Aug 3, 2021
Today’s Invisible Stories guest is author, podcaster, and speaker Nicolle Merrill. Nicolle has written for Four Seasons and National Geographic private jet tours, taught digital communication skills to global executives, and sold adventure travel programs in New Zealand. As the former Associate Director of the Career Development office at Yale School of Management, she coached hundreds of MBA students and professionals through all phases of their career transitions. Nicolle’s book, Punch Doubt in the Face: How to Upskill, Change Careers, and Beat the Robots, has been published by PYP. This book upgrades career advice for the future of work. In the book, Nicolle translates the headlines about robots taking all the jobs into a guide to help career changers navigate the new world of work. Nicolle’s human-centered approach to career changes, combined with a relentless curiosity about emerging career trends, has led to speaking engagements across the US, as well as in Canada and Ireland.
In this podcast, Nicolle and I delve into her life as a self-described job-hopper, and how she used her adaptability and Liberal Arts background to try out different career paths and guide others looking to do the same. Nicolle talks about
- How she took her experiences in different jobs and combined them into her book, to offer others insight into what their career path may look like. She emphasizes that career changes are not linear, and that they take different shapes depending on who you are and your journey may not be like somebody else's journey.
- How her attention-grabbing book title came to be, and how it is a larger message of learning to push away doubts and insecurities and be confident in your skill sets.
- Her tone in her book, and how it really sets the stage for her speaking engagements and other branding elements. From the first few pages of her book, you know who she is and what she is about, and she is just like that in person. There is a congruence that just works.
- The way she overcame her procrastination tendencies and carved out time each day where she would write whatever came to mind, without stopping to self-edit.