Shocking Truth! Your Daydreams Will Get You Promoted Faster Than Your Resume

Is your resume getting lost in a sea of qualified candidates? Are you looking for a competitive edge to get that next promotion? 

In today's competitive job market, the old "hustle" mentality isn't enough to land the best career opportunities. Get the guide at: https://www.jennlandis.com/yourbreakthroughguide

It’s time for a new approach, one that is designed to give you the competitive edge you need for a true career breakthrough.

In this motivational video, I’ll introduce a counterintuitive but powerful 5-step formula to success and increased visibility that proves your ability to daydream is more valuable than your resume. Whether you’re seeking career advancement via a promotion, preparing for future career growth, or looking for career insights, you’ll discover how to turn free-flowing thought into a “visibility project” that showcases your initiative, resourcefulness, and bold thinking—helping you stand out to decision-makers and make meaningful progress in your professional growth.

🔥We’ll break down my "Daydreaming" framework for career planning, leadership development, and landing your next job promotion:
➡️ Step 1: Daydreaming: How to unlock creativity and explore your ideal career path for women career growth and talented professionals.
➡️ Step 2: Curiosity: A career development strategy that sparks new career building ideas.
➡️ Step 3: Ideation: Transform your thoughts into actionable steps for job advancement and promotion.
➡️ Step 4: Scrappiness: Develop a “make-it-work” attitude that builds mental strength and resilience for workplace success.
➡️ Step 5: Relationships: Share your project to boost visibility, inspire others, and open doors for career advancement.

This episode is packed with expert advice, career coach insights, and success tips for women at work and bold professionals ready to capture breakthrough success.

Whether you’re asking, “How can I advance my career?” or “How do I stand out among the competition?", this episode will guide you.

Stop letting a flat, backward-looking resume define your potential. Start using career growth hacks, career development tips, and professional growth strategies to create a forward-looking pitch that lands you the breakthrough promotion you deserve.

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🔗 *CONNECT WITH JENN LANDIS*
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► Book: Break Up. Break In. Breakthrough! https://a.co/d/dxU9ehR
► Website and Free Resources to Support Your Next Breakthrough: https://www.jennlandis.com/yourbreakthroughguide
►Book Jenn to Speak at Your Next Event: https://www.jennlandis.com/speaking
► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennlandis/

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Let's face it. Job opportunities are not as plentiful as they once were. Promotion rates and job rates are down across the US with some industries hit harder than others. In a more competitive environment, standing out from the crowd can be difficult, exhausting, and just plain discouraging. And yet you're also tired of feeling unseen and overlooked. What are you to do? Well, my friend, there just may be a surprising way to get scrappy and stand out even in a down economy, and it doesn't start with your resume. It actually starts with your ability to daydream. That's right. Your daydreams are actually more powerful than your resume. And that's our topic for today's episode. Welcome to Daring Breakthroughs. The podcast obsessed with helping professionals at all levels, just like you build unstoppable confidence, gain crystal clarity, and create powerful networking connections to give you a competitive edge. We share practical strategies and inspiring stories from daring people who have achieved remarkable breakthroughs. I know that if you can see it, you can be it, because I navigated my own career from Walmart to Wall Street and my friend, you can too. I'm your host and author of Break Up. Break In. Breakthrough! Jen Landis. It used to be that hustling was the obvious way to become the undeniable choice for that next breakthrough opportunity. I remember being in corporate offices where people were afraid to walk out to their cars right at five o'clock because the execs may be watching up in their windows to see who was coming and going. I eventually became one of those execs, and I can tell you we didn't do that, but there was a fear of that. And I think in many companies there may still be. Whether you are chasing a promotion in your current company, an opportunity through your network to a new company, or maybe a pivot to a different industry or role, if you hustled, good things just seemed to come your way. You gave up your life, you gave up your social engagements, you gave up a lot, and sometimes even your health, but good things seemed to come your way. Then the pandemic hit and the world as we knew it changed, our priorities shifted, and we all realized we were tired of the hustle and we were willing to admit it to ourselves and to each other. And for the first time in a long time, we felt like we had choices. We were living in a time called the "Great Resignation." It felt like you could just wave a wand and great opportunity just magically appeared. Post on socials that you were looking for your next opportunity. Turn in your resume and voila, good things came your way. We were reminded that there's more to life than just the hustle. We started advocating for ourselves, most notably, by leaving our current employers, thus the Great Resignation. And you know what? It worked, at least for a while. The pendulum has now swung back in the other direction, and we find ourselves living in a time with lower job growth and lower promotion levels than we experienced even pre-pandemic. I am not trying to paint an overly bleak picture, but the reality is that competition for opportunities is real. The struggle right now to find a job is real. It's taking, on average five to six months for people to find jobs and when they, they change jobs, they're not coming with the big bonuses and the big, uh, pay increases that we saw just a year or two ago. There are more people with great resumes vying for attention and fewer overall opportunities. So now what, do we have to give up this newfound freedom we've had and return to a hustle mentality that makes no sense? I don't think so. I don't think so, but you do have to find a way to stand out with more than just a well-written resume, if you don't, you run the risk of staying stuck in an unfulfilling job with untapped potential, with frustration growing and mounting, and a longer timeline to get to that next breakthrough with more income, impact, and joy. And that's not how we roll here at Daring Breakthroughs. There is a better way. So I'm going to invite you to do something a little counterintuitive. I want you to kick back, let your mind roam, because I believe that daydreaming just might be the new hustle. Now, to be fair, I'm not saying that you won't have to work, that you can just kick back, do nothing, shirk your responsibilities and great things will happen anyway. I am not saying that. What I'm saying is that you can work smarter and use that as a way to stand out in a competitive field. Particularly in the age of AI, being able to think and build relationships while leveraging smart tools like AI to assist you is a key differentiator among today's talent. To get ahead, you can't just be a doer. AI is going to continue to do the doing for us, or at least the heavy lifting. Original thought, paired with the ability to build relationships in a way that others can see, that's how you stand out. So, I want to share a process that you can remember with a simple, silly sentence. Ready? Here it is. Dave's clever idea sparked results. Okay, so I can kind of hear you now. So who was Dave? What was his idea and better yet, what were his results and why were they so amazing? Well, let me back up and tell you a story about, um, a time when I first came into my C-Suite role. I was super nervous. Um, I was worried because I was a very different candidate for the role than my predecessor had been. Um, my predecessor had been an SVP for many, many years with quite a few different companies and very large prestigious companies. And I, on the other hand, I grew up in the company and came up, um, with a very different background than he had, and I was concerned that they were going to look at me. And when I say they, I mean the CEO, the C-suite counterparts of mine, and the board were going to look at me and expect me to have the breadth and the depth of his experience, and I, I didn't have it. And so in one of my first conversations with the CEO before I stepped into the role, I had a very candid conversation with him. His name happened to be Dave. So my sentence pays a little bit of, um, homage and respect to Dave. And Dave said, you know, Jenn, I don't expect you to be him. If I wanted him, I would've found another person that had similar characteristics to him. I didn't. I chose you for a reason. You are what the company needs for this season of our growth. And you can figure it out because Jenn, you are resourceful. You are incredibly resourceful. And I walked away from that meeting. Feeling much better, feeling like I was seen and that he did know who I was, what I stood for, what I could bring, that he valued what I could bring. And I also walked away recalling that, man, all of the times I'd been scrappy and I had figured it out. My dad would call it putting something together with bailing wire and duct tape. You just figure it out. You use what you have and you figure it out. And his calling me resourceful in that moment gave me confidence. Confidence that I had figured it out in the past, and confidence that I would figure it out in the future. As for the sentence, we're going to use it as an acrostic to help us remember the steps in what I'm calling the daydreaming framework. We're going to turn the act of daydreaming, kicking back, letting our brains roam into trailblazing in just five steps. This is going to set you apart and make you the undeniable choice for that next opportunity. This process works in any situation where there's a decision maker standing between you and your next breakthrough opportunity. The purpose of this is to gain visibility, whether you're an entrepreneur or you're in a networking group and you just want a higher, more visible role, or maybe something within your community. Anywhere where a decision has to be made by someone other than you, and visibility is gonna help you stand out, that is what this framework will help you do. Step one is daydreaming. Daydreaming in this context is the opposite of the hustle mentality. When I say daydreaming, it means you are giving yourself room to kick back and think, to stare into space and to think to yourself, "I wonder what if..." with no purpose, no agenda, just allowing your mind to drift, allowing your thoughts to slow and reducing your stress by practicing mental rest while also building mental strength because you are deep thinking and you are using every part of your brain in a way that it was intended to be used. I often say that I am only as well-behaved as my inner five-year-old. I need snacks, I need naps, and I need playtime. And I think most of us are only as well-behaved as our inner five-year-olds. And I think our brains need playtime. And it's so easy to get caught in a trap of checking off to-dos and moving on to the next thing that we don't really stop and give ourselves time to think and to let our minds wander. Like thinking without, uh, the pressure of direction. Like, I've got to think about this one specific thing. No, just letting yourself float in a sea of thoughts and just letting it be. I think this is also why meditation and the practice of meditation has really become so incredibly popular because it gives us that space to just rest. Really good daydreaming allows you to generate a spark of an idea that captures your attention and pulls you in. So for me, in my background and example. Um, I had a daydreaming session in which I really wanted to see our organization put in place a corporate university. I talk about this in my book, and it was one of several, um, breakthrough moments for me, and the breakthrough didn't come until years later, but the origination of that idea was during a brainstorming session when I was just sitting back and I was tired, and I just let my brain wander. Daydreaming is powerful because it also leads to step number two, which is curiosity. So curiosity involves unleashing your inner 2-year-old. So I talked a minute ago about our inner 5-year-old. Now we're going to regress even further and go back to age two, where we are asking "why" questions. Um, and if it's not, why then the five W's, right? What, when, where, why, and how. That's not five W's, but I think you know what I mean. It's a period of exploration. So curiosity just pulls you in and gets you exploring without judgment. And I, I gotta tell you, I struggle with this sometimes because I find myself, uh, creating or asking questions at the same time that I'm evaluating answers. And this is not the time for that. This is just to ask questions. "That's interesting. Why would that be?" I'll tell you, my husband is phenomenal at this. He can ask question after question after question, and he takes some of our discussions down really interesting paths that honestly I wouldn't go down because sometimes his curiosity is actually just better than mine. It outlasts mine. So build the muscle of curiosity. The outcome of step two, is excitement because it builds energy and enthusiasm. When you really get into the curiosity of, of asking questions and seeking answers, it, it builds some momentum. So for me, I started asking questions about that corporate university,

like: 14:07

"What is it really?" "Who's involved in running them? What does it take to run a corporate university? Who would have to approve it? What are the pros and the cons? Um, when do you know your, if your company is ready for that kind of a, a thing. And how are they structured and funded?" Lots and lots of questions. I mean, the wonderful thing about curiosity is once you really start getting committed to asking all of these questions, you will find more and more and more questions. Step three is ideation. It's when you actually start generating ideas based on the curiosity questions that you've been asking and the exploration that you just went through. So this is where we start to see patterns and we explore possibilities based on the answers to the questions that you've asked yourself or that you've researched. This is where we really move from seeking to understand what others do, and we start internalizing it and we start asking, "Well, what could I do?" So we move from a generic intangible idea to a possibility that you can actually consider for yourself. We turn abstract daydreams into tangible thoughts that we can kind of lay out in front of us and examine. The outcome for this step is a list of ideas. You get more energy, but you also get caution. This is also where we can start backing away because we can get overwhelmed by some of the ideas we come up with and we start, um, allowing imposter syndrome and questioning of ourself to start settling in. And it just, sometimes our ideas feel bigger than our ability to tackle them. So you have to be careful because this is where it actually starts to feel a little bit more real. And I would encourage you. Keep going. At this point, you're not ready to call it quits. Keep going. So for me, the example of this would be for me to say, "Well, what would it take for a company of, at that time, around 1,500 people to want to invest in a corporate university? And wouldn't make sense for us?" So I started thinking about how we could potentially have a corporate university light that would work for our size of organization that isn't an exact replica of the ones I was studying that were in these huge, massive, massive companies that had huge budgets and lots of training personnel, et cetera. So that led me to step number four, Scrappiness. This goes back to that comment Dave said to me of being resourceful. So this involves a determined make-it-work attitude where the rubber meets the road and you start asking, "Okay, who else has tried this? What did they do, and what would it take? What resistance am I likely to encounter, and based on what I know about our budget constraints and our personnel constraints, is there any way I could pull out that good old duct tape and bailing wire and figure out a way to make this work?" You got to get scrappy, and this leads to a confidence boost because it builds learning agility. It gives you an opportunity to see that you have ideas unique to you that you could probably pull off. And maybe it's not gonna be as amazing and as formal as a structured Google University, but it's going to be something that's filling a need, perhaps that's missing in your own organization. And, there's probably a way that you can find some resources to put towards it. Now, you may not know where those resources are going to come, and that's okay because at this point, our outcome is simply to have a visibility project plan, or outline that you can then go pitch to find the resources you need. So for me, going back to my example, I really spent a lot of time trying to determine how I would structure it given our known budget issues and internal politics, um, trainer competition, competition between departments and just, um, a lack of, um, I would say consistency in the way all of the trainers in the organization viewed their jobs and the way they wanted to carry out those jobs. And then I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I would get leaders to approve it. How, how could I make this make sense for a 1,500 person company? And all of that leads you to step number five, Relationships. Now I'm gonna tell you, I thought about calling this networking, but I think it's more than networking. It's not just networking. It really is building relationships by sharing your idea with others. And I mean friends, family, colleagues, uh, coworkers, managers, potential sponsors, um, strangers on the street if you think that they might be willing to listen to you and might have an idea. I have gotten great ideas from complete strangers, uh, when I was working on a visibility project and I was just seeking to learn and to get, to get some, some better ideas than the ideas I had by myself. So you can use your visibility project as a way to build relationships. I don't know about you, but when I'm meeting someone new, it is always so much easier for me if I have a topic ready to, to ask them about ready to break the ice with, um, that's not the weather or, you know, what's happening in the news. Um, it just helps me to have a purpose for my outreach to that person, and that's what this visibility idea, this project idea can be for you. The benefits are huge. You stand out in remarkable ways. So let me just tell you again, you cannot underestimate just how much this kind of an approach helps you stand out from the crowd. And I can say that from, from both perspectives, right? As the person who gained incredible opportunities by doing this process multiple times over and over throughout my career and and gaining visibility as a result of it, and as a senior executive leader who had to pick talent, who had to work with talent, develop talent, and select talent to sponsor and to, um, provide opportunities for or to, to give opportunities, whether that was a full-time job, a promotion, um, a leading role in a very visible, important strategic project. Those that stood out were those that came forward with ideas that they had generated, um, based on gaps that they saw in the organization. And those were the people who demonstrated resourcefulness and scrappiness. And those were the folks that the senior team would, quite honestly, fight over at times because we wanted them on our projects. This works, the interesting thing about this is that this works even when it's not your visibility project that gets approved. So I told you that I, um, a few minutes ago, I said that I had done this and, and that it had worked, but it took several years for it to come back. I talk about this in my book as well as the keynotes that I deliver. I had an opportunity that I pitched that two years after I pitched it, came back around full cycle. I had left the organization, and they came in, found me, recruited me back into the organization to implement this idea that I had pitched two years prior. And it was because I had shown my scrappiness, because I had a plan. They were so, um. I guess impressed by my initiative and my willingness to put myself out there that they never let go of it. it was a pretty good idea too. That helps as well. Um, what I didn't know at the time and learned later was that I had also, because of that pitch, I had been put on a short list to lead some pretty important aspects of a massive acquisition for the company, and they wanted me in a project management role. It had nothing to do with the topic that I had pitched, but because I had demonstrated resourcefulness, independent thinking, and a willingness to make bold action by bringing it forward and pitching it. Those were characteristics they wanted in their leaders for this acquisition team. So you never know where your pitch might lead. So to wrap it up, "Dave's clever idea sparked results" helps us remember that we need to daydream, we need to have curiosity, we need to bring forward ideas, we need to be scrappy, and we need to build and leverage relationships. The reason daydreaming is more powerful than your resume is because your resume is flat. It's backward-looking, and you are neither of those things. Your visibility pitch shows initiative. It shows your ability to think critically and act boldly, and it is way more memorable, my friend, than your resume. So to help you remember these steps, I've created a guide with an infographic that you can snag for free from my website, jennlandis.com. Well, that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you for joining me for this episode of Daring Breakthroughs. Don't forget to check out the show notes for free tools and links related to this episode. If you found value in this episode, would you like, review, and subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode? I'd love to have you join me throughout this entire journey. While you're at it, let's connect on social media. I'd love to hear from you. You can find me nearly everywhere with the handle @askjennlandis, that's Jenn with two Ns. And of course, if you need a speaker for your next event, I'm your girl. Check out my website, jenn landis.com. That's J-E-N-N-L-A-N-D-I-S.com for all the ways we can work together. Until next time, share an insight you gained today with a friend, and then apply that insight by making one bold move. I dare you.