I’ve been wanting to experiment with ChatGPT for a while now, but family, business, life…all the things have been going on and taking up a lot of my time.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, while I was procrastinating from reviewing my taxes, I thought – right now is my moment. Let’s play!
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I decided to start with one of my clients’ biggest questions in the career pivot.

How do I translate my strengths into potential paths outside of what I’ve always done?

This question stops people in their tracks because they don’t know what they don’t know.

I typically fuel them with answers from their network, online research and my own knowledge of which skills typically go with which roles.

Yet, what if we had a tool that could fast track clients with answers that they then could experiment with to see if they resonate and feel sparky?

So, I jumped in with two of my favorite hobbies: the Clifton Strengths and learning more about me.

I asked ChatGPT, “What careers are best for people with the top 5 Clifton Strengths: connectedness, activator, maximizer, communication and individualization?”

And oof, freaky.

Number one response…

Life Coach or Mentor:

This role allows individuals to leverage their connectedness to help others see the bigger picture and find meaning in their lives. The activator strength enables them to take action and initiate positive change, while maximizer helps them focus on optimizing their clients' potential. Effective communication skills are essential for guiding and motivating clients, while individualization helps tailor coaching strategies to each person's unique needs and goals.

Interestingly, Marketing Manager was also in the top five paths mentioned – so according to ChatGPT, I was on track with my previous career, as well.

I continued my experiment by asking about my clients’ strengths. Then adding in salary parameters and other variables from their non-negotiables list.

I wouldn’t say we were on-target all the time, but like anything generated with AI right now – it gave us some new ideas to think about, to ponder, to expand our thinking beyond what we know and what our circle of other humans know.

All to say – if this is the point you’re at, where you’re clear on your strengths, but you have no idea how to translate them into a new career path – give it a shot! You have nothing to lose and only new possibilities to gain.

Lastly, because I couldn’t help myself, I did ask ChatGPT: Write a blog post about how to use ChatGPT in a career pivot in the style of Rachel B Garrett.

And…it was complete shit.

So fellow humans who enjoy writing – there’s still a place for us. For now.

Did your first quarter fly by like mine?

Between kicking off my 2024 cohort of Career Command Four-Month Shift, helping all of my news clients remind themselves of who they are and matching up the right roles to their gifts, and starting my new community – Career Connections – it’s been a bit of a whirlwind.

Full transparency – I’m behind on solidifying my Q2 goals. And writing this note is helping me to get back on track – so thanks for the space to share and also – I mention this because it’s part of a process I use for goal-setting and planning that fits with my style and my strengths.

I begin all of my goal-setting with free writing or sparky conversations with colleagues and friends.

I must start from a creative, exploratory place before I can buy in and attach my name to tasks and due dates.

My (almost) thirteen year old daughter and I have been discussing this recently. We share a personality quirk that we can easily follow rules, jump into projects and go above and beyond – when we buy into that thing – whatever it is. And when we don’t – there’s struggle, often an impasse.

If you’re aware of Gretchen Rubin’s framework of The Four Tendencies, we’re the Questioners and we’re learning how to navigate being who we are with some self-awareness, self-honoring gifts of doing the things that energize us and the tough love of – sometimes there’s just shit you have to do.

After I let my ideas percolate for a short period of time, I like to make sure they’re aligned with my values and my overarching goals for the year.

You may remember, I am prone to epiphanies and I can create new things quickly. So, I’ve built in ways to validate whether or not these new ideas fit with my overarching goals for the year that I set in December of 2023.

In addition to my revenue goals, I have Career Self Care Goals in categories like: Energy, Relationships, Growth and Positioning. These are the domains where I can get intentional about how I want my business and career to look and feel – beyond the numbers.

Sample goals in these areas:

• Energy: Don’t send emails on the weekends. (I may write them, but I won’t send them)

• Relationships: Continue to set two networking conversations a month with people from my career advocates list. Hint: if you don’t have a list like this, I recommend making one asap.

• Growth: Research Embodiment Coaching Certification (I love thinking about all the new tools I can bring to my work!)

• Positioning: Rework my LinkedIn to reflect my current offerings and messaging.

This all feels doable for me in addition to all I have on my plate already. I like to make my goals realistic and even inviting and fun. Because – we all know what happens when they’re not. Not only are you unlikely to achieve them – but you may not even set goals for the next quarter/year/ever again.

I’m curious to hear more about how you’re thinking of goal setting. What has worked for you in the past? How do you continue to tweak your process? How can you make it fit with your personality, your style and your strengths?

A few weeks ago, I reconnected with a former colleague from one of my first jobs. Actually, he hired me into an ad agency digital producer role in the height of the dot com days – and it changed the course of my career.

I hadn’t seen him in nearly two decades and we were transported back to that –anything was possible– time of our lives.

Not only was I energized by spending a couple of hours with my old friend, but I was also brimming with a visceral delight to revisit someone else…

24 year old me.

It’s not like I haven’t thought about her much – but it’s typically in the realm of my personal life woes and the 20’something struggle to learn adulting on the quick.

Yet – when I think about the fierce, driven, risk-taker I was at that age in my professional life – I’m not only confounded by her, I want to take her to dinner and pepper her with questions.

According to cultural box-checking...the reasons I was finding success and momentum in my career were not obvious.

I didn’t ace college. I had zero connections. I didn’t have a one year plan, let alone a 5 year. In fact, I had no clue what I wanted to do short or long term. Some of you may remember I changed my major 5 times!

And while I may have been scared shitless often in my personal life, somehow in my early professional life…

I advocated for myself like a boss – even with colleagues and managers twice my age.

I built deep and meaningful relationships with people who spoke my names in rooms I wasn’t in.

I ran towards change when others ran from it.

I jumped into new exciting challenges, even when I had no idea where they would take me.

I brought joy and jokes that landed at least 70% of the time.

And in revisiting early career me, I see so many clues that could have led me to where I am right now in my career.

Not just in the work I enjoyed, but in the person I showed up to be.

In the qualities that have always driven my momentum.

I invite you to do the same with your early career self.

Take 24 year old you to dinner and bring your curiosity.

What do you have to learn from this person who may not yet be fully immersed in the high stakes of adult responsibilities that are currently on your plate?

And what can you do to embody that version of you – even for an hour this week?

I can’t wait to hear what 24 year old you made you do that you thought you would regret!

I review a lot of resumes.

As part of my 1:1 and Group Coaching Programs, I provide a resume audit after my clients have used the best practices shared in my online modules to tweak and optimize the most recent version of their resumes.

Often, I ask clients to show more quantifiable results in their bullets. Growth in the business. Operational cost savings. Engagement with the product. And yes – your awards!

Yet – lately I’ve been noticing that my director and VP level clients are over-indexing on business results content – and they’re missing something critical.

Bullets that demonstrate your leadership expertise.

If you’re targeting roles in which you’ll be leading a team, DO NOT FORGET to talk about your leadership skills and results.

Did you grow a team? If so, by what percentage or to how many employees?
Did you receive excellent results for your leadership in your employee satisfaction survey?
Did you recruit, mentor, develop, redistribute your team so that they improved efficiency and engagement in their work?
Did you inherit a team and transform the culture and effectiveness?
Did you implement training, coaching and a culture of feedback and growth on your team?

All of these results will build a bridge to what is possible for you in your next leadership role.

These are not in any way soft skills. Don’t even get me started on my soft skills soap box. Not a thing, people.

These are relationship building skills.

These are communication skills.

These are leadership skills.

So, make sure they are well-represented and clear. Shine them up and show them off.

I received a beautiful compliment a few days ago and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop.

A new-ish client of mine had a few questions and she asked if we could jump on a quick call (outside of our regular session time) to discuss them.

Extra calls in between sessions are not included in my coaching program. I offer email support and Monthly Office Hours as a way to answer questions that fall outside of session time.

In my nearly nine years in business, this has come up a lot. And like most boundary setting exercises – this simple request has been a complex journey for me.

In the past when I’ve taken the call, in the name of over-delivering, the meeting is not brief and it in essence becomes a session. A session that I’m not being compensated for.

Full transparency – in these moments, I’ve felt resentment bubbling up within me.

It’s the same resentment my clients feel when people ask them for time to “pick their brain” on topics that are directly related to their expertise and their means of making a living.

When you’re a generous, giving human, it’s hard to say no. It just is.

That’s why, I don’t say no. I give options that work for my time and what I know it’s worth.

I responded back to the request, “Feel free to send your questions within an email or come into Office Hours on Monday where you can get answers from the group. I don’t jump on additional calls in between sessions.”

This brings me back to the best compliment ever.

In our next session, my client said “Thank you for your note about the extra call. You modeled what kind, clear boundary-setting looks like. And I needed to know that was possible.”

She tapped into something so important to me. The thing that gets me over the hurdle every time I still writhe in setting the boundary.

How am I ever going to coach clients on identifying and honoring their own boundaries if I am ignoring mine?

I’m holding my lines AND I’m sharing what it looks like to do so.

Not everyone will be this open and receptive to your boundaries – and that’s ok.

You should expect mixed reviews of agency and self-advocacy in our Patriarchal hustle culture. That’s not your problem, nor is it your responsibility to convince them of anything.

But the feeling of my clarity inspiring someone I admire to stand in her power is a lasting gift reminding me of my gratitude for this work.

For most of my life I’ve considered myself a raging extrovert.

Yet, somehow the combination of pandemic life and middle age has prompted me to embrace my growing introverted side. In addition to recalibrating my social life  because of my kaput party-stamina, it’s also brought me to a shift in how I approach networking.

And it’s this change in perspective and planning that has helped me truly appreciate and support my introverted clients in all of their networking endeavors.

So for all of you whose eyes just opened a little wider, here’s my…

5-min Networking Guide for Introverts

The “who”:

1. Prioritize one on one conversations over big events where you’re mixing with multiple people. That’s a lot of people-ing.

2. Wherever possible, choose people to connect with who you find energizing.

The “how”:

1. Choose a place to meet that is quiet, calm and not too crowded.

2. Make it easy for the other person to meet with you with a convenient time and place for them.

3. Do some research on the other person’s work, organization and career. Your research will show you value their time. And you can do it while you’re by yourself!

4. Be yourself in the meeting. Be open. Be honest. Be vulnerable. It takes a lot more energy to be someone else and when you’re yourself – you attract the right people and repel the wrong people.

5. Build in quiet, solo downtime before and after your conversation.

6. Don’t judge yourself for needing quiet, solo downtime before and after your conversation. You need what you need. It doesn’t mean anything negative about you.

The “what”:

1. Always have a goal for the conversation. There are hundreds of potential goals that you can get at with strategic questions. (What’s the culture like at your organization? How did you make your career transition? What’s your day to day like in your role?)

2. Start the conversation with some questions about the stuff of being human – family, weekends, vacations, etc.

3. Make sure you get to the goal by the halfway mark of the conversation. If you get through the whole meeting without discussing it, you both will feel like it was a nice talk, but neither of you got anything out of it.

4. Authentically appreciate the other person for their good work (see the research you did, above) and their willingness to take time to speak with you.

5. Send a thoughtful note after your meeting to follow-up on any to-do items that came up in the conversation and to deeply appreciate them.

That’s it.

It does take energy, but it doesn’t need to be complicated. You’ll click with some people and you won’t with others. When you don’t click – it’s not about you. It’s about the fit – and you can’t expect to fit with everyone.

I look forward to hearing how it goes when you take all of this guidance out for a spin.


You got this, introverts!

In 2021, I had a rough personal and business year. Funny how those two things usually line up. Personally, I lost a beloved family member–which for me brings up the many other losses in my past. And professionally–I was struggling to keep the business afloat. I was doing a lot of social marketing and trying to launch my groups multiple times a year…and something wasn’t clicking.

It came to a point at the beginning of 2022, when I thought about quitting my business and finding a full time job. While I was sending out resumes and networking toward this goal, I also decided to spend some quality time with my Clifton Strengths report to find some answers.

As is typical with my time spent revisiting my Clifton Strengths–I did find a nugget of truth. One that I’ve been nurturing for the past two years and has brought me the greatest success of my nearly three-decade (oof!) career.

My 2022 insight (that is still hard to say out loud–damn you, Patriarchy!):

My most powerful gifts lie within my ability to build and nurture deep, meaningful relationships.

In this newsletter and in person…

It’s impossible for me to stay on the surface for very long with people. I go there.

And my people, they’re game. They’re in. They stay for the long haul and we go deeper every time.

Everyone else…well, they run for their lives. They change the subject. They unsubscribe.

But truly, that’s ok. I don’t have time to remain on the surface. That’s not real life. Not mine, anyway.

So, in 2022 that translated to reconnecting with coach colleagues, therapists, mentors and former clients. Showing up and giving generously in communities that are important to me. And most importantly, spending more time with friends who energize me and truly see me as I am.

The sparky energy I felt for my work and the business results followed many-fold.

In 2023, I continued to focus my efforts on relationship-building by deepening my work with former and current clients. I created free Monthly Office Hours sessions so I could build community and connect people I respect and admire–so they can support each other. I also experimented with new group formats to learn more about what works and doesn’t for the relationships I want to build.

And here I am after year two of the big relationships project and I’m more alive in my work than ever before. It feels aligned with who I am and the change I want to bring into the world.

To quote psychotherapist, icon, visionary Esther Perel – “It is the quality of our relationships that will determine the quality of our lives.”

Our careers do not get an exemption from this rule.

The quality of our relationships will determine the meaning we find in our careers–and I’m excited to say this will be a new additional area of focus for me in my work in 2024.

I want to build a community where we have monthly discussions on all the many topics at the intersection of relationships and career.

Loneliness, boundaries, dealing with assholes, intergenerational communication, networking in your own way…the list is long.

In addition to monthly sessions there will be quarterly virtual networking facilitated by me.

Most important to me…

It will be human.

It will be vulnerable.

It will go deep.

It will welcome all genders.

And it will be less than $1000 for the year.

I’m still working through the details for a more official launch, but I want to put the word out to all of you who may not be in career transitions and are looking for a way we can work together.

If this sounds like something you’d want to learn more about, please click yes below to send an email my way.

Thanks for continuing to stick with me as I delve into some of the more difficult career topics.

I appreciate you and your commitment to finding meaning in your work.

Are you as exhausted as I am from the onslaught of Big January Energy?
The "you’re already behind, your weaknesses are holding you back " vibe?

Side note to the marketers on this: fear does not motivate people long term.

And to the organizational leaders: you can’t accomplish the entire year’s goals in January. So put away the six decks you’re working on concurrently. You’re burning out your people in week four of the new year.

How can we possibly sustain this pace?

As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking an intentionally different approach to January. One that interrupts the crushing messaging about all I need to change about myself and my business.

It’s unhelpful, unproductive and well…unfun.

While everybody else is Dry Januarying or New Year, New You’ing – I’m rounding out my Self-Love January – and it feels rebellious in all the best ways.

I’m writing down my energizing new ideas for the year AND I’m simply letting them percolate.

I don’t need to take action yet and force the ideas into the world before I’m ready. It feels grounding to give myself some time to let the ideas untangle themselves.

I’m meeting the Big January Energy in my people with calm and compassion. Modeling another way that comes from an inner knowing of what truly motivates me.

I’m building wide berths of buffer into my calendar.

I’m seeing heart filling friends and colleagues for coffee, lunch and REALLY chilly walks.

I’m respecting my body’s desire to hibernate on cold, dark winter nights. I’ll meet you for an evening in April.

My self-love January is mostly about self-trust and the belief that I know what’s best for me.

And it’s not anything you’re selling to make me better. I’m already pretty great.

I hope as we round out this month, we also say goodbye to all that’s already burning you out. And if not, we could make Self-Love February a thing too. I’m in if you’re in.

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