Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Career & Work

The Job of Your Life … Finding A Job You Love?

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Finding a job you love is challenging, but it can be easy as 1, 2, 3. It takes a plan and a process along with patience. How do you go about creating or finding the job that is fulfilling and on-purpose? That’s the job of your life.

This video was originally aired on November 17, 2011, when the unemployment rate was over 10%. In the years since, the published unemployment rate is lower. In many circles today the underemployment rate and out-of-the-job-market rate remains very high. 

Every day I run into people who are underemployed or unemployed. This breaks my heart on many levels. Aside from their loss of income and financial struggles, what I often observe in their situation is a point of view that is detrimental to their current and long-term state of well-being. They’ll never get the job of their life. It is like the movie Dead Poets Society, where the one young man decides that a life of just pleasing others is worse than death.Kissing Cobras

Many people think a job equals security and identity. This erroneous, yet prevalent, worldview on work creates a cycle of being in and out of dissatisfying jobs or workplaces. Or, if the pay is sufficient, staying in a job one really doesn’t like all that much. The pain of change appears worse than the suffering on the job.

For a few dollars more, we’ll trade our precious life. What a waste! Yet, I fully understand and deeply appreciate the dilemma. Money is important to function in society, to eat, to be housed, etc. 

Don’t blame your job for your state of well-being. Instead, take responsibility for bringing meaning to the job! That sounds easier to do than it really is. But how?

First, don’t quit your day job just yet because I struck a nerve with you!

Second, let my 1-2-3 approach (see this On-Purpose Minute) settle in your spirit. Even if you think it is impractical, do you find yourself wishing you could actually do this? Do you imagine what’s really possible if you pursued your passion? 

Third, do your heart work! On-Purpose Peace and My On-Purpose Folder are remarkable workbooks for personal or small group study.

Fourth, if you’re thinking of starting your own business then connect with me. We have coaching and programs that can help you accelerate your planning process and success ratio. We even have healthy lifestyle coaching with On-Purpose Partners for a select few people.

The job of your life is to live your life on-purpose. To be as fully you as God intended and designed you to be.

How Do You Manage Disappointment?

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Disappointment is inevitable but it need not be debilitating. How you manage it, however, is a choice with profound implications to your well-being, relationships, and opportunities. The easy route is to react negatively and stay there, but what good is that? You have a better choice. What words of advice have you heard for getting unstuck when you find yourself disappointed with something important?

I got to thinking about the word: disappointment. It led me to this chain of words: disappointment > disappoint > point > appoint > appointment. The common word is “point” as in a mark or dot or direction. When we’re disappointed, the mark has been missed. It does, however, provide an opportunity for redirection. What if disappointment is really intended to direct us to a greater appointment? So when we stay in a negative place, aren’t we the ones who increase the price of the initial disappointment and risk missing where we’ve been appointed to shine?

What works for you in managing disappointment? What you have to say may be the very words that help transform another person’s perspective. Be courageous and share your ideas when opportunity arises. Now don’t disappoint me!  : )

Check out this 10-minute excerpt from a keynote address I did where I was talking about changing the punctuation point in your life from a question mark to a statement to an exclamation point.

Need help going from a question mark to a period to an exclamation mark? Read The On-Purpose Person and get one of the companion workbooks.* Better yet, engage an On-Purpose Professional to coach you through the process of becoming an on-purpose person in creation.

*On-Purpose Peace is a workbook for Christians.

 

Ambition. At What Price?

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Click on text for more information about the On-Purpose Small Business Package

The desire to make a positive difference is the sweet, soulful heart of ambition. In contrast is blind ambition that tramples all in its path to accomplish an end, perhaps even a noble end at that, which is fraught with unhealthy costs. Much of this rests on your view of people.  

Which will mark your life, career, and legacy?

Herein lies the rub for many a business person. To what lengths are you willing to go to realize your ambitions?

Results, especially in the form of company sales and profits, are outward and tangible measures of success. Measurable signs, however, tell just a portion of the story. If you want to know the full story, ask the people along the way who helped to produce the results.

Here’s a painful example. For 12 months spanning 2008 to 2009, I worked nearly full time with a CEO client to author a book that codified his corporate culture, leadership development moves, and business strategy for internal use. Intending for the company to go public via IPO, the book also targeted Wall Street analysts and investors so they could readily grasp what truly made this company great.

The IPO market at that time dried up with the challenges in the economy. Instead, the company was purchased by a national competitor for $130 million. By the CEO’s own admission, the book helped them get more than $15 million in greater value for shareholders over the IPO price, plus they kept their name, and the CEO was offered the position of President over the merged companies.

“Wow!” you may be thinking, “That CEO had to be a happy man.” You would think so. Eight months after delivery of the manuscript, a client satisfaction clause I wrote into the contract was used to deny issuing me an “earned” six-figure stock bonus despite personal assurances from the CEO to the contrary. My concern for my client’s satisfaction and best interests was used against me. Ouch! That hurts on so many levels.

Just because one can take advantage of another person, does that mean one should? Best-selling books on the art of war and being a prince would say go for it. But I say there’s nothing noble in selfishness and greed. True nobility is knowing one has the upper hand and using it to raise up the other person instead of jamming them down further.

The deeper value is seeing people as being above things. Translation: relationships are greater than transactions. Results with responsibilities and citizenship can coexist and produce true greatness.

For a couple of decades I’ve worked with my CEO clients to get them to stop saying things like, “Our people are our greatest asset.” Assets are bought and sold as in slavery. Relating people to assets dehumanizes them and places them on par with the photocopier. By the way, the investment in the photocopier maintenance agreement often far exceeds the equivalent “maintenance agreement” for the people in training, development, and benefits. How sad is that!

Along this same line, the term Human Resources certainly isn’t endearing and doesn’t advance the cause of people as human beings. Resources is just another name for commodities or assets that are traded, discarded, and otherwise moved about indiscriminately. The Human Resources Department is a blind co-conspirator in the loss of human identity and dignity. Instead, rename the department to something like, “People Development” or “Talent Management” but not “human resources.” It is degrading.

I hold no delusions of grandeur that either the perfect person or company graces the face of the planet. Self-serving serpents slither the planet preying on others. We are all capable of being this way, yet deep within our spirit we yearn to a higher self, call, and standard. We’re better to aspire and fail than to have no aspiration at all.

Gazing with admiration upon the shells of “successful” men and women may provide inspiration, but it tends to deliver little instruction. You know better. Get the true back story from the secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, clerks, delivery persons, and cafeteria workers in corporate headquarters. Look at their personal life. Are their personal lives as captivating as their business headlines? You’ll soon discern whether the person capturing the headlines and your attention is gold-plated or 24 karat solid gold.

Do this: Whether you’re leading your life, a team, or a business, you need to decide: Ambition, at what price? Knowing your purpose and defining your values is a great start to building a life and a career where you can put your head to your pillow at night and sleep soundly.

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Here are some famous quotes about money for your consideration and amusement.

“Money makes the world go around.” $100 bill stack

From the song Money (Watch the performance!) in the Broadway play Cabaret sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

 1 Timothy 6

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Jonathan Swift

“Get all you can [money], without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”

John Wesley

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.”

Yiddish Proverb

Are You Doing Business By Design?

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Chief Leadership Officer book cover
Today is the last day you can pre-order Chief Leadership Officer. Click here or on the book cover above to be one of the first to read it.

 

Chief Leadership Officer presents an On-Purpose® based advanced alternative to the traditional CEO–run management system and method. It takes a choice to lead a business in this manner.  

Most start-up businesses begin with great intentions, but too often wind up being haphazardly led with little to no regard for the founder’s spirit or original intent—even if the founder is still running the business! It is a costly loss of strategic advantage, employee and customer engagement, and business profits!

Most susceptible to this drifting from the founder’s intent are large organizations and institutions where work is highly fragmented across divisions or countries. Specialization must be paired with a sustainable corporate culture that honors and innovates upon the strengths of its past and informs the future.

For example, did you know that universities and colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other Ivy League colleges were started as seminaries to train and equip ministers in the Christian faith? Today, these academics bastions of intellectualization and secularization are so far from their founders’ intent that their roots are obscured, if not outright ridiculed. So much for the founders’ idea of a truly “higher” education.

Large businesses are very susceptible to losing a measure of their soul. The pressures to produce profits can create expedient behaviors that diminish sustainable brand value and equity. When ethical issues arise the tendency is to resort to conveying and communicating corporate values as a “fix.” In truth, authenticity was lost long before and expediency started rotting the roots of the tree long before the “harvest” went bad. When values need to be more codified and communicated than caught, then real business problems are predictably on the horizon.

Solo owners or one person entrepreneurs are susceptible too; but they face a different challenge, however. Founders of these SOHO (small office, home office) businesses are typically wearing far too many hats and are preoccupied with production, sales, or customer care. They’re easily caught in a vicious swirl of learning, working, and selling or overwhelmingly stuck in procrastination. Fortunately, their passion to perform typically enables them to muscle through and deliver on a small scale basis.

Solo owners are alone and that’s a disadvantage when it comes to doing business by design and being ethical. The perspective of oneself is limiting. If the solo owner is willing to be transparent, here’s where a business coach or advisor can lend perspective and accountability. 

Years ago, a client was starting an IT business. He got so lost in his software development, he soon forgot why he started a business. His intent was to help clients, employees, and his family, but he lost sight of the larger picture as he was buried in the details.

It sounds so basic, but the fundamentals of business really don’t change because ultimately business is about people serving people. In my client’s case, lines of code were the means for creating value and making a contribution. He, however, got caught up in the making of money versus creating an “everyone profits” culture. The true value of his business wasn’t code or cash, but grounded in how his software improved the lives and productivity of his client companies. By refocusing his attention on his original “why” and design for starting the business, he was able to turn around the business.

Any kind of plan or business plan for small businesses tends to be scarce. Who has the time to plan? or so the thinking goes. Understandably so because they’re really not all that appropriate or useful in many businesses (See: What is the Purpose of a Business Plan?). Nonetheless that doesn’t mean strategy and planning are useless and meaningless. They have a specific and powerful place in a company of any size.

(Special plug: A couple of years ago I met Jim Horan, creator of The One Page Business Plan. Here’s a great planning device for businesses of all sizes. It is, however, especially apropos for solo owners. Also take a look at The Service Model, a one-page organizing tool for businesses.

Regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur of a one-person show or the CEO of a billion dollar business, as your business advisor and designer, you don’t call me until there’s a problem in the business that your team or you can’t fix yourselves. Your SWOT Analysis only takes you so far.

Let’s assume that you are competent at delivering your product or service, but the business isn’t growing. That means the problems lie in the design of the business or the leadership or both! Conversations and conventional wisdom swirl around business infrastructure, business planning, and the business model, but it is like a fish swimming in water trying to see water—you won’t see it because you’re too close to the matter.

Times like this demand depth, not shallow manipulations of the status quo under the guise of change management. In the strategic depths of an organization, a slight adjustment in understanding, a tiny shift in strategy, or an orientation toward greater alignment ripple powerfully into positive results. The simple articulation of a 2-word purpose statement is the tiniest of acts, but the most potent of all strategic initiatives.

Tweaking the fundamental design of the business is not for the faint of heart. Eventually, failure to do so will be manifest in every facet of the business … and that’s costly at every line item on the budget. Strategic business design can TOPBPerson coverelevate the business to the next level of performance, profits, and expression of its purpose. 

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The On-Purpose Business Person provides a solid framework for any person at work to learn how to treat their work as a business. Click here or on the image to the right to purchase it for $16. It is also available on Kindle for $9.97.


How Solid is Your Core?

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Be sure to watch the bonus footage in today’s On-Purpose Minute for a visual analogy about the cost of having a hollow core versus a solid core.

Core Strength is at the Heart of Leadership

Inner strength lies at the core of our being. Your 2-word purpose provides the strongest defense you have when you come under attack. Like any strength, however, it must be nourished and developed or it will dwindle and decay.

CLO hard book cover open
Pre-orders close this Thursday, June 30, 2016. Click here or on the book cover to be one of the first to get it when it is released.

Your core is also the source for going boldly into the world. If you’re frustrated, disheartened, or disappointed, then chances are your core is suffering. Pain is inevitable. The difference between this hurt crushing us in defeat or stirring us to rise to the challenge is our core.

In my upcoming book, Chief Leadership Officer, one of the key messages is personal leadership precedes leadership of others. Who wants to follow a jerk? Leading one’s life requires us to resist the natural gravity of decay. Leadership requires thoughtful upkeep and exercise to avoid becoming weak and rotting. You are the only true caretaker of your core. Others may feed it and some may deplete it, but only you control it.

A solid core is the source of inner strength that enables us to withstand the harsh forces that would come against us. This isn’t to say that fears, doubts, and concerns don’t creep into our lives. They do. The difference is when they do creep in, do they find an unguarded home to invade? Or do you have the presence of your purpose in the heart of your heart to resist the assault of your soul?

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

How Do You Get the Job of Your Life? Part 2

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Part 1 is found here.

A tough personal economy, job loss, or unemployment means you may find yourself stuck in a job that no longer suits you or worse you feel stuck and that you have no options to change because the risk to leave is too high. Unhealthy thoughts are creeping into your psyche.

Worse, do you find yourself in a repeating pattern of moving from job to job in a sort of trial-and-error attempt to find the right job? The only thing worse than moving from job-to-job is the potential loss of confidence that can often accompany this cycle where you feel like you have no place to belong and contribute.

The challenge isn’t necessarily the job but the applicant! My implication isn’t that there is something wrong with you as a person. Quite the contrary; you’re uniquely gifted and talented with a valuable contribution to make. You have an unmatched experience and background … and that’s just the start of what sets you apart! What you have is backward thinking about how to find the job of your life.

The Secret to Finding the Job of Your Life

So what is the secret to finding the job of your life? Your process is flawed, not you! Chances are you’re chasing money, not meaning. If you keep applying for misfitting jobs that meet your financial goals but rob your soul, then you’ll get rejection letters galore. You lack the common sense to see you’re an empty suit chasing a dollar. Or, worse yet, if you do get an ill-suited job, how soon will it be until you realize the mistake you’ve made … or your employer does? Welcome to the repeating pattern that invariably ends in frustration, lost momentum, and a career setback.

Try this very different approach to finding the job of your life. Admittedly, my approach places a substantial burden of work on you to think, craft, and find the job and company that best suits you to thrive. Too often, I’ve seen people settle for a close approximation of something meaningful or the decision is made purely for “more money” reasons. Being sold to the highest bidder offers some upfront ego-strokes and rewards, but long term you have to ask yourself if this is the place, the people, the product, and the purpose where you can thrive.

Kill Rates or A Healthier Place

A couple of decades ago, my wife was applying for a job with a defense contractor. Judith loved everything about the position. Wisely, an interviewer bluntly asked her, “Are you comfortable being in the business of killing people? Here we talk in terms of ‘kill rates’ to assess the effectiveness of our products.” Everything else about this job seemed like a great fit — superior pay and benefits working in a major corporation, nice people, interesting work, but … Judith decided to pass on that position because being in the “kill rate business” just wasn’t who she was.

Years later, after raising our children, Judith decided to re-enter the workforce to become a health coach. Today she is in the business of saving lives by helping her clients to gain health. She is thriving because her heart is in her work. She’s put it together 1-2-3. She’s defined who she is and found meaningful work supporting her in becoming who and how God made her. The 3-2-1 approach almost invariably becomes oppressive rather than expressive.  166

Judith tapped me to work with her in support of helping clients to be at a healthier place. How on-purpose can one be when you’re not very healthy? Plus she’s training others to become health coaches by sharing in her joy of saving lives and my calling of helping people lead lives of being on-purpose.

Invest Your Life

Don’t spend your years wasting away chasing meaningless endeavors. Instead, invest in your life in what matters most to you. Do it on-purpose!

If your life or career needs some renovation, then let’s connect and see how we can help you take a healthy step toward being true to yourself, prospering, and making a difference by giving back. Is it time for you to invest in the first job of your life — taking care of you? Here is how we can help:

Finding the job of your life is the job of your life. Until you’ve figured out who you are, why you’re here, where you want to go, and what’s important, then you’ve placed yourself at a strategic disadvantage to find the job of your life.

Give this different process and approach a try. It is as easy as 1-2-3!

What Do You Do Best?

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As A New Year Rolls Around: What Will You Do Best in 2016?

The On-Purpose Business Person
Here’s the new cover to The On-Purpose Business Person since this classic OP Business Minute was recorded

This simple, yet highly clarifying question from this Classic On-Purpose Business Minute carries strategic value and importance to every aspect of your business and life. Your answer matters. Don’t get hung up on the perfect answer. Have a written answer that is in the ballpark. That alone will powerfully direct and clarify many decisions you face today and will face in the New Year.

The subtitle to The On-Purpose Business Person provides an important strategic statement that is so simple that one might miss the power and potential to transform your career and/or business. 

Consider the centerpiece of the subtitle: Doing More Of What You Do Best More Profitably. It can transform your life, career, and business.

Have you read The On-Purpose Business Person? You’ll learn how to do more of what you do best more profitably.

 

Is a Startup Business a Smart Career Move?

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Are you unemployed, underemployed, or just plain finding that your corporate job is slowly sucking the life out of you? Are you gasping with this suffocating sense of being stuck with just enough air to breathe, yet barely enough to thrive? Is some combination of your income, lifestyle, family relationships, and health suffering because of dissatisfaction and frustration with your present work situation?

Start Small. Keep Your Overhead Low. Work Hard. Pray Unceasingly.

Starting a business isn’t just for people with business degrees and experience. Motivation, hard work, and a willingness to learn serve any budding entrepreneur.

Plan ahead for starting your business off right. In time, you’ll ease into the transition. Sometimes it is thrust upon us from necessity. Regardless of whether it is a retirement, layoff, job elimination, or simply what you want to do, starting a business is a smart move.

Here’s my list of 10 compelling reasons for starting a business:

  1. Escape the rat race. Get out of that corporate job and transition to more meaningful and enjoyable work.
  2. Personal expression. A business can be a creative outlet for a hobby or passion.
  3. Independence. Set your own hours, decide who you want to target as your customers, and don’t have a boss.
  4. Retiring to work. Retirement looms in a few years so growing a business represents a smooth transition and new sense of work identity.
  5. I need the income. Your small business may provide extra income to cover the bills for braces, college, and vacations. As it grows it can replace your current salary and become full time.
  6. Tax breaks. A small business is a vehicle for deducting some existing expenses from your tax return. Consult your CPA, but when the business picks up a fair share of the bills, it can ease the household budget.
  7. Ambition. A small business can become a big business! Put your ambition to work.
  8. Change the world. A business can be the means for you to truly change the world with your business idea, invention, or service.
  9. Plan B Security. A sour economy can be a ripe time to start a business. In such times it may be the means to provide for one’s family and self in the event of a job loss or cutback. Security matters.
  10. I can do better. Many businesses have begun because the founders knew they could do better than their employers or what was offered on the market. I’ve seen women-owned businesses blossom simply because the founder wanted equal pay in parity with men and to do better for her family.

Do you need to be the next Elon Musk of PayPal, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Steve Jobs of Apple, or Bill Gates of Microsoft?

Not really … but what if you could be? Are you ready to trust your dream? Starting a business may be one of your smartest moves yet.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin