Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Carlson.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
It’s hard to believe sometimes, but I started out as an attorney. I graduated from Harvard Law School and worked on Wall Street after the financial crisis, and I defended big banks. I had gone to law school assuming that getting the best grades and going to the best school would ultimately lead me to the “best” job. Like many students I have worked with, I didn’t make the effort to define success, I just followed the prestige train straight to the “top.”
While at the firm in New York, however, I started realizing that I didn’t belong there. I realized that I don’t actually like banks, conflict, or details. In fact, I took a self-assessment called the Values in Action, which reflected that my top 5 values are 1) love, 2) spirituality, 3) gratitude, 4) curiosity, and 5) forgiveness. I didn’t know what to do with that at the time. All I knew was that it was a big red flag for where I had ended up.
At that point, I did what most people do, and I made a change, but not one that made a big difference professionally. I switched law firms in NYC. Unsurprisingly, I did not find the job of my dreams there, but I did meet another attorney who sat three doors down. We fell in love quickly, and one day out of nowhere in a taxi cab, he told me he loved me completely, and he asked me to move to Haiti to volunteer with him. And we did. I went from Jimmy Choos to Tevas in six months flat. We lived in a tent and built schools and water filters with Haitians and people from all over the world after the Earthquake of 2010. That was an insightful journey, especially considering I had only been camping for one night before we moved.
Truthfully, I loved the experience and didn’t really want to return. We were confronted though with a couple of realities that made us come back to the US after about five months. First, I loved the organization we worked with and it was better than most that I saw in Leogane, but we weren’t sure it was effective aid. For example, there were many Haitians with far more carpentry skills than I had who would have loved a relatively safe place to pitch their tent to rebuild their own community. We were also confronted with how dangerous it really was when a beautiful 19-year-old volunteer friend died at our base camp.
In terms of my career, I had hoped that by clearing my professional palette and giving up what I knew, my next steps would be obvious. It, however, did not work that way. I came back to the US depressed, unemployed, confused, had a terrible haircut, and all I knew was I needed to work with people and in a positive way. Also, I reached out to friends and old colleagues, and apparently no one knows how to effectively guide an out of work attorney / international volunteer with a passion for service and a lot of student debt.
At that point, my then husband started a company and I got a job as a career advisor at Emory Law to support us. Our hope was that we could use the resources we made to help people in a different way.
Although it was hard at first at Emory as a career advisor often being treated like a glorified secretary, I found I had a knack for getting through to students. I loved working with them, and I saw an incredible need. They needed to be taught the skills of self-advocacy, including how you identify and act on your strengths, interests, and values, which no one ever teaches. I would say that this rises to the level of crisis with a 50% employment rate at graduation. Students were being institutionalized and some even commit suicide when facing the debt, the bar exam, and unemployment. For that reason, I created a class in my spare time that puts a doctrine around self-assessment and how you select and implement themes that will be persuasive to your professional audience in resumes, cover letters, business, communications, interviews, etc. Then I got really annoying to the administration until they let me teach it. Although it took years, I won that battle and started teaching my class called Professional Narrative in 2015.
Upon teaching the class, student response was overwhelmingly positive, and over 95% of students said it should be made mandatory. Many students told me it was the most helpful class they took while at Emory, and I still get notes telling me the same thing. After several years of teaching it, I got Emory to hire me to build it out as curriculum that they made mandatory for all first-year students. I got to create and deliver that curriculum last year. I also taught my content to a wider audience of Emory affiliated professionals with anywhere from 2 to 20 years’ experience, and the response was also ridiculously positive, so I took that as a cue that what I had created was powerful and valuable.
Finally, I took the contract I made with Emory for the curriculum, and I used it to exit my higher end day job and start my own company, so that I could work with an even wider audience. I am now the CEO of a company that works to help professionals find their purpose on the planet and pursue it effectively. I work as a career coach, a public speaker, sometimes as a professor, and as an educational consultant for schools. The bulk of what I do, however, centers around my Liberate Yourself Master Class, which helps people take control over their professional lives, make powerful professional pivots, toward more joyful and satisfying careers.
Overall, I think the Liberate Yourself concept is an important one. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think that’s part of what I went to Haiti to learn. I also think the entire world benefits every time one of us claims our professional power and realizes our potential, so I’m grateful that my journey has landed me here to help people in Atlanta and around the country do just that.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Definitely not a smooth road. (Does anyone say it’s a smooth road?) However, the bumps have been as fruitful, if not more, than the smooth parts of the road. About two and a half years ago, two weeks before I taught my very first session of my class at Emory Law – the rest of my personal life fell apart. My dad died, my mom was struggling with cancer, my husband that I started the journey with and I separated (and ultimately divorced), my best friend had 23 tumors removed, and a colleague died. All of this occurred within about a six-week span, and I was lost. After I separated from my ex-husband, I didn’t even have a car, and I was just moving outside the perimeter to my amazing town, Pine Lake. Atlantans know that not having a car itself can be a crisis! As I picked up the pieces, I woke up one day and asked myself – why am I not living EXACTLY the life I want? I was really forced to ask myself what’s meaningful and, for that, I am grateful. That was when I decided to keep going with my coursework and to ask for the future of the work to be made on contract, so I could start my own business to do this work for everyone, not just law students.
Other challenges include the fact that I didn’t know anything about business, and Lord knows, I’m still learning. I know I’m very talented at what I do, it’s just everything else about running a business that I had to learn.
As with everyone, I also have a lot of fear and self-doubt. I didn’t even realize how much fear I had until I made myself step through it to get to bigger and better things. I also really have had to work on believing I am enough, that I’m worthy and capable of achieving my dreams. My mentor constantly said to me that I was the only thing standing in my way, so I have had to work on that and learn to believe that my story is one worth telling.
Please tell us about Sarah D Carlson LLC.
I liberate lawyers and other professionals from unhappy careers by giving them the tools and confidence to make powerful professional pivots. My goal is to help people find their purpose on the planet and give them the tools to pursue and ultimately be successful in that work.
To that end, I offer the Liberate Yourself Master Class for Professional Transformation and Growth, which is a twelve-week program that walks people through the entire process of identifying their professional strengths, interests, and values – and finding work that aligns with those. At the end of the process, clients have a defined goal and are able to articulate how and whether opportunities align with who they are, their bigger picture vision, and what they want and need in their life right now. They also finish with:
• A brand new resume and cover letter tailored to their identified goals,
• plus a perfected narrative to make this change,
• the ability rock interviews,
• new connections and an understanding of how to create a fruitful professional network,
• the best job searching techniques available, and
• a list of target employers to hit the ground running.
With luck, clients have their feet in the door of their top employers by the end of the process. I am doing the Liberate Yourself Master Class program with individual clients and in small groups in two-day intensive in-person programs – and I am just about to take it all online. In fact, I am taking pre-registration for my first online Master Class program now!
I also do a lot of public speaking and consulting. I speak at law schools, undergraduate schools, to corporate teams, and at all types of professional associations and events. I do motivational talks and speak on all things related to leadership, self-advocacy, and professional development, including the nitty gritty of resumes, cover letters, interviews, etc.
Finally, I am writing a book. Two actually. The first encapsulates my professional work, the art of professional self-advocacy, which I call professional narrative. It will be published this year. The second tells my story, the journey from New York, to Haiti, to Pine Lake, the path that led to the lady here today.
In terms of my business, I think most of what I do sets me apart. My story is my work. I don’t just help people get jobs (although I do indeed do that). Just as I have done via my winding crazy journey, I help people claim their own power and realize their professional potential in a world that doesn’t make that easy. I’m immensely proud of that.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have identified who I was and been brave enough to pursue what I really wanted a lot earlier. Law was not a good fit for me and that would have been obvious if I had any clue about who I was. If I had done the personal work and been honest with myself, who knows, maybe I’d be giving Oprah a run for her money already! That said, I don’t regret any of my steps because they’ve led me here, and each piece was really important for the next. And now, hopefully I have a life story worth telling.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarahdcarlson.com
- Phone: 470-345-5122
- Email: sarah@sarahdcarlson.com
Image Credit:
Hannah Hamby
Kobelah Bennah
Christina Archer
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