Dawn Taylor| 21/08/2024

Dawn Taylor

Hey hey, hey. It's me. Don Taylor, if you've not figured out I'm your host yet, we were doing something wrong. I get to chat with someone with a common name today. His name is Don Gleason. And what are we diving into? We are going to dive into this whole get a job thing. This whole idea on why it's so hard to find careers, why it's so hard to transition into it. But before we get started, let me tell you a little bit about him because he's a super cool guy. He is an executive director with the Maxwell Leadership Certified team. He is a speaker, a trainer, a coach with 41 years of work experience working with people trying to achieve personal professional goals. But one of his biggest things is raising them to achieve new heights in their personal lives and professional careers. And so one of his things that he does and was actually just doing right before this call was, and with a group of people, helping people that have come out of the military, army, things like that, trying to figure out how to get a job, how to get into everyday life again. And prior to this call, we had a really cool conversation on this and headspace around it. And never mind, we're just going to dive in and we're going to start this whole episode today. But yeah, welcome to the show, Don. Thank you so much for being here.
 
Don Gleason

Thanks, Dawn. I'm really excited about it. And I love this topic. And I'm gonna have to go back and listen to that other one you just talked about. Hopefully that was a recording because I want to hear. I try to get as much as I can to understand the psyche of people, military, but not military as well, about what's holding them back, because I can't help them if I don't really know what their problem is. Right. And it's very diverse.

Dawn Taylor

Totally. So let's dive into that even today. What do you wish people were talking about? 

Don Gleason

You know, I wish people were really talking about the depths of what it takes to find a job. We we get on the surface level, you know, you got to write a resume, you got to have a LinkedIn profile, you got a network. But what does it really take to do that? Just just pick networking. For example, I was talking to a young man yesterday. I've been working with him for three years. I've helped him get two jobs. He keeps getting let go from those. So I'm trying to get him into another one and he's just convinced nobody wants to help him. And I said, you know, “How are you helping yourself in the networking?” And I said, because Zig Ziglar, right. You got to help enough other people get what they want and they'll help you get what you want. But most military, they walk in, ask the question, “Do you have a job for me?” Well, nobody's just standing there with the job. You got to show me your personality. Show me your perspective. Show an interest, maybe help me. Right. And it's a two way street. And then I'll help you. So it's that deeper level. That's just one example of a deeper level we've got to get people to think into. So my answer is wish they were talking at the deeper level. And I've got some more things we can talk about,

Dawn Taylor

No, for sure. So let's backtrack in your story, what is your history that got you to this place because you've had some big career transitions in your life. 

Don Gleason
 
You know, getting out of college. I'm that guy that went back in 1982 and companies actually sent rejection letters, which they don't anymore. So you now you submit application after application and never hear a word. Yeah. And and sometimes even the company goes, they say, let's set up an interview and then they never show up. And they complain about the people not showing up, but the companies now are doing the same thing. So anyway, I had 454 rejection letters back in 1982 when I graduated college. That process really helped me think into what am I saying? What am I selling, who am I trying to get to? So it was it was a middle of a recession. So I joined the Air Force for four years and I stayed for 27. Absolutely loved it. But I got out in 2009, I retired and I said, okay, now I got to go through this process again. So I really dug in deep into what I wanted to do. It wasn't just “I want to work in a job in engineering. Let's see what I get.” It was, I've never really liked construction. I'm really not a design guy, at least not on buildings. I like wastewater treatment plants and water plants, but I really enjoy working with soil and the groundwater in the soil and the flow of the groundwater, right. And hazardous waste and how we keep them out of that. And so it was round in that area, and I got really specific, and I started looking for those companies that do that. And I really only had a handful of interviews and I got a great job. Booz Allen Hamilton brought me on board. I stayed for nine years. And when you think about the statistic that says 45% of military leave their first post military job within 12 months. And I stayed for nine years.

Dawn Taylor

Yeah. That's impressive.  

Don Gleason

There's something there right now. I'll admit it. The five year point things happened in the company and I rotated to another area, and that was really struggling. And I struggled there for three years, traveling almost every week. But I felt the purpose, I felt a mission. I was helping people. Right. And when things finally changed in the company, I said, “Okay, um, time for me to go do my own thing.” And I dreamed about that for a long time. So, now it's kind of fun to hang your own shingle. Back in 2017, speaking, training, coaching, especially the coaching aspect. And then I started a nonprofit in 2020 just as COVID hit. And we did that for three years, and I stepped away from that just over a year ago. My partner and I were working in different directions and we just weren't together anymore. So I just, I stepped away and then back to my own company. But it's, I keep coming back to that career transition coaching. I really don't like seeing people struggle in the wrong job or struggling to get the right job.

Dawn Taylor

So a couple thoughts on this. I see this all the time. Even in my own life, I was the kid who. And maybe I was hyper independent, but I was the kid who wanted to buy a stereo and asked my parents. They said no, they weren't. My parents did not have a ton of money growing up. It's not that they were wealthy, so we got things like garbage cans and bedside tables for Christmas gifts because we needed them and they were necessities in our home, right? We still had fun. We still had a beautiful life, but they weren't just going to buy me a stereo because I wanted one. So I took a full time babysitting job for a family of four when I was 12 years old, for an entire summer. I was that kid. I was the kid who raised rabbits in the backyard and sold them and babysat all the time. And like, I was this constant hustle from a probably a way too young age of, like, know if I want that thing, I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to get a job and I'm going to do it. So I've always had that defiance in me. I've always had that. I don't even know what totally had a word it because it's not even a defiance. It was more just like this genuine curiosity, but also stubbornness. Like I am more stubborn than most people I've ever met in my life. And so when I wanted a job, I just got one, right. I am coming from a background of trauma. I think it was that I wasn't terrified of rejection at that point. So I would just, I was like, no, I don't care. Tell me you like me, tell me you don't send me the rejection letter, fly out or there's 100 more businesses and someone's going to hire me. And there's always been a piece of that in me, right? So I've applied for jobs that I wasn't, like I didn't have the requirements. I've also done some really insane jobs. At one point I was talking to a friend about this last week, and I was actually having this conversation with my sister of kids these days that can't afford the lifestyle that their parents have. And aren't knowing how to pay their bills and aren't knowing how to get ahead and are super stressed out. And I said, but it's priorities. And both of these people I was, I was talking to. It was like, yeah, but it's different. It's more expensive. And I said, “No. I said, we knew we could afford ramen. If I wanted steak, I needed another job.” So I was the girl who at one point was working full time and going to school full time. I was the girl who had a job, literally, I worked and I don't even know to this day why I said yes to this job. I worked at a local bar. Doing bookkeeping, said a bookkeeping company on the side. And I would show up and they'd meet me. The security guards would meet me in the parking lot, walk me to the safe, like, the locked office, lock me in the office from 4 to 8 every morning. And I would do the bookkeeping because so many people had been drugged and attacked and that I literally had to hide in a room. Well, and then they'd walk me back out to my car, I'd go home and I'd shower and I'd change because I felt disgusting to go to my full time job, right. But it was this. It was this mentality of like, but there isn't an option. I have to do this. I have to have the income to be able to afford my bills. And there were medical expenses and other things going on. And I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but is part of it that we've created a really soft world?

Don Gleason

I'm just writing down a quote.

Dawn Taylor

Here's what I mean by that. And I'm sure some will be mad at me for this. And that's okay. Please message me. I'd love to chat about it, is we knew we had to get jobs in high school. Like, I don't know many people in my graduating class that didn't have some sort of something going on, like or at least a part time job because you had to. Our parents weren't giving us everything. We had to have a job, and it wasn't the good job. Like we had the chance to have everything back then. And there was no shame in having the job at the gas station or working at the Zellers, or being the doing whatever, like there was no shame attached to it. We just all had a job. We all just went out. All the businesses knew that they hired all these 16 year olds. 15 year olds, right? 14 year olds at McDonald's. Because as long as you didn't touch the hot stuff, right, we just knew. We just knew that we had to do that. And it feels like nowadays that's not a thing anymore. But then people also are missing those crawling and walking steps and wanting to go directly to the run. What are your thoughts on that?

Don Gleason

I see a lot of couples and families in my neighborhood that are 30, 35, and I don't, I'm not trying to be judgmental here. And if they can afford it, fantastic. But I'm looking at so many and I'm thinking to Dave Ramsey and he says, three out of every four people in your neighborhood are living paycheck to paycheck. They can't afford the lifestyle they have. Now, I'm in a neighborhood where the houses are $500,000, and I have a 2017 Honda and a 2018 Ford pickup truck. And I'm looking at some of these guys. They've got 2020 this and a 2023 that, Lexus, Tesla. And I was like, “I hope you guys can afford all this.” right. So there is a lifestyle piece. But the thing I was looking at I learned not too long ago. And there's this thing. Imagine a circle and it says on the far left, easy times. Right when we're given everything right when and think about where we came from as people. Because the hard life is below that. Hard life creates easy time. So you think about, I think if I have this right, you know, coming out of World War Two and all that struggle that they had, and then the parents said, I don't want my kids to struggle like I struggled. My mom came through, she was born just before the Great Depression. Right. So she was two or 3 or 4 years old, five years old, living with that. Her mother died when she was 37, when her mother was 37. Um, so my mom was probably 16. She was in high school. So this was now World War Two. Mom dies. Dad's changing jobs every year. So think about the life that they had. Well, they come out and I don't think my parents did this, but a lot of the generation did was, I don't want my kids to struggle. So I want to give them everything right. I want them to be able to move into the same house. I want them not to have to have a job in high school or in college. I just want them to focus in on college. Right? But we all know that if you don't have a job in college, what do you do? You party and go to college. I had a job and I party and I went to college. So hard times. Hard life creates easy times. Easy times create an easy life. We don't appreciate it. We don't have values. We're not doing the work. We're living outside of our means. That creates hard times. Because all of a sudden we realize that we're not getting what we need. We don't have the life that we want. We've got to go back, like you said. To hustle and find that job, etc.. And then finally, the hard times create that hard life which creates easy times. So it's an interesting circle. And I think we're in that compendium now, of parents have tried to give the kids so much stuff. We wandered away from values. John Maxwell is big on right now values. You know, if you really focus in on values in life, then you're acting and treating people in the right way. Not to make this political, but Donald Trump. The one thing that that I may agree with a bunch of his policies, but the way he treats people, the way he acts, right, all of those things are.
 
Dawn Taylor

It's appalling.

Don Gleason

It's appalling. Bbut I because I come from the values because my parents taught me values and I respect and trust. I have a hard time, no matter what his policies are, to like that person into the office. And I'll admit right on publicly, I voted for him in 2016 because I wanted something different. I saw some change, I saw some hope. But now I look back. There were signals. So, I couldn't vote for him in 2020 and won't vote for him in 2024. So ,it's going to be interesting. But again, not to make all this politics, but that will probably get a whole bunch of people riled up, I apologize.

Dawn Taylor

Um, okay, we're in Canada. Canadians, Canadians. We're not big on politics in the same way. Yeah.

Don Gleason

So but but it's about that trust. So what I wanted to ask. So I'm going to come back before I ask you a question. So I also had a job in high school. I ended up having a couple different jobs in college. Um, I remember one summer I was a fire truck driver and I would work a weekend day and then Monday. So, sometimes it was 48 hours. Um, and then Tuesday morning I go home, shower and get ready and go to my other job and work 40 or 50 hours there. So some, some weeks I had 90 hours, you know, earning money. So, I had spending money and other things for college, but I still had a job during the school year. Um, because my parents. Yeah, they were good. He's a professor, but he wasn't rich. He had older cars, so I just said, “I'm not going to put that burden on you. I'm going to go earn.” And I think it was because I had examples in my neighborhood of people doing the same thing. And that's the question I want to ask. Did you have peers that were doing the same thing, or in the family, or a mentor that told you you should do something like that, or is this just more–

Dawn Taylor

In regards to having that many jobs than working to get my bills paid? No, that was just me.
 
Don Gleason
 
Okay.

Dawn Taylor

And I think part of it is the defiance. So we were talking earlier about. You know, even like mental health around these things. And because you do a lot of work with people, you know, that have PTSD and that are coming in of war and different things and army and military, and now they're doing this like transition. And I think a few pieces of it are number one. I've never had it, my worth is not attached to my business, and it's never been attached to any career that I've had. So because of that, I have no shame when it comes to that. So, if all of a sudden my business fell apart tomorrow and I have to go get a job. I've never looked at it as like, what's my role going to be? What's my position going to be? What's the business card going to say? What's the car that I might get? For me it's like, no, what do I need to do to pay my bills. And I've often talked with clients over the years that there's this weird thing called a gift of desperation.

Don Gleason

Mhm. Oh yeah.
 
Dawn Taylor

Where you hit a point where you hit rock bottom hard enough, right, tthat you're like, I have to do something, and it's nobody else's job to take care of me right now. Right. I have to figure this out, and I have to figure out how I'm going to get there. And so at times when people in my life, I'm also a weirdly secretive human in some ways, and people listening might be like, “What? She's so vulnerable and open, I totally am.” I 100% am. But a lot of my life, I just felt like I was too much and it was too overwhelming for me. And so I just didn't tell people things. So if we were struggling financially because we had made a stupid money choice, or we were struggling financially because we had a massive health expense, um, I would just buckle down and figure it out. And that has been a character trait that I love and hate about myself. To be really honest, because I don't know how to ask for help all the time. I've gotten a lot better in my later years, but. But I have, like, I've always just figured it out. And I haven't had the shame. So there was one winter that my husband was really sick and I was like, “I don't know how we're going to pay our bills. Like, I actually don't know how we're going to pay our bills this winter.” And as much as Canadians have good health care, we don't. And he is very expensive medications that they won't cover because they don't like them. It's very Canadian of us to not like a prescription so they won't cover it.

Don Gleason

Yet Americans want the same health care you guys have.
 
Dawn Taylor

Oh my gosh. And I'm like, I'd rather be in the States honestly, most days that rather be in the States. But I had a friend who owned an Orange Julius, and she lost a bunch of stuff suddenly, and she needed help over Christmas. And I was like, “Rock on!” And I just went and worked at Orange Julius for Christmas at the mall. And I remember people coming in and being like, “Aren't you embarrassed to be working here?” And I was like, “No, it's paying my bills.” Like it's paying me. Like, I don't know why this is such a struggle for people. But even with that, don't you find that my husband and I have talked about this. He's in a position right now where he's worked 23 years in the same industry. He's worked his way up the ladder in an industry where nobody sticks around and actually does the same job for a long period of time, and people are now asking like, “How did you get this job?” And he's like, “Because I've hustled in this industry for so many years.” Like he's never chased the dollar. He's never been like, “Oh, I'm going to go to the company next door because they're going to pay me a dollar more, or I'm going to go here because they're going to pay me a dollar more.” Where is that coming from, do you think? Where is that? Because I think that's part of this whole transition. Right? It's like we're trying to go from, lik,e high school or university into getting a job. We're trying to go from one massive career to different layoffs. Companies have shut down or whatever. Now we're trying to get into a new career. And we don't know how. We don't know how. We people don't know what they're even looking for. They don't know what they're willing to go for, but then they get shame attached in that, and then they get, you know, the judgments on specific roles and jobs. But where do you think it's coming from? Is it just like a fear to commit?

Don Gleason

Facebook.

Dawn Taylor

Yeah.

Don Gleason

Instagram. TikTok, social media has gotten to the point now where people only put their best and now it becomes a competition, right? “Oh, look at my kids. Are they so neatly dressed? Look at the activity we're doing. We're at the zoo.” Or this. Or the theater, right. And now, it becomes a competition. Keeping up with the Joneses. And, uh, and it's kind of that way in the job market, right? Oh, I got a director job, huh? Well, I got a principal job. Well. Huh? I got a vice president job. Oh, I got a senior vice president job. I'm an executive senior vice president. So who cares, right? Are you doing what you want to do? Are you making the money you should be making to pay for the lifestyle you want to live? I was a senior associate with Booz Allen. I was below principal, below vice president. Um, probably, I think making about as much money as most of my peers are making, even though they had bigger titles, they had smaller companies, you know, because on the outside, depending on the size of the company, the senior vice president could be making 100,000 to 500,000. Right? You just never know. So, um, to me, it wasn't about the title, it was about what I was doing. And my dad taught me that. This is kind of interesting. I asked my girlfriend of five years to marry me. We were dating for four years. At that point, she said yes. We were working the engagement announcement, and my father and future father in law said, “Your dad has his PhD, so we want to put Doctor William Gleason.” And I said, “Ain't going to fly. My dad will not let it. He says he only uses that title for work. He will not use it in his private life.” And my father in law, he was like, “But he's earned it.” I said, “I understand he's earned it, but that's not the right forum for him to put it in.” So, he says, “I'm gonna go call your dad.” So, he calls my dad. He says, “We want to put doctor on the engagement announcement. He goes, “Absolutely not.” My father in law was like, “I could not believe how stern he was.” Right? But it was. So now when I come through the military and I ended up retiring as a colonel. And I have business cards. A bunch of my peers put Colonel or General on their business card to have it on their LinkedIn profile. I don't know that you can find Colonel anywhere on my LinkedIn profile because it wasn't who I was. You know, I was an environmental engineer. I was a leader, I was a commander. I did these things, but Colonel was not who I was. Colonel was just a rank or a pay grade. And, uh, but I think too many people get attached to that. So I think we get attached to the status and to the situation. And, I think social media just perpetuates it. I've been kind of on a, a rush this year to show my vulnerability on Facebook or social media where I'm struggling, so where I'm failing and get people to think about it a little bit and it is okay. Why can't we share our vulnerabilities when we learn? I have done more learning, watching people fail. My dad once told me. He says we made an investment. He finally, in his later years, he was doing investing stuff when he retired out of his professorship. And he says, “I got into a company, kind of a friend told me about it. $20,000 lost it all.” So tell me a little bit about that. Why? That was a valuable lesson. I don't know that he did it to give me a lesson. Maybe he was just trying to, I don't know. Was he trying to give me a lesson? Was he just talking about it? Was he vulnerable? Was he thinking? Just thinking out loud? I don't know, but I now do my own investing, and I've made mistakes, you know? But now I try to cap it. I try to have the right. I ended up one time. Getting it with us. I'd stay away from penny stocks, but there's one company - $0.13 a share. They were getting, they were creating a new type of aluminum that had done all kinds of testing and had greater strength in aluminum, it was lighter. Airlines were getting really interested into it. Alcoa was starting to get into it. They had a big contract, a couple million dollar contract. And I thought, oh, this could really go somewhere. Within months it was worth less than a penny and never recovered. I lost about $2,000, so ah yeah, I got it. So but it forms now things and I'm okay with sharing that on this forum or others, right? I made a mistake. I thought I did the right due diligence, but I didn't. So now what do I do?

Dawn Taylor
 
I think that's in every area of our lives.I think partially because I've well, I've worked through a lot and the work that I do with people, I'm very, very open and willing to talk about all the times in life that I have screwed up or failed.

Don Gleason

I'm sorry. I got to say this. I downloaded the newest Investor's Business Daily yesterday. On the top of the third page, there's always some quotes, and the guy says, “The problem with talking about my failures is I have so many.”
 

Dawn Taylor

Right? And it's so funny. Like, but I've also had some huge wins. And that's something that I often talk about and with people and go, “No, no, no.” Like we all have our book of proof of all the times that we failed. What about the Book of proof of all the times that we've had to win? And so. Let's go back to this career transition piece of it and why it is so hard to transition. I do think it's what we've been talking about in regards to shame and regards to ego and attaching our worth to what our role was. Our title was, our job was. That then makes it very hard to feel like we're almost taking a step back.
 
Don Gleason

They say that. Carl Jung says that, you know, was it only 3% of the people? No, 2% of the people think, 3% of the people think, they think that 95% of the people don't think. And a lot of people question whether that's Carl Jung or not and who actually said it. But the idea is they're right. We go through life really just on habits. After we get into the new job and learn it. We're just habits. We drive. We're just taking the same path, doing the same thing. We're not even almost paying attention, except you're kind of watching the traffic. And when something goes out of the ordinary, you get the attention. Um, but I think in life we're not thinking. We see especially I'm a baby boomer, so born in ‘59. We are talking later, baby boomer. But it was all about security, right? We wanted to get a job. Like in Madison, Wisconsin. Oscar Meyer’s huge company. A lot of people work there out of Madison because it was secure. It was well-paying. You could be there for 40 years, get a nice retirement. Did people really enjoy it? Now, I heard, I didn't know then. Now I heard a lot of people were really struggling. But if you go to almost any Toyota here in San Antonio assembly plant, all those same things, do people really enjoy it or is it about the security? So, we get into this piece of should my passion be at work? Or should my passion be, my work is paycheck and my passion is outside my work and I'm very big on “Put your passion in your work.” Find out what you really want to do. In the fifth grade. I went to the first Earth Day in the United States, sponsored by a senator out of Wisconsin. So, I grew up in Wisconsin. It was big in Wisconsin, so they did a big thing. I'm in fifth grade. It impacted me. I was good at math and science. I got ahead of all my peers. I really liked the environment. My dad took me out hunting and fishing and all those things, and I saw the pollution. I smelled the stench. I saw the dead fish. I had to do something. So, I got into environmental engineering. So, it was kind of, it kind of grew into that. And then when I got in the Air Force, I got to be the environmental guy, and I got to study the groundwater in the flow, and we found contamination. Like I made a name for myself. I won several different awards. So it took me down the path that fifth grade started. And what I do is I try to help people really figure out what that is. But most people really struggle with thinking about it because they start thinking, “Well, I've got a civil engineering degree, so I'm going to be a civil engineer.” Do you enjoy it? You know, tell me about the best day at work. I don't have any. I hated every day of it. Why do you want it? Why do you want to do it for another 20 years?

Dawn Taylor

Can I challenge something in this?. I think part of it is the definition of passion. Right. There's something to be said for. You realized you were like, wow, I'm very interested in dirt and environment and all of those things. So, I'm still going to go to school. I'm still going to find a respectable career. I'm still going to find something that's going to pay my bills. I'm still going to take those action steps where it feels like nowadays, like I've had people come to me in their 50s and they're like, “I'm very passionate about Instagram. and you're like, oh, okay. “I think I want to become an influencer.” But I'm passionate about it. I don't think that people understand the definition of passion versus hobby versus something that calms them or relaxes them versus something that ignites something in them. And I think that's a piece of it. I have people say to me all the time, you should get a job building Lego, figure out a job, something around Lego because I love playing Lego and building things. And I was like, “Well, no, because I don't want to do that as a job. And it would never pay my bills. Like I could get a job at the Lego store. Yeah, probably, except for because of my skills and my background, I'd probably end up in a supervisor role, and I don't want to manage people anymore in my life.” And like, no, no, I don't want to. I just want to build Lego. Maybe, but that's where I feel like that's a piece that's missing, and that sometimes we actually have to have a job that will pay our bills. I'm not saying be in a job that makes you miserable, but we still have to have a job that will pay our bills. And the world, you know, we talked about. Like the social media aspect of it and all that. I think that part of that, though, is also, everybody thinks that they should be an influencer and everyone thinks they should be a business owner, and everyone thinks that that's the way life needs to go. And sometimes it's like, no, sometimes, like I've talked to clients in the past, I'm like, “No, get a job.” They're like, what? And “I'm like, walk away from your company for a bit, put it on hold, do that as your side hustle. Go get a damn job.” And they laugh at me because I help people build businesses all the time. I'm like, “Right now in your world, you need structure, you need security, you need safety. You need to know that it is a Monday to Friday, 8 to 5 or whatever the hours are. And that is beautiful.” There is nothing wrong with that. Right? And especially coming from a place of trauma. And I could see this being with a lot of people you work with, coming from a place of trauma. When you believe that your world is going to end soon and you can't dream and you can't visualize and you can't think that far out because it wasn't safe to. We don't know how. We don't know how to dream that way. So some of it, like I often tell people, I'm like, you just need to do something, like, pick an odd job and just get going because you can't steer a parked car. Like, you have to start somewhere. And just somewhere and it doesn't matter where. I remember, um, talking to a client one time and he was like, “Worst job in the world would be working at a tire shop. I cannot I can't even imagine what it would be like to, like, fix tires all day in the smell of the rubber and the screech of the hat, the impact wrenches and all the things.” Like, he was just like, that seems like the most horrible job. And I was like, great, apply there. And he was like, “Sorry, what?” And I was like, “I want you to get a job at a tire shop.” Right. They're always all hiring. And he's like, “I don't understand. I just told you that would be the worst job on the planet.” And I said, yep. And I said, “But you're going to have money coming in to pay your bills, and your hatred of it will become the fuel that will drive you to find something different.” Because you realize you don't want to be stuck there. But you're going to have the win of knowing you got the job. Yeah. And then you have a paycheck coming in every two weeks and you can breathe.
 
Don Gleason

And you faced your fear. You change from that would be the worst job in the world to. Wow. I gained a new appreciation for it. About a month ago, I was thinking through this situation, and you nailed it, right? Sometimes you just have to have a paycheck. Sometimes you just need security. Sometimes you just have to pay the bills. Totally. To the other end of the compendium. And usually as you get older. Right. Because you've now scrimped and saved and earned and you have a retirement and you're ready to retire now, it's like, I want the passion. So there's a compendium along that line that probably move across. Some people get to it earlier, some people never get to it. But you start to try to figure out, “What is it I really want to do?” Right. There's a gentleman I think is James McCowan, who wrote the book essentialism. He said he started and he was doing anything the company wanted him to do, and then he realized that most of those things he was doing weren't producing the benefit, the results of what he really wanted to do. And he didn't really like them. So he decided at one point and he talked to his boss, “I'm going to really focus in on these things that bring the best bang for the buck that I really enjoy.” And some of his peers came by and said, “What are you doing? You're not going to get promoted. You're not going to get, you know, the right salary raise.” Well, he stuck with it and he got the bigger promotions. He got the bigger pay raises because he was bringing in the bigger benefit to the company because he focused on. Right. So I think there is a compendium along that piece. And you nailed it too, with the trauma as so many military people. And it's not just military, right? There's a lot of emergency services, people and others who come out with trauma of one fashion or another, um, could be other things, could be not even work related, but they just need the security of a job and they don't. They can't take over eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. They can't take problems home with them. You know, all those things. And we have to recognize that those people are on that left side. What I'm calling the lower end. I hate to put a lower position because it puts a quality on it, but on the paycheck end, let's say it that way. They just need the security and the paycheck. But maybe over time, like you just did, you challenge them to step more and more into certain things. John Maxwell gave his nephew some advice when he started his first job, he said. “Find somebody every day that you can help.” You know, Secretary. Whatever. Helping moving boxes. Right? They're bringing in copy paper for the copy machines. Go help them. And somebody would say, “What? You're a degreed engineer. Why would you be hauling? That's not the best use of your time.” But you're helping somebody. Mark Cole, who's now the CEO of all of the Maxwell Enterprise for John, started in the mailroom doing whatever it took to add value to the people around him. He got noticed. And finally it was John's secretary who said, “You need to pay attention to this Mark Cole guy.” And he started talking to Mark. John started talking to Mark and said, yeah, I see something here and started pulling him up. And so it makes a difference. Um, so anyway, there's a long ways around it, but I think you nailed it in terms of the paycheck versus passion. It's not an either or. It's never going to be and you're going to move along that scale. I mean, in 1982, when I joined the Air Force, it was paycheck. I needed a job, I needed experience. You know, yeah, I was willing to not do environmental work. I was blessed. So the way I can say it, it wasn't lucky. It was blessed. I had the right boss, the right opportunity. I had the right degree for it. And I just loved it and had to do it for two years there at my first base, two years at my second base, and just made a name for myself. Um, I grabbed on to the opportunity

Dawn Taylor
 
But even that what you just said? “I grabbed onto the opportunity.” I was working with, um, one of my nephews. Fuck, I love this kid. He has always been like an old soul, and he was the one when he was only about 12 or 13. He wanted to meet with an investor to figure out what he should do with his money for, like, RSPs and retirement and things like, it's like a 401 K here and. I was like, all right, I'll set it up. And so, you know, you find some friends and you laugh about it, you set it up and. But this kid, he's like, we had a conversation one day. He's like, “I don't know what to do with my life.” And I said, you know, I said “You can look at it in a couple different ways.” I said instead of looking at it as I need a career, I need a Monday to Friday. I need whatever it is. I said, “What is the lifestyle you want to live?” And he was like, “What?” I was like “Not what's the job I want to have. What is the lifestyle you want to live?” So we mapped it out. We were sitting at a restaurant where the tablecloth was kraft paper and they gave crayons for kids to color, and we mapped it out. I was like, what kind of house do you want to live in? What kind of car do you want to drive? And he was about 15, I think, at the time, 14, 15. And I said, okay. So it's like, do you want a house like your parents? Do you want a house like ours? Do you want, like, what is it you want? Do you want to be able to buy a new pair of shoes every month, or, you know, every other month? Do you want to go on vacations? Like, what does that look like for you? Because kids are watching already at that age, and really, they don't know enough to know that they know nothing, right. So we mapped this all out and I said “Okay, so do you want to get paid based on showing up. So you're just paid a set amount based on the fact that you have the right training, the right schooling. You're showing up every day. Or do you want your paycheck to equal how hard you work?”
 
Don Gleason

Mhm.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
And he was like, “Oh.” And I said, “Because one. You're always going to, you're always just going to make a steady income.” I said. “But the other is that if you're lazy, you get nothing. But if you work hard, you're going to get even more money than someone else. And I said, but it's 100% the effort you put into it.” And for his personality, he's like, “Oh, I want that one.” And I was like, “Awesome, okay, what kind of jobs could you do? Where your efforts that you put in equal your paycheck?”Right. What kind of jobs? They're out there. Okay. Do you want to work with people? Do you not want to work with people? Do you want to have to cold call? Do you want to have to network? And I took them to a networking event, and I did all these, like, weird things with him. And I challenge anyone listening to his kids. These are the conversations you need to have with your kids on what they want to do, because that kid got it in his head what he wanted to do, and he would randomly like, call me and ask me questions. He drove like 14 hours on time to show up at our house and like, go for a drive. I needed to discuss how this was going to work. But this is the kid that, well, he did. He did everything that he set his mind out to. But one of them was, we were sitting with him. we had driven up for his birthday one year, and I think he was about 17 at the time. And I said, “Look, I said, you've got a chip on your shoulder and you need to learn people's skills.” And he was like, okay. And I said, “So you're going to get a job here. I said, get a job at the Boston Pizza, go get a job at a restaurant.” And he was like, “What? I'm not getting a job at a restaurant.” Right? And I said, “Look around. You have to learn how to talk to people. You have to learn how to deal with difficult people. There's a hundred different roles. You can learn leadership, you can learn management, you can learn, like, there's so many opportunities to do that.” He did. He still works there part time just to fill in some gaps while he's following his passion on building his career. But the other thing that we did was I said, “I want you to go. So you wanted to be a realtor.” and I said, I want you to go. “Put on a nice outfit. I said, you don't have to be in a suit and tie. But I said, look respectable. Get a haircut for a shower, right?”
 
Don Gleason

Such an important point right there.
 
Dawn Taylor

Right? He's always been a pretty clean cut kid. I was like, “No, no, no, you're gonna act like you respect yourself and you respect the people you're going to go talk to.” And I said before, you can even write because he was too young to write his test yet to become a realtor. And I said, I want you to go around to every single real estate office, and I want you to apply. To have them mentor you for free. And he's like, “What?” I'm like, “You're going to volunteer your time four hours a day.” And you're just going to say, “Can I pick your brain? Can I follow you around? Can I do these things? But I will clean toilets. I will empty garbage cans. I will wash your car. It doesn't matter what.” And it was interesting how many people gave me flack for that in a way of like, seriously, you're telling him to do this for free? And I was like, “It is the best learning he's ever going to get in the industry. And he will know if that's something he wants to do for a living.” Before he wastes his money on the exam and he raises money on the insurance. We waste this money on all the time and energy and efforts to go into it. Man, you've never seen a more proud auntie. Every time that kid lists a house, sells a house, does anything. But he did it. He did it. He stepped out of his comfort zone and he had no shame. And he got the job at the restaurant where he had to, like, clean up after kids throwing food on the floor. And he, you know, volunteered his time at these offices. But then they fought for him when it was time to actually step out and do it like they all wanted him there.
 
Don Gleason
 
Mhm. Goes back to the easy times observation of earlier, right?
 
Dawn Taylor
 
Totally.
 
Dawn Taylor

I don't follow him. I don't like some of his stuff he's done, but I do know he does a lot around Story Brand.

Don Gleason

Yeah. So he talks about every movie. Every book has a hero, has a problem, has a guide. They fix the problem. There's a new result. If you watch every movie, your book, that's what it is. So you have to kind of use that, use a framework like that to talk about the problem. But most of us shy away from the problem. We just focus on the task because it's easy. The reader needs to know that problem to put it in perspective.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
But we don't create critical things anymore.
 
Don Gleason
 
True.

Dawn Taylor

Well, it's easy times, right? And it's one plus one equals two. And that's it. And no one thinks outside that box. And like my husband and I have this conversation often on nobody questions anything anymore. Nobody steps out of their comfort zone. They don't just try and see
 
Don Gleason

They’re afraid they're going to be shamed,

Dawn Taylor

Right? They'll be shamed, or they might fail, or they might fill in the blank. But I think that's part of the problem with that is. They're not. We're not creative thinkers. I remember, um, we take all our nieces and nephews on these crazy trips and for their 13th birthdays, 12th birthdays around that era. We were on one of them and our bank account had been hacked while we were in the air flying on the trip, and we'd been dealing with some issues anyways with the bank. They couldn't figure it out. They thought it was fine. And knowing this, I had taken, like all my business cards with me to make sure we were fine. Knowing this, I had taken extra cash out just in case. Just in case it happened again. I had not had time to like, transition all the bank accounts and do all the things in time for this big vacation. And one of the things that happened was because it had already, long story short, because they had already dealt with so much fraud in this account, they ended up seizing everything and shutting everything down until we were in person to walk into a bank to open it back up. So we're now out of the country on this three week vacation. Zero access to our money. Like none. And we got off the plane. We find this out from all the warnings. I phoned them, they're like, “No, we need you to step foot into a bank. We got to figure this out. We've now upped this to the highest security levels.” Blah blah blah. And I was like, “Okay, let's figure this out.” And my husband, even and with the kid that we were with, was like, “Oh my goodness, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” And like they started panicking and my husband looked at, I think it was one of our nephews. And he goes, “She’s Auntie Dawn. She'll figure it out.” There you go. And he was like, “What do you mean?” It's like she'll be the person who will figure out how to check into every hotel without having a credit card check in, like rent cars without credit cards. Like she will somehow manage to figure this out. Like it'll happen. And you know what's funny? Like, at one point I had, like, a bank manager wire transfer money to a hotel. I had, like, all of these hilarious things went down, but I managed to get a car rental company to rent us a car, three different places. We got car rentals without having a credit card, and even they were like, “Why are we doing this?” And at one point, literally the manager of this car rental place, as he's letting me sign the paperwork is like, “I don't know why I'm saying yes to this.” Like he was starting to question himself. He's like, “I'm not allowed to do this.” And I was like, “Oh, but you are.” And it's funny because I think that that's where, like, yes, people in my life bug me about this all the time and they laugh about it. They're like, “Oh, if anyone will figure it out, she will like, like you'll make it happen.” But I think that's a skill we need more of. I think that's a character trait we need more of. Which is, you know what it's all like. Marie Forleo. Whatever. Whoever should like, whatever she does. Sounds bad, but I just know this short a book called, like, Everything’s Figureoutable, and I haven't read it, but I always laugh at the title because there's so much of that is like, “No, no, no. What would it take for me to figure this out? What would it take for this to actually happen? What if we ask the questions? What if we just get really, really curious about it?” And I think that's where for anyone listening who's feeling really stuck right now. What if you weren't a tree? Like what if you actually could move? What if you could shift? What if? What if you could figure it out? Yeah.

Don Gleason
 
There's a beautiful part about being a coach is we help people reframe their thinking. And I wish I would have done this after I retired from the military. I was down doing business travel, and I went down to an airbase in Florida. We'd been there all week helping the client, and at 6:30. I had an 8:00 in the morning appointment, I was going to check out, be gone all day and then go get the plane in the afternoon. So, I had to check out by eight. So at 6:30 I went over to the office and there was a huge, long line. I said, there's no way I'm going to get through that, get breakfast and get to the meeting. So I went back to my room and being a retired colonel, I was able to do just a form. I put the credit card on the form and supposedly, you know, because they have a kind of a higher level bonded maid would come in, pick it up, put it in, it's already in the folder, take it over, and they would process it. By the time I got home that night, I had not used that business credit card for months, I mean months. We went back and looked at it. By the time I got home that night, the card number had already been stolen, $10,000 had been charged in different places. And I was like, how could this have happen? Right? So I started thinking through it, you know. And I ended up thinking the only person who had that card was either the maid or the office.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
Yeah.
 
Don Gleason

Who else could have had that? So I called the group commander, who I had been a group commander. He's the oh six in charge of all of that operation. And I said, “I just want you to be aware of this. There might be something you have to look into.” His immediate response was, “My people wouldn't do that.” Hmm. Here's the powerful question. So let's just say they did do that. How would you find out? Reframe the question. Right? Because he immediately came back with pride, with ego, with protectiveness, with all those different emotions. He didn't want to admit it. But so often in companies’ military, we oversee the problems because we won't think into the situation. Well, what if they did, kind of like your kids, right? So they come home and teachers, teachers and no teacher said teacher says he got in a fight. “Well, my son wouldn't do that. Son. Did you do that?” “No.” Well, my son wouldn't do that. And they started arguing. Well, what happens if they did? What was going on? Reframe the question. And I think we miss so much by not thinking into the question the other way around. If that happened, what do I need to do? I wonder sometimes how many other people got their credit card stolen. Was there a ring? And maybe when I was a squadron commander. I was talking to, what they call them, it's not the security police, but it was the Air Force. It's operational security investigations. And they would look at drug rings and broad rings, and they were constantly looking at different things around to make sure that they were asking the question, you know, what signs would exist if something was happening and they would find different things? And they talked to me about some of the people in my squadron that were involved in stuff. At first you wanted to push back. I was like, “Well, no, okay, you've got what can I do to help you? How can we prove this?” Right? And, uh, and we ended up having some I mean, we had one at my partner, squadron commander. There was a whole ring of people within the squadron. Stole over a half $1 million, at least of materials, hiding it in different, you know, iin different, uh, HVAC rooms around the base. And then he'd come in on the weekends and take the material, go out and use it for their own businesses. So they're getting free supplies, right? And I was like, how could people why would people do that? Because it was beneficial anyway. Just the thought there of reframing the question. And, uh, and we have to get past that resistance. My coach asked me one time, he says, “What's your relationship with money?” I thought. Good. Yeah. And she said, I want you to think into that question. Well, I went out walking. I said, I always take my phone and I'm typing in the notes pages on my iPhone. I thought it'd be a 20 minute walk. 90 minutes later, I'm walking and still typing stuff just coming into my head. “Why? Why do I pay for this? Why do I pay for that? Why don't I get to take my car to the garage? Why do I like working on that?” Right? And I started thinking about all those different relationships. But in some respects, I came back to, I get a certain joy out of doing my own yard work and seeing it every day that it's green and everything's taken care of. And I did it,

Dawn Taylor
 
See, and I think that's what's missing. And I'm really sad. I'm really sad for these younger generations because of the world that we live in. They've never been taught how to critically think.
 
Don Gleason
 
That's a good point.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
They've never been taught how to do that. They don't know how to do that when it's like “Hey, think about this question and you know, resonate on that or journal about it.” They actually don't have that developed skill in their brains on how to process that.
 
Don Gleason

Is that why so many kids in math hate story problems? Because you have to critically think.  You have to figure out what the question is saying, what's the variables, what's the unknown?

Dawn Taylor
 
My husband always calls it - follow it through to its natural conclusion. And he teaches that all the time. It worked to his guys and he's like they don't like he's like you can't even get a kid to like figure out how to like wrap a hose these days. Like they don't even know how. They can't critically think like, what would I have to do to make this a thing? And they don't know how to do that anymore because they've never had to. They've never had to. They've never had to put the food in the oven at the wrong temperature and burn it and go, oh I wonder if I turn the temperature down next time if it would cook different, because all they have to do is Google it and do it perfect on the first try nowadays. And I think that's part of the problem. Right.? How do you get a job if you do get those rejection letters because we aren't rejected anymore. How do you move forward in your careers? How do you do those things when we don't actually know how to critically think? And I think that's one of the pieces that kids need. It's young adults. Honestly. It's a lot of like 30 and unders right now. Even people in the 30s, they don't know how, they actually don't know how. And the amount of times I'm like, people go “Dawn, can you just tell me what to do?” Yeah. And like, walk me through the steps and I'm like, oh my goodness, yes, yes I will.

Don Gleason

And you bring that back to how to find a job in this environment. Right? I hear a lot of people going to networking groups and they walk in saying, “Do you have a job for me?” Or can you connect me to somebody? I have no relationship. So what is it? Critically thinking? What? What would it take for that person standing there who maybe has a job to want to give me a job or give me a referral into his company or something? What do I need to do to build that relationship? And it's like, I don't have time, I don't know, I have nothing to give. Like this gentleman I was telling you about yesterday, I have nothing to give. So therefore there's no reason for me to ask the question. I can't help him. We don't even know what he needs. Maybe he just needs somebody to care, right? Maybe his mom is dying and he just needs somebody to talk to about it. It takes nothing but time you do that, that individual is going to be beholden to you and let you into his company. But we don't know how to do that anymore. It's the same thing we've been talking, right? It's your focus. What is it I really want to do? What do I really need to do to network to get to that place where I can talk to those companies? How do I need to sell myself that I have done the things that they're looking for, not the lowest level, but at the level that I want in my resume and my LinkedIn and my interview stories to get that level, because I talked to so many people that I want a $100,000 job, and I got offered the $80,000 job, I can't do it. That's not what - well you sold yourself for the $80,000 job. That's what your documents show. That's what your stories show. They didn't have the trust that you could do the $100,000 job. I think you nailed it. Really good. Critical thinking, solving the problem of what do I need to do to get what I want? But most of us haven't figured out what we want, and they don't have the rest of it either. That's good.

Dawn Taylor

No, we don't. Thank you, Don, for being here today. Thank you for this conversation. I hope that people listening learn something, or at least have a different vision on what they need to do to get the job, what they need to do. Just just a mindset shift. I'm like, hey, what if I wasn't scared of failing? What would I apply for?

Don Gleason
 
And here's the challenge. Sorry to interrupt you.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
It's okay.
 
Don Gleason
 
People are going to listen to this and say, oh, I don't have that problem. But reframe the question. What if I do have that problem that I can't critically think? What do I need to do? So I challenge people listening to this to reframe the question, well, what if I do have that? What do I need to do to fix it? 

Dawn Taylor
 
That can change things for you. Mhm. Don thank you thank you thank you again. If you guys want to get ahold of him, if you want to learn more about him check out our show notes located at the TheTaylorWay.ca We have all of his contact information and what he's working on. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and please join us again in two weeks for another fun topic. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Don, and I cannot wait to hear how things keep going for you. We'll have to keep in contact.

Don Gleason

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today.  

Dawn Taylor

You're welcome. 
 
I remember when I was a kid like 8:00 every Saturday morning, my dad would wake up and tell us what we're going to do around the yard. We're going to put in a garden, we're going to fix, we're going to change the water pump on that vehicle, you know.

Dawn Taylor

But all those years we worked and we worked.

Don Gleason

Yeah. And I didn't push my kids enough. A we talked about the cars were tougher to maintain at the time. So therefore you send them to the garage, um, to the, to the auto mechanic. Right. You could do some things and I work to get my kids to do it, but sometimes when I'd be in the middle of it, we're trying to figure something out. The kid would disappear, and I didn't chase him down and bring him back like my dad would have done. And easy times created easy people. They don't have that stick to it even enough. So I thought that was really interesting. I love that piece of figuring out what you really want to do, that daydreaming. Right? Um, and I want to touch back in on this with the resume piece. I wish people would really think into the resume and what it can do to help you sell yourself because you talked about, you know, I think how you said it. Um, but anyway, if you write a basic resume, which is what most books tell you to do, you're listing your responsibilities, right? I choose this example I turned on, I open the command post every morning for the general, and I've seen that in a resume. Right. I just did this task. I was responsible for this task. I did, you know, I maintained the books for this company. Okay, well, then if I hire you, I'm going to hire somebody who just turns the lights on or just does the books.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
Oh, interesting. Yeah,

Don Gleason

But if I can tell the story and say, you know, faced with the problems of operating, the command is doing this off the top of my head, faced with the problems of operating the command post and bringing so many people together and setting I. So I set up all the rules and responsibilities and the processes and and how in certain emergencies, this is how we're going to operate. These are the people we need to contact and notify. If I say that story and what the results were of that. Yeah, you're going to get a job where they need you to more than just turn the lights on. It's somebody I can rely on to think through those problems. Same thing with an accountant, right? Is there a bookkeeper or is an accountant where they knew the laws, the tax laws, the legal laws made sure that all the finances were compliant. The reports were put together, they were submitted on time. They worked through any issues. That's a whole different level of employment. And I'm trying to get people to think into - what do they really want? Because the way you write your resume is going to show that you're qualified for that. And people are so stuck these days. At least in the military. They take their responsibilities and stuff out of there. They call them performance reports or fit reps, fitness reports, and they just copy-paste them into the resume and said, “Well, that's what it says, you know, says right there, I'm an accountant. I can do all those different things.” No, you're a bookkeeper. It doesn't show at all. “Well, that's what I did.” But that's not what it says. So, we need to bring that out. I work with people to really bring that out in their resume. So they're telling the story of the job that they want and it's storytelling. So, I'm creating a digital course. I'm really calling the storybook, the storytelling framework of getting a job, because you have to be able to articulate what you did and what the results were, not just the task, but the problem you solve, right? If Donald Miller is big on Story Brand, I don't know if you've if you're following him at all, but he–

Dawn Taylor
 
I don't follow him. I don't like some of his stuff he's done, but I do know he does a lot around Story Brand.
 
Don Gleason
 
Yeah. So he talks about every movie. Every book has a hero, has a problem, has a guide. They fix the problem. There's a new result. If you watch every movie, your book, that's what it is. So you have to kind of use that, use a framework like that to talk about the problem. But most of us shy away from the problem. We just focus on the task because it's easy. The reader needs to know that problem to put it in perspective.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
But we don't create critical things anymore.
 
Don Gleason
 
True.

Dawn Taylor

Well, it's easy times, right? And it's one plus one equals two. And that's it. And no one thinks outside that box. And like my husband and I have this conversation often on nobody questions anything anymore. Nobody steps out of their comfort zone. They don't just try and see
 
Don Gleason

They’re afraid they're going to be shamed,

Dawn Taylor

Right? They'll be shamed, or they might fail, or they might fill in the blank. But I think that's part of the problem with that is. They're not. We're not creative thinkers. I remember, um, we take all our nieces and nephews on these crazy trips and for their 13th birthdays, 12th birthdays around that era. We were on one of them and our bank account had been hacked while we were in the air flying on the trip, and we'd been dealing with some issues anyways with the bank. They couldn't figure it out. They thought it was fine. And knowing this, I had taken, like all my business cards with me to make sure we were fine. Knowing this, I had taken extra cash out just in case. Just in case it happened again. I had not had time to like, transition all the bank accounts and do all the things in time for this big vacation. And one of the things that happened was because it had already, long story short, because they had already dealt with so much fraud in this account, they ended up seizing everything and shutting everything down until we were in person to walk into a bank to open it back up. So we're now out of the country on this three week vacation. Zero access to our money. Like none. And we got off the plane. We find this out from all the warnings. I phoned them, they're like, “No, we need you to step foot into a bank. We got to figure this out. We've now upped this to the highest security levels.” Blah blah blah. And I was like, “Okay, let's figure this out.” And my husband, even and with the kid that we were with, was like, “Oh my goodness, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” And like they started panicking and my husband looked at, I think it was one of our nephews. And he goes, “She’s Auntie Dawn. She'll figure it out.” There you go. And he was like, “What do you mean?” It's like she'll be the person who will figure out how to check into every hotel without having a credit card check in, like rent cars without credit cards. Like she will somehow manage to figure this out. Like it'll happen. And you know what's funny? Like, at one point I had, like, a bank manager wire transfer money to a hotel. I had, like, all of these hilarious things went down, but I managed to get a car rental company to rent us a car, three different places. We got car rentals without having a credit card, and even they were like, “Why are we doing this?” And at one point, literally the manager of this car rental place, as he's letting me sign the paperwork is like, “I don't know why I'm saying yes to this.” Like he was starting to question himself. He's like, “I'm not allowed to do this.” And I was like, “Oh, but you are.” And it's funny because I think that that's where, like, yes, people in my life bug me about this all the time and they laugh about it. They're like, “Oh, if anyone will figure it out, she will like, like you'll make it happen.” But I think that's a skill we need more of. I think that's a character trait we need more of. Which is, you know what it's all like. Marie Forleo. Whatever. Whoever should like, whatever she does. Sounds bad, but I just know this short a book called, like, Everything’s Figureoutable, and I haven't read it, but I always laugh at the title because there's so much of that is like, “No, no, no. What would it take for me to figure this out? What would it take for this to actually happen? What if we ask the questions? What if we just get really, really curious about it?” And I think that's where for anyone listening who's feeling really stuck right now. What if you weren't a tree? Like what if you actually could move? What if you could shift? What if? What if you could figure it out? Yeah.
 
Don Gleason
 
There's a beautiful part about being a coach is we help people reframe their thinking. And I wish I would have done this after I retired from the military. I was down doing business travel, and I went down to an airbase in Florida. We'd been there all week helping the client, and at 6:30. I had an 8:00 in the morning appointment, I was going to check out, be gone all day and then go get the plane in the afternoon. So, I had to check out by eight. So at 6:30 I went over to the office and there was a huge, long line. I said, there's no way I'm going to get through that, get breakfast and get to the meeting. So I went back to my room and being a retired colonel, I was able to do just a form. I put the credit card on the form and supposedly, you know, because they have a kind of a higher level bonded maid would come in, pick it up, put it in, it's already in the folder, take it over, and they would process it. By the time I got home that night, I had not used that business credit card for months, I mean months. We went back and looked at it. By the time I got home that night, the card number had already been stolen, $10,000 had been charged in different places. And I was like, how could this have happen? Right? So I started thinking through it, you know. And I ended up thinking the only person who had that card was either the maid or the office.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
Yeah.
 
Don Gleason

Who else could have had that? So I called the group commander, who I had been a group commander. He's the oh six in charge of all of that operation. And I said, “I just want you to be aware of this. There might be something you have to look into.” His immediate response was, “My people wouldn't do that.” Hmm. Here's the powerful question. So let's just say they did do that. How would you find out? Reframe the question. Right? Because he immediately came back with pride, with ego, with protectiveness, with all those different emotions. He didn't want to admit it. But so often in companies’ military, we oversee the problems because we won't think into the situation. Well, what if they did, kind of like your kids, right? So they come home and teachers, teachers and no teacher said teacher says he got in a fight. “Well, my son wouldn't do that. Son. Did you do that?” “No.” Well, my son wouldn't do that. And they started arguing. Well, what happens if they did? What was going on? Reframe the question. And I think we miss so much by not thinking into the question the other way around. If that happened, what do I need to do? I wonder sometimes how many other people got their credit card stolen. Was there a ring? And maybe when I was a squadron commander. I was talking to, what they call them, it's not the security police, but it was the Air Force. It's operational security investigations. And they would look at drug rings and broad rings, and they were constantly looking at different things around to make sure that they were asking the question, you know, what signs would exist if something was happening and they would find different things? And they talked to me about some of the people in my squadron that were involved in stuff. At first you wanted to push back. I was like, “Well, no, okay, you've got what can I do to help you? How can we prove this?” Right? And, uh, and we ended up having some I mean, we had one at my partner, squadron commander. There was a whole ring of people within the squadron. Stole over a half $1 million, at least of materials, hiding it in different, you know, iin different, uh, HVAC rooms around the base. And then he'd come in on the weekends and take the material, go out and use it for their own businesses. So they're getting free supplies, right? And I was like, how could people why would people do that? Because it was beneficial anyway. Just the thought there of reframing the question. And, uh, and we have to get past that resistance. My coach asked me one time, he says, “What's your relationship with money?” I thought. Good. Yeah. And she said, I want you to think into that question. Well, I went out walking. I said, I always take my phone and I'm typing in the notes pages on my iPhone. I thought it'd be a 20 minute walk. 90 minutes later, I'm walking and still typing stuff just coming into my head. “Why? Why do I pay for this? Why do I pay for that? Why don't I get to take my car to the garage? Why do I like working on that?” Right? And I started thinking about all those different relationships. But in some respects, I came back to, I get a certain joy out of doing my own yard work and seeing it every day that it's green and everything's taken care of. And I did it,

Dawn Taylor
 
See, and I think that's what's missing. And I'm really sad. I'm really sad for these younger generations because of the world that we live in. They've never been taught how to critically think.
 
Don Gleason
 
That's a good point.

Dawn Taylor
 
They've never been taught how to do that. They don't know how to do that when it's like “Hey, think about this question and you know, resonate on that or journal about it.” They actually don't have that developed skill in their brains on how to process that.
 
Don Gleason

Is that why so many kids in math hate story problems? Because you have to critically think.  You have to figure out what the question is saying, what's the variables, what's the unknown?

Dawn Taylor
 
My husband always calls it - follow it through to its natural conclusion. And he teaches that all the time. It worked to his guys and he's like they don't like he's like you can't even get a kid to like figure out how to like wrap a hose these days. Like they don't even know how. They can't critically think like, what would I have to do to make this a thing? And they don't know how to do that anymore because they've never had to. They've never had to. They've never had to put the food in the oven at the wrong temperature and burn it and go, oh I wonder if I turn the temperature down next time if it would cook different, because all they have to do is Google it and do it perfect on the first try nowadays. And I think that's part of the problem. Right.? How do you get a job if you do get those rejection letters because we aren't rejected anymore. How do you move forward in your careers? How do you do those things when we don't actually know how to critically think? And I think that's one of the pieces that kids need. It's young adults. Honestly. It's a lot of like 30 and unders right now. Even people in the 30s, they don't know how, they actually don't know how. And the amount of times I'm like, people go “Dawn, can you just tell me what to do?” Yeah. And like, walk me through the steps and I'm like, oh my goodness, yes, yes I will.

Don Gleason

And you bring that back to how to find a job in this environment. Right? I hear a lot of people going to networking groups and they walk in saying, “Do you have a job for me?” Or can you connect me to somebody? I have no relationship. So what is it? Critically thinking? What? What would it take for that person standing there who maybe has a job to want to give me a job or give me a referral into his company or something? What do I need to do to build that relationship? And it's like, I don't have time, I don't know, I have nothing to give. Like this gentleman I was telling you about yesterday, I have nothing to give. So therefore there's no reason for me to ask the question. I can't help him. We don't even know what he needs. Maybe he just needs somebody to care, right? Maybe his mom is dying and he just needs somebody to talk to about it. It takes nothing but time you do that, that individual is going to be beholden to you and let you into his company. But we don't know how to do that anymore. It's the same thing we've been talking, right? It's your focus. What is it I really want to do? What do I really need to do to network to get to that place where I can talk to those companies? How do I need to sell myself that I have done the things that they're looking for, not the lowest level, but at the level that I want in my resume and my LinkedIn and my interview stories to get that level, because I talked to so many people that I want a $100,000 job, and I got offered the $80,000 job, I can't do it. That's not what - well you sold yourself for the $80,000 job. That's what your documents show. That's what your stories show. They didn't have the trust that you could do the $100,000 job. I think you nailed it. Really good. Critical thinking, solving the problem of what do I need to do to get what I want? But most of us haven't figured out what we want, and they don't have the rest of it either. That's good.

Dawn Taylor

No, we don't. Thank you, Don, for being here today. Thank you for this conversation. I hope that people listening learn something, or at least have a different vision on what they need to do to get the job, what they need to do. Just just a mindset shift. I'm like, hey, what if I wasn't scared of failing? What would I apply for?

Don Gleason
 
And here's the challenge. Sorry to interrupt you.
 
Dawn Taylor
 
It's okay.
 
Don Gleason
 
People are going to listen to this and say, oh, I don't have that problem. But reframe the question. What if I do have that problem that I can't critically think? What do I need to do? So I challenge people listening to this to reframe the question, well, what if I do have that? What do I need to do to fix it? 

Dawn Taylor
 
That can change things for you. Mhm. Don thank you thank you thank you again. If you guys want to get ahold of him, if you want to learn more about him check out our show notes located at the TheTaylorWay.ca We have all of his contact information and what he's working on. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and please join us again in two weeks for another fun topic. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Don, and I cannot wait to hear how things keep going for you. We'll have to keep in contact.

Don Gleason

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today.  

Dawn Taylor

You're welcome.