Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Hello, my midlife friend. This is Bernie Borges, your host to the Midlife of Health podcast, and this is episode 144. Now if you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you know that I release episodes on Mondays, every single Monday. I don’t think I’ve missed a single Monday in 2 years. Now this episode is releasing on Monday, December 25, 2023. Obviously, December 25th is Christmas Day. Now I didn’t record this on Christmas Day, but I’m releasing it on Christmas Day 2023. So if you celebrate Christmas, I just wanna wish you and your family a wonderful merry, merry Christmas to you and yours.
Bernie Borges [00:00:43]:
Now whether you listen to this on the week of Christmas or in the summer of 2024, it doesn’t matter. I’m planning to do something a little bit different for this episode. I’m gonna do a 2 part series that’s gonna that’s releasing with this episode, 1, 144 on Christmas day. And then I’m not gonna do a a, a takeaway episode on Thursday, 28th. Instead, I’m gonna do the 2nd part of this 2 part series on Monday, January 1st, New Year’s Day, 2024. So here’s what I’m planning to cover. Let me give you a little context. You might know that, a few months ago, I published the midlife career Reboot Workbook.
Bernie Borges [00:01:27]:
This is a free workbook that’s available for download at the midlife fulfilled.com website. It’s also linked up in the show notes. And the number 1 piece of feedback that I got from people that have downloaded the workbook is, hey. It’s great. It’s a workbook, But I’d love to have a 1 page version of this. You know, something that I can look at every day that’s available on 1 page. Well, you asked, and that’s exactly what we’ve put together with a lot of great help from my digital marketing strategist, Carrie Baker. Shout out to Carrie.
Bernie Borges [00:01:59]:
We put together a 1 pager. And so what I’m gonna do is on this episode, I’m gonna cover the first 2 steps of the 5 steps, that I cover in my midlife career reboot workbook. So this 1 pager and the workbook, which The content is the same, but the the difference is the 1 pager, is obviously on 1 page, and it’s much more condensed. It does cover the 5 steps, But let me let me point something out. Let me point out, base first of all, who is this 1 pager really for? The whole career midlife career reboot content. Who’s it really for? If you’re feeling stuck in your career in any way, kinda stagnant, that’s then that’s certainly something that I think with warrant getting this checklist. If you’re not satisfied with where you are, you’re kinda confused with where you are, you’re looking for some clarity, maybe some direction, Maybe you’re just struggling with work, life balance and you’re looking to reboot your career and find that work, life balance, or you’re just looking to make some kind of a change. That’s who this checklist is for, this reboot checklist is for.
Bernie Borges [00:03:07]:
But let me also say that there are other use cases for this checklist. And I’m gonna give you an analogy here. Imagine I’m teaching you how to drive a car. Now now stick with me here. Okay? This is an analogy. Imagine you’re learning how to drive a car. I’m in the passenger seat. I’m your instructor.
Bernie Borges [00:03:25]:
You’re behind the wheel. You’re learning how to drive a car for the first time. And every time we get in the car, through your learning process, we drive to the same exact destination. Let’s just say that it’s the grocery store. Every time we we go for a driving lesson, I’m teaching you how to drive this car, we go to the grocery store. We go back and forth across many lessons, And then the day comes where I say, you’ve graduated. You know how to drive a car now. And you say to me, well, I guess I can drive this car anywhere.
Bernie Borges [00:03:55]:
Right? Not just to the grocery store. And I say to you, that’s exactly right. You can drive this car. You now know how to drive a car, which means you can now take that skill and apply it in other use cases, not just driving to the grocery store. You can drive to the beach. You can drive to the movie theater. You can drive anywhere you want. Now again, this is an analogy.
Bernie Borges [00:04:20]:
The 5 steps that I’m covering with you from this career reboot checklist, these are practices that you can also apply to build your personal brand or for business development. So even if you’re not looking to reboot your career, I want you to be mindful of that, or maybe there’s someone that you know that’s not looking to reboot their career, but is looking they’re looking to build their personal brand, or they’re in business development. These practices are absolutely transferable into those other use cases. So I just wanted to get that out of the way. I also wanna state the obvious. I should have said this in the 1st minute or so because I’m now a few minutes in. You can obviously get this checklist on the website midlifeofill.com, and I encourage you to do that because I’m gonna be covering the points from this checklist on this episode and the following episodes. So Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Bernie Borges [00:05:13]:
There are 5 steps to this reboot plan, this career reboot reboot plan. I’m gonna list all 5, and today on this episode, I’m gonna cover the first 2. And then on the next episode, I’ll cover 3 and 4, and then of course, the icing of the cape with with, step number 5. So let me just read through what the 5 steps are. The first one is to get the product right because you’re the product. The second 1 is to know your target market and really, really know them. And then the third one is to reach out and engage with your target market relationally. I’ll elaborate on that on next week’s episode.
Bernie Borges [00:05:51]:
And then the 4th 1 is to get the meeting, whatever that meeting is, and then the 5th step is to reassess, just continually reassess what’s working, what’s not working, and then tweak your plan however you want to. Now I’m gonna cover Steps number 1 and 2, but I also wanna point out that the reason that I even put this whole thing together starting with the workbook, I kinda work backwards. Maybe not. I don’t know. I I kinda like the way I did it. You know, I put the fur the the workbook together, which is fairly comprehensive, And then I did this checklist, but the reason that I did it in the 1st place is because these are practices that I have used To reboot my career twice in the last 7 years. Twice. So the only common theme here is that These are practices that apply really, really well in a midlife career setting.
Bernie Borges [00:06:44]:
Okay? And, again, think about the other use cases that I mentioned, personal branding in business development. So let’s look at the first one. Get the product right. Let me give you the analogy of, yes, I’m big on analogies. If you haven’t noticed about that about me by now. Well, duh, now you know. The analogy here is a product manager. The role of a product manager.
Bernie Borges [00:07:05]:
And by the way, early in my career, I thought I wanted to be a product manager, but it’s not the the career, path that I went down. But a product manager’s job is to, first of all, understand what problem their product solves. What are the features and benefits that that address a specific market need? Right? And Who is the target audience for that product? And then how do we go to market with that product to get the product in front of that target audience? And then how do we promote the product and and create both awareness as well as desire for that target audience to buy the product? So step number 1 is to think of yourself as a product. So what does that mean? It means Understanding exactly what your features are. So that means what problem do you solve? Where do you solve that problem? By where, I mean, what what Industry, are you solving that problem? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? How are you different than other people that are like you? And specifically, what are your skills within that domain of your strengths, your weaknesses, and the problems that you solve. And what are your specific experiences? The point to this is and of course, This exercise is something that you should document. And even if you have a checklist in front of you, remember, we’re doing this because people who downloaded the workbook said, hey. I’d love to have a 1 page checklist.
Bernie Borges [00:08:41]:
In the workbook, there’s actually an exercise. There’s an exercise for all 5 steps, by the way. So in this 1st step here, the exercise you’ll go through if you if you download the workbook in addition to the checklist is you’ll actually answer those kinds of questions. So you’ll actually document who you are as a product. That’s why step number 1 is to get the product right. You are the product. So you have to be thinking that way. You have to have that lens, that mindset that you’re the product, and get that product right, And make sure that you’re communicating exactly the virtues of you as a product in the marketplace.
Bernie Borges [00:09:19]:
Now In the workbook, I go into detail on how to do that on LinkedIn. I don’t do that in detail on the 1 pager because they would take it beyond the 1 pager. So I encourage you to get the 1 pager as as a comprehensive checklist, but the workbook goes into detail on how to actually Get the product right. You, the product, right on LinkedIn, and there were specific best practices. And by the way, That is a big area on how this applies to your personal brand and business development if that’s you. Meaning, if you’re not looking to reboot your career, But you’re looking to, improve your your personal brand and or you’re in business development. Getting that right on LinkedIn is critical. So that’s step 1.
Bernie Borges [00:10:03]:
Get the product right. Having that mindset of you are the product. How are you different? What problem do you solve? Who who do you solve that problem for? Where are they? How do you get your product out to the marketplace, meaning yourself, and make sure you get it right on LinkedIn. Okay. That’s step number 1. Let’s go to step number 2 because that’s all I’m covering on this episode, the steps 1 and 2. And then I’ll cover steps 3, 4, and 5 On the next episode, that will be ep episode 145. Step number 2 is Know your target market.
Bernie Borges [00:10:37]:
Like, really, really know them. Again, I’m gonna refer to the workbook. In the workbook, there’s exercises where you define your target market. Meaning, if you this if this is career focused for you, what industry are they in? What are their roles? What are their titles? What are the things that they care about? What kind of tenure do they have in the industry? Where do they spend their time? Are they on LinkedIn, or are they elsewhere? What kind of, events do they attend? What kind of publications or blogs do they read? And create a little persona for each one of these, And this is again where I refer to the workbook because you do this in the workbook. I give you the exercise of actually documenting these attributes, and I give you a little template In the workbook, the checklist just gives you the checklist. The workbook gives you the template where you can actually modify the template, of course, because it’s gotta be for you in your scenario. And when you modify it, then you can define the persona attributes. And by persona, what I mean is build out a persona of your target market.
Bernie Borges [00:11:49]:
What is their role? What is their tenure. What industry are they in? What are their titles? What do they care about? What problems do they have even if you don’t Solve all of them. It’s not about that. Don’t limit the problem definition to the problems that you solve. The idea is that you really wanna know who your Target market is that’s the whole purpose of this exercise. That’s why in the workbook, I actually call it no buy target market because I’m trying to I’m trying to put a little drama into it, some emphasis that you really have to know that target market Because if you go back to step 1, you as the product, you wanna make sure that you can address the things that that target persona cares about. It may not be everything because it’s not our job to be all things to all people. That’s not our job.
Bernie Borges [00:12:42]:
Our job is to be a specific thing to a specific set of people. So as you think about building this this persona exercise. Think about certainly understanding all the things that your target persona cares about, the things that they struggle with, But then know really, really well where you fit. What what is it that you address specifically with that target audience? So I’m gonna leave it here for this episode, episode 144. Remember, this is part 1 of 2 where I’m covering the 5 steps on the checklist, the midlife career reboot checklist. I’ve covered know the product. That’s you. Know your target market really, really well.
Bernie Borges [00:13:32]:
Define that. Build it out. On the next episode, on episode 145, I’m gonna cover step 3, Reach out and engage relationally. Step number 4, get the meeting or whatever it is that you’re you’re looking to achieve with them. And then step number 5 is to tweak based on what’s working and not working. Remember to get the checklist. Go to midlifeofill.com or just scroll down in the show notes and click on the checklist, and download the checklist so that you can, go through it through these episodes as well as just have it at your fingertips. On that note, again, depending on when you’re listening this, listening to this episode, I just wish you a a wonderful holiday season.
Bernie Borges [00:14:21]:
On the next episode, I’ll be wishing you a happy new New Year. And until then, remember, Remember, if you’re 80% fulfilled, you’re doing great. I’ll see you next time.
