by Jenny Blake
Before my longer trip to Bali and Thailand in 2013, I conducted my own travel pilot by taking one month off from my business to travel to both countries in 2012. Buying the ticket for that trip was the most intimidating step. Once that was done, the rest fell into place, even how I would work with my coaching clients while on the road. I enjoyed my two-day stay in Ubud, Bali, so much that I returned to that exact spot the following year for a full month, then again two years later for another month to work on this book. Each trip gave me more courage for the next. Contrary to some of my biggest fears approaching each one, business and productivity actually improved—in fact, significantly so.
Travel pilots are different from vacations in that they stretch you out of your comfort zone. The stretch zone might be how long you travel, where you go, or your intentions for the trip. Perhaps there is a class you want to take abroad, or an industry you want to explore further as a potential next career move or location.
Travel pilots allow you to experiment with long-term or long-distance travel without committing to a giant leap, such as moving to a foreign country outright, though sometimes that can be just the shocking cold-water plunge your system needs.
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The Pilot stage is about action—putting your ideas into practice to gather data and make informed decisions about what to pursue. But for some people, opportunities always seem to find them. What are they doing differently?
Consider the adage “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” A Pivot mindset is “A bird in the hand, with a second one camped at the bird feeder I built, is worth a flock in the bush.” How can you build your own bird feeder? Which of your pilots, if you invested in it further, is most likely to bring opportunities to you?
CHAPTER 9: PAUSE, REVIEW, REPEAT
What Worked? What Didn’t? What Could You Do Differently?
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
—Alice Walker
SLEEK AND QUIRKY VINTAGE CARS THAT WOULD MAKE ANY COLLECTOR DROOL. Coffee close-ups so intricately shot that you can practically smell the espresso grounds and taste foam on your lips. Comedians conversing casually in diners, candidly discussing fame, humor, family, neurosis, and hard work.
Jerry Seinfeld pivoted from stand-up and Seinfeld to producing a web series called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee—and the show is as addictive as his caffeine costar. Sure, it is fun to see two celebrities in their natural habitat, shooting the breeze for twenty minutes. But more contagious is how this show represents the total embodiment of a person’s unique talents. Seinfeld found a way to follow his interests—his love of cars, comedy, coffee, and diners—while innovating within the TV industry and creating a viable business model around his experiment. The result is a joy to watch.
Comedians in Cars is not a 180-degree turn from his sitcom, but rather more of a 90-degree shift. Seinfeld episodes often depicted friends meeting in restaurants discussing day-to-day pet peeves in what was described as “a show about nothing.” Comedians in Cars follows similar lines, in that Seinfeld’s predilections combine to form what he describes as “an anti-show about a nonevent.” In one memorable episode President Barack Obama jokes, “I always wanted to be in a show about nothing and here I am.” Seinfeld replies, “There is nothing—nothing more nothing than this.”
In a Fast Company interview on what inspired him to experiment with a web series instead of a traditional TV show, Seinfeld said, “It just seems like the Internet is screaming at artists to be creative. It’s like an art-supply store: You walk in, and there’s paper and cameras and paint and pencils. It’s like someone throwing down the gauntlet.”
Seinfeld piloted the Comedians web series with the first season, then refined the style and production value over time as he gained audience traction and paid sponsorship. At the time of this writing, Comedians had wrapped its seventh season.
Seinfeld made a point to ensure that his pilots led quickly to viable income. Though he probably does not need the money, in evaluating this next career move he said it was important to generate enough profit to make the show worthwhile for him and his guests. In an interview with David Letterman, he said, “I wanted it to work as a business. To create a [web TV] show that made money hasn’t really been done. That was part of the puzzle I wanted to solve.”
Just like the TV pilot, a career pilot is an experiment that is meant to be evaluated, and quickly. Drop your attachment to the outcome and stay curious: What can I learn here? How might this inform my next move? How can I expand my original vision?
Once you have completed a pilot, or even several concurrently, the next step is to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. What would you do differently? What has potential for greater opportunity? After that, you will identify another round of experiments and repeat the Pilot process.
Piloting is not a one-and-done proposition. It is likely that you will run several pilots until you figure out what sticks. What smaller bets might you want to expand upon? Each time you go through this process, you will learn about yourself and refine ideas about who you want to work with and what you want to work on.
PAUSE AND REVIEW
After conducting a pilot, ask yourself these key questions, the three E’s:
Enjoyment: Do I like doing it? Is it engaging? Am I excited to return to it?
Expertise: Am I good at it? If not, can I increase my skills in this area? Am I excited to do so? Is this a natural extension of my strengths?
Expansion: Is there more opportunity to expand in this market? Can I earn a living doing this?
Piloting removes the pressure of having to find the perfect next move, and instead fuels creativity and dynamic in-the-moment planning. Piloting should be fun. If it isn’t, you may be overshooting; break your experiments down into smaller steps that move them from your panic zone to your stretch zone. If you are not excited about piloting something, ditch it or revise it and move on.
Thomas Frank pivoted from blogging about tips for college graduates to becoming a video production expert on YouTube through purposeful pilots. He ran small experiments, evaluating them at every step, as he built his reputation and expanded his platform:
The first video was an experiment to expand his blog. Thomas settled for bad lighting (resorting to desk lamps after building a custom light that almost caught fire), filmed without a script, and posted with very little editing.
Next he tried mixing academic topics with video games. In one video, “Is College Worth It? Use the Tony Hawk Method,” Thomas included skateboarding moves from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater as a metaphor for the viewer to decide if and when to apply to college. Thomas believes these early efforts at “combining geek references with academic content” helped him stand out by creating a unique video signature.
Another pilot was creating an entertaining six-minute summary video of a popular one-hour lecture on YouTube. That video has become the third most popular on his channel, with over a hundred thousand views, which indicated that Thomas should create more like it.
While building his YouTube following, Thomas pursued parallel opportunities to develop his platform across diverse media, including podcasting and writing a book for college students called 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades. The book turned out to be a major catalyst that spiked his e-mail list from 2,000 to 27,000 people and brought in a handful of speaking inquiries.
During this time, Thomas also pitched himself as the new cohost for a podcast called Listen Money Matters, another pilot. In one episode, he talked about his goal of retiring by forty. A writer for U.S. News & World Report heard the episode and interviewed him, leading to an appearance on national TV at the Fox Business studio in Manhattan, a peak career moment.
Thomas has become a pro at piloting by improving bit by bit, building key relationships, and creating redundancy by testing new ideas simultaneously within his platform. In
evaluating the three E’s, it was clear that he enjoyed creating videos and podcasts, he was able to learn quickly and increase his production skills, and the market was responding favorably—demonstrated by reader e-mails, outside inquiries, and a steadily growing base that soon surpassed a hundred thousand subscribers.
TAKE INCREMENTALLY BIGGER RISKS
Even while following the Pivot Method at a high level, you can return to the first two stages as a way to evaluate a particular pilot:
Plant: What worked well that you can repeat?
Scan: What additional information might you need? Is there anyone else who would be helpful to connect with?
Pilot: What might be a variation on the initial test that you can try next?
After gathering data, you will be more prepared to take greater risks, even if you are still intimidated by the scope of the opportunity. You will soon reach a point at which the clearest next step requires a bigger launch, covered in the final Pivot stage.
As she pivoted from accounting to IT within her company, Casey Pennington was also piloting with a side hustle. She ran a small experiment by interning for an entrepreneur as his virtual assistant, working on his tasks during nights and weekends. Although she enjoyed the work, she gained important insight leading her to correct course.
“I thought I wanted to work full time for one entrepreneur as his behind-the-scenes operations support,” she said. “But after networking and speaking with other entrepreneurs and interning for a while, I realized that small businesses are so unpredictable and change focus so often that I didn’t feel like I could rely on one employer for job security.”
Casey’s pilot clarified her long-term vision and desire to work for herself. “I realized that becoming a systems expert and consulting with many businesses would be more secure,” she said. “I could rely on multiple sources of income, and this approach would be a better fit with my love of learning and my love of new challenges.”
Next she returned to scanning by signing up for an online business course, and started talking to entrepreneurs to learn about their biggest challenges.
Casey’s subsequent pilots were to add additional clients instead of taking direction from only one. This moved her closer to her goal of running her own full-time consulting practice. In doing so, she further refined her systems and reduced risk by learning more about what working with several clients is really like.
When Casey decided to make the leap to full-time self-employment the following year, she knew that uncertainty would still lie ahead, but that she had increased her expertise and risk tolerance by piloting and making adjustments along the way.
30-Day Decision Tracker
Spin, spin, spin. Second-guess, scrutinize, analyze, journal, ponder, meditate, marinate. WHERE IS THE ANSWER AND WHY ISN’T IT HERE YET?!
Whenever I find myself trying to overintellectualize something I am stuck on, talking through the same issues with friends in an endless loop, or otherwise evaluating a next move without making any progress toward clarity, I know it is time to step back. The mental spinning is merely a chew toy for my mind, one that keeps me busy, but offers no nutrition.
At this point, there are two courses of action to take—or a combination of both:
Get quiet: Relax, meditate, tune in to your intuition. If there is no clarity, sit with the discomfort and have faith that the right next action will arise. Surrender to the uncertainty. Trust that things will work out, and look for learning in the meantime.
Get curious: See the situation like a scientist. Look for experiments to run. Gather more data. Ask different, more refined questions. Observe your thoughts over a period of time.
If you are having trouble evaluating a pilot or a decision, and that confusion is preventing you from moving forward, try tracking that focus area for thirty days.
Rate how you feel about the pilot or decision every day on a scale of 1 to 5. At the same time, write down short, daily notes to add a qualitative observation component to the tracking exercise. Oftentimes just the increased awareness from being an observer during this time inspires new, small actions within each day.
At the end of the observation period, review the data. What trends emerge?
As my friend Jenny Ferry says, “Stay curious. Situations are either resolving or dissolving.” The same can be said for anything you feel stuck on. Stay curious and open to the direction the situation is taking, rather than forcing a solution or weighing it down with expectations. In doing so, you can objectively observe whether it is resolving or dissolving, and what next steps to take as a result.
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Piloting should not happen in a vacuum. The evaluation step is a critical one for getting feedback, reviewing your observations, and asking for input from others. That way, when you do launch, it will not be blindly. Every pilot is an opportunity, a small test to determine if you actually enjoy the doing of what might be required for your one-year vision. Pilots expand your knowledge and skills, and help you close the gap between where you are now and where you want to go.
The simplest way to evaluate a pilot is to revisit the hotter/colder game: Was it hot and on the right track, lukewarm and not quite right, or cold and a misguided flop? Did the pilot energize you, yield positive results, and encourage you to keep going in that direction? Or did it cause frustration and difficulty as you hit one roadblock after another, not yielding the return on investment you desired?
If your evaluation indicator is warm, what next pilot could you run, this time with slightly higher stakes or wider reach? If your evaluation indicator is cold, or not yet achieving the results you seek in terms of enjoyment and impact, return to the Plant stage to see how you can hook back into your strengths or vision. You may also need to spend more time scanning by asking others for feedback, finding accountability buddies, and learning new skills.
You can be quite content in the Pilot stage for months (if not years), so long as the experiments are aligned with your broader career vision. However, some pilots are so positively charged that they become massive magnets drawing you closer, leaving you powerless to resist.
You will know when you have stumbled onto something promising. But how do you know when to promote a pilot from your farm team to the big leagues? When is it time to go all in?
Pilot: Online Resources
Visit PivotMethod.com/pilot for additional tools, templates, and book recommendations for this stage.
STAGE FOUR
LAUNCH
All In
PLANT
SCAN
PILOT
LAUNCH
LEAD
LAUNCH OVERVIEW
WHILE PILOTING INVOLVES A SERIES OF CONTINUAL, SMALL EXPERIMENTS THAT provide information about your next move, the Launch stage is when you make the big decision that completes your pivot. These decisions do not have a guaranteed successful outcome, though you will have reduced risk throughout the Pilot stage.
How do you evaluate these final steps to avoid launching too soon or too late? Remember: if you wait too long to pivot, change will choose you. How can you make smart career decisions in the face of remaining uncertainty and fear? What if you make the wrong choice and things do not go as planned? In this stage you will address remaining uncertainties and determine when to launch and what benchmarks to hit so you can transition with confidence.
Tricia Krohn landed her dream job in the financial industry, only to find that it was not what she had expected. She was a self-described “corporate ladder climber” throughout her twenties and thirties. Eventually she reached her optimal position, which she describes as “the job, the position, the ranking I craved.” She soon realized how unhappy she was, even though she had reached her highest career aspiration. Tricia couldn’t picture staying there until retirement.
By working through her own version of the Pivot stages, Tricia felt
increasingly free to make a change, and became clear on her decision: return to school to become an English teacher, while bridging her income by working as a restaurant server and substitute teacher.
As it turns out, she could not have planned her exit from banking more perfectly. The market tanked two weeks later. She had pulled her 401(k) out within days of losing half its value. Tricia said the most challenging part of her launch was making the decision. “My life has been a dream since quitting,” she says. “I still have ups and downs but I am not unhappy with life, I always have something to look forward to.”
This is a sentiment I hear often from impacters. Even with bumps on the new road, the majority never look back or regret their Launch decision. But how can you be so sure?
CHAPTER 10: BUILD FIRST, COURAGE SECOND
When Will You Make the Big Move? What Are Your Linchpin Decision Criteria?
I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditional realization of the self.
—J. Krishnamurti, Total Freedom
WHETHER MOVING TEAMS WITHIN A COMPANY, CHANGING COMPANIES, STARTING A BUSINESS, or shifting or shuttering one, launches involve a healthy dose of faith, smart risks, and adrenaline. Ultimately, you will know it is time to launch when you are ready to risk failure—knowing that you had the courage to go for it—for the possibility of success, challenge, and personal growth. Or, as Joseph Campbell put it, for “the rapture of being alive.”
