If you are staying in a job and want to explore an alternative career, START HERE.

A Step-by-Step Transition Is YOur Best Bet

Is there an activity you love doing after work? One activity you’ve kept investing more and more effort into over the years?

If you do, you are already building a career option.

Building options without knowing

I know a leader who built a successful career to become a sales director for leading fashion brands. He loved doing yoga to release stress. But then he got more into it and took a 200-hour yoga teacher course to advance his skills. 

At one point, he found he enjoy yoga more than his corporate job. He thought maybe he could teach yoga. After trying teaching for a period, he made a conscious move to step down to take a manager role so he could spend more time on yoga teaching practice. 

After 3–4 years of building it up and teaching part-time, he saved enough money for a longer runway, gained enough yoga teaching experience and quit the corporate job to go all in on building his yoga teaching career. 

He wasn’t making the same money, but he was living a successful life on his own terms with better alignment, greater happiness, and deeper meaning.

He’s not the only one.

I’ve also seen someone who has a corporate job and spent his weekends building a YouTube channel about photography skills. His DEDICATION and CONSISTENCY brought over 100,000 subscribers and that became a decent income contribution for his newborn’s expenses.

And another lady who is passionate about baking alongside her corporate role. She DEVELOPED and UPLEVELED her skills to a professional standard and eventually chose to switch to become a pastry chef.

These examples show that sometimes the option is more obvious than you think.

The option appears when you attend to your needs

You know the corporate job is not meeting your needs.

It could be you don't enjoy your job fully so you spend time on other activity you love.

Or, you don’t feel it’s financially secure due to the instability. With more personal responsibility, you realise you cannot rely only on your job as a single source of income. And you need another one as insurance.

Regardless, you have something else you enjoy doing, and you keep investing more and more time to upgrade your skills. You take this activity SERIOUSLY, like a profession. And indeed, you are becoming one, even if you haven’t noticed yet.

Expect the twists and turns

Like all new work projects, transition to new paths is rarely a smooth journey.

It’s normal to face adversity and challenges.

When the yoga teacher I mentioned just started as a full time yoga teacher, he faced a setback due to the pandemic. In the first few months, it had a real impact on his income and made it feel discouraging. 

Yet he didn’t give up and eventually secured more teaching opportunities in community centres. He grew his class size gradually and taught in overseas retreats in recent years.

It’s possible to create alternative career options as long as you are willing to commit to the journey intentionally.

If you persist with preparation, you’ll get there.

Rally more support Including your Company

Many people do not talk about the side business they are building, worrying how they might be judged by colleagues or if it will affect their jobs.

While it may be valid in some tough situations, I also see the positive example of being open with your manager to get support, especially if you have a good relationship with your manager and your company culture encourages that.

An ex-Googler turned full-time tech educator on YouTube with over 1.5 million subscribers recently shared about that in an interview.

Before he started talking his personal YouTube channel, he checked with the compliance team and manager. Because of his openness, he got more support to go all in without holding himself back with the worry of backfire.

YOUR intentional EXPLORATION starts here

If you choose to explore your alternative career options while staying in your current job, here are 3 questions you can reflect on and write your thoughts:

1. Outside of work, do you have any activity that you have been enjoying doing for a while? If you do, what level of that activity do you want to achieve in 3 years? If you don’t, what 3 activities could you consider trying now?

   
   

2. What level of commitment are you willing to invest in this activity every week? What are you willing to give up for this?

   
   

3. What could you start sharing with your manager about your passion project to get more support? Are there any opportunities to practice or share this skill while you are at work? Or could you create some?

The good news is if you are taking the actions to explore your career options while you are in a job, you are in a good position because you are ahead of your preparation.

All you need is to do it intentionally so you can build on solid ground.

And if there are people who can do it, you can do it too.

If you are in different situation

You can read the article where I wrote about the four career positions and see if you belong to any. Whichever position you are in, you can prepare for your better future with more awareness.

Hope this article inspires you. If it does, do share with others because

~ WE RISE BY LIFTING OTHERS ~