Episode 167: Achieving Career Happiness with Myriam Rose Kohn – Transcript
[Rennie Gabriel]
Hi folks, welcome to episode 167 of the Wealth On Any Income podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and your money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel.
In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in five to ten seconds, what determines how close you are to complete financial choice, and how to run your business without being in your business. And last time we had Howard Brown, a two-time cancer survivor, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and best-selling author of Shining Brightly. Today we have as our guest Miriam Rose Cohn.
Miriam Rose is a multilingual career expert who had to go through two career transitions herself. She doesn't just do textbook theories in her program, she brings real life experiences. She knows where the pitfalls are and the fear lie, and her clients do not have to do it alone.
She holds her clients' hands until they reach their goal, and with Miriam, they have a confidant who has their best interest at heart. Miriam, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income podcast. Well, thank you for having me.
I'm happy to be here. Terrific. Well, let's start with a few questions.
One, tell me more about the work you do and why you do it, although from your introduction, I have a good idea.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
Well, I've been in the career business since the 90s, and along the way as a career coach, I have met many people who were just miserable, but miserable in their work. I would not leave for fear of losing the paycheck. And so there's no need for this today, because what I do with my clients, first of all, I ensure my clients get paid for what they enjoy doing, so they can lead a more joyous and harmonious life.
And it's especially important today that at least you're happy at work with all the anger going on in the world right now. And, you know, my miserable clients went home miserable and they got rid of their partners and spouses instead of doing it the other way around. So now, if my clients are happy at work, they go home happier, they have a better family life, and it ripples out, right?
And hopefully it counters some of the anger, at least they can respond to it should they be caught in a situation, you know, with a more self-centered approach and keep their blood pressure down. Because this is another thing, before I answer what I do, is that if you are happy doing what you do, and you're not in a toxic environment, because that's important as well, to be in a good environment, you have lower blood pressure, you have fewer headaches, and all this contributes to fewer diseases. All the other stuff makes you sick, you know, because if you're not comfortable at work, you're at dis-ease, and if you're at dis-ease long enough, you get a disease, you know?
So yes, all these things are important. And so what I do, if people, and listen, the answer always lies within the client, right? We know that.
It's just a question of unnerving it. So if they don't remember what they wanted to do, we do career exploration first.
[Rennie Gabriel]
That makes so much sense. And it's, I know how effective this can be, because, oh gosh, it was well over 30 years ago, it was in the 1990s, that I found myself back in a business I couldn't stand, because I had the experience of it. And I went to a career counselor to find out what I should be doing.
So I really respect the work that you do.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
Thank you. So what we did, so once the career exploration shows us what you'd like to do, whether it is becoming an entrepreneur or working for someone else, and by the way, we're all entrepreneurs today. People don't realize that, because if you don't manage your career, no one else will.
So, but you know what I mean, you know, entrepreneurs, you start your own business, whatever, or if you want, and it's especially important, you know, for people who like to work with their hands, you know, and who are creative types. And then there are people who prefer to work for someone else, in which case I coach them on how to conduct a proper job search, because it's not filling out applications and waiting to be called, especially some positions get 150 applications a day, you know, you have to be a lot more proactive. So I coach them on that.
I still write their resume and LinkedIn profile of their executives, you know, their executive bios, boardroom bios, whatever they need there, because I don't have enough time to teach them how to do that in the amount of time we have to go from point A to point B. And once they have an interview, I coach them on how to ace the interview, which is the questions they need to pose, how to connect with the interviewer, and then how to bring the interview back on track if it derails. And then when all is said and done, then we do personal and digital branding, which is important today, because you have to be known for something.
If you are known for something, and I don't care if it's an administrative assistant, all the way up to CEO, you are always recession-proof, because if you're known for something, people will always come to you. So that's kind of important. We'll build on that later on.
So there are many facets to this, and of course, I still do career coaching along the way. It's an interesting thing with my clients. Once they've been a client of mine, they're like a client for life, you know, because things change in their life, and they come back.
For some of them, as I told you, I started in the 90s, I'm doing their children's resumes now who have become adults, right, and their career management. So it's a nice relationship.
[Rennie Gabriel]
It's so funny you said that, because I referred my son to the same career counselor that I went to. Yeah. So there you go, right?
It's generational, yes. It's 100% of the profits from the work I do to various animal and veteran charities. I noticed something similar about the charities you support.
So tell us about the charities that you support.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
You kind of have to choose, you know, because there are so many in the veterans area. So I support the Disabled American Veterans and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and I also support Habitat for Humanity and with the animals, the ASPCA and the Humane Society. I think it's called the United States or America.
I just know it as the Humane Society.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Local ones and national ones. Right, that's correct. So bless you for that, because it's the same charities I like to support.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
That's interesting. That's good. All right.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Yes, yes. So tell me, this is a two-part question. What would you say was your biggest failure, and what was your insight from that failure, and how you use that to create success?
And I know, I think before we got on the recording, I spoke about your ex-husband.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
Right. You want, I can talk about this. I mean, I'm not going to go into my married life.
You have to understand when I, you see my gray hair, right? So I'm not 20 years old anymore. Oh, my son is going to turn 50 this coming, if I have to say it.
But when I was raised, you were raised to be a good housewife, you know, and a mother. That was your purpose in life. If you had to work, you could be a teacher, but not university, God forbid, no.
Only elementary school or be what we called in those days a secretary.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Yeah.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
And so this is what I brought in to my marriage, but like women know, I'm sure, and I'm not saying all men are like that. Please don't go and misunderstand. There are many good men around, but I happen to have one who when he was done, but his feet doormat, and out he went.
So all the time we were married, he did not allow me to work, because it would be bad for his image, like saying he was not a good provider. Okay. So I was kind of sad because he came home one day at 5 p.m. It was a Monday. I'll never forget it. I know it was a Monday, 5 p.m., and he told me the next morning he would be out by 9 a.m., supposedly for a trial separation. But then, you know, I saw him take all his stuff with him, and because he had not allowed me to work, how was I going to support our two, well, they were twins at the time, our two sons, and I wasn't going to pay rent, because I had nothing.
I wasn't allowed to work. Everything I tried, he always sabotaged. So I considered that a failure, and so I did what I had.
I had a degree. Well, I have a master's, but every day he told me how incompetent I was, illogical I was. I couldn't do anything right.
So you go with this mentality, and one day I said, well, if that's true, why is it I'm doing everything and he isn't doing anything except go to work and play with the boys? So I decided to change my mind, said, and I went down to the junior college and got a part-time position as an adjunct professor, and then I got one at my alma mater at the state university level, and so I started getting out of this, and that was how I got out of this failure. I considered it a failure, because I did everything I was taught to do.
You know, I cooked all the meals from scratch. I tailored his clothing. You know, I made him from scratch.
He sewed everything, chose everything. So that wasn't good enough, so I figured, well, like I said, I got a position as an adjunct professor. I taught languages.
My degrees are in French. My master's is in French. I had the double, and I did this mind you when I first came to this country before I married him.
I worked 52 hours a week to support myself, pay my rent, and pay my education, and carried 16 units at the college level and university level thereafter, and I graduated with magna cum laude in both. So my degree were in French and German, and then my master's was in French with a minor in Italian, and so that's what I taught, and then after a while, it got to be difficult because, and I'm sure the teachers listening to your podcast will probably feel the same, you get squeezed because you have, you can't do anything right with the students anymore. The parents come in not understanding the dynamics of education, and on the other hand, well, at the level I'm at, when you're talking junior college and university, you know, the students come in on their own, but they think they know it all, and they're busy with the phones.
When I tell them, don't use your phone, you won't hear my explanations, and then they're like this under the desk, like I can't tell by their body language what they're doing, you know, but then you have to write student learning objectives, outcomes, excuse me, student learning outcomes, SLOs they call them. Well, how do you do that with students who don't want to learn? They came in, and they go like this, okay, what are you going to teach me today, or they don't show up for half a semester, and then comes the end.
I have to pass your class. Yes, well, you're entitled to three absences. How many do you have?
Well, you don't understand. It was this, it was that. Fine, you should have told me.
How's your work? What can I do extra work? I said, you don't understand.
Extra means above and beyond the basics that you have to do, so there was stuff, so it got to be very hard between students not being students, and the administration forcing you to do SLOs, because if I don't pass students, then I look like a bad teacher, right? Toxic environment. We were talking about that a few moments ago.
Let me tell you, I love to teach. I love to teach, but I couldn't do it anymore. I changed into educating my clients now.
My, right, it's still teaching, but we don't say it. We say educate, but you know that after stopping to teach, it took two months without any medication whatsoever. My blood pressure went down from 173 to 119.
That's how toxic that environment was, and I love to teach, so that's how I changed it and started building my business more and more. As I said, I've been doing it for, well, 30 years now, if not more so.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Yeah, that's what I love about having the people on my podcast who have a personal situation that leads them to the business that works for them, and for those who aren't there yet, they can get a hold of you, and now I'm going to guess, well, I know you've got some valuable free resource that the people listening can get. Please tell me about that.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
The free resource I have right now, it's, I'm using, I'm in the process of setting up my own checklist for what people should start, should start thinking about if they want to contribute a transition. If you love your work, but you're in a toxic environment, you certainly can continue to work, but in a different place or capacity, and I can help them with that. It's the, and so the book that's available right now is about how to update your resume and what to do with some interviewing questions and stuff like that.
You have to understand, resume writing constantly changes, even since the pandemic, only three years ago, everything's different, and how you approach things. First of all, of course, you have to do your homework when you go to an interview. You just don't go blinded in there.
You do research on the company and whatever else. Well, if you have worked with me, first of all, you decided which companies you want to go on, so that work has already been done, but you haven't done that on your own, the book can help you, and I can assist you because when I do interviewing techniques, I didn't mention we also do compensation negotiation, and the reason for that is we don't call it salary negotiations anymore because so much more has come into play, like how many days off do you want?
Do you want four days a week at 10 hours a day or five days a week at eight hours a day, or do you want to do remote work? How much commuting, you know, and do you want gas for your car or do you want a company car? If you have to go in and to work, do you get a gym membership to stay active so that you can be energetic at work and whatnot?
A few of things, I'm just mentioning a couple, you know, but there's also insurance and retirement, and since you do well for any income, you know, all this stuff comes into play and you have to keep track of it, and a lot of people don't have the first clue about it, so the resource I have now will help them with that, and then I'm in the process of setting up a checklist of what they have to look for when they start doing a career transition.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Terrific. I will have a link in the show notes to that free e-book. Thank you.
And one of the things I think people need to be aware of is that probably six years from now, there are jobs, maybe 50, 60, 80 percent of the jobs in six years that don't even exist today, so I know there are endless possibilities, and people need to be flexible and allow their imagination to support them. Absolutely.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
The latest statistics show today, and what are we, May 29, 2024, that 85 percent of the positions that will be available in 2030 do not even exist today, and that's more than five and a half years, five and a half years away, so you're exactly right in what you're saying with your percentages, yes.
[Rennie Gabriel]
That comes really, and five years moves fast. Yes. Thank you, Miriam.
I want to thank you for being on the Wealth on Any Income show.
[Myriam Rose Kohn]
Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me, yes, and I enjoyed it.
[Rennie Gabriel]
It's so short, yes. Now, to those who are still listening, if you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com forward slash TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free nine-step roadmap to complete financial choice and philanthropy, and receive an email once or twice a month with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or your money, and if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart, please check out our affordable program, Wealth with Purpose.
To my listeners, thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth on Any Income podcast on your favorite platform, and please rate, review, and subscribe. Until next time, be prosperous.
Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye.
