Pivot with Jenny Blake

Joy and frustration can be equally motivating. Sometimes joy pulls our focus like a magnet to where it needs to be. On the other hand, sometimes being grumpy and frustrated is a sign we need to pivot in another direction. They both help us understand what roles or activities, or ideas we need to say no to to make sure we have enough space for what we want to say yes to. 

Today, I’m joined by recurring guest host Adrian Klaphaak, who is just returning from a two-month parental leave after welcoming his second child into the world. We’re talking about preparing for, and returning from, time off; the challenges of parenting while running a business; and working toward sustainable joy and focus amidst it all.

Are you working on a Pivot-in-progress? For guidance on reconnecting with what lights you up and creating an action plan to move forward, check out Adrian’s flagship Career Pathfinder Program and apply promo code PIVOT at checkout.

More about Adrian: Adrian Klaphaak is a coach, purpose guide, entrepreneur, therapist, and founder of A Path That Fits Career and Life Coaching. His coaching approach is holistic—a constant balance between getting results and a quest for meaning and fulfillment. He describes himself as “a deep seeker with a constant itch to make things happen.”

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Try This Next: What do you want to say no—or not now—to right now?

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

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📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/314

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Is change whispering to you? For Khe Hy, a former investment banker on the fast track of keeping up with the corporate Joneses, the discomfort from following the status quo first started feeling like a pebble in his shoe. “Psst! There’s more out there for you,” it whispered. 

In this conversation, we talk about his decision to leave Black Rock, how he follows his instincts when building his new content and education business, and how sneaky “shoulds” and insecurity often stem from unmet needs we had growing up.

Be sure also to check out Khe’s episodes on Free Time: 163: Leveraging Idea Kernels to Create Compelling Content with Khe Hy, and 129: The $10K Work Framework with Khe Hy.

More About Khe: Khe Hy is the founder and CEO of RadReads, an online education company that helps professionals lead productive, examined, and joyful lives. Khe is creator of the $10K Work productivity method and teaches the popular cohort-based course Supercharge Your Productivity. RadReads provides guides, trainings, and coaching for over 36,000 professionals to help them gain back free time, scale their impact and make their little dent in the universe.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Try This Next: Twice a week, take a piece of paper and a pen, go somewhere quiet, and reflect on a question about your life or business. Ask yourself, "What is the pebble in my shoe?” or, “If everything went great, what would my life look like in ten years?” This is less about having precise answers and more about creating the space for reflection.

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

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📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/313

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As the saying goes, “Worrying is praying for what you don’t want.” A close cousin is future-tripping: projecting and living in the future instead of being present with what is actually happening, keeping an open mind about whatever might happen next. 

If you are inclined to catastrophize, you’re not alone! But getting caught in a fictional movie can mean missing out on important opportunities, ideas, and relationships. Today, I’m talking about why we do this, how future-tripping manifests, and strategies for shifting into what I call present-calming instead.

🌟 15 Strategies for Shifting from Future-Tripping to Present-Calming:

✅ Try this next: Notice when you’re caught in a movie of the future, generating anxiety from a problem or situation causing you stress. Ask to be shown one next step, and stay attuned to clues or hits of inspiration or intuition in your environment.

Do you have any strategies for present-calming? Send me a note at [email protected] or leave me a voice memo at pivotmethod.com/ask.

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

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📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/312

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It’s time to leave guilt spirals, perfectionism, and hedging behind. Today’s guest, Lia Garvin, is sharing her favorite tools for reframing frustrating situations through powerful questions and helpful feedback.

More About Lia: Lia Garvin is the bestselling author of UNSTUCK: Reframe Your Thinking to Free Yourself From the Patterns and People that Hold You Back, leaning into nearly ten years of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech, including Microsoft, Apple, and Google to explore the power of reframing to overcome common challenges found in the modern workplace. In her popular TEDx talk, “Your decisions aren't wrong, your inner critic is“, Lia shares the secret to reframing the stress we feel around making decisions. As the Founder & CEO of The Workplace Reframe organizational strategy firm, speaker, and coach, Lia is on a mission to humanize the workplace, one conversation at a time.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Try This Next: The next time you’re feeling stuck, try reframing your questions from “why?” to “what?” Write down all of the questions you are asking yourself, and re-construct them. So, “Why didn’t they pick me?” becomes: “What else might be going on in the situation that I’m not aware of?” and “Why does this always happen to me?” becomes “What else might be possible?”

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/311

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I’m complete. Have you ever landed on that sense of satisfaction, perhaps after a peak experience when you’ve given everything you could? Often what quickly follows: Now, what’s next? 

My guest this week — the very first partner coach I brought on to help in my business — pivoted out of academia after an accomplished trajectory into running her own coaching practice. Several years ago, she was featured in Shana Gaynor’s wonderful Business Insider article, I went to a career coach, so you don't have to—and it was a rude awakening, that has been bringing clients our way ever since!

In this conversation, we discuss creating the impact you want to have in the world, crafting jobs and roles to fit your strengths, and how to navigate the nerves of striking out on your own.

More About Rebecca: Rebecca Fraser-Thill is a Pivot Career Coach, the Senior Contributor at Forbes on meaningful work, and the owner of Fraser-Thill Coaching & Consulting, based near Portland, Maine. Rebecca taught psychology at Bates College for 18 years, where she led the design of their Purposeful Work program. She holds a Master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. You can find her at www.RebeccaFT.com

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Next Action: Find a list of work-related or adjacent values online (or generate your own) and write them on index cards or slips of paper. Next, physically put them in order of what is most important to you. Return and reorder them over a week until you have no more changes. This list of values will help you make decisions and rules about your work—if something doesn’t align, it becomes much easier to say no to. 

📘Books:

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/310

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“The Sensitive Leader is a wayfinder, not a truth teller” with all the answers. Learn how serendipity helped today’s guest, Ciela Hartanov, successfully pitch an internal project to co-found and lead The Google School for Leaders; why sense-making is an essential skill when pivoting; and how to “right-size” a proposal until you get a yes. 

We also discuss what it means to develop “identity agency,” how Ciela knew it was time to go out on her own, why building a personal brand isn’t the end-all-be-all, and how to build trend-spotting skills.

More About Ciela: Ciela Hartanov was part of the founding team of The Google School for Leaders and Head of Next Practice Innovation and Strategy at Google, where she developed projects designed to shape the future of leadership and work. She currently runs humcollective, a boutique strategy and innovation firm that helps companies, executives, and teams make sense of the forces shaping the future and prepare strategically, and cohosts a podcast called Questioning Work.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Next Action:

Build your trend-spotting skills by taking a walk in your neighborhood. What are you noticing? What are the things you haven’t been seeing? What does that tell you about the world?

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/309

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“No [person] ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and they are not the same [person].” —Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher from ~500 BC

I share this quote in nearly every Pivot keynote because it speaks to the reality of uncertainty in every aspect of our lives, even when we’re not intentionally pursuing bigger career changes. Every day we are different, as are the companies we work for, the broader economy, our community, and even our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional bodies.

Today, recurring guest Adrian Klaphaak and I are exploring how to keep moving and build momentum, even when you aren’t in a position to take big risks. How do you double down on your strengths and take small steps to pivot in place, creating room for bigger opportunities down the road?

Are you working on a pivot-in-progress? For guidance on reconnecting with what lights you up, and creating an action plan to move forward, check out Adrian’s flagship Career Pathfinder Program and apply promo code PIVOT at checkout.

More about Adrian: Adrian Klaphaak is a coach, purpose guide, entrepreneur, therapist, and founder of A Path That Fits Career and Life Coaching. His coaching approach is holistic—a constant balance between getting results and a quest for meaning and fulfillment. He describes himself as “a deep seeker with a constant itch to make things happen.”

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Next Action:  the work activities that you get the most joy, energy, and flow from. How can you build upon those through smaller pilots?

📘Books:

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes: Pivot x Career Pathfinder Playlist (previous episodes with Adrian), 289: Stealing Wi-Fi as Career Strategy with Jenny Wood

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

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📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/308

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Leaving the cool shade of a corporate tree with a great salary and benefits to start a business is never easy. But making the call mere months before a global pandemic hits seems on the surface to be ill-timed—to say the least. Or perhaps cosmic. 

Don’t feel bad for Tony McGaharan, who is a pro at finding the silver lining in any situation. Suddenly the market for his budding business went from Belfast to global through virtual events, and his business is thriving because of it.

In this conversation, we cover how he knew it was time to give his two-weeks notice (and not just pivot internally), how he addressed financial fears of leaving a six-figure salary, navigating the first few months of the pandemic as a new business owner, and how he builds relationships to generate new business—including Google still a key part of his client roster. As his coach says to him, “Be careful what you do because what you do, you do more of.”

More About Tony: Tony is a Leadership Development expert who previously worked for Google's People Operations in Dublin, Singapore, and London. He is an experienced leader, effective facilitator, and qualified coach on and off the basketball court. He founded People Playbook in 2020, host of the Three Points podcast, and has partnered with a diverse range of organizations across the globe to design and deliver purpose-built leadership development programs.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Next Action: Outsource your confidence if you need a boost. We can get stuck in our own heads and not see ourselves clearly, so ask friends and family what they see your strengths as and what they think you can bring to the world.

📘Books: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, Life After College

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

Pivot

Free Time

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/307

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it too late to wish you a Happy New Year? Larry David, one of my favorite curmudgeons, would say yes — I have surpassed the HNY statute of limitations.

While the “new year, new you” energy is still fresh, I invite you to conduct a calendar audit: What are your shiny shoulds? The coulds? The so goods?

Today I’m sharing a crossover from the Free Time podcast and book about one of the most popular topics that readers ask me about most: Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds. This also ties into one of the Pivot Paradoxes I share in the Pilot stage of Pivot: The Fauxspiration Foe.

If you haven’t already, grab your copy of Free Time—winner of six book awards!—and subscribe to the w3 award-winning podcast wherever you listen »

You’re invited! I would love for you to join us in BFF, my private community for small Heart-Based business owners. If you want accountability, support, and strategies to stop sailing the sea of shiny shoulds so you can set more time free to do your best work. Visit itsfreetime.com/bff, and enter promo code PODCAST at checkout for a discount.

🌟Key Takeaway: If you want to dabble in something that might be a Shiny Should, treat it like an experiment. Set rules for engagement that respect your time, including firm start and end dates, then evaluate the impact on your energy and your business. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

✅ Action Step: Observe your calendar and projects for the next two weeks: What is most energizing? What’s most draining? Within the most energizing people and projects, conduct a second audit (you can do this by drawing three columns on a blank piece of paper or digital note): What are your shiny shoulds? The coulds? The so goods?

📘Books Mentioned:

🔗Resources Mentioned:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes

• JB episodes on SPARKED with Jonathan Fields

Pivot:

Free Time:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/306

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The opening epigraph to Luke Burgis’ brilliant book gave me such a chuckle that I can’t resist sharing it here:

“We want what other people want because other people want it, and it’s penciled-in eyebrows all the way down, down to the depths of the nth circle of hell where we all die immediately of a Brazilian butt lift, over and over again.” —Dayna Tortorici via n+1 (as quoted in Wanting)

In today’s conversation, we’re talking about mimetic desire and our relationship to wanting. It’s a fundamental aspect of the fact that humans are social creatures: I see, therefore I want; I want, therefore I am.

But if what you’re wanting isn’t serving you, this conversation will be just the medicine you need to turn your attention inward again. As Luke says, “Mimetic desire is like gravity—it just is. Gravity is always at work. What gravity is to physics, mimetic desire is to psychology.” We can get better at escaping relational riptides and the rat race. Listen in to learn more about why Wanting is the key to unlocking our deepest desires and ridding ourselves of toxic comparison and competition.

More About Luke: Luke Burgis has co-created and led four companies in wellness, consumer products, and technology. He’s currently Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship where he also teaches business at The Catholic University of America. He writes and speaks regularly about the education of desire, and is the author of two books on these topics: Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person and Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Next Action: Be like the hawk (as featured in today’s conversation!)—notice what your subconscious Michelin Stars are and examine, Are they serving you? Do they represent your “thickest” desires, or merely what others in your life and industry tell you that you should want?

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/305

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices