Welcome to Shameless Careers newsletter

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the Shameless Careers newsletter. I am running this newsletter alongisde my podcast Shameless Careers which is on a mission to help people build careers they love (available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts).

Earlier this year, I decided to start a podcast, Shameless Careers, to find answers to the question that has been intriguing me for a while: "How do people find a career they love?"

I started with interviews of people who have made drastic career pivots—for example, from consulting to yoga teaching, from law to fashion design, and from prestigious big tech jobs to entrepreneurship. I think such extreme cases of career pivots provide particularly interesting insights into the question of how people find careers they love, because these people have taken significant risks—financial and especially "perception" risks of detouring from a prestigious path—to find out what they really want to do.

All of these risks and trade-offs are something I'm focusing on in most of my interviews, and it keeps fascinating me how courageous these people are and how empowering it is to take ownership of your career—unapologetically, regardless of what others say. Of course, behind the scenes, I'm always asking the question: "Have you ever regretted your decision? Would you ever go back?" This is simply to find out: all the doubts that hold us back from taking career risks—are they confirmed once you actually take a step towards the unknown? So far, no one has said they have regretted it (with the most extreme version of this being, "I see my previous job in nightmares")—even if they are worse off financially. But I'll keep asking this question—after all, we all know it's not black and white, and sometimes it takes leaving a certain career path behind to come back to it and appreciate it more.

But I don't want to just interview guests who have made dramatic career changes. I also want to speak with people who have stayed within the same industry—and are happy doing what they do—to ask them how they figured out what makes them tick so early on and how they shaped their role to match their passions. In the end, I suspect that for many of us, career fulfilment is closer than we think and doesn't require dramatic changes—maybe just some tweaks to the role or joining a more empowering team or working under a less toxic boss :). All of us have chosen what we do now for some reason, right?

Finally, I also want to speak to professionals who are helping people find careers they love. Career coaches are the most obvious choice because they see so many people who struggle to find fulfillment. Here I want to find out: based on what they see, what do they think are the main challenges with finding fulfillment—lack of purpose, societal pressures about following a prestigious path, confusion about strengths, or a mix of all of this? But I don't want to stop at coaches—I was shocked when every single interview with people who discovered what they want to do mentioned the importance of "finding a quiet space to hear their inner voice." At first, I thought I was dreaming—my Eastern European brain hears voices only in VERY specific instances involving strong alcoholic beverages (but that's a conversation for another podcast :)). Anyway, the more this inner voice kept coming up, the more I became convinced that accessing our minds can probably give us the most powerful clues about what we are meant to do—and, in fact, right now, the interviews with mindfulness professionals are some of my favourite on the channel.

So what's with this newsletter? Here, I want to distill the learnings from each interview—and, hopefully, over time, piece together a clear picture (if not to say—a process!) that can help people build careers they love.

I invite you to embark on this journey with me—and, most importantly, share your personal experiences with this important topic by responding to the newsletter email. I will be super interested to read these (you have probably guessed that I love this topic)—and I will be responding to each comment.

With that, I'm super excited to finally kick this off, and — until next time.

Be Shameless.

Best,
Varia
Host of Shameless Careers