Episode 67 – Coffee N.5 – The Connection You Need To Make with Michelle Enjoli

Lara Schmoisman  0:05  

This is Coffee N5. I’m your host, Lara Schmoisman. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for being back here in Coffee N5. And today i was thinking about my journey. And I’ve been there done that, I did for so many years. And I always say, I had to recycle myself. I grew up in the 80s. They 80s weren’t kind, and I lost many jobs because I wasn’t as thin, or as tall, or I wasn’t that willing, maybe. So I just wanted to do my job. And we, we live in a world that changed a lot. And over the years, I realized that I had to just be me. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t thin, or if I wasn’t tall, because that’s not something I can change. Well, I love high heels we know that. But and I had to get over the accent, that is not going anywhere. But overall, I had to learn how to respect who I was as a person. Otherwise, nobody will respect me. It was a tough call. And it’s a tough lesson to learn. But I guess that that’s part of growing up too. Today, I invited Michelle. And I’m not gonna even attempt to say the last name because I know that I’m gonna mess it up. So Michelle, Welcome to Coffee N5. And I’m so glad that you accepted to come to talk to me today about something that is very, very important to me. And we’re gonna disclose this in a moment. But first, I want you to first say your last name. And then tell us a little bit about your journey.

Michelle Enjoli  1:53  

Sure, thank you for having me. So yeah, my full name is Michelle Enjoli Beato. And yeah, my journey has been quite interesting. We were talking about it before we started the podcast, which is when I actually started my career as a television producer. For many, many years, I was producing television for a lot of different networks and, and television stations across the US. And I pivoted twice in my career, I then after producing television for a number of years, I became a digital marketer with a large company Mercedes Benz USA in the US. And you know, with them moved from New Jersey to Atlanta, Georgia, when they relocated their headquarters, and after a couple of years with them decided to launch my own business, coaching others about career development. And so I’ve pivoted career wise three different times, which has been a fun and interesting journey.

Lara Schmoisman  2:53  

It was so interesting to meet Michelle because we have the same background basically, we both were in production and television then we both moved into marketing and digital marketing. And then I opened my agency and I do some coaching . It’s similar , basically the same story and different place. And also we both have a lot more in common than that. We both found out that business has no gender business has no age business and I love that she’s now working with  developing professionals. And what with this thought, I mean, I hate when people call me boss, babe boss or how oh my god, I’m not like that. I’m just Lara. It’s like, even when I used to teach. I hated that people called me Professor. I didn’t need to have a name. And for me, it’s a lot more important to be called Lara than  being called professor.

Michelle Enjoli  4:01  

Yeah, no, I agree with you. So I mean, literally, the basis of my business is about connecting right with people and I talk a lot about that, you know, being different is amazing, right? And you should focus on connecting with people as people you know, stop generalizing, stop trying to put people in a box none of us have, you know, belong in a box. Therefore, we should, you know, communicate with each other, as you know who we are and take time to find out who Lara is, right? Who is she? she’s just not a woman, right? She’s someone who has a history, who has a career, who has interesting things, stories, you know, you have something to learn from anybody. So I really, really love that, you know, and teach people to focus on that for sure.

Lara Schmoisman  4:45  

Well, I, I want to go a little deeper in this career development, because I feel so many people don’t know where to start. Like, first of all, a lot of people are afraid of change. And I don’t know how many besides recycling myself as a professional, before that, I changed my mind a few times before, like my, like my career choice. And honestly, my career choice started in one place and life took me in a different direction that I never expected. So how, how to start  that process of a career journey, a career change? How do you work with your people, your business?

Michelle Enjoli  5:26  

Yeah, so I get a lot of clients. So for example, like I speak to a lot of young people who are either in college at the university level, or starting their careers, they’re in their first or their second job, and they’re frustrated. And I also work with a lot of older people who have been in a job or an industry for a really long time, and they’re looking for a change, or they have to make a change. And I tell people all the time to focus on you first, meaning Who are you? like write down You know, what is your talent? What is your experience? What makes you different? Once you start writing that down and realizing and connecting with yourself as a professional, then you go into, okay, well, what are some of the things that I’m interested in? Where am I? Where am I interested in going? Because the way that I look at career development is very different from the usual way of looking at it. See, I look at career development, I tell every single person, whether you own a business or not, you are an entrepreneur. And the reason why is because you own a product or service yo, right you own. So you have to  in today’s world, you have to market yourself, you have to continuously educate yourself, you have to make sure, yeah, so that’s what so I say, you know, change that mindset into whether you just got a new job, whether you’re happy in your job, or not continuously work on your product or your service. And that’s you.

Lara Schmoisman  6:54  

Yeah, you cannot never stop learning. That’s something that I learned early on, because you turn around and  there’s a new technology, or something happens, the algorithm changes, or the business owner changes a client of yours, and you never know. So you always need to be prepared, I found out that we are in a very interesting time in this world. The news is that people don’t want to work full time, people want to work remotely. But also I’ve found that everyone wants to go digital, everyone wants to be an Entrepreneur and create digital courses or create something, which is to me a little scary, because there are a lot of people with very little knowledge trying to teach others.

Michelle Enjoli  7:41  

Yeah, no, definitely. I think that, you know, there’s this perception that and you know, this, especially because of social media, and I talk to kids about this all the time, and I even did a TED talk last week about this. People love to glamorize entrepreneurship and success. You see the beautiful Instagram pictures, the beautiful pictures of oh, I’m a business owner, I’m in front of a mansion. I’m in front of a private jet. And in front of me,

Lara Schmoisman  8:05  

I love the jet ones. That’s so typical.

Michelle Enjoli  8:09  

I mean, really, I mean, there are people that I know who will rent a jet for an hour. So you can go in and take pictures. I mean, it’s that crazy. And people don’t understand what is behind what we do. There’s a lot of sacrifice. There’s a lot of work that has to continuously be done. Entrepreneurship is not easy. It requires work. And so it’s interesting when I see people, you know, glamorizing this nothing in life should be glamorized everything from trying to get ahead at work at your, you know, at a job or starting your own business. There’s a lot of hard work involved.

Lara Schmoisman  8:42  

Yeah. And again, not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur, I found out that a lot of people are trying to have their own small entrepreneur business, but at the same time, they’re risking something that maybe they’re good at in their own world or finding another opportunity. Not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur. And I

Michelle Enjoli  9:04  

think our own journeys, yeah, it’s a journey.

Lara Schmoisman  9:09  

I think it’s overrated, and mostly in the younger generation. They are, like you said, there is this glamour that they can see. And they think that entrepreneur life is that. And entrepreneur life is not that easy. You work a lot. You work more than anyone in your team. And also you have the huge responsibility of your team.

Michelle Enjoli  9:31  

Exactly, exactly. And that’s the thing I know, this is why I focus on the act of being curious or staying curious, right? Because I told people when I was in college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. A lot of people don’t and that’s okay. But I happened to know what I wanted to do. And if you take my specific journey, I became a television producer while I was still in college, which was amazing. But guess what, seven years later, my interest changed. I wanted to change. And I switched. And guess what, a couple years later after that I switched, we are constantly growing. And that’s what I, you know, I want to tell people, every decision that you make from a professional standpoint is not permanent, right? Learn from every place that you are in, every position, every job, there’s something to learn and grow from, you know, from that experience, use that and then just be open to it. Just be open to new opportunities. That’s the way you navigate your career.

Lara Schmoisman  10:29  

We both have been in marketing and being in marketing, and somehow you’re teaching how to market yourself. And there’s something to be learned there that you can only market yourself so far. If you are not, if you don’t have it at some point it is going to show you can only Fake it until I make it until so far. So it’s okay to go a little extra and say, hey, I can do this. You know, you can do it and you’re not 100% Sure, but you know, they can pull it off. And but  on the other side becomes just a bluff, and you can become a liar. So it’s something that you need to be very careful of because your reputation is behind it. And you can throw in your reputation, just from  faking until you make it and where there is a line that it becomes a lie.

Michelle Enjoli 11:28  

Yeah, no, definitely. So like, I created a curriculum, right. And that curriculum focuses on three different things. And one of the things is I teach people, you know how to network, right, how to connect with other people I call networking, connecting. And then personal branding. So while you’re talking about personal branding it is important, and a lot of people assume what you just talked about before about faking it till you make it. People assume that personal branding is the pretty pictures on Instagram. You know what you tell people. No. personal branding,  Yes, there’s a point of branding that you can create yourself. But the real branding is what Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon says, Your personal brand is what people say when you’re not in the room. So do people you know, do your clients say that? Did you help your clients? Did you help them solve problems? That is a true testament of like, what your brand is? 

Lara Schmoisman  12:22  

absolutely. And I mean, there is a saying in Spanish that I always, oh, you speak Spanish, so I can tell it and then we can translate it. It ‘s from Don Quijote, which says, ”Si los perros ladran, quiere decir que estamos cabalgando”. Dogs are Barking means that we’re galloping. We love that saying, but also, when dogs bark as many times as you want to, you’re gonna hear not what you want to hear a lot. There are a lot of people out there, they’re not prepared to see your change, they are not prepared to. You also need to put the rules of your game when you’re changing. I mean, how many times in business has probably happened to you that the client wants the extra, but they don’t want to pay for it. There is something that when you create your personal brand, you need to decide how you’re going to be dealing with that.

Michelle Enjoli  13:24  

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I get asked to speak for free all the time. You know, that’s something that and it’s interesting because I created in my business plan for our family, that’s once a quarter, we give a giveaway, an opportunity for me to speak to a charity, or to a school free of charge. That’s something that I really love doing. I love giving back. So that’s built into my business plan. But I’ll get offers, you know, all the time. Hey, can you speak to so and so for free? I said, I’m a professional speaker. I’m also a professional coach. So you know, I have a fee. You can either pay it or you cannot. But yeah, it’s very interesting. People. Yeah, I mean, they will try.

Lara Schmoisman  14:01  

Yeah, or even the clients say, Oh, can I have an extra session because in the last one I didn’t feel like that comfortable with, or it’s something that is a reflection of your personality. And many times, like a client, like you say, it’s not gonna be happy with you. But at the end is that you know that you did the right thing. And if you’re a professional and you build up to be where you are today, you can go to sleep and be at peace, because you know that you did the right thing.

Michelle Enjoli  14:33  

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Lara Schmoisman  14:37  

I’m always curious because I find that a lot of professionals are struggling with who they are and who they want to be. And like they always say, who you are, who you really are and how the other ones see you. And for positions that they’re high in In companies it is really hard to merge those three and many times. So understand how other people see us in our positions. It was impossible to understand some decisions that we needed to make. But there are things that we only see. And I found out that that’s really hard for personal branding, because you cannot explain yourself for every decision that you make.

Michelle Enjoli  15:28  

Exactly, yeah, no, I mean, it all comes down to confidence. That’s why you know, I do like to focus and help people do like a rediscovery of themselves of who are you today? Right? Like,  who are you? Who is it?You might want to be somewhere, but where are you today? And we work on defining who you are, who is it that you want to be? And then based on that, right, you need to start making decisions based on that, because another part of personal branding is being consistent, right? So if you want to be known as something right, a professional, you want to be known as a leader, you have to consistently do the right thing, how you know, you know, your actions have to align to that personal brand that you want to create.

Lara Schmoisman  16:11  

So someone comes to you, and what do you start with? Where do you start to find out? What’s next? Because I’m sure that a lot of people are anxious to know what’s next in their life?

Michelle Enjoli  16:26  

Yes. Through a series of exercises, like I, we first for example, firstly, say what is your goal, so I get people that come to me with different goals, like one person might come to me, because they need help with their personal branding, they just got a big job, and they want to just be able to define themselves. And so I help them define like, Okay,  what is it that you want your personal brand to be? So we create a personal branding statement, I help them with their bios, I help them create, you know, what that persona should be so that they can, you know, obviously, follow it. I have people that come to me because, you know, they want to completely change careers. So we focus then on Okay, well, what are your skills? What are your qualifications, what has been your personal brand, we go through some exercises, and then we build a plan for them to now go and network with other people will, you know, reinvent themselves via LinkedIn, right? Look at their digital assets. So depending on what the specific goal is, is it to get a new job? Is it to completely change jobs, whatever that goal is, then I start from there, but typically, for every single scenario, I start with the person first, let’s find out who you really are.

Lara Schmoisman  17:39  

And I totally get it. And I, I am going back and something that maybe I was thinking about while you were talking because you had to go through this transition. How was it for you to discover this transition? And this is what you wanted to do?

Michelle Enjoli  17:57  

Yeah, so for me, it’s interesting, because, um, I actually had a moment three years ago, and it’s funny, because it was three years ago today. So one of my TED Talk talks about this moment. So three years ago, I was in marketing, I was, you know, in a relationship, I was I had the, you know, the job that I wanted, I was doing, and I had a moment, today, three years ago, where I was driving home, and I wasn’t happy, I was getting burnt out. I didn’t feel creative. There were a lot of things going on. And I had a moment in my car that was like , it was like a weight on my shoulder. And I had to have a conversation with myself, Michelle, what is wrong? Why are you not happy? Why do you not feel like you have a purpose? And I literally had to go through a transformation of asking myself some questions, trying to make some changes. And I went through this whole discovery process in order to figure out okay, well, what is it that I want to do for the rest of my life? What is it that I’m good at? What is it that I love to do? And that’s how I kind of came across, you know, this whole curriculum I had started doing this work before. But that was the moment that I was like, I need to make this into something that I can help other people do the same.

Lara Schmoisman  19:08  

Amazing. Well, congratulations, three years, it was meant to be that you are here today. So before we go, I want to ask you the same question that I asked every guest that comes to Coffee N5, which is that we all make mistakes. And I believe that we learn a lot from those mistakes. So what’s that mistake that taught you the most?

Michelle Enjoli  19:39  

The mistake of not listening to the doubt and the questions that I’ve had. So three years ago, you know, I had doubts and questions about what I was doing for my career, my personal life. And my biggest mistake was waiting like silencing those questions. Instead of addressing those questions and answering them. I finally did, but it took me a little while to do So I definitely think that was a that’s a big mistake and one that I have made a number of times in my life and many other people make if you have a doubt or you have a question about something, make sure that you answer it

Lara Schmoisman  20:12  

 Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Michelle, for having coffee with me today was a pleasure having you here and listening to your journey and all this amazing story that you told us and tips for our audience. So everyone I will see you next week in having coffee on Coffee N5. It was so good to have you here today. See you next time. Catch you on the flip side. Ciao ciao.