How do you go from full-time employment to working full time on your business? That’s probably the most common question I get about becoming self-employed.
It’s all about learning how to pivot your career as you’ll learn from Jenny Blake.
She’s is the bestselling author of Life After College and Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One. You can learn more about pivoting from Jenny at Pivot Method.
She spent 5 years working at Google and while she loved working there, she knew working for herself was the next logical step in her career. She loves studying transitions and developing systems to help guide people through big changes.
Now successfully self-employed, she’s been asked back to Google to teach how to pivot in your career as part of their global career developing training.
There are some amazing lessons packed in this episode including:
- Using soft skills such as meditation and intuition to learn how to listen to and trust yourself.
- How she got her “MBA in app building” after spending two years and thousands of dollars on it, only having to give up on it.
- Why the new meta-skill we all need to learn is dealing with uncertainty.
Life Skills That Matter In This Episode
- Practicing self-awareness with respect to how you feel about your business.
- Reframing your mindset around how you spend your time.
- Embracing discomfort for what comes next.
How Jenny Works and Thinks
- Wake up time: No alarms set, ideally before sunrise.
- Ideal work environment: Now able to work from home before going out in the afternoon for exercise or a break.
- Regains focus by: Sometimes a reset by running physical errands from a different to-do list. Sometimes asking what’s the one next step or what is the next easy or fun step.
- 90-day goal: Writing afterword for Pivot” paperback edition and delegating more tasks.
Inspirational Quotes
“I really love studying complex problems and ideally creating systems and methods and templates that help people work through them.”
“We measure our life not just in money, but in how much we’re growing and learning and making an impact.”
“I’ve learned in my life that the things I think I’m least cut out to do, the things I’m the most afraid are probably what’s coming next.”
“If you don’t make the time, it’s eventually hard to find the time.”
Coaching Advice
When trying to decide what’s next for your life, Jenny gave the following ideas to begin exploring:
1) Establish a vision. What do you love doing, what do you gravitate towards? Find what excites you.
2) If you completely trusted yourself, what would you do next?
Resources + Bonus Materials
Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
Listen to my previous interview with Jenny about how to get what you want!
Special Offer
Jenny is offering a $15 discount to anyone who signs up for her private Momentum Community for side hustlers and solopreneurs.
When you sign up, let her know you heard her on the Life Skills That Matter podcast and would like to take advantage of her $15 discount special offer!