Career Relaunch®

Hear what can happen when you leave a fancy finance job behind to “give back” to the community. In this episode of Career Relaunch, Scott Lee, a former money markets broker in London who left his job behind to feed the homeless shares his thoughts on creating value, making a contribution to society, and how reading books can really change your life. I also shared a couple of my favorite books that had a major impact on my career.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I suggested you get that book on your reading list and start reading the first 10 pages this week. I’m going to commit to reading Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins just to join along! What’s on your reading list? I’d love to know, so be sure to let me know what you decided to read in the comments below.

Scott Lee is entrepreneur who’s never looked back since he left the daily grind of London’s financial world behind. After working in the world of investment banking, wealth management, and money market brokerage, Scott left the finance sector, spent some time working with homeless people in need, and eventually went onto found responseIQ, a sales optimization platform.

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!

Teaser (first ~15s): I quit, I took the money that I had, and I started feeding the homeless in my hometown with a good friend of mine who had been on his own journey as well. We were both sort of looking for an outlet to almost clean ourselves of the previous life.

Joseph: Good morning, Scott. Welcome to Career Relaunch. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

Scott: Thank you, Joseph. My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

Joseph: I’d love to start, Scott, by first of all hearing what’s been going on for you in your career, in your life. I know you’ve had ton going on the past few months and would love to hear what you’ve been up to.

Scott: The past few months have been very exciting. I started a company called ResponseiQ around eight or nine months ago now. I’m very fortunate to say that we’ve just secured venture capital funding. We’re going to be moving over up into new offices in London and expanding considerably. It’s a really exciting time in not just my life but in the company’s life. Things are full throttle right now. Everything keeps changing week from week, but I’m very excited about the next couple of months.

Joseph: Congratulations. We’re going to come back to talking ResponseiQ. Can you just, in a nutshell, give us a really quick snapshot of what ResponseiQ is all about?

Scott: We solve the problem of the fact that companies aren’t that good at getting back to internet-based inquiries. We’ve built a sales acceleration and lead management platform that turns inquiries into phone calls within 60 seconds.

Joseph: Can you go back in time and just tell me a little bit more about the work you’re doing in the finance sector between 2011 and 2013, before you founded ResponseiQ?

Scott: I did quite a lot of jobs in the investment sector before I quit and started this journey. I’ve been in finance and investment banks. I’ve been in wealth management, and most recently, I was a money market broker at ICAP in London. It didn’t really fit me too much, but there was a lot of good times had there, a lot of great people met, and a lot of lessons learned. Unless I did that part of the journey, I don’t think I’d be at this part of it right now. Everything along the way is certainly a lesson learned.

Joseph: What originally attracted you to that sector?

Scott: To be honest, like everyone else in that sector, it is the monetary rewards. My educational part just led towards that. I always did quite well at school. I went to a very good business school and performed extremely well. I got very good placements and internships. Before I knew it, I was at the biggest companies in the world, working with some of the biggest-name brands.

That kind of just happened. It wasn’t really something at 15 years old that I said, ‘Yeah, I want to be an investment banker, I want to be a money market broker.’ It just happened very spontaneously, Joseph. I kind of blinked, and the next thing I knew, I was in Canary Wharf.

Joseph: Can you explain what your day-to-day life was like there?

Scott: The most recent job I had was a money market broker. The way I can possibly describe that is the movie ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ is probably the last industry where it is still a little bit like that. You got a load of very aggressive and loud men in one room, all very close together, shouting big numbers at each other, lots of stress. The hours were incredible. I was sort of working 5:45 till 5:00 every day, no breaks. I was a junior there. I was a young man, a junior, which means you’re first in, last out. You get the lunches. You say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’s. It’s sort of do all the work with not much of the rewards.

You work in those hours, but you’re also expected to go out and entertain clients and drink and eat excessively at the same time. It’s physically a very draining job, but even though you sat down for 99% of the day, you’re burning it very much at both ends.

Joseph: I know that when we first spoke, you mentioned the daily grind of the City of London’s financial world. What made this a daily grind for you? I know you talked about the hours and how you had to spend your evenings with clients. What made this especially difficult for you?

Scott: At some jobs where you have clients and you have a bit of a relationship with them and you sort of like them, in that environment, traders and investment banks of your clients, these are some of the smartest people in the world. They sort of have a bit of a god complex, and you’re sort of treading on eggshells the whole time. Eighty percent of the time, you are not doing very much, but that 20%, if you get a decimal place wrong, you’ve caused the person to lose a few thousand pounds. He’s your friend, so he’s annoyed at you. The trader is shouting at you, and the company’s annoyed at you. It’s just absolutely rollercoaster of emotions that really does just drain you down.

At the same time, you go home and you’re stressed, you can’t sleep. I was a young man in my young 20s, and by Friday evening, I just wanted to sleep. That’s a grind on anyone.

Joseph: What do you think keeps people in that industry working like that?

Scott: I can absolutely tell you what keeps you in it because when I interned at this company before I was offered the role in later years, I remember having a very nice man sitting down and going, ‘Scott, you seem like a nice, smart, young man. Why do you want to work here?’ I was like, ‘It’d great to work here.’ He went, ‘Are you kidding? Me and everyone else in this room, we would leave if we could do anything else. We’ve been here so long, one, we’re addicted to the money. Our lifestyles were at a certain level. Our kids go to a certain school. Two, we can’t do anything else. We only know how to push around these imaginary numbers and turn them into other numbers.’

He said to me, ‘It’s weird how this now become true. What you need to do is leave and go work for a startup. That’s the future.’ Little did I know that that would obviously come to fruition in later years.

Joseph: What made you realize that you wanted to shift out of this world?

Scott: I got really into documentaries, and then I got very deep into a lot of literature, a lot of stuff that they don’t teach you in school. I’m a very well, financially qualified, young man, but then when you actually learn about how the financial system works, about how debt really works, things aren’t planned up to lessen the funding of wars and things like this. I sort of thought I’m reading books about the companies that when I get off the Tube and walk in the office, I then go and serve. I was kind of leading two lives, and I come to a pinnacle moment.

I remember I used to go home and visit quite a lot in Kent from London, which isn’t too far. There was one time I was with my friends having a drink, and I remember saying the sentence, this time next year, I won’t be working in the city. The next day, one of them called me and said, ‘Scott, you realized what you said last night?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.’ I think that was the pinnacle time where I actually said the words out loud. I’ve probably just thinking about it in my head. That certainly started the journey of looking for the next step.

Joseph: What did you do next once you realized that you needed to move on?

Scott: I started looking at other options. I thought about going back to university and doing a Master’s, but really, I knew that that was just putting the inevitable on hold. In the end, I decided that I’m actually just going to quit. I don’t particularly want to do anything. I know that mentally, I’m not prepared to take another leap into an industry that I know I don’t like.

I quit, I took the money that I had, and I started feeding the homeless in my hometown with a good friend of mine who had been on his own journey as well. We were both sort of looking for an outlet to almost clean ourselves of the previous life. We did that all winter.

Joseph: What was that like for you? That seems like a huge contrast between working in a fancy office, making quite a good income to then being in this other world, feeding the homeless. What was going through your head as you were doing that?

Scott: It felt good. It felt nice. I hadn’t really given any value. A term that I like to use a lot is value. I think in the financial sector, there is zero value being created, whatsoever. It’s a zero-sum game. When you’re meeting people out in the streets, they start remembering your name. You start knowing a little bit about their background stories. You see them when they’re drunk. You see them when they’re sober. It was a nice feeling, because you’d go home and go, ‘Wow, I’m freezing cold, it’s been raining for two hours, but a lot of people have now got a warm meal,’ and it’s a nice feeling. It’s something that I hadn’t actually experienced before.

It’s something that I recommend that everyone does actually do. It’s easier to give £5 in a charity box where only 50 pee of that will actually end up serving the charity. You’re better off just putting your hands in your own pocket and doing something yourself in the active community.

Joseph: What did that teach you about yourself as you went through that?

Scott: Not to judge a book by its cover is certainly one thing. I saw and met some of the smartest people I’ve ever met while I was doing that, granted when they were sober they were a lot smarter. Some of the stories were just incredible. Some of them are ex-city guys themselves that had just taken a few bad turns, and then they get stuck in this rut, and there really isn’t much to get them out of it.

I was someone that did just this: you walk around with your chin up. You think you’re a captain of the industry, but that’s of course they breed you to think like that. They breed you to think that you’re the best thing walking, but you’re not. Everyone is just a normal human being with a normal story. Everyone’s got the same worries and same worries as everyone else.

Joseph: It’s always so tempting to become arrogant and feel like you’re on top of everything and you know everything, but in reality, we all live in our small, little worlds, and there’s so much we don’t know, and there’s so much that could happen to us. Life is so fragile, and things can get taken away from you really quickly.

You’re feeding the homeless. You’ve left your job. A lot of people, when they don’t like their jobs, they tell me, ‘I’d love to quit, but I just can’t because I don’t know what it is that I want to do next. I know I don’t like what I’m doing now, but I don’t have a sense of where I want to go.’ How did you manage that? Because I know you mentioned you weren’t completely clear on what was next for you when we talked before.

Scott: I took a bit of time out. I’d tried to almost not decide on what I was going to do next, and then it organically happen. I was lucky enough, I was working at the same time. My family run a medium-sized building company. It’s pretty successful where I’m from. I’ve worked on that during the summers as a child, so I had a second home to go back to. They can’t quite believe why I left the city to come work on a building site, but to me, I was 20 times happier. I got to do that to essentially tick over and have enough money to live and spend the excess on what I was doing with feeding the homeless with my friend.

That gave me enough time to zone out mentally. That’s the job that you can do and you can go home and you can forget, and you can actually have time to process about what you want to do next and what you’re actually interested in. With the internet now, you can really just go down any rabbit hole that you like. You can grab hold of anything now and just sow a couple of information for free. Don’t even get me started on the books that you can get on every single subject. That’s when you really get into something.

Joseph: You’re reading these books. You’re learning a lot about yourself. What were people in your former professional life saying about this? Did you have interactions with them still? I’m just curious what the reaction was to this new life that you’d created for yourself.

Scott: It wasn’t just so much of the people from the previous life. It was family and friends as well. They think I was a little bit crazy, and for myself, it was a little bit crazy. It’s quite a random thing to do. Obviously, it’s paid off now, but to have the courage to actually do that, it was difficult, and there were some of the closest people to me who, even though maybe they wouldn’t have said it to my face, they were skeptical. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t have been skeptical. It’s healthy skepticism, but it certainly did exist.

In later years, I’ve had people come out and go, ‘Scott, I thought you were mental when you said the stuff that you were saying.’ On the other flipside, some of the people that made me really well, just turned around and went, ‘Scott, whatever you do, you’ve got this. We believe in you. You’ve always done well. Whatever you choose to do next, you’ll be fine,’ but let’s make it clear: there was a lot of people that would’ve put me in the crazy column.

Joseph: How did you manage that?

Scott: Confidence to be honest. There’s a little bit of arrogance in me. I’m aware of what I know, and I’m proud of what I know. If I know more about something than someone else, then I will stand by my opinion in any given circumstance. That’s sort of been well-documented in my life. If I know that something’s the right decision for me, then I’d weighed out the pros and cons and it’s cool, therefore, I’ve made the decision, and my decision is made.

There’s always going to be skeptics along the way, but no one ever achieved anything by agreeing with everyone else. That’s for sure. Nothing ever got created that way either.

Joseph: What was the hardest part of that time between when you left your job and moved on to founding ResponseiQ?

Scott: It was sitting down with my dad and stepmom. My dad’s a successful man. If he hadn’t been sort of an entrepreneur himself, I don’t think I would’ve had it in me. At the time I didn’t know that, but if I just rewind a little bit, I had to come down to folks and sit with the both of them who really had no idea what I was going through mentally, how unhappy I was with my role, with what I was just learning about with how the financial system works. I was genuinely unhappy about these things.

I’d sit them down and go, ‘Look, I need a little bit of faith, but I’m going to quit. My decision has been made. I’m really not happy right now. I’m not in a happy place. It was a very emotional conversation. I’m not ashamed to say that. That was definitely the hardest bit, and I remember it very well. I even remember what I was wearing that day. That’s something that certainly stuck in my mind.

I’ve been so lucky, Joseph. My family have been so, so supportive in everything that I’ve done. Never once was it really questioned. They had belief in my more than anyone, so I’m very fortunate.

Joseph: At that moment, you mentioned that that was really tough. What were you concerned about?

Scott: I was concerned about what the future of my life looked like, and I was also concerned about—it sounds almost a little bit naïve—yes, I am now the CEO and Founder of this company, but I also care a lot about world poverty, about global issues, and things like that. At the time, those issues are really eating me up, so I actually probably cared more about those at that moment in time than I did my own wellbeing. That’s where I was at at that moment in time, so that also made it very hard.

To other people that love me, I tried to explain to them that I care more about other things than myself. That’s a difficult conversation to have by itself.

Joseph: I knew that I also wrestle with that sometimes. I feel like sometimes I’m focused on my own ambitions, and I sometimes feel guilty that I’m not doing more for other people. I always feel like I could be doing more. I think about that a lot actually.

Scott: The problem is, you have to draw the line somewhere. One day, you just have to go, ‘I’m going to do this amount,’ and you have to stop there because I was going down the path of doing everything, and then you end up not really contributing anything because you got nothing to contribute.

My long-term ambition is the ‘Warren Buffett’s of this world that make incredible money and then get to spend the rest of their life giving it away. Who would not like to spend the second half of their life doing good things to people who deserve it? I can’t imagine anything more rewarding.

Joseph: You’re kind of figuring things out during that year. How did you start to put the pieces together that you wanted to found your own company?

Scott: I think it started with the self-help industry. I think I got into that.

Joseph: Was there any particular resource that you found useful?

Scott: I think I read all the classics, everything from Guy Kawasaki. Brendon Burchard, he’s got some not very specific books, but this gem of books that just made you feel good if I’m honest. Then I sort of got the bug into reading books that made me feel good. A lot of things people, and also entrepreneurs as well, whether it be their marketing, their own books, or whatever thing they’re probably selling ultimately, but that got me interested in the world of entrepreneurship. The next thing I know, I’m probably reading two books a week on different topics of entrepreneurship. A really good one that I read was The Millionaire Fastlane. It didn’t have a catchy title, but it’s a very, very good book for any budding entrepreneur.

Then just one thing led to another, but I didn’t stop reading, and I still haven’t stopped reading. In fact, next to me right now, I have two books in a package ready to send to my new head of sales, and I want them to read them, because I know how much I got from them. You can spend a year learning about something or you can shut yourself in a room for a week and read all the books in it. Someone’s been there before, made the mistakes you’re going to make, and giving you the solutions. It’s that simple – knowledge is there.

Joseph: Was there any one or two pieces of insight that you got from those books that helped accelerate your move toward starting your own company?

Scott: Yes, there was. It was in The Millionaire Fastlane. Ideas are easy to come by. Every guy who’s ever sat in park has had a great idea. I had someone call me very recently and shared their idea with me but don’t have a lot to protect the idea. An idea is nothing. Everything is in the execution.

Also, as important is if an idea has already been done, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. The world is a big place, and you can certainly take a twist on it. I think an example that they give in the book is a gentleman who made a bog standard bottle of vodka, but he shaped it as a skull and then he sold the company for 30 million just by making the bottle look cool. You just got to take something, put a twist on it, and shoot it to another market. That’s what really got me thinking.

If you sit there and think, ‘I’ve got the have the world’s next big idea. I’ve got to create a microchip. I’ve got to create a PC or the iPhone,’ it’s not going to happen. You just got to scale down. I would very much recommend The Millionaire Fastlane to people to open your eyes out to the opportunities that are there without you knowing it.

Joseph: Can you just also tell me a little bit about what you learned about yourself, during the past transition that you went through, about career change?

Scott: I don’t think anyone can really be aware of the ideas that they can have and the things that they can overcome unless you take a chance and you change something up. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being an employee for the foreseeable future, but you can still have your own, little, mini entrepreneurship within your job. I think sometimes and as you push yourself outside of those boundaries, you’re not going to actually be able to have ideas and achieve things unless you make that chance.

That’s something that I found very much myself. I hit roadblocks almost daily, and then come 8:00, 9:00 p.m., I’ve overcome it and absolutely excelled past it. I never thought I’d be able to do things like this until I took myself out of that comfort zone.

Joseph: Finally, do you have a piece of career advice you could share with people who are on the cusp of making that change? Maybe they’re unhappy with their current role, but they just can’t quite take that leap. Anything you want to share with that person?

Scott: Whatever problem you’re having, whether it’s mentally, financially, or spiritually, put your head in a book. Get up an hour before you go to work. Read that for an hour. I used to read on the Tube on the way to work. Anything you want to overcome, there’s a great author who’s put it in a book for you. Go out, buy that book, and I promise, it’ll be the start of the next hundred books that you’ll read.

Joseph: I definitely want to hear a little bit more about ResponseiQ. I know that you mentioned before, it is about response optimization and sales acceleration. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing there and what ResponseiQ is all about?

Scott: We’re very much solving a problem. If you get back to an inquiry within five minutes, you are 100 times more likely to speak to that person versus if you wait 30 minutes. We walk in, we up that connection rate by 10%, 15%, 20%, 30%. They create great first impression. Off the back of that, there’s all these metrics to show you how well your sales agents are performing, who’s connecting the most calls, who’s making the most appointments. It’s also very much an accountability platform. We’re in a very good place right now, and we’re really looking forward to some accelerated growth.

Joseph: Wow, fantastic. I know that you just recently landed a round of VC seed funding. Is that right? You’re moving into London, right?

Scott: Yes, that’s correct. We’ve landed some funding with Fuel Ventures, courtesy of Mark Pearson. I recommend that people look in Mark if they’ve got a great idea at seed level. He’s a very, very good man, very happy to have partnered with Fuel Ventures. We’re very grateful to be in this situation.

Joseph: My final question for you is, when you landed that VC round of funding, what was that like for you to have reached this point after, not so long ago, making that brave decision to leave your old job behind?

Scott: Interestingly, I mentioned to you about how important the conversation with my dad and stepmom was when I first made that leap to leave. Interestingly, I actually got the email confirmation when I was on a Eurostar train to Belgium to go to a music concert with my dad and stepmom for my dad’s 50th.

They didn’t really know exactly what was going on. I kept the cards close to my chest, because obviously, I was very excited, but I didn’t want to say something that didn’t happen, so I sit there and go, ‘Guys, I’ve got something to tell you,’ and we were shouting, and we’re screaming. It was just this beautiful moment, and then the whole weekend in Belgium was stunning. It was a really, really good time. Looking back to where I was, where it was 12 months ago, it’s an insane journey, but you got to take those risks.

Joseph: Congratulations again on all your success. It’s been a really interesting story to hear, just how different your life is now compared to what you’re describing at the start of this talk. I just wanted to thank you for taking us through the importance of contribution and the power of reading and also how you managed your own career change. Thanks so much for your time today, Scott.

Scott: Thank you, Joseph. All the best for the future.

In this week’s Career Relaunch episode, David Pullara explains why he decided to leave his job at Google and instead focus his energies on his family and a few passion projects. We discuss respecting your authentic self and pursuing projects that feed your true interests. During today’s Mental Fuel segment, I described what happened when I decided to pursue a couple of my own side interests.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of giving yourself permission to pursue one of your side interests. What’s one small, concrete step you will commit to taking today to finally get moving’ on that side interest or project you’ve been toying with for so long? I’d love to hear what you plan to do in the comments below.

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!

Teaser (first ~15s): Fundamentally, your authentic self, your core beliefs, what you really love to do, that’s just part of who you are. I think that if you try to do something that goes against that, you’re going to be unhappy.

Joseph: David, thanks so much for joining us today here on Career Relaunch. I’m really excited to hear more about your transition. I know you’ve got a really interesting story, but I’d love to start off by just hearing a little bit more about what you’re up to right now.

David: Thanks, Joseph. Thanks for having me. What I’m up to right now, I’m actually taking the opportunity to pursue a whole bunch of different opportunities, some passion projects that I’ve wanted to do for a while, and it’s really tough to do when you’re working full-time.

For example, I’ve been working on a book for quite some time with a co-author, and now I have some time to actually focus a little bit on that. I’m going to be teaching a course at my alma mater, the Schulich School of Business, on retail marketing starting in January. I’m able to do a lot of the prep work I need to do in order to be prepared for that. Last week, I had the opportunity to judge the Canadian Marketing Association Awards, to act as a judge on that panel. It’s pretty time-intensive but something that I have time to do now.

Joseph: Very cool. You sound like a very busy guy right now. Some people may know what a passion project is. For those listeners who aren’t familiar with that term ‘passion project,’ how do you define a passion project for yourself?

David: When I had direct reports, I would always ask them, if you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with your time? I think that’s a really revealing question about what actually makes people happy. The way I always answer that question is, if I won the lottery tomorrow and I didn’t have to work anymore, I would spend time teaching, and I would spend time writing. I might do a little bit of traveling, but teaching and writing would be my passion project.

Right now, I’m actually getting the chance to do that. I don’t have the luxury of having won the lottery, but I’m getting the chance to do some writing and to prepare to do some teaching. That’s how I would define a passion project – what would you do if money weren’t the primary motivator?

Joseph: Could you tell us a little bit about your life before when you’re at Google and what you’re up to before this point?

David: I was working at Google. Google is an extraordinary organization. I was in a sales role, and I’m not a sales guy. I’m a marketer. Throughout my career, I’ve had the privilege of working for a lot of really great companies. I worked for Starbucks, I worked for Yum! Brands, I worked for Coca-Cola in various marketing capacities. I love marketing. I love the consumer. I love understanding the consumer and what they need. I love building brands.

The role that I was in didn’t allow me to do a lot of that. I joined Google because it’s Google. It’s a fantastic organization. Everything I read about it, it’s true. The people are all brilliant, but fundamentally, I just wasn’t doing what I love to do. Frankly, I wasn’t that good at it. That was just becoming really clear to me and the fact that I wasn’t happy. You should be happy when you’re working for an organization like Google.

Joseph: You mentioned that you felt like you weren’t good at sales. Was there anything else that convinced you that that was the case?

David: The expectations from a sales person are that you’re meeting your quota first and foremost. My colleagues, they come into the office, and they say things like, ‘Hey, we just got an extra X thousand dollars of revenue,’ and they get really excited about that. When I was able to do that, that’s not what excited me. What excited me is when I worked with my client, and they had a big problem, and we were able to solve the problem. That was the win for me. I would celebrate that win as, ‘Yes! We solved the problem!’ I wouldn’t even care how much revenue was attached to that. That’s a pretty big sign that you’re not a sales guy.

Joseph: You’re at Google. You realized that this sales role isn’t quite right for you. What did you start to think about doing next?

David: I didn’t immediately come to that conclusion. My first instinct was to try to double down and try to get good at it. I spoke with a lot of my US colleagues. They were really helpful. They gave me some good tips. I spoke with a couple of senior people within the Toronto office where I worked, and they gave me some great pieces of advice to follow. Even after I did that, I found that I saw the path to success, and I just still realized that I wasn’t going to be happy doing it. That’s really what prompted me to make the change.

Joseph: I would imagine that being at such an amazing company like Google, the idea of walking away from that would be difficult. I’m just curious what was going through your head in terms of extracting yourself from such an amazing organization.

David: It was an incredibly difficult decision. It was Google. It was literally one of my favorite companies. I had dreamed of working there for years and years, and so I didn’t want to admit this. I almost saw it at first as a failure on my part. It took some time to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a failure. This was just something that I wasn’t meant to do.

Google as an organization is great. I think that in the right role, I think Google would still be a tremendous opportunity, but the role that I was in was just not right for me. That took some time, and I worked with an executive coach for a while to help me validate what I was feeling. I think that’s what took so long. I think that in a regular organization, I would’ve come to the conclusion much faster.

Walking away both from a culture perspective and from a financial perspective was really tough to do, but it was the right thing to do.

Joseph: A lot of people I speak to, if they are in a company that they admire, one of the things that they try to do is what you’re describing, which is to sort of mitigate the situation or maybe find a way to make it work. At which point did you realize that there was not going to be a way for you to make it work in another way at Google?

David: I think it was recognizing the tradeoff that had to happen. I understand what I like to do in the course of a job and what I don’t like to do. I like to solve problems. I like to come up with solutions. I like to manage people. I just realized that, as I was speaking with more and more people about what it took to be successful, it didn’t feel like me.

Joseph: One of the things you mentioned, David, in your article was an assault on your authentic self, which I think is what you’re getting at there. Can you just explain what you meant by that when you said assault on your authentic self?

David: I came up with that line because I feel like everybody has the person that they are when they’re with the people they’re most comfortable with. When you’re with your loved ones, the people who know you best, that’s the true you. I think that, sometimes at work, you hide a little bit of that to fit in, to be a little less of an extreme personality sometimes, but fundamentally, your authentic self, your core beliefs, what you really love to do, that’s just part of who you are. I think that if you try to do something that goes against that, you’re going to be unhappy. If you have a set of values and you go and work for an organization that has a different set of values, you’re not going to feel good about that.

That wasn’t the case with Google. I think that culture fit, and the values were very much aligned, but my authentic self is a marketer, and I was trying to be a sales guy. I was trying to be something that I actually wasn’t. Every day, I came home feeling emotionally beaten up because I was trying so hard to be something that I wasn’t.

Joseph: It sounds like you actually had quite a bit of self-awareness to know what it was that you did love to do, and you were courageous enough to pursue those passions. What do you say to people who aren’t that clear on what it is that they love to do? Because I think that’s one of the challenges: knowing whether or not this is just a rough patch or if this is actually the signal of a complete misfit in a role.

David: I think everybody has a bad day, and everybody has a bad week. A lot of people even have bad months, but it’s when you’re going repeatedly over and over and over where it’s tough to get up. I call it the alarm clock test. When you just start a new job and you’re super excited to be there and you just can’t wait, you leap out of bed. You wake up before your alarm. You never hit snooze. The snooze button is just not something you ever do when you’re excited about your work.

When you’re less excited about your work, and the alarm goes off, and you’re hitting snooze one, two, three, four times, that’s kind of a subconscious signal that something’s not right, that you’re not excited. When you’re doing that for a prolonged period of time, that’s one little example of something that you need to rethink about what you’re doing.

Joseph: It’s like one of those things that you can’t ignore when you wake up each morning, whether you’re feeling good or whether you’re feeling bad about the day ahead.

David: The other thing that I would say is that I have a very supportive, very loving partner, my wife, and when you have supportive people around you who are willing to be honest with you, they’ll let you know when you’re not being your authentic self. My wife saw that I wasn’t happy. I would leave really early in the day to catch the train, and so everybody was sleeping when I would go to work, and I’d get home pretty late, just enough time to help give my kids a bath and put them to bed, and then I’d go back to work. My wife was like, ‘You’re not happy, and we’re not seeing you very often.’

If you’re working hard at something that you love, it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like just something that you’re doing to pursue your passion. When you’re working hard at something that you don’t love, then your days are really long. That’s the distinction. That’s the mark of what you should and shouldn’t be doing, I think.

Joseph: Did you come across any skeptics along the way as you decided to start your transition on the way out of Google onto something else?

David: There was only a very close circle of people that I trusted with the fact that I was struggling. It’s never easy to admit that you’re struggling with something. We talked a little bit about self-awareness before. It’s really difficult to draw that line to say, ‘This isn’t something that I can do really well.’ You don’t want to necessarily broadcast that to the world. I did write a blog posts and broadcasted it to the world, but that was after the fact. While you’re in the moment, I think it’s pretty natural to just put on a smiley face and work hard and just try to get past it.

There were a lot of skeptics because there weren’t a lot of people that knew how I was feeling, but the people closest to me who did know, they love me and support me, and they want me to be happy. It wasn’t, ‘What? Are you crazy? You have to stay. It doesn’t matter whether you’re happy or not. It’s work.’ It was more about, ‘You need to do what you love because that’s going to make you happy,’ and, ‘You’ll find something. Don’t worry about leaving this opportunity because the next one will come along, and it’ll be great.’

Joseph: Can you take us through what happened next for you as you started to transition out of Google?

David: Once I left Google, I took a couple of weeks just for myself, spent some time with my kids—I have three young children—just to recharge. I had gone through 10 months of a very intense period, and I just took a few weeks just to reset, figure out what I wanted to do next. I think for me, the mapping and the planning of that was really important.

Joseph: I think one of the things that people struggle with and one of the tensions I hear about is whether you should leave your job before you have another job lined up. I’ve been in both situations where I’ll leave a job, and I’ve got something conveniently lined up. I’ve also been in situations where I left my job behind, and I don’t have something lined up. For me, the latter was a lot more uncomfortable. I’d be curious what that was like for you to leave Google behind without having something lined up for you next.

David: I’ve been in both situations as well, and it’s definitely better when you have something lined up. It definitely feels better to hand in your letter of resignation, take a two-week vacation, and then start something new and not have to worry about any discontinuation of pay or anything like that. I think the choice that everybody has to make is, can you go on until you find something new?

In my situation where I just discovered that I was really unhappy in that sales role, I didn’t want to go on. I didn’t think it was fair to myself. I didn’t think it was fair to my family, who was seeing that I wasn’t the best me I could be. I didn’t think it was fair to the company. I don’t think it makes any sense for me to take up space, just taking the paycheck while I looked for something else. I felt like I couldn’t do a complete job search and give 110% to Google. I didn’t think that was even fair to them.

In my situation, I felt that the best thing for me to do was to leave and just have faith that I could translate that into another opportunity.

Joseph: Was there anything that was especially surprising about leaving and having a little bit of idle time?

David: What’s surprising is how much I’ve enjoyed it. I’m somewhat of a workaholic, and I’m going to have to get back to work at some point clearly, but just taking the time to—we talked a little bit about earlier—pursuing those passion projects, playing with my kids, and going out for coffees and doing a lot of networking with some really great people I know, just catching up, it’s been phenomenal. I didn’t actually think that I would enjoy it as much as I did.

Joseph: You mentioned that alarm-clock moment in the past. What is it like when you wake up right now?

David: I don’t set an alarm a lot of days. I think having a 6-month-old takes care of that for you.

Joseph: Natural alarm clock.

David: That’s right. Normally, my wife, in the middle of the night, has gotten my daughter, a 6-month-old, and brought her into our bed, and so when I wake up to the little laughing and gurgling of my daughter lying beside me, I open my eyes and see her smiling face, it’s just a surge of energy. It’s funny how certain points in your life change your perspective. Having kids is definitely one of them.

Joseph: How did that change your perspectives?

David: Having kids is a moment where you realize that there’s something bigger than yourself. You now have a responsibility to these little people who are looking to you, and you’re the role model. I want to do what’s best for them above what’s best for myself. Some may argue staying in a job and getting a paycheck is what’s best for them, but we’re fine. We’re pretty conservative with spending, and we’ve saved up a little bit, so that’s less of an issue than teaching my kids that you can go and love your job. I have in the past loved my job. When you don’t love your job anymore, I don’t want to teach my kids that you have to stick it out, that it’s okay to be unhappy for a paycheck. I think that that changes your perspective. I think before I had kids and before I had that responsibility, I never would have thought that way.

Joseph: I know you’ve alluded to money and having the steady paycheck a couple of times here, David. Was there anything that you found surprising about not having a steady paycheck anymore and the impact, if any, that that’s had on your life?

David: If you have the opportunity to plan for it, that’s key. I didn’t storm into the office one day and say, ‘I quit,’ and I’m done. I knew that this is something that I was considering, and I talked it over with my wife. We sat down and figured out what the implications of that would be. I think with the proper planning, it hasn’t had a tremendous impact. At some point, I think we all have to work, we all have to do something, but it hasn’t been as devastating as it could potentially have been because I was able to plan for it.

Joseph: What’s been the toughest part of making this transition for you?

David: The most challenging part is just, from the actual transition, trying to explain it to people who would never understand your decision in a million years. That was really difficult.

Joseph: How do you go about doing that? I know what you’re talking about there, David, because you’ve got the people who just won’t ever get it. They’ve got a certain perception of what one’s career should look like. How did you go about explaining it to those people?

David: I think most people can understand that there are some roles that you should be doing and some roles you shouldn’t be doing. I think that no matter who you are, I think if you took a look at yourself, you could say, ‘These are the jobs where I would be happy, and I think I would be terrible at these jobs, and I would be unhappy at these jobs.’ I think if you frame it like that, that’s a much more powerful message, and people kind of get that a little better.

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

David: I would say that I wish I was willing to take more risks earlier. Now, I’m pretty comfortable with risk. I’m very comfortable with change, but earlier on in my career, I was a much more conservative player. I felt like I needed to have the linear career, start off as an assistant brand manager, be promoted to brand manager, go to senior brand manager. Most people think of their career in a linear fashion, and my career has been a lot of lateral moves, a lot of different industry changes, and it’s worked out really well for me. I wish I’d known that it could work out that way earlier on in my career because I would’ve been less afraid to make changes.

Joseph: Do you have any advice for someone who is maybe in that sort of linear career, and they’re not feeling happy, and they’re hitting the snooze button four or five times a day? Any sort of career advice you’d offer that person?

David: There’s nothing wrong with a linear career per se. I have a love of friends who have done it that way, and they’ve been very successful, and they’re very happy. When I was younger, I would be trapped by the thought of having a better title, and title was a driver for me. I became happier, and I became more successful frankly when I stopped trying to collect titles and started to collect skills.

When I evaluate opportunities, I look at what I can learn and what I can contribute. When I’m about to start a role, I think about what it’ll look like when I end the role. I say, ‘What did I learn from that opportunity?’ and what was I able to contribute, because really, those are the things that build your career and build your resume.

If you’re in a linear career path, recognize the point where you’ve stopped learning, when you’re doing the same old, same old, same old over and over again. That’s, I think, when you need to make a change, and then just figure out, be honest with yourself about what you’re really good at and what gaps you may have and go and try to fill those gaps.

Joseph: I want to wrap up today, David, by talking about—I wish we had time to talk about all of your passion projects, but I definitely want to hear more about your book on mentorship, which I understand is scheduled to be published in 2017. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

David: It’s a moving target. We’re self-publishing, and we’re targeting a late 2017 date. I’m working with a co-author, Dr. Alan Middleton from the Schulich School of Business. He’s a really well-known, really great guy who’s had a terrific career. I think for both of us, we feel very strongly about the concept of mentorship. We believe that you cannot be successful in any area without having people who have offered the benefit of their experience and their advice. This applies across any field.

What we’re doing is we are interviewing a number of high-performing people, people who have accomplished a lot in their career across various industries and trying to figure out what part mentorship played in their success, because I think life is too short to make all of the mistakes yourself. I think that having people who are willing to give you their wisdom so that you don’t have to make those same mistakes yourself is invaluable and essential to true career success.

Joseph: It’s definitely one of those things that I know sometimes I struggle with: reaching out when I actually need help with something, but when I have done it, it really just saved me days of work because there’s somebody out there who’s probably already done it.

I also want to hear about one more of your passion projects because you mentioned it. You’re getting ready to teach an MBA course, and I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

David: I’m super excited about this. Earlier in my career, I used to teach for Kaplan part-time, helping people learn how to score well on the GMAT test, which is the test you need to take in order to do your MBA. I’ve really liked teaching. I really liked helping people understand things. Maybe that ties a little bit into my passion for mentorship and having people ask me about things and allowing me to share those experiences.

Teaching is something that I’ve always wanted to do. As I mentioned earlier, if I had won the lottery, one of the things that I wanted to pursue is to be a professor. This opportunity came up where I graduated the Schulich School of Business to teach the course in retail marketing, which I think is such a dynamic area. The opportunity came up. I spoke with an old professor of mine who happens to be running the department now, and this is the person who actually developed the course and has been teaching it for 10 years. He wasn’t able to do it anymore. They needed a professor, and I put up my hands. I wanted to step in. I’m very excited about that.

Joseph: Very cool. Also, I think it’s just great that you’re dedicating so much of your time to pursuing some of these projects that also give back to other people, which I think is really fantastic.

David: It was really interesting that they said that if you finish school when you’re 20 years old and you work until you’re 65, that’s a 45-year career, and you can take that 45 years and split it into three different sections. The first 15 years is all about learning and growing and building your skills. You just focus your time and energy in learning as much as you possibly can and building your base. The next 15 years is about benefiting from that first 15-year cycle. That’s where you’re going to start to do really well in your career and get the titles and get the promotions and get the paychecks. The last 15 years is about giving back, giving back of your time, your money, your expertise, your experience.

Not to say that those are hard lines in the sand, each of those 15 years, but I think that that’s a pretty good framework for how I want to build my career. I’m in the second phase right now, and I’m always going to be learning. I love to learn, but I also don’t think that I need to wait another 15 years before I start giving back.

Joseph: It’s just been really interesting to hear about your career trajectory. I know you talked a lot about self-awareness, which is useful, and also the importance of planning. It’s also just cool to hear about what it’s like to be pursuing some of your passion projects too. I’ll be looking out for that book and really looking forward to seeing what you’re up to next the next time we connect.

David: That’d be great. Thanks, Joseph. I enjoyed our chat.

Solonia Teodros discusses her international moves and shift from working in the PR world to co-founding The Change School, an organization focused on helping people navigate change. We’ll talk about how your cultural upbringing can affect your career choices and the importance of creating boundaries between work and the rest of your life. Afterwards, during today’s Mental Fuel segment, I’ll share a couple ways I maintain my own work/life balance.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of giving yourself an opportunity to take breaks from your work. What’s one quick activity you could commit to doing on a regular basis that allows you step away from your job, rejuvenate, reflect, and recharge?

Solonia Teodros is driven by the potential of individuals, organisations and societies to change. Her vision for the world is one where everyone has the courage, confidence and commitment to realise their potential for greatness.

In 2013, she co-founed The Change School, a holistic lifestyle and learning brand for anyone at a cross-roads or pivotal life stage. They create experiential events, retreats and talks designed for conscious individuals and groups committed to continuous learning and growth. They believe, with the right tools, change can be a force for good. Follow them on Twitter, 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!

Teaser (first ~15s): Rather than forcing ourselves to do things or be productive or go to that social engagement, it’s also being able to say no when you need to and allowing yourself that space to just realign, recharge, and start over tomorrow.

Joseph: Hello, Solonia. Great to have you here on Career Relaunch. I just got done watching your TEDx Talk, and there are a lot of things I would love to ask you about related to The Change School and global citizenship and growing up in a multicultural family. You’ve got such an interesting background, but I’d like to start by talking about your career. I was wondering if you could kick us off by telling us what you’re focused on right now in your life.

Solonia: It’s quite an interesting time right now, I think both personally and in terms of the work I do. It’s a bit of a transition period. A little bit about what I do is I’m a co-founder of The Change School. At The Change School, we really just help individuals to align their personal values and their life choices. That resonates with me on a personal level as well. Right now and probably always, the focus is really on living and working authentically and practicing what we preach in our personal lives but also using our personal experience to enable others who are struggling with the change or some type of transition.

Joseph: You mentioned the transition in the work you’re doing and also your personal life. Would you mind just giving us a glimpse into what sort of transition you’re wrestling with right now?

Solonia: The Change School is in a transition right now for a couple of reasons. One is we’ve done a bit of a pivot at the start of this year, and we’ve decided to focus more on how we can add value to individuals as well as companies but really focusing more in individuals because we see that, at the end of the day, making a change is very much a personal choice, and by working with individuals, we’re able to make that impact faster and enable them to go further.

My co-founder, Grace, is now a new mom of a beautiful baby girl who’s a month old. That’s an example of a life stage shift that can happen and obviously has an impact on various aspects of Grace’s life and our business. Really going through that journey, I think, is also allowing us to better understand the types of challenges and opportunities that come up when you are shifting through life stage.

What that means for me and the business is that we’re growing, and we’re growing our team. I’m learning to manage a team as opposed to just being a co-founder doing everything. It’s about learning to say no to certain opportunities and learning to say yes to the right ones and also just keeping up with the growing demand in Singapore, which was perhaps a slower market at first for us. Now, I think they’re sort of catching up with the importance of being able to embrace and navigate through change. We’re excited about that.

Joseph: Very cool. I know that you were not always living in Singapore and you weren’t always the founder of The Change School. I would love to go back and go through some of your life transitions. Can you take me back to your time in Boston? If you could tell me a little bit about what you’re working on at the time, professionally what was going on in your life, and then we’ll try to understand how you got to where you are right now.

Solonia: In Boston, that’s where I went to school. I went to Boston University. I studied International Relations, which I kid about this. I say that sometimes that’s a subject for people who don’t really know what they want to do, but I did know that I was interested and always curious about the world and the dynamics of different cultures and politics and economies. That’s sort of why I studied that.

From there, I really felt quite passionate about research and academia, and so my first role coming out of school was working in Global Health Research at Harvard University, which was obviously not related at all to what I studied. I think research was something I realized I was really good at and really enjoyed doing.

In hindsight, I always say I guess I’m a bit of a serial career shifter and sort of hop around from one job to the next, in search of purpose or meaning or even just trying to figure out what it was that drives me and that I really thrive in. After a few years in the academic world, it was really my excitement about New York, which was only four hours away. I used to take weekend trips away and come back and feel like, ‘God, I really love the pulse and energy of that city,’ and I just wanted to be there.

At that time, a lot of the advice I was getting from career counselors or personal mentors, because I’m half Chinese and I speak Mandarin, everyone was always saying, ‘You got to use your language. That’s such a high demand skill. Find a job that lets you use your language.’ Being in such a hurry to move to New York, I decided to take the first opportunity I could that allowed me to use my Mandarin. That was in a product sourcing and supply chain management company. They were really excited to have me, and I was always open to trying new things.

Joseph: What was that transition like for you to go from academia into more of the product world?

Solonia: It was definitely a big shift, and it was a huge learning curve. Again, in hindsight, although it didn’t feel it at the time, I was always really good, I think, at communicating my strengths and demonstrating to a potential employer that while I’m very cognizant of the things I don’t know, I’m a fast learner, always curious about learning new things, and I always ask questions if I’m stuck, and I’m passionate about learning and growing.

That really went a far way throughout my life I think. Even though I was always hopping jobs, I think being able to have that narrative and having that self-awareness and being able to convey that always allowed me actually to hop around in different industries and sectors.

While I was in that job, I did get to use my language, and I did gain a lot of business and project management experience, which was great. However, to be really honest, I was using my Mandarin to come down harder or yell at factories in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. That wasn’t quite how I envisioned adding value with my cultural fluency or even language fluency. Eventually, I decided once again to hop from there.

Actually, one of my clients while I was in that role, asked me to work for him on a freelance basis, and he was a ‘Fortune Magazine’ photographer. He needed a communications manager. Before I knew it, I was working with photo journalists and editors at ‘Time Magazine’ and ‘Fortune Magazine.’ Again, I learned a lot, and I gained a whole new set of skills. That was a really rewarding experience.

The turning point came when the financial crisis hit Wall Street, which was 2008. The publishing industry was taking a hit. Photography as an industry was taking a hit. At that time, I felt very fortunate that because I have a connection to Asia and had gone to school in Singapore at one period in my life, I had an opportunity to move back to Asia where things were really booming and moving, and there was a lot of opportunity.

Joseph: Can you walk us through your thought process in transplanting your life from the US over to Singapore? Because that sounds like quite a leap to completely relocate yourself. How did you go about doing that?

Solonia: On the one hand, I felt like I was going back home. On the other hand, I probably underestimated what later became quite a period of reverse culture shock – coming back to a place that you feel is home, only to realize that you still have a lot to learn, there’s a lot of things you don’t know, and that a lot can change over eight years. I did take some time to travel around Asia when I first moved back just to reorient myself.

Joseph: What surprised you the most in going back there?

Solonia: At that time, I got engaged. During that one two-year period, I was getting ready to get married, and my husband, who’s Indian, he comes from a traditional Indian family. I think in addition to underestimating the reverse culture shock, there was also an adjustment I had to make to being so closely tied to a very different culture that I wasn’t familiar with and I was learning about as I was getting immersed into it.

Another layer on top of that was a bit of an identity shift and crisis, in that you’re going from an independent, free spirit, job-hopping lifestyle to one that really makes you question, who do you want to be as a daughter-in-law? Who do you want to be as a wife? Who do you want to be with in your relationship? Because I see ourselves as such a holistic sort of pie with so many realms. I don’t really look at professional life as one realm, and then relationship as one realm. They all mold into each other at some point. I think that was a very trying and challenging period for me in all ways.

On the career front, coming to Asia, really the big question was, who am I going to be and what value am I going to create here? That took a lot of time for me to work out.

Joseph: You just come from the PR world. Did that cross your mind in terms of just continuing on the track that you were on before?

Solonia: It definitely did. I think one thing I was quite aware of, being in Asia, is that unlike a place, a city like New York for example, where I think there’s so much room to create alternative career paths and less conventional jobs, I was pretty conscious that, in Asia, there wasn’t necessarily all that flexibility. I think to save myself too much stress and uncertainty, I immediately wanted to jump into a PR agency because there were a lot in Hong Kong and Singapore, which were the two cities I was really focusing on in the beginning. Actually, when I came to Singapore, I did end up in a big corporate PR agency.

Joseph: You’re at the PR firm, and you’re back into the world that you were once in. Can you take us through the next transition as you moved away from the PR world?

Solonia: People who come from agency would know, it is very fast-paced. It can be really long hours and really stressful. I think I’m not one to ever shy away from hard work, but I think the only way for that to work well is when you have a supportive company culture, colleagues, mentors, and just a sense of happiness and wellness in whatever role you do.

I think, at some point, the long hours and the fact that our company culture at the time was not necessarily as supportive as I would’ve liked—in fact it was a bit competitive, it was quite at times even toxic—I think the first red signal for me was the impact it was having on my overall happiness, because I pride myself in being quite a positive and generally upbeat person, and my physical health. I was losing energy. I was tired. I wasn’t feeling valued or appreciated. Over a longer time, the role itself just became a job, and it stopped holding much greater meaning or purpose for me.

As I said earlier, I was also going through such a shift in my personal life, and all of this was building up and forcing me to really ask myself, what do I want my life to look like, and what is my definition of work-life balance, and what is my definition of meaningful work? After about two years, when I really started asking myself these questions and more clearly defining my boxes that needed to be ticked, I realized that fewer and fewer boxes were getting ticked, and it was time to move on.

Joseph: I see. I know a lot of people go through this experience, Solonia, of feeling like they’ve had it with work, and it’s not really doing it for them anymore, and they want to get more clarity about what they want to do. That’s where they get stuck. They can’t past that stage. Could you take us through some of the things that you did to gain that clarity that instilled you with enough confidence that it was time to leave and pursue something else?

Solonia: One of the biggest ones was expectations, other people’s expectations and societal expectations. Being that I was living in Asia and half my family is Asian, I think a big fear was facing the music. What am I going to tell my mom? What am I going to tell my grandparents? What are you going to say when I’m giving up a steady paycheck and a job with a great company and no real idea of what’s next? That was something scary.

Obviously, practical concerns were also scary. How am I going to afford not working and for how long? Will I have to have a side hustle? If so, will that distract me from finding my next thing?

I think, also, growing up where most of us are taught that you don’t leave a job, if you have to leave a job, you don’t leave unless you know you have another job lined up, and I didn’t have that either, I definitely spent a few months sitting in the agency, still trying to figure out if I was crazy or if I was thinking about the right move for myself.

I think a few things helped. One is I did really carve out the time and space to spend time and sit down and talk to my mom and also my husband about what I was feeling, what I was thinking, and really trying to make them my allies and to have their support. I think for me, it was also knowing that my mom and my husband’s opinions really mattered the most to me. I think that was good because you can’t please everyone, and it’s actually not up to everyone to approve or support your decision. I think you need to know who your allies are and leverage that support to prop yourself up and forward, but you also have to be able to just shut out the noise and know that it’s not forever.

There was a period where I was a bit probably more insular and not sharing everything with as many people because I needed to be okay with my transition first. I needed to feel like it’s okay. I needed to accept it, because I knew that once I did, that would come through in my interactions and sharings with anybody. So I did take some time to myself.

The other big thing I did during that time was—this did take a lot of work. This wasn’t something that just happened overnight. I think it took me about three months—I traveled and I spent some time looking back at my own career path and journey and really tried to find a common denominator across all these jobs and experiences that I had, and within each of them, ask myself, ‘What did I love about that?’ or, ‘What was I really great at?’ or, ‘What were people praising me about for that?’

Eventually, I identified that common denominator as really, I felt that I was a strong communicator. I felt that I could be persuasive in helping people to feel that they can tackle problems, that they can overcome challenges that they see, and because I guess I’m a natural problem solver, I was always quick to offer help or offer solutions or offer guidance to companies or individuals around how they can get around challenges that they were seeing and reframe challenges as opportunities.

The more I got that clarity, the easier it was for me to recognize the things that I would find purpose and meaning in.

Joseph: The point you made about stepping away from other people, I think, is a really good one, because I know I’ve felt this myself during my transition. I started to become very concerned with a lot of people’s opinions of me. It’s important, as you mentioned, to just focus on who really matters and also remind yourself that, actually, the person you got to look in the mirror every day is actually you. If you can be okay with it and you can reconcile it for yourself, once you’ve convinced yourself, it becomes a lot easier.

You’ve taken some time to reflect on what you want. What happens next for you?

Solonia: I finally left. I got the green light from mom and hubby, and I was feeling great about it. At that point, I did manage to save aside a little money, at least like three months’ worth of buffer to just not have to worry about that. Then I had a very old and close friend of mine who is now my co-founder. We’d reunited in New York, and then we were always wanting to do something together but never wanting to force it.

At that time, Grace’s father had passed away, and so that coincided with me leaving my job. We both found ourselves at this very difficult, challenging crossroads. Even though our triggers were very, very different, we were asking ourselves very similar questions: What is meaningful work for us? What is the vision we have for ourselves for the future? Because we were very close and always sharing with each other, we sat down one day and really tried to distill what was missing from the trajectories, our options we perceived that we had.

We always joke about this and say that the options that you have when you’re stuck, there are two main ones. Generally, a lot of people will either go and get an MBA or continue their education or get some kind of credential, or you go on a yoga retreat because you just want to try and get away from the noise and reconnect with yourself. Those are both great options. I definitely don’t want to undermine those.

I think what we realized was that we were looking for something more holistic. We were wanting something that allowed us to develop ourselves intellectually and spiritually and physically and physiologically. That, we felt, didn’t quite exist.

To distill it even further, we were saying, ‘What is it about that type of experience that would really allow us to move forward?’ We narrowed it down to three main things. One is that we needed the opportunity to learn and develop ourselves, whether that’s learning a new skill or taking up a new hobby, but that ability to sort of advance ourselves personally and professionally.

We were also seeking community. By that, I mean it could be community in the sense of what you find in a co-working community, but it also can be just a group of peers who help to support you, who may mentor you, and who may give you very honest feedback and challenge you to do more and to be more.

The third thing was having a creative space and a learning space that allows you to reflect, allows you to learn, which is always a messy process, and allows you to shut out the noise and shut out the distractions.

With that sort of clarity, we decided to test whether this was something that other people in a similar situation would need. That culminated in a 21-day program that we ran in Bali. We had 17 people from all corners of the world join us, and we really tested our assumptions. We shared worksheets and workbooks and workshops and excursions and activities that we felt would have really impacted us in a positive way.

Joseph: I don’t know if you have this come up, but sometimes, when I talk to people who are navigating change, either on these podcast interviews or elsewhere, I can’t help but think about my own story and my own trajectory. Was there something that you learned about yourself during that time when you were pretty much immersed in this world of trying to inspire change?

Solonia: One part of that experience that was really eye-opening and inspiring for myself was just realizing that entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be about setting up a business that grows and scales quickly and gets investors. A lot of times, the best businesses are built on a problem that we experience ourselves and feel that we can solve better or offer a non-existing solution to.

I always say I kind of stumbled into entrepreneurship because what I was passionate about when we started The Change School wasn’t running a business or being a business owner so much as it was that I knew people were going to go through change always in their lives. Change is the only constant in this highly uncertain world we live in.

It was amazing to discover that I had this genuine passion and ability to really encourage people to do more and inspire people to chase their dreams and to really take a less conventional path if that is where they saw themselves going and to be okay with it. The journey of The Change School is also very much the journey of my own self. It is this exploring and experimenting and realizing and discovering new things about yourself all along the way.

I guess a few other things I noticed is that, through that process, I really finally built much more confidence and courage in myself and my own abilities. I always felt that I was very self-aware, but I didn’t necessarily trust myself enough to take on a whole new venture until I did it and actually saw that things were moving and that people were appreciating what we were offering. That was a very empowering experience.

This is something I have to remind myself always: learning to trust the process and know that you’re not always going to know where something will lead, not every idea you have is great and not ever opportunity becomes something real. I think being very clear about your why and your intentions and the motivations and impact you want to have allows you to just let go of the things that you can’t control and in a sense have a little faith that serendipity and timing will eventually work into your favor.

Joseph: I know that I have this tendency of wanting to be a bit of a control freak with my destiny, so I’m just here laughing as you’re saying those things because I give myself plenty of headaches trying to just manage every individual thing. I think you’re giving us a good reminder that you can’t control everything, and at some point, you just have to try to reground yourself in your original motivations and hope that that will be the guiding light as you continue to move forward with whatever ideas you do have. Very interesting.

You’d mentioned that you were not interested in entrepreneurship originally and that you’ve now moved into this world of entrepreneurship. What’s been the toughest part of being an entrepreneur or co-founder?

Solonia: Sometimes, there is a danger for professionals who work in the corporate environment of falling into what I call autopilot mode, where there are so many structures and systems already set up and in place that, very often, we become doers but not always thinkers and not always problem solvers because so many corporations are structured in a way where we lose the bigger picture I think. That translates into the way we work and the way our levels of curiosity and our levels of being proactive about solving problems.

I think, at least for me personally, that was a big shift, because once you’re running your own company, there is no right or wrong. Everything is a test. Everything could fail or could succeed no matter how much you plan and strategize around it. Developing that resilience is tough, and it takes failure to develop resilience. You can’t really just become resilient without experiencing hardship.

It is really needing to push yourself. People tend to think, ‘You’re a business owner. You set your own hours.’ Actually, my greatest challenge is setting my own off hours because it’s so easy to work through the day and through the night because the only person to answer to is yourself. Setting boundaries has become a really big challenge. Juggling priorities in life and work was a big challenge, it’s a constant challenge, and still being able to nurture relationships, whether it’s business relationships, family relationships, and social relationships, and most importantly, our relationships with ourselves.

Joseph: During those times, when you are trying to balance everything, do you have any advice or do you have any tips or tools or techniques that you used to stay on track during those challenging times?

Solonia: For one thing, I think that word ‘balance’ sometimes is tricky because the idea and the concept of balance, I think, is extremely subjective. What work-life balance looks like to one person could be completely different or even the complete opposite to another person.

I think what’s more important and definitely at The Change School, what we base everything on is really about personal values and really knowing what’s important to you and then almost reverse engineering from there down to the nitty-gritty in terms of how you spend your time, how you create boundaries whether it’s at home or in your social life or even how you set meetings during the week, and also recognizing that we have limited time in a day and we also don’t have boundless energy.

Tied to this is also that idea of self-care and knowing what type of environment you need for focused work, what type of environment you might need to be more productive, what type of setting you need to not be working and to create those boundaries and when you just need some down time.

Actually, we just ran an event two nights ago around career change. One challenge that a participant had shared was exactly that, ‘What happens if you’re without a job and you’re in between jobs, and you just have a really bad day, but I know I’m supposed to be doing something, but I’m not?’ My response was simply, we need to be a bit kinder to ourselves, and we need to understand that some days are going to be, and that’s with everything in life. Rather than forcing ourselves to do things or be productive or go to that social engagement, it’s also being able to say no when you need to and allowing yourself that space to just step away from things and clear your mind and realign, recharge, and start over tomorrow.

Joseph: When you look back on your career change, Solonia, is there something that you wished you had known that you now know, having gone through these transitions?

Solonia: It really is okay to take the road less traveled. I think the onus comes back to us, and we have to really put in more of that self-work to understand who we are, what we believe in, and where we can add value in the world and dare to pursue those opportunities and follow that path despite naysayers, self-limiting beliefs. It’s just acknowledge those things and either ignoring them or working around them. You talked about a guiding light. It’s sort of letting the things we know of ourselves and know of the future we want in the world be the guiding light.

Just know that, again, we can’t control everything, but hard work, self-awareness, and keeping your eye on the prize can go a very, very long way. A lot of things, I think, will just fall into place as you go, provided that you are doing those things.

Joseph: I would love to hear a little bit more about the work you’re doing, especially in the space of global citizenship. I just got done watching your TED Talk, which is really wonderful to watch: ‘Stepping up to Global Citizenship,’ which is a talk you gave with your co-founder, Grace, in 2016. I was just curious if you could wrap us up today by talking a little bit about how your multicultural background has had an impact on your career trajectory and how global citizenship has been at the core of the work that you’re doing.

Solonia: My background is that I’m half Taiwanese and half Ethiopian. I’ll also mention that I have a half-sister who’s Ethiopian-Lebanese and a half-brother who’s full Ethiopian, and as I mentioned earlier, my husband, who’s Indian. The reason I talk about that is because I think that experience, in a way, has allowed me to have a very natural openness to change and adaptation. Things weren’t always smooth in my family in terms of overcoming cultural differences.

I think seeing that and understanding that on a very real and deeper level from a very young age has allowed me to have more compassion for the natural fear or resistance humans have towards the unknown. It’s allowed me to understand why change can be so scary and why the familiar always feels safer. Having that insight and that compassion has allowed me to do my work better.

At The Change School, if you go to our website and see our theory of change, we always talk about being a school that aims to empower and enable more global citizens. While we have shied away from using that term only because people have so many preconceptions of what a global citizen is or means, I think, for us at The Change School, we simply define a global citizen as an individual who can connect the dots between the self-awareness piece to the world beyond them. It’s about personal mastery. It’s about understanding our values and understanding how that translates into the work we do and understanding that each of us has a role to play in global society. It’s important to be self-aware, but it’s also important to realize that the work we do should be much greater than ourselves.

Joseph: Thank you so much, Solonia, for taking us through your career journey and explaining how you gained clarity along the way, the importance of getting the space to reflect, the importance of self-care and setting boundaries, and also just taking us through the importance of how much multiculturalism has played an impact on your own career. I know one of the things that you talked about in your TEDx Talk was the importance of continuous learning and practice and curiosity. If people are curious about learning more about you or The Change School or the retreats that you guys organize, where can they go to learn more?

Solonia: My bio’s up on The Change School website, which is just TheChangeSchool.com. If what I’ve shared resonates with anyone, I’d love for them to also just drop me a mail and connect. I’m at [email protected].

Our retreats, we’ve got a few coming up that are actually very suited for any sort of career shifters or relaunchers. We’ve got something on how to be fearless, which is about building confidence and courage. We’ve got a self-care retreat about creating those habits that allow us to be our better selves. All of that can be found on The Change School Facebook page. If they just type in The Change School on Facebook, they should be able to find us.

Joseph: Fantastic, Solonia. We will make sure that we capture all those links in the show notes. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your personal journey. I hope everything continues to go well for you there at The Change School and that people continue to get a ton of value out of your retreats. Thanks a lot.

Solonia: Thanks so much, and thanks for having me.

Becoming a freelancer has plenty of benefits including independence, freedom, and control over your time. However, it also involves many ups and downs, doubts, and uncertainty along the way. In this episode of Career Relaunch, Stephen Satterfield, a former restaurant manager turned freelance writer and founder of an online food magazine shares his own unique career journey and thoughts on how to patiently manage upheaval and uncertainty in your career. I’ll also address a listener question about how to stay motivated each and every day.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I shared a few ways I stay motivated even when I’m feeling a bit frustrated. What are some of the techniques or tools you use to stay on track with your own career goals? Share your tips with the Career Relaunch community in the comments below.

Stephen Satterfield is a food writer, speaker, food activist, and Founder of Whetstone Magazine, where he shares stories of food origins. He’s the inaugural food writing fellow at Civil Eats, a leading voice on the American food system, and the former restaurant manager at Nopa in San Francisco. Follow Stephen on Twitter and Instagram.

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!

Teaser (first ~15s): A lot of people feel that, when they’re confronted with the doubt and the anxiety, they’re not equipped for it or that they’re unsure of themselves. I think that uncertainty is completely part of the experience.

Joseph: Stephen, good morning, and thanks so much for joining me here on Career Relaunch.

Stephen: Thank you. I’m really excited to talk to you, Joseph.

Joseph: I know you’ve had a really unique and diverse career in food and beverage and also as a restaurant manager and also as a writer. I’d love to just start off by learning a little bit more about the food writing you’re doing right now.

Stephen: Right now, I am a writer for an online publication called Civil Eats. Civil Eats is one of the foremost authorities on the American food system, particularly around the issue of sustainability. When most people hear that I’m a food writer, what they imagine is me on a budget and going out to fancy restaurants and critiquing fine food and wine, which I’m sorry to disappoint you—it disappoints me as well—but that is not the kind of food writing that I do. I’m more focused on really how the things that we eat and drink arrive to our plates.

Joseph: How long have you been doing writing?

Stephen: I have been a writer my entire life, but this transition has really come to fruition, I would say, over the last three years. Notably at Nopa Restaurant in San Francisco, where I was a manager for five years, I started a very basic Tumblr blog to catalogue all of the amazing things that I was seeing around me every day, beautiful food and many different iterations from arriving from a local farm all the way to the final composition, which just over the years, year by year, turned into a side project to eventually a full-time multimedia project that I was managing called Nopalize, which is basically a spinoff of the restaurant’s name, which I think gave me enough credibility to begin getting offers from more traditional publishers.

Joseph: Before we get into more of your writing, can you just take us back to what you were doing for Nopa and your role there as a restaurant manager? What was your day-to-day life like?

Stephen: A restaurant manager is a pretty thankless job. The hours are quite long. At this restaurant in particular, it is now a 10-year-old, farm-to-table restaurant right in the middle of San Francisco. The volume of the restaurant made it so that, sometimes, a typical day would be arriving at 2:00 p.m. and then locking up at about 4:00 a.m. and getting to bed at about 5:00 a.m. and really even doing a lot of my writing after 4:00 a.m. shifts, into 5:00, 6:00 in the morning, and then crashing and then waking up the following day and doing some version of the same thing.

I really, really strongly identified with the ethos of the restaurant because it was really built to sustain the local food community and to really support sustainable farmers and producers, which are principles and values that I strongly identify with. I was happy to be in the role, but obviously, with hours like that, especially with a bubbling interest of writing, it was really inevitable that I was going to eventually have to move on. I’m just fortunate enough that my employers at that time were so forward-thinking that they really allowed me to explore this new food media platform that really helped catapult my career.

Joseph: I know a lot of people who are interested in either the restaurant industry or they want to be chefs or they want to manage a restaurant, because you see this stuff on TV and on the movies, and it all seems very glamorous. Can you explain to me what your motivations were in moving on?

Stephen: Restaurants, for most people, have a shelf life. It’s a younger person’s sport so to speak because of all the physical demands. There’s always this perpetual negotiation of the money’s really good, I like having the cash, I really love this community, versus I don’t want to be doing this when I’m in my mid to late 30s or mid to late 40s.

For me, I just had such a high regard for Nopa, I just couldn’t really see anywhere else that I would really desire to work in a restaurant after that experience, coupled with the fact that I had a very profound and growing interest in really becoming a storyteller and doing narrative multimedia journalism to try to tell a more honest account of what the life and culture is really like of people who are in the food community.

Joseph: One of the things that I sometimes hear from people, which I think is what you’re describing, is this sort of emerging interest that comes up alongside their full-time job. How did you then begin to think about this passion for storytelling or this passion for writing becoming an actual career for you?

Stephen: As I spent more time paying attention to what was out in the marketplace, I started realizing that not only was I not really seeing anything that reflected exactly the idea that I had, but the ones that approximated it were really clear validations. I think the more that we just paid close attention to the marketplace, the more we felt like there’s a conversation in food that people are ready for that’s not entirely being reflected in the glossy food magazines.

Joseph: You decided that you want to pursue this. What happens next for you in your career here?

Stephen: I decided I wanted to leave the umbrella of the restaurant media project and focus more globally on some of these food issues. I started doing some traveling and this exploration around food origin, food culture, and food ways, really looking at the things that we take for granted. All over the world, there is this collective new interest and consciousness in food culture in a way that is really unprecedented in any other time in history. It just became really clear to myself and some of the people who I’ve been working on the project with that we really needed to be the ones to begin to document this amazing international movement.

Joseph: I’d like to try to shift the conversation a little bit to talking about your career and what this was like for you personally to make this shift. Obviously, you’re creating something from nothing and you’re embarking on pioneering in this new space. Can you describe what it was like for you to leave Nopa behind and to then, suddenly, be traveling around the world capturing these stories?

Stephen: It was, in a way, I feel what I had been training for in a sense. The thing about traveling to these place that really made me feel like I was both connected but also definitely further away is looking at the commonality of the spirit of these farmers and their practices in different parts of the world and then seeing the ways in which they were so familiar to all the farmers that I’d known from California. I think it was really when I was on the farms that I felt, again, just really validated in all of the preparation that I had been doing, kind of unknowingly too, just really out of my own curiosity and just almost understanding this other language of agriculture.

Joseph: One of the questions at the back of my mind is that this does sound like a dream. It sounds amazing to be able to travel around the world and document all these different food practices. How did you fund your travels? How did you make this new life for yourself viable?

Stephen: It is very, very expensive to leave your job and travel the world. Again, I started traveling in the fall, and I knew that I was going to begin that journey in January. A lot of the initial travel, I just paid for through my own savings and out of pocket. We started to do some outreach to people and these communities as we started to hone in on the stories that we wanted to pursue. I think, almost always, our lodging was in someone’s home, and so it wasn’t as if we were staying in really fancy hotels each night.

We specifically chose places that were just inherently inexpensive. We did some filming in Oaxaca, which is gorgeous but also the second-poorest state in Mexico and not at all an expensive place to travel. All of these places that we went were chosen with limited resources in mind. Frankly, we just weren’t really spending a lot of cash.

Joseph: This is really interesting because I know that one of the things that stops people from pursuing their dream is money. How do you think about money right now, now that you’re pursuing this dream of yours?

Stephen: I am emphatically in favor of people having part-time jobs or jobs that provide them supplemental income. I have been fortunate enough to, throughout that time, get work as a freelance writer. As a freelancer, what you quickly realize is that the money that you are owed is not the same as the money that you have. Had I not been in places that were inexpensive and only relying on my freelance income, I would’ve been in a really, really, really sticky situation on more than one occasion. A lot of the clients are not really held accountable for giving you your paycheck in the same fashion that they would have to if you were an employee of theirs.

I think that’s a really critical thing for a lot of people who are pivoting into a new career to understand, because oftentimes, one of the plans about money is, ‘I’ll just do this thing that I’m doing on the side to make a name for myself, to make a little bit of additional income while I start the business.’ That’s fine if you have the ability to live and pursue that project without relying on that freelance income, but if you make the leap and the plan is to rely on freelance work, I would strongly advise against that.

Joseph: What do you think has been the hardest part of being a freelance writer?

Stephen: It’s absolutely the money because what no one tells you is that you really do spend a great deal of time just sort of tracking down your money. It’s really much easier to be zen about the whole thing when you’re not relying on that money to, let’s say, pay for rent.

I just think for any young writer, it’s not the advice that they want to hear, but until you get to a point where people are contacting you, you probably want to keep your day job if you want to be a writer, because unfortunately, the writers are getting paid a little bit less because there are so many people who are willing to do the work for relatively little money.

Joseph: Has there been anything else, Stephen, that you have found to be surprising, specifically related to the move from being a restaurant manager to more of a food writer?

Stephen: It’s very lonely. I think that was the biggest surprise for me: a lot of people who work in restaurants are very social, very gregarious, outgoing people, and the life of anyone who’s starting anything is really lonely. It requires a lot of hours of intense concentration, quiet, and focus and solitude, especially as I was working from home to get a lot of this started. Your proximity to the fridge is just a couple of steps away all day long. If your brain wanders for even a second, ‘Am I hungry?’ then yeah, you’re hungry, and you’re up and moving around.

Just the ways that you have to fend against your own distractions of other people, you also have to recognize that it is going to be lonely sometimes, and you’ll need to schedule time for socialization so that you don’t really get too bummed out in solitude.

Joseph: Is there anything else that you miss about your former life or your former career as a restaurant manager now, looking back?

Stephen: I miss the people. They call it the hospitality industry, I think, rightfully so. It’s really for the people who inherently are hospitable or who really buy into that notion. It’s almost like just having one grand dinner party every single night. Again, for me, the most stressful part of running the restaurant were always everything leading up to opening the doors. Once the doors were opening, it was a show. That adrenaline that you get from being the conductor of that big show, that I kind of miss.

I really think it’s important that people don’t have this notion that, ‘Unless I’m making 100% of my income from this one thing, I’m failing or I’m not doing it right.’ I really think that’s misguided, and I think that that, a lot of times, just comes from purely a place of ego. Perhaps use it as motivation to get yourself to wherever you want to be, but just try and go zero to a hundred from one job into a full-time career switch, it’s just really a risky proposition and frankly a more difficult proposition. If you are able to have a part-time job, it actually keeps you more productive.

Joseph: What do you think prevents people from taking part-time jobs to supplement their income?

Stephen: I think a lot of times, people just feel some sort of failure or inadequacy, like it doesn’t feel real or substantial if they’re not doing it all on their own or all their way. The reality is there isn’t such thing as an overnight success. That’s not a thing that happens very often. You’re better off trying to play the lottery if your plan is to make it happen overnight. What’s way more likely in any business venture is that it’s the product of day after day, month after month, compounding year after year, until there is a significant breakthrough.

If you look at your own, let’s say, hobby or freelance career or aspiration in the same way, or career change even, what you have to understand is that you’re building your new career in the same way you would be building a new business. You have to have that same patience with the process. Just like if you were starting a new business, you would have to take on loan from an investor or a bank until you could pay them off.

It’s really no different for freelancers. You might have to take the investment income of, say, a part-time job. After three years, just like you would have paid your investors back, maybe after three years of your part-time job and your diligent work on the side, you can leave that job. You can leave it with a great deal of pride because you’ll be leaving, and you’ll know that you’re in a position in which you have saved and earned and built your business or your career to a point where you can comfortably leave. I think there’s so much more gratification in that.

Actually, a big hindrance for people starting their own thing is that they just feel, ‘I can’t really start it until I can do it full-time.’ That gap is just so large that you’ll get swallowed up in that chasm before you even begin if that’s how you’re looking at it.

Joseph: Can I go back to one of the things you’re talking about earlier, Stephen, which was the loneliness period or not having the people around you who you used to have around you. What keeps you going during those lonely times?

Stephen: Once when I got lonely, actually when my partner was traveling in Europe for a couple of months, I spent I think about three or four months doing dinner parties each week. That became this incredible opportunity for me to always have something on the calendar, to look forward to. There’ll be a new cast of people each time. It did so much to strengthen the relationships that I already had here, to bring in new relationships, to make me a better cook. If you do have a community or an interest in being a part of a community, I would say just looking for these recurring gatherings that other people are hosting or maybe even hosting yourself is a really good way.

Joseph: I was reading your last blog post on Nopalize. One of the things that you mentioned that you learned was that upheaval is never easy but always necessary. What did you mean by that?

Stephen: About twice each decade, there is a necessary moment in which the work that I have been doing up to that point gets to be comfortable. I think as soon as your work becomes comfortable and familiar, you have to move on to the next thing. That upheaval is really difficult because it’s like the alarm clock going off. When you’re in full-on REM sleep and you got the blankets on and it’s cold and you got nice wool socks, the last thing you want to do is enter into the cold. I think every five years or so, we are in these peak moments of slumber that need to be reinvigorated, reawakened and redefined.

Joseph: Speaking of your own career change, when you look back on it, was there something that you felt you learned about yourself?

Stephen: The main thing that I learned about myself is that I am really fragile. I think it’s an important thing for people who are entrepreneurial or starting new ventures to articulate. There’s a lot of people who give advice who are entrepreneurs who talk about grit and toughness and perseverance and all those qualities that are absolutely necessary.

It is also true that there are moments where you have to be tender with yourself and there’s a self-awareness that is really important to where, after a hard day, you can say like, ‘I really did get my ass kicked today,’ or, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. I have real doubts.’ Being able to fully absolve those moments as part of who I am and part of this experience and then being able to move forward the next day with the same resolve everyone talks about, I think that’s really the key, because everyone who talks about their boldness and courage and perseverance, they all have doubts as well.

This is very difficult stuff to make big changes in your career, in your life. A lot of people feel that when they’re confronted with the doubt and the anxiety, they’re not equipped for it or they’re unsure of themselves. I think that uncertainty is completely part of the experience. It’s as much a part of the experience as the courage and the toughness and the grit. Unfortunately, people don’t talk about it as much.

I didn’t graduate from college. I know we didn’t get into my entire backstory, but I went to culinary school and just started in a professional track as a food and beverage and hospitality professional. Especially for me, I had so much insecurity about being a real writer or not having a journalism degree. There’s so much doubt, but the more productive I was in my own work, then the more I realized being a writer is just about writing. My output, frequency, and quality is just as good as some of these other people, and so I was emboldened to move forward despite that insecurity.

Joseph: I think that’s a great reminder. I can tell you, as a small business owner myself, I definitely feel like there’s always this pressure almost to come across a certain way or to act like you’ve got everything together and everything’s working. The reality is that there are a lot of days when things don’t work. There are a lot of down moments, and there are a lot of moments that are really frustrating.

My final question to you, Stephen, before we move on to your current project, is what’s the best career advice you could offer to people who are thinking about making a career change?

Stephen: Once you have identified something that you’re better at than most people or something that you enjoy doing or can do without realizing that you’re working, find the people who are doing those things at the highest level and just copy them. Look at their work as a literal blueprint and go from there.

Joseph: I can’t let you go without talking a little bit about your current project, which I understand is a multimedia project about food origins. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Stephen: I am working on a multimedia publication called Whetstone Magazine. Whetstone is basically a continuation of a lot of the work that I’d described at Nopalize – exploring food origins and culture. You’re able to check it out on WhetstoneMagazine.com or also just at Whetstone. If you want to learn more about the local food communities and cultures from different pockets of the world, then follow us there.

Joseph: Final question for, was there something in particular you came to appreciate about food while you’re capturing these stories of food origins?

Stephen: All that wholesomeness that happens around the table in our best moments as humans and as families and as neighbors, that is a very beautiful universal language. It’s always been part of an ideal that I’ve had about the power of food. That connected quality that we have around food or at the dinner table is truly one of the few shared languages of all human beings.

Joseph: Thanks so much, Stephen, for taking us on your career journey in the world of food, your experiences as a freelancer, and sharing some tips on how to identify your passion. I hope everything goes well for you with Whetstone. Thanks so much for your time.

Stephen: All right. You as well, Joseph. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Your career can take turns outside of your control, and when that happens, you have a  choice between taking charge of the situation or allowing yourself to get knocked down. In this episode of Career Relaunch, Anne Lipton a former neurologist & dementia specialist turned writer & speaker discusses doing what you love, not just what you know and embracing the idea of stepping off the beaten path in your career. I also share some thoughts on how allowing your career to evolve can open up exciting, meaningful new doors in your professional life.

Be sure to follow Anne on Twitter and check out her Common Sense Guide to Dementia For Clinicians and Caregivers book and Facebook page.

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!

Teaser (first ~15s): Going a little bit off the beaten path or just letting something grow and blossom that maybe you didn’t plan along the way, sometimes, that’s where you’ll get your most joy and your most reward.

Joseph: Hello, Anne. Thanks so much for joining us on Career Relaunch. I’m super excited to hear about your work and your life.

Anne: Thank you for having me, Joseph. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Joseph: Just to kick off, can you give us a brief overview of the work that you currently do as a writer and speaker?

Anne: I am mainly working as a writer, and I write mainly fiction at this point in time, a variety of different genres. In the past, I’ve written and published a number of nonfiction, mainly academic books. I do do, occasionally, some academic writing now as well.

I also am a speaker, specifically on the topic of dementia. I also am a member of a medical advisory board for healthcare provider and assistants organization called Cariloop, which helps people who have family members who are needing some sort of in-home or long-term care.

Joseph: Wow, you got a wide range of different experiences and roles right now. Out of curiosity with the fiction writing, can you give us an example of the type of fiction that you write?

Anne: It really runs the gamut from picture books to what’s called adult fiction, which would be something like a mystery writing.

Joseph: I know you weren’t always a writer, and you weren’t always a speaker. You started your career in clinical medicine. I was wondering if you could just go back in time before your days as a writer and a speaker and just tell us a little bit more about your work and what your life was like as a neurologist.

Anne: I was in clinical practice, but I also mainly started my career in academia. I’ve actually had two career transitions. I started out in academic medicine, which would include not only clinical practice but research and teaching. Then later, I was in private practice. My specialty in neurology is dementia and behavioral neurology, so I kind of straddle the worlds of neurology and psychiatry, working not just with patients but also with families, particularly as the disease progressed.

Joseph: You’re the first physician we’ve had on this podcast. You’re also the first neurologist we’ve had. What’s the typical career trajectory for someone in neurology?

Anne: The major two paths are academic, which would be working at medical school or other large medical center, and then private practice in which someone might set up their own clinic or join a group practice.

Joseph: You ultimately decided to walk away from your private practice. I was just wondering if you could take me through what drove that decision for you.

Anne: In a way, my hand was forced a bit, in that we moved from the United States to Ireland. Going abroad, I could not medically practice. I was working on a couple of books at the time and chapters, and I continued to write. It was very unfortunate because I actually had a position that would be privately paid, and so I was simply waiting for certification. At this time, my husband then had accepted a job in Canada. We were in Ireland for almost two years, and I wasn’t able to practice as a physician.

Joseph: What was that like for you to no longer be able to practice the craft that you’d spent so many years training for?

Anne: It was disappointing, especially when I knew that people were waiting so long to see a doctor. I really enjoy helping patients and families and getting to know their stories. I think that’s one thing that led me into writing: I love stories and every patient tells a story. I like to listen to it. By working with people who have dementia and their families, I get to know the person very well. I would usually work with them until the end of their life, and that was just really a special honor and privilege, and I miss helping patients and their families through a difficult diagnosis and adapting to that and trying to maximize and optimize their quality of life and just give them the best life and journey that they could have. As one of my friends said, there’s a lot of green tape, so it’s unfortunate.

Joseph: Then what happened next? Did you think about returning to clinical medicine full time and reopening up a practice when you moved over to Canada?

Anne: I couldn’t practice independently because in Canada, although there is a shortage of specialists, if you’re coming from another country, you have to practice under supervision for two years. The situation as it would’ve been set up would not really have worked very well with my specialty of dementia because I would’ve just been reimbursed for each patient that I saw, and I would’ve had to do a lot of extra work, filling out papers for research. Frankly, a lot of other tasks that I wouldn’t have necessarily been reimbursed for doing.

By that time, I had written my first novel. I really enjoyed writing, and so I would’ve liked to go back to helping patients and families. I don’t want to be working for free. If I’m going to be working for free, then choose what I wanted to do. I really have enjoyed the writing, and I’ve really found the passion for it. I love doing it. Also the speaking and working on the medical advisory board has really helped me reach a lot of people and help a lot of people. Working in the clinic, I can only see one patient, one family at a time.

Joseph: It sounds like the circumstances didn’t really allow you to return to clinical medicine in the way that was going to work for you, so you switched over to an alternative plan, which was the writing and the speaking. How did you start doing that? Because I know a lot of people who they want to get involved in writing, either in a full-time basis or as a way to either express some of their side interest or just because it’s a passion of theirs. How did you start with that?

Anne: I’ve always done some writing, particularly even in medicine. My reports are quite detailed narratives because of the nature of seeing patients with dementia. It’s what we call a clinical diagnosis, and much of the diagnosis is made through the history. I got to hear many, many people’s stories, and I would document these stories. That was part of my medical report. I always enjoyed doing that, and I did other fiction writing as well.

When we moved to Ireland, as I said, I was writing several books. These were dementia-based books and chapters. Being in Dublin, it’s a very inspiring, historic city. Of course, many novelists have come out of Dublin, Ireland, and what else is there to do on a rainy day in Dublin but to write?

There are a number of great online resources. I found a wonderful writing community on Twitter, also some Facebook groups. I’ve actually met some of my critic partners. Critic partners are other writers who write in your genre and they critic your work and they critic theirs. I’ve met a number of them. They live all over the world. Some of them, I’ve actually gone one and met in person, but you don’t necessarily have to to find a compatible critic partner and to find someone likeminded.

I think it’s a bit of inspiration that got me on the path, but it was also where I was, and that was inspiring, what I was experiencing, and then what I made of it. Do what you can with what you have and where you are.

Joseph: What do you think was the toughest part of making this transition from clinical medicine into writing?

Anne: One is just in terms of the schedule. When you’re a busy physician, you’re seeing patients all day, writing prescriptions, doing paperwork, and then it seems like the days sometimes don’t end. You go home, you get paid, and you do more paperwork. Very long hours, very busy, but you have a very structured day. As a writer, you have to be a self-starter, self-motivated, and set your own schedule.

I will tell you, having done both jobs, I often work equally long and equally as hard as a writer, but I don’t have a schedule necessarily like I would patients or someone saying, “Dr. Lipton, your next patient’s here.” It’s up to me to be that self-starter and to be that writer.

Also in terms of going out and getting resources, while there are a number of resources on the internet, in books available locally and writing groups, one has to really reach out for those. It’s a nice background as a doctor and a researcher. I’m very used to researching different topics, so I have a good basis for that, but if someone is starting out and they don’t have that basis of research, that’s a skill you have to learn as a writer as well – how to research.

Joseph: The other thing I was thinking about, as I’m listening to your story here, is at least on the surface, it would seem to me that being a neurologist is very different than being a writer. Has there been anything in particular that has been surprising to you about transitioning into being a writer, having been a neurologist?

Anne: One thing that I guess was surprising is, not too surprising given my personality and what I like, but just how the solitary nature of it would affect me. What I actually found was local writer groups, or there’s a program called NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month, which is actually international, but it’s something that occurs each Novembers. There’s an online community as well as local meet-ups and also just local critic groups and also, as I mentioned, the Twitter community of writers, different writing contests.

I actually joined Twitter so I could participate in some of the different writing contests. It turned out to be very surprising. I joined it to enter writing contests, and I ended up with it becoming so much of a community of fellow writers and friends. I’ve learned so much. It’s been so instructive, but it’s also been very supportive. The bottom line, the answer to the most surprising thing, is how much the social media can teach you and connect you really.

Joseph: It sounds like the writing is working out quite well for you. I just got to ask you this question because it’s been at the tip of my tongue. I know that you mentioned that you really enjoyed your work as a neurologist also. How much do you think about or do you ever think about returning to being a clinical neurologist?

Anne: I do think about it some, in that I really enjoy working with the patients and families, but it’s actually interesting how many people I’ve been able to help through my books, through this healthcare startup, Cariloop, and through my speaking. I’ve been able to reach a lot of people that way without necessarily having to deal with the headaches and hassles of the administrative sorts of tasks, which you can tell from this interview that I don’t enjoy those things.

Joseph: Weren’t your favorite things, right.

Anne: My favorite thing is helping the patients and the families, and it’s actually quite enjoyable to have found a way to channel that goal of helping people and connecting with people and doing that through my writing and my speaking and serving on the medical advisory board.

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

Anne: I wish I knew that you’re braver than you think. I was talking with one of my friends, and you can imagine, as a neurologist, I don’t tend to do high-risk activities like motorcycle riding or horseback riding or downhill skiing. Certainly, if I did any of those things, I would wear a helmet. I had mentioned to one of my friends, I said, ‘I’m a risk-adverse person,’ and this is someone who’s known me for many years. She said, ‘Are you kidding?’ She’s like, ‘I think you’re very brave. You went off and you moved.’ I had been to Ireland before we moved there.

Making the choice not to practice as a physician, although I’d been in school for it many years and I’d trained for it for many years, that did require a lot of courage. Some people may still question my decision, but I enjoy what I do. I tell people now to write your passion. Some people say write what you know. I say write what you love because if you love it, then you’re going to really enjoy it, and others, your readers, will get that from your story, that sense of enjoyment. If you enjoy it, you won’t mind researching it. If we all only wrote what we knew, stories would be rather boring. We need to write what we love and what we can imagine, and the rest will follow.

I guess the thing that I would tell my former self is get yourself out there. Be brave. You’re braver than you think you are to try new experiences.

Joseph: Was there any advice along the way that you received that was especially helpful in keeping you on track with this change?

Anne: Some of the best advices, basically to do what’s right for you, and you can’t concern yourself with necessarily the opinions of others or the expectations of others or society or even your own preordained expectations.

Joseph: Do you have any advice for other aspiring writers out there?

Anne: Self-doubt can be part of any creative process. What I would say is you have to embrace that doubt. You have to take it and make it your own and say, ‘How can this doubt make me better in my creative endeavor or whatever it is that I’ve set out to do?’

In writing, we talk about plotters and pantsers or George R. R. Martin who wrote the Game of Thrones series, he talks about gardeners and architects. Gardeners can plant a seed and tend it. They don’t really know what’s going to come out of the ground. Architects might plan things out, but then they have to work with whatever soil that they’re given. No matter how much you plan, sometimes, you run into things unexpectedly.

As writer, one thing that’s really good to learn is, no matter how much you plan something out, let yourself go where the character takes you, where the story takes you, because sometimes, it’s following them down that rabbit hole that will lead you to the most important breakthroughs in your story.

I would give that advice to any aspiring writer or person: to go off that beaten path. Plan what you can and tend your garden, but sometimes, the reward for going a little bit off the beaten path or just letting something, an idea or an action, grow and blossom that maybe you didn’t plan along the way, sometimes, that’s where you’ll get your most joy and your most reward.

Joseph: Just to wrap up, let’s talk about what you’re doing right now. I understand you’re on the medical advisory board for the healthcare startup that you mentioned earlier. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Anne: Cariloop is a healthcare startup that is devoted to helping family members find care for their loved ones, especially elderly loved ones, who may have needs for care in the home, which might actually help to keep them at home or have needs for long-term care or even to move out of their home to receive care. The idea of Cariloop is to provide people with a care coach who can help them with all different features of care, whether that’s joining a support group for an illness, finding care in the home.

A lot of people aren’t aware of the resources that are out there, so Cariloop is really to try to help people with accessing the resources easily and saving them a lot of time and hassle and headache. It’s also for people who just want to plan care for the future. That’s something that a lot of us don’t think about. It’s rolling out and based in Dallas, but the hope is that it will spread beyond Dallas. Many people have used it who live beyond the environs of Dallas as well.

It’s very exciting to me because, again, it gets back to the idea of helping people, helping them live the best life that they can and trying to reduce stresses and burdens, especially on caregivers.

Joseph: Speaking of resources and speaking of caregivers, I know that you’ve written quite a few books on dementia and Alzheimer’s, including The Common Sense Guide to Dementia for Clinicians and Caregivers, which I saw. I was looking at the Amazon reviews. I know one geriatric care manager called it, ‘By far the best and most useful book for caregivers on dementia.’ We’ll capture that in the show notes also.

Thanks so much, Anne, for sharing your career change journey from medicine to writing, giving us a glimpse into your transitions, and also just reminding us of the importance of allowing yourself to go off the beaten path. Thanks so much for your time today.

Anne: Thank you, Joseph.

Sometimes, your career can evolve in surprising ways, and you can either fight those changes or embrace them. In this episode of Career Relaunch, Julian Mather a former army sniper turned TV cameraman turned magician discusses the importance of letting go and embracing the twists and turns of your career. I also share some thoughts on the importance of putting yourself out there to create new opportunities in your career.

Julian Mather wasn’t at school the day they taught conventional career planning. A chronic truant he self educated and read between the lines to find the secrets to turning his obsession into his profession. From high school failure to Army sniper to globe trotting TV cameraman to kids entertainer to online entrepreneur he really hasn’t felt he has a worked a day in his life. And at 55 he says he’s only just beginning to hit his straps. Julian uses his simple truths and life changing resources to inspire and educate mid lifers and halt the 45-65 year old mental health decline and rising suicide rate among men at his site TailorMadeCareer.com. He now runs the world’s #1 training academy for professional children’s entertainers while re-inventing himself as a speaker & expert on midlife career change.

Be sure to check out Julian’s hand picked podcast episodes that will inspire you and teach you the art of change. Also, watch a few of Julian’s Magician School videos on YouTube to learn a few magic tricks like this one . . .

https://youtu.be/zCBOzBavD_c

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!

Teaser (first ~15s): I use that sniper analogy of a bullet ricocheting. That’s my life. I’ve just been on this ricochet – off that side and barring to the left and to the right. The target is long gone, but I’m always going forward.

Joseph: Welcome, Julian. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join us here on Career Relaunch.

Julian: You are most welcome, Joseph.

Joseph: Can you just get us started here by telling us a little bit more about what you’re focused on right now in your career and your life? You’ve got a very interesting story, and there’s a lot of pieces to get to. Let’s start with what you’re doing right now, and then we’ll go back in time and work for it from there.

Julian: Right now, I’m passionate about working with 40 to 60-year-olds—I’m 55—about getting them digitally literate. There’s wonderful opportunities online, but it’s been my experience that a lot of people don’t know that these are there. There’s also a problem that if you’re white, if you’re male, if you’re 45 to 65 years old and you’re a Westerner, you are most likely to suicide. I think that’s just crazy, I don’t understand it, and I’m trying to, in my small way, be a part of the jigsaw that solves that problem.

Joseph: Very interesting. I definitely want to come back and talk at the end about Tailor Made Career a little bit more, but I would love to go back in time because you’ve got one of the most interesting career trajectories I’ve ever seen. We get some really interesting people on the show, but I have never had someone on the show who was an army sniper. Can you take us back in time a little bit? We’ll start from there. You’ve got some other interesting chapters, but I would love to just kick off by talking about your time over there in the Australian army.

Julian: I’ve really got to go back to where it all started. It all started at school because I did really well at school if you don’t count learning. I did so poorly, I had to repeat my final year at high school, and then I ended up doing worse in my repeat year. I became a chronic truant, and I self-educated myself at the State Library because I knew what I wanted to do, Joseph. I want to be a photo journalist.

I studied by myself months and months and months, pouring over these photo books. I realized, to be a photo journalist, I needed to have a camera in my hand at all times, and I needed to be where the action was, which was not in my home town of Brisbane. I saw an army recruiting poster, and I went in and asked, ‘Could I be a photographer in the army?’ They said, ‘Certainly, sir. Sign here.’ To my naïve surprise, that’s when the yelling started, and it didn’t stop. They put me in the infantry. I was being duped.

When I was in the army, I looked for some way where I could get some peace and quiet and get away from all this yelling, and I found a place. I became a sniper. My job description read verbatim, you must have a personality which allows you to kill calmly and deliberately. Honestly, my heart wasn’t really in it because that part of me that’s designed to kill people is not very big.

There I was, lying and waiting, looking through my crosshairs, but I’m still dreaming of being a photo journalist, which is simply telling a story with pictures. I realized that looking through my telescopic sites, it’s like I was looking through a camera, so I started the process of making imaginary movies. Essentially, I self-educated myself in filmmaking. I went from being trained to shoot people with a rifle to shooting people with a camera, which is much more socially acceptable I might add.

Joseph: Hang on just a second. I got to stop you there because I would love to hear a little bit more about you being in the army and the fact that you became a sniper even though that wasn’t what you had in mind. How did you reconcile that?

Julian: How I reconciled that was that I’m male, and I have this brain which is compartmentalized. I just open a box, and all the information and the knowledge goes in that box. I worked with that box, and then if I move on to the next thing, I close that box and open another box. I’ve just got a very, very project-driven mind.

Joseph: Where there any aspects of being a sniper that did sit well with who you were?

Julian: Gosh, yeah. I could indulge in my antisocial behaviors. Essentially, Joseph, I’m an introvert. You’re going to hear a part of my story later, how I’ve trained myself out of that, but I’m a cave dweller. This is what I love doing. I love getting by myself with my own thoughts and essentially not talking to people. That part really, really suited me.

Joseph: You’re right. There are all sorts of roles you could have in the army, but it’s a very introverted role. I never thought of it like that. You’re spending a lot of time by yourself I would suppose.

Julian: You work by yourself. You also work in teams of two, which I got to tell you, it was really, really hard, because when you work with someone in a team of two, you’re tasked. You might be tasked for 48 hours, and you are literally side-touching this person for 48 hours. You’ll hide side by side. It’s a very unusual situation to be in.

Joseph: What happened next for you? You’re an army sniper. You spend a lot of time by yourself or with your partner there. When did the gear start to turn for you and how did they start to turn that maybe you should go off and do something else?

Julian: I still wanted to be a photo journalist. I started this process of training myself in filmmaking. It was pre-internet. I used to go and get whatever books I could at the library and start training, because this is first step of what I always do, and I’ve had many career changes: I immerse myself, and so whatever the next project I’m going to move on or next phase I’m moving into, I literally just get in and I read and I listen. I get every bit of information.

When I went into cinematography, because what I did was I left the army and I joined the ABC TV in Australia, I ended up doing this for 25 years, where they put money in one hand, plane ticket in the other, kick me out the door, and said, ‘Go tell people stories.’ In a sense, I had made it, what I wanted to do – be a photo journalist. It was not with still cameras, how I originally set out to be. It had evolved and had gone into motion picture.

Joseph: One of the things that we talk about on the show is how people make these shifts. I have to say that going from sniper to TV camera man, to me, seems like quite a shift, although I know you’re still looking into some sort of a view finder or a scope of some sort. Can you just explain, what was that transition like for you?

Julian: It’s interesting because being a camera man is both problem solving and creativity at the same, which are two strengths that I really, really have. Even though I didn’t have the creative side in the army, I certainly had that problem solving. There was that transition across that was quite a natural flow. Really, the transition from being a sniper to camera work was not as big a transition as my careers I did further on.

Joseph: Speaking of which, you did have another transition after that, and I’m really interested to talk about this because I know you eventually ended up becoming a children’s magician. Before that, when we talked for the first time, you described to me the emotions that were involved with leaving your camera man world behind to go do something else. Can you walk us through that transition?

Julian: After 25 years, I’d met so many VIPs, and that’s ‘very inspiring people.’ They were out there making a difference. That just infuses me, and that’s what I wanted to do too. Even though I was doing little projects here and there, nothing was gaining traction. I started to think it was just me, that I wasn’t good enough to do the things that all these other people seem to be able to do.

One day, I had the simplest of realizations. I realized that all these people who are making a difference, they were in front of the camera, and that’s where I needed to be. But I was behind the camera, and the only way for me to be in front of the camera was to leave behind the camera. I couldn’t be in two places at once. So I left, and I cried. I mourned my career. I was leaving 25 years of everything I had worked so hard for. It was really the very fabric of who I was.

But you know what? That morning, that was the best thing because it’s incredibly important to let go, because it’s only when you let go that you can start a fresh job, a fresh life. Just get out there and give it your all.

Joseph: People talk about this process of mourning when it comes to loss of a loved one or when you’re breaking up with somebody. You got a relationship you’re walking away from. I don’t know if people always think about that when it comes to careers. Yet your career is such a big part of life, and of course, there’s going to be emotion that’s involved when you let it go. How did you get through that?

Julian: I suppose there’s a difference between a career and a job as well, because if it was just a job, I don’t think I would’ve mourned it. Really, photography was just a part of my being. It started back prior to that because my father was an amateur photographer, and he got me into this world. Really, up until that stage, it was my whole life that I was giving away.

Joseph: How did you know that it was time to move on from that?

Julian: When my learning plateaus, Joseph. I really get to stage where I would just think, ‘I’m starting to do this day after day, and I’m not learning anymore.’ Even though it’s a great job, it was seriously a good job, the pull for me to be challenged, I’m a risk taker, but I’m a slow-motion risk taker. My transitions from career to career normally take me about five years. It is risky leaving your job and doing something completely new, but I’d sort of put steps in place to counter that, but those steps don’t always work.

Joseph: What were some of those steps, just to understand how you were mitigating that risk?

Julian: One thing I do when I’m changing careers, I’ve got this thing called the 1852 rule. That is essentially that change is this whole thing of small steps. For me to change careers, it takes me five years. That’s my rough rule of thumb. There’s 365 days a year, and I only need to make one small change a day to do that. That’s 365 by 5 years, it’s 1,852. For me to change careers, I know that it’s going to take me 1,852 small changes.

I’ve got this thing called the perpetual motion formula. It’s really simple, but it works really, really well. There’s only two steps to keep going forward, to take these steps. Step one, roll up your sleeves and take the next step. If you’re confused, go to step two. Step two says, your one and only job is to find out who can teach you what the next step is, and then you refer back to step one. If I don’t know anything, I just know my job that day is to find out who can tell me what I need to know. I never stalled.

Joseph: I guess when you break it down like that, it becomes a lot less daunting, because I know that change can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming.

Julian: People wait for motivation to start, ‘I need the motivation to get up and start my plan and change my career.’ Motivation has never ever started the process. It’s the two D’s: desire and discipline. If you’re lucky, you’ll have desire. You’ll wake up one morning and just have this burning desire, overwhelming passion. You want to do something, and nothing is going to stop you. I rarely ever get that.

I have to go to the second D, which is discipline – setting a plan and taking those steps and breaking it down into bite-size pieces. Once you do that, then the motivation comes, because once you start taking a few of these steps, you start to see results, even small results. If you have a plan, it’s there every day, the next day, and the next. A plan never runs out.

Joseph: Interesting. It’s almost like you’re flipping things on their head because people normally wait to feel motivated to take action. You’re saying take action, which creates the results, which then generates the motivation. It’s much more in your control. You’ve taken this motivation, this desire, and this discipline after you’ve departed from your camera man world. What happens next for you?

Julian: I had three other passions apart from photo journalism. It was my family, magic, and juggling. I had another one as well. It’s actually four. I had teaching philanthropy to children now. It’s a long story how I got to that point, but I just had this idea that I could teach philanthropy to children. In my mind, this was how I was going to make this difference.

I planned on going into primary schools, working with 10-year-old kids, teaching in simple terms that philanthropy is smarter than charity. I left the ABC, and I launched this new program to deafening silence. Schools would not book me, and I said to me, ‘Hang on a minute. I ran this past you. You said you like the program.’ They said, ‘We do like it, but we didn’t say we needed it. What we need is math and science and literacy. Have you got any of those?’ I learnt my first marketing lesson – never open a restaurant unless you’ve got a starving crowd.

There I was, and my whole TV career was sailing off into the sunset. I had what was essentially a magic and juggling show with no audience. Through necessity, I had to reinvent myself again as a children’s and family entertainer.

Joseph: What was that moment like for you when you worked so hard on relaunching your career, I guess attempt number one, and it just lands with chirping crickets? I’ve had that happen to me before, and I can tell you that it’s not the most pleasant feeling. Can you just describe what that day was like for you when you found out that, ‘Gosh, maybe people don’t want the thing that I’m selling’?

Julian: It was embarrassing and it was humiliating. I had no way to go. I had my family, a wife, and I had two younger children. My wife was working, so we had some money coming in. I use that sniper analogy of a bullet ricocheting. That’s my life. The bullet came out of the rifle, and it’s supposed to be heading towards the target, but I hit something on the way, and I’d just been on this ricochet – off that side and banging off that way, and then another barring to the left and to the right. The target is long gone. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m always going forward.

When I don’t know what to do, my first job is to find out the people who can tell me what I need to know. I knew how to do the magic and juggling show. I had that, but I needed to learn about basic business. I can’t believe how naïve I was about the world of business. I knew nothing about it, but I had to learn.

Joseph: You learn that and then you start to reinvent yourself in another way. Can you just describe what that reinvention was?

Julian: That reinvention was a local children’s and family entertainer, doing family shows, school shows, birthday parties. I did that for seven years. The more and more I got deeper into the world of magic, the more and more I realized that there were these long-held beliefs in the world of magic that I didn’t subscribe to about the way you structured shows.

I started this thing. It was called Julian’s Magician School, and it started to get traction. Now, it’s got about 140,000 subscribers. It’s got over 30 million views, but I started to make a difference where I never expected it. The thing was, about a third of my audience was actually adults, and they were right into this confidence-building aspects of being able to take simple tricks and stand up in front of people and just tell a joke and be the life of the party. I started to get emails. This need I had inside of me to want to make a difference was happening where I least expected it.

Joseph: I was just thinking, as you were talking about that, have you heard of Patch Adams? The clown that went into hospitals. Actually, I met Patch Adams many years ago when I was in my high school years. I just think that what you’re describing using magic as an enabler, as a vehicle to have an impact on these audiences, to me, is just really inspiring. It’s not an aspect of magic that I always think about.

Julian: People have to understand that there are no gatekeepers online. If you’ve worked in a corporate job all your life, if you need to have something done or you got an idea, you’ve got to take it to someone. You got to ask permission. When you start working online, these gatekeepers go. It really is democratized out there. The speed of implementation, if you have an idea, if you have a point of view, if you have a business idea that you want to run and test, my goodness, you can get the thing up in a couple of hours if you want, and you don’t have to ask anyone.

Joseph: This whole process of putting out your personal brand is very much democratized, whether you’re using Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or whatever. Yet, a lot of people hesitate to do that. How did you work through that? Was that an issue for you at all?

Julian: It was a huge issue. I came from a background of very low confidence, of very low self-esteem. I don’t mind talking about that. Starting to be confident in my own opinions and putting them out there, doing it in the world online where you get trolls and haters, it all kicks you. You know what you learn after a while? You don’t bleed. People would criticize me online with a particular view, but I’d go up and my family would say hello to me, and my wife would hug me, and my dog would wag its tail. Life goes on. I think we put too much weight upon what other people think, and it’s just what they think.

Joseph: When we spoke before, you had described to me your five steps to making a career change. You’ve alluded to three of them already: immerse yourself, the 1852 rule, never wait to be motivated. What I would be really interested to hear about now, because I think it relates to the topic of what we’re talking about is this idea of pushing send. Can you explain to me how you push send?

Julian: It’s just this idea of push the send button. Have you ever driven off in your car, and you think something’s wrong, it doesn’t seem to be driving right, and then you realize you got your parking brakes still on?

Joseph: Yes, that definitely happened to me.

Julian: That is what not asking questions is like through life. Once you start to ask questions, all of a sudden, you’re freed up, and it’s not going through life with the parking brake on. Because you go back into this beginner’s mindset, it’s a blessed thing. When you ask a question, when you push send, quite often, you’re going to get no as the answer back, but no does not mean no. I always thought it did. I was very sensitive. If someone said no, they meant no. No, they don’t mean no.

If I contacted you, Joseph, to be on your podcast, and you had said no to me, I would have thought that could be for any one of a thousand reasons. It doesn’t mean Joseph doesn’t like me. He doesn’t think what I’m doing isn’t worthy. It could’ve been the business was in a thing. It could’ve been your podcast sequence was full up for the year. There’s a whole heap of reasons. No does not mean no.

Joseph: I think that what I struggle with the most, Julian, is when there’s no response at all. You reach out to somebody or pitch yourself, and you just hear nothing. Do you have a tactic or a strategy of dealing with whatever you want to call it, rejection or lack of responsiveness from people?

Julian: I just don’t take it personally anymore. I used to. I used to take it so personally. I just don’t take it personally now. I’ll actually make a spreadsheet up, and there’s my series of dates that I’m putting in there. I’ll send out an email, and if I don’t hear anything back, I’ll do a follow-up email in a week. If I don’t hear anything back, I’ll do another follow-up email in a week. Then I’ll do one in three months, and then I’ll do one in six months, and I’ll do one in 12 months. Probably if after a year I haven’t heard, maybe I’ll give it up then, but I don’t take it personally.

Joseph: Finally, Julian, before we talk about your current projects, I’ve just been listening to your story here, and I’ve just been really fascinated about how you’ve been able to navigate so many career changes in a way that has left you stronger, wiser. Do you have and advice that you’d like to share with people who are considering to make a career change?

Julian: One thing I do tell younger people these days is to go out and lead an authentic life, because online, you get people who go, ‘I’m going to travel every country in the world in six month,’ and they make a blog about it. It’s not all authentic. That’s just going to wear out. You’re better off with just something you are passionate about, just going out and start living your life, because that’s where the stories are going to come from. If creating a personal brand is what you’re about, it just takes time.

Joseph: It does take time. You’re absolutely right. It’s not something you can really accelerate or speed up or short cut. I’d love to wrap up by talking a little bit more about Tailor Made Career, which I know is all about showing 40 to 60-year-olds how to discover hidden knowledge assets and turn them into income. Can you just take us through a little bit more detail what Tailor Made Career is about?

Julian: What I’m doing is I have a site. It’s called Tailor Made Career. I’m offering a training for 40 to 60-year-olds. The first step of that training is getting them to realize that they have knowledge in their head that people are willing to pay for. It’s a brave new world out there online. They just don’t understand that yet. If you go to Tailor Made Career, the first thing you do is you’ll get a guide which will help you release and unlock that knowledge in your head and show you you’ve actually got something to say, and people are willing to pay for it.

Tailor Made Career is offering different tools, and one of those that people can get is a free 12-part course on how to create your podcast if you want to do that. It’s really easy, and it’s actually quite cheap.

Joseph: Julian, where can people go if they want to learn more about Tailor Made Career?

Julian: Go to TailorMadeCareer.com. If you want to find out other projects I’m working on, you can go to JulianMather.com.

Joseph: Fantastic, Julian. We will definitely include all those links in the show notes, including your YouTube channel, which is very fun to browse through. Thank you so much for taking us through your fascinating career, walking us through the importance of motivation being within your control, discipline, breaking things down into manageable steps, and also just giving us a glimpse into some really unique and interesting industries. Thank you so much for your time today.

Julian: Thanks, Joseph. Bye now.