How to future-proof your career and create a job yourself you love without going back to Uni

Last week I had the honour to join one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies in Brisbane for their career’s week, with the overarching theme ‘Create a career you love by building your Personal Brand.’

It couldn’t have been any more exciting for me as I’m truly believe that each and every one can (and should!) create a career they love and then excel in it!

These days everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and have a start up as it sounds pretty cool. However, not everyone actually enjoys the roller coaster ride that comes with running their own business and neither should everyone have their own company.

What not many realize is that entrepreneurship has nothing to do with the environment but with the mindset.

Entrepreneurship means realizing an opportunity, assessing the risks and costs associated with it and then go for it (or not) before everyone else tells you.

 

This can and should be applied to corporate careers as well.

The fact that jobs are getting replaced by technology, is a massive opportunity for us to focus on using traits and skill sets that make us human and in natural state of flow.

Key is to realise how to combine our strength with our interests to provide value to others so we can capitalize on them.

 

Plus – being aware of our soft skills which are transferable and independent on any trends or industry changes, is the only insurance for ourselves to not become complacent.

I’m also passionate about this topic because it wasn’t always like that for me.

I was in Brand and Product Marketing for 10 years and convinced that it was my ‘calling’.

However, whilst I achieved to get a more senior role with 28 years (a higher role than I set myself as goal to achieve by 35 years), it felt exhausting.

In the minute I woke up, I already felt tired, was anxious for what’s ahead and worried about what I did as lost confidence in what I did.

I put on weight, constantly felt exhausted, was grumpy all the time, didn’t have the energy to go out and also got divorced - my world just turned around and everything what I had wasn’t what I wanted anymore.

I also didn’t know what it was that I wanted either.

It wasn’t until later (in fact I was already 30), when I started to invest for the first time in my life in paid personal development and coaching that I realised the role I got eventually into, didn’t play to my strength at all anymore.

It was a new experience because prior to that, all my roles played to my strengths – that’s why I got promoted and progressed in the industry.

Corporate careers however are designed to promote people into the next rank until they eventually become incompetent in the new role (or feel like it anyway).

Climbing the ladder means taking on different responsibilities and skill sets (not just more of the tasks you have already done well for years).

That’s the issue though: just because someone is good at doing something, doesn’t mean they are good in either coaching someone else to get the same result, looking after the additional admin that comes with it or handling the politics with stakeholders or whatever it might be.

And this is exactly what happened to me.

My brand archetype – what describes my personality and is my DNA – is a magician.

My strength has always been seeing something bigger than the obvious and what others can see and I’m a big believer in big transformations. That’s why new product development was easy for me.

The last role however, was quite executional for most of it and perfect for someone who can make sense out of pieces of the puzzle thrown at them (like Creators).

Where I excel however, is coming up with the pieces for the puzzle, so the step prior to that.

What I did was working harder and longer than anyone else to get results. First in, last to go.

And still, the outcomes that I got never seemed to be even close to what others could achieve and were rewarded for. I had no explanation for that until nearly 2 years later.

I got into Recruitment more through accident initially as I knew I had to do something different to what I was doing as it burnt me out. It was a rough time, not going to lie.

I questioned my choices and if I just spent 10 years, a lot of energy, effort and money into something I wasn’t even good at?

In the search for a new role, I also realized that my skill set is slowly but surely becoming redundant. It was the time when Digital Marketing and Social Media became a ‘thing’.

My issue was that I had no (hands on) experience with it.

At Uni, it wasn’t taught because it was just not there yet when I studied and in my roles, it had never been part of my responsibilities.

There I was, burnt out and low in self-confidence about my own abilities and the future ahead, I could only see 2 options: Going back to Coordinator level and learn the trade of Digital Marketing from the bottom and work my way back up or do something completely different.

Given the fact I had a big mortgage, option 1 was financially not viable. So option 2 it was. (Even though I didn’t know what option 2 was to start with.)

Long story short, I got into recruitment after many hurdles and many rejections from pretty much every agency in Brisbane. And they all gave the same reason: ‘You don’t have sales experience and we don’t think we can teach you either’.

It wasn’t until I got a personal introduction to an internal recruiter that I got an interview and eventually an offer, with the condition that I had to start a new desk: Digital.

Ok – so there I was again in a challenging situation ... I had no idea about recruitment and no idea about digital. And now I had to not only make one work but both at the same time…

‘I take it’ was my reply, not knowing that it will be the best decision I have ever made.

3 months in, I got commission and loved it. Everything felt easy and I couldn’t believe I got paid for what I loved doing. 8 months later, I had a consultant working with me, 18 months later, we were a stand-alone practice of 6 consultants.

How can that even be?

Succeeding in a new industry, with zero experience nor contacts, I climbed the ladder quicker than in 10 years??

It was the simple fact that it played to my strengths without realizing it.

I got my confidence and optimism back and with that, I got more and more opportunities presented to me, most of them I had never thought of myself.

Fast forwarding 3.5 years from then, I have now been running my own business for 1 year, made my strength my full-time job and work with incredible ambitious people, doing the same for them:

Creating careers they love and can excel in, whilst doing it with ease.

Last week alone, 116 people started their Personal Branding and Career journey with me which is still incredible, thinking about the times I hated my job and didn’t know there were more options than I could have ever imagined.

That’s why I have made this my mission:

I want to help as many ambitious people excelling in a career they love (whatever that means for them) so they can make the biggest impact they can and get paid well for the value they provide and others can benefit from!

So if you have been on a cross path and need to decide commit or quit, get started by downloading my FREE Career Guide now!

Ready to fast track your journey and consider 1:1 coaching?

Then let’s chat and see where you at and what’s the best way for you to move forward

 > Book your FREE 45-minutes Strategy Call Now!