Three things I had to learn to thrive from a mid-career change

Is this what I’ll do for the rest of my career? Some of us may have already asked the question, for some it’s yet to come – others may never ask it at all.For me that question came at 31, just after I’d had my daughter, I felt stuck. Stuck in a career that I’d worked so hard to progress all through my 20s. Stuck financially in my dream house, that the proceeds of a successful career had bought me. But something wasn’t right. No, I couldn’t imagine myself doing this for another 30 years! Next came the hardest decision I’d ever made. With a sick feeling in my stomach, and the chatter of people telling me I was crazy, I handed in my notice, sold my house, and just spent time with my daughter. Time that I’d missed by rushing back to work three months after she was born.Executing the planI honestly left without a plan. My old-school mentors would have frowned saying I wasn’t following my career plan. But I was a completely different person to the person that wrote them. Life had changed me. I’d worked so hard over the previous 10 years I was blind. I needed to find out who I was and what I wanted.I’d always been one for taking up opportunities, that part of me has never changed, and when an ex-colleague suggested we start a security awareness business it felt right. Having been in the industry for over a decade did not make it simple. I soon found knowing about culture and awareness alone did not mean you could have a successful business in it. So, here are the top three things I had to learn…1. I don’t hate finances I struggled with maths at school and convinced myself I could not do finances. That belief was limiting me. Every time I looked at a P&L, the numbers melted and swayed. Previously finance was someone else’s job, but now my name was on the official records. I was accountable so I better know what I was signing for. I started from the bottom. For every VAT return, my business partner sat with me, patiently, while I laid every receipt out on his living room floor and furiously tapped into the calculator. Until one day it clicked, I didn’t need to be a mathematician to understand finances, I just needed to understand the process.2. Just because it’s right doesn’t mean it will sell Have you ever met those people who run small businesses, and you go on a demo with them, but by the end you have no idea what they offer, and to top it off you’ve had a lecture about why what you want won’t work? Well, welcome to me 10 years ago. When I started Layer 8, I knew the textbook, correct way to create behaviour change. What I didn’t realise is, my offering was complicated and convoluted. No one could grasp my offering and say ‘yeah that helps me with a problem that I am looking to solve’. I had to learn to be clear, strip back my ideas and my processes until I got to the core of what was useful and effective. 3. I had to find my voice and practise using it The first time I put myself out there I remember saying, ‘people are going to think who’s this Sarah and what does she know’. Thank you, Jane Frankland, for setting me straight and telling me ‘you haven’t come from nowhere, you’ve just been under the radar’. For years I’d struggled to find my authentic voice. I became a company director in my mid-20s but instead of wearing that badge with honour, the fear that people thought it was a joke crippled me. This led me to create weird versions of myself based on what I saw other leaders doing. I made mistakes. I upset people. And all I was trying to do was prove I was worthy.Finding my voice came with practice. It came from getting coaching for public speaking. By writing blogs and recording vlogs and continually improving them. And most importantly, it came from getting clear on my message, what I wanted people to know about who I am and what I stand for.Was it worth it? Yes, yes, yes! I still don’t earn what I did when I was working for someone else, and often it is harder, way harder, but I love it. I do things that give me energy, I work on topics that I am passionate about, and I do things that I believe add real value to the development and progress of our industry.Sarah Janes is managing director and co-founder of Layer 8. She is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Information Security’s Women in Cyber steering committee. Sign up to CIISec Live for innovation and knowledge inspiration (Sept 15-16) here.

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Three things I had to learn to thrive from a mid-career change

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Three things I had to learn to thrive from a mid-career change

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