Fran Berrick on why you have to stop running someone else’s playbook

What this conversation is about

Fran Berrick spent roughly 25 years in corporate media, including a stint as an advertising director at Vanity Fair, before building her own media sales business and then leaving it to start Spearmint Coaching. Her work now is helping people move from stuck to unstoppable, with a particular focus on women in business leadership.

Glenn Llopis invited her onto the Earning Conviction series because of something she told him when they first spoke: people do not pay her for answers. They pay her to help them learn to ask the right questions. That gap between having an answer and knowing the question runs through the whole conversation, from college career offices to executives who are quietly done.

What colleges are not teaching

Berrick does not think there is enough debate about whether higher education prepares students for work. Families are already weighing what a degree buys, and AI will sharpen that question. Her view is that universities are very good at teaching academic subjects and consistently miss three things: human leadership skills such as making contact, being articulate and thinking critically; self-knowledge, meaning any structured help working out where a student might want to go; and a practical toolkit for selling yourself.

Career services, she says, has been the neglected stepchild, underfunded and understaffed. Her most urgent suggestion is cheap: embed the work in courses that already exist. If there is a marketing course, why not self-marketing? The question she wishes more career offices asked is simple: what can I do to improve outcomes for my students?

She is just as clear about what students should be asking, and when. Not a panicked visit in the final month of senior year, but questions as a first- or second-year student: what tools will help me understand how I operate, what assessments can show me where I fit, what networks and internships can I start on now? Glenn drew the conclusion that this is not only an institutional problem. The individual has to start asking more, and learn to ask better.

Curiosity is the tell

Why do questions matter so much? Because of a pattern Berrick sees everywhere:

"I find there’s a direct line, not a dotted one, between curious people and successful people." — Fran Berrick

Curiosity challenges assumptions, encourages creative thinking and creates opportunity. In her years selling advertising, she used to joke that her own job was uninteresting to her; what the client did was fascinating all day long. Most people, she says, find it easier to put everyone in a box.

So why do people get stuck? Inertia, mainly, plus sunk-cost thinking. Her prescription is unexpected in its timing:

"the time to get your Excel certification, your AI certification, and everything else is while you’re really happy exactly where you are." — Fran Berrick

Waiting until you need a change is playing defense, and she is blunt about the difference:

"it takes a lot more effort to play offense than defense." — Fran Berrick

Glenn named the problem underneath it:

"the issue isn’t career strategy. It’s a seeing gap. Most people just can’t see what they’re looking for. And if you can’t see it, you can’t act on it." — Glenn Llopis

Conviction comes from moving

How do people become more convicted about what they want when nobody can promise the outcome? Berrick has no interest in pretending otherwise. Clients want proof on paper, a contract that says it will work. She can give them data points, but in the end they have to ask themselves the right questions, trust what they find and be willing to fail.

"I think conviction comes from action, not the other way around." — Fran Berrick

She could not be certain Spearmint would succeed when she started it; she had preparation and a plan, and then she acted. Glenn put her story in his own words:

"Fran, I think you had the conviction to do something before you had the confidence that it was going to work." — Glenn Llopis

She is honest about what holds people back once they already know. Often they are ready to admit it, she says, but they are scared: of failing, of not finding the next job. Part of the reason is conditioning. School tells you what to do. Navigation apps tell you what to do. Then work stops telling you, and most people have no process for deciding for themselves.

Your playbook, not theirs

Glenn told a story from early in his own career, playing golf at a beverage industry event as a young man. A senior executive told him to forget his score and simply watch: the person who throws the club after one bad shot is showing you how he handles pressure. The lesson, Glenn says, is that adversity up close looks overwhelming, and from a step back it is full of opportunity.

Berrick agreed that the real skill is self-management, and pulled the whole conversation into one line, the one at the top of this page. Let other people play their game, she says, and play yours. That depends on understanding what matters to you, what motivates you and where your natural strengths are, because somewhere in whatever new world is coming, there is an opportunity that fits.

Her closing observation is about what coaching actually does. Clients often reach the end of the process and admit they had a hunch all along:

"They kind of knew it. But now they feel it." — Fran Berrick

Glenn tied it back to the students at the start of the episode. Young people are trying to claim an identity; people in mid-career are trying to reclaim one. Either way, he argues, it is not a new identity you need:

"It’s the one you’ve always had but never took the time to claim." — Glenn Llopis