Episode #1: Why are we doing this now?
Hi, Have you ever wondered what the secret to success was?
Have you ever wondered what are the top three things that made you successful?
Are you trying to find your superpower?
Today on our podcast we're going to talk about some strategies, tips and tools to unlock your potential.
My name is Steve Porcaro and I'd like to welcome you to our podcast today.
And joining me is.
Hi, I'm Barri Rubin, your Co-host.
Hey Barri, thank you for joining us today.
We're kicking off our new podcast series on finding the way to jump start your success, how to get things back on track and more importantly, how to maximize your impact, whether it's in your life, your career and your business.
But before we do that, we're going to take a few minutes and kind of share a little background how we got to this point.
Barri and I come from some different, slightly different backgrounds, but we do share some commonality and we're going to take a few minutes and and tell our stories and more importantly, share a little bit of our journey.
Barri, would you like to kick it off please?
Sure, I'm one of those people who didn't know what they wanted to be when they grew up.
But I was a very good writer, and I ended up majoring in English in college.
I went to a liberal arts school, so majoring in communications wasn't one of the options.
And I figured, well, maybe I'll be a broadcast journalist and I moved to Los Angeles.
But the broadcast journalism thing fell by the wayside pretty quickly, and I landed in sales, which is interesting because people always told me you'd be a great teacher, and I realized that good sales people are good educators.
So I started working as a makeup artist, and what really felt good to me was watching people see themselves differently once we help them focus on what their positive attributes were and maybe push some of their less desirable attributes to the background using makeup.
And that's kind of the same thing that happens when you want to be successful in your career.
You try to find what you're good at and focus on it and use that to propel yourself forward.
Fast forward.
I ended up leaving the makeup industry because I didn't feel like both sides of my brain were equally activated, and I wanted something that would use a little bit more of my communication skills.
So I ended up working in private practice in ophthalmology.
That ended up being a springboard, and I ended up in the medical device field.
And I used those same skills, communication and education.
And I went from helping women feel more confident in presenting themselves to the world, to helping doctors feel more confident presenting surgical options to their patients and helping them grow their business.
When I relocated to the East Coast, unfortunately, I got laid off, which is why I originally joined one of Steve's LinkedIn groups.
And through that process, Steve and I developed a really interesting relationship because my style is so consultative and I have so much more interaction personally with marketing that sort of became my sidekick role to Steve.
So I've been helping him with marketing because we discovered, right Steve that I'm sort of the voice of your client because I'm a medical device sales professional who wanted to improve their work life balance and be more successful at work.
And so that's how that relationship was born.
And when I also realized that I really like helping people, this became a natural extension for me because I know that the work we're doing here is going to help you, our listeners.
So that's me in a nutshell.
Thank you Barri.
It's it is interesting when you hear other people's story and you say, yeah, I've done something similar.
The part about going through this, this Rotary in life, what am I going to do when I grow up?
It's it's a common theme.
Many people change and adapt.
What we wanted at one point may not be what we wanted today.
There are very few people I know.
My wife is one of them.
As an artist, she knew she was going to be an artist at three years old and I was always envious.
I'm thinking, man, I wish I had that.
But my story very similar different path.
I joined the Navy at a young age.
I wanted to go on to a spaceship and growing up I was a big fan of science fiction and I've read a lot of sci-fi magazines and I thought the closest I would get to a spaceship was being on a nuclear submarine.
Plus I wanted to see the world reading all these stories.
They they would take me away and I joined the Navy to be a nuclear power technician.
Electronics, Nuclear power.
It was one of the hardest schools and training to get in the military and I passed the the, the, the, the test to get in.
But when I went through the physical, lo and behold I found out I was color blind.
Really a red green deficiency, which I had no idea at the time and it was quite amusing because they still wanted me.
But I couldn't serve in that role.
I couldn't do electronics, I couldn't serve nuclear power.
I couldn't serve on a submarine.
And as I started looking at other options at that point I was, I think I was working in in a couple restaurants, I worked in an Italian restaurant and I enjoyed making meals.
That was my creative outlet.
And they asked me if I wanted to cook.
And I'm like, yeah, I don't think I wanna cook for people on a on a ship.
But it's different when you're doing it for a job versus, you know social events.
However, as we went through this list, all the fun jobs I wanted to do intelligence, search and rescue, I needed normal color vision which I didn't know.
It's kind of funny.
And at one point I said, why don't you just tell me what do you need, what do you have a shortage of.
And they say they the the recruiter said we need help in the healthcare, the medical section.
And they gave me the brochure.
We didn't really have computers back then and at least on on personal computers, but I'm looking through the jobs and I said nuclear medicine, I'd love to do that.
And they said Nope, you can't do that.
I said advanced laboratory technology.
Nope, you can't do that.
I said what about search and rescue?
I'd love to jump out of a helicopter and you know help people and they said no, you have to be able to see the flares the color of smoke.
And I I was really like oh man, this isn't going to work.
Finally they said we do need help in the operating room and I said, huh, in my mind I'm thinking Mchale's Navy meets MASH and when I in an in a sense it was a little bit like that we were allowed to to scrub on cases first assist and we did a lot of things in the in the military.
I was exposed.
I was in the operating room for five years.
I did my training in Oakland, CA years ago, had a wonderful time.
I joined the Navy to see the world and I went from the Greater Boston area to Connecticut.
It's a whole 2 hours away.
However, this is where, like Barri said, life has a funny way of happening.
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After I served down at the Submarine Base in New London, which of very ironic, I was looking to get a job.
I had a job lined up in Boston.
I had an apartment, I was engaged, and the orthopedic Rep for Cynthia's Trauma Company came by.
We started talking and he talked to me about being an orthopaedic trauma consultant and for a minute I I was a little, I don't know, I don't want to go in the dark side because I was in the clinical side.
I said sales was beneath me, right.
Remember a lot of people growing up had this negative connotation of what sales was about.
But I remember calling my dad and at that point I didn't think my dad was my dad.
It's like, I don't know, I'll, I'll call him for advice.
He must know something about this.
And it was really, he gave me some great advice.
He said, first of all, you're not selling used cars, and nothing wrong with used cars, but you're selling state-of-the-art technology.
And you know, I thought about it because I really, again, I was really into that high tech thing, he said.
The other thing is instead of just working in one operating room, you'd be working in multiple operating rooms.
And I said I can do that.
And lastly he said instead of selling or sale, change it with another 4 letter word help.
He said you're going to be out there helping people.
And up to that point my whole life, my career was all about helping surgeons and nurses help people get back to their normal activities.
So it kind of shifted my my approach to the sales industry.
I interviewed my manager at the time, took me under his wing.
He was a combat medic in the Army during Vietnam.
I was a Navy corpsman.
He brought me under his wing and he taught me all about orthopaedic trauma.
And it really was amazing.
I was able to take my background, my training, my skill set, and as Barri mentioned, that whole educational component.
I was teaching people how to suture the ER techs and we would do surgery classes on pig's feet and it was amazing.
But I love the educational component and I love the medical device field and my orthopedic career.
I've sold everything from the neck down, basic spine equipment, trauma, sports medicine, reconstruction, biologics, DME and a lot of other things in my career.
But like, like a lot of people, we've reached that point where I'm ready to do something else.
After 23 years in the operating room, I was ready to go on to that next adventure in my life.
And I wanted to use my background in in sales, presentation, skills training, coaching surgical teams through those successful surgical outcomes.
And I looked around.
I fell into professional coaching and training.
I didn't even realize it was a profession.
But since 2005, I was able to take these skills in my experience and help sales professionals, leaders, small business owners and a lot of professionals really create that life, business, career that they're looking for.
And as Barri said, we were on LinkedIn in the early days and we fell in together.
We started doing webinars to help people get the most out of LinkedIn.
And back in those days, it was really the beginning and we were very fortunate to have some knowledge and some experience to do that.
And it's funny how we planted those seeds.
And over time, as Barri said, I've worked with a lot of people who were transitioning, a lot of people who were trying to grow their business, people who were trying to grow their teams.
And one of the things that we realized because Barri, again, she, she's been a partner through a lot of these social media journeys on LinkedIn, we realized there was a common theme, right?
How do we find that groove, that success groove?
How do we find that trail?
More importantly, that recipe for success for each person and it's slightly different for everybody and like everyone's journey, whether it's in your career, social media, networking life, it's different.
So our goal with this podcast is to share some of these strategies, these tips and these tools that we've both learned over the years.
I've been coaching professionally for 18 years.
I come from the medical device field.
I served in the Navy and one of the things that we both bring is helping people either look their best or perform at their best.
And when we put that together, we thought unlocking your potential with clarity, confidence and courage would be a great way to do that.
So going forward, we plan on doing these weekly podcasts and sharing a little bit of our journey, some of our successes, some of our challenges.
But at the end of the day, we want you to have a take away something that you can implement into your your personal or professional life on a regular basis.
Barri, before we go, anything else you'd like to share with the group?
Just to that, to that focus of where we want to guide people to further their life and their career, I think it's very interesting how clarity, confidence and courage are so closely interlinked with each other.
You can't have one and not have the other two.
You can't have two and still be missing one.
You really do need all three.
And I I think that our goal of helping you integrate those three CS is really going to help our listeners to get started in the right direction.
Yeah, and you know it.
It's, it's interesting going forward, I do a lot of backpacking and I'll share some of these tales from the trail.
But the reality is our goal is progress, not perfection.
We don't have the instant answers.
We don't have the magic ticket.
But we know just like going to the gym, we're going to make a little progress and kind of nibble this away hopefully because we all hit this, this Rotary at life at times, again, personally and professionally.
And our goal is to hope we can help you move forward just a little bit.
So with that being said, please subscribe to our newsletter on LinkedIn, unlock your potential newsletter.
We'll be sharing our podcast issues there.
You'll be able to download them as well.
There's also a video component, there's also an audio component.
So whatever works for you.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or topics that you'd like us to cover, please send us an e-mail, direct message, e-mail, whatever works.
Be in the the bottom of the podcast transcript.
Other than that, have a great week and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Thanks for joining us.
Bye, bye everyone.
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