CHAPTER 7: MAKE YOURSELF DISCOVERABLE

How Can You Add Unique Value and Build Visibility?

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

—Ovid, Heroides

BLUETOOTH IS THE MAGIC TECHNOLOGY THAT PAIRS TWO DEVICES WITHOUT ANY CABLES. Connecting two Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as your phone to your car or wireless speakers, requires making them both “discoverable.” When a Bluetooth-enabled device is discoverable, other devices can detect, pair, or connect to it.

Pairing up in the career sense works the same way. You will have an easier time navigating between career moves or clients if you are discoverable, which means putting your ideas out into the world through your own platform, or piggybacking on an existing one. Both require that you stand for something and commit to sharing your unique ideas and expertise.

So far in the Scan stage we discussed whom to connect with, and what types of skills would be most beneficial to develop. Now it is time to zoom in on specific opportunities and platform-building activities to round out your Pivot portfolio. This third Scan step is about investing your searching time wisely and getting your story straight: making your desired direction known to others, and developing a strategy that enables opportunities to find you by increasing your visibility and reputation.

DEFINE YOUR PROJECT-BASED PURPOSE

In the Plant stage, we explored the idea of purpose, a driving theme that propels your entire body of work. If you are compelled by a force that calls you toward a specific type of work or group of people, that can provide great clarity when pivoting. But what if you still don’t know what your purpose is? Maybe you skipped that section because it seemed too abstract.

For some, the pressure to define a purpose or mission statement is stifling and causes much unnecessary angst. In many cases, particularly midpivot, trying to get too specific with one Be-All, End-All Purpose causes more anxiety than anything else. So ditch it. Focus on shorter-term aims instead.

If your one-year vision is the what, or the desired destination of your next career pursuit, your project-based purpose is the why. In a world of shorter-term work, defining your why with project-based purpose will help you better sift potential opportunities while scanning, without the pressure to guide your entire life by one magical, all-encompassing statement.

Defining personal projects, and by extension your project-based purpose, is not a trivial exercise; it turns out this process is central to our overall sense of happiness. Cambridge University professor Dr. Brian R. Little, author of Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, believes that when asked, “How are you?” our answer hinges on how we feel about our personal projects. He writes, “Well-being is enhanced if your projects are meaningful, manageable, and effectively connected with others.”

Nerissa Gaspay is a San Francisco–based preschool teacher for children with disabilities, including cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, rare genetic disorders, and epilepsy. She has a project-based purpose to bring more play into her classroom after seeing how much it accelerates her students’ development. One of her experiments to meet this project-based purpose is starting each day with an obstacle course. Although more traditional teachers may wonder about its merits, Nerissa’s kids love it, and she has already seen tremendous progress as a result. Her longer-term purpose is to help parents better understand and communicate with their children with disabilities, and to develop new methods for helping her students learn and acclimate to their surroundings.

Julien Pham, the physician-entrepreneur you met in Chapter 2, has a project-based purpose for his website, Startup Clinic: to connect physicians with each other so they can transfer knowledge, share innovative ideas, and help bring medicine into the twenty-first century by encouraging the institutions they work for to think like start-up companies. As someone who was born in Vietnam and raised in Paris, and grew up with a doctor dad and business-founder mom, Julien’s longer-term purpose is to connect cultures to improve communication—between medicine and technology, and between physicians and patients.

As you scan for projects that might suit you, look for the underlying project-based purpose. Why take on that work? What do you want to accomplish? Who do you hope to impact, and in what way? If someone were to send you a glowing thank-you note related to this project one year from now, what would it say?

If you are still having trouble coming up with a purpose for your next phase, simply ask: how can I be most helpful to the most people? And this doesn’t have to mean the masses. “Most” right now might be your nuclear or extended family. Or shift from thinking to doing by volunteering at local organizations that are always grateful for extra hands, such as homeless shelters, food kitchens, meal delivery services, animal hospitals, and homes for the elderly.

The one thing that has brought me peace in my most unclear career moments is rededicating myself to serving others. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

PLATFORM AND LEVERAGE

Becoming an expert and developing a strong reputation is helpful, but it will not take you very far if the people you want to work with do not know who you are or where to find you.

Developing a public-facing platform, a corner of the world from which you can share your ideas and expertise with a community you cultivate, greatly amplifies your leverage during and after a pivot. Like the pole-vaulter who uses a pole to catapult over the high bar, your platform gives you leverage to find new and previously unseen opportunities.

When I left Google, I had big plans for launching my book and online courses. But to pay the bills while working on those elements, I did one-on-one career coaching, which was 20 percent of what I had been doing in my role at Google. This ended up sustaining me as my most reliable source of income for five years. It provided reasonably predictable cash flow, I could throttle it up and down relatively easily, and I could do it from anywhere. When I decided to work from Bali and Thailand for two months in 2013, I was worried no one would want to work with me because of the unpredictability of Internet access or having to make our calls over Skype across time zones. But surprisingly I got the most clients in the history of my business. That was enabled largely by the platform of readers with whom I had built trust in the years leading up to my travels, negating potential distance issues.

Developing a community takes time, and strong ties will be more helpful than large stats. Whether 50, 500, or 5,000 people, it is not the size of your platform but the level of engagement that matters. This inner circle will become your best advocates, supporters, connectors, and someday, perhaps, customers and clients. Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine, suggests aiming for “1,000 True Fans,” or people who will purchase “anything and everything you produce.”

Building a community and becoming a thought leader should not be about a selfish aim for fame. As Dorie Clark, author of Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It, wrote, “It’s about solving real problems and making a difference in a way that creates value for yourself and others. It’s a willingness to be brave, open up, and share yourself. It’s a willingness to risk having your ideas shot down, because you genuinely believe they can help others.”

Not everyone has to become an entrepreneur, blogger, or “personal brand.” Nowadays, with social media, many people feel that they must “live their lives at the same time they brand the shit out of it,” as my friend Stacy Sims puts it. Branding, and becoming a thought leader in some area of expertise, is not going to be every impacter’s passion, nor does it have to be. But becoming an expert in your desired field—not just technically the best, but recognized and publicly known for it by generously sharing that expertise with others—will become your most powerful generator of new opportunities. Instead of feeling like you must constantly pound down doors to get hired, others will swing those doors open for you.

Julie Clow, author of The Work Revolution, was a senior vice president in HR at a hedge fund while writing and publishing her book. As her growth within the company began to wane, she received a message through LinkedIn asking her if she wanted to interview for a job that exceeded her wildest dreams: senior vice president of global people development for Chanel. She now splits her time between Paris and New York, with great perks to boot.

Julie was perfectly positioned to be poached for a new role because of the platform building she had done: continually achieving great results at her company, writing a book based on her expertise in organizational behavior and company culture, taking on a board position with a prestigious global learning and development organization, and cohosting a Work Revolution conference. Julie developed a strong reputation in her field and a platform that she could leverage into an even better-fit job.

Julie does not maintain a public-facing platform for the purposes of running her own business; she loves working within large, innovative companies and transforming their people and leadership programs. She enjoys writing, and applies that skill to publishing high-quality content just often enough to keep her engaged in conversations within her industry. In addition to bringing her career fulfillment, contributing to large media platforms helps her expand her leadership influence and remain discoverable.

Photographer Daniel Kelleghan also has a platform that makes him discoverable to others, allowing him to seize opportunity when it shows up. After six months photographing products for Groupon in Chicago, Dan quit to pursue his own photography business full time, traveling to shoot fashion and architecture, while bridging his income with corporate clients. He worked diligently at posting high-quality, artistic photos on Instagram to build a following.

Over the first three years of building his Instagram platform, Dan amassed a little over 7,000 followers. Then, because of the unique quality of his photographs, Instagram featured him on its suggested user list for two weeks, showcasing Dan’s account to new users worldwide. By the end of the second week, his following skyrocketed to over 100,000 people. Hotels and clothing brands started reaching out to offer goods in exchange for Dan’s sharing photos of their products with his audience.

Now Dan stays for free in many places by proactively offering sponsorship opportunities to companies in cities he will be traveling to. New clients such as Audi and Warby Parker are finding him rather than the other way around. Dan became the fifth-highest-followed Chicago Instagrammer after his initial boost, propelling his platform even further. On one hand, this may seem like a random lucky break. But Dan has been committed to producing high-quality work for years, knowing that if something like this were to happen, he would be ready to capitalize on that luck.

Platform Options: Ways to Leverage Expertise

Unlike Julie and Dan, you may not want to build a platform on a foundation of ideas or creative expression. You might want to teach, interpret others’ data, or build software that replaces you altogether. Below is a wide range of high-leverage platform ideas to consider. Just for kicks, brainstorm three avenues you could pursue within each, no matter how far-fetched:

REVEL IN THE WORK OTHERS REJECT

After four years at her PR firm, Amy Schoenberger, who you met in the introduction, started feeling uninspired. She knew that it was time to make a change; however, she loved her company, the culture, and the people, and she did not want to leave. Amy ended up creating a new role for herself at the firm by finding opportunity in a strange place: by seeking out, taking on, and excelling at the work that no one else wanted to do.

In 2009, PR strategy recommendations increasingly included social media and blogger outreach. While many of her coworkers saw social media as annoying and beneath them, Amy decided to dig into the field. She learned everything she could, following the industry as it was evolving, and quickly became the firm’s in-house social media expert. Soon she was consulting with most of the firm’s clients. She parlayed this work into a new role as director of digital entertainment, a position she created from scratch by demonstrating the impact of her work on the organization.

While I was working on this book, Amy was approached by a former manager and mentor to join her at a new company. This opportunity developed because of her excellent results and reputation. Amy became vice president of social strategy at M Booth.

Amy’s advice is to follow a counterintuitive approach to opportunity. “If you don’t know what you want to do next and you are feeling stuck, do the work no one else wants to do,” she advises. “It may lead you to a surprising and rewarding answer about what you like, what you are good at, and where you can differentiate from everyone else in your industry, especially in a cluttered field.”

LEAPFROG: WORK BACKWARD FROM TWO MOVES AHEAD

If you are still having trouble culling opportunities or clarifying a project-based purpose that is aligned with your vision, consider the leapfrog approach.

Many people actually do have an idea of what they want two “moves” from now, even if they do not have a clear understanding of what they want in the moment. Imagine a frog hopping on lily pads. Oftentimes people can identify the lily pad that is two leaps away; they just can’t see the one right in front of them that should come next in order to reach their further goal. The leapfrog approach will help you scan for opportunity two moves out, then work backward to find a transitional in-between pivot.

When I applied to Google for a role on the AdWords training team in 2005, part of what attracted me to the position was that I knew deep down I wanted to be an author and professional speaker someday. At the time, public speaking was so nerve-racking that I wore turtlenecks when giving big presentations to cover the splotchy red marks that would show up on my neck and chest. I knew that taking a job where speaking in front of others was a daily requirement would serve as good immersion therapy—and it did. In this case, my desired role to be an author and professional speaker was two leaps ahead, and the job I took at Google helped me progress toward my longer-term lily pad.

Graduate school is another example of an intermediate pivot that narrows the gap between the current state and the desired leapfrog move, one that is two steps ahead. Although it does require a significant investment of time, money, and opportunity cost, graduate school can provide many benefits, including networking, skill building, time to explore in a structured environment, expertise in your desired field, and in some cases, required professional licenses.

Adam Chaloeicheep, who you met in the introduction, climbed up the ranks quickly as a creative director in a branding agency. But at twenty-six years old, he felt completely burned out. So he sold all his belongings and moved to Thailand to study in a Buddhist monastery, wiping the slate clean. When he returned home, Adam knew he wanted to expand beyond just graphic design. He envisioned himself in high-level brand strategy roles as a chief experience officer, or CXO, the translator between CEOs’ business goals and their product design teams.

However, Adam hit wall after wall when he applied for these types of jobs. Even when his résumé and pitch book made it to executives’ desks and he interviewed, no job offer materialized. This was a sign that he was shooting too far ahead of his experience, at least in terms of what was visible to others from his résumé and public-facing platform. The latter didn’t exist at the time, as he did not have a website or professional online presence beyond his LinkedIn profile.

In parallel to this search, Adam started exploring options for graduate school. He knew that he was a good graphic designer, but would never be “the best.” Adam asked himself, “How am I going to grow into something I want to be, in a CXO-type role, if I don’t feel completely confident in being able to apply those ideas to add value to companies?”

After debating whether to attend graduate school for a few years, Adam decided that it would indeed be his best next step. It would improve his business acumen, bolster his résumé and network, and buy time to pivot his own fledgling freelance business. Adam applied to Parsons Business of Design program, accepted a scholarship, and moved to New York City with just $5,000 of his savings remaining. Within one year, thanks to the structure, connections, and mentoring he received in graduate school, Adam started his own brand strategy firm, hired a team of fellow students, and quickly surpassed mid-six-figure revenue—all prior to graduation.

Adam made the business school trade-offs worth it by tying school projects directly to his business, experimenting in practice, not just in the classroom.

“It was hard to swallow moving all the way from California to New York with barely any money in the bank and taking on the expense of two years of tuition,” he said. “So I just told myself that if I am going to do this, I am going to do it so that I can apply things in the real world as soon as possible.” Throughout school, and in his wider life, he maintains an impacter mindset for experiments like these: “Care deeply, but have no expectations.”

Now Adam does serve as a chief experience officer, his vision two moves out, by running his own brand strategy company. Graduate school was the lever that enabled him to achieve his goal.

The leapfrog approach has three key benefits: it helps build transitional skills and experience, allows you to explore what you enjoy more deeply, and enables you to form key relationships in the area you want to pivot to, even before you have your following steps lined up.

LET OTHERS KNOW YOU ARE LOOKING

Until this point, much of the Pivot prep work is solitary—identifying your values, vision, strengths, interests, and allies. Although you identified people to connect with earlier in the Scan stage, you have not yet applied the full reach of your network’s resources.

Now it is time to clearly state what you are scanning for and how people you know can help. Even if people you contact do not have an open opportunity right away, they can put their feelers up in case something related to your desired direction surfaces.

Casey Pennington started to feel stuck two years after graduating college, despite having “done everything right her whole life.” She said, “I made straight A’s in school, got into a top business university, snagged an internship and subsequently a full-time offer from a large corporation. I thought I was set for life. Fast-forward two years and the thought of spending my entire career navigating bureaucracy and politics was causing me increasing dread each day. I knew something needed to change.”

Casey first identified what she wanted, the known variables of her one-year vision, as a work environment that provided learning, challenge, autonomy, flexibility, relationship building, and the time and money to have the life she wanted outside of her career. Working for herself was appealing, but Casey knew she was not ready to venture out on her own just yet. When she decided to pivot within her company from accounting to IT, she first let her managers know. Then she leaned on her strengths by transitioning to an accounting role on another team with an upcoming software implementation project.

She scanned further by talking to anyone she could find with experience in software development and learning as much as she could about current systems to prepare herself for a future role. When the first software project she landed was delayed, an unexpected opportunity came up to help on a related temporary assignment.

“Because I had laid the groundwork to let my managers know I was interested, they recommended me for the project and I got it,” Casey said. “I had been making my interest in moving to IT known for a while, even though this offer seemed to come out of the blue.”

I have heard many stories like Casey’s. Once people get clear on what type of opportunity they are looking for and make it known to their network, prospects materialize in surprising ways. Although they may not have actively sought out those exact opportunities, spreading the word generated momentum behind the scenes, even when they did not realize it was happening.

I call this the universe rolling out the red carpet. When you are heading in a direction that resonates, every step you take prompts another fortuitous rolling out in front of your feet. Each courageous move uncovers new people and opportunities, encouraging you to keep going and reminding you that you are on the right track.

When you are ready to put the word out, send an e-mail to your closest friends, family, and trusted professional contacts with the following sections:

Even if you do not know exactly what you are looking for, opening the process up to your trusted contacts can generate fruitful next steps. When Carlos Miceli made the difficult decision to step away from the three-year-old company he cofounded in Argentina, he sent an e-mail to his network with a Google Doc linked at the bottom called “Carlos’s State of Affairs,” which he described as a “private and more vulnerable LinkedIn profile.”

In the note, he expressed his knowns and unknowns. He stated what he was looking for, and how his network could help or collaborate with him. “This is looking like a bridge year for my long-term vision,” Carlos wrote. “I’m not worried about what the next big project will be, or if I should join someone else’s ‘rocket’ instead of launching my own—I am more interested in figuring out with whom, and where.”

The document outlined Carlos’s preferences and current ideas on potential directions for his next career move, skills he wanted to improve, content he was interested in, and ways his network could help. At the end of his e-mail, he also made it clear that he was happy to provide advice, ideas, connections, and resources in return.

Pivot Paradox: When the Grass Really Is Greener

“The grass is always greener on the other side.” Too often this is used as a phrase to keep people in line. “Don’t bother being upset! The grass is always greener!” The message is to settle, to be happy with what you’ve got. If you have a job, don’t bother looking elsewhere. Don’t listen to your gut; take it on blind faith that no matter what you do or where you go, you will always have this itchy, unsettled feeling. Let the wave of peeking through the fence come and go, then sit back down and stay put.

It is important to be present in our own lives, to be grateful for what we do have, and to understand that any next move will have drawbacks and rough days. We should resist chasing what is shiny or seems easy, or basing our happiness on impermanent things. Relationships, jobs, and daily life inevitably become challenging at times, but we find our most rewarding growth experiences on the other side of discomfort.

That said, there are times when the grass is greener! I once read a book about entrepreneurship that, at every chapter, seemed meant to deter me from actually leaving my job. This book provided a “realistic” view of how difficult it would be, and spoke at length about how many businesses fail. By the end, it was clear that the author’s advice would have been to ditch my greener grass fantasy and continue trucking along at my dependable corporate job.

But what the book did not account for is the invigorating feeling of giving it a shot. Of having all day, every day, to apply my best creative energy to my own business and success. I am glad I had a realistic view of the challenges I might experience over the first few years in business, but I am much more thankful that I did not take her advice.

The grass really is greener for me, based on my values and vision, on the other side. I still work with big technology companies, including Google; I just prefer to set my schedule and strategy for doing that. For me, any brown grass patches are worth it. Sure, I face challenges, but I am sitting on the right plot of land, and will continue improving my grass-growing abilities over time.

While your day-to-day experiences might vary, it is important to listen when your gut is telling you that there is a greener plot of grass that is a better fit than where you are now. Ultimately, you will not know until you gather more real-world data; don’t just spin out on speculation.

That is what the next Pivot stage, Pilot, helps you do: step on one patch of grass at a time to determine if, in fact, you like it any better. The more patches you test, the more indicative they will be of the whole.

However, a Pivot paradox caveat: these patch tests cannot capture the entire experience. To switch metaphors for a moment, it is akin to the difference between a piece of cake and an entire bakery: one piece of cake will give you an accurate assessment of how the whole cake tastes, but trying a piece of cake will not be a complete indicator of how everything else in the bakery tastes. One side hustle earning $200 each week will show you if you enjoy that side hustle, not what it is like to try to earn a living from it full time.

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Some people become dizzy during the Scan stage of a pivot because they are scanning without a plan, falling prey to too much searching and overthinking: What is out there? Who can I talk to? What is next? WHO AM I?!

If you find yourself aimless or frustrated while scanning, return to the Plant stage. Reconnect with your vision, values, strengths, and what is working. From there, determine what exploration would be a logical extension from those known variables.

Channel Sherlock Holmes: every conversation and piece of new information is a clue. How you react to what you are discovering is as important as what you are learning; notice how different options make you feel. It is likely that your Scan phase will be as much about eliminating solutions you do not like as it will be about picking up new ideas that you want to pursue.

Searching, scanning, and narrowing can only take you so far. How do you take smart action when you do land on several strong idea leads? If you are at a pivot fork in the road, which path should you pursue?

Scan: Online Resources

Visit PivotMethod.com/scan for additional tools, templates, and book recommendations for this stage.