Break All The Rules and Love Monday's Again with Tammy Alvarez

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. With more than 25 years in corporate trenches, Bernadette's own journey from being dismissed as a tyrant boss to becoming a sought-after leadership coach and speaker illustrates the very essence of transformation that she now inspires in others with her tips, strategies, and stories. So if you're ready to shed the bitches of fear and insecurity, ditch the imposter syndrome, and step into the role of the powerhouse leader you were born to be, this podcast is for you. Let's do this.

Tammy, welcome, welcome, welcome.

How are you?

It's awesome to see you.

Thank you so much. This is my first podcast recording of the new year, probably for you too, I'm guessing.

Yes, me too. Well, and I think this is a beautiful conversation to have in a time spot like the beginning of a year, because that's when people should be really considering their career path and their goals and what it is that they want to achieve. But before we get there, I always like to introduce our guests or allow them to introduce themselves to our audience so people can get to know, like, and trust them. So could you share a little bit about Tammy?

Yes, happy to do so. And without getting too much into work, I spent my career on Wall Street. I was a managing director managing thousands of people, and that was really what I did for a living until I didn't want to anymore. And I remember having this day where I just suddenly everything I loved, I hated, and I decided to do something radical. So I pulled the plug on my career on Wall Street. I moved to a tropical island off the coast of Belize in Central America and started this company about 7 years ago. I love adventure. I'm a big scuba diver, hiker, you know, we love all the things that are in nature. And so living in Belize for 5 years really gave us that opportunity to have a massive reset and off the payroll. So the timing was perfect for me and I just decided it was time to do something really different. So today I live in Mexico City. So we were in Belize for 5 years and then I started to miss this big city life. You know, the crocodiles were fun, but it was time to go to a different wildlife. And, and so now we're talking while I'm here in Mexico City in our home.

That is fabulous. The fact that you pulled the plug, made a decision, because people would probably think like, what are you doing giving up a Wall Street job and disappearing to a tropical island? Yet let me ask you, what was the real motivation behind doing that as far as you needing to really be true to yourself and what it is that you were looking for in your life, not just in the grind of work?

Yeah, and, and I think the reason I pulled the plug is because I finally put my life first. I had been chasing the next promotion, the next big project, the next big bonus, the next big everything for decades. And while it served me and my family very well throughout the years, I just really felt like it became soulless, and I felt like I was in this soul-crushing grind. And here I am doing the most terrifying thing I think I've done in my entire life, and I've done some really weird stuff. But you know, the guy that I had been casually dating, you know, for years decided we actually liked each other. So we were moving in together and we moved together to a foreign country and I started this own business. And so while I'm heading into all these uncharted territories where I'm really feeling over my skis, my friends were asking me, why are you giving up? I was like, what? Because there you are at the corner office, the big C-suite job, the big title. And it's what everybody aspires to. And when you finally get there and you look around and you're like, I don't like this anymore, and I'm going to do something really different. And so I think that was interesting because when you mentioned like leaving that, so many people looked at it like I was giving up, whereas I looked at it as I'm taking on one of the biggest adventures and one of the biggest challenges in my life.

Do you think you had to reach a certain age in order to kind of recognize that? And, you know, with all the experience and with all the you know, dos and don'ts and failures and successes? Or can our younger, you know, career professionals also work to assess what it is that they really want out of their career and their life, and therefore, you know, make those changes and go after those things?

The, the reason I was able to do this with relative ease in terms of— I didn't spend years thinking about it. It was a, you know, a few months of decision-making is because I had spent my entire career living this way. And there's seasonality in everyone's career, right? So acknowledge that, like, I was able to take bigger risks when I was younger. You know, when my daughter was born and I was the only breadwinner, my husband was a stay-at-home dad, then I had to throttle back a little bit and I was a little more risk-averse. And then once things got stable again, I was able to play bigger. And so throughout my career, I had 11 different functions. I led everything from sales to audit and everything in between in 5 different industries in and around Wall Street. And I think the, the mindset that I had was that if I didn't like it, then change it. So instead of sitting and griping and moaning about why this new boss is a jerk or why I didn't get promoted or why this or why that, I'm like, okay, I don't like this. We're going to do something different. And that muscle that you build and that resilience that you build over time allows you to play bigger when you can and to still make those really important changes to take control over your career when you've got to hedge a little bit and when you don't have as much flexibility.

Many people listening and watching would say, but I don't have that control. I don't have that ability to navigate where my career is going. My boss or HR or someone else is making those decisions for me and is carving out those paths. Is that a true concept, or are they just kind of telling themselves and making excuses for themselves not taking control of their careers?

The reality is it's one of the biggest lies that we tell ourselves. When you start to make one simple shift, everything changes. And what we talk about, what I've always done, is if you treat your career like a business, and everyone that's listening today gets a promotion because you are now the CEO of you. When you are able to do that and step into your career like it is a business, then everything changes. All of a sudden you stop taking the doormat projects that aren't going to pay you anything extra in the hopes that you might get a bigger bonus, or you stop doing all this extra work, you know, with an idea that we'll make it up to you later. Like, if one of my clients said, I need you to do a significant amount of work and I'm probably going to be able to pay you February, March of next year, as a business owner I'd be like, sorry, no. Right. But as an employee, we do this all the time. And so we talk about when that's your business, you wanna make sure that your skills are in high demand and that you're solving a real problem for your customers, which is your employer, and that you've got a rockstar sales team, which are all your stakeholders and sponsors that say good things about you when you're not in the room, and that you've got a strong marketing plan because people inside and outside your company need to know about you. So we tend to put things on cruise control and leave it up to everyone else and then feel disenfranchised when the system fails us. But here's an analogy I want our listeners to think about today. The system paves the roads for you to drive on, and the system sets the guardrails so you don't go over the cliff, and the system even sets the speed limit. But you are the one driving the car. And you get to decide what road you take. You get to decide how fast you're really going to drive. And more importantly, you get to decide what music you're putting on the radio.

It's perfect. I'm a very visual person. So it absolutely ties directly to this subject. However, it kind of beep beep beep for me. All right. So the first thing would be, I can't say no to my boss. If they come to me and say they need me to do X, Y, and Z, I can't say no to my boss. How do you suggest they handle that? But at the same time, they don't know how to say no, to set those boundaries and to create that path for themselves.

Yeah. So you're right. You can't say no to your boss, but what you can say, is yes, and. Because when you say, I can do this and there's things that I need in return, then that levels the playing field. Trust me, when, you know, when I was in corporate, I think one of the biggest things that was hard to understand, especially as I started to really understand how things were done, right? Because at my level, I had access to everyone's salaries, who got promoted, where the bonuses went, the board meetings, what happens behind closed doors, and you will be shocked at what really actually happens. And when we treat our career like a business, we need to do that realizing that we're not being disloyal to the organization because it is a commercial arrangement. They are paying money for goods and services that you're providing in exchange for your compensation and your benefits and all that stuff. But when you think about it, how do companies buy things? They buy things based on the return on investment. What is the most I can get for the least amount of money? Not what's the cheapest, not what's the most expensive, but where's the value? So if you're delivering this value to the organization, they actually expect to pay for it, but only when you stand up for yourself and say that this is something that deserves more. So whether it's getting rid of a project that's a dead-end project because you need to do something else, Whether it's saying, yes, and I would like to do this. When I do this, I need this too. Whether it's exposure to more senior leadership, whether it's getting one of your projects off the ground that hasn't had the sponsorship. So there's all kinds of things that you can do to negotiate by saying yes, and. And so I think, you know, and we think that, oh, they're going to look bad at me or I'm going to be in trouble or they're going to fire me. The reality is they're coming to you because you know what you're doing. And so, you know, when they don't come to you is when you should worry. And this is your best opportunity to negotiate, but you don't because we have this fear of the unknown that we're going to be seen as disloyal, when the reality is they're expecting to pay and they're expecting trade-offs. You just have to ask for them.

And aren't they expecting you to ask and step up and kind of advocate for yourself, and they see it as weakness if you don't?

In many cases, that's true, right? Some of us have bosses that don't like to have people smarter than them on their team, right? So if you're in those kinds of situations, you need to step a little carefully. But the reality is when you make sure that the things that you do best are aligned to the company's top goals, and that you're using those skills to really help the company achieve those goals in whatever way is within your span of control, no matter how high or low you are in the organization, you're going to be a value proposition. And with that, you've got a lot of nego— and that you think you do. And when you take that baby step and realize it worked, then you get to take another one. Right. A great example is one of my clients had— she's been with a large organization for a long time, and she's had— I think when we started working together, she had maybe 13 lateral moves. And more and more work every time. And so finally, with our coaching, I'm like, uh-uh, you say no this time. Unless you get that promotion, unless you get that next level up, unless you get the money, the benefits, the office that comes with it, the answer is no thank you. And so she did. And guess what? She got it. They were shocked because she actually stood up for herself. But if she had done that 10 times ago, she would have gotten it then too.

Should they also be looking to advocate for themselves upfront in that negotiation prior to then taking it on and waiting on the back end to say, you know what, I think my work deserves a bonus, promotion. You know, it would solve a lot of the stress and the anxiety and the disgruntled attitude that one might have in taking on new and more without anything in return.

Absolutely. You should always negotiate up front and most of the time realize you're not going to be able to get what you want in the first conversation. But what you've done now is you set the stage, right? And I am telling you right now, exceptions are made every day for the right people in the right circumstances. And so when your boss is saying, well, HR won't let me do that, that's crap, right? HR is there to tell you the rules and to tell you what happens if you break them. But, you know, I'm a break-the-rules kind of girl. And so HR was an advisor, not my, not my police officer. And so I'm like, understood, I'm doing this anyway. It's like, OK, because I'm the business owner, I'm the, I'm the leader. And so, you know, so your leaders have the ability to do this if they want to. So if you're getting pushback or you're getting the common HR won't let me or it's against policy or whatever, then you need to realize that there's a way around this because the rules apply to everyone but me. That's kind of how I always looked at it. I'm like, that's nice for everybody else, but that's not what we're talking about here. And so, but again, you've got to go back to that value proposition. You know, what's your value to the organization and how does that impact the company's biggest goals? Because if you can keep doubling down and trading on that, you've got a lot more wiggle room. So let's say you want a promotion, but promotion cycles don't happen, right? You know, every time. Then that, yes, it's like, OK, well, I understand that you're going to put me up for promotion, but how can we guarantee I get it? Because you're not the only one that has to say yes. It's all of your peers. What can we do to get me in front of your peers so next review cycle I'm in pole position to be able to do this? So don't just take yes and move away and be, "Whew, thank goodness that awkward conversation was over." Go deeper into figuring out how you actually get those deferred yeses over the finish line or what could be in the way, and then try and get ahead of that as you can.

You mentioned stakeholders, and I'm going to throw some advocates and sponsors in there as well. For those listening or watching who may not necessarily have been, been putting themselves in, in the position to go and seek them out, what can you share with them around who advocates are, stakeholders, sponsors are?

Sure, absolutely. Because the reality is, for you to get anything, then that means somebody else in the organization isn't getting their part. Right? When we have bonus dollars, bonus dollars are fixed. And so most of the companies do not peanut butter it around, right? You get a percentage based on your contribution. So let's say it's at 10%. For you to get 12, somebody else is getting 8, you know. And so for you to win, someone has to lose in this, you know, in this equation. So the secret is you want to make sure that you've got enough people saying good things about you in the room when you're not there.. And they need to be at your boss's level and one level above. And so many of us stay in our departments or we stay in our lane or we do these things and then we wonder why no one has ever heard of us, even though we're awesome at what we do. So here's a great way to solve that. It's doing what I call a stakeholder heat map. And so what you do is you put your boss and their peers, you put the people that are at that level within your organization that you have to work with. So maybe it's finance or tech or HR or legal or marketing or product development or whatever. So the ones that you interact with, you want to put those people on that heat map as well. And then you want to order them in terms of impact and influence. So the ones who have the biggest influence go on the top, the ones that no one listens to go on the bottom. And then once you have that straight, then you need to color code them red, yellow, or green. And so green is that you have a great working relationship with them. They can speak to your Yellow is that you've had a little bit of experience with them, but they really wouldn't go to bat for you instead of one of their own people. And then red is these people can't pick you out of a crowd of one. And then based on the influence number in terms of what— where they fall on the list and those color codes, start to build a plan to do meaningful work with those people. So it's not just a flyby, let's have coffee and waste everyone's time. It's having a meeting that actually shows that you've got a strong business acumen and that you're there to help. So, for example, if they're on your list, then you interact with them somehow with your department because no one is insular. So an easy conversation would be like, what are some of the things that my team is doing that's not making your life easier that I should know about? I mean, this is unsolicited. You're going to another leader saying, how can I help my team make your life easier? Now all of a sudden you're a rock star. Right? Especially if you not only take that information but do something about it. And so these are easy ways to really start to expand what I call your power base. And then once you've done that, then all of a sudden these conversations, mobility within an organization, and being seen as the person that everybody wants on their team becomes much easier.

Now I'm going to take a right-hand turn on something that, because I, again, I'm visual and I'm just imagining these interactions with people. And you even made the comment about there's some managers who don't want people that are smarter than them on their team. Now, you were considered, from what I understand, you were considered the Velvet Hammer. And you weren't aware that that's what, how people were perceiving you. So can you give that backstory? And therefore, you know, then how did you address that?

Yeah, absolutely. And I was shocked, right? And then, and there's the story of it's also in the book, right? So we had had a hell of a project and it was a multi-year thing that was just dead on arrival. And that's what my team did is we did transformation and we did the hard and scary stuff. And so I took my team out just to blow off some steam. So we all had way too much tequila and way too many buffalo wings. And then all of a sudden from this crowded table in this really noisy bar, One of my managers says, do you know what we call you? And I was like, oh, I was like, I don't know if I want to know this, but I was drunk enough to ask. I'm like, no, what do you call it? He's like, we call you the Velvet Hammer. And initially I bristled. I was like, what? And then somebody else poked in. It's like, because whenever you have to beat us upside the head, you do it, but it never hurts. And I was like, oh, okay. I think that's the best thing anybody's ever said to me, especially on Wall Street. And I didn't know that was my brand. Because my brand was we had fun. You know, you hear laughter out of the conference room and everybody's like, what's going on? You know, but you know, if you screwed up, then you were held accountable and it was never fun. Right. And so I got actually that I thought that brand worked well for me because it was actually true. Like, you know, yes, we're going to do the hard things, but it doesn't have to hurt as much. But the reality is I didn't do that on purpose. That actually happened on accident. And after that, I learned I need to be much more intentional with how I'm showing up and how people are perceiving me to make sure that I'm getting the best out of everyone. Because unfortunately, that Velvet Hammer brand terrified many people. And so that prevented them from coming to me and talking about, like, warning signs of what's happening that could go wrong or challenging ideas because they just didn't want to, you know, they just felt uncomfortable with it. And so if you don't build your brand purposefully and with intention, others will do it for you. And so I think that's the most important takeaway there is I got lucky because the environment I was in, that played well. But as I moved on into more senior levels and as I needed to reach a broader area of people and have much more input, then I definitely had to change how I showed up. And so brands are going to happen with or without you. So you want to hold the pen on that.

As you can tell from the name of this podcast, my brand was the corporate bitch.

So yeah.

Yeah. So you want to kind of get in tune with the perception others have of you. Because in my case, I was oblivious to the fact that I was that way. However, that said, how does one navigate kind of taking control of their brand, of their career path, of what it is that they want when they are working for a difficult manager, like you said, you know, those that don't even want smart people on their team or smarter than them on their team. How do they handle that and feel as if, okay, I can feel like I'm valued and that I have a future?

Right. And so step 1, especially if you like the organization, you like the team that you're on, you know, the boss is a bit wonky. If you can be the bridge between what your boss wants personally and where they are, then that will change. Right. Most bosses that don't like to have people that are quote unquote smarter than them on their team are afraid. Right. They're afraid you're gonna make them look bad or that you'll look better than them or whatever. Go aside and know that your wins are their wins. And at the end of the day, it's going to benefit you significantly more doing it this way. And you become that bridge to what they want personally, because it's not always obvious what they want. Sometimes they just want to be able to have an uninterrupted meal with their family. Right. And so taking some of the nonsense off their plate, sometimes they want to get promoted, but they need to get a hard project done that no one's willing to do. And so, you know, I think step one is to really be that bridge. And when you can do that, then what you'll find is you move to their confidence. And so you're the one that hears about everything before your team members do. You're the one that they start brainstorming with and saying, what do you think about this idea before I go out with it with everyone else? Because there's that trust. You know, that doesn't always work, but it's a great first step. And so if that doesn't work, it's time to move. Because if you are working with someone who is going to gate and block your success, and your growth, don't stay, right? And so there's tons of opportunities either within the organization, you know, or externally, right? In terms of that. So that's when it's time to, you know, take a good hard look at this and say, all right, time to put me first. If I had a customer who monopolized all my time and paid me very little money for it, or very little growth or very little recognition, I have to break up with that customer as a business.

Right.

Because it's not good for the long-term growth. So again, you're the CEO of You Inc. And is this client, AKA your boss, good for your company or not?

However, I'm even getting some rash recalling my early days of my own business, leaving corporate, in that people feel desperate that they can't walk away. Because the company has good benefits, has good pay, I'm not going to find another job like this, or, and/or if they are a business owner, that they can't walk away from a client because I need that income. Where does one find that courage within themselves to take that step?

Yeah, it is terrifying. It's not right. I was, you know, the biggest, like, Emotionally, I like when I first started this business, like every customer that bought from me, I was unstoppable. Every prospect that said no, I was never going to make another sale again. I mean, you know, the first 2 years were just a disaster emotionally. And thankfully my partner Steve had owned his own business for like decades. And so he was able to talk me off the ledge very often, which I needed, you know, but from a corporate perspective and from a business perspective, I think there's a couple things that give us courage. The first thing is to realize that, you know, a lot of times our relationship with success and failure are messed up. You know, we try and avoid failure at every opportunity. But the reality is you cannot succeed without having failed. So if you're avoiding failure, you are preventing success.

I love that.

And so, you know, So many of us are like, I don't want to look bad. I don't want to lose face. But yet in the next breath, all of us would say, I learn more from my mistakes than from my wins. And so I think we need to get comfortable with the idea, first of all, that nothing is so binary as success or fail. Nothing is that black and white. Everything we do has some elements that worked and some elements that didn't. And we control the narrative. Like, 2024 was a great year for Career Burnout Circle, but was it perfect?

No.

Did I make lots of mistakes? Oh my goodness, yes. And did every idea work? Oh my God, no. However, you know, it's again that narrative. You focus on the things that worked and you realize, okay, we're going to have to tweak the things that we didn't. And that comes down to what I call an experimental mindset. So if you've got this binary, take the hill no matter what, and you know, there's landmines everywhere, but you're still going to do this. Then you are setting yourself up for a long road of frustration. But if you take smaller steps and say, I'm going to have this experimental mindset where it's like, what does this button do? And if I push that button, what happens? And then take that and keep the stuff that worked, get rid of the things that didn't, and try again. And when you do these small iterations and when you don't turn this into some catastrophic, you know, pass/fail situation, you're going to find that you've got the courage and the resilience to do a lot more. And the one thing I heard during COVID my business had to take a major pivot, right? I was doing all private work and in my business demand went through the roof, but no one paid my rates anymore. So I was like, I gotta figure this out. And so I did this, I was stuck in the UK and it was the whole thing. And so I did this 5-day challenge with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. And Dean said something that stuck with me. He's like, you have the resilience. And if you knew that you had to fail 36 times to get what you wanted, you'd do it because you knew the 36th time you'd get it. But the issue is we don't know how many times we have to fail before we get where we want to go. And too many people stop at the 34th or the 35th time, not realizing that that last push is what gets you where you want to go. And so I think a little grace and a lot of humor and, you know, and that experimental mindset and realizing that failure is not the enemy. And that failure is not absolute, gives us that courage that we need to take those bold actions for ourselves.

And take control, break the rules, break the rules and love Mondays again.

That's what I'd say. Well, that's what it's all about. Right. And people thought I was crazy. I'm like, no, everyone deserves to love Mondays. That's why we do what we do here at CWC because people think it's a pipe dream, but when you step into it, your whole life changes and it's just absolutely amazing.

So what would one tip or one piece of advice you would give our listeners and viewers when it comes to learning to love Mondays again?

I think that the best tip I want to leave everybody with is to think about what— not what are your most best skills, not what are the things that are most marketable, but what are the things that you can do for 12 hours a day and end the day more energized than when you started. For me, it's coaching, it's being on stages, it's doing podcasts, it's working with our other coaches. I love that stuff. I mean, I can do marketing and sales and organic social and all that stuff, but after about an hour or two, I'm spinning in my chair throwing puzzles at the ceiling. Right? So first of all, step one is to figure out what lights you up. Step two is to do more of that every day.

Love it. Absolutely love it. They always say, find what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

I agree. And not all of us have the luxury of doing every day all that. Like, I have to do stuff I don't like, right? It's called adulting, you know. But if you can find small ways to put the things that you love most into your day, then you're gonna find that those Mondays are much easier to face. And that you start to really look forward to it. And over time you get into this situation where you can actually create the role around what you love to do. And, and that's the ultimate, right? Is to be able to lean into that, to help the company reach their goals, doing the things that you do and love most.

I love that. Everyone, please check out her book, Escaping the Career Traps. You can find it on Amazon as well as her website, which I will remind you is careerwinnercircle.com. And then of course, follow her on LinkedIn and go to her website and make sure you learn all about her and what she's— what she does and how she could support you. Tammy, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much.

Such a pleasure. Thanks for the invite. I've loved our conversation today. And the minute I heard the name of the podcast, I'm like, I have got to be on this one.

I did too. And I We'll look forward to having everyone reach out to you and learn more about you at careerwinnercircle.com.

Great.

Thanks, Tammy. Thank you very much. You bet.

Now that was a powerhouse conversation with Tammy Alvarez of Career Winner Circle. We cover a whole gamut of topics, but I wanna mention a few of them that you can make note, maybe even set a goal around. And really start acting on so you can be building a powerhouse career. One of the first things is she talked about advocates and sponsors, those individuals that will talk to others about you when you're not in the room. They'll advocate for new projects, for promotions, for new opportunities. And therefore, if you don't have stakeholders or advocates in your corner, Then she talked about a stakeholders heat map, and it's a great tool to use to really prioritize those individuals that could be helping the trajectory of your career. The next thing is she gave her scenario of being labeled or branded the Velvet Hammer, and the emphasis was on you needing to define and to act on and build your own brand before others create your brand for you. There was a lot that I made note of and that Tammy brought up so you can navigate, control, and really drive your direction of your career path. And so share it with your team. Make note if you have to go back and listen to it again, make note for yourself and be sure that you are putting into place what is needed in order for you to really have that powerhouse career so you can love Mondays again, even if that means you have to break some rules, as Tammy says. Now, if you are having any challenges over and above what we talked about today, and you could use some support in handling them and navigating them, then please feel free to even reach out to me and let's have a conversation. You can go to coachmebernette.com/discoverycall, and I'd be more than happy to understand what the challenge is that you're having and provide you tips and strategies to help you move forward so you can be the powerhouse leader you're meant to be. Thank you for being with us this week, and I'll look forward to having you right back here for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Bye.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Want to dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffire coaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.