“What am I going to do next?” I asked myself for the hundredth time.

I was leading an $8M project with a team of 20, I was up for a promotion and I was establishing myself as an upcoming leader in the company. Things were going well.

But I couldn't ignore the internal voice that kept telling me it was time to move on.

Perhaps you can relate?

Well, fast forward in time and I did end up moving on.

After I left consulting, I co-founded a startup, then founded two solopreneur ventures.

But let’s stop for a moment and zero in on the career pivot I made from consulting to co-founding a startup.

How did I KNOW that this was the right next step?

Believe me, there was a lot of soul searching, research and discussions before I made the decision to trade corporate job security for an exciting, yet risky role. It was a big move for me at the time and it was one I wanted to be sure of before saying yes.

Maybe you can relate? You’re in a job that gives you security, interesting work, smart people to collaborate with, but you know it’s time for a change. But change to what?

I'd like to share with you three things I did to help me figure out what was next in my career story.

I hope these steps help you as much as they helped me.

1️⃣ Widen your career options

When most people plan to make a career change, they narrow their search instead of widening it (i.e. they only focus on 1-2 roles).

Widening your search at the start helps to create a picture of all the career alternatives that are possible. Once you learn more about what’s out there, it’s so much easier to ideate and design your next career move.

How do you widen your search?

The fastest way to discover a new career path is to broaden your exposure to new opportunities.

Try:

• Reading the news with an eye for different roles
• Reviewing industry reports
• Talking to past colleagues at different companies
• Connecting with special interest groups on LinkedIn
• Meeting with friends who work outside of your industry / company

Ask questions, be curious and learn as much as you can.

But you have to do this step with a plan. Otherwise, it becomes way too chaotic and confusing.

So the trick is to widen your opportunities the right way. That’s where mind-mapping and time-boxing come in.

2️⃣ Make a career mind-map

Mind-mapping is a design thinking tool that is used to help generate connected ideas to a core theme. It’s a great way to develop a high-level view of what you’re interested in before diving into more time-consuming research.

Here’s how it works:

Grab a piece of paper, colored pens and some quiet space to think.

• On your paper, start by creating a central career theme that you’d like to explore. In my example, I called it My Career Pivot and the purpose was to generate a list of careers I could explore.
• Brainstorm 4-8 subthemes on your central theme. These are the first-level branches connected to your theme. I wanted to explore entrepreneurship, marketing, business development, staying in consulting, finance, people leadership and not-for-profit leadership.
• For each subtheme, generate 3-6 branches that expand the subtheme. These should be no more than 3 words per branch. For example, under finance I listed; private equity, corporate finance, startup finance, startup fundraising, M&A advisory as my branches.

Keep in mind, this exercise took me 15 minutes. If you find that you’re not sure what to write for the branches, that’s an indication that you need to spend more time researching (see Step 1: Widen Your Search).

Once you’re finished, analyze your mind-map. What are the common themes?

My themes were startup / tech / coaching. This helped me narrow what I wanted to explore so that I could create a networking plan and learn more.

3️⃣ Create a time-boxed networking plan

Once I narrowed down what career pivots I wanted to explore, I created a networking plan so that I could learn EVEN more about each role in order to validate if that career path was a yes or a no.

For each career pivot I investigated, I found 3-5 people who were veterans in that area and asked them to meet for coffee. I explained my situation and asked them specific questions to learn more about that career path.

The early conversations included high-level questions like:

• Tell me how you got to X career?
• What is your day-to-day work like?
• If you were hiring someone in your position, what would you look for?
• What do you think I should consider when evaluating this as a potential career pivot?

Once I conducted these early discussions, I began to zero in on what I liked about each opportunity to narrow down my list of career pivots from 7 to 2-3.

When you're in this step, it's important to time-box your networking activities by making goals like...

• I'll explore X career path for 4-weeks and meet 4-8 people in this time to learn about A, B and C.
• Here's what needs to be true about this career path for me to say "Yes" to further consideration.

This will keep you on track and help you avoid analysis paralysis.

Remember: the sky is the limit when it comes to your career.

​If you’re feeling stuck and not sure what to do next in your career, let’s book a call. We’ll dive into your situation so you can leave our discussion with a clear plan. I look forward to meeting you!​

Until next weekend!