How to Find Your Joy Superpowers—and Get Paid to Use Them with Lucia Knight (#143) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 143
Lucia Knight of Midlife Unstuck joins Dustin Serviss to discuss finding work that fits your strengths, redefining success and testing a new direction without starting from scratch.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Introducing Lucia Knight and Midlife Unstuck
[00:02:58] What a midlife turning point can feel like
[00:05:22] The fear of not knowing the next direction
[00:08:01] Identifying work that energizes you
[00:13:26] Experience and a uniquely personal contribution
[00:17:28] Defining meaningful progress
[00:19:45] Designing the business around the life
[00:22:12] Choosing clients who fit your strengths
Guest & resources
Related episodes
Transcript
[00:00:00] Dustin Serviss: I would like to welcome Lucia Knight onto the picture of wealth today. Lucia is helping people all over the world. She is midlife unstuck dot com, and it is a site that helps midlife career professionals, business owners get unstuck and onto a new path of joy when they've experienced some sort of, you know, success or a certain level of success that is, you know, by all estimations, successful. But to them or to that person, they're feeling stuck. They're feeling not as successful as they might appear on the outside, yet they have the success that they thought when they were twenty that it would feel so good when they got there.
[00:00:41] Dustin Serviss: This was a very compact, impactful conversation, and I really appreciate the work that Lucia is doing in the world. This is an exciting podcast. One, because you and I had a great visit on your show or your Yes. Seminar you're releasing a few weeks ago. And, also, it is my kids' last day of school, and they have lots of friends over. So I'm sharing some of the noise around with them, and so I feel like they're on the show too. So that's, great. And we're talking joy in the workplace and bringing more joy to someone's career. So thank you for staying late in the UK and getting on the show today.
[00:01:20] Lucia Knight: My absolute pleasure. I'm looking forward to this.
[00:01:23] Dustin Serviss: What would be a kickoff problem question that we can talk about the answer or the solution? What is... When I say joy at work and someone's like, I'm not an employee or it could be joy running your own business. We start a business to create a financial resource. Yeah. And we're gonna have a great life. And once we have it, we're not maybe not there. So what is the big question that you're being asked or you're solving in what you're seeing with clients?
[00:01:52] Lucia Knight: I'm seeing individuals... The big question is, how do I practically design work without having to waste loads of time on trial and error? Yeah. So most of the people I work with time has become very precious and it, even if they've set up a business, we know the first few years of setting up business is often highly intensive work because you're learning how to do things you didn't know how to do, or you're, you're learning how to do things in a different way than you used to do them. So I think most people I work with want to be smart about the future. It's similar to you. Oh, I'm sure all of the people who work with you are just trying
[00:02:34] Lucia Knight: to be smarter about the future so that they can use the present valuably. Does that make sense?
[00:02:39] Dustin Serviss: Impactful. It's just... And is that something that is age related, or it is something that is anybody related? Can a twenty year old experience not joy at work? I guess they could. But what we're really talking about more is, like, mid Yeah. Midlife for successful people. Correct?
[00:02:58] Lucia Knight: It feel... Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So my business is called Midlife Unstuck. So I have already defined the people I work with. But since we don't know when we're going to die, it's nearly impossible to know if we're at midlife. Yeah. Yeah. So if typically, probably in your forties and beyond. Yeah. So if the average age for men and women in the UK is eighty six years old, somewhere around early forties, you're halfway through in theory, if you were lucky. Yeah. But also there's a pondering moment. There's a moment around midlife when something happens and that something can be lots of things. So the trigger could be illness.
[00:03:40] Lucia Knight: It could be a big birthday. It could be your first child, your last child. It could be your children leaving home, but there's something that's happened in your life that has caused you to pause. And that can happen at twenty, but it happens all the time at that midlife phase. Doesn't it?
[00:03:57] Dustin Serviss: Lucia, what about if someone has got at twenty to envision, man, if I only had this much money or if if I only made five hundred thousand a year Yeah. And all of a sudden they get to midlife and they're making that
[00:04:09] Lucia Knight: Yeah.
[00:04:09] Dustin Serviss: And it's not as enjoyable as they dreamt at twenty, would that be a catalyst?
[00:04:14] Lucia Knight: Totally. Totally. Because it's not... Because they were running at one goal, but that one goal is quite one dimensional unless you've put loads of thought into it. Yeah. And run really fast, get there. And the people I think we're talking about really successful, like loads of goals, like stretch goals, all of those things, but there are compromises that need to be made in order to fulfill that one primary goal. And at some point maybe that's, they've earned enough or they've done enough or, but mostly I see there's a questioning of what does success look like? I feel by other people's definition, I am successful.
[00:04:54] Lucia Knight: By my own definition, I'm successful. Like at twenty, the person you described at twenty, that would have been their dream. So they've lived it, but that doesn't mean it has to be their only dream. They're only, I just think if we stopped every five years and deliberately redefined what does success look like for me, we'd never get to the stage where most of us do get to a point where we go, this isn't it, but I don't know what it is. Yeah.
[00:05:22] Dustin Serviss: What would you say to somebody who is experiencing that moment where they've got to that level, they are by all standards, and they're scared? They're now in a place where they're like, I don't know which way I wanna go.
[00:05:36] Lucia Knight: Yeah.
[00:05:37] Dustin Serviss: And where would I even start to think? Because it's a confusing market. It's a... I'm reading right now, like, tons of goal based books, Ben Hardy to Lewis Howe's old book, like, the masks of masculinity that, like, Yes. Really... They're two opposing things. So, again, I'm gonna share some personal stuff that's... I'm in the middle of the... One's pulling one way, one's going the other. One's about goals, one's about... And not just money goals, different goals. But then the other one's saying you shouldn't act like that because you're wearing masks and you're authentic, and it's... This is what I am.
[00:06:10] Lucia Knight: Because you might be somebody different if you thought about it differently. I really get the sense that in my experience, it's a choice. So you have all the choices in the world, but but you choose to be this sort of person. You choose to prioritize these sorts of things and these sorts of activities and these sorts of people, and that defines you. But to go back to your question, to answer it more clearly and more practically, in my research, so in the last twenty years, I've interviewed three thousand five hundred senior executives. That's a lot of people. To understand what made them satisfied at work and
[00:06:45] Lucia Knight: what reduced their satisfaction, what brought them pain and what was the damp cloth on their joy at work. And I then interviewed a hundred people who had got to a midlife point, whatever that age was. For some, it was forty, for some, it was fifty or anything in between. For one, it was sixty one and who just paused and did what we were talking about. Reevaluating what they wanted, what they needed, who they wanted to be, their identity, everything, and then designed work differently that allied them to be happier. Their version of happy, just like in your book, I've been reading your book over the last few weeks. Yeah.
[00:07:20] Lucia Knight: So it's all so personal. And so I learned a lot of lessons from those people who had left behind a twenty year successful career and did something different. And all of that comes together. I am going to answer your question. Sorry. This is a long answer. I'd like to suggest a way to do that, a formula from which to start and the formula is use... So imagine a Venn diagram. So the first circle is use your unique superpowers daily. I'll come back to that. Point them at problems for others that really excite you and then decide what kind of life you have to have and do what you need to do to make the money you need to do that. Yeah.
[00:08:01] Lucia Knight: So the superpowers are activities, three things that you do, three or four that you do that energize you, that when you do them quickly, easily, lightly. And so you could do these in your seventies and they would feel brilliant and you could do these for half a day of the week. And it would for other people, the impact would be like four days a week. So if you know those things, you can then design them into tomorrow. And the other bit is purpose and meaning what problems in the world do you wanna solve? And it's always for others. So those two things. And then the financial piece is where you come in.
[00:08:40] Dustin Serviss: What if you... What if a person has never gone through the exercise of understanding their unique superpower?
[00:08:46] Lucia Knight: Nobody has. I've never met... I've met super successful people who don't feel super successful anymore, even though they have everything that the world might define as success. All of the trappings, all of the cars, all of the homes, all of the holidays, all of the... Yeah. And... Okay. So where do you start finding your superpowers? I have this really quick one page. It's not a quick exercise, I have to say, but a really quick starter exercise where you take an eight, a piece of paper like that. Yeah. And you cut it in four and you write down all of the things you're doing when people compliment you, then you write down all of the
[00:09:24] Lucia Knight: things you were doing when you should be doing something else and all of the things that you always put your hand up for. Yeah. Let me do that. Yeah. Not necessarily getting paid for it, but, oh, I'll help you with that. If you ever need somebody to do that, those sort of activities And when you lose time. So the concept of flow, but, and list those out, like through life, through weekend, as a parent, in every one of your role, as a sibling, as a child, everything. And there are patterns in there. So Ruby scientific mind, went back to you, love research. So there's patterns in there that will show you
[00:10:03] Lucia Knight: the things that you love doing, helping others with that bring you some sort of joy. You may not use the word joy, but it feels great. It feels awesome. I could do that all day. I can't stop doing that. Those sort of languages, it means that it's connecting in your body, as well as usually the people I work with and you work with, as well as cognitively, that it gives us jolts of satisfaction or jolts of energy, jolts of joy, and those four things. So can I give you some examples?
[00:10:33] Dustin Serviss: Hundred. One at a time. Yep.
[00:10:34] Lucia Knight: Yeah. So I worked with someone called John. Yeah. So one of John's superpowers, one of some... His superpowers are fixing things that don't work with solutions that don't yet exist. Okay. So that's super specific. So when he was a child, he was a kind of child who would play with Lego on the floor, but not those those big expensive models that have instructions, not those creative. So he built four layered tractors with things that could do move. Yeah. So they didn't exist, but they solved problems that he saw on the farm that he grew up in. He designs prosthetic limbs for all sorts of people, sports people, children, etcetera.
[00:11:18] Lucia Knight: But he's doing it for particular issues, bodily issues that no one else either has the skills, talents, or desire to invest that much time in. Yeah? Someone else. I worked with someone called Nicola, whose really simple superpower is
[00:11:34] Dustin Serviss: Lucia Kaysafi for one sec. Can you go back to John and help Yeah. Us understand if John was working or running a company that was okay, but not his thing and how he pivoted or how he justified going after his unique superpower, and it was gonna be
[00:11:54] Lucia Knight: Okay. So the reason he came to me is he was... Some of the work he was doing was absolutely cognitively exciting. And so the design, the invention, the problem, the reviewing with the client, what is the problem? How do we need this? What exists in the world? Brilliant, super powered work. But because he was working in a bigger corporation, he had to do all sorts of other stuff that bored the life out of him. And so what he decided to do, and he hadn't realized which bits were great and which bits were draining. So we figured out the first thing we did in our first session was, what's your Kryptonite? What do you need to lose?
[00:12:30] Lucia Knight: And then what's your superpower, which took us a few more sessions. Yeah. And it was just that they went, okay, I need to cut seventy percent of the work that I'm doing. So I can't do that in this company. I don't want to do this in the company. So where can I take these skills and do them for another company or do them for myself? So he set up his own business and he now consults to do just that tiny little innovation. And that's all he does. He's I'm not interested in getting this product to market. You get other people to do that, but let me do this. Let me do it in my own time, in my own way, with my
[00:13:03] Lucia Knight: brain power in the way that I want to do it. And so that's utterly joyful for him, but he just couldn't see it sometimes in the messiness of life. He had five children. Yeah. The messiness of life. So he was trying to be a dad, trying to work, trying to do all of this stuff. He just had never taken the time to pause it long enough to do that.
[00:13:23] Dustin Serviss: Did he take an income haircut to go to that?
[00:13:26] Lucia Knight: No. No. Because it's so unique. His uniqueness does... No one else can do it in the way that he's done it. And no one else had the thirty year experience profile that he'd had. Yeah. But actually, if you think about his supervisor, he's been doing it since he was seven years old. Yeah. So this, and it energized him. It didn't in any way drain him. So he would go like an inventor into his invention space and stay there for a day, a whole day and come out energized, ready to get playing fun with the kids on the floor. Does that does that make sense? Yeah.
[00:14:00] Dustin Serviss: I'm sorry to to interrupt you, but I wanted to get that through because I think it's a stumbling block for many people where it's like, as we get older and maybe not, it's you start being risk averse or risk aversion becomes a major bias. And when you're young and naive and you're not even aware of some of the risk, you go for things. And it might work out. It might not. But as you get older, there's a... I got a family, and you're always downside playing instead of you're not letting yourself... There's fifty... It's fifty fifty. It's gonna be good or it's gonna be bad or it's gonna be in the middle.
[00:14:34] Dustin Serviss: So we're we're always downside playing because you're always considering that's gonna go bad. Or it's what if
[00:14:39] Lucia Knight: Yes. You're...
[00:14:39] Dustin Serviss: What if you actually doubled? And you mentioned my book. It's the and paradigm. And you were still present at home, but you doubled your income. Like, that could happen. We put these restrictions on
[00:14:51] Lucia Knight: And so we need to dream a little bigger, but that very natural as we age, the risk aversion comes in. I think this is simplistic, the formula. It's got loads of other stuff in it. But if you know, with certainty that you're going to use the three or four energizing superpowers, if you know, for sure, because you were designing your work to include those half of the risk disappears, then you have to solve a problem that is commercially viable. Yes. Or solve it in and then build the lifestyle around that. And actually you don't need to do it anyway. You could start with what lifestyle do I want?
[00:15:26] Lucia Knight: You must use the superpowers and then which problems will allow me to have the lifestyle I want, but I don't see it having any longevity. If it just has one of those, it has to have all three of them. Doesn't it? Do you see people being, what impact do you see of people being risk averse as they age?
[00:15:47] Dustin Serviss: I think there's skills and talents and dreams that are left on the table that people aren't capturing because they don't wanna go for it. And one of the things that that I... We just looked in our client block was there's a certain financial solution or a certain type of life insurance. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Regardless, it's a whole life insurance policy, and it requires a big deposit into it. Mhmm. But then you have life insurance your whole life, and it has a cash value. I've just really simple... Oversimplified.
[00:16:16] Lucia Knight: Thank you for simplifying that for me.
[00:16:18] Dustin Serviss: But you can buy cheaper life insurance than this particular product. And so one of the things that that people will say is, wow. This is a way bigger requirement of my dollars.
[00:16:28] Lucia Knight: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Dustin Serviss: But when we look at, like, our client block over twenty years, it's a ratio of eight to one. So eight people have been successful with it to one person that's failed on a ratio. So
[00:16:40] Lucia Knight: Yes.
[00:16:40] Dustin Serviss: That tells me that it... That's a fair ratio. And then we looked at our whole month... The... All the clients that had those policies, on average, their net worth over twenty years increased four times.
[00:16:54] Lucia Knight: So what's the pattern? What was the mindset?
[00:16:57] Dustin Serviss: Bought the policy to whether they are today, their net worth has gone up four times. None of them would have guessed that it would have probably gone four times because... I don't know. Just people don't... I I don't see people that I'm talking to now are thinking they're gonna be four times net worth in the future twenty years. So these are real stats. And, again, I don't have hundreds of thousands of people. There's hundreds, but not thousands of people to go. So is it a big enough cross section? Maybe not. But it is
[00:17:27] Lucia Knight: It's still a pattern.
[00:17:28] Dustin Serviss: It's a pattern It's a pattern. In the advice that's coming out or when we're recommending the type of the thing Yes. That we're probably appropriately recommending it to the right people. So where I'm going with this whole thought pattern is using a coach like you, which I do. I'm a part of strategic coach in Canada and they're in the US. But they do these exercises. One of the questions they ask is for you to feel happy with your progress in twelve months, what has to happen personally and professionally? Yes. So it puts you in this mindset. So you lay out, like, for me to be happy in the next twelve
[00:18:05] Dustin Serviss: months, personally, I wanna x do this and this. And then they go in a format of dangers, opportunities, strengths. So what are the dangers that could affect that? What are the opportunities you need to capitalize on? And what are the strengths you have similar to you
[00:18:17] Lucia Knight: Yes. That
[00:18:19] Dustin Serviss: can help you? So you're not focusing on the things you don't have. You're focusing on things you need to have.
[00:18:25] Lucia Knight: And that makes absolute sense. So going back to your earlier point about goals, there isn't any point of setting a goal unless the bigger picture has been defined. And twelve months for some people is the big picture, but I think you suggest much longer than that, don't you, in thinking? What does life look like? Yes. Yep. What does life look when I'm fifty? What does life look when I'm sixty? What does... For instance, my husband and I, I'm fifty one. He's forty nine. Yeah. But we talk a lot about what fun are we gonna have in the near future? When are we going to retire? So we have a lovely spreadsheet, which I think you'd be proud of.
[00:19:02] Lucia Knight: Yeah. That shows all assets liability. Yeah. And we, he looks at it more than I do, but every six months we have a little look at it. What's left. What's the fun pot look like? Do we just go hell for leather and do this big project in the house or not? No, because we're prioritizing fun, but also just thinking about what we do when we retire. So he is a cyclist and cycles all over the world. So he wants me to cycle all over the world with him. Yeah. I think he wants me to be the van driver, but I don't really want to do that. But if I'm not gonna do that, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna Airbnb it all over the world.
[00:19:31] Lucia Knight: And I go, and so what does that look like? How much money do I need for that? What... So starting at the end makes so much more sense because then it impacts every spending decision I make today. And that is something I don't see many people doing.
[00:19:45] Dustin Serviss: It affects your business too, because people might say, hey, Lucia. Okay. I will... I'll meet you for coffee, and you say, time out. I only do Zooms. It... We can achieve the same things because you work back from the goal to build a business, and the business isn't handcuffing you
[00:20:01] Lucia Knight: That's right.
[00:20:01] Dustin Serviss: Of life.
[00:20:02] Lucia Knight: And it makes you value. So one of my very first clients has said, can we meet face to face? And I was like, oh, I don't do face to face anymore because it's such a waste of time. And she's changed the meeting twice because things were going on in her business. What a waste of time. So it's a never happening again. It is happening for her, but it's never happening again
[00:20:23] Dustin Serviss: Yeah.
[00:20:23] Lucia Knight: Because I want to be traveling the world and doing all of this really cool stuff, and wasting time commuting somewhere doesn't make any sense.
[00:20:30] Dustin Serviss: Lucia, can you give us your highlight story of working with someone that was the most impactful? Or, again, I think I always try and incorporate a lot of stories because I feel like it lands better with people and a story of a person really resistant to make a change. You get involved. You talk to them, and maybe it's something you ask them or something that it could be a situation. But what was the outcome of that, and how are they... Why would they have been someone to write a testimonial on your website?
[00:21:03] Lucia Knight: Oh, gosh. Who to choose? Who to choose? I might go back a bit further. So lots of people I work with working corporate... I'd say, probably, sixty percent of the people I work... Are taking their first step out of corporate, and I've got to either board level, whatever, and they're tired of it. So I'll give you another example because I think the others are a bit more relevant for you. Yeah. She was about forty six when we worked together four or five years ago, and she had set up her business a couple of years ago, and it was doing well. Like, clients were just coming to her.
[00:21:35] Lucia Knight: She was making more money than she thought possible, but she was drained, exhausted, and unhappy. I didn't know why, but knew she just needed to shift it Cause some of the work she was doing was great. Some, but she'd never taken time to think through it. And so we worked together for about three months and over that time we could, we figured out that she was just saying yes, because she was afraid that if she said no, she'd lose clients in the future. And there wouldn't be that a few years into a business. You're not quite sure whether you're going to make it forever, even though she'd had more money than she'd ever earned. Okay.
[00:22:12] Lucia Knight: You're nodding. You've heard that before. Yeah. So there's this fear of money slipping through my finger if I don't say yes. But the core issue for her was that a very small percentage of her clients could she use her superpowers with. The rest were either pernickety or annoying or had different value systems or wouldn't do what she recommended and therefore there was battles. So she, in, in the end, after the three months, she said, this is so easy. And so she just said, I now know my superpower, so I know I can sniff the people who will allow me to use them, and I'll develop a process around that so that I make it very clear. But
[00:22:56] Lucia Knight: she got rid of two thirds of her client base and she's flying, but she's flying in a different way. So she's still earning the money, but she's energized. She's working less and she's got this lightness around her that she'd forgotten she had because work is joyful. It's still work and it's still hard and it's still energetic and it still takes hours and all of that stuff, but it's light work. Now she doesn't know whether she's going to stay with this business forever, but she knows whatever business she chooses to set up next must have her people, her clients, her superpowers, her values,
[00:23:39] Lucia Knight: and that she just had to be really strong in believing that she could continue to earn loads. And loads meaning just what she wants. Yeah?
[00:23:48] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I guess that could be different things to different people. Lucia, thank you. We need to know where can we find information on either your social, if you... If that's where you're thinking, or are you more of a newsletter person, or what what is your medium for sharing information with people?
[00:24:04] Lucia Knight: So I've been writing about that sort of stuff for eight years. So just go to midlife and stuck dot com. There are hundreds of articles from all sorts
[00:24:11] Dustin Serviss: of articles. Midlife unstuck dot com.
[00:24:15] Lucia Knight: Dot com.
[00:24:16] Dustin Serviss: And everyone can find it, and then we can... And people can hire you. What is the engagements that that you typically would work with someone?
[00:24:25] Lucia Knight: I have this wonderful program called the speedy sharper, yeah, where I do loads of heavy lifting. And in three months, you have the experience I've just talked about with that client. Yeah. So we figure out what's wrong, we figure out your superpowers, and we design the way forward together. And that's really... It's quite quick, but it's deep work. And I do as much of the heavy lifting as I can for that. And then there's other longer programs where I show people how to do it, and they do it by themselves.
[00:24:51] Dustin Serviss: Awesome. LinkedIn, Facebook
[00:24:53] Lucia Knight: I'm on LinkedIn. I really like LinkedIn. Don't like any of the other socials, but I really like LinkedIn. They seem to have kinder people, less argumentative, more sharing learning. My people
[00:25:03] Dustin Serviss: Awesome. Thanks a lot for being on the show today.
[00:25:06] Lucia Knight: My absolute pleasure. Thanks, Dustin.