’s also been involved with Huron Pines opening its first nature preserve in 2019, on an 80-acre piece of property donated to the organization in 2018. The environmental nonprofit has been raising funds to support everything from trail maintenance to community programming at the preserve. The core of the Huron Pines mission is to connect people to nature in order to build vibrant and sustainable communities throughout Northern Michigan. The Hubbard Lake Nature Preserve will help achieve this goal. You can help support environmental education and learn more about the Hubbard Lake Nature Preserve or Huron Pines. Did You Enjoy This Episode? Please Let Us Know! Tweet: If you enjoyed this episode and have a few seconds to spare, Tweet to let me and Colby know! Tweet a thank you! Review: I’d also love for you to leave a positive review and rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, which helps my show reach more people who want to relaunch their careers. Subscribe: Be sure to subscribe to Career Relaunch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Android so you can automatically get each new episode on your device. Full instructions. Stay in touch: Follow Career Relaunch on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also follow host Joseph on Twitter and Facebook. Comments, Suggestions, or Questions? If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners! Leave Joseph a Voicemail You can also leave a comment below. Thanks! Thanks to A2 Hosting for Supporting Career Relaunch A2 Hosting is the web host provider I use and trust for my own websites, and they even offer 100% carbon neutral green hosting. For an easy, fast, and affordable way to get your personal website online today, visit careerrelaunch.net/a2 to get 50% off your web hosting plan. Episode Interview Transcript Teaser (first ~15s): I was really defined by my job. I spent a lot of time trying to think more about ‘what are my other interests outside of my job’ and ‘how can I feel validated without my work being the thing that gives me that validation.’ Joseph: Hello, Colby. Welcome to Career Relaunch. It is great to have you on the show. Colby: Thank you for having me. Joseph: I would like to talk with you about a few different topics today, including your decision to move on from a very reputable company, moving from the for-profit to non-profit world. Also, I want to touch on how much salary fills satisfaction. I was hoping you could just start us off by sharing a snapshot of what’s keeping you busy right now in your career and your life. Colby: Our annual report just hit mail boxes this week. That’s been a huge project that just wrapped up. Now, I am deep in event planning and getting things ready to open our first nature preserve this June and updating a bunch of communication materials ahead of our field season, which will start in the spring and the summer. Joseph: For those people who are not familiar with your organization, which is called Huron Pines, can you just give a snapshot of exactly what Huron Pines does and your role there? Colby: Huron Pines is an environmental conservation non-profit. We’re based in Northeast Michigan, so protecting the great lakes is a huge part of what we do. We do that through a lot of on-the-ground restoration initiatives, like connecting rivers by removing dams, getting rid of invasive species, supporting native habitat, all of those things. Another huge part of our work is connecting people to nature through environmental education and outreach events, those kinds of things. Essentially, the more that we can get people out loving nature, the more that we can hopefully protect all the natural resources that we have here and then protect the long-term sustainability of the great lakes. Joseph: I know you haven’t always been the marketing director there at Huron Pines, and I was hoping we could go back in time a little bit, Colby, and go all the way back to the roughly 10-year chapter of your career at Google and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Can you tell us about what you were doing at Google during those years? You don’t need to go all the details of every single role you had there. Maybe just give a glimpse into what you were doing in your most recent roles there, and then we can move forward from there. Colby: I had basically two chapters of jobs at Google. I started there right out of grad school. I was a liberal arts person, so I was really happy to get a job wherever anyone would take me. I was very, very lucky that Google was who took me. I started doing online advertising sales. I did that for about four years, and then I transitioned into marketing for the next five years or so. I worked in small business marketing, specifically trying to help small businesses get an online presence, like thinking about kind of local mom-and-pop shop kind of businesses, getting them to be comfortable with using the internet to help grow their businesses. That was what I spent a lot of my marketing focus on. Joseph: Aside from your functional marketing role there in your projects, can you paint a quick picture of what it’s really like to work at one of Google’s offices? Because I know that there’s always this intrigue about what it’s like to work at Google. We had people on the show before who have worked at the head office but not somebody who’s worked at a satellite office. Colby: It was a pretty nice gig. The office moved after I’ve been there for probably about eight years. We were, for a long time, right in the middle of Downtown Ann Arbor, which is really great. Then we moved to a bigger campus basically after we grew. Just the facility to work in is great. Basically all the things that you hear about are true. All the food is free. We had a chef in a cafeteria. There was a barista. There was a massage therapist on site. All of those things exist in their great perks. Joseph: Was there anything that surprised you most about working there? Colby: You start and it’s like so unbelievable that that’s a work environment, and then you, overtime, get really used to it. Then you take for granted all the things that are great about it. Now that I don’t have access to all of that, I appreciate that and realize how crazy it was that some of those trainings, there’s an Authors at Google program, where people would just come in that had written books and talk about them. Some of those kinds of things, like the fact that that was happening on a daily basis, now, is a little more mind-blowing than it was when I was there, because like I said, you just get used to all the crazy stuff that goes on there. Joseph: Before we talk about your transition out of Google, was there anything in particular that you found challenging about working at a place like Google, in spite of the fact that it sounds like there were such amazing perks and it sounds like a wonderful environment to work in? Colby: It kind of is a double-edged sword, because what is great about it is that the people that work there are really great and really self-motivated. It’s part of what makes it work and makes it successful. On the other side, there’s this culture of over-achievement and continued progress
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