We Should All Be Career Adventurers
Seek Purposeful Career Fun While Minimizing Risk
The One Role Unicorn
I had coffee with a guy recently to learn more about his career. While we sipped delicious java and savored avocado toast with egg, he told me that he respected people like me - people who take risks in their careers. He had spent nearly his entire career with one company in the same job.
He’d made good money with a highly reputable financial services company. But, I could hear a little wistfulness in his voice. He wished for more but had rationalized his career place, where the financial incentive to leave was too risky. By contrast, I’ve worked for a number of companies in a variety of roles within a number of industries. I’ve embarked on multiple career adventures, some highly successful others a mistake. As we finished the avocado toast I thought, the one company, one role worker is destined to be a unicorn in the future. They will be difficult to find.
Welcome to the Future: A World Filled With Career Adventurers
In the future, the world will be filled with more and more career adventurers. Before I explain why, let’s define what a career adventurer is. A career adventurer is someone who continuously seeks growth in their career by embarking upon new challenges. A career adventurer is not necessarily someone who jumps from company to company or job to job. Career adventurers could be people who willingly seek out new experiences either with new companies or with their existing company.
Further, a career adventurer isn’t an aimless wanderer. Career adventurers seek new experiences because they are curious and want to keep life interesting. At their core, they know that variety is the spice of life. We weren’t meant to bludgeon the same bolt into the same board with the same company in the same industry for forty years.
Why The Future is Filled With Career Adventurers
The future is filled with career adventurers for three reasons: the data says it already is, people are inherently curious, and companies are not loyal.
First, the data says we all already need to be career adventurers. I saw a career counselor when I was 23. I recall one eye opening statistic he shared with me: The average person will have more than 10 jobs with 7 companies over the course of a career. This statistic holds up. Millennials change jobs every 2.75 years. The “job hopping” generation will have approximately 15 jobs in their career at that rate.
Second, people are inherently curious. We humans seek novelty from birth. Our curiosity doesn’t magically go away when we become adults. It just becomes more complicated. Again, let’s look at Millennials. This large generational cohort is filled with people constantly seeking new adventures: 60% of them are open to a new job opportunity.
Third, companies are not loyal. Sorry to burst your bubble if this is what you believe. Companies care about one thing: profit. At a drop of a hat, company leaders will cut bait with people in roles. Everyone of us will likely be cut from the team, receive a pink slip, have our roll eliminated, or however you want to describe being fired at some point in our careers. (Check out this great post on getting fired by friend and The Captain’s Log author Bob Gilbreath.). We all should be prepared to be a career adventurer at a moments notice. You never know when that moment will come.
Prepare for Your Career Adventure
This Substack will inspire you to make your career an adventure. It will show you how others have embraced adventure in growing their careers, whether it’s been with one company or a dozen. Last, it will provide you with the inspiration, tips, and examples to purposefully build meaningful career adventures. I’ll primarily use career adventurer stories starting with my personal network and this community.
Personal Stories: The Key to Unlocking Career Adventures
“Why stories?” you may ask. Stories are filled with information and experiential wisdom. Stories capture the essence of others successes and challenges. Plus, stories are fun, captivating, and filled with conflict. They provide necessary perspective for a career adventurer to learn from others before taking a new path. Plus, my career counselor said the key to making the right move and taking informed career risks is conducting informational interviews.
Why You’ll Enjoy Visiting
You need inspiration and tips for your own career adventures. You want to know how others keep their career’s interesting, but don’t have the time to actively seek others out. You want helpful tips to maximize career fun while minimizing the inherent risk of adventure. You spend most of your workday in meetings listening to your bosses engage in meaningless debate and politicking. You spend your “free time” shuttling your kids to soccer. That’s where Career Adventurer helps.
I’ll curate career adventure stories, tips, and research / insights for you. I’ll share career stories to inspire your own. I’ll start by sharing my own career adventure. Then, I’ll interview career adventurers in my network. I’ll ask each interviewee to refer a career adventurer I should interview. This will provide diversity of thought and take us on unanticipated adventures. One day you’ll hear from an accountant turned startup founder. The next, you’ll hear from a marketer turned elementary school teacher. Overtime, I’ll build a database of career adventurer stories for you to reference as you build your own adventure. I’ll curate tips and insights and might even conduct some original research to deliver topical career adventuring need to knows for you.
I’ll commit to 4 posts per month and at least one interview per month, but may target more. I’ll deliver it in either written or podcast format and post key excerpts from the interview. If it is a pod cost, episodes will be 20 - 30 minutes in length. Written posts will be no longer than 10 minute reads. You can listen to or read them at your leisure
Join the Adventure!!!
Subscribe now for free. Life is way to important to be boring. I’m doing this for two key reasons. First, I really enjoy hearing other people’s career stories. They are packed with inspirational details. Second, I’m looking to learn lessons for my own adventures. God willing, I’ve got decades of work in front of me. I plan to work even when I “retire.” I am excited to learn how others embark upon career adventures to inspire my own.
I really do love this article! I look forward to seeing more stories! Both of my parents have worked the same jobs/worked at the same company for decades. I've known for a long time that that wouldn't be my thing, not just because of corporate companies only caring about their profits, but I'm someone that gets bored easily. I can't do the same thing everyday. Variety is very much the spice of life! (Not to mention with our economy, it's growing more and more difficult to support ourselves off of one income anyway.) This article makes me feel better about my ideas of exploring my career options that will help expand my skills as an artist.
Wonderful idea, looking forward to reading/listening and hopefully participating some day