Finding Your Career | Leni Miller

 

Episode Transcript of: Finding Your Career | Leni Miller

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Laney Miller. She is the president and founder at EAA search company that’s focusing on helping individuals find the right type of work. Laney, welcome to today’s show. Thank you. Can you give me your background of how you got to where you are today?

Leni
Yeah. I have a degree in 18th century German literature, which wasn’t particularly practical. And I ended up working in an employment agency right out of college. And one thing led to another and I became a serial entrepreneur in the business. I started two big staffing agencies in San Francisco, one of them is still going strong called McCall staffing. And about 15 years ago, I started a retained search practice, which recruits executive assistance to CEOs all across the country. So my background has always been in employment one way or the other. And every once in a while, I got to use my German, but not very often.

Alan
Well I imagine that but you have, you know, a lot of things that other people don’t? Yes. So in the in the area of searching for new candidates and working with CEOs. What’s your process? So you go about how do you get people placed? And

Leni
yeah, well, the thing that I realized early on in my business, whether it’s for CEOs or it was for less senior people, is that in order to place people in jobs that really are right for them, I had to identify what is right work for people. So over the years, I just slowly but surely started defining the formula of what it was that made up write work for people. And about 10 years ago, I also CO produced a TV series with a friend of mine, who was in the outplacement business, Sharon Cadbury, and we were sponsored by Intel. And our job was to go find people it was called Home Sweet office to find people who love their work, who had leveraged technology, and their passions and their values to find work they love. And it was really during that experience that I really saw the the formula of what it was that made up right work. And I started seeing that anybody could have it, anybody could find it. It was just a matter of managing the project. And really knowing yourself. Well.

Alan
You know, for many of us, we need that type of help with finding the right work. It it seems like it seems obvious yet, so many of us get lost. And you know, who am I and how do I? How do I capitalize on what I need to do best? It reminds me of this book called What color’s your parachute?

Leni
Oh yeah that was the Bible back in the day. Yeah. Yeah.

Alan
And so Richard, both. So you just published a book called Finding the right word I did, okay. And five steps to life that you love is just not finding work. It’s finding life, right, and having a passion for it. So what inspired you to write this book,

Leni
right? The biggest inspiration came from interviewing so many people who were in wrong work. And Alan, I’ll tell you, one of the things I researched during the writing of my book was that wonderful quote, by Henry David Thoreau, where he says most lives, live quiet lives. Most people live lives, most men live lives of quiet desperation. And what I didn’t know was the second part of that was and go to their graves with their songs still in their hearts. And so many of the candidates that I would interview, my job was to make sure that those candidates didn’t go to my clients, right. So so many of the candidates I would interview wouldn’t be in there, right work. And they couldn’t even imagine leaving what they were doing, because they didn’t know how, and they didn’t think they could afford it. And all the reasons why not. So the biggest inspiration was to share what I knew about finding write work with as many people as I could.

Alan
So if I pick up your book and read through it, then what’s my takeaway there?

Leni
Your takeaway will be you will understand what you have to do to discover the parameters of your right work.

Alan
Okay. Okay. So,

Leni
and you’ll be inspired by other people’s stories.

Alan
So who have you interviewed for you, but in putting this together?

Leni
Well, I decided to interview famous people and ordinary people, ordinary meaning that people wouldn’t know their names, not that they were ordinary people. So I interviewed has had the great privilege of interviewing Robert Mondavi before he passed away. And Robert was a person who at the age of 56, or 57, was kind of booted out of his family wine business, because of some internal family problems. He always said no, he wasn’t booted out He was just done sabbatical. But the truth was, he was asked to leave. So Robert Mondavi also was privileged to interview Warren Hillman before he passed away, who was just such an icon in the Bay Area in terms of his contributions, as well as the hardly strictly bluegrass festival that he created that he gives to San Francisco every year. And then there are people that you probably have heard of, one of which is called snorkel Bob, I don’t know if you ever go to Hawaii and you you rent snorkel.

Alan
Actually, I have been to his place. Bob’s,

Leni
well, he’s in the book. Yeah. And he has some great quotes, but he’s a member, the one of the he’s kind of a funny guy. But he said to me, in my interview with him, he said, Laney do what you love. And sometimes the Money Follows and sometimes it doesn’t. And and that’s true, right? So right work is very different than just doing what you love.

Alan
Laney we need to take a quick break. I’m having a fun time with this interview. We’re visiting here today with Lanie Miller, she is the president of EA search, also the book author of finding the right work. We’ll be right back after these messages, but we’ll find out more about what is the right work.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m visiting here today with Laney Miller, she is the president of EA search and also the book author of finding the right work. Also the five steps to the life you love. And Lanie. Before the break, we were talking about the book, your background, how you got to where you are today. I want to pick up on this interview, though and having you help us understand what does it mean by finding the right work?

Leni
Okay. You know, first of all, I will say that each human being has right work that’s unique to them. It’s absolutely unique. And so one of the biggest and most important aspects of right work is knowing yourself well enough to know what the ingredients are, what the parameters are to your right work. And Alan right work shifts throughout life. When my baby was born, my parameters and my priorities for work are very different now that I’m a grandmother, and she’s all grown up. So so the the the formula really for right work is to understand your deepest values, you know, what are non negotiable in your life, in terms of your value values. Second thing is to start really identifying and discovering your strongest talents. These are the things you probably came in with, when you were a little kid, you were probably using them in a different way than you do as a grown up. And then also your strongest skills. And then finally, really know those priorities in life. Very few people allow themselves the time to understand what are their priorities, and a lot of times people don’t think they deserve to have those priorities matched in their job. And priorities are things like I don’t want to be more than 20 minutes from home. Or I don’t want to work for a company that selling guns, you know, or I don’t want to be with people who don’t share my values. Those are all priorities. And when you identify them clearly, you can line them up with your values and with your strongest skills and abilities. And if you do, you will find right work.

Alan
Do you get a lot of people coming to you that are still employed? Oh, yeah. And then they come to you. They say Laney I’m not happy. And so what process do you walk a person through?

Leni
Yeah, that’s a really good question. You know, the biggest thing is to have them really understand. Why not? Because it’s through understanding. Many times people have jobs that teach them what they don’t want. You know, it’s a horrible experience. But what they come away from it with is I don’t want to work for let’s say a guy whose greed is good is his biggest value, you know, or I don’t want to work two hours from home and get stuck in traffic and not see my children anymore. So what we do is we really get beneath well, well you’re unhappy with that. But why why are you really unhappy? Because usually they’re deeper reasons why,

Alan
you know, Lenny, you remind me of my first job when I went to go work for the IRS and the matching you with the IRS. The first welcome gift. They said welcome to the IRS and the first thing we’re going to do is audit your return So No kidding. And they said, pull out your returns. I said, Do I have to? You want your job? Yeah. And so when the guy says, Well, what if I quit? They said, doesn’t matter. We’re gonna audit you anyway

Leni
That’s a story.

Alan
It was a it was an interesting job. You know, first of all, I had no money. So I had no fears. Right, right. Yeah, with that. But, but you know, you learned early on, right? You know that. How long did you stay? Oh, long enough to get out of there. Yeah, right. It was two and a half years went to the training program, right. And once I was trained, then I went on to bigger and better pastures.

Leni
But also an important point is that that probably was the platform in a way for other things like people love doing business with people who know the IRS, right? So that’s, that’s a value added, even though it wasn’t a job that you want to stay with. And I always tell people that someday, you’ll look back. And you’ll see that was a value added,

Alan
well now tell you to qualify this. I loved my job with the IRS. My wife walked in one day after two and a half years. And she told me I need to quit my job. And I said, why I like my job. She says, No, I have no friends. I said why? She says, Well, when they find that you work for the IRS, they run away.

Leni
Very funny. Very funny.

Alan
We need to we need to take a quick break here. And I want to get back to about what’s going on today’s job markets and what people should be reassessing about their own lives here. Thank you. We’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and busy here today with Lanie. Miller, she is a president of EA search and also the author of the book, finding right work by steps to a life you love. And, Lady before the break, we’re talking about what is the definition of the right work. And as we went through this process, you know, when people find themselves in work that they don’t like, you know, how do they make adjustments there. I want to turn over though, to today’s job market. Yeah, first of all, how are we doing out there?

Leni
Well, you know, it’s interesting. There’s such a dichotomy that often isn’t expressed in the media, and it upsets me. But what’s happening is we’re beginning to see a talent shortage in this country of Americans that are trained for the jobs that exist. And we have this mega high unemployment rate. So you have you know, nobody mentioning that the biggest issue is education, and managing expectations and inspiring people to be self reliant in their way of training themselves. And we have unemployment. But along with that, this is always a theory, one’s own theory. But

Alan
my take about you talk about relights in the book that don’t Oh, yeah. Oh,

Leni
yeah. Well, there, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Warren Bennis. But he’s a futurist who spoke once at a lecture I was at. And he said, the illiteracy of the 21st century, is when people will not be committed to lifelong learning. And the Self Reliance required in today’s job market. In today’s work market, I call it a work market, because the job as a way of working is disappearing. Technology has been fully utilized in factories, it’s been fully utilized in companies, and many jobs have disappeared. And Alan, you’re not going to come back in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of work out there, there is a lot of work for people to do. It’s just that they may have to discover what it is. This is another reason I wrote the book for themselves, find a need and fill it. And there are many stories in my book about people that did just that, you

Alan
know, if I had been out of work for, say longer than six months, I would imagine it’s hard for some people to feel that they can ever come back into the market. It is hard, and what advice would you have for them,

Leni
you know, read my book, number one, because it addresses that. But number two, I would say that they may be looking for work in all the wrong places. And by that I mean it used to be that you could respond to an ad and get a job, right? Or you could you know, look online and get a job even as recently as five years ago. Now the network is king like what you have to do is you have to garner the forces of all the people you know, and expand your network. Also you have to be clear about what it is you want to do with your time relative to work. And if you don’t have the right skills, you have to get yourself to a point where you can go get the skills that you need. And there are a lot of government programs these days to train people. So you have to take it on, you have to kind of become your own Headhunter and not be reliant on other people to find you a job. And it may be a job, and it may not be a job, it may be working as sort of a mini consultant in your own business. Or it could be learning a new skill so that you can drive a truck during the day, it you just never know where it can go. And it depends on your own priorities.

Alan
But about this social entrepreneur, where, where they get into dealing more with social issues that are not necessarily about making money, but creating change?

Leni
Well, I’ll tell you, I just came from a conference this weekend called wisdom 2.0, that was sponsored by Google, and LinkedIn, and all the big boys down at the young big boys down in Silicon Valley. And there are a lot of people making a big difference socially, and also making a lot of money. So it doesn’t mean if you have an interest in making a difference in the world, it does not exclude the opportunity to make a great deal of money. And I think Google is a good example of that. They are really doing amazing things in their investments in nonprofits and socially valid companies. And also people love to work there because of a lot of the things they get in terms of education and training. So you don’t have to, you know, expect that you’re going to be a nonprofit, just because you’re doing good in the world.

Alan
You know, I want to I want to turn over and talk about for those people that are saying, you know, I want to get back to work, in addition to your book or their programs, that that you you feel that would be the best place for them to start with trying to find out who they are, and what their real passions are. You know,

Leni
I think that it’s it’s, it is passions, but it’s also understanding what’s important in life. So this is the advice I would give, get out of a pad of yellow paper, and on top of it right priorities, and write down the five things that are the most important relative to work. And that could be number one, make money. Number two, work close to home. Number three, do whatever. And then understand what your strongest talents and skills are. Ask your friends, what am I really good at? What is it that you can see in me that perhaps I don’t see in myself. And then also write down what your values are, you know, what is really important to you as a human being, and then begin to talk to people about where they see you. If you need training, there are a lot of I can’t really list off all the training options, but, you know, go to the library, use local resources, you don’t have to spend money to start getting a lot of information anymore. But you have to become your own headhunter. You have to become the person that is going to make this happen. So what does that mean? You can’t expect somebody else to find you a job anymore. You have to take it on yourself.

Alan
I think that’s excellent advice in in so many of us, often will go to another person saying solve my life. Yeah. When we have all the tools that are necessary to solve our own issues there, right, I think was it Colonel Sanders at the age of 67. Started Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right.

Leni
Right, exactly. And Robert Mondavi, who’s interviewed in my book started a brand new Winery at 57. But he also became the person that educated the entire country in with the value of fine wines. We used to drink mostly beer, cheap wine and bourbon.

Alan
Yeah, that’s amazing. You know, just a side note, the one thing he missed, you know, what a bottle of wine goes for in China if it comes from France today, but it’s ridiculous. Not this is not all bottles, but I’ve seen upwards of $15,000 A bottle of they’re really good. They’re really good. They’ve come the friendship convinced? Yeah. The Chinese and if it’s wine from France, it’s worth that. Yeah.

Leni
Well, and and a lot of the taste tests that they did from the service from the Napa Valley, after Robert got going and all these other wineries came showed that that’s no longer true.

Alan
I agree. So we just need to get Robert over to Fortunately, the program over there to, to to sign it there. Well, okay. So, if a person wants more information on your book finding right work.com.com Okay, finding right work.com And any other if they want to go to EA search, how do they find you for helping with career?

Leni
Yeah, EA search.com.

Alan
Okay, real easy. We’ve been visiting here today with Lanie Miller, that EA search.com and also the author of the book finding right work lady, thank you for joining today. So much. We’ll be right back after these messages.

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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