Episode 10: The Modern Career Playbook - Finale

My first guest was Isabelle Panton, known online as the Corporate Agony Aunt.

After years of working in talent and recruitment, she built an online audience of hundreds of thousands by giving the kind of honest, no-nonsense career advice that she wishes she'd had early on in her own career.

I would say it is a marathon, not a sprint.

And even when you're in your 20s, you have this feeling that you should be in a certain place.

You should be in a certain title.

No.

I think the statistic is on average now we will have six different jobs in our lifetime.

Our parents had one.

Mine didn't.

but most people's parents had one.

And so what we have to understand is that we don't have to be doing all of the things all the time.

It'll never feel perfect because our careers are moving.

They are moving.

They don't stay still ever.

And so if you have this era that is finance era, and then you go into a family-run business era, and then you might go into a freelance era, and then you might circle back to finance again, that is success.

Until you understand your own definition of success on any given day, you will not be satisfied in your career because you can't measure what it is that actually makes you happy.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

And to enjoy the marathon, you have to find the joy in every day.

And when that joy runs out, you have to consider how can I pivot, do something completely different, quit, go off grid, travel to Vietnam, come back, start again.

My dad told me this when I was in my early twenties and I didn't want to believe him because I was like, do you know who I am? But it's not an easy upwards trajectory this is not our career our career is squiggly completely different graphs it's a bar chart then it's a pivot like there is no consistent storyline no matter what a founder on the internet will tell you and my last part that pertains to this is that Don't just quit your job for the plot.

When people are doing that, they have daddy's money, mummy's money, family money, sofas to surf, privilege, network.

The narrative that we're being fed at the moment about quitting your job for the plot is not an accurate representation of the job market.

Please don't do it.

Not everyone is quitting to become an entrepreneur overnight.

Not every hustle bro is a multimillionaire in the way they might present themselves.

My first guest was Isabelle Panton, known online as the Corporate Agony Aunt.

After years of working in talent and recruitment, she built an online audience of hundreds of thousands by giving the kind of honest, no-nonsense career advice that she wishes she'd had early on in her own career.

I would say it is a marathon, not a sprint.

And even when you're in your 20s, you have this feeling that you should be in a certain place.

You should be in a certain title.

No.

I think the statistic is on average now we will have six different jobs in our lifetime.

Our parents had one.

Mine didn't.

but most people's parents had one.

And so what we have to understand is that we don't have to be doing all of the things all the time.

It'll never feel perfect because our careers are moving.

They are moving.

They don't stay still ever.

And so if you have this era that is finance era, and then you go into a family-run business era, and then you might go into a freelance era, and then you might circle back to finance again, that is success.

Until you understand your own definition of success on any given day, you will not be satisfied in your career because you can't measure what it is that actually makes you happy.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

And to enjoy the marathon, you have to find the joy in every day.

And when that joy runs out, you have to consider how can I pivot, do something completely different, quit, go off grid, travel to Vietnam, come back, start again.

My dad told me this when I was in my early twenties and I didn't want to believe him because I was like, do you know who I am? But it's not an easy upwards trajectory this is not our career our career is squiggly completely different graphs it's a bar chart then it's a pivot like there is no consistent storyline no matter what a founder on the internet will tell you and my last part that pertains to this is that Don't just quit your job for the plot.

When people are doing that, they have daddy's money, mummy's money, family money, sofas to surf, privilege, network.

The narrative that we're being fed at the moment about quitting your job for the plot is not an accurate representation of the job market.

Please don't do it.

Not everyone is quitting to become an entrepreneur overnight.

Not every hustle bro is a multimillionaire in the way they might present themselves.