Career Planning with Ray Giese

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george grombacher 0:11
one level, this is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong apply for re Geesey re Are you ready to do this? Absolutely. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Right is a CFP. He is a CCSP and Ms. Career Coach, personal finance coach, educator with career financial pathways. Ray excited to have you back on the show, tell us a little about your personal laughs more about your work and why you do what you do?

Ray Giese 0:38
Well, I grew up in the city of Chicago working class family, put myself through college, spent about 35 years in corporate sales,

and decided to retire about about six years ago now and devote my my, what I call my encore career to helping people navigate their careers much like I did on my own. So that’s really where I’m at today.

george grombacher 1:01
Nice. And we had a conversation a couple years ago, a couple two, three years ago about how grownups struggle to find good career fits, then ping me and you said that you’ve been struggling or working to solve a problem that the same problem is affecting young people?

Unknown Speaker 1:20
Well, I mean, it all starts when they’re young, right? People in their 30s 40s 50s see challenges in their careers because they didn’t really didn’t learn how to navigate career challenges and opportunities early on. So I sat back and said, Well, let’s go to the root cause what’s the root cause? High schools, colleges, quite frankly, don’t have the time, the bandwidth, the resources required to give everybody the help, they need to learn how to successfully navigate their careers. So what I give them as a process and a set of tools, and a way to use that process repeatedly throughout their career. Nice.

george grombacher 2:02
I think sometimes we do beat up on high school and college, we say, well, why don’t? Why don’t I learn this? When I was in college, it’s like, well, they already have to teach us a lot. So I think that that’s well said that they don’t have the bandwidth, or the resources to give everything that we could possibly need to every student. So,

Unknown Speaker 2:19
you know, the average high school counselor has anywhere from two to 300 students per year assigned to them. I think about it, George, if they’re if their workload is 2000 hours, right? On an average work year, doesn’t leave much time to devote to every individual student and all the work that needs to get done.

george grombacher 2:41
Now, certainly not. So what are our other numbers that you point to and think about, it says this is a big problem.

Unknown Speaker 2:52
You know, the one that really stuck out to me are the graduation rates from from college, right? Every cohort of students that enters college to hopefully earn a degree, only 40% of those students that start out actually earn a degree within four years. 40% within four years, another 20% will take up to six years to graduate 40% This is the thing that really hit me over the side of the head is 40% of the students that start college never finish, never finish. Now, all of those students walk away with an average student loan debt of somewhere in that 35 to $40,000 range. Right? Now they’ve got to pay that back over 10 to 15 year period. It really delays their financial wellness, if you will, by that length of time. So I looked at that and said that that’s just not right. We’ve got to find some way to better orient young people, high school students, college students, so they can graduate on time, minimize their student loan debt and walk into a career that’s promising and engaging and enjoyable for them. That’s really, that’s really the root cause of what I was focused on.

george grombacher 4:09
Nice. Yeah, the that it is such an awful thing. We’re saddling young people with 10s of 1000s, sometimes hundreds of $1,000 a debt as they enter adulthood or stopping kids. So let’s, I appreciate I appreciate you working to put a dent in this break to tell me tell us a little bit about about this system. About the program. I have to think that a lot of it. Well, just tell us about the program.

Unknown Speaker 4:44
Well, it’s it’s for young adults, I’ve kind of simplified it from an adult, you know, working adults, people that have been in the workforce, let’s say 510 years, have that life experience. They’ve navigated some of those challenges so far, so they have a different perspective. When you’re talking about high school students and even college students, maybe maybe somebody that didn’t even go to college, just, you know, wandering out there looking for a career, some sort, they don’t have that foundation of experience that life experience that the rest of us did. So they’ve got to find a way to first of all, find out who they are. Discover, you know a lot about what they do in terms of their personality, their skills, their interest in their values, right, and put that together in what I call an Explore phase, which is next, which is starting to overlay those those traits, to figure out what’s the best fit for them relative to career opportunities. And then finally, find some way to experience those top rated career opportunities, and decide what they want to become, and what they what impact they want to have on the world. So it’s really a three, three step process, discover, explore and decide. And a lot of it’s self paced. Obviously, I’m the facilitator, the host the guide, but it really, people have to discover for themselves what’s best for them, I just give them the tool, the resources and the process to to basically expedite that process for them.

george grombacher 6:23
That was really what my question I was trying to formulate, but I was unable to is, what percentage of it is just the kid or the individual doing the work on themselves versus me as the teacher just telling them about different career opportunities?

Unknown Speaker 6:38
Right, I would say my goal would be about an 8020 9010, you know, depends on the motivation, and the time availability of the student. And quite frankly, that’s a big concern. Because, you know, again, society, high schools, in general have really inundated these kids with, with activities, there’s absolutely no downtime for high school students today. And I understand the the need to work hard, there’s got to be some time for them just to be themselves. And and to contemplate who they are what they want to become in the world. And so that’s really the I find the biggest challenge is just getting the kids to time to do these activities. And think for themselves. Hmm.

george grombacher 7:21
Yeah. Yeah, I think that that’s a something that’s that’s that seems to be afflicting all of us these days, he’s not having any time, I think, no downtime for students. So we’re probably not able to crack that not re, but being able to figure out the rest of it. I don’t, I don’t have a lot of experience working with high school aged kids. But I have a good amount of working with college kids just through volunteering and stuff like that. And I know, it’s like you get it can be extremely rewarding. But then also extremely frustrating, because it’s the whole you can lead a horse to water thing. So they need to be engaged interested in it. How do you? Is it for lack of a better term? Do you have like a screening process to try to gauge is this kid interested in this? Or where are they in the spectrum of interest?

Unknown Speaker 8:13
You know, I have a Georgia have a brief checklist, one page checklist, I call it a Getting Started checklist and incorporates a lot of the aspects of what I’m trying to get them to figure out about themselves. And so I’ll start there saying let’s let’s just have a conversation about your readiness, right, your readiness to, to graduate from high school, enter college or some other professional training, right? Doesn’t have to be college, but find some way what’s what’s the what’s the path for you, right? And so I try to gauge their readiness, and through that their motivation, and then start there. You’re absolutely right. There’s nothing you can do for an individual. If they’re not willing, ready, and able to engage you. Right? You just have to wait for that that flower to start blooming a little bit, and then you can help it along.

george grombacher 9:01
Yeah. It’s fascinating. I think that I certainly I put myself in the situation when I was in high school. And I was incredibly ambitious, and knew that I was going to go to college, and I was going to graduate college and I was going to be a successful person. But I had zero idea of what that actual career was going to be. And so I don’t know where that would put me necessarily probably make me a wonderful candidate for a program like this.

Unknown Speaker 9:32
You know, it would a lot of kids pursue their interests, which is which obviously one of the key components or what I look at, but it’s not the only component, right? They some kids pursue all I want to go to Colorado because I like skiing. So I’m gonna go to the University of Colorado, right. So there there are various reasons why people choose to go to college and what college they choose to go to, but they never focus on what’s the end game. The end game is to really earn a living, right, become more educated, get a degree and then actually earn a living, that earning power then starts the financial planning process. So that’s, that’s, again, really where I started this whole, this whole thought process is what drives financial wellness, financial planning, it’s all about it all starts with the ability to earn a living now, earning a living and enjoy doing it. That has to be come together as well. A lot of folks out there right now that are earning a decent living, but it really dislike what they do. Right? So what I try to do is combine those aspects early on, so that they have a target to shoot for, and get out, get out in the work world a lot easier, and are much more satisfied over a long period of time.

george grombacher 10:46
I think it’s awesome. So how are how are you delivering this program?

Unknown Speaker 10:52
Obviously, with pandemic, it all had to be remote for the most part. And quite frankly, that adds some advantages to it is flexibility of time to schedule with young adults, kids. They’re used to the platform, I use Google Classroom really to look deliver the content. Virtually every high school student college students familiar with Google Classroom, as an example. If people want to meet with me now one on one, that’s fine. But just recognize that that takes additional time effort, and then the costs go up as well. So what I’m trying to do is develop a program that’s affordable for all students, not just folks that can afford it, but for all students, and make it effective for them on a platform they’re used to using.

george grombacher 11:40
Yeah, I appreciate that. So I think you probably already answered this. But how much of it is, is them doing independent work? How much of it is interfacing with an actual individual? Like you Ray? Or are you also working to give it to, or implemented through high schools so that they somebody at the school could potentially spearhead it moving forward?

Unknown Speaker 12:08
Yes, and yes, I actually work with four high school counselors, you got to understand one thing about high schools that are incredibly protective of their student base, which is, you know, understandable, justified. But what I tried to do is lend my support to them, when they see students that could provide, you know, basically realize some some advantages from the program, they’ll refer men that way with their, with their parents, you have to understand this has to be a joint effort here with the parents. Right? And, and we move it that way. I also have a variety of financial planners, as well as other resources out there that look for potential opportunities with their clients or their clients, students. And I refer them in from permanenter, as well. Going back to your question about how much time the programs really, as I mentioned, there were three modules discover, explore and decide. There are eight assignments within that, that timeframe, right, those three modules, and there are six, one on one coaching sessions. So they complete the activities. And then we get online and have a conversation about it, right? And help them summarize things. And a lot of what a work that I’ve been doing, George, people innately kind of understand what what they want, but they don’t know how to describe it, right. And so what I’m giving them is a vocabulary, a way to describe it and articulate what it is they want in life, and then use that process repeatedly through their career to make those adjustments throughout your life.

george grombacher 13:47
Love it, I think that’s a wonderful way to put it. And I just, I know that whenever we human beings, particularly young people take the time to go through and any kind of an exercise you had sitting down and writing down goals, which we all know that we’re supposed to do, but none of us ever did until we got older, that it’ll stick with you for the rest of your life. So going through this discover, explore and decide whether or not you end up doing the exact thing that you thought you were going to do. It will give you these tools that will prepare you that’ll serve you again for forever.

Unknown Speaker 14:21
You know, there’s a there’s a theory in career planning called happenstance theory. Right? And you and I went through happenstance from day one, and we we maximized happenstance. We just kind of bounced around a little bit, until we figured out what it is that we were happy doing and could make a living at it right. What I’m trying to do is not ignore that happenstance, because no matter how much you plan, they’re still the unknown, right? You’re still at 10% Unknown. And so you have to let the happenstance work for you in a productive manner, but not overtake the entire process.

george grombacher 14:55
That’s a real theory. I love it. It is I came up with this great theory everybody that’s awesome happens that it’s it’s 1,000% True them. So and maybe, maybe that’s required. And me, who knows, right. But as we go through things we change and we adjust but doing this work on the front end, obviously,

Unknown Speaker 15:23
think of it as you know, you’re a little bit in the test tube phase, right? You’re combining elements in the test tube and mixing it up, you’re not quite sure how that that reaction is going to occur and what the outcomes gonna be. So you have to leave a little bit of an opportunity for happenstance to occur, but at least arm yourself with some some information regarding your life, regarding what you want to become and how you’re going to get there. And hopefully, that reaction is a bit controlled. And you get to where you want to be, you know, much better fashion.

george grombacher 15:57
Yeah, appreciate that. So the Explore phase, this is, this is talking to people who are doing it, it’s it’s shadowing, it’s internships, it’s all these,

Unknown Speaker 16:07
it’s all of the above internships, informational interviews, job shadowing, you know, it could be elective classes for high school students, you know, they have to fill out their curriculum, junior senior year, it allows them to be a little bit more focused on those courses that they want to choose if it’s someone in college, same thing, right? provide those elective courses, they might step into the shoes of that career and figure out what’s going on. So it’s a whole host of experiences, just to immerse them, make sure they’re making the right decision.

george grombacher 16:42
How long did it take you to develop the program?

Unknown Speaker 16:47
Well, I tell you what. It was probably a five year process, George. And again, my my process for adults is somewhat similar, but a bit more complex. Some of the assessment tools I use for adults are very different, more in depth. Again, because high school and even college students don’t have that breath of life experience, you have to kind of break it down a little simpler, use some some tools, their bandwidth of attention is pretty slim. You know, if you can catch them for 2030 minutes at a time, you’re lucky. So I have to be able to use tools that keep them in that realm. And then take it one step at a time. So a lot of experimenting upfront about what’s what’s most effective. But I think I’ve got the right, right mix of tools, resources and timeframe now,

george grombacher 17:39
have it re people are ready for that difference making tip, what do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 17:44
You know, I’m gonna I’m gonna slow down to get there sooner. And what I mean by that is to do some planning, before you attempt to go on your journey, figure out who you are through discovery, what you want to become through the exploration phase and then decide what impact you want to have on the world. If you do that, you will reach your destination much sooner and enjoy the life that you’re going to going to have.

george grombacher 18:17
I think that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. Ray, thank you so much for coming back on. How can people learn more? Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you and the program?

Unknown Speaker 18:29
Website is CF pathway season Charles F as in Frank pathways.com. My email address is Ray at CF pathways.com. That’s probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Perfect.

george grombacher 18:45
Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, show your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas or a high school student that appears to be floundering. You get the idea. Go to see f pathways calm or an adult who appears to be floundering, which is which is most of us cf pathways.com Shoot me an email at Ray at CF pathways calm as well. Thanks again Ray.

Unknown Speaker 19:11
Thanks, George.

george grombacher 19:12
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai