Introduction: Navigating the Crossroads of Your Career
Welcome to the pivotal moment of your career. Whether due to unforeseen circumstances or a deliberate choice, you're standing at a crucial crossroads. It's a point where paths diverge - due to job loss, burnout, a personal crisis, or the transition into retirement. Unprepared, these moments can be daunting, leading to turmoil and chaos.
Our program is uniquely designed to prepare you for these career-defining moments or to guide you if you're currently amidst a career crisis. We understand that while many are adept at their job's day-to-day tasks, they often struggle to align their career with the broader perspective of their life's journey.
Join us today and redefine your career path to match your life's greater calling.
Embrace Change, Realign Your Path
Our program acknowledges these critical junctures as perfect opportunities to reevaluate, reassess, and reset both your career and life trajectory. Unlike conventional career advancement programs, we don't focus solely on climbing the corporate ladder or boosting your income. Instead, our approach is about preparing you for the significant shifts that naturally occur in life's second half.
Carl Jung's Wisdom: A Guiding Principle
As the renowned Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Jung insightfully observed, "But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning...". The roles and personas we adopt in life's first half must evolve as we enter its evening. Our program helps you transition from adapting to others' expectations to shaping the world according to your true self. This second life phase often brings existential questions, such as "Why am I here?". Even after achieving career success, many feel a void – our program aims to help you identify and fill this missing piece.
Who is This Program For?
This program is for anyone facing a career crisis, feeling unfulfilled, or those seeking to redefine their life’s work. It’s especially beneficial for those who have experienced career turbulence and are struggling to find their footing.
The Three Stages of a Career
A Job
This stage is about fulfilling basic survival needs. It's a role you play primarily to earn an income, often without further aspirations.
A Career
Here, you experience progression, develop skills, assume more responsibilities, and achieve higher salary brackets.
A Calling
This transcends the conventional job or career. It's about fulfilling a purpose, contributing to a greater good, and realizing the work you were born to do. It's not just about personal success but your contribution to the world.
Addressing Career Risk
An unfulfilling job can lead to a life that feels wasted and unfulfilled. Our program guides you through the natural growth path of a career, helping you transition from a job for survival to a career that develops your capabilities and ultimately to your Calling – to fulfil what you are here to do, your life contribution.
Join Us on This Journey
Believe in a program that takes you from where you are to where you want to be. Join our mastermind program today and embark on a journey that aligns your career with your life's true purpose!
Enroll now and redefine your career path to match your life's greater calling.
Discover Your Defining Moments with Our Groundbreaking Program
Module 1: Discover the Power of Defining Moments
Unlock the potential in your career's pivotal events with our transformative module, "Defining Moments". Whether it's an unexpected job loss, burnout, or a personal crisis, we turn these challenges into your greatest opportunities for growth.
Why This Matters
"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." Embrace this mindset shift and learn to see your career crises as gateways to your true calling.
What You'll Achieve
- Identify Your Key Moments: Recognize the defining moments in your career.
- Learn from Experience: Gain invaluable insights from these pivotal events.
- Shape Your Future: Use these moments to impact your career and life positively.
Real Success Stories
Be inspired by stories like Des's, who found his calling after a job loss, proving "Getting fired is nature's way of telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place" (Hal Lancaster).
Find Your Great Work
Overcome burnout by aligning with your true passions. Discover the work that resonates with your deepest values.
Take the First Step to a Fulfilling Career
Join our "Defining Moments" module and turn your career challenges into stepping stones for success.
Seize the moment – Your career transformation starts here! Join us Today!
Module 2: "Career & You" - Redefine Your Identity
Uncover Your True Self Beyond the Job Title
Join our "Career & You" module and break free from the confines of your job title. Understand that you are more than your career label – you're a unique blend of talents, abilities, values, and personality.
The Importance of Self-Identity in Your Career
When your identity is tied to your job title, losing your job or retiring can lead to an identity crisis. This module helps you find your place in the world beyond your professional role. Embrace the wisdom of Abraham Maslow: suppressing your true self can lead to psychological distress, but expressing it nurtures your well-being.
What You Will Discover
- Childhood Dreams: Reflect on who you aspired to be in your childhood.
- Current Dreams: Identify who you dream of becoming now.
- Unique Self-Description: Craft two sentences that capture your essence and uniqueness.
- Ideal Career: Imagine a career that truly expresses your identity without financial constraints.
Empower Yourself
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "To be yourself in a world constantly trying to make you something else is a major accomplishment." This module guides you to achieve this accomplishment by aligning your career with your authentic self.
Embrace Authentic Success
Napoleon Hill highlighted the essence of true achievement: succeeding at being yourself. Our module empowers you to redefine success on your terms, aligning your career with your genuine self.
Transform Your Career Path
Join us Today! and embark on a journey to rediscover and express your true self through your career.
Module 3: "The Integrated Life" - Aligning Career with Passion
Discover the Joy of Work That Feels Like Play
In "The Integrated Life", we explore how to transform your career into an extension of your passion and joy. Inspired by Richard Branson's philosophy of blending work and play, this module guides you to design a career that doesn't feel like a burden but a natural part of your living.
The Need for Integration
Henry David Thoreau observed that many lead lives of quiet desperation, their careers misaligned with their true desires. This misalignment can lead to a lack of fulfilment, diminished life satisfaction, disengagement at work, stagnation, strained relationships, and even health challenges. Integrating your career with your life opens the door to greater joy and fulfilment.
What You Will Learn
- Core Life Values and Priorities: Identify your top three non-negotiable life values, such as family time or self-care.
- Passionate Activities: Pinpoint activities you love that don't feel like work.
- Creating Income Streams: Explore leveraging these activities to generate multiple income streams.
Success Stories of Integration
Drawing inspiration from the lives of Walt Disney, Warren Buffett, and Mary Kay Ash, we show how passion can be transformed into successful, joy-filled careers.
Embrace Your Integrated Life
This module isn't just about career transformation; it's about redefining how you live. By aligning your work with what you truly love, work becomes an enjoyable, fulfilling part of your life.
Transform Your Career Path
Join "The Integrated Life" module now. Learn to merge your passion with your profession, turning every day into an opportunity for joy and fulfilment. Sign up today and start living a life where work feels like play!
Create a life where work and play are one and the same. Join us Today!
Module 4 – Doing Something for Humanity
The What
A career that progresses from being centred on only meeting our own individual needs to serving something bigger than ourselves.
This career recognises that we are on this planet for a greater purpose and that our talents, accumulated knowledge and message and wisdom are needed by others.
The Why
Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor. Born in Vienna in 1905, his harrowing experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II profoundly influenced his work, philosophical perspective, and his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
Frankl believed that mental and emotional illnesses are really symptoms of an underlying sense of meaninglessness or emptiness.
This is something I encountered early in my corporate career when I had all the elements of a great working life. (Worked in a professional setting, well paid, I had a job for life, unlimited promotional opportunities and my parents were delighted that my academic achievements created this opportunity).
With all these pieces in place you could well ask what my problem was – my problem was I didn’t enjoy repetitive accounting work – I was in mental and emotional turmoil as Victor Frankl points out. The work I did was meaningless – and I felt empty and at the time there was no-one to really discuss my situation with – and hence didn’t understand why I found myself in such emotional pain.
Victor Frankl believed that when a person finds meaning in their life – they can overcome any suffering. Frankl was not the only person to recognise that a career needs to provide purpose and meaning.
“Work needs to provide more than just a source of income but also play a role in providing a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction that a person’s life is serving a valuable purpose and contributing to the lives of others and not simply to a company’s bottom line”. ~Robert Collier
Much of the restlessness, confusion, and discord that we see about us exists because men have not found their Great Work. Daily labor merely to provide creature comforts is not enough to satisfy the wonderful consciousness within us. Our many faculties, powers, and abilities demand full use and expression. ~ Manly P. Hall ~
When I made a shift in my corporate career where I focused on making a difference in people's lives through training, mentoring, coaching, and teaching I was able to elevate my workdays out of drudgery and monotony and into the satisfaction that comes making a contribution to others.
Dharmesh Shah says, “Stop thinking about making a million dollars, and start thinking about serving a million people.”
Einstein shared a similar sentiment when he said, “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
The How
I am often told by clients that they have no idea what their purpose is. This is something I don’t agree with – deep down they really do know. As American philosopher and psychologist Willaim James wisely said, “In the dim background of our mind we know what it is that we are meant to be doing.”
Finding someone’s purpose requires deep exploration by a trained professional. Some of the questions I put to my clients include:
What is the biggest contribution you have made to others so far in your work/life?
What would you most enjoy doing in your working life that will serve others and reward you financially?
If you did know your purpose in life – what would it be?
The Outcome
A shift in career focus from external recognition and validation to a greater emphasis on inner fulfilment and joy.
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations; your conscious expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a great, new and wonderful world.” Patanjali
Module 5 – Awakening the Entrepreneur
The What
French economist, Jean Baptiste Say was one of the first people to describe the entrepreneur. He defined an entrepreneur as a person who shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of high productivity and greater yield.
This was something I applied in the second phase of my corporate career where I transformed myself from a jack of all trades, an easily replaceable commodity with the auspicious title of Business Analyst and moved into a highly valued Risk Management specialist role.
Risk Management was a highly demanded capability in high demand both in the company I worked for and in the broader employment marketplace.
Within the Risk Management domain, I continually focused on using my time and energy to create greater value. I had changed my attitude to my career from doing a job to becoming a value provider.
Entrepreneurs are value creators.
I initially began by writing customised Risk Management Guidelines for the company. This was considered relatively low value, then went onto create greater value by conducting risk assessments, running training programs, facilitating risk workshops, and providing consultancy advice. Along this continuum greater value was being attributed to my time and capabilities – which elevated my income level and increased the security of my employment tenure.
The Why
To survive and thrive in today’s fast changing world – be that in your career or as a business owner – you need to think like an entrepreneur.
In the later phase of my corporate career – my employer was shedding employee minded individuals who were just doing jobs, had conservative perspectives and resisted the changes the company needed to make to become more competitive.
The company began hiring individuals who had previously run their own businesses, worked in several industries, or were considered game changers rather than preservers of the status quo. These people weren’t interested in sitting in small jobs they wanted to make a big impact and create future wealth through their breakthrough ideas.
My employer was obviously not seeking to eliminate all of its employee types but to foster more of an entrepreneurial culture and creativity among its people. People who could take the initiative and think outside the box. This was something that was being promoted by consultancy firms at the time and noted business authorities such as Peter Drucker and Tom Peters. (See Book Thriving on Chaos).
“I’m looking for a lot of men with an infinite capacity
for not knowing what can’t be done”. - Henry Ford
Observing that our jobs were not as safe as they had been previously, a small number of savvy work colleagues and I began side hustles – developing other career paths that would give us alternative income streams in the event we lost our jobs.
One person was buying and renovating old homes and selling them at a profit, another set up a weekend wedding chauffeur business, another provided IT repair services on weekends leveraging his tech skills. These individuals demonstrated entrepreneurial nous by not allowing themselves to be victims of their employer’s decisions. They did this by not waiting for their employer to throw them on the scrap heap and be devastated in the process – they became the designers of their future rather than wait for something to happen.
Entrepreneurs understand that organisations exist to serve their own interests, they will cut headcount when their priorities demand it, or if they think that someone becomes less valuable because of their age – then they are thrown onto the scrap heap. (Despite their experience, accumulated knowledge and wisdom).
In my case I got tired of being treated like a puppet having to subordinate and conform to the demands of management who determined what I was worth, the hours I needed to work, the nature of the work I performed and kept me under close surveillance and whether I was worthy of promotion.
My decision to become more entrepreneurial came not so much from my concern for my employment security particularly in the final years but rather how suppressed and controlled I felt in that environment.
(Deputy CFO defining moment – where do you think you are going – I’m not finished with you yet. I no longer wanted to be a slave in someone else’s system. This became a turning point in my career when I decided that the day would one day come when I wouldn’t remain dependent on an employer. All I needed was to create an alternate income system for myself.
As William Blake said, “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
The How
(Creative – Destruction)
Business Guru, Tom Peters said, “To survive the long haul, you must passionately pursue the destruction of what you have created.” In this context it may involve the destroying the job you had previously created for yourself – so that a new journey can begin.
In my case I began placing more energy and focus on my coaching career (which was my next value-added area of focus) and less focus on my previous value added Risk Management corporate offering - as I phased myself out of corporate employment.
What ensured that I didn’t lose my job during this phase was that I continued to provide enough value that made my worth holding onto.
Eventually this would prove unsustainable which I was prepared for and was in fact what I was designing for myself.
1. The Rule of Chaos
Neil deGrasse Tyson stated that controlled chaos is a powerful mechanism for developing independent, confident individuals who are not afraid to question, challenge and innovate. Enter the entrepreneur. I observed firsthand that it’s those individuals who can bring order to chaotic environments who develop their entrepreneurial muscles. A chaotic environment can be a dysfunctional business process that doesn’t deliver on the customer promise.
The person who can go in there conduct the necessary investigation to get to the root cause of the problem, engage with all the key stakeholders to develop a coherent solution and put the right people in place to deliver of requirements is awakening their entrepreneurial mindset.
“Without order nothing exists. Without chaos, nothing evolves.” - Dr John DeMartini
2. Learn from Entrepreneurial Greats
Some of my entrepreneurial influencers are:
- Steve Jobs because introduced groundbreaking technology, was a storyteller.
- Walt Disney who created animated characters – was also a storyteller who activated people’s imagination and brought family entertainment through television, movies, and theme parks.
- Robert Kiyosaki – who wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad – his book promoted financial literacy, investment, and entrepreneurial thinking. Definition from low value to high value – book $20 – Board Game $100 – speaking and consulting business which he earned $000’s per day.
Entrepreneurs don’t simply focus on their personal success but contribute to society across generations – they are remembered because their work continues to make an impact beyond their physical life.
3. The Differentiation Factor - Power of Combination
As an entrepreneur your ability to differentiate yourself from competitors does not come from your list of skills and achievement documented in your resume. Differentiation comes from how you combine your unique ideas, insights, talents, experiences to provide value to others.
What made Steve Jobs unique and exceptional was his combination of talents that included:
- Ability to see future trends.
- Understand market needs
- Appreciate how technology could integrate into people’s lives
- Attention to detail
- Eye for simplicity and aesthetic design
- Storytelling that captivated audiences
- Who are the entrepreneurs that you admire and which of their strategies do you apply in your career/business?
- In what area are you able to bring order to chaos?
- How would you describe your unique combination of talents, abilities and ideas.
- How can you package your unique combination of abilities into a unique methodology and system that makes you stand out in the marketplace?
- What do you want to be remembered for?
The Outcome
Entrepreneurs are in control of their destiny because they take the initiative, are prepared to destroy the old to create the new, bring order to chaos and learn from other great entrepreneurs.
They go beyond thinking about personal success – to making their life count by leaving their mark - become immortal in the process. They are remembered beyond their life – who doesn’t want to be remembered?
"Deliberate disruption is the only path to sustainable growth and success." - Josh Linkner “The Road to Reinvention."
“People who get on those are who get up look for the circumstances they want if they can't find them, they make them.” - George Bernard Shaw
Career by Design
So What?
The Career by Design System in a unique coaching methodology that recognises each person needs to proactively manage their career or they will experience the consequences of having it disrupted and or diminished by others.
Its also a system that acknowledges that everyone has a unique combination of talents, abilities, experiences, and insights that can be combined to provide unique value in the marketplace and make a difference to others.
Career by Design also helps people expand their concept of a career beyond just a means for an income, power, and status but it can also be a path that enriches a person’s life and serves a valuable purpose in the world.
Career by Design – ChatGPT Version
The Career by Design System is not just a coaching methodology; it's a transformative journey that empowers you to take command of your career destiny. In today's fast-paced world, if you're not proactively shaping your career, you risk letting external forces direct it for you, often leading to unfulfilled potential and missed opportunities. This system is crafted to awaken the unique blend of talents, abilities, experiences, and insights that only you possess, harnessing them to create unparalleled value in the marketplace. It's about standing out, not just fitting in.
More than just a tool for securing income, power, or status, Career by Design redefines the essence of a career. It's an invitation to embark on a path that not only fulfills your professional aspirations but also enriches your life deeply and contributes meaningfully to the world.
This is about crafting a career that resonates with your inner values and aspirations, turning every step of your professional journey into a move towards personal growth and broader impact. With Career by Design, you're not just building a career; you're leaving a mark in the world.
Create a life where work and play are one and the same. Join us Today!