Trust the Process While Taking a Chance: Courtney Bartholomew

Courtney Bartholomew

2014 U.S. National Team Member
2013 ACC Freshman of the Year and 2016 NCAA runner-up in both 100- and 200-yard backstroke

Now: Insights Associate @ LovePop in Boston, MA

During the last few years of my swimming career, I lived and breathed the motto “Trust the Process”. I applied this phrase to every aspect of my life, from swimming to personal matters. However, after retiring from swimming I felt this phrase no longer was applicable to the path I was on. Thus I began living on the motto of “Take a Chance”. At the time, I had no idea the two really go hand-in-hand and should be intertwined.

We have different journeys in life, both professional and personal. However, these two journeys are typically interlaced. There will be bumps and twists along the way and you may not understand where the journey is taking you. Believe me, I am still living it.

We all make career choices. For me, I made a decision to retire from the sport of swimming right before the 2016 Olympic Trials. I realized I was no longer in love what I was doing every day and the effort to make professional swimming happen, did not interest me. I signed on with a large corporation (let’s be honest, it was for the money) and started working a month after graduation. Within the first three weeks, I knew it was not the right fit for me. Between not being interested in the product and having to make sales calls all day, I was ready for a change. Seven months after starting I gave my two weeks and packed up my belongings in Boston.

In looking for a new career, I leveraged my options and what I “thought” were my career aspirations and accepted a job with a small company. Looking back on it now, I was most impressed with the flexible working options and the ability to move to a warmer climate, not the job itself. Who could have imagined that just three months later, I would realize sales was not for me and I was just as unhappy as I had been before? So after almost two decades of knowing exactly where I was going with swimming and academics, I found myself in a place that was new to me – leaving yet another job without a safety net to catch me.

I took a "leap of faith" and began my own business helping high-school swimmers navigate the college recruiting process. Swimming had taught me the value of hard-work, time management, and if you have a dream go after it, so by golly, I did it. I can honestly say it was so much fun because I loved being able to dedicate all my time to these swimmers accomplishing their dreams. It also was extremely difficult because every night I went to bed wondering where my next paycheck was coming from. The stress of not having stability alongside not being close to family in Florida, caused me to re-think everything. Was the flexibility and thrill of owning your own business worth the stress? I decided it was not for me and moved it into a side-hustle, where I would still work with clients as a hobby, but on a much smaller scale.

This led me to my next line of career thinking as I pondered where to go from all of this. A few blessings and lessons had come from my two jobs and creating a business: 1. Learning I really loved working with people 1-on-1, 2. I wanted to work in an environment that challenged me to learn and grow everyday, and 3. I really did not like living in Florida and I wanted to be back in Boston.

Going through the job search was painful; I had no idea what I wanted to do! All I knew was I had learned those three important things about myself in my previous experience. So, every company I applied to, I made sure the job included those elements. One of my previous co-workers had transitioned to this awesome company, Lovepop, who secured a deal with Kevin O’Leary on Shark Tank. They were growing rapidly, based in Boston, and looking for candidates of my skill level. She was always posting Instagram stories of how cool it was, so out of curiosity I reached out. Within the next week, I was through the interview process and offered a job as a Customer Happiness Associate. What is a Customer Happiness Associate you might ask? Essentially customer service, however, since Lovepop is still in the start-up phase, we had a lot of other side projects that allowed for our team to learn new skills that contributed to the business. For example, I was able to lead the company on implementation of our new phone system.

At Lovepop, I have found where I can envision myself growing, learning, and creating while working with Lovepop Employees and Lovepop Customers. Each day I ride the subway into Boston for my job, which is in a creative environment that challenges me to learn something new daily (if not hourly). Just last week, I was even offered my first professional promotion, to build out and own a new branch of the business, Customer Insights. A big milestone for someone who had no idea what they wanted to do less than a year earlier. 

It has been a rewarding journey, but at the same time it has caused me to think about my priorities and what I am destined to do with my professional career. This is the journey of finding yourself and of “Taking a Chance”: to be successful you have to be able to manage uncertainty. I have learned to be persistent and determined - to trust my abilities and not let others define who I am. Let your work speak for itself and keep moving forward, even when it’s tough. Do not settle for living on your past accomplishments, but keep learning, building, doing.

I may not know where I will be in five years, but I have to trust the process, and when the right opportunity reveals itself, that I remember to believe in the journey and take the chance.

So if you are not sure where life is taking you at the moment, just trust the process. You’ll get where you are supposed to be.

Connect with Courtney on LinkedIn here.