Ep. 54 | Your Career Is a Portfolio, Not a Job.
Why is it so easy to offer help and so uncomfortable to ask for it?
Melissa Moody, co-founder of Wednesday Women, joins Heather Cooper and Blakely Graham to explain why your career is bigger than your day job. She shows how to build a portfolio career around what matters in this season without turning your life into an endless list of obligations.
Then Melissa introduces the give and the get. She explains how to identify what you need, turn a transactional request into a relational one, remove the hedging language, and stop talking long enough for the other person to answer. Heather and Blakely also get honest about comparison, CrossFit, writing a book, and deciding what not to do.
Plus, Blakely takes us inside Olivia Rodrigo's Daisy Chain Fields festival and its lesson in how to support the next generation without disappearing.
Key Takeaways:
Why your career portfolio includes more than the job that pays you
How to invest in a side project without turning your life into an endless list of obligations
Why priorities should change across different seasons of life
How comparison can make someone else's goal feel like your failure
Why deciding what not to do is part of building a meaningful career
How to identify a get by looking at an opportunity or a blocker
How to turn a transactional request into a relational ask
Why hedging words like “just” can undo a request before anyone answers
How asking gives someone else the opportunity to help
Why practicing rejection can make the next ask easier
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Melissa Moody on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissammoody
Wednesday Women: https://www.wednesdaywomen.org/
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Links & Mentions:
Wednesday Women: https://www.wednesdaywomen.org/ (the movement and executive membership community Melissa co-founded to amplify women leaders and help them support one another)
Daisy Chain Fields: https://www.daisychainfields.com/ (Olivia Rodrigo's women-led music festival supporting organizations that serve women and girls)
Associated Press on Daisy Chain Fields: https://apnews.com/article/aa831e6e96d6e75f315ae35633c6cd06 (reporting on the festival's $20 million raised for 10 nonprofit partners)
Women in the Workplace 2025: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace (the McKinsey and LeanIn.Org research discussed in the episode about ambition and career support)
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