The Biggest Career Regrets You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner

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Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

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Alright. Let's talk about career regrets, what we wish we knew before it was too late. What's the, one career decision that you sometimes replay in your mind and wonder what if? So, I'm blessed

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that most of my career decisions I would say I would do again, but there is one that I think if I could go back and do my career all over again, there is one thing I would do very differently. I'll tell you that story later.

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Alright. So it turns out in a recent study that older Americans reveal some of the surprisingly common regrets about working lives, and the insights offer valuable lessons to all of us no matter what career we're in. So let's dive into the the topic and see if we can help those that may have some career regrets, or help prevent people that may make the same decisions and prevent a regret in the future.

[: 00:56

Let's start with kind of describing our career journeys because you and I have had very different trajectories. So at a high level, mine was, I got a double undergrad, a liberal arts degree and an engineering degree. I went, and worked for a technology startup, then I worked for Home Depot corporate headquarters, then I went back and got an MBA, and then I went to another Fortune 500 company, worked there for about 8 years, and then worked for a couple of, tech startups after that. And then, ended up out on my own as an independent consultant and executive coach. So I've done fortune 100.

I've done startup where I was employee 5, and I've done my own, you know, own my own small business. So I've kind of covered the whole range of sizes of organizations, but you have a very different story.

[: 01:54

Yeah. I mean, on my side, I was working on my undergrad, and the IT company was just taking off. And I had to choose between this growing IT company and finishing my degree, and I chose to to focus on the company, and, honestly, I've never looked back since. You know, I think one of these days, I might go get a degree just, you know, to, like, be not let my kids pass me up or something. I don't know.

For whatever reason, I don't actually

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Because you have nothing else to do besides the 12 companies that you're running right now?

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Right. But, I mean, for me, you know, there was my first job, which is like a pizza place, and then I worked at CompUSA if you're old enough to remember what CompUSA was back in the day.

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Oh, yeah.

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And then I worked for an IT firm. And then from there, that's where I branched off into my own. I've I've worked with large organizations, you know, Fortune 500 and and such and, you know, global companies as a hired gun coming in and doing, like, big strategic projects. So I've worked in those, you know, environments and alongside those people, but I never worked as a w two, you know, for 10 years, you know, at a large organization. And on top of that, you know, I never had never needed the degree to credentials to to try to get a job like that because their experience in the other projects that we'd completed spoke for themselves.

[: 03:09

Yeah. I think education is one of those that, for me, I'm I'm kind of on the fence about. I am thankful for the degrees that I got. I like school. I'm pretty good at school.

But the longer I'm out of school, the more I realize that the school does not do a great job of preparing you for the real world. And and your success in a classroom has very little to do with your professional growth and leadership opportunities. And I don't I just don't think I realized that until I'd already sunk a couple $100,000 into student loan debt. And then I was like, oh crap that doesn't actually help me get a better job. It might get me interviews for better jobs, but even if I get the job it doesn't make me necessarily better at it.

So I'm not ready to call that a regret yet, but I would say that I would if I could go back, I would un I would dial down the value I put on education because it's not as helpful as I thought it would be.

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In this first segment, you know, the bullet point here is not prioritizing education or choosing the wrong kind.

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Mhmm.

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So I actually think people not prioritizing, especially if you're, you know, 65 or old or kind of in the 60, 65 range and you're you're looking to retire. And I I noticed this with, like, my parents and, you know other other influential people throughout my life that didn't have degrees, but they weren't running businesses. They were capped at a certain level of of, you know, the the the ladder, if you will. And I know now it's even harder to retire, you know, at the age of 65.

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Yeah.

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And so I wonder how many people out there are regretting not prioritizing the degree for those that are in a more corporate environment and kinda stuck in a, you know, middle of the row job.

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Yeah. I I've also seen people really regret, very specialized, very narrow degrees.

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Yep.

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One

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of the things I was I was thankful for, I got a engineering degree in industrial and systems engineering. You can go almost anywhere with that. I had friends go into law school and med school and consulting and all sorts of things. But if you get a very narrow degree like a teaching degree and you ever find yourself in a situation where you can't or don't want to teach, it's very hard to create other options. And so I would say one career that I haven't had but I got a lot of friends that have is they narrowed themselves in on an option too quickly.

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Yep. Well, I think it's interesting interesting now is either they narrowed themselves too much or they just went right into the workforce versus there's a lot of cases today, we're just looking to people have a degree, period.

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Mhmm.

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But because I mean, in I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not. For a lot of times, for us, we were looking for some level of commitment, you know, whether you've had some sort of past experience that showed that you could do the job or, you know, if you're fresh out of college, it was showing a level of commitment to getting, you know, the degree. You you chose to go through the hard work and do it. It showed that level of commitment. And so, I think it's interesting, even today's deck, how much is the degree, where we've come over the last 20 years is what I'm trying to get at.

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Have you ever been, have you ever lost an opportunity because you didn't have a degree?

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I don't think so. No.

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It doesn't surprise me given the kind of work that you do. But I know I have seen and have passed on people, you know, not hired people who didn't have a degree because some of those some of those roles do require a degree.

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Some of

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the things that I've hired for is you you've you've gotta have a degree.

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Well and if you're, like, in a medical field, you know, you don't wanna hire a nurse that doesn't have a nursing degree.

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Right. You know? Or if you're hiring a software developer, it's kinda I mean, you can just kinda earn your way if you've been developing and coding for a long time, but that's a kind of an unusual path. The majority of people you wanna see them with a CS degree.

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Hey. One of our head of developments that was amazing had a doctorate's degree in medieval English. Had nothing to do with development. He was a phenomenal developer. But at the same time, it was, that was just more of a passion for him.

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Mhmm.

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And and development was all self taught and self learned, and he was he was great at it. So I don't know. Maybe my that's where my experiences are kind of all over the place because I've I've been in places where degrees have the degree didn't really mean anything to the person. Like, the individual didn't even know how to apply the contents from the degree. Mhmm.

And then there's been other people that if you can tell that they really leveraged it, and learn from it. So but and back to this, it's, you know, it's it's the older Americans are regretting not prioritizing higher education or, like you said, the degrees that had limited crew utility. How can we talk to people today to, like, make sure that they don't narrow themselves on a degree?

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It's interesting as you said that older Americans, I I'm seeing almost the opposite with millennials and Gen z. Like, they're just, like, college is a waste of money. And I think I think the truth lies in between. Right? I I don't think college is a waste of money.

It can be if you don't know what you're doing, you're spending a lot of money, you're taking out big loans and you don't have a plan for what you're going to do after school. I think that is a recipe for disaster with with college. But if you know where you're trying to go, you've got a plan and you've got a degree that opens doors for you. I think colleges can be a very good investment. You just gotta be smart about the ROI of it.

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Well, there's so many options these days.

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Right.

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Yeah. And and not to say that the the I don't know that the online programs are, you know, the greatest thing since sliced bread or they're all, you know, a dime a dozen and it's a fake certificate. I'm sure there's levels of all in between. But Right. At this point, you can get a degree cost effectively, whether through community college or through an online program.

So, here's a stat right here. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate of people with bachelor's degree is 2.4% compared to 4.6% of those with only a high school diploma. So there's something there. The the unemployment rate's almost double for those without a degree versus with, and I wonder why do you think that is?

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I just think that having a degree opens more doors. There's a similar statistic that shows that the unemployment rate for technical for people with technical degrees, engineering, math, science, etcetera, is half of what it is for the rest of the population. So when you have a job, when you have a degree like that, there's just more available options to you. Like, it was interesting when I graduated from college, my high school offered me a math teacher job. They asked me if I would come back and teach math at my high school, and I even considered it for a little bit.

But it it pointed out to me that teachers can only go and teach. They're not gonna get an offer to go be an analyst at a tech startup. As an engineer, I had the option of either being a teacher or an analyst at a tech startup. And I took the analyst at a tech startup job. But that was because my my degree gave open more doors and had more options.

Whereas if I had majored in teaching, I kind of only got one job, one option which is teaching. And so I think that's why there's a big difference between people who don't have degrees, have degrees, and then have kind of more technical degrees. There's just different opportunities available to those people. Unless you're Ryan Hodges and you're the exception to every rule.

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There's a there's a bullet point here in this article. It's this business insight article we're reading.

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Mhmm.

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It says degrees don't often always pay off. 1 person that was interviewed went back to school for an advanced degree and found herself overqualified for many roles. Demonstrating that education without direction can be costly mistake. So is that where you find yourself?

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Overqualified for things? No. I I think it's because I had direction. Like, I knew where I wanted to go. And I had built a path to get there, and so the roles that I was looking for were appropriate to the experience and education that I had.

But I can absolutely see a situation where somebody goes and gets a lot of education but doesn't have the experience to match, and they could struggle to find a job because they're overeducated but don't have the experience to align with it.

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Yeah. That's that's interesting how you phrase it that way. So it's almost like you can you can have more ambition Mhmm. But not qualified for a role, and you're stuck. Or you can have, you know, the education and be overqualified for a role that's within your capabilities.

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Yeah. I think and I think both of them are risks. I think they're you've gotta kinda find that walk that line, to really have a a successful career that's gonna continue to open doors for you as you progress. Alright.

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So, let's talk about job hopping versus building a comprehensive career. Says many older Americans regret frequent job changes that prevented them from building deep experience and comprehensive career narratives.

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I'm on both sides of the fence here because I have I have held a lot of different jobs, a lot of different titles, but I've also worked for a couple companies for several years. I worked for one organization for probably 9 years. I see both. I see career hop or or job hopping is a faster way to income growth. If you stay with a company for 5, 6, 10 years, whatever, your income is not going to grow as fast as it would if you were with a different company every 2 to 3 years.

However, in the long run, if you don't develop expertise in particular areas, it's going to be hard to maintain that high level paycheck over the long term because you you just don't have the skills and abilities required to maintain that job.

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You might get it, but you'll lose it.

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And so I think there's a there's a balance again that has to be found there. I'm kind of a fan of changing things up because it forces you to learn new things, kind of forces you to grow your value as an employee. Whereas, you know, I've got friends that have stayed at one company for 20 years. If they were to ever need to find a job at another company, I'm not sure what their options look like because they don't really know what the market will pay or how transfer verbal their skills are. They just know one company really, really, really well.

How about you? You've been you're always in multiple companies at the same time, so I I don't even know what your longest tenure is with any single company.

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That's hard because, like, you know, in my current stint, I've been with the same company for now 13 years

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Okay.

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Which overlaps with the company that I was with for 16 years. But I own both of those. But then when I look back in some of these things I do, you know, I have the average about about 18 to 24 months with any given company. But in the nature of what I do, you know, my my goal is to go in there and then make myself irrelevant. And if I'm there longer than 36 months at the longest, you know, really ideal 18 to 24 months, if I'm there, then I'm not doing my job.

Mhmm. So it's it's one of those yeah. My resume is kinda long with kinda, quote, unquote, job hopping, but that's the nature of the job. But I've also got a level I've also got a different view on it because using the the, you know, the child growing up, going off to school example, I've had companies I've taken from absolute start up all the way up to multiple exits, and now I'm watching it grow off in the distance. And I'm not a part of it.

I'm, you know, just a shareholder, and it runs entirely on its own. And it's like your kid when when they're in their twenties. I don't know. That's that one's really hard because I I've I don't move, yet I move frequently.

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Here's I I wonder if this article is somewhat, I don't know if it's survivor bias or what it is, but it's easy to have regrets no matter what choice you make because it's always a trade off, right? So, if you stay with 1 company your entire career, right, let's pick the extreme example. The pros of that is you're going to be fairly comfortable with where you are. You're going to know the people. You'll have deep relationships.

You're going to be able to kind of, really specialize in the thing that you want to be great at. You're gonna have a lot of history and tenure, and and those are all good things. The con is your salary will not grow as quickly for the most part. Right? In general, your salary will not grow as quickly as it would if you were job hopping.

Right? So if you're that person who's been at one company for 10, 15, 20, 25 years, it's easy to look back and be like, man, I wish I had job hopped more. Sure. But you're gonna trade a couple of things for that accelerated income growth. Right?

If you job hop every 24 to 36 months, you're going to make more money faster. However, you're gonna have a lot a much more volatile career. You're not gonna have the long term relationships that you've got at 20, 25 years tenure. You're probably always gonna be on some sort of a learning curve. And and that's tough.

Like it's exhausting to go into a new job and have to figure out how things get done around here. Right? And if you're doing that every 2 to 3 years, like that's exhausting. And you can choose that but you're trading exhaustion for more money and more opportunity versus maybe less money, but also less stress and less exhaustion. And either path has trade offs and it's easy to look at the other side and say, oh, I wish I had done it that way.

But the grass isn't always greener. It's just different. You know, the name of our podcast is Make Work Not Suck. And I think there's, you know, multiple ways to look at that. And 1, we don't want I mean, the whole reason we do this is because we wanna help people not hate their job.

And I love that mission and I'm all behind it. The truth is though that there is there's always trade offs in your career decisions. And so whether you choose to stay at one company for 30 years or be at a different company every 3 years, Both of either of those options could be awesome. Either of them could be terrible. You have to kind of decide what's most important to you.

For some people being at the same company for 30 years would suck. I would lose my mind with that. But for other people, I've got dear friends that are like, I don't ever want to leave this company. And it's like, God bless! They've been there for 20 some years and they're going to retire there.

I would look at his career and say that that that work sucks. He would look at mine and say your work sucks. You're constantly stressed out. You don't know how you're getting paid in 6 months. And I'm like yeah, that's part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is there's so much adventure.

Some people will look at that and say that sucks. I don't want anything to do with that. I want to know where my paycheck is coming from. And so while we want to make work not suck, we can't avoid the fact that there are always trade offs. And so it's important for each of us in our career to understand what's really important to us.

What are the values that we bring that guide our decisions? And are we looking for comfort and safety and predictability? Okay, that's great. Stay with the same company. Are you looking for adventure and career growth and revenue growth as fast as possible?

You probably want a more entrepreneurial path. Either one is fine, but just understand that you're not gonna get the pros without the cons.

[: 19:34

You know, as we're looking at this article, it talks about people have regrets. You know, they're late in their career, and they have regret career regrets.

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Mhmm.

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So if we were to bring it into how to make work not suck for those that are, you know, either closer to that mark and or far away from that mark, how can you prevent regret in your career decisions?

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So, I think that might kinda lead towards the the main regret that I have in my career. My biggest career regret is that I did not do entrepreneurial things earlier in my career. I went straight from school to, you know, pretty quickly I was within a fortune 500 company within 2 to 3 years of graduating. And that was great. I learned a lot.

But I think entrepreneurial ventures are easier earlier in life. You don't have a wife, you don't have kids, you don't have a mortgage, you can eat ramen noodles, you know, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Like, that's easier to do than to try it entrepreneurial thing later in life when your burn rate's a lot higher, the expectations are a lot higher, and there's more people depending on you. I think I would have spent less time in corporate if I had done more entrepreneurial things earlier. And so even if entrepreneurial isn't your bent, I think trying something to see if it's worth it, trying that in your twenties or thirties is good career advice.

Because then you get to the end of your career, and you have less regrets. Because you're like, look, I stayed in corporate for 30 years, and it was great. I tried that one entrepreneurial thing. I hated it. Glad I got that out of my system.

As opposed to getting to your sixties and be like, I wonder what would have happened if. And that entrepreneurial thing could be a side hustle. Like, it doesn't have to be quit your job and go try to make it on your own. It's something that you could do on the side and begin to kind of flex some of those entrepreneurial muscles.

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It's interesting you say that you wish you would have been more entrepreneurial earlier on, except for and maybe I'm the crazy person here is is I had kids young. I was a crazy person that wanted kids young. So I was I had kids in my twenties, married in my twenties, and starting biz you know, companies in my well, my late teens, but twenties. You were talking about you wish you were more entrepreneurial younger in life. And I I think I'm I'm on the interesting, track of I was entrepreneur early in life and I had, you know, married young, kids young, like, all by choice.

I didn't want to have kids in my thirties and then have them graduating when I was much older. Like, I wanted to be, you know, in my forties when my kids started graduating high school, so I had plenty more life with them. But that also meant in those younger years when I, you know, was eating ramen and running a company and managing a family, it was run very, very ragged. So there was a lot of times I missed some of the early childhood days with with the kids. But I think that's because I just did everything at once as opposed to, you know, starting a company young and then waiting to have kids.

I just did it all early. I may be the exception to the rule again, so maybe not. Maybe this doesn't is irrelevant. Yeah.

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I would say your your story is probably unusual. I think most people would say it is it is easier to be entrepreneurial earlier in your career because there's just less demands on you. Right? What I needed to make in my early twenties is very different than what I need to make now. And so it's much easier to it would have been much easier to do this.

And I think it's it's important to remind people that that doesn't have to be an all or nothing. Right? Entrepreneurial opportunities could be a side hustle. And I think that that's kind of more of where where I think I probably should have gone is learn how to make a product or service. Learn how to market it.

Learn how to find customers. Learn how to sell. Those are skills that will help you no matter where you go or what you do that you don't tend to learn in large corporate organizations because your roles are so narrowly defined. And the advantage of smaller things is you've gotta do everything, and you gotta understand how all the pieces fit together. And that's a value to you and to your employer even if you go and and go work for a fortune 5 100 company.

Your ability to understand marketing and sales and product and service and delivery and customer service, all of those pieces, that just makes you a more valuable employee whether you choose to stay independent or you go work for somebody else.

[: 24:18

Yeah. You know what's interesting is and I know the article is talking about some of the older generation and and potentially their regrets. I don't think that's an issue in the younger generation. I think almost everybody has a side hustle at this point.

[: 24:30

Yeah. It it's very common now, which I think is a really good thing. I think that's going to reduce the number of career regrets later in life because people are more open to exploring different opportunities and different ideas, which I think is a good thing. What about you? What are some things as you look back on your career, some opportunities or decisions that you would do differently?

[: 24:54

It's crazy because I I struggle with this one because there's I don't think there was any decision I would really not make. I struggle to look at because there I mean, there there's always like, oh, if I could have worked a little harder here, if I would have done a little more of this or but I actually struggle with I don't think I would make any of the decision. The the the overall big decisions, I don't think I would make them any differently than I have. I mean, you know, I guess I guess my only regret is, you know, you know, people didn't give me $1,000,000 contracts, you know, earlier in my career, and I didn't I wish I I regret having to work so hard for them.

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It would

[: 25:29

have been nice to have been lazy and just have the money come. Like, that's my biggest regret is it was hard.

[: 25:36

Okay.

[: 25:39

Oh, that sounds conceited. I've always been very intentional and I look at those risk and I look ahead and, you know, what's the impact and, you know, very calculated decision making and, you know, every decision made always worked out in the end. Was it perfect? Did it go the path I wanted it to? What is exactly what I had in my head?

Never. But I always got to the destination at the end goal. And, like I say, I wouldn't I wouldn't do anything. So maybe maybe this is going into the next one. It's here.

It's, you know, taking risk without a safety net. And I think for me, that's a lot of what I did is I I there's many cases didn't have a safety net. Mhmm. So the only way to persevere was forward and was to take the risk. So I guess I only know how to take risk without a safety net versus I think there's a lot of people that have to have a safety net before they take risk, but that also means you're missing on the opportunities because you're waiting for the perfect opportunity as opposed to taking the risk when it presents itself.

[: 26:39

So So it's interesting that you'd mentioned it that way, that the taking risk without safety net. Part of the reason why I struggle with the regrets, you know, what what career regrets do you have, is that I've not had a lot of decision points in my career. Because when I started my entrepreneurial journey, and and I joke with people that I'm the world's most reluctant entrepreneur, I had started Steering Ventures, my side hustle, and had a client, but it was a small thing, and I had a full time w two job. Well, I unexpectedly lost my w two job, and my, you know, client contract had just ended. And so I found myself in a situation where I had no job, no income, no nothing.

And it's like, you're either going to starve to death or you're gonna figure something out. And in a situation like that, you get really creative and you figure out how to figure something out. So it wasn't really a choice. Like, that wasn't a career decision that I made. It's like, I'm just gonna jump and have no safety net.

It's like, no. I got kicked out. You've gotta figure out how to do that. And so many of my career changes and career decisions weren't really decisions. It was just out of necessity.

I wouldn't say I'd recommend that to people, but it it is a very good way to learn very quickly what works and what doesn't work.

[: 28:03

I think the school of hard knocks definitely forces people forward, and I think it's a lot of entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial people, you know, that they learn through the school of hard knocks. You know, I think that's where some of them make it, and some of them go back to the w two job because it was hard, and I think the others persevere through.

[: 28:19

So what if we flipped it around? What decisions, Ryan, have you made that you think have made work not suck for you? Like, where where have you made a choice that has maybe not been something that you regret, but something you look back on and say, wow. That really changed the trajectory and put me in a much better place than I would have been if I hadn't made that decision.

[: 28:40

God. That's, like, everything I've done. Again, I I that's why I struggle with this is I I make I make very calculated risk risky decisions. So it's it's literally I just start rattling off every decision I made that's landed to me where I

[: 28:53

am. But there isn't 1 or 2 that kinda stick out as being particularly, influential in that direction?

[: 29:01

Not that I can recall. Like, there's nothing sticking out. That's why I'm struggling to think of 1.

[: 29:05

Yeah. Ryan, it seems to me, like, you you end up in a mentor kind of role with a lot of people in the companies that you're helping turn around. How do you advise them? How do you coach and mentor them to not make decisions they're gonna regret in their career?

[: 29:24

Oh, no. That's a good question. I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to, like, if I'm I'm working with a business owner, and it's like, okay. Is the business successful? No.

Or is is it where you want it to be? No. Okay. Is what you're doing working? Obviously not.

Okay. So you're gonna do things different? Yes. And then when they try to go down the same path, it's like, okay. You're making the same choices.

So do you do you really wanna go back down the old path, or do you want this other way? And so it's just at the end of the day, all I'm doing is pinning them against themselves, forcing them to make the hard decisions. But at the end of the day, it's the regret would would only come if they continue to make the same stupid decision.

[: 30:00

Yeah. I've seen with clients that I've worked with, there can be a misalignment between what they want in the short term and what they really want in the long term. I think that's a situation where you can end up creating a career that you regret is you choose the near term over the long term. And you eventually find yourself in a situation that you can't get out of, or or you've gotta go back significantly backwards to then go forwards again. And I think those tend to be the the situations where people make a lot of career mistakes.

Is is this what you want right now, or is this what you're gonna want a year from now, 10 years from now?

[: 30:35

I think as you're saying that, I think and this is totally not gonna apply to so many people. It's like, I I don't I don't even call it a regret. The and I I don't even call it a bad decision. And you know what I'm about to say here. Lost a $1,000,000 in a investment this year.

Referred by a great friend. I don't regret taking that. It sucks. Mhmm.

[: 30:59

But I

[: 30:59

I don't know. That's where I struggle with it. It's like, it kind of is what it is. At the end of the day, it was just money, and I'll make it back. You know?

I'm not gonna burn my friendship over something that even they couldn't control.

[: 31:10

Not even over $1,000,000? I I might burn a friendship over $1,000,000.

[: 31:16

I mean but but what is what good is that gonna be? Like, getting mad at that or regretting that, like, what is that gonna do? The person that the the person that wronged me wasn't the friend that connected me to it. It was the other side of that that all of us were I mean, you know, hundreds of people were blindsided by. So, I mean, I I I can't have a I guess you'd say my only regret is the sleazebag that was running the program didn't get caught sooner, but I feel bad for all the people that got taken advantage of, including myself.

But, I mean, I guess at the end of the day, at least he got caught, and other people won't get screwed. And, well, I'll still keep going. It's just a bump in the road. So I that's that's where I really struggle with with these kind of questions. Yeah.

[: 31:58

It does seem to me that perhaps one of the ways that you can make work not suck is the attitude you take to your career decisions. And I think perhaps what part of the reason why you've struggled so much to answer these questions is because you frame those decisions as learning opportunities, as ways that you're improving. And I think that's a really helpful framing, but not everybody looks at it that way. And so perhaps the recommendation here is not looking for mistakes and labeling them as that's a mistake, that's regret, but more that's an opportunity for me to learn and get better and move forward.

[: 32:40

Yeah. That's that's very good call because I never I never want to regret something. And so it's one of the ways the way I prevent regret is by never allowing the opportunity for regret to appear. So taking the risk, you know, pushing forward, making those things happen. And if I choose to pass on an opportunity, then I've made my peace that if it goes, you know, a a a direction that I would could regret, I've already made my peace that that was gonna happen.

If I go for it and it doesn't work out, then I've already made peace with it could fail. And so I think it just comes down to making having having peace with decisions in that moment, I guess, is where where you there's never really regret out of it.

[: 33:21

Yeah. I've heard this sometimes referred to as a pre mortem. Before you make a decision, you kind of work out what's the worst case scenario. Like, what could happen here if things don't go well? And if you work that out and you understand what you're walking into and it doesn't happen, great.

But if it does happen, you're still prepared for that potential reality. You can learn from it and reframe it not so much as a regret, but as a failed experiment.

[: 33:51

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely so. So if we take it to well, I I let's take this a step further that that, $1,000,000 investment loss has actually made work suck for dozen people

[: 34:04

Mhmm.

[: 34:04

Because of the the negative fallout that's caused. But then again, it always goes back to it. It's the opportunity to like, you you I always I always go back to Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow, when he's talking to, I forget Orlando Bloom's character. And he makes a statement of, you know, there's only things what a man can accept and can't accept. You can accept the fact that your father was a pirate or you can't, but he was a pirate nonetheless.

So can you accept it or not? It's like, that that's just the reality of it. Do you accept you can put your head in the sand or you can accept it and move on. But the only option is to purge or, forge forward. You know what?

Here's here's an interesting one. I actually used this this morning with someone. I'm gonna bring in some of my anime favorites. Screenshots here. It was between 2 characters.

It says, whether your behavior is sacrilegious or not, means no difference. Forge ahead, he says, because you can't you don't get the option of standing still. So I take away from that is in your career path, doesn't matter where you're wishy washy or whatnot. The only path is forward because you don't get the option to stand still. Because if you stand still, something else is gonna happen.

It will create regret. And if you don't wanna regret your career choices and you wanna have a, you know, make work not suck, then the only way is forward because standing still is not an option.

[: 35:24

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