So Glad You Asked
Conversations on career, leadership and living an intentional life with CliftonStrengths® Certified Life & Career Coach and Founder of Whole Human Co. Jean Madison
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So Glad You Asked
Redefining Success: My Story from Idealist to Entrepreneurship through Burnout & Back
The episode dives into my personal journey, outlining the evolution from a challenging corporate job to founding Whole Human Co. It emphasizes the importance of purpose, support, and understanding one's strengths to create a fulfilling career.
• Sharing background and early passion for helping others
• Discussing challenges faced in the nonprofit job market
• Transitioning to corporate recruitment and facing burnout
• Realizing the need for alignment with personal values
• Establishing Whole Human Co and emphasizing self-care
• Importance of support systems and defining personal success
• Lessons learned from strengths coaching and empowering clients
If this sounds interesting to you, if it sounds like, oh, that might be something that I need, just reach out, comment, you know, follow, subscribe to the podcast, let me know what you think, but also reach out and schedule a discovery call.
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Welcome back to so Glad you Asked, the podcast where we have conversations on career leadership and living an intentional life using CliftonStrengths and conversations with me, jean Madison, a certified life and career coach and the founder of Whole Human Co. Coach and the founder of Whole Human Co. This week, on so Glad you Asked, we'll be talking all about me. This week we're talking about my story, my background, what makes me who I am, what makes me qualified to do the work that I do, what drives me to do the work that I do, and just to help everyone understand where I'm coming from in my work. Just as a reminder, the purpose of this podcast is really to be able to connect with all of you on the work that I do in a way that I do it best, which is talking, bite-sized answers to questions I'm often asked, many coaching sessions on challenges I'm seeing with my clients and a way for you to connect with me and my work on a more consistent basis. To answer the first question what is Whole Human Co? I'm so glad you asked. Let's dive in. I want to start off today's podcast by talking a little bit about my background. Some of you may know some of this, some of you may not. So we're just going to start by giving everyone a basis of understanding of who I am, where I come from, where Whole Human Co comes from, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:So going back to, honestly, childhood I was going to start in college, but it really really goes back to childhood. I've always had this passion for helping people and I know that that sounds really cheesy, but hear me out. You know, in sixth grade I cared a lot about world peace. I did an entire year long project on the United Nations. From there I decided that I really cared about what was going on in the world and this passion really carried with me into college, where I studied international studies and social justice studies. And my goal in college was really to go on and work for an NGO. And then, halfway through college, when I picked up social justice studies, I got more interested in what was happening closer to home and really set my sights on the nonprofit world. In college I really had this firm vision. And then, post-grad, I kind of had this realization of how challenging it was to make that vision a reality. And what I mean by that is that, as with the majors that I had, I knew I was going to work in nonprofit.
Speaker 1:What I didn't understand and what I don't feel was adequately explained to me in my idealistic early twenties, is that nonprofits are like small businesses, and like small businesses, they don't have the capacity to hire a lot of unskilled or fresh out of college individuals. And so I started applying to jobs. I started applying to, you know, full-time positions in nonprofits but, to be honest, I had no business applying to. But I did it anyway because I really thought that I was qualified, I really thought that I could bring value to those positions and I probably could have. But knowing what I know now, they were probably right to not hire me.
Speaker 1:So, as I was wrapping up my senior year, I was applying to many, many, many nonprofit roles, getting rejected from many, many, many nonprofit roles. I went to college at a school that has a prominent business school, so all of my friends already had jobs lined up. They all knew what they were going to be doing come August and I was panicking. But more than panicking, I was just really disappointed. I didn't understand how I put in all of this work and it didn't seem to matter. And I know that there are probably a lot of people listening to this who are like yep, had the same experience. You know, did all this work in college, graduated college, and it was kind of like what for?
Speaker 1:So, as I was interviewing for roles, I interviewed for a role at my university with um, I think, the alumni department. I can't remember exactly, but they were gracious enough to interview me. I did not, I was not qualified for that role at all, but they really allowed me to go through the process. They kind of took me under their wing and from that I was referred to a position at a corporation. Needless to say, was not super excited about it. It's one of the largest tech companies in the world, not based in the US, and it just was not at all what I had pictured for myself post-grad.
Speaker 1:But I took the interview because at the time it was July, I had already graduated and I didn't have anything lined up and I needed something. So I ended up in a corporate job that, to be honest, didn't require a college degree. It was a recruitment coordinator role. First of all, I did not know that people got paid to recruit people. At my university it's all alumni that come back for the career fairs, or at least that's what I thought because, to be honest, I had never been to a career fair in my life. But I interviewed for this role, I got accepted, I took it.
Speaker 1:I felt both defeated and excited to have my first kind of big girl job. Defeated, though, because it wasn't a nonprofit, it wasn't using any of my education, it didn't need any of my education and I was getting paid hourly. I wasn't even a salaried employee, and so you know, that was kind of a hard pill to swallow, but I was still really motivated to learn. I, it turns out, I really enjoyed recruitment. However spoiler alert that company sucked. Oh my God. It was so bad, the culture was so bad, the way that people were treated was so bad, and I was in kind of the early like the college recruiting team, so we were recruiting people who were me basically to come and do a training program computer science training program with this company. The one really really good thing that came out of this is that I had a couple of incredible mentors. Really good thing that came out of this is that I had a couple of incredible mentors, women who had been in recruitment for a while, who were very good at it, and so I really got to learn a lot from them.
Speaker 1:But my favorite moment that sticks out to me is that one day my mentor, renita she had just started with the organization, probably like two or three weeks beforehand, and she said, hey, let's go for a walk. It was like lunchtime and on that walk she turned and looked at me and she said if you act, if you worked or acted the way that this organization encourages you to work or act in any other organization, you would be fired immediately. So figure it out. And she didn't mean it in the sense that, like I, was a horrible person and doing the wrong things, but she meant it in the sense that you are new to the working world, you are engaging in activities in an environment that allows for that and encourages that, and that's not normal. This is not a normal environment. You should not be doing the things that were happening on our team. And so I do feel lucky that I wasn't. I don't feel like I was really doing a lot of it, but I was going along with a lot of it. You know, my boss ended up getting fired for not the reasons we think that they should have been fired, but for selling inappropriate things on the internet and using the company's corporate address as her company's address. So that just gives you a little picture of what that first year of my professional life was like.
Speaker 1:So, a year in, by this time I had moved into a formal recruiter role. I hadn't actually done a full season of recruitment yet, but I was a salaried recruiter at this point. But I was miserable. I was miserable. I was living in a city I didn't want to live in. I was doing work that I actually enjoyed. I really enjoyed college recruiting. I just did not believe in the organization that I was recruiting for at all.
Speaker 1:And so you know that, combined with challenging bosses, very low pay, et cetera, et cetera, I just knew that I had to start looking for new jobs. The boss that I had at the time would send gist emails. If you know what gist is, get your shit together. And I'm not saying like I know a lot of people use that term kind of jokingly with love. It was not with love. It was size 72, red bold font that said G Y S T. Anytime she didn't like something that was done, um, or something wasn't done to her standards. Again, I'm 22, like I'm learning here, um, and this was the boss that I was dealing with. So I was, you know, burning out very quickly.
Speaker 1:I was very unhappy and I started looking for roles and I kind of ended up in that same place again, where I kept finding roles that I was interested in but I wasn't really qualified for them and this time around I wasn't quite as optimistic. So I wasn't going and applying to all of these jobs, thinking like, oh, it's fine, I'm probably qualified. I was like, no, I'm not qualified, I'm not going to apply for that. But I ended up coming across what at the time, was a dream role. It was remote, it was college recruitment, it involves travel, it was working for an education nonprofit Like truly, it was just everything that at the time I was looking for. It was the combination of all the things I had wanted in college, plus, you know, this newfound experience in recruitment. But I really did not think I was qualified. I was like you know what I haven't done a full year of recruitment as a full-time recruiter. They need someone who's going to manage an entire territory Like there's no possible way they're going to hire me for this role. So I honestly wasn't going to apply and this is going to be the cheesiest thing you've ever heard. So just buckle up.
Speaker 1:One day I was driving home from work after I had seen this role and it was a particularly shitty day at work and I drove past a Lululemon which was in my neighborhood and on the window of this Lululemon they had written surround yourself with those on the same mission as you. And I read that and I was like, yeah, what I'm doing right now it ain't it Like I am not surrounding myself with people on the same mission as me and I need to be doing that. And so I went home and I applied for the role and the rest is history just kidding. But that sentiment is one that I really carried with me in my work for the last decade. It is what motivated me to apply for the role of education non-profit which I did end up getting, and it really was the beginning of a really, really fun part of my career. But it's it's a, it's a statement that I still refer back to. Am I surrounding myself with those on the same mission as me? Because, guess what, my mission has changed over the years. And that's fine and that's expected, and that's something I encourage as a coach at Whole Human Co, but it really was kind of the foundation that kicked off everything that was to come so fast forward in my non-profit work. I rose through the ranks quote-unquote pretty quickly. I moved into a lead recruiter role within a year or two and then moved into director of recruitment, which is the role that I had when I ended up leaving the organization. I loved my work at this organization. I loved the people that I worked with until I didn't.
Speaker 1:Things changed about six years in. Leadership changed, expectations changed. Covid happened. You know, this global uprising around race and equity, which is something that we had focused on deeply in our organization, was core to the work that we did, but now was suddenly on this more public, more intense stage. It deeply affected my team. Covid deeply affected my team. The new leadership that came in just really wanted to do things very differently than the way we had done them before, which I understand because we were trying to reach goals that we had never reached before.
Speaker 1:But what happened in that kind of changing of the guard is that I went from working on a small three-person team that really complemented one another's strengths, made it possible for all of us to do the things we were really good at to being on a team structure where it was much more siloed and I was now expected to kind of execute on projects and activities from start to finish, which, spoiler alert, is not my strengths. And so, as things changed, it really felt like my strengths were no longer valued in the same way that they had been before, and this need for me to really do things that were so far outside of the things that I do well just caused me to burn all the way out. That obviously combined with the things happening in the world. So, at the end of 2020, I was essentially offered offered the opportunity to be demoted. Um, basically, I was told that I never should have been in a director, put put into a director role because I wasn't prepared for it, which, again, not completely untrue, but I don't think I did a bad job in that role. Our team hit goals for the first time ever in organization history under my leadership. So you know, we'll just leave that there, um, but I was somewhat invited to find a new role within the organization or move to an assistant director role, and at the time, you know, had this happened earlier, had this happened before my burnout, maybe I would have been open-minded to the idea, but at the point that it happened, I felt like I was kind of being overlooked. I felt like I was being not supported very well in my role and not recognized for the things that I had done. And I know that in listening to this like even if I was listening to this I would be like, oh, suck it up. But it's true, that was the feelings that I had. I'm not saying what happened was completely, um, the wrong choice by any means, but it was disappointing. I was heartbroken, I was exhausted, I was demoralized. Um, and then enter Samantha, my strengths coach.
Speaker 1:Uh, so, in early 2021, by a weird parental turn of events, I was connected with Samantha, who was a strengths coach, and I worked with her to try and figure out what was going to come next for me. I knew that it wasn't going to be with the organization that I was with. I just couldn't find a path forward that felt good, and so I ended up, toward the spring of 2021, with two options I was in the interviewing process for a VP of recruitment role at another nonprofit, or I could go my own way. I was in the interviewing process for a VP of recruitment role at another nonprofit, or I could go my own way. I had started a coaching certification program and I had this option to basically increase my salary significantly and have an even higher title with a really cool organization, or go out on my own, potentially make $0 and fail. It seems like it should have been an obvious choice, right? But I was so burnt out at the time, I was so exhausted. I could not fathom going into a new organization, you know, potentially with new demons, and take on even more responsibility at that time. I still think that role sounds exciting. I still think that role would have been a great learning opportunity for me. I just didn't have it in me.
Speaker 1:So I ended up in May of 2021 quitting my job or giving my notice. Rather, I did not actually leave my job until July 1st, but that is a lesson that I learned all in and of itself. I will maybe talk about that on another podcast, if you're all interested. I gave six weeks notice. I would not recommend, but it's what I did. So I decided to quit my job. I had no backup plan. This was not a situation where I had a thriving business and I was just ready to leave my role. I did not have a business, I did not have paying clients, but the burnout was so severe that I had to take time to heal, and we're going to talk more about burnout in future episodes. But just a quick note that if you are experiencing burnout, it's not just that you're tired and it's not just that you're lazy, and it's not just a mental thing. Burnout is physical and burnout requires healing. So that's what I did, Kind of when I left my role at the nonprofit.
Speaker 1:I gave myself six months to be successful. Air quotes on that one. My definition of success at that time was to replace my current income with working for myself. That is now a laughable thing for me. I have really yet to replace my income entirely from what it was with the work that I do at Whole Human Co. But that's also a story for another time. So I gave myself this six month timeline to be successful. If I wasn't quote unquote successful by the end of 2021, then I was going to have to find a new nine to five job and that spoiler alert didn't happen. I was not quote unquote successful by the end of 2021, but I learned so much. I learned how to support my nervous system. I learned how to build a business from nothing. I learned how to coach individuals and help them see results, but, honestly, most of all, I learned how to redefine success for myself. I learned how to build an actual vision for the life that I wanted to be living, what I wanted to be doing on a day-to-day basis, how I wanted to spend my time, the people I wanted to be working with, et cetera, et cetera, and according to that, I have been incredibly successful over the last couple of years because I'm doing the things that I know I'm meant to do, working with incredible people, spending my days the way I want to spend my days.
Speaker 1:And I also just want to asterisk that this is not without privilege. I have a partner in life who can help support the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Not everybody has that, and if I hadn't had that, I would have had a different job. I did have other contract roles over the last couple of years to help bring in income when things were slow with my business, but I do have that privilege, so I want to put that out there for all the people who are entrepreneurs out there who pretend that they've never had any help and they just made it on their own? They probably didn't. They probably had support, they probably had some level of privilege.
Speaker 1:So putting that one out there for anyone who's thinking, oh my gosh, like she figured it out? No, she had a lot of help. She had a lot of help, and that's a huge part of what I do at Whole Human Co is show people that we're not meant to do things by ourselves. We're not meant to do it alone. We are meant to have support, we are meant to have help, and if you are not in a place where you have that, you might need to find it, you might need to create it, whatever it looks like, but most of the people that you're looking at did not do whatever they did by themselves.
Speaker 1:Self-made, in my opinion, is just a lie. It's just a lie. No one is self-made, no one. Even if you come from no money, you're not self-made, because there were definitely people that were holding things together for you, picking up the pieces, et cetera, et cetera. Now, maybe there are a couple of examples that go against this, but that's just my personal belief on the matter, but I digress.
Speaker 1:So I went into full-time business ownership in the middle of 2021, fast forward about 18 months and I got my strength certification. This was a really big deal for me because I hadn't loved the coaching certification program that I did right out of my nonprofit career. I didn't like the way it was run. I didn't like a lot of things about it. I learned a lot, for sure, but it was just another example of being in an environment that wasn't quite right. A lot of lessons have been learned over the last couple of years y'all. But December of 2022, I got my strength certification from CliftonStrengths, from Gallup, and when I tell you that I have been deeply enthralled with this modality ever since, I mean it and I'm sure if you follow me on social media, you get my emails.
Speaker 1:You know me at all. You know how I hate to use the word obsessed, but you know how obsessed I am with strengths. I find it to be so incredibly fascinating. I find it to be such a valuable tool we're going to talk more about strengths in its own episode and kind of how it really changed my life. Like strengths really did change my life and I'm not trying to be dramatic, it just it just did. Getting the certification changed my business. It changed my work with clients. You know.
Speaker 1:Since that time, I've been working with one-on-one clients. I've been focusing on ideal life, career exploration, strengths, etc. I've been working with organizations and teams on understanding their strengths and building stronger teams. One of my really deep passions I talk a lot, especially on social media, just about my one-on-one coaching, but one of the things that I really, really, really love to do, and what I loved about my role as a director, was leadership working with leaders, helping them improve their performance practice. Working with individual contributors, helping them to understand themselves, understand their strengths, understand how to ask for what they need, advocate for themselves, build processes that work for them, et cetera, et cetera. I'm so excited to do more of that in the coming years because it's just something that really lights me up, and I think it's the place where my work has the most potential for impact.
Speaker 1:I have worked for some absolutely god awful bosses just the worst. I have also had some incredible mentors and seen what true compassionate, intentional and powerful leadership really looks like, and so I want to help other people do that. I want people to have good work experiences. I'm tired of hearing about how everyone is treated poorly and everyone is burnt out Like it doesn't have to be like that. Leadership is hard, but it's not that hard y'all Like. Management is hard, but it's not that hard. We're truly making it so much harder than it needs to be.
Speaker 1:I'm also really looking forward to working with more middle managers. I think that middle managers are the people that make the world go round, and they are also the people that just get absolutely assaulted from all angles. You have the people they're leading, wanting them to make choices and decisions that they don't actually have the power to make. You have leaders making decisions that don't make sense because they're not on the you know, not in the field, they're not in the work, they don't know how it goes. Necessarily, middle managers, if you're listening to this right now, I love you. I am here to support you. If you want to chat about how to make your life easier, how to make your work more impactful, please, please, please, please, please, schedule a discovery call, because you all are my, my focus, especially for 2025.
Speaker 1:Um, most of this past year, I have spent birthing and raising a beautiful baby girl. My work slowed significantly in 2024 because, hey, I was learning how to be a mom and I had the privilege and opportunity to be with her most of the time. So that is what this last year has meant for me. It's meant a lot of navigating my own personal and professional evolution. You know, along with my clients. They're not just doing it on their own, I'm also in the weeds, doing the work for myself and using that experience to really help encourage people to do their work for themselves. That's kind of my story. Ongoing dot, dot, dot will be to be continued. But that's how I got here, that those are my experiences that led me to want to found whole human co and organization that focuses on the intersection of life and career coaching.
Speaker 1:I truly don't believe that you can have an effective career coaching experience if you're not talking about the life that you want to live. That's just it period. So when people come to me and they're like I just I just need a new job, you know there are, there are people that can help you with that. I am probably going to push you to go a little bit deeper. I'm going to push you to figure out what it is you really want. I'm going to push you to identify your values. I'm going to push you to get to know your strengths, because so often I see people come to me burnt out, saying I just need a new job and if it weren't for our time together, they would just end up in another job that six months from now would have them burnt out again, unhappy again and in a job search process again, and we don't want that. I don't want you looking for a new job every six months. It's freaking exhausting to do that and that's not how you should be spending your time and energy. I also don't want you pursuing goals that you've only set because that's what society tells you you should be doing.
Speaker 1:I am not a big fan of shoulds in this space. You should be doing what you want to be doing. You should be living life in the way that you want to be living life, and sometimes that's really hard to identify on our own because we are so inundated with messaging and images of what other people are doing with their lives and we're like well, I guess that must be what I should do too, but it's not. I should do too, but it's not. 9.8% of my 9.8 out of 10 of my clients which is a fun number, you know come in and they say I want this, I want this salary, I want to do this work, I need this job, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 1:And when we get to talking about what is it that you actually want out of life? What they want out of life is so simple. So many people say I just want more time to relax, I want more time to be with family, I want more time to take care of myself, exercise, eat well, et cetera, et cetera. But we're spending all of our energy focusing on that job and that perfect salary and that prestigious title, when, if we just took a little bit of time, we could actually already live the life that we wanted to live. We don't need the extra money. You know, the extra money is great.
Speaker 1:I'm not here to tell you not to make money, by all means, but make sure that you're pursuing that career, that salary, that title, because that's actually what you want to be doing with your time, not because it's the only path that you can imagine to get you to this thing you think you want. So that's what we do at Whole Human Co. We figure out what you want. We actually get into the nitty gritty of what it is you want your life to look like and then we take action to find the work that supports that life. Because if you have a life that you want and your work is not actually moving you closer to that or supporting that life, then what is the point? What is the point of that work?
Speaker 1:If this sounds interesting to you, if it sounds like, oh, that might be something that I need, just reach out, comment, you know, follow, subscribe to the podcast, let me know what you think, but also reach out and schedule a discovery call. I offer currently free discovery calls, free 345 minutes of mini coaching, getting to know me, getting to know my style, but also probably walking away having had a coaching session. So if you're feeling like you're stuck, if you're feeling like this is not it for me, this work, this life, the way I'm spending my time, it's just not it, but I don't really know what is. Hi, I'm Jean Madison, the whole human coach, and I'm here to help you. That's what I do here. So that's it y'all. That's my story. That's how I got here.
Speaker 1:I would love to know what questions you have about the journey, about my work, about even you know my training and my approach to coaching. I would love to hear what you want to hear on upcoming podcasts. So follow me on Instagram. Shoot me a message. I'll be asking occasionally what people want to hear so you can share those questions with me there. You can share questions in the comments here, wherever you are listening to your podcasts, but I deeply appreciate you being here. I appreciate your valuable time and listening to my story. Hopefully you have found some value in this conversation. You found maybe some motivation to take action, to do things a little bit differently. Whatever it is for you, I wish you the absolute best and I will see you back here for our next episode of so Glad you Asked.
