Exploring The Midlife Career Crisis With Scott Doyne

Is your career at a crossroads? Feeling that familiar tug of wanting something more, or navigating an unexpected shift? You’re not alone. This week, we speak with Scott Doyne, a career coach, author, and speaker with over fifteen years of experience helping professionals just like you find clarity and confidence during career transitions. Scott’s book, Exploring the Midlife Career Crisis, is a go-to resource for anyone feeling stuck or searching for deeper purpose in their work. Join us as we discuss Scott’s insights, his coaching work, and his own career journey. Ready to navigate your next chapter? Let’s get started.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/scott-doyne/.

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Exploring The Midlife Career Crisis With Scott Doyne

Professional Coach, Author, And Speaker

My guest is Scott Doyne. Scott is a certified professional coach, author, and speaker with over fifteen years of experience in helping professionals navigate career transitions with clarity and confidence. His recent book, Exploring the Midlife Career Crisis, has become a go-to resource for anyone feeling stuck or searching for more purpose in their work life. We’re going to be discussing Scott’s book, his coaching work, and his broader career journey. Let’s get going.

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Scott, welcome. Thank you for joining me. I appreciate it.

Thanks, JR. Good to be here.

Excited to get to know you and to talk a little bit about your work and your book. Let’s start there. Tell us about your book, Exploring the Midlife Career Crisis.

I was going through my own, and so I felt like I just wanted to get it out there, but it’s not just my story. It also is structured in a way to help people navigate their own transition stages. It’s got some career pivot case studies and then some exercises people can do on their own that might help them along.

Scott’s Personal Midlife Career Crisis & Reinvention

Your own career crisis was an inspiration for this if you want to call it that. Tell us a little bit about that, and how that played out, and what ended up happening.

I’ll rip the band-aid off first. I was laid off in the morning. My media industry is going through a lot of change in the last decade. The good news is I saw it come. I was running a research and analytics team. I was very in tune with the metrics and the business and what was going on. While the sports business as part of media was strong, the ecosystem we were living in with less people in the U S buying cable TV and satellite, was leading to a lot of downturn and reductions. I saw one of my colleagues get laid off in January 2022.

It lit my light bulb in a way that was like “Wait, that actually can happen to me. I need to get my head straight on what I might want to do.” Through that exploration process ran into an executive coach, and had a great session. As I was gaining my own clarity on the future, I thought I could pursue that path. The coaching thing spoke to me. I started training towards certification. I started drafting a business plan. Eventually, I was laid off in November of 22. Once that happened, I finished my certification, I did a little bit more research, talked to 30 coaches, and then launched two years ago last month.

Overall, what’s the core message that you want your readers to walk away with?

I want them to know that reinvention is possible. I had a set of circumstances that led me towards an involuntary departure. At the age of 50, I wrote and published my first book, and I’ve completely changed careers. It’s very different in a lot of ways, some of which are my choice, but it’s also the same in terms of me wanting to help people with their careers. I feel like that’s who I was as a manager and a leader. I was invested in professional development, mentorship. I had a lot of interns around. I think a lot of that was in me, but I had never thought about or never needed to determine how to leverage those skills into the future. Now having done it, like for real, rebranded where people know me as this, not that, I believe reinvention is possible, and it’s never too late.

I think I always heard it. I’m well past the age of 50, but people would say to you, “You’re over 50. It gets a lot harder to change jobs or change careers.” I think that’s getting less and less true as time goes on, partly because people at the age of 50 don’t seem as old as they were a generation ago, and people are working longer, and people have multiple careers in the course of their lives. In the scheme of things, I think people should be less afraid of these kinds of situations.

I think it’s one thing to get midway into your career and have a layoff happen. That happens to almost everybody at some point in their career. It’s another thing where you have a, “I just really want to do something different.” Those are two very different circumstances, but often the process you go through is probably somewhat similar.

I agree. I think entrepreneurship, in particular, the barriers to entry are a lot lower, the tools, the skills, and the technology that enable some of that. I would never be able to do my own marketing and design without Canva, for example. AI is enabling a lot of content creation, or at least content drafting or editing, even though I believe in human writing. I think the tools are there. I don’t want to pretend the job market is easy. That would be a lie. That’s really difficult. I have former colleagues who were laid off that have gone back to school in anthropology, one who’s a welder, and heard from somebody the other day that’s going to be a counselor or therapist. It may take retraining. It may take investment, but why not?

You use the word crisis in your book title. Do you see it as a crisis?

I do. It’s different for everybody. The emotional part is what I’m getting at. This is how things feel, and it may be one day a week. It may be one minute a week. It may be every day, whether somebody feels lost or stuck in their job, or they go through a health scare, or they see their parents go through something, or their kids are going through something, whatever that impetus is. Maybe a professional athlete whose career is ending at 25. Those moments can absolutely feel like a crisis. I want to give them credit for that because how that feels is real, even though maybe the solutions are not as far away as they seem.

It is scary. I think, particularly if you haven’t been through it before, a lot of people go through it multiple times. I certainly have gone through different points in my career where I’ve been in job search mode, and the first time was unnerving. The second time was like, “I know what happens. I know what to expect. You just go through the process, and you eventually figure it out.”

Totally. It’s remembering back to that first time that I think gives me the empathy. Having been at a company for twenty years and truly not drafted a resume, it’s daunting. The interview game has changed, and how you submit applications and the ATS machines that are filters in the process. It does change, it is daunting, but not impossible.

Identity & The Emotional Impact Of Career Transitions

You talk about identity when making these identity shifts in midlife. For a lot of people, work and identity are very closely intertwined, which isn’t super healthy.

We spend a lot of time there. I think is the beginning and where it might’ve been, call it 8 to 10 hours a day. The way that’s expanded with smartphones and the expectation of availability nearly 24/7. I think it washes over you even more. I feel very fortunate that I worked in sports media my whole career, and there were many days that did not feel like a job. That’s not true for everybody. Finding a way to compartmentalize that whether it’s for your work-life balance or to hold on to your identity.

It’s why the layoff can feel so harsh is because when you introduce yourself to people, a lot of people quote their company and the job title. We know that’s not anybody’s whole self, but what else do your sayers say about yourself? What you care about, the causes, you champion, the size of your family, and how old your kids are, all those are possible. It is pretty routine to ask people, “What do you do?” They answer with their company and their title.

At the same time, a lot of people feel trapped in what they’re doing currently. What’s at the root of that?

As I talk to my clients, I have a healthy dose that are in transition that either have involuntary left their company already. There are some that I call that they’re in the get-ready package. They anticipate a potential layoff or have this feeling, like you said, of stuck or maybe lost. It’s like “Something’s not right about where I am. I may be supposed to be somewhere else.” The fear that I get out of those conversations, a lot of it comes from the health benefits.

It is the financial side, the financial realities of paying your bills, paying your mortgage, paying your rent, but the health part of it, especially for parents, I think that’s real. My suggestion for that is to at least find out how much it costs and what options are available. What do you actually get from Cobra? It’s still maybe a daunting dollar figure, but knowing the dollar figure versus fearing what it might be can feel very different.

Living over here in the UK, where you’ve got the NHS, it’s at least a backstop. I happen to have private care as part of my job, which at least gives me some ability to go outside of the NHS system if I want. It’s nice to be able to have that people think differently about moving because of this issue that Americans have of not being able to have this easy backstop mechanism other than Cobra if they happen to get laid off, and it’s expensive. You end up doing really emergency levels, high deductibles, those kinds of situations to get through. It’s just such a different situation, but I don’t see that changing anytime soon in the US.

No, the marketplace is a step, and without getting into the politics of it, I think there are some options. There are brokers, but just doing a little bit of research to see what might work for you can help.

The Four Stages Of Career Transition

You talked earlier about the four stages of career transition. Can you walk us through those?

The first one is realize. It’s a light bulb moment. Whether you’re stuck, you get laid off, or you just feel that something’s off, you realize it might be time for a change. The second step is to explore. What might I want to do? What are my strengths and interests? What’s out there? There may be some experimentation in that stage. The third one, once you have a hypothesis about what you might want to do, is to articulate.

This is where you put your materials together. What is your personal brand? How are you going to talk about your experience and your interest in a certain path? The last one is activated. That’s your go-to market. You’ve got your materials, you’re heading in a certain direction, and your energy is relatively focused. You start to get some data back that can cycle back through those four stages.

There’s a section about self-reinvention. How do you guide people through that process when they’re scared to move forward and clinging to the past?

There are some real mental psychological hurdles around that. In my training, we actually did study a bit of neuroscience. Early on, I think it’s about trying to get my clients or help them get themselves into an open-minded place, not necessarily judging every idea that they might want to go after, but just documenting. For me, I didn’t have a coach at the very beginning. I started with journaling.

I had a list, there were fourteen possible directions I was going to go in. It just started to get the juices flowing without me filtering them out or evaluating them quite yet. Once I got into that coaching situation, I had that other light bulb. Mentoring was on my list. I didn’t know why, but the dots started to connect. I’d say just getting some thoughts on paper, thinking about your real interests, your hobbies that might be professionalized.

Things that bring you joy. What might you want in your next role? What do you want to give in the next role? There are questions and ways to get some of that out of you. The next part is a bit magical to be honest. I don’t know why I ended up having that coaching session or had that epiphany, but what led to it was an open-minded exploration that for me included journaling, for somebody else might include talking to somebody.

Pivotal Coaching Session & The Meaning Of Loyalty

Is there a particular story from the book that really encapsulates this idea of a midlife career turning point?

For me, that one coaching session was so important. It was the pivotal moment. I’ll tell you a little bit more about it. What I was exploring with that coach was what I might want to do in the future, and the fact that I felt a little guilty about looking or thinking about looking. She caught me saying the word loyalty a bunch of times. She said, “God, what does loyalty mean to you?” For me, I was in a company that went through a couple of acquisitions, and the company culture and the people were changing.

I had a couple of bosses in my line of command that I really respected and had been around for me for a long time. The way I ended up answering that question was that my loyalty was to those people, not necessarily to the company. I think in saying that out loud, having thought about possible options, seeing this coach in front of me, thinking that I like talking to people one-on-one and listening to them and helping them, something in that moment materialized that allowed me to see that as a real option going forward that I wanted to take some next steps on.

What reactions to the book from readers have surprised you or stuck with you?

I get so blown away when I see it out in the wild. It’s at a networking event, and talking to somebody, and they pulled my book out of their backpack. I had one of my younger clients, I work with executives but also students. I said this was a young professional. His mother was laid off, and he bought the book for her. I just thought that’s just the greatest because I think there’s good content in the book, and I think it can help people. The fact that it can be seen as a heartfelt gift to somebody to try to help them in their situation that’s really meaningful for me.

Talk a little bit more about your coaching work. Who are your typical clients? What industries do they tend to be in? What levels? What points in their careers? All of that.

I lean on my industry background, sports, media, and technology. I work with executives as well as emerging leaders, and a lot in career transition, whether it’s voluntary or involuntary. That intends to be a lot of the work, and the way I see myself or how I like to partner with folks is to be their support system, to be what I say is a bridge, helping them to their next chapter.

Coaching Philosophy & Empowerment

You’ve been doing this for a few years now. How is your coaching style settled, and your philosophy to coaching?

I undervalued listening. Somebody that I get to meet has raised their hand and asked for help. I don’t take that for granted because that’s hard for people to do that. Some people are trained that that’s a weakness. I think it’s a strength. When they get to me and I can sit there and listen without judgment, I start to realize that most people don’t necessarily have somebody like that in their lives. To me, even listening without saying anything can be a gift in and of itself. Working as partners to figure out what is it you might want to do and how do you want to get it?

Do you tend to push hard, give a lot of homework, or is it more just in the line of questioning that gets people there on their own?

It’s definitely not the push hard style. Even the drill sergeant will never be a drill sergeant. I’m more of a cheerleader. I’m an idealist, I’m an optimist. I feel like my attitude and personality give people hope. Hopefully not false hope, but rebuilding their confidence a bit when maybe they’re at the bottom, and then helping them help themselves is important to me. That’s the empowerment piece because I don’t want to be a band-aid. I don’t want to be a crutch. I want them to have some tools, materials, and confidence so that the next time they go through a transition of any kind, they actually can do it on their own. Maybe we talk about leadership training at that point, or executive presence, or how to hire people whenever we move on to that, they’ve progressed themselves.

Do a lot of work with people in transition, as you mentioned, do you counsel them in a different way if they’re in their 20s or 30s versus if they’re in their 40s or 50s?

I think there’s a lot in common. What’s not is understanding the landscape. When I think about the younger folks, there can be a little bit of teaching and training. I work with students who want to work in the sports business. Yes, I try to help them conduct their own research and understand what’s out there, and make networking connections to understand the options.

If I have an idea of what they might want to do and what culture they’re looking for, it would actually be rude if I didn’t share some of my objective knowledge. I might change from time to time, but with those younger folks, if I can help them understand the landscape objectively, it might save us both some time. Even though I think exploration and curiosity might lead them on a different path than they expect in a positive way. I think that’s the biggest difference with the younger group.

Shifts In Sports Media & Career Strategy

Sports media is a tough business, as you’ve experienced in your own career. A lot of people want to do it. Not a lot of jobs in the scheme of things. It just tends to be a tough industry to break into.

It absolutely is, and it continues to be, and it’s evolving, and the way the tech companies have gotten involved now. There are other new opportunities. There are also entrepreneurial and influencer opportunities that are in the content space. Somebody who wants to be, let’s say, an on-air broadcaster. There’s nothing stopping them from having their own podcast. There’s nothing stopping them from standing outside of a stadium and recording a stand-up, and so you can put that stuff on tape and get it out to the world now. When I was starting, it was still just broadcast, cable, a little bit, but there was no UGC. Now there’s an opportunity to get that experience, provide evidence that might attract the people that are hiring for those roles.

Midlife Career Crisis: The way tech companies have gotten involved now, there are new opportunities, including entrepreneurial and influencer roles in the content space.

You break out of the self-produced mode into more of a traditional media type of role.

Yeah, if you want. You don’t even have to anymore.

That’s true.

Neither is for the faint of heart.

Inspiration Through Real-Life Reinvention Stories

What do you say to people who feel like they’ve missed their window?

That’s a tough one. I think I need to do more writing on that one. Some of the pivots I write about in the book, I do eight case studies. One of which was Martha Stewart, I think is a good one, who was a stockbroker for the first part of her career and clearly did not end up in that place. Has had a couple of curves and roller coasters ever since, but there was some reinvention there. Colonel Sanders of KFC launched the company was 64. Just friends and family. I’m seeing around us. I think what I’m getting at is finding examples where somebody can maybe identify with that example and have more belief in themselves in the process they might go through. Otherwise, it does seem difficult, but I think there are a lot more examples out there than people realize.

There are plenty of examples out there, but it still feels lonely when it happens to you.

It does, and I’m looking at my kids, who are both in college, and the version of me they saw as a sports media executive doesn’t show what I went through in my 19s and 20s and what it took to get to where I was that they’re aware of. That squiggly line and paid internships, and here’s something right to go out on a limb, and didn’t have tickets to all the games. I think it’s important to share some of the messy stuff because social media has impacted how people see the world in themselves, and what people are putting out there that’s likely polished gives people that FOMO sense, where it’s like, “I cannot do that.” They did that so easily, and none of that’s true.

Rebuilding Confidence After Setbacks

How do you help clients rebuild confidence when they’ve been laid off or experienced some other setback?

Very common. One exercise I went through that made more of an impact than I expected was having somebody read their own LinkedIn recommendations, because you forget about them if they’re out there. Some people are saying nice things about you, your whole career. They cannot all of a suddenly be untrue because you got laid off for whatever reason. When he read through them, I could just see his demeanor change. Thinking about, “That person thought nice of me. That person said this very specific thing about that project I worked on.”

That was just one exercise. You might go back to performance reviews. You might go back to nice emails from people. I’ll show you this. I don’t know if you can see this. I’ve got this jar by my desk that, after I left my company, my staff wrote little notes. There were nice things they had to say about me being their manager and leader. As an entrepreneur, you have days where you don’t maybe feel great about yourself, something that goes well, a partnership goes south, whatever. I think we all need those little reminders from time to time.

Especially as you mentioned, being an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is lonely for a lot of people. If you’re a solopreneur, you don’t have that interaction that you do when you go into the office and you’ve got a bustle of things going on around you and meetings and people and all of that. It’s very different. A lot of it is much more isolating, and you have to really work at A, getting comfortable with that, and B, making sure it doesn’t become like your entire existence.

I would say it’s the number one difference. A great company with lots of great coworkers. They were fun. They’re creative. I loved being around them. It made me smarter. It made me happier. Having that go away in a heartbeat was very difficult. I have to create some of that community intentionally now. I’m in some coaching groups. I’m in a writing group with authors. I have coffees or lunches. I like working out in my basement, but I miss the community a lot.

AI Disruption In The Job Market

You need daylight. Let’s talk a little bit about the job market. You’ve made some references to it. What are you seeing in the job market? What makes it tough?

I don’t know if we can answer this question without talking about AI. I wish we could talk about something else, but it’s just so relevant in what’s going on with downsizing and scaling and new tools, and technology. The question to me is what skills and roles will survive AI disruption, and how you integrate AI into how you do some of those? What I keep coming back to is communication, collaboration, influence, persuasion, and relationships. That human stuff I think, is still very important. Even those types of things can be buoyed using AI to augment your role.

The tools are getting good enough. If you want to invest enough computer power in it, you can pretty much do almost anything in the creation community. There are certainly people who are really excellent fiction writers and conceive these stories and tell them in their own unique way. You know when you really are reading really good writing, and I don’t think the tools are quite at that point yet, but for like nonfiction explainer stuff, like they do a pretty good job, and you could do films. You can do podcasts that are made up of like virtual people. It’s a little bit intimidating.

It is, and it’s real, and ignoring it and avoiding it is pointless, but in integrating it so that it helps you be a better version of yourself or a better worker within your skills, I think it is useful.

How do you turn AI into a tool as opposed to a job killer if you’re one of those people who are going through that job search transition mode?

I think you have to be a continuous learner. You just have to always be augmenting, and I know it sounds exhausting, but sticking your head in the sand is definitely not going to do you any favors.

The Rise Of Portfolio Careers & Meaningful Work

What are some of the other trends that you see out there in the job market?

The fractional space is really interesting. We’ve known entrepreneurship, we’ve known consulting, and I think this is some of that by a different name, but it’s all related to the gig economy and what’s going on with the odd jobs and how people might piece together their career. I like this term portfolio career a lot because it’s not necessarily the 9:00 to 5:00, 40-hour work week anymore.

People want flexibility, and there are now ways to do that. Hopefully with healthcare as well, which continues to be an important part of that puzzle, but it also is for purpose and fulfillment, and passion. Like the identity thing we were talking about earlier. If you have a bunch of different pieces, then your identity isn’t reliant on any one piece. Some people prefer variety versus like one thing.

For people who are really struggling through that job search and it’s just going on and on, how do you keep them motivated?

I think remembering your why. Why is it that you’re going after what you’re going after? There can be some level of compromise to your approach. You can change your approach over time, look at the data, and adjust. I think the other piece is having cheerleaders around you, not doing it on your own, I think, is important. That can become very isolating. The voice in your head gets louder. You don’t have other voices to combat that. It may not be your advisor that’s the tough love advisor that you’re working with these days. It might be the ones that give you a hug and encouragement, and confidence. Look at who you’re surrounding yourself with during that process to make sure that you’re not just making practical progress, but you’ve got emotional stability, too.

I would often say to people who would call me when they’re in the job search mode, and like at the risk of using a sports analogy, this is like baseball. It’s a game of it, bats. You’ve got to get it bats, but you only have to get one hit.

It’s 3 out of 10, and you’re in the hall of fame. If you’re doing that, it’s fine, but you got to put the numbers out there for sure.

I think a lot of people don’t appreciate how much work finding work is.

It’s really hard and you cannot control others’ perception of what you’re going through, but it still hurts. That’s real. Hopefully, you protect yourself and your mentality by having some other people around you who aren’t judging you in that way. They aren’t saying, “Why can’t you find a job?” They’re saying, “I understand that it’s difficult. Here’s somebody I think that might be worth meeting.”

Career Beginnings & Development

Let’s talk a little bit more about your career journey. You started in television production. Was that like your dream? You definitely wanted to do this when you were going through school, or did you fall into it?

A blend. I was a huge sports fan growing up. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, a Reds and Bengals fan.

Browns and Indians, my friend.

That’s too bad. I was just into everything. When I was looking at colleges, the University of Michigan had a sports management program, which is pretty early. There’s tons of them and so once I found that program I got into that and met up with another Cincinnati and who wanted to be the next Dick Vitale and the two of us started the student TV station at the University of Michigan. Which, 30 years later, is still alive and running. That was my introduction to TV. I absolutely got hooked on being a producer, and we ran a live hockey broadcast, and there was a dating game. There was a soap opera somebody ran. I did fall in love with media at that point and was able to intersect that with sports and another passion for the rest of my career.

I can remember going to an open house at my school for the university TV station that we had back then. What I realized I was in Air Force ROTC. I was ultimately going into the military. The problem with the TV station was that all the kids who worked there were doing drugs all the time. I’m like, “I cannot be around. This is a real problem.” My time there was very short-lived as a result. I knew that that was not going to be the right place to put myself in, or I would put my scholarship in jeopardy, for if nothing else. It never happened. It’s interesting that you started that TV channel.

I feel the need to refute that that was the culture of our organization. A lot of my friends today still came from that experience. We visited with some current students last year, and we’re able to share the story of how we founded it. It’s nice to leave something like that behind.

What did you learn about yourself in your early career years?

I was ambitious, JR. I don’t think I realized it so much until I slowed down eventually, but I just wanted to do everything. I was hungry and willing, but I was also fortunate to be able to take unpaid internships is not something everybody can do. I want to acknowledge that part of it. Nobody was stopping me from what I wanted to accomplish.

Do you do just thinking about how old you are and when you likely went to school, that the dot-com era had a lure for you, or anything, but we’re focused on media?

I saw it pretty early. The University of Michigan had some early Internet pioneers working there on the faculty, where they were doing distance learning using the Internet. Even back to high school, we had a computer teacher who had us up on Prodigy with a very slow dial-up modem. That was the ‘90s. I was into it. We had an Apple two plus at home. I credit my parents. I was into the consumption of all forms. I was also into pressing buttons a lot. That was cool for me. It’s all been a dream.

My form of distance learning, I got my master’s in engineering from Northeastern. I did it while I was in the Air Force. I would go to some remote location where they had a closed-circuit television that was piped into the classroom, and you would sit and watch it. Most of the time, I was the only one in the room, which is not, by the way, a recipe for staying awake. If you had a question, you literally had to pick up a phone, call a number, the grad student would answer the phone on the side of the room, and like ask your question to the professor. It was just so antiquated back then.

True. We’ve come a long, long way.

How did you ultimately get more into the traditional sports media world? I know you spent a lot of time in the Turner world.

Early on, those internships I had. I had a summer internship with a regional sports network in Detroit, where I worked at a Detroit Tigers game that got me into the freelance production pool. I was working at hockey games, football games, basketball games, just did the freelance circuit. I did that until we moved to Atlanta.

My wife and I met at Michigan and moved down to Atlanta. While we were here, where we live, we got involved in some high school sports production and did that for a little while before going back to business school. I have gotten into linear TV, freelance production, and worked on high school sports stuff. Once I was in business school, I got a summer internship in the Turner family on NASCAR.com. That’s really where I started immersing myself in the digital side and just rode the wave.

You also do some teaching now.

I do. I love it. At Emory, my MBA alma mater. I’m teaching a course on career navigation and sports media and technology. It’s what I know, and so I wanted to share that in a very practical workshop course, working with some undergrads, and I love doing that. I love running workshops. I love speaking to university classes and just helping them navigate their own way, depending on their own motivations and goals, but giving them some tools and encouragement to make the most of their opportunity.

Advice On Career Navigation & Networking For Students

What are the biggest 2 or 3 pieces of advice that you give to kids who are in school on how to navigate the work world?

Let’s see, networking. It would probably make the top ten if you forced me to make a top ten. Getting comfortable with that for the younger generation is complicated. They’re IRL in real-life engagements. They’ve grown up differently. They’ve grown up with social media, and there’s some progress you can make building relationships through social media, but also being able to look people in the eye, shake their hand, and know how to ask questions at a cocktail party thing.

Finding a way to get that generation more comfortable has taught me a lot about not telling people to be somebody different than themselves. I think there’s a natural way to build relationships without being the self promoting asshole. There are ways to do it. I’ve developed a methodology and it’s in the book as well of maybe networking as a research project where you’re trying to learn something about the space and taking it step by step where I’ve got a client who was quite resistant to reaching out to people and through this methodology has now come to enjoy it.

To me, that’s the light bulb I want to turn on is not writing their messages for them. We’re not telling them, “Here’s who to reach out to go do it.” It’s having the tools, the confidence, the capacity, and the motivation to go about things interpersonally because it’s going to pay a very long-term dividend that they’re not even aware of yet.

Networking has such a bad connotation for a lot of people, and they think about it as transactional and self-serving, but networking in the right way is ultimately about getting to know people and trying to find opportunities over time that have benefits for both of you. I think if you think about it in more of a long-term developing relationship, being willing to have the reciprocal give and take that comes with it, those can be fantastic relationships, but a lot of people they’re uncomfortable at cocktail parties. They don’t like doing that thing, but there are a lot of ways to do networking that don’t require you to go to a networking event or chat somebody up at a cocktail party that you’ve never met before.

Midlife Career Crisis: Networking in the right way is ultimately about getting to know people and finding opportunities over time that benefit both of you.

Totally agree. My hope is that young folks feel like there needs to be a quid pro quo immediately. That’s not entirely realistic, except that for that executive you’re meeting with that day, they might have had a really terrible day, and the opportunity to help you might be like that warm fuzzy feeling that gets them to get out of bed the next morning. You might be doing somebody a favor by letting them help. All you’re responsible for, if I can put this on somebody, is to pay it forward.

What’s ahead for you? What do you want to get out of the next few years of your business and your career?

I’m really excited. My company is a career services company, so I think everything will revolve around that conceptually. While I love the one-on-one coaching, I also like producing content from my media background. It is also a way to scale impact if I can be so bold. Finding ways to put more content out there, whether it’s another book or workshops or video content, public speaking, I think there’s some room there for me, and we’ll see how it unfolds.

Good luck with that. Any last advice you want to leave our readers with?

I just hope people feel comfortable asking for help. People may feel like that’s something that’s maybe too prideful for that or whatever their legitimate reasons are, but there’s none of this that you have to go through on your own. There are plenty of people out there. There are lots of coaches who will offer free sessions like I do. Just get to know somebody, and one of those sessions, like my first coaching session I ever had for my executive coach, one session can make a huge difference in calling you forward.

Thanks for doing this, Scott. It’s good to meet you. We overcame our technical difficulties for the Zoom global outage.

Adapt and thrive.

Again, thank you.

Have a great day.

You too.

—

I want to thank Scott for joining me to discuss his book, Exploring the Midlife Career Crisis, his coaching work, his broader career journey. As a reminder, our discussion was brought to you by Pathwise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career, you can join the Pathwise community today. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for Pathwise Newsletter and follow us on  LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks. Have a great day.

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About Scott Doyne

Scott Doyne is a certified professional coach, author, and speaker with over 15 years of experience helping professionals navigate career transitions with clarity and confidence. Known for his compassionate, no-fluff approach, Scott specializes in guiding mid-career individuals through moments of uncertainty, burnout, or reinvention. His recent book, Exploring The Midlife Career Crisis, has become a go-to resource for anyone feeling stuck or searching for more purpose in their work life. Drawing from a background in corporate leadership and coaching psychology, Scott blends strategic insight with real-world practicality to help clients build careers that align with their values and strengths. Whether he’s coaching one-on-one, speaking at events, or writing, Scott’s mission is to empower people to stop settling and start designing careers they actually want. He’s been featured in major publications and podcasts, and is passionate about reshaping how we think about success—especially in the second half of life.

Scott’s earlier career journey has included various leadership roles for Turner Sports and Bleacher Report, where he partnered with the NBA, MLB, NCAA, NHL, PGA Tour, and NASCAR. Scott offers his expertise to Partners in Change, 21st Century Leaders, and his alma maters, the University of Michigan and Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He also enjoys spending time with his wife, two children, and their pet Goldendoodle who has a thriving Instagram profile.