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Welcome to the Art of Charm. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Today we're talking with my friend Jenny Blake, author of Pivot.

The only move that matters is your next one. You should listen to this show because we're going to talk about how to make yourself more agile in your career.

How to make sure you're not afraid to make a move forward instead of staying stagnant or worse, going for plan B and how to actually pivot.

And why it's not as drastic or dramatic as you might think and why if you don't prepare for a pivot, you might be pivoted.

So we'll show you how to prepare in advance. And last but not least, how to know when it's time to quit your day job and go all in on your side gig or make the leap to a different job or career entirely.

So enjoy this one with Jenny Blake. And by the way, if you're new to the show, we'd love to send you some top episodes and the AOC toolbox where we discuss things like body language and nonverbal communication, persuasion, networking, negotiation, mentorship, everything else we teach here at the Art of Charm.

If you're in the United States, just text charmed to 3 3 4 4 4 that's C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 3 3 4 4 4.

Everywhere else, go to the Art of Charm.com also at the Art of Charm.com slash podcast. You can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes.

All right, here's Jenny Blake.

You're an interesting character because you have done the things that you write about in your book. And seemingly it's not just, here's what other people should do for my ivory tower perspective.

You've reinvented your career and moved around quite a bit for somebody who's had successful careers instead of just very low level, right? Because it's very easy to say, you know, you need to pivot. You need to change and do this when if everything is kind of entry level, but you've had some serious roles with Google and other companies as well. And you've written a couple of books.

So tell us a little bit about why you decided to write pivot.

Sure. Well, thanks for saying that first of all. And I have no interest in being up in some ivory tower and speaking from a soapbox of success. That's not interesting to me. Nordow, I think it's that helpful for people.

The real reason I decided to write pivot was leaving Google was a tough decision. And I joke that it was like breaking up with Brad Pitt. You know, everyone would react like you really think you can do better than Google. How are you going to feed yourself?

So leaving was not an easy choice. And I rode the adrenaline of that for about a year and a half. This was back in 2011, 2012. And then I just hit another wall. I already thought I was entitled, you know, I just one of those entitled millennials that's never going to be happy. How come I'm not happy at Google.

And then when it happened again two years in to running my own business, my first book was life after college and I realized, I don't want to talk about that the rest of my career.

I had another wall. And once again, I felt crazy. And once again, I felt like I was losing my mind. And this time I didn't have a paycheck to fund that exploration. So as my bank account dwindled to zero.

I had two weeks. I didn't have January rent. This was January 2014. And I had to either move out of New York, go get another job and fold my business. And that's the moment that I looked at I've read over 400 personal development, much like you Jordan, personal development, business, fitness, finance, books. And I was pissed.

Like why aren't any of them working? I've been reading this stuff for 15 years. Why isn't it working? And so it was only when I started to really focus on what was working in my life and business. And that's when pivot came to me of not just how can people be as Agile as startups, but how can we shift methodically in a new direction by leveraging what we already have.

And so that was the crux of the book because I think we're all going to have to do this much more frequently.

Well, I agree with you there. And I think there's an interesting takeaway from just the first bit of this, especially in that you thought, am I just someone who's never going to be satisfied? And who knows maybe that's part of your personality or your DNA.

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