Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:02:52: Exploring scripts
00:06:14: Looking at skills
00:08:30: Know your enough
00:15:09: Portfolio vs resume
00:21:06: Your portfolio story
00:23:11: Advice for navigating career changes
00:29:30: Scenario planning
00:34:13: April's career advice
00:37:09: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This week is one of our Ask the Expert episodes and you're going to hear me in conversation with April Rinne on career change.  And I know career change, from personal experience, can often feel scary, intimidating, exciting, overwhelming, lots of emotions to grapple with all at the same time.  It can also feel hard, I think, to practically figure out how to make it happen.  So, even if you're really motivated by the change you want to make, you then think, "Well, what does it look like to make this move?" 

Together with April, I explore three key themes: firstly, zooming out, what do we need to unlearn and relearn if we want to make a change, and I think just generally get better at navigating change in our Squiggly Careers;  then we go on to talk about some of the skills that you can develop to support you to change in a way that works for you, and lots of things that she talks about are very relatable for me, things that perhaps I wish I'd done sooner when I was making career change, or things that worked; and we finish by discussing April's practical experiences, as she's made a number of career changes herself, and what she's learned along the way.  And I particularly enjoyed that part of the conversation.  I think it was just really nice to hear her stories, just what's supported her to navigate her squiggle and to create this portfolio approach to her career. 

So, whether you're already in the midst of career change right now, or maybe it's just a seed of an idea that you're intrigued by, I hope you find the episode with April really useful.  And I'll be back at the end to say goodbye.

April, thank you so much for joining us on the Squiggly Careers podcast.  As we were just saying, I can't believe we've not had a conversation before today. 

April Rinne: I know.  Well, better late than never and it was in the stars, and I'm really happy to be here and to meet you as well. 

Sarah Ellis: And today, our Ask the Expert topic is career change.  And we know, and I think both April and I have experienced it firsthand ourselves more than once, career change can feel intimidating and exciting and energising, it can feel full of uncertainty whilst also feeling incredibly motivating and meaningful.  I think it prompts a lot of emotions and a lot of like, "How do I make this happen?"  So, emotionally it's quite tough, but also practically it feels like a hard thing to do.  So, we're going to dive into that today.  We're really going to think about if that is you, if you're thinking about changing career, maybe it's a really small seed of an idea, or maybe you're really ready to make the career change right now.  I think we're going to talk about some ideas, some mindsets, some skillsets and some tools that we just really hope will help you with that career change process. 

So, let's start off with this idea that really stuck out to me from April's work around scripts.  This word "script" comes up a lot in April's book, which is called Flux, and there's this brilliant phrase where you say, "We're stuck in an old script that often isn't serving us", and as soon as I read that, it got multiple highlights, it got highlighted, it got circled.  And so, it's these stories that we tell ourselves that don't serve us.  And I think this is true in loads of different areas, actually, of careers.  I think we could talk about all sorts of areas where we have old scripts that aren't useful.  But I think for career change, recognising those old scripts is quite a good place to start.  So perhaps, April, you could just talk about what some of those old scripts sound like, which are the ones that you see people talking to you a lot about, maybe even which ones did you experience?

April Rinne: So, script is this idea of what are the stories and the narratives by which you live your life.  Are you the author of your own life, or are you living a life that someone else wrote the script for you to follow?  And I think we see that all over the place, everything from parents or caretakers expecting you to go do XYZ for your profession, or peer pressure, or frankly social media, media as a whole, these narratives just from society, which last I checked, no two individuals are the same, we're all unique, so why in the world would we all be striving for a similar kind of script, if you will?  So, much of what we're talking about here is identity.  How do you show up in the world, and how do you find meaning and purpose and value and respect for yourself and from others?  And so to just acknowledge that's a very human condition, it requires reflection, it requires self-awareness, it requires getting to know that inner drumbeat, those things that bring you alive, that make you uniquely you, that allow you to bring your best self, not just to work, but to life.  Yes, it's work, but for me, that's the most nourishing, rewarding kind of reflection, journaling, prompting, etc, that you can have.

In my book, I go through a series of reflective questions that individually you can do in teams, but so much of it is getting to know parts of you that we don't get to talk about that often.  And not in a kind of "Woo-woo", I've had a lot of people actually say to me, they're like, "This is therapy, but it's awfully therapeutic" what they gain from that process.  But what I find, it's not so much about having a kind of major "Aha", I mean that will often happen along the way, but it's more committing to small but deliberate practice; it's more about taking a few minutes a couple times a week, setting aside time; it's grooving a different mental muscle that helps you do this kind of reflection, that helps you get clear on again, what parts of your script did you pick up somewhere along the way, but you'd really do better for yourself if you could let go of them.  The new script, what are the things, the kind of career you'd to build, the kind of life you'd like to build that really aligns with your values and being the author of your own life?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that aligns really nicely.  When you do read any research about career change, I'm thinking particularly here about Herminia Ibarra's work at London Business School, which lots of our listeners will be familiar with.  She has a great summary of where she does describe, none of us like it because it always sounds harder than the silver bullet approach, but essentially the most successful career change happens incrementally.  And actually, when I think about my own experiences, you don't really go from zero to hero.  What you do is you start to experiment, you start to test, you start to develop some of the skills I think that we're going to talk about next, and so I think also letting go of the pressure of thinking, "Well, this career change has to happen overnight".

I actually remember thinking, I felt a bit of pressure in my career change, I think because people were asking us about it for quite a long time, because we ran Amazing If for seven years as not even a side project, that wasn't even a phrase at the time, just something outside of work, essentially.  And people were like, "Oh, is that because that's what you want to go and do?"  And I was like, "I'm not sure".  The career change wasn't the motivation for me, I was doing it for other reasons at that moment.  And so I think as well, just giving yourself that freedom to explore and not to think, "Well, I must have made this move by this date", because I think that gets people into feeling both disheartened and disappointed, well certainly when I've spent time with people trying to kind of navigate the tricky world of career change. 

So, I like the fact that when we talk about skills in a second, the skills feel quite cross-cutting to me.  Whether the change has come my way and I can't do a lot about it or whether I'm planning for that change, skills is I think quite a good place to start.  And you share these superpowers in Flux, eight superpowers, all of which I think are useful.  I was reading them all thinking, "Yeah, that would be helpful".  But there were a few where I thought, reflecting on my own experiences, career changing, and just generally navigating change, a few that maybe stood out certainly is a good starting point for listeners who are like, "Right, so what are these skills that are going to help me, ether because I'm suddenly now experiencing change and I am trying to see it through a lens of opportunity, or actually I kind of want to make this change happen".  And there are a few different ones we can talk about.  So, I'll let you choose which one you want to start with.

April Rinne: So, "Know your enough", this is chapter five, yes.  What we're really getting at here is, and again very much related to these scripts and helping people recognise that today, in today's society, we live in a world by and large that is about more, more, more.  And that is not just more money or more power, that is more likes, more clicks, more clothes, more stuff, more things to do, the more busy you are, the more important you are, it's everywhere, and it's making a lot of people quite miserable.  And I think we do see it for sure in the workplace, and what I was saying earlier, "Unless I'm making more money, I will somehow be deemed, I don't know, less valuable, my identity will take a hit", whatever it may be.  But there's this idea of more, more, more.  And there's this implicit message that it's not just about having enough, doing enough, showcasing enough, it's about, "Are you enough, unless you buy this product or that service or have that title?"  These are all scripts.  And so, what we do is we're trying to get people -- this superpower is developing an awareness and a knowledge of the difference between more, more, more; and again, that's mostly society saying these things to you. 

When you are constantly after more, whatever that more may be, when you're constantly after more, by design you will never find enough.  Because what happens when you find more; then what?  "I need more, I need more".  And we keep, so to speak, kicking that can down the road.  But when you know you're enough, which is both "your", so your point of balance and harmony, as well as that "you are" enough.  And I often like to just call out anyone listening, to just let the word sink in that you are enough, that you always have been enough, and that no one should ever tell you anything different, you always will be enough, that that is your starting point to be able to see and find abundance. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that point you just made there at the end of, in a search or request for more, you're never going to succeed essentially.  And it really reminds me of sometimes when we're doing work with people on their careers, have you got that kind of mentality of, "I'll be happy when", you know, "I'll be happy when I get to this point; I'll be happy when I've got this job title; or, I'll be happy when I get paid this amount of money".  Now, the money one, I think I don't want to take away from people, that I think when you're figuring out your enoughs, money matters.  And actually I'd everyone to talk more about money and careers, and we're doing some work at the moment around Squiggly Careers and kind of going, "Well, that doesn't mean you need to get paid less.  You need to, you need to be really confident about showcasing your strengths and talking about how you're going to add value". 

So, what we don't ever want people to feel is, I think sometimes the fear with career change is, "Oh, but I don't want to keep doing what I'm doing.  But if I go and work in a different sector, or if I do move from, say, marketing to corporate responsibility, if I move out of my area that I've spent a lot of time maybe building equity in, well that means that I'm going to get paid less or I'm not going to be rewarded as well".  And I mean, there's definitely some systemic challenges around that, certainly in terms of how organisations are set up that we're really interested in.  But also, I think I always challenge people to, "Don't start with that assumption".  If you start with the assumption that you're not going to earn enough, then inevitably you're already fixing on that; versus, "Well, what would it look to have enough?". 

Even in my own story, so many people say, "So, when you first start a company, it's really useful if you can just not pay yourself for a year", and Helen and I just went. "Well, no, that is completely unacceptable".  In the UK, there are very high childcare costs, I'm sure it's probably the same in the US, and we've both got massive mortgages, let's be honest.  So we were like, "There is no way.  We can talk about our enoughs, but there is no way that we can just run a company and not pay ourselves a salary.  We need to pay ourselves a salary from day one".  And we were both really clear that our enoughs had to include that.  And then I think that really helped me, because I'd really figured out, "Well, what were the things that perhaps were part of that portfolio?"  And as you said, as it moved from just being this brilliant thing that gave us loads of energy, to being a business that gave us loads of energy, we were like, "Right, we've got to get some cash in the bank that means that the enough works, that it works for us".  And I think often, even just figuring out some of those numbers and what that needs to look like can be really helpful to people.  And often we talk about design, we've just not interrogated things in that way, because we've just got used to what's gone before.

April Rinne: When you know you're enough, and again I love that you and Helen were both like, "This is our enough", it gives you a much clearer baseline to grow into, to expand, to go and have that fulfilment.  And obviously when we say enough, yes, financial is a key part of it.  It's also about things like, "Do I have enough time to invest in these things I care about?"  I always like to, and even in the book there's this long list where we talk about, "Do you have enough love in your life?  Do you have enough compassion?"  And I do think that overall, Western society at least, in modern times we've over-indexed on we have way too much stuff.  We have a lot of stuff in our lives, but we don't have a lot of humanity in our lives, for example.  And so you go through this process again of reflection of, "Where do I have too much of what, and where do I have too little, and what do I need to actually invest?"  And investing isn't just money, it's oftentimes time. 

I want to bring that up too, because what I'm really trying to help people do is live a fuller life, a life that is in greater alignment with who you are and what you want to do.  And when you know you're enough to bring all of this back to change, it is that when change hits, if you know you're enough, you are much better placed to react, to respond, to adapt, to pivot, to do whatever it is than if you're always after evermore.  That becomes a kind of baggage, if that makes sense.

Sarah Ellis: It does.  And I think one of the potential myths that people sometimes have around Squiggly Careers, about flux, about portfolio-ness, is it's anti-ambition.  So, one of the things that we often have to say quite early on when we're drawing ladders to squiggles, ladders to portfolios, I will often say very explicitly, "To be clear, I want you all to be really ambitious for where your career can take you".  But I think it's sometimes this feeling like, well no, because I'm opting out of this ladder, I'm letting go of the ladder, that doesn't mean that you're anti-ambitious.  If anything, I think it means you're more ambitious, it's just that that probably feels more individual.  And you've used the word "design" quite a few times; you've designed it. 

We were chatting just before we got started, I think your sense of what does it look like to design this portfolio is really complementary to this idea of there is no such thing as a straight line to success, our careers will be squiggly.  And actually, you describe portfolios in a few different ways, which I found really interesting, because you can't help but go to the default, which I think is quite an old script really.  You go, portfolio means, for a lot of people, they'll be like, "Oh, I've finished my main career, I've finished my main, and now I do some non-executive things, and that's because I'm older and I've got that experience and now I have multiple jobs.  But I could only do that at a certain level and at a certain stage".  And then you go so much broader around what a portfolio really means and how it can work for everyone, because that won't feel exactly the same as Squiggly, but I think it'll feel really complementary.  So, let's go a bit deeper now into the world of portfolio. 

April Rinne: Rather than looking at your career as a ladder you're going to climb, or a linear "path to pursue", see it as a portfolio to create and curate because I believe that the shape, the model of a successful career looks more like a portfolio to curate and it is more fit for a future of work that is in flux.  And so, I'm looking at ambition, have all the ambition you want.  Is your career and is your mindset and your approach to your career, is it future ready, future fit?  I don't the word future proof, I'm not sure anything's really future proof.  That's some kind of guarantee, but future fit.  And that's where people with ambition say, "I see this more holistically".  And so, the shift really is rather than -- and again, I should back up and maybe we add this in as well. 

When we think about the ladder metaphor, it also tends to map with a traditional resume.  So, think about your resume or your CV.  And we have spaces for like, we want to know your name, we want to know your credentials, we want to know your titles, we want to know how long you were there, but it's very much a ladder, right?  And a lot of stuff's not on your resume, including I think a lot of the skills and a lot of the roles and a lot of the things you care about that actually bring your best to the workplace.  And so, a portfolio is your unique combination of everything you can do that adds value to society, and it is so much more than your resume.  I often think that your resume contains a fraction of who you are, often not even the most interesting parts.  That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter.  A resume is absolutely valuable, it's just incomplete.  So, this portfolio takes you beyond that.  And one of my favourite examples, and we were talking about this earlier, just to make this tangible, think about what's on your resume, then think about who you are, what you can do, what makes you you. 

Parenting skills, there's no place for them on your resume.  I think for many people they would even be a "Ding" or like, "Don't bring that up in an interview". 

Sarah Ellis: That would be me!

April Rinne: Would it?  Parenting skills are super skills for time management, conflict negotiation, empathy, right?  Why don't we have this on resumes?  Now, because being a parent doesn't necessarily help you climb a ladder.  But in fact, parenting skills is a great example of the kind of skill that is at the centre of your portfolio, and it mixes and mingles and matches with everything else.  When you break down what is the essence of a portfolio and how might it be different than a ladder or a resume, ladders and resumes are very much structured around your role and, are you progressing up a given role?  When you break down sort of -- we do reverse engineering in some of these workshops.  And what you're really reverse engineering back to is what are the skills that you bring and how can you recombine those skills?  So, parenting teaches you skills.  Going through hardship teaches you skills.  They don't bolt onto a role or a title, but they're at the essence of your portfolio. 

Then, what you're doing is, when we talk about designing a career, you're taking all of the different skills that you have, understanding where they intersected in different roles, different parts of your life.  But then, you flip that inside out and you're able to identify, "So, what are the good things I might be good at doing?  How might that map to the kinds of things that might come next, where I want my career to take me, etc?"  So, we pause there, but you can see the overlap with Squiggly, but it's a different shape, I think with a different kind of structure or scaffolding around it.

Sarah Ellis: So, I sensed when I was reading that chapter, I feel like what you're trying to really encourage people to do is give themselves credit for all the things that are already there, it's perhaps we just don't give them the kind of credit that they deserve almost.

April Rinne: Exactly.  This is beautiful.  I'm so enjoying this conversation.  So, we talked about scripts earlier.  I will often talk about your portfolio story, the scenario that will often happen quite a bit, which is somebody who has a resume in which they've done all kinds of things, all quite different, ten different jobs, ten different sectors, all over the place you might say in a traditional sense, and this person is applying for a job in, let's just say, an unrelated sector, a career change, something new.  And you can have two different hiring boards or interview boards.  One of those boards can look at this individual's CV and be like, "This person looks scattered, or they took time out, or they look scattered, they look unfocused, we're not really sure, don't know, why would we hire this person?"  And you can have another group of people, same CV, same everything, and they can be like, "This person is ten people in one".  I the analogy, 1 plus 1 equals 11!  "This person, we have to hire them.  We could never find all of this in one person.  We must hire them immediately". 

What's the difference between those two scenarios?  And often the difference is, can you tell that story; can you connect those dots?  So, I'm now working with organisations to help them rethink and up-level their hiring intake requirements, forms, how all of that comes together so that at least it's not perfect, but at least there's a chance designed into the HR policies, procedures, frameworks, you name it, where this kind of information can be enquired, can be captured, can be included.  Because right now, the way that we've designed so many pieces of the HR system as a whole is only to capture what's on the resume, hence all this other stuff goes missing.  So, there's a huge opportunity here.  It is shifting gradually, but there's a lot more, I think, that even members of the Squiggly community can be thinking about and helping bring to organisations and so forth.

Sarah Ellis: And I'd just like to, as we start to come to the end of our conversation together, you're brilliant at sharing your insights and observations from all the research and writing that you've done.  And you downplay a little bit, but you have also done this very successfully a number of times.  And when I say career change, you really have changed careers.  When I was reading the book, I was like, "Oh, okay, one minute she's a lawyer, the next minute I feel like you're climbing Italian mountains".  And I was like, "Wow, incredible!"  So, you definitely have also lived and breathed this yourself.  This is not new to you either; I feel like you probably had these experiences and then almost you've started to go, "Oh, it's not only me, and how can I help other people who want to do the same?" 

So, almost more now from your personal perspective, what do you think are some of the things that have helped you as you have been navigating those career changes, some of which, as you said, were certainly, forced upon you in a way that you would never have wanted or anticipated, and I also got the sense some were definitely things that you had more proactively chosen?

April Rinne: Absolutely.  And I can also say that even growing up, the more I learned about careers, the more frankly, and I'll say this between the two of us and anyone listening, it felt quite stifling.  It felt I was going to have to leave a part of myself out, I was going to have to cut off a limb, and that just never felt right.  And so, I can tell you that I was a career portfolioist extremely young, but (1) had to encounter it and there was a lot more stigma around anything that wasn't traditional, so I'll tell you that's some of my advice; and (2) we didn't have the language, even portfolio, no one was talking about it.  So, I just felt I was having to do something that a lot of people gave me a lot of flak for.  I had professors and mentors, and again I wasn't using the term "portfolio".  I was simply saying, "The decisions I'm making about my career are not the ones you're used to seeing.  I am not going to go and do a programme that will allow me to be a lifer at a given company.  I'm going to go hiking in Italy".

I spent four years as a hiking and biking guide.  And that was again, a great example of knowing your enough.  That was not enough income to raise a family, but I was at a point in my life where I had very few commitments and was like, it was plenty of money to travel, guide for seven or eight months of the year, and then spend the rest of my year travelling.  And I did that for four years without a permanent address.  Now that, I guided in Italy, I guided in Patagonia and Morocco and Vietnam.  You put this in perspective, it taught me way more than any job, way more than an MBA at that time, but I was investing in my portfolio, and yet my mentors, professors, everybody was telling me, "Your career makes no sense.  You look like you're scattered, what are you doing?"  And I just had to say that I'm like…

So, back to some of the advice that I would have, and it is easier said than done, but rest assured I had to do it too, there is this element of getting really clear on what matters to you.  And I had to learn very young, what is my inner, call it intuition, call it your inner compass; what is it really after here?  And obviously I had to be independent financially and otherwise very young.  I didn't have a family.  So, I had to figure out a way to make this work because it was up to me.  But it made me realise that I didn't want to be defined by a lot of the trappings that society lay out for us, almost assuming we want, it was much more about, how can I serve others?  How can I actually have a life of, I think meaning, but also adventure and also joy?  And so, it led me down that path.  I ended up doing some of this work, I think, earlier than I might have otherwise because of what I went through. 

But I also know that as early as I can remember, I was looking at like, there's a different way to look at what we do.  And I don't want to sound too waxing nostalgic, but there's the Mary Oliver poem about like, what are you going to do with your one sweet and precious and short life?  And there was always this sense of, if I were to die tomorrow, I don't want to, but what would the world need me to do today?  And so a lot of my advice is really finding, doing the inner work.  And again, it's not heavy, it's reflective, but start practising.  What are you really after here?  And then, and I can say this is a lot easier to do today than in years past, but finding that community, finding that tribe, finding those people, I think the Squiggly Careers community is a great place to start, where people are entertaining these different ways of seeing and being and doing and no two portfolios look alike.  What can you learn from one another? 

You might want to know there's a career portfolios podcast, it's been going on for seven years, and it's just interviews with people who have different kinds of portfolios.  Start doing that and iterate.  And the last thing is, I never, ever leapt off a cliff.  I never just said, "I just think it's all going to work out.  I'm just going to jump".  It sounds like you too.  I love that you had Amazing If for those years on the side.  I would always spend time planning through.  Many people know me as a futurist today, and in the world of futurism there's this thing called scenario planning, where you're mapping out different scenarios.  I would do so many different kinds of scenarios, realising that you'll never have certainty about what exactly is going to happen, but you will have run enough scenarios, imagine enough different possibilities that you have, again, a bit of scaffolding regardless of how things turn out.  I could talk about this all day.  Apologies!  It's really opened up a lot of, I think, richness and a lot of potential for humans flourishing.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think just listening to you, it's so clear that you followed your curiosity, and I think that comes through when I also read your work.  I just feel you're insatiably curious and committed to learning and finding out more and then that's guided you and guided your choices.  And I do think that is very good practical advice for people, around surround yourself with people who won't be the same, because I don't think any of us are the same, but surround yourself with people where you feel you share at least a philosophy and who are going to appreciate what you're trying to do.  Maybe they've done something similar or at least can offer you good words of wisdom or reassurance, or sometimes just they can listen, which I think can be equally helpful.  And I think with scenario planning, we've talked about it before on the podcast, around actually scenarios are incredibly useful because they just help you. 

I love a worst-case scenario, which always sounds really bleak, but I think they're really helpful, because I really remember thinking when I was first moving to Amazing If, once I had figured out the worst-case scenario, that was my tipping point.  I went, "Okay, let's imagine nobody reads or buys anything that we ever do and we don't earn any money.  How long can we last for and do I think someone would give me a job?"  And once I got to, "Okay, I think I can last for long enough to give it a decent go.  Do I think someone will give me a job?  Probably", I'd got a good enough network by that point, "and do I think I'll be able to get a job at a good enough level that I would be okay with the childcare mortgage thing?"  Once I tick, tick, ticked, I then went, "Actually, do you know what, now the choice and the control is completely with me.  I either do it or I don't, but I certainly have run out of excuses".

April Rinne: This is fascinating because what you just mapped out, same thing.  I've been independent now as well.  My goal was not to be independent.  It was more like, "It's something I want to learn.  Can I do this?"  And so, this idea of curiosity, yes, and responsibility, that sense of, I'm not just following my curiosity blindly, and I don't have the ability to just do whatever I want.  I have to be responsible, I have to make things work.  But once you walk yourself to that worst-case scenario, you're like, "That's it?" 

Another set of questions that I often find quite helpful, and again this is for work but also for life, this idea of you want to make a career change, you want to try something new, you want to make a change in life, you don't know how it's going to go.  How do you filter that?  So, two questions that are parallel.  I've often asked myself, and I can say this to you, any career change I've made, I've said, "Number one, will I regret doing this?"  And you're like, "Maybe, it might not work.  I've done my best to research, but will I regret doing this?  Maybe.  Will I regret not trying?"  And every single time there has been this inner, just this energy of like, "Absolutely.  I will absolutely regret not trying".  And I have found that to be really helpful.  And when that happens, it's like, "Oh, okay, here we go.  And back to the whole bit about, "It is a change I'm choosing.  I don't know that it's all going to work out, but I do know that my life will not have been fully lived if I don't give it a shot". 

But that said, to your point, give myself three months, six months.  Have some bounds where you assess, is it working; is it not?  But fascinating, and this relates exactly to it, I would say, "I'm going to go for it.  I'm going to give myself, let's just say six months or a year".  And the key though is in that period in which I don't know exactly if it's going to work out, to not second-guess my decision.  I'm going to pour myself into this thing for the time that I've given, because again it goes back to enough and more, right?  I know what my enough is.  Pour myself in, don't second-guess, because what I realise is if I second-guessed, I would sap 50% of the energy that I actually wanted to be investing in making this change work.  So, anyway a couple other fun filters, useful filters, I think to navigate this sort of thing.

Sarah Ellis: I think those two questions around regret are genius.  I think they are incredibly useful, and I think they're two sides of the same coin, which I think actually makes them even more useful.  I know our listeners are going to love those questions.  I'm so glad we got to those.  You know when you think, "Well, I don't know.  I don't know what we've not talked about and what we have".  And I was just writing those down going, "Oh!"  I just think if someone was to ask me now, "I'm navigating a career change, what advice have you got?"  I think that I can't imagine now having a conversation where I wouldn't include those two questions, so I'm so glad we got to that.  Thank you. 

Finally, as we come to the end of our conversation together, April, and I know we've talked about so many different options and advice and words of wisdom, but we always do like to leave our listeners with a final thought from you.  So, if someone listening is thinking about career change, and maybe are in the midst of it, maybe they're about to start a new career, what final best piece of career advice do you really want people to remember?

April Rinne: I was thinking about this, and there are a couple.  It's funny, after we're talking about this, there's a part of me that actually wants to come full circle and just say, recognise that insofar that a career change is a change you get to choose, what a gift, what a privilege, what a joy it is to have that choice.  And so, to celebrate the fact of being able to choose and navigate this wild and crazy world, as opposed to worrying about is it going to work or not, back to is it going to work or not, you can look at those regrets, those questions about regret.  But career change that we choose is the best one could possibly hope for, the ability to get to pick.  That's one thing I'd just really like for all of us to honour, to recognise, because I think we often don't even realise that simple fact. 

The other thing I was going to bring up, and it's more probably a footnote, but it relates very much to the portfolio of like, I look at the future in which there's going to be more flux and more things changing, and what you're doing now is unlikely to be what you're doing five years from now or ten years from now, we just don't know.  But in that context, the quote that often comes to mind, it is in the book, I don't take credit for it.  Many people have said it, I'm not sure, I think we don't know exactly who the person is; but it's less about being the absolute best at something and more about being the only, the only person who actually has all of these different things they can do and dots they can connect.  It actually makes you much more resilient, much more, as I call it, flexi, and much more capable to navigate whatever is ahead.  So, that would be the other one, is don't be the best, be the only.  And in this light, remember that no one will ever be a better you than you, and good luck trying to be anyone else, as you probably heard, everyone else is already taken, so do the best you can at being you. 

Sarah Ellis: I think that is a perfect place to finish our portfolio/Squiggly conversation today.  So, April, thank you so much for joining us.  As we said, our worlds have crossed, but never quite collided.  So glad that we've had the chance to have this conversation together today.  Thank you so much. 

April Rinne: You too.  Thank you.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you for listening to my conversation with April today.  I hope you found that a useful listen and wherever you are in your career change stage, I hope there was something practical that you could take away that you feel will support you with what next and what now.  If you have ideas of topics you'd like us to cover or experts you'd like to hear from, please let us know.  You can just email us, we're helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  But that's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now.