Career Relaunch®
Joseph Liu
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Trying Things Out with My Ly
Is it ever too late to explore your other career interests? Marketer turned voiceover artist, actor, model, and writer My Ly doesn’t think so. Her firm belief is that it never hurts to give something a shot, even if your background experience is unrelated or when you think your chances of “success” are slim. In this episode of the Career Relaunch podcast, My shares her story of pursuing a few different side hustles during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and discusses what opportunities have emerged from these explorations. We talk about the trade-offs of full-time employment versus self-employment versus contract work along with the importance of maintaining a positive mindset when exploring new career possibilities. Key Career Insights Dabbling in different areas without layering on too much expectation can be a really effective way of opening up new doors in your life and career. Things may not work out exactly the way you think they will, but at the very least, you’ll learn something along the way. Timing plays a huge role in the career pivots. Even if you feel like this moment isn’t the right one to make a leap, reframing your attitude to focus on just giving things a try rather than trying to succeed can enable you to take action. Anything is possible at any age. Just because you haven’t dabbled in something before doesn’t mean you can’t get into at a later age. Tweetables to Share If it's possible for someone to achieve something, why can't that person be you? My Ly Tweet This Listener Challenge During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, my challenge to you was to give something a shot. To give something a go that you’ve been thinking about trying out for so long. To focus less on whether you’ll be good at it or as good as others at it, or whether you’re going to be “successful,” but rather to focus on attempting it for the sake of exploration, learning, and most importantly to finally just seeing where it takes you. Maybe it goes nowhere. And that’s okay. But maybe it can be the start of something you never imagined would be possible for your career and life. About My Ly- Marketer, Actress, Voiceover Artist, Model, and Writer My Ly is a passionate, energetic, and creative individual who loves networking and helping others to inspire and grow. With over two decades of marketing experience in the beauty, construction, banking, and hospitality industries and a love for writing as she works on her debut novel, My has made the most of the lockdown period, during which she’s done work as an actor, voice over artist, model, and editor during the pandemic. She’s now doing what she can to inspire other people with creative interests to pursue their dreams. During our chat, My referred to the Cutty Sark, where she’s the featured model on their homepage, the London Transport Museum where her voice is featured in one their exhibits, and View Magazine where she’ll be doing some editorial work. To learn more about My, follow her in Instagram or Clubhouse @my_petite_my. 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 My 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 and Facebook. You can also follow host Joseph on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, 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! Thanks to A2 Hosting for Supporting Career Relaunch A2 Hosting is the web host provider I use and trust for my own websites, and they even offer 100% carbon neutral green hosting. For an easy, fast, and affordable way to get your personal website online today, visit careerrelaunch.net/a2 to get 50% off your web hosting plan. Music featured in show Isobel O’Connor / Band of Cubs, Our Waters / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com From Now On / Magnified / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com Alex Ora / Daylife, Walk the World, Into the Mountains / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com From Now On / Magnified / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com View Points / Imprints of Life / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com Headlund / Doors Wide Open / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com Lindsay Abraham / Morning Hike, Sunday Bright / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com Episode Interview Transcript Teaser (first ~15s): If its possible for someone to achieve something, why can’t that person be you? Unless you give things a try, you’ll never know if something is achievable or not. Joseph: What are you up to right now? What have you been doing in the past few months? What’s been keeping you busy? My: Back in September of last year, right at the beginning of the first UK lockdown, I ventured into some side hustles. I experimented with acting, voice-over work, and that’s been quite interesting because it’s not taken me to my current situation. I’m really sort of pursuing those particular creative outlets. Joseph: You’re also working full time, right? Can you remind me of what you’re up to right now with your full time work? All these voice acting and modelling, you’re doing this on the side, right? My: I work a full time job in marketing and I’ve been working in marketing for over 21 years now. I love what I do from a day-to-day perspective and I always have loved marketing. But I’ve also been a very creative person as well all throughout my life. With these side hustle experiments—or side hustles, shall I say—they are all fitted in and slotted around my day job. That can be quite challenging because my marketing day job is very busy and hectic. I’m juggling both then demanding day job, as well as then, evening to weekends and early mornings, fitting around all the other aspects that I’ve fallen in love with as well. Joseph: We should probably go back in time a little bit. I know you’re working in marketing right now but you had a few detours along the way, from what I recall. I think the first time you and I crossed paths, in 2012 or 2013 when we served as judges in London for a marketing award event. You were working marketing sushi for Yo! Sushi and I was marketing ice cream for Häagen-Dazs. Can you tell me a little bit about your earlier career in marketing? After that we can talk about when you stepped away from it, returned to it, and how you fit in all these side gigs. My: It was really early on, taking us back to my university days. I actually did an advertising and marketing degree. I really loved it and then fell into working into my first marketing job. I worked first in a lot different marketing sectors and industries. From the hairdressing industry, construction industry, banking industry, and hospitality industry—which has been a massive love of mine for over 8 years now. For me, it was quite important to think about different industries and also experience those industries because I think you don’t necessarily know what type of industry or company you might want to work for. I’ve been working in hospitality for probably 8 years now, and it’s obviously my marketing day job. An opportunity came up for me to work in terms of my marketing consultancy side of things. It’s always something that I’ve wanted to do but never had an opportunity. So, when the opportunity came up, I really wanted to give that a go. I loved it. I had a couple of clients straight of the book and I really enjoyed working with those clients. Joseph: Were you doing that alongside you full-time job or did you completely stepped away to do your own independent consultancy. My: I had stepped away from my full-time job and then became self-employed and worked as a marketing consultant. I really enjoyed that. I think it’s a very different ball game when you came from working, for a long time, in permanent salaried jobs and then switch over to being self-employed, running your own business, running your own consultancy. I can definitely see different pros and cons being on both sides of the coin. I really did love going out, networking, getting my own clients and working with my clients as well. One of the reasons why I decided to come back into more of a contract role, initially, and then come back to a permanent, salaried member or staff, is because actually of my creative paths and routes. I was also wanting to work on my debut novel. I think what I quickly realized when I was working on my marketing consultancy is that working on your own business means you’re working on it pretty much 24/7. That’s really what led me to start thinking about how I’ll be able to carve out some time to do something a bit more creative and to start working on my novel again. How could I do that? What I wanted to do was to go back to a contract role, first of all, and then have the stability of getting back into a permanent job. Joseph: Let’s go back a little bit here. There’s a couple of transitions that are quite interesting. You went from working full-time to being self-employed. What surprised you about working on your own? What were your plans and how did things actually pan out? My: One of the biggest challenges about being self-employed, especially quite early on and quite new to it, I realized quite quickly that I missed the whole kind of having my own team, department, an
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