Lessons from a Quitter Ep. 12: How Nick J. Murphy never lets fear or failure get in his way
Today we had our first professional athlete! Nick J. Murphy started out his career as a punter in the NFL until 2005. After leaving the NFL and finding a void in the job application process, Nick jumped into entrepreneurship by creating workblast.com, a startup focused on bringing video resumes to the job site world. After 4 grueling years, Nick and his partner closed down the company and Nick found himself back to square one.
He ultimately went into the corporate world and ended up successfully climbing the ladder at 3 of the world’s largest job sites: CareerBuilder, Monder, and Indeed. And while he found stability and a large paycheck, Nick was unfulfilled in his role. He quit in order to give entrepreneurship another shot. He is currently the Founder and CEO of Mid-America Careers, a career website focused on the Midwest.
Nick is also a Transformation Strategist, host of the Job Lab Podcast, speaker, frequent media contributor, and father of five. His insights have been featured in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Inc.com, Yahoo!, Business Insider and many more
Today we got to talk to Nick about how he was able to let go of the identity that was wrapped up with being an NFL player, how he came back from bankruptcy, and why staying at a high-paying job that you are not fulfilled in is just not worth it.
Here is what we chat about in this episode:
- How Nick dealt with the difficulty of leaving the NFL
- How he got the idea and funding for his first startup
- How he dealt the failure of that startup
- His journey climbing the corporate ladder
- Why he decided to risk it all to start another company
- Why he thinks 85% of people are unhappy in their jobs
- And why you should just go for it...
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Tim Ferriss’s Fear Setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=5J6jAC6XxAI
- Gary Keller, The One Thing
- Greg, McKeown, Essentialism
- W. Chan Kim, Blue Ocean Strategy
Where to find Nick:
- https://www.nickjmurphy.com
- https://www.facebook.com/njmstrategy
- https://www.instagram.com/nick_j_murphy
- https://www.thejoblab.com
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