<musical introduction>

Hey, I'm Alexis Booth and welcome to the Breakout Booth! I was a senior manager at Google, I'm a wife and a mother, and I learned the hard way: If you're not fired up, you're on hold. 

I believe success is closer than you think. There's a set of skills and habits you can grow to unlock unbelievable outcomes. In this podcast, we'll explore them through real talk and bold conversation because I want to help you break out.

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Hello, hello, and welcome to our very first special episode of the Breakout Booth! I'm Alexis Booth. Welcome! I'm so excited to have you here and I'm so excited to kick all of this off.

This is our Hello World episode. For any of you who are not techies, whenever you're learning a new computer programming language, Hello World is the name of the first program that you deploy. And since this is my first official episode, that's what we're going to call it!

So, let's dive right in. What is this all about? 

Well, let's start off talking a little bit more about me and how this idea came together. I spent the last 14 years of my life climbing the career ladder at Google. It was not my first job out of college - we'll talk more about that over the course of time - but it was definitely my most significant career move, at least so far. And during this time, I was also basically navigating the transition between being married to my job and being at the mercy of everything that my job expected and required from me to designing and leading a fuller and more intentional life.

There is a lot of hard work that I did along the way. Some of it was stuff that I picked and did by choice, stepping into different roles, learning new skills, making moves. There's also a lot of stuff that happened around me. The circumstances of the world today are extraordinarily different than they were 14 years ago! Over the course of this time, I have now gained a lot more skills. I wouldn't call them complete, but I am in a much better place of being able to make active choices about where I want to spend my time and energy. So that's kind of me.

As for the podcast, I spent the last half of my time at Google - so, really, the last seven years - I was in a senior manager role and I really leaned into being a coach and mentor for a much wider audience of people. During this time, I started hosting a series of real talks that were, I mean, they were based on my experience because I was coming up with these topics and putting them out in front of people. Basically, what they were was these tough and intriguing conversations that no one else was having. I was telling people things that people don't say out loud, or they're saying things that they only say behind closed doors. Some of them were about how to get ahead. There was one in particular that was about how to prevail at Perf [Google’s performance review process]. Later on, it became how to catapult your career because Perf died at Google. There were also some around how to take care of yourself. In particular, there was one around how to beat burnout.

Anyway, I got a lot of feedback from other people that the talks and the things that we were talking about in these coaching and mentoring sessions were extraordinarily valuable to them and I was saying things that no one else was telling them. It was clear that people wanted more. They were hungry for it. So, my plan for this podcast is basically to take that concept of what I was doing while I was at Google and take them outside the walls of the company. 

You know, there's probably a bunch of topics that you're going to see on the list of what's in the season and you're going to be like, I've heard about this before. Well, I think I have a little bit of a twist on it and I welcome you to see if you agree. There's also going to be some thought-provoking topics that I think you're going to want to hear.

Well, why should you stick around? 

First and foremost, I believe in you. I believe that you can learn and grow and that the stuff that I'm covering in this podcast is going to help you do that. Everything in here ultimately boils down to skills and habits. And these are all things that you can practice and you can get better at over time. If you know anything about Carol Dweck and the growth mindset, it's kind of like the spirit of all of this is that you can get better. You don't know this skill yet.

I also think that there's a lot of things that people have been told from a young age that they're part of your personality or you know, you have this intrinsic ability to do these things. And I'm going to call BS on that. Now, yes, people do have natural abilities and there are things that you do really well on your own. But I'm also going to argue that there's probably a lot of things that you were nurtured to do from when you were a young age that you didn't have any control over and you probably don't even know half the things that were happening there. The reality of these skills is that you don't think of them as skills. You don't think of them as things that you can do better at. And I'm going to help you reframe them and think about what you can do and so you can grow in even more dimensions than you might be thinking about today. 

The second thing that I want to help you learn about is tradeoffs. You are today, either intentionally or maybe unintentionally, making tradeoffs by deciding on the things that you are focusing on and that you're doing. I can pretty much guarantee you that there is at least one thing in your life that you could and probably should stop doing. I sure had a flaming dumpster full of them! Now, the reality is you cannot be fired up and in a state of growth and simultaneously in a state of overwhelm or falling apart. And I would much rather that you learn the art of choosing and pressing the pause button on certain things in your life with intention than you getting yanked off the playing field on a stretcher. 

There are far too many stories that I have heard, many of them are people in my own life and my network and friends and family who have wound up in the emergency room thinking they're having a heart attack. And guess what? It's a freaking panic attack. They have driven themselves to a state of massive overwhelm. They have not taken care of themselves. I've been burned out - twice. This is real stuff. And while I want to help you reach those pinnacles of success of where you want to go,  you need to learn what the tradeoffs are and you need to think about how you are taking care of yourself because your success is actually at stake and so is your livelihood and honestly so is your life.

Now, the third thing that I want to help you out with is compassion. We're going to lighten it up here, I swear this is not the Debbie Downer show! We're going to have some fun. I promise. And we're also going to give you a healthy dose of compassion and support. The reality is you are not alone. There are so many other people who have been exactly where you are. Okay, they're not sitting next to you in the car or at your office desk, but you know - same head space, right? There are so many people who are struggling or have struggled with the same types of challenges or they're aspiring to do the same things that you are. And they worked really hard, and they worked through this - and it was tough. And they made it! They got there. They did the thing. You can, too. We are all in this together. And we're also going to have a ton of these amazing guests. We're going to help you feel right at home. You're part of the family - let's all have a hug!

So, the last reason that I think you should stick around, what we are going to be digging into here - arguably, these are actually skills and habits that are best navigated through coaching. So, I will be honest here. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a career coach that it was worth talking about until I was nearly 40 years of age. I now have worked with one for the last three years, who is worth her weight in gold. She is amazing and we are going to talk to her later on this season. But the stuff that we're focusing on here, they're soft skills and they're like life habits. They are not things that you can go take a test on. Or, I mean, I guess arguably you could, but it's going to be a kind of dumb test if you ask me. The thing that you are trying to work through is actually practicing them and changing how you operate in your day-to-day life. And this is stuff that is best served through coaching. 

Now, when I was early in my career, I had five different jobs in the first 5 years out of college. I could barely pay my rent. There is no way in hell I could have paid for a career coach unless I was going into debt. And while I didn't actually think that people worked with coaches for the next, you know, whatever 10 years of my career after that, if I did, I don't think I would have prioritized spending that money on it. 

I mean, ultimately, the way that you learn all these skills is either through trial and error and a lot of pain all on your own and you know, whoever in your network is giving you advice and tips and hopefully you have some good managers. I made so much more progress when I engaged a coach and started getting these nudges in different ways to frame up the challenges that I was having and started noticing things that were happening to me. 

So, what I am excited to talk about here with you is digging into these topics and talking about them from that kind of coaching standpoint and really helping you shift your thoughts around what you can do and start imagining behaviors and different ways to go about doing things for free. 

In terms of specifics of what you can expect with the podcast, we have a season full of episodes that cover a range of skills and habits and these are things that you can develop. We are also going to explore the visceral triggers you probably in many cases don't even notice that are happening to you. There are things that as a human being occur in your body and if you don't know that they're happening or you can't predict when they might, those are these other traps that I want to talk about and help you navigate better. 

We also have a bunch of guest speakers throughout the season because it is so incredibly important for you to hear all of these different stories and see just how many people there are that are just like you. Thank you so much for joining me here. I am so excited for you to be here today. And I really hope that you'll join us for more episodes. You can hit the subscribe button in whatever app you are using for podcasts and I hope you will.

I'm going to leave you with one thing before we drop. It is in the spirit of new beginnings. I want to end this episode with a song that I wrote and recorded almost 20 years ago, but I never released it. It is not perfect, but today I am going to call it complete. I feel like it's pretty topical, in the spirit of reclaiming you. Anyhoo, I hope you will join me for more episodes and until then I hope you have an awesome day. 

<song begins playing>
<words throughout are sung>

I'm in, I'm out, I'm in again
I can't make my mind up, I’ve lost my head
I'm up, I'm down, I'm on the mend
I'm racing down the road to nowhere fast

You're pushing buttons that you know you shouldn't press
You're pushing me to get this off my chest

You push me and I'll push you down
I've got to push you, got to push you back
Cuz I can't see when you push me around
I've got to push you, got to push you back

I'm on, I'm off, I'm on on a bender
Riding on the highest highs and lows
I'm up, I'm down, it never ends
But I can't tell no one cuz no one knows

You're pushing buttons that you know you shouldn’t press
You're pushing me to pull myself out fast

You push me and I'll push you down
I've got to push you, got to push you back
Cuz I can't see when you push me around
I've got to push you, got to push you back

I’ve spent all of my life
Searching for the one thing that would pull me back again
I’ve found that in all I’ve tried
I keep pushing too hard
I keep pushing the wrong way
I keep pushing myself away

You push me and I'll push you down
I've got to push you, got to push you back
Cuz I can't see when you push me around
I got to push you, got to push you back

You push me and I'll push you around
I've got to push you, got to push you back
Cuz I can't see when you push me around
I got to push you, got to push you back

<end of singing>
<end of song>