Move over, traditional career guides. In an era where jobs can involve managing virtual economies, designing sustainable cities or programming artificial intelligence, the classic career path isn’t kids’ only option. For the next generation navigating a world of limitless career possibilities, the well-meaning advice to “follow your passion” can feel overwhelming without a map. Now, a wave of adults with truly fascinating jobs are throwing that map wide open. They’re stepping out of their labs, studios, and field sites to share the real, unfiltered career advice they wish they’d had – not just about how to land the job, but how to build a life of curiosity, resilience and purpose. This is more than career day; it’s a mentorship movement designed to inspire the innovators, problem-solvers and dreamers of tomorrow.
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Tell us your name, and give us the elevator pitch about your job.
My name is Christian François, and I work online with expat parents and professionals from every corner of the world, helping them become CEO of their health, crush their fitness and weight management goals while navigating an over-productive work-life schedule.
Could you walk us through a typical day or week in your role? What are your primary responsibilities?
As a coach, my top responsibility is to create customized nutrition-workout-lifestyle programs for my clients, to hold them accountable along the way and to be a support system for whenever they need a bit of a push.
Now that I’m self-employed, I wear quite a few different hats in a day on top of being a coach.
I usually start my days with going through what I like to call “priority messages” – meaning that I pick up any interactions with my current clients from the day before or anything that came in and that requires direct attention and a response ASAP (e.g., if one client has a brunch event coming up, I need to give them the tips they need to navigate all the yummy food properly).
After that, I reply to any sort of important inquiries or interactions that come through social media.
Then I spend about one to two hours studying something (it’s always either a health/nutrition course or an entrepreneurship course), which gives me some fresh ideas and perspective to attack the next part of my day: social media marketing/content prep.
I spend about one to two hours planning, writing or shooting content for social media. I post about two to four times a day).
By the time I finish with this, it’s usually noon or afternoon, and that’s when I go back to wearing my coach hat and do client check-ins, either via video calls or via messages.
The rest of the day after that is usually sporadic. I usually either go back to studying or prepping content.
This entire flow usually [goes]from 8am to 9pm [on weekdays]and on the weekends from 8am to 1pm.
What is the most rewarding or fulfilling part of your work? What problems do you get to solve? On the flip side, what are the most significant challenges or stressful aspects of your job?
The most rewarding part of being a coach is definitely to see the person achieve their goals, mostly after struggling and failing at it several times in the past, then to see them graduate out of my program and being able to sustain their results on their own without needing my help anymore.
I also enjoy building relationships. Most of my clients are in the age range of 40 to 50, have very interesting stories and successful careers, and I get to learn a lot from them through our interactions.
To be able to do something I am passionate about, and have freedom of time and location when it comes to work, and live quite a comfortable life as a result of my daily work is something else I am very grateful for as well.
The biggest challenges and stressful aspects were when I first started. I did not have much experience and knowledge. So I wouldn’t know how to work with special cases such as people who have metabolic and hormone problems, how to create workout plans for people who only have 30mins per day to train, how to help high executives who have to go out and drink with partners several times a week, etc.
Over time, I have learned to navigate every potential situation someone goes through, which has made the coaching process way more enjoyable.
How did you get to where you are today? You can talk about your educational route, pivotal moments, unplanned detours and any other decisions that you find important.
To make it really short, let’s say that dropping out of a PhD to go full-time into fitness and nutrition coaching was the last thing that my mom wanted to hear back in 2020.
I had a bachelor’s degree in hotel and tourism management, came to China for a master’s in business administration, then went for a PhD in management science and engineering (right in the middle of Covid and when online learning started becoming a thing).
I wasn’t enjoying the PhD, while my growing passion for fitness has already opened a few doors in terms of opportunities to work full-time.
So, I eventually sat my parents down (they were stuck here for two years, unable to go back home in Madagascar due to the lockdown situation) and told them that I was going to quit the studies.
So, I started working full-time as an in-person trainer, switched between different gyms, while on the side I was also working on my online coaching program and slowly growing it.
In early 2024, the online coaching was doing so well that I felt confident to let go of all my personal training jobs, start my own company and work fully for myself and remotely.
And here we are today.
I’m grateful that my parents trusted me and gave me their support because looking back at all that I have achieved since then, I truly think that quitting the studies was the best decision that I have taken.
I did not despise or hate studying, but I think my passion for fitness was to big for me to neglect.
Knowing what you know now, if you could go back and give one piece of advice to your teenage self about work and life, what would it be?
The first one is advice that I have gotten from my father while he was tearfully saying goodbye and getting ready to board the plane to leave my home country: “Dream, see and think big.”
When in doubt, feeling tired, not confident, unmotivated, faced with big decisions, remembering those words [has]always been a great way to re-center myself and dare to take steps outside of my comfort zone.
The second advice is a habit that I have always adopted since being a teenager: “Never spend a day [without]studying or watching something related to what you love.”
Since I stepped into the gym back in 2016 when I was looking for a way to make my ex miss me (true story, lol), I never spent a day without reading or learning something about “nutrition-fitness-health.” This is also what made things go smoothly when I decided to drop out of school and work full-time, because at that point, I already had a couple of professional certifications that would qualify me to be a coach. I truly think if you spend a day without at least absorbing some sort of new or even repetitive information in your brain, then you are wasting a lot of potential.
Images: Christian François
