For those still in high school and college or just starting their careers, it can be difficult to decide what you’d like to do with the rest of your life. Even after working in a field for a long time, you might wonder if you would be happier doing something else and pivoting from your current line of work to another exciting field. When striking out on what sounds like the next best move, you can look into starting an organization either in the field where you have the most work experience or a new industry that is uncharted territory for you.
While some people might think that starting a company is the easiest way to start a new career, it can be easier to work for someone else in your preferred new industry and learn the ropes before you try to do it yourself. You can also take courses at a community college or university in subjects related to the field you want to enter if you’re not sure if you’d like to quit your current job to pursue a new passion. Another good idea is speaking with friends, family, and experts in your area about what they do for a living to see what their ideas would be for you to change your career or take it to the next level in your current industry.
When Is It Time to Switch Careers?
While you’re the only one who can know when it’s a good time for you to start a commercial venture or get a new career move underway, there are some tell-tale signs that you’ve reached your limit of how long you can comfortably pursue your current career path. If you’ve reached the highest promotion in your field and you’re still not satisfied with the pay, benefits, duties, or prospects, it’s probably time to change careers. On the flip side, if you’re studying to get a certain type of career in college and you’re struggling to motivate yourself to crack open a textbook on the subject, you may want to switch paths and majors before it’s too late for you to choose another option in school.
When you need to move somewhere new, it can also be a good time to change up your career choices because you’ll have a whole new community to network and find work at your fingertips. Sometimes, having a fresh start in a new city or town can inspire you to take risks and make choices that you’d never have made in your original area. It can also be a good idea to consider changing careers if the cost of living in your new region is higher than where you used to live since you might need to get more education or a different job to pay for your bills in this area.
How Can You Change Careers?
After you’ve graduated college or entered one field, you might think that you’re stuck working in that field until you retire. The good news is that people change careers all the time so there are plenty of ways you can switch careers even if you already have a job in a career trajectory or you’re working in a field that is highly specialized at the moment. Sometimes, all it takes to change careers is getting some experience in a new field while it might take getting another education to change careers if you want to work in a field that requires specific training.
To change careers from one industry to another, you’ll need to do your research to determine what the best route would be to your new career path. If you have no idea what type of career you’d like to have, you can do some career exploration by searching for information about different careers online, taking quizzes that give you feedback about what careers would suit your personality and lifestyle, or even speaking with a career counselor at an organization that helps people find new jobs.
1. Open a Dental Practice
If you have the proper education and qualifications to work as a dentist, it can be a smart commercial strategy to open up a dental office. You can either open a general dentist office in your area or you can try to open a specialty dental office that offers specialized care such as sensory-friendly dentistry or orthodontics. If you’ve never worked in the dental field, the first step to opening a dental practice is getting your education to become a dentist.
For those who don’t have education or experience in dentistry, it can be easier to enter the dental field by working in an established dental professional’s practice as a dental hygienist or clerical assistant. You can also try working in a dental office as an administrative professional if you’re still not sold on the idea of working in dentistry. This will allow you to see what it’s like to work in this field without having to go through years of schooling and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to educational institutions for a degree that you might not even like to use after you graduate.
2. Practice Estate Planning Law
For those with a mind for business and law, it can be interesting to combine these two interests in one career by working in estate planning law. When you want to help people plan for how their legacy will be carried out after they pass away, it can be rewarding to become an estate planning lawyer. Of course, you might not have the time and money to go to law school, so an alternative idea that involves the same skills and interests may mean working under an estate planning attorney as a paralegal professional.
There are a few different ways to work in estate planning law. Some people may have the credentials and drive to work as an attorney in this area of the law, but you can only do that if you’ve gone to law school, passed the bar exam, and studied this specific section of the law to the point where you can confidently practice it. If you’re not set on going to law school, there may be related jobs that don’t require as much time, money, and schooling such as administrative roles, paralegal positions, and even jobs in marketing for estate planning attorneys.
3. Start a Law Practice
When you have a degree and experience in law, you can put that experience to good use by opening a business and starting a law practice. If you’ve always dreamed of having your name on one of those billboards for family law practices in your area, you can make that dream a reality by getting a loan for an enterprise and going from there. Before you open up a law firm, you should work for a firm in your related area of law such as a family law firm if that’s what you intend to practice so you can gain experience and develop the required skills for running a firm of your own one day.
4. Start a Holistic Medicine Practice
When you have a passion for holistic medicine, you can turn that love of medicine into a business if you have the commercial smarts it takes to run a successful one. Whether you create a product that benefits those who practice holistic medicine or you start an alternative medicine practice, you should look into laws and regulations that pertain to your field of practice. Although you might start this kind of business with the best of intentions, you may find that there are strict regulations for those who are interested in healing others so it’s important to have an idea of what those regulations are and what the consequences are for not following them before you’ve officially set up shop.
If you’ve found regenerative medicine and you want to share the good news about it, you might want to consider starting a coaching business once you have the right qualifications to do so. Many people would prefer to work with someone who understands their struggle as they navigate healing on their terms, so it can be helpful to use your experience of healing through alternative or holistic avenues and share it with others. You can also blog or create video content about holistic medicine if you have a set of skills that aligns with this path for your new career move.
5. Become a Pediatrician
While it takes a long time to have the education to do it, you can help children stay healthy and heal from illness or injury if you open a business as a pediatrician. Parents of children appreciate having a pediatrician who is reliable and available when they need to treat their kids for illness, so it can be helpful to stand out from the crowd and open a pediatric walk in clinic if you have the proper qualifications. Since medicine is a serious industry, you’ll need to follow all of the laws and regulations associated with practicing medicine if you decide to open a practice.
Before you decide that being a pediatrician is right for you, it could be a good idea to speak with professionals in the field and ask what a day in their lives is like. You can also try to shadow a pediatric healthcare professional to see if this type of work seems right for you. When you’re deciding to become a doctor of any kind, it’s important to consider whether you’ll be able to afford the time and financial commitments of medical school since they’re not for the faint of heart.
6. Start a Digital Marketing Agency
If you have experience in ROI digital marketing, you can put those skills to use by creating a digital marketing agency. Since every company needs a strong social media presence these days, you should have no trouble getting plenty of clients at social media consulting services if you play your cards right. While starting a business isn’t the right solution for everyone, it can be a great way to be your boss and control the way you spend your time as a working professional.
If you’ve worked in another field like the legal field or medical field, you don’t have to throw away your previous experience to pursue marketing. Once you take appropriate coursework in marketing or gain experience in the field, you can use your experience in other industries to market your services to companies in those industries and establish trust. After all, many companies would appreciate the opportunity to work on their social media presence with a professional who knows the jargon and best practices in their field without having to go through years of training to understand what makes their industry tick.
Final Advice
Before you open up a business, you’ll need to think of the best way to finance it. Unless you have family members or friends who are wealthy enough to loan you money, you’ll probably need to speak with a bank, credit union, or other lender about securing a business loan. Once you’ve figured out how to finance your business, you’ll also want to hire a business development coach to help you get your company off the ground effectively.
Although you might think that owning a business is the only way to switch your career, you should know that this is just one of many possible solutions to the issue of not knowing what career path is right for you. Even if you don’t know what you want to do with your career, you should know that it’s perfectly normal and healthy to crave change after working in a specific field for a while. Depending on your work experience and background, you may find that it’s not as difficult to change careers as it seems like it would be when you start your search.
To find career inspiration, you can look anywhere where there are people who have careers that are different than yours. From social media stars to regular people working their jobs in your community, career change inspiration is everywhere. You can speak with a career counselor at a local college if you think that your career change might require an increase in education level.