Shannon Flanagan on choosing your career instead of chasing it – the break, the pause, and the rewrite. Shannon Flanagan has run more than 80 Power of We Wednesday interviews at Retail Women in Tech. Not one of those women had a linear career path. All of them hunting for jobs inside a system that only rewards one. Shannon spent two decades inside Fortune 500 retailers and hypergrowth startups developing teams, leading change management, and supporting people through reinvention. In early 2025 the unexpected happened. A layoff, and suddenly she found herself pausing, reflecting, and looking to reinvent her own career. Two things she'd planned to do at retirement showed up 15 years early. Her fiancé told her to go all in on the nonprofit she wanted to start, Retail Women in Tech (RWIT). Then a friend called to say she wanted to write a book about with her and tell the stories of the women in RWIT. Shannon said yes to both, with three teenagers at home, a mortgage in one of the most expensive areas in the country, and no paycheck coming. Shannon’s new book, Choose - don't chase - Your Career, is built in three parts: the break, the pause, and the rewrite. Shannon walks Ricardo and Casey through all three, starting with the layoff that opens chapter one and the bottle of champagne she opened on her deck by noon that same day. It's the most personal career reinvention story we've ever had on the show. This one goes deep. Casey admits that the last real pause she took was the summer she was 17, and that she spent years chasing goals she set at 12. Shannon names money as the hardest thing she had to let go of, then gives the line from her financial advisor that she still repeats every week. What You'll Learn in This Episode Why the corporate ladder still gets rewarded even though 80 out of 80 careers zigzag.What the break, the pause, and the rewrite look like week to week.The three months it takes to unwind, and why almost everyone quits at week two.How Shannon answered the mortgage question when she walked away from a paycheck.The reframe that beats the stereotypical deathbed question: what would you tell your niece or nephew to do?The through line she found across all the stories in the book, and why your old journals are the place to find yours.Why Shannon built Retail Women in Tech with no paywall. Support our sponsors: This Episode is Brought to You By RetailClub. Retail and brand leaders can attend RetailClub AI Festival completely budget-free. A free ticket, plus $1,750 toward travel and hotel. From the founders of Shoptalk and Groceryshop, it's three days fully outdoors in Huntington Beach, September 22 to 24, with 2,000 senior leaders working through how AI is transforming retail. If you're shaping AI's future in retail, budget shouldn't be why you miss it. Register by August 28 at https://retailclub.com/retail-razor-podcast W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. Arizona State University is a leading public research university recognized for innovation, access, and impact. AI-Enabled Supply Chain Strategy is a three-day executive program at ASU's W. P. Carey School of Business, the largest business school in the United States, serving more than 25,000 students, from October 5-7, built by their #2-ranked Supply Chain Management department for senior leaders setting AI strategy across procurement, logistics, and operations. Register at https://specialevents.asu.edu/878064 with ID Code retailrazorasu for $1,500 off. Preview it in our 3-part Data Blades podcast mini-series this September with Professor Brett Duarte. Subscribe & Follow Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to The Retail Razor: Retail Transformers for more episodes featuring retail innovators, disruptors, and bold thinkers reshaping commerce. Subscribe to the Retail Razor Podcast Network: https://retailrazor.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://retailrazor.substack.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://go.retailrazor.com/utube About Our Guest Shannon Flanagan. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-e-flanagan/ Author. Choose - don't chase - Your Career. https://a.co/d/0cXKYT1f Founder. Retail Women in Tech. https://retailwomenintech.org Shannon has spent her career inside complex organizations, driving significant paradigm shifts in how teams operate at fortune 500 companies and hyper growth startups. This has given her a rare practitioner's view of what moves people, culture and business forward. At twenty-five, Shannon discovered her why: to create the conditions for people to love what they do every day. That purpose has been the through line of her work ever since. Drawing from her experience in organizational design, leadership development and change management, she has dedicated her career to supporting people and organizations through reinvention. Whether that means launching new businesses, optimizing talent or moving through the seasons of our lives. Shannon made a life-changing decision in the Spring of 2025. She started a non-profit, Retail Women in Tech, and wrote a book — two things she planned to do when she "retired." When the opportunities to do both manifested in front of her within weeks of each other, fifteen years ahead of schedule, she knew she couldn't turn a blind eye. So, she faced her fears, listened to her gut and pivoted to seeing herself as an asset to invest in, giving up a paycheck and security to actualize her life's work. She's a business owner, an author, a speaker, a life coach and a mother of three. And she believes that by sharing our stories, we spark the inspiration and change we seek in our own lives and the world around us. Shannon didn't have this figured out before she wrote a book telling other women how to figure it out. She still doesn't. And that's the point. Chapters (00:00) Teaser (00:55) Show Intro (03:29) Introduction & The Mystery Mug (04:28) Why She Wrote the Book Now (07:47) The Mug Story Revealed (09:09) Getting Laid Off (12:21) The Corporate Ladder Myth (18:06) Break, Pause, Rewrite (24:27) Letting Go of Money and Fear (31:56) Facing Fear and Choosing Not Chasing (37:57) Redefining Success (45:43) Final Reflections & Where to Find the Book (53:08) Show Close Meet Your Hosts Helping you stay sharp, be bold, and transform retail: Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voice for 2025 and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Thought Leader in Retail, a Top 25 Thought Leader in AGI and Careers, a Top 50 Thought Leader in Agentic AIand Management, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Digital Transformation and Transformation. Thinkers 360 also named him a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformationand the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the partner marketing leader for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft. Casey Golden, is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T, and CEO of Luxlock. She is a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2026, and Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, Casey is obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer and is slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Episode Music Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Tropikool, from the album Future Beats 2, plus Virtual Apology and New Styles, from the album Shimmer Pop, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.
