These days, we hear a non-stop barrage of career advice. Some of them is good, but a lot of them are not. In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about what might be the only career advice that matters.

Relationships, Marriages, and Divorce

By now, you may have heard of Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a divorce, and that Jeff Bezos and McKenzie Scott got divorced a couple of years ago. You might be wondering why we brought this up.

You see, these people are some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs and biggest philanthropists ever. According to hustle porn stars and business advice gurus, these are the people we should aspire to be. Yet for whatever reason, their marriage didn’t work out.

While there is merit to saying that sometimes divorcing doesn’t mean it failed, but just ran its likely course, it does make you wonder.

“The reality is if your personal life isn't working, all the money in the world can't save you.” – Christopher Lochhead

Living a Legendary Life

Which brings us to the second point: the decision about who your significant other or partner is going to be is arguably the biggest decision that you will make.

Because when it works, it is the foundation for designing a legendary life. If it doesn’t work, everything just seems out of place.

So we should ask ourselves: are we designing our life around our work or our work around our life?

While this is not necessarily a binary decision, most people would want to live a legendary life.

“I think what most of us want is we want to have a legendary life. And whether we're working or in our marriage, our primary relationship or with our family and friends, we want to have what you might think of as a 360-degree life.” – Christopher Lochhead

 

Getting Things Right

Herein lies the question: is it possible to get everything right all the time?

Of course not. Though in general, it is what most of us are trying to do. In that context, our work sits inside of our non-work life.

So if you're somebody who's been working too hard, work 80 to 100 hours a week and travel two to four hundred thousand miles a year on a plane, here's a career advice. Ask yourself: what am I working for?

We're living at a time of massive personal self-examination that has been brought on by the pandemic. We recently wrote a Category Pirates about this, how people are going YOLO, YOLO being an expression for you only live once.

Now is a time for consideration. And I think what these high-profile divorces tell us as somebody who's been divorced myself, is that it's time to consider our work in the context of our lives.

Links

A Very “Different” Approach To A Legendary Career: YOLO And Achieve Your Personal IPO

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.