Richard

The route into it is not saying to oneself, I need to build up my confidence. The route into it in our experience is go find something that gives you energy.

Natasha

Welcome back to the Career shifters podcast. I'm Natasha Stanley.

Natasha

Today, I'm talking to CareerShifters founder Richard Alderson about the brilliant Emma Hamlett, whose career change story we heard in our last episode. If you missed it, do go back and have a listen before diving into this one.

Natasha

Now, Richard is an entrepreneur who founded Careershifters in 2006 after making his own shift from consulting into the social enterprise sector. Since then, he's developed a deep understanding of the theory and approaches that underpin a successful shift by supporting thousands and thousands of people to find more fulfilling work.

Natasha

His practical and straight-talking approach meant that our conversation today is full of insights that you can start applying to your own career change right away. So without further ado, let's get started. I started with Emma with what I said was quite an easy question, which turned out not to be such an easy question. So I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, when she was a kid. And as I was re-listening to her story this morning, knowing that you and I were going to be recording, I kind of got curious about that for you. What did you want to be when you were a kid?

Richard

I think I'd answer in a similar way than she did, which is I don't think I had specific ideas. And I also retrospectively can look back and see myself enjoying certain activities that have continued to this day in my career. So I loved putting on performances. And I wasn't necessarily always the performer, but I liked creating the the production, if you like. So being the person who made it happen in a way that brought pleasure and joy to the people experiencing it, but also participating in it. So there was an organiser in the context of performances function that I enjoyed.

Natasha

What kind of performances? I'm picturing you and your brothers in the living room...

Richard

Magic and music. I think the two ones that were the main ones. Yeah.

Natasha

Super cool! Super cool. And that... what you're pointing to there I think is really interesting, right – that feeling of "I haven't got concrete ideas, but I can kind of connect the dots looking back and see those clues" and it makes me think of what Emma was saying about when she finished university and she didn't have still a concrete idea of what she wanted to do.

Natasha

And I see that all the time. And I think of all of these young people coming out into the world feeling like they're supposed to know and they're supposed to be setting themselves on this path. And even later when they're in their established careers, kind of thinking, "why didn't I know back then? I should have. If I had known, I wouldn't be where I am now."

Natasha

Do you think we put too much pressure on young people to kind of have the answer really early on?

Richard

100%. I think there are certainly those people that know. And they're fine. They go ahead and do it.

Richard

And I think for a lot of people, that knowledge which comes from experience just isn't there.

Richard

And therefore, that question that gets banded around so much. It comes from adults to kids because it's a question they feel they should ask or they're curious about. "So what are you going to do? What do you want to do?"

Richard

And it becomes ever more intense around particular levels in education where people are choosing, at least in this country, subjects to take.

Richard

I think it's a really dangerous question. I think it's unhelpful because it doesn't speak to the reality of what most of us are going to be, or many of us are going to be doing going forward, which is having many different careers, experimenting a lot, and that being okay.

Richard

So I hope that narrative and that question evolves going forward.

Natasha

Yeah. And the focus on experimentation, right? And being okay with trying something and it not being quite right and course correcting and adjusting.

Richard

My hope is that for those people who aren't clear that from age 12 they want to become a vet or they want to become an engineer or whatever, it becomes totally acceptable and indeed the norm that in one's early career years, that it's about experimentation.

Richard

And so maybe the question will become, "so what are you experimenting with this year or in this period of time in your early career? How did it go? What are you learning? What's the next experiment you want to run?"

Natasha

Yeah. And that would be so liberating.

Natasha

I think of so many people that we work with for whom every experiment that doesn't turn into a forever career feels like a failure. And to be able to liberate yourself from that and have fun with the process and be okay with finding out who you are over time in your twenties and actually far beyond... Massive, massive.

Natasha

So Emma came to us having done a little bit of that. She started the Launch Pad having moved into the social enterprise sector from museums, and finding out that that also wasn't where she wanted to be. But this was after 15 years in a career, building up all of that experience.

Natasha

And that taps into a massive fear for a lot of career changers of taking a really big wrong step.

Natasha

And what I found interesting about that was that she hadn't just taken a flying leap, right? She'd been volunteering in that world. She'd spoken to a friend who was in that area, and it still turned out to not be where she ultimately wanted to be.

Natasha

Should Emma have done something differently there, or are wrong moves sometimes just a part of the career change process that people should be prepared for, do you think?

Richard

Most likely the latter.

Richard

And my suspicion is if we spoke to Emma on this particular topic, she would look back on that period and say, "look, this is all part of the tapestry of my journey. And perhaps had I not done that, then the next step wouldn't have become apparent in the way that it did."

Richard

It's really hard to say. The reality that we've seen over so many years of working with career changes is that wrong steps are an inherent part of this process. Ideally, those wrong steps are minimized through short experiments that minimise the risk of doing that, but equally there's always going to be the risk that there's a step that's taken that isn't quite the right one.

Richard

Credit to her though, she recognised that relatively quickly and was able to then take some further action to course correct.

Natasha

It's a scary thing to think of, right? I'm imagining people listening to this thinking about making a career change, they haven't made a move yet, and hearing that a wrong turn is quite possible can feel really off-putting.

Natasha

Of course, it's all very well looking back and being like, "oh, it's all fine now." But when you're thinking about doing it, it's quite a different matter.

Natasha

How do people need to think about this in order to be able to start taking action on making a career change without being paralyzed by that fear of a wrong turn?

Richard

So let me talk to this in two ways. One's from a very high level perspective. conceptual way or perspective and one's more from a ground reality perspective.

Richard

So what I've noticed is that when people are going through some sort of transition in their career, they're in a process of innovation. They're essentially needing to come up with different ideas, different possibilities, for what they can do next.

Richard

And if you look at innovation theory and from people and organizations who've been doing this for years and years and years, the reality is that innovation happens through experimentation. And experimentation involves dead ends or wrong turns, however you want to label them. And so it's an inherent part of the process of innovating.

Richard

One way to put this is if you're not finding things or discovering dead ends or trying things that aren't the right fit for you, you're probably not experimenting enough, and you're probably not going to be coming up with sufficient good ideas in the process of figuring out what next for you. That's the conceptual level of this.

Richard

The ground-based reality of this is that you can also, through going about this in the right way, mitigate a lot of the risks involved in this.

Richard

So in the way we work with our clients, we encourage people to run small, experiments, which mean that they are done in a matter of hours or days rather than weeks or months. Why? Because each person has to run a lot of them, but also when they're kept small, the risk is also kept small.

Richard

So what we've seen is that to a large extent, not completely, but to a large extent, you can take a lot of the risk out of the process of making decisions that are not the right ones through identifying quickly the paths that are not the ones for you.

Richard

Equally, as we've just heard with Emma, sometimes even with that testing things out, there can be steps that are taken that aren't quite the right ones. And then it's just a matter of recognizing that.

Richard

And she didn't put herself in... She was still working. She was still earning money. There wasn't any particular risk or danger she was putting herself in. It's just she'd lost some time on the journey.

Richard

But again, my suspicion is that she would look back on that period of time and say, "That was just one more step along the way to where I am now. And I'm glad I did it. And I now know categorically through doing it that that particular area was not the right one for me. And so I've got a little bit more peace of mind as a result."

Natasha

She lost time. The other thing that she said she lost a lot of was confidence at that point. And that personalising of an experience like that... What's your take on that, on the impact on people's confidence?

Richard

It's huge. We see this day in, day out with the people we work with and our audience.

Richard

The reality is, is if you're doing something work-wise that isn't a good fit for you, it's likely to be impacting your confidence to a smaller or larger extent.

Richard

I will talk in specific terms about my own career change journey: so when I was working for a large technology company, towards the latter end of my time there, I was doing a project for a client where I was doing work that really wasn't a good fit for me. I'd lost motivation for my job because I felt like I was dragging myself to work and going through the motions at work. And so I lost motivation. That loss in motivation meant that I didn't perform as well as I felt I could do in a normal work situation, which in turn led to a lack of confidence saying, "well, maybe I'm just not good. Maybe I'm just not skilled. Maybe I'm just not good enough."

Richard

And so it can be a very dangerous, vicious circle to get into because that lack of confidence then often leads to a lower ability for someone to take action. And that lack of action means that people tend to stay in that particular circumstance and it just gets worse and worse.

Richard

And so that lack of confidence is a very, very real reality and it's something that requires acknowledgement. It also requires action to move beyond it.

Richard

And again, what we've seen is that when people are in action doing things supported by other people, as Emma talked so beautifully about in the way that she went about this, then that confidence can start to be tackled.

Richard

And in fact, the more action is taken, the more that you can see new possibilities, you can see that you have value, through those actions, through interacting with other people, supported by other people around you, the more that that confidence can build step by step, which is an absolutely critical part of the career change process. It's very hard to change career from a position of low confidence.

Natasha

Totally. And that's why I loved Emma's Zumba story so much. She didn't think she was going to become a Zumba instructor. It wasn't about that. In fact, on the surface, it's got absolutely zip to do with career change, right? Volunteering as a Zumba instructor.

Natasha

And yet it had such a transformative impact for her. And this is the thing, I suppose, right? Like when you're not feeling very confident, doing something that's a little bit out of your comfort zone can sound like the last thing you want to do. So you're in this vicious circle, right?

Natasha

To what extent should people be looking for ways to build up their confidence outside of the career change conversation? And how might they do that in a similar way to Emma?

Richard

So I think it's really important.

Richard

The route into it is not, in my experience, saying to oneself, I need to build up my confidence. The route into it in our experience is go find something that gives you energy.

Richard

To reconnect you with the part of yourself that to a large extent has been disconnected in the environment or with the work that you've been doing. And just allow yourself to feel that connection again in a very tangible way, to help you recognise that it's possible to access that, to recognise that it's there, to recognise that there are many things in the world that can energise you.

Richard

And that energy will then lead into lots of other things. It will help recharge the battery within you, which is really important, where it's been drained from doing something that isn't right for you. But it will also give you access to then start to take actions, which can then lead to greater confidence.

Richard

So I think energy is a great way into this, looking for things to energise you.

Natasha

And I loved what she said as well.... I can't remember exactly how she phrased it, but she said something about how she got to see herself in this completely different light.

Natasha

So she was doing things, and she said, "I didn't think I was very good with people. And suddenly here I was being really good with people. I didn't think I was a very extroverted, outgoing person. And yet here I was delivering stuff for people."

Natasha

And getting to see yourself outside of the structures and identities through which you know yourself and other people know you can be transformative too, right?

Richard

100%. And again, I would say it comes back to the fact that what she was doing was something she naturally enjoyed, that gave her energy, that then put her in a position where she was able to be more of herself and then see how that impacted other people and get that reflected back to her and go, "oh, wow, when I am more fully in myself and the authentic version of me, look at who I can be."

Natasha

That's something that I see a lot of the people that we work with, I guess, be surprised by, right?

Natasha

When they start to work with us and they did the Launch Pad, for example, on the Launch Pad, we give people missions and exercises to complete.

Natasha

And often when they first start doing them, they're like, what has this got to do with career change? Right?

Natasha

But there is a sort of indirectness, a sort of roundabout way of getting to some very clear answers that is not how we're trained to think about the world of work, right? We would never think, okay, in order to build career change confidence, go teach a Zumba class.

Natasha

And we saw more strands of this coming out in Emma's story. She said that one of the things that made a difference through working with us on the Launch Pad was not thinking about jobs right away, but but instead starting from a much broader place of what mattered to her, what her values were.

Natasha

Can you tell us a little bit more about that? What's the value of not jumping straight to job titles and looking for roles, and instead starting from what can sound like a much more woolly kind of place?

Richard

In our experience, looking for jobs based on a job title is entirely the wrong way to go about it.

Richard

OK, this might be terrible... It's like looking for a romantic partner based on their name. Like, I only want to meet someone... It's just like, what? And it's not quite the same because... no, it's not quite the same. When we look for jobs based on job titles, it tends to be more reactive rather than proactive.

Richard

So where is it that we see job titles? Well, we often see job titles in job ads.

Richard

Emma talked about how she looked through the Guardian newspaper, for example, when she got her first career, and so we're used to looking through a whole series of job titles and going "oh could that be for me? Could that be for me?"

Richard

And the challenge is is that that's responding to something that someone else has put together in terms of a job title and job description. And of course that always happens, but it's... What it's not being is it's not starting with you, and what you really want, and what's really right for you.

Richard

And so there's always a danger that we're going to get pulled in different directions when we're reacting to job titles and job descriptions that are out there in the world.

Richard

What we heard Emma do was, she did that at the beginning of her career, and it worked out for a while in her career, but it wasn't long-term where she wanted to be. Instead, what we heard her do was experiment and notice, from her own experimentation, her own actions, the feedback that she got from others, that there was a different route that combined a number of things that she was naturally good at, that other people had commented on, and did not come from a job title.

Richard

So she said that other people said that she was really good at creating nice spaces for people, that she had good judgment, good taste.

Richard

None of those things are job titles. They're things that she possesses as qualities, things that come quite naturally to her, things that are recognised by other people. And it was when she put those things together with another couple of interests of hers, books and women, that she was able to craft something that became what she now does.

Richard

And that was a very proactive move from her part. It was something that was built on very strong foundations of who she is, rather than reacting to something that someone else has put together, out there as a job title or job description.

Natasha

And you talked there about how other people saw her, and she said that that was a really crucial turning point for her in her career change process.

Natasha

What's the value of getting other people in on this conversation in your experience?

Natasha

Because it's something that a lot of people shy away from, asking these kinds of questions. You know, "How do you see me? What am I good at?" Is'tIIt's

Richard

It's essential, in our experience.

Richard

So we've seen with the people we've worked with that every single career change happens through interactions with others.

Richard

And indeed, the more that you can surround yourself with people on the journey, the more that you can interact with other people, on the journey, the faster you're going to move, and the more effective your career change is going to be for so many reasons, right?

Richard

So from the perspective of going through the journey, as she talked about, it's incredibly powerful to not do this alone.

Richard

One, from a motivation, accountability point of view. Secondly, from opening up new networks and perspectives that you can't see yourself. Then it's really, really important to interact with people outside of your current bubble, what you know essentially.

Richard

And indeed, that's what she did in her own experiments. And she did that beautifully when she had clarity about, look, I want to be in the bookshop industry. She did it so beautifully in terms of reaching out to other people who were running bookshops to get input and guidance from them in a way that didn't just help her at that stage of her journey, but continues to help her now because she has this phenomenal network of like-minded people.

Richard

Nothing of any significance in the world is achieved single-handedly, and this was her experience in her own career change. So people are just absolutely essential.

Richard

And then the final thing - and there's many more - but the final thing that came up in her story was so sometimes it takes other people to remind you or indeed enlighten you into the things that you're really naturally good at, because other people can see that really easily in a way that you can't.

Richard

So other people did that for her, right? So they shone a light on these ingredients and that then became a core part of her career going forward.

Natasha

Yeah, it's really hard to read the label from inside the jar, right?

Natasha

Other people can see it really clearly, but when you're on the inside and when your confidence is low, it's really, really tough.

Natasha

You talk there about how Emma brought together these different ingredients of the things that she'd noticed that she was good at, the things that she'd noticed energised her.

Natasha

That can feel like something that's much easier to... craft something proactively if you want to create something for yourself, like Emma did. She started a business and she pulled together those elements that she'd identified for herself in quite an intentional way.

Natasha

To what extent can people also do that if they're looking ultimately to be employed, if they're not going to craft something like Emma did that's perfectly tailored to those clues?

Richard

I think the immediate thought that comes up in response to that is it's not too different.

Richard

So day in, day out with the clients I work with, what I'm seeing is that they're identifying areas of high interest and energy for them. And the reality is there are already people working in those areas of high interest and energy for them.

Richard

And so their job becomes to really understand what's already happening in this space and where is it that I could best fit. And that fit might be within areas an organisation or a team.

Richard

Equally, it might be that there's an opportunity for them to start something new in that space because that's what they feel they want to do or how they orientate it.

Richard

But really, once someone's identified those areas of interest, it's then up to them for how they best fit into that area. And there's lots of scope for them to decide where that might be.

Natasha

Yeah. I think it can feel as though if you want to find something that's the perfect fit, you have to create it yourself.

Natasha

And yet the world is so big, and there are so many people doing so much like mental stuff... it's, it's a challenge in a lot of ways not to find somewhere that would be energising for you to be, and where you would really have something to bring to the party, huh?

Natasha

So Emma had what is quite a legendary moment, I think, like this moment of certainty, this kind of light bulb moment that I think so many career changers long for.

Natasha

I really hoped I'd have a moment of just, ta-da, this is what you're supposed to be doing.

Natasha

And it sounds like Emma had a version of that, which in some senses is really inspiring and exciting to hear.

Natasha

And I noticed myself feeling a little nervous when I hear stories like this because it happens for some people, but it certainly doesn't happen for everyone. And even when something like that does land, not everybody trusts it.

Natasha

You can have a moment of, "wow, this really could be it."

Natasha

And it's very easy for the little voices to come in and swipe it away.

Natasha

How should or could people be thinking about moments of clarity like that, or light bulb moments in in finding an idea for a career change?

Richard

Generally our experience is that there are not huge light bulb moments along this journey, in that generally you're not waking up one day and going "oh that's it!"

Richard

It tends to be more process of putting jigsaw puzzle pieces together, slowly but surely, and then a picture emerging through a lot of experimentation, a lot of trial and error, and action, real-world action in that particular area.

Richard

Having said that, sometimes there can be these instances, like my experience, where it does come together very quickly.

Richard

And I think you asked her this in your interview with her, which was, "well, how did you know?"

Richard

My sense was, again, it comes back to what we were talking about before, that it brought together... a number of things that she already knew that she was really interested in. So longstanding interests and talents, right? That it all came together in one thing.

Richard

And she didn't just, yes, there was a strong sense of, there's some clarity here, but then she quickly turned that clarity into action. And every single action she took beyond that clarity validated that clarity, which is so, so important.

Richard

And my imagination, she didn't talk about this, but my imagination is that every single conversation she had with other bookshop owners further increased her certainty. My imagination is that when she created her mobile bookshop, that was such a positive experience that, again, it helped cement that clarity.

Richard

And so, yes, moments of clarity can arise. And sometimes, like in Emma's case, they can be quite profound, quite quickly. Great. And if someone doesn't immediately or very soon take action to validate that clarity, then there's a danger that that clarity is not going to be as useful or maybe misguided.

Natasha

As I listen to you talk, it also strikes me that she had what she described as this moment of realisation.

Natasha

And of course, as you say... she'd also had a number of much smaller moments of realisation when she read the responses that she got from her friends about what she could contribute in their lives.

Natasha

And when she noticed what was behind her, when she logged on for our weekly coaching calls, it was just walls of books.

Natasha

And sometimes it can feel like one big light bulb moment, but actually that source of light comes from lots and lots of little sources, right?

Natasha

So as you said, Emma went quite quickly from having this idea into action and going from the concept of 'Bookshop' to actually making it happen.

Natasha

What lessons from that part of the process particularly stuck out to you? What did she do right?

Richard

So much.

Richard

I think the biggest lessons were the fact that she just went ahead and got started. And in her own words, she didn't feel she needed permission from anybody else to do that.

Richard

So I love the fact that though there was an unavailability of premises in Durham for her bookshop at that stage, she said, "well, screw that, I'm just going to start a mobile version."

Richard

And it's no mean feat to do that, but she did it.

Richard

And that was, it sounds like a really important step on on her journey because it just got her involved immediately in the act of book selling, the act of meeting customers, and I have no doubt that some of those customers remain her customers today, the act of learning through all of that about what works and what doesn't in this particular field.

Richard

And so my imagination is that that stepping stone that she took because she didn't wait for permission, she didn't wait for everything to be perfect to start, was a really important part of her getting to where she is now.

Natasha

And I guess I'm thinking of you in this context, not just as somebody who's a specialist in career change, but also somebody who's founded multiple businesses and helped many, many others with their startups.

Natasha

I'm imagining that you're coming from the perspective that kind of bootstrapping a business is a really great way to get into it.

Natasha

And at the same time, it's something that's really, really useful for people who maybe don't want to start a business but want to establish themselves in a new area or land a job in a different industry.

Natasha

What can people do if they want to maybe move sideways into employment to just get started in the same way that Emma did, perhaps without buying a mobile van?

Richard

So again, the principle here is just get started in the smallest possible ways that you can.

Richard

What I will say is this doesn't work for certain fields. So if you're thinking about becoming a pilot, don't try and go and start flying a plane. It's not going to work, and nor will you be allowed to, just so for anything that requires official certification or licenses.

Richard

But for the most part, a lot of our career changes are not doing that. And There's an opportunity for you to get started in small ways.

Richard

I had a client who was very interested in writing. And so she started a blog. Not just that, but she also started to offer her copywriting services to local businesses. And very quickly, she found people who wanted her services and saw huge value in her services. Because copy is a very important part of how a business works. communicates to the outside world. And so through very, very small initial projects that she did, both personally, but also for other businesses, and she did those initial projects pro bono, she was able to build up not only a portfolio of work, but also great experience of different types of writing that allowed her to be clearer about where she wanted to focus her writing going forward.

Natasha

That idea of, "I'm not going to wait. I'm not going to wait for permission. I'm not going to wait for somebody to offer me a job. I'm not going to wait until I've got my website set up or my logo or any of that kind of thing." is really, really important. And again, completely contrary to how we're taught about how to approach the world of work, right?

Natasha

It's so interesting to me always that so much of what we teach and what we share with people at Careershifters is completely the opposite of what most of us are trained in, in navigating the world of careers. So no wonder people feel confronted by the prospect of making a shift, right? We have to turn so much of what we've learned on its head.

Natasha

What else stuck out to you about Emma's story that feels important to pull out?

Richard

So firstly, in the way that she started to experiment with other things from her social enterprise job.

Richard

She demonstrated a way of doing this, or a way of managing her shift, that we see being really successful with a lot of people, which was rejigging her role.

Richard

So she said that she was able to reduce her working hours to essentially start to work part-time to enable her to pick up other pieces of work and start to build up her new or start to run experiments festival and then to build up her new work. So that's one thing that jumps out.

Richard

Secondly, second thing that she beautifully observed was that there's a distinction between exploration and making a career change. And what I've seen so often in our audience and our customers is that the two get conflated together. So that when people think about, "oh, I really feel I need to make a career change, it feels like they're going to have to leave what they're currently doing, take a huge amount of risk, figure things out, and fingers crossed, it all works out okay."

Richard

Instead, what can be really, really important, in fact, what I say is really important to do, is to separate the exploration stage of career change, where ideally you're still in paid work while you're doing this.

Richard

So you're minimising any risks, but you're doing a lot of the exploratory work to understand what else is out there that could be possible, exciting, and viable for you. And then only then, once you've done that exploration and got some answers and a high level of certainty, then you can make the right decisions for you to then make the career change and leave what you're currently doing or start the transition into what you're doing next.

Richard

So that is a beautiful distinction and a really important one to understand that she highlighted.

Richard

And then I think the third and final thing was that she said she learned so much about herself in this process. And this is what we see time and time again with the people we work with, is that this is not only a journey of changing your career, but it's a journey on so many other levels, and one particularly of self-knowledge. And as a result, just feeling a lot more comfortable with who we are and how we're now bringing ourselves to this really important thing that takes up such a big proportion of our lives in terms of our work and our careers.

Natasha

For Emma to say, I can't remember exactly how she phrased it, but it was something like, "I'm not the person I used to be. In my 40s, I've discovered sides of myself and versions of myself and things that matter to me that just weren't the case before."

Natasha

And to hear her talking about that with such delight and such pride is really something, huh? It's really something.

Natasha

One of the other things that Emma talked about that I'm curious to get your take on was she said she's working harder now than she ever has. The shop is open seven days a week. She can't remember the last time she got away to take a holiday.

Natasha

And she's really happy with that. because it's something that she loves and that she's making the kind of impact that she wants to make. And she's got a sense of belonging in her community that was really important to her and was missing before.

Natasha

I think a lot of people want to make a career change, perhaps in order to have better work-life balance. They want more separation between their job and their life. And then there's also this narrative of "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. It'll all be worth it."

Natasha

How do you think about either separation between work and life or alignment between them or the blurring of the lines between the two? What's your take on that whole conversation?

Richard

So there's a couple of things I'd say.

Richard

Firstly, this is a very personal matter, and what work-life balance is to one person is going to be very different to another person.

Richard

And I think it's really important in the process of exploration, as we were just talking about, that if you're thinking about making a career change, that you really understand what is it that you want for yourself, that's going to work for yourself and indeed for the other people around you. S o your family and whoever else it is that's important in your life.

Richard

The second thing I would say is that even the term work-life balance is maybe not the most useful term. So what I prefer to talk about is work-life congruence.

Richard

And this, again, is personal to me. So I very much in my own life now, in the career I've crafted, I can very much resonate with Emma in that I often work a lot. And equally, there's no dissonance there for me in my life because so much of who I am is expressed in my work. And it also fits with the rest of my life in the way that I've crafted it with the people, my family, and my loved ones around me.

Richard

So there's a degree of, for me, congruence between what I do work-wise and my wider life. There's a congruence between how I show up in my work and how I show up in the rest of my life. And that feels... that feels fine. So I don't really measure it on a balance scale of things. I measure it more on a congruence scale and that feels important to me.

Richard

But it's not going to be right for everybody. And I think that, again, coming back to my first point, I think it's a very personal decision that has to be felt out for the individual.

Natasha

So for people listening who have listened to Emma's story, or are about to go off and listen to Emma's story based on this conversation, if there's one thing that you think everyone can learn from Emma and how she went about this... What do you think's the key lesson to hang on to here? It's a tricky one because there's so many beautiful lessons in what Emma has to share, right?

Richard

The big lesson for me that I hope is helpful for others is that it's okay that some of the steps in this journey that you're on career-wise are not optimal. And what's really important is that you recognise that quickly, and as Emma did, you take action to course correct. And it's likely that if you do that, you're going to find your way to what is really right for you, in the knowledge that this whole journey is about experimentation and noticing where you fit and where you don't.

Natasha

Well yeah that feels like a perfect point to press pause on this. Thank you for coming and listening to Emma's story and sharing your thoughts and perspectives on this. It's been lovely to sit and chat in this context with you rather than our usual daily nonsense.

Richard

Nonsense? What do you mean?!

Natasha

That was Richard Alderson, founder of Careershifters, sharing his insights on Emma's career change story.

Natasha

If you enjoyed listening today and want to stay in the loop for future episodes, make sure to hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you're listening to this. In our next episode, you'll hear from a new career changer, Paul, who started exploring a new career in order to take care of his mental health.

Speaker 02

There were still parts of it that I really loved. But there were so many parts of the job which were not compatible with a healthy life.

Natasha

And ended up somewhere you might not expect. Thanks for listening. I'll see you then.