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

First, my hand to my heart in thanks to the nearly three thousand attendees of the 2013 World Domination Summit who listened and lifted me up as I shared my story from the stage of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon. Your response that July morning is the inspiration for these pages, and you are all here in my bathtub full of kittens.

J. D. Roth is the reason I gave that speech. He asked me to do it. I said no, Im not going to talk about one of the most difficult periods of my life in front of thousands of strangers, because that is not my idea of a good time. He said, Thats exactly why you should do it. I will never be able to fully express the gratitude I feel for his confidence in me and in my story. Thanks to Chris Guillebeau, the founder of WDS, for saying yes when J.D. suggested me as a speaker and for not panicking when I still had no idea, two weeks before the event, what I was going to say onstage.

To the eighty-plus of you who agreed to share your leap stories with me for this book: I couldnt include all of you, much as I wanted to! But please know that you all contributed to what I learned and ultimately shared here. This is your book, too.

Rick Horgan sent me an e-mail the night of the speech in which he wrote, Im Chris Guillebeaus editor at Random House. I was in the audience this morning, and I keep seeing a book title: What the Hell Do I Do Now? Eleven days later we had a deal. Eleven days! The book title changed, and along the way our editing relationship was cut lamentably short, but I credit Rick with, and thank him for, seeing my potential as an author, not just a radio voice.

Eric Nelson called after I left Marketplace to see if I wanted to write a book about personal finance. Uhno. But he became my literary agent in those interim eleven days between speech and book deal and helped keep me on track. Deepest gratitude to Susan Rabiner for stepping in when Eric left for a new opportunity.

Leah Miller joined the team about a year into the process and proved to be a formidable manuscript editor. Thank you for understanding what I did and did not want this book to be, and for helping to shape it for the better. Diana Baroni picked up the ball after Leahs departure, and Im grateful to her for making sure we got it over the goal line. Thank you to Penguin Random House for making me a published author.

Ive been blessed with talented and generous colleagues over my twenty-plus-year career. Tom Goldman gave me my start in public radio. Henry Sessions was an early radio role model, and I couldnt have asked for a better TV co-anchor and friend than Jim Leinfelder. David Greene signed me to the team at Only a Game in Boston, joining Gary Waleik and my eventual maid-of-honor Katy Clark, and Bill Littlefield, who was and always will be the writer I strive to emulate without any real hope of doing so. There is no more talented radio editor on the planet than (Uncle) Ken Bader, who polished my prose in the WBUR newsroom, and Lisa Mullins is the consummate friend and radio host who to this day schools the rest of us in How Its Done. And while I was off the radio track for a couple of years, Norman Birnbach proved that being a good boss and a good friend dont have to be mutually exclusive.

I will always be grateful to J. J. Yore and Jim Russell for hiring me in 2001 to host the Marketplace Morning Report, the start of eleven years inside the newsroom where I so desperately wanted to work from the outset of my career. That shop gave me access to extraordinary colleagues for more than a decade, none more so than Paddy Hirsch, who served as the senior producer of Marketplace Money in my final year there. I wish we could have taken the show where we wanted it to go and where it deserved to go, but, instead, as my friend, Paddy gave me the confidence and strength to leave a place that was no longer good for me. He believed in my new future before I did.

To my Marketplace listeners: I miss you dearly and hope youre continuing to save more than you spend!

Teachers are everything in this world, and I am lucky to count among those who inspired me deeply: Bob Hamm, John Welty, the late Candy (Noyes) Morrison, Pat Lotz, and Dorothy Fahlman.

So many friends have contributed to this effort just by being there for me and engaging in heartfelt and helpful discussions about the Big Questions: Mia Dunn, Candice Rogers, Karen McManus, Sean and Diana Egusa, Matt and Nicole Janssen, Adam McIsaac (who also, let history show, sent the tweet that inspired the speech), Nat Katz, Heidi Moore, Liz Weston, Steve Chiotakis, Deb and Fabricio Lopez, Karen Kiefaber, Elizabeth Babor, and Julie Campoy. You may not have realized it at the time, but your counselover coffee, lunch, drinks, dinner, trips to Santa Barbara wine countrymade it possible for me to get my thoughts straight on what this book should really be about. And a giant bear hug to Bill and Nina Graham for providing a quiet space at Mammoth Lakes for me to think and write during this process.

My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, are the best a girl could ever hope for, and I cannot believe how fortunate I am that fate picked them for me. I love you more than I can possibly express, and I hope in these pages you find the gratitude I feel for being your daughter. Please take every bit of the credit for anything that is good and honorable about me.

And finally, to Dan: for not flinching that day in August 2012 when you came home to find me curled up in a ball in the backyard, sobbing that I have to quit. You never once questioned my decision or my ability to rebound from a deep sense of despair, betrayal, and fear. You have provided unyielding support for me and for my career throughout our relationship. For all of that, and so much more, thank you.