'Your Next Avenue' Podcast Episode 5: Finding Meaningful Work
Lawyer turned chocolatier Shawn Askinosie on how you can do it
Once people hit their 50s, many find themselves with a yearning to do meaningful work. If you’re one of them, you’ll want to listen to the new Episode 5 of the free “Your Next Avenue” podcast by clicking on our podcast link here.
In the 20-minute podcast, host Richard Eisenberg, Next Avenue’s Work & Purpose channel editor, interviews Shawn Askinosie, a former successful criminal defense lawyer who switched careers to find meaningful work by starting Askinosie Chocolate in Springfield, Mo., where he’s the CEO. Forbes has called it one of the 25 Best Small Companies in America. and the 16-person small business has a big heart, sharing profits with its farmer partners and feeding 2,600 students in Tanzania and the Philippines through its A Product of Change program.
Besides making and selling delicious chocolate, Askinosie’s 16-person company has a big heart, sharing profits with its farmer partners and feeding 2,600 students in Tanzania and the Phillipines throught its Product of Change program. Askinosie, who is also a Family Brother at Assumption Abbey (a Trappist monastery), recently wrote a book about his journey and how you, too, can find purpose from what you do for a living: Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul.
In the “Your Next Avenue” podcast, Askinosie talks about his personal quest, how people over 50 can determine the kind of work that would be meaningful to them, the importance of sorrow and solitude and, most of all, ways to feed your soul.