Career Relaunch®

International cover model turned food entrepreneur Colette Russell Smith shares her thoughts on handling setbacks and the importance of turning your ideas into concrete actions.  I also explain how I move forward with daunting goals during the Mental Fuel® segment.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of turning your ideas into actual concrete actions that drive results. I’d love to hear what bold ideas you’re going to begin acting on. Share your plans with the Career Relaunch community by leaving a comment below.

Colette Russell Smith was born in the food and wine region of South Africa and has always been a passionate foodie. In fact, she liked potatoes so much she decided to change her name: she and her husband Mike will got married in December 2016, becoming partners in life as well as in business. Colette is a keen globetrotter and has lived all over the world. Prior to receiving her Honours Bachelor’s in Commerce at the University of South Africa, she studied film at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. Colette is also a qualified Pilates Instructor and is very focused on well-being.

She has been an international model for the past 10 years, working with leading agencies across three different continents, representing some of the world’s most esteemed brands in their categories. Colette is now based in England where she’s the co-founder of the SAVOURSMITHS brand, combining quality home-grown produce with big global flavours in stylish packaging for a totally new take on a traditional snack. Follow Colette on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

View a sampling of Colette’s modeling shots . . .

Check out the SavourSmiths flavours Colette mentioned. Yum!?

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Thanks to General Assembly for sponsoring this episode of Career Relaunch. General Assembly is a pioneer in education and career transformation, specializing in today’s most in-demand skills. Visit GA.co to lean how to boost your career. Use Promo code ‘RELAUNCH‘ for 20% off your 1st class or workshop.

Teaser (first ~15s): You get gratification by speaking about exciting ideas and things you potentially want to do and actually then never really do anything, which I think is a really big problem for dreamers. You have to put it to work. You have to really do it.

Joseph: Good morning, Colette. It’s really nice to talk with you again and very exciting to have you here on Career Relaunch.

Colette: Good morning, Joseph. Nice to speak to you too.

Joseph: You’ve got a very interesting mix of professional experiences. You’re an international model, and I know you’re really passionate about wellbeing, and you’re also busy launching a new food brand here in the UK. I want to try to get to all these things, but can you start by telling me about what you’re focused on right now in your life and career?

Colette: Right now, I am focused on SAVOURSMITHS mainly, which our brand new luxury potato crisp brand that we’ve started, and also modeling. I’m trying to juggle the two together, but I would say mainly SAVOURSMITHS is taking a bit of priority just because it’s new and it’s like a newborn baby.

Joseph: I have to tell you, I went and I picked up a bag of your wagyu beef and honey mustard crisps from Fortnum & Mason strictly to do some research here. I have to say they’re very tasty crisps.

Colette: Oh, I’m glad you got some and you like them. That’s good.

Joseph: Yes, very tasty. You are our first model that I’ve had on the show and also the first guest from South Africa. I’d love to start today by going back in time, Colette, and digging into your career trajectory as an international model before we get to your time co-founding SAVOURSMITHS. Going back to your modeling days, which I understand you started at the age of 13, can you walk me through how you first decided you wanted to go into professional modeling?

Colette: I was in South Africa. I was in school at the time because I was 13 years old. I didn’t find modeling. Modeling found me. I was walking around in a shopping center somewhere in Cape Town, and a scout came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to join our agency?’ I didn’t really know what he was talking about. Afterwards, when I got home, I Googled it, and there was some of the best South African models at this agency. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’d love to do that.’ I spoke to my dad who then said, ‘Yes, you can do it,’ but I’m going with you, and he went and told the agency, ‘She can do it, but she has to finish school, and she can’t supply like zoo,’ and this and that.

Joseph: How do you come to realize that you are actually model material? I know that this scout came up, and they found you, but as you’re getting into the industry, how do you start to come to realize that, ‘This could be something I could be doing professionally?’

Colette: I suppose you’ll be more sure the more jobs you get. I suppose if you’re booking no jobs, then you probably know that it’s not for you. You have to be a certain look and a certain height. If you’re really, really short or really, really, really, really tall or big, you probably can’t do it because you have to look generically pretty, take care of yourself, have good skin, good teeth, good physical attributes. Although these days, especially in London, I know people love the androgynous look – the weirder you are, the cooler. You probably have to have a good personality as well. I suppose clients will book you by your looks, but then they won’t rebook you unless you have a good personality, and they love to work with you.

Joseph: Can you explain to me how your father reacted to your decision to start to pursue modeling? How did you manage that?

Colette: I grew up in South Africa in quite a conservative household. My dad was very much into getting a proper degree. He did inspire me, and I did listen to him because he’s a very successful entrepreneur himself, and he’s made a big success in his own life with his own business in finance, but we did have a lot of arguments because I just wanted to model and act. I started studying originally in Stellenbosch before I did my degree at UniSA. I phoned him one day, and I was like, ‘Hi, dad. I’m quitting. I’m going to Hollywood. I’m going to become an actress,’ and he was like, ‘Okay, fine.’ When I came back, he told me, ‘I think it’s time you do a proper degree.’ I ended up doing Business Management, which in hindsight, was one of the best things I ever did.

Without knowing that I’ll get into food products, I did do some product development, product management subjects. I did a bit of logistics, international business, and things like that, which does help me. I think everything you learn at university doesn’t define whether you’ll be successful, but it has been very good to me. It’s kind of grounded me. It’s also made me come to London, which was a very good thing.

Joseph: When you were studying, were you still keeping up the modeling?

Colette: The deal was always that I could do as much modeling as I wanted to, travel the world as much as I wanted to as long as I do a bit of studying as well.

Joseph: I think when most of us think about what it’s like to be a model—or I at least speak for myself—I kind of think of fun photo shoots or fancy events. What do you think are some of the common misconceptions about modeling that you only realized once you were in the industry for a while?

Colette: I think that is something that I really think people don’t always get, like you said, the challenges, because it all looks glamorous. You’re always looking pretty. You get invited to nice events. People automatically think that you’re cool probably because you’re a model. It’s really not the case. It’s a very unstable, very saturated market.

One of the main things that I really find hard about modeling is that what you put in is not necessarily what you get out. You can go and train as much as you want, work and go to every casting, do everything you can, and then it still doesn’t guarantee anything. There’s no stability, so you don’t really know where your next job is coming from, and you kind of live on the edge, which is fun if you like living on the edge, which I do to a certain extent.

I think being an entrepreneur is probably a bit similar. It’s just that whole thing of you’d never if you’re quite good enough. You get a lot of rejection all the time. Sometimes, agencies will tell you, ‘Can’t you please just lose this much more weight? Can’t you wear this type of clothing? Can’t you make your hair this tone?’ It’s just so much criticism and rejection. It’s just a lot of uncertainty. It’s quite an unpredictable place to be.

I think that’s also where a lot of eating disorders and things come from, because girls and guys both just start feeling really insecure, but I’ve been lucky. My mother and father has been very good at telling me, no, it’s not me. I’m good enough, and it’s just the modeling industry. That’s been really helpful.

Joseph: One of the things that we talk about on this podcast, Colette, a lot is this idea of rejection, because I know when people are trying to make a shift in their career, it’s like what you said: you put in all this effort, and then things don’t always work out. How did you manage those challenges yourself? Specifically the rejection side of the industry?

Colette: I grew up with a mother and a father that’s been very, very supportive, which I think plays a massive role in one’s life if you’re lucky enough to have them. It really motivated me and made me quite firm in who I am. I’ve read a lot of books on self-improvement and all of those, and I’ve also had good mentors along my life. I always try to have people that motivate me, are positive, that build me up, which I think is very important.

Something that made a profound effect on me is a friend of mine. She booked a yogurt commercial one year, and she did the casting for the commercial the previous year. She said to the director, ‘I did the casting last year. Why didn’t you book me last year if you book me this year?’ He said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. We wanted to, but the producer thought you look too much like his ex-wife who he hated.’

That just kind of puts it to perspective that, often, you think it’s your fault, but there’s so many little things that can play a role in why people say no or yes. You might catch someone at a good time, a bad time. They might be tired. Of course, people can’t say yes to everyone. There is a chance that you will have no as an answer, but you just got to learn that it’s not you.

Joseph: It’s a very good reminder that I think it’s hard not to take these rejections personally, and at the same time, it may have absolutely nothing to do with you and some other circumstance that you have no control over. I love to shift gears now a little bit, Colette, and talk about what you did next in the next chapter in your career. What happened next for you? Because I know that you mentioned you moved from South Africa to the UK. Can you describe how your career started to evolve at this point in your life?

Colette: At the time when I moved to the UK, I was still studying, and I did an open-distance university so I could travel, do modeling, and study at the same time, which worked perfectly, because obviously, with modeling, you have castings, but they don’t necessarily run the whole day. You can work in the evening, morning, whenever, so it worked really well.

I joined Nevs Models in London, which is a really good agency that I have a lot of respect for. They’ve been really good to me. At the same time, they got me so much work, and it went so well that I decided to just live in the UK because it was financially such a good thing compared to South Africa and some other countries in the world. It was a really good market for me, and it still is.

Then I thought, once I finish my studies, I’d really like to do something with my life and have my own business. I spoke to someone who had a proper business in finance, and I thought, ‘Maybe I should start doing that.’ At the time, I also met Mike.

Mike was quite good. He played quite a crucial role in steering me towards doing something more entrepreneurial. He said, for example, my lifestyle would change so much if, all of a sudden, I had to go to the office every day the same time, half an hour lunch break, commute, this and that. I thought he’s probably right, so I started reading a lot, thinking a lot about what I wanted to do. London is such an inspirational place for new ideas and finding your thing that you want to do because everything is possible.

I, then, thought I would go into retail and fashion maybe and do something in that regard. By accident, I bumped into Touker Suleyman, who’s one of the guys from Dragon’s Den. We eventually met up. It was all like serendipity. I spoke to him about doing this thing in retail and fashion, which I thought would be perfect for me because that’s what I’m good at and that’s what I know.

Joseph: Was that just a completely random interaction you had with him? How did this opportunity to talk with Touker Suleyman come up?

Colette: It was really random. I was standing in the street. I was waiting for Mike. We were on our way to dinner. Touker was also waiting in the street, kind of walked past me, came and stood next to me, and said, ‘Hi, do you work in fashion?’ and we chatted and whatever. I was kind of like, ‘Who is this?’ I have no idea who it is. The next week, a magazine came from my Pace box, and he was on the cover. I was like, ‘Oh my word. I should have spoken to him,’ because he’s obviously quite a successful guy who I can learn from.

The next week, it happened again. He was in another magazine. I thought I’m just going to pull up my courage and give him a call. I thought the way I can get his number is I’ll make contact with him on LinkedIn, which I then did, and immediately got in contact, phoned him. We went for lunch the next day, and that’s how our friendship started.

It was really funny, but it just shows you once again that even people that you think you can’t talk to, people that are so successful and inspirational, they often love to share knowledge, and they love for you to pick their brains. They’re happy to help you because obviously, somewhere along the line, someone helped them. He made me realize that I should find a different path.

I, then, took a metaphorical sabbatical – few months of no talking to people about what I wanted to do and really think about what I wanted to do, because I think, often, what I’ve done—I’m guilty too—is you get gratification by speaking about exciting ideas and things you potentially want to do and actually then never really do anything, which I think is a really big problem for dreamers and entrepreneurs because you have to put it to work. You have to really do it, which is the difficult part.

After a long while, I realized that, actually, all I like in life and all I think about, want to read about, and do is food and drink. I’m a real foodie. I love everything about it, and I thought, ‘Let’s do something in that area,’ and Mike loves it too.

Joseph: You mentioned you took a sabbatical from talking to other people about your ideas. Was it just the space and the time you had to reflect on what you wanted that ultimately allowed you to figure out what it is that you like? How did you decide that food was a passion versus just an interest of yours?

Colette: I finished my studies and I needed modeling, so I had quite a lot of time. I just went for a walk, did things where I really thought and reflected on what I really like in life and what I wanted to do. I really realized that that is what I like, and that is what, me as a person, always wanted to think about, do. I’m always looking at new foodie things, new restaurants. I took myself out of the box and looked at my own behavior. That’s how I came to realize that it’s a really big passion for me.

Joseph: How did the idea for SAVOURSMITHS come about then?

Colette: Mike then said, ‘If you do something entrepreneurial, I’ll do it with you. I’ll support you. I think it’s a really good idea.’ We thought, ‘Let’s maybe do something with fresh food’ because of my whole Pilates instructor background, and Mike’s also very healthy, and we wanted to do something that we could be proud of. We chatted to a guy called David France, who ended up being and still our known executive consultant. He’s been a really good mentor for us. I read a few books on fresh produce, and we were thinking and thinking.

One night, I think we were just having a glass of champagne, and we had like a ta-da moment. The plan came together. We were like, Mike’s family are potato farmers. It’s amazing. We love snacks. That’s something we absolutely love. ‘Let’s go into potato crisp manufacturing,’ which is not a noble idea. It’s not a brand new idea, but we thought since they have the farm, it’s so nice. It’s something we personally love. Let’s make the best crisp that there’s ever been in the UK. That’s kind of how it came together.

Joseph: How do you now think about how you balance your time between SAVOURSMITHS and also your modeling? The reason why I ask is a lot of times, people who are listening are interested in portfolio career – this idea of having multiple interests and keeping them afloat. How do you balance those two? There may be other things also because I know you also mentioned you’re a Pilates instructor.

Colette: I try to do SAVOURSMITHS when I’m not modeling. If I’m modeling, obviously, I take the day off, and I focus on that. I do my castings. If I commute and go on the train, I send emails from my laptop while I’m commuting. When I’m working and I have a free moment, I work on SAVOURSMITHS. The funny thing now, which is really ironic, is before, agencies will tell you to eat healthy, go to the gym, exercise. Now, all of a sudden, I have the clients and the agency devouring my crisps in front of me at castings and the jobs, which are really funny. They’re like, ‘Oh my word, we can’t believe you do this now.’

What’s really important is that you must realize that you can do more than one thing. Mike always has a really good motto in life, which is ‘It’s not about what you do but what you get done.’ I try to focus on that because I think, sometimes, you can spend 10 hours kind of floating about doing various things but not getting so much done. I think it’s the lunk who sold this Ferrari. He said the first 90 minutes of the day is so important, and I really try to do that. I try to sit down and really look at everything and go through everything and make lists.

I think when your mind gets so busy, it’s really good to keep lists and plan because I think if you fail to plan your tomorrow, then you plan to fail basically. I think it’s easy to keep balance if you have to take everything off and do everything because it’s very complicated if you just tried to remember what must do.

I also think another way in which I balance my life is I try to make time for myself as well because I think it energizes you, just where you sit back and get inspiration and do things you enjoy where you can reflect. I go for a walk every day. I know Mike does that too. We don’t go together. We go separately. Just a little walk is really good for you to just take a breather. Then you can get back, be focused, be balanced, and it really makes it easy. Some people would need to just sit and have a cup of tea, whatever they want to do.

Joseph: What do you think has been the most surprising part of having both of these careers, which at least on the surface don’t seem to be directly related with one another?

Colette: The rejection is so similar. I actually feel so lucky to have had a modeling career before I started being an entrepreneur because there’s so much rejection in this. We obviously phone a lot of people up, go see a lot of clients, make contact with them, email them, and a lot of people just really don’t care about you and are really just like, ‘No, I don’t want to work with you. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you’re phoning me,’ or they just simply don’t like it or they like something else or they’re friendly with someone who has another crisp brand or whatever. You’ll never know. I think that’s very similar as well.

I think what I’ve learned from modeling that I find in the entrepreneurial world too is you just got to push through, and you mustn’t dwell on it too much and think about the rejection too much and think about the uncertainty too much. You just look for the next thing and the next client. Every day is a new day with new opportunity.

Joseph: When you look back on this past year of launching SAVOURSMITHS and now managing that business, what’s something that you wish you had known about this new life of yours that you now know?

Colette: I wish I started earlier because it’s so much fun. It is so satisfying. It’s not been simple, but it is possible clearly, and I just absolutely love it. I think before, I was always uncertain about what I should do. I was thinking, ‘Can I do it?’ It’s also part of the whole rejection thing, about, ‘Will I be good enough to achieve this and grow a good business and everything?’ If I let go of all those insecurities and fears, I would’ve started earlier. That’s what I wish I knew. It can be done.

Joseph: Having been through this career transition, what’s one thing that you’ve learned about yourself?

Colette: One thing is that I’m really a people person. I love people. I love being creative. I love just working with people, and I love this lifestyle of being an entrepreneur. I like the rush of not knowing what’s next. I’ve also learned that I can be quite disciplined and I could do a lot in a business more than I thought I could, because at the moment, it’s just me and Mike still. We both do everything from our accounts to our marketing to our flavoring, everything we do. I never realized that I could do quite so much myself and in such a short space of time as well.

Joseph: I want to wrap up by talking a little bit more about SAVOURSMITHS. Can you tell me a little bit more about what’s next for you guys at SAVOURSMITHS? I know you were recently listed in Waitrose. For those people who are outside the UK who aren’t familiar with Waitrose, it’s one of the most well-known and more upmarket mass grocery stores in the UK. What’s next for you guys at SAVOURSMITHS?

Colette: We’re just trying to continue selling our product to more places in the UK. We try to focus on farm shops, delis, gourmet pubs, gourmet restaurants. We really love quality, and we’ve tried to put the most luxurious ingredients into our crisps. We try to go over that sort of markets or try and get into more shops like that. We’ll try and export a little bit. We’ve already started exporting to Germany. We’ve done some in America actually as well, but we haven’t done that much because we’re only still a baby company. We’ll try and look at that, and we’ll try and bring on new exciting flavors, which we’re currently working on some, which is quite exciting.

Joseph: Do you have a favorite flavor? I think you guys have four flavors out right now.

Colette: I think my favorite is the parmesan and port flavor. I really like it. We’ve actually just been nominated for great British food award for that flavor. Then I think the champers and Serrano chilli is a very fun flavor because you get that fizz of champagne on your tongue followed by a hint of Serrano chilli, which is really fun and exciting I think.

Joseph: I do have a confession, Colette. I didn’t tell you this the last time we talked, but I think you know I used to work for Gü Desserts. It’s another indulgent brand, and whenever you joined the company at the time, you had to say what your guilty pleasure was. Then they include that underneath your staff headshot on the website. I kid you not – I said my guilty pleasure was eating meat-flavored crisps, so I was very happy to see you guys launching some of these products. I’m definitely digging the wagyu beef flavor that you guys have out there.

Colette: I like that too, but I personally like cheese a lot.

Joseph: Finally, I got to mention this. We’re recording this in July 2017, and I know you’re featured on the cover of this month’s ‘Your Fitness Magazine’ and also in this month’s ‘Wedding Ideas Magazine,’ which is very cool. I’m just curious, what’s been your most gratifying modeling gig and why?

Colette: Each job is special on its own because you work with so many interesting people from all around the world all the time, which is great. I would say I’ve done ‘L Magazine,’ which I love, which I think was one of my favorite things that I’ve done. Then I’ve done Condé Nast ‘Brides,’ which was gorgeous. Lots of interesting other jobs like with Swarovski, Sony, Virgin, Cornetto, which is all really fun, and I absolutely love them.

Joseph: If people want to learn more about you or if they want to learn more about SAVOURSMITHS, where can they go to find out more?

Colette: If they want to know more about me, they can probably give me a call.

Joseph: We will not put your phone number on.

Colette: Or go on our website, email me. No, don’t worry. Please don’t. No, I’m joking. We’ll probably do a little bit more marketing and stuff where we write more about our story and the story behind SAVOURSMITHS, so people will be seeing that. They can listen to your podcast obviously.

More about SAVOURSMITHS is on our website, which is www.SAVOURSMITHS.com. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, which we update and we keep it exciting and tell you all the new and exciting news and where you can buy it and everything like that.

Joseph: Very cool. Thank you so much, Colette, for telling us more about your career as a model and entrepreneur and how important it is to be persistent in your career and most of all how to balance the different priorities that you have in your professional life. Thanks for your time, and best of luck with the rollout of SAVOURSMITHS in the UK, Germany, and America.

Colette: Thank you, and hopefully more.

How can you apply design thinking to your own career? In this episode of Career Relaunch, former high school teacher turned Site Reliability Engineer for DropBox, Krishelle Hardson-Hurley explains how she relaunched her career, sharing useful tips on how to use design thinking to plan out your next career move, investing time to create a clear & consistent career narrative, and the opportunities that come from making audacious moves. In the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll talk about the benefits and drawbacks of setting firm goals.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I challenged you to take a momentary step back from one of your goals that’s been an enduring, driving force in your career. To what extent does working toward that goal still make sense? If that goal no longer serving you, what can you do right now to finally let it go & make room for the pursuit of something greater?

Krishelle Hardson-Hurley is a former high school mathematics and language teacher who now works as a Site Reliability Engineer at Dropbox. With an eye for design and a love for problem solving, Krishelle’s passionate about building tools that support learning, collaboration and productivity as well as advocating for matters related to education and equity.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

BrandYourself offers simple tools and services to help control what people find when they Google you. To clean up, protect, and improve how you look online, visit BrandYourself.com and use promo code ‘RELAUNCH’ to get 50% off a Premium membership.

Teaser (first ~15s): I just said, ‘I want to be a teacher forever, so I’m going to go do that right away.’ You can imagine sort of my head down, focused on just achieving these milestones without actually picking my head up and thinking, ‘Is this really what you want to do?’

Joseph: Krishelle, thanks so much for joining me here on Career Relaunch. I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on how you can apply design thinking to your career and the steps you took to shift from teaching to the tech industry. I was wondering if we could start off though by having you tell us a little bit about Dropbox and your role there.

Krishelle: Thanks, Joseph, so much for having me. I’m super excited to share my experiences from my own personal career launch. I’m currently working at Dropbox, which is a cloud data company where we store your data inside the cloud so that you can access it from anywhere on any of your devices. The role that I’m currently in is I’m a SRE or Site-Reliability Engineer. I’m sort of a hybrid between a software engineer and a system administrator. I’m focused on making sure all the systems that Dropbox depends on are reliable and that Dropbox is always available for our users. I utilize code to automate all the processes to make sure that those things happen.

Joseph: I know there’s a lot of different roles there at Dropbox. How did you decide on becoming an SRE versus other sorts of roles there at Dropbox?

Krishelle: Frankly, I was really looking for a really great running opportunity. I landed in the SRE role because the program was designed around bringing up people who were making a career change as apprentices in this type of role. I was really looking for something that would allow me to learn and be engaged in design conversations. Also, at Dropbox, we’re constantly trying to make our product better and trying to make it more reliable, more available and just create a better user experience for our users. That really forces you to be engaged in these critical conversations around problem solving and design. SRE allowed me to do that from all different avenues.

Joseph: I know, Krishelle, you haven’t always been a site-reliability engineer. Can you give us a glimpse into your former life as a high school teacher back in San Diego?

Krishelle: Prior to me becoming an SRE at Dropbox, I was teaching for about six years. Five of those years were in San Diego, California. When I went into college, I immediately pursued the route of becoming a math teacher. I had always been very strong in math. Both my parents were math majors. I thought, ‘This is the right path for me,’ and so I ended up pursuing that route.

The issue with that is that I don’t think that I spent a lot of time thinking critically about whether that was a job I wanted to do. I didn’t know a lot about it. All of us go through school. We all see teachers work. We don’t always know everything that goes into the profession of teaching. Although I had seen my mom go through it, most of my experience with her was watching her as an administrator, so I didn’t always have a clear view into the classroom.

As I got to the end of my program at university, typically when you’re finishing a credential program, you go into what’s called student teaching. That’s like an apprenticeship for teachers where you work under a master teacher and you learn the ropes.

As I’m in this program, I’m thinking, ‘This is pretty challenging. I can probably do it.’ I wasn’t sure if it was for me, and I think that’s pretty typical of new teachers. I think a lot of new teachers get in there, like, ‘This is very hard. This is harder than I expected.’ Typically, other teachers will tell you, ‘Give it some time. You’ll get the hang of it. Give it a couple of years, and you’ll really know whether this is the right place for you.’

Joseph: Was there anything in particular that made you a little bit uneasy about doing the teaching that you’re doing?

Krishelle: Part of the reason that I ended up leaving was that teaching itself, in addition to this idea of wanting to grow myself, is that it was really exhausting me. At the core, I wasn’t getting everything out of it in order to really feel fulfilled.

In that instance, I was able to tell that because my behavior was demonstrating it. I started to do a lot of side projects. The little free time that I did have, I would take on these little projects – things like event planning and cake decorating. I ended up taking a coaching position at my job, and I think I was doing that to sort of mitigate this feeling of lack of professional and personal growth. I’d say, ‘I’ll just take on all this other stuff. Maybe I can find it there.’

Eventually, that really led me to just be very exhausted, and I ended up in a position where I took a coaching position, and I made a commitment that the expectation was that I do that for a very, very long time and end my career in this particular position. I think that was a very important moment for me because I really had to confront the fact that I wasn’t getting everything I needed out of that career. That was the defining moment for me where I decided that it was time to make a change.

Joseph: What was the difference between this point of exhaustion and some of those mental rumblings that you had been feeling before?

Krishelle: I think at this point, the side projects weren’t even doing it for me anymore. They were not even helping to make me feel fulfilled. Those too were over-exhausting to me, and so I really felt this pull to see what else is out there. I was confronted by the fact, towards the end there, that I hadn’t really thought critically upfront about the choices I was making to go down this path. I knew that I needed to take more time to think about it, and I think when you get to that low point of exhaustion, you start to question all your choices. That’s sort of what happened.

Joseph: One of the things that you had mentioned—I think it was in your webinar you gave for women who code—was that you mentioned having your head down, focused toward achieving your goal. What exactly did you mean by that?

Krishelle: Once I got into university—I went to the University of San Diego—they asked you to declare a major. I immediately declared math major with the intent on becoming a teacher without even really thinking about it. I was very determined during that time to finish both my credential and my double major that I ended up getting in four years. At that point, I sort of put my head down, and I really focused on reaching the end goal of you will get your degree in four years. It will be in math and Spanish with a teaching credential, and then you will go on to teach. That was what I was focused on.

I ended up going on and getting a Master’s because I knew, within the teaching profession, you can actually move up the pay scale if you have a Master’s. So I just said, ‘I want to be a teacher forever, so I’m going to go do that right away.’ You can imagine sort of my head down, focused on just achieving these milestones without actually picking my head up and thinking, ‘Is this really what you want to do?’

Joseph: I’ve definitely been there myself, Krishelle. On the one hand, a goal can be really great, but then on the other hand, it can be a little bit limiting, and it can prevent you from being able to see the other options that are out there.

I read a couple of your blog posts on Medium and the Hackbright Academy blog. One of the things that struck me was how methodical you were about your approach to shifting from teaching into what you’re doing right now. For the rest of the conversation, I’d love to dig in a little bit more into specifically how you applied design thinking to your career change. I know that’s something that you’ve talked about before. Could you just walk us through how you applied design thinking to your life and career?

Krishelle: The idea of design thinking is that you identify a problem, and then you move on to develop several prototypes that address this key problem that you have. Then you go through this process of testing those different prototypes and keep iterating on the one that is ultimately chosen. This is a process that’s actually used when you’re designing anything, from a coffee to a computer mouse.

The problem that I started with was this idea that I’m not fulfilled as a teacher, and so I started to think about, ‘What do I like about teaching? What don’t I like? What are the other things that I’m doing, addressing that teaching maybe is not? What are the central themes about those things that I can pull out and try to make into a career for myself?’ Ultimately, I sort of reframed that problem statement into, ‘I need to find a career where I can use design,’ because designing was very key to all of those different activities I was doing, ‘where I could problem solve on a day-to-day basis and where I could have impact.’

There’s this really fantastic book called Designing Your Life. If there are any folks out there that are looking for some more strategies on how to think through this process, that’s a really great resource for you.

What I ended up doing after honing in around this problem statement of looking for design and problem solving and impact, I went forth and tried to create a list of what they called prototypes in the design world where I say, ‘These are the different careers that might be interesting to me. Let me explore them a little bit.’ That’s the sort of testing part of this whole process.

Some of the careers I looked at was computer animation. I grew up in SoCal. I was really into watching animated films and Disney, so I thought maybe I could go into that realm and become a computer animator because that blended technology and art and creativity and whatnot. I thought about that and took an animation class. That was my way of testing whether that was going to be an appropriate direction to go, and I ended up not liking that. It wasn’t for me, and so I pivot to another prototype.

As I mentioned before, I thought about doing some teacher training, I thought about going into tech as a product manager or an engineer. The way that I went about testing those three is I just started to have conversations with people. I started to reach out to people in EdTech or just in tech in general, different employees, CEOs, things like that. A couple of people that I came across were engineers within tech, not necessarily EdTech but within tech. They started to tell me about how they got to work on different projects, and they were always constantly engaged in this idea of design thinking and problem solving.

Ultimately, I learned about a boot camp called Hackbright Academy, which is a software engineering boot camp. It’s three months long, and it actually allows people to make a career change into tech to become an engineer at the end. That was ultimately the route that I chose, because when I went to speak to some folks at that school, I really felt that those thing I was looking were really going to be something that I would get out of an engineering career.

Joseph: One of the other things that you had talked about in some of the articles that I read that you had written, this part where you’re talking about testing prototypes is to test enough prototypes, and wait till you have that moment when one of them just speaks to you. Can you just explain how you determined whether something was speaking to you or whether it was just something that you kind of thought was interesting?

Krishelle: I had heard about this school called Hackbright, and I went to an open-house that they were hosting. I go in, I sit down, there’s a bunch of other women there, it’s an all-women school, and they had a panel. On the panel was a teacher. It’s like everything I had said to everyone in my life about what I was looking was coming out of this teacher’s mouth in this moment.

I think it’s important, as folks are out there and considering this career change, that as you’re talking to different people, if something jumps out at you, really piques your interest, really engages you, you engage in an activity that time flies by and you don’t even notice, to really pay attention to that, because that is something really speaking out to you that this is a path worth looking into or possibly pursuing long-term.

Joseph: This process you’re describing of applying design thinking to your career sounds very patient, very rigorous, very methodical, and it sounds like it really worked well for you. At the same time, it also sounds like it requires a lot of discipline and hard work. Was there any sort of tool you used to help you stay on track to keep track of this design process applied to your own career?

Krishelle: I am sort of a type A person in the sense that I like to write all of these ideas down and come up with a framework for myself. I actually wrote a blog post that maybe we can link to later on.

Joseph: I saw that. That’s exactly what I’m referring to.

Krishelle: It’s where I described how I thought about these things and how I broke it down.

In reference to a particular tool, I would say one that I really make use of still today is Trello because I think it really allows you to encapsulate all of your different ideas into small cards that could then be moved around and edited. I think if you’re someone who’s actually making a career change, and you’re going through the job search process, you can use it to really have a good view. It’s almost like a board to look at where you can see your progress right in front of you.

Joseph: That’s a really good segue way into how you landed your job at Dropbox. I read your article on how you designed your career change on the Hackbright Academy blog and how you really hustled to land your job at Dropbox. One of the things that you mentioned in there was about asking questions and asking intentional questions. Can you just explain what you meant by an intentional question?

Krishelle: I had done all of this work of designing my career blueprint and really thinking critically about what I want. By the time I was in front of the folks that would actually give me an opportunity to pursue that, I could tell my story very well because I have thought through it. I had really done the work to understand what I was looking for, and I could communicate it very effectively.

I ended up meeting a woman who worked at Dropbox. She was the Engineering Manager, still is, and I just started talking to her about what she does. What I found is that a lot of the common problems she faced, I had faced in my own project, and so we go in this really cool narrative. After she and I had communicated over email several times, I saw her at a different event. When I saw her, I realized how impactful she really was as a female leader in tech, which you don’t see very often frankly. I was just really impressed and inspired by her.

So I just decided to ask, ‘Would you ever take a junior person?’ because typically, when you come out of these boot camps, you’re at a very junior level. She happened to say, ‘Oh, we’re doing this program with a boot camp, and it’s going to be great,’ and then she sort of just walked away. That was an important moment because I went home and I thought, I should asked to be considered because otherwise, no one’s going to hand me this type of opportunity.

I decided to send her an email, and I said, ‘Hey, I’m really inspired by you. I would love to work for you. I’ll do whatever it takes. If there’s ever an opportunity, please let me know.’ Because I stepped out to ask that very poignant and audacious question, she was so impressed by that that she ultimately invited me to come and interview. Eventually, I was very lucky to land the position.

Joseph: What’s one thing that you’ve learned about what it takes to make a career change into the tech industry that you wished that you had known before?

Krishelle: The biggest thing is your network. That summer I talked about earlier where I spent the entire summer just pushing out my resume, I was not successful because I did not have a network here. The most important thing and choice that I made was to move up here and start building my network. I think it really does help when you know someone who can vouch for you and say, ‘Yeah, she’s really awesome. She would be a great addition to our team.’ Unfortunately, that’s the tough part because a lot of people may not know anyone at a particular company or within the industry.

It really is, at the end of the day, a lot of the times, about who you’ve connected with or what people know about you, whether it be through someone else or via what you put out into the world online. That’s something that I put a lot of emphasis on, and I focus a lot on: just making sure my online presence really shows who I am as a whole person and what I care about, because sometimes, it may not be about who you know, but it may be about someone seeing something that you did or you wrote about, piquing their interest and ultimately leading you to an amazing opportunity.

Joseph: I think that’s really important. Again, I know you touched on that in your article: just making sure that the message that you convey is consistent with your online narrative. I think that’s what you are alluding to there.

Before we go, I also wanted to touch on a project I know you’re really passionate about, which is The Bethune Project. Can you wrap up by just telling us a little bit more about that?

Krishelle: The Bethune Project is this amazing project that started this past year during Black History Month, and it was actually started by the great-grandson of Mary McLeod Bethune, who in the United States was a civil-rights activist. One of the things that he noticed was that there were a lot of negative imagery around African-American men in the United States. What he wanted to do was really turn that over and offer people a repository or collection of positive images of black men.

If you go to TheBethuneProject.com or you go to TheBethuneProject on Instagram, you can see this collection of these amazing images of black men. It’s a photo project. I encourage everyone out there to check out the project. Follow it and just support this amazing work that he’s doing.

Joseph: Thanks so much for letting us know about The Bethune Project. We’ll definitely include a link to The Bethune Project in the show notes along with a link to your articles, which I think do a really great job of walking people through exactly how you made this career change, the tools you used, the steps you took, how applied design thinking to your career search. In addition to that, where can people go to learn more about you?

Krishelle: They can go to Krishelle.me. That has all the links to all my other social media sites. Feel free to follow and engage in a conversation with me. I’d love to chat.

Joseph: Fantastic. Krishelle, I really admire your methodical approach to taking control of your career, and I really just wanted to thank you for telling us more about your life as a site-reliability engineer, how can apply design thinking to your career, and the proactive steps you took to land your role at Dropbox. I hope things continue to go well for you there.

Krishelle: Thanks so much, and thanks for having me, Joseph. This has been awesome. You are really someone who really helped me to make this choice and gave me some of the tools that I still use today. I really appreciate all the work you’re doing.

Your past professional experiences can often play an unexpected role in shaping your future career. In this week’s episode of Career Relaunch, Dinara Kasko explains how she used her training as an architect to now create beautiful architectural desserts as a pastry chef. We’ll discuss the importance of persistence, how to get your work noticed, and how to put yourself in a position to get lucky.

In the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll share a few thoughts on how to leverage your past experiences to create a way forward with your future career ambitions.

At the end of this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I recommended you find some way to take one element of your your past experiences to think about how you can leverage your past to open a door to the future. What’s 1 specific element of your past experiences you could use to help you create a unique, “right to play” in the career space you’re trying to enter? Share your actions below!

Dinara Kasko is a Pastry Chef from Ukraine. After graduating from Kharkov University Architecture School and working as an architect, designer, and a 3D visualizer, Dinara started baking some simple cakes & pies, but quickly began creating more complex, architectural cakes, which turned into her passion. She now uses a unique technique of digitally designing her cakes then using a 3D printer to create molds she uses to build those cakes. To check out Dinara’s amazing pastry creations, follower her on Instagram.

A sampling of Dinara Kasko’s creations . . .

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Thanks to General Assembly for sponsoring this episode of Career Relaunch. General Assembly is a pioneer in education and career transformation, specializing in today’s most in-demand skills. Visit GA.co to lean how to boost your career. Use Promo code ‘RELAUNCH‘ for 20% off your 1st class or workshop.

Teaser (first ~15s): I’m an ordinary young girl from Ukraine. I’m not a professional pastry chef. Now, they like my work, so they decided to make an article with my work. Also, I think I they gave me a very big chance.

Joseph: Dinara, thank you so much for joining me today on Career Relaunch. I’m very excited to hear about your career and all the work that you’re doing, which is very beautifully done. Could you just get us started by telling us a little bit more about the work you do right now?

Dinara: Now, I’m working a lot with 3D modelling, so I work a lot at my computer. I’m making different models for different new cakes. I have a lot of ideas, so I try to combine this modeling with my cakes. Also, I attended different classes with different great chefs.

Joseph: I would love to hear a little bit more about the cakes that you create. Could you describe that process of the pastries that you’re creating and how you go about it?

Dinara: In general, all that I make are ordinary mousse cakes. You can create the same at home because I work at home too. All cakes were made in my home. I can propose my new forms, new shapes for these cakes, so I’m working a lot with this part – with modelling. These cakes are very traditional French cakes with mousses, with lots of cream and gelatin, ordinary cakes with sponge cake, jelly, with different confit, different fruits, with mousse, with white or black or milk chocolate. I like very traditional taste.

Joseph: I think you and I, when we spoke before, I told you I used to work in the luxury desserts industry myself, and so I know how much work goes into making a single cake. What you’re doing is a very delicate process. It’s incredible to see the art and the architecture that goes into the cakes that you design. Out of curiosity, how long does the process take you from start to finish?

Dinara: It depends on your goal because it can be maybe three hours, but it can take also maybe one month. For example, if I need to print my model, I can print then I can see some mistakes on the model. I need to remodel it and print again, and then I need to cast my silicone mold then make cake inside, and then I need to work also with this recipe which I can put inside.

Joseph: I know you weren’t always a pastry chef. You actually started your career in architecture. I was wondering if you could take us back in time before you were creating these beautiful cakes and pastries and tell us a little bit about your time as an architect and a design visualizer I believe is what it’s called in the Netherlands.

Dinara: Yes, I worked as an architect in this company in some European company for three years. Also, I worked as a designer for the university of my second course I think. I worked, in general, maybe eight years as an architect, but in Ukraine, it’s not very popular and can’t make a lot of money because we have a crisis now. Cakes are more popular now.

I started getting interested in cakes maybe five years ago. I started to attend different classes, and at the same time, I worked as a visualizer in this company, but I realized that to make these cakes is more interesting for me than sitting near my computer and making the same all day. Also, for example, if you work as a visualizer, you can make these models, pictures, different visualizations day-by-day, but you can’t touch this. It’s more important for me to make something that I touch. I like it when I see the result of my work.

Joseph: This is something that I know a lot of people talk about who work in large companies. They’re working on projects, and they’re sitting in front of their computer screens, but they never get a chance to actually see the end result or to actually touch and feel the fruits of their labor. How did you get the idea of creating cakes? How did that come about?

Dinara: Maybe four years ago, I like to make cake after my work in the evening. I spent a lot of time at my kitchen, but it was just my hobby. I have a lot of friends. They came to my home, and we ate these cakes every week I think. Three years ago, I was pregnant, and I stopped my work as an architect, and so I had more time in my kitchen. I spent more and more time with cakes, with different experiments. Every day, it was more and more interesting for me.

Joseph: Do you think that if you had not become pregnant, do you think you still would have pursued this cake passion of yours?

Dinara: Yes. Before my pregnancy, I thought about education, about big schools. I wanted to go to a big, professional academy to learn pastry, but I decided that the pregnancy, the children, and family are more important for me, so I chose my family.

Joseph: How does an architect shift from working in that industry to working in a totally different industry? Can you walk us through how the early days looked for you when you were starting to explore doing this more professionally?

Dinara: Day by day, I made more and more cakes, so I started to attend different classes. I realized that it’s very interesting for me – these textures, colors. It’s very modern – this design, this mousse cake with different glazes, very shiny. Some of these cakes, they look for me like a piece of art, and I saw the great chefs here in Ukraine, and it was amazing for me. I attended classes from different champions from France and Spain and Russia, and I feel like I’m in fairytale because after these classes, I started to makes these cakes with their recipes day by day, every day, every evening. I started to buy different special ingredients, tools, and made different experiments. It was like a big, big hobby, just my passion for my free time.

Joseph: At what point did you realize that this could be more than just a hobby, that other people would become very interested in your work, and that this could become something bigger?

Dinara: In general, maybe two years ago, I made a page in Instagram. I saw that there are a lot of beautiful pictures of beautiful cakes, and there were a lot of chefs. I tried to make something very beautiful with good photos, and after one of the famous magazines saw my work, they proposed for me to make an article for their magazine. For me, it was the main thing in my career, this article in such magazine.

Joseph: How did the magazine find you? The reason why I ask is because there are a lot of people out there. Let’s say they started an Instagram feed, and nobody goes to it. I got an Instagram feed for this podcast, but I might have 200 followers. That’s kind of it right now. Was it just luck that this magazine discovered you? How did they find you or do you know?

Dinara: I think all in my life, it’s like a big luck for me. I’m lucky. I have a friend from Kyiv. She’s named Tetyana, and she has a very big academy in Kyiv. This is my first academy. I was here a lot of times in different classes with different chefs. She proposed for me to send a message to this magazine with my work because she likes my work. I sent messages. I sent maybe five times, but every time, this mail went to spam. It was in October, I decided, ‘Okay, no.’

Joseph: Right, it’s a sign.

Dinara: Yes, it’s a sign. After that, in January, they sent me a message on Instagram, and they proposed for me to make an article for their magazine on how we can combine architecture and pastry. Then I prepared some works or them.

Joseph: So you took the initiative to reach out to them multiple times, and then they finally got back to you at some point.

Dinara: Yes, but after it, I saw that there will be a lot of Russian or Ukrainian chefs after my article because I saw that a lot of people would write to this magazine. If you want to make something, if you want to be famous, if you want people to know your work, you need to write to some magazine, some chefs, or some very important men in this world.

Joseph: Was there anything that was difficult about reaching out to people early on for you, or was that the fairly comfortable activity for you to be sending your pictures off to these magazines?

Dinara: I was scared of course. After Tetyana proposed for me to make a message for this magazine, I didn’t send them any information for maybe three weeks. I was thinking about it.

Joseph: What was scary about that?

Dinara: Because I’m an ordinary young girl from Ukraine, from a small city, and I’m not famous, I’m not a professional pastry chef, how is it possible to see my work in such magazines like this ‘Sogood’? For me, it was impossible in general. Now, they like my work, so they decided to make an article with my work. Also, I think they gave me a very big chance.

Joseph: What do you think has been the most surprising thing about moving from architecture into the world of pastries and desserts?

Dinara: For me it was my popularity because I’m famous now. It’s the most surprising so far.

Joseph: How has your life changed since becoming ‘famous’?

Dinara: In general, I have an ordinary life now, the same life, but I travel a lot, and I have a lot of friends. A lot of people want to contact me to ask me something, to make me some propositions, invite me to different countries, but I try to have an ordinary life like I had before.

Joseph: What do you think has been the most challenging part of this journey for you?

Dinara: Now, I can’t make ordinary cakes. I can’t show my followers just ordinary red or white cake or some of our traditional cakes. I can’t make myself on Instagram. All works need to be beautiful and professional. I can make now only professional things. Also, I need to combine my ordinary work at home with my daughter with this pastry. I need to make something new every day, some new recipes, so I need to combine all.

Joseph: I know that taking care of kids is a full-time job. How do you find the time to invest in creating these beautiful pieces of pastry art? Because I know a lot of people feel like, whether they have kids or not, they have their responsibilities during the day, and they don’t have time to do these other things. How did you create that time for yourself?

Dinara: I have a very short answer. I have night.

Joseph: You just sleep less.

Dinara: Yes, at night. You can work at night. Also, I have a big family, so they usually help me with my daughter. My grandfather can work with my daughter during the day, and I have one or two hours for working. In general, all of our work we do at night.

Joseph: I know that you husband is also involved with the process. Can you tell us a little bit about what he does?

Dinara: He is the biggest part of our process I think. He helps me with photographs, with videos. Also now, he works with my website. Also, he has a lot of different ideas that we make together.

Joseph: One thing that I’m really interested in, just to bring our conversation to a close here, is how did other architects react to you leaving the world of architecture to work in the world of pastries?

Dinara: I have a friend. They are architects too. My best friend, of course they’re proud of me. A lot of people are proud of me, a lot of my friends, but now, you can change your career in any time. If you want to be an architect, okay, but if you want to be in some other profession, you can do it easily. In Ukraine, I think in all the world, you can do it. Why not? Because if you’ll be happy in some other way, you can change your way.

Joseph: Do you have any advice for someone out there who is in a job that maybe they’re not that happy with and is thinking about making a change?

Dinara: You can change your way, you can change your career in any time. Of course you need to make money in your ordinary job for this because you can stop your ordinary work. For example, I can’t be architect today and I can’t be pastry chef tomorrow. You need to change it day by day, so you need to work in two ways. At one time, you can realize that some other profession for you is more interesting. Why not? For example, now, I’m working as a pastry chef. I’m working with cake a lot, but I can change my way. Maybe in five years, I will be dancing or something else. Why not?

Joseph: Right, why not? Finally, before we talk about your current projects, what’s something that you have learned about yourself during this career change?

Dinara: I learned that I can work every day without sleeping if needed, that I have very good family, and they help me a lot. I realized that I have a lot of ideas, and we can change our world. I’m so happy that I can meet a lot of people with this pastry art.

Joseph: I would love to wrap up by talking about your current projects. What’s next for you? As you look ahead, I know you have a lot of different interests, but what does the future look like for you?

Dinara: I want to travel a lot. I want more children. I want to have a bigger family. Also, I want to work with my 3D printer, make new models because we have a lot of sketches, and make new cakes, work a lot with recipes. Also, I want to go to have professional education maybe for two or three months or for one year, to be more professional.

Joseph: I know that a lot of people are asking you for your time right now, and I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today about your journey.

Dinara: No, thank you.

Joseph: Yeah, thank you so much. Dinara, if people want to learn more about your work or if they want to just take a look at some of the beautiful architectural pastries that you’ve created, where can they go to learn more about you?

Dinara: They can find information about me at my website, DinaraKasko.com, or you can find information at my Instagram.

Joseph: I would highly recommend people to check out Dinara’s Instagram feed. It’s absolutely incredible to watch. Also the videos on your website are just amazing pieces of art to witness how these cakes come together. It’s very impressive. I have worked in the dessert industry myself. I have not seen anything like this before. Congratulation in all your great work, and I wish you the best in the future.

Dinara: Thank you very much.

What does it take to move to a new country and relaunch your life? In Career Relaunch Episode 21, Manuel Chilet shares his unique story of transplanting himself from Valencia, Spain to London, UK, shifting from Sales to the Hospitality industry. He now works on the concierge team at the W Hotel in London. During the episode, Manuel shares some useful tips on the impact a positive attitude can have on your career prospects, how to recreate your life and career in a new country, and a glimpse into the world of hotel hospitality. In the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll answer a listener question about how to manage having lots of different career interests.

At the end of this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I alluded to the idea of surrounding yourself with people who make you happy. My challenge to you find one person this week who makes you feel good when you’re around them—either a colleague or friend–who makes you feel energized, and you haven’t talked to in a while, and take the initiative to reconnect with them. Who will you plan to reconnect with? I’m actually planning to reconnect with Manuel when his episode airs!

Manuel Chilet at the W Hotel, Leicester Square in London, UK

Manuel Chilet was born in Spain and moved to London, England eight years ago. He decided to change his relatively comfortable life as a sales coordinator in Spain to start a career in hospitality in London. After relaunching his life in London, he eventually went on to become part of the concierge team at the W Hotel in Leicester Square London.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

BrandYourself offers simple tools and services to help control what people find when they Google you. To clean up, protect, and improve how you look online, visit BrandYourself.com and use promo code ‘RELAUNCH’ to get 50% off a Premium membership.

Teaser (first ~15s): I was hungry for learning the language. I was hungry for meeting people. I was hungry for having a sort of life. Within less than a year, I was already calling London my home.

Joseph: Manuel, it’s great to talk to you again. Thank you so much for taking time to join me here on Career Relaunch.

Manuel: Hi, Joseph. Thank you very much for inviting me to share my humble experience. Thank you.

Joseph: I was wondering if you could start off by telling us what you’re focused right now on in your professional and your personal life.

Manuel: I’m actually in Spain taking care of mom. She’s going through cancer. The company allowed me to take a couple of months and be here taking care of her while the treatment is going on. I might be back in London within a few weeks because we are getting really good results with the treatment and chemotherapy. Everything is going fine here back home. As soon as every one of the steps are in place, I’ll be back in London because that’s the place to be.

Joseph: I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today because I know that your mother’s been going through a tough time. At the same time, it sounds like the chemo is going well so far, so that’s really good to hear.

Just to talk a little bit about your life back in London—because that’s where we first crossed paths. I know you’re back right now in Valencia for the time being—can you tell us a little bit about your life in London and what you do?

Manuel: I’m working in hospitality at the W Hotel in Leicester Square. At the moment, I’m part of the concierge department where I work as a concierge. I’m involved in the departmental training program. It’s pretty much my intention to keep going with Starwood because we’ve got many properties. Now that Marriott is taking over the company, we might be even bigger than we are. I like the company. I think that the environment is perfect, and it’s a great place to develop a career.

Joseph: I’ve been there myself in the W Hotel, and I know you definitely bring a lot of energy to your role, which is how we first met. Before you were at the W Hotel and working for Starwood and working in hospitality, I know you were working in a very different line of work before that. Can you take us back to what you were doing before because I know it involved a little bit of sales if I’m correct?

Manuel: My background was mainly in sales. I started working in a tiny company back in Spain, selling water treatments like fountains and stuff. That was my introduction to the sales world. Then I jumped to office depot where we were selling stationery and products for the office and all kinds of stuff, a huge catalogue. Then my path went to newspaper. I started selling advertisement, which was at the moment by far, a fantastic, fantastic experience because it was not just about selling the stuff, but I’m also involved in marketing and events, and I was running key accounts. It’s a really, really interesting world. Then I changed my life.

Joseph: I know that after that, there was a pretty major leap. Before we get to that, what was it like for you in the sales world? How much were you enjoying it? What was the experience of working in sales?

Manuel: What I loved about sales was that it’s a really active world. You spend most of your time interacting with different, so many kinds of people. Every day is a new day with new challenges and new faces, and you’ve got your clients. Some of them you know for many years, but then you’ve got also to build new clients every day. That was really, really interesting. That was the part of the business I enjoyed. Of course, there is the other part of targets and budgets and forecasts that were not that enjoyable, but I have to say that the atmosphere was great, and I enjoyed a lot.

Joseph: It sounds like things were going well. At the same time, you then decided to make a pretty major change. Can you take us through what happened next for you?

Manuel: I’m sure that you all know about the situation. When Spain starts with the recession and crisis, and the economic situation started being not as nice as it was previously, the retirement was something that people were not really keen to spend money on. The situation started being a bit difficult from management and even the relations with the clients because when you’ve been through a difficult situation, like it could be dismissing people or firing people, people started being a different person, absolutely different.

The sales was not fun anymore. There was not much joy by meeting clients because all of them were pretty much in the same delicate situation. There was no money to spend, and management was still trying to push, push, push. There was something really uncomfortable in that situation.

Joseph: You decided to leave sales then at that point. Is that when you decided to move to the UK?

Manuel: Yeah, everything was pretty much. At the same time, I was having coffee with a friend. That friend of mine have been living in Amsterdam in London. At one point, we were in that conversation talking about leaving outside this comfort zone or this area that you’ve been living in for your entire life. Since I was a student, I was really, really interested in traveling and learning different language and everything, but life was taking me through a different process. I met someone, I got married, I have my life sorted, everything was settled, and the plan was going according to the society – getting married, looking for kids but never came. Everything was more or less settled until there was a radical change.

Joseph: What was that radical change?

Manuel: Within a few months, after I got divorced, I found myself in a point where I had to change some other things in my life. I took the decision of working for a company that I would be happy to work for and being surrounded with people that I would love to be with them, not just my colleagues but also my friends and to put something in my life far from pressure and far from this kind of situation that sometimes we get comfortable in a place where we are not 100% happy or where we are not 100% ourselves. That was my main decision.

Joseph: How much did the divorce have an impact on your decision to make the move away from Spain or did it?

Manuel: It’s possible that when I had the decision to get divorced, I started a different way of seeing life. I understood that I could take control over my life. From then, I was a little bit more concerned about my happiness than some other aspects of life, like society’s opinion or even parents’ or friends’. I started taking the decisions just looking for my wellbeing and my happiness.

Joseph: Then you moved to London, and then what happens next for you?

Manuel: London was a fantastic challenge. I was feeling really positive although I was scared absolutely because it was the first time ever I was living somewhere rather than Spain, and my English was not good at all. At least not good enough to start working in sales. Then it happened that I found a job in hospitality. I understood that hospitality was somehow similar to sales, because at the end of the day, I was trying to fulfill the client’s expectations. Before in sales, it was selling my products. Now in hospitality, it’s by giving my service.

Joseph: When I think about people relaunching their careers, I think about five ways they could do it. They could change their role, their function, their company, their industry, or their geography. In this case, you changed all five at once. Can you just explain how you managed to pull that off? How did you land in London and then go about finding this job?

Manuel: I believe that my attitude was really positive. When your attitude is positive, the companies can see that attitude. My intention was, first of all, find a job that could give me some money to survive. The first thing I have in London was just a room, and that’s it. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any kind of contact where I could knock a door or pull a string and find a job. I went to a place, a Spanish restaurant, and the manager asked me, ‘When did you arrive?’ I said, ‘I arrived a week ago.’ ‘What’s your intention?’ I said, ‘I want to work. It’s the only thing I want.’ Again, my English was really, really bad at that point. Again, the change of places, field, everything, because even language was different, was in a way easier than I was expecting from outside.

Joseph: What do you think was surprising about the transition?

Manuel: With that attitude, I could find a job quite easily, even changing jobs and houses. I remember that in the first three months, I moved three times from my place to another place in terms of home. In the first six months, I had to change two or three times because the first one was a restaurant and then was a pub and then was another restaurant. This restaurant was part of a chain, and I changed to another one. Then I just started to work in a big hotel, in a five-star hotel within six months.

Everything was really just happening in a way. I believe it’s all part of that I was hungry for learning the language. I was hungry for meeting people. I was hungry for having a sort of life. Before I was even realizing, the things were happening, and I was finding myself, I’m not going to say settled, but within less than a year, I was already calling London my home.

Joseph: One of the things I guess that struck me when I first met you was just how positive of a person you are and how magnetic of a personality you have. That seems like what you’re talking about is that that attitude and that personality has really served you really well and helped you get these opportunities. I’m just wondering, how do you keep that up? Because I talk to people, and they want to restart their careers, and the first few months, just like you mentioned, it can be really bumpy. How did you manage to keep your positive sentiment up during those times when you had to keep moving flats and you had to keep looking for a job? What was that like?

Manuel: I was quite sure that everything would be okay in no time. I was trying to push myself to work every day for something, like first, I was trying find schools where I could improve my English, because I knew that as soon as I start speaking better English, I could find a better job. It happened that one of my colleagues was the one who introduced me to the five-star hotel. With my first interview, I was going just with a smile with no experience, with no English. I was there, myself, and all my willingness to learn and all my hunger for life maybe.

Joseph: What do you think was the hardest part of recreating your life in a different country?

Manuel: The people. Here in Spain, it’s really easy. You can go to any bar, and you can start a conversation with someone sitting right beside you at the bar, and in no time, you’re talking about really personal things. In London, I found it really, really difficult because of maybe my open-mindedness or the way that I approach friendship. I like to have many, many, many close friends. It’s something that, in London, for me, was a little bit of a challenge.

Joseph: When you started working at the hotel, what was that like for you to suddenly be thrown into an environment where you were doing something totally new in a totally new environment, totally new geography, speaking a totally different language?

Manuel: W is a different kind of hotel, and the atmosphere, it’s totally different. I found that place in hospitality where I could be myself. As soon as I started improving my language and interacting with people from all over the world, either colleagues or hotel guests, I found myself being happy delivering service, being happy interacting with people, fulfilling expectations and demands. It’s fantastic.

Joseph: Is there anything that you have learned during this process that you’d like to share with others that could be helpful to them?

Manuel: Try to avoid opinions because the most important opinion is your opinion for yourself because you know exactly why you’re taking a decision. I could hear many people telling me, “That’s a crazy situation,’ or, ‘The situation over there in England is not much better than it is in Spain,’ or, ‘You do not speak the language. Where are you going to go?’ and this and that. I always kept being positive. If whenever you go there, the situation is not as nice as you’re expecting or you cannot find your way over there, you can just come back. I was really open to make it happen and to give 150%, 200% of myself to make it work.

Joseph: When you look back on your career change, what’s something that you wished you had known that you now know?

Manuel: I wish I had a little bit more of self-confidence because like this, I would have made my change even earlier than I did. For the last year and a half working here in Spain in sales and the situation, I was not happy. I was in a really, really tough working environment. I would love to go back in time and push myself and fill myself up with self-confidence and tell myself, ‘Listen, you are able to do anything you want, so take the decision. Just take this stuff and move.’ Then I would save some precious time of my life.

Joseph: What do you think was the main thing that was holding you back from making the leap earlier?

Manuel: From outside, my life was quite good. I had a really nice apartment in a really nice area in Valencia. My car, my motorbike, my holidays, my friends, but the working environment was giving me such a pressure and such a tough life that, for one and a half years, I was not being myself. I have material things, but my life was not complete for those 9 to 10 hours that was dedicated to my work. I was not happy. That’s half of my life, and I’m counting the time I’m sleeping. For me, it was a really, really great decision to change.

Joseph: What do you think kept you from doing it sooner?

Manuel: In that situation, you have to be looking for a job, you have to be looking for a partner, you have to be looking for kids, you have to be looking for mortgage and change everything. Jumping to UK was just going against everything that the society expects you to do. Probably family and close friends were not 100% giving me that push to do it.

Joseph: I want to wrap up today by just talking a little bit more about what you’re working on right now. Can you, first of all, give us a glimpse into your life as a concierge at the W? I understand you’re also developing some new skills over there right now.

Manuel: For us as the concierge department, we are there to make sure that the guests find within the city, not just the hotel, everything that they are expecting and even more because we are the ones that send them to restaurants and shows and prepare for them a whole schedule over their stay in London. That’s really fulfilling, and I love to do that.

A couple of years ago, I started getting involved in the departmental training and brand standards and saying hello to the new people coming to work with us. I was able to share with them all the passion and trying to show them that this is a different company here. Here, you can work as a human being, as a person, and love what you do. That’s something that the departmental training brings perfectly for me in my life.

Joseph: I also can’t let you get away without getting a little bit of an insight or tip from you. Do you have any tips for anyone who wants to get on the good side of a hotel concierge?

Manuel: Something that I like in the relation is whenever people come to ask for a plan, for me, it’s really important for the people to be open. As you said, the concierge is the insider. We know a lot about the area. You have to let the concierge surprise you and give you local tips and give you advice and suggestions that no tour guides are going to give you. There are no other places where you can get them, and that’s really important.

I believe that to be open-minded, it’s really important. It’s not just in this situation but also within your professional life. Be open. Maybe you never tried to do something, and you think, ‘I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to like it,’ but why don’t you try? That’s the way to find new things and enjoy.

Joseph: What do you think keeps people from just trying something out?

Manuel: Sometimes, we are afraid to fail, and we give too much of importance to the fact that, ‘I could fail.’ What if you fail? What’s wrong? It’s not a problem. I could try to work in sales now in England, and I could fail, but if I don’t try, I would never know if I’m able to do it or not. It’s not about failing and not being able to be a human being anymore. It’s just failing, realizing what you’re doing okay or why you are not good to do that, and then changing. There are so many things, professions, or there are so many activities that we can try to do, but we always stay within the ones that we feel comfortable with. There’s a lot to see, and there’s a lot to experience if you are just a little bit courageous.

Joseph: It sounds like one of the tips there is to not let yourself stay down for too long and to just move along. If people want to learn a little bit more about you or if they want to get in touch with you, where can they go?

Manuel: It’s really easy. They only have to come to W Hotel. I would be more than happy to share my experience over coffee.

Joseph: Manuel, first of all, thank you so much for taking time to speak with us and share your story. You talked about a lot of really interesting things related to the power of positivity, how you recreated your life in London and also just how you deal with failure, which is also very helpful. I really appreciate your time, and I hope your mother has a really smooth recovery.

Manuel: Thank you very much, Joseph. What you are doing with this podcast is fantastic.

Joseph: Thanks a lot. Good to talk to you.

Sandeep Johal, a former nonprofit teacher turned artist shares her thoughts on breaking through cultural barriers, the impact of becoming a parent on your career, why connecting with people & community is critical, and how to become your own #1 fan. I also share some thoughts on the importance of believing in your own work.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of becoming your own #1 fan, a concept Sandeep shared during our conversation.

My challenge to you was to pick one element of your work where you’re constantly critiquing yourself, and spend the next week being a little LESS critical. What’s one aspect of your work where you’ve been your own worst critic, where it’s about time you gave yourself a bit more credit? Leave a comment below with the change you’ve decided to make!

Photo Credit: Britney Berner

Sandeep Johal is an artist, educator, and workshop facilitator who recently made the jump from a stable full-time teaching career at a not-for-profit to a career in the arts. The birth of her son prompted her to re-revaluate her life and push through the fear to create the life she wanted. Her days are now spent taking care of her son and her nights spent making art.

“Rest In Power” drawing by Sandeep Johal

She’s currently working on two gender justice series, very close to her heart:

You can follow Sandeep on Instagram and Facebook.

If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

Thanks to General Assembly for sponsoring this episode of Career Relaunch. General Assembly is a pioneer in education and career transformation, specializing in today’s most in-demand skills. Visit GA.co to lean how to boost your career. Use Promo code ‘RELAUNCH‘ for 20% off your 1st class or workshop.

Teaser (first ~15s): Once you start stepping into doing what you’re meant to do and you’re actually producing things, I don’t know what happened, but one day, I just stopped being my own worst critic, and I started becoming my number one fan.

Joseph: Sandeep, good morning and thanks so much for joining me here on Career Relaunch. I’m very excited to talk to you, and I’m also excited because you’re calling in from one of my favorite cities in the world, which is Vancouver. Thanks so much for taking time to speak with us today.

Sandeep: Thanks so much for having me. Vancouver has been raining for two months straight.

Joseph: Oh no. It’s also raining over here, so that makes two of us. There’s so much I want to cover with you today, Sandeep, and I’d love to just start off by talking through some of the work that you do right now. Can you start off by telling us about the art that you’re doing and you’re focused on right now in your life?

Sandeep: It’s basically an extension of a series I did in 2006. That series was called ‘When Honor Kills,’ and it was based on honor killings in my culture. I’m South Asian. It highlighted two specific women whose deaths had really impacted me.

After I’d done that series, I kind of stepped away from that type of work, but it was always on my mind. Now, I’ve returned back to work around gender justice. I’m working on two series right now with working titles. The first one’s called ‘Anamika Devi’ and the second one is called ‘Hard Kaur.’ I’m really heavily influenced by Indian textiles that you’ll find a lot in my work. I do a lot of geometric abstractions, so a lot of my work is very symmetrical, very geometric, really heavily pattern-based and shape-based.

Joseph: I understand that you were working in the teaching profession before at a non-profit. Can you take us back in time and explain the type of your work you were doing before you got involved with the current art you were doing right now?

Sandeep: I went to art school when I turned 30 for two years. After that, I was like, ‘I’m going to be an artist!’ and I spent basically eight months being broke and depressed. It was really a tough time.

Joseph: What makes that depressing? Because I know that breaking into art must be very difficult. What’s the hardest thing about that?

Sandeep: I think it’s that expectation that you’re just going to have all of these ideas, and you’re going to be able to execute them, and you’re going to get yourself out there, when really, you’re so exhausted from having been doing art 40 to 60 hours a week for two years, and then you finish, and you’re by yourself, and you’re trying to figure this all out. They don’t teach you business courses in art school, and so you really don’t know how to run a business either.

I just think I wasn’t ready. I think timing is everything, and that time was not the right time for me to be pursuing it. Obviously, I had to hustle to pay my rent, and then I got the job that I previously left about eight months later, and it was that Immigrant Services Society, which is an organization that’s been around for 40 years in Vancouver, and its specific goal is to help immigrants and refugees acclimatize to life in Canada and give them the resources they need and support they need to build their lives here.

Joseph: How did you go from doing that line of work to making the leap into the art world? Can you walk us through a little bit of that sequence of events for us?

Sandeep: It got to the point where I just felt really unhappy, and I felt kind of embarrassed telling people what I did for a living because it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. My colleagues were amazing. The organization is a wonderful organization. I love teaching to the students. I met so many incredible people from all over the world, and I learned about these stories of their lives. It made me really realize how lucky we are living in Canada, because all things considered, some of my students have really, really hard experiences in their countries. It was such an awakening for me to be around different types of people and to be able to connect with them.

I really love that aspect of my job. I love connecting with people, but I just wasn’t happy. I just felt like there was something else out there for me. It really has always been art, but I think there’s just been so much fear around pursuing it.

In 2013, my husband told me to start a website. He said he wasn’t going to help me make it, so I had to figure it out on my own. Of course, I’m like cursing him as I’m trying to figure all this out because I’m still a real analogue person. I’m not totally into the digital world yet.

Joseph: Was he in a position to be able to help you with that?

Sandeep: For sure.

Joseph: Just out of curiosity, why was it that he wanted you to take the lead and to own that?

Sandeep: Tough love. He just wanted me to really figure it out on my own. It was good that he did that because I did figure it out, and I was like, ‘Great.’ He just wanted me to understand how to do these things because I really was so opposed to digital things.

I made the website. It was a huge undertaking. It took me about probably three months. Then I put it out there in the world, and my friends and people I’ve known for a long time were all like, ‘Finally.’ People had been waiting for me to do this for so long, and so I was finally stepping into it, but I didn’t know what to do in terms of art.

I went back to mandalas because I’ve been doing them for so long. I posted them online, and people were really interested in them. I had a few people asking, are you going to make these into prints? So I chose 20, and I made them into prints, and I sold a bunch at the end of the year. That was great, and then the next year, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to make more.’

Then I got pregnant, and so I was obviously tired, and I had other things on my mind, so I didn’t really do much art until my son was born in 2015.

Joseph: What do you think held you back from moving toward doing this work that you’re so passionate about? What do you think held you back from doing that sooner?

Sandeep: I think when I was growing up, I didn’t see any Indian role models that I can look up to in terms of art, people who were doing what I wanted to do, so I didn’t really have a reference point. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, and so I ended up doing a biology degree because that’s just what you do. I wasn’t happy doing my biology degree, but during the degree, I would make like glow-in-the-dark T-shirts, and I’d run into my anatomy class and be like, ‘Hey, stop,’ to my teacher, ‘Turn off the lights. Look at the shirt I made.’ He’s going to shake his head and be like, ‘Why are you in this faculty?’ My professors tell me that I was in the wrong faculty, and I should be in arts faculty.

Going back to my culture, there’s only a few options that people seem to think Indians or people should have doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, those types of jobs, and so there’s not really an emphasis on the arts or I think support towards the arts. I have to think about where my parents are coming from. They came from India as immigrants, so they didn’t have that luxury of being like, ‘I think I’m just going to pursue art.’ They had to basically survive and support their children, so they took jobs that they had to take because they needed money, and they needed to survive.

I think the idea of having a career in the arts is so foreign, and it’s kind of self-indulgent too that it’s hard to put it into context for them. Even though they understand that I love art, it’s hard for them to understand what that looks like as a career.

Joseph: How much do you think that influenced your decision to not pursue it initially? Was that the primary factor that you think kept you from pursuing it?

Sandeep: I don’t want to put any blame on my family, because obviously, you make the choices you make, but I think I was scared to step out in that direction because I was scared of failing. If I was going to do it, I wanted to show my family that I was going to succeed at it.

When I turned 30, that’s when I decided to go and study art. When I told my parents—I didn’t even want to tell them—my mom was like, ‘Why can’t you just get a job and stick to it?’ Even then, they were kind of like, ‘What are you doing?’ So at the end of my two years, when they saw the response to my work, and they were at my grad show, I could see the pride swell up in them. They could kind of see what I was doing, but I think still not totally understand what I was doing. It’s been a long journey to get here for sure.

Joseph: How did you manage that, the fact that they were not completely on board with this, and they didn’t quite get it while you were still making it in that industry?

Sandeep: Everyone wants their parents’ approval. Everyone wants to make their parents proud. I want to make my parents proud, but I want to do it on my terms, and I want to do it with my art. I think there’s a lot of struggle and a lot of soul-searching and thinking about what I really wanted in life. It’s my life and I should be the one that makes the decisions and decides what I’m going to do. I think they’re understanding more what I’m doing now for sure.

Joseph: I can relate to that for sure. I’m Asian-American, and as you may know, I wanted to go to medical school, and then I went to medical school, and then I actually dropped out after two weeks just because it was just not for me. That phone call to my parents was not an easy one to make. Literally, I think I kind of just disappeared for a while. I think I had to kind of disappear for a few months or it might even be like a year just to sort stuff out for myself. So I see what you mean about needing to reconnect with yourself and figure out what you want.

Was there anything else tough about making that transition into the art world? I know you mentioned before, it was a bit of a slow start.

Sandeep: Basically, I had my son in April 2015. I don’t know what happened. Like a switch went off, and I was like, ‘What am I doing? I need to really reevaluate and prioritize my life.’ I really thought about what kind of mother I want to be and what kind of life I want to have. I realized that I couldn’t tell my son to dream big or to go after his dreams if I wasn’t doing it myself, and I realized that I had to just push through all the fear about doing this and just do it because I want to be the best role model I can for my son. Having him actually got me on track.

After my maternity leave, I took an additional six months leave of absence, which just ended in October. That was when I made the complete decision to leave the job and pursue the art full-time.

Joseph: What ultimately tipped the scales?

Sandeep: In May, I joined a studio run by women for women, and it’s female art is for female artists. It’s called THRIVE Art Studio. It’s also just been open for about just over a year.

Joseph: Is that in Vancouver?

Sandeep: It’s in Vancouver, yeah. The founder, Jamie Smith, had reached out to me to come and join this art studio. I met with her, and she just had such great energy. I joined this female art studio, and within six months, I can’t even tell you how much my confidence has grown, how much better my art is getting, how much community I have now, how many resources I have access to. That, I think, has played a huge factor in it.

I also, through THRIVE Art Studio, have an art consultant, Pennylane Shen. I’ve had two consults with her, and she basically has helped me redefine my vision and cut away all the fluff and move in the direction that I want to move but in a more clarified way.

I guess I realize that you need to connect with people. I didn’t know how to get out there and connect with the arts community. I didn’t know what to do. The studio just came along at the right time, and it’s all about collaboration over competition. It’s a really supportive environment.

I realized too that you have to invest in yourself financially as well and reach out to people to help and find mentors. Find people who have more experience than you that can direct you in ways that you can’t direct yourself.

Joseph: What do you think kept you from trying to create a community around the work that you’re doing or find a community? I know one of the things you mentioned was you weren’t aware of it, but was there anything else that kept you from wanting to surround yourself with other people?

Sandeep: Just struggling with all those feelings of being a mom and having this little child that’s yours. You have to try and figure them out, and you’re exhausted. My son didn’t start sleeping through the night until about two months ago, so I felt like I was living in a fog, and I was exhausted all the time. That definitely had an impact.

I think was just a bit shy too. I wasn’t sure how to approach it. I guess at that point, I didn’t have that sensibility of like I could just email someone to reach out to them. Now it’s a thought for me all the time: if I want to talk to someone, I reach out to them. If I want to do a studio visit, I reach out to them. People are kind, and they will give you their time, and they will just be so gracious about it. I’ve been really lucky with the people I found.

Joseph: Reaching out and connecting with other people is such a great way to catalyze the changes that you want to make. When you started spending time at the THRIVE Art Studio, what was the most surprising part of being part of that community and the impact that it had on your work?

Sandeep: Just the level of support. There are people who are emerging artists, artists that are mid-career, established artists. There’s a whole gamut when it comes to where people are in their careers. It’s just been so positive and so supportive. We have a Facebook group where we can ask questions about anything. I think the thing I like is that it’s a studio run by female artists for female artists, and so it’s really focused on the female artists.

Joseph: Going a little bit deeper into the world of art, what do you think is the hardest part of making it in the world of art?

Sandeep: There really is room for everyone because there are so many artists out there and so many different kinds of artists. You find them on social media, and you’re like, ‘Wow, there’s a ton of artists out there.’ Then you also are like, ‘Oh man, there are so many artists out there that we’re all just trying to find our little piece and get our art out there and get known.’

I think sometimes it’s falling down that comparison hole when you’re on Instagram or social media, and you’re looking at other people’s work, and then you’re like, ‘Oh man.’ I’ve been really conscious of that just to make sure I don’t start spiraling when I’m like, ‘How are they doing this? Their work is so amazing. Oh my god, I’m such an impostor.’ That’s been challenging for me.

I think I sometimes do feel pretty isolated even though I’m working on the art and I’m doing what I want to do because I have to physically be at home, working on it to get it done. I can’t just be out and about. My old job was really social. My colleagues were really good friends. When you go from that, and then it’s just you, solitary in your home, working on your art, it can get lonely for sure.

Joseph: You’d mentioned something about comparison and the impostor syndrome. Do you have any tips on how to stop being critical of yourself? Because I think that’s something that I do a lot. I’m quite self-critical. I can’t help but compare my progress with somebody else’s progress in the same shoes. Any thoughts on how you deal with that or how you have dealt with that that’s worked for you?

Sandeep: My best friend, he’s always telling me, ‘This is your journey. You cannot compare yours to someone else’s because their journey is different.’ I think keeping that in mind, we’re all here doing different things. We have different lives, we have different experiences, and honestly, you can’t compare yourself to other people because they’re coming from a totally different place than you are, and you all have different things to learn.

What happened with me was I didn’t ever want to call myself an artist because I felt like I didn’t have any art to show. If someone’s like, ‘What do you do?’ I’m like, ‘I’m an artist.’ ‘Where can I see your work?’ ‘Nowhere.’ I feel like such a loser because I didn’t have anything to show people. I didn’t have anything going on, so I never said I was an artist. I’ve only just started saying it probably in the last six months, and it feels better because I’ve actually been doing things, and I have things to show, and I things on my website, and I have things on the pipeline for next year coming up. I think once you start stepping into doing what you’re meant to do, and you’re actually producing things, I think you start to lose a bit of that critic.

Also, I don’t know what happened, but one day, I just stopped being my own worst critic, and I started becoming my number one fan, and everything changed. I think it’s because I started doing art every day. Instead of just sitting there, worrying about, ‘Oh, what should I draw? What should I paint? What should I do?’ I just started creating art every single day. Then I saw how one project would lead into the next project, which would lead into the next project and how my art would slowly evolve and change the more I made it.

I started really enjoying the art that I was making, and I was like, ‘You know what? I like this. I’m really proud of myself. I think I’m doing good work, and I’m working really, really hard to produce this work.’ I think I just kind of switched it around.

Joseph: I love that. That is such a great mindset to have, to be your own number one fan, because if you can believe in it yourself, then I would imagine it’s so much easier to convince others that there’s also value there. We can oftentimes be our own worst enemies with that stuff, so I’m going to write that down and remember that.

Sandeep: It’s like if you don’t believe in yourself, then who is going to believe in you? I’m very fortunate that I have the most amazing husband. I didn’t make this decision on my own. He basically helped me work through all of this. When it was time for me to decide whether I should leave my job or not, I had told him I’ll go back to work. I will do whatever we need to do. He basically said, ‘Look, I would feel better if you were at home with our son, and I think you should pursue your art full-time.’

I even had to go like, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure you’re okay being the only provider? Because that’s a lot of pressure,’ and he was like, ‘Just do it.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ I asked him like, ‘If I totally sucked, would you tell me?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, of course.’ I was like, ‘You believe I can do this,’ and he was like, ‘Yes.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.’ He’s been also just my biggest cheerleader, and I feel so fortunate that he believes in me enough to support me in this career change that I’ve started.

Joseph: When you look back on your career change, Sandeep, what’s something that you wish you had known that you now know?

Sandeep: If there’s something that you are passionate about and something that fulfills you, just go for it because I’ve spent so much time not doing what I wanted to do, and I felt so unhappy at so many points in my life because I wasn’t doing it. Just go for it, because if you don’t do it, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Since I set my mind to doing this, all good things have been happening. It’s like I’m on the right path because doors are just opening for me. I feel like if you have a passion, you have to follow it.

Also, you have to create your own opportunities. That’s another thing I didn’t really realize, because I was like, ‘How do all these people do all these things?’ It’s because you actually have to find the opportunities and reach out to people and create them. Now, I’ve been doing that, and I’m getting a better understanding of what’s required to move forward in your career, which has been really awesome.

I think also investing in yourself financially. I have the art consultant. I pay her to come and help me manage what I’m doing. I’m part of the art studio. I take professional development workshops. I do all sorts of things now that I never did before. Invest in yourself. If you don’t have the money, save up for it or just do it anyway and money will come later.

Honestly, now that I’m thinking about it, I think you just have to trust, and you have to trust in the universe and trust that you’re doing the right thing and just be open to it. As long as you’re making the strides to create this life, I think you’ll be supported.

Joseph: That’s another great mindset. I think that when you open yourself up to the opportunities, they do come your way, especially if you’re doing the work you’re meant to be doing.

I want to talk a little bit more about the work that you’re currently doing. I know you alluded to this at the very beginning. Can you describe to us in a little bit more detail the work you’re doing on those two gender justice series?

Sandeep: The first one, I read a book a few years that’s called The Selector of Souls by Shauna Singh Baldwin. I love Indian writers. They just express the grimmest situations in the most beautiful ways. In the book, there’s a goddess called Anamika Devi. Her form is a clay pot, and so this woman has this divine intervention, and she’s been told that they have to give Anamika Devi a bodily form now. She and some of the women from the village sneaked off into the cave where the clay pot is, and they have this conversation where they’re trying to decide what she should look like.

I always had this idea of what I would interpret her bodily form as. I did a 12-inch by 12-inch painting for a show recently, and I did my own take on it. Then I decided to do some drawing studies because I was going to do five more of those tiny paintings.

As I was doing my drawing studies, the first one that I did was around the time that an international student from Japan was missing and then found murdered in Vancouver. It really hit me close to home because I worked in that industry for so long, and I’ve had a lot of students from Japan. It could’ve been one of my students. It was really heartbreaking.

So while I was drawing this first study, I dedicated it to her. I posted it on Instagram and said, ‘In dedication to her name,’ and, ‘Rest in power.’ I decided for each drawing that I was going to do, I would dedicate it to a woman whose murder has impacted my really deeply. Now, I’m actually going to be doing a solo show next year based on them, which is amazing. That’s one of them.

The other one is the flipside of that, it’s called ‘Hard Kaur.’ The Kaur is a traditional Sikh woman middle name. I am basically highlighting women from India that I think have achieved really remarkable things despite all of the obstacles that are in place for women in India. There’s one woman who was the first Indian female amputee to climb Mount Everest. There are some rebels and some vigilantes and some scholars and activists and all types of women.

One of the women, there’s a documentary about her right now called ‘Driving with Selvi.’ She is the first woman in South India to become a taxi driver. I drew her, and then I take them in it, and I asked the filmmaker if I can send Selvi a copy of the drawing, and she’s like, ‘Yeah, I showed it to her, and she’d be so happy to receive one.’

I love that idea of connecting with the real women who I’m drawing and sending them a copy of the art. I just have nothing but respect for all of these women. If I can give them a piece of art to reflect that, then I’m so happy to do that.

Joseph: Wow, very cool. That is so interesting to hear about, Sandeep. I think it’s amazing that you’re doing this art that is just very empowering and capturing the extraordinary and the ordinary in these women. I think that’s so cool.

Thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through your career and to explain the culture barriers that you broke through and the impact of becoming a parent on your career and the importance of connecting with people and also that idea of making sure that you believe in yourself, and when you’re your number one fan, how much of a positive impact that can have on your own career. Thank you for your time today, and congratulations on your upcoming art series too.

Sandeep: Thank you. I just want my parents to know, I love you mom and dad. I don’t want them to think that they did anything to prevent me from doing my art. They’re great.

Joseph: Always good to give a shout-out to the parents. Finally, if our listeners want to check out your art or if they want to follow you, where’s the best place they can go to find you?

Sandeep: You can go to my website. It’s www.SandeepJohal.com. I’m also on Instagram. I post a lot of stuff on Instagram, process shots, finished pieces, things like that. On Instagram, I’m SandeepJohalArt. Also on Facebook, I’m Sandeep Johal Art.

Joseph: Thank you so much for your time today, Sandeep. I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

Sandeep: Thank you so much, Joseph.

Adrian Granzella Larssen explains how she opened new doors in her career, shifting from her editorial role at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC to eventually becoming the Editor at Large at The Muse in New York City. During the episode, she shares some useful tips on taking charge of your career trajectory, networking for introverts, and making manageable steps toward landing the job of your dreams. In the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll talk about the concept of creating professional bridges between your current role and target role.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I talked about how making incremental shifts that add up to the changes you desire for your career. My challenge was that you pinpoint the next bridge you’re going to build in your career (location, sector, organization, function, or role) that will move you toward your target role.

If you want some help nailing down your next move, download my free career mapping worksheet below (Excel required) to help you clarify the action you’ll take to start building that bridge to your next role. What’s the change you’re going to make? Leave me a comment! I’d love to hear what you have planned.

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If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners!

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Teaser (first ~15s): What held me back for so long was fear of this huge change. It feels like such a leap going from a job you hate to work your love, but there are a million tiny, baby steps that you can take along the way that will get you closer.

Joseph: Hello, Adrian. Welcome to Career Relaunch.

Adrian: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me today.

Joseph: You have written a lot of really useful career articles with some solid career advice. I’m definitely hoping to touch on some of those topics during our chat, but we are here to talk about change. I know that you’ve had a few changes recently in both your life and you career. Could you kick us off by giving us a glimpse into how things have evolved for you over the past couple of months?

Adrian: I have been at The Muse for about five and a half years. I joined the company as the very first employee. I have seen it grown from literally 0 to about 150 employees through all kinds of stages of growth. I was hired to run the editorial team. I served as Managing Editor and then Editor in Chief. I’ve recently transitioned into a new role there, which is a part-time Editor-at-Large role. What that means is I’m going to be spending time on creative projects and strategy, translating our content into all kinds of new vehicles and some press like this wonderful podcast. I’m really excited to be making this change and to be talking about change because it’s what I am going through currently.

Joseph: You are the very first editor that I’ve had on Career Relaunch, Adrian. For those out there who are interested in understanding the world of journalism a little bit, can you explain exactly what an editor in chief does?

Adrian: It looked a little bit different during my time at The Muse, but basically, it entailed overseeing all of the content, production, and marketing at Muse. We published about 50 articles a week, and the Editor in Chief is the one who makes sure all of that content is assigned, all of that content is in production, and then all of that content is produced in the best way possible so that when readers see it on the site, it is the best possible writing, it’s the best possible story, the best possible advice, and then the best possible title and photo and SEO optimization and lots of little things that readers don’t typically think about but that make a big difference when it comes to getting it out there into the world.

Joseph: I know you haven’t always been at The Muse, Adrian. I was wondering if you could take us back in time to your life in Washington DC, when you were at the George Washington University. Maybe you could tell us briefly about what you’re up to there, and then I definitely want to come back to some of the work that you’re doing here at The Muse at the very end and then also talk about some of your own projects.

Adrian: Previously, I was in a very, very different role. I was at the George Washington University in Washington DC, and I was running online communications for their health center. GW for me was actually a bridge job, and it helped me change careers. Prior to GW, I had been in marketing roles, and I realized that marketing was really not what I wanted to do. I didn’t really know how to get out of marketing and into a more editorial role, so I ended up taking a job at GW. I was hired as a marketing manager, but I used that experience and that time there to sort of transition and pivot my career into editorial.

The department that I worked for also put out the medical center’s publications, so in addition to my work as a marketing manager, I would go over to the publications team and say, ‘Hey, you guys seem really busy. Is there anything that I could help you with? Could I maybe write an article for the newsletter, maybe write an article for the magazine?’ Ultimately, that turned into me doing a lot of that work, a lot of writing and editing work. Ultimately, I pivoted into being the editor of the magazine, and then ultimately, that led to my final role there, which was running the online communications, overseeing websites and the content on those websites.

Joseph: When I hear that, it sounds like quite a seamless transition, but I’d imagine that it’s not the easiest thing to make a pivot within an organization from the function you’ve been hired into a new function that aligns with your interest. How did you go about uncovering this new opportunity while also keeping your day job going?

Adrian: I felt very lucky to have an organization that that was supportive of me taking on other projects. I know it’s not always so easy in every organization, and a lot of people don’t want to give up their work or let somebody else take something else on. In my case, everyone was very, very supportive and under-resourced and strapped, and so people were happy to have the help. It’s a big time suck and energy suck to do work on top of the job that you were hired for, and it took work outside of work hours and really putting a lot of time and energy into this. It’s not something that you can just do from 9:00 to 5:00 or 9:00 to 6:00.

Also during this time, I was freelance writing for other sites, which is what ultimately led me to my job at The Muse. That too, there were a lot of nights and weekends that I wasn’t relaxing, I wasn’t hanging out with my friends. I was doing this extra work, in some cases not being paid for it, but that was necessary to translate what I was doing then into what I ultimately wanted to be doing.

Joseph: How did you know that you wanted to get into journalism?

Adrian: It was one of those things that I sort of always knew. I just tried not to pay attention to it because I didn’t know any other writers, I didn’t know any editors, and I didn’t know anyone who had made a successful career in this field. I just had this idea in my head that I think a lot of people do, that, ‘Oh, well. Writers can’t make any money. I can’t find a writing job with good benefits.’ That’s not true at all.

When I finally started thinking about what I am going to do for the rest of my career that’s not marketing, this idea of writing just kept coming up. What I ended up doing and what was really helpful was I took a few classes and took online classes through Mediabistro. I don’t know if they have them anymore, but it’s an approach I recommend to everyone for a couple of reasons. I think, first, you interact in that world, so all of a sudden, I was talking to and working with people who were writers or editors or trying to be writers or editors and understood more about what that career path might look like. I also understood more about what type of writing and editing I like to do.

I took a personal essay writing class, I took a beauty writing class, I took an ad copywriting class, and I was sort of doing the assignments and the homework, I understood more about what I liked and what I didn’t like. I kept doing more of what I liked, and that was really helpful in figuring out what this career path could look like.

Joseph: That’s interesting. I know one of the articles you wrote, which I thought was really good, was about ‘How to Get Experience in a New Field without Starting at the Bottom’ I think was the title. You mentioned doing things like getting a side gig or doing some exploration on the side. It sounds like that was really fruitful for you to dip your toe in the water with some of these different classes. It seems so effective to do that, and yet I know that some people don’t seem to make the time or don’t seem to go down that road. What do you think stops people from taking that step?

Adrian: I think the time and energy factor is a big one. You come home from work at the end of the day, and you’re exhausted, and you still need to go to the gym and go to the grocery store and see your family or call your mom. There’s a very real time hurdle there.

I think one of the biggest things that holds people back and definitely was true for me was this fear of getting started, this fear of putting yourself out there, this fear of doing something different, this fear of, ‘What if I do this different thing, this thing that I’ve said for a long time I’ve wanted to do and I don’t like that or I’m not good at it or I fail at it?’ It’s easier to sit in your job and say, ‘I’m not happy. I really want to be a writer, and maybe someday that’ll happen.’ That’s pretty easy. Actually making stuff to do that, to put yourself out there to become a writer is really hard, and that held me back for a really long time.

Joseph: During your role there as the Managing Editor at George Washington University, what happened next for you?

Adrian: I started freelance writing for other sites on the side, and it was actually through that experience that I met Kathryn and Alex, the founders of The Muse. They had a site previous to The Muse, and a friend of a friend introduced us, and I started doing some work for them. Ultimately, they closed down that site, and they started The Muse and sent me an email one day and said, ‘We’re starting this thing. We need a full-time Managing Editor. Do you want to do it?’ The opportunity really did fall in my lap at a point that I maybe was not yet ready to make a big move, but it was an opportunity I knew I could pass up.

Joseph: It sounds like this was one of those things that came up not through some sort of job posting or anything but just through, I guess, networking.

Adrian: Exactly. I did not apply for this job. I don’t think Kathryn and Alex had ever seen my résumé. At the time, I was living in San Francisco. They were living in New York. We had worked together and emailed and Skyped and worked together, but it was purely online. I hadn’t met them in person, but it absolutely was the networking that got me to meet them in the first place.

I tell this story a lot because I think people tend to think, ‘I have to meet the people who are doing exactly what I want to be doing,’ and only consider a certain subset of people and their network. The woman who introduced me to Kathryn and Alex was a friend of my husband from law school. She has nothing to do with what I do. She has nothing to do with Kathryn and Alex do. She purely just knew someone who she thought I should meet, and it just goes to show that your network and the people who can help you reach your goals or get you to where you want to be could be anyone. They could be friends. They could be your parents’ friends. They could be your hairstylist’s sister. It could be anyone, and the more people you talk to about your goals and what you’re trying to achieve, the bigger your network becomes.

Joseph: I couldn’t help but read one of your articles where you called yourself a card-carrying introvert. I myself am an introvert, and I’ll tell you, Adrian, I wouldn’t say that networking necessarily comes naturally to me. Do you have any advice for introverts out there who maybe understand the importance of networking but just can’t quite bring themselves to do it? Is there anything that worked well for you?

Adrian: Networking does not come naturally to me, and the idea of walking into a networking event and introducing myself to strangers makes me break out in a sweat. I hate it. I’m more comfortable with it now than I was five years ago, but it will never be my preferred state of being. I hate it. That, however, is not the only version of networking. What I tell people like me is to find the version of networking that works for you.

I do a lot of one-on-one coffee meetings or I do really small, intimate dinners. I’ve done this with a couple of groups of people there. I find a friend who has a similar goal or is in a similar world, and we both invite two or three other people, and then we have a really small, intimate dinner party. That is a great way to meet new people and have really deep, interesting conversations with people, which is absolutely a form of networking. It’s not the walking into a room and introducing myself to strangers. Actually, in some ways, it’s more effective.

Joseph: You decide that you’re going to shift over to The Muse. I know that that also involved a geographical change for you. What were some of the challenges, if any, that you faced when you were transitioning from one role in one sector to another role in a different type of company, a different type of organization, a different city, and a slightly different role?

Adrian: We were a completely remote company when we started. I was in San Francisco. The founders were in New York. They actually came to San Francisco for about a year when The Muse was going through Y Combinator. Then I moved to LA. The company moved to New York, and I sort of kicked and screamed for a couple of years before ultimately making the move to New York.

Joseph: What was your hesitation in doing that?

Adrian: I really love life in California: I love sunshine, I hate winter, I had a great community and group of friends there, my family is there, and I thought New York life would be hard. It is in certain ways, but I actually love it much more than I thought I would.

For me, it was really refreshing. I sort of felt like, for the first time, this is the environment that I belong in. This is the type of work environment I want. This is the type of work I want to do, the type of co-workers I want, the type of relationship with co-workers I want. I felt so, so happy.

Certainly, there were challenges for me. It was hard not having the resources that I was used to, not having an HR department or even health benefits at the beginning. I think it’s really important to do your research before you’re making the move so you’re not completely blindsided in this new environment, that you sort of have an understanding of what people like and don’t like about those environments, whether you will like or not like your new environment, what to expect, eliminate surprises before you get into that situation.

Joseph: Is there one particular tactic that you thought worked well for you to understand whether or not The Muse was going to be a good fit for you?

Adrian: I had a lot of conversations. I had a lot of conversations with Kathryn and Alex about their working style and their expectations, their goals for the company. I talked to people who had worked with them before. I basically did a lot of research to understand, ‘This is who I want to work with. This is who I want to build a company with for the next several years.’

I really just can’t stress the importance of that enough: you are interviewing a company as much as they are interviewing you, especially in a startup when you’re going to be working a lot, you’re going to be working on a small team, and you’re going to be working through some pretty stressful times. It’s really, really important to do that research.

Joseph: It’s interesting because you’ve got a really unique perspective, Adrian, because you worked for a large medical facility in Washington DC and focused on medical research, and now, you’re in much more of the startup world. Having been in both sides of the equation there, do you think that there are any sort of misconceptions or any sort of surprising things that you’ve found, now that you’ve spent some time in the startup world, having been in the non-startup world before?

Adrian: I think people think that working for a startup has a certain element of glamor or excitement. I would say excitement certainly. Glamor, not so much, especially at early-stage startups. It’s pretty hard. The hours are pretty crazy. There are things you have to deal with, like there’s 12 of us in this company, no one is the office manager or the IT guy, but the internet just went out. One of you 12 people needs to solve the internet problem, and a lot of just jumping in and doing things that you might not be great at or you might not be qualified for or you might really not want to do, like sit on the phone with Comcast for an hour. There’s a lot that is hard, and it’s not glamorous, especially in the early days.

Joseph: You were most recently in this role as Editor in Chief, but I know you made the decision to make a slight change in the nature of your role there. Now you’re doing the part-time Editor-at-Large role. Was there any particular trigger or impetus to you making that shift in your role?

Adrian: I had been thinking a lot about it last year for a couple of reasons. The company was growing really, really fast, which is amazing, but I sort of prefer the early days and sort of preferred some of the work that I was doing earlier on in the company. I wasn’t really quite sure what that meant or what I wanted to do with my role.

I actually spent the month of January in Southeast Asia. The Muse has a wonderful sabbatical policy, where after you’ve been there for five years, you can take a month off completely paid. I took advantage of that, traveled around for four weeks, but it was the first time in my life that I hadn’t worked at all while I was on vacation. That sort of had an interesting impact. I came back, and for a month, I had pushed everything off my plate. My team was completely doing everything that I normally did. It came back, and I had to think about, ‘What are the things that I want to add back on my plate and what are the things that should stay off my plate forever that someone else is actually better qualified for and enjoying more than I was?’

As I started thinking about that, I started designing this new role and then realized these are the things that I’m really excited about and passionate about and think that I can add value in, things like starting a new initiative or a new project, creative strategy with our growing, branded content team. I really crafted a role around those things, and it was amazing. It was amazing that the company was supportive of that, and I feel more energized than I have in a really long time.

Joseph: Was there anything that you did that you felt made those individuals in your company more receptive to the idea of you making a slight tweak?

Adrian: What I did was focus on not only what I liked doing but where I thought that I added the most value. For any boss to say yes to this sort of arrangement, it needs to be something that is equally as good for the company as it is for you or better for the company than it is for you but pitching it as a business case, not just, ‘This is what would make me happier. This is what I want to spend time on,’ but how I will be able to impact the business and the company in a bigger, better way. If you could do that, then there’s a much better chance of the powers to be going for it.

Joseph: For other people who are thinking about making a career change, do you have any advice that you would like to share with people who are maybe on the cusp of making that shift from doing work that they’re not super thrilled about to something that they can feel super passionate about?

Adrian: Just start taking one tiny, little, baby step. What held me back for so long was fear and fear of this huge, monumental change. It feels like such a leap going from a job you hate to work you love, but there are a million tiny, baby steps that you can take along the way that will get you closer. Figure out what those baby steps are, whether it is just sitting down for coffee with someone who has a job that you really admire or doing one, tiny volunteer project for an organization you admire where you can use your skills in a different way or reading a book. Whatever the smallest step that you could possibly take is, do that step. What I found is once you do that one step, it’ll make the next one a little easier and the next one a little easier, and you’ll find some momentum there. It’s that first step that’s the hardest.

Joseph: Do you have any tools or resources that you used to stay on track with your own career goals?

Adrian: One of the things that I am doing right now is working through a book called The Artist’s Way. It was really important to me to start writing more. It’s something that I love, I changed career paths to do more of, and then last year, I really wasn’t doing it at all. I wanted to get started again, but I just couldn’t figure out how to get started. This book is all about breaking through that fear, just getting back into the habits and the routines of a writer and not judging the work that you’re producing. That has been really helpful for me this year in making progress towards my new goals.

Joseph: Finally, before we talk about your current projects, having been through this career change, Adrian, what’s one thing that you’ve learned either about career change or even about yourself?

Adrian: The biggest thing I have learned is that careers are really long. I remember being 28 years old and feeling stuck and feeling like, ‘I guess this is just what I’m going to do for the rest of my career. I guess I’m just going to be a marketer.’ Looking back, that was so wrong. It was only a few years into my career, a career that’s going to be hopefully 30+ years long. It’s never too late to make a change. There’s a lot of roads in front of you, so it’s important not to feel stuck, to feel like there’s always something that you can do. It’s never too late to try something new. There’s a long road ahead.

Joseph: I want to wrap up, Adrian, with what you’re doing now, because I know you’ve got a few interesting things going on. I was wondering if we could start with The Muse first. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you’re focused on at The Muse? I know that specifically, you’re expanding your content into other formats, and I think you got a new book coming out.

Adrian: The two things that I’m really, really excited about right now at The Muse are translating our content into video, into online courses, into some other formats that we haven’t even dreamed up yet. We have a wealth of content that’s all written that you can find on TheMuse.com/advice. What is the next way? What do we turn that into next? I’m thinking a lot about that right now, and it’s really exciting.

Then The Muse Founders, Kathryn and Alex, just published a book called The New Rules of Work, and it basically is an A-to-Z guide to what we’ve been talking about today, which is finding work you love and then succeeding once you got there. Actually, it’s a great read if you’re feeling stuck. There’s all kinds of topics in there: résumés and cover letters and interviewing and pressing your boss, but my favorite part of it is the beginning, where you sort of walk through your personal career values and then use that information to weigh all of the different job possibilities in front of you. I think if I had had this when I was early in my career or making my career change, it would’ve been a lot easier.

Joseph: Aside from your work at The Muse, can you give us a quick snapshot of the freelance work you’re doing for early-stage companies, which I know is a new exciting initiative for you personally?

Adrian: As I mentioned, I really love the early days of startup life. One of the things that I’m really excited to work on outside of The Muse is helping other early stage companies figure out their content strategy and building editorial teams. I’m also saving some time for my own creative projects.

Joseph: Interesting. I’ll be looking forward to hearing how that goes for you. From your articles and our conversation today, I can definitely tell you I find your guidance very practical and grounded in reality. I’m sure people who work with you will gain a lot of value. I just wanted to thank you so much for telling us more about the life of an editor and some tips on networking in a way that works for you and also the importance of taking manageable steps towards your goals that aren’t too overwhelming. Best of luck with your new role at The Muse, Adrian, and your own freelance consulting work.

Adrian: Thank you so much.