{"id":3804,"date":"2013-12-18T02:57:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T07:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/?p=3804"},"modified":"2014-01-14T04:32:21","modified_gmt":"2014-01-14T09:32:21","slug":"the-mid-life-pivot-dont-call-it-a-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/the-mid-life-pivot-dont-call-it-a-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mid-Life Pivot (Don&#8217;t Call It a Crisis)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps people wouldn&#8217;t be so hesitant to change careers during mid-life if they paid a little bit more attention to start-ups. Having been in start-up mode for the past few years, I&#8217;ve read numerous articles with titles like,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>&#8220;Five things you should know about start-ups&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;Eleven reasons start-ups fail&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;Six keys to start-up success&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>&#8220;Nine start-ups founded by flesh-eating aliens from Planet Zargon&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(Okay, well, maybe I made up that last one.) How does start-up advice apply to mid-career switches? One piece that resonates with me is,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Accept that the company you end up with will bear little resemblance to the one with which you started.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/7-Generation-Games-LogoMed.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"7 Generation Games Logo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/7-Generation-Games-LogoMed-300x112.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"112\" \/><\/a><a title=\"Research design meets actual people: 7 Generation Games\" href=\"http:\/\/www.7generationgames.com\/purchase\/\">7 Generation Games is a company that sells adventure games that teach students math.<\/a>\u00a0Our focus is upper elementary and middle school. The games are historically accurate, with consultants from the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation and Turtle Mountain Chippewa.<\/p>\n<p>Four years ago, I wanted to create an online program to teach statistics to community college students. I had a lot of cool ideas about routing students to instruction based on the right or wrong answers they gave. Here is what happened &#8211; the district administrators I talked to said that they really needed a program to intervene earlier. In many areas, there was a lot more political pressure for public K-12 schools to change than at the community college level. In short, there wasn&#8217;t nearly as much market demand for what I wanted to do as for something else in the area of using technology to teach mathematics.<\/p>\n<p>So, I did what most start-ups do when they find the market isn&#8217;t there. Pivot. If you&#8217;re finding a lack of demand for your skills in the workplace &#8211; the job openings for word processors, administrative assistants or middle managers are just not there anymore, then maybe you need to think of yourself as a start-up. As Tom Peters calls it, You, Inc. There is also a really key lesson here for mid-career shifts. Notice I did &#8220;something else in the area of using technology to teach mathematics&#8221;. I love math and programming and I don&#8217;t think I would be happy in a career that did not involve those two things.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, we hired a Chief Marketing Officer who had a decade of experience in journalism. She&#8217;d probably be bored programming and hate it. She writes most of the company blogs, our marketing materials and press releases. Since we&#8217;re a small company, she also lends a hand co-authoring grant proposals and scientific reports and writing scripts for some of the instructional videos.<\/p>\n<p>The keys to a successful pivot, whether you&#8217;re a person or a start-up, are<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Identify a market.<\/li>\n<li>Identify what you really love doing.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t give up before you get really good at it<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The intersection of those three is where you want to be. I&#8217;ve had people argue with me about each of those points, but I&#8217;d argue right back.<\/p>\n<p><em>If you really love it, a market shouldn&#8217;t matter<\/em>\u00a0&#8211; Um, no. Maybe if you are independently wealthy. If there isn&#8217;t a market, maybe it&#8217;s a bad idea. Maybe no one really needs embroidered toaster covers. If you can&#8217;t make a decent living at it, it&#8217;s a hobby.<\/p>\n<p><em>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you love it<\/em>. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame said that his boss advised against loaning money for someone&#8217;s passion, because passionate people aren&#8217;t objective about the bottom line. There&#8217;s some truth to that, but it&#8217;s also true that if you love what you are doing, you&#8217;ll stick with it long enough to make it through what\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.squidoo.com\/theDipBook\">Seth Godin refers to as The Dip<\/a>. In our company, that was a period of several months when the founders worked without pay as we developed our first game. For students, it can be that middle of a graduate program when the excitement of starting has worn off, graduation seems a distant haze and final exams loom right around the corner. If you really love providing health care, teaching or whatever your field, you&#8217;ll power through. The other reason it matters if you love it is that you only get one life. I spend 3\/4 of my waking hours in my office. I want to spend them happy.<\/p>\n<p>LISTEN CAREFULLY &#8211; when I started programming in javascript and PHP I wasn&#8217;t all that good at it because I had just started. No one begins as an expert and too many people give up because they aren&#8217;t immediately good at statistics, writing lesson plans or taking someone&#8217;s blood pressure. What they don&#8217;t seem to comprehend is that none of the people to whom they are comparing themselves started out that good, either. Maybe you&#8217;ll even fail a course. Let&#8217;s hope not, but it happens. Dr. Erich Longie, a friend of mine who was tribal college president, gave this talk to many students:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So what if it takes you five years or even seven years to get your degree? When you walk up to graduate and they hand you that diploma, it&#8217;s not going to have a note on the bottom, P.S. It took him seven years. You&#8217;ll walk across that stage a college graduate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Our company didn&#8217;t take off making educational technology in 2011, but we&#8217;re doing it now, and that&#8217;s what matters.<\/p>\n<p>=============<\/p>\n<p>This post is brought to you by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaplanuniversity.edu\/home.aspx\">Kaplan <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogher.com\/\">Blogher<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Whether you\u2019re seeking further success in your current role or a new opportunity, Kaplan University can help you prepare for the exciting possibilities ahead.*<\/p>\n<p>As an accredited university built on more than 75 years of experience,\u2020 Kaplan University offers a wide range of career-focused programs designed to develop the skills and knowledge leading employers seek. Our focus: to offer you the most direct educational path to achieve your goals.<br \/>\nAre you ready for a change? Learn more at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/ktzPQC\" target=\"_blank\">kaplanuniversity.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>* Kaplan University cannot guarantee employment or career advancement.<\/p>\n<p>\u2020 Kaplan University is regionally accredited.\u00a0Please\u00a0visit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaplanuniversity.edu\/about\/accreditation-licensing.aspx\">http:\/\/www.kaplanuniversity.edu\/about\/accreditation-licensing.aspx#<\/a>\u00a0for additional information about institutional and programmatic accreditation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps people wouldn&#8217;t be so hesitant to change careers during mid-life if they paid a little bit more attention to start-ups. Having been in start-up mode for the past few years, I&#8217;ve read numerous articles with titles like, &#8220;Five things you should know about start-ups&#8221; &#8220;Eleven reasons start-ups fail&#8221; &#8220;Six keys to start-up success&#8221; &#8220;Nine&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-de-mars-general-life-ramblings","category-the-julia-group"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3804"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3867,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions\/3867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}