341: Pivoting from Prestigious Consulting Jobs to the Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

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Oftentimes I think people are probably adjusting too much to oh, I can't do that. Oh, I'm not wired like that. It's still confusing. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I don't think it ever goes away. The benefit of this path being on a pathless path is that you have to grapple with your fears and insecurities on the default path. You actually don't have to, because everyone silently agrees just to never talk about them.

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.

Welcome back Pivoters. Jenny Blake here with a very special guest. I'm absolutely delighted to have Paul Millard here with us. Paul is an independent writer, freelancer, coach and digital creator. He is the author of the Pathless Imagining A New Story for Work and Life where he explores the invisible scripts that constrain our lives. He's also the host of the Pathless Path podcast where he talks to the most interesting people on unconventional paths. And we had such a fun conversation for free time about his choice to turn down a $200,000 two book traditional publishing deal that you can go listen to that in episode 205. He's written very candidly online. He published a whole tweet storm about it. That's an incredible pathless path story of its own. But, but afterward I said, Paul, we gotta get you on Pivot because there's just so much alignment. And so with that, Paul, welcome to the show.

Excited to be here, Jenny. It's been so good to get to know you and learn more about your story as well.

Likewise. And I know we gave a shout out to Aldea before, but I have to thank Al for so many fun friend connections. And this is another one where once we finally Meet. It's as if like a fold of time and space has collapsed on itself. You know, like, it's great that our winding paths have connected at this moment. One of the things that I really, it jumped off the page when I was reading your book, which I really enjoyed tremendously. It came at the perfect time for me being mid pivot in progress myself. You say that embracing the pathless path requires grappling with the feeling of being a bad egg. And I can relate to that. So I'm just so curious what you meant when you wrote that. What did that mean to you at the. That feeling of being a bad egg? And does that still ever show up for you from time to time?

This is something I felt powerfully in my first year after quitting my job, but didn't have the language for. It's actually an idea from Ben Hunt where he writes about the industrially necessary egg. And he wrote this whole essay around basically the second half of the 20th century. We had this industrial explosion all over the world. And as part of that there was this centralization and progress built upon full time jobs, industrial companies, large mass scale employment. And what does that system need? It needs the industrially necessary egg. That system optimizes around clean eggs that can be stored, that can be shipped, that can be presented beautifully in a supermarket. But as Ben writes, he's a farmer and he knows that the best eggs are actually dirty, weirdly shaped, and they're usually laid in someone's backyard, right? And they're more delicious. But that is a quote unquote bad egg. Many people think that that's a bad egg, right? They look at it and it's dirty and they say, ooh, we can't eat that. And if you take this over to employment, the industrially necessary job is somebody that does their duty, that does full time employment, that participates in the large scale industrial economy. So when I left employment, I was sort of shocked that people had a negative reaction to what I was doing. I think especially in New England, there's just less of a strain of entrepreneurship as there is in the west coast of the US and it didn't even matter what I was up to. Like I was trying to freelance, basically just trying to experiment. But to many people, oh, you're not going to work? Are you unemployed? What's your goal here? And I sort of saw this resentment toward me, like, you shouldn't be able to do this. And it basically drove that feeling of, what the heck, why are people so negative toward what I'm doing. Why do I feel so bad? Bad? And those feelings really drove a lot of my curiosity and exploration over the next five years leading to the book.

You mentioned how people kind of, there's this sense that we're not allowed to do that or that's crazy. You know, we hear that a lot. I also find that when I experience really big or dramatic challenges in my business, the first answer that so many people say is well, can you go get a job? So it's like the good egg mode persists. I'm now 12 plus years in. No matter how long. It's still not only the default path, but the default question to someone going on the pathless path is like, well, how quickly could you just get back to the path if you're experiencing a challenge?

It's become such a strong pull. Like we've almost lost memory of the fact that this is not a normal way. We've set up human society for like 99% of our history. This whole building our lives around full time jobs is a 75 year old phenomenon. Like knowledge work was only starting to become a thing like sort of working in businesses, desk office jobs after World War II. Right. 150 years ago most people were farmers. Right. Or working in agriculture. Maybe it's a little farther back than that, but you get the point. And 200 years ago certainly people weren't like looking for a full time job with benefits. It was like, what can I do to meet my needs? And most of us have grandparents who were basically just hacking a living doing exactly what we're doing now. But then so many people became employed in society that we started to see the whole point of adulthood as becoming employed. Andre Gores wrote at the end of the 1990s in his book the Wage Based Society. People deem membership in society as participation in formal employment. So to not participate in formal employment is not to participate in society. And I think a lot of what I wanted to do with my book is just sort of point these things out. I don't have a strong take. I think working in a full time job is great for many people, but a lot of people don't feel good in full time employment and they feel bad wanting to do something else. And I wanted to show people here's why you might be feeling these things.

One of the things you describe first, you call it the achievement narrative that you and I both participated in or had unconsciously in our 20s. And one of the beautiful things about your book is that you were a slow burn and you say that you say that this didn't happen overnight. You didn't suddenly reject the achievement narrative overnight. It took time. It was one methodical kind of guess of a step after the next. One of the challenges of you call it the trap of prestigious career paths is that instead of thinking about what you want to do with your life, you default to the options most admired by your peers. And I had never really seen anybody put words to it in that way that not only are we at times caught up in an achievement narrative and going for prestige, but it gets confusing because what our peers or family or anybody, society, the public, the media, rewards that kind of feels good to be admired and respected by other people. So I'd love to hear when your aha moment was around this, like, oh, I'm defaulting to what my peers admire, not me. And then does it show up for you? Now, as a creator, do you ever find that you a little bit start to sway or default to the options admired or living with that other creatives have, and you have to go, wait, wait, that's not me.

Yeah, this comparison trap is really hard. I think it's worth taking a step back and thinking about just employment in general. I mean, many of us have parents or previous generations that spent their entire career at a company that was much more normal. Many people are still employed, but the nature of that relationship has dramatically changed. So everyone knows that you need to keep moving in your career. And you were one of the first people to really acknowledge this. I think you were ahead of your time with pivot, really pointing out that it is about the next step and the trap. I was sort of shocked. Like, my dream was to land a job in consulting, and I ended up landing a job at McKinsey. And you can read about how I got rejected from every other company and somehow McKinsey was the one that accepted me. It still sort of shocks me that this happened to me. But when I was there, I encountered all these other people who didn't come from a background like mine. I didn't have parents that went to college. I didn't go to an elite undergrad or any schools. Growing up, these people were all slightly dissatisfied. They were only at McKinsey to get somewhere else, to go to a better grad school, to work in banking down the road to make more money, to follow more prestigious careers. And I had this weird feeling of being really happy. It was so much better than my experience in my first job working at GE that I was like, this is amazing, but when you're in that environment failure is actually staying in the job. I'm sure you experience this at Google. Once you work at a company like Google, success is like actually leaving Google and going to do a startup or going to work at a company with more options or climbing the rank within Google like, it never actually ends in today's world. And I think this is just really hard for people, so I'll pause there. I'm happy to riff on, like, how I think about this in the creator realm as well, but there's pretty much always another step. And if you do that, you're basically just never taking time to figure out what you really want.

Yes. And we are mimetic creatures, so we do look around us. Like none of us lives in isolation. There is some part of this where we're always kind of looking around, saying, who's doing what I want to do? And then having to question where we end up when we're on what you call the default path. And it's true. Yes. Even at Google, once you get in, which is a huge hurdle, then it's how quickly are you getting promoted? And there becomes this obsession. I worked in career development, so we often had to address the question of people wanting a promotion much sooner either than their manager thought they were ready or that was even available. We always used to say there's only one CEO. Like the whole company can't just get promoted and promoted and promoted. Google grows very fast. But I mean, even still, there's not always a promotion available. Sometimes there was prestige in becoming a people manager, which I really disliked. So I learned very early, became a people manager, did not enjoy it, and kind of climbed down the ladder, you know, got back off the ladder, said I looked ahead. I don't want to be a middle manager at some big company. Again, no shade. It's just certainly not the fit for my strengths and energy. And then you'll even hit an internal plateau. And the only answer is, well, now you need to go to business school. So once again you're well, are you getting into the right business school? Oh, and I don't know about you, but I always heard in these types of environments, well, if you don't get into the top 25 or even the top five, it's not even worth it at all. Don't bother.

Well, there's a trap in that too. I actually went to a top 10 school. I went to MIT for business school and engineering, and the opportunities are bigger there, but it's a very narrow set of options. There are like 50 companies that actually care about the top MBAs, right? So your options narrow artificially to these are the companies you can work at that will pay you 150 grand after you graduate from an MBA. These other companies are not going to care about it. So you start narrowing the possibilities of your life in a really weird way. Like there's actually a lot of options to move between companies, but it's a very certain type of work. It's like analytical, strategic work for these kind of companies. Consulting, banking, finance, strategy. And that was sort of my path and it was like I always felt like something was missing. So I sort of experienced the inverse of wanting what other people wanted. It was whenever I was discontent, I would try to replace that discontent with like another shiny magical option. I wasn't really desiring what other people have wanted, which has made my transition to working on my own, I think easier than others. I was just relentless about trying to get rid of my discontent. And eventually I like to say I ran out of moves like, like nobody would hire me because I was clearly only going to stay there for a year, a year and a half.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You also had a very interesting story in the book and I laughed when you said that anybody who's worked in a customer or client facing role or a client facing company knows that there's always an emergency. Like everything is urgent, there's always an emergency. And you described an exchange with your manager. Can you recount that story for us? Because you know, you stood up for yourself in that moment and it didn't go over so well.

Wait, is this the one where I ended up quitting?

Yes. I think later in the thread you're like, oh, this doesn't seem like a fit anymore. You just couldn't help yourself but make the move.

So me and my manager had been going at each other for a while. I think I am mature enough to realize this was like 90% me now. I think at the time I was probably more frustrated with him, but I was in the wrong environment, playing the wrong game. And I think my last year full time employment, I was essentially just self sabotaging myself because I was too scared to just bet on my own. So I would kept dropping hints that, you know, I'm just gonna, like, not work anymore, I'm gonna take time off, I'm gonna leave eventually. We just had so many clashes. And it culminated where I arrived Friday afternoon in Sarasota for a wedding. I didn't even tell anyone I was going. I just left in the middle of the day and was flying. So you can get a sense of how reckless I was with work at the time. And I remember landing and seeing all these emails and he's like, we need to respond to this, we need to get this out. You know, I was just so fed up. I wanted to get to the pool, I wanted to see my friends. It was sunny, it was in the winter, so I just didn't want it. So I'm sitting in the hotel room and I was just like. He sent this super direct email. Very New York energy, as I imagine, you know. And I was like, you know, I just don't think I want to be doing this anymore. I think it's time to move on. And he took that as my literal resignation. And he calls me 15 minutes later. He's like, I understand you want to move on. I've already talked to the head of the office and she's okay with you leaving. And this sort of shocked me. I'm like, what the heck is this guy doing? Like, he just orchestrated my firing. But I didn't do anything to push back. I just let it happen. And I think that was me just admitting it's actually time to bet on myself. And I ended up staying another, like two to three months to transition. And those next few months, I was just in this liminal state of like, what have I done? I have no idea what I'm doing. But I was sort of just knew I had to head in this new direction.

It's almost like this rebellious inner self, like you said. I mean, sure, self sabotage is one form of it. But it was also like that inner self just crying out. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

What do you think you meant when you said, I think I need to move on? When you sent that email, were you thinking from this team, from this role, but still staying internal?

No. I had dropped hints that I wanted to freelance.

Yeah. Oh, okay.

Basically, after consulting for nine years, I knew I could freelance. I knew that was a viable option. Now, looking back, I didn't really know what I was getting into. It's a completely different skill set to do that on your own as it is to do it inside a company. But I was just sick of the environment. It was an older company. They had brought me in to build a consulting team. It was an executive search firm, and they weren't really wired to work, do sort of consulting work. I was so frustrated with how slow things were going. They wouldn't promote me, they wouldn't give me any raise, even though I was working on, like, millions of dollars worth of projects. And I just started becoming a worse version of myself. So I think it really was my deep inner self saying, like, wake up, buddy. Like, it is time to live your life. It is time to stop yourself. It is time to actually start taking action. And I'm really grateful for that because I just didn't have deep emotional awareness early in my 20s. And going on this path has really enabled me to get more in touch with myself, really try to figure out what matters to me. And I wasn't doing that on my previous path. I was doing it a little, but it was just so slow. And the environments I was in were not conducive to doing that.

And it can be really hard, I think, when you are that age and everything has been oriented around achievement, prestige, success, the ladders, the schools, the grades. Like, it's hard. It's hard to just dive off the deep end cold and not have financial fear or just even the fear of floating out in society. Like you said, just the way, especially in the U.S. oh, man, there's just so much tied up with we are our jobs. And you write about that a lot in the book. Now that you're on your own, let's come back to that piece around the comparison trap. There's a lot of shiny objects even in the creator economy or the world of freelancing and entrepreneurship as well. And sometimes those peers, I find, can be just as alluring. Like, what they're doing, how they're running their business, their business model, how much they create what they create. Like, there is a lot out there, and there's a lot to take in and look at, examine, and even learn from, of course. So how do you navigate that today? Like, when you find yourself getting tempted? I know that you're not all that tempted by the shiny things anymore, but I'm curious if it ever bubbles up at all. And when it does, what does that look like?

I don't really struggle with this, and I think there's a couple reasons why. One, when I left my previous path, I knew what I was wanting to leave behind. I had a job for 10 years, and I didn't want another job. I also knew that aiming at success was not my prime motivation. I was always trying to escape discontent. So on this new path, I really designed around not doing things I don't like, and I was really obsessive about that. I was so in rejection of my previous path when I left that everything I did, I just kept small. I kept it slow. I tried to dramatically lower my cost of living such that I could buy more time to experiment and wander. And in doing that, I learned to, one, trust myself. I, too, found things I like doing. And I developed this immunity, I think, to what other people were doing, because the first few years of my path were so slow and low earning and. And also exciting and energizing that it was like I knew why I was doing this. I knew why I wanted to keep going. And I haven't really come close to burnout, which has been amazing on this path. I'm more than six years into it now, but I think I tell people, you can't expect to take it slow and carve your own path and do it my way without dramatically lowering your income. So I think if I had left with this goal of I need to replace my income, I probably would have burned out because I would have had to choose goals that were not things I could commit to over the long term. So I really embrace this principle I call now called Design for Liking Work. Start with finding things I like, and then build things around it. So I podcast, I write my newsletter. I do a lot of things that don't explicitly make money. And then some of the things I make money from, I minimize them or automate them in opposition to leaning into them, which might create more revenue. And six years into this path, I'm now starting to find the comfort where it's like, okay, can I be a little more ambitious about these things and not lose myself? And I've found that I can. Now I have, like, a new foundation of just, like, Emotional resilience and confidence and self awareness that I found I can lean a little more in that direction. But it's still an edge for me and it's still pretty scary.

What's scary about it?

I don't know. I was reading the beginning of your book where you write about making 500 grand a year and working 10 to 30 hours a week and that was kind of scary for me to read because it's like, well, Jenny's saying that I could probably be a bit bolder and still enjoy my life and still have that life force you talk about. I don't know. I think it's just residual fear of like becoming that past self. Like the final years of my previous path. Externally I'm like earning a big income. I'm living in New York, I'm successful, I have all these impressive brands on my resume and people care about me, they want to talk to me, they want to hire me. But I felt like I was becoming a person and that scared me. It wasn't the person I wanted to become in the future. I didn't think I could be a good father in that environment was something I've now become and I don't know, I'm still grappling with that.

Well, you and I share a value. That freedom and health and energy, like that's so much more important to both of us than money. So for me, I try to reject anything people tell me of what's possible or not possible. You know.

Yeah, I do this too.

Yeah, Like I've always just tried to be an advocate that there is no law of the universe saying if you work fewer hours you'll earn less money. I try to just tell myself like, well, what does it look like or what is possible? But I will say I will definitely earn less rather than work more. So a year like 2023, where I have not yet reached that number, that was the five year average of the previous five years of writing the book and that was top line revenue. My take home averaged on the five years was closer to 300, which is still really abundant. But I'm not there this year and yet I'm not going to start either, just like you. Not only do I have no interest in reverting to bad habits, they don't work for me and then I get sick. So I've just learned the hard way enough times to know that I would rather be patient and stay working according to my values. And you have a mantra that I love coming alive over getting ahead for me, even if it's scary. Even if it's challenging, even if we have to cut back certain things of how we're spending or living, I will do that. Rather than somehow just think out of fear, oh, I better double down, triple down, and start doing all kinds of stuff. I can't stand in my business because that's not the point. You know, like, I don't care what the numbers are. I would never want to be misleading or anything. I also just don't like to be told what to do or what's possible.

That's why we're on these paths.

Yes.

I love being on this path. And one thing that fuels my writing is I'm deeply curious about other people's paths. When I see somebody doing something bold and making a lot of money, I actually don't get a lot of envy. I'm always like, oh, that's interesting. What do they have that enables them to do that? Do they feel good doing that? Do they seem to be burning themselves out? Are they stressed? Like, I'm asking a lot of questions, right? And then if I see somebody that's sort of wired like me, that's doing something, that's even more interesting. So when I see somebody like you doing something or somebody like Khee doing something, I'm asking, okay, that's interesting. That's somebody closer to a game I'm playing. How could I integrate that in my own way? And then often I'm just doing experiments. I'm always asking the question of what are the small experiments? I can do that I can quit quickly, and if it takes off, it takes off. But I'm always trying to be slow and deliberate, and I don't want to prematurely optimize around some sort of revenue stream or revenue stream or product.

That's a good Freudian slip of a rev of a revenue scream.

Yeah, well, right. If you start making some money from something that drains your energy, it could be completely destructive to your whole path. Because for me, writing is sort of the core thing, and I don't care about making money from it. I've started to make money from it, from the book, but that is really the source energy that is upstream from everything else.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You mentioned friend of the pod Kay. He who's a mutual friend, I loved the conversation you had with him on Pathless Path. So listeners, I'm going to put it in the show notes. And Kay also talked about really downsizing his business on free time. We've done a handful now together. Now he's launching his own and I'm grateful to be one of the guests along with you. So I just wanted to highlight another batch of episodes that if you appreciate this type of conversation, I've really had a lot of fun listening to you Paul you and Kay's dynamic. And I'll link to all that in the show notes because I find that like you said, it's one thing to see outliers or just like you, I'm not that interested in taking corporate energy and just applying it to entrepreneurship and the goal still being like more better, faster. That's not my aim. So I also find it very interesting and also reassuring to talk to other people who are building kind of with similar values first and then whatever rewards follow is interesting. And it's like, oh, what's working for you? What have you tried? But if you ask another type of entrepreneur, again not making a value judgment, but you can't ask the person that works 247 to figure out a business model based on free time and time with your family and time for robust health. Just doesn't work.

Yeah, that conversation with Kay was really fun. I saw him go deep into sort of business building mode and I think this is such an interesting thing because he's been so transparent about his money insecurities and his goals and ambitions. He left his career making tons more money than I did and I wonder sometimes if there's sort of an anchor to what you used to make. Like I thought it was really funny that after you subtract business expenses, I sort of ended up this past year, my fifth year of self employment, matching my Previous salary. And sometimes I wonder if there's a gravity to what you used to make. Like, sometimes I see people that leave executive positions like K, and he used to make like over a million dollars in his final year and he just so casually made tons of money that I'm like, I sort of assume, oh, I can't do that. And yeah, I'm still playing with this. Like, our money beliefs are way more flexible than we think. And oftentimes I think people are probably adjusting too much to, oh, I can't do that. Oh, I'm not wired like that. It's still confusing. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I don't think it ever goes away. The benefit of this path being on a pathless path is that you have to grapple with your fears and insecurities. On the default path, you actually don't have to because everyone silently agrees just to never talk about them.

That's such an interesting point, right? Or it's like, even if you have fears or anxieties, like I could see being anxious these last few years, if you'll keep your job, will you be part of a round of layoffs? Things like that while you're afraid? I found that when I was in that environment, while I was afraid or anxious, the paycheck kept coming every two weeks versus on the other side. It's like you're afraid and you're anxious and there is no paycheck until you figure it out. Until you get that one next clue on the pathless path. And I also chuckled when you said, because I work for myself, I spend zero minutes a year blaming other people for my circumstances. And that's what I think is the difference on the other side side, it's like, especially if you're a breadwinner, it's like it's sink or swim, period. End of story. Fear or no fear, the show must go on.

Yeah, and I like that responsibility. It feels good because I don't waste any time blaming people and I get to make all the decisions. I think one of the features of this path is that inevitably you can't really optimize for money and growth above all else. Businesses can do this because they can hire tons of people. But if you're doing an individual or even a few people in a company, you can't really optimize everything. I'm under optimizing pretty much everything I do. Which means you are actively making trade offs all the time. And that means you're opting into deciding what you value if you're going to drop the ball on things, you need to opt in to other things. And for me, it's often spending time with family now, or spending time with my wife, or investing in my leisure time. Because my best writing often emerges when I feel good, when I'm exercising, when I'm spending time wandering. Not everything is about money, and that feels really good for me because I'm sort of opting into what I claim to care about.

Yes, I love how you put small experiments you can quit quickly. Because I talk about piloting in pivot, but I have never considered it. Almost in the inverse of not only small experiments you could launch quickly, but specifically ones that you could quit quickly. So if you could leave listeners with one experiment, maybe even in the spirit of something that they could quit quickly, what would it be?

Yeah. So I called this ship quit and learn, and basically you're shipping it as soon as possible. So how can you take action in the next week? Design it for quitting. So if you're going to launch something like a podcast, don't spend $10,000 on a studio and a setup before you've done it. Right. So design it such that you can just start shipping it. Sign up for the free host on Spotify. Record with your computer mic for free. Just do five episodes. See how it feels. If you all you're doing is learning, you want to learn in that experiment about how it feels. Are you excited to keep going? Does it feel bad? Is it annoying to edit the episodes? Things like that. And in the space of action, you're just trying to figure out what to do next. Too many people are aiming at goals as outcomes of their project. Right. I'm going to launch podcasts and hit the top charts at the beginning. Well, okay then what? So another idea. We both written books. I bet there are listeners that want to write a book now. People delay the decision because they're like, well, do I self publish or traditional publish? It actually is irrelevant. I tell people to open a word doc, start dumping past stuff you've written in there, create a table of contents and just start writing for two months. In those two months, see how it feels. Do you want to keep going or do you want to quit? You can do that for free. Everyone can do that. So many people want to write books. Just start. I'm giving you permission. You can even get Jenny's permission slip in the back of her book. There's so many things like this. So how can you test it in a week or a month?

I love this process and thank you for the permission slip product placement. You know, shout out. In fact, free time episodes 202:02 are 40 permission slips. So if you want 40 at once, in addition to the one Paul just gave you, they're over there. I'll put it in the show notes. And I also want to say to this thing of writing a book, Free time is my third. In no scenario did I sit down romantically in the woods and write all day, every day. I life after college. I wrote while working full time at Google Pivot. I wrote while working full time in my business, really serving clients. I had to do 15 minute bursts in the morning. Free time was probably the most concentrated. But it started with a 30 day accountability challenge with a friend. We sent each other a check mark in Marco Polo if we did a hundred words that day. A hundred words is seven sentences. You can record a voice memo on your phone. And lately I've been trying to get into writing more too for a possible secret writing project that I'm going to now take your advice on. Paul and I will get on the subway, have 20 minutes until my stop, and I pull up a notion card in a notion database and like oftentimes I write an entire little essay just sitting there on the subway. I just think my question to myself, I even have a recurring reminder on my phone is what's true this week. And that helps guide my podcast solo episodes. Any writing I do, but writing is not my go to thing. I have to create practices and reminders and little cookies, little cookie trails of like making it fun and small enough to do it. And that's truly how a book gets done as well. It's not in this big, linear, intimidating process. Outlining it is certainly helpful. I love the book Storyworthy. You can also just capture micro moments and write about them in the moment so that later if you do work on a book, you have so much rich material to draw from. So I'll just throw that little tidbit into the book writing ring.

I love that I'm going to steal that prompt.

Yeah, super cool. Well, I'm very happy that we're doing a mini circuit on free time Pivot. And we'll do your show too. The Pathless Path. I'm going to put all these great links in the show notes, including to your book. Where else would you love to send people?

Yeah, so I always forget that I have a podcast like the Pathless Path. Podcast is, I think, a good starting point. I go deep on stories. Jenny's is going to be up there soon and it's just channeling my obsessive curiosity about what makes people tick and what helps people thrive on their paths. So there. My newsletter is boundless.subsack.com reach out. I'm pretty easy to find and love connecting with people.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much Paul for being a great new friend on the pathless path. And big thanks to everybody who's here listening.

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 the this episode@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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