ļ»æToday's episode is a bit of a personal episode because I want to share a big news that's happening in my life but also share with you the journey that that I had to go through in order to end up in this position and it involves career pivoting. It involves navigating a changing ecosystem in the industry and as I am recording this it is April 2026 and it has been an adventure.
Being in the animation industry over the past few years and I had many emotions um many experiences, many aspects I was dissatisfied with and so throughout the last year I went on a bit of a dark journey of the soul thinking about is this what I want for the next 20 years of my career and if not what are the other opportunities that I have with this skill set and the experience that I have. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. Um if you are connected with me on LinkedIn, you might have already seen that I have recently been accepted as a PhD candidate and a doctoral researcher at Concordia University in the film and moving images studies department. So in the fine arts faculty and I am I could not be more excited about this turn of events. I could not be more excited to be taking on this journey over the next few years.
And in my PhD and my PhD research, I will be studying how the platformization of the animated content has impacted the business models, the organizational structures, but also the monetization of animated content. And my research is going to be focused more specifically on the Quebec ecosystem because that's where I live and work. But many of my findings and much of the data that I'm going to accumulate will also be pertinent to a much wider understanding of the animation ecosystem or even in the like the digital creation ecosystem.
And although it seems like it's just a post on LinkedIn which if we are not connected on LinkedIn please please connect I I would love that's my main social media so I would love for us to be connected there so it seems like it just happened one day and I posted it on LinkedIn with a cute photo but it was actually a whole journey together and a lot of people in the community have been sharing with me that they are considering maybe pivoting they are considering staying in the industry but maybe changing or like upskilling, adding different things to their resume so that they have more opportunities in the industry. Some people are also flat out thinking about working in a different industry, maybe even leaving animation behind and doing something else entirely, whether it's still be producing content or not. And I understand the community members, if your experience of the past few years has been anything like mine, it's been a bit disheartening.
Seeing everything that's going on and just like the landscape is changing so fast. It can be extremely overwhelming. It can make us feel insecure. It can sometimes feel like there's no way to predict if we're even going to have a career in the next few years or not. And on my end, it did create a lot of questioning. I wouldn't say anxiety, but there were a lot of questioning and just like self-awareness and in-depth analysis. And career pivoting is not something that's easy to do necessarily. And I'm not saying that that's what I'm currently doing, but considering pivoting in your career is something that can be very hard, especially if you spent the last like 20 years like me. Building a career that you love, working hard to thrive in an environment where maybe being a woman wasn't so accepted 20 years ago or, you know, we do a creative we have a creative career. So, it's not always as much of a straight line as some other fields of work.
And for me, I think it was kind of a long time coming that I needed to find a new purpose and a new way to impact my professional community. So, we created the Happy Producers about 5 years ago. And the Happy Producers is a mission-based company. Our goal is to help the people in the industry thrive. And the way that we decided to do so five years ago. Before that, we had a consultancy business. And we decided to start creating courses that can help our peers have healthier, smoother productions while making more money and having bigger profits. We have courses that help you lower stress in everyday production. And a lot of our courses are about production and project management processes, but also the mindset that you need in order to be able to succeed in a fast-paced iterative competitive industry like the animation industry and building the happy producers was such a labor of love. There was a lot of joy in doing so.
At first, we were really focused on project management and well-being. And throughout the years, as the community needs shifted, we shifted as well. And over the past two years, a lot of our courses have been about translating a creative idea into a resource assessment. So, we have bidding, winning, animated projects that is one of our most popular courses where we help you take an idea and translate it into a budget, a bid, a crew mapping, a schedule, etc. And we've also been giving a lot of workshops on animators that want to become entrepreneurs, starting launching a business or growing your solo business. And we've also given a lot of live workshops on financing and marketing for animated projects. And we've loved doing all of this and I'm doing this with my husband. I don't know if you know LP and I are actually married. We have been working together for a very very long time.
It's been we're celebrating 10 years this year of working together full-time and it's been a journey and it has had amazing moments. But for me um I was starting to feel like I was ready for something fresh and I started seeing that there was another level of impact that I could have on the community and that there was just a higher level at which I could serve and that I could be using my skills to help my peers on a much deeper level. So when we started the happy producers um I had just left the studio system and so had LP. LP left the studio system a few years earlier and we were a little bit fed up if I'm just being honest, we had the opportunity to work in big vendor studios for most of our careers and accumulate like amazing credits on our IMDb and work on some of the most exciting IPs in the world like Game of Thrones and Pirates of the Caribbean. I worked with directors that I have admired for a long time. I worked with extremely proefficient artists and production team.
And it's not that I didn't love my studio career. I just felt like after 15 years in the studio system, I was ready for more freedom. I wanted more time freedom. I wanted more freedom of location. I wanted to be my own boss. You know, I didn't like being my 40s and still having to have my vacation approved by my boss. I was really looking for more autonomy and freedom. And that's why we decided to start our own business. And when we launched the Happy Producers, that desire for freedom and flexibility and agility and impact and mission were at the forefront of all the decisions that we make and I'm so proud of what we build. Building a business is a hard adventure. It will, you know, shatter your ego. It's one of the scariest things I've had to do. And while this wasn't my first business, this was a business in which we were very visible because we used organic social media strategies in order to gain visibilities and for our clients to be able to find us.
So, a very very visible journey that it's been being in the Happy Producers. And we love the Happy Producers. We still stand 100% behind every single course that we've ever created. I'll put a link in the show notes so that you can check out the courses for yourself. They're still very much up to-date, super pertinent, extremely helpful courses. We've had over 450 paying students, over a thousand free participants in our master classes and other events. And building this community has been so much fun. And the community is definitely my favorite part of the happy producers and I started anyway analyzing my skill set and thinking about how can I maximize my experience. So I didn't like call it a career pivot but I was definitely desiring to open new fields of possibilities whether they be in the industry or not.
And so I took a step back and I let myself analyze and look at many different opportunities. And I was feeling a little bit not stuck but overwhelmed with the idea and a little bit disappointed that I just couldn't continue to do the career that I had. Because the future currently seems uncertain and it doesn't seem like reliable for me to put all of my eggs in that basket. And I'm not saying that's the case for you, but I've heard a lot of people say that they are pivoting in their career as well or that they're looking for their next move and you know there's a spectrum of opportunities and that's what I really wanted was to open the spectrum of possibilities.
So the first thing that I did was the brag bank exercise which is an exercise where you list everything that you've done in your career whether you were paid for it or not any award that you've won any special event that you were part of every single thing goes into the brag bank and it just makes you realize like, wow, over the last 20 years, I've done a lot of different things. For example, did you know that I started my career in radio, I was a radio hostess in my very first job out of university, armed with nothing but a master of arts, specialized in gender studies and French literature, I ended up being a radio hostess in Quebec City, meeting some of my closest friends to date through that experience. And sometimes I forgot I forget that I did that. So, in the brag bank exercise, you write every single thing you've ever done and it just first of all gives you a little pat in the back that you've been doing amazing and the state of the current state of the industry is completely outside of your control. So it's not you that's not doing great. And it also gives a second look on what are the skills that I have, what are the things that I like to do and what are the things that I don't like to do. So that was my second exercise that I put myself through. And I remember I was particularly down that week and LP was in Colombia giving a conference. I was alone at the cottage and I kind of went and sat on my dock with my feet in the lake and I started making a list of everything that I love and everything that I don't love in my current career.
So at the happy producers and I was able to gain so much clarity about what are the tasks and the things that I do at work that I want to take with me in the next 20 years of my career and what are some of the things that you know create friction, frustration that I just I don't really enjoy doing and that I might not be taking forward with me. For example, doing the podcast is something that I love. Whereas to doing all the marketing assets, so anything that I have to do in Canva, any of like the little posters that we do for the courses, the courses sell page, like all of the marketing assets. For me, it's really something that I don't like as much. I'm just not great at it and it makes me feel like it takes me forever to do and that somebody else would probably have like even cooler ideas. So that's something that I would want to delegate in the future or that I'm not going to be doing in my next in the next stage of my career.
So doing that exercise what I love, what I don't love, and what I'm just neutral about gave me a lot of insight and kind of gave me redirection for the next stage of my career. When I started the happy producers, I wanted to serve my community by using the knowledge that I had gathered over the past 20 years working in different studios and there was a gap when it came to training the production teams. Whereas studio artists were getting a lot of training around like technical skills and software, the production crew really it felt like the production crew was being left behind and the production crew like controls so much, you know the profitability of your project lies in their hand. The tone of your project, the work conditions, like the production crew impacts so many aspects of your production.
So, I didn't necessarily know that I love teaching back then, but I knew that I had enough knowledge and that I had been reading about leadership so much and that I was so involved in the person and the personality that I had at work that I had a lot of insights to offer when it came to creating healthy work conditions. And so that's why we decided that the knowledge is what we were going to be monetizing in our business. And that's how the first online course came about. Starting a business really helped me discover some passions that I didn't know I had. So for example, for teaching, curriculum building, um for anything that has to do with knowledge sharing. So that's one of the things that came to light when I was doing the list of what I love and what I don't love. So that's one of the main pillars that I kept with me when I was thinking about okay, how's the next move in my career if I want to serve my community and help my peers navigate a very very troubled time.
I also wanted to make sure that I was futureproofing my career. So I wanted to make a move that's going to sustain me over the next like 20 to 30 years. I'm 43 currently, so I still have a very long career ahead of me. I wanted to be a joyful career where I feel purposeful. I want to love my career. So, I knew that in any decisions that I was going to be taking, I had to be playing the long game. I didn't want to just make a quick fix decision. I didn't want to just put a band-aid on a problem. For me, like deeply in my soul, I could feel like I had to move on to the next stage of my career. So, it was very serious for me that achieving that next stage might take a lot of work. It might not be instantaneous. So, it has to be something that's going to sustain me and I'm going to want to be doing for many, many years. And having a business is such a fun testing ground or such a great lab in seeing which skills you have or in trying to develop new competencies.
And so, seeing what I love and didn't love, but also like making a list of what I was really good at and what I really wasn't amazing at was also super important because there are things in the day-to-day business that I don't enjoy as much. So, let's try to make sure I don't bring those forward with me. And when I'm thinking about future proofing my career and playing the long game, I started to really get attached to my personal values and the values that guide my choices. Love, freedom, family, freedom of time competency, freedom of location, all of these things were really important to me. So, I wanted to make choices that were aligned with that because like who wants to do a career pivot and realize that they hate their career even more than they did before or that there's even less opportunity in their career now than there was before? Like that sounds like a nightmare scenario. And it truly feels in the industry like everything changed overnight.
And that did give me a lot of insight that informs the decisions that I make because before I didn't know that everything could change overnight. Now I'm painfully aware that it can and that within a few years the industry can completely change. So I also wanted to take that under consideration in the choices that I was making in the skills that I wanted to develop and in the moves that I was going to make in my life. And in this dark journey of the soul is what I call it now in hindsight because honestly my friend it was hard. It was hard asking myself all these questions, considering a career pivot, reconnecting to my values, all of these things did require a lot of introspection and self-awareness. So it was really important for me to futureproof my career and I shared with many friends that that was what I was consideringāa career pivot. And if I'm being honest, many unhinged ideas went through my mind.
I considered taking a course in accounting at some point and becoming an accountant. Like many people, real estate was on my mind. Do I just become a real estate agent? Like I'm definitely really good at selling. I'm a good communicator. I love real estate. I considered many, many avenues and I didn't throw myself in any of them too fast. I really always went back to what I love to do, what I don't love to do, and what are my values, and is this going to be future proofing my career. So, having these pillars helping me in my decisions was really fundamental because you don't want to be impulsive with a career change. You don't want to pivot in a way that's not deeply reflected upon, because you want to make sure that you're building something for yourself that's going to be working for you, that's not just great for the world, but that's also going to be supporting yourself. And so I'm sharing this with my friends. Hey, do I become an accountant?
Should I be a real estate agent? Um, you know, like am I going to go work in a completely different field? I have some friends that pivoted into a different field altogether and are loving their new job, right? So I would tell my friends and share with them and I got some good advice and I got some not great advice. One of my close friends who I admire deeply cuz he's a very successful multi-entrepreneur in the tech world, he said just get a boring job and get over it. Just apply to a boring job, make some money, you know, have a stream of solid revenue, not a solid revenue, a stable revenue, and just move on. And I was like, no, I am so not doing that. I built this exciting creative career for myself. And I'm refusing to give up. I'm refusing to give up on the fact that I can have a career that fits my personality, that fits my desires, that fits my purpose. So, I'm sharing this not because this friend is not amazing, cuz he's amazing.
I'm sharing this because if you're considering a career pivot, not everybody's always going to be agreeing with you. And not everybody would be doing the same moves that you are doing. Not everybody would have your courage. Not everybody would be as daring. And it's okay. You don't need other people's validation when you're making your choices if you have solid pillars in your values and in your likes and dislikes. And if you keep in mind that you want to future proof your career, for me getting a boring job that's not futureproofing my career because I know that I would not be able to do that over 20 years. So my point is know yourself, trust your intuition and just take the journey seriously. Ask yourself the right questions and if you are sensitive to other people's comments or advice, then don't ask them for advice. You know what I mean? Not all of your friends understand what it's like to currently be working in an industry where so much is changing.
Here in Quebec, more than half of my peers lost their job over the past 18 months. That is traumatic. That's a hard thing to go through. It's hard and it's unique. Not everybody's had to go through that in their career and it's annoying and it's disheartening and it's, you know, I have a broken heart from it. So, take everybody's advice lightly. And if you really, really need advice or you feel like you're lost, maybe go to a career coach or somebody that's specialized in helping you find that next move for yourself, somebody thatās specialized in helping you see different perspectives with your skill set. But, you know, take some of your friends' comments with a grain of salt. No one knows what's good for you as much as you know what is good for you.
So in the dark journey of the soul that I was on, one of the things always kept coming back to mind because when I was younger, in 2008, I started a PhD at Laval University in Quebec City and it had been a lifelong dream for me to do a PhD to study at the PhD level. And when I started back then in 2008, I got offered my dream job working for SPIRA, which is the filmmakers co-op in Quebec City, and I had to make a choice between the two. The first semester of my graduate study had been a little bit underwhelming. I wasn't in love with the program. Um I thought the expectations were really low and I'm somebody that loves to be pushed especially in an academic setting. I'm an Aries so I like to always be striving to be my best and I'm very competitive with myself. And so I decided to take this work opportunity that I was scared would probably never come back.
I had a masters in literature and I got offered a job producing films, like I was kind of mind blown and I wanted to seize the day. So that's how I started my career in film making working at Spira for many years and it was an amazing experience but I always knew I would be circling back to the PhD. I always knew for sure I was going to complete my graduate studies, but I didn't feel like there was any rush. And for a really long time, producing films was my reason for living. You know, I was the biggest film geek. I started my career in live action. I loved working in live action more than I'll ever be able to say. Our films were being presented in festivals around the world. We had like a magical carpet ride of a career. And when there was the writer strikeāI think it was back in 2011āso, not the one that happened recently, the previous one, there was a lot less work in live action in Quebec City. And I ended up in CG.
Um not necessarily out of passion, but out of necessity. And so, since 2013, CG's been my main focus. And I found a lot of things that I do love in the CG world. And the challenges were so big back then, well technologically but also from the work condition perspective, that I was very motivated to work in the field. But as I said I always knew one day I was going to go back to university and you know do a PhD and when I was looking at my skill set, maximizing my experience, what I love, what I don't love, what are my values, what do I want my work life to be, everything converged to me being a PhD candidate being a good idea for me in order to meet those needs and goals that I had for myself. So I shared with my friends againāit was a few years ago actuallyāhey I'm thinking of going back to school to do a PhD in film studies, and the reaction was underwhelming.
I was with a group of maybe 10 friends and some of those friends have known me forever so they know that it's been a dream of mine, but some other friends present were like, oh my god like why? Oh my god, that's a crazy idea. Like what do you mean, like just get a boring job, right? And again, I'm just sharing that to let you know that if you take your career pivot seriously and you go through the right exercises and you really make sure you're aligned with the pillars of what you want for yourself and your career, other people's opinion will not be as relevant. So, while not everybody was a fan of the idea, I secretly started to research different schools and I was really staying in my lane. And at that stage, I wasn't sharing with everybody. My husband knew of course, but nobody else was really in the loop. It was kind of like my own little secret project for me.
I put it on a vision boardāthe PhDāand I started looking at different universities and I went to McGill cuz that's where I completed my bachelor's degree. I looked at the HEC here in Montreal, which is a French business school that's very, very reputable. I considered many universities, many different topics, and then I kept in mind those pillars that I had for myself. So for example, I looked into the organizational behavior program and I realized most of the people in the program come from a human resource background and most of the career outputs of such a program are in human resources as well, and I am not interested in working in the field of human resources. So for me I was able to take that choice away from the possibilities. Then when I looked more into the business school I was really interested in the courses that they had; they also offered like a minimum guaranteed in terms of how much money you can make by being a PhD student at their school.
Um, but because I'm a creative person and a creative field, I just didn't really feel like I belonged in the group of business people that were there wearing suits and I want to have a more colorful and creative experience of my life. So, I realized that it wasn't the right place for me. Furthermore, I wasn't sure that studying in French was the right move for me, even if I am studying a local topic; I want my findings to be able to travel throughout the world. So for me it just makes more sense to complete all my studies in English. I'm going to be writing articles. I'm going to be writing a thesis. If it's in English, for me it just gets to impact a lot more people. So that's why I decided to do my studies in English. My first language is French, but my business is in English as well, as you've noticed. So that's not something that stops me.
And I had to meet with many professors and directors and I took about a full year of looking at different schools and getting information and thinking and debating. It was always really easy for me because I was super aligned with my desires of where I wanted to go with this and I wanted to make sure that the research that I was doing at the graduate level was going to feed into the happy producers and was going actually help out the industry. So, I didn't want to study just something that's too conceptual. I wanted to accumulate data and meaningful research that actually helps my peers better understand the business cycles and the business aspects of platformization so that they can better monetize it. So that they can build studios that have the organizational structure to support the current realities.
So once for me I unlocked the fact that I wanted that level of impact, then it brought a lot of clarity to the school that I would end up at or who I would be working with. So I decided to circle back to my alma mater Concordia because they have a film department that is very very reputable and I decided to look into their PhDs and see what was available and I realized through many, many different aspects of the program through the team that they have, the labs that they support and etc., that that was exactly where I was meant to be. So I contacted a professor, kind of pitched them my research topic. They told me that the research topic would fit at Concordia. We decided to meet over Zoom. We had a great connection. My research would fit within their lab. So boom, I had a thesis director and that's how I was able to apply to Concordia while also already having somebody that was behind me internally.
So, if ever you're thinking about going back to school at a master's or PhD level, I would definitely suggest that you do that if there's already somebody that's supporting you within the department. Like, it's going to make your application stronger. And let me tell you, I worked my ass off on that application, okay? So, I didn't just chat GPT the thing or do the fast thing or be like, "Okay, I just want to be done." And I put my heart and soul and an insane amount of attention to detail to my application. So both my statement of purpose, the pitch for my research, the writing samples that I provided, the referees that I asked to write reference letters for me, like I went all out and I really dedicated myself to this application so that if ever I didn't get in, I could not regret not giving this the attention that it deserves. So whether you're applying for jobs or pivoting in your career, like just give it the love and attention that it deserves.
I see a lot of people just applying to every single job with the same curriculum and letter and it's like make it personal, you know, give it the attention that it deserves. Career pivoting is hard. Give it the love and attention that it needs for it to be successful for you. So I worked on my application. I vision boarded the thing. Um I ended up submitting my application and I cried so much when I submitted my application because I felt like I was about to unlock a new field of potentiality and that was what I needed in my career. That's what was lacking in my career for me at that stage. It felt like not enough things were possible and I want to play in a field where a lot of things are possible.
So I was very very excited when I submitted my application and I listened to K-pop demon hunters like "Golden" by Hendrix, I cried and just felt uplifted and felt excited and went about with my life, you know, and went about with the happy producers and all the good stuff. And it was a bit later in January when I was coming back from a trip where I had no internet on that trip for a full week. I came back and checked my emails and I saw that I had gotten an admission offer. So basically that means that I got in and that they wanted me to be a PhD student within their team. Not only am I tapping into a new stream of revenues, but I'm also opening a whole new chapter of my career where the PhD is now a transit. It's a trampoline, right? I'm going to be jumping on the trampoline and then jumping to something else afterwards. There's another level beyond the PhD. So for me, all of that was important because career growth is important.
So I didn't want to just get the boring job and stay stuck in a corner. If you're choosing the boring job, please know I love you. No judgment. Sometimes we got to do what we got to do. But if you've been finding it really disheartening and heartbreaking and hard to be navigating everything that's going on in the industry, and if you're not sure that the position you currently have has a future beyond the next five years, or if you're having a hard time finding a job, I wanted to share this journey with you so that you know that I'm a real person and like I did it and I'm not special. I just asked myself the right questions and I took the timeāI took the time to analyze what's the right move for me. And then those who are like "oh I wouldn't do this move for myself"āthat's fine but their opinions were not going to be taken under consideration in the choices that I make for myself. So it didn't take too many minutes. It wasn't solved in half a day.
I didn't have a good cry and then I moved on. It was a journey. It was about a year of looking at different universities. It was probably three years since I first told my friends, "Oh, I think I'm going to go back to graduate studies." So, my point is your career is important. It should support your life. It should feed into the impact that you want to have in this world. It's more than just a paycheck. It's more than just something you do to pay your bills. It gets to be so much more. And if you're having a hard time in the industry right now and like me, you want to serve and you want to help, well, try to see what career avenues are where you can help, where your level of impact is even bigger than before. Our peers need help. The industry is shifting. It needs understanding.
We need to have a better grasp about what's happening now, but also what's going to happen next because things are changing fast and if you need a pivot, if you want a pivot, if you have no choice cuz you've been looking for a job and you got to do something, please take yourself through the journey of really owning your values, knowing what your skill set is. Just because you haven't been able to get a job in the industry currently doesn't mean your profile is not amazing. Doesn't mean your skill set is not impressive. Doesn't mean that your experience is not extremely valuable. It just means that there currently are way less jobs than there used to be and the recruitment process is not always like a straight line. Sometimes it's just about who you know or did you know the recruiter or not. It's not a comment on you. What's going on in the industry right now is not a comment on you and your competency.
It's not a comment on you and what you could do today and with the remainder of your career. So, if you have any further questions about how I got into the PhD, what does that mean? Um, if you're interested in the subject that I'm researchingāso business models, monetization, and organizational structure when it comes to the platformization of animated contentāI would love to chat with you. If you're feeling lost in your career and you need help, please know that the Happy Producers Community is always a safe space for everybody that just wants to make the industry a better place and that just wants to strive in their career. So, if you have any questions, if you're a little bit nosy and you want to know more about my journey, I'm here for you. Just leave me a comment.
And also to make sure that you always know first when there's a new episode of the podcast dropping, please make sure that you are following the podcast if you're on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts and it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a five-star review. As you know, the podcast is still pretty green and it really helps us make sure that the podcast and the episodes make it to the people that need to hear this message. So, it just helps us play that algorithm game. If you give us a five-star review, I would appreciate you so much. So, I will be back very soon with a new episode of the Happy Producers Podcast. And in the meantime, let's make sure that we are connected on LinkedIn so that we can help each other
