Breaking Work

#420: In this episode, Mike Gardon chats with Tom Brunskill. Tom Brunskill is the co-founder and CEO of Forage, a job simulation platform that helps students bridge the gap between education and work opportunities. On a mission to make education-to-workforce pathway more equitable, Tom co-founded Forage in 2017 to provide the ability to preskill through virtual job simulations produced by the world's top companies, including J.P. Morgan, Lyft and Walmart, to name a few. By breaking down barriers to gaining workplace-specific skills, Tom hopes to level the opportunity playing field and empower anyone to pursue their dream career. Tom started his career as a corporate lawyer at a multinational law firm in Australia before moving to San Francisco and has been featured in Business Insider, Financial Times and TechCrunch, among others.

#419: Right now we're experiencing the highest inflation in 40 years which is impacting our wallets, our companies' profit margins and our jobs.

Technology changes fast rendering entire industries obsolete. The stock market is in the tank.

But we can still succeed - and that's not coming from a natural optimist.

How?

By adapting and methodically setting up our lives to weather the storm. Keep listening to learn more!

#418: In this episode, Mike Gardon chats with Mike Podesto. Mike Podesto is the CEO & Founder of Find My Profession, Inc. After years in sales and recruiting roles, Mike knew that it was time to begin his journey with Find My Profession. On October 3rd, 2015 Find My Profession was born. The inspiration came from a lack of satisfaction in the recruiting industry and the huge need for help on the job seeker side. Having job candidates come second and hiring managers come first always seemed backward. With more "recruiting rules" than ever, Find My Profession evens the playing field by using their recruiting knowledge to benefit job seekers. With the job seeker in mind, Mike quit his job as a recruiting manager to devote his full attention to providing a solution exclusively for job seekers.

#417: Learn how to network with the people you admire! Your network determines your level of success - your ability to find a better job, pivot careers or find clients. Tune in to learn how to network with anyone on the internet!

#416: In this episode, Mike Gardon chats with David Kline. Dave is a former Chief Operating Officer of several different divisions at Bridgewater Associates, the worlds largest hedge fund with over $200M of assets under management headed by Ray Dalio, whose book Principles is a must read.

I met Dave on Twitter (@dklineii) and was fascinated by his career pivot. He successfully transitioned out of the high stress world of high finance, and is currently the owner of Skillscouter, a website that helps people find the best courses for upskilling their abilities. Dave also teaches cohort classes for growing managers. Having hired, trained and managed hundreds of high performers in the high stakes jobs of finance, Dave has seen it all, and he's codified his management principles in what he calls the Management Accelerator.

#415: Your runway is basically the amount of time you have to complete whatever pivot you are trying to execute.

Learn the best ways to extend your runway in this episode!

I want more people to choose to change rather than be forced.

Whether you want to change jobs, change companies or blow it all up and work for yourself, change takes some thought and planning.

How you go about breaking your career depends on your risk profile, just like with investing. The more risk tolerant you are, the bigger, faster change you can make. If you have more obligations, children, expenses, the slower and more planned out this should be.

Listen to learn more about the anatomy of a career pivot.

#413:

In this episode, Mike Gardon chats with Dave Fano. David Fano is a serial entrepreneur, former WeWork executive, and ex-architect who has made it his mission to help people navigate their careers with confidence. His latest venture, Teal, helps people optimize their job search by providing the level of tooling and infrastructure that companies have but for the individual professional. In just over a year, Teal has grown to a community of over 40,000 users committed to advancing their careers.

In this episode, Mike Gardon chats with Mark Herschberg. Mark Herschberg is the author of The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You. From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia. He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT's "career success accelerator," where he teaches annually. At MIT, he received a B.S. in physics, a B.S. in electrical engineering & computer science, and a M.Eng. in electrical engineering & computer science, focusing on cryptography. #412: At Harvard Business School, Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, currently serving on the board of Plant A Million Corals. He was one of the top-ranked ballroom dancers in the country and now lives in New York City, where he is known for his social gatherings, including his annual Halloween party, as well as his diverse cufflink collection.

Jeff's story starts with his own thirst for knowledge on how to manage money. He became a certified financial planner, got into blogging in order to differentiate himself in his practice and wound up building an online media site (GoodFinanciaCents.com) that made him way more than his practice, which he had been grinding at for over five years. None of it happened on purpose yet. None of it happened by chance either. Jeff's story proves the point that you don't have to have it all figured out as long as you stay curious and make decisions to continuously invest in yourself.