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My Future Career Goals: From Instructional Design to Building a Continuous Improvement Business

  • Apr 2
  • 4 min read

Over the past decade, I have had the opportunity to serve in a wide range of roles across multiple industries, and I have learned from some incredibly talented people. I have created training materials for a university food court, complex technical documentation for U.S. military software and hardware, onboarding and upskilling content for the utility sector, marketing copy for a developer intelligence SaaS platform, learning and sales enablement content in retail, and educational copy for a digital asset management (DAM) software company.


From the outside, my career path may not look especially linear. My titles have varied. The industries have changed. And the work itself has ranged from technical writing and copywriting to instructional design, learning strategy, multimedia production, and performance support.


But despite that variety, a common thread has remained: I have always been drawn to work that helps people do things better. I care about clarity, growth, capability, and improvement. Whether I am designing learning, writing content, building systems, or solving workflow problems, I am most energized when I can make something more effective, more useful, and more human.


The Road Ahead


At the beginning of 2026, I thought my future career goals were already mapped out. My plan was to complete my Master’s degree in Instructional Design at Grand Canyon University and continue pursuing leadership roles in learning and development, gradually advancing in responsibility and scope over time.


Then, in early February, I had a business idea I could not shake.


The more I thought about it, the more it aligned with the work I have already spent years doing: identifying friction, clarifying problems, improving systems, strengthening performance, and helping people grow. What started as an idea quickly became a new direction.


Over the next five years, my goal is to start, run, and successfully grow a continuous improvement company that blends consulting services with technology. I want to build something that allows me to use my experience for good by helping individuals, teams, and organizations work more effectively, operate more efficiently, and develop more intentionally.


That goal is ambitious. I have never run a business before, and building something sustainable will require a great deal of learning, discipline, and resilience. Especially where only 50% of business survive year five and 20-30% survive to year ten (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026). But it also feels deeply aligned with my values, my strengths, and the kind of long-term impact I want to make.


Why I Put My Master’s Program on Hold


Pursuing that goal meant something had to give.


As much as I wanted to continue my Master’s program, I reached a point where I had to be honest with myself. I could not realistically build a business and fully engage in graduate school at the same time. I tried to do both, and it became clear that I was not able to give my education the focus it deserved. More importantly, the pace required to sustain both paths at once was unhealthy and unsustainable.


Because of that, I made the difficult decision to put my Master’s program on hold.


It was not a decision I made lightly, and it was not a reflection of diminished respect for education. If anything, it came from taking learning seriously. I did not want to move through the program half-engaged. I would rather pause with intention than continue in a way that was misaligned with my current reality and goals.


How I Plan to Keep Learning


Although I paused my formal degree program, I have not paused my development.


As I pursue this next chapter, I plan to continue learning through more flexible and self-paced options related to both business management and instructional design. Business education will help me increase my chances of building something sustainable and well-run. Instructional design will remain highly relevant because it continues to shape how I think about communication, capability building, systems, and behavior change.


Some of the learning paths I plan to continue exploring include online courses, certificate programs, academic articles, trusted industry websites, reputable podcasts, and thoughtful YouTube channels (Du, 2021; Lange, 2018). For this season of life, that approach makes more sense. It allows me to keep learning while also creating the space I need to build something new.


Closing reflection


My career may never follow a perfectly straight line, and I am okay with that.


What matters more to me is that the path continues to move toward meaningful work. Right now, that means taking what I have learned across instructional design, writing, enablement, leadership development, and performance improvement and using it to build something that creates real value.


The road ahead looks different than I expected. But in many ways, it feels more aligned than ever.



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