Given the opportunity, what would you build in your community?
As the hellscape that is the tech industry continues to implode, more and more tech workers just like us find ourselves wondering what we’re going to do next. Both what we will do to continue to feed our need for creativity, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and what will we do to feed our families.
It can feel scary to leave something that’s served us so well for so long, but it’s also scary to stare into a bare pantry, an empty wallet, a drained gas tank, and a silent email account. Sometimes we just need to cut our losses and strike out toward something new and different.
It’s at times like these that our experiences researching, planning, and designing unique solutions that solve real customer problems become increasingly valuable. By identifying key personas, clarifying their unique problems, and running experiments to test our hypotheses, we can reinvent ourselves in ways that contribute positively to our communities, breathing life into pockets of our cities left for dead by the corporate giants.
Case in point: Meet Emily deSousa. After years in Customer Success for some of the nation’s biggest brands, she stepped out on her own, found a need in her community and got to work meeting it.
“Everything I learned in tech obsessing over the customer experience, sweating the details, building something people actually want to come back to I poured into this place.”
Emily launched Pacific Beach Laundry Co nearly two months ago. Not only has she found the work challenging and rewarding, she has revitalized a “rough” space and met a number of people from her community.
This is exactly the sort of career pivot I suggest and encourage through my Career Nirvana program. Find a need in your community, typically one that was once served by a local craftsperson but has since been gutted by private equity or big business, and study it. You’re likely to see that the PE and big business competitors have stripped the value out of their offerings because they not longer have any competition. This is your invitation to step into the void that was left behind, to provide a service, craft, or product that is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the people who live in your town or city.
And by doing so, you’ll not only be providing a necessary service to your neighbors, you’ll be making a living you can feel good about, that supports you and your family, and that grows the tax base in your community and brings your neighbors back together again.
If you’re ready to make the leap, to go home, to do something that makes you feel alive again, you’re ready to “Refactor your Job.” Join me in the next cohort of Career Nirvana to do just that.
Read more about Emily’s journey here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emily-desousa_after-years-in-customer-success-ive-officially-share-7455439449376800768-qmqT?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAALwwTwBPS0cai_siTQrTzKMRcPEz0F6Jxw
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