Facing a life transition? Time to get over yourself

She handed me the Post-It note with a 1-800 number on it. I stared at it, confused. Earlier in the day, my manager Michael had asked me to get the “conference dial-in number,” for our upcoming meeting and so I’d approached Mary, an executive assistant, for the info.?

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with a 1-800 number. For me, 1-800 numbers were used when you needed customer service or wanted to order an Ab Roller through an infomercial at 2 am (been there). But I didn’t understand the concept of participating in a meeting by dialing into a 1-800 number.

In today’s digital, omni-connected world, it’s almost unthinkable to imagine a time when we weren’t dialing into conference lines or Zoom calls. But back then—after spending seven years in medical school and residency training, one year in medical practice, and four years working in the non-profit sector—any meeting I’d ever been to had either been in person or, rarely, I would call someone on the phone for a one-on-one discussion. I’d never had a need for a conference dial-in.?

So there I was. It was my first week working in marketing at a small biotech company and, in fact, my first corporate position ever. I knew how to treat diabetes, run a code blue, and monitor a patient’s high cholesterol, but I didn’t understand how a conference dial-in worked. Or how to use PowerPoint. Or operate a laptop. And, oh by the way, I only had a CliffsNotes understanding of biotech, the drug development process or marketing. I’m so thankful to the folks who hired and championed me in the first place, but looking back I can’t help but wonder—Michael, Hoyoung, and Alberto, what were you thinking??!?

I was grateful and thrilled to make the leap from clinical medicine to industry. But life transitions—even the ones that you fight for—are replete with emotions and the instinct to cling onto the past or what’s familiar, however difficult or complex those times might have been.?

Medical school and residency training hadn’t come easy to me. During those seven years, I had to work harder than many to master the concepts, focus, study, and learn. When I made it out the other end, clutching my diploma with incredulity on graduation day and, three years later, walking out of the hospital having completed my residency, I was proud.?

Maybe too proud. I wanted to wear those accomplishments like a badge. Sit at the finish line and celebrate. And get congratulated. I never would have admitted it at the time (did I mention how proud I was?), but that’s how I felt. I’d worked hard to earn those things and wanted to dwell on what I’d achieved. Savor the success and the satisfaction of a job well done.?

But as I stared at that Post-It note with the conference dial-in number, even though I was hit hard with the reality of starting over, I saw it as an invitation to seek humility—otherwise known as “getting over myself.” It was time to stop focusing on my past accomplishments, my resume, and self-aggrandizement. Time to let go of fear of the unknown (hello, PowerPoint), being exposed as a fraud, revealing my weaknesses, and making mistakes.

I may have achieved a certain level within clinical medicine, but my current reality was that I was new to biotech and the corporate world. At the end of the day my manager and my team didn’t care all that much about what I’d been through to become a physician. They wanted to know how I could help them grow the business and make it successful.?

It was a new day with a new challenge ahead of me. Here’s what I had to do:

#1 Accept that I was a novice. My education and training as a physician provided valuable context for my job in biotech, such as understanding physicians’ mindsets, treatment patterns, and unmet needs. However, I had to acknowledge and accept that these were not the core skills and knowledge I needed for a role in biotech marketing. No one had the time or inclination to dwell on all I’d accomplished in the past. It was time to buckle in and focus on learning how to add value in tangible ways—from developing a target product profile to conduct market research to determining a product’s market size. I had to come to terms with the fact that there was much to learn and I needed to dive right in.

#2 Embrace being a novice. Not only did I have to put aside pride and accept my newbie biotech knowledge base, I had to learn how to embrace being a novice. This was borne out of the gratitude I had for this transition.?

For so many years I felt stuck in clinical medicine and now I was on a new journey with fertile opportunities for reinvention. Opportunities to grow instead of being stalled in a job I didn’t like. To learn from the many experts around me and to tap into their years—sometimes decades—of expertise in all aspects of biotech, pharma, and the business of healthcare. To challenge my current way of operating and to deepen my critical thinking skills. To cultivate a mindset that being a novice was a tremendous gift.

#3 Master being a novice. While I couldn’t have predicted all the different paths I would eventually take in my career—moving from biotech to advertising to digital health to starting my own agency—I could see that in biotech alone there were countless therapeutic areas, markets, and disciplines to learn and understand. I had to develop a process and then a muscle memory for how to be a novice—which wasn’t just about learning about a new subject in a systematic way, but putting aside fear of failure, asking the most basic of questions, and not allowing my self-worth to be diminished because I was the least knowledgeable person in the room.

While I can’t say definitively that I’m a master at being a novice, it has become second nature to me. This didn’t happen in the first year or even several years of professional and personal transitions and reinventions, but rather from years of practice, making mistakes, learning the hard way, and learning best practices from people I admire and respect.?

And I certainly didn’t do it alone. Colleagues, friends, and mentors have helped me develop and hone a process for learning about how things work and what makes them tick—and always with a sense of humility. Even when you become a master of something, there is always more to learn.?

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There are still many days where I want to sit and bask in my accomplishments, congratulating myself for a job well done. In fact, as I write this I’m fighting that urge, as my business partner and I are deep into building and scaling Best Friend Jack, our boutique marketing and branding agency. The urge to sit in a comfortable, familiar mind space, where I have all the answers, playbooks, and processes. But I know that on the other side of that 1-800 number, there is joy and fulfillment in the uncomfortable, in evolving, and on this journey as a lifelong novice.

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