Transcripts
1. Introduction: I think making a pivot in your life can be hard and scary because you're putting yourself out there, but on the other side of the pivot, you can find more fulfillment and feel like you're being more of yourself. I'm Emma Gannon. I'm an author and broadcaster and I wrote the book, The Multi-Hyphen Life, which is about creativity, the future of work, and side hustles. Today's class is all about creative pivots and making space to make a change. I am really into talking about pivots because I've experimented with loads myself, but also because I think making big changes can be scary and we don't really have the tools to help us through these changes sometimes. In today's class, we're going to go through some practical exercises, but also I'm talking to three creatives about their pivot journeys. When I left the military, it was a recession and then leaving my last job to be full time in my career, it was also a recession. So I reminded myself that there's never going to be that perfect time. It's very hard to pull yourself away from your comfort to try something new which can potentially feel like it's got room for failure. Have some flexibility when it comes to your plans. It may not work out, but there might be a reason why it doesn't work out the exact way that you want it. I'm really excited for you to feel empowered to make some calculated risks, to feel in control and not do anything too rush. But also look for the opportunities and start thinking about ways that you can make it happen. I'm really excited that you're here. Let's get started.
2. The Power of the Pivot: Welcome to this class on creative pivots. I'm so glad that you're here. Pivoting is something that I have done in the past and it's something I've done really recently as well. I recently wrote my first novel. It was a pivot in terms of I hadn't done it before, and it was a brand new skill, and something that I had to make happen by myself. No one really asked me to do it. I just went and tried it out. One of the big things with pivoting is that no one's really going to tap you on the shoulder and suggest that you do it. It really does have to come from yourself and you have to make that first step on your own. I was really excited about making this class because there is no roadmap. It's hard. It's different for everyone. There's no straight path, there's no quick and easy step process. But I really wanted to talk about it because I think sometimes we think we have to be an expert before we try something new, we have to be overqualified to even make that step. Whereas all my pivots have come from curiosity and learning on my feet and really learning just by doing it. Through making all my different pivots, I definitely feel like I've got to know myself better. I do feel more fulfilled in my day-to-day work. But I also feel that by making all these pivots, it's almost been a process of elimination in what do I like? What do I not like? Therefore, I'm getting closer to this dream job that I never really thought existed before. When we talk about pivots, it can be choice led, and it can be something that comes from a place of wanting to follow up on a passion. But sometimes it's because something has happened in the world, which means we have to shake things up. It is almost a truth in life that we can't control everything that we do, even if we love our job, something might come along and change it for us. So even during COVID, people have had to pivot. They've had to change up their businesses. Often new things change their skills. Actually if anything, pivoting is a lifelong skill that we will have no matter what happens externally. This class will have two exercises to help you with your pivots. The first exercise will be about finding what that pivot might be and really reflecting on yourself and figuring out what that pivot might start off as. The second part will be planning the pivot because this is something that we need to make time for, make space for, and we need to have a plan. Next, I'll be talking to three different creatives about the pivots that they've made. They're also different, one made a pivot later on in life, someone made a really big pivot from one very different thing to another. The other is always in transition and trying new things all the time. I think you'll get a lot from those conversations. I will be reflecting on those conversations and all of the really helpful tips and advice that I got from those interviews and relay them back to you so that we can all find the learnings and the lessons from those conversations together. As we go along, I'll be taking some notes and following along the exercises so that you can see and all you'll need is a notepad and a pen and to write down as we go and please do share any thoughts, any ideas in the project gallery below, and I can't wait to see what you get up to. If you have taken my other classes, this is the perfect class for you. In my first class we covered going back to childhood and figuring out what really lit you up when you're younger and you're creative, identity. The second class was about getting out of our own way and really finding out what those obstacles are that keep popping up. This one is about making it happen. It's about making change. It's scary, but this is a really exciting time to be making change. Next up, I'll be taking you through the first exercise.
3. Finding Your Why: The first step here is really looking at where we're at and what we might want to change. It's so easy for time to pass, for years to go by and to look up and not really notice that the time has gone. It's really important to notice that we are living in a world of distractions, we're living in a world of social media updates, and it's very noisy and we can get very confused with what we want. It's important to ask yourself whether you want to progress in the job you're currently in, maybe you've hit the ceiling, maybe every year is quite repetitive and you want to change. Maybe it's that it's not really fulfilling what you want your life to look like in the future. I think it's important to reflect on whether it really is matching up with the idea of what you wanted your life to look like. The good thing about making a pivot is it doesn't have to be something that you go and tell everyone immediately. For me, personally, that really adds pressure, and then people start asking you how it's going and it can feel really weighty. Something that I find really useful is working in secret on your pivot. For me, I wrote my blog in the evenings years ago, and I didn't share on social media for a while. I started writing my novel, Olive, in secret for a few months, and also with my podcast, I started recording the audio in the evenings just for fun, just to practice. Take the pressure off, start small, and you don't have to tell anyone just yet. It's really helpful to realize what skills you might be missing from your job or things that you wish you were doing or you used to be doing and you're not doing anymore. For me, personally, I remember working in a role where my job was to write for a certain brand, an agency, and then I got promoted and I wasn't writing anymore. I realized that I was really missing that and I was missing that skill and that part of the job. Sometimes that can happen, you can pivot out of the thing that you love doing. This exercise is going to be getting back to what you are missing, what you want more of, and how we can pinpoint that and really zone in on it. One of the things that's really important to identify is the why, the reason why you want to make this change. It's all very well wanting a new job title or wanting a new identity or wanting something that's external facing, that actually the feeling of the job and the feeling of happiness or more joy, that's really what we're going after in this class. When we're talking about pivoting, sometimes you might be wanting to pivot into a completely new area and that might feel really daunting at first. But you have to remember that you have so many skills already, you won't be starting from scratch, and you have so many soft skills. These are the skills to concentrate on. These are the skills that will be transferable. Things like public speaking or networking or your organization skills or your visual skills. You might be watching this and thinking you're not sure what your pivot might be or what you even enjoy or what you want to move towards. It's really important to pick up on really small clues. The feeling of enthusiasm is actually one of the most powerful feelings we have towards being attracted to something we want. It might be that you light up when you see a certain TV show or a certain book or a certain color or a certain place when you go traveling, these are all clues. Make a note of the things that light you up and they will serve as clues later down the line. For me, I think it was starting to become quite obvious. I was reading more novels, I was reading more articles with my favorite authors about how they wrote their novels. I think people around you can sometimes see it too. For my birthday a few years ago, someone in my family bought me this novel writing class. Sometimes the clues are from other people around you, sometimes your friends can see you better than you can see yourself. The clues can come from anywhere, but just make sure that you're taking note of them because when you have them all laid out, they can make sense. One of the challenges of making a pivot isn't necessarily doing it, even though that is very hard, it's sometimes admitting it in the first place. It's very normal if you feel afraid, but the very first step really is to just admit it to yourself that you're ready for a change. It's important to prepare yourself that you won't have this neat identity anymore, it is a change, and when we're in limbo or when making a change in the middle of making a pivot, things can feel a bit messy, but that's completely normal. You might even feel like you're going backwards slightly. You might feel like you're unpicking some of your work you've done to move forwards. That actually is a good sign, and it's a good sign that you're making change. I've definitely noticed a shift in this becoming more normalized, I think it's a really good time to be multi-skilled and to be adaptable. I think there was a time where you had one job and you stuck to it. I think the world is changing. This exercise really is about bringing out those core values that you want to have and that need to be involved in your next pivot.
4. Exercise: Your Core Values: For this exercise, it's all about picking around 3-5 words that really encompass what you feel is currently missing and what you might want to pivot towards. For me, when I made a pivot into writing fiction and changing my career quite a bit, the first thing I felt like I was missing was a challenge. Things were going okay and I felt like I was in a bit of a safe place which was going well. But I just felt like I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. That is something, personally, for me, I really enjoy doing, I like to be a little bit scared, I like to push myself. For me, this was a challenge. I didn't know if it was going to happen or if it was going to work, but I made peace with it may be not working out in order to feel like I was having a bit more of a challenge. The second one would be creativity. I felt like I was writing my non-fiction books which I really enjoyed. They were quite limiting in terms of writing about a topic that I knew about, but with fiction, it just opened this whole new world of creativity because you can talk about topics you don't know a lot about, you can create characters to say things that you would never say, and you can create a world that you don't live in. For me, that was a huge part of wanting to do it. The third one was adventure. This was to do with the fact that in order to make the pivot happen, I had to again get out of my comfort zone, but more physically. I had to take myself away, I went to cafes, I went and stayed by the sea, I took some time wait at the weekends and this was outside of work time, but I wanted to make the space to have an adventure. Not only did I write the book or start writing it, but I took myself away and saw a bit more of the world, or I saw more experiences. I got more out of it than just the work itself. One word that I have decided not to use anymore with myself or other people is the word, should, because it insinuates that we should be doing things in our lives when actually who made that rule in the first place. Should, is a bit of a society-pressure thing. If you feel like you should be making more money or you should be doing a certain type of job, then that's not really what this exercise is about. It's more about going inside and thinking, what do you actually want to do aside from all of the confusing messages of social media outside of your family's expectations. This is really just about focusing on those really simple things that will bring you more joy. When you have your words, you might have two, three, four, five, take them, and then go a little bit deeper and unpick them and work out what that actually means in practical terms. For me, challenge meant sending a scary email to someone, reaching out to someone maybe for advice, or someone in your network who might be able to help you. This is something that is scary. People don't really like reaching out to people and asking for things, it's hard. It was also learning a new skill. It was going and taking classes. It was saying no to a social thing on a weekend. It was sacrificing my time, again, scary and a challenge. With creativity, it meant opening myself up to following new people online. It meant getting out of my comfort zone in terms of reading new books and reading books that I hadn't read before, or buying new novels online that I felt would help me with my craft. It was sort of branching out of my comfort zone in terms of creativity. With adventure, that meant booking a staycation, going and staying in a little house on my own, which goes back to the challenge thing, I'm not great at getting out of my own house sometimes. It also meant an adventure in terms of creating a new world for myself and creating an adventure inside the book, which meant coming out with new characters. When you take these three words and dig underneath of what that actually looks like, that can make up a bit of a base for your next steps. This is an exercise that you can do just with a notepad and a pen. But take yourself away. This isn't something to do with someone else, this is something to do by yourself. Maybe it's just one weekend, you turn your phone off and you sit with yourself and your feelings and your journal and you write it down. That in itself can be tricky when there's so much going on. But I really recommend taking the time to make this first step. Next up, we're going to talk about planning your pivot.
5. Planning Your Pivot: Something that's really important when making a pivot is the planning and the strategy that comes with making the move. This is something that requires you to take the skills that you currently have, to take a lot of the experience and qualities of your job that you already have, and pivot them into a new space. I think it's important to mention that when making a pivot. The reason it can be hard is because it might require an element of sacrifice. A lot of people who I've spoken to and interviewed about making these career changes. That is the one thing that keeps coming up. They did have to sacrifice something. We've all got the same amount of hours in a day, and it's strange not to mention that you have to take hours from somewhere else. When I was in my 20s, I made quite a big pivot, and I felt like perhaps, it was slightly easier because I didn't have as much at stake, but I have interviewed a creative for this class who pivoted into his 40s, so it is definitely possible and is still a really exciting move to make. The good thing about having a plan is you know what to expect. The thing with pivoting is there are times where you might feel overworked, or you might feel that you've taken on too much because you're in that transition period. This is what happens especially with side hustles. You add it in and then you're doing a lot but actually, the side hustle is allowing you to pivot and make that transition easier. The thing about pivoting is that it's not just quitting your job and overnight having nothing. That is definitely not what this class is about, and it's definitely not what pivoting is about. Pivoting can be slow, it can be a slow burn, and it can be a period of a year, maybe even longer where you're planning to make change quite slowly. I know that for me it was taking on that extra bit of work in order to have that on my CV or on my linked-in so that I can pivot more towards that skill. This is about upskilling, it's about having different income streams if you can, just one extra income stream that could be really small is a plan B in order to move forward with a new challenge, which can be quite scary. But just sowing those seeds and making a start, it means that you're gathering information and gathering your time and money, and expertise over a long period of time. It's really important, I think if you're making a change not to put pressure on yourself, because that can make this whole thing more stressful. We can think up all of the reasons why it might go wrong. There are so many mind games that can hold us back, so make it really easy for yourself. Do things in private. Don't necessarily tell everyone, you don't have to announce it. Just build up this catalog of information, upskill and do things on the side, and feel like you're gathering a lot of information and research for your pivot, and then when it comes to making that change, you'll feel so much more confident. You'll feel like you've already made steps towards it without feeling like it's this massive thing or a big deal. I definitely subscribe to the idea that we should always, when we go into anything, remind ourselves that it might not work. I know Seth Godin, who is an amazing marketing guru, always says this when he writes his books, he always tells himself this might not work. I think for when I was writing my novel, I definitely thought that. I said to myself, this might never ever get published. This might never ever happen, but I was still willing to spend those weekends writing it because it was adding so much more to my well-being by doing it over and above, what was going to happen on the other side.
6. Exercise: Your Non-Negotiables: For this exercise, we're going to have you take your notepad and a pen and write down a list of your non-negotiables. These are things that you still need set in stone in your life. But it will free you up to know what you can and can't move in your current schedule and create that time to create your pivots. I'm going to have you write down two subtitles under the titles, Time and Money. These are going to be your non-negotiables. These are things that you can't really change up too much or you might be able to change them up a lot, but just making sure that you know what your foundation is for what you need in your life to get through the days, the weeks, the months. Another thing that can be really useful is looking at the amount of time that you spend on something and realizing what is a non-negotiable and what is essentially free time that you could dip into. Under time, you might have that your non-negotiables are that you need to have your whole Saturday free for you to see your friends, do what you want, and that is understandable. It might be though that on a Sunday, you are okay with spending 30 minutes on a Sunday afternoon or evening on your side project or your pivots. For me it was looking at how much time I was spending on the weekends, scrolling through things I thought were inspiring me, but actually I think I could have maybe spent less time on that and more on my side projects. This definitely comes into putting my phone down for an hour every weekend and putting that into the side project. Working out your body clock, I think is really important as well because things will seem easier. For me, I do not want to get up early. That is not something I like doing and I will not be helpful to myself or others at 6:00 AM in the morning. But I angered in the evenings and I'm happy to create half an hour to an hour, when it gets late to working on things. For me, I would say I'm a night owl. So write that down. With time as well, I think it's important to know that during this transition period, which it is and it doesn't go on forever, but it is a period of time when you might have to sacrifice things. It might be that you are not saying yes to going to the pub on the Sunday that you do every single week, it might be the one of those weekends a month you don't go. When we're talking about making pivots, I think it's really important to talk about money because they go hand in hand with the planning of making any big life change. It's really important to work out what your bare minimum is to get through a stage where you might be overworking or under working, because you're going through a change. Making your budget for the month and knowing exactly what you need to get by is really important. When you've worked this out, it can be really helpful because you can then know what you can say yes or no to. For me, I found that if you know what your bare minimum is, you can know whether you can turn down something that will completely suck your time and energy because you want to spend that few hours on the side project that ultimately could make you more money down the line. It's all a bit of a mathematical game of working out what you can afford to say yes and no to during your pivot time. The other way this can work out is when you know how much money you need, you can work out whether you could go down to a four day week. This opens up a whole day in your week for your pivot. This is something that is increasingly popular, this isn't wacky idea anymore that someone might work a three or four day week, this is something that a lot of people are already doing. The other thing that might be quite obvious when we're talking about sacrifices during this pivoting time is sacrificing what you might be spending your money on. It's a really good idea to go through your finances really closely, and just during this time because you're going to be in a rocky period of change, which ultimately will make you happier, it's good to look at what you could cut back on. It doesn't mean you have to cut back forever, it just means that this is a period of change and sacrifice. For me it meant really looking at what I was spending on and not going out for dinner as much, not buying as many clothes, not spending money on things I didn't really need. What you're doing is a strange element of self-care or looking after yourself in other ways because you're basically investing in a better future. Now it's your turn to do this exercise. Grab your notepad, your pen, grab your calendar, and your bank statements, and look at what you're doing. To see making a pivot in action, I'm going to be speaking to three guests pivoters. Up next is the first pivoter.
7. Danielle Clough's Story: Danielle clough's is an embroider from South Africa, where she studied art direction and graphic design. She then began her career as an artist in the fields of visual art and digital design. Danielle is no stranger to trying new things, hosting a show on Assembly Radio, creating custom book covers, and worked as a contributing photographer to several local and international publications. I'm looking forward to talking to Danielle all about her creative pivots. Hi Danielle. Welcome. Hi Emma. So good to meet you and I'm so excited to talk to you all about your creative life, which has taken so many amazing paths along the way. I wanted to ask you firstly, because I know you've made so many wonderful pivots and it's all come seemingly quite natural to you. But the first pivot it seems that you made was when you pivoted out of traditional education and explored other routes, and I wanted, if you could tell us about that. Yes, so I was in a just a regular schooling system and I had discovered this love for clothing, and I got this vision of myself being this amazing fashion designer like the South Africa's Coco Chanel or something like that. I basically convinced my mother to let me drop out of mainstream school and to a visual arts metric, so that when I got to the point of being able to be in fashion school, I had this advantage. I guess that was my first big move towards the bigger picture, I guess. I loved that because I think with art and creativity and carving your own path, a lot of it seems to be self-taught, but it's almost like you got to strike a balance between learning in a traditional way and then learning by yourself. How much was it you teaching yourself? It's a balance of being able to move outside of your comfort zone to try something which you teach yourself, and then having the foundations around you to allow that to happen and then to progress, so you can keep playing and keep using those as steps to move forward. Also with making those steps and changes and realizing what's working and what's not working, how do you know when you're excited about something? Is there a physical feeling? Is there something that happens? There is a physical feeling, and then I think maybe the best way that I can find for it is obsession. This consistent ruminating or this itch that you've got at the back of your mind, whether it's something you want to explore, whether it's a new medium, and it just sits with you. It's almost feels like something that's unforgettable. I guess you're someone that has tried so many different things. I'm a huge fan of trying out different things and seeing what sticks and getting more experience. But would you be able to talk about how you did dabble with quite a few different things to find out what you wanted to do and all of that is never wasted. Yeah, nothing is wasted. If I look at all these avenues that I went down and now how my creative process works, it all feeds into itself. I think that that's the thing about changing scope or disciplines. You always think that if you're doing this and then you're changing to this, it's a completely different thing, and it's because you're not good at that or you failed. But those things don't sit next to each other, they sit on top of each other, and you're constantly building yourself. Yeah, totally, and I love doing lots of different things because it almost spreads the pressure out onto a few different things, so I can be more playful and be more free. But for anyone who might be listening and thinking, they want to pivot, they want to add something into their life, does it come with any challenges, and what would they be? What are some of the things that you've overcome? I think now, especially with social media and the affirmation, I think one of the hardest challenges is to pull yourself away from your audience and to do something for yourself, which is really hard, especially if you're getting some reward for what you're already doing, whether that's financial or emotional, it's very hard to pull yourself away from your comfort to try something new which can potentially feel like it's got room for failure. I know you mean. It's very noisy on there, and sometimes we need to remember what we even like because we're being targeted with so many different things that you, sometimes I think you can forget what your own taste is, which is quite scary. Do you take little holidays away from it or put your phone on silent, what do you do to step away? Well, yeah, remove Instagram from your phone, put it on another device, like your computer or your iPad or something like that. Just anything that keeps it away from being in your pocket and consistently on your mind that social media assumation comparative space that it creates. I find this has been really helpful doing something and not sharing it. Doing something for yourself and holding it for yourself and just allowing space for that experience to just be yours. I guess creating tools to protect what you love. Even if this thing that you love becomes a full-time career, you still have to have certain tools to protect it. That's even saying no to certain commissions or saying no to certain jobs, or saying no to social things that can distract you from exercising or being in this process. Anything that you feel instinctively you need to do to protect that passion, and that process is probably the biggest tip. When you're starting a fresh project, do you set intention for what that might be so? Is it a hobby? Is it going to be a business? Do you go into it feeling like you know what it's going to be or do you just do it and then see where it ends up? I think it just do it. Yeah, I think sometimes I used to do things with this idea that it was going to be this great thing. You have this fashion designer, I was like are going to be the world's best fashion designer. I'm ready to take over South Africa. Then I studied fashion design, after doing this two your visual arts course at school to be this great thing, and I really didn't enjoy it and I dropped out after two weeks. It came with this huge sense of failure because it was mourning this vision that I had for like the rest of my life and I think that's one of the hardest things about changing your life, is that feeling that you've failed because you've disappointed a future version of yourself, and after that going down these other different avenues I realized through that, things only happens through work, they don't happen through this final destination. Even when you're building a business, a lot of people think, I have to have this, a website and stock and det,det,det, and only then is my business compete. But actually the best way to build the business is to start, and then to allow it to organically grow from there. Sometimes success in something is literally making something you like and paying your bills with it just getting by is like you've done it, and for that to never be reached would be a shame. It's actually an amazing point of success to spend a whole weekend doing something that you love, that's joy, and what is success if it isn't joyful? I also feel that we often diminish the value of a hobby because we can't measure its value,. Definitely, and it's so much more empowering to know that you've made the rules yourself for what you want to achieve and that you're not constantly doing it for any outside validation. Another thing I love about you and what you're doing is just this open-mindedness of being able to change your mind. I think we're so scared sometimes to say I've changed my mind. I don't know what it is, but it's almost like we have to stick to something. Is that sort natural part of your personality? Have you always been okay with changing your mind, or is it something you've learnt? I think it's natural, but I think it comes also with having a strong support system of friends and family who even if they didn't understand it, they were like, "Oh, I don't know about that haircut but it's very, you." So then doing stuff like that, I never felt like things came with judgment, I think that we have to have faith in people that people are nicer than they're not nice. Trusting that when you do something, when you experiment, when you change, there's always going to be more support than there isn't, there's always going to be more positive feelings towards you than judgment, and that helps the feeling of ebbing and flowing and change. Yeah, because on the whole I feel like there is still this, not necessarily a stigma, but people thinking, well, you're going to have to choose one thing in the end, and I always get asked if you could pick one thing, what would it be out of all the things that I do? Do you think that we can live in a way where you don't have to pick one thing. I think you could have a potential to be exhausting. If I think about going and jumping between if I was still doing photography and I was still doing this, I would probably be really tired. I think focus is actually one of the biggest tools you can have in a work kit. Being able to hone in on something and then to build it. But I don't think that means that you should only do one thing. I don't believe you should be a master of one thing, but I think that carving out real time to enjoy a process and to learn from a process is beneficial in the long run. It's okay to do something else. But I think to create as much attention for one thing at one time is beneficial. I think that's so important because when we make pivots, for example, when we are deciding we want to make a change or in the middle of that change, you have to focus. You couldn't just decide you're going to change careers and not think about it much. I think it takes commitment and time and focus, so yeah, that's really good advice. Yeah, it feels like there's a real theme with pivoting that you never truly stop, you're always learning new things and even if you work for yourself or you work for a big company, I don't think that ever changes. We're always having to reinvent ourselves and it shouldn't have to be scary. But on that note, I wanted to, lastly, ask you, do you see yourself pivoting again in the future? Is that something that you can imagine happening again? Strangely for the first time, I think in my life, I don't have that itch for the next thing, but I am starting painting classes, so maybe that will open up something else. I think what's happened is I've started becoming a lot more business minded, which is quite strange. It's almost like most people from a business background and then allow themselves to be creative. I've changed, so I think that would probably be my next move. But again, it's just trying things, teaching yourself new things and opening yourself up to different experiences and then seeing how those grow and then having a vision of I'm going to do something completely different. It's hasn't worked for me before, so I'm just going to trust the process. Yes. Trusting it and taking the pressure off seems to be the way to go. Thank you so much. That was so great and so many helpful tips in there that I would definitely use myself. So thank you. Yeah thank you so much for chatting. This has been so cool.
8. Robert Generette III's Story: Next I'll be talking to Robert Generette III, an award-winning illustrator and former high school art teacher. Under the pseudonym Rob Zola III, he used an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil to create compelling sports illustrations and portraits for clients ranging from Nike, ESPN, Obama Foundation, Xbox, and Adobe. We're talking to Rob about his many different art experiences and his willingness to try new things using mobile technology and how this has led to pivots along the way. Hi, Rob. So good to meet you. Same. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm making it. I'm so excited to talk to you today. You've got so many different creative strands to your career. Even your bio is just super interesting. We're going to talk about your pivots throughout the years as they've been quite a few. First of all, I just wanted to ask you because I think you started off in more of a traditional art role industry work, and it seems like you've pivoted into more of a digital setup. How did that come about? You're talking about a long story. It first came about from a message from an old student. He wanted me to teach at his high school because, everything he was learning in high school, he had already learned in elementary school, with me being his teacher. So I went to interview at that school and, to make a long story short, the principal was looking for a computer art teacher. I was, like, "I can learn it. I can learn it to the point where I can teach students how to do it. " He was, like, "No, we already want a computer teacher." I asked him that question I always ask during interviews, "Are you sure?" He was, like, "Yeah." I was, like, "Okay. I'm going to ask again. Are you sure?" He was like, "Yeah." He looked a little off because I was asking him twice the same thing. But we shook hands, I grabbed my large portfolio, went back to the office so I can turn back in my visitor's pass. On my way to the office, I text real quickly to a friend. I was, like, "Hey, I need a torrent of Photoshop and Illustrator today with serial numbers." He was, like, "No problem." When I turned that pass in, I got home. I downloaded everything, and I learned Photoshop and Illustrator in three weeks. Wow. Do you feel that a part of the pivots that you make, do you come from other people almost requesting it of you, or was there a part of you that was also really interested in it yourself? It's a mixture of the two. It's a hybrid. The catalyst is usually someone asking for something that may not be in my skill set, and I'll try it out. But once I try it out, the universe expands, so to speak, and I found all these different ways of do something different than what the person asked me to do that better suits my needs and make me feel more fulfilled as an artist. Because it's interesting, this class. It feels like it can be a lifestyle change, and it can be something that comes from the person, or it can come from the outside world and the opportunities that come with the changing world. As you say, sometimes it's a bit of both. I wanted to ask you about the other pivot that you went through, which is working in a full-time role to working for yourself now. What was that like, that transition? Let me tell you, my new boss is the best. I taught for 20 years, and teaching in a public school setting, the biggest issue that I had was the authority figures. I have folks who would try to tell me how to do my job, but then they would confess during the polls observation that they can't even draw a straight line. So how are you observing and giving me instructions on how to teach a class where you can't even perform the basic of the basic skills? When things don't make sense anymore, it's time to move on. So I made that leap. How do you think you can tell when something isn't really serving you anymore because I think, for me, it's when I'm repeating the same things over and over again, and I feel like I'm not learning anymore. Would you say that that's one sort out for people who might want to pivot and change things up a bit? Yeah, I'll call it a ceiling. Once that ceiling gets low, and you don't have any more room to grow upward, it's time to look for something different. You'll know what that ceiling is. For me, it was I wanted to teach the kids how to do this digital art, and those opportunities wasn't available where I was. I didn't want to move sideways anymore, so it's best just to get out. What was the moment for you where you knew inside that actually maybe it was time to make a change? It's funny you asked that. At the time, I had a teaching life, and I had this other superman superpower life when I was Rob Zola. The Rob Zola life required me to fly and go to all these different places for conferences and things of that nature. I had my students prepared for it. So I would always give them a heads up before I travel. This particular time, I think I was going to Adobe MAX. I was preparing my students, and I said, "All right, you-all, I need for you all login to the platform with me so I can go over your sub-work for next week because I won't be here and the student was, like, "You're going again? You're leaving again?" It echoed, and I just stopped for that moment. I was, like, "Wow, maybe I'm not giving my students all of me now." That was that magical moment. Just have one phrase, "You're leaving again?" It's interesting you say that because I had a similar thing where other people have picked up maybe that other things were going well. It's almost that realization that you are only one person, and you can't do it all sometimes, and sometimes you have to make a choice. It always happens organically, like you can't choose anymore. It's just happening. Absolutely. So interesting. Another part of your story that I loved, and I really want us to talk to you about is you pivoted in your 40s, is that right when you had a family. Yes. We hear loads of stories about people pivoting in their 20s or fresh out of uni, things like that. I think we need more stories of pivoting when actually you feel like maybe you should stay in your lane, but actually why should we? Yeah, it's a little scarier in your 40s. In what way? There's a lot of things that hang in the balance of you being successful. You can have a ripple effect on a lot of other things, if you're not. For instance, I got two kids, and they were young at the time, we had recently moved into a new house, student loans, other financial responsibilities, and here go this guy deciding that he's going to forego his check every two weeks. But luckily I had a wife that supported me. I would always talk about leaving the educational field. It got to the point where she was basically quoting Nike and say just do it, I got you back, and because of that, it made it easier. Because I think finances is one of the main things that stop people from pivoting, isn't it? From my conversations with people that I see the time, money, or confidence but money stands out as a bit of a drawback. But how practically do you recommend people save, even if it's not six months, even if I just need to get by for two months and have that time to really make the pivot happen. You got to have to forego some luxuries. You can't have Starbucks every day if you're expecting to go freelance. Those little things build up over time. Take in account how much money you spend on just those little items a month and write them down in a notebook because you have to see them or just go over your bank statement for the last three months and highlight all the things that you treated yourself with and think about, this money could have been placed into a savings account, so I can make a nice little soft cushiony mattress when I jump. Just by doing those little exercises, you'll realize how much your money can really go. On the flip side, because it is a bit of a sacrifice and you do have to change things up a bit. What are the pros? What's the benefits? What do you love about your life now? Well, Number 1, I get to set the rules. Number 2, I'm not stuck at one job. I'm only there like a temp just to collaborate with a group of people, and once that job is done, I pack my bags up and I go to the next one to collaborate with someone else. It's always exciting. The work is never stale. It doesn't get exhausting. It's adventures that's different every time, but it's just a different way for me to apply the skill set that I have. Everyone's got their own path and everyone's pivoting and zigzagging and changing things up themselves. But is there anything that you would pass on to someone else if they were asking you now and you have all this hindsight, is there one thing you would recommend as a starting point? I will say move with the wind. I always tell the story about two trees. There's a palm tree and there's oak tree. A strong wind comes along, and what the palm tree does is the palm tree bends along with the wind. The oak tree is rigid and stiff, doesn't move, so eventually, the unwillingness to move the oak tree breaks. When the windstorm is over, the palm tree goes right back up. Have some flexibility when it comes to your plans. It may not work out, but there might be a reason why it doesn't work out the exact way that you want it to work out. I love that advice. That's so good because I think to be someone who pivots and enjoys the journey and changes things up, you have to make peace with things going wrong and just scrapping it or ditching it, and I feel like sometimes in our culture we're too scared to quit things because we need to make it work, but sometimes it's it's okay to quit. Do you think that's the case sometimes with pivoting? Yeah, I think we were conditioned at an early age that the word quit is a bad word. But there's something after that. You just don't quit and stop and don't do anything at all. You have to stop doing one thing in order to start doing something else. Forget how you were brought up for a second. Think about the direction you want to move in. You got to forego whatever you're doing now in order to do what you want to do. It reminds me of that always moving in Beta mode that you're always just reiterating you and what you're doing. Has it been quite crazy for you to see just how much your career has evolved, because it's almost evolved in tandem with technology evolving. Yeah. I won my first iPad on Twitter. Even opening the box, I was wondering, what am I going to do with this. Is a big iPhone. What am I going to do with this big iPhone? I think the universe has a funny sense of humor when it comes to stuff like that. Where does it stop and start with upgrading your tools? Because I feel like now we've always got more that we can get in different phones, different iPads. How do you know when you need to pivot with your tools and what you can stick with? Here's my rule of thumb when it comes to that. You know exactly what you need if you can pay for it within one or two gigs. That's good advice. If you want the new iPad, of course everybody wants the pro. But what's your budget? Because starting out, I would tell folks easily listen, go get the base model iPad with the Apple Pencil. It does the same things. Try it out. You don't want to invest a lot of money in something and you don't like it. That's really good advice. Because I think sometimes if we're making a pivot and we're trying to invest in a new career, it could be tempting to over-invest in the tools and then actually put too much pressure on yourself actually, because you should be growing with what you can afford and grow together. When we're talking about working for ourselves, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the art community, the people that you teach, the people that you know. How much do they impact your next move or pivots? Do you take feedback quite often from the people around you? Oh, always. I think being in art school you condition to have that critique. One other thing I would say is, be a fan. Be a fan of folks who are doing the same work that you're doing. Folks who are doing something totally opposite. I'm a fan, and my inspiration comes from anyone who is living off their passion. That's who I follow on Instagram. That's really good advice. That's three really good tips in one. Don't fall into comparison if you can help it and be a fan, be inspired by different people who are outside of your industry, and also just keep asking for feedback because that can be quite scary. When you're asking for critique, it's brave. You need to have that truth told to you from multiple sources. Once you get that feedback, look for similarities in the feedback. Nine times out of 10, that's what you really need to focus on next. That's really good to know, and I think that is really, really helpful to see how someone does it behind the scenes. But feel like we covered so much there. Thank you so much Rob for your time. It was so interesting talking to you about all the things to do with pivoting. I had fun. We need more of this. We need to do this more. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Let's do a weekly podcast.
9. Yasmine Cheyenne's Story: Yasmine Cheyenne is an advocate for mental health as well as a diversity, equity, and inclusion expert. Corporates including ABC, Facebook, and Skillshare have invited her to share her trainings which destigmatize ideas about race and seek to create more opportunities for marginalized communities. She has helped thousands of students take control of their financial and physical health by creating boundaries, designing that dream job, finding the love of their life, and more. Yasmine brings her practice more than 15 years of legal and business experience, including being an Air Force Veteran. She is the host of her own podcasts, the Sugar Jar Podcast, and we'll be talking to her about the pivot she's made along the way. Hi, Yasmine. Hi, how are you? I'm good. I'm so excited today to talk to you about pivots because you were doing different things before what you're doing now and I get to ask you all about that. What were you doing before you're so low, self-built, amazing career that you've got now? Well, before I was doing this, I originally joined the military. I was in the Air Force on active duty for five years. From there I went into a civilian career, working in government, and I did some corporate work, so I've really had a lot of different careers and jobs and opportunities that somehow led me to what I do now. They all really pushed me toward what I'm doing today. Did you find that it naturally came to you, this window of opportunity to pivot or change things up, or was this a real gradual thing? What was the first seed? The first seed was definitely when I was on active duty. I was working with domestic violence victims and I was just really interested in how we could create space for them to be able to continue to have assistance going through such a tough journey, going through such a tough experience. It didn't seem like that existed in a way that I felt was actually going to support them in their healing. The seed was definitely planted there where I knew that, that was something that felt like it was a part of my purpose, but I didn't know yet how it would come to fruition and what it would look like in real time. How did you plan ahead? Because you had a busy job beforehand that must have taken up a lot of your time. Yeah. I wouldn't recommend everything that I did. I burnt the candle at both ends in the beginning because one youth was on my side, but two, I was just so excited by it. I wanted to learn more, I wanted to do more, I wanted to train and do all of these things. Eventually, I recognized your business gets to a place where you have to choose. It got to a point where I recognized that what I was doing was something that I couldn't no longer have a job and do this and devote the amount of attention that I wanted to my business. It wasn't that I couldn't do both, it was that I don't have to anymore, I can do this full time. Making that decision was one that took about three years. Yeah, that's such a good point I think about taking risks because there's high-stakes and low stakes and I feel like with pivoting, you have to do the maths, don't you? Of how much of a risk and I personally willing to take. It felt like you did reach a balance. I mean, how did you work that out? What you personally were willing to sacrifice during that time. When I left the military, it was a recession and then leaving my last job to be full-time in my career, there was also a recession and so I reminded myself that there's always going to be things happening. There's never going to be that perfect time. The worst-case, I could probably just get a job. I used to work at McDonald's, I could probably do that again if I needed to do. I do the smart thing and look at my finances. All of the uncomfortable parts of business that perhaps you don't have to be so serious about when you're doing both, you have to get really serious about when you're going to jump into it. That's also a part of being a business owner, really diving deeply into all of the things that you're responsible for now, it's scary, but I think that ultimately it makes you stronger and it makes you make tough decisions like, hey, maybe this month I can't do this or maybe I need to do this and other month and really just taking full responsibility for your dream. Yeah, I love that and I feel like there is this big strategy behind it and there has to be sometimes when you take risks. Sometimes when people say that they just fell into a job it's like, how? How did you fall into it? But you do a lot of work around burnout and self-care and looking after ourselves. Would it be safe to say that there could be a time when you're making the pivot that you will experience feeling overwhelmed and overloaded but that's maybe a part of it that you just need to realize might happen but actually the rewards on the other side means that you will live a happier life, it's just you've got to go through that hard bit first? I really believe in starting as you wish to go on, which for me means if I don't want to work 26 hours a day, then I need to create a schedule or a life and my business needs to reflect what I want for myself personally. Really creating time and schedules and flow that makes sure that I'm not burning myself out. But even if I'm not burning myself out, that doesn't mean that there's not overwhelm and there's a lot of overwhelm with success. When you're successful, you have to deliver. When you get a great opportunity, people are expecting you to be able to meet their needs. There's overwhelm in the fear of failing and then there's also overwhelm in, they actually want me to do this and I now I have to create a product and give it to them. I think recognizing that overwhelm doesn't always mean this is a sign that I'm failing, overwhelm is also excitement, overwhelm is also nervousness, which is a normal reaction to opportunity that's new and different and not putting the connotations of this is bad. Definitely. That's really interesting because I think some of the most breakthrough pivots that I've done, that I now look back and think, thank God I did that, at the time I felt like I was going backwards, whether it was a slight pay cut or I wasn't sure of myself. It's that thing where people say it's like an elastic band that you pull back and then you go forward. It's just you feel you're going backwards. Did you have that at all? Absolutely. I had really worked myself. I didn't know that I was going to be leaving the job that I was in. It's the kind of job that you retire from. When I left I was, ''Oh my gosh. I'm leaving my health insurance, I'm leaving my retirement, I'm leaving all of these things to take this opportunity.'' Now on the other side of that, recognizing that I'm getting to do my dream, write a book and do all these different things, I recognized that you have to take those leaps. I could not write a book and have a 9 -5. There are some hard facts about your dreams and what you have space for and you do have to be willing to create space for what it is that you want. I think you're so right, I couldn't have even seen that possibility for myself until I just took the chance on myself. That's so interesting. I think that's a huge part of this, is defining your own values and your own path and what you want as an individual because we can't do everything. We can do a few things really well. We can do a lot, but we can't do absolutely everything and it's hard to reality, isn't it? To accept that something's got to give? Yeah. I think this way, I said I'm such a big proponent of starting as you wish to go on because if you want to be able to take an hour walk every afternoon, your schedule is going to have to reflect that, you have to build that in. I think people think when you start your own business, it's like, ''Oh, I have all this freedom of flexibility.'' That is so not true, if you don't create it. You could be working from sunup till sundown, especially when you have your own business because you're even more invested and so you have to create that. You have to put those boundaries in place that are saying, I don't work before 11:00 or I don't work after 11:00 PM or whatever it is and really advocate for yourself with yourself. I wanted to ask you about that actually relying on yourself. It's a huge part of this and I feel we're in this time where most of us have an Internet connection, a laptop, Skillshare, all these things that can help us through, but we can have all the tools, but we need the confidence to do it. What things did you do to help you be confident during those times? I definitely relied on truth. I love to do fact checking in with myself. When we have those ideas that come up and say, ''Oh you're not going to be able to do this, you're not worth it.'' I remind myself, well, what's the evidence that I have to prove that this isn't true. There are times where there are those negative thoughts or those fears that come up and redirecting those thoughts and providing myself with evidence of how it's not true has really been a game changer and me recognizing that I'm able to do this because I'm doing it. That's how I really began to build my confidence just by putting myself out there. I didn't always know how to speak and do interviews, I had to do them to learn how to speak and do interviews. I didn't always know how to answer questions. I had to answer questions and watch interviews and cringe before I could learn, okay maybe I shouldn't say that next time. We have to be willing to, for lack of a better term, fall flat on our face. It is where you really learn a lot. It's not something that's always going to happen but in pivoting you have to be willing to get it wrong sometimes. Yes. So true, I feel like this conversation has become more relevant since 2020 and everything that's been happening and things are changing. For people that don't like change, this is such a hard time, it's hard time for everyone. But if someone like a younger version of you or your past self or even, I don't know, a young family member comes to you and says, ''I really feel like I'm ready to make a change or start this process to pivot my career.'' What's the one thing you would say to them? Ask yourself, what is it that I enjoy? What is it that I love? What is it that really lights me up and just try it. Know that it doesn't have to be I have a full business, you don't have to incorporate yourself today. You don't have to go get a tax ID today. Just start small and don't be hard on yourself on the process. We often want to just, get it right. You want to be perfect. We want it to be a success out of the gate. I've been in business almost 10 years, it took a very long time to get to a place of where I'm very comfortable in what I'm doing and things are still changing and shifting in ways that I'm still a freshman or in kindergarten, so to speak. Remaining a student of your work is the easiest way, in my opinion, to really lighten it up. You might be an expert in what you're talking about, but you're never going to be an expert in life and business is a part of life and pivoting is a part of life, and a part of life is the ups and downs, so ride them and try to enjoy them as much as you can. I don't know, your views on this, but I feel like maybe in this world we're living in of social media updates constantly it can look things happen very quickly. That's a really good reminder that this pivoting can take time and that's fine. Right, the number one thing people have to remember about social media and I'm not sure where it gets lost, but this is a stylized, curated content, I don't wake up like this. We don't wake up looking like this. Just like if you were going to work and you were giving a presentation, you wouldn't give it in your pajamas. You would get up, you would get dressed, you would look your best. That's the same thing with social media. For people who are creating content in terms of their business, this is a part of their job and an extension of their brand. If I share a picture of myself smiling or if I share a picture of myself doing something great, it doesn't mean that everything is perfect in my life, this is a snapshot in time. That is such a good reminder that everything we see is not necessarily reflective of reality and we have to remember that. But I always think about careers and pivoting and just general life as we move through life in chapters. We're always changing and we might look back at our past work and cringe, but that's normal and that's growth. Can you see yourself pivoting again in the future? If so, will you use the tools you already have to embrace that? Absolutely. I stay open to the fact that I have no idea what the future is going to look like. There may be opportunities that present themselves that I never imagined would be something that I could do. I just give myself the flexibility to do that. It's so freeing to know that we can do multiple things. We're humans, we enjoy multiple things, we're multifaceted and so for me, I definitely see myself continuing to incorporate everything that I love into my work, into my business, into my life. Yeah. That's such a positive note to end on. Thank you so much, Yasmine, that was so great and it's going to be so useful for all the other conversations as well, so thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for having me, bye.
10. Making Your Move: I really enjoyed that speaking to lots of different people about pivoting and I've learned so much and I'm so excited for you to also get so much from that. I'm going to now boil down everything that we've learned today into some really succinct few lessons that you can go and take into the world as you embark on your pivots. The first thing that really stood out for me was this idea of having to believe in yourself because this pivot does really come from your own gut feeling. It's like an intuition and an instinct. All three of these pivot is new that they had to go ahead and follow this clue of the world almost telling them that they should make this change and they'd be mad not to even though it would be hard. The second thing is that this is a sacrifice and this is a calculated risk. It's not a risk that will ruin your life forever but these are small risks that people are taking in order to try something. Because as cliche says it sounds that we only live once. You have to try things to know if they'll work or not and if you don't try, you will never know. The third thing that really stood out was that quitting is fine, you can quit something. It's not really a failure on your part, it's actually better to just quit and walk away if it's not working. All three of the pivot is, we're fine with just letting something go if it wasn't working anymore. I think that's something that you grow and almost flex as a muscle. You have to learn to let things go and not just keep going. Those were the three overarching themes that really stood out to me. But I really loved so many of the anecdotes in the interviews. I loved when Yasmin was saying that we do have to be kind to ourselves during transitions. Some things go wrong and some things are hard, but you have to be nice to yourself and try not to read too much into the negative thoughts and try and get those out of the way as much as you can. I love what Rob was saying about making sacrifices with the support of his family. Everyone wanted it to happen and they made it work, even later in life where you do have commitments to uphold. That was really useful and inspirational. I really liked what Danielle was saying about knowing her own bodily reactions and physical feedback to her own feelings. What she felt like when she was ignited and excited and full of enthusiasm, she knew how that felt. That was almost a benchmark with finding out where she wanted to go in the future, which I really liked. I think for me there is a slight being realistic sometimes about work and about pivoting and we won't always be on cloud nine. But I think it's really important to know that feeling of joy and what that feels like because you know it's possible and you know it's out there. Another thing that I loved about the interviews was this feeling of self-motivation and each person, even though it has been hard, they were self-taught. They bought themselves the tools they needed, or they borrowed something to teach themselves, or they messed it up a few times and got better slowly. I think that is the real spirit of pivoting, you can teach yourself so much these days and we have so much that we have access to. We have so much information at our fingertips and to me that was really inspiring because it made me feel like I could go and learn something completely different if I wanted to, later down the line. You might not be ready to share your story with other people in the outside world yet or that first inkling of wanting to make a change, because it's scary and as we've said, it's nice to keep it to yourself when you're going through it. But you could still share it in the Skillshare community comments. We would love to hear your thoughts and we'll help each other. We're all going through different things and we can all offer a bit of wisdom to each other. Please go ahead and share below and I'm really excited to hear all about your next step.
11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking this class on Creative Pivots. I hope you've enjoyed it. I've had so much fun taking you through everything and learned a lot myself as well. I hope that you get something from this class that you can take forward into your practical day-to-day life and make that first step. I think the most important thing is that it might be hard, it might be scary to make any change in your life. But I think what's waiting on the other side is so worth it and to build a life that you love and love even slightly more than you do now, it's all worth the difficulty of changing up your life for a short period of time. I wish you so well on your pivot journey and we can't wait to hear all about what you get up to as well. Thanks for taking this class.
Emma Gannon, Author, Broadcaster, Podcast Host
