Episode 37. Building the Business of You: Being Strategic About Your Career Development - Connie Steele

What is a career mashup and how can it help build the business of you? Connie Steele and I discussed this, her best-selling book “Building the Business of You and so much more on Episode 37 of the Reframe & Reset Your Career podcast. In this episode, we will learn about: Appreciating your achievements and talents, especially things you find easy, Studying mathematics but moving into marketing research after researching options in college, Being strategic and intentional to transition into Tech with AOL to learn new skills and accelerate her own growth, Enjoying the agile Tech environment of experimenting, learning and not worrying about failure, Becoming the "CEO of You", viewing yourself as a product/ service and showcasing how you add value and what you stand for, Adopting a flexible mindset to deal with the increasing uncertainty of the world, Her new book “Building the Business of You” which looks at providing a system/ roadmap to develop your career, Being strategic when planning and developing your career not simply working hard, Being honest about your abilities and seeing how they dovetail with macro and micro trends to identify potential career opportunities, Work is not always meritocratic, you need to understand the bigger picture, develop soft skills and build strong relationships, Creating a career development plan and sharing it with trusted people in your network so that they may help guide you to your goals, Don’t take feedback as criticism but reframe it as a data point and way to improve and The importance of emotional intelligence, it’s a skill that you can develop. Connie is a future of work and life expert, author, co-founder of management consultancy Flywheel Associates and host of the Strategic Momentum Podcast.  With over twenty years of experience, working at Fortune 500 (companies such as AOL and General Mills), start-up and scale-up organizations, high-growth tech companies, and consulting with C-level executives, Connie has observed firsthand how business is no longer straightforward, but collaborative and fluid. Connie has always been intrigued by the “why” behind companies and careers that thrive and has spent ten years studying the workplace trends that are now permanent changes. Her goal is to help people understand their skills, talents and interests to help them build their long term strategic approach in order for them to discover their portfolio career or superjob. She’s also passionate about helping leaders build fluid organizations to adapt and thrive in a world where uncertainty is the new certainty. In her best-selling book “Building the Business of You,” Connie shares the trends of tomorrow so professionals can form their own career mashup – her term for the career of the future in which workers merge their skills, passions and values. Connie’s book shares future of work trends that provide the ‘why’ behind how people’s attitudes, motivations and expectations are changing with respect to work and life. Yet, it also touches on the implications to our personal and leadership development as a result. It teaches a strategic planning framework to help those take control of their career, because in today’s world you have to now be the CEO of you. Connie’s perspectives and advice has appeared on Forbes, Authority Magazine, TechRound and Thrive Global. Connie and I talked about how progress at work is not always directly linked to working hard and performing well and she told me: “For so many, you go into work thinking it is this meritocracy, you go in thinking it is black and white just like school ... the reality is that's not always the case at all, sometimes it is but in many instances there are so many other factors that influence an outcome and if you're not aware of that, you're not seeing the big picture, it's hard to understand. Many people get quite frustrated because they don't understand why peers might be moving up when they may not have that level of talent or comm