Belong

Belong-Interview with Phyl Terry
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Introduction
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Kevin Micalizzi: Welcome to Belong. I'm Kevin Micalizzi recently had the chance to sit down with Phyl Terry. Phyl's the founder and CEO of Collaborative Gain, and author of Never Search Alone and Customers Included. Professionally and personally, Phyl has a passion for bringing people together to help them succeed.

Phyl has a talent for creating the right spaces, along with the right structure. Phyl's work on Never Search Alone and their incredible free community for job seekers has helped tens of thousands of professionals work together to help each other find jobs they love. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Thank you.

Welcome
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Kevin Micalizzi: So Phyl, welcome.

Phyl Terry: Glad to be here. Thank you.

Kevin Micalizzi: So I, you know, as you know, like this podcast is really about exploring belonging. And I feel like, you know, initially I was thinking Phyl is an expert at cultivating belonging in business. But then I was like, you know what? This is Phyl's life. You've been doing this for many, many, many years now.

Phyl's Journey and Early Influences
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Kevin Micalizzi: I'd love to talk about what got you started.

Phyl Terry: Sure. And just so your listeners know, I think you and I met through the Never Search Alone community.

Kevin Micalizzi: We did. Yep.

Phyl Terry: Yeah. And so that's my latest book. It came out just as the tech, you know, job downturn hit. And one of the big ideas in th at book is to have community and belonging to build a job search council.

And we set up a pro bono volunteer led movement around the world that's now set up and run 3,000 of those actually.

And, we hope to, we hope to get to a hundred thousand, to a million. We think it's a really important new way for people to approach the job search and their careers and get much more. To get the kind of support they deserve to make good decisions and build good careers.

Building Communities and Movements
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Phyl Terry: So that's what part of what I'm doing now. I also run Collaborative Gain, as you know, which is a private community of senior leaders in tech, which I started 20 years ago, and that's, that's going great. We have a number of product leaders and general managers and CEOs. I started that with, with Google and Amazon back in 2003 in the aftermath of the dot-com downturn. And we've had about 2000 leaders go through the program. It's a great community. I love running it. It's a real privilege to be with those leaders and to support them. But to your point, this goes back a long way. So my mom started the first council in 1960.

Okay. For elementary school teachers in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where I grew up.

The Power of Asking for Help
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Phyl Terry: So I watched her, you know, and she taught me about the art of asking for help, which is a really critical part of my program and philosophy and how you build belonging. Because when you ask for help, when you create vulnerability and you're open, it builds trust, and connection.

In college I was a student activist. I worked in the anti apartheid movement. This is back in the 1980s. And, I was the co chair of my, uh, campus anti apartheid coalition, but I also built an alliance of colleges and universities on the West coast. And then I went to England and worked directly with the African National Congress and SWAPO as a volunteer, as a student leader in support of what they were doing.

And back on campus in California, I created a council of the heads of different student organizations. Okay. And I brought them together and I said, listen, let's create an environment where we learn from each other, where we can ask for help. And at first they were like confused, like, wait, what do you mean?

Like, so we can like do events together. You know, I said, well, you could do that. Yeah. But the, the idea is more about, as leaders of these student organizations, we need a support group. We need a way to ask for help and support each other.

Collaborative Gain and Career Councils
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Phyl Terry: And, when I was then in business school, I worked with McKinsey to set up the first CEO councils for Silicon Valley CEOs.

This is in the early days of the internet. And then I went on to create Collaborative Gain councils, as I mentioned in 2003. And, and that's been a big part of my focus, but I've also along the way. I've created a number of other communities and movements.

I've created Slow Art Day, which is a global event every year. We've had about 1500 museums and galleries participate. It's a way of slowing down and learning how to look at art. The premise is simple: you take five pieces of art and each person looks for 10 minutes at each piece and then has a conversation about it. And it achieves a couple of things. One, it achieves visual literacy in a way to learn to look at art, but it also builds community and belonging because you have this shared experience together, and then you share how you each saw the art and you get to look through each other's eye, which is a great way of getting to know people.

It's a great team building event. I have a whole free program where companies. Can download my moderator a guide and my participant guide and they can go run these slow looking events with their product teams and their executive teams and a number of companies are doing that today. So, using art, to build a sense of belonging and trust.

And get some visual literacy, which everyone working in digital businesses needs.

Innovative Programs and Initiatives
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Phyl Terry: I also run something called the WBRG, the world of business reading group. It's a high school business literacy program based on the philosophy of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And it happens every summer.

It's at WBRG.org. If any of your listeners have high school students, they're welcome to, to, to apply. They can go to WBRG.org and actually sign up to be notified when the applications go out in January. And we've had, hundreds of students go through the program and the students read selections of Warren Buffett's shareholder letters.

And then we've built like a 120 page curriculum around that.

Kevin Micalizzi: Oh wow.

Phyl Terry: And each class, each section has 10 or 12 students, and it's run in a Harvard Business School – all the faculty are Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School alums who've done something significant in the business world. And, this is their chance to give back.

By the way, if anyone listening is, you know, an accomplished executive, and wants to participate as a faculty member, they can, they, it's an all volunteer program. They can go to wbrg.org and learn more about that. But here's something that most people don't know.

Warren Buffett - The Community Organizer
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Phyl Terry: One of Warren Buffett's greatest strengths, and one of the reasons he's been so successful, this is gonna blow your mind, he's a great community organizer, okay?

What he has done, and he talks about this very, with his letters, his shareholder letters, he's been very explicit about the values and philosophy and the approach of Berkshire Hathaway. With the goal of cultivating a long term loyal shareholder base, a community of shareholders. And then he does a community event every year.

And I've taken many people out to that where 40,000 people come together for an annual meeting. Most companies get 200 people and some of them are crackpots. This is 40,000 long term shareholders who, who share the philosophy and feel they're a part of a community. It's really, it's remarkable.

And it's, it. The support of the shareholder base that he has crafted and cultivated has allowed him to do things that many other CEOs are not allowed to do in terms of the patience and approach that he brings to building that business. He's a community organizer who's generated billions and billions of dollars in value.

It's really a remarkable story. And he's a mentor of mine. And when I say he's a mentor, he doesn't know me.

Okay. He actually knows me a little bit, but, but. I don't call him. He doesn't have to take my calls at 2 a. m. and I don't have to listen to everything he says.

Dead or Distant Mentor
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Phyl Terry: His partner, Charlie Munger, taught me this concept.

Charlie Munger talked about, you need to learn from the eminent dead. And I thought, well, what about the eminent living as well? So I created this concept called DoD, Dead or Distant Mentor. The graveyards and bookstores are full of them.

Anyone listening right now can get a mentor. And by the way, in my own research, 95 percent of leaders today don't have mentors.

They don't have living mentors who are close to them and they really regret that. And I say to them, do what, do what Charlie Munger did. Benjamin Franklin was his mentor. Okay. Last time I checked, Benjamin Franklin was not living and breathing, and if you build what Buck Munger calls a passionate relationship with someone like that, a mentor you don't know, a dead or distant mentor. And you, and you really read and reread and think about them and the life, the lives they've led and the choices they've made, it can have a profound impact.

And they credit, Munger and Buffett, both living but also dead or distant mentors with their success, right? So, yeah, that's a long answer to your short question.

Kevin Micalizzi: It was a fantastic answer.

Creating Structure and Positive Politics
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Kevin Micalizzi: I love with Collaborative Gain, and even when you're talking about what you were doing back in college, you're not just creating space. I've noticed you have a superpower of creating space and the right structure for lack of a better word.

Phyl Terry: Yeah, that's important. Yeah, it, it, well, I'm going to, I'm going to give an example that some people cringe at, but I think it's really important. I see them as pioneers, which is AA, in 1937 when they started, there was no good solution for alcohol abuse disorder for alcoholism. There was nothing. Now, today, there are many programs, but Stanford Medical School did a meta analysis of all the research, and they said, still, by far, the most effective program is AA. What AA did is they created a space, they created a safe place for alcoholics to come together, but they also created a program, a structure, right? It's that combination. So, with the job search councils, it's not just, hey, come together and somehow theoretically be supportive of each other. But here's, here's some of the things you need to think about.

You need to think about Candidate Market Fit, a key, a concept I developed over 25 years of working with people in the job search, right? Which is to say. You need to think about what you want, but also what the market wants and how the market perceives you and your skills today, when you're going out to look for a job, your skills and experience are the product you're bringing to market.

So you need to think about Candidate Market Fit, and you need to have a structured approach to how you determine that Candidate Market Fit. That's a key part of the Never Search Alone program, right? Now, if I had just written that book and said, Hey. You know, come together and support each other because the job search is lonely.

I think, I think that could have been helpful. But then what do people do together, right? You really need to, I mean, that's what I spent years and years working on. My next book, Never Lead Alone, which I don't know when it's going to be out. I'm in the messy middle, which is 95, 90 percent of the writing process, probably two years at this point.

It might be out next year. I was hoping to hit the fall of 25, but I'm not sure I will. We'll see. Um, but the point is there, you know, um, I'm talking about people in jobs. Like, so Never Search Alone and help you keep a job. Never leave. I hope you can get a job. Never Lead Alone. I'll help you keep that job, make an impact, get promoted, that kind of thing.

And a core part of the Never Lead Alone. Yes. Join a career council. Right? Like the kind we run at Collaborative Gain or you can set up your own or whatever. But, the equivalent to candidate market fit is what I call positive politics. You need to learn how to play politics, but not in the backstabbing credit stealing way.

You can play positive politics, a way that drives positive change for your customers, your colleagues, and also allows you to get that promotion you deserve. You know, many people who are good people, Do good work, put their heads down, and hope the work speaks for itself. But then they get passed over for promotions, right?

And they wonder why and they get mad and sometimes they get mad and they quit and they hurt themselves actually by so doing. And I say, well, pause for a moment. First of all, you need to understand. We all need to understand psychology better, you know? And, there's something known as the availability heuristic.

Okay. What that basically says is that we humans have a tendency to remember, things that are right in front of us or we can easily recall. So that person in the company who's constantly promoting the work they're doing, we're going to think of them more easily. Whereas the person putting their head down just trying to do good work that speaks for itself, we're not going to think about them because they're not available to us.

So the person doing good work needs to keep doing good work. That's the sine qua non. That's the foundation. I don't want it. I don't want to help people learn how to play bad bullshit politics. I want to learn how to play positive politics, which starts with, and is most importantly about doing good work, building great products and services, building good companies, whatever it is. And layering on top of that, making sure that your boss and other key people know, first, your career goals, where you want to go, you know, and they know what you're doing and what your team is achieving. Not in some kind of a credit stealing way, but in an honest, but consistent way, making sure you remain top of mind, because if you don't, you're going to fall victim to the availability heuristic.

You're going to fall victim to the fact that they're not thinking of you, because if you just put your head down and do good work, you're not top of mind. I get that. I get why people want to do that. That's my proclivity as well. And I have learned, I'm not that comfortable with the social media world where you're, you know, you're supposed to be a self promoter.

I like to promote the things I'm involved with and the people who are helping them. I don't love promoting myself as much, but you have to learn positive ways of doing that, that include you, but aren't necessarily only about you.

And that's what I talk about in that next book. But the point that you're making is that I create environments, but I also, I also create structure and a theoretical frameworks and exercises and, you know, a philosophy for what you can do together.

And in particular, my, you know, my focus in the business world is how to help people build careers that are built to last in a world that is ever changing and is has instability baked at the core of it, Right.

Kevin Micalizzi: Yeah. I mean, I noticed, you know, it's, it's one thing to bring people together, but that isn't going to magically create that connection, that vulnerability.

Phyl Terry: Right. Yeah. And, and in that case, that's why I focus on asking for help. Asking for help is a superpower. It, it can really put a lot of, wind in your sails, a lot of support behind you. But in the case of bringing people together in the council, if people are openly willing to ask for help, which means they're vulnerable, it creates trust. And if you're not willing to ask for help, you know, I have seen organizations that run councils where they bring leaders together, but it's not founded on asking for help. And so they're just peacocking with each other in a small environment. And that creates no vulnerability, no trust. It's just a pain in the ass, frankly.

I want to run in the other direction. It doesn't do anybody any good. It doesn't help with growth and development. It doesn't help people manage through the challenges they have. It's just a way to peacock. And I'm not, I think peacocks should peacock, but I don't think humans should.

Kevin Micalizzi: Yeah. I mean, it almost just becomes performative.

Phyl Terry: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, you know, shoot me now or as we said in LA when I was growing up, gag me with a spoon.

The Dot-Com Bust and Collaborative Gain's Origin
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Kevin Micalizzi: Love it. You formed Collaborative Gain around the time of the dot-com bust. And I'm sure there were a lot of career challenges. What, when, when did you start and what inspired you to kind of take that approach you were using to build your own business, to really help others in that job search, because it's, it's, it's such a novel approach to it.

Phyl Terry: So at the time I was CEO of a company called Creative Good and we were pioneers in customer experience and product management. People like Marty Kagan were our clients. And, you know, we, we were sort of flying high in the dot-com era and then the crash happened and it hurt us badly. We, we survived it, but just barely, you know, we had to lay everybody off more or less.

It was, uh, it was really, it broke my heart. It totally did. And of course it was very, we, we had to do the first round of layoffs just before Christmas of 2000.

Kevin Micalizzi: Painful.

Phyl Terry: It just killed me. And of course it was worse for the people we laid off. It was, it was just, it was just gut punch, you know, and we had built a great culture, you know, and I really cared about those people and we just, you know, we just crashed, right?

We couldn't, we had no funding. And so we, you know, we just, there was no magic source of money. And we ended up doing another round of layoffs, which was a total bummer. And we ended up, you know, down to like two or three people and, we made it through, but it was, I mean, it was a depression. That was a depression in the internet world.

It was a smaller world, but it was a depression. What we have today in the tech world, the tech world is way bigger. We have a recession route, you know, the number of people out of work relative to the number of people in work, it's not approaching what it was back in the dot com era. But, you know, a number of the people laid off today have been in jobs for 14 years, and this is the first time they've had to look.

Some of them are in their forties or fifties, whereas in the dot com era, we were all in it for just a few years and most of us were really, really young, you know, and, and it's easier to bounce back when you're young, it's still hard. And the people I laid off will tell you that was no fun for them. It was much worse, obviously, for them than it was for me.

But it was, you know, and that, you know, that, that was really when my passion for, you know, creating a program for people to manage their careers started. And because I started now advising and coaching a number of people who had been laid off in this wasteland that the internet was for a couple of years after the dot-com bust.

And, those of us who were still in jobs and that included people like Marissa Meyer at Google and Mary Moheed at Amazon and a woman named Elizabeth Peasley at Travelocity. I went and spoke to them and I said, you know, I'm thinking about creating. A community and a council that brings, you know, people who are working in product management together, would you, would you like something like that?

It's not a conference. There's not going to be speakers and sponsors. It's going to be a safe place for you to ask for help. And they were like, yeah, that sounds amazing. You know, and by the way, Elizabeth Peasley is still a part of the program today. She's a moderator of one of our product councils. She was VP of Product back then at Travelocity and, um, she's, she's just absolute dynamite, she's dynamite.

She's, we're so lucky. I'm so lucky. We're so lucky that she's been a part of the program since, since day one. You know, we have several people, Mary Baumgartner is moderating another council. She was on that first council and she was at HBO running the, their internet, stuff at the time. And this is, you know, going back to 2003.

Right. And she today is a moderator of one of our councils. You know, it's, it's a real community. I mean, it's. It's a business, but what people will tell you is that it feels like a community. You know, it's not transactional. It's long term. We're long term oriented. We have a number of people who've been members of it for 20 or 25 years who've used it to go from director of product to CEO of public companies.

You know, and I love that kind of longitudinal focus of Collaborative Gain. We, we're just not transactional. Yeah, we have, we have to collect fees because we have to have money to run the business, but you know, that's not what it's about. We collect the fees so we can create a community that will really help nurture people's careers over the long run and give them the kind of support that nobody gets, you know, where you can really be open and you build, I mean, you build deep friendships over many years. And, and that's a great, great, great good. You know, we live in a world where people are lonely and they lack friendships. So yes, you know, I'm focused on helping people, you know, get jobs, get promoted, whatever. But at the end of the day, I really want to help them get friendships, build community and support that transcends, you know, whatever job they

Kevin Micalizzi: Right, right. But what, what brought you to shift that perspective, um, from, you know, helping those currently in a job to putting in what, what was it, 10 years to build this program for job seekers?

Reinventing the Job Search
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Phyl Terry: Well, you know, so I don't, I'm not like a career coach, right? And I don't, I don't actually have a business around career coaching, I mean, around job, coaching. I'm a, I coach people in jobs, but I wasn't, but what happened is a number of these, Members of the councils, you know, would inevitably leave a job or get laid off and we'd have conversations.

And it was like, you know, I started advising them, you know, without charging, but really seeing that the way people look for a job was just upside down, it was just bad and that we needed to bring a product management lens to redefining this product, call it the job search product, if you will. Right.

People were just spraying and praying. They weren't thinking about what they wanted. They weren't thinking about what the market was, where the market was at. It was just, it was, and you know, of course people don't know how to look for a job, you know, because they spend most of their time hopefully in a job.

So their expertise isn't product management or marketing or GM or whatever it is. And so once in a while, when they need to look for a job, they don't know how to do it. And the way it works has not been reinvented. Like we created things like Indeed and LinkedIn, but those were not a reinvention of the job search itself.

They brought important tools. I mean, we didn't have the ability to network the way we do today with LinkedIn. It's a great tool. I love that tool, you know, and they brought, you know, jobs from the classifieds in the newspaper in a local city to a national or even global thing like, like Indeed. Those are important programs, but what they didn't touch is how people went about looking and how they thought about themselves and how they approached the market.

They didn't touch the loneliness of it. When you leave a job, You're usually working on a team. You're leading a team. You have all, and then you're all by yourself, you know, and that amplifies insecurity, fear, anxiety, which everyone felt. That's an important point from Never Search Alone, which is people think, "Oh, I'm the only one who feels the fear and insecurity," no accomplished CEOs feel the fear and insecurity. Every single person goes through a job search of any kind, a board search, a job, feels the insecurity and fear and loneliness. And it's just, I, I can't believe, given my experience with councils, and then my mom started the first one in 1960, and I did the first one in college, and then with McKinsey and the CEOs, that it took me this long to do this.

Actually, the question isn't why did I do it? Why? Why didn't I do it earlier? You know, it's so obvious that we need this kind of support for everyone who's looking for a job, right?

The Journey to Candidate Market Fit
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Phyl Terry: And that we need a structured program. And so, uh, after the dot-com bubble burst and things started to get better, I started to think about this and then the great financial crisis came along and then that led to some layoffs and I'm like, God, we have to do this better.

And so I just started testing and iterating and it took me about 10 years to write the book, but it took me about 20 years in total to iterate the approach. It took 20 years for me to coin Candidate Market Fit. I, I finally nailed that just before the book was done. I just, can you believe that it's, again, that's such an obvious concept.

Of course, right? But, um, but we didn't have, it was just, it's been a neglected area. As a society, we have not paid attention to the methodology of the job search, to how we think about, we have not brought our best minds. So, you know, I tried to tap into the smartest people I know, like Allison Mnookin, who's a professor at Harvard Business School and a former CEO.

Her Mnookin two-pager is in the book is an important part of the approach. So I tapped into all these smart minds. I did 300 interviews. I had hundreds of people test the book. I got, went through 400 drafts. You know, I, I wanted to create something that was a real contribution to how we think about looking for a job. And I think I might, I think I might've achieved that. I think, I think it is. It's not, I think it adds something new.

Kevin Micalizzi: Oh, I'd most definitely, I would agree.

Building a Lasting Community
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Kevin Micalizzi: I wanna first acknowledge the, the fact that you have people in your Collaborative Gain councils that have been there for so many years, that outlives almost all the communities I see.

Phyl Terry: Yeah.

Kevin Micalizzi: That's phenomenal.

Phyl Terry: Real community is long lasting, right? So there's a lot of community in the business world, but they're short term. They're short term and they're often transactional in nature. Um, so I wanted something longterm. Now there's a trade off. With Collaborative Gains councils where I have people in there for 20 years, 25 years, whatever.

Well, we haven't been going for 25 years, so it's 22 years at this point. When you have that, there's a trade off. You have to, To build that kind of environment, you're not going to quickly scale. So I don't think that kind of long lasting community scales. I think it's, I think this isn't software.

This is people and relationships. And, so, you know, but in my day job, I was helping companies scale by helping them build better product management teams and, and customer experience. But in my evening job, I was building this community of people in that world. But. But I was, I was taking it offline and creating real, real community based around trust, around asking for help, around real commitment to each other and to being vulnerable.

And if you can scale that by the way, I haven't learned how, so I, what I've scaled is not the size of the community. It's the depth. Is the depth and longevity.

Kevin Micalizzi: Right. And if your goal is now to create more councils, but keep the size manageable, I think that's phenomenal because if you try to get 30, 50 people into a council, you lose that personal connection.

Phyl Terry: Oh, no. Yeah. It needs to stay small.

Creating the Never Search Alone Community
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Phyl Terry: And now with Never Search Alone, I said to myself, you know what? People are so focused when they're looking for a job, they're willing to put in extra work. I bet we could create a free community where people run these themselves with the methodology, exercises, and training and support from us.

But I wanted to make it free for two reasons, three reasons. One, I wanted to honor my mom. But two, I also wanted to make it clear that if you join a job search council and part of the Never Search Alone community, whether you're a moderator of that council or a member, you own that. You're responsible.

We'll give you the tools and we'll give you training and support, but we can't hold your hand. And, I don't want to hold your hand because one of the great things you need to learn as a job seeker and as a leader is to take what I call, "become the I in village." There may not be an I in team, but there's an I in village.

Okay. The I individual, independent, responsible, but with a village of support around yourself. And if I were to put together an expensive program, first of all, I couldn't reach that many people with it, which I want to, I want to really, redefine how people look for a job at a large level, cultural level.

But then also they would become, they would tend to become passive and expect to be taken care of as customers. And I want them to be active leaders of their own search, right?

And, I, you know, I think, I think we've made at least a modest, contribution around that.

Kevin Micalizzi: Definitely. And, and the fact that you're over 3000 of these peer councils is Never Search Alone is phenomenal.

I I came across the community when you were at 200,

Phyl Terry: Oh yeah, so what council, what number of council were you on? 290.

Did you moderate that?

Kevin Micalizzi: I did not initially, but then picked that up.

The Role of Moderators in Job Search Councils
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Phyl Terry: And so for your listeners who are looking for a job and thinking about joining the Never Search Alone community, first of all, do you recommend it and do you recommend they become a moderator.

Kevin Micalizzi: Highly recommend both. There,

Phyl Terry: why?

Kevin Micalizzi: When you're a moderator, there are so many resources supporting you at the kind of meta level so that you can help run things effectively for your team. But, that moderator is so incredibly important to the success of that council and everyone in it. I've noticed, you know, job search councils that don't have a strong moderator or who have kind of a A laissez faire moderator..

Phyl Terry: Yeah. Are not as effective.

Kevin Micalizzi: not getting as much of it

Phyl Terry: Yeah. They're not getting as much out of it. And you as a moderator, yeah, you get more support, which helps you in your job search, but you also help support these others, which also boosts your own confidence, doesn't it? And gives you a sense of, you know, meaning and purpose that, you know, you can very much lose when you're out in the job search by yourself.

Kevin Micalizzi: Absolutely.

Phyl Terry: I'm really glad you did that. Thank you.

Kevin Micalizzi: Yeah.

The Value of Diverse Perspectives
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Kevin Micalizzi: I want to ask you one question about the, job search councils. So when you do your peer councils for Collaborative Gain, you are bringing together product managers, and the product managers are, you know, all coming in with the domain expertise and learning how to be vulnerable, how to ask questions.

But I've noticed with the Never Search Alone community, the focus is much more on finding others, at the same level in their career as you, but not necessarily with the same discipline. And at first it kind of surprised me. I thought, okay, maybe it's just, you know, not enough people have signed up yet.

Phyl Terry: Right.

Kevin Micalizzi: But, I've found, I really appreciate the diversity of perspective. Was that intended in what you built?

Phyl Terry: Yes, yeah. And by the way, even with our paid councils, so we have, we have a number of paid councils. And to be clear, typically the company sponsors the executive. They're usually a director, VP, Chief Product Officer, or a CEO, GM, whatever. And we have some that are all product. And then we have like, we have some C level councils where you'll have a CPO, a CTO, a CMO.

It's cross functional. Because the more senior you get, what your job is about, is influencing across the organization as well as down through the organization, right? So that's very important. That's really valuable. But earlier in your career, you're very focused on your domain. And so we reflect that. With Never Search Alone, though, we found, some of the councils, some of the job search councils are only product people, and some of them are a mix.

And, and, you know, we have an algorithm that basically looks at who's applied and brings people together, allowing peer level. I like, and I write about this in the book. I like the mixed discipline groups, because a couple of reasons. One, it's always helpful. They're, you're going to really be able to tap into some different networks.

You know, if you put product managers together, don't know each other, you're going to have different networks. But if you put a product manager and a marketing person and so on together that don't know each other, boy, those networks are going to be really different. And those, those are important, but also they're going to come with a different perspective and they're not going to be competing with you for a job.

So they're looking for marketing jobs, not product jobs. In fact, if they go grab a marketing job, they might know about a product opening in that company and be able to bring you along. Yeah. So I like the diversity, but I leave it open to people when they create their own job search, because you can either create your own job search council and tap into us, or you can come to us and we'll match you with other job seekers.

If you're going to do it on your own, I love the diversity. You know, I recommend it. I think it brings more viewpoints, perspectives and networks.

Kevin Micalizzi: And it's such a strong community with, with an accompanying Slack community that you can find people from other disciplines, or I'm sorry, if you're on a mixed council, but you can, you can find others, you know, who do the same thing you do, and get that support.

Phyl Terry: And there just a great heart to this community?

Kevin Micalizzi: I love it.

Phyl Terry: Isn't yeah, I think it's surprising to people, right? Because you don't expect that in a business community, which tends to be more networky or transactional or something like that. There's people who come to Never Search Alone seem to have a real heart to them and a willingness to be giving and open and to ask for help in a vulnerable way, which is giving counterintuitive to many people.

Kevin Micalizzi: Right. But I, I almost think I shouldn't say, but. Yes, I think that the fact that you structured this in a way that people come in and they feel vulnerable and feel connected. I think opens that door for them to, to, feel like they could give more.

Phyl Terry: We hope it's a teaching machine for asking for help, for vulnerability, for trust, for community, you know, for psychological safety. You know, we want you to get a job, but we also want you to have this experience, right? And because there's cultural change we're going after here. A kind of cultural change where, which takes time. And we know this, you know, we're, we're in it for the long haul, you know, my volunteer, it's all volunteer team. The volunteer, the core volunteer team is in it. I asked people to make a two year commitment, but the core volunteers are like, I'm in it for 10 years, 20 years, whatever, you know, they're in it for the, for the long haul.

It's amazing. And that's the kind of timeframe you need to think about. If you want to start to shift the culture a little bit to a culture where people recognize, you know, you can think of what we're doing in a way. It's operationalizing concepts that, that we didn't invent, others, like Brene Brown talks about vulnerability. Amy Edmondson, the Harvard business school talks about psychological safety, amazing work they've done. We're operationalizing that we're creating a community where people learn those things by putting them into practice in their job search for the job search councils and for their career development in the the Collaborative Gain councils.

Kevin Micalizzi: right. right. And, and for those listening, it's phyl.org and I'll add links to all the stuff we're talking about in the show notes.

Phyl Terry: Yeah. PHYL baby.

It's easy to remember. Fill with a Y.

Future Plans and Projects
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Kevin Micalizzi: Totally. So Phyl, I know you talked about, your, your Never Lead Alone book is in process. What else do you have planned? Cause I feel like you just. You come up with these amazing ideas and execute on them.

I'm just super curious what you've got in store.

Phyl Terry: What else is in the pot? Well, okay. So I have, I have a memoir I've been working on for years. I really actually started working on it in college. I had a pretty, uh, topsy turvy childhood. And, you know, the hook of the memoir, kind of one of the things I'm really playing with is my journey of learning how to go through hard experiences and not get victimized. You know, I talk about the difference between the verb and the noun. Like, you can, you can be, you can be victimized. You can have gone through a kind of a trauma or abuse. And hopefully get help and support for that. But not turn that into your identity. Not become the noun. Not become a victim. Victimized versus victim, right? And, and that's really important. And we live in a world where I think a lot of, we don't have enough conversation about that and where there's, you know, there's a certain number of people who, and I feel very empathetic towards this, cause I've done this myself, go through something hard and then get really victimized by it and become a victim.

Turn that into an identity. And, and I think that's really problematic. And I, and I think it's, I see this with a lot of men, I think it's particularly problematic for men and especially men in their middle ages, they can get totally stuck. Right. And so I wanted to kind of tell this story about, you know, my journey.

I, uh, what I went through and, you know, I was in a, I was in a wheelchair on welfare, you know, walk up apartment in the early nineties in New York. And my therapist said to me, yeah, this sucks, "what do you want to do?" And I'm like, well, what do you mean? What do I want to do? My life is over. I'm in a wheelchair, welfare, and a walk up like, what can I do?

I can. And she's like, no, I know it's really, really hard, but what do you want to do? You, you still have choices. What kind of life do you want to lead given these constraints? And it really pissed me off at first. I wanted her to take care of me. I wanted her to support my sense of victimization and my victim identity.

And she just wouldn't do it. And, you know, that led to, that led to everything I've done since then, you know, and that question, you know, what do you want to do? It's sort of the heart of the Never Search Alone book.

The Importance of Asking for Help
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Phyl Terry: It sucks to get laid off. I feel total empathy for that. You know, what do you want to do now?

You know, are you willing to say, okay, I'm going to let that identity go and embrace myself as, as an individual who has power and agency and independence and build a web of support around myself. Cause yes, I was able to take her up on that offer to figure out what I want to do. And I built this life that ended up, you know, getting out of the wheelchair, getting the medical support I needed, you know, going to work on Wall Street, then going to business school, you know, and then becoming an entrepreneur.

And then writing books, but none of this have I done alone. You know, I have had councils and support and a village around me all the time, and I have had to really struggle along the way with letting go of my humiliation, my anger, my, my anger at the unfairness, the world is unfair and it sucks. Now, what do you want to do?

You know, going back to her name is Nancy Green, the therapist I worked with back in 1990. Now, what do you want to do? It sucks. Now what, you know, and, and so I've, I'm, I'm working on that memoir and, and I've been thinking and, you know, I've sort of been working on it for a long time. I didn't finish it earlier in part because I knew I needed to grow some more before I knew what it was.

I wanted to, what the story was, you know, and I think that's, I think that's what the story is. And so, that's on a slow burn. It's possible I never finish it. We'll see what else I end up doing. And I, and I want to see if people want the book, you know, I'll, I'll have some early readers and see if they think it's a contribution and meaningful.

At the least it's been critical to my development. If I never publish it at all. Right.

Phyl's Memoir and Personal Journey
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Phyl Terry: I also am planning future books like Never Age Alone, right? As we get older, we need a support group, so that we can manage everything. Certainly our health. But our health and what, to what degree we have wealth and family and friendships, so that we get the support.

So, you know, many people are growing lonelier. Many people are growing older and lonelier and isolated. And it's loneliness is more, is worse than smoking for your health. And, and it's intimidating to go to doctors and how do you make decisions, you know, and sometimes you have a spouse that's involved and sometimes you don't, but even if you have a spouse that's involved to have that extra support group, where you can really talk through, you know, the questions of what treatment you're going to do, or. Are you doing the checkups you need to be doing, you know, and are you doing the social activities or the other things. How do you want to, how do you want to create your life? How can you growing old sucks now, what do you want to do? You know, and it does, you know, I'm, I'm still young at heart, but I'm getting older and you know, things fall apart.

Kevin Micalizzi: That's unfortunately true.

Phyl Terry: So that's, that's something that I've been thinking about. It's a lovely question though. What else, you know, I've, I'm always, I always have a hundred ideas and generally maybe one of them makes it out, you know, and I have ways of testing and thinking about that. And, and where we go from there, we really want to grow the, the world of business reading group, the WBRG.

I mean, we're, we're at a point now where we've got like seven faculty members and we're having, you know, a hundred students a summer or something like that, it's a summer program. But it is a great program. I'm very proud to say, and I'm not touting myself when I say that I'm really touting Warren Buffett because the core of the curriculum are his shareholder letters, which see what happened is that the pandemic hit in 2020.

And high school, I don't have kids, but high school kids in my life, you know, cousins, friends, whatever, suddenly we're out of classrooms and they weren't getting any live instruction. So I scrambled and I started a zoom based, instruction for the world of business, you know, and I just, and I, you know, I'm, I'm a long time reader of Warren Buffett.

So I just started using his letters. And I didn't know that it would work with high school students. They love his letters. I mean, this is the best writing out there in the business world. They loved it. They loved the real world examples and the philosophy, the ethics, the leadership, the finance, and discovering that they can be a part of that conversation.

And so it was, it was a mitzvah. It was like, wow, I couldn't believe that this was so impactful. And so I ended up turning it into a whole, into a whole program, but we're very early days. We're very early days with that.

Expanding the Never Search Alone Platform
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Phyl Terry: We're very early days with Never Search Alone. With Never Search Alone, we want to build a platform.

It's going to take a couple of years, I think, for me to raise the money from the job seek. I don't want to get investors involved because that's a whole different dynamic. I want this to have. From the people who've, I asked people who've gone through the program, if they'll make a donation towards the building of the platform and people give $30, or $50, $500 or whatever.

I'm also on a speaking tour right now around AI. AI, and what I call the 20 year curve, helping people think about cutting through the hype and think about what's real. And I'm donating all my speaking fees to this pot of money that will go to building a platform. I really want to build a platform so that when people join a job search council, they have a login, they have a home for their job search council, all the tools, you know, and it's contextual, depending on the stage of the job search, they see the tools that are appropriate to that stage.

And I want to be able to have a section where recruiters can come in where we can charge recruiters to come in and recruit from the community and use their money to improve the program and services and stuff like that. So, yeah, so, you know, we have big hopes. We, we'll, we'll have to see what the world allows us to do.

Final Thoughts and Call to Action
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Phyl Terry: If any of your listeners want to volunteer, by the way, we have a lot of openings for volunteers at phyl.org/volunteer. You know, we're looking for video editors and, and a PR person, and we're looking for data analysts and other things like that. So, yeah.

Kevin Micalizzi: I love this Phyl. So Phyl, you, you gave me a term I'm now going to use. You are my DoD mentor.

Phyl Terry: Hope you use it. I want to popularize that term. I, everyone should have their own DoD mentor.

Kevin Micalizzi: It's a phenomenal way to think about it.

Phyl Terry: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, so Buffett and Munger, Catherine Graham is one of my DoD mentors. She was the longtime CEO of the Washington Post company. The first woman to run a large company in the United States.

And she has a wonderful, wonderful, autobiography memoir called 1997. Won the Pulitzer Prize. Everyone should read that book. I talk about it in Never Search Alone. And, I've gotten to know her family a little bit. And, and that's been great, but I never knew her. And, you know, she, she, she and her family are definitely DoD mentors of mine.

And one of the great things about Katharine Graham is that she was unbelievably good at asking for help. And it really, it really powered her through some critical decisions and built that company, built her career and built, and built a path for women to follow, you know, she was, she was on the cutting edge of women coming into business and she asked for help a lot, really, really moving, very, she's a, she's a teacher, to me.

Kevin Micalizzi: That's awesome.

Phyl Terry: yeah.

Kevin Micalizzi: So Phyl, thank you so much for jumping in to do this with me. I know you keep an incredibly busy schedule.

Phyl Terry: Yeah, well, I'm glad you're doing this and thanks for being a moderator of Job Search Council 290 and continuing to promote the program. You know, we're we're still very early days I want your listeners to know we're in it for the long haul We want to have a hundred thousand job search councils.

We want a million job search councils.

Kevin Micalizzi: That would be phenomenal.

Phyl Terry: And you know, we really we want anyone laid off or let go to have a powerful program that is free. A community there to help them with heart and smarts.

Kevin Micalizzi: Love it.

Phyl Terry: Thank you for spreading the word. Yeah.