There’s no roadmap to reach your goals | life coach

Michael Bolognino [0:01]
I prefer to refer to myself as a life coach versus a career coach. 

I have a hard time identifying with career coach, executive coach, life coach. I consider myself a human coach. The thing that unites my client base is not their profession. It's that there's something that they know they want to be different. They most likely can't really articulate what it is. They want to figure it out and they want to go make it real. That's what I do, whether you're an opera director or tech VP. 

[intro]

Dave Weich [0:40]
Hi, I’m Dave Weich, and you’re listening to Work-Shaped Life.

Michael Bolognino grew up just outside of Albany, New York, and began working at a young age at his family’s Italian deli.

What was your first job? I bagged groceries at the Big D Supermarket in Framingham, Massachusetts. 

We all start somewhere. And oh, the places we'll go. 

Because it's not often obvious what's going to make you successful at work. To be good at your job...and find gratification in doing it? A lot of the time, navigating a career feels more like guesswork and prayer. It's hard enough to figure out what you want to do (that someone will pay you to do, I mean). How do you make that a reality?

Fourteen episodes into Season 1 of Work-Shaped Life, we figured it was about time to consult  a coach.
 
[interview]

Dave Weich [1:43]
I'm curious about who your clients are and how they find you. And what is it, do you think, about the way you approach this work that creates a fit sometimes when people do say, “Yeah, I think I would like your help.”

Michael Bolognino [1:57]
Yeah, let me answer the first part. Who are my clients? They really do range. When I left my tech career 20 years ago, I assumed it would be all tech people. In fact, I assumed it would be all tech marketers that I would support. To my delight, that has not proven to be true.

I work with people across various industries. I've worked with a professional female skateboarder who was in the Olympics. I've worked with a veterinarian. And our job is to answer four questions. The questions are: Where am I? Where do I think I want to go? Where do I actually want to go? And how do I get there? So each client I work with is curious about those four questions.

Dave Weich [2:42]
Those are questions that you're handing to them before you even start the work? That you're basically saying, This is the path we're gonna walk down.

Michael Bolognino [2:48]
Yeah, that's how I describe it to them. And I use that language very deliberately because what a client thinks they want and what they actually want, that's the magic of this work, is getting really clear on that. Because what we think we want isn't always the actual underlying desire that we have. And that's what creating space and coaching allows for. 

One of the things that separates therapy and coaching is that we don't only dig in and get clarity, but we also act. So coaching is about being and doing. So for example, at the end of every session you have with me, you have homework, which I call “takeout.” And that's some kind of action, some kind of movement that moves you towards where we've uncovered you want to go. Coaching is forward-looking. From here, where do I want to go?

Dave Weich [3:35]
Working with people in a variety of fields, what do you find connects them? Because I imagine that there are more connections than even the client would necessarily realize. 

Michael Bolognino [3:48]
A hundred percent. One thing that stands out to me about this work is that I don't really know a lot about what my clients actually do. We don't spend a lot of time talking about the meetings they have or what their goals are at the office. That's irrelevant. It's more about where are they lacking confidence? Where are they feeling inauthentic? Where are they holding back? Like those questions unite, or those characteristics unite all of my clients. So it's less about what they're doing in the field and more about how can they be their best, biggest selves.

Dave Weich [4:23]
So, stepping back from that, you worked at Google for, was it 13 years?

Michael Bolognino [4:31]
Thirteen years, yep.

Dave Weich [4:33]
How did you even get to Google? What brought you into that tech world?

Michael Bolognino [4:38]
It was all an accident. So I studied creative writing in college. Poetry. I am a poet. I haven't written in a long time, but that's where I left college, and I moved to Seattle because of love.

I arrived there without a job. I worked at Starbucks at first. And then I saw a job opening on the Tufts University Career Board, which is where I went to college. And it was for a marketing assistant job at a company called Cranium. And they made board games. And I thought, well, I need an actual job that pays me better than Starbucks. And working on board games sounds interesting. And I did some communications work in college, so I'll try it. 

And then basically I got the job. It was an incredible, foundational first career for me because it spanned beyond any one industry. It was run like a tech startup. So yes, we made games but it was founded by Microsoft, former Microsoft employees. And so I learned all about how startups work. I learned about marketing. I learned about being scrappy and kind of having my hands in all the different kinds of pots. And from there I basically woke up 20 years later with a marketing career as a leader in marketing. So it was an accident, and it all started with that first job at Cranium.

So it was in 2008 I left Cranium. And I worked at a couple startups and I started to get into it. I started to like the idea of this kind of scrappy emerging tech. One of them was a wiki company, so we made online communities that anyone could create. And then I got a job at Picnic where it was photo editing. And Picnic got acquired by Google. And I was a contractor at the time, so I didn't get to move along with all the employees, but I got the chance to interview. 

And when I got that opportunity to interview, everything just came down to that focus of I need to get this job at Google. It felt imperative to me. I had this opportunity, I had the chance to interview, and so I treated it like I used to treat swim meets. 

So I was a competitive swimmer for my whole life. In swimming, I would put my goal time up all over my house. I would put it in my car, I'd put it in the bathroom on the mirror. I did the same thing for Google. I wrote I will get this job at Google and I plastered it, you know, in the kitchen cabinets. So I psyched myself up because I knew that there was this opportunity that might teach me a lot and change my life. And so I did everything I possibly could to get the job. And I had, I think, six hours of interviews across two weeks and I got it. And that started the next chapter of my tech career.

Dave Weich [7:03]
I have a theory that people don't recognize how relevant the rest of their life is to their work. Do you find that to be true? I mean, it's funny to me that you would sort of bring what you've learned from swimming to your application process with Google.

Michael Bolognino [7:22]
Yeah. I think that this is the beauty of coaching, too, is that everything's on the table. All elements of your life feed into your career. And this, you know, I invite my clients to share their whole life with me. And I because if we only look at how they're showing up at the office, we're missing out on a ton of information from their lives. So it's critical that we go beyond just what work looks like. So, yes, I do feel that our experiences with sports, as children, the clubs that we were in, things outside of work that really turn us on, that's all clues that help us figure out either how do we get healthier and set ourselves up to do the work we're currently doing in a healthier, better way, or how do we tune in to all that information to figure out what we actually want to do next. So it's 100% relevant. 

And I would argue, at least using myself as an example, I came back to swimming 30 years after I quit in college. And it is also beneficial as a regulator. It helps me stay mentally in check, it helps me stay physically in check. And so a big part of my work with my clients is on their own routines. What is it that they're doing outside of work for their bodies and for their minds that is gonna help them make the changes they wanna make? So it's all related.

Dave Weich [8:41]
Yeah. I noticed on your website you talked about leading product and brand campaigns at Google, in addition, I'm quoting, “to developing well-being initiatives and workshops and coaching internal clients as part of…” 

Was that just personal interest that drew you to well-being initiatives or was that another case where you were just kind of drawn into something and then recognized an affinity?

Michael Bolognino [9:02]
Probably the latter. So and that's been true in my whole life. I subconsciously move towards things and then sometimes it turns out that it's something that I actually want to bring into focus in my life. So, at Google, for a long time I was very happy. I had a lot of freedom. I was working on really exciting campaigns.

We had a lot of resources, we had a lot of flexibility, and I loved that. And then that started to change and I started to feel more detached from the work. I started getting less fulfillment from it and I honestly just, I think out of necessity, started to connect with my coworkers. And I found out at Google that there was a program called the Guru Program, which was basically coaching-light. And I signed up for it because something that I knew when I reflected on my career of 20 years that really lit me up was supporting my coworkers. 

I've always done that. People have always put time on my calendar for years, for decades, to talk about their relationship with their managers or relationships outside of work or work-life balance or how to pitch themselves for their performance review. And I never really connected the dots. So when I joined the Guru Program, it gave a little bit of structure and gave me a taste of this other way that I could serve people. And then from that, Google had a resource of all these different coaching programs that were available. And I started to figure out that there was this other kind of language and career that might be out there for me. And so I actually got certified as a coach while I was at Google. And that was a core component of how I made it possible.

Dave Weich [10:33]
What was it that  gave you the confidence to make that jump to say that not only should I leave this position, but this is something that I believe I can do and would be good at?

Michael Bolognino [10:46]
It took a lot of experimentation and a lot of education. Once I identified that being in service of other people was something that was interesting to me and that might be something that could pay my bills, the first thing I did was I said, okay, let me learn. Let me figure out some frameworks. So I got certified at a program called CTI. And after I completed that program, it confirmed for me that this is a field that I'm interested in. There are these modalities that I think are curious, but I still have a full-time job, I still need health insurance, I don't have a business plan. So what are the questions that I need to answer in order to move me closer to a potential exit? 

And so what I did was for a year, I was really deliberate, and on Mondays and Wednesdays and Friday mornings, from nine to noon I blocked my calendar—and I had the luxury of doing that because I worked East Coast with mostly West Coast people. So I blocked my calendar, and I coached as many people as I possibly could for a year. And I asked myself three questions. Do I like it? Am I any good at it; am I impacting these people? And will people pay me for this? And so for a year I experimented with that. The answers were yes, yes, and yes. And then I stayed for another two years, and here's why.

I got the data that said that I liked it, I was good at it, and I could make money on it, but I still had this mentality that I required the stability of having a corporate job in order to live the life that I wanted. So I had to spend the next two years breaking into that.

Dave Weich [12:15]
How'd you do that?

Michael Bolognino [12:17]
Good question. I hired a coach, first thing.

Dave Weich [12:19]
Okay.

Michael Bolognino [12:20]
So you know, that that really helped me. But I also got real. I defined what the life that I wanted to live looked like. I hadn't ever been conscious about that. And it looked a lot like the life I had at Google. So I had a good sense. And what I mean by the life I want means like I wanna travel twice a year. I wanna go out on a winter vacation, a summer vacation. I wanna be able to have my two dogs fed and healthy and taken care of. I wanna be able to pay my mortgage. I wanna be able to buy gifts for my family. I really was curious about laying that out. And then I said, okay, well what does that actually cost me?

And knowing that number was curious because I had never thought about it before. I never really had to. So then I had the number and I had the sense, right, of what I wanted my life to look like. And then we looked at our finances and we said, okay, let's make three budgets. 

One is the budget that keeps our life exactly the same. One is a medium-tier budget where we're scaling back, but we're still doing a lot of things we like. And then we're the bottom budget is just before we move in with my parents at age 42, right? So what my husband and I did is we spent three months living at the medium budget.

So it was our second experiment. What does life actually look like if we scale back? And we completed that, and our consensus was we could do that. If we have to spend a couple years at this medium level of life, it's worth it in order for me to build my business out. So those two things really helped me start to crack open this idea of stability only meaning Google salary.

Dave Weich [13:54]      
Right. Do you find that your typical client is comfortable with that degree of patience and experimentation?

Michael Bolognino [14:00]
It's such a good question. I think if people come to the conclusion that they want to work with a coach, they're ready—and they often want answers and change immediately. So there is some impatience at first. I do notice that. It takes about three months to kind of clean up your house and clean up your boundaries so that—and clean up your leaks—so that you can then lift your head up and look around. Because if you are all jumbled and you come into coaching, it's gonna be really hard for us to clear out room so that you can figure out what you want.

If the system that you've been operating in that's keeping you stuck where you are remains. So we have to dismantle that first and create room for you. So yeah, people can be impatient sometimes, clients, but once we get to that three-month mark, it's been my experience that they recognize the value of that and how they're then set up to do more of the forward-looking thinking. Yeah.

Dave Weich [14:53]
One thing on your website that intrigued me and that I could kind of relate to was the idea that it's not always about quitting your job. That the easy answer, and it's always the bright, shiny new thing is attractive in any context.

Michael Bolognino [15:08]
Yeah. Yeah, and ejecting is also tempting. Like get me out of this. Like, over there is gonna be better. Yeah.

Dave Weich [15:14]
Is there a kind of onboarding process in your work with clients where you're really just it's more about expectation-setting? Because I would imagine that people come to you, the ideas have been spinning in their head for some period of time and they almost need to reset.

Michael Bolognino [15:31]
Absolutely. And I'd say one characteristic that most of my clients share when they first come is that they're stuck. There's somewhere where they're just jammed in there and they're not…they've come to the point where they can't figure out what they want or what they want to do. So that's usually the biggest symptom. 

And yes, onboarding is really intentional in my work. And I sometimes meet with potential clients once, twice, three times for free, so that we can ensure that we're extremely clear on what they're setting out to do and how my work would help them figure it out. So there's a lot of conversation and clarification, and I don't want to say goal setting, it's more of areas of focus-setting that we have to do even before the client is a yes.

That's super important because I've learned the hard way. Sometimes a client's been a yes after five minutes and they're not ready to do the work. And then we have to unwind that relationship or even end the coaching relationship. So even though it's an investment of my time, I find that it's worth spending one, two, three hours with a potential client to define it together.

Dave Weich [16:39]
Is there a typical span of time that your relationship with a client lasts, or at least the core section of it? Or is it just different person-to-person?

Michael Bolognino [16:49]
Yeah, so my program is six months long to start. I used to do three months, and what I found was that three months is really what it takes to kind of get clear on where you're leaking your energy, what boundaries you need to put in place, how you can kind of arm yourself to lift your head up and then look around and go, okay, what do what do I actually want? So I've extended it now to a six months minimum.

And basically, we meet 12 times across six months. And at the 10th session, we have a check-in with each other,  where we check in on, okay, what progress have you made towards what you set out to accomplish? What room is there still for this work? What new opportunities have come up in this work? And then we discuss it and we either agree to continue the work beyond the six months or the client completes. And I'd say three quarters of my clients re-enroll and one quarter complete after the first six month period. 

Dave Weich [17:46]
Do you recognize now how you might have ideas that you might have had starting out that were misguided?

Michael Bolognino [17:57]
Yeah. I wasn't sure how much I would take on from the client's journey and their struggle. I'm a very empathic person and I think I struggled as a kid and even in high school and college with taking on the emotions of my family and my friends. What is so interesting is that that does not happen with coaching. I am in full service of my clients, but they're fully responsible for their worlds. And so there's this beautiful border that feels impervious to me. So I don't find that I'm taking on the emotions or the feelings of my clients in a way that maybe years ago I would have worried I would have. 

And a part of that is because I also believe in all of my clients, truly. And that's a big part of coaching and the way I was trained is that the belief is that they have the answers. I don't have the answers. I'm not handing them advice. That's a big misconception, is that a coach is someone that's gonna guide you. My belief is that you know where you need to go. I help get that out of you by being here fully present, listening to you, mirroring what I'm hearing you say, and challenging you.

And then helping you with accountability and movement so that you can go get it.

Dave Weich [19:12]
What are misconceptions that come up a lot in that gap between thinking what you want and actually what you want?

Michael Bolognino [19:20]
We come with a lot of limitations and a lot of beliefs that hold us back. So if I'm doing my job right, the client isn't going from A to B. Like if they're imagining, okay, I'm coming to coaching and I'm at point A and my goal is to get to point B, if I'm doing my job right, they're getting to point B-prime. It's a place that they can't imagine because they're operating from a set of beliefs and understanding that kind of keep them where they are.

So my job is to help them say, okay, well, what if we really poked at some of these beliefs you have or some of these limitations that you think are fact? What if they're actually not true? Or what if there's another way? What does that open up for you? How does that change where you actually want to go? That's a very common thing that we work on.

Dave Weich [20:13]
How has it been running your business? You need to find clients. I was curious, for instance, you list a bunch of companies that you've engaged with on your website, a really wide variety of companies. I mean, Hinge to Oxfam. 

Michael Bolognino [20:28]
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Weich [20:30]
Okay, what do these things have in common? Well, they have people in common, probably more than anything else. How has building the business been for you?

Michael Bolognino [20:38]
It's been exciting, it's been challenging. You know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. My family, I'm surrounded. My father owned an Italian deli and was an entrepreneur. My mother was a real estate agent. My husband is a designer who works for himself. My brother works for himself. My sister-in-law works for herself. I've been surrounded my whole life. I was the oddball corporate person. So, in a way, I've been trained with… I've been inspired by entrepreneurs. So that's Point A. 

Point B is I love a challenge. I love operationalizing things. 

So when I set out to leave Google, I asked myself, “What's the dreamiest work setup I could think of that would deliver the income that I need?” And for the last three years—so I resigned three years ago—I have only coached clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays, period. And I've stuck to that.

And that has been so freeing for me because that means Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, to answer your other question, that's how I'm creating clients. I'm having conversations. I'm catching up with people that I love or former connections. The way that I create clients is through conversation and referral. Those are the two main ways. I don't pay for advertising. I don't have a content calendar. I have a very strict rule for myself that I only post on LinkedIn if I have something truly to say. I only post on Substack if I have a point to make.

So, having the structure of my coaching days, having those commitments of only posting content when I need to, and creating time so that I can do what I know is how I create clients, which is: connect with people. That's how I keep the system moving. And then also having two days where I coach, there's a simple mathematical equation. If I know what income I want to make and I know what I charge for six months, I know exactly how many clients I need to have on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

So, basically, the answer to your question is all these systems that I've put in place. Again, I didn't consciously set out and say, okay, I need to create a system for working two days a week, or I need to create a system for creating clients. That has happened organically as I've gone, and that's been the secret to me being able to be successful, is that I have structure.

Dave Weich [22:46]
One of the curiosities I have, you know: the work you do, no matter what you do, you carry around because it's who you interact with and what you learn, the kinds of questions that are in your head, the types of people that you're interacting with on a daily basis, either as a colleague or a client or what it might be. 

What did all that time in tech do for you to shape the way you see the world?

Michael Bolognino [23:13]
Hmm, there's a few answers. So I just told you about creating systems. The tech world told me about that. Operational design, which ironically, I ended my career at Google in marketing as an operations lead. And I found that to be the most creative time I was at Google because I was solving problems and creating systems. So that was a totally unknown, unexpected delight. So answer number one is I learned in tech about operations and systems. Two was working with people in high-stakes environments taught me how to communicate. It taught me how to speak to leadership. It gave me a fearlessness in my communication. So that would be the second thing. 

I think three would just be the people I was exposed to. It was a global company. I worked with people on every continent. You know, I worked with localizing teams that were translating our work into 120 languages. I got exposure to all different points of view and all different types of people. So I'd say those are the three main things from tech that informed me today.

Dave Weich [24:15]
Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's a single answer to finding a sort of gratifying career, but one refrain that just keeps coming through when I hear about people's paths, more than curiosity, it's actionable curiosity. Like people who are willing to engage in environments that you know make them uncomfortable. Certainly where they're not necessarily the expert in the room.

I just interviewed someone two days ago who said, “You know, in my twenties, I don't know, I just had so much energy and naivete, and I went and I reached out to business leaders across the city and just asked for informational interviews and I genuinely wasn't looking for a job. I felt like I needed to learn more.” And I do really feel like the single biggest roadblock to a typical person finding a gratifying career is the lack of understanding of what the options are.

Michael Bolognino [25:10]
Absolutely.

Dave Weich [25:11]
Until you engage, those options don't clarify.

Michael Bolognino [25:16]
It's really hard to evolve if you don't put yourself into new and uncomfortable situations. So if you don't make that phone call, you're not gonna move forward. You're gonna stay where you are. So there is bravery that is required. And bravery can come through in tiny increments with just experimentation. And that's why I think experimentation is a great way to kind of test the waters and put yourself out there in a way where you're setting out to understand and learn something. And then move on to your next experiment. So that's what I would say to that. 

And I always like to think about the story with my husband. He was working in marketing, really unhappy. And one Sunday he came home and he said, “I'm going to start an Instagram account and I'm going to create a bouquet of flowers every Sunday, take a picture of it, just once a week, just for a habit.” And he did that for a year. And in the process, he started to make a relationship with the people at the plant shop. And then he took a class at the plant shop and he loved that.

And then he ended up getting his horticultural certificate from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. And then that evolved into this, into that. And now he's a full-time designer who has his own landscaping and interiors design business. 

And so my point is that it was that little tiny step that he couldn't connect to the end result. But he took that step and he said, I'm gonna do this experiment, I'm gonna commit to this. And it evolved into something bigger than he could have imagined. So it requires you putting yourself out there to evolve.

Dave Weich [26:46]
I think part of the problem is that it sounds so cliche. You know, one step at a time, you don't know where it's leading, but I find there's very few situations where it's not actually true.

Michael Bolognino [26:57]
Yeah, I agree with you. I think sometimes we're forced to have a big leap that's maybe out of our control. A layoff. A partner passes away. But yeah, on the whole, small steps go a long way. 

I talk about this on my website, too. I don't think of decisions as big or small or good or bad. I think of a decision or a choice as a step towards your next decision or choice. And so that's how I keep the stakes lower for myself is, I'm gonna make this decision and I always have the ability to make another decision.

Dave Weich [27:32]
You mentioned layoffs. Are you seeing more clients in that context? That feels like a different conversation.

Michael Bolognino [27:39]
Yeah. The way that I notice layoffs impacting my clients is less that they're being laid off and more that there is now a culture of fear where the companies have a ton of power. And people have seen their coworkers get laid off for a couple of years now. One thing that comes into my work often is this tension between fear of keeping a job and how to adapt yourself and kind of do the kind of work you want to do. There's a lot of tension there because a lot of people are afraid to misstep. It feels very cutthroat to them. So I see layoffs both impacting people who get laid off and then also impacting people who still have jobs.

Dave Weich [28:21]
Right. Because it's just part of the landscape now. No matter where you are.

Michael Bolognino [28:26]
Absolutely. Same with AI. You know, almost every client I have is being encouraged or maybe even forced to use AI regularly and sometimes in a way that is, even spoken aloud, as a means of replacing them. This comes up in my work where people are being forced to use AI to teach AI how to do their jobs, and there's fear, there's a lot of fear around that as well.

Dave Weich [28:53]
Do you notice fundamental differences in the kinds of conversations you're having within that world, or do you actually just find that they're a different flavor of the same conversation?

Michael Bolognino [29:02]
AI is a very dominant topic for basically all of my tech clients. Another layer of it is that many of my clients are putting AI out into the world and they have conflicting feelings about AI personally. So that is another big part of this work, is how do you promote something that you have ambivalence about, or not even ambivalence, that you have maybe some pretty formed opinions about? There's a lot of conflict there. Because you want to keep your job too, right? 

It's like it's another layer. It's another layer of this kind of pressure. You don't want to get laid off. You want to be able to deliver and do your job, and you're being asked to do and promote something that maybe is out of alignment with your values. It's a tough time out there to be working in tech.

Dave Weich [29:56]
What is most interesting to you about the work you're doing now?

Michael Bolognino [30:00]
What is most interesting to me is that I get to be so up close to so many different kind of human beings. And no exaggeration, I see the magic and the power and the beauty of humans all day long. That's probably the most surprising thing about my work is what I get to see. And every single client I have is a magical person who is capable of so many things, and to see them find that out about themselves and believe it, that's the magic. 

That is why I do this. That makes it all worth it. So that's what comes to mind when you ask me that question.

Dave Weich [30:36]
Where do you see it going? Is there a way that you want your work and or your experience, frankly, of the world to evolve in the next few years?

Michael Bolognino [30:47]
I want to continue to provide a human resource for other human beings that want to evolve and want support and kind of counter this cultural shift we're having towards automation and AI. 

And you know, there's AI coaching. You can ask ChatGPT to be your coach today if you want to, right? That doesn't scare me because my clients are working with me because of my humanity. A machine is never gonna be able to deliver intuition and instinct and observation the way that a human can. And I wanna stand in that, and I wanna own that. And that looks like me continuing my role as a coach, but also not using any AI to write. I refuse to do that. Keeping it out of my world. 

So I think integrity is what comes up for me and, you know, my hope is that I can become even more human. It's a funny thing to say, but maintaining my humanity is my wish for myself.

Dave Weich [32:00]
As a person who graduated with a degree in poetry, what does it seem like now that you're looking back on it, that this is what I did for a big chunk of my life?

Michael Bolognino [32:12]
Yeah. It is a wild thing to look at, to look back on. I'd say what's so cool about my work today as a coach is that no, I'm not a poet, but metaphor is a big part of what I do. We point out connections between things that don't seem related. So it's not poetry, but it is a very creative practice. So it ties into that.

I always refer to the 20 years I spent in tech as an accident. I don't think that was ever on my plan. That was never my agenda was to be a marketing tech leader. But it was an accident that I'm so grateful for because of the things I just told you that I learned. But also, you know, the experiences it gave me. It brought me around the world. I have no regrets. 

And I think it actually informs my work also because it shows that planning isn't a guaranteed way to create a life. In fact, it's very hard to create an amazing life by planning it. You have to live it and you have to see where it takes you. And I think that really inspires me. And it proves to me that we're all figuring this out as we go. 
 
Dave Weich [32:23]
My personal experience in this realm, I majored in lit, I got a creative writing MFA. So my twenties were very…I was bartending, you know, it was that kind of life. And I met a woman, and I went to New Zealand with her because she had done a year of schooling there. And I met a woman in New Zealand whose job it was to lead people on backcountry tours around the world, like in the Andes and the Alps. Her company would fly her around, and she would lead people on eight-day excursions through the mountains. And it really stuck with me because at the time I just thought, That's a job? That’s something you can do?

Michael Bolognino [34:02]
Yeah, yeah. Here's what I would say to that. When we are in high school and we're going to college, we're asked to make some decisions that are hard to inform, like picking a major, for example. When you are seventeen, you may think you have a sense of what you want, but committing to something like a major even for four years, I think is a complex ask. And then take that further: when we graduate, same thing. We're expected to kind of have a pretty good sense of where we want to go. 

And so what I would say is my advice to young people would be, check in with yourself when you think about what you want and try to distinguish what you've been told you want, either by your family or society, and what you actually care about. 

And I'll give you a quick example. So I went to college as a pre-med. Pre med was my major. And you know why? It wasn't because I love science. I mean I did like AP Bio. It was because I was from a family of immigrants, and I thought, What's the best possible thing I could do in the world to be successful? And it was a doctor. So I went fucking pre-med. Excuse me. So I went pre-med. Okay? 

Dave Weich [35:14]
Not a problem.

Michael Bolognino [35:15]
Alright. That had nothing to do with me. It had to do with my family, it had to do with societal pressure, and it suppressed what I actually wanted. So for example, if I knew I could go to college to do textile design, I probably would have looked into that. I had no idea that was even on the table. So my advice is, when you're younger, is really try to hear what voice is telling you what you want, and see if you can distinguish what's coming from outside with what is inside. And exposure is the best way to know that. 

So move towards the things that you like. Join the clubs that you're interested in. You know, with the internet today, we can contact people. Contact the person on Instagram that's doing a project that's really interesting to you. That would be my advice. Just be clear about what's your voice versus someone else's.

Dave Weich [36:13]
Yeah. That's good advice. I think about it all the time because actually I also majored in pre-med, and I switched out after a year. I still sort of remember the dinner conversation where I told my parents that I was changing to English lit. 

Michael Bolognino [36:28]
Yeah. I remember mine, too. I think that conversation happens at many tables around the country. And it takes bravery to make that choice and to change. It does. Because there are people who would go forward with the pre-med career and be really unhappy. 

I appreciate that though. We have agency to make the decisions that we want to make, and experiment, and create the lies we want to create. I fully believe that.

Dave Weich [37:01]
Well, thank you very much for taking the time.

Michael Bolognino [37:04]
Thank you, that was fun.

[outro]

Bailey Cain [37:08]
Work-Shaped Life is produced by Sheepscot Creative. It’s hosted by Dave Weich, edited by Michael Nipper and me, Bailey Cain, with production support from Benna Gottfried, Rosie Struve, Amelia Lukas and Kate Sokoloff.

If you’ve been enjoying this season of Work-Shaped Life, help us reach new listeners by sharing your favorite episode or leaving us a review. 

We’ll be back in three weeks with another episode. Thanks for listening.