​​One of the most booming industries globally, the construction industry is, without exception, fraught with many challenges. It’s a long-term game, and that is why it’s essential to work alongside people who understand the process and see the results. Joining Melanie Parish on the show today is Elinor Moshe, a mentor, speaker, and the host of the podcast called Constructing You. Elinor shares how industry professionals and future leaders can construct their careers in construction to achieve more recognition, higher compensation, and faster career progression.

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Listen to the podcast here

Constructing Your Career With Elinor Moshe

I’m here with Elinor Moshe, who’s an ambitious and driven leader and a dedicated mentor in the construction industry. Her passion to guide, inspire, and direct future leaders and industry professionals to construct their career lead to her founding the successful platform, The Construction Coach. Elinor is the host of a successful podcast, Constructing You. As a number one bestselling author Elinor’s book, Constructing Your Career is one of its kind for people who want inspirational practical action and unconventional career intelligence to construct their career. Elinor has been featured in Yahoo! Finance, Australia National Construction Review, Property Council of Australia’s Top 500 Women in Property programme 2019, Top 100 Women in Construction, and is frequently a speaker guest lecturer, and panelist. She holds a Master of Construction Management and a Bachelor of Environments from the University of Melbourne. I’m glad to have her here on the show.

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I am excited to have you on my show.

Thank you.

I am curious about what you do. I have a passion for real estate, so I’m tickled inside to get to talk to you. Let’s start by talking about what you’re up to in your work.  

There are many things. Whilst COVID has presented a realm of opportunity, it’s been fantastic to be able to release the podcast, and my book came out. People are sending me photos of them getting the book and starting to read it, which is an unusual feeling. You being an author can relate to both going through the process of releasing a book, but then being on the precipice of other people than yourself reading it. We team that with amazing clients that I get to work with at the moment. There is a lot happening and a lot in the pipeline. It’s incredible what you can do as a thought leader and how much you can keep on expanding and adding to your name and your business fluidly.

It sounds like you’re up to many of the same things I’ve been up to in 2020. I know the journey of all those things, releasing and starting up. How are you experimenting with your work now?

Looking where there is an opportunity and when nothing has been done before and then going, “That’s the space that I’m going to operate in.” That can also be the scariest space because it’s all new and you don’t know how it’s going to work. With the podcast, for example, that I released in March 2020, Constructing You. All podcasts in the construction industry are very technical based and mine is a non-careers careers podcast. It’s about who you have to become to achieve what you have. It’s this quite a large concept that I wanted to translate into audio form and it is working. At the time, I was like, “I’m doing it. This is what’s happening.” That was an experiment within itself. When I wrote the book, it was the intention to piece together years of unconventional career intelligence and all acumen associated with constructing your career.

It’s not a technical book by any standard. I said, “I’m going to put it out there.” That’s exactly what happened. The presales have taken off and the first-week launch figures came in and I also took off. It’s also about presenting different offerings to the industry, which hasn’t been offered before that I know of in the forms of masterminds and different types of leadership mentoring that I do. I think everything that I’ve done this year has been an experiment because my business, The Construction Coach, is Australia’s first construction coach. There isn’t anyone doing what I’m doing in the industry for the industry. Every step that I take can feel like an experiment within itself until I’ve done it. You realize, “That was okay. It wasn’t that scary. It’s good. Let’s keep going.”

Constructing Your Career

Tell me a little bit about your clients, what do they look like? Who are they?

As a thought leader, we base our target market on psychographics, not so much demographics. For me, it’s about people who have ambition, aspiration, and drive. They’re my people. They understand that the construction of all things is a long-term game and it doesn’t happen overnight. To boot your success, your career, or your business, whatever it is that you’re aspiring towards your leadership proposition, it’s a long-term game. I look for people who can understand the process and can see the results. They’re the key metrics in which I work with on a fundamental basis. You do look for a certain demographic at different levels, but it comes down to the mindset because that’s what’s malleable. That’s what people can change in order to get the results that they are looking to achieve.

As you’re doing all of these things, how do you decide if one of the things you try is working or not working? What do you do in terms of data collection?

There’s the hard data collection of LinkedIn, social media platforms, views per blog, and downloads per episode. I don’t look for immediate results. I look for an upward trend and also understanding what is happening on all these platforms. I am also monitoring my engagement if I’ve changed my behavior with those platforms. You also look for the softer type of feedback. I’ll be at the most important type of feedback and that is, “What are your clients saying? What is your community saying about the podcast, the book, the actual reviews and feedback, and the transformation and experiences that the community and the clients who work directly with me are experiencing?” That’s the ultimate data.

That’s a great way of looking at it, what’s happening for people around as we’re doing the things that we do and as we engage in thought leadership? What do you do to take care of yourself in all of that?

I am someone who has a higher achievement orientation. That means that I frequently don’t stop because whilst I am proud of what I’ve achieved. I also have this constant dissatisfaction with where you are. That’s what always drives me forward to keep on delivering, to keep on adding value, to keep on experimenting. I’m also cognizant when the body says, “I needed a day.” It’s not always about stopping. It’s also about building in daily habits, which create a sense of well-being, not on a superficial sense, but on acquire in an innate sense. I do that via meditation. It has been the absolute busiest months for me.

I haven’t gone a day without meditating because this isn’t a show about the benefits of meditation, but it has been beneficial. I also journal and journaling is one of my most important outlets. It’s my most sacred space, but above all that, I have the best mentors behind me in my corner. It’s actively being in conversation with what’s going on with what’s happening. I’m not someone who needs a weekend away or to stop completely or detached from what I’m working on. My work gives me a few, but I also recognize when I need space to recalibrate.

When you talk about mentors, how have you chosen mentors for yourself?  

Constructing Your Career: Look where there is opportunity and where nothing has been done before.

The story that I have with mentoring is a unique one. I am particular about the type of people that I consider mentors. There’s mentoring with a capital M and that’s a formal mentoring. There’s mentoring, which is listening to a podcast or picking up a book. It’s being conscious about the information that you are feeding into your mind. One of the key metrics of assessment for me is, would I swap places with the person? If I will, then I am more than likely to want their advice in order to achieve the results that they have. That’s what it is because mentoring is the opportunity to save yourself time as to where you want to go. In the first instance, that’s what’s required. I think what the individual needs to know is what it is that they want and what their vision is because that’s how I came across my mentor.

Through the journaling process, I slowly started uncovering the vision for my own life. I didn’t know exactly the vehicle in which I would achieve all aspects of this vision. When you look back, you can connect the dots, but it was at an event that I saw my mentor and he immediately spoke to me. I knew that I had to come into his world and fast forward, I’m on the tail end of the mentoring program with him. In some sense, it’s divine intervention as well. I also put it down to that. When you know what you want and you have this conviction that you’re going to go after it, the universe aligns people and opportunities around you in order to make that happen.

I love the way that you’re talking about mentorship. As coaches, we talk about coaching and mentorship often feels like this nebulous world out there to me. It’s fun to hear how you’re talking about mentorship. I would like to ask you about imposter syndrome. I’m super curious about it. As a coach, as someone who’s working in leadership and how it shows up, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. You don’t have to bare your soul, but when you’ve noticed that you or others have experienced it, what you’ve seen and how they manage it, or did they walk away from it?

It’s an interesting topic within itself. The imposter syndrome is a consequence of when you don’t know exactly on the macro and the micro of who you are, what it is that you’re here to do and having that full conviction with your vision. When you can see your vision when you can project yourself out for years and you can see who it is that you are and what you have achieved, the mere fact that you can see that vision and the person that you are, it means it’s a reality for you. That thought is already a metaphysical thought. It’s one step closer to reality. When you are on the edge of something new or you are releasing a program, there is that sense of, “What am I doing? Am I good enough? Am I leading some of that?”

You have that conversation with yourself, but that dialogue doesn’t last for a day, a week, a month with us. It lasts for maybe five minutes, half an hour and then we get back to business. What always pulls me forward out of that funk of, “Am I good enough?” Yes, I am. I look at my future self and I know what she’s had to do. I know what she’s done. That helps me in the immediate term or immediate timeframe overcome what is classified as imposter syndrome. I also spend a lot of time working on my mindset and my skillset. I have backup women myself. I don’t put myself in a mentoring position where I can’t deliver to a client.

I don’t ever put out content that I don’t fully believe in. I don’t go out and do something without, “First, what tools do I need? What my mindset needs to look like? What my skillset needs to look like?” That comes over time as well. In a work, out a work of confidence, it’s been years of constantly working at it. The confidence that I have and for those that know me or interact with me for long enough, they know that confidence is my first language. Ambition is my first language, but it hasn’t always been like this. I’ve been the shyest and quietest person in the room. I’ve been the person that delve down their power. That’s when I felt the imposter syndrome of, “What am I doing?” That inner dialogue. It’s been through that work, that discovery, that fulfilling your own purpose of being on the journey of listening to your calling, but eradicates that imposter syndrome. You’re not asking, who am I to do this? The conversation then becomes, who am I not to do this?

I love the way that you’re talking about this with. It’s powerful. I love that you’ve been there. You’ve experienced it. I’m sure that you still do. After coaching for years, I know that we all, if we’re working at the edge of our potential, then we’re going to find that place. Where can people find you, Elinor?

If people would love to connect with my podcast, Constructing You, or read my book, Constructing Your Career, you can connect with me on Instagram @ElinorMoshe_. I am also on LinkedIn, Elinor Moshe. For everything else, go to ElinorMoshe.com.

Constructing Your Career: The mindset is malleable. It’s what people can change in order to get the result they are looking to achieve.

It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for spending some time with me.  

Thank you. It’s been great talking to you.

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I’ve been speaking with Elinor Moshe about construction, leadership, imposter syndrome, and all sorts of things. It’s been fun to talk with her about many things. I loved hearing her talk about how she chooses mentors and wondering, “What if I swap places with them?” It’s a great nod to vision, to what you will accomplish, to where the end state is. This is such a fantastic question to ask, to try to think about that end state. I’ve had a blast talking with Elinor. It’s been amazing. Go experiment.

Important Links:

• The Construction Coach
• Constructing You
• Constructing Your Career
• @ElinorMoshe_ – Instagram
• Elinor Moshe – LinkedIn
• ElinorMoshe.com

About Elinor Moshe