How to Future-Proof Your Creative Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Résumé | with Christina Wallace

About Episode

Today’s guest is Christina Wallace who is an entrepreneur, author, and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business school. Christina is a self-described “human Venn diagram” who has built a career at the intersection of business, technology and the arts. If you’ve been a listener of my podcast for sometime or have attended my latest workshops, you will most likely recognize that term as something I highly support.

In our conversation, Christina and I talk about the history of how industrialization shaped the needs of the human species to specialize, but how that shift has now turned against the working class. We also talk about how the pandemic became the catalyst to trigger the rapid shift that made specialization become not only outdated, but the biggest risk in our time. We delved deeper into why the specialization model simply doesn’t work anymore given the rapid changing circumstances we’re going into right now, and what exactly we need to be focusing on as we move forward.

Christina and I also talk about building The Portfolio Life, which is the title of her book as well as a key strategy to become irreplaceable (even in these rapid changing times when many roles are being rendered obsolete). She takes us through the steps she describes in her book to find the intersection of everything in your life so you can identify what makes you who you really are as well as discover the value you can offer in any industry. Whatever industry you’re currently in, this conversation will help shed light on your next steps if you feel you’re behind and need to catch up with our constantly evolving world.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I am here today with Christina Wallace, who has been described as a human Venn diagram. You have built a career at the intersection of business technology and the arts. You're currently a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. And you're also the author of the new book, The portfolio life, how to future proof your career, avoid burnout and build a life bigger than your business card. And, dear Lord, is this the shortlist of your bio, you're also an active angel investor and startup advisor, you're also co created and co host that limit does not exist, which is a podcast about portfolio careers is on iHeartRadio, over 125 episodes and millions of downloads. And you also had a viral TED Talk that details your unique approach to hacking online dating, you founded multiple startups, you've been a management consultant, and I'm getting a message from my producer that says if I read the rest of your bio, we have no time for an interview. So Christina, tremendous, tremendous pleasure to have you here today.

Christina Wallace: Delighted to be here.

Zack Arnold: By the way, you're making me feel really lazy and unaccomplished. Right now, when I look at the list of things that you have done, and how diverse and different it is, I've considered myself a little Scattershot and flaky and unfocused for most of my career. And then I look at what you've done. And I'm like, where are you getting all the hours in the day that I can't seem to find because I, I feel like I've accomplished a lot. And then I look at this list. And like, man, I am just slacking off.

Christina Wallace: Well, judging from the photos on the wall behind you, you may have gotten started in the family business before I did, and I'm pretty sure that made the big difference, right? I've got two kids now who are one and three, and Good lord, the difference and how much time I have available now, versus before I had kids, it is astonishing. And I think that is going to be a big factor. And how much capacity you have for whatever chapter of life you're in, is, what other responsibilities do you have? What other pieces of your life are already part of your portfolio, I now have kids in my portfolio and everything else is getting like prioritized within an inch of its life because there's just not as much space right now.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and then that's an area where I have to give myself permission to be okay with where I am. And just to clarify for anybody that looks at the wall, they look at and are like, what a children do you have? I only have two, just a lot of pictures of them. And they're now 13 and 11. And I didn't even start diversifying my career until they were both toddlers. So I was very much a specialist. I was a cog in a machine and I did one thing for most of my career and achieved I don't I never want to use the word mastery. But I achieved a high level of expertise working at a very high level on Alias shows. I've edited the number one network show the number one cable show the number one Netflix and streaming show. But I was a specialist that was a cog in a machine until I realized this is no longer the path for me. And it was these two behind me that that created that realization. And then all of a sudden, I became the scatterbrained ADHD mess of all of these things that I wanted to pursue thinking that I was doing it wrong. And I had to get back to focusing and specializing. But now when I look at when somebody says just the other day, my daughter just went back to sixth grade and the teacher said I'll do what what does your dad do? It makes me think of kindergarten. What does your daddy do? Right? And her answer was, it's complicated. I don't know how to explain it. Right? So you get that, right. So if somebody would have asked me 10 years ago, well, what do you do? Oh, I'm a film and television editor worked on shows like Empire and Burn Notice now it's like, well, how much time do you have? Creativity coach, Career Strategist. podcaster, author, American Ninja Warrior, Spartan coach, Dad husband, and that's kind of the shortlist. And I had a conversation recently with Chase Jarvis talking about creative calling. And I told him the same thing I'm going to tell you, which is that your work has given me permission to be okay with who I am. Because I've always thought, well, at some point, I'm going to get focused again, I'm going to stop being so scattered. And I'm now realizing this is the superpower that gets us through this generational shift and this technological shift that we're seeing right now. So tell me a little bit more about what the hell is going on right now.

Christina Wallace: Well, I will, I'm gonna get back to your your background, though, because I think there's something fascinating in a shift from editing, where you're taking kind of a mess of all of the frames that have been shot over the course of production, and finding the story and putting putting in the cuts that like make it make sense to someone coming in fresh to experiencing this for the first time. It feels very consistent with coaching, both creativity and athleticism, right. Like there's something there where you're like, I can see the bigger picture and I'm helping clients find that through line. So I'm seeing some threads here but but Okay, so what's going on right now? Well, your industry is feeling it the most right now with everyone else right? Right the writer strike the actor strike, there's a real understanding that that there's a in the last decade or two, just a material shift in the relationship between jobs and workers. And layered onto that are all of these external disruptions in the world, like extreme weather, AI, generative AI that's coming to up end, entire business models, political upheaval, just across the board, sort of all of these what used to be once intergenerational disruptions are now like, every two to five years, it feels like they might even be coming faster than that. Now, don't forget the pandemic, right, all of these things. And so, understandably, the people who are running the companies and the organizations of the world are, are responding to these disruptions by by trying to cut as close to the bottom line as they can. They're trying to eke out profitability, they're trying to become much more flexible. And the way to do that puts the individual worker incredibly at risk, right, like people who have been lifers at some of these companies, 1516 20 years, were on the chopping block for layoffs in the last 12 months. Industries that used to be the path to the middle class, I think, particularly we've seen this, these narratives come out in the film industry, these roles were used to get residuals, these jobs where you used to actually be able to afford a life and a family. Now you're getting pennies for that same work because of the changing business model. So there is a, a real shift that I think the pandemic kick started. Because we all had to sit still for a little bit too long to we had to really think longer than we would have ever chosen to sit still and think, and, and really face whether or not we were living the life that we wanted to be living and whether our ambition, which many of us have, I am incredibly ambitious, but whether that ambition was actually fulfilling what we wanted out of life, or whether our professional work, which is meaningful to so many people, but it's not enough. And that in some cases, we were sacrificing a larger picture for our life in favor of this professional ambition. That wasn't, you know, keeping us warm at night, it wasn't tucking us in and giving us those Snuggles. And so it's a shift in thinking about from work life balance this like tension. On one side we have worked on the other side is everything else. And instead, thinking about it, like a financial portfolio, work is part of your life. It's not in opposition to your life. And there's a whole bunch of other things that are in your life. And so the question at any given moment is what does your portfolio looks like. And depending on what else is in your life, as you go through these different chapters or different seasons of life, you're going to shift and rebalance what that portfolio looks like.

Zack Arnold: I definitely want to get much much deeper into actually understanding the portfolio how we break it down, I want to talk about your unique intersection of actually having a background in finance and portfolio management. Because that again, just talks about this human Venn diagram concept in the intersection of everything. But there's a couple of things that I want to hit first, I'm probably going to say about 17 times, let's put a pin in that because there's so many threads that I want to pull. The first one that I'm going to put like a second pin after a pin as I want to come back to your observation that is so astute about the narrative thread and connection between being an editor and now being a coach and a podcaster. Because when we talk more about the process of constructing your own portfolio, it took me years to make that connection. But when when I did, it totally changed my life. But there's one other thing just to kind of set the table a little bit and help people better understand how we got here is understanding the seismic shift that happened with the industrial revolution, because I've been writing about this for a while, but I wasn't really as succinctly explaining what happened largely because I'm so diversified that I didn't take the time to really research it. And in a single chapter, you answered the question, how do we become specialized anyway, because we need to understand what we're going back to we're not doing something new, we're going back to something that we're much more wired for. So just talk a little bit about our transition to specialization.

Christina Wallace: Yeah, so So pre industrial revolution, you know, pre kind of turn of the century. People did a bunch of things always right, you you had to tend your crops, mend your clothes, raise your family, contribute to your community, everyone had a range of skills and and worlds that they inhabited and that is how we built a life. And then when the industrial revolution happened and we started professionalizing and and Creating the sort of systemic production of goods, we needed people to do one specific thing. And crucially, I needed to be one specific thing so that we could, you know, break this complex process into smaller pieces, but also so that we could hire, and then replace individual people weren't no longer became the linchpin of, of a process, it was everything was interchangeable, just like the parts of a car. And so it made from a business standpoint, it made it possible to build things faster, cheaper at scale, and really grow these huge industries. But they did so at a cost to the worker whose life went from being this, you know, rich tapestry of skills and networks and relationships down to what my grandfather did for 40 some years, and it was like welding chasis on the car for General Motors, same plant, same model, same job for 41 years. And what made it work is that there was enough profit coming through the system, certainly in post World War Two, America and you see this in other cultures as well, there was enough kind of rising tide lifts all boats where we could pay money back to the investors and make them happy, but also really take care of workers. My grandfather had a living wage, he was part of a union, he was able to retire with his pension, he had health care. And he put his three kids through college with him working without a college degree and my grandmother as a homemaker. By the time my mom comes around, that that cushion, that commitment from the company to the worker is no longer there. So now she's a secretary, she's still full time employed salaried benefits, but without the same kind of protections that my grandfather had. And then by the time I come along, and everyone from the younger Gen X's and the millennials, we don't even have that cushion, the things that used to be salaried are now hourly, they're now gig worker, they're permanent answers, they're freelancers. And we start to see this sort of, you know, a separation of the pieces, that relationship between company and workers is just getting undermined layer by layer, in large part, because of the the pushback from the investor class in the 70s. The 80s really said, Wait, we should be getting a lot more return on our capital for this. And we started to see that, that shift in really favoring the investor class over the worker, and and that continues sort of hyperspeed today.

Zack Arnold: At least we can all still afford to buy our own houses and live the American dream, though, right?

Christina Wallace: I mean, that's hysterical. I'm about to be 40. And I still rent, I paid off almost 200 grand in student loans. And I pay what, $6,000 a month for childcare like it's absolutely preposterous, my husband and I are very well educated, we have great jobs. And it is it feels impossible, because every single piece of the American dream, health care, child care, housing, all of the pieces of this have become individually impossible to achieve. The pace of income growth has not nearly kept up with the pace of anything else. And then when you try to fit all of those pieces together, it's just, it's, I would laugh if it weren't so sad. And then you look at stories. The New York Times just did a package a few days ago on Gen Z ers, and they're like, I'm not even trying to rent like little home by like, I can't even afford to rent like this is just not going to be part of my future. And so I think there's a real crisis, that it when older generations look at the situation and they say suck it up, buttercup, like it's always been hard, you're gonna have to sacrifice you're gonna have to work hard. I there's a disconnect between like, I get working hard. I've never had fewer than three jobs in my entire life ever, ever. This is not just hard if it's impossible.

Zack Arnold: And I think there was one individual statistic that just popped off the page, I think encapsulates all of this. And it's exactly what's going on in Hollywood, but it's happening everywhere. But all the conversations we're seeing with the CEO pay and profits versus what the workers are getting paid. I'm just going to quote this statistic because I was like, This is it in one sentence, and it's an average weekly wages have increased only 17.2% In total, over the four decades from 1979 to 2019. But the productivity of American workers increased by 72%. Over the same time So we're working our asses off, and we're way more efficient and more effective than we were. But it's the people at the top of the towers that are getting all of the benefits from that. And that's what we're seeing between the working class and the CEO class and why everything has just completely fallen to pieces.

Christina Wallace: That's exactly it. But like, I, you know, I think a perfect example of this is like, back in the day, there was like, the secretarial pool, right? If you were an executive, you went in, you dictated something, and your secretary typed it up. And then you know, over time, you start seeing the full time secretarial pool, go down to one assistant go down to assistant you might share go down to like, Oh, you don't need an assistant, you can, you can take your own stuff, you can make your own travel plans, you can do all these things. And so the things that used to be other people's jobs, because partially of technology, yes, but also partially because of the expectation of well, you now do that. More and more and more of these jobs are getting layered on and you're not getting paid for it. Or, you know, when people survive a layoff, and they're like, congrats, you still have a job. Okay, now you have to absorb the work of the people who've been laid off, but are you getting paid their salary to know, we're cutting costs, that was the point of the layoff. And so we never seem to recover from that. And people are taking on more, they're making more out of that time. They're squeezing it on every end, but they're not seeing the benefits of that. And that 17% in income far is, you know, so much lower than every other piece of their life, that that they have to make that income cover.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and there's a saying that has been colloquial alized in my sector of the industry that, frankly, has nothing to do with just my industry, but really the entire economy as a whole. But when it comes to this idea of the work piling on, and less people doing the same thing, I would always say that in Hollywood, today's miracle becomes tomorrow's expectation. Right? It's like this is going to be an impossible thing to do. But we believe in you. And then you do it. Yeah. All right. Okay, now do that every day. You're like, Yeah, I'm sorry. What now? Not even remotely sustainable. When we wonder why we're so goddamn burned out?

Christina Wallace: Yes, that's exactly like great, you could pull it off. And now that's the standard staffing for something like this. That's the standard expectation on turnaround time.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. So though, what I want to talk about next is that for decades, the narrative has been passed down from generation to generation to generation, literally starting a preschool. What are you going to be when you grow up, right? And then in high school, in college, you pick a concentration, then you pick a major, then you go out into the world, and you know who you are? And what you're going to do, you grab the bottom rung on the ladder, and then you climb to the top. Yes. And in my opinion, it's not just a matter of the ladder has changed or has moved, there is no more ladder, it doesn't even exist. Correct. And I think that the scariest thing for people to realize, but it's the reality that I want to share with everybody. And you talk about this a lot is that now the biggest risk of all is specialization. We'll talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, how we calculate the risk versus the reward. Because this is really scary for a lot of people.

Christina Wallace: I mean, try to imagine so it's 2023. Now, if you asked a kid who's 23 Now back in 2000, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up kindergarten, whatever it is, my math is a little bit off there. None of them would have said a generative AI engineering specialist. Right. And yet, that is gonna be one of the hottest jobs in the next two years. So part of this just truly stems from literally we don't know what the jobs are going to be the industries are going to be the the growth sectors, we don't know that the rapid pace of disruption, yes, but also innovation, right? Disruption isn't only bad, it just means things are changing in a way that is sort of reordering the norm. That pace is so much faster than it used to be. And so you can't live a whole career under one understanding of the world anymore. You can't even at this point get from high school to the workplace, under one understanding of the world anymore. And so given that world, it is impossible to to have sort of this linear strategy of who am I what do I study? And how do I work that way up, you are right that the ladder doesn't exist anymore. And that's partially because the industries that have the first steps on the ladder, they don't have the top have any more like the business model doesn't work if there's nowhere to go. And I look at this in like the nonprofit theater management world, which is where I started out my career, it is absolutely possible to get a first entry level job as an assistant or an associate somewhere in nonprofit theater management. Good luck going anywhere from there, though. There's no other step. Right now you can be an associate or you can be the artistic director. There's nothing in between. And also the entire nonprofit theater industry is It is not going to exist in in how we see it today in a decade. So, so you can get a step on but you can't go anywhere and the places that aren't growing, they don't have those first steps because they don't exist yet. So it's a completely different mindset. And I think part of what has felt like the rug is being pulled out from under us, is because we were told there was a ladder. And we were told, if we did these things, we would have the ability to build a stable life, we're not even asking you to be zillionaires here, we just want a little bit of stability. And that's not true. Now. So it feels a little bit like that disconnect. So so how to think about now that Clay Christensen, who was one of my mentors at Harvard Business School, before he passed, he had this framework to think about innovation within big companies on emergent strategy versus deliberate strategy. So a deliberate strategy is a linear one that says, we're starting from here, we want to go there. Okay, let's map it out. How do we get from here to there, draw a line, connect the dots. And now let's break that into pieces and go step by step till we get there that is, pick a major, get a job, get promoted. That's the deliberate strategy. And emergent strategy is what you need in a world where you say, I'm starting here. I think I want to go there. I don't actually know where there is, though. And it is not clear to me at all, how I get from here to there, because everything is changing. So you literally can't plot out the steps. It's like when my mother in law says, Well, don't think about what job you want. Next, Christina, think about the one you want after that. And I was like, I, I have literally never even known what my next job would be. I can't possibly think about the one after that. I don't know, I don't know. So an emergency strategy says, Okay, I roughly have a sense of my my direction. And I certainly know where I am right now. And I'm going to be opportunistic, I'm going to connect the dots, I'm going to say yes to things that I don't know where they're going to pan out. But they seem interesting, I'm going to build real relationships that are not just transactional networks of people who can do me a favor, these are real people that I am going to invest in, because they're wonderful. And at some point, it's going to work that I have these people in my life. And as long as I kind of, roughly, I'm heading toward the thing that I said I wanted, I'm making progress. And at some point, if I look up and say, That's not what I want at all, like I got closer, and I realized that's it's a mirage, or it doesn't line up with my values, or it doesn't match what I want for my life anymore. I give myself permission to release that goal. And I pick a different one. And I build this much more emergent, opportunistic approach to life.

Zack Arnold: So this to me is going to be the perfect place to somewhat pull that pin out of you making that observation earlier about the connections between being an editor versus a coach versus whatnot. But the one additional question that I want to throw in here, before we get there is a lot of people's fears. And I know this because I get these fears sent to me all the time via email, some of them in a not so nice manner, is you me now I have to become a jack of all trades. Like I just I've developed this one skill in this craft, and this is what I'm good at. And I don't want to like scatter all of my attention elsewhere and just become a jack of all trades, master of none. I have my own response to that. But what's yours?

Christina Wallace: So I get I've, I've had a version of this I've had it challenged me in other interviews, well, don't you want your neurosurgeon to just be a neurosurgeon? Like, do you really want him to have a high side hustle? And my answer to that is, I want them to be very, very good at what it is they do, of course, but think about it the other way, the day that my neurosurgeon is thinking about retiring. And then they look around and say, Well, what am I going to do if I retire? I've got no hobbies, I have no friends, I have nothing outside of my entire identity is being a neurosurgeon. And they say, You know what, I don't need to retire. I'm gonna keep doing this for another 10 years. That is not a neurosurgeon, I want anywhere near me. So if you think about it from that perspective, I'm not saying you have to be an expert at 72 things. But what I am saying is take a little inventory of who you are, what you care about the worlds that you have stayed connected to the hobbies that you enjoy. Think about all of those things not as, Oh, those are silly little things I do to fill my time when I'm not working. But these are parts of who I am. This is what's in my Venn diagram. And when you start doing that, you realize that Ninja Warrior, cool exercise things, maybe they're not at the same level as As editing film in terms of how seriously you've pursued them, the excellence that you've built up, but it's meaningful to you, it's part of who you are. And it deserves a place in your portfolio whether or not you ever go on the TV show where you get to be famous doing that thing, right. So, so this is what I mean, it's sort of step back and and excavate the parts of yourself that you put away when you grew up, and tried to become serious. And focus.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And now we're going to be getting a whole lot deeper into Venn diagrams, because asking my producer, anybody on my team, I'm obsessed with via Venn diagrams. And as soon as I saw, I'm the human Venn diagram. I'm like, Oh, my God, you and I have to talk. What I want to share an example of this, that every time that I've talked about this, either on the podcast or when I do it live, it got the biggest kind of laugh and aha moment that I didn't expect. So I will give the example of imagine for now we keep it simple. And we have two circles that are two Venn diagrams. One of them is my level of experience and expertise, editing television, and film in Hollywood, right? Again, I haven't mastered my craft, there's always more to learn. But I've achieved a high level of expertise and success. Right. Now we look at the Venn diagram of me as an American Ninja Warrior. I suck. I am not a good American Ninja Warrior. And I know because I train with decorated and accomplished Ninja Warriors that are on the 50 foot banners. I'm not good. And then I asked the audience the question, when you overlap, high level expertise in film and television editing with American Ninja Warrior, I asked them the question, how many editors do you know that are better at American Ninja Warrior than me? Right? That's exactly it. There's nobody in my industry that's better at ninja than I am. It's finding that intersection of all those. So I have a I have a concept that I want to workshop. I'm still working on it. So you can either fuel my fire or you can be like, yeah, no, that's w should stop. Okay, so here's, here's the thought that I've had is I believe that the transition from specialization back to generalization, I believe that the what's going to end up happening is that we get to become a jack of all trades, and Master of one. So now I want to go to this Venn diagram of me transitioning from editor to all the things that I do, you've already identified and you go, you can go a little bit deeper into it. But this connection of it's not just, I'm in a computer, and I putting together digital dailies and constructing a scene, I'm telling story. So how would you connect the threads between all the various things that I'm a jack of all trades? And consider me a master of one?

Christina Wallace: Yeah, no, I love that framework. And I have always struggled with that phrase at all, even the Master of None, it sounds like there's there's a longer piece to that quote that that is basically the opposite of how we treat it. It's escaping me at this moment. But in any case, this master of one, I think it's when you think about it, from that perspective, it becomes the master of one becomes not a functional, or specific job title, or even a thing like, like, call it film editing, it becomes this higher order. Through line, like you pointed out that could be in your example storyteller. It could be coach, it could be someone who challenges the status quo, right? You start to realize what it was that you loved about the thing that you became more of an expert in in the first place, why you were attracted to it, why you excel in it? What is the essence of it? Not the like day in and day out? But like, what is it about it that makes it a fit for you? And then you start looking at? Well? Are there other places that shows up in your life? Or if not, are there other places it could show up in your life. And so I loved your example, because as a math and theatre double major in college, I was certainly not the best mathematician at Emory University, nor was I the most talented director. But I was quite literally the only mathematician who could stand in front of an audience and crack jokes, and tell stories and and love being in the center of attention. And I was the only person in the entire theater department that like didn't cry at an Excel spreadsheet of numbers. And so being at that intersection, connecting those worlds connecting those ideas became my superpower. And so I do think your your point of like, what is that larger through line that becomes the truth across these worlds that you're in, as well as these power of associative thinking, right? How can I bring what I know from this world into that world? And and what point of view does that offer that maybe no one else in this room has thought about?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the key word here that I want people to really zone in on his essence, right? What is the essence of what I'm uniquely good at? I don't know if you're familiar with it or not you I'm sure you've heard the term but the work that Gay Hendricks did in developing the zone of genius. I feel like it's so it's so similar to finding that zone of genius. Yeah, and I'm still workshopping this as well. And I'm gonna go back half a step. So you understand and the audience understands where this came from, is that when I was at that point where I realized, editing is my identity, and that's not a good thing. And I'm completely and totally wrapped up in it. And the only way I can support my family is being stuck in small dark rooms for 60 hours a week. And I don't want to raise my kids via FaceTime. So the first thought in my head was, I'm starting over right in big air quotes. I'm starting over and thinking, Who am I to think that I can make a major career transition, I'm almost 40 years old, I've got these two young kids, like, I just need to stay in my lane and do what I'm best at. But I knew it wasn't going to be fulfilling. And it was leading to this endless cycle of burnout. And it took me a few years. But it was when I discovered that what I do as a coach or as a podcaster, as a writer, is the exact same thing that made me great as an editor. That's when I was like, Oh, my God, I've got 30 years experience doing.

Christina Wallace: Exactly. You weren't starting over at all you were just transitioning,

Zack Arnold: and what and what I found, and like I said, I'm still workshopping it, but I think I'm pretty close. If somebody said, What is your specialty, I would say that I'm uniquely good at simplifying the complex, and taking all of these disparate, disconnected story points, and collecting them together, and a very entertaining, inspiring and emotionally invigorating story. And guess what I can do that as a TV editor, I can do the same thing for somebody else's story. As a coach, I can do it as a podcaster, the concepts you write about, they're not easy to understand, right. But I'm using that ability to take the complex and simplify it. So now that's my specialty, I feel like I'm a master of one. And again, mastery is a loaded word. And I always have more to learn. But now it's a matter of if I want to do something different. If I want to go and produce a documentary series, or whatever it might be. I know I'm not starting over because I have so many transferable and valuable skills.

Christina Wallace: Yeah, no, to anyone who's listening, but not watching. I'm like nodding my head off over here. That that mean, this is exactly what I want people like that. That's the process that I want people to follow. And I, I hope that I can lead them through that in the book that I wrote, because so much of this is recognizing when you are making these pivots, you're not starting over, you are not throwing away everything that you're not like the top of the mountain top. And now you're going back down to climb a new mountain, you're just like going in a different direction. And I worked with this one woman who had been in marketing, she'd been an event manager before she left to raise three kids. And she was out of the workforce for 20 years raising these kids. And then she got to a point and said, okay, my kids are out of you know, they don't need me day in and day out. I want to go back to work. And she had this perspective of well, I'm starting over, I haven't I haven't been working for 20 years, I was like, Okay, I've been parenting for three years. And I know damn, well, that is work. That is hard work. But it's not just, you know, a pat on the head motherhood is work. No, I mean, literally put it on your resume, what have you been doing, you have been managing complex, divas and and highly complicated, emotional, you know, personalities, you have been managing all of the logistics, you've been coordinating, you know, a household and all of these moving pieces. Like if you start to actually break apart into the pieces of work, I was like, You should be a chief of staff to a CEO, like I would hire you in a heartbeat. Because you are exactly the person who can anticipate three steps ahead. If I do this, where does that you have 20 years experience, as a COO of your family, like, you should be asking for significant, like roles and pay and compensation because you are an amazing asset to any organization, right. And so this is where the work has to be. But if you don't see that, that through line, if you haven't connected the dots, you cannot expect anyone else to see those dots for you. So this is where the work of this really comes in, is knowing yourself, having that ability to reflect and pull up and find that story. So that you are are helping other people understand what you bring to the room.

Zack Arnold: So basically that in a nutshell, when people ask, What do I do for a living that that's what I do, I'm literally going to go to the transcript copy paste that goes on the website. You nailed it. So I thank you. I appreciate what I want to point out here that I think is so important, both just in general, but especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence, to break down what you just said in the simplest terms possible. I don't think that it's going to be it's not going to be impossible, but it's going to be very difficult for anybody to move forwards in any industry based on hard skills, because most of our hard skills are almost instantly becoming obsolete. And what I been telling people for years, I've always looked at it this way, I don't hire for skills, I hire based on values and based on character. And if your story is all about your hard skills, well, then people are going to either say yes or no and the Autobots are going to discard you with recruiters and whatnot. But I can teach people skills, I can't teach them character, I can't teach you to not be a dick, right? I can teach you workflows, I can teach you Google Sheets. And now it's a matter of Well, now we have to all teach each other AI. But if we continue to define ourselves, either by our identities, as far as with the job title, or our hard skills, we're in for a world of pain over the next five years. Oh,

Christina Wallace: Oh, 1,000%. And I love that you even pointed out the the tension when you were trying to think about that transition, because it really started with Well, this is who I am, right. And so many times people are thinking about a transition there are interested or they, they feel that friction point of like, what I'm doing is not what I should be doing. And then they are scared to make a change, because they see themselves as their job. They have connected to that identity. And they they know they have whether it's a very clear space in their industry, people know how to immediately categorize them, when they meet them, you know, they have a very clear, you know, set of relationships and the pecking order, all of that is so easy. And then you You say, Well, you are so much more than your job. And they say I hear you I know, I know I am. And I don't know what that is, if I'm not x. And so the literally the very first step of the portfolio life model requires separating identity from the paid allocation of your time, and how you are currently, you know, monetizing it. Also known as your job because your job can and will change your industry can and will change. And if you are connected to it, you are going to be the last person hanging on that like floating piece of driftwood, rather than the first one being willing to look and see where else your skills and your work might be really relevant.

Zack Arnold: And I'm going to add one further layer to this a very brief one, which is complete and total plagiarism because they're your words, but I think it's so important to restate this is that I think it's important for folks to understand that this is a systemic problem. And it's not your personal failure to figure out, I had this conversation over and over with clients, whether it's with networking skills, or time management or financial management, and they're in their 30s, or 40s, in their 50s. And they're constantly berating themselves, saying, Why is it so hard for me? Like, why should just know this stuff? And then I say, Have you been taught any of this? Well, no. So then why is your expectation that you should know how to do it, that's a failure of this system. That's not a personal learn individual failure,

Christina Wallace: Correct. That is correct. There's so much of this that either, you know, was steeped into the unwritten rules that, you know, the very top echelons of, you know, business and, and academics and, and the elite, you know, ruling class they're passing on at the dinner table, but it's not being shared beyond that community. And or these are life skills that we have had to build out, given the current world we're in that our parents literally couldn't pass on, right? I think back and I say like, it's not that my mom didn't give me everything she knew she did. I just grew up in a blue collar family and Michigan in the 80s. Like, this isn't the world that she knew. So of course, she wasn't able to prepare me for this. And this is why one of the biggest skills and sort of values, you know, character questions has to come down to, are you someone who is in love with learning, and constantly excited by the opportunity to try new things to change to go off in that direction? Or are you someone who is clinging to what you had yesterday, and you are afraid to the point of, of closing your eyes and just pretending that the future isn't coming? Because that I can't even really teach the former? Right? It's just how you how you look at the world? Is it with excitement? Or is it with trepidation? And how do you react to opportunity?

Zack Arnold: It's literally like you have already listened to the podcast that I have coming out right before you. Because if anybody wants to dive into either part of that, I have a 90 minute conversation with Eduardo desenio. All about not just the fixed versus the growth mindset, but understanding learning mode versus performance mode. And as an adult, you're just stuck in the gear performance mode. We forget that Learning Mode even exists. But then when learning mode comes along, we realize that there's so much more adversity that comes with change. And I talked with Brad Stolberg, all about how the difference between homeostasis and aloe stasis where right now we're at point x, and we're transitioning to point y and we're just waiting to get back to X, whatever you think we're going back to we're not we're not there's no stopping progress and having the the ability to manage your mindset and manage that adversity is such a core foundation of making this transition from specialization to generalization. So I swear to God, it's like I just fed you all of my previous conversations. And you knew what, exactly how the narrative all comes together. So that tells me that I'm probably on the right track. So the the next thing that I want to bring up as an extension is something that you mentioned with this analogy of the mom, which I think is such a perfect encapsulation of this, you said, Well, you're you're the CEO, oh, and you could be the Chief of Staff for a CEO, right. And there's, there's a line from your book that is either incredibly exciting, or it's terrifying. And that line is that you get to become the CEO of your life. I read that and I'm like, Yes. And other people read that. I'm like, Oh, my God, that is way too much responsibility. And I just want to stay in my lane. But I don't think we have any choice. The transition is we're all going to be the CEO of our own business and our own life. So first, how do we just manage that and take it in, then I want to actually talk about practical steps.

Christina Wallace: Yeah. So I hear you on it being both incredibly exciting, and also terrifying, because with it comes a certain amount of agency and control that I think many of us are really feeling a yearning for. But with control and agency comes responsibility, that if we are in charge, then we are in charge. And so you know, there's there's definitely kind of two sides to that. But the the pro of this is that you get to decide what goes in your day, what goes in your portfolio, what, how you spend your time, and you can say, my current allocation isn't working. This friction, I feel day in and day out, isn't serving me, I, my, my goals have changed. I'm not who I was 20 years ago, and I want something different. And I'm going to allow myself to go after something different. That is incredibly empowering. And on the flip side, it means that if you have that realization, this isn't what I want. I need to do something different. And then you don't. Well, that's on you. Right. And that's the scary part, that now you have the ability to make these choices. Now it's on you, if you don't, it's 2023 man like this is how I think this is how we gain some of that stability, and fulfillment and joy back to our lives. Because zero other people are going to be the CEO of your life. So either you do it, or you you have no one in charge, there's no leader and you are rudderless. And you're left behind.

Zack Arnold: And it largely goes back to something you said earlier specifically talking about the the assembly line and the move to industrialization. We didn't know it back then now it's very, very clear that we are treated as replaceable expendable widgets, which is again, why there's no security and what we think is a stability in stable, you know, very specialized craft, especially in the entertainment industry, it is very clear how disposable all of us are. Now at least we can accept that. That's reality, you may or may not have heard, because I know that you're not like intricately involved in the politics of Hollywood, but give or take a month, month and a half ago, amidst all of the strike chaos. There was some executive unnamed to this day, that essentially said Our strategy is to wait this out long enough. So the writers started losing their houses, right. And when I saw that, first of all, I was incensed. But then I was like, at least now everybody understands the game that we're playing, because that didn't surprise me at all. And so many people were appalled, and like, the game hasn't changed. They've just made it clear what the game is. Now, we've always been expendable, and replaceable. Which is why whether you like it or not, or it's scary or not, you have to become the CEO of your own life. Because no Corporation is going to do it anymore, you're not going to get your gold watch after 40 years of service. So you can then start your life, right, you're the one that has to design this. But we've never been given any of these tools. All of this is a totally foreign concept, which again, not a bug in the system. It is the system because it makes us compliant workers on the assembly line, but the assembly line is going away. So I want to start digging into how we actually start to construct our Venn diagram. So break this down from the simplest level, and then we'll start to get more complex. Where do we start?

Christina Wallace: So you start with a bit of an inventory? Who are you? What do you love? What are the worlds that you inhabit? So there's some exercises on this in the book, you can go from anything from what are the sections of the newspaper that you'd love to read? What are the corners of Reddit that you run down? What are your hobbies? What are the things that you love to do when you're not working or that you used to do when you had free time, right? What are all of those elements and you start bringing them up, you don't have to make sense of them yet you just write them down truly like just go by 1000, sticky notes, they're going to be helpful in this process. But you start kind of laying them out. And then you go talk to the people who know you really well. And ask them what they see, when they look at you, why would they come to you? What is it specifically that makes you stand out in their minds, and you write all of those things down? And you can go back through previous iterations of yourself to you're like, Oh, I've been in this mode for so long. I don't remember who I was. Okay, go back. Who were you in the fourth grade? Like, I want you to take it almost to the extremes, because then you realize, you're like, oh, that's always been a part of who I am. I love that. I just, I haven't had the opportunity to express that in many, many years. So you write all of these pieces down, and then you start to group them. This is why sticky notes because you want to be able to move around whether you have a board or a table or your bed, I don't care. And you start trying to figure out what are the categories that they exist in, you start realizing maybe you're the person that your friends always somehow put in charge for group travel, you're like, you're really good with all the logistics, or you've been like obsessed with politics every single day, since you were like, you know, 12, even though you've never worked in politics, you've never whatever, but that's a piece of what you care about. Get that in there, and you start realizing, Oh, be really connected to my community matters to me. And maybe if you are someone who has moved around a lot, and you're a renter, and you've never really felt connected to your community, you're feeling that loss. And whether you run for city council, or just show up the next community board meeting, there might be a thing for you there. So you, you figure out these groupings, and then very likely, you're gonna have some sticky notes that fit in more than one grouping. That is the intersection of those circles in your Venn diagram. So you can start laying them out and seeing where they overlap. You're someone who loves to write and coach but you're also someone who loves finance. And they overlap because you write a personal finance blog, right? Like, boom, that's where they intersect. If they don't intersect anywhere, this is a big aha moment. Because now you can start to look at them and say, Okay, how might they intersect? If I love this, I love that. What's the mashup of those two things? Is that an opportunity that I could go after, and whether that's a new hobby, whether that's a side hustle, something you moonlight doing, or somewhere you volunteer to just get connected, you can figure out kind of the business model of what that looks like, we get to that next but, but that's sort of a highlight of an opportunity of where you can pull these things in. But the point of this is not that you have to be every single thing in your Venn diagram every day, that would be overwhelming. The point is to simply reflect on and, and really appreciate the all of the different dimensions of what makes you you. Because that is what gives you permission to go beyond your current identity, your current job, your current way that you show up in the world, and say, Well, no, I've always had these other pieces. People just haven't seen him yet.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the I had this exact realization with a client of mine very recently that I'll break down. I'm sure that this has happened you 1000 times. But I'm still relatively new on workshopping and running my students through this process. And I was teaching finances class, which is like, do 100 levels below the level of the kind of stuff that you do. But one of the things that I've learned over and over and over, especially in the creative world, creative people suck at money management, I'm sure you can probably agree. And they don't understand how do I balance my finances to deal with the lean times and be able to endure the gaps between jobs? And the reason the most people keep saying yes to paycheck jobs. And they're miserable, because they don't have the money to be able to say no, so I developed a program just to help them understand the basics, create automations. And then we started talking about how we can monetize ideas, because right now, nobody's working. So I had a very high level assistant editor that's working on like the top a list Apple shows. And I found that over and over and over, when some of my students would ask, well, I don't understand the difference between an S corp and an LLC, etc. I'm like, and not really the expert. And he's like, I'd like to chime in. And then he would go off on all these these things, then I would, I finally stopped him. And I'm like, How do you know all this stuff? And he's like, I don't know. I'm just, I'm really obsessed with learning about business entities and I do my own taxes. And I said, you're really good at translating something that all financial, all the financial stuff that creative people hate. You're really good at explaining it in simple terms. And he's like, Ha, that's interesting. Two weeks later, I get an email with outlines for two entire online courses and workshops. He's like, What would you think of these where it's all about teaching the basics of finances and business entities? for creatives that hate this stuff, that to me was the center of his Venn diagram knowing he also used to teach editing software at the Apple Store to Grandma's that knew nothing about software, right? That's where all really together.

Christina Wallace: That's brilliant. It's an obsession randomly with understanding entities and how business works, the understanding of why and how creatives might be terrified of this, and the specific application for their lives that are different from tech entrepreneurs or anyone else. And a history and experience of breaking down cones concepts for a lay person, like you put those three things together, and arguably a skill set that allows him to make his own online course, without having to bring too many other people in to the work like that is the perfect example.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I've had more and more of these conversations with my students. And it's just constant aha moments. So I'm really, really excited to be able to bring this out for more people and have them have the tangible steps to work through.

Christina Wallace: And what I love about that particular idea for him is like it's coming up right now in a lean time where no one is working. But that creates passive income. That becomes a nice little foundation of his income streams, going back to when the the industry reopens, and he takes on new jobs that are a little bit more sporadic. He now has this thing that can buffer him between those, I mean, in the exact, you know, instances that you were just talking about. And so it's not like selling out, I think many creatives are like, Oh, I don't want to sell out and have to do all these other things. I'm like, No, it's figuring out what else you have to offer, how you might be able to package it up, put it out in the world, particularly, if you can do it in a way that allows this passive income stream, you make it once, and you just make it accessible, asynchronously for other people to pay you for later. That's the most like perfect example of how he's can add diversification to the business model of his life, leaning on the pieces of who he is already.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And that's actually one of the very first steps that I took seven, eight years ago, when I started this process is I did it in bite sized pieces. And I found that I had I had a real, I had a real knack for using Trello for project management, but specifically for people in post production. And nobody even knew what Trello was. So all of a sudden, it wasn't like I was the Trello guy for the entire world. But I was the Trello guy for people in film, how do I build the workflow specifically for TV and film and documentaries. And to this day, I still get residual deposits every single month in my bank account, because I have a multitude of courses on what was lynda.com and is now LinkedIn learning. However, there's one thing that I want to clarify that I think is really, really, really important for people, you used a trigger word for me, which is passive income. And my joke has always been the passive income is when you work 20 hours a day. So you can make money while you don't sleep. And passive income and residuals they exist. But the amount of effort and work to build a foundation for that is anything but passive. So I just I wanted to throw that out there. So your thoughts,

Christina Wallace: The I can, I can absolutely see the trigger for that phrase, what I refer to as passive income out here is that it is an existence where you make it once and you can sell it many times, as opposed to, for many people, their first inclination is like, Oh, I could do this thing for someone, I could consult, I could edit I could write. And I'm like, That's really interesting. And that's a great use of your skills. But that requires every dollar you make to be a product of an hour that you put in. So that is a direct act of like you can only sell so many hours in the day. Whereas if you make something that you can then put out in the world, and every time it gets downloaded, activated, signed up for whatever brings you money, it is a reflection of work you've already done. True. But it is not it is scalable in a way that consulting or creative work or anything that is like our for our being sold is not

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I'm very, very glad that you clarified that because the most important fundamental mindset shift that I needed to make was I no longer want to trade my time for money. This is not about the exchange of hours for dollars. So an example of what I would say quote unquote, for those listening passive income is that one of the first online courses that I built built five, six years ago, my students are literally still using it today. I haven't touched it in five years, right, I'm still managing a business and growing a business and I'm very actively running the business. But I continue to create an expand an entire suite of products. So if I wanted to I could just send an email and say click this link to buy the self guided online course for this discount. And I That to me is almost passive income, because it's something I created years ago that I can keep using and building upon. So I just I wanted to clarify because Are there's so much in the online business community in the podcasting world that makes it all sound so simple and easy. And it just rolls in. But you and I are clearly on the same page. Yes. So I want to get back to to brass tacks just a little bit. We're we're in this room, we've locked ourselves from the outside world. We're buried in post it notes. Yes. What are the names on the actual circles? What are the Venn diagrams? What are the categories? Because I have my own. And I'm curious what yours are.

Christina Wallace: So this is where anyone who loves writing and grammar is like parallelism. And I agree with you in writing, I don't think it's relevant for Venn diagrams. You could have industries, functions, roles, skill sets, I mean, they don't have to all line up. So you know, the shorthand I use in my bio, I'm a Venn diagram at the intersection of business technology and the arts. That is a simplified version of my Venn diagram. But my Venn diagram also has performing and storytelling, it has teaching, which is sort of the intersection of performing and storytelling, it has, you know, so many other things that are a piece of this. But then it also has an industry technology. I write code, I have built businesses in the tech world, I speak tech in a way that I can translate it into other places, there isn't one specific thing within technology that would fit and so all of those pieces are summed up by a sector, right. And so this is where it takes a little bit of, of massaging, you might put all of these things together, and you give them names, and then you step back, and you think, Ah, it's not quite it, there's something missing. Or I don't know if that really feels like me, which is why one of the steps of this process is like you put it a lot on paper, you go away for a day or two, you go live your life, you come back, you look at it again, you say does that? Does that feel like me? Is there is there anything missing there? Is there it does it line up? Maybe you show it to a couple of people who love you and say, does this? Does this make you think of me? You know, it's just like the Wall Street Journal stipple photo, like you look at this from far enough away, do you see Christina? And so you kind of massage it for a while, but at some point it it clicks? I don't know what's in your Venn diagram.

Zack Arnold: So for me, it's not so much about what's in my specific Venn diagram at the moment, what I'm trying to figure out, are the categories, right? What are the circles themselves, and I'll share with you what I have currently, I am very much in the mindset of I want notes. And I want feedback from people that know more about this than I do. But where I am currently with this process, and helping my students is I break it down into four main circles. I'm pretty sure there's at least a fifth. But the four main circles will be all of your past and present work experience. It doesn't matter what the industry is, doesn't matter if you were an assistant manager at Blockbuster 25 years ago, if you're an editor today, right? Both of those are mine. And then the second one would be what are all of your skills, right? What are the two? If you look at that experience, it's not just I know, Avid Media Composer, I know Google Sheets, right? When I look back 25 years of my experience as an assistant editor, or as an assistant manager of blockbuster, it was communicating and managing conflict, which I still use to this day in Hollywood. I mean, editors more than anybody else are the mediators that manage conflict, right? Yeah. So that would be an example of how I break down the experience into skills. Then for me, the third one is passions, obsessions, just random knowledge that you have, like you said, things that you read about things that you're interested in, it could be irrelevant or completely irrelevant. But that's the third one. And then for me, the fourth one is how do you define yourself by your character traits and your values? Those are the four Venn diagrams that I'm currently using. Do you feel that there's something that I missing there that comprises the pieces that we need to find the intersection of all of them?

Christina Wallace: Don't know if there's anything missing, I think in terms of passions that I, I would maybe expand that I think you may have even said it as sort of passions and interests. So I'll give you an example. I, I would never say that I'm passionate about New York City Real Estate. I live there for 14 years. I don't live there anymore. But I will tell you the very first section of the New York Times that I will read on any given day is the real estate section. I know more about New York City Real Estate than a random person should. And part of it is because it is so it's such a strange microcosm of a sector. No other City Real Estate works like New York City Real Estate, and it is impossible to understand the prices are ridiculous. The expectations are ridiculous. And I'm obsessed. I cannot get enough. And so I put it up there with like something that I read and care about, I could talk to you ad nauseam about New York City Real Estate. I don't know if it makes me who I am. But it's certainly it's in it's in the ether is part of what I do. And so I would never say it's a passion in the same way that theater and music and art but it is. But it's it's, it is an obsession.

Zack Arnold: What is it about the whether it's the skill set required to be good at it? Or the emotional connection that you have to it? How do you feel that your reason for doing that or being drawn to it might be connected to other parts of your Venn diagram?

Christina Wallace: I am obsessed with it from a from both the intellectual business piece of like, how does this industry exist? Why is the prices, you know, why are the prices and the way that they're set up? And, and that piece of it, I think it's just such a strange microcosm that you don't see replicated in almost any other space. And at the same time, having lived there for 14 years, having rented very many things. The very personal element of like, you don't get access to the magic that is New York City. Unless you deal with New York City Real Estate, it is, it is trial, by fire, it is hazing. It is preposterous that you can touch both walls of your bedroom at the same time and still pay $1,400 a month. But it is it is the cost of admission to the magic of that city. And I am still working on why I find it. So also the stories in the New York Times real estate section are obscene in their tone deafness. I think that's part of it.

Zack Arnold: So having that obsession or that passion, and I'm using this to workshop for my other students actually fun workshopping this with you. Because just like me, you don't have all the answers. You're still figuring out your Venn diagram. It's very complex. What do you think it is about just that obsession and that interest, the things that you learn or the skills that you're developing? How is that being a part of your life making you better at other parts of your life?

Christina Wallace: Oh, man, I mean, it certainly has helped me more with media training than any media trainer ever could on what not to say to the New York Times reporter. What photo not to stand for? What, what quote, not to get? No, I think it's I think it certainly has fueled a good part of the work that I even did in the first chapter of this book of lining up the like, the disconnect between what, what people want to make of their lives, and then the barriers that are being erected to going after it. Right, you can't just pick up and I mean, I moved to New York City with 600 bucks, five suitcases and a cello, no jobs, no relationships, nothing. And I had about two weeks to like, figure out how I was going to make enough money to stick around or I had to move home to Michigan. And I pulled it off, I found an illegal sublet on Craigslist and like made it work. But it's I think it's it's such an interesting dataset of looking at what we expect people to be able to afford and want and aspire to, and what reality actually is for the majority of people living in New York.

Zack Arnold: So if I were to break this down, you correct me if I'm wrong, I think that there's two incredibly valuable things that you get from this quote unquote, random obsession with New York real estate, one of which is that as an author, that's very much entrenched in this conversation, you have a much clearer understanding of the disparity of income with the way that the economy is now organizing itself today, and empathy with those that are on the lower side of it versus the higher side of it, which is going to make you a better author and a better speaker. But as you also alluded to, and I know you kind of laughed it off, but I think it's really important. You've learned how to manage tone for the right audience by watching exactly what you should not be doing. And that's a valuable transferable skill from a random interest.

Christina Wallace: It absolutely is well done. Thank you. I'll go back and write that down for my transcript.

Zack Arnold: Nice. All right. So I contributed one, post it to this giant mosaic that you have. So here's the here's the one last thing that I really want to point out that I think is important about all this. And what I would see as potentially the darker side, or the scarier side of making this approach is that you're very much like me, you're very much ambitious type a driven mode, we're going to build our network, we're going to organize our finances, we're going to do XY and Z, and we're going to build this portfolio life. But for a lot of people, this is scarier shit. And there's the fear of failure. There's this idea that I'm an imposter, who am I to think that I can even do this, right? What what, especially if I'm older, how is it that I can develop the confidence to think that I can even make this transition and diversify and generalize? So let's talk a little bit about the darker side of building the portfolio life and all the realities that come with it?

Christina Wallace: Yeah, it's such an interesting question because you know, I start this when I say this to literally anyone I work with, you already have a portfolio I'm just helping you make it visible. And then you can decide if it lines up with what you want. And then we can make adjustments to your portfolio, right. So it's no one comes into this, as a one dimensional person, everyone has a Venn diagram, everyone has a portfolio, all I'm asking you to do to start is to make it explicit, to put it on paper, to take a look at it. And to even take that moment and recognize, pat yourself on the back for the experiences that you've built, the character that you've developed the, the interests that you have run down dark alleys to pursue, like, put that all on paper and realize what a rich life you will have already had. Right? There's some amount of like, really sitting in that and embracing that story, rather than the one. It's like, oh, well, I'm X years old, and this is all I've done. That's not all you've done. It's literally not all you've done. So it's a lot of the starts with the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And if you tell yourself, I am too old, I am too specialized I am to ADHD I am too. You know, shy, I can't do this, well, then you can't do this, you just told yourself you couldn't. But if you start with like, Hey, this is a new way of thinking, I haven't done it before, it's gonna be a little awkward. But let's figure it out. Right? It's you've given yourself permission to try and I have an entire chapter of failure in the book, because that's a big part of this model. Failure is not a a moral, you know, stamp on your forehead. Failure is not even, it doesn't have to be some huge thing I write about how my very first company flat out failed, that's a version of huge failure. Failure can come aways in many smaller ways as well. But I really describe failures, just when the thing that happened is different from the thing you wanted to happen. You ask someone out, they said, No, you wanted to build a company, it didn't work. You thought you were interested in changing careers to this direction, you got that job turns out, you hate it. Great. You now have new information, you have new information. And now you can act on that information. Failure is just a part of the process. And particularly in a world where that is changing this fast. That is asking this much of us, when you are building an emergent strategy rather than a deliberate one, you have no choice but to take some chances. And some of those chances will fail. And that's okay. So really reframing failure, away from I should have known better I can't believe I did that that makes the no none of those things are true. This is I thought this would happen. Turns out it didn't. I now have new information. Let's work with it. I argue the only way that failure really is a disaster. Two ways. One is if you hurt other people in the process, and two is if you learn this new information of what not to do. And then you don't do anything with that information. You keep running down, the thing that you already know is not working like that. That is how you truly fail in life, you go down, you make this job change, you hate it, and then you stay for 20 years, disaster. So be comfortable with failure, and put yourself in a position to say, this is new for everybody. And I am shifting that mindset to it's okay to be uncomfortable. I don't know everything. I'm uncomfortable all the time. I'm uncomfortable all the time. And that is part of the mindset shift. You know, I even talked in the book about how I took up. I took up long distance running after my big failure because I've never failed at anything like literally ever. And it felt so foreign to me. And I realized that I had avoided trying some things earlier in my life for fear of failure. The failing was in opposition to my internal narrative. I'm someone who succeeds, and therefore I can't fail. And I realized that you know, if I am someone who avoids things because of the fear of failure, like that's going to really suck. It was a big part of why wasn't going so well in my dating life either up to that point. And so I decided I was going to practice being bad at something which my editor pointed out. She's like, that's not the same as failing. I was like it is to a type A overachiever who doesn't, who doesn't fail. So

Zack Arnold: Recovering perfectionist, I can attest to that.

Christina Wallace: So I took up half marathons and ended up doing a couple of full marathons and I am a terrible runner. I run a like a six hour marathon almost, I'm so slow, but it doesn't matter because the point is I show up and I keep going and I put one foot in front of the other from the start line to the finish line. And then it turns out I did the thing, even though I was really bad at it. And part of that allows me to show up and beat added something and still try. That alone was worth its weight in failure to learn in my 20s, rather than waiting until my 40s, or 50s or 60s to get that that shift.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I had a very similar experience where one of the hardest pills I've ever had to swallow was realizing that with all the accolades, all the achievements, all the skills I had developed, I had learned the skill of managing failure. And boy did that one hit hard. And once I started to learn it, I realized that the reason that I've been able to excel at just about anything that I choose, and whenever somebody says like, What's the secret to succeeding in Ninja versus editing your this or that I said, there's nothing unique or different about me, except my willingness to fail faster than you is why I get where I get because I fail as fast as humanly possible. And my team even created a framed picture of one of the photos that they took me on the ninja course with a quote that I didn't even know I said, which is failure is just feedback. And I was like I said that that's a good quote. I like that, you know, and I've got that hanging up to remind me of that. And I agree with your assessment of when it's only true failure. And there's one more than I want to add to this. And you kind of sort of said it. But to put it in a nice, neat little sussing package. It's really only failure. Also, if you just choose to give up and not move forward. Yes, right. Because if it's out of fear, like, Oh, I couldn't do it, or you listen to those limiting beliefs and those voices, even when you know, if you were to overcome the fear that you wouldn't fail anymore, that to me, when you decide I'm just gonna give up for whatever reason is failure. But there's, there's one other thing that I want to talk about, especially given what's going on right now in the industry and in the economy at large. All of this sounds great. I'm going to build this portfolio life and I'm going to diversify myself and become a generalist. And I'll see if I can eventually understand jack of all trades, master of one seems weird to me, but you know, maybe someday I'll get it. But here's the problem. I have a family to support. I don't have the room to be messing around with my portfolio and diversifying and building side hustles. What do we do about that?

Christina Wallace: Yeah. So you don't have the room not to is is the bigger thing right then. And I think the the, in the bigger picture in the tech world and the bigger corporate world for the last few years has been a little bit of whiplash, going from all the layoffs, it's being of COVID to we can't hire fast enough 18 months in to then length people off. I mean, like this was this was an entire, you know, growth cycle that normally would take a decade. And we did it in about two years. And it was the first time I think many, many people realize like, oh, I cannot put my family's stability in someone else's hands, no amount of loyalty to a company is going to be rewarded. In return. No amount of success or growth in a world is going to be enough if that entire world has to go on strike to be given respect and the wages that they deserve. So there's there's too much going on where an entire industry Broadway saw this during COVID, the whole thing just shut down for 18 months. So that level of volatility and disruption is, is going to continue. So you can not afford to at least take a look around I'm not saying just you know, throw everything up in the air like spaghetti and see what sticks. But you have to have you have to find that space that that intellectual space to look around and say, how might what I am doing be put at risk? And how can I diversify that risk? So if everything you do is in one industry? How might I put my skills to work in a different industry? Right now, if your industry isn't paying anything, go out and see who else wants your skills and develop some relationships, build that network, edit speakers, reels for professional speakers right in in the corporate world, like start to really think about where might this translate, maybe it's the same skill set, but in a different industry. It's the same way of working, but in a different network. That's one way to diversify. Literally just diversify your customer base. You can also think about what are the other skills that I might bring to the table that I'm not just doing X all day long. And you can diversify from a functional standpoint. And then the last is just really be thinking about your whole portfolio. If you've got a family to support Great, that's a big part of what goes in your portfolio. What are the pieces that you want to make sure you have for them? Are you showing up for school things? Are you able to put in volunteer work coaching Little League being part of the library benefit committee, whatever those things are? Or have you not had the space for that up to this point. And if you want to carve out the space for those things, what must be true of the things that room mean in your portfolio? Are you at a point where you say I have to be paid X dollars per project or per hour or whatnot for my professional peace to float, because I am not willing to give my work 80 hours a week, my family deserves more of me. And so now I am going to go out and actively look for professional things that meet my bar, so that I have the other pieces that I demand. And, again, it's the stories we tell ourselves. If you say nothing exists in this world for more, well, then you're not gonna find it.

Zack Arnold: Well, now we're gonna have to talk for another 90 minutes, at least about setting boundaries, because you've just opened up a giant can of worms. That to me is one of the absolute foundations of building a portrait portfolio life is you have to set boundaries and learn how to say no to the wrong things. But speaking of boundaries, I have to be respectful of your time. So even though I'm about 10% of the way through my notes, we're going to at least wrap it up for today. And first of all, if there's anything else that's absolutely vital to share that we haven't, I'd like you to share that. But otherwise, I want to know where people can find you and find your work to make sure that they can also learn how to build their portfolio life.

Christina Wallace: Well, my book is anywhere you buy books. So that's the easy part. You can follow me on LinkedIn or at christinawallace.com, that contact goes straight to my email. And I answer all of them as you know. And honestly, the biggest thing that I want everyone to know is having having a financial cushion becomes your ability to enforce those boundaries, the ability to walk away, we call it your BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. When you are back against the wall without that financial cushion, you have to say yes to things that you don't want. So finding and building a way which is why I love that you are working with with artists in this way is that is what gives you the flexibility, the diversification to make the choices you want to make and not the ones who feel like you have to make

Zack Arnold: well once again to emphasize what an absolute pleasure this was. I appreciate you responding to my cold email message and allowing me into your network. I can guarantee that my students are going to be hearing this conversation literally for years to come. This is the foundation of everything that I'm doing and I'm so excited that we finally got this in the can so thank you so much, Christina, I very much appreciate it.

Christina Wallace: Thank you for having me. It was delightful to be here.

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