The SEEK Podcast
Welcome to the SEEK Podcast – we're so glad you’re here. This podcast is a place of community, collaboration, and inspiration, created to invite and encourage you deeper into a relationship with Jesus. Join these podcasters and many others as we encounter Jesus at SEEK25, Jan 1st-5th. For more information and to register, visit seek.focus.org.
The SEEK Podcast
Finding Your Faith in the Corporate World: Corporate Catholic x SEEK
Navigating the corporate world as a young adult can be intimidating, especially for those who want to maintain their faith in a secular environment. In this episode hosts Allison and Claire share transformative lessons they've learned throughout their careers. Drawing from their personal experiences, they detail the essential idea that your first job doesn't have to define your career. Instead, it's a valuable learning opportunity filled with potential for growth and purpose.
The corporate landscape needs more people of faith to champion positive change within organizations. Allison and Claire wholeheartedly believe that by embracing their identities as Catholics in the workplace, they can inspire a new perspective in corporate culture. They challenge the notion that work must be a mundane necessity divorced from spirituality, encouraging listeners to see their contributions through a prayerful lens. Each moment spent in the office can, in fact, be an opportunity for worship and service.
Community also plays a crucial role in this journey. The hosts advocate for building supportive networks, urging young professionals to connect with each other for encouragement and growth. The lives they build around their careers should be infused with faith, and they emphasize that previous experiences will shape their paths, even if it feels confusing at the moment.
Check out SEEK Replay
Welcome to the Seek 25 podcast, featuring some of our favorite podcasters recorded live at the Max Studios podcast stage during Seek 25 in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. My name is Allison.
Speaker 3:And I'm Claire and welcome to the Corporate Catholic Podcast. Thank you so much to Focus and Max Studios for allowing us to be here today. We're really excited and this is our first time doing a live podcast at SEEK, so we're just so grateful to be with you all today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for those of you who have never heard of the Corporate Catholic Podcast before, our mission is to really inspire the joyful hustle by integrating a relationship with God into the nine-to-five. So just a quick show of hands here how many of you are either majoring in business or considering a job in the corporate world?
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, good bit of you, and I don't know about all of you, but when we were in college, allison and I felt a little nervous and anxious about entering the corporate world as people of faith and we just didn't want to lose our identity as a Catholic in a secular corporate world, but just didn't really know what that integration was going to look like or like how our faith and work would actually interact at all.
Speaker 2:And yeah, yeah. So both of us are now just a little over three years into our careers post-grad so we wanted to use this time today to share with you five things we wish we would have known before we started our corporate jobs. But before we do that, let's do some quick intros so you guys can get to know us a little bit better. Claire, do you want to start?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so hi everyone. My name is Claire. I'm originally from Columbus, ohio, and went to college at Miami, yeah, where I studied information systems, analytics and entrepreneurship, and now I have a job in consulting in Chicago and I work in healthcare mergers and acquisitions doing buy side diligence, sell side advisory and post close work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as I said before, I'm Allison. I was born and raised in Omaha, nebraska, and then I moved to Chicago and went to college at Loyola University. I majored in accounting and information systems and minored in marketing, and I also work in consulting, actually at the same firm as Claire, but I work in our technology and experience division. So I help different clients basically implement new technology and it helps them better connect and serve their customers. But enough about us. Let's tell you a little bit more about how this podcast even came about.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So my senior year of college, I got the opportunity to take a faith and entrepreneurship class and that was really the first time that I had thought about my faith, how my faith life would look in a corporate context, and honestly, I had been dreading work my entire life, like I was so worried about graduating and just working at a desk for 40 years and just like watching my life pass away and I just didn't understand or couldn't imagine how work could be anything like my amazing four years in college until I took this class, and one of the biggest things that I learned was that in Genesis, when God created Adam and Eve before the fall, he gave them.
Speaker 3:He gave them jobs. Their job was to work and tend for the garden and, um, you know, so when the world was perfect, uh, humans still had jobs, and so I think that was a huge turning point for me, and really all of the negative things that we see come from work are just, you know, ways that evil has crept in in different ways, but at the core of it, our work is meant to be a good thing and this was really just a huge light bulb for me and I was so inspired. And when I moved to Chicago, I started an Instagram account called Corporate Catholic to just bring other people along with my consulting journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was around the same time that Claire and I first met, so we actually both started at the same time at our current company and through a mutual friend of ours, we figured out that we not only lived in the same apartment building, but we were literally one floor apart in a 34-story high-rise apartment building in Chicago. So kind of crazy and definitely a God moment. But it was really at a time where I was desiring to find Catholic community, especially having just left college, and so, as Claire was kind of telling me about her inspiration for Corporate Catholic, I knew then and there that it had to be a podcast, and so I told her that and it took a little bit of convincing. But fast forward, two years and 54 episodes later and here we are now at Seek doing our first live podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, as you can probably tell, we're pretty passionate about this topic, but you know, god's also passionate about work. The concept of work is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible, and so this is just something that needs to be talked about and it's just such a pivotal time in your transition from college to post-grad life, so we're just really excited to dive in and as we prep for this episode, we were just thinking back on when we were in college and just thinking like what we wish we would have known about the corporate world. So you know, that's what we're ready to get into and let's get started. So number one is that your first job doesn't define your career, and I think I don't know about you all, but anyone know someone that just knew what they wanted to do with their life from like the age of five. Like they were just like woke up and they were like I want to be a doctor and their whole life they knew they wanted to be a doctor and they've had this whole plan and it's just been so great for them and that's amazing.
Speaker 3:But I was just never that person. I was always just someone that was like, yeah, she's, you know, she's good at this, she gets good grades, she, you know I'm okay at sports, but I was never someone that just really had like a defined skill that I could like tap into and be like that is what I'm talented at and like that is what I should do for a job, and so, like coming to college, it was just kind of um, kind of challenging, where I feel like everyone is saying, you know, follow your passion and like, find that thing that is uniquely you and then use it. And it was just really hard for me to identify that. And a professor of mine told me that he didn't really feel like he had found his passion until the age of 50. And I think that, you know, passion is a gift and it's a gift that some people are blessed with.
Speaker 3:But really what we all are looking for is purpose, and our purpose is to know love and serve the Lord, and that's something that you can do in any job, in any situation that you're in. And I think if I had known that, I just would have had like so much less pressure on myself because, really, like your first job, if we just reframe the expectations of our first job, your first job is to know how to work, just learn how to be an employee, to gain experience in something that you've never done before to love your coworkers, just to and to know, love and serve the Lord, and you know you can do that wherever you are. So if you find something that you're passionate about, that is so incredible. But that should not be a qualification for your first job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this even extends past your first job too. Yeah, and this even extends past your first job too. You know, when I took this first job that I have now, it really was my dream job. I was so excited about it, and when I started working I was like I'm like going to work here forever. This is great. I love it so much and I still do love my job.
Speaker 2:But you know, the past year or so I've kind of felt this tug of that. You know, I'm not sure that God has me here forever, but I don't necessarily know what the next move is either, and that's okay too. And so one thing that I've been trying to do is to just take that to prayer of. You know, take the pressure off trying to figure out, like, what's my big passion, what's my ultimate purpose, and instead ask you know what's my next step, or where does God have me next? And each job and each role you have is a stepping stone to where you're meant to be.
Speaker 2:And another thing I would encourage is talk to people who are very well-seasoned into their careers, or maybe have that dream job that you have, and ask them about their first or second job out of college, because I think you'd be surprised that a lot of people that have these really glamorous jobs had jobs right out of college that were vastly different from what they're doing now. So I know in college we had a lot of guest speakers at my college and I was always blown away by their first couple jobs out of college and it was just so different from what they were doing. So it gave me a lot of hope and it kind of lessened that pressure of needing to feel like you have to have it figured out for that first or second job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know something, I want to do, something that I'm passionate about, but I don't think I'm in a rush to do so and I think, as you just start your first job, or you know, you, through the classes you've taken at college, like you can see small areas where maybe you're like that really interested me, or that, you know, this interested me more than this, and you know, just lean into those areas as much as you can and, you know, just follow that path and at some point, you know, you might find something unique to you. But, yeah, as we've talked about it, you know your first job is just, you know, take the pressure off and just take something that you know fits some qualifications of, maybe like location and, you know, maybe a pay that can support your lifestyle and maybe some values and focus on those things rather than maybe the job description and the role itself. All right. So number two is that the corporate world needs you and I think that it's really easy to look at corporate America as this just large, easy to look at corporate America as this just large, you know big, bad wolf of sorts, and I just want to stay as far away as possible, but you know, I'm sure we're all well aware that the corporate world makes a ton of decisions for the world that we live in today and we're just impacted so much. Like, for example, even just you know, pharmaceutical companies creating, you know, the medicine that we take, or impacting the healthcare industry. A ton, or a lot of the companies that you may well known and love are owned by private equity and, like those are large corporations just with a lot of money and maybe not always the best intentions, and so there's just a lot of different. You know corporate roles impacting the companies and you know the products and everything that we use on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 3:And you know Catholics need to be at the board. They need to be at the table and being able to be there and have an opinion and have an impact so we can make change. I mean, no change is going to happen if we just kind of separate ourselves and do our own thing and hope that and pray that it'll change, like there needs to be some people on the ground actually advocating for change and doing so in a way that you don't have to, you know, go up to the board and say I'm Catholic, but they're going to respect you, you've worked there and they respect your ideas and your credentials and they say, like this person knows what they're talking about and we respect them and especially with what we talked about, being seen, known and loved just being a Catholic is so attractive in a corporate world and others are just really gravitating towards that love and kindness that you have and bringing that to the corporate world. It's just very needed.
Speaker 3:And I was talking with a missionary a few years ago and they were kind of just talking about, you know, whether they should stay in mission or go to the corporate world, and they just said I really can't imagine myself having any more impact than what I already have as a missionary.
Speaker 3:And I just really have been thinking about that for years and I, you know, I've taken it to prayer and I'm just so convicted that I know I am a missionary in my current role. Just the conversations that I've had with co-workers and just seeing them and realizing that no one has maybe supported them in a certain way or, you know, remembered their birthday at work or just asked about their kids or just shown them certain love, I know I'm a missionary and so I really believe that you can be a missionary in any role and you know we are all meant to serve the Lord in different ways, and just because your job title doesn't say missionary doesn't mean it's not in your job description. And so if that's something that maybe you're dealing with, of deciding, feeling like you have a heart for mission and not sure where that plays, I just encourage you to keep an open mind and take the words I've just said into consideration as well when kind of making that discernment process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, and it's so easy to just think that you know all corporations and all companies are bad, but there are good companies out there, and so you may be thinking like, how do I find those good companies that share the values that I have is just to not just look at their mission statement on the website, because it's so easy for companies to paint themselves in a positive light and say this is what we believe, this is what we live by. But culture is really lived out by its people, and that's something that I've really learned just in our first couple of years working, and it's something that I love about the company we work for is that the culture is so strong, and so if you want to see what a company's culture is like and what their values truly are, try to talk to people who actually work there, whether it's maybe an alumni who you can connect with on LinkedIn or just someone that you can get connected with. That's a really good way to see what a company actually values and what their culture is actually like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think something that stuck out to me about our company is that they did a values-based interview, which I thought was like, really unique and it honestly got me thinking, as Allison was just saying about you know, find someone who actually cares what your values are, too. Like. Our company had a values-based interview because they cared what our values were just as much as I was caring what my company's values were, um, and I. I think that's really important too is there are companies out there that are known for their culture. Maybe try some of those first, see if there's companies that are kind of known for their culture, people that, um, you know, were you know able to uh, just find their place.
Speaker 3:And yeah, Um, and I think, as mission, just another witness of in corporate world you can have, mission is this podcast. So Allison and I were coworkers and are still coworkers and, um, you know, if I, if we didn't work in our corporate jobs, this podcast wouldn't exist. And now we know, if we didn't work in our corporate jobs, this podcast wouldn't exist, and now we're here at SEEK hoping to impact some of you. So I think this is just another witness is how you know, say yes to the corporate job if you feel called?
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Number three work is hard, but you can do hard things. Hard, but you can do hard things. So I'm going to state the obvious here. But work is not always fun.
Speaker 2:But Colossians, chapter 3, verse 23, says whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men. And I love this verse because it really gives us the opportunity to take even the most mundane things you know, working on an Excel spreadsheet or building a PowerPoint, or doing these things that seem to have no meaning and giving them meaning by offering it up as a sacrifice, as a prayer, as an intention or something that you know it's just been on your mind recently. And we have that opportunity to do that as Catholics, so we can find meaning and bring meaning into things that just seem meaningless. And I feel like the past couple years I've really God has really shown me that I can do hard things. So I've been on a project now for almost two years and it just wrapped up shortly before SEEK, so it's finally come to a close, but it's been one of the most challenging parts of my career and this project wasn't supposed to be two years. You know it's not normal for consulting, but there were a lot of pivots and changes and a very difficult client to deal with that just made this project just keep going on forever and ever.
Speaker 2:And there were so many points during this project where I so badly wanted to just go to my career advisor and say, hey, like, just get me off this project, like I don't want to be doing anything else but this, or even saying, okay, I should just quit and just find a different job.
Speaker 2:But the thing that kept me in that job, in that project, was the team that I worked with, the internal team and the bonds that we had built over those years. You know, not only did we go through the hardest things together, but we saw each other through people getting engaged, people moving and all these different life changes that we navigated, in addition to just being on this project together. And so that's one of the biggest gifts I think about work is as well as just those relationships and the bonds that you can build, and that truly is a gift from God being able to show up and be there for your coworkers in that way. So, yeah, I think it's so easy to get sucked into the negativity in the corporate world and make everything about yourself and I need to get this done, or this is. You know, why is this person having me do this thing? And one of the things that kind of helps you get outside of that is focusing on how you can serve the people that you're working with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was thinking about, uh, our patron saint of this week, joan of Arc, and just how much that she had navigated and just really felt that resistance through something that she was feeling called to do. So the Lord was asking her to lead a battle and, you know, people laughed in her face really and she was only, like, I think, in her teens, so she was very young I forget the exact age and she was definitely probably, you know, one of, if not the only, woman out there, and so I really looked to her, as mergers and acquisitions is a very male-dominated field, so I was just thinking about her. And not only was she young, but she also was just a minority in the situation, and there's going to be times where, in your corporate role, you're going to feel like the minority, and maybe it's because you're the only Catholic in the room, and I just encourage you to really think about St Joan and how much she went through and also how much resistance she had. So she threw out this great idea and it's like throwing out a great idea to your boss or maybe your project group or your team and everyone is just like that's the worst idea I've ever heard, and there was just so much resistance, but she knew that God was calling her to and so she just had to keep persisting. And I think persistence is a huge, a huge gift and a huge virtue that you can call on the Lord and just have and ask for persistence through whatever you're doing. So when the Lord asks you to do something and you're like, you know it'd be so much easier if I could just stay at home.
Speaker 3:And I think about remote work is just so prevalent nowadays and there's only so much impact that you can have through a screen. And I know that for years, you know people had to do remote work. But I would also encourage you that it's going to be harder to work in person. It's definitely you have to commute, you got to pack a lunch, you got to. You know say hi to people awkwardly when you like get water or coffee, but the benefits are just so, um, so great because you end up interacting with people in such a new and different way than, uh, if you were just working remotely. And yeah, I guess that's just an encouragement too, because I feel like working remote it just seems so glamorous, Um, just like being at home and kind of having the autonomy to do whatever you want, but really, like you're not. One, you're not going to impact people and two, you're not going to learn. Like you need to be there.
Speaker 3:And you know, remote work has actually impacted us as younger consultants, because a lot of the older people are staying home with their families, which is amazing. But also we're not getting as much mentorship as young people. And you know, that's something I've tried to like bring up to my mentors and just thank them when they are in person, because I'm like thank you so much, this means so much to me. And I'd encourage you all as well to just to not, you know, be complacent and not take a step back, but to take a step forward and say, like I'm here, I want to learn as much as I can and I want to be in person, I like want to ask questions, I want to impact others and I want to show up. So I encourage you and if you're experiencing any resistance, just to really ask for St Joan of Arc's intercession, as she really has gone through so much push and pull through her whole story.
Speaker 2:All right. Number four Forty hours of work could be 40 hours of prayer. So this is kind of a crazy statistic. But and I don't like to think about it too much but the average person will spend one third of their life at work. I know, kind of crazy. That's a lot of time and a significant portion of our lives. And so it can be so easy to just compartmentalize our lives into okay, here's my work life, here's my personal life, here's my spiritual life. You know, going to mass and prayer and all those things. But especially when it comes to work, if we truly set aside every other part of ourself, we're missing out on a huge opportunity to show up as a witness to our faith at work. And I know you may be thinking how do I show up as a Catholic at work? Like what does that look like? And I think you know it can be kind of a taboo topic of you know I shouldn't talk about faith at work. Like those things should be separate. And I think my opinion of this was really shifted, actually just a couple months ago.
Speaker 2:So who here listens to Spotify? Okay, yes, so I'm a big Spotify person and one of my favorite days of the year is when Spotify Wrapped comes out, right, and you get to see all of your top artists, your top songs, your top podcasts. And so I was at work and I was sitting with someone on my team and you know this was a girl who was not Catholic. I had never brought up the fact that I do a podcast before, but she had followed me on Instagram and you know I've posted about the podcast before, so I imagine she heard about it through that, but we'd never talked about it before. And she's like hey, do you want to watch my Spotify wrapped with me? And I was like sure, like I love to see what other people are listening to. And so she has her phone up and she's going through and it gets to the section where it shows you your top podcast. And number three on her list was the Corporate Catholic Podcast. And she was like oh yeah, like I listen to your podcast. And I was like wow, like we've never even talked about this before, like I didn't even know We've been working together like two years now and it was just kind of a crazy moment. And you know there was other people on my team there and they, you know, kind of chimed in. They were like wait, you have a podcast.
Speaker 2:Like I didn't know this and for so long I was just not that I was trying to hide it, but I was just scared to bring it up. I didn't think people would care and also I just felt like it was a very vulnerable thing. You know, like the things that we talk about, sometimes I'm like I don't know if I want my coworkers listening to that always, you know, and but you know, after that, you know, at a happy hour, like everyone on my team was just asking about it and saying you know, why did you start this? Like, what do you talk about? Who do you interview?
Speaker 2:Like what do you talk about? Who do you interview? Like what inspired you to do this and just express such curiosity and interest in it that I just was blown away. And it really just changed my perspective and it made me realize that you know, when you work with people and you build relationships with them, you want to learn everything about them, you want to understand what they like and what's important to them, and you know that includes your faith. And you know I would do the same for someone else as well.
Speaker 3:So so, yeah, yeah, and I definitely think that you know it can be hard to kind of bring up faith at work and I think something that I just really try to do is to be truthful. So it's like someone asked me what I did this weekend and I went on a retreat. Like I tell them, I went on a retreat because it's how I would answer the question and I it's not like I'm trying to bring up faith, it's just that they genuinely asked me what I did and that is what I did. Like my faith is a huge part of my life. I'm constantly doing stuff related to it. So some of my coworkers I did, like one of those on Holy Thursday, like the seven church bus tour, like you know, on like the night of Holy Thursday and like some of my coworkers still talk about that, they're like Claire and her bus tour. She loves that. Like, what churches did you go to again? So it's just fun to you know, kind of just try to be yourself as much as you can when being with people and even if you don't know them that well, they might ask you simple questions, but you know I try really hard not to hide, but I also am not, like I say enough where they're like, they know I'm Catholic and if they want to ask and learn further than people have, and if people you know that makes them uncomfortable, then you know, maybe it's just something that they know about me, but we haven't discussed too much further.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I also want to encourage everyone to, you know one, if there's an employee resource group at your work, to get involved. So there was actually like an interfaith employee resource group at my work to get involved. So there was actually like an interfaith employee resource group at my work which was really amazing and just something I didn't know existed in companies before joining one. And but there, you know, it was kind of just an interfaith group and you know, I kind of just stood in the background the first year and just kind of saw what was going on. But then the second year I was like you know, there's not a Catholic specific group. So I just asked and said, you know, could I start a Catholic group? And they said yes, and we're small but mighty and you know, trying to to grow, where we each year and, um, we pray the divine mercy chaplet every other Friday and sometimes no one comes and sometimes it's. You know we get a group to come and it's just like such a, it's such an amazing experience that I've actually been able to like pray with my co-workers, you know, on our like, on our laptops, like on our like work computers, and it's like actually allowed from my company, which is just such a gift and such a blessing and other ways that you can maybe allow your 40 hours of work to just be 40 hours of prayer is just kind of that.
Speaker 3:Pray without ceasing, like just say a come Holy Spirit, before your meeting, say a decade of the rosary. You know, I like to pray the rosary on my train ride to work. It's a great time to kind of just have 15 minutes to myself. You know, maybe you're dealing with something very specific. Search for a patron saint. I know there's. You know, saint Joseph the worker, jose Maria also has a lot about work and JP2 has said a lot about work. So there's just so many people that you can kind of ask for for intercession through your work and maybe find a saint that's close to you and and keep them close during during your work day. All right.
Speaker 3:So the last one here is that God puts dreams on your heart for a reason, and I think that the main takeaways here are that nothing is wasted and to have hope. You know, like we've said before, it's so hard to see the value in doing 40 hours a week on Excel from your bedroom. You know working remotely like that is so hard and but there are ways that we can know love and serve God, as we've talked about. But also God is using the experience that you're having in any experience, to help shape and write your future. And I don't know if any of you have ever read a book or seen a movie where, like the very end, they bring in something from the very beginning and you're like, oh, it all makes sense and it's like all tied up so nicely in a bow and it just like everything happened for a reason. And I really feel like God likes stories like that.
Speaker 3:I just think Alice and I have both had several stories where something that happened years ago that we thought meant nothing was like really preparing us for something that we couldn't even dream of or didn't have any idea existed. And one that comes to mind for me is just, I had a random internship my junior year and this was COVID summer, and I was all excited and it was, you know, at Notre Dame and it was this like Catholic accelerator program for the summer, and so I was really excited. But then everything went remote and so it was just me in my bedroom, you know, so sad, but just doing what I could, and we had these speakers that would come and talk to the entrepreneurs and so, like some of the speakers that have been here this week, and just you know, other different business, catholic business owners and different people were speaking to these entrepreneurs and I was just like, wow, this is so inspiring, this is so great. But I didn't really take it anywhere. I just kind of was like that was great, I loved hearing them.
Speaker 3:Um, you know, put it in my pocket, like that internship seemed like such a random thing, like I've done nothing else ever related at all, just started doing consulting and had all these other experiences. But, flash forward, years later, we've started this podcast and I've actually contacted several of the people that have spoken about, you know, at that internship to be guests on the podcast, and I just feel like I, when we started the podcast, I already knew so much more about, maybe, the Catholic entrepreneurship and in business you know some of the businesses that were out there just from that internship and I was like this is just so random, just so yeah. So, and you know, god is just using small things, especially like at this conference at SEEK maybe you had an idea or a talk that sparked you and that might lead you in a direction that you might not think about it for years and then it might show up again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And another example too is you know this podcast now. So an experience that I had was I've actually started two other podcasts before this one and I wasn't exactly sure why I was doing that, honestly, Like the first one was during COVID. You know, podcasting started becoming kind of popular. I was bored, I was at home, as most of us were, and I was like I'm just going to learn something new. I'm just going to see if I can figure this out.
Speaker 2:And I had studied abroad my sophomore year of college and traveled a ton and kept really detailed journals of you know all the places I went and all the experiences I had. And I was like I'm just going to start doing solo podcasts about each of the different places that I went, just to kind of I don't know remind myself of those trips. And you know it was a difficult time. And so I did that and it didn't really go anywhere, it didn't turn into anything and you know it just kind of ended and I was like, okay, whatever, it was cool to learn. And then, when I was in college, cool to learn.
Speaker 2:And then when I was in college, junior senior year, I started working for my college's entrepreneurship incubator. I've always kind of been interested in entrepreneurship. And I got a job there working for this professor who kind of spearheaded the whole program and he was like, all right, it's still kind of COVID and you know we can't do a lot of in-person events, so you know we need to still do something, but it's kind of up to you to figure out like what you want to do. And I was like, okay, well, maybe we could just start a podcast and we can just interview different alumni who have gone on to start businesses and, you know, do different things. And so I took that first experience and started a podcast for my college, just interviewing different entrepreneurs, and again I graduated. It kind of ended. It was fun, but I had no idea that it would then lead to you know what we're doing now and this podcast we have now.
Speaker 3:So and I also like I had a podcast in college and it just like died. And I had such a negative connotation with podcasts and I also was. I worked with one in our entrepreneurship department as well, and then with COVID it just kind of like disappeared. And so when Allison came to me and was like you want to do a podcast, I was like absolutely not. I was like that is the last thing I want to do, like they just were failures in my mind and I think that really what was happening was that like I had a desire to do a podcast and we both did like early on in college.
Speaker 3:It just took really like years to for that full, you know, for our full like vision and God's vision to like come to fruition. And we both, like you know, dabbled and tried a few different things and then found our way here and I think, you know, some of those things that I thought were failures were really just things preparing me for what God was actually calling us to. And so, you know, maybe you have something like that where you're just like I don't want to think about that because I tried that and it didn't work, or like that was just such a random experience and you might not know why God has asked you to do that or like how you found yourself in that situation. But just be hopeful that God is going to use all of your experiences to form your unique path and your unique journey in your career. And something just to keep in mind is that success for Catholics looks different, and so for having hope in this year of in this, you know, jubilee year, and we're pilgrims of hope is that if you're in a season of just like deciding your major, like deciding a job or an internship, you know some of your classmates are going to be looking at things and you know, maybe these prestigious jobs or just other things, and their vision of success is different than ours, and it's really hard to kind of remember that and remember that we are pilgrims marching towards heaven, but our eyes are towards heaven and we're really playing a whole different game than most other people that you know, maybe your classmates or your coworkers and so I just encourage you that it's going.
Speaker 3:The road is going to be hard because when we're doing the right thing, resistance is always going to be there.
Speaker 3:The evil one is always going to try to stop us, and so feeling resistance is actually a good sign that you're on the right path and you know. I encourage you to really just keep prayer as the center, focal point of your discernment in your career and throughout your career path and just really remember that heaven is the real goal, because a lot of your coworkers and once you get in the corporate world they're like, no, what's important is getting the next promotion, or like what's important is that you know you work until midnight until this is done, because this is like more important than anything else you have going on. And I just really encourage you to like accept any hardship that you endure, you know, through prayer, and to just remember that you know success looks different for us and just keep that hope if you ever have any difficult times and you'll be okay so we can do it. We all are in this together, as Father Mike and Troy Boland have said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one other example and story I want to share before we wrap up is, you know, just allowing God to work in ways that you wouldn't have expected. So I know a lot of you are probably maybe looking for internships right now or have done an internship, and I had an internship during college that I absolutely hated. It's like I went into this internship and applied for it and there were multiple locations and I thought I was going to be in Chicago, which is where I went to school, and I put that as my preference, and it turns out they ended up sending me to Erie, pennsylvania, which is a very small town, and I just wasn't expecting to be there. I was very upset. I was like, no, I wanted my first summer in the city. All I wanted to do is just be in the city and experience everything that's going on there, and so I had a lot of resentment going into it, but I didn't have anything else lined up, so I was like, okay, I'll go, and so I ended up going.
Speaker 2:I didn't love the work itself, but what I got out of it was so many strong friendships and I ended up being roommates with my current roommate now, and she's one of my absolute best friends, and so it's just crazy to think that if I would have, you know, discounted that opportunity and just been like, no, this isn't what I wanted you know, I'm not going to do that Like my life would be so different now and I wouldn't have this person in my life.
Speaker 2:So so I just encourage you to you know it may not be the internship that you wanted or the experience that you wanted, but you never know how God is going to work through that.
Speaker 2:So have hope with that as well.
Speaker 2:All right, so as we kind of wrap up here and, you know, kind of finish doing some reflection on kind of our own careers, I hope you can tell that we definitely don't have it figured out either. So, but what we have done is just start the conversation, and you know, with this podcast, like that's truly what we are trying to do is to just have these conversations and it's helped us so much, and so I encourage you to also have those conversations as well about work and your jobs and your co-workers and all these things that impact our lives so much as you navigate that transition to post-grad. And you know, as you can see today, like we are so passionate about this topic and we truly believe that God cares about your work and he cares about your career, and so we hope today this kind of eased some of your maybe anxieties and worries about pursuing a job in the corporate world and also just encouraged you that you don't have to work in ministry to be a witness and an example of your faith in your day-to-day life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so thank you all so much. If there's a topic that we didn't touch on today that you were hoping that maybe we would talk about, we encourage you to maybe check out some of our other episodes. We do. A lot of guests as well, and many of them have booths here, have been walking around, so there may be someone interesting that you might want or another topic that you might be interested in, so encourage that. And we will also be hanging out after the podcast. Interested in? So encourage that and we will also be hanging out after the podcast. So please come say hi, and we have stickers and would love to meet you. So thank you all so much and we hope to see you again soon. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode recorded live at Seek Miss the conference, or want to relive your favorite moments? Seek Replay has you covered Access, powerful keynotes, inspiring talks and exclusive content to take your faith deeper, anytime, anywhere. Head to seekfocusorg backslash replay to download now, and don't forget to join us for Seek 26. Check out seekfocusorg for more information and to register.
