Ep 7. An Open-Ended Sabbatical: Leaving The Post-MBA Corporate Grind Behind To Travel The World
Listen to the Podcast Episode
In this episode, you will hear from a guest who after being denied a sabbatical request from his multinational company, laid the groundwork to leave the corporate grind behind and travel the world. Once he hit his savings goal, he walked away, and a new world opened up. Listen as he shares how he mentally and financially prepared to take his post-MBA pivot, spent 2 summers taking language classes, and redefined his relationship to his work.
Transcript
Victoria Hefty (00:00):
Hi, I'm Victoria Hefty and welcome to the Post MBA Pivot podcast, where I share stories of professionals who took unexpected, interesting or unique paths after graduating from business school. Today, you'll hear from a guest who laid the groundwork to leave the corporate grind behind and traveled the world after his request for an unpaid sabbatical was denied. Once he hit his savings goal, he walked away from the multinational company and a whole new world opened up. Listen as he shares how he mentally and financially prepared to take his post MBA pivot, spent two summers taking language classes, and redefined his relationship to his work.
Victoria Hefty (00:43):
What was sort of the background or motivation for going to business school or getting your MBA? They can be different sometimes.
Post MBA Guest (00:52):
For both of them, I think like most people, you go to business school to get a new job and to put a floor on future earnings. I had finished college with an accounting degree and I went to work for a public accounting firm in a specialty services group. It was cool for about two years, I started to get a little bored, started to get tired of the travel. Yeah, and wanted to do something different. I started talking to recruiters and the recruiters, oh yeah, great county major. We have jobs in financial analyst or whatever. And then when I would go to talk to the recruiters, they would pull the bait and switch like, oh, hey, here's a job doing the exact same thing you're trying to get away from.
Post MBA Guest (01:34):
So with that, the way to escape that... And I've always been in the business. People in my family been entrepreneurs and there's the love that's there, but it was also me just trying to get away from what I was doing before. So I decided to get out. That was it. I'd love to give you a much more eloquent, beautiful, deep down passionate story. I hated my job and I wanted to something different.
Victoria Hefty (02:03):
Did you know people that were MBAs or how did that come about? I don't take that question for granted, because some people are like, never really thought about it. Knew it, read a book and decided, or some people are like, everyone I knew had an MBA, so it just seemed like a natural next step.
Post MBA Guest (02:17):
Well, now that I think about it, I interned at another firm. I interned at Deloitte when I was in undergrad and one of the guys whose project that I was on was another Morehouse grad. He had done his two and a half, three years and had gotten an HBS. When I talked to him, between us, we're just like, oh yeah so what are you doing? He's like, yeah, man, I got to get out of here. So I didn't know that would be my path, but yeah, that's how it worked. There were a few people I knew from classes before me who were doing it. I think at the time I thought that, oh, I'm going to go work in a public accounting firm and I'll get the CPA and I'll just rise through the ranks and become someone's CFO one day. I was very idealistic, keep head down and work hard and all the good things will come to you, and that's exactly not how it worked.
Post MBA Guest (03:06):
And if you wanted to talk about a time when there was an aha moment, I overheard the practice leader of my group talking to, I think, one of the other senior managers, and he said something to the effect of, well, if I can squeeze 18 months out of the people here before they leave, that's a good for me. Again, back to the whole very idealistic thing, I thought I'm trying to build a career. Again, put your head down and do the right thing and somehow other people are going to look out for that. That wasn't the case at all.
Victoria Hefty (03:37):
So you're at business school. When you are there, do you have a clear sense of that first post MBA role or are you sort of just trying to figure it out?
Post MBA Guest (03:48):
I'm trying to figure it out. So in my mind, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do post B-School.
Post MBA Guest (03:54):
I wanted something like a consulting job, but not consulting. I had done it mostly because of the travel. With the job before B-School, I was probably on the road 30 weeks, 30 something weeks out of the year, but I liked the idea of going from client to client, not necessarily having the same team all the time or knowing that this project has a start. So ultimately I ended up taking a job in an MBA rotation program for a multinational firm, a multi-industrial firm based out of the Midwest, and the way that was set up, there were three rotations. There were three major business groups. So you did one rotation with each one of the business groups, 15 to 24 months, and with one of the rotations being abroad in one of the foreign offices. So that's lined up to my idea of like, oh, I don't know if I'm ready to just stick with this one thing, because I made that mistake before. I knew I didn't want to necessarily stick with one thing, but I knew that I didn't want the whole rigmarole that comes with consulting life.
Victoria Hefty (04:59):
So you're in your role, did you go for the international rotation? Did you try that out or where did you go?
Post MBA Guest (05:06):
Yes. One of the reasons I wanted to go to business school was to work abroad as well. I studied abroad twice in undergrad, loved it both times. So as part of my first interview on campus, talking about the role, talking about the program, it was an informal guarantee that they would send me abroad. It was part of the program. Some people had done it, some people had not. So I ended up spending 23 months in Shanghai, China. Professionally, it was really good. I reported into the VP of Finance for the region who reported into the CFO for the business group who reported into the global CFO. So I was fairly close. I was doing high impact work. There were a few times that... One of the stories is that I got an email from my boss, responded to it pretty quickly, a line or two.
Post MBA Guest (05:53):
I get a follow up email from him, and I see that the email chain has gone through to him and his boss and to the global CFO back down to me, and I needed to add some more color to the explanation I gave him because the global CFO was going to use that as part of the call with the analysts. It was one of the first times in my career that I was like, oh, I might be actually working on something that's kind of important. So it was great from this standpoint, kind of all the work that I was doing had really big impact. Still the best experience I've had professionally. And then personally, I was in Shanghai. I would spend long weekend in Tokyo, long weekend in Hong Kong, long weekend in Taipei. It was just great for traveling. I think I hit nine other countries in Asia while I was there.
Post MBA Guest (06:51):
And then just the friends I made there. You have this group of people who just decided to throw caution to the wind, spend a year or two or three or five away from home living with a bunch of strangers who did the same thing. So yeah, made some really good friends. I mean, life was just, everything was just hitting on all cylinders.
Victoria Hefty (07:13):
So when do you have a moment or a situation where I say your worldview changes, something shifts, and you're like, I need or want more, or something different.
Post MBA Guest (07:26):
So I'm there. Like I just said, everything was great. And then the end of my assignment comes.
Victoria Hefty (07:31):
That part.
Post MBA Guest (07:33):
That part. Talking with them, I would've stayed another year if they let me. It's like, no, your visa ends on August 31st. I think like a month before, they didn't have a role for me back in the states. So like I said, I'm enjoying my time abroad and I had always wanted to just have unencumbered time to just travel. So I was like, okay, they don't have a role for me back in the states yet, they're not going to extend my visa here, I don't want to get stuck with just some crappy role that they just find for me to just put me there, so I asked for a sabbatical. I think I asked for a one to four months unpaid sabbatical. They can find something cool for me for when I get back to the states, I can take the time to go do travel, whatever I want to do for these few months. So I talked this over with the program director who was the liaison between me and senior management, who was over the program. A guy by the name of Mike. So ask Mike, hey Mike, this is what I want to do. Mike says, okay, cool.
Post MBA Guest (08:36):
Mike talks to senior management, senior management... So Mike didn't tell me that they said no specifically. Mike said, well, I talked to them and it hit with a thud and you could hear a pin drop in the room. I was like, okay, so that probably means that didn't get approved. I think it was at that point that I knew that there was something more that I wanted to do. I knew that I liked being abroad. I knew that I liked doing work that had more impact. I think I was kind of feeling out what exactly I wanted, but I knew it wasn't going to be the next thing that was on the docket, which was them sending me back to the states and I have reporting lines that are now 10 degrees of separation between me and the global CFO. So that was a definite turning point.
Victoria Hefty (09:28):
So you have this moment where you know that's not really an option. Knowing you, how does your mind then work to figure out what's next? What's sort of your thought process?
Post MBA Guest (09:40):
Start with the end and work backwards. Okay? So I needed the things that would put my mind at ease. I had been aggressively paying off student loans, but I knew that if I were to take any sort of break from corporate America, any break from getting a paycheck, that I would need to get that out of the way. So I kept going, kept going, paid off my loans, maybe six... It was like back in October, I think I fully paid them off six months after getting back. And at that point, because I had been aggressively paying them off, I had a certain lifestyle and now that had this extra traunch that was usually go toward paying off loans, I just put it away, saved it, invested it.
Post MBA Guest (10:25):
And the other side is that I came up with a number that said, once I hit this number, I'm okay to quit and spend some time doing things I want to do. I'm okay to quit without having the next thing set up for me.
Victoria Hefty (10:41):
And looking back, was that number sort of like-
Post MBA Guest (10:45):
Ridiculous. It was a ridiculous number. I probably could have survived on half that number.
Victoria Hefty (10:51):
Yeah but even halving it, right? Is that how you work? So you're like, okay, I'm going to shoot this ridiculous number, but then if I do reach that, then I don't have any more excuses or... Not even excuses. I don't have any more blocks or what was your thinking? Because I've never quite heard of that. I love it.
Post MBA Guest (11:06):
Yeah. I mean, that's... Well, I would say this is how MBA types work. No, this is all of it. This is how I work. I think I'm very good at, if you put a target in front of me, reaching that. Whether it makes sense or not, whether I went back and evaluated whether this was like, oh yeah, that number makes sense. It didn't. I just went for it, and once I got it, it put my mind at ease. I'm like that with pretty much everything. It's the thing of, okay, this is the number, and once it becomes a number, that's a target, not questioning it anymore, just hitting that number.
Victoria Hefty (11:41):
So you hit the number, then what?
Post MBA Guest (11:44):
I was five months away from the number. So this was October, I was supposed to hit the number in February, and I was going to quit in February. So we got this email about comprehensive cost cutting, that there were going to be lay offs. And the package that they were giving people, it was one month for every year of service. So you do the math, it's October, I need until February. I thought, man, if I get laid off, I can start this thing right now.
Post MBA Guest (12:20):
So I think I was the only person who wanted to get laid off on October 1st, and I did not. I packed up my desk. The only thing I needed to grab from my desk was, there was a horse that some of my Chinese friends had given me that was a sign of good luck and best wishes, and I had kept it at my desk. That was the only thing I needed to grab.
Victoria Hefty (12:44):
No goodbye emails. No? No writing?
Post MBA Guest (12:48):
That's what LinkedIn is for, right? I was ready to go, and the president of the business group, it was a very classy move, but he was going around and talking to people individually, and my cubicle was on the back of a row, so he was walking back and forth behind me the entire day, talking to people. And I was just like, come on, stop. Stop at my cube. This can be done. I can start this five months early. I'll grab my horse, throw it in my bag and that's it, I can be done.
Post MBA Guest (13:20):
Either way that didn't happen. So I'm there, the business group ended up being sold to a private equity firms. It was just five months of anticipation. I was going into the office every day, so disappointed from not being laid off and just irritated. I would get emails and I'm like, what does this person want? It's like, oh yeah, they want me to do the job that they're paying me for. Like, okay, that makes sense.
Victoria Hefty (13:50):
So how much of the move or that next February thing had you have planned out or was it just the anticipation of freedom?
Post MBA Guest (13:58):
It was the anticipation of the three line resignation letter that I gave to my boss, because in my mind and how I had it planned was it's going to be this open-ended thing. I'm going to start with a year off and if I wanted to take another year off, I'm going to take another year. Just going by that sort of metric and the good thing of having something open-ended like that is that I didn't have to have everything planned out. I just knew that I wanted to have the freedom to travel or go to language school or whatever I wanted to do during that time.
Victoria Hefty (14:40):
This is what I hear a lot. What if I have a gap on my resume or what if someone is going to ask me what I did during this time? Did you have any of those thoughts in your head like other MBAs or were you just like, I'm going to figure it out and I'm not worried if there's a gap? What was your approach?
Post MBA Guest (14:58):
In my mind at first I thought, okay, I can craft this to be like, oh okay if I do these certain things, it'll look a certain way so then I'll have a good story to tell. I think during the process, I just became unapologetic about it. So as I see it, if I have this good education and I have these experiences and I have these skills, these things don't go away because I took some time away from corporate America. So if they mean something, they're always going to mean something. If I get written off because of it, they never meant anything. So I'm relying on the fact that, hey, I know what I'm doing, I have these skills, I have these experiences. And when you go back to the experience with asking for the sabbatical and not getting it, if I'm applying somewhere and that's a big holdup for someone, or for a company or for whoever's reviewing my resume, then I'm perfectly fine with not working there.
Victoria Hefty (16:01):
So you're traveling, and I'll talk a little bit about what you did, but when you're traveling, to what extent is work truly out of your mind, or is it like, you're thinking about what is that next step, but you're not overly focused on it? Where was work professionally in your mind during this time off?
Post MBA Guest (16:19):
So in my mind I thought, okay, if I do this for a certain number of months, I can tell the story the equivalent of someone who took maternity leave or paternity leave. Hey, someone left the workforce for this long, I left this long. I can still do these things. I would say probably six months in, I didn't even think about it. I had saved a ridiculous amount of money, I was having the time of my life doing things that I had always wanted to do. One of the things was language school. I went twice. Seven week intensive summer programs at Middlebury College in Vermont. I had applied twice before, but didn't have the time to go. I did it for two summers. I did Portuguese one summer and then French the next summer. I wasn't thinking about work.
Victoria Hefty (17:10):
I know we didn't talk too much about pre-MBA life, but how big of an aspect of work was to your identity for your sense of who you were or has it always kind of been not really the core?
Post MBA Guest (17:23):
I've never identified myself by my work, but it was always important because I had bills. So even if I don't view myself as this person, I kind of got to be that person to pay the bills. Even telling the story these days, it's an awkward... Even during that time, some people were like, oh, so what did you do? That's just a question people ask you, and it's like, deep breath and here goes the story.
Victoria Hefty (17:51):
I can relate.
Post MBA Guest (17:54):
I think I'm very much more... Life enthusiast is probably more how I identify than any past jobs or anything else I've done. And even through this process, I think there's even more of that. What I do for a living or what I do to pay bills I should say, isn't core to how I identify, and it's become more unapologetic over that time to say...
Post MBA Guest (18:24):
I saw some meme that is, I think it's showing something, like someone in an interview, and it's like, it says something about like, I'm passionate about being able to pay for food. I'm passionate about being able to pay bills.
Post MBA Guest (18:38):
Obviously these things that I get through working. I love problem solving. I like taking broken processes and fixing them. I like making things better, but I can do that with crossword puzzles too. It doesn't have to be within the realm of corporate America. Those are personality things with me, and sometimes that outlet is through my work, sometimes that outlet is through learning a language, sometimes that outlet is through just learning new things.
Victoria Hefty (19:07):
And have you always been that way or did you have a moment growing up or early career that you kind of went on this path? I feel like I very much was like, it's work, it's my identity, and only after I had my daughter did I really learn to sort of separate it. Not to mention, I did do a sabbatical post-banking where I took my bonus money, bought a one-way ticket to the Caribbean and was a bartender. So that was awesome. But even then I was like, I have a year. It was very structured. I'm going to have a year and then I'm going to go back to work. I wouldn't call it a true identity break in the same way. So for you, would you say that it's either how you were raised or just you, your personality?
Post MBA Guest (19:50):
Both. From my first job working at Old Navy, for the most part, I'm just trying to find some joy in the work I was doing, but I was making seven bucks an hour and I was getting people jeans from up stock. I think from that point in time was okay, I do this because I like taking my girlfriend to the movies after work on Saturday. I'm not passionate about selling jeans or whatever else I was supposed to be doing there, handing out tags in the dressing room. Which is, as a side note, some times in business school made me feel like kind of an odd ball.
Victoria Hefty (20:24):
Well I was going to ask this, that was my next question. So you're at business school, but you mean, even when it comes to recruiting season when everyone goes nuts to groups, I mean, where were those moments where you felt like, I don't really think the same way a lot of my peers do.
Post MBA Guest (20:42):
I looked around at... We had a joint networking session I think with, I can't remember who the firm was. We were there and I just remember that people were really elbowing people out of the way to try to talk to partners and bigwigs, whoever was there. And I was like, these people are more intense than I am. I love to think that I'm a hard worker, X, Y, and Z, blah, blah, blah. But I mean, there're these things in my personality that are just, I can recognize someone is like, okay, I have to shmooze with you because I want this job.
Post MBA Guest (21:17):
I'm not a shmoozer, I'm pretty directly when it comes to things. I don't want to talk bad about my classmates. But I'm like, oh, the bankers, I was hearing stories about people missing class and flying to New York to take a lunch meeting with someone and flying back. I'm like, do you know how expensive class is? And I'm like, for you to fly to New York, something like that would never cross my mind. I can fully admit, oh, okay, these people are a little more intense than I am. During undergrad, first time someone came back to campus and gave a presentation and they were talking about whenever they're working on Wall Street and whatever, 22, 23 years old and made a ton of money, a hundred grand and some change, but the 80 hours was a good week. In my mind, I'm like, that sounds like you're working two, 40 hour a week jobs.
Post MBA Guest (22:17):
To bring it back to the point, I just identified that in myself... I think going in, I would have thought like, oh yeah, I'm a gunner, I go for it. I've always been someone who wants to hit goals, wants to do whatever. Got to school, I was like, I'm tired.
Victoria Hefty (22:32):
Exactly. So now looking forward, where does the MBA fit I guess into that? Does it just allow you to basically have like a floor on what types of roles will allow you to... How do you sort of think about this MBA degree professionally?
Post MBA Guest (22:47):
Professionally now it hopefully will put a floor on salary and it gave me a great network of people to talk to, to learn more about positions, learn more about opening some of these jobs that you won't see hitting job boards. I think it was good for a recalibration. I learned a lot about myself and where I fit in the... I don't want to call it ambition, but I think the experience gave me like, oh, okay, I actually don't care about being someone's CFO. Thinking about it now kind of sounds miserable.
Victoria Hefty (23:31):
A lot of people don't realize that until they are CFO.
Post MBA Guest (23:32):
And I have been there. I have the post-MBA job. I'm making the money. It's Tuesday at four 15, and I'm just sort of staring out the window, trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life when everyone else, your family and people around you are like oh, whatever big fancy degree, or whatever, you make whatever kind of money, you're not concerned about a lot of things in life. Maybe it's just getting too high in Maslow's hierarchy, but it didn't matter much.
Victoria Hefty (24:01):
Here's the thing. If they had said yes, to the month long leave of absence and you had continued to work in Shanghai. What was the work culture like there? Do you feel like you would have hit that same feeling, just now you're looking outside dreaming about going to Tokyo? Where do you think looking back that would've led you? It's hard to know, but let's just have fun with it.
Post MBA Guest (24:30):
My time in Shanghai, we were all there to bring best practices to the region. So we had a finance student from the United States and there were the engineers that were there from Germany, the operations people there from South America. And I got to take a look at how other places view business. And the Germans, they're very on time for meetings and very on time for leaving the office. It seemed like that's more of a European business culture is when I'm at work I'm here to do my thing, but they still have their local holiday time.
Post MBA Guest (25:08):
So it's like, okay, we are leaving for seven weeks. I'm going on holiday and I won't be back and there's not a like, you can reach me in emergency, you can do whatever. No, I'm gone. It just made me think that the company had been around for, I think it was founded sometime in 1880 something. been around, at that time, 130 years, and someone takes a six week, seven week vacation holiday, and they can come back and they can keep the sign on the door. The company's not going to fall apart without you there. So I actually think had I stayed in Shanghai and stayed in that work environment, and that's more of, I think how my personality fits, I do think had they approved the four months leave of absence and I got a taste of what that was like, then I probably would have quit.
Victoria Hefty (26:01):
Even hearing you talk about it, have you considered working for that type of role again? Obviously at a different stage of life, but nonetheless, international?
Post MBA Guest (26:10):
I'm not sure I would live abroad again for an extended period of time like that again, but I would look at working for a European company that has US operations that has a culture of... And again, it's all anecdotal. I can't say it's across the board, but it feels like my view is more like the view that those coworkers had, that this is part of your life, it's not your life. Life is for living. They spend their time on holiday. They go do this thing. They go to that thing. Work is very serious between the hours of... When you're at work, work is serious, get work done, but when you're off the clock, you're off the clock, and it's not something that stays in their mind. I think this was like post B-School, I was talking to someone who was interested in a job at the company I was working for, wanted to chat and asked me, what keeps you up at night? Nothing. I sleep well.
Post MBA Guest (27:14):
If something keeps me up at night, it's certainly not work problems. I mean, I could see that changing if I were still like doing my own entrepreneurial stuff. But outside of that, I'm not, no. I'm not an ambulance driver. I am not an emergency room doctor. Those people have jobs that are very urgent, you have something to do right now that needs to be done. It's actually life or death. You need some analysis done on numbers, mm.
Victoria Hefty (27:41):
I cannot wait to hear what you're up to in just a couple of years, it's going to be so good. So a couple of questions. I imagine when people, especially... I don't know if you've done any reunions or you catch up with classmates, they ask what you're doing, what question do you get asked either the most or that you still remember that when you answered it, people are like, I can't do that, and you're like, sure you can.
Post MBA Guest (28:05):
I keep in contact with a group of people from my class and they knew about all this stuff when I started doing it, so they just kind of know. Sometimes people look like I'm doing the impossible. Again, there's that part of my personality's like, no man, just quit.
Victoria Hefty (28:20):
Do you really think it's that simple? I mean, I think it is.
Post MBA Guest (28:25):
A good friend of mine said something about, make a list of all the things that you would do if you had $10 million, extensive list of all these things you'd do. Then take a look at that list and how many of those things really require $10 million? It's not many of them. So if you can come up with actually putting a plan behind, hey, pick a number, what number savings is going to make you feel good about quitting and not having something lined up? What are these things that you want to do? And it's like, hey, I want a, whatever. It might be like, I want a Ferrari. Okay. How much does it cost to lease a Ferrari for a month? And once you have a number around it and it becomes less of this dream, less than this crazy nebulous out in the universe thing that sounds cool, but maybe I can do it, maybe I can't. How much does that cost?
Post MBA Guest (29:16):
Okay. Well, hey, if you want to lease a Ferrari for a month, it's going to cost you, I don't know, $2,500, and if you have $2,500, you can go do it. It might come at the expense of something else, you might get divorced, but there's an understanding that it can be done, you just have to look at the trade-offs.
Victoria Hefty (29:39):
Yeah. Does it feel foreign to you when people ask you... I feel like they probably do look at you and they're like, I could never. What ultimately is the difference? Because you're dealing with other smart, competent, somewhat adventurous people who still don't see themselves in your actions. So what ultimately in your mind do you feel like is the separation? Do you feel like you've just done it a few more times, so it's less scary for you? Do you feel like you just have a different risk tolerance? Is it just more simple than that?
Post MBA Guest (30:12):
I think, and again, I'm kind of lumping all MBA types together, but I think we've all been, throughout our lives, very good at meeting other people's expectations. There's always a goal that I got to meet. Like oh, I made senior manager, got to make partner. I can do this after I make partner. I can do this after I have a couple of million in the bank. I can do this after the kids go to college. I can do this at this time. And that's the thing, I don't think I have any more risk tolerance than anyone else, I just pulled the trigger or I just didn't scare. That's really it. I've had conversations with friends and it's like, okay, you don't need to do what I did, but you can do your thing, and if you want to go to the Caribbean for a year and be a bartender, you can plan your life around going to the Caribbean for a year and being a bartender if you think it's going to take you however long you get a job, you can save that number of months of expenses.
Post MBA Guest (31:13):
If you think there's something wrong with that, and if you think you might not be able to do that, then I don't know. You can have a zero interest credit card that you can put your expenses on and only have to pay whatever small amount of the bill until you actually do get a job. But I can say that it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
Victoria Hefty (31:29):
Tell me about that. I think that's a perfect way to close out our discussion. I love that. So it was a lot easier than you thought it was going to be.
Post MBA Guest (31:40):
It's just a thing of, this sounds so cliche, but you just have to do it. Once I printed out my resignation letter, signed it, asked my boss to talk to him, handed him the letter and just said it, it was like this weight was off my back and it was like, oh, I can do this thing now.
Post MBA Guest (31:59):
I wish I had better words. Executing on was like knocking the first domino over. Once you do that it's, hey, how expensive is it to stay in San Paolo for six weeks? It's cheaper than staying there for one. It's cheaper than staying there for one week. I think it came a lot down to figuring out, actually putting some numbers around the dream you have and that's whatever it might be. Everyone doesn't have to have my dream, but I think everyone has their thing that they want to do. If you leave it out there as this, I'll do this when... Yeah. I don't know. Those retirement commercials that you see on TV? None of the retired people I know were doing that. The retired people I know are playing golf occasionally, taking care of their health and playing with their grandkids. You're not going to go backpacking in Vietnam when you're retired.
Post MBA Guest (33:02):
I'm not going to do that now. I'd do it 10 years ago, five years ago, maybe. I'm not doing that now. For me, it was, I'm just going to take an advance on my retirement.
Victoria Hefty (33:15):
I love put a number around your dreams and then just go for it. Putting advance on your... I love that.
Post MBA Guest (33:21):
Just put a number on it. And if it's out of reach, like it's out of reach, but at least you know, in your mind, that I can lease a Ferrari for a month for $2,500. It's not a dream anymore, it's leasing a Ferrari for a month costing this much.
Victoria Hefty (33:33):
But it's funny, when you put a number, especially if you're an MBA type, you oddly enough find a way to make it happen because we are goal-oriented.
Post MBA Guest (33:42):
The original point was we've done so much of that stuff for other people that, oh, you're telling me that, okay, your measure of my aptitude is this test. Okay. My real aptitude may be wherever, but I'll take your little test. Whatever you need. All right. I'll crack your little case. We were very, very good at measuring up to other people's bars, and I think so much so that maybe even some of that is tied into our own identity and we've never taken the time to really look at what would a dope life look like for me, and how do I get there? You can say, oh, someone else's view of success is top five B-School, MBB consulting, whatever it might be. It's like, oh, I can do that. I know how to do that. But when it comes to the life that you want to live, you coming up with strategy for it and you reaching that goal, I mean, I honestly think some people just haven't even thought about it or try to put some real skills and passion and elbow grease into figuring out what they want.
Victoria Hefty (34:54):
I know. So many good things. I know we're running out of time or out of time. One last question. How has retelling or sharing certain parts, maybe you haven't articulated in a long time, how does that make you feel when you look back at your journey here?
Post MBA Guest (35:10):
I'm super happy I did it, especially during these pandemic, quarantine times. I think when I did it, it felt urgent to say, I want to do this now and it needs to be done now, but the world will be around forever and I could have easily pushed it back for a few years. Well, I had left the country every year since 2001 and I haven't left since 2019 because of the pandemic. So retelling the story and thinking about where I am in my life now makes me, one really happy I did it, and then two, I shake my head at the number that I needed to feel good about quitting, I shake my head at how seriously I took myself.
Post MBA Guest (35:56):
I look back and think like, I'm glad I did it when I did it, I'm glad that I met the people I met, and I believe that all of this stuff... You meet people when you need them and I wouldn't want to change any of that. But looking back, I would have just thrown more caution to the wind, I may have, who knows, I may have tried to do a couple of months before business school. Just looking back, I spent so much time getting up the nerve to do the things I wanted to do in life, and it just sounds crazy to me that I was nervous about how other people would react to me doing things that I want to do.
Victoria Hefty (36:38):
Looking back, would you have asked to be let go, instead of waiting for that five months?
Post MBA Guest (36:49):
Would I have asked to be let go?
Victoria Hefty (36:50):
Knowing what you know now, because you said a couple of things, one, the number was... Looking back, it didn't need to be that high and you wish you would've done it sooner. Looking back, do you feel like you probably should have been like, listen, I'm ready. Or are you glad that you stayed?
Post MBA Guest (37:04):
That was five months of me going through the motions. I'm trying to think, would I have volunteered? People would've looked at me like I was crazy if I volunteered. I think if there were, in some parallel world, there was a situation where they said, hey, we're looking for volunteers for people to quit and we'll give you whatever, six weeks, two months, three months salary, yeah I would go.
Victoria Hefty (37:29):
I love it.
Post MBA Guest (37:30):
I definitely would've. I would've gotten this process started earlier. I did a lot of time. There's something fulfilling about doing something for yourself, and I think I've taken that with me. I get up and I try to work out before anything else. I start the day doing something for myself before I give my time to other people or it might be like, I'm just getting up and I'm just going to read or whatever it might be, there's something fulfilling for me too, and it's whatever, selfish, self-indulgent, but it works for me to just do something for me. It's crazy talking about it years later, but yeah, I would encourage people to... People don't have to do what I did, but I think people should look into doing the thing that they want to do, and figuring out what it takes to do it. Whether or not you ultimately do it is kind of on them. But yeah, it was good to put some numbers around it, going to put a timeline around it, to know that, hey, this isn't a dream. This is an actual thing that I can do that and I've done. When I'm 70, 80, 90, however long I live to be, I know I'll look back fondly.
Victoria Hefty (38:53):
Thank you for listening to this episode. If you are interested in crafting your next career move or reading the transcript of the conversation, please visit postmbapivot.com. Finally, if you enjoyed today's discussion, make sure to leave a review and subscribe to receive the next episode.
