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A podcast that explores what it means to work with purpose by interviewing people who are working for more than just a paycheck.
Are you in corporate America grinding away the weeks as you watch the years fly by? Do you have that voice in your head that’s asking for something more? But you shouldn’t complain, right? You’ve got a good job, good pay, good benefits. There’s people out there that would kill for a job like that. But that little voice just won’t go away.
I’m your host Gino. And as an ex 9-5er I know that feeling all too well. I worked in corporate for 6 years before I finally decided to walk away, choosing to live my life a little differently. And since then, I’ve met some pretty amazing people who do work that positively impacts the people around them, their communities, and the world. This podcast exists to share their stories, and to help inspire you to do the same. Leave that job that you hate and to start working towards your purpose.
Welcome to working towards our purpose, a podcast that
offers a different perspective on what a job can be for everyone
out there that's heard that voice in the back of their head asking for something
more. It's time to listen to it. I'm your host, Gino,
and join me as I interview people who have decided to work in their
own purpose. Together, we will learn, become inspired,
and hopefully find our own path towards working in our purpose.
Hello and welcome to working towards our purpose. In
today's episode, I have a little bit of a different episode for you
all. I'm trying out a first solo episode
and we'll see how it goes. I'm not
totally pumped about talking for set amount of
minutes by myself, but I'm going to try it out and see
how it works. So there's a few things that I wanted to talk about in
today's episode, and we'll just kind of get
right into it and I'll try to have it as conversational as most
of my other podcast episodes are. So at the time of
recording this, I just about went over the one year mark of
this podcast. So first off, I just wanted to thank everybody who's
listened and thank all my guests for coming on.
And I've had some really good conversations with people, and I've
met people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. And it's
been a great way to learn about people and to
connect with people and to make connections with people. And
yeah, I just feel very grateful and fortunate for that.
Also, it happens to be right around the
time of my three year anniversary from quitting corporate and
kind of getting out of that lifestyle and making a lot of changes in my
life. And something else I'm also grateful and fortunate
for. So wanted to reflect upon that. And for
me, I always like to celebrate that day because it's an important
date that I decided to choose myself and to
choose my own happiness versus anything
else. And I guess it wasn't exactly that day that I chose
that, but it's a good reminder for me of the day
that I left, right? It's the day of the change. So this year
I celebrated by getting a tattoo and
finishing the rest of my arm sleeve. I had a half sleeve up
until that point, and I was able to finish it over a two day
session with this really amazing artist, Stefano. And
I just had like a really awesome experience. Maybe I'll get into that a little
bit more later in this episode, but some other things I want to talk about.
So this podcast, for me, has always been about learning and about
growing and about getting closer to the idea of
why I'm here or on this earth, what my calling or my purpose
is. And I've thought a lot about it as we kind of transition into
the new year. And I know it's a little bit into the new year now,
but I was thinking a lot about it and taking some time to myself.
And at the end of last year, I kind of came to a decision
in my mind about my business, pleasant podcasts.
And I think it might be helpful to talk about
as I continue to going along this path. And
for me, I think at first, Pleasant podcast
was my business, where I helped other podcasters. And
I always wanted it to be something that would fully support me
and make me more money than I did in my corporate
job and infinite potential and that sort of thing. But it hasn't really
been that. And I think being honest with that is something
that's important. And as I go into this new year,
my words for the new year are authenticity and radically
being myself. And I think being transparent in this is,
I don't know, helpful, maybe for somebody who's in a similar
position. So regardless of if it is or it isn't,
I want to share it because it is helping me be
more authentic to myself. So, that being
said, when I first quit Pleasant podcast was I put everything
into it and I tried a bunch of different things, and
I've mentioned it here and there before on the podcast. But the first year
for me was not at all how I expected. I expected to quit my
job, to put all my time into plus and podcasts, and then to make the
same amount of money that I did at my corporate engineering job. And that just
didn't happen. And there was things going on. It was still the
pandemic. I was completely working by myself. I wasn't
getting any help from anybody. And it just, I don't know, it became
this bit of a humbling experience. And at that point, after the
one year mark, it kind of forced me then to go out and get a
part time job where for me, at first that was seen as a
failure to get a job and then to also have a
business. You weren't a real entrepreneur if that's what you're doing.
But I've since changed my mind on that. And at first, I worked
some pretty bad jobs that I didn't really like at all and weren't really
contributing anything to me other than money. And then I think it was
probably around my second year mark where I worked
this job for a year and it helped pay bills,
but it was becoming a source of frustration. And I think I kind of paused
and thought about what I was doing, and I decided to
get a job that would give me something in return
other than just money. And at that point, I decided
that I wanted to be a barista because I thought it was a useful skill
that I could take anywhere. And I was always interested in coffee. I'd like
coffee a lot. I like the atmosphere of coffee shops,
people working or writing or doing schoolwork. So I kind of
like the idea of being able to be a barista. At which point I applied
to a bunch of barista jobs, and the one that got back to me was
a bagel shop with a barista position. So, long story
short, I started working there. I worked as a barista for a little bit,
and then I got into some other things and learned a bunch of different new
skills and trades and eventually found myself in farmers markets,
which I really enjoy. And I've met so many awesome people through
and kind of done some other things around there, too. And just
working for a small business, it's been not like any of my other
jobs that I've had. And it's nice because it's part time and I
don't have to be there full time, and I don't have to invest all of
myself into it. But when I am there, I work with some really great
people, and I'm able to kind of go where
things interest me. And I feel as though my opinion is heard.
And really what I'm just trying to say is that it doesn't feel like a
job that I've had in the past. And it's not a place that I don't
like going to because I only work three days a week there. It
isn't this thing that I dread, and I've been able to enjoy it and to
learn and to learn transferable skills that I can use other places.
So it's really been a good experience. And I'm also open to the idea
that if it doesn't become a good experience anymore and it's something that
I don't enjoy doing, then I can move on to something else.
And I think really what I'm trying to say with this whole thing is that
the idea of just having a business that supports you and
that's the only thing you do, and you put everything into it, at least for
me. Maybe that's not the way for me.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But I'm being really open to the idea
that this entrepreneurial path or
path towards purpose, because I don't even really like saying entrepreneur anymore. I think
it's more so a path towards purpose and finding purpose in your work.
However, that may look so for me, when I'm going to a farmers market and
having conversations with people every week and making connections and human connections,
that to me is purpose. And it allows me to
be in the moment and appreciate everything around me. And I think that that
for me is a huge part of purpose. But it's also given me the space
to think about what I want to do with my business. And because I
have that secondary income, it doesn't put as much pressure on
me to make pleasant podcasts support me
fully, which then helps me make decisions, not from a
monetary standpoint. So I think that that's really important
or that has been really important for me and is something
that I want to talk about now, because like I said earlier, I'm
changing my idea of what I thought Pleasant podcast was. And
now coming into this new year, how I'm thinking about it is it's kind of
maybe just this small company that only works with a small amount of people,
and I work with people that I really care about. I don't have to
constantly keep forcing podcasting. And
it made me think back to how I even got into podcasting to begin with.
And it was because when I was in my corporate engineering job, I was
just desperate to do anything else. And the only skill that
I saw myself having was audio engineering because I had been recording
music and I was listening to podcasts. So it kind of
just clicked into place to like, oh, I can use my
engineering skills that I've learned through music for podcasting. Because
for me, it was like almost an insecurity thing because it's like, I
don't think I'm good enough to be doing music, but podcasting is
a lot easier from an audio engineering standpoint. So
I could do that, and that's kind of how I got into it. It's been
surprising in the fact of it's helped me along my
journey and making connections with people and seeing people
do the things that they really care about. And for that, I really still love
it. But I don't want it to be this thing that's like, I need
to force it to be like a money making machine. And
therefore, now I'm doing stuff that I don't really care about anymore. So that being
said, I've come to terms that pleasant podcast
is one of my small businesses that
is a piece of my identity, but it's not all of me. And it
is this smaller thing now that gives me some sort of
income, but it doesn't fully sustain me, and that's okay. And
if it becomes bigger, that's cool. And if there's something exciting that I
want to put into it, then I'll do that, but I won't
force something, and I'm not going to force some sort of
marketing tactic to bring me more clients. For me,
I think I feel like there's an even bigger thing that I could
be doing or an even bigger way of helping people. For a long time, I
felt that with podcasting, I've always kind of just maybe found
people that I would want to work with, but kind of having to force
it into the podcast framework and if it was something that they didn't want to
do, because podcasting is not for everyone and it has tons
of cool benefits, and I think there's many positives to it, but
there's also some things that just make people uncomfortable. And I think that that's
okay. And you don't have to be doing podcasting and
coming to that realization. It's like, okay, well, how can I help people more, and
where do I want to help people? And I'm still answering that myself.
And I think that this podcast has been helpful for me in seeing
what's possible and having communications and connections with
people that make me think more of myself. And I'm
not sure what it is yet, but I know that there's something else out there
for me, and I think being open to it and giving the
room for myself to find out what that is, is
important. So that being said, not looking at pleasant podcasts
as this big thing that I need to solve, or
this problem of how do I get more clients, how do I make more money
with it? I'm not really looking at it like that anymore. I'm looking at it
as it is and being okay with that and accepting that
and then thinking about what I want to be doing in the
future. And I'm still kind of defining what that is.
And again, I'm okay with not knowing yet. I really like
the idea of helping people more to figure out
who they are and to do the things that they really want to be doing
and to work towards their purpose. And I think this podcast
is one of the closest things that I found
that resonate with me as far as what I want to be doing with my
life and my purpose. And so that's why I've decided
to try to put more into this and to try
to release episodes more than biweekly. And the goal is
to interview more people and it's to do more solo episodes and
it's to check in more with myself and to kind of just put that out
there to be more authentically myself and to put more of me into this
podcast and to see where it goes. So the goal is to release
weekly episodes. Maybe I'll take a break sometime in the summer or something like that,
but I would like to release weekly episodes
and really just start talking to some more people and start making my
own solo episodes where I'm contemplating these things and thinking
about where I want to be helping people and where
I want my life to be and thinking of
everything less from a business standpoint and more of like a person
standpoint, I think, is kind of where I'm leaning towards and
yeah, I don't know. I always tell the story about when I first made my
first business cards for Pleasant podcasts and how I didn't even put my name on
it because I was trying to separate myself from the business, because I
was afraid of putting myself out there. And now I feel like I'm just
chasing the opposite of that. It's not even a business anymore. It's just
me. And how can I help people in a way that makes me
money? Because of course that's important, but not
prioritizing the money and thinking about more. So,
like, what fills me up energetically and how can I feel like I'm helping
other people? So, hopefully this wasn't too
rambly, but yeah, I'm going to look to start to do some
more of these solo episodes. I don't know how often they'll be. And this year
I've also started a substac, which is something that's new to me.
It's pretty much like a blog site that
also gets sent out as like a newsletter. So if you want to join my
substac, I'm basically going to be talking about things that I've
learned through books and people that I've come across and kind of just
ideas about the things that I'm thinking about. And it's not going to be like
an every Monday sort of thing, but I'm going to try to send one out
weekly. And it's just a practice for me of being really
authentic in the hopes of inspiring other people to be more of themselves
and to find more purpose for themselves. Yeah.
So if you'd like to follow me on Substac. I have a link in the
show notes to where you can just click it and follow me. It's free. You
can also comment and stuff, and I'd love to hear feedback. I always love to
hear any feedback that anyone has. So thank you for listening
and I'll have another interview podcast for you next week, so I'll see you
then. Be well. Thank you for listening to working towards
our purpose. If you liked today's episode and are interested in more,
you can sign up for my substac newsletter with the link in the show notes
where I share thoughts, tips and ideas that I'm learning along my
journey to help inspire you. The show was produced by
pleasantpodcasts@pleasantpodcast.com.