Clocking Out with Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee
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Clocking Out is a podcast about bold moves and personal breakthroughs. Each episode spotlights people who’ve made the life-changing decision to walk away from jobs, careers, or situations that no longer served them in pursuit of something more meaningful. Through candid conversations, we explore the pivotal moments, mindset shifts, and personal values that fuel these transformations. Guests share the setbacks, surprises, and self-discoveries that helped shape their new paths, with themes of resilience, reinvention, and purpose woven throughout. Created as a tribute to Raymond's mother, who inspired the show by chasing her own dream of career fulfillment, Clocking Out is a reminder that it’s never too late to choose yourself.

  1. Jul 29

    Bianca Alba: Federal Public Health Career to Entrepreneur & Travel Influencer

    Permission. It's the word that anchors this conversation, and few people have claimed it as fully as Bianca Alba. Born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and brought to the US at six months old, she grew up in the DMV as the oldest of four girls, watching her parents work multiple jobs to keep food on the table. She became the first in her family to earn a college degree on a full scholarship after failed courses in microbiology and organic chemistry redirected her from the medical route toward public health. That path led to the CDC, an internship during the Ebola outbreak, and a competitive fellowship that took her to Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a $20,000 salary. Alone in a new city, she learned to take herself on dates, hike, and travel solo, quietly laying the foundation for everything that came next. A deployment during the Zika response brought her to Puerto Rico, where she's lived for nearly a decade. Then Covid hit. Deployed relentlessly to the front lines, living out of hotels and building test kits at night, Bianca reached a breaking point: she couldn't promote mental health while struggling with her own. She started a podcast on the side:This Latina Travels, moved to a remote federal role, and kept building an emergency fund just in case. When that position was eliminated in a reduction in force last year, her preparation met its moment. She chose herself, going all in on the platform she'd built, which now spans a blog, speaking engagements, and service-focused college programs in Puerto Rico that have put over $70,000 into local hands. This conversation is about giving yourself permission,to start before you're ready, to grieve a career even as you outgrow it, and to trust that preparation, community, and purpose can turn an ending into a beginning. Connect with Bianca at: Website: https://www.thislatinatravels.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thislatinatravels/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancaalba/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thislatinatravelsFB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thislatinatravelsYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisLatinaTravels Follow Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos Become a guest on Clocking Out: https://bit.ly/46sqClq

  2. Jul 15

    Eloise Skinner: Corporate Lawyer to Psychotherapist & Author

    Are you alive — not just breathing, but truly, deeply alive?" It's the question that anchors Eloise Skinner's work, and few people have chased it as far as she has. A psychotherapist and author specializing in existentialism, Eloise has lived more versions of herself than most people let themselves imagine; corporate lawyer, monastic, fitness instructor, writer, founder. Raised in London by two musicians, she grew up immersed in music, playing piano above all. But at sixteen, in a quiet act of rebellion, she turned away from the family art and chose law, partly because it was a clean slate. She wanted a firm foundation under her feet, studied at Cambridge, and became a corporate tax lawyer at a US firm's London office. She loved it. Yet alongside the work, something else grew: she began writing and teaching, drawn less to the contracts than to helping others find their footing. At twenty-six, still practicing law, she joined a one-year monastic community run out of Lambeth Palace, structured around a "rule of life" of poverty and silence. She kept her job and lived it in parallel, spending her annual leave on silent retreats. What the silence revealed didn't break her; it built her, forcing a confrontation with herself that modern life is designed to help us avoid. Then, in 2021, amid the Great Resignation, she left law — not out of bitterness, but from a conviction that every day on the legal path was another day too long away from a path she couldn't yet name. Since then she's trained as an existential psychotherapist, founded The Purpose Workshop, and written The Purpose Handbook and But Are You Alive? This conversation is about living from a foundation of self-knowledge rather than a fixed plan about what stillness reveals, refusing to abandon yourself through a hard transition, and the courage to follow an inner pull you can't fully articulate, trusting that reinvention is a slow, ongoing act of becoming. Connect with Eloise at: Website: https://www.eloiseskinner.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eloiseallexia Follow Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos Become a guest on Clocking Out: https://bit.ly/46sqClq

  3. Jul 1

    Hung Lee: Social Anthropology to Recruitment Industry Voice & Founder of Brainfood

    In this episode of Clocking Out, we meet Hung Lee, a man whose path bears no resemblance to a plan, and who would be the first to tell you not to follow it. Hung was born in the Netherlands to Hong Kong Chinese parents, the kind of family that ran a restaurant and finished school at fourteen, leaving him and his brother to figure out the rest. By three he was in Germany, by five in England, a third-culture kid who learned early that belonging was never guaranteed and otherness arrived young. As a boy he dreamed of becoming a zoologist, of living the David Attenborough life outside the office. Instead, academic realities pulled him toward the study of humans, and he majored in anthropology, only to grow disillusioned with the discipline and walk away from it entirely. He never worked a day in the field. What followed was not a clean arc but a series of hard resets. Rejection after rejection in his job search. A serious car accident that left him convalescing for eighteen months, broken and isolated, with nothing to do but think. But it was in that forced stillness that the clarity came: he couldn't wait for a life to arrive, he had to go make one. He moved to London with three days' rent in his pocket and a single rule, that he would have a job by the end of it. He talked his way into recruiting and stayed for twenty-five years. The defining moment wasn't loud. Hungover one morning, mid-screening call, he realized he had become so good at the job he could do it half-asleep, and felt a flash of pride, then a wave of shame. He had disrespected the candidate, the profession, and himself. He resigned that same day, with no plan and no fallback. What came after was a string of failed businesses, an 18-month rhythm of trying, failing, learning, and trying again, built on a philosophy he holds to this day: never run a plan B, just build another plan A. Out of the wreckage of a failing startup came Brainfood, a newsletter born from his own frustration at wading through internet noise to find anything worth reading. It quietly became a fixture of the recruitment industry. This conversation is about living without a map. It's about what stillness can reveal when everything else has been stripped away, about treating rejection as information rather than a verdict, and about the strange freedom of having no fallback. Most of all, it's about the courage to listen when something inside tells you it's over, even when leaving makes no economic sense at all, and to keep putting energy into the world until something worth keeping emerges. Connect with Hung Lee at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunglee Newsletter: https://recruitingbrainfood.substack.com/ Website: https://www.recruitingbrainfood.com/ Follow Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos Become a guest on Clocking Out: https://bit.ly/46sqClq

  4. Jun 17

    Terentia Browne: Chemical Engineer to Leadership Coach & Entrepreneur

    In this episode of Clocking Out, we meet Terentia Browne, a woman who spent two decades mastering one of the most demanding technical disciplines in the world, before realizing that the most meaningful work she'd ever done had nothing to do with chemistry at all. Terentia grew up in Durban, South Africa, during the final years of apartheid, the first grandchild on either side of her family to go to university. Her mother, a single parent who never got the opportunity herself, made the message unmistakable: education was the only thing that could break the cycle. So Terentia chose chemical engineering, thrived, and went on to build an ice cream factory alongside international teams, lead engineering at Johnson & Johnson, and earn the Healthcare Businesswoman's Association Rising Star Award. On the surface, a career in full ascent. But beneath the promotions, something else had always been running. She was coaching people. Not formally, not for money, just because it was where she came alive. The pivot didn't arrive as a crisis. It arrived in a Dubai hotel room in February 2019, when a single question stopped her cold: what is the significant impact you want to make on this world? She resigned from J&J, flew home on the first of March 2020, and landed in a global lockdown with no clients and no office. She sat in her apartment and built a leadership program from scratch. The first sale was three hundred dollars. By year's end, she had sold the same program to Airbus OneWeb Satellites for sixty thousand. Impel Talent now works with Fortune 500 companies across life sciences, space and tech, and renewable energy, developing the technically brilliant people nobody ever taught to lead. This conversation is about a calling that doesn't announce itself loudly, but builds slowly and unmistakably over two decades. It's about telling your mother you're walking away from the degree she sacrificed everything for. It's about flying two planes at once, and knowing when to let go of the one you're on. Connect with Terentia at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terentia-browne/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@terentiabrowne Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terentia_browne Website: https://www.impeltalent.com/ Follow Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos Become a guest on Clocking Out: https://bit.ly/46sqClq

  5. May 13

    Paul Tasner: Clorox Executive to Sustainable Startup Founder and TED Speaker at 66

    In this episode of Clocking Out, we meet Paul Tasner, a man who spent four decades doing exactly what he was supposed to do, before getting fired at 64 and discovering that the most important chapter of his life hadn't started yet. Paul grew up in Newark, the son of a postal worker who carried mail on his back and complained about it quietly for thirty years. Without anyone saying it out loud, the message was clear: find something stable, stay there, keep your head down. And Paul followed that script with remarkable dedication. He chose industrial engineering because it was the least intense option. He pursued a PhD in mathematics and walked away five years in because he couldn't see himself living that life. He took a job with his favorite uncle and left within two years because the man he'd idolized was impossible to work for. Then he landed at Clorox, where he stayed for fifteen years. The first five full of ambition, the middle five a plateau, and the last five quietly suffocating under a boss who wanted him gone. At 64, fired and clear-eyed about his odds of being hired again, Paul didn't retire. He needed income, so he started consulting. But consulting felt like doing the same work for other people's companies, and he'd done enough of that. Over two years, an idea took shape: sustainable packaging made from waste pulp, a compostable replacement for the toxic plastic blister packs lining store shelves everywhere. He launched PulpWorks in 2011, at 66, into a market that wasn't ready for it. And he built it anyway, waiting for the world to catch up. Fifteen years later, with nearly 3 million views on a TED Talk he thought had the worst title he'd ever heard, Paul is still at it. Still checking his email every morning with something close to excitement. Still convinced that doing your own thing feels fundamentally different when it belongs to you. This conversation is about what it actually takes to start over late. Not with great courage or a grand plan, but with a financial need, a few good relationships, and the slow realization that the safe path was always a detour. It's about staying current, the unexpected gift of being let go, and what a Netherlands life insurance company told Paul after his TED Talk: that finding a passion in your senior years might be the single most powerful thing you can do for how long, and how well, you live. Connect with Paul at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2336787/admin/dashboard/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=pulpworks%2C%20inc Website: https://pulpworksinc.com/ Follow Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos Become a guest on Clocking Out: https://bit.ly/46sqClq

  6. Apr 29

    Lily Woi: Deloitte Management Consultant to Entrepreneur & Author

    In this episode of Clocking Out, we meet Lily Woi, a self-described shy, quiet, reserved, and awkward introvert who walked away from a prestigious consulting career at Deloitte three months before a promotion, with no business name, no clients, and no plan. What she had was the clarity that staying any longer would cost her something she couldn't get back. Born and raised in a quietly entrepreneurial family, Lily grew up watching her parents model financial freedom while steering her toward the safer road: accounting, a chartered qualification, a recession-proof career. She followed the plan exactly. She joined Deloitte's graduate program, earned promotion after promotion, and was well on her way to manager. On paper, everything looked right. Underneath, the gap between what she was being rewarded for and what she actually cared about was quietly widening with every passing month. The pivot came not from a crisis but from a moment of plain, unignorable clarity. One ordinary morning, she texted her manager and resigned. No backup. No business plan. Not even a name for what came next. She didn't tell her parents until after it was done, because she knew what they'd say, and she wasn't sure she was strong enough to hear it out loud and still go through with it. What followed was the messy, exhilarating work of rebuilding from scratch. First clients through referrals. A speaking stage that went so badly she left the conference and had a quiet breakdown at a friend's place. And still she kept going. She wrote a book, Quiet Confidence, and discovered that the same introversion she'd spent years managing around was, in fact, her sharpest professional tool. The shy girl who used to hide in bathroom stalls to recover from the overstimulation of corporate networking is now a sought-after coach, speaker, and author, not because she became someone else, but because she finally stopped pretending to. This conversation is about the quiet courage it takes to leave when nothing is visibly wrong, the identity loss no one warns you about when you trade a title for a blank page, and what it really means to build confidence, not as a destination you arrive at, but as evidence you accumulate one hard thing at a time. Connect with Lily at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilywoi/ Website: https://lilywoi.com/ Book: https://bookboon.com/en/quiet-confidence-ebook Follow Raymond: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos Become a guest on Clocking Out: https://bit.ly/46sqClq

  7. Apr 15

    John Fareed: Marine & Magician to Global Hospitality Chairman and Author

    In this episode of Clocking Out, we meet John Fareed, a man who has lived more lives than most people dare to imagine and turned each one into raw material for the next. Growing up in rural Georgia and summers spent in Egypt, John learned early that identity is fluid and the world contains far more possibility than the circumstances you're born into. What followed was a life shaped less by planning than by honest reckoning. Six years in the U.S. Marines, kept only because of a private negotiation with his Egyptian grandfather, where an eighteen-year-old passed on the car and asked instead for his mother to be welcomed back into the family. Fifteen years as a professional magician performing at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, on cruise ships, and in casino showrooms, until a trusted friend quietly walked him through the math. Not a failure. Not a breakdown. Just the ceiling, made visible by someone who cared enough to show it. The pivot into hospitality consulting came with nothing but nerve, no degree, no industry experience, no roadmap. For a while, it worked. Then 9/11 arrived and took most of it in a week. What looked like rock bottom turned out to be a blueprint. He worked inside a hotel, joined a prestigious firm, and in his forties moved to Dublin to earn a master's degree, graduating inside Saint Patrick's Cathedral and so moved by the experience that he went back a second time just to feel it again. Today, John serves as Global Chairman of Horwath HTL and is the author of From Invisible to Icon, distributed by Simon & Schuster, drawn from his experience of building authority from scratch in a field he entered as a complete outsider. This conversation is about reinvention without a safety net, the clarity that catastrophe can bring, and what it means to keep performing on a bigger and bigger stage. It is about the courage to look ridiculous to the people who know you, and the wisdom of dreaming large enough that even your regrets point somewhere worth going. Connect with John at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnfareedWebsite: www.horwathhtl.com  Follow Raymond:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos  Become a guest on Clocking Out

  8. Apr 1

    Natalie Nixon: Professor to Creativity Strategist, Speaker, & Author

    In this episode of Clocking Out, we meet Natalie Nixon, a creativity strategist, global keynote speaker, author, and CEO of Figure 8 Thinking. A woman who built a career not by following a map, but by trusting the thread that connected every unexpected turn along the way. Growing up in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Natalie moved through three very different schools, a mother who wove and sewed, a father who worked two jobs, and a childhood spent figuring things out on the stoop. That's where her curiosity was born. When it came time to declare her college major, she called home bracing for disappointment. Instead, her father offered one of the most liberating sentences she'd ever hear: if you study what you love, you'll have to turn away opportunities. That statement became her north star.What followed was anything but linear. Middle school English teacher, hat designer, global fashion sourcing executive, professor and MBA program director. Each chapter fed the next in ways she couldn't have engineered. But the leap didn't come from inspiration. It came from exhaustion. The breaking point wasn't a dramatic resignation. It was an involuntary moment of honesty, walking down a hallway, arms full of papers, hearing herself say through clenched teeth, I don't want to do this.What she didn't realize was that she had already been building her next chapter. A small consulting practice called Figure 8 Thinking had quietly become proof of concept. The leap, when it came, was a step onto ground she had already been preparing. Today, Natalie advises leaders through her Wonder Rigor methodology, pairing imaginative curiosity with the discipline of testing and prototyping. Through keynote speaking, Leap Lab events, and two award-winning books, The Creativity Leap and Move. Think. Rest., she helps people build creative capacity for consistent innovation. This conversation is about nonlinear paths, the courage to follow your curiosity before you can justify it, and what it means to finally stop masking the voice that's been telling you it's time. Connect with Natalie at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalienixonphd/ Website: https://www.figure8thinking.com/ Follow Raymond:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmlee/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raymondlee.co Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clockingoutpod X: http://twitter.com/hrentrepreneur Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clockingoutwithraymondlee/videos  Become a guest on Clocking Out

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Clocking Out is a podcast about bold moves and personal breakthroughs. Each episode spotlights people who’ve made the life-changing decision to walk away from jobs, careers, or situations that no longer served them in pursuit of something more meaningful. Through candid conversations, we explore the pivotal moments, mindset shifts, and personal values that fuel these transformations. Guests share the setbacks, surprises, and self-discoveries that helped shape their new paths, with themes of resilience, reinvention, and purpose woven throughout. Created as a tribute to Raymond's mother, who inspired the show by chasing her own dream of career fulfillment, Clocking Out is a reminder that it’s never too late to choose yourself.

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