This Former Line Cook Created the Go-To Apron for Celebrity Chefs

Is a career coach really worth it?

I believe everyone needs and deserves a career coach.

We spend 1/3 of our lives at work — sometimes more — and usually don’t have formal guidance on how to navigate our transitions and limiting beliefs throughout.

I'm often asked about the difference between a therapist and a coach, and how to choose between them. My simplest answer is that therapists focus on how your past has influenced your current situation, while coaches guide you from the present to where you want to be in the future.

Here’s a non-exhaustive cheat sheet to know if a career coach is right for you:

• You’re unhappy with your current job but have no idea what you would do next.
• You're navigating limiting beliefs in your current role that are holding you back.
• You struggle to accomplish goals that you care about.
• You are navigating a challenging situation with a coworker.
• You want to develop yourself as a leader, either in your own company or within your organization.
• You want to discover your purpose to make the most of your time on this planet.

What should you expect from a career coach?

I remember my coach telling me early on that a leader is anyone who can share a vision of the future that’s so inspiring, someone wants to follow them there. With this definition I see us all as leaders — whether in the traditional, professional sense or simply in leading our own lives and being in relationships with others.

While I can't predict what every career coach can offer, here are the 10 lessons that completely changed the way I lead, plus 10 questions you can use to reflect and integrate these lessons into your daily life:

These lessons will help you:

• Be the leader of your own life journey
• Lead with care and clarity
• Make genuine connections
• Realize that becoming a leader is a fast track to personal growth

1. Trust is built in a context of care

Whether it’s with people you work with, or in your personal life, make what you care about known — needs, wants, desires, values. You can’t expect someone else to know them if you don’t clearly communicate them. And, make sure you make it known that you want to know theirs, too.

2. Riots start in the stands

There are 2 types of people: the people on the field, and the people in the stands. Find the people who want to be on the field with you. Rolling up their sleeves and doing the work — this might be at work in the trenches of your start up or in a romantic relationship. You won’t get far if you’re on the field alone surrounded by people in the stands.

3. We live in a mirroring reality

Our external reality is a projection of our inner reality. When we offer kindness and compassion, we receive kindness and compassion. When we offer criticism or judgment, we receive that, too.

4. Curiosity is the emergency break to judgment

If your “mood elevator” is falling, curiosity is the fast track to lift it. In these moments, you can say something like: I notice I’m being judgmental, I wonder what that’s about? Then start to list things that have come up for you that you’re reacting to. Maybe you spent a little too much time on social media, or a colleague cut you off while you were talking and suddenly you’re in a reactive state. This is human. Use curiosity to get back on track.

5. Clarity is kindness.

Being clear and direct with others is a way to show respect and consideration. Ambiguity can create stress and uncertainty, but when we are clear we give others a sense of stability. This is a form of kindness. And if you feel unclear, communicate that and see where it goes.

6. Being someone’s fan is > anything else.

Sadly, we live in a culture where people get more attention for spewing their criticism at each other publicly than when we lift each other up. Seeing people tear each other down, whether it’s on social media, in relationships, or during meetings breaks my heart. Especially, when I’ve seen without fail, the positive impact offering admiration and support has on someone’s confidence and overall growth.

While I don’t blame people for the system that has normalized this behavior, I urge us all to do what we can to break free from it and do the inner work to heal our insecurities and fears, and celebrate each other’s unique gifts.

7. You can’t work harder for someone than they can for themselves.

“Help 49%” is something a mentor said to me a long time ago. As a leader, I’ve learned this time and time again. You can’t want something for someone that they don’t intrinsically want for themselves.

This applies to every type of relationship we have, both professionally and personally. You can’t help someone until they decided that growth is their priority. It’s up to you if you want to stick around patiently during that time or move on.

8. Love is allowing the other person — and yourself — to be whole.

This one really is about accepting and seeing people for who they are, not what we want them to be. As a leader, I try to see each person I work with as a whole, unique being and accept them fully as that person. Which means it’s my job to make sure I am not projecting onto them the person I want them to be as they grow.

The root of this wisdom lies in attachment theory, and while this line of thinking is usually strictly applied to romantic relationships, I think it’s useful for all relation aspects of our lives.

9. If you need to win every fight, then you’ll be surrounded by people who are always defeated.

I often say the only competition anyone should be in is with themselves. The ego trap I’ve seen many people fall into, when choosing a romantic partner or building out their team, is subconsciously choosing people they can feel important or powerful around versus challenged by.

10. People need to be pointed to their own resiliency.

It’s fascinating to me how easily people forget their own capacity and strength. We have and continue to overcome a great deal as humans in this lifetime.

Turning your hobby into a career can take a little trial and error, a lot of resilience, and some good business sense. TurboTax can help you make your moves count so you can focus on what you do best! Whether TurboTax experts prepare your tax return or you do it yourself, they guarantee their calculations are always 100 percent accurate, or they’ll pay any penalties.

If you’re a creative person looking to take your hobby to the next level, here are tips for getting started and growing your business.

Choose your focus: Before Steffy started focusing on the DIY aspect of her business, her niche was in fashion, mostly vintage fashion, which helped her build a following who loved her aesthetic. “My first big win was I booked a blog a month with a major fashion brand. It was the first time I realized that big companies are paying attention to people on the Internet,” says Steffy. “Over time, working with brands just legitimized what I was doing and made me feel like, yes, this is fun, and yes, this is something that is still a hobby, but also there's a future in it as my business.”

Set clear goals: Define your career goals – actually write them down – and create a roadmap for achieving them. Set short-term and long-term goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Set reasonable dates for achieving those goals and stick to them!

Create a personal brand: Establishing a strong personal brand that feels unique to you and your target audience can help you stand out in a crowded space. Make sure it’s clear what you do from your branding and what services you offer.

Develop a business mindset: Brush up on budgeting, marketing, sales, and customer service to understand how best to monetize your passion. “My first challenge was tax wise,” says Steffy. After getting hit with a big tax bill at the end of year, Steffy realized that she had to pay quarterly taxes as a freelancer to avoid hefty fees. “When you work for yourself, you're thinking you're making all this income, but really a lot of it goes back to the state and the government, and you have to really be on top of that.” TurboTax experts can help you determine all of your deductions as a freelancer and entrepreneur while helping you get your max refund.

Scale wisely: Do you invest in hiring help or do you stay small? That’s a question solopreneurs often struggle with. “I hit a certain point where I realized that I did need help. I'm still working through what that help looks like. I have a part-time employee, but I always grapple with whether I need more hours and more hands on deck,” says Steffy. Balance your creative life by contracting out the responsibilities that take up a lot of your time and that you don’t necessarily enjoy doing. Wearing too many hats can take away from your talents and lead to burnout so get help when you need it, like tax time, but choose wisely where you invest your time and money.

Adapt as you grow: Once you start to gain traction, adjust and adapt your business plan to suit your growing needs. “I was already doing DIY projects behind the scenes, but I just thought, it's not my niche. People won't be interested in this,” says Steffy about transitioning her fashion-focused brand to her other hobbies. “Then I filmed one video of DIY, peel-and-stick wallpaper, and it went viral. That's what made me realize that maybe people do come to me for my fashion, but that my fashion sense trickles down into all aspects of my life, including how I decorate.” That led Steffy to eventually writing a home decor book A Home for Every Season. “It just shifted my business completely,” she says.

Connect with other creatives: Being a solopreneur can be lonely. You have friends and family but they may not understand your business struggles. That’s where a creative community comes in. “A community definitely helps even just to have comradery and bounce ideas off of each other,” says Steffy, who often shares content with other influencers. “We're all on the Internet and then getting together and creating content and sharing it, it definitely helps lift everyone up.”

Consistently show up. Consistency is key to building a following and accomplishing your goals. “The biggest tip I would have is to just get up and do it every day,” says Steffy. “You have to have a strong foundation yourself to grow and just keep coming up with new ideas and trying new things and just showing up, not necessarily every day, but a few times a week, for your audience and trying to inspire them and be creative.”

Photos: Courtesy of Steffy.

Running a business or thinking about starting one? Make your moves count with TurboTax!*

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As a Power of Women honoree, Mariska was recognized in regards to her work as an advocate for sexual assault survivors. She took the stage and used her platform to discuss rape and assault conviction reversals, shining a light on the recent overturned ruling in Harvey Weinstein's landmark NYC case. Here's what she said:

Today I want to talk about reversing convictions, and more specifically I want to talk to you about how impossible it is to reverse mine. It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that survivors matter. It is impossible to reverse my conviction that what happens to us matters, and that our society must respond to survivors with a more a compassionate, holistically, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of what healing means.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that after a trauma, survivors can reclaim lives of hope, of possibility, of audacious risk, beautiful intimacy, and glorious, glorious abundant joy. And I stand before you as evidence of that statement.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that we must listen to survivors as experts on what justice means. It is extraordinary how little their voices are consulted, let alone incorporated, in the process of deciding how to repair harm. Justice is not a one-size-fits-all journey.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that patriarchal impunity has to end. Patriarchal impunity is when a male-dominated system exempts perpetrators from punishment. Studies show that only 20% of all rape cases in the U.S. are reported to the police, and that between 5 and 0% of all rapes result in a guilty plea or a conviction. So why do 80% of victims not report? Because they're met with a system that grants impunity to perpetrators; a system that blames victims; a system that accepts only those victims who are experienced as "real" rape; a system that completely misunderstands the neurobiology of trauma, which causes behavior in women that doesn't fit the picture of how a "real victim" would act.

Is that change needed that victims should just pull themselves together? Just buck up and report anyway? No. No, it's the system that receives them that needs to change

It is impossible to reverse my conviction — and the conviction of my extraordinary team, The Joyful Heart — that the backlog of untested rape kits can be brought to zero; that the testing of all new kits must be mandated; that we need a statewide kit tracking system; and that survivors have the right to access the status of their kits.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that grammar — yes, grammar — that we use when we speak about rape must change. In the sentence, "A woman is raped," there's a crime and there's a victim, but there's no perpetrator. Where's the perpetrator? Where is he? Statistically, as we know, most likely he's walking free. He's so free that he doesn't even appear in the language about the crime that he committed. Is that not extraordinary? It's extraordinary that in the very grammar, the perpetrator goes free. Reintroducing perpetrators in the language of rape will make some very unwieldy grammar, but that's the nature of change. It's unwieldy, it's messy, it's uncomfortable, but it's necessary.

Hargitay continued on in her prolific speech to describe that rape shouldn't be considered a "crime of passion" because it's "not simply the next step in the trajectory of his passion" when a man takes a consensual hookup too far and assaults a woman against her will. She stated that it's "an exercise of power," doubling down that the language we use is important.

The speech went on to address that rape is both about power and control, as a "construct" that was "built, and assembled, and reinforced over time." She noted that there are people with these positions of power — and she specifically called out those in the entertainment industry — that could make a difference and aligned themselves to victims and survivors.

After this and some other remarks, Hargitay specifically called out the Weinstein conviction reversal. She said:

I do want to say something about the Harvey Weinstein conviction, specifically about the reason that it was overturned: too many women's voices. Too many women's voices were allowed to speak. Hallelujah! Amen! I can't imagine anything more beautiful than that. The Daily podcast episode talked about how it was so risky for the prosecution to have that many women testify. Risky to let women speak? You're damn right it is!

Too many women speaking brings change. Too many women speaking shakes the establishment. Too many women means we get listened to more, and people might actually hear what we have to say. Look what happened when women started saying just two words, right? Me too — just as an example — a tidal wave of change. Me too.

And then of course, there was the response: the Me Too Movement. The backlash. The examination of whether the changes that have come are lasting, or are even positive. Of course there's a backlash! What did they expect? For women to speak repeatedly, loudly, together, with a purpose — for there to be no backlash? The backlash is evidence of how powerful those voices were, how powerful those voices ARE.

Watch Mariska Hargitay's Full Speech Here

Turns out that your TV heroes really can be your IRL heroes after all. Long live Olivia Benson! Long live Mariska Hargitay!