[0:05] There is bad career advice out there, and I bet you've heard some. I know I heard some in the first 25 years of my career when I worked in the corporate world. That changed in a 20-minute conversation that opened up a completely new perspective for me, a new paradigm, a new way of thinking about career and what is success, which was good advice, finally. I want to share that good advice with you today, But first, I want to unpack some of the mistakes people make in their career and some of the bad advice that you get that leads to those mistakes. And then we're going to get to this new way of thinking about your career, some good advice to help you plot a positive career. My name is Rusty Gaillard, and this is Do Something Different, a leadership podcast. And leadership is 100% applicable in this situation because it starts with you. If you can't lead yourself, there's no way you can lead someone else. You have to be effective in your own career first.

[1:05] I ended my corporate career, the 25 years of corporate world that I worked in, with 14 years at Apple. And I started at Apple in operations and I moved to finance where I was the worldwide director of finance, leading the global sales forecast for Apple. What are we going to sell? Where are we going to sell? Every product all around the world. It was a huge job, super interesting, and I went on to do some other things in finance as well. But I didn't start my career in operations or in finance. I graduated from college. I went to Princeton. I graduated with a mechanical and aerospace engineering degree. All of my classmates were going into consulting and banking. Well, most of them anyway. And I got some good advice from my dad at that point. He said, you can always go into consulting and banking. But if you are at all interested in working as an engineer, you should start there. Because if you go to consulting and banking, you'll never go back. And it turns out he was right. So I started my career as an engineer. I took a job at General Electric in their jet engine business, which was a super interesting business. It was also very big, which meant what you do as an engineer is very small. And there were people working on the same problem for two decades. And I said, that is just not me. So I started my career there, but I very quickly moved away because I learned that it's not what I like to do in practice, even though I loved studying engineering.

[2:30] And this leads to one of the common mistakes that people make. They assume that they should know what it is that they want to do when they're starting their career. And that is a mistake because how could you possibly know you've never worked when you're starting your career? You need to experiment a little bit. You need some variety. You need to try something. And if you don't like it, you need to move and go do something else.

[2:54] But i think that people enter the workspace with this mindset that they have to know what they're going to do for their whole career i had a conversation with someone who was about to graduate from college with a civil engineering degree and he had done an internship at google in the data centers doing civil engineering for the data centers which is cooling and heating and you know plumbing and all the kind of stuff that you would do as a civil engineer, and everyone around him all the other civil engineers said this is the best work I've done in my career. And this guy hated it. And he called me and he said, what am I supposed to do? I'm about to graduate with this degree. And the pinnacle of the work for people in that degree is something I don't want to do.

[3:35] And this highlights this point that somehow people think they need to have plotted out their whole life when they're graduating from college because they assume that their career is linear. And that is another big mistake that people make. They assume that they will have a linear career. And it is just not the case. So don't assume you have to know what you're going to do your whole life. It's going to take some experimentation. And don't assume that you will have a linear career. That is just not the way it works.

[4:07] Some of the other mistakes that people make as they're thinking about their career is to assume that they have to delay gratification. I can't tell you how many people that I talk to who aren't very happy in their work, but they stay in their work because they're well paid, they're making good money, and it's the reasonable and responsible thing to do. It's the application of delayed gratification at the grand scheme of their life. We are taught as students about delayed gratification, which is don't go out and have fun with your friends. Stay home and study because that's going to lead to a good grade and good grades are going to lead to a good college. Good college is going to lead to a good job, big income, successful career, and so on. That is all about delayed gratification. And delayed gratification is effective. Some of you may know about the marshmallow study, which was done at a preschool at Stanford, I don't know, probably 40 or 50 years ago. But they placed a marshmallow in front of these young children, five years old, and they said, if you can wait two minutes and without eating the marshmallow, I'll give you a second marshmallow. You'll get two. Otherwise, you can eat the marshmallow now. Basically, one marshmallow now or wait two minutes and then you get two marshmallows.

[5:24] Well, they went on to study these kids years and years later, decades later. and the kids who were more successful in their academic career and even in their professional career were the ones who were able to wait, who were the ones who could employ delayed gratification.

[5:40] That makes sense at the micro scale when you're talking about two minutes, but it does not make sense when you're talking about the grand scheme of your life. To say, I'm going to enjoy my life once I have reached financial independence, once I am rich or retired or whatever it is the goal post is for you. Don't delay everything that you want in life until that point. Because first of all, you may not make it. I mean, I'm getting ready to go to a high school reunion and I have classmates who have passed away, some of whom years ago during college. Not everybody makes it to later years in life. And second of all, do you really want your life to be two-thirds nose to the grindstone followed by one-third of enjoyment when you'd have less energy and less passion in the last third of your life? That doesn't really make sense. So don't fall into this mistake of delayed need gratification. And the corollary to that is that many people are risk averse. And that's another common mistake they make in their career.

[6:47] And I lived this to some extent, because I remember when I had been 14 years at Apple, and I was looking for my next job, I literally printed out my resume, got my resume in my hand, and I'm looking at my resume and saying, who would hire me? What am I qualified to do? How can I leverage this experience into something else?

[7:07] And it was this perspective of saying i need to continue doing what i'm doing it's a linear progression i've got to take advantage of what i've done and that's going to position me for my next thing and to some extent that's risk averse it was very tempting to stay at apple because i was well paid apple's a great company i liked the people there i liked my work there were a lot of good reasons to stay there and yet i felt like there was something else for me.

[7:34] Now let's transition so those are some of the mistakes that people made but let's transition now to some of the bad advice that you get because one of the things that i remember hearing in my career all the time was do what you're passionate about and frankly i hated that advice and i think it's terrible advice this is why most people either a don't know what they're passionate about or B, have multiple things that they might be passionate about. But either way, they're not sure. So when I heard that result, that advice, the result was I felt bad about myself. I felt bad about myself because I didn't know what I was passionate about and I didn't know how to figure that out. So not only was I not doing what I was passionate about, but I didn't even know what I was passionate about. So how could I possibly do that? It just felt like bad advice and I felt like a failure whenever I heard it.

[8:28] So if you've ever heard the advice, do what you're passionate about or love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. I mean, those things sound great, don't they? Like we all would love that. But the reality is a tiny fraction of the population knows what they're passionate about and follows that into their career. Right. We've all heard the story of the person who, when they're eight years old, says, I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up. And they're a doctor and they love their work. But that is a tiny fraction of the population. So many more smart, well-educated, ambitious, curious people have many different things that they could do that they might develop a passion for if they do it. But trying to sit there and meditate and clear your mind and figure out what am I passionate about so you can go build a career about it? Forget it. It's terrible advice. Don't listen to that.

[9:21] The other piece of advice that I would get all the time is to develop a career plan. What is your five-year plan or what is your 10-year plan for your career? And here's why that's bad advice. Because when someone asks you to develop a plan, it's going to kick your rational mind into gear and you're going to start thinking. And the logical way that your rational mind works is to build a progression, a linear progression. And it's all about what's possible. Where might I be in five years? And how could I get there? What are the steps that I can take in order to get there? That's a very linear and it's a very rational kind of process that's going to be kicked into gear whenever somebody asks you to come up with a five or a 10 year plan for your career. That is a very different question from what do you want?

[10:10] The five or 10 year plan tends to steer you towards what do you think is possible

[10:15] and what is a logical progression to get there rather than where do you want to go? And I think that question is a good pivot point transitioning us into this new way of thinking about your career because so few people even consider the question, what do I want? What would I enjoy in my career? What do I like to spend my time doing? How would I want to have the right balance of work and personal time and family time? I'm, what kind of people would I want to work with? Would I want to work with a large company, with a smaller company? What kind of scope of work? How much independence do I want? Do I really want to be an entrepreneur who's responsible for every aspect of the business, or do I like working in a big company? All of these questions are completely relevant, but so few people ask, what do I want? And the problem is, you go back to this linear, kind of risk-averse thinking about career, which is, I'm doing fine. I'm not going to rock the boat. I don't want to try to figure out what I want. Like, this is good enough.

[11:17] I encourage you not to settle. And this is part of the paradigm shift because think about how precious life is. At some point, you, you know, if we're all so lucky, you'll be 90 years old and you'll be sitting somewhere reflecting on your life. And you will have spent, I don't know, from age 20 to let's say 60, 40 years of your life working on a career, working on something. And the question is, when you're 90 and you look at those 40 years, you'll say, was that time well spent? You all know that the studies of people who are at the end of their life and look back and they say, what do they regret? It's not the things that they did. People rarely regret the things they did. They regret the things they didn't do. And what that means is they regret not betting on themselves, taking a risk, investing in themselves, following their heart, doing introspection to say, what matters to me? What do I want? What do I care about? And making their life reflect that more and more.

[12:19] This is the paradigm shift that opened up for me in that 20-minute conversation that I described at the start of the podcast. I had been looking for my next job. I had been looking at my resume. What am I qualified to do? How can I take another step? But every possible direction I saw felt like another version of what I was already doing at Apple, and Apple was better than any of those other possibilities, so it wasn't worth leaving. But I didn't even see a whole range of possibilities that were out there because I was focused on the linear progression, the next logical step based on what I had been doing. I never asked the question, what do I want?

[12:59] In that 20-minute conversation, that person helped me ask the question, what do you want? And let go of all of the constraints that you put around that question. So don't think about what have you done before? What are you qualified to do? What would someone hire you to do? What would your parents think? What would your spouse think? All of the things that get in our way. Is this reasonable and practical? Is it irresponsible to jeopardize the financial stability of my family? I'm not saying those aren't real considerations. Of course they are.

[13:30] But if you layer on all of the constraints up front, you never even get the ideas. You've got to let go of those constraints so you can get the idea of what do you want. That has to be the first question. And it doesn't have to be, what are you passionate about? There's no one and only answer to that question. What do I want? There may be three or four or five things that are interesting to you. That's totally fine.

[13:56] So start with a question of what do I want? Because that is the most important question. And follow that. Follow your interest. So the first thing, ask yourself, what do I want? Absent all of the constraints that normally get in the way. The second thing is go as far as you can towards that inside your current job. I can't tell you how many people have come to me and said, well, what I really need to do is quit because my boss isn't good or the company's not right. The culture isn't appropriate. Whatever the reason is, their first answer to the problem is to leave. But that should not be your first answer to the problem. Your first answer to the problem should be to grow. You grow, not to change company, grow inside of your current environment. And once you have grown and it's still not the right place for you, then you can consider going. How do you put this into practice? Let's just say, for example, you are the kind of person who wants something different in your role. You want more autonomy. And I'll just, I'll give you a specific example rather than do this hypothetical. One of my early clients wanted to be an entrepreneur, but he worked inside a massive tech company. This is someone I used to work with at Apple, had gone to another big tech company and wanted to be an entrepreneur. He said, I always had this dream of being an entrepreneur. I said, okay, cool. Let's see how you can grow towards that.

[15:22] What we did is we carved out some time so that he could invest in some entrepreneurial activities. And he actually had some friends and they got together, they brainstormed, they figure out what are some ideas and opportunities we could pursue. And he actually got involved in starting one of those things. Now, not operationally, because he still had his corporate job, but he spent a little bit of his time working on entrepreneurial ideas.

[15:45] As he went through this process, he learned some things. So this is back to the mistake that people made, which is you have to, they assume that they know what it is that they want. Well, he learned as he went through this process that he loves being part of the idea generation and the advising and the kind of early stages of an entrepreneurial venture, but not the hands-on day-to-day execution of that venture. That's not what he was interested in. so as he started the process as we started the process together he said i'm thinking about leaving my corporate job to go be an entrepreneur as he implemented that he grew inside of his job he did not change his job but he grew inside of it by carving out some time to focus on these new things that were important to him he learned he did not actually want to be a full-time entrepreneur He wanted to be involved in entrepreneurial things, and he could do that while still staying in his corporate job. And that was not a sacrifice for him. That was not a tradeoff. It was actually what he learned he wanted. So you have to grow as much as you can inside of your current job. And when you have grown as much as you can inside your current job, if it's no longer the right environment, great, make the change. But go as far as you can without changing your environment. because that is how you learn.

[17:08] Your environment is never the problem. The problem always starts with you. And once you have grown as a person, once you have grown as a leader, then you address the environment. But you've got to go as far as you can yourself inside the environment.

[17:25] Just a brief side note, that applies just as well to a difficult boss. You may have a difficult boss, but if you aren't growing as a person and saying, how do I deal with a difficult person? What different tactics have I tried? What strategies have I tried? If you're not learning how to navigate conflict, how to be more assertive, how to hold on to your values and the presence of pushback from others, if you aren't growing in that way and you're just running away from the situation, you are certainly going to confront that same challenge elsewhere in life, perhaps in your next job. I've talked to people who say every boss I've had after 20 years of my career has been A, B, and C, bad in that way, had the same common negative characteristics. And I'm looking at them saying, okay, you've had, let's just say 10 different bosses over the course of your career, and they're all bad in the same way. That doesn't sound like a problem with the bosses. That sounds a problem with you because you carry your problems with you if you don't learn to address them. That's why you have to grow inside your current role as much as you possibly can.

[18:31] What this means is being willing to be bold. And then this is the third piece of advice I want to share. So the first was ask yourself, what do you want? Second, grow inside your current role. Third, bet on yourself. Be willing to bet on yourself. Take a risk. Be willing to say, I'm going to try something different. So when I was contemplating leaving Apple, and I was terrified by this decision, by the way, because at this point, I had invested 25 years in the corporate world, and I saw myself as a corporate person. I actually made that decision deliberately, consciously. When I was leaving business school, I went to Stanford, and tons of my classmates were doing entrepreneurial things. And I dabbled in that a little bit, and I just felt so uncomfortable with it. And I went back to a big company and I said, oh, I like the big company because I felt comfortable there. And I made the deliberate decision consciously. I said to myself, I'm a corporate person. I do well in the corporate world. It's a comfortable environment for me. That's where I'm going to build my career.

[19:37] Then after 14 years at Apple, I'm contemplating leaving to start my own business as an executive coach. And it freaked me out. I'm telling you, I was not comfortable with that decision because I saw myself as a corporate person. I had consciously told myself I'm a corporate person and I built my whole career there. I've got a good job. I'm well paid. It's stable. There were way more reasons to stay at Apple than there were to leave. And most people, if I talked to them, would have said, stay there. It's the right thing to do. It's safe. It's stable. It's a good job. It's a good company. You're doing well there. Stay at Apple. I made the decision to leave. But why is that? Once again, I would look ahead and look, pretend that I was that 90-year-old, looking back and reflecting on my life. I call this the rearview mirror test because somehow we always can see things more clearly once they've happened. So just jump ahead in your imagination to that age of 90 and say, as a 90-year-old, sitting there comfortable, reflecting on your life, ask yourself, what is the right decision? At this point, I was in my mid-40s and I'm looking back as a 90-year-old saying, bet on yourself, go for it. Whether it works, where it doesn't work, that is the adventure of life. That is the spice of life, is going for things that you want. So bet on yourself and do it.

[21:03] That is the third piece of advice. And sometimes you'll have to use that rear view mirror test. Jump ahead to that 90 year old version of you. Look back at this decision and say, what is the right thing?

[21:15] This paradigm that I'm talking about, which is anchored in these principles of asking yourself what do you want, growing as much as you can in your current role, and betting on yourself. This paradigm is rooted in the fact that you are capable of more than you're doing today. And I know that's true regardless of what you're doing today. You know, scientists say we use something like 10% of our mental capacity. We know. Just imagine if you Google from 10 to 12, that's a 20% improvement. We know each one of you is capable of far more than you're doing today. And we tend to blame our circumstances, our situation. Don't do that. You take responsibility. Grow as much as you can in that situation. And then ask, what do I want? That should be defining the direction of your growth. What do I want? Grow in that direction and then be willing to bet on yourself in the steps you're taking inside that role and when it's time to leave that role and go on to the next thing.

[22:12] I'll share with you when i was contemplating leaving apple to become an executive coach i didn't get the idea and quit that day of course not i got the idea and i went and i got some training and certification i started my business i held some workshops i enrolled my first clients and once i did those things and i said now i'm ready to leave and devote all of my time and attention to this i grew inside of my role it's just like the client that i shared earlier that worked at the big tech company but wanted to be an entrepreneur. He grew inside of his role. And for him, the right answer was, don't leave the corporate world. Stay there. Great.

[22:48] Take these steps. You matter. Your career matters. You've got to lead yourself first. Find out what matters to you. What do you want? What do you want your career to look like? What is a successful career? Independent of what you've studied and what other people think you should do and what is safe and secure and what is reasonable and stop delaying gratification. If you just left all of that behind and said, what matters to me? And as instead of coming up with a five-year plan, just ask yourself if in five years from now, I could have the best career I could ever imagine, like well beyond what I thought I might be able to achieve in my lifetime. What might that be? What would look like? What are the characteristics of that? What are the things that excite you? There's not one single answer to that question, but find elements of it. Find things that pull you in that direction. They might be scary because I get it. I faced those fears myself, but be willing to take a step forward because you can do this. 100% you can do this. And that is the paradigm shift. It doesn't have to be hard work and grit and delayed gratification and suffering. And 25 years from now, you'll be able to retire and be financially independent and do the things you want to do. And then finally you can enjoy life. It doesn't have to work that way.

[24:07] You can have the kind of career where you're happy, where you're growing, where you're stretching, where you're betting on yourself, where you're doing things that you like and you want. You can have that kind of career. You can still be financially successful and

[24:19] you can enjoy it along the way. That is the paradigm shift. What if you could do that? And I know that you can. So do this. Stop and think and just ask yourself, what do I want? Take the steps to grow in that direction. Bet on yourself. Just like this guy who worked at the Big Ten company, he had to carve time out of his job to go work on being an entrepreneur. I had to carve time out of my job at Apple to go invest in training and certification and working on a business outside of work. Invest in yourself. Bet on yourself. use the rearview mirror test if you need to help encourage you to make that decision to bet on yourself because when you're 90 you're going to look back and say man am i glad i took the risk, take some of these things put them in the practice apply them because you have to do something different if you expect a different result.