The Detour That Showed Her What Success Was Supposed to Mean

In CNBC Make It this weekend, marketing leader Sally Simmons shares a story many professionals will recognize, even if few have acted on it. In I quit my marketing job to walk dogs for 4 months, she describes finishing her MBA in 2022 while working a remote healthcare marketing job on East Coast hours from California. She was burned out, and one morning, watching a dog walker on TikTok, she realized she wanted that job.

So she took it. She quit, built a profile on Rover, priced her services low to earn reviews and treated the work like a real business. She sent owners detailed updates, left their homes exactly as she found them and set out to become someone families trusted with a member of their family. Four months later, she had a five-star rating across 30 reviews and a full calendar. Then, in the middle of one of those walks, she got the call offering her the marketing role she still holds today.

She calls those months one of the most valuable professional experiences she has ever had. I agree, and I think the reason goes deeper than fresh air.

A Definition of Success She Never Chose

Simmons writes that before the dog walking, success meant promotions, bigger clients and climbing the corporate ladder, with a focus on prestige and money. There is nothing wrong with ambition. But many professionals are running on a definition of success they inherited rather than chose, from parents, schools, business programs or the people around them.

Borrowed definitions work for a while. They come with a clear target and a scorecard. The trouble starts when the life they produce stops fitting the person living it, and burnout is often the first signal. Sometimes people are simply overworked. Just as often, they are working hard toward something that was never really theirs.

Leaders should watch for that signal in their teams. I wrote about how the dread people feel before the workweek often says more about the environment than the calendar in Sunday Dread Is a Leadership Signal, Not a Calendar Problem.

Reinvention Is Reclaiming What You Edited Out

What strikes me most is what Simmons learned about herself. Walking dogs, she found that the skills she valued most were showing up, listening, caring deeply and building trust. As she puts it, "passion is visible, no matter what kind of work you're doing."

Those weren't new skills. They had been there all along, buried under a version of success that rewarded titles over the way she actually wanted to work. Her four months didn't turn her into someone else. They helped her reclaim what she had been editing out. That is what reinvention really is. It isn't about abandoning who you are for something new. It is about rediscovering what matters most to you and building forward from it.

Notice how she went back, too. She returned to marketing because she needed the stability, benefits and predictable income of a full-time role, especially with her first child on the way. That structure has real value, and she doesn't pretend otherwise. The difference is that she brought a clearer sense of herself back into it. She now logs off at five to be outside with her family and takes calls while walking her own dog. The job changed less than her relationship to it did.

Her story echoes a point I made about careers with many chapters in The Only Constant in a Multichapter Career Is You. The roles will keep changing. What carries through is the person, along with what you solve for, which grows as you do.

You Don't Have to Quit to Find Out

Simmons is candid that she could start small because she had savings and a partner with steady income and benefits. Most people can't walk away from a paycheck for four months. The good news is that reinvention rarely requires a dramatic exit. It requires honest attention to what gives you energy and what drains it, and then the conviction to act on what you find.

A few places to start this week:

Write down your definition of success, then ask where it came from. If you can't trace it back to something you chose, it may be time to revisit it.

Find your own version of the dog walk. Look for work, paid or not, where you lose track of time. What you are doing in those moments is a clue to what you naturally solve for.

For leaders: ask your people what success means to them, not just what their next role should be. Their answers will tell you how to keep them.

Simmons closes by saying success means building a life you enjoy, even if it looks different than you imagined. Some might see a gap on her résumé. I see the four months when she found her way back to herself.

Success lasts when it is defined by who you are rather than by the script you were handed.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.