# How to Leave Corporate and Build Your Own Business Doing Work You Actually Love (A Real Director's Mid-Career Pivot)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/happen-to-your-career-meaningful-work-career-change-career-design-job-search-6608672/how-to-leave-corporate-and-build-your-own-business-doing-work-you-actually-love-a-real-director-s-mid-career-pivot
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/happen-to-your-career-meaningful-work-career-change-career-design-job-search-6608672/how-to-leave-corporate-and-build-your-own-business-doing-work-you-actually-love-a-real-director-s-mid-career-pivot.md
Podcast: [Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search](https://stenobird.com/podcast/happen-to-your-career-meaningful-work-career-change-career-design-job-search-6608672)
Published: 2026-06-23T03:33:11+00:00
Episode link: https://happentoyourcareer.com/729
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/htycshow/HTYC729.mp3?dest-id=161278
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/happen-to-your-career-meaningful-work-career-change-career-design-job-search-6608672/episodes/how-to-leave-corporate-and-build-your-own-business-doing-work-you-actually-love-a-real-director-s-mid-career-pivot
Duration seconds: 1277

## Resource

If your career looks successful on paper but feels off inside, you're not alone. Many mid-career professionals reach a point where the work that used to fit no longer does. Breanne Gjurich-Wozniak's story is one path forward: a portfolio career that combined her biotech expertise with her animal welfare interests. Breanne had a career that looked solid from the outside. Biotech R&D, then regulatory work submitting new technologies to the FDA. Director-level. Real success. Inside, the fit was changing. The work was drifting.She started looking at R&D and regulatory roles she was qualified for. Nothing gave her any excitement. That's when she found HTYC's free 8-day mini course and joined the Career Change Bootcamp. She built one 5-year career plan with her manager and a separate one with her career coach. The two plans were so different. The energy in each was so different. She knew it was time to leave. What followed wasn't a traditional job search. It was 20 conversations with strangers, a series of career experiments, and surprising feedback from people who'd only met her for an hour. Her coach introduced the idea of a portfolio career: multiple types of work, multiple interests, all under one umbrella. Breanne built a consulting business that combined her biotech expertise with the animal welfare work she'd always wanted to do. What you'll learn: The 5-year career plan exercise that reveals when your current path no longer fits How to use Social Goldilocks conversations to get strangers to see what you can't about yourself What a portfolio career actually looks like (and why one full-time job isn't always the right structure) How to translate decades of industry experience into consulting work Why "successful on paper" is the hardest career trap to leave Our…

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