Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, Beverly Glazer psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:37

What if the only way to find your path is to burn the old one down? Well, welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. And I'm Beverly Glazer, a transformational coach and catalyst, empowering women with strategies to rewrite the rules, reclaim their voice and create the life they were meant to live. And you can find me on reinventimpossiblecom. Wendy Alexander didn't follow the straight and narrow path. She forged a path of her own. She lived through silences, sacrifice and starting over more times than most people would ever dare. There's nothing stopping her. Today she's an interview and career coach, running her successful business Happy Career Hub. Wendy guides midlife professionals and menopausal women to break free from the secure narrative and achieve the careers that they longed for. If you are ready to reclaim your spark and reinvent what life can look like for you after 50, well,W endy's journey will light the way. Just keep listening. Welcome, Wendy.

Wendy Alexander: 1:50

Hello there.

Beverley Glazer: 1:52

Good to be here. Great to be here and I'm so glad because there's that Australian accent or South African accent. You're an Australian yeah, right, right, which I love. It's so charming. But you also originated from South Africa during the time of the apartheid. That was not a pleasant time. What was that like for you? You were just young.

Wendy Alexander: 2:23

Yeah. So I'd say the first seven years of life was pretty dandy, because when you're a kid you don't really know the environment that you're growing up in. So you know I'm in the neighborhood playing with the neighborhood children and mom and dad's there providing a secure and safe home. And I think my first encounter with apartheid was around age seven. One summer at the beach, family had gone down there with some friends. It was a fairly remote beach and within, I'd say, half an hour of being on the beach, we were approached by two policemen telling us asking us what we were doing on that beach. And back in those days and for all of the whole apartheid era, it was all about segregation. So there were signs everywhere. You know, whites only, beach or colours only, and so on and so on. And so we had missed that sign. That sign was actually hidden by a bush. So we looked at the beach it's smoke, no one's there. We went to play on the beach and build our sandcastles and all those things, and then the cops came and literally put the families off the beach, said you need to leave now, and so on and so on.

Wendy Alexander: 3:41

So I was quite young and I didn't understand what was going on and so on and so on. So I was quite young and I didn't understand what was going on. But I looked at my father's face and I looked at my mother's face and I knew something was off. As a kid, you can sense energy, you can sense vibration, and I just saw my dad really rigid and I thought something's wrong. And then we got anyway, we got into the car, we left as we were driving home I was the curious kid in the family that always, you know, the one always asking why. So I asked my dad, I said what's going on? Why couldn't we be on the beach? And dad was. He just said to me. I remember him saying to me can you for once just be quiet? That was his response to it. And I thought, oh, he never says that to me because I was always the curious child and dad used to read a lot of books to me, you know, shakespeare, all of those things, even at a young age, because he knew that I was so curious. So I was quiet.

Wendy Alexander: 4:43

And then, when we got home, he then sat us down and explained what the country was about, what it meant whites only what it meant, you know, because we obviously fell into the colored. Back then there was three classifications so white colored, which is mixed race, or biracial, which is what I am, and black. Those were the three segregations and everything was segregated according to those classifications. So you had the trains, the buses there was whites-only buses, whites-only carriages on the train, colored carriages, black carriages and so on. And I think I felt I remember I mean I look back now and I've had discussions with my partner and I said, you know when that happened, I realized I didn't realize it at the time, but I look back and I realized I lost my childhood because I became incredibly serious in me up until that age. It was like it just disappeared overnight and I started to get really curious. I started writing things, I started asking a lot more questions and I think only as I became a teenager or sort of at the age of 11, 12, I started to really understand what that meant in the country.

Wendy Alexander: 6:02

And then I became a political activist myself. I started marching, I started, you know, having signs everywhere, when I sometimes used to skip school to go to the rallies, the freedom rallies, you know. People were fighting for the freedom of the country, so I was caught up in quite a lot of things a lot of violence, because they would tear gas us and whip you and shoot into the crowd and all that type of thing, and that was the catalyst. My mother couldn't cope with wondering if her kids were going to come home safely. So dad started applying for migration to Australia and it took a number of years, like about eight years before we were rejected many times and then I think it was around the 10th time, maybe eight years later, where we were finally accepted for migration and the family migrated to Australia.

Wendy Alexander: 6:57

But South Africa was difficult I mean growing up like that, always having but then I was also. When I was a teenager I was so rebellious, you know, and I put myself in harm's way. I know that. I know I was in the rallies. They were shooting into the crowd, you know, and I would just be there with everyone else, you know, angry, wanting to find a way. So, yeah, not a safe environment.

Beverley Glazer: 7:22

Not a safe environment. And then you went from there to Australia. Did you immediately feel safe or were you also threatened? I mean, it's a huge transition. So what happened?

Wendy Alexander: 7:38

I didn't feel unsafe. But we were very confused and it took about two years for all of us myself and my siblings and my parents to really settle into life in Australia. Because I think that when you grow up in that kind of environment for so long, there's a level of subliminal programming that happens. And I remember one of the first times I was going into the city with my cousin and my cousin's aunt had been living out here for five years prior to when we arrived, so they had adjusted and I was going with my cousin into Melbourne city and we're waiting for the train, and so then the train pulls in and I said which, which carriage am I supposed to get in? And was like you're not in South Africa anymore, you can get into any carriage.

Wendy Alexander: 8:28

And I think when I asked that question I realized that there was some programming to undo, because my instinct was to look for where I belonged, where it was safe, what carriage could I get in, what movie, cinema could I go to, things like that it was all programmed and I was living in a country where I could go wherever I wanted. But it took a while to get used to that freedom and I do remember us sort of crying at my parents, saying we want to go back to South Africa. We had been trying to leave the country for so long and then we want to go back to South Africa. We had been trying to leave the country for so long and then we want to go back because it was so unfamiliar.

Beverley Glazer: 9:09

And what did your parents do here? They did everything to get you kids out of there and you're not adjusting. It's so strange.

Wendy Alexander: 9:18

What was going on. The thing is, I think my father was the only one that was holding steady, because my mom was so worried about her kids and we were so unhappy for the first 18 months. I would say that she at times wondered, you know, if they'd made the right decision. But you know, we persevered and I think my father spoke to his sister about her two children, my cousins and they also had taken a moment to adjust and she said just keep moving through it, they'll settle in and it'll happen when you least expect it. And it was kind of like that.

Wendy Alexander: 9:55

It was just like you know, one day everything falls into place. You know your way around the land, and so now you start to feel comfortable and obviously there was a great sense of freedom, knowing, when it finally sunk in, I can go wherever I want. There's opportunities for me here. You know I can go to university, and back then in Australia my goodness, I wish it was still the case now, but back then university costs like $250 a year in the fee and then you just paid for your books. You bought and paid for your books, so it was so cheap. They did eventually bring in what is now called the HECS and you know obviously you pay that off over a period of time. But I did my university and graduated the year before they brought the new rules in, where suddenly education was ridiculously expensive, you know.

Wendy Alexander: 10:49

So, for me. I feel lucky that I actually got through the graduation, and the year after I graduated was when they brought in these new education rules and policies and all of these things.

Beverley Glazer: 11:02

So by the time you were in university, did you feel assimilated? Or were you still back in South Africa thinking, okay, this is an okay place, but it's still not home?

Wendy Alexander: 11:14

No, I felt reasonably assimilated, but there was. What I started to notice was there was some trauma that showed up because I went. I met a friend. I was taking a Spanish class and I met a friend, he was from Spain and we started hanging out and he was so curious and then one day he said, oh, shall we go to the movies or something? And went off to the movies and back then Cry Freedom, which was the story of Stephen Biko, who was one of the most prolific activists in South Africa.

Wendy Alexander: 11:45

That film was being shown in Australia and I went with him to see the film and I just cried like a baby through all of this watching this, because you know, they show his rise in South Africa. He was eventually killed in jail, so he was jailed for being a political activist and was eventually murdered by the police. But they show that whole rise and how he fought and the sacrifices he made for the country. A lot like Mandela, but he died much younger. He was actually killed in jail.

Wendy Alexander: 12:17

Mandela wasn't killed in jail, but they were freedom fighters and I was just sobbing and this guy was just like he didn't know what to do with me and he was apologizing and apologizing, he's going. I'm sorry I shouldn't have brought you to this movie and I was like you know what I actually needed to see, what I'd just come through. But I remember him just being so mortified that he had taken me to see a movie about my country and one of the most prolific activists in our country. But that was the realization for me that there was a lot of healing to do around all of that, you know. So I felt safe physically, but emotionally I was still processing lots and lots of things and during that time you graduated.

Beverley Glazer: 13:10

Yes, you had a relationship. There was a child. Yep, you got out of a relationship. You're still a mother now, and now a single mother. How did you manage that? You're still young.

Wendy Alexander: 13:27

Yeah, I'm still young. Look, the relationship was so I met him in probably the third year of being in Australia and we were together for almost nine years. But it was a good relationship until probably five or six years and then after that there started to be some challenges and he had a violent temperament. So domestic violence was something that started happening in the relationship. And towards the end of the relationship I fell pregnant and then first of all, realized that there was an affair going on. So that was number one, and then number two, he. I don't know what happened there, but he acted as though I had had the effect the, I guess, being caught. I don't know what it was, but he just lost it. And so I he ended up hurting me. I ended up in hospital, almost lost the baby because I was four months pregnant at the time, and that was the end of it for me. You know, once I came out of hospital I was like I'm done, got a restraining order, all of those things, and started to pack up the life that I'd built with him, a home that I had worked three jobs because I was the one that secured that home put the house on the market. It sold at a loss and I started life with a baby in my belly and a massive debt over my head, right. So that was I actually call that period. I call it the rock the rock bottom. That truly was the rock bottom of my life, because I lost everything I've worked for. I built up a life after university and working in my jobs and things.

Wendy Alexander: 15:19

Um created the house. We had the house for five or so years and then it was gone because the relationship ended. And it wasn't just a case of the relationship ending. There was the domestic violence piece of it, but there was also. He emptied out the bank accounts so he left me with nothing. I mean, we had to end up changing. A friend of mine gave me the money to change the locks on the house and then the house went on the market. The police came in, all of that kind of thing was going on, and so when I started after the house sold and it was sold at a loss, so there was a huge debt left of it he walked away from all of that responsibility and it literally fell on my shoulders to be mother, father and provider for my daughter. So it was a very scary beginning.

Beverley Glazer: 16:15

Yes, and you did this single handedly. Yeah. How did you support yourself? What did you do with the baby?

Wendy Alexander: 16:24

So with the so she was. I actually moved back in with my parents after that situation happened because obviously, my parents were like you need to bring this baby to term, you know. So I moved in with my parents. I got the support there in terms of them really taking care of me and really keeping an eye on me to make sure, but you know, that was it was during that time though. So, from five months pregnant to the time I brought the baby into the world, I was an absolute mess, you know, couldn't stop crying, and it was awful for my parents to watch that as well, you know, and my daughter was going to be their first grandchild, so they were very protective, trying to help me get over that whole situation.

Wendy Alexander: 17:10

I did continue to work, but I did because I ended up in hospital. I spoke to my boss, I went to the boss and I just laid it out. Like I just said, this is what's happened in my life. I'm pregnant, and he was amazing. I will say and this is, I suppose, a message or a teaching point for most people it's like sometimes you simply have to be vulnerable, authentic and share what's going on, because people are never going to know how to support you if you don't say anything. So I told him this has happened, the relationships ended, lost the house, all of this and he just said to me I think you need to look at the working hours and how we do. Because he said I don't want you to be under this kind of stress. So that was the first time I negotiated working from home. So he we had a conversation and he said you need to do the remaining three months of your pregnancy from home. And so I was able to do that and I did work and it was look, work was a great distraction because I was so heartbroken that it got me through the days. At nights I would be crying my eyes out and my mother would be comforting me and trying to, you know, soothe me, but during the day I was very focused on my work. So it was really good to be able to do that.

Wendy Alexander: 18:37

And so another teaching moment is that wasn't the time of remote work. Nobody was doing it, but you ask for it if you need it. You know this is what I'm saying I say to a lot of my female clients is like, when you need something, you can't just assume that you're not going to get it if you haven't asked, like ask first and then figure out which way you go. So I did ask for that and when I came off maternity leave, I came off early because there was a project in trouble Another manager at the place I had been working at. He needed help, the kind of help that I was an expert in bringing the derailed projects back on track. And so he rang me and he said listen, I've been given your name. I know you're on maternity leave. I know you've just had a baby. So she was four months at that stage. Can you come back early? And I thought, oh, here's an opportunity. So I asked, I said to him yeah, I'll come back early, but I need to work from home for four days of the week. I'll come into the office one day. Do my meetings, all my meetings have to happen on that day, because I'm only coming in once. And I asked for what I wanted and I said we can trial it for three months, see how it goes. The thing is I knew I was going to deliver because I wanted that situation to continue. So here's the other piece If you ask for something, it has to be a two-way street. You need to give as well. So here's the other piece If you ask for something, it has to be a two-way street. You need to give as well. So I delivered my projects, I rescued that project that was going off the rails, and they were amazing. They let me continue to work from home, you know.

Wendy Alexander: 20:15

But I also, at that stage, realized I needed to make more money because the debt was drowning me, you know. And so I then started to put out my resume. Well, that wasn't exactly the case. I started having coffees with recruiters because I was like, who can help me make more money? The people that decide about jobs. And the people that decide about jobs are hiring managers or recruiters. So I started to put a plan together to have coffee with them, and I simply I was fairly authentic. I said I'm trying to change my career trajectory, I would like your insight or your perspective. And people were generous, and this is again the same message, and it's been my message for a lot of years. It's like ask for what you need Now. You're not always going to get it, but you're definitely not going to get it if you don't ask Right, because nobody's going to know you need it.

Beverley Glazer: 21:16

And so why, after this, you're building a life now and you're in Australia. Why did you decide to go to America, to California and then to New York? Why?

Wendy Alexander: 21:30

So my daughter was growing up. Her father was American, right, he was from New York. She was around four or five, I think, and I was getting a little bit restless myself. I had built up a reasonably successful career at that stage and a lot of it was in high-powered corporate roles, and part of me wanted a break from that. The other part was I always wanted to see America myself. I don't know if that was the attraction to him. I don't know because I was like I always wanted to see America myself. I don't know if that was the attraction to him. I don't know, because I was like I always wanted to see America. But then also I was still in touch with his mother, who had always been great to me. You know we had never met, but she was always in touch with me over the years that I was with him and since the baby was born, she would always send every year a card, a birthday card, christmas card, money for my daughter. So she was amazing and I remember one of the conversations I had with her. She said I really want to meet her and I said, okay, I will eventually come to America, and so I decided to just give it a try. I had traveled there once or twice before, that liked it, had friends there, and then decided okay, we're going to go and try it out. So we went off to California. I had switched into non-for-profit working with substance abuse people so I did a lot of the writing grant writing, because I was always writing and I did grant writing for this organization. So I had a job there.

Wendy Alexander: 23:11

And then he had gone, her father had gone back to America and he somehow found out that I was in California and sent. After all these years of not being in touch, he said look, I know you probably don't want to hear from me, but you know I would like her to meet my mother and that was part of you know. So then I went to New York but it was only a short trip two weeks and took her to meet her other grandmother and obviously caught up with him again. By that stage I'd processed all of the stuff. He was perplexed about why I had never forgiven him. I'm like, oh my goodness. I was like, dude, you hurt me, you know, and I really had to struggle to hang on to the baby Like I was like. Anyway, we had a conversation. It was a reasonably healing one for me. I don't know what it did for him, but we didn't really stay in touch after that. I had taken her to meet the grandmother. I was happy about that and California was great, like I really enjoyed it, and my visa was renewed a couple of times there, but then I think it was the fourth visa application renewal where they said no time for you to go home. So I was in California for about two years and I enjoyed it.

Wendy Alexander: 24:30

I saw through the substance abuse program.

Wendy Alexander: 24:33

I saw a different life.

Wendy Alexander: 24:36

I saw what could happen when people don't have the kind of support they need.

Wendy Alexander: 24:43

Life throws incredible challenges at them, because a lot of the people that I met who turned up at this foundation were people who had become homeless as well, so some of them were veterans. There was a lot of trauma there and I could see all of this and I realized how fortunate I had been to have the support of my parents and my community and my bosses at work, and so I was like, wow, this is what could have happened. You know, if I didn't have the support that I got now I think I would have fought hard anyway because there was a child. So I don't know that I would have ended up on the streets, because there is something in me and there was something that arose in me which is how I transformed my career was when I realized I needed more money. I started having these conversations with these recruiters and things, and that changed things for me and I did catapult my career. There was the fight in me, you know, and largely it was due to wanting to give my daughter a really good life.

Beverley Glazer: 26:01

And the fight in you started with apartheid? Yes, it did.

Wendy Alexander: 26:06

Yes, it really did. Yes, yes, it did, because you know, my father used to be trying to calm me down and pull me back, rein me in, but I was so determined to be a part of some of the change that I saw needed to happen in the country that, as I said, I did put myself in harm's way many times and I was very fortunate that I didn't catch a bullet like many people did or that I didn't end up arrested and in jail like many people did.

Beverley Glazer: 26:36

Exactly. And now you're back in Australia, you and your daughter. What came next?

Wendy Alexander: 26:45

So I came back to Australia and the night that it was so funny because I landed on a Thursday night back from California, from LA. And the Friday morning I got a call from one of my ex-bosses and he said I heard you back in the country and I'm like I only landed last night how do you know I'm back in the country. And he was like you know the grapevine, and I had been in touch with a few of my ex-colleagues. So then one of them knew I was coming back and they knew when I was arriving back and he said to me I have a project that I need to get back. It was again, you know, the derailed project. Somehow I always end up with those. He said I have a job for you, can you start Monday? And I said don't you need me? I said because he was the senior manager and then the projects were being run by different people. And I said don't, I need to have an interview with the guy I'm going to report to. He goes no, I'm the boss, I've decided I know your work. And so here's another thing that I want to say is I had built the networks through those five years when I transformed my career.

Wendy Alexander: 28:00

I've kept in touch. I always tried to deliver above and beyond, and that is part of how you get what you want, because my networks were strong and so when I landed back in Australia, I didn't have to hunt, I didn't have to go out and look for the next job. It came to me. And so these are some of the things that when I work with women. There's a few pieces. You figure out what you have to offer. You need to work on your confidence. So I didn't just become confident after being so heartbroken. I put myself in professional counseling because I knew that I felt broken and I knew that I didn't want that passing on to my daughter.

Wendy Alexander: 28:51

And ultimately, I never wanted to be a victim of life, and that started in South Africa. I was like I'm never going to be a victim of life. Yes, I'm going to probably be confused and I might get hurt from time to time, and there's going to be challenges, because that is just life. It is what happens and, no matter what we do, we can never avoid that. Right, there's challenges one way or the other, but I didn't ever want to be the person you know singing and playing a violin to a victim narrative. That wasn't me, and so always I dug deep to pull out the fight in me, the fighter, the resilience in various circumstances. You know, in various circumstances, you know, in South Africa, in adjusting to Australia, in losing my partnership, my relationship and then having to start losing my money, all my money, losing my house and bringing up your daughter single-handed, and we can go on and on.

Beverley Glazer: 29:58

Yeah. And starting a business stepping out of a secure network of people and creating something brand new. Let's talk about that Launching the Happy Career Hub. What's that about?

Wendy Alexander: 30:12

Yeah, so that wasn't brand new. When I left corporate, because I had catapulted my career and I jumped from rock bottom to a reasonably high paying job within a very short space of time, there were people around me my colleagues, my family, my friends who probably I'd been in that new job that was paying me really well for about a year or 18 months, and people started asking me how did you do that? How did you go from there to there? Because they knew the story. The ones around me knew that I'd lost everything. They knew that I'd started again with a baby and that I was raising a child by myself, and so they just asked me how did you do that?

Wendy Alexander: 30:57

And I actually started helping people. And it wasn't a business, because I was helping people for free. I just started showing them how I'd written, rewritten my resume. I would practice with them, with their interviews, because I'd learned the techniques from recruiters those recruiters and those hiring managers who had helped me. So I suppose what I was doing was paying it forward. Right, someone had paid it forward to me. I was doing well and I thought people would come and ask for help and I just said oh yeah, okay, let's go.

Wendy Alexander: 31:25

And so I was probably working with people about five hours a week, so it wasn't a lot of hours because I was in this other job full time. But people started to get success the same success that I had gotten and then they started to send their friends. So suddenly there was referrals happening and then I was like, hang on a minute, this is a business, this is something I can do. And so I started to charge, but at a very, very low rate because I was earning really good money at that stage. But I did remember having conversations with people and they said you need, you've got a system here and you need to use it and you need to alter charge. Because one person said to me people don't always value what they get for nothing and they don't always execute. Like you've got the system, you've got this way to help people and they don't always execute on things that they haven't paid for. And I did notice that some of the time. I did notice some people that I was helping they wouldn't do what I asked them to do or they wouldn't follow through, and then a year later they'd come back to me and they're still in the same stuck place. So, yes, so then I started as a business, but it was very much a side business for 15, 16 years because I was growing from strength to strength.

Wendy Alexander: 32:48

But when I went through menopause, that was the thing that upended a lot of things for me, because it was unexpected. I was 45 years old, so it came a lot earlier than I'd expected and I had not expected it to come with the symptoms that it did, and the biggest one for me was brain fog, and that really dashed my confidence, because I was a high performer in my job. I was delivering, you know, like 200, $300 million programs of work, managing big teams and so on, and suddenly my brain isn't working the way. I was always so reliant on my ability, my organizational skills, and everything's going to mush. I'm forgetting things, I'm also experiencing such severe symptoms I have to dash out of meetings, you know. So it really eroded my confidence. And when you're working at that level, running these major programs of work, there is always a level of stress that comes with that. Because you're delivering fast, quickly, things go wrong, you have to adjust, you have to pivot, you have to take the project in a different direction, and then, of course, the lack of sleep, the insomnia that also came with menopause. So between all of these things it put me under severe stress and I knew I was like this is not sustainable. I'm going to end up with some health issues if I'm not careful. And so I started to reevaluate and I also noticed that at that stage.

Wendy Alexander: 34:32

So I'd been in corporate at that high level for about 23 years and I started to notice that I wasn't happy anymore. I was bored. Most of the time I could do what I was doing in my sleep, so there was not a lot stimulating me anymore. The only stimulation I was getting was stress stimulation because I had big deadlines and I had to deliver to big budgets. But the actual work was so boring, you know, and I started to notice that I was feeling bored. I was starting to get discontent.

Wendy Alexander: 35:04

Along comes menopause, or the stress that goes with that, and it was like a perfect storm, a collision that told me I needed to make a change. And when I started to do my self-assessment because and this is something that I do with other women we do go through a foundational piece where we do the self-assessment, we have a look, because you need to know what it is that you really want to do next, not just take a stab in the dark Right. And so I looked at life and I said you know what? Looked at life and I said you know what, the only time I feel really happy, even when I'm stressed, even when I haven't had a lot of sleep, is when I'm helping people get the jobs that they want. There was something meaningful about that work and all. When I was helping people through an interview practice and I saw they come to me and they're nervous and they're stumbling over their answers and then we have a few sessions. By the time they're ready to go and interview with a company, they're confident and they ace the interview and they get the job.

Wendy Alexander: 36:08

Like for me, that was just. I was like visibly watching the change and I said to myself you know what? I'm turning this into a full-time business. So the five hours a week or the little that I was doing, it became the full-time business. Now that's not an easy thing to do because I did transition slowly. So it took 18 months for me to transition out of corporate and into the business. And I did it deliberately that way, because I wanted to save enough money to back myself.

Wendy Alexander: 36:40

And this is one of the things that I do when I speak with the women. I am not the girl that will say just walk out of the job, because if you put yourself under financial challenges, you're going to have a level of stress that is just too much to cope with and in fact, it's not going to help you be able to negotiate for what you really want, because when you're struggling financially, you're automatically not in a position of strength to negotiate powerfully. So I am not the girl that will say to people they come to me and they're discontented and they don't, they hate their job I'm not going to say, well, leave it tomorrow. No, we actually work a plan, we create a strategy, we create volunteering opportunities. So if there's skills that are missing, you go and get those skills that are missing through your volunteer work.

Wendy Alexander: 37:35

I've also seen at volunteering where, because I've done it myself I did it before I left corporate I would go volunteer at organizations and I would meet huge key players in corporations, like I had met CEOs who were also volunteering. You get to know these people. In that situation I had job offers from everywhere, ceos saying to me I've been watching you work with that team on this. You know we would volunteer at this homeless shelter and they go. One of the CEOs came to me I've been watching you work with that team on this. You know we would volunteer at this homeless shelter and they go. One of the CEOs came to me said I'm just watching how you communicate with people. He said do you want to come work for me? So this is why it's not.

Wendy Alexander: 38:13

The volunteering is not just something I work, a strategy with my clients to do for the sake of getting skills. It's for the sake of putting them in front of opportunities as well, because an opportunity can come from anywhere. That's what I've seen. It's happened in my career, it's happened in all the people I've worked with. They're volunteering and suddenly someone's offering them a job and that's part of that networking piece, you know. So, yeah, I ended up leaving corporate and creating my own business and for a long time and I still do work with some men, like a lot of CEOs or executive management, when they want to move up the ladder or they want to change to a different industry industry, but most recently it's mostly midlife women, because once I came out of that journey I was like man women. We need a voice, we need help. So part of my work is advocacy for the midlife woman, not simply helping them.

Beverley Glazer: 39:15

Absolutely, I agree with you there. So tell me, wendy, what's one tip that you would like to share to women that are listening to pursue their passion.

Wendy Alexander: 39:30

So the tip that I have and it's the foundational piece that I do with everybody and I actually have this resource on my website. It's a free resource and I call it Mining your Story and what I did with that and that's the self-assessment piece. So in that worksheet you go through the patterns of your life, that have threaded through your life, because that's going to inform you about the things that you really like doing. So, for example, in my case, writing was a theme From the time I couldn't process apartheid and what was going on. From the time I was a kid, I started to write. Through my teenage years I wrote poetry lots of dark poetry, I will say, because I was very angry and rebellious but I wrote through that. Then, when I got through university so I did English. Literature was one of my majors in psychology Writing was always threading its way through, and so when I started to assess and do my own patterns, I was like, no matter what I've gone through in life, this writing thread is always there.

Wendy Alexander: 40:31

And the other thread that was always there was I like helping people. So I had volunteered at homeless shelters in Cape Town in South Africa when I was a teen. I'd worked with disabled kids. I was like I like helping people, contributing something to people. So there's two themes and that's why, when I was ready to make the switch, I was like, what is it that I can do? And I was like, hang on, I already have it. I'm helping people with their resumes and their LinkedIn profiles and their interviews. I already have something, and writing is a part of that. So that's how I was able to move.

Wendy Alexander: 41:05

So I wouldn't say seamlessly, because the money side of it had to be handled. I had to save enough to back myself. But I knew what I wanted to do from doing the self-assessment piece, and this is what I do with every woman and the listeners can go to the website, grab that worksheet and actually start there. Go and dig into your own story, because you need to find the gold. That's why I call it mining your story. You're mining for your gold, your challenges that you've overcome, because if you've overcome, you have a set of skills. It takes something to overcome in life. So whether you have resilience, whether you have bravery, whether you have that ability to simply not quit, it is within you, otherwise you wouldn't overcome whatever it is you've been through is within you. Otherwise you wouldn't overcome whatever it is you've been through. There's also the patterns.

Wendy Alexander: 41:56

Then I look in the worksheet, we look at the future. You know if you had the magic wand and could just dream about the ideal career, write about it like get it out of the system, get it on paper. It's going to show you something about yourself. And then we identify the key skills, like what is it that you do? Maybe people come to you for advice and you don't even know that that's a skill you have because you do it so seamlessly, you do it so automatically.

Wendy Alexander: 42:24

You know you might be the person that knows how to work a budget and so everyone will come and say, oh, I've overspent again. How do you do the budget thing? You know, or you might be. In my case, people knew I loved words, so they would come to me to write. I've written wedding speeches for people because they know how much I love words, right? So that was the thing that's. Oh, words, words, words, writing, writing, writing. This is your thing. So for me it's like go and dig into your story, do the foundational piece and I will say it's the piece that most people try to avoid.

Wendy Alexander: 43:00

They want to make the change, they want to make the career change, they want to go into a different industry. They might even want to start a new business, but they want to avoid the foundational piece. The thing is, if you do the foundational piece, everything that follows, that is a lot easier to do. Thank you. So that's the tip Go dig, go mine your story, dig deep.

Beverley Glazer: 43:24

Thank you. Thank you, Wendy. Wendy Alexander is the owner and founder of Happy Career Hub. Founder of Happy Career Hub, she's an interview and career coach who believes that midlife is the perfect time to claim the career of your dreams. Wendy helps clients present themselves so well that they can't be ignored. They negotiate with confidence and they create an income and lifestyle that they've always dreamed of.

Beverley Glazer: 43:54

Here are some takeaways from this episode. When the system breaks, you build your own system. Silence your shoulds and follow your fire. Your next chapter doesn't need permission. You have more value than you think that you do.

Beverley Glazer: 44:15

If you've been wondering how you can start moving your life forward, take one small step in the right direction. Perhaps you can take a walk and imagine where you'd want to be in the future, or let go of one tax that drains you. Or tell yourself I can't, don't ever do that. Catch the cats. If you want it, you will find a way For similar episodes on midlife reinvention and changing your career over 50, please check out episodes 112 and 120 of Aging with Purpose and Passion. And, if you love travel, well, tune into the Ageless Traveler podcast and subscribe to Travel Tuesday newsletter. The Ageless Traveler is the number one resource for active travelers 60 plus. It's hosted by Adrienne Berg, whose mission is to ensure that you never stop traveling, and all those links will be in the show notes below. Where can people learn more about you, wendy, and find out about your services? What are your links?

Wendy Alexander: 45:27

So Happycareerhubcom is the website and it's probably the easiest way to find me because I have my resources there and I also have a calendar there where people can book a 15 minute chat with me and I do that for free if they feel they need a little bit of direction. Sometimes people only come and just want to know direction. They need to go in. Sometimes they come because they say I need some help with my interviews, you know. So everything is available on the website and then LinkedIn. I'm also on LinkedIn. That's where I do a lot of my free posts and my audios giving tips on interviews, on career change, on resume writing, on LinkedIn profile writing. That's all at the LinkedIn and that's Wendy A Alexander. So I couldn't get Wendy Alexander, someone else had it, so I had to put my middle initial there, so there's two A's in the middle. Wendy A Alexander is the LinkedIn handle.

Beverley Glazer: 46:23

Perfect, because Wendy's links are also going to be in the show notes and they'll be on my site too. That's reinventedpossiblecom. And now, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you really passionate about your life? Get my free checklist from stuck to unstoppable and have quick, actionable strategies that actually work. That link, where will it be? Yep, in the show notes right below, and you can connect with me, beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over 50 Rock, and if you're looking for guidance in your own life, I invite you to explore reinventimpossiblecom. Thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please drop a review, share it with a friend and always remember that you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Speaker 1: 47:33

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossiblecom and, while you're there, join our newsletter Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.