What Happens When the Career You Prayed For Becomes Too Important? Cheryl Hunter

Cheryl Hunter spent 17 years working her way through McDonald’s Corporation before becoming an owner-operator and spending another 16 years running her own restaurants.By most measures, she had built exactly the kind of career people hope to build. Her restaurants were performing well, she was leading a large team, and she had created a business that gave her both success and influence.Then she didn’t get the next restaurant she was expecting.At first, Cheryl was frustrated with the decision. She had the experience, the numbers, and the track record. But over the following months, that disappointment forced her to ask a much harder question: Had her career become more important to her than she realized?That question eventually led Cheryl to sell her restaurants and enter a completely different season of life.In this episode of the 100X Podcast, Cheryl talks openly about the difficulty of walking away from something that was still successful, learning to separate her identity from her work, and discovering that the skills she had spent decades developing could still be used in ways she never expected.One of the most interesting parts of Cheryl’s story is that she does not really think of herself as retired. She prefers the word “redeployed.”Today, she uses what she learned in business to coach entrepreneurs, work with nonprofit leaders, mentor younger leaders, and help organizations around the world think more clearly about leadership, accountability, stewardship, and people.We also talk about the moment Cheryl stood outside one of her restaurants wondering if she should be somewhere else doing ministry. When she opened the door and heard employees speaking several different languages, she realized that maybe she did not need to go somewhere else to serve people. The people were already there.This conversation is about business and leadership, but it is also about a much larger question:What do you do when the thing you spent most of your life building is no longer supposed to be the center of your life?Cheryl’s answer is not to stop working or stop contributing. It is to take what you have learned, pay attention to the people around you, and begin investing it somewhere new.If you are a business owner, executive, leader, or someone beginning to wonder what the next chapter of your life might look like, this conversation is worth your time.