MY SALO IS: ADVENTURE
I can chase titles, or I can chase adventure. I’m living my best life because of the freedom and flexibility consulting has. That’s my Salo.
Georgia Green needed a career to keep up with her healthy sense of adventure. Consulting became the roadmap to fulfilling cross-continent hikes, bikes, and hauls.
Now, she boldly goes the extra mile in her life and her career, to her great delight.
Georgia traveled a traditional accounting path for small regional firms for a decade before she met with Salo to explore consulting. “I needed some help with my career,” she says. “I felt like a professional job hopper. I liked to clean things up and make them efficient, but I often got bored and wanted to move on to the next thing. I wasn’t sure I was using my full talent.”
She hadn’t really considered consulting, in part because she says she feared she would be consigned to data entry. “I didn’t realize it was a higher-level job or even a career path,” she says. “My life changed that day.”
Redefining the meaning of success
It took time to move past the corporate ladder-climbing definition of success she’d been used to. “I had to do a lot of digging into myself. I asked, ‘Would I be happy even if I got the title?’ The answer was no. Where I derived happiness from was impact, and consulting gives me that opportunity. I can really spark and change people’s lives at work. Then businesses are impacted, which impacts the community. That gave me that sense of purposeful connection to the work I was doing.”
Trailblazing, both in life and work
And then there was Georgia’s sense of adventure: Healthy, even for other adventurers. “Even before COVID-19, I had built a bicycle that I rode 4,000 miles, working from picnic tables. I solo hiked Mexico to Canada which, took me five-and-a-half months, and I organized my work so that I could pop off trail once a month and do a month-end close.” So, when the pandemic hit, Georgia was “not about to live in an apartment in a concrete jungle.” She put together a custom RV with Wi-Fi, solar power, a standing desk, and monitors—and hit the road. She visited 18 states without ever missing a work deadline.
“I would never be able to do this if I had a desk job where I was chasing titles,” she explains. “I can chase titles, or I can chase adventure. I’m living my best life because of the freedom and flexibility consulting has.”
Step one: Confront your fears
Georgia says prospective consultants just need to confront their fears. Some fears are real: Needing to account for financial stability, retirement, or reconciling consulting to what you know from a “traditional” job. But some fears, Georgia says, are just stories we make up to protect ourselves.
“My best advice is to list out your fears, because fear fears solution. You automatically take the power away by calling it out, then writing our solution to the fear. Can you put an answer to your fear and speak truth into it? Is it possible your worst-case scenario comes to bear? Maybe. But is it probable? Probably not. If you are curious about consulting, there’s already a spark there, just waiting for the gas to be thrown on it.”
Step two: Dive into satisfaction and sustainability
Georgia says she’s found her career as a consultant not only fulfilling, but sustainable.
“In 10 years, I never had time off I did not want,” she says. “Clients want you back or people leave. You gain experience and exposure to new tools, systems, networking, methodologies. It opens opportunities to you that you would never have in a ‘normal’ career. The limitation doesn’t exist over here.” She says it helps that with Salo, you get a built-in team: of colleagues, work family, an employer. “I’m taken care of with benefits, PTO, and being paid for every hour I work.”
In the end, Georgia feels freed from a hierarchy that didn’t work for her. “I can find my true north and define my measure of success. Consulting gives me a sense of purpose and passion. I wake up and feel so alive. I don’t feel I’m just exchanging my life for dollars—I can define what I want to do for the rest of my life. That’s wildly fulfilling.”
Did this story spark your curiosity about consulting?
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