Page 37 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

STEP 1: PERFECT THE PRESENT 25

requirements are, it is easier to identify and satisfy your manager’s
requirements, and you’ll both be happier as a result.
The vast majority of problems with people can be solved with
these two steps: (1) put in place stronger boundaries, and (2) get
your own personal and emotional requirements met at home, not
at work. Sounds simple and ridiculously obvious, and it is, but it
isn’t easy to do, so most people don’t do it. In fact, since most peo-
ple don’t even know what their personal requirements are, you’ll
be way ahead of the game by figuring out your own. This knowl-
edge will give you a huge advantage in the workplace, and it will
automatically improve your professional and networking ability
as well. I’ll explain how to do both in Step 2.

SUCCESS STORY

The Frustrated Human Resources Director Who
Followed Her Passion to Find the Right Path

Melissa Todd, a vivacious, stunning, redheaded, forty-something HR
director, was making an impressive six-figure salary at a law firm in
Washington, D.C., but hadn’t been loving her job for years. It didn’t take
much work on identifying her passions and values (Step 5) to figure out
that Melissa is a bona fide dog lover—the kind of person who creates an
immediate bond with any dog that she meets—and to no surprise, dogs
love her too! That’s nice, but how do you make money out of a love of
dogs? Of course, she had two dogs of her own, but she couldn’t see how
loving dogs could make her a good living.
One of her first coaching assignments was to start a business in the
evenings doing something she enjoyed. Melissa’s first business venture
was to create special dog packages complete with beds, handmade
collars, hand-painted feeding bowls, special treats, and toys, geared for
celebrity pets staying in luxury hotels. The problem with this business
was that profit margins just weren’t enough to make it a sustainable or
lucrative career, and although the products were for dogs, it didn’t fulfill