206: I Don't Know

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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 podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Morning friends. I've taken a page today out of Valerie K. Martin's book. She's a Momentum member, longtime member, and amazing podcaster in her own right. She just launched a new podcast called Recharge with some cool and fancy punctuation. You'll find it if you search for Valerie K. Martin and her previous show, what's the Effing Point? Which I was a guest on. It was a lot of fun. She's been doing these daily walks and daily podcasts and I love that I hear her walking, I hear the birds chirping in the background. It's super cool. And I love that she is challenging herself to do a daily, she calls it mini muffin sized episode to give people some food for thought and something calming. And it's not meant to be advice actually. I just love her take on everything really, but especially not trying to tell people what to do, but just give them something to think about or something calming. So I'm here, I'm at a small park where we take Ryder every day. He has his little basketball, he's happy. You'll probably hear people, cars passing. It's Saturday morning in New York City and I thought, I've been thinking to myself, what on earth can I do my next solo show about? And I just kept thinking, I don't know, I don't know. So taking this meta for a minute, the topic of this episode is called I don't know. There's so much power to saying that, to admitting that, especially when the world is in chaos, and also to using that as a jumping off point, not as a dead end. Sometimes I think we stop, we say I don't know, I don't know what to do or I don't know what to talk about or what to write about or what to create in the world or how to serve. And we stop there. We think, well, that's a problem. I don't know, actually. I don't know is a doorway. It's a beginning. It's a start to the conversation. And we. The other thing I love about admitting it is it's a truth. A truth with a capital T is what is my truth today? I don't know. I don't know what to do. I don't know the right answer. I don't know how to solve this yet. I don't know what topic would be most helpful. You'll hear Valerie talk about this on two of her latest recent recharge episodes, her daily show. And we talked about this in momentum even earlier in the week, that what do you do when you don't know and you're not sure what to create? And yet if you pride yourself on being a creator or you're doing what Val and I are doing with this daily podcast challenge, there's something really fun about the challenge, the call to rise. And what I love about a challenge is that it does create parameters or brackets to say, even if you don't know, challenge yourself to figure it out. The times where I wasn't doing a daily podcast or even I didn't care if I hit the weekly target, I kind of let myself stop at, I don't know, I let it just be the barrier, in a sense, and then I didn't produce anything. Sometimes that's okay. Val's latest episode, one of them is called An UN Strategy for all you strategists. So I'm a big fan of going with the flow. And when you don't feel the energy or flow, it's okay not to create a obsessively. That's never been my mode. We are not machines. That would be really difficult if we were holding ourselves to this expectation of constant, unyielding creation or knowledge or thought leadership, or pretending that you always have the same amount of energy every day, every week, especially if you're in this for the long haul.

So what do you do when you don't know? And I'm going to touch on this from a content creation perspective, because that's the boat that I'm in right now, and a lot of people that I work with and that we have in momentum and maybe some of you listening to this podcast, but I encourage you to think about how these approaches might extend to whatever it is in your life right now that you feel and I don't know around. And by the way, I'm a big believer, of course, in intuition and that you don't know until you know. Sometimes you just need to let something settle. Or as Stephanie Houston would say, crock pot and simmer and to trust and surrender the process. To trust that one day you will know.

In terms of content creation, I like to have active listening opportunities throughout my website, my platform, my activities, my communities that I run.

A B F A B G F Always be getting feedback. That's one of my mottos. You maybe heard me talk about that on the rapid prototyping episode of the podcast. You can learn how to rapid prototype a course@pivotmethod.com RapidPrototype I've typed it all out. Always be getting feedback. ABGF in fact, the fact that I don't know what to talk about on this podcast in the month of May is a signal that I need to ask. And I am humbly and hereby asking all of you who are listening right now. I would be really grateful if you could go to pivotmethod.com survey and just tell me when do you listen to the podcast? Especially now because a bunch of you took the survey when it was still weekly and pre pandemic. I really genuinely want to know. It would be so helpful for me if you could go to pivotmethod.com survey and let me know when you listen or what you appreciate, what challenges or questions are on your mind and if I could create anything for you, if I could answer any question or riff on any topic or give you any behind the scenes take at something in my business, I would love to know what that looks like and it could be business related, career, creative projects, intuition, whatever challenges or uncertainties. If there's anything from those of you that have been listening thus far.

Can help point me in the right direction, that would be super helpful. So that survey, pivotmethod.com survey and me asking reaching out to you, asking you to take it, is a form of active listening. I call it active listening because that survey exists on my website all the time. So anytime you go to pivotmethod.com podcast or you see the links, the sub links to the podcast, you can always submit a question you've heard me mention pivotmethod.com ask and then sometimes I'll call out specifically to the survey, which is a little more detailed and in depth. Both of those are methods for me to always be listening. Oh, abl. That was my brief. That was my brief that I said in Momentum, ABL or abgf. Always be listening. Another thing that I do is when somebody joins Pivot List, I ask which of the four most common pivot paths are you a part of? So are you a career pivoter? You're looking to change careers within a company? Are you a solopreneur, Are you a manager? Or are you an hrvp, somebody running large scale programs? And maybe you're interested in licensing pivot for your organization? So rolling out pivot within your company, those are the four main types that tend to arrive at the pivot virtual doorstep. And, and so I also ask right away, when you join Pivot List, which of those four is most helpful to you, most relevant? I don't usually tailor the weekly pivot lists to any of those four archetypes per se, but if I'm launching or creating something, I know exactly who to let know once it's ready. So that's a more subtle way. And if you want the really behind the scenes, geeky Internet terminology, it's called tagging and segmenting. So I use kajabi for our email list and it means that if you click whichever of those four links you click on, I always redirect you to a surprise bonus. Because of course I'm not gonna ask you to do something for me and not give you some surprise little freebie. It's a template and each of the four links goes to a different template. And once you click on one of those links, I'm able to tag which of the four you clicked on. So I would tag as pivoter, solopreneur Manager or People Ops, People Operations. You would get the bonus. I would have this little tag now and then I can segment. So segment the list. Segment a newsletter if you want to join Pivot List. If you're not already receiving my weekly ish updates, you can go to pivotlist.com sorry, no, you'll go to pivotmethod.com pivotlist that's pivotmethod.com pivotlist although now that I said that out loud, I should just buy pivotlist.com I'm going to try to do that. If you happen to see that that URL works, means that after I recorded this, I successfully purchased that domain.

Another thing I do when I don't know and I want to do some research because what does it mean when you don't know? It's two Things. For me, it means either maybe you're not yet connected to your own intuition, because I think deep down we do know, or if we connect to our own experience. What is my truth today? What is a central challenge or question that I'm facing today? You can always tap into that and explore because at that moment in time, you have a front row seat to whatever that experience is. So, in fact, if you're able to dive into it a little bit, wrap your mind around it and ask others around you, and then have some small solution, it does ironically give you something to say or share about that thing that you're struggling with. Sometimes I call it patient zero. Or you have a front row seat to this experience. So what are you noticing? What's it like? What's it like not to know? What are you observing, connecting with your intuition, connecting with your own truth. And then sometimes it's a legitimate listening issue. I talk in pivot about grounded theory, the type of research that Brene Brown does where she looks at the data set first. She doesn't have assumptions or theories that she's trying to prove with her data. It's the opposite. She looks at the data she's collected and she pulls out common themes and then ideas and analysis that emerge from the data, from the ground up. So when I feel that I don't know what to say, what to create, what to share, it's a sign that I need to go back out into the world as well. Not just my own intuition and my own truth, but to ask all of you who are already here and say, what's out there? What are your challenges? What are your interests? What are you excited about? What are your dreams? What would be most helpful? And when I do that, just like Brene, just like grounded theory researchers, that.

Almost recharges my creation battery, because I do feel connected again to what the world needs and not the entire world. There's no way. I often feel guilty sometimes when I finish recording a podcast because of all the people that it wasn't for. So even to give you an example, on the recent podcast with mjc, I have so much fun recording with him and I was sharing even a really trivial concern about opening back up, like, oh, how will I go get a mani pedi? And now for two days I've had guilt. Like, oh, there are people who are working in hospitals and they're working so hard, and all the healthcare responders and the people driving the subways and what a petty, frivolous. How could I even say that out Loud, you know, But I was just trying to go through different scenarios of everyday life from the participant standpoint. But often in those moments I'll feel kind of guilty because I'll look at all the others who just. That's the most first world elite type of problem. And I kind of feel bad that I'm not addressing as directly what it's like for so many others during times like these when I feel that that's a signal for two things. I could address it and figure out how to speak to other slices and segments and. Or trust that I'm just providing one perspective and adding and elucidating, expanding one perspective in that there are so many others out there who are doing the same. I was honored to be on a podcast this week. It's not yet out for the restaurant industry. And you know, he's the expert. The host, Eric is the expert, not me, of course I don't run a restaurant. But you know, I was sharing what I've learned on the pivot front and then he was able to speak to it and how it relates to the restaurant industry. But I was so happy to at least be part a small part of that conversation and for restaurateurs and chefs and owners, just to provide my small piece of perspective to an industry that I care so much about. Not just the big chains, the smaller shops. Whether it's small casual dining or small fancy high end dining. Restaurants have been such a huge and important part of my life and especially here in New York City. I think going out to eat is one of my greatest joys in life with friends, to a nice restaurant or a new restaurant or new experience. We used to go every Friday and it was always something that I so looked forward to. How did I get on that tangent? Oh yeah, this is what happens when you record off the cuff at the park. I was talking about.

Either big guilt or I call it micro guilt of content and worrying about not serving every slice and every community and every type of person. That's natural. I try to keep moving. I always try to admit what I don't know and share what I can know and keep going. There is a I shared this in the recent conversation with Olivia that I published for her community, the Doubters, the Dunning Kruger effect. It's also in pivot that those who are actually more intelligent rate themselves as less intelligent. And then those who are less intelligent or have a lower iq, let's say by formal measures, tend to rate themselves as more intelligent. So the more intelligent and self aware you are the more you admit what you don't know, how much you don't know, and the more you would have a sort of beginner's mindset. So part of content creation is just saying I don't know and yet I'm still willing to have or start a conversation and give people something to bounce off of.

Think about how you could listen more to yourself. How could you have active listening for your own intuition and your truth of the moment? And what types of active listening could you build in to whatever it is you're creating and whatever communities that you are serving? How could you reach out and ask what they most need right now, how you can most be of service? If you go check out Valerie's Recharge podcast, she did this in a recent episode with her private Facebook group. This is why I created Momentum, so that we could do these brilliance barters for and with each other. You can learn more about that@pivotmethod.com momentum and that's why I'm asking you here and now. I'm publishing this episode to start a conversation to say I'm at an inflection point and I don't know moment and I would love to hear from you. The survey is pretty quick. If you just go to pivotmethod.com survey, not only can you take it and help me out, but maybe you'll get some ideas about a survey or types of questions that you could send out, even to friends and family. By the way, you don't have to already have a podcast or a book or a website in order to do this. You could email the people that you most care about or the people that you most feel called to serve and just ask for their take. So you can create a survey in Google forms pretty easily. Or Typeform is what I use. If you see it on the website, I'd love to hear what you think and I'd love to hear your methods for active listening and grounded research. With that, we now have picnickers arriving at the park and someone who's eating chicken or something yummy. Riders ears have perked all the way up, so I'm going to take that as our cue to leave. And let's see if you can hear Ryder panting. Say hi Ryder.

Now he's licking me. Okay, bye everybody. Hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.

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@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.