Choosing a Career: Jumpstart Your Journey to Your Dream Job

If you're just starting out in your career or just trying to find the right career path for you, you're in the right place. Tracy Tim is joining us today to walk you through some thought exercises that will help you hone in on your ideal career. Tracy is the author of the book Unstoppable, founder of the online learning company Thrivist, and the creator of The Nth Degree, a proven and trademark process for helping high-potential professionals define and pursue work they love. And that's me, Brandy Warwus. I'm on Indeed's Job Seeker Experience team, and we're responsible for creating helpful resources and events like this Job Cast for our users, like you. So choosing a career is a big decision and a lot to cover in one workshop, so let's get started. Brandy, thank you so much for that warm introduction, and welcome everyone to today's Job Cast, which is on choosing your ideal career. Again, my name is Tracy Tim. I am so excited to be here to share this information with you today as you head off to do some amazing and wonderful and impactful work in the world. So here is what we're going to cover on today's workshop. We're going to start with the real stakes of your career choices. I believe that understanding the real stakes at hand and how you may be underestimating what your career decisions are costing you really gives you the motivation to dial in when it comes to finding your ideal career fit. Then we're going to talk about the three keys to that ideal career fit and how if you optimize these three keys together, you can actually define a custom career that fits you like a hand in a glove. Then we're going to talk about defining your unique career niche, which is absolutely vital to either advocating for yourself as you progress in your career and your growth or making a case for a career switch even early on in your professional life. And then of course, we're going to wrap up with how this can help you not only now, but how clarity can help you even further down the road in your career, and specifically how you can master a career clarity process that can serve you both now and when your circumstances change later in life. And then of course, you guys, if you stick around with us all the way to the end, Brandy mentioned this, she and I both have a couple of amazing freebie resources to share with you at the end of this process so that you can go on after today and not just have a great webinar experience, but actually start jumping into the process of choosing your ideal career. So let's jump right in with item number one, which is understanding the real stakes of your career choices. Now, it is no secret that we've been experiencing more uncertainty than ever before in our world, right? I think most people have started off their webinars with that fact in the last year and a half. And many of us may feel like that's caused us to put real life on hold. And the reaction that many of us have when real life is on hold is to step back and to sort of wait and see what the new normal will be and where we might fit in in that new picture. But today, I'm going to share with you some specific ways that you can actually use or leverage this time of collective confusion, not to just stay where you are, but to get ahead and to take advantage and to actually make some progress in your career while others may just be standing still. I'm here to tell you that the wait and see method that a lot of us think is safe, especially in times of uncertainty, is not the way to get ahead. In all the work that I've done over the past several years running my business, and then during the last year and a half dealing with a lot of uncertainty myself, I've seen one resounding trend, and this is true. Those of us with the most clarity are positioned to win in times of major uncertainty. What does that mean? It means that when the world is experiencing collective uncertainty and it feels like we're all taking a pause, the few of us who actually have clarity, who take this time to make strides in their own understanding of themselves, those are the ones who are going to be able to move their career forward when it seems like everyone else is standing still. Having that clarity puts you back in the driver's seat. In fact, when we have clarity, then no matter what the circumstances, we can still make really great decisions, feel empowered in our careers, and even somewhat main a semblance of control and stability around our own destiny. So why do we need to be so focused on clarity? Why do our careers really even matter that much? It's because when it comes to work, the stakes are so incredibly high. You're probably thinking, of course, about money when we talk about stakes, right? Money is probably the number one factor that we associate with our careers. What happens when we're unclear and unfocused professionally is that we're actually not able to make the same amount of money we would make if we knew our highest professional value and we pursued work in that area. In fact, studies show that people who love their work and have clarity and focus in their professional lives not only make more money than everybody else, but they make it faster. So when we lack clarity, we're actually leaving dollars on the table. And for most of us, that's a big part of the reason that we work at all. But the stakes don't just stop with money. Then you've got to think about your time. Time functions a lot like money, except you don't get time back. You can't earn any more of it. Once it's gone, it's gone. Time is this always dwindling asset that I think, unfortunately, most of us take for granted. And many of you, I know, are early on in your career, and it may feel like you have all the time in the world to play trial and error when it comes to finding work that is ideal, work that you love. But I'll tell you this, as you progress in your career, you will find that time moves a little faster every single year. And it's much more challenging to make changes later in your career than it is to enact them earlier, even if it feels scary. I'm telling you, ask any senior person in your current position, and they will tell you that this is categorically true. So what could be more valuable than time? Well, I believe that that's our individual lives, our purposes, and our impact. As far as any of us know, we get this one incredible shot at a life and having an impact on the world. And I guarantee you, I know that you care about this. If you didn't care about your impact, if you didn't care about your life and how your work fits into that life, you wouldn't be on a webinar or a Job Cast put on by Indeed, wondering and trying to figure out how to find your ideal career. All of you are here because your life and your impact and your enjoyment of that life deeply matter to you. But when you're not clear about your career, it can end up feeling like you're wasting some of these precious moments in this ultimately not unlimited but finite amount of time and life that you have. So why am I reminding you of the value of time and money and your impact when it comes to your career? These reasons are precisely why clarity, meaning extreme focus, meaning what we are going to be talking about today, the exact areas in the working world where you can add the most value and achieve the most impact. These reasons are why having that amount of clarity is so important. Because when it comes to clarity, when you have it, you can rise above the noise of everyone else. When you have clarity, you can have the confidence and conviction to ace interviews. When you have clarity, you can stay in the driver's seat of your own career, no matter the external circumstances, no matter what is going on in the world. And when you focus on these exact areas in the world of work where you can add the most value and achieve the greatest impact, then you can accomplish these three things. You can make more money, you can save more time, and you can live a more fulfilling and impactful life. And I think that's something that we all honestly want. But having ideal work that fits you like a glove is not a nice-to-have. It is not something extra that we're all hoping for. It's essential when it comes to maximizing these three areas of your existence, of your life, so you can thrive in every single facet of your life. Now, I've highlighted the real stakes of our career to get you inspired, to get you excited about what's going to happen in the next 50 minutes of this webinar. If you feel excited to dive into these actual strategies, which we are going to get into next, I want you to type yes into that chat box right now. Type it in all caps. Tell everybody that you are excited and inspired, and this is helping you double down to make sure that this is important. So before we head on to the next section, I'm going to kick it over to Brandy for a little bit of early Q&A. Thanks, Tracy. One question that's come up is, I'm 50-plus. Is a career too late for me? You know, are employers more discouraged because of my age? And I can actually answer that we have an entire Job Cast dedicated to avoiding ageism in the hiring process, so I definitely recommend that you check that out. But no, it's not too late, and hopefully some of the exercises that we'll do with Tracy today will help you find what that niche is for you where you can still make an impact. Love that. Thank you for sharing that, Brandy. And I'll also add that one of our clients in our 10-week Career Clarity program right now, we're only in week six. He is also in his mid-50s. He just landed a job halfway through a process that's supposed to take 10 weeks, and I believe that he did it because of having this depth and level of clarity. Because when you can speak to your true value as a professional, that's when you stand out in the career marketplace. But we can't do that unless we know exactly where we fit the best. And that's why this next section of these three keys to finding your ideal career fit are so important. We've covered the real stakes. We know how important they are, so now we have a reason to care. We have a reason to find out and discover our ideal fitting career. So let's hop into the next section where we're going to actually identify the three types of professional career fit. Now, knowing these three puzzle pieces is absolutely crucial to figuring out where you want to go in your career. Now, I know that putting together a career can feel a lot like putting together a puzzle without knowing what the puzzle cover looks like. So we are going to start with the puzzle pieces themselves. We're going to start with puzzle piece number one, which is now, puzzle piece number two, which is nature, and puzzle piece number three, which is nurture. And I'm going to explain to you what each of these puzzle pieces actually mean. So first of all, let's go a little bit deeper into each one and how they actually align with certain types of career fit. So first we have now. Now is a concept that encompasses your values as a professional. This includes your current life circumstances, your vision for your future, both short and long term, and then your personal set of commitments. So where you are in your life right now, if you're really honest about it, that's going to equate to how you align with the values of a certain business or the values of a certain career. So this puzzle piece will have to do with how your work fits into your life and your lifestyle, how the values and mission and vision of an organization align with your own values, and then even how the culture or the climate of a working environment fits your personal set of commitments. And when we have a strong alignment with our values and who we are right now, then that means your career will have the foundational components to be aligned with you authentically and to keep you fulfilled. So that is puzzle piece number one. Puzzle piece number two, I like to call nature. Conceptually, nature encompasses anything that is innate to you as a professional. So this can include your behaviors, your attitude, your strengths, or even your professional gifts. Now, how you are hardwired and how you function when you're simply being yourself is going to equate to personality or environmental fit within a given career. So this puzzle piece has to do with how your role and your responsibilities are going to align with your habits of behavior, how your work environment aligns with your core personality, and how your overall career or business aligns with your strengths. And when you have a really strong alignment in this area with your personality and your nature, what's great is you can simply be successful by being yourself, which is extraordinarily important when it comes to your energy and your efficiency in work. And then last but of course, not least, we have nurture. Nurture as a concept encompasses what you've learned or earned as a professional. So this can include any knowledge, any expertise, or any skills that you've gathered through your collective experiences over time. So your nurture or your skills are going to equate to how you align with the required competencies to complete a job successfully. So this puzzle piece has to do with how your body of knowledge aligns with the subject matter of the work that you're going to do, how your skills allow you to complete your work adeptly and quickly, and then how your overall experiences overlap with or align with, right, the work that you are required to do each and every day. So if you have a strong alignment in this area of your skills or your competency, then that means you're actually able to do a good job without a whole lot of training or without a whole lot of time to get yourself up to speed. So as you can see, having any one of these three fits, having a now values fit, a nature personality fit, or a nurture competency fit would be a huge boon to your career. But I'm going to take it one step further. Having alignment in any one of those areas is great, but the ultimate goal is that we identify a career path that leverages all three. That we find a profession that aligns with our values, our personality, and our competencies so that we can be aligned philosophically, we can be aligned personally, and of course, and maybe most importantly, aligned professionally. So that means that the goal is no longer finding any one of these three things. It's finding all of them so you can find your niche where your values, your talents, and your skills overlap. The most amazing part about figuring out your niche is that your unique niche in the marketplace is unique to you. You will not have the same now nature and nurture combination as anyone else, which means it's incredibly difficult for anyone to compete with you at that level because this job will be inherently so uniquely tailored to who you are. So this is not only how you rise to the occasion, but it's also how you become an asset to a business, how you add maximum value to them so you can earn maximum value in return. So we're going to jump right into puzzle piece number one, which is now. If you've got your pens, your pencils, your notebooks, your e-reader, whatever you're taking notes on, bring that out because now we're going to jump into the nitty gritty of actually figuring out each of these puzzle pieces and how you can do this for yourself and your own career. So puzzle piece number one is now. Imagine your life's journey or path is charted on a GPS. Anytime you pull up your phone and you go into Maps and you want to go somewhere, you are going to put in your destination, but you're going to put in your personal current location first. And that's because you need to know where you're departing from in order to know how you're going to get where you want to go. This is a great thing to remind ourselves and we that we simply cannot ignore where we are in our lives right now, just because we want to be somewhere else. It is so crucial at this phase of your life, no matter what phase of your life, early, mid, late career to honor where you are at this stage and phase so that you can make a plan as to how you're going to move forward and that that plan is actually going to work for you. And the way that we do that is by getting really honest about where you are right now and what's going on in your life. Now, I know many of you are coming into this because your early stage career, and that is so wonderful. Your values and your commitments and your vision for your life right now are totally beautiful and valid. And guess what? Five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, they're going to change. They're going to grow and evolve. And that's because you are going to be in a different place in your life. They may even be different from your peers, different from your parents. And the goal of getting really clear on where you are right now is honoring that so that you can have an authentically aligned professional career. Now, if you're living in alignment with your values, you're going to experience more sustainability and more success. So this is gut check moment number one of four. We're going to have four of these gut check moments as we move throughout this process today. And the question that I have to ask for you today is what are you choosing? Every decision you make in life, every decision, especially as it relates to your career, speaks to something you do or do not value. And so today the question is, what are your decisions saying? I want you to answer this honestly in the chat with a yes or a no. If you were to align your career choices so far with what you actually value, would they align? Yes or no. This is a gut check moment. This is you being totally brutally honest with yourself, honest with everybody in the chat so that they can see that they're not alone. You are not alone. We do this all the time. But having sustainable success means having alignment with our unique definition of value. And that's how we have foundational sustainable success in our careers. Okay, great. Perfect. Right. I want sustainable success. I want to be aligned philosophically with my job. How do I do that? This is going to be our very first exercise today. Of course, we this is a workshop, but we do we do not have time to go in depth into each of these exercises. So if you want to do these later on, I encourage you to take notes as we go on the step by step process to figure out each of these areas. So if you are going to get really clear on your values, then no better place to start than with your core values. So in order to do this, I like to call this the 10 2030 core values process. So step number one is you're going to take 10 minutes, and you're going to do a brain dump of everything that you currently value, right? It could be warm kitten cuddles, it could be having a local bartender who knows your name and makes you feel at home. It could be having your family nearby, it could be success and everything that that means to you, right? But all I want you to do for 10 minutes is do a brain dump of everything you currently value. Then, step two is you're going to take 20 minutes and you're going to look at a list of values for inspiration. Any list of values will do. I know that Brandy and everybody at Indeed actually has a beautiful resource for this area, which she's going to tell you about in a moment, but you just want to look at a list of values for inspiration so that you can make sure that you don't skip anything that's crucially important to you. Lastly, step number three is you're going to take 30 minutes and you're going to group similar values together. By the end of steps one and two, you're probably going to have 50, 100, 150, 200 words or phrases written out on a page, but we don't have 50, 100, 150, 200 values. We probably, most of us, really only have seven to ten. So, the goal of grouping them is to get really clear on what these groups actually are so that you can name them and rank them and define them so that they can actually work for you. Now, step number four sounds a little crazy, but I want you to step away from it. Take a break. Take a nap. Go for a run. Maybe sleep on it. Come back to it when you have a fresh head and actually look at these groups and ask yourself, are these true for me right now? So that, lastly, you can name all of your values. You want to give them names that are inspiring to you and then you're going to rank them so that they are in order so that they can actually be used as a litmus test for your ideal career. Go ahead and ask your friends or family to do this with you. My family and I did a version of it recently and it was really eye-opening to see how our top values differed. There was no wrong or right, only better understanding yourself and ensuring that your decisions align with what you value. Absolutely, Brandy. That's a wonderful, wonderful mention. And you're right. They're going to change and they're going to be different than other people's and that's the importance of this step is honoring where you are. Indeed recently launched the Work Happiness Score, a new company rating metric by employees that you can find on Indeed company pages. We did a full Job Cast about it, so check that out to dive deeper. But essentially, there are 12 core value dimensions that make up work happiness or well-being. And as your job searching on Indeed, you can actually click in and see how your own core values align with those of potential employers. Beautiful. So let's jump into puzzle piece number two, which I like to call nature. Now, why nature? Why is this part of our career so important? Imagine your favorite athlete or imagine your favorite animal. Maybe you follow an Olympian that you love, or maybe you've got a special animal that is near and dear to your heart. Well, when you think about athletes and animals, both elite athletes and then everyday animals have very clear and obvious ideal environments. One of my favorite quotes of all time is that Einstein said, everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it will live its whole life feeling stupid. So the question today, and what I want to remind you is, you are a professional athlete of sorts. You are a professional animal of sorts. You have an ideal environment where you are made to thrive. Your set of gifts, your talents, your strengths, your personality, your behaviors are best suited for some environments, but frankly, not all environments. So this is gut check moment number two. The question is, are you playing your best game or are you perhaps playing someone else's? Whose ideal game, whose ideal environment are you trying to survive in right now? High achievers like you and like me and like Brandy, we were raised learning how to win. School had A's and F's, so we knew if we were winning or losing. Athletics has winners and losers, so we knew if we got a good outcome or not. Every facet of our lives until we get out into the working world has a very clear winner and a very clear loser, and sometimes it's easy to get caught up in someone else's ideal role, ideal environment, or ideal version of success and forget that we each have our own. And in order to experience sustainable success, we have got to be laser focused on not just playing any game that we could succeed at any level simply because we're smart or we work hard or we're resourceful. We want to focus on playing our best game, the game that we are most highly suited for. And I know that I experienced this personally in trying to start my career on Wall Street and feeling like that fish trying to climb a tree, and I know Brandy has a great story about this as well. This is definitely something I wish I thought more about early in my career. Sometimes you can be good at things, but they aren't necessarily aligned to your personality. Surviving isn't thriving. After college, I went into strategy consulting because I talked to some folks in the field and I thought, hey, I can do that and it pays a lot. But pretty quickly, I realized that the actual environment wasn't a good fit for my personality because it was super competitive and based heavily on internal politics and networking. Although I've always been a high achiever, I've never been motivated by competition. I'm the type of person who's energized by collaboration and helping others. So there was just no way that job was sustainable for me. And that is such a great moment to remember that we're just not looking for any job. We're looking for sustainable success, right? Not success that you burn out from in a year or two years, but success that you can enjoy for the long haul so you can have energy and do great work at the same time. What a beautiful example. So this is one of my favorite exercises to get really clear on some components of your unique nature. Now, you've probably taken every assessment in the world, which is why I'm not going to rep an assessment at this moment in time. I'm going to teach you instead one of my favorite activities to leverage what we call the mirrors in others. Now, oftentimes when it comes to our nature, because we are so close to the problem, if you will, right? Identifying our own nature is challenging because it comes so easily and naturally to us. It is so easy to overlook or underestimate what we do really well because we're so used to doing it really well. We didn't have to work very hard at it. It's not very fascinating to us. But when you ask other people about your strengths, they will be able to identify not only what you're good at, but how and why that is valuable above and beyond how you believe it is valuable. So this is my favorite exercise. We call this mirrors in others. The first thing that I want you to do is access a phone, an email, an online network of some sort, and then you are going to list out 20 people that you know and that you trust. Now, the first thing I know that's gonna hop into the chat is, Tracy, I don't think I know 20 people. Well, I guarantee that you do. Push yourself to find at least 20 people that you know and trust in any area of your life, personal or professional, and you're gonna reach out to each one of these people in whatever modality works best for you, and you're gonna ask them one simple question. What are my three greatest strengths? What are my three greatest strengths? Then you're going to sit back and wait for the awesomeness to fall on you. Once you start getting answers from people, you're gonna compile those answers, and you're going to look for patterns. I have done this exercise with hundreds of professionals to this day who have asked 20 to 25 people what their three greatest strengths are, and the fascinating trend is that each individual only has about five, an average of five, total strengths that are reported among all 20 to 25 people. There may be some outliers here and there, but the trends do not lie. When you are showing up at your best, you show up consistently, and this is a great moment in time for you to get that objective and honest feedback from the people in your life that care about you, so you can actually start to value and leverage these strengths in your professional career. We are going to move on to puzzle piece number three, which I like to call nurture. Now, what is nurture, and why is this so important? Well, if nature is everything that comes naturally to you, then nurture is everything else. I like to say it's everything you've learned or earned that you've put in your toolkit over time to make you the professional that you are today. However, early in your career, it is easy to feel like you lack valuable work experience, and then even later on in your career, it can be easy to feel like the work experience that you do have is no longer relevant or valuable. This is especially true if you're pursuing a path that is not directly related to your major or your field of study. It's also especially true if you are trying to make any sort of significant switch or transition within your career. But I am here today to tell you and challenge you and remind you, you have valuable experiences. You have been alive this long, you've experienced something in life, and it is up to us as the quote-unquote professional athletes to uncover these puzzle pieces of value and to pull them out and articulate them powerfully and with confidence and conviction, knowing that they are valuable and related to our career. This is gut check number three. If you are not leveraging your previous experiences in every format, whether it's work or education or other various life experiences, then potentially you are wasting them. So this is question number three. Life provides nothing if not lessons and experiences for us to leverage, and everything can be useful if we try to use it. I learned this very early on in my career. After I left Wall Street, I thought that I had to start my professional life from scratch because I didn't ever want to be in that environment again. I had a very close friend and mentor tell me, listen, you can choose to see your past as wasted time, or you can choose to always find something you can use, something you can transfer, and something you can carry with you going forward. And she calls this the nothing is wasted mindset. So one of your keys to sustainable success along with everything we've gone over so far is going to be really cultivating a nothing is wasted mindset. Well, how do we do this, right? My favorite exercise for this is diving into what I like to call your ninja skills. Okay, so when it comes to your leverageable experiences, there are three major places that we want you to look in your life. We want you to look at your work experiences. We want you to look at your education experiences. And then we want you to look at everything else, your hobbies, your extracurricular activities, your travel experiences, any unique life experiences that you've had are ripe for finding puzzle pieces that you can leverage going forward. So in order to complete this exercise, you'll want to list out all of your previous work experiences, go all the way back to that babysitting job or that hostess job you had at a local restaurant, and write everything down that you've done for work. Then go back to both your formal and your informal education, write down any degrees or certifications that you have. But then also look at what you love to do intellectually for yourself, the podcasts you listen to, the books that you read, the magazines that you flip through, anything that fascinates you. Then lastly, you want to go through your hobbies, your extracurricular activities, and any travel experience that you've had. Anything that you do just because you love doing it. And you're gonna ask yourself a couple of critical questions. These are my favorite three. What did I learn? And be objective about it. What did I enjoy? And be honest about it. And what can I use? And be creative about it. What did I learn? What did I enjoy? And what can I use moving forward? Make any notes. And again, you want to be looking for patterns that indicate subject matter, or indicate role and responsibilities, or indicate an environment that's going to be ideal for you. When it comes to landing a job, understanding these transferable skills is crucial to standing out in the applicant pool. My passion has always been travel, and the skills I've developed through traveling are applicable in my work and show a clear thread in my competencies for project management and planning. Because I'm the type of person who has a full Excel workbook for every trip with an itinerary and budget. Traveling has also helped me build interpersonal skills, adaptability, problem-solving. Those nurtured traits have real impact on my ability to do my job. I love that. And think how much more of an interesting and exciting person you show up as in an interview or the job search process when you're pulling all of these facts about what an incredible professional you are from your hobbies, and from your travel experience, and from all these other creative places that other people are not looking. This is yet another way to set yourself apart from the noise. So, so far we've been discovering your puzzle pieces, right? The Legos, if you will, that make up the awesome and unique professional that you are. And next we're going to transition into how specifically to put those puzzle pieces together to form your ideal professional career, or what I like to call your niche. But before we jump into making conclusions, we're gonna pause real quickly for some midpoint Q&A to see if we can answer any questions at this stage. Yeah, one question that came up that I think is really relevant is, is it realistic to expect that everyone in society will have a dream job? What about those, you know, jobs that maybe people don't dream about? I love this question because, to be honest, I think we can all aspire to find our ideal careers, or we can believe that it's not possible for us because it's not possible for everyone. While it may not be possible for everyone, if you are here today, you have access to the internet, you have access to resources, and you have access to inspiring individuals to help remind you that while it may not be possible for everyone, it is a hundred percent possible for you. I don't know you, I don't know your specific background, I don't know what's going on in your life and in your world, but I do know this. We are all here for a reason, and it is a hundred percent up to you to be the person who's going to seek out an ideal professional experience. That you can control. Whether or not we land there, of course we cannot control. But if you give your greatest shot at it, you're that much more likely to end up in that space. So I just encourage you to, yes, be honest and realistic about the fact that this might not be everybody's experience, but that doesn't mean it can't be your experience. Yeah, and I also want to add that your dream job or dream career doesn't necessarily mean the thing that you, you know, making money by doing your favorite hobby. That's not necessarily your dream job. A dream job or career could really be just whatever allows you to live your best life. So if you know, your family and being at home is really important to you and that's what you value the most, then your dream job might just be something that gives you the flexibility to do that and to spend time at home. You know, thinking about it more broadly is not just the thing that you want to do every day, but what enables you to live your best life. I think that's an important lens to use when you talk about dream careers. I think that's beautifully said, Brandy, and that's why we always start with now. That's why we always start with values. That is your foundation, and if you know what you value ahead of time, then you know what you're willing to entertain, and you know when to say no when no is the right answer. Alrighty, so thank you for that pause for Q&A. We're going to keep on going into defining your unique career niche. Now, to address the question that just came up, which I think is so valid and so honest, right, because don't we all want this? I think deep down we all want to thrive. We all want to know that we have something special in the world to do and to give. We all want to believe we have this niche, and I think we have this nagging little guy in the back of our brain that says, nope, that's not for you. That might be for Tracy. That might be for Brandy, but it's never going to happen for me. The only way that we can ensure that we have a chance at it happening is by aiming for it, is by going for it. We cannot hope that trial and error in our career is going to get us there, and that's why I think the goal is looking for the intersection of now, nature, and nurture so that you can have something that you love, right, because it aligns with your values. You can have something that you're naturally good at doing because it aligns with your nature, and then you can have something that you feel adept and skillful and strong at because it leverages your previous experience, and that is your nurture. The great part about this process is that when we identify this area in the working world, we actually become an asset to a business. We're no longer a line item. We're no longer as replaceable as we were before. We get to add maximum value to them, which conveniently is how we get to add maximum value in our own lives. It's how we get to experience both or all of freedom and financial wellness and fulfillment in our careers. So why is your niche so important? I get this question all the time, and I think it's one of my favorites. Isn't this limiting, right, to be extremely focused? Aren't we supposed to keep our options open? Aren't we supposed to be open to these new opportunities and ideas? Why would I want to be laser focused? Am I going to miss something? But I'll tell you what, clarity is king or queen if you want to thrive. If you're okay with a job where you're just so-so about it or you tolerate your day-to-day, then fine. Keep your options open. Entertain all and everything. But if you look at choices and the paradox of choice, the more options that we have, the more anxiety that we experience. And the more open we are to everything, the less of a chance we have at actually identifying and finding what is ideally suited for each of us, right? We have to have extreme focus in our search in order to land somewhere that is ideal. And if you want to rise above the noise of the marketplace, which is something going on right now, we've got more people applying for jobs than we did two years ago, you need to have a clear and consistent message going out into the world. So this is our last gut check of the day. It's asking you, put aside what you think is possible. Put aside what you think is realistic just for this moment and ask yourself, what do you want? What do you want? And if you're bold and you're brave, I want you to type in what you want in your career in the chat. I want to thrive. I want to feel alive. I want to do work I love. I want to make an impact in the world. I want to make great money. I want to have a really nice lifestyle. I want to do good in the world, right? Type what you want into the chat because you have come this far. And today you have a choice. You can continue to live by limiting beliefs or other people's expectations or what you believe to be possible or impossible out in the world. Or you can choose today to define and pursue what's ideal for you. Let that be a moment in time where you choose to do things differently because sustainable success is knowing your niche at any given moment and knowing when and how you need to make changes or evolve as you, as an asset, as an athlete, as a professional, as you grow and evolve. So here's the simplest step-by-step process that we have put together to actually come up with your professional niche. I like to say that it's A plus B plus C equals me. What we're trying to do here is add now, nature, and nurture to come up with your unique professional niche. So the easiest way to do this is start with one of your core values from now. So let's say that one of your core values right now is freedom. I just want the freedom and flexibility to experience life the way I want to experience it, and that's what freedom means to you. So then you're going to ask yourself, great, where in my personality, in my gifts, or in my strengths, so nature, does freedom have alignment? And then I want you to write that data point or that fact down. So where does the value of freedom overlap with your nature, with just who you are and how you're hardwired? Maybe you're a naturally independent person. Maybe you're an only child like me, and so you've had to fend for yourself for a long time and take care of yourself. All of that is in alignment. Then you want to ask yourself, where in my knowledge, in my skills, in my expertise, or in my experience, which is nurture, does freedom have alignment? Maybe because you've had a lot of experience being on your own. Maybe you left for college. Maybe you've backpacked around Europe by yourself. Maybe you have been working in a remote role for a certain period of time. All of that is ripe experience that overlaps with your desire for freedom that shows that you can actually function in an environment where you have an extreme amount of freedom. Now that becomes one clear component of your ideal niche, and you get very specific about it. So maybe it's remote work only, or maybe it's work where I get to travel, or maybe it's work where I'm an individual contributor—not an individual computer—versus a manager and responsible for somebody else. Write down this one clear component of your ideal niche. Then you know what? You're going to go back to the top. You're going to pick another core value, and you're going to go through the exact same process, and you're going to rinse and repeat until you get through your 7 to 10 core values. What you'll have at the end of that process is a list of your ideal career components, and that becomes your north star. That becomes your raison d'etre. That becomes your ikigai. That becomes the thing out in the world that you are pursuing with extreme focus and clarity because you know that it aligns with you philosophically because it aligns with your values. It aligns with you personally because it aligns with your nature, and it aligns with you professionally because it aligns with your nurture. That is what makes a beautiful, sustainable, successful niche or career. Lastly, we're going to talk about how do we achieve clarity now and beyond. Well, if you're using this process that we just talked about, if you're looking at where you are now, if you're identifying your actual nature, and then if you're leveraging your previous experiences, then you have a system, no matter what's going on in your life, to achieve clarity at any given point of time. This is really important for you younger ones and any of the more senior professionals. Type this in the chat if you know this to be true. Your life is going to change. Your values are going to change. Who you are is going to change. As it does, as you grow and evolve, having now plus nature plus nurture to equal your niche is going to be a great tool to have at your disposal to have clarity both now and beyond in your career. Be sure to check out Indeed's Career Explorer. You can get great data on various career paths, including what skills and qualifications are needed. And if you want to see a big alphabetized list, take a look at the career paths page. Sometimes it can be helpful to see them all listed out like that. And you can find details for each role, including job description, salary, education, skills, work environment, and more. That is such an incredible resource, you guys. I can't tell you the number of times that I've had people ask me, do you just have a big list of jobs? And the world of work, as we know, is always changing. There are jobs that exist now that didn't exist 10 years ago. And there will be jobs 10 years from now that don't exist today. So of course, this won't be comprehensive. But what an incredible place to start, especially if you're the kind of person who just wants to see all of your options and cross things out that you know to not be true or good fits for you. Plus, if you identify what this ideal career is, if you've got these puzzle pieces, you can use this list to start coming up with names for your puzzle, with job titles or with options for you to look at to see if they will fit those puzzle pieces that you're looking for. So I'm so excited to have been here with you guys today. Stick around for Q&A, and because Brandi and I have a couple of freebies for you. But I just want to remind you that today is an opportunity to draw a line in the sand. You have a choice. This can be just another fun webinar that you watched. Hopefully you had a great time and you learned something. I know I love being here with you guys and love sharing this information. I feel really passionate about it, and I hope that shows. But don't let this be just another 30, 45, or 50 minutes that you spent and you do nothing about it. Take one thing from today, just one thing from today, and go apply it in your career. If now and having values resonated with you, go do that. If getting deeper on your nature and asking people around you what you're good at resonated with you, go do that. If doing a deep dive into all of your life experiences and pulling those puzzle pieces out resonated with you, go do that. But don't do nothing. Let today be the first day of the rest of your career, as they say. Thanks, Tracy. So first here, I've been working outside of my degree for a few years. How do I transition back into that career with little experience? Great question. So I actually can resonate and identify with this. I studied psychology in college, and then I actually spent my first two and a half years of my career working on Wall Street, of all places. It's because I got recruited to do that and had no idea what I wanted to do with my degree anyway that wasn't obvious. And so I ended up starting my career with my fingers crossed. Maybe I'll like it. Maybe it'll align. Maybe this will all work out. What I do today is so much more overlapped and aligned with studying psychology because I get to talk about behaviors and personality and gifts and why we do what we do and motivators. The way I think that you can make that transition is to look back first and foremost at what you studied and ask yourself what specifically ignited you intellectually. Why did you study that subject? It's not just that subject, but what you want to do with it. So if you studied engineering, is that because you want to work in construction and that's what gets you excited? Is it because you just like the idea of having a puzzle and putting the puzzle pieces together? Is it because you like to fix things that are broken? I think understanding that foundation first and foremost of your education is most crucial. Then I think in order to make yourself as relevant as possible to that industry or to that field of study, look at the ways that you've been nurturing yourself intellectually over time. I guarantee you that even though you haven't been working in that field, if it's something you really love to learn about, you've probably been nurturing that, you know, scratching that itch over time in small ways. So ask yourself what podcast you've been listening to, what books you've read, what magazines that you pick up because you're fascinated by the topic and where those things overlap with what it is that you studied are ways that you can prove that you've stayed up to date and you've kept your subject matter expertise or a certain level of knowledge up to speed in order to be relevant in that environment. Then I would also ask you to consider looking back at the work experience that you do have and asking yourself some critical questions about how you can leverage those skills or those knowledge or that expertise, right, in this new industry or in this new field of study. I guarantee you if you get really microscopic, if you dig really deep into your work experience and then your previous education, even if it's informal, right, even if it's self-taught, you're going to find some ways that you can certainly be relevant and capable in this new, quote, new environment without needing a whole lot more than that. Thanks, Tracy. Another question that came up here is, is getting further education always the best fit, especially for someone older? I love this question too. Okay, so I would say in all the, I've been doing this work for about six, almost seven years. It is a rare person, maybe one out of a hundred that we work with that actually needs to go back to school for one reason or another. Generally speaking, in my experience, most people who need that need that degree in order to actually practice what they want to do. So, for instance, I've coached somebody who said, you know, I really love this counseling psychology world. Well, in order to be a counselor or psychologist or psychiatrist, you have to have a degree and you have to have a certification to actually practice, to actually have a job. Then you have to go back to school. Ninety-nine percent of the people that we work with do not need to go back to school because they're already ready and capable for the role that they actually want to be doing. How is that possible? Well, remember, we did now plus nature plus nurture. So, the answer to that is inherently going to be something that you already care about, something that you're already naturally gifted in, and something that you already have the knowledge, the skills, or the expertise to execute. There's no way that you add now plus nature plus nurture and you get an answer. That's not something you can already go and do and do well. So, remember, leveraging your previous work experience, this is something that most of us skip. We go right to what are we missing? What degree do I not have? What certification do I not have, right? What designation do I not have? Remind yourself what you do have and then try to build your ideal career around that. I love that because education, frankly, is expensive, right? We know this. So, if there's a way to, you know, upskill in any way that you need to get to that next role that's your dream job, then, you know, there are other ways usually to do that if it's not, you know, a required certification or degree, like you said. And Brandy, before you move on to the next question, I'll just share this slide as well. If you are wanting to do that now plus nature plus nurture exercise, we have a guide on our website that you can download and do that very easily. And it's free. So, I would encourage you to go there and download that first before you dive into maybe I need a degree, maybe I need another certification, maybe I need another designation. You can get that at www.onewhothrives.com forward slash ccguide, career clarity guide. And then, if you want to go deeper with me, I'm also offering free 50-minute sessions. So, www.onewhothrives.com forward slash clarity call. We can talk about your career, we talk about your life, and then we can talk about our programs and see if we're a good fit to work together. But either of those resources are at your disposal and they're both absolutely free and a good place to start. Actually, the next question is kind of related to that and that's how valuable is a career coach? What would I get out of a career coaching session? And how do you avoid overpaying for one or know if you have a good one? It's a good question and I'm going to give you my total honest opinion on this and it might not be popular, so just go with me. I believe that there's a difference between coaching and teaching and therapy. And if you need or want therapy, that is great. There are plenty of beautiful, wonderful counselors who will sit and listen to you talk for hours and will be deeply invested in your story and they will help you find solutions over time. What a coach or a teacher or an instructor is there to help you do is teach you a lesson, hold you accountable to applying it, and get you results. So first and foremost, if you're looking at a coach, if you're looking at a program, if you're looking at some type of solution, let's say you go on to our website, One Who Thrives, and you're looking at our Discover Clarity program. You want to look first and foremost for outcomes. What are they saying that I'm going to actually learn or achieve or think or do differently as a result of making this investment of my money and my time and my energy? That is number one. So if they can't show you examples of happy clients or people who have been successful in the past, that's a big red flag. The other thing is great coaches are going to hold you accountable to what you say that you want. There's a reason that even elite athletes have coaches. It's because going to the gym isn't always fun. Does it get you a gold medal eventually? Yes, in some cases, but it's not always a great time, right? What do they need? They need somebody who, when they show up to the gym, just tells them exactly what to do. So I would say that having a great person in your life in this area or a great program in your life in this area is going to literally be the coach to your gym, meaning all you're going to have to do is show up, and then that person is going to give you the work to do so you don't have to think about the process. You don't have to think about the steps. You don't have to come up with the exercises yourself, right? You're simply implementing what they are teaching you to do, and then they are holding you accountable to creating space and progress in that process. That's really helpful. Thanks, Tracy. I think we have a couple more minutes, so let's see if we can cover one more question. What is a simple way to align competencies from one skill set or job into something entirely new? For example, working in hospitality and wanting to go into customer success. So this is great because what we're talking about is transferable skills, which is like an old term, right? This is like 90s transferable skills. What are your transferable skills? But it's coming back because so many of us now are realizing, hey, I might be really great at what I do, but I don't love the subject matter, or I don't love the industry, or this isn't, frankly, the clientele or the audience that I care most deeply about. So I might be good at my job, but it's really not moving the needle for me. It doesn't resonate. It's not where I want to be adding value in the world. This, again, is where you have to go super deck level into your work and ask yourself, what do I like about this? What have I learned from this? And what can I bring with me going forward? And it's literally, I would start, especially if you're that clear that you know what industry you want to move into, look at your day-to-day and just ask yourself what skills you're using every single day. Do you have a lot of communication in your day, a lot of collaboration? Are you great at problem solving? Are you good at conflict resolution? Are you good at de-escalating? What are the actual things that you do on a day-to-day basis that could be transferred to any environment, not just the environment that you're in? So they're not subject matter-based. They're not clientele-based. They're just skills, right? And then imagine yourself in this new environment and ask yourself some critical questions. How would I use that skill in communication? How would I use that skill in conflict resolution? How would I use that skill in de-escalating? How would I use that skill in negotiation? And come up with actual scenarios. This is a great opportunity to leverage something like a shadowing or an informational interview. If you know what industry you want to go into and you know what skills and knowledge you have, go to a person who's already in that industry and say, hey, I'm good at this, this, this, and this. Where does that fit in in hospitality? Where does that fit in in customer success? In your experience, what is the job title that someone with these skills might have? Where could you see me fitting in? This is a great reminder to not just rely on your own knowledge, right? Not just rely on yourself, but to really look at who can help you in the world to expand your knowledge and expand your worldview. Yeah, and we did another Job Cast specifically on changing careers and diving into those transferable skills and how to communicate them on a resume and in your interview. So I just put the link in the chat for that. But I think we are out of time. So if you found this to be helpful, check out our other Job Casts at indeed.com slash Job Cast and follow Indeed on social media. Do you have a question for Tracy or the Indeed team? Go ahead and leave it as a comment on this YouTube video. And don't forget to like and subscribe for more videos like this. Thanks for watching.