The Power Of Showing Up With Rick Bernstein

Showing up is half the battle. When you present yourself with authenticity and grace despite the risk of failing, you are already on the right track to achieving success. In this live discussion, sales and entrepreneurship veterans Rick Bernstein and Tina Fox break down the importance of showing up consistently with the College of Business students of their alma mater, James Madison University. The two JMU alumni emphasize the importance of leveraging your university connections to improve career opportunities, mastering your identity map, and getting rid of your false deadlines. They also discuss what it takes to deal with imposter syndrome and find your true calling – even if you are over 40 years old.

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Listen to the podcast here

The Power Of Showing Up With Rick Bernstein

Hello, everyone. My name is Rick Bernstein. I am a podcast producer. I am the founder of Voice of DC Productions, which is a production company. We love to tell stories. Many of the stories that I gained are formative in my life, started right here on this campus 30 years ago. I can’t believe I’m saying that. Tina, how has it been? 

Happy homecoming. 

Connecting With Everybody At James Madison University

How has it been 30 years that have passed since this happened? I grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. My brother came to JMU. That was a huge inspiration for me, coming to visit him and falling in love with this campus. Welcome to the show. This is a TERN live event. We’re featuring the mentorship program and leaving a legacy through mentorship through Tina’s programs. I wanted to learn a little bit about how you connected with everybody on campus when you came to JMU. It was probably about 11,000 students at that point. 

Hi, everyone. I’m Tina Fox, a 1994 alumna at JMU. I actually started in the College of Business. I didn’t end up in the College of Business. I ended up in the College of Arts and Letters. This is my 31st homecoming. It has been a long time. The campus has changed a lot. When I first came here, I thought it was Disney World. It was away from my parents. I get to establish my independence. I get to study something that I’m interested in. I get to make new friends and connections. It was an amazing time to be here on campus. Ever since I’ve come back as an alum, I see that the culture hasn’t changed. 

We’re still opening doors as Dukes for one another, which is super cool. I asked Rick to join me here because we are two alumni who enjoy giving back. I know Rick gives back through philanthropy and some of his businesses. I give back through the build-out of TERN Mentoring. We’re here to connect with you all and talk a little bit about interpersonal skills and human connection because that’s what Rick and I are all about. We centered our whole career path around human connection. Being that this is COB 202 Interpersonal Skills, we hope that what we say is going to be relevant to all of you. 

When I came to campus, my eyes were wide open. I knew I loved JMU from visiting my brother here. In high school, I was active in youth group kinds of things that went outside of Fredericksburg, into DC, Delaware, and North Carolina. I started meeting people through youth group functions outside of high school and my friends. When it came time to go to college, and there were probably about a dozen kids from my high school who were also enrolling at JMU, I chose not to room with any friends. 

I chose to meet some new people when I started. When I got to campus, I would meet people from Northern Virginia, Southern Virginia, or another state. I somehow picked up on knowing someone that they knew. I was hypercharged when I came on campus, leveraging the connections and relationships from my youth group experiences and the people that I met when I came to immediately make connections, not only in my dorm, but throughout the campus. Once I got my feet wet and had an older brother who did activities like student ambassadors, orientation assistant, and fraternity life, I mimicked exactly what he did. 

In the spring of my freshman year, I became a student ambassador and gave tours. That summer, I was an orientation assistant, and then I rushed to a fraternity my sophomore year. What I found with those experiences is that without knowing it at the time, my network began growing and growing. It was something that was life-changing for me because getting to this point as an entrepreneur, you have to have some salesmanship. The very first job I had in sales was selling this university as an orientation assistant, as well as a student ambassador. What kind of activities, Tina, when you came to campus, were you drawn to that you feel like hypercharge accelerated your networking? 

It was an epic fail freshman year. Let’s face it. I came to campus. I was so excited to be away from home. It was like, “Let’s go.” I wanted to go out. I wanted to party with everybody. I also happened to have a boyfriend on campus. That made it very convenient for us to hang out. We’re acting like adults. It was a ton of fun, but then my grades started slipping. That wasn’t who I was in high school. I was having a little too much fun. I gained the freshman fifteen. You name it. It was a disaster of a year. 

I got myself together in the spring semester, primarily because my parents said, “If you don’t get yourself together, we’re not paying for this anymore.” That’s a huge motivating factor. Sophomore year, I decided I needed to find my people. I didn’t know how to find my people on a campus of, at the time, over 12,000. We’ve doubled. We’re over 25,000 on this campus. Finding your people, even though you’re surrounded by people, can be hard. 

Are they the same class as me? Are they upperclassmen? Are they in my major? I decided to rush that year. That changed my life. Even if I didn’t get selected for a sorority, I figured that at a minimum, I was going to meet a lot of people. Like you, I decided to rush. I found my home at Sigma Kappa. Some of those sisters are still the best of my friends. We hold an annual four-day girls’ trip. Every year, we hold that time sacred. 

As I said, this is our 31st year out of school. I’ve known some of these women for 35 years. We still stay connected to this day. That was one of the areas. I didn’t go as wide as you with all the different activities you had. I only had so much bandwidth for myself. I also ended up joining the University Program Board, which was amazing, because it taught me something different. It wasn’t just about the friendships that I was making in my sororities. It was more about me trying to connect with people on a project. It was almost like a project-based friendship, where the University Program Board, back in the day, was in charge of bringing different acts to campus. 

I remember two of my favorite acts. They couldn’t be more opposite of each other. One was James Brown. We had him as a singer here. The other one was the late great Dr. Maya Angelou. We had her come in and do her poetry reading. It was absolutely amazing. Getting a chance to connect with friends through projects was another way that I was helping myself understand what the real world would look like. You go to work. You’re probably going to develop some friendships, but at the same time, it’s going to be centered around a program or project. 

I look at the friendships that I’ve kept over time and the relationships that have been personal and professional. If I can say 30 years later, I’m in a fantasy football league with these people, three different leagues and all different aspects of my life, one with a Vienna dads group where I’m a dad and I live in Vienna, Virginia, one league with them, one league with the fraternity guys, and one with the guys I met freshman year. When I was coming in as a freshman, it was these relationships, these friendships, where everything was brand new. 

You’re bonding together. Do you guys find that when you were thrown into this place called campus and JMU, you’re developing these bonding relationships, whether it’s in your suite, who you room with, or who you share a hall with? What I found 30 years later is that those friends whom I met that very first year were the ones who I still have stuck with. We do an annual golf trip every year. We’ve stayed close personally. We’ve all been groomsmen in each other’s weddings. We have been there for graduations for their kids now, which I can’t believe we’re at that point. 

That was my first year in a nutshell. Second year, I decided to rush a fraternity during my sophomore spring semester. My brother had done it, so of course, I’m going to try it. From there, that’s where my network professionally, believe it or not, started to accelerate. I was undeclared, but I became a Business major from my sophomore year into my junior year. The way that I even got into the workforce was during my junior year is typically when there were campus recruitment events. They might do it throughout your time here now. 

I remember junior year, that was the time to try to score an internship for the summer. What you did was you preselected five companies that you were interested in. They would look at you and pick you. It would be a match, almost like dating online. Swiping, no. Is it right that you reject? I was getting the swipes. Is swiping right the rejection? Anyway, long story short, I got zero interviews and zero pairings per my transcripts, whatever it was. I was interested in them. They weren’t as interested in me. I was right next door in Zane Showker Hall. I was in the computer lab on the second floor. 

I ran into a fraternity brother. I said, “Did you score any interviews? I got a goose egg. I got nothing.” He said, “I have one this afternoon with Sprint,” which was an old telecom company that became T-Mobile or whatever. He said, “I have an interview with Sprint, but I can’t make it. I have a paper that I have to write.” I said, “You’re not going to go?” He’s like, “Yes, I’m not going to show up.” I was like, “What about your time slot?” He’s like, “It’s at 3:00. I can’t be there.” I said, “Do you mind if I go in your place?” He said, “That’s fine. I’m not going to be there, so if you want to.” I went home, printed out the resume from my floppy disk, threw on my baggy suit and tie, and biked back to campus. 

I was in Grafton-Stovall. That’s where they were conducting interviews. I went to that appointment time. I introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Rick. I think Sprint is a special place. I would love to have an internship here for the summer.” I got the internship. How it turned out is that one of the interviewers knew my brother from JMU. It was these connections. I was born into it biologically, having a brother who went here and then knowing one of the interviewers. That played into it a bit, but showing that interest and taking that initiative to fill a spot that was going to be otherwise open, and no one showed up, I went for it. 

I went and had that internship. After the internship was done, they offered me a full-time job after graduation. That was in computer information systems. That’s what I majored in. While that job lasted about two years, and I found out that was not my calling, it got me into the workforce. What it did was get me into a house, renting with those same friends that I met freshman year in Weaver Hall in the village. It then kick-started my career professionally. 

The Power Of Showing Up And Leveraging School Connections

I love the fact that you showed up. Right now, there is this time, more than any other time. You can show up online as often as you want, 24/7. You’re wired for sound. Having to physically show up for something is a completely different set of roles. You showing up for something creates something in the atmosphere, whether it’s a benefit to you from the standpoint that you receive something or you learn something. Not everywhere we’re going to show up or going to get the job or the interview. You happen to take advantage of a great situation. 

It sounds like you came prepared with knowing that you wanted to get this job. You were going to say what you needed to say to get the job because you needed a chance. You needed a chance coming out of school. I love the fact that you showed up. There are so many times where folks are a little nervous to show up because we didn’t have to show up in COVID first and foremost. We got into the habit of being online and not showing up. I know, even for myself, I did not want to show up to this event. 

You would think that this is crazy because I’m an entrepreneur, and we should show up all the time. There was an event that I was invited to by another JMU person. I’m going to share a regret when I was listening to your story. I’m going to share a regret that I have. I was invited to an event by another JMU person. It was in downtown Arlington. It was up on the rooftop. It was called Founders and Funders. As an entrepreneur, you want to connect with funders because you’re always in need of cash to get your company to the next level. 

I remember it was on a Wednesday night. It was absolutely beautiful. There was no reason not to go because it was 72 degrees and perfect. I was invited, as I said, by a friend. I begrudgingly get in my car and drive in traffic to get all the way up there. Even when I had parked, I had this bad attitude about “I don’t want to be here.” As soon as I walked into the lobby, because it was after hours, the other person who came to the lobby with me, it was obvious that we were going to the same place. I said, “Are you going to the Founders and Funders event?” 

He said, “Yes.” He asked me what I did, and I told him about TERN Mentoring. He was like, “That’s cool.” I said, “What university did you go to?” He said, “James Madison University.” It was almost like I got this thing from the universe that was like, “You’re in the right place. You’re with the Dukes.” That brought me back down. I didn’t know this guy. He was years younger than me, but he was here at the event. He was a banker. I went upstairs and started networking with folks. By the time I left that evening, I had not only networked with an amazing group of people. 

I realized I knew more people. I knew at least three or four people at that event. I thought I was only going to know one, but I didn’t know who else was invited. Showing up was half the battle. I left that event having reconnected with somebody whom I had met years ago. It turns out he is in charge of this. I’m going to call it a secret society, but it’s a group called Mindshare up in DC. It’s an amazing group of entrepreneurs who are very well-connected. Ted Leonsis kicks it off every single year. For those of you who don’t know Ted Leonsis, he’s the owner of Monumental Sports, which is a lot of the Washington, DC sports teams, amongst other things. 

It’s a great group to network with. That reminded me about showing up, and then my regret. I was thinking about what you said. What I did not do, that Rick did a lot better than me, was Rick leveraged his connections in school for business purposes. Even today, you’re like, “Yes, Dave Moya and all these.” I’m like, “You stay connected with these folks, business perspective.” It is super cool. I did not do that as well. I wanted to be friends with everybody. We were very friendly. We would go out to bars or restaurants and stuff, but I never actually thought to leverage that into business. 

Why not take something that is this common connection of the university and our time spent here? Why not start talking about things in business? As a woman in the mid-’90s coming out of here, I kept with the women. I didn’t necessarily network with my male counterparts. I would say if you get a chance here at JMU or during homecoming, because a lot of us are running around campus, Friday is the big board day, if you all didn’t know about this. You’ll see tons and tons of alumni in COB because all the boards are coming back to have their meetings. 

They start at 8:00 in the morning, and they finish by lunch. All the boards get together. They go to the common foyer in Hartman, and they have a big lunch. That’s a chance for you to get to know other Dukes who are running around COB because we’d love to get to know you. We’re waiting for students to come up to us, talk to us, and tell us all these different things about campus. I would say that’s my one regret. I didn’t do what you did. You’re much smarter than me in that regard.

I fell back on my curiosity and being a people person, getting to know people, their backgrounds, and where they’re from. A common thing you hear in DC or any big city when you’re working is, “What do you do?” We’ll meet at a party. “Tina, nice to meet you. What do you do?” It always feels a little cold when you say, “What do you do?” because what you do doesn’t necessarily mean that’s who you are. One interesting little tidbit is not to wrap yourself up in your identity and your self-worth necessarily if you’re good at your job or bad at your job, because there is so much more in and outside of that. 

What I took away from getting zero interviews and pre-matches for that campus visit was that they might not have seen in me what I knew, but I knew new people. I also knew myself. I knew my story. Coming back to the interview process, what did I say when I showed up? My transcripts for my transcripts. Did I use both of my repeat forgives? Absolutely. Were they both in my major? Absolutely. They were both in Computer Information Systems, coding COBOL, an old language that very few people do, although the government still has all their mainframes and stuff on that. 

There wasn’t much of a story to tell because they can look and they can see A, B, C, D, E, F. It’s just letters on a piece of paper. What I knew when I went in was that I knew my story. I knew myself. I could share with them not only where I came from and who I knew, but also what drives me and what my passions are. What were some of the questions I asked them? What does success look like at this company? I’m going to be coming in as an intern. I’m fairly low level. What does this look like? Tell me what, in your eyes, a successful intern would do. 

What’s a day in the life of an intern? Will there be opportunities to get to know my coworkers? Are there happy hours? Are there things that we can do together outside of work? It is playing on the interpersonal side and the relationship side of things, culture. I knew my job was going to be in a cubicle, typing in code that I was not very good at, and trying to make a computer talk and spit out output. I learned after those two years that my strength and my interest are with the human. We play out now with AI and everything that you guys are hearing about, that we’re all hearing about. 

This is all new for us, even though it has been years in the making. My take on AI and where I like to spin it is not artificial intelligence, but authentic impact. Those are the letters that I like to prescribe to that. What is authentic? People want authenticity today. They want to know you. What did I do when I showed up to that interview? I was my authentic self. I could tell them where I was coming from, what my experiences have been, and how I could be a benefit that summer for that internship. It wasn’t until down the road that I discovered my purpose and my impact. 

How Tina And Rick Met Each Other

I wanted to segue into how you and I met, because showing up and actually taking the initiative is what led Tina and me to cross paths years ago. What had happened was that through my neighborhood and through my community, I got to know my neighbors. Once you become a dad, your kids go to school with your neighbor’s kids. I had gotten to know some guys in the neighborhood. One of the guys had asked me, “Do you want to join me? I’m a member of this forum that meets once a week.” They have breakfast. It’s a bunch of entrepreneurs and businesspeople who are in a room. 

There are doctors. There are the carpet cleaning people, the windows people, the IT people, the doctors, the lawyers, and all of that. It’s a room of new people. Granted, you’re in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and up. That’s one other thing. You’re never too old to continue to make these connections. He had invited me and said, “Do you want to come? You have a small business. You have a production company. Maybe someone in that room could use your services.” I said, “Great. I’m going to show up.” At 6:00 in the morning, we show up at the hotel. We have breakfast. 

Everything had wrapped up. Everyone had a chance to give a quick little spiel about what you do, and you’re open to conversation. “If you know someone who could use production services for events, then come see me after breakfast. We’ll talk.” Through those courses of conversation afterwards, I went up and found a nice gentleman. He had worked within commercial real estate, mortgages, and other things within that field. I approached him and introduced myself, “Where did you go to school?” and all of that. 

Once we made that connection, when I told him I went to JMU, he said, “That’s funny. My wife went to JMU. She’s an entrepreneur. She’s hustling and getting her business off the ground. I should connect you two.” Ultimately, that is what led us down the way. It was showing up, going to an event, a room full of strangers, except the guy that I knew, who I was his guest, and through having those conversations, but genuinely being interested in the other people in the room and saying, “Tell me a little bit more about your business. By the way, my wife happened to go to your university.” We were a couple of years apart in graduation. 

Knowing Who You Are By Mastering Your Identity Map

It is four and a half. You offered the class some great advice as far as getting to know yourself. When you go out to whether an internship interview, a job interview, or talk to friends in general, he said that the first question people tend to ask you is, “What do you do?” You don’t get that asked on campus. You might get asked, “What’s your major?” You’re assuming that at least we’re all Business majors. One of the things that I like to think about is, instead of asking, “What do you do?” so that you can understand who somebody is, “What do you like to do?” That’s a little bit different. Adding that one word in there changes the whole question. What you like to do may not necessarily be what you are currently doing. When I was here, and I was a Business major, did I like it? I don’t know. It was hard. 

I promptly failed Dr. Alex Gavin’s Accounting class. I decided that I needed to go seek other paths at JMU. I went to the College of Arts and Letters. If somebody had asked me back then, “What do you like to do?”, I would have said something very similar to Rick. I would have said, “I like to deal with people. I like to connect with individuals. I don’t like sitting behind a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers. I don’t like having to sit in a room by myself doing a project. I like teamwork. I like getting up and speaking publicly. I like these things.” If I had said that, I bet you anything. Some of the people that I was meeting at the time, whether it was my advisor, my professors, or even my parents, would have probably said, “If you like those things, why are you doing this?”

They might have given me a clue that I was not necessarily on the best path for myself. By asking people what they like, you may be able to not only get to know them a little bit better on an interpersonal level. By also sharing what you like to do, you might also elicit things from other people because that’s more fun to talk about anyway. When you talk about what you do, and it’s like, “I run an ed tech company. We partner people in mentorship,” the eyes gloss over. How does that apply to me? When you talk about “What I like to do is connect people across generations. I like to bridge the gap between students and their future career. That’s what I like to do,” they’re like, “How do you do that?” 

When he gave you that comment about thinking about your authentic self, think about it in that term. What do you like to do? The other comment I’ll make is that Carol used to have me do this. Do you still do the identity map? Those are cool. Don’t throw that in the trash. Think that this is a nice little class exercise. Those are super helpful when it comes to knowing who you are, expanding on that, being able to go into any conversation, and touching base on some of those areas, commonalities as to where we live and who we know. You start with your name, and then you put your spokes going out. 

On each spoke, you put an aspect of yourself, whether it’s how you identify. I’m a military dependent. I’m a Chinese American. I put that on my spoke. When I go into a conversation, I talk about what it means to be a military dependent. What does it mean to be a Chinese American? How does that play out in my life? How do I want to see that play out in the things that I do when it comes to work? Understanding not just the adjective or the noun that you’re giving yourself, but the why behind those things will better serve you in your interviews and your interpersonal connections as you move forward. Does that make sense? I needed a quick check-in with the class there. 

It’s a great point about following those passions, your interests, and what you like to do. If you can marry that with a major here on campus, then you’re setting yourself up for a great ride moving forward. You guys have so much runway time ahead of you to learn, discover, and figure out what it is. I didn’t like what I majored in. I didn’t like my first job. I did it because there were job opportunities. I knew that coming out in the late ‘90s that that’s when the internet started bubbling. This dot-com thing was becoming a thing where you could go to a consulting firm, or you could be a software engineer, and you could do these things. 

I didn’t like the work. I like people. I like the happy hours. I liked getting to know the people in the office. Maybe I could get a promotion that way, being likable, willing, and there when they need somebody. It’s one of those things where we look back on our lives. We’ve lived long enough to know the age of 40 sticks out to us as far as what that meant about how you approached relationships, connections, interpersonal, but also passions around that age time. I didn’t find my passion until after 40. I lived a lifetime as I did. I was under my parents’ roof from 0 to 18. From 22 to 40, those next eighteen years were finding out what it was that I was passionate about. 

If I’m in the audience, I’m thinking, “Eighteen years, you were lost in the desert? What’s going on in those eighteen years?” You’ve got to step them through your mindset in those eighteen years, because sometimes, it’s work. Sometimes, it’s discovery. Step us through the mindset. 

It’s all work, and it’s all discovery. I sold software. I was a consultant. One thing we would do is we would show up on a client site and do what we call discovery. Stephen is all about these discovery calls. Stephen is on my team. I’m actually Jacob Richard. I go by Rick. Travis is part of my team. We know about this discovery thing. We would sit with a whiteboard, get to know, and ask the questions of these companies to understand where they are falling short in their people, their processes, and their technology. That’s how we spun and sold our software. “Our software can automate all these things.”

That whole discovery process, when I look back on it, taking stock and trying new things, that was those eighteen years between 22 and 40 for me. It was getting a job. My sole focus was friends and a job. When I came out of JMU, that was it. I took all the noise and everything that’s happening around me. My two focuses were having friends and getting a job. Ultimately, I landed in that job. What it took was taking the job, being on site, and learning after two years. 

I have this rule of twos. Giving anything a two-year chance is worth it. My wife and I dated for two years. I knew that first year, we were getting to know each other. It was discovery and having fun. That second year was becoming a little bit more serious, and picturing what life together would be. Two years for work. The first year, think of it as you’re planting seeds. You’re getting to know your coworkers. You’re getting to understand what’s expected of you on the job, your daily routine, what a day in the life is like, and giving it those two years. 

After those two years, you can get an idea. Is this for me, or maybe I should look elsewhere? I did that. It’s not to say that in the next employment opportunities afterwards, I wasn’t starting to move forward. Every step that I took after that, job change, and industry change I did, I was actually stepping in the right direction. I was finding my passion without knowing it. What happened after the IT job is that I got into consulting. I was still doing IT work, but I went from behind the desk to in front of the customer. I was on site, the USDA. 

We were helping them with their accounting software. I got to train them on the software. I got to take functionality enhancements requests from them. I would go back to our technical people. They would code it. I was learning to bridge the gap between technical, which is the world I came from, to now bridging in front of the customer and getting them what they wanted. I was into consulting, then hit a little bit of a wall there, and was dating a girl at the time whose sister happened to be in healthcare. I then took a liking to sales and healthcare. 

I’ve had over twenty years of career in healthcare. It was in sales. It was in medical devices and surgical equipment. I was pre-med coming into JMU. I took Zoology and Botany. I said, “I’m not going to cut it.” The interest is not there. My technical acumen and my passion for this is not what I thought it was going to be. I wanted to be a doctor to please Mom, Dad, and Grandma, but that ended up not being the thing. Here I was. After that IT experience, coming into healthcare, I get to play doctor. I get to wear scrubs. I get to have clinical conversations. 

All of that was in those eighteen years of discovery. Ultimately, where I landed in my passion and my purpose was life lived. I gave myself those chances and opportunities to learn, to fail, and to find what it was that was interesting to me, backing into opportunities to take a software position, selling software to nonprofits. I love the work of nonprofits. You’re hearing a lot of things from me. There’s IT, there are podcasts, and then there’s healthcare. How does that all tie in? I do all of them. I still do healthcare stuff. I fundraise. I do live events. I emcee. I auctioneer at galas. I raise money for organizations. By the way, I also produce podcasts. 

What is the line through all of that? It’s people and their stories. All of that is connected. People, their stories, their health. People, their stories on the podcast. People, their stories, the mission of a nonprofit. That’s how it all wound together. I gave myself that chance and those multiple different varieties of experiences over those eighteen years to then get into 40. I’ll be 50, so I’ve had a decade plus after that to keep digging in and honing in on that. 

Welcome to the golden side. It’s awesome. 

I swear to you guys, things keep getting better. They do. They keep getting better. 

How To Deal With And Get Rid Of Imposter Syndrome

I have a couple of questions because I’m listening to your story, which I’ve known, but I always love hearing it again. You’re going through all of these different iterations of self. You’re learning a lot. Was there ever any imposter syndrome going on during all of these years, even now? Talk to us about imposter syndrome. 

Only at every job that I’ve ever had, starting, even talking in front of you guys, and leading this discussion. Have I done that much? Here I am coming back to JMU. Future leaders are in the room. Have I done that much? I was a failed software engineer coming out of college. Is that the example? Is that the takeaway from it? 

That’s interesting. That could be the tape running in your head right now. You’re sitting in front of the future leaders of America. You’re thinking, “Have I done enough with myself as a JMU alum?” That’s fascinating to me. 

I’m not the example of the person who graduated doing the thing forever that I thought I would with the degree that I earned. What I instill in my kids, the cheat code with all of this, is confidence. It is knowing your story, knowing yourself, and being comfortable with that. There are things that we all go through in our lives, our backgrounds, and where we come from. It’s harnessing that, feeling that value in yourself, and knowing, even whatever job it is, you’re contributing something bigger and better. You’re meeting people along the way. This journey of the different jobs without friends and then ultimately without my wife and the support of my family, I wouldn’t get to this point. 

I don’t get to the point in the fact that I feel that having that support and that confidence helps kick in to do things like we are today. With imposter syndrome, it’s natural. To me, it speaks to confidence. What I like to do ahead of podcasts and these things is to learn who I’m interviewing. Do you guys listen to podcasts? Do you guys have some favorite ones? Please check them out on Spotify and Apple. We’re there, The Pod of DC. Broadcasters are not stepping into these interviews cold, stepping into a Commanders-Bears game on Monday night, and talking about what they’re saying in front of them. They know every player. They know the technicalities of the calls that the refs make on the field. 

They know the players, the history, and all of that. What they find, and they speak with all of this confidence, and I’ve learned play by play, if you listen to these announcers and the depth and breadth of the information they have, they’ve done their homework, but they’ve worked at it. That gives them the confidence to talk about it. Putting the work in and the preparation when Tina and I sat down, it wasn’t just, “I met your husband. Tell me about yourself.” I googled Tina. I was learning about TERN Mentoring. I was making targeted questions that were value-added instead of spending too much time on “Where did you grow up? What was your favorite place to eat?” and all of those things. 

We are having a very baseline conversation. With that work and research, we’re now elevating that conversation into huge takeaways. Imposter syndrome is natural. It speaks to confidence. The more you know yourself and your story, and even the technical aspect of your job, the more you feel like you can present and overcome that. Every time I step on stage for an event, if I’m doing a podcast, something live like this, yes, a little bit always, there’s always somebody over your shoulder saying, “Are you good enough? Are you qualified to be in this position to talk about things?”

Your honesty and vulnerability are great on that. I’ll take the other side of imposter syndrome. Rick used the C word. Confidence is where he takes that. For me, where I take imposter syndrome is in courage. We study imposter syndrome at TERN Mentoring, particularly with students. We always learn that there is a degree of imposter syndrome. How am I supposed to take everything that I studied at university, and now all of a sudden apply that to this job? Maybe it’s not even the job that you wanted, but it’s the job that you got. 

You’re trying to figure out, “How am I going to take this finance background of mine and apply it to marketing?” Maybe that’s where they hired you. There’s always a certain level of imposter syndrome. This is actually shared with me by a dear friend. If you are in a room where you feel like you have imposter syndrome, welcome. You have arrived. Why is that? It is because you’re in a room where you feel as though you have a place to grow. That’s what we’re all supposed to do. That’s where I take it to courage. 

You have to have the courage to stand in the pocket to be there to listen well, to learn well, and to take whatever it is that you learn and move forward. Rick has the power of two. The first year is the year that he’s learning things. The second year is the year that he’s refining things. For me, I take it one more year. It’s always been this way in my life. Has anybody seen the movie Forrest Gump? You’ve got to see it. A few of you have. That’s good. Forrest Gump is an awesome epic story about a guy who finds himself in so many different crazy things in life. 

The first year for me is always Forrest Gump-ing my way through whatever it is I’m doing, because I’ve probably never done it before. There’s definitely imposter syndrome going on. I have to have the courage and the confidence to show up early and often, listen, and learn super well. Once I get past that first year, if I’ve done a good job in the listening, the showing up, and the following through, that second year is about building out efficiencies. Now that I’ve been here, what can I do to apply my skills? How can I now enter the conversation with some of my thoughts? What can I do to connect people? 

That’s the year when I started trialing a bunch of stuff for me, because now, at least, I have a little bit of the background. That second year is about building out efficiencies. That third year is all about mastery. I feel like if you’ve done your work for those first two years, by the third year, you should be in a position to help teach other people what it is that you have learned over the last couple of years. My goal in life is always to make myself obsolete. When I’m done with that third year, I’m hoping to teach someone to come up behind me to then take on the role so that I can go do other things, and I can grow myself. 

With this generation in particular, gone are the days. I don’t know about your parents. My parents stayed in a job for 30-plus years. That was the goal of that generation. I’m a Gen Xer. We’re Gen Xers. It’s a little bit different. He talked to you about different jobs that he’s had the privilege of pursuing. I’m very much the same. I spent 22 years in the medical device, singular lane, vertical market. I was in business development. I started as a sales rep frontline and moved up into leadership positions across the United States. I traveled all the time. It was awesome. 

I became an entrepreneur by accident. I didn’t mean to do it, but I needed to do it for my family’s purposes. Becoming an entrepreneur helped me realize that there were skills that I had developed and that I had mastered in my singular vertical lane that I could apply to other industries. It never occurred to me that I could go outside of my industry because I was still in that mindset of my parents. I can change jobs. I can change companies in this singular vertical of medtech. To take that and move it into real estate, or to take that and move it into an edtech company, is that even possible? What do I know about that? 

Giving Yourself Enough Time And Grace

One of the characteristics Rick and I share is extreme curiosity. Having the curiosity, the courage, and the confidence to show up in those new lanes after you have helped somebody else make you obsolete is what helps us grow as human beings throughout life. I hope that for you. It was interesting what you said about after 40. Pre-40, I was on a singular track. I was like, “Get out there. Earn as much money as possible,” because these are the years when I am young. I’m hungry. I’ve got my health. Let’s go. All I wanted to do was increase how much money I was making every single year. 

I was in sales. A lot of that was within my control. I needed to exceed expectations in sales. In my over-40 life, it’s not that the ambition went away. It’s just that there was a refocus on what my priority was. Previous to 40, it was pretty much my single life. After 40, there was my family life. It is not something that we discuss in college. We don’t talk about what you are going to do when you have a family. It should be a course. It should be like, “These are things that you might want to think about.”

Married at 32 and kids at 35, I needed some space. I needed some space after college to date and to find a job that I enjoyed. It is about giving yourself that space and grace because we tend to wrap deadlines around things. The only deadlines are in this classroom. You’ve got to turn this in on this date at this time. When it comes to the game of life, don’t put deadlines on yourself that aren’t necessary. You don’t have to say, “I’m going to be married by 30. I’m going to be too old to have kids at 35,” or anything like that. These are things that we get a lot of noise in society about. It’s unnecessary. You’ve got to give yourself that space and grace. Did you raise your hand for a question?

You were talking about confidence and courage. How do you think you can build that, because that sounds like something that comes naturally?

It is finding something that you are working your tail off on. It may not be working out, but it’s sticking with it and knowing and identifying that. To me, a lot of these lessons learned and these takeaways, we didn’t have sitting at those desks where you guys sit now. We had to live life. We had to give that space and grace. We had to give ourselves this time to do those things. That job that you will get right after you graduate, if it’s something you do for 30 or 40 years, congratulations. That’s awesome. You found it early on. 

For the majority of us, it’s going to be a launching pad. Finding that courage is a lot. There’s a lot that comes with confidence. It’s in your technical aptitude, which was very low for me in my job. Where did my confidence come from? I was young. I didn’t think that anything could hurt or harm me. Stay out late, get up early, rinse and repeat, and do that. I’ve had friends along the way. I’ve had people there to talk to, to share with when I was frustrated, and now a wife, kids, and those sorts of things. Finding that is giving yourself that chance and that grace. Keep going. 

If it’s meant to be, whether it’s a partner or a job, fantastic, but it might not last forever either. Don’t put that pressure on yourself, “It has to be.” My parents have been married for almost 50 years. I hope that’s going to be the case for me. I hope nothing changes that, but life happens. Things happen. You have to keep going with the flow. Keep swimming. Another movie reference, as cheesy as it is. Keep playing. Give yourself those chances to go up and to go down. 

Building Resilience Through Uncomfortable Situations

If I can add, the only way that anyone builds confidence and courage is also to build resilience. The way that happens is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Far too often, we’re in a very cushy society. We have lots of things available to us. Even here at JMU, this beautiful snow globe, driving down here into the valley, and seeing all these trees changing colors and Shenandoah, it’s picture perfect. I feel like this is a fake movie set when I come down here because it’s so gorgeous. 

Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations is where you end up building that courage and confidence. He said, “Fail.” That was the word. I’ll add on to that. You want to fail forward, fail fast, and fail fabulously. I love alliteration. Failing fast means when you’re coming into a situation, even though it might be uncomfortable, that’s okay. At some point in time, your gut is going to tell you whether you’re traveling the right path or you’re not. If you’re not sure, also surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth. 

You should ask them for that feedback. “I’m going to try this. These are my goals for this. If I can’t see the forest through the trees when I’m about three weeks, six months, two years in, or whatever that timeframe is, can you call me out on things because I want to make sure that I’m moving on the right path?” You can always surround yourself with those people who will be your bumpers to help you build out your courage and confidence. 

Failure is not something that some of the younger generations are familiar with because we’ve done a lot to make sure that there are so many safety measures in place. From cars to communication, there are a lot of safety measures. There should be. At the same time, that limits our ability to take risks and test boundaries. We want you to safely take risks and test boundaries to build that courage and confidence, which in turn will build your resilience. 

By the way, for the most part, when I go out, and I have to do something so uncomfortable, I keep thinking to myself, “Am I going to die today in doing this?” The answer is typically no. I’m not going to die by showing up at an event and connecting with people, talking about something, or learning about something that I’ve never learned about before. It’s going to be weird. They’re probably going to talk over my head. 

That Funders and Founders thing, many VC people and bankers I met were using all this language. I’m hanging in there, best I can, truth be told. “Do you have a debt instrument? Are you on this? Have you considered this? Where are you in your funding?” My head is spinning. I’m doing my best to keep up with that. As I said, at the end of it, I got a connection that’s going to help me learn this language and get connected in that space better. You better believe I’m going to have a tremendous amount of imposter syndrome. I’m going to have to take everything inside me and be like, “I have the courage to show up for this.” 

Getting The Right Type Of Mentorship To Level Up

I backed into a mentor-type of relationship in that first job that I was so bad at. It was evident that my work wasn’t great. There was an older gentleman. I thought he was so old at that time. He’s probably my age now. He pulled me aside into a boardroom. It was the middle of the day. He says, “How are you feeling?” This was someone whom I would sit in a morning meeting with. He was an advanced software engineer with tons of letters after his name, was very great at what he did, and had been doing it for years. 

He saw me at 22 or 23. He said, “How are you feeling?” I said, “I don’t know. I’m a little overwhelmed right now. I’m not enjoying what I do.” I ended up crying in the boardroom with this man, who was a co-worker. He said, “You have gifts. You have skills. I understand. There’s more for you after this. I would probably start looking once you start to hit that point.” I was now at a point where I was emotionally showing how frustrated and upset I was that I wasn’t enjoying the work. 

I wasn’t good at the work. It became time. It was that day that I freshened up the resume. Six months later, I was out. I backed into that mentorship kind of relationship. When I think about my time at JMU, I didn’t have a mentor. We’re all in this together. We’re all swimming and trying to figure everything out as students, as undergrads. I got a progress report for my kids. It said on the progress report, “If your child has any questions about their grade, have them talk to me. Come up to me after class.” 

It’s written on the progress report, “Come up to me.” What I would say is if you don’t feel like there’s mentorship, because you guys are all in this same boat together, fellow sophomores, juniors, seniors, on up, then talk to your professor after class. Take that next step and say, “Where do things need to maybe change? Where can I go? Professor Hamilton, what are you saying? Where could I be better? What could I do?” 

It’s an opportunity for a micro-mentorship relationship to be right here with an incredible person, right here, to be so fortunate to have such a great professor in this room that you could go immediately after school. If you’re not feeling something, you can be honest. Maybe you’re not liking it. What can we do here? We’re in this class. How can we make this semester work? It is taking that opportunity to do that that I did not necessarily. 

I would go to my programming teacher for COBOL and say, “Can you help me finish this code?” It was not her job. Her job was more to guide me and help me try to figure it out. With mentorship for you, here you are now, these years later. As a founder and leaving a legacy through mentorship, what was that spark? It was after 40 that you fell into this mentorship thing. Was mentorship in the background?

I said earlier that I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I did not come out of JMU thinking, “I’m going to own my own company. I’m going to do this. I never thought about that. If necessity is the mother of invention, that’s what happened with me. I spent 22 years in medtech. I loved it. I had no intention of leaving. I have a family. I’m traveling 90% of the time. My then five-year-old says to me, “Mommy, you’ve been gone too long.” It’s a story that I’ve told a million times. That was a changing point in my life. 

I heard those words at another level that let me rethink, “What am I doing? Who am I spending time with? How am I prioritizing my family and work?” That was a struggle of about two years, trying different things, demoting myself, changing jobs, and all of that. My husband, whom you met first, said, “Why don’t we burn the boats?” It meant, “Let’s leave our corporate careers. Let’s build our own company,” to which I thought he was absolutely nuts because I had never been trained in owning a company. 

What did I know about that? He was like, “No, listen. I’m the subject matter expert on this. I can run the operations in that. You’re the business development expert on this. You can run it in this. Together, we can make this work. What we don’t know, we will figure out, or hopefully, we can hire towards.” It took a lot of thinking. Next thing I know, I was like, “I think of all my options. This one best suits where I am today.”

I decided to take this leap of faith with him because I also thought, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Maybe I will end up going back to working for someone else in a corporate job. I can proudly say that it has been eleven years. Cobalt Settlements is the company that he and I started in Arlington, Virginia. We are a title and settlement company up there. Even in that, I still didn’t know what I was going to be when I grew up, because that wasn’t my lane. 

I told you what my lane was, but I wasn’t going to be whittling a medical device in my garage. That also wasn’t who I was. I wasn’t an engineer either. It was coming back and serving. Sometimes, I say, “When you can’t figure things out for yourself, go help someone else.” That’s where this whole concept came about. At the time, I was coming back to JMU. I was guest lecturing, working with Professor Hamilton. I was keynote speaking. 

I was judging. I ended up becoming the chair of the management board here. In serving the students, I realized something about myself. I was like, “There’s so much like me at that time.” I was so much like them. I had my trepidations about courage and confidence. I had not built resilience yet. I was the first of my generation to go to college. I didn’t have anybody ahead of me who said, “This is what you now need to do.” I had to figure that out for myself, my siblings, and my cousins. 

I was a nervous cat. What am I going to do coming out of school? Professor Hamilton charged me with all this stuff that you’re doing in class. “I feel like there’s something more that you can do.” I’m looking at her. She loves this story because I tell it all the time. I’m sitting here thinking, “Come on, Carol, time, talent, treasure.” I deliver all three of those exactly how much more so she will get blood out of a turnip if she can. 

Because it’s Carol, I kept thinking for weeks, “What did this woman mean? What else can I deliver to this university that I’m not already delivering?” I went back to her. I said, “A lot of times after class, students will come up privately and have conversations with me. We’ll stay in touch. I’ll mentor them, or we’ll connect on LinkedIn. I’ve enjoyed that. Why don’t I build a mentorship program for your class?” She was already very adept at mentorship because she had executed it before. 

I wanted to do it on a new level. We started talking about it. We brought it to her very first class. Not only was I able to serve my younger self and live my legacy through mentorship, but then I connected with people like you and other JMU alumni, who were saying, “I would love to connect with a student on a one-to-one basis. I would love to be there for them, listen to what is going well for them, listen to what they need help with, and listen to who they need connections to. I’ll do whatever I can to help serve them.” 

When I had had enough of these folks coming in, it was like herding cats. I realized at that point in time, I needed to solve this problem. The solution to that problem was to build an ed tech platform. By the way, I am not a coder. I’m a Comm major. Going back to imposter syndrome, what do I know about writing code at an ed tech company? I don’t. That’s the truth of it. I know how to solve problems. I know with every problem that I solve, there’s going to be another one that comes up. 

I keep solving problems. I keep asking for help. I keep connecting with people to help me solve the problems to make this grow and get bigger. TERN Mentoring was born a few years ago. It not only serves JMU, but we also serve other universities. I keep growing. Instead of helping a class of 30 or 40, we now help thousands. We connect alumni with universities. That’s the genesis of that. It was not at all pre-thought. It’s definitely after the fact. 

What Tina did was find that. She had that calling from her family, saying, “We need to redirect.” She had the support of her husband to do that. It takes that support and that little reminder. It came in the form of your child asking you to be around more. Tina then took her resources and time and put them into building a company. That is her 24/7. This is what she does. 

I do three things. I have a healthcare career that I still manage. I own and operate a production company. I fundraise. I have multiple interests. I have a hard time just doing healthcare. Doing podcasting, you’ve got to find a lot of sponsors to support your show. All the commercials in a podcast, “This is brought to you by AG1 Athletic Greens,” or “Guys, BetterHelp if you need this and that.” There are all these commercials. 

That’s how they make a living. Podcasting full-time is these companies coming in and writing a check for advertising, as they would do on the radio, a TV ad, or a drug commercial. That’s how you monetize and sustain yourself as a podcaster. I’m not there yet. I have one sponsor, but I’m not there quite yet. I’m not going to stop doing this. I love this. I love people and getting to know their stories. The fundraising aspects came at 40. It was so monumental for me. I lost my dad. I lost my house. 

We had an oak tree fall on our house. We were home at the time with my two kids and everything. Thankfully, it didn’t hit any of us. We got out unscathed. We rebuilt our house. I changed careers. I went from healthcare for a brief bit, got away from it, and went into fundraising. That’s where I found my purpose. That’s where it hit me. I don’t want to give that up either. I’m greedy like that. I want to do all three of these things. 

That is where it becomes more of a time management and less of a “Can I do this?” because I’ve lived long enough to know when something is failing in healthcare to try to fix that problem. Getting microphones to work, I’ve gotten them to work a lot of times. Sometimes, it doesn’t happen, but we keep going. We’re not going to stop there. Even fundraising, sometimes, we exceed our goal. Sometimes, we meet it. Maybe we don’t quite raise as much money at that gala as we were hoping to, but we continue to show up. We continue to do those things. 

If you have those interests, if you love fantasy football and say, “I want to make that a career,” great. You start boning up on the league on the software that runs some of these apps that manage fantasy football. There are so many different ways. We’re so hyper-connected. There are so many ways to start something out of a passion and out of an interest. Don’t feel that has to be everything that pays the bills. Your bills get higher as you have a family, a mortgage, and all those things as time goes on. 

A lot of behind doing the things I do is to support those. The interest in those things is what keeps me showing up and doing those things. It’s interesting. You can do multiple things. Follow your passions. Follow your purpose. It is finding those things, but rooting yourself in that we can call it, for lack of a better term, a 9:00 to 5:00, something that will initially get your foothold in the workforce, earning a paycheck, and hopefully being able to be independent. 

From that, you can play on the weekends a little bit. I like to say that I have my 9:00 to 5:00, and then I do my 5:00 to 9:00. My 5:00 to 9:00 is this. It’s booking interviews. It’s reaching out to nonprofits to see if they have an event coming up that they need a fundraiser for. I divide my day. I have to be a dad and a husband, too. I fit that in somewhere in between. Give space, grace, interests, and passions. Follow all of it. You can do all those things. 

One of the reasons Rick and I wanted to come here today is that we’re very passionate about interpersonal skills and how they helped us. Hopefully, you’ve seen how two individuals Forrest Gump their way through that bridge from collegiate to career, and even in career, continued to change and morph. I don’t want you to believe that there is ever a linear path. It’s not an A to B, and it’s going to be in this direction only. You may go like this in life. You may meander a little bit. You might even, like me, take a step back to move two steps forward. That’s going to be okay, so long as you’re staying true to yourself. 

Rick is sharing his story. I’m sharing my story. You’ve heard of a couple of alumni who have done it in their own ways. Truth be told, less than 27% of people who studied a major in college actually end up continuing that career in their lives. If you are an Accounting major, Finance major, Comm major, or whatever, you may end up doing something else, but taking those skills that you learned in that major and applying them to something that you’re truly passionate about, which is what Rick said. 

Rick, you said something interesting. That’s something about this through line of your human connections. You took an opportunity with your roommate or your friend, not going to that interview opportunity. You asked him. You went to that interview opportunity. You talked about sitting down with a mentor at Sprint and realizing, “This isn’t what I’m going to be when I grew up.” You took that personal opportunity. With these students trying to not only identify who they are on campus, what kinds of things are they going to get involved in to extend their networks, and what has that whole throughput of people? You’re getting different jobs. For instance, have you ever gotten a job where you didn’t know anybody? You did something online, and you got a job.

No. It’s even down to what we used to call headhunters. They are placement firms or recruiters, where you would send your resume. They’re contracted with a company that’s looking to fill a position. They get your resume and try to find a fit. If you were to put a resume together, the high school you went to, if you played sports or cheerleader or did something like that, and your grades freshman year, do you feel that tells your story? It doesn’t tell your full story, does it? Ultimately, in an interview process, that’s exactly what they’re looking at. They’re like, “What are your qualifications? What are your transcripts and your grades?” I was a very average student. I was an above-average networker and friend maker.

That’s how my degree was 4.0-plus in that regard. I look at gaining networks and friends and expanding that way both intentionally and unintentionally. When I look back on my life, there were a lot of unintentional things. I was doing it because it felt right. I am that people person. I’m curious. I want to know where someone’s from when I first met them in freshman year. “What was that like in high school? Do you know someone? I think I know someone from there.” These opportunities and even how we met were more of an intentional thing versus an unintentional one. 

Unintentional, you’re swimming around, taking in your surroundings, observing, seeing something that’s interesting, a club, an activity, and then saying, “Why not give it a shot?” or asking a roommate, “Where are you going tonight?” “I’m going to this party off campus. Come along. How about it?” That’s fairly unintentional and intentional. The intentional thing with even how we met was that I had a neighbor, another dad. Our kids go to school together. He’s a part of a networking group that once a week has breakfast together. It’s a chance to pitch your business a little bit. You could be a plumber, an architect, a lawyer, or a doctor, and you’re trying to network with these established people. 

You pay dues. You pay to be a part of the thing. You can look at fraternity life like that as well. You’re paying to be a part of these things. You have dues to pay, but it’s well worth it. I see my man in letters back there. It’s well worth it, the friendships that you’re going to get, whether you pay dues or not. This is another one of those networking groups you pay dues for. You come in. He asked me to join. He says, “You’re a production company. Maybe there’s someone in there who wants to put on a live event, fundraise, do a pod, or something like that.” I ended up going with him there. I saw an opportunity to branch my business out. 

I show up at 6:00 to 6:30 AM for breakfast, and then have a chance to meet people afterwards. I approached a gentleman who seemed like a nice guy and wanted to introduce myself. He caught a little bit about my background that sounded interesting to him. He said, “You should meet my wife.” We established that I went to JMU. He said, “She went to JMU. She’s an entrepreneur. She’s building this thing right now. It’s around mentorship. I need to put you guys in touch.” Within six months, she and I were doing a show together, and here we are to this stage. There was an opening. Again, that door was slightly cracked, like that interview. 

There was a door, an opportunity to go to this business forum, to meet people whom I wouldn’t know in walks of life, and at least to share my work and what I do. I could have left right after breakfast. I could have called it and set up. I got my day job. I got to go there. I stayed. This was during the week. I was missing something. I was giving something up to then go do this other thing. Don’t tell the boss. I stayed after breakfast. I wanted to meet some of the people in the room because I thought they were interesting. I thought they provided maybe a service or something that I could use, or I knew someone. 

You did two very important things, which sound so simple, but they’re hard to do in reality. You showed up. He showed up to something that he had never shown up for before. It can be daunting to show up in a group of about 50 people in a networking situation and know that you’re going to pitch your business, if not nerve-racking. It was at 7:00 in the morning. You’re up bright and early to go pitch your business to a group of strangers. He showed up, which I love. One of the things that we want you to take away is to definitely show up. Even if it’s uncomfortable, and you know nothing about it, it’s okay. Just show up. That’s half the battle. 

The second thing you did was you followed up. He met my husband at this networking event. He establishes that I also went to JMU. He could have said, “That’s nice that she went to JMU. I know a lot of people who went to JMU,” and left it at that. Rick didn’t just do that. Rick ended up going online, looking up some things about who I was and how we could be connected. He picked up the phone and called me. I was like, “This is unique,” because my husband had said, “I met this guy. He might reach out to you.” I’m thinking, “Maybe not.” One of the things that I do often is talk in front of classes. I always offer to everybody, “Please connect with me on LinkedIn.” Less than 10% do. 

I’m going to offer it to you. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, @TinaFox. Connect with Rick Bernstein on LinkedIn. This is going to establish a network for you. It is the fact that you followed up. I will say the riches are in the follow-up. Fortune is in the follow-up. When you follow up, that’s where the fortune is. Rick and I have done a couple of shows together. He said, “If you’re going to be going on campus during homecoming, let’s do a TERN live and inside a classroom. We’ll do it through my show.” I was like, “Seriously?” 

He drove down here with all of his equipment. He was here at 6:00 in the morning to set all of this up. I rolled in at 7:30 and all bright-eyed. Rick was already all set up. It was amazing. He even had his buddy Travis come all the way from Wilmington, Delaware, to help support this whole thing. You never know when you show up and follow up, where those things are going to lead. Those are two very important things, but not necessarily easy to execute. 

One of the things that we haven’t talked about yet, but I’m curious as to your thoughts on this. We grew up in a time when we didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have AI. We didn’t have a lot of these things. We learned how to connect with people. One of the things that I read over and over again in different articles, Forbes, Fortune, or Business Insider, is that we see the generations that are now coming up having to come up in a world where they are doing remote business. They are doing a hybrid business. 

How is it that you could talk to this audience about how you connect when everything is at a distance online? Everybody is applying online through Indeed and all of these other apps. They’re sending out 100 resumes at one time, and they’re getting nothing. It’s like screaming into the void. How do people connect in a world that is hyper-connected over the internet, but maybe less connected on the interpersonal level? 

We talked about that in analogy with parenting. They say that we’ve become so over-parenting with them in person and under-parenting them online. A lot of times, what you live and experience one way online could be very different. Your life could be different in person than how it’s displayed online. The tools for us Gen Xers, I’m savvier over time because I have to be doing this work. It’s one of those things that is not native to us and how we came up. 

We didn’t have the benefit of being able to make fast connections, whether it’s dating or job applications online. What still applies today are these opportunities outside of work. I’ve worked from home for twenty years. Everything I run out of this business, as well as healthcare, I work from home. It’s sales. I have to go to the hospital, surgery center, or something like that. If there are opportunities in work to show up, and whether it’s work optional, three days a week, or that, show up and be in the office. 

There’s nothing more isolating than being at home in your house. You’re seeing the dishes that need to be done. The dog needs to be walked. There are so many things that could be done around you. It’s important to have some aspect of going into the office. Let’s say the job that you get is 100% remote. It goes back to when you log off. How are you spending that time? There are so many Eventbrites and different sites that have so many networking opportunities and cocktail hours, whether you’re bonding over music, all these distribution lists and boards that people would congregate over a thing, something thematically that you’re interested in. 

If you like working on technical things or repairing cars, or you have hobbies in and outside of what you do, find those groups online and see if there’s a meetup. One of the things I did in my community is that one of the dads who I went to that forum with, that I was telling you about, is a car guy. Two other neighbors are car guys. I’m not a car guy, but I’m a community guy. I like getting people together. What we started in our town, in Vienna, Virginia, is a Cars and Coffee event. They get to geek out on the car stuff. 

What we do is we create cars and coffee T-shirts. We sell them for $30 a piece, and then we give them to a foundation for food insecurity, for families who are hungry in the area. We’re working off each other’s kinds of things. We’re isolated managing our families, but we connected in the neighborhood, whether it’s a dog walk, you’re out for a cig back in the days, or how you connect outside the bar, those little things, interests, and everyday life. 

Being able to connect with other people is so vital. We started this whole Cars and Coffee. It has only grown and grown. We’ve raised more money for these foundations. In any opportunity, as remote and virtual as it is, find some way to connect, whether in the office, professionally through the job, or through your own interests, hobbies, or other things you like to do outside of work. 

Let’s talk about the practical aspect of that, because you are a practiced people person. We grew up in a time when we had to connect with people all the time. One of the things that I worked with Professor Hamilton on in some of our classes a few years ago was the identity map. Have you all done an identity map? Have you pulled out that identity map since you did it as a class exercise? No. You all started with your name in the center. You spoke it out to nouns and adjectives in your life. I always said, when we would work together, go a step further and know who you are. If you want to be a practiced people person, you have to know yourself. 

It’s so much easier to get involved in a conversation with others when you can draw on certain commonalities, and you know yourself well. If you were to tell people, “This is my name. This is where I go to school. This is what my major is.” That’s one thing. That’s a lot of information, but to be able to talk about what it is that you like. Rick and I were talking about the other moment about “What is it that you do?” That tends to be the question people ask you all the time when you get out of college. Maybe in school, it’s, “What major are you?” That only tells you one aspect of who you are. Instead, think of it from the perspective of, “What do you like to do?” 

Whether that’s you telling people about yourself or you asking people about themselves, what do you like to do? Adding that one word changed the whole trajectory of the conversation. Instead of saying, “I’m an IT major, or “I go to work in an IT business,” you can say, ‘What do you like to do?” I know that Rick likes to connect with people. I know that Rick wants to pursue philanthropy through his work. I know that Rick likes to do podcasts. There are things about Rick that I know because I’ve gotten to know him a little bit better, about what he likes to do. 

In that identity map that you’ve done, pull it back out again. Look at the adjectives and the nouns that you’ve given yourself. Ask yourself. Why does that matter? Why does being a Tri Sig matter? Why does being a Pike matter? Why does being on the University Program Board matter? What does that do for you as a person? What do you like about that? That’s how people in interview situations will get to know you. You can also get to know other people. 

What do you like to do? Hopefully, in that exchange, you start picking up on commonalities that you can now enter into further conversation and go a little bit deeper in that conversation. We wanted to give you a practical tip in all of this connecting and interpersonal skills that you can go out today, and you can start talking to people about what it is that you like and what it is that they like. Practice that over and over again.

How To Retrain The Brain And Eliminate False Deadlines

I want to wrap it up here, but I wanted to open up the floor and give you guys an opportunity to ask some questions of two very curious alumni to hear about how things are going for you. What are the things that you’re thinking about? What do you need help with? Don’t forget to write down either your mentorship moment or what you want to be mentored on, because we want that at the end of class, too. Yes, Ma’am.

What do you think is too late to figure out what you want to be?

Reframing “Too Late” and Letting Go of False Deadlines

You started the question with, “Too late,” meaning an end that it’s over, and then there’s nothing beyond the rainbow. There’s nothing there. What I would say is retraining the brain and reframing to say, “It’s never too late.” For me, after 40, digging into passionate projects and doing things like presenting through podcast and doing fundraising, it’s never too late. I would give myself that time to say, “This is what’s in front of me. This is what I’m studying now. This is today my interest at 19, 20, 21 years old. This is what my interest is in. Passion is in.”

It is following that and seeing where, over the course of the relationships, working, personal, that you develop if your life goes in different directions. We talked about false deadlines. Don’t put those false deadlines on yourself that it’s too late by 30, too late to get married, or too late to have kids. Don’t say, “If I’m not locked into my career by 25, too late.” I would ask kindly and gently to take that out. Pull it out and say, “It’s never too late.” 

He mentioned earlier giving yourself grace. I don’t think it’s too late for anything. If you have curiosity and an interest, continue to pursue it. Every single one of us is going to get up every single day. As we get up, we’ve got 24 hours in that day and 160 hours in that week. You know what nature hates? A vacuum. Your time is always going to be filled. It’s going to be filled with something. It’s going to be filled with Netflix. It’s going to be filled with YouTube. It’s going to be filled with Twitter or X. It’s going to be filled with class. It’s going to be filled with parties. It’s going to be filled with jobs. It’s going to be filled with a lot of things. 

The thing that I would say is always make sure that you’re filling your time with something that’s helping you grow and connect. If you do that, you will continue to open up opportunities for yourself. You’ll learn a lot about yourself in those opportunities opening. Is that something I should pursue? Maybe not. Sometimes, try it. If it’s going to make you uncomfortable, but it’s going to give you that opportunity to grow, sometimes, try it. It’s never too late. That’s a self-limiting belief. I’m with Rick. I would kindly ask that we remove that self-limiting belief because it’s never too late. People are doing things all the time. 

I met an 80-year-old who got a $750,000 grant and then a $3 million grant. As an 80-year-old, she is rocking it. She’s a meritist. She’s retired, but she’s still doing all this stuff. I see people finishing when I was running. I see people finishing marathons who were three times older than I was when I was twenty. They were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, finishing marathons. It’s never too late to do what it is that you want to go after. It’s a mindset. It’s whether or not you’re going to try. 

A nice, cheesy metaphor is when you’re behind the wheel of a car. You have a windshield. You’re looking forward and moving towards. You have a rear-view mirror and side mirrors that only focus on what’s next to you and what’s behind you. You have to use all the mirrors. You have to look forward through the windshield. You have to look in the rear-view. You have to look in your side mirrors. Together, that’s getting you to that next point and not hitting the person next to you or being aware of everything around you. It is that balance.

Think of it as not “I’m just looking forward.” Of course, you’re looking forward, but also leveraging who’s next to you and who’s behind you as well, moving forward along the way, and doing that. Somebody took years and years to finally find something that gets me excited and gets me out of bed. We have that benefit now with a strong rear-view to look behind and see, “What was behind us? How did we get to this point now?” There are lessons learned from that. Your rear-view is a little bit smaller, not quite as much life lived, but someone had once said, “It’s not the years of life. It’s the life in the years.” Making the most, you could have a very full life in 22 years, 21 years, or 20 years, and there’s only more ahead. Keep that optimistic, forward-thinking viewpoint. It’s going to serve you. 

What other questions can we answer today? We want to hear from you.

There has to be one more.

Yes, sir.

Mentorship Moments & Being Ready When Opportunity Appears

What’s the best piece of advice that you guys received during your college years?

I’ll tell a story. Give me a second to think. I remember when I was here in college, it was the age of grunge. If you know anything about grunge, everything is like two sizes too big and typically lacking color, and it’s just kind of sliding across the floor. I did not necessarily look my best, but everybody was like that, so I was like everybody else. I had to go from Fred Hall, which is where I lived in the village, and I had to hike it all the way up to Anthony Seeger, which I think is a police station or something at this point, I can’t remember. Anyway, that’s where all my comm classes were.

Every time I would do that hike and schlep in my grunge, I would see this one woman, and she always looked impeccable. She had like kitten heels on. It’s a mountain campus. Who’s wearing kitten heels on a mountain campus? I mean, I kind of am today. She had kitten heels on, and she always had something akin to a suit or a nice dress. I thought maybe she’s a new professor, or maybe she’s interviewing, and if she’s interviewing, what is she interviewing for? I want to know all about this.

I mustered up the courage to go up to her one day. I was like, “Excuse me, are you a new professor here? Are you getting ready for interviews? Am I missing something?” She looked at me, and she said, “No, I’m a student just like you. She introduced herself. I said, “I’m Tina Fox.” She’s like, “What year are you?” I said, “Sophomore.” I said, “What year are you?” She said, “Senior.” I said, “You always look so great. Why do you always look so great?” She said, “The way that I see it is that you never know when opportunity is going to rise to meet you, and I want to be ready when it is.” This was before mic drop moments. For me, the mic hit the floor that day, and I went, “Bam.”

You can look her up after class. Her name is Patricia Southall. She went on to be Miss Virginia. She also married Martin Lawrence, and then she married Emmett Smith, and she’s an international speaker. She is so put together. That is the awesome Patricia Southall. I’ll never forget it. It was a mentorship moment that changed my life. After that, I basically gave away all my clothes to my friends, and I decided to go find clothes that were going to make me look better in public because I didn’t know when opportunity was going to rise to meet me, and I wanted to be ready for that challenge. That was my mentorship moment.

I was going to say, being told, when I was actually in the spring semester of my senior year, knowing I wasn’t going to be graduating on time. I came in with six credits, and I ended up six credits short. Part of that had to do with the major that I was in, and doing those repeat forgiveness actually put me behind. I was a December graduate. What did I do? In that last semester, I moved into the fraternity house. Where is a place where you could live that you don’t have a lease to be responsible for? You can move in and move out and all of that.

That’s a silly piece of advice, but what was great was that before I left, I really cemented a lot of relationships with the person who had the interview and whose spot I took. I also lived there, and just solidifying and being in close quarters with people. It can be an apartment off campus. It can be a roommate of any kind. It doesn’t have to be a fraternity house. Obviously, that was just great.

I had the benefit of a bigger brother who had lived this life before. He’s five years older, and he was an example of the things to do. He says, “Get involved, and the things that he did by example. Again, fraternity life, student ambassador, and orientation assistant. He had told me to do this thing. Be involved on campus. I had received that bit of advice as I got here.

As far as advice, actually, I was just a fish swimming in a big sea and just going with the flow, not really realizing it. Looking back now, I’m like, “I did get my self-grace to have friends, drop off with some friends. You get tighter with this group, and then maybe that group falls off, but just giving myself that space to do those things. I self-mentored in that way. I should have asked more professors for guidance on the work that I was doing.

I could have approached alumni during alumni weekends, like when they come back. A lot of these, if you play a sport or if you’re involved in these clubs, where people will come back for homecoming and approach somebody. If I were to do it all over again, maybe I would grab that fraternity brother who graduated eons ago and ask them about work and what got them there. That is how I would part to you, how you can start doing that now and finding those points of view and those life experiences.

Yes, ma’am.

Time Management, Priorities, and Intentional Use of the 160-Hour Week

How do you time manage all of your jobs?

Time management is a big thing.

We have spouses and kids. What about them?

I’ve often said that everybody, if we live a week, we get 160 hours in that week. It’s going to be filled because nature hates a vacuum. That time is going to be filled with something. What do you choose to fill that time with? Going global is always the best way to start your time. Time management, in my opinion, starts with the things that matter the most. What are the things that I’m aligned with value morally-wise? How do I want to spend my time? 

I’m going to make sure that I’m taking full advantage of my education. I’m going to get myself eighteen hours so that I can maximize my time here at JMU, or I’m going to do these extracurriculars because it’s going to give me project-based connections and relationships, family, whatever that is. Take the big picture and then drill it down. Be realistic with how many hours exist in a week. We have 160 hours that exist in a week. You’ve got to sleep in there. You might have a commute. You might have to eat. There are certain things that you’re going to do. Don’t overschedule yourself. 

I know a lot of people love to check boxes and say, “I did all of these things.” I told you when I was at JMU, I was a student, I was involved in Greek life, and then I also did the University Program Board. That was it. I honed in and focused on that. Time management is a function of what you want to do, why you want to do those things, and how that is going to benefit your growth, and then mapping it out. Planning is important. I used to plan years in advance. I stopped doing that because life gets in the way. Now, I plan more for a quarter to six months, maybe a year in advance, so that I have goals and I’m reaching milestones along those goals. 

The app that I use the most on my phone is not texting, phone calling, or social media. It’s the timer. We used to do this with our kids. We put them in timeout, two minutes. When this buzzes, when this goes off, you’re coming out. You’re building a border of some kind and everything. Creativity and opportunities live. You’ve got to have some guardrails. You’re not at JMU without education, a major, or something to keep you on a path of some kind. 

It’s not just a free-flow pop-in at that building. You have some structure to it. What I do daily is set a timer for myself. If I’m answering emails, in the thing, and on the phone, that’s one thing. If I need to break off and say, “There’s something that I don’t want to forget,” I’m going to set my timer. Give me ten minutes. In those ten minutes, what can I do? Yes, I can waste away on social media. I can doom scroll. 

I can do all of that, or I can set a timer and say, “All I’ve got is ten minutes. Let me hold myself to it.” Quick little workout, a quick little creative drop of some kind. I use this in my life. It came with parenting first. I realized I can use this timer to do a lot of things and hold myself. I’m not shooting hours and overshooting small wins. I’ve got something down. That’s ten minutes that I wouldn’t have had or given myself otherwise. I found that to be helpful. 

Yes Maam.

I’m starting to think about internship opportunities. How do you recommend growing network professionals where you don’t have alumni in a state who can help?

What state are you in?

Connecticut. 

Welcome. We love our Northeasterners. 

Is it back home?

Yes.

Do you keep in touch with some of the friends that you came up with and came through with? 

Do you want an internship in Connecticut, or doesn’t it matter? 

That’s what I was thinking about, rather than how you work here.

That’s a good point. Charlotte was hot when I graduated, as far as people moving to. A lot of DC because a lot of Virginia students. That made sense. New York. You can find yourself going anywhere. You’re not constrained in that way. There are alumni from all over the place, from Connecticut and other places. A great place to start is the foundation of your education here and your experience. That’s ultimately going to be what you know, and then it’s who you know, weaving back into those friends and having an ear on the ground, because I know what you mean. With the internet and everything now, it is about finding opportunities within that town, that city in which you’re at. 

This is why I built TERN. It’s because I’m trying to help the students bridge that collegiate to career connection, whether that’s in their local hometown or in their major, etc. Outside of that, the best thing you can do is tap into your alumni network. That is familiar to you because you both came from James Madison University. If you go to LinkedIn, use the search bar, and type in JMU, Connecticut, you might find alumni who are there. 

You can also go to Alumni Relations and say, “Who are your alumni in Connecticut?” Paula Polglase is your director of Alumni Relations. She would be happy to help you with that. Ask them, “Can I get some names? I want to reach out to them on LinkedIn.” Start connecting and let them know who you are. Make sure it’s a tight little blurb. When you ask for somebody to connect with you on LinkedIn, my best practice is to say that you’re looking for a fifteen-minute informational conversation. That’s it. 

At thirteen minutes, you’re going to cut that conversation because you’re going to respect their time. You’re going to be prepared when you get into that conversation with a couple of three questions of what you need to know, maybe who they can further connect you with, and who’s in an industry that you’re interested in. That would be the greatest place to start. I’m going to wrap because Rick did me a great favor by allowing us to bring TERN live to the part of DC here at JMU during homecoming week.

Important Links

• Voice of DC Productions
• Rick Bernstein on LinkedIn
• TERN Mentoring
• The Pod of DC
• Cobalt Settlements
• Tina Fox on LinkedIn 
• Eventbrite 

About Rick Bernstein

Rick Bernstein, founder of The Voice of DC, is a trained voice actor, emcee, and licensed fundraising auctioneer whose twenty-plus-year career spans the fields of entertainment, technology, fundraising, and healthcare.

These experiences, combined with a diverse skill set honed on stage, in the recording booth, and consulting alongside hundreds of organizations, have distinguished Rick as a unique entertainment and fundraising service provider.