Entrepreneurship vs. Employment: Building a Blended Career
Episode 450 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Baily Hancock
Leverage your community to land professional pivots.
Community, connection, and collaboration. Baily Hancock identifies these 3Cs as the keys to our survival as a species. A community architect and strategist with more than three decades of experience, Baily’s prioritization of these concepts within both her own career trajectory and her client work has positioned her as an expert in helping organizations conceptualize, launch, and grow successful communities.
In this episode, she shares what she’s learned about leveraging your community and leaning on your connections when you’re navigating major career pivots - including transitioning from full-time employment to entrepreneurship, and back again.
The reality of reinvention
The need to pivot or reinvent oneself might take the form of a monumental status change like parenthood, an involuntary redirect like being laid off, or a personal decision to change up your career.
Whatever the cause, it’s usually an unmooring experience, and it’s often exhausting. In 2021, Baily experienced the need for reinvention, and it led to a very relatable decision to make yet another pivot: she found a full-time job that leveraged her community-building expertise and left her consulting business behind…at least, for the time being. Just a few short years later, she’s returned to entrepreneurship after being laid off from what she had originally considered the “safer” path.
But in addition to accepting that navigating a career swerve might be a slog, it’s also good to remember that there’s only one constant we can bank on: change. Reinvention comes for all of us at some point because we’re always moving through phases in our lives. Single to coupled up, child-free to child-raising, employee to unemployed—transitional phases are innumerable and inevitable, both in our careers and in our lives in general.
When Baily starts to feel the drag of reinvention, or like she’s a pawn in someone else’s game, she looks back and thinks of all the changes without which she wouldn’t be where she is today.
When she taps into that hindsight, there’s always one major throughline: community.
Don’t run - reach out for support
Community is Baily’s one big non-negotiable, both in life and in work. How she chose to approach her recent layoff really exemplifies her dedication to cultivating connections.
We all have different ways of dealing with life’s swerves. Me? I’m definitely prone to the hibernation approach. While Baily points out that our natural reactions in these instances are the ones that will serve us best, she also stresses that at some point, we need to come out of that protective shell.
When Baily’s latest career pivot turned up, she turned straight to her community. Whether you do this privately or share your experience in a LinkedIn post, reaching out to your established community is always going to pay dividends.
Of course, it has to be authentic. Baily stresses that she wasn’t just reaching out to people she hadn’t connected with in years to ask if they had any leads. Rather, she was—to use her analogy—reaping the harvest of the community she had watered and fertilized for years beforehand.
Her regular, genuine engagement with her professional community meant that seeking out “her people” at that trying time produced healing conversations that helped her stay grounded and optimistic when, like anyone, she was dealing with days of pretty heavy self-doubt.
Embrace - and showcase - your thought leadership
Connection and community are the throughlines in Baily’s life, and that recognition of her expertise helped her build out her career as a thought leader in this arena.
Here’s the great news: anyone has the potential to become a thought leader! It’s a matter of nailing down what’s really important to you—what’s your thing? What subject can lead you down an hours-long online rabbit hole or to talk a friend’s ear off? There you go: that’s your subject matter.
Being a thought leader isn’t about being the only person who’s interested in something, or the only person who knows a lot about that thing. Instead, a thought leader is someone who excels at discussing their topic from their own perspective, in their own style.
The trick is getting your thoughts on your subject matter out there for wider dissemination. If you never go beyond chatting with a girlfriend over coffee, you’re seriously limiting the leadership you can offer.
Trust yourself and your knowledge. Don’t be afraid to call yourself an expert or identify a topic as your area of expertise. The more you share about what you love, in whatever medium resonates with you, the more people will think of you when they think of that topic. And that’s when people start sliding into your DMs to ask you questions and offer you jobs or podcast guest slots that are right up your alley.
And speaking of podcast guest spots, Baily’s latest foray into her own area of expertise—teaching people how to connect, collaborate and build community—is her new Podcast Guest Playbook. She collected all the tips and tricks she’s amassed over the years, guesting on more than 40 podcasts and hosting two of her own, into a guide on how to ID your own area of expertise and the stories and experiences you can tell to really engage listeners and solidify yourself as a Thought Leader.
The safest path: employee or entrepreneur?
Before we parted ways, Baily and I tackled one more question that’s on many peoples’ minds, especially in this era of side hustles and remote work: what’s more secure—a standard “9-to-5” W2 job or entrepreneurship?
In the past five years, Baily has worked on both these tracks, and she doesn’t rank one option above the other. A regular paycheck is great, of course. It’s nice to know exactly how much money is going to be in your account every two weeks. When a W2 job is a good fit and you’re valued, it’s a great option. If it stops being a great fit for your skills and interests, the relative freedom and choice of entrepreneurship start to look shinier.
But the idea that a regular paycheck is more “secure” than the variable income of working for yourself isn’t realistic, as Baily’s layoff after two years exemplifies. Working for yourself and having multiple streams of income can turn out to be just as secure because it means the pivot you need to make pertains to only part of your livelihood, rather than all of it.
At the end of the day, solidifying that throughline—the expertise that comprises your thought leadership—is the trick to making your current phase, be it employee or entrepreneur, really match with your goals and values
Baily and I cover a lot in this episode, and I’d love to hear what resonated with you the most. How did our conversation get your brain churning with ideas for leveraging your community, building on your connections, and fostering collaboration in your career to catalyze your desired impact? Visit our Courage Community on Facebook or the group on LinkedIn to join in the conversation.
Related Links from today’s episode:
Connect with Baily on LinkedIn
Snag the Podcast Guest Playbook
Join The Collaboration Coalition
The Level Up: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
Speak Up: our live assertive communication course
Hone your voice to build your thought leadership:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 450. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up, and today we are talking all about entrepreneurship versus employment, how to build a blended career.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
Joining me to dive into today's conversation is an old friend of mine, Baily Hancock, who I'm so excited to dive into with a really vulnerable, raw, and real conversation that I think so many of us will be able to relate to. Now, a little bit of a secret that I have to let you in on, at the end of today's episode, have some big personal news that I'll be sharing directly relates to this topic that I'm really excited to share. But, when I had the interview with Baily just a few days ago, I didn't yet have clearance to share this news. So I didn't mention it explicitly in today's interview, and so I kind of want to keep you in the dark as well, because Baily's in the dark in this interview. And then at the end of today's episode, I'm going to share with you some big news and some personal revelations around why I'm so interested in this topic today and what that means for Bossed Up moving forward.
So, with that little teaser, let me tell you a bit more about Baily. She's not only a good friend of mine who I haven't had a chance to speak with in quite a while, this interview feels like catch up between two old friends, but she's also just a really incredible professional. She is a connector, a collaborator, and a catalyst for community success. She knows that community, connection, and collaboration, as she calls them, the 3 C's to saving humanity, are the keys to our survival as a species. And she's not being hyperbolic, she's super genuine and real about that. And you'll hear more from her directly. She knows that those are the quickest ways to feel less alone in this world and really to succeed together. And we share that belief in such a big way.
Baily's a community architect and strategist, and so through her business, she helps individuals and organizations conceptualize, launch, and grow successful communities, acting as a guide from idea to implementation and iteration, and everything in between. Baily combines her MBA and her operations mindset with three decades of experience running communities and being a member of many herself to offer a well rounded perspective on what makes communities and the people within them thrive.
She's also navigated some pretty big career transformations over the past few years, and as a fellow working mom with young children, talks candidly about the impact that that's had on how she views herself and how she and her partner strategize when it comes to, you know, earning a living and keeping a roof over their heads and raising her beautiful children while also building a career with impact. So, I'm so excited to dive into this conversation around building a blended career with Baily Hancock. Baily welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
BAILY: Thank you for having me.
EMILIE: It has been a hot minute.
BAILY: It is. I think the last time we saw each other, I was pregnant with my first kid, which was now, like, five years ago, which is wild.
EMILIE: And that was at the book tour. You were one of my hostesses with the mostesses, uh, in LA. You know, for the sake of just setting some context here, knowing that community and connection and collaboration has always been a hallmark of what you do, give us the lowdown on, like, what's really transpired for you personally and professionally in the last five years. That might be a great place to start.
BAILY: Let's see, five years ago, I was a few months out from having my first kid. It was 2019. I was finally hitting, like, a solid place in my entrepreneurial career. I had been an entrepreneur since the end of 2016 doing collaboration consulting. So I worked with mostly women entrepreneurs who had service based businesses to help them grow their business with partnerships, and I loved it. I was doing a ton of speaking gigs. I had my own podcast called Stop, Collaborate, and Listen. It was so much fun. I was a guest on podcasts all the time. I was really out there, kind of like, putting myself out there as a thought leader in the collaboration space. And then I had my son in July of 2019, took a few months off with him because, you know, that was a wild early days, as you know. And then I came back in February of 2020 to restart things and get back to it. And we all know what happened there. So 2020 was, I don't know if you remember what happened in 2020, but it was not good.
EMILIE: Not the best, for sure.
BAILY: It was not awesome. Across the board, not great. The real silver lining for me, though, was I got so much unexpected extra time with him. His name's Archie. I got to see everything. I got to see his first steps and be there for everything because I was working from home and he was in the home. We got so lucky. We got a nanny right before the pandemic started. And from day one, she was like, I really want to keep coming here because I'm going to go insane if I have to stay home every day. And so it. We got so lucky. So we had help, but nobody could go anywhere. So we were all in our house. I was doing every possible thing imaginable to try and keep my business afloat. But the first thing that happened when, you know, shelter in place, orders came where all of my pipeline just dried up because entrepreneurs were scared. We had no idea what was coming, and so everybody just tightened their, you know, their belts, so to say.
So, yeah, it was rough. I promised myself I would never use the word pivot in a sentence again after 2020, because I feel like everything was, how to pivot, how to pivot, how to pivot. I was so sick of pivoting. It's like that friends, you know, clip of them pivoting with the couch up the stairwell just played on repeat in my brain for that entire year. It was wild, but I figured out, okay, I'm just going to see what I can do to keep adapting. The end of that year came. I launched a community called The Collaboration Coalition. It went really well in the beginning. I got, like, 400 people in there in the first few weeks, all through partnerships. I practiced what I preached, and I promoted it through all of my partner channels, and all of my amazing connections helped me promote it, which was great, but it was a free community. And when I went to go charge four things in it, it was sort of, crickets. And I was about, I think, ten weeks pregnant when I launched that community and did not have it in me for any more pivoting. I was so tired and so burnt out.
So, long story longer. I wrapped up the community at the beginning of 2021. I was then, you know, like I said, pregnant with my second kid, had her in July, and the rest of 2021, I just really reassessed everything. And I was like, okay, why am I so desperate to be an entrepreneur? What is it that I, I think I'm getting from this, that I can't get from having a day job? And what I realized was, I used to get so much fulfillment from it in the early days when I had unlimited energy, I had unlimited time. I could work whatever hours, whatever days, and it was fine, but that wasn't my life anymore. And so I once again did the “P” word. I pivoted, and I took a job in house at a company that was a community hosting platform. And I was like, wow, this couldn't be more aligned. And it really, really was until it wasn't. But that's how I ended up back as a, we'll say a W2 employee for two years, and then fast forward two years, I get laid off at the end of 2023, which brings us to today. So, I'm back in the land of entrepreneurship once again, punishing myself with this very challenging life. But my heart wants what my heart wants, and we're giving it another go. So it's been a very fluid last five years.
EMILIE: Well, I so appreciate that, because I feel like you've been living through an accelerated microcosm of what a lot of multi-hyphenate or whatever the hell we want to call ourselves careers these days, where a lot of people don't exclude themselves from entrepreneurial ventures or from the W2 full time job workforce. I think there used to be much more of a false binary there, like, you either are. And now I think it's really important, frankly, for us to create more flexibility, fluidity, and also just get real about, like, the grass is not always greener.
BAILY: There is no green grass anywhere, right? There's patches everywhere. There's patches on both sides. There's dead grass on either side. And I think it really just comes down to your values and your priorities in this exact phase of life. Because I can speak for myself, I think of my life as this one big, lumpy thing, right? Like, it's all one thing, but in reality, it's just a series of phase, after phase, after phase, after phase. And it took me till my first kid was, like, two to realize, oh, I'm in a mother phase right now. I'm not in the same phase that I was in two years ago. I'm in a totally new phase, and my priorities are shifting, not to mention the reality of the situation, which is life is so expensive, right? So, like, very few of us come from generational wealth, where we can just do whatever we want to do. We have bills to pay. And so even if our passion lies in, X, we still have to bring in money to pay our mortgages. If you're even lucky to have a mortgage, your rent, all of that, God.
EMILIE: Forbid, childcare or, like, what's happening at the grocery store these days.
BAILY: Jesus Christ. It's. There's no easy spot with money. And so I think there's this balance of balance, you know, balancing your passion with your practical reality, knowing that nothing's forever.
EMILIE: Totally. And I do think as much as you might be sick of the word pivot, that kind of the constant that we can all bet on is the constant need to pivot is, like, the constant need, whether you're pivoting from a full time employment situation to entrepreneurship or vice versa or some blend of between, like, if we live in our lives and experience our careers in phases and eras where our needs look different, like, that's going to require reinvention. And so what has remained so constant for you, which is really interesting to me because you just are so clear about this in how you live your life, at least online, right? Because this is what I see from afar.
BAILY: Well, I love that it appears that way. Right, great, good. [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Well, it does. Like, have you been through some massive transition? Hell, yeah. And there's a very clear through line around community.
BAILY: Well, I think there always is for all of us. Right? Like, there's always a through line if we look hard enough. And, you know, Steve Jobs has this quote that you have to look backwards to connect the dots. Right. And I'm such a pattern seeker that I often am looking back to see, okay, what am I doing today that I couldn't have done had I not done X, or had X not happened to me, right. That makes me feel infinitely better and less chaotic about things. Like less a pawn in a game that I'm not participating in.
So my through line has always been community. It has always been community. And the work that I'm doing right now is around the 3 C's to saving humanity, which is community, connection, and collaboration. And they all are inextricably bound, right? Community, for me, is the people around me. Connection is how I'm forming bonds with those people. And Collaboration is, what are we doing to support each other, sharing our resources, our time, our energy, our effort. And so those 3 C's have always been at the core of anything that I've done, whether I'm working for somebody else or working for myself.
EMILIE: Right. It feels like we're in a pretty dire state as a world, too. So when you say to save humanity, that rings really true.
BAILY: It's not a pithy statement. It's true.
EMILIE: I mean, there's a lack of connection, specifically since 2020. I think it's really exaggerated some existing trends around isolation and loneliness as an epidemic. So how have you navigated your sort of leveraging of community, connection and collaboration when the rugs been pulled out from underneath you? Because 2020 sure as hell sounds like that happened to your business and as a new mom entrepreneur. And then getting laid off in the tech sector is such a common story these days.
BAILY: Right. It's a large club to be part of. It's not an exclusive club, unfortunately. You know, community is the first thing I turn to anytime the rugs been pulled out from under me. I look around me, almost as, like, where are the lifeboats around me? And the lifeboats for me are my people. And so I've been post layoff for almost four months now, and I've probably had 75 catch up calls with people. I've had so many virtual coffee dates, real coffee dates, lunches, dinners. Like, I turn to the people around me who know who I am, because often I think when the rug gets pulled out from under you or you're in a major source of place of transition, it's easy to forget who you are. It's easy to believe the people that are laying you off, like, oh, well, I'm not worth keeping around.
It's very hard to keep your ego out of that. If you're not bringing in clients and you're an entrepreneur, it's very easy to say, well, then I suck. I'm not worth paying. I'm never going to make a dollar again in my life, which is a thought process that goes through my head at least once a day. And so, for me, my connections are people there to be like, what are you talking? You are amazing. You have so much to offer. My God. If, uh, you know, so it's. It's both a validating opportunity, and it's the people around you have their eyes and ears in rooms that you're not in. So, opportunities for me have always come through my community.
So right now, you know, when people are like, what are you up to? Like, honestly, it's, um, I'm kind of figuring it out as I go. You know, I've got some things I can do. I have some things that I'm creating. But my conversations with other people are generally what shine a light on what I could be doing to whatever my goal is, right, whether it's get another job, start up my own business, get speaking opportunities, whatever it is. Those always come through other people. And people can't help you if they don't know what you need or that you even need help at all.
EMILIE: And I just feel like being open to how you get there, right? Enables you to have these open ended conversations where you're not going in saying, this is what I want. I want a W2 job, or, this is what I want, I’m landing clients like this. Having a little creativity involved in how you get to whatever comes next is such a vulnerable but essential process. What do you say to my dozens of clients who, many of whom come through our doors in the form of our hired program, our job search program, and it doesn't matter how many times I tell them that what is going to set you apart is people. You got to be talking to people. We got to be connecting with people. And they say, damn, Emilie, I've been job searching for a year now. I can't talk to another person. I don't want to be vulnerable anymore. I will be whoever this application needs me to be. And I think in a place of insecurity, which I can deeply relate to, because I go, inter, like, interior, is what I'm trying to say.
You seem like someone who can hop on your Instagram Stories and say, whew, I just, you know, have navigated a layoff, like, where are my lifeboats at? And I'm like, I'm not ready to go public with this yet because I'm in dire straits, you know? Like, what do you say to folks like me or others who are listening, who are like, I can't talk to anyone right now because my life is crumbling around me, you know, like, that insecurity.
BAILY: Listen, we all handle hard things differently, so you have to, like, whatever your natural reaction is, is right. It's the right one for you. I've always been an outward processor and a verbal processor. I understand what I think by talking about it, and I'm not like everybody, but there are definitely people like me. But for the people that are, like, the hibernation ones, the retreat, the, like, I need to go be alone and cry and deal with this, do that. And then when you're done with that, because you do need to, like, get back to things so you don't wallow forever, come out of your shell, and you don't have to blast it to Instagram or LinkedIn, but you can start to reach out to the people you trust, who know you in your good times and your bad, because those are the people that are going to prop you up when you can't do it for yourself.
And so I think there is a lot to be said, especially with connection. You really can't connect deeply without vulnerability. And if you're only going to stay surface level, that's where the relationship is going to stay, too. And listen, I have tons of surface level connections, don't get me wrong. But those are never the ones where great opportunities come through, right? It's people that I've been like, I don't know, dude. I don't know what is going to happen next. I don't know what I want. I don't know where it's going to come from. I'm really scared right now. I have two kids and a mortgage. Like, what? I don't know. And they're the people that talk me off the ledge, and they're like, I will do anything I can for you, so let's just figure out the first step, the next best step. You don't have to have the whole plan mapped out, because that's just. I think 2020 showed me that very clearly, that, like, your plans are cute, but you have no idea the variables that are coming your way. You just can't. So,I think you can always go back to, kind of your values and your core beliefs and your people. And so, no matter what happens, I know that I can control what I'm doing and how I'm thinking and feeling about the situation. And for me, my connections help me stay really grounded and level and optimistic instead of wallowing all of the time, which is very easy to do.
EMILIE: Totally. And whether it's optimistic or just productive. Right? You could still be pessimistic, but get s*** done. You know what I mean? Like, I think those relationship building conversations are some of the most productive things people can do when exploring their next opportunity. You never know which of the seeds you're planting will eventually sprout, but that act of sowing that sort of fertile ground of friendships, of connection, of potential collaboration, like, you can't find what you're looking for without exploring in that way. And I do think that's such a productive use of your time as opposed to just mass applying to things, you know, on LinkedIn.
BAILY: Well, and I don't know how many people really have success that way anymore. It doesn't seem like a lot because, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn premium, so I can see how many people are applying for the jobs that I'm looking at, and I'm still open to a good job should it come my way. But, you know, I'm also being practical in saying that, like, okay, I'm going to allow that to be a possibility, and I'm going to allow a entrepreneurship or a business of my own to be a possibility. And I do want to say one thing about the connection piece. When you're down, it shouldn't be the first time in, like, ten years that you're connecting with these people. Like, there is so much to be said for nurturing your network all the time, and it doesn't have to be a huge ordeal. I literally have a task on my calendar for every day, and it says water LinkedIn, and it's got a little plant emoji. And I go on for 30 minutes, and I scroll the feed. I comment on posts that seem interesting. I cheers things. I send little DM's when it makes sense. I'll share job postings that I see with people that I know. I'm just, like, feeding my network. I'm, like, fertilizing that ground, right? So that when I'm looking to harvest, it's not the first time I'm looking at my garden. It's not full of weeds or dusty, right? It's like, I'm keeping that network of mine healthy all the time.
And it, you know, it's interesting because it's never a one to one situation. So, you and I haven't talked for five years. However, it was like no time passed. You reached out, and I was so excited to see your name in my inbox. And so it's not like, oh, I need to be specifically, um, connecting, you know, with Emilie over and over all the time. It's like, it's more of a karmic thing. Like, I really think relationship karma is real. And so right now, where I don't have, like, 40 hours worth of work to do every week, I'm still spending my time nurturing my network by supporting other people, adding value where I can. And, you know, all these conversations I'm having, I will, I sometimes will feel guilty that I haven't had a more clear ask in those conversations. But it's not like I can never reach back out, as my ask does become more clear, like, as I figure out what I'm doing with this business, I finally just launched my podcast guest playbook. And now I'm like, oh, I can go email the 75 people I've talked to in the last four months. Be like, hey, guess what? I did a thing. Here it is. So if you still want to share it around. Cool. So, like, it's not like the relationship's dead once the phone call ends. It's just the beginning.
EMILIE: Totally. First of all, thank you for getting on board with the gardening metaphor.
BAILY: I use it all the time, so. Same page.
EMILIE: Okay, good. You added some beautiful color to that. And I also kind of like that. It's kind of like exercise. Like, it doesn't matter if you go to the gym for 6 hours one day a year. It's like, it's a recurring habit that really brings that ROI. I love that. And I kind of wanted to get at. We were talking about vulnerability, but I also want to get at security because I think when I was pregnant with Max, I sat down with a lot of my female entrepreneur buddies and said, do you think it's more safe and secure to go get a W2 employment option or to remain an entrepreneur? Entrepreneur. And everybody has very strong opinions one way or the other about that. It ended up not really mattering because, like, I wasn't ready to make any kind of decision around that at that time. But it's just so interesting to kind of, you know, I had a really challenging year of business last year, so this become more relevant for me recently than ever before. And especially at the ten year mark of Bossed Up this month, March of 2024, is eleven years of Bossed Up.
BAILY: Holy crap. Congrats.
EMILIE: Thank you. When that ten year mark came around last year, I was having really an existential crisis of, like, what am I even doing here long time, like, what are we making progress? And then you, you know, look up from your desk for the first time in a decade and really take a, uh, look at the landscape and you're like, oh s***, is still bad for women. It's not really working.
BAILY: We have not succeeded.
EMILIE: Yeah, things are kind of looking worse…
BAILY: Somehow
EMILIE: …So I just feel like, you know, I had a full existential crisis that I'm definitely on the recovering side of now, but barely. And I just, you know, I think if we seek security, it's a natural instinct, especially when you have little ones as a parent.
BAILY: It's such an illusion. It's truly an illusion. That's what I did when I went back in house. I had a, I guess he was maybe, oh, no, my, my daughter was seven months and my son was two years and seven months. And I was like, okay, I need a stable paycheck. I need stability. And it was super cool to have the same amount of money go in my bank account every two weeks. I loved that. But I was also mentally just trashed. Like, that job kind of broke me after the first year. It just, it was no longer a good fit, and the culture was not the right fit for me, and I wasn't feeling valued. And you know what? The entrepreneur within me kind of came back to life after having my kids, and my brain was working better because, you know, that first year, it's fuzzy, man. And so.
And I think some parts never really fully come back, but you unlock so many other superpowers as a mom. But I started to come back to life and I felt like I had kind of outgrown the environment. And so, anyway, here I was, you know, midway through last year, thinking, okay, I think I'm ready to do something on my own again. But there was such fear. There was such fear of leaving a stable paycheck, and come end of 2023, they did the job for me and let me go. So it is hilarious that we just assume that a job is going to bring that stability, when really, there is no such thing as full security and stability. I think, again, it's a phase. It was stable for two years and great. And then it wasn't.
EMILIE: I have this theory sometimes that it feels like the universe hears your whispers.
BAILY: Oh, 100 billion%. [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: And this was me, January of 2023. So, not a couple months ago, but a year ago, I'm on vacation with a girlfriend, and I basically say, you know, I'm not sure Bossed Up is forever for me. You know, I'm not sure that I'm attached. Like, my ego isn't wrapped up. I care about a lot of things. I'm not sure this is going to be a forever thing for me. And then we had the worst quarter we've ever had in our existence in a decade.
BAILY: You're like, okay, I didn't mean, like, break it for me. I was just saying, yeah, no, you do. I believe fully in the power of your words and your intentions and your thoughts. And it's so easy to get stuck in this headspace of, like, woe is me, or, what am I even doing here? And this has been happening so much for me in these last four months, because even though I was ready to go, nobody likes to be laid off. Nobody likes to be told that your job doesn't matter anymore. Like, that sucks. That's such an ego hit. But I will say that like, when I can catch myself in those thoughts and I can shift it to, things are always working out for me. I'm getting to pursue something that I feel infinitely passionate about, which is helping people find community and connect with others and collaborate to do whatever the hell they want to do in their life. That I. When I say the 3 C's of saving humanity, I truly, truly mean it. I feel like no matter the scenario in our future, let's say things truly go to hell and we're in a post apocalyptic world. What do you think we're going to need more than anything else? Community, connection, and collaboration. Otherwise, we are toast. We're done.
EMILIE: What I think you model so effectively here, whether it's intentional or not, or if it's just a matter of circumstance, given all that you've traversed in these past few, few years years, is the power of thought leadership, which is something a lot of people Google, a lot of women ask for more insights on. But what you're really doing is bringing language and almost, like, philosophy to what lights you up.
BAILY: Yes, that's a great way to put it.
EMILIE: And you're finding a way to consistently align your career in different iterations around this thought leadership. And so I feel like the podcast playbook relates to being a thought leader. How do you advise folks who hear that thought leadership in you and want some of that for themselves, whether they're full time employees and are very happy to stay there, are maybe entrepreneurially curious or are fully in it with us here? Like, how would you advise them to start thinking about or conceptualizing their own thought leadership?
BAILY: Everybody can be a thought leader. It's so intricate, intricately tied to personal brand as well. It's kind of like, what do you give a s*** about? What is your thing? What is the, what is the subject matter that you read books for fun about or listen to podcasts about, or go down TikTok rabbit holes about? Right? Like, what is the thing that you could talk about with somebody at nauseam, right? For me, it's those 3 C's. Everything comes home to those 3 C's. I can bring any conversation back to the 3 C's. And so, in every job I've ever had, they have been the way that I have gone about the job. So the job itself kind of doesn't matter, but I approach the job with those 3 C's in mind. And so I would tell people that are like, thought leadership, what the hell is that like? Okay, so what? You're just talking about a thing. It's truly, like, I believe that the things that we find infinitely fascinating are part of our purpose in life. I think that if it's in your brain, it's meant to be in your brain, because I don't care about everything. I don't care about a lot of things that other people could spend all their time thinking about, writing about, talking about, reading about. Right? So I do think that there's, like, a nugget of wisdom in there around. Like, well, if it's in my brain, it's meant to be something I pursue. If I find it fascinating, go down that rabbit hole. And so, from a perspective of, how do you show that LinkedIn is such an amazing.
EMILIE: Right. How does it get out of your head?
BAILY: How do you get it out of your head or out of, you know, just a conversation with a friend? So, for me, the way that shows up is I love to write, I love to speak, and so I'm on podcasts a ton, and I'm talking about the 3 C's. And what's fun for me about it is, regardless of the audience of the podcast, I can shift the conversation to match that audience. The subject's the same, but the way I talk about it is different. So I would say for you, you know, why is it important when you are a W2 employee? First of all, nobody's going to stay at their job forever. That's just not a thing. Even if you wanted to. Sorry, not a thing. So, and applying randomly on LinkedIn or wherever for jobs is only so effective. And if you can put yourself out there as a thought leader in your subject matter or the topic that you find really interesting, people will come to you with opportunities which are always going to be better. Because let me tell you, interviewing for a job that somebody approached you about has a completely different energy than you being desperate and begging somebody for a job. Right?
EMILIE: Right. I kind of think of it like you're putting out a bat signal.
BAILY: Absolutely. You're. Exactly.
EMILIE: And there's a lot of different ways to put out that bat signal. Maybe you love writing, hate speaking….
BAILY: What's your medium?
EMILIE: …maybe you love speaking, hate writing. Yeah. But, like, the way in which you dare to put yourself out there in some way. Not for the ego trip, right? Not just for the likes. Because if you chase likes…
BAILY: Ugh. Just stop now.
EMILIE: …it’s going to be very hard…
BAILY: It's such a depressing ride.
EMILIE: …it's not fun for anyone…
BAILY: It’s not fun. Yeah, it's very, uh.
EMILIE: The algorithms do not make that game, like, very, very fun for anybody. But if you genuinely are curious about contributing to a dialogue, to a conversation about something you care about, that's the bat signal that tells everyone else who cares about that stuff or needs to know about that stuff and sees you as an expert in that stuff.
BAILY: Yes. Or wants somebody in their company who knows about that stuff, you've just made yourself shine, right? Bat signal is the perfect way to put it. And so whether it's writing on LinkedIn once a week, I've learned some fun facts about LinkedIn since coming back to entrepreneurship. So, apparently, less than 1% of people post more than, or, less than 1% of people post one time a week. So most people either never post or post very sporadically throughout the year. So, if you can post once a week, you're already in the top 1% on a platform that has 1 billion with a, B, people on it, which is bananas. The people that are going to hire you as clients are there, and the people that are going to hire you as an employee are there, or the people that are going to hire you to speak or teach or whatever it is you're trying to do. So I'm going hard on LinkedIn these days because Instagram and TikTok, I'm not a video person. I don't do well with that. I feel like it's just out of my wheelhouse, and I'm not interested in getting better at it, which is fine.
EMILIE: I love that. That's a really key distinction. It's not, I can't do this. It's, I don't want to get good at this.
BAILY: I don't want to put time into that.
EMILIE: And that is a perfectly valid answer that more people, women in particular, uh, should be saying these days. So I love modeling that you don't.
BAILY: Have to do all the things you really don't like. I'm going to write, and I'm going to speak. Those are my favorite things. And, you know, this podcast guest playbook that I created, I created it based on me being a guest on over 40 podcasts and having two podcasts of my own where I've interviewed hundreds of people. And it's just best practices. It's truly like, what are you going to say when you get on there? So there's a whole section that I think ties directly into thought leadership, which is, what is your area of expertise? What are the subjects that you're infinitely curious about, and then what are your personal and professional stories and examples that tie into all of it. So, I have created a fun little free downloadable if you want to check it out. If you're like, what is my thought leadership even like, I have no idea. So you can go to bailyhancock.com/podcastguest, and it'll give you a little free downloadable, and then you can find about the playbook there.
But I think that we all should be thinking about what is the unique thought or what is the unique perspective that we're bringing into this world that only we can talk about? Like, even if everybody was talking about the 3 C's of saving humanity, I'm going to talk about it in my specific Baily way that you wouldn't. Right? And so we all have something unique that we can share with the world. And I'll tell you, it feels really good to, like, take what comes into my brain and then spit it out to where other people can use it and maybe do something with it or learn from it or get ideas from. That feels really good when we're so used to consuming content and taking in content. So, I think everybody should, should explore this realm. It's so good for your career, for your business, and for your mental health.
EMILIE: Well, I feel like you're having an impact. You know, you're creating value for other people, whether you're charging for it or not, whether you can make a living off it or not, which is a whole other story. But it's like…
BAILY: That is a whole other story.
EMILIE: …something deeply satisfying about creating value for others. And one key word you mentioned is expertise. That I want to just harp on for a second, because saying that this is my area of expertise does not mean there isn't someone out there who is more of an expert than I am.
BAILY: Yeah. All right, let's talk about that real quick, because I've worked with many women clients, as well, who are like, oh, no, no, no. I could never say that I'm an expert in this. And so this is why I say I have expertise, and it's the same thing, okay? Nobody knows everything about anything. Nobody. And if you do, then, okay, good. Check. We're done with that subject. Let's move on to subjects that we're still exploring. But to be able to step into your power and own the fact that you have expertise in probably many things, but definitely at least one or two subject matters that, guess what, people that have way less expertise than you are saying they have way more. So just own it. Don't. Don't downplay your accomplishments. Don't downplay your experience, because that doesn't get you anywhere. And I promise you, there are people dumber than you making more money than you, getting better opportunities than you, because they have no qualms about calling themselves an expert. We see a lot of it on LinkedIn. Right? Every day.
EMILIE: Yeah. The meritocracy that we think we're operating within doesn't exist. So…
BAILY: I'm still mad about that. When I realized the meritocracy wasn't real, I felt really, really lied to. My God.
EMILIE: …but I've been working hard.
BAILY: What about all my gold stars?
EMILIE: Exactly. Exactly.
BAILY: Own it.
EMILIE: I love it. Baily where can those who are listening who are like, yes, I need these 3 C's to save not only humanity, but just save myself. I want to learn more. I may be, you know, curious about applying my thought leadership, whether I'm a entrepreneur or full time employee or something in between. You know, where can my listeners.
BAILY: We all are something in between, aren't we?
EMILIE: We are. It's true. Like, where can they keep up with you?
BAILY: Well, like I said, I'm spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, so it's Baily Hancock, but it's Baily with no e. So that's like a secret code to being able to find the real me. Um, and bailyhancock.com is my website, and you can get that podcast, guest prep downloadable there, where it'll really just help you hone in on what is your expertise? What are your stories that you can share to help explain that expertise and really position yourself as a thought leader in whatever space you want. So, yeah find me on LinkedIn. Send me a little connection note saying, hey, I heard you on the Bossed Up podcast, and I would love to connect. It's where I'm spending all of my time.
EMILIE: Awesome Baily well, it is such a delight to reconnect with you. So much more connection to come. And thank you for being here.
BAILY: Thank you for having me.
EMILIE: For more links to everything Baily and I just discussed, you can head over to bosssedup.org/episode450. That's bossedup.org/episode450. I hope you will. I hope you'll connect with Baily. She truly is such a magnetic dynamic power connector. And so if folks, you know, have opportunities for Baily, have ideas for Baily, or want to continue to learn from and benefit from Baily's expertise, I know she is always open to hearing from you.
All right, the long awaited announcement. Yes? So it's so funny because it was on the tip of my tongue throughout this interview with Baily I desperately wanted to tell her, but I didn't want to ruin this interview if it wasn't ready for public consumption yet. And I just got the clearance that I can share this news about a week ago now. And so the headline is, I have accepted a full time in house leadership development job. The backstory is that I actually started feeling this craving for a career transition over a year ago. So, in January of 2023, the past year has been a blur. In January of 2023, I was coming up on Bossed Up's 10th anniversary, and everything looked hunky dory, everything looked great. We had a big team. We had a lot of momentum. And I was on vacation with a girlfriend of mine in Cancun, of all places. And I really started to articulate that. I felt like I've, for over a year at that point, I had hit a growth ceiling for myself. I had achieved everything I wanted to achieve with Bossed Up. And yet, was I really learning? Was I really experiencing different things, or was I just experiencing a lot of the same things year after year?
And maybe you've heard this seep out in lots of different ways in the past year on the podcast, but I got really focused on growing my community in the Denver metro area, connecting with other organizations, learning more about the both public sector and private sector actors here in Denver, because I wanted to see, like, who was doing the best work, who was on the forefront of all kinds of things that I cared about. And I was also just giving myself an opportunity to explore different areas of passion that I have, different things that I cared about beyond what I obviously care deeply about here at Bossed Up, gender equity and closing the gender leadership gap. Right? And then the moment I whispered to the universe back in January of 2023, hey, I think I might be interested in something else and what's next? My business imploded in rapid succession. Like, the first three months of 2023 was our worst quarter ever. I had to lay off two full time team members, and we spent the rest of 2023 in survival mode, just digging out from the hole that I'd found myself in all of a sudden. And at the tail end of that, I felt very proud of where we landed as a team. At the end of 2023, Irene and I had really single handedly, the two of us, I should say, you know, two pairs of us, two pairs of hands, when the two of us turned this ship around. And I'm still so proud of this community and this business. And that entire time I was applying for jobs, at first it was because I thought I was going to be out of a job very soon. I thought this business was over. I was going to be, like, officially dead, uh, not by choice. And then even when Bossed Up did recover, I continued to apply for opportunities because I was getting some bites and I was pretty interested in what was happening out there. And this idea of starting to envision myself growing alongside a group of peers as opposed to leading my own thing for eleven years now, was very appealing to me. And so I was delighted when it felt like a match made in heaven when I found this opportunity. At Ball Aerospace, a company I've referenced a few times on this podcast, they were hiring a Senior Leadership Development Specialist role that is embedded in their talent and organizational development team, part of a huge, 70 person HR team where there were a lot of interesting people with a lot of years of experience, with a lot of different lived experiences, working with a really interesting, very niche population of mostly Aerospace engineers, and all the people who support them in this very fascinating, very Colorado centered company. And then so Ball Aerospace, it felt to me like all roads kept leading back to Ball Aerospace. I interviewed for the position, and then it happened really quickly. I'm talking like weeks over the course of Christmas. They were very excited about me and I was very excited about them. And by mid January, I had signed an offer letter and I started about a month later. I've been working now for over a month. I just wanted to be really deliberate about how I rolled out this news to you all because I can understand that this might be a little alarming. And it was so funny because even when I was interviewing, I think it was a little alarming to these full time, working, long time corporate HR professionals as to why on earth I would be making this kind of a transition. Like one of them said, have you ever held an HR position? And I was like, no, great question. You know, I have all this experience at Bossed Up, serving companies, serving individuals, doing leadership development, doing diversity, equity and inclusion. And my last job technically, before Bossed Up was a Senior Digital Political Strategist job. And so they took a leap, they took a risk on hiring me, and I think it's really working out beautifully.
And so here's what I'll tell you. There's a lot of uncertainty. I still don't know exactly how things will change, but for the short term, I have just downshifted what I'm actually able to do for Bossed Up. So, I get to now pick and be very choosy about the projects that I take on at Bossed Up. And I'm basically just keeping the favorite parts of my job going, this podcast being, you know, first and foremost. And so I plan to continue on. And we have some wonderful recurring clients to whom I have obligations that my employer is totally, we are totally above board, transparent with one another because I could never take a job and then like moonlight doing my own thing. I really wanted to be very above board. And they just have a culture of flexibility and belief in individual responsibility, especially because this is an individual contributor role. It's a senior role, but it's an individual contributor role, where I have the opportunity to really work on creating some new internal leadership development offerings for their most senior leaders across the enterprise. It's my first chance working in a really large matrixed enterprise, so it's a really fascinating learning environment for me.
And I get to work alongside some incredibly brilliant peers. And it's not that I haven't really had that chance at Bossed Up. Just so different when you're wearing every single hat as an entrepreneur, as Baily talks about, right? Like, you know, there are benefits and drawbacks to both. And so as someone who has not had a very blended career for the past eleven years, now, I'm blending, baby. It's happening. I'm back in, you know, a W2 seat and I'm really loving it. I'm particularly grateful for the flexibility that I'm afforded through a hybrid work schedule and through just like, a boss who totally gets it and leads based on deliverables, not butts in seats, that I get to continue showing up for you all here at Bossed Up.
I don't know what the long term vision is. I don't know what the long term future holds just yet. But I'll tell you this. Baily and I talked frankly about uncertainty in both entrepreneurship and full time employment. And in my very first week at Ball Aerospace. Ball aerospace was acquired by a larger aerospace company. That Friday, the acquisition closed and technically, I am no longer a Ball Aerospace employee. As of four days into the job, I now work for BAE, which is a british aerospace company.
So it's a big change. Like, there's a lot of changes happening there. Obviously, that might have implications for my career and my life. So, so far, I'm just knocking on wood that everything continues to be as wonderful as it has been over the past month since I started, because I'm having a fantastic time and I'm learning a lot. Now, the one thing I will say is that this is the only time you're going to hear me talk about it, because I'm a public speaker. I'm a keynote speaker. I'm a podcaster, I'm a writer. And I do not speak on behalf of BAE Space and Mission Systems, formerly known as Ball Aerospace. Just to be explicitly clear, nothing that I'm saying today is representative of the company that I work for. And I will continue to speak about Bossed Up and my role there, but I will not be speaking publicly in any way, shape, or form on behalf of my employer, BAE.
So that's why I'm probably going to be like one of those TikTok influencers you might see, who says, hi, I'm so and so, and I lead HR for a global company. And from here on out, you'll know that I, you know, I'm a senior leadership development specialist for a global aerospace company. And that's as explicit as I'll probably get with you all. But I hope this creates some sense of camaraderie because I know the vast majority of Bossed Up community members are full time employees and now I am, too. And so in addition to wearing the hat, I wear it Bossed Up and having been an employee, employer and having been an entrepreneur and to be clear, Irene is still my employee and Bossed Up is still operating. We are still open for business. I'm just, like, I'm building out this blended career and really enjoying the focus that I get to bring to just being an employee for a minute. And I think it's brought a lot of peace and simplicity, ironically, to my life in this moment that I'm very grateful for.
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So that's the news, y'all. I'm very curious to hear what y'all think and I appreciate everyone's understanding and I don't know, I just, like. I'm excited to see where this takes us. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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