You want to change careers, but you don’t want to leap without a net. Good! That sounds terrifying. Let me teach you how to change careers without doing anything risky. You’ll learn the safest way to change careers, how long your career change might take, and real examples of my clients who have used this approach.

When to Create Your Safest Career Change Plan

The truth is, you can’t plan for something hypothetical. So until you know what you want to do, trying to figure out how you’ll do it is impossible.

With that in mind, I’m going to share a general plan for the safest way to change careers. It’s not a step-by-step plan that’s specific to your new career and needs (again: that is something you can only make that once you know what you want to do), but it is an outline for what a practical, successful career change looks like.

Here’s what it’s not going to look like: It’s not going to be Sunday night with you in your regular job, whether that’s finance, admin, education, the arts, marketing…and waking up in your ideal career the next day.

You can make that leap, but not overnight.

So what are you doing from Sunday night to Monday morning, proverbially? How are you bridging that gap between where you are, and where you want to be?

The Safest Way to Change Careers

The safest way to change careers is with what I’ve dubbed a Crossfade.

A Crossfade is a transition period where your current and future careers overlap. Your current career fades out, and your new career fades in.

So why do you need a Crossfade? Well, one place where most people go wrong when it comes to career change is that they don’t adequately plan for the transition from point A to Point B. They make big changes too soon without any kind of plan. And then when the big change doesn’t work like they want it to where they’re not making money as quickly as they want to and ends up being just really risky. So we want to minimize risk.

I’m working with clients who have rent or mortgage, dependents, oftentimes the primary or sole breadwinner of their family. There’s just no latitude to cross our fingers and hope it works out. There’s got to be a solid plan.

Don’t Quit Your Job Too Soon

We want to keep you from “rubber band quitting” where you quit prematurely and then have to snap back into your old role or something similar that doesn’t move you towards meaningful, sustainable work. We don’t want that because then not only are you back at square one but you’re even more discouraged than before, and you’re less likely to even try again.

With a Crossfade, there’s no big scary gap between jobs. You don’t quit your job as soon as you know what your new thing is going to be. For a while, you live in both. You use your Crossfade to build a financial safety net, gain skills, build relationships, and plan for the switch.

How Long Will Your Crossfade Take?

Well, the truthful but kind of annoying answer is that it depends. Some Crossfades are short it’s just a matter of applying for a new job and for some people that goes quickly. For other folks, it takes years if the work you want to do requires getting additional training or education. Particularly if you want to start your own business, it can take several years before you’re able to consistently earn your survival number through your business.

But I want you to keep in mind that your speed is not as important as your direction. A Crossfade can feel slower than the immediate gratification of quitting right away, but in the long term saves you time. Better to get it right and go slow, than quickly change and rebound into your old work.

How to Plan a Successful Crossfade

There are multiple possible scenarios for how this transition could go for you. But the main things you’re going to be doing are identifying the gaps between where you are and where you want to be and then building a bridge over those gaps. We are looking for what is the point of entry, and how can you get started.

I want to give you a couple of examples of my clients so you can start to imagine how this might come together for you.

Crossfade Case Study: Nicole

First up, I want to tell you about Nicole. Nicole went from being an employee to a business owner with some supporting jobs along the way. When she came to Your Career Homecoming, she was working at a tech company, and through the program, she discovered that she wanted to do floral and event design. For her Crossfade, here are some of the things that she did:

• She started by taking some classes on flower arranging
• She attended wedding conventions
• She just started trying to learn the craft and get familiar with the world that she wanted to work in
• She started a blog and an Instagram account about floral design and event design
• She got a job at a floral shop she did some small free floral & event designing jobs for friends
• Then eventually she quit the tech job
• She put her up own website
• She started accepting paying clients

There was a little bump in the road here. Her employer at the floral shop discovered her Instagram account and did not like that she had her own side thing going on. Nicole wasn’t really happy with that employer anyway, so she decided she was going to leave that job and she found a job as a bridal consultant at beholden which is Anthropologie’s Bridal Boutique. So she left that floral assistant job and got over to be a bridal consultant and beholden. But this was still giving her access to that world to the world of weddings and brides and events, and it just took her business to a whole new level and got things going even more.

And then I think her first summer in business she designed 10 weddings on her own. She kept her job at Beholden while she continued to book more and more weddings. She was working in her Homecoming Career doing wonderful work making money and just had this vibrant exciting career. So that’s what it looked like for Nicole going from employee to business owner having some supporting jobs along the way and finding her point of entry into this world.

Crossfade Case Study: Brit

Brit did the kind of opposite: she went from being an entrepreneur and having her own business to being an employee. When she came to your career homecoming she had her own social media business, and she discovered through the program that what she cared about, her sense of purpose was all about telling stories, and she wanted to go into documentary-style storytelling.

While she was doing her fieldwork in the program, she learned what gaps there were that she needed to build a bridge between what she knew and what she needed to be able to do for this kind of work.

Fun side note: During her fieldwork, she also got a job offer because one of the people that she was talking with was so impressed with her that she said, “After you go learn some more technical stuff, if you’re still interested, come back and talk to me, and I’d love to try to find a place for you here.” So don’t underestimate the informational interviews.

Brit already had a great ear for stories. She was good at telling them but she needed more technical expertise so she studied at a summer institute to beef up her technical and journalistic skills, and then she got hired at a public radio station as a digital reporter and producer.

And after a year or so, there she was, able to move on to another station in a bit of a more elevated position after she had kind of found her point of injury at that first station. So that’s what Brit’s path looked like.

The Truth About Your Crossfade

So let’s be real. The Crossfade can be a gangly, awkward teenage phase in your career. You might feel like you are leading a double life because you have one foot in two different careers. And that’s OK; this is a temporary phase. It might be all elbows and knees poking out for a while until you can fully fade into your new role. But your Homecoming Career is worth it.

To plan your Crossfade, get clear on the meaningful work that’s right for you. From there, find the gaps, figure out how to build the bridge and, always be looking for that point of entry.

There is a path to get there. It may take a little longer, but it’s safe & practical.