Afford Anything - Get Me Out of This Crappy Job! - with Jenny Blake, author of Pivot

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

#81: Jenny Blake used to have an enviable job. As a Career Development manager at Google, she enjoyed the perks of a Silicon Valley life, plus the satisfaction of helping people everyday. She co-founded Google's Career Guru Program, and helped countless Google employees find their right career "fit." But, ironically, Blake sensed that her own career wasn't on the right track. So she took a brave plunge that few would dare: Blake quit Google, packed her bags, and moved from California to New York in search of a new life. She launched her own business. She began publishing books. Today, she joins us on this podcast to share the knowledge she's accumulated over many years about how *anyone* can pivot into a new career or direction. If you're feeling stuck in your job, and you're thinking about making a major life change -- regardless of whether you'd like to try a new industry, retire early, or start your own business -- you might want to hear some of Blake's advice. Enjoy! http://podcast.affordanything.com/episode81 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by SaneBox, a smart filter that prioritizes your inbox, removing the email distractions and saving you time. Get a free $25 credit at Sanebox.com slash Paula. You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make, every dollar that you spend is a tradeoff against something else. This is the Afford Anything podcast where we learn how to explore those tradeoffs and make decisions smarter, wiser, more thoughtful, conscious decisions about which tradeoffs we want to make in life. My name is Paula Pant, host of the Afford Anything podcast. And today, I've got a question that I think a lot of you might be able to relate to.

What do you do when you realize that you just can't stand your job anymore? You're not happy. You don't want to be in your office for another day. You hate your office. You hate your boss. You hate your work. Or maybe you don't hate it. Maybe that's too strong of a word. Maybe you're just bored. You've hit a plateau. You need a change. You need to pivot. But you're not sure quite what you want to pivot to. Is it that you want to save up a bunch of money and then take an early retirement? Is it that you want to pivot into a different job, a different role within your same industry? Or is it something else? Is it that you want to start your own business? Is it that you want to go move to Thailand and join the circus? You want to try.

change in life, but you're not quite sure what that change should be. Can you relate to that? If so, then you might be interested in today's interview, which is with Jenny Blake, the author of the book Pivot. Pivot's tagline, and I love this, is the only move that matters is your next one. And it's a book all about how to wisely make a career change, regardless of whether that career change goes in the direction of literally getting a different job or starting your own business or anything else. It's intentionally broad. So if you're feeling stuck and you want some advice about how to make a career change, then let's hear what Jenny Blake has to say. Oh, BTW, she is the co-creator of Google's career guru program. So she used to work full time for Google before she

became self-employed and she helped Google develop its own program that helped internal Googlers manage their careers. So now she's taking that skill set that she developed. That she developed, for Google and she's spreading it to the outside world. So if you're feeling stuck and you suspect that you want to make a career change, you might be interested in hearing what Jenny Blake has to say. Without any further delay, here she is. Hi, Jenny. Hi, Paula. I'm really excited to talk to you today. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. So Jenny, the topic of your book is pivot and the idea around pivoting is making a change within your career and your work in your life. I'd like to just start with your personal story. I know that you don't want to be known as, quote, the girl who left Google.

But tell me about, you know, your background, how you became interested in this topic. For me, it came from not feeling very resilient in my career. And every time I was hitting up against a pivot point or plateau, which I only have the language for now, it felt like a crisis. And I felt like there must be something wrong with me. Either I'm destined to be unhappy from the rest of my career because every few years I'm wondering what's next or what inspired me to write this book is that maybe we're all experiencing this more frequently. And that instead of being allowed to have two crises in our life, one at midlife and one

at quarter life, maybe we're all going to be experiencing this what's next searching more often, in which case let's get better at it. Okay. Just so that the listeners have some background, can you kind of walk everyone through your path? Sure. Yeah, I went to UCLA and at the start of my junior year, got the opportunity to work at a startup company, a political polling startup with one of my professors. So I actually left school, took a leave of absence, and started working there. I was there for two years. Later, went back to graduate with my class. I was ahead at the time that I left. and then moved over to Google in 2011. I made the tough decision to leave Google and try and make it on my own. So to move from the Bay Area to New York City and try my hand at running mail business,

having no clue whether I would succeed or not. And definitely had major ups and downs, but I'm proud to say, here we are six years later. And I am still not living in a van down by the river. Nice, nice. And so tell me about some of the, uh, pivot points that you reach now that you have that language for it? Every time it had to do with feeling either bored or like my work wasn't falling into my zone of genius. That's a term from Gay Hendricks of what I thought I was truly best at or looking ahead

and not seeing how I was going to be able to grow. So maybe it was that I tried to have a conversation or tried to see a trajectory and either didn't like what I saw or couldn't picture anything at all. So you mentioned this notion that I had become known as the girl who left things, the girl who left Google, the girl who left college. Part of what was so stressful once I was on my own and asking what's next was I didn't have a steady paycheck to fund that exploration. So as I did look ahead to say, well, what's next? This time that searching just had so much more stress and pressure because it affected my very ability to provide for myself. So that's generally how I define a pivot point, although some people hit pivot points through physical. exhaustion. Like if you're hitting burnout frequently or getting sick more often, sometimes our body

sends signals that, hey, it's time to make a change. And if you don't do this quickly, I'm going to start talking to you more and more loudly. So for you, it was you wanted to find meaningful work, but you also needed to do it in a way in which you could continue paying the bills. Yes, exactly. And it's one thing to ask what's next within a company. But then when you're self-employed, it's a really scary question. And paying the bills also in a way that, that I realized one of the biggest mistakes I made early on in my business was not creating steady, predictable streams of income. Even though I wanted to, I didn't really know how. So it wasn't until, for example, switching from coaching, working on a three or six-month engagement to a

monthly retainer model, that when I switched to monthly retainer, I could finally predict how many clients I could have, how much room I had. I would bill everybody on the first of the month. I always knew how much was coming in. And that made things much smoother moving forward. One thing that you mentioned in your book is that a lot of times when people hit those pivot points in their careers, when people hit a plateau and know that they want something more, there's some contingent of society that shames or blames people for wanting to prioritize meaningful work. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, this whole rap on millennials that they're so entitled and they just want trophies. And I just really do not think that that's true. the board. Certainly, I think that yes, millennials do look for more meaning in their work, or at least have been unafraid to ask for meaning and meaningful work and work that makes an impact, and so they are more apt to leave. Whereas even for my mom, for example, when I was thinking about leaving

Google, she would say to me, work is work. It's not supposed to be fun. Like, it's supposed to pay the bills. And we just clearly have a very different take on that. But it's more essential now than ever as well to be doing meaningful work that adds value because if you're not, there's all these economic factors like globalization, automation, innovation, outsourcing that will affect someone's ability to keep their job. So I think it's smart for everybody to be asking how am I learning and growing and ultimately how am I making an impact and that doesn't just affect millennials, it's everybody. And even people who don't want to change are now getting pivoted more frequently. So that also has nothing to do with blaming somebody for job, quote, job hopping when organizations are evolving

so quickly that it's rare on both sides of the equation that we're staying anywhere for as long as we once did in the past. Though, of course, there are exceptions to everything. What you said about, you know, work is work. That kind of reminds me of the idea that there's some people who see work as a job, some who see it as a career and some who see it as a calling. Yeah, I love that research from, I just. don't even know how to pronounce our last name, but exactly that if we see work as a job, it's meant to pay the bills and it's really an exchange of time for money. And that's fine, by the way, this is no judgment attached to any of this, but people are motivated by different

things. So someone who's motivated to have a job mentality approach to their career, maybe they just want to work and then spend as much time with their family as they can or volunteer in their community. Someone with a career orientation is generally aiming for some amount of success and prestige and social status that comes from their career. And then those with a meaning orientation, and it may be a combination, are looking for meaning. They're wanting to say, what is my legacy? How is the work that I'm doing having an impact in the world? Or they feel that work is a calling. I was born to do this or I live to serve. You know, things like that kind of show someone who money is important, but it's not everything. And status is important, but it's not everything. And they feel called by something deeper to make an difference in some way.

Can you, if you have one type of orientation, can you shift it? Like, for example, if you are in a job mindset or a career mindset, but you want to be able to think of your work as a calling or as something meaningful, how do you make that transition? Does that start from within? Or does that start from within? Or does, that start externally by changing what you're doing? I would say that for someone who has a job mindset and they're not bothered by it, exactly. It won't even really be a blip on their radar. Then they won't feel any, there's no need. There's nothing saying you have to have a meaningful passion behind your work. But what you're describing, I think, is somebody who maybe currently has a job, but they're not that fulfilled.

And they do feel this inner whisper that there's more out there or I'm hungry for more. have even senior level coaching clients who are working with me. And yeah, they're like C-O or some really high up title or in charge of advertising for the whole company, but they're ready to move on to what they would call legacy pivot. That for the next 10 years, now I want to advertise a product I really care about, not just advertised, period. And so everybody can continue to grow in this way and just say, what's most important to me and how do I want to be helpful to people and And who? Is it just your immediate family? Is it your community? Is it some other population? So you can just start, I think, exactly as you said, Paul, of just asking the questions of what's

most important to me without the pressure to feel like you have to have some end all, be all life calling or life purpose that guides everything you do because we're all evolving so quickly and so much that there's no need to know this. I don't believe in necessarily having an all-encompassing mission statement, but if you do, that's great. So I do happen to have one, which for me is I strive to be as helpful as possible to as many people as possible. I enjoy creating templates and resources and books that help people through big transitions. And I'd like to help as many people. So I don't only want to do one-on-one coaching, for example. I enjoy writing books and speaking that can reach more. Describe that as your mission statement.

Will that mission statement ever change? Do you go back and revisit it every so often? It could, but what I like about mine and any of you listening, feel free to borrow it, is that it is all encompassing. So I didn't attach myself to what specific topics or exactly how. And that's the thing that when I'm in transition around the topics that I'm writing about, I return to, well, just given what I know, what I've experienced and what my biggest challenges are, How can I be of service here? How can I be most helpful? What are people struggling with that I can help in some way, usually relating to my own struggles and then eventually how I've come through them? You describe a four-stage process that you call the pivot method. And I'd like to, if it's okay with you, I'd like to just take some time to really walk through each of these steps. Would that be all right? Sure. Great. So let's start with Plant. Can you explain to everyone who's listening?

what is the plant stage, that stage number one of the pivot method? The name of this stage plant comes from the analogy of a basketball player. When a basketball player stops dribbling, they plant one foot, and that's their source of strength, their stability, their foundation, then they can scan for passing options with their pivot foot. So one of the biggest mistakes that pivoters make, myself included, is focusing so much on what we don't want, what we don't know, what we don't have, that none of that propels the conversation forward. The plant stage is so important because it's about understanding

what is already working. What do you already know? What are your known variables? What do you already grade at? What do you most enjoy? When are you most in the zone? And what does success look like one year from now? Don't even worry about too much farther out than that. But these then become the brackets for your pivot. And they become your foundation to guide all of the searching for your next move that follows. So let's walk through an example. Let's say, say that we've got a somebody who is hypothetically a 35-year-old working at a marketing company. And they're not quite satisfied with what they're doing, but they don't really know what's next. So in the plant stage, what would this person do?

So they would start by understanding, well, what am I already doing? What do I most enjoy when I'm most in the zone? Would that be aspects of their current job, or could it be like hobbies that they have that they're not doing within their work? Yeah, all of the above. It could be stuff you enjoyed as a kid, but maybe haven't been doing too much more of now. Even doing personality assessments like Strength Finder, Myers-Briggs. And then what does success look like a year from now? You know, anytime someone's feeling a little stuck or at a pivot point, you don't know where you want to end up. That's part of the perceived problem. But at least understand broad strokes of what success might be. So where do you want to live?

what type of office environment do you want to have? How do you want to be learning and growing? What kind of impact do you want to make? What skills would you love to learn? Who do you want to be surrounded by? How much would you like to be earning? All of those really help paint the picture of what success looks like. And it's going to be different for everybody. And even if you can't know all of those variables, at least get down what you do know or take a best educated guess. And then it's great. The more flexible, you know, the less specific someone is, the more flexible they may be, which is I'm willing to work anywhere or in any industry, but the one thing I really care about is, boom, you know, innovative, progressive culture. Okay, great. So you just kind of identify your must-havs and you're nice to haves,

and also your can't stand. What would be deal breakers for you? Hmm. Okay. All right. And then what comes next? So that's the plant stage. After that, what's the next step from there? So the next one is scan. Scanning is about connecting to the plant stage and then looking for people, skills, and projects that could extend from what you identified in the plant stage and help you explore options for moving forward. So in the basketball analogy, it's akin to the basketball player passing the ball around the court. So what would be, let's go back to the example of the 35-year-old marketing person who works at a marketing company. What would that person do now that they're in the scan stage? So for people, it could be.

who's doing what I want to do a year from now. Is there anybody in the company, maybe people outside of the company, who are some friend tours they could connect with, people maybe in a similar boat or even online communities, podcasts like this one, resources that are out there. And then they could also look for skills. So if they've been in marketing, depending where they want to end up in a year, maybe they want to become a manager for the first time or pivot to some. Maybe they've been doing marketing in the fashion industry. Now they want to do marketing. in tech. So are there any classes or skills that they need to learn in order to bridge that gap? And then also getting the word out and just letting people know, hey, this is what I'm interested in.

I'm looking. If you hear of anything, let me know. And that's a process I called making yourself discoverable. So not just you looking for people and skills and opportunities, but making it clear so that those same opportunities and people can also find you and know what you're looking for. One of the things that you wrote about in your book that I loved that came out of the scan stage was the concept of reciprocal transformation. Can you just explain what that is? Because I thought that was really just a cool idea.

Yeah, I love this. This is from my friend Lisa Danylchuk. The idea that in helping another person, we also transform ourselves. So whether it's a coach to a teacher to a student, a mentor to a mentee, that any time one person is dealing with something, it helps the other as well to be in the other position and that so often we mirror each other of what we most need to learn or hear or see. And so just a cool idea of connecting with people. We can have such mutually beneficial relationships.

And they don't all have to be, you know, a lot of times in career, people feel pressure to find a mentor. And there are so many resources available beyond just that. Right. And I mean, and this kind of reminded me of the idea that sometimes the best way to quote unquote get mentoring is to turn around and mentor other people. And within that process, you end up learning by virtue of teaching. Yeah, 100%. They call that reverse mentoring in some of the organizations that I've observed. You know, one thing that we haven't touched on yet, but that I want to talk about before we move on to the next stages is the concept of funding your runway, building your runway. Can you discuss that a little bit? Yeah, this is the idea that any pivot inevitably takes some amount of financial resources. And depending on how much you have saved, that can inform what your options are.

So if somebody wants to change jobs, but they have zero savings in the bank, then you'll have to wait. this probably doesn't make sense to quit your current job until you have the next one lined up versus someone who has a year's worth of savings and wants to go travel the world for a year to reflect on what to do next. They have a little more leeway. So pivot runway is just how much margin you have to be able to give yourself some cushion in between. And if you don't have much, maybe you're waiting on your pivot or you're taking smaller steps or creating a side hustle of some kind to earn extra money to save up so that you can give yourself the best chance of success when you do make a change.

And how long should that runway be or how much money should that runway represent? It's going to be different for everybody, but I recommend about six months if possible. I would say that if you're looking for another job, the average time to look for another job can be up to eight months, which is quite a lot, though certainly much shorter if you have a network you can tap into and reach out to. And even just if you're self-employed, at least six months is a great idea, just so you can ride out any initial dips and keep going. All right. So we've talked about stage one, which is to plant yourself and stage two, which is scanning.

Let's talk about stage three, which is pilot. Yeah, pilot is where it starts to get really fun. And piloting is all about small experiments. So based on where you are now and where you want to end up, What are some small experiments that you can run that will help you test the waters of a new direction? So the pilot falls into, or a good pilot will hit what I call the three E's. Do I enjoy this new area? Can I become an expert at it?

And is there room to expand in the market? And so try to take some of the pressure off of making one big career leap and instead try and find one project or one small idea that you could start experimenting with or even several at a time. and let them show you which ones take the most momentum. Enjoyment, expertise, and expansion. Yes, exactly. In the basketball analogy, this is like passing the ball around the court, seeing where you have the best opportunity to make a shot.

Or as I've, to switch metaphors, I've come to describe it like race horses at the Kentucky Derby. Our job is not to know which one's going to win, but it's just to line up these pilots. You line them up like courses at the starting gate say, go and you see which ones emerge and pull out ahead. And that's the best way to ease into a next move without taking on too much risk up front. Let's go back to our 35-year-old person who works in marketing. I realize we're taking some fictional leaps here, but what would that person be doing in this stage, in the pilot stage? I always like to recommend people start right where they are. So it could mean taking on a project at work that would even fit some of their vision and what they want to be doing or going to a certain type of course or training on nights and weekends.

It could be starting a side hustle of their own on a professional level or just piloting some personal projects like cooking classes or learning a second language. So it really is going to depend on the individual and what his or her goals are. But bite-sized chunks that don't necessarily involve changing all the way up front. For example, I have one coaching client, one of his pilots. He's not sure if he wants to move from the L.A. to the Bay Area. So he may do what we call a pop-up shop where he moves himself to the Bay Area for one month, rents an Airbnb, and goes to events and networks just to see if he likes it there. That's an example of piloting before putting the pressure to just make the big move overnight.

Actually, you know, I did something very similar. When I moved from Atlanta to Las Vegas, I first came out to Las Vegas for three weeks. And just spent three weeks here getting into the feel of what it would be to live here. That's awesome. And it was very different. If you're just here for two or three days, you don't get the experience of going to the grocery store, filling up your gas tank, realizing that you need to go get an oil chain, you know, those sorts of things. Yeah.

And how did you know you wanted to stay? I just liked the routine of everyday life in this environment. That's so awesome. I did the same thing actually with New York. I moved here for, I would come for a week at a time with Google. Then my friend and I moved for a month when I was on my sabbatical. And so we moved for a month. We rented an apartment.

And same as you. Wanted to see it's probably so different as a tourist and then living here. And I didn't know if I could handle the pace and the noise and the chaos of New York. But we loved it. We loved it. And so she and I both together ended up moving a couple months later. Oh, nice. You know, I meant to ask you why?

Why was it that when you quit Google, you also moved from California to New York? Because when I read that, it sounded to me like, wow, that's two major life transitions that are both happening at the same time. I know. And then, of course, quitting my job to go work for the most expensive, or to go live in the most expensive city. But I just, I had always wanted to live in New York. And I just felt called to it since I was really young. and when I applied to colleges after high school, I really just didn't get in anywhere that I wanted to go on the East Coast. So I had always had this chip on my shoulder to go live there. And by the time I got here six years ago, I just felt like I was home. And I just felt like, I belong here.

I love it here. And I never want to leave. And I still feel that to this day. Nice. We're going to take a break for ads in just a second. Before we do, I want to pause and just send a special message out to all of you. I think it's really important to be totally transparent about the thought process behind how we accept and vet sponsors for this show. So what criteria do we use when we're deciding which sponsors we're going to accept and which ones we're not?

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I'm going to really go behind the scenes and just open up my brain and share it with all of you. And I hope that you enjoy it. And I hope that maybe it's, you know, teaches you something about business or not. But that's what's coming up ahead. All right. With that being said, let's roll into the ads. First, I'd like to give a shout out to one of our newest sponsors, a company called La Tote. The reason that I was happy to bring them on as a sponsor is because, as many of you know, last year, I lost a lot of weight.

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I mean, what do you have to lose? Go check them out for free. Get the free $25 credit. And then see if they offer the value that you need. See if they are making your email experience more pleasant. So sanebox, S-A-N-E-B-O-X. dot com slash p a ulla pilot stage you talk about the 30-day decision tracker what is that exactly this is a way to make big decisions a little less abstract or if you feel like you're waffling between options

funnily enough i set this up when i was dating someone i couldn't tell whether to continue this relationship or not and maybe by asking that question it's automatically a subtle sorry, this one's not going to work. But I remember thinking I was too confused on a day-to-day basis. So why don't I just track? Why don't I just write how I feel on a scale of one to five every day with a few notes and just see how things shake out? And sure enough, on day 29 of this tracker, he broke up with me. I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh at that. Yeah, no, it's okay. It's perfect. It's perfect, right. Like, the decision was made for me right on time. And so same thing with a job. It's, Like sometimes thinking every day, what should I do?

Should I stay or go is too big. But if you track for 30 days and you see, oh, wow, 25 out of 30 days was a two. And I was feeling discouraged. Wow, that's way more than I even realized. And so it can just kind of give you some data on what can be a very qualitative feeling of emotion or ups and downs and actually be able to track over time. Now, of course, this is for a more like, let's say, left brain type approach, the right brain. would just be even something like a short daily meditation practice where you check in and say, you know, what am I feeling?

One of my favorite coaching series of questions is, what does your head say, what does your heart say, what does your gut say? So even that can be a great way to break through a sticky decision. Head, heart, and gut. I like that. Let's talk next about stage four, the exciting slash scary stage, launch. Yeah. So launch is in the basketball analogy, when the player goes to make a shot.

And this is when you go all in on the new direction. So you've reduced risk by going plant scan pilot. And by the way, those first three stages is a cycle. It's not a linear one and done process. But if you cycle through plant scan pilot, plant scan pilot, then eventually you may be ready to launch, which is go all in on the new direction. Maybe that means moving teams at work or changing companies entire. or quitting your job to start your own business.

The launch is when, yes, there is still some risk and uncertainty involved, but you have significantly reduced it by running pilots and seeing which ones get momentum. And most people I interviewed, not one person regretted their launch, no matter how it turned out. Even though approaching a launch, as you said, Paula, can be quite intimidating. But what if it doesn't work out? What if I fail? And everyone I spoke with was always felt so glad that they had tried. and that you always get new and better data from a new vantage point.

So there's really, at a certain point, you got to just move and gather all the data from that next move and then go from there. You talked about how one of the biggest questions that people have around the stage is just how do I know when it's time to launch? How do I know when it's time to cut the cord and make that move? For the people who are listening who are wondering that right now at this moment, how do they know? when it's time. Yeah, well, there are many different ways or different criteria on my website and in the book I have a launch timing criteria checklist, which is broken down into categories like maybe someone's launch decision depends on financial resources, saving a certain amount of money, earning a bonus when their side hustle is earning a certain amount. For others,

it might be date-based timing. You know, I had one coaching client who said, I'm quitting before the holidays no matter what. And by the new year, I want to do, I want to be. done. So, or date-based is just waiting. Could be project-based timing, waiting until something in the side hustle is set up, waiting until you complete and launch a big project at work. Could be waiting on, like the choices in someone else's hands, waiting on a grant on funding to get into graduate school, waiting for your partner to get a job or change, make a transition. And then the last one is kind of gut or body instinct. So many people just say, I just knew or I couldn't stay there another day.

Do you ever see that people might set a certain benchmark? You know, they'll say once X happens, that's when I'll launch. Once X happens, that's when I'm going to quit my job. And then once that X happens, they just move the benchmark. Do you see that happen a lot? Yeah, I think you can't really move until you're ready. And I don't believe that in some cases, yes, there's such thing as moving to soon or too late. But yeah, there are definitely people where the benchmark is elusive and it,

and it keeps moving. And I think that's fine. You know, it's really just about you might hit that benchmark and just feel in your gut. It's still not time yet. If I had left Google when I first considered it, I would have missed out on so many things that are now vital to my career. I mean, even if I left when I first had the thought, I wouldn't have created this global career guru program that's now on the cover of pivot that I say co-creator of Google's career guru program. So I'm so glad that I stayed longer than at the time I thought I might. So I think as long as a person is finding what is valuable about staying and not feeling just like a victim to it, then that's what really matters. So with any choice you make, with any job, any career, anything you do, there's going to be some tradeoffs.

One of the things that you talk about in your book is the hexagon, the pivot hexagon that shows the tradeoffs, you know, security versus freedom, time versus money, structure versus adventure. Can you talk a little bit about those tradeoffs in the hexagon model? Yeah, sure. So exactly. This is the idea that of any next move, we are often optimizing for opposing values or that they seem to be opposing. So if we are choosing security, we may be taking a nine to five with a steady paycheck rather than the freedom of doing your own thing. Or as you said, the tradeoffs between time, money. So, we're just the tradeoffs between time, money, security and freedom or adventure, routine and adventure. And so it's just kind of to acknowledge that any next decision has tradeoffs. And so which ones do you want to make? Which ones are most

important to you? And how can you somehow, even with the embedded tradeoffs, can you still be creative about generally assembling an opportunity or an next move that fits as much of your values as possible? What do you do if you don't know which? trade-off you want, you know, if you're like, but I want security and freedom or I want structure and adventure, you know, if you, you're feeling when you evaluate it is kind of the, I want it all. Right. Well, then I like to ask creative questions. So how can I achieve security and freedom? I would try and create more specific parameters for what each of those means as well. So how can I earn $100,000 a year and work 35 hours a week? You know,

You could just be very specific about what each of those concepts means to you, or at least what the window is that you're trying to hit and then just ask the question. And you may not come up with the answer overnight, but slowly over time just by asking the question instead of feeling like, oh, well, you can't have it all and not even trying. For me, when I was leaving Google, I would ask myself, how can I earn twice as much in half the time? And I asked that to counter my fear of not being able to provide for myself. But by asking how can I earn twice as much in half the time, I didn't hit that right away, but I held it as a question of what's possible. And now here I am six years later and I am earning twice as much and half the time, if not more, on those ratios. But it took six years. So it's not to say that just by asking it, we can do it overnight, but at least we start creatively working toward that.

Can you talk about lead, the final stage after all of this? lead is about applying this method as a coaching and mentoring framework. So beyond mapping your own next move, how can you help other people do the same? And so you can even use these three stages, plants can pilot as a way to map a conversation. And everyone listening can try this. Even with loved ones, when you ask them or they tell you something they're struggling with, instead of just giving your opinion, you can say, well, what's important to you about that? What does success look like? You know, what is where? working, okay, what's out there? Would it be helpful to brainstorm or what's a small experiment

you could run? So, I mean, you can just use this as a way to help facilitate someone else's best thinking and even for organizations creating programs that can help people figure out their next move or in your own business as a solopreneur if you're listening and you have your own thing to say, what can I pilot within my business? What programs can I be piloting? And I like how you give the advice to people, you know, ask lots of open questions, you know, when you're talking to other people who are trying to work through this, don't try to solve their problems. Just ask them questions and listen and be exploratory. Yes, exactly. It's so tempting to want to just give advice, but it's ultimately much more efficient.

If you first understand what success looks like for this individual and let them really talk and explore, then weigh in. Then when you do could give your suggestions, they're so much more relevant to what that person is aiming for. And have you found, I mean, when I have these conversations with people, I've often found that many people deep down inside know what they really want. And it's much more powerful to be the person who asks questions that allows them to state it themselves. I agree wholeheartedly. Yes, so true. If you just ask someone, well, what does your gut say. You would be amazed. So many people have way more answers inside of themselves than they realize. Well, Jenny, is there anything that I haven't asked about that you'd like to emphasize?

I think that out covers it. Thank you so much for all these great questions. Of course. Where can people find you if they want to learn more? The best place is pivot method.com. And if you go to slash toolkit, there's a bunch of free templates and resources from each of the stages we talked about. And then And also, if you're looking for help mapping your next move, we have an amazing team of six pivot coaches. So if you go to pivot method.com slash coaching, you could sign up for a two-session jumpstart with email in between. And that can be a great way to just get some one-on-one support and clarity on your next move.

Nice. Well, thank you so much, Jenny. Thank you for having me, Paula, and for everybody who's here listening. Thank you so much, Jenny, for this interview. What were some of the key lessons that stood out? Well, for me, there were a couple of things. Number one, so the four stages that she talks about when you're making a career change. Plant, scan, pilot, and launch. In a nutshell, planting yourself means asking yourself some really good, solid, tough questions about who you are and what you want. Where do you want to live? What type of office environment do you want to have? How do you want to be learning and growing? What kind of impact do you want to make? What skills would you love to learn?

who do you want to be surrounded by? How much would you like to be earning? All of those really help paint the picture of what success looks like. And it's going to be different for everybody. So essentially, the plant stage is the stage in which you really take a good, solid look at yourself. And also, you start building a financial runway. You start saving up ideally six months' worth of living expenses so that you've got a cushion to fall back on while you're making this transition. That's stage one. Stage two, scanning is looking around for the opportunities. And stage three, piloting, is test driving those opportunities, testing something, whether it's a new job, a new city, a new side hustle, just test it to see if you like it before you go all in. And then stage four is going all in.

So that is one of the big pieces that stood out to me from this conversation is making a career change can seem daunting. But when you boil it down to its essence and you break it down into those steps, it feels much more man. That was one big thing that I got out of this interview. The other thing that I got out of both the interview as well as the book is the pivot hexagon. And what I love about this is that the hexagon represents three reciprocal pairs of values. Essentially, it represents tradeoffs. So one of those is imagine this hexagon is a series of spectrums, right? So one of them is the spectrum in which on one end you've got security and on the other end you've got

freedom. So if you're on the security end of the spectrum, then you want to minimize risk, minimize uncertainty. You want lots of outside protection and consistency and approval. On the other hand, on the other end of the spectrum, you've got the desire for freedom, whether that's financial freedom, financial independence, or whether it's the ability and flexibility to choose your own projects at work, location independence, those are all different. forms of freedom. And so then you've got this tension, you've got this tradeoff between security and freedom. And that's one of the three reciprocal value sets that's represented in this hexagon. Really quickly, I'm going to go over the other two before I start talking about what we've

learned about that. So another one of those reciprocal value sets is money versus time. So in this model that she's built, money is both the amount and the consistency of your income versus time is time. It's how much time you dedicate towards working every day. How much time you dedicate towards money. You know, time and money exist within that dynamic tension. That's where the expression time is money comes from. And then the third value set is structure versus adventure. So structure is routine. It's predictability. It's having that set schedule versus adventure, which is travel and variety and meeting new people and excitement. So you put all of these together. each of these value sets live along a spectrum and you put it all together and it turns into a big hexagon.

You've got these three value sets and they seem to conflict with one another. They seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. And as Jenny said in the interview, when you want both of them, when you want security and freedom, when you want time and money, then the question that you have to start asking yourself is, okay, how do I define each? each of those terms, and how can I have both? How can I achieve security and freedom? I would try and create more specific parameters for what each of those means as well. So how can I earn $100,000 a year and work 35 hours a week? And I love this approach because, all right, let's say that you want both time and money. Well, there are ways that you can do that.

And the way to do that is to earn money in a form that doesn't require the time for money tradeoff. So in other words, build streams of passive income so that you can have money that doesn't cost you your time. Let's say that you want the freedom of self-employment, but you also want some security as well. The question isn't, well, should I be self-employed versus should I, you know, keep the security of my nine to five? job, the question becomes, how can I have both? How can I have the freedom of self-employment as well as the security of knowing that I have some steady, stable income coming in? And then once you frame the question that way, there are a myriad of different answers. Maybe you have the freedom of self-employment, but you look for contracts that are on a monthly retainer. Or maybe you have

the freedom of self-employment, but you also have a stream of passive income coming in that supplements your income or maybe you have multiple streams of income and those multiple streams give you security because that way if one of them dries up you still have the others to fall back on. My point here isn't that you should choose one answer over the other. My point is that even though these things exist in attention and exist in a tradeoff, there are ways to have both. And the answers that you arrive at depend on the questions that you ask. I hope I'm being clear. I feel like I'm being a little esoteric, but I'm hope this all makes sense. You can have both time and money. You can have both security and freedom.

You can have both structure and adventure. And the way to have that is to define what each of those terms mean to you. Then once you have those specifics around it, then figure out how to get that. So that's what I got out of this interview. I would love to hear your thoughts. Share your comments over, you know, my favorite playground these days is Instagram. So head over to Instagram.com slash Paula Pantt, where you can share your comments on this episode. You could also share your comments on the show notes, which is at Affordatingthing.com slash episode 81. And if you've enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and hit subscribe and leave a review. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I'll catch you next week.