Changing careers, especially across industries, is a major trial for anyone. Overnight, your network goes from thriving to irrelevant, your previous employers become unrecognizable, while achievements feel worthless. But one strength we can all lean on when making taking on this big leap in life is your skills. On Living Not So Fabulously, hosts David & John Auten-Schneider chatted with TV & film producer Michael Selditch about his experience moving between architecture to TV production—two careers that couldn’t be anymore different. “I never felt like I wasted my time because there were things I learned as an architect,” he said, that he was able to use as he moved into Hollywood.
Hosts and husbands of Living Not So Fabulously, David & John Auten-Schneider, dive into real money stories with activists, allies, artists, tech-gurus, and trailblazers in the LGBTQ+ community to give you tangible takeaways to tackle your wallet woes.
For full episodes of Living Not So Fabulously, watch on our website or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
Video Transcript
One of the things I, I love that you mentioned here is this idea of understanding how skills that you had and were using in architecture could be applied to another career.
Absolutely.
I, I never felt like I wasted my time as an architect and I’ve often felt like if I had to do it all over again, I would have done the same route because there were things that I learned as an architect, you’re dealing with a team of people that all have a similar goal to make this thing, whether it’s a building or a or a TV show.
Um And as the leader of that and as a showrunner, I was the leader of a TV show.
You know, you need to make sure that everybody feels wanted and safe and that they’re all working towards the same goal and working on the same project creatively.
And also the two big things, time and money are both so prevalent in both fields.
You gotta hit your schedule on time and you gotta keep within the budget.
Story continues
And so I as a, as a showrunner, I was always really good about that because I was so used to doing that as an architect.
When you think about that kind of discussion in your brain about how do I apply skills from this career to maybe something else?
What kind of advice would you give to folks who are listening or watching?
Well, I mean, first of all, you really have to be passionate about it, you know, you don’t wanna change careers.
Willy nilly.
Um So you have to be really passionate about it and you have to be really confident that this is what you wanna do and this is that you’ll be good at it, you know.
So I think you really need to think it through like that and then you have to go full force.
You can’t just tiptoe in, you got like really throw yourself into it um with abandon and, and, and not like maybe I’ll try that, you know, it helped that.
I, I think of sometimes that because I was so young when I did it, I was a bit naive, you know, and people will ask me still, why would you ever switch care?
And I think to myself, yeah, this career I switched into was way harder and way more difficult to make money than the one I left.
So I don’t know what I was thinking, but it has been more satisfying and it has been turned out to be more lucrative.
So I guess in retrospect, I did make the right decision.
Um But I don’t know, somehow, I guess in my youth it didn’t seem as scary as it would seem to me.
Now, this content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.
