Friday I logged off from a role I’ve had for the past five years.
It's a role that was transformational for my career, because it was the largest undertaking of my professional life. One that saw me accomplish things that I never could have imagined.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to accomplish some pretty cool things.
My career really took off in 2011, when I joined my last financial institution as Chief Lending Officer.
It’s there that I passed the six-figure salary mark for the first-time and developed multiple first-of-their-kind programs that won me national awards in the banking industry.
I created the Line12 Fund, which was the first venture debt program for ideation-stage startups offered by a credit union in the United States.
I launched and organized the business department at that same credit union, where we became the top SBA lender in our state.
That credit union had come off of four years of negative growth. It grew by double digits every year I was there.
I’ve also done some other pretty cool things in my personal life.
Things like becoming a state Karate champion. Being one of the first people in Tennessee to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with the Gracie family.
I lived in Japan for a while where I played guitar on the streets of Kobe and made a Japanese busker over $1,000 USD in less than an hour. I had to intentionally break his guitar strings so he’d stop pressuring me to keep playing.
I became a father, which, hands down, is and always will be the greatest accomplishment of my life.
There are probably some other things I’m forgetting. My life has been very eclectic and very, very full.
But, for a kid who idolized his father’s professional prowess, I’ve always put a lot of worth into my professional life. For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be a Chief Executive Officer of a large company. Until I didn’t.
Until a health scare, followed by a lot of deep personal work, woke me up to the fact that what I really wanted was to do work that energized me.
That’s when I left my credit union and joined my current company.
When I made the move, lots of friends called to tell me I was crazy.
“You are going to be the CEO one day, what are you doing!?”
What I was doing was making an explicit decision to focus on making work fit into the life I wanted, not the other way around. In the words of Paul Millerd, author of my new favorite book, “The Pathless Path,” I was actively and consciously searching for the work I wanted to keep doing. Because “the longer we spend on a path that isn’t ours, the longer it takes to move toward a path that is.”
That is the takeaway I want you to get from this post.
My friends didn’t understand because they were still stuck on the default path. I didn’t know it at the time, I hadn’t yet read Paul’s book, but I was on the pathless path.
That was almost ten years ago.
I’m back on the pathless path, again.
On Friday I wrapped up my role as Senior Director of Product Management for the Jack Henry Origin/Platform.
During my five year stint I a) authored the business case for the largest product build in the company’s 50+ year history; b) worked with the team to deliver the Phase I commitments to the Board, which included being live with a net-new, cloud-based digital deposit core; c) created the company’s Product Go-to-Market team and saw it grow from a team of one to a team of twelve and; d) created the company’s Product Operations team. I was playing a key role in building the program that is the future of the company, and now I’m walking away from all of it, quietly. No fan fare, at my own request.I suspect, if my friends knew about this move, I’d get the same messages.
“What are you doing!? Your career was at its pinnacle!”
It probably appeared that way, publicly. But, privately, I’ve been considering this type of move for a few years.
Why? A lot of reasons.
I haven’t felt like myself for years.
Working on a high-profile project lends itself easily to burnout.
Also, candidly, there is a lot of frustration with internal politics, but I won’t go into that.
I’ll be announcing my new role, at the same company, soon. It’s not a move centered around career advancement.
It’s a move focused on doing the type of work that energizes me, with people that I enjoy working around.
It’s one on the pathless path.
Am I nervous? A little.
But, this isn’t the first time I’ve taken a hard turn in my career.
The last time worked out fabulously. Let’s hope this time does as well.
P.S. If you are considering your own career pivot, I’d love to help, however I can. My DMs are open. Let’s talk.
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