Invincible Career - Claim your power and regain your freedom

My guest for this episode is Fiona Pagett. She is a 52-year old single mother of two young people, now in their twenties.

She has enjoyed a colorful career in broadcast journalism (check her out on BBC Scotland!), corporate communications, video production, personal training, and — most recently — real estate. 

Proactive, and not afraid to make different life choices, Fiona has changed careers on several occasions, two of which have involved starting new businesses from scratch. 

A “glass half full” type of person, she enjoys encouraging others to live life to the fullest.

Fiona and I met several years ago in an entrepreneurial community, and we’ve been friends ever since. I’ve always been impressed with how she’s taken control of her career path to adapt to changing circumstances quickly.

So many people get set in their ways as they mature, but she’s never stood still. She isn’t afraid to dive in and start a new business or pursue an entirely new profession.

The most amazing thing? She always succeeds.

You can find Fiona on Linkedin.

Key points from our conversation

I want to call out a few points from my conversation with Fiona to help you if you’ve ever felt like it was too late to make a change in your career or life. She also shared some of her experiences with the lockdowns and quarantines in Scotland from the perspective of a real estate agent.

External circumstances

You can’t control external circumstances. The Great Recession in 2008 impacted her business that provided multimedia services for corporations. Her clients dried up almost overnight.

The only thing you can do is quickly adapt and survive. Fiona has done that by diving into new employment (e.g., becoming a real estate agent) and starting her own businesses multiple times (e.g., video production, personal fitness training).

I know that you might feel hopeless and helpless when an external factor changes the world so dramatically. The negative impact and chaos create a great deal of anxiety and stress.

However, no amount of wishing or complaining will make it go away. It’s our reality, and we can’t force it to stop. All we can control is our personal reaction and mindset, and then make plans for adapting and moving forward.

What other choice do we have?

It’s never too late

At age 41, Fiona made a huge career change from being a partner at a video production company to becoming a certified personal trainer. She shut down one business, built the next successfully, and provided for her family while her children were in school.

Several years later, she pivoted again into real estate when she had more free time (i.e., her children were grown and moved out). People will tell you that you can’t make a significant career change after 50, yet she did (I did too).

Your soft skills are essential and play an increasingly larger role in your success as you move up the career ladder. Those skills are so transferable. Communicating well, collaborating effectively, persuading others, educating others, etc., can all apply to thousands of jobs and businesses.

It’s always possible to change. When you’re in your 50s, 60s, and even your 70s, you still have many years ahead of you. We’re all living longer — much longer. Those of you reading this right now may live past 100!

It’s so sad to talk with someone who has regrets. They waited and waited but never pursued a dream or passion. Don’t get set in your ways in your 40s and 50s. Keep growing and chasing what you want out of life!

The impact of the pandemic

She feels privileged that she never lost her job, despite the economic impact in Scotland. They had a 3-month lockdown, which resulted in furloughs for many.

Because of her real estate role, she met with people who had felt so isolated during that time. Sometimes, she was the first person who had been inside their home in six months! They were desperate for human interaction and conversation.

However, other people thrived. They adapted their home office spaces, enjoyed having time back (e.g., no commute), and made time for exercise again.

Much like in the U.S., this new world does seem to have a polarizing impact. Some people are lucky to have jobs that were easily transitioned to remote work and working from home. Some people made use of their recovered personal time for exercise, hobbies, and making new friends.

Other people lost their jobs and businesses. They didn’t have a good solution for working at home. The stress and anxiety have been so detrimental to their health.

However, Fiona believes in staying positive, doing our best to adapt, and finding a way forward. She always has, and always will. We’d all do well to follow her example.

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to our full conversation, and hear more of Fiona’s advice and experiences! 🎧

Want to join my career community?

If you’d like to be a part of my private community of ambitious professionals who want to be more successful in their careers, simply subscribe now, and I’ll send you an invitation. After four years, it’s no longer open to the general public. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to participate in our exclusive office hours every week!

Are you ready to turn a $15/month investment into thousands of dollars of increased income every year? That’s exactly what has happened for many members of my community.

However, I do know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber yet. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media 📣 

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your job and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s office hours topic

⭐ Office Hours - How to Build a Powerful Network

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts a private mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs who want more accountability and support. If you’re not interested in starting your own business someday (or accelerating an existing one), this community isn’t for you.

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

I was standing at a whiteboard in a large conference room with Prabhakar Raghavan. If you’re not familiar with who he is, he’s currently a Senior Vice President at Google, where he is responsible for Google Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, and Payments products.

However, when I worked with him, he was the Chief Scientist running Yahoo! Labs and one of the smartest people I’d ever met. I was the Head of Consumer Products for Search and spending more time with the media and board than ever before. So, I was lucky enough to spend some time learning from him.

Here’s an excerpt from his Google Research page.

Prabhakar is one of the foremost authorities on Search and is the co-author of two widely-used graduate texts on algorithms and on search: Randomized Algorithms and Introduction to Information Retrieval. He has over 20 years of research spanning algorithms, web search and databases, published over 100 papers in various fields, and holds 20 issued patents, including several on link analysis for web search.

So, yeah, he’s a smart guy. We were preparing for a board meeting, and I was also going to be meeting with a new member to talk about our latest strategy for Yahoo! Search.

His advice for me? Keep it simple. Really, really simple.

Then, he quickly sketched a barebones wireframe of the Search Results page on the whiteboard with basic blocks to identify the algorithmic search results and the sponsored results (i.e., advertising).

Actually, that doesn’t really capture the essence of what he meant. He described how critical it was to avoid technical jargon, insider vernacular, and anything that would confuse the listener.

We lived in the Silicon Valley corporate world and spent our days discussing Search technology. The board members did not. Their world was very different than ours.

To earn a seat in the board meeting and a chance to present to them, you had to be a bridge between the complexity of our technical world and their business and operational world.

You had to explain things so that they could easily understand what we were doing and why it mattered. It was critical to bridge the gap between our expertise and their domain experience so that they could provide valuable insights, give us relevant feedback, and help all of us make better decisions.

If you could not explain things in a way that they could understand, or if you made someone feel stupid, you’d never be back in that room again. It was a career-limiting move.

The board loved Prabhakar. Tech journalists loved him too. He was smart, eloquent, and he could cut right to the heart of the matter with simple explanations that made people feel like they walked away with a better understanding than they had before.

Whenever I think of someone who could be the bridge between two worlds, I remember Prabhakar. If you look at his career journey, you can see that this ability is one of the things that helped him rise to the top. Check out this article if you don’t believe me:

Prabhakar Raghavan Isn’t CEO of Google—He Just Runs the Place:

THOUGH PRABHAKAR RAGHAVAN recoils at hearing himself described as “the CEO of Google,” the 60-year-old engineer turned executive is as close to being that person as one could be. He runs search, ads, commerce, maps, payments, and Google Assistant, businesses that bring in the lion’s share of the company’s revenue. And he’s paid like a CEO—last year the company paid him $55 million in salary and stock.

On the flip side, I can also think of people who stalled out in their careers. They climbed the ladder to a fairly senior point in their profession but couldn’t quite break through to the highest leadership or executive levels.

Now, I know that some people aren’t even interested in the management track. But, some of these individuals also weren’t able to get promoted to the most senior individual contributor levels either. When that happens, your earning potential stagnates.

That’s because excellence in your craft will only take you so far. Yes, doing your job well is definitely necessary to climb the early rungs of your career ladder. If you’re not great at what you do, you won’t progress very far at all.

However, even the most talented individual contributors hit a ceiling if they cannot communicate well with others. To climb to the highest levels, you have to communicate with people who don’t live in your world.

Sadly, too many people think that it makes them look smart to toss around big words, baffle people with the complexity of their craft, show off their intelligence, and try to prove how important they are. But it doesn’t work. In fact, the more someone refuses even to try to bridge a communication gap, the more they reveal their low emotional intelligence.

If you are interested in breaking through this career ladder ceiling, you should learn how to bridge the domain expertise gap between you and the people you work with across other organizations, companies, etc. The most successful people that I’ve watched over the course of my 20+ year career are those who do this exceedingly well.

But, how do you do that? Well, here are some steps you can take to learn how to become “a bridge.”

* Understand their world

* Learn enough about their job

* Be relevant and connect the dots

* Don’t be rigid

* Communicate clearly

Understand their world

It begins with curiosity and empathy. Take the time to research who someone is, what they do, and what you think they are trying to accomplish.

Care enough to put yourself in their shoes. What is their world like? What matters to them? How might they be feeling?

When you talk with someone, show that you understand who they are and what they do. Connect your world to theirs. Use your conversational skills and ask questions to learn more.

Learn enough

I used to tell young designers to “learn enough to be dangerous.” I was referring to learning enough about the technology to communicate well with engineers, learning enough about product metrics to have better meetings with product managers, and learning enough about business goals to know how design could help achieve them.

But, it’s not really about being “dangerous.” You just want to learn enough to have intelligent conversations with others instead of living in your own world. Learn enough about someone else’s job, domain, and goals  enough about someone else’s job, domain, and goals so that you can bridge the gaps between:

* What they want and what you can provide

* What you need and what is possible

* How they describe their world and how you talk about yours

Be relevant

How do you contribute to higher-level goals? Not your goals. I’m talking about the overall goals of the company, organization, and team.

Too many people get caught up in their private world and forget where they fit into the big picture. They miss the forest for the trees.

I saw this problem all too often in design organizations. People falling in love with their designs. Design for design’s sake isn't relevant in a company that must satisfy customers and remain profitable. And, when you’re not seen as relevant and clearly don’t understand the larger goals, you don’t move up the ladder.

Designers aren’t the only guilty parties. I’ve worked with engineers who would get caught up in the beauty of the architecture and purity of their code. They constantly tried to refactor and reduce technical debt while pushing out work that would help the product advance and make the business more money.

Unless you’re an independent artist, your work serves a higher purpose when you agree to be an employee. Be aware of what type of company employs you and make yourself relevant to its goals.

I’m not saying that you need to be a puppet dancing at the end of leadership’s strings. But, you do need to strike a balance between what you want to be doing and what they need. Be relevant and valuable if you want to keep climbing the ladder.

Don't be rigid

People are too precious about their profession. At work, we used to call that an “Ivory Tower” issue. It’s related to the previous point of being relevant.

People with this impractical attitude often acted as if they were better than everyone else in other organizations. They weren’t interested in the mundane matters of other people or the urgent problems the company faced. They couldn’t be bothered to care.

Guess how that worked out for them? They enjoyed their little ivory towers for a few years, but they all came crashing down later. Most C-level executives and boards have little patience for spending money on teams that never deliver tangible results for the company. It has to pay off in some way eventually!

You should be proud of what you do. Be strong and confident enough to push for excellence. Nobody wants to do mediocre work in their craft just to please a leadership team.

But, don't be so inflexible that you think it's more important to win battles while losing the war. In the end, if the company fails, you lose your job, and all of your hard work fades away.

I watched that happen at a few of my past employers. We’ve all seen it happen across various industries. The purest and most perfect solutions don’t always win.

Communicate clearly

Finally, you have to bring it all together and become a great communicator. I’m sorry, but I don’t know of any way to skip this step.

However, if you don’t care about climbing to the very top of your career ladder, then don’t worry about it. But, if you want to expand your influence, be well-known and well-respected, people have to know that you exist, and they have to understand what you do.

You must be able to communicate clearly with people who don’t live in your world.

This starts with becoming a valuable translation layer between your team and others. I attribute much of my career success to investing in my public speaking skills and learning enough to communicate well with engineers, scientists, product managers, executives, etc. People used to say to me, “You don’t talk like a designer.”

Drop the vernacular. It’s so annoying to talk with someone who speaks in acronyms, uses obscure phrases, and acts like they’re a member of some secret society. It’s not impressive. It’s irritating and will hold you back.

Too many people use complexity to mask insecurity. They spout big words and the unique language of their profession to feel smart and special. Just stop it.

When someone is a great communicator who can make things clear and understandable, people want to spend more time with them. They get invited to increasingly important meetings. They are the ones who get promoted to higher levels of leadership and influence.

Be a bridge

Hey, if you don’t care about getting promoted and climbing to the upper levels of your professional career ladder, then ignore what I’m saying. Just keep focusing on your craft and be happy where you are.

It really is ok. Some people don’t want the stress and lurking impostor syndrome of moving up and up and up.

However, if you are interested in pursuing leadership and having greater influence, you must learn how to bridge the gaps between people. Be able to simply connect your world to the worlds of others. The best “bridges” can even help other people in completely different worlds understand each other. It’s awe-inspiring to watch.

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to my more complete discussion and examples from my work experiences 🎧

Do you have any thoughts on this topic? Any advice to share? Or, do you just want to tell me how wrong I am? That’s ok too. 😉

Leave a comment!

Want to join my career community?

If you’d like to be a part of my private community of ambitious professionals who want to be more successful in their careers, simply subscribe now, and I’ll send you an invitation. After four years, it’s no longer open to the general public. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to participate in our exclusive office hours every week!

I do know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s office hours topic

⭐ Are you on track to achieve your goals for the year?

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts a mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs who want more accountability and support. If you’re not interested in starting your own business someday (or accelerating an existing one), this community isn’t for you.

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

My guest for this episode is Marvin Liao. He’s an investor-operator, executive coach, and formal advisor to several large family offices. We crossed paths over 10 years ago at Yahoo, and I’ve been following his career pivots and journeys around the world ever since.

Marvin is a partner and board member at Game Groove Capital, an international gaming holding company. He was previously a partner at the venture capital fund, 500 Startups, running the SF-based accelerator program and investing in seed-stage startups. He invested in over 414 pre-seed and seed-stage startups during the six years spent there.

Marvin also spent more than 10 years at Yahoo as an executive with extensive operating experience expanding businesses across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States in his career at the company.

Marvin presently serves on the investment committees and advisory boards of several venture capital funds. He also mentors at numerous accelerator programs around the world. Marvin is a frequent speaker at many digital marketing and tech startup conferences.

You can follow Marvin on Twitter, and check out his newsletter, The Hard Fork.

Key points from our conversation

I want to call out a few points from my conversation with Marvin to help you if you’re considering founding your own startup or becoming an investor. He also shared some advice that applies to everyone moving forward in this crazy new world and chaotic economy.

Venture capital

If you work in tech long enough, you’ll often hear people talk about their long-term goal of becoming a VC partner. I think this career dream stems from a few things:

* They see the big money floating around in the VC world and want a piece of that pie.

* It looks like a glamorous lifestyle. On social media, we watch VCs and angel investors traveling the world in style, eating at the best restaurants, and living large.

* It’s a position of power. People in tech are usually sitting on the other side of the table begging for budget and resources. It sure would be nice to switch sides and be the one who decides who gets funding or not.

* Investors get to see an enormous variety of early-stage startups working on cutting-edge tech solutions. It’s exciting!

However, there is no single path into the VC world. It’s not on the promotion ladder at work, so how do you get there?

If you listened to Marvin’s story in this episode, he didn’t actually plan on becoming an investor. He had been mentoring at several startup accelerator programs for over a year. He got to know the co-founders of 500 Startups, and they asked him to join.

Advice for new investors

Marvin said that his first 70-80 deals weren’t that good. He felt like he didn’t know what he was doing. His successful investments started in years 2-3.

So, what makes the difference between a successful investor and one who is struggling?

First, get better at reading and assessing people. I’ve heard many investors talk about the importance of the team. Does the startup have the right people? Are they building the startup for the right reasons? Do they understand the space?

Next, understand the market. It may look like a small market, but can it become a large one? If you can’t do this, it’s a total disaster.

However, you can’t predict everything. He remembers some startup teams that didn’t look promising initially but were willing to grind it out and eventually became successful.

Timing is important too. I discovered that with my voice-based startup five years ago. We were too early. Now, you can’t swing a stick without hitting a voice startup (e.g., Clubhouse).

Advice for founders

Marvin said that founders should really understand what they want and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Once you take VC money, you’re on a narrow path.

Be conscious and intentional about the decisions you make. Is this what you really want? Or, is it what everyone around you is telling you to do?

Founders think they need to raise money. Everyone is telling them to raise money, and it becomes a marker of success (especially in Silicon Valley).

Once you do raise, it becomes growth at all costs. You either have a billion-dollar outcome or the investors hope that you’ll fail quickly. It’s tough to get off that path.

He knows founders who regret taking VC money. I know that I regret that we raised a seed round for my startup too soon. I should have waited until we had product-market fit.

Self-sufficiency

Marvin doesn’t like how Silicon Valley disparages “lifestyle businesses.” Lifestyle businesses are fine.

If a business is supporting you, that’s a good business. There are many paths to building a startup and having a successful life. Raising money and chasing a billion-dollar dream isn’t the only definition of success and happiness.

2020 should have taught us that we need to be self-sufficient. Many big companies failed their employees. Our governments let us down in many ways.

Even if you are happily employed, you should have some side hustles to hedge your bets. You should have a portfolio of investments to provide long-term financial stability.

Being an employee with one income stream is riskier than becoming an entrepreneur where you control your destiny or being a consultant with multiple customers.

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to our full conversation, hear more of Marvin’s advice, and the story of how he unintentionally found his way into the VC world! 🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Learn More About Google AnalyticsThis challenge helps you understand your audience better. There are people who are interacting with your content (e.g., your website, portfolio, articles, newsletters). But, do you know what they are doing with it? Do you know who they are?

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A Slack community for ambitious professionals who want to be more successful in their careers. However, if you’re not a knowledge worker or comfortable with tech, it’s probably not for you.

* A mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs who want more accountability and support. If you’re not interested in starting your own business someday (or accelerating an existing one), this community isn’t for you.

* A free community for independent creators who want to make a living doing more of what they love. Note, this community is for creative individuals who actually bring things to life (e.g., art, design, music, movies, photography, writing, pottery, etc.). Sorry, managers and agents, it’s not for you.

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

A friend of mine made a significant career pivot years ago. He decided that he wanted more out of work and life, so he invested in himself and went after it. He’s been very successful!

However, he discovered that odd experience which sometimes happens when you change, grow, and move in a new direction. His old friends wanted to hold him back. Sadly, he found that he had to create a new circle of friends who were just as ambitious as he is.

I've experienced this a few times in my life when I made significant career changes. Many of my old acquaintances faded out of my life.

Once we no longer had the bond of a shared office or similar work, we lost touch. Once I could no longer help people with my position, I wasn’t viewed as someone useful who could be leveraged.

A few of my friends stayed by my side. They were friends with "me," not my job title. We've stayed in touch for several years and catch up when we can. They are supportive of my new lifestyle and business.

Surprisingly, a tiny number of people are directly antagonistic. They mock my new business and seem upset about my lifestyle changes. They’ve said that I was crazy to throw away all of the progress in my previous career.

So, like my friend, I had to find a new tribe. I created a new circle of friends and colleagues who were more supportive.

I did it because it's so tough to succeed alone. I'm not talking about having business partners or employees. I'm also not talking about your boss or coworkers because:

* Work is a competitive environment where only a few people can get promoted.

* You can't openly share your fear, uncertainty, or doubt without some sort of repercussions.

* Most people have mediocre bosses — or even downright bad ones — who aren't exactly supportive and nurturing.

I'm talking about finding your professional support network. Finding your tribe of people who want to see you succeed. Becoming part of a community that wants to help you grow.

“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.” ― Seth Godin

Your tribe is a small group of people who:

* Provide guidance because many of us are at different points in our journeys

* Act as a confidential sounding board for your important decisions

* Answer your questions, no matter how crazy they might seem

* Support each other in their goals because you're all on similar paths

* Help you with connections and resources

* Have your best interests in mind and lift you up when you're feeling discouraged

It can't be too large (e.g., all of your connections on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook won’t work well for this purpose). You need a certain degree of intimacy to ensure that people are really committed to helping each other.

I’m guessing that you’ve already experienced the pros and cons of being part of a community at some point in your life. But, our early experiences with them aren’t exactly the same as later experiences with communities you intentionally choose to join.

Early community experiences

Our early experiences with communities were not entirely under our control. As children, we lived in the communities where our parents chose to make our homes.

Most of us went to schools where we encountered yet another community. Again, we did not have much choice in this. Perhaps your parents intentionally selected your school and, therefore, your community of peers. In my case, our tiny town had one public school. No choice.

My “community experience” wasn’t the best. I go into more detail in the audio version (scroll up to play) because it’s easier to explain things verbally instead of trying to capture it all in text.

Later in life, you probably selected your college or university for advanced education. Although you couldn’t choose which students attended classes with you, you could form your own circles of friends and study groups.

Again, I explain this better in the audio version. I initially made some big mistakes in forming my “tribe” at the university. I finally got it right later, but it took a lot of work to reverse that disaster!

When you start working for employers in your given profession, you discover that — once again — you’re not in full control of your community of peers and coworkers. But, you have to make the best of it.

Sometimes it works out, but sometimes it can lead you astray if you join a tribe of people with goals that aren’t completely aligned with yours. In the “old days,” it was a bit more challenging to find a great community outside of work.

Now, the internet has made that a lot easier. Tightly-focused global communities are discoverable at your fingertips. Perhaps this introduces a new challenge that makes it difficult again. There are thousands and thousands of communities scattered across hundreds of platforms!

You may have to explore and try a few before you find one that meets your needs. But, as you may have heard or read in my recent conversation with Sam Sycamore, joining and engaging with the right community can make all the difference in your professional life and career.

How community helps you

Surveyed community members said that their communities empower them in the following ways (source):

* Asking questions (76%)

* Providing solutions (68%)

* Connecting (65%)

* Being heard (61%)

* Feeling seen (60%)

“You just need a few people — who will look at the rules, realize they make no sense, and realize how much they want to be connected.”— Seth Godin, from his TED talk: The tribes we lead

How can a community make a difference in your life, both professionally and personally? Believe me; it is very different than the group of people you’ve let into your social media circles. Of course, there may be some overlap, but the tighter focus and intentionality of a community/tribe is uniquely valuable.

* You share similar goals and are committed to helping each other achieve them.

* You often share similar career paths, too, so people who are further along can help you with advice, guidance, feedback, resources, connections, and more.

* You have a shared agenda vs. the hidden ones that often exist at work. People in your tribe aren’t competing with you. They want to see you succeed.

* You agree to confidentiality. Where else can you share your innermost professional worries, fears, and secrets with people you trust? I know that I could never safely share everything with my boss or colleagues. My team didn’t want to hear when I was worried or nervous (i.e., they needed the sense of stability and calm that I provided). My wife got really tired of hearing about my work drama. Your community is there to listen.

* You don’t have to worry about looking stupid and asking “silly questions.” A great community is supportive and understanding.

* You can depend on your community to hold you accountable for chasing your dreams and achieving your goals. They will help you stay on track!

* Your community will lift you up when you’re feeling down. I run a career community, and this is a consistent theme. Work is hard, and job interviews are stressful. People lose confidence in themselves and get depressed sometimes. We lift people up in our weekly calls and help them believe in themselves again.

My first business and entrepreneurial community

When I started my first solopreneur business, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a team of consultants at the time. We were all working together. They encouraged me and talked me through my worries and fears (e.g., I had a family to support).

There were so many things that I didn’t know about starting and operating a business. There were so many mistakes that I would have made if it wasn’t for my community. They showed me the ropes and helped me navigate the complexity of working for myself for the first time.

That was over 20 years ago, and I’m still friends with many of those people today. The bonds we formed were that strong. We’ve continued to help each other over the years by making introductions, sending work to each other, coaching each other, and more.

I also credit my strong entrepreneurial community and tech community with helping me succeed with my second solopreneurial business. My network has made all the difference in the world.

My third business and lack of community

Yes, we all have skills and experience in our professions. But, if you've never operated your own business, you don’t have all of the knowledge and wisdom you need to succeed yet.

When I launched my third business several years ago (a tech startup), it was very different than my first and second ones. I was a solopreneur with those past businesses. This time I had co-founders and employees. We raised money from investors.

This time around, I didn’t have the same close community to guide me. I should have connected with other founders who could have helped me avoid mistakes, improve my odds of success, and not feel so damn lonely when I was struggling.

The internet is a wonderful thing, and a great deal of the information you need is online. But there’s so much information overload. Plus, there’s a big difference between theory and practice, and knowledge and wisdom. I wish that I had either found or created my community, but I did not, and I eventually failed.

It can feel overwhelming. It can be scary. But, it doesn't have to be that way.

Creating communities

I knew how important it was to find a supportive community this time around with my fourth business. So, I searched and found a few.

I joined some, but they didn't quite meet my needs. We had very different backgrounds and were building very different businesses.

I was so frustrated that I stopped searching and created my own. I built a career community to give others what I wished I'd had during my corporate life: A supportive group of ambitious, helpful professionals with no hidden agenda. Not my boss. Not paid for by my boss. Not my competitive peers.

That's also why I created my mastermind community of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small business owners. I wanted to create that supportive environment for people ready to break free of their 9-5 jobs and start their own businesses, but they aren't sure where to begin and want a community of experienced peers to ensure their success.

What I built is an entrepreneurial community of like-minded corporate escapees who can:

* Guide you with our decades of experience

* Educate you with helpful courses

* Give you feedback on your plans

* Answer your questions

* Support you when you need it most

* Help hold you accountable to achieve your goals

Starting a new business is never easy, and it can be a little scary. But, we're here to help you and support you every step of the way! Learn more here.

Choosing or creating your communities

If my communities sound like what you’ve been seeking, I’d love to have you join us!

However, if you’re looking for something different, I encourage you to find a community that is right for you. If you can’t find one, don’t give up.

Create your own community! It’s easier than ever before to bring like-minded people together from around the world.

In a past article, I talked about Slack, Discord, Mighty Networks, and a few other solutions. So, I won’t go into more detail on those again (read that instead).

What I want to share with you now is a new community-building service that I discovered a few months ago: Geneva. It is much simpler than the other services I use, and you can quickly spin up a new community using it.

Geneva is a free, flexible communication platform designed for groups, clubs, and communities of all shapes and sizes. You can read more about what it is and how to use it in their help center.

However, I always find it better to join an existing community to learn a new platform and understand how it works. I like to kick the tires before I even think about creating my own group.

As I said in the beginning, your long-term professional success really does depend on finding your community of like-minded people. It’s also personally beneficial. You’ll discover that your emotional wellbeing improves when you know that your friends in the community have your back, are always there for you, and are cheering you on!

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to my more detailed discussion of communities and my experiences with them 🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Review Your MetricsThis challenge helps you get more quantitative about your online activity. When you use social media and other services to drive more success for your career or business, you have to know what’s working and not working. Reviewing your metrics will yield insights when you look at the big picture.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A Slack community for ambitious professionals who want to be more successful in their careers. However, if you’re not a knowledge worker or comfortable with tech, it’s probably not for you.

* A mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs who want more accountability and support. If you’re not interested in starting your own business someday (or accelerating an existing one), this community isn’t for you.

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

My guest for this episode is Sam Sycamore. Sam is a writer, web developer, tree hugger, and avowed music junkie.

He currently works as Head of Content Strategy & Marketing at Hashnode, a global tech blogging platform that enables bloggers to tap into a fast-growing and supportive community of readers, writers, and tech enthusiasts.

Sam began his career online as a music journalist, contributing to various publications as a writer and editor while hosting a radio show, playing in bands, and booking concerts in his hometown of Louisville, KY.

In 2016, while working on a farm in rural Kentucky, Sam launched the lifestyle blog and podcast The Good Life Revival, where he created content related to self-reliance, sustainability, and living close to nature. This led to the publishing of two books:

* Introduction to Foraging - A Beginner's Guide to Gathering Wild Foods With Confidence (2018)

* Foraging North America - The Botany, Taxonomy, and Ecology of Edible Wild Plants (2019)

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns in 2020, Sam pivoted from his job as a landscape carpenter to the tech industry by teaching himself front-end web development and JavaScript. He spent the first half of 2021 freelancing as a web developer and technical writer before signing on to his current role with Hashnode.

Sam lives off-grid in the Santa Cruz Mountains of coastal California. His career in tech has been powered entirely by solar energy since day one.

His socials: Twitter • Polywork • LinkedIn

Key points from our conversation

I want to call out a few points from my conversation with Sam to help you if you’re considering a big career change, especially if you feel trapped and think it’s too late.

It’s never too late

I’ve written about this before in It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy. It really is never too late to invest in yourself. It’s never too late to make a change in your life, even a big change.

What’s the alternative? To feel stuck, unhappy, and unfulfilled for the rest of your life? I don’t care how old you are, you can always take your career and life in a new and exciting direction.

Sam is the poster child for taking control of your life and investing in yourself. It wasn’t easy. If you listened to the episode, you heard how he would get up at 4 AM every morning and spent two hours teaching himself web development. Later, he added even more time coding during nights and weekends for about 4-5 months.

A chronic injury became the sink or swim moment when he had to quit his day job and go all-in on his freelance work as a web developer. He hustled hard for 2-3 weeks and finally landed his first two clients. In April 2021, he had doubled his monthly income — from his previous job in landscaping — by doing freelance web development and technical writing work!

Find your community

Sam’s advice for making a career change, “Step 1, find a community. That’s the thing that makes all the difference in everybody that I observed.” You have to find your community for support and advice.

When he started, he didn’t know anyone in tech. He was working alone in a dark room every day, learning to code. It is really hard to stay motivated and hold yourself accountable without a like-minded community. Tech Twitter was where he found his people.

Seth Godin refers to this as “finding your tribe” and it’s even more important now. Many of us are feeling increasingly isolated with remote work and working from home, even if we prefer it.

As a solopreneur, I spend most of my days alone. I tried a few entrepreneurial communities, but they weren’t right for me. So, I decided to create my own community for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs (check us out!), with a focus on people who want to exit the corporate world and make a living doing more of what they love, fully under their control.

Put yourself out there

Sam is amazingly engaged on Twitter. Check out his profile and you’ll see that he only joined in October 2020, yet he already has almost 9,000 followers!

He writes a blog, hosts a podcast, and is very active on Twitter. He has been putting himself out there for years and years.

Remember how I say that you will become an opportunity magnet for the best things in life if you share who you are, what you believe, and your expertise online? That’s precisely how Hashnode found Sam and made him a job offer.

They customized the role for his strengths. They had noticed his blog and how frequently he posts and tweets. Clearly, he knows his stuff when it comes to content strategy and marketing. The proof is right there. So, they hired him and he loves his new gig!

If you’re interested in making a career change, don’t be shy about putting yourself out there and finding your community. It’s one of the best investments you can make in your new future.

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to our full conversation, hear more of Sam’s advice, and the story of how he completely reinvented his career! 🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Assess the Progress of Your PlanThis challenge helps you get back on track with the goals that matter the most to you this year. Without assessing your progress at this midyear checkpoint, you can’t know if you’re doing the right things to succeed later. There is a saying, “That which is measured, improves…”

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A free Slack community for ambitious professionals who want to be more successful in their careers. However, if you’re not a knowledge worker or comfortable with tech, it’s probably not for you.

* A mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs who want more accountability and support. If you’re not interested in starting your own business someday (or accelerating an existing one), this community isn’t for you.

* A free community for independent creators who want to make a living doing more of what they love. Note, this community is for creative individuals who actually bring things to life (e.g., art, design, music, movies, photography, writing, pottery, etc.). Sorry, managers and agents, it’s not for you.

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

"You can't be successful at everything. We hear a lot of talk about work-life balance. Nonsense. You can't have it all. You can't."— Alain de Botton

Fame, fortune, and family. Why can’t we have all of those at once? 

Why can’t we be amazingly successful at work and wonderful partners to our loved one? Why can’t we rocket up the career ladder and be great parents?

Why can’t we be in peak physical health, read all the books we want, listen to music, play music, be a great dancer, work hard, enjoy vacations, appreciate the little things, and become a billionaire?

I’m sorry, but you can’t have it all. At one time, I thought that it was possible. Heck, I pursued it for many years.

However, you inevitably sacrifice something. I achieved many things that I wanted but lost others that were even more important. I succeeded and failed, and I was miserable in the end.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. You may not be able to have it all (whatever that means), but you can have more of what matters most to you if you take the time to understand yourself better and make some tough decisions.

But why do we think that we can have it all in the first place? Why do we fall for this false dream?

Survivorship bias tricks us

Our social media feeds are chock-full of articles about the super successful. Our “heroes” who supposedly have it all are interviewed, quoted, and shared left and right. 

We are so bombarded with their names and stories that we start to believe that achieving their success is realistic. We can have it all too!

"Survivorship bias also flash-freezes your brain into a state of ignorance from which you believe success is more common than it truly is and therefore you leap to the conclusion that it also must be easier to obtain." — David McRaney, Survivorship Bias

Privilege fools us

The people we think “have it all” aren’t like you and me. Chasing in their footsteps will often take you down a path of misery and failure. 

Why? Because these people had numerous hidden advantages and lucky timing that you will never replicate fully.

Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success" provides numerous examples across multiple domains (e.g., sports, politics, and business) that "success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages." These advantages include lucky timing and being given extraordinary opportunities.

We can’t have it all just like our heroes because they have privileges that we will never enjoy. But, the reality is they don’t really have it all either, despite what their social media presence shows.

It’s fundamentally impossible

I’ve had this conversation with so many people before. People who become surprisingly upset and angry when I say that it’s impossible to have it all.

They say that I don’t know what I’m talking about. They are different. They are special. They will be the ones who are wildly successful and able to really have it all. 

The problem is, I can’t think of a single person who does have it all. Occasionally, someone appears to be that magical unicorn. But, inevitably, the truth comes out, and I discover that some aspect of their life is a complete train wreck. 

Have you read about the personal lives of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk? Have you witnessed the drama of the failed marriages of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates? They seem like they must have it all, but their private lives are falling apart behind the scenes.

Tony Robbins (speaking of train wrecks) once mentioned in a podcast that he knows plenty of successful, wealthy people who simply aren't happy. "Money makes you more of who you are… it doesn't change people."

If all of these billionaires cannot make it work and have it all, what are our chances? It’s almost as if it’s fundamentally impossible to have it all.

That’s because the hours in your day are finite (unless you have a secret time machine). Your attention is finite. Your energy is finite. 

The more you fragment your time, attention, and energy trying to do it all, the less value you deliver to each task and activity. You will start to fail at some things, perhaps even everything.

Would you rather lose it all?

You cannot — and you should not — try to excel in everything at the same time. 

* Job

* Title

* Career

* Wealth

* Fitness

* Health

* Relationship with a significant other

* Role as a parent

* Friendships

* Self-improvement 

If you try, you will be stressed, anxious, and eventually burn out. Worse, you will fail to achieve goals that are more important than the numerous tasks that are nibbling away at your time. 

For example, I failed at being a good parent when I was trying to be a great employee. I was so focused on my career for years that I wasn’t around as much as I should have been.

I feel incredibly sad about those lost years because you can never get them back. Never.

If you don’t want to fail, you can intentionally choose what you want to focus on now and what must wait. You can stop kidding yourself that you are capable of simultaneously juggling every single ball in your life. 

Be honest about the choices you are making. Admit the tradeoffs you are choosing. 

It’s more empowering to be in control of your decisions about how you want to focus your time and energy. No one can really do it all, all of the time.

“But what if the answer isn’t to do more? What if the answer is to want less? What if the solution is simply accepting our bounded potential, our unfortunate tendency as humans to inhabit only one place in space and time. What if we recognize our life’s inevitable limitations and then prioritize what we care about based on those limitations? What if it’s as simple as stating, ‘This is what I choose to value more than everything else,’ and then living with it?”— Mark Manson

Please don’t fall for the BS that people spout about having it all, either. They don’t, and they never will, no matter how much they scream that they are. Watch people’s lives long enough, and you will see the cracks in the veneer.

Yes, you will sometimes have to prioritize work over your life (like I did). Especially if you’re trying to climb the ladder aggressively, make as much money as possible, and invest it for your future. 

However, when you create a long-term plan and intentionally make those choices, you know when it’s time to switch gears too. You know when you want to shuffle your priorities and put more important things on top (like your family and your health).

You can have more of what matters

No, you can’t do it all or have it all. But, you can have more of what matters the most to you.

What if I told you that it’s better to ruthlessly prioritize how you spend your days so you can focus more on fewer things? 

When I did that, I put my family and health at the top of the list. My career was no longer in the number one position. As I mentioned, it had been for years.

However, I decided that enough was enough. My family relationships and my health had suffered for too long. I couldn’t keep doing that. 

With age and experience, there comes a little bit of wisdom. I accepted that I could not have it all. I made peace with that.  

I’d had a great 20 years in my first career and accomplished most of what I wanted (e.g., founding a tech startup). But, now it was time for my career to take a back seat to my family and health.

However, if we wanted to dial back my work and income, we also had to dial back our lifestyle and expenditures. If I wanted the freedom to create a new definition of “having it all,” I had to leave the Silicon Valley rat race. 

When you’re deep in a bubble like that, it is all-consuming. You can’t imagine doing anything else or living any other way. It seems more important than it really is.

Taking a step away from that crazy world for a few months gave me a new perspective on life. Getting out of the Bay Area tech bubble refreshed my view of the world too. 

I’m not saying that it happened overnight or that it was easy. It was a painful process of letting go and rebirth. But, the funny thing is that now I’m happier than I ever was before. 

I have less of what I used to think mattered, but I discovered actually mattered very little (e.g., title, money, possessions). I have more of what matters most to me now (e.g., time with my family, freedom, health), which makes me more than satisfied that I gave up my old ideas of trying to have it all.

How to take back control

If you prioritize everything in your life into a force-ranked list, what would that list look like? Consider all dimensions of your life; love, family, friendships, health, fitness, career, possessions, nest egg, etc. 

Are you spending your time and energy where you want? If not, what’s your long-term plan for changing that?

I was recently talking with a client about this problem of trying to juggle it all, feeling overwhelmed, and burning out. Everything felt urgent and important. Everything wanted their time. 

What can you do about it? How can you take back control of where you focus your time and energy? Here are a few steps that can help.

Define what having it all means for you

Question each item you put on your “Having it All” list. Use the Five Whys technique to get to the root of each one (e.g., Why do I want this?). Ask yourself why for each answer. Why? Why? Why?

For example, I used to think that my job title was an important item on my list of having it all. I had to become an executive. Being a CEO someday was part of that vision.

I had a taste of both and found out that it didn’t matter to me. The higher I climbed the career ladder, the less appealing that line item was. I deprioritized it and, eventually, it dropped off my list entirely.

Create a prioritized list

After you’re done questioning everything, create a prioritized list from the items that make the cut. Don't give things the priority that someone else thinks they deserve (e.g., your employer).

Be true to yourself and your needs. Prioritize the list based on how you feel about things and what you want.

Explore the Eisenhower Matrix

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

Put all of your tasks and activities into an Eisenhower Decision Matrix. Determine how urgent and vital each one is.

* Urgent and Important Tasks need your prompt attention (e.g., getting your car repaired)

* Not Urgent but Important Tasks deserve your attention, but you tend to put them off (e.g., writing a book that will help your career)

* Urgent and Not Important Tasks are the usual firefighting activities that you should learn to avoid or delegate (e.g., your boss tells you to attend a birthday party planning meeting)

* Not Urgent and Not Important Tasks are sometimes useful for relaxing (e.g., playing guitar), but often they are wasting your time and providing no value (e.g., scrolling through Instagram)

Escape the zero-sum game

Some activities steal time from more important items on your list. Directly trading time for money is one of those traps.

It is better to invest an hour in an activity that generates returns forever instead of paying you once. I face this tradeoff in my business all the time.

When someone hires me for an hour of consulting time, I get paid once for that hour of work. That hour is gone, and I never make any more income from that moment in time ever again. But, when I spend an hour writing an engaging story for Medium, that activity generates income forever!

Read Naval Ravikant's excellent post How to Get Rich. He talks about what true wealth is, its purpose, and finding your leverage. 

“Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep; it’s the factory of robots cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program running at night that’s serving other customers. Wealth is money in the bank that is reinvested into other assets and businesses.”— Naval Ravikant

Only give items the time they deserve

Give tasks and activities the time you think they deserve, not the time they want or even require. This is a hard step to take, but it will create a fundamental shift in your life and how you spend your time.

For example, marketing my business could easily consume eight hours of my day. Will it take all of that time if I let it? Yes, it could easily eat up my entire day.

Does it deserve all that time? Nope! I have more important things on my list. 

Time box activities that you must do but don’t deserve unfettered access to all of your time and attention. It also forces you to be more efficient because work expands to fill the time you give it anyway (i.e., Parkinson’s Law).

Evaluate each prioritization decision

First, assess the commitment of time, attention, and energy for each time on your list from the top down. Next, decide how to budget your resources to the list. Your time is finite, so choosing to do one thing means you can do less of another thing.

For example, if you decide to dedicate six hours per week to item #4, where does that time come from? What will you give up to make that happen?

Finally, do a cost-benefit analysis:

* Will you be satisfied with this tradeoff in the short term, if it pays off (e.g., less time with your family to get promoted in six months)?

* Will you still be happy with this choice in the long run (e.g., the sacrifice was worth landing that executive role, even if your children feel less connected to you years from now)?

I can hear some people saying, “Larry, knock it off with the exaggerated scare tactics!”

But, I’m not making up a fictional example. It’s from my life.

I worked really long hours for over six years (12-14 hour days, nights, weekends, no vacations) to land a series of promotions. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for the support and recognition. The salary boosts helped give my family a nice life.

But I paid a heavy price. Years later, one of my young children said to my wife, “I’m a little nervous around Dad because I don’t really know him.”

They barely saw me Monday through Friday, and work even interrupted my weekends with them. How do you think it made me feel when I heard that my own child didn’t know me?

It broke my damn heart. I can never get that time back, and my relationships with my children will never be as strong as what they have with my wife.

Use time blocking

Time block your calendar and fiercely protect your scheduled high-priority activities. This is especially useful for those “Not Urgent but Important Tasks” that we tend to put off forever.

“Sometimes people ask why I bother with such a detailed level of planning. My answer is simple: it generates a massive amount of productivity. A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.”— Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

I use time blocking to ensure that I have dedicated calendar time for the most important activities. Otherwise, all of those urgent little things creep in and steal away my days.

For example, I set up recurring time blocks for:

* Morning journaling

* Daily exercise

* Working on my podcast

* Writing newsletters and articles

* Marketing activities

* Time with my community

* Strategically working on my business (instead of always in it)

* Time with my family

Read more about time blocking, day theming, time boxing, and task batching in this excellent post by Todoist.

Protect your scarce resources

Aggressively protect and manage your time, attention, and energy as your most precious resources.

* Eliminate energy vampires (e.g., people that drag you down and argue with you online)

* Delegate tasks that you do not want to do

* Delegate activities that you should not be doing

* Don't let other people force themselves into your working moments or life (e.g., set up do not disturb on your phone, let calls go to voicemail, batch respond to messages)

I hope you can redefine what “having it all” means for you so that it’s realistic, achievable, and gives you a sense of happiness and fulfillment. I also hope that some of these strategies can help you reclaim your time and freedom to focus on what matters the most to you!

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to my expanded discussion of this newsletter article  🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Audit Your Professional Brand

This challenge helps you maintain a consistent professional brand everywhere you exist online. The longer you’ve been using the internet, the more profiles you may have. They can quickly get out of synch. Completing this challenge gets your profiles aligned with each other and ensures they clearly support your professional brand. Tracking all of the accounts and information in a spreadsheet makes it easier to update later.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A free Slack community for ambitious professionals who want to create an invincible career.

* A professional mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs.

* A free community for independent creators who want to make a living doing more of what they love.

He lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

Would Apple be a $2 trillion company if Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had been more alike? I highly doubt it.

Thanks to my time working at Apple many years ago, I had the opportunity to experience the personalities of both Steves. I can tell you that they were very, very different people.

"The day we started Apple he changed. He changed his personality forever because he now was a founder of a company that had money. He wanted so strongly to find the way to be an important person in the world. He became very serious. He would always speak as though he was the one on top of running Apple. That was good with me. I was the shy engineer who wanted to go into the laboratory and keep inventing things and building them. I didn't want to run a company with politics and people pushing each other out." — Steve Wozniak (source)

Jobs did seem larger than life. His famous “reality distortion field” was legit. You believed the grand vision he described. But, he was not someone you felt comfortable around, and he could be a terrifying leader (e.g., “Justify your existence!”).

On the other hand, Wozniak was a friendly guy who loved to joke around. He enjoyed telling us stories of the pranks he used to play. He loved building stuff and wanted to be left alone. He seemed happy to fade out of the spotlight and focus on his passion for education, gaming, and building new tech.

As strained as their friendship became later when Jobs started acting like a serious businessperson with a God complex, the complementary balance of strengths and differences between the two founders was necessary for Apple to succeed.

Jobs needed Wozniak’s quiet and focused creativity and engineering talent. Wozniak needed Jobs to boldly lead the company and market the hell out of their products.

At some point in your life, you too will seek to partner with one or more other people. You’ve probably already done it. That’s what it means to be an employee in a company. You don’t get hired to sit alone in a basement for years. You have to partner with your coworkers, manager, and other colleagues to get stuff done.

Sure, working solo has many benefits. I love it and have done it for years. But, I also know that I am limiting what I can accomplish by trying to go it alone.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African proverb

Partnering helps you achieve greater things. You’ll need to connect the unique “puzzle piece” of who you are with other complementary pieces to complete the full picture. That connection could be between:

* You and an employer when you’re trying to find the ideal role that will take your career to all new heights.

* You and a partner if you’re pursuing an entrepreneurial path and want to launch your first business.

* You and a life partner when you’re ready to commit and build a life together.

I’m not going to get into how to find your life partner in this newsletter article. I actually did write quite a bit about that earlier this year. If you’re interested, you can read my Lessons from 30 Years of Marriage (Parts 1-3).

So, how do you find the right co-founder when you’re ready to start your own business?

How do you find great professional partners when you’re seeking your next career move?

Getting this right is important because co-founder conflict is one of the top reasons that early startups fail. Bad bosses and toxic coworkers (i.e., your “partners” as an employee) are two of the top reasons people quit their jobs.

Why bother partnering?

No single person is a complete picture. We're all puzzle pieces. We have holes in some areas (i.e., our weaknesses) and tabs in others (i.e., our strengths).

I’ve consulted with startups where the founders were too much alike. They had the same talents, skills, experience, and personalities. Both founders were engineers. They were both interested in being the CEO. Neither one of them knew anything about design, customer research, marketing, sales, or how to turn their cool technology into a product that a customer would want. It didn’t turn out well.

Sometimes very similar partners can make it work if they hire a great team that fills in their gaps and weaknesses. But, they’re still on a path to failure if both think that they should be the one who is heading up the company, managing the Board, speaking to investors, talking to the media, etc.

To succeed and complete the full image of your future, you need to combine your piece with others who complement and balance you. That includes:

* Talents

* Skills

* Interests

* Personality

* Vision

* Operational expertise

* Leadership style

You need to fit together well. But, even when you do, a misalignment is still a recipe for ultimate failure. You need to make sure that you agree with what picture you’re trying to complete.

You’re not going to be happy if you try to place your “mountain scenery” piece into a puzzle that completes a photo of the Manhattan skyline. I hope you already know that’s true in personal relationships. It’s also true in professional ones.

What are your nonnegotiables?

Partnering with someone who complements you with their differences is essential. But, you do need to be similar enough to your partner in some ways so that you’re aligned on things that matter.

Even if your pieces fit well together, you may discover that you don't complete the same picture. For example, you want to build a lifestyle business that supports you financially and gives you enough freedom to enjoy your life outside of work. But, your potential partner is really ambitious and wants to create the next billion-dollar company.

She’s so driven that she’s ok with working 24/7 for years to make it happen. However, you can’t stand the idea of staying in the office until late in the evening and never seeing your family. I don’t care how well you complement each other; that partnership will not work out.

Questions to explore your nonnegotiables — where you need to be similar and aligned — might include:

* Are you a product company, service company, or hybrid?

* Are you both willing to sign documents that legally define the company, your roles, ownership, compensation, arbitration processes, etc.?

* What is your vision of the future?

* What do you want the mission of your company to be?

* What should the company’s principles, values, and ethics be?

* What size of company do you want to build?

* What’s the ideal organizational structure?

* Are you both going all-in on this venture, or can one person only contribute part-time?

* How do you do your best work (e.g., all alone, together in a quiet room, with music playing, joking around while you work)?

* How do you prefer to communicate (e.g., texts, Slack, email, phone, in-person)?

* What is your ideal exit strategy (e.g., retire and sell the company, go public, get acquired)?

* How do you ideally want the company to make money (e.g., are you ok with advertising revenue)?

* What is your philosophy around spending money, handling profit and loss, and investing in the company?

* How should important decisions be made?

* How should disagreements and conflicts be resolved?

I founded a tech startup several years ago with co-founders and employees. I made sure to build the core team with people who had very different — but necessary — skillsets (e.g., design, back-end engineering, front-end development, mobile development, product, business).

We also had different strengths and weaknesses that balanced each other (e.g., ability to pitch investors, networking, attention to detail, big picture strategy, creativity, planning, financial acumen, optimism, pragmatism, enthusiasm, stability).

Importantly, we were all aligned on our vision for the company and our “Why.” We also had similar working and communication styles.

For example, the very talented designer (Hi, Sam!) and I shared a small office. We mostly worked quietly with headphones on when we had to crank on tasks. But, we also knew when it was time to chat, joke around, grab lunch, and celebrate a little on Fridays after a release. It all felt natural, and it was one of the best working experiences in my life.

When you're forming an entrepreneurial partnership, it's essential to find the right pieces that fit together and align to create a shared vision of the future. I think everyone understands that.

However, it’s also important when seeking a new employer and boss. You want to make sure that your piece fits into the vision, mission, talents, company culture, and principles.

For example, you will be miserable if:

* You believe in data-driven decisions, but the company leans toward authority-based decisions (e.g., do whatever the CEO says).

* You care deeply about the environment, but the company works with partners who don’t give a damn about the environment.

* You enjoy an open, honest, and collaborative culture, but the company is highly political, full of secretive meetings, and cutthroat behavior is rewarded.

Seek out differences

We recognize similar puzzle pieces and feel an affinity. We have similar interests, life experiences, strengths, and failings. We often form deep friendships with people like this.

It might be tempting to try to partner with these comfortable and familiar pieces. People often want to work with good friends. Many entrepreneurs and founders have started businesses with friends who were classmates or coworkers.

It sometimes works out. But, it’s often a mistake if you are too alike.

You need to find pieces that fill your gaps. You need to find people who appreciate and need your strengths.

For example, perhaps you're great at creating something but terrible at sales and marketing. You're a talented, prolific artist. You crank out beautiful work every week to share on social media, but you're barely scraping by. You want to partner with someone to help scale the business.

Your ideal business partner shouldn't be another creator like you. Yes, you do want someone who will appreciate what you create and have the same long-term vision. But, more importantly, you want a partner who excels at sales and marketing, will help you find customers and grow the business, and is committed to helping both of you financially succeed.

* While you’re creating the next work of art, they’re finding new opportunities to build an audience.

* While you may be shy and unwilling to connect with people on social media, they know to nurture your super fans and enjoy the interaction.

* While you hate discussing prices and trying to persuade someone to buy your work, they've found a creative way to monetize what you do so the fans are thrilled.

It’s a useful exercise to document your talents, skills, strengths, and likes. What are you really great at doing and enjoy doing? These become the positive tabs of your puzzle piece to complete the holes in a potential partner’s piece.

It’s just as useful to capture your weaknesses and dislikes. What are you not good at doing, and what do you hate doing? These holes will be areas you seek to fill with the tabs in your potential partner’s piece.

For example:

* If you know that you’re better at big picture thinking and weak with operational details, you want to find a partner who has strong attention to detail and enjoys those operational tasks.

* If you struggle with pessimism and feeling down makes it hard for you to be productive, find a partner who is more optimistic and can help lift you with their positive energy.

* If you avoid conflict and hate negotiating with people, find a partner who doesn’t mind going toe-to-toe with folks when necessary.

Complementary Harmony Feels Magical

People have compared a professional partnership to marriage. A few have said that choosing the right business partner is even more challenging than choosing your spouse.

I don’t necessarily agree with that. But, there’s no denying that you’ll probably spend more time with your business partner, and the risks can be even greater.

However, when you get it right, it is pretty magical. There’s nothing like partnering with someone who gets you and completes you. With the right partner, you’ll discover how 1 + 1 = 3.

It comes down to being self-aware and deliberately seeking out the discomfort of partnering with someone different than you vs. a comfortable like-minded friend. You will thrive in your new venture (or job) when you partner with someone who genuinely complements you.

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to my expanded discussion of this newsletter article  🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Share Your Portfolio of WorkThis challenge helps you keep your portfolio of work up to date. It makes sure that you’ve included your most recent accomplishments and are happy with how your talent is being represented. It’s also your chance to get some honest feedback from the community!

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A free Slack community for ambitious professionals who want to create an invincible career.

* A professional mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs.

* A free community for independent creators who want to make a living doing more of what they love.

He lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

I don’t remember what my friend did, but suddenly a drill sergeant was in his face screaming at him. He called him every name in the book and told him how stupid he was.

At the end of his tirade, the drill sergeant stopped talking and kept staring into my friend’s face. He was expecting some sort of reaction or response.

But, my friend maintained his composure. He stared straight ahead, looking past him, his face expressionless.

That seemed to irritate the drill sergeant, so he tried to provoke him further, "You want to hit me, don't you, boy?"

My friend slowly turned his head. He smiled calmly and made direct eye contact. In a low voice, he deliberately and clearly said, "Ohhhh yes, drill sergeant."

His confident response — coupled with his imposing physical stature — made an impact. I was astounded to watch the drill sergeant mumble something, turn, and walk away.

That’s the power of confidence. Of course, it isn’t only useful in the military. We need it in our everyday lives, in both personal and professional situations.

We’re all slowly starting to venture out into the world again. I’m watching friends around the world going out to dinner, attending events, and meeting new people.

Of course, we have been meeting new people online during the past year. My Invincible Career Slack community chats every day, my Career Accelerator meets on Zoom every week, and I talk with my 1-on-1 clients all the time.

However, it’s different in person. I know that my social skills are feeling a bit rusty. I’m also feeling slightly awkward at events in the real world now. I guess Zoom isn’t a perfect proxy for physical socialization.

Several people have told me that they feel less confident now. They’ve been away from the workplace and social gatherings for over a year!

Well, it’s time to brush up on those conversational skills! Until your old confidence returns, here are some tips for boosting your signals of self-assurance.

You’ll instantly be perceived as more confident. This changes how people react to you. That change in their behavior feeds back into your assessment of the situation, which now makes you actually feel more confident.

It becomes a virtuous cycle.

Exude calm

Eight-time Olympic medalist speedskater Apolo Ohno was spotted yawning before his big races in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Broadcasters mentioned that perhaps he was bored or tired.

Nope, he wasn’t. He was intentionally yawning to prepare his body and calm himself down before the race.

"It makes me feel better. It gets the oxygen in and the nerves out."— Apolo Ohno

Long ago, I started using my own calming rituals to handle stressful situations (e.g., during Army Basic Training, executive reviews, Board meetings). I'd force myself to feel somewhat disinterested and maintain a neutral expression.

People would remark later, "How do you stay so calm in those meetings? Nothing seems to bother you."

My wife also once said, “You seem at ease in every situation."

I'm not at ease. I often feel anxious. I frequently feel stressed.

However, I do my best not to let it show. I intentionally maintain my composure in most situations to help myself stay calm and feel more confident. I also do it to help people around me feel more relaxed and less stressed by what’s going on.

To instantly feel and appear calmer:

* Focus on taking slower, deeper breaths.

* Yawn before that big meeting or event starts!

* Relax the muscles in your face.

* Unclench your jaw.

* Smile slightly.

* Use an engaged but relaxed posture.

* Let tension flow out of your back and arms.

Maintain eye contact

I’ve written about the power of eye contact before. You can use your gaze and body language to radiate more confidence. You can also deliberately use eye contact to communicate care, attention, and respect for others.

You will stand out and be viewed as more confident when you make appropriate eye contact with others. Why? Because fewer people are looking others in the eye during conversations. Eye contact should be made about 60-70% of the time during a discussion to create a sense of emotional connection, yet most are only doing it 30-60% of the time. 

If you want to be perceived as competent and confident during a job interview, for example, be aware of your eye contact with the interviewer. When applying for a high-status job, applicants who gazed regularly at the recruiter were given significantly more favorable evaluations compared to those who avoided eye contact.

If you want people to view you as confident and likable:

* Make eye contact before you start talking to someone.

* Aim for looking into their eyes about 60-70% of the time during a conversation (less when you’re speaking and more when you’re listening).

* Maintain eye contact for 3–7 seconds to show that you’re interested (more than 10 secs is too long).

* Use a gesture or nod to naturally break eye contact and look away slowly (don’t look down since that signals low confidence).

Move with intention

Confident people make slower, more intentional movements. They don’t let others rush them.

You can even see this in the animal world. Note the difference between the movements of a cat and a squirrel. One is a predator. The other is prey.

One makes slow, languid movements. It acts disinterested most of the time. It’s capable of extreme speed and physical action, but only when it chooses to do so.

The other makes herky-jerky movements. It twitches and flits around, scrambling anxiously from spot to spot.

Some people behave like squirrels. Their anxiety is often betrayed by their eyes. Research has found that when we are nervous or troubled our blink rate increases.

Try this the next time you want to instantly look and feel more confident:

* Blink slowly instead of fluttering your eyes.

* Breathe steadily through your nose.

* Intentionally let your lungs fill with air as your chest slowly rises and falls.

* Languidly move your body to stretch and relax during meetings.

* Reach for things more slowly, open your notebook or laptop more deliberately, and don’t be in a rush with your movements.

Speak deliberately

People tend to speed up their speech when they are nervous. They ramble and stumble over their words. They also sometimes lose their train of thought.

Anxious speakers take shallow breaths and rush their words. Their voices climb a few octaves because their chest and throat feel tight. Not good.

It used to happen to me all the time! But, I finally learned how to take control of my body’s reactions to the stress of speaking in front of others and focused on improving my vocal delivery.

To instantly sound more confident:

* Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

* Relax and slow your speech down.

* Speak more deliberately and clearly.

* Remove hedging phrases from your speech (e.g., I feel…)

* Eliminate verbal tics and vocal fillers (e.g., Ummm…)

* Use pauses and silence for emphasis and impact.

* Make eye contact with your listeners.

* When asked questions, take a brief moment to think before answering.

Smile more often

Confident people frequently smile because they know they can handle almost any situation. They’re able to relax and enjoy themselves.

Smiling is probably the easiest way to instantly feel more confident. When you smile, it releases endorphins which make you feel better and boosts your self-esteem.

This is another one of those virtuous cycles. When you smile at someone, they are more likely to smile back at you. Both of you feel more positive, and you immediately begin feeling more confident.

With that said, this only works with a genuine smile. Tight, forced smiles are instantly perceived as insincere.

To feel more confident when talking with someone:

* Genuinely smile when you meet them as if you’re catching up with an old friend.

* Make sure you smile with your eyes too.

* Smile when they smile, or when they say something that is funny or enjoyable for both of you.

Have a plan

This type of preparation will also help you feel more confident going into a situation. Many times, we feel anxious and nervous because of the unknown.

Research and planning help me feel more confident. I like to remove as many unknowns as possible. I like to make the unfamiliar feel more familiar.

For example, before I talk at an event, I research everything I can find about the venue, the other speakers, the organizers, the audience, etc. I will watch talks from previous years. If possible, I also explore the venue long before taking the stage.

The research and planning make me more familiar with the event, venue, and people. I feel more comfortable and, therefore, I feel more confident.

You can easily boost your confidence before any interaction by:

* Being proactive and taking action, which instantly makes you feel more capable and confident.

* Doing your homework and researching everything.

* Turning the unknowns into knowns.

* Turning strangers into familiar faces and voices.

* Creating a plan for how you will approach things.

* Preparing and rehearsing what you will say and do.

Predict outcomes

We can never be entirely certain what we will encounter when we meet others. We don’t know how they will react or what they will say.

To feel more confident, try to predict their behavior and prepare your reactions. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

For example, I would have to say that my military experience helped prepare me for the angry, screaming executives I encountered during my time working in tech in Silicon Valley. I was trained to stay calm, remain silent, and look straight ahead when a drill sergeant was inches away from my face and screaming at me. I was even physically punished in creative ways.

Do you think I gave a damn about some power-hungry exec trying to intimidate me? I anticipated that behavior and was prepared with how to react to it.

Before an important event, meeting, or discussion, create a model that predicts potential outcomes and how you will respond. You don’t have to be 100% accurate with predicting the exact words someone will say or actions they will take. Instead, work on the following:

* What questions will they potentially ask?

* What might their objections be?

* If they say no, how will I respond?

* If they say yes, what will I say next?

* If they lose their temper, how do I want to react?

* If everything goes smoothly, how do I want to wrap things up?

Be ready to walk away

One of the most confident things that you can do is walk away. Knowing that you’re ready to do so makes you feel more confident going into a conversation. Be ready and able to walk away when you’re no longer getting what you want from a situation.

For example:

* Walk away when negotiations stall and an offer still doesn't meet your requirements.

* Walk away from a job when it can no longer meet your needs and your manager isn’t willing to make the necessary changes.

* End bad relationships that aren’t serving you well.

Confident people always know that they are in demand. They know that they have options. They don’t need to put with a terrible boss, unacceptable compensation, or a bad work environment.

Of course, you always try to negotiate, improve things, and transform a situation until it’s acceptable. But, if all else fails, confident people can walk away and move on for something better.

Feed your confidence engine

As I mentioned above, you can create a virtuous cycle when building your self-confidence:

* Intentionally use confident body language, actions, and words.

* Others will perceive you as more confident.

* They will behave as if you are a confident person.

* Their reactions create a feedback loop for you.

* You feel more confident about the conversation and situation.

* You behave with even greater confidence.

Your enhanced self-confidence will serve you well. Confident people tend to perform well in job interviews. They’re more likely to pursue challenges and take smart risks. They tend to be more influential and get promoted more often.

In general, the more confident you are, the more successful you will be in life.

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to my confident discussion of this newsletter article (see what I did there?) 🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Explore the Passion EconomyThis challenge helps you explore new ways to showcase your work and what you create. If you already have some ideas for what you want to share, great! If not, don’t worry about it. This week introduces you to new opportunities and gets the creative juices flowing…

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A free Slack community for ambitious professionals who want to create an invincible career.

* A professional mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs.

* A free community for independent creators who want to make a living doing more of what they love.

He lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

My guest for this episode is Sami Gardner. She is a career coach who specializes in helping creative and technical professionals develop their dream careers.

Sami redesigned her own career to travel the world and has helped job seekers from San Francisco to São Paulo.

Sami believes that if you kickstart your career, you kickstart your life. She shares her career journey from librarian to a career advisor, digital nomad, and published author.

She talks about the reality of degrees and job security. No matter what your degree and how great you are at your job, you’re always at the mercy of the people at the top who control budgets and make decisions that eliminate positions. 

She was tired of being at the mercy of an employer, so she started her own business. She was also totally free at that time and decided to travel the world, work remotely, and spend time with family.

We also discuss how she balances her time as a business owner with being an active published author. Because, when Sami isn’t coaching, she writes sci-fi/fantasy novels!

Key points from our conversation

I want to call out a few points from my conversation with Sami to help you if you’ve ever considered becoming a digital nomad, exploring a career change, or pursuing a passion.

Remember your why

Sami enjoyed her career coaching business, launching courses, and traveling, but she was burning out. She was a digital nomad and exploring the world, but she was trying to do too much. She couldn’t even enjoy her time in new cities.

She took a step back to think about her “why.” She remembered why she started her business in the first place.

Her goal wasn’t to have a business. Her real goal was to have freedom. She wanted more freedom and flexibility in her lifestyle. She got lost somewhere in the middle of building it and got caught up in hustling 24x7. 

We all need to take a step back occasionally and reflect on why we are doing what we do. Are we still on the right path, or have we drifted off course?

Overcome your fears

Sami had already written a great deal of content for her books. But, she realized that she was scared to put her work out there. That’s why she had been sitting on her writing for years and not publishing anything.

She had the good fortune to attend a writing retreat in France for a month. It gave her the time to focus and think about her goals as a writer.

She realized that she had a goal she hadn’t done anything with; she wanted to publish her books. The time at the retreat helped her overcome her fears, put her work together, set up her author brand, and publish.

There’s probably something that you’ve been scared to try. You may have fears that are holding you back from taking action. But, regret is worse than fear. Trust me.

Make time for introspection

The pandemic forced Sami to stand still for a while and be more introspective. When she was constantly traveling, she never had the time to reexamine her business, review how it was operating, and decide if it was still what she wanted.

I understand the challenge she experienced. When you are working so hard every day in your business, it isn’t easy to find time to work on your business.

She reevaluated how she was working, how she set up her business, and if she wanted to continue the way things were going. She decided that she was stuck in a loop, and something had to change.

She was working so much that she couldn’t enjoy life. She traveled to these amazing places and couldn’t even take a break to go to the beach or spend time with friends.

Business owners talk about making time to work on your business instead of only working in your business. The same is true for employees and their careers.

You can get stuck in a cycle of working so hard in your job that you don’t make time to set goals for your career, make plans, and take action to achieve what you want. It really is necessary to set aside dedicated time to focus on you, your career, and your life.

Don’t wait until you’re feeling frustrated and burned out!

⬆️ Scroll to the top if you want to listen to our full conversation and hear where you can find Sami, her coaching service, and her books! 🎧

A way to support my newsletter

I know that not everyone is ready to become a paid subscriber. But, there is a great way you can support my work without spending any money:

📣 Recommending my newsletter on social media.

It only takes a few seconds, and it helps grow my business so I can continue making time to write it.

I'll even provide some copy and paste text to make it easy to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Thanks in advance!

I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Get More out of LinkedInThis challenge helps you leverage one of the most focused networks that you probably have. LinkedIn tends to be the best place to connect with current coworkers, past colleagues you enjoyed working with, and like-minded people from your profession and industry. But, most people aren’t taking control of their experience to squeeze more out of the platform…

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also hosts:

* A free Slack community for people who want to create an invincible career.

* A professional mastermind community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs.

* A free community for independent creators who want to make a living doing more of what they love.

He lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

I’m sure you’ve already heard this, but when it comes to social media, we are the “product.” The services are technically free, but we all pay a price.

The big platforms make a killing off of the time you spend there, thanks to their highly personalized ads. They know everyone you are connected to, who you engage with, what you click, what you share, etc. Businesses leverage that massive amount of data to show you ads they hope you will click.

Social media platforms also love drama, titillation, and arguments. That behavior draws attention, and the people who engage feed their hungry data machines. That improves their ad quality, the highly-targeted ads get more clicks, and that generates even more money. 

When you use social media the way that they want you to, they get rich. But, what are you getting out of it? 

At best, you receive some personal benefits like seeing recent photos from distant family members, reconnecting with old friends, and finding new ones. At worst, you fall into the trap of wasting time, endlessly arguing with strangers, and trying to change minds that will never be changed. 

The social media giants are extracting billions and billions from all of us. Don't let them use you and get nothing of value in return.

Now, it's your turn to squeeze some juice out of them. 

You can use social media to build your professional brand, grow a more powerful network, and advance your career. But, you must use it the right way.

Don't fall into the trap that I did for so many years:

* I felt obligated to accept friend requests and follow people back, so my feed became polluted with content I didn’t enjoy. 

* I became so fed up that I rarely engaged, so the platforms stopped showing my occasional content to my friends in the feed.

* To fix that, I started using scheduling tools to automatically broadcast on social media more often. But that made people tune out. 

I finally returned to the roots of what social media was meant to be, and things improved. I became more human and authentic, and people responded. I took control of how I use social media, and now I enjoy the value of these platforms more than ever before. 

Common mistakes people make

If you use your real name and identity for your social media accounts (some services require that), everything you do is tied to your reputation and influences how people view you. If you have alternative or throwaway accounts so you can have untethered fun on social media, you don’t have to worry about this as much.

Over the years, I’ve watched people using social media in ways that are potentially damaging to their careers. The choices they make are certainly impacting their reputations and professional brands.

In some cases, they don’t care or need to be concerned. They’ve made their money for life and can let loose with no worries about the repercussions. 

Chad Hurley is one example. I’ve been surprised by the things he tweets. But then I remembered that he doesn’t give a damn.

He sold YouTube to Google for $1.65B in 2006. His current net worth is around $450 million. He doesn’t care what you think. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

However, if you still need to work to make a living, you might want to think twice about the social media presence you create. Here are some examples from a few people I follow online.

* Posting a seemingly endless stream of various alcoholic beverages every day. A potential employer checking that out would check the box: “Alcoholic.”

* Constantly raging against the machine, hurling insults at various politicians, and screaming curses at any individual who thinks differently. Who would want to work with such a ball of flaming rage?

* Striking people down left and right with biting sarcasm, veiled threats of being canceled, and intellectual humiliation. Sure, they’re really smart. But, most people try to avoid ending up in their crosshairs and certainly wouldn’t want them as a coworker. 

* Only liking, retweeting, and sharing links to other people’s articles and posts. No one has any idea who this person really is, how smart they might be, if they have any talent, or what their point of view is on anything. Who would want to hire someone that demonstrates zero creativity or original thinking?

* Engaging on social media with people every few minutes all day long. When does this person get work done? They supposedly have a full-time job, but I can see from their stream that they are posting and commenting all day and night. I would be reluctant to hire this person, and I’m surprised their employer hasn’t said something about how they are spending their workdays.

If this sounds like you, don’t kid yourself and say, “Hey, I’m being the real me!” You wouldn’t say half of that toxic crap to someone’s face. You wouldn’t behave that way at parties. You wouldn’t trash your boss in a meeting in front of others. 

Or, maybe you would! But, if you did, there would definitely be consequences. You would lose friends, stop being invited to events, and you may eventually get fired. 

So, it’s your choice. But don’t complain when things don’t go your way later. 

Social media is fire. It can be a powerful tool when used wisely, or it can burn your house down when you act like a fool.

If you would rather take control of social media and bend it to your will, read on.

Weave a powerful network 

Intentionally curate your network. Maybe you feel forced to accept that connection request from your uncle on Facebook. But, other platforms are different, and you should tightly control who you let into your inner circle. 

For some services, it used to be that a connection had to be a mutual decision. That’s still true for a few services today. If you wanted to connect with me and see my stuff, I had to accept your request and make you a friend too. 

You can still use this model if you take your account private (e.g., Instagram’s private account setting) or make your content only visible to approved followers (e.g., Twitter’s protected tweets setting). But, that doesn’t work well if you’re trying to build a strong professional brand and attract a following. 

Now, most services let you follow people and see their public content without requiring a friend connection. For example, I follow some of my favorite authors on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can add smart and interesting people to your network very easily and start seeing their valuable content every day. 

If you want to improve the quality of your social feeds and the engagement with your posts, be careful about who you friend and follow. I’m more selective now than I was in past years.

When I let too many people into my network, I would see way too much useless garbage in my feed (e.g., “Copy and paste this post to prevent Facebook from using your photos without your permission!”). I would also receive comments on my posts that were damaging to my professional brand and my mental health.

Now, I’m quick to unfriend and block people who behave badly. My accounts blend my personal and business life. I’m ok with polite disagreements, but I don’t need some jerk trying to destroy my confidence and hurt my business. 

Craft a professional brand

Think about how you want to be perceived online. You can separate your 100% personal social profiles (e.g., Reddit) from the profiles where you might have a hybrid model of personal and professional content (e.g., Twitter) or 100% professional content (e.g., LinkedIn).

Unless your accounts are privately locked down, or you use a secret identity, you can rest assured that people will find you online. Every recruiter and employer I know uses social media services or specialized tools to check out potential job candidates, check up on employees, and evaluate potential business partners. 

Whether you like it or not, your professional brand is impacted by what you say and do online. You can let your brand develop organically, or you can take control and shape it intentionally. 

In your bios, be clear about who you are, what you do, what you care about, and how to learn more about you (i.e., link to your website). Use a profile photo that is aligned with how you want to be perceived too.

It might be fun to remember doing tequila shots on your last birthday, but does a potential employer want to see that? Probably not.

Of course, your professional brand goes way beyond your bio. It is built on the content you share. It is reinforced with every word you say and the actions you take.

Showcase your talent

It seems like many people think that the only ways to demonstrate their talent are through their resume, cover letter, portfolio, LinkedIn, and maybe an interview presentation. They save it all up and dump everything in those places. 

However, most of those assets only come into play when you’ve already decided to pursue a job and interview with potential employers. How many potential opportunities have been lost because you don’t consistently share more about your talent on the services where people can discover you?

What you share on social media should be a mix of content to keep things interesting and balanced. The precise proportions vary based on platform, professions, and audience. But, here is what I like to do with my account and see from other people I follow (in priority order).

* Posting original thoughts in your own words. These can be brief (1-3 sentences), but they demonstrate how you think, show what you believe in, and let your real personality shine through. I share things when a random relevant thought crosses my mind. I share snippets of content from my original articles. I also keep a notebook and Evernote list full of ideas that I can share later. 

* Natively sharing the original content you create (e.g., photos, designs, videos, writing). Note: this isn’t sharing a link to the content. This is your chance to shine! It’s how you can showcase your talent and be discovered. I follow many talented writers, poets, cartoonists, artists, and photographers because they share their own original content every day. I can’t wait to see what they’ve created! 

* Commenting intelligently on other people’s posts to show support, add value, and connect with like-minded folks. This has been the best driver for me to get more attention online and gain more followers, especially when the original poster has a large, relevant audience. Shallow comments (e.g., “Me too!”) and likes don’t really help you, other than tuning the feed algorithm to show you more from that person.

* Sharing links to your original content. This could be something you wrote or created, your podcast, a video you produced, a book, a photo album, etc. 

* Sharing links to other people’s content (e.g., news, articles, videos, blog posts). You should always make sure that the content fits the professional brand you’re trying to create. You can occasionally share stuff that is off-brand. But, if you do that too often, people will unfollow you because you are no longer posting what originally convinced them to follow you. Last year, I muted or unfollowed some folks because they switched from sharing useful information to nonstop political posts. 

* Retweeting (or quote tweeting) and resharing from other people when they post something useful and insightful. Again, make sure that it’s aligned with your professional brand. I’ll often like funny stuff, but I don’t retweet it because it doesn’t fit the focus of my business. 

Keep your eye on the prize

What is the number one thing that you want from social media? Don't say, "Get more followers."

Having followers is a means to an end. They're an audience for your message. They are friends with whom you can engage. But, acquiring more followers won’t necessarily help you achieve your goals if you don’t know what you want.

Take a step back and think about what you want the most. How can others out in this big ol’ world help you achieve that? 

Some examples:

* A promotion. 

* A new job. 

* A new consulting gig.

* Potential employees for your team. 

* Investors for your startup.

* More book sales.

* Customers for your business. 

* More speaking opportunities. 

* Potential partners to collaborate with you on a project. 

What do you want people to do if they like what you have to say? Where can you guide them to take that next step that gets you closer to your goals? 

Keeping your eye on the big prize ensures that you stay focused. It helps you post relevant content, attract the right people, and direct them to the right destination (e.g., your website, GitHub profile, newsletter, portfolio, LinkedIn profile, author page). 

Engage like a decent human being 

It really does come down to behaving like a decent, intelligent human being online. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Engage in ways that reflect the way you want to be perceived. 

I think that was the original intent of the first social media sites. In the real world, you won’t encounter all of the people you’d love to meet. You may never bump into someone you admire.

However, you can follow them online. You can make friends with great people from all over the world. You can engage in intelligent conversations. 

That was the vision. Unfortunately, it became polluted by trolls and advertising. But, you can take control and wrestle social media back to what it should be. 

Be more human, genuine, kind, and authentic, and people will respond to you. Intentionally structure your network and be smart about what you share, and the right people will want to connect with you.

Social media can be as wonderful or as terrible as you decide to let it be. You control who you follow and what you see. You control who gets to follow you and engage with you. 

Your career will benefit when you use social media for your purposes. Your sense of wellbeing will improve when you take firm control of how you use it every day.

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I've really been enjoying the Invincible Career newsletter by Larry Cornett (@cornett). If you want to get ahead in your career and you aren’t subscribed yet, you’re missing out.https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com

This week’s professional development challenge

⭐ Professionally Leverage Social MediaThis challenge helps you grow your online presence in a way that is aligned with your professional goals. It will increase your visibility and showcase how good you are at what you do.

It also lets people see more of who you are, what you’re about, and how you think. Be you!

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor who also runs a professional and supportive online community for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs (join us!). He lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice that can help others take full control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.