2488 - Finding Financial Security and Joy Without a Total Reset with Your Career Homecoming's Laura Simms

Redefining Career Fulfillment in Midlife: Strategic Pivots, Whole-Self Alignment, and Sustainable Professional Transitions with Laura Simms In a recent episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast, host Josh Elledge sat down with Laura Simms, Founder and Career Coach at Your Career Homecoming https://yourcareerhomecoming.com/, to address the underlying causes of midlife career dissatisfaction among high-achieving professionals and executives. Laura, a recognized career strategist and creator of the Whole Method, shares her battle-tested approach for navigating career pivots without throwing away decades of built-up industry experience or making reckless, uncalculated leaps. This conversation delivers an actionable framework for business owners, corporate leaders, and mid-career executives who want to diagnose the true sources of professional burnout, align their daily work with personal values, and execute sustainable career transitions that protect financial stability. The Strategic Career Pivot Architecture: Aligning Core Values, Avoiding Radical Leaps, and Reclaiming Personal IdentityThe primary error made by mid-career executives and business owners experiencing professional fatigue is assuming that dissatisfaction requires a complete career teardown or a drastic leap into an unfamiliar industry. Laura Simms explains that career burnout is rarely solved by simply switching roles or jumping between corporate employment and entrepreneurship, as the root causes—such as value misalignment, boundary erosion, and identity over-fixation—often follow the individual to their next venture. Rather than abandoning established expertise, high achievers must execute a methodical professional audit to isolate specific environmental or structural triggers. Distinguishing between external workplace dysfunctions and internal value conflicts allows leaders to design targeted career adjustments that leverage their existing professional capital while restoring personal fulfillment. Achieving long-term career clarity demands that professionals decouple their personal self-worth from corporate titles, industry accolades, and daily business outputs. High-performing leaders routinely over-identify with their executive roles, losing touch with broader personal interests and value systems outside of work. By reconnecting with their whole selves, professionals can objectively evaluate what elements of their current career should be preserved and what aspects must be strategically phased out. Utilizing incremental transition strategies—such as advisory roles, specialized consulting projects, or hybrid arrangements—allows mid-life changers to validate new directions on a small scale before committing to a full operational pivot, minimizing risk while maintaining income stability. Furthermore, sustaining professional momentum during mid-career transitions requires replacing vague desires for change with precise operational deal-breakers and strategic non-negotiables. High-achieving individuals must map out clear criteria for what constitutes a viable, fulfilling workday, explicitly defining parameters around creative autonomy, travel expectations, financial return, and time flexibility. Incorporating a structured accountability framework—whether through specialized executive coaching or peer advisory groups—prevents decision paralysis and keeps transitions moving forward with intentionality. When deep self-diagnosis, disciplined asset inventory, incremental market testing, and structured accountability are synthesized into a single career architecture, executives eliminate transition friction, safeguard their financial foundation, and predictably enter their most impactful professional chapter. About Laura SimmsLaura Simms is the Founder and Career Coach at Your Career Homecoming, a prominent career transition strategist, and an expert in mid-life professional development. Drawing from years of experience helping high-achieving leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs navigate complex career crossroads, Laura specializes in helping professionals build fulfilling careers without starting over from scratch. She is the creator of the signature Whole Method, a structured coaching framework designed to align personal identity, professional strengths, and financial sustainability. About Your Career HomecomingYour Career Homecoming https://yourcareerhomecoming.com/ is an elite career advisory practice and executive coaching consultancy engineered to help mid-career professionals and business leaders find meaningful, sustainable work. The firm specializes in delivering comprehensive career diagnostics, value-alignment mapping, transition strategy playbooks, and structured coaching through the signature Whole Method program. Through practical masterclasses and tailored advisory frameworks, Your Career Homecoming enables professionals to eliminate career dissatisfaction, leverage existing expertise, and execute seamless professional pivots. Links Mentioned in This EpisodeYour Career Homecoming Official Website: yourcareerhomecoming.com https://yourcareerhomecoming.com/Laura Simms on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laurasimms https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurasimms/ Key Episode HighlightsDiagnosing the Root Causes of Mid-Career Dissatisfaction: Uncovering internal value misalignments rather than defaulting to impulsive job shifts or sudden industry pivots. Decoupling Personal Identity from Executive Titles: Reconnecting with core values and personal strengths outside of professional roles to make clearer strategic decisions. The Incremental Pivot Strategy: Leveraging transferable skills and testing new career models through consulting or hybrid projects before making a full transition. Establishing Professional Non-Negotiables: Defining clear workplace criteria around autonomy, financial return, and lifestyle flexibility to evaluate new opportunities. The Whole Method Transition Framework: Deploying a five-part structured approach spanning self-discovery, diagnosis, visioning, strategy, and accountability to execute safe career moves. ConclusionThe conversation with Laura Simms reinforces that resolving mid-life career dissatisfaction requires an intentional balance of self-diagnosis, asset preservation, and strategic execution. By standardizing internal career criteria, testing new initiatives incrementally, and aligning daily work with personal identity, business leaders and executives can transform professional stagnation into a highly structured, self-sustaining chapter of growth. More from The Thoughtful Entrepreneur🎙️ Want to be featured on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur? Get your voice in front of 50K+ listeners. 👉 Schedule your guest spot here » https://go.upmyinfluence.com/podcast-guest 🤝 Consultant doing 6+ figures? Let’s introduce you to your next big client, partner, or referral source. 👉 See how here » https://upmyinfluence.com/ 📡 Thinking of launching your own podcast? We’ve built over 250 shows for leaders who land dream guests weekly. 👉 See the system here » https://upmyinfluence.com/ 🚨 What’s Your PodVerified Score? Find out how you rank as a podcast guest — and get matched with hosts who actually want you. 👉 View the platform » https://upmyinfluence.com/ 📬 Subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur New episodes daily to fuel your impact, visibility, and influence. Thanks for listening — now go build something extraordinary! To discover more strategies for scaling your impact and growing your authority, explore the resources available at podverified.com https://podverified.com/. If you are a founder or executive with a story to share, we’d love to hear from you—click here to apply as a guest on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast! https://go.upmyinfluence.com/podcast-guest

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you're committed to growing your business by serving audiences with generosity and real expertise, you're in the right place. This is a daily 15-minute show featuring leaders who believe real impact comes from generosity, not hype, which means, as a listener, you're going to get the good stuff. In fact, we created Podverified.com to give thoughtful leaders like you free tools to show up better on podcast stages like this one. That includes your free Pod Verified score, free Pod Verified guest training, a free media kit builder, and so much more. It's the first ecosystem of its kind, built by podcasters who genuinely want to help guests thrive and grow in podcasting.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Visit Podverify.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  With us right now, it's Laura Sims. Laura, you are the founder and career coach with Your Career Homecoming. You're found on the web at YourCareerHomecoming.com. Laura, it's great to have you.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Just up the road from me in Atlanta, and I absolutely love going to Atlanta. But also, you've done, like in your background, you've done a lot of acting, a lot of stage stuff, a lot of TV shows that we would know. I'm sure we could search you out on YouTube and find some clips where you've been there. But maybe we'll talk about that in just a minute. You know, I always love starting off with, you know, high-level leaders asking what they're doing, kind of geeking out on what they're doing for fun outside of work. I understand you're binge watching something right now.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I am. Well, speaking of my acting background, so I have been loving the four seasons on Netflix, which is a Tina Fey-driven show. It's a great ensemble cast, and it's got two seasons of it now. I've watched both of them multiple times, because I like to watch it once for story and to enjoy, and then I like to watch it again. And I'm listening to how was this script constructed, and what happened in the scene, and what was happening with the wardrobe changes as this character goes through a story arc. So I have just been soaking it up on repeat. It's such good writing and such really great performances from the cast.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. My wife, I know, just finished season, I think she just finished season two, or she, I know she was watching it. And, you know, just anything that Tina Fey does, she's just so clever. I love her sense of humor. I just, it's so relevant, and yeah, a lot, lot of fun. Yeah, in fact, I was, there was one scene, I'm not going to try, I'll save that for another conversation, but it seemed like the writing was really clever. I love great writing.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I mean, you can't go wrong with Coleman Domingo either, so I'll just eat it up.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Nice, nice. Well, thank you for the TV recommendation. Laura, tell us about the work you do with Your Career Homecoming.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for 15 years, we've been working with high achievers who have, you know, on paper, they have accomplished what they want to in their career, but it is feeling empty, and they are kind of hit with often a midlife, is this all there is? I want to do something that feels more fulfilling. I want to do something that really uses my true gifts. And we're helping them figure out, what is the career that's going to bring together the meaning, money, and joy at a stage in their life where they don't want to blow it all up and start from scratch?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, what do they do?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  So, we really work with folks to take a really holistic approach to this. You know, a lot of times, it's not as simple as, I need a new list of options. There is this behavior set that is running the choices in the background. You know, a lot of these folks have gone a very traditional path. They have always done what they were supposed to do in order to, you know, win at life. And so, some of it is looking at how they make choices, you know, deprogramming some of this stuff that was inherited from parents or from school, and learning to make decisions that are actually going to align with the kind of life they want to have, the kind of person that they want to be. And then it is about, you know, how do we get a good list of options in front of you, not based on your resume, because sometimes

• 4:17Speaker 01

  your resume is really a eulogy for what you're done with. So I want to get back in touch with the whole person. The homecoming of it is, let's look at you as a person outside of work. What do you care about? What do you connect to? How are you naturally showing up in the room anyway? Kind of collecting that raw material before we are generating options and evaluating which one is going to be the best fit.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Hmm. So, you know, and this, what we're talking about, isn't just, so I know, obviously, you're working with a lot of folks that might be, you know, still kind of in, you know, working a corporate job, you know, working a job, and they're dissatisfied. This same thing happens for people that might be self-employed, or might be working as an independent contractor. They might be a consultant or a coach, you know, and kind of, you know, subbing out their talents. And Laura, they might be equally, or even more so unhappy about the business that they're in. I talk to business owners frequently that are like, you know, when you finally get them to be very honest in a very quiet room, they're like, I wish I just had a regular job. This sucks.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  So, a lot of, I think, you know, the work that you do is relevant to, folks are just maybe dissatisfied with where they are currently in life. Does this sound right?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. We work with business owners and, you know, freelancers as well. And I think that first step is really understanding, let's do the diagnostic work of understanding, where's the dissatisfaction coming from? Because it's easy when you're an employee to think, well, the fix is just if I had a business, I was in charge of everything, and I called all the shots. And it's easy to think, if you're a business owner, like, well, the fix is just for me to go get under the safety of some organization. And that's not always the big issue. So, we want to figure out what's not working. What do you actually need in order to be, obviously financially safe, but also fulfilled, and feel like this is worth your time? So, that's the first step.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  All right. Well, to our friend that's listening right now, and maybe they just want to kind of have a little bit of a homecoming with themselves. What might be a good way to start that introspection, or self-conversation, that sort of thing?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, something that I see with a lot of our clients is, there has been a real, I would call it an erosion of self over the years, and folks really over-identify with work. They think about themselves in a work context, and it's really hard for them to even say what they like and don't like in their personal life. So, I think, you know, letting yourself be a human being again, and really get in touch with, outside of work, what do I care about? If I could never work another day in my life, what value do I bring to the relationships that I have? Really decommodifying yourself, and thinking of yourself as a full human being again, before we figure out, how do we express what you have to offer through your work?

• 7:23Speaker 00

  One thing I commonly see among some who are dissatisfied with their job is, you know, they think about, well, I just want to be self-employed, like, or I want to start my own business. And then they start looking at, like, maybe like a franchise, or just something, I'm going to open a food truck, or I'm going to start selling paintings, or something like that, because they love it so much. And I would, from my perspective, say, well, you know, I feel like you have decades of experience in this industry, in this space. I would hate, I mean, again, this is just me, and, you know, obviously, this is their own conversation,

• 8:08Speaker 00

  but my suspicion, or my skepticism is, why would you throw all of that away? I mean, I get it if you hate your industry, but it's like, man, if you want to start over and start selling quilts, you're competing with anybody, you know, who can do that. And it may not be a super high bar to do that, whereas, you know, very few people on the planet have your amount of experience, and that might be more valuable. You know what I'm talking about here?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I do.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Help us navigate this.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, here's what I think you're observing. A lot of people who are miserable because they've done the right thing, they think that the only solution is to make a wild swing, and because they've been very practical and, you know, gone the traditional route, they think the only solution is to do this wild swing and do something out there, or follow your passion. I think doing the practical, you know, prescribed thing and follow your passion are really two sides of the same coin. They don't solve the problem, because what is being left out of the conversation of all of this is, is, look, if you want fulfilling work, it's about this relationship between what do I have to offer and who's going to receive it?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  And when you go the prescribed route, you know, sometimes you're banking on a thing you're good at, that doesn't mean that's the best at what you have to offer. It might really drain you to do this thing you can excel at. And when we're following your passion, that's usually about your excitement about quilts or an engagement with an activity that you really love. And where's, who's buying it? Who is it serving? Who's the receiver on the other end? And so I want to do is just get rid of this binary altogether and say, let's get back in relationship with what you have to offer and who needs what you have in return. And then that time, I mean, maybe it is, we're doing a wild swing towards selling quilts, but it's, it's often the solution is not as dramatic a change

• 10:04Speaker 01

  as people think it has to be. And there is something in this middle ground that is going to make you feel alive, that is going to be financially viable. I think there's a, people are seeking novelty. And sometimes they swing too far because they don't know what else to do.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Hmm. And, and maybe novelty is just the thing that they are not getting in their current work. Um, you know, I've talked with founders that are just burnt out because they're doing founder-led sales and they're just like, look, what I really love doing is, uh, you know, is, you know, speaking or, uh, you know, designing things, you know, things are, but yet I'm kind of stuck here. Um, and, and so this can happen both for, you know, business leaders and founders, uh, and, uh, you know, again, as well as, you know, folks that are, um, working, um, you know, in a regular, in a regular job. So they might be successful. Um, but yet they're miserable. And so, um, but I wonder

• 11:07Speaker 00

  if it's their, you know, what, what, what do you see that's usually preventing them from changing things up? Now, I could tell you practically for a lot of business owners, it is, it can be really tough to make those changes, um, structurally, you know, within your organization, if you just haven't found a way to, you know, kind of get out of a role, because I think most of us as business founders start off doing all of the jobs. And then slowly, you know, we start putting people in to kind of replace the jobs that we hate. Uh, or, you know, we know we're not good at, definitely not in our zone of genius. And hopefully we keep kind of pulling back, you know, so we can be in that zone of genius. But, uh, and any observations on that?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think at least for the people I work with, look, they're go-getters. And when they know what they want, they're going to find a way to get it, even if it is a little bit of delayed gratification. So the problem my folks are facing is they're not even sure what would be the better option. You know, I'm, I'm stuck doing this function, but if you ask me what I'd rather be doing, I mean, I'll take some guesses, but I'm not sure that that's going to solve my issue. And so understanding what is the change that needs to be made? What is that actually going to solve for? What is that going to get you instead? Let's do that before we blow up your whole org chart or before we make some, you know, big, big life adjustment is let's figure out what is actually going to solve the problem that you're experiencing now.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Hmm. Laura, tell me about, uh, how you actually engage with folks? Are you just, you grab coaching calls with people?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we've got a structured program. So we've got a curriculum that we work folks through, but you know, it's not as simple as like, here's some worksheets and a book and figure it out. So we've got a combination of small group coaching, you know, sessions. So people can come, ask their questions, kind of learn from others, um, as they have their, their hot seat. Um, and then we also do one-on-ones as well, because there's just some parts of this that really require more dedicated support. So between the curriculum, small group calls, one-on-ones, where, you know, we do homework reviews for folks that are in the program. So we can make sure that they are getting that, you know, oversight and feedback throughout their time with us because so many of our clients have accumulated a lot of self-knowledge that hasn't gone anywhere. And I want to make sure that we

• 13:21Speaker 01

  are somewhere that they can actually make change, get the answers they need, get the confidence they need to go make the change for real.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, Laura, final question, uh, say someone's in their 50s, is it too late for them to make a career change?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  No, no. I mean, you got to plan better than you did in your twenties. It's not too late, right? And to your point, by the time you're in your 50s, there's no starting from scratch. Like you're a fully formed human being. You have a lot to build on. So it is seeing what can we build on rather than pretend we got to throw it all away and start over. It's a great starting point to be at, like, uh, they call it a pivot, right? It's a great pivot point in your 50s.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  Hmm. Your website, YourCareerHomecoming.com to our friends that are listening. Uh, I know you've got some resources here. What, what would you recommend they do from here?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I say the, the highest level thing you can do is go check out the free masterclass because it is going to take you through the exact strategy we use with each and every client. It's called the whole method. And if you're sitting at the cusp of saying, I know something has to change, but I don't know what it is or how to do it. This is going to show you exactly what that transition looks like.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Hmm. So, um, when I go to your website, um, what do I, what do I click on?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. In that upper corner, there's a little thing that says, learn the whole method.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Learn the whole method.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  You can go there. Uh, that's probably the easiest spot.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cool. Then just click, get the training, start watching. Nice. Awesome. Well, uh, again, uh, Laura, uh, your website here is, uh, YourCareerHomecoming, Laura Sims, uh, of which you are the owner and career coach. Great. Thank you so much for sharing all your insights. It's been great having you.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue, and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed. We publish daily 15-minute episodes focused on growth that actually compounds. And if you're interested in being a guest, or you want to turn podcast appearances into measurable business growth, visit Podverified.com. You can start for free with your Pod Verified score, along with free podcast guest training and a free media kit builder. These tools are built to help you get booked on better

• 15:52Speaker 00

  shows, deliver stronger interviews, and convert audience trust into revenue. No more desperate sales. You truly can enjoy all the business you like by generously sharing your wisdom. Everything we offer is built by podcasters for guests with a focus on trust, organic growth, and long-term business success. Thanks again for spending your time with us. I'll see you next time.