Today our guest is Karl, an amazing and passionate career coach, and personal friend from Work Happy Now.
For me what stands out about Karl and his work are his qualities (super powers!) authenticity, honesty and integrity. These same qualities spill over into his family life and friendships as well.
On his blog Karl gives tips, advice and stories that help any employee or CEO improve their work environment.
What makes you so passionate about helping others become happier at work?
Being happy at work increases creativity, improves friendships and builds confidence. Need I say more? Ok I guess I will. Don’t want the interview to end after two sentences. 
Helping people accomplish happiness in their careers is the best job in the world. I worked with a photographer who was amazing, but didn’t know how to build relationships to further his career.
After two coaching sessions I had him taking his online and offline brand in a new direction. Within 2 months he was connecting with people that needed his talents, but would have never known about him. It’s an amazing experience working with such talented people. They just need to tweak their focus so they can optimize their business.
For the first 10 years of my career work felt like a struggle. I knew that I was dealing the wrong way with my career, but didn’t know how to fix it. I thought I deserved success for just being smart.
Any career worth loving doesn’t work that way. As I developed myself I realized that happiness was at the core of my success. Whenever I enjoyed my work I did a great job. Whenever I hated my job my work suffered.
So I began to develop my internal foundation, which built my confidence and improved my creativity. My results improved dramatically. As most businesses start an individual sees pain and wants to help people overcome that pain. That’s why I dedicated my life to helping people develop their superpowers.
The Bold Life:
Karl the gift you have and the work you're doing has a significant effect on our world. When we're happy and satisfied with our work we have a contagious energy that spreads to those around us and uplifts them as well.
Tell us about your superpower coaching? Why should I hire you?
We need to build our strengths and passions to develop our superpowers. Superpowers happen naturally. No one can force a superpower.
I have tried to design ebooks, banners, or websites, but everything always turned out average. I just don’t have the design gene in my body. I realize this so I hire other people who have this superpower.
People hire me because they want to optimize their creativity to create a career that makes them happy or improve their career to become happier. They want to learn how to break through their mental blocks to improve their results. That’s my superpower.
The Bold LIfe:
A few years ago I was doing work I wasn't passionate about and I knew I couldn't keep going. I hired a coach and got clarity on a different direction. I wish I had known you then!
With the super power coaching you offer no one can use the excuse to stay stuck today and unhappy today. The world needs the gifts we all have to offer. We can't not afford to move ahead…super charged!
What is more important inspiration or motivation?
Both inspiration and motivation are basically the same kind of internal energy. It’s the chicken or the egg scenario. I think curiosity sparks inspiration which in turn sparks motivation. We can’t have motivation without inspiration.
I had a friend who felt inspired to adopt a child because they attended a party where another couple had adopted a baby from Guatemala. This inspiration created 2 years of motivation. It’s a lot of work to adapt a child. There is paperwork, money deposited, interviews, more paper work, waiting, more waiting, more money, flying to the location to meet the child, more waiting, flying back to pick up the child. Finally happiness.
They went through this because they believed that their hard work would all be worth it.
Isn’t that what we all hope for – at the end of each day our hard work will all be worth it?
The Bold Life:
Karl that's a wonderful story! I hold a special space in my heart for adoptive parents. My daughter planned adoption years back and in the end we all learned how to love on a deeper level. A difference was made in all of our lives.
Yes! we all want our hard work to have meaning and make a difference.
Tell us about your “superpowers” that make you a great dad and husband?
It’s funny that you ask this. Just last night my wife was about to put on a shirt my mom gave her as a present. I told her to wait and wear it tomorrow when she goes to pick up my parents at the airport. She smiled and joked that my superpower is finding ways to make other people happy. My mom will see the shirt and feel a little extra love toward my wife.
My wife is happy because she made my mom happy, which makes me happy. Win, win, win.
The Bold Life:
Wise Karl! Very wise. I'm sure you mom will have a huge smile on her face when she recognizes the shirt! You have a way of making people feel special.
Tell us about one of your favorite clients?
I have too many to list. Every time I give a Superpowers Coaching Session I learn something myself. That’s why I do what I do. I grow too.
We all need to continue to grow in every phase of our career. If a person isn’t growing they aren’t adding new skills. It’s this flat line that hurts creativity. We must avoid this flat line at all costs.
The Bold Life:
I agree with you! I think we grow as much or more than our clients because they gift us as well. Is a benefit you don't know anything about until it happens;)
Why do you believe creativity is so important?
Being creative is vital to a happy career. I will never be convinced otherwise. A car mechanic needs new problems to improve herself. That’s what creativity does within a career that only creativity can do. It forces us to learn about who we are.
When we learn about who we are we add skills and gain deeper understanding of our passions. This is where your foundation is built. The more you develop your skills and clearer your passions become, which strengthens your superpowers.
It’s this knowledge that will leverage your happiness. You can then pick your clients and teach other people to do work that you don’t enjoy doing, so you are free to do what you love.
The Bold LIfe:
Brilliant Karl…brilliant!
How does career jealousy play a role in career happiness?
A career should never be compared to other people’s careers. We must measure our progress against ourselves and not other people. This is hard to do because we see a friend at work get a raise or another business’ sales sky rocket. We try to copy these tactics and they don’t work.
We can’t copy what other people are doing because it doesn’t align with who we are. It comes back to our superpowers. If we are great with talking to people and finding out their pain points then we need to maximize this skill.
We can’t copy someone else’s website sales copy because it works for them. The main reason this doesn’t work is because we attract the type of people that would buy our competitor’s products not ours. We need to write from our perspective so we entice the people that want what we offer.
The Bold Life:
I encourage anyone who has feelings of jealousy to take the same energy and co-create or partner with others. Often times we are only seeing our own untapped potential when we become jealous of another's work or success.
Believe me I've had lots of experience! LOL
Do career intentions work?
Many people ask me about manifesting career intentions. They ask me if they can just visualize what they want and manifest a career of their dreams.
Yes and no.
We all need to visualize what we want. We all can do this very easy. Where most people drop off and give up is breaking the dream into small parts and taking action.
This is where you can gain leverage. If you can break a dream into small enough parts and slowly build your superpowers, you can make almost any career a reality.
To get started on using the law of intention to develop a career that you bring you fulfillment you can make a career board. Thumb through a magazines or search on Google images and print out pictures of what you want your career to provide. Do you want excitement? Cut out someone traveling for work. Do you want to start your own company? Cut out what this business would look like. Then for each picture break down how you are going to achieve this dream.
Then before you start to chip away at the dream remember why you are doing this action. If you can’t muster up the desire to work toward this goal then either fear is getting in the way or this goal didn’t matter as much as you thought it did.
The Bold Life:
I think it's important to state if you are aware of and have developed your super powers it will help your path will be smoother and success will happen sooner.
Check this out next!
Work Happy Now Contest
If you are interested in winning two free Superpower Coaching Sessions with Karl, click here and leave a comment by midnight on May 14th and you’ll be entered to win. The most heartfelt and passionate comment will win.
I've closed comments so you can enter the contest at Karl's blog! click here
Author bio: Karl Staib helps people develop their career superpowers at Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this interview, you may like to subscribe to his Free 10 week E-course or follow him on Twitter.
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