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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jenny Blake
Read between
March 11 - April 7, 2023
What Worked? What Didn’t? What Could You Do Differently?
Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. —Alice Walker
Once you have completed a pilot, or even several concurrently, the next step is to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. What would you do differently? What has potential for greater opportunity? After that, you will identify another round of experiments and repeat the Pilot process.
What smaller bets might you want to expand upon?
three E’s: Enjoyment: Do I like doing it? Is it engaging? Am I excited to return to it? Expertise: Am I good at it? If not, can I increase my skills in this area? Am I excited to do so? Is this a natural extension of my strengths? Expansion: Is there more opportunity to expand in this market? Can I earn a living doing this?
Plant: What worked well that you can repeat? Scan: What additional information might you need? Is there anyone else who would be helpful to connect with? Pilot: What might be a variation on the initial test that you can try next?
an online business course,
Surrender to the uncertainty. Trust that things will work out, and look for learning in the meantime.
Rate how you feel about the pilot or decision every day on a scale of 1 to 5. At the same time, write down short, daily notes to add a qualitative observation component to the tracking exercise. Oftentimes just the increased awareness from being an observer during this time inspires new, small actions within each day.
What trends emerge?
if you wait too long to pivot, change will choose you.
BUILD FIRST, COURAGE SECOND
Ultimately, you will know it is time to launch when you are ready to risk failure—knowing that you had the courage to go for it—for the possibility of success, challenge, and personal growth.
Do not expect courage to rain down from the sky before you make a move. It comes from taking action.
Financial Benchmarks Money saved (Pivot runway): Ideally, you should have at least six months of savings to see you through a launch. Make sure that leaving your current job or clients will not send you into your panic zone due to financial stress. Ensure that you have enough financial runway to buy time to generate momentum in your new direction. Money earned (When my side hustle earns X dollars or more): Although your side hustle earnings may not yet equal your salary, analyze their likelihood of generating cash flow. Can they realistically provide you with recurring income? If not, it is
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Take X months to explore, or take a sabbatical:
One of the biggest safety nets when launching is the size of your platform and the reach of your reputation.
Does the number of new clients really matter, or is it the monthly income target you are aiming to hit?
she changed the title on her website from “Author Jennie Nash” to “Jennie Nash, Book Coach.”
class in small-business strategy,
At a certain point, many people “just knew” it was time, either because their health was deteriorating and stress levels were skyrocketing or because the new direction beckoned them to the exciting edge of their stretch zone and no longer induced panic.
Some big decisions lie outside of our immediate control,
What is my backup plan?
What pilots can I run while waiting that will continue to move me forward, or address these same values and vision elements?
What is my waiting deadline, after which point I will pursue other options? How will I know when I have waited too long?
Determine whose approval is critical to your decision, and whose is nice to have, even if disappointing not to receive.
Our family and closest friends are those who have the greatest emotional interest in our safety and survival.
Make Short-Term Trade-offs if Necessary
For any project, a client can optimize for two of three core variables: time, cost, and quality.
take an overall assessment of how important each of these six values is to you in general, where 0 is “not at all important” and 5 is “critical to my well-being.”
give each its own hexagon and rank how well each option fits the six values, where 5 is “meets this need completely” and 0 is “does not satisfy this need at all.”
If you shut things down before they have a chance to create value for yourself and others, you will remain stuck in the same cycle of feeling like you are starting from scratch without a clear strategy or rationale to back it up.
If you leave too soon, you risk leaving unrealized gains behind; too late, and you risk experiencing diminishing returns on your time and effort.
If you are successful in your current position—which you probably are as an impacter—it is likely that you have unrealized gains on the table. In investing terms, unrealized gains refers to profit that exists on paper, but that has not been cashed in, such as a winning stock that has not yet been sold. In a career sense, unrealized gains typically fall into three categories: Financial incentives: A large commission, bonus, or stock options vesting. Results and reputation: Completing a project or receiving an upcoming promotion. Growth: Gaining skills and experience that will be helpful for
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the law of diminishing returns asserts that past a certain point in production, adding more resources will no longer yield favorable results. In fact, every added effort or input yields increasingly lower returns.
Notice where you hang out on the spectrum of unrealized gains versus diminishing returns:
Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves:
“develop the capacity to endure, and even thrive, as you traverse the project plateau.”
The average life span of human cells is seven years. Skin cells regenerate every two weeks, and the cells lining our gut turn over every five days.
Unexpected outcomes accelerate our growth.
the gut contains over 500 million neurons, equivalent in size and complexity to a cat’s brain, and is the source of 90 percent of our body’s serotonin production. The gut-brain is primal, forming in the womb before the heart- and head-brains. It deals with core identity-based motivations such as safety and protection. The majority of nervous messaging occurs from your gut to your brain, not the other way around: 90 percent of vagal nerve fibers communicate the state of our system to the head-brain, with only 10 percent providing communication in the other direction. Perhaps most surprising,
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the tipping point occurs. You know that no matter what, you are willing to launch in the new direction even if you fail. At this point, you would regret not trying more than trying and not meeting your expectations.
Cut yourself some slack. Remember, one hundred years from now, all new people. —Message tacked to a tree by monks at Wat Umong, a 700-year-old temple in Thailand
It is a signal that you need to develop a game plan that allows you to sidestep paralysis.
Although many of us know when it is time to leave our comfort zone, there is a blurrier line between weaving through the stretch zone without tipping into the panic zone.
“What is your definition of failure?”
regret minimization framework
I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “OK, I’m looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.” And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this.
Determine your own values around risk and failure, and what failures are acceptable or not.
“One year from now, how would you feel if nothing had changed?”
