In this introductory video of her free course "Value Yourself or Else," career coach Natalie Fisher presents the concept of a "career time portfolio" to help people who have been laid off, feel stagnant, or are seeking change. She argues that careers are not meant to follow a straight upward line; instead, they naturally experience ups, downs, and periods of stagnation, much like the stock market, natural cycles, and personal relationships. Using stock‑market analogies, she explains that downturns (or "corrections") are normal and only harmful when individuals panic‑sell their skills, reacting short‑term and accepting lower‑value opportunities. She also draws parallels to trees losing leaves and a ten‑year stagnant relationship she experienced, illustrating how recognizing and planning for downturns can lead to rapid upturns once the situation is reassessed. Fisher positions herself as an experienced coach (11 years) who helps clients strategically manage emotional and practical aspects of career downturns to minimize loss and maximize future gains. She invites viewers to continue the course, promising more tools to reframe negative feelings and capitalize on inevitable career cycles.
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In this video, I'm going to introduce a new concept called the career time portfolio. If you have just experienced a layoff, or if you are in a place where you feel like you're not growing in your job, or you're looking for a change, then this video is for you. Stay tuned. Welcome to the first module of this free course, Value Yourself or Else. If you don't see your own value, good luck getting anyone else to see it. So I want to introduce to you the concept of the career time portfolio. And this is something that has helped many, many of my clients, including myself. And it states that we are not actually meant to have a linear upward trajectory of growth without any downs, without any stagnant times. And this is kind of a misconception I think that we've taken on from society where people expect you to kind of improve, improve, improve, improve, always get better, always get better, always be succeeding 10 times more than you were. And if you're not, then you're doing something wrong, or you're failing, or you're doing badly, or something has gone wrong, right? And I just want to break that myth because it's very unhealthy and it's not realistic. While we will move up— and I'm going to explain what this graph is in a minute because it's here for a reason— we will always have periods where we're doing well and we're on an upward, but then we're gonna have downs, right? And so I compare this to the stock market, but also it's very relevant in nature and in everything that we see. So I'll start with the stock market analogy. The stock market has always trended up since its inception, since it was the stock market, but it doesn't mean that it's always gone up in a straight line without ever having any downturns. So they, they're called downturns or corrections. In stock market speak. But the interesting thing is, is that when there's a downturn or when there's a correction, then that's actually not a problem. And really nothing has gone wrong unless people panic and sell all their stocks. Then they actually lose. If they don't, then their stocks will come back and they'll recover and even gain more than they had before. Yes, it goes down, but then it comes up even more. And that's been statistically true throughout history. There's actually so much, like that's all there is, is evidence of everything going back up. So with the 2008 crash, and there's been tons of crashes, corrections throughout history, right? The only people who lost money were the people who panic sold, but the people who left everything where they, where it was and maybe even bought some more got really rich during that time, right? Or, or, you know, increased their net worth during that time, right? And so I wanna strategically position yourself when you have a career downturn or a career period of stagnation to show you that that's the same thing. So what I would call like a drop, when you get laid off, for example, say you're doing well, you're in a company, you're thriving, and then you get laid off. Instantly you're gonna think, oh no, that's a downturn, crap. And a lot of people, what I see them do is they basically panic sell their skills. They're like, oh no, I gotta get something. They might not do this right away initially, probably be excited, be like, oh yeah, what's next? But as soon as it doesn't start to like show that they're gonna go up right away, they'll start to entertain lower options, start to say, oh no, no, but it's the market, the market is the problem, and if I don't take this, I might not get anything better. And that's what I call panic selling your value, because you're looking at it from a very short-term perspective. And so in nature, there's no such thing as an up, up, up, up, up all the time either, right? So if we look at trees, for example, they're going to lose their leaves. A tree isn't going to just grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It's going to have times where it stops growing, right? And then it continues growing. It's going to have times where it might grow funny out the side, or like it's gonna do— it's not just gonna be a straight linear line on the way up, okay? It's like that with businesses, right? Businesses are gonna do well, and then they're gonna have dips, and then they're gonna have upward trends. But as long as it continues to exist, it will trend up because we are meant to evolve. So something Tony Robbins said is that you're either growing or you're dying, or like— and you can stay still for a while, like you could stay stagnant for a while, but then you're either gonna go down or you're gonna go up, right? And as humans, we always want to go up. So that's our intention, that's what we desire. So we do. The thing is, is that we can do this one of two ways. We can do it with that panicky energy every time there's a downturn or a correction. And we could be like, oh my God, this is like the worst thing ever. I need to panic sell. I need to do something, take frantic action, stressed out action. Or we can be like, yeah, this is normal. This is normal. I've planned for this. I know what to do for this. I know how to manage this situation because I know that it's just going to come back. That is how I encourage my clients to see that. And also, I want to really normalize the fact that ups and downs are normal. periods of stagnation are normal. And another example that I'll share is in relationships. For your love life, for example, and I'll use mine as an example because I always use mine as an example. But I went through a time when I was in a relationship for 10 years. And a lot of that was stagnation. It was, it was not a good relationship for me. I learned a lot. I'll tell you more about it in the future modules. But it was basically me staying stagnant and me maybe going down a bit in my value, like how I viewed myself, my confidence, everything. So I was probably on like a slight downward trend and like slowly going down. And I didn't see this at the time, this is hindsight now, but when I finally left and when I finally saw everything clearly, it immediately went way up. So it was like there was a downward trajectory, and then once I realized what was going on, I was able to leave that relationship, sell that faulty stock, and then immediately basically buy one that went way up because of my newfound intelligence, because of my learning, because of my wisdom throughout that, right? So, so you could be in a very bad situation, or what looks like a bad situation now, and it can change very fast for you. But we just need to normalize that that's how, that's how life is. Like, that's how nature is. That's how everything is. So When we're told, oh yeah, you should be going, you should be going up, you should like, why haven't you done more? Why haven't you created more? Why aren't you making more? It's like, yeah, it's normal that, that things are gonna dip, things are gonna stagnate, and things are going to naturally trend up. So what, what I aim to do with my program and my philosophy and my work is to help you minimize the time, the times in a downturn because you can see calmly and clearly. Mm-hmm. You can actually capitalize on that downturn in order to set yourself up for a big upturn and a big return. And you can do that in a much more even-keeled way so you're not panicking and freaking out. So if we use the stock market, for example, the equivalent of what I do in your career is help you plan for any kind of downturn emotionally, mentally, help you get set up so that you can essentially build wealth during that downturn and become even more successful afterwards. And downturns are gonna happen no matter what, whether you're investing in the stock market, whether you're not, whether you have a career, whether you have a job, whether you have a business, whether you are dating and your goal is to find the love of your life, you're gonna have ups and downs. That is like, that is the ride of life, right? So my goal is to help you minimize the times in the downturn, capitalize and extract the most value that you can so that you can get the biggest upturn. And I consider myself pretty expert on this because I've been through my share of downturns. And like I said, that relationship one was the biggest one of my life. It was a slow downturn for 10 years. Like, I didn't notice it and I didn't see it that way. However, everything that I learned from that, I was able to bring into the most strategic, the best way that I could ever think and value myself more than I ever had. And then within a year, have a massive upturn. That was like a different life entirely. So if that sounds good to you, follow the rest of this course because I'm going to be covering more concepts. I love talking about ways to see things that you normally would be feeling like down about or bad about, or thinking that you're not normal, or thinking there's something wrong, or thinking you're behind, and kind of flipping those things on your— on their heads and being like, hey, actually this is what we can do about it. Actually, it's not that hard. Actually, there's a solution. Actually, there's a way. And actually, you're going to be just fine. And Come with me, I'll show you. So if that resonates with you, check out the rest of this course. Glad to have you here. I'm Natalie Fisher. I've been a coach for 11 years and I have lots more to share with you. So I'll see you in the next one. Bye! Subscribe to the channel. Give me a thumbs up if you liked the video. Give me a thumbs down if you didn't like the video. Give me a comment. Let me know what you thought. Any insights, anything you gotta add, go for it. Let me know. And that's it. I'll see you in the next video. And who do you think you are? Running around leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts and tearing love apart. You're gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul. So don't come back for me. You won't think who you are. Who do you think you are? You asking all around.
