The courageous women who overhauled their careers

Fantasising about a dream career is how many people survive the working week. But these Melbourne women took a gamble and transformed themselves professionally.

Kate Smyth was an Olympic track and field runner who is now a naturopath. Picture: Nicole Cleary

What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a question we’re all asked almost from the moment we can talk.

But career paths in the modern era are no longer as simple as setting your sights on a single profession and studying the course.

Whether it be burnout, changes in family life or just a niggling feeling that you should be doing something different, people are increasingly walking away from established careers to try something new.

Professional social media platform LinkedIn researched the growing trend, finding that in the past five years two out of five Australians started a totally new job.

A further 70 per cent were secretly pondering the idea.

Interestingly, when it comes to reinventing careers, women are leading the charge, more likely to make drastic changes compared with men.

We spoke to four women who plucked up the courage to overhaul their professional lives.

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Claudia Brdar went from the corporate world to property styling.

CLAUDIA BRDAR — RENOVATOR, PROPERTY STYLIST AND COACH

For most of her working life, Melbourne mum Claudia Brdar knew she wasn’t in the right place.

As an account manager with the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, she was adept at dealing with business owners every day, but deep down felt she should be her own boss.

“I was working so hard for someone else and I thought I could be using that energy for something myself,” Brdar says.

After years of resisting the urge to leave, in 2013 and entering her mid-30s, she and her husband took the plunge and bought a rundown house in Watsonia for $460,000.

By day, they worked their normal jobs, but at night the couple painstakingly gutted and patched up the property.

“We would go after work and paint in the dark using makeshift torches because there was no electricity,” she says.

“I wasn’t just fluffing pillows. There was sanding and painting. I was doing the big things and getting my hands dirty. It felt really good to learn for myself and not just let someone else do it for me.”

On a strict $75,000 budget, the house was transformed over six months.

But it wasn’t until it sold for $1.03 million that Brdar, 44, realised she could do this for a living.

“When you look at what you’ve achieved, it makes you realise you’re capable of quite a lot,” she says.

“So after that I thought I’m on to something here, I’m going to do this.”

In 2017, Brdar, from Viewbank, founded The Renovate Avenue, a consultancy to help other budding builders.

It’s been such a success that last year she expanded by adding property coaching business DIY Renovation Academy, and says she never regrets the decision to become her own boss.

Jodie Auster is the Uber Eats General Manager. Picture: James Horan

JODIE AUSTER — UBER EATS GENERAL MANAGER

From emergency rooms to boardrooms, Jodie Auster’s career has taken many turns.

Naturally conscientious and smart, when it came time to apply for university in her teens, for someone with her high test scores, medicine was a natural fit.

“I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do,’’ Auster says.

“I liked health. I thought it was important and wanted a job where I could interact with people.”

Studying in Melbourne, she completed her medical degree. But from the moment she started in the health system, she began to question her choice.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy medicine,” she says.

“I was just acutely aware there was a whole world of other jobs out there that I didn’t know about and didn’t have exposure to.

“I was really driven by curiosity of what goes on and what other people do.”

Auster eventually scaled back her hospital hours and enrolled at the Melbourne Business School.

On reflection, it was a bold move considering she’d never set foot in an office.

The 42-year-old threw herself into the business arena, landing an internship at a top global management consultancy firm in 2009.

It was a strong foundation, but it wasn’t until she jettisoned into the start-up world in California’s Silicon Valley several years later that she began to feel totally comfortable with her new career path.

At the centre of the tech world, sneakers and casual wear replaced restrictive business suits, and the atmosphere was exciting.

Mingling with everyone from founders to CEOs and venture capitalists, Auster quickly made an impression, with her intelligence and curiosity proving a powerful mix.

A knack for motivating staff and jumping on opportunities were her trademarks.

In 2016, she returned to Melbourne to take up her current role as general manager of Uber Eats, bringing her partner Rachael and their two children.

Overseeing the meal-delivery company’s success has been another career highlight, she says.

But she’s not done yet.

“Would I do it again? I probably will because I’m always excited by different and interesting things. I encourage people to have a philosophy of saying yes, so give it a shot and know if you make a mistake you can always go back.”

Kate Smyth was an Olympic track and field runner who is now a naturopath. Picture- Nicole Cleary

KATE SMYTH — NATUROPATH

Cheering in the crowd at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Kate Smyth — a successful property marketing executive — had the sudden urge to become a professional marathon runner.

“It was like a light bulb went off in that moment and sitting there I realised that was something I wanted,” Smyth says.

At the time, she ran for fun, a “plodder” who was far from professional.

She was also midway through her 30s and years behind most competitors in the sport. But Smyth saw these as hurdles to overcome rather than roadblocks.

Almost overnight she went part-time at work, found a running coach and committed to an intense training program.

“I basically thought, ‘Am I really going to go for this opportunity and see where it takes me, or will I continue with my professional career?’ And at that point I knew going to the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics was absolutely priceless and I would always have my business skills.”

For the next five years, Smyth ran for more than 20 hours a week in between work commitments.

Rather than feeling rundown she found being outside a refreshing change from the office lifestyle and found mental strength in the physical transformation of her body.

She placed seventh at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, which gave her the confidence to officially quit her job and set up a consultancy business.

By the time she headed off to the Beijing Olympics two years later she was in peak physical condition and set a record for one of the fastest times ever run by an Australian female marathon runner. But post-Olympics, Smyth, now 46, came crashing back to earth.

Being a professional athlete was not a long-term career option and she was unsure of her next move. She tried returning to marketing but found her old career no longer exciting, describing the 12 months back in the office as “soul destroying”.

“I had just felt like so much of me had changed and I had to move on to something else,” she says.

Directionless, Smyth went travelling, landing in Colorado, a popular destination for avid runners.

Here among the athletic community and its wild running trails she experienced a new lifestyle and witnessed ways health professionals were treating sports injuries.

But before she could explore this new path, tragedy struck, turning her life upside down.

Her grandfather died suddenly in Australia and she lost a long-planned baby daughter.

“The one thing that allowed me to get excited again was keeping a connection with my athletic past, but also the fact I could help people to be better athletes. And that’s when I saw I needed to retrain as a naturopath and give people a more balanced experience of care.”

Smyth clearly isn’t a person who does things by halves and again threw herself into her new goal, enrolling at Melbourne’s Southern School of Natural Therapies.

Today she operates specialist naturopath practice Athlete Sanctuary out of offices in Carlton, Ballarat and Torquay.

Caring for athletes is a world away from marketing, where she began. But Smyth credits her first job for arming her with the skills necessary to run her own business.

“It’s been an interesting journey.

“I have really zigzagged through my career, but I finally found the one true thing I was destined to do.”

Sharon Dargaville left a career in hospitality for digital marketing.

SHARON DARGAVILLE — DIGITAL MARKETER

Growing up, Sharon Dargaville always had a passion for cooking so when the opportunity to take up a chef apprenticeship arose, she jumped at it.

“I wanted something I could travel the world with,” she says.

“To me, being young was all about socialising and travelling and that’s exactly what I did, with a trade up my sleeve.”

For almost a decade, Dargaville moved from place to place gaining new skills in different kitchens.

But she found hospitality industry hours were long and the breaks were short, which left little time for a social life.

One day working in a restaurant on the Sunshine Coast, Dargaville, now 30, decided she’d had enough and wanted to make a change.

The first step was to enrol in a local marketing degree part time.

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At 28, she left her cooking career behind for good and headed to Melbourne, reaching out to contacts on LinkedIn.

Her networking and determination would eventually land her a job at her current firm, Digital Eagles, as a digital marketer creating online strategies to promote companies and drive traffic to their sites and content.

“I seriously love what I do now,” the Richmond resident says.

“Although it’s been a really hard road, all those hard lessons have taught me what to do and what not to do in the future and how important your connections are.”