speaker-1: Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Work is Rigged, the podcast where we talk about what it's actually like to be neurodivergent in this crazy world of work that we have to navigate. I'm Veronica Yao and I am your host. And today I'm very excited to have Sherry Andrew with us to share her story. After discovering her ADHD diagnosis later in life, her focus has now shifted to helping individuals with ADHD figure out creative strategies to manage their money. Sherry, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
speaker-0: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to see where this conversation goes today.
speaker-1: You know, some people might be thinking right off the bat, like Veronica, this is a career podcast. Like what does finance have to do with it? Well, I mean everything, of course, coaching neurodivergent people for their careers. Our conversations rarely stay in the workplace. Oftentimes, we actually have to talk about things outside of the workplace in order to understand how they are impacting us. Of course, the workplace is where we earn our paycheck, but what happens afterwards also affects our life at work. A lot of our listeners are maybe a bit adverse to dealing with their finances or get overwhelmed with money conversations. I myself have always struggled with math and with numbers. Mm I would love to know what your journey has been and what your thoughts are. Can you kick us off?
speaker-0: Yeah, I'd like this could go in so many directions, but I just want to first say that money can actually keep us connected to careers and even professions and specific jobs that make us miserable. Money can either keep us stuck or set us free. And for folks that are neurodiverse, like we tend to avoid it a lot or go in cycles of hyper focus avoid, hyper focus, avoid. Coming from a career that I thought was safe. I thought I would just work out my years until retirement. I thought that I was managing our household finances in a good way, but all I was really doing was tracking and also like being miserable at your job, it's expensive. I traveled multiple times a year because that was the only way I could truly escape a high stress job. And When you find contentment in your everyday life that you don't want to escape from, that can reduce your overall costs. You're not spending as much on travel or chasing dopamine spending and impulse buying because you've you're in a place where you're not trying to get away from. You're able to b just sit with the day and do the things you need to do. And I didn't realize how stressful my job was and the negative impact it was having on my life. until I got fired. And then two, three months out when I started to get out of burnout and my nervous system became more regulated, which were terms I didn't even know at the time, I started to be calmer, be less like aggressive, have less anxiety and so many things just started to fall in line and what was a really stressful, shitty day at the time, ended up being something I look back on now and be like, Thank goodness s they I got fired.
speaker-1: Honestly, growing up when I heard that someone got fired, it was always said in like a whispered tone like, my goodness, they got fired. Like it was such a term that was full of shame. And then I grew up to realize that almost everyone's been fired. Multiple times I'm in that camp too. And nowadays I find that it is much more normalized. It's not necessarily a signal of your worth as an individual, as a professional, but more of comment on the current job landscape and what we're kind of dealing with. And one of the things that we don't often have space to think about, especially we're in if we're in those toxic spaces and if we are in burnout. is that there are things that we can do outside of the workplace, outside of job hunting, that can actually build a safety net for us, that can actually make it possible for us to have Options or choices. And I'm on my own journey trying to unlearn a lot of the money myths, I suppose you can see the assumptions that I've always grown up with about having money or not having money. And what I remember one of the phrases that really sounded completely fake to me was the idea of financial freedom. Because honestly, it sounded like they were selling something, and they were, but As a concept, I didn't understand it. It sounded impossible because how could you just not go to work and just like explore the world and whatever? And I later learned that it was less about never having to work again and living that like ideal utopian life and more about Having options when you are in a bind, when you are in a place where you are not enjoying work and it's really draining your resources and your energy and you're not able to enjoy life outside of work. You have to literally take a plane and like fly to another country in order to feel safe enough for your nervous system to start. resting and regulating and everything, you can actually sit there and be like, Maybe I can take some time off so I can figure this out. Maybe s I'm set up well enough so that I can have the space to figure out my next move. As an expert in this space, what do you think, Sherry?
speaker-0: Yeah, well, there's so yeah, there's so much to unpack there. And having a client who is a teacher and starting in September she's actually going down to I can't remember what the term is, but she's going down to I think eighty percent. So she's getting the the equivalent hours of working four days instead of five, which is actually linked to like fewer hours every day, but she was able to do that because she realized she was in burnout, she realized that she didn't have time. When she got home, her cup was empty, she couldn't take care of her kids in the way she wanted, so Because she had her finances, she had a clear plan, she knew what she could live off of, she was able to do that with confidence. And it gives you so much flexibility. They say money can't buy happiness. But if you're in a career and you're sitting down with your boss or you're in a really crappy situation at work, imagine having a chunk of money set aside and there's a particular situation that's just the final straw to be able to say, you know what, I'm done. Consider this my notice effective immediately. Think there's power in that and there's power in that fun then giving you time to be able to reset and think about what is next. I was doing like a group trip with a bunch of strangers. We were hiking the Inca Trail in Peru and conversations. Some of these folks were talking so passionately about their careers And you could tell that they were excited to go back to work because of things that they were working on. And that just cracked my mind open so much. I was like, Whoa, you you enjoy your job. You you want to get back to work. You're not traveling to escape your job. That moment just shifted things so much for me. There are people that are gainfully employed, either through businesses that they start themselves or working with different organizations that help people with their finances. I'm like, what? I wanna help people do what I've done to have spending that's more in align with the life you want versus spending, not thinking and then trying to figure it out later.
speaker-1: think there's something to be said about Having that choice that you said, instead of being shackled to a job that you know is no longer serving you, that is literally toxic and is bleeding out into other areas of your life, it's really, really important to be able to identify that and then be able to have that space to address it. Like if you think about it, how much money would you pay if you were in your last toxic job right now and you would be able to buy a week off or a month off? I know a lot of people who we have on. This show are entrepreneurs. They have gone through the world of work. They have worked for other employers. And a lot of them have, just like you, just like me, thought, I can do better. I can do better by myself. And hopefully, I can do better by other people who I might hire in the future. And so I think that. You know, the future of work for neurodivergent folks like us is a combination of people like you and I who actually have the privilege and the means and you know the capacity to be able to start these businesses and build out those structures so that we can actually create Environments, work environments that actually serve the people who we are working with and ourselves so that we can bring that energy home. A lot of people I talk to, they'll say, I work so hard so I can bring home money for my family because I love my family so much. And that's important, of course. But what about the other things you're bringing home to them? What about the energy you're bringing home after work? That's not serving your family either. And so while money is very, very important, we have to remember that is that it is not the end goal. What the end goal is, is what you do with the money, how you spend it and how you create opportunities for yourself and invest in yourself and the community that you have around you.
speaker-0: Yes. What you said really resonated with me that like what you bring home, yes, we need to make money to pay our bills, but at what cost to our families? So if you're working a job that you have to commute an hour and a half each way, adding three plus hours to your day and you're making three hundred thousand dollars, how can you flip that and find a role that's maybe closer to home or even self employment or work from home and then you can often find that you can lower your costs a lot and really you buy money with your time. And if you can reduce your time, but it reduces your money too, but then that gives you so much back. And even outside of time, like that mood that you bring home and that baggage you bring home, about three months after I got fired, my husband just made the comment, just in a casual conversation, that I was a different person to live with. And I'm like Wait a minute. Explain? And for me, I immediately get my haunches up and I'm like, this must be negative. What do you mean? Like I'm I'm lazy, I'm not making any money, I'm not productively contributing to the household. He's like, no, no, no, no. You're you're more calm, you're easier to live with, you're you're not stressed out all of the time. I'm like, but I really was up here all the time functioning in such a high level. of probably like crossing in and out of burnout or living in burnout all the time without really understanding it because I didn't understand my brain. I shoved a lot of things down that are like, no, no, good money, good job, can work overtime to increase my income. Just it's it's okay. Just just shove it down and keep going.
speaker-1: Yeah, and when you are immersed in that world it's kinda hard to remember Who you used to be, who you could be, because you're just so stuck in survival mode. All you're thinking about right now is how do I survive this moment? Unfortunately, it's that state of survival mode that actually keeps us trapped in those kinds of jobs. So we need to make sure that when we do have those moments to breathe, when we do have those moments where we're a little bit more clear headed, we're using those as best as we can with the capacity that we have. To plan ahead and make sure that we do have those escape plans. We do have those contingency plans and those safety nets all set up because ultimately there is no such thing as a safe job. There is a job that will have its season. Sometimes the season will be really long, it'll be several years or decades, even if you were starting work meant way back, or it could be a couple of months, it could be two years, and guess what? Those are valuable as well, but you need to know what works best for you and you also need to know what you have at your disposal in order to create an escape plan. Yeah.
speaker-0: Being able to have that runway and that flexibility is so important. And the the job market has shifted a lot, the career market, because we see the older generations working maybe one or two jobs, working their basically their entire life for one company, and each generation that has passed, fewer and fewer people are doing that. And there's actually information out there. You're actually able to significantly increase your earning potential when you not necessarily job hop, but if you're working two or three years at a job and then you're looking for another role, you're much more likely to have a higher jump in salary than if you stayed and were promoted within that same company. I recently had a client send me a message who she'd been given more responsibility at work, but given a very small raise. And then she went to a different company that not only has the ability to have her move up with the company, she also got close to a twenty thousand dollar annual raise, which she was never getting that from her company, even though the responsibility she took on was in line with a raise of that level. And it can just feel like a fresh start too, because you're able to take your knowledge, but then People around you, they don't know you. They don't have these stories or memories of you from years ago. You're able to really continue to move up and progress in a way that you can't with one single company throughout your career.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. The memory of an employer is not as long as we think. They always tell us, we'll appreciate you because of your loyalty and because of your tenure and all that stuff. Ask your manager, do you remember what I did last week? And they'll probably forget. So and it's not to say that you can't value the relationships that you have in the jobs, but just remember the context as to your employment there. You know, if your manager decided to leave tomorrow and you got a new manager, guess what? You're starting from scratch anyway. So it's very important to be able to have those opportunities to advocate for yourself, to ask for those raises, to go to other employers and and showcase this is my level and this is what I can offer you and everything like that. But I think a lot the reason why so many neurodivergent folks struggle with that is because a lot of us find it very difficult to advocate for ourselves in general. And we often feel like we need to just be grateful for whatever we're given. Because a lot of us find it difficult to find employment. We find it difficult to maintain employment. And so therefore we get it in our heads that we need to accept the bare minimum. And that's Tragic honestly, because that's just some high-level brainwashing. We are worth so much more than the workforce gives us credit for.
speaker-0: If you've got a brain that works like ours do, I can guarantee there's things that you are undervaluing in yourself because it comes easily, and then we tend to ruminate on I missed that deadline. I forgot to send the attachment for this thing to a customer client. And I see this a lot with entrepreneurs too, because when you're doing something that you love. Probably. It comes easy to you. You enjoy it. But when it's something we're passionate about and we enjoy, we're like, yeah, but I would do it for for free. It doesn't mean that what you're providing to your clients or customers isn't so freaking valuable. And and that's the same as an employee as well. Like you're able to do things and see things. And yeah, maybe miss a deadline or an important email here and there, but your work efficiency w in those set period of times when you get into hyper focus is so much higher than your neurotypical peers. And again, that hits a lot for entrepreneurs too, where any of my clients who are doing something that they're charging hourly for, if there is any way we can get away from that, I strongly encourage it. Because if you're doing something that takes an hour every week three months from now, maybe it takes forty-five minutes because you've created efficiencies and you're better at it. So then are you going to cut your pay but still give the same results? Let's not do that. Get away from from charging hourly. And as an entrepreneur who did have a stint for a year where I did go back and get a role as an employee, as a financial coach within a a tech company, and I thought it was the solution. I'm like, I'm going to get the help for the things that I don't want to do. I'm going to be able to reach more people. And as the year went on, I'm like, this is so rigid. I can't do these things in the middle of a day, even though I had flexibility and I fully worked remotely, just not being able to take a whole afternoon off on a Tuesday to go and do something I wanted to do and also it helped me realize that I had a lot of trauma from my previous employment. And what highlighted that for me was When there's company wide announcement in our weekly stand up around performance reviews coming up, my stomach just dropped. And I was I have trauma. My boss was amazing. She was a lovely human and I I felt comfortable messaging her being I'm feeling like this because here's some history to unpack. Previous job evaluations were let's talk about all the bad things. you did in the last month, even though this is supposed to be an annual evaluation. And she said to me, which was so eye-opening, that if there are things in a performance review that are negative that are a surprise to you, that's my shortcoming as a manager. Because if there was something that I was concerned about, I would tell you that. I'm like, that's how good managers work. They don't use a job performance to hammer down all the negative things.
speaker-1: Blind side you and be like this is the professional way to do it? Like
speaker-0: Yes. Yeah, it was just it was very eye opening, but ultimately I just realized it's not for me. The flexibility of entrepreneurship is really where it's at for me because having gone through getting fired after a fairly long career, I realized that yeah, there's not safety in jobs and a lot of people think that entrepreneurship is more risky. But when you have one employer Or in entrepreneurship, maybe you have five clients or ten clients, whatever your business looks like, maybe you have a hundred clients. If you have five clients and one of them goes away, you still have most of your income and you have the ability to go and find another one. One person saying that we're not gonna work together anymore does not mean a hundred percent of your income goes away like when you are an employee with one job. Entrepreneurship can be risky, but there are ways, especially on the financial side, that you can create stability. I pay myself the same amount every two weeks. I have a clear system to know when I can give myself a raise. So you can take a variable income that can vary widely month to month depending on what you're doing, and create stability, even though it's not easy. But if you're thinking about starting a business and you're worried about that side of it, just just know that there are ways that you can create a paycheck similar to being an employee every week, every two weeks, every month, whatever you want that to look like.
speaker-1: And I think speaking for a lot of the neurodivergent professionals I've worked with, some of them are absolutely like, yes, entrepreneurship is the answer. I can't work for an employer anymore. I was totally in that boat. Obviously, you were as well. But there are some of them who really do rely on the consistency and the structure that a nine to five might bring. Some of them are even hesitant to go after contract jobs because, you know, not only are you going To have to do the work, you're also gonna have to shift between trying to find new contracts for when your current one ends, and that feels like an additional demand on top of it. If you are an entrepreneur, well, my goodness, everything comes down to me. It's not like I have the safety net of my colleagues and my manager. And even though that comes with its own set of problems and its own set of trauma. Oftentimes people do see employment as the only option for them. Working within those confines, I would say it's incredibly important, regardless of whether you go the self employment route or the employed by someone else route, that you understand What is your value as a professional? What are you good at? What can you contribute? But also what motivates you as an individual? Because different things motivate different people. What about the limitations and the challenges that you might have? For example, if you're not able to do heavy lifting, maybe don't work in a warehouse, right? You know, so by figuring that out and mining your life for data and putting them all in a format that is tangible to you, whether it is writing it down in a journal or like putting it all in a spreadsheet or creating a vision board. You need to take that time to be able to figure that out about yourself so that you can make the best decisions. by you. Of course, that kind of circles back to what we were talking about about having that safety net and having that option to be able to have that space to do that self-discovery. And a lot of people who are stuck in survival mode in these jobs are not able to do that. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have if someone came up to you and said I'm stuck in a toxic job and I want to create a strategy where I can use my money and use my assets in my favor so that I can have options. Is there any advice that comes to mind that you might give them?
speaker-0: Yes, and the first is like to kind of rewind back a little bit and have clarity around what do you need to make? What are your monthly expenses? It was like what are your basics? Like what do you need to bring in every month as far as take home pay to cover your essential expenses? So your bills, food, all of those things. And then there's other levels too. It's like then what do you need to cover your bills, your essentials, and then starting to put money away for bigger expenses like travel or holidays and gifting and car maintenance, home maintenance. And then like the third level is what allows you to put money towards all of those things and also your financial goals, whether that's growing your savings or paying down your debt. And that can be really key when you're on the job hunt because then you know, okay, maybe this role is less money, but the company is more aligned with my goals and my values and or I work from home or my commute is less. It's lower take home, but there's more benefit to working with the company. That helps you to see what's my minimum salary, what's my range as far as income. And then also thinking about benefits too. In the tech world, a lot of roles have some really unique benefits. I have folks who have wellness accounts or educational accounts that they're paying for coaching and They're getting their internet reimbursed because they work from home. So there's a lot of other benefits that we don't necessarily think about to some roles as well, too, that could allow you to have a lower salary because you're able to offset some of those costs. And a lot in the bigger tech companies, really significant bonus structures is pretty common as well, which for our brains is really difficult to manage. And when I work with folks who are in a job where they have a quarterly bonus or an annual bonus or stock payouts. What I see before we work together is very often those lump sums that they're receiving, and maybe cut that comes with a tax return or other things as well, they're using it to fill in the hole they dug since the last time they got a bonus. So they're paying off large chunks of credit card debt or loans from loved ones and We work together to have a plan so that your expenses are covered with your monthly income and then your bonus becomes the icing. And especially if that's a significant bonus, the shift from using it all to pay off quote unquote mistakes from your past and using it to fund your next trip or your safety net, because there is a lot of uncertainty with folks in a lot of their jobs. There's been significant layoffs and you feel really uneasy or uncertain. And losing a job, whether that's getting fired or a layoff, with money in the bank or with confidence in how you manage your money and being able to go, Okay, whew, just lost my job. That's not comfortable. But when I'm helping my clients look at setting goals for emergency funds, usually three, six, twelve months of expenses is what is recommended. But I take a slightly different look at that and to be if you were to lose your job right now, what would you cut? From your budget, how would that look different? And clarity in your monthly expenses, both the bills and the variable part of it, can give you peace of mind, flexibility, freedom to be change how you're doing things, be able to put more money towards your goals and just have that breathing room which is so underrated.
speaker-1: Curious to know where our conversation goes? Tune in next week where we post the second half of our conversation with Sherry Andrew, where we'll continue talking all about what it's like being neurodivergent and navigating a career and the finances that are actually tied to it. In the meantime, if you want more information on neurodivergent-friendly career resources and services, Please check out atypicalcareers.com where we've got a ton of really great career advice and career coaching services for all of you who think a little bit differently, just like me. As for me, I'm Veronica Yao. I am your host and the career coach behind Atypical Careers. And I hope to see you online. In the meantime, remember, work is rigged, so don't sweat it.
speaker-0: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to see where this conversation goes today.
speaker-1: You know, some people might be thinking right off the bat, like Veronica, this is a career podcast. Like what does finance have to do with it? Well, I mean everything, of course, coaching neurodivergent people for their careers. Our conversations rarely stay in the workplace. Oftentimes, we actually have to talk about things outside of the workplace in order to understand how they are impacting us. Of course, the workplace is where we earn our paycheck, but what happens afterwards also affects our life at work. A lot of our listeners are maybe a bit adverse to dealing with their finances or get overwhelmed with money conversations. I myself have always struggled with math and with numbers. Mm I would love to know what your journey has been and what your thoughts are. Can you kick us off?
speaker-0: Yeah, I'd like this could go in so many directions, but I just want to first say that money can actually keep us connected to careers and even professions and specific jobs that make us miserable. Money can either keep us stuck or set us free. And for folks that are neurodiverse, like we tend to avoid it a lot or go in cycles of hyper focus avoid, hyper focus, avoid. Coming from a career that I thought was safe. I thought I would just work out my years until retirement. I thought that I was managing our household finances in a good way, but all I was really doing was tracking and also like being miserable at your job, it's expensive. I traveled multiple times a year because that was the only way I could truly escape a high stress job. And When you find contentment in your everyday life that you don't want to escape from, that can reduce your overall costs. You're not spending as much on travel or chasing dopamine spending and impulse buying because you've you're in a place where you're not trying to get away from. You're able to b just sit with the day and do the things you need to do. And I didn't realize how stressful my job was and the negative impact it was having on my life. until I got fired. And then two, three months out when I started to get out of burnout and my nervous system became more regulated, which were terms I didn't even know at the time, I started to be calmer, be less like aggressive, have less anxiety and so many things just started to fall in line and what was a really stressful, shitty day at the time, ended up being something I look back on now and be like, Thank goodness s they I got fired.
speaker-1: Honestly, growing up when I heard that someone got fired, it was always said in like a whispered tone like, my goodness, they got fired. Like it was such a term that was full of shame. And then I grew up to realize that almost everyone's been fired. Multiple times I'm in that camp too. And nowadays I find that it is much more normalized. It's not necessarily a signal of your worth as an individual, as a professional, but more of comment on the current job landscape and what we're kind of dealing with. And one of the things that we don't often have space to think about, especially we're in if we're in those toxic spaces and if we are in burnout. is that there are things that we can do outside of the workplace, outside of job hunting, that can actually build a safety net for us, that can actually make it possible for us to have Options or choices. And I'm on my own journey trying to unlearn a lot of the money myths, I suppose you can see the assumptions that I've always grown up with about having money or not having money. And what I remember one of the phrases that really sounded completely fake to me was the idea of financial freedom. Because honestly, it sounded like they were selling something, and they were, but As a concept, I didn't understand it. It sounded impossible because how could you just not go to work and just like explore the world and whatever? And I later learned that it was less about never having to work again and living that like ideal utopian life and more about Having options when you are in a bind, when you are in a place where you are not enjoying work and it's really draining your resources and your energy and you're not able to enjoy life outside of work. You have to literally take a plane and like fly to another country in order to feel safe enough for your nervous system to start. resting and regulating and everything, you can actually sit there and be like, Maybe I can take some time off so I can figure this out. Maybe s I'm set up well enough so that I can have the space to figure out my next move. As an expert in this space, what do you think, Sherry?
speaker-0: Yeah, well, there's so yeah, there's so much to unpack there. And having a client who is a teacher and starting in September she's actually going down to I can't remember what the term is, but she's going down to I think eighty percent. So she's getting the the equivalent hours of working four days instead of five, which is actually linked to like fewer hours every day, but she was able to do that because she realized she was in burnout, she realized that she didn't have time. When she got home, her cup was empty, she couldn't take care of her kids in the way she wanted, so Because she had her finances, she had a clear plan, she knew what she could live off of, she was able to do that with confidence. And it gives you so much flexibility. They say money can't buy happiness. But if you're in a career and you're sitting down with your boss or you're in a really crappy situation at work, imagine having a chunk of money set aside and there's a particular situation that's just the final straw to be able to say, you know what, I'm done. Consider this my notice effective immediately. Think there's power in that and there's power in that fun then giving you time to be able to reset and think about what is next. I was doing like a group trip with a bunch of strangers. We were hiking the Inca Trail in Peru and conversations. Some of these folks were talking so passionately about their careers And you could tell that they were excited to go back to work because of things that they were working on. And that just cracked my mind open so much. I was like, Whoa, you you enjoy your job. You you want to get back to work. You're not traveling to escape your job. That moment just shifted things so much for me. There are people that are gainfully employed, either through businesses that they start themselves or working with different organizations that help people with their finances. I'm like, what? I wanna help people do what I've done to have spending that's more in align with the life you want versus spending, not thinking and then trying to figure it out later.
speaker-1: think there's something to be said about Having that choice that you said, instead of being shackled to a job that you know is no longer serving you, that is literally toxic and is bleeding out into other areas of your life, it's really, really important to be able to identify that and then be able to have that space to address it. Like if you think about it, how much money would you pay if you were in your last toxic job right now and you would be able to buy a week off or a month off? I know a lot of people who we have on. This show are entrepreneurs. They have gone through the world of work. They have worked for other employers. And a lot of them have, just like you, just like me, thought, I can do better. I can do better by myself. And hopefully, I can do better by other people who I might hire in the future. And so I think that. You know, the future of work for neurodivergent folks like us is a combination of people like you and I who actually have the privilege and the means and you know the capacity to be able to start these businesses and build out those structures so that we can actually create Environments, work environments that actually serve the people who we are working with and ourselves so that we can bring that energy home. A lot of people I talk to, they'll say, I work so hard so I can bring home money for my family because I love my family so much. And that's important, of course. But what about the other things you're bringing home to them? What about the energy you're bringing home after work? That's not serving your family either. And so while money is very, very important, we have to remember that is that it is not the end goal. What the end goal is, is what you do with the money, how you spend it and how you create opportunities for yourself and invest in yourself and the community that you have around you.
speaker-0: Yes. What you said really resonated with me that like what you bring home, yes, we need to make money to pay our bills, but at what cost to our families? So if you're working a job that you have to commute an hour and a half each way, adding three plus hours to your day and you're making three hundred thousand dollars, how can you flip that and find a role that's maybe closer to home or even self employment or work from home and then you can often find that you can lower your costs a lot and really you buy money with your time. And if you can reduce your time, but it reduces your money too, but then that gives you so much back. And even outside of time, like that mood that you bring home and that baggage you bring home, about three months after I got fired, my husband just made the comment, just in a casual conversation, that I was a different person to live with. And I'm like Wait a minute. Explain? And for me, I immediately get my haunches up and I'm like, this must be negative. What do you mean? Like I'm I'm lazy, I'm not making any money, I'm not productively contributing to the household. He's like, no, no, no, no. You're you're more calm, you're easier to live with, you're you're not stressed out all of the time. I'm like, but I really was up here all the time functioning in such a high level. of probably like crossing in and out of burnout or living in burnout all the time without really understanding it because I didn't understand my brain. I shoved a lot of things down that are like, no, no, good money, good job, can work overtime to increase my income. Just it's it's okay. Just just shove it down and keep going.
speaker-1: Yeah, and when you are immersed in that world it's kinda hard to remember Who you used to be, who you could be, because you're just so stuck in survival mode. All you're thinking about right now is how do I survive this moment? Unfortunately, it's that state of survival mode that actually keeps us trapped in those kinds of jobs. So we need to make sure that when we do have those moments to breathe, when we do have those moments where we're a little bit more clear headed, we're using those as best as we can with the capacity that we have. To plan ahead and make sure that we do have those escape plans. We do have those contingency plans and those safety nets all set up because ultimately there is no such thing as a safe job. There is a job that will have its season. Sometimes the season will be really long, it'll be several years or decades, even if you were starting work meant way back, or it could be a couple of months, it could be two years, and guess what? Those are valuable as well, but you need to know what works best for you and you also need to know what you have at your disposal in order to create an escape plan. Yeah.
speaker-0: Being able to have that runway and that flexibility is so important. And the the job market has shifted a lot, the career market, because we see the older generations working maybe one or two jobs, working their basically their entire life for one company, and each generation that has passed, fewer and fewer people are doing that. And there's actually information out there. You're actually able to significantly increase your earning potential when you not necessarily job hop, but if you're working two or three years at a job and then you're looking for another role, you're much more likely to have a higher jump in salary than if you stayed and were promoted within that same company. I recently had a client send me a message who she'd been given more responsibility at work, but given a very small raise. And then she went to a different company that not only has the ability to have her move up with the company, she also got close to a twenty thousand dollar annual raise, which she was never getting that from her company, even though the responsibility she took on was in line with a raise of that level. And it can just feel like a fresh start too, because you're able to take your knowledge, but then People around you, they don't know you. They don't have these stories or memories of you from years ago. You're able to really continue to move up and progress in a way that you can't with one single company throughout your career.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. The memory of an employer is not as long as we think. They always tell us, we'll appreciate you because of your loyalty and because of your tenure and all that stuff. Ask your manager, do you remember what I did last week? And they'll probably forget. So and it's not to say that you can't value the relationships that you have in the jobs, but just remember the context as to your employment there. You know, if your manager decided to leave tomorrow and you got a new manager, guess what? You're starting from scratch anyway. So it's very important to be able to have those opportunities to advocate for yourself, to ask for those raises, to go to other employers and and showcase this is my level and this is what I can offer you and everything like that. But I think a lot the reason why so many neurodivergent folks struggle with that is because a lot of us find it very difficult to advocate for ourselves in general. And we often feel like we need to just be grateful for whatever we're given. Because a lot of us find it difficult to find employment. We find it difficult to maintain employment. And so therefore we get it in our heads that we need to accept the bare minimum. And that's Tragic honestly, because that's just some high-level brainwashing. We are worth so much more than the workforce gives us credit for.
speaker-0: If you've got a brain that works like ours do, I can guarantee there's things that you are undervaluing in yourself because it comes easily, and then we tend to ruminate on I missed that deadline. I forgot to send the attachment for this thing to a customer client. And I see this a lot with entrepreneurs too, because when you're doing something that you love. Probably. It comes easy to you. You enjoy it. But when it's something we're passionate about and we enjoy, we're like, yeah, but I would do it for for free. It doesn't mean that what you're providing to your clients or customers isn't so freaking valuable. And and that's the same as an employee as well. Like you're able to do things and see things. And yeah, maybe miss a deadline or an important email here and there, but your work efficiency w in those set period of times when you get into hyper focus is so much higher than your neurotypical peers. And again, that hits a lot for entrepreneurs too, where any of my clients who are doing something that they're charging hourly for, if there is any way we can get away from that, I strongly encourage it. Because if you're doing something that takes an hour every week three months from now, maybe it takes forty-five minutes because you've created efficiencies and you're better at it. So then are you going to cut your pay but still give the same results? Let's not do that. Get away from from charging hourly. And as an entrepreneur who did have a stint for a year where I did go back and get a role as an employee, as a financial coach within a a tech company, and I thought it was the solution. I'm like, I'm going to get the help for the things that I don't want to do. I'm going to be able to reach more people. And as the year went on, I'm like, this is so rigid. I can't do these things in the middle of a day, even though I had flexibility and I fully worked remotely, just not being able to take a whole afternoon off on a Tuesday to go and do something I wanted to do and also it helped me realize that I had a lot of trauma from my previous employment. And what highlighted that for me was When there's company wide announcement in our weekly stand up around performance reviews coming up, my stomach just dropped. And I was I have trauma. My boss was amazing. She was a lovely human and I I felt comfortable messaging her being I'm feeling like this because here's some history to unpack. Previous job evaluations were let's talk about all the bad things. you did in the last month, even though this is supposed to be an annual evaluation. And she said to me, which was so eye-opening, that if there are things in a performance review that are negative that are a surprise to you, that's my shortcoming as a manager. Because if there was something that I was concerned about, I would tell you that. I'm like, that's how good managers work. They don't use a job performance to hammer down all the negative things.
speaker-1: Blind side you and be like this is the professional way to do it? Like
speaker-0: Yes. Yeah, it was just it was very eye opening, but ultimately I just realized it's not for me. The flexibility of entrepreneurship is really where it's at for me because having gone through getting fired after a fairly long career, I realized that yeah, there's not safety in jobs and a lot of people think that entrepreneurship is more risky. But when you have one employer Or in entrepreneurship, maybe you have five clients or ten clients, whatever your business looks like, maybe you have a hundred clients. If you have five clients and one of them goes away, you still have most of your income and you have the ability to go and find another one. One person saying that we're not gonna work together anymore does not mean a hundred percent of your income goes away like when you are an employee with one job. Entrepreneurship can be risky, but there are ways, especially on the financial side, that you can create stability. I pay myself the same amount every two weeks. I have a clear system to know when I can give myself a raise. So you can take a variable income that can vary widely month to month depending on what you're doing, and create stability, even though it's not easy. But if you're thinking about starting a business and you're worried about that side of it, just just know that there are ways that you can create a paycheck similar to being an employee every week, every two weeks, every month, whatever you want that to look like.
speaker-1: And I think speaking for a lot of the neurodivergent professionals I've worked with, some of them are absolutely like, yes, entrepreneurship is the answer. I can't work for an employer anymore. I was totally in that boat. Obviously, you were as well. But there are some of them who really do rely on the consistency and the structure that a nine to five might bring. Some of them are even hesitant to go after contract jobs because, you know, not only are you going To have to do the work, you're also gonna have to shift between trying to find new contracts for when your current one ends, and that feels like an additional demand on top of it. If you are an entrepreneur, well, my goodness, everything comes down to me. It's not like I have the safety net of my colleagues and my manager. And even though that comes with its own set of problems and its own set of trauma. Oftentimes people do see employment as the only option for them. Working within those confines, I would say it's incredibly important, regardless of whether you go the self employment route or the employed by someone else route, that you understand What is your value as a professional? What are you good at? What can you contribute? But also what motivates you as an individual? Because different things motivate different people. What about the limitations and the challenges that you might have? For example, if you're not able to do heavy lifting, maybe don't work in a warehouse, right? You know, so by figuring that out and mining your life for data and putting them all in a format that is tangible to you, whether it is writing it down in a journal or like putting it all in a spreadsheet or creating a vision board. You need to take that time to be able to figure that out about yourself so that you can make the best decisions. by you. Of course, that kind of circles back to what we were talking about about having that safety net and having that option to be able to have that space to do that self-discovery. And a lot of people who are stuck in survival mode in these jobs are not able to do that. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have if someone came up to you and said I'm stuck in a toxic job and I want to create a strategy where I can use my money and use my assets in my favor so that I can have options. Is there any advice that comes to mind that you might give them?
speaker-0: Yes, and the first is like to kind of rewind back a little bit and have clarity around what do you need to make? What are your monthly expenses? It was like what are your basics? Like what do you need to bring in every month as far as take home pay to cover your essential expenses? So your bills, food, all of those things. And then there's other levels too. It's like then what do you need to cover your bills, your essentials, and then starting to put money away for bigger expenses like travel or holidays and gifting and car maintenance, home maintenance. And then like the third level is what allows you to put money towards all of those things and also your financial goals, whether that's growing your savings or paying down your debt. And that can be really key when you're on the job hunt because then you know, okay, maybe this role is less money, but the company is more aligned with my goals and my values and or I work from home or my commute is less. It's lower take home, but there's more benefit to working with the company. That helps you to see what's my minimum salary, what's my range as far as income. And then also thinking about benefits too. In the tech world, a lot of roles have some really unique benefits. I have folks who have wellness accounts or educational accounts that they're paying for coaching and They're getting their internet reimbursed because they work from home. So there's a lot of other benefits that we don't necessarily think about to some roles as well, too, that could allow you to have a lower salary because you're able to offset some of those costs. And a lot in the bigger tech companies, really significant bonus structures is pretty common as well, which for our brains is really difficult to manage. And when I work with folks who are in a job where they have a quarterly bonus or an annual bonus or stock payouts. What I see before we work together is very often those lump sums that they're receiving, and maybe cut that comes with a tax return or other things as well, they're using it to fill in the hole they dug since the last time they got a bonus. So they're paying off large chunks of credit card debt or loans from loved ones and We work together to have a plan so that your expenses are covered with your monthly income and then your bonus becomes the icing. And especially if that's a significant bonus, the shift from using it all to pay off quote unquote mistakes from your past and using it to fund your next trip or your safety net, because there is a lot of uncertainty with folks in a lot of their jobs. There's been significant layoffs and you feel really uneasy or uncertain. And losing a job, whether that's getting fired or a layoff, with money in the bank or with confidence in how you manage your money and being able to go, Okay, whew, just lost my job. That's not comfortable. But when I'm helping my clients look at setting goals for emergency funds, usually three, six, twelve months of expenses is what is recommended. But I take a slightly different look at that and to be if you were to lose your job right now, what would you cut? From your budget, how would that look different? And clarity in your monthly expenses, both the bills and the variable part of it, can give you peace of mind, flexibility, freedom to be change how you're doing things, be able to put more money towards your goals and just have that breathing room which is so underrated.
speaker-1: Curious to know where our conversation goes? Tune in next week where we post the second half of our conversation with Sherry Andrew, where we'll continue talking all about what it's like being neurodivergent and navigating a career and the finances that are actually tied to it. In the meantime, if you want more information on neurodivergent-friendly career resources and services, Please check out atypicalcareers.com where we've got a ton of really great career advice and career coaching services for all of you who think a little bit differently, just like me. As for me, I'm Veronica Yao. I am your host and the career coach behind Atypical Careers. And I hope to see you online. In the meantime, remember, work is rigged, so don't sweat it.
