This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
Josh: My metric for a meaningful career became: can I do something that’s net positive? Who knows how much you can help people, but can I show up every day and try? In one night, my entire view of that changed.
James: Hello, and welcome to Graduate Theory. My guest today is the founder of Campus Consultancy. He’s worked with more than 21,000 leaders across schools, universities, non-profits and corporations, and gives more than 300 presentations each year, including TEDx talks and a presentation at Australasian Talent Conference Digital 2020. He’s a former engineer with experience in graduate recruitment. Please welcome Josh Farr.
Josh: Hi, James. Thanks for having me.
Josh’s Grad Program Experience#
James: It’s great to have you on. You have unique and exciting experience in many areas, and I’m looking forward to discussing it. One thing I noticed on your LinkedIn was what you did during your graduate program. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Lendlease’s program normally takes two years and you completed it more quickly. I’d like to hear about your experience as a graduate and how that came about.
Josh: Thanks again for having me. The punchline is that Lendlease rejected me from its graduate program before I joined the same program that year. I didn’t even get an interview, so I’ve always joked that, given I’m no longer an engineer, perhaps they were right not to offer me a role.
That’s definitely not a criticism. Lendlease is an enormous, ASX-listed, tier-one engineering company with a market capitalisation of $3.5 billion. Perhaps I should explain how I originally applied.
I sent in an application as everyone does at the end of uni: you write a résumé and cover letter, then hit submit. They responded, “Due to the high calibre of applicants, we are not going to progress.” I thought, “Damn, another one.” Until then, I had done everything right at uni.
I had good grades, a couple of scholarships, work experience, ten volunteering roles and a respectable résumé, yet I didn’t get in. As the rejections continued, I realised I didn’t know how to get a job. I had done plenty of engineering work but little career planning.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and was still jumping through hoops. I joke that in first year, when university is difficult, everyone says, “Don’t worry, second year will get better.” Then you reach second year, find it difficult and hear, “Don’t worry, third year will get better.” It was turtles all the way down. Despite the rejections, I went to an engineering camp while serving as president of the civil engineering society.
We ran the camp for first-year students and invited my friend Mike, an engineering graduate, to give them a commencement-style speech. Mike is still with Lendlease today. He loves engineering and is its poster boy.
To cut a long story short, he eventually helped me get a job through the back door. I joined a smaller company, Baulderstone, which was then acquired by Lendlease. I suddenly found myself in the Lendlease graduate program.
I went from a small, agile company where I had tremendous responsibility to retaining that responsibility while also confronting the bureaucracy of an enormous organisation with dozens of graduate requirements. They placed a booklet in front of me containing more than 120 things I had to complete to be certified as a graduate.
They said, “You’ve got two years to do it. Good luck.”
James: That’s remarkable: you were rejected, yet found yourself back in the company completing the program. A checklist of 120 items is an unusual way to define completion; these programs are often time-based.
Josh: The program was meant to take a couple of years. Engineering is extremely hierarchical. What did you study at uni?
James: I did maths and finance.
Josh: The closest comparison is probably a consulting firm, where you progress from associate to senior associate and onwards. Construction engineering works similarly: undergraduate engineer, graduate engineer, site engineer, project engineer, senior project engineer, construction manager, and eventually running your own project. I moved from undergraduate to graduate engineer and entered this two-year program, but my actual job was on an assigned site. I was hired to do that job, not to participate in the program.
I was retrofitting the program to my site-engineering role. I was playing above my pay grade while having no idea what I was doing, so I had to figure it out. To complete the program, I had to demonstrate competence across all its different areas.
The nature of my site allowed me to tick them off quickly. I treated the program like a project, following the phrase, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” I decided to arrive an hour to an hour and a half early as often as I could, allowing for those rainy mornings when you want to stay in bed.
On some days, I arrived at 4:00 am and spent an hour on one competency. If the requirement said, “Demonstrate knowledge of X,” and I didn’t know what X was, I researched it.
I recorded it in my diary. Another requirement might be experience in—putting it very simply—digging a large hole. If my current work didn’t involve that, I spent the morning reviewing site documents and plans to find where that work would occur. I then approached the relevant team and explained that I needed the experience for my graduate program.
I’d say, “I know you’re planning this work in three weeks. Can I come and shadow you? Can I watch, take notes and ask questions? I promise not to get in the way and will help if I can. I need to take some photos and tick off this requirement.”
I discovered that people were receptive to someone who wanted to learn and respected those who went above and beyond. Breaking 120 requirements into daily tasks, then asking where I could acquire each missing skill, was extremely helpful. The same approach applies to starting a business or launching a podcast: divide a large task into small ones, find someone with the relevant skill and learn from them. It was meta-learning. At uni, I learnt how to learn from a book; in this program, I learnt how to learn from people. That produced tremendous growth.
The Social Pressure of High Achievement#
James: You were completing the program much faster than colleagues following its usual 24-month schedule. How did that feel? Was there any social pressure, and did your peers’ progress affect you?
Josh: On one hand, it was a point of pride; then I quickly messed it all up. I’ll start with the fun part. I was powering through the program. At one of the days when all the graduates gathered, I was asked to present because I was working on perhaps the most exciting project: Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour.
I would arrive on site and watch the sun rise through the Sydney Harbour Bridge, because the bridge was east of us. Yachts passed on the water. It was a beautiful project.
The universe helped me by giving me the best possible project on which to realise that I didn’t want to be an engineer. If I didn’t like it there, I wasn’t going to like it. People said, “Don’t worry, it’ll get better when you’re a design engineer,” but I’d heard that pattern before.
I was asked to present on this beautiful project. A two-year program contains roughly 720 days, but only 120 requirements. Working six days a week, I thought that if I completed one each day, I could finish quickly.
That was driven by both a strength and its shadow. The strength was my desire to grow and become my best self, which I still hold today. Its shadow was the desire to be better than other people. I didn’t have that language then, but that was what drove me.
Jungian psychoanalysis says that whenever there’s a strength, a shadow lurks behind it. Consider the tyrant king, or what’s happening with Putin and Russia: great power carries a dark shadow. I believe that’s true of all strengths.
Without going too far off on a tangent, honesty is a strength, but if you criticise your local barista’s coffee, you’re simply being a jerk. Too much or too little honesty isn’t good. Strengths have a sweet spot.
I’d always been an achiever: grow, grow, grow; achieve, achieve, achieve. That helped me power through the graduate program. At this conference, before I spoke to the other graduates about my project, someone else presented his.
This was the number-two graduate. His project was a road job. That isn’t a criticism of him or his work—I’ve worked on roads too—but his task was to construct sound walls alongside a highway. You place a column like a telephone pole, install a wall, then repeat. Every eight metres, he dug a hole, inserted steel, filled it with concrete and moved another eight metres.
He did that for kilometres. Sound walls are necessary, but I would rather have done anything than that forever. Again, it wasn’t a criticism of him; it was simply the project he presented.
I had spent the previous year and a half giving tours of our large Sydney Harbour precinct to politicians, influencers and other visitors. I had a slick presentation with CGI, photos, behind-the-scenes details, facts and stories, and had already delivered it 20 or 30 times.
Whenever someone visited, I volunteered to present. I loved talking about the project; I simply didn’t love building it. I had polished the jokes and statistics. The other graduate sat down after showing column after column, and in my imagination the lights dimmed and rock music played as I wowed the group. The audience’s general reaction was, “Screw you, buddy.”
I got to work on the harbour amid all this beauty. The upside was that I loved talking about it. The downside was the attitude of, “Look at me and how great this is.” In hindsight, that involved a fair amount of ego, which I believe was driven by my unhappiness.
I didn’t intrinsically love the work, but it looked good to the outside world. I compensated for my unhappiness by telling people how great and beautiful the project was. I wasn’t claiming to be the best; I was trying to convince myself that I liked what I did.
After completing the graduate requirements, I learnt a valuable lesson. While the head of our construction site was on holiday, I applied for the promotion that completing all 120 items made available.
A senior employee visited my site and asked, “So you want to finish the graduate program?” I was only eight or nine months in, but replied, “I’ve finished it. Here’s the 120-page document; everything is ticked off.” He asked, “What’s your end goal?” I knew it was a loaded question but couldn’t see the trap because he had more experience than I did.
He clarified, “Where do you want your career to go? Where do you want to end up?” Nobody had asked me that before, and I didn’t know. He asked whether I wanted to become a construction manager, the senior role on a project.
My gut reaction was, “Not really.” He asked why I would limit myself and not aim for the top. I said that I’d watched construction managers and didn’t want the job. He then asked, “If you aren’t happy here and don’t want to reach the top, where in the middle do you want to finish?”
Josh: I didn’t know. I simply wanted more—the next thing—and, lacking a destination, kept climbing. I was trying to say whatever was necessary to finish the program. I left that conversation realising I didn’t know why I was pretending to like the job. I was exhausted from working 12-hour days, six days a week, and wasn’t enjoying it.
I received the promotion, then my construction manager returned from holiday. He had kindly given me a job after my rejection and had mentored me in the early days, but he was furious.
This young employee had sought a promotion beyond his scope and rank. I’d completely broken the chain of command: he employed me to work under him on his project, yet I’d gone into the corporate machine and found a way around him.
I’d broken the unspoken rules of loyalty, patience and humility. The message was: this kid is a high achiever with a large ego who dislikes rules and will do what’s best for himself. All of that was true. The problem was that I behaved that way because I was unhappy, which I’d never articulated. When the promotion offered more money and responsibility, I realised I didn’t want to be there. That wasn’t a criticism of the company or job.
In that moment, being told I could have more made me recognise that I didn’t want it. Learning this at 22 was a gift: I didn’t have to spend 40 years doing something I disliked. Gallup’s Australian workforce data says that fewer than one in five Australian workers under 40 loves what they do. Sit with five friends and, statistically, four of you dislike your work. That’s depressing. Once I realised I wasn’t alone, I wanted to determine what came next.
Everything I’d done until then had prepared me to be an engineer, and now I didn’t want to be one.
Leaving his Career as an Engineer#
James: That’s fascinating. Rather than remaining as many unhappy workers do, you asked what came next. It was brave and perhaps fortunate to realise this early, before additional responsibilities made leaving harder. Following a passion involves risk. Once you recognised that you weren’t happy, what was your next step? You could have gone anywhere.
Josh: To be honest, I went a little Peter Pan and ran away to Neverland. I didn’t know what I was doing. The theme appears in many films: Simba finds the kingdom frightening and runs away.
I followed that adolescent urge to escape. When my best friend’s older brother and his friend were about 22, they went to Canada for a ski season, relaxed and had fun.
I’d worked hard at uni and never had overseas holidays. While some friends travelled during breaks, I worked to pay for uni. I asked what the opposite of my current life would look like and how I might enjoy every day.
Perhaps I could have a grand adventure. I’d been sensible and saved money, which is my top tip for anyone who dislikes their work. Saving gives you a cushion.
You can take one, two or three months off—or two years in my case—to determine what’s next. I could remain in a job I knew I disliked, or have an adventure, reset and try to work it out. I recruited my best mate, and we moved to Canada for a ski season.
I wanted to do something different and have fun. I met many amazing people, including plenty of Australians and highly qualified people who had attended great universities and graduated with numerous opportunities, yet reached the same conclusion: “I don’t want to do the work I’m doing.” Being around others in the same position was reassuring. Travel introduces you to many people who are a little lost.
After a while, I no longer wanted to wallow in being lost. It was fun, but I wanted to move forward. After a few months of the Canadian ski season, travelling around the US and doing the classic Contiki tour of Europe, I ended up in London about six or seven months later.
We had visited many countries, nearly exhausted our money and needed to work again. I quickly developed skills in the nightclub industry and discovered that I could be paid to drink and party with people.
I promoted nightclubs and had a great time. My job was to party with groups of 100 to 200 people and be the life of the party. On days when I didn’t have to drink, I’d wake up relieved.
I’d ask my housemates, “How excited are you not to drink today?” That’s the opposite of a healthier relationship, where you look forward to champagne at a Saturday party, wedding or engagement. I’d be excited not to drink, then someone would inevitably invite me to another party. I drank and encouraged others to drink professionally. People had fun, took great photos and made great memories.
It was hilarious, but also depressing—alcohol is a depressant. After weeks of this, I felt spiritually and morally bankrupt and wondered whether it would be the rest of my life. I hadn’t been happy as an engineer.
I’d gone to the opposite extreme and partied for a living, yet wasn’t happy there either. I wondered whether something was wrong with me and whether I’d ever be happy. That possibility was terrifying.
I could make a single day amazing, but wasn’t good at creating long-term happiness. Could I make months amazing, or would I always want to leave? I was stuck in London running pub crawls and feeling lost.
How Josh Found his Passion#
James: That’s an interesting question: do you dislike the work itself, or are you failing to appreciate it? Will anything fulfil you, or is that simply how life is? How did you respond to the bleak possibility that you might never enjoy anything?
Josh: For anyone listening: one, thank you for listening; two, don’t worry, this story has a happy ending. I can go into the depths of the darkness and tell you that I screwed up at work, was driven by my ego, got people drunk for a living and felt depressed because I’ve done the work to overcome it.
I think many people get stuck because they won’t admit there’s a problem. I did this in a later job, which I’ll tell you about, where I sat down with literally thousands of people and discussed their careers over two years. I love the phrase, “You can’t solve a problem you’re not willing to have.” At the time, I wasn’t willing to have any of these problems. In hindsight, I can look back and think, “Geez, how silly was I? I can’t believe I was doing this stuff.” But if you looked at my Instagram then, it appeared that I was having the best time in the world.
I was probably making people more depressed about their lives by presenting mine on Instagram as happier than it was: beautiful boys and girls, and beautiful, exotic locations. I bought a GoPro, which levelled up my whole Insta game. It was fire. I remember tipping over a couple of thousand followers and people beginning to treat me differently.
This was seven or eight years ago. Instagram had been around for a while, but having a couple of thousand social-media followers was still a thing. I’d be out on pub crawls and knew the routine. Someone would approach me and say, “This is so much fun. Oh my God, you do this for a job?”
I’d say, “Yeah, I do. I’ve been travelling for a year.” They’d reply, “You’ve been travelling for a year? That’s amazing. I should add you on Instagram.” I’d give them my username, and they would say, “You have thousands of followers.” People literally treated me differently because of those followers, even though I wasn’t showing my full life.
It wasn’t fake; it was my real life. But it wasn’t the entire truth. Someone once told me to look through a person’s Instagram account and see what percentage of the time they’re smiling. It’s nearly 100 per cent.
In normal life, nobody walks around smiling all day; your face would hurt. Instagram was part of my life, but I was projecting it and trying to convince myself I was happy. I realised it wasn’t working and had to figure out what to do.
I’m a slow learner, but I’ve been lucky and gifted with good opportunities. Completely coincidentally, Nathan—an awesome guy I studied engineering and worked at Lendlease with—had a large friendship group.
Long before COVID, he was travelling around Europe with a group of friends and ended up in Portugal. I thought Portugal was in South America. I said, “Dude, I’m not catching a plane from London to South America.” He replied, “Portugal is an hour away from you by plane.”
I said, “Oh, okay. Sorry, I had no idea.” I jumped on a $50 Ryanair flight—international flights out of London were very cheap—and went to Portugal. I spent time with him and a couple of mates. They said, “Life looks amazing.”
I replied, “It kind of is, but I’m getting sick of partying every day.” I decided I needed to leave London. The party scene was too hectic and wasn’t healthy, so I would move to a little beachside town and settle there.
While walking to the beach in Portugal, I stopped at a hostel, spoke to the owner behind the counter and got a job there. It was beautiful and beachy, not a city; it was simply different. A week later, I went back to London, packed my things, did one final pub crawl, finished a pool party at 2 am, went directly to the airport and flew to that little Portuguese beach town.
I thought, “I’m just going to be here and decompress.” I moved to Portugal, spent time there and started considering what to do next. It was my layover period: I could sit on a beach and think. At that point, I started looking beyond myself.
This was 2015, at the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis. Nathan and his friends had moved east into Greece and were heading down into Turkey. Naive young me thought, “That’s fascinating. I’ve never been to Greece or Turkey.”
This was where everything involving Syria and people moving through the region was happening, and it was in the news. I thought, “Why not? Rather than reading the headlines, I’m here. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What if I go and see what it’s really like?”
I moved towards Greece and into Turkey, a country I knew nothing about, at the critical point when refugees were moving through it. I remember being in Turkish cities where the army travelled up and down the streets because people were protesting the wars happening in Syria.
The government was being overthrown in Turkey while we were there. I thought, “I’m in what may not be the safest place right now,” but I felt called to it. I needed to be somewhere that had something deeper happening. I don’t know whether that was a healthy or safe way to think, but I was looking for something deeper.
I wanted proximity to a real problem in the world, as strange as that sounds. The closer I got, the more I realised how painful and tragic everything happening in that region was. My question became, “Can I do something about this?”
Was I going to take Instagram photos of a refugee crisis? Definitely not. They didn’t gel particularly well with my waterfalls, sunsets, boots and boat cruises. It was a different vibe, but I needed something different.
I asked, “If I’m not going to take photos, what can I do?” I posted on Facebook: “Hey, I’m in Turkey, this is happening and I have a couple of weeks here. World, if you were me, what would you do?” I threw it into the ether, and someone replied, “Why don’t you volunteer?”
It sounded like a good idea, so I set out to find a way to help.
Josh’s Powerful Volunteering Experience#
James: That’s powerful. Through all those experiences, you’ve gone from escaping corporate Australia to escaping the nightlife. You’re slowly peeling the onion down to serious problems happening in the world.
Seeing those problems firsthand is powerful. How did that affect you? This time, you were getting a taste of reality much closer to home. What came out of that volunteering experience?
Josh: That’s a good insight. When you talked about escaping corporate Australia or the nightlife, I was really trying to escape myself. I wanted to be happy and fulfilled, but what I was trying hadn’t worked, so I would run away, try something else and hope to find happiness and fulfilment.
I thought I could do that through pub crawls. That didn’t work, so I kept running away. Ultimately, what I was searching for was what I found when volunteering at a refugee border crossing between Macedonia and Serbia—two countries I’d never visited.
One of the cool things about visiting all those countries in a row—and people listening may think, “This guy doesn’t have a clue about any of them”—is that I experienced countries and cultures I knew nothing about. I was in Turkey for three weeks before realising it was in Asia, not Europe.
I still thought I was in Europe, but I was in Asia. I literally didn’t know what continent I was on. I was outside myself, metaphorically and physically. Travelling through those countries made me realise that people are people everywhere, and people were suffering.
The news always shows one perspective, whereas people are rich, dynamic, generous, beautiful, loving, sad and suffering all at once. At that refugee border crossing, I realised I could do good instantly.
Just as I could find ways to be unhappy, I could find ways to be happy and fulfilled in a moment. The border crossing was at the end of a train track on the edge of Macedonia. People had to leave the train and cross the border into Serbia.
They were trying to enter European countries that wouldn’t technically let them in, but once inside, they were covered by UN refugee treaties. They had to sneak into those countries. I watched mothers holding babies and sneaking them across borders, which is a strange concept in Australia because we’re an island.
Imagine barbed-wire fences between Queensland and New South Wales, with mothers holding babies in the dead of night and crawling under fences to get in. It was insane to see. In one night, I saw 6,000 people get off a train.
That same week—I forget who the Prime Minister was; this was when Australia had about 17 prime ministers within a week—the current Prime Minister announced a policy: “What’s happening in Syria is awful. We’re going to let 10,000 refugees into Australia.”
I thought, “I, one Australian, saw 6,000 people in a night, and we’re going to let 10,000 into an entire country? This is a joke.” Helping that night involved simple things: handing out bread and milk, giving people water and something to eat so they could continue their journey.
The bread came from a local bakery. Everything was donated, everybody there was a volunteer and some had been there for months. The bread wouldn’t last the refugees a week, but it might last until the next UN refugee camp.
I had several profound realisations. First, many people need help. Second, the causes of the social problems we see are complex. It isn’t as simple as volunteering for one night and solving the problem. Third, you can help people take one or two more steps on their journey.
That can literally be lifesaving. Providing a meal to someone who doesn’t have one, milk for a baby or water could save a life without you ever knowing. It changed my view of what impact was. I asked, “What if it stopped being about me and became more about service?”
“What if I did more good in one night than I had in my entire life? What if I did that the next night, and the next?” I didn’t stay at the refugee camp. I didn’t say, “I’m going to save this refugee camp forever.”
But I took away an idea that I think is more powerful than the action: what if every day I helped as many people as I could in a meaningful way and nudged them along their journey, whether in leadership, their career or by handing out supplies?
With everything that happened recently during the Queensland floods, I was at my local kindergarten with a group of volunteers.
We took out books, swept floors and moved furniture. We were nudging society in a positive direction. My metric for a meaningful career became: can I do something that’s net positive? Who knows how much you can help people, but can you do something positive?
Can I show up every day and try to help? In one night, my entire view changed. I think about it every day. Whenever I struggle to sleep, I remember lying on a concrete floor. That night, I slept outdoors on a concrete slab.
It was just me and the concrete: no blanket, nothing. Any time I have trouble sleeping, thinking about that triggers me to remember how fortunate we are and how much we have. Then I ask, “What am I complaining about?” My problems don’t exist relative to those I saw. That motivates me every day to ask, “What can I do? How can I serve? How can I show up and try to make the world a better place?”
That one night was like an iPhone receiving a software upgrade: suddenly, it can do things it couldn’t do before.
It was also like a Tesla receiving a software update overnight: you wake up, and it can drive itself. I don’t have a Tesla, but so the story goes. That’s literally what happened in my brain in one night. The next morning, I woke and thought, “Oh my God, I need to find a way to help people.”
It was black and white. It was pretty profound.
What is Josh Working on Today#
James: That’s remarkable. Many people are searching and need an experience like that to wake them up. You’ve taken that experience and now have a similar effect on others, helping them recognise that they too can create a positive impact and make the world better. You were fortunate to witness these events firsthand, seeing real people suffer real problems and being able to help. I’m glad we’re sharing the experience today. You’ve transferred its energy into your current work and have a significant impact on people across Australian universities, corporations and non-profits. I’d like to discuss your writing, your current work and the positive energy behind your desire to improve the world. What key ideas do you want to share?
Josh: I love that. Thank you for giving me space to share it. The writing you’re alluding to is the product of sharing these insights on LinkedIn every day for six years. I post something I’ve learnt, a reflection or a story. That amounts to thousands of posts into which I’ve put considerable time, trying to make each idea practical.
After running nearly a thousand workshops—a couple of hundred each year—while posting, speaking and writing daily, I noticed certain ideas recurring. When you work with students over several years, you tell one cohort something, then share the same idea with a new cohort the following year.
For the new students, it’s the first time they’ve encountered it. I realised these ideas were universal and that I’d been lucky to tap into some of them. I wanted to share them in another format, so this year I’m publishing my first book, Your Leadership Matters.
Its principle—my philosophy and belief—is that seeing, treating and conducting yourself as a leader is the most empowering way to solve life’s inevitable problems and take advantage of its unlimited opportunities.
The book has six parts, organised as six Gs. The first is groundwork: understanding who you are and, as you said, peeling back the onion’s layers. Drawing on my work with thousands of people and hundreds of books and podcasts, I present the tools I wish I’d had at 22.
I had no idea what I was doing. I remember sitting in a gondola at a Canadian ski resort, rocking back and forth and thinking that I must look crazy, repeatedly asking, “What am I going to do with my life?”
I eventually realised that was a poor question. I could answer much more easily, “What problem do I care about that I could address today?” I could find a problem I cared about.
Ironically, understanding who I was meant thinking less about myself and more about the things I cared about: whom did I want to help and serve? The book guides readers through six stages they can apply to any area they want to improve, including finances, career, relationships, fun, joy, peace or love.
You can treat it as a field manual, with fill-in-the-blank exercises and questions that help you navigate from where you are to where you want to be. I’m excited for its release and can’t wait for people to read it and, hopefully, see the impact on their lives.
James: I’m excited to read it. Throughout this conversation, your interest in psychology and in looking beneath the surface has been clear. We discussed the shadow side of strengths and identifying what truly drives us. That’s important work we can all do better. I’m interested to see how those ideas appear in the book. Its message that people can lead themselves and take control of their lives is powerful. Asking “What am I going to do with my life?” is a common mistake I’m also guilty of making.
What am I going to do with my life?#
Josh: Since we’re running short on time, what does that question sound like when you ask it? Are you asking, “What am I going to do with my life?”
James: Yes. I ask, “If everything goes to plan, what do I want to be doing in ten years?” It usually returns to career measures: I want a particular position, to work for a certain kind of company or to earn a certain amount of money.
I don’t often ask what problem I want to solve. Perhaps it is a common problem where intervention could move someone in a positive direction and change their life. Sometimes an idea never becomes an action. You may only need to nudge someone slightly, particularly early in life, to change their later trajectory significantly.
Josh: I’ll offer a technique that may resonate with you or the audience. Imagine a 40-year career. I’ve been running my business for five years, and five years is a bloody long time to work on something.
Think how long uni felt when you worked on something every day. Five years is both short and long. A career will probably last 50 years, but use 40 conservatively. Divide that line into five-year chunks and you have eight mini-careers. Instead of asking what you want to be doing, ask what you would be proud to have done in the next five years. Pick a problem in the world; you could start with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
There are 17; pick one. Learn about the problem, find organisations and people working on it, and explore it deeply. Ask what you would love to do in that field, not where you must work or what job you must hold. If you could help 1,000 people, 100 people or ten people over five years, what would you do?
The second part is structuring the plan so you can’t lose. In addition to helping people, what skills do you want to develop and what experiences do you want to have? Do you want to travel; work in a startup, non-profit, government or corporation; or learn technical skills?
Do you want another degree, to start a business or to build a podcast? Over the next five years, whom do you want to help? What can you learn deeply enough to become a mini-expert? What skills and experiences can you gain?
That creates a win regardless of the result. How old are you, James?
James: Yeah, I’m 23.
Josh: In five years, you’ll be 28. You’re two years younger than I am now and roughly a year older than I was when I started my business. By then, you could have done valuable work and become a mini-expert in a problem that matters.
You’ll have met great people, gathered stories and developed skills, with seven more mini-careers still ahead. Some people are certain that they want a corporate career, to be a lawyer or to climb the ranks, which is great. Most people listening to a podcast like this aren’t so certain.
If you aren’t certain, remove the pressure of a ten-year career plan because it will change. Ask what five-year mini-career would be worthwhile even if it failed horribly. I worked in non-profit education.
I probably never want to be a recruitment manager again, but those two years taught me a great deal about education and recruitment. Recruiting taught me how to understand people and ask questions, while education became a launch pad for my current work.
That experiment lasted only two years; in five, I might have mastered some of those skills. If you’re stuck, don’t ask only what work you want to do. Ask whom you want to help and what skills you want. Shorten the time horizon, because asking where you want to be in 40 years can be overwhelming.
You may have one life, but you also have one chance at the next five years. Shrink the question.
Josh’s Advice for Graduates#
James: That’s an excellent exercise. One question I ask every guest is: what advice would you give yourself if you were starting your career today?
Josh: What I just described would probably be my answer: think about the next five years and whom you want to help. If you’re lost, try to answer this question.
I’m sure this isn’t original, but the point of a career is to end unnecessary suffering. If you don’t know what to do, find someone who is struggling or suffering that shouldn’t exist—a resourcefulness problem rather than a resource problem. Before recording, I mentioned booking an Airbnb today. Its home page asked whether users could help house 200,000 Ukrainian refugees. There are obviously more refugees, but that was the displayed figure.
People with vacant Airbnb properties around the world could say, “I can house a family for two weeks. I can forgo two weeks of Airbnb income,” or perhaps offer accommodation for two months or two years.
It’s a small sacrifice that won’t cause their own family to starve. Many listeners won’t have a spare property, but they may have a free weekend, a few hours or $50 each month to donate. My advice to my younger self would be to find a problem you care about.
Find suffering—strange as that sounds—with leverage: it needn’t happen, a solution exists, and great people or organisations are working on it. Get involved and change your proximity. Proximity changed everything for me.
The hardest advice I’d give my younger self is to spend time somewhere with real problems. Those problems can exist in your neighbourhood, including domestic abuse and many others.
You shouldn’t simply knock on a neighbour’s door and ask whether suffering is occurring. Connect with organisations addressing problems locally, or go somewhere where the environment confronts you with them.
I needed the shock of recognising that real problems existed and that I could help. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was practical. The gap between what I thought I wanted and what I needed became apparent. Go somewhere with a genuine challenge and be around people solving it.
Had I only witnessed the crisis without seeing anyone respond, it would have been deeply depressing. At the refugee crossing, however, I saw local families and bakers with almost nothing give away everything. They closed businesses and gave all their bread to refugees they didn’t know, from other countries and religions.
Some religious narratives described these people as enemies, yet the locals devoted their lives to helping them. I thought, “That’s religion. That’s what it’s about.” Being around such selfless, generous people changed my perspective.
That’s the message I would give my younger self.
James: I hope listeners take that message to heart. Thanks for joining me today, Josh. Where can people learn more about you?
Josh: To connect with me, search LinkedIn for Josh Farr—F-A-R-R. To learn about our organisation, visit CampusConsultancy.org, which explains what we do.
If you gained something from today’s conversation, I’d love to hear from you. Message me on LinkedIn and say you heard me on Graduate Theory, tell me what you liked, ask a question or explain where you’re stuck. I’ll send you useful resources or try to point you in the right direction.
James: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing your story and mission with us, Josh. It’s been wonderful to hear about your experiences.
Josh: Thanks, James. Thanks for having me.
Outro#
James: Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. To receive my takeaways and what I learnt from this episode, please go to GraduateTheory.com/subscribe. You’ll receive my takeaways and information about each episode straight in your inbox.
Thanks again for listening. I look forward to seeing you next week.