Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want

Until recently, Tess Vigeland was a longtime host with public radio’s Marketplace; it was a rewarding, high-status job, and Tess was very good at it—but she’d begun to feel restless. Without any definite, clear sense of what she wanted to do next (but an absolute certainty that what she’d been doing was no longer truly satisfying), she walked away from her dream job and into a vast unknown. Suddenly she was no longer “Marketplace’s Tess Vigeland,” she was just Tess Vigeland.

For the multitude of Americans who change jobs mid-career (by choice or circumstance), the growing legions of freelance workers, and the entrepreneurially-minded who see self-employment as an increasingly more appealing and viable option, Tess Vigeland has created a personal and well-researched account of leaping without a net. With her signature humor, she writes honestly about the fear, uncertainty, and risk involved in leaving the traditional workforce—but also the excitement, resources, and possibilities that are on the other side.

Leap is also about finding a new definition of success. Tess poses the important question, “Who am I without my job?” She shares the accounts of people who struggled with this question before and after they took their own leap of faith, and they ended up finding out more about themselves than they’d thought possible. Success doesn’t have to be measured by salary or a traditional career path, as so many of us are conditioned to think, but by your own happiness and fulfillment.

Part memoir and part field guide, this book offers a funny, thoughtful, and provocative look at how to find satisfaction and success when pursuing a career less ordinary.