While it’s not quite as drastic as relocating from Park Avenue to a park bench, last year TV reporter and financial journalist Vera Gibbons made a big downsize, moving from her spacious Carnegie Hill apartment — complete with its expensive custom furniture and luxurious Stark carpet — to a tiny, 500-square-foot studio.
“I couldn’t afford to keep it,” she says of her former abode.
It wasn’t that she had overspent, but rather that she wasn’t getting booked nearly as often as she had before.
“They [the bookers] went from calling me all the time to 10 times a month, to five, to barely calling at all,” says the 52-year-old, who spent the better part of two decades appearing on networks like CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Gibbons’ on-air appearances fell from around 20 television spots per month to two, which translates to less than 10 percent of her former income — nowhere near enough to pay her bills without tapping into her savings. As a reporter who educated people in managing their finances, Gibbons knew that a lifestyle change was a must.
“Sitting at home [in the Park Avenue apartment] eating ramen noodles, waiting around and panicking wasn’t going to change that,” she says.
Gibbons also recognized that the tide for her kind of reporting had been turning in the wrong direction. She had been treading water since before the 2016 election, with bookers telling her that she wasn’t getting any airtime on programs like “The Early Show” and “Today” because audiences were hungry for political news, not subjects like how to make the most of your 401(k), save at the gas pump or find the best Black Friday deals.
“They kept telling me ‘maybe next week,’ ” she says, explaining that the television bookers insisted that people would eventually get tired of all politics, all the time. But that never happened.
“I was trumped by Trump,” says Gibbons.
For a few short seconds, she thought about taking a job at the front desk of a local health club so that she could pay her bills, but that wasn’t what she was passionate about or what she knew. Besides, Gibbons was pretty sure that other people were also tired of all politics all the time, so she tested the waters by posting the kind of news she would have covered on television on social media.
“I quickly got hundreds of likes,” she says.
Gibbons took that as an indication that she was onto something and bought two Internet domains (NonPoliticalNews.com is the one that stuck), built a Web site with a friend’s help and established accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
Next, she created an e-mail newsletter, NoPo, which exposes news stories in four areas: consumer and personal finance, beauty and fashion, health and wellness, and diet and fitness.
Gibbons partners with a team of unpaid interns who scour the Internet in search of hot stories and send them to her. She wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to curate the newsletter, then e-mails it out to her 25,000 subscribers. That’s a number she is proud of, given that she started with one subscriber in 2017: her mom.
“NoPo is growing like gangbusters,” she says, noting that her readers range from New York Islanders owner Jon Ledecky, to CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth, to socialites Jean Shafiroff and Felicia Taylor. NoPo subscribers live everywhere from New York to Dubai to Hong Kong to Los Angeles.
Talk to Gibbons and it becomes obvious that any time anyone signs up for the newsletter she is thrilled, even though she isn’t drawing a paycheck at this time. That’s because NoPo News is free, and it doesn’t have any advertisers.
While Gibbons has already been approached by a few venture capitalists who want to invest in her business, she’s keeping them at bay, choosing to bootstrap instead and remain self-sufficient. When she reaches 100,000 subscribers, she’ll look to monetize.
In the meantime, she’ll keep her eye out for news and her fingers on the keyboards, thrilled that she found a way to keep using her skills — just in a new way.
We asked Gibbons and a few select career advisors about how to pivot your career when you reach a dead-end but want to keep doing what you love.
Say yes
Accept every meeting, every conference, every introduction. It may lead to something, says Gibbons.
Network with your second-level connections
“The people you have worked with at your jobs tend to pigeonhole you in a box,” says Rick Aronstein, a partner at True Search, an international executive search firm. “Their connections, who don’t know you as well, usually don’t, so they will be more open-minded when they give you advice.”
Take stock of what you love to do
What aspects of your career expertise do you enjoy? Lean into those and steer clear of those you don’t, Aronstein says.
Careers are rarely straight paths. Embrace the twists and turns and rest assured that hard work pays off eventually, says Gibbons.
Flip the supply chain
Find adjacencies in your field, says Aronstein. If you’re selling x, think about jobs in receiving x. Examples might be: If you sell ads, consider jobs in buying ads. If you are an external recruiter who provides services to corporations, think about being the person in a corporation that buys headhunter services.