#LifeSkillsNow Mini-Series: Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future
Practical, Future-Focused Skills for Teens, Because Life Success Starts with Smart Decisions Now
13 short workshops on life after high school, from 13 people who are not their parents.
“I Don’t Know” Is Not a Plan, and Nagging Can’t Change That
You’ve asked some version of the question: What do you want to do? What are you thinking about after graduation? Have you looked at that application yet? And you get the shrug, or the sigh, or the “I don’t know, Mom” that ends the conversation before it starts.
Most teens who answer that way do care. The whole question just feels enormous and vague, and they have no idea where a person is supposed to start.
So these 13 workshops start for them. A career coach, a college professor, a pediatrician, a scholarship expert, an entrepreneur who began working at 13, and more, each taking on one piece of the next-ten-years question in under 35 minutes. Your teen watches, and you get to stop being the only voice in the room.
These workshops are so much better than any YouTube videos we’ve come across. The videos along with the worksheets, resources, & missions are great tools for our neurodivergent household.
The Challenge: Teens Need Guidance, and Parents Need Support
Between school, activities, and daily responsibilities, helping your teen prepare for life after high school can feel overwhelming. With so many choices ahead (college, career paths, leadership skills, and financial independence) it’s hard to know where to start.
Why not get expert support? The Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future Mini-Series offers affordable, high-impact workshops that equip teens with the knowledge and confidence to make smart decisions about their future.
Each workshop provides real-world advice from experts, an easy-to-follow action step, and valuable insights to help teens take charge of their future with clarity and purpose.
This really gave my teen a lot of tools to go out into the real world with confidence.
Real-Life Skills Kids Can Apply Immediately
Traditional schooling often falls short when it comes to preparing kids for real-life challenges, like managing a household, choosing a career path, and handling life’s ups and downs.
And kids and teens all crave more independence with every passing year…but do they know what to do with it?
When it comes to juggling massive decisions like, “What should I do with my life?” teens and parents alike can quickly feel overwhelmed.
College?
Trade school?
Gap year?
Course of study?
And how do we pay for it all?
From soup to nuts, our experts will walk your teen through the process of assessing their own skills and passions, aligning those with possible career paths, and weighing whether college is a step on that path or not, PLUS these skills your teens need NOW and will continue to use throughout their adult lives:
Goal setting and focus tips
- Becoming a leader
- Solving problems with the right mindset
- Avoiding burnout
- Money mindset
- Goal setting and focus tips
Chris Render did a phenomenal job explaining what’s next after high school. I loved that he explained that there is more than just college after high school, something we have been discussing with our teen.
Why Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future?
Most future-planning advice for teens is either a guidance counselor handout or a four-year plan they’ll never look at twice.
These sessions are conversations. Short ones, on one specific question each, with somebody who has actually done the thing.
- 13 videos from 10 to 35 minutes, so a teen can watch one before practice and still get something out of it
- College, no college, gap year, scholarships, career direction, leadership, goals, money mindset, and how to work hard without burning out
- One real-life action step from every workshop, including a values-finding activity ebook and a free career assessment
- A one-time purchase with no subscription, and it’s yours to keep
Mini-Series Package for Teens
The Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future Mini-Series features CEOs, podcasters, homeschool moms and dads, financial experts, a college professor, MD, and a PhD to help teens make informed decisions about life after high school.
Workshops included in #LifeSkillsNow Mini-Series: Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future:
How to Win at Life by Starting as a Teen with an “Everything Is Figureoutable” Mindset
with Aaron Walker of View From The Top, ages 12+, 22 min
An entrepreneur who started working at 13 and has run 14 businesses talks straight to teens about time, relationships, and saving money early.
Developing the Leader Inside You
with Arthur C. Woods of Life Coach for Teenagers, ages 12+, 24 min
Three types of influence and three types of leadership, and why leadership is available to any teen willing to be a quality person first.
How to Find Your Passion Early
with Jonathan and Renee Harris of Parent Their Passion, ages 10 to 16, 30 min
Parents of nine on turning a casual interest into a marketable talent, starting as young as 10, so there’s a portfolio ready by graduation. You’ll be asked questions along the way, so plan for more than 30 minutes.
Initiating Impact, What’s Next After High School?
with Chris Render of My Homeschool Success Coach, age 14+, 33 min
The six questions every senior should answer before leaving high school, plus an honest look at college, a gap year, and no college at all.
Are You Well Rounded? Scholarships Are More Than Grades
with Valerie and Julie, the Grownup U Podcast Team, age 15+, 10 min
Where to find scholarships that don’t require perfect grades, what makes an application stand out, and how to build a scholarship toolbox so it’s not a scramble.
Mastering Peak Performance Without Crashing
with Dr. Mary Wilde, Pediatrician, ages 10 to teen, 35 min
Seven tips for the musician, athlete, artist, or student who cares about excellence and is already feeling the stress of it. How to perform well and stay emotionally well.
How to Choose the Best College for You
with David Urban, Professor of English, Calvin University, age 15+, 26 min
A professor on picking a school by finances, academics, and whole-life fit, with a warning about big debt and a case for staying closer to home.
5 Tips to Keep You Focused: A Guide to Planning Your Future
with Dr. Shelly Gruenig, Founder of Be Greater Than Average, age 14+, 29 min
What taking a great photo has to do with choosing a career. Five tips from a career coach and hobby photographer, with a photo challenge to enter.
Money Mindset to Thrive with Money Responsibly
with Chelsea Brennan of Smart Money Mamas, ages 10 to teen, 11 min
An ex-hedge fund manager on the three beliefs about money that get set in childhood and follow a kid into adulthood.
Goal Setting for Teens: Love Life by Choosing Goals That Matter (and hitting them too)
with Pam Barnhill, ages 12+, 11 min
SMART goals without the lecture, plus the part most goal-setting advice leaves out: how to make the goal actually get done.
Choose a Career Direction You Care About
with Sam Feeney of The Career Factors, ages 15+, 17 min
A former school counselor on why so many adults merely survive their jobs, and a better way for a student to decide. Free career assessment included.
The Importance of Getting Experience Before Choosing Your Career
with Merrilee Boyack, ages 12+, 19 min
Six steps for exploring careers and trying jobs on, including job shadowing, for the teen with big dreams and the teen with no clue.
Making College Admissions Simple
with Cara Harvey, ages 15+, 10 min
The system one mom used to get her teen through every application deadline without arguing about it, built in free Trello or a plain notebook.
What Your Teen Will Be Able to Do
After this series, your teen can:
- Answer the six questions Chris Render says every senior should answer before they walk out of high school
- Compare college, a gap year, and skipping college altogether without assuming one of them is the default
- Pick a college for reasons that hold up, and see through the rankings and the flag-wavers who told them it’s the best school ever
- Find scholarships that aren’t about being valedictorian, and keep a toolbox so the applications don’t eat their fall
- Take one casual interest and start building it into something an employer or an admissions officer would want to see
- Set a SMART goal and actually finish it
- Figure out how most people pick a career, why so many of them end up cranky, and what to do differently
- Go get real experience through job shadowing before committing to a path
- Lead, at whatever size lead is available to them right now
- Work hard at something they care about without crashing, which is the part nobody teaches
None of it is a worksheet for its own sake. Every workshop ends with something to go do this week.
As a teacher, I am watching the value of teaching kids life skills grow dimmer everyday. Instead of raising independent children, parents are sheltering more and more and doing everything for them. Thank you for valuing our children enough to let parents know that it’s ok to let them grow into independent adults!
What’s Included in the Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future Mini-Series
Thirteen video workshops with printable handouts and a real-world action step for each one, pulled from previous seasons of #LifeSkillsNow. This is every future-planning session we’ve run, in one place, at a price that won’t make you think twice.
Access to a private, ad-free membership area with no distractions and no autoplay
Lifetime access so your 12-year-old can come back to the college-focused sessions at 17
Downloadable videos for offline use, so you can take learning on the go
#LifeSkillsNow Mini-Series: Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future
Life After High School Starts with Decisions Made Now
- Downloadable Videos
- Printable Handouts for Note-Taking & Quick Reference
- Access Never Expires PLUS if anything is added, you get that too!
- 13 Future-Planning Workshops for Ages 10 to 15+
- Private, Ad-Free Dashboard
- $10 per Workshop = $130 Value!
$30
🎁 Gift-giving option provided during checkout.
Rest Easy with our Happiness Guarantee
You have time to decide what you love! Let your teen watch a few workshops, see if the conversation at dinner changes at all, and if you don’t love it let us know within 30 days of purchase and we’ll give you a full refund.
You have unlimited access to all the content, so even if you use every piece and still ask for a refund, I’d still give it to you because I believe in this collection of workshops so much. That’s my risk, but I trust you probably won’t do that – it’s just important to me that you understand how much care we’ve put into this experience.
What does a workshop feel like?
1. Watch a Short Video
Each workshop is between 10-35 minutes long.
2. Optional: Print a Page to Follow Along
3. Do the Mission in the Real World
Each workshop has a quick mission to accomplish to put the newly learned skill into practice!
Give each workshop teacher 10–35 minutes to teach, and they’ll equip your teen with practical knowledge and an easy action step to spark real-world learning.
With #LifeSkillsNow, give your kids the tools for success in the real world!
Got Questions? Here are Your Answers:
Your teen. Every workshop is taught straight to kids and teens. You’re welcome to watch along, and the mindset and peak-performance ones hold up fine for adults, but the videos don’t need you in the room. The session on what comes after high school is built for a teen and a parent together, so that’s the one to watch side by side.
Ages 10 through 18, and your teen grows into it. Three workshops start at 10: finding your passion early, money mindset, and peak performance without crashing. Four more open up at 12: goal setting, leadership, the “everything is figureoutable” mindset, and getting real experience before you pick a career. Two on life after high school are for 14 and up. The four college, scholarship, and career-direction sessions are for 15 and up. So a 10-year-old starts with three and keeps coming back, and a 15-year-old can watch all thirteen.
The college and scholarship sessions will land better at 15 or 16, and access never expires, so there’s no rush. Start with finding a passion, goal setting, leadership, and getting experience. Those four are the groundwork the later decisions sit on.
Yes, and that’s on purpose. The session on what comes after high school covers the gap year and the no-college route directly. The one on finding your passion early is about building a marketable talent instead of assuming a degree. The career, leadership, goal, and money workshops don’t care which path your kid picks. Only three of the thirteen are specifically about college.
Between 10 and 35 minutes, 4 hours and 37 minutes for the whole set. Fair warning on two of them: the Harris passion workshop asks your teen questions along the way, so it runs longer than its 30 minutes, and Aaron Walker’s video has a few frozen seconds where the Zoom connection dropped. We left it in rather than lose the interview, and Katie says so right on the workshop page.
In a private, ad-free membership area you can get to anytime. Videos are downloadable so you can watch offline, and every workshop includes a printable and an action step.
Nope. These workshops are about decisions and skills, not supplies, so your teen needs a notebook at most. The printables are optional.
Yes! It’s a one-time purchase with no subscription, and your access never expires. Buy it for your 7th grader and it’s still there for your senior.
Yes! If we add anything to this Mini-Series as further seasons of #LifeSkillsNow take place, everyone who already owns it gets the new workshops at no cost, even if the price goes up later.
The #LifeSkillsNow Mini-Series are pulled straight from previous Seasons, so if you already own one or more, chances are you have some of these workshops already.
Yes! Teen’s Guide to Planning for the Future is one of several. If your teen also needs the nuts and bolts of money, Money Management Basics for Teens and Tweens is the companion set. Read about all our #LifeSkillsNow Mini-Series right here.
No, our terms and conditions require you to use your #LifeSkillsNow Mini-Series login solely for personal use. You can absolutely share it with all of your own children on their own devices, and you can create child accounts for the kids in your home under your paid account. You’re also welcome to invite friends over to watch the workshops with you at your house.
Still have questions? Our Happiness Coordinators are here for you. Start a conversation with the chat icon in the corner of your screen.
Give Them a Place to Start
You can’t decide your teen’s future for them, and you’ve probably stopped trying. Thirteen workshops, four and a half hours, and a kid who has something to say the next time you ask.
“This was fun, interesting, and produced results instantly. We loved it.“
