This whole blogging thing started because I’ve always wanted to write and a former colleague “About the Same” has been writing a blog about her experiences as she goes through her own personal career change. Like me she was in advertising. Like me, she gave up that career to pursue something she loved. In her case it was teaching. In my case, I left the security and comfort of my work in Human Resources at my current employer to pursue sales for the company. In some ways you could call this my “brass ring.” More than a few dozen people think I am a raving lunatic for making this kind of a transition at this stage of my career. I was “set” in my previous role. Well respected, I had a large staff and a meaningful budget, heck I even had a really great admin, who, even with all of her kinks and curiosities, I adored because she took care of me, did what I asked of her and really cared about making me shine. (Her biggest kink/curiosity…she liked working with me…TALK ABOUT WEIRD!!) I EVEN let her edit my grammar…talk about trust!
NOW, I am MR Junior guy on the totem pole again. Heck, at the moment, I am not even selling, I am a coordinator. If this sounds like a step back, well that’s simply because it is. In the words of my darling daughter who stopped by “cube” and said…”what happened to your office? You got downgraded!”
Or did I?
You see, I love selling. I love putting deals together and solving client problems. I love change; I look for things that are broken, or need to be broken; I finish breaking them; I help fix them. I arrived at my employer as a sales person. At the time I was selling advertising to HR. I spent 4 years changing things from inside the organization. I loved what I was doing. I REALLY Loved it. I could go back to doing it tomorrow and I would have a great time. There was only ONE tiny eensy little teeny weenie thing missing. I wasn’t directly creating profit for the company. So here I am out on the end of a long limb, swaying in the breeze, from time to time hanging on by a few fingers. Only time will tell if I am brilliant or a stark raving lunatic. That said, I won’t wander the planet going… “I wonder what would happen if I would’ve…”
For me, I needed to do this because I’ve raised my kids telling them that they can do anything they set their mind too. I’ve told them that they should wake up in the morning loving life and loving what they’re doing. I’ve told them that if they want to realize real success in life they should find something that they love doing and then they should go do it as well as they possibly can. This is something that I wanted to do for quite some time. Heck it was an idea that was largely nurtured by our SVP of HR.
So I’ve taken some steps back, I’ve been “downgraded” according to appearances, but the fact of the matter is that I haven’t been downgraded at all…not from a big picture perspective. I’ve opened up the door to a whole new world of opportunities that would not have been possible if I hadn’t been willing to climb out here on this little branch. In the not distant future, I fully expect to become part of our company’s sales team. I don’t know EXACTLY when that will be, but in the grand scheme of things, it will only be several blinks of an eye. I’ll be the new guy again, but I’ll be doing something that I love – something that I am pretty good at and I’ll be doing what I tell my kids to do. Pursue your dreams and goals and you can do anything you choose to do.
How about you, what’s your brass ring? What do you want to do? Hope to do? Can you get there from here? What are you willing to do to grasp it?
That's it for today...I look forward to your feedback!
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