‘Bachelorette’ Star Jason Tartick Applies Reality TV Lessons to Career Strategy in ‘Restart Roadmap’

As Nashville continues to boom, one of the hidden benefits is this: Our celebrities aren’t just musicians anymore. As a case in point, Music City has claimed Jason Tartick as one of its own for about three years now, and with a new book ready to guide readers through overhauling their career (for the right reasons), he sat down with Sounds Like Nashville to talk it out.

A Buffalo, New York, native and former contestant on ABC’s The Bachelorette, Tartick appeared on Season 14 of the iconic reality dating competition — and although he didn’t win, he sure did end up getting the girl.

He’s currently engaged to Season 11 lead and Dancing With the Stars champ Kaitlyn Bristowe, and if you ask him, his time in Bachelor Nation has been the best thing that ever happened to him. Not just romantically, though. … Maybe just as important is the impact on his career, because it inspired him to restart on his own terms. Now a successful speaker and entrepreneur focusing on financial advice for everyday folks, Tartick ended up founding his own company, Restart, to help folks do what he did. And now his book The Restart Roadmap: Rewire and Reset Your Career (out today) explains how it all happened.

Chatting via Zoom from the sunlit office of his Nashville home, Tartick says it all started before he was on the show — he was in a rut, he just didn’t know it. Deep into the corporate world as a young banking executive, it looked like he had a life figured out from the outside. But that wasn’t true at all.

“For about 10 years I was the corporate guy,” Tartick explains. “You tell me where to go, I’ll be there. You want something done by a certain time? It’ll be done before that. I literally was just checking every box, and living pretty much my entire identity through my work.”

Tartick is a well-spoken, outgoing guy with a ton of interpersonal energy, so it’s not hard to believe him when he says he accepted four relocations for this job, eventually moving all the way to Seattle “because they said there’s a good opportunity.” But despite his upward career trajectory, he was feeling totally lost.

“I felt as though I didn’t even really connect with myself, I was just this suit, senior VP, corporate banker,” he says. “That’s all I knew. It was around that time I was asked to go on the show.”

Everyone in Tartick’s life told him to pass. Family, friends, and especially colleagues were thinking “Dude what are you doing? You’re on a rocket ride in this corporate world. What the hell are you doing going on a reality TV show?” But Tartick saw it differently, and for the first time in 10 years, he was ready to ask himself what he wanted.

“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I wanted to do it for me,” he says. “So I did it. I went on the show, and that changed pretty much every aspect of my life — where I live, which is beautifully here in Nashville, Tennessee; who I’m engaged to, Kaitlyn Bristowe; and what I do for work.”

That’s the happy ending, but Tartick admits it did take a while to get there. After The Bachelorette, he even went back to his banking job — but it just wasn’t the same. He had seen a different path, and then his employer pushed him out anyway … which was most definitely NOT for the right reasons.

He tells the story in the book, but essentially what happened was he was given an ultimatum — either stay in his job and stop doing Bachelor Nation stuff on the side, or leave. Obviously, he chose to leave, and now his life is everything he never even knew he wanted.

“[The book] wasn’t even really on my vision board,” he says. “It just came to me from putting out the brand I believed in.”

In the book, Tartick lays out an eight-step process to help anyone who is rethinking their professional track. From the smallest of changes to the biggest, this book has got it covered, and Tartick sees five reasons someone should consider a restart of their own.

1) Mobility. “If you feel like you’re not moving in the direction you want, or not accelerating, that means you’ve gotta do something.”

2) Money. “If you feel as though you’re not compensated enough, and you need to be paid more for the value you bring? Red flag. A restart is in your future.”

3) Fit. “If you look at your job duties on a day-to-day basis and your natural skill set isn’t aligned with that, it’s time to realign and restart.”

4) Passion. “If you feel as though you don’t have any type of passion for what you do, a restart is necessary.”

5) Fear. “If you are fearful of what’s next, because you have fallen victim to being complacent. I think that’s a golden cycle for large corporations. If you are complacent, they will thrive off of that.”

Tartick goes into detail about what each means and how to apply his lessons, and he says it adds up to a different kind of career-coaching book. Along with well-researched statistics and even a section of key takeaways at the end of each chapter, he’s wrapping everything in stories that his Bachelor Nation fans will eat up.

“What’s different about this is that it’s pretty entertaining,” he says with pride. “I tell really wild stories of behind the scenes, from corporate banking to reality TV and everything in between.”

In the end, Tartick says he realizes he’s been fortunate. Not everyone will be able to support themselves by starting a podcast, but that’s not what the book is for. It’s called a Restart Roadmap for a reason, because after all is said and done, it’s about moving yourself to where you’re supposed to be — wherever that is.

“Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” he says. “I’m in a place I want to be, and I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked, because I actually understand, finally, what motivates me. … For me, I worked for a lot of people who I said ‘yes’ to and I got the job done for, but I didn’t necessarily agree with the things they did or how they did it. I’m motivated to never have to work for anybody other than myself again, and that’s what keeps me driven.

“If this book can make the smallest impact on how people manage their lives, where they want to go, then it’s a win. If it can change people’s perspective in some way, that’s what I’m looking for. Small wins. … If people can embrace the restart instead of run from it, it’s been a success.”

Jason Tartick’s The Restart Roadmap: Rewire and Reset Your Career is available anywhere books are sold starting today (April 5).