How to Handle Life’s Unexpected Turns w/ Lisa Cork

[00:00:01] Dr. Christiane Schroeter: Nobody tells you this. After graduation, the people who become CEOs are usually the same people who had no clue what they were doing at 22. Today’s episode is about career pivots, unexpected opportunities, and how one decision can completely change your future. If you are ambitious but uncertain about your next step, this conversation is for you.

[00:02:05] Lisa Cork: I’m Lisa Cork, CEO and chief strategist at Fresh Produce Marketing Limited, which has been my own consulting company for the last 35 years. When we talk about whether you can crystal-ball-gaze and project where life takes you, I had no idea when I graduated Cal Poly Ag Business in 1988 that I would immigrate to New Zealand, become CEO of my own strategy company, or end up back at Cal Poly teaching in the department that transformed my life. It’s a full circle moment.

[00:04:33] Lisa Cork: My first passion has always been traveling. By the time I graduated, traveling was a big part of my university career. I did internships in St. Louis and Washington, D.C., and drove back and forth across America twice to get myself to and from them. If you would have asked me then, I might have told you I wanted to be a truck driver. That is how much I loved the open road.

[00:06:14] Lisa Cork: My second passion was marketing. I had a special professor who was a consultant doing business in the real world, and he brought the classroom to life every single day. He was a real catalyst for igniting my passion. In 1987 I made the NAMA marketing team, was appointed captain, and we won the national competition with Sunkist as our client. That was my first exposure to fresh produce marketing, which became such a big part of my world.

[00:09:16] Lisa Cork: When you win the national competition, companies come knocking. I was approached by a big agribusiness ad agency in Rochester, New York, and said yes immediately. It sounded amazing: wearing a suit, moving to a different state. Then after graduation I went to Europe for three months. I spent the summer in shorts and a T-shirt, and suddenly realized I’d taken a job where I’d have to wear a suit and heels every day in a really cold part of New York. Something changed in me.

[00:11:50] Lisa Cork: In the moment, the opportunity seemed amazing. Coming back from Europe, it was no longer amazing. Here is the catalyst moment your listeners may enjoy: don’t be afraid to undo what you’ve done. I knew it was the responsible thing, the thing everyone congratulated me on. But I called them up and said, I’m not coming. That left me with bills to pay and no job. We are not the same person we were as students. Give yourself permission to change your dreams.

[00:13:44] Lisa Cork: Two weeks later, everything changed. I was sitting on the porch of the house where I was living, and a peer from university drove by. He asked what I was doing, and I said I’d turned down the New York job and was unemployed. He said, I’ve gone to work for the most amazing company. They sell fruits and vegetables, it’s like trading stock but in produce, and we’re hiring. That one 30-minute conversation literally changed my entire life and led to the career I have today.

[00:15:18] Lisa Cork: Sometimes you just have to say yes to the opportunity that knocks. [00:15:21] Dr. Christiane Schroeter: I tell my students: pause and feel it out. There might be opportunities knocking that you ignored because you were so focused on moving forward. The pause is sometimes what leads to your next movement. [00:15:43] Lisa Cork: Or you’re so focused on where you think you should be that you don’t take time to understand where you may be destined.