The Impromptu Game Plan: Recent Episodes
Sarah Firisen & Catherine Rennolds
Enlightening, but also lighthearted chats exploring the career and life stories of people who've made pivots in their lives to create more meaningful careers that align their strengths, experiences, passions, and values. https://theimpromptugameplan.com/
From theater major to HR director, it wasn't until she had cancer in 2014 that Judy Baker found her calling as a mentor and advocate for authors
https://bookmarketingmentor.com/
After a long career in commercial banking, Doug "retired" and started a second career as a commercial pilot, following a childhood passion for flying.
Jen pivoted to being a freelance consultant when she lost her corporate executive position, then pivoted to work on Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign, then pivoted again when she lost the campaign to become a solo entrepreneur starting up an online brand (Flourishing Over Fifty).
https://flourishingoverfifty.com/
Linda is a former corporate climber who evolved into an entrepreneurial expat partner coach when she took a leap of faith to step off her traditional career path to follow her husband to Tokyo for his job in 2004. Since then, she's bounced between the US and Tokyo (twice), Abu Dhabi and London. She finally realized that the way to live a much more authentic and fulfilling life was to put all her experience as an expat wife to good use as a coach for other expat partners.
https://www.theexpatpartnercoach.com/
Yvonne started out as a classroom teacher but saw a need to get a second master's degree in clinical psychology. She then met her husband, moved across the state, and put that degree to use as a trainer and counselor for an employee assistance program. She later pivoted to heading up a human resource department. Retirement brought another pivot when she published her first book, Flying with Dad: A Daughter. A Father. And the Hidden Gifts from His WWII Stories.
https://ingeniumbooks.com/yvonne-caputo/
A serial entrepreneur, Heather left a 20-year career as a health and safety consultant after severe burnout to create a company that she loves and is excited about doing every day! She created Little Lake Boutique, a company specializing in alcohol infusions and mocktail infusions, as well as artisan BBQ Spices, wing rubs and dip mixes.
She is a happier, healthier person because of the courage to pivot her life,
https://littlelakeboutique.com/
Danny Freeman originally thought he wanted to be a fundamentalist Christian minister. After realizing that ministry wasn't his calling, he spent about 15 years in public education – first as a teacher and then as an administrator.
During the pandemic, Danny turned to writing and completed his first novel, The You I which debuts on July 12, 2022.
The You I See is a big-hearted, humorous novel that functions as both a sweet 'coming-of-age, coming-out' tale and an unapologetic affirmation of queer identity which traces the sexual awakening of two gay teens as they mature through adolescence. Set against the backdrop of a fundamentalist Christian context and the changing cultural landscape of Houston in the early 1990s, The You I See weaves together faith, politics, shifting social attitudes, the journey to self-acceptance, and the importance of LGBTQ+ allies like few other young adult novels.
https://dfreemanbooks.com/
Andy is a social entrepreneur and innovator who is driven by a desire to create equitable and low-carbon approaches to living. He has a particular enthusiasm and experience in the development of community projects and social enterprises in the low carbon arena including food/drink/transport/arts/renewable energy. He started Big River Bakery, specializing in slow ferment, handmade breads, and baked goods, made with locally sourced ingredients. It's also a social enterprise, aiming to embed in the fabric of the area and contribute to the well-being of the community in all its facets.
https://bigriverbakery.com/
Jon is an exemplar of The American Dream. In 2005, Jon came upon an opportunity to travel from Uzbekistan to the United States to work in the hospitality industry and jumped on it. But he soon ran into problems with that offer and had to pivot. With only $200 in his pocket, he went on to start multiple successful companies and is now writing a book to help other immigrants to the US be successful.
https://asrorjonshukurov.com/
Ash worked for five years towards a Masters in Mechanical Engineering and Management. But after graduating, he realized that mechanical engineering wasn't for him. After a 4 1/2 year stint as a management consultant, he left to start his own business where he could act more in alignment with his passions and values. He works with individuals and companies to help individuals become high achievers, entrepreneurs become master communicators, and companies navigate people & change through these fast-moving times.
After 30 years in the restaurant business, Paul quit his job, sold his house and belongings, strapped a backpack on, and took off on a trip to Greece. He wasn't sure how long he'd be gone, but four years later, he's in Vietnam writing a book on that country's food and culture
https://paulbkennedy.com/
Abby moved to LA after college to try to make a career in improv and comedy. I barely supported myself with jobs like hostessing and working at a gym. Abby eventually entered graduate school for psychology and struggled with the feeling of “giving up” on her creativity. However, she's managed to create a private psychotherapy practice that she now finds far more creatively satisfying than the realities of the comedy circuit and entertainment industry.
Website: www.abbykrom.com
Podcast: All The Therapies https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/all-the-therapies/id1576797554
Courtney left her cushy government job as a policy analyst (after 6 years of school and a graduate degree in policy and politics) because she was incredibly unhappy. She didn't have a plan - she just knew she needed to trust her gut and that something better was out there. The following 3 years were about self-exploration and growth, leading her to open her own fitness studio in 2018.
Now, Courtney is the owner and CEO of Loyobo FIT, a fitness community that is fighting back against diet culture and teaching members (mostly women) how to love their bodies. Her passion is helping women to step into their strength, understand they are worth MORE than just their body, and have the confidence they dream of!
https://www.loyobofit.com/
Growing up at the end of apartheid in South Africa, Gordon knew from an early age he wanted to have one of three careers: to be in government, to work in the UN, or to be a newscaster. So far, he's managed to achieve the first two, and with his intellect and charm, who knows what the future holds for him to end up on CNN.
At the age of 50, and after 15 years at Microsoft, Jack left a six-figure job to become a Magician. People noticed not only how great a magician he was, but also how good he was at marketing. He started getting gigs to write copy and create marketing funnels for other businesses and now helps clients around the world create powerful marketing machines for their businesses.
https://writekillercopyfast.com/
Jody Sperling is a fiction writer looking for a publisher. A decade of patience and no book contract led him to shift his strategy, and he began learning real estate investing with the view that the rental properties would be his patrons of the arts.
While he built a strong rental portfolio, he realized he had years until his properties would pay for his bills, not to mention, that real estate got him no closer to his true dreams. He decided to live off the proceeds from selling his rentals and launch the business, cre8 collabor8, a podcast and publishing platform designed to give everyday people a chance to tell their stories
https://www.cre8collabor8.com/.
After more than 20 years as a children's book editor, Annie did a lot of soul searching and found the courage to follow her joy and go back to school to become an acupuncturist. She's currently juggling both professions (and actually combined the two by editing a book by a fellow acupuncturist!) as she builds her practice and learns how to be a small business owner.
joyalchemyhealing.com
https://awesome-builder-9760.ck.page/1401cbaca0
From very early on in his career, Kenston knew that his strengths, passions, and values lay in the L&D and leadership development spaces, particularly around diversity and inclusion. But despite trying everything he could think of, he was unable to get a role in that field. He finally started his own company, Live with Lyfe. Through this work, he has now found himself in demand for exactly the roles that companies were unwilling to hire him for previously!
livewithlyfe.com
Helen has always been open to opportunities and to change and so life and career pivots have come easily to her. Quite early on she found a career that aligned with her values but she nevertheless struggled to bring her strengths, experience, passions, and values into alignment. She's now moved closer to that alignment through a portfolio career that combines her work with NGOs with her own company helping clients with speaking and presentation skills.
https://academy.presentpotential.ch/
After undergraduate and graduate degrees in music composition, Mellissa pivoted to being a
TV News Anchor/Reporter/Producer. A few more pivots later, Mellissa is now an award-winning storyteller, film & video director/producer, international speaker, and best-selling author. She teaches companies how to marry purpose with commerce to shorten their sales cycle by way of storytelling.
https://www.duckpunk.net/
Coming out of college with a math degree but no idea what she wanted to do with that, Katrina fell into an actuarial career. She knew that she was using her strengths, but the job didn't spark any joy. Through a couple of pivots, she realized that she wanted a career that aligned with her passions and values, but wasn't sure what that was. After two career breaks, she realized that her passion was coaching other people around career breaks and sabbaticals.
www.bestbreakever.com
From the start of her career, Melitta knew that both her passion and her strengths lay in marketing, communications, and branding. But after a happy and successful career, she realized that, as a mother to young children, she needed a better work-life balance. Melitta started her own communications consultancy, but before she knew it, she was so busy that she lost that balance and suffered from burnout. Now, as a marketing coach, business mentor, and best-selling author, Melitta has found the right balance of her strengths, experiences, passions, and her values.
www.melittacampbell.com
https://www.melittacampbell.com/podcast
https://melitta.mykajabi.com/dream-clients-academy
Farah has had more than her fair share of adversity in her life. But she made the courageous choice to grow from her experiences and write a new chapter for herself. She realized that her passion was to inspire brave new leaders to discover their awesome genius within. And to create a ripple effect in changing lives and impacting the world.
https://www.interactconsulting.in/
When project manager Stephanie's husband was deployed to Afghanistan she finally found the motivation to turn her passion for art into a career. But it was once she started reaching back for her project management skills and experience, starting a business to help other artists, that she finally pivoted into a career that brought her strengths, experiences, passions, and values into true alignment.
www.stephanieweaverartist.com
After facing a life filled with roadblocks, dead ends, and personal tragedy with inspiring resilience, Johdi is now helping women over 40 develop their own physical, mental and emotional resilience.
After a global education across Ireland, Singapore, and Australia, Sinead did some initial career exploration only to realize that the true alignment of her values and passions lay working in her family education business GetReskilled. Not only is her career and life story inspirational, but she has fascinating insights about how her company helps its clients understand how they can find the right career for their second-half of life.
www.getreskilled.com
A series of life challenges helped Marie to realize that her job was not aligned with her values. She pivoted into a corporate role leading a global wellbeing center of excellence. But eventually, she realized that in order to fully align her strengths, experiences, passions with her values, she needed to leave corporate life and work for herself as a Wellbeing Consultant & Career Coach
https://www.mariechequer.co.uk/
Nikole loves her job, as a CAD designer in fashion, but wonders whether her passion for horticulture and its intersection with social justice and food scarcity is something that could translate to a career pivot. We discuss techniques for working through her options and brainstorming what that career pivot might look like.
Sarah thought she would be a secretary for life until some unexpected career bumps in the road forced her to pivot. Utilizing her network and relationships, she has managed to bring her strengths, experiences, and passions into alignment working for Simple Revolution, a values-based brand strategy company. She now has the work-life balance and flexibility she needs while finding true career happiness, helping a young, dynamic business grow and flourish.
From an accidental start as a computer network engineer, through almost two decades as a software developer, with a wonderful pivot to being a storytelling guru, Sarah feels that she's now in a place where she has done a pretty good job aligning her strengths, passions, experiences, and values.
In the process of living her own impromptu career game plan from attorney to law firm manager to founder of a start-up accelerator fund, Kelly realized that her superpower was actually networking and understanding how to use her network to maximum effect. And so she wrote a book on the subject and is now a keynote speaker.
Kevin has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Influential in the Experience Industry and an HR Executive Rising Star. While he didn't get here by career pivots, it did involve a journey of self-discovery and reflection to recognize what his core values are and to understand how to craft a career that aligns with them.
Sam comes from a long line of accountants, including his sheep counting great-grandfather in Italy. So a career as an accountant seemed to make sense initially. But through multiple pivots and re-inventions of himself, Sam has found his twin passions in his private equity and venture capital firm, Tip of the Spear, but also in the Javelin Institute which provides Executive Education targeting Leaders who experience family hardship
While questioning her own career choice in IT, Bruna had the epiphany that she'd been trying to make a career change based on thinking about only her past job experiences or by focusing solely on what she was passionate about. Once she realized that she had to bring her strengths, experiences, passions, and values into alignment with who she is as a person, she realized that her perfect career pivot was towards helping other people make similarly successful career changes as an Executive Coach
After a long and successful career in packaging design, Charlotte found herself burned out and suddenly dealing with breast cancer. She knew she needed to find more work-life balance and has spent the last few years trying to build a portfolio career that allows her to be creative without any of the overhead of a corporate job.
Kicking off season two, we talk to David who had a long and successful media and marketing career. He now runs a non-profit, the Refugee Employment Partnership, and finds it to be the most meaningful work he's ever done.
After a career full of twists and turns, Theo has found a truly meaningful career as a Family Service Counselor at the famous funeral home and cemetery, Hollywood Forever. The cemetery is the final resting place of hundreds of Hollywood legends, including Judy Garland, Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, Mickey Rooney, Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks, and hundreds of others.
We've been finding the topic of the #GreatResignation so fascinating and relevant to The Impromptu Game Plan, that we decided to devote an episode to discussing it. We consider whether a better name for this is the Great Reframing and what we think the trend bodes for people looking to make career pivots. Here are some of the articles we reference
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/more-people-plan-to-quit-as-return-to-work-plans-go-into-effect-.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2021/07/06/first-he-fired-his-employer-are-you-ready-for-societys-great-reframing/?sh=1e6cebf74a01
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6819252294266187776/
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-most-fundamental-skill-intentional-learning-and-the-career-advantage
This week, we chat with Niko about courageously making bold career and life choices. After years of working as a tech consultant for large companies, Niko has found that the way to align his strengths and experiences around technology with his passions and values has been to say no to projects and roles and to be prepared to step away from his career.
This week we talk with Alyssa, a career adjuster. After COVID lockdown caused her to reassess her career and work-life balance, Alyssa became part of the #greatresignation. She found a career as a personal financial advisor, giving her the purpose and work-life balance she was craving. https://caminvestor.com/
We chat with Philip about creating a more meaningful and fun career with his partner Keith, cheese making, and learning to dance like Beyoncé. We laughed so much, our faces were hurting by the end of recording the podcast.
https://wildescheese.co.uk/
Nikki Swan talks to The Impromptu Game Plan about how her search for a more meaningful, creative career took some twists and turns before she realized that the perfect alignment of her strengths, experiences, values, and passions lay in helping others reconnect with their passion for work.
The Impromptu Game Plan talks to our dear friend, and long-time collaborator Bruce Rowling. Catherine & Sarah first met Bruce when we hired Bruce to teach drawing to the participants in the leadership development program we worked on. He'd never taught drawing before but said yes anyway. That agility and adaptability was the beginning of a beautiful friendship and collaboration that included quite a few years of world travel, laughs, and adventures together.
Dave Ford talks to The Impromptu Game Plan about how he accidentally became an environmentalist while trying to find more meaning in his career. He now runs the Oceans Plastic Leadership Network, which works with environmentalists to create sustainability-focused programs and practices that actively engage global leaders in industry to create change at both speed and scale.
https://opln.org/the-network/
Ian Duncan talks to The Impromptu Game Plan about his 35-year career as a Brand & Marketing Strategist, redefining all his roles to be more interesting and finding his purpose within the corporate world by helping organizations find their purpose. Ian shares his current reflections on his next steps and to what extent he might choose to follow his passion and interests.
After many years in the corporate world (plus a stint as a baker of scones), Eric finally aligned his experiences, strengths, and passion for technology and innovation with his values and started his own company, Otocast, the mobile audio guide. https://www.otocast.com/
We chat with Ken Yuille, who has gone from small business owner in Australia to James Spader's hand-double in NYC in order to support his wife Jane's career. Ken has become a career explorer, open to opportunities, not ready to retire. What will he do next? Whatever it is, it better involve leaving time to bring Jane her nightly G&T!
After a lifetime of corporate roles that rarely brought her joy and work-life balance, Geesha has found a way to align her strengths, passions, and values to create a sustainable Sri Lankan food services business in Germany. We talk to her about her career journey and, along the way, find out that she's the number one super fan of one of our previous podcast guests!
We chat with Krishna, Cardiologist, VP at Abbot Vascular, Ted-ED speaker, author of YA fiction, & now beginning his new side-career as a movie executive producer. Where does he find the time and energy? Krishna is another great example of how you don't have to give up a successful day job in order to align your strengths, passions, and values and find a meaningful career.
We talk to Andy Woodfield about how he's managed to align his passions, strengths, and values within the day job. Andy talks to us about showing up authentically in his life and career (and helping others do the same), becoming a gin distiller, and baking cakes (though not from scratch).
In this episode, we talk to Suzanne who has happily turned her back on the corporate 9-5 but has never been busier...or happier. We also coin the phrase Ninja Planter. Tune in to find out more
The Impromptu Game Plan isn’t about landing your next big job, rather it’s about reflecting on your next career or life pivot. They might end up being the same thing, but they’re often not.
In this episode, we talk to Adam Kaveney who has navigated many life and career pivots and now, as the co-founder of his own company, has come to a place where his values, passions, and strengths are more aligned than they've ever been.
We know that millennials crave more purpose from their careers and lives. They don’t want to do what their parents and grandparents did: be content to start on the bottom rung of a safe job for a stable company and work 9-5 in an office each day, patiently waiting for incremental advancement.
And so for our first podcast in the series, we’re going to interview Sarah's almost 21-year old daughter Anya who has some idea of the field she’s interested in, but hasn’t really started to think seriously about the kind of jobs she might apply for when she graduates. And on a personal note, as her mother, Sarah would like her to start thinking about this soon!