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Episode 67: The Career Clarity Book is here! With author Lisa Lewis Miller

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

I have been counting down the days to this day since the very beginning of the year. Today, my dear wonderful friends is the day that Career Clarity, the book, comes out into the world and into our lives. 

It is no joke to publish your own book. It can take a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get here. It feels almost a little bit surreal to be saying that my book is out in the world. I’m so excited for it to be out in the world for people to be able to pick it up off the street, even if they’ve never heard of us to feel like they’ve got some hope, some inspiration and some motivation for what’s possible in your work and your life. 

On today’s episode of The Career Clarity Show, we’re doing something a little different. I’m actually going to give you a sneak peek of the audiobook version of Career Clarity. Give it a listen and go to GetCareerClarity.com/book to get your copy today!

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career.

0:31  

Hello, and welcome, clarity seekers. And let me know what you think of our brand new intro and outro music. I felt like it was time to do a little bit of a refresh on our branding and our energy and our messaging, because we’re getting even more new listeners than ever, which is such a huge compliment. And because when I think about career clarity, and this work of aligning your career with your life, aligning your values with your vocation, and making sure that your work feels soulful, satisfying life giving juicy energizing all that good stuff, it felt like it needed a little extra pep in his step. So I hope you’re loving the new music and getting used to it. If you are a longtime listener. 

1:16  

I am so excited for today’s episode of the podcast to come out. Because it feels a little bit like I have been counting down the days to this day since the very beginning of the year. Today, my dear wonderful friends is the day that Career Clarity, the book, comes out into the world and into our lives and can be in your hands, or on your Kindle, if you are an online e reader person. And it’s such a crazy thing. It is no joke to publish your own book, y’all. And it can take a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get here. So it feels almost a little bit surreal to be saying that my book is out in the world. And I’m so excited for it to be out in the world for people to be able to pick it up off the street, even if they’ve never heard of us to feel like they’ve got some hope, some inspiration and some motivation for what’s possible in your work and your life. If you have not already picked up your own copy of the book, please don’t hesitate to go scurry over to GetCareerClarity.com/book where you can see all the places where you can buy a copy so that you can patronize your preferred vendor. 

2:28  

And if you have bought the book or not, we are having a little celebration later this week. So Mark your calendar for Thursday, November 19, at 6pm Mountain Time. Which is 8pm for you East Coast folks. Which is 5pm for you pacific time, folks. We are going to be doing a virtual launch party, where I am going to get to say hello to everybody who has gotten a copy of the book and share a little bit of the book, answer some questions. And essentially celebrate being in a position where we’ve got this incredible new tool out in the world that hopefully will help so so many of you with finding work that feels like it fits. 

3:06  

So in the celebration of it is a big day, this big moment, this big everything. I also wanted to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into exactly what’s inside the book. So on today’s episode of podcast, we’re doing something a little different. And instead of having me share a bunch of things, insights, blather on whatever, I’m actually going to give you a sneak peek of the audio book version of career clarity. So what you’re about to listen to is the introduction track for Career Clarity, the audiobook so that you can get a sense of exactly what is inside the book. So if you’ve been on the fence about whether or not you need it in your life, you’ll be able to have exactly the information you need to make that decision and see if it can serve you. So I’m so grateful for you as a listener. I’m so grateful for you for celebrating with us today on the book coming out into the world. And I hope that you enjoy and love the next few minutes of experiencing the introduction to Career Clarity, the book.

4:10  

Introduction – We all want to tell a beautiful and honest story about our career choices. We want to be able to gush with authentic excitement over what we do and why. Some people have a talent for making everything sound gushy and picture perfect. Constantly humble bragging about winning awards, traveling to cool locations for business meetings, or working with enviable clients. They’re the people who land on the 30 under 30 or 40 under 40 lists and share means like love your job and you’ll never work a day in your life. Depending on what you say and how you say it. You can easily paint your career like it’s a fairy tale Disney movie, even if it’s not 10 years ago, I could have spun a similar seemingly impressive tale about my professional trajectory. In the course of two and a half years, I went from a nonprofit job with little growth potential, and doubled my salary by becoming a communications consultant. I traveled to Canada, England and Indonesia, teaching businesses how to create advocacy campaigns and mobilize the public in favor of policy change. Sounds pretty exciting, right?

5:30  

It hits the trifecta of covetable careers, great pay, tons of accolades and a ritzy international travel opportunities. But there’s a catch. There’s almost always a catch. Our words have power, especially the words we don’t say. And that shiny Hollywood Story above is the product of some serious lies of omission. When I’m more honest about the pivot I made in my career, the lies of omission become much clearer. While I was on track to become a vice president by 28, I kept feeling like something was missing. As a communications consultant working down the street from the White House, I was basically a mercenary and hired gun tasked to spin media gaffes, or public policy issues. So they appeared to be in my clients political favor. 

6:24  

My job required me to work on whatever problem came through our doors. Whether or not I agreed with the goals or beliefs. I felt like I was freely trading my own principles for a fast tracked, externally impressive corporate career. As long as I was comfortable with selling out and betraying my own beliefs, I could keep rocketing up the corporate ladder. In short, I was unhappy, unfulfilled, and constantly questioning whether my work had any real value. Nobody else could see how conflicted I was about being great at work that tore me up inside. Through this lens, it’s clear the story is certainly not the same fairy tale anymore. What it lacks in a cartoon heroine, it makes up for an honesty.

7:13  

For many of us, our current career story doesn’t sound quite so rosy. We don’t want to stay on the same path for the rest of our days. But it can feel like the only way to have a career we love is by pretending and seriously filtering how we talk about our lives. We know those forced airbrush stories aren’t real and aren’t sustainable for the remaining decades of our careers. But we don’t know what else to do. And yet, we know there are people out there who have taken courageous actions to create genuinely wonderful and honest, new career stories. 

7:51  

People like Ron, an engineer in Portland, who felt like his career and life in Oregon was starting to stall out when his wife suddenly landed a coveted tenured academic position in Seattle. To top things off, they found out they were expecting their first child. Ron’s current job wasn’t going to let him work remotely, and certainly didn’t have an impressive paternity leave policy. Ron was staring down a career crossroads. He wanted to support his wife’s career and relocate to Seattle where a lot of his family lived. But he didn’t have any prospects in the area. He knew spending precious time with his first child was non negotiable, and he wanted to make a change to make more money, but wasn’t sure where to start. He used this framework to get clear on his priorities and options to better align his career with his life, and then took serious action. Researching future prospective employers in Seattle remotely, repositioning himself as a leader and project manager and negotiating his first six figure job offer as well as six full weeks of bonus paternity leave. 

8:58  

Deja is another great example. Today, expat Deja is based in London and is in charge of giving away millions of dollars to charities doing corporate social responsibility for an international media company. But her career started on a very different trajectory, doing events and management work for musicians in the United States. by doubling down on creating a courageous vision for the work and impact she wanted. And following the steps you’ll learn in phase three of this book to perfection, she paired her clear career direction with an all out networking campaign that opened incredible doors for her to lead and grow abroad. You’ll meet oodles of other clients and the pages to follow. And while the stories and details are authentic, their names are changed. 

9:44  

Neither Ron nor Deja needed a filter to make their careers and lives look amazing anymore. They were willing to take unconventional steps to define success on their own terms, create career paths that fit and put in the work to make it happen. And they’re thrilled with how things turned out. I want that for you too. Because if you’re reading this book, you probably aren’t completely in love with your job. You’ve probably been a pretty good worker, maybe even labeled as an overachiever. And your career might look pretty impressive or jealousy worthy on the outside. But if we get really honest, that career doesn’t feel as amazing on the inside. It isn’t that you completely hate your work. But you’re wanting a challenge you aren’t getting, you feel like you aren’t living up to your full potential, and you’re antsy for a change. And while you’re not used to feeling this persistent itch of discontent, you’re really starting to pay attention to it. 

10:48  

Now, let me be the first to tell you, nothing is wrong with you. Breathe. Your feelings are right. This current role doesn’t fit you. Maybe you outgrew it or maybe it never quite fit right to begin with. So if you’ve been measuring yourself against Dylan, the sweet and determined youngest route who knew at the tender age of seven, that he wanted to be a dentist, you can stop choosing to go to grad school and have a 40 year career in dentistry until you throw a retirement party in your 60s might work for some of your peers, but it’s not the right path for you. And that’s okay. In fact, that might even be good. Wanting to keep growing, stretching and learning new things is good for you. Good for your work, and good for our economy. Your desire to learn is one of the key drivers of the career clarity approach to career pathing. And this book wouldn’t have caught your eye if you didn’t want to learn how to make a change. You can trust your feeling that you want work to feel better.

11:59  

You aren’t meant to settle. You don’t want to become one of those people with the dead look in their eyes. For whom every day at work is same crap, different day or worse. Fine. I’ve been in your shoes. As an obsessive learner an overachiever. I would devour books, podcasts, TED talks and online courses to try to understand the secret keys to creating a fulfilling, juicy life giving career path because where I was felt so life draining. Now, there are a lot of books out there. Some writers focus on the tactical pieces, like getting job offers or professional rebranding. Others teach you how to follow your heart. But while most thought leaders presented their strategies to solve a particular issue along the career journey, I noticed few people were effectively looking at the start to finish journey. As much as they entertain or encouraged. They often don’t zoom out enough to give you the full picture of why you haven’t found fulfilling work you love and how to land the fantastic job without going broke. 

13:11  

After collecting the data points from other experts, I went on to use that research to help more than 500 clients make successful career transitions of their own. This experience taught me a lot about what actually works and doesn’t for finding lucrative soulful and joyful work. With the lessons learned from seeing hundreds of individuals on this professional pilgrimage. I synthesize the full body of work into the career clarity methodology. This book shares that strategic framework with you so you can master how to find great work and create a satisfying delightful career that empowers you to live your best life step by step. 

13:51  

The Career Clarity framework is about addressing the underlying career fulfillment problems, and equipping you with a strategy to use over and over again for the rest of your life. It will help you see and value your gifts in a new light. differentiate the superficially sexy ideas from the sustainable ones, and feel natural energy in your work again. Ignoring a strategy for mapping your career moves is a risky decision. While throwing spaghetti at the wall or falling into a career path ends up okay for some folks, taking a step in your career without intentionality often leaves you adrift and spinning. There was a good reason you accepted this position. But as the months go on, you start to feel overwhelmed, overworked, underappreciated or underpaid. And simultaneously, you’re feeling frustrated and hopeless because you thought you’ve done everything right to get here. If you’re feeling nervous, because you don’t know exactly how or why you got into this mess in the first place. Imagine feeling that way every day over the course of The next 20 to 30 years of your career, bouncing like a pinball from job to job, hoping things will get better, but not trusting that you’re making the best career decisions. Sounds nauseating and frustrating right? Now, imagine how life would change if you had a strategic plan guiding your professional development. You’d make career decisions with competence and ease, and know how to judge when the time is right to make a move. you’d start developing strategic relationships before you needed them purely because it’s fun. 

15:34  

So job searching will no longer feel like your hair has been set on fire. To increase your intentionality and vision when making a career shift. That career clarity method will guide you through three phases to finding a career that feels like it truly fits you. Phase One, finding a few ideas of what you want next. Phase Two, testing to confirm that your dream is dreamy in reality, and phase three, executing on your strategy to make it happen. Think of this journey like scaling a giant, gorgeous, slightly terrifying mountain. Maybe we call it mount fulfillment, and you don’t have much mountain climbing experience. Your first phase is preparation. Finding the mountain you’d like to climb, and deciding what you need to pack in your knapsack for your journey. You’ll want a good map, a well calibrated GPS, water, a flashlight, non perishable snacks, all that good stuff to help you get to the top of the mountain in a healthy safe way. You’ll want to start learning how to read the weather conditions and decide how to plan an initial route. This stage of career pathing requires auditing your current career assets, deciding which of them you want to take on your career journey, and brainstorming the best fit ideas to pursue.

16:57  

You’ll never scale the mountain if you don’t get off your couch. So the next phase has to be testing your desired path. If you plan a route on paper, that isn’t doable in real life, or you set out and discover Ach, there’s a giant ravine ahead, you’ll turn back and give up at the first challenge that looks insurmountable. Therefore, we have to approach your career adventure with curiosity, the ability to be nimble, and willingness to adapt to changing terrain. This phase of career mapping requires courage and vulnerable action taking. Without those traits, you’ll always be wondering what if about the ideas in the back of your mind, or the path not taken. And then the last phase is execution or actually scaling the mountain to the summit. And then the last phase is execution, or actually scaling the mountain to the summit. You’ve got the right tools, you’ve learned the best strategy, you’ve tested a route. 

17:57  

So now all you have to do is pick up the pace of your hiking. This phase is where you go all in and go all out to achieve your goal. rebranding yourself to match your target sector, developing new relationships and finessing your interview strategy. It’s tempting to skip straight to this phase and jump out on the mountain. But if you skip over the first two phases, this part of career pathing can be the most painful, frustrating, arduous and time consuming of all. Don’t do that to yourself. Trust the steps of the process and you’ll get the rewards you’re looking for. The reason heroic climb resonates so deeply in our cultural context, is because we can all see ourselves in the unpredictable ups and downs of a journey. You think you’ve taken the perfect next step in your work, and wham, out jumps the next challenge, whether that’s a first child, a missed promotion, a sick parent, an abusive boss, or an unexpected cross country move. But if the protagonist doesn’t know where they’re trying to go, the only way their story ends up with a fairy tale ending at the end is by sheer luck. We don’t want to feel like the outcomes of our life and career choices are purely left to chance. And when it comes to career success, you don’t get hit by the luck truck unless you’re standing in the middle of the road. This book will show you an empowered strategy for navigating career choices so you feel fulfilled, happy and clear. 

19:31  

With its help you can create a legacy you’re proud of approaching this journey with a framework and a plan makes all the difference. Even if we can’t plan every step perfectly. With a framework to guide you, you’ll know exactly where in the process you’ve gotten stuck before and what you need to get back in motion. The information in the pages that follow won’t be enough by itself. The pathway to a career that makes money and makes a difference is embedded with it. In these chapters, but it’s up to you to choose to take action and follow it. The story of a real incredible career adventure isn’t written exclusively from a comfortable hammock at Basecamp former client of Eva took action to change her career story. She was swirling after her California career as a Hollywood casting agent ended when she lost her biggest contract days after her second son was born. She was feeling uncertain, but knew she wanted to start fresh and do work that felt more aligned with her values. 

20:35  

Through exploring the process for mapping out what’s next, she came up with an idea to start an acting instruction business that let her be home with her boys while making five times more than she’d ever thought possible, and hiring employees for that business by year two. Today, Aviva now runs to six figure businesses from home and spend more time than ever with her sons. A story like this is possible for you to even if you didn’t go to Harvard Business School, marry rich or have a trust fund. Goodness knows I didn’t. But you won’t get to tell this kind of great career story if you fall into the trap of letting other people’s opinions shape your career. A guidebook like this will help you untether yourself from opinions, assumptions and fears. To find your own way. Use this book like a textbook workbook or even a devotional to guide you each step of the way. There are clarifying questions sprinkled in at strategic points to help you reflect on the concepts and decide how to apply them in your own journey. If you hope a change is possible for you, if you’ve heard a tiny voice stirring in your soul whispering that you can’t keep doing the same thing for the next 10 years. Or if you believe work can be easier and more fun than you ever imagined. You’ve already taken the first step towards career clarity. Let’s take the next steps together. Navigating the career waters like an expert takes time and help. As my friend and fellow coach Catherine Carruthers often says, “You’ve got this and I’ve got you.” Yours, me.

22:26  

And that’s a wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests and topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity: Finally Finds The Work That Fits Your Values and Lifestyle. For the link to order it go to getcareerclarity.com/book. And don’t forget to get your other tools, resources and helpful goodies at getcareerclarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the career clarity show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.

About the Author Lisa Lewis

Lisa is a career change coach helping individuals feeling stuck to find work that fits. She helps people clarify who they are, what they want most, and what a great job for them looks like so they can make their transition as easily as possible. Lisa completed coaching training in Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method, Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions, Kate Swoboda's Courageous Living Coaching Certification, and the World Coaches Institute. In addition to that, she apprenticed with the top career coaches in the country so she can do the best possible work with — and for — you. She's helped more than 500 individuals move into more fulfilling, yummy careers and would be honored to get to serve you next!

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