Reinvigorate your professional life, re-align your career with your passion and create greater financial stability.

Dear executive or professional:

Do you wake up each day excited about going to the office?

In fact, are you motivated to the point where you're keen to meet the challenges of the day?

At parties do you tell those who ask how much you love your work?

If the answer to these questions is ‘NO’ then perhaps EPR can help turn your ‘no’ into ‘yes’ through applying a series of proven processes we have been using and refining for almost twenty years.

Before I tell you how you might transform your career, please allow me ask you one further question:

Is your lack of satisfaction in your professional life affecting your relationships with friends and family and even your sense of wellbeing?

If your answer is ‘yes,’ urgent action may be required. Many high-quality executives and professionals lose what's most important to them because they failed to make the best career decisions.

It does not have to be this way...

Instead of:

• Being stuck in a dead-end career or professional rut
• Working within an uninspiring organisation
• Struggling to find much that's enjoyable about your working day
• Being locked in a situation just because of the pay
• Working non-stop to the detriment of your personal life and wellbeing

I’m confident you’d prefer to be:

• In a role more aligned with your true passion and values
• Completing each day with a deep sense of satisfaction
• Working with a great organisation surrounded by motivated colleagues
• In a position with definite opportunities for advancement
• Enjoying greater control over your professional future

I’m also extremely confident you would like to regain deep personal satisfaction so you enjoy life to its fullest.

Wouldn’t it be great if a friend or acquaintance came up to you, out of the blue, and asked…

“You seem a lot happier now…like your old self...have you made some big changes in your life?”

If you’re unhappy with your professional situation, it’s time to make a career transition…a planned, organised, confidentially managed, and effective move away from your employer, role, or even your current profession.

While successful career transition is never easy, requiring considerable dedication of time and patience, I personally know thousands of executives, professionals, and managers who made just such a transition deliberately and systematically and are much, much happier.

I understand deeply what it’s like to appear happy but feel totally discontented... success and satisfaction do not necessarily align in the professional world. I’m Russell Johnson, Founder and Managing Director of EPR, Australia’s first and leading career management firm. EPR has helped thousands of executives and managers make a successful career transition. We specialise in helping people make changes and overcome obstacles in their executive and professional careers.

Before I detail how EPR can help you, let me describe a predicament I was in…

I’ve had a very diverse set of work and career experiences, in many parts of the world. In the early 1980s, I joined Arby’s, a restaurant chain in the United States, as Director of Franchising with the mandate to fix a failing franchise program.

Arby’s is a chain that has for most of its life fallen far short of its potential. I created a franchising system, and developed and led a team, that turned it from a laughing stock to a much-admired industry behemoth. In the process, I rose to Senior Vice President and equal number 2 executive of the company. Under my leadership, we quadrupled the number of franchisees and increased our growth rate to the point where a new restaurant opened every 39 hours. We were written up in the industry press as the great turnaround of the 1980s, and were independently ranked in the top 10 of the over 3,000 franchise opportunities then available in the US. For a few shining years, Arby’s enjoyed a Golden Age. When I left in 1987, the chain employed close to 60,000 people, in almost 2,000 restaurants.

Along the way, the ownership of the company changed and I found myself reporting to a new CEO. Under the new ownership, I could see that although sheer momentum would ensure our rapid growth continued for a while, our rate of growth had reached its zenith, and would soon begin a downhill slide.

Beyond that, I felt that my work was done. I had built a very powerful team. The Vice Presidents who reported to me had matured in their roles and were fully capable of continuing without my leadership. The depth of leadership ability in the team was such that a number of our people subsequently became CEOs of other companies.

But above all, I had simply lost the motivation to continue in the industry I was a part of. I was feeling the renewed stirrings of a need that had troubled me in the past but had lain dormant since I joined Arby’s - the need for a greater sense of meaning in my work. I guess it would be fair to say I was ready for a ‘midlife crisis’.

I knew I needed to grapple with this, so while the new CEO was settling in, I took a couple of weeks off to consider my options. I knew also that he was keen to bring his own team in, and felt he would be happy to see me leave. I decided it was a good time to resign and find a way to recreate the passion I had lost. I didn’t do this lightly. I simply couldn’t see another way to find what was missing.

Returning to the office, I laid my resignation letter on the CEO’s desk and waited while he read it. His reaction took me totally by surprise. He sat shaking his head and repeating ‘The one guy…the one guy…’ He laid the letter down and said ‘You’re the guy who’s made the company what it is. What do I have to do to keep you?’

I was utterly taken back, and could only think enough to nominate a package I felt would be far beyond anything he would accept. Then, I thought, we could agree that my departure should proceed swiftly, and could amicably determine the timetable.

Instead, he accepted the package I had nominated. On the spot.

I returned to my office pondering the implications of the mistake I had made, and feeling perplexed and trapped. I had given a commitment I didn’t want to keep, but felt I must.

I settled back in to work. From the outside, I probably still looked happy. Inside, I was extremely unhappy. I said to myself…

“This isn’t the kind of success I had in mind.”

I had been called driven in the past, but my work no longer required any of that. The motivation was gone, and I was feeling like a ‘bird in a gilded cage’. At the top executive level, I noticed some political game playing blossoming and flourishing, that had been blessedly rare in earlier years. I grew tense and stressed. And it was affecting my family.

I could see that high income and status were no longer enough. I felt strongly that I needed to leave the corporate environment. I was extravagantly well paid and could afford to take a very long period away from work if necessary. So two years later, I resigned again - still without clarity or a workable strategy to gain it. But I made a decision and announced it to my family, colleagues and friends so that I would stay committed to it…I would not work for money again until I found a path that would restore my motivation.

I was confident I would gain that clarity quickly. As it turned out, I was greatly mistaken. I spent four and a half years finding my path. Along the way, since my family was up for an adventure, we returned  to Australia, the homeland I had left 23 years earlier.

Without a systematic, workable approach, I continued to go around in circles, investigating hundreds of business opportunities. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t seem to get the old motivation back.

My tortuous journey to clarity finally ended one evening in 1992, when in discussion with a friend with whom I had studied in the UK many years earlier, I experienced a ‘BFO’ - a Blinding Flash of the Obvious’. I saw that I had made classic career mistakes that I had thought myself too capable to make. I had just been standing so close to my own situation that I couldn’t see I was making them.

In that realisation, I also recognised that I had at last found a path that would restore my passion: I would create a systematic approach that would help others maximize the benefit of their commitment to their careers and avoid or if necessary, recover from, career mistakes such as I had made.

It’s the most gratifying experience of my working life to help and watch our clients move from soul-destroying professional positions to a totally refreshed and renewed professional life. Helping EPR clients make a career transition into a more satisfying, productive and balanced career provides me, and all my associates, with a huge degree of personal and professional satisfaction.

Meet some EPR clients…

EPR helped these clients and can help any executive in any career situation.

What’s happening in today’s job market?

Industries change. CEOs eliminate thousands of jobs after a morning meeting. Experienced and competent executives and professionals find themselves in a career cul-de-sac through no fault of their own. Growth opportunities that existed in certain industries vanish almost overnight.

EPR clients are professionals who decide to transition away from shrinking or declining industries, or from roles that no longer motivate them, and to find significantly better opportunities.

When clients first come to EPR, many are down on themselves and feel they have made poor career decisions. I remind these new clients the economy is constantly changing and 90 per cent of  companies are clinging to old-fashioned employment models.

The key is to find companies and organizations that provide opportunities for associates to align passion with their work.

At EPR, we make this happen.

The results of this Gallup poll will astonish you

In the middle of the last decade, the Gallup Organization released the results of a survey indicating that the level of ‘actively disengaged’ workers in Australia is second only to France and equal to that in the UK. Over 80% of all Australian employees were found to be either ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’.

There’s no need for this to happen. If more people pursued their passion our entire Australian workforce would be vastly more engaged and productive.

At EPR, we’re making that happen…

Using our systematic approach to career transformation, EPR clients…

• Find great companies to work for.
• Are much more satisfied with their professional situation.
• Maintain or improve their financial status.
• Never again get stuck in a career they don’t like.
• Don’t fall into the corporate trap of accepting incentives and large salaries to stick around while steadily losing employability and self-confidence.
• Enjoy a much improved work/family balance.

Most importantly, EPR clients discover they CAN change the direction their career is taking and proactively make positive changes.

Shouldn’t I just contact a recruitment agency?

Many recruitment agencies and executive search firms or ‘headhunters’ are excellent resources, under certain circumstances. An agency can be useful, for example, if you want to stay in the same type of position with the same type of company…a lateral move or perhaps the next move forward, if you are not already too far up the career ladder. In some instances, this type of move provides relief from a bad situation.

However, recruitment agencies and headhunters are motivated to place as many candidates as possible and are not equipped, or remunerated, to help people manage a career transition.

What specifically can EPR do for me?

EPR helps clients, primarily executives and professionals, align what they do with who they are through a proven and comprehensive system.

This EPR Strategic Approach includes:

• Personal career coaching with an EPR career transformation specialist.
• The 12 Keys to a Successful Job Search
• The EPR Six Cs System for career success
• The Professional Development Partnership
• The EPR Market Pull methodology
• Additional proprietary systems and methods such as Milestones tracking, PLUS in-person and online networking opportunities including membership in our exclusive alumni/client networking group and through our connections with leading recruitment and executive search consultants, where appropriate.

Our Strategic Approach comprises an eight-step process:

• Perform the equivalent of a SWOT analysis on yourself. What are your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities? What do you need to gain true job satisfaction?
• Clarify your value proposition so you understand the unique executive skills that make you an asset for an organisation.
• Set your career goals and develop your market positioning based on them and on your value proposition.
• Develop your career plan and an appropriate timeline for the attainment of your goals.
• Develop, refine and maintain your communication skills so that you clearly articulate your value proposition to contacts you make, both formally and informally. This gives you power and confidence at the negotiating table.
• Research, research, research. Discover as much as possible about organisations and people that may have opportunities for you, until you understand exactly what they can offer you and how your skills are of benefit to them.
• Expand your sphere of influence. Keep in regular touch with your contacts and implement a specific program to develop new ones. This opens up opportunities and establishes a relationship with decision makers before positions become vacant. In fact, it often leads to positions being created where they previously didn't exist.
• Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. Perform this process regularly throughout your career. Over time, career prospects will repeatedly open up for you.

We fully assess your skills, experience, and goals and personally guide you through what can be an extremely difficult and emotional time in your life.

My systems help you…

• Develop a personal brand and ‘elevator’ introduction
• Identify the industries where you can thrive.
• Find the organisations in those industries where the culture matches your values and aspirations.
• Develop effective marketing materials
• Develop interviewing skills.
• Build or rebuild confidence.
• Develop a career plan, then implement the plan.
• Build a new network.
• Mine the ‘hidden’ job market.
• Get your life back!

My firm provides you with all the professional and developmental tools you need to realign your career.

The EPR approach to networking is a major key to the successful outcomes our clients enjoy…

Through the EPR alumni/client networking group, we even provide in-person and online networking opportunities before, during, and after your job search. Through this network, you build connections with successful executives in a mutually supportive focus on maintaining awareness of and access to unadvertised positions. And where appropriate to their goals, we further support clients in leveraging their new-found marketability through our connections with leading recruitment and executive search consultants.

Using our system, EPR has helped thousands of executives and managers totally transform their careers.

You have a choice…

Saying to yourself, “I need to make a change in my career” is easy. Following through and gaining the result you really want is difficult, especially if you choose to go it alone.

You must…

• Gain clarity and conviction about your brand, target markets, and target companies.
• Become competent and confident in self marketing and compelling to yourself and others.
• Establish the connections that lead to a sustainable career transformation.

I’ll be brutally honest for a minute…

I’ve seen hundreds of extremely talented, experienced, and industrious executives and managers try to organize their own career change and all but a handful fail.

As a result, they stay in their rut and remain professionally miserable. This affects their health and ultimately their family and personal life.

Making the switch to new opportunities is difficult. I know. It took me almost five years…thankfully, I’ve developed a career transformation system based on over 23 years of experience working with thousands of clients that succeeds reliably, and that can allow you to manage even short term financial and professional concerns while it’s in process.

So…the choice…go it alone and fail or squander months and perhaps years in an unnecessary struggle

Or

Partner with EPR and succeed.

I know you’ll transform your career when you make the right choice …and enjoy it immensely when people notice you’re significantly happier.

To your professional success and personal peace of mind…

Russell Johnson
Founder and Managing Director
EPR

P.S. People often ask me, “what’s the best way to achieve professional satisfaction and fulfilment?” My answer…find a way to do what you love. Make it happen.

P.P.S. On the fence about the free career consultation? Click here for testimonials and case studies. And make sure you download my special report, “Twelve Keys to a Successful Job Search for Executives and Professionals.” Click here now.