Career Relaunch®
Joseph Liu
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Focusing on the Present with Caroline Yeats
When it comes to your health, you never really know when things can take a turn. Caroline Yeats shares her story of relaunching her career as an investment banker to become a nutritionist after being diagnosed with incurable Stage IV bowel cancer in her early 30s. We’ll discuss investing your time in only those things that matter and treating each day as if it’s your last. The week we had planned to record this conversation, Caroline actually had to have a sudden, emergency heart surgery, but she very generously insisted on still doing this recording, which gives you a glimpse into her positive attitudes about life and work. During today’s Mental Fuel segment, I’ll share the steps I’m trying to take to create the future I desire. Key Career Insights When you’re in a balanced place in life and invested your time doing things you care about, you can truly enjoy each day. Doing things that make you miserable is not worth it because life is just too short. Thinking about important questions can potentially change the rest of your life. What do you want? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? What can you do about it? Imagine what you want your ideal life to look like in 5 or 10 years. What can you do right now to make that happen? You have to decide which issues you will allow to consume you, then reconsider whether it’s worth the stress. Listener Challenge During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about deciding exactly what you want your life to look like in the future. Decide what specific actions you’ll take right now to maximize the chances of making this vision come true. While there are no guarantees things will turn out exactly as you hope, you might as well do everything you can to try and turn your hopes into reality. About Caroline Yeats, Nutritionist Caroline Yeats started her professional life in investment banking after graduating with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from The University of Oxford. After five years, she joined one of her banking clients, Xstrata Mining, as an Investor Relations Manager. Following the company’s takeover, she was a founding member of a new mining venture, X2 Resources, but a serious medical issue led her to leave her corporate life behind to pursue a career as a nutritionist and found Nutritious Living. She’s currently completing her studies while writing three books, caring for her toddler and undergoing treatment for incurable stage IV bowel cancer. Follow Caroline on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Did You Enjoy This Episode? Please Let Us Know! Tweet: If you enjoyed this episode and have a few seconds to spare, Tweet to let me and Caroline know! Tweet a thank you! Review: I’d also love for you to leave a positive review and rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, which helps my show reach more people who want to relaunch their careers. Subscribe: Be sure to subscribe to Career Relaunch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Android so you can automatically get each new episode on your device. Full instructions. Stay in touch: Follow Career Relaunch on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also follow host Joseph on Twitter and Facebook. Comments, Suggestions, or Questions? If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners! Leave Joseph a Voicemail You can also leave a comment below. Thanks! Episode Interview Transcript Teaser (first ~15s): Imagine yourself in 5 or 10 years’ time and your ideal life, and then think about what you can do right now to make that happen. Don’t wait for 5 or 10 years. Start doing things now that mean that that will be a reality. Joseph: Good morning, Caroline. Thank you so much for coming on to Career Relaunch. Caroline: Good morning. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to take part. Joseph: There are so many things I want to talk with you about today, Caroline. I just want to start by saying I really don’t feel like we can do justice to everything you’ve been through in a half-hour conversation, but I’m going to try. I’m hoping to talk about your decision to leave the world of banking behind and also the impact your health has had on your career decisions and outlook on life. Can you start by sharing a glimpse into what’s been happening in your life, even over the past week? Because especially as it relates to your health, I understand you’ve just come out of an emergency heart operation. Caroline: I have indeed. We didn’t know I would be able to record this, because two days ago, I was still in the hospital having been admitted to A&E on Thursday with fluid around my heart which had to be drained in an emergency. Perhaps let’s take a step back from that. Last year, I was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer. That means it has spread to various places in my body. My prognosis is poor if I’m honest. It’s an incurable condition although I am having treatment. I’ve been treated with works of surgery, radiotherapy, along with chemotherapy fortnightly, and I’m responding well to it. That’s kind of where I am right now, and I think it’s important to get that because it had influenced a lot of my career decisions over the past few years. Perhaps to step back a little bit further and give you a very brief history of me, I am an Oxford graduate. I studied philosophy, politics, and economics, and the typical way of going into the city and starting working in investment banking. This was 13 years ago now. I went to Deutsche Bank and spent five years there. It was a fantastic career as an early 20-something. I learned a huge amount. I worked with incredible people, both within the bank and on the client side. I was in a client-facing role in corporate broking. I got to spend a lot of time with big companies and CEOs and CFOs, which was just amazing really, as somebody starting out with their career. It was something that I need that I wouldn’t want to do forever. It was very intense. It was very long hours. I didn’t have much of a life, so after five years, I actually moved to one of my clients, a mining company called Xstrata. It’s a very big company at the time. I spent a few years with them. They were then taken over, and I stayed with the CEO and CFO of that company, and we set up a new mining company, which is sort of private equity backed. We raised a big fund to go out and buy mining assets. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. Then everything kicked off with my health, and three years ago, I decided to leave the city world altogether and started training as a nutritional therapist. That’s where I am at the moment. Joseph: I definitely want to talk more about each of those two pivots in your career. Before we do that, you alluded to the cancer. For those listeners who aren’t familiar with the various stages of cancer, what exactly is stage four bowel cancer, also known as secondary or metastatic colorectal cancer? Caroline: Stage four, as you rightly said, is also metastatic cancer. It just means that the cancer has spread from its original location into other organs. For me, I have cancer that began in the bowel. I had a number of polyps, which are small growths found in my colon, which is the lower part of your bowel, three years ago. That was kind of the start of my cancer journey. At the time, we thought that they were only pre-cancerous. It turns out that was probably not the case unfortunately. I had a couple of small operations, but I was otherwise considered fine until last year, when I started suffering from a bad back which, to cut a very long story short, turned out to be a tumor in my spine. When I had various scans, it was also discovered that I had cancer in my lungs, in my liver, my pelvis, and in various lymph nodes. What had started in my bowel—they discovered that, through biopsies and through tests of the tumor cells—had spread to various spaces, and that’s what made it stage four. Interestingly, I don’t have any tumors in my bowel, which stumps everybody, but that’s just one of the examples of how strange this cancer is, I’m afraid. Joseph: I know that prognosis is a really funny word because nothing is definitive when it comes to cancer, but can you share what the prognosis is here for you, especially as it relates to your stage four bowel cancer, or at least what you have been told? Caroline: The prognosis for stage four bowel cancer is very poor. Five-year survival rates are well under 10%, but there’s a couple of things to say about that. You’ve already alluded to it. Prognosis is an odd thing because all the doctors can do is look at averages, and there is nothing average about my situation to be honest. The majority of bowel cancer patients are over 70. You have to think that when you’re over 70, your life expectancy is not too long anyway, so being young is a positive for the start. Secondly, everybody just responds so differently to treatment. We didn’t know whether chemotherapy was going to work for me, but actually, it’s working superbly. At my last scan, all but one of my tumors had shrunk. If treatment hadn’t worked, my life expectancy last year was 6 to 12 months, but it’s kind of irrelevant because treatment is working. It’s very much now ‘how long is a piece of string.’ My view is I feel well most of the time. Chemo is very hard, but between chemo, I feel very well. I just live life like today. None of us know what’s around the corner, so I try my best not to focus on what might happen but just to focus on what I can control and what I can do today. Joseph: You mentioned that the majority of people who have this are in their 70s. We should point out that you’re actually in your early 30s. Caroline: Yup, that’s right. I’m 34. Joseph: We’re going to come ba
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