485: How I Knew It Was Time: 4 Stories Of Career Change

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:01

In honor of the book launch, I wanted to share a few of the people that you'll hear from in the book that changed their careers and lives for the better. These are people, just like you, who were unhappy or bored, or just felt like they were meant for more, and were ready for a change in their career, and they decided to take action towards meaningful work.

Introduction 00:24

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:43

One thing that led me to start this podcast in 2013 was my hope that by sharing others' extraordinary and seemingly impossible career change experiences, I could solve what we call "the exposure problem" that most people deal with today. If you found this podcast, you're probably already suspect that you need to make a change and your intuition about this is likely correct. But your next question is probably, "change to what?" you don't always know what your options are, especially, if you don't know they exist. And that's the exposure problem in a nutshell. By sharing career change stories weekly, my hope is that you'll find the inspiration and exposure to see that extraordinary can become possible for you. Personally, I had to get fired before I could recognize what needed to be different to make my life and career the best it could be for me and my family. I don't want you to have to get to that point. I want you to know that meaningful work, that you're excited about, that is fulfilling, feels great, pays well and that you actually enjoy is out there and you don't need to settle in hopes of solving this exposure problem and amplifying the spread of the seemingly impossible career changes even more. I started working on a book way back in 2018. It's been a team effort. And my entire team has been hard at work at this project for over four years. And that time has finally come. That very book is now available. Our new book "Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work" is finally hitting the shelves on Tuesday, October 18th. It's available for order at all major book retailers. I'm so excited to share this with you. And it's been really wonderful to see this come to life and have a physical book out there in the world that can be passed from person to person, and hopefully change their mindset on what work truly can be. It's crazy to finally be able to say it's book launch week as of right now. In honor of that, in honor of it being a book launch, I want to share a few of the people that you'll hear in the book that changed their careers and lives for the better. These are people, just like you, who were unhappy or bored or just felt like they were meant for more and we're ready for a change in their career and decided to take action towards meaningful work. The book actually includes over 20 stories, not a joke, over 20 stories. That's a lot of characters in one book. Also, I wanted to do that because they're from all different industries and had all different obstacles that they had to overcome in order to get to do work that fit them, that they love, that they're enamored with. In this episode, I want to introduce you to some of their situations, some of their stories, in hopes that one of their stories will resonate with you and inspire you to take action and happen to your career. Let's take Michael, for example. Michael had worked his way up to VP of Finance for a major movie studio and had convinced himself that even though he was miserable, he was lucky to have his job, it would be crazy to leave it. He also convinced himself that his team needed him and he didn't want to abandon them. Here's Michael talking about his experience with burnout.

Michael Fagone 04:02

I had a great team of people under me, and that sustained me for years. And I felt like it was my duty to suffer through this job, because I wanted to see my team advance. I wanted to see them get promoted, take on more responsibility, right. I think the last, probably, three years I was there, I was doing it out of a sense of duty to the people that worked for me, but I also had the sense of... and I think this is common for people who get burnt out is you have this irrational sense of importance of the work, like, I felt like if I'm not there, this stuff is gonna fall apart. If I'm not there, no one else is going to be able to do these things and they won't be perfect and they won't be right and they won't be on time. I have to keep going. And I did that until I physically couldn't do it anymore. I lost 20 pounds in the final year I was there. I didn't really sleep much that entire year, obviously, wasn't eating, wasn't exercising at all. And it just got to the point where I would get out of there on Friday and just go into a coma for the weekend and drag myself in on Monday. And I did that for... the last year, I kept saying, "it'll get better, it'll get better, it'll get better."

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:16

And it did get better. But not until Michael left and decided to make a change and remove himself from that situation that was no longer a fit. But let me tell you about another story. Stephanie Bilbrey spent 16 years working in roles that were good jobs, but it also didn't quite fit. She felt like she didn't have a calling like everyone else. I'm totally using air quotes here. Even if you don't believe that everyone has a calling, the truth was that Stephanie was missing something from all of her roles, and she couldn't figure out what they was. Here's Stephanie explaining this in her own words.

Stephanie Bilbrey 05:52

You know, some people, they have a calling. And that's not the case for everyone. And I've listened to enough of these podcasts and, "It's okay if you don't have a calling. It's okay." You know, I made peace with that. But it's like I had these fits and starts of, "I'm passionate about this." And then like a year or two or three later, I'm like, "I hate this." You know, I had a very specific moment where I was working, moving away toward event planning over several years, but I had to lean back into it when I moved across the country, because I had to get a bridge job. And I remember this woman coming into the office, she was a client, it was a big Conference Convention Center. And she came in devastated. The event is going on, and she said, "We agreed on white napkins. In ballroom A, there are white. In ballroom F, there are ivory." I mean, she looked like the world was ending. And I was like, "I can't do this anymore. This is not what I want." So where's that spark? And you know, marketing wasn't doing it for me. And I even started like a local networking organization for marketing, because I was like, "This is it. This is cutting edge." And I was like, "Man, I really liked these people. But this isn't doing it for me either." So I think really what it comes down to is just, I wanted to feel engaged with the work I was doing. I wanted to be excited about it, even if it's not a calling.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:20

Now picture this, you go through all the work that it takes to get a new job only to realize from the beginning that it's nowhere close to what you expected it was going to be. Not only did that happen for Stephanie, this happened to Cheri Thome. And in fact, for her, she realized on day one that it was going to be far worse than what she expected. Even terrible. She found herself in a job where there were immediate red flags.

Cheri Thom 07:49

And then the company I was working for just went through a lot of change, and it wasn't the same place that it had been. So I switched jobs. And that job was great, but then we moved. So I switched jobs again. And the job that I took... what I was told during the interview isn't what the job ended up being. So whether that was me not having a full understanding of what to expect, or there was deceit in the interview, I don't know. But it wasn't what I was expecting. And I was really, really unhappy. Really unhappy. So I was there for, oh gosh, I probably started looking for jobs within a month of starting. But doing it, you know, the going on Indeed, or flexjobs or any number of other tools looking for jobs, and I just was not getting any hits like no emails, no interviews, nothing. And that went on for a little over a year. And then I decided I need to do something different because I needed to get out of that job. And so that's why I contacted you guys, and I started by talking with Phillip. And I remember I started crying on the phone with him. Because during that interview, I felt like I'd been lied to, like, to start my new job. So I said that, I don't trust myself. I don't trust myself to make the right decision.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:05

Had Cheri been lied to? Well, she definitely felt that way. But I think what's important here is you can see the impact that it has on your confidence when you go through that type of experience. But what happens when your longtime career comes to an end? What happens when you take a love, say of beer, you turn it into a career. For example, Larry Chase ended up working in breweries for 20 years. He got to know every single aspect of beer, sounds pretty great, right? Well, it was. He loved it for many years. But then he hit a wall. And it was no longer great. And he didn't know what his next steps should be. Here's Larry, when he realized he needed to change.

Larry Chase 09:46

The organization that I was in was very unhealthy. And I had come out of now three organizations over my brewing career where it was great to start and I think a lot of that was the honeymoon period, and then things changed organizationally. And it became a place that I didn't want to be. I dreaded going to work. I didn't want to be around some of the people and the leadership, and there was no direction coming from the leadership. And there were things that I saw that I could do and help out. And I was really put in my place every time that I would reach out and try to do more, and they'd say, "Well, you're..." I hated this, but it was kind of like, "well, you're just production. That's all we want you to do." And oh, it tore up my soul, because I saw so many other things that I could go in and do. It was time to leave that company. So I left and the question was, well, what's next? And I thought I'd figure it out. And six months went by, I worked in a winery during harvest and crush with a friend who is the winemaker. Fabulous experience because I got to learn about wine and how the similarities and differences between making wine and brewing beer, it was great, yet, I always thought I'd open my own brewery. And I'd been thinking that for 15 years.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:07

Okay, here's the thing about all these people you just start from, when they realized they had to change, they took action, because deep down they knew that they were meant for more. They all rode the wild rollercoaster of the career change process. And they stuck with it through the highs, through the lows, and held on to the belief that they could find, they could discover, they could create meaningful work that they truly enjoyed. Now, here's what that means. That means that all of these not so great situations resulted in a happy ending. So let me share what ended up happening for each of these people. Michael ended up leaving the major movie studio and it probably saved his life by doing so. He took a year sabbatical and started truly enjoying life again. He eventually accepted a new role as an independent mortgage broker where he found out that work could be fun for the first time in his life. Stephanie excelled at getting out of her comfort zone and reached out to people at organizations she was interested in. One of these reached outs led her to landing her ideal role, working as a content and communication strategist in a company that she loves and believes in. She even described her work to me as, "when you get to do what you can't stop doing." Cheri stops trying to simply run away from her old job and figure out what she was running to. After defining her life and her career priorities, she ended up staying in the same industry as a business analyst, but found a super specific role that allowed her to become an advocate, and a product owner and ultimately feeling extremely aligned with her work. Larry realized he didn't want to be a hands on Brewer every day, but he still wanted to be in the brewing world. So he found a way to serve the brewing industry in a capacity that fits his strengths and energizes him. He's now a certified coach for the great game of business and teaches breweries and brewery industry vendors, financial literacy and organizational health. And it's been really fun to see the growth there as well. If you can't tell, that's something I love. I love being able to see, even years later, sometimes many years later, what that initial change, that initial deciding that you're not going to, "I'm going to settle", you're not going to accept something that isn't a fit. It's really empowering. And so many people have described it to me as, not just empowering, but it's allowed them to build confidence and how to transition, and skill sets that they can use and apply to all areas of their life, not just their career. So yeah, it starts with your career, but it can be so much bigger. And if any one of these stories resonated with you or inspired you, I would encourage you to get our new book: "Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work", which is packed with tons of stories just like what you heard today. You can find the book at all, but pretty much every place that you want to buy books from online. It is all of those places, because guess what? It's out now after four years of work, it is out now. Thanks so much. Here's what's coming up next week.

Speaker 14:16

I think that has been a thread throughout my career. And I think it's probably a pretty common thread if I've identified something that I'm really good at, never really stopped to think "do I actually love doing this? Or do I just love that I'm really good at doing this?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:38

I talk to people all the time who have excelled in their career, and they're exceptional at what they do. But they've also come to the realization that they're not finding enjoyment in their work. And honestly, this is a very normal experience. Here's what it comes down to. Just because you're good at something, doesn't mean you'll automatically enjoy doing it. Often the enjoyment that you're feeling is associated with all the positive feedback that you initially received for being so good at whatever it was that you're doing. So, if you've come to this realization that you want to find more enjoyment in your work, then something absolutely has to change. And you probably are wondering, what else can I do? If this thing that I've excelled at for all these years isn't what I want to do anymore.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:33

All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.