The Portfolio Life and your Personal Brand with Christina Wallace (ep.179)

One, it starts with identity. So many people see themselves as their job title. That is such an American thing, but it's also such a 21st century thing.

Yeah.

And the danger of that, beyond the fact that it's just not true, is that you can lose your job and your identity in the same conversation.

Have you ever considered this? If you're 100% focused on your job and you lose your job, then of course you lose everything. Yikes! That voice, by the way, belongs to Christina Wallace, the author of a book that I highly recommend called The Portfolio Life. I met Christina a few months ago at a conference where she was giving a talk about her book. The exercises that Christina outlines in her book can change your life, and this is not an overstatement. Are you ready to learn more? Let's do this. Let's talk about talk. Welcome to Talk About Talk podcast episode number 179, The Portfolio Life and Your Personal Brand with Christina Wallace. You're about to hear my conversation with Christina where you'll learn about a framework and several exercises that will help you identify your personal priorities. You will also hear the full spectrum of emotion, from us crying about my lost friend to laughing out loud. Here's an excerpt from her book jacket for The Portfolio Life that I think you're going to find compelling. I'm going to read it to you. It's one paragraph. Whether you're sick of being told that your worth is Inextricably tied to your work, or that setting boundaries and protecting your personal life means that you aren't all in, this book will walk you step by step through the process of designing a strategy for the long haul, because you deserve rest, relationships, and a rewarding career, not someday, but today. After all, you only live once. Yes. That is pretty compelling. Now, of course, I always see these things through the lens of our respective personal brands. These exercises provide powerful insight into our true brands. And as you'll hear me admit to Christina, I recently assigned one of her exercises in my personal branding boot camp, and it went exactly as she forecasted. The first part was easy, pretty simple, but then it got very difficult. And of course, that is where the magic happens. Okay, let's dive in. I'm gonna introduce Christina and then we'll get right into the interview. After the interview, as always, I'll summarize with 3 main learnings that I wanna reinforce for you. Are you ready? A self-described human Venn diagram, Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She's currently a senior lecturer of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, an active angel investor, and a co-producer of Broadway musicals. Her latest book, this one here, A Portfolio Life, was published in 2023. And this is the book that we reference in our conversation that you're about to hear. You can find a link to this book in the show notes for this episode. A serial entrepreneur, Christina has built businesses in e-commerce, edtech, and media. In 2019, she co-authored another book called New to Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth. She was also the co-host of The Limit Does Not Exist, an iHeart podcast with Millions of downloads over 3 seasons and 125 episodes. In her free time, Christina sings with various chamber choirs, embarks on adventure travel, and she's a mediocre athlete. Yes, those are her words, mediocre athlete. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their 2 children. Thank you so much, Christina, for being here today to talk to us about The Portfolio Life.

Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

So when I looked at the table of contents, Christina, I loved how you structured the book. You've got the 3 parts, the why we're doing this, the what we're doing, and the how we're doing it. And then you also present the 4 pillars. So I was wondering if you could start by sharing with the listeners what each of the 4 pillars represents.

Sure. When I was trying to ground this model in sort of a structure of like, what is it giving you, right? Like you think about this from startup pitches all the time or any sort of product, like stop telling me about the features. Tell me about what problem it solves, what it gives, you know, the person who's thinking about it. That's how I came to these 4 pillars. Effectively says, here is why and how The Portfolio Life delivers on what it does for you. Number one, it starts with identity. So many people see themselves as their job title. That is such an American thing, but it's also such a 21st century thing.

Yep.

And the danger of that, beyond the fact that it's just not true, is that you can lose your job and your identity in the same conversation. And I have experienced this. It was incredibly destabilizing. Um, and I think because of that, many people stay in jobs longer than they would want to.

Mm-hmm.

Um, they stay, uh, in entire career paths because they can't imagine a version where they might have to reinvent themselves. And, um, and it's just very, very like narrowing as you get older. And so it starts with this notion of like, how could you— I like build an identity, define an identity even, that it isn't about how you monetize your time. Um, and instead is based on these, these components of like the worlds you live in, the skills you have access to, the networks you're a part of, and, and build this out via a Venn diagram as you see sort of those intersections is where you have a unique perspective. And once you have that understanding of your identity, you can see that I'm more than one thing. That gives you optionality, pillar 2.

Right.

Which says, like, you can always do more than one thing. You never are stuck if you can see that you have options. And those options can be really small. They can be like, hey, let's find a different context for doing this work. You love the work, you hate the company. Let's find a different place that— and define very positively what are you going toward? Not what are you running away from. But in many other cases, it's bigger options. It's, you did this first season of life, that was great. And now let's zigzag. Let's pull something else out of your Venn diagram and drive with that for the next decade. And so really understanding that, like, basically, unless you're on your deathbed, you still have options that you can pursue, but you have to see them, right? And this becomes a lot about the stories we tell ourselves. about ourselves. And that brings us to the third pillar, which is diversification. That's actually where I started the entire model. The portfolio life is very much based on this idea of a financial portfolio, right? We think about how we diversify our financial portfolio and we can allocate our assets and allowing us to take some risk because you have to have risk in order to get returns. But you can mitigate that risk through diversification by thinking about how can I, can I, you know, invest here that won't be correlated with that thing over there? And if one thing falls apart, the whole portfolio doesn't fall apart. It's the same way with our lives, that the only way to survive the amount of disruption we are currently facing is to be diversified. There are so many moving pieces that we can't foresee, we can't plan for, that you can't be linear about your strategy. So instead, how do you think about, are there hobbies, and again, networks, relationships, side hustles, whatever that is, that both gives you something on a day-to-day basis? You're not doing everything just because of doomsday, but by having sort of that diversified base of activities and people and skills, If and when disaster befalls your industry, your geography, your relationship, whatever, you have other irons in the fire that you can access. And ultimately, that brings us to the 4th pillar. The point of this entire model is flexibility. The generations that came before us, our parents, our grandparents, on the one hand, they might have had it easier, right? A slightly less disruptive world, a slightly more predictable place. But I think they also were stuck on a linear path whether they wanted to or not. You picked a thing and then you did it for 40 years.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I see the moments where I think my family would've really appreciated the idea to reinvent themselves or to take a different path for a different chapter of life, but that wasn't an option for them. So as much as it can be annoying that we're like, everything is getting thrown up in the air every few years or every few weeks even, right? Like the world is changing and we can't, We can't ever have nice things.

Right.

At the same time, it offers us this huge amount of flexibility that means we can build for a season of life. And when that season shifts, when the thing that we've built no longer serves us, you know, we've got new friction that wasn't there before, you rebalance your portfolio. So you can think about what's that season when I have small children? That's the season I'm in right now. Or this season where I need to take care of my parents, or where I have a major health issue that I need to address, or I'm burnt out and I need a sabbatical, right? It allows us to get really creative and flexible about meeting our needs and allowing our goals and motives to change, which is just human nature.

I love your term seasons. I think it's almost empowering, right? 'Cause people might think, you know, I've reached this, you know, pinnacle in my career, and then something happens, and they— I know they freak out. People— I get these emails from people, Andrea, my professional brand, my identity is changing. Help, help, help. And I say, first of all, congratulations. Take a breath. You're gonna be okay.

Yeah.

I think it's fantastic. So with these 4 pillars, I'm hearing a couple things that, that the benefit is personal in terms of your life satisfaction, definitely your career satisfaction, and probably even your life satisfaction, right? So it is a shame that our parents weren't thinking this way in previous generations.

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of empathy for them where you're kind of like, you had to pick a thing at 16 or 22.

Right.

And the version of you at that stage maybe even wanted that thing.

Yeah.

Deeply. And then you turned out to be moderately good at that thing in the best case scenario, and that thing is all you ever got to be. And, you know, I see the joy in many cases of, you know, my mother-in-law getting to retirement after a fabulous career as an executive and realising that, like, A, she's not dead yet and has a tonne to offer, and B, there was this whole piece of her that she hadn't really been in touch with since college, which was art, art history, and Spanish. She had studied them in college. She hadn't touched them for her entire career. And now at 70-something is retired and is like, I'm gonna go be a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I'm gonna give tours in Spanish to tourists. Like, I, there's this whole piece of me that, that had to be at a 0% allocation for a really long time. But I'm existing in this same world today, and the world today says I still have another season ahead. So I think as frustrating as it may have been for them in those seasons where they didn't have that flexibility, the joy is they're still here, and this applies to them too. And so, you know, I see a lot of people thinking this book is really applicable for, you know, young graduates or people reaching new parent status or going through those transitions. But I think it's just as relevant for folks at any stage of transition across a career.

So speaking of this transition, I'm thinking there are catalysts that may happen, like retirement, or like being told, you know, you've kind of reached your cap in this organization.

Yeah.

Or, you know, something— your family role change, you become a parent, or you become an empty nester. There's these catalysts that happen. But there's also an opportunity, I think, for people when they read The Portfolio Life and really internalize it and act on it, to be proactive and to take advantage of this opportunity. When you were talking about your mother-in-law, I was thinking I had a very, very dire conversation with a friend of mine that was dying of brain cancer. And he said to me, I asked him if he had any advice for me, and he said, I, I just hope that before you are in the stage that I'm in, Andrea, that you will, um, you know, live your life and not have any regrets. And if there's something right now that in the back of your mind you're thinking you should do, go do it. For me, Andrea, and for you, please do it. And I was like, right away I thought—

You're gonna make me cry.

No, you know what? You know what the thing was though, Christina? I had to paint. I literally went home and signed up for a painting class.

Yep.

So, so many of it. So for your mother-in-law, it was painting.

For me, it was also painting.

But we, most of us have things that we are, what's the word? We're hiding, we're ignoring.

Yeah, I talk about the work of excavating.

Excavating.

Right? There's so much of who we are that has been there from the beginning, right? Once you see these things about yourself, then you go back and you're like, Oh, I have a story from when I was 6 that my mom used to always tell that is a perfect example of this exact thing. And you're like, oh, I've always been who I've always been. But as we grow up— good thing I'm not wearing mascara today. As we grow up, we feel like, and in some cases are explicitly told, but in many cases, this is self-editing.

Mm-hmm.

We feel like we have to put those things away so so that we can be serious and grow up and pick the things that are appropriate for the level of education, ambition, et cetera, that we aspire to. And many of those things we put away as childish things.

Yeah.

And what we lose in doing that is, while it may be true you were never gonna have a career as a painter, I don't know, I haven't seen your work, there's something brilliant that you get out of the act of painting that is separate from the value of the finished object. And when you decide that the value of the finished object you can't monetize enough to pay your mortgage, you get rid of the entire practice of painting.

Oh.

And you lose something in that process, which is why I think many of us, when we get to this, like, you know, sort of midlife crisis era, it's because we have lost so many, like, limbs and attributes and elements of who we are we are simply because in capitalism, the outputs of that work wasn't valuable. Wow.

You have no idea. Actually, you probably do have some idea of how much that resonates with me. And I can hear my coaching clients saying, yes, yes. So in the work that I do with my clients on personal branding, It's a similar way of saying what you're saying, I think. I encourage them to really think deeply about their unique identity and not to follow the expected path. And I've said this, I feel like a million times, you can be a very strong B+ by copying others and following the expected path. But if you really wanna knock it out of the park, if you really wanna be successful and happy, Yeah. Then think deeply about your unique interests. So of the 4 pillars, I'd really like to focus on identity because I think we can get some traction here. Can you describe your Venn diagram and also what generally your, I guess, portfolio Venn diagram could or should look like?

Yes. Absolutely. So the Venn diagram, I talk about sort of these two— I love circles, all sorts of circles. So the Venn diagram, we obviously know, is like the intersection of various sets from set theory, intersection of various circles. I think of this as who you are and your portfolio is what you do.

Okay.

So your Venn diagram on the whole is pretty static. Now, it can change over time. Certainly as you develop new interests, they might show up in different ways, or as you start to see the expression of some of this work, you see like, oh, wow, this is actually part of a bigger picture. Let me kind of reframe what's in those buckets, those circles. But it's pretty steady over time. Now, there are pieces of your Venn diagram you might not be using day in and day out. They might be at a 0% allocation in your portfolio, but it doesn't change that they are part of you.

Mm-hmm.

So I hear a lot of people in my, I say in the very simplified version of my Venn diagram, I've built a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. So you go back and you look at, I was a music, a very serious musician, a classical musician, and then I added theater as an actor and director and now a producer to that and tried some arts management. And then I went off to business school and got into the tech world and I did startups and investing, right? Like on the surface, the linear chronology makes no sense, but when you look at it in sort of these these categories, you're like, okay, I can see where those intersections gave you this and these intersections gave you that. And the joy of that is you can start to see where there are intersections that you haven't played in yet, where you're like, oh, maybe there's opportunity there for me to take this information and that network and like find something interesting. So it can also point out opportunity that you haven't considered. But I think in a broader, slightly less simplified Venn diagram, You know, I have industries, but I also have skills like storytelling. You could argue that's part of arts, but I think it's just part of communicating and communicating through story, um, that I have found to be deeply relevant to who I am and how I experience the world and what I offer a room. And that storytelling is written, it's performative, it's live, it's recorded in all these different formats. And so as a result, that actually makes me a pretty decent marketer, right? So you can see how like the skill plus the business and the technology is like, oh, you could fit in in a marketing role at a startup. But then there are also other things like I'm a mediocre athlete and I'm really quite serious about that. I'm a mediocre athlete. I'm not good, but I keep trying. I'm 6 feet tall. I should have been an athlete and I just wasn't for a lot of reasons. And for a long time I internalized, again, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. I internalized this as like, I am not an athlete, I shouldn't even try. And then after my first startup failed and I was facing this crisis of identity, I was like, you know what, screw it. I am so bad at being bad at things. Like, I won't even try something if I think I'm gonna be bad at it, that I'm gonna just force myself to do something I know I'm bad at, which is running.

Ooh.

And so I took up long-distance running. And you can't escape the fact that you're bad for a very, you just one step in front of the other and you're like, oh, this sucks, this is taking forever, I'm exhausted. And I still, to this day, I'm a terrible runner. I'll run marathons, they take 5 and a half hours. That's nothing to brag about, but I keep doing it.

Hmm.

And by continuing to show up, 2 things happened. Number one, I actually started to get a little better, and I started to recognize all the ways in which investing in my body and my health and my movement really mattered for my overall happiness. Certainly, as I think about some of my longer-term goals in life, a lot of that rests on staying in good health. And it's not something you can take it, like, for granted at 40 the way you can at 25.

Right.

But the other thing it taught me was, like, I could change that story from I'm someone who succeeds to I'm someone who shows up and works really hard. And that opens up a lot of worlds to me. It allows me to be an amateur at 41, When otherwise I would say, well, the boat has sailed. If I haven't become an expert, I'm never going to. Right? Like, a lot of these beliefs about who we are are self-imposed.

Right.

And sometimes they're based on, you know, data from a childhood moment or a teacher or a comment a partner had. Right? Like, I'm not saying we invented it whole cloth, but I would argue that a lot of this case, the data has expired. And, um, we talk about this in startup world all the time, right? How old is the data? Have you refreshed the data to make current conclusions? Um, and so in a lot of cases, when I hear people say, well, I'm not that, oh, I'd be, I'd be terrible at that. Oh, I, I can't even think about that. I'm like, how do you know?

Yeah.

How recently have you tried?

Yeah.

Would you like to go run some experiments and see if that's still true?

Yeah, so this sounds like a growth mindset, right? But it's not just, okay, I'm gonna try and learn this. It's changing your mind from, I can't do that, to, I'm at least gonna give it a shot. And you just made me think of something that, again, personally, that happened to me. I have 3 degrees in business. I've taken plenty of courses.

Slight overachiever there, no doubt.

Well, it's all business. commerce MBA, doctorate in business. And, you know, of course, over that time, I took several courses on entrepreneurship. I always admired people who were entrepreneurs, and I always said explicitly, directly, I said, I don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body.

Ah.

And then I came across this passion of coaching executives, and now I've built a business around it. And my friends are like, Oh my goodness, Andrea, like, what have you done? And I'm like, I know, I'm reading, I'm listening and reading to books about building businesses all the time now. And it's like my identity changed. It went from, I, I am not that kind of person, to this is something that I'm going for, like, and spending— talk about my portfolio— like a significant amount of my time on it.

Of course. But I think a big part of that too, I mean, I love that you are are so focused on communication and how do you think about, you know, who you are and how you share that and what that looks like when you show up in the world. Because a lot of this is also relevant to like, well, what do you, when you say entrepreneur, what's in your head? Is it a 25-year-old Harvard dropout white dude in a hoodie in Silicon Valley raising VC funding and building something that goes to a billion dollars?

Yes.

Sure. Like that's what most of us think. And that is one tiny little flavor of an entrepreneur. There are so many types of businesses. There's so many types of things. And so part of this is like changing what you see yourself as, right? The stories you tell yourself. And the other part is like being sure that you're seeing the world accurately. Like when we use these words, what does that mean? And are there versions of this that, that might be more relevant to you than not? And how might this fit into your life, right? You go, go into that with like—

Yeah.

that design thinking phrase of like, how might we? Rather than like, I can't, I shouldn't, I won't, it won't work, you know? And I think so much of that is like, we have these, understandably so, we have these shortcuts, these proxies for how we understand people and roles and industries and spaces and geographies because the world is so complex that we can't possibly take in all the information every single minute and be able to make the judgment calls we have to make, right?

Right.

This is evolutionary brain.

Yeah, we have to. Otherwise we wouldn't survive, or never mind thrive, right? Yeah.

And 2 things can be true. My favorite parenting phrase. Um, and those proxies, those shortcuts that we've used to understand the world might be out of date, and we need to refresh them with current data and see, is that still what I think it is? And is it still not relevant to me the way I thought it wasn't?

Yeah, you're reminding me of a conversation I had very recently, actually, with Professor Jerry Zaltman. He's emeritus from HBS, and we were talking about archetypes. And I'm— so my clients love being diagnosed with what of the 12 professional identity archetypes do it resonates the most, and then how that can provide me with, with direction and focus. I think it might be similar to, I guess you could say, diagnosing what your Venn diagram looks like, right?

Yeah.

And Jerry was, was cautioning me to, to also caution my that, you know, your archetype can certainly and probably should change over time. Don't get stuck, right? This is the flexibility pillar, I think.

Huge.

Yeah.

I mean, I think even one very sort of simple version of that, right now as a professor, I'm not managing anyone, right? No one reports to me. I report to no one. Academia is a very strange place.

It is.

And for someone who built a career as a leader and a manager, to take a role for a big studio season of life where I'm not managing anyone can feel, you know, contradictory. You're kind of like, well, that's not for me, right? Like, I've specialized in this other thing. And so those moments where you say that gut reaction, that's not for me, I am blank, those are exactly the moments where I want you to freeze and write down those statements and then, like, break them apart. pull back the layers and say, like, is this true? Must this be true? What is it about being a manager that's so crucial to my identity? Is it about the power and the prestige? Is it about the impact, the scale of my hour? It's not just a one-to-one, like an individual contributor. Well, I get scale as a professor. I get 90 students a semester, and they're gonna go on to become some of the biggest leaders in the world. Like, that's pretty good for a multiple on my hour of work.

Right.

So as you start pulling that apart, you realize that, like, The elements of what I'm getting out of this, what I'm interested in, can be met through a huge— again, the optionality— a huge set of options.

Mm-hmm.

But it requires just a little bit of, of more nuanced thinking than I think many of us give ourselves the time for when we're sort of living in a world where you're making snap judgments and having to make decisions every 30 minutes.

So when I heard you at the summit live giving the presentation about your book, and then when I read it, and now again, when I'm talking to you, I'm thinking about, if you could think of it as a continuum or a spectrum ranging from the thesis of the book Range, right? Where, where I can't remember the author's name, talks about how the most successful folks are the ones that have diversification and variety in their background. Versus the whole, you know, 30,000 touches of the ball is the only thing that's gonna get you there and you need to be laser-focused, right? And it sounds like you are not necessarily prescribing a certain place on the continuum, but you're encouraging people to be open to the range thesis of diversification.

Yeah, I mean, I think 2 things can be true. It is absolutely true that there is a whole host of worlds where specialisation, 30 touches on the ball, whatever that looks like, is super relevant. And I'm not saying go half-ass everything and put 2% of your portfolio into 50 things, right? Like, that's not a good portfolio.

Right.

At the same time, whether you are becoming an expert neurosurgeon or professional basketball player or artist or anything, You literally cannot do it 24 hours a day.

Yeah.

And that's where we see burnout. That's where we see, because in addition to like, you need to rest, an underestimated thing among high-performing people sometimes. In addition to that, even the most fulfilling work doesn't meet all of your needs, right? So if you think about this, you start this model from like, what do I need? I have financial needs, sure. Those are probably front of mind and easiest to quantify. But then there are things like, I have growth needs, I have creative needs, I have needs around community and relationship, um, I have needs around impact and knowing that my work matters. No matter what you do, it is unlikely that it is meeting all of your needs. So, As you specialize on that thing, you might recognize like, hey, I love this thing I'm doing, and I need to have this hobby that meets this one little piece, this painting hobby. I'm not any good at it, but it gives me the meditation. It allows me to sort of de-stress and process and be active with my hands so I can't get sucked into technology. And, you know, create something and just like let those thoughts out of my head so that that everything else has space, right? And that makes me better at this other thing I'm doing. And I see it, you see this in the stories, in the literature even, that supports this idea that, like, people who have something else, whatever that something else is, makes them better at the first thing.

Right, I think it's the term consilience, I keep thinking, right?

Yes, because you're both, like, you get new information by stepping out into a different space, right? We know this from, like, second and third graders, third-order network nodes are more valuable than first-order network nodes because they have access to new information, as opposed to in our direct network, we're all talking to the same people, reading the same things, talking about the same ideas.

Yeah.

But in addition to that, stepping away from something actually gives space for the first thing to marinate. And so I want my neurosurgeon to have a hobby. Right, I want, and they're a big part of that is it makes them better at what they're doing. But the other piece of it is that it means that on the day that they're no longer loving what they're doing, they won't force themselves to do it for a single day longer than that because they have something else that brings them joy.

I like that.

And that gives them identity. And I think that's a piece that we can certainly see in society right now, a whole generation that was never allowed to have anything else other than their jobs. And now they are holding onto power for far longer than they should, because who are they if not the name on their business card, right?

Right.

And so, so I agree with specialization. Certainly there are fields that necessitate that, but I also agree with range. I believe that you can't just be one thing. No one is. We're all 3-dimensional. And so recognizing what are all of those other elements of me I think about this like the O'Hare snow-in airport test, which is like on hour 5 of being stranded at the airport. What are we talking about? Because at that point, we've covered the basics, covered politics, we've covered Taylor Swift, we've covered, you know, what you're thinking about for Q4. At that point, we're down a rabbit hole.

Yeah.

And I am probably telling you about some random Broadway production that Mary Zimmerman directed in 1998, and you're probably telling me about whatever. And those are the things that you're like, oh, that's what lights you up.

Right. Okay. So this is a beautiful segue to one of the exercises that I learned about when I was listening to your presentation that I stole and, and prescribed to a, a personal branding bootcamp that I just taught a couple weeks ago. I challenged the folks in the bootcamp to do your 100 wishes for your life exercise. Mm-hmm. similar to what you were just saying, right? After an hour you get to— so do you want to describe that exercise?

I love this exercise. And I, I even got it from a wonderful UX designer, um, uh, who has written quite extensively about this work. And so it's all sort of, I attribute this to like the best of the internet when we all just build on each other's ideas, open source internet world, 100 wishes. The idea is. We're not talking about goals. Goals are things you achieve.

Mm-hmm.

Wishes are a little bit different. And you think about on your deathbed, we wanna get all nice and sappy. What are the things that you want to leave behind? What is the imprint that your life has had? And so that's everything from like the artifacts, Organizations, the work, the paintings, the whatever that will outlast you? But also, who do you want to have loved, and what do you want to have seen and experienced? What are the stories that you're telling in that moment, right? Like, what is the measure of your life? And I, I put sort of like the 100— 100 feels insane because you start writing, you're like, 100 can't be that hard. You get to like 30 and you're like, I have 100?

I got to 30, Christina. I got to 30. And I know, I know my mind was playing with me a little bit because you said at about 30 to 35, but it got really hard.

I know. I didn't keep going.

And then that's where the magic happens, right?

Like grab a wine, glass of wine, grab some something, um, and go take a walk and keep thinking. And that's where the magic happens. Because after 30, you get through the obvious resume stuff and the easy stuff like, I want to have a family. And you get to— you're like, what does that even mean? What does that mean? It forces you to start getting really specific. I got like, I want to have a relationship with my adult children where we are still actively in each other's lives. That requires a huge investment in the relationship we build from childhood onward.

Right.

Because that's not guaranteed. You don't just show up and you both live long enough and you get to be in each other's lives as adults. I want to be able to pick up my grandkids when I'm 90. That's an investment in my health that I have to start making now. I wanna win a Tony Award. I wrote that one down 5 years before I started producing Broadway. And it was, for me, it surprised me that I was like, really? You stepped away from a theater career 15 years ago. Like, interesting. And it wasn't about the award. I mean, obviously, the award is lovely.

Awards are good, yeah.

It was the notion that like, I'm not done with that part of my life yet. I want to be back. And I want to be back in a meaningful way, not like a community theater, help out with the school play way. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but like, I'm talking big leagues. And so, when that moment arrived, it was like, hey, do you want to invest in this Broadway show? Do you want to get involved as a producer? Do you know what that means? I was like, oh, that's an easy yes, because I already excavated that part of me and realized I want it. I want it, even if it seems silly to want it at this age. So you start writing things down and this is the moment where, and then, you know, once you've got the long list, you sort of put 'em into buckets and it gives you a sense of like, is there a whole piece of my life that I haven't been investing in and I haven't for a while? Which is not uncommon, right? You get to midlife, you've got a family, you've got responsibilities. There might be a whole piece of you that like kind of has been ignored for a decade.

These are the seasons, right?

These are the seasons.

Yes.

And there might be a moment where you're like, huh, I mean, you can't pursue all 100 wishes every single day of the week. Obviously. But if you've got this whole category of wishes, you're like, I haven't touched that in a couple of decades. That's usually a sign that, like, maybe you put a 5% allocation on that. You find a way to, like, slot that in as like a once a week, an hour a week something.

Yeah.

And in doing that work, as you realize what needs its meeting, how it's, it's contributing to your happiness and your community and your growth and your just whole person-ness. you might realize like, actually, I kind of want to dial that up to like 10%.

Mm-hmm.

15%. Maybe this becomes like a little side hustle. Maybe this might be my next season of full-time work, and I want to start laying the groundwork for that before I step away from my day job to sort of de-risk that transition in a really intentional way, right? And like, all of these things could be true. But it allows you, if you like, actually listen to your heart's desire, as silly as that might sound, you know what you want out of your life. You just gotta sit long enough and listen to the things where you're like, I feel so stupid writing this down. You're like, do it, write it down.

All right, so listen up, Talk About Talk listeners. Here's your homework. Create your Venn diagram. With, I know you said usually it's 3 or more, it could be 5 or—

It could be 5. At about like 6 or 7, you probably want to think about a slightly different way to organize, right? Find the similarities and categorize a little bit because like 7 can feel overwhelming. But yeah, there's no fixed number.

So create your Venn diagram, look at where it's overlapping, think about where you're spending your time on that Venn diagram and where the opportunities may be. And then take it to the next level and list your 100 wishes for your life.

Yes.

This is the imprint that you wanna make, the legacy that you wanna leave, but also the experiences that you wanna have. I think it's fair to say that there could be goals in there, but it's not— Oh, for sure. It's not all goals. It's more experiences and what do you wanna have happen and categorize them. And then I think it's beautiful. You can proactively pursue those things, but also just that exercise, will keep those themes top of mind. I love your story, Christina, about how when the opportunity came to you to be a Broadway producer, you were like, done. I already know that that's one of the most important things in my life that I need to check off. They must have been like, oh, okay.

I think this is so relevant as you bring it back to personal brand. I mean, I feel like it always comes back to personal brand because this is about who you are and how you show up in the world. And when you have excavated things that matter to you, Mm-hmm. The people around you want to help you, right? Everyone in your network, everyone who works with you and knows you and loves you want to help you. But like, no one's thinking about you most of the time. And so to help you, they need to know what you need, what you want, what you're looking for. And so having that clarity to say, I'm building this business, I'm interested in this thing, but like also I'm kind of psyched about anything related to theater. If you know anyone, if you come across, right? Like even just saying the words out loud allows the universe to help make it happen. Because the reason I even got to invest in that Broadway, that very first Broadway show is because someone in my network knew that I was a total theater geek.

Nice.

Okay. And she got the opportunity and couldn't take it and said, you know who you should talk to? Christina.

Oh, oh, this brings me such joy.

So like, executing these things and having them top of mind is what allows your network to show up for you.

Yeah.

But you have to be clear on it and it can't be all over the place, right? This is where like the buckets, the organization of that story really matters, 'cause most people can remember what, 3 things about you? So dial it in.

Okay, so you just said the magic story word. When I turned to chapter 9, Tell Your Story, I was like, okay, now it's time to sit down and get comfortable and devour this and start writing in the margins. You talk about how to answer the question, tell me about yourself. You talk about avoiding being the reasons we don't want to be the qualified quiet.

Yes.

You talk about being your own CMO, Chief Marketing Officer.

Yeah.

And you talk about having your one sentence. So, I mean, there's so much that we can unpack here. I'm just going to say, folks, you got to read the book. It's amazing. But do you have any other stories about, about how this, you know, you do the work upfront and then you end up telling the story not just to yourself, but sharing it with others and the impact that that can have?

Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately it sort of, for me, comes down to 2 things. Number one, as I said, no one's thinking about you, um, and so you have to arm them with the information, right? And I think a lot of people really struggle with like, I don't wanna be self-promotional. I'm like, it's literally, it's not, I hear it every day, Christina.

Every day. Every day.

It's not self-promotional. You're just literally telling me, who are you? Like, arm me with the things I need to know to understand who you are and how to help you. Um, but the other piece of it, and that I have found very effective for me, especially as like a slightly strange path person, um, a weirdo, and I say that lovingly, is, um, I try to leave breadcrumbs of who I am in the world, and I let those people find me. And so, okay, what the hell does that mean? That means things like writing blog posts or having a Substack or writing on LinkedIn on a regular basis, having some thought leadership that you put out in the world. I had a podcast for a while, same idea. It is being part of communities and sort of showing up to things and raising my hand and making it very clear that like, this is part of who I am, and I'm going to just leave that nugget so that even sort of asynchronously almost, I get inbounds constantly through my website. I have a website. You're like, well, of course you do. You're a professor and an author. I had a website when I graduated from Harvard Business School, which is insane.

Yeah.

I was 26, I had an MBA, and I was like, you know what? I need a website. I need to be findable.

Mm.

And that website has changed so many times over the years. And like the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive can be a testament to this. It has had so many lives. But the point is, I was out there, I had a front door in the internet world, and I was findable by the people looking for someone like me.

Mm-hmm.

And almost every opportunity I've had up to this point, um, has been inbound. I put my work out there, and then other people say, actually, I'm looking for exactly someone like you. Do you wanna speak at this event? Do you wanna write that book? Do you wanna come and teach here? And so, like, you don't have to be, like, blasting your story on a soapbox on the corner, but you can leave artifacts, leave breadcrumbs, and then be easily findable.

Love it. So be purposeful, be public, I was also just reading and writing and thinking about private versus public thought leadership, right? There's so many advantages to creating a body of public thought leadership. Oh boy. And avoid being—

Truly, this book would not exist without my public thought leadership, because part of what told me that there was a book to write, and that convinced my editor that she should buy the book, was getting the comments and the conversation in. I was originally writing articles for Forbes years ago and seeing the reaction, the responses, and the feedback loop to specific articles. I was like, this isn't anything. I just need to write it to meet my quota for the month. And then like it goes viral and you're like, oh, is that— huh, that's a unique point of view, right? Like you're letting the market literally tell you Which of your ideas are, are unique, are specific and new and fresh. You don't have to be right. You just have to put work out there and like literally let your audience tell you what they want more of.

So this is very compelling evidence for why we don't want to be the qualified quiet. But I know many of my clients, they're like, I'm not writing for Forbes. I'm not writing for HBR. I don't even have a blog and I don't want a blog, nor do I want a podcast. And I, I think my answer to them is, when you introduce yourself, even as simple as when you introduce yourself at the beginning of a meeting or at a networking event, you're not saying that you're good at everything, but put your stake in the ground and tell them what you're all about. You know, what differentiates me compared to other communication coaches, or what differentiates me compared to other tech executives is my whatever, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, and a big part of this I think is remembering with any story, it starts with who's the audience. Um, and so if you're in a room of all tech executives, you could probably give a very high level, like, oh, I, I am the head of product development for blank, and they all understand what that means. You don't have to get into the details there. And then you can provide something else. And, you know, I'm a silver medalist skier, uh, from the Olympics, right? Whatever that thing is, like, because you have this shared body of knowledge in one area, you don't have to go deep there, and you can provide, like, what is different about me? based on this room. Now, if you go to a dinner for a whole bunch of Olympians, Yeah, right. Then, right, again, what you have in common is different than what you're different on, right?

Yeah.

And, and so as I think about it, this is where the Venn diagram comes into play every time.

Yeah.

I'm not the best entrepreneur in the world. I'm not the best Broadway producer in the world. I'm not the best business person in the world, but I am the damn well best entrepreneurial Broadway producer At a business school, right? Like, as you think about kind of where is that combination, and in the room, like, what is that point of view that I can really stand out on? And you edit your story to allow that, like, one sentence to show, here's what I have to offer and here's where I stand out.

Oh, you will be quoted on that, Christina, I promise. Excellent. Okay, I want to Move now to the 3 rapid-fire questions. Are you ready?

Yes.

Question number 1, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

I'm an ambivert. I need both. And I know this very explicitly because like many performers, I have a ton of energy that I emit when I'm on. And then when I get off stage or out of class or whatever, I go and like lay on the floor of my office and just stare at the ceiling for an hour. However, you're like, okay, that makes you an introvert. No. During the pandemic, when I was inside for like 36 straight days staring at my 3-month-old, which was basically a potato at that point, she had no personality, while my husband was working in the other room nonstop, I was like, I need human interaction. This is not going to work for me. So I'm an ambivert. I need a little bit of both.

Okay. Question number 2.

Yes.

What are your communication pet peeves?

Mm. That throat clearing, and I don't mean the literal throat clearing, I mean the apologizing for what you're about to say rather than just saying it, or the like, well, I know I'm not really the expert here, or the na-na-na, and like you fill up a solid 30 seconds of however long you've been allotted. Just start saying the things that you want to say and— We don't have to worry about all of that. We call it throat clearing, especially when you're writing, and it's almost always that first paragraph and you just delete the first paragraph and by the second you've like gotten into it, start with the second paragraph.

Oh, very well put. I love that. So no more weak language, no more apologizing, no more posturing.

No.

Be direct. Okay, I got the head nod. Last rapid-fire question. Is there a podcast or a book or maybe both that you find yourself recommending lately?

Um, a little bit of both. I have 2 books, and one book is also a podcast, so I'll start with that one. It's called The Anxious Achiever by Maura Arendsmelle. Um, it's through, I think, LinkedIn Podcasts, and she also has a book related to it that I freaking love. Um, and I love it a ton, and not just because she quoted me in it, but, um, as someone who has been anxious my whole life, who's on medication for anxiety, I really struggled with, you know, like, how might this hinder my career and all the things? And when I met Maura and we were able to actually talk about this, I realized that so many of my superpowers as a manager, as a communicator, actually stem from my anxiety, right? Like, my ability to read the room and notice micro changes in facial expressions when I'm giving a talk, and therefore allow me to adjust how fast I'm going, whether I'm dropping some of the humor that's not being received, whether I'm pivoting how I use proxies in my storytelling. All of that comes from, like, the hyper-alertness of anxiety. And so I was like, oh, yes, it's something to be managed. It's not— I'm not gonna go and encourage everyone to just lean into your anxiety, but—

Mm-hmm.

But it's also not something to be feared, and it's not, It's not a shortcoming. It's just something I can harness for how I show up in the world. So I love that one. The other one is Karen Eber, The Perfect Story.

Okay.

It is a fantastic book. It just came out last year on literally the art and science of storytelling.

Oh.

She's a storytelling coach, and it is just a brilliant playbook, For anyone who's never really thought about the mechanics, the structure, and the delivery of storytelling. It's a whole discipline, and she sort of just lays it out there for you. So those are my 2 faves.

So I have thought about the mechanics, the structure of storytelling, but I'm not familiar with that book, so I can't wait to read it.

Check it out.

I will put links to the podcast and both of those books in the show notes. Is there any last, thought that you want to share with the Talk About Talk listeners about maybe the advantages of the portfolio life or, or how to embody it?

I mean, I think this is why I've put the entire last piece, the last third— I would say third, but it's actually half the book— on the how. Because there's the theory, right? That's the first third. Um, and there's the, like, you know, why you should do it, and that's amazing. But the work of actually doing it is like a whole discipline. And so I think if this is something that is appealing to you, Mm-hmm. I want to encourage you to actually like do the work. You can't just think about it and then hope your life will change, which is an obvious thing to say, but like also, you know, I read a lot of great books and I'm like, that's interesting. And then I go back and do nothing about incorporating those ideas. And this is one of those that I think is a, as you said, like, there are people going through big moments of transitions where there's an obvious catalyst for this, but there's also these micro moments of like, there's friction in my life that didn't used to be there. Huh, that friction usually means like your needs are not getting met, or the things that used to fill you are no longer filling you.

Right.

And these are the early signs before the midlife crisis, before the moments of big transition that like, Maybe I just need to tweak my portfolio a little bit. So to the extent that you want to read the book, pull up some of the exercises, grab a friend. I love doing these with friends, um, and sort of sit down and, and like make this your, your project for a couple of weekends. I think you'd be really surprised by how much you might get out of just a couple hours of doing the work.

I can tell you that This has already made a big impact on me. And I just wanna say thank you, Christina. I've, I've learned a lot and I really enjoyed learning even more about the portfolio life. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. Wow.

That was an intense conversation. Tears, laughter, the whole gamut. Incredible. Thank you, Christina. Now, as always, I'm gonna share with you 3 key learnings that I hope to reinforce with you coming out of this conversation with Christina. Actually, it's more like 3 exercises that I hope you'll try, even just one of them. Choose one of these 3 and see how it goes. Then try another and then another. Trust me, I did this and it's fantastic. Because here's the thing, at some point your life is up to you. Let's do this with our eyes wide open. These exercises can help. They can also illuminate some of the themes in your personal brand. The first exercise is your personal Venn diagram. Maybe limit it to your professional life. What are the 3 to 5 themes that represent your passion and your expertise? For Christina, she said it's business, technology, and theater. For me, I did some thinking about this. It's brand marketing, teaching or coaching, and self-expression. Self-expression as in communication and also self-expression as in painting and art. I realized that throughout my career and even personally, I'm kind of obsessed with these 3 things. Now, the fun starts by plotting down my various activities into these circles And where they overlap. I hope you'll try the same thing. What are the 3 circles in your personal Venn diagram? Hmm? The second exercise is to list the 100 wishes for your life. Like I said, like Christina said, the first 30 to 35 are easy, but that's when it gets tough, uncomfortable even, but that's where the magic happens. Once you're done your list of 100 wishes, you can start to categorize them and make sure you're leaving breadcrumbs, as Christina says, and thinking about how you're allocating your time. And this leads me to the 3rd exercise. We didn't talk about this directly in the interview, although we did talk about it indirectly, and it's covered in detail in the Portfolio Life book. It's the exercise of allocating your time. This is about identifying what proportion of your time, what percent you're spending on your physical health, Sleeping, working out, with your family, enjoying the outdoors, focused on each of the circles in your Venn diagram, socializing with friends, looking after your parents, caring for your children, and yes, working, and on and on. I just loved how Christina highlighted that we have different seasons in our life. I love that word. So maybe if you're in the sandwich generation, you're looking after your children and your aging parents. Maybe that's not when you have time to explore your creative side. That piece of your pie might be very narrow, right? Or maybe even nonexistent. But then the seasons change and suddenly you have an opportunity to be more creative. I guess the idea here is to be conscious, to be proactive about this, to be mindful about where You're spending your time. This way you won't have any regrets. After I met with Christina, I created my own pie chart of how I currently spend my time, and then I created a different one for how I wished I was spending my time. This is important stuff. So those are the 3 exercises that I encourage you to try. 1, the Venn diagram. 2, your 100 wishes for your life. And 3, your pie chart of how you allocate your time. Before you Before you embark on these exercises, I really encourage you to read Christina's book, The Portfolio Life. There's a link to the book in the show notes. And I have to tell you, this is interesting. On one hand, this is an easy read. As you can gather from our conversation, Christina is very easy to talk to, and she writes the same way that she speaks. So in a way, it's an easy read. But if you take her suggestions to heart, this is not at all an easy read.

No.

I mean, creating your personal Venn diagram, listing your 100 wishes, and recording how you allocate your time on a pie chart. These are not easy exercises, but I know you're up for it, and I know you'll find these exercises valuable. And of course, the insights from these exercises will end up informing your personal brand. These are important elements of your identity. That is everything for this episode. Thank you again to Christina Wallace. You can find her coordinates and a link to her book in the show notes for this episode. And my coordinates are there too. You'll find a link to sign up there for my free email newsletter. There's also a link to my LinkedIn account so you can follow me there or maybe even send me a DM. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please make sure you subscribe and share it with your friends. Thank you so much for listening. Talk soon. Bye.