341: How You SHOW UP Is the New Mid-Career Strategy

The mid-career job market can challenge your confidence in ways you did not expect. You make it to final interviews but do not get the offer. You hear “we will be in touch” and then nothing. You start to question whether it is safer to stay where you are simply because the paycheck is reliable.

I know that experience. I have lived a version of it myself. And it led me to ask a more important question than “What job do I want next?”

The better question is this: How are you showing up when the old career rules no longer apply?

In this episode, I break down what has changed in the job market since late 2025 and why the traditional advice to “find a job you love” is no longer enough for mid-career professionals. If you want to get promoted, land better opportunities, or feel more fulfilled in your work, the strategy has to evolve.

I share a key insight from my keynote, How We Show Up Matters, and explain why success at mid-career is no longer just about experience or performance. It is about how you position yourself through your visibility, your influence, and your professional presence.

We also go behind the scenes of a major business decision I made. I closed my previous membership and built something new: the SHOW UP Leadership Lab. I explain who it is for, how it supports mid-career professionals who feel stuck or overlooked, and why group coaching and community-driven conversations create a deeper level of growth and accountability.

This episode is for you if you are tired of doing great work and still feeling invisible, if you are questioning your next move, or if you know you are capable of more but need a smarter strategy to get there.

This episode is designed for mid-career professionals who:

• Feel stuck, undervalued, or underutilized in their current role
• Are struggling to get traction in their job search or promotion efforts
• Want to increase their leadership impact and visibility at work
• Are ready to stop relying on outdated career advice and adopt a more strategic approach
• Want clarity about what is next without starting over

The career advantage in 2026 is not just what you do. It is how you show up. When you shift your focus from chasing the next job to strengthening your presence, influence, and positioning, you create opportunities instead of waiting for them.

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Transcript

Why Things Feel Different Now

The 2025 Job Search Hangover

When Your Career Impacts Everything

How I Found My Next Move

A Keynote Sparked The Pivot

The New Question: How You Show Up

Listener Feedback And A New Plan

Why I Closed The Old Membership

Introducing Show Up Leadership Lab

What The Lab Helps You Do

Pricing And The Founding Rate

Mid Career Reset Webinar Dates

Stop Tweaking Resumes, Start Leading

How To Join And Final Reminders

Follow, Connect, And Goodbye

John Neral 0:10

Hello, my friends. This is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast, and I'm your host, John Narrell. This is the show for mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued, or unsure what's next, and know that doing more isn't the answer. Here we focus on how you show up, how you make clearer decisions, build influence, and take control of your career. Let's get started. Hey there, welcome back. I have something really exciting to share with you today. And admittedly, this is a bit of a different episode because what's impacting you right now is impacting me. And it's informed some business decisions that I want to share with you in this episode. So I hope you'll stick around because this is so relevant and relatable. So here's what happened. The last quarter of 2025 was very different. I remember being out in Vegas in November and I was waiting for my car, and I remember feeling like something was different. Something felt very different in terms of my business and what you all are experiencing in terms of your career journey and career path. And 2025 was a very heavy year in a lot of ways. You know this. If you were interviewing for jobs, you were ghosted. You were excited and then let down pretty quickly. Or you got to multiple rounds of final round interviews and you just didn't get a job offer. Or you were hugging your job. You were trying to be grateful that you had a job, even though you weren't particularly thrilled with what you were doing or where you were doing it. You might have caught yourself saying, at least I have a paycheck. And let's not underestimate the importance of that. But as I was standing there, and I thought, is it time for me to change? Change the way I'm serving you, I'm approaching my business, and what this all actually means. Because in that moment, when I started thinking of changing something, it got a little scary. Because what once worked wasn't. LinkedIn had changed its algorithm and it was upsetting or changing the way I was being able to pull people into my orbit or even getting clients from LinkedIn that in the past, admittedly, was pretty easy. We know all the things that are going on in the world. And here we are at the end of March. And it is no surprise that we are going through a lot right now. Regardless of what political affiliation you have, you know, gas is more expensive, groceries are more expensive. It is harder and harder for that mid-level, mid-career professional to make ends meet. I see it too. I see it when I go to the pump. I see it when I go to the grocery store. But this is the reality we are in right now. And my question to you then is how is that impacting your career? Because the question I asked myself is, how is that impacting my business? See, in many ways, when I talk to you about being stuck, I felt like I was in that same quagmire. I felt like I was dealing with an entrepreneurial stuck that felt very similar to what you feel when work simply isn't enough. So here's what I did. I did what I know. So I did a lot of reflecting, self-coaching. I got coached hard by my coach. I leaned into my network of coaching colleagues who are in this similar space to listen to what they're going through, to get their perspective and ideas on things. And I talked about what was going on with my loved ones, my closest friends, my trusted colleagues. And I sought their help or input to figure out my next move. And what I learned is that leadership and career coaching needs to look very different in 2026. But something else happened. Something happened in December. Something so good that I wasn't expecting. And I want to share it with you as to why that is the impetus for why I'm doing things differently in my business here in 2026. So quarter four was slow. And admittedly, quarter four is always slow. You get the holidays, people are like, I'll just wait till the new year to start my job search. I'll figure out new plans for my career in January. I just want to enjoy the holidays. I completely get that. Okay. But as I was talking to people, as I was working with my own private clients, as I was talking to prospective clients, things were noticeably different. And at the same time, I had been asked by an organization to deliver my signature keynote called How We Show Up Matters. This was a keynote that I have given numerous times over the years. And I had an incredible opportunity to work with a 35-person team on what it means for them to show up. This was a fantastic opportunity. And I was so excited to work with this team for a few hours. And in the middle of that presentation, I got this hit. We call it an intuitive hit. It's that thing that makes you stop and take a look around and go, okay, let me let me really process what's going on here. I've gotten this intuitive hit several times in my career. In particular, if you followed my story for a while, you know that one of the first times I got that professionally intuitive hit was when I was working as a middle school mathematics teacher. And I got that hit that was telling me I couldn't do this for the rest of my life, that there was something more I was meant to do. And that created a whole change of me, leaving a tenured position and going from a wonderfully tenured, secure job in northern New Jersey to supervising 21 instructional coaches across 13 middle schools in our nation's capital. So I got this hit and I was like, oh, what's going on here? So if you can imagine it, I'm standing up in front of this room, 35 people, and somebody asks a question. And I get this hit and I say to myself, this is what they need. This is this is the conversation that needs to be had. The conversation is no longer about finding a job you love or loving the job you have. It isn't about how do I get out of this horrible situation and just get a better job. The issue at hand is how do mid-career professionals right now show up in ways that are impactful, effective, relevant, and important to them. And my six show-up strategies that I coach on and I talk about matter more than ever because I believe it's the conversation we need to be having at a much deeper level in 2026 to figure out your next move. It isn't necessarily about being happy or loving your job. It's about showing up in ways that give you not just the confidence, but the pride and the satisfaction in knowing you get to do work that you're phenomenal at doing, you are challenged, you are pushed, and you have an opportunity to step into a deeper level of greatness than you have ever done before. So I took that whole experience, I thought about it over the holidays, we started off the new year, and I thought, okay, how do I change this conversation? If you are on my newsletter, if you subscribe to my newsletter called the Mid Career GPS Newsletter, okay, this is where the other half of this conversation happens. So you can go to my website, johnner.com, and subscribe. You can check the show notes as well. But this is where I survey you from time to time. I ask for your input. What are you experiencing? What are you feeling? Is this something you want? And what you gave me was so helpful and insightful. So I started looking at what I put out there. So as I just shared, I have my newsletter, I have this podcast, it is free content, it is weekly content. Love that you love, love, love that you are a part of it. That's at one level. Then I had a membership program called the Mid Career GPS membership community. It was$67 a month. Um it was a place for conversations and support and information, and it wasn't going anywhere. And then I had my private clients that I work with. And so when I looked at my offerings, I decided that the best decision was to close the membership. I had launched this about a year ago, right now, and and I closed it. And I closed it because I simply felt it wasn't the right product to support you and serve you for where you are right now. The membership lives between the free stuff and the one-on-one coaching. And the one-on-one coaching is is that in-depth relationship that you and I have when we work together for four months and it comes at a price point. But the membership was was supposed to be a different level of support. And it wasn't positioned right, it wasn't marketed right. And so deciding to close it felt like I was killing something off. Right? So the first thing I did was I stopped accepting new people into it. So I only served the people that were into it. I served them for about two months. And then at the beginning of this month, I officially closed it and shut it down. And I remember when I turned it off that day, I felt like I was letting something go to create something bigger. Something bigger, something better, something bolder. So are you ready? Because here it is. I am announcing today the show up leadership lab is now open. The show up leadership lab is a place for mid-career, mid-level professionals who want help in showing up differently and to apply these six powerful strategies to their leadership and career trajectory to make the impact they want. It might be about finding a new job. It might be about managing your team differently. It might be about increasing your visibility within work. It might be about positioning yourself for that next promotion or navigating the organizational politics. In the Show Up Leadership Lab, we will work at navigating toward your next move, be it your next promotion, your new job, your next job interview, your next performance review. Whatever is next for you, the Show Up Leadership Lab is the place for you to do it. It is an ongoing professional development membership designed to help you increase your influence, strengthen your visibility, and position yourself without the guestwork and stress of thinking you have to start over. You don't have time to start over right now. What you do have time is you have time to show up differently. And this is where it is personal, and this is where the conversation happens in this room. One of the things I learned from the previous membership, and I've also learned from group coaching and masterminds that I've been in before, is that the conversation that happens in the room is where the value is. You get to hear from other people and what they're going through. You get to see people being coached, you get to see people being supported. And then there's the accountability of them coming back and hearing what they have learned. This is why I believe this conversation is so important right now. Because you're hungry, you're frustrated and you're hungry. You're frustrated that your career isn't going exactly the way you thought it would, or the way you want it, and you're hungry for information and support, but admittedly, it is probably difficult to afford. So here's what I did. And and I I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, okay? I want to make this affordable, but it has to cost something. Right? It has to cost something for you to get intra, entrance, or admit, admittance into the room, right? To be here, to hear these conversations, to come for the monthly group coaching calls, the monthly content trainings, the QA inside the private Facebook group. There has to be a cost associated with this. I don't want you to think of it as cost, I want you to think of it as investment. And when I came up with the pricing of this, I thought, what the heck? What if we could do this for less than the cost of a casual lunch or dinner you have with a dear friend per month? So right now, the show up leadership lab is open and you have an opportunity to come in at a founding member rate. The founding member rate is$37 a month. Or you can join for the year at$370.$370 for a year's worth of support at mid-career to help you navigate what's next for your career. Now, the founding member rate is only going to be available for a limited time. Okay? So if you want to come in, you want to come in now. If you've been following my newsletter, you've been following this podcast, you know that on today, March 24th, I am hosting a webinar at 7 p.m. called the Mid Career Reset. It's a free webinar. You can go to johnner.com forward slash webinar. I'm going to run the same training Wednesday, March 25th at noon Eastern. At the end of this webinar, I'm going to announce this founding member rate. But listening to the podcast, you can come in right now. You come in, you get immediate access to things, you get access to the Show Up Foundations course, the Show Up Foundations workbook, you get three bonus trainings that are in there. And these are all designed to help you get started on how you are defining what it means to show up as you incorporate my show up six strategies. So for$37 a month or$370 for the year, whichever option is best for you. Here's why I priced it this way. When I think back to one of those pivotal moments in my career, I think back to my role as a training and staffing director at an educational nonprofit. And when I announced that I was leaving my position to open my coaching practice full-time, I looked at my vice president and I said to her, I'm leaving because I have an opportunity to help more people than I've ever helped in my career. And I believe that to this day, as I sit here behind this mic, I have honored that through all of the trainings and keynotes and coaching support and programs I've run over the years, I've done that. But I'm not done. I'm not done because there is a much larger conversation to have. And that's why if you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling undervalued or not supported, if you're having difficulty navigating the internal politics within your organization and are second-guessing what you have to do to increase your visibility, your effectiveness, to be recognized better or differently, to get that promotion you so desperately want, or to interview for that job and land that position that is your dream job at this point in time in your career, my friends, you do not need to tweak your resume. You do not need to like change one line in your LinkedIn profile. The answer is in how you show up. The answer is in showing up differently, incorporating these six particular strategies that make you a force in the workplace. Because doing good work is no longer enough for you at mid-career. If you are sitting back and waiting to be recognized and waiting to be validated for all the great work you are doing, you will be stuck for the rest of your career. And I know I hear people all the time and they say to me, John, I don't want to brag, I don't want to be one of those people. We have to change the narrative on how you promote yourself. And there is a way to do it without bragging or being boastful or being a cocky, arrogant jerk. You can do it authentically and do it in such a powerful way that gets you noticed. But we do that inside the room. We do that inside of the show up leadership lab. My goal here is not only to help more mid-career professionals than I've ever done, but to help create a group of leaders who are impactful and effective in the ways they show up inside of their organizations day in and day out to drive the results they believe are important to them. This is where the conversation happens. Whether it be for the month or whether it be for the year, this is your opportunity. And I am going all in on this from here on out. Yes, I will still be taking on private clients as I have space and capacity to do so. And I love my work with my private clients. It is a much different level of engagement that happens there. But this group program, the Show Up Leadership Lab, is the thing that I am going in a hundred percent on in 2026. And I would love for you to be a part of it. So, how do you come in? You come in by checking the show notes or going to my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash show up. All one word. Johnnarrell.com forward slash show up. You come Come on in, you can get access to all the trainings, the bonus materials, the workbook, everything right off from the start. And the Facebook group will open about a week after this. So we'll we'll I'll open up the Facebook group um next week at some point. So you get a great chance to get a jumpstart on things right now by going through the foundations course, the bonus trainings. We now have a way to support you at a much different and affordable price point than ever. So thank you for letting me share this. I'm sure you can tell my excitement about this. This has been a long time coming, and just getting behind the mic today and sharing this um feels incredible. And I can't wait to serve you and help you inside of the show up leadership lab. So until next time, my friends, remember this. You will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing you inside the show up leadership lab. Thank you for listening to the MidCareer GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Daryl Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember, how we show up matters.