330: How I Turned Feeling Stuck Into A Career I Love

Career Momentum and Getting "Unstuck" Starts With How You SHOW UP

Career momentum does not come from doing more. It comes from showing up with clarity, intention, and confidence, especially at mid-career. In this opening episode of the year, I share my personal journey from classroom teacher to leadership and career coach, and the moment when being fine was no longer enough.

I walk you through the experiences that shaped how I think about careers today, from turning classic game shows into engaging math lessons to leading instructional coaches across 13 middle schools. Along the way, stalled interviews, internal politics, and budget delays forced me to rethink how career decisions are really made and how influence is built at mid-career.

These lessons became the foundation of my work helping mid-career professionals who feel undervalued, underutilized, or stuck despite doing everything they were told would lead to advancement.

Why Mid-Career Feels Harder Than It Should

Mid-career is not a plateau. It is a dynamic and decisive phase where visibility, influence, and clarity matter more than effort alone. I share how nonprofit reorganizations left me highly valued by some leaders and invisible to others and how those moments sharpened my understanding of what truly drives career momentum.

In this episode, I introduce the six strategies for showing up with intention. These strategies focus on aligning your thoughts, emotions, and actions so you can protect your professional brand, have more meaningful conversations, and make smarter career decisions in a complex job market.

What You Will Learn in This Episode

If you are a manager or senior director balancing career growth with family and caregiving responsibilities, this episode will help you cut through the noise and regain momentum.

You will learn:

• Why mid-career is one of the most important and misunderstood stages of your career
• The turning point that shifted me from educator to leader and coach
• How to read interview signals and ask for feedback that actually matters
• How to reframe career setbacks into growth opportunities
• The six strategies for showing up with clarity and intention
• Common challenges facing managers and senior directors today.

Chapters

• 0:00 New Year And Mission
• 1:22 What Mid-Career Really Means
• 2:20 John’s Education Roots
• 3:45 Game Show Mathematics Spark
• 5:02 The Voice For “Something More”
• 7:07 Interviewing And Asking For Feedback
• 9:08 A Panel Interview And Budget Prep
• 11:14 Loss, Solo Travel, And Meeting Richard
• 13:04 Turning Down A Pay Cut
• 14:06 DC Role Delayed And Reframed
• 16:00 The Best Job And What It Taught
• 18:16 Nonprofit Reorgs And Feeling Stuck
• 20:24 Why He Coaches Mid-Career Pros
• 22:08 Who He Helps And Their Pain Points
• 24:20 Ways To Engage: Podcast And Newsletter
• 26:34 Mid-Career Clarity Code Offer
• 28:13 Season Six Roadmap And Guests
• 29:18 Core Mantra And Closing CTAs

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

Hello, my friends. Happy New Year. This week I am celebrating nine years as a full-time leadership and career coach. And as someone who's worked in this space for a while, I know that mid-career is the most dynamic time in our professional lives. And what happens during that time is either going to set us up for great success or make our lives and careers difficult. So whether you're new to me and you just found me or you've been here for a while, I'm going to take some time in this episode to reintroduce myself and share with you why mid-career and helping people like you navigate your mid-career journey is so important to me. And I want to help you navigate mid-career better than ever. Look, 2025 was not an easy year professionally. So why don't we just make 2026 a bit easier? Let's get started. And know that doing more isn't the answer anymore. Here, we focus on how you show up, how you make clearer decisions, build influence, and take control of your career, whether you're navigating a career change, seeking a promotion, or redefining success at mid-career. Well, again, my friends, happy new year. And I hope your holidays were wonderful and healthy and happy. You had a chance to make some memories. Things were really good here. I'm so grateful and blessed. And happy 2026. We are in it and hitting the ground running with all of that. So we've got some new people coming in. You may not be familiar with me. You may not know my story. So I wanted to take a little bit of time today just to reintroduce myself. And if you've been with me for a while, you will probably hear something you haven't heard before. But for most of my career, uh, I spent it in education. So I started off as a middle school mathematics teacher in northern New Jersey. I quickly got promoted to being what was at the time it was called the Middle School Mathematics Coordinator. I then got promoted a few years after that to being the district mathematics coordinator. And it was at that time when I often say I had a mid-career moment. And that mid-career moment was me recognizing that while I loved my job and I loved where I was doing it, I wanted more. And I didn't, nor was I ready to settle. I couldn't see the next 20 to 25 years of my career and saying, I'll be okay here for the rest of my life. It was nothing against where I worked or the people I worked with. It simply was that I wanted more. And I needed to figure out what more actually looked like. So one of the things I knew was that I really enjoyed doing professional development workshops and teacher training and supporting the teachers in my district, but also supporting teachers through the workshops I was running in other districts. So I pulled a colleague of mine in on a really special project that we had developed and worked on. We called it Game Show Mathematics. And the idea was we took, we created games essentially that were loosely inspired by game shows of the 70s and 80s and made them into math lessons. So, for example, if you were to play Plinko, we would take a look at Pascal's triangle to figure out exactly where you would have the best chance of landing in, in this case, the$10,000 spot on Plinko. Um, and just so I can share this with you, it's either the fourth or sixth slot, depending on where you count from. So there's nine spots at the top of the board. You go for four or six, that gives you the best chance. But we we created games that were based off of card sharks and high rollers and some things from the prices right. And we had such a great time. And I would get so energized by doing this workshop that I was like, how could I do more of this? This was the thing that was lighting me up. And I remember teaching this lesson on multiplying fractions one day. It was a good lesson. The kids understood it, they got the whole point of it. And this little voice crept into my head and it said to me, uh, John, you can't do this the rest of your life. And I shook it off. And I shook it off very simply because I was making decent money. I knew what I was doing. My work stress level wasn't too bad. And I was like, no, no, I'm I'm good. I don't think I need to figure something else out. I'm I'm good. I was in my late 30s at the time. And of course, the next day I go in and I'm standing in front of my students and I'm teaching this lesson, and this voice creeps in and goes, um, hello, you cannot do this the rest of your life. And I brushed it off again. And so, of course, that voice keeps getting louder and louder and louder. And when you listen to it and you think, okay, what does this all actually mean? What it meant was I could keep doing what I was doing and be quote unquote okay. Everything was quote unquote fine. But I wanted something more. And the thing of it was I had all of the conversations I needed to have in my district because at the time, there was nowhere for me to advance unless I wanted to go into administration track. And I had no desire to be a principal or vice principal. Just wasn't my thing. It wasn't what I was interested in. I had my master's degree. I have 45 credits over my master's because as a school teacher, you want to get as many education credits as possible in order to make as much money as you can on the guide, the guide being the salary guide. And then I was doing consulting work on the side. I was working for some textbook publishers. I had a 10-year consultancy with Catsio America where I was working alongside of their calculator and technology developers to bring some really new and exciting technology into the classroom. I was tutoring, so I had my own tutoring business on the side. So I was doing all the things and probably a little more of some of the things that teachers typically do at mid-career. Because I was like, well, let me make some more money. Let me figure some of these things out. And I'm so grateful for those things because it did help me figure out that while I enjoyed my time with students and I was a really, really good teacher, I wasn't happy. And that sometimes can be hard for us to acknowledge. I should be grateful. I should be thankful. In this job market, there's a lot of people who don't have jobs. I hear this from my clients all the time. It's understandable. But here's the thing you are allowed to go for something more. You are allowed to give yourself the space and grace to figure out exactly what more looks like. So I started interviewing for positions and interviewing for jobs. And what I found was that I could get to the final round of the interview. I wasn't getting the job offer. And so for many of you, you often struggle with, well, how do I get feedback? You have to ask for the feedback. It doesn't mean you are going to get it, but you have to ask for it because in asking for it, you might get something that gives you an indication where you're at. So I remember being a finalist for a high school math supervisors position in a wonderful district in New Jersey. And I remember going into the board meeting that night, and it was a closed meeting, and it was a panel interview. So I'm sitting at the end of the table, and there's nine board members sitting around the table. And I'm doing all the things that you should do in a panel interview. You make eye contact, you address multiple members, you speak slowly and clearly. And here was one of the things that I did that just knocked it out of the park. I got a copy of their budget. That was public information, so I wasn't breaking any rules or anything like that. But I got a copy of their budget. And I started dissecting the budget specifically from the lens of what a math department supervisor would be looking at. I was looking at technology funding and technology initiatives. I was looking at replacing textbooks in a timely manner. All of these things that I was bringing to the board. And I remember sitting in that interview, and I'm answering the questions, but I'm watching the nonverbal from the board members. I'm seeing heads nod. I'm seeing people write things down. I'm seeing people leaning in. And I'm saying to myself, you're doing good. Keep doing what you're doing. And we go through the next question, and then the time is up, and they walk me out. And I remember walking out of the room, and it was I don't recall it being the HR representative. I recall it being either the board president or a board vice president. But they said something to me they probably shouldn't have. But I'm so grateful they did. They look at me and they go, thank you for a wonderful interview. Thank you for your preparation, your attention to detail. You made this way harder than we anticipated. And I smiled and I said thank you, and I got in my car, and I pretty much knew at that point I wasn't getting the job. Now you might say, John, well, how come you figured you weren't gonna get the job? At the time, and we still see this in a lot of places, of course, but it was the idea of elevating someone from within. The outsider coming in, especially into a school district, was really, really hard to get that job offer. And so I kept finding myself getting close, but then I realized it probably wasn't anything I was doing wrong. It had to do with my confidence and how I was showing up in the interview, and what, if anything, I could do differently. When we put that out there, sometimes, sometimes we get a gift. And in this particular summer, I did something I had never done before. And that was I traveled alone. I had always gone vacation with family and friends. I had never gone on vacation by myself. I considered this to be a rite of passage. And a few months prior, a really, really, really dear friend of mine and the father of my goddaughter had passed away from a very courageous but long battle with cancer. And so going away to be really quiet and journal and reflect and everything just seemed kind of appealing, kind of seemed like the right thing to do. What I didn't expect was that I was going to meet someone. So I met my now husband Richard on vacation in 2008. And he lived in Washington, D.C. I was living in northern New Jersey. So we did the long distance thing. And as the relationship progressed, and we thought, okay, so what if we were to move in together? Because of what he does for work, didn't really make sense for him to move to northern New Jersey. So I said, I will come to New Jersey, I come to Washington, D.C. rather, when I get a job. So I start interviewing for positions. I remember interviewing at a school here in DC. And long story short, I interview for the job. They bring me in, I do a demo lesson in front of a class. There's like 19 students in the room. There's eight administrators, supervisors, principal, the whole bit. They escort me out of the room, they bring me into a conference room, and they offer me the job on the spot at$25,000 less than what I was making. I couldn't do it. I wasn't going to do it. And I was, I didn't want to go back into the classroom. I wanted something more. But turning that job down, but doing so well throughout the entire interview process created some advocates for me. Who, when I applied for a job at the central office to manage a team of 21 instructional coaches across 13 middle schools, they vouched for me. They vouched for me as someone who knew his material. And so in 2009, I get pretty much the green light that says we're going to offer you the job. But I don't have the email. I don't have a contract in hand. So I'm out to lunch with a colleague. I'm keeping all of this under wraps. Phone rings. And I see it's from the District of Columbia Public Schools. And I answer the phone, and it's um the woman who would end up being my boss. And she says to me, Um, I got bad news. She said, Um, we lost our funding and I can't bring it down. But I'm assured we're gonna have funding next year. So if you can hang out for another year, reapply, would love for you to come down. Okay. I was disappointed, I was frustrated, I was angry, I was upset. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. If I knew I was going to have a full year before I left this job, what could I learn? What would I want to work on? So I worked on things like my communication skills, my leadership skills. I was the district coordinator for grades K through eight for four schools. I had I had teachers across so many different buildings and everything, and yet I was like, this is an opportunity I would never have had. How much better am I going to be when I go to interview for this job a year from now? And how much better am I going to be when I go into that role? So we continue to date long distance for a year. I continue to do my job. I go back and interview. They offer me the job. And in the summer of 2010, I moved. I left a job I was in for 14 years. We had dated long distance for two years. We're going to try and go ahead and give this a shot. And I start this new job in July. And I have often said, and as I think back on all the jobs that I've held, and we think about mid-career and what we get to learn in this moment. My job as a professional development specialist and managing a team of 21 instructional coaches across 13 middle schools was hands down one of the best jobs I have ever had in my life. There were days I would come home with this huge smile on my face, and other days I would come home in tears. But when we got it right, when things worked and things clicked, there was such a satisfaction that I would never have gotten that had I stayed in my previous role. The people whom I got to meet, understanding and getting to know the various leaders I got to work alongside with and learn from, set me up for the next job when I went to go work for a state superintendent where I worked in assessment and oversaw the math and science assessment in Washington, DC. And after that, and that's a little bit of a story for another time, but I will tell you, it's it's why you build great relationships with people you work with, because you never know when they're going to advocate for you for another role. But um, I ended up going to an educational nonprofit after that role. And that's where I stayed for five years before I opened my coaching practice nine years ago. I served as a senior test developer and then moved into a training and staffing director role where I oversaw management and professional development for a 28-person team, and then did such a great job in that role that we had reorganized, and they moved me into this training and staffing director role to oversee an entire team of 85 people. I love that job as well. That job was great. But nonprofits, which sometimes operate like corporate entities and go through restructuring and reorganizations, I had never really experienced a reorg like that. And the first time I landed really well. The second time I did not. And it was a very intentional conversation I had with my vice president one day, where I walked into her office and I Said, I'm basically stuck here. You like the work that I do, but the people above you, they're kind of impartial to me. And essentially, I'm not getting fired today, but I'm not getting promoted, I'm not getting a raise, I'm not getting a bonus. And I feel like I'm stuck on an island to die. How accurate am I? And my VP looked at me and she goes, They don't get you. They don't understand all the things that you do. And when I say to you that I help mid-career professionals who are undervalued, underutilized, or stuck, my friends, I have lived that. I have lived that in my core in my career. And not just that one job. But navigating mid-career and finding a way to show up in how we do it, that's the energy we bring. That's the six strategies that I coach my clients on about what it means to show up, because it is all about our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, and how we leverage those things to build better business relationships, have deeper conversations, protect and promote our brand and our reputation, to ultimately figure out whatever is going to be next. That is the essence of my work. So why should this matter to you? If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, or you recently found this podcast, this is very niche. This focuses specifically on mid-career and navigating all of the things that come with it the highs, the lows, the in-betweens. And it's what gives me the greatest joy and the greatest satisfaction in terms of who I get to help now. When I informed my vice president that I was leaving, I told her that I was leaving with a tremendous amount of gratitude because I have an opportunity to help more people in this role I'm doing today than I have ever had in my career. Nine years ago, I had no idea that I would be in the sixth year of my podcast. I want to say this is like episode 330. I get to do something every day that excites me and gets me up in the morning because I don't want you to struggle like I did at various points in my career. This job market is difficult, it is challenging, it is complex, but it doesn't have to be difficult. Because when you have clarity and when you know how you want to show up, then you are clear in the steps you are going to take. So typically the people I help, they're typically between the ages of 35 and 55. They hold titles between manager and senior director. Their biggest pain point, they do not want to be stuck. And when I ask them what stuck means, they tell me that they're either stuck organizationally where there is no room for them to move up inside the organization because a position isn't available for them, or nobody is leaving. Or they say to me that they're stuck because they get overwhelmed by all of the things they think they need to do to find a new job. They're typically raising their families. They have small kids. They're also at the same time starting to have to take care of their parents. They feel like they're pulled in so many different directions, and yet they're expected to show up at least 40 hours a week and do their job and do it well and manage all the things and still make it seem like they have everything under control. That's a lot to ask. That is a tremendous amount to ask. But we find a way to do it. What I want for you is I want you to be able to do it easier. I want you to be able to have more clarity about how you are navigating this mid-career space than ever before. So, how do you and I get to know each other more this year? There's a few things. So, first, I would hope you would continue to listen to this podcast. I would hope you would share this podcast with people in your network or somebody you know that you care about and be like, this guy's got some really good stuff, and I'd love for you to take a listen to it and text him the link. Right? This podcast continues to grow because of an organic reach. And you referring this podcast to other people, I greatly, greatly appreciate it. So thank you. But if you want to go deeper, if you want to get a little closer and not have to pay for anything, then I want you to join my newsletter. I write a twice-weekly newsletter. It is inside of my email community. It is free. It's called the Mid-Career GPS newsletter. I email on Wednesdays and Fridays, and when I'm compelled to, sometimes it's a little bit extra during the week. But it's all about giving you information around leadership and career strategies to help you navigate mid-career without all of the overwhelm and the stress that we can sometimes impose on ourselves. So you can go to my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. All of that is there. Okay. If you want to go a little deeper, I created something specifically new for 2026. I hope you will check out. It is called the Mid-Career Clarity Code. Now, the Mid-Career Clarity Code is a quick quiz or diagnostic, if you will, that's going to ask you a series of questions about where you are currently at in your mid-career journey. I'm going to take those answers, I'm going to review them, and I'm going to send you a personalized video of about 10 minutes long, right, about what's working and not working in your career, and to help you get some additional information about what steps you may want to take. Now, again, you can find the mid-career clarity code on my website at johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. This is right now, this is a$43 offer. Okay. And I have to charge for this because you're getting personal time from me. Okay. So it's going to take me time to go through your answers and review them and understand how the questions interact with each other and your responses. Um, and then record that video. But I want you to have something that is a nice entry point that can give you a step towards more clarity in 2026. If you didn't have a chance to listen to episode 329 about what we learned in 2025, do me a favor and go back and listen to that one as well. 2025 was not easy. I want to help you make 2026 a whole lot easier. I'm not going to be able to take away layoffs and restructuring and reorganizations and things like that. But I know it's easier when you have greater career clarity and you are clear on how you show up. So as we move forward, this is the first episode of season six. I typically make my seasons the entire year. So it's really easy to remember. We're in 2026. This is season six. New episodes drop every Tuesday. I am really excited about the topics I'm going to be bringing you, some of the guests I've already got lined up, some of the guests that are in the works that I can't wait to bring to you as well. And we're going to keep coming back here every Tuesday when new episodes drop. But if you want again, want some more information, please visit my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. Hope to see you in the newsletter community as well. So, my friends, let's navigate this most challenging and dynamic time of mid-career together. I've already been through it. I am here to help you through it and navigate it with greater clarity, more so than ever. So until next time, my friends, remember this. You will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time. And how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the Mid Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your MidCareer GPS, or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at Johnnaryl Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember, how we show up matters.