The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career

by Reid Hoffman

When a Hollywood executive once asked him during an on-stage interview whether he makes five-year strategic plans or three-year strategic plans, Reed said he does neither: three years is an eternity in Silicon Valley, and they can’t plan that far in advance. Instead, Netflix stays nimble and iterates, always in the test phase. We call this mind-set “permanent beta.”

If you want to chart a course that differentiates you from other professionals in the marketplace, the first step is being able to complete the sentence, “A company hires me over other professionals because …” How are you first, only, faster, better, or cheaper than other people who want to do what you’re doing in the world? What are you offering that’s hard to come by? What are you offering that’s both rare and valuable?

It’s impossible to know exactly when an inflection point will disrupt your career. The only thing you can safely know about the future is that it will be sooner and stranger than you think. So instead of trying to do the impossible and predict when an inflection point will threaten, prepare for the unknown. Build up your soft assets and proactively embrace new technology so that if and when the inflection point does come, you are ready to swiftly parlay skills into a Plan B.

Old-school “networkers” are transactional. They pursue relationships thinking only about what other people can do for them. And they’ll only network with people when they need something, like a job or new clients. Relationship builders, on the other hand, try to help other people first. They don’t keep score. They’re aware that many good deeds get reciprocated, but they’re not calculated about it. And they think about their relationships all the time, not just when they need something.

Careers, like start-ups, are also punctuated with breakouts. On a typical résumé—and even on a LinkedIn profile—there’s a reverse chronological listing of jobs held, all presented in the same type size and font. But on its face this is misleading. Our professional lives are not a sequence of equally important jobs. There are always breakout projects, connections, specific experiences, and yes, strokes of luck—that lead to unusually rapid career growth.

Franklin believed that if he brought together a bunch of smart people in a relaxed atmosphere and let the conversation flow, good opportunities would emerge. He set in motion a trend that the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville noted in Democracy in America, his 1835 classic assessment of the young United States: nothing was as distinctive about America as its people’s proclivity to form associations around interests, causes, and values.

If you want to increase your opportunity flow, join and participate in as many of these groups and associations as possible. If you don’t know where to start, go to www.meetup.com.

If something worthwhile will be riskier in five years than it is now, be more aggressive about taking it on now. As you age and build more assets, your risk tolerance shifts.