What do you do when you’ve done everything that you were supposed to do, but still find yourself asking the question “what do I want to be when I grow up”? This is the place I found myself back in 2014. I was facing a possible layoff from a company where I’d worked for almost a decade. How did I get here? Well, to fully answer that question I have to go back to my childhood dream of being a Radio DJ. For a long time I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to be a radio program director and have an on air shift as a DJ. A series of restructuring and layoffs found me shelving that dream, and eventually getting into a sales career.
Working as a field sales manager helped me discover my true passion. I enjoyed sales, but where I truly felt a sense of purpose and calling was the part of my job that involved training and coaching others. After experiencing yet another layoff from my field sales manager role, I knew that it was time for me to make some serious decisions about the direction I wanted my life to take. At the time, I knew that I loved training and helping others to reach their highest potential. I decided at that time to step out on faith and create my own training and development company. Once I started finding clients, many of my former co-workers and friends started asking me what I was doing and how I was getting paid to do what I loved. I was traveling the world, living on purpose and people were taking notice. I began to share what I was doing, and eventually people started asking me to coach them. It started to click for me that there were a lot of people that going through life never finding that thing that lights them up, gives them purpose and makes them jump out of bed in the morning. It was then that I decided to get formal coach training so that I could gain the necessary skills to help others follow their dreams and start to design their work around their life and not the other way around.
I feel fortunate that I now get help others through training, speaking and coaching. What helped me the most is getting really clear on my unique gifts and talents, and creating a solid plan to find work that aligned with my strengths. This is the process that I love to take clients through because it helped me so much. Yes, it is a process, but it can be done…all you have to do is take the first step.
Oh, and remember that dream of being on the radio? That dream came true on September 9, 2020 when I launched The GenX Career Show, a podcast specifically designed to help and inspire midlife professionals aged 41-55 discover their passion so that they can find or create work that they truly enjoy! Click the GenX Career Show tab right here on my website to listen to new episodes each week!
