699: Career Change at 50+: How to Know It’s Time to Leave a Good Job After 30 Years and Pivot to Work That Actually Fits

[00:00:00] Scott Anthony Barlow: She flew helicopters for the United States Army, tested aircraft that most people will never sit inside, and traveled the world, and even pioneered remote work 20 years before the rest of us figured out it was an option. By every measure the world uses to define success, Monika Herdlick was winning.

[00:00:16] Monika Herdlick: I had a wonderful career. I traveled the world. I flew different, in a different aircraft. I conducted test events. There was a lot that I loved about my career.

[00:00:26] Scott Anthony Barlow: But here's the thing about winning at something that no longer fits. You can feel it before you can name it.

[00:00:32] Monika Herdlick: I no longer felt excited about going to work.

[00:00:34] Scott Anthony Barlow: She stayed because the money was good, because the flexibility was real, and because walking away from something that looked like success felt impossible to justify, until a single phone call took the choice out of her hands.

[00:00:45] Monika Herdlick: On Friday, I basically got a call from my supervisor saying, "Teleworking's done. You need to come into the office beginning on Monday." And I'm like, "What?" It was scary. The unknown was looming. I didn't have another job. I still had two kids in college. I'm like, "Okay, well, I have no idea what I'm gonna do."

[00:01:02] Scott Anthony Barlow: If you've ever looked at your career and thought, "This is good, but it's not quite right," then this episode is made for you.

[00:01:09] I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is Happen To Your Career. Before we get into what changed for Monika, I want to make sure that we understand what she built here, because this is not a story about someone who was failing or coasting. Monika was genuinely succeeding at something that had quietly stopped fitting.

[00:01:27] And for anyone listening who is mid-career, thinking about a career change after years in the same field, wondering whether starting over is even possible at this stage, the difference between these two things matter enormously.

[00:01:40] Monika Herdlick: I had a wonderful career. I ended up doing a number of different test activities. I traveled the world. I flew different, in a different aircraft. I conducted test events. There was a lot that I loved about my career. I loved being in the air, on any platform, but what really made me enjoy the helicopter was the control. I could fly, and I could stop. I could just hover. I didn't need a long runway to take off.

[00:02:06] It was just that sense of control that really just appealed to me. As you become more senior, you take on more responsibilities, and I transitioned from a lot of the hands-on flight testing into program management and project management. And I even enjoyed that initially. But over time, it was more of the same.

[00:02:28] The work just really got to be the same thing over and over again. I just didn't... I just lost the motivation. It had been great for a while, but it was definitely time to move on.

[00:02:37] Scott Anthony Barlow: What was a really great situation for you at one point started to become more stagnant, it sounds like. When did you recognize that, "Hey, this is not what it once was for me."?

[00:02:52] Monika Herdlick: It had been kind of in the back of my mind for a number of years. I appreciated the flexibility. I loved the fact that I had the autonomy, but the work just wasn't interesting me anymore. It was that frustration of wanting to move, but yet being a little fearful of it just because you had... It's like, "do I really wanna, you know, upend everything at this point?"

[00:03:10] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think that's a really normal human thing, let's call it, where we've got so many great elements that we become hesitant to make a change or give that up.

[00:03:23] Monika Herdlick: I no longer felt excited about going to work. There was a period where I really felt dissatisfied. I was just frustrated. And so I talked to a life coach thinking, you know, maybe a life coach could help me. And we focused on, you know, "okay, let's see if there's something you can find that you enjoy in your job," and that lasted for a little while. And then I was just like, okay, this is really telling me that thing I need to move.

[00:03:45] Scott Anthony Barlow: It sounds like as you started recognizing that, at some point you started trying to do little pieces to try to make it better. And when that didn't work, what happened from there?

[00:03:56] Monika Herdlick: Work just became something that I did because I had to. Kind of felt a little resentful sometimes. I was like, "Oh, why are they asking me to do this again?" The things that I was doing were the same thing over and over again, the things that I could do in my sleep.

[00:04:10] Scott Anthony Barlow: Okay, here's what I want you to notice about this moment in Monika's story. She didn't spiral. She did not blow everything up overnight. She tried to make it work at first. She did things like hire a life coach.

[00:04:22] She refocused on the parts that she still found meaningful. She gave it a real honest effort. When none of that moved the needle, she did something that I think is one of the most underrated things a person can do when they're stuck in a career that no longer fits.

[00:04:35] Monika Herdlick: The test drive. It required me to reach out to people that I didn't know. I remember spending at least two or three hours, three times a week, in my favorite coffee shop with my headphones on, doing the work and trying to get stuff done. You know, setting up those calls and making... reaching out to people that I didn't know and saying, "Hey, would you talk to me?" Which is not an easy thing to do. So the work isn't easy, but is well worth it.

[00:04:57] Scott Anthony Barlow: She started moving before she had all the answers, quietly, methodically, in the same deliberate way that she had approached every hard thing in her life before this one. And what she did during those months, the test drive conversations, the exploration, the strangers she reached out to from a coffee shop three mornings a week, all of those things are eventually what made the difference.

[00:05:20] What happened next is part of the story that almost never makes it into the highlight reel, but it's the part that made everything else possible.

[00:05:28] Monika Herdlick: When I started working with Nicole, I started exploring other things that were absolutely unrelated. I looked into becoming a life coach. I looked into becoming a financial planner. I looked into real estate. I looked into becoming a yoga instructor. I looked into travel. There were so many things. Thinking about it doesn't do anything for you. You really have to act, and that was challenging for me because that took me way out of my comfort zone.

[00:05:55] Scott Anthony Barlow: Really, it's much more about perspective. That's ultimately what allows you to be able to make those decisions which then create clarity for you.

[00:06:03] Monika Herdlick: Perspective gave me the ability to do the things in order to figure out what that clarity was. I was very honest about my likes and dislikes. I like the idea of business development, but at the same time, I don't want to be the one cold calling.

[00:06:16] I want to foster relationships. And the way HTYC approached what your ideal career looked like, you know, some of those questions I never even would have thought to ask myself.

[00:06:26] Scott Anthony Barlow: Most people, they wait for clarity before they act. What you come to discover, and what our entire process is built around and the psychology that drives it, is that it actually works the other way.

[00:06:39] You act first, then the clarity follows. The interesting thing about doing all of the quiet internal work before the world forces your hand is that at that point in time, you're not starting from zero. You've already been building. You already know more about yourself than what you did before. Well, Monika had been doing this identification work for months, trying to figure out what creates a phenomenal fit for her, the life she was trying to build, and her career.

[00:07:09] She was building something that nobody could see yet. And then one day, the government made a decision, and then everything else Monika had been constructing inside of herself was suddenly and very urgently required. So this is the moment that changed everything, and it happened really fast.

[00:07:25] Monika Herdlick: On Friday, I basically got a call from my supervisor saying, "Teleworking's done. You need to come into the office beginning on Monday." And I'm like, "What?" And after being on the road for six hours three times a week, not including my work day, I was done.

[00:07:40] Scott Anthony Barlow: Whether it be, you know, creating that space in the form of not having to go to work or creating that space in another way, creating that space can be very valuable. But what I'm actually curious about in your case is what did that actually do for you?

[00:07:52] Monika Herdlick: It was scary. The unknown was looming. I didn't have another job. I just started working with Nicole. I still had two kids in college. I'm like, "Okay, well, I have no idea what I'm gonna do." I had time to be able to take a step back and really work with Nicole, get a break, distance myself from the workplace, figure out, you know, okay, this is kind of retirement. You know, how does that feel?

[00:08:14] Scott Anthony Barlow: This is the part of the career transition story that people do not talk about enough; the moment after the relief wears off, when the quiet arrives and you realize the question is not whether you needed to leave, but the question is what comes next.

[00:08:30] Monika Herdlick: I settled and I had rested, and I was able to be in a different space. I realized that I really do want to still contribute. I really do enjoy being in the workplace with people that I enjoy working with. I knew that being at home retired was not something that I'm ready for yet. Honestly, I was bored. I was just like, "Okay, what am I gonna do next?" I mean, I just, I needed, I knew I had to do something else.

[00:08:54] Scott Anthony Barlow: For Monika, that answer started with many conversations, but one in particular, not an application, by the way, a conversation with a friend whose husband owned a company.

[00:09:06] Monika Herdlick: The current job, I never even applied for the position. I just started talking to somebody, let them know what my strengths were and what I was looking for, and he said, "Well, let's talk some more." And we kind of explored the space, and I was basically hired as a strategic hire.

[00:09:20] Scott Anthony Barlow: Now, I want you to sit with what Monika just said. She never actually applied for the job. She didn't go through the traditional means of finding it on a job board. She didn't send a cold resume into the void. She had done the work of first understanding herself, of knowing what she was looking for, what she was targeting, and then being able to articulate it clearly.

[00:09:44] These are things that don't seem like a big deal. However, these months of work that came before that are what made the conversation possible in the first place. A lot of people going through career changes, transitions, job changes, life changes, in general, they're searching for the perfect thing. In this case, the perfect position, the perfect title, the perfect job description.

[00:10:04] Now, what Monika found was a company that was curious about her and appreciated the experience that she had as a whole person. Amazing, right? That is what career growth on your own terms actually looks like. And what changed on the inside is even more important than any of those details.

[00:10:22] Monika Herdlick: Now I know kind of where my strengths are, and I've been able to really reflect upon what I like doing and what I don't like doing. I can now chart my own course to an extent. I'm a happier person. I'm more engaged. I'm excited to go to work. Going through the process gave me more confidence. It helped me to realize that I have more to offer and there's more potential here. I'm more willing to take risks because I did a lot of the work that required kind of coming out of my comfort zone, and I survived it.

[00:10:50] I'm like, "Oh, okay, this wasn't so bad." I'm not a different person, but it helped me to realize that I have more to offer and there's more potential here. And, you know, going outside of my comfort zone is actually a good thing. It gave me more confidence. I'm not a spring chicken anymore, and I worried about that from a standpoint of how would people view that, you know. That was a non-issue.

[00:11:09] Scott Anthony Barlow: Ageism does exist on both sides, but to your point, it really is about finding the right place that is going to be truly a fit in all aspects.

[00:11:21] Monika Herdlick: Having that coaching, having somebody that is outside of your situation, being able to help you think things through is extremely valuable, no matter what age you are.

[00:11:31] I don't care how experienced you are. I stopped learning, and here it's like, "Okay, I don't know this, so I'm gonna go to this person and ask," and, "Okay, I got this," and I can get into my flow state doing a lot of this. And so I just feel buoyant, like, "Okay, yeah, what's next?"

[00:11:46] Scott Anthony Barlow: You have now intentionally put yourself in this place where you're getting to have all of these new or first-time experiences, but also leveraging all these skills and experience that you have and you bring to the table. So it becomes this wonderful way to be very valuable, but also you're getting just as much back.

[00:12:05] Monika Herdlick: I'm not working full-time, and I'm able to do, you know, my yoga certification and other things. I started beekeeping. You know? There's just different things that I got to do.

[00:12:15] Scott Anthony Barlow: Part-time hours, a title she helped shape, director of programs and partnerships, room to define what the role actually looks like as she's learned, and outside of work, the space to finish her yoga instructor certification, and start help keeping bees.

[00:12:30] So in all, 30 years of excellent work ended with a phone call that removed the very last thing keeping her in place. And then a conversation, not an application, that opened the door that she didn't even know existed. She's part-time by design, by the way. Prioritizing her health and her wellness, and when she describes going to work now, the word she uses is buoyant.

[00:12:54] Not happy, not satisfied, not relieved. Buoyant. This can be your story too. We have hundreds of episodes with stories just like this, but whenever you're ready to make it happen, drop me an email, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put 'Conversation' in the subject line. I'll make sure that I introduce you to my team, and we can figure out the very best way to support you making a transition to work that actually fits you and the life that you're trying to build. Until next time, I'll catch you on the next episode. Adios. I'm out