Timestamps

00:01:54: Defining a setback
00:04:26: Interview 1: Amy Shoenthal...
00:07:26: ... the four-phrase setback framework
00:16:19: ... combatting your inner critic
00:18:26: Interview 2: Ken and Mary Okoroafor
00:19:34: ... setback examples
00:25:34: ... dealing with redundancy or restructure
00:30:06: ... cycles of careers
00:30:32: ... financial freedom
00:32:11: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This episode is part of our Squiggly Careers Stage Series, where we're talking about five different career stages where we think having some extra and maybe specific insights, support and advice can just be really useful.  So, we're covering career starters, career returners, changers, continuers, and today our focus is on a difficult topic, those moments where we have setbacks and really knotty moments in our Squiggly Careers. 

Helen Tupper: And as well as Sarah and I sharing our squiggly perspective on setbacks, we also wanted you to hear from a couple of experts and people who've experienced this directly, just to make it as real, relevant and relatable as possible.  So, in this episode, you are going to hear my conversation with Amy Shoenthal, who is the author of a book called The Setback Cycle, and Amy talks through four phases that you can go through when you are experiencing a setback.  And the idea of that really is it gives you a greater sense of control when your experience can feel hard, and Sarah and I will come back to that in a minute.  And so, you'll hear that conversation first, and then you're going to hear Sarah's conversation with two people who have experienced a setback, Ken and Mary Okoroafor, who talked to Sarah about their experience and what they learned from it and their advice for other people who might be experiencing a setback at the moment. 

Sarah Ellis: And with every episode, we've got a guide, which has got coach-yourself questions in, tools to try out.  And this guide has an interview with Eleanor Tweddell, who is the author of Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You.  So, it's worth looking at that for extra ideas, extra resources, and you can share that with anyone who you think might find it helpful. 

Helen Tupper: The link for that is in the show notes.  You can also find it on our website, amazingif.com, or if you follow Amazing If on LinkedIn, we'll be posting about that there, so you'll be able to find it. 

Sarah Ellis: So, what makes a setback a setback?  Helen and I were reflecting on our own experiences, and we felt that every difficult moment that really feels quite a significant setback has two things in common: a lack of control and a lack of choice.  So, something has happened to you that you couldn't control, you couldn't influence, so it's come your way; and if you had had the choice, it's not what you would have hoped would have happened.  So, you are in this position of having to compromise, of thinking, "Well, this is not what I would want to do.  This is not what I would want to happen".  And I think whenever we feel like we have lost that ability to have agency and autonomy over our Squiggly Careers, that feels really hard.  I think you can feel lost, you can feel really lonely, and also it can feel really personal. 

So, we were doing a redundancy workshop recently.  I said to everybody in that redundancy workshop, and everyone was going through a restructure or redundancy, "What's the best piece of advice you would give everyone here?"  And people's advice was really brilliant, it was really inspiring to read.  But so many people were saying, restructures and redundancies, they feel like they are about you, even though you know they're not about you.  So, objectively and rationally, when these things happen, it's never a reflection of your skills or your talent.  It's an organisation making some changes that you might not agree with or will feel really hard, but it's usually an organisational thing.  But the problem is then, even when we understand that, emotionally it can feel really hard to take.  Because often we have given a lot.  We've given a lot to our roles, we've given a lot of time, a lot of energy. 

Whether that's a restructure or redundancy, or I was saying to Helen, sometimes I think I've had a few setbacks where a leader that I've worked for, a manager that I've worked for has left unexpectedly, and again you feel like, "Oh, I've invested a lot in that relationship", when suddenly that is taken away from you, or the dynamics of your relationship with a person or a team or an organisation change unexpectedly, it feels just a lot to grapple with, it feels really overwhelming. 

Helen Tupper: I think as well, a setback could feel like, you know, you've gone for a job and you didn't get it.  I think it's very different to feeling stuck, which is often something that people experience in their career, but it's this moment in time where, as Sarah said, you lose that choice, lose that control.  So, let's move on then to the first conversation to help you if you're in this situation right now.  I feel like the most useful thing that we can do is help you move through it, give you back a bit more control, create a bit more choice for you.  And so, hopefully that's what you're going to hear in this conversation with me and Amy, who talks through the four phases of the setback cycle, so that you have got maybe a bit more autonomy and agency over the situation you might be finding yourself in.

Amy, welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast.

Amy Shoenthal: Thank you for having me.  I'm so excited for our chat. 

Helen Tupper: So, this episode is all around career setbacks.  And whilst there are lots of setbacks that people might experience in their career, for lots of people this is probably going to look like restructures or redundancies, which are increasingly common in Squiggly Careers.  Before we get into the four-stage process that you have created to help people with setbacks, how did you become an expert on the topic of setbacks?  I feel like there's some good stories here. 

Amy Shoenthal: You know, everyone feels a little weird when you call them an expert.  I was once introduced at a conference as a leadership expert, and it was the first time that I had ever heard someone say that.  But I asked them later, "What made you choose to introduce me as a leadership expert?"  And they said, "Well, didn't you spend the last few years studying the habits of successful leaders and being a journalist that covered stories about this and doing research for your book and speaking about it and coaching people?"  And I was like, "Huh, I guess I am a leadership expert".  And so, I would say the same thing.  That's how I became a setback expert, through my leadership work, through my research, through my journalism career, through interviewing leaders as to what led them to their most successful ventures.  I mean, the answer was always some sort of setback. 

So, we'll get into the framework, of course, but really as I started interviewing more and more people and noticing this common theme, I noticed that it wasn't always just an obstacle or some sort of challenge, that it was truly they were working towards something, they got bumped backwards, and they had to totally rethink everything they had just worked towards and create something new.  And 99% of the time, that new thing that they created in the rebirth after the setback ended up being ten times better than anything they were working towards on that original path.  And that's why I went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out, what is this?  What is this thing that happens to people?  Why do they emerge so gloriously?  And where's the playbook?  How can I make sure that next time I experience this thing that everyone seems to experience, I can come out the other side with a sense of confidence and creativity and resilience?  And that thing that I kept noticing was really the true definition of a setback, which is a reversal or check in progress.

Helen Tupper: And so, the purpose of the playbook or the framework, is that that confidence and creativity that you can go through a setback and come out better because of it; is that the role of it?

Amy Shoenthal: Pretty much.  I mean, it's really the fact that you don't have to experience a setback in order to find success.  But when you do experience a setback, it does spark this curiosity and creativity, even though it's not pleasant.  It's not an enjoyable way to find creativity and innovation, but because everything we've been working towards, when we've been focused in this one path, in this one direction, when that all falls apart, all of a sudden there's so many other paths to explore.  And it's terrifying and it feels horrible in the moment, but the opportunities available to you in the aftermath of a setback are endless.  And so, it really is this moment of opportunity, even though it definitely doesn't seem like that in the moment.  And that's why I came up with the four phases to figure out, okay, when we're in that horrible moment, how do we work ourselves into that creative rebirth?

Helen Tupper: So, I wonder whether we take the four phases, and maybe I might give you my career at a point in time when I experienced a setback, so that we can maybe apply the phases to where I was at that time and what it might have looked like for me.  So, for context of setbacks, this is me in Microsoft.  I have just come back after maternity leave, so I've got a young baby at home, and I've just come back to Microsoft's biggest ever restructure.  So, I've moved from Virgin to Microsoft for this amazing new opportunity.  I haven't been there for very long when I went and had my baby.  Come back, she's a very little baby, I'm tired, emotional, and I've got loads of expectation about what I need to do in this job, and my job has gone.  There's been Microsoft's biggest ever restructure.  They're very kind to me, but the outcome is, "Your job is no longer here, and we need to talk to you about what else you want to do".  So, that's the moment that we're coming to, that's the setback that I'm experiencing.  Can we use that moment and your phases to work it through?

Amy Shoenthal: Yeah, of course.  I mean, that's the established phase.  So, the phases of the setback cycle are the four E's: establish, embrace, explore, and emerge.  You are in the first phase, which is the moment when your setback is established.  Now, that was a very obvious setback.  Your job is gone, you have to figure out what else you can do, whether within the organisation or outside of it.  Obvious for you, but not always obvious for everyone, right, because some people sleepwalk through jobs that aren't serving them anymore, sleepwalk into relationships that aren't serving them anymore.  So, I have a few exercises in the book that helps wake people up if they think they are sleepwalking through a setback.  Yours was very established, right, clear.  Phase one, done. 

Phase two is embrace, and that's really the most difficult phase, because that's when you really have to think through like, "Why did this happen?"  I mean, in your case, it seems like it was just totally outside of your control, but sometimes in the aftermath of a setback, you realise, "Hey, I kind of contributed to this, and here's where I went wrong", or, "Hey, this other person did this thing that caused this thing", but be careful not to get into a spiral of totally blaming yourself and becoming stuck in that sense of shame.  But also, don't get stuck in a sense of resentment or you're just totally blaming someone else for your problems.  That's not helpful.  Even if someone else was at fault, it doesn't matter.  What can you learn from it?  What can you take from it?  And how can you move forward?  And so, that's the embrace phase, when you really have to sit with the difficult feelings and take in all the information, because that's going to inform what you do next.

There's also a lot of neuroscience that supports why setbacks set the stage for reinvention and creativity.  Your brain is always chasing rewards, right?  We know that our dopamine receptors are always looking for the dopamine hits and moving away from the dopamine dips.  But it's actually in the dips where the transformation happens.  That's what leads to the rewiring of your brain, because when you think through that less than rewarding experience, the dopamine dip, you want to do everything in your power to avoid that feeling again, and so you're probably not going to react in the same way, if you're conscious of it. 

The other thing about the neuroscience of setbacks is that when I spoke to a neuroscientist, she told me that she was able to prove in her lab that people who have been through more setbacks are better at knowing when they're on the wrong path, they're better at problem-solving, reasoning, logic.  You can recognise the signs and you actually course-correct more easily, you don't continue into your setback, you don't barge forward. 

Helen Tupper: When I talk to people who experience a setback, sometimes they rush into the next thing because, I don't know if it's dopamine or it's comfort or it's reassuring, and I'm always saying to people, "Just try and sit in the space".  Now, some of that's hard if there are financial pressures.  People are like, "I need a job", so they will do anything in that situation.  I think in some situations, people do have a window of time to make a decision, and rather than rush into something because it feels validating to do it or comforting to do it, I'm like, "Just hold the space, just for a little bit longer".  

Amy Shoenthal: Hold the space, that's the point of the embrace phase.  And again, I am a leadership coach and I can't tell you how many clients come to me because they got laid off.  They felt so frantic about just getting a new job.  They were only seeing in the short term, "How am I going to make my rent next month?"  I understand that.  However, six months later, a lot of them were in bad roles.  They had rushed to take something that wasn't good and now they were trying to get out of it.  And that's more difficult than if you give yourself the time to find the right thing that you'll be in for longer.  So, think long-term gains, not short-term wins.

Helen Tupper: So, we've embraced and then we're going to…?

Amy Shoenthal: Explore, phase three is explore, and it's the best reward for going through embrace.  Embrace stinks, you have to feel your feelings, sit with a discomfort.  And I do have some exercises in the book, and I take my coaching clients through it when I speak to them on how to embrace, because it is so difficult.  Your reward for getting through that is you get to go explore, where we go talk to our community, we try new ideas.  And the great thing about explore is that we get to try all kinds of new things without committing to anything yet.  And that's really fun, because we're just playing, we're just seeing what's possible, talk to people.  I have a really fun superpower exercise in the explore phase to talk about how to merge your passion with your strength.  Because if you can find something that sits at the intersection of your passion with your strength, you have struck gold, this is the exact right role for you.  And so, we have a lot of ways to guide you through that, so again, you're not necessarily just rinse and repeating your old role, you're really thinking through, "How can I make this really work for me?" 

Even if it's another role at your organisation, even if you're not leaving one job to go to another, and you're just trying to make it work within your organisation, how can you take the pieces of your role that you love and bring them to the next role?

Helen Tupper: And the explore point, I guess this is a point where you don't have to do all of this on your own.  You're being curious, you're having conversations with other people like, "These are some things that I get energised by.  What opportunities do you see that might need these abilities?"  It's those sort of conversations.  Then what do I do?

Amy Shoenthal: Well, at some point, you do have to make a decision, "Okay, what is my next step?  What is my path forward?"  And if you've gone through all the steps and you've cycled through the first three phases, then by the time you get to phase four, the last phase of the setback cycle, emerge, you have a pretty good idea of where you want to go or at least what you want to pursue.  And that's really, really satisfying.  It's incredibly satisfying to just have that clarity, especially around your career, "This is what I want to pursue.  This is how I'm going to move forward".  And even if that thing you want to pursue feels so, so, so big and scary and unattainable, well, what are 20 tiny steps you can take to start to work your way there, right?  Who should I talk to, right?  If I'm going from corporate to consulting, maybe step one is just building my website.  What am I going to put on my website?  You don't have to have any clients yet.  You just have to start building towards the thing that you want. 

That's really, really powerful.  And once you take a couple of tiny steps, it starts to feel more real, and you start to really pave that foundation for your next chapter.  And that is one of the most exhilarating feelings possible.  You've like taken your career and your life into your own hands, and you are really forging your own path forward.

Helen Tupper: Is there anything else that you have found in your work that helps people with their self-belief, as well as following the structure, their experience in the setback, is there anything else that just gives them that bit of a boost to keep going?

Amy Shoenthal: I always talk about the inner critic, that voice that says you can't, you shouldn't, you're not capable.  Take that voice and remember that's not you, that is just a thought.  When we take that inner critic and we actually separate it from ourselves and we give it a name, we give it a voice, we give it a whole persona.  Even this morning, I forget what I was thinking, I had some thoughts of self-doubt like, "You can't do this, you shouldn't do this".  And then I was like, "That's not me, that's Roz, that's my inner critic".  It sounds silly, it sounds like woo-woo, but it's actually not, it's a proven psychological concept.  You remove your self-doubt narrative, you put it over here, it becomes separate from you. 

Helen Tupper: You know what I was doing?  It's the exact same thing on holiday last week.  I was reading a very deep book on holiday last week called The Untethered Soul.  It's got a horse on the front running across the beach, it's very deep.  But it was saying these voices in our head that are just chattering to us all the time, if that was like a friend sat next to you, you probably wouldn't be friends with them anymore because you'd be like, "Just go away, you're negative and you're noisy, just leave me alone!"

Amy Shoenthal: It's true.  No, it's true.  And if you combat your self-doubt inner critic with your inner hype person or even your outer hype person, right, because sometimes other people see you more clearly than you see yourself.  So, it's something to keep in mind.

Helen Tupper: Amy, thank you for talking us through that.  Where can people go to find more out about your work on setbacks, and also dive a bit deeper into the framework that you've talked through with us?

Amy Shoenthal: Of course, you can obviously buy The Setback Cycle on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any booksellers, my website, amyshoenthal.com.  I'm on Instagram @amysho, LinkedIn.  You can find me. 

Sarah Ellis: So, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Amy and Helen.  Really nice to hear a practical framework that I think just helps you to navigate your way through setbacks.  And I think frameworks can be really helpful when we're feeling a bit lost or a bit uncertain.  You're now going to hear my conversation with Ken and Mary, who are worth a follow on LinkedIn, which is actually how we found them, and then you realise you have loads of connections in common.  So, Ken and Mary, I was meeting for the first time.  It felt like a really curious conversation.  And what I really appreciated about both of them is I think they approach the idea of setbacks with a lot of empathy, because they've experienced different challenges and setbacks themselves, a lot of openness around their own experiences, what's felt hard and what's been helpful.  And they're a great team, so they're really complementary, and so it's a really good conversation and I hope you find it useful.

Ken, Mary, thank you for joining me on the Squiggly Careers podcast.  I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. 

Ken Okoroafor: Thank you for inviting us. 

Mary Okoroafor: Yeah, super excited to be here. 

Sarah Ellis: We were meeting for the first time over LinkedIn, so LinkedIn at its best, me getting in touch with you and saying, "Any chance we could have a conversation?"  And since then, we've already found a connection in common.  So, it just shows sometimes that it's good to find somebody new to have a conversation with, and then you never quite know where it might lead. 

Ken Okoroafor: Yes, absolutely.

Sarah Ellis: And so, today we are talking about a difficult topic.  And so, we know that within a Squiggly Career, there will be what we often describe as 'knotty moments'.  There's no such thing as a straight line to success and there are difficult times for all of us and for everyone, and it can feel really hard and it can feel lonely.  And so, one of the things I wanted to start today's conversation with is a bit of reassurance that this genuinely does happen to everyone.  It doesn't matter how brilliant you are or how successful or shiny you might look on LinkedIn, for example, or from the outside, everybody does have these setbacks.  So, your profiles look absolutely incredible, because that's how I found you both, because I was doing some LinkedIn stalking, being honest!  You've written a Sunday Times bestseller.  So, would you both be prepared to share with us maybe the other side of the story, a setback that you've had, and maybe what's helped you in that moment? 

Ken Okoroafor: One big setback that I can think of that's been life-changing in many ways for me is going from a world where I've spent, call it about 14, 15 years, building a career and becoming a Chief Financial Officer, like you mentioned, had that nice, shiny LinkedIn title, I worked in a sexy industry in investment management, worked in venture capital, I had interesting-ish work.  But going from all of that with all the perks and your six-figure salary, to basically quitting all that during the pandemic to do something completely different.  And that took quite a while to embrace that new identity, shift from getting a regular salary, shift from having colleagues I could talk to and ask questions, dealing with anxiety and stress around, "Oh, gosh, what does my identity look like now that I'm no longer having this career I've built over 14, 15 years?"

Sarah Ellis: I really relate to that.  I remember when I left Sainsbury's and almost being like, "Is anyone going to be interested in me anymore, or want to stay connected with me?"  And you do have these often irrational doubts, I think, that go through your mind when you have these setbacks.  And I think one of the things that really did help me was finding some of the people who have been through that similar process.  Ken, did you do that, did you have those conversations?  Or actually, was there something different that helped you in that period of time?  Quite hard during the pandemic as well, because you had the pandemic layered on! 

Ken Okoroafor: Yeah, yeah.  So, I can think of five things come to mind that really helped me.  So, the first one was actually support from my wife, Mary, who will share her challenges in a minute.  So, having her support was very important.  The next bit that really helped me was doing what I call, as I guess a finance person, a 'what-if analysis'.  So, I looked at analysing, what would my career turn out to be if I carried on, in how I was going, versus what could the opportunity set look like if I went down the path that I'd chosen.  So, if I'd carried on in my normal career that I was in, I would still get paid my six-figure income.  It would go up a little bit by inflation, a bit beyond.  But broadly speaking, my role would pretty much be the same without much else changing. 

But I realised that if I'd gone the other way, the way I'd gone, although things were very difficult, there was this limitless potential.  The opportunity set was a lot broader; I could do really interesting work that could take my life in lots of different directions.  So, that gave me a bit of reassurance.  The third was actually just working on my mindset.  So, accepting that, "Do you know what, this direction I've taken is a good career".  Even though on LinkedIn, it might not be as shiny and as normal as saying, I'm a Chief Financial Officer, it's okay for me to be a YouTuber or a blogger or a creator or whatever".  I had to accept that within myself, that that's okay, and that's what really matters, not really what other people think. 

Then the final two are pretty much making new friends, as you mentioned, who are in similar spaces, people who are creative and trying new things.  And then finally, getting our finances in shape was actually key. 

Sarah Ellis: How about you Mary?  So, first of all, you were the answer to number one there.  So, for our listeners, Mary and Ken are physically together, I can see them both sitting next to each other, and so obviously having each other, incredibly useful during those hard times.  But perhaps talk to me a bit about your setback and let's see how different or similar it is to Ken's. 

Mary Okoroafor: So, I think for me, it was kind of similar in that I shifted from working in corporate.  So, I was in a top-five accountancy firm working as an e-business analyst, where I was there for five years.  And when I was three months pregnant, I did something that my work colleagues thought was absolutely crazy, and I told them that I was leaving the world of corporate to run a children's nursery business. 

Sarah Ellis: Wow! 

Mary Okoroafor: The reason behind that was so that I could have the time, flexibility to spend with my children, and also save money in childcare costs because we all know how much it costs to put your children into childcare.  So, what happened was essentially that my settings changed immediately from a professional firm, where I would get free breakfast and free fruits every day, to working in a really small business in a small building.  The colleagues I worked with, they changed from people who were furthering their careers and they were much older, to much younger people who were just starting out in their career.  So, they were apprentices, they were doing NVQs.  And in addition to that, my income, it decreased significantly for a while.  Although I gained more flexibility, I had proximity to home and all of that, so there were a lot of changes, but there were benefits and there were lots of challenges at the same time that I had to navigate through.

Sarah Ellis: Doing anything for the first time always feels uncomfortable, daunting.  It can feel quite overwhelming.  So, for people listening who are going through maybe quite a significant setback, it can feel that lots of stuff is happening to you.  But you can't change.  If you're in a really big company and you're going through a restructure or redundancy, you didn't decide that, that has come your way.  On average, people will experience that around 2.1 times during their career.  In certainly my corporate career, I had way more restructures than 2.1.  There was sort of a restructure, I felt like, every 18 months, two years.  If there hadn't been one, you were like, "Well, there's obviously going to be one soon".  And I just wondered whether that was something either of you had experienced, or perhaps in the organisations you've been in and the people that you've helped, what advice would you give to people who are maybe in that really crunchy knotty moment right now?

Ken Okoroafor: I've definitely experienced redundancy and restructures at least twice, and it's crushing.  I think that's the first thing I would say, is there's a lot of uncertainty that comes with that, particularly if it's unexpected, which we're seeing a lot more of at the moment, with changes in the world happening, shifts in technology, companies are outsourcing to other parts of the world, AI is having sweeping impact on the way companies are looking at how to run their businesses and the impact it's having on headcount and that sort of thing.  The first thing I'd say is to accept that there's nothing wrong with you as an individual.  You're not a failure because you've been made redundant.  It's almost inevitable.  You can almost guarantee it will happen to you at some point.  So, I think that acceptance is actually a really good place to begin, to say, "Actually, it's not me.  I'm not rubbish at my job, this is just what happens".  And I think that mindset shift helps once you think of idea of failure in a different way.

The second thing I want to say, from a practical perspective, as someone who has been through this, is it's important, particularly the more senior you get, to have access to an employment lawyer, particularly if you're leaving in difficult circumstances.  It doesn't cost as much as people think to have access to an employment lawyer, because they might work on your case maybe one hour, hour-and-a-half tops, but the insights they will bring, the peace of mind they will bring to your situation, the negotiating power they will bring to your situation could mean that you will leave with a bigger payout potentially, and you don't feel like you're in this deep, dark hole alone and dealing with this problem just by yourself. 

Then the third and final thing I'll talk about is finances.  You come to realise that if you have a bit of an emergency fund, it goes a long way in helping you feel like, "I've got a bit of a runway in navigating redundancy".  Begin to prepare for that, even if you are in that position right now, look at what hard decisions you need to make in your personal finances to create a bit of a buffer and security in the event that you're navigating it.  Thing I've learned in my experience is that the place of work is about power dynamics ultimately, and an employer usually has the upper hand.  But there's a way of winning back some of that power over time.  And some of the things that one can do is the finances bit we talked about.  

But the other bit, and this is more of a strategic move, is to begin to create a bit of a personal brand.  I think it's so important now more than ever that people have something else, something else whether it's a passion project over time, this will not happen overnight obviously, or whether that they're becoming a thought leader of some sort in their area of expertise or their industry.  Platforms like LinkedIn, all these various other platforms, YouTube, if you can build a personal brand over time, this becomes a strategic advantage. 

Sarah Ellis: What I loved about your points there was that thing of, it will happen to all of us, see it as inevitable.  And actually, at that moment, somebody had given me advice previously around have three months' salary just somewhere, if you can.  And the other good bit of advice that I've been given a few times is it is okay through a redundancy to go into a bridging role.  So, you don't have to find your next perfect job next.  Sometimes, particularly because of the financial pressure and strain that can put on you, a good enough job can actually take away the financial pressures and the strain for a while, so your next job is not going to be your last job.

Ken Okoroafor: I've come to learn over time that we all have cycles of careers basically.  So, the cycles of careers could be, every ten years, you might have to reinvent yourself in some capacity to potentially even start something completely different.  The mindset shift that's necessary is almost embracing this idea that actually, "It's okay that I don't carry on with one career forever". 

Sarah Ellis: Just before we finish, I do want to dive a little bit deeper into money, our financial freedom, because I couldn't not when I've got you both with me.  If people listening want to start taking a bit more control, where would you recommend people get started? 

Mary Okoroafor: A lot of people don't achieve financial freedom because it was never a goal to start off with.  What was that percentage? 

Ken Okoroafor: 95% don't, for that reason. 

Mary Okoroafor: And a lot of the time, it's because they think it's out of reach firstly; and also, they don't know how much they actually need to become financially free.  So, everyone needs to have a goal that they're working towards firstly, and then that would then dictate where your money goes, and your short-term, your midterm and your long-term decision-making process will be dictated by what that number is for you.  And then thirdly, I would say create a budget.  Decide how much money should go towards saving, investing, paying off your debt based on your goal.  And then depending on what stage of the money journey that you're in, it could be that you don't have any debt.  So therefore, you will now want to work on building your emergency funds, whether that's three to six months of emergency funds, or paying off your expensive debt if you have any. 

Then, we would say start putting your money in an environment where it will grow and compound.  For example, that could be investing in a stock market for you or other income-generating assets.  For example, it could be property.  What you want to do is put your money in an environment where money works for money, rather than you having to personally trade your time for money.  Because there's only so many hours you can work in a day.

Helen Tupper: I loved listening to that.  They are a great team.  Also, so are we, hopefully!  We should team up with Ken and Mary more.  Thank you so much for listening today.  If you are experiencing setback at the moment, we know this is a squiggly moment that can feel particularly difficult.  So, as well as the episode, don't forget that we've got the guide for you for a bit of extra Squiggly Career support.  And there are lots of other tools on our website as well that are all free.  So, it might be worth going to amazingif.com and just seeing some other things that can help you in this particular moment. 

Sarah Ellis: That's everything for this episode.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back to you again soon.  Bye for now. 

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.