Women at Work - Emily’s Taking a Break from Nine-to-Five

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Our free-spirited, entrepreneurial co-host is applying advice from all our episodes on side gigs, freelancing, starting a small business — and quitting — to her own life. Emily reflects on her decision to leave her design job at HBR to fully focus on a long-time creative passion, as well as how she's thinking about her career going forward.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. So Emily, you're leaving us. Tears. I know. Tell us what you're going to do. So if you guys remember, we did an episode on side gigs, side hustles with Brianna Kaza. And that was when I talked about kind of starting this little side business of selling vintage clothing. I am obsessed with searching for vintage treasures. It's my favorite thing to do. I mean, has been for many years. So I started selling items on Etsy and started doing outdoor vintage markets. I'm not expecting to make a lot of money, but hopefully I'll make

enough to continue shopping. Sourcing. Continue sourcing inventory. Was it a hard decision to leave? In a lot of ways, it was very easy. I felt like it was a long time coming. Like I was considering it for a really long time and I felt like I had been putting off the decision to finally do it. But I would say that like this is a great work environment and I have really liked working for HBR. I think there's good work-life balance and I love the people that I work with. But I think coming out of the pandemic, it's like it's been a long time of feeling like, oh, all this shit is happening at me, to me, on me. Right.

And then feeling like, OK, time for me to make some decisions. Yeah. My job was not overwhelming in any way or too difficult in any way, but I am definitely feeling burnt out. I'm not feeling creative anymore. I'm not feeling like I'm producing my best work anymore. I don't feel like I'm contributing how I want to contribute. And so at this point, it's like I can't continue to spend a third of my life because that's like what a workday is. I can't continue to spend a third of my life feeling this way in my job and I want to feel challenged in new ways I want to feel like I'm creating great work and I just I still am like desiring that feeling and I'm getting little bits and pieces of that from just doing the vintage stuff on the side but having limited time to do that I want more of it are you thinking of maybe turning the vintage clothing gig into a full-time? I think it's going to probably be full-time for a few months until I can no longer

stand it anymore or until I have no more money left. I like that. I like that. Yeah. I want to give myself some time to like find a little clarity and think about what comes next because I'm not in a position right now to look for to job search I just cannot job search right now people are like how is the job search going up like there's no job search oh my god keep your anxiety to yourself I'm not doing it I am not job searching and there's no plans for it for like at least a little bit of time but I want to take classes and I want to learn about other fields and I want to look at design from different angles. My only other plan for this time is I'm going to sign up for a yoga studio

because I really miss doing yoga. Oh, good for you. And I really miss feeling healthy in that way. And so that's my only goal is to just feel healthy. That's an amazing goal. And it'll put you in the right headspace to make these decisions. And I'll make this decision now. But then you know what?

In a few months, I might say, OK, I want my nine to five back. Like I want that. I just need to take a break. And I'm like, why doesn't everybody else need to take a break? They do. They do. They just don't have the wherewithal to do it. Yeah.

And I lived with my parents for, like, I was privileged enough to live with my parents for a year and a half. So I saved up some money while I was with them. So I could be able to kind of do this. Right. Because I need to be able to still pay rent and pay for my life. But I'm going to be frugal. Yeah. I mean, I have such respect for you

for doing this, recognizing what you need and making it happen for yourself. I didn't feel like I had any other choice, to be honest. I think I was thinking about this for such a long time. And like our last season, I felt like all the episodes were speaking to me. I was like, oh, everybody knows because we talked about like all the episodes were speaking to me. I was like, uh-oh, everybody knows. Because we talked about quitting your job and the great resignation, and we talked about freelancing, and we talked about small businesses. So I have been dying to ask you, Emily, how much of that, what you just described, influenced, or how did it influence your thinking as you made the decision to take a break?

I felt like whenever we covered this stuff in episodes, it inched me a little bit closer in the direction. So it was, I think, reassuring in some way to cover all of these topics. Not that any of this sounds easy, but just being exposed to those ideas in a really complete way every time we did an episode, it made me even more curious about it, even more wanting to jump into it, even more wanting to try it. Instead of like talking about it and being on the outside, I was like, oh, I want to be one of those people. I want to be part of the great resignation. I want to be part of this. So all those episodes we did about freelance and quitting, like, is there any advice or like insights from those episodes that you're taking into this this next phase? So I think it was on an episode of The Essentials when I talked to Alice Boyes. And I don't think we were recording at the time, but she mentioned this idea that really stuck with me.

Do you want to live a good life or do you want to live a rich life? Some people want to live a good life. Some people want to live a life where, you know, there's stability, consistency. know their stability consistency or are you somebody who wants a rich life who seeks those really high highs and I guess in response sometimes has low lows but you're in this position of being exposed to new experiences all the time learning a lot and I'm really not doing this justice but when she explained this I was like I really do seek a rich life I do not seek the stability and the consistency and I do seek newness and experiences and challenging myself yeah but yeah, that stuck with me. I want to live a rich life.

Right. I like that. So I'm feeling like if we don't end this episode, then she can't leave. We're just going to buckle up, listeners.

This is a 17-hour episode. A 17-year episode. A 17-year episode. So we'll never leave. You want to go? I don't know. I'm not saying goodbye. Okay, well, we're not saying goodbye. Don't say goodbye.

Let's not say goodbye because we're going to see you. We're going to see you at your markets. You're going to come visit us. You'll come have lunch with us. Yes. I'm really going to miss you though. I'm really going to miss you as a colleague and as a co-host and as a presence in the office, even though we weren't in the office very much this last hideous two years. But it's just been wonderful getting to know you and working with you and you made us better. Yeah. You made this podcast better. That's for sure.

You know, it's been a weird two years to do this together in, but like your voice has always been a comfort. And just thank you for bringing yourself to the show. Yeah. And your honesty. That's so nice of you, of both of you to say. I feel like I've learned so much from the two of you. You've helped me so much. I've reached out to both of you when I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing here.

I'm scared here I'm scared I'm still scared still doing scary things so I really admire both of you and I'll be looking up to you forever we're going to miss you

behind that microphone yeah thank you come back and visit I will I want to come find you at one of these markets oh yeah

it's called Still Cute Vintage okay and what's your Etsy store called? it's Still Cute Vintage and so on Instagram it's called Still Cute Vintage. Okay, and what's your Etsy store called? It's Still Cute Vintage. And so on Instagram, it's at Still Cute Vintage. I have about 100 followers, so I need more. Thank you. Oh, you have 101 now. I think 102. Great. Thank you, Emily. We'll see you soon. Thank you, Amy.