Episode 314 - Recruiter-turned-Founder Georgie Hubbard unpack how to pivot with confidence, optimize your resume and LinkedIn, and ditch “spray & pray” for targeted strategies that actually get results.

Georgie  Hubbard (00:00)
I feel like a lot of people are still making the mistake of is just spraying and praying.

So literally just applying for like tons and tons of jobs. And that, don’t believe that works anymore, right? Like you’ve got to look, if you want to apply for a job, just read through the job description and have a look at what those core skills are. And there’s a couple of things that I would do.

Renata Bernarde (00:45)
let’s start with you and your career. When was your boldest move in your career? When did you do the boldest, most confident move?

Georgie  Hubbard (00:57)
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. And it’s actually nice to be this side of the mic as well. As we were saying before we went live, I’m normally interviewing, so this feels a little bit strange. I’m like, okay, I’m being questioned today. look, love that question. So there’s been quite a few bold moves in my life, but two that really stand out the most was, I guess my first sort of real bold move was my own career reinvention, my own career pivot from…

working in skin and beauty and transitioning into tech recruitment. So that happened when I first arrived in Australia 12 years ago, I made that bold career shift and I’m happy to sort of go into what that looked like and break it all down. Then the, guess the second big career bold move for me was leaving the safety of my full-time job in recruitment and starting my own agency, Safe Solutions, which I did eight years ago. And that’s been a big, big journey. And

From both of those moves, what I have learned is that we don’t ever feel ready to make them. And I think that this is one of the big misconceptions, especially around confidence and what I’m seeing a lot of really talented individuals do is waiting to feel ready. Like I’ll go and do another qualification or I’ll wait to the new year or I’ll wait until my life gets less busy to make that move. And…

the longer you wait, the harder it gets. Like it’s never gonna be easy to make a leap to back yourself. But my sort of framework for working through things is thinking, would I regret not doing this? And that is the motivator for me always to make a move. And if the answer is I would regret it, then it doesn’t matter as much about the fear or the risk involved. I just…

take it regardless. So that’s kind of my mission now is just to help people overcome themselves, overcome the lack of belief, the stories that they tell themselves and understand that in this new world that we’re heading into, I believe the biggest risk that we can make is staying still and not making some bold moves. So yeah, they’re the two big ones for me personally, and I’m happy to go into more detail about either if you want.

Renata Bernarde (03:22)
I’d love to go into more detail because I have clients that are doing those two things. So ⁓ I have clients that have moved countries and are thinking about reinventing themselves. And I have clients that have left a job after many, many years and are thinking about, I think, you know, the two that I’m thinking of right now are literally going to start their new businesses and all of them.

have this paralysis by analysis situation where they landed in a new country, but they’re thinking, no, I need to first fix everything before I think about this. Or ⁓ before I start my business, I need to do all the courses, all this, attend all the webinars, everything, talk to everybody before I look for clients or for work. Did you feel like that as well?

Georgie  Hubbard (04:20)
Look, I’ll be honest, I’m somebody that probably doesn’t, I don’t overthink things. I think one of the best frameworks that I use in my life, and this has helped me a lot, I actually write about this in the book. So whenever I’m about to make a decision or I wanna do something, I sit down and I think, okay, what is the worst case scenario?

Because what we tend to do when we’re about to like make a business, to put our hands up for a promotion, move countries, whatever it is, we focus on all the things that could go wrong. And then that kind of causes us to feel the fear and not take the action. So we’re going to think all of this regardless. So what I do is I sit down and go, okay, what is the worst case scenario if things went terribly wrong, if I did this thing and just get it out of my head onto paper. And what I’ve come to realize from doing that over and over again, anytime I wanted to

take a leap or step outside my comfort zone is the worst case scenario actually isn’t that bad. But I think we tend to like really make it sound worse in my head to what it actually is. Okay. And, look for me, to be honest, like the worst case scenario when I was pivoting from beauty and tech recruitment is that I didn’t like it, but I didn’t lose my qualification. I didn’t lose all my knowledge. I could just go back. So, okay. was like, that’s the worst case scenario. When I first went to start my own business, I thought, if this doesn’t work.

I’ll get another job in recruitment. So that kind of like took away the fear. So I think the first thing is like, get it out of your head onto paper. Cause then you kind of disconnect from the fear. The second question I asked is what’s the best case scenario. And then that kind of gets you super excited, but also you can tend to over exaggerate. And the danger of that is that if you set your goals and your ambitions too high, as I’ve done in the past, you can then feel disappointed because

Anything that’s going to stretch you and anything that’s going to require you to level up is going to be hard. It’s going to be tough and you’re going to come up against challenges and you’re going to come up against yourself. So it’s great to sort of focus on all the really good bits, but we also tend to over-exaggerate in that kind of disappointment. Then there’s the likely case. And this is the blend of both. And I feel like this is the framework to really focus on because when you then think about the likely case, you’ve gone through your worst case, you’ve gone through your best case and you go, okay, well, the likely case is that

Renata Bernarde (06:23)
Hmm.

Georgie  Hubbard (06:37)
when I make this career pivot or whatever I wanna do, it’s gonna be some challenges. I’m gonna have to learn a few different things. I’m not gonna know everything and that’s okay. And it might take me three months or six months or even a year to get up to speed, but you know, I’ll learn a lot and I’ll upscale myself in the process and hey, it will be a fun journey. So this is the kind of framework that when I’m sort of helping individuals make big decisions that just write it down, get super clear, look at the best, look at the likely, look at the worst.

and then it kind of strips away the fear and you go, do you know what? I’m gonna go for this because actually it’s really not that bad if I fail. Okay, I’m probably not gonna get that big goal that I want to achieve straight away, but the likely case feels good and it’s worth pursuing it.

Renata Bernarde (07:24)
Yes, I love that. I really also use something similar with my clients, but mostly I tell them to remember that the worst case scenario, especially if they’re going for a job interview, is that they are not going to get the job interview and they don’t have the job anyway. you know, just go ⁓ with that mentality of what do you have to lose? But it’s a great way to trick your mind not to catastrophize when you’re going through something really stressful.

⁓ Moving countries can be stressful. ⁓ You moved from the UK to Australia many years ago. What was the biggest ⁓ cultural shock that you had when you landed here?

Georgie  Hubbard (08:11)
⁓ God, biggest culture shock. I think, to be honest, it was almost quite positive in a way because one thing I do remember thinking is that the Australian people were pretty positive, very inviting. There was a real sense of optimism when I arrived from this country 12 years ago. I saw a lot of opportunity in Australia. I literally arrived with a rucksack. I had nothing.

Renata Bernarde (08:19)
Okay.

Georgie  Hubbard (08:38)
And I found the Australian people to be incredibly warm and inviting towards me, to be honest. Like I honestly had a pretty good experience, if I’m honest. ⁓ I think that, I know it’s not like that for everyone, but I was really willing to work incredibly hard. I applied for a lot of jobs when I first arrived. I went for a lot of interviews. I just believe that I was meant to be here.

And I thought, I’ve got to make this work. I don’t want to go back to the UK. I had spent my younger years there and I certainly missed my family, but I just felt like this country was where I was supposed to be. I guess throughout my life, if I really look back and reflect, like I do really try and have this glass half full mentality towards life. I like to see the good in people. I like to see the positives in a situation. And I know that

not everything’s going to be smooth sailing. And I don’t also expect things to be easy. I think that this is probably maybe a little bit of a gift that I have that I think a lot of people are searching for the quick and easy button, the easy path for this or the easy button for that. And there’s no such thing. And I think that when you understand that any time that you’re going to go and do something, you’re going to come up against struggle, you don’t come into things with roast into spectacles. Like I didn’t think moving to the other side of the world was going to be easy.

So I was fully prepared to come up against the fact that I didn’t know where to live. didn’t know how to navigate a new city. I didn’t know anybody. So I didn’t come here thinking that I was just gonna be handed something. I came here thinking, I’m gonna have to prove myself. I’m gonna have to work hard. I might have to take a pay cut. I might have to go for multiple different interviews to get a job. And that’s exactly what I did. But I didn’t get off the plane thinking that I was gonna be landing a dream job straight away. I had to work incredibly hard and…

I think that that’s what builds resilience in people, that sort of understanding that when you are pushing yourself to do things that scare you, you’re going to come up against yourself. And that’s where the growth and the opportunity lies as well.

Renata Bernarde (10:35)
Yeah.

And in that phase, was moving into recruitment intentional or did you just land there? You know, like looking for work, you know, and trying everything and shooting into every industry and it landed in recruitment. I’m sort of interested to know how it happened.

Georgie  Hubbard (11:03)
Yeah. So when I first got to Australia, I got a job firstly in the industry that I had studied in. So I got a job in beauty and skin. So I had done a bit of travel before I came to Australia. So I’d worked in Greece and France across Europe running spas. So that’s kind of what I knew. So I was able to get a job after quite a few interviews reasonably quickly within a sort of few weeks, ran a clinic in Melbourne for six months and then

I fell in love with this country and I thought, I want to stay in Australia. But unfortunately I couldn’t get sponsored in the current industry that I was in in beauty. So that’s when I knew I was going to have to make a career pivot. where I started was I, okay, I thought, right, I’ve got a set of skills and these skills are transferable. And that’s what I want everyone to understand that we don’t need to identify with our job titles. I think we need to flip our mindset and identify with

Renata Bernarde (11:42)
Right.

Georgie  Hubbard (12:00)
the skills and the stories and the wisdom that we have, because that’s what can be repackaged and brought with us wherever we want to go next. So I wrote down all of my skills and I was really good when it came to building rapport, building trust of clients, navigating ⁓ complex machinery. I was pretty good with new technology. I was really good at being organized. I was good at sales, negotiations. So these were all like my skills. And then what I did was I went to the job boards.

Seek, LinkedIn. And instead of typing in recruitment, because I didn’t even know that was going to be the job I was going to move into, I typed in sales, customer service, relationship building. And that’s where I sort of started to notice a few sort of jobs come up. And I saw the ad for a junior recruitment consultant, read the job ad, definitely didn’t hit all the skills. I probably only hit about 50, 60%.

Renata Bernarde (12:36)
Yeah.

Georgie  Hubbard (12:55)
And that’s another key point that I want to make is that you’re never gonna hit 100 % of any skill on a job ad and no company actually expects you to, just company wishlist job ads. So I went through the jobs and I thought, okay, I’ve got a few of these skills, I’m gonna apply. Long story short, I didn’t hear anything for about three or four days, but there was a number at the bottom of the job ad. So I picked up the phone and I called and a guy, let’s call him Tom picked up and he said, hello, ABC recruitment.

I said, Oh, hi, this is Georgie. I’ve set my CV and this is what I do. And I basically pitched myself, which was a, you know, I guess a skill that I’d had in beauty selling myself. He invited me into an interview. Um, I was there and it was like an assessment center. So I was there against like 10 other people. That was pretty scary. And we all had to go through these different exercises. And one of them was, um, it was like a, I had to calm down an angry client. Now, obviously I’d had quite a lot of experience doing this working in

the beauty in the customer service industry, because not everyone’s happy with their treatments and things. So I listened, I understood, and I repeated back to him. So he felt heard. And then at the end of that, he broke character and he said, Georgie, where did you learn to do that? And this is, I guess, an example of what transferable skills can look like. What kind of came easy to me was a very needed skill in the industry that I wanted to pivot into. And then a week later, I got a call to tell me that I the job. But here’s a really key point that I really want to make.

Other people in that room were far more qualified than me on paper, but they didn’t get the job. And this is the key piece now where companies are shifting away from, need 10 years experience in this and five years in this, to looking at people through a lens of skills. And it’s all about how you position yourself. So long story short, I then, that’s how I put into recruitment. I’ve done that now for 12 years. It was a massive learning curve for me.

I’d never read a CV in my life before. And all of a sudden I’m having to learn all this tech jargon. I’d never pitched to a client in that way and I’m doing that. And it was me fumbling through a lot of calls, me making a lot of mistakes, but it was a really good learning experience. And I didn’t lose all of the skills that I had in beauty. I took them with me and just use them in a different way. And this is kind of the message that I want to send out to people now is that

You’ve all got skills and these skills are needed across different industries. It’s just all about seeing yourself through that lens as opposed to identifying with a job title and seeing yourself as somebody that’s got value to offer other industries.

Renata Bernarde (15:35)
Yeah, yes. Look, I agree with you and I want ⁓ to ask you more questions about that because you now have your own business in recruitment and 12 years is a long time. Things have changed in recruitment. And one of the things that ⁓ my prospect clients and listeners come to me with, and they say, look, I would love to transfer my skills.

But it seems like nobody will give me a chance. know, more and more we see jobs advertised without a phone number to call and more and more we see jobs that are online applications only. And you have to follow this sort of recipe of the applicant tracking system to make sure that you get an interview. it’s so hard because there is no barrier of entry for applications. So you have hundreds of applications and

basically just one job at the end of this pipeline. So how would you do it now? You know, if you were applying for that same job in 2025, there’s no number to call, there’s nothing you can do. Do you think that you would have the same chance to impress?

Georgie  Hubbard (16:52)
look, I’ll be really honest, I think it’s definitely, it’s definitely a lot harder now. But I still think the same rules do apply. I think that first and foremost, you need to start with all of your skills, because that then builds this level of confidence and self belief. And if you don’t believe that you’ve got the right skills, you’re never even going to take the first step and the first rejection, the first no, you’re going to start beating yourself up and feeling deflated. So

we need to believe in ourselves. We need to understand that we do have value to give and really sort of like do that skills and career audit of like, this is what I bring to the table and keep telling yourself that all the time, build that evidence for, write down your skills and just literally just keep adding to them and feel proud of all the things that you’ve achieved across the course of your career. That’s the first thing I would still do. The second thing that I feel like a lot of people are still making the mistake of is just spraying and praying.

So literally just applying for like tons and tons of jobs. And that, don’t believe that works anymore, right? Like you’ve got to look, if you want to apply for a job, just read through the job description and have a look at what those core skills are. And there’s a couple of things that I would do. The first thing I would do is make sure those core skills are reflected in your resume.

Because yes, know, CVs are going through filter systems now, right? So there’s AI that’s basically reading resumes and, you know, I know that can be really frustrating, but that is the reality that we’re living in right now. So you need to be aware of it. So once you know that your, skills that are on the job ad are in your resume, then that’s, that’s how you apply. So you make sure that you match those two. The second thing that I would do is I would also be looking seriously at your LinkedIn profile.

because the first thing that our recruit is going to do or HR manager is going to do or high manager is going to do is they’re to go straight to your LinkedIn profile. And this is where I think a lot of people don’t understand this. So I look at LinkedIn profiles all day, every day. And sometimes I look at a profile and I’ll go, I’ve got no idea what this person does. They’ve got a very outdated picture on their profile. They’ve got nothing about them in their bio.

and there’s no sort of like sense of like achievements or outcomes that they’ve got in their current roles or previous roles. Like see your LinkedIn profile as your online resume. That is kind of what you wanna be looking at. And the reason why I’m also saying this as well is because how also recruiters work and how I work is we get access to the backend of recruiter. And what now LinkedIn does is I can now upload a job description onto LinkedIn.

and the AI of LinkedIn now will bring up candidates that match that job description. So if you’re an individual right now, knowing what kind of job you want to go for, make sure that your CV and your LinkedIn profile is reflective and has got those key skills in your LinkedIn and in your CV, because that’s what makes you searchable. That’s what’s going to make you come up. When I type in software engineer, your CV is going to come to the top or project manager. Your profile is going to come to the top.

So you need a profile that’s seen and searchable. So that’s the second thing I would do is I’d get all of like my marketing material, my resume, my LinkedIn profile, all up to date with not just reflecting where I’ve been, but where I want to go. And that’s where, that’s the real key. So look at all the jobs that you’re applying for, what keywords come up again and again, what skills come up again and again and again. And if you see things that you don’t yet have, well then you need to go and up skill. Then you need to think, okay, what do I need to go and learn?

What do I need to go and do a micro credential on? So there’s tons of free courses online at the moment around AI and all sorts of things. It just got to do a bit of research. So I would then be identifying where are my gaps and I’d be spending time updating that. Once I’ve done a micro credential, I would be posting about it on LinkedIn. So I think this is the other piece as well. Visibility leads to opportunity now. So I’d be start thinking about your reputation.

how you show up online as well, because it’s great having a really good LinkedIn profile, but you wanna bring people to it. And the only way you do that is start posting content. So having an opinion about things going on in your industry, sharing an event that you’ve recently been to, sharing a course you’ve recently done, visibility leads to opportunity. I’d then be sort of thinking about networking. So I’d be putting myself out there online. I’d be connecting with professionals in the spaces I wanna move into.

I would be going to networking events and meeting people and having conversations. And this all sounds like work. I appreciate that, but that’s what you’re to have to do because opportunities now they’re not going to be as abundant as what they want, as what they used to be. So we’re going to have to sort of start thinking about our approach to job search in a completely different way.

And I think that for those people that are really taking their careers, you know, seriously, you’re excited about all the opportunity. This is a fantastic time. I’m really excited about what’s coming, but there’s no denying that we’re going to have to really rethink our careers. And we’re going to have to just do these extra few steps if we really want to stand out in a competitive marketplace.

Renata Bernarde (22:17)
Yes. ⁓ look, you’ve just, you know, said everything that, you know, we’ve been talking about on this podcast for so many years in such a concise ⁓ way. And I 100 % am behind all of the things that you said. One of the things that I do is I have a LinkedIn group that’s private and it’s a membership. So people may pay monthly. It’s fairly new. I’ve only started it a couple of months ago.

And I did this to help people be more active on LinkedIn because people have profiles and then they do nothing about it. They don’t engage, they don’t post, they don’t do anything. And really they don’t know how to have their own narrative. And starting from the moment where you said you were reflecting about your talents and then you realized you had all these strengths and then you used them to find ⁓ your new job in Australia.

I feel like people don’t even know that about themselves. Right. They haven’t really stopped to think. And maybe in ⁓ younger generations they do. I find that whenever I have a younger client, ⁓ they are more in tune with their talents and their strengths. I am a Generation X. Most of my clients are Generation X. They’ve been working so hard all of their lives, never stopping to talk about their stories.

reflect, journal, think about what their strengths are. So I do all of that with them. And I use this ⁓ assessment called Talent Predicts. And one of the talents is boldness. And I have a lot of boldness. I’m wondering if you have boldness as a trait or did you have to work to…

that muscle and take it to the gym. Like I tell my clients, you can, you know, we have all of these talents. It’s a talent wheel with lots of talents. I have a very risky combination because I am very bold. I’m very persuasive and I have zero precision. So I am not interested ever in being perfect. I just want to go with my ideas and I persuade people and sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. And that’s how it is with me.

could take precision to the gym and stretch it out and become more precise. I probably have done that over the years, but mostly I just find ways of overcoming my lack of precision by either getting somebody to proofread things for me or I get Grammarly. I’m addicted to Grammarly because it’s important to me to get things done ⁓ and spelled correctly. What is boldness to you personally?

Georgie  Hubbard (25:04)
Yeah, I think as well, just to go back on what you’re saying, like I do believe it’s a muscle that I’ve built over time. If I reflect back to very younger Georgie, I was really shy in school, like really shy. was just, you know, yeah, painfully shy. And over the years, I guess what sort of built my own boldness is putting myself in uncomfortable positions over and over and over and over again, understanding that

first courage comes, then the competence comes, then the confidence follows. And I think with too many people have got that backwards. So it’s a muscle that you build and it’s weird. It’s like I’ve almost trained myself now to see the fear as excitement. So…

even today, by coming on a podcast, you know, there’s, there’s an element of nerves around that I’ve like, I really want to offer as much value as possible. And, you know, I really want to make sure that, yeah, like, you know, this podcast is successful for you as well. but I go, if I waited and waited and waited and waited until I felt bold enough or confident enough to come on and start doing podcasts or write a book or do it or do whatever I’d be waiting forever. So I think the how I’ve built my boldness,

is continuing to put myself in situations that scare me slightly. And going back to one of my biggest, biggest fears, because I know this is such a common fear, was public speaking. I could not, and this is not a joke, stand up in front of a room of even like five or six people and say my name without literally almost having a panic attack. And this is going back probably about eight years ago now. And I identified that that was gonna hold me back. So I enrolled in, I know if you’ve heard of like Toastmasters.

Renata Bernarde (26:53)
Yes.

Georgie  Hubbard (26:53)
And it’s basically

like, yeah, public speaking, I guess, meet up if you like, and you all come together once a week and you all get a chance to speak. for about, well, over a year, almost 18 months, I didn’t miss a week. And it was the most uncomfortable, painful experience. I remember the first sort of few weeks turning up and standing up and saying my name, sweating, you know, like it was so awkward. But again, putting myself in these positions.

has just sort of stacked the evidence over time that I can do it. I can talk in public, I can push myself a bit and I’m living through it. I’m gonna be okay. So this is, guess, my core message from the book is you don’t wait to feel ready, you don’t wait to feel bold. You take the first move.

even if it’s messy, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if you’re shaking, even if you feel all that doubt and fear and discomfort, but over the other side is where all the opportunity lives. And had I not continued to push myself, and I’m sure you’d say the same, of keeping putting myself in these uncomfortable situations, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have been able to start a business. wouldn’t have been able to write a book. I wouldn’t have been able to come on this podcast. So I think we need to identify what is holding us back.

What’s the fear behind it? Is it fear of judgment? Is it fear of failure? Is it fear of success? Like what is actually the fear? Call it out. See it for what it is. It’s just a fear. It’s not fact. It’s something that you can overcome. And the only way you overcome it is facing it. You’re never gonna overcome a fear by just pretending it’s not there or just sort of, yeah, of shoving it to the one side. It’s always gonna hold you back. So I think we overcome fear by facing it head on.

And that’s how we build our boldness and our confidence and belief in ourself.

Renata Bernarde (28:44)
Yeah. And every other straight, really, you know, if you want to build any other, you know, problem solving or forward thinking, it’s just a matter of taking it ⁓ to the gym, like I say, and work working on it like you’ve done with with boldness. ⁓ You then. Pivoted your career once again and started your own business and you’re much older. I mean, you know, a decade older when you did that, wasn’t it? And.

What was different then? Did you feel more experienced and ready to make a change the second time around? Or were you more concerned that you were too old to make a pivot? I’m thinking about some of the issues that some of my clients feel when they come to work with me. Am I too old to make a transition now? Maybe I missed the opportunity. Did any of those fears came to mind?

Georgie  Hubbard (29:44)
I am, I definitely was nervous. I mean, I was walking away from a very stable job and a reputation that I’d built. I mean, I’ve been, I had been in that recruitment agency for almost five years and in recruitment, you get paid a commission. So I was on a nice pay slip at that point and, but

Again, the fear of regret was the biggest motivator to make me change and to make me make the move. thought, would I regret not going for this? And doesn’t matter whether you’re 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, like if you are going to get to the end of your life and regret not doing something, I think that that’s a reason to do something because who wants to get to the end of their long precious life and think what if? And just a quick side note before I dive into the business thing.

There’s one book that every single person should read because it fundamentally changed my life apart from my book, of course. But the book, the book is it’s by Bonnie Ware and it’s called The Five Regrets of the Dying. And the number one regret is I wish I’d lived a life that was true to me and not what others expected of me. When people got to the end of their life, they regret the things they didn’t do, not the things they did do. And reading that book, it just stripped away everything. I was like, I’ve got to do this.

Renata Bernarde (30:30)
you

Georgie  Hubbard (30:54)
doesn’t matter if I fail, doesn’t matter if I mess up, doesn’t matter if the business is a success or failure, I’m gonna learn along the way, applying the best, worst, likely case as well. And yeah, it was, it was a massive learning journey, but I didn’t start a business in something brand new as well. I started a business in recruitment after having six years in recruitment. So I had the evidence built up over the last six years, having a successful career in recruitment to say, well, I know how to recruit, I know how to win.

work, I know how to find talent. So I just need to learn how to actually run a business and all the tax implications and how to hire and how to actually build a sustainable business. I’m sure I can figure that out, but the actual skills of what the business was going to be recruitment, I knew how to do it. So I guess my biggest piece of advice for anyone thinking about starting a side hustle or a business is always think about what skills again you’ve got.

and how that can be translated into ⁓ solving a problem. And that’s all business is, it’s solving problems for people. So whatever you’re doing right now in your day job, what are you good at? What do people come to you for and could you monetize that? So we’ve all got strengths, we’ve all got skills, which is why doing that skills audit is so important. And I bet you that there’s a skill that you have that somebody would pay you for and start there. Don’t try and follow your passion. I think this is one of the worst advices that people ever can say is go and follow your passion.

Well, you might have a passion of, you know, I don’t know, knitting or golf that might not turn into a business. Right. So I think when you’re starting a business, start a business and something you’re good at. And then eventually, if you make that a success, then you can pivot into having a business that you’re passionate about. But there’s, I’ll tell you this because I’ve experienced this firsthand as well. I did have a little side business. I’m really passionate about health and fitness and mindset.

And I did have a little business at one point on the side of my recruitment company, teaching people about mindset and health. And that’s my passion, but it became my prison because it got to a point where I wasn’t making any money to really sustain it. It was actually really stressful and it soon didn’t become my passion. So my biggest piece of advice now is monetize your skills, turn that into a business, make that a success.

and then down the track if you want to go and experiment with your passion and your purpose and all of that, then go and do that. But just monetize your skills first. And that’s exactly what I did.

Renata Bernarde (33:25)
Yes, because it’s a much easier commercial transition, isn’t it? If you have the skills and then you’re learning how, I mean, you mentioned before that you knew you could learn things, but learning on something that you know you can sell easily, ⁓ which in your case was recruitment and all the connections you’ve had, that’s an easier sell for you.

Georgie  Hubbard (33:30)
Correct.

Yeah, correct. And that’s

the thing as well, monetizing your network, monetizing all of these things. we’ve got this, especially people who, like you say, are sort of like a slightly old generation. You’ve got so much knowledge and wisdom, so much knowledge and wisdom to share. And it’s, you could package that up and you could be a consultant. You could offer your services to people like.

There’s so much you can do and AI is literally making it easier than ever before. You can spin up a website within seconds. You can create marketing copy within seconds. You can put a brand brochure together within seconds. Like all of this, I didn’t have eight years ago when I was in, starting my recruitment agency, had to pay somebody money to build me a website. I had to pay lawyers to get contracts together. You can build things in seconds now with AI if you just know how to prompt it correctly. So the opportunity’s never been greater.

It really hasn’t.

Renata Bernarde (34:43)
Yes, yes, I think you’re absolutely right. And ⁓ what I experienced myself when I opened my business was that it took a while for it to crystallize as a commercial business for me, because I was not a career coach before I became a career coach. Right. So I had to educate my audience, my network, the people that I knew.

to let them know that I was transitioning from being an executive, from being a business development executive, for working in the intercept between research and politics and do collaborations at that level and run ⁓ events and raise money for things. That’s what I used to do. That was what people would hire me to do. All of a sudden I’m telling people, now I have a podcast called the Job Hunting Podcast.

And a coaching framework called the Job Hunting Made Simple framework. And people were like, what? That’s not the Renata I knew. I had no idea that you wanted to do that. So it took me a long time for me to make that transition commercial. It was easy to do the transition, ⁓ but I had to educate my network and slowly build up.

word of mouth and a clientele and a reputation for something new. And that takes time. Even in recruitment, making that transition, did it take time for you to commercialize the business as well? Or by the time you’ve started it, you had already tried a couple of other things, so it made the transition easier for you.

Georgie  Hubbard (36:28)
it’s, look, we honestly, like, is bit of a side note, but my business partner and I, it was a bit of a, it wasn’t the best, we didn’t leave in the best terms. I’ll put it that way. They basically, I was always going to leave because I was ready to sort of like branch out and start my own thing. And then my business partner, she wasn’t going to be leaving as quickly as what she had to, but basically they just fired her.

and we didn’t get paid out any money or anything like that. So we literally were single swim. So I didn’t even have a second to think about commercialization. What am I doing? I just knew how to sell, I knew how to pitch and I knew I needed to go and win clients and get jobs in to fill them to get money in as soon as possible because at that stage of my life, I just bought my first property. My business partner had a one-year-old daughter. She was the breadwinner. It wasn’t a case of let’s sit around and…

have a thing about our business name and our website. was like, we just need to get jobs and we just need to get money as quickly as possible. How are we going to do this? Let’s stick to what we know we’re good at, recruitment. Let’s go and win work and let’s fill jobs. So I guess the first year, to be honest, was a complete whirlwind. And we just knew we needed to act, we needed to swim because otherwise we were going to drown. So we just swam and we just kept on winning work and we just kept on putting ourselves out there and then…

I really started to understand the power of actually putting yourself out there online, starting to build a bit more of my brand as like not just Georgie the recruiter, but Georgie who runs a recruitment company. And that’s sort of been a real journey for me of posting content on LinkedIn, beginning to think about my reputation and what I want to be known for. That sort of came, I guess, later after just getting the work. But I also think there’s power in that as well, because there’s

there was almost like the credibility was there because I had started a business. It was going okay. There was some credibility. So by the time I came to start posting, I wasn’t sort of just posting for the sake of posting to get clients. It was like, I’d already kind of laid a bit of a foundation. So there was a bit of credibility there. And then I just had to sort of build on top of that. But to everyone listening, like you’ve already, you’ve got credibility, you’ve got wisdom, you’ve got knowledge to share. So you don’t need to wait.

until you sort of feel like you’ve got that credibility, you already have it. But I’m just saying in my scenario, like I just didn’t have time to think about this. I would have loved to have time to think about it. And now I’m very much more intentional whenever I start something new to think about the brand messaging and to think about what I need to portray in the market to get the right clientele to come back towards me. But back then, if I’m honest, it was…

sink or swim. was just let we’ve just got to get jobs on as quickly as possible. Let’s just hit the phones and, and go, which is what we had to do.

Renata Bernarde (39:23)
Well, you know, if I was coaching you, I would have told you to do that. Yes, it’s not just the skill survival. It’s just, it validates your ideas faster, right? Instead of you, like, you know, the client I’m thinking of that I told you who’s spending a lot of time learning, learning, learning, learning, and being paralyzed by so much information. you’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do that. have have, you know, your website and your…

Georgie  Hubbard (39:26)
Survival, it was pure survival.

Yes, yeah.

Renata Bernarde (39:52)
branding done and your business plan and da da. Those are all important things. Don’t get me wrong. But if you don’t have clients, you have bugger all. So go and check if your job is needed. Go and not just ask your friends who will always tell you nice things, but go and ask the difficult ones, the real potential clients and ask them to hire you for whatever it is that you do and see if

Georgie  Hubbard (40:02)
you

Renata Bernarde (40:22)
your idea is validated or not because then you can start pivoting if it’s not. Otherwise you’re going to spend too much time overthinking it and not going to market with it.

Georgie  Hubbard (40:34)
Agreed. And just as I think this could offer some value to the audience as well. as I mentioned at the start, I’m also building an AI app called Pivoter. So that’s basically like you can put in your current job title. It will give you your transferable skills and then it will give you a complete roadmap into getting you from where you want to be to where, where you are now to where you want to be. Whether you want to pivot into a new industry, start your own business, ⁓ pivot into a different promotion.

that it will basically spit out exactly the steps that you need to take and give you that really sort of roadmap to get you from where you are to you want to be. But how I tested that idea is I basically just ⁓ built a landing page and said, sign up for early access. And I said to myself, if I get over a hundred people, put their name and email in and opt in to that list, I know I’ve got a validated idea.

And I got over 200 people now to put their name in. So that told me that signaled from the marketplace, there’s a need for this. Now I’m going to go and build it. So that’s another way that you can test your idea. You could just basically put together a really basic landing page with an email sign up to say, apply for early access and see how many people put their name and email in. And if there’s more than say a hundred people, you go, okay, there’s definitely going to be a need for this.

Now I’m going to invest some time and maybe money and energy into building it out.

Renata Bernarde (42:04)
Love that. Love that. Georgie, so you’re building this and you’re also launching your book. Who is the ⁓ ideal reader for your book?

Georgie  Hubbard (42:17)
I’ve, look, I’ve, I’ve written the book, I would say for more of the female audience, because one of my passions is also to make sure that as we move into this new AI world, no one gets left behind. And I’ve seen firsthand in technology recruitment that is very male dominated, but I also know that’s where a lot of the opportunities are going to be. So I wrote the book for a female audience, but

I also know that there’s some amazing men out there, some male allies that also get a lot of benefit from the book as well. So the book is written for females. ⁓ That’s kind of my audience who I targeted. Pivotal is for anyone, everyone. So that’s kind of like, no matter who you are, you can get benefit from Pivotal. But I would say if someone’s listening to this right now and they are feeling stuck, they’re feeling unsure,

They’re lacking a bit of clarity in their life. They’re lacking that confidence. They know they want more. They know they’re made for more, but they just don’t know what the first step should be. That’s who the book is for. Somebody who is ready to take their own bold move and who just needs a bit of help and a direction in making it. And the way I’ve laid out the book is the first part is all about confidence, building that up, overcoming fear and imposter syndrome, creating time for ourselves.

Part two is all around the strategies of actually how to reinvent yourself, how to make a career pivot, how to get ahead in the age of AI. And then the final part is stories from the podcasts and the females that I’ve spoken to throughout my career who have made their own career reinventions of like proof of like it’s possible. And then the final part is a confidence challenge where it’s a 30 day, you you’re doing something every day, just something really, really small to build up.

that level of confidence because I didn’t want the book to be another book that people read and go, that was nice to pop up my shelf and that’s that. I wanted it to be really tangible, really, I want people to take action. And that’s why I included the challenge at the end. anyone who’s feeling stuck, unsure wants that little bit of security now and just to start making their own bold moves. That’s who it’s for.

Renata Bernarde (44:25)
thank you. I love the idea of the book. I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. And you are now a friend of the podcast whenever you want to talk about a new topic that you think are going to be great for our audience. Just let me know. We would welcome you back with open arms.

Georgie  Hubbard (44:33)
Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. And I can’t wait to have you on my podcast soon as well.

Renata Bernarde (44:48)
Okay, we’re going to put a link in the show notes to your book, to your business and to your podcast so people can go and check it out.

Georgie  Hubbard (44:56)
Thank you so much.