007: It's Never Too Late for a New Dream with Emily Chase Smith of Chase Smith Press

Who says just because you get a law degree you need to be chained to a life of pantsuits and working 9-9 for the rest of your life?

Today's guest Emily Chase Smith of Smith Chase Press realized pretty quickly in her 20s that her and law were a terrible fit. As fate would have it, she was forced to explore what she wanted to do when she and her then-husband moved to Prague and she was suddenly unable to practice the career she had spent so many years working towards.

Tune in to this week's episode to hear how this powerhouse of a woman made - not just one, but many leaps from law, to consulting work, to speaker and now author and coach and her words of wisdom on how you can do the same!

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In this episode, she'll be sharing:

  • How after realizing she didn’t want to continue a career in law, she found the permission to start dreaming of a new career during her time living in Prague as she began listening to various podcasts and reading books like Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love.
  • Worked as a bankruptcy attorney after she moved back and that morphed into consultant for small businesses about their finances.  Seeing the same pattern and that’s when she started speaking and wrote her book, The Financially Savvy Entrepreneur
  • How, even though she enjoyed the freedom of being a consultant and speaker, she was challenged to relook at her life when her friend asked the big question, “Is this really what you want to be doing with your life,” leading her back to one of her oldest passions of writing, and how she was able to turn that passion into her next career.

Emily's advice for big dreamers:

  • Realize that no time is every wasted.  Every career Emily has had from a lawyer, to consultant, speaker, and now author, has built upon each other to help her prepare for the next leap and shift in her life.
  • Give yourself permission to explore other things.  Moving to Prague made it easier for Emily to explore different career ideas because she couldn’t continue practicing law in the foreign country, but Emily’s advice for anyone is remembering that it’s just a matter of giving yourself permission to dream.
  • Keep the leap you are exploring and thinking about very precious, very quite.  For Emily it was important to keep her ideas and dreams to a small group of people like her childhood friend because she did her idea to be scrutinized by the  people in her life she knew would tell her to get over it, until it was a strong enough of an idea.
  • Remember that it’s scarier not to do something than the fear that comes along with actually doing it.  Emily describes that at some point you’re going to hit a wall and say, “Holy crap, I’m really doing this. I’m really putting this out there.”  For her it’s been important to remind yourself that there’s nothing worse than walking around say, “Should have, would have, could have.”
  • Remind yourself that you will be okay.  Even now after all of the different things that she’s done, every time Emily does something new fear comes up.  In order to move through that fear she constantly has to remind herself “I’m going to look like an idiot, and that’s okay.”

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