#234 Mid-Year Career Clarity Check: Is Your Family Behind? Transcript

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

We just celebrated the Fourth of July, and for this summer lover, admittedly, I cannot stand winter. I get a little sad because summer feels halfway over for some of you living in other regions. I realize maybe that doesn’t hold true because, well, if you’ve got a teenager, maybe they just got out of school. But for all of us, it’s indisputable that 2026 is literally halfway over, so whether your young person in your house is 1518, 2125 there are certain moments that tend to arrive faster than families expect. I’ve seen this over and over again. I’ve noticed with both young people and the adults that I support that everyone tends to over index how much time they have in a day, a week, a month, and unfortunately under index on the reality of how busy and full life is. Most families don’t suddenly wake up one morning and realize, oh, we’re behind, so maybe it’s the post graduation pathway that you’re facing for your with your young person, maybe it’s choosing a college major or applications, securing internships, whether in high school, college, or beyond. Yes, they do exist at all levels. Searches for tiny jobs while still in school, or exploring and securing that first big career move, ready or not, these milestones are going to show up because the clock just keeps ticking. So, instead of a new year’s resolutions goals type episode, I want to do a mid year career clarity check, not to panic anyone, but to help you recognize what’s coming at you in the second half of this year before that season arrives, because what, here’s what I see all the time, when direction hasn’t been built, some sense of direction, not all of it, before these moments show up for young people, parents, usually my listeners, of the parents, end up carrying the emotional, financial, practical, maybe tactical burden, and it feels heavy. So, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go through four different – I’ll just call them eras in this parenting of 15 to 25 plus year olds, we’re going to take them in chronological order. So, if you’re sitting here thinking, well, I have a 21 year old, I don’t need to hear you talk about stuff for high schoolers, jump ahead over the show notes. We’re going to do a time stamp that shows you how to jump to the stage that you’re in, but before we jump milestones, I want everybody to know that I recognize that across all these ages our kids are naturally going to mature to varying degrees, some of them exponentially, sometimes in a very short period of time, others very slowly, but all of these kiddos, I’m going to call them all kids, will naturally begin to mature, but what I’ve seen, because we’ve supported 1000s, that doesn’t happen naturally, but everybody wants it to, is that direction ends up coming up as well, so maturity is going to naturally happen to some degree, and direction will not naturally happen unless you give it the intention and attention that it is calling for. So, okay, let’s jump into our first checkpoint. This is for those of you that have a high schooler, a teenager, and I want you to ask yourself, as you think about them, and if this isn’t the era that you want to listen to, go to the show notes, find the timestamp, jump ahead to where you want to be. So, if you still have a high school student, I want you to ask yourself, if they were to graduate tomorrow, do they know where they’re headed after high school, and even more importantly, why that is the direction that they’re heading in. Let’s talk about what direction actually looks like.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  04:49

So, if you have a kiddo who is headed to college and maybe they’re a junior or maybe they’re going to be a rising senior, have they built a college list. Act that aligns with their future goals, because most of you who are going to be paying for college, you expect some sort of a career outcome. We talked to Jeff Slingo back in January, and we took everything from his dream school book, and if you.. I’ll put this episode in the show notes, if you want to go listen to it, but we took everything that was more career-oriented. But here’s the deal. When he talked to families while writing that book, he found that the number one expectation that a family had when sending their kid out of college was that there would be a career outcome on the other side. For others of you, maybe your student is looking at two year associate’s degree, or maybe they’re going to head into an apprenticeship or an employer training program, regardless of where they’re pinging to with that GPS. I always talk about putting the pin in where you want to head. It is key at this stage that they are understanding admission requirements. If it’s a gap year that they want, then it’s making sure that that is with intention, and that all of these decisions in any applications they might be submitting to apprenticeships or colleges or employers reflect that they’re making an intentional choice. See, there’s two big mistakes that I see for those who are college bound, they’re so focused on the college that the major, they don’t realize that there’s a major impact of choice of major and career direction. If you want to go back to listen to my April 2025 episode with Rick Clark from Georgia Tech, he’s head of admissions over there and enrollment over there. You want to go listen to that, because he talks about the hidden impact choice of major has on college admission. So, let me get my camera. I don’t know why my camera keeps doing this today. I think it’s all my hand talking. Right, the other thing that I’ve noticed is families who have kids that are headed into a non four year path make this assumption that they’re going to be easily, these opportunities will be easily available, that they’re non competitive, and nothing could be farther from the truth. There are associate’s degree paths, there are trades that are highly competitive and limited, and so you really need to educate yourselves early on, instead of just assuming if you’re on the non-four year college path that you’re going to have readily available options for what you want to do, and that’ll be figured out very quickly, so you know when these milestones arrive around applications, it might be a high school graduation. If you haven’t had some sense of direction at that point, the cost doesn’t necessarily feel high financially, but it does feel highly emotional. Parents begin worrying about deadlines, they see friends making choices, and what I’ve seen over and over again is parents, you can easily move into an over functioning stance, right, not because you’re a controlling person, but because you’re stressed, and that’s our stressed behavior when we see things not going as planned. So, regardless of where you’re headed, the pathway may be different, but direction still matters. So, if you have a teen and we’re at this mid year, where did you think that you would be by now? And if you’re not, are you carrying that emotional weight? Are you over functioning, and maybe even doing practical and tactical things that your kids should be doing? Think about where you want to be at the end of 2026 and how they can begin to build confidence in the direction that they’re headed. Okay. Checkpoint number two. Let’s jump up. So, I’ve toyed with a lot of different ways to talk about this, but here’s the reality. Checkpoint number two is, do you have a 20 year old? Are they two years out of high school graduation?

Lisa Marker-Robbins  09:15

So, you know, during the teen years, it’s natural to think that time will fix it, and I’ve said this over and over, that it doesn’t, but at 20, leaving it up to time and just natural maturity starts to feel harder to believe it will actually happen, and it’s not because 20 is old, I mean, hello, if it were like I’ve got both feet in the grave, right, but at 20 there are patterns when we’re parenting these kids that begin to come become visible to us, right, and so now it’s not just like, oh, they’ll mature a little bit and it’ll get all figured out, so here’s what I want you to ask yourself, if you have a 20-ish year old kid, if you are about. Two years, two and a half years post high school graduation, is your young person building towards something intentionally by design, or are they simply drifting into what is organically coming at them and just feels like the next natural place to let it go. Here’s the deal. If they’re in college, majors really need to be locked in my sophomore year, or you’re going to be extending time in school. For some majors, they actually need to be locked in freshman year or sooner, depending on the major, right? If you have a kiddo pursuing an associate’s degree, they are two years in, and they’re facing the finish line, and going and looking for what we’re going to talk about next, which is their actual real career search. Right, if they’re in trades, apprenticeships, they went into employer training in the workforce, they’re now gaining proof by two years in that they do actually have a fit that will sustain a future lifestyle outside of your home, or they’re gaining proof that maybe they’re on the wrong path, and they need to pivot. 20 is a point where parents intuitively begin to actually know what’s going on underneath it, right? So, there’s this ripple effect underneath everything, and parents, we can feel it in our bodies when it’s happening, and sometimes often I’m talking to the parent first before I’m talking to a 20 something. The parents need to get honest with themselves about what patterns are emerging. What decisions are coming out of those patterns? What habits are being established, and will what momentum has taken hold, or lack of it? And when parents start seeing that all of these choices, decisions, habits, momentum are happening, you’ll begin to know whether they’re accumulating into something meaningful as evidence of progress or if you’re just accumulating more time, more days checked off the calendar, right? So ask yourself, are we accumulating evidence of positive fit, evidence of we’re doing the right things, but evidence of we’re not on the right path into a meaningful future, so we need to pivot, or are they just drifting along, and you’re carrying them emotionally, maybe even financially at this point, and feeling the tension building your own body, which means you bring things up and the conversations become to build tension instead of trust, and what do you need to do to correct that? Right, so at 20, the conversation is shifting meaningfully as you’re having these talks in your home from potential of what we might be able to do in the future, waiting on yet to get here. To are we in a place where we’re building a long term trajectory that eventually moves us all into the next stage of life? For you, that might be empty nesting right now. If you’re listening to this so far, and we’ve got two more checkpoints to go through, but you’re realizing these milestones are closer than you think, and you want support on how to have career confidence. I want you to start with my free video, so it’s at Flourish Coaching co.com forward slash video. It’s a short training where I walk through the most common mistakes I’m seeing families make at all of these stages that delay direction and create unnecessary stress for families, namely the parents, sometimes even more than the kids. So, flourish coaching code.com forward slash video. Now, let’s go into checkpoint number three, and the age of this is going to vary, but it’s when the first real career search begins to take place, and what I’ve seen is families enter this stage.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  14:05

If they, you know, they’ve left the other two stages, they, they leave it often with this like false confidence. Okay, some have have great reason to believe that there’s real confidence, but some of you, you get hit by, oh, I had false confidence because you could earn the credential, but not yet the position. So, they’ve gotten through school, they’ve earned an associate’s degree, they’ve landed the apprenticeship, they’re checking the boxes, they’re completing degrees or training. But when they’re faced with a tough job market that we’re in, I mean, that’s just the reality where we are right now, right? The economy, the what we call entry level melt, so these entry level jobs just kind of melting away. It can be really tough, and so what the key question becomes here at this stage, when that real career search, so if you have a kid that just, you know. Finish their associate’s degree, that real first career search might be at 20. If you have a kid that is completing a four year degree, well, this next stage doesn’t really come till 22 or 23 right? So, whatever that age is, I want you to think about this stage, and when they’re ready to begin, not not going out and getting a job. I talk a lot about the difference between jobs and careers, right? So, jobs are paychecks. Careers have meaning and purpose, and they support a lifestyle. Can your young person clearly communicate who they are, what they bring to the table, and where they’ll fit into an organization? Because most employers, at this point, they don’t really care about the exact classes that you’ve taken. Many of them don’t even care about the GPA that you earned, but they’re really wanting to know what value will you create here. If we give you an interview, a job, can your young person communicate that, because that’s what this stage becomes all about those who can’t communicate it. If you’re looking for symptoms of, like, my kids got the credentials, but they’re not.. I’m not sure if they’re able to communicate this appropriately. They have resumes that are being ignored, they have applications that disappear into black holes, and they don’t hear anything. They struggle to network, they struggle in an interview, and they lack confidence when explaining their strengths, the skills that they have, and the proof of those skills. And when that happens, I see parents all the time. Well, let me try to help you with my resume or your resume. Sorry, let me do some interview prep with you right again. Parents can go over into the over functioning because they too are stressed because our kids are struggling, they’re upset, and we want to fix it for them. But when we go into that over functioning and we start doing it for them and we’re taking tactical action on their behalf, actually you’re undermining their agency, and that’s when the tension builds, and so the fix to this stage, and I’ve seen this over and over, is self and self awareness. Self awareness is the shift. If you want to tag back and go back to listen to episode 221 I talk about the greatest predictor of career success. I’ll tell you right now, it is self-awareness, but we talk about how to build self-awareness, which is the key component at this stage of life. See, the first career search, it doesn’t test what they’ve learned to be able to perform that job that they’re aiming for. It actually is testing how well they understand themselves, and they can communicate that to land the opportunities. You know, one of the students in our elite track of launch Career Clarity, she was taking action to rebuild her LinkedIn. She was in a job, she was miserable in her job, part of it was culture, part of it was fit, and so she was going to go into a slightly adjacent space, and when she started working on her LinkedIn and revising it, because she got to know herself better, and she understood how that connected to careers. Here’s what ended up happening: she had no, you know, that little circle that opened to work that can go on your LinkedIn profile picture, she hadn’t even activated that yet.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  18:23

As a matter of fact, she was afraid to activate it because she was really concerned that her current employer would see it, right? So that’s very common, but she went ahead and revised it with what she had gained about herself, and suddenly recruiters were reaching out to her because the AI algorithm will bring your young person in front of recruiters and employers when it reads how it should read, so opportunities begin to open up, so you’ve got to be able to communicate those things. Okay, so we’ve got teenagers, we’ve got 20 year olds, we’ve got whatever age that first year that first real career search begins. Checkpoint number four, I’m going to call it the launch line. There’s nothing else that we should be calling it. This also isn’t a specific age. We have five kids, so three of my own, two bonus kiddos, they’re 24 to 34 currently almost 35 in 25 to 35 get that 10 year age range. This varied with our own five kids, but what I’m asking you to think about is, and if you don’t have a kid yet at this stage, I want you to ping ahead in your brain to what age you imagine that they’re no longer in your home, okay? So you know our youngest are twins, as my regular listeners know. There goes my camera doing that thing again. Let’s get it straightened out, okay. Straighten out again. So our youngest, you know, they quickly got out of the house. We’ve got others that you. Took them a little bit longer. It’s okay. The real question isn’t even like, do they have a bed at your house? The real question is, if your young person had to support themselves tomorrow outside of your home, and they’re in this over 20 year old, they’re at the launch stage, would they be ready? Would they know how? See, this is where delayed launch begins to become very real. No longer will it be about what can they do someday, but when will they actually launch, because there’s a next chapter for both you and them on the other side. So, your checkpoints are, are you seeing growing confidence, increasing responsibility, ownership, agency, or on the other side of the coin, is there hesitation? Is there dependence on you, either emotionally or financially? Have they had a false start, and they’re just having trouble finding the gumption to get started again? Are they drifting along, because to a parent, a drifting 20 something becomes burdensome emotionally, practically, and financially, and it’s not about age, it happens because of capability and direction are finally intersecting in a way that you realize we’re far behind where we thought we would be right now. In Paris, it’s not just you thinking about that, it’s your young person too. They don’t want to stay in your house forever. So, here’s what I want you to think about. July 4, summer, you know, to me feels halfway over, for sure. 2026 is halfway over, but there’s still plenty of time. I want you to recognize which milestone you’re currently in. What’s coming next? What are you facing? And then I want a commitment on the part of your family for the outcome of your young person to dedicate intention and attention to figuring this out. Okay, so what needs to change between now and January 1 for your whole family to feel prepared for the next milestone when it arrives. Your goal is to sit down and have a discussion as a family and parents. Here’s what I want to remind you of when you start these conversations. These are not easy conversations. It takes courage and bravery on your part too. I want you to begin with empathy and validation as you tee it up, because their feelings are going to come forward if they’re struggling in particular, but even if they’re doing some of the right things, but you’re thinking like they’re not doing enough right, so lead with empathy and validation that will open their ears, and then lead the discussion with questions and curiosity. Okay, not with directives or orders, listen more than you talk, and there’s a better second half of 2026 ahead for all of you. Okay, that’s that’s what we’ve got.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  23:15

And so, if you want to go back and listen to those other episodes that will support this, go ahead and go to the show notes. We’ve got them over there for you. And thank you for letting me into your ears and into your life once again. And there goes my camera again, getting all wonky. Okay, we’ll figure that out. Okay, I’ll see you again next week as we go into the second half of 2026