hey girl hey and thanks for dropping into the switch favorite quit podcast candid convo for the girl needing a lifestyle plot twist when she's deciding if it's time to switch pivot or quit i'm ayana angel and i am your host as well as chief encourager and author in order for you to hang out with us in this awesome space all that's required for you to do is sit back open your mind and enjoy the show on today's show we're chatting with karen eldad a business coach and speaker coach karen is a trusted advisor to industry leading executives and superstar entrepreneurs who are setting records at the top of their fields over the last three years coach karen has developed a measurably impactful and streamlined executive coaching process while working with top organizations including jp morgan christian dior slash lvmh van cleef and our pals iwc beyond capital and more a diplomat's daughter and graduate of the london school of economics coach karen speaks five languages and can easily relate her message to anyone and everyone including her social media following of more than 100 000 having served in the israeli army and emerging into coaching from crisis counseling coach karen believes in service as a way of life and comes in focus on adding value and making things better and easier in yours as a coach she is accredited by the icf wci and tti insights and is also a top level crisis counselor with crisis text line let's get into this good conversation with karen karen welcome to the show thank you it's so nice to be here thanks for having me yes absolutely so i'll start with a little background so what was your very first job what was your very first paying job my very first paying job was bartending a club really yes and i was an awesome bartender in fact one time it was the hottest club in israel this is in the late 90s really and um i was really a phenomenal bartender i wore a lot less than i do now so obviously that helped enormously and one time ross from friends david schwimmer came to the bar he was dating in israeli at the time and i was a huge friends fan and that night he got water that's all he ordered okay everybody else was like downing shots of yager and he left me a 300 tip for water for water that's amazing i love it celebrities did well yeah i bought a hell of a business on jacket with that money i bet you did i bet you did so now that makes me think i'm gonna go in a different direction now so you said this was in israel were you born and raised in israel i wasn't raised in israel my parents were at duplomass my father's an israeli ambassador so i grew up all over the world which is why i speak american english like this and uh yeah i ended up in school in london and then in school here in new york and i stayed nice so have you lived other places outside of um london yes yes where have you lived we want to know now well i've lived in turkey in costa rica uh in israel of course in switzerland in peru in argentina for many years um and now here wow amazing yes yes so are you a natural adventure do you like exploring new places and learning new places etc the personality type that comes out of the nomadic lifestyle is called the third culture kid they're kids that are naturally much more inclined to identify with their host countries than they are with their original identity so that's a very interesting fact but it produces two archetypal personality types hyper introverts or hyper extroverts which do you think i fall under uh hyper extroverts hyper extroverts are much more risk friendly we're just naturally more yeah let's jump out of a plane why not it sounds like fun yeah i personally am very jewish and don't jump out of planes but i take risks in other ways okay so tell us a little bit about obviously we talk on this podcast all about switch them quick yeah and that journey is nothing ever thank you so much thank you thank you we were talking about that before just like the naming and all that good stuff so how um how has your journey been what have you done to get you to where we are right now what's what's your story been like it's a good story it's actually not the renaissance story uh that marie forleo for example presents which is i've been a jack of all trades and i did this and i did this yeah um if you look at my resume my things app is really not it's most rather linear for me after the bartending years actually i was really just doing co-curricular to pay for college right um because i paid for my own school thank you very much hashtag no debt um there is another way i'm just saying yes um and i went to a really expensive school so it's absolutely impossible but what i'm trying to say is after that i really wanted to go in a really pragmatic way i've always been intellectually gifted and intellectually gifted follow a certain course in life everybody follows a certain course in life and my trajectory was good school date nice guy be in proper position well-paying the right genre etc etc for me it was media in particular okay at uh in 2006 2007 when i'm emerging from school beginning to really move in the workforce the devil wears prod is the big thing every woman in the world i split up at least i'm and hadn't wanted to work for a big magazine i worked for a magazine so i worked for magazines for many years i was the uh director of cousin balton i was the publisher of surface magazine and that was my trajectory well guess what starts to happen fascinatingly before all the other industries like coal mining and truck driving start to become obsolete publishing becomes yeah because the internet takes off enormously i'm not saying it's absolutely go new york time it's just saying there was a shift that happened we know that there's a huge decline happening there's a huge decline happening which i saw years ago and i start starts to make a pivot okay first i made the tippy toe dip i moved in-house meaning i started working for brands rather than for media companies doing the same thing essentially for laying the same skills that i've learned and honed at media brands into i don't see which is a big luxury company but after that i started to see that this really this whole trajectory is is certainly becoming massively massively skewed and in addition my whole life starts to collapse at that time because i got divorced because i really wanted to i was living in switzerland because i married a swiss guy i wanted to live in switzerland i wanted to come back to new york so i started why overhaul one thing when you go overhaul your life why not burn it all down this is very unusual i hope we're going to talk about how anybody can do this without burning down the system but in my case i did okay this is when i turned to what i had before thought was unseemly unfavorable and unintellectual the world of self-help i was the biggest knob in the world making that okay so so biggest knob in the world is that because like you feel like i wasn't paying that much attention to it or i was well aware of it i read the holy hill when i was 24 years old and i was a bunch of hui i thought that people of a certain intelligence who are very well able of going and getting what they want are above this quite frankly okay now interestingly i didn't get everything i want in life and it felt awful to me i did not love the career i was in the job was finite the systems were certainly not certain as i had backed on the husband i married was the safe bet to marry was really just not even boring it was abusive and awful but the systems that i created that produced what i thought was the right life didn't feel good to me and something inside made me think maybe i should pursue a life that does feel good to me maybe it is possible and the way to that is personal development and self-help yeah at the end they sometimes aspirated as business books which i think is phenomenal because that's how you really help a lot yeah if you can get people in the door that way absolutely and then i really dove into this island and you know to be honest with you you know the difference between something that helps you and transforms you and it's awesome and something that becomes a real obsession and i had an obsession i had more than 400 books in my house at one time i was taking 26 coaching programs wow a lot of money yeah and i'm gonna be real serious about it and i started to ask myself this i'm already i'm good i'm happy i've developed the career of my dreams what do i still need this for and it was because this is what i wanted to do wow so once you started getting into the self-help space or personal development space what was like some of the first things that you did aside from like buying quotes and things like that or what are some of the first things that kind of like made you have some aha moments do you remember like the early days of like discovery well i remember the first aha moment which was about perspective i think almost everybody's aha moment will come when they understand the story they've been playing replaying in their head can be seen a different way if you just let that crack in you're going to start to explore further and mine came when i was going through this divorce and my ex-husband was extremely contentious and in german so that's like unusually contentious for a two and we um we were fighting a lot and couldn't reach an agreement and i picked up a book called the seven habits of highly effective people most people hopefully have read yes it's the original it's phenomenal book and in it there's one chapter in which steven r covey the author talks about a conflict he's having with his wife and he realized that she's not really angry with him she's disappointed she's frustrated she feels heartbreak that's a very different way of seeing the exact same situation and i described to myself in that moment maybe he's not angry maybe he's suffering from the rejection from the failure and from heartbreak whether i think that he has feelings or not yeah he may actually be a human being dealing with something else and i picked up that phone and i remember speaking to him and saying i just want you to know i'm sorry i'm sorry that you're going through this i'm sorry that i'm going through this i'm sorry that this happened to us none of this should have happened let's try to figure out how to get out of this from the best way and it went smoothly from that point on wow that you know i believe i believe it totally because i think sometimes people just need to hear like i said different perspective and also sometimes people just want to be seen and heard and feel like um they matter and their feelings matter and i'm sure that did a great deal of you honoring that and acknowledging that for sure it did but that's a tactic yeah real transformation was me understanding that what i was seeing was not the truth and i believe that this is the secret to everything but the moment when you realize in life that you don't know what you don't know this is a key coach Karen phrase you don't know what you don't know in any situation in life you're seeing one percent of reality that is my personal fundamental belief there's 99 out there that's going to be discovered and that is when things get really interesting right so how did things start to develop for you in terms of what was some of the first moves that you made when you said okay this space that i'm operating in um this media space this is not really see longevity in this i need to make some shifts what are some of the first things that you decided to do to say i'm going to take control of the situation i'm going to answer broadly because i want your audience to get the best um answer that really resonates with them i want them to hear this in a really good way you don't actually get messages actively usually when you're stuck you don't usually actively get messages when you're in that comfort zone sometimes you know that you're frustrated you really want to change you are as you say in your captions sitting at your desk going how is this my life yeah sure and i respect that that's physical pain and that means that it will blow up whether you like it or not and that's awesome you're on your way but what do you do is everything's kind of okay and it's you know it's not the worst it's not the worst you're not going to die or you're not going to die anytime soon and you don't really like change well if you are stuck and you just keep reproducing this you know you have a desire but there's no need to honor it right now you can do a couple of things because my demise of the policy industry has been very very slow yeah um is to ask yourself a couple of honest questions am i really living in a way that feels good to me am i am i enjoying everything that i can possibly enjoy right now am i having a wonderful time in this lifetime is this everything that i think i have get honest with yourself and ask yourself those questions if you answer those questions at all the way that i just ran a survey with people who um have run through my program are you unhappy yeah more than 50 said yes if you get real honest with yourself and you think i'm still jealous of other people i'm still thinking about my potential i'm still not living to my purpose i'm not happy well then you may want to do something and then if you get to that point if you get to that point you will have a real legitimate desire to change which is going to be critical you have a why because it's emotional that changes what your circumstances are not your actions then you're and start taking action and i recommend one of two things just to get you started okay the first would be change your environment in any way yeah literally from a recondo in your house yeah and this has actually become a burden which is tremendous to changing up your social circle the people who are usually kind of uskillish it's okay why don't you just join a soul cycle class or a yoga class or a book club or anything a little bit out of the ordinary you don't have to do what i did which was move to a different environment you can actually just start cultivating different environments different micro environments around you all the time this will give you a different perspective and shake up your world a little bit even i always say walking to work a different way every day stopping a different coffee shop is going to start to expose you the second thing that i would recommend with all my heart that you do is to take any action in a positive direction any small action yeah in my case i don't mind sharing with you that the first thing that i did when i started to really transform my life was not the self-helpery i joined a suicide hotline i had been a suicide counselor when i was in the army okay and i was very good at it and i really liked it and back when all the systems were collapsing i go for a divorce by the way i lost almost everything in the divorce and what i did get to keep i put in storage while i was moving and could you believe it the storage burned down so i lost all of my things oh gosh just me and my cats left and we're really like like little refugees coming back to the united states yeah on a friend's couch for more than two months trying to rebuild life which was actually a blessing in disguise but at first of course it didn't feel like a blessing in disguise i was pretty miserable right and already get myself out of thinking about myself the first impulse that came was just figure out how to think about other people and i volunteered on a crisis text line with which i still volunteer today and i recommend everybody do it what is it called crisis text line is the fastest growing suicide hotline in the country we are all text and it's just a phenomenal thing to do for other people particularly since we have a societal mental wellness crisis right and uh that was it so what i'm saying to other people is if you're in the same situation you want to start to transform your life just find something out of the ordinary to start to do take that tango class start that pottery endeavor figure out how to have a small side hustle no matter how small it is you never know where it's going to lead it will begin to transform your life i absolutely agree because i i wasn't a self-help junkie let's say before i started transforming and transitioning my life i don't even think i know that i was aware of self-help but i wasn't checking for it but i was not like oh let me go read this let me do this let me do that but one of the things that i did naturally on my own was just what you said started putting myself in different environments trying different things signing up for classes all those things that's why i tell them regularly it's just like sometimes you have to just start shaking up your world in a way that you can control you know sometimes you can't control all the things but you can put yourself in different environments and that's that's an awesome thing to do to just get started so when you're thinking back to um to kind of like your early transition days did you have any like fear or apprehension about like making these dramatic changes and obviously things were happening in your life overall but i'm sure that that could potentially make somebody be paralyzed to not take some type of larger action well the biggest thing that's first of all everybody has fear if you don't have fear you're not living and you're certainly not living to your potential that's your first clue that you're not living to your full potential because it is and it's not really so it's excitement it can also become real so you're saying if you don't see if you're not experiencing any fear then you're living to safe you're way too safe yeah okay you gotta have a little degree of fear and you have to understand that there's nothing to fear but fear itself which is kind of a nice balance of like oh fear yay hello fear let's get something in the bar um of course i felt fear and uh in fact terror however like for most people who eventually get unstuck the pain of staying in that place becomes so big that you will literally you're happy to collapse all the systems to get through it in my case i got lucky i was in an abusive relationship abusive relationship at some point you just have to go i can't fucking deal with this for another second of my life and you will wake up and get out of it you know i don't really believe that i overcame anything so heinous because in my particular case i tolerated for a very short period of time i figured out this was completely off immediately and i got out for most people this lasts much much longer it's trauma and it's overcoming trauma and most coaches will tell the story of overcoming trauma i was broke i was a heroin addict i was etc etc none of these really qualify for the superstar category generally speaking the overcoming is something a little less insidious and that makes it a lot harder to overcome because it's really hard to even say that i got a problem particularly when you're doing well you're married you have money you're married you have money you really think the systems are okay so what if you haven't had sex in 17 years so what if you hate your job and it's boring and miserable it's fine i'm completely covered i'm doing the right thing my parents are proud of me yeah okay well that's fine but if your brain threshold is toppled you will break out it it will become too much to bear and when it becomes too much to bear the fear just okay yeah you have no choice and it's my desire for everyone to seek coaching and understand what you just said which was coaching will find you in that point because i always pray for a big juicy problem because that will move you and that's a wonderful moment in life not a bad moment in life congratulations if you're there so do you find that you were able to uh use any of the skill set that you had used previously in the coaching in the work that you do now sure i mean i was a marketer for most of my career essentially a marketer and a salesperson all people by the way at the top of your fields or running a business or in any position of power your salesperson whether you like the word or not make friends with it it's a phenomenal work so yes you use those skills every single day um it's just that what i do on a daily basis today is much more meaningful to me and my transactive nature uh is is kind of only limited to the administrative part of my business so yeah i still have to run a business and i still have to have marketing platforms in place um that are brilliantly run by the chief millennial officer elissa but um it's really about um the nature of the work has changed enormously working i primarily work on one of the people private coaching and uh in talks and seminars and masterminds and that presence that space that you hold for people that transformative uh work is really different so we were talking before we got started just about sort of like the shift in our culture in terms of people really wanting to go more toward the freelance lifestyle and that type of work why what are your thoughts on that shift and sort of maybe why you think people are going in that direction permission to get heavy on everybody's ass and let's do it i love this question and i love this podcast and this podcast's name for this is the heart of what we're talking about today i am first of all a huge fan of the author Yuval Noah Harari the other brilliant israeli who has written sapiens and the most recent masterpiece 21 lessons for the 21st century i recommend them with all my heart in 21 lessons what he talks about a lot is the size and shift that is occurring on a global level because of the forces of automation and artificial intelligence whether these signs sound like sci-fi to you or not it is a million percent part of what's happening now we are 100 percent aware of that that is not like global climate change which for some reason some people are talking about whether it's like it or not it's affecting people's pockets it's affecting people's jobs so from flying or automated cars to uh the replacement of truck drivers which are probably the first couple of things that we're going to see and of course the knowledge industry that's already replaced a lot of in the past we're going through a new revolution and that revolution according to Yuval will come in ways there will be one revolution in 2025 2035 2045 this isn't going to stop so what's going to happen is we're going to have a societal seismic shift it's already beginning to happen with industries like the publishing industry many of my colleagues have started to switch pivot or quit into industries like real estate where their transferable sales skills are very easily marketed and shifted in addition you'll see truck drivers becoming i don't know like he says yoga instructors because today yoga instructors are much more uh in demand than a truck driver yeah as he also states this is extremely hard to do at 30 perhaps they're rather resilient you're okay let's do this i don't have anything to lose yeah i have a family let's transition at 40 it's much harder yeah at 50 it's extraordinarily hard now somebody who did pivot in her late 30s by the way this is a new business it's only been around for three years i'm now 42 years old it's a remarkable effort to make a transition at this age you've certainly judged a lot about your peers for doing something that's a little wackadoo you 100% have to brush up on skills get new certification this is transformation however it's the most useful thing that you can cultivate because whether you like it or not we will transition things are changing we will transition five to seven times in our lives and so the most valuable thing you can do for yourself today is not college i say this as an ideally graduate the most important thing that you can do for yourself today is mental acumen mental fortitude and the skills of resilience and those are only found in coaching personal development self-help and whether you take one seminar or another when we teach you the mindset part when we teach you how to see things differently so that the things you see are different you will really develop a life scale that will serve you forever and ever in these times that's all you need though so someone i'm going to play devil's advocate here so someone who is maybe having a child that's graduating you know and they're getting ready to go to college or they're thinking about college things um they're going to say like but what about the hard skills you know the mindset what about the hard skills what are they going to be qualified to actually do they can do whatever they want there are a couple things to be said here first college is a lot of fun and it's a right of passage so there's room for college it's just not useful and i believe that it's not useful as an academic so it's fantastic also just so you know for crisis text line usually um most of the texts are under the age of 25 and i think that anybody under the age of 25 is really emotionally young yeah they're emotionally extremely young so it doesn't really matter what you do there's a reason why most people come to coaching at the age of 35 45 and that's actually my sweet spot for example and the reason for that is you really start to ask the big questions like you have the fortitude you're it's almost like going to a second adolescence in the first adolescence you're big enough physically to say no to your parents at 35 45 you're big enough to say actually the systems are not really working for me what's going on yeah and when you do ask those questions you get powerful answers but at 25 you don't necessarily know what you're asking yet yeah you're really still seeking and that's totally fine which is why i always say to parents and a lot of people i coach your parents and they say well you coach my kids well there's a different kind of coaching for that exactly and that will teach them wonderful skills but it's certainly not um what we're doing yeah yeah so yes it does have its own place i also believe that the fact that i went to the army when i was 18 or any form of national service is exceptional for character building will teach you soft skills which should be renamed actual hard skills and um anything that you do is very very valuable it's just don't bank on the set skill and the set uh acumen because it's going to serve you for a very limited period of time statistically speaking so someone who's listening right now and they are in a space where they're just thinking like i'm miserable i want to quit my job you know they have sort of reached that point where they're like i recognize that something's happening here right um what would you say to that person like what would be off the top of your head like what are some of the things that come to mind first i would say i'm sorry i feel that way i really am i know what it's like yeah it's okay help is on the way nothing has to happen this right hot minute first thing to do is to remove the urgency and calm yourself down it's okay you're in phenomenal company i get that you don't like your job however let's ask ourselves first and foremost this question would you rather be very poor and no money coming in would you rather have money coming in what's the easier choice here it's the same place for now the reason is and so many reasons the reason i always slow down the process is when people jump from one moving train to another moving train you don't have any control of what's on the other side you will fall usually between the trains you got to stabilize one train before you can jump onto it right and so what i always say in switch or pivot or quit situation is either stabilize the machine that you're on and fix yourself because if you don't different places different faces you will reproduce the same results again again again or you can figure out how to stabilize your situation by hedging your bets meaning cover your ass find a side job that pays enough to get by find a transitional gig find a consulting job just stabilize the machine because otherwise it will happen to you as it happens to most entrepreneurs they can't sustain it there's no money coming in month after month and most people are not that obsessed with what they're doing in the initial stages just to maintain that momentum i myself have a full-time side job while i was creating this business for a year because you know that it costs money to create and put all the things in places and me starving doesn't serve anybody right so i have to do it the right way and i advise most people who are not independently wealthy and most of us are not certainly not at the age of 36 um to really do that um in a systemic way and know that the time doesn't matter the time doesn't matter yeah if you've got a dream that you believe in you can get it done so the first thing to do is stabilize one of the trains when you're in a position where you have to make hard decisions um where you're like okay not really sure what is the right way or the wrong way or whatever what are some of the tools that you find yourself using to like make those big decisions well decision making is always big and decision making is always critical and it's also a key as a result it's a key uh factor or component in leadership so if you're a really slow decision maker you're suffering from analysis paralysis and you're shooting yourself in the foot that's not a leadership position the fear of making a mistake is so enormous that it's paralyzing you right and that is uh a real thing to deal with so the first thing to do is realize that all mistakes will not ruin your career your marriage or your life mistakes are totally fine when you start to understand mistakes are totally fine you can easily make decisions meaning well with the knowledge of the information that i have now what is the best or most logical thing to do next and i like to say check in with your feeling your feeling actually does matter enormously if it doesn't feel good if it feels wonky to you not because you're over analyzing it but because it just doesn't seem like the right thing to do don't do it the second thing that i'll also give you as another gut check um appropriation is stop listening to the greek chorus the greek chorus the greek chorus the peanut gallery okay yeah stop involving your mom your parents your aunt and your neighbor in big decisions because they are not you they don't have your perspective they don't have the same amount of information so you do have enough information to make a decision and all you got to do is understand that the only thing you're defining is a small error to come no one in any situation is defining an error period at the end have there been any like memorable um business tips or advice that you've received throughout your career that sort of stuck with you sure i have a couple that i love very very much okay the first is pursue your passion follow your bliss um this is really undermined enormously by um most people because they really think that life should be very hard and that you should earn things and that it's just the way it is it's a big ongoing struggle i believe that if i could tell kids under the age of 25 months saying this you're doing extremely well and you know very well what you love you already know what you naturally like and if you have the courage to just follow that rabbit down the rabbit hole you will have a much happier life and whatever it evolves next to because you honed the ability the skill to follow your real preferences right you will be above and beyond and way ahead of the game than other people that is an enormous enormous gift and follow your bliss the words of joseph campbell i think never have there been smarter words spoken i wish i had not been so afraid of judgment so afraid of rejection so afraid of not having enough money and believed all of those starving artists nonsense um profits um and really gone with my preference to begin with because my preference has always been you can probably tell us a talk and i don't think that speaking made the business because nobody did it because nobody told me that it was a possibility and because that doesn't make money it does make money and if that's what you want to do public speaking it's actually a job for you yeah it is and i think sometimes though you know i don't know about you but my parents they instilled in me like traditional get a traditional job get this go to school get this job and sort of like there really wasn't any conversation about what happens after that it's just probably you stay there you know and so i think now where we're at people are not really content with the staying there portion and they're just kind of sitting there and dealing with whatever it makes you feel good or bad you know what i mean so when you ask yourself what were your parents circumstances yeah and if their circumstances and this was the best that they could get that's fantastic my parents chose safe steady jobs right and had a nice content safe lives we live in a completely different reality we just do the average person who is today a millennial will switch jobs five to seven times we are not existing in their universe we will live in our 90s go willing we are in a completely different space retirement advice as well so we're faced with a different reality so you just you do you yeah if you really want to spend the rest of your life a day you shouldn't want to send your last stand up sitting on the couch and watching bravo all the best to do but most of us want more out of life if we are living an expansive lifetime and in that sense follow your preference follow your bliss and know that your bliss and your preference will evolve and you can follow another one and another one and another one is a wonderful wonderful way to live and it's my number one piece of life and business advice the second one is to listen to everything we're about that's ever said in an interview and in particular that he always says we are the sum of the top five people around us jurate the people around you and if they cannot have character not money not character qualities that you admire you should not be hanging around with them because we become who we hang out with if you look for integrity and enthusiasm and intelligence in combination as he always says because if you don't have integrity the other two don't matter right you are really in the company of people who are great who will make you great and will lift you up to the high vibe that you deserve so speaking of parents how did your parents sort of react when you decided that you were going to have this transition in life shift i didn't tell them you didn't tell them was it did you not tell them because you were sort of anyone really i was very very quiet about this and because i already realized that people have enormous amounts of opinions yes the great esther hicks also known as abraham hicks always says if you have a great idea and you're really really excited about it go forth and tell no one as jesus once said um and there's a reason for it it is not fully baked and most people because they are so kind and really really trying to help are giving you their doom stories yes from the perspective of their own experience and when you're trying to do something new and something great think about it i was a corporate person yeah i had decent jobs to which i wore very fancy outfits and here i am on youtube i have a youtube channel 25 videos on it in which i wear soul cycle clothes no makeup and talk to people about happiness and following their bliss yeah do you think that most people react by saying you go girl yeah what are you doing what am i doing a friend called and asked me if i needed money my old boss called me and asked me if i needed my old job back it was really sweet but it's like thank god you discovered this after the fact where it's too late for me to start dismantling this yeah you scared the crap out of me yes you have to have enormous passion for what you want and really go for it and really have to learn in the process to not give a crap what anybody else thinks including your beloved lovely well-meaning parents when it was already out there it was already fully fledged where there was already a series called live with enthusiasm my first online program and a website and systems in place and there was no turning back then oh yeah by the way this is what i do now yeah oh and don't worry i'm not certain right so what would you say to someone how would you maybe encourage them who's trying to find sort of like their strength in that situation in that transition and not be not succumb to the pressures of the fears of other people right because it's easy it's a societal pressure it's expectations there's certain ways that we feel like we're supposed to live our life um and just like you said you know people are observing and looking at you you already know that that's going to happen so if someone's in a situation where they're facing that you know and they're trying to find their strength within that and not be discouraged by other people is there anything that you would offer to them or say to them yes there is remember who you are inside all of us there's enormous potential enormous inside all of us there is faith inside all of us there is trust there is belief if you tap into the understanding of who you are how great you are how somebody remarkably successful and that which you wish to achieve was once in your shoes it's no big deal we've all got to start somewhere you will stay the course it is just a question of time that's it not a question of strength question of time believe work on faith get coached if you have a problem with faith in your mindset and everybody does get coached find support and accountability we can see your blind spots a mile away we can see where you're operating from we can show you the flawed premises that you're working from i always say that one of the great things that you also get is you get to leave on my faith and my enthusiasm and i've already done this i've already done this i've already gone to the other side and uh it only gets better it's different and if you don't have it right now you can borrow hang out with other people who are uplifting who know who you are don't you ever have a girlfriend that say to you what are you talking about you're awesome you got this be that friend yeah hang out with that friend you need more of that you need more of that friend yeah if someone is right now thinking of coaching and considering coaching uh what advice would you give in terms of how to find someone that's a good fit for you within the coaching space because i get a lot of people that um are like thinking about coaching and entertaining it but most you know right now this i guess you could say this world we live in because so many people are looking for transition right there's a lot of different options when it comes to coaching and And sometimes you don't know, like, what's the right way to go? You don't know what would be the right fit for it. You don't even know what you need sometimes. So just from a person's perspective who is in this world, what would you suggest that someone sort of, like, look for or maybe some of the criteria that they should have in terms of finding a coach that would really work well for them?
Well, I'll go broader and I'll go narrow. Okay. The coaching industry has exploded massively. There are more than 20,000 practicing coaches in the United States, which actually isn't a lot per capita, but still it's a very, very large amount.
And most of them are uncertified or unaccredited. And they're certified, if they are, by some school that is just not recognized by the International Coaching Federation. There is only one coaching standard, and that is the ICF. If you're not ICF certified, and it's good to have the additional certifications, I have a lot of additional certifications to run assessments and stuff like that, but if it's not ICF, it's really not proper certification.
And we're monitored certification, and more importantly, for your purposes, not bound by ethical guidelines. And that is extremely important because we're dealing with people's lives. We're dealing with people's lives, we should take it very seriously. It's like they don't let you on a suicide hotline to say, hi, what's your favorite color?
We are trained people. And that's very, very important. The second thing I would like to say is the teacher will appear. You'll see.
If you're looking for coaching, you're going to end up hearing a lot of us. There are phenomenal coaches out there, not just me. I know because I have studied at the helm of wonderful coaches and wonderful practitioners. Badass and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People are very different books, both wildly entertaining, completely different voices.
Which one do you prefer? And the second thing that matters is what are you looking for coaching for? There are coaching endeavors, meaning we specialize in fields. I happen to be a success coach, a personal and executive coach, so my personal coaching is always about you getting your best self, which will trickle down to all of your life, but then naturally the course will follow into executive, leadership, entrepreneurship, coaching.
That's my specialty. And even though you'll find a program on my website called Date with Enthusiasm, because if love ain't working, ain't nothing working, it's a side program for me. It's not my specialty. It's just what gets you on the Today Show.
There are, however, if love is your issue, a love coaching arena. If parenting is your issue, there are so many people who are family and parenting coaches. There are so many people who are coaches that are only for getting you out of anxiety and overwhelm. They're also the marketers.
They're not really coaches, but they're super successful in helping you put systems in place, like Brendan Burchard or Marie Folio. They're usually beasts. They have enormous presences, and they're really here to give you templates that you can use in starting a business or a side hustle, et cetera, et cetera, and they're usually very engaging and delightful personalities. That's kind of it.
So you have every single arena covered, and if you're looking, the coach that is there for you is available. Right, right, right. I like that. I like that.
So tell us a bit about your venture into writing and becoming an author and all that good stuff. What has that experience been like? What does it entail for you? It's fantastic.
It's delightful, and it's extremely painful. All of that, right? It's all of it. I mean, that's kind of the way it is, right?
The sorrow and the pity is hilarious. It's hilarious, though. And I'm enjoying it every second, so I can't actually say that it's painful. It's just very, very lengthy.
The writing thing has always been a thing. I won a poetry contest when I was in the sixth grade. Thank you very much. I've always loved to write, and I've always loved writers, and I've always loved the written word.
I'm also a huge fan of the TV show, Fraser. Any wordplay you throw my way, I'm obsessed with. So it's a delight. All of this entails an enormous amounts of writings.
I mean, I've created more than 200 modules in my coaching programs. You have to write those. And worksheets, you've got to write them. And replying to people's emails, you've got to write them.
So writing is an exercise that's ongoing in my life. If you love to write, this is 100% the industry for you. The content creation industry, or the training industry, or the coaching industry are 100% for you. You are 50% a writer and 50% a coach.
But the authorship process has been much more difficult. The reason for this is not just because the literary process, the packaging of the book, the selling of the book, is very lengthy and exhausting. And this is for anyone who's really writing their own book, not sourcing it to other people. Writing their own book.
Not someone who has a ghostwriter, who's just probably give the content. I mean, if that's what you need to, I don't know, boost your business. But I just want to say, too passionate to do that. It's my book, so I'm going to write it.
The thing about it is the rewrite and the amount of rewrites to make this concise, to make this palatable, to make this agreeable to so many people, to make this marketable, quite frankly, is a very, very difficult process. It's a lengthy process. But here's what's wonderful about it. It really gets real clear about what your MO is.
Before, I really do cover almost everything. But when you become very, very specific about what you want to talk about, what you want to help people with, what your number one A to Z MO is, it really helps you as a practitioner. And so the writing exercise has been very clarifying for me. Do you have any personal care routines or things that you do to kind of help you, I guess, perform at your best when you're, or prepare you to perform at your best when you're out there doing all the basic things that you do?
Anybody who tells you that they don't is lying through their teeth. It's not sustainable. Also, anybody who hears your and my energy knows that you don't just bounce off the walls for no reason. It is cultivated.
This is not a personality type. This is a habit. And I do three things in particular that I never, ever miss. The first one is I meditate every day.
I do not get up dead before a 15-minute meditation. I believe that meditation transforms your life. Actually, that's an understatement. If you're not doing it, just do it.
The second thing is I read a lot. And I read a lot because it's very informative to what I do. It makes me more interesting at dinner parties. But also, it really sparks the thinking plugs.
It gives you an enormous amount of ongoing inspiration. And the third thing I do, and I have to do this because the nature of what I do, particularly as a suicide counselor, but also as a coach, is very emotionally heavy. And I'm already very trained to not join anybody in the problem. I won't be able to help anybody if I can.
But you do have to take breaks very regularly. And I take breaks every two hours. I go outside. Today's a gorgeous day.
You take a long walk and do absolutely nothing. Just clear your head. This is so important because it reminds us that we are a human being and not a human doing. You don't have to be on all the time.
You can be completely off for stretches of time. It's very, very good for you. Ooh, I love that. We're a human being and not a human doing.
So my final question is, what does success mean or look like for you in your life? Success is not what people think it is. It is not the money. It is not the lover of the debt.
It is not the accomplishment. It's not the fantastic bank. Success is you living as authentically as possible to who you are. In the words of Gary Zukav, who is Oprah's favorite, it is when the personality comes to serve the soul.
When you are in alignment with who you really are, you are inside exactly the way you are outside. You come to serve. You come with compassion. You come with the love of who you are.
You come accepting yourself. You really show up as yourself every single day and allow, by the way, other people to show up as themselves. That is true success. You don't need to have anything else.
I love that. So Karen, we've heard so much from you that is inspiring us and helping us, seeing our minds in the right space and all that good stuff. Let everybody know where they can find you, keep up with you, follow you, work with you potentially, all that good stuff. Thanks, Anna.
Well, my website is k-e-r-e-n-e-l-d-a-d.com, karenaldad.com. On it, you'll get a fantastic freebie called 10 Steps to Getting Anything You Want. And you can also leave a voicemail for my podcast if you want one personal question answered or a book of a consultation with me if you are interested in private coaching. Or you can also, because private coaching is expensive and I'm very well aware that it is not for everybody, especially since this is your first foray into coaching, I have four fabulous online programs that are available at very, very affordable price points where you get videos and audios and worksheets and the best of Coach Karen on that website.
I'm at Coach Karen on Instagram and Facebook slash Live With Enthusiasm on Facebook. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Coach Karen. Thank you.
I appreciate you for everything that you've shared with us. I'm sure it's going to bless a lot of people. And as always, you guys, be good.