Career Relaunch®

What’s it like to take evening classes while working full time to expand your career options? In this episode of Career Relaunch, David Gulbransen, a former Software Startup Founder & IT Consultant turned Intellectual Property Attorney & Director of IT shares his thoughts on attending law school while holding down a full-time job, managing failure, and creating a diverse, portfolio career.  I also share some thoughts on the importance of investing in yourself.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of investing in yourself. For some help in doing this, you can download my “Investing in Yourself” Worksheet.

Register free below to access this resource and gain access to my entire Career Resource Hub. If you’re already a member, simply login to access this resource.

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David Gulbransen is a author, attorney and “IT” guy based in Chicago, Illinois. In his law practice he focuses on intellectual property issues (copyright, trademark) as well as information technology and business law, primarily with startups and small business entities. He’s also the Director of IT at the University of Chicago Law School. David had over a decade of experience in information technology and software development and is a published author with over half-dozen technical books under his name. Currently, he contributes a regular technology column to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.

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): It was just a very unique opportunity that presented itself, a natural and very good fit for my particular experience, sort of an alignment of the stars if you will.

Joseph: Hello, David. Thanks so much for joining us today on Career Relaunch. I am really looking forward to hearing all about your career story.

David: Great, I’m happy to be here.

Joseph: I’d love to start off by, first of all, having you just tell us a little bit more about your law practice and also the work you do at the University of Chicago Law School.

David: My law practice is primarily concentrated in intellectual property. I practice part-time because I am also at the University of Chicago Law School. My role there is as the Chief Information Officer, so I’m in charge of the IT for the school, both from a policy perspective and overseeing the technical staff here at the school.

Joseph: I see. On the intellectual property side, do you work with any particular type of clients or any particular type of business?

David: I tend to focus on small businesses and startups. I have a background in computer science and a lot of experience with startups actually before I became an attorney. I really like working with small business owners or people who are in the very early stages of startup venture, trying to get things off the ground, don’t necessarily have a lot of money or funding but still have legal questions and legal issues that they need to address to make sure that they’re in the best position possible down the road when they do start either growing their business or receiving funding to grow their business.

Joseph: I definitely want to come back to that because I think there’s a lot of interesting tips and lessons that we can definitely learn from you. I’m actually most interested, since we are here to talk about career, in hearing a little bit more about your career trajectory, because obviously, having a law practice and being the director of IT are two very different things. You got the true portfolio career. I’d love to go back in time and just have you take us through how you got to where you are right now. Can you explain to us what you were doing before you became an attorney, when you were involved in web development?

David: I graduated from college with a degree in Computer Science, and so after that, I needed a job, and it was in the mid ‘90s. It was a very good time in the US in the tech industry, and so I actually went to San Francisco and worked for a startup there. After that startup was acquired, I launched another startup. I was mostly doing technical development work, XML, Java development.

I really enjoyed working in the startup environment. I enjoyed the culture, the pace. Everything about it was really great, but I realized that the things that I was interested in relating to startups were less development, less technical and more the business side of the house, more financing, management, growing the business, attracting investment, that sort of thing.

Joseph: So what happened after that? Did you continue to do what you were doing or did you make a move into the business side of things?

David: I started to make a move more into the business side of things with my own startup, which was an XML development company. I enjoyed having my own startup, but I really liked the people that I met at other startups and talking to them and wanted to figure out what way I could work with other entrepreneurs in a way that I could add value to the businesses that they were creating, which led be to a decision point where I thought about pursuing an MBA, and I thought about pursuing a JD.

My wife was an attorney. We sat down, and we had this discussion. Basically, it came down to the single question of, what can you do with one degree that you can’t do with the other? Although the education track is somewhat different for the two obviously, with an MBA, you could do everything that you could with a JD, except practice law, and the converse is not true. With the JD, you could do everything you could do with an MBA, but you also have the option of practicing law.

I’ve always been interested in intellectual property, especially as it relates to software development and tech companies. Obviously, with any kind of tech startup, there’s a large intellectual property component, and so that led me back to law school. I decided to go ahead and pursue my JD with a certification in intellectual property.

Joseph: What was that process like, David, as you were thinking about the prospect of going back to law school, having already worked for so many years? What was that like for you?

David: It was daunting really. I mean I was a non-traditional returning student, so I was older than most of my classmates. I had a job at the time. I was working at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the IT department as the director there, and so I had to return in an evening weekend program, which is a little bit longer than a traditional law school program. Going to school period is a challenging thing. It takes a lot of time and energy. Doing that on top of working a full-time job was really daunting.

Joseph: How different was the type of work you were needing to do in law school versus the type of work you were doing before? Obviously, you were a student, which is different, but I would imagine the way you use your brain is radically different.

David: It really is. It’s kind of cliché, but the saying is that law school doesn’t teach you the law. It teaches you how to think like a lawyer. Like most clichés, there’s an underlying element of truth to it, and it’s a very different skillset that you’re applying. There’s a similarity in that a lot of law, at least in practice, is problem solving, and a lot of IT is problem solving, and so there is some overlap I find there to approaching how to solve a problem, but that’s really where the similarity ends.

Joseph: I see. During that process, did you ever have one of those moments where you just thought, ‘Am I on the right track here?’

David: Sure, there were plenty of times when I thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’

Joseph: I can imagine.

David: ‘Can I sustain this?’ going to work from 9:00 to 5:00 and then a half-hour break and then classes until 9:00 p.m. four nights a week. There were definitely times when I questioned whether I was doing the right thing or not or whether or not I could keep up with it.

I think what really kept me going was my wife was very supportive. She had gone through a similar program. Not only did she understand the perspective of what I was going through as a law student because she had done it before, but she understood the additional challenge of being a non-traditional evening weekend law student, which is different than the challenges that a full-time law student faces.

Joseph: Could you also just take us through or give us a glimpse into what it was like to be a slightly older student in law school? Because I know some people I talk to, they realize that they need to go back to school to get to where they want to go, but the idea of going back as an older student is one that they struggle to reconcile. Could you just give us a glimpse into what that was like for you?

David: Actually, I liked it for a couple of reasons. One, most of my peers when I was in law school had full-time jobs, had families, and so they understood sacrifices that we were all making to be there, and they understood the difficulty of managing the workload from your primary day job in addition to the workload for school. I think you get a lot of support from your fellow students, which is nice.

The other thing that I think is a little bit different is I knew I wanted to be there to pursue a JD. I wasn’t there because of family pressure to continue in the family business. I wasn’t there because I had just graduated from college and didn’t know what else to do. I had a much better focus, I think, than I would’ve had when I was younger.

Joseph: You had a lot of experience before in the IT industry. What happened to that part of yourself when you made the shift toward pursuing law?

David: I focused my classes on intellectual property, on trade secrets, copyright law, patent law, and in those courses, I think having a technical background definitely helped and contributed to the subject matter because so much of the tech industry has intellectual property as a major component, and so it was definitely helpful to have that background.

I found that in those intellectual property classes, the majority of students had some kind of technical background. It wasn’t necessarily computer science, but it may be that they were electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, or chemists, biologists, people that were coming from some kind of science, technical background because that’s a big help when you’re pursuing a career in intellectual property law.

Joseph: What’s interesting, as I’m listening to your story here, David, is that you seemed to have this very strong clarity. I know you mentioned there were some doubts along the way, but you seemed very certain of where you’re headed and what you wanted to do. How did you get that clarity? Because I talk to a lot of people, when they’re thinking about making a change, one of the biggest fears is knowing whether or not that’s the right move and the fear that they’re going to end up in a situation that maybe isn’t any better than where they were before. How did you amass that or cultivate that clarity?

David: Part of that is that I frequently experiment with other things. I pursue lots of hobbies in my spare time, and so I explored different options along the way. In addition to my background in computer science, I have a background in theater.

Joseph: I saw that. You deal with the green computer science and theater.

David: My undergraduate degree added scenic design. I was a designer, not an actor. I pursued that for a while. I actually, for a while after college, had my own production company that did video production. I explored that career option. It didn’t work out. It turned out not to be for me.

At least for me, I had to go through a period of trying different things and not being afraid to fail. It’s hard. I think everybody is afraid to fail, and I was certainly afraid to fail, but I did fail. I had startups that didn’t pan out. That teaches you some valuable lessons, I think, about your interests, where they lie, what you’re capable of, and I hate to say I recommend everyone to fail—it sounds weird to say that—but I do because I think that one of the best lesson that I learned from failing in a startup environment is the lesson that it’s okay, and life goes on. You can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try something else.

The world doesn’t stop, and it’s not the end of everything if you do fail. Life is full of second chances, and so if you try something, and it doesn’t work out and it fails, try to look at it, learn the lessons from that failure, and then take those lessons into the next thing that you try.

Joseph: As you think about this transition, David, what do you think was the hardest part of making the shift from one industry into another?

David: The hardest thing for me personally was that I wasn’t actually sure if I wanted to practice law. I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do with my law degree – advising startups and dealing with intellectual property. The absolute thing that I did not want to do, which I saw some of my peers having to do, is end up doing insurance defense of get trapped into a large firm where, all day long, you’re reviewing documents and supervising other people reviewing documents. Those are things that I definitely knew I didn’t want to do, and frankly, that’s the majority of stuff out there practicing law.

Eighty-five or ninety percent of it are things that I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to litigate, I didn’t want to do criminal law, and so it seemed like it was a big leap of faith to pursue this degree with the end goal being the ability to practice law, knowing that the majority of types of practice out there I didn’t want to do.

Joseph: Finding the needle in the haystack there.

David: Right, the very particular niche market that I wanted to be in.

Joseph: So you finish up law school, and then what happens? Obviously, you decided not to go work for a firm. How did you then come to the decision that you wanted to start your own practice?

David: I’ve always been very independent and comfortable with the startup aspect of it, and so I launched my practice immediately after law school. I spent about two years doing consulting/legal work while I started to build clientele with my practice because I always had the IT side of things, which has sort of always been my safety net. I was able to take on a mixture of IT consulting clients and legal clients. It allowed me to not handle a divorce case when somebody would ask me for it.

That, honestly, was one of the hardest things to avoid when I started my own practice: you don’t have a deep base of clients, so there’s always this temptation to take anyone who walks in the door because you need the work, and you think, ‘I could just do this one divorce because I don’t have any IT clients lined up right at the moment, and I don’t have good prospects. This is right here, and it’s pay.’

Joseph: How did you avoid that temptation?

David: I took a divorce case. It was awful. It was so awful. It was absolutely horrible. It just wasn’t worth it if you know the tradeoff of the potential money from that type of work versus how much I disliked the work. If I wanted to keep doing work that I didn’t want to do, I could have not wasted that much time and effort. That helps bring it into very clear focus.

Joseph: In addition to focusing on the legal work you do enjoy, if that weren’t keeping you busy enough, you’re also the Director of IT at the University of Chicago Law School. Can you just walk us through how you came to that decision to add another layer to your career to make it a true portfolio career?

David: It was just a very unique opportunity that presented itself. I was practicing. I had a lot of experience in IT in the university setting. I worked for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for eight years, so I had a lot of experience with the institution, I had a lot of experience in the academic computing, and so when the position at the law school presented itself, it was a natural and very good fit for my particular experience. I had university experience, I had IT experience, and I had a law degree. It was just sort of an alignment of the stars if you will.

My practice is very small. Again, it’s part-time. I deal primarily with very small startups and small businesses. The nice thing about it was that it’s not full-time, so I can do it part-time outside of regular working hours here at the university. That allows me to be very selective about my client base, which is something that is very, very fortunate.

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

David: I wish I had known how much work it is. I think I did go into law school a little bit blind to how difficult it is to sort of completely swivel. It’s hard. Going back and pursuing additional education is hard. It’s a big time investment, and I don’t think I fully understood how much of a time commitment that is. Again, I think that, sometimes, you just have to take that leap of faith and not be afraid to fail.

Joseph: If anybody out there wants to change careers and become a lawyer or get into the legal profession, do you have any advice?

David: I love education, and I recommend more education for everyone, but you do have to look at the return on that investment. Law school is not cheap, either is business school, and so you really have to understand the value of what you’re paying for and the prospects for the return on that investment to obtain that JD.

There are great things that you can do with a law degree that are rewarding in non-financial ways. I know a number of students, people that I went to law school with, who are working in public interest, who are working in immigration law and who are not getting rich doing it but are really, really making a difference in people’s lives. There are non-monetary returns that you have to weigh into that calculation.

Joseph: Now, I can’t let you go without talking a little bit about your expertise, which is intellectual property. Do you have any intellectual property tips for small business owners, whether it’s just a common pitfall that comes up that you deal with or just a general piece of advice that you think is helpful to share?

David: Two things that I see happen a lot are patent law and trademark law. In patent law, the number one thing that comes up is, ‘I have this great idea. I’ve been selling this product for a couple of years, and now I want to see about getting it patented.’ There’s a statutory one-year bar on patents once you started selling your product.

If you have a physical invention or if you have a process that you think is very unique, any kind of invention like that that you think may be patentable, talk to a patent attorney or a patent agent as quickly as possible. End up saving yourself money in the long run by spending a little bit of money upfront to figure out whether or not you have a patent.

The other mistake that I see people make is with relation to trademarks. That is, ‘I launched this great company, and it’s going really great, and I’m selling it. Then I just got this letter from this other company that says that I’m infringing their trademark. What is this?’ It’s a lot better to pay a small amount of money to an attorney to do a search and make sure there are no conflicting trademarks out there and to register your trademark upfront than it is to be selling your product and developing your brand for three years only to get hit with a cease and desist and find out that you now have to start over again from square one.

Joseph: I can definitely attest to the importance of speaking to an attorney about your trademark. When I started my business, I called it Onward Coaching, which I thought was so cool, and I was really excited about the name because it was aspirational and it was all about moving on in your career. It wasn’t until I actually talked to a trademark attorney that I realized I couldn’t actually trademark that name because it violated one of the criteria for a trademark.

I know that whenever I talk to legal experts like you, I end up learning about a lot of things that never even cross my mind to consider. So I think that’s valuable advice.

If people want to either learn more about intellectual property law or if they just want to have a chat with your or find out more about the work you do, where can they go?

David: They can go to my website, which is just GulbransenLaw.com.

Joseph: Thank you so much for your time today, David, sharing your story about your portfolio career that you developed for yourself, the importance of learning from failure, and also just sharing a few useful tips about getting into the legal profession but also some tips on intellectual property law too. Thank you so much for your time.

David: No problem. It’s been fun.

What’s it like to leave your stable agency job behind to become a creative freelancer? In this episode of Career Relaunch, Polly Aspinall, a former Creative, Producer and Account Director at London-based agency turned freelance Set Designer shares her thoughts on the importance of creating connections with a diverse set of people and allowing yourself to be open to new ideas.  I also share some thoughts on being open to opportunities, even when they’re not exactly perfect.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about being open to opportunities that aren’t 100% perfect. For some help in doing this, you can download my “Saying Yes to Opportunity” Worksheet.

Register free below to access this resource and gain access to my entire Career Resource Hub. If you’re already a member, simply login to access this resource.

Log in if you wish to renew an existing subscription.

Polly Aspinall spent nearly 8 years working in a hybrid marketing role as a creative, producer, and account director for brands such as Johnnie Walker, the BBC, ASOS, Smirnoff and H&M. After taking a course at Central Saint Martins, part of the University of the Arts London (UAL), Polly recently made the move into set design, prop-master, and junior art director for film and tv, including projects for Episodes and a new TV Show by the makers of Inbetweeners. She also does freelance set design for window dressing, photoshoots, and interior designs.

If you’re interested in exploring a career in the creative arts, check out UAL’s full list of courses and short courses.

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): The more open you are to opportunities, the more likely things will happen to you. When you’ve been stuck in the same role or the same industry for a long time, you tend to sort of be very comfortable, so you say no to lots of things, and actually, the best things happen when you say yes.

Joseph: Hey, Polly. I know you had a really busy few weeks, filming until midnight on most days, so thanks so much for making time to join us here on Career Relaunch.

Polly: No problem. Happy to be here.

Joseph: Can you start off by telling us a little bit more about the work you do as a set designer?

Polly: Of course. I have just started off in a lot of set design, and I’m currently working on a TV show. Basically, what I do day-to-day is anything from going out and buying props. I can be given the color scheme and the design of a room, and then I have to go off and find the perfect vase for example that will fit or the tea towel that one of the actors would use in that kitchen.

Other times, I can be making things. Just this week, I made 100 fake hamsters for a scene that is coming up.

Joseph: A hundred fake hamster. Hang on a second. How does one go about making a fake hamster?

Polly: Obviously, they have to look like they were moving and have to look semi-realistic even if they’ll only be in scene for sort of 10 seconds on camera. I needed to make 10 hamsters that would move and 90 that would just sit and look like hamsters. I bought a whole load of cat toys, and then I bought some plastic eggs and some fake fur and basically covered 100 plastic eggs in fake fur and then attached some to cat toys so they move. They were surprisingly realistic actually.

Joseph: Wow. Are there guides to making fake animals or do you have to improvise and come up with this yourself?

Polly: No, and actually that’s the really good point about the job. I would say that the main thing about the job is that it’s all about problem solving. You will be given a problem like, ‘We need 100 hamsters, and we need them in a week,’ and you have to work out what the quickest, cheapest, and most realistic way of creating things is. It comes down to things like making fake wine and find a liquid that looks most like wine that obviously won’t mean that the actors are drinking alcohol whilst they’re acting. There’s all kinds of things like that where you really have to use your brain to creatively problem solve, which I absolutely love.

Joseph: What’s the strangest thing you’ve been asked to do as a set designer?

Polly: A few weeks ago, I had to make fake ashes, as in human ashes. There’s a scene where, sadly, one of the characters’ fathers has died, and they are presented with the bag of ashes to sprinkle somewhere. They throw them up in the air, and then they blow back into the actor’s face, so we have to use something that is safe to breathe in. It has to be something that’s not too disgusting or gritty that might hurt the actor.

There’s a particular type of earth that the theater industry used to use to make ashes, and it’s now been proven to be carcinogenic, so I again had to go off and problem solve about how to do this. I ended up dying a whole load of baby powder, talcum powder, and I dyed it gray. Then you have to let it dry, and I had to measure out exactly the amount that a human man makes. Now, we are the proud owners of 2.5 kilograms of fake human ashes.

Joseph: Wow, very interesting and stuff that I have never really thought about. I feel like we could spend this whole time just talking about all the different stuff that you make. Set design is very interesting, but we are definitely here to talk about you career, so let’s come back to the set design—because I’d love to hear a little bit more about your current projects—at the end.

When you and I first crossed paths, you were doing very different work. At the time, you were working as a creative producer and account director at a marketing and advertising agency in London. Can you take us back to what you were doing before you got involved in set design?

Polly: I used to work at a lovely, little agency. It was an integrated agency where we did a bit of everything from strategy to events to publishing. We even created and developed a few mobile phone apps. I’d actually been there for seven years, and being such a small company, I’d done a bit of everything. I dealt with clients on a daily basis. I wrote strategies. I came up with the ideas for campaigns, and then I actually produced them.

It was a background that taught me to do a lot of different things and to be very chameleon-like and to sort of become an expert in something very quickly, but it was very much focused on the world of marketing and advertising. Clients were alcohol brands, so I spent a lot of time talking about nightlife and cocktails and things, which is really, really interesting, but I got to a point where maybe it was starting to not challenge me as much.

Joseph: Can you tell us a little bit about how you started to realize that you weren’t being challenged and you weren’t growing or that you were stagnating?

Polly: I did architecture at university. When I left university, I was searching around for what I wanted to do, and I found this amazing agency. I kind of never looked back because it took me low end, and I learnt so much, and I loved the people. I found that I was quite good at what I was doing, which is kind of intoxicating, but I think I looked up after probably about four or five years and thought, ‘This is great, but actually, if I had sat down and thought, “What do I really want to do?” would this be it?’

I think I started thinking back to my more creative, more design roots, and more about creating spaces and places. I really started to hanker after that. I realized that the world of marketing and advertising, although I loved it, it probably wasn’t my first love as it was. I think I really felt this need to try something different.

Joseph: You mentioned something there: being good at it was sort of intoxicating. Obviously, you were good at your role. Can you take us through what it was like to walk away from something that you knew you were pretty good at but maybe wasn’t something that your heart was in?

Polly: It was about this time last year that I handed in my notice, but it took me a good six months to come to conclusion that I should. I have to say it’s pretty terrifying because you’re walking away from a place you love, the people you love. A lot of my friends in different industries complain about their jobs a lot and are day-to-day quite unhappy in their work, and I had never once been unhappy in my old job. I was very lucky. Compared to most people, a lot of my friends said, ‘Why are you doing this? You already have the perfect job,’ and it was sort of the perfect job. Also, not to mention, walking away from being paid quite well into an unknown abyss of being very junior again. It was really scary. Telling my boss who had been my mentor as well is also somewhat terrifying.

Joseph: Do you remember the moment when you finalized your decision that ‘now is the time to go’?

Polly: I found a course at Central Saint Martins, which was actually in set design. It was a week-long course, and it didn’t cost a huge amount. I took a week as holiday and did the course, and I said to myself, ‘By the end of this week, I will know if I really love this and if I should do it or if actually I hate it.’ It’s going to be a whole load of drudgery to get there. I did the course and absolutely loved it, so on the Friday night, I just thought, ‘Monday morning, I’m going to do it.’

I was pretty emotional the weekend actually. I may sound like such a baby, but I spent the whole weekend on and off crying. It’s like going through a breakup.

Joseph: Oh, wow. What do you think was making it so emotional?

Polly: I think because my old agency was such a small team, and I’ve been with them for such a long time, it’s like a family. Because the world of set design is entirely freelance, it’s not like I was leaving to go to a permanent job. You leave to basically put yourself out there. It was also probably quite terrifying.

Joseph: So you make the decision, you resign, what were the next few weeks like for you? Can you just take us through your new life and how you started to build your new life as an independent freelance set designer?

Polly: When I handed in my notice, I had a three-month notice period. Then after that, basically because of staffing and capacity issues at work, they actually asked me if I could stay for another couple of months until Christmas and go down to two or three days a week on which the other days, I could do set design work. Actually, that was sort of the perfect launch pad for me because it gave me half a week to go off and meet people, do work experience.

I basically started by making this huge list of people I knew, people I knew who knew other people. I stalked a lot of people. I would watch TV shows, find out TV shows I loved, find out who the designer was, and then basically send them an email and say, ‘Hi, I’m now free,’ and I did a lot of free work experience for people.

I basically said yes to everything. I worked on theater things. I went in to watch a TV show being filmed for a couple of weeks. Basically, by Christmas, I got a whole load of experience and a whole load of meetings with various people under my belt, which set me up really nicely for the moment that I left work permanently. That’s what I was doing – making lots of contacts.

Joseph: What do you think was the toughest part of recreating your life as a set designer?

Polly: As a freelancer, you are continually looking for the next job. Therefore, it really relies on you being very, very proactive and also very good at networking. Networking was never ever something I ever prided myself on. I think I’m naturally quite shy. I define putting myself out there and meeting new people quite terrifying. Obviously at the beginning, it was all that. I didn’t know any of these people, and I have to just put myself out there.

I think as well, combined with that, there’s the moments when you write a really well-crafted email or you call someone or you have a coffee with someone, and then you never hear back from them again, and you chase them a few times. I realize now that that happens. You have to send 20 emails to get one response. Coming from a world where I spoke to clients all the time and clients have to call you back, that was probably one of the toughest parts – the rejection combined with constant, relentless networking on your own behalf.

Joseph: I think when a lot of people talk about networking, they’re thinking about going to an event with a nametag that says, ‘Hi, my name is…’ with the wine glass in one hand and you’re shaking hands with the other, which can be really terrifying for people. How did you get through that period? Because it sounds like you don’t love networking, yet at the same time, you were doing it. What kept you going?

Polly: For every few rejections, I would get a real breakthrough. One memorable breakthrough was I went to go and see an incredible exhibition at the V&A, and I came out and I just saw the design was wonderful. I researched the guy that had designed it, and he’s won awards for films, and he was this complete hero and sort of idol of a man. I write to his agent, and I actually met up with him for coffee. I’m now in quite regular email contact with him. If I was going to aspire to be anyone and realistically never get there, he would be the person. I think victory is like that. It really kept me going through the rejections, I guess.

Joseph: Is there anything in particular that you’ve learned about networking that you think would be valuable for someone to hear if they are struggling with trying to figure out how to get started with networking?

Polly: Meet up with everyone that you can in the sense of, sometimes, a friend would say to me, ‘You should meet this person,’ and at the time, I think, ‘Are they really relevant? They’re in theater,’ or, ‘They have nothing to do with a lot of set design,’ but actually I think, everyone you meet has interesting story. You never know what connection they might make. Also, it’s just quite interesting to meet all different types of people. I think meeting up with everyone that you have the opportunity to is really, really great.

The other one is always say thank you. When people give you their time, whether it’s an email or a coffee, I’m always very, very careful to obviously thank them lots of the time but also to always follow up and say thank you, A. because it’s obviously a great way to get back in contact, but B. because I just really am very, very grateful. One day, if I do get somewhere in this industry, I will very much do the same for other people starting out in the industry. I think it’s quite important to keep that circle going.

Joseph: One of the questions or one of the skepticisms I get from people who are trying to change careers is this idea of having to deal with starting over. When you were approaching these people and describing the fact that you wanted to get into set design, even though you hadn’t really done it professionally before, what was the reception like amongst those people?

Polly: Actually, one thing that I continue to get even now, now working on the TV show I’m working on now, is people saying, ‘Why are you leaving the well-paid world of advertising for TV?’ People can’t believe it because I think a lot of people go the other way. They work in TV for 10 years, and then they move into advertising. There’s a lot of people saying that. Some that are more mentor-type figures in set design are saying, ‘It’s really great that you want to do this, but are you sure you don’t want to stick with what you’re doing?’ People have been generally quite receptive.

I think what people find quite hard with me is that, because I’ve worked for seven and a half years and I’ve gotten to a relatively senior position, I think people find it really hard because technically, I should be in a really junior role. I don’t know if they feel guilty or they feel like they’re not using me properly if they put me in that, because they can’t give me a senior role because I don’t have the experience. I’ve actually had to really battle and say, ‘I’m very, very happy to be junior. I promise.’

I suppose what people might worry about is that I might be very arrogant about it or get angry about the fact that I’m so junior, but actually, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s quite nice to not have the responsibility for a little while.

Joseph: Has there been anything else that’s been really surprising about going from a more experienced role to a more junior, what I’m going to call an entry-level role?

Polly: I think what anyone changing industries at my age would find is that a lot of the people in charge of me tend to be younger. At first, I found that not difficult, but it made me realize how late I’d come in the game to this. I’m technically fine with that. I have some friends who I don’t think would be. I’m very happy to be told what to do. I also like to be in charge as well, don’t get me wrong, but actually, age and experience are two quite different things. Age doesn’t necessarily mean experience and vice-versa, but it was a bit of a mental leap at first.

Joseph: The other thing I’m curious about is what it was like to go from working predominantly in an office setting into what I’m going to guess is a much more hands on job. What was that like to make that sort of transition?

Polly: TV shoots tend to be, let’s say, eight weeks long. You just get settled, and then you’re moving on to the next thing. Not only is it not in an office, but you’re working with a team who are only your team for a couple of months. It makes it quite exciting.

At times, it makes it quite stressful because, for example, we’ve been filming on location this week in a house, a very, very huge, beautiful house. Obviously, when we’re at the studios, there were dedicated offices that I can spend time in and do my research or whatever it is I’m doing. On location, you just have to find anywhere you can and just set up there, which can be quite strange. I always find the first day is a bit disturbing and you don’t really know where you are, but by the second of third day, you’re really settled, and you’re actually quite sad to leave that place.

Your life is never stagnant, and it does mean that the days and weeks, in a good way, go a bit slower, because I did find that working in the same job for such a long time, I would look up and a whole year would have gone past. Whereas actually, the last two months have gone very, very slowly but in a very good way because I’ve just learnt so much and seen so much and heard and met so many people. It puts the necessary jilt or that electricity into your life, which is great.

Joseph: Do people understand that you weren’t doing this for your entire career, that this is something new for you? Does that even come up at all?

Polly: People assume, because I’m doing such a junior role, that I’m quite young. They might realize it’s my first or second job, but they think that’s because I’m in my early 20s, which is great.

Joseph: Added benefit.

Polly: A lot of people are quite surprised when I tell them that I’ve had a whole other career. A lot of them say, ‘Wow, why are you doing this?’ It’s not something that many people do. It’s definitely not something where people go, ‘Yeah, I know other people who’ve done that.’ So far, I’m the only person I’ve met who’s ever done this route.

Joseph: You’re certainly the first person I’ve met who’s made this sort of change, which makes it very unique.

The other question that I get from people sometimes, when they’re thinking about making a change, is they have this fear of losing all these skills and experiences they had built up before they made the change. Have you found that your experiences as a creative producer or an account director, has that shown up or has that helped you in any way in your current role as a set designer?

Polly: There’s a lot of intangible things, like obviously dealing with clients a lot and then also managing teams to get things produced in my previous job. In what I’m doing at the moment, I am constantly talking to people and persuading people to do things. I had to call a pizza restaurant yesterday and try and persuade them to open two hours early to make pizzas for us on a shoot on Monday, and I feel like the skills that I’ve learnt through my previous career really helped me to be able to have those kind of conversations. I think if I was coming fresh out of university, I’d be very scared to have those conversations, and I also just wouldn’t know how to do it.

I also think the creative thinking that I used to have to do has really helped with this kind of problem-solving aspect of things. Whenever I’m not going set design work, I am freelancing back in the world of marketing just because it’s a world I know, and it’s an easy way to pick up two to three weeks’ work at a time. Actually, what I found when I go back, I write a lot of presentations when I’m in the world of marketing, and I’m so out of the habit of it now, it takes me a few days to get back into writing and marketing speak. It’s this weird duality in my brain of being very, very formal and strategic versus very hands-on and very creative.

Joseph: I know that at the very start of this conversation, you were talking about back in your old role, you started to feel like things were getting a little bit stagnant, and you weren’t growing as much. Can you describe what it’s like now to be doing work that you’re really enjoying and really engaged with? What’s that like for you on a day-to-day basis?

Polly: I never ever watch the clock. I didn’t do that that much at my old job, but I was very aware, ‘It’s Wednesday. It’s two days to the weekend.’ I felt quite often quite stressed at my old job. I’m perfectly happy to have lots on and not have much time. That’s fine, but I think when you’re stressed and you really don’t care about the outcome in a way—I mean I’d be working on things that I’d written the presentation 100 times over but in slightly different ways for different clients, and yet I have a deadline and yet there’s various stressors to add to that—when you don’t really care, I think that starts to really get to you.

I think the fact that my days go so quickly, the fact that I’m learning so much every day, I mean there’s all these vocabulary that people use in TV that I had never heard before. Every day, I’m just learning something new, doing something new, meeting new people, and I really feel like I am constantly growing. I’m feeling challenged a lot of the time. Quite often, I’ll get asked to do something, and I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to achieve it, but my brain is never kind of asleep. It’s exhausting, but it’s really great. I feel like I’m in flow to use one of those business terms.

Joseph: Very cool. The other thing I was wondering about is whether or not this new life that you have for yourself, this new professional life, has that had any sort of impact on the rest of your life at all? If so, what impact has it had?

Polly: A couple of my friends simultaneously to me, there’s about four of us who all sat down about a year ago and said, ‘We like our jobs, but we’re not that happy. Let’s make a change,’ so actually, we all changed jobs. Amongst them, it’s really great because we can compare notes and say, ‘This is really hard. This is great,’ etc. I think amongst my friends who are still doing the same thing, in a sort of friendly way, I guess there’s a bit of jealousy and a kind of, ‘You’re so brave. I can’t believe you’re doing this. I wish I could be brave enough to do it,’ that sort of thing. I think generally, the reaction amongst my friendship groups and my family has been very, very positive.

Joseph: The final question I’ve got for you before we start talking a little bit more about your current project is, what’s the best career advice that you’ve ever received?

Polly: This is something I was doing unconsciously, and then someone said it to me, and I was like, ‘This is the best thing,’ which is basically saying yes to everything. I’ve heard it being called an opportunity mindset before. Basically, once I handed in my notice, everything single opportunity, every single meeting, every single bit of work experience, I said yes to. I found myself in some very weird places, being invited to some very weird lectures and parties and to meet some very random people, but actually, every single thing has led to something.

I think the more open you are to opportunities, the more likely things will happen to you, and I think when you’ve been stuck in the same role or the same industry for a long time, you tend to be sort of very comfortable, so you say no to lots of things, and actually, I think the best things happen career-wise and life-wise when you say yes.

Joseph: Just to wrap up today, let’s go back to talking a little bit about fake hamsters and ashes and things like that. Can you just tell us a little bit more about your current set design project? I understand you’re working on a sitcom right now.

Polly: I’m working on Episodes, the American sitcom, which is mainly filmed in the UK. That comes to screen, I believe, either the end of this year or the beginning of next. That’s been a really, really exciting project. I really feel like I’ve landed on my feet, that being my first proper set design job because it’s a very big team, and there’s a big art department team, which is what I’m part of, which is great because there’s lots and lots of people to learn from and lots for me to do, which has been really, really great. I’m a double role again, very hybrid person, always.

I’m the Art Department Assistant, and I am a Buyer. Basically, the Art Department Assistant part means that I am available to do anything. Sometimes, I do a bit of food styling.

Joseph: That is not easy.

Polly: It’s weird. I thought I was terrible at it, but I’ve been asked again and again to do it. The irony is I’m a terrible cook, but apparently, I can make food look good. That’s fine.

Joseph: Also important.

Polly: Exactly. Making props, and then also being available on set to run on and do things and make sure the continuity is always preserved. The Buyer side of my role is what I was talking about earlier where I’m sort of briefed to run off and buy a prop, and then there’s Senior Buyer who’s been in the business for years, sort of assisting him to buy the big pieces, like huge bits of furniture and carpets and lamps and things like that. It’s been a very varied role.

Joseph: Is there something that you’ve learned about set design that you never fully appreciated or just never really noticed as a passive viewer before you got into this industry?

Polly: I think it’s probably the amount of care and attention that is given to the details. If there’s a scene that takes place in an office and there’s a notice board with lots of notices on it, the casual viewer wouldn’t probably even notice that. The secret is that every single notice on that notice board has actually got copy on it, and that copy is relevant. Someone will have sat in an office and thought about, ‘What will be in an office notice board? There’s probably some takeaway menus,’ so I think the level of detail.

For example, when I’m doing food styling, if I have to prepare a salad, I have to research what kind of fruit and vegetable you can get in that particular part of the US. I can’t put something that they wouldn’t eat or the actor would never eat because he loves meat, ‘Why would he ever have a vegetable salad?’ that kind of thing. I think it’s the level of thinking that goes into every single detail and details that 99% of people will never notice, but if they were missing, they would.

Joseph: Very interesting. I can talk about this all day, but I’m going to let you go here. If someone’s looking for help with set design, either for TV or film or photo shoots or interior design, how can they find you and contact you?

Polly: If you go to my website, which is PollyAspinall.com, that’s the best place to find out more about me. On top of that, my LinkedIn profile is also very detailed.

Joseph: Thank you so much, Polly, for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us and share your thoughts on the power of networking and how you went about creating your new life, this idea of the opportunity mindset, and also just a glimpse into the fascinating world of set design. I’m going to keep an eye on those fuzzy hamsters next time. Thank you so much for your time and congratulations on the new role.

Polly: Brilliant. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

What does it take to leave your stable corporate job behind to launch your own business and venture? In this episode of Career Relaunch, Anne Tumlinson, a former Senior Vice President at a Consulting Firm turned Business Owner shares her thoughts on how to recognize when it’s time to change careers, the importance of daily discipline, and embracing the ups AND downs of your career journey. I also share some thoughts on how you can start gaining some traction with your own goals.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about how defining your daily commitments can help you make steady progress toward your goals. For some help in doing this, you can download my “Defining Your Commitments” Worksheet

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Teaser (first ~15s): Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It doesn’t mean that it’s not going to bear fruit. It is really okay for something to take time and effort. It’s so much less about talent than it is about commitment and consistency.

Joseph: Anne, thanks so much for being on the Career Relaunch Podcast. I’m super excited to have you on as one of the first guests. I would love to start by having you tell us a little bit more about what you’re working on right now in your life and career just to get us kicked off and understand what you’re up to.

Anne: Sure, thanks. I’m thrilled to be on the podcast with you. To participate in it as you launch all of these new initiatives is really fun for me. When I watched you give your TEDx Talk, all of those points in your career that you’re talking about, I was there. I saw it happen in real life.

The last year, 2015, was a year of taking my day-to-day work life and really structuring it in an even more disciplined way that’s going to take the concept that we invented last year and propel it forward in 2016.

Joseph: I definitely want to hear all about Daughterhood. I know that’s something that you’ve launched just recently, and this is all about bringing caregivers together and helping people understand the various systems of care and building a community around common caregiving experiences, which is really interesting. Before we get to that, I would love to hear a little bit more about how you got to this moment of working on Daughterhood and if you could take us back to a few of the turning points in your career that led you here.

Anne: My whole career has been focused on this role of being an analyst, a consultant, a researcher, a policy wonk in Washington DC, working on healthcare and aging issues. I love that, and I’ve always loved it. It’s a great career, but there were a couple of moments over the last 10 years where I had this experience. I don’t know how to describe it except as like the word ‘tug.’ You feel something tug at you.

It happened for the first time when I was writing something for a client. I got this feedback. They said, ‘You write like a journalist.’ That’s so unusual, and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I really love writing, but I’ve never written for anybody other than a corporate client.’ I’ve never written anything other than memos and reports and analyses. I just felt this tug, like that’s something I really would like to try.

Joseph: Did you feel like you were a good writer before that?

Anne: No, and that’s the crazy thing. Had anybody told me in high school or college that I would be writing as the primary part of my job one day, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy. I’m not a good writer. I don’t even get good grades in English.’ I never really saw myself that way.

Also, it kind of came around the same time that I was asked to participate in this forum. Again, usually, the things I produce feed in are for the expert community. Instead, I was asked to come and speak to a group of women who were taking care of their parents or were being cared for. You toss back a few drinks and talk about these issues that come up around aging, caring for aging parents, being an aging woman in the society, and I was asked to a speaker, not as an analyst but as somebody who knows a lot about this topic. It brings a level of heart to it. That was a pivotal moment because the tug was so strong, I thought, ‘I want to do this.’

Joseph: How much time passed before you actually decided to make the shift?

Anne: A lot. That was probably 2008. This is the thing about those tugs: you can ignore them for a long time. It’s so easy to stay in what you’re comfortable with and what you’re already doing. I would say to people, ‘I really want to write a book. I really want to write a book for consumers,’ and I talked a lot about it.

Joseph: So you were actually thinking about doing it?

Anne: I was thinking about it, but I really could not, for the life of me, get from that idea that I wanted to do that.

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

Anne: I had no idea. That movement from a job in which I receive a salary that comes into my bank account every two weeks to I’m writing a book is a big leap. I tried to do it sort of as like, ‘I’m going to get up every morning at 5:00 a.m. and start writing a book,’ and I would start writing. Here’s what I learned: I had very little patience or tolerance for that process of writing and scrapping and practicing. I wanted it to come out perfect the first time. I would sit down, and would it be hard and frustrating. I failed. It was hard, so I failed, so never mind.

Joseph: Then that activity would just go away?

Anne: Yes. Life is also happening at the same time. I have young children, I do have a job with responsibilities, and then I got divorced. I think I’ve said this too before. There’s nothing like a divorce to really quickly help you understand where all of your biggest fears and self-doubts are. It’s very traumatic and a big thing to go through.

Joseph: Was that when you started to realize you wanted to make the shift?

Anne: No. I actually was doubling down on my expert career at that point. That was 2011. Basically, the trajectory here was, 2009, I was like, ‘I’m going to write a book. I’m going to do it from between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. every morning, and I’m going to get it done in a year.’ Then in 2011, my marriage fell apart, and I have to support myself solely. I’m doubling down on being an important professional person with a big title and a pay check and a consulting firm behind my name.

Part of what I was doing during that time was really, I didn’t realize it was seeding the ground for the big change I’d make in 2014 because I was learning about content development, content marketing, and I started doing a lot more writing and a lot more speaking in that context.

Joseph: Can you take us to the moment when you decided to leave that behind and launch Daughterhood?

Anne: In the fall of 2013—this is funny how quickly this thing’s going to happen—I am 100% invested in this particular job at this moment in time. When it’s happening to you, you do not realize what a blessing it is, but the organization in which I was working was also undergoing all of these changes, and these changes were not consistent with where I wanted to go creatively with the product that I was in charge of. I had been in the organization 14 years, and the direction of the organization was going in and the direction that I wanted to go in became intolerable for me very, very quickly.

It was like the perfect storm because I basically had this dream, it was lying dormant, I had been developing my skills, and now suddenly, I had this combustible moment. I’m not a big woo-woo person here, but really, it’s amazing the way in which, when that happens, you get support somehow. I think it’s because deep down inside, you’re reaching out into the world and really unconsciously asking for it, because as soon as I had that combustible moment, it was actually in a meeting presenting my vision and realizing, your stomach just sort of dropping out of the bottom, ‘This isn’t where this organization wants to go.’

That combustible moment, about a week later, you called me, and you said, ‘I’m launching this thing, and I’m working with people who want to make a career change.’ Do you remember that?

Joseph: I do remember that, yes. Serendipity.

Anne: I was like, ‘Wow, what a coincidence.’ About a week after that, I had a meeting with a really great colleague of mine who said, ‘It’s funny. I’m looking for somebody to help me with something.’

Joseph: Why do you think that happened, that things started to come together? Was that just the universe kind of coming together? You mentioned you’re not a woo-woo person. What do you think made it work out for you to have these support mechanisms come your way?

Anne: I guess maybe I’m a little woo-woo. I didn’t used to be, but it was too freakishly coincidental. I just want to clarify something I think is so important right here, because sometimes you hear a lot of people who go out into the world and create new things talk about this experience of having things move into place to help shine the light on the path right in front of them, but that is all it does. It only shines light on the path right in front of you. It doesn’t make it easy.

Despite the fact that you called in, despite the fact that I went out for sushi with my friend Gretchen, who needed help managing a big project that was right up alley, and she needed it to be on an independent basis, and it was a perfect bridge, nevertheless, 99% of my emotional experience during this time was fear.

Joseph: It sounds like some of the pieces were coming together, but most of the time, this thing was really scary. What was the hardest part of making this transition then?

Anne: I see this all the time now when I look at my friends who are employed. This is not to denigrate being employed by an organization—hopefully soon, people will be employed by me—but it’s very hard to believe in yourself because you’re not really being tested to believe in yourself. When I made this transition, it put in to stark relief, the degree to which I had really very little confidence in myself. I spent these first few months really doubting and questioning myself. I mean it was waking up in the middle of the night and thinking, ‘Who do you think you are?’

Joseph: Like the impostor syndrome sort of thing.

Anne: ‘You are only as good as the organization that you were attached to. That was your identity.’ It’s an identity shift. You’re going from being identified with an organization that provides you all kinds of cover, no matter how dysfunctional it might be, and most organizations have dysfunction. You have that devil you know, and then you’re out on your own, creating your own income, and the rubber really is hitting the road, and you have to trust that you have what it takes.

Here’s the thing, and now it’s funny: I feel like I crossed over to the other side, and I often now am in the position of counseling friends of mine who are really talented, brilliant, amazing people, and I’m always shocked at how uncertain they are about making the same transition. I feel like, ‘I wish you could just see this the way I see it. You are going to be more than fine.’

Joseph: I hear that so often from people when they’re looking from inside an organization and they want to launch off and do their own thing, that we are really afraid of it, which I was too when I was in that situation. It’s really terrifying. Do you feel like people have to go through it to believe that it actually does work out? What do you tell the people when they are on that cusp?

Anne: I do think there’s a certain amount of going through it, and it’s really normal to be scared and nervous, but what I tell people is that it really does help to have a coach or a counselor. The reason is because you are believing things about yourself, and you taught me this: there’s that voice in your head that is trying to protect you, but it’s very loud.

It’s not reasonable to expect that you will be able to combat that voice by yourself, and that’s where you really need another person, a coach, or you need a community, interacting with, engaged, and talking to people who can be your voice of reason as you did with me many times, like, ‘You seem to have a lot of evidence for why this won’t work. Let’s talk about the evidence for why it would.’

Joseph: So having somebody provide a different perspective to get you out of your head.

Anne: Yeah, because I think there were a few really pivotal moments where I really was losing faith or confidence, and there was no particularly good reason for it except that it’s just really hard to describe how unsettling it could be to go from a 25-year career where you’re getting a pay check every two weeks to one in which you’re not and you’re not married.

What I would say to people is you will be shocked at how much you can do on your own. You don’t even know because you’ve never been in that situation.

Joseph: By going through it, you’ve actually been able to experience what it’s like to trust yourself, to rely on yourself, to create something from nothing. Now that you’re further along, do you still have those moments of doubt or does that come up as much as it used to?

Anne: It really doesn’t. I would say I spent a year really wondering where the next project was coming from, and it always came. For a whole year, it was like, ‘I got a project. It’s going to give me this much money that’ll get me through the next three months,’ and right about the time that that project will be over, in will come the next project. I should say, that was happening at the same time that I was really trying to develop the Daughterhood concept, so kind of the same thing was happening on Daughterhood.

Joseph: How surprising was that to you to have these things continue to be in the pipeline without you having to necessarily go and proactively seek it out?

Anne: I was completely shocked. I mean I would always be shocked. I really did spend a year going, ‘I can’t believe people want to hire me. This is so great.’

Joseph: When you say that you couldn’t believe that people would want to hire you, what was making you think that?

Anne: I think it was this shifting identity that I had something of value to contribute. I didn’t realize how reliant I was on that organization that was behind me in my previous job. There, I was like, ‘Of course you want to hire us. We have 100 smart people here.’ There was something inherently valuable about working with me that people would be willing to pay for. It took me a year of continued evidence of it to believe it. Then I would just like to say, I spent another year still consistently undervaluing it. I worked very hard last year because I didn’t charge enough.

Joseph: How did you overcome that undervaluing, undercharging?

Anne: There was no choice. There’s so much work coming in. After a year of this sort of like, ‘What? There’s work? That’s great,’ then it started to really come in. I just got to follow this year, and I realize I cannot because I’m not charging enough. It’s affecting Daughterhood. It’s affecting my kids. It’s affecting my health.

I can’t explain it, and again, this gets back to the woo-woo stuff. There’s a chemical, an alkanol process happening internally as you’re going through all of this. There are forces inside of yourself that start to shift, like this moment, this fall where I thought, ‘People will actually pay money just for me to give them advice. I don’t have to produce the perfect product or paper. It’s enough. I am enough in the experience that I have and the knowledgebase that I have and what I’ve been involved in.’

Joseph: Knowing what you know now, Anne, because it sounds like you now are at a point where you feel comfortable knowing that you have a lot of value to offer, what advice would you offer to the past Anne as you were making this shift into Daughterhood?

Anne: Just because something is hard doesn’t mean that you’re failing. It doesn’t mean that it’s not going to bear fruit. It is really okay for something to take time and effort. It’s so much less about talent than it is about time and effort and commitment and consistency, and that’s where the magic happens. Not to sound like Elizabeth Gilbert, but she’s right. It’s that butt in chair every day. That’s 99% of it, and it doesn’t really have that much to do with you personally. It’s just, ‘Are you committed? Are you all in despite your fear?’

I once heard Mastin Kipp say something that I actually wrote down and taped to my wall. He said, when he was starting out writing The Daily Love, that he was living I guess in some suboptimal situation and a tiny, little room. He said he heard this voice—he’s very woo-woo—he said, ‘You know, your face is the size of this room,’ which is a very small room, and then he said, ‘But that’s enough.’ It’s enough. You don’t need that much courage. You just need a little bit of courage and faith and comfort in that place of not knowing, and then everything else is just showing up.

Joseph: Just making sure that you’re putting in whatever you need to do each and every day, day in and day out, and putting in the hard work and figuring out a way to make it happen.

Anne: I think the advice I would give my earlier self would not be to do anything differently. It would just be to suffer less. I don’t have advice in terms of I really feel like it’s unfolded exactly the way it was meant to. I think I suffered more than I needed to.

Joseph: That actually is a nice segue way into one of the last questions I’ve got for you here, which is when you look back on this career change, is there something you wish you had known that may have allowed you to not suffer as much as you just mentioned?

Anne: I wish that I had known just how amazing it is to be in the process of doing something new, because I was very goal-oriented – not that there’s anything wrong with goals. Goals are great, but my goals are like, ‘We’ll be able to launch the new business with X million in revenue by 12 months from now.’ It was all about getting to that end goal instead of being in that process that, ‘This is your new life, Anne. You better be really sure that this is how you want to live.’

I wouldn’t have done anything differently, but the job now is creating and building, always. The job is not, I’m going to invent something, and then that’s going to be done. It’s always a process of invention, and that’s the job. I wish I had known that because I think I would have used my time more effectively in the beginning. It took me nine months of you and a couple of other people saying, ‘Just start.’ It’s like, ‘I can’t start because when I start, then the clock is ticking.’ Now I understand, ‘There’s no clock. This is what I do now.’

There’s a painter whose painting started getting shown in her 90s. She’d been painting for 60 years. You really have to love painting. What I wish I’d known was that this was about loving this process of doing this. It’ll be nice if there’s commercial success. It’ll be nice if there’s a scaling and an appreciation of the work, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I didn’t know that 18 months ago or two years ago. Two years ago, I thought it was about writing that book and getting it finished and off to the publisher and then spending the rest of my life in the Bahamas.

Joseph: I see, yeah. I guess it goes back to the whole enjoying the journey along the way. I think it’s Tony Robbins who talks a lot about not achieving to be happy buy happily achieving it, enjoying the journey as you’re going through it. That is, in and of itself, really gratifying.

Anne: Exactly.

Joseph: Thank you so much, Anne, for taking us through your journey and giving us an insight into some of those challenges that I know a lot of people go through when they’re trying to make a big change. I’d love to wrap up by hearing a little bit more about Daughterhood and how people can find out more about Daughterhood. Before we do that, I got three quick questions for you just to wrap things up. The first, is there a specific tool that you’ve used that has helped you keep yourself on track?

Anne: The one thing I do really recommend that everybody do is it doesn’t matter how you do it, but you do need a way to keep track of your ideas because ideas do not like to come to you when you are sitting at your desk, I’d found. Inevitably, I’m walking somewhere, and I have to stop and pull out my phone. I just use my notes.

Joseph: The notes app on your phone?

Anne: Yeah, and I just type in whatever phrase or idea or thought that comes to me. I think one of the most challenging things about this is that you’ll find the more creative work you do, the more creative work you will want to do. You start bringing things into the world, and it opens up some hatch in the back of your mind, so just be prepared. You don’t have to follow every thread, but I have an ‘idea book.’ I give every idea one page to express itself, and then I leave it there because then I feel less pressure to execute on everything. That’s how I keep some discipline.

Joseph: What about the best career advice you’ve ever received?

Anne: Right when I was leaving, this mentor of mine, he sat me down. He goes, ‘You’re just going to have to get in the boat and start rowing. Just get going. Just start.’ You hear a lot of people say that, but it was really true. That was great advice. Then if one path doesn’t work, you just go down another. There’s no such thing as failing. You’re not failing. You’re trying.

He said he was an army ranger, and he was in that ranger training that is so bleak. All these guys washed out, and he said the only reason he stayed was not because he was big or strong or tough or brave. It’s just because he would wake up in the morning and be like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to get up.’ I think that might actually have been the most valuable. I found that to be such a relief. You don’t have to be brilliant. You don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg. You just have to get up.

Joseph: I guess it goes back to how you said, just showing up and just doing something, anything each day. It will help you make some progress.

Anne: Amazing how that all worked out.

Joseph: Finally, what’s one habit that’s consistently served you well in your career?

Anne: I think it’s a mental attitude of just not staying down too long. Here’s the funny thing: I don’t have great habits just in general. I have tried so hard to get up early in the morning or meditate or run, exercise, you name it. Whatever it is, I’m not good at habits. The thing that I am good at is deciding that whatever the setback is, I’m more committed than ever to moving forward in spite of and because of things that haven’t worked out. It’s like a mental process that I go through that just says—and maybe this is harping on the same theme again—just always get back up. It’s like the theme from Rockies playing in the background now.

Joseph: With that music in the background now, I want to wrap up by talking a little bit about Daughterhood. You launched that. You’re organizing these meet-ups, and you’re building more awareness for your community, and it’s all about caring for aging parents. Can you just tell us a little bit more about the meet-ups and what you’re focused on right now?

Anne: The meet-ups are a huge initiative of mine right now. I am launching a recruiting effort to get community leaders all around the country to start Daughterhood circles in their local communities. We kicked it off in San Diego last year. It went really well, and we learned a lot. One of the biggest things we learned is that it takes commitment and leadership at the community level in order to create community around this issue, and that it’s really needed. It really is all about providing women with the information, resources, and support that they need to do this job, which is a hard one.

All these things we’ve been talking about with starting your own business, family’s experiences, this is very, very, very hard, caring for another adult. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you’re a failure, and that’s our message. I think bringing communities together is going to help spread that message.

Joseph: If there are women out there who want to get smarter about their aging parents or they want to learn more about Daughterhood or they want to get involved with one of these communities, where they can go to follow you or to find out more?

Anne: Go to Daughterhood.org, and you can subscribe to the newsletter, which would be really fantastic. Feel free to follow me on Twitter. Facebook though is really where the community is coming together. If you’re in this situation, please, please, please, come visit us. I feel small enough that if you have a question, just write to me through the website. I love to hear from readers. I have a really fun and growing Q&A with readers that I really value. I learn a lot and love the interaction.

Joseph: Thank you for making yourself available to those people, Anne. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your journey with us and for telling us about Daughterhood. I really appreciate you being willing to talk through not only the highlights but also some of the lower moments throughout your journey, because that’s what we all go through when we’re trying to do this. Thank you so much.

Anne: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.

What does it take to leave your corporate marketing job behind to create your own app? In this episode of Career Relaunch, Aniefre Essien, a former Consumer Goods Brand Marketer turned music streaming app Founder shares his thoughts the importance of conviction and being authentic to who you are. I also share some thoughts on how you can define what matters to you.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of clarifying what matters to you in your life & career. To help define your values, you can download my “Values Questionnaire” Worksheet

Register free below to access this resource and gain access to my entire Career Resource Hub. If you’re already a member, simply login to access this resource.

Log in if you wish to renew an existing subscription.

Aniefre Essien has more than a decade of marketing experience, across a wide range of industries including Food & Wine, Home Cleaning, and Social Media. After spending years honing his craft at major corporations, Aniefre decided to leave the perceived security of the corporate world to launch his own start-up. He is the Founder/CEO of Vaytus Media LLC, a media streaming platform that enables convenient discovery of premium independent music.

Vaytus is a new, independent music streaming app, with hand selected, curated content from artists who create for the love of music. “Vayt-us” means elevate us, and is built on the premise that good music makes life better. At Vaytus, we’re a bunch of musicians and music lovers that know that the best, most honest music is being made by indie musicians not heard on the radio—so we built an alternative. The app is in testing now, and will be released soon. People can pre-register for an account at vaytus.com and follow Vaytus on 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): No matter what you do, you will never make 100% of the people happy. There’s always going to be someone that’s going to disagree with every decision you make, so then it’s about understanding what really matters for you and then making that decision and being comfortable with it.

Joseph: Aniefre, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for making the time to speak with me today because I know you’ve been a busy guy lately. I know you’ve just moved from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. You’ve just given a talk at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, where we both did our MBAs, on managing risk in your career, which I definitely want to come back to.

First, could you start by briefly telling us a little bit about Vaytus, the independent music streaming app company you founded, and what you’ve been working on there lately?

Aniefre: Absolutely. First and foremost, thanks for having me, Joseph. It’s always good to talk with you, and I’m happy to share what we have going on with Vaytus.

Joseph: Thank you.

Aniefre: Vaytus, it’s a made up word that stands for ‘elevate us’ kind of smashed together. The basic premise is that music makes life better.

For a while, I was one of those people who subscribed to the fact that good music was dead, and if I wanted to hear good music, I have to listen to old stuff. Then, I got turned on to the underground scene or the independent music scene. I found there was really great music that’s being made by amazing artists all over the country who decided, ‘I’m going to make art based upon what I like.’ The idea of Vaytus is there are millions upon millions of people across United States and even more across the globe who love great, independent music, and they want this type of content I’m calling theistically authentic.

I have a team of curators who are industry professionals. Some of them are DJs, some are artists, and they go and they curate great music across different genres, and we pool it together into our player. So instead of a listener having to go and search all over the internet trying to find great music, they can come to Vaytus, and it’s kind of like a curated watering hole for great music that you’d never hear in the mainstream.

Joseph: What are you guys working on there right now?

Aniefre: We’ve just finished the first version of the app, and it’s in alpha testing.

Joseph: Congratulations.

Aniefre: I appreciate it. I’m kind of working around the clock right now because I’m totally obsessed with this thing. I’m getting emails and texts at different times of the day and night with people who are experiencing and playing with the app and want to provide feedback. We’re trying to make sure we catch all of the bugs that may be there so we can release a pretty quality beta release here for the general public.

Joseph: You’ve not always been in the start-up world, right?

Aniefre: No.

Joseph: I got to tell people – I got an email from you recently that was two sentences. I don’t know if you remember this, but it said, ‘I left the corporate world for good this time.’ Can you just share what was going on for you and your career before you launched Vaytus?

Aniefre: There was kind of a false start in this leaving of the corporate world. I went and got my MBA, and when I graduated, I took a job. I primarily took a job to make a good living while Vaytus incubated and was being developed by the long. Then, I left the corporate world and went to do Vaytus full-time. We needed to go back to step one. We needed to scrap what we had been doing and rebuild from the ground up.

I needed to then go back to making a living, so I took another job going back into the corporate world, and that definitely was like eating spinach for a child. I knew that the time had come and gone. I went into the corporate world originally to learn some things, and it has a lot of value working for major corporations, and I learned a lot there, but I had a pretty good sense – I was 80-90% sure that I shouldn’t be trying to build a career there, but there’s something to the stability of direct-deposited pay checks.

So I went in, I worked with integrity, and I felt like I brought value, but I just really dreaded going to work. It wasn’t just Mondays. It was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I went in to work one day, and I was like, ‘This can’t go on any longer.’ That’s when I decided to go ahead and put in my resignation and take the leap.

Joseph: When you say, ‘This couldn’t go on any longer,’ what are you talking about in terms of the things that were just eating away at you?

Aniefre: It’s about the work. There are three potential paths. We can go X, Y, and Z. You go and you do your due diligence, you do your analysis, you run your numbers, you talk with your cross-functional team, and you figure out, ‘Given our particular strategic goals and given our strengths and weaknesses, the category and dynamics, etc., we probably should do X or even X or Y,’ but ultimately, somebody in the bigger chair had a lot of passion for doing Z, so you find a way to try and deny gravity, deny that water is wet, deny that fire is hot so that you can do Z – I’m not that personality type. Why did I spend a month working with my team to try and figure out what we should do to get the optimal result if, at the end of the day, we’re just going to do Z? There are certain personality types who are fit for that. I’m just not one of them.

Joseph: When you had your original stint in the corporate world, how many years was that before you launched off and worked on Vaytus?

Aniefre: All in, I’ve done 10 years in the corporate world as a marketer. I worked for bear companies. I worked at major CPG companies. I’ve worked in the wine industry.

Joseph: You mentioned the steady pay check earlier. What was that like, that moment when you decided to leave that behind and pursue Vaytus?

Aniefre: It’s definitely difficult because you have the perpetual tension between long term versus short term. I think most people get caught up in the short-term practical compromises that one needs to make to live in the society versus what’s really going to be meaningful to their life and what type of mark they want to leave in the world. It definitely was really difficult to figure out how to make that jump and have the conviction, especially—I don’t want to turn this to a sad story, but—I’m not a rich kid, and so there’s not some rich uncle or a trust fund mother who’s sitting behind me and saying, ‘Okay, chase your dreams. I’ll be able to float all your bills.’

Joseph: ‘I’ll catch you if you fall,’ right?

Aniefre: Taking that leap required some soul searching, and to be honest, it’s really helpful to have really strong supportive people in my life, from my girlfriend to my family members to my close personal friends or I count as chosen family. That really was instrumental in my going in and deciding to take that leap – knowing that there would be people there to help in some way if I needed it.

Joseph: In your talk at the University of Michigan, you talked about five principles, and one of them that stood out to me was take the calculated leap. How did you manage the personal risk in your own life, in your own career, making this leap into the unknown?

Aniefre: You referenced the five principles, and I will just rattle them off really quickly from the talk that I gave. First, you need to know yourself. Second, you need to have conviction. Third, you need to be more curious than afraid. Fourth, you need to take the calculated leap. Fifth, you need to enjoy the journey.

If you go back to the first principle that I believe anyone can use to leverage managing risk in their career, it’s understanding who you are and what you are and what you’re not. I’ve always maintained that I’m somebody who is in this world, not of this world. I’ve never really bought into ‘I need to go get a job and a title from some Fortune 500 company, and I need to be the VP of whatever to find value in my life.’ I’m opposite of that. I’m into authentic human connection. I tend to be the type of person who is more concerned with what’s going on with the least fortunate in society as opposed to the most fortunate in society and trying to be a part of that elite crowd.

Understanding that those are the things that ultimately matter to me in life, making the choice to go ahead and take that leap and to leave it behind wasn’t that tough because I felt like I was sacrificing who I was and my integrity every day, going in and trying to find ways to agree with something I fundamentally didn’t believe in. I’ve had to sacrifice my personal integrity to do it. That was just a price that was entirely too high.

When I looked at the mark I wanted to leave in the world and the life that I wanted to lead in general, going back to knowing myself and what really mattered to me, I knew that I needed to just go ahead and take that leap because I wasn’t going to be happy. I wasn’t going to find happiness chasing the next promotion.

Joseph: You and I both spent quite a bit of time in the corporate world. If you’re like me, you run across other people in the corporate world who are thinking about launching something or they’re not happy with their jobs, but then they stick with it for months or years. Having gone through this yourself, what do you think keeps people from making this sort of leaps, even if it means being able to pursue something that will be a lot more meaningful to them?

Aniefre: I would say the concise answer as to why people stay is they become beholden to the material benefits. People like to have disposable income, especially at the levels in which you and I worked in Corporate America. It’s a pretty good salary, and so the lifestyle you’re able to lead from a material standpoint is a pretty comfortable lifestyle. I think that’s why people stay.

Then, I think the other piece is fear of the unknown. I like to invest in myself, and I have a large amount of confidence in myself and my abilities, and so going back to those five principles, it’s understanding who I was, then I put conviction around it by saying, ‘This is who I am, but I need to align my actions and behavior around it.’ Then, I really came to understand what it took to create, grow, and sustain a company, not just to have a job function but to holistically build a company, pull a team together, pool resources together, and then lay out a growth plan and be able to manage and lead that.

It became less of a black box. It became less mysterious, which then took away a lot of that fear that I think most people are talking about, like, ‘I hate this, but what else will I do?’ People don’t know what to do. It’s kind of abstract. ‘I would like to start a company,’ or ‘I would like to do this, but I don’t know exactly how to do it,’ and so they end up trapped.

Joseph: You mentioned money. Has there been anything surprising to you about the experience of letting go of your cushy corporate income?

Aniefre: To be blunt, I think where I’m at advantage is having grown up with very low income. I always say that my floor is a lot lower than most people, and so what I can be comfortable with is a lot lower than most people. So it wasn’t necessarily a surprise. I mean it is nice. It is nice to have that direct deposit every two weeks, but ultimately, it got to the point to where the price was too high.

I think early on in my career when I was within Corporate America and I was learning, that compensated for what I’d call the cubicle life. When it got to a point to where there was diminishing returns in terms of my learning curve and what then remained was an increase in scope of responsibility, I wasn’t really interested in what came with the increased scope of responsibility. So then, it was time to go.

Joseph: Did you run across any skeptics along the way in terms of, ‘What are you doing?’ or, ‘Why are you leaving this cushy job behind?’ Did you run to any sorts of people like that?

Aniefre: I did. I think one of another area in which I’m really blessed though is the people who are closest to me have a really keen understanding of who I am and what I value. They were able to see the toll it started to take on my once the learning curve started to diminish and I slowly have to deal more with the politics and jockeying for increased scope of leadership. They were all very supportive in terms of people in my inner circle. The folks who were skeptical, I got a good gift of being able to block out people’s opinions who don’t really matter.

Joseph: How do you do that? What’s your secret to doing that? Because I run into so many people who want to make a change, but they say, ‘I don’t know. In my social circle, people are saying this is crazy,’ or, ‘My parents think it’s crazy for me to let go of such a great job.’ How do you manage that?

Aniefre: I think that can be really difficult. One of the things I was taught growing up is that there’s the classic, ‘If other people were jumping off a cliff, are you going to jump off a cliff too?’ like your parents tell you when you’re a kid growing up. One of the things I internalized is, as an adult, when you figure out right from wrong, you need to have the conviction to stand up for it.

There’s these plethora of things from my background, from being an athlete, from also being a former martial artist, from growing up in a pretty tough community and having to navigate my childhood and adolescent years. A lot of those things reinforced courage in different ways. Ultimately, when I got to a point as a young adult and moving from my early 20s and from my mid-20s, it became really clear that you’re not going to make everyone happy. No matter what you do, you will never make 100% of the people happy. There’s always going to be someone who’s going to disagree with every decision you make, so then it’s about understanding what really matters to you and then making that decision and being comfortable with it.

There have been people who didn’t agree with a particular person. Like when I left at a post-MBA level job prior to business school, but I still left and went to business school, there were some people who didn’t agree with that. They’re like, ‘What are you doing? You have the job that people get after business school. You have it now.’

Joseph: Everybody wants that.

Aniefre: But they didn’t see my long-term vision and where I was going, and I knew it was the right thing to do – to go back to school. There were certain skills that I just was not going to learn as a brand marketer: developing an idea, building a company, and growing it throughout all these different phases. I took that leap, and I think now that they see the Vaytus app is a tangible thing and exists, they’re like, ‘I get it. I get where you’re going. I get what you’re trying to do.’ I think ultimately it comes down to having that ability to believe in yourself when no one else does.

Joseph: One of the things that you alluded to just now was conviction. I know you mentioned it as one of the five principles you spoke about before when it comes to managing risk in your career. What do you mean by ‘conviction’ and how has that served you along this journey?

Aniefre: If you don’t believe in what you’re saying, no one else will. If I want to say that I really want to get in better shape, but I go buy a dozen of donuts a couple of times a week and I never go to the gym, that’s not really conviction. You need to start aligning your actions to what your priorities are.

I think it’s doing an audit of what it is that you really want in life and what really matters to you and then doing an audit of how you are spending your time. Of the things you are currently doing in your life or in your career, which one of those things are moving you towards your goals? When you recognize that there’s a gap, that there are things that you’re doing that will never lead to the life that you want, then it becomes incumbent upon you to alter how you’re spending your time. That’s what I mean by conviction.

Joseph: I see. What’s been the toughest thing about launching your own business?

Aniefre: I would definitely say it’s the conviction piece and keeping the faith, because inevitably, you’re going to hit hurdles. You need to have this deep reservoir of belief in yourself, and you need to understand what it’s going to take to be successful and where you’re at in the journey. When you run into obstacles on Day 3 out of a 30-day journey, don’t get upset about getting to Day 30 and saying how far you are away. You’re in Day 3, what can you solve today to get to Day 4? It’s having this deep belief that, when everyone thinks you’re crazy, when everyone thinks your foolish, when things seem bleak, break it down into bite-size chunks and say, ‘What is it that I can do today to get over these hurdles?’

The hardest part for me has been getting to what I call Day 1, which I think we’re at Day 1 now that the app is built, taking something from this idea and getting it to where it actually exists. How do you get people to believe in something that doesn’t exist? It’s just an idea.

When obstacles arise and you’re still in just an idea phase and you’re trying to bring this thing to life, it’s very easy for people to walk away. It’s finding very passionate, very smart, and very talented people to come along on this ride, getting key stakeholders, like my girlfriend, like my brothers and different people in my family to say, ‘We believe in you. We support you,’ getting early angel investors to say, ‘We’re going to put a little money behind this.’ It’s, when things start to go array, to not get flustered, to not be overly dramatic, and to actually become calmer when things get chaotic.

That was really difficult because there were some bumps definitely along the road. During that phase, in going from idea to Day 1 and having an actual physical product, it’s difficult to persevere when obstacles arise.

Joseph: You mentioned enjoying the ride or coming along for this ride. What makes that so important for you?

Aniefre: My fundamental belief in life is that relationships are what matter. Titles are ultimately not going to make you happy in life. Your pay check also is not going to make you happy in life. It’s how you spend your time and who you spend it with, so ultimately, me chasing after things that aligned with who I was and my convictions is where I find my rewards.

As I’ve been navigating through and when I think of all the obstacles that the Vaytus team has overcome, they’re all happy memories for me. I’ve enjoyed the journey even when things got rough and bumpy and looked like we had no idea how we’re going to get over next hurdle or the month or two where there were blockages, and we can’t figure out how to get to the next phase, and then we’d figure it out. That whole journey, in and of itself, I enjoy.

I do watch the show ‘The Walking Dead.’ It’s like, every time they solve a problem, there’s some other catastrophe that’s right around the way, and that’s what starting a startup is like – there’s always a problem to deal with, and I enjoy it. If I didn’t, then I probably should be back in the corporate world collecting my nice, safe pay check, but I enjoy this process and the people that I’m working with. It’s very important to work with people you respect and that respect you.

Joseph: It sounds like you’re enjoying the ride there, Aniefre. I just wanted to thank you for sharing your journey with us because it’s just really cool to hear, first of all, your experiences in the corporate world but then also how you made that pivot into launching your own business. That’s super exciting, and I hope it all goes well for you.

The final principle you talked about was curiosity. Just to kind of wrap things up, if people are curious about learning about you or about Vaytus, where should they go to find out more?

Aniefre: They can go to Vaytus.com. They can follow us on Facebook.com/vaytusradio, or they can follow me on Twitter, which is @Aniefre. There’s going to be a lot of content being pushed out over the next few weeks and into the next few months as we launch Vaytus. You definitely will be able to download the app.

Joseph: Super exciting, Aniefre. I’m looking forward to checking out the app and listening to the music, and I hope it all goes well for you. I’m sure it will.

Aniefre: I appreciate it. Cheers.

What does it take to leave a comfortable, stable job behind to pursue your lifelong dream? In this very first episode of Career Relaunch, Kelly Cara, a former Educational Researcher turned Health-Supportive Chef & Lifestyle Wellness Educator shares her perspectives on giving yourself permission to do work you enjoy, taking the brave steps to start that journey, and understanding the tradeoffs involved when you leave stability behind. I also share highlights from my own career reinvention story then share thoughts  on how you can start reinventing yourself.

During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about how starting somewhere, even if imperfect, is important to creating the career change you desire. To help you begin, you can download my “Defining Your Starting Point” Worksheet

Register free below to access this resource and gain access to my entire Career Resource Hub. If you’re already a member, simply login to access this resource.

Log in if you wish to renew an existing subscription.

Kelly Cara is a certified health-supportive chef and Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) facilitator. After completing a master’s degree in experimental psychology, Kelly worked for several years in a behavioral health facility and then for a higher education institution as a researcher. Through those career experiences, Kelly discovered a passion for educating others about health, wellness, and how to live one’s most vibrant life through research-supported nutritional and lifestyle modifications. She and her husband recently started their own business, V-Life, to turn that passion into a viable career. Learn more about her culinary adventures at Natural Epicurean.

If you’re based in Austin and interested in living a healthier lifestyle, check out Kelly’s Website, Facebook Page, and her Austin CHIP Meetup page.

If you’ve been pondering a culinary career yourself, check out Natural Epicurean’s Plant-Based Culinary School. They also offer a Career Changers and Entrepreneurs Scholarship, which you can learn more about here.

Finally, if you want to learn more about food virtually, Natural Epicurean has recently launched an exciting new online learning platform. So be sure to check that out too.

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’d been in a place that wasn’t getting me closer to my life goals, that when I finally gave myself permission to go and do what it was that I wanted to do, that relief was definitely a sense of saying, ‘I’m not sure where it’s going to lead me, but it’s going to be okay.’

Joseph: Kelly, thanks so much for joining me today. I’m super excited to talk to you. Thanks for being willing to share your story here on Career Relaunch.

Kelly: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Joseph: What’s keeping you busy right now in Austin?

Kelly:  A lot of things going on. I’m working full-time as a manager of an up-and-coming, rapidly growing bakery here in Austin. It’s all vegan and gluten-free.

Joseph: What’s the name of the bakery?

Kelly: The name of the bakery is Better Bites Bakery here in Austin. That’s paying the bills, and it’s given me a lot of good experience in my new career area. I’ve also got a lot of side projects more related to wellness education and nutrition. That’s really my focus, so I’m keeping busy with a lot of that. Not a lot of free time right now, but recipe development, teaching a little bit at a culinary school down here called Natural Epicurean, also getting my own business started.

Joseph: Very cool. You have also been working as a vegan baker. Is that right?

Kelly: Yes, the bakery that I work in now, I started as a full-time lead baker over there. We’re now fully vegan, and I transitioned from the lead baker position into the management position in May of 2015.

Joseph: I definitely want to hear more about your journeys as a vegan baker, but before we get to that, I would love to just go back in time a little bit. When you and I reconnected, 2013 I think, you were back in our hometown of Springfield, Missouri, right?

Kelly: Yup.

Joseph: Just so people know, you and I have known each other since 1990. Then I left Springfield in 1996 for college, and then I know you went off to the Peace Corps. Then after 17 years, we reconnected. I was wondering if you could just take us back to the moment before you were doing the vegan bakery and the culinary school. What were you up to at the time?

Kelly: I was working full-time as the Assessment Research Coordinator for Missouri State University. What that means is I had a Master’s degree in Experimental Psychology, and I was teaching Statistics at the university just per course. Then I got this full-time position in the Assessment Office, doing a lot of research around educational benchmarks, anything related to student learning, student motivation. We’re looking at GPAs and test scores and doing all kinds of research like that.

The reason I even got into that field was that I was interested in wellness – specifically mindfulness, being able to live your best life by paying attention to the world around you, paying attention to how you feel, paying attention to the people around you. The research I was doing at the university wasn’t about that, so I was starting to feel some job dissatisfaction.

My job paid well, and it had really nice benefits. I was in my hometown with my family, and my husband’s family were all there. We had a good apartment. Life wasn’t bad by any means, but I just did not enjoy going in to work every day because it wasn’t focused on anything that I was really that passionate about or interested in. The skills I was using were valuable, but the topics themselves were not really that interesting to me.

Joseph: This is going to sound like a strange question, but how did you know you weren’t happy?

Kelly: I kind of came in in the morning, I did my work, and I left, and I tried not to think about it when I left. I think that’s a good clue.

Joseph: It’s a good sign.

Kelly: I’d heard somebody somewhere say, you should try to live your passion, and if you’re able to get paid for what you love doing, then you’re a lucky person. I thought the things that I do in my free time, on my own time, have nothing to do with what I’m doing at work, and I’m really interested in these other things. These other things feel much more engaging and fulfilling for me, and I’m not getting that at work. Those were all telltale signs that I wasn’t enjoying it.

I also wasn’t always taking good care of my health, and so during the first three years of that job, I didn’t feel vibrant.

Joseph: Why was that?

Kelly: It was a desk job, and I’d had pretty active jobs prior to that, being in Peace Corps, and I worked at a psychiatric hospital where I was up on my feet a lot, moving around, working with people. This was a desk job where I was sitting in an office with no windows in the attic floor of an old administrative building. I felt like my legs would ache as I was sitting there. I was getting vitamin D deficiency. I wasn’t in the sun.

I started going to yoga like crazy. I was actually coping with some of these work stresses with copious amounts of hot yoga. I thought, again, another telltale sign that something’s not working for me in my eight hours a day at work.

Joseph: How did that balance play out for you between what you’re doing at work, which wasn’t very enjoyable, and then all this stuff on your evenings and weekends, which you found a lot more enjoyable?

Kelly: It wasn’t enough to offset it, and I think that’s ultimately what led to the decision to make the career change: I wanted to do recipe testing and development, I wanted to start my own business, and I had written down all these ideas, waking up at 2:00 in the morning and thinking we’ve got to help people and let them know practical ways to make lifestyle changes. I’m writing all these ideas down but not having real time to dedicate to it. It was enough to kind of keep my non-work life interesting, but it wasn’t enough to be really fulfilling. I saw a lot of potential in the direction that I wanted to go, and I wasn’t able to pursue that with the amount of time or attention that I wanted to pursue it.

Joseph: When did you realize it needed to be more than this ‘middle of the night’ stuff?

Kelly: I don’t know what inspired this, but one day, I was sitting around in the evening with my husband. I was really feeling dissatisfied, and I asked myself the question—maybe we were having a conversation about it, maybe the lottery was on the TV or something—I was like, ‘What would I do with my life if I had a million dollars and could just stop and do whatever I wanted?’ The immediate response to that was go to culinary school, which was a surprise to me.

I’m vegan, and a big part of food in our household is about nutrition and what food can actually do to help heal you and to energize you and equip you for life. I was thinking, ‘Man, I’d love to go to culinary school. I wonder if there’s a vegan culinary school out there.’ I get on the computer and I look, and lo and behold, here’s Natural Epicurean Academy of Culinary Arts in Austin, Texas, 10 hours south from where we lived in Springfield.

I think just knowing that that place existed was enough for me to say, ‘This is something that I actually really want to do. How can I make this happen? Is it possible for me to do this?’ This would mean moving to Austin, at least for the six-month program. It would mean completely shifting careers from researcher at a higher education institution to a culinary world. How do you explain that to anybody?

Joseph: Totally different.

Kelly: Knowing that my ultimate goal was to be helping people reach healthier, more well-balanced lives through nutrition and a variety of things, culinary was just going to be one piece of that. Just knowing that that resource was out there really made me start thinking about the possibility of change.

Joseph: What did you do next once you knew this was out there? Because this seems like a pretty big leap. Comfortable job, near your family, decent income, stable lifestyle, and then this leap into something totally different. What did you do the next day once you started to realize you wanted to pursue this?

Kelly: That night, I actually filled out a form on their website that was like, ‘Are you interested in learning more about the school?’ I filled it out, and for the next two years, I got emails from them saying, ‘When are you going to come to our school?’ Because of that, I constantly had this connection with them, and I was starting to have a dialogue with them:

‘Here’s my situation. I don’t know that I can leave right now, but I’m thinking about it. We’re going to have to save up some money if we’re going to do this.’

‘You don’t understand. My husband just started teaching, and now, we’re both going to have to uproot and move, or I’m going to have to find an apartment for six months. That seems kind of odd.’

I mean there was a lot to work through. Twenty-twelve was when I first had that experience, and then 2014 was when I actually started in the school. It was filling out a form. I guess really just taking the first step by asking that question: What would it mean for me to come and attend your school? Are people like me doing this? Is this something that you could see as being possible if I don’t want to leave my job and Springfield? I just had to start asking some questions.

Joseph: Can you take us to that day when you made the move out? What was that day like? I want to just imagine. That would just be full of excitement and nervousness. I’m just curious what that was like for you – that day when you moved to Texas.

Kelly: I was over the nerves by that point. I was very excited and relieved actually. I don’t want to say like a burden had been lifted because that probably happened the day I turned in my resignation for my position, but there was a sense of that too – this relief and a little bit of sadness leaving my apartment back home. We lived there for three or four years, and so there were some familiar things I’d grown up in Springfield. I had never lived somewhere else in the United States. I had lived other places overseas.

I am an adventurer and I do like to go travel to new places, but picking up and moving someplace else, I guess there was a little bit of this unknown. You’re just driving toward it physically, going to this place that I’ve never lived before. I’d say a lot of excitement.

I did have a lot of peace of mind though. By that time, I’d worked through a lot of the nervousness and the doubt. I was feeling pretty hopeful and excited to start my new culinary school. I mean it was a dream. That was something that I’d been wanting to do for two years, and four days later, I was going to be in my first class. It was exciting.

Joseph: Very interesting. There’s one word you used in there that I’d love to go back to. What you said was ‘relief.’ What was the relief about?

Kelly: I think the relief was about finally doing it. I’d been wanting to do it for so long, and I’d been in a place that wasn’t getting me closer to my life goals for so long that when I finally gave myself permission to go and do what it was that I wanted to do, even if it meant telling people.

I had a hard time telling people, ‘I’m quitting my job to go to culinary school in Austin. Devin doesn’t have a job. I don’t have a job. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m just going to go.’ People can look at you like you’re crazy, but that relief was definitely a sense of saying, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m doing it anyway. I’m going to find out what’s going to happen,’ and, ‘I know enough about myself that I’m not going to be a failure. I’m not sure where’s going to leave me, but it’s going to be okay.’ I finally allowed myself to acknowledge that. That was definitely a moment of relief.

Joseph: How much did it affect you when people gave you those strange looks? You got something so stable right now, and now you’re going into something that you don’t even know how it’s going to work out. This is something I hear from a lot of people: they’ve got friends or family who are working in stable jobs, and they just look at you funny when you go and pursue something that’s so non-traditional. How much did that affect you, and how did you deal with that?

Kelly: I caught myself doing a couple of different things. I emailed everyone that I had ever really worked with face-to-face in my four and a half years at the university, and I let them know what I was doing. I tailored some of those emails more personally for people I’d really worked closely with, but in general, I kind of let people know what was going on.

I got a lot of email responses. Half of them were, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so glad for you. Do what you love. I had a chance to do that in my life, and I’ve never looked back. I never regretted it a day,’ and then other people that were saying things like, ‘Really? This sounds like an interesting experience.’ You could tell they were trying not to be mean, but they definitely were like, ‘What the heck are you thinking?’

I definitely caught myself pulling on the more research and nutrition side of the school when I was explaining myself instead of just saying, ‘You know what? I’m going to culinary school. It sounds like fun. I’m going to try it out and see if it helps me get closer to my career goal.’ I caught myself explaining it a little more, like, ‘Oh, no. I’m going to get into nutrition research, and they’ve got this Science of Nutrition Class. It’s all very scientific, and I’m a researcher.’

Then I eventually started just being more and more real about it. Depending on who I was talking to, I was able to say things like, ‘I want to try it out. We’re trying to start a business eventually, and I think this is going to help me get there. It’s going to at least give me confidence.’

Joseph: I think that comes up a lot: we almost feel like we’ve got to justify our decisions or defend our decisions, both to other people and also to ourselves.

You started the National Epicurean Academy of the Culinary Arts. What’s it like for you when you start there, because this is radically different from being an Assessment Research Coordinator?

Kelly: I’ve always been a good student, but a traditional classroom is where you sit, and you have your books, and there’s the teacher, and you kind of know what that environment is like. The first day of culinary school, we’re sitting there in our chef’s coats and these wacky, black-and-white chef pants that look like clown pants, and we have these big clogs on that are nonslip shoes and a hat. Here, I come from this really professional setting, dressing up every day, and then now I’m taking out the trash and doing these other things.

Joseph: Were you literally taking out the trash?

Kelly: Yeah, we did. At the end of every day, you’re cleaning the kitchen and all of that. It was six months of having to understand that industry a little bit, but that first day, I was actually a little nervous. Like I said, I’ve always been a good student, and I always feel very good and excited on the first day of school, but at the culinary school, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, knife skills. What if I don’t have it?’ I was nervous, but within a couple of days, I felt very much at home. It took me a little while to get over the outfit, but other than that, I felt pretty good about it and started getting a lot of confidence.

Joseph: Were there other challenges that came up with this career change?

Kelly: Financially, I knew that if I was going to stay within the food industry side of it, which I was going to have to do at least a little bit to complete my certificate, there’s no money in food unless you’re at the top or unless you’re like a chef star or something on Food Network. Austin’s an expensive place to live, much more expensive than Springfield, Missouri. We had savings, and we knew that we were making this move, and there wouldn’t be a lot of money in the beginning, but trying to figure out how to make a comfortable life for us here on a very small pay check, that was a big challenge at first.

Joseph: What do you say to people who use money as their reason why they’re not pursuing something that they would rather be doing?

Kelly: I kind of don’t consider it a great excuse. I understand it because I felt it too. If you really want to do it, you can find other things to cut out of your life, other expenses to cut out of your life in order to save and to make those moves toward what you want. The rewards on the other end, even if I’m not making as much money—which actually, now that I got moved into a management position, I’m making approximately the same salary I was in my research job by the way.

Joseph: Interesting.

Kelly: It worked out really well for me, but I was serious about it, and I had a really hard decision to make when that opportunity opened up, ‘Do I actually want to be a manager of a bakery? This is not what I moved here for.’

I just feel like people cushion their lives quite a bit with a lot of unnecessary comforts. If you’re really trying to break out and do something different, you’re going to have to tighten the belt a little bit for a while, save up, and give yourself some leeway, so that if you don’t get a job in your new field right away, you can survive that. I don’t need the newest phone. I don’t need the newest computer. The resources that I have right now are working for me, and they’re not getting in the way of me pursuing my goals.

If I start spending radically in other ways, then I could use that as an excuse, but I think, ultimately, if you want to do it, money doesn’t need to stand in your way.

Joseph: When you look back on this trajectory, is there something that you wish you would’ve known?

Kelly: I wish I would’ve known that it was okay to change because I probably wouldn’t have held on to that job for so long. I’m a very logical person, and I’m very plan-oriented. If I don’t know what the plan is, then I don’t like to leap. I wish I would have known earlier on that it was going to work out and that it would be okay. That’s not something I could have known.

Ultimately, that’s what pushed me to make that final move. I had a conversation with my mom at the dinner table before we moved down here to Austin, and I asked her. I said, ‘Is this the stupidest thing I’ve ever done?’ She looked at me and said, ‘It’s going to work out. It always does,’ and it’s true. Sometimes, it’s just that little reminder that it is going to work out.

I will find a way to make it work out. I never just give up. That’s not who I am. If you really know yourself and if you pay attention to how you’ve managed your life, then I think you can have that confidence to just step out there and say, ‘You know what? My heart is leading me in this direction. Maybe my mind is leading me in this direction, but it’s something that I want to pursue. It’s going to be okay.’ If it’s not okay, you’ll find something else to do, ultimately. That’s the comfort. There will be something else that you can do. You can always find something else.

Joseph: That’s a great story to hear, because I think sometimes, we get in our own ways of making progress in our careers. I know that things kind of work out, but obviously, you’ve also put in a lot of work. Has there been a tool that you’ve used that has helped you stay on track with your goals?

Kelly: Periodically, probably about twice a year now, maybe even three times a year, I’m reassessing, ‘What am I doing right now? Am I on track?’ and I’ll sit down and write, ‘Here’s what I’m doing. This is what I want to be doing. What steps need to happen in order for me to get there?’ You helped me work through that actually when we were trying to decide whether or not to move down here. ‘What would you need to do in order to get there if that is where you ultimately want to go?’ I sit down and I do that. I write down some of those things.

Sometimes, it’s very practical stuff. ‘I need to email this person about this piece of equipment that we’re going to be using. I need to get the business cards made. I need to reach out to these people about getting some videos done.’ Sometimes, it’s much more fluid than that. ‘I am working full-time at a bakery. What does that mean in terms of my time dedicated to opening my own business? Is it helping me or how is it hurting me at this point?’

Joseph: Is there a great piece of career advice that you’ve received?

Kelly: It’s very simple, and it is not a plug for Nike, but my dad told me, ‘If you’ve got all these ideas, you’ve got all this stuff that you want to do, do it.’ That’s ultimately the best career advice that I’ve had. Instead of just thinking about it all the time and saying, ‘I’m wanting to do this. I think it’s a good idea. I can’t see how I could fail,’ go do it. I think ultimately, that’s the hardest part of it, but it’s also the only part that’s going to make it happen.

Joseph: That’s true. That is really good advice. I know that I’m like you. I’m a planner. I like to reflect on stuff and then map things out. At the end of the day, you’ve got to do something. It’s definitely a mind-set shift when you’re working for an organization, very task-focused, and then running your own business or trying to start your own thing, that action leads to opportunities. Easier said than done sometimes.

What’s one habit that has consistently served you well in your career?

Kelly: The first word that comes to mind is responsibility. I’m just always, probably to a fault, very responsible, and I always do what I know I’m supposed to do. If it means fill out these forms to create your new business, I read the whole form, I figure out what it means, I do all of the parts, and then I don’t have to redo it later. If you can do the job well the first time, you don’t have to redo it.

Joseph: It’s really interesting to hear, and it’s also good to get a glimpse into what’s been working for you. I definitely want to hear more about V-Life, Kelly. I know this is just kind of in its infancy right now, but what are you up to right now with V-Life?

Kelly: V-Life is a lifestyle wellness education business that my husband and I have just recently inaugurated, started out.

Joseph: Congratulations.

Kelly: Thank you very much. Very exciting.

We are really going to be aiming our focus at corporations in this area that want to provide wellness programs for their employees. We’re going to be educating people about the connection between nutrition and exercise and health in a very practical way with a lot of videos and things that we get to show people, food demonstrations. We can also do that for individuals, personalized nutrition assessments, recipes or menu development for families or businesses. We spent probably 8 to 10 years figuring that out for ourselves, so we want to share that with people.

Joseph: I have to admit. I am not a vegan, but last week, my wife and I actually went on this detox vegan diet for one week. I tell you what – it was a struggle for me. Do you have one go-to vegan either recipe or favorite food for what I’ll call the reluctant vegans out there who are still eating meat and animal products?

Kelly: We do a lot of beans, lentils, which is something that I didn’t eat much before I became vegan.

Joseph: I heard those are great for you.

Kelly: They’re really, really nutritious, superfast, easy to cook, and they have a little more of a meaty texture when you mix them into things.

The V in V-Life stands for ‘vibrant,’ so our little tagline is Your Path to a Vibrant Life. The idea is not that we’re out there to convert everyone to being vegan. We actually just want to inform people about the relationship between nutrition and wellness. If that just means getting closer to health and closer to optimal health by making a few different changes, that’s what we’re going to help people achieve.

Joseph: If people want to learn a little bit more about how they can lead a path to a vibrant life, where would you suggest they go or how could they learn a little bit more about what you’re doing or the types of programs that could help them make these little steps to improve their lives?

Kelly: We are on Facebook at Facebook.com/AustinVLife. Also, the CHIP Program, the Complete Health Improvement Program, is the educational tool that we’re going to be teaching. That website is CHIPhealth.com.

Joseph: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It’s really inspiring to hear your story of leaving something stable behind to pursue something that you find a lot of passion in. I’m just excited to see how this all turns out for you. I definitely wish you the best in your culinary journeys.

Kelly: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, and good luck to all of your folks out there who are considering making that change. It’s worth it.