Trusting Your Instincts Through Transformations

Join Paula and special guest Mike Rataczak in this wisdom-packed episode as they discuss Mike's journey of making a significant career shift. After dedicating over 30 years to Human Resources, Mike made the bold decision to return to school for design and pursue a career as an interior designer. Listen in to learn Mike's decision-making process and the challenges he encountered while embarking on this new path.

This episode offers valuable insights into the experience of navigating major life changes, while also providing encouragement and wisdom for those who may be reflecting on their own journey and feeling a sense of regret or wasted time. Paula and Mike remind us that every step we take serves a purpose, and we are always exactly where we need to be in each season of our lives.

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About Mike:

I took an indirect but happy path into my design career. I grew up in Minnesota and moved to New York City after college, where I earned an MBA from the Columbia Business School and then built a career in management consulting and corporate human resources. Throughout those years, I never lost my interest in design, and, in late 2018, I left my corporate career to study at Parsons School of Design and then open my own design studio. In 2023, I returned to the Twin Cities, and I’m grateful for the dual influences of business and art, as well as life in New York City and the Twin Cities, as major influences on my design business today.

Website: www.mikerataczakstudios.com
Instagram: @mikerataczakstudios
Facebook: mikerataczakstudios
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaelrataczak/

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Episode Transcript:

Trusting Your Instincts Through Transformations

:: This transcript was generated automatically - please forgive typos. ::

[00:00:34] Paula: Welcome to today's episode of beyond neutral. So Today, I am speaking with a very special guest and we are delving into the topic of major career transitions. And I mean, major career transitions. And with me today, is Mike Radecek. Welcome to the show, Mike.

[00:00:55] Mike: Thank you, Paul. It is a delight to be here.

[00:00:58] Paula: Great. So to give, our listeners and our viewers a little bit of context, Mike's career after completing his MBA at Columbia, he spent his early career in the consulting world with, Hay Management Consultants and Accenture on, Basically a variety of consulting projects around organizational design and implementation and process design and implementation with different industries around the world, basically, right?

[00:01:25] Paula: And then he transitioned into corporate human resources where he had a number of leadership roles within the fashion industry with leading brands, including Henry Bendel, Victoria's Secret, I think Timberland, and at the end of his career served as the head of Human Resources, chief Human Resource Officer for Cohan,

[00:01:49] Mike: right

[00:01:49] Paula: before in 2018, making a major transition where he left the corporate world, launched into an entrepreneurial experience and launched Che Studios.

[00:02:02] Paula: Is that it? Mike Radich? Mike

[00:02:04] Mike: Radek Studios. Yeah. Mike

[00:02:04] Paula: Radek Studios, which is. An interior design firm specializing in residential design. And so that is a massive journey. And I'm excited to talk to you about that process.

[00:02:20] Mike: Thank you. I'm delighted to talk about it. I'm thrilled that you asked me. So, thank you.

[00:02:24] Paula: Yeah. So, I talk with clients regularly, both within obviously my recruiting practice as well as my coaching practice. around the idea of transition. And often how people think of transition is within the lane that they know quite often, right? So you, you see, you know, designers who've worked in corporate design and they decide they're going to go into a design consulting, or you talk with, leaders who go into management consulting.

[00:02:53] Paula: So it's always kind of saying in this lane that they absolutely know and have worked in and seems familiar. Your transition was a, I call it, it was a left turn, right?

[00:03:04] Mike: It certainly was. I blew up everything.

[00:03:06] Paula: You blew up everything. When I change,

[00:03:08] Mike: I go big.

[00:03:09] Paula: There you go. That's it. Go big or go home. So tell me a little bit.

[00:03:12] Paula: Well, I'm interested, first of all, in kind of how you, when you started your career, you took a little bit of a more traditional path, I would call it, right? That's right. So tell me what you, When you started, what your assumptions were, what you were thinking about there?

[00:03:27] Mike: Sure, sure. So my initial assumptions, were I don't know what I want to do.

[00:03:32] Paula: Okay. Like most people, right?

[00:03:34] Mike: So, you know, I was in my early twenties and my first job out of college was in merchandising. Her department searching in New York, and then I transitioned into their corporate HR team because I realized that as much as I thought the virtualizing world was very interesting.

[00:03:46] Mike: I myself was just wholly disinterested in being a merchant. and so, you know, I had done all that for about 5 years, and I was kind of at a crossroads trying to figure out what, I wanted to do next to my life. I was, you know, mid to late twenties around there. And I ended up going to business school because I was sort of starved for more education.

[00:04:02] Mike: I love learning. And I lived 10 blocks from one of the best business schools in the country. And I thought I'm going to take a chance and see if I can get in. And I did. And I went end up going to Columbia for two years. Absolutely loved it. I think I'd shocked some of my friends who couldn't understand my interest in business school, but I.

[00:04:21] Mike: Thought it was the most fascinating things I had ever done. I met some wonderful people. it was just marvelous. Absolutely.

[00:04:28] Paula: Excellent.

[00:04:28] Mike: and when I left, you know, to your point about where my career was going, I wanted to stay kind of adjacent to my initial career in human resources, but something different.

[00:04:39] Mike: Kind of like is exactly what you were talking about earlier. I'm a design consultant. My case, I worked in HR and I want to be an HR consultant. Right. I was fascinated by the idea of how do I use. This idea of people in a broader way and HR consulting work seemed like the way to do that. So in my last year at Columbia, I got the names and phone numbers of, I think, three or four business school alumni who worked in HR consulting firms in New York.

[00:05:07] Mike: And, you know, this was the early 90s, pre internet and email was great, right? Call them up on the phone,

[00:05:12] Paula: telephone calls, and

[00:05:15] Mike: said, I'm not, I'm, you know, I'm going to be graduating in the spring. I am not calling looking for a job. In fact, I want to interview you because I'm thinking about going into the world in which you work, but I don't know that much about it.

[00:05:27] Mike: So I'd love to come to your office for 30 minutes and just quiz you on what it's like. And, you know, people love that.

[00:05:36] Paula: People love that.

[00:05:37] Mike: People like to talk about what they're doing. I think it was four people total. Four different consulting firms. They were wonderful. I asked for 30 minutes. I think each conversation lasted a minimum of an hour, but most were an hour and a half.

[00:05:51] Mike: It really gave me a good sense of, What the what that organization or what that kind of work was like and prove that yes, indeed was quite fascinating So long story short, I ended up going to work for the hay group, which Is an hr focused consulting firm. They do a lot of compensation consulting organization design things like that And I worked for their new york office for three years primarily around leadership development recruiting development Things that basically focused on how do we find?

[00:06:16] Mike: The strengths that we need employees. How do we recruit for those? How do we train those? That kind of thing. So it was marvelous. Like, you know, I got to travel around the world. I met, you know, I got to work in a variety of organizations.

[00:06:28] Paula: Yeah, it

[00:06:29] Mike: was great. That's great.

[00:06:30] Paula: And then you transitioned from consulting into corporate at some point.

[00:06:35] Mike: What happened is after about three years at the hate group, I got recruited by what was then Anderson consulting, but while I became Accenture and, you know, And hey, it'd been great. Accenture was just dazzling because of the like, Hey, it was an organization full of really smart people and the learning opportunity was tremendous.

[00:06:50] Mike: So I went to work for Accenture for almost five years, also doing HR related consulting or design. So total consulting, almost eight years. Loved, loved, loved it. but after about eight years, I found that my personal life was not quite as lovely as my personal life. I was on the road a lot.

[00:07:08] Paula: I

[00:07:09] Mike: was getting tired.

[00:07:10] Mike: long story short, I would, I got a phone call from a former colleague and boss who, worked at a fairly high level in HR at Victoria's Secret, which was division of L Brands. I was living in Boston at the time, and she called me and said, I think you need to move back to New York, get out of consulting, And come work with me again.

[00:07:28] Mike: And they were starting this joint venture.

[00:07:30] Paula: Grab that brass ring, right? Right. Before he was a speaker, he

[00:07:33] Mike: was entering into a joint venture with a Japanese beauty company. And they needed someone to be the head of HR for this nascent, joint venture. And I thought, when else in my life am I going to get an opportunity like this?

[00:07:43] Mike: And it gave me a chance to also build stability into my personal life. So I packed up my kit bag and I moved back to New York. And that's really what began the next, Oh, 17 years in corporate HR.

[00:07:56] Paula: That's excellent. Good for you. 17 years in corporate HR, number of different companies, number of different brands.

[00:08:05] Paula: So, when you think about that and you were kind of go going along in this HR function, where did this design piece of you sit at that time?

[00:08:15] Mike: it fit nowhere in my professional life, but it was always part of me. well, so I was the only 15 year old, 16 year old boy I know who used to like corral his parents and say, we got to move all this furniture around,

[00:08:28] Paula: set

[00:08:30] Mike: up, doesn't make sense.

[00:08:31] Mike: And we got to do this with the bedrooms. And I was fascinated by architecture. and I had one point when I was applying to college. was really serious to think about being an architect. I loved it. Like the design, the ideation of building and how we use, how we create a new space. however, five years architecture school focused on things like physics just made my blood run cold.

[00:08:53] Mike: I am not a science guy. I'm fairly good at some things, but science is not my forte. And I was wise enough to 17 and 17 to know that wasn't going to make sense. So my instinctive interest has been there. As long as you can remember. Always, always. I would build forts out of sticks when I was a little kid in my grandparents front yard.

[00:09:13] Mike: And I would, I built like houses on our property using old pieces of wood, you know, terrifying my mother because they were one step short of falling in on me. you know, the instinct and the desire was always there. And I ended up like, as we've just outlined, took a different path professionally. And that professional path was quite wonderful.

[00:09:32] Mike: I, if I could go back in time, I would do it all over again. what changed Paula is that as I got into the mid 20 teens. Yes. I started to realize that voice, that design voice in me, which had been relatively quiet and which I had sort of indulged via just taking care of my own apartment and helping friends with small projects was getting louder and louder and I couldn't ignore it anymore.

[00:09:59] Mike: So, early 2018, I decided to start looking into seriously listening to that voice.

[00:10:06] Paula: That's excellent. So I'm curious, as you talk about the experience that you had in fashion, okay, in human resources, you're working around designers a lot. Yeah. You're working, yeah, you're working with creative people on a very regular basis.

[00:10:22] Paula: You know, you've got this little interest in this little voice and you're working around all these people who are doing that.did those things ever intersect for you in any way?

[00:10:31] Mike: You are the only person who has ever seen and figured that out because huge part of my life,

[00:10:38] Mike: my last position before going to your design, I was the chief HR officer at Cole

[00:10:42] Paula: Haan

[00:10:43] Mike: in New York. And yes, we had all, you know, many of our designers were literally yards from my office.

[00:10:49] Paula: Right. Right. And

[00:10:51] Mike: in my last couple of years in that CHRO position. I started hanging out just I would make excuses to like, go to the design hang

[00:10:58] Paula: out in the design studio.

[00:11:00] Paula: I love,

[00:11:00] Mike: you know, the designers that talk to the designers and just being around that creative energy. I, it was like,a hit that I needed every day in a good way. And, you know, they were great. They indulge me and would show me how they were doing things. And after they got over their terror of why does the head of HR keep coming over here, should we, yes,

[00:11:18] Paula: yes.

[00:11:19] Paula: Bothering us. Right.

[00:11:20] Mike: I was like, no, no, you're fine. I just want to know more about what you do. and I think that's one of the reasons that, you know, I was able to sort of live this corporate HR life with a design interest because I got to work in a creative field. So I still got to be around creative.

[00:11:33] Mike: And then, you know, like I said, in early 2018, I started to realize that I'm tired of visiting the creatives. I want to.

[00:11:39] Paula: That's interesting. That's so it's had kind of percolated.

[00:11:42] Mike: That's right along the way. And so, I kind of came to an inflection point in early 2018, which was,I decided to take the advice that I used to give candidates all the time when I was in HR and, you know, I interviewed candidates all the time and as candidates and I would coach people on my own team and colleagues and things like that.

[00:12:02] Mike: But one of the things I talked about regularly for years with colleagues, with recruits, even with friends, anyone who is considering making a job change was to the extent humanly possible, if you're going to go to something new, go to it because it's the right next thing for you, not because you're trying to escape from something else.

[00:12:23] Paula: Oh, that's fascinating. If you're

[00:12:25] Mike: trying to escape from something else. the new thing you're going to probably won't work out. You tend to be making a decision in the wrong mindset and

[00:12:35] Paula: come

[00:12:35] Mike: back to bite you. Now, of course, if the thing you're trying to get away from is abusive or dangerous, toxic

[00:12:40] Paula: or yes,

[00:12:41] Mike: that's different.

[00:12:42] Mike: But I'm talking about like, You know, I just don't like this job. I'm bored. So I'm gonna take that next thing over there.

[00:12:47] Paula: Right?

[00:12:48] Mike: That generally won't get you where you want to go. And so I realized that I was at the point where I had to have that conversation with myself. And happily, what I realized is. I wanted to make the change, not because I was miserable, hurt, or whatever you want to say, in my current job.

[00:13:06] Mike: It was because the right next thing was in front of me, and it was something wholly different. And that's where I was supposed to be. I loved my 10 years at Cole Hawn. They were great to me. I learned a ton. I got to work with a great team of leadership colleagues, and also the people on my own HR team, where You know, if any of them are listening to this, I love you all the best people with whom I ever worked, but it was like a suit that didn't fit anymore.

[00:13:35] Paula: That's excellent.

[00:13:36] Mike: I was supposed to be doing something else. And so I decided to look into doing that.

[00:13:40] Paula: That's excellent. You know, one of the things that, I also talk to people when they're wondering what that next thing is, and you hear people talk a lot about their passion and they expect it to be this overwhelming thing that they just can't live without.

[00:13:54] Paula: And, and it's, it actually is. I think simpler than that. What do you enjoy spending your time doing? Right. I mean, it's that simple. And if you map that to what you just said, where did you enjoy spending your time in design?

[00:14:08] Mike: That's right. And you know, exactly. And since I was child, in fact, there's this idea in the world of psychology, I believe if I read this in prior readings correctly is that if you want to get a sense of what your instinctive interests and passions are, go back and look at what you did as a child.

[00:14:28] Mike: Because the children are driven by instincts. They don't have world experience to count on. So they're driven by instinct, right? That's true. So, you know, what were you instinctively drawn to as a child? Like, for example, my brother is a nature artist, self taught, magnificent, well educated, but he has literally been painting animals and birds since he was three.

[00:14:50] Mike: Wow. It's very much to encourage this, right. I used to sit, like I said, I would sit in my grandparents front yard and build little huts out of sticks. Yeah. So watch children at play to get a sense of what their personalities are like, what their interests are like. And mine finally came to the forefront and said, you know, it's time to, it's time to do

[00:15:09] Paula: this.

[00:15:10] Paula: was there any, moment in life that you can remember like over that timeframe where this had been percolating, but there was an event or a series of events that said, you got to listen to this voice. It's time to pay attention. It's

[00:15:23] Mike: Yeah, there were a few things. They all pretty much happened in late 2017 and early 2018.

[00:15:29] Mike: in no particular order, it wasn't like one more than the others. It was sort of like, they all added up to the push that, that the

[00:15:36] Paula: tipping point.

[00:15:37] Mike: Yeah. And one was just. This is more benign, but just sort of like a growing disinterest in what I was doing boredom. I would run out to do an errand for my office and I would be gone for an hour because I'd be my office was actually in the flat iron district, which was near a lot of furniture showrooms and I started wandering into these showrooms.

[00:15:57] Mike: But you gotta get back to work. and I still realize I'm doing this more and more. What does that mean? Number two, I have a very close friend who is like my best friend of 30 years, who just bought this beautiful new house, in Washington, D. C. And he said, you know, if you were a designer, what I would hire you to do my house.

[00:16:16] Mike: Wow. I need someone who can do this full time and you obviously can't. So he hired somebody else who did a magnificent job. And that really struck me because this is a friend who has very discerning taste, has made a tremendously successful career in finance.

[00:16:34] Paula: who knows you,

[00:16:35] Mike: you know, does not suffer pools gladly.

[00:16:39] Mike: So he was. Pressing me for this. That said something. A third thing was More personal. I had a friend from my work days. he worked for the company that had once owned the company I worked for. and he, I don't mean to be I don't mean to bring us down, but he was killed in a skydiving accident on his 50th birthday.

[00:17:01] Paula: Oh, my God.

[00:17:02] Mike: yeah, it was horrible. Yeah. And he was one of those people who just sort of lived life full on. You know, he loved his work. He loved his, Out of work, you know, whatever he was in, he gave it his all. His relationships, His athletic interests, his intellectual interests, his work. You know, he was the person who had recruited me to this job in the first place, and I found his interests and his passion mesmerizing.

[00:17:26] Mike: He was just a fundamentally, just a very good, kind man. Like this is someone who, if you thought about the next 30 years of his life, well into his 80s, you could just see that this was someone who would live a full energy, who lived very much In the moment, very true to who we was, this is someone who just said a sense that he knew who he was when he was probably three.

[00:17:46] Mike: And he listened to that voice

[00:17:47] Paula: with it. Yeah.

[00:17:48] Mike: And then he was killed. And I found myself just thinking, my God, what am I waiting for? Because that happened to me. And I'm lying there at the end of my days thinking, why didn't I listen to my voice? And so, you know, all these things added up to, A snowball that kind of pushed me down the hill to, all right, I need to look into this.

[00:18:10] Paula: So, wow. Yeah. So a lot of times I think people think there's this one moment, but Often when we go through like a major transition or we prepare for a major step, it has been percolating along the way. And it's about paying attention to the signs.

[00:18:25] Mike: right before I made the final decision to okay, I'm going to make a plan to look into this.

[00:18:30] Mike: I was in a meeting with one of my colleagues who's the, my company's head of merchandising and we were going over this presentation she had created around, organization design for a team. And it was an important conversation and she is tremendous. And all I was thinking about on and off for the hour we were together was, my God, I love the color she used in this deck.

[00:18:54] Mike: And the cover page was this really beautiful, deep, rich maroon.

[00:18:58] Paula: Oh, that's fabulous. And the thing

[00:19:00] Mike: was, I would design a room around that color.

[00:19:03] Paula: Oh my God, that is hilarious. I

[00:19:05] Mike: remember what I was wearing. I remember what time of day it was. I remember that presentation. I actually held on to it.

[00:19:11] Paula: I

[00:19:11] Mike: lost it in my

[00:19:12] Paula: remember what the org structure was supposed to look like.

[00:19:15] Paula: That's probably lost. Right. And I never

[00:19:17] Mike: went back to my office thinking, but you need to start a new journey.

[00:19:20] Paula: so you're starting this new journey,

[00:19:22] Mike: right?

[00:19:22] Paula: But,what was the very first step that you remember taking when you said, okay, I'm going to do this. What was step one?

[00:19:31] Mike: I realized that I know absolutely nothing about the world of design of interior design other than the broad strokes. Okay. And I need information and I love to learn. And I'm also a big believer in. the wise man is the one who acknowledges what he, you know, was it Socrates?

[00:19:47] Paula: No, sure.

[00:19:48] Mike: Socrates is the one, the wise man is the one who acknowledges what he doesn't know.

[00:19:51] Mike: I'm a big believer in Socratic thinking. So the first big step for me was thinking, I need to just gather as much information as I can about the realities. Of this career, not the fantasy that one sees on HGTV, but the reality of it,

[00:20:08] Paula: the day to day life,

[00:20:10] Mike: right? So I called a friend of mine who is an architect in New York and very talented, extraordinary architect.

[00:20:18] Mike: And I called him and said, can I take you to lunch? Because his office was near mine. And we went to lunch. And I told him what I was thinking and that I needed him to just tell me everything that he knew in his head. And he proceeded to tell me everything he knew about the world. Good, the good, the bad, the ugly.

[00:20:37] Mike: And one of the things he said is you need to get some formal education and you need to get to work as soon as possible because you are not getting any younger.

[00:20:48] Paula: Yeah.

[00:20:49] Mike: I thought, good point. He also said, you know, get your own apartment photographed, start building a portfolio now, and, get out there, but he said, if you can get a little formal education, that would be helpful.

[00:21:05] Mike: A lot of people think they can go into this cold, and sometimes they can, but he said, I'm not a huge believer in that.

[00:21:11] Paula: Yeah. And so you enrolled in school where?

[00:21:16] Mike: I'm sorry to cut off for a moment.

[00:21:17] Paula: Oh, that's okay. So you went, you enrolled in a program, right? So

[00:21:22] Mike: fortunately, you know, I lived in New York city, home to the best tier design schools in the country, Parsons, New York school of interior design.

[00:21:29] Mike: So I went to both of them and vetted them. And I realized that Parsons kind of fit my needs a little bit better. they had, let's call it a certificate degree. It's an uncredited thing. Yep. It's basically met for people who are already working. Courses were mostly in the evenings on weekends. It's considered actually adult education, but you can apply the certificate to an associate's degree if you want to get a two year degree.

[00:21:49] Mike: And so I signed up for Parsons Associate or Certificate Program. And, you know, I basically started that in the, I actually didn't start till the fall of 2018.

[00:22:01] Paula: You were still working at this point?

[00:22:03] Mike: Yeah, I was. So what I did is I met with my friend, Ted, the architect in the winter of 2018. And over the next 6 months, I took his advice and I started vetting the schools and looking into them.

[00:22:14] Mike: And I realized that the Parson Certificate Program probably fit my needs best. The best time to start it would be the upcoming fall. And then I made, I sat down and literally hand wrote on a piece of paper, everyone I knew who worked in design or design adjacent businesses. So it

[00:22:28] Paula: was a long list for you at that point.

[00:22:30] Mike: it was, yeah, it was, I was fortunate, this is where. There are

[00:22:34] Paula: those worlds overlap and you find this is where it helped

[00:22:37] Mike: to be in my fifties, making a career change.

[00:22:39] Paula: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:22:41] Mike: You know, I called some, I spoke to some over the next several months, I went on, what did Hillary Clinton call it?

[00:22:47] Mike: A listening tour

[00:22:47] Paula: and

[00:22:49] Mike: talk to friends who were real estate agents. a friend of mine who was a high end design designer slash contractor in Los Angeles. I talked to four or five people, interior designers, some who already knew, some who friends connected me to, I talked to my financial planner.

[00:23:12] Paula: Ah, yes.

[00:23:12] Paula: So you basically went into this process in terms of gathering information about design in the same way that you gathered information about consulting when you started your career, same skills, same process, different application, right?

[00:23:28] Paula: Who were, what were some of the other things that you needed to do or that you did in order to kind of set yourself up on this?

[00:23:36] Mike: I, I needed to see a clear path,

[00:23:42] Paula: I

[00:23:43] Mike: was gathering information, but not knowing how I was going to use it.

[00:23:47] Paula: Okay.

[00:23:47] Mike: And so I needed to do something with all of that. And what I decided to do was something I really had never done in my life, which was to not worry about it.

[00:23:57] Mike: Usually I'm like, you know, what's the next thing? Let me, you know, I can, I can be anxious and worry about anything, right? I decided I'm just going to listen to people and see what happens. And in that process, the path. Started making itself known and what I realized that I was going to do after talking to all these people was three things.

[00:24:20] Mike: 1, I would start, I would enroll in this 1 year program person started in the fall and get formal education and happily was the evenings and weekends. Number 2, I was going to, and this fell into my lap. I was going to do some work as a as needed intern for a designer in New York City. He had a 1 part time person who kind of helped him with the administrative side of his business, but he really needed somebody else to help him.

[00:24:49] Mike: With design and he was someone I was 1 of the people, the designers I was meeting with. He was a friend of a friend and in the course of the conversation, he said, you know, I could really use some help. Do you want to just help out as needed? So, yeah, who wouldn't? so I took that on. That would be the 2nd thing.

[00:25:06] Mike: And the 3rd thing I realized is. I need to stay with my existing job until the early fall till September, October, just because there were certain milestones I wanted to get through in the job. And I felt like I just needed more time getting my head comfortable with this life change. So, by the fall of 2018, I was enrolled in Parsons, I started working with this designer, and I was ready to give my notice and move on.

[00:25:33] Paula: Wow. So when you think back on that, what were, because, you know, obviously in, in retrospect, you go, I did this, I did this, I did this, and it all, you know, was linear and all great. I suspect during that time, there were a number of times where you kind of went, uh, wait a minute. and these other little voices maybe came in to slow you down a little bit.

[00:26:01] Paula: Tell me a little bit about that. what were some of the hurdles you had to get over in that process?

[00:26:08] Mike: I think the biggest hurdle was, self doubt. and what kind of, part of that was just, you know, Me being insecure about my abilities. You know, I had never, I'd never done this in a big way. It's one thing to help friends, a friend, pick out a new rug.

[00:26:22] Mike: It's something thing to make that your career. and number 2, you know, I remember talking to 1 designer. recommended to me by a friend and this designer is quite successful in the , eastern seaboard. And I knew of him but didn't know him. I met him once at a party years earlier. he gave me, you know, 10, 15 minutes on the phone and was really, from beginning to end of the conversation, wholly discouraging of this.

[00:26:48] Paula: Wow.

[00:26:49] Mike: in fact, yeah. He basically, in so many words, said, you're out of your mind. you are making a big mistake. Everybody thinks this is, you know, you're going to be Joanna Gaines making

[00:26:58] Paula: Right, right. Pretty

[00:26:59] Mike: on a screen. And you will go bankrupt because you need lines of credit with showrooms and things like this.

[00:27:07] Mike: And it was very sobering and, you know, and it sort of triggered my instinctive insecurities about

[00:27:13] Paula: securities. Sure.

[00:27:14] Mike: Right. So I remember, like, walking into that conversation and that kind of, you know, knocked me down for a while. That was 1 thing. Another thing that sort of made me pause and think, I'm not sure was just leaving the financial security of a regular paycheck.

[00:27:30] Mike: Paid insurance, paid health care.

[00:27:32] Paula: Sure. Right.

[00:27:33] Mike: You know, I'm single. I don't have a spouse or partner whose insurance program I can attach to. I had to take care of myself. So, I would have to buy my own health care, which in New York is not cheap,

[00:27:44] Paula: not cheap, right.

[00:27:45] Mike: Even for one person. So, dealing with my own insecurities about, well, can I financially risk this?

[00:27:52] Mike: Plus, Getting this very cold bucket of water from another designer. It really made me stop and take pause. And then

[00:28:00] Mike: I decided that if I put this down as a balance sheet, you know, assets and liabilities, those were two liabilities, but I realized that those two liabilities, one was coming from one person's point of view who didn't

[00:28:12] Paula: even know

[00:28:13] Mike: me,

[00:28:14] Paula: who had also been incredibly successful doing what you wanted to do.

[00:28:18] Paula: Okay.

[00:28:18] Mike: Right. And they

[00:28:19] Paula: found a way,

[00:28:21] Mike: right. Worked for a large design organization that had very deep pocketed clients. So of course, you know, they required massive lines of credit. That's not where I'm going to be on day one. So it was an apples to oranges comparison, although I did appreciate his candor and he made me really think hard about some things.

[00:28:38] Mike: I'm actually very grateful to him because it did make me delve a little bit more closely into, okay, what are the financial aspects of that? And that made my decision sounder. and then the other liability, is this idea like, oh, can I do this or not? Like, I decided, yeah, I could and I started looking at the work that other people did and I was like, I could do better than that. And I looked at my own apartment and I was like, you know, every time people come to my apartment, they tell me

[00:28:59] Mike: it's so beautiful. And these are people I trust. and so I decided it was time to listen to my instincts. I knew that. Right. And I am a big believer in the power of instinct.

[00:29:10] Paula: So one of the things, you know, it's interesting, there's a woman who I, have studied under named Linda Rossetti, who talks about so much about, transitions and how our emotions work really hard when we're trying to go forward in a new way.

[00:29:25] Paula: Our emotions work really hard. To pull us back to what we know and has actually developed a tool to kind of help manage through that so that you're able to kind of see the lessons you're getting from those emotions rather than being stopped by them. It's a tool called hail. It's phenomenal. I use it.

[00:29:42] Paula: but if you, can you think about thinking back on those times, what was, if there was one emotion more than anything else that kind of kept cropping up, what would you say it was?

[00:29:52] Mike: Fear of? Of financial bankruptcy. Fear. Fear. Yeah. Fear of financial

[00:29:56] Paula: bankruptcy.

[00:29:57] Mike: That was my number one thing. It was, I'm going to go broke and I'm gonna end up move in with my parents and live in my childhood bedroom in my fifties. Right, right. , my 80-year-old parents are, we stand the door like, what are you doing here?

[00:30:10] Mike: And why did you quit that well paying job?

[00:30:12] Paula: so what practical support did you find to overcome that fear?

[00:30:18] Mike: Well, I decided. The best thing to do when you're facing an overwhelming fear is to stare it down, like delve into it. You know, there's this, I'll delve back into my English major background, but, decades ago, Albert Camus wrote this book called The Myth of Sisyphus.

[00:30:36] Mike: It has this great line in it that crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Meaning this great fear that is terrifying you falls apart when you confront it.

[00:30:49] Paula: And when you look at it, when you name it and when

[00:30:51] Mike: you, that's right, her

[00:30:53] Paula: tool is all about exactly that.

[00:30:55] Mike: How

[00:30:57] Paula: does it influence what he can learn from it, the whole, yes.

[00:31:00] Mike: That's right. And so when I started thinking that way, actually my financial planner became a partner for me. he, he sat, we sat down and looked at how much money had I saved. Um, and he said, you know, what we, what you're going to need to do is set up an allowance. Every month, we will give you an allowance from your savings.

[00:31:20] Mike: And, you know, I had to put together a budget, like how big is that allowance? And, you know, it took me about 11 and a half seconds to realize that that monthly allowance was going to be much, much less than I was used to living. Your

[00:31:30] Paula: salary.

[00:31:31] Mike: I was going to have to live, live a different kind of life, but hardly, you know, I wasn't going to be, I didn't have to sell my home.

[00:31:39] Mike: I wasn't going to change any, you know, I was going to be fine.

[00:31:42] Paula: Right.

[00:31:42] Mike: The other thing he made me do was put together kind of a four year financial projection for the business in terms of. Just revenue. He said, I don't need balance sheets. You don't even, we don't even know what that would look like. But if you think about how you're starting year one, year two, year three, year four, where do you want to get with your revenues?

[00:32:01] Mike: And what I realized is that for years one and two, I would live 100 percent on savings.

[00:32:07] Paula: Okay.

[00:32:07] Mike: Year three, by the end of year three, I would be living 50 percent on savings. And by the end of year four, I would be wholly independent of my savings. And so to race ahead, I was actually fully independent of my savings by early in year four.

[00:32:24] Mike: So it was basically nine months ahead of my head.

[00:32:26] Paula: That's awesome. That's excellent. That's excellent. So you put these, you put tangible, measurable parameters. First of all, you enlisted help of experts and you put these tangible parameters over what this needed to look like in order for it to work for you.

[00:32:43] Paula: That's awesome.

[00:32:44] Mike: That's right. That's right. There were two things that I had to keep in my mind. One is, be conscious that I am not thinking clearly because I'm anxious about this.

[00:32:54] Paula: That's excellent.

[00:32:54] Mike: Therefore, number two, go seek out the input and counsel of people who know me and are credible. Like, I'm not going to go talk to my great aunt who's going to say, Oh, follow your back.

[00:33:08] Mike: No. And so I'm going to go talk to my hardheaded financial planner who would say, yeah, you can afford this or no, you can't. I'm going to talk to three or four of my closest friends who will be brutally honest with me and know me well. And also I had hired a career coach who I was working with and he was tremendous throughout this whole journey and helping me kind of, you know, visualize what the future could be.

[00:33:34] Mike: And I'm, you know, I still work with him and he has been just tremendous.

[00:33:38] Paula: That's excellent. That's excellent. as you kind of went through that, were there any assumptions you had made that did you kind of looking back, thinking about this, were there assumptions that you had made about what work needed to be for you or what success meant for you or What your future needed to look like that you had to shift or change or rewrite in order to have the courage to take this step.

[00:34:06] Mike: Yeah, I think the shift I needed to make was I had to let go of the idea that my future was going to involve retirement at 65. And maybe a condo and, you know, Arizona or something like that, or Montana to live in, you know, part of the year and visit my friends and live that sort of life started in 65, maybe 70.

[00:34:33] Mike: I, it's hard for me to fathom in any career, leaving my work behind. At 60 or even 65. But, you know, I had a vision of that. My retirement was going to look that my later life would look like that. And it sounds, I apologize. I sound like I'm being shallow. It's all, it's all about, you know, condo and travel.

[00:34:52] Mike: but it was this idea of security, you know, that I was going to live this sort of comfortable life that I made for myself and instead I had to acknowledge that what I envisioned what I saw going forward was something that was much less certain. And that what would carry me through that uncertainty was my belief in my abilities.

[00:35:15] Paula: It's interesting. You said,I had envisioned this, you know, life of retiring and, but you also said, and now I can't imagine that I would not be working when I'm 65 or I'm 70. Yeah. And when you say that, I'm curious, it's not that you can't envision not working when you're 65 and 70, because you have to, I'm wondering if part of it is because you don't want

[00:35:40] Mike: to, I don't want to stop working.

[00:35:44] Mike: Yeah, I really don't. it's funny, like, and I say that because when I first left Cohan in the fall of 2018, after I'd given my notice, you know, I was just going to school. I wasn't doing any design work yet, and I was working with this designer a few hours a week,

[00:36:00] Mike: I had a

[00:36:00] Mike: lot of unfilled time on my hands. All of a sudden I left Han and I was gonna school, but it, you know, the homework level was high, but. I got all of a sudden I had a sense of what it might be like to not be working anymore.

[00:36:12] Mike: And I was bored out of my mind.

[00:36:14] Paula: Oh, interesting.

[00:36:15] Mike: there are different definitions of happiness in post work life. If you're lucky enough to have a retirement. and I realized like mine is not this. I daily activity matters and it doesn't have to be work work. It could be just sign up as a full time volunteer with something, but.

[00:36:34] Mike: You know, a life without, I felt like I had a life without purpose all of a sudden, and that's not how I wanted to live. The whole point of making this change was to continue the idea of purpose.

[00:36:43] Paula: And learning and growing.

[00:36:44] Mike: And that's right, learning and growing. So, you know, once I started getting some traction with the business, You know, I got my first project in early 2019, just a few months after I left my HR career.

[00:36:55] Mike: And over the last few years, you know, I realized like I started this career a little late. I was 54. Um, I want to do this for 20 years.

[00:37:05] Paula: That's great. You know,

[00:37:06] Mike: I don't want to stop 70 or six years from now when I'm 65, I'm just getting started and I don't really want to, I don't want to just be retired.

[00:37:17] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. It

[00:37:18] Mike: doesn't have to be.

[00:37:19] Paula: Um,

[00:37:20] Mike: so yeah,

[00:37:21] Paula: So one of the things I left out in the story of transition was that on top of that you had lived your life in New York. How long did you live in New York?

[00:37:31] Mike: Uh, I lived there for a total of 32 and a half years,

[00:37:34] Paula: 32 and a half years. And having launched your business and having done projects in New York, you then moved.

[00:37:42] Paula: It wasn't enough of a transition. You then packed the whole thing up and moved back home to.

[00:37:50] Mike: Minneapolis. Yeah. I had grown up outside Minneapolis, you know, my family's lived in the state for since they were 18 fifties, basically farmers and Minnesota. But I had moved to New York right after college. And I ended up living there my entire adult life.

[00:38:06] Mike: I lived in anyway. I was. Away from Minnesota for about 36 years. I spent about three years in Boston. during while I was in these coasts, but the more than almost 33 years of those 36 years were in New York and

[00:38:19] Paula: in

[00:38:20] Mike: late 2019, when I was one year into my new design career, I realized. I just don't want to live in New York anymore.

[00:38:30] Mike: It, like my old career, this city had become a suit that no longer fit me. Most of my close friends had left by then, had left New York, moved to different places. Without them, it was a bit of a ghost town. I felt like, I felt like that guy who stays at the party too long.

[00:38:44] Paula: Yeah.

[00:38:45] Mike: And I realized like, it just didn't fit me anymore.

[00:38:48] Mike: I wanted something a little less, Much, but still trusting and progressive and engaging. And I decided that I would stay in New York for 2 more years because it's such a great place to learn design plan that come the end of 2021. I would. Leave New York. So I gave myself two more years to stay in New York.

[00:39:11] Mike: And that was great. It gave me a chance to really learn the business. And I got some great project work. And in late 2019, late 2021, I sold my apartment in New York. And instead of going to Minneapolis, I actually moved to Washington DC for a year because I wasn't quite ready to quit the East coast.

[00:39:29] Paula: Okay.

[00:39:30] Paula: DC

[00:39:30] Mike: seemed like You know, a happy meeting between my hometown, Minneapolis to New York. It's cosmopolitan interesting city where there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. Very intelligent people. If I'm going to get to New York, it's an easy train rider, whatever. I have some close friends who live here.

[00:39:48] Mike: And so I'm actually in DC right now. and I thought, yeah, this will be the next place. There was a step apartment I rented and I rented an apartment in DC for a year.

[00:39:59] Paula: Okay. And then I

[00:40:00] Mike: moved the business there.

[00:40:01] Paula: And you move the business there and then you move the business to. And

[00:40:06] Mike: six months into my 12 month lease in DC, I realized, yeah, this is not my new home.

[00:40:11] Mike: it's a wonderful city. It's just not the city.

[00:40:14] Paula: Just not your city.

[00:40:15] Mike: But what it did, and this is, again, the power of instinct, my instincts were, buddy, it's time to leave New York and moving to DC, listening to those instincts, leaving New York, moving to DC, living in DC gave me kind of, it quieted down my life,

[00:40:33] Paula: a little bit of space, right?

[00:40:35] Mike: And it gave me some perspective. It got me out of New York. It quieted down everything. It quieted my mind. And it gave me time to unconsciously and consciously think about what is right for me next. And that process made me realize. A good friend of mine said, DC You thought DC was gonna be your second long-term marriage.

[00:40:57] Mike: It actually turned out to be your rebound relationship, .

[00:41:00] Mike: where we weren't right for each other, but I will always, you know, appreciate what the, you'll always

[00:41:04] Paula: appreciate what you had.

[00:41:05] Mike: We'll always have Washington and so I was, by then, I actually have close friends from New York who had moved to Minneapolis.

[00:41:13] Mike: And they hired me to help them with their house. in Minneapolis and their house happened to be in my favorite neighborhood in the city. So that was a delight. And also my mother was ill and getting sicker. And so I was going back more to spend more time with my parents to help out. And so I was spending a lot more time in my hometown and realized this was an epiphany.

[00:41:35] Mike: I can tell you it was Labor Day weekend 2022. I realized I just want to move home.

[00:41:40] Paula: Wow.

[00:41:41] Mike: I was on the, I was on Cape Cod with some friends, including these clients from Minneapolis. And I remember we were sitting at the beach and I looked over and I said, I'm moving back to Minneapolis. You just made the decision.

[00:41:51] Mike: And they're like, do you want to hire our broker? I'm like, I'm going to hire your broker. I'm going to buy a house. I want to live in a house again before I'd lived in a house since I was 22. So I ended up moving myself and my business to Minneapolis in April of 2023. So just a year ago. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:07] Paula: And then you're starting again, right?

[00:42:09] Paula: Whole new community, whole new contacts. And what was that? But, but you were very, uh, you were very experienced at this now. Right?

[00:42:18] Mike: Yeah. And I, what was that like? it was a bit daunting. I, what I hadn't realized, I hadn't consciously thought about, and I think this is important for people contemplating the career change, you have to build up your own businesses, think about the market you're in, you have a base of potential business there just by virtue of your presence there.

[00:42:37] Mike: You can, you're so long. I knew a lot of people. I never had to market myself. The work kind of started coming and then I would get referrals from clients in DC. I had to start over, but. You know, I got a project here and a project there, and if I had stayed with it, that would have grown. Even though I had grown up in Minneapolis, I had lived there since, you know, the late 80s, and I had stayed connected to the city.

[00:42:58] Mike: I went back frequently during those 30 some years to visit my family, but, you know, my network was on the East Coast. And so I went back to Minneapolis, and I realized, I really have to, I'm really starting over.

[00:43:12] Paula: This is even more

[00:43:13] Mike: starting over than New York was, because leaving New York, I sort of had fertile ground for clients here.

[00:43:19] Mike: I had to start all over in every possible way.

[00:43:23] Paula: And how has that worked?

[00:43:24] Mike: It has generally worked well. what have

[00:43:27] Paula: you done to make that work?

[00:43:28] Mike: I decided that I would give myself a year to just start building awareness

[00:43:34] Paula: back on the listening tour. You went back on the listening tour,

[00:43:37] Mike: right? I got to build awareness because nobody here knows who I am, right?

[00:43:42] Mike: You know, they don't care. That I'm New York, this is a wholly different world and it's the twin cities are just a marvelous place. You know, it's just on so many fronts, but, you know, I realized, like, I'm really starting over, like, this is huge. And so I decided the best thing I could do is just, like I said, build awareness.

[00:44:00] Mike: And for me, that meant several things 1, get to know the design community. So, you know, I, I joined the Minnesota chapter of the American side and started getting involved with them. and I. coincidentally, shortly after I moved to Minneapolis. ASID Minnesota decided to do a designer show house this coming summer.

[00:44:22] Mike: they partnered with a couple that bought one of the old Pillsbury mansions in Minneapolis. And this, they're going to live in this house and raise their family there. And it's this enormous, beautiful mansion built around 1910 or so. And they partnered with ASID Minnesota to do a show house. And so I thought, why not?

[00:44:39] Mike: So I applied and I got two rooms in that.

[00:44:42] Paula: Oh, that's fabulous. Yeah.

[00:44:44] Mike: So that'll be live for, they'll have open tours the second half of July for about two and a half weeks. So that hopefully will be some good publicity. at the same time, I just got to know other designers in the community. I got to know the showroom managers.

[00:44:57] Mike: I was very fortunate. I went to an ASID event in December, a holiday event, and I met the editor in chief of Midwest home magazine. And they did a digital profile on me on their website in February. And they're doing. a spread on my New York City apartment in there. May June issue.

[00:45:15] Paula: Wow.

[00:45:16] Mike: I'm really excited about it.

[00:45:17] Mike: Sure. And I also, you know, for the 1st time in my since I started, I bought advertised and I figured, you know, again, build awareness, right? You know, I, so I bought print and digital advertising and local channels that people go to

[00:45:30] Paula: and

[00:45:33] Mike: then I just started reconnecting. You know, like I said, I have some New York friends across the street.

[00:45:36] Mike: I reconnected with a couple of college friends who live there. Reconnected with 1 or 2 friends from high school. and I'm just, got to know my neighbors and fast forward, you know, 11 months and, I'm going to be in the show house in July. I'm, I've got to know the design community, a number of members of the design community well.

[00:45:57] Mike: I've built a fairly good new community of friends and neighbors. I've got a couple projects going on, one in New York, actually, ironically, New York City clients for the, their weekend house on Long Island. Yeah. And I've got a new project in Minneapolis, which came out of all this networking.

[00:46:17] Mike: I consciously gave my, you know, this sounds so trite, but I gave myself permission to give myself at least a year to just get used to it and start planting those sprouts.

[00:46:28] Mike: So 11 months in, I'm feeling pretty good about things.

[00:46:31] Paula: So two things I keep hearing from you that come forward in all of the journey that you've had. One is giving yourself space. And you've used that term a couple of times. So you used it just now saying I gave myself permission to start again in, in Minneapolis, right?

[00:46:51] Paula: And, I gave myself space to lay the groundwork I needed in order to do what I needed to do. You, you've used that a lot. That space. Tell me about the value of that.

[00:47:03] Mike: It's where you find the answers.

[00:47:05] Paula: Yeah.

[00:47:06] Mike: And so, in my twenties, thirties and forties, I think I did what many men and women in their twenties, thirties and forties, I just kept moving forward, moving forward, but I didn't necessarily do it with intention.

[00:47:19] Paula: Right.

[00:47:19] Mike: you know, some of it was intentional. Some of it was planned. Of course I didn't, I wasn't driftwood floating around a river oracle, but you know, I wasn't as intentional in my professional life. As you know, in retrospect, I wish I had been. I was very fortunate that a lot of great things came my way, and I worked really hard, but this new opportunity, I decided this is a time to live with intention.

[00:47:47] Mike: This is the time to really think about what's right, because I've made this huge change. I can't let myself do that carelessly.

[00:47:58] Paula: And

[00:47:59] Mike: thing is, and maybe this is just because I'm, you know, we get older, we be, you know, sometimes we, we

[00:48:03] Paula: get wiser.

[00:48:04] Mike: We get wiser, perhaps more introspective. But I started to realize that the best decisions in my life that I'd ever made were when I made them on instinct.

[00:48:14] Paula: On instinct.

[00:48:15] Mike: friends, I chose some jobs that I chose. my college major, you know, whatever it might be. and the worst decisions I made is when I made them because I thought I was supposed to.

[00:48:28] Paula: Ah, that's

[00:48:29] Mike: like, you know, the person you're dating, they're on paper, they sound perfect.

[00:48:33] Mike: Great. This is exactly what I should be doing. And you realize, well, we are not suited to each other. Isn't that

[00:48:38] Paula: so? Yeah. It's so interesting because instinct, like I, and I talked to clients about this a lot before. Yeah. Yeah. Instinct really comes from within, right? It's really paying attention to your inner voice, your inner voice, right?

[00:48:52] Paula: Right. Where, which we're not really trained to pay attention to. What we're trained to pay attention to are those outer voices. Those assumptions that I talked about earlier about what you're supposed to do or what, you know, what's supposed to be the next step and not the inner voice.

[00:49:11] Paula: where we get the ability to access that is through space is that space that you talk about and finding that space, but there's so much discomfort in that space because it's a space where you don't have the answer and you have to sit in it and find it right.

[00:49:27] Mike: That's exactly right. And sitting quietly, being patient is not my forte. And there, I think there's a certain societal assumption or an assumption in larger society that that's a good thing. You know, like, smart ones are the ones who are who are impatient and driven and they just go, go, go. And in some cases, that is right.

[00:49:49] Mike: But I, yeah. My answer is, well, it depends on the person who are doing it. We're going, going, going are still listening to their instincts. I think what gets you in trouble is when you don't. And look, I also recognize that there are a lot of people who say, look, I'd love to go do something else, but I can't, you know, for whatever reason, financial familial, whatever it might be.

[00:50:08] Mike: There are a lot of extraordinarily solid reasons that people are not necessarily choose a profession that might be a better fit for their interests and instincts. One of the things that helped me get to do this was I realized I can,

[00:50:26] Mike: so

[00:50:27] Mike: Why on

[00:50:27] Mike: earth would I not?

[00:50:28] Mike: I can, so for God's sakes, let's go. And the other thing is, you know, like I think about really blowing it up and moving back to the Midwest after starting business in East Coast, I remember thinking I made this career choice because it was the right next thing for the right next part of my life.

[00:50:46] Mike: the joy and the satisfaction of that is going to be remarkably diluted if I stay in New York and even DC because I just don't want to live here anymore. I love those. I love DC. In fact, I said, I'm in DC right now. And I was in New York this past weekend for a friend's birthday party and I was just euphorically happy to be back there.

[00:51:07] Paula: But it's not your home anymore. It's not my home.

[00:51:09] Mike: Right. Being there for two days, being here for three days. I'm so happy to be back, but I realized like, I, these aren't my home. These places aren't my home anymore, but my God, my God, am I lucky that I got to live in them.

[00:51:20] Paula: That's excellent. I remember, you know, it's interesting, Mike, because you said, I realized in 20, I think you said 2021, that it was time to move back.

[00:51:27] Paula: And I remember talking with you before you left Kohan in 2018 and maybe even 2017 about going back to Minnesota. Yeah.

[00:51:37] Mike: Yeah. About

[00:51:38] Paula: wanting to do that and about, and, and, and I remember you saying, you probably think I'm crazy. And I was like, no, no, you know, the plant, the, the seeds, we plant these seeds so often and we don't even realize we've planted them.

[00:51:54] Mike: Right.

[00:51:55] Paula: and quite often. You know, the disruption or trying to transition into something we get pulled back to not paying attention to the seeds that we planted and not to those inner voices and how important they are along that journey. Um, so congratulations,

[00:52:12] Mike: those comments were my instincts trying to speak up.

[00:52:15] Mike: You can't say those. I wish I had listened to those instincts more clearly in my 40s, because I would have understood. Yeah, maybe you want to live back there someday, but not yet. There's a reason. You know, this is 1 thing a friend of mine told me this once, probably my late 40s, early 50s. He's like, you know, I'm tired of hearing about Minnesota.

[00:52:37] Mike: There's a reason you're in New York. You know, there's a reason you stopped. You stayed here

[00:52:43] Paula: for

[00:52:43] Mike: now for now. He's like, you know, maybe you should start appreciating this a little bit more. He was right. You know, New York living in New York in my twenties, thirties, forties, and early fifties. Was exactly the right decision, and I was in Boston for three years in the middle of those years, which is also a marvelous place to live.

[00:53:01] Mike: I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And my only regret about that is I wish I just sort of. Recognize the Minnesota comments for that's for you someday, but not now you're supposed you're supposed to be you are where you're supposed to be right now. And and that's a pretty beautiful thing.

[00:53:19] Paula: Yeah, that's wonderful.

[00:53:21] Paula: When you think about this journey, which has been amazing and thank you for sharing it with us. When you think about this and you touched on this a little bit, but I wonder if there's anything else that you wished you knew in your younger days that you know now and, and when you wish you had known them when you, when you wish you were aware of that.

[00:53:45] Mike: Yeah. I think it's a couple things in no particular order. One is I wish I'd known that I was more adept at the work I was doing than I thought I was.

[00:53:59] Paula: I

[00:53:59] Mike: think maybe a lot of people feel like that in their occupations. I don't know. but I, I think there was always a voice in the back of my head that told me on and off for several decades that, you know, you're sort of here by a miracle, man.

[00:54:14] Mike: Like, are you really as I really think you are. All right. Well, thank you for your, your shoes here. Um, and I wish I, you know, there are times where I should go back to my younger self and say, you are capable, you know, you're capable and give yourself credit. In a reasonable way, in a humble way, give yourself credit.

[00:54:35] Mike: Don't beat yourself up for things you haven't done. And don't, don't beat yourself up for inabilities that don't exist, but also recognize, you know, things you're not very good at, things that you're, that aren't right for you. And don't spend time on that. Don't, don't go after those things. Another thing I, I wish I'd understood better.

[00:54:54] Mike: I tell myself is again going to this point about instinct. Listen to them. They're telling you something. They are telling you. They are absolutely telling you something. I've loved the world of design and space creation since I was 4 years old. Instincts were trying to tell me something I will say as an aside.

[00:55:13] Mike: Oh, and I hope this doesn't sidetrack, but I think it's relevant. I cannot emphasize this next point enough.

[00:55:19] Mike: for people contemplating major transitions, be careful about judging your past life as a wasted time.

[00:55:27] Mike: If only I had done this new thing 25 years ago,

[00:55:33] Paula: that is a

[00:55:34] Mike: one way ticket to misery. Maybe.

[00:55:36] Paula: Sure. Because, yeah, I agree.

[00:55:39] Mike: I was in a wholly different professional world in those years. Some of those jobs I like more than others. There was work I did during those 30 years that I didn't really care for, but I did it because I had to pay the bills, I had to take care of myself, but for the most part they were pretty good.

[00:55:59] Mike: The other thing is, that career allow me to meet some absolutely marvelous people. You being one of them, you and I would not be here if I had not done that. Like I would never have met you. And you were such a tremendous mentor to me in my last few years at CHRO. You really were. Thank you. And I would never have had that experience of, of getting to work with you if I had gone a different way.

[00:56:19] Mike: The other thing is I have a marvelous community of friends. But I never would have met who are, you know, so dear to me. I am in the home of a friend I made when I was 25. He's my best friend. We have been 25 years old. We are now, you know, 59 and 60.

[00:56:35] Paula: Had you gone to architect school, you wouldn't have met him.

[00:56:38] Mike: That's right.

[00:56:39] Paula: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:56:40] Mike: You know, I, when I was applying to college, when I was 17, I looked into going to art schools. I wanted to go to the Rhode Island School of Design or Parsons because my research indicated those are like two of the best art schools out there. And I ended up going to a liberal arts college instead and getting a degree in English lit, which has served me well, frankly, um, despite what people may say about English majors.

[00:57:04] Mike: I'm a big proponent of a liberal arts education.

[00:57:07] Paula: Absolutely. As I am in

[00:57:08] Mike: a lighter time. However, I didn't go to art school. I didn't become a designer. I took a wholly different path and it led me down a wholly different life than if I had gone to art school, but that different path gave me a tremendous circle, marvelous friends.

[00:57:25] Mike: It gave me the chance to live in this fantastic city. It gave me a chance to stretch my brain and learn, you know, through the jobs I had to work at it. And on a very personal note, if I had not gone to the college I went to, my brother, who's a year younger than I am, would not have gone to that same school.

[00:57:42] Mike: He came down to visit me His senior of high school, when I was a freshman in college, really liked where I was going, liked what he saw. He applied, got in, ended up going there as well. And that's where he met his wife.

[00:57:55] Paula: There you go. Right? Yes. it's so true. It's so easy to have regret. It's so easy to look at something and say, wow, you know, had I not done this, but I always say to people, well, if you hadn't done this, this wouldn't be your life.

[00:58:10] Paula: You know, you can't know what you're assuming everything would have been fine because you don't understand. The other challenges that you would have encountered from that other decision, right?

[00:58:20] Mike: My brother and I always got along well growing up, but we had very different interests. We barely did. We didn't do many things together.

[00:58:26] Mike: We got along. We just didn't have much in common going to college together. We became very close and, you know, to this day, he's my, you know, we're very, we're still very close. And he married this marvelous person, my lovely sister in law, and they've been married. They have three children. My sister married my brother's college roommate.

[00:58:46] Mike: my niece and six nephews are six, seven of those. Fascinate marvelous people I've ever met and they wouldn't exist.

[00:58:53] Paula: They wouldn't right. They would not. That's right.

[00:58:55] Mike: So, you know, like we make decisions. Based on what we know at the time,

[00:58:59] Paula: 100%, I make

[00:59:02] Mike: the best decision,

[00:59:03] Paula: you know, at the time based on what I'm

[00:59:05] Mike: only grateful for the life I've had, you know, I had some of it was my own hard work.

[00:59:10] Mike: Some of it was luck, so I'm very grateful. So I'd say to any of your listeners, if you think about a career transition, please start with everything you've been doing until now is good.

[00:59:20] Paula: Mm hmm. And has led you to the point where you have the opportunity to question whether that's what you want. And you have all of this experience.

[00:59:28] Paula: You know, I, I hear you and I hear about the path you went on and I tell people all the time, the skills that you have. Are not the job that you do, the skills that you have, the job that you do is the place where you get to utilize the skills that you have. And the skill I hear from you consistently is curiosity and talking with people about what they do and how they do it and what makes them good at it.

[00:59:55] Paula: And all of that is exactly what you utilized in order to launch the career that you have now.

[01:00:01] Mike: That's exactly right. This whole idea of like, seek. Out help. Never be afraid to seek out help because again, your instincts are telling you you need support for an important thing. Community seek out. And the other thing I'd say, like I said, I was very fortunate that I was able to take a work and life path that I did.

[01:00:25] Mike: And some of the reasons for that were my own good luck. And one thing I'd say again to listeners, whether you're going to stay in the world you're in, or you transition to a new line of work or a new way of life. If you encounter people who are trying to do the same thing, younger, older, whatever it might be, if you can help them or mentor them, do it.

[01:00:51] Mike: Because not everyone has this, you know, we are a very unequal world and some people don't have more opportunities than others. And if you have opportunities, That other people don't have and you can use yours to help them get to where you, to do the kind of thing you are doing. Do it. We have a Pay

[01:01:09] Paula: it forward.

[01:01:09] Paula: Pay it forward.

[01:01:11] Mike: Yeah, pay it forward, man. It's true. I had people, I had, I moved to New York, I had 11 cents to my name and people, you know, helped me out and I, and I was fortunate that I had my family to help me as well, but some people don't have that. So if you can help people in whatever way that looks like.

[01:01:27] Mike: Do it. Yeah. I think in a world where we're so digitally enmeshed these days, we forget the more far more primal priority of connection to other people.

[01:01:41] Paula: Community

[01:01:41] Mike: should be helping mentor and help other people in whatever direction they're trying to go.

[01:01:47] Paula: Sure.

[01:01:48] Mike: Sure. And it's

[01:01:48] Paula: what's so interesting about that is quite often we're so we are limited in what we think about in terms of the community we have at our disposal and the recognition that people really do enjoy connecting and helping other people for every 10 people that you reach out to, to ask their advice or their direction, eight of them are going to give you time.

[01:02:12] Paula: Truthfully, if you approach it that way, they, and I encourage this to people all the time. And it's often those first phone calls that you make to say, Hey, I'm thinking about this. I wondered if I could ask for your help. That once you start doing that, you realize that the community that you have is the nucleus of an even broader community that you get to build and you get to evolve and, and that in and of itself.

[01:02:40] Paula: Just by itself pays so many dividends to all of us and to everybody who's involved in that process. So, yeah, it's true. I agree. Well, Mike, thank you so much for your time today. You've had a fantastic journey, a lot of changes, a lot of steps along the way, but. You know where you're meant to be at the moment, right?

[01:03:03] Paula: I guess that's the big takeaway. You're where you're meant to be at the moment.

[01:03:06] Mike: Yeah, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

[01:03:09] Paula: That's excellent.

[01:03:10] Mike: Well,

[01:03:11] Paula: I would encourage anybody I've seen your website and I've seen your work and it's phenomenal. And I do. There's some questions for you on that on my couch.

[01:03:21] Paula: No,

[01:03:23] Mike: the artwork behind you is fantastic. So you're already late. Thank

[01:03:25] Paula: you. I appreciate that. Thank you. His website is www. mikeratacheckstudios. com. And if you look at my show notes, you'll see how that's spelled. I encourage you to. First of all, look at his work, it's phenomenal, but also, heed his wisdom and insight about what it takes sometimes to get to where you want to get to.

[01:03:47] Paula: Mike, thank you for your time on the podcast and continued success to you.

[01:03:53] Mike: This has been a real pleasure.

This podcast was produced by The Willoughby Co.

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