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About Pursuing Dice Making
Are you pursuing a path that aligns with your passions? In this episode, Lauren Schipper shares her journey as a former physical therapist who took a leap into the world of dice making. She shares how she followed her love for art and creativity, which she initially overlooked due to societal expectations and other, family influences.
Lauren highlights the long hours and inadequate compensation in her physical therapy roles, as well as the inflexibility of work schedules after becoming a mother. She realized that outpatient ortho was not fulfilling her and found out that dice making aligned with her identity and values. The advent of COVID-19 served as a catalyst for her, who, despite the uncertainties of the pandemic, found clarity in her desire to pursue dice making full-time.
This transition was met with a mix of support and skepticism from her peers and family. Yet, she persevered, fueled by her passion and the joy her new career brought her. In this episode, we will talk about discovering your passions and true calling in life, how Lauren found harmony and balance in an alternative career like dice making, and how she handled her family’s skepticism.
Staying in a profession that doesn’t align with one’s true passion can hinder our personal growth and overall well-being. Lauren’s story is a reminder that the journey to personal fulfillment can sometimes require bold decisions and the willingness to embrace the unknown. Listen to her transition from the structured world of healthcare to the boundless realm of creativity and entrepreneurship.
Resources
- Lauren’s Website Busy Wizard Dice
- Lauren’s Instagram
- Lauren’s YouTube
Related episodes
- From Physical Therapist to Cornell MBA with Keith Liao DPT, MBA, Entrepreneur 030
- Beyond the Clinic: Where Knitting and Physical Therapy Collide, with Andrea Lui PT 036
- TJ4: How to Create More Alignment in Your Life 045
This show is supported by
- This month’s sponsor is Engage Movement, the go-to solution for rehab professionals looking to increase their earnings without extending their work hours. Visit EngageMovement.com/rehabrebels and use the promo code REBELS to unlock your training for FREE!
Transcript of Lauren’s Dice Making Career Journey
Intro 00:01
Welcome to the Rehab Rebels podcast. Are you a rehab professional ready to transition to an alternative career? Hear inspiring stories from others just like you and learn the best ways to bridge your career gap. This podcast has you covered. Now here’s your host, doctor of physical therapy and podcaster, Tanner Welsh.
Tanner Welsch 00:21
Welcome back to another episode of Rehab Rebels. For this particular episode, I’m going to introduce the universals in the particular of this episode with Lauren. Big takeaway the universal in her story is that sometimes our chosen career path may not align with our true passion and values. In this case, Lauren discovered her love for art and creativity, which she initially overlooked due to societal expectations and other family influences. Her journey teaches us the importance of recognizing our authentic interests, even if it means stepping away from traditional paths and finding fulfillment and unconventional career choices that resonate with our true selves. So let’s start diving a little bit with the bio of Lauren and a little background and then we’ll invite her on the show. Lauren’s from St Louis, missouri. She attended MGH in Boston for her DPT and she’s currently a handmade dice maker. And a little brief work history she worked with preschoolers with special needs. Lauren, welcome to the show.
Lauren Schipper 01:36
Awesome. Yeah, hi, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Tanner Welsch 01:38
Yeah, I gotta ask what are those letters with the school?
Lauren Schipper 01:42
So it stands for MGH Institute of Health Professions, and MGH being MassGen Hospital.
Tanner Welsch 01:48
Oh, wow.
Lauren Schipper 01:49
So the hospital founded their own grad school that just does PT OT speech. I feel like they have a master’s in public health now too. But I think its official name is just MGH Institute of Health Professions.
Tanner Welsch 02:00
Oh wow, dang, OK, yeah, that’s quite a prestigious place, very cool.
Lauren Schipper 02:05
Yeah, we do anatomy at Harvard and stuff. It was so much fun, I loved it.
Tanner Welsch 02:10
Awesome, the brief work history with preschoolers working with special needs. Can you talk a little bit about that? Was that shortly after graduating PT school or?
Lauren Schipper 02:21
The fun thing is I thought about working with kids when I was applying for PT schools and then I went to school in Boston where there’s six PT schools and not as many people as you would think in general. So if you wanted to work with peds, if you got an internship in school, you could, and if you didn’t, you were never going to work in peds. So I graduated and went right to outpatient ortho because you know that’s what you do and was happily working in outpatient ortho. And then we moved from Boston to New York City, worked again in outpatient ortho and was just at a soul crushing job. Really didn’t like it, didn’t like my boss, didn’t like my hours. And my sister-in-law was didn’t you want to work with kids? And I was like, oh, I did. I did want to work with kids.
02:58
So I just applied to every job that I could in New York City that was a PT job with kids. And I found one that was at a school that was specifically for kids with special needs and my wonderful boss was I was like I have no experience, I just have general PT. If you will accept our terrible pay, I will train you. And I was like yes, 100% I will, and I was the last PT they were able to hire because it paid so bad. So that’s when I started working with kids and she trained me and all the other. There were two other PTs there and everyone was super welcoming and wonderful, as I was. What are we doing? It was an absolute joy and delight. I mean, when your day gets to go to the playground and teach your kids how to climb on a climbing gym and then blow bubbles, those days were heaven. And then, of course, you know, admin changes and everything goes downhill.
Tanner Welsch 03:49
We’ll come back to that. Ok, we’ll come back to that. Let’s go back to what made you decide to become a rehab professional, a PT, in the first place.
Lauren Schipper 04:16
Yeah, I come from a family of doctors. Both my parents are physicians, my stepdad’s a physician, my stepmom is a med device rep. So as far as I knew, that was either doctor or nurse. That’s all I knew that existed. And then I took a physiology class. I went to Washington University in St Louis for undergrad. I took a human physiology class and it was by a woman who was a PT and had a PhD in physiology and I was she’s amazing. I should do that, but I focused on the PhD in physiology part. I don’t want to get my PhD. What am I going to do with this PhD? I don’t know.
04:46
And then I just sat like an idiot and walked like an idiot because you know, I was in college and my posture was terrible and I was mentioning to her that I had a ton of back pain and she just looked at me and she was we need to work on your posture, you need to go to see a PT.
05:02
And I was oh, that other thing that you do in addition to being the most amazing teacher at this school. And I walked in and the PT was just, she was so wonderful and knowledgeable and she just took her hands and just corrected me, put me back up to where I was supposed to be. I had such terrible sway back and I had my shoulders down because I had been pulling them down. Because I was so worried about lifting them up because I studied and had so much tension in my body, I was I surely should pull these down more. So I over pulled my shoulders down and I was oh, I don’t hurt anymore. This is amazing, this is magic.
05:34
80% of my pain was gone in the first day and I was I want to do this, this is what I want to do. At that point I was still I’m going to be a PT. And then there was a month where I was going to be a zookeeper Just six months where my whole life trajectory was just all over the place. And then I did follow the PT thread and went in that direction.
Tanner Welsch 05:51
And what was the story behind the first sense of awareness that things weren’t quite right?
Lauren Schipper 05:55
as a physical therapist working as a physical therapist, Well, first it was when I was working with adults and I was. This isn’t quite filling me the way I want it to.
Tanner Welsch 06:04
Tell us more about that. Why isn’t quite filling me the way I want it to? Tell us more about that. Why isn’t it filling you up? Why isn’t it filling?
Lauren Schipper 06:07
your cup up, I don’t know. And isn’t that so scary after you’ve just spent so much money to be like, oh no, maybe this isn’t what I’m supposed to do? And I was working in outpatient and I had at least two, if not three, patients at a time. Sometimes I had four, which was only when someone we thought was going to cancel actually showed up. But I was getting a little overworked and a little bored. It’s definitely also when you’re brand new and you’re like, oh, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not good at this, maybe I should just stop. So I stuck with that company until we moved.
06:35
And then I moved to a whole different vibe With Boston. I had been working in the basement of a rec center. Most of my patients were on Medicaid. I actually really, really enjoyed working with that population and really helping out, because I know it’s also very hard for people who are on Medicaid to find good PT. So it was really fulfilling there. And then I went to New York City and worked in a you know one hour one-on-one Pilates based outpatient where, like most of my patients were stock traders, stockbrokers. There we go I’ve worked at the Fed and stuff and I was like, oh, there’s some whiplash here, but my boss was terrible, so I again felt entirely unfulfilled. And that’s when I was like, oh, I should work with kids, and then that was so much fun until it wasn’t.
Tanner Welsch 07:20
The place that you said that the boss was terrible but you were working with, it seems like a decent population of adults. I think some of them were stock traders and stuff. What was it about that environment that, I’m assuming made you shift into going to work with Pete’s?
Lauren Schipper 07:34
It was mainly my boss and the hours were so terrible because, you know New York, everyone works late. My rush started at six, so I’d be at work until eight, and then I would have to write all my notes At night. My rush started at six, so I’d be at work until eight and then. I would have to write all my notes at night. Yeah, yeah, I would like not get home till nine sometimes I mean, at this point, no kids. Young in New York I was, oh, this works, but it didn’t, and then she wouldn’t pay me. She also made me 10.99 when I should have been a W-2. And the kicker is that I interviewed with a PT and she was great, and then she was oh well, my other co-owner of these two clinics is going to be working with you there and I’m like that’s great. She’s going to be fine. She was not. She was an acupuncturist and she kept telling me what to do and being do you know how?
08:13
to read an MRI and then they hired a chiro pushing me to make all my patients go to him and I did not like him and it was just, I’m done, I’m not dealing with you anymore. I think it was there for six months. I was basically the head PT at this clinic because there was no other PTs there. I was the first one. I really loved being in charge of everything. If something breaks, I’m going to go be the one to fix it. Our windows didn’t open, which makes sense in a New York high rise, but also it was so hot with the heat was on, so I figured out how to disable the window locks so that we could open them and not roast. But she was just so mean and disheartening that I was. I don’t need this. I’m going to go chase children and get paid, so much less.
Tanner Welsch 08:54
Okay, yes, and you love this environment and everything, and you were talking about some administration changes, and so tell us how? How come it didn’t work out long term? What’s the story there?
Lauren Schipper 09:19
at school because I left in 2020. So I’m sorry if I’m not quite using the right term. All of my children had IEPs. That’s just the blanket term that I would use. But when working with my kiddos, as I would call them, there were a lot of behavioral issues with some of the children, and figuring out how to actually work with these kids took training. You couldn’t walk in off the street and be like, oh, I’m just going to babysit a kid, working with them in productive manners in ways that weren’t mean. You had to be trained on, and when I started, we were. We had amazing support. We had a school psychologist. We had a school ABA who used it in a very productive and loving way, not the way that I know. A lot of people really hate ABA for just drilling things into kids’ heads. We didn’t use it like that.
09:59
We had really good support and we felt what we said as therapists mattered to the admin about like, oh, you know, we need more time for this. You can’t make us write eight progress reports in one month and just slowly we got bought out by a new company and I received one raise in the five years that I worked there and it was for $1 an hour and they went from covering our insurance to not covering our insurance and taking away overtime. When they ask us to write six progress reports for our kids which also involves writing a new IEP for them in one month while also doing all your other requirements and it just wore us all down. And then they took us to a new school and increased our gym space by literally 300%. I did the math because I was so mad and I was like no, no, I’m not coming back here. They gave us a space for the gym and a space for our offices and we ended up separating out half of the office space so that the OTs would actually have a place to work with our kids, because we didn’t have any space.
10:55
And at that point I was very pregnant. I think we moved when I was five or six months pregnant with my daughter and I knew I was not coming back, so I just decided to be a pain in the butt. I had a staff meeting and they’re like you know, things are going to get better. And I was when? How? Because you’re doing X, y, z, which everyone wanted to say, but everyone’s like okay, I don’t want to get fired and I’m just so incredibly pregnant I’m like they’re not going to do anything to me, so I’m going to say what everyone here wants to say.
Tanner Welsch 11:24
No, I totally get it. I had some similar experiences in my first PT job where it was just so many different things were just falling apart and it was just nobody would listen. Nothing was actually changing. It was either they tell you what you think you want to hear, just to keep you quiet, or it’s this is what corporate says, we can’t do anything about it. And it’s no, this, I can’t do this anymore. So I totally, totally relate. This is the third time I think I’ve heard that where there’s been situations where you guys were pregnant and, for whatever reason, the situation either wasn’t getting better or and or got worse and you guys already made the decision Nope, not coming back to this after I give birth and all that. So there’s, there’s something about that that is a pivotal point for y’all.
Lauren Schipper 12:16
Yeah, it’s a very easy exit point, that’s for sure. I had a whole other school that I was planning on shifting to that. One of my friends, one of the PTs, actually had left and moved to another school and she’s like yeah, no it’s pretty good Right after I have my kid I’m gonna take six months off. I’m gonna go work at that school. Gonna be great. And then COVID hit in New York City and everything pivoted.
Tanner Welsch 12:37
For sure. So what made you decide to go down this new career path of creating dice professionally?
Lauren Schipper 12:46
Yeah, so I had been making dice as a hobby starting in 2019, April 2019. And I had really liked it. I found it fulfilling. I had gained myself a little following on Instagram. I was selling my dice on Etsy and already work in mid to late 2019. I just when we saw the things weren’t going great at work and I remember sitting in my office and being like, okay, how many dice do I have to make per week to be equivalent to what I make at this job? Okay, how long does it take me to make dice? Could I do that? And there was a part of me that I could do that. I think I can do that, but it was still just a hobby. And the funny thing is I was charging like $40 a set for at that point. I charge much more now and I like how little Lauren was, I could totally do this, charging 30, 40 bucks a set, like no, you really couldn’t have, girl, but I like your gusto for thinking that you work that quickly, yeah. So I had already started thinking about it and my husband was being very supportive. He was like you know, whatever you think you want to do, I believe in you to make it work.
13:45
So once everything shut down in New York City and it became very clear that the school that I wanted to switch to working to was all remote and I mean I’m sure there are plenty of people here that had to do PT over remote who are listening and realize that that’s not great. Working with my kiddos over Zoom in their homes also not great. Trying to get the parent to facilitate. So I had, I think, 20, 21 kids on my schedule and I emailed all the parents. You know here’s what we’re going to do. It did take my school four weeks to figure out how to do online courses because they were just so disorganized and I think I saw four kids. Half my parents were Spanish speaking so we had to figure out an interpreter so that none of them even reached back out. One of my Spanish speaking parents did, which is great because it was one of my kiddos who really needed PT. She was walking for the first time independently and it was so exciting for all of us because she was four and had been mainly in walkers and wheelchairs and we got her walking. But I got one session with her because we had to have a sibling translate. It was not great. So it became very clear that that was not a fulfilling way to do PT either.
14:52
Once my daughter was born and I finished maternity leave, I was I’m out, and we realized also that we didn’t want to live in New York City in an apartment anymore with a baby. So we moved to St Louis, Missouri, which is where I’m from, and they don’t have preschools that are just all for kiddos with special needs. That’s one thing that really made that job so special is that everyone was in one spot. We had the OTs across the hall, we had the speech therapist just down the hall, the speech therapist just down the hall, we had our school psychologist, everyone in house and we all work together so well as a team, and that doesn’t really happen outside of New York. So I realized I didn’t want to drive from school to school doing PT with kids in hallways. I was like you know what? Let’s do, dice, let’s follow this little dream, let’s see if it works. And that was mid 2021. And now here we are.
Tanner Welsch 15:37
What were some of the first signs of traction, and really the story and emotions behind it, with this Dice making career journey?
Lauren Schipper 15:45
I think my first one was when I had my first viral tweet that got nine or 10,000 likes, which was huge in the Dice community back then. I know it was very exciting. I was very newly pregnant with my daughter and I got a ton of orders and oh, people like this, people are willing to pay for this. Even though it was 60 bucks, I think, for that set, my poor buyers had to wait 12 weeks, if not longer, for those dice and everyone was super happy to just wait, as I was sorry I had to. You know, I had to order handmade flowers from a woman who lives in Ukraine and so that took a while. But yeah, everyone was super nice about waiting and excited about the next thing that I was going to make and my custom commission slots were filling up and I was, oh, I think I can do this, but I’m also, you know, working a full time job, so I get home at 430 and then would immediately start making dice until 11 pm.
Tanner Welsch 16:39
So were you working as a PT full time and then doing this when you got?
Lauren Schipper 16:40
home on the side thing, yeah, so I did that up until my daughter was born. Because resin fumes are really toxic, I made myself a little casting tent out of a grow tent so I could vent the fumes directly out of my apartment and stuff. But you have to shower after every time you cast and babies don’t like to wait. So there was no chance of me getting to do resin work because if she woke up from a nap early and I was fully suited up and had resin on my hand, that wasn’t gonna work. So I took like a fifth I think it was a 15 month break from making dice after my daughter was born because they had to move and get her into daycare and all that stuff.
Tanner Welsch 17:16
Okay, yeah, that totally makes sense, for sure. And then, after she was in daycare, is that when you resumed back to the dice making?
Lauren Schipper 17:24
Yep, pretty much. She went into daycare and I got into full. Let’s get this going. At first she was only there three days a week and I was. I don’t have enough time to make dice. I need to get rid of full time so I can really dive into this. That was mid 2021. And ever since then I’ve just been continuing to work to try and make myself more efficient so I can just make as many dice as possible.
Tanner Welsch 17:47
Absolutely. Yeah, you know you’re like a business owner. What would you say is a struggle, a big personal struggle, that you went through with this transition from being a PT leaving the field into going all in on your professional dice making that you’re willing to share, and how did you overcome that challenge?
Lauren Schipper 18:04
I think the biggest challenge for me was definitely the side eye that I was getting from my family. Yes, thank you for supporting me as I became a PT. My parents are also physicians, so I definitely got it like, oh, you’re going into PT. And then I was like, yes, and it’s great and you will respect me. It was great when my dad finally had to go to PT for himself and he was like, oh, and I was like, yes, yes, you get it now. And then to leave that and be like I do art now.
Tanner Welsch 18:31
I make dice for a living. Yeah, I don’t even do like traditional fine art. I’m not doing oil paintings in the garden, I make dice. I open with. I’m Lauren, I make dice for games like Dungeons and Dragons. Respect for from your, your colleagues, from your family, about your decision to actually do this full time, professionally and create a business. Where was that moment that they were like, oh oh, oh, okay, I see you now. I respect you, I see what you’re doing yeah.
Lauren Schipper 19:08
So the fun thing is my colleagues will go for it. Knew it? This is amazing. I texted some of my PT friends because I needed some particular sprinkles that I couldn’t buy in the Midwest. I had to have them buy them for me in New York City and it was my old boss. She was like, so you’re doing Dice full time now? And I was like, yeah, she’s like that’s so great.
Tanner Welsch 19:26
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Lauren Schipper 19:27
They were always so supportive because doing cool, fun things and I also had my kids and needed a more flexible schedule than being an outpatient. And when I had been an outpatient you had to work until 7 pm some days and that was perfectly fine when I had no kids. And now, oh, they’re going to make me work till 7? My kids go down at 7. And inpatient isn’t for me. All my friends who were moms were like, oh yeah, no. And then, yeah, my family who were you know, my parents and my sisters who do not have children my one sister who is now a resident in pediatric neurology, and my other sister who is a missile defense engineer.
Tanner Welsch 20:00
Oh my gosh.
Lauren Schipper 20:08
I know, and I was just a lowly PD, I’d be like well, one of us went to Harvard, and it was at least me.
Tanner Welsch 20:09
I at least have that going for me, there you go.
Lauren Schipper 20:11
There was definitely a little bit of side eye there, but I also just was feeling so happy and fulfilled and just knew that this was working so well for my family and for me. That I mean also therapy for years, Like I don’t really care what my dad thinks.
Tanner Welsch 20:26
Yeah, absolutely.
Lauren Schipper 20:28
Yeah, here’s the thing he also has never overtly said anything about. Oh, I can’t believe you’ve done that, but you can just tell a vibe sometime. And it’s so funny. We were meeting new people in like a big dinner setting a few weeks ago and a guy that my dad had been talking to before came and like sat down with me and my sisters. I’m like, oh, I want to hear about everything that you do. Your dad was telling me so much about you and I was like, wait me first. What did my dad actually say I do? And he goes I don’t think he actually told me what you do and I was like, aha.
Tanner Welsch 20:54
Caught him.
Lauren Schipper 20:55
I was like I’d make dice and he’s like that’s so cool, tell me about that thing. Most people are like that’s so cool, tell me more about it. And, honestly, if someone doesn’t, we’re just not going to be friends. We were never meant to be friends. You aren’t started following my Instagram and seeing I’m actually really good at this. I make very cool things.
21:21
He was very impressed with the Star Wars set that I make, where I have like there’s a starry background and then seven different Star Wars ships floating in some clear resin, so when you roll it it looks like the dice or the ships are around in space. And I also made a set of dice using the sawdust from some walnut that he had for like 25 years, that we got milled a long time ago, and he was using it to make a mantle and I was like, oh, this sawdust looks cool. And I filled a cup with it and I put it in dice and he was, oh yeah, I do really cool work, dad. It’s been a lot of me just being very confident in myself and realizing that this just brings me so much joy that I actually just don’t care what pretty much anyone thinks at this point.
Tanner Welsch 22:02
For sure. What would you say you love most about your new reality as a dice maker?
Lauren Schipper 22:08
I definitely. I love getting to create things with my hands. I always thought that, you know, I was going to find the most fulfillment with helping people. I’m just helping my people in a different way now. I’m helping them get the exact set of dice that they’ve always wanted to find but couldn’t find. I love the creative aspect of they come to me with an idea and then I turn it into a design and then I make it into dice and then I send them the pictures or the video of it and they’re always it’s amazing. But yeah, it’s just, I love creating things with my hands. I love thinking up something and then seeing it come to fruition and getting to do just different things all the time.
Tanner Welsch 22:46
What did you learn as a PT in the rehab career that you apply to your new career as a Dice Maker?
Lauren Schipper 22:53
I’ve been thinking about this because there’s not a ton of overlap between the two. There’s a lot of asking people questions to clarify exactly what their pain. Okay, is it like this? Is it sharp? Is it stabbing? Is it here? Is it when you do this? Is it when you do that? Does it get better when you do this? And for me there’s a lot of okay, what do you want? Do you mean this? Do you mean that? When you say a color, do you want it to look like this? Do you want to look like that? Do you want this?
23:14
It’s a lot of putting things together into a whole, but I think most importantly is for me as a content creator, because I mean, I am a dice maker but a lot of what I do is content creation. I have to make videos that people want to watch, to, then want to buy my stuff, which means that I have to do voiceover all the time and I have to think of something to say for two videos every day on TikTok Well, four days a week on TikTok and then I use those videos for every day on everything else. And I think that PT thing that you get, where you just have to learn how to talk to people, do small talk and sound cheery, no matter what’s going on. That kind of element I think I actually use a lot.
Tanner Welsch 23:54
Yeah, those interpersonal skills for sure. Yeah. What would you say is obvious to you now that you struggled to see in the moment? They always say you know hindsight’s 20-20. But what’s obvious to you now that you struggle to see getting to where you are when you are working as a physical therapist?
Lauren Schipper 24:09
That I’m just an art kid. I think I’ve always been meant to do art when I was working until 9 pm at night and I couldn’t even come home and like cook, which I now realize is like creating something with my hands and having like a tangible product. That’s what put me down of really hating that job is I couldn’t create anything. I had no time, and once I got a different job and I was able to start cooking again, I was able to start doing my hobbies again, like crochet. Downstairs I have three crochet projects and a needlepoint project going on right now.
24:34
I am always making something with my hands and I think I should have just admitted that to myself a long time ago, my senior year of high school, I could have had more free periods, but instead I took 10 periods of art. I took ceramics and black and white photography and my friends were like you could come hang out with us. I was like, no, no, I need to go throw some ceramics right now. This is what I want to be doing. So, yeah, but I mean, when you grow up in, it’s not a high pressure situation.
25:00
I did go to a private school for high school, so then, of course, you go off to college and then you find your career, and then you go to grad school for that career, and then your parents are doctors. So you’re supposed to be something too. It’s just you follow the path that seems like the right one, because you don’t become a professional artist. That’s not a thing. Dice making is art. I’ve come to realize, because for a while I was, oh no, I’m just making dice, I’m making art. They’re just functional art and tiny resin art.
Tanner Welsch 25:24
It seems like several people in your class at least a handful of them are doing these alternative things, and he’s one of them. He’s on episode 30.
Lauren Schipper 25:33
Oh cool. I don’t know exactly what he’s doing this day, so I’m gonna have to go listen to that because he’s an MBA star. Yeah, my husband was going to get got his MBA at the same time that I was getting my PT degree and just a few years after he graduated he was Can I talk to Chris about MBA stuff? And in my head I was like Keith, we just spent all this money on PT school. What are you doing? I get it now, Keith.
Tanner Welsch 25:53
Was Andrea in your class too.
Lauren Schipper 25:55
Yeah, Andrea was one of my closest friends. We hung out all the time.
Tanner Welsch 25:58
Okay, and she’s in episode 30. So, yeah, I thought that was wow. There’s like a group of you guys that were just definitely not going the traditional route and doing your own thing, so I thought that was pretty sweet.
Lauren Schipper 26:10
Yeah, I love how Andrea came into it with just realizing that she loved knitting and then being like, oh, I can do some ergonomics tips, and then just running with that and I refer people, crafters to her stuff all the time because they’re like oh, my hands hurt when I’m crocheting or when I’m sanding dice and I was like go, go, go, go, look at everything she makes.
Tanner Welsch 26:29
Right, I believe we’re ready to close. Do you have any book recommendations or advice for? You know, those that are in the rehab field but maybe want to do something like what you did. They want to start a hobby, or they have a hobby and want to take it full time. What are some tips or advice you got for them?
Lauren Schipper 26:46
Absolutely. I have no book advice. I have two small children, I do not have time to read. But turning a hobby into your profession, I almost always say don’t do it, because it does suck the fun out of it. This is actually my third hobby that I’ve turned into money and it’s the only one that is actually stuck. I did crocheting and I had an Etsy shop, but as soon as people started paying me for it, it sucked the fun right out of it. And I did mini painting painting miniatures. No one apparently wants to actually pay for that and let me tell you I was really good at it but it’s a fluke.
27:21
I think that I’ve been doing this for so long and I haven’t had any burnout, except for when I overtly push myself too hard and work late into the night and stuff like that, and when I respect myself as a person who is more than just my job. This is just such a joyful career. So I think, knowing that you like, love your hobby, maybe stick your toes and get an Etsy shop. Etsy’s fees are ridiculous, but it is a great way to dip your toes into. Do I actually still enjoy this when people pay me for it, and I think that’s the the biggest thing, because if you feel like, oh, this isn’t fun anymore, don’t, don’t do it. Don’t do it, because forcing yourself to craft which should be done with love and joy, forcing yourself to craft which should be done with love and joy is just so, so soul sucking. I feel so incredibly lucky that I am able to do this and I still work in the evening sometimes if I feel like I haven’t gotten enough done, but it doesn’t feel soul sucking anymore. So I just happened to have found the perfect combination of me and this craft that just seems to work. So, basically, don’t force it.
Tanner Welsch 28:15
Yeah, for sure. I love how you tried and tested some things out and just kept going and didn’t give up, for sure. So little closing remarks here. Staying in a profession that doesn’t align with one’s true passion can hinder our personal growth and overall well-being, and our call to action is, I would say, to reflect on our current career satisfaction and flexibility. Are we pursuing a path that aligns with our passions? If not, it’s time to explore alternative career options that offer both fulfillment, flexibility, align with our values. The journey to a more satisfying and flexible career may require stepping out of conventional paths, but the rewards are well worth the leap. Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your journey. It’s been a pleasure.
Lauren Schipper 29:03
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Tanner Welsch 29:05
Anytime.
Outro 29:06
Thank you for listening to the Rehab Rebels podcast. If this podcast was useful, make sure to hit that subscribe button and leave a review. For more information about transitioning to alternative careers, head to rehabrebels.org or follow us on Instagram at Rehab Rebels podcast. We’ll see you next time.
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