How many times have you or someone you know said, “I hate my job. I wish I was doing something else instead,“? Probably a lot. But change is hard. Taking the first step towards change can be the hardest and a lot of people just don’t know where to begin even if they’re miserable. If you find yourself in this boat, what’s nice is there are a lot of free resources out there that can help if you simply start looking.
My site is one example. Capital One is another example. They sponsored me to attend one of their free career workshops in San Francisco the other day. Before diving into the key points of the workshop below, I wanted to share a story of a friend who took a risk everybody thought was absurd at the time.
Andrea had been in institutional equity sales for 10 years and grew tired of it. She was a Vice President who made a healthy $200,000 a year salary and a bonus that ranged from $0 – $200,000. She lived in a modest one bedroom apartment in a nice part of town and took the bus to work. Most people in their early 30s would never risk leaving so much money on the table. But Andrea did.
Andrea came into the office one day and told her manager that she was leaving. Everybody was shocked since she was a lovely person who was well-liked by her clients and by her colleagues. When asked whether she planned to go to a competitor, like so many have before her, she said, “Nope! I plan to go to baking school!”
Everybody was shocked! Baking school? What the heck? Even I was thinking what a curiously strange move to make when she could just practice at home after work and on the weekends.
Andrea was determined. For years, she had been dreaming of digging her hands into bowls of dough and watching her own scrumptious delights turn golden brown. If she was going to be a baker, she wanted to be the best baker possible by learning all the culinary secrets at a top school.
Surely a career doing what she loved would be less stressful and provide much more meaning to her day-to-day life. Even with the $8,000 cost to attend baking school, and the subsequent much lower salary, she believed this dramatic change would be worth it.
But once she finished school and got her first real baking job, reality hit hard. Being a baker wasn’t anywhere near as stress free as she imagined. She regularly had to work the graveyard shift in order for all her baked goods to be fresh the same day. When she worked dinner hours, she was constantly berated by the head chef, just like how Gordon Ramsey would yell at all the contestants on Hell’s Kitchen. “Hurry up you slackers!”, “Do you want me to fire you? Or are you going to fire the créme brulée because it surely isn’t going to fire itself!” It was non stop pressure in the kitchen.
After several months of work, Andrea said something I’ll never forget, “Sam I can’t take it anymore. If I’m going to get yelled at every day at work I might as well make six-figures getting yelled at every day instead of a lousy $15/hour!”
Andrea ended up giving up her dream as a master baker and going back into banking the following year. Years later she told me, “I have no regrets because I went after what I thought I wanted. I’m a much better baker now than before. And although I still don’t love my job, I have a much greater appreciation. The greatest regret would have been to never try.”
Related: Do You Want To Be Rich Or Do You Want To Be Free?
Career Change Workshop Recap
If you’re thinking about changing your career, make sure you really think through all of the risks before taking a leap. A lot of time and money is at stake! Here’s a summary of some helpful tips that were covered in the career change workshop I attended that you may find helpful.
The career workshop was hosted by Gwen Lane, an ex-marketer who decided to focus on building her own website and earn money as a product ambassador and Megan Lathrop, a money coach who used to work in investment management.
The most salient notes from the workshop:
- 77% of us take jobs not aligned with our values. Sound familiar?
- Personal branding is key – who you are, what are your values, what are your interests.
- Identify people you respect and look to emulate their brand, but also create your own.
- Ask yourself what you want others to think when they speak your name.
- Create your mission statement.
- Identify your values and find a career that’s in alignment once you’ve developed a financial base.
The 1.5 hour session was one part coaching one part therapy. We broke into groups to give and get feedback about our personal branding and values. I met one woman looking to get into social media marketing, but felt stuck because she didn’t have the three year common prerequisite. Another woman was looking to become a COO for a startup after 20 years of running a 100 person office. It was time for her to finally take some risks, she told me.
It’s really good to meet working folks or folks looking to do something new because I’ve been living in my solopreneur bubble for five years now. Despite a booming Bay Area economy, competition is still stiff to land a coveted job.
Your Brand Is Your Secret Weapon
Branding is vital to everyone’s career and business success. In a sea of homogeneity, you must develop some type of personal trademark that makes you stand out from the crowd. Be known for something.
With Financial Samurai, I’ve purposefully chosen a red, black, and silver color scheme. The colors are meant to convey a level of ferocity when it comes to tackling all of money’s mysteries. The mask is a universal mask that represents all of us, not just me, in our quest for achieving financial independence sooner, rather than later. My objective is for people to come away from my site feeling smarter and with more perspective than before they came.
Really take some time to think about what your personal brand says about you today and what you’d like for it to say about you in the future. The career workshop was a good reminder for participants to stay on brand. I often go off the rails with my posts because I’m bored or feel a little spicy. This workshop helped me focus on my site’s core values.
Related: How To Build A Stronger Brand For Your Career, Website, Or Business
Other Career Change Tips
From a financial perspective, map out all the costs associated with doing a career change. For example, one common path many young folks take is to go back to business school full-time for two years. But I’m not exactly sure how many attendees actually add up the total cost of business school + the forgone salary + lost time and compare the total cost to the potential income + happiness increase.
The worst financial decision is when someone goes to graduate school and then ends up not working shortly after graduation. The cost is guaranteed. The income and happiness are not.
More often than not, you’ll have to take a step down in pay if you transition to a new career. Therefore, it’s best to thoroughly sit down with a veteran in the space you want to join first and talk about all the pros and cons. If Andrea got to know more restaurant bakers, she might not have been so shocked by her treatment.
I knew about the pitfalls of the online media world before I left my full-time job because I had been moonlighting for a couple years already. Try as much as possible before you buy.
It is very common to be disappointed after a career change if you don’t have proper expectations. The more you can align your values with your work, the happier you will be.
My New Co-Working Space!
What I realized from my latest visit is that a Capital One Café is a great free co-working space whenever I start getting cabin fever. Downtown SF is a mad house nowadays, so being able to have a place to host business development meetings, go to the restroom, charge my devices, relax, stuff my face with pastries, do some banking or just chat up with random hustlers is great.
Further, all the workshops have catered food and drinks as well, which is great for all those frugal folks out there! When our workshop ended, the caterers started setting up dinner food and beverages for the 5pm – 6:30pm entrepreneurship workshop.
For more expert insight on Mapping Your Own Career Path, you can also check out Capital One’s recent #CapXTalk panel discussion to hear how executives from companies like LinkedIn, Zappos Insights, The LA Girl, and Times 10 tapped into their personal values to achieve their career goals, and what advice they have for others who are looking to make a change.
Here’s a snapshot example of some free upcoming events in SF.
Thanks again Capital One 360 for helping keep the lights on here at Financial Samurai. It’s always fun to get out of the house once in a while and meet new folks and learn new things.
Recommendation If You Want To Move On
If you want to leave a job you no longer enjoy, I recommend you negotiate a severance instead of quit. If you negotiate a severance like I did back in 2012, you not only get a severance check, but potentially subsidized healthcare, deferred compensation, and worker training.
When you get laid off, you’re also eligible for up to roughly 27 weeks of unemployment benefits. Having a financial runway is huge during your transition period.
Conversely, if you quit your job you get nothing. Check out How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye.
It’s the only book that teaches you how to negotiate a severance. In addition, it was recently updated and expanded thanks to tremendous reader feedback and successful case studies.
Updated for 2020 and beyond.
I’m in the same position and if you asked me a year ago, I would’ve said keep at it, make yourself coping mechanisms; I’ve got a subtle countdown timer on my desktop and whenever things get too much at work, I look at it or get the work done with tears of frustration.
But now I’ve been diagnosed with an adenoma and I don’t know. I’m dependent on my job for my healthcare. I wonder if my stubbornness to keep going at work for FI cause my adenoma which has now made me dependent on the healthcare provided by my employer? Was it worth it?
My husband is in a high stress job that leaves him little to no time to explore other jobs or career options. He still has student loans for law school and his current job is helping us pay these down, but it’s become an endless spiral of stress and no sleep in addition to his values not aligning with the company he works for.
Would you recommend keeping this job for a few more years to pay down debt or attempt to explore other jobs while working or quit and dedicate his full attention to a job search. We realize that a new job might mean a lower salary for him, but at what point is the stress not worth it?
It’s worth seeing what else is out there ASAP while he still has a job. Much easier to find a job when you still have a job.
Now this article hit home, but not in the way you may think. I was never able to pursue what I wentto college for because the Recession was in full swing when I graduated. At the time I was desperate to get a job – any job- that would help me repay my student loan debt. I was homeless in college and due to my skin color received a crappy Pell grant ONLY when I was sleeping in my car. College is worthless to most people now because the ROI isn’t there.
Living in poverty after working so hard to fulfill something you’re passionate about and good at can crush you. I saw the entire industry change that I worked so hard to be a part of and found out that STEM jobs aren’t anywhere near as ‘safe’ as people assume they are. Other classmates who made it were replaced by foreign workers (immigrants) and wages were slashed. This was ssuming that the jobs weren’t just moved overseas for cheaper labor since Americans overpay for an education that just isn’t worth it.
I was forced to start over four times. With each job I thought I’d be able to build a career around it but that’s a all out lie when you have to rely on an incompetent business owner for a paycheck. After taking intiative and learning key fundamental skills on my own to prove my worth (women are generally hated in male dominated industries) I was still told that they just don’t hire women because it’s “men’s work”. I was refused work in machine shops even when I could demonstrate G-code and understood the processes. Automotive companies laughed at me, welding specialists were pissed I could even MIG and arc weld. Factories refused to offer more than $8/hr for foundry work that I learned and even showed the shift supervisor my sprue networks on my own projects. I know rejection in the most intimate way and how constant rejection can make you doubt your self worth as a person.
Imagine how horrible it is to live in a country where immigrants rip your work from you, where you can be legally discriminated against, you’re paid less as a woman (I’m underpaid now at – $1.06/hr compared to men at my job with no experience or certifications), have been denied training and opportunities, and am considered a freak as I don’t conform to the typical woman in the town. The area I live in (and will be leaving next year) is a dump where 67 – 69% of the residents are on some kind of welfare. I have a degree. I don’t have kids with different fathers, I work harder than everyone at my job, I’m not married, and I try to leave every place I’ve worked at in a better way/condition than when I got there. I also don’t take shit from anyone. Talk down to me and I return the favor.
Yet when I stand up for myself I’M PUNISHED. I stood up to a coworker creating a hostile work envrionment and wouldn’t you know it that men in their 20’s and 30’s can’t stand it when a woman is right. Threatening to beat a coworker is wrong but my manager didn’t care. The guy is incompetent, never on time, loud, sexist, curses all the time and more. He can steal MY food but when something of his goes missing then everyone gets interrogated. It’s insane and why I’m leaving that pew jumper’s paradise for a larger city with actual opportunities. After literally exhuasting all of the options where I’m scraping by, that eureka moment finally hit me. I have exhausted every possibility and dealt with death threats from members of the local Chamber of Commerce when trying to create a competitive company.
It hit me hard. Why throw away my skillset on morons who will never pay me what I’m worth? Why not pivot those skills into my own brand, build a business aroud it, and pursue my obsession where I can actually live and be treated like the human being I am? If horrible crazy people who openly discriminate against women can make it I know I can definitely run a business. After taking a class in a larger city hours away, I’ve been working on my business plan, have created the sitemap for my website, the color schemes, and have my own logo finished. While many people may give up entirely take the time to learn a skill, no matter what you are doing, and improve on it. If that skill translates into something else that will help you pursue your main goal then you’ve just made yourself more valuable and brought yourself one step closer to acheiving that long term goal.
As a result I’m at the point where I found the best place to move to, but need a bit more experience and certifications in order to ensure my move is successful. There’s no point in moving to a city if you can’t afford the rent.
During my class I met people that I was at ease talking to and actually had SEVERAL things in common! I felt at home with them and realized it was where I belonged. There wasn’t a nasty snide remark those two entire days, no threats, no yelling, no hostile behavior. We can either be dissapointed when we learn how those careers we fantasized about as kids really work or you can pivot and exploit what you see. Either way I’d rather be doing what I actually enjoy and do the work I currently do as a backup of sorts as it compliments my true end goal to be financially independent. During that time I took off work I realized it was also the first vacation in my life. The area I travelled to has amazing work spaces, tool libraries, and communities (plural) where people actually want you to excel!
No matter how bad it is focus on what you can do, what you can actually change (even if it’s just you), and give yourself realistic goals with acheivable deadlines. Don’t overload yourself with so much work that you can’t finish anything (personal experience). This has helped me tremendously and I wrote it not to be just another online rant, but to let people know that if you walk away from bad experiences make sure you take away something useful from each of those experiences. Don’t walk away from anything empty-handed if you can help it.
No matter how hard life gets you can train yourself to see a realistic opportunity in what you are dealt. I refuse to give up and really enjoyed this article. Don’t let other people define who you are and make sure you take time to invest in yourself.
I had a career transition that required grad school. Even with the significant debt I took on, it was absolute worth it. My earning potential is much higher and I am more satisfied in my field. I also was able to start my own business within a niche in it. My branding narrowly targets a subset within a subset and I am starting to become nationally known as an expert.
I studied computer engineering all through high school and then college, but didn’t feel like a career in Informatics would suit me. So I ended up majoring in Social Work.
Total career makeover!
However, after graduation.. I went back to working in front of a computer. (Just like Andrea)
I’m not sorry though, I’m really glad I took a chance on studying something I actually enjoyed.