In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews award‑winning resume writer and career coach Katherine Miller. Miller shares her personal journey from a post‑divorce move to Fort Bragg, through a decade in business management and engineering where she felt inauthentic, to launching a full‑time writing and coaching business rooted in her psychology background. She emphasizes the importance of following one’s own instincts rather than external advice. Miller explains that what many label unhappiness is often cognitive dissonance—misaligned expectations—and recommends mindfulness meditation to rewire the brain and focus on controllable responses. Her overarching business advice is to invest in oneself—education, skills, social graces, and networking. She tells her younger self to trust her abilities and pursue her own path despite fear. On happiness, she cites a Kenny Rogers lyric about knowing when to “hold ’em” or “fold ’em,” framing it as recognizing when to persist versus when to quit a toxic situation. The book that impacted her most is Hardwiring Happiness, which taught her about neuroplasticity and the power of mindfulness exercises to shape perception. Her favorite quote, “Courage is not the absence of fear; it is acting in spite of it,” underscores her belief that fear blocks success. Finally, she directs listeners to connect with her via LinkedIn or her website, notablewritingstudio.com.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Katherine Miller with us. She is an award-winning resume writer and coach specializing in career and relationship growth, teaching people how to secure high-quality positions and romantic partners. So welcome to the show, Katherine.
Hi, thank you for having me.
Of course. Thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it. We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you, Katherine, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Oh, I think one of the best stories from my life, at least that catalyzed growth in myself, was that I moved down here after a divorce, I moved from Fort Bragg, and my father is an engineer and my background is in psychology. And in order to help guide me, my family and friends gave me a lot of advice about where to go after this divorce. So when you have a life-changing experience like that, you tend to begin to doubt yourself and your own path. So what I did was I entered into the field of business management and engineering and construction. And I did realize success in that field and I rose to the top. But in that time, in the 5 or 6 years that I was in it, every day felt very inauthentic and every day was a struggle to realize happiness in myself. And that really bled over to every area of my life, be it my relationships with my romantic partners, my relationships with my children. It really affected my day-to-day life, and it, it ended up affecting my faith in myself. So what ended up happening was I had to relocate again, and when I did, I decided to take my part-time hobby to my friends, which was writing and coaching, uh, something that was in my field of psychology and naturally came to me and I turned that into a full-time business. And I realized more success in that business than I ever had in the decade prior when I was pursuing something that other people told me was my best bet because they did not think that you could do much as an entrepreneur. You know, other generations don't, don't really look at it the way that our generation does. When you want to do freelance, you want to go out and do coaching on your own. They wanted something more secure. And more stable for me. So while I did realize success in that, I find that I learned what you need to do as an adult and to be true to yourself is to follow your own path and trust your own instincts. You know what you're good at, you know what you're naturally capable of. And if you can get past that fear and you can stand and say, "Thank you for your advice, but I want to go my own way," you can realize immense success, much more so than if you live your life for other people.
Mm, that is huge. Thank you for sharing that with us. The next one I have for you, Katherine, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Okay, I like that question. So I think the most valuable piece of advice I could give you that falls within my expertise, and again, my background, my expertise, I consider to be psychology. That's what my degrees are in. And I learned in there that what we consider, what most people call a state of being unhappy, is really a state of cognitive dissonance, which is when we expect things to be one way and they are not that way, be that our careers, our relationships, when we have differing expectations between what reality is. So my best piece of advice is to, if you are feeling unhappy or you are feeling stuck, to do some mindfulness meditation, and we can actually rewire our neurology and our brains to start living more in the moment and letting go of our expectations of what we think should be happening and control only that which we can control, which is our response to it. And when we let go of that expectation of perfection or whatever you have, the way that it should be, and we deal with life as it is, we actually deal with it in a much more peaceful, calm, and logical state. And that just kind of cascades down into every other area of your life.
And what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
My best piece of overall advice is to invest in yourself. I wish that I had invested in myself more than I invested in other people and their lives. I wish that looking back, I had taken the opportunities to spend my money and my time in investing not only in my education, but in furthering my skill sets and furthering my social graces and my network. So if you invest in yourself, that is the best investment you will make. It will come back to you over and over again in your life. Both in business and your personal life.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, it might tie in, what would that be?
It does tie in. If I could give my younger self advice, it would be to, to believe in your own ability to do what you know you can do. There's a lot of fear when we're young and it takes a lot of courage to break away from our friends' and family's advice and follow our own path that we know deep inside. Is right for us. And I would tell my younger self to trust that and just go that path because it's going to work out okay.
And you kind of touched on this earlier, but maybe you want to go a little deeper. In your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
In my opinion, the key to happiness actually comes from a song that I loved and my dad used to listen to, an old Kenny Rogers song, a country song that involved knowing when to fold 'em. And knowing when to hold 'em. And it talked about a poker game. But I really think that the key to happiness is knowing when to pursue in the course that you're on, even when it's difficult, and when to quit that course and follow a different path. Knowing when your environment is toxic or knowing when persistence and tenacity has become too much and you're just making yourself miserable and everybody else around you miserable. So you need to know when to call it quits and when to go a different direction that will ultimately result in your happiness.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
The best book that I have ever read was called Hardwiring Happiness. And the number one thing that I learned from it is that our brains have quite a bit of plasticity and we can indeed learn to control those intrusive thoughts that come in and our outlook on the world is to some degree hardwired into us. But we also have the ability to do mindfulness meditation and different brain exercises that will help mold us and our perception of the world to increase our happiness and put more logic into our reactions to our circumstances. And that gives us more control over our lives.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is, "Courage is not the absence of fear." "it is acting in spite of it." That is my favorite quote. And I believe that fear holds people back from success very often. Fear of disappointing others, fear of being successful and possibly losing that down the road and that devastating sadness. And I remind myself that being courageous, which I find a very admirable trait and I try to have that in my life, is moving forward even though I am afraid. And that's where true happiness lies.
Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
The best place for people to find and connect with me online would be LinkedIn or on my website at notablewritingstudio.com, but I'm most often found on LinkedIn posting and messaging people.
Perfect. Thanks again for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Tyler Wagner.
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