How to Change Career When You Have No Idea Where to Start

0:00From GEICO Subconscious News, I'm Tammy RacingThoughts broadcasting from your brain. Tonight's top worry. If something happens to your apartment and you need to, like, stay in a hotel and pay for it, that would be crazy, right? Art Palpitations has more. That would be crazy, Tammy, but you got surprisingly affordable renter's insurance through Geico, so it could be covered, giving you peace of mind. Aw, I love a story that ends well. Next up, love stories. Are they all they're cracked up to be? It feels good to worry less. It feels good to Geico. Music, food, art. These things define and unite us.

0:34And they come in colors that breathe culture. Colors that connect us with their variety and richness. You'll find that same variety in Valspar Ultra paints. Great coverage and durability starting at$29.98 per gallon. Enjoy everyday protection against scuffs and wear with a smooth, washable finish. We're made of colors. And with Valspar Ultra, you can reflect that pride of culture you have inside on every wall of your home. Available at Lowe's. welcome to mother kind it is me your host zoe blasky and this is the show for you the woman behind the mother and we are very proudly supported by wild nutrition's women's supplements i am so excited to bring this episode to you today because i think there is something in the air right now almost every conversation i'm having is about career and specifically career change this is such a massive part of matrescence and actually a massive part of motherhood that the career ladder you were climbing, maybe the one you've been climbing since you left uni all the way through your 20s, probably into your 30s, you realise it just isn't against the right wall anymore and you want to and you need to pivot.

1:52But then comes the fear, right? What am I going to do next? How am I going to make it work? This career, this job, this skill, this is all I've ever known. How am I going to find something that suits me and fits me as the woman that I am now, not who I used to be? It's completely wild to me how we choose these careers. You know, I chose my career in corporate marketing straight out of uni and here I am, 43, you know, and I want such different things from work now than I did then, of course. But no one really teaches us how with big responsibilities, with high fixed costs in our lives, how to make these pivots.

2:34And that is what I want to teach you today. I've actually developed a whole model around this because in my private coaching practice, which sadly I don't have as much time for today, but in the eight years prior, I have spent a lot of my time coaching mothers through career pivots. And so I've developed this framework, which up until now has just been for my private clients. But today I'm going to share it with you. And the framework is called MOVE. So the first step is M, map. You have got to know where you're going and what you really want. I know it sounds simple, but it's really not, is it?

3:15Especially if you've been disconnected or you've been on autopilot or you've just been doing a job because you've known it for so long. So that is the first step is what do you really want? What is your map? Where are we heading to? Then the second letter O are your options. OK, so you know where you want to get to. You know what success means to you now. You know how you want to feel in your work. What are your options? So we're going to look at what your transferable skills. And then I want to help you identify what I call the red thread, which is just this brilliant tool that helps you identify where your experience and your skills intersect with something.

3:55you're really passionate and curious about, which is exactly what I did. I reverse engineered when I switched out of corporate marketing into what I do now, mother kind, I reverse engineered, right? What are my best skills? What am I passionate about? And I put them together to build this, to be honest, dream career that I seem to have crafted for myself. Okay, the next one is V, validate. We never, ever, ever want to make a pivot or a move without validating it first. What does that mean? Well, it means that say you're in finance, you're in corporate finance, and you want to start a finance consulting business.

4:33You want to go and work with founders, maybe female founders, and you want to use your finances skills, the skills you've got, but you want to take them into a different market. what you need to do is validate that that different market wants those skills so if you wanted to speak to small female founded businesses then you need to go and find those businesses and ask them what problems do you face with your finances do you use accountancy firms how does it work these are my skills how would how much would you pay and would you pay for someone like me to come and support you 10 of those conversations you are going to know whether your service would work or not work and then you're going to be able to tweak it so that is v validate we always always always want to validate why because it d risks okay and then the last one e is execute because what i see is so many of us just stuck up in our heads overthinking not taking action and clarity actually comes from taking action so many people that i know spend years dreaming of doing something and never actually doing it.

5:41And I always say the time is going to pass anyway. I am so grateful to the Zoe of nine years ago that took action, that in tiny ways, like I've been building Motherkind slowly, step by step, I'm so grateful to that version of me because these nine years have passed anyway, right? So now I'm at a point where I've got this dream career that I love because nine years ago I started taking the action so we have to start taking action I love talking about manifestation and change and change and making things happen which is all manifestation is loves speed you want to do things quick and so we I'm going to teach you how to develop a 30 60 90 day plan to actually make it happen and I'm so excited to share this with you today because it works.

6:32And I know that so many of you are struggling with this because you tell me in my DMs. So I'm really excited to share it. Okay, so let's go into each of those four stages in a bit more detail. So the first letter is map. I want you to imagine that you're literally like laying out a map on the floor and we're going to work out, you know, all the ways that you could go and all the things that you could do we're gonna work out what does success mean for you now what is your map where do you want to get to we would never just jump in the car and just drive somewhere random because we would end up somewhere random right when we want to get somewhere we look it up we program the gps we put it into our phones and we get there this is what this stage is i want you to think about this as programming your GPS for where you want to get to.

7:26So the first thing that we're going to do is decide and define what success means for you now because most of us we define that if we defined it at all when we're in our 20s or maybe 30s and we are different women now. How do you know when you're going to be successful? Those are the type of questions that I want you to think about. I want you to get this clarity. So I want you to think about your version of success from a few different angles, right? The first one is financial success. Now, I say that first because I think that so many of us have high fixed costs. So you need to be thinking, how much do you want to be earning?

8:06You really need to know your numbers. The second one is emotional success. How do you want to feel about work? The third one is impact and purpose. What do you want the work to do? Do you want it to have an impact on a certain group of people? Do you want to work with women, for example, or have you been affected by something and you want to support that group? And the last one is how do you want your work and your life to fit around your children and other responsibilities? So we need to look at success from a perspective of life as a whole, because I know for so many of you, because you tell me in my direct messages that you have these jobs that look so successful on the outside, but you feel like you're burnt out and that your family and your children are really getting the dregs of you, not the best of you.

8:56So when you come to defined success, I really want you to think about how does it affect my family? How do I feel when I finish work? How does this version of my career fit around my life? Okay, so in order to get that, there's some very specific questions that you need to ask yourself. And I'm going to share a little bit about that more later on in the episode. So the next tool that I want you to have a think about is called your ideal day or week. Now, typically what people do when they're thinking about career pivot or a change is they jump straight into the what. They jump straight into the role or the title or the business or they start searching LinkedIn or they start and then start panicking, right?

9:39There's no opportunities or they might read articles about AI and they start to panic. Don't start there. obviously you're going to get there but don't start there in this map phase we're really thinking about vision and we want to suspend some of those more negative thoughts or some of those thoughts that might limit opportunities so I want you to think about your ideal day first this is really important because I want you to focus on the content not the form so I want you to think about not the title you know or I want to be an entrepreneur or I want to run this sort of business or I want to pivot into whatever it is think about what you will actually be doing day by day I once had a client client who came to me she said Zoe I want to launch an app for a community of mothers and I said great tell me about your ideal day and the ideal day that she was describing was being surrounded by people was being building this community in person and what was really interesting to me is she never once mentioned in her ideal day anything about tech, anything about working with developers, anything about the tech side of the business because she said she wanted an app.

10:51So I kind of showed this to her and I said there's a real disconnect here. She said oh yeah I hate tech, I hate working sitting at my desk and I said listen I don't think that you should be doing an app, I think you should be doing in-person community events and she did and she was hugely successful at it but I imagine if she hadn't done this ideal day exercise she might have gone off and spent time and money on most precious resources going down this app route and then realizing she absolutely hated it so I helped her to realize that you really need to think about how do you want your days to look instead of jumping straight to the end idea so I actually want you to think about your ideal day in quite specific detail like where are you working are you commuting are you at home who are you working with are you working alone are you working with a team that you manage or are you working with colleagues and peers what hours are you working all these things are so important and when I envisaged my ideal day before I started Motherkind I knew I wanted to finish at 3 p.m and I do I knew I didn't want you know there's a kind of seven till seven business or job because then I'd need seven to seven child care and I knew that I never wanted that.

12:04So it's so important to think about your ideal day. Okay, so you've got your version of success. You've got your ideal day. Now we are going to do a little bit of introspection. And I want you to look at what naturally energizes you. Why? Because when I see people that are the most stuck in their careers, it's often because they're doing things that completely drain them, which is why you're getting home from work and you're not feeling energized by what you're doing. You're not feeling inspired by what you're doing. You're actually feeling drained by it. And that is when we get into this really horrible place where we feel like we're giving our family the dregs of us, not the best of us.

12:41Now, I know it might sound like utopia and you might be thinking it's all right for you, Zoe. But I have worked really hard to get myself into a position where I genuinely love 90 percent of my job. I don't love the 10 percent, which is the admin and the finance, but everything has every all jobs have a 10 percent that you don't like. I love my job around creating content I love the podcast I love writing these are all things that are really naturally aligned with what gives me energy so actually I finish work at three o 'clock with higher energy and in the podcast in the studio where we are now everyone laughs at me because sometimes we'll do seven back-to-back recordings and my energy actually rises throughout the day because I absolutely love it so you really need to find something that aligns to what you find naturally energizing.

13:32And that can be such a good way to avoid burnout and how you actually start to really love what you do. And I do think that we all deserve to love for the most part what we do. I think we all deserve that. So I want you to think about what gives you energy. It could be in your current role. It could be in a previous role. It could be something outside of paid work. But I want you to think about what is it? Is it solving complex problems for people? Is Is it that you're so energized by learning about AI and new tech? Is it that you're energized by purpose and working on something really big with a mission?

14:06Is it that you're energized by working with colleagues? Or maybe you're most energized when you just get to sit on your own and tackle something and get into deep work. Think about what it is that gives you energy. And then on the other side, I want you to think about what drains you. You know, what is it? Is it bureaucracy? That's a massive one for me. is it rules for rules sake massive one for me i find it very draining is it admin is it doing something when you can't see the bigger purpose behind it like doing something for doing sake is it the people that you're surrounded by that drain you i want you to get really clear on this because in the next section we're going to think about your red thread which is where your unique skills intersect with the things that you are naturally curious and passionate about and this is how you can start to find out exactly what it is that you could be doing and if you are loving this so far I'm really just giving you a taster today and I'm actually incredibly excited to tell you that I am going to be running a career pivot challenge because I see so many of our community going through this and I want us all to come together so starting on the 21st of October it's going to run for 30 days hopefully they're going to be thousands of mothers coming together from our community all to support each other and there's going to be live calls with me there's going to be recorded lessons there's going to be a community area you're going to get this beautiful it's so beautifully designed I've really invested in making the workbook beautifully designed that you're going to work through so that hopefully by December ready to go into January you are in such a different place I want you to feel at the end of this challenge a newfound confidence in your skills.

15:49I want you to get a newfound clarity about what's possible and I want you to leave with a plan to make it happen. And I'm so excited because I have designed this in a way that it's not going to feel overwhelming. I'm fed up of all these courses that are just completely impossible if you have other things to do, right? So this is typical mother kind. It is really high on compassion. I have designed it for someone who has very little time and headspace. It's really high on understanding, but it's really also about taking action and getting what you want, because I want that for you. And I'm so excited to bring us all together.

16:27I've actually never done this before. So I'm absolutely buzzing for it. And this episode, we are opening the waitlist. So if you join the waitlist, you are the first to find out when we open the doors and we launch and you get 30 % off only if you're on the waitlist. So make sure that you sign up. The link is just in wherever you're listening to this. There'll be a link in the show notes. You just pop your email in and you will be on the waitlist.

17:02let's go into the second step so you'll remember we're working through the move framework we've done m which is map now we're moving to o options so this is where you are going to take everything that you've learned about yourself and again i'm only giving you a kind of taste of the tools in the actual challenge there are way more tools to help you get more specific and clear but for the purpose of what we're doing today this taster I want you to take all of that self-awareness that you've had around success around your ideal day around your energy givers and drains and then I want you to start to think about what your options are so as we work through the challenge and as we work through this episode we're going to go from the macro which is the big picture that we've just done and then we're going to get more specific so let's look at your options the first thing that I want you to think about is your skills and we want to look at skills from a few different perspectives okay so the first perspective that we want to look at them from is a technical perspective so technical skills sometimes they're known as hard skills these are the things that people can pay you really well to do right these are typically the things that you've been learning for a number of years.

18:15Can you run a P &L? Can you manage a project? Do you know how to run a certain piece of tech? Do you know how to run Google ads? Do you know how to work a certain AI? These are your hard technical skills. So maybe you're a teacher and you know how to impart knowledge. Whatever it is, these are your hard skills. So I want you to think first about what those skills are, capture them. And again, in the challenge, we'll be doing this together. Then I want you to think about your transferable skills. So your hard skills are typically things that are linked to your training, to your career to date. If you've been out of paid work for a while, which I know loads of people who are going to join this challenge have been out of paid work and are looking for clarity on what to do next.

18:59So if that's you, then the hard skills that you've gained while you've been at home raising the children there are so many of them please do not discount the skills that you have got raising children there's actually a whole episode i've done on that and we will link that in the show notes so i want you to also think about the skills that you had earlier in life or earlier in your career because those skills don't go anywhere we've probably just forgotten that we've got them so when we're thinking about the skills this is not a time to be humble this is a time to really own what you know and so often what I see is that when something comes naturally or easily to us we tend to discount it you know I've been told my whole career since I was 21 that I was really good at communication I was someone who always loved presenting you know those all staff meetings where you know there'd be a thousand people there at these corporates I always wanted to present.

19:57Honestly, it came really easily to me. And I think I just disregarded it as a skill that I could get paid for. And now I literally get paid to speak. But it took me realising what a valuable skill that is that not everyone has. So I really want you to think about this. If something comes naturally or easy to you, please don't discount it. Okay, so we've looked at hard skills. We also need to look at transferable skills. Now, these are the skills that can move across industries. They can move across roles. Things like communication that I just described, whatever job I was in, I would be using my communication skills.

20:33So maybe it's that you're amazing at management. Maybe you're really good at negotiation. Maybe you're really good at detail, whether that's, you know, planning something with your toddler or with a board, right? Maybe you're really good at time management. Maybe you're really good about negotiating and working with multiple people to get something through to completion. So think about your transferable skills, try and capture as many as you can. And then lastly, I want you to look at your personal qualities. This is always the hardest, particularly for us women, because again, we just had to disregard how incredibly we are.

21:11And I want you to think about, you know, I'm someone who always brings positivity. You might be someone who always brings a balanced view. I want you to think, Are you someone who brings energy? Are you someone who always brings a different perspective? Think about your personal qualities. And this might feel like a stretch, but I really want you to do it because we're not going to be humble right now. Now is not the time to be humble. Now is the time to really take a moment and think, do you know what? I am really, really good at that. So those are your skills. And we're now going to think about your red thread.

21:51Now, your red thread is where your hard skills, your transferable skills and your personal qualities. So the work that you've just done, they intersect with something that you are naturally curious and passionate about. So I want you to have a think about what am I excited about? Think about what articles do you read? What accounts do you follow on social media? what could you talk about for hours that kind of always piques your interest what are the documentaries that you watch if you're in your own business for example are there areas of the business that just fascinate you and you always want to know more about these are the things to take notice of so for me when I look back it's almost hilarious how obvious it was when I apply this move framework that I was going to do something in communication around personal development around women because those were the things that I was naturally really good at and in my life outside of marketing that I was completely obsessed with.

22:45So this is such a powerful tool and in the challenge I'm going to give you a few extra clues and a few extra ways that you can get absolute clarity on what is your unique red thread and I'm going to show you how to turn it into a list of options that you could do for your next right career move and actually how you can rank those options and to narrow it down.

23:15Okay so now we are on to the next phase which is validate. So as we're staying at the start we never ever ever just want to jump into a new career. We need to validate and we can validate in so many different ways, but specifically it involves putting yourself out there a little bit. So this is the first chance where you're really going to get to prove yourself that you mean it this time. This is where the rubber hit the road. So for example, I was coaching someone on this recently and she has a strategy consulting background for very large corporates. She wants to move her strategy consulting skills to help small female founded businesses.

23:54Amazing, right? what a brilliant pivot so her validate was all about finding those small female founded businesses and saying to them you know what are the things that you're struggling with these are the things that i could bring could you see yourself using a service like mine what would stop you using a service like mine what would you pay for you really want to gather as much information as you can because you are going to be doing something really powerful and really important and that is to de de-risk. You have to de-risk. We're not in our 20s anymore. We've got responsibilities. We have to be able to cover the mortgage, the childcare and all the other costs that we've got in our lives.

24:31So you have to validate your pivot. If it's a product business that you want to start or a business where volume is going to be important, I would say you need to make sure that you can get at least 100 people on a wait list. Super simple, simple landing page. drive people there and see if you can get 100 emails I would say if you can't get 100 emails you probably need to do more validation that you've got the right business if it's a new industry that you want to move into you really need to talk to people that are already in that industry or go to some industry conferences or subscribe to industry emails and industry press you really want to immerse yourself into the thing that you want to go in before you take the jump And again, when we do this in the challenge, we're all going to be doing this together.

25:18So for this validate phase, you can use other people in the community to help validate ideas. And I know that we're going to have people in there. Such a range, you know, C-suite, people running their own businesses who want to shift, people who've been out of paid work for a while, who want to get back into paid work. We might even have people in there who are in paid work, who want to shift to non-paid work. There's going to be such an amazing mix of women from our community to all come together. and support each other with our ideas in that validation phase. Okay, so the next one is execute.

25:49So hopefully by now you have validated one of your ideas. It's probably become very clear which one is going to work the best for you, which one you're most excited about, which one your potential customers or clients or industry you are most excited about and you're going to need to execute. So for that, we're going to work out a 30, 60, 90 day plan. OK, now as part of this, one of the things we need to think about is a financial plan. The other is a paralleling plan. So let's start with a financial plan. Finances are obviously a massive part of pivoting. You know, if you have a big salary, you've probably built up fixed costs in your life around that.

26:32So it's not realistic, is it, to just jump into something different? You know, I absolutely love Simon Squibb when he talks about everyone finding a dream. I believe in that too, but we also have to be realistic in a practical way. So there are three numbers that you need to know. You need to know your survival number, your pivot number and your runway. And when you know that, you can make a financial plan within those 30, 60, 90 days to start to transition to your new thing. Notice that I said the word transition. That is because we are potentially going to do something called paralleling. which is where you continue to earn in the way that you have been and you build up the new opportunity, your pivot on the side.

27:12This is what I did. So I had done corporate marketing for 12 years. That was the biggest leverage skill that I had. It was the thing that I could charge the most for, right? Because I had 12 years proven experience there. So I carried on doing that. I carried on consulting in that while I built Motherkind on the side. And it turns out this is an incredibly well researched I didn't know this at the time it's incredibly well researched that if you can switch into another career by paralleling it can really improve your chances of success so you also want to think about in your 30 60 90 day plan am I going to parallel what is that phasing going to look like then hopefully when you followed this move framework you're going to have your map you know where you're going you're going to have your options you've narrowed those down with your validation phase and now you're into your e-phase you'll execute and you have a 30 60 90 day plan what could possibly go wrong you are absolutely rocking and rolling by this point now there's one more thing i want to talk to you about and that is that there are certain mindsets that we need when we are going through a career change the first one is that we have to believe that it is possible because if we believe that there's no opportunity AI has taken all the jobs.

28:30This industry is getting smaller. No one has any money to spend. If you believe that, I really believe, and it's not just me saying this, I've witnessed it in my own life and there's loads of research to back this up, that the energy that you put out is what you get back. So think about it. If you're sat there at your desk thinking there's no opportunities, you're not going to get on LinkedIn. You're not going to go and speak to that person. Whereas if your mindset is, opportunities are flowing to me every day. You know, you might get to the school gates and start telling someone spontaneously about your idea who might know someone that can help you.

29:04It's all about putting yourself out there. And I really think that if you can have a mantra like there are opportunities around every corner. I am someone who sees the possibility in everything that I do. You want to have a few of these really powerful phrases that you can say to yourself because it's really going to shift your energy and then you're going to change what comes back to you. Okay, you've got to get behind yourself, maybe for the first time in your life. I need you to start thinking, this is going to work out for me. Watch me go. That is the mindset that you want. That is the mindset that is not only going to make this pivot successful, but it's going to feel great as you do it because you're going to feel confident.

29:48You're going to feel aligned and you're going to feel like you can back yourself and you've got that courage and that confidence. that was a lot wasn't it i've given you so much today hopefully you can crack on with it if you don't want to join the challenge i've given you enough that you can work through this on your own but i do hope that you will join us we start together on the 21st of october the wait list is open now because you are a listener of the podcast and you if you join the wait list you'll get 30 % off the price that it will be when we open to the general public. So I'm really excited about this.

30:26I'm so excited to bring our community together. I'm so excited to see so many new ideas form, so many new connections form and to just help you make these pivots and changes because we need to get that ladder on the right wall, right? So I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please do let me know what you think and hopefully I will see you inside the challenge. and I will see you next time.

30:54That was the episode. I hoped you loved it. If you did, please make sure you subscribe, and I will see you next time.