How to Learn & Retain More Useful Information
Have you ever read a business or self-help book only to forget most of the advice a few weeks later?
Did you ever listen to a podcast but then have trouble remembering the story you heard or the ideas discussed?
If you have, you know what it feels like for all that time to be wasted. What if there was an easy way to remember that required only two seconds a day?
Well, it just so happens that there’s an app that allows you to do just that. It’s called Brain Bump and we had its creator join us on Creating Your Encore Career.
How to Build Healthy Habits for a Successful Encore Career
Why Boomers are Returning to Work and How Companies Should Handle It
How to Financially Prepare for Your Encore Career
How to Make the Most of Your Extra Time
The Elements of an Encore Career: Mindset, Planning, Skills, and Connections
Creating a Portfolio Career with Steve Preston
How Cultivating Deep Smarts Will Help Your Encore Career
To help us understand how cultivating deep smarts can help us in our encore careers, I turned to the book Deep Smarts: How To Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap. Through engaging with this book, I found the following helpful tips to share with you today.
Making Career Transitions
Dave has decades of experience in multiple roles, from chief human resources officer at John Deere to working in the private sector for the federal reserve bank. Dave has never been one to shy away from making changes he needed in his life and finding ways to make his skills transfer to whatever new pathway he had to take. In our discussion, he shared with me his journey and experiences to help you better prepare for what an encore career move could look like.
What I Learned from Your Message Matters
Retirement in 2022: What’s the Purpose and How Can You Thrive In It?
How to Age with Purpose and Become the Person You Want to Be
This discussion is based off a book by Richard Leider and David Shapiro, Who Do You Want To Be When Your Grow Old? I was introduced to Richard by Modern Elder Academy. We went through several sessions together and had many conversations about purpose, especially purpose later in life.
How to Succeed in a Recession
Why You Are The Brand?
How to Build a Platform and Products to Support Your Encore Career
If you’re coming out of a corporate career, you may have a good-sized portfolio. However, now that you want to begin your Encore Career, what’s next? Will your portfolio let you live the life you want for the next 30-plus years? If I had to guess, I’d say that your current goals include earning, learning, and leaving a legacy. You likely want the freedom to work when you want, where you want, and on the things that you love.
How to Position Yourself As High-Value and Pitch That to Others
In the last couple of episodes of Creating Your Encore Career, I’ve been talking about Mike Kim’s eight steps to building a profitable personal brand. We went over his PB3 method and the importance of having strong partnerships. Today, I want to talk about another aspect of his eight-step method: positioning and pitching. If your goals include earning, learning, and leaving a legacy, you must learn how to position and pitch yourself well. Mastering these skills is the key to creating a thriving Encore Career.
Partnerships: Why You Need Them and How to Do Them
Partnerships: Why You Need Them and How to Do Them
Last week on Creating Your Encore Career, I shared the next steps you should take in creating your Encore Career. These steps are your foundation when you’re just getting started. They take you from being fresh out of your corporate career, having no clue what you’re doing to running a successful business in your Encore Career.
I want to take some time to share more thoughts on this topic. Specifically, I want to talk about partnerships.
Why Partnerships Are Important
One of the highlights I’ve gleaned from the books I’ve been reading lately is the importance of partners. We just can’t do this Encore Career thing alone.
Why?
Partners are people who:
Encourage you
Teach you
Do work for you
Connect you
Partners are essential.
How to Work With Partners
I’ve partnered with a variety of people in my Encore Career. Some ways I’ve partnered with others include:
Hiring a Virtual Assistant
Participating in masterminds
Hiring a podcast production team
Working with designers
Collaborating with other entrepreneurs
Hiring my podcast crew has been one of the best partnership decisions I’ve made. They’ve freed up so much of my time so I can focus on the stuff only I can do.
There are other best practices I’ve learned in this journey of partnering with others as well. Firstly, build a diverse network. Partner with people of all different ages, cultures, and skills and from different areas of the world.
Secondly, remember that it’s more important to know “who” than it is to know how. Know about and let others use their expertise.
Finally, collaborate with others and stop worrying about competing. There’s room for everyone. To fight against comparison, remember that some people need to hear your unique voice.
I like the way Mike Kim sums up partnering: “Be the jelly to someone else’s peanut butter.”
First Steps to Build an Encore Career
Since the re-brand of Creating Your Encore Career, I’ve talked a lot about Encore Careers. I’ve explained what they are and why we need them in this day and age.
In case you need a recap on why you should consider starting an Encore Career, let me remind you that 20% of people are over the age of 60 today. By 2034, more people will be over the age of 65 than under the age of 18. Therefore, older people are essential to the full functioning of our economy.
So, how do we actually make an Encore Career a reality? Today, I want to get into the specifics of how to start one and share the eight steps to building your Encore Career, as inspired by my good friend and mentor Mike Kim.
The Eight Steps
In his book, You Are The Brand, Mike Kim shares eight steps to building a brand. These can be applied to creating an Encore Career as well. The eight steps are:
1. Point of View
2. Personal Stories
3. Platform
4. Positioning
5. Products
6. Pricing
7. Pitch
8. Partners
Good Questions to Ask
When you are first starting this 8-step process, you need to ask yourself questions. Your answers will help you determine who you will help and what your Encore Career will look like.
Two main questions are:
Who am I?
What am I doing here?
Mike Kim’s PB3 is another method for figuring out who you are meant to help in this world. It includes three questions to ask yourself to determine what your Encore Career will look like.
1. What pisses you off?
2. What breaks your heart?
3. What big problem will you solve?
My Journey
My own Encore Career journey has been going on for seven years now. In 2015, I attended the Permission to Prosper conference with Ray Edwards, Mike Kim, Jody Maberry, Andy Traub, and Steve Kurti. Then, I attended Jonathan Milligan’s camp 7 Streams of Income. From there, I began consulting in the manufacturing business and consulted with the Chamber of Commerce.
My Encore Career journey took many twists and turns from here. In 2017, I got help from a Virtual Assistant, in 2018 I joined a training program for coaching on emotional intelligence, in 2019 I began this podcast, in 2021 I did a public webinar, and in 2022 I attended an MEA online event.
On episode 143 of the podcast, I get into more of the details of this process. Tune in there to learn more!