The Nine Stages of Career Transition, with Ed Molitor

This is the Athletics of business podcast, episode 32. Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now, your host, Ed Molitor. Hey, everyone. This is Ed Molitor, CEO of the Molitor Group. Ed. And your host of the Athletics of Business podcast. And I want to thank you for joining me again today as we dive into a topic that has been very relevant and prevalent in my professional career, and that is transition. I want to back up for one second and explain why I'm really fired up to talk about this. There's three, for lack of a better term, three bottom buckets in my business. Three different areas in my business. The Molitor Group.

One is executive coaching. The second one is leadership performance consulting, and the third is keynote speaking. Now, if you picture each of those like you would one of your children, okay? We love all our kids just as much. Okay? I mean, we love them all to pieces, but we love them in a different way for a whole variety of reasons. And I won't go into that, but nevertheless, we love them in a different way. And I want to talk to you about something that I work on with my clients a lot in the executive coaching piece of the puzzle, and that's transition. And I'm going to share a very personal story regarding transition that I think will help bring this to life.

And I've done a lot of research, and what I'm going to share with you is a combination of the research I've done, the experiences that I've had in the work that I have done with clients, I believe, and I found this a couple years ago, maybe about a year and a half ago. I firmly believe. When I really take a step back and look at it and try to make sense of the whole process of transition, I firmly believe that there are nine steps, okay? Nine different stages, I should say, of career transition. All right? And I want to talk to you about the. About those nine stages, and we're not going to spend as much time in each one. We'll probably get through the first couple a little quicker than we will the middle of the pack. And there's a reason for that.

Okay? And before we do that, I think it would be. It'd be wise to explain two of my career transitions right early in my career, because this really typified what most folks go through. The first career transition I had was in 1996, the previous four years I have been coaching college basketball at Lewis University, which is a Division 2 school right outside Chicago now. Unbelievable. University. Really, really good academic university, great athletic programs. Okay. And were in the, what they call the glbc, the Great Lakes Valley Conference, which arguably in basketball was one of the top two or three conferences in the country at the time, and very competitively. Even if I went up and down the list of coaches that were in the league at the time, you'd understand, but that has nothing to do with our subject today.

So I was there for four years and loved it and had a great time. In my first year there, I was a grad assistant in our head coach, Jim Weitzel. It was his first year as head coach, which was really cool for me because I got to my first year in college, coaching was my boss. His first year taking over a new program. Historically a really powerful program. Strong program, great tradition. Had struggled for a year or two prior to Jim getting there, and we did a pretty solid job of building it back up. After my first year, I was named to the full time assistant. And back then there was only one full time assistant, which meant I was the top assistant, which didn't really mean anything because the grad assistant did just as much. Okay.

But I was in charge of recruiting, I was in charge of scouting, I was in charge of the weight program, what have you. So after my fourth year, I was fortunate enough to be offered an assistant coaching job at Texas A and M University, the third assistant slot. And back then the third assistant spot was called the restricted earnings coach. And all that meant was that the ncaa, in their infinite wisdom, was violating a law and they're limiting how much money that, you know, we can make limiting a person's earnings. So anyways, I accepted that position. It was going to be Texas A and M's first year in the Big 12. The head coach at Texas A and M was Tony Broney, who is family to me.

I played for Tony at Creighton and I was very excited to go be going down to Texas A and M to work for him. Now. It was going to be Tony's, I believe, fifth year. There had been a struggle the previous two years and we really thought that we had the pieces together in place to turn the corner, so to speak, and start making some noise in the Big 12. But the transition took place when I first got to A and M, because I realized all of a sudden I wasn't the big fish in a small pond in terms of recruiting in terms of on campus, I went from, I think at the time Lewis was 4000 students, maybe 1500 on campus at most to Texas A and M, which at the time I believe had 30 something thousand students on campus.

It was insane. But the office dynamics, not so much politics, even though that's a word, that is true. But the office dynamics within the athletic department were much different. I had to get used to that. The culture was much different. The field, the level of energy, the positive energy was much different because I went from a program on the rise that eventually was going to make the NC2 a tournament consistently, a program trying to survive and, you know, trying to keep our jobs. And. And you went from really looking forward to, you know, the end of the season when you were going to make a run and getting into the tournament to, man, now you got to read the papers, now you got to listen to the talk shows and what are they saying about us and do we have a job?

Do I need to start looking? And it was different. I'll tell you what else was different. My resources, our resources, the weight room, the equipment, the clothes, the apparel. I mean, I went to going, you know, I would go through one pair of shoes during a basketball season at Lewis, and all of a sudden at am, you know, I'm getting boxes of shoes every other week, getting clothes, getting everything. But it sounds really cool, but it is all different, okay? It is all different. And what happened was when I was at Lewis, I was a well established recruiter. My work ethic was known, my ability to connect with people was known. The fact that I was selfless, which in the, within the athletic department was well known.

And I'll never forget when I got, when my first day in the job, I had to go around and I'd meet everybody and one of the gentlemen I had to meet with is a longtime Aggie. A lot of history within the athletic department is probably the best way to say it. And he sat me down and tried to be real stern with me. Really, really stern, okay? And when I don't deserve for you to be really stern with me, it's not a good way to go. And he said to me, he said, ed, you've got really big shoes to fill. You know that right? Now, what he was referring to was my good friend Porter Moser, who had held the same position two years prior. Not the year prior, but two years prior.

So long story short, the gentleman that took Porter's position in between my time there and Porter's time there, Quit middle of season. And I said, that's funny. I said, because last time I checked, there's no shoes in the locker that I'm gonna fill because Matt quit. It didn't go over real well. But I'll tell you what it did do. It made me take a step back and realize nobody knew who I was. Nobody cared what I have done, what I had done at Lewis University. Hell, they probably didn't know where Lewis University was, okay? And they didn't understand how hard it was to compete in that league and to recruit to that school and to get kids to not just buy them up.

But anyways, that was really an interesting conversation that I internalized and probably never let go of in my two years there. So that leads me, you know, to the first stage of transition. And that's detached and dissatisfied. Okay? That may not do the best job of describing because here's what happened after two years. I just mentioned I was there for two years. So two years later, we get fired, Coach Barone gets reassigned, which basically means he's fired, which means the assistants, pack up your boxes, get out of your office as quickly as you can, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, okay? So I did that. And I decided at the age of 28, I was young, I was dumb, I was immature, probably very self centered, selfish. And I said, you know what?

There has to be more to life than just basketball. I grew up with coach's son. It was all I knew is everything. I knew I loved it, I was passionate about it, but I just wanted to try something else. And I really missed Chicago. Prior to coming to College Station, I was living across the street from Wrigley Field with two of my. My best friends. So you can imagine that. Scene 26. You're 24 to 26 years old, living across the street from Wrigley and moving to College Station. So I decided to move back to Chicago and get in the mortgage business. Now anyone who's familiar with the mortgage business in 1998 in Chicago will say, hey, that was perfect timing. What a blessing. It was the beginning of the refi boom, one would think, but again, it was a huge transition for me.

And in that transition, I can remember my first week in the office, sitting there and looking around. And all of a sudden what I did every day, what I knew was gone. You know why I came to the office every day? The people I interacted with, the people I connected with, the people. You know, I went from picking up these high school, picking up the phone, calling these high school coaches and junior college coaches that were trying to win games and recruit great kids and make a huge impact on kids lives, to talking to realtors who couldn't get to the office before 10am and rightfully so. They work late at night. But my point being is there was a whole different thought process. There was a whole different paradigm. It was all new to me.

And once the honeymoon of oh, it's cool, I have a job wore off, especially when I realized I was 100% commission and they wouldn't even buy my laptop, I became very detached and very dissatisfied in the mortgage business. I really did. And you know, when you do that, you start to be conflicted emotionally. You start to really doubt your self worth, your self esteem takes a hit. And really when you change industries like that, and it doesn't necessarily have to be changing industries, but your skill set so different and you wonder, am I enough? Am I good enough? Can I get there? Back then it was a proverbial fake it to you, make it. Literally. My training in the mortgage business was here's your calculator, here's a pad of paper, there's a phone book, all right, that's how old I am.

It was a phone book and it was, fake it till you make it. And I just, man, did I have a hard time with that. And I really questioned who I was, what I was doing. My status had gone completely to crap in my mind. And to be honest, I missed the coaching fraternity, I missed the kids, I missed working with one of my best friends and with Amanda, to this day is family to me and I love with all my heart. It was really, it was really a tough thing for me to do. And really what happens is it leads to the next stage and that's identity limbo. Okay, who am I? What am I doing? What are my core values? And do my core values really align with this job?

See, I had it all backwards because I started to change who I was for what I was doing as opposed to changing what I was doing for who I was, what I stood for. I think that's one of the keys in transition is man, you really have to reestablish those core values and lock into who you are, what you stand for, you know, what makes you go. And that was bad. That was, that was a hard deal for me because I was very conscious of the fact that I was changing and it wasn't for the better. But I didn't know how I was changing. I didn't, you know, subconsciously I was changing my core values. And I didn't realize that, but I did see the results in that led to the third stage, which, as you can imagine, is confusion.

So now here I am, I've got no options, right? I didn't get a buyout at Texas A and M. I could barely get them to pay for my move back to Chicago from Texas because they wouldn't pay for. They wouldn't pay for my move down there. Goes back to the whole restricted earnings thing. But I digress. So anyways, now I'm here. I'm in the mortgage business. My office is in a beautiful neighborhood of Chicago, North Avenue Wells in Old Town. And I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm all over the place. Okay? I am absolutely all over the place. I don't even know how to read a rate sheet, which is one of the more simple things tasked to do in the mortgage business. And I'm trying to take pre approval loan applications. And I, you know, it's.

You talk about being uncomfortable and getting way outside your comfort zone, but I didn't have the tools. I didn't know, I didn't really know not what to do. I didn't know how to do it, which was really weird for me. So I was floundering, to say the least. And I, you know, all of a sudden I wouldn't work as hard. I wouldn't work as long. I wouldn't get there as early. I started going into a shell because I knew I was screwing up and I knew I was letting people down. That convinced them to hire me, that I would be very, very good, that I would be a high performer and that I would make them a lot of money. Because at the end of the day, in the mortgage business, that's what it's about.

So what happened next was a complete page out of the way. I became what I think was a pretty decent coach. I had to figure out what I need to do to establish a process to become great. And the fourth stage of transition is commitment to the process. All right? And in that process, and I want to go back. We're now in, you know, in several minutes into the podcast. This is. These nine stages are not something I came up with. Okay, I found these as I was googling different things and doing research and studying and writing content. I found them at Dorothy Dalton, calm as I. As I went through everything and I think they are absolutely phenomenal, spot on. And so now here we are, four stage commitment to the process.

And what I did is I went to our president and I said, Steve, can I have, can we walk down to, I believe it was Einstein bagels. I said, can I, can we get a coffee and a bagel? Can I talk to you for 30 minutes? I need to pick your brain. And he's probably thinking, you know, this whack job is going back into coaching. Because it was getting to be that time of year is going back into coaching. I invested some money in him in terms of training, which grand scheme of things, he didn't. It was the furniture he rented for me. But anyways, we go down there and I said to him, I laid it out there, said, Steve, I've never failed in my eyes. I've never failed at anything, which I'm sure, according to other folks, I have.

Which is fine, right? We learn through faith, failure. So I said, Steve, I need to know what I can do to be up there with the best. I need to know what I want. What can I do to close a million a month, then a million and a half, then two, then three. What, what can I do? And he says, you need to get with Robbie and you need to get his, his business plan. All right? He wrote a great business plan two years ago and that was a game changer for him. You need to get with them and you need to get with him now. That's something you want to do. As a matter of fact, I'd like to have that business plan on my desk by Friday, if it's possible. Now mind you, it's Wednesday, so.

Okay, that's, it's not a problem at all. So I went to Robbie, got his business plan, I looked at it, I set it down in front of me. I'm like, you gotta absolutely be kidding me. And that's not the word I used. But it's, you know, let's just go with it. And it was great. I mean, it was unbelievable. Down to, you know, how, what time he's getting in the office, down to his morning routine, what time he's getting the office, how many calls he's making, how many follow up calls, how many meetings he's going to get, how he's going to schedule, how many open houses he's going to do a month, his target realtor list, his target referral source list, I mean, what books he was going to read. It was unbelievable.

And at first I kind of fought it, and eventually I said, you know what? Screw this. I'm going to go sign out the app room, which is a room where you take applications. And it was this decent sized room as glass, floor to ceiling, so everybody could see me. And I spent the entire Thursday in there, the entire Thursday. Which means nobody could take apps in the app room that Thursday. And I didn't really care, because if I was going to produce and I was going to contribute to Chicago Bancorp, I had to do this. And I knocked it out, and I was really excited about it. So I went in and I turned it in on Friday. And on Monday morning, unbeknownst to me that Steve was going to do it, he used it as an example for everybody else in the office.

And, you know, that was great, except guys looked at me like, hey, jackass, I was. I was gonna go to the Cubs game tonight, and now I got to do this. But anyways. But commitment to the process is where it really starts to turn. And you almost have, like, an aha moment, like, this epiphany, like, which is exactly what happened to me. Like, if this is gonna work, this is the way it has to be. And if you don't buy into and believe into the process, if you don't commit to the process, you're not going to progress significantly, and you're certainly not going to excel and succeed and accelerate your learning curve as quickly as you're capable of. So now, stage five of the transition. Career transition. The danger zone.

Okay, Is it just me, or does all of a sudden Top Gun pop in your head, too, and you hear the song whatever. Into the danger zone. That is pretty bad, pretty pathetic. But anyway, stage five, the danger zone. Okay? And here's what can happen now. You've reestablished your core values. You've got your singleness of purpose that you're coming to work with every single day. You've committed to process. You believe in the process, and you're doing it, but you're not seeing the level of success that you would hope to have seen at the rate you would have hoped to have seen it show up. It's a challenge, and it goes back to, you know, setting unrealistic expectations or what have you. It's very normal. It is very normal to get into this part where you almost feel stuck, all right?

You almost feel like, oh, I'm banging my head against the wall. I know I'm doing the right things, but. But they're. They're not working. Now. This goes back to Something that my dad said a long time ago to me. He sat me down, and I really questioned. We were having a tough season my junior year. We were working our lips off, man, and we had gone 21 as sophomores. We were struggling as juniors. And I was. I was upset, I was ticked, I was confused. I was probably drawing on some resentment. And he said, I'm going to tell you something. He says, and you got to listen to me, because this is really key. And he'd say this to his teams all the time, and I probably heard it over 10,000 times.

And he said, doing these things does not guarantee you success, but I will guarantee you if you don't do these things, you have no chance at being successful. And it resonated with me, and it made sense for whatever reason. And there's times I had told you teammates that or I had told, you know, guys I was coaching that, and they look at me like I was nuts. And then they process it and they think about it. And in other words, you ain't guaranteed you're gonna win every game, but you have to prepare for that game to the best of your ability and try and execute that game plan. And if you don't do that, then you ain't got a shot in heck at doing that. So what you need to do now, you can't. You can't allow backsliding to take place, okay? You get.

You got to keep reaffirming your goals, reaffirming what your vision is, and reaffirm the. That. That process, that action that you're taking. And what you need to do is you need to change pace, okay? You need to change pace. As you stay persistent, you're going to build resilience, okay? And you've got to be real honest with yourself and real transparent with yourself. And I think. I think this is where I spend a lot of time with my coaching clients right here, in terms of my role as their executive coach or business coach, if you will. And do we get into life coaching? Hey, you know what? Our worlds blend together now. Our life and our career, they blend. They blend together. So call it what you want, but we spend a lot of time right here.

And what I always talk about, when you change direction, you have to change pace. And I always said that in basketball, in a physical standpoint, so when you go from left to right, you got to change pace, okay? But when you change direction in your career and you're trying to do something new and you're trying to take action, you have to change pace. You got to stay focused, all right? And remember, it's not about being busy. It's about being productive and being effective. This is where, I mean, we all had that person in our office that runs around like a chicken with their head cut off, yelling about this, yelling about that, hooting and hollering, pounding their chest. And, and in the grand scheme of things, all they're doing is returning emails or getting callbacks, all right?

So don't, don't mistaken busyness for production, all right? And this is where your focus is going to start to really get dialed in. This is where things are going to start to come together. And you could just slide stage six right into stage seven. And they, you know, you can word this as cohesion and synergy, you can word it as flow, whatever you want to say. But this is when things start seeing. Seem to start falling into place for you. And I remember this. And then let's back up here in the mortgage business, okay? I remember after committing to the process and I go sit in open houses every Sunday. I'm doing what they told me to do, you know, and I'm connecting with people and I'm having great conversations. I'm getting their contact information, but, man, things aren't happening in 20 days.

They aren't happening in 30 days. You know, and this leads me to actually bring up a point is one of the things I stress in career transition. And I stress with my clients that I'm working on goal setting and processes with the level of success that you are experiencing. And if you've been my clients or you've heard me talk, you've heard me say this, the level of success you are experiencing today is in direct proportion, direct related to the activities on your calendar 90 days ago. If you go back and look at what you were doing 90 days ago, okay, that will tell you why you are where you are today at this stage of the game, all right? So anyways, now you start seeing things. Let's. Let's go back to stage seven. You start seeing things that fall into the place.

And what happens is you're accumulating positive habits, okay? You're accumulating positive habits. And for me, when this happened was when I moved right past the danger zone. Zone. I stayed resilient or I stayed persistent. I build resilience. I kept focusing on the positive. I stayed true to the plan I put together. I picked up the pace, so I did more, but I did More effectively, okay? When I just put more on my plate to put more on my plate, I put more on my plate to have a purpose. And when I did that and I got into this stage seven, and all of a sudden it was like there was a rhythm. People now were expecting my calls and were looking forward to running a scenario by me. They were looking forward to talking. They're looking forward to connecting.

All of a sudden, there's a buzz. There's a buzz about you. You have a different vibe. You have a little different swagger. You approach your meetings instead of trepidation, but with. With. With. I don't even want to use the word hope. With confidence, you know, and you're more confident. And when you're more confident, you project that confidence onto your potential clients or your current clients. And all of a sudden, the vision you had and the goals you set. Excuse me, Those. Those are going to be on the horizon. Now, just when you thought you were there, just when you thought you were about to get over the hump or turn the corner, whatever you. However you like to word it, you get. You. You have a setback, all right, Some people joke, you know, it's Murphy's Law or whatever you want to call it.

It's inevitable you have a setback. And that's just the way that. That's it. That's all it is a setback. Or you might have multiple setbacks, but you and I both know, all right, we're. It's about growing through adversity, not just getting through it. It's about learning from failure. And a setback doesn't necessarily mean it's a failure. And, you know, opportunity often comes disguised as a problem or a challenge. And when you get to the other side of fear, when you run to the fight, all of a sudden, that negative, so to speak, that what folks viewed as a negative becomes a huge positive and a huge catalyst for the direction you're headed in your career.

And I hope this is making sense for you, because as I talk about this, and this is one of the things I think makes me pretty authentic, is I'm starting to get those old emotions back, that roller coaster, that feeling. And I'm starting to remember exactly what it was like. I mean, I can remember sitting in sales meetings, all right, and looking at the numbers for loans originated and just thinking, God, why don't I have more? Why don't I have more? More. Why don't I have more? And then I remember the transition to when I was just chasing those metrics of it was about loans closed, okay?

And the loans closed were in direct proportion to the loans originated, which were in direct proportion to the pre approvals taken, which was direct proportion to how much work I was putting in, how many calls I was making, how many meetings I was running, how many follow ups I was doing. And it was the process. And it all came back to that. And that's why I knew when setbacks occurred, it was all. It was okay. It was okay because I was doing things the right way, because I was building the foundation of my business. I was building the foundation of my relationships. And this, hey, what I'm talking about here doesn't just have to be in the business world. It could be in any professional career that we talk about. And then finally stage nine, okay?

Stage nine is when everything starts to come to, to fruition. It's where you score, so to speak. Okay. But it's when things really come to fruition and all the work that you had done starts to show up on your own bottom line. It starts to show up in your influence with your team in the office, excuse me, within the office. It starts to show up in the amount of people that are calling you as opposed to you having to reach out and make the cold calls. And it shows up in your personal life because your level of self esteem goes up, your level of self confidence goes up, your level of self belief that you were able to navigate these waters of a career transition. And it is not easy to do.

And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I've been successful in every career transition that I've made and I've been blessed. Speaking of career transitions, the last seven and a half years leading up to my launching of the Molitor Group, I was working with a phenomenal recruiting firm, Soar Consulting. Amazing people. And what we did is we placed former exiting retired military and jobs throughout the country. And you'll never ever have conversations with people who have a tougher transition than former military going into the working world. And you know, I, I frown when people say, well, they got to adjust to the real world.

Hey man, you try telling some of the people I became friends with and I really mentored and I talked through some things that were in Afghanistan or as we call the trash can a stand, or were in Iraq, even the ones that weren't. You try telling them that what they're going into is the real world, please. Okay, check out episode 21. On episode 21, I interviewed JJ Constant. JJ is an amazing man. As selfless as you can be. A matter of fact, if you. If you were to look up the word selfless, Google it, and you hit Wikipedia, there should be a picture of J.J. okay, I'm gonna say that I'm gonna buy selfless, but JJ sat there, told me, jj, I'm sorry, was a special ops Marine who is one of the main characters in the book Victory Point, which was.

He was part of Operation Whalers. It's. You've got. You've got to go and listen to the. Listen to episode 21. It's an eye opener. And he does talk about how his career transition was way harder than he ever could imagine. Way harder. So what's my point? My point is this. If one of the toughest human beings that I have ever met, and I know some tough. And I am friends with some tough human beings and one of the kindest souls who I have ever met. As long as you don't cross them. No, I mean one of the kindest souls you have ever met. If he has a hard time, okay, with an undeniable, incredible work ethic. But if he. If he has a hard time transitioning in his career, it's okay, all right? It's okay to have challenges, it's okay to have setbacks.

It's okay to go through the nine stages, and you may not go through all night, and God bless you if you don't. Okay? The key is when. The key is there's gonna be times when you really have an opportunity to quit. All right? Stage three, confusion. Stage five, danger zone. Stage eight, setbacks. Okay? You can quit. And you know we're gonna do. Is I'll do in a future solo cast, is I'm going to talk about what happens when. When you get to stage nine, and how do you sustain that success? Because I failed miserably in the mortgage business after I realized some decent success. And there's all sorts of things that go into that story which I think will add value to you, but the key for this is really locked into what's going on. And I think one of the keys.

People ask me, well, what are the keys to career transition besides being cognizant of what the process is or what the stages are? And I'm going to tell you, okay, here's the keys. First of all, reestablish your core values. And I don't mean change them. I mean bring those back to the front of your mind. Again, be very intentional about being conscious of your core values. Work on your why strengthen your why? Is there a way you could tweak it and make it stronger? All right? But don't change it again. You don't change your core values for what you do for a living, all right? Your core values are who you are. They're your unshakable foundation. Then identify what your purpose is. What is the purpose that you are going to operate with every single day?

Alright, so people, you might be saying, seriously, what's the big deal? Okay, what is the big deal about my purpose? And you know what does that serve? You know, my purpose is to go learn my new position and make as much money as I possibly can as fast as I can. If you're in some form of sales or to climb the corporate ladder as fast as I can, whatever it might be. But here's what operating with your why and focused on your core values and having a purpose does, all right? It makes you better, it makes you tougher, it builds your resilience. Why does it build your resilience? Because you become more authentic. And when you're authentic, you operate with the highest level possible of honesty and integrity. Honesty with thyself, honesty with your team, with your organization, with your clients, with your customers.

And integrity. Don't mistake integrity for morality, okay? Integrity is doing what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. In other words, your, your heart, your mouth, your feet are aligned. You're doing what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it in the way you say you're going to do it. And that's what integrity is. And when you do all this, all is you're going to do is increase the level of trust that your people have in you, which increases your influence. Which. What, what does that do? Makes you a better leader, Makes you a more impactful leader. It provides you the opportunity to pour into others lives on your team at a much higher level.

So that is why, I mean, that is absolutely the reason you need to focus on your why, your core values, your purpose, and have a servant mindset. Some of the greatest leaders I know, the ones that go through hell and back for their team, sometimes you really don't know that they're going through hell because what they're doing, they're so busy helping their other teammates, their team members, the people that they're in charge of, get, you know, grow through their day and accomplish what it is that they've set out to accomplish. And when you can do that, when you can focus on these things in your career transition, everything just becomes a process. Everything becomes a way of life. And again, you're accumulating positive habits which you're going to utilize throughout your career. All right, so that's it for today.

And I hope that rings and, you know, I hope that hits home. Transition. Career transition impacts all of us in some way or another, even if it's not us directly. It could be a spouse, it could be a close friend, it can be a son or a daughter. It can be someone that you know, a peer. But career transition is critical and it's critical to really be self aware of what's going on. Remember, self awareness is a competitive advantage. It's a competitive advantage of with yourself being better than you were yesterday. And it's also a competitive advantage with folks vying for the same position or competitors vying for the same customer, the same. So whatever. Self awareness is a huge competitive advantage.

And it's, it is, it has been studied and it has been written about, okay, that the number one factor in achievement of C level leaders is that they have a high level of self awareness. And if you can do that throughout your career transition. And it doesn't mean it's always going to work out. It doesn't. But what did you learn from it? And you got to pour as much into it so you can pull as much out of it in terms of what you learn from the process. So that, again, is it for this podcast. I want to thank you. Hopefully you stayed with me to the end because I think there's some pretty decent stuff there at the end.

And I would love if you could give us a review, go to itunes and review the podcast, this episode, if you like this episode, check out more episodes on itunes or stitcher even go to Google Play and our website, the Athletics of Business. Calm. Speaking of our website, speaking of the athleticsofbusiness.com my new ebook is on there and you can sign up and receive that. And that's all about unleashing greatness. And that's a compilation of some amazing interviews that we had early on in the podcast. So again, this is Ed Molitor, the Athletics of Business podcast. And I cannot thank you enough and we would love to hear from you.

If you have any questions, anything that you want to ask me, you can hit me up at info@themolitor group.com that's I N F O at the molitorgroup.com thank you for listening to the Athletics of Business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathleticsofbusiness.com now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.