Welcome to the very first episode of PQ, conversations that build equity. I'm your host, Jason Whittingham. And on this first episode, I'd like to just introduce myself to you a little bit and the purpose of this podcast. So PQ or professional quotient is the summation of how we utilize our personal portfolio of professional equity. Our professional equity are the things we've built up throughout our lives. Our skills, our knowledge, our education, our experience, and the network of people we have around us. And each of those things can be built up through different ways. We can get education. We can learn new skills. We can learn new things just by listening to others. We can meet new people, and that can open doors. And each of those is always being built up anytime we're learning, building, and connecting. But it's when we really start learning to leverage our equity that we raise our PQ, our professional quotient. And so just like financial equity, if you have a few dollars that you can sink into something that you own, and then the thing that you own can gain value over time, say you're able to acquire a little bit of gold and however much money you have now, you buy that much gold. And then over time, gold itself becomes more valuable. And so at a later time, if you need, you could sell that gold and you'll have the money you started with, but now you'll also have extra. This is what I want you to be thinking of when I say professional equity. We too can leverage and utilize and borrow from and earn dividends from our professional equity. And again, that skills, knowledge, experiences, education, and our network. And on this show, we are going to be hearing from a variety of guests from across the professional landscape so that we can hear from people. What does it look like on a day to day basis when you're working in marketing or in legal or in the nonprofit space or because you're an entrepreneur, what all do you have to do? All these questions, we're gonna hear from our guests. And hopefully, this will be helpful to those out there that are struggling to navigate the professional landscape. And the reason this is really important for me to do and important for me to bring these conversations to the market is because when I started in in the professional world many years ago, I really didn't have a clue what I was doing. I didn't have a clue where I was going to go. And when people would say, well, what goals do you have? It was just a big blank stare. And it's because I didn't know what, a, I was capable of, and, b, I really just didn't have an awareness of what people actually did in all these different roles that that they that would be thrown around. You can go to any job listings site, and you'll see a plethora of different roles out there. And then you start reading the fine print and you're just more confused than you were before. And so this is part of the reason I want these conversations to be brought to you from real people, from real professions across the landscape, so that anybody could be hearing their story and then saying, maybe I wanna get into learning and development. And now I know a little bit more about how. And now I also know that I could reach out to Jason Whittingham or his guest and and ask how I might get more involved. I myself started in a print room. And in the print room, I just sat there and and when pay pages needed to be printed and books needed to be bound into little, you know, deliverables, they call them, that's what I would do. And it was something that I felt a little bit like, is this all I can do? And I have to address this right away because a lot of people out there feel they hear this imposter voice. I myself am one of them. Now, you'll hear it called imposter syndrome. I don't believe it's a syndrome. I like to call it a voice. And here's why. When you have a voice on your shoulder that's telling you, you're never gonna be good enough, or you'll never learn that skill, or those people won't like you, you have an opportunity to also create a voice for the other shoulder. And on this shoulder, I like to call it the reposture voice. So, your imposture is like that little bitty devil, and your reposture is a little angel. And, the reposture voice reminds you of the things you've already accomplished, and it encourages you to keep going forward. So, when your imposture voice says, you're never gonna learn that skill, your reposture voice can say, I've learned lots of skills. I can learn this one too. When your imposter voice tells you that people are gonna laugh at your idea, your reposture voice can say, yeah, and people laughed at Nikola Tesla too. And then he went and changed the world. So there's lots of ways that we can remind ourselves of our accomplishments. And I encourage everyone today to just start embracing a reposture a a reposture voice. So it's just like when you have bad posture, you want to re posture. And so you just want to lift your head up a little bit, remind yourself of your skill set, remind yourself that you have a community of people around you that can help you, Remind yourself that experiences can be had every single day. And let me get on that too, because experience. I went into so many different interviews trying to get out of that print room, And I kept hearing the same thing. You can't have this job. You don't have enough experience. And it's frustrating because if you don't have the experience, then you can't get a job. And if you can't ever get that job, then you'll never be able to build that experience. And so it's this never ending cycle that excludes you. Now, while society does draw circles that shut us out, we can be superior to that. We can leverage our strengths, our knowledge, our our skills, our experiences, and our our education and our network to overcome them. So when our imposter voice says, you're never gonna get past that wall, your reposture voice can say, we can go around that wall. We can go over that wall. And if we work with others, we can knock that wall down. And so this is part of the power of having community. And there's lots and lots of ways to build your community. You can join official groups like ERGs or BRGs or employee networks. There's lots of different names for them across the markets. You can also join special interest groups like sci fi clubs, Star Trek groups. Okay. All minor sci fi. But there's lots of different special interest things to join. And when we do, we start meeting people as people. And when we make those connections, because we just want to connect with people that are similar to us or have the same passions, we end up having new opportunities to learn new skills and to learn new knowledge and to have new experiences. For me, this was really, I got out of the print room because of mentors. I had a wonderful, wonderful person in my life whom I'm excited to say you'll hear from in a later episode, Amy Chavez, that when I suggested to her that she's a graphic designer, that I'm seeing that while I was in the print room and I had lots of time on my hand, she was dealing with a whole lot of of revisions where people would come back for a brochure or a book, and they'd say, we wanna flip out the language here, or we wanna update the numbers here. And I thought that seems like something I'd be able to help with even if I don't know the graphic design program yet. So I said to her, you know, if you if you teach me how to open up the program, work within it, I can do those things for you. And within hours, she had the programs downloaded on my computer and was giving me lessons on how to use it. That was an incredibly impactful moment for me because it helped me to then feel confident having the skills of a graphic designer. Now I'll say I still don't have the eye for graphic design, but I can do the skill set of it day and night. If you need me to switch out pictures or if you direct me to, to make the sky bluer, I can do all of that and I enjoy doing it. Because I started feeling confident in it because it was something I embraced and learned and just started doing. Another example is videography. That was another skill set that I was looking at the marketplace back in many years ago thinking we are all going to be moving into video marketing before we know it. I should be urging everyone to get there. And it's hard to urge people to go somewhere you haven't been already. So I kind of challenged myself again with the help of people around me to start filming little sustainability tips. I called them green tips of the week. And I said of the week so that I was challenging myself to do something out of my comfort zone by filming something, putting it together, video editing it, and then whether I'm really a hundred percent happy with it or not, just hitting submit so that it's out there. Because it for me personally, if I'm always waiting for perfection, I'm never gonna get there and I'll never have anything to share. So while my very first green tip of the week videos were very cringey, especially by today's standards, And it's very hard for me to go back and rewatch. I'm so thankful that I did it because it was one of those things where it helped me have a skill set that then ended up adding to the job that I had. So after I moved out of the print room, I was working as a graphic designer, as a marketing assistant to a team of real estate brokers. And while I was doing this and then doing my green tips of the week, I was able to feel confident enough with my videography to suggest to the team, why don't I go out and film some of your properties so that we can have video of this? And through that engagement, I was able to help shift and shape my day to day job so that it went from something I felt I was a little bit stuck in to something I was really able to mold and feel free in. And that then led me to being more engaged in community because while I was doing the sustainability things, I was attending Earth Day events and sustainability summits and getting to know people, especially in the North Texas community. And I would see the same people again and again, and there became a familiarity, it built a community. Now I am not a natural networker. So I am not gonna go into a networking event, pass out a ton of business cards, and make a million friends in an hour. I might be able to go to one of those events, and I'm hearing my reposture voice remind me right now, I will go to those events and I will meet one or two people and I will have a lifetime bond with them. They will be friends forever. And that's my way. Each of us has our own way. We don't have to wait to be perfect and wait to be like everyone else to succeed. And that's one of the big points of this podcast for me is giving back to, especially, the neurodivergent community that I am a part of because a lot of us need that assistance of just knowing what's out there so that we can learn how to forge our own path. Because in reality, we kind of already are forging our own paths everywhere we go. This is because or at least I I can really only speak for me, but because I process information differently from my peers, it's always left me feeling like I'm a little bit behind and I have a little bit more to make up that other people maybe don't have to. And and some of this, I've really learned, is just that imposter voice, that imposter voice that really is universal. A lot of people have it. And so I'm excited to share the voices coming up. All of our guests are gonna be sharing what they do in their day jobs. They're gonna be telling us a little bit about what that typical day looks like. They're gonna be sharing with us aspects within their professional equity that they find most valuable. They'll be sharing with us how they've overcome challenges and what activities they do to continually raise their PQ. And giving advice to anyone that might be looking at their field and thinking they want to move in that direction. So this podcast is really a love letter, a dedication to those that are in the market that are just navigating, those that are career pivoting, those like myself who are neurodivergent or neurospicy, and and even students that are really thinking, oh my goodness, I have to join the professional world soon, and I don't know what I wanna do. So the the this is why we're going to have these conversations. I hope that you will enjoy hearing these conversations as much as I have enjoyed interacting with these guests that that you'll hear from. And I hope that you'll also give some, a little attention and love to market scale who's bringing you this podcast. I have so much thanks to to the partnership in that. And there again, it was really a reminder to me of the power of community. We always, always accomplish more when we're working with others. And in fact, I don't know if we ever accomplish anything when we're just on our own. And that can be challenging for some of us, but it's so important to find community, embrace it, and really connect, grow your skills, shadow from shadow someone. Like, if you are around a leader that you admire, ask them if you can just sit with them in a meeting to learn how they run a meeting, or volunteer to serve in a philanthropic event, or or at a if you're at a company that has employee engagement events, get involved there, volunteer. People will not turn away volunteers, so it's always an easy, free way to get experience. And that experience, once you've led even a volunteer group, once you've done that leadership, you now can claim that leadership. So when you are interviewing to your next job, you can say, why, yes, I do have leadership experience. And you can start learning anything you want just by connecting with the right people. And that's really the true power of community, and that's the true power of raising your PQ. And I'm so happy to share with you that over my time, I went from being in the print room to serving on the executive leadership team of a global company. And it it was a long journey, and it was not a normal linear path by any means, but it's one that I'm excited to share with you in bits and parts through the different conversations with our different guests. And I'm super excited to just invite you to these PQ conversations. So please remember that just like we have an IQ and we have an EQ, we also have a PQ and that PQ can be risen up every single day. Just keep learning, building, and connecting. Until next time.
