Join Karen Lynch as she sits down with Doug Keith, co-founder of the Insights Career Network (ICN) and founder of Future Research Consulting, to explore his extensive career in market research and the vital role of ICN in supporting professionals in the industry. Doug shares the origins and mission of ICN, its rapid growth to 1,700 members, and the unique blend of virtual and real-life meetups, career resources, and a supportive community it offers. They discuss the evolving employment landscape, the importance of networking and mentorship, and how ICN is helping job seekers and industry allies navigate their career paths.

You can reach out to Doug on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Doug for being our guest. Thanks also to our producer, Natalie Pusch; and our editor, Big Bad Audio.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. It’s Karen Lynch hosting today. I’m so glad to be here with all of you and so glad to be here with our guest. Today, I’m talking to Doug Keith, who I happen to know from some of our collaboration for the Insights Career Network. Doug is a cofounder and current co-leader of the Insights Career Network, but also a founder of his own consultancy, Future Research Consulting. So Doug, welcome to the Greenbook Podcast.

Thank you, Karen. I really appreciate the invitation.

It’s my pleasure. It’s my pleasure. And, you know, I’m so excited for the success of ICN. ICN, acronym for Insights Career Network. So I’m really, really pleased to have you here. But let’s just kind of kick things off with a little bit more of an introduction to who you are, Doug. So why don’t you share with our audience a little bit about yourself, the current work you do, but then also how you got to this place.

Sure. Well, Karen, I’ve been in market research since 1994. I spent the first half of my career working for other companies. I was a vice president and account executive at TNS. That was my last real job. I have a quantitative background, but since I started my consulting business in 2007, I’ve mainly been doing qualitative work. I still feel quant studies, but I work across industries. I do a lot of technology work. Basically, I could talk to anybody at a party for five minutes about anything. I’ve [laugh] covered so many topics in the last 17 years, which is unbelievable to me. But I think that above all else, I’m just a very curious person. I really just like learning about other people and I think that’s been a natural extension into doing market research. I actually have a journalism degree as an undergraduate degree and started out working in public radio. So I think from then on I was interviewing people about all kinds of things, and, yeah, it’s just been a natural extension in what I do now.

Yeah, I have often thought that the connection between just journalism and qualitative research, in particular, is really closer than we all might admit. Right? Because both types of professionals are in the business of pulling out information from others so that they can do something with it. So it’s a great overlap there. Thank you for sharing. You know, it’s funny, you also mentioned—and this might be relevant to some people who are tuning in, you know, specifically curious about insights careers, but, you know, mentioned it was, you know, when you had kind of, you know, the last ‘real job’ you had. It’s very interesting the way we think about employment versus consulting because you are gainfully employed. It’s the last employer you had, other than yourself, perhaps, but it certainly is a real job that you’re doing now [laugh].

I’m my own worst boss, I would say. I’m hardest on myself. I’m a terrible employee, for me [laugh]. I’m regularly berating myself. Don’t you think it’s time you do that work, Doug?

Yeah. Yeah.

And stop giving me a hard time, man [laugh]. And then I have to remind myself that pretty much everything I do is my choice. I chose the project. I chose to do this, and it’s been actually fantastic. I’m lucky that I’ve been able to make it work as long as I have. It’s given me a lot of flexibility in terms of not only the types of projects I work with, the clients I work with, but also in just—even in terms of my time. And I think in the last couple of years, after following the pandemic, seeing people working remotely, working hybrid, they’ve gotten to have some of those advantages, I think, that they didn’t see before, being that kind of in the office 8, 9, 10 hours a day. And it’s a good thing. I asked myself years ago, “Why isn’t everybody doing this, at least, you know, working remotely, some people doing contract work?” Because there’s just so many more ways to work than ‘I got a job, and I go to the job, and then the job ends every day, or the job ends one day.’ And that’s one of the reasons I’m involved in what I’m doing. But still, I love that there’s a lot more flexibility than I think there used to be. And I saw a study about hybrid work and how the study is showing that people are even more productive when they’re working in a hybrid mode than they are when they’re working, you know, back in the office. I think leaders like the idea of back in the office, but that work-life balance actually is meaningful. It’s not a namby-pamby snowflake kind of thing. It’s a real thing. Work-life balance really matters—makes you better at what you do when you have time to not be doing that thing.

Yeah, for real. So I was self-employed. I don’t know if you know this about me. I was self-employed for, you know, 17 years, from 2000 to 2017. And during that time, I embraced the idea—towards the end, kind of going to a co-working space because I was sensing that I needed more because it was a little bit—you know, I just washing, you know, feeling a little bit of angst. Anyway, so I was going to co-working spaces a few days a week, too, to try to kind of change my energy. So I think hybrid allows you to sort of change that energy a little bit too. So I did the reverse of what you did. Right. I actually, you know, went down to my husband, it was like 2016, and I said something about, you know, I think I need to quit my job. And he’s like, “Karen, you are your own boss. What is that telling you?” And I was like, “I don’t know. It’s telling me that I’m done with my consulting chapter. And now I kind of want—I want something else.” I wanted a team. I wanted employment. And so I kind of took my shingle—my qualitative consultants shingle off the shelf, and then, you know, have been working for others really since 2017. So there is no rule for your career, right? There’s no one way to do it. So...

I agree. You know, when I do talks for—well, it’s everybody, from everybody to high school students to adults, veterans of the industry, sometimes I’ll put up a picture of the yellow brick road, and I’ll say, “What is that?” “Oh, I think that’s from the Wizard of Oz.” I said, “Right.” I said, “That’s my career.” Right? It’s a winding path. You know, at the beginning, you don’t know anything. You don’t even know what questions to ask. And then you meet people on the way. You learn things; you gain knowledge, and even when you get to the end, they say you could have gone home the whole time.

Right. Right.

You didn’t have to be on that path. But—and I think the winding part is a reality. And I—when I tell students, “Yeah, so you think you’re going to get out, and it’s going to go like this. I get a job, it goes like this, and then I’m CEO, and then I stop.” Right.? And now it’s much more of this. And I feel like I’m on my third career at this point. And I think these are all actually really helpful things. On the one hand, it might give you anxiety, like, ‘no, I want some certainty.’ But on the other hand, you do get to choose. You really do. And I think a lot of people in our industry are very fortunate. A lot of college educated people—they’ve made a choice to come here. They can choose to leave. They can choose to do things differently. There are a lot of opportunities in our industry to do a lot of different things. You find that thing that lights you up, and you can do that thing. You don’t have to do all those other things if you don’t want to. So I just think that winding path—and I love what you said, like, you chose to go the other way, but there is no one way. And I definitely have seen that through the Insights Career Network that people are worried; they’re upset. And I say take a minute and think about—this is an opportunity to maybe choose a direction versus like, ‘I just keep marching on, marching on, marching on.’ You don’t have to do that, even though you feel like you have to.

Right. Right. So let’s segue into Insights Career Network, and take me back to when it started and how it started. What made you decide this is something you wanted to invest kind of time and resources towards?

Well, at the start of the pandemic, it was only about a month in, and I started attending some virtual conferences. And I was not an in-person conference goer, but when I saw ‘free online,’ I will do that. And about a month in, I saw someone talk about this group, MRx Pros, that had just started. And they said it meets every Tuesday, and it’s free. I will go to that. So I started going to that, and within a month I was finding speakers for it. I spent two years helping to find speakers for it. I attended every week. And it’s just a great way to meet people in the industry in an informal setting where nobody’s looking for anything, nobody’s asking you for anything or trying to sell you anything. And it’s just very different than some of my experiences in the past. Through that—there’s a great email chain, and Stephen Griffiths, who’s the founder of Insights Career Network, sent an email saying, “I’m thinking about founding this thing, creating this thing. Who might be interested?” I’ve been talking to people pretty much my whole career about their careers. I think sometimes it’s more fun than talking about my own. So when someone says, like, could I talk to you about what I do or what I want to do? Absolutely. I’m glad to provide any kind of advice or direction I can. So when I saw this come along, I thought, I’m already kind of doing this, and it’s a way that I can be involved in the industry that’s not necessarily traditional path through some of the other organizations that exist because I just hadn’t found my way in those organizations. Like, this is already something I know I enjoy doing. And so Stephen had been in a job club where he lives, in Minneapolis. He said there were like 3,000 people in this job club. And it was across industries, but he just found that the community, the camaraderie, the tips the help that you would get was just so valuable. He looked around, and he said, “There’s not really this in our industry.” And he went through a graduate program, and he had met people through that. And then during the pandemic, he’d started working with some other people that are on the client side. It formed an informal group, and he just kept seeing more and more value in that. And then he also recognized that a lot of people get work through that dreaded word, ‘networking.’ Right? It’s kind of who you know. And so he thought, there really is an opportunity here to help support people in this aspect of a career where—that happens to everybody. I mean, there’s just going to be a time, whether you choose to leave or choose not to leave or they invite you to leave, where you’re going to be looking for that next thing. And it’s not something that we do a lot in our lives, and so it’s not a skill that you have, and there’s so much uncertainty. So to have that kind of support, I think would—Stephen felt it’d be really valuable. And the six cofounders, including myself—I didn’t know any of these people, and that’s actually been, you know, an incredible benefit. You know, I just said, I’m interested. I’ll have a conversation. And it went from there.

How did Stephen kind of find all of those people? So you, he might have connected with MRx Pros. Was everybody in that group? So was it all plucked from that, or did he kind of scour the greater universe?

Karen, it’s who you know [laugh].

Mm-hm.

One of the cofounders he went to graduate school with and then had been this person’s employee. Two of the other people—I think at least one of them had gone through that same graduate program later, and he had helped mentor. Another person was—again, I think they had met through client-side organizations. I think the fifth person, Brian Fowler—I think he was through MRx Pros. I think he was one of those people that just kind of jumped in, like me. And it’s also interesting because I spent my whole career on the supplier side, and so it’s been cool working with people who are on the client side, just to get their point of view. And it’s a good reminder in terms of the organization. Again, as I said earlier, there are all these different paths, and it’s important to understand each of those paths so you can provide help that’s targeted to that—I want to work on the client side. That’s different than working on the supplier side, and you have to talk about different things. And know different things. So, yeah, it’s been a really engaging, rewarding experience getting to know people in this—again, a very different way than, you know, we met at a conference, and we had a conversation. You know, this kind of pulling our resources together and our varied experiences I think has really benefited the group.

I love what you said in the beginning about it’s sort of being a club, right? A club for people who work in the industry, focused on your work, and not necessarily what you do, but on mindful, deliberate conversations around careers. So fast forward with me a little bit to now—and for anybody who’s still a little bit like, I don’t even know—what is Insights Career Network and tell us kind of what the pitch is when you explain it to people and also how much it’s grown since you began.

Sure. So we founded it in January of 2022, and we spent four or five months just figuring out even what it was, what our goals were. One of the things I’ve loved about it is it like MRx Pros, it’s been informal. We didn’t start out and say, “What’s the structure going to be of our organization?” We started out thinking, “What are the things we want to accomplish? And we’ll work towards those things.” And MRx Pros has had great success just having those weekly sessions with a variety of speakers. And they also have a networking chunk where you get to meet other people, again in informal settings. Those two things work pretty well. So the first thing we said is, well, how about if we just have regular meetings? How often should we have them? Okay, how about if we have them twice a month, and we’ll have speakers come in, but it won’t be on esoteric topics. That’s kind of the way it goes with MRx Pros, which is nice. It’s a really nice break sometimes from thinking about everyday stuff. But we would get people to talk about specific topics that would help job seekers, and that twice a month cadence seemed to make sense. It was enough for people to feel like there’s something regular happening, but not so often they say I can’t make half of these meetings. So that was the first thing we did. Okay. We planned on having these twice-monthly meetings. Also, we needed to be able to get the word out. So we developed a LinkedIn page. It’s closed-page, so you sign up for it, and then you’re able to see job posts. You’re able to see what’s happening with Insights Career Network activities that are happening. We also decided we wanted to have some resources for job seekers. So we have a referral-based job board. Sometimes there’s lots of jobs; sometimes there aren’t a lot of jobs. But the nice part is the referral-based piece because there’s a contact and somebody you can reach out to and say, what is the story with it or what happens at your I organization? And even if you’re not the hiring person, you can tell me more about this position. And then we also have job-seeker profiles, so people will just share their information there. And hiring managers can come and look at what is basically a spreadsheet. We’re always trying to figure out how to improve the tools that we have, but at least you can find, you know, some really great candidates there. And we have several hundred candidates in there now. We record all of our sessions, so they’re all available through YouTube. And we call them the bootleg sessions because we don’t take the time to edit them down. There’s always “did somebody start the recording? Somebody stopped the recording?” Like that type of thing. But the main thing is we get that great talks. We have, like, a 20-minute talk with a Q and A section. at the beginning, we have community time, where new people new to the group just get to talk about—just introduce themselves. And then we usually have 10 to 15 minutes of a breakout session at the end, so you get to meet a few people that have been in that big group. So one of the things I like about it is it’s not a webinar, it’s not a one-way thing. People can participate throughout. They can ask questions. They get to introduce themselves. At the end, you know, they get to meet four or five people and make a good connection that they can follow up on. And now we’re kind of branching out into having more IRL, in real life, kinds of activities, meetups at conferences. People organize these things on their own. There was a person recently who organized, in Southern California, said, “I know there is some people here. Why don’t we just get together?” And they just met just to get to meet people in real life. And, of course, through Greenbook at IIEX, we had the opportunity to not only just get—meet people, but we had office hours where people come talk to us about career issues. We did a workshop about doing an elevator pitch. We had the opportunity to do a moderated discussion about not just career paths, but about the hiring process. So I think—and people have been asking for these types of things. So, like, “Okay. What is the next thing that you’re going to be doing?” Our core will always be those twice a month meetups and those resources that we have available. We’re trying not to grow so quickly that all of the volunteers get burned out and stop doing it, and then—and it doesn’t exist anymore. And we’ve already had a couple of founders who had to step away because of other commitments. And just like with any volunteer organization, you hit your limit and you say, “Okay. It’s time for me to move on, and I’ve made my contribution.” Move on. And that’s absolutely understandable.

I mean, you’ve accomplished so much in two years. I think the note that we have here is that you’re at 1,700 members already. Is that the latest data point?

That’s right. That’s right.

Yeah. And I think it would be really interesting to explain to our readers an ally, right, versus a seeker because the membership is much broader than what you might think, which is people looking for work.

Mm-hm. Yeah. That was also really by design. Because, first of all, when you’re a job seeker, you need support. And working with other job seekers, there’s absolute value in it. And I can explain more about that piece, but also that can turn into a commiseration fest [laugh] where you’re kind of like, “How badly is it going for you?” “Terrible. How about for you?” “Terrible.” Versus someone who says, “Look, I feel like I could help. Let me offer some advice. Tell me what you’re trying to do. I’m just here to support you.” That’s the ally piece. We’re actually working now to try and evolve that ally—our approach to bringing allies in. Because an ally might be happy with what they’re doing. They might not need resume advice or figuring out how to negotiate a salary, although that can be helpful in any situation. But, you know, maybe listening to 30 minutes about that isn’t of value. What they want is that 15 minutes of talking to people. So we’re talking about new ways that we can have allies participate. And we’re talking about maybe building some type of mentoring program—which we’ve had some people say they’d be interested in—maybe just having open sessions where allies and seekers can come and either pair off or they can just at least be able to talk to each other. We’ve done some speed networking sessions where the whole session is just getting to meet other people, and I think that’s where allies can really be able to join in. But I think the reason to have that is we want to be a whole community that gives everybody a chance to participate, not just ‘I’m looking for a job. What do you have for me?’ And I think it’s a mindset shift.

Yeah. And I mean, I think—my husband and I, we’ve talked to, you know, some of the younger people, our children, friends, and friends of theirs who, you know, hit the job force and have jobs, but they’re not necessarily sure if they want to stay in those positions. And we say to them all the time, like, when you are gainfully employed, that’s actually a great time to be just kind of meeting people and talking about the future because you never know who you are going to know sometime down the road who might give you a little bit of a, you know, glimpse into a position that you’d be perfect for. So, if the intention really is like, “Hey... I’m not seeking right now. I just want to meet people because I am career minded. I am focused on the fact that I know I inherently believe people that I meet today may help me in the future in some way I don’t even know and can’t even imagine.” So I think personally that’s one of the benefits of allyship, is ‘sure, you’re not seeking now, but you never know what you may find in the future if you are open to just making relationships with others who are career minded.’

I agree. And listening to you talk about that, I really think what we have is a continuum of people. So it probably doesn’t make sense to say, “Today, I’m an ally. Today, I’m a seeker.” Because we also have a third group of people, which we don’t have a real name for, but they’re kind of, like, the lurkers, the on the down low people, who will show up, but they’re—you’ll just see their initials. They’re not going to put their information anywhere. Maybe they’re actively looking, but they don’t want to announce that to the world. Maybe they’re thinking about making a change. Sometimes I’ve gotten into the breakout sessions and someone will say, “I’m just really thinking about what my next move is. And I just wanted to be able to talk to people and hear what people are thinking right now.” So, yeah, I think it is more of a continuum. And Stephen Griffiths, our founder, one day said, “Guess what? I just got laid off.” And all of a sudden he was a seeker. So he went from an ally to a seeker, and he was having multiple meetings a week. And then he finally—when he found a job, he finally—he did a presentation for us: five tips from a person who just got a job.

Right.

So this is how quickly things can change, especially in the current economic environment.

Well, and I think that’s also really important, just to put a pause on that for a second, you know, five tips for the current time, for 2024 job seekers, may be very different from the last time somebody was unemployed. Things have changed. The environment is different, and it’s—you know, some people maybe haven’t looked for a job in five years. Maybe they haven’t looked for a job in 10 years, and they are new to the 2024 job seeking game or the 2025 job seeking game. So it is a way to stay current with what is happening now. And I think that’s one of the things I appreciate about the work of ICN.

I can really vibe with that, Karen, because I haven’t looked for a job in 17 years. So when people start talking about things like, is your resume ATS ready? Could you explain what that is? Do you know that you might have to do a video interview, a pre-recorded video interview? My daughter had to do one of those. Like, how did that work? Oh, you got two tries to answer the questions, and if you didn’t like your first try and you did the second one and you didn’t like that one either, tough luck. You’re stuck with the second one. That sounds really scary. I like being able to build rapport with people, and I don’t get the opportunity to build rapport with people over a video interview. So you have this new world. But then I also saw an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day that said, networking is back. Right? So this was one ironic thing, in 2022 when we started and we had our first session, and we probably had 20 allies and seven seekers. And for a couple of months—are we ever going to get any seekers? And then fall of 2022, bam, everything changed. People started getting laid off. All of a sudden, the balance dramatically shifted, and we started getting a lot of people that were in the situation you were saying, which is, “I haven’t looked for a job in 10 years. I don’t even know how this works.” And, you know, job seeking is not an innate skill. You aren’t born with it. Maybe there are people who are born networkers, but that doesn’t mean you know how to write a resume that’s ATS friendly so it’ll get through the bot and make it through to a hiring manager. So there’s a lot of things—and there’s skills you can brush up on, and there’s so many different skills you have to have to successfully find a job that I agree with you. That’s really where I think the value is, it’s helping to keep people up to date and also telling them it’s okay that you don’t know this. This is learnable stuff, okay? You don’t have to get a PhD in job seeking. You just have to know how to do it in the present day.

Yeah. Yeah. I also think it’s interesting. As I was explaining to you, I was—again, it was 2016, and I knew I needed a change in my life, kind of first-level change, which was be employed. Again, full disclosure, it was when my oldest son hit send on his college applications, and I had a visceral reaction to, you know, the fact that I was self-employed, and I had ebbs and flows, and I’m like, “Wait a minute. [laugh] You know, I might need more in the coming years.” So, anyway—but one of the positions I had interviewed for was with the larger organization, and it was a nonprofit, actually. And it was the algorithm—that the online test I had to go through. I was answering questions quite authentically, so I thought. But I definitely had the lens of somebody who had been self-employed for 17 years. So I was not allowed to the next round for this particular position, which was very heavily about management, even though I had managed lots of partner relationships and vendor relationships, I hadn’t managed a team. Right? And so the algorithm could tell. Like, it knew how I was answering things, and they were like, “You know what? This isn’t the type of manager we’re looking for.” And it was really eye opening and humbling for two reasons. One, it was eye opening because I was like, I don’t know how to play this game. I don’t know how to not be authentic for a—you know, for kind of a survey [laugh] about my employment. But also, what is the truth that it uncovered? The truth was I hadn’t managed a team before. I was self-employed. So the position I did take actually allowed me to become a manager. And within a few years, I was managing a team of six. And I was saying, “Oh, I get it now.” We should never be so sort of proud of ourselves to think that we don’t have shortcomings that we might need to shore up for the next position. So that’s, I think, another thing that’s really wonderful about the work you’re doing is it does teach people, open people’s eyes, help people to see things through a different lens than they may have. Right? So it really is good work you’re doing.

Well, I appreciate that. I’m like—you know, some days you’re feeling great about everything. Some days you’re not feeling so great. And, you know, sometimes it’s “Oh, I got that ICN meeting today,” and then you go to it and you hear people’s stories and you see them type things in the chat like, “I found out today I’m not alone,” you know, or people at the end saying, “I didn’t even know this information. This was so great,” or the emails that we’ll get without requesting them saying, “This was such a big help to me.” And then you feel like I actually did something valuable today. I mean, the work that I do for my clients is incredibly valuable to them, but this is valuable in a different way. And it’s not just to our industry. This sounds so hokey, but it’s to humanity. Like, maybe I helped a human today. I didn’t just help a business advance their business goals. I helped somebody advance their personal goals. And I know I’ve greatly appreciated in the past when people have helped me tell you briefly, Karen, that I was in graduate school thinking I was going to go into management in public broadcasting. And I took one research methods class and I thought, wait, this is kind of interesting. What is this thing? And I thought, maybe I can learn what audiences want. Hmm. So then I finished that program not knowing anything about research, and I thought, I got to find out. How will I find out? I got a broadcasting cable yearbook. I wrote 100 letters to companies within 100 miles of where I lived and said, “Could I just talk to you about what you do?” I have no idea where I even got this idea. Actually, this idea works today. And I can’t believe how many people said yes. And one of those turned into my first job in research. But just the fact that people would take the time to talk with me just to tell me what they do. And I didn’t say like, no, do you have a job over there at the end? And I think that’s a very clear break in the way you should approach this. But I’m grateful that people were willing to take the time to tell me about what they did, what they liked about it, and what they thought could be better or different, as I always say in my research interviews. And it helped me figure out what areas I was interested in. So that’s what we’re doing to this day with ICN is people are saying that ‘I’m not sure what the next step is. Can I talk to you?’ I had a great conversation yesterday with a person who is currently doing consulting and trying to figure out what he wants to do for the next ten years. And I just said, “Well, how can I help you figure that out?” And, you know, if they end that type of conversation when someone says, “This was great. Thank you so much.” I feel like I did something for somebody today. Now I’ll go back and do the work that I need to do.

I think that there’s a great story. One of our podcast episodes for—I think it was 2023, a future list honoree, who was trying to figure out, you know, kind of what her career path was going to be before she became a qualitative researcher, for example. And she reached out to people from her network and said, “Do you have a few minutes so I can interview you about what you do?” And it was through those—and people say yes. People are very—people in our community, in our industry, are very open to the ‘can I just talk to you for a few minutes about your job and your career path?’ I know I’ve answered a bunch of those emails and set up those calls as well—people curious about your career path as they’re trying to discern what’s next for them. And I think that, number one, we have a very generous industry with that, you know, kind of from that standpoint. There are people who are absolutely willing to help lift others up and even just share a little bit about themselves in the hope that they inspire someone else. So I think it’s important for us to kind of be mindful of that. Like, we are all just human beings trying to help other human beings [laugh].

Yeah. And I think—I know for me, one of the long-term goals of ICN is to just normalize this idea of career paths and job searches. Because I’ve seen this phenomenon through our ICN meetings, where the second that you are job seeking for whatever reason, whether you lost a job or you’re just choosing to look for a new job, if you say, “Can you help me find a job?” That’s a yes, no question. And they generally said, “No, I don’t know anybody.” But if you say, “Can I talk to you?” They’ll say, “Sure, I’ll be glad to talk to you.” And as I mentioned, today you can be an ally; tomorrow you can be a job seeker. And we should recognize that. It’s a small industry. Did I hear the number like 9,000 people? It’s pretty small. And so that person that helps you today might be the person you hire tomorrow. That person that says, “No, I don’t have time today,” might be the person you will ignore tomorrow when you have the opportunity to hire somebody as a vendor, as an employee, to give them help. If you feel like it’s a one-way relationship, like, well, I don’t want to be in a one-way relationship. Nobody enjoys those. But I’ve just seen it. There’s just that real kind of stigma, you know, at conferences where they say like, “We don’t have any. You know, if you’re a job seeker, like, that’s not really what we do here.” Like, but tomorrow you might find a job, and you’re going to say, “I need a booth at your conference.” “Great, come on in.” But it is just a mindset. And it’s not just our industry. It’s across all industries. But this idea of you’re almost like a pariah, and it makes no sense to me. You’re just a person whose—your situation changed, and you have a lot of value. And across those 1,700 members, we have so many great researchers, great people that if hiring managers showed up, they’d probably find great—five great candidates just in that one, one-hour session. You know, but that’s just not the way it works. And it’s interesting. In our industry, you think it’s all about curiosity, but we’re not curious when someone says I’m looking for work. I don’t want to have that discussion.

Yeah, that’s interesting. And I love that you’re working to kind of change that paradigm because there is something much, much greater to the seeker, even in the phrase the ‘job seeker.’ They’re not just looking for a job. They’re also seeking knowledge. They’re seeking maybe to update their skills. Like, they are actively working on the development of themselves, their brains. When job seekers come to IIEX events, for example, we know they’re taking in content that will help move them forward, which will actually make them a better candidate in the future for somebody hiring because you’re hiring somebody with a growth mindset. They’re not there to cause harm. They are there to actually continue to elevate the industry as a whole. So I think that’s a philosophy that we have, and that’s one of the reasons why—you know, full disclosure to everybody listening. I’m a little biased because I do sit on the advisory board of ICN. Probably should have said that a little earlier, but I, plus Greenbook, you know, fully support the organization. So let’s talk a little bit about that advisory board because it’s not just ourselves that are on that board. I know you have support from other people who do similar work to what we do and then represent all aspects of the industry. Talk a little bit about that advisory board and what you’ve noticed with it.

Well, this was definitely Stephen’s brainchild, and Stephen deserves a lot of credit for just really thinking in the big picture in terms of how the structure for this organization could work. And he’s one who recommended having it. He recruited the first couple of people that participated in it. And then the rest of us said, I have a person that could be great for it. And I think it’s a great position for industry leaders because it asks so little of them [laugh]. We only have meetings every other month for one hour, and our leadership comes and says, “We’re thinking about doing this. What do you think? Do you think this is a good idea? What would you suggest?” And we get so much help in two ways. One is—I have three ideas. I’ve been through this. I’ve sat on boards. I’ve worked with other volunteer organizations. So I have some suggestions or great connections. Oh, I know a person who would be really great to do a talk for you or a person that could offer assistance in some other way in the background. So those connections are really valuable. And actually, I’ll add a third way, which is as industry leaders, you know what is going on. You have your finger on the pulse of the industry. So you’ll say, like, you know, the way things are kind of working in my organization now, this might help you to think about how you can position what you’re doing or how you can help people. And it’s actually kind of comforting just to be able to go to a group and say, “Oh, we’re really trying to figure this out.” And just to have an ear to listen is wonderful. And, I mean, I also know for myself it’s pretty cool to be able to talk to people that are senior in the industry and have seen a lot—a lot of understanding, and it’s, you know, a little humbling and exciting at the same time to get to interact with people that are—have for a long time have led the industry, have made significant changes in the industry, care about the industry, care about the people in the industry. And I think that’s one cool thing about this advisory board because there’s not a lot of glory in it. I think it’s awesome. People are doing it for their own gratification, in the sense, like, “I can actually help people, you know, in this way as well.” So it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

Yeah, I like it very much. I like the work that you do, and I’m a big supporter. So, again, pleased to be there. Pleased when I think you all—Stephen had reached out to us and, you know, said, “Hey... you know, would somebody from Greenbook like to sit on the board?” And I was very happy to raise my hand and say I would like that. So it aligns with my personal values too. So let’s talk a little pragmatically now, you know, things I want to make sure that we cover before the end of our time together are kind of what’s coming down the pike. What do you have coming up next? And then also, how can people get involved? So let’s start with the—start with the, you know, the former. What’s coming up next for ICN? What are some future initiatives, future programming? It can be as real-time as what’s happening, you know, at the next Monday meeting [laugh] or bigger than that. You tell me.

That sounds good. Well, the biggest thing that’s happened to ICN is that we have put more of an organizational structure in place. And I think initially, I know I was kind of resistant to doing that because I like the informality of the group. Each person just kind of did the thing they were most interested in and made those things happen. That would have been fine if we had stuck at 100 members for the last 2 years. Once you got 1,700 members, and you have people that clearly have need, and we had to start thinking about how to do things differently. And I mentioned earlier that, you know, we’ve had—some of our cofounders have had to step away, and all of a sudden there was this—I know for me, all of a sudden I was a little panicked, like, is this thing going to end? We put so much effort into it. But luckily, we had already been talking and also talking with the advisory board, about what kind of structure we might have. And so we have, now, directors. We have four different areas of interest, and then we have directors for each of those areas, and we have vice presidents for each of those areas. That also gives those people a chance to have a title they can put on their LinkedIn profile. Vice president of marketing for ICN. And then, with that structure, then when volunteers show up, then we can say, what are you interested in? I’m interested in marketing. I’m interested in membership. We have a research on research group, and so we’ve done studies about hiring. We talked to hiring managers. We’re working with another organization now on a survey that’s going to be fielded, and we’ve been able to piggyback some questions onto that. So having these new people is exciting for two reasons. One is people finally get a little tired, and it’s easy to have a lot of ideas. And they said, but who feels like doing this? And then these new people come in, and they have 10 ideas, 20 ideas, and they’re already executing on them. And I see things happening, and I go, “Oh, my gosh, [laugh] a real organizational structure can make things happen,” and it’s—after every meeting, I’m like, I just want to thank you for coming. And even at IIEX, we had probably seven or eight people there from ICN. And even when I finished moderating the little panel about hiring practices, there’s all these people. And they’re like, “Hey... great job.” I’m like, I’m used to—especially as a consultant, like, one person comes over, “Hey... that’s nice. Can I ask you a question?” That’s it. Then you wander off by yourself. So I even feel like part of a group now, which is really cool. But to see that, I think it’s just going to set it up for the future. So you don’t have a growth mindset in that we have goals we have to hit. I mean, the ideal goal is no—everybody is—it’s 100 percent full employment. Nobody needs us anymore. That’s not the way it’s ever going to be. Even in 2022, there’s people who are thinking about how do I choose from the jobs that are available to me. And the economy is cyclical, so it could come—it’s going to come back around, and people will have more of a choice again, and they’re going to need help to figure that out. So I think just having that in place is giving us the opportunity to do a lot more. But I even had to remind these new leaders, you don’t have to do everything in a year. You don’t have to do anything. Do the virtual meetings, do some in-person stuff, do some of the research—the research, but don’t have ten initiatives going at once because—

We don’t want them to burn out.

No. No.

We want sustainable.

Yeah, yeah. So, but I think it’s like, for instance, when you say about, you know, what are we trying to do? Like, what are we talking about at the Quirk’s Event? You know, is there going to be a meetup there? We’re talking about future conferences. Can we do what we did at IIEX? Can we have more of a preference? Where we’re also benefiting, that organization is hosting the conference. Because now we have this other component that we can offer people. So those kinds of things, those types of initiatives, I think are really exciting. I just always want to make sure that we stay focused on that core mission of just being there for people. And in our meeting today, someone said they talked to a person at an in-person meetup who said, “I just like having it on my calendar. If every two weeks, I know I have some place to be as a job seeker, it just makes me feel better.” And that’s—just even that—you could call it a minimal level of support, but it really isn’t that. Emotional support is really critical. And I want to be sure we stay focused on that. I never want to be that organization that exists to be an organization and you don’t even know why you’re doing it anymore. But I will tell you, in terms of growth, we probably went from 25 or 30 people in those initial meetings, to the last meeting; we had more than 100 people come. And we’ve kind of hit that point where we’re getting 100 people on average. That’s a lot of people we’re helping. So it’s just making sure the organization stays vibrant. That’s our number one goal.

Yeah, well, let me help you with that by giving you a chance to plug how people could connect with this organization. What are all of the ways they can connect if they want to start to attend meetings or if they want to get even more involved as a volunteer? It is a fully-volunteer organization, so tell us how they can find you and do those things.

I really want to stress what you just said. It’s a fully-volunteer organization. Because when we started, we talked about what will our model be? And I don’t think anybody was going to quit their day jobs to run this. And we need some money. We need some budget to be able to support our activities. But it was never about getting paid memberships. It was about—especially for people that are job seeking, every penny matters. So that volunteer piece is really critical. So, first of all, you can join as a member for free at insightscareer.org, and that website has all of our resources. So when you land on that page, you’ll be able to see ‘post a job.’ So if you have a job, if you are hiring, you can post a job there. The referral based job board. You can post your profile. You can see those bootleg videos. You can find a link that takes you to the LinkedIn page. And on that LinkedIn page, it’s a closed page. But all you have to do is just say, “I want to join.” We will check to make sure you’re legit [laugh], but that’s a pretty quick process. But that’s a good—that’s mainly the place where we communicate with each other. Because one thing that’s interesting about it is kind of like when you’re in the market for a car. Once you bought the car, you stop thinking about cars. And once you get hired, you kind of stop thinking about the job process. We are trying to encourage people to come back as allies, of course, but—so it’s a transient membership, which is completely fine. But being able to volunteer, especially now that we have that structure, there is an email address there. When you sign up, you’re going to get regular emails talking about the upcoming events. But then, also, we’ve created a newsletter, occasional newsletter. And so you can get that information. And even through that email, once you sign up, you’ll be able to reply to that email. I think it’s just like info@insightscareer.org to be able to find out more information about volunteering. And now that we have this structure, now we can say, here’s one thing you can do. And that’s what we’re trying to get to, is if there’s one thing you like doing, you’re like “I’m just a database person. I love doing that.” Great. Manage the membership database. You don’t have to do ten other things. And so we’re always glad to have help in all areas. You don’t—not everybody has to say, “I want to be in charge.” Just do your one thing. You’re a busy person, you know, and help out when you can help out. So we would definitely be glad to have the help, and we would be glad, Karen, to have people come the way you talked about it, in terms of you’re always working on your career. And I did a sales training a couple years ago with Steve Henke, and he talked about this idea of you got to lay down the runway. So if you’re selling something, you can’t show up today and say, are you ready to buy? You got to establish a relationship, and you talked about it. It’s the same thing. While you have a job, is the best time to be talking to people, just to—not just build your network. It just sounds so one-way. It’s just to build your knowledge base and think about what you might be—want to be doing. And so it’s not—this is not a place just for job seekers. I’ve started—I’ve gone from job club, calling it job club, to a career club because it’s much more about your career in insights.

I love that. Thank you so much. And, also, attend a meeting if you’re—if not sure you’re going to be all in with volunteering to do anything, just come to one of the meetings. Be an ally. If you’re already pretty satisfied where you are, then just be an ally. You never know where the conversation is going to go. And I think the magic of relationships in this industry is you might be surprised with what comes your way, right, if you just show up—show up today, and you don’t know. Right? But it might be surprising; it might be delightful. Because for so many of us, that’s what it has been. Doug, I am so happy to have talked to you today. Is there anything you wish I had asked you that we didn’t get to?

Okay. I’d seen that question in the list [laugh].

[laugh] I don’t always stick to the list, but that one I pretty much try to do every time.

Yeah. Yes. Is there anything that we didn’t cover? Okay, I’m just going to kind of throw this out there. I mentioned that for most of my career, I was really not very involved in the industry. And when I would join organizations, it wasn’t that people weren’t welcoming. They were nice, but I didn’t really see my place. I didn’t know how to use—I think this goes back to networking thing. I didn’t know how to be a member of an organization in a way that felt really organic. It just all felt very fake, and I think that’s why. And that has nothing to do with the people involved. I think that was my bias going into it. And what I’ve learned in the last couple of years, and really only been the last couple of years that I’ve really gotten involved in this industry and people actually might know who I am. It’s because I just had these—those opportunities, like at MRx Pros, just to talk to people just about—just learn who they are. And we have organizations, for-profit organizations like Greenbook, nonprofit organizations, like Insights Association. Why are—there are so many different groups, and each are doing their own thing. But anytime we can work together, that brings our industry together, and we need more of that. I really feel like that. And it’s made me think much more about being a welcoming person myself. If I see that person standing by themselves at the conference, I’ll go over and say, “Hey... what’s going on?” Versus “I don’t have time for that.” But that is a really different mindset, and I’d like to see people adopt that mindset more. I know it’s hard to do because we’re focused on the things we have to get done. And this is a really challenging industry in terms of time and money. But if you can take five minutes and say, maybe I could help someone else today, it sounds kind of, again, Pollyanna-ish, but it’s really true. And even this—Karen, one of the great things about this advisory committee is we have people who are competitors on that committee who are working together for the benefit of the industry. And that has been incredibly heartening to see, and I hope to see more of that in the future.

Well, I hope so too. All of it. I’m with you. Here, here. I am all for collaboration. I’m all for approaching people with empathy, always assuming good intentions and everybody, and see how we can help. So I’m so glad you were here today to kind of share more about the Insights Career Network with our audience and, you know, just kind of keep this conversation going. So thank you. Thank you, Doug.

Oh, I appreciate the opportunity. And I will just—you know, I don’t want to turn into a total love fest, Karen, but you have been one of our biggest supporters. You’ve given us so many opportunities to get the word out there, and we couldn’t be more appreciative of that.

Thank you. And now I will speak with a frog in my throat and tears in my eyes. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. To our audience, thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us and giving us your time. Without your listenership, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do each week. So we thank you for that. To Big Bad Audio, who makes us sound great, I really thank you for all that you do. And of course, our producer, Natalie Pusch. Thank you so much, Natalie, for setting this call up. And again, to everybody who volunteers to help for the Insights Career Network, keep up the great work. Thank you all so very much. Bye-bye.