If You’re Thinking About Making A Big Life Change, Award-Winning Author & Podcaster Jenny Blake Has THE Best Advice I’ve Ever Heard

Jenny Blake, acclaimed author of award-winning books, "Pivot" (2016) and "Free Time" (2022), hosts popular podcasts with over a million downloads each. Formerly a Google career expert, where she taught people how to "career" at Google; now she’s teaching EVERYONE.  Learn about the transformative power of being a "daymaker", one of my favorite lessons she shares. My other favorite lesson is how to set yourself up for success when you pivot (it’s soooooo good).

Sh*t I Wish I Knew In My Twenties (SIWIKIMT) is a podcast dedicated to helping 20-somethings thrive in their twenties, not just survive.

Host Debra Alfarone knows how tough being in your twenties can be. As a high-school dropout turned-network-TV-correspondent, she learned most of life’s lessons the hard way. She overcame the odds and now covers the White House for CBS News nationally. She’s also a confidence coach for young women in the TV news industry.

Connect with Jenny on IG at @jennyblakeny and get her Free Time toolkit here: tsfreetime.com/toolkit

Listen to her two podcasts here: pod.link/pivotmethod and pod.link/freetime

Transcript:

Debra Alfarone:

Thanks for listening to BEEP I wish I knew in my 20s, the podcast hosted by a former high school dropout turned network TV correspondent who had no mentors, no big sister, no nothing. So I kinda (kinda is the operative word here) got my life together. Now I want to pour into you to help you not just survive but thrive in your 20s. And that, my friends, brings us to today's guest, Jenny Blake, a podcaster and the author of three, yes, three award-winning books, including pivot and free time, each with a podcast, with a million downloads. No, I am not at all intimidated by that. And really the reason why I had to reach out to Jenny is because of your first book even. And it was the best-selling book on being a 20-something, how a 20-something can create their life and all of your advice is actionable. So I'm gonna shut up now and say hey to Jenny.

Jenny Blake:  

Hi, Debra. Thank you for having me. I'm so honored to be here. Yes, the book you mentioned Life After College. The word adulting did not exist at that time. But I struggled so much with knowing what to do, and how to get my life together that that's where that first book and blog came from. So thanks for having me.

Debra Alfarone:  

I actually bet this advice can help us in our 30s or 40s or 50s and beyond. Because adulting, girl, I am often walking around in this neighborhood with mismatched clothing. I'm sure people are like, “Wow, you really don't have your life together, now, do you, Debra?” Bring us through maybe a couple of gems from that book for our listeners. What do we need to know?

Jenny Blake:  

And this book came out in 2011. The subtitle is a little cringy. It makes me cringe now, but there was a reason to it. There was a logic at the time. So the full title is Life After College, The Complete Guide to Getting What you Want. Now, I cringe because it sounds - really, that whole rap about millennials being entitled, spoiled, perhaps, got too many trophies. “Oh, we just want what we want. Give it to me.” Now, that was not really a point. The point was thinking deeply, even when you're young, even when you're in your 20s, even when you feel like a hot mess as I did so many times during that decade. Thinking through what's important, and really visualizing what success looks like, was incredibly powerful for me. And it wasn't until I had a coach through a leadership program that I went to through Google who said to me, what are your values? What is important to you? What's your life purpose? Nobody had asked me that. And there weren't a million podcasts that I could subscribe to like yours, where I felt like I had a friend in my ear, even if that friend was one-directional. And so the whole notion of the complete guide to getting what you want is really the complete guide to reflecting on every area of your life and being really intentional about what success looks like. 

Because what is even more true now than was in 2011 is, with social media, compare and despair is at an all-time high. I can't even be on the apps, I've actually been really intentional about staying off of them. Because I noticed that every time I would put the phone down, I felt worse. And I could either go to therapy for 10 years to figure out my insecurity issues. Or I could just not make myself suffer every day by looking an infinite scrolling through these through the scroll. So I think it's even more important now to really understand. When are you happiest? What is fulfilling to you? What's exciting to you, what resonates with your soul path, your soul journey that isn't just about acquiring stuff, or looking evermore beautiful into infinity? Like just for me, personally, I can't really keep up with that.

Debra Alfarone:

It is a curse and a blessing, social media, because I've met so many wonderful people through social media, but I believe it makes me a little bit like “Oh, I wish I had that life. I wish I went on that vacation. Man, I wish I had that outfit. I wish I could afford that.” But also you know what we do is we then go “oh, well, I should be here by this point in my life. I should have this” and you know what? Every one of us has something. But there's always a place that we don't have enough. So how do you lead people to go through kind of figuring out what they want? What questions should they ask themselves? 

Jenny Blake:  

I think it's helpful to partly reverse engineer as well. When have you been happiest? What are some of your peak experiences, a lot of coaches will ask that. What was a memory that stands out in your mind where you felt so delighted or joyful or fully present or proudest, looking back on your life? When were you proudest, what qualities were present in that experience? 

And sometimes, if you feel like you're in the midst, your mid pivot, you're in a fog, you can't see what's ahead of you. My friend, Penny and I call it sometimes a “goo state,” where you're in so much transition that there's no clarity at all, you don't even feel like you are connected to a vision. And it's just a matter of time, you just actually are throwing everything up into the air and saying, everything's up for grabs. 

And I do think the last few years had all of us pause and reconsider, and recalibrate and reflect and reimagine what's possible for ourselves and our lives and how to be intentional, what do we want to create? So that's one thing I would say is reverse engineering, even looking at when you were a kid, what did you enjoy doing? It's interesting to see those through lines. And in fact, I'm very inspired by you, Debra, because one of the games I would play was set up a little video camera, and pretend to be a news anchor. So I would write a little script about the news. And then I would recite the news. And this was just one of the games I played as a kid. But I never saw that through as a full on career. 

Debra Alfarone:

And that's another thing for all y'all out there. It's not always a straight line. I wanted to do that too. But I didn't know that I could do it. And I didn't know anybody who did do it. I thought that was for “other people,” other people who are smarter or in the right place or knew the right people. 

And I think one valuable lesson I learned is if you don't know the right people, get to know the right people, you have every right to ask people for an informational interview. Now it's an informational zoom. I mean, back then we didn't have that, right. You know, I would call up people in New York. And I was from New York, but I would call up people and say, Can I maybe meet with you, and have coffee with you? And shockingly, some did. And I'm sure other people were like, “who is this woman?”

But now you can meet with anybody and you know what, people like to help other people. So that's one tip that I have. Thinking back to your 20s. I know you worked at Google. And that had to be an incredible experience. Looking back, what advice would you give yourself?

 Jenny Blake:  

It's easy to get restless, even in these perfect on-paper jobs. I worked at a startup for two years prior to Google. And then I was at Google for five and a half. I am so glad that I pivoted internally when I was at Google, because there was a point, two and a half years in where I was hitting a ceiling, I was actually managing people and not very happy about it. I loved the coaching piece. But I really, it made me so nervous having to deal with personnel stuff, or giving tough feedback. I really think I'm honestly, kind of too sensitive for a role like that, as much as I want to say, “Oh, I could overcome it,” It just didn't quite fit my personality. I'd much rather be working more independently, more creatively. 

And I did have a coach give me advice that “have you really made the most of your time there?” And so thank goodness, I ran into a friend in the parking lot. She said, “How are you doing?” I told her, “not great, I'm thinking of leaving.” She said, “Well, we just opened up this team, this career development team. And there's one open role, maybe you should apply for it.” Because I had been doing side projects within Google and outside of Google related to coaching and careers and writing. I was able to apply and get that role and stay at the company two and a half more years and launch this program that I'm still so incredibly proud of today called Career Guru. That's a drop-in coaching program that they still have in place. 

And so one thing I would say is don't leave too soon. I talk in Pivot about, borrowing financial terms, unrealized gains and diminishing returns. Unrealized gains is you haven't stayed long enough. You haven't done at least one flagship product program, accomplishment, something that you can look back and say, during that window of time, here's this thing I did, and I'm so proud of it. And here are the results. And you and I, Debra, before you hit record, we were even talking about a journalist that we like, Faith Sallie, and you knew one piece she had done on vocal fry. So staying long enough to see something through to get some kind of results. 

And then on the flip side of that, diminishing returns, don't stay so long that you're completely stagnant and miserable, and that you're trying to make something work, all the while, nothing you're trying is working, there's no sense of traction or momentum flow, you're actively getting drained. Because what I found out only the hard way, especially in my 20s, was I just kept burning out. And whether it was from having a full-time job and a side hustle, that was my blog Life after College, what became the book, or just the fast pace of working within a big company like Google, I just kept hitting burnout. And I would just burn out crash, recover, burnout, crash, recover, and not really know how to get out of that cycle until I did end up leaving the company and kind of being able to set my own hours on my own. And so I would just say that, if you stay too long, and something isn't working, your body will start to react and reject the situation and try to speak louder and louder of like, hey, this isn't working, you gotta pay attention to me.

Debra Alfarone:   

I remember staying at my last local station, probably a little longer than I should have. But then again, you know, well, I can't really look back and say, well, this would have happened, or that would have happened. I mean, I was there for the time I was there, I had kind of plateaued, wasn't happy. And then you know, when you're not happy about work, and then you keep going to work? Well, guess what? That cycle of unhappy, unhappy, and now I'm just spreading unhappiness all over the place. And that's not my being. So I'm so with you on that don't stay longer than you need to because time is money. And even if you're in your 20s, and you think, “Oh, I've got all this time,” well you do, you have a lot of time, your time is worth it, your time is valuable.

Jenny Blake:   

Sometimes people feel a lot of pressure that if their job isn't perfect, or they're not getting promoted fast enough, they start freaking out, especially early in career. Especially in my 20s, I often felt kind of paranoid, are things moving fast enough? Interestingly, it was some of those side projects that I mentioned, that ended up giving me these incredible opportunities down the road, and they don't have to be your full-time job. So for example, when I started at Google, I wanted to create a book club amongst the training team. And I asked for budget, and I got approval that we could all buy the same business book, once a month, and sometimes even invite the author to meet with us. I had no plans of being like Google's chief book club officer or anything like that. But years later, when the authors at Google program was at risk of dissolving altogether, because it was completely volunteer based, the powers that be thought to themselves they go, who could we bring in to be an interim lead for this area of the business? Oh, Jenny loves books. And they just knew back from those book club days, that I love books, and maybe I could step in and help lead this team and turn the corner. And we did. And yet, it was never my full-time role. I was never on paper on what you would see on LinkedIn, I was still a Career Development Program Manager. But that was another kind of project-based purpose, or a part-time project, even within the role that was so fulfilling because as I was leading authors at Google, I was bringing in all of these interesting authors to come speak, they were delighted to get to come to Google and give a talk. And those relationships I still have, several of them are close friends to this day, 12 years later,

Debra Alfarone:   

You have these two books, Pivot and Free Time, and I really want to dig in, because a lot of my listeners are people who work in the TV news industry, but a lot of people don't. And also entrepreneurs, I am a little bit of both, right? So I understand about being burned out. I also know a little bit about pivoting. I had, at one point left the business, started my business, got back in the business, what are your best tips for when you're facing a career change? And you may have to pivot because I know lots of people right now are thinking, do I want to stay in this industry? Do I want to go into the next field?

Jenny Blake: 

One of the biggest misconceptions about pivoting is that you're going to know the answer upfront, then you think to yourself, I'm at a pivot point or plateau, and that somehow entirely in your mind, you're going to solve this pivot before you start taking next steps. It does not work that way. The best pivots, the most successful ones, do involve doubling down on something that's already working. So there is something in your world, in your universe that you're enjoying most right now. And I have seen that the most successful pivots involve honing in on that thing that's working best and trying to double down on it and do more of it. So if you love coaching, your pivot in progress might be that you're trying to carve out even more time to do coaching and even less time doing something else that as one book put it, I love the way this is phrased: Are you ordering off of yesterday's menu? So sometimes in our career, isn't that good?

Debra Alfarone: 

Oh, yesterday's menu, damn.

Jenny Blake: 

Yesterday's menu and so sometimes what was good is no longer what we need. And yet we're continuing on ordering off yesterday's menu and we're not even seeing the specials that are right in front of us today. Wow. So, so well put, sometimes it's hard to admit we're at a pivot point because we'll shut in, I'd be happy. Oh, I got you in maybe in your case, I have this job or this thing that I aspired to my whole life, shouldn't I be happy? Shouldn't this be enough? Shouldn't I be nothing but 100% fulfilled, 100% of the time. Hashtag blessed, you know, but actually, we feel a pull. And I do think it's often our souls calling us to grow and evolve in a new direction, or to express ourselves even more fully. So part of the pivot process is setting up small experiments to test that hypothesis. Okay, I think this is the direction I want to go next. But is it just a silly, you know, is it a smart risk? Or the stupidest thing I'll ever do? We can't always know in advance. But by setting up small experiments, you don't have to know the answer. You get to start testing the waters and then see which of those experiments takes on a momentum of its own.

Debra Alfarone:

We sometimes get attached to what the outcome is supposed to look like, I'm supposed to be this, I've worked my whole life to be this. But you, your dream can morph because guess what you've grown. You're not the same person you were a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. So it can change. And, it should change

Jenny Blake:

The environment around us changes as well. So for example, when I was going into university, I thought I was going to be a journalist. And I even wrote for The Daily Bruin, I was a news reporter for the first year. But I realize how stressful the lifestyle of that was, even a freshman in college, I saw that the older, the people who are farther ahead at UCLA on the newspaper staff were completely tired, burnt out, stressed out, were failing their classes, had really bad grades. And even my experience was so tumultuous, I'd get assignments at the last minute, and I'd have to drop my schoolwork. I just saw the writing on the wall that actually this career, I don't think I'd enjoy the lifestyle of it or the pay. 

And so even people who have been journalists, maybe they see oh, there's this new opportunity called substack. I've been looking into how this has become such a hit recently. But it's almost like substack, normalized, charging for a paid newsletter. It allowed, especially tenured journalists who already have a following, to charge for their writing in a different way and a different fee structure than a typical job they might have held in the past. And the substack platform is creating a kind of new watercooler, a new place where people are writing and talking about big ideas and ideally getting compensated for those in some way. So it's also paying attention as society changes and evolves, certain things fall off, or are no longer tenable, career-wise. And the more you are willing to experiment and try new things, like you said, Debra, we can never know what's going to work. But there are rewards for those who are willing to try.

Debra Alfarone: 

And I think we have to normalize paying people for their work. We can read a couple of articles free here and there. But I do think that you have to invest in people's success. So I'm all about that model and things do change. So I have a question for you. How can you become a daymaker?

Jenny Blake: 

I love that you're asking me this. Oh my goodness. So for listeners, now I'm gonna start flushing just remembering this story. This was not too long ago. Unfortunately, a tree in the backyard. I live in a brownstone in New York that the buildings face each other. And we have this backyard area. And this tree must have been unhealthy or partly dying because it needed to get chopped down. Yeah, and all day long, there was the hottest guy he eventually, it was 95 degrees and humid. So at the start of the day, it was just this crazy watching this guy like climb this huge tree and start grappling with how to bring this tree down again with all condolences for the tree, which I'm very sad that it's gone. 

This guy was such a daymaker, by the middle of the day, he had no shirt on he's like has an eight pack. He's glistening in the sun. But not only that, all of us who had kind of stopped what we were doing. The neighbors across the backyard had a cup of coffee and their camera in hand. They're talking to this guy all day. He, this guy turns and looks and starts waving at the babies down below. He turned back and look toward my office and give me a smile and a wave. And I just couldn't believe how this one person doing his job, but he was doing it with so much joy and enthusiasm and he's got to know how smoking hot he is, let's be real, that he was just living it up and he was having so much fun with this job that it stopped so many of us in our tracks. 

I only wish I would have canceled all my calls and go to watch the view. And so I even ran, you've probably heard me say this in the podcast episode, but I even ran down the hall, I said to my husband, Michael, Michael, you got to come see this. And Michael looks like this. Because just when you think you're safe in your own home with this incredible view, and so I call this guy the daymaker, because he, he just created this forcefield of joy around himself, even though again, I'm sad for the tree. It had me stop what I was doing. It had me laugh, how did you smile, it had the people across the way, doing the same. And they got all of us talking and just made our day, it was such a memorable experience. 

And so that I did an episode on this, of how can you be a daymaker in your work and not just do your job, but delight in it and get other people to smile. And similarly, on the other side of the coin, you could be a daybreaker where you're grumpy and complaining and draining, and nobody wants that, I know nobody listening to this wants to be a daybreaker. But the question is, can you be a daymaker? Can you not just be neutral? In terms of the energy that you give? But can you actually harness your strengths and your joy to be magnetic and to have this mission of making people smile, and whatever it is that you're doing?

Debra Alfarone: 

I tell you, that really sticks with me. Now, I don't have an eight-pack. And I can't bring down a tree. But I definitely can do things to help make bring joy to other people. Yeah. And you know, I was telling you before I live in DC, and I was spending one week in New York last week, and it was hot. Oh girl, it was hot. But I was working at this incredible opportunity at CBS anchoring their stream. And I remember, I didn't know the word daymaker. But for some reason, I thought I'm so happy and I'm so grateful for this opportunity that I am going to approach everyone like there are rainbows shooting out of my eyes.

Jenny Blake:  

A big part of Free Time, my new book, is about how do we free up our time from get out of the weeds of busy work and spend more time doing what really drives us, our big creative strategic thinking. And I think it's also so important to notice who in your life is an energizer and who's a drainer or on the work front? What energizes you, what drains you? I heard on a podcast this amazing tip that one guy, after he ends every meeting, he color codes that calendar entry, red, orange or green. And if it's red, it drained him, if it's orange it’s neutral, and if it's green, he really enjoyed it. And so at the end of the week, you could actually take this inventory of his whole calendar, just at a glance seeing the color coding. And I thought that's so smart. Because sometimes if I would tell you all listening, what energizes you in the moment? At an abstract level, it's hard to remember, it's hard to really say except for the big stuff. But this calendar color coding exercise, I'm going to try that, I think it's so smart.

Debra Alfarone:  

Earning twice as much in half the time while experiencing peace and joy in serving your highest good.

Jenny Blake:

So the origin of this guiding question, it's really an inquiry because it doesn't have to be taken literally. When I was leaving Google, I was so afraid that I was going to go broke that like spend all my money not earn any money in my business, I didn't really have confidence that I was going to be some brilliant entrepreneur, I genuinely didn't know if I could ride out the six months of savings that I had. 

I was pretty convinced that I could not earn a dime and need to go get a job after my six months of pivot runway ran out. And I was constantly ruminating over what if I go broke? What if I fail? And I was so sick of that at some point, my inner CFO just having a panic attack that I started to make myself it was okay. If I had that fear-based thought, I at least said fine. I'm going to at least complement it with something else. So what if I go broke? Okay, what if I earn twice as much in half the time and I tacked that on as a, I might as well invest in both potential scenarios because either one could happen, I could go broke, or I could earn twice as much in half the time. 

Then a couple of years later, I added with ease and joy, because I don't care if I earn twice as much and half the time but I'm miserable and sacrificing myself and unhappy and just a jerk, then I don't want that either. So then it became how can I earn twice as much in half the time with ease and joy and eventually I added on while serving the highest good because I also don't want to work in a way that's completely selfish that serves me with ease and joy but then I'm a tyrant boss to the people on my team or I'm terrible to my clients or doing bad things like sort of offputting. I'm trying to think of a good word like, just toxic oil spill, you know behind me, I don't want that. So while serving the highest good also serves as a compass for anything that I do or take on. Yes, that's great if it's peaceul, joyful and abundant for me. And does it also serve the highest good? And if not, I'm not going to do it, even if I should do it.

Debra Alfarone: 

Oh, should? My husband always says, and I love this. “Don't should all over yourself.” Yes, because we get into the shoulds.

Jenny Blake: 

And I say in Free Time, “don't sail the sea of shiny shoulds.”

Debra Alfarone:   

“Don't sail the sea of shiny shoulds.” Yes. Oh my God, I am so sailing that sea. I think I hear the term imposter syndrome. Once, twice, 20 times a day, maybe 100 times a day. I hear it a lot because I coach people. And so you have a podcast episode feeling impostory, which by the way, I love that you say that become a qualified curator, instead of an end-all be-all expert. I think you just solved my problem just by reading that title. Because I think I should know everything. And if I don't know everything, 100% of everything. Politics while I'm at the White House, then I'm an impostor. But that's not true, says you. So make me smart.

Jenny Blake:  

Oh, my goodness. So I love that you pull this out. Because this is what I need to remind myself constantly. I have such a high bar for myself. Because I do think that if you have high expectations of yourself and others, or you read a lot, or you're you know, the  irony of all this is that the more well read or well listened or informed, the more we realize the truth that how much more there is to know. So the Buddhists have a saying, beginner's mind. And that's acting at the like, we know that having an intellectual humility is admitting there's no way I can know everything. And yet, sometimes I find myself holding myself back, oh, well, I can't write a book until I'm the number one most leading successful business person of all time. And I will hold myself back from writing or speaking or talking about something until I feel uber qualified, clear some impossibly high bar. And that's where I have to remind myself that no one's really asking or needs me to be the end-all be-all expert. 

And no doubt there are some of those out there, there are billionaires in this country that have more money than anyone else. And they could certainly teach us about how to operate a business at that scale. But when I give myself permission to be a qualified curator, it feels much more freeing and relaxing. And what I mean when I say qualified curator is that we can self-qualify, there's no qualification to Olympics either. But it's saying, I spend a lot of time reading business books and listening to business podcasts, and tinkering in my own business. And when I synthesize all of that, and I can apply it to a struggle that I'm facing, or that I've solved, I'll share that solution back out. Therefore, I'm not the richest business person. I haven't earned the most money, but I have had a front-row seat to a certain challenge or struggle. I've curated a lot of the best that I could find in this area to solve this problem. And now I'm going to share it back out and that qualified curator lens gives me permission to keep moving when the imposter bells start blaring, which is the time

Debra Alfarone:  

Is there one thing that you wish you knew in your 20s

Jenny Blake:

Oh, gosh, I wish I knew the word that's just blinking coming to mind is relaxed. I think I figured it out towards my later 20s But I wish I knew that I didn't have to be so strict with myself so rigid. I used to think if I gained 10 pounds, I would be unlovable, just utterly unlovable, undateable and I kept myself within this 10-pound hyper extreme margin weight-wise. And so things like that I just later relaxed those ideas that I had about exactly how I needed to be in order to fill in the blanks.

Debra Alfarone: 

I definitely identify with that. What is the saying like confidence, but confidence is sexy. That's number one. But you know people will see your confidence when you walk in the room. They're not going to see those couple of pounds that we think are unacceptable. That's us not being kind to ourselves. And again, if you want to lose weight, if you want to be healthy, or whatever it is, that's your choice, but you get to also decide how you love yourself because  nobody’s gonna love you if you don't love yourself. I have been way too mean to myself and had been so unloving and unkind to myself in my 20s. And that's one thing, I wish I didn't bother wasting all of that time. I think I could be a lot further along, had I just been nicer to myself.

Jenny Blake:   

And I do appreciate as well, let's acknowledge how far the cultural conversation has come because curvy women even used to be a shocking thing, if someone had curves was like, unbelievable. And only recent years has that become a goal, a go-to sort of standard are all bodies are beautiful, you know, this kind of messaging that didn't really exist when I was growing up. So I appreciate as society and culture shifts around this too.

Debra Alfarone: 

Do you have a worst date, a worst job, or a worst outfit in your 20s that you would like to share with us?

Jenny Blake: 

My worst outfit, I feel like so many of my business casual outfits are just dreadful. And my friend Julie put it this way in her book, The Work revolution. Like why is it that we have two closets? What we wear, you know, on nights and weekends, and then what we wear to the office that is so unrepresentative of who we actually are. And so yeah, I can picture when I applied for the job at Google. Just these lame probably Banana Republic or, and Taylor business pants like black. I don't even know like stretchy polyester. I don't really know. And then this sweater set?

Debra Alfarone:  

Yes, in there. What were we doing?

Jenny Blake:  

What were we doing? And I at the time, I thought it worked. But it just wasn't me. It just had nothing to do with who I actually am. And I'm in yoga clothes now. 95% of time even pre pandemic. That's who I am. I've even stopped wearing so much makeup, even for zoom calls and things because I'm like, you really want to know who I am. This is me.

Debra Alfarone: 

You know, I have refused to wear shoes. Now we're not, we're not doing shoes. We're just doing sneakers. And I've now decided to make it a brand. So I'm gonna wear sneakers with my dresses and sneakers with my pants suits, sneakers with everything like, that's that. I haven't really accomplished the sneaker revolution yet. But I do need so hey, send me your sneaker recs, everybody, because I've had a couple of sneakers, but they're, they're kind of like, I need to have a whole, I envision a whole sneaker wall. What was the best piece of advice that someone gave you during your 20s that really stays with you that's like kind of a go to?

Jenny Blake:

There was a yoga teacher when I was in the midst of contemplating what's next. And actually it was wanting to write my first book. And I was really intimidated by the whole process. I didn't as you said, I didn't know anybody in publishing, I didn't know any authors. I didn't think I was capable of getting a book deal. But I kind of had this urge to try. And she said just keep putting one foot in front of the other. You've always known what to do next. And it was that too part. Put one foot in front of the other and her giving me that confidence that looking backwards. Once I took one step I always could figure out the one next one after that. And so that has stayed with me to this day. And there's even a great podcast that I love called the next right thing. So just remembering even when it all feels so fuzzy and confusing. Another kind of colloquialism or phrase around this that I really like is you have to start walking down the hallway before you can see the open doors.

Debra Alfarone: 

Oh, that is good. That's going to serve so many people. Oh my gosh, Jenny Blake, we are so happy to have you. Thank you so much for sharing some really important people we all wish we knew in our 20s

Jenny Blake:  

Thank you so much, Debra. It's a delight to be here with you. I can't wait for another round at some point. Thank you for having me. And huge thanks to everybody who is here listening.