Roxana Heitz is the kind of person who “has it all” on paper: Stanford Ph.D., 15+ years of product leadership, and a career building health and wellness products across the Google/Alphabet health ecosystem, Peloton, and others….
So why reinvent?
In this episode, Roxana breaks down a tension so many mid-career high performers feel: the work still matters, but the environment doesn’t fit anymore. The gap between insight → action gets slow. The process becomes the job. The misalignment grows.
Instead of making one massive leap, Roxana applies product thinking to her own career reinvention: form hypotheses, run experiments, collect data, and iterate. The result is a portfolio approach – building flexibility and momentum while she explores what’s next.
What we cover:
- The moment corporate success stops feeling aligned, even when the mission is meaningful
- How Roxana gave herself “permission” to step off the treadmill
- Designing a portfolio career: advisory/consulting, fractional product leadership, and founder exploration
- Why “betting on yourself” is a skill – and how to build it without blowing up your life
- The ReInvention superpower most people skip: feedback, accountability, and community
If you’re a high-achiever who’s quietly thinking, “I can’t keep doing it this way,” Roxana’s story will help you rethink what’s possible – and how to move forward with clarity without needing a perfect 20-year plan.
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
Roxana: The big aha moment for me, the permission and the readiness to bet on myself. I think the question I kept asking myself is how do I take all these different types of experiences that I’ve had throughout my career and find a unique way to combine them and, draw meaning out of all of them Reinventors, we’ve got a great episode for you today. We’re interviewing a member of our reinvention community and a personal friend of mine, Roxana Heitz. She’s a Stanford PhD with 15 years of product leadership across health, wellness, and consumer technology. She’s led teams and products focused on women’s health, cancer treatment and wearable health devices.
Chris: She’s worked in the Google Alphabet health ecosystem and with Peloton, Verily and Dexcom. We really wanted to have Roxana on as a great example for our listeners ’cause she is taking reinvention on. She’s exploring a number of different approaches, doing some fractional work based directly on her career experience, hanging her own shingle as a consultant, and also looking at launching an entrepreneurial venture.
So really excited to talk about all of that. And first off, Roxana, I just wanna say thank you so much for being here with us today.
Roxana: Thank you guys for having me. Really excited for the conversation.
Chris: And Roxana, I mean, you really embody our six tenets of reinvention. For one, you are definitely taking action.
It’s like a running joke in our community that every week Roxana is gonna wow us with something new that she’s worked on. So you’re really taking this next step of your career on and being very proactive and it’s also, I think, great for our audience to hear how you’re getting clarity and really approaching the why, the what and the how of your work very intentionally. Because Todd and I are seeing that in the future of work, for us to be successful, we have to do things a bit differently. We have to be more flexible, open-minded, and even creative in how we’re thinking about the next steps in our career.
So maybe just to get us started, tell us a little bit like how did you come around to the idea that now is the time for your reinvention?
Roxana: Maybe I can start a little bit with the background because I think it all ties together with where I’m at today and, why I even started considering some of my next steps.
You kind of shared a little bit about the, specifics of the background. I would say my, overarching theme has been really following my curiosity and passion. So, you know, I kind of started my career in engineering doing chip design at Nvidia and Qualcomm and started being curious about, you know, how can I apply technology to help people lead healthier lives?
And I got a chance to collaborate with someone, in the med school where I was doing my PhD at Stanford, and I realized I could use technology to improve people’s health. And so then I was just hooked on that whole idea of, okay, now my life has a purpose.
I can design and, you know, bring to market products that really help improve people’s lives. You know I worked on women’s health technology, cancer treatment robots. then I started leading, products in areas around, you know, wearables for, chronic disease monitoring, then fitness apps, then metabolic health products.
I just kind of always followed my, curiosity and, you know, opportunity to find new ways to, to help impact people’s lives in a positive way. And that brought me a lot of fulfillment. And, That being said, my career has always actually felt very fulfilling for that reason. And I always really loved, the products that I was working on.
I loved the problems that I was solving. But what had kind of started to crystallize over the last few years for me. Is that, it was was less about the what I was doing, but more about how I was doing it. So a lot of times operating within, especially larger organizations, I started noticing more of a delay between decision and action. Obviously, you know, I understand why that needs to happen as part of how scaling works, but it kind of started to feel maybe artificial to me , and there was a lot of time being spent sort of navigating the process.
and I kind of tend to do my best work when I can move from insights to action very quickly, right. I’m very action oriented as I know you guys all joke about, but truly, you know, I, I really like making quick decisions, turning those into learning, kind of having momentum, just shortening the gap between knowing and doing.
And I think operating in the environments where that felt kind of artificially lengthened, just started to feel a little bit less aligned with me. And so although I felt like I, could do it and, and I was able to be successful in it, it didn’t mean that it felt aligned with how I wanted, to operate ideally.
Todd: So the work for you really was interesting, and purpose driven. It was that your relationship with the environments that you were in they evolved and you started to feel like, well, maybe this isn’t the right place for me to be. ’cause I can’t actually do what I really want to do.
So that’s when this whole idea of making a transition or making a reinvention started to come up. And so what did you do then? As this started to happen, I’m sure this was kind of a little bit revealing for yourself, like, oh wow, okay. Like I have this purpose driven life and this work that does really well in the world, and it also looks good from the outside.
But it’s also not feeling good on the inside in some ways. So talk us a little bit about your process there. Because I think this is an important thing that a lot of people deal with is this subterfuge of feeling not aligned or not feeling fully on fire, even though there’s a trajectory that’s very strong in a bunch of ways.
How did you navigate that part to it? Because now we’re obviously working together and you’re full on reinventing in a bunch of ways, but I think this initial part’s really important to hear. How did you do it? Like what was your process like to get to I need to make a change?
Roxana: Yeah, definitely.
I, I will say actually, I probably had couple of false starts here. I think the very first time I met Chris was when, you know, I had a few moments in my career where I thought, this might be the time to really try something completely different. And then something would come along, you know, a problem that I really loved, an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down that felt genuinely compelling.
You know, people I really respected. And so it was really easy to lean back into the role and the work and, you know, part of it was that allure of the familiarity, right? I knew how to operate in a machine. I knew I could get results. I knew how I could be successful. And, you know, all those experiences were really meaningful and, and full of learning.
I just wanna be clear about that, right? Like I mm-hmm. I I worked with incredible people, you know, and impactful products. I’m genuinely grateful for all those chapters. But you know, as I mentioned over time, kind of feeling this misalignment, I think a big element for me was, joining this community actually, and just really kind of seeing other people who are struggling in a similar way.
And almost giving myself permission to really start to get off the treadmill. I know you guys can have this expression of picking up the needle off the record. Right. It’s, I kind of call it getting off the treadmill, just really taking a step back to think about what else might be there for me.
How else might I be able to bring about the kind of impact that I want to have, but maybe in a slightly different way, and in a way that felt more aligned with me. Yeah, I, I don’t know if there was a very, specific moment I would say it’s been kind of a reckoning over time and a learning and a knowing, that’s been crystallizing.
But the key moment that I felt really changed the trajectory is giving myself that permission. Mm-hmm. And being in this community of people who are kind of dealing with similar things and kind of seeing how they were dealing with it and seeing that, I can really relate and I’m not that big of an anomaly.
I can kind of really think about designing my life in a very different way.
Chris: Permission is such an important concept in reinvention. Right. And that’s something we see in our conversations in the community all the time, there’s this idea of why not that we can all kind of see from the outside sometimes when we’re talking to people, but we, but the people themselves get caught up in whatever narrative or identity or. So when we talk about that with you, Roxana, do you feel that there were elements there of, there was something that you were supposed to be doing or some lane you were supposed to stay in? Or why do you think it was difficult or maybe permission didn’t reveal itself to you over that time?
Roxana: it’s interesting ’cause like I said, I, I’ve sort of attempted this a few different times and I even had the beginnings of starting my own ventures or ideas exploring them.
And, I think there was a sense of competence that I felt within the environments that I was operating in, and I knew that I could be really good at it. Right. I had a lot of success. I was getting more and more responsibility. It was really fun. It was really interesting.
So there were a lot of parts of it that were really great. And so it was hard to envision somehow keeping all of those parts, but operating in a very different way. I remember that was one of the first challenges that I brought to the table when I joined you guys.
Just, how do I not throw the baby out with a bath water, right? Like, how do I take those elements that made me feel really great about what I was doing about myself and my own identity and competency and so on. But just find a different way to bring them into the world.
And find a different path that could still be fulfilling. It just really felt like I had to try something different because I just knew how , this game was gonna play out. I had seen the movie and, it was more and more and misalignment with how I wanted to operate.
Todd: I mean, again, this is exactly why we’re doing this conversation, right? Because you are modeling something that so many people are dealing with, and have taken that step. So I just really appreciate you allowing us to delve into kind of the inner workings of what was going on with you, right?
Because it’s the kind of thing that we don’t always look at, but it is helpful to see. The start stop is pretty much ubiquitous. This is what everybody does. And there’s this thing in the Seinfeld. I love Seinfeld, and you know, Chris and I, you’ve listened to our episodes, we’ll just pull out some stuff all over a place.
And Jerry says in one episode, you can’t just tip over a soda machine, you gotta knock it back and forth a couple times before it goes over, right? And I think the same thing happens. these big life transitions and these career changes, especially for midlife professionals and someone like you has been so successful.
it’s a really big thing and it’s also really interesting to hear how much just finding a conversation that Chris and I are having with others was the thing that gave you the permission. Right. This is exactly why we’re doing this podcast. Okay. so that way others could feel like, yeah, I’m in a similar boat and I need to be thinking about this.
And for me, I’m very motivated because I think that the world is changing so fast, Roxana with AI and everything that more and more people will need to have this conversation. And I’m just saying, Hey. Do it now, be proactive. But I’m curious about something in particular with you. When you join the community, we guide you to think about the end, right?
We have this whole idea of thinking with the end in mind and getting clarity about what you want, which connotes this notion of aligning your next career moves with your lifestyle, you know, and actually thinking a little bit differently about your future, and I’m curious how that landed for you as someone who was feeling purpose-filled and successful, but now you’re also thinking about it differently and matching the how you’re doing things.
So when you started to go down that process of getting clarity, as we call it, and talk a lot about on this podcast, what was that like for you? What was revealed for you that maybe wouldn’t have been if you didn’t do that exercise?
Roxana: I think there’s different, types of clarity, right? There’s kind of the clarity of what am I doing 20 years from now? There’s clarity of I don’t wanna do X, Y, Z anymore. And then to me, what was actually more important was the clarity of the next step, if that makes sense.
Like you said, a lot of my work was. Purpose driven. And I knew I wanted to continue to do that. So I didn’t have to kind of do some major burning of everything from my past. But the big aha moment for me, and I think what I kind of continued to see into my future was the, the permission and the readiness to bet on myself.
I think the question I kept asking myself is how do I find a way to honor that? How do I take all these different types of experiences that I’ve had throughout my career and find a unique way to combine them and draw meaning out of all of them and, kind of this realization that I like wearing many hats. I draw energy out of entrepreneurial adventures and endeavors. The moments of clarity were around, like I said, the how. And I knew that I wanted to continue to do something within these spaces and the industries that I’ve been in around health and wellness and fitness.
Maybe it’s a little bit different from somebody who has a career over here and completely pivots to a completely new area. But this was the kind of clarity that. I needed, and this is what, happened when I stepped off the treadmill. The future is not all W2 jobs to infinity. There Could be portfolios of jobs, there could be other ways to put in practice all of the great experience that I’ve accumulated.
Chris: I like how Todd always says pick up the record needle and move it to change things. But you say step off the treadmill because even your analogy has to be health technology focused.
That’s how laser focused in that sector you are Roxana. But it is an interesting thing because you’re right, like there are a lot of people that we’re talking to in the community and listeners that are, changing the what of their career. We talk about here a lot of times how I did procurement.
Todd still doesn’t know what that really means, but it was not aligned to me as a subject matter and of course there were all the corporate trappings that you talk about and how long it took to get things done, et cetera, et cetera. But like also the subject matter wasn’t right for me. So for me it was like, I’m not throwing the baby out with the bath water, but we’re throwing out a lot of bath water when we go to do the next thing.
Right. Whereas for you, it’s more structural in a way where you’re looking at it saying, oh, I can do this fractionally, I can do this consultatively. And you know, you’ve got this entrepreneurial bent around it. And I think especially in the realm of entrepreneurial work, do you wanna tell us a little bit more about betting on yourself?
I go back to the word you said before of competence. Right. And I think that for those who are listening, you don’t know Roxana like we do. Roxana is hyper competent. Not to embarrass you, but you’re so good at so many things and you’re just knocking out the park at things, you know, when you go to bet on yourself, especially in an entrepreneurial
milieu, what does that bring up for you?
Roxana: Yeah, so I think as I was considering the many paths, and I know you guys talk about then your podcast a lot as well, right? How do you decide what to do? What to do next? How do you decide which opportunities to explore? I realized that this idea of prioritizing, forming hypotheses, running experiments, collecting data, revisiting assumptions.
That was all part of my DNA as a product person. These are all product principles that I decided to actually apply to my own process and my own reinvention, right? and. Instead of trying to pick the one right answer with utmost certainty, I decided to actually kind of down select to three different paths that I was genuinely interested in and, and kind of start testing them in parallel.
Kind of where I’ve landed in a lot of it was just from a lot of the conversations within the community and with you guys, I’ve sort of taken on this portfolio approach where I’m experimenting with how I allocate my time across a few different things.
All of which I’m really excited about and investing seriously in, but wanting to see which of them will potentially take even more of my interest and energy and potentially take off. One of them is setting up an advisory LLC because I was getting a lot of inbound interest and I realized that my expertise was pretty differentiated and in demand. And so I set up the structure to allow myself to continue to lean into my expertise, but then stay flexible while also solving kind of a wide range of interesting problems.
I also joined an early stage startup as a fractional product leader in a space that I’m super excited about and I have a lot of experience in, and it’s really fun. We move really fast. We get straight to substance and impact and honestly, it’s been really invigorating to work with a really smart and great group of people.
And both of these are time boxed on purpose so that I can have some time to explore another area that I’m super interested in. And that’s the entrepreneurial venture that I think you’re referring to, Chris. So I’m really excited about a new concept for a women’s first weightlifting studio.
There’s a lot of talk about women needing to build muscle and build strength, especially later in life. There’s, you know, increased awareness of the benefits. But what I kept hearing from women is that they know they need to get strong. They know they need to lift heavy, but gyms just feel really intimidating when they get there, they don’t know exactly what they need to do or kind of how to do it.
The environment is just not designed to build confidence over time. And since I’ve also been going through my own strength training journey, I can just imagine what this environment should be, and I just know it needs to exist. I just see so much opportunity in redesigning the entire experience, creating an environment that builds confidence and mastery and education and support and that’s truly welcoming for all levels and kind of helps women through this stage of life so that’s really the kind of general area that I’m super, super excited about. I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna turn out or what shape the product is going to take. I’m doing a lot of exploration right now and learning from a lot of people in the industry.
But this was an idea that. Came to me sort of at 3:00 AM one night, and I just couldn’t shake it off.
Todd: Best ideas come that way, right? Like 3:00 AM Oh my God. That’s what I should be doing. I mean, there’s so much to unpack with what you just said, and I think that if you’re listening to this and you follow us, you see why we brought Roxana on here.
Right? She’s really modeling a new way, someone that’s been able to, through some coaching and community and self exploration find a new way to explore the future of her work that is pretty juicy in these three different ways that you just described, right? It’s really admirable the way that you’ve been able to do this.
But here’s my question, right? Because I think where a lot of people struggle, maybe you don’t, but other people do in this is it’s a new skill, right? One of our tenets in reinvention is skill building. So to have a portfolio career where you are now segregated into, alright, 10 hours a week, you’re doing this fraction work for these guys, 10 hours a week, you’re doing this, and then X amount of hours, you’re now doing this entrepreneurial adventure.
I mean, this is a lot different than where you came from, of working for a company and, building a product and a W2 and all that. How are you skilling yourself to be able to do this? Like are you actively learning entrepreneurial techniques or mindset techniques? Talk to us about that part of your process, because I think there’s something about you that this is relatively easy and maybe it’s just your scientific nature, the way that you go about it, and your product nature to be able to do that.
But are there challenges in that for you? Like have you experienced struggle with how to balance all these different things that you’re now kind of juggling?
Roxana: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the theory is easy. Mm-hmm. And the setting up my time in these buckets and the ideas what I’m gonna try to do and why, and how I’m going to assess what’s working and what’s not, I’ve got that down. The day to day is for sure very different and a lot more challenging and then a lot of the learnings along the way are also definitely a bit of a rollercoaster. So on the day-to-day, right, like how exactly I actually bucket my time and how do I figure out which of the buckets to do items from? It’s all new. It’s, a different way of. operating, which is actually exactly what I wanted. It’s very self-directed, which is fun and interesting, but it can be challenging at times. So I’ve kind of built myself little tools to do that and keep myself on track and keep myself accountable.
The community is a great accountability tool as well. And then, you know, on each of these different areas that I’m working on I’ve also picked up new skills and new tools. So I’ve vibe coded a few different little websites to describe what my advisory services are, and then I use a lot of vibe, coding in the startup that I’m working at.
And then, I’ve been also experimenting with various little apps.
Chris: You built a protein first nutrition tool that I’m using, so, you know.
Roxana: Oh, nice.
Todd: And it took her like three hours by the way, or something like that.
Roxana: At 3:00 AM At 3:00 AM Yeah,
Todd: It’s like pretty awesome.
Roxana: But yeah, so learning a lot of new tools where, you know, it’s just me kind of tinkering, but really the biggest tool is going out there and talking to people. Right. Especially for my business idea, i’m finding myself talking to studio owners, gym owners, lots of women in the community, kind of what is it that they want and what are they looking for, what’s not serving them, what problems they have. Real estate agents, just a wide variety of people that I’m having to learn from. and you know, sometimes it’s not super comfortable and I have to put myself out there. I have to figure out, how to incorporate the learnings too, because, what’s hard about entering a new space is getting up to speed on all the fundamentals, right? There’s plenty of gym and studio owners that just know the ins and outs and the operations and so on. There’s a little bit of teaching myself that, absorbing that from the community of, of other gym owners.
But then I’m also trying to do something slightly different in that space. So I’m having to take in this information and decide what applies and what doesn’t.
And you know, sometimes if I hear a little bit of naysaying, do I go with it or do I decide, ah, that’s exactly where I’m gonna be different.
So that’s actually been probably one of the most challenging things is how to operate with confidence in a space that I don’t yet have as much competence in as I would have in some of these spaces where I have deep, deep, deep expertise.
Chris: One thing that comes up as you say that, right? And we won’t turn this into a coaching session, Roxana, but it is something that pops up, is that to say, yes, you’ve had deep competence and experience in certain areas throughout your career, of course, but also many or every project that you worked on at some point was once new. And so you are bringing your competence and you’re bringing your skills, and you’re bringing your abilities to a new focus or a new element where you did have to get up to speed like that.
So I guess I’d argue you’re using that same muscle, right? It’s differently contextualized, and it’s in this place where you’ve given yourself permission to be, a little bit more out there and off the beaten path from where you were. But in a way, are you still tapping into those same skills where you’re it wasn’t like every project you did during your career, you got, you went and interviewed the engineers or whatever, and you got a straight answer and it was really obvious, right? You always had to read between the lines. Do you, do you feel that you can tap into that muscle still in this vein?
Roxana: Yeah, absolutely. That’s such a good point and I remember the first time that I shared some of my concerns or, anticipated challenges with the community around you know, do I even have the skillset to do this? I think someone just straight off came out and said, look, there’s plenty of transferable skills that I’m sure you have. And, and that’s actually true as I’m reflecting back to your point, I’ve seen this movie, I’ve, been in these kinds of situations. Brand new challenge, brand new market, having to assess an opportunity, that’s again, kind of part of my DNA and to your point, it’s, a similar muscle.
It’s maybe just picking up a dumbbell instead of a kettlebell.
A lot of it is deciding how much of my background I can bring to the table and my domain knowledge. Right? And my Understanding of frankly, people like me and women who are going through this phase and hearing these things and how to kind of relate to them and how to understand what they’re going through.
And then how much to kind of transfer from previous skills.
Chris: Well, if I can jump in for a second, we did talk about this a little bit in the community ’cause I think we encouraged you bring your personality and your specific experience and self to this entrepreneurial venture because of how powerful it is and how powerful it speaks to your customer avatar theoretically is someone like you. Right. So that is really resonant language that can land with them. I bring that up only Roxana, because this is really common with the people in our community and people who are going through career reinvention in general is, I think a lot of times people start with this, let me put this abstract idea of what I’m doing out there, this abstract business or whatever it is.
And almost all the time, we find there’s a lot of benefit to being like, no, share your personalized, unique, infused version of that, because that actually is what speaks and sings to the people that you’re gonna work with.
Roxana: yes, , you’re totally right. So What I’ve realized is that I actually have, first of all, I have a lot of domain expertise, right? A lot of my work has been at the intersection of, human behavior, habit formation behavior change, technology, kind of really trying to understand people deeply and how do I convince them to do something that’s good for their health. that’s just been, a sweet spot for me professionally.
And then personally, I’ve had some firsthand experience with this as well, having gone through my own strength training journey and so. I think it’s just a matter of, of combining these and then understanding what gaps I have left. Right? I know you guys have also talked about collaborators and partners. I think that’s an area that I’m thinking about deeply right now as well. And what skillsets am I missing that I can continue to gain myself? and where should I actually partner? Or what’s my first hire, for example, right? That’s another big one right now that I am actually getting my personal training certificate, but obviously if I open a space that is meant to scale and has a lot of clients, I’ll very likely need to be bringing on external help as well.
Todd: I would like to future pace it a little bit and just to reflect to you some of the things that I think being around you over these last several months, you do really, really well and I think are necessary skills for other people to literally pay attention to. First, you in a reinvention de-isolated yourself, you literally sought out assistance.
Okay? Like you reached out to Chris, you joined our community. You start to show up to all these calls and you get the value. That is like 90% of it. You’re actually going out having the uncomfortable conversation with others about, well, I don’t really know, or, I’m exploring these things, and you’re starting to get the value.
The other thing that you do so extraordinary in the community is that you literally ask questions and you really want to get the feedback, and I think that’s your product design self that shows up. But I gotta tell you, for reinvention, that is a really valuable skill. And I’ll give you a specific example that I love. So recently we did a session where we allowed everybody to do an elevator pitch, right? And everyone went ahead and prepared a two to three minute pitch about what they were doing.
You raise your hand, you’re like, I’m gonna go first. And you shared your thing, which was amazing by the way, and everyone gave you some really good feedback and then we were gonna move on to the next person. But there was one person in the group who didn’t share feedback just ’cause we didn’t get to it.
And you said, actually Todd, before we move on, I would like to hear from so-and-so over there because they didn’t give feedback yet. And I was like, okay, this girl’s here to get her data. You know, she’s here to get her information and she’s here to get the most comprehensive overview the she can, but I gotta say that’s a skill most people don’t do.
You are seeking out knowledge. Mm-hmm. You know, you’re seeking out feedback. Okay. That is just so incredibly valuable. I just wanna give you that feedback because I think this is just what most people aren’t doing. They’re stuck in their head. People that listen to this. Like a lot of people don’t join our community, they don’t take our workbook. Yeah, they’re just listening to the podcast. But eventually they’re gonna take some action. They’re gonna have to, because getting the support you need is just really, really very important. And then with you, I look at this scenario right now, three things right now that are in play.
One of those is a big entrepreneurial venture, right, which has a lot of unknown and variables. I mean, at some point, Roxana, there’s gonna be decisions that are gonna have to be made one way or the other about maybe this project really starts to take off, or maybe that fractional work business starts to take off and they want you full time, and maybe that’s exciting for you.
Maybe they all start to take off, right? Then what do you do? Welcome to the world of reinvention. hese are the times that we just need to be coming together to make smart decisions. Like it’s not gonna end, the end goal here is not necessarily I that you’re just gonna get another W2 job and that’ll be the next 20 or 30 years from you.
Most likely. This is going to be an evolution about how you are constantly working and making money and thriving, Right? So it doesn’t really end. And that’s why we did it, it’s an ongoing thing. What are your thoughts when I say that? Like, do you feel that, what is your reflection on that?
Roxana: Well, I absolutely expect all of this to evolve. Mm-hmm. And that’s why I’m so serious about my data, right? I know that I need to get it from all the sources. It’s actually even more important to get critical feedback is what I find.
Mm-hmm. Just having kind of the niceties of like, yeah, that looks cool. That’s, not exactly helping me further refine my ideas or my path. Right. And so. This is actually back to my product DNA as well, just that you put something out there in the world, you collect the data, you kinda see how it performs, and then you decide on your next step.
I I think I had mentioned this in one of our sessions a while ago. what’s really important is having clarity for now, and I realize that, I don’t need to have the next 20 years figured out. And I am going to gather more data and learn a lot of things, and I’m gonna be pattern matching and deciding what to do with the new information that I’m collecting and receiving.
And I absolutely expect it to change. That’s why I’ve been saying this is what I’m doing for now. I don’t know when it’s going to change exactly, but I will, set myself times to, you know, allow and reflect and evaluate both how the data is looking, but also how I’m feeling about these different directions because this is kind of where I started, right?
I, wanna kind of change how I operate and I want to let my own energy and alignment, really guide my next few steps.
Chris: I want to really jump back to, I think one of the first conversations we had Roxana, about your career. You and I might have just been a casual conversation before we sort of were even informally coaching or you were in the community. But I remember you telling me, you were sort of looking at your career at the company you were at at the time and part of what was a blocker from your perspective was, well, you know, this manager’s in front of me and like they’re this age and they’re not gonna move on, so therefore, like, there’s not really a spot for me to go. And it was a conversation that was kind of like that. And I just wanted to reflect back to you it’s such a cool thing to be to having this conversation now where there’s none of that in your way. It’s all you in what you choose to do next and what you choose to build. We talk about this a lot on the podcast for people who are coming outta corporate we have this unfair comparison of, oh, I’m trying all these new things and they’re very uncertain ’cause we’re making this comparison to this false certainty that corporate gave us.
And of course there was a certainty in a sense of if the company’s still making money and if this, and if that, and if this and if that, then yes, you could stay there for five years and rot on the vine until that person gets promoted, retired, or exited, and then maybe you can get that role. Maybe I’m projecting Roxana. It feels like this is a much more exciting and invigorating path for you than that.
Roxana: Yeah. I think for me and how I like to operate, right? A lot of it is having a sense of ownership, which I’ve never shied away from, and I have that plenty now.
Within a company, you get a lot of structure, right? Which can be really nice and comforting, and there’s a lot that I just kind of need to figure out on my own right now. but I happen to really like that stuff. I, I kind of like figuring out how to do my own thing. you know, bring people in as needed, come up with my own systems and, just learn, learn and grow along the way, right?
Use new tools, teach myself AI, vibe, coding, and so on. So, I think there’s a time and place I got a lot of value out of working for a lot of these companies and, gained a lot of invaluable experience and it just felt like it was time to, try something different and yeah. The betting on myself has really, I’ve felt a lot of alignment with that idea.
Todd: Yeah. you know what’s interesting, another way to say it is you’re the product now. Right?
You’re now the product that you’re designing. It’s you. Sometimes Chris and I say, be the CEO of your own life. I think another way to say it, especially with your context is, well, I’m now the product, and I am now developing myself.
And that’s reinvention to me. You know, because I think that’s the future. That’s what we all need to be doing right now. The landscape’s gonna change dramatically over the next. 2, 3, 5 years. I mean, it’s happening fast. You know, there’s a lot of stuff happening right now, that is just so fast.
So your mindset in my opinion, perfect for being able to navigate the changing nature of the future, you know, and that’s why we wanted to bring you on here. And I feel honored that you’ve chosen to work with us, you know, in our community, and you’re bringing so much value to other people.
That’s the other thing, you’re providing so much value for the other members in our community that are watching the way that you do this and that you’re doing it as you’re also learning from others, and that’s an accelerator which is what a good community is, right? And that’s why we do reinvention.
So I just want to thank you for being here with us and sharing your story so cleanly and beautifully. And I’m inspired by what you’re doing, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you. I don’t know where this is going. You don’t know. That’s what’s fun about it. And that mindset is just, it’s a childlike awesome, wonderful feeling to feel that way. And you’ve inspired me to feel that way as well. So I just wanna thank you for being here.
Roxana: Amazing. Thank you so much. I loved getting a chance to share my story and, getting to chat with you guys, thanks for having me.
Chris: Yeah, thank you so much, Roxana. This was awesome.
Todd: Well more soon subscribe to what we’re doing here if you love hearing from people like Roxanna, and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Thanks everybody.
