Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.

Lena: Sometimes the 30-year backpack of career, family, and everything else gets too heavy to carry. At 52, Sarah set hers down. And what she found on the other side reshaped what work, life, and her next act could look like. Today on Midlife Circus, Rob and Brent sit down with Sarah Hager to talk about her midlife sabbatical, walking away, healing, finding herself, and going back to work on her own terms. Before we begin, check out the Message the Show feature in your podcast player. It's a simple way to reach us, share feedback, or say hello. And remember to follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and join us in the Midlife Circus community in Substack. Let's dive into the Midlife Sabbatical, taking a career break in your 50s with Sarah Hager.

Rob: All right. Today I'm really excited to introduce our guest today, and actually our good friend Sarah Hager. Brent, you introduced me to Sarah about six years ago. You two, I think, were working together. Is that right? Yep, you bet. And so you were working together, you introduced me to Sarah, and she was going to be crewing a couple of her girlfriends that were doing the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. And I'd done the race a couple of times. And so out of the blue, I get this text from this woman, Sarah, that says, Hey, I heard you've done Leadville. Can you come over to my house and talk to me about being a crew member and how to help my friends with this race? And so that started this really fun friendship that my wife and I got to have with you, Sarah, here in our neighborhood, having walked by your house a bunch of times and maybe waved at you, but never really got to know you. Just to give you a sense of the conversation we're going to have today, we ask all of our guests to give us a quote. And I think hopefully Sarah's quote is going to help sum up really what our conversation is going to feel like for all of our audience. And her favorite quote is having fun is so much fun. Come on, having fun is so much fun. I might steal that. She's the mother of two young adults, a son and a daughter, that she lives nearby down in Denver, Colorado. She worked for over 30 years in accounting and operational leadership, mostly in the technology space with companies like Cisco, Avaya, Lucent. Then in 2021, she stopped all of it to take a break. She went on a two-year sabbatical where she explored the world and herself. She traveled, she volunteered, she spent time outdoors, and even opened her own Etsy shop. Today we're going to explore that decision and the experience around it. What prompted it? What did she learn and what did she do? And what happened when she went back to work? And when she went back to work, she went back to work on her terms. So welcome to our podcast today, Sarah.

Sarah: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you guys.

Rob: All right. So our introductory question is always a fun one for our guests. What is the most recent bucket list item that you have checked off?

Sarah: I got to hug a koala. I went to Adelaide, Australia. I've got a couple travel buddies that I travel a lot with, Larry and Tim. And they call me up. They're like, hey, we're going to Adelaide, come with us. I'm like, I'm in. So we got to, I mean, we got to see all of Adelaide, but we went to a wildlife sanctuary park and got to see koala bears, got to, I got to feed kangaroos, I got to see wallabies and emus and dingos. And it was very, very cool. Something I'd never done before in my life and was really excited to do.

Rob: But hug a koala bear.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rob: Is that as cool as it sounds? I can only imagine. I mean, as you see a koala bear hanging out of a tree, how cuddly they would be. Is that actually what they're like or not?

Sarah: Well, yes, super cuddly. And obviously, you know, they had a special koala experience where you got, you know, only a few people got to do it. And um, the one thing is they're not necessarily as soft as you think. Their fur is kind of sandpapery, but they're still so lovable and huggy and just, you know, who doesn't want to just wrap your arms around one?

Rob: I need to add that to my list now. That is so cool.

Brent: I did a trip to Australia one point in time. I didn't get to hug the koala, but at the event I was at, there was a guy that was walking around one, and it just looked like almost they don't move a lot, right? So it was almost looked like a stuffed animal, but then it would just kind of turn its head toward you, like, okay, is this either creepy or cute? But it was super cute. Very, very cool.

Sarah: Well, and the one obviously that they had with us was older and had been around people a lot. So he was pretty chill. I wasn't too worried about him uh bolting off or anything.

Brent: So, Sarah, in the intro, I got to dive into this one because I was aware of it a bit from the outside of this experience that you went through. So let's just jump into telling our listeners, what prompted you to step away from work early? You're pretty young when you did it. And how did others react to this big bold move that you took?

Sarah: Yeah, so I would love to say that there was some sort of grand plan, that we had planned all of our finances and everything perfectly so we could retire in our early 50s, and everything was wonderful. Um, you guys talk a lot on the show about all the financial aspects of being able to retire. That was not quite where we were at. It was more of an emotional decision. I went through what I refer to as my personal Annus Horribilis, the worst year of my life. 2021 was just painful and awful. In a two-week period, my best friend was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She's okay now. She's okay now. Um, my ex-mother-in-law passed away very suddenly, which obviously I had a 30-plus relationship with her, but my children who were young adults, it really hit them hard. So supporting my children through that. Then our community that we lived in together um had a horrible, devastating event where there was an avalanche. And two of the people that were killed in that avalanche, I was very, very close to. And that hit me really hard. Then the hits just kept on coming. Um, I had two close family members that attempted suicide. That was pretty soul-crushing. And then it just became this situation of like compounding grief that every next thing that kept happening. I added it all up. I think I went to 11 funerals in 2021, which nobody is, is horrible, and you have to go through a period of grief, but it just added up. And you can hear my voice. It was just a really, really hard year. And by the end of all of it, by you know, summertime, I was just a raw nerve. I was, you know, my nervous system was just shot. And I was barely, you know, I was in a pretty stressful job at the time, a high-level management job in tech, and I wasn't being productive at work, I wasn't functional. I just couldn't give what I needed to give. And so I'm also having an accounting background. So I looked very deeply at our finances and realized that we were in a position where we could take an early retirement slash sabbatical. We needed the market to do us a little favors because we were both younger. We needed to be able to bridge that gap to our retirement age of 59 and a half when we could access all those, you know, IRAs, 401ks and everything. So we had a pocket of money that just needed to last us till then. So um, my husband at the time was also, you know, not doing great because he'd lost a close friend of his. Um, it just was a bad year for both of us. So we went ahead and pulled the trigger in about in November of 2021 and decided to go ahead and take early retirement with some inkling of maybe going back to work part-time. I just didn't know what that was at that point.

Brent: I remember that moment in time when you told me you're going to do it. And my reaction was like, wow. Like, wow, in the sense of it, we didn't get into the background of why. It was more or less, I need to do this. And how did others react? Like your kids and others that were close to you react because you were pretty young at the time. You were kind of in your early to mid-50s, and you're just trying to like figure out where do I want to go with this. But how did others look at this scenario? Because I just remember saying, congrats, but I just never saw, I never really witnessed or heard of a lot of people taking a sabbatical at the age set you were at the time. Right. And I was so curious. And then, of course, I kind of look inward and saying, gee, could I ever do that? I don't know. Like I was just going back and forth. So, how did others respond to you?

Sarah: So the initial response from most of my friends and family was, wow, lucky you. I mean, most frankly, a lot of people were jealous. Like, you can afford to do that, you can make that happen. I don't tie a huge amount of my who I am into my job. So for me, going ahead and leaving my job to take the time off, that felt wonderful. And then a lot of my friends and family really supported it and were excited and, like I said, a little jealous. So it ended up, you know, really just the whole thing was just a huge relief to be able to take the time off and not receive any pushback from you know, anybody.

Rob: It's funny you say people were jealous, Sarah, because I was one of those people that was definitely jealous. I know I think I saw you, as Brent said, he heard about it. I think I saw you while we were out walking, and you had just done it or you had been done for a week and away from a week, and you were like bubbling. It was like you were just bouncing, walking down the street. You were so excited to say you had stepped away. And I'd been threatening it for a long time. I'm like, oh, she did it. That's so cool. Why haven't I done it yet?

Sarah: It really was. I mean, just that feeling of, you know, and also being a recent empty nester as well, and spending pretty much my entire adult life being responsible for other humans, other things, you know, at some point in time, large work groups that reported to me, you know, the constant day in, day out of a demanding corporate job, and to just feel all of that lifting. And then suddenly I just got to figure out who I was as me, not a mom, not an employee, not a driving a business forward, you know, just me. And I got to make choices about myself and what I got to do every day. And it was, and you're right, I was probably pretty bubbly because it was just such, you know, this 30-year backpack I'd been carrying around, I just got to take it off. And that was magical.

Rob: What were some of the things you did during this break?

Sarah: Initially, the first couple of months, I just felt like I wanted to lay catatonic and not do anything. I mean, there was definitely a lot of healing that needed to happen. That whole nervous system raw nerve feeling took some time to lift. Um, a lot of therapy, a lot of long walks with the dog, bubble baths, you know, just chilling, like, you know, a lot of Netflix. And um, then as I started to come out of it and feel more myself, then it was more moving my body every day, getting back to yoga and skiing and biking, you know, all the things that I love to do. And then travel. I love world travel if the Adelaide, Australia story didn't tip you off. But we went everywhere from like Bali and Bangkok to Krakow and Prague and traveled the world for over, you know, a year and a half. And I mean, I still travel the world, but a little bit less frequently.

Rob: Yeah, your Instagram account is another thing that makes me jealous with the travel you get and the perks you get being a family member of an airline executive or something like that.

Sarah: I have a lot of airline employees in my family, so I've always had the ability to travel for free-ish. You got to pay the taxes. But it does mean I can uh at a week notice go to Australia with my buddies. So that's kind of nice.

Rob: That's great. You said I want to go a little deeper on something you shared now twice, is you learned some things about yourself or you got back to yourself. And so you left this corporate world with the stress of a corporate world and the tension around leading people. And during this break, you found yourself and learned some things about yourself. Would you mind sharing with us what some of those things were that you found and what you learned?

Sarah: Oh boy. Um, I think more than anything, just figured out how to be, for lack of a better word. You know, I was so uh, you know, how you have a work face that you put on and a mom or a dad face, you know. Brent, you know this, you know, there's so much that we do where we have to um be a not unauthentic, but we put on a different face for how we behave in work and show up for our kids and our family and everything else. And for me, it was truly just going in and figuring out what do I like to do? How late do I sleep in when I don't have an alarm? Do I, you know, what values do I have? For me, I know you guys had an episode recently about giving back. Um, for me, that was finding charity that excited me and interested me. And the avalanche really sent me for a loop. And so it was finding a way to give back to um our local mountain rescue organization with my accounting skills to find that like that was the thing that triggered me and got me excited. And finding the things that got me excited for me, that wasn't, oh great, a new work project. Yay.

Brent: I find that really how you describe that, like when you think about yourself and what do you learn about yourself? The way you described it, not only did you have all these losses as human beings around you, I mean, 11 funerals, Sarah, and in that short amount of time is just devastating. One or a million, and they're just all so difficult. So that we're coming out of COVID. So it's just this isolation, and then you empty nesting. I mean, your children are kind of starting to figure out their life as adults post-college or they're still in college, but getting close to finishing college, things like that. Like so much change happening at once. And I just think like when you learn about yourself the way you described it, is so important because you no longer, like you said, you'll take on a project by yourself because you want to take it on. It's not something handed to you. Right. And you start to learn little things. I just have to ask this curiosity question is one of the things that I've learned through myself is it also can be a recipe for depression for me, is when I'm sitting around a lot and watching Netflix and just kind of sitting in just this stagnant stage. Did you ever feel that? Or did you know that that was part of the therapy that you needed to just do nothing?

Sarah: Initially, that was part of the therapy I needed was to just do nothing because I had been doing so much for so long. And so there was a certain amount of you know, decompression that I really just was desperate for. As that started lifting, then the boredom did start to rear its head. And I did start to find structure with my day. You know, you know what? I actually do wake up at seven o'clock every morning without an alarm. And you know what? I do like to go for a long walk with a dog to start the day. And, you know, then I'll do some computer time. I also learned that even though I've spent my entire career sitting in front of a computer, I still like to sit in front of a computer. I'm a nerd. I like numbers, fire up our Quicken first thing in the morning. What are our investments doing today? How can I rebalance our portfolio? Like that's just a certain nudgey accounting side of me that actually excited me. And then once, you know, sprinkled travel in there, but then once the boredom set in, that's when I started thinking, you know, moving towards, all right, well, how could I make a little bit of extra money without going back to work yet? And so I started tinkering and investigating what type of easy, sort of set it and forget it businesses might be out there. And that's when my brain started working and I kept spending more time at my computer. And so I don't think I'm a person who can completely sit still and do nothing. I definitely enjoyed the freedom of heading out for a happy hour, maybe at three instead of five, or being able to say yes to a friend who's like, let's go for a bike ride, let's go out, let's go do things. And so that definitely having the freedom in my day to do that with just a little bit of structure around the edges is what did it the best for me.

Brent: So you mentioned starting something. So one thing I do want to talk about is you started an Etsy shop, Hernage Creek Design. What prompted you to go down the Etsy route after you probably explored a few ideas and tell us a little bit about it. Love to learn more.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So my mind was just, you know, starting to move forward and say, you know, what could we do? And I had heard about different ideas for sort of passive income businesses. You know, I don't know, maybe you find a product and you sell it via Amazon or something. And I didn't love the idea of inventory. And I'm by nature not a huge risk taker. So things, certain things like that just made me too nervous. Throughout my research, I came upon the idea of something called print on demand, which is basically there are businesses out there that will print things, mugs, sweatshirts, t-shirts, tote bags, and they will do it completely on a one-off, on-demand basis, and they link in with Etsy. So all you got to do is come up with a real good idea for what the heck to put on that t-shirt or mug or sweatshirt. Um, but once you do, it becomes a very much set it and forget it business. And so I just had a lot of fun. Again, I have this part of me that's a little detail-oriented and loves, you know, dealing with in the down in the weeds with stuff. And so I figured out how all the systems work. And then I just started thinking about designs that spoke to me. What would I wear? What would I be interested in? And started making some designs. I have probably maybe like 180 designs on my Etsy shop right now. Some aren't great. Some of my first ones, not good. Um, but a couple best sellers that I really knock out of the park and sell a lot of quite frequently. And it is, initially, when you're coming up with designs, this is not, it is definitely a time-consuming endeavor and linking everything together and mock-ups and marketing and all those things. But once I got over that hump, I haven't touched my shop at all in the past two years. And I make enough to cover my utilities every month. I'm not making millions of dollars, but I'm making the after tax and expenses three to five hundred dollars a month. When I retire, retire, I'll probably now that I kind of know what things people buy and things certain people are interested in, I could see putting up some more designs and maybe it turns into a thousand dollars a month. Maybe it, you know, we'll see. But I can travel, it's I spend maybe less than two hours a month on it. And it's just a fun little thing. And every time my friends have something going on, they're like, hey, can you make us some t-shirts? Yes, I can. Hey guys, you need a Midlife Circus swag? I'm on it.

Brent: What was it like for you? Because when you and I work together, you're very detail-oriented, you're a numbers person and you're very skilled in accounting and operations, and you're just amazing to work with. What was it like for you to take on a creative project? Because we know in midlife a lot of people start to think a little different to say, hey, I did this same type of job for a long time. I want this creative outlook. What was that like for you to unlock this creative? I can't believe you have over 100 products. That's incredible. So congrats on that, too.

Sarah: Well, thank you. Um, I have always joked that I have a hollow right brain, that there's no actual creativity here. It's just all left brain numbers ticking and tying and aligning perfectly. It was really fun to try and explore that side of me. Now, designing t-shirts ends up being a little bit more analytical than anybody would imagine because you got to come up with the idea. That's the creative part. But the fonts and the alignment and the colors, that still just tickled the left side of my brain and all that detail stuff. So it kind of met me somewhere in the middle. I still do have these creative moments where I'll be out for a walk or something. I'll be like, that's the idea. That's the next t-shirt. That's the thing that I'll put and say on the next design. That is probably where I struggle the most, but the linking of systems and the pricing models and all those pieces are still in my wheelhouse.

Brent: Well, what's fun about that, Sarah, is we interviewed a friend of ours, Ron Mayer, who went to law school at 50. And what he said, he was actually able to link a lot of his past experiences into this new experience. And it sounds like you're not going into this 100% saying everything is new. You still are tying in systems, you're still using numbers, you're still doing calculations. So you're getting that right brain stimulation, but you're unlocking the left brain creativity. And my guess, and maybe you could describe was that rewarding for you to be able to say, not only can I use some of my past experiences, so I don't feel like I'm starting from scratch, but I'm also itching something that is something a little bit new to me that is fun.

Sarah: Yeah, it absolutely was. And it's been really fun to explore that part of me and realize maybe I don't have a hollow right brain. Maybe I do have some creativity out there. And it's fun when I, especially some of the designs I've come up with that have just taken off and been bestsellers. It's been really fun to be like, I did that. I came up with that idea. And that really speaks to people and is something that they really enjoy. So yeah, it's definitely exciting to broaden my horizons in that way.

Rob: The Etsy shop does definitely hit the demographic of our audience. It talks about being 100% bionic because we have some aftermarket parts in our body. It talks about I challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you're unarmed, is one of their t-shirts. You got me curious now, Sarah, which ones were the best sellers? Which ones of the t-shirts were your best?

Sarah: So I have discovered that people like to advertise something about themselves on their body because it's a talking point. And I have had a partial knee replacement, and that's what got my brain going about. I bet people might like a shirt that said something about having a knee replacement or a hip or a shoulder. And so I just started making a whole bunch of t-shirts about having um aftermarket parts and having uh replacement parts. And I sell 20 to 40 of those a month. And people give them as gifts to people having surgery, and people love them.

Brent: What's so cool about this, Sarah, is how you and I got introduced was through work, and then we became friends pretty quickly because not only we're close in our community, but you talked about some of those losses, and we all, you know, when the avalanche hit our community, it was a loss for all of us. It was just devastating. Four people died in an avalanche for our listeners, and a couple of them were pretty close to all of us, so really challenging. But one of the things that you did is I'm just going to go back through this, is you understood that you had something that you needed to take a break from. And part of that is just life. And life can be really complex sometimes. And so you made this bold move to say, you know what, I'm going to take a sabbatical, a bit unscripted, it sounds like, but I know I need to do this. And then you had a phase that said, I need to just veg out and not do a whole lot. But then you did some travel, but you also unlock this creativity, which is so cool. And I think one thing that Rob and I get from doing this show is people are like, well, what am I going to do? Like, what would I do if I decide to do this? And what's so cool is you started an Etsy shop and you've got your storefront, you unlock some creativity, you created some products. You also gave us a hint that this is something that you could expand if you wanted to down the road. So it's got this evergreen approach to it, if you choose to do it. But you did it because it was something that you could do. And what I love about this is when you started the business side of things, is it met you where you were at. And that's so cool. Let me ask you a question about that. When you decided to do the sabbatical, did you say, hey, I'm going to start an Etsy shop right out of the gates?

Sarah: No, absolutely not. I knew that maybe the route to bridging the gap financially might be something part-time. Um, thought that, you know, maybe I'd just start a bookkeeping business, something easy breezy, you know, nothing as high level of type of work that I'd done in the past. You know, those types of thoughts had occurred to me. This was just a random path that I went down and discovered that it actually could be profitable in some way.

Brent: That is so cool. I mean, that's an aspect that I think from a lifestyle design, it's very, very difficult for people just to go from one thing to the next saying, I got all the answers. Give yourself space. And that's something Rob and I always encourage people to do if they're making a big change. It's like give yourself a little space in between. Because if you decide before, like, I'm going to go do this, it may not be what you want to do. And so you gave yourself space and you explored a few ideas. So congrats on that. And it's super cool. And I know some of your shirt designs are just killers. So I'm so happy that you're doing it. And I like how you bring in the humor side of just life. And that's one thing that you've got a special gift that you're willing to just kind of put it out there just to say this is reality, people. This is what's actually going on. Because in the communities in Colorado that we live in, there are a lot of hip replacements, knee replacements, shoulder replacements, and injuries that happen because we're very active. So you're just kind of poking fun at that to say, oh, we're all part of the same tribe here.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Rob: Sarah, you've hinted at a couple of things, and I'll just talk about the Etsy shop just a little bit, but I want to move on to the bigger question. I mean, you mentioned your Etsy shop creates a little bit of passive income that helps cover utility bills, which is actually really cool, that it actually is creating an income stream that covers a certain lifestyle expense that you have or just living expense that's really, you know, it's almost like a set it and forget it, is what you said is you got the Etsy shop going. You come up with a new idea, you throw a new t-shirt up there, might generate a few bucks here and there, but it's covering some of your expenses. But earlier you shared that you, when you stepped away, you kind of looked at the finances, you were going to be okay, maybe not okay. It was this kind of eh, but you still made the leap. So give us a sense of what I don't want you to go in the numbers of the financial situation, but you looked at it as saying, we're going to take a jump, even though we don't know the financial piece of this, we can always go back to work. Can you walk us through some of the decision process around the financials that you had as you were making the step away? And then we're going to pivot to kind of going back into work.

Sarah: Absolutely. Yeah, when I looked at all the numbers, you know, one of the things that I think um as a young person in my career that was preached to me from the jump was put as much money as you can in your 401k, IRA, what have you, get those retirement accounts stocked up and have an emergency fund. You know, definitely have you know some money tucked away in high yield savings account, brokerage account, what have you. But I did a very exceptional job of putting a lot of money into my 401k and had some great investments that did very well there. Um, so I wasn't worried about our entire financial piece. The problem is that um, I'm an accountant and I would not ever take money out of a 401k or an IRA with penalties because that is just a bridge too far for this accountant. So even though the money was there, I did not want to be touching that money early. When we've talked about ages, I'll tell you specifically. I was 52 and my husband was um 57 when we retired. And so we were about to get access to his retirement funds at 59. We couldn't access mine for quite some time, and we had a decent pile of money outside of those tax-advantaged accounts. We did need the market to do us a little bit of a favor for that money to bridge that gap. And in 2022, if anybody just keeps track of this, um, I think the NASDAQ was down 33% in 2022 and S&P 500 was down 20%. So um the market, in fact, did not do us any favors. And that money wasn't going to last us so that I could just fully retire and you know, love my little Etsy shop, but it wasn't exactly going to pay the bills in that time frame. So it, you know, it turned out that it is what it is, you know. I knew it was a reality, I knew it could be a reality, and it quickly became our reality that we weren't going to be able to make it all the way to me being 59 and a half. And so I made the decision to you know to start looking and to start figuring out what I needed to do to make it until 59 and a half, which is now only three years away.

Brent: When do you think about that, Sarah? I know one of the fears that people share with us is if I step away for a short amount of time, so a couple of years, am I going to be unmarketable when I come back to the workforce? Did you experience any of those concerns of thinking, like, boy, am I going to be able to get a job that I actually want to get, or am I going to go backwards, way, way backwards?

Sarah: It certainly was something kind of lingering in the back of my brain, especially going straight into technology, as quickly as tech changes, as quickly as all my contacts would change, could I put my foot back in that door? But truthfully, for me, I didn't want back into that industry. And luckily, I do have a very strong marketable skill. I am an accountant. Um, passed the CPA exam a million years ago, but I am an accountant. And there is some weird little part of me that all the serotonin and dopamine fires off when I'm adding up numbers and ticking and tying. So I didn't have to do a lot of like deep soul searching. How am I going to pivot? What am I going to do with my career? Because I knew not only did I possess the accounting skill, but I actually really like it. And accounting jobs, luckily, just very straightforward accounting jobs, are reasonably easy to come by. Um, so I was lucky in that sense that I didn't have to reinvent myself entirely and concoct some new way I was going to work. I knew I could fall back on accounting and I knew I kind of wanted to.

Rob: But you figured out you wanted to go back into accounting during the break, though, right? I mean, or did you know that before you left? Before you left in the first place, like I'm going to take a break, we're going to step away, I have to bridge this gap to 59 at some point, and I'll go back to accounting, or was it just a leap of faith saying, I know I can always go back. Let me figure out if I want to go back.

Sarah: Probably a little bit more the latter. Like I always knew that the accounting aspect has always been a safety net for me. And so I knew that worst case, I could go back to accounting. And again, it's something I actually enjoy doing. So there wasn't any big strife, you know, any internal conflict of I guess I could always be an accountant again. Um, it was more like, ah, I'll do it again. That's fine.

Brent: So think about you decide you're going to go back into the workforce. We knew you kind of outlined or you alluded to saying, you know, you kind of knew you needed to, but it wasn't probably this big sense of pressure. But let's talk about you had a general idea. I'm going to do some accounting. How did you start that process? Because here's the other thing that when you were describing this, is a lot of times as we get to the age that we're at, we have a healthy network, but you decided to go outside of your industry where you were for the last 30 years, tap into a skill that you already had and you've probably used on and off over your entire career. But how did you start that process to seek out a role that's outside of your core experiences of the past several years?

Sarah: You know, I first I did some deep dive in myself as, you know, what would I be willing to do? What level I wanted to sit at, you know, do I want people working, you know, for me again? No. I'm in charge of managing people again. Um, what kind of hours do I want? What kind of job might fit that bill? At our age, uh having good healthcare is very important. Um, so that was something that definitely was at the top on my list. And then honestly, I got, I mean, I guess I got lucky. I just started going to some of the very straightforward job boards. And I found a couple of interesting enough jobs on Indeed and started blind applying and got a bunch of interviews. I think it was my experience, my background. And that opened the door. The problem is that I was vastly overqualified for everything I was applying for. So the initial, you know, first thing in the interview was let's talk about the elephant in the room. I realize I'm overqualified for this position, but let me explain to you where I'm at. I'm in this sort of third act of my career where I want to just take it down a notch. I don't want a job that keeps me up at night. I don't want a job that stress, you know, that I get the Sunday scares and I'm not excited about working a Monday. I want something easy breezy that is, frankly, barely 40 hours a week and with some nice health benefits. And I ended up finding a job honestly much faster than I thought I would. And it ended up being a perfect fit. Also, remote was really important to me, is I have zero interest in going to an office at this point. I've worked remote most of my career in technology, and I wasn't about to be packing up and going to an office every day.

Brent: How is that conversation? I mean, you think about Rob and I, as we were preparing for this discussion, we're like, how has that happened with an employer saying, because you kind of came with some expectations on your side. I want to work remote. I don't want to work extended hours, I don't want to have people working for me. And so if you put this list of don'ts, sometimes that freaks people out on the hiring side because they're like, geez, and what do we got here?

Sarah: What does she want to do?

Brent: Yeah.

Rob: What was the reaction?

Sarah: Yeah. In this case, it was actually for the firm that I ended up working for. I worked for a mid-sized travel marketing firm that already has a fully fleshed-out accounting department without really any room for advancement out of the position I was interviewing for. So when I said I don't want promoted, I don't want people working for me, they're like, great, because unfortunately, we're in a business that there's not really any career advancement. You would be working this job, and that's it. And um, the other component about the job that I took on is that it's a marketing firm. So I work with all the account executives who are lovely, unbelievably creative human beings, but maybe not so good with the balance sheet. And so I do a lot of educating them, explaining to them how to run their own P&L, how to look at costs, how to control their levers when they're managing um their various lines of business. And so I do a lot of teaching. And my experiences bring so much to the table. And, you know, my company is, you know, mostly hiring business analysts, kind of straight out of college, early in career. That life experience, that life-lived experience that I have is a huge asset to my company. I have a quarterly check-in with my boss every quarter. He's like, You're good, right? You're not leaving. I'm like, you know, like first, I'm like five more years, four more years, three more years. I'm like, I'm here till I can retire. But he's like, you know, they appreciate what I bring to the table. And, you know, a the financials, I'm, you know, so specific and love to have things tick and tie perfectly. But also the training and the educating and the work that I do with our account executives, they appreciate it. And I fit in a nice little box that they need me in. And it's mutually beneficial.

Rob: How empowering, though, to walk into a room knowing what your non-negotiables are in this next job, right? So here's what my non-negotiables are, and being able to think back. And I think a lot of our audience would actually align to this is you're coming to the table with a tremendous amount of experience, because we had to all just figure life out and figure stuff out since we were little kids. You came back in almost with that as a superpower coming back to this job. You're hiring young people, which you need to do to keep your company growing, but you need that wisdom that comes with life experience. I can bring that at a lower cost. And we both win in this scenario, is what I'm hearing from you.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, to be clear, I took a pretty significant pay cut. I knew that this job, I was never going to make what I was making when I ended my tech career. But I also knew what I needed. What I needed was uh enough money to just pay the bills to 59 and a half and some good medical. And I got it. And a job that doesn't stress me out. Yeah.

Rob: To bridge the gap and something that's not going to stress you out and give you the quality of life that you want today.

Brent: Did you find that psychologically that was hard? I find that in a career, you always, you know, earlier in your career, it's always upwards and to the right that you want to make more money, you want more responsibility. And so then you take this couple years off and then you come back. Did you psychologically look at this, or was there a preparation process to say you had to come to grips with yourself to say, we're not at that stage anymore? Like we're going to go into this just with purely. There's a desired outcome that I have, they have, we're matched, we're a good pair, but I don't need to worry about all those other things. Because I think you and I were talking about this previously. Some of the ego things that come to me are really challenging. Like, I want to lead, I want to do this. But then there's a moment in time where you're like, that doesn't serve me well anymore.

Sarah: I definitely, going into applying for jobs, had to have that sort of heart to heart with myself of you've made a lot more money, you've had a much higher powered career, you know, it's a trade-off, it's a sacrifice for what you're getting out of it. Being able to do what I want on my own terms for me is worth being paid less. Um, it also means that my computer is shut off at about four o'clock every day. I'm done. Um, it's the trade-offs of what makes me happy and knowing that I have a very flexible job where I can travel, I can do all the things that I want to do, and going into it, I knew I needed to be that that trade-off was going to be there. I was looking at my social security statement though recently, because everybody should do that. Um, and I realized the last time I made this little money um was a year that started with a 19. So um that was like, ooh.

Rob: Yeah, gosh. Oof. That wasn't that long ago. Come on, whatever you're laughing about.

Sarah: That was like a couple years.

Brent: It's like you know what's interesting, like how you describe all this is I think what I didn't take into consideration, Sarah, is the win that you created for your employer. Because there's a couple of things that you're going to bring to them. You're going to bring honesty, integrity, consistency. You're not trying to game the system. And that's a challenge in today's workforce for sure. Like, and I'm not throwing darts at anybody, but it's hard sometimes. Some of my friends who still manage really big teams, they're like, there's always a portion of the population of my workforce that's trying to game the system. And they're trying to beat it where I only going to work 20 hours a week, you know, 30 hours a week, and the demands and so forth. So you come with this ultimate transparency to say, here's what you got for me. And I will always show up. I'm always going to be on time. I'm always going to do my work. It's going to tie out perfectly, as you alluded to, but I will shut my laptop down at four o'clock. I'm not the person that you probably want to call on to say, will you work the weekends and the long nights? Because I'm not looking for that. But it's for an employer, sometimes that is incredibly rewarding or it's needed, because then you just don't have to worry about that person on the team because they're going to just deliver what they say they're going to deliver. And it's an easy button for them. So I'm assuming you've gotten that feedback where that's you're helping them too.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I am sort of just the easy set, set me and forget me. I just go, I work my accounts, I work with my account directors, account executives, and they just don't, they don't have to worry about letting me go. And um, and like I said, like the teaching component of it, they appreciate that immensely. I just I get you know lots of great feedback on the work that I'm doing. Uh, it will be definitely interesting to see how the next three years pan out as it gets closer, how we end up transitioning all of my accounts over. We lost somebody and I took on all of his accounts and they haven't been taken back yet. So, because I have the bandwidth to do it.

Rob: You can't break that habit of raising your hand or volunteering. You shared that with us too as some project came up. You're like, uh, I guess I'll do it. I can do it. No, let me do it. I'll take care of it.

Sarah: That is, I'm in a little bit of a uh problem right now in that we just acquired a small firm and they asked if I would take care of transitioning the financials over. And I'm like, do I want to? No. Am I capable? Yes. So I am, and it's been a hectic couple months, but it'll taper back off pretty quickly. So, but I do have my review with my boss at the end of the week. And I am going to mention that I'm not sure I want any more acquisitions.

Rob: Or maybe just a bump in the number that you're getting on a bi-weekly basis. You know, that's another option. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just kind of like you're the designated hitter or the person, you know, on deck that can always get pulled into something because of that experience that you bring to the table. Because you took a step back and you bring this wealth of knowledge and real life experience doing a lot of these things for that company, you're an incredibly valuable asset to them that they can just say, Hey, Sarah, can you plug into this in this little gap of a window? Because we know you'll just do it and get it figured out and we don't have to worry about it.

Sarah: Exactly. And I'm happy to do it right now because they are in a little bit of a bind.

Rob: So, as we talked about this episode being the midlife sabbatical, so taking a step away and then likely going back to some form of work for a period of time and then fully retiring. What suggestions would you give to our audience that heard the message today and is now thinking, oh, that'd be neat to do? Let me explore this a little bit. What suggestions or advice would you give our audience?

Sarah: Well, geez, if I could give advice to somebody who's in their 20s, I'd say save, save, save. Save, save, save, save in and out of your tax-advantaged accounts, plan for it. You know, working for 30 years at, you know, I like that backpack analogy. That backpack gets hefty after 30 years and being able to take it off is a huge relief. Um, but you never know when you're going to experience something like, I mean, mine was a pretty dramatic worst year of my life. But even just a, you know, illness in a close family member, something that can really sideline you and keep you from being able to work, or just burnout and stress and knowing that that potential is out there. But for me, it ended up being two years. It ended up being almost two years to the day. Um, and that was wonderful in what I needed. But even two months, even, you know, some ability to know that you could take the break. And, you know, like I said, I was a little bit of a wing and a prayer for us to make it happen. And it mostly did. But you do it, be position yourself so that you can do it, because it was the best thing that I ever did. And I just I find myself reinvigorated, happy to be back at work for a period of time, also looking forward to the day I can have that full retirement. It was the best thing that I've ever done in my life, taking that time away. It really was wonderful.

Brent: I think it's incredible the way that you describe it, because one thing that as humans is difficult to do is actually decide to make a change and not knowing all the answers on the other side of the change. We had a doctor on recently, and he was just talking about stress as an example. Most people know when they're really stressed out. And what they don't know is the actual damage that it can do or the things that's happening around them. So relationships might start to struggle, your health might start to struggle, and then you might be the next person in line that has the real big health scare. So what you were able to do is to recognize I got to get off this train for a bit. And that is so amazing, Sarah, that you're able to share that. Because that's the bold step that most people are so scared to do. But you know it when you're in it, and it's hard to do, but when you do it, you can reflect back and have a beautiful story like you shared today, is that what did it do for you? It did a lot. And I like how you said you found yourself and things like that. So before we wrap up today, I just have one last question for you, Sarah. As you're navigating this, let's say you're having some beers with some of your friends and they're kind of thinking about it themselves. What's the one thing outside of saying just do it? How would you help them to explore the experience of what this could be just for a couple of years type thing? But like if two of them come to you and say, you know what, Sarah, you did this, I'm so scared. Like, I just don't know. Like, how would you coach them just in a mini coaching session, just to say, all right, here's what I learned, and here's something that you may be able to take away from it.

Sarah: You know, we talked about this a little bit before, and I guess it was always in my mind knowing I had a fallback position of the accounting thing. Talking about what their fallback could be, you know, worst case, if you approach worst case head on and at least have some sense of how you might address that, then everything else becomes easy. And so I think I would take it there with them is walk through, you know, imagine this is what you're doing. How would you then, you know, solve for the fact that maybe the money didn't last in my case? How would you circle back to it? Um, and then secondarily to that is a sense of a roadmap. Now, for me, because I was just so completely fried, I had no sense of my roadmap. I know now in hindsight what my roadmap was is, you know, four months of resting, some travel in. After six months, I was ready to like get back in front of my computer and start tinkering. You know, so to at least maybe have broad strokes of what a roadmap might look like for what you want to do, especially if it needs to be a compressed time. Two years felt like a lot of time, and I came to a lot of my things naturally. If that is compressed and it's only three months, how are you going to, you know, walk through that to make sure you're benefiting from the time away? And then that you have that sort of, you know, in case of glass break emergency, what's my worst case scenario to get back to you know, some money making and get back to the workforce?

Brent: That is so helpful. I have a friend that he's a CEO of an organization, and his worst case scenario, and it's not actually a worst, it's almost his best case scenario, is I want to become a barista at a coffee shop. Because he likes the social interaction and he's just like, I just know I need to interact with people and I know that I enjoy that environment. And he just kind of talks about it that way, just from a simplicity standpoint. So there's a bit of a mini fallback, but what you're describing is really important in this journey is put that aside. Like once you do it, you put it aside, but you just say, that is your plan Z. That is the something that if it comes to this, I'm going to go do that. But I'm not going to get stuck on that to say I've got to have that figured out. That's called confidence and confidence in yourself to say, I can do something. Let's just be aware of that. So, Sarah, we can't thank you enough. I mean, your story is amazing. And thank you for taking the time with us today. And as I summarize our conversation, I think the big start for you was you recognized that a change needed to happen. You gave yourself space within that change to say, I have the ability to step away right now. You did look at your finances, you knew that you could bridge, you know, you had some flexibility. So you took advantage of that flexibility. Then you started to learn about yourself. And I like how you described it because I'm in the middle of it a little bit with my kids and going off to college and stuff. Like, also you have a little bit of space to think about you. And so you did that. What makes you happy? What am I excited about? You're going to travel, you started your Etsy shop, and then you started to re-engage with the thought of going back to the workforce, but under your own terms. And that's a really important part of the journey. But what you did, I think you kept it so practical. And that's the advice I have for others as well in listening to your story, Sarah, is that you had your own set of expectations, but you also had with that a set of realities that you're not going to have the big title, you're not going to have the big income. As you said, your income was the last time you had the income that you have now was back a few years ago, we'll say. In the late 1900s, is what I heard him say.

Rob: I hate that phrase.

Brent: A while ago, you know. But you had like some reality checks in there, and that's an important part of this journey as well. If you want to make change, it's like, yeah, I'm going to do all these things, but you got exactly what you wanted. So congrats, Sarah. Your story's amazing. Thank you for taking the time with us today. And um, our gratitude that we always share at the end is towards you because you shared such a cool story. And thank you for doing that. And thank you for paving the path for so many people. Because this is one of those episodes where, you know, our listeners, if you like it or you know somebody, share it with a friend because this is the type of episode that some people should listen to, because I guarantee there's a lot of people that can learn from what Sarah did and some of the things you learned and some of the things that you wish you would have known in advance. But thank you for sharing the story, Sarah. It's great.

Sarah: Thanks, Rob and Brent. It's been a pleasure.

Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder: the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the Big Top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.