Welcome back to the corporate Cowboys podcast my name is Alex as always your host you’ve got me for the next 30 minutes which I hope to fill with knowledge and a little bit of experience perhaps some cathartic comedy even if that means I gotta make life a comedy
Well maybe not life but other folks’s lives what would a corporate Cowboy do you might ask well approach work like you would life you have to like what you do at every point you have to embrace it the journey the struggle the pain you want to talk about transmutation transmuting energy
Transmute the pain into something you learn to enjoy because it’s a corporate War baby you’re born into this [ __ ] so the sooner you come to terms with that fact sooner you can get to work our goal really is to attain a state of consummate professionalism and in that Spirit I’m donating these 30-minute
Blocks of time as they uh open Office hours of sorts you know time is money time is valuable yeah yeah Alex we get it but I want to show that it is possible to be successful in corporate though you may have to move a little unorthodox a little unconventionally and only because
We’ve been conditioned to think that work is unconventional but life itself is a struggle life ain’t Fair from the moment you’re born what you think you just get up and walk go get a hamburger nah you’re defenseless you’re defenseless until you learn how to move
And in turn how to make moves how to orchestrate moves you see now we’re getting deeper now I’m picking up steam yeah this podcast is um it’s served as a form of therapy for myself while I work on my skills organizationally verbally mentally to be able to talk speak directly without
The ums and the eyes and the stuttering so even if it is coming off a little bit slower just know that you can speed it up 1.25 or 1.5 x that’s totally up to you but I’m not going to put you to sleep if anything I’m going to shake you awake
Because it’s what a corporate Cowboy would do a corporate Cowboy would catch you lacking today’s question comes from our slash career advice and they’re asking dang this is a big question the question itself is bigger than the body actually no it’s just the size it’s the font size and because it’s in bulb
Really it’s just the title copy and paste it into the body quick efficient in and out I like this question already all right they’re asking when it comes to a person’s career okay when it comes to a person’s career is a person supposed to more or less get from 18 to 30
To establish a career and then when they are 30 plus more or less go on to go on to what they are able to establish for themselves to 30 this question is poorly written but I’m going to try to decipher it for us and then when they are 30 plus more or
Less go on go on what they were able to establish for themselves to 30. okay so they’re asking I guess they’re asking is this um par for the course or or is this statistically correct that individuals get from 18 to 30 to establish a career and then from 30 on essentially live off
Of what they established from 18 to 30. and then they follow it up with so starting something over 30 is sort of not really normal question mark they’re asking if you’re just getting your career started at 30. you’re a quote unquote career at 30. is that not normal is that not really the
Norm my answer to that is and if you go back you’ll notice that I paused at the first mention of career when it comes to a person’s career the very beginning of the question they asked and there is an ellipsis there which I guess prompts a short pause if you are reading um
What’s the term I’m looking for practical reading you know it’s like a rule it’s like a rule in Reading where if there is an ellipsis you do with short pause for effect right for emphasis but to add that Ellipsis there and I wasn’t thinking about a person’s career
I’m thinking about a person’s life life is your career you are born into corporate if you have a Social Security number you’re born into corporate if you have a registration number you are born into corporate if you’re born without one you’re gonna have to break in one way or another
If you’re listening to this in order to deal with corporate you’ll have to break in you’ll have to and and that sounds aggressive that sounds offensive but it’s not really break in in the sense if you want to work with them you’ll have to break in
Not break and Enter but you’ll have to make some moves maybe you want to get noticed maybe you don’t but it’s not unheard of it’s actually less uh less unusual that people in today’s day and age just don’t know that that they are Incorporated that they belong to um
Certain principalities that have existed since the dawn of time since people got together in groups to conduct business which is what a formal organization is it’s getting together formally agreeing to do business together and you got yourself a corporation the basis of a corporation I mean today’s day and age corporations got
Some legal formalities that they have to satisfy and file forms and reports and documents with the state or the federal government depending at what level it is that you’re operating on but you’re born into corporate whether you know it or not inside or out it just depends
On how many steps back you want to take to look at things in perspective you want to re-prespect yourself sometimes sometimes when you’re reflecting you want to re-prespect I like that sometimes when you’re reflecting you also want to reap respect [Laughter] you want to plan on how you will reap
Respect damn there is too much word play going on in there that I have I’ll have to write that down but from 18 to 30 yeah I think in an Ideal World in an Ideal World from 18 to 30 I mean you want to start working
If you don’t know what you want to do right if you don’t have your Your Mind Set On I want to go into um science I want to go into mathematics or engineering something technological stem I wanna be a lawyer a doctor is that mathematics or medicine medicine right okay
You want to work in stem okay continue in school you can you can make a career off of the hard Sciences doing your due diligence nose to the grindstone steel sharpening steel days weeks months years on end that’s something you have to plan for it’s something you have to prepare
Yourself mentally for maybe not so much physically as far as excelling but you can maintain yourself physically Physically Active right but mentally that’s arduous that’s laborious what I mean is that that’s difficult it’s challenging mentally not a lot of people go on to pursue those careers and some of them actually
Return later in life which brings me to another point there is no starting over it’s just adjusting there is no starting over there is no redo button there is no easy button either it’s just an adjustment you’re going forward always it’s how time proceeds and you are necessarily traveling through time
You are traveling with time together you can’t go back you can’t restart at 18. once you hit 30 what because you believe you don’t have a career made you can just smack that easy button and go back to 18 and do it over again it’s not possible but you change you adapt
With the information that you collect along the way you inform the decisions you make if I could go back at 18 which you don’t think I’d want to keep the knowledge I have now and make different decisions when I was 18. of course but I can’t so any time wasted
Between 18 and 30 if you want to go back and recoup it you’re not going to effectively if anything you’ll sacrifice a bit of your 30s recouping that time that progress that you think you should have had when you were 18 through 30. it’s not a bad thing
But it’s not a good thing either I think that comes back to uh comes down to how people are raised how people are socialized to think how people are educated and trained to work to create which they’re not really if you think about it if you go to public school
There’s not a whole lot of creating taking place it’s just route memorization and blunt regurgitation laughs which yeah can get you trained individuals but only trained in one thing and it’s trained in the subject or the topic that you train them on no more no less but you teach individuals how to learn
How to yearn for the knowledge how to crave how to savor how to appreciate enjoy how to apply how to extract distill and apply knowledge conceptual knowledge converting it into practical knowledge those kind of skills and abilities are hard to come by in average individuals and even more difficult to cultivate
And below average individuals what I mean by average and below average it’s just people who who lack the spark or ignore the spark that they have because school was boring because books are [ __ ] because reading and studying and homework is for [ __ ] nerds there was a point in my life where I was
Like that I mean early on I was a [ __ ] bookwormer but then later on when I I guess flowered or blossomed grew up glowed up as the youngsters say got a reputation I got some friends I got some girls I knew where to procure where to get substances that I began to neglect
And it wasn’t that I thought studying was for [ __ ] nerds it wasn’t that I thought that oh if you raise your hand in class you’re a [ __ ] teacher’s pet nah nah I I didn’t even have time to judge I was so caught up in the game I just neglected my studies
I was cool with the Nerds I was cool with the jocks I was cool with the Stoners with the Rockers I was cool with everybody but in doing so in in getting around and shaking hands introducing myself getting acquainted to the scene drugs and alcohol I wasn’t minding my own business
I was in everybody else’s I was like a diet socialite it’s nothing to be proud of something to be proud of I I knew I wasn’t going to become a celebrity off of it and yet I was a Micro Niche a niche micro like the lowest bottom of the barrel celebrity
Where I came from at least which wasn’t even a big town not even a lot of people but folks knew me to say the least right folks knew me folks knew what I was about they knew that if you were dealing with Alex you were getting a good deal
If you’re dealing with Alex you weren’t just dealing with Alex but you’re working with Alex shaking hands I guess I had the markings of a professional early on sure comes with the little bumps some bumps in the ride but nothing we couldn’t get over nothing we couldn’t get through But from 18 to 30 I mean I was working on everything except building an empire except building this quote-unquote career this one career my career was my experience and I I sold my experience beautifully from from employment to employment where I worked little by little I was discovering and revealing the meaning
To this life we call corporate which is to make business better right now that’s from a corporate Cowboys perspective for others it’s going to be having a family and kids right but if you’re [ __ ] around in corporate and you have a family and kids and your family and kids
Get in the way of making business better honorable with dignity and integrity then you have problems or you will have problems [ __ ] around with corporate Cowboys and I’ve seen that I’ve seen that time and time and again individuals like that tend to confuse their work their life with their career they think
It’s all separate they they think they’re a separate legal entity that they can just turn around and [ __ ] burn people left and right why because their family is getting fed meanwhile business practices and business ethics are going down the drain I mean it sucks when they when they uh
Can’t deal with the pushover anymore you know corporate Cowboy enters the scene corporate Cowboys not hitting pushed around you develop yourself enough your career begins to take on a more nebulous form like a consultant almost people ask for you by name get me Alex call Alex I need Alex’s help on this
What would a corporate Cowboy do that name you should insert your name whenever I say corporate Cowboys you want to think like a corporate cowboy see you want to think like yourself and if you can’t it’s because you were never taught how to that [ __ ] sucks maybe you’re 18 now
And you’re about to start and this is a wake-up call for you how do I start thinking like myself how do I start thinking for myself and for everyone else how do I make business better maybe you’re already 30 years old and you think [ __ ] I’ve got to make a
Career change I’m not satisfied with where I am right now what can be done maybe you’re under 18 and if that’s the case I mean this is this is rated PG sometimes are but maybe you need parental advisory maybe you don’t have parents to tell you how to think
Maybe your parents just tell you what to think because they’re the grown-up in the end I get it I get it well if anything they’re teaching you patience patience you want to get out of a tight situation take a couple stack steps back and put yourself in someone else’s shoes analyzing your situation
You’ve got resources right think like a corporate Cowboy you’ve got resources you’ve got time even if it is limited even if all these factors are limited because they’re not yours directly you’ve got resources you’ve got time if you have a roof over your head food on the table
Clothes on your back like all like many parents I’m gonna say all parents like many parents provide for and say so you cannot be ungrateful you cannot be unappreciative of their efforts to keep you alive because at some point in time you we’re defenseless you couldn’t get up and go to the factory
To get paid and then grow go grocery shopping and buy sandwich supplies to make yourself a sandwich right you grew up little by little and your parents helped you out along the way how much do you owe them for that who’s to say right there comes a point in life where you’ve
Got to do a personal evaluation a little personal accounting some internal auditing whereas I specialize in external auditing funny enough organizational auditing funny enough as a uh as a career consultant as a professional consultant but what you should do from 18 to 30. is work in anything
Yeah I came back to Center I found that I was going off on a tangent but at 18 you want to start working that’s what I did if I could have started when I was younger I would have which you know I did but legally on the payroll above board
Yeah at 18. at 18 I got my first job at 18 I was making legal Monies and your experience at least your professional career because your lived career your personal career starts from when you’re zero right from the moment you’re born sometimes your managers I.E your parents
Sometimes your managers set you up for failure sometimes your manager set you up for success not all of us can be born in the c-suite right but just like many of those born in the c-suite haven’t a [ __ ] clue what goes on on the ground floor and so whenever they come out
Slumming shall we say they get caught up and rolled over there are individuals on the low end that move up to be professionals and still these two separate individuals are out of place because of how they’re raised then you got [ __ ] in the middle who might might have been born in either end
Might have been born on either extreme and want to learn I have a passion for it have a passion for the work they want to be in the midst of The Fray but they don’t want to be a manager [ __ ] I don’t want to be a manager you
Might find me stirring the pot but that’s just because the [ __ ] got flavor I like the way my cooking tastes but I’m definitely not a manager yeah I’ve managed and I can do it but I’m in the business of making leaders of convincing just regular individuals because everybody’s a regular individual that
They could be a leader folks come to me with problems and then you got these problems that I I read off to you from Reddit which in hindsight they seem a little basic right but everybody’s problem is basic to somebody I don’t even think I’m the baddest [ __ ] there’s always somebody
Better than I am somebody bigger stronger taller where if I can’t take them on physically let’s say then in combination I’m thinking that I could do so mentally that’s that’s the corporate war in a nutshell you’re not on the battlefield anymore shelling it out between two kingdoms
Nah you’re shelling it out between two corporations and sometimes it’s not even out of uh animosity sometimes the generals just want to test one another it’s a it’s an eye-opener it’s an eye-opener how some how frivolous some of this [ __ ] can get I mean I’ve seen and done things that
I wouldn’t necessarily wish on others but um I know when the time comes and I pray I don’t end up old and senile where I’ve got a or my story must end because I am inhibiting Innovation creativity and beauty right if I’m if I’m inhibiting honor and integrity morals and ethics
Yeah I deserve to go out from 18 to 30. what was I doing I was building myself if I could go back I mean you want to know what you should do right now if you are 18. like I said start working and keep reading I know you’re a [ __ ] bookworm
Deep down inside you’ve read a couple of pages and you saw images as you were reading that’s called your imagination and I get phone is so tempting not the Doom scrolling is addictive because every new image every new picture that flashes across your screen is another drop of dopamine I get it
I understand but if you’re not coming up with these images on your own if you’re just being shown them then we go back to what I said earlier you’re just being shown what to think and what to accept what to understand and not how to do any of that you’re being trained
You’re being conditioned you’re being socialized and it might not even be to your own benefit you got to look out for yourself in order to look out for others but I mean you uh you get LED sooner or later you’ll get lead I mean leaders get led to right but they’re leaders first
Before they end before they get ended before they end up getting fed yeah a little Proof of Life Today is Monday July 3rd have a happy Independence Day everybody catch you next time
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