Hi, I’m Serena and I want to change the way you think about your career.
Hi, I’m Serena
and I want to change the way you think about your career.
MAYBE MY STORY WILL HELP
When I was 16, I decided I was going to be an opera singer. Opera was my everything. It defined who I was and all the choices I made for my future.
Fast forward through 6 years of community college, 2 ½ years at a Cal State, $30k in student loans, and a dozen different serving/bartending gigs, I proudly got my BA in Opera (Yes. I sing opera).
Then I realized that the opera life was not the life for me. I loved performing but I did not love the industry. I was going to have to sacrifice a lot of important things in my life to “make it.” And I just knew in my gut that it wasn’t going to make me happy.
So. I pivoted.
I moved to arts administration and bounced around as an administrative assistant, program manager, event planner, back to hospitality, then a few years in fundraising. Each role was fine...until it wasn’t.
Nothing ever felt quite right. Like something didn’t fit — like I didn’t fit. I was exhausted and burnt out from feeling like a failure at every job I had. I felt like something was wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to be happy at work, why wasn’t I? I could barely even get my work done. Was I just lazy? Was I just bad at work? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME? I started to feel depressed.
Then at 35, I was diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety and suddenly, it all made sense...
Work was hard because I was working against my brain — instead of with it.
No wonder it never felt like the right fit — 90% of the work I was doing was outside of my strengths.
No wonder I wasn’t happy — I was trying to implement “productivity hacks” that made me more frustrated and depleted.
In fact, every job I had before ended BECAUSE it wasn’t in alignment with how my brain functions (even my so called “passion”). I just didn’t realize it.
The critical step we’ve been skipping all along is identifying how your brain works, first. Then you can try to identify what careers fit into that. Instead, we spend a stupid amount of time twisting ourselves into whatever mold we feel will get us a job, compromising at every turn. We job-hop in the same role thinking a new company might help us, when in reality it’s the role we don’t thrive in!
THIS MADNESS HAS GOT TO STOP.
BUT HOW?
The GMOOTJ Framework asks you “What does my brain need to be it’s best self” FIRST, and then guides you to find a career at the intersection of your life wants, your strengths, and your interests.
It helps you gain confidence to go for what you want. It helps you stop twisting yourself into a pretzel for every job. And it gives you the tools to create the opportunities you need to keep moving forward.
step one: CREATE CONFIDENCE
Before you dive into finding clarity, you need to unlearn crappy narratives about your abilities, your intellect, your experience and your ideas of success. These are holding you back, my friend. They are the reason you’re still at that job you hate.
step two: CREATE CLARITY
Do you know why your job feels exhausting? It’s because something is out of alignment either with your strengths, your values, or your non-negotiables. Working late hours every night when you really want to be home for dinner? WAY underpaid for the job you are doing? Primarily performing tasks you hate? You. Need. Career. BOUNDARIES. Identifying what you need out of work is a game-changer. Establishing boundaries around your area of interest is where the magic happens.
step three: CREATE OPPORTUNITY
You need tools to build that dream career. GMOOTJ has ‘em. You will learn how to access the hidden job market, make yourself irresistible to employers and never negotiate on your needs again. (Tools are everything!)
NON-NEGOTIABLES
We are committed to actively being anti-racist and consistently learning and unlearning to dismantle white supremacy and all forms of exclusion and oppression.
We believe that systemic barriers like racism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, the patriarchy...all of it exists and affects what you do in your career.
We believe that all work is inherently exploitative, that "dream job" is a garbage term to gaslight people into trying to love work, and that centering your wants and needs in life is the real way to find any sort of career clarity.
We have a zero-tolerance policy for any hate speech or slurs against marginalized genders in any of the GMOOTJ communities.
We serve all marginalized gender identities which include transgender women, transgender men, cis-women, non-binary individuals, and other gender identities who have been systematically oppressed throughout history.
We will only choose to partner, coach and learn from those who equally subscribe to the non-negotiables above to continue to keep the GMOOTJ community safe and inclusive for all.
