My Favourite Failure: Giving up my dream opera career - Caroline Dowd-Higgins

0:00I'm going to level with you. I'm not the best manager in the world. I'm a decent coach, but management is my co-founders thing, not mine. And thank god for that because developing your team is one of the single most high leverage things you can do as a leader Which is why i'm really happy we're working with personio They're the all-in-one hr platform You need to handle everything from hiring to onboarding handling absences to managing compensation Their features touch every point of the employee life cycle from onboarding right through to exit interviews And because they automate so much of the boring but necessary hr admin you and your managers can focus on getting the best out of your people.

0:40So if you're leading a growing business and want to spend less time on HR admin, then book a demo at personio.com forward slash secret leaders. That's personio.com forward slash secret leaders. There's a link in the show notes. So I remember I came home after an audition tour empty handed. I didn't have work moving forward. And I sat on our steps at home inside and I burst into tears. And my husband was distraught because he was so upset seeing me really burned out and debilitated. And I questioned, can I continue to do this? Caroline Dowd-Higgins is a respected executive and career coach. But if you told her that 10 years into her career, she'd have laughed at you.

1:28She was doing perhaps the most niche work imaginable Singing opera It's what she'd been destined to do since childhood But despite her talent and graft She couldn't make it work Sadly, Caroline wasn't able to sing on the podcast She said opera singers don't use microphones Because it's all about power and acoustics I mean, she would have blown our kit You can find her work on the internet Which is worth checking out Because boy, does she have a voice

1:59So I'll bring you back many moons ago. I was a kid, I was 12 or 13, and I was singing in the church choir. And to be very blunt, I was singing very loudly. And the church choir director said, whoa, this kid is literally singing too loud and an octave higher above all the other kids. So they very diplomatically pulled my parents aside and said, can we put her in the adult choir? she's a bit disruptive in the kids' choir. And my parents didn't know anything about music, and they said, sure, throw her in the adult choir. And I'll tell you, that was an opportunity for me to shine because I was singing very naturally.

2:40I have a big voice, and I realized that this big voice in this little girl was actually meant to sing repertoire that honored that sound. So that opportunity as a preteen and an early teenager to sing with the adults allowed me to take voice lessons and grow and develop. And I found repertoire in the operatic repertoire that really honored my voice. Four. Epic. It's the stuff of dreams. She'd found her thing. And she kept getting the validation that she could make it. I can tell you now with humble confidence looking back, I won awards, I won competitions, I had opportunities to be showcased as a very young opera singer.

3:23This is before university. and enjoyed it very much, was put in environments where I was singing in front of thousands of people, singing with orchestras. And I don't say that to brag. I say that because I worked really hard to do that. And I was hearing from professionals in the business that there was a voice there and there was talent and there was potential. And I knew that if I rolled up my sleeves and worked really hard, that I could give it a go. And that's what I did. She gave it a good shot, but Caroline's story is endemic across the performing arts. Some of it was glorious. I had what I call the feasts, and then I also had the famines.

4:05And the famine was tough, because all along, you're still perfecting your craft. You're honing your art. And I will also add the necessity, you're paying for it. You're paying for voice lessons, for accommodation, you're working with a pianist, with an accompanist. It is not an inexpensive journey. And as an American, I was living abroad, paying rent in a German apartment, for example, paying taxes in a foreign country. So you've got to really go all in and you've got to develop a thick skin. It was the relentless cycle of feast and famine that took its toll. The way it works in the performing arts, very rarely does someone have a full year of work.

4:50We audition for a gig. That's the term that we use. We audition for this opportunity. Maybe it's a role in an opera in Lucerne, Switzerland. And you have that opportunity for six weeks. You rehearse and then you perform. And then you're looking for your next gig. Now, the folks, just like the celebrities all over the world that become famous and really become top of class, they might have more and more gigs where they can sustain it throughout a year. My situation was different. So you might have six months of wonderful work and steady income coming in. And then you may have a dry spell for three months or even six months.

5:31You're constantly auditioning and constantly looking for new work. And I shared that you have to develop a thick skin. Working hard and being able to deal with feedback and failure, quite honestly, is part of the game. You know that going in, you've got your eyes wide open. So you've got to be ready and resilient to recover. The pattern Caroline developed was that after a rejection, she would give herself a 24-hour pout period to mourn the opportunity. Then she'd dust herself off and go again, having considered what she could learn from the most recent failure. But after one too many rejections and on the back of a four-month spell in another country trying to find work, she had that breakdown in front of her husband, questioning if she could go on.

6:14Well, it gave me an opportunity to say, is this the path that I want to be on? Maybe I need to step back and look at the red lights, which tell us to stop in traffic. It wasn't smooth sailing, and it wasn't about not working hard or having a tremendous work ethic or trying. but the light bulb went off for me to say, maybe this isn't the right path. And that was a very important realization to understand I'm not a bad person. I'm not a failure in that term. I may have failed to make this a long-term sustainable career, but the gifts are still extraordinary. Caroline didn't have a clue who would hire her or for what role.

6:57So she started speaking to a career coach. That sparked her interest in coaching, which of course became her career. Along the way, she learned some powerful things about failure, including an insight, a line reeling, which I've really taken to heart. There's a phrase that we use quite a bit here called fail forward, fast and often. And I think the speed is important. Now, I would say there were times where I had to pivot and it might have been, okay, I'm not having success auditioning in Germany. So let's try another country or let's come back home and think about how I can adjust. So those adjustments are natural, but there's also a time where you hit the wall and you realize, is this what I really want?

7:43Now I'm going to share a phrase that I have coined, and this is very American, the suckiness, right? The crap situations are real, but the suffering is optional. And I really had to step back and say, how much do I want to suffer through this, through the debilitation, through the very scarce financial reality, through the exhaustion? And that's a personal question that only you can answer for everybody listening. But I would also encourage you to have some trusted people in your network who can give you some objective feedback, not subjective, everybody has an opinion, but objective feedback that you can look at the data, if you will, and maybe it's your finances or maybe it's your length of time and your resources.

8:33and I would ask yourself every day, is it worth it? Is this the right path? Or am I on a road that has red lights? Because everybody deserves to have a path with green lights. You just have to find the right road. The suffering is optional. Love that line. That was Caroline Dowd-Higgins, who says and shows that you should always give yourself permission to change. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Serta. Thanks to Caroline and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you next time.