You don’t have to stay in a JOB you HATE from a former BBC TV presenter

You can't think your way into a career change. People often are scared because they can only think in terms of what they know. Their job doesn't really excite them anymore. Career change is a series of tiny, tiny micro decisions. You need to start with some self reflection. But you had a pretty short and brutal life. A little bit of imposter syndrome. We all have that. They're in a muddle and they're overwhelmed. They're not really happy. All the little voices are saying, you can't do this, you're too old. Or is this all there is? This era is over forever. It's dead to me. Never been asked that before. And maybe this is what people need to hear.

Today's special guest was a BBC TV presenter for many, many years. Then she realized that something was up. She needed to make a change and she made a huge career change. And she now is a specialist in helping people like you, perhaps, who aren't fully satisfied in their career or are wondering what's next and don't want to look back at retirement with regret. And she talks about the courage it took, the fear she had to push through, even though she did love so many parts of what she did at the BBC. Something just needed to change. So we're going to talk about the five steps to making that change and landing the dream job. Maybe it's within your current organization, maybe it's not, but please sit back and enjoy today's conversation with Rachel Schofield. Rachel, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, James.

Oh, I'm so delighted. I was listening to you on our dear friend Mo Gaudat's podcast, Slow Mo.

I was like, we need to have.

Rachel on the show. And the reason being, I get so many people contacting me going, look, I want to lead my life on purpose, but actually I'm miserable in my job or I'm bored or I've done the thing for 20 years and I don't know where to start. And when I seen your work and I heard your message, Rachel is the exact person I need on the show to help guide those people who are going to have a big career change. So why do people come to you who want to change careers? How are they feeling? What are they showing up with?

Oh, great question. They're in a muddle and they're overwhelmed. I think what people often know is what they don't want. So they know, like you say, that they're not really happy and it's probably been a feeling that they've been wrestling with for six months, a year, two years. They know that their job doesn't really excite them anymore. They know that they want something different. But the problem is, what's at the end of that thought is, well, yeah, but if I don't do this, this world that I'm so familiar with, that everybody knows me as, you know, what else is there? And I think that's the piece, as well as the confidence to do it, that people really need help with. They know what they don't want, but what's at the end of that journey is very muddy and confused.

Yeah. And I've been there personally myself, like, I'm sure most listeners as well will have been recently. I was sitting down with a former All Black player, and he was still in the All Blacks at this point, playing rugby. And we were chatting about life after rugby, what it was going to look like. And this guy has all the resources you can imagine, all the support, all the mentoring. And he says, james, but I am rugby. Like, my life is rugby. That's my identity. And he was so fearful about what to do after. So everything he was looking at was just in the rugby field. Do you think that's a normal thing? For most people, they're worried to step outside an industry. They see their industry as their identity.

Yeah, hugely. It's a fantastic book that I recommend to people by Professor Aminya Ibarra, which is called Working Identity for people who are thinking about career change. And it really digs into the fact that we find it hard because our work is so wrapped up with who we are. And so not only does it represent a lot about our personality, perhaps our status, our standing, our friendship groups, our financial stability, it's tied into so many bits of our life, but also it's often all we know. You know, there are great, hilarious statistics about even our own partners and people in our family. The level of knowledge that you have about what your partner, your spouse, your brother, your cousin actually does is really low. So even people kind of in their own network, they say, yeah, I'm a. You know, I'm a forensic accountant or something. And you think go, yeah, my cousin's a forensic a thing. Thing with the. I don't really know what he does, you know, and that happens so much even with people's partners. They can sort of give the job title. And then someone says, what is that? And they're like, I don't. I think she does something with, like, projects that she sort of managed. So, you know, the fact that we know what we know, we're so familiar, but we don't know what else is out there, particularly now. I mean, jobs are changing constantly, aren't they? And the jobs that we knew as kids are really evolving into things that we don't even know what they're going to look like. So, yes, people often are scared because they can only think in terms of what they know. And stepping out of that requires imagination, it requires creativity, it requires curiosity, and it requires courage as well, and some help from other people, because you don't know what you don't know 100%.

Such great advice. And it's interesting. I look at what I do now compared to what I did 10 years ago, and when I'm sharing this on stage in a keynote, people are like, what? Wait, stop.

What?

You're doing this. But you did, like, how did that happen? Where was the bridge? Where was the big epiphany moment? And it was so interesting because I had a very specific job, very, very, very niche. And I moved to New Zealand for that job. And for me, that's all I could see myself as was James the drummer, James the drumming instructor, James the percussion, retail store owner. It's all I could ever see, and therefore I could never get out of that. And there was a really powerful process that helped me understand that actually the things that we do in our role can be repackaged and we can learn from those and we can apply them in different ways. So from your experience, have you been able to help people with a similar kind of a framework or a similar kind of journey to go, hey, I know you've done this thing and this is who you think you are, but actually there are so many traits and lessons and skills that you could take from that and apply to 50 other industries.

Yeah. And I think the first part of the process is not looking for a job or a job title and thinking, what else could I do? And what's it called? Because who knows? And you could be anything out of a thousand, ten thousand things. So it's helping people kind of strip themselves back and start looking for those, I often call them kind of golden threads that run through their life that aren't actually about job titles, but are about things like what you're interested in, what you're good at, what you care about, what you're going to be feeling passionate about, what excites you, what you value. Because it's those kind of themes that you start to see that will guide you to the next move. So, for example, for me, I spent 20 years as a journalist at the BBC, so I was a television news presenter and reporter, and I've ended up working as a coach. Now, a bit like you were saying, it's like, you know, how do you get from that to that? Those don't seem connected, which in itself is challenging and puts people off because they think, I will never be able to explain to people why I used to be that and now I'm this. But what I can see now, and I'm sure you can do the same with your journey, is I can see themes and key kind of words and skills that link the two things. So there's a lot for me around communication. So, as a journalist, you need to be able to communicate, you need to be able to storytell, you need to be able to listen and hear people's stories. And that shows up hugely in coaching, where you're listening to somebody, you're trying to analyze their story, you're trying to pull out the different parts. That's journalism in another guise. I love the idea of presenting, so I like the idea of performing in some way. So that took me into journalism and particularly television, but also a lot of my work is around delivering workshops and standing in front of people and explaining stuff. And again, so that's no coincidence that I can do that as a coach in the same way I used to do as a television presenter. So all of these kind of things, the kind of curiosity that made me a journalist also makes me a coach. My communication skills work in both avenues. So what I do with people is dive in with them, to all of these kind of particular pillars that make up who we are. So, as I say, strengths, values, interests, and of course, the practical stuff about how they want to work, how much they need to earn, what kind of environment they want to work in and things like that. So it becomes a kind of combination. So it's getting really interested in who you are and what excites you. Once you've got a kind of blueprint of that, you can start to generate some ideas around that and go exploring.

I love it. And I want to step in, in a moment to looking at your five steps, because you've got an incredible book that for the person who's thinking about, hey, which way do I go? They've got to grab a copy of it. And that's the career guide Change, and there's five key steps to finding your dream job. So I'm going to put a link actually in the show notes in the description for the listener or viewer to get that. But I'd love to jump into that in just a moment. So for those that are sitting in self doubt, for those that are confused, wondering can I ever do this? I feel that there's a psychological and a physical consequence to sitting in that for too long. And that can be autoimmune disease, that can be high stress levels, that can obviously mean overeating or over drinking, smoking. There's actually a real deep consequence to not making a decision around where you want to take a career. So for you, how do you help people get out of that fixed state? You know, step number one is around understanding awareness. But how do you get people out of their stuck stuckedness?

I think the thing I say to people is you can't think your way into a career change. So although in a way that flies in the face of what I've just said, yes, you need to start with some self reflection. You need to be thinking about who I am and what do I care about. But that only takes you so far. And a lot of people get stuck because they wait there. They think if I just read one more book, if I just listen to another pod, if I just do a little bit more writing and vision boarding, it will come to me like in a vision that's not going to happen. You have to be ready to go exploring. I think you have to, as a potential career changer, get over the fixation of thinking this is a one time decision. This is a like tomorrow I need to decide that I'm leaving my job and I need to know what I'm doing. Actually way before any of that, you need to think. I need to just explore some of the little sparks that won't go away. The little germs of ideas that I don't know what quite they mean. You know, I just know that I love travel. I don't know if that means I need to be a travel agent or I want to write about travel or I need to help people at airports. You know, it could mean anything. But before you try and think, I just need to sit and work this out and then I'll apply for that job. No, no, no, you need to just think, okay, in the next two weeks I'm going to try and talk to as many people as I know or who I can find who work in any way to do with travel. I'm going to go along to that conference in my local city for travel agents. Not because I necessarily think I must be A travel agent, but that will expose me to this other world. This will introduce me to people who I can ask all my weird and embarrassing curious questions of. So there are lots of ways, and I work with people on this and how to explore and to get over the fixation that you're on the precipice of one decision. Actually, career change is a series of tiny, tiny micro decisions to just say, I'm going to pick up the phone to that old colleague of mine who left being a lawyer and has gone to work as a graphic designer. Just have a chat with them. Not because I think I necessarily want to be a graphic designer. Let me just go hear their story. And it's all of those small things that just shift you a little bit further along your pathway.

Why do you think career is so important to us as a human species? Why do you feel that we put so much emphasis on how we feel about our careers?

I guess I'm no historian, but I think that's shifted, hasn't it? I think we used to live much shorter lives and a career was something that put food on the table and gave you a wage. And of course, most of us would have been working in fairly mundane, boring ways in the fields, in the factories, just doing kind of an honest day's work for probably not a very honest day's pay, to be honest. Let's face it, a lot of people were exploited, but you had a pretty short and brutal life. And it was a kind of means to an end. The joy now of modern life, of course, is that we live longer, we're fitter, we can work. We have to work until we're older. So it's become much more rapture up with the whole of our life journey. It's not just, if I can just get through this for 30 years, I can retire and do the stuff I really want. We now have invested so much more in our careers around it, needing to be much more aligned with who we are if we're going to do it for that long, and if we have that much level of choice as well about what we do, then we want to be much more intentional about it. We also want to feel that it's not just transactions, not just I go and they pay me. I think people are looking for more purpose and meaning in their work, and that doesn't have to be huge. I don't mean we all have to set out to save the world, but we also want to feel like it has meaning and that perhaps where we work is a good place I think, you know, a lot of us now feel much more uneasy because we know so much more about big companies and things like that, that we don't want to work somewhere that we feel doesn't treat people well or has a product that's rubbish or is, you know, pulling the wool over people's eyes. We want, if we're going to invest our time and our energy into something, we want it to feel like it's something that perhaps is doing good, whether that's on a small scale or a big scale. So there's, there's so much more at play, so much more that we're investing in our work. Right. Rightly or wrongly, you could argue that the idea that you just went and, you know, plowed a field all day and came home might have been simpler for all of us. But. But now we do have choice and we do look for meaning in a way that perhaps we never did before.

Yeah. And I think we are so fortunate at this time. And with AI doing what it's doing and robotics and nanotechnology, I do believe we will have more freedom of choice to decide where do we spend our time, how do we do that?

I'll also interrupt you, James, but I think what will be fascinating about that is we all also say, oh, won't it be brilliant if AI comes in and we can just work two days a week? And I think there is something magical in that, but it will also throw us hugely because a lot of us, because we take so much perhaps status and meaning and identity from our work, that will require some good thinking about how do we then think about kind of, we pompously call it kind of self actualization. But how do we meet all of those kind of deeper needs about expressing ourselves and feeling like we're contributing and feeling like we add value and we, we bring something to the world. If we strip away work, and I think there'll be a really interesting period of time where we all start to analyze, well, what else do I want to do? Is that around volunteering and helping people? Is that about upping my leisure time? And if so, would the novelty of kind of that wear off after six months? If I feel like I'm just fannying around all day, I don't know, I have some really interesting topics there. You know, none of us want to be working under the Kosh for 50 years, but equally, it does give a great amount of structure and meaning to us.

It really does. And you look at the scientific research around people who have a sense of purpose and meaning they live longer, they have lower stress levels, they sleep better, they have less anxiety. And then you look at people who do retire at 65, but they were so passionate about their career, they retire, some of them lose a sense of meaning and their death is brought forward quite quickly. And I've got several friends who have died in around that 65 to 68 years of age after retiring. And I think there's a direct link between this amazing purpose filled life and then all of this free time with not too much to focus on. So I'd like to just for a second acknowledge the person that's listening right now that goes, hey, I've been at the place that I'm at for 15 or 20 years and I think the grass is greener over there. Do you have any advice for them around? Hey, the grass is greener wherever you water it. So before you take the big career change, is there a way for them to go, could I look at what I do differently here or could I have move within the organization, move side to side? Is there any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think that's a brilliant one. And I always want to say to people, once we've kind of worked out what's wrong, that's going to guide you because people want to think and assume that a career change, a career shift is the real kind of ones that you see in the paper. Yeah, I was an accountant, now I'm a zookeeper. You know, if I ever do anything for, for a magazine interview, tell us about the most exciting career change you've ever had. And they assume that most people, you know, become ballet dancers, having been teachers, you know, and actually they don't, they really don't. And I hope that's reassuring to people. Yes, some people make that huge leap, but actually sometimes it's a series of much smaller tweaks that get you to where you want to be. So I have an exercise I do with people. It must be the journalist in me that I call the what, where, who and why exercise. Might even be another one in there. But it's all those kind of question words because when you look back, you can do it on a piece of paper and you sit and you think, let me look at all the jobs I've done so far, particularly the job I'm in, and figure out how I feel about the different elements. Because sometimes people realize it's not what I'm doing that I don't like. You know, I love project managing. The problem is not the what, it's the where it's the fact that this company that I work for has been taken over, the whole culture has changed or the whole mission has changed and it just feels off to me now, or how I'm working, that's one of the other ones that's the problem. It's not that I don't like what I'm doing or where I'm doing it. It's the fact that I'm suddenly having to remote work where I wanted to be in the office. I miss people, I don't see my team. So sometimes when you can actually break down your work, you can see that the problem is not what you thought it was. You know, often it's because you've had a change of boss, say, and you're like, I had this great relationship with my boss and now I have this nightmare person who's just passive aggressive and making my life a misery. And so you end up thinking, I hate my job. You don't hate your job. You just don't get on with your boss. So sometimes that can lead you just to think, I need to make a sideways move. I need to look just for a shift, doing what I'm doing, but in a different environment. And equally, as you say, what about even if you're not desperately unhappy, but you're someone's a bit stale where you are. And so you start thinking, maybe I should move. I've got a client like this actually at the moment who came to me because she's probably got another 15 years of work left and she works in the charity sector and she doesn't dislike her work, but she's just thinking, do I want to be in this role for another 15 years? And if not, maybe now is the moment to move.

And so what we've been trying to look at is, well, you know, what are the opportunities where you are? Because actually there may be things you can do, projects you can volunteer for other departments where you just would be able to mix it up a bit and suddenly reinvigorate what you love about the place or give. Give yourself a new challenge or start to work on something that involves a little bit of learning or upskilling that will stimulate that part of the brain that's got a yawn. So absolutely, I think building good networks within your organization, asking to kind of go and shadow volunteering for a different project, saying, can I do some additional training? Or just making time for those conversations, it's harder. Now, I know that we're not all in the office, but being nosy, like in the queue for coffee, just saying, oh, hi, where do you work? In the building. What are you doing? You know, and suddenly you think, I didn't even know that was a thing in my own organization. So I think we just need to be nosy and curious and not overlook, as you say, the opportunities that could be on our doorstep 100%.

And that in and of itself staying at your organization but having a lateral transfer, that's still a career change. And it's not like you have to change everything for it to be classified as that. Do you ever see an age and stage like any patterns come up or like. Yeah, people in their 20s tend to start to get a bit uncomfortable with where the careers are. People in their late 40s, early 50s. Are there certain points in our lives where you see patterns show up?

Yeah, I think, I think definitely. And it's not the same for everybody but I think there are natural kind of seasons in our life where our careers come into sharper focus. So definitely, I think a lot of people in their kind of mid to late 20s come up for air. They've often kind of had their university experience, whatever school training they've had and often they feel they kind of fell into their first role. They were just like, I'm graduating, I need something, you know, I want to, I need to rent a flat and I need an income and all my friends have got internships and ah, so they maybe go for something that's good enough. And of course, because what do you know when you're 21 you've got a certain amount of information to go and you take the best decision you can. But then often people in their, in their late 20s, early 30s, as things settle and they, they've learned as much as they can about a place, suddenly go, I don't necessarily know that I want to work in HR anymore or I thought PR was really sexy, but actually it just feels a bit, you know, icky to me or whatever it is. So I think that's a natural point where people rethink, I think for people who are parents, particularly women, but I think increasingly men too, as we kind of see that, that shift towards gender equity. I think there's a moment where perhaps you become a parent or different stages in your kids lives that causes you to reassess what you want. Perhaps you're somebody who, you know, you're a dad and you suddenly think, I never see my kids or I, you know, you're having a conversation with your partner and, and they say, you know, this is what I need, I, I want to get back from work after maternity leave or whatever it is and you suddenly think, hang on, I need to pull my weight in a different way. Or we need to look differently about how our income is working. So definitely I think if you become a parent that makes a difference. If you become, then later in life, if you become someone who's got to look after elderly parents. There are so many stages and I think big birthdays as well. I often get people who come to me and say I'm turning 30 or I'm hitting 40 or you know, I'm about to be 50 and I'm realizing it's now or never or I feel like something's shifting and it's time for me to reevaluate who I am. And I think it's a really great thing. I mean, so many people don't get the chance to pause and think, who am I now? Am I the same person I was when I was 19? Or you know, if you're 50, am I the same person I was when I was 37? But often life is hectic and busy and we don't get that chance. And often again, even if you're supposed to have appraisals at work or, you know, annual check ins and annual reviews, those can be done so badly that nobody really makes space to listen to you and what you want and who you now are or you think you can't share it because you think I can't tell them that. I'm a bit worried about the fact that my kids are teenagers and one of them has an eating disorder and I feel I need to be around, you know, but I hope that some of that is shifting and we can recognize the human in the career resource as well. And because the more companies actually listen to what their people want as well and look for opportunities to maybe move them within the company as well to freshen things up, that's going to help your retention massively rather than risking losing.

People like in terms of finance for recruitment, it's going to be a huge incentive for companies to develop the people within, but also the culture as well. You look at what it's going to do with the culture, it's going to be significant. I wanted to ask you a more personal question about your career, so if you don't mind sharing. So how did you feel about your first year in journalism? And then how did you feel in your last year of journalism?

Interesting question. I've never been asked that before.

I think in my first year of Journalism. I felt.

Like there was a lot of potential, there was a lot to learn, but in a good way. I mean, of course, sometimes that's overwhelming. Whenever you start a new job, you think, I don't really know what I'm doing. Will people notice? But I think there was a sense of, yeah, there's so much to explore here and there's, there's a pathway I can go on. I, I started off as a reporter on local radio and I was thinking, oh, if I work hard, if I do well, I can work my way up and hopefully get to be a television presenter on the national news. So I think I was probably a little bit scared, a little bit of imposter syndrome. We all have that, but also a real sense of that it could be something expansive and exciting and some ideas about where I wanted to take that. What did I feel in my last year? Well, I don't want to sound sort of depressive about it because I still, a bit like I talked about one of my clients, I didn't hate it, I hadn't totally fallen out of love with it. But I think. And maybe this is what people need to hear. And you alluded to it right at the beginning. It's like you just kind of had maybe. Is it that you've grown out of it? I don't know, you've just grown a bit weary of it. It's too familiar. I think that's what it is, is that. And that can sound weird. People often look at me like I'm a bit weird because obviously presenting the news on telly sounds like, oh, why wouldn't you want to do that? So that sounds amazing. But like any job, if you do it for a long time, it becomes quite repetitive. And yes, of course you're working in news. There are breaking news stories and there are exciting days where big things happen. But a lot of the time you're also just interviewing politicians who you know aren't really going to answer your question. And you can phrase the most brilliant killer question and they'll still just answer however they want and you become a bit jaded, I think. So. I think by the time I left, I just felt like, this has been fun, I've really enjoyed it. I really love the BBC. So that was hard to feel like, am I really going to do this? Am I going to. Like your all black interviewee was saying, you know, am I really going to say, this isn't me anymore, I'm starting from scratch. But again, it was that sense. And this is perhaps the word that I want people to take from this, that there's still potential, there's some other stuff that we could build into something, and it's going to be scary and it's going to be wobbly, and I don't quite know what I'm doing, but I want to. I want to honor that, and I want to go looking at it.

That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And I personally can relate to that in terms of how I felt my first few years doing what I was doing, and then the last few years where it was a little bit tarnished, a little bit just uninspiring. I was borderline bored. I loved the people, I loved the organization, but I didn't love how I felt about things. So I think that next step, there's a lot of fear that can stop people. Like, the fear will stop them in their tracks. How did you harness the courage to actually walk away from the BBC?

I think it took me quite a long time, but I also knew, and I always want to say this to people, that you might disagree with this, actually, because I was listening to one of your other podcasts and you had some quite tough views on decisions. And I don't know if I agree with them, but to me.

I allowed myself to think I don't have to, like, shut this door in such a firm way that it's got six bolts and three padlocks on it. You know, I was able to think I could. This door will still be open, particularly if you, you know, maintain your. Your network and you kind of keep in touch with people by moving. I'm not saying this era is over forever. It's dead to me. So I think that helped me be brave to know that I could. I could always come back to it if I needed to. I also took a period of transition. I think that's the other thing. And I know this isn't possible for everybody, but a lot of career changes don't happen on a. On a Friday, you're doing one job, and on a Monday, you're doing something totally different. It's a lot gentler than that. And that transition period does help with the kind of mental shift and the courage, because often there is a period, and there was for me, where I was training as a coach, but I was still working at the BBC. I was freelance by then, so I could do a bit of presenting, I could do my training, I could be practicing my coaching, clocking up all my practice hours that you have to get. So that helped as well. Seeing that this was a gentle process, that I was still exploring it, I hadn't gone all in.

And what else did I need that made it manageable or how did I get the courage? I think gradually one of the hardest things when you're thinking of shifting or you are making the shift is talking about it to other people. So one of the things I say in my book is, is get the right people around you. Because sometimes your the loveliest people in your life and that might even be your partner or your parent or your brother. You know, can, can really put you off with the best will in the world. They're not meaning to be unkind, but they only see you as one thing. You know, you're James the drummer and they're like, what do you mean you want to sort of become an executive coach? And you know, and they look at you like that sounds really hard. And why would you give up this great thing you've got? So I think knowing who are your real champions and who will go with you on that journey in a supportive way, not in a, not because they're blinkered and going, yeah, go you, you can do whatever you want. You know that they're realistic, but they're good at helping you kind of on the journey unpick the challenging bits, get stuck into the bit that's confusing you or the puzzle and help you talk it through. So I think getting good people around you, sharing only what you want. So, because people like, oh my gosh, I'm seeing my auntie for Christmas and she's going to ask me what I'm doing and I don't really want to say that. I'm thinking of, you know, leaving my big job in the city and training as a, you know, psychotherapist. So don't, don't, don't say that. You know, choose who you share it with and only when you're ready and practice with friendly faces. Telling that story and it comes back to the threads is when you know why you're doing it and why it makes sense to you. You can share that with more confidence. And it comes with practice. You know, you have a few where you think, oh my gosh, that sounded really weird and rubbish and people will wonder what I'm doing. But suddenly you've said it to a few people and you're like, actually, this is a story I can tell with confidence. And that makes sense to me.

I love it. Really, really good advice and I'd like to actually jump into the book for a second. So in the career change guide. There's five steps. What are those five steps that people need to take or should take?

Yeah. So let me go through them fast because otherwise, you know, I don't want to exhaust people. But it's all in the book. The first step actually is preparing. And it comes exactly down to what I say said about things like getting the right people around you, making that time and commitment to a career change. Because it's not something you do in a weekend, it's something that you're going to need to commit to. So I always say you need courage, you need commitment, and you need curiosity. And you can prepare all of those things. You can make the time and the energy and the commitment. You can do the work on the limiting beliefs that are holding you back and stopping you. Be courageous. All the little voices that saying, you can't do this, you're too old, or how will you do this? You don't have the skill set or you won't be able to do this and also pay your mortgage. You have to engage with those thoughts, not just back them away, but actually look at them and engage with them. And yeah, you definitely need to prepare yourself to be curious. I think a career change, the biggest thing that will help you is curiosity. So I do some. There's a chapter on that, on preparing. Step two is that thought piece. It's working out, reflecting on who you are and building yourself a career profile, a kind of blueprint. So I have exercises in the book that take people through those pillars. What are your strengths? So what are you good at? And what do you like doing? What's important to you? Your values, you know what, what motivates you at work? You there for you, there for the money. You're there for the fun. You're there for the. For the purpose. What's important, how you want to work. So that piece around the practicalities and the interests and what excites you and whether that has anything for you from ideas. So there's a piece about that. Then step three, really important is that piece about, okay, what ideas have I got? And letting yourself be really expansive and playful in that space and thinking, actually, I don't have to like get the idea with the exact job title. I just need to kind of capture any little sticky thoughts, any little sparkles that keep calling to me and won't go away and just capture them. I don't know, I maybe don't know what I want to do with this idea that I love cooking. It maybe doesn't hold the answer. But I'm going to capture that. And I get people to dream up three future me's because trying to come down to one straight away is hard. So let yourself play with the idea that there are quite a few of you, these future versions of you out there, all of which could probably be quite happy. So don't sweat the small stuff too quickly. Whether, oh, do I want to, you know, do I want to go into computer programming or do I want to be a doctor? I've got to decide before I do anything. No, keep them all on the table. And that then takes you into step four. You've kind of got a number of future versions of yourself. Let's go explore them, let's take some action because again, you don't know what you don't know. So do you want to be a doctor? Well, if you've never spent any time with patients and sick people, if you've never visited a hospital, if you've never looked at what the training really looks like, how are you going to know? Could you run your own business as a cheesemaker? I've had a client who wanted to do that. Well, before you start kind of designing the whole website site, buying 60 gallons of milk, you know, whatever it is, why don't you just go along to your local market and chat to some of the people who are local producers and who sell stuff, all that kind of stuff. And then the last bit, step five is about keeping going. It's building on the action taking, it's getting into the nitty gritty of CVs, LinkedIn profile, building a new network, trying to find the work you want, applying for jobs if that's what you want to do, or figuring out the business proposal that you want to make and the keeping going. And in that section, it's about again, mindset, you kind of, you're bookending it with both, because all the time you've got the practical thing, but you've also got all the stuff in your head. It's a roller coaster. And there'll be days when you're so up for it, you're like, yes, I'm going to be a whole new person. And other days you're like, oh, I don't think I've got this. Let me just go back to my office. So, yeah, there's some interesting stuff at the end, which is mindset. And also lots of lovely case studies of people who've done it in different ways to different extents, just to kind of inspire people, give them ideas and see that it is possible.

It's that Roger Bannister effect where people thought, you know, we couldn't run that fast. Nobody can do the mile at that, at that pace. And then he did it and all of a sudden people started to do it and we've continued to increase speeds. It's no different with career changes. When you can see someone that's kind of similar to you, that's stuck, that could actually do it with a process. Brilliant. And I think that having a process is important because when you don't have a process and you're out on your own trying to figure it out, it's actually scary, it's daunting, it's frustrating. And often you can doubt yourself and not make the change. For me, it took two or three years to actually make the change. And that's a significant time. And that's about 10% of my life at the time. So I was around 29, 30. See, that's 10% of my life where I've spent just trying to figure out where to go to have a process like yours would have short circuited, shortcut that massively. The one thing I wanted to ask you was you talked about the three versions. I think that's really incredible because I had this idea that I got to get down to this one thing, my niche, my avatar. Having three, wow, that's liberating. What were your other one or two things that you were thinking about exploring other than coaching?

Yeah, so I'm quite a good example of this process. So I had, I had two, I probably had lots of others. So it doesn't have to be. Some people have three, you might have four, you might have five, it's fine. But I say three because it's kind of manageable. I think mine were. One was kind of quite closely related to coaching. So it was media training. A lot of ex journalists go and become media trainers. They go and work in big companies and teach people how to, you know, appear well when they're interviewed. Again, though, I took that into action. So I went and spoke to an ex colleague who was doing that kind of work. I looked into, you know, what it involved. I read up, I investigated and realized that didn't quite align because what I felt uncomfortable about with a lot of media training and not to tar everyone with the same brush, but I kind of didn't. You have to be careful where you do it because I thought I don't really want to help necessarily. Big companies weedle out of difficult situations. That's what a lot of Media training is. It's sort of crisis management. I thought, that's not my bag. So. So I moved away from that idea once I'd started to look into it. The other thing, which was totally, again, sometimes these things have no bearing whatsoever. I had this lovely idea because I'm quite a creative person that I wanted to be a print maker. So one of the things I did, again, brilliant. Before you kind of throw everything in and buy a studio and you know, I just signed up my local further education college. I signed up to a weekly course on, on printmaking, so lino cutting and I did that and I really enjoyed it and thought, oh, maybe I could do something with this. I mean, like I was going to make any money. I'm not sure I had the time. But what the clincher for me, and this again is why experimenting is important, is I went along. There's a big museum here in London called the Victoria and Albert Museum. Beautiful place, all to do with sort of artifacts and art and also quite a lot to do with craft. And they were running a day, I think it was called something like how to. To monetize your card making business. It was all. It was aimed at creatives. I thought, that's it, I'm going to that. It was a day long, great way to just. I went to this James and I realized looking around the room, I was surrounded by a load of people who were serious about this stuff, who were already doing a lot of going to markets and selling, who built their websites and who I could tell had a level of commitment that I suddenly thought, this is not me. I thought, Rachel, if you wanted to do this, you would have already done a lot of this stuff. And you haven't. You've just been going along to your class, having a nice little cut the liner, make a pretty thing. And I thought, your heart is not fully in this and if you want to do it, it needs to be. And not just your heart, but your energy and your time. So again, until you try things, it's one thing to think I want to run a cafe. It's another to go and work, you know, shifts every Saturday and see if you actually like it. Because we all have an idea of, oh, wouldn't it be lovely to just sit among the carrot cake all day and chat with my lovely neighborhood customers who come in and then. And you go and do it. You're like, I hated it. If I have to make one coffee, I might kill someone. You know, so you, you just got to try. And I did that and that's why I realized that the coaching was much more up my street, because I took it gradually, talked to lots of coaches, did a course that was not a huge, you know, it wasn't a three year Masters, it was a, it was a kind of one year part time thing that again wasn't horrendously expensive. So it's always kind of checking things out in a way that is low risk and low cost to give you real data rather than just the kind of imaginings of your mind.

Such good feedback. And I did the same thing. I was 15 and at school we were told, you know, you need to decide what you might want to do when you're older. So I decided I want to be a lawyer. And they said, look, we're going to hook you up with a local lawyer for a week and you're going to spend time kind of working with them and following them. So two days into that week I said to my parents, I hate this, I do not want to be a lawyer. This is miserable for me. It's like this guy seems to love it. This is like my worst nightmare. It's dry, it's boring, I'm not up for this. And it was so good that I got to do it because had I not done that, chances are I would have went to university for three or four years and then went and sat at the bar and then became a young lawyer. And two or three years in would have been asking myself, why did I do this? So I think the opportunity to dip our toes in is so important.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, as you say, we call it work experience, don't we? In school I always say to people, you know, okay, you might be 39, go take yourself and find some work experience. You know, we've all got brilliant kind of friend. Because people go, I don't know anybody, I don't, you know, I don't know anybody who works in market research. I'm like, come on, you might not know someone, but you know, your cousin probably does, your old flatmate does, your mum does, your neighbors do, you know, you just have to put it out there to the world and you'll find that, you know, it's that sort of six degree, seven degrees of separation, whatever it is, people can often help you. And that's the other thing about a career, a career shift is, you know, ask other people to help in small ways. Obviously not asking straight away like give me a job, but just saying, do you know anybody who is one of the best questions you can put in your repertoire as a career changer?

Absolutely. I just have a couple of last questions I wanted to ask you. So there might be small inner whisperings that people are struggling to hear that are trying to tell them how you should be considering a career change. So I have a dear friend, and recently she was saying, look, I'm spending a lot of time after work talking to my partner and telling them how much I'm unhappy and I'm not happy with the situation or the environment or the job. To me, that's an inner whispering, like how you keep talking to your partner, inventing, inventing over a period of months. There's a suggestion there that perhaps you should consider a career change. Are there any other indicators that people should look out for that would say to them, I should buy the book and start considering a career change?

Yeah, I think, I mean, an obvious one is the kind of the Sunday shivers, as we call them. You know, that. That thing. And of course, a lot of people have this. And there's different times of life where we're busy or work is stressful. Of course, it's normal not to love your job all the time, but I think if you regularly on a Sunday night are thinking, oh, yikes, you know, I've got. I'm starting work tomorrow, I've got to do that thing. And if that is a regular enough thing, that then that's a problem. The other time I find it hits people is anytime they have time to kind of stop and get off the hamster wheel. So I often think holidays are a time of reflection for people. It's when you're kind of on the sun lounger or hiking up the mountain or whatever you're doing, and that constant little voice keeps coming back and saying, is this. Is this all there is? Is this what I want? You know, I'm enjoying my holiday and I'm thinking, oh, I've got to go back. So I think it's anything like that, but that is coming back and back, and you can't immediately just link to the fact that you've got a massive project on at work or there's a big deadline, or you're stressed about whether you're going to get the promotion. Yeah, I think it's patterns. Patterns are a huge thing in coaching and in career change, too. It's like, what are you noticing about yourself, whether that's how you're feeling, whether that's about things that keep catching your interest, conversations you keep having. You know, what are you saying? What are they telling you? Anything like that, recurring thoughts. It's like, get interested in them, get curious, and try and figure out if there's something there for you that's powerful.

Thank you. And I really feel that the work that you do is so important because when we get to the end or towards the end of our lives and we look back, I do believe a lot of people look back with regret around how much time they spent at a job that they kind of liked or maybe didn't like. Bronnie Ware wrote an amazing book called the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She was a palette of care nurse. And I always spent time with people in their last days asking, what were your regrets? What would you do differently? And one of the ones that kept coming up was, I really regret making decisions in my life based upon what I thought other people thought I should do. Mom and dad thought I should go and study to do the thing. My partner thought I should stay in the career path because I'll get promoted to partner. That was one of the biggest regrets. And I feel that the work you do is literally, it's the linchpin that allows people to move in a different direction, to not have regrets. I want to thank you for the work that you do.

Oh, thank you, James. And you're definitely onto something there. I think one of the words you're trained to look out, you'll know this as a coach is should. And people say that I think I should do this, or, you know, I've always felt I should. And I think that, again, is a big warning. It's like, why do you feel you should? Well, who's that coming from? Because it's probably not you. It's probably, you know, some other external constraint which you're a bit scared to kind of break away from it. And it's hard. But, yeah, when the shoulds hit you, you know, again, there's information for you there, 100%.

Well, Rachel, one last question before we wrap up. I'd like you to please join me for a moment and fast forward many, many years into the future. You are highly aware that it is your last day here on Earth, and someone very young, maybe under the age of 10, comes into the room and says, rachel, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

The word that springs to me in that space is playful.

Which in a way, sounds contrasting to purpose. But purpose can feel like quite a weight when people talk about things. Find your purpose. Find your why. Follow your passion. You'd think as a career coach, I'd be big into that. And for some people, that is exactly the right thing. But I think actually to live your life on purpose, you have to. And here's that word again. Be curious, be playful, be experimental, because.

Things change, life evolves, that we've just talked about, how careers evolve. And I think making space to check in with what's important to me right now, what would be fun, what would be exhilarating, what would be interesting, what would be different, and being prepared to kind of do that and then a few years later, check in with that again. So that you're leading your life not as one big chunk of life, but as like a series of chapters and you get to write each one of them and they might look different and they might be a totally different genre, but. And some might be busy and hectic and ambitious, and others might be quiet and private and not striving. So I think it's to lead your life on purpose, you need to be curious and playful and constantly letting yourself evolve into who you are next for your next chapter.

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And is there anywhere for the person that's listening now going, I need to get going. I can't wait for the. The book to arrive from Amazon. Is there something they can do now where they can connect in with you and take a step towards uncovering what the change might be?

Oh, thank you. Yeah. People are more than welcome to come to my website, which is. Rachelscofield.co.uk or find me on LinkedIn Rachel Schofield. And there you will find. Here's a fun thing. This is playful. I have an exercise you can Download. It's called 7 Ways to Explore your passions. And you'll see that I say that cautiously, not because I'm thinking everybody has a passion, but it's a starting point to allow people to think in a quite fun way, in an unusual way. Seven different prompts to get you thinking. What are those little sparks, those themes that I need to get curious about that could hold the answer to my next chapter? So, yeah, get onto the website, download it, and I think it will give you some real insights into who you are and what you really want.

Amazing. You've heard it here first, folks. We'll put that all in the show notes so you can link straight through and get it. And Rachel, I just want to say a huge heartfelt thank you for making space today, but also for your continued work in this space.

Oh, it's been great fun talking to you. Thanks, James.

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