Career Change: The Sh*t No One Tells You About

In 2016, after 10 years of burning out, doing things that I did not really care about, I decided to leave the corporate world, take a leap of faith and explore the rapidly developing world of Digital Marketing, working on the agency side.

To facilitate this change, I also moved to Cyprus in 2018 as no agency in Greece would take a bet on me, being 37 years old and not having set up a single facebook ad in my life.

So, I made a career change from Marketing Management to Digital & Performance Marketing, coupled with a country change between 2016-2019 and these are the things I wish I knew at that time:

You will need a ton of money

Starting from scratch means you go to lower salaries than expected.

I had a 50% salary decrease almost from day 1, because when you move from Big companies to small agencies many unexpected things can happen.

Eventually, I made my way back to the big league, but negotiating higher salaries in always difficult when you start from a lower base.

Having a 50% salary reduction hurts a lot if you are 35+ with a ton of financial obligations.

I estimate that my career change costed me more than 50.000 euros of squandered savings.

You will have to learn everything from scratch.

I don’t even know how many nights I spent watching videos for setting up Facebook Ads, Google Ads, SEO, Google Analytics etc.

I spent most holidays setting up Ads.

I remember that I spent a whole weekend trying to set up my first Google Ads campaign for my first freelance client.

Working hard is the only option….

You will train your humility muscle too hard

Starting from scratch means you are at point 0 again.

I was taught from interns and junior executives on how to set up Facebook and Google ads and in the beginning I was constantly being criticised for not knowing enough.

I even had a salary decrease twice.

You will see everyone else progressing

Also, while I was pursuing my dream, my peers were climbing up their career ladders, getting to the stratosphere.

Many of them are now General Managers, VPs and Group Directors in big Greek and multinationals companies and some of them have already taken their business to 7 or 8 figures.

It is very easy to feel like a failure, when you see all those people who started at the same point with you, progressing so fast while you start from ZERO.

You will have many many dark days

I don’t even know how many times I doubted about my self and my capabilities. I remember one day when I was 38 years old, I was walking home from work and I was thinking that I destroyed my career and my future...

I was literally on the edge of depression.

There is light at the end of the tunnel

Thankfully at some point, if you manage to cope with everything, you start to become skilful enough in your new craft and you start to make money, add value and regain that competitiveness under a new career.

Past experiences help a lot when you make a career change because in the end, business is all about people.

Technical skills can be learned but people skills and market knowledge are only build with time and experience.

When you work on building a different skillset/career, you carry with you the soft skills and the learnings of your previous career.

Finally, allow me to say that making a career change is a highly rewarding process.

From 2019 till 2022 i made an extra 50K freelancing every year, so the money that I lost was just an investment in the future me.

I also had the chance to start my own business & develop amazing new skills ad knowledge.

I did go bankrupt twice as a business owner, but this is the story for another post :-)

Finally, at the age of 30-35 you still have another 30 years of work ahead of you, so it is not wise to stay in something that you don’t like.

But be careful cause every time you make a career change, you start from (almost) zero.

If you make it a habit to start from zero every 5-7 years, you will never progress enough in your field.

Real mastery takes time...

So, if you need to make a career change:

• Try to have a good financial safety cushion
• Be ready to start from scratch and
• Trust the process.

Also, I would advise to first start a side hustle doing what you love, before embarking to a complete full time career change right from the start.

You can get there gradually and with less pain and significantly less stress.

You have all the time in the world and you will get there eventually.

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