#126: Nonlinear Career: A Path to First-Time Entrepreneurship or Career Advancement

Show Notes

Some people follow linear career paths; others find themselves wanting to mid-career change directions throughout their careers.

Stepping off the traditional career track—that well-trodden road leading from novice to expert in your field—can feel daunting, especially after you’ve invested a decade, or several, pursuing a linear pathway up the corporate ladder.

In this episode, co-hosts Nola Boea and Lori Vajda explore what a vibrant life and a non-linear career have in common and why you want both!

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In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• What is a non-linear career journey and what does it have to do with living a vibrant life?
• How do professionals move between industries and tolerate the uncertainty that accompanies a non-linear career journey?.
• Why changing job roles, or even career paths, can bring many advantages – namely, broadening your skill set and bolstering your career capital.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:

(04:59:73) We’re explaining a non-linear career track and how it can have a positive impact on both a person's income and their vitality far into the future.

(07:18:91) The major differences between following a traditional and nontraditional career track

(12:31:81) Whether you choose an unintentional journey or an intentional path, here are some helpful steps you can take to design your non-linear career.

(15:29:60) There are a variety of reasons for choosing a non-linear career, but stage, age, and life circumstances can definitely motivate people to jump ship.  

(17:30:13) What is the future of retirement? How has it shifted, and how can pivoting now prepare you for becoming a first-time entrepreneur in the second half of your vibrant life?

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Nola: Remember when you were a child and an adult asked you, what do you want to be when you grow up? Well, if you were like me, your answer probably had like two or three professions attached to it. So, my answer was usually I want to be a ballet dancer and an astronaut. There was no "or" just an "and" in the reply.

So, then you get to high school and the same question is meant to elicit a single narrow response. One that suggests your college major and the career you will have for your entire adult life. But what if it doesn't have to be like that? Instead of a single, focused career path, you could choose a non-linear journey, one with room to grow and change. Stay tuned listener, because in this episode we're exploring what a vibrant life and a non-linear career have in common, and why you want both.

[00:00:53] Lori: Welcome to Sticky Brand Lab podcast where we bridge the gap between knowledge and action by providing you with helpful information, tips, and tools from entrepreneurs and other experts so you can quickly and easily jumpstart your side business. We're your hosts. I'm Lori Vajda, and this is my co-host, Nola Boea.

[00:01:13] Nola: Hello there.

[00:01:15] Lori: Hello Nola, how are you?

[00:01:17] Nola: Fantabulous. You know, Lori, one of the reasons I am looking forward to today's episode is because we are talking about a paradigm shift.

[00:01:26] Lori: And by shift, what are you referring to?

[00:01:28] Nola: I mean that there are a lot of people who believe that retiring means that a person has reached the pinnacle of success and now they can enjoy living a balanced life filled with less stress and more times for friends, family, adventure and happiness, and usually comes with a cocktail by the beach.

[00:01:50] Lori: Well, you know Florida is on that list of retirement places.

[00:01:53] Nola: Exactly. But what if we've been thinking about our work and our retirement all wrong? What if we set out to build a non-linear career path that we did not want to retire from? While still reaping all those benefits of a vibrant life, including a cocktail by the beach?

[00:02:13] Lori: Wow. Well, you know, you've brought up a really good point, although I do think before we introduce the non-linear career and what we mean by that, as well as the shift in attitudes about work in general, it would be a good idea if we told the listener why we think this topic is so important and why we wanted to focus on it now.

[00:02:36] Nola: Okay. Good point. You start.

[00:02:41] Lori: Well, it all started with us talking about who we serve, and by we, I mean the podcast Sticky Brand Lab, was founded to help working women become first time entrepreneurs. And that's because many women face financial hardships in what has been traditionally thought of as the retirement years. At first, we thought that being an entrepreneur would help professional women kind of plan out their future so that they could have multiple streams of income as well as enable them to live the remainder of their life, vibrantly.

However, unbeknownst to us at the time, it also sparked a discussion about what retirement was and what the future of that looked like. And that sparked a discussion about retirement's future and how people frequently underestimate the cost of things like major home repairs, dental work not being covered on insurance, eyecare, hearing aids, major medical expenses, a recession, a global pandemic, and the list goes on and on.

And what we were really surprised was by the fact that there wasn't any scientific evidence to support the health and wellness benefits of what we think about as a traditional retirement. What we found was just the opposite.

[00:04:05] Nola: Yes, we did. And in fact, that's when we realized that we had no idea how our notions of this vacation-like retirement even came about. Now, at the same time that we're wondering this, we are also observing that there have been changes in the attitudes that we've had about work and careers and personal lifestyles, especially since the pandemic. And there appears to be some real difference in how older generations like we are, like boomers and Gen Xers, as well as younger generations, there are differences in how they think about these kinds of issues. And like I said, even though we fit in those older generational categories, you and I share similar ideas about work, retirement, lifelong learning, and things like that. Today, we are talking about that non-linear career track and how it can have a positive impact on both a person's income and their vitality far into the future.

[00:05:01] Lori: Yes, it reminds me of those blue zones, you know, the people in Japan and some places around the globe. What I'm hearing you say reminds me a lot about that.

[00:05:12] Nola: Yep.

[00:05:13] Lori: And when we were discussing the similarities and yet some of the differences, we decided that it would make more sense to talk about that in an upcoming episode; specifically, we're talking to a woman about her journey down the path of non-linear work, where she is now, how technology has contributed to her career portfolio, and what she's discovered by talking to other like-minded professionals in that same industry.

[00:05:43] Nola: Now, with all that being said, it is fair to say that some professionals will choose to stay on what has traditionally been a vertical career track, which will eventually lead to a traditional retirement path. I mean, that still exists. And I can't help wonder if this non-linear track will be something one day people will think of it as a fad, rather than the future of work. I mean, I don't think so, but you know, they say the pendulum does swing back.

[00:06:08] Lori: It does. It swings from one to the other, but with the mounting costs for education and the debt that people have taken into their retirement or up to their retirement, we've really been examining work in general. So I think that you brought up a good point and only time will tell for certain.

Recently I read in 2021 that 40% of the world's workforce had been considering leaving their job. At least that was according to Microsoft's Work Trend Index, but a recent headline raised that to 60% of the global workforce.

[00:06:49] Nola: Wow.

[00:06:49] Lori: Yeah, exactly. So when you look at the changes in employment that have happened and are currently happening, for example, between the recession and layoffs, new technology like automation and artificial intelligence, tools like ChatGPT and hot topics like diversity, equity, opportunities for remote or hybrid work, even traditional employment isn't looking so traditional.

[00:07:17] Nola: That's so true. Now, that's not to say that there isn't a certain appeal to a traditional career track. And you know it's very stable. It's like having your future laid out for you. Because you can select a course of study, then get your affiliated internship and entry level job and work toward some logical promotions in that field, gaining your expertise and eventually reaching your ideal job position with your ideal company. And in that respect, a structured path can make the most sense, especially depending on the type of career you're interested in or the career you've chosen. For example, medicine or academia. That's really the logical path in those professions and it's the best one.

[00:08:01] Lori: Absolutely. And some public sector work also. You work so many decades within that public sector and you get a pension. And that actually is how retirement, just as a side note listener, that's what we classify and define as retirement came about. But we're going to talk about that in a upcoming episode. To get back to this one, I think before we get into the why and how a non-linear career track works, we probably should define what we mean by that. So, do you want to explain that for listeners?

[00:08:37] Nola: Certainly. A non-linear career may begin in one direction and then transition to a different path, sometimes more than once. Now, these shifts typically happen as people make discoveries about themselves and gain new insights about their strengths, their preferences, and their interests. And these shifts can also happen when unexpected opportunities or even unexpected challenges come about and present themselves. For an example of a non near career path, I mean, when I first started out earning my own rent, so to speak, I was in early childhood education directing daycare centers, then shifted with an education toward accounting and then ended up shifting to corporate marketing following a career track there. But when companies folded and the recession hit, that's when I decided to just go with what I'm good at and what I like doing, and went into nonprofit copywriting where, after so many years, got really bored, but still stayed in that industry and went into humanitarian grant management. So it seems like it's all over the place, but one kind of led to the other and sometimes it was kind of a forced decision that always ended up to be a good one.

[00:09:53] Lori: Same here. I started in mental health field, got into being a dating coach, led to social media. Social media didn't exist when I went to school. So, when we're thinking of non-linear career paths, some of those opportunities show up because there wasn't a time for it earlier. Let me give you an example. Let's say that a person starts their education to become a nurse. During the course of working in the field, they have an innovative idea, or they see a much-needed service or product. That leads him or her to become an inventor or an entrepreneur in order to bring that idea to fruition.

[00:10:35] Nola: Yes, which reminds me of our interview with Carrie Brazaski. She was a hospital administrator who resigned after becoming super, super stressed and burned out, but turned that whole experience into consulting and she now is a stress management consultant helping corporations with their employee wellness programs.

[00:10:59] Lori: As matter of fact, many of the interviews we've done with entrepreneurs has been on a similar trajectory. They had a background in one area, but in the course of family situation, personal situation,

[00:11:12] Nola: life,

[00:11:13] Lori: life in general, they saw a challenge and came up with the solution and that led them down a particular path. You know, times have really changed because back in the early two-thousands when I was setting out on that non-linear track, if you will, changing jobs or changing companies every three years was really frowned upon. I mean, people questioned either my integrity or my knowledge or my commitment because I was hopping around. Now, granted, part of that reason was because I was either in a pilot program, or I was in a grant type of program working in public sector, and the job naturally came to an end. So even though I had a good reason, people still doubted it.

[00:12:02] Nola: Yeah, I know. Looking back, that was really an unfortunate perspective because for me, working in a variety of environments and industries such as tech companies, universities, and nonprofits, I had amassed a lot of applicable skills and knowledge, and I really was a good worker. It just looked like I wasn't reliable because I left a job less than five years of employment, which at that time, believe it or not, was the expectation.

[00:12:28] Lori: I think that today, I've talked about an unintentional journey here, and I think if somebody intentionally was designing their non-linear career or their career portfolio, the same approach would, I think, be similar. That being, you kind of lean into it. For me, as I had mentioned, the funding for my position went away, but I also wasn't happy doing what I was doing and I started to look for opportunities that would challenge me and take me out of my comfort zone. So initially, that started within my field. I was in the Division of Youth Corrections. I wanted to move from working with children who were getting in trouble while still in school and living at home, to kids who are being committed to the division. So, I started to make a shift. But what ended up happening is I also looked at opportunities to take my knowledge and education and shift that. And that led me to becoming a coach, and then I made a niche to be a dating coach because at the time I was dating and I was thinking, hey, I bring some knowledge and experience, plus I have an educational background in here.

 When we think of what motivates someone to choose that non-linear track or a career portfolio, some of those look similar to what I've just said. You want to prioritize job satisfaction over job stability. I like to say that just because you're really good at something doesn't mean you enjoy it.

[00:14:13] Nola: Right.

[00:14:13] Lori: Some people want more challenge, and I was one of those people. Even though I was working with kids that were being taken out of the home, or I was working with couples on family and couples counseling, I really wanted to get out of working with younger kids and younger families in order to experience something that I didn't have knowledge in.

[00:14:36] Nola: Yeah, I can totally relate because the jobs that I kept for the longest amount of time, I mean way more than the three years, were the ones that had the most variety and offered the most challenges.

[00:14:48] Lori: Yeah. And another reason for the change in career tracks, for some people, it's all about values. They want to work for an employer that aligns with what's important to them. So if social philanthropy is part of your values, you may want to work for a company that shares that. For some people, they will do a step down or a vertical step, freeing up more time because changes in their life circumstances happen, or their life stage change happens. Maybe they went from being single to being married or in a long-term committed relationship, and that partner travels so they need something that's more flexible. There are a variety of reasons, but stage, age and life circumstances can definitely motivate people to jump ship.

And I think also just the result of losing motivation, whether it's because you're no longer interested in the field or you are not seeing a vertical opportunity with the company . You know, I know some people who, to take a promotion means to also give far more hours than they're willing to do, and for the same or similar pay, and that's not appealing to them, so they make a move.

[00:16:06] Nola: Yep. I can so relate to pretty much all of the points you just mentioned.

[00:16:10] Lori: Well, you must not be alone because there's a breadth and depth of knowledge that's showing up to address this. I was looking at some recent headlines. Last year, you and I really introduced the idea of the career portfolio. Now, when I did a Google search for that and just added the year 2023, I couldn't believe how many recent topics came up. So here's some examples about today's topic and the career portfolio:

As employers and employees face an ever-changing job market, can non-linear careers become a new normal?

Bored with nine to five? Eight ways to build a portfolio career.

Why should you build a career portfolio, not a career path?

So I think it's fair to say these are all hot topics, and my question is, can older generations, Gen X and Baby Boomers here, can you really afford not to pay attention?

[00:17:08] Nola: That is insightful, and I would say that there are a number of younger Boomers and Gen Xers that are intentionally making that mid-career shift as a way to take advantage of new opportunities or to even avoid becoming obsolete.

[00:17:22] Lori: I think it's fair to say that the future of work is already here. Without a doubt. So here's a question for you, Nola. What about the future of retirement? How do you see that shifting? Or do you?

[00:17:35] Nola: I don't know, maybe different cocktails? Just kidding. No, actually I see retirement now, not as an end to a career, but as the pivot point in one's life, including how they generate income, but not only income, but also health and relationships, creativity, joy. I see retirement as the outcome of crafting life on your own terms.

[00:18:05] Lori: I love that.

[00:18:06] Nola: And you and I have thoughtfully and lovingly coined this concept of becoming a first-time entrepreneur in the second half of a vibrant life. You know, it's a paradigm shift.

[00:18:18] Lori: It is.

[00:18:18] Nola: Yeah, and it's one that we think needs to be discussed. And it totally applies to women who seek to add aside business to their career portfolio. For many of us, starting a business is the start to an exciting new future. And we look forward to delving more into this concept moving forward.

[00:18:35] Lori: Yes, we hope the ideas and thoughts we've shared here today have sparked your interest and curiosity about your career, and the idea of becoming a first-time entrepreneur in the second half of your vibrant life. Just remember, starting a business comes with its own set of challenges. So take time to determine if the risks as well as the rewards are right for you. Just don't let your analysis become your paralysis. And listener, be sure to stick around to the very end of this podcast for a fun little surprise.

[00:19:07] Nola: If you found the information we've shared helpful and want more tools, tips, and inspiration delivered to your inbox, sign up for News You Can Use. It's right over on our website, stickybrandlab.com.

[00:19:20] Lori: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring, and motivating episode. And remember, actions create results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.

[OUT-TAKE]!

Lori: Take...pause out
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[00:19:48] Nola: That was a silent rehearsal!