5 Steps You Can Take This Week to Create Work You Love (Even If You Have Another Job) S5E04

You’ve worked hard. You’ve built a successful career. On paper, everything looks great — yet deep down, you feel that quiet restlessness…
 That tug for something of your own.
Something more fulfilling, more purpose-driven, and more aligned with who you’re becoming.

If you’ve been craving a new direction — but you’re not ready to walk away from the stability of your current job — this episode is your roadmap.

In today’s conversation, I’m sharing 5 simple steps you can take this week to start creating work you love… work that lights you up… work that could eventually give you the freedom and fulfillment you’ve been longing for.

And the best part?
 You don’t need to quit your job, take a big risk, or have it all figured out.
 You just need a clear starting point — and a strategy.

 Inside this episode, as your CliftonStrengths® Coach and Visionary Strategist, I’ll help you: 

✨ Take inventory of the skills that energize you
 ✨ Turn past work experience and hobbies into new opportunities
 ✨ Identify causes and problems that light you up
 ✨ Leverage your God-given talents (your CliftonStrengths®!) to create impact and income
 ✨ And inspire you with one woman's story  — Ms. Rachel of Songs for Littles — turned her passion project into a $50-million purpose-driven business

Whether you’re craving a creative outlet, dreaming of a future career pivot, or simply ready to explore what’s next, this episode will help you take your first confident step toward building a career — and a life — where you can live your calling, lead with your strengths, and create meaningful, sustainable success.

🔹 Take the free Portfolio Career Quiz → DiscoveringYourCalling.com/quiz
🔹 Book your Start with Strengths session → SheriMiterCo.com/services

Mentioned in today's episode: 

 Get Your Rack Back 

Ms Rachel & Team

Take the CliftonStrengths Assessment

Take our free 12-question quiz to see if it's right for you and get your next action step. https://discoveringyourcalling.com/quiz

Checked all the boxes of success but still feel like something’s missing? My new book, Discovering Your Calling, is a guide for ambitious women ready to stop drifting and build a life of true fulfillment and joy. Your calling is waiting.

✨ Grab your copy today: https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Your-Calling-Ambitious-Fulfillment/dp/B0F49CH72W

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

In today's episode, I'm sharing five practical steps you can take this week to start building a portfolio career, even if you're not ready to leave your nine to five. I'm going to show you how to start building your future on the side. And at the end, I'm going to share a real life story of someone who turned one small idea into a$50 million impact. Welcome to the Discovering Your Calling podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy, and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button, and join me on this journey toward discovering your calling. So if you caught last week's episode, we talked about what a portfolio career is. And after you listened, you might have been like several people that contacted me and said, I've been building up one my entire life. They just didn't have a name for it. And if you're someone who naturally just loves variety, that might sound familiar. You love that idea of having multiple sources of income. That's again how you've been working your business your entire life. But maybe if you are someone who's taken that more traditional career path, that more linear of you go to college, you get your degree, you land that job that uses that degree, and you're work, you work your way up the ladder until retirement. This may sound a little odd to you. And you may be thinking, well, why would anybody want to have a portfolio career without the safety and security? And no matter which direction you are right now or where you've been, I want you to listen to this episode with the open mindset of how could I possibly build something else on the side? Now, if you're already doing multiple sources of income, maybe for you it's it's making sure that what you are doing aligns with your calling, it aligns with your gifts and skills and all the things we're going to talk about today. And if you are more of that traditional career path, for you, it might be looking at like, how could I add something on, you know, something to my life on the side without stepping away from my nine to five, without, you know, losing that security. And this is all about creating that, that something that feeds your soul, something that uses again, your gifts, your talents, your life experiences, and not about giving something up, giving up that career that's all about security. And that's the way I want to really look at this building your portfolio career. And I do, as I shared in the last episode, I really do feel like today, because there really is no safe jobs out there anymore. You know, it used to be that you knew you could count on having that job until you retired at age 60 or 65 or 72 today. Um, but nowadays, nothing is guaranteed. So I really feel like we all need to build something that we can call our own and have that as a secure fallback, you know, plan B or fallback plan. I don't know if that's the right verbiage, but you know what I mean? Like something that you have control of. It's about taking control of your life. And that's what building a portfolio career to me is really all about. But I want to make one thing clear about what a portfolio career isn't. It is not about working a bunch of random jobs because you have to pay the bills. Now, I have been there before. My husband and I were talking about this and kind of started chuckling, thinking back to when we were newlyweds and we got married really young, like shockingly young. If I said my age, it'd be like, oh. Um, so we were both very young. And he had just got on the city fire department where he did spend his career. And I think his starting pay was something around$15,000 a year, maybe less. You know, we were eligible for food stamps if we wanted to take them. And, you know, it's funny because I know today, some of you are listening, might be making$15,000 a month. And we were making that a year. So we had to be scrappy. And we were willing to do anything, legally and morally right, of course, to provide for our little growing family. We had had a baby like a year, year and a half after we got married. We started had started our family, and we were still, you know, he was not making a lot of money. So I remember I worked retail at a department store. I used to sew these crazy 3D sweatshirts for small local business. And then they hired me. They wanted me to go out and help sell them. And I mean, talk about a cringe job. I look back at the I think back to those sweatshirts, like, oh my gosh, they were so, so 80s. Um Tom and I together used to deliver phone books, or if any of you remember phone books. I mean, he delivered packages, he delivered pizzas, he delivered newspapers. Again, you name it. I think we did it or tried it. And that was just from a need of cash. Had nothing to do with living in our calling. It was all about the cold hard cash. That is not a portfolio career. The portfolio career is about creating work you want to do. And again, whether that's about multiple roles at one time or keeping your full-time job while building that something on the side, or designing work that just gives you freedom to be a work-from-home parent, or maybe it's about making an impact after you retire from that traditional career. And it's about using your strengths and having the freedom to live life on your terms. And as I mentioned last week, and I mentioned earlier in this podcast, to me, right now, it is the smartest way to create future security. Because again, I can't say this enough. There is no job that is really safe anymore. So if you're ready to start creating your portfolio career of your own, let's talk about these five things you can do right now, this week, to start taking inventory and start looking at what you can bring to the world to start creating your side. We're really talking about the side project today, the passion project. Again, I don't like the word side hustle, but if you think about that, like something you can start doing on a small scale on the side right now. So grab a pen and paper because you're gonna want to take some notes. And this may even be a podcast that you want to listen to a chunk, put it on pause, write down your thoughts, turn it back on, listen to the next section, write, you know, put it on pause, write your notes down, whatever serves you best. But this definitely does take a lot of it's about you taking the time to write down the thoughts that come in. So, first thing you're gonna do is take inventory of your current skills. Start by taking inventory of those skills. Um, as I mentioned in my book, Discovering Your Calling, and also in my academy, the key here is to only focus on the skills that you have that energize you. You know, we've all had to learn skills at one point in our life that we had to do them, but we didn't enjoy doing them. And in fact, they kind of drained us when we did do them. So we're not talking about those skills. We're talking about what are the skills you love using, the ones that you're known for. Maybe at work you're the IT person. Maybe you're the IT person because you were trained to do that, but maybe you're also the IT person as an unofficial job title because you just geek out over technology. So everybody asks you questions about, oh, my computer's not working right, or this is not working right, or how do I fix this? You're just known as the IT person. Could you offer that expertise as a side gig to people outside of your circle of influence? Who could you offer that to? I mean, there's a lot of us out there that are not IT experts that could use somebody to come in and help us fix our computer. Actually, right now, my husband's computer, the sound is not working properly and we could not figure it out. So he's looking for that person that, you know, he would hire you to come in and fix this computer. Um, so that's one example. Maybe you have skills like a craft, like sewing or woodwork. Could you take those skills that you use to create something? Um, could you take that and create something that maybe you could sell on Etsy? Or maybe you could take that skill and teach others how to do it. Now, if it's about sewing, I'm guessing you're probably not going to be making those cringy 3D sweatshirts I had to make back in the day. But what are the skills that you have that you have honed and you're known for? Again, woodworking. Could you make a beautiful piece of furniture to sell to somebody? So think about those skills. Um, my client, my current client right now, Mary, we're working right now on her taking some of her one of her skills. She is a very skilled, um, not a florist, but she's has this great skill of being able to take flowers and just create amazingly beautiful flower arrangements. And she wants to take that and create a side business for now, possibly more in the future, of selling these flower arrangements to others. Uh, particularly, she wants to do them for gravestones. And it's something that she's passionate about and something she's very skilled at. We're also talking about how she could take those skills of being able to create these beautiful flower arrangements and teach it to others in a workshop setting. I mean, people are paying for workshops like that. I went to a charcuterie board workshop not too long ago to learn how to create a charcuterie board. So, what are the skills that you have that you could either teach to somebody else or maybe create something, or maybe just offer your services to somebody. But just remember, it needs to be the skills that not only are you good at, but that energize you. Because just because you are good at something doesn't mean you should be doing it if you find them exhausting to do. So your first step is write down five to 10, five to 10 skills that you have that you truly enjoy using. And some of those skills may be things that you haven't utilized yourself in a long time. So think back, you know, to previous skills that you used to use. So, what are those skills? Write down five to 10 skills that you have that you enjoy using. Step two is review your work experience. So look to your current work, but also look back at your past work experience. What roles or projects have you had that where you maybe you were helping others? Or how could you take that experience that you've had at a job and maybe become a mentor, a paid mentor? Or you could use those, you know, it's kind of like the skills, but the work experience to freelance. Or maybe it's becoming a consultant. Um, if you're a graphic designer, could you freelance on the side? You know, if you really love doing graphic design, that's your nine to five, you love it, you're passionate about it, and you want to still do more, you could freelance on Fiverr or upwork as a graphic designer. Or maybe you could take some skills and um that you've learned through your your work experience, uh, take your work experience and volunteer to mentor somebody, maybe mentor teens. Maybe you could take your work experience and serve on a nonprofit board, or maybe your advisor for startups. Um, not all of your calling to, by the way, or even your portfolio career. This again is Sherry Mitre's opinion, has to be paid. Some things I feel like maybe might start off as just giving back to society, giving back and just offering your services for free. You never know where it could lead, or maybe it'll always stay as a volunteer portion, but it feeds your, it fills your cup, it feeds your soul. So that's gonna give you um more energy, more passion in your life. So go back through all of your past roles. What work did you love doing? What work were you really exceptionally good at? And what would you enjoy doing or helping others with? Because sometimes your next step is hiding in something you've already done. So just take some time to review your current work experience that you've you're known for, like you know you do it really exceptionally well, andor past work experience. Just jot that down. Now I want to pause here and let you know we're not worrying about trying to create something yet. You're just jotting down this information. Don't worry about if something comes up like, well, I don't even know how I could do it. We'll get to that in a minute. You're just writing down the information right now. So you should have your inventory of your current skills or past skills. Second thing is review your work experience. Now the third thing is the third step is to revisit your hobbies. So think about your hobbies, the ones that you currently have or the ones you used to have. Could you take something you love doing and turn it into something that brings in extra income? Maybe you are a great musician. Maybe you enjoy painting, maybe you enjoy coaching a sport. Could you teach something? Could you sell your creations on Etsy or even start something totally new? And my son, my youngest son, uh took his hobby, his love for espresso of all things, and he has turned it into a coffee cart business. And let me tell you, he's killing it. He has, it seems like two or three bookings every single week since he started in July. So he took his hobby of coffee and espresso and turned it into a business. Another son of mine, our oldest son, him and his wife, have chickens. So they now sell eggs and other goods and a little farm stand. So what are your hobbies and how could you possibly turn them into a side business or make money from them? Um, you know, what hobbies, again, do you have or did you used to have that maybe you feel like you haven't had time to do, but you could bring them back into your life. And again, don't be afraid to dig into your past. You know, what did you love doing as a kid? What did you do in college? Or what were you do before you even had kids? You know, after that, it seems like we do everything for our kids. So jot those ideas down. Just revisit your hobbies. The fourth step is to find a cause that lights you up. So the next thing is to think about the causes you believe in, the ones you would love to support or bring awareness to. And in the Discovering You're Calling Academy, we call this your purpose-driven problem. What is that thing you see out in the world or in your world that tugs at your heartstrings? What makes you say someone should do something about that? Well, maybe, my friend, it's time for you to be that someone. And it might be that you take your skills, your knowledge, your work experience to help solve the problem in your own unique way. So, for example, I am passionate about making sure everyone has access to fresh vegetables. I just, I think it just matters so much in our lives. Next year, I plan to volunteer at our local community garden. And again, in my humble opinion, not everything has to be paid, but sometimes it can be. Um, I have a friend Connie, and she's a cancer survivor. She now dedicates her time to running her own foundation. It's called Get Your Rack Back. It's fabulous. You should look it up online, get your rack back. They help families in crisis by providing restaurant gas and grocery gift cards and financial aid for physician and hospital co-pays. She's also become a paid author and speaker. So she took what mattered to her as a cancer survivor and turned it into a foundation to help others. So what tugs at your heart? Is it helping somebody with a certain disease? Is it animals? Is it politics? Is it the environment? Write those things down. Okay, and step number five is lean into your God-given talents. Take a look at your God-given talents through the Clifton Strengths lens. Now, if you've taken the assessment, pull out your top five or your full 34 report and start reading through it. But I want you to look for the clues that might point you toward a side business or new project idea. So, what do I mean by this? So, for example, one of my clients reports um said this in the report. It said, Because of your strengths, you may be adept at setting up processes that makes that make it easier to perform certain repet repetitious. It's getting late here for me, repetitious assignments or tasks. And another line read, you periodically establish rules that help people manage daily or weekly routines. Perhaps you outline a detailed plan. Now, she was also a graphic designer for me. She did some graphic design work. And I know by working with her, her mind does work this way. She has a very unique way of organizing her thoughts and organ creating organizational tools to help get a project done. So she could also just create organizational tools for small business owners because I don't know about you, but that is not my forte. And it would be great to have her like break down how to how to, you know, look at big projects and make them into manageable daily tasks. So that might be something she could do with her natural strengths. Another client's um strengths report had this to say in it: you are flexible and can quickly adjust to changing or unexpected circumstances. Your calm response to chaos reassures others and helps respond to what people need. Now, she happens to be a wedding event planner. And that is one of her superpowers in there because as you can imagine, on the day of a wedding, there's usually a lot of chaos. So she uses that gift of hers to help calm that chaos, to help people, you know, realize she's got it so that their wedding can come out beautifully and just what they had imagined that day to look like. So that's how she's leaning into her natural, natural strengths of being able to make, you know, help things calm and be flexible in the day. So what clues might be hidden in your report? Now, for this one, it might be good to even ask a friend, ask a close friend who knows you well to read your report and see what clues they pick out. Sometimes that's easier to pick out clues for somebody else than it is for ourselves. Or better yet, you can always hire a coach like myself, a Clifton Strengths coach, to help you uncover those hidden gems. Because we have the advantage of reading a lot of reports out there and we see what are the unique gems that stand out that aren't in anybody else's, but they're in yours. That tells you what your natural Clifton strengths are and how they could be used to help others in the world. So that was step five, lean into your God-given talents. So I'm going to review these real quick. So number one was take inventory of your current skills. Number two, review your work experience. Number three, revisit your hobbies. Number four, find a cause that lights you up. And number five, lean into your God-given talents. Now, as we wrap this up, I want you to go back and look at your list and think about the common threads there. Look to see what stands out at you. Maybe an idea already pops out just by writing down the list. Um, you could also use AI for this. Take all your ideas and plug them into Chat B GPT and ask for a few creative ways to bring them to life. Or maybe you could ask Chat GPT, like, how could I create a side business knowing that I have these skills, this work experience, you know, I'm passionate about this. Like feed all that information into Chat GPT and see what it comes up with. Or again, if you'd rather work with a human, let's connect. I would suggest starting with our uh my start with strengths session, which is where we can, you know, look at your strengths, but we'd also look at this list as well. If you book a start with strength session specifically for creating your potential side hustle, your potential passion project, we can take all these things that you've already written down and we'll, you know, we'll look at them together and figure out like, what is it? What is it hidden there that you can start creating something to start making that little extra income or something that just again fills your cup, something that gives you energy. Because this isn't again about necessarily just trying to create something that you have to do because you're desperate and you need money. It's not really about that. Now, yes, you might want to make some money and you kind of need some money, but it's about creating something that's in tune and lines up with your calling, whether it be that it's always going to stay a passion project on the side, or is it potentially going to become something that could turn into your full-time, you know, income producer? It really doesn't matter where you want it to go. It's about where we start today. So I want to close here with a real life example of someone who did all these things. She actually, as I thought back to, is like, yes, she did all five things and has now created a$50 million business. She saw a problem she wanted to solve. She used her past work experience, her professional skills, her creative hobbies, and even her spout her spouse's talents to build something meaningful, meaningful. And what started out as a small project to help just one person grew into something that now touches millions of lives around the world and is turned into a business worth over$50 million. Sounds pretty unbelievable, right? Well, some of you may have heard of this person before. If you have anybody in your in your life that's under four years old, you probably have. And that person is Miss Rachel. She's the creator of Songs for Littles on YouTube. And she created that because she noticed her young son was struggling with speech, and she couldn't find the kind of educational videos she wished existed. So she decided to make them herself. So that was her purpose-driven problem. And she drew on her work experience as an early childhood educator and music teacher. And she used her skills in songwriting and teaching, and she tapped into her hobby of music and her husband, Aaron's background as a Broadway music director and composer. He now handles the production, music, and editing of their channel. And together, they became business partners in bringing her vision to life. And what started out as a mom trying to help her child has become, again, one of the most beloved educational platforms online, helping millions of children, including my own grandchildren, my the smaller grandchildren love Miss Rachel. And her story really is just a beautiful reminder that your portfolio career, or that little idea tugging at your heart, might grow out of a combination of these five things: your skills, your work experience, your hobbies, your purpose-driven problem, and your God-given talents. And who knows, who knows that one small idea might not just change your life, it might change someone else's too, or perhaps millions of lives out there. You never know. But you have to take the first step, which is just to explore and then experiment and test things out. And remember, your calling doesn't show up all at once. It kind of just unfolds as you take action. And just as a reminder, if you need more support and/or you're trying to decide, is this even for me, do I even want to create a portfolio career? Then I would suggest you take our new portfolio career quiz. It's still kind of in the beta stages. So it's not all it's going to be in the future, but it will definitely give you um some direction. So take our portfolio career career quiz um at discoveringyourcalling.com forward slash quiz. So discoveringyourcalling.com forward slash quiz. The link will be in the show notes. Take the quiz and see where you're at. And I'm also here for you. Not only am I cheering you on as you create your career and a life that truly fits who you are, I'm here to help you. I'm here to coach you. I'm here to mentor you. And if you want that little next level support, again, I recommend the Start with Strengths session because everything really does start with strengths. And you can book your session today and or look learn more at sherymiterco.com forward slash services to check out our Start with Strengths um session. So that's it, my friend. So I hope this is valuable to you. And I would love to know which step gave you the biggest aha. Which of the five steps that we went through, which one was it that, like, oh, wait, maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I could do to create something. Let me know. I'll be waiting to hear from you. Thank you for spending this time with me. My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action toward discovering your calling. I just have two favors to ask of you before you go. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and you might hear your review read on a future episode. And two, can you share this episode with three friends who will also enjoy it as much as you did? By doing these things, you will help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world. And until next week, remember, you've been created to live a life of fulfillment, freedom, purpose, success, and joy.