Meet Maria Dastur | CEO/Founder Second Half Consulting – Empowering Women Through Pivotal Career Shifts

We had the good fortune of connecting with Maria Dastur and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Maria, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
From a very young age I was drawn to helping people. I would befriend the lonely kid in the corner and always stop to help anyone that needed saving. Nature or Nurture? My parents were models of service to others. My mom was a social worker and my dad ran a school for adults with intellectual disabilities. They encouraged me to be whatever I wanted to be. There were many starts and stops and pivots in my career. From athletic training and personal training to collegiate athletics and recreation to public health and later non-profit service. At the core, each and every role had the focus of helping others. The other uniting factor was low wages!

As my children grew toward adulthood, they became expensive! Cars, college, sports, and everything else. I wanted to contribute to my household in a different way. I have always been proud of the work I have done, but the frustration of never making a living wage was now front and center. With an MBA and decades of experience it was time to put me first. I started Second Half Consulting LLC as a way to continue doing the meaningful work that I love and GET PAID!

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
When you start out as a service based solopreneur, you say yes to any opportunity that comes your way. Money is money! This “say yes” to everything approach doesn’t work in the long run. It is hard to drive out the persistent advice that you have to niche down. Get clear on your audience and the transformation that you provide. My first attempt at defining a niche was as a career coach for women. I learned two things. First when you do a great job and your client lands a job, you lose a client. And second, many women found their way to me thinking that they needed or wanted a job, but really what they wanted was a way to bring in a good income while having the autonomy to do something flexible that aligns with their passions in life. My new niche found me.

I help women to reimagine their careers as a piece of living their life by design. So many of us live to work. I invite my clients to consider what do I want now and where I am going in life. How can this next job, side hustle or entrepreneurial venture be a bridge to retirement and their rich life? I am finding more and more that women want to build portfolio careers. Portfolio careers enable you to explore multiple passions and take bigger risks because you have other pools of income coming in. Initially when designing a portfolio career, a big piece of the income comes from a more formal employee job, but there is also a focus on building other income streams. A few years down the road these ‘side-hustles’ are now bringing in enough income to say goodbye to the employee job. And a few more years down the road these side hustles have matured into passive income streams and you can shift to retirement mode!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
My family and I relocated from Northern Virginia to Colorado 5 years ago after finding a house on Zillow while on summer vacation. We were no strangers to the beauty of the state and embraced leaving suburbia for mountain living. It didn’t take visitors long to find us. When our favorite people come to town we plan out multi day curated experiences. Straight from the airport we head to Chatfield State Park to float among the trees. In the morning with the car loaded up we head for Buena Vista where we set up camp. The next few days are filled with tubing down the Arkansas into Salida, mountain biking, and hiking. We catch an evening concert, enjoy the many restaurants, and do some shopping on the different main streets. The next day we head to Leadville, one of the few quintessential Colorado towns that still remain in the state. After a little history and a visit to the picturesque Turquoise lake, our friends understand why we are never moving back to the DMV!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The biggest challenge to any coach/consultant is drumming up business. How can you not only reach an audience, but establish credibility and connection? Early on I realized that the answer to my marketing dilemma was public speaking. When you are on stage you can build rapport, establish credibility, and delight and inspire your audience. All of this accelerates the process of turning someone from a cold lead to a warm prospect. In an effort to become a better speaker, I found my way to Toastmasters which led to the National Speakers Association Colorado and other local speakers networking groups. Suddenly I had dozens of mentors and connected with people who were also doing big things in their businesses. They challenged me to grow and think bigger about my future.

Website: https://www.secondhalfcommunity.com

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariadastur/

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