I’m sharing this videoIto give a little insight on my career – how I built my career, how I transitioned from pharmacist to digital creator, etc. This is a question I get asked a lot, so I thought this could be a helpful video to share my experience, but also help anyone who isn’t happy in their current situation, wants to make a career shift, and especially to those of you in the medical field who don’t like what you’re doing in the job environment and want to find that shift. I’m going to share a few hurdles I overcame, and some big obstacles that got me from pharmacist to digital creator. Check out the video, but I also summarized it below.
How I Overcame Career Obstacles
- Did I just waste all this time in school?
For me, I had just worked my butt off for six years in pharmacy school – earned my doctorate, was ready to start my life and working as a pharmacist – and then literally day one, I was like, “I hate this. This is not for me.” There was a whole year period I was thinking maybe I could be a pharmacy consultant or maybe I should do something completely different… I didn’t know what to do.
It’s definitely hard to get over that mental block because no one likes feeling like they wasted their time. For me, it was SO painfully obvious that I wanted to be happy doing what I was doing. Even in the three years that I didn’t even start my brand and I worked as a pharmacist, I kept switching pharmacy jobs – literally taking pay cuts – thinking maybe I would like this job environment more. The fact that I was willing to take less money to be happier showed me early on what’s important to me.
Even if you feel like you wasted 4 years, 2 years, 6 years, 10 years… you still have so many years of your life left – it’s just not worth it. Looking back really won’t get you anywhere, so for me, this was one of the best decisions I ever made.
- Worrying about judgement.
Whether it’s your family, your friends, etc.,I think this is totally normal, especially if you’re like me and wanted to go from working at a retail pharmacy to doing more media, TV, digital content, and YouTube. That’s a really big switch in careers, and I was worried about the judgement.
One thing I did that really helped me was for the first eight months when I was building it, I didn’t tell a single soul. I thought, you know what, it’s no one else’s business, and I wanted to work on it myself. Eventually I had something solid to tell people versus just saying, “Hey, this is my idea!” For me personally, it helped. Some people are a little judgmental – my parents were nervous – but It doesn’t always come from a bad place. Maybe they’re worried about your well being or if it’s the right move for you, but you have to do what makes you happy, not what makes your parents or friends happy.
If you find that you’re holding back doing something because you’re worried about judgement from anyone else in your life, ask yourself this question: Are you not going to do what makes you happy and what you’re passionate about because of someone else’s opinion? Even saying that out loud just sounds so ludicrous. This is your life, and it’s about what makes YOU happy and YOUR journey.
- How to make money?
Of course I was concerned with actually making money and making it into a career. When you finally find your passion and know this is what you want to do, sometimes it’s hard to work somewhere else. But, you also have to pay your bills. I don’t think enough influencers talk about this part of it. You just see the final product – they have hundreds of thousands of followers and they’re making money doing this – but how did they get there in the first place?
All I can do is share my story and tell you what I did, and that was work full time as a pharmacist while I was building my career. Once I actually started making money – which took me a full 3 years – then I was able to quit the pharmacy. You have to make sure that it’s going to be consistent, you’ve built an audience and that this is something you can really do. It’s okay to work at a job that pays the bills while you’re pursuing your passion. Don’t take any shame in that or think that you’re failing. Real good things take work to build, so just know that you’re on the right track if you’re doing both and pursuing what you love.
- Self-Doubt
I think this is something we can all relate to. Like I just mentioned, there were so many years that I wasn’t making any money, and I was working SO hard. I literally would work eight hours a day at the pharmacy and then work until 10-11 at night, pursuing this career that I wanted. There were so many times throughout those years where I was like, “Am I ever going to get anywhere? Is this ever going to work?” I was lucky to have people I could ask and mentors who told me that this was nothing – some people take 10 or 20 years before it takes off.
The big thing that kept me going was knowing that I would do this forever. My mom would see me working so late, working really hard, and not making any money in this career yet, and she asked, “How long are you going to do this for?” I knew I would literally do this forever, even if I make no money, and that was such an important moment. Even if I had self-doubt, I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my time. It’s almost like a hobby that I’m turning into a career. Yes, there’s hard work that goes into it, but that helps get rid of the self-doubt. You know deep down that just because something is hard, doesn’t mean you’re not good at it; just because something takes longer than you want it to, doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get there.
- Celebrate the little victories.
I went into this with this mindset of “When am I going to make it? When am I going to reach that finish line?” And finally I realized that there really is no finish line because this is my life’s purpose, this is my passion, and what I want to do. What finish line would I even reach?
We create the “I’ve made it” concept because to someone else, you could’ve already made it graduating college. Everyone has their own version of making it. You learn that this whole thing is a journey. I”m going to be doing this my whole life, and there’s going to be mistakes I make, and things I do that I wish I learned before… That’s just my journey, and you have to enjoy it. Trust me, if you’re pursuing something that you love, you really will enjoy it.
Don’t doubt yourself and get upset that things didn’t go the right way in the beginning or they’re taking you a little bit longer than they should. Of course there are days that aren’t great, even though you’re pursuing something you love. It’s this big journey that you’re on forever, and I think knowing that makes you feel like you’re in less of a rush.
- YouTube.
I wanted to share a little bit about trying to create a YouTube channel, how to go about it and what I did to get mine to where it is today. One thing you might not know is that I actually tried and failed at YouTube twice before I felt like I actually gained momentum.
The first time, I had a marketing team with me, and we would create these videos… and I just felt like they weren’t very me. They were so bad – I’m embarrassed to even look at them. A few years later, I made different videos, which I thought were pretty good. It was kind of a Q&A thing where I would read your questions and answers off Instagram. …Totally failed. No one was interested. No views.
What actually helped my YouTube get off the ground was when I decided I needed to make content for my community that they can always refer back to. People would ask, “What is food combining?” or “What kind of workouts do you do at home?” I went into it thinking YouTube is so saturated, I’m not even going to try to win that game and get anywhere with it – this is just going to be for my community. And with that mentality of “just bring value,” it organically did so well, and it ended up being my most successful channel. I’ve been on it the shortest amount of time, and it beat all of my other social media channels. Going into it with the intent of bringing value to your audience is huge because you’re asking for their attention. What value are you bringing them? When you look at it like that versus how you want to look on camera, what you want to say, what you think is best – it really gives you a shift in mindset, and that was really huge for me when building my channel.
I hope you found this video helpful, and if you are making some kind of career shift or life shift, it brought you some kind of value and helped you along your journey. Just remember that if you are really passionate about something, and you really really love it, you’ll want to do it for free forever, and you’ll find a way :).
