#210 From College First to Career Fit: How College and Career Clarity Has Evolved Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  00:58

Welcome to a solo episode of College and Career Clarity. You know when this podcast first started back in January of 2022 this is our four year anniversary today. It naturally focused on college as a gateway to career. And that wasn’t strategy. It was just it was always my default. And over the last few years, in me and in our flourish community, something began to shift. And it’s not because college stopped mattering, because it still matters greatly, and for a lot of pathways, is the best fit, but it started to matter that fit became my priority. Fit became my focus. And in this anniversary episode, as we celebrate our fourth anniversary, I want to explain that shift. I want to explain what I’ve learned along the way. And you know, there’s going to be some subtle shifts in the podcast, and I want to explain what you can expect moving forward so early in my career. And when I say early, I mean I started my career in 1991 Yeah, that makes me kind of old, right? And I just college was my default. I focused and all of my work from the classroom to my first company on college bound family, so I was just tied up in the college prep world, and that shaped how I initially served the families that I was supporting with Career Clarity. It framed our conversations. It was the gateway that we focused on. It truly made sense of the time, and I don’t regret it. I I’ve learned a lot from it, and that’s not going to go away. And it wasn’t wrong, but it was incomplete. That is what I’ve discovered in the last four years. So, you know, in 2021 I pulled the launch Career Clarity, our career confidence framework, out of my other company that I sold in 2024 and we created flourish coaching around the work that I started all the way back in 2008 so the work isn’t new, but where it lived inside flourish, coaching and our launch Career Clarity, course, it’s home, if you will, changed up a bit. So then that’s with that sole focus, then really over the the career piece more and a company only focused on Career Clarity and career confidence. That’s when things began to challenge my default mode. See what happened was I was watching watching really capable young people. And when I say young people, I often call them kids. Doesn’t insult my kids that I do that. I mean, my kids are 24 to 34 couple of them are even parents already, and I so when I hear say kids, I’m talking about this 15 to 25 year old age group that we are serving. So I was seeing really capable young people began to take very different paths. I mean, just last week, in my inbox, Wall Street Journal sends out another article. Is college even worth it anymore? And that sentiment has been growing for me. I do still believe college is worth it. I’m glad I went. I have a master’s degree I sometimes toy with. Ooh, wouldn’t it be fun to get a PhD. I know call me crazy, so college does still matter, but see, here’s what I am seeing a growing number of families within our community, that ability, college ability, college aptitude, doesn’t equal alignment, and as people have begun to question whether the cost of college is worth it, or if it’s the right path, Even when they’re college capable, I’ve seen more and more kids, including one of my own, choose a different path because college didn’t offer alignment. See, realize. Saying that you can do something you’re fully capable doesn’t mean you should do. It. Can do doesn’t equal should do. And that is something that I teach a lot about with it when I’m teaching in webinars or on our launch live coaching Q and A calls. Can do doesn’t mean should do. It’s about fit and it’s about alignment, and because each young person is one in a million a single path, college can’t honor that unique wiring. You know, I’m a mom of twins, and even born at the same time, raised in the same house, they are wildly different from birth because they were born with an innate wiring. So as I began to see this, and I began to get convicted, I began to shift over the last, I would say, 18 months, we even, we redesigned launch Career Clarity. I literally threw out our lessons, rewrote the course, re recorded it in a professional studio last April, and put it out into the world last May. So we’re, we’re in version two of the course, and part of that is rooted in the convictions that I have now from my lived experience, and not my lived experience, but my lived experience being with all of you, my listeners, our community, the schools that we work with, see, it’s no longer just about college versus trades versus Training and serving only one of those paths. It’s about discerning fit timing and direction and being intentional, so that young people are making informed decisions. And then what I’ve seen that do for their parents is it brings relief. So instead of worried about my kids choosing a direction that might lock them into something for years or set them behind, or cause them to flounder or fall behind, by beginning with the end in mind and in the end in mind when I say that is career fit. You know, Jeff selingo wrote about this in his book, dream school, and in dream school, he says, when he talks to parents, they say, I am hiring the colleges to get my kid to career. Not I’m hiring them for an experience or a social experience, but they expect a career outcome, right? Let’s start expecting career outcomes from any pathway. So when we begin with the end, in mind a career, and then we reverse engineer that path for what makes sense, not only for the individual, but what the career requires, that’s when we’re going to have a better, cleaner, clearer, less emotional journey, and that’s what I hear from the families that I serve. I mean emotions in this phase of life, when you have a 15 to 25 year old, they are all over the place, probably more so than any other stage of parenting. Yes, when they’re little, and we thought we had big problems, and we did, we now know that we didn’t, but it now even in my empty nest years, I can tell you, while the emotions still come up in difficult situations or opportunities to parents still come up, there’s a lot less emotion than in that 15 to 25 year old. So by making these shifts, I’m seeing families become less pressured, calmer and more grounded, and that’s what I want to bring to everybody. So what’s changing here at flourish coaching isn’t throwing college out, but serving a wider array of families. We used to focus only on college families with college bound teens. Now we’re focusing on all educational paths, and that is by design, right? We’re also focusing on not just these younger, 15 to 18 year olds that are still in in high school. Because, let’s be honest, some people don’t get serious about this work until they have a floundering 20 something. And while the vast majority of those that we currently serve still are families with teens families, many of them families that are heading into college more than the other routes. Our biggest, fastest growing area is 20 families with 20 somethings, and that 20 something is floundering or falling behind, and their home feels like it’s tension filled when the parent tries to carry the conversations. And the kids just not ready. So we’re looking for a calmer, more grounded way of doing this. So we are supporting all educational paths by design. We are a community of people of a wide array, a wider array of age groups, 15 to 25

Lisa Marker-Robbins  10:20

and we’ve begun to work with more schools. So I am known at times for criticizing schools. I’m not criticizing the people in them, but I’m criticizing our focus on graduation line instead of launching a career with purpose, setting setting them up for launch success, right? But we have a growing number of schools who are joining our community, along with the families that we’re serving that are also becoming more intentional about this, families and schools who want more structure, not more pressure. And that is completely possible. See, the work has gotten clearer because I’ve learned from the schools and the families, and they’re beginning to ask, I see this as a post covid shift. They’re beginning to ask more honest questions, and they’re becoming more transparent the conversations with all of you is what has what has convicted me of the subtle, tiny shifts that we begin to make so on College and Career Clarity, what’s going to happen? What are you going to see here? Well, community matters more than ever. You are my community. If you’re my listeners. I want to hear from you. I want you in my DMs and social I want you sending me emails. For those of you that join me in working with us, we are a tight knit community who learns from each other, if for those of you that are in the schools that we’re supporting or even the schools that we’re just having conversations with we are all better when we’re together, because we can share struggles and normalize that things are not always easy, and when we share our wins together in our insights that we gain, what we find is it incentivizes other people to go do what could feel hard or risky. Takes a little bit of bravery to go out there, to explore and validate, instead of playing it safe and staying static. So this learning, this it within community. This learning is happening together, and I love it. It’s normalizing struggle and incentivizing wins, and it helps everybody feel a responsibility for the process. See, you don’t need more information. Information is out there, and gathering more information is not the solution. You need a steadier, strategic way to think about what we’re going to do. So as we do this, at least as it relates to the podcast you’re going to hear, we’re not going to abandon all the college conversations. They’re still really, really important. I’m actually, at the time that I’m recording this, I have a really exciting guest coming up on the podcast who is all about college. So we’re not going to abandon that, but you’re going to see a subtle shift into more balanced conversations that are are career oriented. I’m not even going to say trades or college bound or it’s just career oriented conversations. Is what you’re going to hear more of, more of that College and Career Clarity, right? You’re also going to hear more from me. I keep hearing from you guys that, oh gosh, Lisa, you made me feel so much better. Or, you know, oh, how can we talk to you more times limited. So I’m going to do more solo episodes in 2026 and that is intentional, because that’s what you guys are telling me that you want. And when it’s a solo episode, it’s probably going to be a little bit shorter, and maybe you’ll celebrate that. I know, in 2025 our average length of an episode was 38 minutes, and most of them fell right into that 30 to 40 minute with our longest one being 71 minutes. But these episodes, when they’re solo, particularly, and it’s not a conversation with a back and forth exchange of ideas. They’re probably going to be a little bit shorter as well, and you might be able to celebrate that, and maybe we’ll have be able to reach more people through that. So what 2026 as we go into our fifth year of College and Career Clarity, our sixth year of launch Career Clarity as an online course with life support. It’s not going to be about doing more. It’s going to be about doing the right next thing to support you guys. So welcome. Keep listening. It’s going to be an exciting year. The easiest way besides. Listening, which you’re already doing now, or watching on YouTube. The easiest way to first baby step into our community is get our newsletter. So if you go to flourish coaching co.com forward slash newsletter, and I’ll put that in the show notes, I’ll just land in your inbox every single Tuesday, I have not missed an email, a weekly email, since May of 2021 you know, we started flourish coaching as a brand and January of 2021, and we’ve not missed a week. We bring you not only the podcast, but insights from me and resources as well as a conversation queue to use inside your family, to be intentional, intentional about what the next right conversation is to fuel career, clarity, so flourish, coaching co.com forward slash newsletter. Welcome to year 520. 26 is going to be a great year. Sending you my best. I’ll see you next week.