Quick note before we jump in, you are invited to Jumpstart Joy in 2020 with a live Pivot Podcast taping and Joy of Movement book launch party here in New York City. So if you live in the city, if you live in the area, or you just know somebody who does and wants to send them the invitation, please go to pivotmethod.com slash joy. The event is on Thursday, January 9th, doors open at 6.30 p.m. It's going to be on the Upper West Side, and I'm just so excited to partner with some incredible women to help launch Kelly McGonigal, two-time guest with a Pivot Podcast, help her launch her new book, Joy of Movement.
We'll do a live podcast taping, then you're going to get a movement session led by Nia Black Belt trainer, Caroline Coles, accessible to all bodies to help us all experience gratitude, joy, and hope in community. And then DJ Petra, my dear friend and two-time Pivot Podcast guest, is going to bring us home with a dance party. You'll also walk out with a signed hardcover copy of Kelly's new book, The Joy of Movement, How Exercise Helps Us Experience Happiness, Hope, Courage, and Connection. So again, this is all happening on Thursday, January 9th.
I would love for you to join us and be there for a live Pivot Podcast and so much more. Just head to pivotmethod.com slash joy, and you'll get all the details. And now, back to today's show. What's next?
This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot, The Only Move That Matters is your next one. For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com slash podcast. If change is the only concept, then let's get better at it.
Here we go. Hello, friends. Happy New Year. Can you believe it?
2020 is upon us. What an exciting time of year. Here we are kicking off this new decade. OMG.
Also, I cannot help but shamelessly plug 2020 Vision, everybody. Who isn't going to be doing that this year? I actually did get LASIK in mid-2019 in honor of 2020 and 2020 Vision. And I have long been a vision-setting advocate.
Not goals, not specific attachments to outcomes, but vision. In fact, it's one of the most important parts of the Pivot Method. And that's what I'm going to walk you through in this episode. Without vision, we are not magnetized by a North Star.
Part of the reason I wrote Pivot was to help us all get better at navigating change and identifying a resonant vision, not for 10 years out, although it's tempting in 2020, but for the year ahead. What's working best? When are you most in the zone? When are you the happiest and the most energized at work?
And what does success look like one year from now? Even in terms of how you want to feel, who you want to be surrounded by, the types of projects you'd love to be working on, and even most importantly, how you want to grow and make an impact. Because those are things that are in your direct influence and control. I mean, of course, nothing's really in our control at the end of the day, but I find it more empowering to focus on those aspects of vision setting than even any specific numbers, metrics, achievements.
One of my all-time favorite exercises is the Ideal Day Madlib, and we're going to get to that in this episode. I have to say, these Set Your Strategy episodes of the Pivot podcast are some of the most popular that I release all year long. And so this one is going to borrow from the 2018 episode, because there's so much timeless good stuff in there. So if you've recently listened to that one, you're going to hear a blend in this episode.
But nonetheless, this will help you set a resonant vision for the year ahead, and I cannot wait to see what 2020 brings us. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the four-stage pivot method framework, and this can help you map what's next, even within your current role or business, or even a specific creative project that you already have underway or you want to initiate. It's a way to look at what's working, double down on it, figure out where you generally want to end up, and then how to work to close that gap with small experiments and next steps. Before we jump in, I also want to share some of the resources up front that can help you as you enter this exciting new year.
The first is a pivot sprint. This is set up in a way that you can do it as a five-day sprint, a five-week sprint, or just go at your own pace. Join us at pivotmethod.com slash sprint, and you'll get access to a set of materials that will walk you through the four stages of the pivot method and help you set your strategy one step at a time. That's a great compliment to go with this podcast, and it's totally free.
In fact, if you listen to this podcast, I encourage you to pause after every prompt and write things down. But if you miss doing that or you're on the go and you just don't feel like it, you can head over to pivotmethod.com slash sprint, and you'll get access to a login. You can revisit those materials and those four stages at any time. Another free tool along those lines is if you want to create a pivot mastermind in the year ahead, the mastermind leader toolkit is also completely free, and it allows you to create a mastermind with your friends or your friend tours, as I like to say, that will walk you through three months of material to have weekly calls with exactly what you need to facilitate at your fingertips.
It will walk you through a more detailed version of the pivot method, so that's great if you want to kick off the new year rate and create that extra accountability and support. Working with my peers and reaching out to friend tours, even setting up pop-up mastermind groups, has been a huge part of my success and sanity, honestly, over almost 15 years of online platform building. So even though I haven't been self-employed that whole time, I have been steadily building, working, blogging, writing, trying to figure this whole wild west of the internet out. So even if the word networking gives you highs, I think there is so much value to connecting with your friends in a structured way and sharing resources, connections, ideas, and feedback.
So if you want to get access to that, go to pivotmethod.com slash mastermind. And again, the sprint is at pivotmethod.com slash sprint. As you know by now, I'm going to throw all these links because this episode is going to be full of resources in the show notes at pivotmethod.com slash 2020, baby. Pivots start right under your feet.
They're not about reaching so far outside of yourself that you're in your panic zone and you have complete analysis paralysis. No, pivots start right where you are. And it's just about saying, hey, what's already working? What can I double down on?
And what are some related small experiments that I can try? And remember, pivots do not have to be huge dramatic moves. So even though this is a pivot podcast, I wrote the book Pivot. I'm talking about mastermind kit pivot sprints.
Pivots start right under your feet. I define a career pivot as a methodical shift in a new direction based on what's working. So you end up doubling down on what's working to help you figure out generally where you want to end up and then how to work to close that gap. This does not have to be about big leaps, big risks, sending yourself into your panic zone.
It's not about reaching so far outside of yourself that you're having complete analysis paralysis compared to spare. None of that. Pivots are about methodically looking at what's working and what you want more of. And that can happen right where you are.
The best pivots start right under your feet. So now that's what we're going to do in this episode. If you happen to be a side hustler or a solopreneur, I encourage you to check out Momentum. I can't even tell you exactly when doors are going to open again.
But if you want to learn more and you want to be part of the solopreneur community, working through this framework as we build our heart-based businesses, you can join the waiting or the interest list at pivotmethod.com slash Momentum. Just two more resources and we're going to get into the meat of this episode. If you're looking for one-on-one support as you map your next moves into your head, even if you want to just kick off the new year in a really powerful way, I encourage you to check out pivotmethod.com slash coaching. Although I myself am not doing one-on-one coaching as I focus on Momentum and my larger client engagements and working on the business, not just in the business, true to the free up Founder Time course that's also completely free, pivotmethod.com slash Founder Time.
Coaching is such a powerful way to talk through your unique situation, look at your strengths with another person, set a powerful vision and a strategy for tackling that. I have so much respect for the pivot coaches that work with me. We've been working together since before the book even came out, and they are all longtime colleagues, friends, in some cases, former clients. I just cannot rave and say enough good things about each of them.
Check them out, pivotmethod.com slash coaching. These are such incredible, smart, strategic, heart-centered people that can really partner with you to start things in a really powerful way. And as I did last year, I'm opening up just a few VIP day spots. So this is not going to be for everybody, but if you're somebody that really wants to roll up your sleeves and get stuff done, it is one of my favorite things to do.
So maybe you want to make a special trip to New York City out of it, or you know there's a time where you're going to be in New York. If you want to set up a VIP day, it's one-on-one with me all day, and we have a prep call to set the strategy for the day, and then we do some follow-up coaching as well, go to pivotmethod.com slash VIP. It is so much fun for those of you who are ready to work at that level, and I'm not going to open up many of those, but that's the way that I am working with people outside of one-on-one coaching. Without further ado, let's get into it.
Again, I encourage you to grab a piece of paper and a pen. It will activate a different part of your brain than typing on your phone, and you might even want to pause periodically as we go through this next set of reflection questions. Whenever I'm thinking about a new year, I like to really zoom out. The first thing that I do is come up with a word or a theme.
What is my intention for this year? What do I want to focus on? I've had themes like freedom the year that I was leaving Google and building my own business. One year, my theme was radiate.
That was about finding my inner glow, my inner calm and peace. In 2015, my word of the year was delight. And then 2016, my word of the year was serendipity. I remember thinking that when Pivot was launching, I wanted to market the book with serendipity, not marking muscle and pushing and forcing, just the magic.
It was actually serendipity and magic. And sure enough, although it wasn't related to the book, I met my partner, Michael, walking down the street in opposite directions. So that was the ultimate manifestation of serendipity that we met. You know, there's just passing seconds to say something and get to know each other.
And here we are now. That was proof to me that anything truly can happen at any time. And also the power of just saying, what's important to me this year? One year, it was surrender.
I've had friends who've chosen a word like faith or focus. In 2019, my words were abundance and heart's desire. And I went down a whole reading rabbit hole on abundance things books. Actually, I had a lot of fun.
And I rewrote a lot of my money scripts. So what is it for you? What's the big theme? A touchstone throughout the year, something to come back to, something to check in on.
Every year they build, they're cumulative. So the words that you choose builds. And then for me, I now absorb these messages of freedom and radiate and delight and serendipity and surrender. And they all add up to this bigger picture of how are you being and who are you being as you go through your year.
I really don't, as many of you probably know, I don't like the word goals. I don't really like the word resolutions. And I'm a big fan of Tosha Silver's notion that even trying to manifest certain things, like vision boards and manifestation, I think some of it's cool. If it's helpful for you, definitely do it.
But some of it can end up, as she calls it, a grocery list for God. Where you're like, I want this and then this and then this and then this. And we become so attached to these specific things. This brings me to part two.
So once you have your theme, I encourage you to focus on what are your soul goals for this year? That's different than goals or a grocery list for God. Soul goals are these things that you feel called to, that they're deep in your soul. You just feel called.
You've had something kind of drop out of the sky and it gives you that aha feeling, that's how you know that it's a soul goal, that you don't know if it's possible. And it might even seem impossible or out of reach or just like, what on earth? When a soul goal drops in, you may have an inner critic voice that says, who do you think you are to think that? That's impossible.
You can't do that. You're not smart enough, rich enough, young enough, old enough. Hear that voice, write it down anyway. That voice just means you're expanding beyond what you previously thought was possible.
Keeping on with soul goals and the theme of the year. Another practice that I really love to do at the beginning of every year, I've been doing these since 2012, is a mind map for the year. I'll put a link in the show notes. I did a video interview for CMDC on mind maps and I did like 15 videos for them.
And this one went super viral. Within the first few months, it had over 100,000 views. By now, I wasn't able to find the count online, but then they later uploaded one to YouTube that has 10,000 views. This thing just went nuts on the internet.
And people were emailing me through LinkedIn saying, oh, I saw your mind map video and I just had no clue that it would resonate so much. But the way that you do a new year's mind map is you put the year in the center of the page. This is also in pivot, by the way, for those of you who have the book or you want to get the book. You put the year in the center of the page and put a circle around it.
By the way, this is an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper or bigger if you're feeling fancy and creative. And then from the year, you draw spokes for different themes of the year. So it might be business, creativity, relationships, personal learning, health and fitness, mindset, whatever is important to you. And then from each of those themes, you just riff again.
And the goal is don't put too much pressure. This doesn't have to be perfect. But draw spokes for anything that comes to mind. Let's say personal learning.
For me, it's going to be continuing with Arabic. Maybe we're starting to learn French, improving my interviewing skills. I may even hire a voice coach. I want to get better at podcasting on every level.
So I'm going to think about that. Under business, I would draw spokes for how I want to grow my business, continuing to scale my income, doing more pivot licensing deals, continuing with two speaking gigs a month on average, raising my rates, you know, whatever it is, growing the momentum community. I invite all of you to join us. I'd love to have you.
Things like that. So you end up filling the page with stuff that's important to you. And it might even be part of this. How are you being?
So what practices, what rituals, what routines? Maybe there's a whole section on just being. And you draw things like gratitude, reverence, acceptance, practicing things like Byron Katie's The Work, turnarounds. These are not shoulds.
I'll say that. That when you draw your mind map, it's what would spark joy? To return to that Marie Kondo phrase from her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. What sparks joy?
That's what goes on your mind map. I really encourage you throughout this process, do not get stuck in shoulds. It's so easy at the beginning of the year to have the shoulds rear their head. Like, I should do this.
Let's say I have a lot of author friends. Let's say our new authors read out to me. You have a book coming out. Well, I should market it this way.
I should hire a publicist for four or five random. Not necessarily. Does it spark joy? If so, it stays.
If not, keep moving. I think, well, how else could I get to the same aim in a way that is authentic to me, in a way that really feels good? I did another podcast really early on called How to Optimize for Revenue and Joy. So I really encourage you to ask combinatorial questions, meaning a lot of times when you're making big decisions, you know, up possibilities.
When Pivot was coming out, I asked myself, how can I market this book in a way that feels completely joyful? And the answer that emerged was do as many podcasts as possible. I love doing podcasts. And that would encourage me to start this podcast back in 2014.
I had no idea where the hell it was going. But as soon as I started, I could tell it I really enjoyed it. And so that became a way that I would connect with all of you and connect with people who are already in the JV community and orbit and then new people coming in. So if you're new, welcome.
And thank you for being here. And if you're old, well, not old, but if you're a founding listener of the Pivot podcast, huge thanks to you. Because I know I say this a lot, but I wouldn't be here without you. After you've done the mind map, now let's really get into the Pivot method.
Pivot method is a four-stage process to map what's next. Plant, scan, pilot, launch. I'm not going to give you my whole spiel about every stage because I've done it a million trillion times on various podcasts. And I don't want to bore you to tears if you've been around or you've read the book.
So I'm really going to stay focused on prompts. This is a version of why I do my interactive keynote speeches in case you want to bring me into your organization this year. And even if not, if you want to run a Pivot workshop with your team, there's also a facilitator kit. Just go to pivotmethod.com slash actionable, and you can run this exactly what we're about to do with your own team.
The very first stage, the most important part of pivoting and planning your strategy is plant. In the basketball analogy, I talk about how the plant foot stays grounded. That's your stability and your foundation. Then your pivot foot can scan for options for what's next.
one of the biggest mistakes people make and that I made is not having a plant foot, not being grounded in anything, just already looking at what's out there. And you look so far outside of yourself that you miss what's right under your feet. So the first part of plant, it's two parts is what's working. What is already working?
This is a great time to jot things down and pause. As you look back on the previous year, what did you enjoy the most? When did you feel most in the zone? What were your biggest strengths?
What did people come to you for advice on most often? Or what did you get complimented on most frequently? Consider what you were the go-to person for among friends, family, or coworkers. And again, this doesn't have to just be professional.
I encourage you to do personal and professional because often they inform the other. As you look back on the previous year, what are you proudest of? How did you learn and grow? Man, you could spend an hour just writing down 10, 20, 30 lessons you learned.
What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about tactical, practical things? Tips, tools, hacks, things that need you better professionally? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
Similar to when were you most in the zone? What made time fly? What did you actually look forward to when you saw it on your to-do list? What brought you the most joy?
Maybe it was not doing, but not doing. Maybe it was things that you said no to. So once you've really explored what's already working, your strengths, what you were enjoying most, how you grew, what you learned, then the second part of plant is we look at where do you generally want to end up one year from now? What does smashing success look like one year from now?
I really believe that any farther out is just too challenging. The five-year question is completely irrelevant. There's no way to know. Things are changing far too quickly for that.
But we can generally know six months to a year out. So maybe a year is too overwhelming for you. Maybe you're in the midst of a big change and you just want to focus on by June. But either way, imagine what smashing success looks like.
How do you want to feel? What does your ideal average day include? Think about your environment. Where do you want to live?
Where do you want to work? Maybe it's the same as where you are now. Maybe you're making tweaks to one or both. Who do you want to be surrounded by?
What types of projects would you be most excited to work on? Anytime you're pivoting or just looking toward what's next, there's usually a gap and there are ways that it's helpful. Who would you be most excited to become the go-to expert for? Taking a moment to think about impact.
Imagine you were to win an award or even get a glowing thank you note. What would it be for? What kind of impact do you want to have on your family, friends, community, clients, co-workers, the global community? Do you want a really fun way to walk through all of these vision exercises?
Check out the Ideal Day Madlib. It's a template of mine. It's totally free. It's my favorite one.
Go to pivotmethod.com slash Ideal Day. It's five pages and you get to just fill in the blanks. And this is a great way to just flesh out your vision because often when pivoting or mapping next moves, it can be easy to just focus on what you don't know. And of course, part of a pivot, part of what makes growth exciting is that we don't know exactly what's going to happen.
But by doing this Ideal Day exercise, you really start to flesh out what excites you and what you do know. Because even if you don't know how you're going to get there, and actually you shouldn't know how yet, you don't need to get into the how yet, because that usually just kind of bogs things down. But the more resonant your vision is, the more it carries you forward through the pivot stages that follow. And I encourage you, you will have some inner-critic-y stuff coming in.
Also, by this point, a lot of people generally write down things that are safe and reasonable and pragmatic. I'm like, okay, yeah, I can generally do these things that I've written down. Take 30 seconds, 10 minutes, and write down stuff that's going to stretch you. Really write down stuff that feels wildly exciting, that you would just be go bananas if this stuff could happen by this time next year.
So do yourself a favor. Write that stuff down. You know you don't have to pursue it all, but just know what it is. Just get it on paper.
What would really stretch you this coming year? Next, we move on to the scan stage. Scanning. So once you know where you are, what's working, projects.
And the best way to scan is to connect them to what you just came up with in the plant stage. If you fall into analysis paralysis or compare and despair, it means you've jumped to scanning too early. It means that you're scanning, and this is common, most people do it. But you start scanning before you're really grounded in who you are, what's already working, and what you specifically want, what success looks like for you.
So from that foundation, now start to think about people. Who would you be most excited to connect with? Maybe you know their specific names, or maybe it's just the idea of a person. So I want to connect with somebody who is an expert at dot, dot, dot.
Or I want to hire a career coach. And you don't know who yet, but you know that, okay, this is someone you want to work with. Think about relationships you already have in your orbit. Who would you want to get to know better?
And this can be friendors, peers of yours, mentors. Try to write down a list of 10 people that you would love to deepen your relationship with or get to know better. On the people front, think about who do you most enjoy learning from from afar? Who is doing what you want to do in your one-year vision?
And these don't have to all be the same person, but maybe different people are doing different aspects of it. And how can you learn from them? There's so many ways to learn from people now. Books, podcasts, website, many people have various programs.
So I love, there are so many people that I learned from from afar without ever interacting with one-on-one. So make a list of those types of people, people that you could just kind of draft behind and see what they're doing and learn from afar. And then if you haven't already, write down someone that feels stretchy and edgy to reach out to. The next part of scanning is for skills.
So you maybe did a little bit of this when you're coming up with your one-year vision, but really reconnect with that vision statement and look at what would be most beneficial for you to learn this coming year? It's actually probably two questions. So what's beneficial? What's related, let's say professionally, to where you want to end up?
And what are you insanely curious about? What would you love to learn, even if it seems to have nothing to do with your work? So I gave some examples earlier, personal things, learning a language, cooking, dance classes. I have friends, one of my friends, Petra, is getting tutoring to be a DJ.
She has a private tutor to learn how to DJ. That's so awesome. My friend Dory got a tutor to help her get into a musical theater program. You guys have heard Dory on the podcast several times.
So skills can also connect to people. Who can you work with to learn what you want to learn? And we have so many ways to learn online. There are even services like italki, where you can just connect with people in other countries, either for tutoring or for language exchange, where you're each trying to learn each other's language.
And that's just on the language learning front. I mean, and by the way, if you're learning language, check out Fluent Forever. It is an amazing book. You've got to read it.
Okay, but I'm on a tangent now. Point is, there's so many ways. What classes do you want to take? Maybe you join ClassPass and you're trying out a bunch of fitness classes in your area, or maybe you're doing Skillshare or general assembly.
Things are online. You're going to go to a coding boot camp. Have a blast with this. Just brainstorm anything and everything you would want to learn.
Another question I ask when I'm giving keynotes on this front is, where do you beeline when you walk into a bookstore? What is the subject matter that you are just so drawn to right now? What's piling up on your Amazon wish list? What types of podcasts are you most excited to go listen to?
And what is it about them? Even what TV shows do you binge on and why? What themes are in those shows that just draws you to them? Or what is it about the characters or the storyline or creativity behind them?
Really study yourself and look at it because the clues are already there. I guarantee it. The clues are already there about what excites you and what you're really drawn to. That brings us now to the third stage, pilot.
This is where things really start to get fun. In plant, you figured out what's working, where you generally want to end up. Scan is about what's out there, people's skills, and projects takes us into pilot, which is about what small experiments can you run to test the three E's. So a good pilot will help you understand for any of your hypotheses about what to learn or what to pursue.
Three E's. Do I enjoy this new area? Can I become an expert at it? And is there room to expand in your role, in your team at work, in the marketplace, in your business?
Enjoyment, expertise, expansion. Now, pilots, this is really key. You do not have to know the answer to your pivots or your guesses about what to pursue up front. This is so crucial.
So often we think that everything has to happen in our head. Like, oh, I need to have my whole business model figured out. In my head, or my next career move figured out. In my head, it doesn't work like that.
Instead, think of pivots as resources at the Kentucky Derby. I share this in the afterword of the paperback edition, that your job is to line up these resources at the starting gate, lift up the gates, and say go. And your pilots will then inform you about which ones start taking on the most momentum. What can you do with five to 10% of your time?
Maybe it's taking one intro class to something you might want to pursue more. Setting up a lunch with someone. Maybe it's just changing your pricing on a service that you offer, or introducing a new product or service, having no clue if it's going to work or not. There's so many ways to pilot.
What it means is that you're experimenting in a really low-key, low-cost, low-time, low-energy way, and that if it starts to gain traction, you can blow it up more. It's taking something from zero to one. And there's a book called that by Peter Thiel. It's always nerve-wracking and vulnerable to go from zero to one, to put up a page, to put up a service, or an offering, and say, hey, this is available now, and have no clue what's going to happen.
But I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to feel vulnerable to not know, but to at least get something public, as Seth Godin would call it, to ship something. With momentum, I'm so grateful for the momentum community, and we've shifted it and pivoted it many times based on what everybody really wants and finds most helpful. So those are a few examples.
And of course, in the book, I give many for piloting within companies as well. I've seen so many people create entirely new roles for themselves just by starting with a small pilot or experiment. One of the things I used to do at Google when I first started was I just got permission to do a team book club, and I would get budget to buy us all one business book a month that we could all talk about together. I had no plans of becoming Google's chief books officer, but it was really rewarding, and that just helped me feel like I was taking charge of something and doing something fun for our team.
And then later, when I needed someone to step in and run the authors at Google team, part of the reason they thought of me was I had done things like that. And I came in and led that team for about nine months right before I left, and that was really rewarding. And even that, it wasn't my full-time role at the time, but it was such a fulfilling thing that I got to do. So enough of me jabbering now about piloting.
Time for you. What experiments can you run? Go look at what you've written down or what you thought about for the plans and scan stages. Really look at your one-year vision and come up with some really small pilots, stuff you could do in the next couple months.
And work backward from your one-year vision. Given where you want to end a year from now, what are some bigger pilots that would really be kind of nerve-wracking and exciting to launch, but that would really propel you forward? So maybe you're thinking of launching a podcast. And let me tell you, podcasting, it is a lot of work.
I mean, it is. I'm just straight up. It's like equal to everything else of running my business. It's like the podcast itself really could be its own full-time endeavor, but it's completely a labor of love.
So I'm not complaining. I'm just letting you know if you're going to do one. It is a lot of work, but there are ways to do it creatively. My friend Nicole launches her podcast, Real Talk Radio, in seasons, where she just has, let's say, 10.
I don't know the exact number, but 10. They launch it all at the same time, like a Netflix series. And that's a little easier because you can kind of do the whole thing in batches, whereas when I'm doing launching every week, you know, it's more indefinite. In any case, let's say you want to start a podcast.
Maybe you don't worry yet about having it be completely perfect, but you do one, quote, album. Can you commit to doing 10 interviews? The reason that I said, I kind of feel like everyone should have one, even though it's a lot of work, so yeah, you've got to think about whether you want to put the effort in, but it's the coolest way to connect with all your heroes and add value at the same time and create something based on conversations with people that you are so stoked to reach out to. So what if you just did one album?
I have friends, my friend Todd Henry did this for his book, Louder Than Words, and he kind of launched an album that went with the book. So maybe you pilot by doing that, and then at the end of those 10 episodes and interviews, you ask yourself, did I enjoy this? Can I become better at it? Do I want to?
And is there room to expand? Do I feel like I could keep going? And yes, there's the energy and the time and the money to expand. And don't worry, it doesn't take nearly as much money as you might think.
Once you've thought about some pilots, technically the fourth stage is launch, but it's a bit of a misnomer because really all you have to do is plant scan pilot over and over and over again, and eventually your pilots will start to gain momentum, and you'll ditch some of them, and you'll double down on others. Eventually, it may come time for a launch. Launch is that final 10 to 15% when you go all in on something. So ideally, you've reduced risk, you've learned a lot about yourself and what you're working on through plant scan pilot, that three-stage process, and it's a cycle.
It's not a linear one-and-done situation. It's not like you plant scan pilot, boom, you're done, now you launch. No, you repeat it over and over. If a pilot doesn't work, it usually means it's not grounded enough in the plant stage.
It's not grounded enough in where you're already good at and where you want to end up. So for some reason, it's getting blocked. And how do you know when a pilot's working? Because you start to get momentum and serendipity and it starts to build and snowball.
Or even if it's not working, you're ready to see it through. When my book was coming out, when Pivot was launching, I had so many pilots lined up for various business streams of income. Pivot coaching, momentum, my own coaching, licensing, workshops for companies, all kinds of stuff. I even created a paper Pivot workbook that is on the website.
It's in the toolkit. I now have a Pivot notepad, a planner that you can tear off Pivot sheets every time you want to map out this process. And we'll make sure to put all of these links in the show notes. This will be another one where it'll be a good questions.
Again, I really encourage you to spend time with every single one of those Pivot stages. And here are my parting words of advice. I get the question a lot, but what do you do if you feel a tremendous amount of fear when considering these next steps and these big soul goals? Two things.
One, that's totally normal. Sometimes if you feel fear, it means that you're stretching too far, you're in your panic zone, and your next steps or your pilots are still too big. So how can you break them down? How can you make them even smaller?
How can you come up with, I always like to ask these two questions at the end of a workshop that I deliver. It's just, what one small next step can you take this week? One tiny next step that you can take in the next week? And what one next step would make the biggest impact?
What's one tiny thing you're going to do when you stop listening to this episode? And what's one next step that would make the biggest impact? Just start there. It's why the subtitle of the book is The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One.
Because it can be intimidating for all of us to think too far out or to put the pressure that any one of these pilots has to succeed. We can't know that up front. So that brings me to part two of the failure question, which is our fear question. They're often intertwined.
And when I said to the person who asked this, I said, by all means, of course you're going to have fear. Don't even try to make it go away. That never has worked for me. It never worked to tell myself, don't be fearful.
Don't be anxious. Don't be worried. Definitely a process of surrender has helped me. I just kind of surrender.
I turn over the outcome. I'm not attached, for the most part, to any specific numbers, metrics, outcomes. I don't feel that that's my business. I mean, I have a vision.
I want things to connect. I want things to be helpful. I love when things gain traction and momentum. I'm not ignoring, you know, what would actually verify that the work I'm doing is making an impact.
But on the other hand, I'm just not obsessed with numbers in any way, whether it's how much I'm earning or how many people are listening. I'm curious. I'm curious what works. Of course, I would love to grow the podcast on that note.
Please share this episode if you found it helpful, because it is one of my sole goals to help grow the show, because I love doing it. And I would love to make it more sustainable. So on the fear, it's like, I try to just drop my attachment. And then I embrace my fear.
I just say, cool, there it is. That must mean I'm doing something big. So if you have that fear, just celebrate it. It means that you are a high net growth individual and you are learning and growing and stretching yourself and you are aiming high.
And those are all things to celebrate. Of course, you're going to have fear. So instead of trying to make it go away, embrace that uncertainty and insecurity and any anxiety that you feel, embrace it and keep moving. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast.
Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up at pivotmethod.com slash Pivot List. Get show notes from this episode at pivotmethod.com slash podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny underscore Blake. Remember, build first, then your courage will follow.
Have a good night always.