Posts Tagged ‘breakthrough’

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Do You Deserve An Amazing Career?

Saturday, September 15th, 2012

(As featured on Kathy’s Huffington Post blog)

As one who works with thousands of professional women each year to transform their careers ,  I’ve been asked almost every question you can think of about professional life.  I’ve also observed over these past nine years what holds women back most from having “knock-your-socks-off” success and fulfillment in their professional lives, and these blocks are not what you’d expect.

Most professionals I work with have achieved a good deal of outward success – responsibility, promotions, authority, recognition, supervision of large staff and budgets, etc. – but for the majority, something vital is missing, and they know it in their hearts and souls.  They can’t seem to put their fingers on what they want most, or how to get it.  It’s like a secret treasure that they keep hunting for everywhere – under every rock, in every new job, relationship, boss, organization, country, entrepreneurial venture — but they still can’t find it.

I’ve seen that almost everyone has at least one “power gap”– an area in which they just don’t have the confidence, self-worth, self-esteem or will power to take them to the next level that they so desperately long for.  The great news is that all of this can change, if you commit to, and invest in, doing the inner and outer work required.

What are these secret career success steps that are missing for so many professionals today, and can everyone access what they need to, to build an amazing career?

The first truth is that while having an amazing career is a potential that everyone can grasp, only a relatively few will step up and commit to it.  I remember speaking with a coach in the Tony Robbins organization who told me, “I don’t care what my clients want – everybody ‘wants’ a thousand things.  I care about what they’ll commit to.”  I subscribe to that same philosophy about career transformation.  Why? Because doing what’s required to absolutely LOVE your career – to be proud of who and what you are in the world and how you’re of service, and know you’re reaching your highest and best potential, takes a great deal of courage, work, commitment, energy, trust, and perseverance – and it takes walking to the farthest edge of your limitations, and jumping — into the scary new territory that is necessary to take you higher.

Are you one of those who WILL commit to doing what it takes to have an amazing career, or just dream about it?  Check out below the top five steps you have to take, and see if you feel ready for what’s required:

The five core steps to create an amazing career –

Step 1: Step back to understand the lessons your life and career are trying to teach you.

Your life is teaching you lessons, but most people just aren’t getting them.  Every day, you receive powerful guidance from your life about what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong (in terms of getting closer to what you want most out of life).  Most just don’t recognize these messages as clear beacons to show you the way to go.  The first step to an amazing career is to make a deep, critical and fearless evaluation of where you are today — what’s working, what isn’t, and what you want most. This includes gaining an intimate understanding of what makes you tick – your personality, values, needs, dreams, legacy, and your power “gaps” – those areas of weakness or insecurity that keep you stalled and stuck. Until you get off the hamster wheel and do this intensive work of exploration and discovery, you’ll continue to spin your wheels wondering why you’re not happier. (Take my free Career Path Self-Assessment to get you going on this.)

 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON HUFFINGTON POST


If you’re ready to commit to an amazing career, I hope you’ll join me in my new career transformation project –  the Amazing Career Project.   See you there!

 

 

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Posted in Amazing Career Success, Careers, Following Your Dreams, Inspiration for Change, Kathy Caprino | No Comments »

Are Your Values Keeping You From Earning More Money?

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Last week, I had the immense pleasure of conducting a coaching training course for the CT Women’s Business Development Council.  I shared the day with an amazing, inspiring group of women who work throughout Connecticut and are heart-committed to helping others get on more solid ground with their finances.  (By the way, if you don’t know about the Women’s Business Development Council, do check them out!).

In the program, we conducted a number of role-play exercises illustrating the power of coaching, and one exercise truly took me by surprise.  In this exercise, each of us explored our intrinsic, heart-felt values – what we care about deeply and what we need in our lives to feel fulfilled and to craft a life worth living. 

After the exercise, we evaluated how these values are supporting us, and also how they may be clashing, in fact, with our desire and need to make more money, and to save and invest wisely. Fascinating discussion…

In doing the internal work of this exercise myself, I was reminded that I value the following traits very highly in my work:

1) Helping people make positive, lasting change (value: making a difference)
2) Authenticity and individuality (value: truth-telling)
3) Offering help and insights based on reality (value: realism)
4) Delivering programs informed by research (value: expertise/diligence)
4) Endeavoring to offer something of value that exceeds what my clients pay (value: service)

When I compare my values and behaviors to those of some other service providers, I see key differences.  A large number (not a majority perhaps, but many) consultants and providers these days seem to value making money over all else, by:

-  Using hard-hitting marketing promises to convince clients about what they can achieve (no matter how likely those outcomes are)
- Accepting clients who are desperate financially, but don’t have the ability to recoup the money they invest in the coach/consultant
- Encouraging clients to put out programs and materials that offer less than high value or strong content
- Making abundant success sound very easy and very accessible to all
- Talking about how they personally made their money, not what the client needs to do in these times to make their own money
- Using fear tactics to scare clients into thinking if they don’t hire the consultant/coach, they’ll fail

On the contrary, when I looked very closely at my own values as well as my outer behaviors, I realized that my intrinsic values have prompted actions that in some ways clashed with my desired outcome of inviting more money into my business. As an example, I tend to give far too much away for free and then feel resentful and angry, and I have a hard time honoring my own boundaries about the type of coaching projects I will and will not accept.

After a long, hard evaluation, I now understand that what I want to change is not my values, but the way in which I express them.  For instance, I’m focused more keenly on being of service to people who are in synch with me about what they value and the outcomes they wish to produce.  I’m also more committed to working with those who are happy and able to pay fairly for the time and support they receive. 

The ultimate goal, I think, is to honor your values fully, while engaging in conscious behaviors that are in alignment with who you really are and what you want in life.

It’s a very powerful exercise to understand exactly what you value, and explore how these values prompt unconscious behaviors that hold you back from achieving core goals such as greater financial success.  I’d recommend doing this exercise today!

Question for the day: What do you value deeply in your life and work?  And how might these values be (unconsciously) promoting behaviors that hold you back from creating a higher level of desired success. Please share what you discover!  

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Posted in Breakthroughs, Careers, Empowerment, Kathy Caprino, Living Real, Marketing Support, Uncategorized, Women in Business | 3 Comments »

The Myth of Career Bliss: Why Chucking Your Career Doesn’t Solve Your Problems

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

I’ve spent eight years working with individuals to achieve successful professional growth, change, and reinvention.  I know a good deal about the process personally too, as I’ve traversed a number of diverging career paths over the past 20 years, including corporate marketing, market research, marriage and family therapy, coaching, writing, speaking, and executive recruitment.

If you asked me my views on career reinvention five years ago, I would have said some very different things than I do today. 

So what’s different? 

In the past three years, I’ve learned what’s required (for myself and others) to navigate through highly challenging financial times while at the same time successfully achieving a more fulfilling professional life. 

I’m not talking about pie-in-the-sky, follow-your-bliss nonsense here.  I’m talking about real-life positive career and life change that lasts and continues to reap benefit and reward.

The Myth of Career Bliss

But today, as new clients come to me – both men and women — I see an alarming myth that thousands of midlife individuals have been suckered into believing.  It’s hitting baby boomer folks hard, and honestly, I don’t see this same myth prevalent in younger generations.  I call it the “myth of career bliss” – the damaging, misleading notion that all it takes to make your life happier is to chuck out your old, unsatisfying career, and come up with a new one, despite what else is falling apart in your life.

Here’s how the story goes:

A midlife professional woman comes to me after 15+ years of corporate work.  She’s awakened to the following realizations, and they hurt:

  • It feels as if her work has no contributive value in the world any more (for instance, she feels she’s “selling” something that doesn’t matter at all or isn’t of positive influence in the world)
  • She’s bored out of her mind doing the work she knows best
  • Her family needs her substantial income of $100M+
  • Her husband and children have grown accustomed to her overfunctioning and her perfectionism, and don’t want things to change too much. (Note: she handles over 75% of the domestic responsibility as well as her full-time job, and she’s worn out, stressed and depressed.  And her overfunctioning has held her husband back from contributing his fair share, financially, domestically, and otherwise.)
  • She feels an urgent need to change her personal and professional situation
  • She’s in a financial trap, not having saved enough money to take several years off to re-strategize, gain new education or training, and reinvent her career path
  • On top of these stresses, there are relationship, behavioral and other issues with her family members (elderly parents, children, spouse, etc.) that need urgent addressing
  • Despite the fact that numerous dimensions of this individual’s life are truly in “breakdown” mode, she believes that it’s a new career she should focus on, as (in her mind) that will bring her life the joy, peace, excitement, meaning, health, and purpose she longs for.

The problem is, it’s simply not true. 

In her case — and for hundreds of thousands of individuals in the world today — it’s not a wholesale career change that will bring you the satisfaction and peace you want.  Instead, it’s taking hard, urgently-needed action that addresses the root causes of your troubles that will make the difference in your career and life.

Busting the Career Bliss Myth: The Top Six Steps You Need to Take to Change Your Life for the Better

Here’s what has to happen for your life to change for the better… and it isn’t job change, for now. 

1)  Power up and speak up – Figure out who you really are, and what you’re intrinsically worth as an individual in this world.  Start honoring what you want to create in your life, and make your partner at home a real partner so you’re not doing everything at home and everything for everyone else around you (see Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s powerful TEDTalk on this and two other key behaviors that will propel women forward in the workforce).

2) Build a stronger, more empowered relationship with money – take control of your finances.  Know down to the penny what you need to earn, and learn how to save more, manage better, and grow your money. 

3) Determine your three TOP life priorities, then make sure you’re attending to those before you even consider career change.  For instance, if you’re dealing with a serious health issue, or a child’s behavioral problems, or the need to move, or you’re facing foreclosure, you must attend to these priorities first.

4) Stop procrastinating and get going – look at where you feel most disempowered and helpless in your life and your career today.  Take steps to address these power gaps.  Unless you do this in your life and job now, your problems will follow you no matter what new career path or job you take.

5) Re-purpose and re-focus your skills and talents – In these very challenging employment times, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and chucking your whole career spend some critical time with a trained and skilled career coach, mentor, or advisor who can help you identify what you’re truly great at and enjoy doing, and determine the best, most appropriate way to bring forward these talents and skills in a job that fits your needs. 

6) Then develop a S.M.A.R.T. transition plan to get you from where you are today, to where you want to go.

 In short, don’t look to career reinvention to solve your problems.  It won’t.  Only you can solve your problems.  And the time to start dealing with them is now.

What are your top three life priorities today and are you addressing them?

 

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Posted in Books, Breakthroughs, Careers, Challenges, Empowerment, Kathy Caprino, Support for Change, Women in Business | 9 Comments »

The Wrong Kind of Help – Six Key Traits of “Help” that Hurts

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

As an empowerment researcher, I’ve studied for eight years what constitutes “helpful” help versus advice or counsel that diminishes and demeans, or sends you in the wrong direction.

The sad news is that thousands of so-called “helpers” in our world today – our family members, friends, service providers of all walks (doctors, lawyers, financial consultants, therapists, coaches, counselors, intuitive, healers, etc.) – simply haven’t done the inner and outer work they need to, to offer empowering, uplifting support.  Instead, the assistance they give is the disempowering kind, dragging us down, keeping us stuck at the same problematic level we seek to rise above.

In my therapy training and work as a career coach, I’ve learned (and tell my clients openly) that only they can discern if the help they’re getting is right for them.  And they should walk away immediately when it’s not.

Each individual has his/her own unique personality, values, beliefs, traits, needs, and priorities – and these coalesce in a way that is individual and special. So the help you receive needs to honor that individuality – and make you right, not wrong. 

My advice to folks seeking help is this – if after the first meeting with the helper you feel empowered, excited, and validated,  and if the help allows you to progress in satisfying ways, then it’s a good match.  If on the other hand, you feel demeaned or misunderstood, challenged in negative ways, and discouraged,  then it’s time to change your helper.

What Kind of Help is the Hurting Kind?

The following are hallmarks of assistance that is wrong for you – and ends up being hurtful not helpful.

You’ll know “bad” help when:

  1. The helper claims s/he is an expert about you (it’s not true – you’re the expert about you)
  2. The help is one-size-fits-all, that applies the same tools and approaches to everyone  – it’s not tailored to your individualized case or scenario
  3. The helper assumes you need “fixing” or believes you’re the problem
  4. The help you receive keeps you stuck  –  you keep experiencing the same the problems over and over
  5. The helper is enmeshed with you – s/he does not support you to grow beyond the help they give
    (I hate to say it, folks, but there are many therapists, coaches and consultants out there who WANT you to keep you coming back because of the money it makes them or because they want you to need them.  I see this in some exorbitantly-paid therapists and consultants all the time.)
  6. Receiving help is a negative experience that drains you of your vitality, hope, and excitement for life. (Or, on the other hand, the help is so overly-optimistic that it doesn’t reflect reality and leads you astray).

 My world is about helping professional women achieve their highest visions.  As I’ve moved into the leadership arena, I’ve seen a lot out there that calls itself “leadership coaching” for women, claiming that it helps women advance.  But what I see instead is a good deal of faulty advice or information that tells women they’re wrong for how they feel and what they want. 

To counter this, I’m launching a new yearlong, 12-part Career Enhancement Program for corporate women for corporate organizations, designed to enliven and support professional women to attain the career visions they hold most exciting and fulfilling.  I aim to provide the highest form of help I can – assistance that achieves the following goals:

Empowering Support:

1)      Validates you – Makes you right (not wrong); focuses NOT on “fixing”you, but honoring who you are at your core

2)      Tailors the help to your specific values, beliefs and needs – not one-size-fits- all

3)      Strengthens and stretches you, helping you see your greatest talents and strengths as well as growth areas

4)      Takes you to a new level – so you overcome previous challenges and are ready for new ones

5)      Encourages you to be more of who you already are – authentically and with integrity, so you can help others
expand and grow as well

6)      Fills you up so you want to experience even more of life and work – gives you a deep and thorough understanding of who you are and where you want to go, realistically.

If your organization is committed to inclusion and diversity, and wants to support professional women’s growth, I hope you’ll reach out – I’d love to offer this 12-month Career Enhancement Program to you and your colleagues.

In the meantime, please remember that getting outside your own head and asking for support to overcome your specific challenges is vitally important.  But choosing the right kind of help– the kind that allows you to move toward the highest and best version of you – is the most important choice of all.  And only you can choose the best help for you.

What kind of help works best for you? And have you ever received help that hurts?

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Posted in Advice, Careers, Empowerment, Kathy Caprino, Leadership, success, Women in Business, Women in Leadership | No Comments »

The Top 6 Reasons People Want Out of Their Work

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

I’ve recently become immersed in executive search work through my new role as Marketing VP for Synergy Partners USA – a specialized executive search firm based in Wilton, CT.  I’m loving the new work — it helps me be of service both to individuals who want to enhance their careers, and organizations who want top marketing talent to help them build and grow.  I’m also connecting with terrific HR and senior management folks committed to diversity and providing career development programs for their female talent as well, which I love to provide through my firm Ellia Communications.  It’s cool!

As a career coach and in exec search work, I’ve spoken with scores of professionals who’ve shared some version of, “I’m really ready for a change, but I’m not sure exactly where to go from here.”

If I’ve heard this message once, I’ve heard it 1000 times now.  So many people spend years crafting careers that appear successful on the outside, only to find that at some point, usually in midlife, the career comes up short.  It’s missing some vital component (or several) that turns the work into something less than fulfilling, lacking in purpose, unstable, inauthentic, unsustainable, or a combination of all of the above.

Why are so many folks dissatisfied with their work and long for change?

Here’s what I’ve found to be the top six reasons people are dissatisfied with their work and want out:

1. They find it impossible to balance work and outside life

2. The money they earn isn’t enough to sustain them or their families

3. The skills and talents required for their work aren’t are a good fit

4. They feel chronically undervalued or mistreated

5. They experience little positive meaning or purpose in their work

6. It’s simply too hard to keep going with it

In short, they’re saying: “I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this.”

If the above describes your experience, read on for some tips to help you create the change you want — away from feeling trapped, toward feeling more confident, courageous and committed to making positive career change today.

1) Claim More Balance

Balance is not going to just fall in your lap.  You have to claim it, and commit to getting it.  How?  First, determine the three most important priorities you are committed to achieving in your personal and professional life.  What are the three things that are vital to you to bring about — that matter more than anything else?  Formulate these in terms of “to be” statements such as “to be a great parent” or “to be a successful entrepreneur” or “to be a helper of others.”   Then commit yourself to these.  Stop over-functioning (doing more than is necessary, more than is healthy, and more than is appropriate) in your life, your family, and work, and let go of doing too much and being perfect in the areas that don’t matter as much to you. 

2) Power Up with Money

To get out of financial distress, you have to become intimately connected with your money.  Create a solid budget with strong financial goals, and stick to it.  Understand what you need to survive and thrive.  Examine your spending – are you buying things in order to soothe your soul?  If so, stop over-spending.  Look at your beliefs around money that you learned as a child from living with your family.  Are your beliefs about money positive or negative, expansive or constricting? Do you believe you deserve wealth and abundance, or are you ashamed of the money you have or don’t have?  Overall, the key to overcoming chronic financial problems is to heal your relationship with money through positive and healthy beliefs, actions, and choices.  Develop an empowered money relationship, and you’ll no longer act in ways that create financial distress or drain you of your financial power.

3) Change Your Skills Focus

Do you know exactly which talents and skills are easy and natural for you to use, that give your work a sense of purpose?  Do you know what work would represent a perfect fit? Find a way (either in your existing job or in a new field or job) to tap your true and natural talents more frequently and deeply.  Take my free Career Path Assessment and figure out what you want to do more of, less of, and never again. 

4) Respect Yourself

If you’re chronically undervalued or mistreated at work and want people to change their treatment of you, start with SELF-respect.  How? Through courageous action that builds your own self-esteem – action that you know you should be taking, but haven’t found the nerve to take.  Don’t wait to become more authentic and real in your work. Speak up about who you are and what’s important to you.  Make yourself right, not wrong.  If you know something needs to be communicated, figure out a way to do it as soon as possible.  Find an advocate, sponsor or mentor at work to help you speak up in the right way so that you will be heard and respected for your viewpoint.  Start enforcing your boundaries so that you know exactly what you will tolerate and accept from others, and what you won’t. 

5) Honor What Gives Your Life Meaning

It’s a highly-destructive and misguided myth in our culture that we can’t make good money doing what we love.  We can, but it takes grit, determination, and courage and flexibility to pursue a path that you love and to make it work for you financially. 

Determine what endeavors and activities bring you joy and meaning, and bring these forward.  The key is to 1) understand the essence of what you want, and then 2) find the right form of it.  To find out if the new path you’re fantasizing about is right for you, research, research, research– interview people in the field, read all about it, get training and education, find a mentor, and determine a way to “try it on’ before you leap.  You might discover that earning money following your passion isn’t — in the end — the right thing for you, but you love to do it on a part-time or hobby basis.  If that’s the case, step up and volunteer or join a community that lets you honor your heart-aligned passions.  

6) If It’s Too Much Struggle, Change

Whether you’re in your own business and it’s simply not working, or the job you’re in feels crushingly difficult, it’s time to make change.  Let’s face it, most of us wait until there’s a full-blown crisis (read about the 12 “hidden” crises working women face) before we do something different.  I’ve personally lived through all 12 of the crises  I write about, so I understand.  But I’m asking you NOT to make the same mistakes I did.  Get outside your own head, and get help to figure out what you really want, and how to get it.

So, what’s your top reason for wanting out of your line of work?  And are you ready to do something about it?

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Posted in Careers, Challenges, Empowerment, Kathy Caprino, success, Tips for Empowerment, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Why “Good” Marketing Advice Can Lead You Astray

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

A significant number of my awesome coaching and consulting colleagues and friends across the country have shared with me in the past year that they’ve hired outside marketing help with disappointing (or disastrous) results.  Despite finding “experts” who seem to have good reputations and produce solid results for others, my colleagues found that the marketing advice they received simply wasn’t effective or helpful.

Curious as to deeper reasons behind the lack of efficacy of this marketing  help,  I asked my friends some questions about it:

  1. Did the marketing advice you get “feel” right to you when you got it
  2. Did you feel that the marketing expert really “got” you – understood you and respected where you were coming from, was supportive of you
  3. Was the marketing advice aligned with what you really believe, deep in your heart
  4. Did the advice honor your unique views, perspectives and experiences
  5. Did the copy, products and programs you were led to create feel like a natural outgrowth of you?
  6. Did the new website or program or free gift that you created with the marketing expert make you feel proud and happy with the end result?
  7. Did you feel equal in the relationship, or did you feel that they were the expert and you were the beginner?

If the answer to any of these questions was “no,” it turns out that the marketing advice may have been “sound,” but it wasn’t RIGHT for them.

The process of finding the right marketing support provider is exactly the same as going about finding the right doctor, financial consultant, virtual assistant, or other support professional.   It’s not enough that the individual has helped others, or has a “good reputation,” or seems successful.  There are skillions of folks who fit that bill.

What does matter is that they are the right fit for you – that they are empowered supporters of you, and understand what you want, why you want it, and how you want to go about getting it.  It’s about process here, not just about content. 

Further, it’s critical that you like and trust your helper.  If you follow the advice of someone you don’t like or respect, you subconsciously sabotage yourself and limit your success.  You’re telling yourself that despite this person feeling “off” to you, they must know better than you, and that you don’t know enough.  That core self-message undermines the entire outcome of what you’re trying to achieve – bringing about great, new aligned clients and customers whom you wish to serve.

How to Choose the Right Helper for You

Here are several key criteria that must be met in order for a marketing consultant or coach to be a good fit and to give you more than you pay for.  If you want to be pleased with the outcome, and find enlivening marketing support that helps you achieve the outcomes you want in ways that are aligned with who you are, ask yourself:

Does the provider:

  • Take into account your uniqueness and differences from others in your field
  • Feel  in alignment with you, in terms of aesthetics, values, priorities, authenticity, communication, and style
  • Want you to be happy with their services, and will do what is necessary for you to be more than satisfied?
  • Have proven results with others who are like-minded with you?
  • Have marketing materials, website, programs, and products that you feel are high-quality and high-content and that you’d like to emulate?
  • Price their programs in a way that ensures you’ll generate significantly more money within a year from the outcomes of their support than you’ll pay them?

Finally, does it feel “right” and “good” to work with this individual?  Does s/he empower you, or bring you down?

Spending money wisely is a hallmark of successful individuals and business owners.  Please…think carefully before investing in outside support.  Make sure that your service providers are capable of helping you be all you wish to be in the world.  Feel free to say “no” when it’s not working.  Bring up your concerns and ask for change or resolution.  If you don’t get want you need, be prepared to walk away from the relationship when you sense that this partnership is not for you or for your highest good.  Don’t wait to ask for what you know you need and want.

Are you spending money today in a support relationship that isn’t supportive?  Might today be the day to say “no more?”

 

 

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Posted in Advice, Breakthroughs, Challenges, Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration for Change, Kathy Caprino, Marketing Support, Small Business, Uncategorized, Women in Business | 4 Comments »

What To Do When Speaking About Your Work is Hard

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

This week, I had a fascinating marketing coaching session with a woman who shared with me her difficulty in speaking about her work.  She revealed that, every time she discusses what she does for a living, one of two things happen:

1) People turn off immediately

or

2) They poke some fun at the company she works for (it’s a well-known national organization with an external reputation that isn’t 100% positive)

While our session was ostensibly about “crafting a powerful elevator pitch,” it morphed quickly into something quite different.  We explored not just the “content” of her elevator pitch, but the “process” of how she feels about and connects to her work, and what is missing.

There are vitally important factors that contribute to being able to speak and write about your work and your job in an authentic, exciting and compelling way.  It’s not all about the words you choose – it’s about what’s underneath those words.

The following are key ingredients to communicating about what you do for a living with passion, power, and purpose:

1) Alignment – You have to be aligned with your work and supportive of it in order to speak engagingly about it.  If you have internal conflicts about the company or the work you do, it’ll show.

2) Clarity – You must be clear about what you do and what aspects of your responsibilities you wish to share with others.  If you wear several different hats in your work, get crystal clear about which professional dimension you want to focus on, and to whom (tailor your messages for each type of audience you encounter, so they can care about what you do).

3) Authenticity – If you have to lie or fib to create a compelling story of what you do, it’s time for a change.  Lying weakens you, and your energy palpably reveals that you’re not telling the truth.

4) Passion – You can’t fake enthusiasm.  If you’re bored to tears with your work, you’ll be boring to others about it.  There’s a difference between a “job and a calling.”  If you have a calling, you’ve got passion for it.  But if you have a job that doesn’t light you up, find some aspect of it that elicits excitment in you (or think about changing directions a bit so it will). 

5) Growth – Finally, if your work is NOT helping you grow and learn, your communications will reflect your stagnation.  Make a shift in your work so you’re learning and growing all the time.  Your writing and speaking will reflect this expansion, and positive growth is a magnet to others.

In the final years before I reinvented my career to something I love, I was corporate VP selling products that, to me, had zero contributive value or meaning in the world.  I hated the work, and I simply couldn’t find a way to speak about it positively.  When folks would ask me, “What do you do?” I’d give some vague, boring or confusing response. 

Why?  Because the work I did wasn’t me at all.  I didn’t like, respect, or even care about it!  If that resonates with you, it’s not your elevator pitch that needs tweaking – it’s your line of work or how you’re engaged in it. 

How about you? Do you like talking about your work?  If not, what’s the hardest thing about it, and what do you think that challenge suggests?

 Thanks for sharing!

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The 12 Hidden Crises of Entrepreneurial Women

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Several years ago I conducted a yearlong research study with over 100 working women across the country about professional crises in women and how we can reclaim our lives to overcome them.  I was astounded by the findings, and felt they were so universal and important for women, I wrote a book called Breakdown Breakthrough about these 12 crises, offering a three-step holistic model to break through these challenges once and for all.

Since the book came out in 2008, women from all over the country have written to me sharing sentiments such as, “You are writing to me, about me, and for me,” and “It’s as if you know exactly what I’m living and feeling!”  My research shows that 9 out of 10 working women are experiencing at least one of these 12 “hidden” crises, and on average, women are experiencing three at the same time!  And over half of these women don’t know what to do about it.

These 12 crises are not just tiny “bumps” in the road but full-out, serious challenges that are marked by chronic disempowered thinking and a serious lack of ability to move oneself forward in positive, powerful ways towards one’s goals and visions.

These 12 crises fall into four categories that represent how we relate to ourselves and the world. 

These four levels depict the nature of our:

  • Relationship with Ourselves
  • Relationship with Others
  • Relationship with the World
  • Relationship with Our Higher Selves

In general, each crisis is characterized by an “I can’t do this!” mantra, or some form of disempowered thinking, beliefs and actions.  The crises include:

  • “I can’t speak up for myself.”
  • “I can’t get out of this financial trap.”
  • “I can’t escape this crushing competition.”
  • “I can’t resolve my chronic health problems.”
  • “I don’t like who I’ve become.”
  • “I can’t use my real talents in my work.”
  • “I can’t balance life and work.”
  • “I can’t do work and play that I love.”

Entrepreneurial Women Face these Same Challenges

As I move forward with marketing consulting work for entrepreneurial women around the country, I’m finding that these same 12 crises are challenging women in their entrepreneurial ventures as well, and in the ways in which they view and run their businesses!

Entrepreneurial women are challenged on these same four levels:

Relationship With Themselves as Entrepreneurs 
Key issue: “Do I have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, and am I “good” or “smart” enough to run this business?”

Relationship With Others
Key issue: “How can I forge a mutually-beneficial and supporting relationship with clients, customers, colleagues, and peers?”

Relationship With The World
Key issue: “Am I using my real gifts and talents in this business, and is my business providing a service to the world that I care about delivering, that others need and want?”

Relationship With the Higher Self 
Key issue: “Does my business have a higher mission, vision and values that mean more  to me than simply making money?”

If you’re an entrepreneurial woman and are challenged with any of the above issues in your life and work, please know that there is indeed help out there for you, and these are very common challenges that entrepreneurial women face.  Also know that new thinking and actions can indeed shift you away from feeling disempowered and unable to tackle the issues at hand.  You can do this, and you can do it well, loving your work and thriving in the process. But you have to take action, and a kind of action that is different from what you normally would engage in.

There are four key steps to overcoming these types of challenges:

1. Step Back – to gain a fresh, empowered perspective of your situation and what it is telling you about what needs to change

2. Let Go – of the thinking, actions, and behaviors that are keeping you stuck and holding you back

3. Say Yes! – to your compelling future visions of your business and of your success as an entrepreneurial woman.

4. Create It – create a S.M.A.R.T. plan with concrete, measurable goals and action steps – and find someone to help you become accountable – for moving on your way to achieving your visions of success and fulfillment.

Try this experiment! Pick up a copy of my book Breakdown Breakthrough and read it.  (Commit to carving out a bit of time just for yourself over the holidays and read the chapters that really speak to you.)  As you read the book and the powerful stories and advice presented by women who have transformed their lives and work, focus specifically on the concepts and information that elicit a feeing of “resistance” in you – ideas or words that make you say to yourself, “Oh, I really don’t want to look at that,” or “That’s not me!”  Then take one, targeted action that will help you address the area you resist the most.

One of the most powerful concepts I learned in therapy training is, “What you resist, persists.”  Watch closely what you resist, because resistance is a sign that you’re overly attached to one particular view or approach, and you’ve closed yourself off from openly exploring other avenues.  I’ve found that the biggest breakthroughs, learning and growth come when we muster the courage to walk directly toward — and through — what we resist the most.

*  *  *  *  *

Let me know how the experiment works!  What is your deepest entrepreneurial struggle, and what did you learn when you mustered the courage to walk through your resistance to Say Yes! to yourself and your business.

Thank you for sharing, and wishing you many happy breakthroughs.

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Why Million-Dollar Coaching Promises Should Make You Leery

Friday, November 19th, 2010

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.” – Winston Churchill

These past few years I’ve been connected with literally dozens of coaches who promise that, if you follow their work and their model, you’ll be a millionaire. 

 Really?

I’ve listened intently to numerous coaching teleseminars these past months about how to make a million dollars, and so many are all about the insider “secrets” to making seven figures, and if you follow their “five easy steps” (or whatever model they’re pitching), you too can do it easily and effortlessly.

I don’t know about you, but I’m up to my craw with these ridiculous promises.  Why do they annoy me so much?  Because they’re misleading and unethical, and leading thousands of people down a path that is clearly not in their best interest.

I’m not saying that people can’t make a million dollars in their coaching practice, or other forms of business, and I’m not saying that there aren’t some great coaches out there who help people reach the million-dollar mark and higher. 

I am saying that there are many more ineffective, self-serving coaches who aren’t capable of helping you reach your high goals.  If you’re broke, and are told you can go from that to a millionaire in a year because you’re following this one coach’s program (and not doing all the inner and outer work it truly takes to be abundantly successful), then you’ll be sorely disappointed and waste a great deal of time and money in the process.

Here’s the rundown of my serious complaints about so many “millionaire” coaches:

Often millionaire coaches end up telling you exactly how they made their million, and recommend that you should follow their “five easy steps”.  However, my many years of training as a therapist, coach, marketing and business exec, writer and researcher of women tell me that:

  1. Easy Steps aren’t the ones that bring about life change: If it were easy, you’d be doing it!  What brings about massive shifting and change is the challenging stuff – the actions that make us fearful or take us WAY out of our comfort zone.  And “easy” steps are not necessarily easy or right or aligned with everyone.  Offering specific “easy” tactics to help people make more money is fine as far as it goes, but it’s not far enough without helping the individual identify specifically the powerful internal shifts they need to make to bring about far greater success.
  2. Broke to Millionaire – it’s doable, but I can tell you, if you’re flat broke, and are given a promise you can make half a million next year, it’s misleading at best, devastatingly off-track at worst.  The reason for that is that we all operate on a level that we’re comfortable at right now, and launching yourself 10 levels higher doesn’t typically work.  What does work is slow and steady progress to the next level higher, then the next and the next, and continuing that process with vigilance and commitment.
  3. Cookie-cutter models are ineffective – A cookie-cutter model to generate a million dollars in revenue is absurd.  To make seven figures, you have to power yourself up in ways that you don’t even realize right now – in your mindset, beliefs, actions, offerings, sense of worth, expectations, financial planning savvy, boundaries, self-advocacy, and in your relationship with money and success.  And you don’t do that by following someone else’s basic tactical strategy.  You do that through intently focused inner and outer work that brings you – step by step, day by day – to a new place that is right for you specifically.
  4.  These promises are entirely self-serving – These millionaire coaches want you to think it’s easy to follow their plan and succeed, because that’s how they make their millions!  Signing people up for programs that cost thousands of dollars, when in many cases the individual being coached can’t possibly recoup those thousands of dollars that year (or in the several years to come) given their mindset, capabilities (at the moment), and business model—that’s just plain wrong.

I come from a perspective of social and ethical consciousness, so seeing these promises being made in sleek and sleazy teleseminars and long-copy marketing pages – the whole thing makes my head spin.  They talk about offering high value and content in the teleseminar, but literally 60% of the seminar is selling their next event (using a cookie-cutter marketing approach for selling events!).

About money – I’ve made six figures in many years throughout my career, and I know what it takes to do it, and it’s not “5 Easy Steps.”  In winning the Make Mine a Million Dollar Business “Micro to Millions” program award in 2008, that one event in my life stepped up my goals and visions for my company significantly, and took me to new heights overnight.  Of course you can power up your career and your business and make great money – and a million dollars is within your reach if the necessary events, factors and ingredients are there, but it’s not through an easy five-step coaching model.

If you too are tired of (and disgusted with) these empty, over-simplistic and grandiose claims and selling tactics, you’re not alone!!  And don’t worry – you’re not being resistant or pushing away your millions to say that that these coaches and messages turn you way off.  There are other ways and means (and empowering mentors, coaches and consultants) who can truly help you achieve what you long for.

The key is in discernment – figure out how to tell the difference between a flashy, self-serving promise (that makes the process sound far easier than it is) vs. a heart-felt commitment to your success — with the intellectual, spiritual and ethical chops to make it work for you. Find helpers who wish to be of true service in helping you become exactly what you want to be in the world.

Thanks for listening to my rant!  And PLEASE share – are you tired of these empty, vacuous and absurd promises?  I’d love to hear.

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You Are Where You Are – and You’re Moving Up

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I’ve had some interesting revelations this week about my business as it is today, and about those individuals with whom I resonate best and most, and where I dream to take my work in the next five years.

 

Here’s what I realized:

 

1) I am where I am – that feels good

 

After an 18-year corporate career that was outwardly very “successful” but inwardly a deep and long-lasting struggle, I spent eight years reinventing and transformed to a new professional identity I love.  I then became an “expert” and advocate of women’s reinvention, because that’s exactly what I’d done well -  breaking through the 12 “hidden” crises working women face today, and reclaiming my life.  I conducted a national research study with over 100 women to learn more about how to break through crisis and transform, and I wrote a book about it to help others do the same.  It’s been all about breaking through.

 

2) But now I want to go somewhere else – and that feels better

 

Now, however, I want something else, something more than breakthrough, to offer others.  I consider myself “successful” both inwardly and outwardly, but now I am committed to ABUNDANT success – tremendous, free-flying, fantastic success (in key dimensions that matter to me) that blows my socks off with joy, fulfillment and empowerment.  I’m committed to creating a fantastically successful life and career.  I have new dreams – clear, crisp, and shiny.

 

To create/achieve that, I need more – more of myself, more knowledge, more insight, more strength, more energy, more perspective, more focus, and more risk.  To access that in myself, I’m doing what I love best to inspire me, yet again.  I’m reaching out to women I admire deeply – those who consider themselves abundantly success on their terms – and I’m learning from them.  I’ve found there are no better teachers than those you respect and admire who are doing what you’d like to, how you’d like to do it.

 

This week, I launched a new national research study Women Succeeding Abundantly – How and Why They Do It, and already, after just two interviews – Shama Kabani and Janet Hanson –  my socks have been blown off.  Why?  Because what I expect to hear from folks who’ve achieved something that I admire, is never what I end up hearing and learning.  It’s all very new and different from what I assumed.  (Stay tuned for more on these powerful interviews).

 

It reminds me of a conversation I had with my sister when she was in high school and I in middle school.  She was imparting to me her pearls of wisdom about dating and popularity, and told me that where people stood in the dating pool resembled being on a rung of a big, universal ladder – you are where you are, but you want to date someone who is one rung higher than you (that’s the dream anyway).  And you don’t want to go down a rung on your ladder!

 

Funny, I feel like I’m on a ladder – not one about popularity or “hierarchy” but an “energetic” ladder representing where I am and where I want to go.  I’m standing on my rung, arms outstretched, reaching toward my next rung – my future self — and am looking up, smiling and breathless.  I’m seeing on this new rung other tremendously successful and empowered women who have carved out a BIG life on their terms, and are loving it and making it work abundantly. 

 

These women are having fantastic success in the key aspects of their lives that they care most about – whether that’s family, home, personal, professional, financial, relationships, well-being, creativity, intimacy, contribution  – you name it, they’re doing it.  These women don’t subscribe to the notion that they can’t have it all – they simply don’t see it that way.  They believe in choosing to commit to the areas that mean the world to them, and then they going after these goals/outcomes with boundless gusto and commitment.

 

The lesson for me in all of this is – At any given moment, each of us is vibrating at certain energetic “level” that brings to us and creates in our lives exactly what we’re ready for, deep-down.  But then – suddenly and inexplicably — we want more and we want different, and we’re ready to create it.

 

So it’s time.  I want to step up to the next rung of the ladder of my life, to create abundant success.  I’m ready for the chin-up.  Are you?  Yes!!  Please come up with me!

 

Question of the week: What do you feel you’re ready for now – what’s your next “rung?”  What do you see for yourself and your life when you step onto that rung?  And will you commit to stepping up to it now?

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