sometimes when we go through something that's that extreme and intense it kind of snaps us into reality in a lot of ways and it makes us go wait a minute what am I doing and how can I change who I am and what I'm doing uh I think a lot of things that I was doing before maybe they weren't congruent with who I was as a person [Music] okay everybody welcome back to Connected conversation season three this is a very special International edition of connected conversations today I have with me somebody that I met recently I met this person at this past Year's cornet event we had a very long conversation where I found who she was and what she did to be very interesting and that person I'm speaking about is Monique putoff I practiced that many times to get it right from MP Consulting International she's a client Advocate and she also hosts a podcast called Arc talks Monique welcome to Connected conversations the international Edition and it's only International because you're here thank you thank you for the intro I appreciate it nice to meet you we need to run any of that back in French um I mean we could but you know what I spoke French all day so I'm good okay I took three years of French in high school and it did not go well I told you that earlier so I'm not even good to I'm not even going to try to to introduce you in French I was hoping to but we didn't quite get there we can do lessons later no worries please no no so if you could can you please take us through your background your statement of qualification how you ended up to where you are today sure um so I actually if you go way far back since childhood I've been really into art and I've been an artist my whole life I was going to go into art uh for my studies and then I decided at the last minute that I don't know uh it's just a little too uncertain for me so I went into interior design so I went and got my degree in interior architecture and design and then I was like hmm I really like the business side of things and the strategy so what can I do so I went back to school and I got my MBA and I was like okay what can I do with that and that was not easy I remember spending like hours with you know counselors and you know other people in the industry to try to figure out what I could do and no one could really help point me in the right direction so I ended up just going into workplace design and strategy and I was a design manager for seven designers and they were also a Herman Miller distributor so we were into living office I don't know if you're familiar with that um but it's a way of doing programming and it's it's really effective actually and I miss working with that but it gave me a lot of ideas for how to understand client needs uh moving forward and I did the same thing when I moved to France so lots of workplace strategy uh I actually lost my job during covid there's a huge layoff where I was working um it was called art desk and that was a huge period of reflection for me and a lot changed about my life during that time and then I decided to start my own business okay so talk to me a little bit about this reflection so again like I I this season we're really getting into and before we get into the main topic talk to me about this process of going through the reflection during the pandemic I want to hear about that so you know I think sometimes when we go through something that's that extreme and intense it kind of snaps us into reality in a lot of ways and it makes us go wait a minute what am I doing and how can I change who I am and what I'm doing okay uh I think a lot of things that I was doing before maybe they weren't congruent with who I was as a person I was underutilized in the roles that I took and I really tied my identity to my job it was like if my job was going well everything was fine but if my job wasn't going well nothing was fine and I realized how attached I was when I lost my job and had no job and I thought well who am I without my job you know you just gave me goosebumps you gave me a little bit of goose because I always say and I I know this is you know a work related podcast and this will go up on LinkedIn you know which is very career focused and all those types of things it's like I work to live I don't live to work and once upon a time I worked with a gentleman it was very unwell he got to a point in life where he's very unwell and he's still attending conferences and and still kind of grinding away and I was like man I could think of a lot of other things I would be doing with my time at that stage he was at and unfortunately absolutely aggressed too so for you to have that inflection point and to say oh my God I tied my happiness to my work and I can't do you feel that way now where it's like my happiness is my hat it doesn't yes I want things to go well in my career yes I want to be uh make money and and be successful but at the same time I can be happy is that where you got to where I can be happy with that and I need to make a pivot so that I can be more happy absolutely and you know I think it took Several Hard Knocks to get to where I am right now because I so it's it's complex why this happens in France but basically whatever your last position was on your resume is kind of your only prospect they don't understand like why you would want to change and do something else and for me I just I was a little too heavily involved in the construction part of a project and that is not my thing that is not what I'm trained in as like a construction project manager or like a little bit yeah it was a little bit too much into that it wasn't the person on site but I was like this isn't me this isn't what I want to do and I'm just not using all the skills and knowledge that I have but I accepted it because I was afraid I was like I need income right I need income so I need to do this and I was miserable and it wasn't that the company was bad or anything like that it was just this is not me this is not made for me right and I remember being so stressed one day I was shaking like physically shaking I've been there and I was like is this worth the stress and I'm like my fear no longer was the big Force driving me and I let that go I was like screw it I am jumping ship I'm leaving obviously on good terms and everything but I'm leaving and I'm starting my own business because I can't take it anymore and that's what I did wow well this is a perfect segue into the topic but I don't before you before you do that um my first job at a college I got a job with a security company um I I have a criminal justice degree which makes a lot of sense oh yeah for a guy who works at a software company I had no idea I came out of college with a criminal justice degree didn't I was like well let me go with it same I wanted to go into kind of like you like how can I get into the business world with a criminal justice degree I went to work for a security company um you know managing Security Contracts where guards were at different companies like the guards they were basically reported to me sure yeah the second day on the job was 9 11. yeah the second day on the job was 9 11. no pressure or anything cheers and we were the fourth it was the fourth largest security firm in the world no longer exists it was privately held it's held by one man who at the time even though we had pagers and cell phones yes I had a pager um listen I remember those days so not a drug dealer but I had a pager the the CEO of the company made us keep all the branch offices open and with only a handpiece full of people worked out of the branch offices that he made us keep them open 24 hours a day I had to sleep there oh my gosh when you said the hand shaking thing I remember standing at a fact again I'm going to date myself a fax machine faxing in our payroll saying in my head no joke in my head I said I'm miserable but I guess this is what it means to be an adult yeah that makes sense I was like I was like well I guess it's it's you know 40 years of this and I just gotta suck it up we we tend to assign meaning to certain things and I thought also that if I wasn't doing something every second of the day that I wasn't being productive so I I totally get what you're saying but that we learn later that that's not true but I also grew up I grew up in you go to high school you go to college I had a job right out of college I mean it was a couple months and then that job burned me out the one the security company one burned me out real quick and then that's how I ended up get that's how I ended up getting into facilities and real estate oh okay interesting but this isn't about me but it's funny because and this is why I thought you'd be a really great guest and I'm not I'm not trying to boost your ego or anything like that but um you have a very interesting story to me you are you're an American living in in Paris correct yeah and you have you have dual citizenship if I'm not mistaken yep so with the theme of this season and we just got into it a little bit what I really want to know is what is your why talking about everything we that that you just went through why stay in in this world why why do you do what you do and why are you in Paris that's what I want to hear that's what I want to do so if you can invite me a little bit like what what drives you after all that you went through all that you know it sounded very painful why are you still here but in a foreign country that's a very good question so uh first I will respond to what is my why my my personal why because I think you know they're just like personal and professional but my personal why is to be a safe space so that people can be their authentic selves so let me let me ask you about that so that means when you say that from nope like that's really that's I'm gonna steal that you're perfect so your personal wise you want to be a safe space meaning that if I call you up and say well I'm really struggling with depression and anxiety you're here for it you want you want me to come to you and you want to be supportive um of what I'm going through as a friend of yours that and also who you are I don't like to operate on judgment and I have friends from all different places in life and backgrounds and environments and I think it's really enriching to have friends that are different than me so uh that's a big part of why I'm here also so on a personal level um you know I've heard this talked about in a cultural standpoint in the workplace to where I said to somebody well what if what if you bring in people who don't really necessarily fit your culture and somebody gave me a really smart answer and they said that's that's great for the culture because then everybody can learn from one another so it's true you've adopted that in your personal life to where um maybe you you have people from different walks of life different personality types and you Embrace that is that fair 100 yeah and uh the reason I came to France that was your other question um is kind of a long answer I'll try to not be overly talkative about it it's like you're supposed to talk this is a podcast let it rip all right here we go so I my grandmother was born in Paris in 1918. okay and she met my grandfather who was an American Soldier during World War II and this is a movie it hits a movie [Music] times uh yeah I desperately want to make an Emily in Paris reference how different I am than her but um will you speak French you speak French I watch it I watch it I don't know every guilty yeah guilty Watcher um so they met during World War II they went back to the US and got married and everything my dad was born there um but then because of the link through my dad I was able to get citizenship here and uh it was not an easy process but uh back to the dream uh I used to visit with my family as a kid growing up we would come here I think the first time I came here I was five so way back when and I went several times after that I did an exchange program when I was 13 and I just kind of fell in love with the country and I was like one day I want to move here what age were you fluent in French by what age 35. [Laughter] yeah I was not fluent when I was visiting like so if you were a little if you were a little one going to French school how did that work uh well I didn't go to a French school I I mean I grew up in the U.S I was just visiting exchange you did the exchange program yeah that was like three weeks long though it was like uh yeah when you're 12 and 13 you can't go for like a super long time yeah so I was definitely not fluent um until way way later but uh understand what the adults were saying no because my grandparents were Italian same thing they were off the boat a time they spoke Italian and I'd sit there and their Italian friends would come over and you understood I couldn't even spell my own last name so it's like I wanted to make a joke about like it's sounding like a delicious pasta dish but I was wrong like I refrained from the Emily in Paris folks until you brought them up and now it's weird okay everybody College anytime I go anywhere it must I didn't do it I didn't do it though mostly I have some control Robert mostaccioli where are the L's in my name bro there's no one else my name I think it's I've been teased about my name too so don't worry no so basically your desire to live in Paris came from your grandmother and your family story if you will let me ask you this is everything that you hoped it would be I mean I think I came into it with some expectations but not a lot because I was like I know there's so much I don't know and it's a bit mysterious and it's just kind of scary because what happened is you know I dreamed about like living here my whole life pretty much when I was 15 I was like I will be living in France someday I don't know when I don't know how um and the way that kind of transpired was kind of a sad story but it turns out to like a happy story um I never felt like I could move here because of being so close to my parents and especially my mom and then she passed away from cancer in 2013. and my dad basically was like I'm getting out of here and I'm moving to France and uh and I was like hey wait that's my dream I want to do that so I was like well my dad's gonna be you know in France so why not follow him even though he's in a different city uh I thought it would be a good idea so I started looking for jobs networking uh through Herman Miller actually and uh they just gave me a couple contacts and I would like cold call these French people with my broken French I'm like hey you want to hire me and they're like hmm who is this person and then I would just be like posting things on LinkedIn like oh I went to a Herman Miller exhibit at this Museum and that's actually how I got a response originally for one of my jobs that I was looking at here and he was like oh I noticed you were to Herman Miller uh exhibit oh do you still want to have that phone call and that's how I got the interviews here but um so yeah I sold my house without knowing that my Visa would be accepted I sold everything I owned and I was like let's see how this goes and then six months later I got my Visa wow see I feel like a genius now because I knew you'd be an interesting guest I think that's it that's on me this is all me that's incredible that is incredible so sorry it was fun I'm sorry about your mother I too went through that my mother passed away in 1988. um from cancer so um I I completely understand what you went through there but if I could if I could say one thing it's maybe in a little way that was her kind of opening up a door for you and that's totally I 100 agree I look I look at it that way it's kind of like these things happen and and maybe there was some way of her saying now go Live Your Dream and exactly that's your father that's why you know life life isn't always puppy dogs and rainbows um but you have to look for those you have to look at the look for those little things um out of these situations so now that we know all that um which is an amazing story there's so many elements to you know from your thought your your grandmother um and your grandfather meeting over there because he was a soldier coming back to the coming back to the United States right I got that right right I didn't yeah yeah that's correct in the Detroit area and then you having this dream of living and you you did it good for good on you I'm here to tell you you did it regardless all the other nonsense you did it you set something in motion as a small child and you did it so good for you on that regardless of all the the struggles and everything that went sideways that we heard in the beginning of this conversation where wrong jobs lost jobs pandemic being being in Paris um it's a lot but here you still are which leads me to the other half of the question which you so eloquently laid out what's your professional you you talked about your personal why you talked about how you ended up in Paris so what's your professional why now that you've figured out all those other jobs weren't right for you why didn't you just throw your hands up in the air and and uh become a street artist up in momar see I I right that's where up by secretary you're totally right yeah I mean I definitely still do art not uh for professional reasons but for personal reasons sure uh but I kind of almost did my own uh you know table of like what are my strengths what are the things I love to do what are the things I don't like to do and then I was like wait a second if I had my own business I can just do all the things I love to do and then I'm good at it was so much easier and it it's so natural like doing this now and it didn't feel natural in the things I was doing here in France before even though there were moments that were really great I was like wait I can bring all these Great Moments and put them together myself and I'm in control of it do you feel free super free now yes and uh I didn't answer your question about what's my professional why so my personal why is tied to my professional wife uh and that is I bring talented people and resources together to create unique Solutions meaning that I I saw a gap in the market here uh for clients where they're coming from another country they need help communicating we were talking about this before um there's a gap culturally speaking you can be fluent in English and you're a French person but you might not understand why people want what they want so I'm kind of like the conduit between the two to explain why things are the way they are and how we need to do them differently for the client um and when I created my own business I was thinking well I can just make it whatever I want it to be for my clients so they're coming to me to find the ideal people to realize their project so actually right now it's not quite launched but um it's in the midst of being created a collective of independent people in the industry um so that we can make uh see I usually say this pitch in French so I'm like literally translating it in my head um but we can create teams that are based on Independent people and it's not from like a big company um when people come over here and they have to work with corporate organizations sometimes depending on the needs they feel limited because they're like oh I feel obligated to work with certain people there's like a very rigid process of how I have to do things it's very corporate and to tie my personal wide back into what I do professionally I think because I'm a safe space so that people can be their authentic selves the clients feel safe with me and they know that I will do right by them so it kind of all ties in together and it's pretty exciting you're an advocate you're a client Advocate all right so now this is me being me give us a small piece of that pitch in French foreign what did you basically say there um I said that I'm creating a collective with different collaborators uh to be able to make customized teams awesome three years of French I got none of it there's a reason there's a reason why people have a hard time speaking French and I have figured out the why behind that give me the why give me the why why so the reason is because there is something in the French language uh called the liaison which um when you're reading words you literally connect the end of the last word to the beginning of the second word okay and it all runs together fanatically so you're not hearing separate words like you do in English okay you're literally hearing like a constant stream of letters and they're very vowel based French we have a lot more consonants and you can hear the separation more um and we don't speak as fast because if you ever translate an English phrase into French you will notice that it's two to three times the length because they have that many more words to say that same thing thank you you just made me and Emily in Paris feel so much better about not being able laughs I decided my job was down here my job is on here I I just like just everything you you just I mean this is really the spirit of what I'm trying to do with this season of the podcast and again you're the perfect example of what what the theme is the why and how and what is your relationship with your career I'll go on this I'll be bold enough to say that you had a toxic relationship with your career as did I I I so many times have I been in jobs or roles it just made me miserable to the point where right before um one of the iterations of my career before I came to nuvolo I just quit I didn't have another job I just quit I was gonna go on some Jack Kerouac which I I'm big on road trips and being out in the world and just I couldn't see that team where things take yeah maybe you should take your show on the road you know all over first stop Paris France they're used to it it's fine I don't know um but yeah I I quit that job and I was but once again Monique I was miserable I was miserable and I'm like I'm done I'm not gonna do it I can I can live for a at least a year without having to work and I stumbled into nuval on I'm not miserable here I get to do stuff like this where I talked you know I talk to all these great people in the industry and and do all these things that I really enjoy doing so that's beautiful it but no it's really great to hear that you had that you had that journey I I feel bad that you went through that having gone through it myself of you know having this toxic relationship with work where the Sunday scaries were a real thing for me before way before it was a hashtag I don't usually do I I usually don't do stuff like this but you're such a good example I think you're a good example for professionals I think you're a good example for anybody who's young in their career and I think you're a really good example for women I really do um it's admirable everything you've been through and and where you are today in your career uh to stop and start and do it all in a foreign country um what advice would you give you know somebody let's put it this way let's let's create a profile somebody goes to work every day and hates their job and the you know they're they're really they really want to succeed and they really want to do something that they're passionate about what's your advice to that person my advice would probably be um let go of what you're used to because happiness is on the other side I have a saying and it's a it's a it's actually the name of a album uh a Canadian band called Our Lady Peace happiness is not a fish you can catch happiness is not a fish you can catch and letting go I think is really good advice um because we see it in personal relationships we see it with Pursuits careers um creative Endeavors you know I used once upon a time I wrote screenplays right and the worst thing yeah worst thing you could do is hold on to an idea to where if somebody's telling you something isn't working or that character doesn't work or you gotta let it go let it go in the historial evolve if we spend our whole lives right we have similar tragedies that have occurred to us right losing a parent at a young age is a tragedy but if we spend our whole lives holding on to that saying why me woe is me why why did that happen to me no I can't go on I can't move on you're not gonna get anywhere in life you're 100 you're gonna be gonna constantly I think fear just drives so many people um and it drove me for a really long time so I'm not sitting here like oh I'm better or anything like that like I definitely went through it um it was the comfort of being in a situation I was used to and oh I'll get a salary I get a paycheck every month and I have insurance and it's fine and the reality was I was not happy but I was accepting that as my only choice and when I was so at my breaking point is when I realized it doesn't matter none of this matters just do what you're meant to do I think that's good advice I think just by you talking through it we we just stumbled on and that's this is another thing I say to I love we we have an office in Boston and the third floor is where the younger sales team sits and they all matriculate they're not all sales now someone to marketing somewhat to success um some went into solution Consulting but the first place I go is that third floor um I go to the third floor and I talk to I try to talk to every one of them and just because I just I love that enthusiasm I gotta I get questions from them all the time and you know if we could really really convey that message to the younger generation none of this doesn't matter what matters is in in inside you and how you feel and how you feel about yourself and and what you're doing in this world because you only get one shot at it a lot of the BS and how many times Monique did you lie awake on a Sunday night and you're like oh that meeting tomorrow is going to be brutal and I I I can't I just oh I can't sleep and and so many times and it's not to say that I didn't have jobs uh that I didn't love I mean I I definitely had a couple jobs that I was like oh this is amazing and I love it but things change you know companies are bought out cultures change um you've probably been through it yourself uh but you know the other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm really happy to like open up and talk about my own experience because I think a lot of people don't have the upper opportunity or don't have maybe the courage to say I made some mistakes and I've failed a couple times or a few times or maybe more and that's okay if you don't fail you don't learn so it's okay to make mistakes well again I I don't again I I just I think we really think the same way um because I whenever I'm whenever I'm dealing with a young sales rep somebody's on that sales track I was like tell me about the deal you lost I don't want to hear about the deal you won because you don't learn anything from the deal you won you learn about and every everything I've learned from are all those deals where I stayed up late at night working my dad used to say this to me oh but you worked really hard I was like Dad that means it doesn't mean anything in the world of sales I spent now I was writing that RFP response we didn't get selected that's it that's it yeah but I learned yeah and it's about how you react to it too and I'm seeing that more now as someone who has their own business especially in a foreign country is you you can't really control it all the way at all um how people are going to react to things so you could make the most amazing RFP response like you just said and you can be rejected but don't put so much meaning into it don't make it about your self-worth or about what you did or didn't do because a lot of the times it's like you'll hear things later it's like oh so-and-so was a friend of the person that was putting out the RFP I mean we've all heard that right and that's just how life goes uh so I see it now I see rejection quote unquote as something very different it's just people who are not aligned with me and that's okay yeah because there's plenty of other clients out there I see that's another thing to say to sales rep uh reps are or a deal on on I didn't want to work I don't think they would have been a good client for us they would have been difficult to deal with uh we would have a hard time making them happy they wouldn't provide a reference for us sometimes it's it's not a good happy marriage exactly it's not but before we wrap up I want to go back to because I took some notes before the podcast started and I was going through Arc talks uh episode seven number seven is that episode seven yeah the last one yeah which is the podcast of which you host uh very professionally by the way um I know you have a hand in the production of that you come across as a great um Advocate I would sign you up to be my Advocate because of how oh thanks how polished and professional you are um we can talk about how much I pay you later no no but what I want to do is give you a little bit of credit here and both after everything you said by the notes I took um from that podcast I got to a point in the podcast again I I my attention span is not not one of great life so I was scrolling through the podcast and I got to a section where you were sitting next to a woman and they they were talking about changing the organization and and maybe reimagining the workplace and the topic came up is what is the why leadership needs to talk about what is a why and the woman spoke to how you know leadership needs to explain to the to the to the workplace Community why they're doing something and then you tacked on to it by saying um just give us the authentic why is it to me oh I took notes easy to make money is it I think that's the example you used is it to make money yes but what you highlighted was and what I wrote down was authentic and your authenticity came through out this whole podcast with you sharing your story and I always end these with a bit of gratitude and what I want to say to you is thank you for being Who You Are because you've talked about don't laugh you could take a compliment it's okay um I know I don't agree with that you talked about in a separate podcast that you know it's all about authenticity and what did you do you showed up and you were your authentic self and you are the personification of what we're trying to do with this season of the podcast in terms of what is your why um and I thank you for being your authentic self with us practicing What You Preach so if anybody ever needs a client Advocate over there in Paris that actually speak don't go to Emily in Paris actually show up in some ridiculous outfit like Emily tends to do no I want to thank you very much Monique um you know a lot of the takeaways from this are you know find you're you're now telling us find your why so that you're not miserable nothing a lot of things that you think matter right now don't necessarily matter um definitely you know comment things from an authentic place and and if you have the capacity to be be a safe space for the people you work with your friends your family and you are the living breathing example of what we're trying to do with this season the podcast so I thank you very much Monique I thank you for spending this time with us uh my name is Bob messati uh this is connected conversations that's Monique hot off from MP Consulting International she's a client Advocate and she's one heck of a person in my opinion uh this was connected conversations I'll see you on the interwebs thank you [Music]