In the Season 1 finale of ReInvention, Todd and Chris come full circle on the framework they’ve been pressure-testing with their community: the 6 core tenets of Career ReInvention. This isn’t resume-polishing or a quick pivot – it’s a practical, human roadmap for mid-career professionals who want more agency, more fulfillment, and a smarter path forward in a rapidly changing world.
They unpack why ReInvention starts with clarity and long-term vision, why game-planning reduces anxiety, how to take imperfect action through experiments, and why humility and a growth mindset are the hidden unlock for learning new skills and building what’s next. Plus: a look ahead at Season 2 themes like AI, money, and the future of work. In this episode:
- A practical breakdown of the 6 core practices to reinvent your career FAST
- Why this is a ZEITGEIST moment for Career ReInvention, and how you can take advantage
- Practices to become the most charismatic and magnetic version of yourself
- The real advantage: building a team so you don’t reinvent in isolation
If this conversation resonates with you, visit ReInvention.biz to explore our guided workbook and join a community of people just like you – people designing what’s next.
**Subscribe to the ReInvention Podcast to stay plugged into fresh ideas, frameworks, and real-world tools for navigating the future of your work and life.
Episode Transcript
Chris: Humility is so freeing. Letting your ego go, when I can drop the artifice of who I think I should be and look like and sound like and all of that, and just be. That’s what this is. You’re not gonna hear this from the person who’s like, let me doctor you resume. Like this is a different vibe.
Chris: All right, my man Todd, what are we talking about today? What do we have on tap for our reinventors?
Todd: Well, Chris, I can’t believe we are recording our 33rd episode and it’s the finale of our first official season of reinvention. We didn’t even know each other six months ago. And it’s more than an accomplishment, my man. And we are embodying in many ways the nature and philosophy of reinvention.
And it’s truly been an honor and a pleasure to be on this journey with you. And look, when we started this, we had a premise. The world is changing and the nature of work and success and how to have genuine fulfillment along the way. I mean, these things are up in the air. And we agreed from the very beginning that we weren’t gonna come on here and preach direct answers like we know everything. But instead focus on a singular hypothesis that your next career, our dear listeners, can be your very best career if you align it with the version of yourself that you want to become and not with who you’ve been in the past.
And from this, the notion of reinventing your career is just very different than pivoting your career. And when we ask the people in our community. What makes reinvention unique? They all share that, it’s the marriage between the question of what do I really want to do with my life and my future with the more practical and tactical questions like, how do I ensure success? How do I make great money? And how do I establish myself long term in this rapidly changing world? And look, man, I know this is our podcast, but I do believe that we are in a zeitgeist moment for the future of work. And I love that we’re taking a stand for people to think smartly, soberly, and creatively about their future.
Like legendary VC Bill Gurley said in our interview with him, the people who act with agency will be the ones who win big. So in this season one finale, Chris, I would love to cover the six main tenets that you and I just enjoy talking about for how to reinvent your career. Because this process and these principles really is how you get that agency.
And these are tools that all of us can continue to use and get better at, to have more success and more fulfillment, and also to free ourselves of these old prisons. What say you my man?
Chris: First of all, thank you. It’s a pleasure and I feel blessed to be working with you, man. Like you said, we only really met each other six months ago in a sense, and we’re in a place where this podcast was, a passing discussion that just turned into a thing. And now we’re on episode 33. I looked up a couple stats.
90% of podcasts never make it past episode three. Of the remaining ones, 90% of those never make it past episode 20. So we are in the top 1% of podcasts in terms of episodes made. We’re not quite there in listeners and downloads yet though, I do, I do wanna say, Hey, if you’re listening to this and you’re loving it, and I know you are, because everyone I share it with loves it. I get like seven exclamation points back about how much they love it. So share this like it, subscribe to it. Think of five people in your lives who could benefit from this because Todd, like we love our community and we love helping those people reinvent their careers.
But I also just love this idea that there’s some random person who knows nothing about us who gets this and our podcast changes their life in half an hour.
And to me, that’s a super exciting thing. I also wanna talk about, we’re wrapping up Season one right now. Season two. I’m so excited about, ’cause we’ve already got a couple of great guests lined up.
We’re gonna be talking to Scott Clary, whose Success Story podcast is huge. We’ve got a Harvard Financial wizard coming on the books to talk about money, maybe pressure test some of the stuff I said about money several episodes ago. And we got lots of other guests and episodes planned that are gonna take, not only our podcast, but our mission and reinvention to the next level. So, like you said, we know this is in the zeitgeist right now. Whenever we talk about it to anyone, they light up. Everyone knows someone, or is someone themself who is in this moment of, I don’t know that this is what I wanna do, what is my next step? And that is reinvention. It resonates with people.
What we’re gonna do today, Todd, right, is we’re just gonna go kind of back to the beginning around those six tenets and come full circle on where we went on this season. And I think it’s really important to maybe reflect on as we are reinventors and doing it ourselves. How has our thinking evolved on those tenets? Have we learned some new things as we’ve had all these conversations and made these episodes and you know, we talk to the people in our community all the time, and it’s a two-way street. We are constantly learning from them. So to me that would be like a really exciting place to go in this conversation.
Todd: Yeah, man, I’m all in. And you know, again, these six tenets, you know, we came up with them pretty quickly and we’ve pressure tested them with our community of people, because this is kind of what we’re helping people with. Like the community that you hear us talking about is just a group of people that get on Zoom calls with Chris and I twice a week, right? And, and we do some motivation, we do some coaching, some Q&As, and you know, because a lot of this is combating against the isolation of being stressed and lying awake at night around what the hell am I gonna do with work? What does my future look like? How am I gonna make money?
How can I possibly even think about doing something that I really like in my lifestyle when I’m trying to tread water for a lot of people. Okay. And for others, it’s also a very exciting time. And the Bill Gurley interview, again, was very motivating because he’s taking the stand that this moment in time affords tremendous opportunity that the people who learn how to use the AI tools, for example, will really come out big winners.
And I know you and I are really turning into that as well. Leveraging our skills and our talents to create systems that allow us to make more money, have a bigger impact, and do the things that we wanna do. Okay. And so we’ll be doing a lot more of that as well in this podcast and in our community. Talking about ai, talking about money, like getting real and bringing in more experts and visionaries like Bill and others that can help us understand where the puck is going so we can all start skating there. I mean, I think our initiative is around not only being optimistic, but also realistic, and to make smart decisions.
We wanna help everybody make smart decisions, and a lot of that is just about showing up. Okay, so when we talk about the six tenets. We’ve talked a lot about the word clarity on this podcast, and we’re gonna start there, Chris, because clarity really is a big thing in terms of career reinvention, and it is what makes it different than just like pivoting your career, pivoting.
You’re not really thinking about what do you really want long-term for your life? You’re just trying to figure out what’s next in the very moment. But reinvention is an opportunity to take a breath and to think long term, and this is what the most successful and fulfilled people do. They think long term.
Then they do these other five things we’re gonna talk about, but getting clarity and making a life vision and just taking a moment to contemplate it. Now we have practices that we talk about, like writing your own eulogy and there’s a lot of things that you can do, and we love that practice, it’s very powerful. It sounds morbid, but it’s really powerful. To sit for a weekend and just think about, all right, the next 30 years play out really well for me. What does that actually look like? Like what happens if things go really well for me? Very useful exercise and it does start to redirect your in the moment activities right.
But just in general clarity, you know I know that when we met, this was a big one for you and, you’ve done a lot of work leaving corporate, leaving a trajectory of 20 years where you were doing really well, man, like you were making a lot of money, you had clout, it all looked really good on paper.
And then you kind of went off and started doing coaching and now you met me. But this is a big one for Reinventors it really is what makes us a little bit different, I think the question of what do I really wanna do? So what are your thoughts on that as we roll in?
Chris: What you said is so spot on, man. I that is really a big part of what makes reinvention different people say things like career pivot or you know, career change. Even like reinvention is bigger than that, not only is it bigger than pivot, but it’s also bigger than career. It’s life. We know this for me, we’ve talked about this a lot on this podcast, right? When I got to the point that the way my career was not resonating with me was affecting me on such a life level, that was what pushed me to the impetus to make a change and to actually start to think in this bigger way about like am I doing this for the next 20 years? Will I let myself do that in my life or do I have to make a change? Our favorite theme is that I always tumble back asswards into all the things that we have discovered and named in reinvention. But like that is one of those things where I didn’t have the words for it, but I did get to this realization of it’s not just work, it’s life. It’s a bigger picture thing.
One thing I love that we’ve seen with people in our community, and even some people we’ve interviewed on the podcast, it’s like something about clarity, it’s permission to dream is built into clarity. The eulogy exercise that is amazing that we ask people to do when they first come in. It opens your mind in a way that most people who are kind of stuck in this job that’s not working for them are just not gonna take the time to do that. But I think that really is what makes this different is this big vision element of it that we’re asking people to really think about the remainder of their life. That opens something up in people. I, I don’t know exactly what it is or exactly how it works, but I’ve never had anybody, or I’ve never been part of a community that sort of made me think about it on that level. I actually remember I had an exercise one time where they were like, write what you would wanna do if you had never like, done this career.
And I came in with this sort of very life focused, big picture, like blow it all up again. And the career counselor guy was like, no, that’s, that’s too big. Like a, like smaller.
Todd: Right. Yeah. I mean, because it’s human, Chris, we’re all finite. We’re not gonna live forever. Right? And we can just wake ourselves up to this, and it’s a lot of reprogramming because we weren’t taught to do this.
Like you went to Brown, you’re not taught on that trajectory to do this, to think about what do I really want? You’re literally just going along and then all of a sudden, at some point you get to this place where you’re like, oh yeah, reinvention sounds interesting, what does that really mean? And then guys like us are like, well, yeah, write your eulogy. It’s like this whole mind blowing thing, but we ask you to go along with it because it’s important. Right. And by the way, so just an addendum to this clarity, right? So I’ve said on this podcast many times that building a career that has some level of purpose about who you really are and authenticity about who you really are is almost like the holy grail. Like being able to do for work what you love and what you’re meant to, and it creates abundance and like all this lifestyle, the things that you want. I call it the holy grail. It’s like this amazing dream that is a dream of mine. I know it’s a dream of yours. It’s not necessarily a dream for everybody. And I want to talk about that a little bit.
It’s just like distinction. And we had this come up in our community,
Chris: great point
Todd: where there was somebody, who is in a quote, corporate soul sucking job doesn’t wanna be there any longer. So the clarity is like, I don’t wanna do this any longer. And is now going out on the side to build some consulting, fractional work, et cetera. Because wants to replace that corporate job as something better. But my sense is it’s not like that job won’t be the end all be all because there’s other things, about this person’s life that they do in their spare time that isn’t related to work, that does bring them more of that purpose and joy. And this is why I love the practice, because when you do something like writing your own eulogy, you just start getting truthful with yourself about what’s really important, right?
So clarity is not a one size fits all. It’s actually just being really honest with yourself about what is your relationship to your notion of the future of your work. You know, does it have to be the holy grail, like maybe it does for me or you, or does it have to be something that is good enough that allows you to do other things outside of work that really lights you up?
So that’s why I love the practice, and that’s why I love, by the way, the workbook that we did. Not enough people are taking that seven day workbook. If you’re listening to us, go to our website at reinvention.biz. and download that workbook. We built it. It’s a seven day process that talks a lot about these tenets and it’s so powerful and you’ll uncover a lot of these truths.
So I just wanted to talk about clarity a little bit from that context. It’s a little bit different than the first episode we did clarity can mean different things for different people. But the point is get it. Do the work to get it for yourself, because it’s gonna pay dividends for yourself as you’re in this rapidly changing environment that we all are.
Chris: That’s a great point that you brought up there, Todd. It’s just about consciousness and intention and intentionality, right? And saying it’s fine if you are not necessarily in the same headspace as we are, where it all has to align in this way. For me, it was just muddling through and just not having any intentionality around it. Or as Bill Gurley said when we spoke to him, I got on the conveyor belt, right? I got on the good college conveyor belt to the good job conveyor belt and just was going along, right?
So we’re not necessarily saying to everybody that has to be this big revelation, but go into it consciously, and make decisions and don’t just sort of have it happen to you.
And I think as Bill would say, that’s acting with agency. That’s a through line through all of our six tenets.
Todd: It’s just taking it proactively, right? Taking the question proactively. You’re not gonna have all the answers, you know? No one has all the answers, that’s why we’re gonna do this podcast hopefully for years, just to help people along the path. I mean, it’s a very interesting thing when you’re adding more awareness to these questions, right?
And then you do this clarity exercise, right? And we invite you to our version of it. I think it’s very powerful, to be able to go through that exercise and we have a very clear way to help people think about the end. It’s like thinking about life with the end in mind and then you get to like things that are a little bit more tactical.
Okay. When you’re thinking about reinventing your career, this isn’t just pie in the sky, Todd and Chris sitting there, you know, in Lotus pose on a mountain talking about clarity and like the end of life and all. Like I get it. Okay. And I can go more into the woo than you can, I think, but. You know, then we get to like game planning, you know?
’cause once you like do that exercise, you kind of come back to Earth and you’re like, all right, well what are the things that I can do? And I think making a game plan for your own career is something that a lot of people just don’t do outside of, let me build my resume, let me go into interviews. But there’s more than that. And you know, if we’re being really honest when we’re talking about reinvention, you and I have had a lot of conversations lately about how much are we focused on helping people be entrepreneurial? is reinvention, the same as new entrepreneur training. People leaving corporate are now doing consulting or fractional work or coaching, or they’re writing their children’s book or they’re opening a gym or they’re doing things that are different than they were. And I think there is some of that here, right? So When we’re talking about the tenet of game planning, we’ve gotta build it out to understand what are we actually doing? Are we now an entrepreneur? And if so, what does that game plan actually entail? As opposed to, am I just redoing my resume to go on LinkedIn and try to find a better job that’s a little bit more aligned? So I think the game planning piece is one that it just sounds good, but most people aren’t really doing it effectively.
Chris: By and large, a huge majority of people are not doing this with their careers. People were on the conveyor belt, we’re moving along. I know that when I was in corporate, I did not have a game plan for where my career was going except up. My game plan was climb ladder, make more money, climb ladder, make more money. That was my eloquent game plan. And I honestly think most people are going through life in that way. And one thing we see with Reinventors specifically when we are talking about this entrepreneurial approach which most of the people we’re talking to, are either doing that literally or that is a big charge in like what they’re doing in their careers. Like a more ‘ Be the CEO of my own life’ entrepreneurial alignment.
The game plan not only helps you figure out like what you need to do and when and how you need to do it, but it also does a great job at taking the anxiety out of this whole reinvention thing. Or at least putting it in its place and, acknowledging it and working to manage it. ’cause we’re walking around all of us with like, thousands and thousands of thoughts and ideas in our heads and this nebulous concept of well, I wanna reinvent, and what does that look like? Putting it on paper and just getting it out that’s like tactical clarity the game plan is tactical clarity. Starting to see that, and again, we, said this many times, but just to remind people when we say game plan. You don’t really know what the plan’s gonna look like for like five years in all this detail. Right. You know what you know right now and you know on a high level it’s like a project plan that you’re gonna refine.
I think a lot of people feel this, like, a relief in my chest when I actually get that down and I go, okay. Here’s what it looks like. Here’s what I’m working towards. I wake up every day with clarity and not having to re-decide what it is I’m gonna be working on each day. That does a lot for people.
Todd: Yeah, we got the outline. You mentioned that we have a Harvard Financial wizard coming on. He is also a JD/MBA from UCLA. Someone that I used to work for in New York. he’s a brother of mine. I love him. You’re gonna love David. Okay. And we’ll be bringing him on, and when he sent over his list of questions, the first thing that he wrote up top: Here’s how I’m gonna help frame out financial planning for Reinventors. He’s like.
What I found over 30 years of helping all kinds of people in finance and tax and all this stuff, is that things always take twice as long and they cost twice as much money as then when you initially think,
Chris: He’s singing my song, Todd, I love that.
Todd: It was the first line that he said, okay, and he also has a whole thing, we’ll go into this about, planning for the disappointment and failure just as much as you plan for the big win. This is where we’re at right now in reinvention. Like you all need to start thinking about this, but I wanna make a point about this, right? So when we think about getting clarity and then building a game plan, and then we’re gonna go into these other tenets right now.
What I love about these principles is that they offer speed. They offer a way through the process faster, so that way maybe instead of, it’s costing twice as much money and taking two times the amount of time to actually get the new success that you want. Maybe it’s 1.5. Maybe it’s 1.3, maybe it’s even faster than you expected, right?
So that’s what this is about to me. When I think about reinvention, I think, what am I doing when I’m on the phone with people or we’re doing the podcast, I’m like, how can I help them get there faster?
I see myself and you as an amplifier, like an accelerator, almost like a lightning bolt, you know, that’s why we’re bringing people in. It’s like, okay, let’s, let’s do this so I can get there faster. Because in this world of so much data and information, there’s so much coming at us, our brains are muddled and it’s very hard to have a very clear through line of what to do. So I think the call reinvention is to somehow in this crazy madness of information and AI helps and doesn’t help, right? it does help in a lot of ways. And it also gives you just a tremendous amount of information that you have to sift through to find it, right? So that’s another skill that you have to add in, and we’ll talk about that when we get to building skills. But simplicity, getting to the point of simplicity will get you there faster, right?
And I think that’s what game planning is about. What comes up for you when I share that?
Chris: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I’m glad you mentioned, and we’ll get to AI and skill building, overwhelm is what comes up in that moment when I hear about that, there’s so many tools. I mean, we talk about this even in our own business building. Like we’re trying to figure out all these tools that are out there and that we can use. And like, it’s a great thing. It’s an amazing opportunity. It’s a perfect time to be reinventing ’cause there’s so much at your disposal. But that is where the game plan really shines, is that it enables you to make intelligent choices about what you’re gonna spend your time on and focus on. Because you can really get into a place where you’re spinning and you’re like, we’ve seen this with some people we talk to and we coach and in our community where it’s like a million options. And you know, your best option is to choose one and to move forward.
Todd: and to experiment with it.
Chris: Yeah, and I think that’s a good segue into taking action. That’s one of those things where, the game plan is theoretical until you take action. Right? And that’s why that tenet is so important. I’ve been thinking of this as really scientifically, like running little experiments, and running little experiments to hold loosely what your hypothesis is and test it in the world. That’s been a total mind shift for me, as someone who kind of comes from the tradition of quietly building and not letting anyone see it, and then reveal the big reveal. Our philosophy, is really the opposite of that, right?
It’s this idea of gathering data, building in public, being comfortable. Treating things as experiments and failing fast as they say in Silicon Valley. Right? And so to me, that’s also a really, really important element that works in concert with your game plan is the actual taking action and the experimentation.
Todd: Well, I think it’s linear. I think what you’re pointing to, people ask me like, oh, these six tenets, are they linear? And I’m like, there is some element of linearity to them. Okay. Because what I found, and I’ve done this myself, you know, being an entrepreneur for 20 years, being responsible for me making my own money in life for 20 years, okay has required me to take a lot of action. And I can tell you from my vantage point of having success and failure. Along the way. I’ve had a lot of both, that when I get into that mode of I need to take action, but it’s not grounded in the clarity and the game plan. It’s when I fail. Because now I am just literally trying to go out there, but it’s not grounded.
You mentioned this feeling of being relaxed by taking action. It’s because you and I have a pretty clear game plan of what we’re trying to do, and we also have clarity about what we’re really trying to do long term. So clarity is a long term, a moment in time where you sense into long-term thinking, like what you really wanna have happen in life.
It does something subconsciously to be able to do that. It frees you for a moment to dream big and to have permission to think about your life as this gift that you have, and it’s a finite experience. And then game plan is this more tactical thing, like, how am I gonna get there? So I do believe, that when you get to taking action, don’t do that before you’ve done the clarity exercise and before you’ve built some level of game plan, look, it’s not perfect. Like you’re still gonna take action that misses, you’re still gonna like reach out to 20 people and like one of them may get back to you or you’re gonna launch something and it doesn’t work.
I mean, this is just part of what we need to do. But I just want to start off by saying that for anyone out there that’s reinventing and you’re really motivated by this. Get clarity, do that exercise, build the game plan, and then when you get to taking action, you’re gonna do so in a different way.
Your mindset is different because you’re connected with something. There’s a root there that you’re, basing it off of. And I’ve seen a lot of people fail, unfortunately, because they’re just trying so many things all the time. It’s like spinning plates and it causes so much stress and anxiety.
It’s like, why is it not working for me? Why can’t I find my reinvention and they do? I’m gonna tell you why. Because those people have taken the time to do these other things, and that’s why there’s six tenets and not one.
Chris: That is so spot on. You know that, that resonates for me. You have a little inside information, Todd, but like,
Todd: inside baseball
Chris: t I sometimes get to that place or I’ve been that in that place in my life where, I’m like, man, I’m trying everything. Why isn’t it working? It’s like, well, ’cause I’m trying everything. Like it’s, you gotta be conscious and intelligent about what you’re trying. And yeah, there are going to be experiments and there are gonna be quote unquote failures or gathering data or whatever it is, but make some choices. Make that plan, have that clarity. I’m just gonna say this, if you’re listening to this and you like this podcast and this is inspiring, you come into our community for a free trial and take the clarity course. Like take that course and get started and just have this spark or check out our workbook, which also has the tenets built into it and laid out. And we’ll help you get that clarity because we’ve got these great tools and, they’re life changing things and it doesn’t take long to get started.
I mean, reinvention is a process and it takes some time and some effort, but just to get to that moment where you have that feeling of possibility and, clarity finally about this life vision of where you want to go. In a matter of days, you can get the start of that and get that burst of inspiration and we’re doing this because we just want to help millions of people, literally, have that experience.
Todd: You’re talking about a very interesting thing here, which is taking action can also mean getting the help and the support that you need. It’s like too many people are sitting on the sidelines like listening to this podcast, but to actually like, go ahead and type reinvention.biz in your browser and look at the workbook and go ahead and download it, or to join the community for free and get on a call with us, for a lot of people there’s a lot of barrier to entry of doing that, and we’re like, no, . The people who are gonna win are gonna take these actions and not just our community, that’s not what we’re saying, but actions in general that can help. Okay. And so this is taking action, like downloading that workbook, coming in, getting on a call with us. You know, it’s a free trial. If you don’t like us, you get off and you just listen to the podcast, hopefully.
Chris: How could you not like us, Todd?
Todd: There are some people, it’s like that Seinfeld thing, how can you not like him? We always go back to Seinfeld, man.
Chris: It’s always there. No, but it is one of those things where I understand it. By the way I’m gonna say this to you listeners Moreso than Todd. I can empathize with you on this ’cause Todd is Mr. Taking Action. And I, at many times in my life have been Mr. Think about it forever, and then maybe one day I’ll take action and then I’m probably not gonna take action ’cause it’s kind of scary. And then like, I don’t actually do it. And it’s a less pithy nickname than Mr. Taking Action. And that’s where all my regret comes from.
Todd: Yeah, it’s a shift. Yeah, it is.
Chris: Any regret that I have comes from that
Todd: Man, I was like that too. I was like that too. So when I started this whole thing, I was going to all these seminars. I was the guy in the back of the room, with my notepad watching all these people in the front of the room, like raising their hand, be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And like, sharing their wins and their stories. And I was like, I’m just gonna be that guy in the back quiet, like paying attention and I’ll just build my success over here. It wasn’t until I got it that I needed to be in the front row, that I needed to be the one asking questions.
Was like any questions? Yeah, I have questions because of the people on the stage were the people that I wanted to be like. I was in the back not engaging with them, and so I had a shift. I had a big wake up call. I was like, oh no, I need to get over my own ego, you know, and start to be humble around the fact that I don’t really know what to do.
And I do need help, and that’s massively important for Reinventors. And I want to flow into the the next principle, which is growth mindset. So it’s embedded in everything. We’re gonna go back into mindset, and that’s what we do here, like reinvention of these principles. They kind of toggle back and forth between just practical things that you need to do, like game planning, and then also things that are a little bit deeper.
Which is what makes us a little bit different. And when you and I talk about growth mindset, we talk about mindset. Very big buzzword, right? We have a very particular way to talk about it when it comes to reinvention, because, this isn’t a space of pure healing, right? There’s healing that happens, right? A lot of people need to come into a place to reinvent their careers and literally heal their past. Okay?
ReInvention. Yes. And we could talk about that. And ReInvention has that element, but also has the element of looking out into what’s possible in the future. Now there are a lot of people who are reinvention curious and haven’t gotten to that point of getting clarity and making a game plan ’cause they really feel they need to do some healing work and like figure out like what went wrong.
You know? That’s part of the process. We have somebody in our community. He was very outspoken on the calls where he has been involved with me for a couple of years, almost two years, and he wasn’t ready for reinvention to go out there and like set the world on fire with this next thing because he had a 25 year career that was gone and he needed to kind of recoup energy.
So he was always around and reinvention-curious, but needed to go through that. And so when we talk about mindset, a lot of it is awareness of what is it that you need to do, with your time and your energy right now, are you ready to go for it? I mean, for me, I am fueling people, as you know, to freaking go for it, and like that isn’t for everybody and if you’re on the side, you still wanna be around that energy, ’cause that is where it goes. Just to let you know. If you’re sitting on the side, like I’m not fully ready to like figure out what my next thing is. Like you will be, okay. You will be, that’s why you’re listening to these words right now.
But for the people that are ready and you’re thinking about, well, what do I do with my mindset? A lot of it is, let’s go, like this is go time. How do we garner that motivation and that inspiration? Our Monday calls are called Monday Motivation for a Reason. Like there’s things that we now do, but within mindset, and before I let you share, lemme just say this one thing.
We do have an element of what we call allow and reflect. Okay. Which is, the human element, like embedded in ReInvention is the need to have a self-reflective practice. It could be a mindfulness practice, it could be a meditation practice, like this is what we do in our community. We’re like, look, yes, you’re pushing forward and you’re proactive and you’re taking action, and you’re doing all these things, but you also need to integrate and have balance to the part of you, the emotional and mental part of you that just needs processing. And a lot of times that’s where the magic comes out. That’s where the new ideas come out. And so this isn’t just push, push, push. This isn’t the way, this is not the way you need to integrate the allow.
You need to walk out into nature. You need to take time for yourself. You need to spend really quality time with your family and friends or whatever it is for you to go on retreats, to do those things that fuel you from the inside out. This is really what makes reinvention different. If we were just talking about career pivoting, would we be talking about this, Chris?
There’s no way. Like no one was saying that to you in these career placement programs when you left your last job. Like, no one was doing that
Chris: No one ever told me to go walk in the woods.
Todd: No one told you to do that. It’s like, no, we gotta go, we gotta go send your resume, you can’t get off the treadmill. ‘Cause if you get off the treadmill, you’re not gonna get back on. Right. All these stories and we’re saying no, this is the time to be sober. This is the time just to be clear, to do the work that you need to do to figure it out. And so that’s why we have it growth mindset. It’s a very important tenet here that we honor.
You know that you’re on a journey and your journey’s a human journey, and it’s an emotional journey. And it’s not just about your resume and your money making. It’s all of it. And when you start to get those things in balance and you work on them together, that’s where you can break free. That’s where you can really find something that maybe you hadn’t found before that you’ve been looking for.
And that’s what we’re about, is getting people to that level of freedom.
Chris: And that is all fantastic and that’s all spot on. And I think there’s also another element of growth mindset. I wanna make sure that we bring up and honor, which is, you mentioned fear before, or maybe there’s people who are like not ready or feeling that. There’s this interesting axis that we find with people that it’s this axis of fear, but it’s also ego. There’s this ego preservation, there’s this
status preservation, and a big part of growth mindset is getting really comfortable being like, if I’m gonna do new things, if I’m gonna do the things that move me towards the life I truly want, I’m gonna suck at them. I’m gonna be bad at them.
I’m not gonna know what I’m doing. It’s gonna be new to me. It’s gonna be scary, yes. But also there’s an ego death element to that because for me and for many of the people we’re talking to, and we’re working with 25 year career of being successful or being at the top of your game and you know stuff, and you’re the person that people come to and you have all of that, and then now you’re like, we joke about you’re almost kinda like, please, may I have some more? You’re just holding the hat out and starting fresh. Right. that’s a little overdramatic. But
Todd: It’s humbling.
Chris: It is, it’s humbling. I wrote that down as you were saying it. Humility, but the thing about it is, I don’t know that we’ve talked about this in this specific way Todd. Humility is so freeing. Letting your ego go and even for like when we’re doing this podcast or doing social media or whatever it is, when I can drop the artifice of who I think I should be and look like and sound like and all of that, and just be that’s what this is.
And again, you’re not gonna hear this from the person who’s like, let me doctor you resume. Like this is a different vibe.
Todd: I love it so much. And you know, let’s just get specific, right? ’cause even in our business, right, like, you know, Chris was like, whatever, big corporate in a real big massive retail company. What real estate company, whatever, you know, And it was fine. You did it for a long time and I know you did it well. That’s really great. And now in our business, right? Everyone knows that we have a podcast. Okay. Which is a natural for you, right? But we also have a community and I’ve been saying to you, look, Chris, maybe you kind of hold the bag on the community, really learning, community building. It’s like an entirely new skill that you don’t know much about Talent wise, like ability wise, absolutely all there. Right? But this is completely new for you. Right? And I think there’s been some resistance, maybe not a whole lot, but some of going in there, owning that, you know, and understanding like, well, what do I, what does that mean to do
Chris: What is this?
Todd: Is there a real business here? What does it mean growing a community like, very tactically speaking we’ve been having these conversations around doing that and you crossed the bridge, like you crossed some divide recently we’re being very open and transparent, like this is conversations Chris and I have had this week.
And then you went into a platform that we use to find other community leaders to learn from them. And I see this light come on and you’re like, oh my god. There’s all these people like doing this and this is what they’re doing. And it was kind of like some of the words that I’ve been saying to you along the way that I think hit home because you took the action and you made the decision to say, for the life I want, this is a skill that I need to learn. And I think this goes into this next tenet of building new skills, right? So they’re all connected, right? It’s like being humble is mindset. Having a plan, having a game plan, finding a partner, a collaborator, taking new action. And then what you’re talking about, letting go of this old self is just so big for ReInventors. And the one thing I wanna share on that, I know you have a bunch of response here, but here’s the deal that I want everyone to know. ’cause people come to me all the time and they want training to be more magnetic and more charismatic. I get this all the time. People are like, teach me how to be one of those people that just like things gravitate towards. The most charismatic people on this planet, the people that are magnetic and things just happen to them are the most humble. They are curious. They do not know all the answers. They’re not pounding you over the head. They’re not pounding you with how much they know.
They’re not pounding square pegs through round holes. They are literally students and walking around asking questions, constantly learning like Bill Gurley, that’s all we talked about at our interview. This is a billionaire. He’s a billionaire, and all he talked about on our podcast was how many books he’s reading and how many biographies he’s reading, and how much he’s learned.
Chris: He was kind of like an excited little kid learning stuff was the vibe Bill Gurley was giving.
Todd: Boom he’s an excited little kid. We all need to be excited little kids again, that’s what reinvention is. Like it sounds very serious and mindset and uh, clarity and writing your eulogy, but at the end of the day, go out onto LinkedIn, send somebody a DM that you wouldn’t, like, ask them to get on a call with you like this is it.
Like go into the community that you’re now in and start asking questions and learning from somebody and be like, oh, like, well, how are you doing that? That’s ReInvention, that’s mindset. That’s building new skills, that’s getting mentorship. It’s all the things, right? And so when you’re on the phone with a billionaire, and he’s embodying it in front of your face, you’re like, how do I be like that? Well, you’d be like that by being like that.
Chris: It comes from genuine desire to learn about these things and authentically being yourself and being drawn to what you’re drawn to. And it is really funny. We’re talking about our sort of tactical thing around how I had some resistance to figuring out whether I’m gonna take on this new role and what that means. And realized there’s this rubric from corporate where it was always like, well, I knew I didn’t wanna do that work, so when new stuff got added on, I was like, more new stuff. I don’t wanna do whatever. That was coming up in some way, like in the lattice of my, you know, the infrastructure of my nervous system or brain or whatever you wanna call it. Part of the switch that flipped is like, oh, I do wanna do this. I do wanna learn that. Like, I mean, I, I dove into the community and I’m like, oh my God, there’s so much we can do. Like, I have to be conscious and cognizant to make good choices. ’cause there’s like, I have a million ideas right now dude. I’m bursting. Right.
Todd: But it took you minutes to get there. It really took you minutes to get there. And like I, I was kind of gently saying, Hey, like, this is what we’re doing. This would be really helpful for what we’re doing. You’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but like, something happened. And I think it was that reprogramming, it’s like this old programming is coming in and creating anxiety in your system and it’s, irrational actually.
It’s, it’s not actually helpful. It’s just like this old thing that’s coming in. And then all of a sudden you switched over and then when you saw it, it was almost like a light went on. And look, this is the possibility, my friend. This is why we’re saying take action. You know, write, write your eulogy, do a game plan, like do these things because you never know when or how the light’s gonna come on, but it’s not gonna come on just by sitting there, listening to podcasts over and over again. Like, it’s gonna happen after you get off this call and you listen to us and you go out and you go do something. Right. I mean, to me that’s it. I just wanna honor that man that this came up. I mean, it’s so cool ’cause it’s literally in the trenches of what we’re doing.
Chris: It is a beautiful thing and I’ll also say we talk about the sixth tenet, we talk about accountability. So obviously that’s you holding me accountable and our co-accountability as partners. And also I’m in this group and I’m coaching the people in our community and some of the things that I’ve said to them, I was able to reflect off of our conversation and say, well, I’m not embodying the things that I’ve said to these people in this moment around this specific thing.
The beauty of our community and accountability in general, and as this sixth ten the two-way street. You say this all the time, Todd, I’m gonna steal your line, isolation is the enemy of successful reinvention. I mean, I believe that, and I’ve always believed it, but I am so steeped in that and living that day to day now, between us in our community. I mean the people in our community we are getting from them as much as they’re getting from us, and the ecosystem of it is so powerful and it’s lifting all the boats, right? It is a win, win, win, win, win type of experience.
Todd: Yeah, and the accountability piece is the last tenet, right? You know we’re the final tenet, , of what we’re talking about here. And it just really might be the most important one. I mean, they’re all so important, but you can’t do it in isolation. Okay. And this world that we’re living in, I mean, you and I have met one time, you’re in New York, I’m in LA and you know, we had a great time together in New York and we recorded episodes face-to-face and there was nothing better. It was great, right? Like just being together. We did fireside chats. It was very cool. But for the most part, you and I are on Zoom. We’re on Zoom with our clients as well, you know, for the most part. And it’s like, how do we build a true team around us, you know, a true team of accountability partners, of collaborators, of just people that we can trust that isn’t necessarily like our family. Like we love our families and our wives, but that’s different. Like I can’t bring everything in that relationship, when I’m building my business, like there’s just different outlets that I need and different, levels of accountability and conversations that I need to have that are just separate sometimes. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just creating healthy boundaries and just being smart about where you need to get resourced, for different things. And so finding a community of people, finding people like us, it doesn’t need to be Chris and Todd, but finding people that you can learn from.
We had a whole thing in the community around people asking how to find mentors. What a great question, like this is accountability, like going up to somebody, what’s better? What if someone came to you, dear listener, and you got an email and it said, Hey, I really admire what you’ve done in your life and your career. I’ve been following you along for a long time. I would love to pick your brain and how you’ve been so successful. I’m at this stage in my career, in my life, I don’t know if you have the time. I’m sure you get a million emails like this, but if you have like a half hour, I would just love it more.
Would you like to get that email? Because let me tell you this, you could send that to somebody that you think would never get back to you, and they will. if it comes from the heart and you really want to understand it is so charismatic, you know, and like that is accountability right there, because all of a sudden now you have somebody that maybe is a little bit further ahead than you on your team helping guide you, and then you got a team of people in the trenches with you that are like, at your level.
And then maybe you’re also helping people a little bit behind you and you’re coaching and you’re mentoring other people. That’s when you start to feel alive and in action. It’s all three of them. It’s like having people ahead of you, having people at your level and having people behind you that you’re helping creates this perfect matrix of energy and motivation.
And to me, that’s what accountability is. We never talked about this before that specifically, but I do believe that there’s three parts to accountability, those three and when you have that, you feel alive, you feel useful, you feel on purpose, and this is when things start to happen.
Chris: That’s a great point to bring up the axis of three, let’s call that. ‘Cause I think a lot of times you say the word accountability, it’s a really narrow concept that people think of where it’s just like, you know, well, we have the shared to-do list, then when I don’t do my tasks, then you tell me I didn’t do my task, or like, whatever it is. It’s actually, you can get so much from the people that are maybe behind you that you’re picking up and you’re pulling. I mean, that’s exactly the example I just talked about sometimes, like if I’m coaching somebody and I’m saying something to them that I’m not embodying, that’s a really powerful moment for me, and that’s a really powerful axis for me to say, okay, step your game up. It’s such a win-win ecosystem of accountability.
Todd: Yeah, it is, man. I mean it is, and like you and I we keep leaning into it and the thing about it is like we do these podcast episodes, we are deepening our connection here. Like we’re in the moment doing it, you know? And then we’re deepening our connection twice a week with our members.
And more than that, we talk with ’em more. Right? And so it’s like, that’s what we all need. We need a team around us. Okay? And so these six tenets just going over them again today, Chris, it really does feel like a comprehensive system of future success for people particularly, that are in that phase of their life where they’re needing to look at reinvention from the work standpoint, right? Getting clarity, building game plan, growth mindset, turning into it using the tools we talked about today, taking action, building new skills, and then getting accountability. Like these six areas to me Chris they’re it, they’re like a bible, for how to move forward, and get there faster so that way you’re not spending two extra three x the amount of money and time like Dave Mandell is gonna tell us, but actually you’re lessening the amount of time that you can get there. And then the last thing I wanna share as we kind of start wrapping this up and head into season two is, you know the other areas here that for me are alive and this came from the Bill Gurley interview, is we all need to be as reinventors leaning into the technology and the AI a little bit more.
And I know you and I are now taking steps, new tools that we’ll talk about maybe on this podcast to deepen our collaborative efforts using the technology. Like, it’s just so much, but leaning in, you know, and like really riding the wave. I think that’s something that we wanna do and reinvention and be a part of that zeitgeist as we’re kind of sharing this content.
And also the finance and the money piece. Like how are we dealing with money? How are we really making money? How are we giving it back? You know, Those two things also count here big time. So I just wanted to leave it at that. And as I sign off, I wanna hear you, you do the final sign off, but. I can’t tell you how excited I am for season two. We are gonna bring in the best people that we can find that speak to the issues that you are dealing with when it comes to reinventing your career and life. Reinvention, yes, it’s career, but it’s also your life. As you keep saying, you keep reminding us of that and we wanna bring those folks in.
Definitely follow or subscribe here. Go to our website, download the workbook. We would love to meet you. We want more people that are, lifting the veil saying, yeah, I need that, I need that.
So for season one, man, I’m signing off man. Chris, I’m so grateful for you. It’s just been so much fun doing this. And what, what Say you at the end.
Chris: Oh man. Todd, again, I’m super grateful for you too, and I think these conversations are amazing and I know that people benefit, but also I benefit you, benefit we co-create in this moment. And we are really, as we’ve said many times, we are living reinvention as we are leading this community. And someone who’s listening right now. Todd and I are working through these things and co-creating and our thinking is growing. This is the value of being in the conversation and being in the community and having your peers, and having your coaches, and having your support because you are going to learn more about yourself and what you want by being in that conversation.
So we really invite you to join us and we really love to meet you and Todd, just for season two, man, I’m super excited because we’re gonna keep going deeper into the bigger life things.
We’re gonna bring on some incredibly inspiring guests and thought leaders, and we’re also leaning more into thinking about that future of work and that bigger picture too.
And so I’m just excited, man, we’ve made 33 episodes as of today, right? So, I’m excited to do 33,000 more, buddy.
Todd: Yeah, man. It does feel like a zeitgeist moment. Love everybody. Sending so much love and respect, honor, peace. Have a great day, and, uh, we’ll see you next time.
