Proactive career planning is essential yet often overlooked. Many professionals find themselves reacting to career opportunities rather than strategically pursuing them. Are you actively shaping your career path or simply going with the flow?
In this episode of the #Career101Podcast, host Porschia and guest Mark Allred delve into the critical topic of proactive career planning. They explore why taking charge of your career trajectory is not just beneficial but necessary for sustained success.
Mark, with his extensive background in leadership and coaching, shares invaluable insights on how to effectively anticipate and navigate career transitions, ensuring that each move aligns with your long-term goals.
The discussion also covers common mistakes in career planning, such as failing to adapt to significant changes or “life quakes” that can redefine one’s professional and personal life.
With over 26 years of driving market-leading sales and building strong employee cultures, Mark Allred transitioned his extensive experience into a coaching career. Now an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) accredited by the International Coaching Federation, he expertly guides individuals through professional growth and transitions, helping them achieve sustained success.
What you’ll learn:
- The importance of proactive career planning and its impact on long-term success
- Common mistakes in career planning, including failure to anticipate and adapt to major life changes
- Strategies for navigating career transitions effectively
- How to align your career moves with your overall professional goals
- Tips for maintaining control over your career trajectory
- The role of strategic thinking in achieving career success and avoiding stagnation
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: Today, we are talking about career planning and specifically proactive career planning with Mark Allred. After 26 years driving consistent market leading sales results, building strong employee cultures and maximizing effective business partnerships, Mark Allred pursued and achieved accreditation from the International Coaching Federation.
Today, he’s an experienced leader, sales driver, and associate certified coach. [00:01:00] He’s uniquely experienced and trained to help individuals evolve professionally, navigate transitions, and consistently achieve higher levels of success. Hi, Mark. How are you today?
Mark: Hi. So good to see you, Portia. I’m doing well.
Porschia: Great. I am so excited to have you with us to discuss career planning, which is actually like I was telling you earlier, one of my favorite topics.
Mark: Yeah.
Porschia: But first we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about seven year old Mark.
Mark: Wow. Seven year old Mark. It’s interesting that’s the age you chose.
That was a defining time for me. I at seven years old, unfortunately, that’s the age I was when my parents divorced. So that was a big year. And obviously a lot of change and adjustment and things. So I think when I look back, it definitely was a time in my life that I think defined a lot of who I still am today.
Porschia: So what did you want to [00:02:00] be when you grew up, Mark?
Mark: And maybe it’s related to that experience, I wanted to be a peacemaker. I had for a long time thought about being a counselor and that never quite came together. Being a young kid, I also wanted to be an actor.
That would be fun too. But no, I just it was, I guess I wanted to just be somebody who made a difference and who made things better in whatever that ended up being.
Porschia: Yeah. That’s I could see you in that. I could definitely see you as an actor. I think you have a great voice.
You’ve got like that inside the actor studio voice. That’s great for podcasting now.
Mark: Yeah.
Porschia: So what was your first job?
Mark: So it’s funny. I my first real job, of course I did the other things. I think I was a Taco Bell for a year when I was in high school, but my first real job out of college, I fell backward into.
It’s something that as a career coach these days, I don’t recommend to folks particularly my kids who [00:03:00] are now all graduating from college, I wouldn’t want them to start the career like I did but it turned out great. I I fell backwards into the wireless industry. So I joined a a temporary agency and they placed me with a company called Centel Cellular.
Most people don’t remember Centel way, way back then. And it was so funny as a young kid. I’m driving around with a car phone in my car and nobody had them back then. So I was the stuff or should I tell you, I was something special, but it, and it turned into a 26 year career just one in promotion to another and advancement.
And it worked out great for me. But again in today’s environment, not what I recommend.
Porschia: So I think that’s a great segue to my next question. Mark, tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you became a career coach.
Mark: Yeah. Of course, having the opportunity to be with the same company is great, but I’ll tell you, [00:04:00] wireless, it’s a pivotal industry.
And for many years, it was like every year, there was the fear of layoffs and restructures. I always used to refer to, to February is the Valentine’s day massacre because that’s about when it used to happen every year. So there were a lot of times in my career where you just weren’t sure what was going on.
The probably the biggest pivotal time of my career was when it did finally happened 26 years later and they reorganized and there was some duplication at my leadership level. And and A severance package was put in front of me and the opportunity to move on was there. There was a chance to stay and do something at a different place, but it felt like the right time to get out and pursue something different.
And it’s led me to where I am today doing the kind of work that I’m passionate about. So that probably was the most pivotal time. And that was just not too many years ago, three, four years ago.
Porschia: Yeah. You’ve got a lot of great experience. I think that you [00:05:00] could work with clients on because those transitions to your point are some things I hear a lot of as well.
Should I take this severance package or, what are the next steps after that? And after being in a, company for 10, 20 plus years, those are some things that a lot of our clients work through. But what motivated you to become a coach?
Mark: One of the things I encourage folks is you want to find work that is in alignment with where your strengths are.
And in those 26 years I spent in wireless, many of them were in leadership. And one of the things that I always felt that I brought best to the leadership world was the ability to help folks get to that next level. Challenge folks that next level, get help them to see things about themselves and about the world.
Their circumstance that they didn’t really see. Somebody on my way out, one of my employees said to me, she said, you ought to look into coaching as something different to do because I think that’d be a good fit. And I [00:06:00] thought let’s take a look. And that’s what kind of got me looking in that direction.
Porschia: So how did you decide to focus on career coaching specifically?
Mark: So when I was between again, living on a good severance, having an opportunity to, call my own shot as far as what I wanted to do next, it wasn’t a bad environment to be out of work at that point. It was pre covid and and my sense was that we needed, and I needed to focus in on where.
Hold that and we’re going to pause and go back. Remind me of the question. I lost.
Porschia: Yeah. How you decided to focus on career coaching specifically.
Mark: So when you’re in that land between working and not working, you get to know a lot of people who are not working. And I developed a real heart for the job seeker and watching people struggle and watching people go through the pain of those [00:07:00] down days.
And so as I started continuing developing in the coaching direction, it just was a natural fit to be involved in that side and to help some of those people that I got a chance to get to know pretty well.
Porschia: So I really want to dig into career planning today, but first I want to ask you, why do you think career planning is important?
Mark: It’s critical. It’s not just important. It’s, you can very easily, and I think it’s the human condition in nature for us to get lulled to sleep by the work that we do. And we show up to work every day and we get caught up in the thick of thin things, as Stephen Covey used to say. And we don’t think about those next steps.
And so we just move forward in the direction that the world takes us. And if we’re not careful, you end up several years looking back and wondering, how in the world did I get here? There’s an old, there’s an old thing out of seven habits where it says, everybody talks about climbing the ladder of [00:08:00] success, but sometimes you could be so focused on doing that, that you don’t recognize you put the ladder on the wrong wall.
And it becomes a tough thing. So that’s having a plan just makes all the difference. And if you’re not thinking a few steps ahead, you’re putting yourself in danger of ending up somewhere you didn’t want to be.
Porschia: I completely agree, and I’m sure you see this, I see it all of the time, clients who are in just that position, they realize that they’ve worked themselves into a role and they’re stuck there or that they started doing something and they wanted to do it for just a few years and they blink their eyes and it’s been a decade.
To your point, I definitely think that career planning is critical. What do you think are some of the best ways for executives and professionals to plan for their careers?
Mark: And this on the risk of this being a bit [00:09:00] self serving for you and for me, at the executive level, I think some of the best playing they could do is to get a partner because let’s face it as you evolve in your career and you get to those levels, it gets tougher.
There’s more expected of you. There’s more hours and things. And my general advice to just general folks is you need to be planning your week and setting aside and holding sacred time for career planning, ideally at the beginning of your week. And you’ve got little pockets of time that you are reserving for your own personal development and growth.
And you’re thinking about what’s going next and everyone should do that, including executives. But again, executives are busy people, and it’s very difficult to do that. Now, I will say a lot of folks who get to that executive level get there because they are good at planning. They are good at organizing and running a tight ship.
But what do they also do? They hire administrative assistants and to work with them to do those things they don’t have [00:10:00] time to do. So I think a smart executive, again, at the risk of being a little self serving, hires a career advocate. Gets somebody who’s good at helping to pull out the career plans and needs that they have.
And helps them to pause long enough to think about who is the bigger, who is the bigger person in my career than what I maybe am now. And then once they help them identify, that, help them build that plan there. And there’s so much, a professional that can do to support them. So again, that’s probably my opinion.
The best things the one at that level could do.
Porschia: Yeah, I agree. We have a whole episode on what I call your career support system and how that is different than your family members, your friends, your neighbor, your coworker, to your point about a career advocate, I like to think of people who are.
Unbiased and, professionals in their career space. Yeah.
Mark: [00:11:00] Yeah. No doubt.
Porschia: You talk about intentionally setting aside regular time to prepare and plan for the next step in your career. And you mentioned doing that perhaps at the beginning of the week for some people, can you explain more about that and how that might look in someone’s life?
Mark: Yeah. So this is something I learned early on as I started growing into leadership. I cut my teeth in leadership and retail leadership. So I was leading wireless stores at 1. 5 of them at a time. And so you spend all week facing the fires of doing that. And then you go into the weekend and you just relax.
And then back at Monday, there you go again. So I learned very quickly if you wait until you get into the throws of Monday morning to start planning your week, it’s too late. The fires are burning, people are needing you, you can’t do it. On a Sunday evening or taking some time and you really don’t have to take that much time.
A good 20 minutes [00:12:00] of proper planning, particularly as you get into the rhythm of it, can do a lot. So I encourage folks to do what I call priority planning. And we do an exercise with clients where we go through and help them narrow down. What are your priorities in life? What are the things that are important?
And we look at things that are bigger than just your work life. And quite often family ends up on that list and God ends up on that list. But you think about the things that are important to you in your life. And then you begin your week asking, The same question for your top seven, which is what’s the one thing I can do in this priority this week to keep it a priority.
And you plan that way and you hold that space and it helps you stay balanced. Hopefully if you’re not in the right kind of career, you’re setting aside time as a career development is part of your priority. And so you’re holding time for that. When you get into that kind of a discipline, then you’re able to manage the fires of a [00:13:00] week better.
Because you position yourself to make a tough decision in the moment of choice. You may have something burning in front of you that says it needs to be taken care of. But when you’ve got something very important planned, you can now evaluate, do I do this or maybe I do need to shift.
Porschia: Yeah. And I love that you used the word discipline.
I think that’s a very strong word, and I think it’s an important word and a great one to use, I think, when it comes to career planning. I have heard some people say that they think having a plan is too restrictive, and it might prevent them from going with the flow in their career. What would you say to someone who feels that way?
Mark: There are a couple things. And I’d give a couple of analogies. One a great quote that I think addresses that statement. You can’t direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails. The wind is going to take you where the wind takes you, [00:14:00] right? And it may get you where you’re going, it may not. Something that’s very interesting, a lot of people may not know about airline travel.
Everybody knows, of course when a plane takes off, there’s a flight plan. So they make a flight plan, it gets them from point A to point B, it’s a very specific plan. But when an airplane takes off, you don’t just stay on that plan. There are environmental factors that are constantly pushing you off.
So the job of the pilot, and even the computer technology in the planes now, is to continue to bring the plane back to the ground. The flight plan. So this whole idea of going with the flow, if you truly don’t care where you end up and you are a free flowing spirit, who am I to tell you how to run your life?
That’s fine. But for most folks, if you’ve got a place you want to be, make your flight plan. It’s not to say that you can’t allow yourself to be there. to go with the flow. Just know how to get back. And so I think that’s what good planning does for you. It doesn’t have to be the kind of thing that consumes you, but it should be the [00:15:00] kind of thing that acts as a compass for you.
Porschia: Oh, I love those analogies. I love those analogies. What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen professionals and executives make when it comes to career planning?
Mark: And then we’ll start with the obvious not planning getting so distracted. So that’s easily said another thing is not recognizing life quakes that sneak up on you and what a life quake is just something happens that just changes the dynamic.
A good example of a bad life quake is being laid off. But there are some lifequakes that don’t appear like it at the time, and it might come in the form of a promotion. So all of a sudden, someone approaches you with a promotion, the money is so much better. And it’s oh, and without really thinking about the full context of what we call career drivers.
So we my, my boss identified years ago, five elements that tend to motivate people about their [00:16:00] work. And if you’re not in tune with, How you are motivated to work and what’s important to you about your work, then, something comes along. That looks like a good idea. And then you take this new job.
The money’s great, but the hours you’re working are tearing your marriage apart. You’re not spending time with your kids. Your health is now not doing what it wants to. To be honest with you, the work itself doesn’t give you the chance to do the things that you are really good at. You’re having to do a lot of things that you don’t really like, and you’re not really good at.
And without properly thinking ahead of time about these things, you put yourself in position to take to take promotions, to take opportunities that just aren’t the right fit. And I’ve seen that happen too many times, particularly to executives.
Porschia: You said a lot of powerful things there, Mark. I was taking notes and thinking about clients and also myself. The whole, point that you made about [00:17:00] lifequakes kind of causing change, I think is really paramount. I’ve had lifequakes that looked, like promotions, like you mentioned, but some that were health issues and health challenges.
And I’ve seen a lot of our clients have health challenges or ladies become pregnant and then all of a sudden, their priorities shift to your point about family. So from your perspective, how can someone plan, but I guess leave some room for those life quakes or things that might come up,
Mark: I think it just begins with knowing yourself.
And investing the time to know yourself and to understand that who you are is going to change over time to you’re going to change as you grow. And so you may have to reenter those seasons of getting to know yourself again, because the planning is one thing, but it needs to come after. [00:18:00] Understanding, what you want in your life.
Great example you brought up, you take a young lady who ends up getting pregnant and having a child that can change your priorities really quickly. It doesn’t mean you can’t think about that ahead of time. I know there comes a certain time. I know in my life of my wife, there was a certain time when we knew we were going to start having kids and we started talking about that ahead of time.
And by the grace of God, For us, it came together pretty methodically, but that didn’t always happen. You do the best you can to plan. You think of all the great military commanders throughout history and you put together the best plan you can, but then the war is going to play out.
But I would much rather go into war with a plan than just putting my boots on the ground.
Porschia: Yeah, agreed. So what are some additional tips you can share to help people with career planning?
Mark: [00:19:00] Again, I mentioned the idea of getting a partner understand who you are, begin always begin with understanding how you bring value.
And if you can start there, then that’s going to seed so many things. It’s going to seed your resume. It’s going to see what you put on your LinkedIn. It’s going to seed how you talk during networking. conversations. That’s the biggest piece of advice that I give folks. And that’s the heart of how I coach people is beginning.
It’s the old, again, seven habits of reverence, beginning with the end in mind, beginning with understanding yourself. So I think that’s something [00:20:00] people need to put some time into. And then Get disciplined it is very difficult to build a strategy and plan. It’s easier just to go through life willy nilly and so many people do it, but I think you’ve got to take the time.
To do that. And, other things, there’s so many great thought leaders. And I know you, you tap into this with your podcast. And I do the same with mine. We’re seeking out constantly people with a story to tell people with something that’s going to provide motivation for people and new ideas be open to that kind of thing.
Make sure you’re giving yourself some time to digest that stuff because there are a lot of answers out there. That we don’t have to come up with ourselves, but we’ve got to put ourselves in position to find them. I would add that to the mix.
Porschia: Yes, to all of that. And to the point, the last point that you were making, I have [00:21:00] found this with a lot of our clients who are high achievers.
They put so much pressure on themselves to have all of the answers themselves. And I find that more from clients who are high achievers than the clients who will tell me, Hey, I was an average student. The high achievers put that pressure on themselves. And to your point, They think they have to have all of the answers.
And so they might have more resistance around asking for help, finding that career advocate and all of that. Have you seen that as well?
Mark: Yeah. And I’ll take it a step further. This is one of the big things I see, and I want to make this point on every podcast I’m on. And every time I get a chance to get in front of people the whole idea of imposter syndrome rampant.
I’ve spent enou I know you’ve probably se and I am no longer amazed to be. So my, my jaw woul I’d find out these execu together say that they ha [00:22:00] So whoever you are and yo Who’s experiencing this sense of I’m not good enough. You’re not. In fact there’s a very small percentage. I’m finding of the population that isn’t that probably more than narcissists.
But outside of those guys, everybody. You got to be aware of that and then give yourself a break. But then also surround yourself with good people and good knowledge
Porschia: agreed. We have an episode on imposter syndrome as well, because yes, to your point, it is rampant and you’d be surprised, how many people are dealing with that.
And maybe they don’t talk about it.
Mark: Yeah. And I think that’s one of the nice things about, I think where our society is going, I think people are talking more about those things at all. I know in the studies that I’ve done with Gen Z is a more, they’re very open generation. I think that’s going to be very good for our world.
They’re misunderstood generations to some degree, but [00:23:00] I think they’re open and, They’re open mentoring and speaking more. So that’s a good thing.
Porschia: Yeah, I agree. We’ve seen that in our work too. We found that a lot of the millennials that we’ve talked to and Gen Zers have been more open to coaching, mentoring support services, and then some of our clients who have been baby boomers have told me, Portia, I, I just thought that seeking a career coach, for example, was a sign of weakness, and getting some support around that.
So we’ve seen, some groups were just more open to the idea quickly.
Mark: Yeah. And I’m a Gen Xer and you’re right boomers and Gen Xers. That’s how we were raised. You didn’t ask for help right or wrong. That was what was in our DNA. Figure it out yourself, stand on your own two feet.
And I’m very excited to see that the Gen X, I’m sorry, the Gen Z is starting to recognize that. Now the thing I’m finding too, is they don’t tend to ask for mentoring, [00:24:00] but if it’s offered to them they will absolutely take you up on it. Most of the time, we’re painting with a broad brush and we talk about generations, but I think it’s going to be something that serves them really well.
And I think it may be also healing for generations like mine who thought we had to do it all. And we now get the opportunity to be mentors for this younger generation.
Porschia: Agreed. Agreed. So in your opinion, Mark, what are some of the best tools or resources people can use for career planning?
Mark: And it’s funny on the, our, on our the website, not too long ago.
There let’s see, it was Paul Teager. I think is how I’m pronouncing that. Are you familiar with he wrote a book called do what you are. And it was a book designed to help people use the Myers Briggs kind of work to identify their personality. And then they did a tremendous amount of study on how that you can see the kind of [00:25:00] work you want.
So the book itself, you identify your personality trait, and then it gives you a lot of different roles that are a good fit for that. So I think seeking out that kind of resource is really valuable. And that resource, by the way, is years old. I think he wrote that book many years ago. It was, I think it’s in its sixth edition now, look for things like that.
There’s a career explorer site that I send folks to quite regularly. It was actually developed for kids who are rising into college, I think. But it asks you a bunch of questions and then it spits out just some jobs that might be a good fit for you based on what you said. It was funny, when I took it at, the 52 years old it, it suggested I should be a podcast host and a career coach.
Those were two of the ones that came up. So that validated it, I thought. So anyway, they weren’t the only two, but they were the two that obviously I was just floored that it that it came up with exactly where I ended up. Which made me feel [00:26:00] good, right? About getting in the right direction.
Porschia: Yeah. I am a huge proponent of personality assessments.
And I don’t think I’ve shared this with you, Mark, but I am a master practitioner of the MBTI. Myers Briggs type of indicator. So I dug very deep and I’m definitely going to check out Paul’s book and read that. But I do think that having those. Objective assessments of yourself can be really helpful.
There’s a great career report that comes with the MBTI. If you take it through a certified practitioner that has some really great insights, it suggests different careers as well. So great.
Mark: And it’s funny and I’ll hear people when it comes to personality assessments say, I just am afraid this is the kind that’s going to put me in a box.
I said, the point of those things is the exact opposite. And I think it’s important in life to wrestle. And if you’re not putting yourself in position to wrestle with [00:27:00] things, wrestling with your faith, wrestling with what the world seems to be telling you, who you are, there’s so much that comes out of that.
So I think that’s one of the great things about these personality assessments. If you don’t agree with what it’s saying about it, about you, boy, it’s a great opportunity to wrestle with that because maybe you’re not seeing things as fully as you should.
Porschia: Agreed. I think you put that very well.
Nothing to add there, Mark. Tell us more about your podcast and Purpose Coaching.
Mark: Yeah, it’s funny. So those are on two different parts of the spectrum of who I am these days. So let’s start with the podcast. The podcast came up as a natural part of what I was doing in my day job.
So I’ve been very blessed to be a part of a company called Reveal Global Intelligence, 18 years. Primary focus of the company is helping define what some folks refer to as the unicorn out there, the tough to find person to fit your role. I’ve been incredibly successful with that. We grew the business and whenever I got involved in it, the goal was to build it out and [00:28:00] provide some career coaching with all of these people that were coming in contact with.
So we built the reveal talent community, which is one website that’s a part of our company. And the reveal talent community is all about our coaching wing and helping folks from a career standpoint. The career progression podcast is meant to seed that where some folks podcast, it’s a week to week, maybe you’re following the same podcast all along.
And hopefully we’ve got some listeners who do that. But for the most part, we’re more of a reference library. So when you’re looking for work, we’ve got, moving on to about a hundred episodes about different parts of the career journey. So what I encourage folks to do is check out an episode, like a book from the library.
Based on where you are right now, if you’re thinking, man, I want to pivot, we’ve got some excellent episodes with some great professionals about pivoting. Check it out and see where that is. And then, different parts in your life, you can go back to that. So that’s what that’s evolved to.
Purpose coaching is, it talks more to the passion of who I am I’m deep [00:29:00] in my faith and one of the things that I acknowledge and recognize, there are a lot of people that get a point to a point in their life, they feel like they’ve lost their purpose, and it’s not a matter of finding it.
As much as in my opinion is reclaiming it. There’s something that comes it’s Proverbs 20 verse five, which says the purposes of a person’s heart are like deep water, but one with insight draws them out. So the coaching I do through purpose coaching is all about that. It’s based on that proverb that, Hey, There’s this purpose living deep inside of you, but you’ve got to take the time to figure out how to draw it out.
And I’m not the person to draw it out as their coach, but I’m certainly a partner who can walk beside them and help them carry the bucket. So that’s what I do there. And that’s my side project and hopefully as I grow older and eventually get towards retirement, that will be what I lean into as I get to that part of my career.
And I can just, help people navigate that part of their lives.
Porschia: That is great. We’ll be [00:30:00] providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so people can find you online. But what is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
Mark: Love to connect to folks on LinkedIn.
As long as LinkedIn is a valid tool. It’s a great place to find me in my role in a recruiting world. I’m on it daily. So I’m out there. If somebody requests to to connect with me, I’m going to see it pretty quickly. And depending on their motives behind why they want to connect, I’m generally very open to doing it.
So yes, that would be one of the great places to reach out. They can always go to reveal to palette. com and drop us a note there. Or even on purpose coaching my site there. They can generally jump into as well. Depending on what they need.
Porschia: So I’m interested to know, since you are another career coach, Mark, what is your definition of career success?
Mark: It’s the simple formula that I talk to folks about is being successful [00:31:00] in your career is being in a job that requires that demands that every day. You are doing the things that you’re good at, and you’re using the talents that you’ve been, that you’ve developed, and you’re using the gifts that God’s given you.
How awesome is it to be in a world where every day you get to go to work, and you get to do those things that you’re just good at, and that you were just made for? But, if you want to grab that success, You’ve got to first understand what those things are. You’ve got to figure that out. And then you’ve got to, you’ve got to look at the environment and figure out, Alright, what are the roles that are going to enable me to do that?
That’s something that, I’m doing right now with my kids, because they’re coming out of college the same way I did. They don’t know fully what they want to do. It’s a matter of helping to ask them those tough questions about what are the things you’re passionate about? Where do you feel like you’ve got gifts that maybe others don’t have?
Because it’s an interesting world. There’s some people that do some jobs and they just love them. And I think, Oh my gosh, how in the [00:32:00] world do they do that every day? Because it’s just not how I’m built. Anything with numbers and, oh my gosh, keeping track of finances thing. Thank goodness for my wife.
She does a lot of that. It would drive me nuts if I had to do that. There are people though that are in those kinds of jobs and they just ended up there. That’s another quick thing I’ll say about this idea of just going with the flow. If you go with the flow and you end up somewhere that you didn’t intend to be, and particularly if you end up staying there two, three, five years, at some point that’s the way the world sees you.
They see you in that role. And if you then want to make a change, it’s harder. You’re now talking about a pivot because everything about who you’ve been says you are this, and you desperately want to be that. And it just gets harder the more you don’t get yourself where you need to be. So it’s important.
You get yourself there as quickly as you can.
Porschia: So now I want to ask you my last question.
Mark: Yeah.
Porschia: [00:33:00] You think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Mark: So how do I think they could get a positive edge? We’ve been talking about it since we started,
You get proactive. That’s why my tagline is so simple.
Be proactive, be intentional. I think if an executive can be proactive and be intentional about the things that they’re doing, and then the keep moving forward part is about, hey, you’re going to have good days. You’re going to have bad day. I don’t care who you are, what job you found. I tell my kids all the time.
Sometimes I come home from work and I feel like a champ. Other times I feel like a chump. And if you recognize and understand that’s the way it’s going to be, the only thing that matters is you keep moving forward. So yeah, executives just starting out in your career, you do those three things, make a good plan.
Yeah. It’s going to be a special career.
Porschia: Well, Mark, you have shared a lot of wisdom with [00:34:00] us today, and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers. We appreciate you being with us.
Mark: I am thrilled to have the time. Nice to spend time with you, Portia. [00:35:00]
