9 reasons why The Fierce Emporium (alone) isn't the right career design programme for you
I could harp on about how great this programme is and how it took six months, 9-hour-days and nearly broke me and my publishers - but that's dull as dishwater.
What you really want to know is:
Should you invest in The Fierce Emporium?
And maybe, also if I’m the right fit for you?
Or perhaps joining The Fierce Emporium will turn out to be an even bigger mistake than Violet Beauregarde's decision to eat the three-course dinner chewing gum that morphed her into a giant blueberry.
Let’s make sure this is the right programme for you - or who knows where it might end up!
Working with a career specialist to get long-term results is a commitment.
It’s a bit like all relationships - we have to be singing from the same hymn-sheet.
Otherwise, it ends up being bloody frustrating, annoying, and could even end in a messy divorce. Not the fairy tale ending we're all hoping for.
So in this article, I’m going to run through the reasons why you shouldn’t join The Fierce Emporium (alone), so you can decide whether it's the right fit for you and your satisfying work future.
So who shouldn’t join The Fierce Emporium career design programme?
Let's have a gander…
1. If you’ve recently been diagnosed with burnout.
The Fierce Emporium six-week learning phase (the first part of the programme) requires energy. Probably more energy than you've ever put into your career strategy.
If you're on-your-knees burned-out from long-term stress or traumatic work experiences, it's a gigantic screaming signal that you need to redesign your work.
But, right now, you might be better spending time recovering before you start some deep career design work. You might spend some time with a burnout specialist who can help you recover faster.
If you're self-diagnosing burnout - check out the 12 stages of burnout video below so see how close you are to the edge.
The earlier you notice, the more time you have to design the future to be brighter.
Alternative idea: Consider getting a little more support in The Personalised Redesign .
While you still get access to all the career design learning from inside The Fierce Emporium programme, I guide you through it and highlight the most relevant bits for you. At the right time. And we separately work one-to-one to get you unstuck and on-the-move.
2. You're light in the self-motivation department
The aim of the first six-weeks of The Fierce Emporium programme is to learn how to design your next decade. Then for the rest of our year together you put all those new skills and insights into a prototype work design to practically transform your work life over a year.
You'll get :
guided weekly access to six weeks of learning - during the six-week learning phase.
six small group coaching sessions - during the learning phase
one live Q&A coaching call per month - for 12 months
personalised support via a private email platform for 12 months.
But you're in the driver seat.
I don't drag you through the work like a naughty school child.
Instead, I encourage, support, respond to your questions and guide you through each phase - from afar.
Myself and my publishers have designed the learning phase to creatively inspire you, visually engage you and help you discover things about yourself and your career that you've never before realised.
You become the Lead Architect of your exciting future work-life.
Alternative idea:
If you’d prefer me to lead the design project for you and enjoy having me as an accountability partner-in-design, check out The Personalised Redesign programme.
2. You cannot find a couple of hours a week for six weeks to focus on your future.
I know you're really busy.
Do you know any midlife professionals who have loads of time on their hands? Me neither.
On average, clients who chose The Fierce Emporium invest 3-4 hours a week during the learning phase.
But everyone's lives are different, aren’t they?
Many clients can only allocate 1-2 hours a week. That also works really well, but their progress is a little slower. But, heck, it's still fantastic progress that moves them away from feeling stuck.
Some clients create more than 4+ hours a week and move mightily fast.
DIYW - Do It Your Way.
In week one, I give you lots of suggestions to make every minute you invest in The Emporium to be value-adding for your future work-life design.
A few hours a week over a few months to design your next decade - doesn't seem like an excessive amount of time.
But if you can't find that time, The Fierce Emporium alone isn’t going to be the right idea for you.
Alternative Idea:
In the Speedy Sherpa version of The Personalised Redesign, while you still get access to all the learning in The Fierce Emporium, we focus purely on the tangible results - Your Superpowers, nailing down your direction and packaging you to gain traction. This happens over three months and demands a great deal more of my time and less of yours. So, it won’t surprise you that it has a very different price.
3. You want a great deal of personal, face-to-face attention
The Fierce Emporium is my dream of a programme to enable those without bags of cash under their mattress to DIY their future career design.
You can do this from anywhere in the world. At a pace that fits around your current work-life and home-life.
You get access to me personally via our private email application.
But zero one-to-one coaching time is included in the programme.
Alternative idea:
If you'd prefer lots of personalised guidance - consider The Personalised Design. It's a shorter programme - there is a “Speedy Sherpa” 3-month and 6-month version. Spots are very limited and your financial investment is higher as I do a great deal of the heavy lifting, which requires a higher investment of my time.
4. You know exactly what your future looks like, and you just need shit hot CV/Linkedin/job search advice.
Maybe you're crystal clear on your future work - you can even name the role and company style in detail?
So you "just" need help re-positioning yourself.
This is the tactical, practical “packaging of you” - which is one of the later stages of the career design work we work through.
If you only need this kind of advice, you'd be paying me over the odds for tactical work.
And you can get your hands on this kind of career advice from a standard career coach and from the head-hunters in your network, with whom you’ve developed relationships with over the years.
If all you need is a range of CV and interview tips - there are some cracking ones this podcast. In The Fierce Emporium, we get to designing your CV and interviewing techniques - but it’s very much after we’ve designed your career strategy and recognise that you need a different personal branding profile.
During my twenty years in head-hunting and corporate recruitment, this kind of “personal packaging” advice was my bread and butter.
I've developed strong opinions on things like CVS/Resumes/Linkedin profiles/Interviewing techniques.
These opinions are based upon on reading 100,000s (not kidding) of very average career profiles and interviewing 2500+ senior executives during the last decade of my former career.
Here’s a half hour interview where I share some of this knowledge. It might be all you need.
But, what I know for sure is that :
without the right strategy,
without nailing down your unique Superpowers and Kryptonite,
without understanding the recurring patterns in your career to date,
without learning career longevity-enhancing skill
and then deciding what you need to be happy in your work -
CV design is short-term.
And short-term isn't what The Fierce Emporium is about.
And it isn’t what I’m about.
Check out my Tedx talk: I show you how I fell into a career coma without a career strategy.
5. You don't have a long history of work
If you’re thinking to yourself: I want to get back to work after a decade off work or I’m just starting out in my career and I want to get this career design thing right then The Fierce Emporium isn't likely to be right for you.
The programme has been designed by midlife professionals for midlife professionals (or those at a mid-point in their career - if you object to the term "midlifer").
It's been scientifically designed with insights from my personal and global research into work happiness at mid-career and beyond.
So, without lots of data-points (a minimum ten years professional experience) it's very hard to use insights from your past to design your future differently - without personalised advice.
If you're much younger or have less than ten years experience - I recommend checking out the work of Neil Ewington at Early Career Academy.
6. You want a cheap service
Honestly?
You can hire a decent standard career coach for probably less than £100 for an hour-long consult.
But, I've never come across anyone (and I've scoured the globe) who offers anything like The Fierce Emporium career design programme.
Which is why I struggle to compare it to what career specialists do when they charge by the hour and give you a discount code for booking six sessions.
If you're trying to compare The Fierce Emporium, try asking other specialists if they help with:
Nailing down the 4 things you do better than most in the world?
Creating a new career strategy - that can last a decade or longer?
Masterclasses and workshops that transform your real network? And train you to do networking in ways that get results and don't make you itchy?
Getting crystal clear on the behaviours that stop you being happy at work?
Giving you novel tools to overcome the behaviours that hinder your work happiness?
Training you to bring impactful change into your life with a proven methodolgy that brings results?
Shutting down your negative inner critic?
Destroying your fear of failure - in a light-hearted way?
Showing you ways to dream bigger with your work?
And practical ways to turn those big dreams into mini-actions.
Creating real human connections with a group of like-minded midlife professionals who are learning how to do work that gives them the life they want?
Monthly opportunities to ask any question about midlife careers and get it answered live?
Personalised email advice for 12 months?
The Fierce Emporium is a full career design service - where you take the lead in your learning journey.
You decide and then design the changes you want and need - with my help - and lots of resources. You make changes at the pace that's right for you.
Very few people could afford this level of support for what is on the face or it a DIY/Group programme - if I charged by the hour. So I don’t.
7. You take yourself very, very seriously
I can't deny that we do deep and important work.
But myself and my publishers spent more than six months designing The Fierce Emporium to be anything but a dull-as-dishwater, forgettable, tick-box course.
There are funny bits, silly bits and light-hearted weekly experiments in the learning phase.
Everything has been designed to be engaging, memorable and beautiful (every image is hand-drawn by the artist Martyn Pentecost, the Creative Director for Mpowr Publishing).
It's been designed for you to have multiple career-changing aha moments that stop you in your tracks. And then move you onto another track.
ADVANCED WARNING: you will meet my alter-ego Loochia - who is the career stylist in The Fierce Emporium. She tells stories that embed in your brain and help me (the straight man to her ridiculousness) train you in The Fierce Model of Change.
If you cannot laugh at yourself or aren't open to moments of silliness that have meaning and purpose - The Fierce Emporium isn't likely to be right for you.
If you’d prefer to spend more time with the straight-man version of me - The Personalised Redesign might be a better fit for you.
8. You just need one session
It baffles me when I get this request, because, in all honesty, you’re unlikely to see any difference at all to your career happiness in one session.
Of course, you may already know I offer a free half-hour chat and occasionally people have epiphanies during that call.
BUT that's because they just needed a tweak to their work situation - and needed someone with my Superpowers to notice and suggest that tweak.
To get cracking results and transform your work happiness - if you've been dissatisfied for a while - you're likely to need a new career strategy not a half hour chat.
But a half hour chat is a sound place to check me out as a real human - and ask any questions I've not answered in this article.
9. You want to earn the most money you've ever earned - and have zero interest in personal satisfaction or fulfilment.
There are so many business consultants out there who can, or claim to be able to, help you with your billionaire dreams. But, I'm not your woman.
That said, money is important to me - and everyone I work with.
In a recent survey of all Fierce Emporium graduates, 86% described themselves as "happier" or "much happier" in their work while also earning "the same or more" within a year of leaving The Fierce Emporium.
Many of my clients are the primary earner in their household. They have responsibilities and people who rely on them to earn well.
So the work we do together in The Fierce Emporium has to allow them to evolve their work-life satisfaction at a speed that's right for them - while earning what they need to earn.
