your second career

One of my favorite bloggers (and local blogger babe), Katie, posted last week about her second career inspired by another one of my favorite bloggers, Victoria. The gist of Victoria’s original post is that she and a few friends were sitting around a table and one posed the question “If you guys could do anything for your next career, what would you be doing?” Inspired by their posts, I thought I'd think about my answer.

It’s a question we all think about, right? Especially those of us in our 20’s, or at least we should be. Forbes estimates us millennials will have 15-20 jobs during our lifetime. So in actuality, it’s quite practical to think about what your next career is because you may find yourself making that choice sooner rather than later. That takes a bit of the day dream out of the answer, doesn’t it?

So I’ll answer the question practically, but just initially. It’s not a secret that I’m working on my MBA. And while I love my current job, the industry doesn’t demand that I am an MBA to be successful. That flexibly affords me the opportunity to take all sorts of classes and I’m finding myself drawn to courses in organizational efficiency, strategic marketing, and brand management. So maybe my next career will be something that threads those three focuses together.

That answers the question right?

Sure. But the purpose of this exercise is to dig a little deeper and find that next career that is as much a day dream as it is a career stretch. Something that you would love so much to be doing that it feels just out of reach but not so out of reach that it is not attainable.

So the stretch dream answer is: I really want to be a small business owner and own a coffee, beer, and wine bar. It would be a small coffee house during the day and in the evening a place where you can grab a delicious glass of wine or craft pint. My hope is that it would be more than a small brick and mortar; it would be a community mainstay where I knew everyone's name and they mine. What is more important than what is served is how the place interacts with the community around it. I want it to be a place for community engagement whether that be open mic nights, or featuring artwork from local high school artists, or something else to that effect. Sure, your everyday coffee shop would be sustainable and profitable in the right neighborhood but I can't see that fulfilling me. I'm a relationship builder by nature (and profession) so my own business would need to satiate that thirst too.

And if it also satiates my thirst for wine, I am a-okay with that too.

What's your dream second career? Check out Katie's Trading Spaces inspired dream here or Victoria's wine fueled dream here.

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