Episode 95: Embracing Changes with Ryan Campbell

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

Today on the Career Clarity Show, we are talking about how the most unique of circumstances and upside down opportunities can reveal the things that your heart is wanting most for your life. For so many of us, when we’re thinking about making a career change, some of the big questions that pop up are really contingent on a secret hope and belief that things are going to turn out perfectly. We hope that it’s all going to unfold exactly as we had hoped in the sort of beautiful storybook, easy peasy start to finish way. 

That’s not how most stories go. Most people when they are on an expedition of self discovery and exploration will have twists and turns. This is one of the reasons why we use a mountain climbing metaphor in the Career Clarity book to describe a career exploration journey. And it’s that spirit of being willing to embrace the changes, to lean into taking chances, and exploring new opportunities knowing that you’re going to get incredibly helpful data back. This is what makes today’s guest on the Career Clarity Show so exciting and such a fun and cool story to share. Ryan Campbell, an international Book Awards finalist, is here to share his story.

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

SHOW NOTES:

• And Ampersand: Short Stories on Endings and Beginnings (of a Sort)
• Ryan Campbell
• Ryan’s Newsletter
• Instagram: @Iamrrcampbell
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host, and each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, and welcome, clarity seekers, it’s Lisa Lewis Miller with you here today. And for today’s episode of the podcast, we are going to talk about how the most unique of circumstances and the most upside down of opportunities can sometimes reveal the things that your heart, your soul and your gut are wanting most in your life. For so many of us, when we’re thinking about making a career change, some of the big questions that pop up are really contingent on a secret hope and belief that things are going to turn out perfectly. Or that we can control the outcome that if I do a I will get be consistently no matter what 100% of the time, the return on investment, you know, the ROI is going to be perfect on this. It’s all going to unfold exactly as I had hoped in the sort of beautiful storybook, easy peasy start to finish way. And we hold this hope and desire in our hearts and in our dreams. And at the exact same time, there is a part of all of us that knows. That’s not how stories go. That is not how things typically shake out. Most people when they are on. an expedition of self discovery and exploration will have twists and turns. And it’s kind of one of the reasons why in Career Clarity Show book we use this sort of mountain climbing metaphor to describe as a career exploration journey, that there are lots of pieces that you may not be able to anticipate tools you might need that you don’t have experiences you thought you wanted that maybe you don’t actually want lets you get started. And it’s that spirit of being willing to embrace the changes, embrace what is coming at you lean into taking chances, trying new things and exploring new opportunities knowing that you’re going to get incredibly helpful data back, which is what makes today’s guest on the Career Clarity Show so exciting and such a fun and cool story to share.

Lisa Lewis Miller  2:27  

So, today’s guest for the Career Clarity Show is Ryan Campbell. Ryan Campbell is an international Book Awards finalist, the craft development chair for the Wisconsin Writers Association, and the founder of the rights cast network, a podcast collective that’s been helping creatives worldwide become more confident in themselves and in their craft since 2016. His published novels include accounting for at all and imminent dawn, which debuted as the number one new release for genre on Amazon. And it’s sequel morning dev is now available in print and ebook with most major retailers. Ryan has also been an instructor for the University of Wisconsin Continuing Studies in writing program and has been a speaker at conferences and seminars all over the place. Ryan lives in Stockton, Wisconsin with his wife where they own and operate kill your darlings Candle Company, which makes candles for the wordsmith of the world. So if you can’t tell already, Ryan’s got a very interesting, nuanced twist, eternity story to share about how he’s created a path and a career and a life that feels good, that feels authentic, that feels creative. So I am so so excited to bring him and his story here to you today.

Ryan Campbell  3:42  

Thank you for having me on the show. It’s it’s interesting to hear one’s bio read back and then suddenly go Oh, yeah, those are those things are all actually true that really did happen. Didn’t that

Lisa Lewis Miller  3:51  

well. And you know, it’s interesting. So who is the actor from house you remember the TV show house? Whew, I forget what his last name is. Hugh Laurie Lowery. So there was a quote from him many moons ago about how so often in our lives, we can’t connect the dots looking forward. But that when we see things in retrospect, he was using this analogy of being sort of a rower and being in your boat, and the direction that you are rowing, your back is facing, the way that you’re going and your front is facing the way you have come from. It’s using your weak it’s facing, you know, everything that’s behind you. And he talked about how it’s actually by looking behind us and seeing the retrospective that sometimes the connections between the twists and turns and the points become incredibly clear and beautiful. So it’s it is always a really interesting, funky, humbling experience to hear somebody else connect those points for you because it’s sort of like somebody’s throwing you into the boat backwards from moment to perspective. Right.

Ryan Campbell  4:55  

And that’s a really great metaphor. I often, you know, on the rights cast network programming, there’s this running joke. About the metaphor machine. And when you get in the flow of conversation, you start making strange analogies. That’s not a strange one. That’s one for the ages. So you know, props to you for that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  5:09  

Well, well, let’s, let’s go ahead and play with this analogy a little bit more and extend it here. And let’s start with the the moment that you first set foot into your own boat here. When you started things out professionally. Where were you started? And where did you think you were headed?

Ryan Campbell  5:25  

So I originally thought when I graduated college that I was going to take a year off. And then I was going to get into linguistics, specifically research in the realm of linguistics. That was what I had studied for my undergrad, I was very into it, I decided to do honors in the major and you know, I was going to go to like MIT and study with the Steven Pinker’s of the world. And we were going to do all sorts of great research on intelligibility of different languages and things like that. And I decided, hey, you know, when I take this year off, I’m going to go ahead and go to Brazil, I’m going to get an internship there, I had spent much of my young adult life learning Spanish. And the last couple years of college learning Portuguese was like, hey, let’s add to the repertoire, we’re going to go down there, we’re going to teach some English, we’re going to teach Spanish to college students in Brazil. I showed up in Brazil, you know, bright eyed, bushy tailed, ready to go really excited about this path toward education and research. And it became apparent, after only a couple of nights at this school, where I was going to be teaching that there wasn’t actually going to be a job. And so I suddenly found myself in Brazil, in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo in a city called sao Carlos, which is similar in size to like Madison, Wisconsin, which is just outside of so there was a good familiarity there. And I suddenly find myself going okay, fine. Good. I’m here. What am I supposed to do for the next three months of my life. I had a return ticket booked out a couple of months, of course, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Now, I was fortunate to be in a position where my housing was, I was staying in a converted garage, at a college students house, it was like a rent free situation. It was like a volunteer thing for them a volunteer thing for me, so I didn’t have to worry about housing. But I had this choice. I can move my flight, I can go home, I can try to get an actual job and start building the experience that I came to Brazil for. Or I can take a deep breath and just see how this plays out. And at first, it played out with me spending a lot of time going to various cafes, and drinking espresso that was dangerously caffeinated. I was not equipped for how serious Brazil is about their espresso and doing a lot of walking around town. And then one day, I just decided, you know, Ryan, in college, he always talked about this novel that you wanted to write. And he got a lot of time when you got a lot of caffeine. So why don’t you go ahead and give that a shot. And that’s that’s kind of where it all started was just clacking away at the keys of my old the original mac book that I had in that converted garage in Brazil? And then God, what is it? It’s 2020? Almost there, it’s probably 21 now so it’s been almost what, nine years since then. And you read the bio at the top of the show things have gone a very particular direction since then. Well,

Lisa Lewis Miller  8:29  

let’s stop and pause to think about like, sweet, wonderful Ryan, of your Ryan of yesteryear. And this decision point that you are presented with of Oh crap, I have arrived in a foreign country where I am getting stress test about how well I was studying Portuguese. And I thought I had an opportunity. I thought I had community I thought I had something to do to occupy my time and i don’t i can imagine the decision making process around well, crap, what do I do? was at least a little bit tricky. Or it would be a little bit tricky for most people. When you were thinking through, do I just changed my flight and GTFO and go back home? versus do I just find a way to make this work for me and make this opportunity into something of value? How did you approach that decision making process?

Ryan Campbell  9:27  

I approached it through what was probably a coping mechanism at the time, which was almost like it was like the path of least resistance but also recognizing that there was potential in giving myself permission to play. And that sounds probably strange because there I was in this space where I was not surrounded by my normal network of support. You know, I was away from my friends and from my girlfriend at the time I was trying to like, get it more involved in the community. In town there, but I didn’t know what that was going to be worth, you know, I didn’t have those immediate connections, there wasn’t going to be the sort of professional development, but I thought I was going to get out of that experience. So I think that what I ultimately decided was like, one, well, I’m now addicted to this espresso. So I think it’s important that I stay here to, you know, keep that habit up. But to, you know, I had an opportunity in having all this time. And once I found a purpose for that time, it wasn’t just time to, you know, you can only walk the same block so many times in a day, but to find something that was calling to me over the course of all these years and saying, you know, it’s not going to be the thing that I work on 10 hours a day, but it’s something that I can give myself permission to work on a couple hours a day to do reading about creative writing, to look for other resources. And also, you know, now I have time to apply for jobs that I can start when I get home, I don’t have to worry about getting back to the US and then trying to do that. So I think there was this interesting recognition of the fact that though things had gone sideways, that didn’t mean that the loss of one opportunity was the loss of all opportunity. It was, there is opportunity, I just had to kind of clear the brush away, if we’re gonna try and keep our boat metaphor up, I guess we’re not clearing brush away. But we are like seeing through the fog a little bit and recognizing that there are other landmarks out there to which we can grow. That’s our metaphor machine, I guess.

Lisa Lewis Miller  11:21  

I love it. And I feel like there are a couple different pieces about what you just shared that I want to underline. Thing number one, permission to play is a really powerful thing to give yourself, no matter whether or not you find yourself in a foreign country aimless and confused or not. There’s so much pressure that we put on to ourselves and our available time, our spare time to make it productive, make it useful, make it sort of like furrowed brow very serious and professional. And one of the things that if somebody was listening to the beginning of your story, not knowing the end, they might think about it and say like, well, gosh, Ryan’s just being young and irresponsible on noon, whenever you want, and who cares. But what we know and what you know, people who have gone through the Career Clarity Show change process have seen unfold in their own lives is that when you give yourself permission to enjoy your life, and enjoy what you’re doing and lean into things that are pleasurable in your work, the kind of doors and opportunities that they open, can be really profound. And they’re the kinds of doors and opportunities that we do not walk through if everything goes according to plan, right? 

Ryan Campbell  12:43  

I mean, we’re walking down that hallway, and you didn’t even recognize that the doors are there. I mean, in some cases, right? It’s very much a this is a lesson that I continue to have to remind myself, and it’s one that I try to, I guess I relearn it every day, to some extent, because though at the time I went through this process of making the decision that I made in Brazil, I didn’t recognize that I was giving myself permission to play and it took me you know, another 5678 years when I reached this critical mass of things like publishing deadlines that were hanging over me, deadlines for publication for episodes of my own programming, and everything was just building building building that I realized, I’m doing the furrowed brow thing that you mentioned, right? I was spending every minute of every day trying to squeeze every last bit of productivity trying to squeeze every last, you know, Penny that I could out of it. And what did that get me? Well, it was stress, it was a lot of stress. And it wasn’t until this last year or so, maybe even really more like the last couple of months. But I started paring things back that, here I am, I’ve given myself permission to play again. And life is a lot more enjoyable. And it’s okay to have to relearn to let your time go and let your mind wander because you can actually do some of your best work when you give yourself, you know, time to breathe once in a while.

Lisa Lewis Miller  14:02  

Absolutely. And I think that, to underscore that once in a while peace, if if you’re listening to this podcast, and you are working crazy hours right now you’re working over time you’re working around the clock because of things going on in your company or in your industry right now. And you’re listening to this and you’re thinking Hi guys, that’s really funny. having time to play That’s cute. I think that it’s really important to to hear what Ryan sharing about just finding ways to squeeze it in in any capacity possible. That that’s the important piece here. That’s the takeaway, right? It’s a it’s a huge privilege to get to be able to play all day, every day with your time, you know, if an opportunity falls through, and there’s a lot of spaciousness and you’ve got the financial runway to be able to float for a bit. But if you’re even in a situation where you’re feeling out of your brains busy, there’s still a way even if it’s 30 minutes A week to inject some play and some joyfulness back into your life and back into your world that can very well be like, we’re gonna go back to our water and boating metaphor here, that could be like a critical life raft to keep you afloat, if you are feeling like things have been going sideways for yourself.

Ryan Campbell  15:24  

Yeah, and I think that, you know, to your point of, even if it’s only a half hour a week kind of thing, I think, folks, if you are someone who is very busy, whether it is with your just the day to day of your job, your industry in general is, you know, working overtime right now, it can be hard to think that you’re gonna have time for that, because you’re so used to your every minute being scheduled, right? And so maybe it’s gonna be counterintuitive, but maybe you have to schedule that time to let your mind wander, like, maybe you have to schedule 15 minutes to play with your cat, or like, whatever it is, you know, just to give yourself that time where it’s just you with your pet, or your kid or just you with yourself, like reading a book for leisure somewhere, whatever it is, there are ways to work this into your life in a structured way, if that’s what you need, and sometimes just blanking out that space on the calendar so people can’t book it and take it away from you could really I would think make all the difference in something like that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  16:22  

It’s almost like booking yourself a miniature Brazil, like a Brazil hour or Brazil day on your weekend to just have this spaciousness.

Ryan Campbell  16:32  

Yep, it’s that guess in Portuguese, you’d call that day. But ideally, you it’d be a little Brazil every day of your life. So take take that for yourself. Right.

Lisa Lewis Miller  16:40  

I love that. Well, Ryan, let’s jump back into your story here. Because when last we left our hero, you’re writing in a sort of janky apartment situation in Brazil with your over caffeinated self and your laptop. And you have a three month timer, a three month clock on your Brazil time. So time’s up, your return ticket is ready to be utilized. What happens next?

Ryan Campbell  17:08  

What happens next is an eager young man who has convinced himself that he has written America’s like next great model is thrust back into reality where he finds himself unsure what you’re supposed to do with a book once you’ve written one. And also facing for the first time, the very intense struggle that I know a lot of folks have or can have after graduating, which is truly finding that job, right? The career path. And with my background, and with you know, the skills that I had acquired, I convinced myself as any I think graduate would or probably does, that there is a path here for me. And it will come as a surprise perhaps to learn that that path turned out to be drumroll please. Pizza delivery. Alright, so there we are, you do what you have to do to get by right. Same thing like in Brazil, I had this time I was going to use it to the best of my ability, I made it count for what I could make account for I come back to the US and you get your interviews, you’re trying to break into different industries that feel like they’re going to call to you before you go back to school, quote, unquote, for folks listening to the podcast version. And the next thing you know, it’s like, well, what’s what’s here? What can I take, and it’s delivering pizza from 5pm, to about 3am in a college town. And that’s how you make ends meet for a while. But that said, you know, the work continued, I tried to start getting involved with the university is Continuing Studies Program at the time they were doing just days, you know, they’d be like a one day seminar, maybe on a Saturday or a Sunday, you could go in and learn a little more about the publishing industry or little tidbits about the craft of writing. And I you know, kept whittling away, I started working on other novels and different short stories. And then I had a, what I thought was going to be my big break, I went to the big university of wisconsin writers Institute in Oh god. 2013, I want to say and at this institute, I had the opportunity to pitch my book to literary agents. And of course, this is a big exciting moment, right? for folks who aren’t familiar with publishing. literary agents are sort of the liaison between authors and the Big Five publishing houses. Basically, if you want to get published and wide distribution and the traditionally published market, you are going to need to have an agent with extremely rare, you know, exceptions. So I go, I got this great pitch, incredible pitch for you know, remember America’s finest book, just we’re we’re ready to go. And, you know, your pitch the book, and it went really well. Actually, every every agent loved the pitch and the requested pages and I was like this is it. Here we are. This is the career you know, I have I have taken advantage of the time that was available to me, I’m going to become my best self. Here I am. Every stereotype you can imagine for an author. And I send all these pages to these agents. And I never hear back from any of them. Ever. So you’re devastated. You know, what do you do? You’re back to square one. You spent that time in Brazil working on that novel, it was your one big, really huge idea. You were encouraged along the way, you’re doing everything, right. You can’t get a job outside of pizza delivery, and suddenly your big novel falls through. And so, you know, I did what is the best you can do sometimes. And that’s just keep swimming, or I guess rowing in our boating metaphor, or in reality here, keep delivering pizza. And so that was really the the status quo for me for a good couple of years there. And I did wear my way up the ladder at the pizza place, eventually becoming an assistant manager. But did I want to stay in pizza forever? No, I wanted to write books. But it was another one of those dead end after dead end things, even if I was writing additional manuscripts. So I reached this strange spot where it was like, Okay, what is where’s the clarity, right? Where’s that Career Clarity Show I’ve gotten being pulled in different directions. And the only things available to me are things I’m not super interested in. So what comes next? Right, I’ve rambled for a couple minutes here. So I’ll make sure that I let everyone breathe. And then we can come back to that if that’s where you want to pick up?

Lisa Lewis Miller  21:29  

Well, Ryan, one of the interesting things about the the sort of career path model that you employed when you got back to the states is you worked a job that you probably couldn’t have cared less about. But that was creating stability, that was creating income. And that was the platform from which you could keep pursuing whatever this thing was that was calling to you more in your case, writing. And there is this fabulous researcher named Emily wapnick. And Emily has created this whole body of literature and research on the different sorts of what I kind of call personal business models, that people who have a lot of different interests and passions employ when they’re thinking about creating a career path that makes any sense for themselves. So she has has this whole body of work on people who have lots of different interests, which she has dubbed multi potential lights. And for multi potential lights, one of the particular methods that multi potential is often employ when they’re working, is a model called the Einstein. And the Einstein model is named after the Einstein of the Albert variety, where he worked a job that was sort of fine, doing government administrative stuff, from nine to five. And then in that sort of five to nine time, in the meantime, afterwards, was throwing himself all in on all the creative scientific experimentation and discovery work that he’s best known for. And so you’re this classic, beautiful example of an Einstein in action, right, you’re doing a job nine to five, or I suppose it was the five to three, that that did not bring you a whole lot of sense of fulfillment or joy in and of itself. But functionally, operationally, it was enabling you to have the space and the time to go to this writer symposium and be able to pitch agents to be able to keep writing and working on your manuscript, to be doing some of the things that really lit you up in new and different ways. So a move that to some people could look like on its face. Is this this like, failure, right? Like there are a lot of very strong harsh judgmental words that are associated with people who don’t immediately dive into, you know, a typical sort of corporate career path. But it takes this untraditional decision or this completely fine but different decision for a career path and contextualize it in a way that actually makes it sound like a much more strategic and powerful move than the person who would have taken the typical nine to five job, but who would have been feeling so drained and burnt out at the end of the day that there would have been no, no energy left no juice left to be able to work on these life giving creative pursuits.

Ryan Campbell  24:34  

Yeah. And you know, it’s really interesting that you use that word strategic there too, in the context of you know, making the strategic choice to have employment or you know, the equivalent that gives you the opportunity to explore in that free time, you know, those Einstein hours what it is that really calls to you, because in looking back, you know, at those years where I was working at the pizza place, Very much, sort of through that lens that you were hinting at where it’s this idea of like, what is what’s my deal? You know, am I am I seen as a failure to other people like here I was, this guy who was very successful in his college career was like, fairly involved in different student organizations graduated with a very high GPA and with Honors in his major, and he’s, he’s just delivering pizza like, what’s, what’s wrong with this kid you like, How can’t you figure it out? And I think, to some extent, you know, it became a comfortable thing for me. And I think maybe without actually recognizing it, I was continuing to press on with that job, because I knew it gave me that space to wake up a little later in the day, I’ve got some time in my morning, you know where I would at that time, I was probably drinking tea. That was before I got back on the coffee wagon, but, you know, I would drink my tea. And I’d work on these short stories, some of which eventually became the novels that are published today. Right. So it was one of those it wasn’t strategic at the time. But later, when I got maybe a little wiser, I did start realizing there were still some strategic plays to be made to keep myself in that space, while still positioning myself in a corporate angle that sort of hedge my bets, in case the novel stuff didn’t work out. So maybe that’s where we go next. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:19  

Yeah, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about this sort of creating optionality. It sounds like is baked into your story?

Ryan Campbell  26:26  

Yeah, optionality was a really big part of it. Because, you know, I was clearly discouraged after my experience with my first novel. Though, after getting feedback from folks in the local writing community, I started to learn like where it had gone wrong, and what I needed to improve on as a writer and really refining that craft. So while I did that, and I did that sort of independent study, I quickly realized that as many of my friends with whom I had been roommates for years here in you know, in Madison, Wisconsin proper, as they started to get jobs that were like out of state and out of the city and move, suddenly, I was in a position where I might have to get a place of my own neck gets expensive, right, and suddenly trying to pay for your student loans and your rent. And sure, I got some free foods that were to the pizza place, but eventually, you know, a pizza delivery position isn’t gonna cover a lot of that. So I had to start looking at what are some ways that I can get involved in other career paths, or just a job that’s going to cost me more money more regularly kind of thing, right. And that led me for a while, interestingly enough to an agriculture and agriculture based company out of Fort Atkinson, it was almost like an hour drive from Madison. But they hired me because the Spanish and Portuguese stuff, they needed help with their customers in Latin America. And so me, who knows absolutely nothing about farming, suddenly found himself having to acquire a lot of vocabulary for that get up to speed and get adjusted. And it was, again, kind of like the pizza place was, this wasn’t a job that was going to be my passion, I wasn’t suddenly going to find myself, like really dedicated to ensuring that, you know, the Wisconsin State dairy farm population was getting the right nutrition to their cows, even though like that was what the entire company’s mission was, I was gonna be there, functionally, you know, I was gonna perform well. I was the only person doing what I was doing. So I guess well to them was just if they heard me speaking Spanish and Portuguese over the wall during the course of the day. So that was fine. I could show up, I could leave. And then eventually, that actually opened the door for me to transition into employment back here in Madison, I got a little closer to home. And I was working in another industry I care so much about he said, with not a hint of sarcasm in his voice. It was medical devices. Again, just completely off the wall stuff, I never would have thought that this is an industry that I would bet in getting involved with. But it was another company that needed someone to work specifically with their accounts in, you guessed it, Latin America. So here we were, again, with these ties to Brazil to ties to time that I’ve spent in Spanish speaking countries. And had I you know, made that choice way back in 2012, or whatever it was to just jump ship on Brazil and not refined my Portuguese language skills. I hadn’t given myself permission to play what I have eventually found these jobs where I could, you know, do those Einstein hours I could show up but I could do the duties of my position, then come home and work on that writing that I had given myself permission to work on in Brazil, probably not. So I had in some ways, stumbled my way into these situations that were very beneficial for what it is that my goals were. But as I progressed through, you know, my career in these different places going from, you know, an international Customer Care role to becoming a regulatory affairs specialist where the responsibilities were kicked up. And I suddenly you know, if you’re I was climbing that ladder a little bit and I had to start making choices at this point. I still didn’t have books out. What was I do? You know, was this all a waste of time, I had been keeping my options open and hedging my bets. But at some point something had to give. And that was kind of when we reached the next stage in all of this, I’ll give another breather here. This is like a chapter a day where we have to pause, we just like let everyone decompress for a second, I think,

Lisa Lewis Miller  30:19  

Well, one of the things I love about the way that you are navigating these, like fine nine to five jobs to create optionality for yourself, is that because you had given yourself permission to play and because you’re giving yourself permission to explore the things that you wanted, in your time in university, you had tools in your toolbox that even though they weren’t being used imminently at the pizza place, had a utilization and an implication in the rest of your life, that there was nothing that was wasted about that. Because I think that there’s a pervasive belief, especially among high achievers, top performers, people who expect a lot of themselves were in Go, go, go go go mode, that if I take my foot off the gas pedal to do anything enjoyable to do anything as a hobby to do anything that doesn’t have visible ROI to it, it’s wasted. And how beautiful that in your story. And in so many stories, that sometimes it’s that time with your foot off the gas pedal, where you are just exploring things, for the delight of it for the intellectual curiosity of it, that those very experiences can come full circle and open doors to you that you would have never been able to open any other way. And if you just saw the opportunity in front of you, and you hadn’t done what you done five years prior, you would never be able to rescale or upskill, in time to be a valuable candidate or a valid candidate for those opportunities,

Ryan Campbell  31:51  

Right, for those opportunities, and actually in the same vein for what would eventually become my published novels, because while I was working these, you know, nine to five jobs, I was showing up, I was doing my thing, I took what I think of as the Hugh howey approach, and Hugh howey. For folks who might not be familiar, he is the author of wool. It was, it’s largely considered to be the first widely successful self published, you know, book series that was out there, they ended up being three books in this series. And what he how he did is he worked at a bookstore. And he kind of did that Einstein hours thing to where, when, when was it that he was going to write these books? Well, he wrote them on his break. That was what he did. He used his lunch everyday at the bookstore, to write these books that would you know, initially self published, they later got picked up by whatever the publisher is the books on my shelf, I won’t grab it, but they got picked up by a bigger publisher reach wide distribution, I think later, he ended up getting the rights back because he realized he was making more money in self publishing. But he took advantage of those small minutes. And I said, One, well, I like those books. That’s pretty cool, too. I’m gonna give that a try. And so while I was on my lunches, whether it was at that agriculture job, whether it was at the Medical Device place, that was my time, my headphones are on and I was punched out and no one was gonna bother me. And I made it very clear, like, yeah, I’m, I’m an author, I’m gonna say that even though I don’t have published stuff out, so please, just like respect that space. And let me have this time. It’s, you know, my half hour my hour to work on this stuff every day. And while I was working on that, I had convinced myself again, I’ve got this new novel, this, this one’s the one. It’s this big techno thriller. Here we go strap in, folks, this is the one that’s going to land me a contract. And I hit a lot of roadblocks with that book, I was convinced it was a good book, I knew it was a good book, but I couldn’t get traction with agents, I couldn’t get traction with small presses. It just I was reaching this point where it was critical mass again, and I thought, alright, this is what I’m gonna take that position within the company, I’m gonna move up to Regulatory Affairs. What that same time, I’ve been giving myself permission to play. But in this case, I’ve been giving myself permission to play with a book outside that techno thriller world. Very different book. I got an idea in my head for a character. And that character just happened to be an adult film star turned accountant. And I wondered what kind of person would make that career shift. And I started dabbling with that character. I wrote a book about her kind of as a joke. It was just a fun thing. I needed a break from this big techno thriller. And Lisa, of course, the book I’ve got offered a contract for first was accounting for it all the joke about the adult or the joke, the book that was written as a joke about the adult film star turned accountant. So again, it was permission to play just give yourself a little nonsense time fit it in when you can and then suddenly that opens doors for everything else.

Lisa Lewis Miller  34:50  

I love that. And one of the things that I want to make sure people who are listening take out of this is that you didn’t put the pressure on your work to be your be all end all, you didn’t put the pressure on your nine to five to have to give you all the play, all the joy, all the fulfillment all the meaning all the purpose, all the income, all the balance all the all the all the that you were approaching your own sort of rich life, if you will a holistic sense of a good well live life through this lens of Let me try these creative endeavors. Let me play with silly concepts and ideas that feel like they might not be going anywhere. Let me have the space to keep applying my craft here. And that continual focus on that I deserve to enjoy my life, I deserve to have fun I deserve to play. Sounds like it’s opened up the way for many, many of the endeavors that have come along the way for you.

Ryan Campbell  35:54  

Yeah, I mean, it really is strange to think about how when I wrote accounting for it all I submitted it, I think to normally when you’re looking for an agent, you got to submit to like 100 of them and not get any traction. Before you go, it’s time to shelve this book. I submitted that book, I think, to maybe five agents and one small publisher directly to a smaller publisher that didn’t require an agent. And I got, I think of those five agents I submitted to I had one request for a full manuscript, which is great way better traction than I had gotten elsewhere. And then same thing with that small press, except the small press got back to me first. And I was very excited, I jumped at the opportunity to have that book published. And then once they once I signed on the dotted line for that I said, and by the way, by the way, I’ve got this techno thriller you might be interested in. And sure enough, they were. And sure enough, that book got published. And sure enough, that one became the international Book Awards finalist. So it was just again, it was like, you just got to trust. You gotta trust rate where it feels good, you know, and just like, give yourself that space, let yourself you know, kind of mess around when you have to because you have no idea where it’s going to lead. I mean, I went from everything that we’ve talked about, I mentioned, I would attend these seminars and these Institute’s about writing. Well, now I speak at them, like, how did that happen? What happened cuz I just gave myself space to enjoy it, you know, and sometimes it was stumbling upwards. And I do have a certain amount of privilege afforded to me to be able to do that. But if you have the space to do it, why not, you know, like, you can make something good for yourself and then share that with other people. And that’s what it’s all about, you know.

Lisa Lewis Miller  37:34  

And I want to highlight something that I just want you to expound on here a little bit, which is that the the time and the space to be able to write didn’t happen by accident. This, this did not happen because you have nothing else going on in your life, and you have no friends and you have no other responsibilities. Right? I think that when when people think about creating space for creative endeavors, or to try something new, to start their first business, to run a marathon right there first book, whatever it is, we sometimes have this, this accidentally misguided belief that we just have to wait until we find the time, the time appears that there will be some sort of magic time Fairy Godmother who bops you on the head with her magic wand and the Duma, it’s all of a sudden, all of your responsibilities and all of the different pressures and demands on your life have magically does aberrated and you have all the space in the world to do the thing that you want to do. And from every creative I’ve ever talked to. While that might be how it looks from the outside to the people who aren’t doing the thing. That’s not usually how the time is, is. I don’t even know what the right word to pick is generated. Manufactured. Korea found

Ryan Campbell  38:49  

Yeah, found or created, I think is a really good one too. Because I mean, you’re spot on, you know, it was what started as I use my lunches to write quickly became, especially once I started being on deadline with my publisher, which created a whole mess of other critical mass, you know, issues was, I started getting up before work, you know, and when I had a short commute, for one of the companies I worked at, well, I’d get up an hour earlier than normal. And I would spend that time writing that meant not getting on my email. When I got to my computer, it meant not opening Twitter, it meant not doing all these other little things. It was truly a schedule the coffee to go off five minutes before I wake up so that by the time I get into that office, it’s ready and I sit down and I write and that is a habit that persists to this day. I mean 5:15am every day, but in chair, hands on keys, that time is sacred. It is for writing and like that’s what it has to be in their days. Do you have to give yourself that time off? Like I get burned out. You can’t do it seven days a week. You have to let yourself say, you know what, it’s Sunday, and I’m still probably going to get up at like 530 because that’s just where the schedule is. And this morning, instead of working on a manuscript, I’m going to work on this Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I’m running right now, because that’ll be fun, you know, and it’s still creative. And it’s play time. And it’s going to keep my brain thinking about it. But just to take the pressure off, but still know that that time was there for you to have. And I think that that is a big misconception, because people do expect there to be this fairy godmother of time, who will reach down to clear everything up for you.

Lisa Lewis Miller  40:24  

Yeah, that I think that there’s, there’s a really pervasive belief that, you know, well, I’m just, I’m too busy right now, that somehow life is going to stop trying to get in the way, and I’ll be able to create space. And there are some people for whom you are absolutely right, that there is some sort of cognitive load going on in your world right now that is going to be alleviated at some point. And maybe right now is not the ideal time to go into this endeavor, because your heart and your energy and your priorities are somewhere else. But if this is important to you, if playtime if creative time if time to explore what could be next for you and your career in life is important to you. Usually, the next question is, what do I need to stop doing? To be able to have the time to do what matters most? And part of what you might need to stop doing is you might need to stop having leaky boundaries, right? Because, Ryan, I love that you were so fiercely protective of your lunchtimes. Because if you hadn’t been if you’d been like, oh, whatever, I can do meetings at lunch, that’s no big deal. Oh, you need me to come in early, because I’m talking to somebody on a different time zone. And that’s the only time that works for them. Sure, no problem I can be there. What gets pushed to the backburner? What gets pushed out? beyond that? The hope horizon, right, and the hope timeline is the play. Oh, I love the the ruthlessness and the fierceness with which you created a boundary and held that boundary to know that it was in service of this bigger dream bigger mission for you.

Ryan Campbell  41:59  

Yeah, I mean, and self advocacy is always going to be important, particularly in a creative field. I mean, in any creative field, think about it, even in a professional capacity. You know, if you are someone who is a brand manager, or you’re a graphic designer, or whatever the case is, there gonna be times where you’re gonna have to advocate for your vision. Because you know, this stuff, you trust yourself, and you know, what’s important to you. And, you know, it’s important to if it’s in that professional setting, you know, it’s important to the brand, you know, it’s important to the company, but when you’re in a space where you are your brand, you know, you are your own company, whether you have an LLC set up or anything like you are the only person who can advocate for that, you know, until you reach a point where you have someone working with you, and a personal assistant capacity or something like that, who really loves your work and who knows your work and is there to help you along the way. Most folks never get to that point, you know, I know incredibly successful, we’re talking about New York Times bestselling authors who still have day jobs, and they have to advocate for themselves when they’re in that professional capacity outside of their creative role to make sure that they don’t have themselves getting steamrolled by that professional, you know, setting, that’s their nine to five, they’re just there to like, add that little cushion and have that stability. So you have to be able to advocate for yourself. And I think that maybe this is the next stage of the conversation. That was where I found myself with everything coming to a head around me with publishing deadlines coming up, and I was getting married. And I taken this, you know, new position within a company where there are bigger expectations of me and everything just reached this breaking point. And it came time to make some very difficult decisions. And so that was, maybe that’s where you want to take it next. I’ll let you know. Okay. Sure. Yeah, we’re getting the nod. Great. So the context on that is that here I was marking Regulatory Affairs at this point, I had just gotten a sizable raise, I was set up for like a true career path. Now. You know, Regulatory Affairs, particularly international regulatory affairs in the medical device industry is like a thing you know, tm, tm, tm after it that is a that is a path and you can take that path and you can do very well.

Ryan Campbell  44:00  

I, I took that job. And then within a week was offered my first publishing contracts. So everything came to a head all at once. And here I was faced with, okay, now we have this this great joy in two different pads, and suddenly the success is there. What am I going to do? I’m going to try to do both. I’ve done both so far. I’ve done okay, trying to do everything I can wear all these hats, it’s going to be okay. It’s not okay, though, you reach a point where you do have to realize that, for me in those positions, only one of those jobs is bringing me joy. But also only one of those jobs is going to really pay me anything. Because as I hinted at earlier, you know, some of the most wildly successful authors and we’re talking about folks who probably aren’t on a lot of readers radar but are still successful relative Lee speaking, they still have to work other jobs to make ends meet. So me getting published with a smaller press. I was like, Okay, I don’t know how well my books are going to do. But I have something I found myself with three books that were Gonna be due out in a year, one of them wasn’t written at all. And I had to go through the stages of, you know, revising and preparing to publish and getting marketing plans together and doing it for all that for these other two. I was running my podcast at the time, it had just gone to a weekly show, and I was also getting married. So you know, it was a real pylon. And my wife looked at me one day, at the time, we were engaged, she just looked at me, she goes, why don’t you just quit? And I was like, What do you mean, quit? She’s like, no, like your job, quit your job, you’re not happy. And then you come home. And you’re, you know, it’s those Einstein hours, it’s I come home, and maybe we would have dinner, and then I would work till 930 or 10pm every day. And like, that’s not a great way to live your life non stop with no end in sight while you’re trying to set yourself up for like this future with your partner, right? And so she says this, I’m like, oh, there’s no way we can afford it. How are we going to make this work? You make you make all the normal excuses you would make, right? Because that’s, here we are, again, we’re deviating from the path, I finally worked so hard, and I got on this path, am I really going to give it up, I did actually crunch the numbers, and it wasn’t gonna be great. But I could leave that job, I would need to find something else. And so I looked for something part time, something that would be very low, it was like going back to that pizza delivery job it was, can I find something that is going to let me show up, perform some tasks get paid a little bit, and then have these extra days, these extra hours where I can breathe, I can do my work, and I can still have this opportunity to be myself. And I did, I quit that job. My supervisor was not very happy, because I had just been promoted to that role. But I think ultimately, you know, the other folks in the company with whom I had worked longer, they got it because they had seen me carving out that time, every day during my lunch, they got the updates and had subscribed to my author newsletter and things like that. So they knew what was going on. And to see that kind of support, and to see that having made the plunge, you know, with some significant lifestyle changes and things that are required when you leave a position like that behind to know that it worked and was working. And that here I am. Now it’s been two years, two and a half years, almost three years, maybe now since I’ve made that change. I’m still working part time at that same place that I made the leap to the books all came out, made a lot of mistakes along the way that could fill a bajillion other podcast episodes, but you live and learn, right, you figure out what needs to make sense, you make the brave choice, and you embrace that which is going to bring you joy, you can find ways to make these things work. And even if I’m not a New York Times bestseller, even if I’m not on a traditional career path, I am finally for the first time in almost a decade and a place where I feel like I can breathe every day. And that didn’t happen because I suddenly realized there was like oxygen to suck in. I had to swim to the surface because I’ve been thrown overboard in a rowboat in a rowboat analogy earlier now to swim to the surface and find that oxygen again. So there’s that metaphor machine.

Lisa Lewis Miller  48:09  

I love it, bring it around, full full circle here. And one other thing I want to make sure to underline about your story is that you had some optionality because you were willing to look at the numbers and figure out how to make it work financially. Yeah. If you had been too intimidated by the numbers or the math or overwhelmed by it, or feeling like you weren’t good with money, it could have been really easy to talk yourself into the belief that you had to say in that regular Regulatory Affairs, job track forever, that was going to be your life and your future. So the willingness to actually crunch the numbers, see what you need to see what your lifestyle costs and see what that kind of freedom is worth to you can be a really intimidating thing to do and an intimidating thing to think about. But it’s one of the biggest pathways to giving yourself freedom and true optionality that that exists.

Ryan Campbell  49:11  

Right? I mean, it is a it was it was a big, scary thing to do. I mean, there were parts of me that even after crunching the numbers, I thought to myself, well, what, what does that mean? You know, like, we’re already living in an apartment where the rent was pretty low, we got very lucky to find the place that we were living and I was thinking like, well, what’s that going to mean? Are we going to find ourselves, you know, if my books come out, and they’re huge flops and like, you know, something happens to my publishing contract, or at this part time job doesn’t work out? Am I going to be back to living in a converted garage in Brazil? Like, that’s not really where my life was at at that point. But you make the tough call and things break your wage just enough and yeah, it can work out. You just have to be willing, like you say, you got to be willing to make that time you got to be willing to crunch those numbers and just give yourself the freedom You need to play.

Lisa Lewis Miller  50:04  

Well, Ryan and I rowboat here, we are approaching the opposite shore. We are about to land. So tell people about what life looks like for you today, because we’ve definitely covered some of the ups and downs of the sagas over the year. So what is what is career? And what does professional life look like for you in this season?

Ryan Campbell  50:24  

Yes. So right now, I am finally in a spot where I have like I said, I’m still working that part time job, but it’s with, you know, COVID, and everything going on, it’s all from home now. So there’s even more flexibility with that. It’s just Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I do that for six ish hours a day. But guess what, in the morning, before I punch in, it’s still writing time, guess what, during lunch, it’s still writing time. Then the other days of the week, it’s all open. You know, I recently decided that I was going to shut down a podcast, I’ve been running for four years, that was another tough choice. But I realized that, hey, the audience, I was reaching there, as much as I love the writing community, for as great as the writing community has been to me, I need to start reaching readers, and not just the readers, who would be out there for my currently published work. But for work that I’m looking forward to publishing in 2021. And beyond, which is in a different vein than what people have historically seen from me, I’m changing pen names from our Campbell to Ryan, our Campbell. So there’s just this evolution is ongoing, right. But the nice thing is, is that in having that part time position, that gives me the stability, and then being able to really dedicate this time on the other days of the week to set aside the hustle of the podcast network and everything that came with that and to embrace the writing again, and to embrace finding a new vision for who it is that I want to be as an author, it feels like I’m kind of I’ve pushed this interesting reset, where it’s like I’ve set myself back a couple of years. But I have all the knowledge now that I wish I had back then. And so I can go into that more confidently. It’s kind of like rowboat analogy. We’re rolling, we’re rowing, there’s a bunch of fog. But then you finally realize there’s a spell you can cast to dispel some of that fog. We’re going Dungeons and Dragons with this a little bit. So we’re going to dispel some of that fog. And now we’re like, oh, there is a way there. And I can see a light on shore. And I know how to get to that light. And I know what it’s going to feel like to some extent once we reach it, now we just have to put in the work and do the rowing. And so I’m in a position now where my quote unquote nine to five is it’s me rowing, I get to choose the direction that we’re going to row I get to choose, you know, the, the boat into which I hop on a given day. And it’s really, you know, putting in these words, the first time I’ve said some of this stuff out loud, I’m just so grateful to know that I’ve been afforded these opportunities. And that luck broke my way when it did, and that I had people in my life who were able to support me and give me the push to make those tough decisions when I needed that help. Because otherwise I’m I’m in a converted garage in Brazil still working on that first novel. Yeah, you never know.

Lisa Lewis Miller  52:58  

I love that. Well, and Ryan, sort of the the end of your story here are the catching up to the present moment, shall we say your story here is that we come back to the idea of these multi potential lights and different ways to structure your work to meet your life’s needs. The Einstein is one of the methods of structuring your life. But the one that you’re actually doing right now, for any listeners who are interested, this one is what Emily refers to as the slash approach, where you’re taking your your typical sort of work hours, and filling them with a couple different money making types of ventures within that time, such that you are an author slash part time employee. And I we oftentimes in the Career Clarity Show world sort of refer to this as the portfolio career, where you’ve got a couple different composite parts to it. And it’s a great strategy for diversification and managing risk. And it’s also a great way to make it so that you can sort of cross fade from your old world, from the Einstein model, hopefully into a new world where the bulk of your life and your revenue but can be coming from the writing space, and you can feel like you’re finally stepping into even more alignment there. The way that rain of yesteryear probably only dreamed of.

Ryan Campbell  54:15  

Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, you suddenly realize that, hey, that one time I left that job, things, things ended up being okay. And so now I can look at this and say, Well, I made that as a plunge. But what if there’s a way that I can slowly ease into the water? And that’s I think, maybe what is behind that sort of slash setup, as opposed to the Einstein setup where, all right, I’ve got this slash going on. It’s a pretty even split on one side of the slash versus the other. But can we start pushing things, you know, to the side there I really want to be on and that’s that sort of lowering into the water. You know, you can make these things work, but now you’re in a position where I’ve learned from my past, and I know what it’s going to take to get where I want to be. And so you do these, you know, it’s this recalibration, it’s this change Have a pen name, it’s this exploring what is more true to you in your writing and in your work, because you’ve been able to make it work in one vein, you know, you can do it elsewhere, you’re just gonna have to put in that work again. And that means keeping up those good habits, it means not letting the bad ones creep in. And it’s gonna mean making some tough choices eventually, but equipped with the knowledge that we have. We know these are things that can be achieved. It’s just a matter of being patient, trusting yourself trusting the process and knowing that eventually, all of that rowing is going to pay off.

Lisa Lewis Miller  55:30  

I love it well, for people who have been listening to this story and who have been bearing with us through our extended rowboat sculling analogy here, and who are curious about you, your work your world and want to keep in touch and hear about what’s coming next for you, including an upcoming book coming out very soon, which is exciting. Where do people keep tabs on you, Ryan?

Ryan Campbell  55:54  

Yeah, so my website is going to be Ryanrcampbell.com. Don’t forget the are in the middle there. There’s a billion Ryan Campbell’s out there. But I did manage to get the one with the AR So Ryan, ar Campbell, calm. Otherwise, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram are where I am more active. My handle there is I am RR Campbell. And like Lisa says, you know, stay tuned, we have the first collection of short stories that we’ll be publishing under this new pen name. That collection is called and ampersand short stories of endings and beginnings of a sort. Coming out, you know, Spring Summer 2021. Here, we’re working out the final details we’ll get there. It’s a learning experience, right. So that’ll be coming out. And I’d love it. If you stayed in touch with me through those means sign up for my newsletter through my website and you can stay in touch every couple weeks. I’ll let you know how things are going and I’ll ask you how they’re going for you.

Lisa Lewis Miller  56:49  

Awesome. I love it. Oh, Ryan, thank you so much for coming and sharing all the twists and turns of your personal hero’s journey on the podcast today.

Ryan Campbell  56:57  

Well, thank you so much, Lisa. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Lisa Lewis Miller  57:07  

And that’s the wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests and topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity: Finally Find the Work That Fits Your Values and Lifestyle. For the link to order it go to getCareerClarity.com/book. And don’t forget to get your other tools resources and helpful goodies at getCareerClarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the Career Clarity Show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.