Transitioning from One Industry to Another with LaQuana
On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Emily Egan, PR Manager. She is joined by Financial Gym client LaQuana to talk about transitioning from one industry to another.
Podcast Notes
LaQuana started with The Gym in July 2019 and has been on an unemployment rollercoaster. Her Financial Trainer is Beca.
LaQuana was with her last employer for six years. When she started with Beca they spoke about making more money and upping her income.
In August 2019, LaQuana was let go from her job, because they were making cuts. It was a blessing in disguise, because it freed her up to do something else.
In December 2019, she started a new job and was only at that job until COVID-19 hit in March. She started off furloughed from the job and she recently received an email that her company filed Chapter 11 and everyone had been laid off.
This has made LaQuana sit down and reevaluate things. She worked in fashion and the industry wasn’t in the best place before the quarantine happened. She is now evaluating whether to go back into this field or transfer her skill set to a different industry.
When people think of fashion, they think of luxury, and that sector isn’t doing very well, because people aren’t buying those expensive items as much, and in the same quantity as before.
Fast fashion speeds everything up and causes a lot of waste, and smaller designers can’t keep up. There is a lot of online buying going on and there have been a lot of ebbs and flows in the fashion industry.
LaQuana recently started writing down the things she has done in the fashion industry and thinking about her day-to-day tasks and thinking about what other industries this can relate to, such as communication.
She hasn’t been sold on one particular industry, but she is trying to figure out how she can use what she has done for something else.
When LaQuana had her first meeting with Beca, she realized that she has always had a mindset that money was hard to come by. She could get it, but it wasn’t easy to come by. She learned to have a more abundant mindset. There are ways to make more money.
Her mindset stems from her childhood. She grew up in a middle-class household and they always had what they needed, but no extras.
Beca taught her to rearrange her mindset and her expenses in a way that she can plan for the things she wants to do.
LaQuana has always been responsible with money, but her struggle was overspending after her bills were paid.
LaQuana is very honest with her daughter about money and is teaching her how to work for money to buy things she wants. She doesn’t want money to be a foreign idea for her daughter.
Goals for LaQuana include paying down her credit card debt, finding a new job in a new industry, and saving are her goals now.