Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Whitney Johnson: Overcoming Fear as You Leap to Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Whitney Johnson believed she could increase her earnings tenfold. So, she pursued business courses at night and eventually made an unusual transition from secretary to investment banker. This marked the first major disruption of her career path and set the stage for her future successes as an entrepreneur, author, and thought leader on disruption. In this episode, Whitney shares her journey of self-disruption through her major career leaps. She provides insights and strategies for professionals struggling to transition into new career phases. Whitney Johnson is a leading expert in business innovation and personal disruption. She is the bestselling author of Disrupt Yourself and is a sought-after speaker and advisor. In this episode, Ilana and Whitney will discuss: - Whitney’s inspiring journey from secretary to investment banker - Her brave leap from business analyst to entrepreneur - The impact of personal disruption on career growth - Strategies for leaders to harness disruption for success - The role of mentorship and support in achieving growth - How to identify opportunities for self-disruption - Balancing personal life with professional ambitions - The importance of a safety net while purpose-searching - The ‘S-curve’ framework for understanding professional growth - And other topics… Whitney Johnson is the founder of Disruption Advisors, a consultancy that specializes in organizational growth and innovation. Recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the top management thinkers, she is a leading expert in innovation and personal disruption. Whitney hosts the popular Disrupt Yourself podcast and is the author of the bestselling book by the same name. She has also written Build an A-Team, another bestseller. She frequently speaks at prestigious venues such as the United Nations and the US Air Force, empowering individuals and organizations to effectively navigate career growth and organizational change. Connect with Whitney: Whitney’s Website: https://whitneyjohnson.com/  Whitney’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneyjohnson/  Resources Mentioned: Whitey’s Books: Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work: https://www.amazon.com/Disrupt-Yourself-Putting-Disruptive-Innovation/dp/1629560529  Build an A Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Team-Play-Strengths-Learning/dp/1633693643  Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream: https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Dream-Do-Remarkable-Things/dp/1937134121  Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Growth-Grow-People-Company/dp/1647821150   

Whitney Johnson, CEO of Disruption Advisors, top business thinkers, 1.8 followers on LinkedIn. You have three books, but you all started with being a business analyst. How did that happen, Whitney? Well, Alana, it starts even prior to being a business analyst because I studied music in college. I played the piano. And when I graduated from college, I had just gotten married. My husband was doing a PhD at Columbia University in New York. And we moved to New York because we were married. I was absolutely terrified. I would never have gone to New York on my own.

So scared. The first week, I would not leave the apartment by myself. And because I was a music major, I naturally decided that I was going to work on Wall Street. But because I had never set foot in a business course, I wasn't very confident. I was a woman. My first job was actually as a secretary to a stockbroker. I did not know that. So cool.

So what happened? So what happened? Well, I went to work. My job was at Smith Barney. So it was between 55th and 56th on 6th Avenue in Manhattan. So I love New York because I feel like this is the place that I came alive. But I would go to work every day and I'm sitting at my desk with my stockbrokers alongside me.

But there was also this big bullpen. And every single day, I would hear these up-and-coming stockbrokers, all of whom were men, say things to prospective clients. Things like, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that this is a great investment. I mean, they're like egging them on. And they would say, throw down your pom poms and get in the game. And I'm offended at first because I was a cheerleader in high school. But I hear this over and over again, every single day. And at some point, I just had this, I have to throw down my pom poms, I have to get in the game. I started taking business courses at night, accounting, finance, economics. I then

had a boss, and this is really important, a boss who believed in me, who gave me a shot, who gave me the opportunity to move from being a secretary to an investment banker. And people in financial services know, wow, that is really unusual. Even today, it's unusual. And the boss gave me that opportunity. And so that moved me to be an investment banker. And I wouldn't have known to really call it that then, but that was absolutely the beginning of me disrupting myself of what I thought was going to be possible for me in my life. Incredible. And probably this is the big focus that I want everybody to understand. You wanted

it. You were committed to making that happen. You went above and beyond to learn everything you need. And yes, you needed to also get the shot, right? Right. It's a both and for sure. It's a both and, and you probably somewhat created your own luck by being so committed. I agree with that. I will always be grateful for the boss who gave me the opportunity. His name was Cesar Baez, which I think is interesting because he was an immigrant to the United States. And I think maybe he had a sense of different opportunity or an opportunity in a way that maybe someone else might not have. So I've always been grateful for that. And as you said, I worked very hard. I was taking classes at night. I wanted this. I was

determined. I was hungry. And I still remember actually having a conversation with someone at a party. And I said to them, why would I make X when I can make 10 X? I'm going to work. My husband's in school and his PhD is probably going to take a long time because PhDs take a long 10x. I'm going to work. My husband's in school and his PhD is probably going to take a long time because PhDs take a long time. So I'm working. Why am I going to make x? I want to make 10x. I love it. And I'm sure Grant Cardone will like that too with his 10x thing. But you know, what's interesting though, is that you have maybe the personality or maybe not, I'd love to hear you, but you disrupt yourself again and again and again. Talk to me a little bit about your story, because everybody needs to listen to that. But also, what makes you

a disruptor? I think there's always a little bit of psychology involved in what causes that to happen. So it's partly temperament. I grew up in a very middle class background in California at the time. My mom was a schoolteacher, somewhat entrepreneurial, but she's basically the generation of the notorious RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I mean, there weren't a lot of opportunities for women at that time. So I think there was a hunger inside of her. And one of the things I love this quote from Carl Jung, who said, one of the greatest influences on a child is the unlived life of the parent. And I think my mom really wanted to have a career. I remember her telling

me she really wanted to go to medical school. people just said, girls aren't doctors. They're just not doctors. So there was something I think inside of her that ended up getting embedded in me and my psyche. I think that's definitely a part of it. And I think there's also a part of it where I look at it and And if I analyze it, now, I'm an oldest child, I've always been very driven to do well to succeed. On the Enneagram, I'm a one. So I'm a reformer, we are going to make progress, we're going to make things happen. And interestingly enough, and I just had this aha, just a few years ago, is my father was a very talented person, very charming, very capable, but he never really made progress in life. He never moved the ball down the field. And I think that observing that stuckness in him, so the combination of my mom wanting to move forward, my dad kind of being stuck, me just being inherently driven,

all of those things combined have led me to be like, I have to always be making progress. It's something just deep inside of me. And that's what drives me. Incredible. So you're in the go, go, go, but tell me, and I want to tie it back to where you were, because as a business analyst, you make a lot of money. It's comfortable. And for some godly reason, you decide to be an entrepreneur. Can you share that a little bit, Whitney? Yeah, absolutely.

So what I love about that, Ilana, is that, so this is something that I learned from Clayton Christensen, who's been one of my mentors, my most influential mentor by 10X. He talked a lot about, and this wasn't originally his idea, but this idea of jobs to be done. And that whenever we buy a product, we're hiring it to do both an emotional and a functional job. So if I buy a new car, the functional job is I want it to get me from A to B. But depending on what kind of car, it's doing an emotional job. Maybe it's one that allows me to show that I'm very frugal. So I buy an economy car, or maybe it's something that I want to impress people. So I buy a Tesla, for example. So one of the things that I realized is that my career, so I now had been an investment banker, and I had moved into equity research, and I was institutional

investor ranked for eight years. So I was really good at what I was doing. And I was making a lot of money. But I remember going into my manager and saying, Hey, I want to do something different. I want to start covering stocks, not in the emerging markets, but in the developed markets, or I want to go into management. And my manager effectively said to me, we like you right where you are. And I remember having at the time I'd read now, innovators dilemma, I had this kernel of an idea that it's not just products and services and companies and countries that disrupt, it's actually people disrupt. And this notion of, if I'm going to make the progress that I want to in life, I may need to take a step back, I may need to disrupt myself, so that I can slingshot forward.

And so when I look at what was the calculus of that decision, the work that I was doing on Wall Street at the time as an equity analyst, it was doing the functional job of putting food on my table, I was making money. And it was probably even doing the emotional job of putting food on my table. I was making money. And it was probably even doing the emotional job of having some stature and prestige at some level. But it wasn't doing the emotional job of I wanted to continue to grow. And what I have learned, and I think that every single person, every single one of your clients will agree with me is that we in any

role that we're in, we have to always know that there is hope for the future, we have to know that there's growth upside. And if there's not growth upside, at some point, it doesn't even matter how much money you're making anymore, you will make a jump, you will make that big leap, because you have to feel like you're continuing to grow. So that's why it was doing the functional job, but it wasn't doing the emotional job. Oh my God. I love this Whitney, because I somehow never thought about it as a functional and emotional aspect. I love this. And what we are seeing, and we'll talk about organizations in a little bit, but what we are seeing is sometimes exactly what you experience when you're actually good. That's exactly where

you're actually creating your own grave, right? Because to some extent for the organization, it's really comfortable to have you stuck because you're doing the good work. Nobody wants to now start replacing you. You already proved yourself. Why now bother to train a new person and move this one? And now you're basically getting more and more and more stuck. And in fact, our instinct sometimes as high achievers is to even work harder, more sleepless nights, more hours. We cram, we try to give more time, but actually what we're doing is creating more and more stuckness because we're not letting them see us in a different way. But what I do also, like you said, people will need to start making decisions not based

on fear and doubt, but hope and dreams, because that's what moves you forward. But tell me about, again, moving to entrepreneurship. I think there's a lot of glamour around it. I think not a lot of people talk about how hard this is. So can you share a hard moment? Just one? Do you want just one, Alana? Just one? As many as you want. I'm joking. Well, I'm not really joking. But you know, it's interesting. I think one of the things that happens and maybe you can relate, maybe other of your listeners can relate is that I was at the top, I was institutional investor ranked. And the logical move at this point would have been to say, okay, I know I'm done. I know I need to do something new. So I'm going to take six months

and I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do next. And I'm going to be, I know what I'm going to jump to. But sometimes if you wait too long, and I think maybe I waited too long, I basically jumped off a cliff without a parachute. I was like, I'm going to go be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what that meant. Really, I'd never been an entrepreneur. My parents weren't really entrepreneurs. So I leave Wall Street, I don't have a job. I'm just going to go be an entrepreneur. So that is definitely a mistake I made, because I didn't know what to expect. And I still remember, in a few months initially, and I was trying lots of different things, many of which did not work. So that's one hard thing. But I remember that I had this loss of identity because up until that time, I had been able to call people and say, this is Whitney Johnson. I work at Merrill Lynch.

Lots of people would talk to me because I worked at Merrill Lynch. I had that positive halo effect of that brand. And now I would call people and say, this is Whitney Johnson. Well, who's Whitney Johnson? And that identity loss, that was very, very difficult. And I guess another piece, I mean, there's all sort of the tactical things, but another piece was, I didn't have the resources that I had before. When you work inside of an organization, there's all sorts of resources available to you that when you're an entrepreneur, they're not available to you. And you've got to figure it out. And what's it going to look like? And it's going to take a lot longer. And you don't realize how much comfort there is in getting a

regular paycheck. And that's gone too. So all those things happen. So those are just a few mistakes. But again, there's a lot more. What I love that you just said, the loss of identity, because I think one of the hardest moments of my life was that loss of identity. Our identity many times is attached to our title, to the company that we're with. That's almost our self-worth, if you will. And suddenly I was a nobody. And I think for me, it was just like, I don't even know which direction I'm going to. So I don't even have a coherent story to tell. So now who am I? And I'm just meeting these people and I'm becoming a red flag. So how did you get out of that?

It didn't happen quickly, for sure. I left Wall Street. So I disrupted myself and said, I'm going to be an entrepreneur in 2004. I'm completely at the top of my game. There was a lot of swirling. I'm going to try this venture and I'm going to try that venture. And we started a magazine and at this time, magazines still worked and lost a lot of money. And I didn't make good decisions because I thought I knew everything. There was definitely some hubris there. There was a lot of swirling for a few years. But then I started doing a little bit of work with Clayton Christensen and started that fund in 2007. But I left in 2004. So there were three years of wandering in the wilderness, if you will. So that's the downside.

I would say, Alana, the upside is that that moment where you do make that leap, that is the beginning of your hero's journey. And that's the opportunity to figure out, well, who am I? What do I really care about? What is my brand? How do I want to show up in the world? What do I want to do in the world? What do I care about? What is my brand? How do I want to show up in the world? What do I want to do in the world? What do I care about? And recognize that it's going to take a long time because what I would

say to you is, so just to give people, so if they're feeling discouraged, don't feel discouraged. From the time that I first had this idea of its momentum of people from a stock picking perspective, this idea of disruption. This is all like 2002 to 2004. I didn't write my first book until 2012. So it's almost 10 years. So it's a 10 year overnight success. So it always looks like the overnight success, but it's been 10 years in the work. Yeah. You know, I talk about S curves and the launch point of the S curve. You can be at that launch point for a very long time, but then that, in fact, I was just, okay, I'm going to digress.

I was having a conversation with a woman the other day who some similarities in background, and she's like, I know there's more for me to do on this plan and I have to figure it out. And I said, you're going to do it, but I need you to trust that it's probably going to take you 10 years to get to where you feel like, okay, I'm doing this thing and let that be okay. But no, you've got to make money in the meantime, unless you're already independently wealthy. And some people will be. And I think one of the purpose of Leap Academy was to help this go a little faster, shrink time and make the stats a little easier. Because for me, it's probably the same, Whitney, right?

It's probably also a decade, maybe six years or whatever that I kind of been searching, throwing spaghetti in the wall to see what sticks. And I know for a fact that if I knew it's a cliche, the biggest thing you don't know is you don't know, but it's like, it's so true. And as somebody that is like you, you already climb up the ladder. I was already vice president. I think I know it all. I come with a little bit of ego, if not a lot. And now it's even worse because I'm listening to argue. I'm not listening to really absorb. So I am not even coachable. I'm not even open to all these things that I think I know, but I completely don't.

And I think that realization took some time to start understanding, okay, there's better ways to do this. There's a way to shrink time. There's a way to have a safety net so that you build your brand when you're still safe and you can still push yourself forward, or maybe figure out some of these zone of genius while you're still working so that you can play it in a different way. But I will also say to what you alluded to that that decade was exactly the muscle that you needed to build in order to become the entrepreneur and the leader that you are today. And that's why you suddenly became this overnight success with three books and millions of followers.

That takes time. Two thoughts came to my mind where you said I wasn't coachable. That's an interesting thing, I think is important, because I think when we do attain a certain level of success, we can get a little bit ego driven. I know I certainly was. And I remember having this thought of, because sometimes you talk to people, and they're like, Oh, I have so many mentors, so many people helped me along. And I was like, that's not happening to me. I remember thinking that. And then I had this big aha of, if that's not happening to me, is that about other people? Or is that about me? Am I not coachable? What do I need to do so that I become coachable? And I think to your point of

the Leap Academy, one of the fastest ways to shrink this is to, first of all, ask for advice, which we sometimes don't. And then when we ask for advice, to follow the advice. Then there's that. That's something that just came up for me when you were saying that. And I do love that because if you can, at your your academy shrink this from 10 years to six years, that's a big delta. Oh, there is something to be said for that time of struggle because it gives us credibility. It's a lot harder to take advice from someone about life who hasn't lived any life. Or didn't struggle through it. I don't want a coach that will help me do a diet if they've always been skinny. It's like, it's one of those things, like you want

somebody that went through, like been where you are, they're where you want to go and you want that journey. If they haven't been where you are, that's not interesting. They can't quite understand where my headspace is. And again, I wish I just listened to that a little earlier. And I realized, I would realize that there's people that I can take their hand and they would just lift me a little faster because there were ways to do it. And I think the more we, you know, and I want to dive into the S curve and stuff like that, because I think it's super important. I truly believe that people will reinvent themselves every year or two now. So whether it's changing responsibility, functions, things are moving at a pace we've never seen before. And if you're not moving forward,

you're not stuck anymore, you're moving backwards and losing relevance at a pace we've never seen before. And if you're not moving forward, you're not stuck anymore. You're moving backwards and losing relevance at a pace we've never seen. So there is going to be a lot of reinvention, whether it's new technologies, new responsibilities, new whatever. Like it doesn't have to be outside of work. It doesn't have to be 180 degrees, but there's going to be a lot of adapting,

reinventing, leaping again and again. So I do believe people will need to have that and it will become one of the most important skills in the future of work. Tell us a little bit about how you see, and again, organizations better jump on board, otherwise they're going to lose the people or they're going to lose their own advantages. But tell me a little bit, how do you see it, the connection between organizations and people in terms of disruption? So I alluded to this a few minutes ago, but one of the big ahas that I had in working with Clayton is that organizations don't disrupt,

it's actually the people who do. If you have an organization that can disrupt an industry, it's because you had teams inside the organization that knew how to disrupt. But that's because they were disrupting themselves. They were changing, they were adapting. And so our focus is very much on, all right, tell me what your business outcomes are, whether it's growing your top line, whether it's growing your bottom line, whether it's both, whether you're trying to turn your organization around, whatever it is, we have seen is that if you will take a people centric growth strategy and say to yourself, okay, I want to grow my organization, but I've got to start by growing my people. I need to understand where is Alana in her growth?

Does she feel like she's being challenged? Does she feel like she's being stretched? Does she feel like she's being stretched too much? Does she feel like she's being challenged? Does she feel like she's being stretched? Does she feel like she's being stretched too much? Does she feel like she's being challenged too much? Because if you're being challenged too much, you tend to disengage. If you're not being challenged enough, you tend to disengage. So let me know where you are in your growth. How ready are you for growth? And then let me give you the tools to be able to grow, to make progress. Because now if I know that you have the tools to make progress and I create the conditions where you can progress. So I like to use a mountain metaphor of where are you on the mountain? Do you have the tools in your backpack to make that progress up the mountain?

And what does the ecosystem look like? Is it sunny and breezy or is there a snowstorm? And if all those conditions are in place, now I've got Alana, she's growing. And if Alana is growing and feels the sense of mission to what she's doing, she's going to be much more likely to work with Whitney, who's also growing because they feel safe. We feel like we have a place. So now we're going to figure out how are we going to work together. We're going to work together in order to grow our team, to grow our products, to grow our company. And so that is our entire emphasis is on how do we help you focus on growing your people? Because if you do that, an outcome will be that you will be able to grow your business in the way that you want.

Incredible. I super agree with that. And also, even within our company, we started implementing, I learned it actually from Brendan Dawson. So they do something called PPF, so personal, professional financial goals. And they basically sit with every person and we started doing that as well. So with every person on the team and really understand how we create this win-win environment that the organization win will be there also their personal, professional and financial win. And if you can tie those together, it really helps them to be more motivated. Because again, at the end of the day, it's kind of what you're saying. People need to be hungry. They need to be all in. They need to be seen. They need to be heard. They need to be motivated, challenged, appreciated. So all of this needs to happen for them to be all in and just help with that disruption of the organization itself.

Yeah, for sure. You know, emotions are always going to be the data that predict what a person's going to do. So what are their emotions? Do they feel like they're growing? If they do, they're going to stick around. If they don't, they won't. I'm serious. If you surveyed every single one of your students, they would tell you they're either going to move or they're thinking about moving because they're not growing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And many times it's the boss. You kind of alluded to that too, right? And I remember with your book, How to Build an A-Team, which was the first time I was ever mentioned in a book.

So thank you, Whitney. You have a lot of impact on me. We'll talk about it. But you had a lot of influence on me and a lot of impact. So first of all, super grateful. But seriously, that reflected on a moment, just like you had the boss that saw you and helped you, that helps. When you have a boss that you trust, that they actually see you and they actually want wealth for you, the sky's the limit. Now you're going to do so much for them and for the

organization. For sure. One of my favorite quotes, well, I have lots of favorite quotes, so that's a favorite quote, is from Clayton, who said, management is the noblest of professions if done well. Ooh, very true. Very strong. So tell us a little bit, again, you already have three books, How to Build an 18, Disrupt Yourself, Dare Dream Do, right?

And Smart Growth. So four. And Smart Growth, right? Oh my God, I forgot. Yes. Right behind you. Oh, you can't see it, but yes, remind me. Yes. Oh my God, that's so cool. I forgot we helped you launch that. Yes, you did. With our leafers. So that was super cool. So tell me a little bit, first of all, most people and most humans can't even write one book. And you wrote four. How? I'm still working on mine and it takes me forever. Yeah. So I think that most of the time people write a book, at least my first book,

again, back to that quote of earlier, Carl Jung, the greatest influence on a child is the unlived life of the parent. My mother always wanted to write a book and she hadn't written a book. So I think that seed got planted inside of me. So with the first book, at least for me, because I'm not an academic, I'm not in the academy, I'm a practitioner. It was, I think I have something to say. And I also want to find my voice. I think there's sort of a combination.

And I remember reading once that someone said that your first book is oftentimes somewhat autobiographical, because you're sort of finding out who you are. You know, I had been blogging for a long time, I thought, oh, I'll just take all my blog posts and create a book. And my editor was like, no, that's not going to happen. So I think the first thing I would say is that when it comes to writing a book, there's a sense that it's a solo sport, because there's only one name on the book. But it's not a solo sport. You have a conceptual editor, you have a line editor, you have a copy editor. There's lots and lots of people who are involved in that process. You have early readers, you have people

who you bounce ideas against. So I think that's the first thing that I would say. That's the first book. Then Disrupt Yourself, that came out of having written the article in Harvard Business Review called Disrupt Yourself, big surprise. And I felt like I needed to write that book because I wanted to start figuring out not so much what I wanted to say personally, but professionally and have a stake in the ground and codify this process, which is one of the reasons why you do it. Again, really good editors. And then Build an A-Team came about because people had read Disrupt Yourself. And I remember meeting someone at an event and they're like, okay, so I'm at this company because I read your book and I quit my job at the other company.

And I'm like, okay, in your case, Alana, that might be good. But for me, who was trying to do work inside of corporations, that was a problem. So I said, I think I better write a book about how if you disrupt yourself inside of your company then and you make it possible for people to disrupt themselves, then you can build an A-team. So that book came, again, good editors, really good editors, and in some cases, some really good writers. And then Smart Growth came about because I realized that I had been talking about disrupt

yourself, but I needed to give people a map to think about what growth looked and felt like. And again, this combines so well with your work, because really what it was, is you get to the top of your S curve, you top of your mountain, and you're like, I've done what I came to do here. And then your work says, Okay, how am I going to leap, I need to leap, and I don't know how to leap, but I know I have to leap because I can't stay here any long. Because if I do, I'll die inside. And so it was a way of giving people a map of what growth looks and feels like so that you all of us would be willing to do something new. So I don't know if I answered your question. But the short answer your question is you write a book because you feel like you have something to say. You want to codify your ideas because it forces you to do that. You want to have a calling card. And then you do it by getting lots and lots and lots of help. And give yourself a deadline because otherwise you will never write it.

Very true. Thank you for that. But then you continue when things are hard. And I do want to go there for a second because I think everybody has big dreams. Everybody has, or a lot of people, at least our audience has aspirations. And sometimes they have no clue what it is next, which we hope with, but sometimes they already kind of know, but just that beating or the hardship or the challenges, just keep them down? What keeps you motivated?

How do you continue? I would answer that question in two ways, maybe three. I think one of the things that keeps me going is I have people around me that encourage me to keep going. When I say that, I mean, my husband and my children, the people that I work with at my company, my co founder in particular. So I have people around me that encourage me to keep going. I think another thing that encourages me to keep going is that I have a really strong sense of purpose and mission. Meaning, I don't always know

exactly what the endpoint is. But I'm very driven by a sense of purpose and mission of doing good in the world. I am very, very clear about that. And so that is a deep, deep motivator for me. I would say two more things that have come up for me. I'm a person of faith. I believe in God. And that motivates me as well of this sense of like, there's someone up there providentially that cares about me and cares about you and cares about everybody on the planet and a belief that good things can happen in the world.

So that helps me keep going because even though I get discouraged, I don't feel full of despair ever. I'm like, we can do this. I can do this. God wants me to do this. So I think my faith helps me keep going. And I guess the last thing I would say, Alana, is that sometimes when I hit up against things that are real stumbling blocks, I'm like, okay, this is not working. And I remember a few years ago, I was speaking at an event. And I met a man by the name of Bob Proctor. And he was human

potential before Tony Robbins, just a lovely human being. And after the panel event that we're both on the panel, he came up to me and he said to me, you have all of these skills and all of these assets available to you, you are not doing as well as you could be doing. He's like, you're not doing as well as you could be doing. I don't know what's going on. He said, but I want to mentor you. Well, as I started to, because I had become more mentorable, but I started doing some work and I realized, oh, I have self-limiting beliefs. There are things that I am thinking and doing and believing that are holding me back. And so one of the ways that I help myself move forward is when I start finding those things, I'm like, I have to figure this out. I have to change my self-talk. I have to excavate what's going on. And I may need to go back to therapy here and there because there's stuff that's going on that's holding me back. But that helps me stay motivated because I know that if I will do that inner work to change what I believe to be true, then I'll be able to do this other stuff that I want to get done. That was an amazing, amazing, amazing answer. Because I think what you touched, especially for me, the limiting belief was really interesting. Because if somebody would have said the word

limiting belief a decade ago, I would roll up my eyes and say, what BS? Really fascinating. I was like, nothing is limiting me. I got this. And I think the reality comes when, again, the ego, you're a little too sure of yourself until you actually try things that are out of your comfort zone. Because here's the interesting thing. You know, Maxwell said beautifully, your success will never go above your leadership lid. My lid was here. I didn't realize it though. I didn't realize it that I need to push it up to actually do bigger things in life. There's this cliche that all the skills that brought you here are not the skills that take you forward, but it's true. Until you build

whatever, an eight-figure business, you don't know what it's like to build an eight-figure business. It's one of those things that will always hold you back. And I think for me, what was interesting is that if you don't even acknowledge that this is holding you back, again, you're not even open to the idea that, yes, there's a lid here that I need to keep pushing. And now I see it. I'm definitely leaning into that. And I see how when we see clients that have this big thing holding them back, oh, I can't do more than move from director to senior director or from VP to senior VP.

No, wake up. What else is available? And that's where it becomes interesting. But what do you think is maybe a thing that some people don't know that built you to who you are today? We talked about your parents, but is there some thing that you went through that made you who you are, you think? Yeah, we did talk about my parents. I think that's going to be true pretty much for everybody on the planet that their nuclear family, what they were like, I think it's going to make a difference. We touched briefly on my faith. It's absolutely helped form and shape me. I think the other person is my husband. You know, I talked about moving along that S curve and just very

briefly, because we haven't talked about this yet. it's just a way to think about what growth looks like your launch point, sweet spot and mastery. And we talked about the ecosystem and making the conditions possible for growth to happen. And one of the things that I observed for me in particular, is that I had all this pent up potential, but the potential didn't start to get unlocked until I got married because I was around someone who believed in me, who said, you can do it. Who wasn't like get in the game. Who's just like, I love you. No matter what you go, you can do it.

So I think when you ask that question, yes, parents, my own sense of who I am, but I think in terms of creating conditions where growth is possible, and I think this is true for everybody. If the people that you live with day to day, whoever they are, if they believe in you, then it's going to be so much easier for you to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And if they don't, it's going to be tough, whoever those people are. Oh, absolutely. And if we already touched it, talk to us a little bit about the S-curve. We touched it a little bit, but let's go over it

because I think it's really, really interesting and very aligned with what we're doing anyways. Yeah. So a very quick tutorial, the S-curve itself, it's been around for decades. It was popularized by Everett Rogers back in the sixties. And sometimes, you know, it has the adoption curve and he used it to describe how do groups change over time? How do they adopt a new idea? He was first looking at corn farmers in Iowa and saw that initially adoption was slow, But once they reached that tipping point that Malcolm Gladwell popularized, then the adoption accelerated significantly. And we used it at the Disruptive Innovation Fund to look at how quickly innovations would be adopted. Well, the big aha that I had, and I'm sure you're going to sense the theme,

because I always seem to bring back management theory back to an individual, is that this S curve could help us understand how individuals change how we grow. Now, people say that all frameworks are wrong, but some are useful. And this to me is very useful, because what it does is it articulates, what does growth look and feel like. So when you start something new, you're at the launch point, and it's this flat place. And you have the experience of it being overwhelming and discouraging and impatient. You might feel like an imposter. And it feels like growth is slow, but it's not. In fact, mathematically, it's happening at its fastest, but it's not yet apparent.

So it feels like a slog, which makes it hard to start new things. Then you hit that tipping point because you put in the effort and you move into the sweet spot. If you decide to stay on this curve, by the way, because you're not going to stay on all S curves, you hit that sweet spot. And now what's happening here is grows fast and it feels fast. You feel exhilarated. You feel like you're exactly where you're supposed to be. You could describe it as flow. And this can be in a relationship. It can be in a project. It can be a skill, any sort of skills. That's the sweet spot. And then there's mastery. And that's where you've done what you came to do.

You've mastered what you wanted to do. And it doesn't mean you're the world's foremost expert. You're the best pilot on the planet. It may just mean I wanted to learn five songs on the ukulele and I did, or I did what I came to do in terms of developing this team and I've done it. And now I'm saying I'm not learning anymore. I have to continue to learn. I need more dopamine in my brain

because at the launch point, dopamine drops. The sweet spot, it's spiking. So it feels great. And at mastery, it stops. There's very little of it. And so you say to yourself, okay, growth is now slow. I need more dopamine. Learning is the oxygen of human growth.

So I've got to jump to a new curve. And so you start the process all over again. And so you can look at it from an individual level, but you can also use the S-curve to look at where is my team on the S-curve? Where are all the individuals on my team on this curve? And can I optimize for growth by having most of my people in the sweet spot? Some of them at the launch point, some of them in mastery. So you now, it becomes a fractal because you've got the individual, you've got the team, you've got the organization, and you can configure it so that you can allow the organization to grow. You can use it to have talent development conversations, but then you can use it the

very, very, very basic of last week example. I went rappelling for the first time. I was on the launch point. Did I know what I was doing? Did I look fancy? Was I terrified? Yes, all of the above. But I did it. I did something new. I gave myself permission to do something new. And so it helps you normalize that process of doing something new, but also normalize the process of Oh, I'm bored. I need to do something new. So that's what the S curve does. It helps you understand what growth looks and feels like. You can explain it to a 10-year-old. So it becomes a common language that you can use throughout an entire organization because it's so easy to understand. And I love this and I love repelling and I love that you started something new. Because again, I think sometimes we get very comfortable in the comfort zone and it's, as we age, we try less and less new things and then more and more again and again, and I get it. I get the fear and it's inevitable if you

want to grow, but maybe share a little bit. Now you're working with organizations that want to see this growth, right? To building these incredible teams. What do you see as some mistakes maybe that organizations make that is basically derailing them. Let me tell you a mistake that gets made and then how you can solve it. So it's actually something that you alluded to a few minutes ago, where you've got a person on your team. And let's say, Alana, that you're the person on the team

and you're like, you know what? I feel like I'm in mastery. I feel like I'm at the top of that curve and I'm not learning as much as I was, I'm feeling maybe a little bit bored, I'm feeling a little bit less motivated. And your manager is like, no, no, no, Alana, you are killing it. You are doing an amazing job. You are in this sweet spot. Well, okay, great. Glad that your manager thinks you're in the sweet spot. But what's going to predict Alana's behavior? Where your manager thinks you are or where you think you are? So that's one of the big, big mistakes that managers make is that they think that where they think

their people are is what's going to predict their behavior. And it's not ever. And so a manager that did this well. So a manager at a company that's named after the largest river in South America, and you can buy pretty much anything you want from them online came across our work. And he was trying to figure out how can I develop my people better. So he reaches out to us and he administers our S-curve insight tool and now knows, okay, here's where all of my people are. Well, you heard me say a minute ago, you want to have probably most of your team in the sweet spot, 20% launch, 20% mastery.

Well, when his team took the S-curve insight tool, 77%, seven out of nine, maybe I didn't get the 77, but close, were in mastery, which obviously has implications for retention. It has implications for succession planning. But he now has a language. He now has this data-driven insight, so he can have conversations. So here's doing it right. Well, one person, they said, you know what, you're at the top of the curve. There isn't something for you to do here. So it's time for you to go somewhere else. But then it becomes amicable because it's not personal. It's just you need more dopamine time for you to move.

Two other conversations took place, which is one person said, you know, I know I'm in mastery. I know I'm at the top of the curve, but I've got a lot going on at home. When I look at my portfolio of S-curves, I've got a lot of launch points at home. So I need to stay in mastery. But I can do S-curve loops. I can a lot of launch points at home. So I need to stay in mastery. But I can do S-curve loops. I can go down the mountain and help bring other people up, which allows them to anchor in a place of mastery, but still be challenged because bringing people along is its own kind of

S-curve. So that pushed them back into the sweet spot. That was the second conversation. The third conversation, very interesting, was, yeah, I'm in mastery. Manager says, and you're a high performer, we do not want to lose you here. Let me broker a move for you to another part of the org. Great. He wins. The manager wins because now the manager is a great manager. The organization wins. Brokers the move, stays there for about six months on the launch point, comes back to the manager six months later and says, you know, I've learned a lot in this new role. In fact, I've learned a lot that I think could be really relevant to your team. How about if I boomerang back?

Boomerang's back, but he's not master anymore. Now he's in the sweet spot because he learned all the stuff that would allow him to move forward. So the way you do it wrong is to think that where you think people are is where they are. It's not, it just doesn't matter what you think. It matters what they think. The way you do it right is by once you know where they are, you can have a conversation because you and I both know is that once a person starts talking to headhunters and they start seeing themselves on a new S curve, they can't unsee it. It's almost always impossible to walk it back. So have the conversation

early. And that allows you to retain your high performers. They continue to grow, grow your team, grow your org. Oh, I love this so, so much. And I love the fact that you actually gave concrete examples because my next question would have been, well, everybody's on masters. What do I do? Like I can't make them all into managers or I can't move them all up the ladder. But the fact that there's, it's really more about just listening to them and understanding their why. And I think that asking of the why in most bosses just don't want to deal with it. They don't want to ask the why. They don't want to ask what else do you want and why do you want that? And when you actually know their why,

you can start aligning these things. And that's just so beautiful. I love that example. So Whitney, what do you think is a really proud moment for you in your career, you think? Well, I think there's some headline moments. I was super proud when I was institutional investor ranked as an analyst. I was always really proud when I would upgrade or downgrade a stock and it would go up or down a couple percentage points. I was proud when I have a book be a bestseller. And those things matter to me. So I want to be clear.

I'm proud when I make money. That's always good too. Those things that I just described are important to me. And in part is because they're markers of I'm doing well, but I don't know that they would mean anything to me if I didn't feel like I was having those moments where someone reaches out to me and says, thank you for that conversation. You and I had, that coaching conversation, or thank you for that keynote you just delivered, or thank you for that book you just wrote, because it changed things for me. Or when I'm able to be effective with my team, or with my business partner. You know, there's a

wonderful saying by Samuel Johnson, and I think this applies here. He said, the ultimate result of all ambition is to be happy at home. So yes, I have all this ambition. But without these other pieces of these relationships and having an impact one on one, and perhaps most importantly, feeling like I personally, and in my life, fully in my life, making progress as a human being, that other stuff wouldn't matter. I feel proud that I'm in my life, that I'm in the Russell. I feel proud of that. That's so incredible and inspiring, Whitney. And I think, you know, if I may continue this, because I love that you said that, and you were always a giver. And we talked a little bit before, you inspired me on a lot of different levels,

but you also gave a lot from yourself. You sent me a keynote that you couldn't go and I did instead, or I was in your podcast and there was an award that I was part of because of you. And you put me on Forbes for the first time in my life. So you've been giving, giving, giving. I'm sure it also comes back to you. And I'm sure that's also part of your personality. And I think a lot of people just don't know how to give or don't know even what to give. So first of all, thank you. And how do you do it? How do you think of so many other people? And clearly your big mission is to

change people's lives, organizations' lives, teams' lives. Like it's very, very clear that it's coming from a very personal place. So that just from knowing you, that's a different place. But talk to us a little bit about that. First of all, I want to acknowledge the compliments. So thank you. I want to receive that compliment because I think there's a lot that each of us as individuals is willing to give. And are we good at receiving it? As you're saying that I'm like, maybe I need to be better at receiving. Maybe that's something I need to work on. In fact, I know I need to work on it. People wanting to help and being willing to receive that help.

You know, a lot of this, it might not seem very concrete, but I think it is concrete. I think that there are opportunities every single day where you think, oh, I could introduce that person to that person, or I could spend five minutes and have a conversation with this person. And that would be really helpful to them. So I think the answer is that when you have an impulse to do something that would be helpful to someone, it doesn't have to be a big thing. I think that's the thing is we sometimes think I've got to give in big ways. Oftentimes, it's just very small. I could just give a person a compliment. There's great research by Vanessa Bonds that said if you're in an airport,

and you tell someone, oh, I really like your outfit, it will change their day. When you say that to a stranger, that's all you have to do. So I think it's a recognition of knowing that we actually have a lot more power than we think that we do, and being willing to be generous in those little micro moments. It allows us to become better givers. Oh, I like that. Better givers. That's a beautiful word. And I think the other thing that maybe, and I wonder, you know, if it made you successful. I think John Maxwell talks about the people's pile, right? Like it's just really hard to stand out these days. It's hard to rise above the noise, right? And, you know, he has this beautiful show, you know, he's like, and then I got one arm out of the people's pile. And then

I gave some more value and I got another arm out of people's pile. And honestly, I feel the same in a lot of cases. And I think by having this habit of giving to people, you're completely out of the people's pile. Yep. And I think there's something there that I think people don't realize, like they'll reach out to some top CEO and say, Hey, do you have 15 minutes to talk to me? Where if they actually give some value first, maybe that would have been easier. You're somehow getting yourself out of the people's pile like this. Did you ever intentionally do it? Or do you think it's a natural thing for you? I think it's both. But what I will say, again, because I'm driven, and I was an equity analyst, so I think there's definitely some intention there. So I don't want to be like, and then this magically

happened. That would be disingenuous. What I will say, though, Alana, is that something that I heard Bob Proctor frequently say is that amateurs compete and professionals create. And what I have observed about myself, and it's a challenge because on the one hand, I'm very aware of what's going on around me and sort of what experiences people are having. Sometimes that's to my detriment because I'm sort of hyper aware. But when I can focus on what am I doing?

What do I have control over? How am I going to make a difference today within the sphere of my influence? I'm not gonna worry about what this person or that person is doing. I'm just going to figure out how can I contribute where I am. That seems to get me out of the people pile. And when I strive, it doesn't. You just get frustrated and discouraged and you do the whole comparison thing and you're doing this. And that is just no way to live. Because there's always going to be someone who's better at something that you want to

do. Always. I love this quote. It's just a beautiful, I was just writing it down. Amateurs compete and professionals create. Like, it's just brilliant. So, you know, we have a tradition in the podcast to take yourself to maybe a younger age, maybe some advice to your younger self that you wish you would have seen things in this perspective. I think that what I would do

is a couple of years ago, a person in the thought leadership space, Shirzad Shamim, he talks about your saboteurs. And he suggested that you put a picture of yourself when you were young, like six or eight years old on your phone and just look at it so that you can remind yourself of when you start to berate yourself in any way, you can look at that eight-year-old and be like, would I talk to her like that? No, I would not. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. I think the thing that came to my mind, so I'm just going to say it is I think if each one of us as individuals could look at our eight-year-old self and say,

do you have any idea how amazing you are, how interesting you are, how charming you are, how delightful you are, how my life is better because you're here. If we could say that, if I could say that to myself, if every single one of us could say that to our eight-year-old self, wow, what a difference. So that would be the advice that I would give to myself now and actually to anybody, start talking to yourself that way now. Like, do you have any idea how amazing you are? And grab onto that amazingness of that person. That's what I would do. That's powerful. This is so good. I love it. So which kind of organizations reach out to you, Whitney? And why should they reach out? You know, I already mentioned one company. Another company that we work with is they make ketchup, Kraft Heinz. We love working with them. We work with a lot of private equity-backed firms. We worked with Morgan Stanley, with Bank of America, and then also fast-growing startups. What's

interesting about our work is because it's all about creating and operationalizing really a growth mindset within an organization, we're pretty agnostic to industry and and to size of company. And so people will reach out to us because they've got a leader who is effective, but they want them to be even more effective, or they've got a brand new team, and they're trying to stand up that new team, or they're getting ready to do a big, massive technology implementation, or there's just been a big merger, they're trying to create a culture where change can happen, they reach out to us for that, because we're all about creating those conditions where growth can happen, whether at the organizational team or individual level. And I guess the other reason they would reach out to us

is not only because we've got great intellectual property, but because we execute extremely well and we care very, very, very deeply. As we discussed this whole hour, right? Like that's incredible, Whitney. I love this. Thank you so much. Again, not just for this show, but for everything you've done

for me for the last decade, because that means that now I can give more to the people around me, to Leap Academy, to my team, to change people's lives in a different way, to help more individuals reinvent themselves and leap. So thank you. This is a big loop that just closed for me. So thank you. Yeah, a lovely loop. Thank you, Alana. It's super, just a wonderful hour together.