The Healthcare Career Pivots You Don't See on LinkedIn
- Julie Granger
- Mar 31
- 19 min read
She built a thriving private PT practice. And then came the divorce.
Not only in her marriage, but also from all she'd built in her business.
She dreamed up a deeper, more intuitive healing container for women that wasn't clinical.
But her system—physically, financially, emotionally—wasn't ready to step into that yet.
What'd she do in the meantime?
A bridge job.
She started working for a Telehealth company as a client experience director.
It was a nonclinical role within a clinical company. Her job was making sure nobody fell through the cracks – something she had always done in her clinical work anyway.
She got to using her health coaching skills every day, not only with clients, but also in her interactions with coworkers.
She was able to work from home on a schedule that worked for her and her new life as a single mom.
It wasn't the dream she envisioned. But it was a necessary stepping stone.
She stayed there for 3.5 years as she built the confidence, financial resource, and home for her new life that she needed in order to feel steady on her feet.
And once she felt that steadiness, then she began to build the women’s health coaching practice she had once envisioned.
It wasn’t an overnight success. She didn’t have the bandwidth for that anyway. She didn’t listen to the “get rich quick” schemes preached by healthcare business coaches. These didn’t seem to fit her highly sensitive, intuitive personality or her single mom lifestyle.
So she did it her way. At first she built her coaching work in the margins of the telehealth job.
Eventually, she’d built up enough clients in her own coaching practice to drop her telehealth work back to part time.
And she’s not full time in her coaching work yet, but she knows that by taking it slow, doing it her way – she’ll eventually get there.
And it’s such an honor to be in her corner, walking alongside her as she does.
And she's not the only one I've supported in this way...
Pivoting isn't always, or ever, a clean and tidy process
I notice something when the women I work with sit down with me to start mapping their next chapter – where they’re contemplating some kind of pivot that will not only bring a shift in their work, but also in their entire lives.
They often arrive looking for a story they think they should tell.
They are longing for the socially acceptable narrative where they pivot from X to Y—where both things are impressive, credible, and explainable at dinner parties or to peers at conferences.
They’ve already spent weeks or months searching for a clean, tidy trajectory that makes sense.
I get it. This is human nature. We want to belong and be understood.
And because of that, we want to be able to answer the question “so what do you do, and what got you into that?” with confidence, certainty, and zero hint of shakiness in our voices or overexplaining that floods the room.
Have you been there? Me too.
If so, you might notice that you want your new thing to be adjacent enough to the old thing so that people won’t look at you sideways thinking “wow, did you totally lose it and were desperate for work?”
But what I notice with most women is – once we get to mapping their next chapter – we see that underneath that desire for a squeaky clean pivot is a knowing that there's often a more hidden story.
These women are starting to really reckon with the truth that the profession they pledged allegiance to—the degree, the identity, the colleagues they'd believed was the thing for them—wasn't actually for them anymore.
And now, stepping away from it felt less like ambition and more like coming home.
But it also feels like they don’t even know where to start or how to dream up what could be next.
I’ve worked with women for 10 years who are in this contemplative pivot and mapping space. It’s confusing. It’s exciting. It’s downright terrifying at times.
And I get that it can feel so disorienting.
You might have joined the nonclinical groups on facebook or followed accounts of people who have made pivots out of the clinic.
You might have taken courses or certifications to explore the fabric of what could be next.
This is a great start!
And yet, you might not feel like the advice, job boards, resume writing tips, new certifications, and interviewing tips really land or provide the direction you hoped they would.
You might sense that you need someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to sit with you and really help you uncover exactly what you need and want – because you don’t want to go to all the effort to burn bridges and pivot into something you’ll regret 3 months from now.
I also totally get that. It tells me that your work is really meaningful to you. That you want it to fill your cup. You don’t just want a job that pays the bills. You want the place where you spend the majority of your days to really showcase who you are and what you came here to do in this life.
It’s bigger than just applying for jobs, building a business, or starting a side hustle.
You want it to fit.
This is exactly what I help clinicians do – who have outgrown their current role and are looking for something wilder, truer, and more you. Something that fits the season of life you’re in and the version of you that you’re becoming.
And since sometimes it helps to see what others have done, especially when it feels impossible to dream up your desired next step out of thin air – I’m here to share a few stories of clinicians I’ve helped over the years. As you read, I invite you to sense into your body if something sparks, lands, or even feels like it’s a hard “no” for you.
All of that is incredibly useful data. And maybe – just maybe – some hint of clarity will come as you uncover that data today.
Home Health 👉 Corporate Leadership 👉 Website Design
After 5 years as a clinician, she’d worked her way up the management ladder in a regional multi-site home health organization.
She thought that getting into administrative work would free her from the grind of clinical work and bring in more steady income than the pay-per-patient model.
It did do all of that. She could work from home, homeschool her kids, and even work from different time zones while her family vacationed.
But the corporate life and all of its hierarchy and red tape – especially when her employees had big ideas or wanted changed and it took 2 years and endless advocating up the chain only for her efforts to be turned down – made her grow weary.
She hated that she had so many creative ideas and could never get them off the ground.
But she also hated that she had a stable paycheck, a growing 401(k), and health insurance for her family.
Leaving and going elsewhere just didn’t feel like a responsible decision.
When her sister-in-law decided to start her own consulting business, she offered to design the website for her.
On weekends and evenings, she learned to code, design, and use AI.
She couldn’t believe how alive she felt doing it. ANd the finished product was a masterpiece.
Over the next year, she designed websites for the startups of friends and family. A side hustle was born.
The better she got at it, the more an idea flickered in her mind “What if I did this full time? Could I replace my income? What about health insurance?”
When we sat down to chat, she was filled with anxiety. She was at a crossroads.
She had started therapy for the anxiety. It helped her find a sense of calm in a chaotic environment. But she couldn’t ignore that every time she got on a Zoom meeting for her work, she sat for 5 minutes in advance, breathing through the dread she felt to just be there. She counted down teh minutes until the meeting was over.
She told me about the website business. When she did, her face lit up. Her voice deepened. It seemed like she was just … suddenly IN the room.
I pointed this out to her. She sheepishly said “I know. I know. It’s so much fun. But it’s just that – a fun side gig. If only I could do this full time.”
I asked her what “full time” actually meant. Financially, logistically. What did she need to bring in?
She hadn’t actually answered this question for herself. So we dug in to her finances. She had grossly overestimated what she needed to contribute to her family – to pay the bills, to contribute to retirement and savings, and to pay for health insurance.
She had also been grossly undercharging for her website services. Even a modest price increase – one she was willing to say out loud and didn’t feel out of reach – would replace her corporate income AND cover health insurance – if she only got one extra client per month.
She’d been turning down inquiries from new startups because she simply didn’t have the bandwidth with her current job.
When she saw all of this laid out in front of her, she acknowledged that it was ridiculous NOT to go full time in her website business.
But at the same time, she wasn’t ready. She’d built a huge reputation. Her employees loved her. And she didn’t have to carry the entire responsibility for her paycheck and insurance on her back.
Over teh course of the next 12 months, she and I worked together to slowly build the bandwidth, resources, and courage to set more boundaries, handed off extraneous projects, and extricated herself from things at work that freed up her bandwidth to focus on her website business.
She was transitioning in place, without actually taking the leap.
Finally, when she’d built enough courage, trust, and proof of concept, she put in her notice.
Yes, people were really sad to see her go. Yes, the company would not be the same. Yes, a few people were salty and snarky about it. Yes, her parents questioned her sanity for leaving a “safe” job and “steady” health insurance.
But she was ready at this point. She had enough support and people cheering her on.
And within 12 months of taking the leap, she had not only replaced her corporate income and made enough to cover health insurance premiums – she had doubled it.
None of this would have been possible if she hadn’t taken on that “fun” project from her sister in law. A project that initially stretched her thin and required her to work on weekends. But gave her access to a creative part of her that brought in an aliveness and possibility that she never accessed in her clinical and healthcare admin roles.
Entrepreneurship seemed like the right path. Until it wasn’t.
She'd built a thriving sports PT practice. But it stopped fitting.
Before she became an entrepreneur, she was in an outpatient hospital setting. It was good, but she outgrew it quickly.
Now, she was helping young female athletes. She was supporting local sports teams, doing injury prevention screenings at schools. Doing sports performance training.
On paper, it looked really good. Like something the younger version of herself had only dreamed about.
But the long hours, the entrepreneurial grind, the feeling that she was constantly racing to keep up with others in the industry, the feeling that she couldn’t skip a day of posting online for fear she’d lose traction in the algorithm –
And she realized she'd recreated the same lifestyle she had in the hospital. Only now she was the one calling the shots.
And her biggest love—travel and adventure—had fallen by the wayside.
And so, she came to me with an idea. It felt insane. She couldn’t believe the words were coming out of her mouth. She’d built this, including her reputation and community connections. Her dream clients were thriving in her care. There wasn’t anyone else locally who did what she could do.
But now she wanted to close up shop.
She hit the road as a traveling PT, living three to six months at a time in the far corners of the country with her new husband.
She immersed herself in rural and remote places that put nature and outdoor adventures literally at her back doorstep.
She biked, skied, kayaked, and hiked every day.
She met people who became lifelong friends and framily.
Eventually, she moved back home, got married, and took a Telehealth PT job.
She’d been taught by a business coach that freedom from the 9-to-5 healthcare grind was found in entrepreneurship. It had worked. She had succeeded.
But it turns out, she needed to illuminate what freedom was on her terms and be held by another healthcare provider who encouraged and guided her to map and follow her own path instead of someone else’s that looked good on paper, but didn’t quite fit.
That moment of "yikes, it's not this" doesn't mean you're doing something wrong
Here's what I want you to feel into for a second.
That moment when you realize the thing you've built—the reputation, the expertise, the identity, the referral sources, the community —isn't actually what you want anymore.
You are not doing anything wrong. You didn’t actually make a wrong decision when you started that first or second or third thing. It was right for you at the time.
You’re feeling this now because you've grown. And the container doesn't fit the shape of who you're becoming.
The world will feed you narratives that you’ve failed. That you’re lacking commitment. That you’re losing your way.
But that’s actually deeply rooted clarity.
I get that it doesn't feel like clarity. It might feels like vertigo.
Like everyone you know is still in the room you just left, and you’re standing in the abyss, alone, wondering who is actually going to come along with you.
From a viral Instagram following to small brick and mortar practice
She built a viral Instagram following sharing pelvic health tips and resources.
And then she became a mother.
As her pregnancy progressed, she vowed to keep showing up online.
Her marketing mentors taught her that sharing her story and process would inspire someone.
It would let them see how authentic she was. How she practiced what she preached.
And her marketing mentor wasn’t wrong. It absolutely did help people. She infused her humor and creativity into some really amazing content. Personally, I found it fun and inspiring to follow.
Her posts started going viral. She increased her followers from 2,000 to 65,000 in six months.
She dreamed of writing and selling a coaching program so she could work from home and be with her baby.
And so she did. People were eating up everything she posted. She was so relatable.
And then she felt the weariness of chasing views, likes, comments, shares, and engagement just to get a couple of people to buy her $99 course.
She felt the fear of taking a break to be with her new baby for a week, worried she would become irrelevant. That her followers—and potential buyers—would go elsewhere.
So she doubled down. She believed that this was just a season. That it had to feel inconvenient. That maybe she was just tired – she was a new mom, after all.
She live-streamed breastfeeding. She gave “real talk” updates in her IG stories from her six-week postpartum checkup. She posted her own journey navigating prolapse with return to exercise.
The whole world was with her every step of the way. Every other day, she'd see a new $99 sale. It felt good.
Then the dopamine hit would quickly fade and she found herself obsessively writing new content because she needed more. More $99 sales. She wasn’t free yet. She had a long way to go to replace the income she’d made in in-person care. But this was working. She could get there, eventually.
She had built this huge online community. People who reliably showed up and commented on her stories and posts every time she posted.
And yet, she felt so lonely. She couldn’t remember the time she had regular in-person dates with local friends. She didn’t know anything about her loyal followers, yet they knew everything about her.
A thought flickered in – I love helping others, but why does this feel so one-sided? I’m not sure how long I can keep this up. It almost feels like an obsession or addiction. This is not how I pictured motherhood.
This was a really painful thought. She didn’t know what to do with it. She’d built something to help so many people. She couldn’t change what she was doing…could she?
She realized: I'm basically leveraging my child's life and my own vulnerability to serve others and make a $99 sale here and there. But who is giving back to me?
She received a copy of The Anxious Generation and was paid $100 to review it and post about it.
But this totally backfired.
She realized, I'm teaching my kids that every minute of my life—and theirs—needs to be documented online for others to see. That their lives are being shown to others without their consent.
This is not the legacy she wanted to leave for them.
And so, she stepped away.
She focused on building analog friendship and community, with no strings attached to that community becoming her business.
She focused on her small brick-and-mortar practice, keeping literal boundaries around her work time.
Work stayed at work. Home was home. Family was family.
The allure of constant growth, scaling, and impacting hundreds of thousands began to fade and crack.
She went to therapy to work on the anxiety and addiction from social media and fawning to please and perform for others.
She chose herself instead of her audience. People dropped off. They stopped following her.
This hurt, but she also really didn’t know those people.
And in this really brave decision, she found her #1 follower and cheerleader – herself.
There's a particular kind of grief in these kinds of pivots, yeah?
You might not be contemplating shutting down your social media influencer business or closing your PT practice. That’s not the norm for most of my clients, but it absolutely does happen.
But I invite you to look just below the surface at what is happening in the hearts of these women. Because that’s often what I see whether you’re doing a job pivot or simply adding a new service to your current work.
There's often not really much grief for the container of work itself. Work comes and goes. It always evolves.
It’s often grief for the version of yourself and your life you thought you'd be and have inside it.
Or it's grief for the identity you fell in love with and thought were supposed to keep wearing forever.
It could be grief for the way people knew you.
Or it might be grief for the satisfaction you got from helping, for the reputation you'd earned.
Stepping away from that means stepping away from how people see you and how you see yourself.
It means rewriting the narrative you once lived inside.
Or it could be some combination of all of those types of grief, which is H A R D.
And admitting that it's grievy and hard (and allowing yourself to process through and feel all of it) takes more courage than most people will admit, especially when they post about their pivots online or on LinkedIn and make it look or sound easy.
But then you feel the dissonance - because it doesn't feel easy to you.
Which is why many women (maybe even you) secretly plot your escape, but continue to find ways to stay put – even if deep down you know that doing so is slowly eating away at you.
Academia 👉 App Design & Development
She got her DPT. Went through pediatric residency. Got her dream academic job as an assistant professor at a top DPT program. She built the program’s service-learning program with overseas trips to help underserved populations.
And then, she decided to stay home with her kids.
For ten years, until her youngest started kindergarten, she didn't practice or teach at all.
Colleagues distanced themselves. Every day she questioned why she poured $200K into a private school education, just for her degree to collect dust in a closet.
She contemplated going back into academia, but felt like the profession had grown so much in her absence – she was sure she wouldn’t feel relevant anymore. She hadn’t been intentional about keeping up with the research. It felt like a big lift to catch back up.
She thought about going into the clinic. But she hadn’t really been practicing since leaving the clinic the first time. She felt like she would need to do residency again just to get a foothold and confidence in her skills.
She contemplated going back and getting a PhD. Maybe that would jumpstart her and make her competitive in the academic world. Plus – she was a perpetual student. There was something cozy and comforting about being in school again.
She allowed herself to dream–mentally pursuing what each of these pathways could look like. But as soon as she’d get far enough down a rabbit hole and visualize herself on each path, her body would resist and she’d sense it wasn’t right.
She felt so lost.
Then she sat down with me and within 5 minutes she said something under her breath about her next door neighbor’s disabled child that she didn’t realize I heard. I reflected it back to her.
A spark was born.
Slowly, she built an app and online community for parents navigating care and community integration for children with disabilities.
It wasn't a million-dollar company. It didn't have thousands of subscribers.
But it was work she could do in the background while being present at her kids' soccer games.
It provided enough income to contribute to a 401(k), pay off her student loans early, and take a nice trip every year.
And it didn’t require her to do the heavy lift of going back to school, doing a long clinical mentorship program to get back into patient care, or read 10 years’ worth of research journals just to qualify as a credible teacher.
Pivoting out of healthcare entirely (hello, real estate!)
She finished PT school. Completed a neurological residency. Built a multi-six-figure private neuro practice specializing in vestibular and concussion care.
She spoke on big stages. Taught courses. Authored book chapters. Mentored young clinicians.
And then perimenopause came knocking and … she just didn’t have the capacity and bandwidth anymore.
It wasn't a sudden realization. It slowly grew as her body shifted. There wasn't anything wrong, per se. She just knew, “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”
Something radical was brewing in her mind. She hadn’t told anyone. Until she sat down with me.
She didn’t let go of her work overnight. We mapped out a path to take things in small bites.
On the weekends, she studied and got her real estate license.
Over the course of a year, she shadowed seasoned agents and took on a client here and there.
She retained ownership stake in her practice, but stepped out of clinical practice altogether. She continued to teach and speak, but much less often.
Eventually, she became the top broker in her area, while still contributing to the clinical practice she’d built on a small scale.
When loss of a family member hits too close to home and you love what you do, but need to change your environment
She worked for a decade at a preeminent neurorehab institute.
It was physical and exhausting, but she loved her patients.
Then her mom was diagnosed with ALS.
She knew all about it. But couldn't do anything to save her mom.
It broke her. She couldn't go back to the neuro setting without seeing her mom everywhere.
But she was so far into her career—what else would she do?
She took a course in canine rehab.
Now, she is the lead canine PT for three local veterinary clinics.
OT Patient Care 👉 EMR Tech Consulting
She was an occupational therapist in a hospital system, and loved working with kids.
When the hospital implemented a new EMR system, she used her OT and educational skills to develop curriculum and training framework that actually made sense for clinicians.
She loved this kind of work so much, she shifted from clinical work into the IT department in the same hospital system.
Now she works from home and has a side hustle consulting private healthcare practices to train their clinicians on EMR systems, CRMs, and the ethical use of AI in patient care.
Clinical Care for the Underserved 👉 Health Chaplaincy
She was an NP who loved working one-on-one with people from underserved and marginalized communities.
She saw how so many people had different spiritual and religious beliefs that often conflicted with the western, white, patriarchal practices and doctrine in the US healthcare system.
She went back to school to get a Master's of Divinity degree, then moved into health chaplaincy for a major metropolitan level-one trauma center.
There, she built programs and hospital protocols to help clinicians from multiple disciplines take cultural and religious beliefs into account when evaluating and treating patients.
Her programs won her both local and national awards.
From being the clinical guru on a pedestal to working a bunch of fun part time jobs
She built a well-known clinical framework and thriving clinical practice where people came to see her from all over the globe. Then she spent five years getting a PhD and becoming a well-loved assistant professor.
Three years in, she decided academia was not for her.
But she didn't want to see patients anymore either.
After her own health struggles and helping her aging parents, she was tired of being around people talking about bodies all day.
She and her husband examined their finances. What did she actually need to bring in?
She asked herself: What would be SO fun, even if it had nothing to do with anything I've done so far?
She started experimenting. Walking dogs (which helped her stay active). Going to a local book club, which got her a two-day-a-week job selling books at the bookstore plus a whole bunch of new friends who talked about anything BUT bodies.
She started coaching middle school soccer—the sport she'd played growing up, and hadn't been back to in decades.
She made just enough money.
But now she was in full control of how she contributed to the world.
And also how she filled her own cup.
Rewriting the story in your own pivot
Here's what I know from sitting across from women who are in the thick of these pivots and choices-
These aren't the tidy, "from point A to point B" career pivots you see on LinkedIn.
They aren’t overnight shifts to get quick money (although sometimes we identify jobs they need to take on as an immediate next to give them the financial resource to dream about the NEXT next step).
But these are the messy, often unsexy, often “take way longer than anticipated” pivots that I see in my practice.
And they're the ones that actually stick—because these clinicians gave themselves room and space to really be honest with what felt right instead of rushing to the next thing that looked good on paper. They gave themselves space to discern and process what looked good on paper, but didn’t feel right anymore – in both their personal and professional lives.
They didn't wait for permission from anyone but themselves.
They didn’t hire someone offering “replace your 6 figure income in 6 weeks” promises.
They didn't need a certification or a business plan or a guarantee that it would "work out."
They just got honest with their bodies and what their souls were really desiring.
The sank in to the tightness in their chest when they thought about going back to their previous job or life.
They noticed the way their shoulders and heart rate dropped when they imagined doing something completely different.
They sensed the relief, the melting away of the tension in their jaws, and the very real grief that came when they finally said out loud – This isn't mine anymore.
That honesty—that somatic truthfulness—is where the real pivot begins.
The pivot – which sounds like motion – is not actually born in the doing, action, and step-taking.
No, it is actually born in the honesty and in the allowing.
It’s found in the willingness to disappoint people who believed you were supposed to be something different.
It comes in the courage and openness to grieve – and be held in the grief – of the version of yourself and your life that you thought you'd live inside forever.
It comes in the willingness to live simpler in some ways and infinitely more free and fluid in others.
The pivots you don't see on LinkedIn are the ones where a woman finally says – I get to choose what my life looks like. Not because I'm running toward something impressive. But because I'm running toward myself.
And that is what changes everything.
If you have that tug toward something wilder, freer, and more “you” than you’ve ever been –
Even if you can’t quite put your finger on what’s next – that’s ok. That’s what I’m here for.
If you're in the thick of a career pivot like these—feeling the pull toward work that actually fits who you're becoming, but can't quite see the shape of what's next—Soul Story Mapping is where we start.
In a 90-minute intensive, we'll map the real story underneath the story you think you should tell about your work and life. We'll get honest about what your body knows that your mind hasn't caught up to yet.
And we'll begin to illuminate what freedom and fit actually look like on your terms.
And if booking a session isn't for you, no worries.
Save this for a day you're looking for inspo on your own. Or contemplating burning it all down.
And I'd love to hear from you – what's an unexpected pivot you made that newly-graduated you would have never seen coming?
Reach out and let me know so I can celebrate your courage and how far you've come.
Relentlessly cheering for you in your next chapter,
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