310: When the Career Grass Really is Greener — On Job Crafting with Rebecca Fraser-Thill

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Well, happy holidays, gifts, holiday decor, and more. The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way, Walgreens. It's all about coming back to what you're great at and double down on it. I find that so many of my clients are still trying to round out so many of their weak areas, the things that don't come naturally to them. And I ask why? Why? Why are you putting the energy there? The return on investment is going to be quite low when we're trying to improve the areas that we know are our weaknesses. If you've chosen a work path that relies on those weaknesses as the indicator of performance, well, hey, we may want to rethink that work path because that's going to be really frustrating.

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 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.

Welcome back Pivoters. I am so excited to be here today with Rebecca Fraser Thill. She's a Pivot Certified coach, one of our most in demand after a Business Insider article featured her coaching called I went to a career coach so you don't have to. It was a rude awakening. I just love the title that Shayna the reporter gave. She is the senior contributor at Forbes on meaningful Work, the owner of her own business, two years strong, Fraser Thill, Coaching and Consulting, based near Portland, Maine, and she taught psychology at Bates College for 18 years and led the design of the Purposeful Work program there. She holds a Master's in Developmental Psychology from Cornell and you can learn more about her and her work on our Pivot Coaches page. We'll put that in the link and RebeccaFT Rebecca, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much Jenny. I'm really happy to be here.

Another fun fact that I did not read in your bio is that you were my very first bold experiment with life after college. To have a coach other than me. After the book came out and I realized I was the bottleneck in my business, I thought I can't be the only coach here. But we have so much great demand coming in from the book and from speaking engagements that I was doing and you took a chance on me and vice versa and we partnered to to see if it would even be possible to have someone else working as a coach in the business. And I just have to say thank you for sticking with me all this time. It's been over a decade now and just working our pivot paths together but really having your support throughout every iteration of life after college that became pivot and everything since. So thank you for being such a brave explorer with me.

Well, likewise. Like you said, we took chances on each other and what a joy to have been a part of the life after college coaching team which was the two of us way back when. It's amazing to think you have worked.

With so many clients and I know because I see the back end of pivot coaching and I see how many people reach out, how many people ask for you, how many enroll for coaching with you. What do you think it is about that Business Insider article? And again listeners, I'll put it in the show notes. What is it about this article that has just been such a boon for you as a coach? Like, what do people most ask you about once you do get started with them?

It's such an interesting because that article was a long time ago. It came out when my son, who's now 7, was just a baby in arms and so quite a while back. And I'm always amazed by the way it has continued to resonate with people. And I think what it is is that the reporter, Shauna, she really did an amazing job of going in with a slant that I didn't know she was going in with. Of course, do we really need coaching? Like, is career coaching really a thing? Is that necessary? And she really was thinking that this was something that wasn't going to be valuable for her. Again, I had no idea when I was coaching her that was her slant. But the article does a very luckily a good job of saying actually coaching is invaluable. And so I think that really resonates with people because we're all a bit of skeptics, right? I think there's some healthy skepticism around what is coaching and how would it actually improve my life. I know I certainly always felt that way before I actually worked with you, Jenny, as my coach. I always thought this seems like something A little bit silly and wow. It's absolutely not. It's so transformational and I think that's what resonates with the Business Insider article.

And it's interesting. Now, of course, the trends. It's much more common to even talk about having a coach than it was 10 years ago. And there's apps advertising like BetterHelp and Talkspace, these different kind of socializing the idea of therapy and coaching adjacent service. I would say it is amazing how sometimes I'll even think to myself, no, I don't need a coach. And then as soon as I hire one I go, they really are prompting me and giving feedback in a way that I was not seeing for myself or just holding the space and accountability to keep working on the questions because someone's waiting for me to get back to them. And I do find that relationship to be so beneficial even when it seems like I don't need coaching. And that's me being a coach and knowing what it is.

It's so true. Because as much as we interact with many people in our lives, that relationship that we get in coaching isn't really operating in any other relationship in our lives. Even wonderful supportive friends don't hold a coaching space for us. So like you said, the accountability in particular, it would be really weird if a friend was checking in all the time saying did you actually get this done? Or what can I do to be there to support you in this process? So it's a unique relationship and invaluable as a result.

You're somebody who has always had a passion for helping people discover meaningful work, find purpose in their work. And the idea that I'm curious to unpack with you today is something that I share in a pivot paradox sidebar in the book where I say sometimes the grass really is greener, that every now and then it you make a big move, you pivot and the container of that move is in fact a better fit for personalities. So the example I give is that being self employed does feel like a better macro container, even though I'm going to have ups and downs within that. You have worked. I mean in your time as a professor you had hundreds if not thousands of students. As a one on one coach, you've worked with so many people every year. How do you help people discern when the grass really is greener and they should pivot and make bigger moves versus starting right where they are and doing something that is called in the industry job crafting that? I know you've done a lot of work with where you're just helping them get a new perspective on the work that they already have.

Oh, it's a great question. And it is, it's all about discernment, that word that you use there. And it comes down to your plant stage. In the pivot process, it's recognizing. So in that plan stage, you're really thinking about who is this individual and how does it match with the environment that they've set up. So in my coaching process, I spend a lot of time talking about work relevant values and preferred skills that they want to be using, growth skills they want to be gaining, and also personality matches and also this thing that I call desired impact, which is all about your purpose that you want to be happening in your workplace. And sometimes we can look at those and say, hey, this isn't that far off. Once we've created that picture, that plant stage, we're like, this needs some tweaks, right? Like, you're really close when I'll say that to clients, like, does this feel very far off from the industry you're in? Oh, but maybe the particular setting. So they need to make a job change, but not an industry change. Or like you said, it might be a larger container mismatch where we're able to say, wow, no wonder you're feeling exhausted, depleted, disillusioned, you're literally swimming upstream every single day in your work. All right, we need to make a bigger change here. So I find that I can't support the discernment until we've articulated all those key elements of the plant stage so that then we can together look at that up against their current situation and make a determination of what is this. And also to note that you don't necessarily have to determine one or the other and say, that's the end all, be all. You can pilot the job crafting within your existing role and see how that feels. Wall networking and getting yourself set up for a larger shift so you can do double duty and actually test out. Is this really not fitting me? Is there no way to make this fit me? And then you'll feel like, okay, I did my bucket list, I can move on. Which is exactly what I did in leaving academia. I bucket listed it and was able to move on without any regret.

What do you mean by bucket list? Because this was a really big move of yours, leaving the safety and security of your job as a professor. And I would imagine the identity of, of that feeling really proud to say that you're a professor, that's a big leap to leave to start your own business. So what do you mean when you say you bucket listed it?

It's a huge change. It was huge. Because when you really think about it, those of us who work in the academic field, that's been our entire lives because right, we all go to school, many of us go to college and then many of us who are in academia, we continued right on till grad school. So I never had an identity of myself as anything but an academic, literally. And that's a really strange thing to think. That is your entire identity. And so every year I was on a year to year contract in my teaching role and every year for nearly those entire 18 years, I'd think next year's the year I'm going to leave and I'd renew for 18 years. And it was because exactly that I was afraid to lose that identity. And what would it mean? I didn't want to have a vacuum of entering into, having no sense of workplace identity or work relevant identity. So I wanted to build that on the side, which I spent a good decade doing through my coaching and my writing. But also that bucket list aspect is where I said, can I really craft this to be a better fit? Let me take every tactic I know to make the most of this opportunity. Because in many ways it was a wonderful opportunity and I'm really grateful that I had it. I loved working with my students. It wasn't too far from home. I could live in Maine, which I absolutely adore this state and it was supporting my family. So in so many ways I felt like this isn't awful, but it's not right? So I literally like made a bucket list of what do I need to try here in my role to be able to walk away and say I tried everything to make that optimal fit for me and to be as impactful as possible. And I feel like I can walk away free and clear. And that's what I did. And it took me many years to work through the list and get to that point where I'm like, I'm done. I actually had the I'm done moment when I thought I completed my list. Time to walk away.

What were some of the items on that list?

So I wanted to change around some of my classes, the way I taught classes, especially my upper level, like small seminar classes where you're sitting with students having amazing discussions. I moved over the years from doing a very traditional approach that was very, very like focused on research articles and was really boring, honestly to me and I think to the students and starting to weave in more lived experiences and valuing people's narratives and weaving in more community engagement where we would go out. For instance, the students would spend time in nursing homes and assisted living facilities to get to know older adults instead of just us sitting around talking about older adults, for instance, and then working on their narratives. So I changed my classes to be like, let's make this as meaningful as possible to me as the faculty member, because maybe that'll resonate not only more with me, but feel more impactful for my students as well. And we really max that out. That was my biggest piece on my list. But I also wanted to try out administration and building programming and seeing if doing larger scale work would be fulfilling to me. Turns out, nope, that is not the work that fulfills me. Scale. I prefer small scale. I get a lot of fulfillment out of seeing one person make change rather than feeling like I'm impacting an entire campus but not getting to see and observe any of that. So those were a couple of the areas that I really maxed out and tried out to their fullest and felt like, yep, okay, did that. Now I know.

And then you described a moment when you just knew what was that moment?

Yeah. Oh, it was so powerful because it's so rare that we know a moment when we're having it. Right. It's often in retrospect that we're like, oh, that was the moment. But I knew in the moment. So what it was. There was a course that I designed that even as I was designing it. We have a five week session at the end of the school year in beautiful, glorious springtime here in Maine. And it's a really unique time because students only take one class. And so I had the opportunity to design something for that. I'd done it many times, but I created a course all about composing a life is what I called it. And it was about narratives, meaning, purpose, and how we construct those over the lifespan. And as I was designing it, I would say to students, oh, you've got to watch out for my course. This is the course I was born to teach. And I made that course everything I ever wanted it to, to be, to the hilt. And worked really closely with an assisted living facility nearby so that my students could really be doing that hands on work with older adults and creating meaningful relationships with them. The students came up with the idea of having a culminating event in that center, in that facility to wrap everything up. And the event was just so powerful. It was all these older adults who had gotten to know these students really well. Even in a short period of time who had shared their life narratives with these students. And we sang songs that they loved from their childhoods and teen years. And one of my students brought their guitar and was just like riffing and it was just incredible. It was everything you could ever want. And I walked out of that building and I thought, I'm complete, I'm done. I'll never be able to recreate that experience. And ironically that was the last time we had that five week session before the pandemic hit. So no, I would not have been able to recreate that experience because obviously we can't have those interactions with older adults in the same way. And I didn't know that at the time, of course, but I just felt like I'm complete.

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Talk about divine timing because you're right, you wouldn't be able to teach that now. And it's so interesting to hear you say the moment that you knew was actually a peak experience and a peak accomplishment, a sense of being complete. It wasn't. Something so bad happened and you were at your wit's end. And then the final straw. It was a sense of completion like you described, of making that bucket list in advance and then having such an incredible class and with your students co developing it that it sounds like you could walk away knowing exactly as you guided us, that you had given it everything you could.

Yes, absolutely. And there can be that flip side too where when we're crafting, doing the bucket list that some of it won't play out to the peak. Right? You're all into it. And I had those experiences too where you put your all in and say not the way I expected this to End. Right. I didn't think this would come of it. Which is also valuable data. Like, instead of judging the quality of it, like, oh, this worked out, or this didn't. Just like, that's great data for me, that maybe I'm complete with this stage of my life. And that's what I encourage my clients to do, too. One of my clients said he counseled his partner when she was feeling really frustrated at a conference that she was attending. Like Rebecca would say, this is data. So what are you going to make of this data? And it's either good or bad. It's all information we can use to make decisions.

Yeah. Another variable that comes into play at these big pivot points is confidence. In your case, you are going to go out on your own for the first time. Having come from this academic environment, and I've talked a lot ad nauseam, people are sick of hearing my story. But to make a long story short, I did not feel confident in my skills as an entrepreneur when I left my corporate job to start my own business. Confidence, it was not quite there. I was just willing to try and I was willing to fail. And I'm curious what your relationship was to confidence. Were you feeling good? Were you feeling like, I know I can do this, or was it a little bit on shakier ground? I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm just genuinely curious.

It's a great question. In some ways, I think there was overconfidence. I thought I knew more than I did. Which is some of the fascinating journey of being an entrepreneur is I'd been an entrepreneur on the side for a long while. I'd been freelance writing since grad school and making some income on that and then coaching for nearly a decade. So I felt like how to do this. And I'd been turning away clients because of my teaching load. I couldn't keep up with the number of inquiries. So I felt like if I stopped saying no, this should be easy. So in some ways, I was a little too confident. Not that because it's been hard, but because the reality of entrepreneurship is that you have variable cash flow from month to month, which any entrepreneur would be like, yes, obviously. But I hadn't paid attention to that when it was just my side income because I had the steady salary. And so whatever was coming in on the side, it was like, great, this is wonderful. But when it becomes your income, you notice every fluctuation, even if it's a mild one. So if it's a month, that's A little bit lower, I'd be like, oh, what is this? What's going on? And working through the process of not catastrophizing that to say this is going to be all the months to come and being able to just sit with, oh, there's ebbs and flows and some months are wonderful and some are going to be less so. So I think in some ways I was confident in a way that was not realistic, if you will.

I find that to be the number one skill that at least I've developed as an entrepreneur is just that, just sitting with the uncertainty and the rollercoaster of when it's really good, when it's really bad, everything in between and never quite knowing what it's going to be. So thank you for sharing.

Yes.

First of all, you're starting at a very turbulent times, so I think that takes a lot of courage and that's a bold move to start in such a rocky economy. It's also interesting that in your second year, I'm wondering, you said maybe in some ways you didn't know what you didn't know what is different in year two of running your business in terms of maybe known unknowns now that weren't present in year one?

Yes, great question. So part of it too is, you know, I left Bates in summer of 2021. That's when I left my teaching role and gave notice well before that. But that's when I officially ended. And at that point we were still in the moment of the pandemic where it was great resignation moment. Right. Everyone was like, hey, I'm going to reconsider what I'm doing and I'm willing to take sabbaticals, plan sabbaticals. And there was a lot of energy. So. And that feels very different than now, right, where we're now going, oh, there's a lot of layoffs happening and the economy shifting majorly. And I think I know more about paying attention to the macro economy and even within industries. I work with a lot of clients in finance and tech and those two areas are having a hard time right now. And so I've learned to pay more attention to what's going on on a more macro level. I think I used to focus more on particular clients, if you will, very small. And being in academia, I didn't have to really look at the macro environment. So that's been a big shift and also just changing into, I'm not just a service provider, I'm a business owner. And what does that mean to be a very different role. And that's that identity shift that you mentioned, Jenny. I feel like it took me a full year to start to make that change in identity. And that first academic year was just me kind of licking wounds of exhaustion from 18 years of the academic pace and saying, who am I now? And now this academic year is more me going like, okay, I know who I am now. What does it mean to live into who I am as a worker?

And what are the shifts that you're making in terms of thinking about yourself first as a service provider and now as a business owner? What are you doing that's different? Or at least what are you thinking about that's different?

Yeah, great question. I'm. I'm definitely being more proactive and thinking ahead. So for instance, I have my pivot certification, which is wonderful. And there's this other coaching certification you can get or credential you can get that's through the icf, the International Coaching Federation. So it's a credential that is widely known. And I know I've never wanted to really get that. I felt like, okay, I have great coaching skills and I've developed them very far. Combine it with my psychology background and it works quite well, which is absolutely true. And as a business owner, I'm very much thinking about streams of income in a different way than I used to. Service provider. I was just like a coach. I have the skills, I have the social proof. I am all set. But now I'm like, okay, the economy can shift. If your whole, if all your revenue is on individual coaching or group coaching, that can be dangerous, especially if a lot of them are in sectors that might struggle at times. So having an additional credential would open up opportunities to work for other organizations or even be a part time internal coach for a particular organization. So I'm thinking differently in terms of streams of income, which I know you've modeled beautifully over time, Jenny. And I, as the side hustler, didn't need to think about in the same way as I do as the business owner in a full time capacity.

And I love what you're describing of optionality just getting a certain certification. And it's true. So many people think they're entirely on their own in their business and if they struggle with getting clients. You and I both have seen so many people do really well partnering with other organizations or people that are out there who have more clients than they can handle. And there are so many partner style relationships that can happen within the scope of your own business. So yeah, it's awesome that you're doing that and thinking about it in that way.

Thank you. Yes, it is. It's definitely thinking about, oh, there's lots of different ways to do this. Anything I'm crafting be working for myself so that I don't have to work for somebody else in any kind of full time capacity. I'd prefer lots of contract work and partnerships and there's many ways to make this work as the economy shifts and that's my goal.

So it sounds like the grass really is greener for you in self employment, at least now at this stage in your life as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. I think there was a time that I would have questioned it if I hadn't fully tried everything out at Bates College. I think I would always have this lingering, maybe there was more I could have done to make that feel better or feel more impactful or satisfying. And I think if I had really left. I tried to leave once, I always thought about it year to year, but I actually tried to leave and took a year off to write full time and I went running back. And that was around, I think, when I'd been teaching for about nine years or so, maybe 10 years, and I went running back and it was largely because I had some questions of things I hadn't fully tried out. And that's when I really came up with the idea of if I'm going to leave, I need that bucket list and I need to work through it and then I'll feel complete. And man, that worked.

I would never tell someone what's possible or not, but I would also imagine that trying to do it as a full time writer would be really tough. And it just sounds like it's getting tougher and tougher unless you go the route nowadays of substack paid subscriptions, things like that.

Oh yeah, no, I wouldn't go for the full time writing as the option. That was before I had coaching going. And it also made me open up to say, all right, what other streams? How else can I build a marketable skill set so that I can be independent? And you know, as someone who's a parent of two children too, I think the advice I would give to them as they grow up is find a marketable skill that you can do within organizations, but that you can also offer on your own. Because that piece has been really important for me in pivoting out of academia and I see it for a lot of my clients too. It just again, offers options so that you can make choices.

It's also interesting how Those marketable skills in some ways narrow. I'm finding the farther I get in my career, it's almost like the fewer skills I have because I've doubled down on some quite heavily. And then it just inherently means that I'm not pursuing others. And unless I was really into something like learning to code, I would just hire someone who had that skillset now. And so I find it a very strange relationship over time of like, what are those marketable skills? And it's not that you can never learn new ones, but developing expertise in any one or two areas. And there's both subject matter expertise, but then the skills behind it, like, you know, maybe develop the pivot IP and then the skill is facilitating an interactive keynote or something. But it's interesting just seeing those choices. Sort of like the grooves get deeper of the few skills at the expense of the many.

Absolutely. And it comes back to what you write about and pivot too. Like, it's all about coming back to what you're great at and double down on it. I find that so many of my clients are still trying to round out so many of their weak areas, the things that don't come naturally to them. And I ask why, why? Why are you putting the energy there? The return on investment's going to be quite low when we're trying to improve the areas that we know are our weaknesses. If you've chosen a work path that relies on those weaknesses as the indicator of performance, well, a, we may want to rethink that work path because that's going to be really frustrating. But, yeah, you've set yourself up for some real challenge, and not in the ways that we love to be challenged as humans, but in the ways that are going to be problematic. So if we can identify, here's what I'm doing really well, here's what in fact comes so naturally to me that I just take it for granted. That's what I always find fascinating. My clients usually undersell the things that come most naturally to them or that they're commented. People comment on all the time because they're like, well, obviously I can do that. I'm like, exactly. Obviously you can do that. Right. That's exactly why we need to dull down there. And that's for me, the coaching skill. That's what I was doing in all of my classes and my advising and sitting with students. I was honing that skill all the time. And I didn't even realize it was a skill because people would just say, oh, she's so wonderful at supporting and helping you figure out where you're going with your class or with your life. And I was like, obviously, doesn't everyone do that? No, everyone does not do that. And that's the key takeaway that I finally clued into. And you do a nice job emphasizing that, Jenny.

Well, that's such an interesting point that you make, that sometimes it is our biggest strengths that are the most invisible to us. And I've had that experience, too. And it's not until someone else says, you're so good at that, or, how do you do that? And I think to myself, this is exactly as you described. Sometimes I'll think to myself, well, this is obvious. Everybody must do it like that. Or sometimes I'll even think, what do I know? I can't possibly have figured this out better than the real experts. But then I'll see what the, quote, real experts are doing. And I go, that's so outdated. You know, like a certain system or a certain way, a template, a process. And it's only when I either get the feedback from others or I actually see what someone's doing behind the scenes. And I go, oh, I guess I have figured something out. And I was just too close to it to, like, admit that or own it or have any sort of confidence around it.

Absolutely. I find that a lot of my work with clients is helping them actually hear that positive feedback because we hear the negative, right? One person says, one criticism. I had a client recently who was like, this one thing that one person said, somebody that I didn't even respect has hung with me for 10 years. And you're like, wow, that was one comment. And then you can get a barrage of comments that are positive, all pointing to the same thing. And we tend, not us humans, I mean, there's reasons for this from human psychology, but we tend not to hang on to it or hear it. We just downplay it, which is fascinating. And if you can actually notice the pattern there, there's the superpower right there.

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There was a lot of talk in the media the last few years. I think they've been talked into the ground, honestly. But things like the great resignation and then there was. What do people call it? It was like the great regret of then everyone going back to their job and then quiet quitting and just all these trends. I think the media has had a lot of fun just, you know, riding a viral moniker like one of these.

And drilling it into the ground. I'm wondering what themes you've seen from actually being on the phone or on zooms with people one on one, Are you noticing trends? Especially as we round the corner and we're now kicking off, what is year three of these last few years of craziness? What are you seeing? Has anything changed from pre pandemic times in what you're seeing with people?

Great question. And honestly, no. I mean people say, oh, now people need fulfillment and impact at work. I'm like, no, I've been seeing that all along. This is not new. That is a human need. The extent to which we are willing to say that we need it and want it, that shifts over time. So how much culture is supporting it. But the fun thing about coaching is that I get to hear behind closed doors what people are actually thinking, right? And they usually do whisper things like I just want something that feels meaningful. Like how interesting that that's whispered for a long time. The last two years people don't whisper that as much. They say it with a full voice. So that's what I find. The difference is not that people's desires and needs have shifted, but just willingness to say it. And now as the economy gets worse again, there's a little more like hiding it and saying, well, I should just care about the paycheck or stability the should start coming in, but the underlying needs and wants I have found to be remarkably consistent over the time. Not only when I've been coaching, but working with students as well and having those closed door conversations around. What would it really look like to build a good life? It's the same stuff. It's just how much we're saying it out loud, I think is what varies. Right?

It's like people talk about the overton window of politics and we can have an overton window of career of what's acceptable to say and admit. And it's even the way burnout entered the conversation. It wasn't part of the conversation and now it's kind of front and center. And I guess the good thing about some of these trends in the career space is that it gives us language to either agree or push against or at least say out loud. And I think maybe that's why people glom on to something like quiet quitting or whatever's gonna be next. I'm sure there'll be yet another one by the time this comes out. But I don't recall ever hearing quite so much chit chat about career prior to the pandemic. Like things were happening and people had thoughts and even though I was in the space, there was just less newsworthy elements to it. The way that I hear now of at least people trying to grasp these trends and themes and understand what's happening. And I just saw a statistic on the small business front that there was actually a surge a couple percentage point increase number of small businesses. So it does seem like you're not alone in your choice to pivot into self employment, that a good handful of people took this time period to do the same.

Absolutely. I think that is absolutely accurate. And it is. It's just what's acceptable in a society. And it's fun for me. I've always cared about these questions around career because we spend so much time working. Inevitably, even if we try to minimize how much time we work, it's still a good amount of time. And it's been fun to see that conversation had in a bigger forum so that people are like talking about what I've been wanting to talk about for decades now. I'm like, this is just great. Which is why I timed my departure from academia when I did, because I felt like if there's ever a time that's ripe for diving into this bully, it's while everyone else is interested in your case.

I mean, starting a family, having kids is such a massive life change. Pivot in its own right into parenthood. Has that changed how you think about your career at all? Or does it just give you even more motivation to stay connected to your most meaningful work because it means that trade off of taking time away from your kids.

It completely changed it, I'd say completely. The day we're recording this is the day my daughter's 12th birthday. So funny timing because I'm reflecting, she's my oldest. And reflecting on those changes, very much so right now. And thinking about who I was 12 years ago yesterday versus 12 years ago today. And it changed my, I wouldn't say necessarily ambition, but the ways in which I viewed workplace success or career success. And I used to have a view that was very naturally. I mean, it's all developmental. As a developmentalist, I find it fascinating, but that natural shift from very individualistic kind of striving that I felt for a long time and that an academic setting can definitely encourage. Right. You're just driving as yourself to one that was more thinking holistically about my family unit and the community I live in and moving beyond my sense of individualistic striving. And so that it really was hard actually at first, because again, that's a major identity shift. And that's ironically or not coincidentally, maybe right after my daughter was born is when I started blogging. Right. Like that was a thing I started blogging and then the blogging turned into coaching opportunities. So I felt something shifting in me, clearly around that time to be like, I need to be somebody different in my relation to work. And then thank goodness I did all that because then the pandemic completely sped it all up. And being present for my children is my number one goal. So being able to pick my son up from school every day is my greatest perk of being a full time business owner. I'm so much more present than I ever could have been in my previous role. And if my money goes down, I'm like, I know what I'm getting in return. And it's seeing him run at me at the end of the day. And there is just nothing like that. Yeah, that's what it comes down to.

That's so sweet.

I love that.

I'm just picturing it now. That's just amazing. And such visceral reinforcement of why you're running your business, why those ups and downs are worth it. And that freedom that you described, the freedom to make that, that choice, like if you are turning any clients away, you know exactly what it's for and you have the choice to do that. I think that's what I find so empowering about it.

It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Even in an academic world where as a faculty member, people are like, oh, you have so much flexibility. It is flexible compared to a corporate environment. And you're on a lot. And thankfully, my daughter is 12. She doesn't really remember me coming home in the dark every single day and not being around and. And she's like, what? That all happened? I'm like, yes, that really did. She somehow wipes some of that from her memory to be around and to make the choices. It's worth all of it. It's worth all the new stressors and challenges and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So give us as we start to wrap up, what is one of your go to coaching exercises? So if listeners do one little piece of homework, what's something that you just love to assign to that's fruitful for your clients?

Yeah, I say if you haven't done a work relevant values inventory in some way, shape or form, you're absolutely missing out on the foundational piece that will help you make decisions about your day to day work, even if it's not making a job change or an industry change or anything large. And the best way to do that in my opinion is just find a list of values anywhere online. There's tons of different values list or just generate some on your own. But what matters to me in relation to work, and I say in relation to or relevant to work because for me, like I was just talking about time with my kids, that is not about my work, but it's certainly related to my work. It has implications for my work and what I'm going to choose. And the most important thing is not just recognizing our values, which many of us have done, or we can spout them off. It's the hard part, which I always push my clients to do, which is prioritizing them. Push comes to shove, what's number one, what's number two? And if you had to give up one, you need to know. And the best way to do that in my opinion is physically moving them around. So putting like the values that resonate the most on little scraps of paper or index cards. If you've got them lying around and every day put them in order, sit them down and come back a day later. Look at that order. Does it fit you? Your mood might affect it. So you might move the prioritization a bit on your values and keep coming back to that stack until you've gone through three or four days where you haven't moved the order at all. And that can help you make decisions. It's so easy for me to say no to meetings and no to any questions that come my way of opportunities if they're going to conflict with time with my family. And I don't even Think about it. It's not a conflict for me anymore. It's not something wrenching because I'm like, yep, that's number one value. So I can say no and not feel badly, but if I didn't have it so well sketched out, I might really wrangle with it. And I see a lot of my clients doing that. So that's the key.

I love it. What a great reminder. I also really like the Agile Development Manifesto and they talk about even overstatements. So you might have two things you think are important, but what is the priority? Even over. And you know, they talk about like getting early customer feedback even over the product being perfect or things like that where you are making those tough choices. And I love what you just described, which is taking it one step further. Once you have these core values. Tim Ferriss has talked about this. Sometimes creating a blanket rule as a result is really helpful because then it enables you to enact those values. So I never take client calls when I could be picking my son up from school or like, you know, something like that where it's a blanket. No, you don't have to decide. Every single time it aligns with your values, you create this blanket rule around it and that's how you then have an easier time putting it into practice.

Absolutely. And I find that so many of my clients are very introspective people. When they come to me, they're all like, oh yeah, I know what my values are. But 201, I haven't met one who actually did the hard process of prioritizing them. We just, that's so difficult that we just are like, do I have to? Yes. Because that's where your day to day decision making is causing you stress. So yes, you have to. And when you get that nailed in, it makes everything so much easier I find.

Where can people find you if they want to learn more, keep in touch and potentially even reach out for coaching.

Absolutely. So certainly I'm a pivot coach. So I'm on the Pivot website and I love doing that. I also have my website rebeccaft.com and the place I tend to post is on LinkedIn. I'm the only person with this hyphenated freezer Thill name. So it's easy to find me there and follow me there.

Amazing. And I'll put all these links in the show notes. You can learn more about Pivot coaching@pivotmethod.com coaching Rebecca will take you straight to be able to schedule an intro call with Rebecca if you want some guidance in the year ahead. Rebecca, this was so fun. Thank you for being here with us.

It is an absolute joy.

Likewise.

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 and@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

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

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