Jenny Blake
363: 🌈 Taking a Quiet Sabbatical and ...

As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting, after over 700 episodes today, I’m announcing a pause for both shows.

Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles, the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my longtime friend (and first coach) Adrian Klaphaak in Pivot episode 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts.

Jenny Blake
362: Setting Creative Intentions Instead of ...

“Expectations are the enemy to the creative process. Sometimes you have to let go of the known to see the unknown.”

Today I’m speaking with James McCrae, an author, poet, and meme artist based in Austin, Texas. He is the founder of 🌻 Sunflower Club, a global school and community dedicated to conscious creativity.

Jenny Blake
361: On Decision Engineering and Evaluating ...

Good decision-making is not about omniscience or clairvoyance—it's more about resilience, according to today’s guest, decision engineer Michelle Florendo. “Decision-making is harder than ever before, and it's not your fault,” Michelle says. “People feel like they ‘should just know’ how to decide.”

Today we’re talking about a framework more helpful than pro-con lists, tuning into your head, heart and gut; why the quality of your decision is not equal to the outcome—did good or bad things happen; keeping a decision journal to evaluate the quality of your decisions regardless of the outcome; and how to drop the guilt of “bad” past outcomes.

Jenny Blake
360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision ...

What happens when you make a big decision but still have lingering doubt, fear, and even despair? How do you know when a “download” from the universe is worth following, and what does test-driving a decision look like? What happens on the other side or when a pivot is taking far longer than planned?

We’re unpacking all these topics in today’s twelfth and final (for now) conversation for the Pivot x Career Pathfinder series with Adrian Klaphaak.

Jenny Blake
359: “You can’t give what you don’t have” — ...

“You can’t give what you don’t have.” That’s just one of the powerful lessons that Nataly Kogan learned the hard way seven years ago, after suffering a debilitating phase of burnout. As a former refugee from the former Soviet Union, she began her American journey in the projects and on welfare, then going on to build an impressive career as a finance and tech executive and serial entrepreneur over the next 25 years. Until she crashed at thirty-eight years old and needed to find a new way of moving forward.

As part of her healing process, Nataly began to paint when she was 40 by signing up for a painting retreat in Tuscony (that turned out to be for semi-professional watercolorists), and now her paintings are on the cover of her books—front and center as part of her bold self-expression.

Business

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[Best Of] Live Fiercely, Study Deeply . . . While Earning a Living — with Jonathan Fields

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[Best Of] Live Fiercely, Study Deeply . . . While Earning a Living — with Jonathan Fields

"Uncertainty may bring unease, but it also brings a vital energy, the exhilaration of creation. Without uncertainty, there is no possibility." —Jonathan Fields

As I get up to speed in my first semester at Union, I’m re-launching a few of my favorite podcast episodes from four years of archives: I hope you enjoy some of these oldies but goodies, particularly if you missed them the first time around! Here’s a conversation I loved with dear friend and mentor Jonathan Fields, from October 2016.

Jonathan Fields' mission is to "live fiercely and study deeply." How does he do that while earning a living? That's what we unpack in this week's episode. According to Jonathan, "There are only two ways to earn a living: you're either solving a problem or delivering a delight. If you're lucky and creative, you do both simultaneously."

Jonathan—or "JF" as I like to call him—has been a longtime mentor whose pivots have inspired me and countless others at every turn: from lawyer to yoga studio founder to author of three books, Jonathan is now studying and embodying what it means to live a good life. We recorded this episode from his plush velvety couches at Good Life Project Headquarters (aka his apartment on the Upper West Side) — I hope you enjoy this off-the-cuff conversation as much as I did. Be sure to grab Jonathan's new book, How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom, out this week! And his free recently released Unbusy Manifesto. 

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117: Activist Venture Capital and Teaching Yoga and Meditation at Rikers with Marcus Glover

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I had the great fortune of sitting behind Marcus Glover on a bus ride to Wallkill Prison for a Defy Ventures business mentoring day, and time flew as we talked about everything from him teaching yoga and meditation at Rikers, to criminal justice work, to his mission of funding minority-owned businesses through disruptive venture capital. 

I can’t wait for you to listen in on this conversation and get your own powerful dose of Marcus magic! You’ll hear about his passion for well-told stories, practicing empathy (rather than the misguided savior complex), cultural competency around dismantling privilege, and much more.

Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at PivotMethod.com/podcast/marcus-glover.

Enjoying the show? Get insider bonuses by joining the Pivot Podcast community at  Patreon.com/pivot.

More About Marcus Glover

Marcus+Glover.jpg

Marcus Glover is a Partner at Southbox, an early-stage investment fund focusing in areas of high-growth technology startups and disruptive content producers. He founded TEDxHarlem in 2010 and has also consulted entertainers and athletes including Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, 50 Cent, Shakira, The Black Eyed Peas, Kobe Bryant, Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning, Rihanna, Allen Iverson, Eli Manning.

Presently, Marcus is devoted to investing and advising early stage ventures. He also holds a deep commitment to social justice and criminal justice reform serving as a board member of New York Tri State Board of Directors for DefyVentures.org and LiberationPrisonYoga.org. Through his work with these organizations, Marcus has become a dedicated mentor to incarcerated men, women and youth and also volunteers as a yoga and meditation instructor leading juvenile programs at Rikers Island Prison.

Topics We Cover

  • How he got started teaching yoga and meditation at Rikers

  • Embracing his own brokenness, yoga as a platform for personal transformation

  • Why the goal of prison programs isn’t what most people going in might think

  • Our goal is to offer unconditional presence

  • His passion for well-told stories, telling stories that empower us versus disempower us

  • Own your story: the pieces that seem successful and the ones that feel broken - it’s the shards that we shy away from, but that’s what makes us more relatable, more human

  • How he ended up at venture capital to further his mission of conscious investing

  • Main critique of VC is cultural competency: as much as it has been pioneering in all these ways of technological discovery, it hasn’t done a great job of disrupting diversity and inclusion

  • Systemic biases that have been here for decades, but as a platform, VC has the power to continue to transform in all of these areas

  • His next frontier for social justice and venture capital: cannabis. For example, The People’s Dispensary - seeks to reinvest profits into communities that have been harmed by the War on Drugs

  • Focus on double-bottom line: people and profits

  • Activist venture capital means “making an investment and level the playing field in everything I do”; also, “protecting against the downside of privileged people coming in and owning all the wealth and communities of color owning all the despair”

  • Reciprocal dismantling of privilege - as a culture we need to develop that IQ around how we level playing fields

  • Privilege is in many ways the barrier to empathy, even though it’s something many of us enjoy

  • MLK: saw his job as to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable

  • Success is the greatest illusion there is. Can any entertainer or athlete say that their success is their own?

  • Secret weapon to try after listening to this episode!

Resources Mentioned

Check out other episodes of the Pivot Podcast here. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen, and if you enjoy the show I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! Sign-up for my weekly(ish) #PivotList newsletter to receive curated round-ups of what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and new tools I’m geeking out on.

Want to support the show and become a founding member of the Pivot Podcast community? Join us on Patreon here.

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108: Penney & Jenny Show Returns! On Spirituality and Small Business

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108: Penney & Jenny Show Returns! On Spirituality and Small Business

I'm delighted to bring you the seventh (!) episode in a side series of this podcast we affectionately call the Penney & Jenny show :) It's a series of conversations with one of my dear friends and mentors (friendtors), Penney Peirce. We had so much fun during our first interview together that we added a second . . . which became a third . . . and so on, until it was a regular feature on the Pivot Podcast! 

This week we're riffing on the intersection of spirituality and small business—how we apply intuition, transparency, non-physical realms, and personal practices toward business-building, attracting clients, and earning a living in a way that feels easeful and joyful. You can check out all of our interviews here (and check for future episodes)—and for easier listening, tune in on our SoundCloud playlist. 

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104: (A Course in) Miracles at Work—On Spiritual Intelligence with Emily Bennington

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104: (A Course in) Miracles at Work—On Spiritual Intelligence with Emily Bennington

Emily Bennington and I have been on parallel pivot paths since we first connected online in 2011. So imagine my surprise when I was searching on Google images for a visual depiction of the word "Grace." I downloaded my favorite and lo and behold, it was pointing to Emily's site with a landing page informing readers about her new direction: teaching others to live and lead with grace, based upon her interpretations of the Course in Miracles as it applies to work and careers.  

In this episode we talk about what the Course is, how we can apply spiritual intelligence to our day-to-day interactions, how to create miracles through powerful mental shifts, and Emily's pivot from entrepreneur giving mainstream career advice to an exciting new full-time role as Executive Director for the Circle of Atonement.

Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at PivotMethod.com/podcast/miracles-at-work.

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102: How to Pivot Your Business When You Feel Trapped by Its Success — with Jason Van Orden

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102: How to Pivot Your Business When You Feel Trapped by Its Success — with Jason Van Orden

Is pivoting just a way of rebranding failure as NYT writer Jacob Silverman would have us believe? I say no way José. In fact, pivots are often a product of our success. As I shared in the #PivotList newsletter I wrote in response to Silverman's somewhat snarky article, Silicon Valley start-ups do tend to talk about pivoting in response to their initial strategy failing. Or in the case of Ross from Friends, when a couch just won't fit around a tight corner :) 

But I believe that pivoting is the new crucial skill we must all foster, a far cry from being just another silly PR performance. If you've hit a pivot point or plateau, it means you have outgrown your current career or business and are ready for something new. We should celebrate that, and all the searching and small experiments that follow!

That's why I'm thrilled to bring you this week's Pivot Podcast conversation with my friend Jason Van Orden, a fascinating guy who was early to the podcasting and internet marketing scene, but who began to feel trapped by that very success, unsure about how to redefine himself from a unique perch atop of his industry. He is chock full of wisdom and systems to help you navigate out from under success that you've outgrown, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! 

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96: The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business with Elaine Pofeldt

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96: The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business with Elaine Pofeldt

I have always been curious about solopreneurs who choose to stay small, like me. Seven years into running my own business, I still deliberately choose not to scale in a way that requires hiring any full-time employees or by too much added infrastructure, to support two of my biggest business values of freedom and agility.

But that doesn't mean that I exclude higher earnings as a necessary byproduct. My business mantras: optimize for revenue and joy, look for ways to earn twice as much in half the time (with ease and with even greater impact), and let it be easy, let it be fun.

So I was delighted to stumble upon Elaine Pofeldt, who is similarly obsessed with researching non-employer businesses with 7-figure earnings. In this week's conversation we dive into what she discovered while writing The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Related note: I've captured my best strategies for nearly quadrupling my income while working half the time (with no full-time employees) in my Delegation Ninja course.

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93: Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference with Kathleen Kelly Janus

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93: Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference with Kathleen Kelly Janus

You all know how I love serendipity—well, this week's guest, Stanford professor and philanthropist Kathleen Kelly Janus, and I met in one of my favorite ways! Sitting next to each other on an airplane. Kathleen was traveling to New York City to meet with publishers to try to get a book deal, Pivot was about to come out, and I had known her agent Lisa DiMona for many years (she represented Seth Godin at the time I met him). 

I'm thrilled to share that in the two years since we met, Kathleen's book, Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference, has launched! In this episode we dive into what makes fundraising for non-profits different from for-profit businesses, why so many hit revenue plateaus, why success is based far more on measurable inputs and small experiments than having a "genius" founder, and how to get involved with causes you care about if you find the vast array of volunteering and donating opportunities a bit intimidating. 

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88: Artist Seth Price on Finding Freedom in Bad Ideas, Balancing Commerce and Creation in Business

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88: Artist Seth Price on Finding Freedom in Bad Ideas, Balancing Commerce and Creation in Business
“Ultimate freedom would mean having just enough money not to have to think about money, and not to have to work all the time.”
—Artist Seth Price, F*ck Seth Price

*Language warning for this week's episode if you have kiddos around! Per the book title above :)*

I am so excited about this week's guest that I was at peak awkwardness during the interview, so please forgive a few choppy edits here and there! I normally don't edit "in line" for the Pivot pod to keep things as natural (and perfectly imperfect!) as possible, but in this case I cleaned up the recording for clarity and concision so that you could get the very best of Seth Price's brilliant mind and philosophy as a renowned multi-disciplinary visual artist. 

Seth's novel, F*ck Seth Price, is one of my most gifted and recommended for fellow creatives. His commentary on the relationship between art, freedom and commerce is sharp, truthful and deeply thought-provoking. As my dad wrote in his Amazon review, "This is the finest, funniest, most incisive book dealing with art and culture that I have read in the past forty years . . . a sort of 'Book of Common Prayer' for all artists entering New York City. Don’t get off the bus, plane, train without it." 

With that, I turn the tables over to our interview for you to get a unique peek into Seth Price's approach to experimenting, persona-dropping, art-making, freedom pursuing, and building on "bad" ideas!

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86: Grab Bag! Upcoming NYC Workshop, BookRx on Interviewing Tips, and the Upside of Awkwardness

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86: Grab Bag! Upcoming NYC Workshop, BookRx on Interviewing Tips, and the Upside of Awkwardness

If you're based in NYC or know someone who is, come to my workshop for reluctant writers on Saturday, February 24! Register at http://caveat.nyc/events and use promo code WRITENOW for $5 off. 

Introducing BookRx! Submit Your Question for the Pivot Podcast

I read anywhere from 5-10 books a month, and probably to a fault, I'm the friend that is always throwing out book recs or "cures" for issues that friends are experiencing. In this week's Grab Bag episode I pilot a brand new feature that I've had in mind for a while, called BookRx. It's a listener-submission format where I suggest non-fiction book "prescriptions" for what ails you or what you're most curious about—and riff on the benefits of awkwardness.

Have a question in need of a BookRx? Email me (Jenny@PivotMethod.com) with a short question or send me a voice memo from your phone—just let me know if you prefer to be anonymous or not :)

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82: Hunch: How to Translate Intuition into Business Ideas with Bernadette Jiwa

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82: Hunch: How to Translate Intuition into Business Ideas with Bernadette Jiwa

"Anxiety over being more innovative leads entrepreneurs to create solutions instead of problems. But what if you could use your intuition to identify an existing problem that’s begging for a solution?”

—Bernadette Jiwa, Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into The Next Big Thing

When Bernadette Jiwa’s little book that packs a big punch, Hunch, arrived in the mail, I immediately thought, “I wish I wrote that book!” But I’m thrilled that she did, because Bernadette’s beautiful heart shines through every page as she describes tools and stories to help you transform everyday insights into big ideas that make an impact.

In this episode you’ll learn how to tap into your innate curiosity to uncover better business ideas, why distraction and external inputs are the enemies of insight, and a deeper look at the formula for uncovering your best hunches: a combination of insight (patterns and practices) and foresight (potential and predictions). 

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81: Create, Serve, Receive, Be Prosperous: Soulful Business with Jeffrey Shaw

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81: Create, Serve, Receive, Be Prosperous: Soulful Business with Jeffrey Shaw

I had such a blast talking with Jeffrey Shaw for this week’s episode. He has been running his own photography and coaching business for over 33 years, including a podcast called Creative Warriors to help heart-centered entrepreneurs create, serve and be prosperous. We talk about how Jeffrey went from overlooked to overbooked, how to find, connect and speak to your ideal customers, and the energetics of business—how to tune-in to your intuition to guide strategy and next steps. 

In Jeffrey’s own words, we are entering “The new renaissance—a time when artists, coaches, designers, authors, speakers and other purpose-driven entrepreneurs will run profitable businesses, be highly respected for their talents and free to express their work across a variety of mediums.” I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did :) 

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79: Set Your 2018 Pivot Strategy with Jenny Blake

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79: Set Your 2018 Pivot Strategy with Jenny Blake

To help you kick-off the new year in style and soul-aligned next steps, I’m back with my annual Set Your Pivot Strategy episode—new and improved with the best resources and reflection questions I’ve got. 

I encourage you to get out a pen and paper for this one—yes, analog-style—and pause frequently to journal for as long as you’d like on each prompt. Go big! Go for quantity, not quality, and don’t censor yourself or worry yet about whether or not what you’re envisioning is possible—the time for that will come later. 

When you think you’re done writing, keep going! That just means you’ve gotten your most obvious ideas down. Pushing through the pauses is where you create breakthroughs, and every time you sit with a question you’ve never heard before, you are creating new neural pathways in the brain. 

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77: 21+ Travel Tips, Tools and Apps — with Jenny Blake

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77: 21+ Travel Tips, Tools and Apps — with Jenny Blake

As you board planes, trains and automobiles to head home (or adventuring) over the holidays, I'm sharing 21+ of my best travel tips, apps and tools—everything from preparing to booking to packing, to travel day and routines on the road. 

Keynote speaking is one of my favorite ways to earn a living, and this year I took about 30 trips, or one every other week. In today’s episode I share the strategies, routines, apps, and products that keep me relatively healthy, happy and sane while traveling, and that help me recharge when my batteries are running low but I’m away from home.

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76: On Plan Z, Creative Finish Lines and the Graceful No—with Alexandra Franzen

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76: On Plan Z, Creative Finish Lines and the Graceful No—with Alexandra Franzen

"Please remember that every person you love and admire—every author, every artist, every business owner, every luminary who seems to 'have it all together'—just remember that their story is filled with hundreds of awkward firsts, too."
—Alexandra Franzen

It was love at first read when I encountered Alexandra Franzen online, and it has been ever since. She's a delightful, talented, prolific writer and thinker who seems to always write just what I need to hear. I love how Alex has pivoted her business over the years, and she's someone I love looking toward for inspiration and insight.

In this episode we talk about opening a brunch restaurant with her boyfriend, why she finds it helpful to dive into details on her Plan Z, how she makes time for art (so she doesn't feel "squished and sad"), her best tips for getting clients over their creative finish lines, why she quit twitter, how she says a graceful no, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! 

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75: Become a Trend Curator + Non-Obvious Trends for 2018 with Rohit Bhargava

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75: Become a Trend Curator + Non-Obvious Trends for 2018 with Rohit Bhargava

"The secret to predicting the future is to get better at understanding the present."
—Rohit Bhargava, Non-Obvious 2018 Edition: How to Predict Trends and Win the Future

I've always been fascinated by futurists and trend spotters (turns out the latter is a myth). How do they see trends coming before the rest of us? What are they doing to sift through the noise to extrapolate a clear signal of where things are heading? Turns out, true to the Pivot Method, that the key to predicting the future lies right under our feet: we just need to get better at understanding how to spot ideas, capture them effectively, and sift through them.

Enter this week's guest, trend curator (What's that, you ask? You'll find out!) Rohit Bhargava. I'm super excited to help us all get a jump on the new year with a conversation about how we can all become better trend curators and apply Rohit's Haystack Method: gather idea hay first, then sit down to find the needles or key themes. We also had fun diving into 7 of his 15 trends for 2018 more closely; our combined list includes: lightspeed learning, approachable luxury, human mode, touchworthy, truthing, enlightened consumption, and manufactured outrage.

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70: Build a Referral Engine with John Jantsch

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70: Build a Referral Engine with John Jantsch

"It's not enough to have a good solution. Buzzed-about businesses have a good solution draped in a total experience that excites, delights and surprises the customer." —John Jantsch

There a few classic books—and business concepts—that I declare must-reads for every solopreneur and side-hustler I work with, and The Referral Engine is one of them. Especially if you're someone who bristles at so much of the online marketing tactics out there like I do, referrals are one of the best ways to get new clients. There is already a foundation of trust established with the incoming client, and it means that you exceeded expectations enough for the referring client to authentically spread the word about your services. In this week's show, business master-thinker John Jantsch and I dive into exactly how to create delightful experiences and systems that will make referrals a key part of your business, not just a happy accident.  

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66: Create Multiple Streams of Income with Dorie Clark

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66: Create Multiple Streams of Income with Dorie Clark

Self-employed for eleven years, Dorie interviewed over 50 entrepreneurs, several who earn multiple six figures each month, to understand what specific tactics it takes to sustain a successful business. In her new book and on this episode, Dorie shares this gold mine of sage advice with us. We talk about how to build the courage and savvy to monetize your expertise and create multiple streams of income so that no matter what happens—the market shifts or you lose your biggest client—you can and will bounce back, and create your ideal lifestyle business in the process.  

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63: Artist as CEO — with Jenny Blake, Michel Karsouny & Kerri Lowe

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63: Artist as CEO — with Jenny Blake, Michel Karsouny & Kerri Lowe

This is a special episode on Artist as CEO, featuring my guy, Michel Karsouny. My longtime blog friend Kerri Lowe, who helps produce a narrative podcast called ArtistCEO, came over to our studio apartment to facilitate a free-flowing conversation about all things art and business. Michel and I met over a year ago walking in opposite directions down a New York City sidewalk — how's that for the magic of serendipity?! Find out how we navigate the highs and lows of creative living, moving beyond burnout, and balancing the business side of art-making with opening up space for the unknown.