Look around you. 85% of your peers are walking zombies, going through the motions, chasing someone else’s version of success.
They are on the default path - they blindly follow the person in front of them to the next step up a ladder they’re not really sure they even want to be on. They frantically search for how to get more done in less time. They’re stressed, unhealthy and distracted.
That’s not you. You’ve had That Feeling. You know in your soul that you’re not on the right path for you. You know you’re not meant to punch a clock, climb a ladder, or listen to everything other people say you should do. You know the only thing you should be listening to is That Feeling.
You’ve seen others who choose themselves come alive the way you want to.
They’ve had That Feeling and did something about it.
They’ve busted imposter syndrome, become more confident, less stressed, and found that alignment between who they are and what they do. Built massive success, and have fun. They have time to be around, present, and patient with their families.
They are aligned, and at peace.
But still killing it!
Imagine if you did work you were truly meant to do. What would that do for your income, family, relationships, health, passion, and energy? Finding this alignment is the greatest productivity hack on earth. You haven’t found it because no one taught you how.
I promise you can do it, you just need the right map!
Stop asking "what is my passion?" and start identifying your Advantages. When you create a map of your advantages, you know exactly where to start. Thoughts like “I don’t know what to do next. . . “ just disappear when you start using your advantages.
When you pay attention to the right signals, they point you in the right direction. The more you stack your advantages together - the higher confidence you gain in following that path, and the more you will enjoy it!
Risk is no longer a dirty word. You’ve learned how to balance uncertainty with what you need to do.
All that’s left is for you to give yourself permission to make a change - to BREAK work.
Hi, I’m Mike Gardon, founder and Host of THE BREAK podcast and Exec. Editor over at Careercloud.com which is read by over 1 million career dreamers every year.
I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don’t. So, I’ve reinvented myself over and over trying to find “success”.
I've been:
That's where I draw my lessons from.
But my pain is where I draw inspiration to help others:
In 2018, I was fed up. Work wasn’t working for me. So I broke it, and I designed an intentional life where I could be creative, be fulfilled and be present and energized for my family.
This was the start of Advantage Mapping.
It took time, effort and planning, but I did it! I defined my version of success, not anyone else’s and then built it.
Now I help people find better alignment between their authentic selves and what they do to earn a living. To do this I draw on lessons learned from the worlds of investing, human-centered design, startups, and even ancient navigation!
Advantage Mapping is the exact system I created for myself and used to transform from irritated, pessimistic cubicle dweller to alive, abundant and optimistic entrepreneur, coach and mentor. I love what I do, and I want you to as well.
It all started with understanding my own unique advantages. Something famed investor Warren Buffett calls, Circle of Competence.
If you follow this map, you can blaze your own “high odds” trail to success, whatever that is to you.
This is for wise people who know there's more to life than the traditional path. This is for the zig-zagers just looking for the right alignment. This is for the dedicated pros who give work their all, but now realize they're not valued and are sick of not being all they can be at home. And this is for the recent college grad to get ahead of the game and build a life of fulfillment with 0 regrets.
“As someone who has struggled with taking risks and stepping outside of my comfort zone, I found Mike’s approach to be incredibly empowering. He has a way of challenging conventional thinking and encouraging his audience to think outside the box, which has been instrumental in helping me to identify areas where I can grow and improve.”
Ryan I., Citigroup
“I would 100% recommend this investment in yourself to anyone who is not fully satisfied with their current career trajectory or hears that little whisper that says "what am I missing"?”
Krista M., Freelancer
“Mike is a master at asking questions that hit you between the eyes to get you to think about your situation in a whole new way.”
Lance, Financial Services
Advantage Mapping teaches a curriculum specifically designed for low-risk, high odds career transformation. This isn’t a job search course, and I'm not your average career coach. This is a transformative experience dedicated to helping you reimagine how to use your natural talents and advantages in new ways to get the most out of life.
You’ll learn what it means to BREAK your career on purpose and design your life from a place of abundance - not fear, by using proven risk management and ideation tools from the worlds of investing, entrepreneurship, and product design.
Join the worldwide movement of Career Breakers who are building freedom, income, and aligned opportunity by looking at work, and themselves, from a new angle.
I learned Human Centered Design from the greatest design firm in the world, IDEO. In this course, we use principles from Design Thinking to envision our future and create the right options to get there. We take a playful, "how might we" approach to building our Options Portfolio.
Good investing is the art of understanding uncertainty and acting anyway. I learned this in my 20s as a Trader in Chicago. You'll learn to view your life and career choices as investments and develop methods of managing moves that seem risky on the surface, but aren't while avoiding the status quo which is actually the riskiest path of all. We use various investing concepts to understand our real risk.
Not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur, but we all need to execute like one. Elon Musk doesn't have all the answers, but he's willing to blow up a few rockets to find them. As a founder of several startups, I learned the value of executing fast with little information, designing lean experiments to gather the right data, and building in the unknown. You will learn to take an experimental approach to your future based on gathering the best signal in a world full of noise.
Your Map is your key to knowing yourself and your potential. You will have a clear understanding of your advantages and how you might use them to design your future and execute on that path.
You will be on your way to imagining a better future. Not just a better future, but you will believe in a high-odds path (or two!) because you believe in your advantages and have learned to stack them in a way that ensures your success.
Advantages, risk mitigation, options, experiments - these concepts are all designed to build confidence - to start your "Belief Flywheel" as I like to say. You will understand risk in a new way and you will be ready to sign off on your new adventure.
You are never alone. This work, and being a part of this community, leads to deep, meaningful friendships with like-minded heroes braving the unknown with you. These friends double as accountability partners, helping you go from lost to found—and enjoying the process.
"After I was unexpectedly laid off from my job with a prominent wealth management firm, I had a choice to make: do I find another job, or do I chart my own path?
I knew I wanted to be an owner and not an employee. I also knew I wanted to remain in wealth management, so I began to outline what I wanted my firm to look like.
But I was stuck on the “how”, and didn’t know how to go about finding and evaluating my options. Mike helped me see there could be a middle path - one with less risk, but that still got the fulfillment I was looking for from entrepreneurship.
Mike’s Advantage Mapping ideas gave me a framework to think through answers to the following questions:
By using an options exploration exercise during my work with Mike, I identified two business owners who were looking to onboard and groom a successor. The firm they had created looked almost identical to what I wanted to build for myself. I joined their firm a couple of months ago and am positioned for an ownership stake that will increase in size over each of the next five years. I was also able to design a complementary growth role that leverages my specialty in generational wealth transfer, which scratches my entrepreneurial itch, and made this opportunity one I couldn’t refuse.
Without my work with Mike, I wouldn’t have been able to creatively look for and evaluate an opportunity like this."
“I had found myself 5 years deep into a career that I could now see is not my calling, not my passion and frankly just come to hate most aspects of. I came to this conclusion after pouring every ounce of time and energy I had into this job to get to a point where I thought "success" would be. Instead, I found after wrapping up too much of my self worth into this job I now hated, I was completely misaligned with most principles I wanted to live my life with. At this point I knew I needed to make major changes but had no idea where to start. I was so entrenched in this life I made for myself that I knew I needed expert help to get out. When I heard Mike on a podcast, I knew the methods and coaching he was discussing was exactly what I was looking for. ”
