08: Working with a career coach to change careers

Are you thinking about working with a career coach to help with your career change? Bella Holzkenner worked with two career coaches to decide her next move after being in asset management for more than 20 years. One of them was certified career and life coach Deirdre Taylor, who was featured in our last episode about how to figure out your career switch when you’re lost.

Bella tells us about the work she did with her coaches and how Deirdre’s support helped her make the decision to become a mental health counselor—something she resisted at first. She also explains how volunteering and taking on a neutral perspective, which she learned from Deirdre, played an important role in making her career switch.


Learn more about Bottomless Closet at bottomlesscloset.org.

Find volunteer opportunities at volunteermatch.org, unitedway.org,  volunteer.gov.

Want to hear more about Deirdre's career coaching? Listen to Episode 7, "Lost with what career change to make?"

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi everyone, I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you've been considering or are working on. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on issues that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of wisdom that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

I speak with a lot of career coaches for this podcast. They share such great advice and insight about making a career change. It made me want to interview someone who's actually worked with a career coach to make their career switch. Bella Holzkenner did just that. She worked with two career coaches after she was laid off from her asset management company. One of them was certified career and life coach Deidre Taylor, who was featured in our last episode about how to figure out your career switch when you're lost. Bella tells us about the work she did with her coaches and how Deidre's support helped her make the decision to become a mental health counselor, something she resisted at first. She also explains how volunteering and taking on a neutral perspective, which she learned from Deidre, played a role in making her career switch. Hi, Bella. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in. What were you doing before your career switch and what led up to it?

Bella: I've spent 25 plus years in asset management doing different types of roles. But overarchingly, I would say business management. It was sort of making sure that the business is running the way it's supposed to. I was very effective in that I had good relationships. So when there were parts of the business that weren't really working, using relationship skills, I was able to smooth those things over and then help the business move forward. Big asset management companies, they've been laying off for a very long time. A lot of the value that I brought to the company was that I knew it very well and I knew how to get things done. And those types of roles were being either offshore or nearshored. Through a series of layoffs, I ended up getting laid off.

Lixandra: While you were in asset management, how did you find the work that you did?

Bella: I don't know that I had a plan to do this work. I sort of fell into it. I had this job with a lot of flexibility and that was really important to me. At the same time, my daughter was very young, so I was able to like go to school plays and I was able to like be class mom and things like that. My father was ill. He would be in the hospital a lot and I would just leave. I mean, there were parts of the job that were fulfilling in that I had, you know, good relationships with people, but the work itself was not fulfilling. But the flexibility at that point of my life was very important to me. You know, I was moving up, even though it was sort of like lateral moves and things like that. You know, I was achieving some success, but I wasn't thinking to myself, like, this is what I should be doing.

Lixandra: So after you were laid off in 2018, what were your next steps?

Bella: So initially I was thinking to myself like this is the worst thing that happened to me. This is what was going on in my head. I'm too old. I'm not skilled. I took a little bit of time off actually previous to this because I think healing and helping people was something that I was very interested in. I had started a four year class in non-dual Qabbalistic healing. So I was able to fit that in my schedule because it was the weekends. So I was training to be a healer and then I got laid off and then I started to work two things that I thought were really helpful. I started to work with Dee Dee Taylor and that was super helpful in removing things that I thought of as blocks. What did I really want to do and what if I really was clear about that? It was still good to have her support. Then I worked with a career coach that was less helpful to me because we had talked about like different industries, you know, at that time, coworking, like the WeWork kind of model seemed like a growth industry. There were these type of roles that were sort of, you know, what I was doing before, like business management and also communications. And I thought it's a new industry. And maybe if I got my foot into the door, you know, there, that might work. And the other thing I started to do, I went to this not-for-profit conference, you could say, and I met the woman who runs this great organization called the Bottomless Closet. So for people who aren't familiar with it, it's an organization that helps New York City underserved women enter the job force. People come in, they get clothes and you help them find a suit and they feel really good in these fancy clothing. And then you help them with career coaching and resume building and things like that. And the feedback I was getting from these women was like, thank you so much. Like you really helped me, made me feel more confident. You made me feel like I could do it. Like something resonated in me and I thought this really fills me up. It really gives me energy. Why am I sort of resisting this?

Lixandra: So did volunteering at Bottomless Closet get you thinking about going into mental health counseling?

Bella: It sort of just became clear to me that it was time to do this. Then I explored different graduate school options and decided to go the route of mental health counseling.

Lixandra: Why were you resisting at first, like you said?

Bella: It's really scary to make a big, big career leap like this at any age, but let alone at my age. It was a huge career shift. It's a different skill set. It's going back to school. It's starting at the bottom. And also two years of school full time means you're not working and you're not making money. And not everybody can do that.

Lixandra: How did your husband react when you told him that you wanted to go back to school?

Bella: I'm really so grateful that he's been so supportive through this process because he said to me, oh, you know, you should travel. And I said to him, you know, I don't know that I can do that right now because I'm going back to school. And I was expecting him to flip out. I was expecting to say, like, what do you think? Like, you know, we don't have the money, whatever. And he's like, oh, my God, that's great. I'm so excited. That's so great. You know, and I think he knew that this was really what I had wanted to do for a long time.

Lixandra: That's great. Did the coaching help with making the decision to pursue mental health and to go back to school?

Bella: You know, they're both helpful in some ways, but in different ways. So the work that I did with Deedee was really about figuring out what you really want and what the resistance is. And that was super helpful. I think, as you know, I mentioned before, there was a lot of resistance, you know, financial, age, change, And working with the other coach, I think it could have been helpful had I chosen a different path. That coaching was more directed to helping you if I'd wanted to switch, let's say, to a different sort of corporate field or maybe government or something like that. Some of the things that, you know, I would say were helpful were things like name 10 events you were proud of and write them out in detail. And then afterwards you go back and you look at what the skills were that helped you make that a successful event. Through that, I did see some skills that were helpful to me.

Lixandra: What else did your coaches have you do that you found helpful?

Bella: I like vision boards, but really writing it down in really careful detail what you wanted. So like something you wanted in 10 years from now, something you wanted in five years from now, something you wanted in three years from now. But to really go to it like from a sort of fantasy point of view, if you could have anything you wanted, if money wasn't an object, if time wasn't an object, if age wasn't an object, if there were no obstacles, what would you want? And so getting clarity around that was very important for me.

Lixandra: Would you recommend working with a career coach when making a career switch?

Bella: I would say, if you can get help, you should always get help. Why not have support if you can, if you can afford it? There are ways to do it. The career coach I was working with was studying to get certified, and she needed a certain amount of clients so I didn't pay her. So you could try to do it that way. What else helped you initially? Something for me that was super helpful was volunteering because even though it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, it was a step in the direction of what I wanted to do. And I really believe in a sort of spiritual way that started to open the doors. So it sort of grounded me in this idea that I'm already doing it and it was useful to have on my resume. So I would recommend to the extent that people can volunteer and things that they're interested in, particularly when it's a career change, they should do that.

Lixandra: So why were you interested in going into mental health?

Bella: My mother was a psychoanalyst. My mother wanted me to go into mental health. And I think for me initially, I felt like it was a lot of school. I grew up not with a lot of resources and sort of worked and put myself through school. So I worked during the day and I went to school at night. And this idea of to become a PhD, it's like full-time school. And I, I just didn't see that I would be able to do that, but I kind of had it in the back of my mind. And then I sort of fell into this path in finance just because it was the job that I had paid me the most during the day so that I could finish my degree.

Lixandra: What about the timing of your layoff? How did that play a role in making your career switch to mental health?

Bella: My identity was very wrapped up in being a worker. So not necessarily like fulfillment from my job, but like doing a good job at whatever I did. I'm being a mother, being a mother is extremely important to me. And so I was very involved in my daughter's life and her schooling and her, you know, taking her to doctor's appointments, play dates, things like that. And also I was in a situation where I was taking care of my father and required a lot of time and attention. My father passed away and then my daughter graduated in June and I got laid off in March. Initially it was super hard, right? Because I had really defined myself as these three things, as a worker, as a mother, and as a daughter. And then all of a sudden these things were gone. And I had some time for myself. And I think, had my daughter been a few years younger, had my father been alive, I would have tried much harder to go back into the same groove that I was in. Like, what is the easiest re-entry into my old life? It was okay. You know, I can't complain. I had a good life, but it wasn't really fulfilling to me. I saw that as a sort of sign from the universe. This was an opportunity to do things differently.

Lixandra: So in 2022, you'll get your master's in mental health counseling. You're currently doing an internship at a mental health clinic. How is it going now that you're working with clients?

Bella: It's amazing. I bring my whole life to it. All the work I've done in myself, the therapy that I've done myself, these modalities that I studied, the experiences I have, right? I bring my whole life experience with me and I think it's a benefit. I'm grateful to be doing like this work that I consider really important, serious healing work in this world.

Lixandra: I'm so happy for you, Bella. So what advice do you have for our listeners who are working on making their career switch?

Bella: First, get very clear on what you want to do and try to approach what you want to do when you're writing it down, when you're working with it, to not let in any obstacles. Because at this point, it's just sort of vision boarding. So try to approach the vision with no bias. Once you get that, right, then you can start to see like what bias is true, what bias isn't true, and then start to refute those things when they're feasible. But I would say if there's something you've wanted to do for a long time and you're clear about your vision and you're clear that the path is achievable to you, volunteer. You know, because people will say, well, I don't have that experience. Like, how can I ever do it? I don't have that experience. There's always some way or if it's not exactly like to me, right. I volunteered in something that was not exactly, but close enough. You have this feeling like I'm on my path. And I think like when you volunteer and put good in the world, the universe sort of opens up to help you.

Lixandra: What about advice for people who are resisting like you did and are thinking it's too hard to make a career switch?

Bella: It's true. As you age, it's hard. So you don't want to say, oh my God, that's, it's not hard. You don't want to like be dismissive of the truth of that, but you can't let it stop you. So I think you have to sort of give yourself like a pep talk. And if you can't be positive, which sometimes you can't, try to be neutral. And I think that's something I got from Didi as well. This idea of being neutral, like you don't really know. It could be better. It could be worse. We don't really know. Because I do believe the things that you say to yourself impact your actions, your thoughts, your feelings, right? So you want to be careful how you speak to yourself. If you wouldn't talk to your best friend like that, don't talk to yourself like that. But you can't always say, because it won't feel true. This is great. Just say, I don't know. This could be a good thing. It could not be a bad thing. I don't know. I'm going to take a wait and see approach. It's always better to be positive, but if that's not possible and that's okay, try to be neutral. You don't know. Take a wait and see approach. It could be better. You don't know. And I would say get help. If you can get help, it could be like a life coach or a career coach or any support that you can get. I would use every resource that I can. Just try to take steps in the direction of your path, whatever they are, if they're little, if they're big, if they're take steps in the direction of your path and see what happens. Gently, gently. No harsh voice, no beating yourself up, no nothing. If you can't be positive, not to beat yourself up about it. I think that's super important.

Lixandra: Thanks, Bella. It was great having you as a guest today. You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. While you're there, join our mailing list and follow us on Instagram and Twitter at careerswitchpod. 

So what's your career switch? Are you excited to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. We're a new podcast, so please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.