Some of the best advice I’ve ever received is, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or end.” Have you ever paused to learn about the humble beginnings and career paths of successful people? Did you know Steve Jobs was fired from his own company? How about Michael Jordan’s cut from his high school basketball team? Every big-time success story includes bumps.

The Humble Beginnings & Career Paths of Successful People

I’m inspired to write on this topic because there is so much struggle in the world right now. Having graduated college in 2009 during “the Great Recession,” I know it can seem impossible to have a career success story when you are struggling just to find career opportunities. For a little encouragement and inspiration, let’s look at the career paths of successful people.

President Obama

Did you know President Obama’s first job was scooping ice cream at a Baskin Robbins in Hawaii? Everyone begins somewhere! From that experience, he likely gained some key customer service and communication skills that he continued to build on over the next 25 years until he would, eventually, become our nation’s leader.

What many young people fail to realize is that each opportunity and experience shapes us. We are gaining perspective and building a transferrable skillset. Transferrable skills, or soft skills, are skills that are valuable and applicable across a variety of situations and fields. Among the most sought-after transferrable skills are communication skills, leadership skills, problem-solving skills, and interpersonal skills.

Reed Hastings, Netflix

We often think of door-to-door salespeople as annoying and intrusive. We wouldn’t associate it with success; however, perhaps we need to challenge these perceptions! Reed Hastings, Founder of Netflix, was a door-to-door vacuum salesman 20 years before he began Netflix.

Hastings likely used skills he built as a salesman when he was selling his idea to investors. Think about the parallel between door-to-door salesman and starting a business. In both roles, he had to be creative and learn to sell his idea. He likely experienced a good amount of rejection in both positions and, from that, probably learned girt and perseverance. Remember, our humble beginnings shape us!

My Humble Beginning

I’m not famous; but, for fun, I’d also like to share my humble beginnings. Growing up in a very rural area in Missouri, there weren’t a lot of options for employment as a teenager. A lot of my friends either worked in the fast-food industry or on family farms. I was very involved in sports and extracurricular activities, so, summer jobs worked best for my schedule and allowed me to focus on school and activities during the academic year.

One of the few opportunities for summer-only work in our area was the seasonal maintenance crew for our school district. That’s a glorified way of saying I was a summer janitor. My job duties for three consecutive summers were painting walls, waxing floors, and cleaning bathrooms, bleachers, and classrooms. It was not glamourous. By the end of an eight-hour day, I was hot, dirty, and tired.

My Takeaways from My First Job

What did I learn from this humble beginning that I still use today? The first would be the value of education or technical skillset. At 15 years old, when I first began that job, I knew I did not want to scrape gum off the bottom of the gymnasium bleachers for the rest of my life. I did not want to breathe chemicals of floor wax and cleaner. I also learned the value of teamwork. I could paint a classroom on my own and it would take me two days of being cooped up in the same room, or, my teammates and I could work together and move through a classroom, or two, per day. Finally, I also learned respect. I have so much respect for the professionals who work tirelessly to keep the facilities that we use daily in tip-top shape. When I was in college and preparing to student teach, my professor told our class, “Always respect and make friends with the cafeteria workers and the janitorial staff.” While some dismissed the advice, I knew it was true and understood the value and sacrifice of the people in these roles!

Career Paths of Successful People

As you read through the infographic below that illustrates the career paths of successful people, I challenge you to think of the positives that came from your beginnings. We all start somewhere, and career paths of successful people are never without bumps. If COVID-19 is creating a bump for you, press on and persevere. You’ll have your success story, too! In fact, we can work on your career plan together. There is no time like the present to develop your action plan for career success! Let’s chat on a free consultation call!

Humble Beginnings & Paths of Successful People
Loren Kelly

“Come and listen to my story about a man named Jedd….” Joking aside, meet my little brother Jedd. He was born when I was in Kindergarten which was a perfect opportunity for him to be my real-life baby doll and later, my first student. I mothered that little boy from the day he was born until the day I graduated and left the house (and probably after, if I’m really being honest).

But there came a time in his life when he needed me, and I didn’t know how to help him. It really bothered me. When he was a senior in high school, he was struggling with what he wanted to do next. Jedd is smart, no doubt. There isn’t a math problem he can’t tackle, and the kid has the kind of patience and curiosity that allows him to sit down and work on an issue for hours without it phasing him. Because of his natural abilities and good grades in school, there wasn’t a question. He should follow society’s “chosen path” and go to university because that is how you become successful. This put Jedd in a really tough place. He could go to university and be “successful” by getting a degree, but he wasn’t really convinced this was what he wanted to do. Being the easy-going person he is, he took the route that society was telling him was best and off he went. He enrolled full-time at university and began taking general education courses.

If I had known then what I know now about career planning, I would have stopped this process immediately. If you’ve read my article 5 Signs a Student Needs Help Career Planning, you know that when a student tells you he/she is “taking general education courses and will figure out a major,” that is a big sign he/she needs help career planning!

Fast forward a year and a half into his college education and Jedd was miserable, my parents were frustrated, and time and money were being wasted. Jedd decided to go to work full-time and not return to school. This was the best decision he could have made at the time.

That spring, he started looking into the local vocational school. He had always had an interest in electricity and working on complex problems. He found an Industrial Maintenance program and enrolled full-time the following fall.

Let me give you a snapshot of his life now. He is 25 years old and working as an Industrial Maintenance Mechanic at a very well-respected manufacturing company in Northwest Missouri. He is making SUBSTANTIALLY more at age 25 with a one-year technical certificate than I did at age 25 with a master’s degree. And, best of all, he is confident, happy, and fulfilled by his work!

Is there a student in your life whose path is being derailed by the “university = success” mentality? Do you know a student who is just like my brother that needs help identifying something they are interested in and excited to pursue? If so, tell them it is OK not to go to university and that there are very lucrative career paths that don’t require a college degree!

I am a passionate Career Coach and Career Educator dedicated to the professional development and success of students! How can I help you (or a student in your life) achieve career goals? Don’t miss the opportunity to receive free tips and updates by joining my email list!

Career Success, No College Degree: Meet Jedd
Loren Kelly

I recently shared a glimpse into my life in 2018 and why I decided to begin offering independent career coaching services to students and young professionals. But there was more to that story that I couldn’t fit in that blog post. There was a big FAILURE in there.

I shared that I arrived in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2018, and that I am not very good at sitting still. All of that is true, but there is more. While I was sitting in our Air BnB waiting for our household goods to arrive, I spent a good amount of time perusing the internet. I also shared last week that I’m a bit of a work-oholic. I bet you can’t guess what I spent a good amount of that browsing time looking at…that’s right…jobs. I had officially been out of work for about six weeks and despite having the holidays and an international move in the mix, it was a few weeks too long. That’s when I found a job opening at a local university that seemed to match my experience and my interests PERFECTLY.

What?!?! Was this too good to be true? Even better, I had a conversation at the local CrossFit gym and got connected to someone at the university who worked in that division. That contact graciously scheduled a meeting for me with the hiring manager and we had a great conversation during which she excitedly asked me to apply for the job. The stars seemed to be aligning! Then, just eight days after I arrived in a new country, I had a job interview and it felt so good.

BUT, the title of this blog post begins with FAILURE. That’s right, I didn’t get the job. Despite getting some great feedback when the hiring manager called to give me the news, I couldn’t help but be a little crushed. What had gone wrong? (I’ll tell what, but you have to keep reading!)

Self-confidence isn’t something that I typically struggle with; however, with all that was going on in my life at that point, I started to let this perceived failure get to me. It was a brutal winter and the days were short, so I used that as an excuse to just hang out inside most of the day with my cat. I finally realized one day that I was being totally pathetic when I clicked on a “Growth Mindset” Ted Talk by Carol Dweck that appeared in my newsfeed. Oh my goodness, I wasn’t just living in a fixed mindset, I was DWELLING there. This was not me and I was not proud of what I was allowing to go on in my life. I snagged her book via Amazon UK and read that whole thing as quickly as I could. I started to invest in myself and realized that this professional downtime was actually the PERFECT time to continue growing professionally by reading and studying. I found a free day of amazing lectures and workshops at the University of Cambridge and immersed myself in a day expanding my knowledge on a variety of topics. One of those was coaching. *Ding, ding, ding!

About two weeks later, my former supervisor and amazing mentor emailed me wanting to discuss an idea he had that later turned into my first consulting contract. A month later, Loren Kelly Coaching & Consulting was born! HOORAY!

University of Cambridge Open Day 2018

So why am I sharing this story?

Because every failure leads to a learning opportunity and, many times, they also lead to something better than you thought you wanted in the first place.

Here are three things I learned from this failure:

1. Cultural differences are a real thing! Just because I spoke the same language did not mean I understood the culture. American and British cultures are different. I had no idea how different when I went to that interview and it was very evident to me a few months later why I didn’t get that job. I was too direct and one of my answers was probably considered insensitive. Let’s just say my ideas of diversity have broadened and I am better for it!
2. Patience is important! I’m an American through and through and I like instant gratification. I was bored and I wanted a job right then to occupy my time. I should have just been patient and enjoyed that season! Because I didn’t get that job, my husband and I were able to travel and experience four different European cultures before he began work that April.
3. My plan isn’t always best. Like I’ve done so many times, I tried to take matters into my own hands and my plan for myself wasn’t half as great as the one God had for me in this season of my life. I am so much happier and fulfilled by what I am doing now than I ever would have been at the job that I thought I wanted.

And the BEST part of the story, I attended a workshop locally last week and guess what? The hiring manager was there. I saw her and gave a friendly wave and smile from across the room. I knew I had two options: I could allow feelings of rejection and failure to creep in or I could confidently stand up when it was my turn and introduce myself and what I do with confidence. I chose the latter and it felt great. The two of us had a great conversation after the training and it was wonderful to reconnect!

So, my challenge for you today, is there a perceived failure that recently happened that you need to reframe? For students and recent graduates who are just beginning, you are going to fail. And, if you are lucky, you’ll fail many times, because those are the moments where you’ll learn and grow the most in your career.

I am a passionate Career Coach and Career Educator dedicated to the professional development and success of students! How can I help you (or a student in your life) achieve career goals? To learn more about me, visit my website at www.lorenkellycoaching.com. Don’t miss the opportunity to receive free tips and training opportunities by joining my email list!

FAILURE: The job I didn’t get…
Loren Kelly