We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laura Simms. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laura below.
Alright, Laura thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
I grew up as the child of an artist and attorney. My dad knew at age 12 that he wanted to be a lawyer, so that’s what he did and worked at the same law firm for 50 years. My mom took 7 years to get her undergrad degree in music because she kept changing her major, and pursued a wide range of creative interests during her SAHM years (which definitely counts as work).
There were advantages to growing up in this real life Dharma and Greg situation, but it led to some real mixed messages around work.
Despite some confusion around what work could or should be, they did some things that set me up to create my own way in the world.
1. They never tried to pressure or persuade me onto a particular path, even when it came to extracurriculars or what classes to take.
2. They always encouraged me to think for myself and align my decisions with my sense of right and wrong instead of follow the crowd.
3. I always knew I was loved by them. I didn’t always feel understood, but their unconditional love gave me a sense of belonging, identity, and acceptance that made it feel safe to discover who I was and what mattered to me.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m the CEO/Founder of Your Career Homecoming, a company that helps people choose and start careers with meaning, money, and joy.
After spending a glorious day working on set of a primetime television show, I had an outrageous thought: “I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”
I had chased my dream career of being an actor for a decade and was making real headway. But at the literal end of the day, I longed to do work that felt like it mattered more. The only problem was that I didn’t know what that was.
There was no holistic guidance that integrated what I wanted from life with real-world considerations like income and starting over mid-career. I needed something that could do more than help me pick a survival job. I wanted a career that felt like home.
After years of struggling and becoming a default expert in what didn’t work, I finally hit upon a counterintuitive approach that led me to find a career I love. Now, my meaningful work is helping other people discover theirs.
What makes our approach unique is that we take a holistic approach to choosing the right career so that your insights become actionable, unlike therapy or life coaching which can lead to self-knowledge that people don’t know what to do with, or more traditional career coaching that’s so focused on transferable skills and it misses of the human wants, needs, and gifts at play. Working closely with each client, they define what they want, create a plan to get there, and build the confidence needed to go do it.
But my favorite part – the part that has me most excited to work with people and is the most inspiring for me – is the larger return to self that they experience. Feeling more like themselves, being excited for their future, going for what they want with audacity, experiencing more day to day joy. True homecoming.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
We’re in a bit of a unique position, because we’re not set up for repeat clients. We help facilitate a decision that they will make one time, and then send them off with the tools to navigate any future changes.
But I don’t want to lose connection with our clients, because they’re truly wonderful folks. To help us stay connected them and give them some community once they’ve completed their work with us, I maintain a free community using the Circle platform. That lets us provide some on-going support and gives them a place to network with each other. I also host a once-a-month free coaching call so folks can keep in touch, celebrate their wins, and get some spot coaching from me. It’s also really rewarding for me to see them go do the thing we worked so hard to discover.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
In my 20’s, I went all in on the “follow your passion” approach and become an actor. I followed my passion to performed in every state on the Eastern seaboard, to graduate school, to Los Angeles. It’s how I met my husband and most of my friends. It was my recreation and my paycheck. And then when I started to question if it was still the right career for me, I wasn’t just questioning a job; I was questioning a lot of my identity and life.
Once I knew it was time to make a change, I tried to follow my passion again but nothing seemed complete.
So I scrolled jobs on Craigslist. I bought books about careers for my personality type. I read every Oprah magazine that promised to help me find my North Star. I went to therapy. I tried following other passions—teaching! web design!—but quickly realized they were *not* how I wanted to spend my working life.
About a year and half into my crisis of meaning, I was sitting in our little guest house in Los Angeles, once again grappling with what career could possibly meet my needs AND feel fulfilling.
I pulled out a sheet of paper and jotted down the work experiences I’d had that I did enjoy.
And then, a phrase went through my head like an airplane flying a banner across the sky:
“What if it’s less about what you do, and more about why you do it?”
That moment shifted my thinking from passion to purpose, helped me choose a career I love, and is the foundation of everything I teach to this day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yourcareerhomecoming.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourcareerhomecoming/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurasimms/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@YourCareerHomecoming
