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“I’m a recruiter’s nightmare,” David Wojcik told Career Buzz listeners (Jan. 29, 2014), referring to his zigzagging career path. “When you look at my resume I’m all over the map: finance, sales, training.” Yet not in spite of, but because of the twists and turns in David’s career story, the dots connected. It happened when he was 39.

David is now president and executive producer at BizTV Canada. His mission is to provide small and medium size organizations with relevant, informative and entertaining business videos via the internet. On his way here, he’s worked in finance, sales and management of woodworking machinery company, training for bankers, and stints in self-employment. All that experience “helped me understand what I really love to do: inform and entertain.”

“I kept bouncing back and forth from self-employment to working for someone. A potential employer would look at me and say, ‘this guy really has no idea what he wants to do.’ The truth is I just love to do everything. I want to do it all.” The last stint, training bankers, showed him how much he liked informing and entertaining, which he gets to do now at BizTVCanada. Plus, this new role draws on all the business experience he’d accumulated.

“My past has set me up perfectly for what I’m doing now,” David reassured listeners. “Doing a business show and having guests on the show in sales, HR, finance and marketing. All the things I’ve done over the course of my career have positioned me to sit across from someone and speak with them relatively intelligently about what they’re doing.”

What are the clues that apply to you? So many of our clients are anxious about choosing the “right career” right away. They worry about making a “mistake.” Better to reframe your experiences, as David’s story illustrates, as stepping stones leading you to the better story you’ll tell in the near future. How?

  1. Ask yourself: What’s one previous step in your career that has set you up for what you’re doing now? In David’s story, training bankers in an entertaining way led him to start his internet TV business.
  2. How specifically did that experience help you be prepared for what you’re doing now?
  3. Notice that your answers to those two questions “normalize” the truth that it’s one thing because of another, not just one thing after another. Past clues help you connect the dots to today’s reality.
  4. Choose to believe that your future story — and the future dot you’ll be standing on — will feature clues you’re noticing now. So, pay profound attention to clues that connect with what you’re wanting. Inspired action will naturally and easily follow.
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