In events, we talk about breaking in — the scramble, the hustle, the proving yourself early on. We also talk about the burnout and the mythical “making it.” There’s language for those phases, common lingo that people use, often in LinkedIn posts and industry panels and even WhatsApp chats between industry friends. But there’s a middle that sits between competent and established, and we don’t have words for it yet.
The thing about mid-career in events is that it doesn’t correspond to age or years of experience in any consistent way. Some people consider themselves mid-career after five years and others after fifteen. It’s not really about how long you’ve been doing this. Other industries might say something different, or if you look at the broad duration of a person’s career, you might still consider yourself early in your career as a whole. But mid-career in events is about where you sit in your own trajectory — that specific plateau where you can absolutely do the job, but the job isn’t moving you forward the way it used to.
You’ve delivered complex events. You’ve held it together when stakeholders were panicking, solved problems in real time without needing to escalate, managed suppliers and budgets and timelines and guest expectations without breaking. You know how to navigate the chaos because you’ve navigated it enough times that it’s become familiar. It took years and grit to get here, and it’s something you are proud of. You’re not new anymore. You are, in fact, solid and genuinely capable but something feels different.
It is that particular phase where you’re working just as hard as you ever did, saying yes, stretching yourself across projects and timelines and people who need you, yet the return on that effort doesn’t feel the same anymore. Opportunities that once came automatically like the email asking if you’re available or the recommendation from someone who knows your work don’t land with the same frequency. When a younger event professional comes through slightly cheaper and an organisation or agency is willing to potentially take a hit on someone with less experience in order to save money, suddenly you’re competing on a metric you didn’t know was on the table. Progress doesn’t feel like it moves in one direction anymore because whilst your capability is undeniably real, your visibility with people who could or will hire you doesn’t always match it. Does that mismatch keep you up at night? It does to me, sometimes. I see event pros become scrappy at this stage without even realizing it. Myself included.
The unsettling part, the thing that makes this phase so disorienting, is that nobody really explains why any of this is happening. You’ve proven you can do everything. You’re competent across the board, which is why you stay booked, why people call you, and why you’re reliable. But that same breadth that made you valuable in early career is now keeping you stuck. Because if you don’t choose your depth —what you actually specialise in, what you’re distinctly known for — the industry will choose for you, and it will choose ‘reliable.’ Reliable pays the bills but doesn’t move you forward.
The early rules were simple
When you’re coming up in events, the equation is fairly straightforward. It’s almost mathematical: effort equals opportunity. Work hard, stay adaptable, say yes, show up without breaking under pressure, prove you can handle adrenaline and ambiguity and chaos all at the same time, and doors will open. You get invited to bigger projects, your scope expands, your network expands, and because you’re easy to work with alongside your competence, the industry opens up more and more. That early phase rewards effort and adaptability directly. There’s a straightforward relationship between what you put in and what you get back. It’s when breadth is currency.
You can outwork other people your age and experience level; you can say yes more because you’re hungry for it and in an earlier phase of adulthood where that intensity feels sustainable. It works because in early career, people aren’t assessing whether you’ll eventually be excellent. They’re assessing potential. Can this person handle pressure? Can they learn quickly? Do they have the stamina and attitude this industry demands? Are they easy to work with? If the answer is genuinely and consistently yes, you move upward, sideways, wherever the next opportunity is.
The unwritten rules and feedback are clear so playing the game feels straightforward.
Then the rules change, but nobody tells you.
Somewhere around mid-career, effort stops being the differentiator between you and the other event pros around you. You can’t outwork your way into the next level anymore because most of the competent people at your level are exactly that…competent. They can deliver a brief and survive event week because they have the experience, and they know how to manage the chaos.
So the question that decision-makers are asking shifts, subtly at first and then without a doubt. It’s no longer “Can they do the job?” but rather “Can we trust them with added responsibility?” Those are completely different questions operating on entirely different criteria. Doing the job is about capability and what you can deliver, what you know, what you can execute on. It’s learnable, visible, measurable. It shows up in outputs and timelines and stakeholder satisfaction. Usually it comes with some great metrics you can put in your CV and portfolio.
Trust, though, is something else entirely. It’s about whether an event pro understands context, reads situations, knows when to speak and when to listen. It’s about whether you can represent an organisation well in rooms you don’t control, handle ambiguity without needing clear instructions, make good decisions when nobody’s watching. Trust requires self-awareness and awareness of how your environment actually works including the politics, the unspoken hierarchies, the way power moves in that particular organisation. You don’t automatically develop trust just by staying late and delivering more outputs.
I remember an event I worked on a few years ago where I spent time crying in the bathroom. It wasn’t a dream project. It was familiar work I’d always enjoyed, so I said yes. Once onsite, I noticed the tension immediately. The team was competent, but there was no room for suggestions or ideas. That’s when it hit: my skillset had outgrown the room. I could see structural problems others couldn’t. I could see better approaches. But there was nowhere for any of that to go. I tried to reframe it as an easy gig, just focus on execution, but the friction was impossible to ignore. Nothing had gone wrong. The event was actually fine, but I felt the gap between what I was capable of and what was being asked, and it manifested as this deep discomfort. That’s when I understood what had been happening for months: I’d been saying yes to work I’d outgrown, and that tension always surfaces somewhere. I didn’t want another booking. I wanted choice. I wanted to go after work I actually wanted instead of taking what came my way. That moment was when I realised: the evaluation had shifted. Early on, saying yes and delivering meant opportunity. But at mid-career, even when you deliver perfectly, if you’ve outgrown the work itself and if you’re not being challenged, not being asked to think strategically, nobody offers you more. They just keep booking you for the same thing. The question stopped being “Can she deliver?” and started being “Is this the right fit for her growth?” And I wasn’t answering that second question for myself. I was just saying yes.
Nobody really explains this shift. You might hear things like ‘You’re doing great’ or ‘You’re so valuable’ or ‘You’re such a safe pair of hands.’ Those are positive, validating words, and you hear them constantly. But there comes a point when they stop moving you forward in the way you expect. I’ve been there, frustrated and wondering why nothing was changing despite consistently delivering. These words, at some point, aren’t expanding your scope or growing your authority because they’re not aligned with what’s actually being evaluated anymore. Most event pros don’t realise this immediately. They figure it out after a period of real discomfort, after months of wondering why consistent delivery isn’t translating.
The events industry doesn’t really use a career ladder
Here’s something that took me years to understand, probably because I came from pharma where the ladder was everything: the event industry doesn’t actually have a career ladder. And that’s exactly why breadth keeps you stuck and depth moves you forward.
Events is an ecosystem of different environments — agencies, in-house teams at corporations or associations, sporting events and entertainment awards shows, fashion weeks, conferences, festival operations, freelancers, staffing agencies, etc. Each one has a different culture, different values, different definitions of what leadership looks like. An agency values different leadership signals than a global sporting event does. A fashion week operates on different currencies than an association. Your reputation in one pocket of the industry might be genuinely strong while your visibility in another is minimal, and that’s not because you’re inconsistent or failing. It’s structural.
And it’s exactly why being “the reliable person who can do everything” doesn’t work in any single ecosystem. You’re not positioned as anything in that ecosystem. You’re generic. You’re useful. But you’re not distinctly known for anything. What’s tricky is that if you don’t understand this, you internalise that difference as personal stagnation or failure. You think, “I should be further by now. I should be more well known. I should have gotten that role.” When actually, you might just be misaligned with the room you’re in, or you might be spread so thin across multiple environments that you’re not building a distinctive reputation in any single one.
You might be operating in ecosystems where your strengths aren’t being translated into the currency that matters in that specific context.
There was this one event I worked on repeatedly for years, and I tried for years to grow into bigger responsibility. I suggested solutions, offered help, and demonstrated leadership, and my manager was genuinely kind and easy to work with, but they didn’t delegate much. There was little room for me to expand. But I was trusted, experienced, and valued personally but not given the scope that would move me forward. I could see where I could have added value. I could see the problems, but there was no mechanism for me to actually do it. It became clear that my performance didn’t matter as much as my positioning within the structure. The structure had no room for me to move, so I stayed reliable, appreciated, and completely plateaued. Being evaluated on output means you deliver well and more doors open. Being evaluated on positioning meant I needed to be known for something specific in that particular ecosystem. I was known for being reliable, and reliable gets you invited back, but doesn’t get you advanced.
That’s not failure. That’s information. But only if you understand that choosing depth in one ecosystem is more powerful than being reliable across all of them.
The invisible criteria
What often goes unnoticed in this phase is that the feedback becomes vague even as your performance stays solid. You can deliver a perfect event, hold a budget that could have easily blown, make stakeholders happy, lead or support a team that functions well. Everything looks right on paper yet the outcome for you feels identical to last time, and the time before that.
You’re still in the same role. You’re delivering similar projects. Everyone relies on you, and that reliability is one of the hallmarks of an event career, being the person people know won’t let things fall through the cracks. However, when your scope stops expanding and your compensation plateaus and the invitations don’t increase, you start wondering why none of this is translating into movement. The issue isn’t that you’re not delivering. It’s that you’re delivering everything, and that keeps you stretched thin and reliable, but it doesn’t position you as anything in particular.
What’s actually happening is that you’ve shifted from being evaluated on output to being evaluated on positioning. Output is straightforward: did you deliver? Did you execute? Were stakeholders happy? It’s quantifiable, measurable, goes on your CV or portfolio. Positioning and your subsequent personal brand is slower to build and much harder to see happening. It’s about what you’re known for, who associates you with what type of environment or outcome, what rooms you’re visible in, what people say about you when you’re not there, what your reputation is in different pockets of the industry.
Positioning doesn’t build from one event. It builds from a pattern across multiple events, across conversations, across your presence and how you show up, and it’s rarely taught officially in event environments. We talk about how to manage a project, stakeholder management, logistics, budgeting, crisis response. We’re getting better at talking about personal brand, especially for freelancers, but we don’t talk about how to actually build a reputation or navigate the political landscape of this industry (and I mean political in the best sense of the word).
So mid-career event pros keep playing the output game. You refine your craft, you’re the dependable person, the safe pair of hands, the one who won’t let anything fall apart. However, reliable gets you invitations, not advancement. What actually moves people forward is choosing a focus (your depth) and building identity-level work around that. It’s the difference between proving you can execute anything and proving that you bring a particular perspective, that you excel in a particular domain, and that you make a particular kind of event or environment distinctly better. That’s what actually gets you over the plateau.
When you’re capable but undefined
From the outside, this phase looks totally fine. And it is fine because nothing bad is actually happening. You’re employed, delivering well, respected, not in crisis. There’s no dramatic breaking point or obvious failure, just a recalibration happening internally where you’re wondering if you should be further, noticing that progress feels slower, questioning your choices and your path.
Mid-career brings a particular internal dissonance that’s hard to articulate to anyone who hasn’t lived it because you feel capable. Your confidence in your ability to deliver, to manage complexity, and to solve problems is real and grounded in actual experience. You can do a lot of things, step into different roles, manage different types of events, work with different teams. That flexibility is a genuine strength, but it can also mean you’re not sure what you’re actually known for, and that uncertainty feels like stagnation.
Early career is about proving you can contribute. You’re essentially saying “I can be useful, I can handle this.” Senior career is about embodying authority, saying “I know how this works and people should listen to me.” That clarity is its own kind of power.
But mid-career is uncomfortable because you’re caught between those two positions. You’re no longer building capability…you’ve got enough of that. You’re not yet at the place where you have authority simply by virtue of position or tenure. You’re at the place where you’re building identity, and identity doesn’t build itself by accident. It requires intention, strategy, and a level of self-awareness that nobody really teaches you to develop.
But because there’s no external drama, it gets reframed as something personal. A confidence issue. A motivation issue. Maybe you’re just not as ambitious as you thought. In an industry that celebrates speed and visibility and scale, internal recalibration can feel like falling behind, but it’s not. It’s the moment where your career either drifts unconsciously where you keep doing what you’ve always done and wondering why nothing changes or becomes intentional.
The comparison spiral and why it gets worse at this stage
At early career, comparison is relatively obvious. They got the job you wanted, you didn’t. They moved faster. It’s competitive but straightforward. Mid-career comparison is murkier and more painful because what you’re measuring against has become less clear. You’re watching peers seem to accelerate into bigger roles, higher visibility, positions of authority, and you’re asking yourself the questions that keep you up: should I be further? Am I playing small? Did I miss something critical? Why did they get selected for that role and I didn’t? Why does their trajectory look like a line and mine looks like a plateau?
Here’s what makes mid-career comparison dangerous…you’re often measuring yourself against metrics you decided on when you were 24 years old. You might not actually want the same things anymore, but you haven’t consciously updated your priorities. Sometimes you’re not behind, it’s just that your success criteria have just shifted without you noticing or acknowledging it.
There was an event once that I desperately wanted to work on. I was willing to volunteer, shadow, step back on pay…all of it. I tried every angle. No job postings. No clear point of entry. After a while, I started asking myself what I was missing. Was my network too small? Was my brand not strong enough?
Then I saw someone I knew was working on it. Someone I’d worked with months before who was at the same level as me with the same experience. I remember the moment I saw it. I was frustrated. Jealous. I immediately started the comparison: Why them and not me? What do they have that I don’t?
But I was actually measuring myself against a metric I’d decided on years ago (access to certain prestigious projects) without realising that metric might not even be mine anymore. The real question wasn’t “Why didn’t I get in?” It was “Do I actually want in the same way I thought I did?” That person didn’t get the opportunity because they were better. They got it because they were closer to the access and in a role I wouldn’t have been able to do anyways, and that’s structural, not personal. But I couldn’t see that difference until I stopped comparing and started asking whether I was even measuring myself by the right criteria.
There may be a time you see someone you know is moving into a C-suite role at a major event organiser. That is obvious achievement from the outside, and part of you thinks, shouldn’t that be me? Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe you don’t actually want that level of organisational politics, or the travel, or the constant visibility. Maybe you want autonomy more than you want a title. Maybe you want to choose projects instead of being obligated to everything on the calendar. Maybe you want your life to feel less intense, not more. Those are all valid things to want, and they’re not failures of ambition. If you’re measuring yourself against a ladder that isn’t yours, you’ll always feel like you’re failing to climb it.
The financial conversation that actually matters
Somewhere in mid-career, another conversation starts happening internally. At early career, you’ll accept lower pay for prestige, and I have absolutely done this…taking the glamorous client, the globally visible event, the prestigious festival because you’re thinking about the experience, the portfolio, the access it gives you, and the lessons. Money isn’t the primary motivator because you’re still building your reputation and your experience base.
By mid-career, the equation fundamentally changes. You’re carrying more responsibility, holding more risk, absorbing more pressure, making decisions that affect significant budgets and teams and reputations, and often, the compensation hasn’t evolved proportionally. So you start doing the math that nobody wants to admit they’re doing: Is this sustainable long-term? Can I actually live on this? Can I afford the unpredictability? Can I afford not to have a pension or savings or stability? Can I afford what this level of stress is doing to my health and my relationships?
If I’m this capable, what could I earn elsewhere? What would that feel like?
There was an event that caused me to reorganise my life around the idea of working there. I’d done the mental math that said prestige event = worth the travel, worth being away from home, worth the constant pace. But then I actually did the math. The real one. What does constant travel cost? What does my family situation look like now? What’s happening to my health when I’m always moving? And what am I actually getting in return? A name on my resume and the hope that next year will be even better? That’s when the financial conversation became real. Paying the bills isn’t enough. I need sustainability. I need to know that the opportunities I’m chasing actually lead somewhere, not just look good from the outside. Prestige stopped being currency the moment I realised it was costing me more than it was giving back.
Those aren’t greedy questions. They’re not a sign that you’ve lost passion for events. They’re adult questions, the ones that come when you start thinking about long term economic realities instead of short term opportunities. When experienced professionals pivot into other sectors whether that’s teaching, corporate training, freelance consulting, or moving to entirely different industries, we often look at that and assume they burned out. Sometimes that’s true, but sometimes it’s simpler than that. Sometimes it’s simply about money. Sometimes it’s sustainability. Sometimes it’s a very rational decision that the way this industry is structured doesn’t work for their life anymore.
Redefining who you are (and why it matters)
This might be the most uncomfortable part of mid-career, so I want to spend real time here. In early career, many of us built our identity around intensity. You were the calm one in chaos, the one who could handle pressure, the one who could stay up all night and still show up tomorrow, the one who always said yes, the one who made it work, the one who could hold everything together when things were falling apart. That identity got rewarded. It got you opportunities, recognition, and it made you feel valuable and needed. In early career, that identity served you incredibly well because it got you noticed, hired, and trusted with big projects.
However, identity built on intensity has an expiration date. At some point, you get tired, or you have a child or other familial caretaking responsibilities and suddenly you can’t be available 24 hours a day. Maybe your health starts telling you something you can’t ignore or you realise that the person you’ve become to succeed in this industry isn’t who you actually want to be anymore. Then, you hit a question nobody prepares you for: who are you if you’re not that person anymore? Who are you if you don’t want the 2am crisis call? If you want strategy more than logistics? If you want depth instead of breadth? If you want your family to know you’re present, not just physically there but mentally there? If you want to protect your health instead of sacrificing it on the altar of the event?
I hit a point a few years ago where I realised I had been building my identity around intensity. Being available. Saying yes. Being the person who makes it work. That identity served me because it got me noticed, trusted with big projects, and respected. But when I got married and moved, something shifted. I didn’t want to be constantly on the go anymore. I wanted to be home. My health started telling me something. My anxiety increased with the pace, and I had to ask: who am I if I’m not that person? Who am I if I don’t want to be available 24/7? If I want stability more than prestige? If I want to protect my health instead of sacrificing it for the work? Letting go of that identity felt like regression at first. Like I was giving up, not as committed. But it wasn’t. It was realising that the version of myself I’d built to succeed in this industry wasn’t the version I actually want to be anymore, and that realisation isn’t weakness. That’s maturity.
Letting go of an identity that served you really well feels like regression, and you will likely tell yourself that you’re giving up. You’re not as committed as you used to be. It’s not that. It’s evolution. You will realise you’re expanding into something more intentional. Evolution and expansion is uncomfortable because the identity that got you here has been rewarded, and the industry knows how to receive it. Letting it go means stepping into something less defined, less proven, less clear, and that’s disorienting but very necessary.
Not everyone wants to move “up” (and that’s strategic)
Here’s another thing we don’t say clearly enough. Scaling doesn’t only mean moving up the hierarchy. Some mid-career professionals don’t actually want a bigger title or a bigger role in the traditional sense. They want something like more autonomy, more control over which projects they take on, or more ability to say no. Some want more creative influence and the ability to shape how things are done instead of just executing what’s been decided. Others want global exposure without permanent instability and the ability to work on international scale events without their life in constant flux. Some want the portfolio career, different kinds of work and different environments and flexibility to move between them. And some want to design their own path instead of following a predetermined one.
The problem is that if the only model of success you see is traditional upward progression — more title, more authority, more visibility — you measure yourself against that path. If it’s not your path, you’ll always feel like you’re failing to take it. Mid-career is often where you realise, I don’t just want to progress. I want to design. That’s a different energy entirely, and it requires you to stop apologising for not wanting what everyone else seems to want.
The decision point
Most people don’t dramatically quit in mid-career and instead reach a decision point that might not even feel momentous when it’s happening. But there’s usually a moment where you decide, consciously or unconsciously, what you’re actually going to do with this phase. This is where your career stops being something that happens to you and becomes something you actively shape.
I’m going to play bigger but differently. I’m going to stop saying yes to everything and start saying yes strategically. I’m going to be more intentional about visibility, about positioning, about the kind of leadership I want to offer.
Or, I’m going to stay, but I’m redefining ambition on my own terms. I’m not climbing a ladder. I’m building the kind of career that works with my life, not against it.
Or, I’m going to leave this world. The way this industry is structured no longer fits who I am or how I want to live.
All three are valid paths. What’s discouraging is drifting into one unconsciously, because drift feels like stagnation. Like something’s wrong with you because you’re not progressing. Decision, on the other hand, feels like power. You know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you’re not measuring yourself against someone else’s metric anymore.
The maturity of mid-career
If mid-career feels heavier than it did before, and I think it often does, it’s not because you’re less capable. It’s because you’re carrying more context. More experience, more awareness, more understanding, and more knowledge of what you want and don’t want.
That weight can either make you shrink, or it can make you sharper. Most of the time, it does both at different moments, but it does require you to pause long enough to ask: what am I actually building now? Is it aligned with the life I’m living? Is it aligned with the person I want to be?
That’s not a crisis. That’s maturity, and it’s where you stop being everything to everyone and start being distinctly something to someone. It’s where you move from breadth to depth. That’s the real beginning of intentional career strategy instead of just moving forward on momentum.
If this landed, here’s where we go deeper:
Listen: I explore these mid-career themes regularly on my podcast. Recent episodes cover positioning strategy, the breadth-to-depth shift, and what it actually takes to build an event career that feels intentional instead of reactive.
Learn: I’m launching a group coaching program in April for event professionals who are ready to get strategic getting better opportunities in the events industry. You can learn more and sign up here.
Stay Connected: Connect with me on Instagram and LinkedIn.
The fact that you’re asking these questions about your career? That’s the beginning of intentional strategy. The rest is just deciding how you want to move forward.
Laura Yarbrough-Lloyd is an event freelancer and career strategist for event professionals. As the founder of IconicEvents®, she is an industry voice on event careers, talent development, and the future of the events workforce. She works with event professionals and organizations across sectors to help build sustainable, ambitious careers within the world’s most iconic events. Her writing explores career progression, industry structures, and the realities of long-term success in events.
