Own Your Career, Own Your Life, With Andy Storch

Don’t just have a job, OWN your career! Andy Storch, author of Own Your Career Own Your Life, joins J.R. Lowry to share expert advice on personal branding, networking, and continuous learning to achieve career success. Andy discusses the importance of self-reflection, setting a vision for your future, and proactively taking steps to reach your goals. He also provides practical tips on leveraging LinkedIn for networking and building a strong personal brand. Dive into self-reflection, set your vision, and learn how to truly own your professional journey!

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://staging.pathwise.io/podcasts/andy-storch/.

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Own Your Career, Own Your Life, With Andy Storch

Author, Speaker, Consultant, Connector, Podcaster, And Conference And Community Host

In this episode, my guest is Andy Storch. Andy is an author, speaker, consultant, connector, podcaster, and conference and community host. He is on a mission to teach and inspire people to own their careers, live with intention, and achieve their goals. We’re going to be talking about Andy’s book, Own Your Career, Own Your Life, and his own journey as well. Andy, welcome. Thank you for doing a show with me. I appreciate it.

J.R., thank you so much. You and I’ve been in touch for a few years. It’s been impressive to see some of the things you’ve been building and an honor to be on your show.

Building Your LinkedIn Presence: The Power Of 500+ Connections

I was looking at your LinkedIn profile. You’re shy of 30,000 followers. I remember when you hit the 20,000 mark, you were very excited about that. You’ve got another one that’s coming up soon, presumably.

I like to pretend I don’t look at it at all. I do check it from time to time. I feel like that is a number that is hard-earned compared with other people who put up a viral video or something to get followers on a certain platform. I’m out there connecting with people, messaging, and creating content every day. This has been consistently done for eight years to build that up.

Sometimes, we look at people like, “They have this many followers. Their life must be great.” I haven’t seen it translate to income or anything else. You still have to go out, do the hard work, connect with people, build relationships, and look for the right opportunities, whether it’s for your own business, job opportunities, or anything else. It does help in terms of building your personal brand, which is something I’ve been big on.

You’ve been doing this for a while, your entrepreneurial activities. We’ll get to that in a little bit. When you are running your own business, LinkedIn is an important way for you to get your word out there. There are people who are more on Instagram or TikTok or doing different things. If you’re doing something professionally oriented, as you are, LinkedIn is a platform that matters. Building a base there is important as well as understanding the nuances of how LinkedIn’s algorithm works.

Whether you are running your own business or managing a career and working for someone else in a corporate environment, LinkedIn is the place to be. You need to be on there connecting with people, creating occasional content, and supporting other people’s content. This is how you’re going to build your brand, network, and influence. It could lead to business opportunities, future job opportunities, or project opportunities, whatever it may be. Playing around on other platforms is nice, like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Threads. Have fun. If you’re in the corporate space, LinkedIn is the place to be. It’s where I intend to spend most of my time when it comes to social media.

I take your point. I look at people who don’t have much of a presence on LinkedIn or many connections. If you don’t hit the 500 threshold, which is a relatively easy threshold to hit for most people, it stands out. It makes people wonder whether you’re someone who will move within the organization that they might be considering you for. If you haven’t built an external network, it begs questions about whether you’re able to build an internal network. There’s probably some correlation there. It’s helpful to have enough of a presence and be visible enough to build credibility for yourself, at least, to get the meeting.

You mentioned the 500. I’ve used that and brought it up with people. For those not familiar, LinkedIn tells you how many connections you have, up to 500, and then it says 500-plus. You can see the number of followers. If I connect with someone or look someone up and they are over 28 years old with less than 500 connections, that tells me they don’t use LinkedIn very much.

I’ve connected with people before, especially if I meet them in person. I see they look like 35 or something and have 300 connections. I’m like, “You don’t use LinkedIn very much, do you?” They’re like, “No, I don’t.” I’m like, “I can tell.” It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to look at for yourself. If you’re over 25 or 30 and have less than 500 connections, it shows you don’t. You can easily get to 500 by going back to everyone you’ve worked with in the past and everyone you met from college on. Connect with them. There’s no downside to it.

Owning Your Career: The Importance Of Personal Ownership

It’s free marketing. We will turn our attention to owning your career. You and I are very aligned on the importance of owning your career. PathWise has this set of beliefs, and this is the first point. You wrote a whole book on this, so we’d love to hear from you. Why is owning your career so important? LinkedIn is one small aspect of that.

To me, owning your career is about taking personal responsibility. It’s saying, “There might be things I want to achieve in my career, whether it’s making more money, a certain title, or doing fulfilling work that I love.” It’s up to you to set an intention and proactively go out to achieve those things. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily will.

I’ve observed too many people drifting through their careers, operating in reaction mode, and waiting for someone else to tell them what to do or where to go. Those people are often less fulfilled than those acting intentionally. It’s a lot less reliable. I’ve seen plenty of people who are “successful.” Maybe they did great work, were promoted, and moved up into certain roles, but it wasn’t based on their intention. It was showing up, seeing what the boss said, and doing that. There’s something to be said for that.

Most of us start out not knowing what we want to do. There’s that 1% of people who seem to know exactly what they want, get the degree and career, and stick with it. Most of us happen into our careers accidentally. That’s totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. I did, too. At some point, it makes sense to take time to sit down with some self-reflection to think about who you are, what you like doing, your strengths, your weaknesses, your values, the things you care about, and the things that light you up.

Try to start steering your career toward doing more work you find fulfilling or maybe is going to be more rewarding, whether financially or something else. You get to define what you want to achieve and then point your ship toward that so you can take more ownership, more responsibility, and hopefully achieve more success.

At the end of the day, you care more about your career than anybody else does. That means you’ve got to be the one who is thinking about it the most.

Hopefully, if you work in a corporate career, you have a manager who cares about you and wants you to succeed. Unfortunately, I’ve had some bad managers over time who didn’t, but I’ve had some good ones, too. Even if you have a great manager who cares about you, they don’t know what you want until you’re willing to do the work to figure that out and go to them and say, “I’m enjoying working in finance. This has been great, but I love people. I’m thinking about working in HR one day. Can you help me with that move?” No one knows that you want to do that until you’re willing to figure it out for yourself.

Navigating The Corporate World: Finding Your ‘Aha’ Moment

I read your book back in 2021. I was going through it to get ready for this interview. I was reminded how it’s very relatable and conversational. You pull a lot of your own experience into that, which I always thought was great. You described that you did a bit of drifting in the corporate world before you had your a-ha moment. Can you tell us what that was like for you? When did you hit this realization that you needed to be thinking about things differently?

Thank you. I appreciate that. I published my book back in November 2020. The most common compliment I get on my book is, “This is great. I wish it was around earlier in my career.” My response is always, “Me too. That’s why I wrote it.” There were plenty of times early in my career when I was responding to whatever was coming my way. I happened into a career, first starting to try to do some things in entrepreneurship, taking some different jobs or startups that didn’t quite work out, and then taking a job a friend got me in the insurance industry and bouncing around in that for a few years.

I got a job very luckily after I got my MBA. A connection from a friend got me a job with a consulting company that ended up being a dream job because it took advantage of a lot of my strengths and skills that I didn’t even know about. Sometimes, we need a little bit of that luck that might come from connections and managers who observe strengths in us but a lot of it is going to come from us sitting down, being more intentional about what we want to do, and figuring that out.

I was drifting. I was responding to a lot of things. I was hoping that someone was going to come along and reward me for something. Nothing was working out for me until I got very lucky when I had a friend who connected me with a job that worked out well for a few years. In 2016, I got into personal development after I listened to a podcast interview with a man named Hal Elrod, who wrote a book called The Miracle Morning, which I highly recommend.

That one changed my life when I started practicing that, which is essentially getting up earlier than you need to do things like meditation, visualization, affirmations, reading, journaling, and exercise. I’d always been big into health, fitness, and exercise but had not done any meditating, journaling, or anything like that. It set me on this journey of reading more books, listening to more podcasts, journaling more, and thinking a lot about what are the things that I want to do.

I was drawn towards entrepreneurship. I don’t know why. Nobody in my family was an entrepreneur. I didn’t even know what that was growing up, but I had this strong desire to be running my own business. I set out on a mission to try to figure out what kind of business I could do that would take advantage of my strengths, the things that I’m good at and I like doing. That took me towards consulting facilitation, some of the stuff I was already doing for a company, and doing more of that on my own.

Eventually, I realized after doing all this learning and trying all these things, I’ve discovered a framework that could help a lot of other people take ownership of their careers and move more towards doing the work that they want to do. Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur like I do, but everybody wants to do work that is fulfilling and that they feel like they want to do on a weekly basis.

I created the framework for the book that led to teaching more people how to take ownership of their career and then have worked hard to build a business around that all the while wanting to make sure that I’m modeling what I’m teaching. I’m always trying to be very intentional about how I’m building my career and my life. It doesn’t mean things have gone perfectly. There have been plenty of challenges along the way. I’m happy to go into those as well. It’s more fulfilling knowing that I have a clear idea of what I want to do, where I want to go, and what I want my life to look like. It’s a matter of doing the work that will hopefully get me there.

Tell us a little bit about the framework.

It starts with the foundation of taking responsibility and self-reflection, which is something that’s missing for so many people. It is taking time, sitting down with a cup of coffee or tea and a notebook and a pen in a quiet space, and reflecting on your life and your career, how you got to where you are, what you like about it, and what you don’t like about it. Most people happen to their careers accidentally. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think that most of us know or need to know at 18 or 22 exactly what we want to be doing for the rest of our lives. There’s a lot of room for changing that more so than ever. There’s an opportunity. There’s so much more flexibility.

To your point, many years ago, it was looked down upon if you wanted to change careers after two, three, or five years, and now it’s expected that’s going to happen. It comes down to us figuring out what we want to do. There’s an opportunity to take time for reflection and think about your strengths, what are the things you’re good at, the things that you like doing, and those areas that you’re still trying to develop.

Maybe there are some things that you’re not very good at. I’m not very detail-oriented. I don’t want to take a job or build a career around something that requires me to pay attention to a lot of details, like a project manager or something like that. Other people thrive on that, and I love it. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. We can complement each other.

From there, it’s setting a vision, thinking about where you want to go and who you want to be in your career and your life, thinking three, five, or ten years down the line. It doesn’t have to be exact or perfect. You’re not signing a contract. It’s about having something to work towards. I’ve found that having that kind of guiding vision to work toward has made it easier to make decisions when challenges and opportunities come up.

Let’s get back to the example I said. How do you respond when you’re working in finance but want to be in HR one day and you’re offered a promotion in finance? If you don’t have that clear vision, you’re probably going to take that because it’s more money. You’re like, “It’s the opportunity that’s in front of me. Why would I turn this down?” Unless you know that what you want to do is work more with people, you could say, “Thank you so much, but this is what I want to do. Can you help me get there?” It takes a lot of courage to do that, but it starts with knowing what you want to do and where you want to go.

The next step is to make a plan to achieve that. I’ve discovered through plenty of mistakes in my life that a goal without a plan is just a wish. We’ve got to be willing to sit down, make a plan, and say, “I want to get into HR or be vice president of finance one day. What is it going to take for me to get there? How do I achieve that?” You go through the steps and then figure out who else you need help from. None of us can do it all alone. We need help as well. We’ve got to be doing things to set ourselves up for future success, make sure we’ve got the right mindset, and make sure we’re taking ownership of our life along the way as well.

The Impact Of Uncertainty On Career Ownership

You wrote the book during the pandemic, a big period of uncertainty. We’re still in a very uncertain period even though the pandemic is not a core factor anymore, although COVID is still out there. You’ve also got artificial intelligence and big political shifts going on around the world. How does uncertainty factor in, in terms of how you should think about owning your career?

It’s important to have a vision and an idea of where you want to go in your career. It’s also important to be flexible and realize that the world is going to be changing. If one of your goals was to become, I don’t know, insert a job that is going away, which a lot of jobs are changing all the time, you have to be flexible to think about what is happening in the environment.

I started writing my book in January 2020. I have two chapters in there about networking. I was sitting there writing a chapter about how it’s important to go to conferences to meet people. The next week, the world gets shut down. I was like, “Get on LinkedIn and start networking there,” because networking doesn’t go away.

I almost met and connected with more new people during the pandemic than before because everybody was sitting there on LinkedIn, doing Zoom calls, and stuff like that. It’s not impossible but it requires a lot more intentionality. That meant reaching out to people and saying, “Can you get on Zoom? Can we chat?” Rather than bumping into people in the office hallway, the break room, or something like that.

It got me to the middle part of my book. What I’ve talked about a lot is that there are three things you can always be doing to set yourself up for future success no matter what is going on, what your career is, or what’s going on in the world. Number one is investing in continuous learning. The days of us getting a college degree or a Master’s degree and working in that field for 40 years and relying on that are gone. The pace of change is faster than it’s ever been before. It’s changing every day, especially with the advent of gen AI and how AI is changing all the ways we work.

Number two is building your network. I find I learn so much from connecting with new people, people I already know, building relationships, asking them what they’re working on, and following people on LinkedIn to find out what they’re doing and working on. That’s how I’ve become so aware of all the things that are happening and changing in the world.

Number three is building your personal brand. We talked a little bit about that with LinkedIn earlier. This is essentially your reputation and what people think about you. You have an opportunity to influence how people perceive you. It overcomes the myth a lot of people have that if you put your head down and work hard, you’ll be rewarded for that. It doesn’t quite work like that anymore. A lot of it comes down to what people know about the work that you’re doing.

Your personal brand and reputation can help you become more successful in your career. It also can help you pivot to things as the world is changing and get gigs, projects, and things like that in and outside your company. You can’t control what other people are thinking about you, but you can influence that by how you show up, how you treat other people, how you work with other people, and how you show up online.

As I look at the way the world is and the way things are going and changing in my work as well, I want to always be investing and learning. I’m reading books, listening to podcasts, taking online courses, and hiring coaches. Number two, I always want to be networking and connecting with other people to find out what they’re doing and working on. Number three, I want to continue to build my personal brand, which is something I can always take with me wherever I go, so that it helps me pivot into a potentially new business and a new career.

Personal Branding In The Age Of AI: Why It’s Crucial Now

I was at a conference and heard Dorie Clark speak about the importance of personal branding in this era of AI. What a personal brand gives you, even with AI taking away more of the job content that people might otherwise do, is you. It’s what defines you. Ultimately, it’s about helping people understand what you uniquely bring and what is your unique work style, experience base, and perspective on a topic. How does that, especially in the AI world, sit on top of whatever a Gen AI or other form of Artificial Intelligence can do? It’s probably more important than ever to have a personal brand. A lot of people struggle with the self-promotion aspect of it. The reality is that we all need to self-promote ourselves all the time anyway.

That’s one of the most challenging parts of building a personal brand. More people are realizing this is important. We need people to know who we are and what we’re doing. We’ve also been told from a young age that bragging is bad and no one likes the boastful person. That’s still true. There’s a fine line. You don’t want to walk into a meeting and be like, “Everybody, look what I did. I’m awesome. You stink.” No one’s going to like that person.

It’s a lot more subtle to make sure that your boss knows about the work you’ve been doing, the project you completed, and the skills that you’ve been learning. It is a lot more subtle asking for more assignments in that area or more challenges to take on and making sure that people are aware of that. That can be both in the work that you’re doing and on social media, like, “I was working on this project recently on XYZ. Here are some things I learned.” If you set it up in a way like, “I’m doing this to share value with other people,” people appreciate that.

Internally, the personal brand is not just about letting people know about the work you’re doing or bragging. It’s about how you show up, treat other people, and collaborate with other people. The example I used in my book that I think about all the time is that if you’re trying to hire somebody to work on a project with you and you get to choose between Brian, who has a ton of experience and you know is capable of doing the work but he’s a jerk to work with, is gruff, doesn’t collaborate well, and doesn’t always respond to your emails, which can be frustrating, or Jennifer, who doesn’t have as much experience, is curious, eager, easy to collaborate with, and even fun to hang out with in the social times, who would you choose to work with?

Own Your Career: Personal brand is not just about letting people know about the work you’re doing or bragging. It’s about how you show up, treat other people, and collaborate with them.

I would choose to work with Jennifer every time. It might be different for some people. Maybe experience is important in certain aspects, but you’d rather have the person with less experience who’s easier to work with. We all have different personalities and ways of working but we can choose our mindset, how we show up, how we collaborate, how we work with people, how hard we work, and the effort we put in. Are we doing things to help other people or are we being selfish?

One thing you can do when you’re thinking about your personal brand, and this is an exercise I have people go through a lot, is to think about what is the personal brand that you want to portray. Who’s the type of person you want to be? For example, for me, a core to my personal brand is that I want to be known as generous, helpful, and inspiring. I’ve heard other people say they want to be known as responsible, high-integrity, hardworking, or someone who can get things done and is reliable.

What is it that you want your brand to stand for? You can ask yourself on a regular basis, “Am I acting in alignment with my personal brand? I said I want to be known as hardworking and reliable but this week, I disappeared for two days. I didn’t respond to anybody’s emails. They’re probably wondering where I am. That was a little bit selfish.”

For me, I could say, “I want to be known as generous and helpful. A couple of people reached out to me for help and I ignored them because I was feeling lazy.” That happens from time to time, but I can come back to myself and be like, “That wasn’t in alignment with my brand. I need to go back and make sure that I help those people.”

Within reason, we’ve got to make sure that we’re getting our stuff done, taking care of ourselves, setting boundaries, and things like that. Are we acting in alignment with that brand? Is that brand something that is going to continue to help us achieve more in the future, whether it’s a better reputation, more gigs, or better jobs? The world’s going to keep changing. When things change and opportunities come up, you want people to think of you rather than someone else.

Global Trends In The World Of Work

You mentioned the world changing and the fact that you’re constantly talking to people and exchanging ideas about what’s going on. In your travels, what do you see going on in the world of work that strikes you as particularly interesting?

AI has been a hot topic ever since ChatGPT came out at the end of 2023. That’s all everybody’s talking about. There are new products and services coming out all the time as well as new ways that people are doing work. First and foremost, this is going to keep accelerating. We’ve got to be willing to learn about what’s going on and try things.

One of the biggest mistakes a lot of people make, especially more experienced people, is saying, “I’m too old for that, so I’m not even going to try.” I’m flabbergasted, like, “Yeah, but this is how the world works.” My wife’s 92-year-old grandmother uses an iPhone because that is the technology that we have. She could have said, “I’m not going to use this,” but it’s how we stay connected. I don’t think we’re ever too old to learn about new things. It’s about the mindset of whether we’re going to dig into social media, AI, or anything else.

We’re seeing a lot of tension in the ways people are working, whether it’s remote or coming back to the office. Companies are figuring out what they want people to do. If you have certain skills or talents, you have an opportunity to choose how you want to work and what’s going to be the best way for that. I talk about networking and personal brand to help you get jobs and career opportunities. People are using AI to remake their resumes. I’m hearing from recruiters that it’s becoming more cookie-cutter. Everyone looks the same as they apply for jobs. More than ever, relationships are going to stand out. It’s easier to hire somebody referred to you by a friend than to pour through 10,000 resumes that all look the same.

I’m hearing interesting things about more badging and online certification. If you get certain skills, you can have some digital certification that you’ve acquired those. We talked about the importance of continuous learning. Can you showcase that you are not someone who got your degree and is working in that field but someone who is always learning and curious? Companies know that whatever we’re doing now is going to be different in five years. They want someone curious, always learning, interested, and willing to pivot and change with the times rather than being stuck in the same way. That’s what I would be looking for if I were hiring young talent in a company.

I would be looking to lead with curiosity and showcase that I’m always willing to keep investing in learning because I want to be up with the times. I don’t want to be disrupted. There are tons of resources out there to learn about what’s going on in your field. There are no restrictions on the amount of knowledge available to us. It’s about prioritizing, putting in the time, and then implementing it, trying stuff.

Key Skills For Success In The Future

We’ve got a search on steroids. You can go to ChatGPT or any of the other tools like it and say, “Tell me what are the ten most interesting trends going on in XYZ industry.” It’s easy to do research relative to the effort it used to take. You talk about curiosity and adaptability. What are the other skills that are going to matter in the future?

Curiosity and adaptability are huge. Empathy is becoming more important. It’s the ability to connect with other humans. As technology does more of the work that we need to do, human skills become more valuable. Your ability to connect with others, communicate with them, communicate ideas, and influence others to get things done.

What I’m hearing and seeing a lot in the corporate space is that this setup is becoming more of a meritocracy, flatter, and a little bit less hierarchical. I’m hearing more requests for teaching people how to influence without authority. You’re not anybody’s boss but you have to get stuff done. How do you communicate with other people if you work in IT? How do you get these other people on board with the project you want to do in sales? It’s empathy, communication, influence, and those kinds of people skills.

Critical thinking is another. To be able to sit down, look at a problem, think through it, and come up with different ideas. I will not rely completely on technology. I will use technology. ChatGPT is great for helping you brainstorm, but it’s not necessarily going to give you the answer. You still have to think about how to set up this problem, what’s the best way to do it, and then leverage AI tools to help do the work. Companies are going to be looking more for people who showcase critical thinking skills. We’re going to be facing bigger problems that we have to figure out. “How do we solve this, still grow the company, and make the world a better place?” or whatever your goal is.

I was having a casual conversation with my wife, talking about how medicine was going to change. I was saying that it’s going to get to a point where bedside manner is what matters in the case of surgeries. When you’re trying to diagnose, there’s a tool that gives you the collective medical expertise of the entire world. You don’t necessarily have to have a fantastic ability to diagnose on your own because you have these great tools with you, but you have to relate with your patient.

Probably some people reading this are thinking, “I got it all wrong.” There’s a certain amount of truth to the fact that for all of us, the human aspect is how we differentiate ourselves from what machines can do. We had that in industrial engineering when all of the manufacturing got automated, went to robotics, and became the service economy. We differentiated ourselves in the services we provided. The service economy is falling prey to technology in a much bigger way. You have to figure out a way to operate in a way that stands out.

Influence is another point. I have another interview coming up with somebody. I was reading this woman’s book. She was talking about a project where she was asked to do something. She was a mid-level manager at the time. She was asked to do this project that involved pulling a bunch of people together from different functions and getting them to work on something. It was all about influence.

It was a massively successful project. Her boss said to her at the end, “Now, you know how to lead through influence. Spend the rest of your career pretending the people you work with don’t work with you or don’t want to.” You are much more effective when you’re leading through influence than through telling people what to do and dictating things. I thought it was a very interesting observation that her boss had made to her at the time about, “Take that mindset into almost everything you do. You are ultimately bringing them along as opposed to telling them what you want them to do.”

It confirms my philosophy about leadership as well. I’ve got another book in the works called Modern Leadership, which is all about how to lead people in a modern world. The days of command and control are over. I don’t think anybody wants to put up with that. People want a human connection with their leader. They want empathy and someone interested in their success. They want kindness and humanity. 

It doesn’t mean that there’s no accountability. You need accountability as well. You want to challenge people to do harder things and do work that maybe they didn’t even know they were capable of doing. That level of empathy, human connection, kindness, and inclusivity is becoming more important. That is going to mean we need to influence people because you can’t just tell people what to do, even if you do have the authority.

More work is project-based. You’ve got more people who participate as contractors, more people in the gig economy, more people doing side jobs, and more people having portfolio careers. In all of those constructs, you get people coming together for a period of time to make something happen, and then they disperse when the work is over. That’s all about influence.

Owning Your Career And Life: Intertwined Paths To Success

It’s all about getting people to share a sense of purpose together for a period of time, especially when they don’t work for you. There’s more of that going on in the work world than before. The second half of the book title is Own Your Life. Owning your career and life are heavily intertwined. Talk about how that manifests in the way that you think about what you do and what you recommend to people in the book.

Careers are important, but nothing is more important than your life overall. We’ve got to be thinking about what we want life to look like. That’s something we have the luxury of thinking about that maybe some of our ancestors didn’t get to think too much about. We do have a life. We’ve got to take care of our health.

We want to take care of our family and build a life that we enjoy within the means that we have. That starts with intention and reflection, thinking about what you want your life and family to look like. Set your intention, vision, and plan for where you want to go. That might involve investing more in your health, saving money for a house or a vacation, or something like that. It goes hand in hand with the career that you want to build as well.

The one thing I tell people a lot is owning your career is about building a career for you. That depends on what you want your life to look like. Going back to the finance person, some people want to be Chief Financial Officers or CFOs one day. Other people don’t care about moving up in leadership positions, don’t want to manage other people, and don’t want to work a ton of hours. They want to be paid fairly and be home for dinner with their family every night.

Maybe there’s a way in some universes where you can have both but it’s not very common. Most executives I’ve met are working 60-plus hours a week and they’re missing some soccer games. Others who may not climb the ladder get more time with their family but they’re not making as much money. There are always trade-offs to everything we do.

We’ve got to be thinking about what we want our career and life to look like. Health is a big factor in that. I’m big on taking care of your health. I see that as coming down to four foundational factors, like getting enough sleep, which is generally 7 to 8 hours a night for most humans. Make sure that you are eating a pretty healthy diet. Natural foods for the most part, if you can, fruits and vegetables, and meat if you choose. Move your body on a regular basis, whether it’s full-on exercise or taking some walks.

Mental health as well. I meditate every single day to get a little bit of mental clarity, breathing, and that kind of thing. That’s something that all of us can benefit from. I know lots of people have been going through burnout and mental health issues over the last few years. Companies are coming around to investing more in wellness initiatives for people but we’ve got to take responsibility for that ourselves. We’ve got to sit down and be like, “Health is important to me. I know that work is demanding, but work is just work. It will always be there. I need to make sure that I’m getting enough sleep and taking time for my health.”

At the end of our lives, I hate to say that work won’t matter, but for most of us, it’s a means to an end. It’s a paycheck. Whether you run your own business or work for someone else, maybe you’re making a little bit of an impact, but it’s about making money so that you can support or create the life that you want with your family, on your own, with your friends, whatever it may be.

Another factor I talk to people about is coming back to those priorities or those things that you care about. Family is an easy one. Health is another easy one for a lot of people. When was the last time you engaged in a hobby or something you like doing? If getting together with friends or traveling is important to you, can you sit down and make a plan to take your next trip or take an hour a week to do some woodworking or whatever hobby you like? It probably won’t happen if you don’t set an intention to make a plan. I think a lot about, “What are the things that I enjoy doing? When am I going to make time for those things?”

It could be seasonal as well. In 2024, I spent a lot of time engaging in fun activities with friends. When 2025 started, I said, “There are a lot of things I wanted to accomplish with my business. A lot of things didn’t go as well in the last half of last year, so I’m going to cut back on some of those social things. I am going to focus more on business, at least for the first quarter of 2025, and see how things go but I’m not going to let it consume my life. I’m still going to have fun on the weekends, get some exercise, and things like that.” It’s a balance. It can go up or down with the cycles.

All in all, it’s taking a holistic approach to thinking about, “What does my life look like now? What do I want it to look like later? What are the things that I need to do to make sure that I create the life I want?” I would hope and imagine for most people, health is part of that. Are you taking care of your health? Are you investing in your family or your friends? The hobbies or things that you say you like or care about, are you engaging in those? We only get one life. No one’s going to make us do those things, so we’ve got to make sure we’re making time for it.

Own Your Career: We only get one life, and no one’s going to make us engage in the things that matter most to us. We’ve got to make time for them.

Intentionality is a keyword there. You have all these different things that you want to do with your life. Work is part of it and also, hobbies, family, friends, traveling, or whatever. You’re trying to do some balancing with all these things at any point in time. Things will come and go. They dial up and down. The goal is to make sure that you don’t live below the threshold at which you maybe could. That’s when you’re letting time pass, not being intentional about what you want to do.

I’m still thinking maybe of the audio equalizer where you crank up the bass too much. Maybe the bass is having fun with your friends or whatever it is. For a little while, it’s fun to have the bass cranked up but after a while, it starts to blare and beat. It takes you out of the equilibrium that you’re ultimately trying to achieve.

You talk about making that shift a little bit from more social in the last part of 2024 to being more business-focused. I did a bunch of traveling in the latter part of 2024. I purposely grounded myself in London to stay focused on things here for a period of time. You do have to dial it up and down, but you’ve got to make sure that you’re doing it deliberately as opposed to letting something take over your life or letting the days go by without making the most out of them.

There are trade-offs to everything. It depends on what’s important to us. You and I are both Americans living in Europe. We’ve looked abroad. We’ve looked at different cultures and how people do different things, but as Americans, we probably value hard work to achieve results more than a lot of other cultures. I’m all about working hard to achieve in your career, but there is a meme that I see from time to time that always gives me pause. It is something to the effect of, “The only people who are going to remember you staying up late to answer emails are your kids who you didn’t spend time with.”

There are seasons and trade-offs. There are times when we need to work harder than others. A lot of people get caught in like, “I’ve got to keep getting caught up. I’ve got to stay up with my emails. I’ve got to keep working,” and put their family aside. Your kids are out of the house. My kids are still pretty young. I want to take advantage of the time while I have them because one day, they will be gone, and then I’ll probably have more time to answer emails.

The Power Of Community In Entrepreneurship And Career Success

If you’re lucky, they’ll call you to come and see you. That’s what you hope for as a parent when your kids become adults. We’ve danced around the nature of your business. Tell us about the mix of things that keep you busy.

Primarily, I work as a speaker, trainer, and consultant. I work with large companies to help them improve engagement and retention by teaching their employees how to take ownership of their careers, prepare for the future, and achieve more of their goals. I do sessions on owning your career, owning performance, achieving goals, building your mindset, resilience, and things like that. I have a training program I’ve created for my book as well.

These things are changing. For a while, it was all about owning your career. I’ve been getting requests for different topics, such as the most valuable skills of the future and some of the stuff we talked about. I also host a podcast and run a conference and community for people in talent development. The podcast is called The Talent Development Hot Seat. The community is called the Talent Development Think Tank. 

That’s a resource and a community I set up years ago to help connect people in talent development and help them keep up on the latest trends, support each other in solving problems, and things like that. I do a little bit of coaching with people from time to time. I’m someone who’s always pivoting and looking at where the opportunities are, what fits in with my strengths, what is the most commercially viable, and what our clients want and need. As a true entrepreneur, I’m willing to adapt and pivot to go there.

You mentioned multiple times feeling this tug or the gravitational pull of being an entrepreneur. How have you found the experience overall? What do you like best about it? What do you like least about it?

It’s been about a few years for me. I started as an independent consultant with a little bit of a safety net, working within the confines of an organization for a couple of years and then going out completely on my own in 2020. I’m less experienced than many entrepreneurs, maybe more than some who are starting out figuring things out.

I love freedom. I’ve discovered that freedom and autonomy are big values for me. It would be hard for me to go back to work for someone else. I would do it if I needed to or with the right opportunity. I don’t ever want to close any doors completely. I do value freedom and opportunity. I’m okay with the volatility and risk. The lesson I’ve learned is that even when you think you have things figured out and things are going well, it’s not going to last forever. Hopefully, when things seem bad and you feel like you don’t have anything figured out, if you keep moving forward, things won’t last forever.

I had good years in 2022 and 2023. Things started to slide a little bit in 2024 in terms of the economy, revenue, income, and things like that. I’m making pivots and always learning lessons. I’m investing in more learning and coaching to improve things here in 2025 and continuing to learn along the way. I don’t think I would change anything else because it’s something that I enjoy, but it’s not for everybody.

A lot of people like the collaboration of working on teams. A lot of entrepreneurs feel more lonely than anyone else because they don’t have that. When I say entrepreneur, I’m thinking mostly about solopreneurs who are working as coaches, consultants, and speakers. They work on their own. Maybe they have a couple of contract people, a virtual assistant, or something like that like I do. They don’t have a bigger company or a team.

Even still, a lot of people working with big companies report feeling lonely. The Surgeon General released a report on the epidemic of loneliness a couple of years ago because so many people are working remotely in their living rooms, bedrooms, or offices at home. They’re not spending time in an office with other people.

To that, I always remind people, “Whether you’ve moved towards entrepreneurship or you’re working for a company, make sure you’re connecting with other people and building some sense of community, whether you join a community online or set up a regular call with colleagues or friends so that you’re not just sitting there working on your own.” Humans are social creatures. We are designed to collaborate.

For 99% of human history, we lived in tribes supporting each other. It’s only now that we can sit at home by ourselves, order food, work online, and never leave the house if we don’t want to. There’s something a little bit unhealthy about that. We need to make sure we are going out and connecting with other people, whether work-wise or socially. All of it is good. I love being an entrepreneur. I don’t mind running my own thing, but I want to be able to connect, communicate, and collaborate with other people on a regular basis. I seek out opportunities for that.

Community is a big deal for you. It’s part of what you’ve done with your Talent Development Think Tank. Not to bring everything back to artificial intelligence, but what AI tools can’t do is create community. They can give you lots of information but they aren’t necessarily going to give you that sense of human connection that you get from being in a community. Community could be physical interaction with somebody. It could be a virtual interaction. We have these people who jokingly say, “Bob’s my best friend but I’ve never met him.”

I’ve had a lot of those.

They have never been physically in the same place as somebody but they can chat back and forth or talk by video. For a lot of people who live on their own and work remotely, loneliness can creep in. Communities are the antidote to that.

It’s so important. This all comes back to thinking about the career you want to have, the way you want to work, and the people you want to work with. Can you continue making little movements toward that? Community-wise, are you collaborating with people work-wise and hopefully connecting with people? You mentioned making friends. A lot of people have started jobs and have never met any of their colleagues in person because they’re collaborating on Zoom all day, which is fine. Making some real-life friendships locally and finding some people who have things in common is important.

There was a point during the pandemic when I was working on a potential M&A deal as part of a group. You have the two sides, the lawyers, and everybody in the mix of this thing. All these interactions were taking place by video. We finally agreed that we needed an in-person discussion to get everybody together to work through this.

It was the funniest thing. Everybody walked into the conference room saying, “It’s so great to finally meet in person.” We lost the first 15 to 20 minutes of the meeting because everybody wanted to have that social interaction. Even in the context of what was ultimately a negotiation meeting, we needed that sense of togetherness and having that moment. I will remember that from the pandemic days.

It’s a big contributing factor to health as well. We’re both Americans living abroad. I moved with my family from the US to Barcelona, Spain, in 2023. Something I’ve noticed about being in Barcelona is that it’s very community-focused. People are out socializing with each other all the time. It’s a big contributing factor to people in Spain, on average, living longer than people in the US. The quality of their food might be better, but the rate of smoking is a lot higher here, too, so it’s not necessarily living a “healthier lifestyle.” The community and being with other people are big drivers of happiness and health. It’s something they’ve figured out in Spain.

What’s Next For Andy Storch: A Look Ahead

Europeans, in general, have figured out community better than Americans. They’re not as car-dependent as a culture as we are in the US. What’s next for you and the business? You have a book you’re working on. What else is ahead for you?

I’ve got a couple of books I’m working on. The next one is called Own Your Brand, Own Your Career. It is a collaboration with my friend, Mike Kim, who wrote You Are the Brand, a personal brand book geared more toward entrepreneurs. I have done more work in the corporate space. We found it was a good idea to collaborate on this.

Another one I’m working on is called Modern Leadership, which will probably be out in 2026. I’m primarily having lots of conversations, working with companies to make an impact on employees, teaching people how to own their careers to make more of an impact, and making more money for my family and me so I can continue traveling and having a great life.

Career Advice: Taking Ownership And Networking For Success

Any last career advice you want to share with our audience?

You said it earlier at the beginning. I always come back to it. Nobody cares more about your career than you do. Hopefully, you have parents who love you and care about you. If you’re lucky, you have a manager who cares about you and wants to support you. At the end of the day, nobody cares more about your career or knows what you want to do more than you. You’ve got to be the one to own it.

Take time to sit down with a cup of coffee and a notebook and write down what you love and don’t love about the work you’re doing, what you want to move toward doing more of in the future, and what’s the position you’d love to have and who could help with that. If you want to become a Director of Finance, who do you know that does that? Can you get on LinkedIn and find five people doing that job?

Send a connection request and say, “J.R., I see that you’re in this type of role. It’s one that I’d like to do one day. Can we get on a call so I can ask you a few questions about your job? I’m not asking for a job. I want to ask you about your career.” Most people are open to that, especially if there’s some type of commonality. If you went to a relatively big university, reach out to alumni because that’s an instant yes. Everybody wants to help fellow alumni from their school.

You’re a Florida Gator, right?

Yeah, I am a Florida Gator. I did my MBA at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in LA. When I was finishing up my MBA and still couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do, I started reaching out to alumni in different roles in finance, marketing, and HR. The “hit rate” of people who were like, “I’ll be happy to talk to you,” was 99%. I was blown away.

It was an alumni connection. It was like, “You’re a fellow Trojan. You’re graduating. I know people were there to help me, so I want to help you.”  There’s even something implicit behind the scenes like, “For my school to be seen as successful, I need people to graduate and get jobs. Let me help this person figure out what they want to do and help them get a job.”

We always want to help other people, especially if there’s some type of connection. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people to ask for help, especially if you’re not asking them to go out of their way to do anything unusual or uncomfortable, like asking for a job. You’re just asking for some advice, and most people are willing to do that.

We’ve got to wrap. I appreciate your time. This has been great. Good luck with everything you’re working on.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I love the questions and the conversation. The book, Own Your Career, Own Your Life, is on Amazon. If anybody wants free resources without buying the book, everything’s on my website, AndyStorch.com/bonus. There’s a five-step guide to owning your career, my morning routine, and all kinds of resources. Thanks again for the opportunity.

Thanks for highlighting all that. Have a good day.

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I want to thank Andy for joining me to discuss his book, Own Your Career, Own Your Life, and his career journey. This episode was brought to you by Pathwise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career, join the Pathwise community. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for the Pathwise newsletter. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks.

Important Links

• Own Your Career, Own Your Life
• The Miracle Morning
• The Talent Development Hot Seat
• Talent Development Think Tank
• You Are the Brand
• AndyStorch.com/bonus
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram
• PathWise on TikTok

About Andy Storch

Andy Storch is an author, speaker, consultant, connector, podcaster, and conference and community host. He is on a mission to teach and inspire people to own their careers, live with intention, and achieve their goals.

Andy is the host of his own podcast, “The Talent Development Hot Seat”, and the founder and host of the Talent Development Think Tank Conference and Community. He is also the author of Own Your Career, Own Your Life, which he wrote to help others stop drifting and take ownership of their careers, their lives, and their futures.

As a consultant and coach, Andy has worked with companies large and small all over the world. He has a BS from the University of Florida and an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Most importantly, Andy is a husband, father, and friend who is on a mission to get the absolute most out of life and inspire others to do the same. He and his family live in Barcelona, Spain.