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.
“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.
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.
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.
“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.
Happy new year, my friends!! Transitioning from holiday time off to the frenetic energy of returning to work and regular life can be rough — so today, recurring guest (and my first career coach) Adrian Klaphaak joins me back on the pod to jam about calmer ways of reentering a new year, and recentering to decide what kind of planning and tracking is the most joyful for you.
“When life takes you down, it changes you. You’re not the same after,” says Dr. Susan Biali in her new book, The Resilient Life. “When I look back on my career, my most cherished accomplishments all came with significant stress.”
And yet, sometimes, that work-related stress can tip into burnout if we’re not careful—something particularly prominent these last few years. Susan is one of my longest-time friendtors (fifteen years and counting!), and in this long-overdue Pivot conversation, we talk about what personality traits make someone most prone to burnout, social overwhelm, the power of small doses of relaxation response activities, and more.
What happens when you write a book called The Revenge of Analog, only to find a pandemic relentlessly converting everything to virtual a few years later?
David Sax answered the call with a follow-up book, the only one he could write from the confines of home, describing the malaise of digital pushed to its extremes, again making the case for RR: Real Reality (and you know we couldn’t resist a few pirate jokes to follow).
I know you’ll love this conversation as much as I did about the timeless nature of our most meaningful moments; the future of books, book clubs, and bookstores; and why the metaverse has nothing to do with our salvation as a species.
Since launching this show in September 2015, the podcasting landscape has grown and changed tremendously. What was once a niche sandbox of independent producers pursuing passion projects has blossomed into an abundant field where it seems as though every major media property, celebrity, side hustler, and business owner decided to throw their hat (mic?) into the audio arena.
Since I’m not nearly ambitious or prolific enough to share three hundred lessons learned in honor of today’s major milestone, or even thirty, I thought I’d boil it down to my top three creative lessons learned in seven years of creating content in a constantly changing space.
When times are uncertain should we be playing it safe? We all have a different relationship to risk—and recession-talk tends to turn the dial up on anxiety about what the future has in store. Today, I’m back in conversation with Adrian Klaphaak, talking about how to be pragmatic, taking the economic environment into account, while also keeping a flame lit for pursuing our bigger dreams.
Have you ever gotten a sudden sense of certainty that you need to pursue something — maybe something totally different than your career or typical areas of interest?
I had the pleasure of podcasting in-person with today’s guests, Alisa Cohn and Dorie Clark, to learn more about how their interest sparked to co-found a Broadway theater investing company together. Building upon their successful careers in the business arena, we talk about what it’s like to start from scratch in a new industry when it comes to networking, investing, collaborating and experimenting.
We have had so many shakeups in the last couple of years that I’d be surprised if most of us haven’t considered pivots large, small, and totally surprising. Inspired by a thread in our BFF Community, I’ve put together a list of do’s and three don’ts for leaving a corporate job. How you leave any relationship is as important to how you begin, especially if there are personal or professional connections you want to bring forward with you!
“Fun isn’t just a result of human thriving; it is a cause.” Our guest today, Catherine Price, is breaking down the difference between True Fun (the intersection of playfulness, connection, and flow) and Fake Fun, the hypnosis of passive consumption. Fun creates a self-reinforcing cycle that helps us prioritize the things that bring us joy. Life isn’t all joy, of course, and we also talk about the nerves that can result from things like preparing to give a TED talk. We discuss overcoming those nerves and how Cathering gave one of the most well-received talks that year.
“Fun isn’t just a result of human thriving; it is a cause.” Our guest today, Catherine Price, is breaking down the difference between True Fun (the intersection of playfulness, connection, and flow) and Fake Fun, the hypnosis of passive consumption. Fun creates a self-reinforcing cycle that helps us prioritize the things that bring us joy. Life isn’t all joy, of course, and we also talk about the nerves that can result from things like preparing to give a TED talk. We discuss overcoming those nerves and how Cathering gave one of the most well-received talks that year.
“Fun isn’t just a result of human thriving; it is a cause.” Our guest today, Catherine Price, is breaking down the difference between True Fun (the intersection of playfulness, connection, and flow) and Fake Fun, the hypnosis of passive consumption. Fun creates a self-reinforcing cycle that helps us prioritize the things that bring us joy. Life isn’t all joy, of course, and we also talk about the nerves that can result from things like preparing to give a TED talk. We discuss overcoming those nerves and how Cathering gave one of the most well-received talks that year.
“Fun isn’t just a result of human thriving; it is a cause.” Our guest today, Catherine Price, is breaking down the difference between True Fun (the intersection of playfulness, connection, and flow) and Fake Fun, the hypnosis of passive consumption. Fun creates a self-reinforcing cycle that helps us prioritize the things that bring us joy. Life isn’t all joy, of course, and we also talk about the nerves that can result from things like preparing to give a TED talk. We discuss overcoming those nerves and how Cathering gave one of the most well-received talks that year.
Today’s guest is an expert in cultivating creativity — and in remaining consistent over the long arc of content creation. Todd Henry is the author of six books, and today we’re talking about how to stay motivated in the publishing industry, where the market reflects winner-take-all dynamics, and the long tail is verrrry long.
According to The New York Times, Penguin Random House (the largest U.S. publisher) said just 35 percent of books the company publishes are profitable. Among those that make money, just 4 percent account for 60 percent of those profits. Todd shares why many of those numbers are arbitrary, and emphasizes focusing on impact and practices to lead a more satisfying business and creative career.
“The [drugs] exist only for my mind, each orange prescription bottle a subconscious reminder that I Am Depressed and I Am Broken and I Need Fixing.” Brooke Siem returns to the podcast today to talk about her new memoir, May Cause Side Effects, and her conviction that: “It’s not my responsibility to edit my story for the sake of somebody else’s feelings.” She believes that you can recover from long-term chronic depression, and after huge trauma and grief—that your brain and your body are primed to be in a state of healing, but you have to help. We also discuss the writing and publishing process, and how she stays true to herself while discussing these sensitive and often controversial topics.
Believe it or not, you can get mentorship from anyone you’d like by employing a strategy today’s guest calls “stealing Wi-Fi.” According to today's guest, Jenny Wood, the creator of Own Your Career at Google, you can get mentorship from anyone you like by paying closer attention to what they do and how they do it.
In this episode, The Jenny’s dig into multiple elements of career strategy, including navigating plateaus, sidelining imposter syndrome, and course-correcting when you screw up.
When did you discover what you wanted to do with your life? I knew from a young age that I wanted to connect and communicate with people, and later refined that into a lot of people, helping them feel a sense of relief when navigating change, with plenty of practical tools to circumvent unnecessary confusion.
Learning to trust myself, and trusting that there is always something new emerging even when I’m in a dip, has been a lifelong process. My guest today, Adrian Klaphaak, returns to the show by interviewing me about career drivers and ongoing challenges. Be sure to also check out our earlier conversation in episode 283: What Are You Here to Do? How to Find a Path That Fits.
Do you like puzzles? If you do, you’re far from alone. An estimated 50 million people do crosswords every day and more than 450 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold. People like puzzles. In his new book, today’s guest, A.J. Jacobs, quotes Maki Kaji—the late godfather of Sudoku, who said puzzles are a journey, articulated with just two punctuation marks:
? → !
“I don’t want fans, I want friends.” This is one of many approaches to relationship-building that I admire in this week’s guest, super-connector Jon Levy. I learned that when Jon texts with “free for dinner tonight?” you cancel all plans and say YES. Both times I did, I ended up at one of his influencer dinners with famous actors, public figures, pro athletes, and C-suite executives.
“Trust is not just a feeling. It’s also an action, and it’s a process that happens over time. Be slow to take, and quick to give.” These are just some of the gems that Grant Golliher has picked up in three decades of horse whispering, training, and teaching the art of trust-building. Today we’re talking about what horses can teach us about reading people and intuition.
