How to Sustain Your Second Career or The Quality of Resilience

Mastering The Second Innings – Part 6

(A dozen years ago, I made a difficult exit from a twenty year career in advertising. My wife and I started Bullzi Inc with the idea of following my passion and her experience, in developing and mentoring people. We survived and today Bullzi Inc works with organisations across continents. The work has morphed and grown. I was living my Second Innings. The definition for that, given to me by someone is ‘one where a person reinvents into a new direction’.

Many friends, business associates and acquaintances keep asking me how I managed to make the switch into a second career. What could one expect?  How did you choose the time?  How do you know what to do? And if you have decided all that how do you gather the courage to make the leap?  I talked to 15 other people who had successfully made the switch. others who are great second innings batters. In the previous part the focus was on What does Success mean in the Second Career? In this, the concluding part I will look at those who managed to sustain themselves through the Second Innings).

 When we started Bullzi, none of my previous colleagues and friends (who were all senior people in their organisations) were really interested in taking a chance with us. I got a lot of coffee, the occasional beer , sincere ‘good luck’s but no assignments.

It was frustrating and often demoralising. We kept at it though, meeting more people with pretty much the same results. I realised that I had to earn my credentials in this field. So I became a trainee once again. A very senior HR professional, whose work I admired, agreed to take me on as an understudy to assist him in his training programmes. I worked with him for free. Another friend, a thought leader in HR, became my tutor guiding me to the right books to read and right people to follow on the internet.

Meanwhile, four months had passed since I quit my job and there was no sign of any income. My daily routine included, amongst other things, checking my bank balance online 2 to 3 times hoping that miraculously it would not keep depleting! That was the most stressful thing I have ever done in my life!

One day, my brother suggested that I could use my skills of knowing business, understanding and mentoring people in placing people. In fact, he got us our first assignment. It wasn’t training but it was still about leveraging the skills I had and involved the mentoring of people. Sounded exciting and I had a point of view on how to do it better. A friend offered a free 3 month trial membership of a large resume portal and we were off. We were spectacularly unsuccessful in our first assignment .

What it did though was give us the belief that we could actually do this and that it was exciting and remunerative. When I talked about it to my old colleagues and friends, I found they were far more receptive and soon I had a few other assignments. We placed our first person 5 months after I quit my job. Was a junior sales person in and we did not really earn much. It was a start though and there were other assignments we were working on. However, the placement well produced nothing for the next 2 months. The thrice daily online banking nightmare continued and I was beginning to doubt my decision.

That is when I got a call for what would have been a dream job. It was to head a radio channel. The money was twice what I got in my last job and there was a lot I could contribute and learn.

To cut a long story short, I did not pursue it. My wife’s comment that she had rarely seen me happier than i was in the last few months and the fact that we were working on assignments which could result in income helped me make that decision. As luck would have it, the day before I was to call the HR Head with my decision, we closed a big position. After that, the placement work began to gather momentum. The training piece, the one that I was originally deeply passionate about was still running dry. I continued my learning and expanded to attending training programmes and acquiring certifications. This helped me meet many other interesting people and potential clients.

The first training break came about 18 months after I had quit my job and it took another year for it to become a regular stream of work.

 In my conversations with other Second Innings batters I discovered similar strands. They all seem to have come through doughty challenges and periods of self doubt. Here are some of the things that define their quality of resilience:

Improvisation

Yes you have a goal, purpose and maybe even terrific excel sheets. However, life will throw googlies. All of us understand this intellectually. In a Second Career you do not have the shield of your comfort zones. Most often you are out on your own. This intellectual fact is your reality, one that impacts your reputation, earning, self confidence and general well being.

Tweaking your idea, finding another related opportunity, making alliances and being open to possibilities that are authentic for you but not necessarily the only things you had thought of, are very important. In my case, Executive Search was one such adjacency. Later, this coupled with my work in Leadership Development opened up Executive Coaching to me. When the recession of 2008 came, I was well prepared to face it.

A Third Innings player, had some outstanding skills – she was a great writer and a terrific cook. She moved from a career in journalism to the development sector as a content writer/researcher. She wrote on various topics. Including reviewing books on food and the occasional restaurant. She co-curated a very popular food blog and that opened up another door. Today, in her Third Innings she is a celebrated chef who uses her writing skills to market and promote her brand. She feels she is constantly growing as a person.

Getting Help

This was a remarkable finding and as I discovered, it is borne out by research on resilience .

They have the ability to attract help. The kind of help I have got throughout my Second Career is unbelievable. From the friend who offered me that free internet service, to my first few assignments, the referrals, the mentoring…I could go on. Sometimes I really have to pinch myself to believe this is all true. I never got as much help in my advertising career.

I have often tried to understand this and asked those who backed me in the first couple of years. The reasons I got were, ‘we like you’, ‘you seemed so passionate about it, it was infectious’, ‘I knew you would be good at it’, ‘you are a good friend’…

Every successful person will tell you how about the many people they have to be thankful to.

Guess passion, good ‘karma’ from your First Innings, the ability to ask for help and being willing to subsume your ego are critical skills to possess.

Teflon

‘How is it flying’? ‘Terrific. Any better and I will be reported for special study by NASA ….”. A typical response from a Second Innings player at a time when the business has not really taken off. They have different ways in which they deal with the tough times. A sense of humour is one of them. Being positive is another.

They learn very soon to shrug off the failures, hurt pride, doubts expressed by others and so on. It is a combination of self belief and belief in what they are doing. For every person who slights or doubts you, if you remember one person who has helped you, the universe gets its balance back.

Faith

When you believe that what you do is really important and meaningful, you can grit your teeth and go through some tough times. Second Innings batters had this faith, in their choice and in themselves. We have all grown up with narratives of how the believer has to struggle for his beliefs and eventually wins. That belief system kicks in and helps us make meaning of some of the difficulties. I had to go through zero income to start Executive Search which got me to understand people even better and is a huge plus I carry into my work now. And I had to have a repertoire of things I could do to survive the crash that started in 2008. Coupled with my deep desire to really help people find their goals and purpose in life, I have been able to stay the course. It all makes sense and every challenge had its purpose.

Realist

Yes, they are positive minded people and believe they will succeed. They also understand that it will not happen tomorrow.

As the ex CEO of a consumer goods company, who now runs a personal finance consultancy, told me ‘ If you are writing about this, please tell people not to have rose tinted glasses on. If they persist, it will happen, but it will take time’.

Being a realist will help you plan for eventualities and face them. Being a raging optimist or super positive will blind you and you could fall very hard when difficulties arise. Jim Collins talks about it as one of the qualities required for companies to make the journey from Good to Great. He named it the Stockdale Paradox

 Luck

I believe I have been lucky. It played a part at many times. The serendipitous connections, breakthroughs at just the right time, falling interest rates that allowed me to pay off my home loan quickly and so on. I also know someone else who was wretchedly unlucky. He had the passion, the drive but the sheer number of things that went wrong in his life, all outside of his control, was really unfortunate.

It is hardly something we can plan for. However, if we keep the faith and manage to muddle our way through the tough times, more often than not, we will be lucky. Just seems to be the way the universe works, mostly.

 When you move to your Second Career, the first couple of years are likely to be the toughest. Once you get past that, it becomes easier and it improves your ability to handle the next googly. Keep the faith and may the force be with you.

“The bamboo that bends is far stronger than the oak that resists” Japanese Proverb

Photo credits to rediff.com, inc.com, wired.com, businessnewsdaily.com, cnd2.hubspot.net and discoveryhouse.com