Podcast with Michelle Ward the WhenIGrowUpCoach

Welcome to the Poly Republic podcast where we’re talking to certified life coach and self-titled “creative career coach” Michelle Ward from WhenIGrowUpCoach.Com. She gives us some advice and talks about how she helps clients find the ideal intersection of their passion and their profession.  (Expanded interview in podcast)

Grab it to go! Download the mp3 and listen to it on the train, over wine, while you clean, in your car, wherever! Michelle’s wisdom and contagious enthusiasm are not to be missed and can provide inspiration whenever you want.

Poly Republic (PR): Michelle, I’m 27 and I don’t know what to do with my life, is that how most of your sessions start?

Michelle Ward (MW): Some of them do. A lot of my consultation calls start that way. But in terms of my sessions, usually by the time I start with my clients we’re off and running. I have some idea as to why they’re there and what they want to focus on. [And] honestly, my clients run the gamut between people, who, like you said, ‘I’m 27 and I don’t know what to do with my life’—and we’re starting from scratch, we have a blank page—to people who have a very clear picture as to what they want to do but there’s a big disconnect from [that and] what is in their reality. I also get everything in between. I get people who “maybe” have an idea, “sort of” have an idea, or they know they love doing something but they don’t know if they can make it into a viable business that will put a roof over their head.

PR: Is there some homework or exercise you give, so that you can begin to get a picture?

MW: There is homework after every session but when they sign up with me, whether we have a consultation call or not, everyone gets a nice, fat welcome package of about four or five pages of questions. Most of them are optional but I’d say 90% of my clients choose to answer all of them. These questions really dig into what that person’s values are, and why that’s a value to them? What they wanted to be when they grew up?—When they were 5? 10? 20 or 30?—Depending on how old they are now? What have they done before? What really sparks them up, personally and professionally? What [did] they really like about their current job or their past jobs? What didn’t they like so much? [These are all] so I could get a really good idea as to what they want to accomplish while we’re working together, they’re goals and some background [info].

PR: When I first met you, you were giving advice to a person who had too many passions, do you remember what advice you gave to them and what book you recommended?

MW: The book was the The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine. Because I work specifically with creatively-minded people, [or] people that associate themselves with the world ‘creative’, I have to say that 95% of them are “Renaissance Souls” and it’s not something that’s really recognized or embraced in U.S. society.[Here] it’s very much, you’re born, you go to school, you pick a major in college, you go tocollege then you find a job—and, thankfully we’re out of that mindset that you’re at one corporation for your entire life and then you retire move to Florida and die [Ed Note: I live in Florida!]… but it’s still not acceptable to have a lot of different things you want to try, to be someone who might tire of things easily, or who works best by working on a few different projects at once. The Renaissance Soul is something that my clients would read and say ‘oh my gosh, there are people out there like me, enough so that there’s a whole book written about them. And it offers very tangible advice, solutions and some exercises to sort of work through all of that stuff.

PR: Do you recommend exploring these different passions or honing them down in order to concentrate on the ones that are more viable?

MW: There are things that one should recognize that, ‘I love this, but I don’t want it to be a business.’ If you’re someone with five different business ideas and you’re what I like to call a “solo-preneur”, you’re kind of an entrepreneur but you’re a one man or one woman band, there are business aspects of things which might not be such fun. So you might love baking, but you might not have any interest in trying to sell your stuff because then accounting comes in, and shipping, and sales, and marketing, and maybe you’re just happy being the person who always brings amazing cookies to every dinner party that you’re invited to. It’s figuring out where your passions and your interests fit into your life and how to keep them as passions and interests.

PR: What about the people who are on the flip side of that, the people who are complaining that ‘I don’t really have anything that I’m passionate about?’

MW: I’ve actually put in a question in my welcome packet, do you believe in passion? I think that the real disconnect that people have is that when they hear ‘passion’, they think A) I’m so interested in it I want to do nothing but this one thing forever, from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, and they don’t feel that about any one thing and [B)]They get so wrapped up in the permanence of it, feeling that once you declare you’re passionate about something you have to do it forever, so they feel like they can’t change their mind about things.

So trying to keep an open mind and think, ok, just because I’m passionate about something doesn’t mean that it’s my forever-thing and I have to do it every day from morning till night until the day I die. It’s about taking a step back and figuring out what do I like to do, what are my interest, what are my really big likes.

I like having my clients start writing a “big-likes list”. It can be as simple as, “I big-like, having a glass of wine in my apartment while the sun sets and watching the view”, even though that doesn’t obviously translate into a career, just sort of knowing, these are the pieces, these are the things that really make me happy, that I enjoy doing, and I enjoy talking about and I want to make room for. Just sort of recognizing those things, opens doors to finding other things that they’re interested about and maybe even passionate about.

PR: You talked about working with “creatives” and fitting that into the grown-up ideals and structure, so what does it mean to be the “creative career coach”?

MW: It’s such a trick question because technically everyone is creative and technically I can work with anybody. I sort of put “creative” in front of career coach as a gate keeping word. People that associate themselves with the word ‘creative’, [are often] out-of-the-box thinkers, they’re a bit unique, and quirky, and funky, and they want a different sort of lifestyle and they don’t want to be bogged down in a traditional, pre-conceived notion of what being a grown-up is like. So, not only do I work with people who call themselves artists, musicians, actors, anything that falls in that bucket, I have also worked with people who say, “I don’t really have a talent, but I’m an idea person”. Those are the people that I work with, and those are the people who I want to be working with. That’s who I feel I connect with the best because that’s who I am too.

PR: Speaking of who you are, you pursued a career on Broadway for a long time and you left that for another dream, how did you know you were ready to pursue another dream?

MW: I went kicking and screaming. My dream, like you said, was to be on Broadway and I never made it, but I freaking tried very hard. I went to NYU for musical theater, I got my BFA there and when I was in my mid-twenties, late twenties, I started listening to that voice that was a very, very small whisper at the time, that was in my head that was saying, this isn’t what you want to do as a grown up, this isn’t your dream anymore. And I say I changed my focus ‘kicking and screaming’ because it took me probably about a year, if not more than that, to really listen to that voice and take it seriously because this was my dream for twenty years and it also was a huge part of my identity, and it also was just a big part of my routine. I didn’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t look at Backstage every week and schedule the auditions that I wanted to go to, if I didn’t send mailings to agents, if I didn’t try to get jobs and go to my singing lessons, well it was like, who am I? And what would I do with myself? So I went to a career change workshop at NYU School of Continuing Education. I went in with the notion of being a life coach though I can not remember how I came across that idea.

PR: How does it feel to be in this dream now, is it as fulfilling as you think Broadway might have been in your life?

MW: Yeah, and it’s interesting, I get the question all the time, ‘do I regret spending all that time and money and effort on pursuing acting?’ And I always think, I wouldn’t change it for anything because not only did it bring me here and is the basis of my story, and how I coach, and who I coach, it brought me to coaching. But it is absolutely this brand new passion I have. I just felt like I found the right fit. I feel like I’m living my passion.

PR: You’ve been dropping hints on your blog and on your twitterfeed about a new program you have coming up, is there anything you can share with us about that?

MW: I can’t yet! Right now, all I will say is that it’s super-secret project that is going to be awesome. I’m working with Jessica Swift who is a professional artist and illustrator, she was a client of mine and we’ve become so close and we decided we wanted to work on something together and we started, TheDeclarationofYou.Com What it is, will be revealed at the end of September. You can sign now and subscribe for updates on the site.

Michelle Ward, aka The When I Grow Up Coach, helps creative people devise the career they think they can’t have – or discover it to begin with! A certified life coach by the International Coach Academy & a musical theater actress with her BFA from NYU/Tisch, Michelle uses a dose of empathy, a shot of butt-kickin’, a wagon full of enthusiasm, & a crapload of inspiration to help solve the puzzle & turn her client’s grown-up skills & values into a passionate (& possibly out-of-the-box) career. She’s been featured in Newsweek and Metro News & could be found coachin’, bloggin’ & givin’ away free stuff at whenigrowupcoach.com.

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Images courtesy of WhenIGrowUpCoach.com and Amazon.