Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova.  This week I am excited to welcome Mark A. Herschberg to the What’s Next! Podcast. Mark is the author of The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You. From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia. He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator,” where he teaches annually. At MIT, he received a B.S. in physics, a B.S. in electrical engineering & computer science, and a M.Eng. in electrical engineering & computer science, focusing on cryptography. At Harvard Business School, Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, including Techie Youth and Plant A Million Corals. He was one of the top-ranked ballroom dancers in the country and now lives in New York City, where he is known for his social gatherings, including his annual Halloween party, as well as his diverse cufflink collection. I am thrilled to be speaking with Mark A. Herschberg on the What’s Next! Podcast!     THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… young people starting out in their careers, leaders managing others, career veterans looking for some direction in 2021, and anyone looking for some tools to move forward successfully!    TODAY’S MAIN MESSAGE… A career goes beyond just being your job. A career is your overall plan for where you want to be spending a good portion of your life, not just now but in the future! Moreover, the only way to get there, to reach that elusive life goal, is to be intentional and set forth a career plan. This doesn’t mean anything is guaranteed, and this doesn’t mean your plans are set in stone, but you need to have clear goals if you want to get somewhere. Plans may be worthless, but planning is everything! Now, a career plan does not begin with “I want x, y, or z job,” it begins with a few key questions about your life, and Mark is here to break it down for us and get us planning for success. He is also here to make sure that we can adjust for success and update that plan too!    WHAT  I  LOVE  MOST… Learning groups are a wonderful idea and I’d love to hear from you on LinkedIn or Twitter about your own learning groups and ideas for them!    Running time: 28:25     Subscribe on iTunes     Find Tiffani on social:  Facebook  Twitter  LinkedIn     Find Mark online:  Twitter  Facebook  Instagram  LinkedIn  The Career Toolkit Website    The Career Toolkit Book