THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

To help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts, here are our show notes.

These show notes come via the Otter.ai service. The transcription is imperfect. But hopefully, it’s close enough – even with the errors – to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.

Dan Smolen  00:00

My wife is teaching gifted children. She teaches gifted children in a public school. But that’s not her only thing and she’ll be retiring soon. And so to get her into something else.  She’s she’s been side hustling, selling vintage clothing and jewelry and ephemera. A lot of people are side hustling right now a keen to test the waters of their next act.

Achim Nowak  00:31

Hey this is Achim Nowak, executive coach and host of the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. If life is a five act play, how will you spend your fourth Act? I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected fourth acts, listen, and  be inspired. And please rate us and subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening on. Let’s get started.  I am just delighted to welcome Dan Smolen to the My fourth act podcast. Dan is a self described future of work Sherpa advocates for people doing meaningful work. Now that phrase got my attention. Dan was an on air reporter in college. And now I have to say right now I appreciate Dan’s voice, which is a classic radio voice. Dan spent a chunk of his early career working in advertising and marketing agencies. He escaped corporate life in 1998 to work as an executive recruiter, eventually founding his own recruiting agency, the green suits, Dan left headhunting in 2018 to launch the Dan smolen experience, and his Dan smolen podcast. In his podcast, he advocates for the future of work, which is work that is profound, protects the planet, empowers people, and is fun to do. Dan is very much living his fourth act and and I can’t wait to pick his brain about wisdom for other fourth actors who wish to engage in meaningful work, but perhaps are done with full time corporate life. Welcome, Dan.

Dan Smolen  02:20

Thank you, I came It’s a pleasure to be here.

Achim Nowak  02:23

I can’t wait to get started. I I like to start every podcast by by asking my guests about who did you want to be when you’re young boy or a teenager? And and what I need to ask with you because you have this. This fabulous voice? Did people tell you Oh, your voice is great. You have to go into broadcasting? Or was not that not part of your reality?

Dan Smolen  02:47

Oh, my God, well, I’m gonna take you back to when I was about five or six years old growing up in New Haven, Connecticut. Okay. I don’t remember when I’m looking out the window where every Wednesday the garbage truck used to pull up in these two jolly fellows would jump off the back and grab my dad’s aluminum garbage cans and bang the crap out of them and do the contents thrown back on the curb and get back on the truck. And I told my mother that I wanted to be a garbage collector. And I was I think she was astounded by my in my first four away, my first foray into career exploration. Now think about that, again, why would a six year old want to do a dirty awful job like working on the business end of a garbage truck? It’s because of what I saw out my picture window, watching these two guys. They were laughing they were having a good time they’re slapping each other on the back. I didn’t know that they were lubricated, you know, to do the monotony of the job. But I connected with fun. Yeah. And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to have fun working a job doing something. So that was my first career dream. It didn’t last long.

Achim Nowak  04:12

It’s funny when you started the story I was thinking in my mind is, is the message that Heck, I will never want to be a garbage collector or is the message that I want to be one and your reason for wanting to be one actually makes complete sense to me. And that also makes sense based on what I just read the introduction and the kind of stuff which many of us really inspired to which which is work that is meaningful and enjoyable. So thank you for that story. I’m going to skip the broadcasting part even and we may get back to it later. But when I hear working in marketing and advertising My mind goes to that’s a hard grind. It’s a hustle. It’s competitive. It’s exhausting. I could be completely wrong because this is All informed by what I’ve seen on TV. But if you think back the question that always intrigued me, why do we stay in something? So what are there any things that you enjoyed or moments where you go, this is why I loved being in that industry.

Dan Smolen  05:15

Well imagine if you will you get to work with some of the biggest brands in the world. Yeah, PepsiCo, American Express, American Tobacco Company. This was straight out of Mad Men. Yeah. And I worked in a, and I worked in a Mad Men type of company. In retrospect, and I apologize for my little poodle barking in the background. This is what happens from the record.

Achim Nowak  05:41

Keep barking away, please.

Dan Smolen  05:44

But I’ve often described those 15 years as for the young and stupid, because only a young and and not knowledgeable person would allow themselves to work, stressful, 80 hour weeks now, this is not hyperbole. I worked 80 hour weeks, the workload was massive. You’d get through all the work that I had to do, and I wasn’t in general advertising. I was in direct marketing. Now I’m impacting huge direct mail programs targeting prospects for our brands to engage with. And so the work was daunting. You had client visits, you had press okays, you had countless meetings. And then because I couldn’t get it all done, I had to like work on billing, which took me into like Saturdays. It was exhausting work. I loved it. I learned a lot. Boy, that was a great learning experience for my later acts. We can certainly talk about that. I was encouraged to get into that line of work by a late mentor of mine, a gentleman by the name of Howard Cogan, who was both a professor of mine at Ithaca College, but also an add man himself and a fairly famous one he had. He had coined the term. Ithaca is gorgeous to talk about the beautiful gorges that are in the Finger Lakes. Yeah. And, you know, imagine if you will, you’re traveling all over the country, and you see Howard’s bumper sticker on somebody’s car, some stranger. And that was his impact on the world. He was a great ad man. You had a wonderful, melodious broadcast voice that I, you know, I tried to pare it a little bit. But he encouraged me again to the agency space, he felt I had the entrepreneurial zeal for it. I did. He thought I had the creative juice for it. I think I did. And so I followed his lead.

Achim Nowak  07:49

I appreciate the phrase entrepreneurial zeal. And I when I think think of that, I think of your future acts, where you created stuff that you owned. And you’re doing that right now. And I know there are many people who want to start stuff. But they’re afraid if you and I think being entrepreneurial isn’t for everybody. But if you had to give some guidance to anybody who goes, gosh, he sounds like a go getter. I wish I could be a go getter like that, who just sort of sinks his teeth into something gets it done. What What advice would you have?

Dan Smolen  08:32

I think we’re in an entrepreneurial age right now. Hmm. And think about that. There’s so much change going on in the world. Just take what’s happened as a result of the pandemic, all the new businesses that have come out of that all the side hustles all the new career paths.

Achim Nowak  08:49

Yeah.

Dan Smolen  08:50

Not everybody is an entrepreneur. But if they have some entrepreneurial zeal, I will tell you, that that impacted my career, measurably.

Achim Nowak  09:06

But let me just play devil’s advocate because I love what you say you did really well. So I could be listening to you and say, well, it’s easy for him to say that we know he started his own agency, but he made a shitload of money working in traditional agencies. And you know, he had the cushion to do it. But I don’t have money laying around. I can’t just start something. I got to keep a day job. It’s not that easy. Right? What do you say to that?

Dan Smolen  09:29

Don’t give up your day job. That’s what I say. side hustle. So my wife had a drama background. She didn’t end up on Broadway. My wife is teaching gifted children. She teaches gifted children in a public school. But that’s not her only thing and she’ll be retiring soon. And so to get her into something else, she’s she’s been side hustling, selling vintage clothing and jewelry and ephemera and objet dar and A lot of people are side hustling right now a keen to test the waters of their next act. And it doesn’t have to be a huge endeavor, it could be like trying out a concept.

Achim Nowak  10:15

I hope all of our listeners heard that phrase, testing the waters of your next act. That’s such a beautiful way to look at experimentation rather than making it an all or nothing proposition. So that’s a great phrase that you just used. I do want to take you to when you started your own recruiting agency. I love being an entrepreneur, I haven’t worked for anybody else on salary for 20 years. I can’t imagine ever doing that again. But what did you learn about yourself? and your commitment to something that you started, nobody made you started to chose to started? What did you learn about starting something that’s your baby that you own?

Dan Smolen  10:55

Well, I got to take you back to before I was a headhunter before I was recruiting. So take me about in the mid 90s, I was reaching the end of my advertising agency career act, and had the idea to create some intellectual property that would help advertisers identify and engage with prospective customers in some sort of interactive way. It didn’t happen, that business didn’t happen for a lot of reasons. All of a sudden, I was out of pocket. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And serendipitously, the phone rang. And I heard from someone who I used to work for in the agency space, who called me up and said, Dan, come to work with me. I’ve started a recruiting agency, her name is Victoria James. And she runs a great agency still, and I helped her found that agency. And we together, we got into add on thing she had a few months ahead of me start. But we were recruiting the very people we used to work with. Yeah, now fast forward about seven years. And I reached the point where I decided, you know what, I’m getting really good at this, or I’ve gotten really good at this. I should go on my own hang my own shingle. And so I was operating in somewhat the same market spaces as Victoria James was. But over time, I modified it to get into sort of clean tech and sustainability and jobs with a purpose type of focus. Hence, the name the green suits, I was working with green minded executives. Yeah. And so you know, into my mid 40s, I just made the decision. If I’m going to do this, I got to do it now. And talk about being shot out of a cannon, you know, starting your own business from scratch, trying to find clients, trying to find candidates, it was exhilarating.

Achim Nowak  13:07

I had the same experience of exhilaration once I started my own business. And once I landed my first clients and got over that hump of Will anybody hire me, I mean, I had a client when I started. So I appreciate the way you said that. But the two things strike me in your story. And you know, want to relate this to our listeners is there’s a beauty about partnering with somebody else. There’s also beauty of knowing when to go solo, right. And the ability to know when a partner is helpful. And when it’s time to go solo is a wonderful little distinction. Let’s fast forward I because one of the narratives that I think can kick around is, well, yeah, he was in his 40s. But you know, I’m in my 60s, or I’m in my 70s. And I want to do a side hustle, but maybe I don’t have that same drive or they don’t have that hunger I had when in my 40s is this still the right time to launch something? What would you say to somebody who might have those questions?

Dan Smolen  14:13

As you were talking, I was thinking about the old American dream, you know, where you got out, I got out of school or whatever. And you got into one career track and you worked for the same company and that ended at your 65th birthday and they hand you a gold watch and a pension and you know, and then you wither away in a beach chair somewhere. You know, what, what do I do next? The really exciting thing about the time we live in right now I came is that we can work well into our 80s maybe even into our 90s right? We have a lot of experience, both personally and professionally. If we’re still curious about the world, we can find something that we can do in Contribute to to make something better. Maybe it’s working with people, maybe it’s working with other businesses. Maybe it’s a part time gig, that gives you purpose. The idea of retirement now doesn’t mean becoming atrophied. It means freeing yourself, liberating yourself to do your best work and be your best self. Right? And, and the really exciting thing about having a fourth act is that all those things that I did in Act One, two, and three, got me to this point. Yeah. And I want to get your listeners to think about what they did in their first stacks. And maybe some of it was painful. Maybe some of it ended in despair. Or in firing, I got fired a couple times. It’s awful. But it’s the good times that don’t get us to where we are now. It’s the learning from the sad and the bad times and the unfortunate things. So for somebody who is in their 60s, or 70s, or perhaps even their 80s or beyond, there may be something that you can do. A lot of people are getting into podcasting now. Right. And it’s given them joy and purpose, and telling their narrative and sharing insight with other people. Others are getting into project work doing something, and maybe it’s not a full time gig, maybe it’s 20 hours a week. But they may be doing something in their communities. That’s really impactful. I know a lot of retirees who become mentors, all that business knowledge and leadership is timeless. It doesn’t go it doesn’t have an expiration date. Younger people need the help of seasoned people to be successful. That’s how I how I look at this time right now. I’m living my best life right now.

Achim Nowak  17:07

It’s so Oprah and I love that phrase. I love that you just went Oprah on me. But that’s I know exactly what you mean.

Dan Smolen  17:15

Can I add something to that? But yes, I didn’t want to become like my father. And I didn’t want to become like my grandfather. What do I mean by that my grandfather came to this country in 1913 with lint in his pockets, and found himself at the business end of a pushcart and then sooner or later, you know, went into World War One and learned language skills and came out of that and ran a dry goods store that became a very successful furniture business. My grandfather was the American Dream success, right. And he, you know, built a custom home, they sent my on to college, he built a house for my family. And then he retired and did nothing. And within a few years time, developed dementia, and then later died. Poof, gone. So my father looks at that and says, I’m not going to be like my father. So my father exits out of the furniture business at some point and gets a side hustle, being a car transporter for a Ford dealership and loves it, right. Until he can’t do that anymore. Yeah. But he wanted to keep moving. And he wanted to keep working. My father didn’t have the agency, or maybe gave himself the permission to create something on his own. Through a hobby or through some other interests. He didn’t, his interest was working. And I tell you that part because after the work ended, boom, that was over my father fell into dementia. And then he died a few years ago, at the age of 90. I look at those two experiences and say that I have to keep a balanced beyond work life. With interest, I read, I explore, I do photography, I travel with my wife around the world. All these things are creative working grounds that helped me say, hey, I’d like to try that. Or I’d like to do that. Or that walk that we took in Amsterdam gave me this idea, and I’m going to pursue that. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing it at. But I have a feeling I’m going to be very engaged doing something that’s both creative and helps people because I’m using all my other interests to inform those possibilities.

Achim Nowak  19:41

A word from your sponsor. That’s me. I invite you to go to the website associated with this podcast www.my fourth active.com you will find other equally inspiring conversation with great humans and you will also learn more about the My fourth act mastermind groups where cool people figure out how to chart their own fourth acts, please check it out. And now back to the conversation. I heard the word create a lot. And I heard the phrase creative working grounds, which is beautiful. You’re six years old now. And you’ve created the dance mold, unexperienced, the Dan smolen, podcast, and my senses, in the spirit of what you just said, You’ve created it, and you’re making a lot of it up as you go along. So if I miss labeling you please correct me, I don’t want to do that. But maybe walk us into because your passion is if future work and the idea that we all have something meaningful to engage with? What during your musings during your research, what took you into this playground? into podcasting? No podcasting, the future of work into being as is in the theme?

Dan Smolen  21:03

Oh, okay. Right. So I’m going to take you back to the end of 2017, the early part of 2018. I had been in recruiting, working with another person and then on my own for 20 years. And I finished up a really big client engagement that left me terribly unsatisfied. And here’s the reason why. At the end of that, I was noticing a lot of my talent, were not retaining in their jobs. And I reached out to some of them to say, you know, what’s going on. And what I heard was the job check the, the job spec changed the hiring manager, left, and now I have a new manager. And he and I are she and I don’t see eye to eye. This has become a toxic workplace, or I got hired for work one set of skills. And now they want me to do something completely different that I am neither trained for or have the passion for. And I looked at that. And I said, Okay, I’m part of the problem. Because I put really talented people into assignments that were about the hiring manager and the hiring company success. And not there’s no talk about an Oprah moment. Right? And, um, I, I went down the road, and there were two paths, which one do I take? Yeah, way, perpetuate the old model and try to keep it going. Knowing that recruiting had become very competitive and very tough, and, you know, something that I had done for 20 years, and maybe I was getting a little bored with the premise. More. Do I take another tack, which is, you know, the model was always about the job and the hiring company and their goals. But I’ve never really worked for the talent, professional talent. And at that point, I said to myself, my mission really should be about helping them be successful, doing meaningful work doing the work that you just said in the intro that’s profound and protects the planet and empowers people and communities. And it’s fun to do. And so I took the, I took the road less traveled right, blew up my business, closed my business in January 2018, blew up the old brand, and started the dance smell and experience because I had this feeling that I could create something experiential. I didn’t know what it was going to be, or how I would get there. Now I should mention that before I blew up the green suits, I had started a podcast in the summer of 2016. And the idea behind it was an adjunct of the green suits to kind of create like a, like a an auditory petting zoo for professional talent to kind of hear from other people who are doing jobs in sustainability or in corporate social responsibility, or business development, or this or that or whatever. Now, another thing that happened at the end of 2017, was that I was going to change that podcast into something completely different. And so that became what ended up being the Dan Smolin podcast. And I help people I provide narrative, but I also provide, you know, 40, some odd years of insight as a professional to help them. Yeah.

Achim Nowak  24:47

You use the word on in your, in your promotional materials, that word Sherpa. Self I, I love that word and and it’s the less traditional For me, it’s sort of a spiritual word. And to me it’s also word that that embraces your elder dumb and your wisdom. Am I miss reading it? Would you just expound on that a little bit for us?

Dan Smolen  25:13

I got goosebumps when you just said that. Right? spiritual. I think you’re right. I was challenged recently to come up with a moniker if you will, that describe me in as few words as possible. It’s a real challenge for people, especially when they’re in a meet up with other people’s strangers. So I came, what do you do? And typically, people go through a narrative that runs paragraphs. Well, that’s not good. People don’t have a good attention span nowadays. So I knew I had to come up with something of an economy of words to describe my unique value proposition to the universe. And that’s how I came up with future of work. Sherpa. So what does the Sherpa do? The Sherpa is the unsung hero of mountaineering. Yeah, he or she helps the Explorer get up to the summit of Mount McKinley or, you know, whatever. Because they can’t do it on their own. Yeah, sure. But the Sherpa is not the focus of the attention. They stand back. And they provide insight and guidance, and maybe a little bit of spirituality, to encourage that person on their journey. And the journey that we envision has four basic elements, to dream, to explore, to strategize, and then to be intentional to act now. And so as a Sherpa, I weave all those things along the way, so that as we transit, our 20s, into our 30s, into our 40s 5060, so forth. we embark on a journey that has new dreams, we explored differently, our Strategies for Success are ever changing, because the world is changing. And at the end of the day, you got to put your foot on the gas and act, even if it doesn’t lead to immediate success. go someplace. Because that journey, element of acting is the most important part of all,

Achim Nowak  27:26

yeah, I like to use the phrase, it’s my job to talk myself into things and not out of things. And I love that your four part framework if it was starts with dreaming, right, because as I see it, many folks have been taught to not dream too big, or have been taught that those dreams are just not realistic. Or maybe you’re too old to have that dream. So to unearth an authentic dream and allow it to be there. And I include myself, I had to really look at this and my own journey in life is it takes some courage. Yes. Any any other thoughts on dreaming or giving us permission to dream? What What does? What do you Dan, think of when it comes to dreaming? From the deepest personal space?

Dan Smolen  28:20

Well, I don’t think we do dreaming well. Dreaming is often the playground of young people. Children, you asked me about when I was a little kid what I wanted a big. Yeah. Later on, you know, when I was like 1112 years old, I thought I wanted to be an architect until a very famous architect told me don’t bother, there’s no money. And I was dashed again. Yeah, we don’t encourage people of any age to take the chance in closer eyes and visualize themselves doing something that just makes them joyful, right. And especially in I thought this was just an American problem that came, it’s in Europe, it’s in Asia, we don’t is we we get so far away from the joyfulness of dreaming about what we want to do. And more focused on the return on investment of what we end up doing, that we end up making ourselves sick. And I’m part of the movement to help change the dream exploration of careers into middle school in the United States into high school and do a better job of it. Because if we can teach kids as they get older, that they have agency to dream. Now their outcomes are going to be better, not just when they pivot out of school and into that first job, but throughout all their four or five or however many acts they have.

Achim Nowak  29:52

Yeah, again, as I think of maybe our elders and dreaming and wanting to work some more I’m going to throw out some stereotypes, but I think there’s truth to it. And I’d love to hear your wisdom on how to navigate those. So stories often hear is, once I in my 60s, or in my 70s, people want me to volunteer, but they don’t really want to pay me, you know, I’m not seen as a potential hire, or they’re going to offer me a job, but it’s actually lower than at the levels at which I worked before. So they getting my expertise for less money. related question, and if you can dance with all of these, think there is an implicit pressure to keep doing the stuff that you’re really good at. However, what you just talked about, which I love is, it’s also a chance to potentially dream into something completely different. That has nothing to do with your 30 year resume. I’m just threw a whole bunch of things at you. But what what comes to mind as I raise some of these concerns?

Dan Smolen  31:00

Well, I’m sad, because when I heard your story, I’m struck again by the rampant ageism that we have in the American workforce, but but really anywhere. Yeah, told people don’t, don’t look vibrant. That’s a lot of bullshit. You know, I’ll tell you something. Sometimes the best workers that I worked with, were senior to the staff, they had a wonderful experience. They’ve lived lives. They, they knew how to navigate difficult situations, I’d rather work with them than a newbie, right? So we’ve got our priorities all wrong about about people who have had the benefit of a long career. And unfortunately, and I don’t see much change happening with this older people are going to have a harder time engaging with traditional corporate type jobs, employment, full time employment type jobs, for whatever reason, you know. And again, it’s a dirty little secret, but ageism, is there. And we really need to think about how to overcome that. But how does an older person engage with the world, they become entrepreneurs, they, they find some way to side hustle, and I know that’s not for everybody. But it’s gonna get easier over time, to to be your own boss, to be what we call a 1099 in the United States, and do contract work. And for somebody who’s in their 60s, or 70s, or beyond, that may be the ticket, we just have to make. Doing that easier. Because it’s not easy to be an entrepreneur. It’s not easy to be doing a side hustle necessarily, because you have to learn, you have to learn the skills of running a brand or a business, your own personal brand. But that’s an opportunity, I think, for community colleges, so to speak, lots of them in this country. They’re training the workforce of tomorrow, but how about the workforce of yesterday that’s come back for today and tomorrow, right? So we need to we need to make their experience resonate with the rest of the workplace to want to throw away that experience that’d be that’d be that’d be criminal.

Achim Nowak  33:41

Everything you said obviously makes complete sense to me. But I want to stress again for our for whoever’s listening is having the courage to do a side hustle, having the courage to learn what it might take to do that well and your your description throughout this conversation around. I’m going to put my trim on woody trying it out, experimenting, seeing what it is. That’s such a beautiful way to look at all of life. I think before we wrap up based on what you know, now is a 60 year old man with many rich life experiences and and not that much gray hair. Look at this row, you know, and many more ahead of you. Yeah. Based on what you know. Now, if you think of young Dan, who thought he might want to be a trash collector, what wisdom Do you have now that might be helpful for him to hear?

Dan Smolen  34:41

I wouldn’t talk to that kid. I would talk to the the neurotic soon to be college grad who was fretting over getting a job and connecting up with work. Because so much of the frame that we were all under was you got to be successful. You got to land in something you got to get started. And I had, I had got trouble in my senior year of college because I was so anxiety ridden about what was to come next. And I would just tell myself to calm the F. It’s going to be okay. And you know what, there’s going to be a lot of bumps along the road. They are gifts. They’re going to make your life interesting, but they’re also going to make your agency to others more appealing. Because you’ve overcome a lot, you know, job changes, relocations. Career changes, you know, I started off in radio in college, and here I am behind him you are and I would not have been able to do that. And had the platform to talk about meaningful work and future of work. Had I not been a recruiter? Had I not had all those years in corporate America, you know, sweating through those 80 hour weeks and doing ridiculous stuff I should never have done putting up with shit that I should never have put up with. Yeah. Learning to say no, when I didn’t, you know, I should have said, No, I learned that right? I got involved in things I shouldn’t have done. Because I felt like my ambition told me to do things, even if I felt that wasn’t right for them. In hindsight, all those things as some are great. Some weren’t so great. They were all gifts. And they got me to this point. And I’m happy now.

Achim Nowak  36:42

You just connected a whole bunch of wonderful dots for us. So thank you for that, Dan. If our listeners want to find your podcast or the Dan smolen experience, where would you like to direct folks to learn more about what you do?

Dan Smolen  36:56

Well, we’re pretty much everywhere hosted. So wherever you get your podcast look for my name Dan smolen. You can also go to dansmolen.com which is my website. If you prefer to listen there we have a tab, a podcast tab you can pull down and get to our most recent episodes, there’s show notes there you can read background on each episode. I’m on Twitter at Dan Smolin. I’m on Instagram at Dan dot Smolin. And of course, I’m on LinkedIn, which is probably the best place to find me because that’s where I’m engaging with people interested about careers.

Achim Nowak  37:37

In other words, Dan gets around, I get around. Thank you so much for this conversation. You use the word gift for me this conversation was a gift. Thank you so much. Thank you again. Like what you heard, please go to my fourth act calm, and subscribe to receive my updates on upcoming episodes. Please also subscribe to us on the platform of your choice. Rate us, give us a review and let us all create some magical fourth acts together. Ciao