Episode 1: Robin's Story - Failures and Frustrations Along the Path to Success

Welcome to the Unlock Your Block podcast, where career empowerment coach Robin Cartwright shares her insights and experiences to help individuals up-level their careers and achieve their dreams.

In this episode, Robin opens up about her own journey, from overcoming childhood challenges to navigating the ups and downs of her career. Her story serves as a powerful reminder that with determination and the right tools, anyone can succeed. 

Join us as we explore the importance of self-belief, resilience, and seizing opportunities to shine in your career.

In this episode, you will learn the following :

●Robin shares her personal story of overcoming challenges and defying expectations to achieve success.

●The value of self-belief, resilience, and seizing opportunities to shine in your career.

●The importance of not letting others define your potential and the need to pursue your dreams.

●The lack of gender diversity on corporate boards and encourages women to take action and drive change.

Connect with Robin Cartwright:

Website: https://www.hiddengemscoaching.co/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robincartwrightYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIGXKZtXOcHTojxFfr4FtYA

Welcome to the Unlock Your Block podcast. Career Empowerment with me, Robin Cartwright. Join me as I empower you to shine in your career, to uplevel your life and to go after your dreams. Let's talk.

Hi, I'm Robin Cartwright of the Unlock Your Block podcast. I am so happy that you've joined me here today. I am a career empowerment coach, and it is my mission to help individuals uplevel their careers and their life, to taste the sweet success of their dreams where they can shine. This podcast is where we will talk about issues with your career, your lives, successes, failures, give you tools to help you uplevel your careers.

And let me tell you why I decided to create this podcast and create this moment, put this all together for you. So I'm going to dive into a little bit about my successes and my failures. But before we do that, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my childhood.

So I grew up in a family of five kids with a mom and dad that we lived on a ranch. My mom was an alcoholic. My dad was a perfectionist and he worked as an engineer. He would work around the ranch and pedal around on the weekends.

And it was what I thought was a perfect childhood because, again, I didn't have any other reference to go by. Then when I was in second grade, I learned that my teacher was not teaching me. And I had to go to a psychologist and be evaluated. I, one night, was wanting to get a glass of water, you know, delay that bedtime that most kids like to delay. And I went out to the kitchen to get the water and as I was coming around the corner I heard my mom and dad talking and they were talking about the psychologist and what he had said was basically, he had said that I would be lucky if I graduated high school let alone go to college or amount to anything.

I heard this and I thought, no way. Something inside me just ignited like a fire and I forgot all about the water. I went back to bed and I remember sitting there in bed thinking, there is no way anybody is going to tell me that I cannot be successful in this life. And let me tell you, it worked. I worked hard. I took every tutoring opportunity I could. I got all the help that I could, I graduated high school and I went on to graduate college. I went on to work on a master's and I got a human resources certification program. So I did not let a psychologist tell me I could not succeed.

I figured it out through my trials and tribulations of learning how to get out in my career. I've had some ups and downs, I've had some failures. Life doesn't always turn out exactly the way that you want. You know, I had this cookie cutter life, I was gonna do this, this, and this, and that's not exactly how it worked out. But it's worked out great, even though at times I've had to pinch pennies, eat peas and carrots because that's all I could afford, had credit-card debt at one time up to my eyeballs, and had to figure out how to succeed when getting laid off or being in a profession where management didn't see you in that way.

I have been right-sized, and down-sized so many times I can't even count. I've had to go through economic downturns, and I've had to pivot my career several times and figure out how to land on my feet. I have felt that I deserved promotions when management did not see me that way and I had to figure out how to get it to the point where management did see me that way. I've sat at the table with CEOs, COOs, board members and executives, mostly men, and we've discussed individuals getting promoted, why they get promoted, why they don't get promoted, succession plans, development.

And I thought to myself in all of this, why should you be stopped? Why should the world or the society tell you that you cannot succeed when you can, when it's inside you to succeed? So it came to me a couple years back, I think during COVID actually, that I needed to get out there and help others. I needed to help others succeed. You have every right to go after your dreams. You have every right to feel that lovely dream of success. I went through my ups and downs in my careers and I did find jobs that I absolutely loved and I was just thriving in them. And I felt great about them. I didn't mind the hour, hour and a half commute because I love the people I worked with. I love the job and I want to help others feel that exact same way.

So during COVID, I put the plan in place to start looking into my professional certification to be a career empowerment coach. I decided that I would go out and start a business part-time while I worked. And unfortunately, that's not what life, remember, life doesn't always get you what you want. So I was laid off. Company didn't have funding. I had to go out on my own again and figure it out.

Now, this time was a lot different because I had social media I had to learn and podcasting and YouTube not so easy to do when you throw yourself out there to the wolves but I've managed to figure it out and I'm asking you to figure it out with me. So through these podcasts, we're going to talk about how you can be successful in your career, how you can get management to see you and the potential that you want to be seen at.

Go after those dreams that you want and have the career that makes you shine. We're going to talk with a lot of different people who've had successes and failures in their lives. We're going to learn from them. And I'm going to tell you, I did some research on board members. Did you know that in the United States alone, that only 22 percent of women are on boards? 22 are on board of directors at companies.

Ladies, you need to pick up your big girl panties and get moving because we need to change a few things. And that's why I did this podcast to get out to the masses to tell you: Let's go! Let's change the world and let's do it together.