Jenny Blake
363: 🌈 Taking a Quiet Sabbatical and ...

As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting, after over 700 episodes today, I’m announcing a pause for both shows.

Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles, the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my longtime friend (and first coach) Adrian Klaphaak in Pivot episode 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts.

Jenny Blake
362: Setting Creative Intentions Instead of ...

“Expectations are the enemy to the creative process. Sometimes you have to let go of the known to see the unknown.”

Today I’m speaking with James McCrae, an author, poet, and meme artist based in Austin, Texas. He is the founder of 🌻 Sunflower Club, a global school and community dedicated to conscious creativity.

Jenny Blake
361: On Decision Engineering and Evaluating ...

Good decision-making is not about omniscience or clairvoyance—it's more about resilience, according to today’s guest, decision engineer Michelle Florendo. “Decision-making is harder than ever before, and it's not your fault,” Michelle says. “People feel like they ‘should just know’ how to decide.”

Today we’re talking about a framework more helpful than pro-con lists, tuning into your head, heart and gut; why the quality of your decision is not equal to the outcome—did good or bad things happen; keeping a decision journal to evaluate the quality of your decisions regardless of the outcome; and how to drop the guilt of “bad” past outcomes.

Jenny Blake
360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision ...

What happens when you make a big decision but still have lingering doubt, fear, and even despair? How do you know when a “download” from the universe is worth following, and what does test-driving a decision look like? What happens on the other side or when a pivot is taking far longer than planned?

We’re unpacking all these topics in today’s twelfth and final (for now) conversation for the Pivot x Career Pathfinder series with Adrian Klaphaak.

Jenny Blake
359: “You can’t give what you don’t have” — ...

“You can’t give what you don’t have.” That’s just one of the powerful lessons that Nataly Kogan learned the hard way seven years ago, after suffering a debilitating phase of burnout. As a former refugee from the former Soviet Union, she began her American journey in the projects and on welfare, then going on to build an impressive career as a finance and tech executive and serial entrepreneur over the next 25 years. Until she crashed at thirty-eight years old and needed to find a new way of moving forward.

As part of her healing process, Nataly began to paint when she was 40 by signing up for a painting retreat in Tuscony (that turned out to be for semi-professional watercolorists), and now her paintings are on the cover of her books—front and center as part of her bold self-expression.

Pilot

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61: Virtual Freedom: Overcome Superhero Syndrome and Start Outsourcing with Chris Ducker

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61: Virtual Freedom: Overcome Superhero Syndrome and Start Outsourcing with Chris Ducker

When it comes to growing and scaling a business, the very superhero skills that facilitate your success may also one day become your biggest weakness. How can it be that you—the entrepreneur—might be the very person holding yourself back in the quest to move from employee-at-everyone-else's-whims to strategic business owner building a scalable operation?

This week's episode with serial entrepreneur Chris Ducker is a preview of what's to come in my new course, Delegation Ninja: Turn Frantic into Freedom, which kicks off on Monday, June 6. 

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59: Captivate: Secrets from Viral TED Talks with Vanessa Van Edwards

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What makes a person captivating? How can some instantly connect with an audience, while others fall flat? 

This week I'm thrilled to have one of my kindred spirits on the podcast with me. Vanessa Van Edwards is a professional people watcher, self-described "recovering awkward person," and author of the new book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People. 

Listen on to learn how Vanessa bootstrapped her Science of People research company, the best place to stand at a networking event, and the top secrets to make your TED talk go viral. 

More About Vanessa Van Edwards

Vanessa Van Edwards is a published author and behavioral investigator. She is a professional people watcher—speaking, researching and cracking the code of interesting human behavior for audiences around the world. Vanessa’s groundbreaking workshops and courses teach individuals how to succeed in business and life by understanding the hidden dynamics of people. Vanessa is a Huffington Post columnist and Penguin author. She has been featured on NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Today Show and USA Today. She has written for CNN, Fast Company and Forbes.

Topics We Cover

  • Pivot blessings in disguise

  • How Vanessa bootstrapped Science of People and why she decided to pivot away from her original passive income business

  • How to avoid reinventing the wheel—especially "broke down rickety wheels"

  • Why conducting original research makes your work more viral

  • How Vanessa started a research-based company without a Ph.D. in social science

  • Secrets from the most successful TED speakers: on hand gestures, how you share your message, why smiling makes you seem more intelligent, and the difference between memorized vs. internalized content

  • The most strategic spot to stand at a networking event for making the best connections

  • How to recover from social awkwardness

Resources Mentioned

Check out other episodes of the Pivot Podcast here. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen, and if you enjoy the show I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! Sign-up for my weekly(ish) #PivotList newsletter to receive curated round-ups of what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and new tools I’m geeking out on.

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45: Happy Launch Day!! Pivot for the Podcast: James Altucher Interviews Jenny

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45: Happy Launch Day!! Pivot for the Podcast: James Altucher Interviews Jenny

HAPPY LAUNCH WEEK!! 

One of my favorite authors, bloggers and good friends—James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself and the Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth—takes over the Pivot Podcast this week to interview yours truly. I couldn't imagine a better way to celebrate the book launch—be sure to grab your copy wherever books are sold!! 

I also took over James' show today—if you don't already subscribe to his podcasts, get on it! They're my favorites that I listen to: The James Altucher Show and Question of the Day (with Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner).

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15: Special, Not Special: How to Work Your Way Out of a Dip

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I rode the high of hitting my 50,000-words-in-a-month NaNoBlogMo goal for exactly one day last week.

For one day I was over the moon! I did it! I wrote almost every morning for one month, and came out with 50,000 words by the end of November. It was like running a mental marathon! Combined with my October practice of trying to write for 30 minutes each day, I had amassed 100,000 words of a book draft. For those who aren’t word nerds, that’s about 350 pages double-spaced. Definitely cause for celebration!

And then, as predictable as ever, the crash came. THE DIP.