#095 - What Is Identity Capital And Why It Can Help Advance Your Career with Nikki Sherin

Show Notes

Do I have what it takes to start a business? Where do I want to go professionally? How do I get there? These are questions most of us ask ourselves when it’s time for a career change. So how can you take the assets you’ve acquired with your identity capital and map out a new career path? To find out, co-hosts Lori Vajda and Nola Boea talked to former chef Nikki Sherin, who used her Identity Capital to become an event marketer and marketing lead for one of the largest IT events in the world.

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In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• How the things you put your time and energy into (identity capital) become what you are known for (your identity).
• Your journey and the elements that have formed who you are, are assets of your Identity Capital you use to purchase’ a new job, career advancement, or entrepreneurship.
• There are many ways to build capital including a degree, your hobby, the books you’ve read, travel and more.  
• How investing in that thing that motivates you, will put you on a path towards a satisfying professional and personal life

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:

(03:24:43) Identity capital explained and how to build yours so you can acquire ‘metaphorical’ wealth to propel you professionally. 

(10:23.26) Even your most unique skills and seemingly irrelevant jobs can be used to build your capital, regardless of your age or stage of personal and professional development.

(14:19:70) Whether you’re looking to switch careers, start a business or go for a promotion, this is how do you pull out and redefine your past as identity capital rather than it just being your job history.

(20:05:94) You've got a career portfolio. How do you take your experience, reframe it as identity capital, and currency to buy the things that you want?

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Nola: When you hear the word capital, what comes to mind? Money, investments, or perhaps assets for investing in starting a company. You're not alone in your thinking, but there's another kind of capital that's arguably just as important and that's identity capital. What is identity capital, you ask? You could say it's the currency you use to metaphorically accumulate wealth. So, you can purchase a new job, career advancement, or entrepreneurship. Stay tuned friends. Because in this episode, we are talking to a former chef who used her unique back of the house knowledge and cooking experience assets to invest in a totally new career. She's here to share how she did it and what you need to do before cooking up your totally new career path.
[00:00:49] Announcer: You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast, where time strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.
[00:01:01] Lori: Many of us have heard the term financial capital and understand its necessity in our lives. Likewise, you're probably familiar with various other types of capital, including social human and possibly even manufactured. Less familiar is the term Identity Capital. What is it, and how even your most unique skills and seemingly irrelevant jobs can be used to build your capital regardless of your age or stage of personal and professional development? Well friends, our guest today knows a thing or two about that. Meet Nikki Sherin, a seasoned event marketer and marketing lead for one of the largest IT events in the world.
[00:01:45] Nola: Prior to starting her new career in event management, Nikki Sherin worked the line as a chef. Taking everything she learned from her culinary training and experience. She connected the red thread of her identity capital to embark on a new industry. Nikki has been a food lover, marketer and events professional for the past decade. She's a wife and mom who believes everyone has a story to tell. Welcome, Nikki.
[00:02:12] NIkki: Thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:02:14] Lori: We are so glad that you are here. You know, I first learned of you while watching your Inbound 2021 session, which was titled from chef to event marketer, how identity capital shaped my approach. And I was captivated by your talk. I was taking notes and afterwards I came back and I was telling Nola about it because I thought the information you shared was applicable, not just to career advancement or changing career direction into a new marketplace, but equally for anyone who was starting a side business for the very first time, a first-time entrepreneur. Taking that breadth and depth of knowledge that they had and applying that to their subject matter expertise, which is what we think about when we think about starting a side business as an entrepreneur.
[00:03:08] NIkki: I was so thrilled with the response from the session at Inbound, I had gotten some great survey response from people who, either one, had a similar background where they had been in the food world, either front of house, so, you know, waitressing doing things like that, um, or back of house. I was lucky enough to understand and learn about identity capital at a young age. It's a, term coined by, Megan Jay clinical psychologist, out of Berkeley. And she wrote a book called the Defining Decade, How to Maximize Your Twenties, essentially. And I was in my early twenties and very lost. And didn't really know What I wanted to do career-wise. I had, graduated a time when the economy was not very good. It was back in 2009 and I had a sociology degree and didn't really know what to do with that. So I just went to my fallback and went back into restaurants and started waitressing. And with a college degree, I was, I was feeling a little like I should be doing more. Um, I should be. Understanding what I wanna do in the future. This felt like I was in a small town in Long Island And said, I need something to motivate me. I need an aha moment. And a friend had given me Meg Jay's book. the Defining Decade about how 30 is not the new 20, you have to maximize this time and start building your repertoire of skills or your weak ties that are gonna help, leverage you and propel you into your future career. So that was when I had enough information around identity capital to then be able to start building that at a younger age.
[00:04:28] Lori: You know, you bring up a really good point. that you kind of mentioned is the, the wealth of knowledge. And we use that term a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of experience. And I think to me, what was captivating about identity capital was it was really a way of understanding those seemingly disconnected parts, you know, in the past, having different career experiences or shifting careers or shifting marketplaces was frowned upon. But it's no longer frowned upon. And what happened to me, like you, when I started early. In my career, I was thinking I would go down the business path. I ended up with, a master's degree in social work. And then I started my first business as a dating coach. So on the side I was doing a dating coach, but I could never connect all the dots. And so when Nola and I were talking about it, that's where we had this kind of epiphany, that there are probably a lot of professionals who would like to start a side business, but worry that maybe their area of interest or their passion doesn't quite connect the dots. And that's why we wanted to introduce that whole career portfolio.
[00:05:52] NIkki: I do think the concept is relatable to people even starting, like you said, in a new career or pivoting, because they've got more wealth of their, career portfolio as you're, gonna mention as well as, how to then tell that story and formulate it into something that is concise and clear, something that is memorable and something that is relevant. So, those are the three pillars of developing your story, but using your identity capital to inform all of that.
[00:06:16] Nola: Right. The identity capital really does dovetail with this whole concept we've been exploring called the career portfolio. So a guy named Charles Handy predicted this way back in the eighties. He assumed that people are, not gonna be stuck in one company for life anymore. People are gonna start taking control of their own careers, and they're gonna have multifaceted careers. They're gonna be doing many different things and they're gonna shape their career. He, coined it a Career Portfolio. And we so relate to that because so many people will think through of all of their breadth and wealth of knowledge and we talk about expanding that and extending that into a side business.
And when Lori told me about your story about, you know, starting out as a chef, and now you're like this really high-profile event manager. I couldn't help but think back and identify with you. Because early on in my career, I was a daycare director with some college education in early childhood development. I mean, that was like for about 10 years. And I was a single mom. And so I was going to school part-time and, got my business degree. But then when I graduated, really the only real working experience I could cite Was daycare and it can be really difficult to get out of such a niche industry. But when I thought back to all of the marketing and the PR that I had done to promote and grow these centers, either from scratch or from squeaking by to a healthy profit, just focusing on those things, I ended up getting a job as VP of marketing and PR for a regional chain of childcare centers, which was like a big step out of that box. And from there, I was able to get marketing management for a tech company and other things, and then realized that my favorite part of marketing was the storytelling. And so I did another shift as a copywriter and ended up spending like the next 10 years, traveling the world, writing impact stories for nonprofits. And my career continuous to evolve. But when Lori told me about your talk, and your professional journey, I just could not help, but, you know, make that connection.
[00:08:34] NIkki: Yeah. It's so funny you say that, cuz I, I actually started in a daycare as well. Cuz I, you know, was working in restaurants. I said, okay, maybe, maybe I wanna be a teacher. Maybe I wanna do special education. And at the time you didn't need any sort of teaching certifications to work in the daycare settings near where I lived. And so I went and I was kind of a teaching assistant in a daycare for, um, children with autism and then neurotypical children as well. And I really loved it, but I realized quickly it wasn't what I ultimately wanted to do. It was kind of like a fail-fast situation where I was like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do a crash course. I did six months of it.
[00:09:09] Nola: Wow.
[00:09:09] NIkki: But then I was like, what will I do next? And I, at the time had read Megan Jay's book. And I said, okay. She tells her patients go out and get some identity capital. And I said, and that's just something like. What is going to benefit me now, like what's gonna benefit me in the future. What's something intentional that I can do. That's not just going back to waitressing or just, I thought about grad school. I was like, but is that really what I wanna do? I was like, you know what, I'm gonna follow a passion. And I said, I'm gonna go to culinary school. I'm gonna do it. I had graduated college already, but I said, I can do a year accelerated program in my local community, and decided that will, at the very least, maybe I will discover, I love this. Maybe I would be a chef. Maybe this would be my profession. And if not, it's a really great skill to have, and it is something that I will learn from. I will meet new people, force me out of my comfort zone, because it was just very unfamiliar to me. And what was great is I actually met people all walks of life in culinary school. There was the stay-at-home moms. There were the, just outta high school kids who were really wanting to stay local and restaurant industry is huge on long island, especially on the north work where I grew up. And there were people who were like me, who just were kind of lost and wanted to understand what they wanted to do next, but in the meantime thought I'm gonna invest in myself. I'm gonna follow a passion and I'm gonna see where this takes me. It did take me into the restaurant world and I did work the line for, um, very busy, new opening restaurant. Realized quickly. That was not really for me, but it did propel me into, I got into food marketing. Right immediately. I went to a chip company in Massachusetts and started doing grassroots marketing. So not only did that connect kind of like I had a passion for food. I had a passion for the product, so I could, you know, it was very compelling and interesting to the people who interviewed me. I applied from Craigslist. You can't get an interview off Craigslist now.
[00:11:00] Nola: Not today.
[00:11:01] NIkki: It was, but the hiring manager, she was actually, she was around my age, um, because it was a startup was a young company and she's like, so you are a, like, you're working in a restaurant right now. You're a chef, but you've got a sociology degree. You worked in a daycare. She just was intrigued. She was, she just was very interested in just talking to me. So like our phone interview, we hit it off and I had a good story to tell and a wealth of experience and thought, gosh, like the identity capital I actually got out of this experience made me noticeable, you know, every time I've submitted my resume for any job I've ever wanted. It's one of the first questions they ask me is they go, huh? So you, you were a chef. Tell me about that. Tell me what that was like. And then what I can do is take those little bits and parts like you did with your job running the daycare is you pull out the skillset. So you pull out like deadline driven, you pull out fast-paced environment. You pull out all those buzzword and the things that they want out of a, an individual in terms of the skillset, like, is this person a right fit in terms of what their foundational background is gonna be? Not just looking at, something on a piece of paper and saying, like making an assumption about it. I think that's the important part is you, you do that exercise. Whether you understand identity capital as you're starting your career, which gives you an advantage, I will say, cuz it makes you more intentional in what you're doing. But on the flip side, if you're already established in a career, it gives you new perspective of looking at your past experience to start pulling out those little threads and those little things of what do I really wanna do. Because then I went from food marketing. We, we were purchased by General Mills. So we all kind of went through an acquisition phase, which is crazy, but a good, really great learning experience.
Then I went into influencer marketing or at the cusp of when that began with, mom bloggers actually, and I could bring my experience then as a daycare teacher and just understanding a, a mother's perspective. I didn't have children at the time, um, but could bring that into that job.
And then I had the choice actually had a choice between going to William Sonoma. I had an offer from William Sonoma in San Francisco to be a, um, an associate brand manager, which was like, Hey, that's the big dream. Or to start event marketing at a technology company. And two very different things. But it really forced me to pull out what are the things I truly like in my job.
Being category manager is highly analytical. It's very much you're in spreadsheets. You're understanding how inventories are looking your, uh, and it was gonna be for housewares goods like that. It wasn't really directly with food, but it was, you know, I, I looked a little more at it and said, like, I don't know. I like a fast-paced environment. I like being deadline driven. I like seeing something come to fruition and see it come to life. I like an end result in the product. and ultimately it led me to going doing events for a technology company because I looked at food is my passion. I'm gonna keep it my passion. I'm gonna do this at home, but I can do the things that actually bring me a lot of fulfillment and bring me a lot of joy in the workplace if I then go into this field. And in all honesty, it's been such an incredible fit for me. And so similar when I've had to look back and explain my story. And, I've done this a few times to a few different audiences, where I can pull it out for different folks who are either early in their career or folks who are currently kind of looking to switch and how do they then pull out and redefine their past as identity capital versus just it being your job history. You know, you have to look at it in that way.
[00:14:29] Lori: Well, just as a side note, so that there's a trifecta here. I actually also did a stint as a childcare assistant, uh, childcare it was for a Montessori preschool.
[00:14:46] Nola: I had no idea, Lori.
[00:14:49] Lori: Yes. Well, because you know, and this is what to me is so fascinating, about identity capital is because often the jobs that we had for whatever reason that didn't fit, where we are, we think of them more as a mistake rather than an asset. And I think that's what I love about how you presented your story at inbound 2021 was that you were embracing your past, not seeing it at all as a mistake, but seeing it as an asset that was going to help you move forward in a new direction.
[00:15:32] NIkki: Yeah. I had recently watched to prepare for this Megan Jay's Ted talk, and it's just fascinating because her whole philosophy and what I took away from, her book was. You don't wanna look back and think I've wasted time, or I haven't accomplished anything. So no matter what you choose to do in say life, there's a lot of people now leaving the workforce. It, you know, they're deciding they're burnt out. They need a break. Take that break, but also make investments in yourself at the same time to build out your identity capital. Either that's gonna build relationships. So you have those weak ties later to be able to leverage those, or how can I use this time away or this sabbatical, to frame, you know, a bio about myself and how that helped me rediscover who I am or redefine what I wanna do in the future. Make sure that none of the time that you spend is, is wasted time. You don't wanna look back. And I, I truly don't. I feel I really maximize what I could in my twenties to now be in my mid-thirties to be where I want to be career wise, but it took some, hindsight looking back and then learning how to tell my story and feeling comfortable with that. But I also, like I said, had the benefit of understanding and learning about Identity Capital at a young age, to be intentional in what I was doing to ensure that every choice I made. I had to think, how does this build my story? How does this make me different? How does this make me stand out? How is this contributing to my overall goals career wise? And you know, I'm not done in my career. I still have a ways to go. So now it's, it's fitting those other elements of what I've learned, even in technology. If I wanted to leave a technology space, how do I leverage working for a cloud company into if I wanted to go into CPG, if I wanted to go into something else, gotta learn and start honing in on how to develop that. So it's always top of my mind.
[00:17:13] Nola: So I'd like to just back up, because this has been fascinating. And we mentioned at the beginning of the show, identity capital really is an unfamiliar term and I'm, more or less grasping it from context. But I think it's fair to say that when most people think about their career or starting a business, based on their existing, knowledge and experience, and they're thinking about even building that, they think about their degree or their specific training or whatever job titles they've held. But that's not exactly the case with identity capital, right? So could you just clarify. What exactly is identity capital, and how does it tie into building our professional assets?
[00:17:58] NIkki: Sure. So how she tends to outline it is they are your collection of both personal and professional assets. Some of those things end up on a resume. Some of those are an accreditation you have a degree that you have. But other things are the relationships you're building and the types of things that fit your personality. Like I am generally a very fast paced person and I'm a planner. I'm very type A, so working in a restaurant environment worked out very well. I was very checklist based. You have your prep list when you walk in and you learn that just natural organization kinda hardwired into your brain to then you take that. And now I'm a checklist person. I'm a to-do list person.
[00:18:35] Nola: Hmm.
[00:18:36] NIkki: You are able to take those things and apply them. You know, you have very challenging relationships. You've got front house relationships and I was in an open kitchen. Mind you too. So the entire restaurant could see you so you couldn't get hot. You couldn't get like frustrated. You had to stay very calm. It was a quiet kitchen. It was kind of a Zen kitchen. So that frustration you had to kind of keep that in. Not unlike being an event manager, you have to keep cool. You cannot be an alarmist. And that was kind of built into me too, of. like, there's always a solution. There's always something you can do. You don't have to panic. You just have to deal with the problem and you have to understand like, and prepare so that those things don't surprise you, but being in reactionary environments is not unfamiliar to me. So it's, it's taking those foundational things that are about you and applying those professionally. I think that that is hard for people to recognize and understand, but once you start doing it and recognizing it, it's like riding a bike where all of a sudden, you're just like, well, I'm this way. What kind of career would, best reflect what I wanna do without having to take like those personality quizzes that tell you you'd be great at this? Um, it's more self-actualization and you saying like, this is what actually the foundation of my personality and the foundation of what I wanna do is, and how that links to professionalism. And then giving it a name. It's identity, capital. It is currency to you. That is the currency you're using to get where you wanna be. And those who have the ability to tell their story will always out win those that just are unable to collect that and, articulate it in a way. So you've got a career portfolio, but how do you sell that career portfolio? You need to take that experience, reframe it as identity capital, and currency. Now, how are you gonna use that currency to buy the things that you want? Quote.
[00:20:18] Nola: It's fascinating.
[00:20:19] Lori: It is. Because often when we want to switch careers, the very first thing we tend to tell ourselves is I don't have the degree. I don't have the experience. If I'm understanding you correctly, what you're saying is no, you are getting nuggets or something in this case is an asset. You just need to frame that, so that it fits in the direction that you're going. So applying your knowledge, your experience, your expertise, and overlaying it on this new direction that you want to go. I think another way that might help clarify that is the idea of the tangible and intangible assets that we pick up along the way. Most of us refer to the tangible, here's the job title that I had. Here's the degree that I got, but your intangibles apply. Can you speak a little bit to that? And also, how do you then, sell that if you will, when you're thinking about going in a new direction, like you did. You're so good at telling your story that in my mind, there's not a leap between a chef now and an event planner. Yet. If I just say those two words, there's a huge leap. So you figured out how to connect that.
[00:21:42] NIkki: Yeah. I think that more of the tangible were the things that I could take and pull out and learn, like being comfortable in a deadline driven environment. So that's a very tangible kind of skill that I was like, okay, like I can. I guess you could say it's kind of blended though, cuz that is foundational too. Like they weren't gonna ask me, can you do a shift nod? No, they were not gonna ask me like how do you make, a no, no, one's gonna ask me those things in a interview about being an event marketer. It leans, for me personally, far more on the intangible things that I can do, and just tell a compelling story that gets attention. I don't think if people really do cover letters that much anymore, but I remember really leaning in my cover letter on that experience, to be able to serve it up. And I think that did give me a leg up in terms of people, you know, if they read them that catches their attention of just telling a better story, about how the different experiences that I had that are also unfamiliar to others, you know, the person you're talking to has not a clue what it's like to be a chef. Or that person may not have a clue what it's like to start your own business, or that person might not have a clue about a specific experience that you had or job that you had. And it's your job to bring them along and make them understand and tell it in a way that is, like I said, you want it concise and clear. You want it memorable and you want it relevant. So it's that relevancy that you're taking and pulling in, not just the tangible, because yeah, you may have a skill set like from when I worked at the chip company, I was doing grassroots events. I was doing a lot of like gluten free fairs and fun runs and things like that, giving away chips. So I did have some of that, like I understand how small-scale events work. I understand the logistics of an event. But truly it was more of the foundational intangibles from being a chef that I use in my day to day, when I talk about what is most meaningful in my career journey. So I have those examples to back it up a little bit more. Now it's more, this is what I bring because of my wealth of knowledge and experience, but well, here's where I started, and this is how those different experiences have shaped my success today. That is truly the foundational pieces.
[00:23:49] Lori: You know, when I was watching your, talk, you used a slide and you highlighted the past your chef experience into what you were talking about. It made my brain light up thinking all the missed opportunities that I had in taking previous work previous, soft skills or even hard skills, in other careers and applying them in the present. But you don't shy away from your past. You actually bring that into the story you're telling.
[00:24:24] NIkki: Yeah. And I think what was interesting about it is not only does my experience there lend itself to my entire high level career journey. What I had done for that presentation was show how those. Intangibles or those skills that I had learned actually informed my day-to-day project management style. So it was okay, we had a problem to solve a couple years ago where we needed to optimize our email campaign strategy. Because in events you're obviously we audience acquisitions. So you're trying to drive people to your events and you need to do it in an effective way. We looked at what our most effective medium was, and it was email. So we said, how do we optimize this to improve engagement and open rates and registrations as a result of these emails?
So I approached it like I would a chef. Where I said, okay, I'm gonna get my mise en place together. That's something fundamental you learn in culinary school. And as a chef is to pre prep. That's why you see all the. Chefs on the Food Network. They've got all these little bowls of things and it looks so simple because they've organized themselves. They've gotten their ducks in a row prior to cooking.
So that was my first understanding was what's my mise en place? I need key stakeholders. I need brand and creative to help me. I need the go to market teams to take a look at this and I need analytics. I need to like look back and do all that. So I assembled my mise en place. And then I would go into, you know, presentation is key.
You want this to look beautiful. People will engage with something if it's attractive looking and, and that's something you learn. That you eat with your eyes first, like you need to understand. And the importance of ingredients. So like getting that team together in my me and plus, and understanding what are the building blocks of what this is, how do we test it and then find the good things. So it's like testing recipes. How do you find the good things, pull them out and then create this beautiful dish that's gonna be delivered at the end. So I essentially looked at an email template and an email process as a meal, as a dish that you're presenting in a restaurant. And that is exactly how I approached it. And we saw increased open rates. We saw increased engagement. We saw increased registration. So was able to show that end to end journey of, not only can I speak to it at the high level, but I could dig down into, okay, let's put these things into practice and show a more concrete example of how this impacts my thought process even today, in order to be an asset to an organization.
[00:26:39] Nola: That's fascinating, how you just described how you drew from your experience as a chef, to now painting the picture of how you do the very same thing in event marketing. I would never have put that together, but you've done that. Now that you've identified what identity capital is and its value, in your opinion, what do you see as the benefits of now knowing what your identity capital is?
[00:27:05] NIkki: Once, you know it, you can reframe or look back on your career in different context. people might look at their experience and there's a lot of imposter syndrome, you know, in the industry right now. So people think I'm not good enough. My experience isn't good. Start owning your experience and own your past and treat it like currency, treat it like something that is to be held at value, treat it like something that you can use to quote unquote, purchase the things that you want in your career or in your life, because I don't feel like I have imposter syndrome. I feel like I am very confident in what I want and what I do, because I look at my entire career history as currency. If I don't look back at like, say you got, let go from a job or say something negative happening your career past. you can reframe. You can spin that as something that taught you a lesson or taught you some soft or hard skills. You know, maybe that job was for a short amount of time, but, working with a manager who was maybe challenging. How did you deal with that? How did you learn to cope? How did you learn to communicate? Or, you decided to take a year off and travel the world. Who did you meet? What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about the world? Those things that you're just gonna take and build, either who you are now or who you want to be. Like I like working in big organizations versus small. I had to learn that through some of my Experience. But then what are the different skills that you need to know there? You need to do cross functional work. You need to have stakeholder relationship management. There's tricky things to navigate there. So you build some of those soft skills as part of your identity capital. Put yourself in situations where you could network or, doing things like the Inbound presentation, working on presentation skills. Like that was a piece of identity capital was that inbound presentation and look where it got me. It got me to talk to you guys. So, it's always doing those things with intention.
[00:28:51] Nola: That's huge. Intention. That I think is the key.
[00:28:54] Lori: Oh, absolutely. I think this has been an eye-opening discussion. And I think anybody listening to the discussion is probably doing what I'm doing, which is what I did the first time when I watched your presentation and then I talked to you, which is, my brain is on fire thinking not only about those missed opportunities that I could have weaved my story with confidence in. But you hit on something that was really important, which was that imposter syndrome that people feel. And that's something that Nola and I experience in talking to people when we're encouraging them to pursue their dream of entrepreneurship or having a career portfolio. So we would love to have you come back and do another episode that really focuses on the, how to, how do you weave that story in when you've started a business, maybe as a consultant or an advisor, and you've got your first client or your first few clients, and you're feeling like, do I have what it takes to convince that person that I really do have the knowledge, experience and expertise to help you.
So would you be willing to come back for a second interview?
[00:30:10] NIkki: Yes, I would love that.
[00:30:11] Lori: But before you go, is there any tip that you could give listeners who would start to think about that red thread for themselves?
[00:30:22] NIkki: So I think just looking at your career path or journey from the highest level and start breaking it down. Just making lists. That's how I did it when I went through my presentation for Inbound is, what were some of the skills that I had that I really feel like have been consistent throughout my entire career? So it is that like I'm deadline driven. I am very Type A and meticulous. I'm a box checker. These are the things that I bring through and I've noticed in every single job that I've had, those maintain. Now just telling someone those things is not interesting, but if you frame them up into this is how I gained that foundational skill, and then this is how it applied, and giving relevant examples throughout my career, to then tell a story and come up with something that is like an elevator pitch. That confidence comes from also figuring that out ahead of time. You don't wanna do it on the fly. You really do wanna come up with your maybe five-minute elevator pitch that somebody's gonna say. So. Tell me about your story. Tell me about your career. And instead of just walking through my resume, I tell a story. So you start thinking of it that way, and then you rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. So that it's just in you, because that is what you look at good entrepreneurs. You look at people who have started companies. They've got a story and they've got it down pat. Because if you feel more confidence and you rehearse something and you've got it down and you're like, I have a story, I have a solid story. You will come off as being very confident and that imposter syndrome will start to just fade away because it'll just start to inform how you speak and how you talk because you're not doing on the fly. You're doing it because this is something that is uniquely you, and it is your story and you are the best person to tell it.
[00:31:57] Nola: That is so inspiring.
[00:31:59] Lori: It is so inspiring.
[00:32:01] Nola: let's start making our lists.
[00:32:04] NIkki: Start breaking it down.
[00:32:07] Nola: Nikki, I cannot wait for you to come back and, tell us more about how to weave that story together. How to weave in that red thread. For today, thank you so much for being our guest. If someone wants to learn more about you or identity capital, where should listeners go or how can they connect with you?
[00:32:24] NIkki: So you could find me on LinkedIn, Nikki Sherin. I'm currently a senior manager for event marketing at VMware. So you can find me there. I highly recommend if folks are interested, to check out Megan Jay's Ted Talk. That is incredible. It's more about the Defining Decade, which she writes now 20 or 30 is not the new 20, but it has a really lot of great nuggets in there.
[00:32:43] Nola: Well friends, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope it makes all the difference in you getting started on your business so you can create your best and most exciting life. If you found the information shared here today, helpful let us know by posting here where you're listening or on our Facebook page.
[00:32:59] Lori: Not sure how to turn your ID into a profitable side business? Contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact. We'd be happy to help you.
[00:33:08] Nola: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember. Action creates results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.

[OUT-TAKE]

Nola: it's actually like the, excuse me.
[00:33:30] Lori: I know that we're on the right course because Nola, all of a sudden has to clear her passageways.
[00:33:39] NIkki: Now you guys need a whole blooper reel.
Those will be easy to find. You just go to like, laugh and cut. Laugh and cut.
[00:33:48] Nola: Yep. Yep. Yep.