Sometimes the experience that makes the least sense while you're living it becomes the experience you need most later.
That thought stayed with me after my conversation with media executive, entrepreneur, and Coda Network founder Lexi Chow on Live, Learn, Leverage.
Lexi's career didn't begin with a plan to create a global streaming platform for Caribbean stories.
It began in public relations.
She built her own PR firm and spent years representing talent. Eventually, however, she reached a point where she wanted something different. She wanted greater stability and made the decision to return to corporate life.
That decision eventually took her to Viacom and then Paramount Pictures.
And that's where her story gets particularly interesting.
At Paramount, Lexi found herself working behind the scenes in technology and video-on-demand.
It wasn't glamorous.
She wasn't walking red carpets or doing the highly visible work she had imagined when she thought about a career in entertainment.
In our conversation, Lexi talked about questioning why she was there.
But she stayed long enough to learn.
She learned about digital distribution. She learned how content moved after leaving theaters. She learned the technology and business behind getting entertainment in front of audiences.
Years later, that knowledge would become incredibly valuable.
Lexi went on to create Coda Network — Caribbean on Demand All in One Place, a streaming platform dedicated to Caribbean films, television, documentaries, live events, and other culturally relevant programming. The platform is available to audiences around the world and provides another avenue for Caribbean filmmakers and creators to have their work discovered.
Suddenly, that chapter at Paramount didn't look so disconnected.
It looked like preparation.
This is something I think about often when working with people who are trying to determine what's next.
We tend to evaluate our experiences based on their immediate usefulness.
Why am I doing this?
What does this have to do with where I'm going?
Am I wasting my time?
Sometimes those are important questions.
But sometimes we simply haven't lived long enough to understand the answer yet.
A role can teach you something.
A difficult client can teach you something.
A business that doesn't work the way you expected can teach you something.
Even the career you eventually decide to leave can give you knowledge, relationships, confidence, and perspective that become essential to what you build next.
That is why I don't believe career transition always means starting over.
Very often, it means learning how to recognize and leverage what you've already accumulated.
There was another part of my conversation with Lexi that was deeply personal for both of us.
We talked about growing up as Caribbean women and not always seeing women who looked like us occupying the spaces we imagined for ourselves.
Lexi spoke about wanting to create a space where Caribbean stories could exist on their own terms, not simply as part of someone else's interpretation of Caribbean culture.
That led us to a phrase that came up repeatedly during our conversation:
You can't be what you can't see.
Representation isn't simply about seeing familiar faces on a screen.
It expands our understanding of what is possible.
When a young woman sees someone who shares her background running a media company, producing films, building technology, writing books, leading organizations, or creating something that didn't previously exist, another possibility enters her imagination.
Maybe I can do that too.
And sometimes that is where everything begins.
Lexi and I also talked about something entrepreneurs and people navigating transition eventually encounter: not everyone will understand what you're trying to build.
Her advice was simple:
Show them rather than tell them.
There is wisdom in that.
New ideas are fragile.
When we're still figuring something out ourselves, sharing it with people who can't see what we see can cause us to question something before we've given it enough time to develop.
That doesn't mean ignoring good advice.
It means becoming discerning about whose advice you allow to influence your decisions.
Not everyone needs to understand your vision before you begin.
Sometimes they will understand it after you've built it.
One of the reasons I wanted to share Lexi's story is because it illustrates something I believe deeply:
Your experience is rarely wasted.
The challenge is that we often look at our lives chronologically rather than strategically.
We see:
I did this.
Then I did that.
Then I changed careers.
Then I started something else.
But when we look backward, we can sometimes see a completely different story.
We see the skills that transferred.
The relationships that mattered.
The lessons we carried forward.
The confidence we developed.
The knowledge we couldn't have gained any other way.
And suddenly, what looked like a collection of unrelated chapters begins to look like a body of experience.
That's where leverage begins.
If you're wondering what's next, perhaps the first question isn't:
What should I do now?
Maybe it's:
What have I already learned that I haven't fully leveraged yet?
Look at the roles you loved.
Look at the ones you didn't.
Look at the problems you've solved repeatedly.
Look at what people consistently come to you for.
Look at the industries you understand, the relationships you've built, and the perspective you now have because you've lived through things you couldn't have understood twenty years ago.
There may be more there than you realize.
Lexi Chow's journey from public relations to corporate entertainment to building Coda Network is a wonderful example of what can happen when experience, vision, and opportunity finally intersect.
Sometimes your next chapter isn't waiting for you to become someone new.
It's waiting for you to recognize the value of who you've already become.
🎙️ Listen to the full conversation:
From Corporate to Coda: How Lexi Chow Built a Global Platform for Caribbean Stories on Live, Learn, Leverage.
Because your next chapter isn't necessarily about starting over. It's about learning how to leverage everything you've already lived.