- Speaker #0
Welcome back to the podcast. This week I've been doing some market research, speaking to people who are still in corporate roles or those who have recently left, and I discovered the number one hurdle many of you face in building a successful regenerative career. Can you guess? Yes, it's money. A staggering 75% of you mentioned it. I have so much to say about this topic. I'm working on a whole series of podcasts that will help you break free from the financial stranglehold that often holds you back from making impactful change in your career. Right behind the money fear, I heard a lot of variations on, I don't know where to start, I don't know where to focus, I don't know what my next step should be. If that resonates with you, please take a moment and be kind to yourself. Remind yourself lovingly that you're stepping into uncharted territory. You're going against the grain of corporate society and returning to a more natural path. It's completely understandable to feel uncertain about where to begin. This week, I'm speaking with an incredible guest who took that leap into the unknown. He's here to share powerful lessons on approaching this remarkable regenerative journey.
- Speaker #1
Welcome to the Regenerative Work Life podcast. If you are ready to make the leap out of your corporate job and into purposeful regenerative work, this is the show for you. As you've probably discovered, transitioning into regenerative work is a lot more complicated than going on a job board and sending off your CV. This journey you are embarking on means taking risks, going against the grain, overcoming challenges,
- Speaker #2
and writing your own script.
- Speaker #1
It takes entrepreneurial muscle, powerful vision, and a willingness to change. Having a mentor by your side makes all the difference. I am your host, Alyssa Murphy. I have worked with hundreds of impact-focused businesses and individuals, and I am here to help you. Let's take things one step at a time as I show you how to quit corporate, find your vision, and successfully transition into regenerative work.
- Speaker #2
Here we go.
- Speaker #3
Welcome to the conversation.
- Speaker #0
Let me tell you the story of Kevin Howard. Kevin built his career in banking, but as he progressed, he became increasingly aware of the glaring inequalities in American society, particularly regarding who could afford to start their own business. He began to dig into what was driving this inequality and learned about the global crisis of climate change. As he grasped the scientific consensus on this crisis, he realised he needed to make a fundamental shift in his career. At the time, he was in his 50s, married and had just bought a new home. He sought a way to make a meaningful impact on the global effort to address climate change. We'll join Kevin at this pivotal moment in his story and explore two powerful lessons he learned from his transition. First, the importance of developing a clear intention. And second, how to let go of the how. Kevin's insights run deep and I hope you enjoy learning from him as much as I did. If you want to hear the full story of Kevin's career transition and all five lessons he learned from that experience, head over to the Regenerative Work Life YouTube channel to watch the entire interview. But for now, here's Kevin.
- Speaker #4
What is it I want to do? I want to shift my career into some sort of climate risk management position where we can mitigate we can try to prevent these worst possible impacts. What is the effort we need to do to hold global average surface temperature from rising to two degrees Celsius? Because we're on that path. And that position needed to be of strategic nature. So an enterprise level type position, that would have meaningful impact in that effort, that global effort. to address global warming, which was leading to the climate crisis. So that was my intention, and it was informed by actual information, the best information I can get. And that's a hard task in terms of the best information you get, because we are immersed in spin and all types of vested interests, and so that's a lot of noise that could lead us in a lot of... I was lucky to be able to find what I considered the definitive bit of information. And so, yes, state your intention clearly so that you can then have. Now, you know, this is what I need to put my energy in. And so what can I do every day to serve that intention?
- Speaker #2
I think that it's so powerful and so important for people to hear, because the thing that I would say I see so consistently from people who have a similar realization, whatever sector, whatever career they're in, you know, there is this kind of turning point where something that where they were experiencing success, something where they were feeling fulfilled, where it. felt purposeful no longer feels that way you know there's some you know they they begin to see it more deeply they come at it with a different world view new information comes up and and that shifts and I think that is the point where a lot of people then become very lost because you know they've they've had to sort of let go and go through a kind of there's a real grieving process right and letting go of the paradigms that we held on to so tightly before you And then who are we without those things that we really identified with? And I think what you said about developing clear intention, to me, you know, I often use the word vision. It's the same thing. It's you have to have this direction to put it in its simplest terms. If you don't know what you want, like you won't get it, you know. And I see a lot of people who are. frustrated because they're not finding the direction, they're not finding the opportunities, but they haven't done this really simple step of just stating out loud, what is your intention? And it doesn't have to be, as you just described, fully formed. You know, you didn't know, you didn't know exactly what career you were going to go into, right? You knew you had to answer this question of what can I do with this knowledge that I now have, right? And then you knew it was going to be something in climate risk, right? So that defined it a little bit more clearly for you. And we'll come on to like what you then did. But I think this is just really something I want to kind of bookmark for people and make sure they hear is like state that intention, know the direction. If you don't know the full picture, most people don't. But like whatever you do know, say it out loud and put your energy on that.
- Speaker #4
Absolutely.
- Speaker #2
And I think that it's probably. leads us quite nicely into the second of your lessons for us Kevin which is to let go of the how because I think that's going to be the big question that comes up for people next like when you know you need to make a shift you know you've educated yourself you've you know you've you've got the knowledge to that you need to make this change but then how on earth do you do it what is the next step what is the next role how did you approach that as you you You knew you needed to make this big change in your career. You knew you needed to commit it to climate. But I'm guessing you didn't know exactly how you were going to go about that.
- Speaker #4
Well, the thing is, and thank you again for that opportunity to talk about let go of the how. Of the lessons, this was the hardest one for me because it cuts against the grain of how we are socialized. We are socialized in Western civilization. to be very plan-orientated. These are the 12 steps to get you from point A to point B, and then you dedicate yourself to following those steps to get there, right? And so this was the approach that I had known. But I had come to realize that the problem with that is that that is taking the information you know at the beginning of the journey. And whatever information that is, it's not going to be as much information you're going to know as you get a third of the way, half of the way, and so on. And it's actually pigeonholing you like a pin light into one path to where you want to go. Now, at the end of the day, you just want to get to where you want to go. You want your intention to manifest, right? It is much more about ego that it has to happen. in some pre-stated way. But this is how we socialize. And the downside of that, because it's not some esoteric ego, non-ego thing, is that what you're trying to do is take what opportunities life literally presents to you that moves you closer and closer and closer to your goal. And by narrowing your focus to some preset series of steps, you are missing a wide range of opportunities that would accelerate you to where you want to go, but you don't see them because I'm following the 12 steps. So the power of letting go of the how. Just sit with that for a second. And then you breathe. Letting go of the how you're going to get there does not make you a guru, pie in the sky, woo person. What it does is it frees you to say, okay, what can I do today? What opportunities are present today, wide range, that I am not considering, that I have not considered, which present the best opportunity for me to make improvement today? for me to move closer to my goal today. When we look back at all the amazing accomplishments we've actually been able to do in our lives, we will notice, and this is what I did, and this is how I came to understand Let Go of the How, that the actual route we took was rather circuitous. It rarely is the 12 steps and you follow the 12 steps and they worked out just like that or whatever. So this is just doing it intentionally. This is just doing it in advance. Let go of the how for a second. And that doesn't mean that you have no plan. It merely means that a part of your aspiration is not strict to how you're going to do it. In fact, that's secondary how you're going to do it. You know, the question is that you do it, you know. And so once I started doing this, it allowed me to see opportunities in different directions that really accelerated me towards. you know, where I wanted to go. And so here I was working in the SBA division for the fifth largest bank in the country. And for context, the SBA division, the small business administration guarantee, it's a, it's a guaranteed loan program, you know, in the United States was like less than 1% of the total credit offered by U.S. banks. So this is a small group, right? And I was doing large loans in that space. small little itty bitty group. And yet I want to do something that's going to direct how the entire bank allocates its $600 billion worth of credit. Okay. Okay. So how do I get from there to there? Right. Okay. So expanding my background, never been in risk management, always been in the business line and stuff like that. But risk management is who's going to be doing climate, who's going to be directing. decisions across the bank. I had to get closer to that. And so I looked at the job postings in U.S. Bank and I had a good reputation and a good relationship with the bank. And I found an opportunity in portfolio risk management. So portfolio risk management is the group that looks at the entire commercial portfolio of the bank, maybe about, you know, $400 billion worth of exposures or whatever, you know, a huge portion of the bank, and that they look at managing the risk from the top down, as opposed to each business line, each individual deal. And so I found a position in credit risk management, right? Well, excuse me, in credit policy management in that group. And that became an incremental step. And what that did was, is that it allowed me to demonstrate my skills and my interests in climate. to people closer to the top of the house, closer to the people who were going to decide the direction of the bank. And that opened the door to, once I got into that position and demonstrated my abilities in that position, when the bank decided it was time for us to actually recognize climate risk as a real risk, they were looking internally for people who were interested in going back to school to do it. And I had been able to build relationships from that intermediate position, right, from doing credit policy risk to be a part of that stand up unit. I became the climate risk qualitative lead for U.S. Bank. There's the climate risk executive, there's the qualitative lead and there's the quantitative lead. And that's it. Right. And so that's how that's. That's how letting go of the how manifested is that I found my way into enterprise risk in a manner that I had never done before and wouldn't have been able to anticipate sitting in from the SBA division. Okay, what's my 12 steps? You know, so that's.
- Speaker #2
Tell the story. It sounds so strategic. It sounds like you could have, you know, looking back, it kind of sounds like you could have planned it that way. But that wasn't how it happened. You know, I just. really want to underline that you know what you're saying is when you let go of that how that's when the possibilities opened up to you because as you said you were contained by what you were able to understand from that starting perspective and that's the thing when we rush towards that I want to get to the destination you know I want to get to a place where it feels like I've made it you know I've done it that we can only move incrementally from wherever we start and actually most often what we're going to end up with is a slightly improved version of whatever it was that we had before you know but what you've described to us is like really sort of fundamental shift and change and putting yourself in a position where you could really have that level of impact that you saw was necessary.
- Speaker #0
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this conversation. The lessons Kevin is sharing align almost perfectly with the approaches I teach my clients. This is the work. This is how you start. This is how you conquer fear. State your intention, let go of the how and take daily action towards your regenerative career. I know it's not an easy journey and you don't have to do it alone. If you're looking for someone to hold your hand, keep you focused and cheer you on every step of the way, let's talk about regenerative coaching. Book a discovery call with me today. The link is in the show notes and I can't wait to meet you. That's it for today. Don't forget that the full video of my conversation with Kevin is available on the Regenerative Work Life YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe while you're there and I'll see you back here next week. I think it's about time we tackle that big money question, don't you?
