The Playbook

Hi, I'm Chris. I've been reading and answering in r/[sub] for a few weeks now (you may have seen my comments). Before this I helped run Tech Elevator, the coding bootcamp; a lot of what people ask here is what we heard from career changers for years. We've built VITALS, a deep self-discovery platform for exactly this decision. It is not a five-minute quiz; it takes real time and produces a full personal profile. I'd like to give you a free year, no strings. If you find it useful, say whatever you would say to your community, good or bad. If you don't, tell me why; that helps too. Not asking for placement or promotion, and I'll keep following the sub's rules either way. Want the link?

Scott, you built Happen to Your Career on the idea that people pivot well when they start from strengths, not from job boards. That is the same bet Anthony Hughes made at Tech Elevator, where his team moved thousands of career changers, a lot of them teachers, into software careers. Anthony has now built VITALS, a self-discovery platform for the reflection work that comes before the pivot. I think he would be a strong guest for you: what actually predicted success across those thousands of transitions, where the bootcamp model failed people, and why he built a slower tool in a quick-quiz market. No sponsorship ask in this email. If you would rather judge the product first, we will walk you through your own VITALS profile in a working session and set you up with a free year. Worth a conversation?

Jenny, since the podcasts are on sabbatical, I am writing about your Substack instead. Anthony Hughes cofounded Tech Elevator and watched thousands of mid-career pivots up close, including many teachers who became developers. He has since built VITALS, a self-discovery platform that asks people to slow down and do the reflection before they leap, which sits close to the Pivot Method's start-from-strengths logic. Would a guest essay or a conversation for the Substack interest you? One possible angle: what thousands of admissions conversations taught us about who pivots well and who grabs the nearest exit. When the podcast returns, we would love to queue a crossover episode. And if you want to judge the product first, we will walk you through your own profile and give you a free year.

Rather than send you a link and leave you to poke around, we would rather do a working session. Anthony, our CEO, walks you through your own VITALS profile, 45 to 60 minutes, one to one or with a couple of your people, and you get a free year of the platform. Dave Watterson, our resident doctor of this stuff, joins when it helps. You judge it on your own results, not our demo data.

Hi [name], I work with VITALS, a self-discovery platform for career changers built by the founders of Tech Elevator, the coding bootcamp. Before we built anything, that team moved thousands of people into new careers, many of them women changing fields mid-career, which is why [community] keeps coming up in our research. I am not writing to buy anything. VITALS is free to use and gives real results at the free tier, and we would like to contribute: a co-hosted online session where your members take VITALS beforehand and we spend the time discussing what they found together, content for your newsletter if that is useful, or whatever fits how you already work with collaborators. Open to a short call to see if there is a fit?

Hi [name], I found you through the ICF directory; you work with [their stated niche, e.g. mid-career professionals rethinking direction]. VITALS is a self-discovery platform built by the founders of Tech Elevator, who guided thousands of career changers through exactly that transition. Coaches use it as structured between-session work: the client does the deep reflection on their own time, free, and shares their profile into your sessions. It is deliberately not a five-minute quiz; it asks for the kind of time your clients should be spending anyway. I would like to offer you a working session: Anthony, our CEO, walks you through your own VITALS profile, 45 to 60 minutes, and you get a free year. If it earns a place in your practice, we would love to hear how. Interested?

You talk to far more candidates than you can place, and the rejection note is the worst part of the job. Here is a better ending. VITALS is a free self-discovery platform built by the founders of Tech Elevator. When you pass on a candidate, send it along with a line like: this will not get you the next interview, but it will help you figure out what you actually want next. It costs them nothing, it costs you nothing, and no money changes hands between us. It makes you the recruiter who helped even when the answer was no. If you want to see it before you share it, take it yourself and we will walk you through your results.

Two quick asks. First, we are now active on Reddit where career changers gather, in r/careerchange and r/TeachersInTransition. If you are on Reddit, come find us and join the conversation; when a thread asks a question you lived through, your answer carries more weight than ours ever will. Second, we are pulling together a small group of TE alumni to go deep on VITALS: run through your own profile with us, tell us what you find, help shape where this goes. If that sounds like you, reply to this email and we will set it up.