If you’re a mid-career professional staring down AI, burnout, layoffs, or the quiet dread of”I cannot do this for another 20 years,” this episode is for you.
Todd and Chris break down the 6 Tenets of Reinvention they use with clients and in their own lives – a practical framework to design your next chapter with intention instead of panic. This is the system Chris literally wishes he’d had 10 years ago when he was stuck in a big corporate job, burned out, and feeling trapped.
In this conversation, they unpack:
- Why clarity comes first and how to start designing a future you’re actually excited about
- Growth mindset without the buzzword BS – using optimism as a real career strategy, not a meme
- Game planning like the CEO of your own life, not just reacting to the next reorg or layoff
- The moment thinking stops and taking action begins (and what that action can look like)
- Skill-building in the age of AI – how to become a student again without starting from zero
- Why isolation kills reinvention and how accountability + community massively speeds things up
If you’re in that “anything but this… but I don’t know what’s next” phase, this episode will give you a language, a roadmap, and a starting point to move forward.
**Subscribe to our ReInvention Podcast and stay on the cutting-edge with fresh ideas and practical tools to navigate the future of your work!
Episode Transcript
Todd: You literally become the CEO of your own life because a lot of people that are reinventing are coming from environments where they weren’t the CEO in their work career Hey Todd, what are we gonna be talking about today?
Chris, man, so good to be with you and today’s of a really awesome and fun conversation that’s so deep in my heart, and I know it’s something that you’ve also found real useful, which is this idea that there are core principles. And a core series of tenants that can help you reinvent your career. And so we talk a lot about reinvention because this is the time where so many people are up in the air about the future of their career. Okay? AI is not something that’s just a fad this is really happening. A lot of people are burned out. I know you went through that and looking at the next 20, 30 years thinking, Hmm, like what do I need to do right now to secure myself? And to secure the future of my work. So that way it’s not just every six months I’m up in the air. Okay. And so I’ve been doing career coaching for a long time and when we met, we started to talk about this notion of what’s a framework that people can grasp onto that can help them make decisions. And move forward in their career more fluidly so they can get to success faster. And so , these six tenets that we’re gonna cover today are that, and they’re principles. So if you’re listening to this, like really take notes, like get outta pen and paper ’cause ideas are gonna pop. And I know that you’re a professional career reinventor, like this has been your jam, right? And so when we came up with this, you said to me like, man, I wish I would’ve had this 10 years ago ’cause it would’ve gotten me there faster.
Chris: I absolutely wish I would’ve had it 10 years ago. And I think the thing is, is that as we go through the six tenets of reinvention, they are all things that I did and have done and continue to do as I’m living through my career reinvention. I just didn’t have names for them until we worked on this and put this together, and I didn’t reinvent my career as fast or as early as I would’ve if I had this framework. And I think that’s what you and I are really excited about is just helping people do this faster. Helping people who are contemplating reinvention, and maybe don’t even call it that yet. Take action, get moving, and really work through what, this is like a system.
This is a process and a system, and it’s different for everyone, but it’s got repeatable elements and there are these six areas that we want you to pay attention to and tend to and care for, and that’s really gonna help you create a reinvention at, at pace, at speed.
Todd: Yeah, absolutely man. And when we talk about the six tenets, we always gotta start with clarity. That’s the first one. And as a coach for as long as I’ve been doing this, okay, like I’ve had the privilege and the honor to sit in rooms like this with people that tell me their deep, dark secrets and their hopes and their dreams and their failures, all that, right?
Just as a coach, you get that. And the thing that I found that’s so fascinating about. Human beings is that most of us don’t have a very clear idea for what we want, what we genuinely want. And so clarity is like the most important thing right now for people to start with. Okay. Because yes, there’s all kinds of reasons to feel nervous about the future, all kinds of reasons to have stress.
Like I get that, but, when you take a moment in time and switch that mindset over to, this could also be an opportunity for me, like in our community, right? There’s a lot of people who came in with stress and anxiety, but then started to see this as an opportunity. Because this is a moment in time where you could align your moneymaking and the future of your career with what you actually like to do or what you’re good at or what you’re, God I say it, your bigger purpose is on the planet. And so it’s an opportunity to like take a breather. And when you take that breather, you start this system, you start this idea, and when you get clarity and you go through a process of getting clarity, and really what clarity is, is permission to dream. I tell people, I’m like, you have permission to dream as an exercise.
You don’t need to do anything with it. But let’s like, stop for a moment and let me prompt you to think about, well, what could happen in your life if things worked out idealistically, like what could happen? You know, like what work would you be doing? Like, what adventures would you be having? What, what is actually possible for you if you are just taking a moment to create a life vision and you start there? You start there because what it does, and I’ll hand it over to you ’cause I know you’ve a lot to share on this, this piece,
Chris: Can’t wait can’t wait
Todd: what, what happens when you get clarity is that it gives you the quality of excitement. Imagine being excited about what you’re creating. As opposed to feeling completely ambiguous or stressed around it, like it gives you excitement and it gives you fuel to get through the hard moments. ‘Cause it is hard to change and transform and reinvent your career. But when you get that clarity and you get that vision, it’s what most people are missing. It gives you that fuel.
Chris: Yeah, it’s super important to get that clarity, and that’s why it is the first step from our perspective through reinvention. I know that I spent a really long time not taking action because I was just in a corporate setting and I was saying, , people would be like, well, what do you want to do? And I’d be like, not this, right?
So to not have a North Star to not have clarity, to not have a destination in mind. And I think a nuance too is that, you don’t have to have it all solved out exactly right from the get go. Clarity is iterative itself, right? So at this moment, if you’re in an anything but this situation, a not this situation, and you can go through the process of getting clarity around what destination am I working towards that gets you excited, that gets you outta bed. Maybe it’s a side hustle or whatever it is. You do it without attachment, you’re not necessarily going to get that exact ideal vision. And in fact, for me, I morphed through a couple of different phases in my reinvention from what I initially thought. But starting with that clarity is key, that motivator, because just not this, you’ll just end up doing that for another year.
Another year will pass and you’ll not have made any changes because
Todd: what I love about it, oh, sorry
Chris: no, go ahead.
Todd: I was gonna say, what I love about it so much is that when I like tout this idea of getting clarity and dreaming big, just permission to dream. Like I do it on Zoom calls and people just like stare at me. You know? ’cause they don’t know, you know? And guess what?
The most successful people on the planet that not had just monetary success, but like also live the life of fulfillment. Those people that you look at, you’re like, man, like secretly I wish I was them. They have clarity. They have clarity. They know what they’re fighting for. Okay. And now most of us don’t, which is why we’re stuck in the land of mediocrity, the land of ambiguity, the land of, I don’t really know. And so when you take it on, and we have practices, right? Like in our community, it’s one of the main things that we do. It’s not just, oh, get clarity, but the one invitation that I’ll give you right now to get practical, it’s to spend a day. Okay. Where you at least one day, maybe a weekend. Okay. But were you get everything out of the way. And you clear your schedule and you try to give yourself some of, know, your space, my own space, and you start getting out a journal or you just record yourself or just start getting the information out and you play the game that I’m just gonna think idealistically about my future. Like what could happen, what businesses could I start, what adventures could I have?
What do I wanna be doing with my time that also matches up my money making and my legacy. Start there. Give yourself the space just to do that. And then without attachment, you don’t need to be attached to any of this happening. You slowly but surely give yourself something very beautiful that sits in the subconscious and it becomes magnetic that North star, because then you start to orient your behaviors and your thoughts with that future. But you know, it doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s just a practice. Right. I know, and I know you did a little bit of that.
Chris: Yeah, that in itself, not to put too fine a point on it, is pretty life changing to even just kind of give yourself the permission to dream, as you said, and to try to imagine what a potential future could look like. I realized, and I didn’t realize it necessarily on my own. I worked with people, I worked with a coach, I spoke to a therapist.
I realized I was making a choice. I was making a choice to put myself over and over again into a corporate situation that wasn’t the right fit for me. There are reasons why I thought it was something I had to do, or I didn’t think other options existed. And I know everyone who’s in a situation like that has their reasons, but even just the process of, for me, it was pen to paper. Some people like to walk, I know you like to walk and talk, Todd, you know, I know you like to think through these things. For me, just giving myself the permission to dream a little bit, write a little bit, let this out, explore this, that right there was very impactful. That was very real.
Nothing really had changed about my day-to-day circumstances in the first few weeks and months that I was doing that, but just the feeling of hope and excitement and like a light at the end of the tunnel. That was amazing. And I, we both see this with people we coach all the time where if you can get someone who’s not thinking in that mode to go through that process, immediately are like coming back, almost like changed people.
Todd: A light goes on. I see it. I see it a light goes on and you can see their eyes get a little bit brighter. Okay. So that’s why when we talk about the six tenets of reinvention, we always begin with clarity. Give yourself the gift, you know, and the opportunity to ask yourself the question
Chris: This holiday season, this holiday season, give yourself the gift of clarity and give your spouse a Toyota.
Todd: Yeah, I mean like, but seriously, like it’s such, especially as we’re entering into the holidays, right? This is a great moment in time to actually do this, to be self-reflective, which leads into the second tenet, which is what we call growth mindset, right? And you hear the word mindset and people roll their eyes, or here we go again, okay.
The, the buzzword of mindset. But no, actually, actually this is the moment in time to take it more seriously because reinvention, connotes transition. And a lot of people are in transition right now, and our goal as stated is to help people get to a reinvented situation and career that is aligned with the future of the version of yourself that you wanna become. You know, that represents your true joy and happiness. Like, why not we’re here for just a blip in the matrix in this life. Like, why not go for it? So when we talk about mindset, the way that we think about it is by learning and understanding first accepting that creating optimism and positivity as a default frequency in your mind is a good life strategy when we’re reinventing.
Because look, we know there’s a lot of reasons to be stressed, and there’s a lot of reasons to have anxiety, but if we just pull out for a minute. When you think about yourself, like really hear me when I share this, like when you think about yourself, when you’re at your best, when you’re inflow, when things are happening, even when synchronicities are happening, you are in this very open-minded, excited state. You’re optimistic, you’re seeing things with opportunity. And so one of the big shifts that’s happening right now as human beings, I think are waking up to this idea that I can train myself to get into that state of mind more frequently and actually even have it be my default mechanism. Because again, what we’re trying to do here is to help you reinvent, but you gotta be in control of the thinking patterns that are habitual and we gotta turn towards it. And what we found, Chris, is that when you do that and you start to do some mind training and to give yourself that North star, I’m gonna think with positivity, I’m gonna think with optimism. And I believe that that’s something that I can do and that will help my life. Then you start to set yourself up at the foundation for real reinvention, because that’s when opportunities happen.
Like we know that. So that’s why mindset for us isn’t just a buzzword.
Chris: Yeah, and I think it’s really true. It’s the science supports it if that matters, but you, your brain notices what you orient towards and everyone will say it. If you orient optimistically, you start to notice it might’ve been there all along, but you start to notice the positive elements when you have the clarity of where you’re going, you start to see the cues that are aligned with that. If you are someone who wants to open a gym, you start to notice that your neighbor’s cousin, who visits every month owns a line of gyms, and that’s somebody that you might end up having a beer with and having a conversation with. I mean, it’s things like that that you can attribute to the universe or whatever it is, but the truth is it starts from you.
It starts from you being open and positive and believing. And I think this is one way I like to think of it too. We look for evidence to support belief. Sometimes you have to start with belief because you’re, what you’re actually doing day to day you aren’t giving yourself the opportunity to show the evidence yet.
Start with the belief, and then build the evidence with your behavior to support that belief. And that’s the feedback loop. That’s the positive feedback loop we’re looking to create here.
Todd: Right. And I think the big question that people say on this one is, okay, but it’s easy when I’m in a good state of mind. But what happens when I get sideswiped with all this negativity? Okay. And I want to talk about this here. ’cause I think this is a really important point that you and I have really resonated on how to deal with this. And just to be really blunt about it, the way I look at it is, all right, a bad mood, overcomes you, right? Like, okay, like here it is. You wake up, you’re not feeling it, you need a podcast like this, like to, remind yourself, but you’re not feeling it.
Like, what do you do? Really there’s two options right there. Okay? And one of them is what I call like the Tony Robbins approach, right? Which is you kind of pound your way through it. You know, we have a saying that we love. Follow your plan, not your mood. You’ll hear us say that, again and again.
Follow your plan, not your mood. It’s a really beautiful strategy, right where you are literally not allowing that negative version of yourself, those negative thoughts, those limitations, to dominate your behaviors. It means that you get up and you do and you keep going no matter what. I call this the Tony Robbins approach.
I work with Tony. I’ve interviewed him twice. That’s Tony’s whole thing. You can change your state like that. That’s his entire teaching. And so that’s a beautiful strategy. I don’t think it’s a complete strategy, but it’s one option for dealing with that negative mindset when it comes up. I dunno if you have anything to share on that piece before we go to the other part of this strategy, but what do you think?
Chris: I do want to get to the other part of the strategy because I agree with you that I don’t think that’s a complete strategy. And I know that if I look only at that part and I say, you know, just fight through it, pound through it, that doesn’t really work for me. So Todd, if I’m not the type of person that that works for, what would you say is the additional part that’s makes it a little bit more complete.
Todd: Yeah. So the second piece of this, and I love Tony Robbins, but like, I don’t think he shares this enough. I’ve been in his seminars, I’m like, just say that too. Which is sometimes the proper approach, is to allow and reflect. That’s what we call it to allow and reflect, meaning that all right, a bad mood overcomes you.
You’re feeling a bunch of fear instead of doing the Tony Robbins thing, you know, follow your plan out your mood and pound your way through it. Sometimes there’s real value in just sitting with it and allowing those thoughts to ruminate and clear. Allow yourself some time to stay in that negative mind state because squashing it often leads to repressing it, which has reverberations later.
We all know this.
Now, I want to get a little tactical on this, Chris, because that strategy also can send you down a rabbit hole where you’re just constantly self-healing yourself and allowing yourself to process right. I think we wanna have, when you’re in this place in your life where you’re reinventing, you wanna integrate a strategy where you allow yourself time to heal, to process information, to feel negative, but you wanna be clear that that’s not where you’re going as a default, which means you wanna put a boundary around it. So, to get real tactical on this, I’ve told you that I do this like every Friday, I give myself Todd time where I allow myself space just to feel what it is that I’m going through. It’s not always negative, but sometimes it is. And I think that allowing yourself to process the information, write it out, listen to music, like allow yourself to feel the negative thoughts with the underlying intention that you’re not gonna stay there for a long period of time, gets you back into that more positive state while allowing your full human to exist. That’s why I think it’s a more holistic approach.
Chris: That’s key. I mean, it really is whole, running away from things, running away from problems, running away from the feeling is not useful in the long run. It’s not effective. And I’ll say back, you know, pre coaching when I was in a corporate role, that wasn’t right for me.
There was a lot of denial in a sense of my situation. Right? And we can talk about all the tools that people use for that happy hour is a very popular one, right? Rather than actually like living in and accepting that, Hey, this, this feels bad. This isn’t right for me, this isn’t working. This is a problem.
And then processing that, right? I mean, like you said, great point, Todd. We’re not talking about wallowing in it. We’re not talking about going down that rabbit hole. What we’re talking about is, is with intention, you know, it’s almost like a workout. It’s like saying, Hey, I’m gonna allow myself to go into the pain of this so that I can feel it.
So that I can get through and I can, what does that tell me? What, what am, what’s causing this? What do I want to change? What does that mean that I want to change? And that can inform, if we go back to clarity, that can inform your clarity. That’s a good exercise sometimes to maybe come out of and take a few notes and write a few things because it’s really informative what you want to change about your life.
Todd: Yeah, I love that that negative voice, the one that you’re trying to run away from, has value. Allow him or her to exist. Allow him or her to express themselves to you through you. They have value. There’s, there’s a reason why they’re feeling stressed. These are old stories, like, you know, they’re old patterns that are just coming up as adults, right?
So we need to allow ourself the time to understand them and then move through, which is why when we talk about growth mindset, in terms of career reinvention, it’s very relevant. Which is why I believe our system is really working for a lot of people, because we’re talking about not just tactical stuff, but the real stuff.
Like how are you orienting, what are your beliefs? What are your perceptions? Which I really think, you know, gets you to the promised land faster. But we wanna move on to the third tenet of reinvention. Which is more tactical, right? Because this isn’t just pie in the sky. Oh, let’s get clarity and create a life vision.
Oh, let me change my mindset and orient, right? All that stuff. Which is really valuable. The third one is game planning. You know, because now what we have to do is we have to be very sober adults. Okay. And just be like, all right, what do I now need to do to explore my reinvention? What are the practical steps that I need to take. And you literally become the CEO of your own life because a lot of people that are reinventing are coming from environments where they weren’t the CEO in their work career, but now they’re in a position or heading towards one where they really feel like they need to explore different things, potentially reinvent in some ways. And so that requires you to now be the CEO and CEOs game plan.
You get that vision, you work on your mindset, and then you build out a system by which you are exploring your reinvention. And it depends about where you’re at, because some people are just starting out kind of burned out, you know, or the end of their career is coming and they don’t know what’s next. Others have already started, like got some side hustles going on. So it depends where you’re at, when building a game plan but making this a very clear thing that you are doing and checking in on us. We’ll get to later in the later tenet of kind of accountability and self-accountability, you wanna start building a game plan around this.
And I know you did quite a bit of this during your reinvention, but I think it’s helped you to talk about it this way ’cause it would’ve added more clarity.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, especially for me going from corporate to solo entrepreneur, right? That was the step that I initially took. Just from a very practical, tactical standpoint, literally becoming the CEO. Like I was a senior executive in corporate, but I wasn’t the CEO, but I, you know, ran a department and things like that.
But then when you come out and you’re an entrepreneur, which not everyone will do and as part of a reinvention, but when you do that, like, I’m everyone. I’m the CEO, I’m the head of sales, I’m the head of marketing, I’m the janitor. So I think there’s just an element of like having to really be accountable, as you said, and have a plan around all these things because it’s a lot and it’s different. And without a plan, it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed by it and to feel bewildered by it. Right. People who are at different stages of it, you know, for you who are in the very beginning, who are thinking, I just wanna try something different. Your game plan might simply be getting clarity
Todd: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: That’s, you know, the number one step and the only step of your plan at this moment might be that. As you go further into reinvention and you have clarity and you have a North star that you’re working towards, well then we get to, let’s map how we’re gonna get there and know that the further you go out in time, the less you’re gonna know about the intricate details of what’s gonna be happening at that point. But you can make a high level plan of how you’re gonna get to where you’re going, and then come back closer and get really, really tactical about what are the things I’m gonna do in the next year, six months, three months, you know, week.
Really get to a place where you’ve created daily clarity for yourself of what you’re going to act on. Because especially if you’re still in your current situation, that’s not working for you. Really easy if you don’t have a game plan to just get distracted by the day to day and like just keep pushing this thing off.
And I know we’re working with a couple of people in our community, Todd, that we’re really helping them commit to cordon off that time, you know, each week or each day or whatever works for them to make sure they’re moving their reinvention forward while they’re doing all these other things in parallel that are existing. Right? And there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from that for them through committing to the game plan and executing it, come hell or high water.
Todd: It’s so well said, brother. I’m glad that you said that. And you know, it just takes me back to the whole premise of this thing, this idea that, careers are, up in the air for a lot of people, and reinvention is a term that represents this idea that I need to think creatively about the future of my work, the future of my money making. And we came together and are putting forth a process, that have six main tenets by which you can scroll through to potentially create success faster in whatever avenues end up lighting you up or being really successful. And I think what most people don’t understand, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years, that there really is a predictable map for reinvention.
And it starts with, sometimes we call it stage one, level one, where either you’re at your current job, right, and you know, it’s ending. AI’s coming, or you’re burned out and you don’t love it, and you just know you need to change. There’s a lot of that right now. And for people in that stage, it starts with the first tenant clarity, right?
Like that’s what people are working on. They need to get clarity. And then what happens, because I’ve seen this again and again, is that people start to open up to the idea like, all right, like, all right, let me work on my mindset. Let me start thinking about some new things that I could do, like through the clarity process. Let me start making a game plan. And all of a sudden there’s a couple of other opportunities that maybe are a little bit surprising, you know? And okay, I can start having different types of conversations. This is reinvention. Okay. And that’s why having a game plan is so very important. And now we get to the fourth tenet, which to me is like the crux of it.
Okay? And that’s why there’s somewhat of a linear pathway here. But the fourth one is taking action. Reinventors need to be taking action. And again, if you’re in that first stage, the action you most likely need to take is getting clarity about what you want, taking that beat. Taking the advice and the coaching that we’ve done this with thousands of people say, Hey, like literally get clarity. But if you are now, in that next phase, it could be making new connections. It could be starting to earn revenue in different ways. It could be putting out your shingle in a different way. Like this is where it gets juicy. And taking action is just a huge part of reinvention and a couple of things about that.
It’s not just like willy-nilly. I know that sounds like I’m very old. I just, can’t believe I just said that willy-nilly. But,
Chris: Willy nilly.
Todd: It’s not willy-nilly action. It’s it’s action that is coming from a system, right? You’re getting clarity. You’re working on your mindset, you’re getting a gameplay and then, and then you have an idea, right? And you’re going out there. And a lot of this, is being courageous, right? Being more forthright, you know, being more fully embodied and empowered that you can create the future that you want.
But it requires you not to just sit there and get clarity and work on your mindset.
It does require you now taking action is where it goes from paper. And kind of internal processing over into, okay, I’m gonna start making stuff happen in the real world. And like, this is why, like, I love that we have this community because we help people do that. You know, like take action. And when you’re in a place with others, and we’ll talk about that later, that are also reinventing and also exploring and being more creative and thinking outside of the box. You feel more comfortable. But the taking action piece is huge. And I think you did this so well in your reinvention.
Chris: There’s so much to say about this, right? There’s a word that you and I debated. You know, we used to say, be fearless, and it’s not about being fearless. You said courageous just now, which I love, right?
Todd: Yeah. Watch myself because I, you yelled at me one time about it.
Chris: And then it brought you a lot of fear ’cause I yelled at you about it, so like it’s fair. Okay. This is going to have elements of discomfort. This is going to have elements of fear like any change does. And I think if you look at it and if you’re stuck in a situation that’s not working for you. 99.99% of the time one of the major elements as to why you haven’t changed that yet is fear. Everyone’s gonna say that they can’t change it, they can’t do this, they can’t do that. And that may indeed be true in some cases, but many of those can’t are actually fears. So fear is going to be in the equation let’s just. Put that out there and accept that. But you act courageously and it’s called taking action at this phase because like you said, Todd loved this as well. It’s not just thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking like, I’m a problem solver. Right? So when I was realizing that I’ve gotta change something about my career, this is not working for me.
I did a lot of theoretical problem solving, theoretical thinking. And it was important and it did help me get clarity and plan and start to get ready to take action. But when I took action, that’s actually when the magic started happening, right? When I decided, Hey, you know what? I’m gonna volunteer for this organization that’s really aligned with sort of my values.
I’m gonna throw a little bit of a, not a Hail Mary, but a deep pass on third down, to try to do this consulting gig. ‘Cause it’s something I’ve never done before and let me just try to sell a consulting gig to someone when I got the feedback of oh, I actually landed a deal. Oh, I’m actually getting paid for this. When I got the feedback of oh, this mentoring I’m doing for this organization that’s values aligned is really interesting to me. That was all the proof I needed to give me the belief that this is a possibility I can do something different. And that was, again, I could theorize around what all the possibilities were, but until I took action, that was when the rubber really met the road.
And that was when I really proved to myself like, oh, this is a thing. I’m going, let’s go.
Todd: Yeah, I love that. And also. Multiple streams of income like, like starting to earn money in different ways, even if it’s very little in the beginning. I had a client who was being shown the door at his job, and I think I might have talked about this before, but he wanted to be a public speaker more than anything, and he had a workshop idea that he eventually sold to his last employer and made a bunch of money doing it. And it was like Christmas morning for the guy because he had never thought that he could make money doing that. But when you take action and you start even doing it, connected with your revenue, making money, right? Like even if it’s very small in the beginning, these doors open up.
It’s very, very powerful. This is why this reinvention conversation is just so important right now. ’cause people need to think a little bit more creatively. Because if you can make $10, you can make a hundred. If you can make a hundred, you can make a thousand.
Right? And on and on. So it’s just starting to think about it a little bit differently.
And so taking action is really at the very core of this and goes along with the next tenet of reinvention, which is building new skills. Like skill building. This is so very important because for most of us, we were stuck in a career path that, let’s be honest, limited our development and our creative output.
But when you’re becoming that CEO of your life and your career, it’s a moment in time to become a student again, to become curious about who you are and not just to sit there and be like, okay, like the future’s in front of me and I could do new things. But then being smart about it. What do you need to learn? Right. This is a time to invest in yourself. This is a time to take courses, to follow the right people in your social feeds that represent who you wanna become. Learn from them. Watch what they do, become a student of theirs. Buy their book, listen to their podcasts. This is a time to build new skills, okay? And the people that do this will reinvent way faster than the ones who don’t. And I think you, from my understanding of your reinvention story. Did a little bit of that, but then kind of had a wonky rollercoaster ride with building new skills until I think it clicked in for you that, wait a minute, I need to speak. I need to talk. I need to take this a little bit more seriously, and that’s propelled you.
Chris: Yeah, for sure. I think especially for my corporate brethren that are out there, like you said it really well, Todd you get pigeonholed, right? That’s because the way these organizations work, it makes sense. I mean, if you are leading a department or a division and you’re growing or whatever it is, it makes sense for you to be plugged into that spot and be really effective.
But then whether it’s going out on your own entrepreneurially or even if just reinventing your career in a different way. If you’re gonna be the CEO of your life and your career, you are gonna have to learn new skills. And I say have to, but that’s exciting. That’s a really cool thing. By the way, end of 2025 and going into 2026, it’s like this is the greatest time to learn new skills.
AI hangs over many people like a spectre of , all these jobs that are gonna be lost or, or whatever it might be. Okay. I also think it’s a great opportunity. I think you can learn so much. You can learn how to use AI itself. You can use AI as a learning tool, and there’s so many other technologies out there that just your ability to learn from people, people who are modeling what you might wanna do.
Social media we think is a great tool, obviously, just to find out what people are doing and open up your possibilities. Like all the stages of reinvention actually can be served by all the technology and tools that are out there. So be drawn and follow those threads and, and experiment and play around a little bit.
But then also just from a skill building perspective, like if I talk about my own story, I think it’s important to say to people because I, I, I can imagine already there’s people who would be listening to this that’ll say, well, I’ve done this thing for 20 years. I have these skills. How, how, how am I gonna build all these other skills at this stage in my life or my career?
You’re gonna need to build new skills, but you’ve also got way more skills and abilities than you probably give yourself credit for than you probably even would put on your resume when you’re applying for the same old job. And I know that when I first came out as a solo entrepreneur, I was really looking at it like, oh, I’m starting from scratch, but I’m tapping into a, a lot of the skills that I had in my corporate career and I’m building on them.
Because you have negotiation skills or you have, technical skills that can translate. You have a lot of those transferable skills that you just have to deploy them in a different way and bolster them and commit to polishing them. And frankly, today things change so fast, just keeping things up to date.
Todd: Mm-hmm. It’s so well said, meaning you already have a lot of skills that you’re not necessarily valuing can accelerate your reinvention. And so realizing that you already have the tools, some of it is just rejigging. And I think that’s really wise. And I’ve also found just coaching people through this process that we do tend to get pigeonholed into, like for example, in the books like, operations focused. And then some people really just love the sales marketing connection piece and aren’t really on the ground operations people. And what I found just in general is that we need to be self-aware to understand where do we tend to gravitate towards? Because you need to have balance as a reinventor. You need to be out there and connecting and being a little bit of that CEO visionary like out there to some extent. Not everybody needs to create a TikTok account, okay? This is not what we’re saying, but for a lot of people, this is an opportunity to get out there, you know, and create a personal brand to some extent. There’s a lot of entrepreneurialism within reinvention, and so understanding that you do need to learn communication and sales and marketing and presenting, or even digital marketing in some way, or AI using AI. Or you need to learn how to build a business and build a financial plan and have projections and other things that we’ll talk about on this podcast, right?
Like really planning out financially your reinvention. It’s a huge topic that I know we’re both excited to get into, and to provide for people. So you already have, you have something else to share on this piece?
Chris: I just wanted to add that I think about thinking about our reinvention community. What I think is a really cool thing is some of the people that we have on the community calls is you see the different skill sets, right? So you see more operational people, you got people who are maybe more like tech or development, and then you’ve got people who are more like visionary and the cross pollination. Even if people who are doing their own thing, just the conversations that they have in the reinvention community can be really powerful in helping each other understand maybe their blind spots ’cause you kind of don’t know what you don’t know sometimes. And it’s really great to hear it from somebody live a real human being as opposed to just going on the internet and trying to Google or AI your way to getting the answer.
And also a really cool thing, again, I’m a solo entrepreneur. But now I’m a business partner with you, Todd, and we have a complimentary set of skills. I mean, there’s a lot of operational stuff that you’re really capable at that I’m like learning from you, but also you are doing for us. Right? And it’s maybe there’s something even that I add to the table.
I don’t know what it is, but in any case, the point being is that getting out there and having clarity and communicating what it is that you wanna do and connecting with people, and like you said, being a visionary as you’re the CEO of your own life, the connections you make with other people, you can build something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts.
Todd: So well said. And it leads into the last tenet, the six tenet reinvention, which is, and I’m gonna say this and I want y’all to really get this being isolated. Is the enemy of successful reinvention. Like this is not the time to be completely isolated. Okay. And that’s why as our sixth tenant, we talk about accountability. And accountability means two things. Okay? Number one, self-accountability. Okay? And this is some of the stuff that we do in our community. We give tools that help people self-assess how they’re doing in their reinvention. And I got this point hammered home when I read Tim Ferriss’s book years back. He said something that really changed my life. He said the fastest way to change any behavior is to track it. Think about that. The fastest way to change any behavior is to track it. And then he went on to explain that when you track things consistently, it raises your self-awareness and just the act of raising your self-awareness changes your behavior. This is so relevant for ReInventors like self-assessment, understanding where you’re at in the process and having a system by every week you check in with yourself to a prebuilt system where you have self-identified, these are the things that I need to look at how I’m doing. Doesn’t have to take forever, but it’s a very smart tool.
So that’s self-assessment. And then the other part of accountability is what you just shared, having others support you. Okay. Finding other Reinventors people who are in the same boat as you, is such an accelerator for everything we’ve talked about, like having a good mindset, getting clarity, building new skills, like all of it, because there’s other people out there that can help you, and they wanna help you.
Now, oftentimes, the people that are in your life could be your partner. It could be people that you used to work with, may not be the best accountability partners in your reinvention because. They may not be as excited about you changing everything or potentially changing things or reinventing. So you need to be smart about who you let into your inner reinvention circle because you wanna be supported by community.
You wanna be in an environment where you can explore. Not everybody needs to know everything that’s going on in your life. Okay. And I say this with a lot of love because when I coach people, there’s a lot of stuff in marriages and partners where people, you know, have a problem communicating this idea that, well, my career isn’t really doing it for me. You know, or I’m being shown the door, or I’m thinking about opening up this, you know, pickle tennis career, you know, or coaching pickle tennis all of a sudden, I mean, this is what happens in reinvention, new ideas emerge, but you do need to explore that, and you need to find people that are also exploring that freely. And sometimes the people that are closest to you are not gonna offer that support, and it doesn’t make them bad people. Like they’re fine people, they’re just not ready to hear all that. And it’s a really important point for how to find accountability.
Chris: I think even the really, really supportive people who are closest to you are gonna often have a hard time understanding, especially if you’re in that early stage of reinvention and you know, it’s not this, but you don’t know quite what it is and you are still exploring and getting clarity about that.
I mean, think about that just practically if you can’t communicate really what it is how are they gonna understand? They might love you and support you and try their best, but they’re not gonna be great sounding boards for it, which again, I love that about our community because you come in the door essentially and it’s a safe space, everybody there is reinventing. And so we’re all open and we’re just sharing we’re really like getting into the work of doing it. And there’s no judgment or no attachment to what we think your static persona or who you are in our life should be. So I think that’s a really cool part of it. I think the self accountability element I think is really important too.
I’m gonna hold up my whoop right. You know, if you have a whoop or a Fitbit or an Apple Watch or whatever it is. Here’s what I love about my wife. Makes fun of me. ’cause she’s like, oh, did your whoop tell you that sleeping is good and drinking is bad again? Good thing you have that right. But at the same time, it really is helpful to have the data for me at least the way, you know, to visually see green day, yellow day, red day.
Oh, I worked out too hard yesterday. Oh, I drank a couple beers on Saturday night. How does that affect me? Whatever. It’s really good to get that feedback and that data, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about in terms of self-accountability and accountability with partners or a community or whoever you’re with, is it’s really easy when you’re in the day to day to think it’s going well or think it’s going poorly or whatever it is.
You have to step back and look at some metrics and be objective and measure it and come back and say, oh, that was a five outta 10 last week and now it’s a six outta 10. Because it doesn’t feel that different maybe. But if you actually objectively look at it, you’re gonna know that you’re moving the needle.
And that’s really important, especially as you’re in a new mode. You’re reinventing, you’re trying something new. We want to make sure that you get the positive reinforcement to keep moving down that path. Or if you’re not going down the path, we’ll then figure out, okay, I’ve gotta take some time, step back and adjust.
Todd: You show the whoop and it’s like so common. Everyone’s tracking all their metrics, but we’re not tracking like how we’re doing in other areas of our lives. Like all you need to do is extrapolate it out. And build a system of self accountability that is such an amplifier for creating success in your life and fulfillment.
It’s just amazing what happens when you do this. So I just wanna recap. Okay. So again, we’re talking about reinvention and we just covered accountability and there’s six tenets you’re gonna hear us like verbatim, we’re gonna tattoo it in your heart and your mind. Especially if and when your career is up in the air to some extent, and you’re looking at new avenues for success and you’re looking to land like financial security for your future, not just in the next six months, but over the next six years or 20 years, okay? This is what reinvention is about, and there is a system for going through that process so that you can uncover what you should be doing that’s aligned with, your talents and your gifts and what you wanna be doing.
And the six tenets are clarity. Working on your mindset, growth mindset, game planning, creating a game plan, taking action, building new skills and accountability. Okay. And so that is a skeleton framework for how you can work with navigating this time of transition for your work. Okay.
And it’s really, really helpful in working. That’s why we just wanted to dedicate this episode. To explaining it because we’re gonna be talking about this in a million different ways and we’re gonna be bringing in other people who are reinventing and you’re gonna be pretty astounded, like watching some of these people who are doing one thing and now have come through this process and have opened up the doorways to different avenues and are finding success.
And it’s sometimes challenging ’cause they’re not used to it. But that’s why you need to have a conversation and you don’t need to isolate. Okay. So just super grateful Chris to be doing this with you. It’s so much fun to be talking about these six tenets. I could do this for like seven hours, like straight. And I appreciate you man.
Chris: Yeah, man, I appreciate you too. I love this. I love this topic. I love working with people through this and helping the people in our community, and hopefully this helps a lot of new people too.
Todd: Yeah. And we’ll see you in our next episode and we just can’t wait to be with you. Thanks so much. Take care.
