Career and Post-career Satisfaction with Anthony Kuo

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our Successful Aging episodes this month on the Living to 100 Club program, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. Each week, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. Our guest for this program helps clients learn what is satisfying to them in their work and in their post-retirement years. Anthony Kuo brings his expertise as a career satisfaction coach to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. What is satisfaction really? And how do we find that place that captures our true style, interest, and meets our needs? Anthony discusses his framework for working on these questions and his CARE card model for starting the discovery process. This is a thought-provoking conversation that will be of interest to all listeners. First, a little background. You are more than your job, and your career is more than a shiny resume. Much more. Anthony Kuo is a career satisfaction coach, and he wants to help you intentionally craft a career you're excited to wake up for. Anthony graduated from the NYU Stern School of Business in 2010 and subsequently took an 8-year tour through the Fortune 500 world, rising up the corporate ladder before realizing he was filling his bank account but leaving his soul empty. Anthony integrates his practical experience with his training as a transformational NLP practitioner to gently and playfully guide his clients through one of life's most omnipresent questions: What do you want to be when you grow up? You can learn more about Anthony and his work at untamedcareer.com. Anthony, welcome to our program.

Thank you, it's so wonderful to be here.

Great. Yeah, looking forward to this. I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us briefly about the highlights that brought you to where you are today. I touched on them, of course, in your bio, but maybe you can put a spotlight on what are the, the highlights that brought you to where you are today. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the highlights, to get the highlights, you have to go a little bit earlier than my business education and corporate career. You actually have to go all the way back to when I was 5 years old, when I was being taught the piano by my parents who graduated from Juilliard. And they taught me to a very high level. Both I and my brother are, when we were growing up, were very accomplished pianists to the point where when I was 17 years old, I performed a recital with my brother at Carnegie Hall. And here's the thing of it, my brother to this day still performs. He still loves it. He puts in a tremendous amount of energy and effort and love and dedication. Into practicing and performing on top of his demanding day job. And me, that performance at age 17 was my last performance. Oh, I— that was it. That was it. And I knew going into it also that it was because I had a very strictly utilitarian view of it, that I was going to get on stage, get my recording, submit it to colleges for scholarship applications. And wipe my hands clean of it. And what a difference, right? Two brothers raised on the same hold with same household with the same talented parents. One grew up to love the piano and one that was like, I could take it or leave it. And I think the big difference there is that it was a skill that I developed and I was very good at it, but it wasn't a skill that I actually enjoyed. Using. And that is the foundation of all the work I do, actually, as a career satisfaction coach.

Interesting.

Because we spend so much time and effort, and this is encouraged by our society and most often by our parents and our loved ones, to pursue what we're good at, right? Every career counselor out there is, well, what are you good at, right? And What I'm here to posit is that there is a really big difference between having a skill and actually enjoying your use of it. And so that is actually what happened to me in the corporate world. I was relying on skills that I had developed, but I didn't actually enjoy using. And so that set me down the whole path of asking myself, what is career satisfaction anyway? How do you actually develop it? Is it possible? And the good news is that I have found that in fact it is possible, and it actually is quite predictable if you know what to look for.

So that set the stage for you to start questioning, right? I mean, you, you're going down a path that was very comfortable and predictable and difficult, I'm sure, but, um, something that you were good at and you got some acclaim for. And then you said, well, maybe this isn't it, maybe this isn't enough. Exactly. Yeah. So you trusted yourself enough to say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make another turn.

It's easy to say in hindsight. In the moment, it was, it was quite a leap.

Sure. Yeah. Quite a leap. Yeah. And you didn't know if you could swim.

No. As one of my friends and, uh, mentors told me, and— it was a situation where I had to build the airplane on my way out the door.

Ah, yeah.

On my way down.

Okay. Yeah. And hope you get finished.

Yeah, exactly.

Good. So tell us about your work now. You do some career counseling. What type of clients do you work with? What are their challenges? What's the setting?

So I, as we've been discussing, I am a career satisfaction coach and I works specifically with the feeling or state of satisfaction. And I work with people across a really broad range of their career and life stages, all the way from fresh out of college, sometimes even before graduation, where often the struggle they're having is they just feel lost. They don't have a direction and they're, they're looking for some traction, all the way up to working with executives who are either wanting to burnish their leadership skills and, uh, but more often at that level, people are starting to question, what is my legacy? And they're starting to think about retirement. And it's an interesting thing that happens when somebody wakes up one day and realizes that what they've worked so hard to create no longer fulfills them, if it ever did.

Sure. Yeah, so that question can come at any time, but I'm— I think what you're saying is that it comes in our middle to near retirement years where we're saying, is this, is this it? Is this— as Peggy Lee said, is that all there is? Yeah, you may not remember that song, but I do. So is that all there is? Yeah. And then you're also working with people who are post-retirement, right? And saying, what now?

What now?

Yeah. Yeah. So how do you define satisfaction? I mean, as you said, it's more than just kind of understanding your strengths and what you're good at. It's, uh, how do you define satisfaction? How do we know when we're really satisfied?

It's a good question, uh, and, and it's a really important one, right? Because if we don't have a clear picture of what we're chasing, then how do we know when we've arrived? How do we know when we can say, ah, that isn't that nice?

Yeah.

And it's a tricky question because on one hand, there are some clear criteria that are pretty common. I won't say universal, but it's a very personal question that's going to be different for every single person you talk to. You ask 100 people how they define satisfaction, how they define career satisfaction, you're going to get 100 different answers. And so It's with that knowing that I engage with people, that the first thing we have to do is to define their version of success, to define what satisfaction means to them. Because one of the trickiest places people can get to that leads to that feeling of, "There has to be more than this," is when we chase somebody else's definition of satisfaction rather than our own. I experienced this, right, in my personal and professional life. I was chasing, uh, essentially my parents' version of success. I didn't know it at the time, and it was certainly not put upon me with any sort of malicious intent. Quite the opposite, you know.

My—

of course it was. Of course I was given a template with the best of intentions. And it just so happened, as it is for so many of us, that that template is not what I needed. It's not what I was seeking deeper in my, in my core.

Sure. Yeah, it was a template that might have worked, but, um, you said, well, maybe I need a different one. Yeah. So satisfaction, I'm sure, is, you know, if we compare it to happiness, it's it's fleeting, right? It's not 100%. It comes and goes. And like happiness, we can't expect to be happy all the time. Of course, we look for periods of happiness and we try to keep moving toward that, but it's not going to be omnipresent, just like career satisfaction. You know, thinking about my listeners and, you know, their questions about satisfaction, career satisfaction, post-career, that's going to be different from someone who's mid-career, right? And someone who's maybe just kind of realizing their true potential, as opposed to the 60 or 70-year-old who's now saying, what, what is my post-career satisfaction going to look like? How do you, how do you compare the two? What's, um, how do we, how do we see the difference?

Yeah, I, I've been asking myself the same question as I've been taking a bird's eye view of my clientele and seeing a very broad range as dimensions of clientele. And I think it's a very universal quest to find ourselves, to do whatever it is that is going to have us feel most expressed in a moment. And that is, we're always yearning for that at any time, right? Whether you are 20 and trying to figure out what you're going to do with your life, or you're 30 and you're trying to figure out what you're going to do with your life, or when you're 70 and trying to figure out what you're going to do with your life. The difference starts to come in when we look at what are the— what is the level of resource and experience that one can bring to bear? What is the level of constraint and responsibility that one has to consider, right? So a 20-year-old or someone who's more mid-career is going to have a certain level of obligation in their lives that constrains them in certain ways, and they're going to have more experience and more wherewithal and more connections and more degrees of freedom, generally speaking, than somebody who's just starting out in their career. And then somebody who's towards the end of their career, if they've been saving up and funding their retirement accounts, and if they've— if the markets have agreed, they have more financial weight to throw around, and they no longer necessarily have to provide for themselves through direct income, right? And so that opens a whole field of questions of, well, I can do anything I want, I don't have to worry about keeping a roof over my head. And so there are constraints and freedoms that change over the course of one's career, but the fundamental question of what do I want to do with myself, what will actually have me thrive in whatever stage I'm at, that remains. Constant.

Yeah, I love what you said there. What will find us most expressed? Yes, never heard it put that way. Yeah, how do we, how do we seek that full expression or self-expression? That's a great question. Yeah, so as you say, there are fewer obligations maybe post-retirement, more degrees of freedom, more doors to open. So what's the difference between, um, having a, a fun hobby and, you know, this kind of self-satisfaction?

Well, a hobby can certainly be satisfying. Uh, the difference between a hobby and a career is, I think, a matter of extent, right? You can have a fun hobby that you can put down at any time, but a career or something that is more serious, a more serious pursuit, you're going to have longevity. You're going to keep coming back to it. And what makes the difference between a hobby that you enjoy every so often and a career that actually draws you in is how— the extent to which the day-to-day mundane realities of that hobby and spinning it up into an actual career, however that looks, the extent to which that suite of activities and responsibilities meet your personality. So I'll give you an example. I personally, during the pandemic, got really into making coffee, like in all sorts of craft ways. Like I went and bought a hand press for making espresso. I love the process of experimenting with that. I went and I, and I got really good at making pour-overs. I, I have so many ways to make coffee in my kitchen right now. It's ridiculous. I'm actually having to downsize it. That's a fun hobby, right?

Sure.

I enjoy that science experiment aspect of it. What I absolutely have zero interest in doing is becoming a professional barista. Right.

Or coming back to it in 10 years, right? Still giving you as much flavor and passion.

Exactly.

Initially. Yeah. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah.

Now, now, when I have my business, it started as a side gig. I was just helping people out for fun with their resumes and their interview skills. And slowly what I realized was that The parts surrounding that I actually really enjoyed also. The forming a deep connection with a person, the act of designing and building business structures that would support a system, a structure. These are not only within my wheelhouse in terms of skill, but also things that just my personality really jives with. It meets my interest. It meets my— you use those words in the intro— it meets my interest. It meets my style. It meets my, uh, needs and skills. And so there's something about that that just really draws me in, that keeps me coming back day after day after day through the ups and downs.

Sure. Yeah, floats your boat. And that's, um, I don't mean to be trivial, but you delved into it and you could see there are a lot of different dimensions to it that really fit with you and your style and what your interpersonal needs were and your research needs and your ability to reach out. Yeah, I could see that. And I mean, the coffee interest may have done the same, may do the same thing if somebody wanted to, you know, pursue that and look at all the different dimensions there too. Open your own coffee shop or start your own line of coffee roasting, whatever. So I could see that that's valuable. Yeah, so the career does have that gravitas feel to it, that it's, it offers the reward, it offers the challenge, it offers the desire to stay at it and keep at it and wake up every morning and look forward to getting out of bed and continuing to do that work, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, my hobby has become making pizza in my outdoor pizza oven, learning how to, how to manage that and make the dough and buy the dough or whatever. So I'm I've been in it about 6 months and I, I love it. It's not something that I'm going to pursue professionally, but I, it's a hobby. Yeah.

It's, it's a great hobby. I'm, I'm coming over for dinner now.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let me know and I'll, I'll take your order. Yeah. So, yeah. In your, in your work, we talked earlier about your, the procedure, the process that you use when you start working with a client and you developed a care card. System. Tell our audience about that. What is that?

So the CARE card is a really, really powerful diagnostic tool to understand what exactly is happening in our careers. If you think about any given moment where you're satisfied or dissatisfied to a certain degree, it is good to notice the level of satisfaction, but it's even better to be able to point at what specifically is driving my satisfaction, what specifically is driving my dissatisfaction, because then it becomes actionable, right? When you have a clear idea of what you're liking and what needs to stay and what you're not liking and what needs to change, then you can actually go and do something about it. So the working metaphor I like to use is that of a care card. So when you go to the store, and buy a plant, you will usually find tucked in the soil next to the rim of the pot a little care tag that tells you exactly how to care for this plant, this living organism, how much light it needs, how much water it needs, how much, how frequently you need to feed it and change its soil and whatnot. And I like that because it's so clear and specific. It's an instruction on how to help this plant not only survive but actually be happy and thrive. And so what if we could develop something like that for ourselves as humans? Now, of course, as we mentioned, each person is going to have a different care card. What it's— what's going to be on it is different, but there are 4 key categories to the CARE card, and they're really, really important. And we've been alluding to it this entire time. The first is called your interests, and it's exactly what it sounds like. But it's not just about, I'm interested in painting or making pizza or making coffee in the morning. It's what is actually energizing you about it. And in the absence of that core ingredient of what energizes, what captures our attention, we get bored. So if you're bored in your career or you're bored with what you're doing, then interest is a really good place to look. The next ingredient is style. And style is, well, it's the style with which you meet your interests. So are you going at it at full speed? Is it more of a sustainable pace? Is Are you doing it alone? Are you doing it in a community? Are you doing a ton of research, or are you flying by the seat of your pants? There's infinite styles to meet, and the key question here is, do you feel like you belong? Are you in an environment, in a circumstance where you feel like you're just melding right in, where your style is not only accepted but actually valued and appreciated, or do you feel like a square peg in a round hole? And then we have our needs, which sit underneath the interests and style. And, and really, the needs are what our interests and style are in service of. And often when the needs are not being met We feel violated, we feel angry, we feel disturbed. And when, when someone's needs are not being met, this is one of the bigger drivers I see of burnout in the workplace. So we have interest style and needs. And the fourth ingredient is skill, or I like to say your favorite skills. And I kind of leave them off to the last because typically our society puts so much weight in it being the first thing, like, what are you good at? What can you do for me? What can you do, right? But by putting it last and appending that word favorite, then we get to inject our own interests into it. So that's the CARE card. You have interest, style, needs, and skills.

So that's a thorough process. I can see where somebody's really digging deep to understand, to answer these questions and fill out, fill out the card. What typically, uh, what are the barriers? What gets in the way of following this journey? Let's say someone does a thorough job and puts a lot of this down on the card, and what, what's going to block the person?

Uh, two things typically. One is that These are big questions. This is a big topic. And it's one that often gets to our sense of ourselves and our identity. And so it can be very paralyzing a lot of the time to confront these questions head on. What are you going to do with yourself? Right? With that sort of intimidating, scolding tone. And so often what I find is that the antidote is to break it into smaller more manageable pieces. So instead of, what are you going to do with your life? It's, well, what's something you enjoy doing? What's something you're interested in? That's one of the functions that the CARE card does for us in the process, is it takes this giant question and makes it— breaks it down into like 16 in sequence.

Sure.

The second thing that gets in people's way is quite honestly, just being stuck in an old mindset where one of the first— one of the questions that comes after creating the Care Card is, okay, these are my needs. This is what I— this is what I need in order to thrive. The follow-up question is, where can you find that? How can you find that out in the world? And there's a really fun brainstorming process where we generate ideas of how one might actually meet their Care Card. And almost immediately, I see this in 99.9% of the time, almost immediately we cross a threshold where it gets too real and someone says, "No." It could be an internal voice. It could be an external voice. Or it could be an internalized external voice, and just goes, "No, I can never do that. No, that's not possible. No, that's not for me. I'm not that kind of person." And because career is so attached to our identity, there is a certain element of our systems of belief and identity that kind of need to come along the ride with us.

Yeah, redefine ourself. I mean, what you're talking about is leaving that comfort zone, leaving that familiar, predictable, low-anxiety place. It may not be as challenging as, you know, enjoyable, but it's comfortable and it's safe. So yeah, I can see that redefining ourself, looking at maybe not just, as you say, breaking it down in small steps, and I was thinking, well, breaking it down into shorter time periods too. Yeah. Here's something for the next year, not for the, not for the next 30 years. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And it's also a matter of making it safe to explore. Sure. Right. Uh, the part of the difficulty of having such broad exploration is that it challenges who we think we are. And when we challenge who we think we are, there's a sort of a defense mechanism that comes up. And so whenever that happens, like it happens pretty often in my work, and whenever it happens, the, the best reaction for both me and the, the person I'm working with is to treat it with curiosity and respect, because there's something very important being communicated whenever that happens. There's something important that must be preserved and is asking to be preserved. If only we could find out exactly what that was. And we can preserve that core, then we can change things around it.

Yeah, there's always a safe landing place. I could see that even though sometimes it might feel like we're building the plane on the way down, there's always a safe landing place too. And we can take little steps out of that and see what it's like, see what the temperature is like. So can you use that care card with somebody who's retiring after Oh yeah, 40 years as an accountant or a doctor or a writer or a nurse, or can use that.

Oh sure, of course.

What was that? What would that— what would a successful Care Card process look like?

Well, you know, when somebody is going into retirement, it's not like they stop existing or doing things, right, in the absence of a formal container of a quote-unquote career. They, they continue to be And what the CARE card is, is a tool to help us understand how we like to be, whether we are in a job or with our families. I've actually had some people say to me, "Hey Anthony, this CARE card thing is amazing. Can I use it to help me with my dating life?" You know, and I'm like, I'm not a dating coach. I don't really know how to advise you on the ins and outs of how to meet people and charm them and whatever. But what I can do is help you understand your needs and help you understand how you like to be and what your style is. And, you know, you can certainly use that to evaluate and filter potential matches. It gets to such universal core parts of ourselves, it has universal application outside of the bounds of an income-generating career.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it can work for somebody who's not necessarily looking for that new income-generating career. Just somebody that's going to look for something meaningful, some new purpose, some new direction that's going to give me meaning in my life. So you could apply it. You could apply the same process.

Oh yeah, of course. And, and, uh, you know, my, my mentor, uh, his name is Alan Birsey. He's brilliant at this kind of work. Um, he's a psychotherapist and a career counselor, and he's nearing a retirement age, and he's, he's talked to me about that. And one of his hobbies that he enjoys and, and spends quite a bit of time and attention on is welding. And making sculptures out of metalworks. And, and that is very much within his care card, even though it's quite different from what his profession has been.

Sure. Yeah. And something he may pursue and may grow bigger than a side interest. Yeah. Interesting. So, um, I'm curious, what's the, what's the takeaway? I, I think it's, you know, great content. I love the care card model. I I think it has great potential to really help the person break down these four very important sides of ourselves, different, different perspectives, different points of view. So what's the, what's the takeaway? What would you hope our listeners leave this conversation with?

The takeaway is that satisfaction is possible at any point in life. And as you alluded to, Joe, the, the experience of satisfaction can and will fluctuate, where some days you'll wake up really excited and other days you won't. And this happens to everyone. And satisfaction is possible, it is worth pursuing. And the dissatisfaction that we sometimes feel is a really, really important signal to listen to because it informs us and helps us seek even greater satisfaction.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. That's, uh, that's where we start to question this self-definition, right? And there's a— does a redefinition fit? Is it too far afield for us, or is it too scary, too anxiety-provoking? Yeah, yeah. So that's good to hear. Satisfaction is within our reach. It's We need to know the right vehicles to get there. Yeah. So what services do you offer online? I know you do a lot of this in person, but you also offer it online. Tell our listeners about this.

I do quite extensive coaching online where I see people individually over Zoom. That's sort of become our lives now. I also see people in groups. I have a wonderful group program that I'm very excited about. Where we navigate these questions of what am I doing with my life? And for better or worse, there's so much stigma around having this discussion, especially if one is experiencing burnout and dissatisfaction. And so it was important for me to create a safe space where we could have these real conversations because It just seemed absurd to me that we could have the experience of being completely alone in an experience that the person right next to you is having a very similar experience of. Uh, and so in that, in that group, we work through what I call the fulfilling career path, where we create a Kara card together. We'll, we'll investigate what possible destinations one might land in and then work together to make it a reality.

So are these groups online? Uh, they are going to Zoom meetings, something like this, several people. Okay. And you do these in person as well?

Yeah, I have not done the groups in person yet. Uh, the, uh, I'm sure that would be very exciting to do. And for now, the, you know, the interest has been across time zones and across the country. So, yeah, we have the we have technology to aid us.

That's the, the beauty of the virtual world, right? Yeah. I like that. Sure. Well, it looks like we're out of time, Anthony, for today. But before I wrap up, I just wanna remind my listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club, sign up for my email list and download a free copy of my 9 tips to make living longer enjoyable. It's a free PDF. You'll also see an option to contact me with your questions and comments. I welcome your feedback. Anthony, thanks so much for being a guest on our show. Tell us about your website. Your website?

Yes, my website is untamedcareer.com.

Untamedcareer.com.

And if you would like to join, if anyone listening would like to join my newsletter, where it's called Satisfaction Seekers, where we talk about this wonderful journey of finding satisfaction and exploring our care cards. You can sign up for that at satisfactionseekers.com.

Satisfactionseekers.com. Okay. And if someone has a question for you, they can reach you through your website, I take it?

Uh, yes, they can. And especially if they sign up for Satisfaction Seekers, I reply to every email that I get.

So, if they—

if somebody wants to reach out and say, "Hey, I heard you on the Living to 100 Club," I will for sure be replying.

Great. Great. Sounds terrific. Well, thanks so much for being a guest today. I enjoyed it a lot. I know our audience enjoyed it as well.

Thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time. Hi everyone, this is Meredith from the Senior Fitness with Meredith podcast where I discuss all things for seniors, from fitness, your health and wellness journeys, how to be all over strong and beyond. I also have my mini podcast called Motivation with Meredith. It's a great quick motivational pick-me-up for your days. Join me. Listen now. Search for Senior Fitness with Meredith on your favorite podcast platform.