Moving On Without a Plan B

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Tess Vigeland, whose voice may be very familiar to yours, because she is the former host of Marketplace Money and a backup anchor for NPR, All Things Considered. She is CEO of Tess Vigeland Productions, an LA based multimedia company.

And her first book, which is really the topic for today, is Leap: Leaving A Job With No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want. Tess, thank you so much. I've been following some of the interviews you've done and articles written about you, so I know you've been super busy with the book.

Tess Vigeland: Yes, it's been great. And, Anita, it's great to be on your show. Thank you.

Anita Brick: Well, thanks a lot. You know, there was a question, and I don't know what you thought of it when I sent it to you, but it seemed super irreverent. But maybe it's a good launching off point so we can. Students said, what if an MBA from Chicago booth is my plan B? I already have a JD. Should I drop out of a booth, quit my job and just see what happens? I think sometimes when people hear a leap, they feel like, well, was it completely random? And I know it wasn't. What were some of the decision processes that you used to actually leap?

Tess Vigeland: Well, if we're being honest, a lot of it was random for me. I did not put a lot of thought into it before I did my leap. It was sort of spur of the moment, I would say. I thought about it for maybe 12 hours. Then I just decided that I needed to move on. Now, that didn't mean that I just got up and left the newsroom.

I gave them three months, but the actual moment when I made that decision was very spur of the moment. When I look back with that beautiful 2020 hindsight that we all have, I realized that I had been thinking about it without really knowing that I was for a long time, subconsciously, I was thinking about making a transition, making a change.

I did not go through the steps of preparing financially as I should have. I certainly didn't know how emotionally and psychologically taxing it was going to be to quit without having something else lined up. What I like to say now is do as I say, not as I did. I didn't do it in the smartest way possible. It has worked out for me exceedingly well, but I had a lot of advantages going in.

I had a name that a lot of people knew I had a 20 plus year career. I knew that I was going to get work, and I was not able to feed my cats and dogs. Plus, I had a husband at the time who had a nice salary, who could pay the mortgage. And, you know, that's what a lot of people think it all comes down to is finances.

And yes, you have to be prudent about money. I detect a little bit of snark in that question, but it's not the first time I've gotten something like that, because the automatic reaction for a lot of people is, oh, bully for you. Lucky for you, you must have won the lottery and you can just up and quit and not worry about living. Well, that's not the case. But I would say that when you do something like this, when you leave without a plan B, when you take the time to really think about your options and what you want to do with your life, you are absolutely taking a risk. You are taking a risk that it could all completely fall apart.

Some people cannot even imagine that, and they think that it's a stupid thing to do, that it is totally unwise for me and for a lot of other people. I've discovered many, many other people who have done this. Now it turns out to be the best thing that you've ever done, because you take that time to really sit with yourself and figure out what you want your life to look like.

If your plan B currently is to boot school and get a new degree, that's great. You made the decision to do that. You made a plan to do that. But if it's not working out for you through no fault of your own, if it's turning out to be something that you thought you would be interested in, you're. Maybe you're not, but you have no idea what to do next.

That's where this comes in. This whole process of really reevaluating where you are in your life, what you want to do with it, and preparing yourself financially enough so that you can take some time away, take a leap into the unknown and try to figure that out for yourself, because I don't think that you can do that while you're in the process.

I don't think that you can do that while you're working. I don't think that you can do it very well while you're in school. You just don't have time or headspace to really consider what is going to make you satisfied and bring you joy in your life. So that's why I advocate making it possible for yourself to take that time.

Anita Brick: I agree it is often difficult to do that. In fact, there is an alum who, in addition to a full time job, says she has three children under the age of four. That whole scenario by itself, you know, it's hard to really imagine. It sounds like financially she's okay. She can make a move without a plan B, but she's afraid or worried that a new employer will think she actually got fired. Because it goes back to that. Well, why would you leave without a job? And she's concerned that others will think she has gotten fired. When you think about the people who actually leaped of their own accord, how did they explain it?

Tess Vigeland: That's an excellent question. And this is something that I have written about on LinkedIn, which is a great place to tap into the HR hivemind question that I have asked there is, why is this a problem? Why does this become an issue? If you have taken a few months, a couple of years away from your career track, particularly if you've been doing something for a long time, like you've had some years in your career, maybe ten years, maybe even 20 years like me.

If you step away from that to go learn a new skill, or to have a family or to do anything else, or to travel the world, whatever it is. Why is that suddenly a black mark on your career? I don't think that makes any sense. Quite frankly, I think it's idiotic. I've gotten on a hobbyhorse about this and would like to change the world, and particularly change the American workplace, so that this doesn't become some sort of black mark against you, because it actually means that you've taken the time to figure out what you want to do.

And when you start looking for employers to come back to, you're really ready to get to the question of how you explain it. First of all, maybe this is pie in the sky, but I believe that the workplace is changing, and I think a lot of that is owed to the millennial generation, which is kind of saying, you know what?

We're not going to do it like all the rest of you have been doing it. So they're changing jobs a lot. They're taking breaks every once in a while. And unless you're not going to hire any of them, you're going to have to get used to that. I think that's wonderful for people of older generations to take a look at that and say, wow, it hasn't meant that our economy has fallen apart.

It hasn't meant that the workplace is falling apart. Yes, we've had to make some adjustments. Maybe this generation will actually find some semblance of work-life balance, that catch phrase that we've all been trying to pursue over the last 20 years or so. I think the workforce is changing, first of all. Second of all, when and if you take this kind of leap into the unknown, where you do take some time away to figure out what you want from your life, which I think is a really important question to ask.

Oh yeah, when you take that time out, I think it teaches you that you don't want to go back and work for someone who doesn't understand that. Frankly, if I applied for a job and someone looked askance at me for taking some time out writing a book and figuring out what I wanted to do next, and they said, well, I don't know.

I don't know if that makes you a good worker anymore. I would not want to work there. And that's just a decision that I've made. And it's something that I think a lot of the people that I interviewed for the book would agree with. I know that someone would come back to me and say, well, bully for you again. Can you tell I've gotten a lot of this?

Anita Brick: Oh, I can tell you, yes, absolutely.

Tess Vigeland: Yeah. That you can turn down jobs. Well, yes and no. What I'm doing is making a decision of who I want my next boss to be. I'm making that a two way street. I'm making it so that it's a place that I want to work. It's people I want to work for. I think the more of us who start doing that, the better off the workplace is going to be. We need to take some of that power back.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right about that. And we have a responsibility to connect the dots for the new employer. How to say I'm off. It's better for them. How this time off actually you gain a new network. You gained more skills. Maybe you even did some experimentation with different projects. It still has to be oriented toward them. Whether you're a millennial or whether you're a boomer or somewhere in between.

It's all about the value you bring. And I think that's where having that cogent story I wasn't lying eating chocolates on the beach. I was doing this and this, or if I was, I gained so much from learning about whatever and about myself and how I can add value. I think that has to be a very strong component to this.

Tess Vigeland: Yes, and I love that you use the word story, because I think that's exactly it. You need to know what your own story is, and you need to be able to tell that story, I guess. Explain yourself. I don't like the judgment inherent in that. You are doing this for a reason, and you are learning a lot as you go through this process.

And that's something that I think is great to share with a prospective employer. You know, I have to say, I also love that you corrected yourself when you said, you know, I don't want them to think that I was eating bonbons on the beach. Well, you know what? If you traveled and you did some eating of bonbons on the beach, foreign.

It is your life. You get one shot at this and this idea that we have to be on this treadmill every single day, every single year of our working life is absurd. It is absolutely absurd. You know, this is why sabbaticals are created. This is why a company like Intel actually gives its employees this time off to go and just take time with whatever they want to do.

They don't have to work. You don't always have to be productive. I know that that is heresy in our society. But there is a lot to be said for just taking some time out to chillax. Right? So back to this whole whole idea of how you're going to explain it, because a lot of the pushback that I've gotten is the HR professionals, when you are looking for a job, it has gotten so automated.

If they are having to look through 500 resumes, yours with the unexplained gap in it, that it's just easy to throw it away. Yeah, it's extra work that they have to do, I understand that. I think that is a failing of human resources. I'm not going to be able to fix that. However, there was some really good advice that came out.

Again, this is a big conversation on LinkedIn where people were saying, you know, maybe that means that on your resume you need to have a paragraph or two, maybe a short paragraph that says what you did and why, and you need to come up with that story, but you want to include it on that resume. Now that's going to be a different looking resume. It's not going to have a company on it unless you go into business for yourself, which a lot of people do. Yes, you do, but that could also then make your resume stand out.

Anita Brick: I've seen sabbatical types of things on resumes. It still needs to go back to what value did you get?

Tess Vigeland: What are you bringing?

Anita Brick: Yeah, we want them to jump with us and see the value. I'm all for that because I had to take a leap, not because I wanted to, but because I got crushed by an elevator car many years ago. And oh, yeah, it was really awful. But when I came back, I struggled with many of the same things because even though it wasn't a voluntary leave, I still had to.

Tess Vigeland: I had been doing right. Yeah, I understand from the employer's perspective they want you to show what you've been doing. But my argument is also that, look, someone in my book said this to me and I still use this example over and over again. Put your resume in a drawer, leave it there for a year. Take it out.

What has changed? Nothing. Yeah, nothing on that resume has changed. Not one single thing. You still have all the experience. You still have all the skills. Depending on what you do, you may need to brush up on them. It's not like when you take some time away, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, you fall down automatically and hit your head and forget everything that you've ever learned.

But that seems to be the mentality that we're talking about here. When people worry that the people are going to look at that on their resume and think, oh, they lost it all, it's not true. It's just not true. So you do have to find that way to communicate that message in some way, shape or form to a potential employer.

Anita Brick: And it depends on the field. I mean, I agree with you in principle, but at the same time, if you've been in technology and you're going back a year later in technology, you better have done something during that time to at least know what the new lingo is. So I think a lot of it depends on what that industry requires.

So I don't think it's the time off per se. Are you still using an iPhone for it? Well, you may be out of touch a little bit here or the equivalent of that. One of the questions that I thought was pretty representative of a lot of people at booths. Current executive MBA student, late 30s. She's been in the internal finance side for a long time.

She wants to do something completely different. I'm not taking a leap because I'm taking time off. I know what I've done. I know what I can bring. I'm doing this MBA to broaden my skill set. But how will anyone take me seriously if I haven't done it before?

Tess Vigeland: It's a tough question. I would point to another story from someone I interviewed who went from corporate America. She also was in finance. She just got wiped out. She was just so exhausted and could not tolerate the idea of going back into that kind of workplace, going back into that kind of lifestyle. She had always been interested in baking.

This is to follow your passion. Sometimes, you have to be careful about that. But she walked into one of the famous bakeries in her city in Minneapolis, and they had a job opening, and she walked in and she said to the owner, look, I don't know anything about baking. I like to eat it. I know the basics of yeast, but that's about it. But what I can bring to you is a passion, a willingness to learn. I have smarts, I know how to handle myself in a workplace. You would be taking a risk on me, but I'm really ready to do this, to make a change in my life, to do something different. You gave her a job and now she's great.

Please. I'm so happy. And she loves what she's doing. She had some of the pangs of, oh, am I not living up to my potential? Because right now I went from corporate America. Now I'm quite unquote just a baker. But she told this wonderful story about how people were coming in over the holidays and talking about how important this product was to their holiday celebrations, this bread that they made that they couldn't imagine, you know, not having this at their holiday tables.

And she said that was all I needed. I'm doing something important. I'm doing something that means a lot to a lot of people. I'm not saying that this will happen for everybody. So you could just walk into some new industry and they will accept you with open arms. No, that's not realistic. That said, there are things that you can do to prepare yourself for something brand new.

You can speak to yourself with skill. You can take classes. You can. I think the word networking has become problematic because automatically all you think of is like having coffee with someone in an industry. What I've discovered is it really takes something more than that. You need to feel comfortable asking people if you can shadow them for a couple of days, because I think what that does for you is it gives you a sense of that new career that you want to leap into.

It gives you a sense of what it really looks like, not just coffee with somebody, not just drinks with somebody gives you a sense of what their work life balance might be. It gives you a sense of what the workplace is like, what the tenor of the workplace is like, gives you a sense for what the daily grind is.

I think we're all just shy to ask for that sort of favor, to ask for that sort of thing. But I think we would be surprised at how many yeses we'd get if people really started asking for these sorts of things. I think most of us are more open to it than we think other people would be, so why not ask?

Anita Brick: You've got a good point. How do you make it easy for the other person to say yes? Because I've heard both sides. I've heard someone say, I asked for such and such and they made it really easy. On the other hand, other people ask for so much they never got to know, but the person refused to accept any phone calls and never replied to email and what are some things to make it easy for someone to say yes to shadowing them or something equivalent.

Tess Vigeland: If people are not going to return your emails and your phone calls, you need to move on. Why bother with someone like that? There's nothing you can do to make this work for someone who is not going to bother with you. If they're not going to do that, then find somebody else. Ask someone else. It's not going to be a two way street.

This is not something where you can exchange something with them unless, you know, you buy them lunch or dinner or something. This is a favor and this is something that you're asking of a fellow human being to help you out with something. I think that's fine. And I think we should all say yes or no more often. But if you're getting a no, move on.

Anita Brick: I agree. I think, though, that there is some little bit of self-reflection there that's required too, because if you're coming in with a very arrogant sense of entitlement, you need to take that back and say, well, look in the mirror first at least, and say, is it me? If it's not me, I agree, move on. But sometimes.

Tess Vigeland: You have to.

Anita Brick: Look in the mirror.

Tess Vigeland: Mean that was obvious. Not always and not always. So don't be arrogant ever. And don't ask for things that are out of line. Think about it before you do something like that. And yes, maybe you're getting a bunch of knowledge you're asking for too much, and if you're being a pain in the butt, then you need to take a look at that. Absolutely. That is a two way street and you need to be a nice, normal person. If we switch gears.

Anita Brick: For a second and evening, a student asked, and I love this. It was early in your book you talked about being remarkable. So in the evenings Susan said, how do you find a new definition of being remarkable after losing a job or leaving one? I feel like I'm a little bit stumped. Where do I look for that new remarkable thing?

Tess Vigeland: Oh my gosh, I love this question. I want to take this person out for drinks or coffee. I think this is one of the hardest things of the whole process. You can prepare yourself financially. You can prepare yourself for some of the sideways glances you're going to get from people, but you cannot prepare yourself, particularly if you've been in a career for a really long time, for not having that as your identity anymore, and especially if you're really good at it.

That's where you derived a lot of your self value, a lot of your self-worth. And when it's suddenly gone and you don't have that thing that you feel makes you remarkable, which is your career, it's really, really hard. And one thing that you should do is be prepared for that to be difficult. I mean, you have to prepare yourself for the loss of identity.

It's a real struggle to deal with that. So how do you find that remarkable? I think it takes time. I think it takes a ton of self-reflection. As you know, a lot of my book is about me trying to figure out how I'm special outside of being the lady of the radio. That was how I thought I was special for 20 plus years.

That's what I thought made me a cool person, because everybody thought what I did was super cool and I had great stories of parties. You know, this gets into a lot of psychology. You know, you find out that what makes you remarkable is not your job. It's how you conducted yourself. It's how you treat other people. It's how you serve other people.

It's about a lot more than the actual job that you did. It's how you conduct yourself there and you find out what makes you valuable outside of what you do for a living. There's no formula for that. There's no roadmap for how you get to that psychologically. But what I can say is that when you spend that time outside of your work life, figuring out who you are outside of what you do, you start to realize what it is that makes you remarkable for me, it was finding value in helping other people.

I did that in my job in a kind of a hard to explain way, I guess. I mean, I had a call in show, so I help people with money, but I never really thought of that as helping people. When you're in the job, you don't necessarily think about that unless you're in disaster relief. So for me, it was figuring out how I could just find that piece of myself that I thought was super cool.

Outside of being on the radio. You just have to work on yourself when it comes to that, because you are remarkable outside of what you do. Maybe you pick up a new skill so that you're challenged. It's something I think a lot of the value that we derive from work is being challenged. And that's why when we get bored is when we really start to think about, well, what else is out there, maybe you can teach yourself a new skill. That's what I did. But I found out that teaching myself and learning something new brought me a sense of being remarkable. I was like, oh my God, I've done this. Wow, this is cool. And it has nothing to do with my job.

Anita Brick: Yeah, again, it is. It's a practice in it's a, it's a process. It's an ongoing commitment for many people. And I think I am included at times. All right. I'm completely determined. I'm going to do this no matter what. And then five minutes later it's like, what did I say? And I think it's this constant, maybe it's not every five minutes, but it's this constant recommitment to keep moving along that path.

There was a question from an MBA student who is in public broadcasting and she said, I'm planning on making a career shift post my MBA. Should I limit my career shift to media? And then knowing what you know now, are there any career fields that you foresee? Here she is. She's been in the media for a fairly long time. You know, that's her life. Beyond that, although you stay somewhat connected. Do you see adjacent fields that open up?

Tess Vigeland: Well, for me, they did. I have to say right off the bat, I'm not a career counselor. I can't tell her what's good for her. What I can say is that for me, one of the things that I learned, I don't think this is unique to journalism, but one of the things I learned is that we all have skills that we don't even think about.

So especially if you've been doing something for a really long time, there are things that you would say, oh, I just do that in my sleep at work. I just know that by the back of my hand at work, and you stop thinking of it as a skill because it is in your DNA. It's just what you do.

What happens is when you leave that workplace or you leave that career, you all of a sudden realize that actually you had skills, and you have skills that you didn't even think of as skills. So let me give you my own example for me. I've been a public speaker for 20 plus years. I mean, I know how to handle a microphone.

I've done stage shows. I have no problem getting up in front of an audience and I have no stage fright. It's just, I mean, it's just I just did it for 20 plus years, so I never thought of that as a skill. It was just part of what I did. Yet when you think about it, it's the opposite of what most other people want to do.

90% of the world does not want to get up on a stage with a microphone or anything else. They want to be as far away from that as possible. It's when I started to think about it that way. I realized, well, I have a skill that has a whole lot of value outside of what I used to do with what I did as I transitioned that into corporate emceeing.

A lot of what I do for a living is I go out to corporate conferences and I'm the person who welcomes everyone and introduces everyone, and sometimes I'll do stage interviews with keynote speakers. Sometimes I'll do the keynote. So this is something that I enjoy because it's giving me everything that I used to have except multi-millions of audiences, but it's giving me a stage, it's giving me a microphone, it's letting me utilize my interview skills, letting me utilize my public speaking skills, and it's making me a paycheck.

That's a big part of this process, is looking at what you do now and figuring out how to translate that, transition that into something else. It doesn't have to be something entirely different. I would encourage her to sit down and really think about the things that she does every day, that maybe she doesn't even think about as a skill set, because she's been doing it for so long, and she's so good at it that it's become part of her.

And anyone can do that. You can sit down and think about not just the physical things that you're doing at work, typing, answering phones. You know, we all do that. But what are the things that are unique to you? The value that you can bring to another potential employer? And how can you explain that to that potential employer that this is what you do, and this is how you can translate it to what their needs might be?

It's a valuable skill to have anyway, and I think everyone should do that. Just sit down and have that list of things that you can do. Start thinking about how you can transition those, because as we all learned in 2008, there is no guarantee. Anyway, you may not leave voluntarily, but you may be pushed, you may have an involuntary leap or like you have something happened to you that you have already thought about.

All these things that we're talking about makes it so that you don't have to fear that kind of push nearly as much as what you may fear. Now, if you've thought about this stuff financially, if you've thought about your skills, if you've thought about how you can translate those and transition those, you are so powerful. That's just stuff that we all need to do. And I wish I had done it a long time ago, because there's no guarantee that you're going to have your job tomorrow. There's no guarantee for any of us. Nobody, nobody. And start thinking about it now.

Anita Brick: Good point, good point. And I know that the people who are listening and this has been really fun. So thank you for all of that. What we'd like to do at the very end is kind of summarize. So we know that there are a lot of people who are thinking about this, especially if they're listening right now. What are 2 or 3 things that someone should be given right now if they're contemplating a move or they're already leaked?

Tess Vigeland: Well, first let me give you the three things that you need to pay attention to. That will tell you perhaps, that it's time to start thinking about making a change. First of all, what I like to say is it's time to go. If you have too much self-respect to stay there. Too many workplaces these days that do not respect their employees, that do not value them.

And if you feel like you are undervalued, even worse, you are being mistreated. It's time to go. It is not worth it. As I said before, you have one life to live. You should not live it in misery. Do not stay there. Second of all, your body will tell you if there's something wrong. And this is something that's very difficult to pay attention to.

But a lot of the people that I talked to for the book found that they had physical manifestations of their stress at work, and they didn't even know that that's what it was. So all of a sudden they were people who were in perfect shape, and suddenly they had terrible back pain, or people who got migraines for the first time in their lives.

For me, my hair stopped growing. Believe it or not, my hair stopped growing, and the only source of stress in my life at the time was work. So you have to pay attention when physical things are happening to you that are unusual. Now, I'm not, I'm not a doctor and I'm not saying that this is what it is, but it's a clue to pay attention to and it's a clue to not ignore.

And third, if you are asking yourself when you'll know how it's time to go, it's past time to start thinking about it. You're already in that headspace where you need to start thinking about making a change now, whether it's a leap or maybe you start researching another career path. Whatever it is, you need to start taking action. You have to listen to your gut.

You just have to listen to it. Because most of the time it's got to be right. I will love those under, you know, one piece of advice is to look for those three things as you are thinking about what might happen next for you. Those are clues for you. Second of all, you absolutely have to prepare for this financially.

I can't tell you how many people have said to me, what do you mean no plan B? Like I shouldn't even think about how I'm going to keep a roof over my head. No, no, that is not what I'm saying. In fact, the working title for this book was Leap Without a Net. And then we thought, that's terrible advice.

I can say that we're not gonna put that on the cover of the book. So now it's a leap. And when I talk about a plan B, what I'm talking about is not knowing what you want to do next, not having an idea of where you want to take your life in the next portion of it. I am not talking about not having a plan B for how to put a roof over your head.

Nobody would give you that kind of advice. You have to be smart about it. This is not a leap and be dumb. You have to have some sort of safety net. Now what that net is, how big it has to be, is something that only you know, only you can figure out. Are you comfortable with a three month safety net?

Are you comfortable with the six month safety net? Do you feel like you have to have a year's worth saved up? Or is that just going to make it so that you never hit that goal and therefore you never leap? You don't want to make it so that it's impossible for you to do this. Because as I said right off the bat, this is a risk.

There is risk involved in this, but you also need to evaluate what kind of work you're going to be able to generate for yourself. You do have to prepare financially, but you also need to be willing to step back and say what am I willing to give up in order to have a better work life? In order to take some time to figure all this stuff out?

Are you willing to downsize? You have to make those decisions. That's all part of the process. This is not one of those situations where you can have it all. You absolutely cannot. If you leave a job and you don't have a steady income coming in, it will change your lifestyle. Are you willing to do that? A lot of people are, and they find that they are happier for it.

So that's number two. Number three, you have to prepare yourself psychologically and emotionally for what will be a difficult journey. I talk so much about the roller coaster that I went on right after I took my leap, and again, I was not prepared. Like I'm telling everybody else to prepare, I would get a project and I would work on it and it would go great for like eight weeks, and then I'd finish it and I'd feel so accomplished and be like, I am so awesome because I'm working for myself and this is working out great.

And then the next day I'd be like, oh crap, I don't have work. I don't have a project to work on. I'm worthless. I don't have anything to do. I look back and I wish that I had just taken those days to go, maybe shoot around the city with my camera, or just go do something that I enjoyed and not beat myself up about it.

But those are emotional roller coasters that you will go on. There is no way to avoid that. You can be prepared for it and know that it's normal, that this is part of a process, that this is part of what you're going through in order to get yourself to a place where you know what you want to do next.

But what I really like to say these days is that, yeah, it was a roller coaster, and the ups and downs of a roller coaster can be really scary, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than a merry go round.

Anita Brick: There you go. Great advice. Thank you so much. Thanks for writing the book, and thanks for making the time to be with us today. And there's lots of really good stuff on your website. Which is your name? Tess vigeland.com. And please keep those lovely.

Tess Vigeland: Thank you.

Anita Brick: Oh, thank you so much. Is there another book in your future?

Tess Vigeland: The book, as you know, ends in uncertainty with me still not knowing two years later what I wanted to do. And part of that is because I wrote a book, right? I mean, so that was my job for a couple of years when I finished the book, I was like, I still don't know. You know, everybody else out there, you should feel free to not know too.

So not an easy process. It was almost like, right. As the book went to print, I decided on what I wanted to do next and I am in the process of selling my house a good chunk of my possessions. I am leaving the country in December to travel to Southeast Asia and freelance and tell stories that nobody else is telling, and I don't know what. I'm coming back. Wow.

Anita Brick: Well, keep us posted. Thank goodness for email and all that good stuff. Thanks again. This was terrific and you are great fun and I'm glad to have the opportunity to chat with you.

Tess Vigeland: Oh, it was my pleasure. It was really fun. Good conversation and I hope it helps people. And please feel free to send me any, any more questions or comments or whatever. I'm open.

Anita Brick: Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.