After five conversations with people navigating career transitions, three themes keep surfacing: the people you work with matter as much as the work itself, staying hands-on is essential for certain personalities, and impact trumps income when measuring real success. In this look back at the first five episodes, Michael pulls together insights from Kim, Erik, Helder, Russ, and Shara to explore what actually makes work meaningful - and why the traditional metrics of success (salary, title, prestige) often work against us.

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Shara Karasic has been working on the internet since the 1990s, back when you could learn HTML in a week and there were only 20 websites to look at. Today, she has what she calls a portfolio career - working on about five different things at once, from advising a Gen Z fintech startup in Ghana to running an AI education company for non-technical people.

In this conversation, Shara talks about why portfolio careers might be the future of work, the opportunity cost of being in a corporate job that doesn't let you learn AI, and why taste is becoming one of the most important career assets. We discuss how algorithms are making everything look the same, why the ability to synthesize across domains matters more than deep expertise in one thing, and why being scrappy and adaptable might be the best survival strategy in a world where AI can rebuild your business model in three days.

Whether you're feeling stuck in a traditional career path, curious about AI but don't know where to start, or just trying to figure out how to stay relevant when the rate of change keeps accelerating, this conversation will give you a different way to think about building a career that can flex with constant change.

Connect with Shara:

• Substack: https://sharakarasic.substack.com/

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Russ Katzman runs Progeny Coaching and Consulting, working primarily with early-stage businesses in their first couple million in revenue. He started his career 30 years ago as an accountant and spent the next two decades learning every aspect of how businesses work, eventually becoming head of strategy for a $2 billion company.

In this conversation, Russ shares a simple three-column exercise for figuring out what business you should start: What are you world-class at? What do you love? And what's the combination of those two that people will actually pay for?

We talk about why small businesses are so dynamic to coach, the human side of business that AI can't replicate, and why you need someone who'll tell you what you need to hear - not just what you want to hear.
Whether you're thinking about starting something new, already running a business and feeling overwhelmed, or just trying to figure out where you add real value in an AI-powered world, this conversation has practical wisdom you can use.

Connect with Russ:
https://www.swissarmycoach.com
https://www.progenycc.com

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