Ep.51 / Entrepreneur Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Jason Feifer on How to Build a Career for Tomorrow

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Jason Feifer has interviewed the smartest most successful people on earth (and is pretty amazing himself) as the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. Jason offers tips on how to ‘Build for Tomorrow’ to create a career that helps you embrace change and act fast, incorporating lessons from the world’s most successful changemakers from his best-selling book. Jason will teach you how to “work your next job,” how to create the world’s greatest ‘pros and cons’ list to help you make decisions, the lesson he learned from getting a scathing letter from his boss in his ‘20s and the best advice he got from Ryan Reynolds.

Plus Rebekah Shoaf, an educational consultant and author on her book Beating Teacher Burnout.

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In this episode you will learn:

How there are two sets of opportunities in front of you
That there is no point in building something if you can’t maintain it
Why you have to work with the resources available to you
You can’t wait for someone to come to you, you have to take action to be noticed

Show Takeaways:

Are you ready to proactively seek out new challenges and opportunities for growth that align with your career path?

Plus Rebekah Shoaf, an educational consultant on her book Fighting Teacher Burnout.

“Don't compare what you are doing against what you would be doing if you had doubled the money or doubled the team or doubled the whatever because you don't, what you have is the resources available.”
“Don't sit around waiting for people to come to you.”
“Compare the risk of action to the risk of inaction.”
“What we always want to be evaluating for is what better problem can we create for ourselves? We're not going to create a perfect solution. So what is the better problem that we can create for ourselves?”

SHOW LINKS:

Follow host Kim Rittberg on Instagram!

FREE DOWNLOAD: Improve Your Video Quality to Increase Your Revenue - 10 Tips to Take Your Videos from Mediocre to Magnetic Click here!

How To Be A Happier, Less Stressed & More Successful Parent: Click here!

EPISODE LINKS:

Jason Feifer’s book Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career

Jason Feifer’s newsletter OneThingBetter

Beating Teacher Burnout by Rebekah Shoaf and Meredith Matson

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Kim Rittberg (00:02):

The editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, Jason Feifer is here. He's teaching you how to future proof your career. Lots of amazing tips and insights, advice Ryan Reynolds gave him. And a story about a scathing letter he got from a boss in his twenties.

(00:18):

This is mom's exit interview, the show for moms who want to craft the career and life they want. Each episode, you'll meet inspirational moms across various industries and levels who are working and living life on their own terms, and they'll bring you actionable tips from finance to business development to happiness, to crushing that imposter syndrome. I'm Kim rit. I was a burnt out media executive at Netflix, US Weekly and in TV news. I wanted a career where I was fulfilled at work but present at home with my kids. So I started working for myself and I love it, but not every day was easy or is easy. I wanted to explore with all of you how other moms were creating careers on their own terms. They're carving out flex jobs, starting their own businesses. They're taking back control. Join me and make work, work for you instead of the other way around.

(01:22):

Humility doesn't pay the bills. That was my message at a speaking event in Arizona. I was teaching business owners how to pitch themselves in 30 seconds. First off, I want to say how inspired I was by all the people doing amazing things. It's not easy to figure out your path to build something and to do it tirelessly all while raising children. But I was there to remind them that we all have to brag. People don't know us. Yes, we all hate bragging. If pitching yourself feels awkward, you know what's worse than being awkward being broke. I learned this lesson the hard way when I was a kid. My mom would stand next to me and she would introduce me to people in high school. Have you met my daughter Kim? She's president of student government and she's about to go to an Ivy League school.

(02:07):

And obviously I was really embarrassed. I would turn red and look at my shoes. But now that I'm older I realize, oh my God, I wish I had a pro bono publicist standing right next to me bragging about me all the time. I realize in a work situation when I was leading a 17 person team, the video unit at US Weekly, I met with a vendor. It was the person working on the technology of our system and I had written a two page memo feedback for them on what I think they could improve. Not that they were in beta, but anyway, ways to improve that. They welcomed the feedback in the meeting, he looks at me and says, and what is your relationship to this video unit? To me, it was so obvious. I obviously was knowledgeable at the information I had typed up the whole document, did he think I was the secretary?

(02:49):

And I was so insulted and I glared at him and I said, I'm the boss. And it just reminded me that people don't know who we are. Often we're underestimated or not even underestimated. People just don't know us. So my lesson to you is humility doesn't pay the bills. Start bragging. And if you want to reframe it as bragging, you can just say, start letting people know all the awesome things that you're doing because you are doing awesome things. And no matter how grand amazing, or even relatively not as amazing accomplishments you have, we all have accomplishments. And putting that forth in the world and not saying it with embarrassment and awkwardness is really, really important. It's the next step to telling people like, I deserve to be in this room. I've done cool things. Let me help you do cool things. And that's how we grow as people and that's how we grow our businesses.

(03:39):

So I wanted to share that with you. I met so many amazing women that sent me messages about how much they loved my lessons and they were like, I can't wait to send you my pitch and learn so much from you. Everyone wrote Getting Ins I I'm inspired by you, the round people. It was so great and I just felt so inspired by everyone who gave me such positive feedback, but I can't wait to see them growing their careers with this and putting it into practice. So there's a little behind the scenes of what I've been doing traveling and speaking across the country. And now back to our show. I'm really excited for you to hear from Jason Feifer. He's the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine and a father of two. He wrote a fabulous book called Build for Tomorrow, an action plan for embracing Change, adapting Fast and Future Proofing your career.

(04:23):

He's also a podcast host, a book author, keynote speaker, startup advisor and nonstop optimism machine. That really speaks to me because if you can't tell, I'm definitely an optimist. Jason's goal is to help you become more resilient and adaptable in a world of constant change so you can seize new opportunities before anyone else does. Why I am so excited to have him on Jason's talk to some of the world's smartest and most successful people. He himself is very smart and very successful, but really there's change happening all around us. There is large scale change happening, AI and all of this new tech, and then there's also cultural change. I think we're all trying to make sense of work-life balance, how do we balance it all? Figuring out what we can do, what the corporate world can do, and in general, in our careers and in our lives, a lot of us fear change, whether we think about it consciously or not, many of us do.

(05:14):

And adjusting our mindset around change. Not just to not be afraid of it, but to embrace it and how to embrace it. How we handle change both with our mindset and our actions that has everything to do with how our life looks and how our careers look. This conversation got me thinking a lot about myself and change in my life and how I've handled it. And what I also really like is there's tactical advice. How do you make better decisions when you're deciding A versus B and how to decide whether to act, how to weigh those things. So that's why I was really excited to have Jason on. Plus he has a great tip from Ryan Reynolds and a cringey but totally hilarious mean letter that he got from a boss early in his career. Jason, I'm so excited to have you here and I would love to talk about your book Build for Tomorrow, an action plan for embracing change, adapting fast and future-proofing your career.

Jason Feifer (06:08):

I'm excited to do that. Thanks for having me.

Kim Rittberg (06:10):

But when I saw the title, I was like, mom's exit interview listeners are going to love this. I particularly love in the book how it's about how to think differently and how to not fear change. We're obviously there's always been change. Right now we're seeing all the AI and in general with Covid. I think there's a lot of things happening and obviously I talk to a lot of parents or business owners, there's a lot of things happening in their life on top of that, talk to me about work your next job because everybody needs to work your next job.

Jason Feifer (06:36):

So work your next job is by the way, just hot tip if for communicators, which is that if you give your ideas catchy names, they feel like units of ideas and you can move them around and you can build upon them. And so it's the reason I do that. And so work your next job is this. Look in front of you, in front of me, in front of everybody listening right now, there are two sets of opportunities. Opportunities set a, opportunities set B if you can believe it. And opportunity set A is everything that is asked of you. So if you work at a job and you have a boss, that boss has expectations, things that you're supposed to do, ways in which you will be evaluated, do a good job at those, that's opportunity set A. Then there is opportunity set B, opportunity set B is everything that is available to you that nobody is asking you to do.

(07:26):

And that could be at work where you join a new team, take on new responsibilities, but it could also be outside of work where let's say you like podcasts because you listen to this one and you decide maybe I should launch my own podcast. Whatever it is, I am here to tell you that I believe and I have found through my own experience and in studying how other people work as well, that opportunity set B, doing the thing that is available to you that nobody's asking you to do. Always more important, infinitely more important. And the reason for this is because if you only focus on opportunity set A, if you only focus on the things that are asked of you, then you will only be qualified to do the things that you're already doing. And this is not to say opportunity set A is unimportant, it is not.

(08:09):

It's important. You got to do a good job or you'll get fired and you won't have income. But opportunity set B is where growth happens. That is where you train yourself to develop the skills that you're going to use next, even if you don't know how you're going to use them. But just say B in the mindset that the thing that you're doing today cannot by its very nature, be the thing that you're definitely doing tomorrow starts to get you thinking about how you can use today too. And here, I'll just work the title of my book in to build for tomorrow because that's ultimately the thing that you can do. If you can use today to build towards tomorrow, then you're really setting yourself up for future success.

Kim Rittberg (08:46):

And I, here's a question related to that. Cause I feel like a lot of people say, Ugh, somebody wants me to join this group and I'm burnt out. So how do you balance opportunity, set the stuff you need to do to get that raised with opportunity, set B, other stuff that will serve you for sure in two years, five years, 10 years, whatever. How do you balance doing both of those without burning out?

Jason Feifer (09:06):

So it's a very important question. A friend of mine said this to me once, and I've been repeating it for a long time ever since. Her name is Katherine Morgan Scheffler. She wrote a book called The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control. And she said, what's the point of building something if you can't maintain it? And I, that's an incredibly valuable way to think what's the point of building something if you can't maintain it? And what we should not be doing is piling things needlessly onto ourselves with no idea of how they build and where they go. But I also believe, and this is going to sound like it's in contrast to what I just said, but it's not is that time is like a balloon. Here's what I mean. You know how you get air into a balloon? I'll tell you what you don't do. You don't expand the balloon and then fit air into it.

(09:57):

You don't make room for the air in the balloon. Think about how we think about time. We often say, oh, I would do that if only I had the time. But guess what, you will literally never have the time. You just won't because time doesn't work that way. You don't suddenly have three hours to fill just in the same way that you don't have a balloon that's stretched to fit the air in and doesn't work like that. A balloon expands under pressure because you blow air into it. Time expands under pressure because you add more things. And when you add more things, what you should be doing is forcing yourself to then reconsider all the other things that you do. So if I'm going to add something to my slate, then I need to step back and say, okay, what am I dropping or what can I do more efficiently?

(10:42):

Or how can I rethink the way that this is made? Or I've been doing this kind of work, but actually when I think about it, if I did it in this totally different way, or what does my boss actually care about? Only one of the four things that I do every day. Maybe there's a way to actually reclaim some time of mine by understanding what somebody else needs so I can fulfill that so that I can claim time that I need. I add so much to my day when the editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, I have this book that I spent a long time writing and now still promote in this conversation with you. I travel for speaking a lot. I do some startup advising. I have two podcasts, one of which is part of a company that I'm helping to build. That's just the start.

(11:29):

And I got two kids and it's like, so there's a lot. How the hell do I do all that? Because every time I add something, I start to think what needs to change in order to bring this in? Maybe sometimes it's money, I'd like to hang onto all my money, but actually now I spend some of it on someone who helps me with some of these things. And this is the way in which you start to build something intentionally that you can maintain because it doesn't any sense to just keep adding things without figuring out how they fit into a larger idea.

Kim Rittberg (11:59):

I really like that advice because I took another piece of advice from another part of your book about, yeah, I was thinking about the giving yourself advice because I am paid to give advice. I do consulting, and one, when I advise people they want to build their brand through content, I'm like, learn all these things. That's awesome. Apply only as much as fits into your schedule that is going to be consistent or hire someone to do it for you. But all these things of don't try to post, create video and try to post every single day to three different platforms. If you're by yourself, that makes no sense. When are you doing your job? When are you going to do your job? And so I like that idea of giving yourself the advice. A, you're giving yourself advice to other people, but giving yourself advice for the you that will exist next month or next year.

(12:41):

How would you advise yourself? I just like that because I think that the things that you're saying a lot of people struggle with in terms of delegating and scaling and a yes to one thing is a no to something else. I think I like that that conversation's happening more their conversation around saying no to things. But I like being conscious of opportunities said B, because I feel the same way in my career. Basically, I was a TV writer and producer and that's cool. I'll be a good writer, but at some point I knew I wanted to lead a team and grow something and build a business and a business, which I got to do. I got to do that by pivoting and taking different jobs and doing and adding on different skills, not just the ones that get you the five rating and the whatever percent bump. Yeah. But I think I like how you frame it as I think people are aware of the dress for your next job, but do for your next job already. Live in your next job and that's how you'll find it.

Jason Feifer (13:29):

Oh, actually just before you, I was just going to add one other thing to what you're saying there, which is here, here's a line that I use all the time. It is not a sexy line, but it helps me a lot, which is I will do the best work with the resources available. Don't compare what you are doing against what you would be doing if you had doubled the money or doubled the team or doubled the whatever because you don't, what you have is the resources available. And I think about that a lot. You said social media posts. I used to try to make videos and post 'em on TikTok. You know what comes most naturally to me and the growth is going to be slow. And so you know what I'm going to do? I'm just, I'm mostly going to focus on LinkedIn and I'm going to double down on LinkedIn because I figured that place out more. I think that's where my audience is. And the other places could I do them if I had a whole social media team? Yes. Do I see people who are in line my line of work, who do have that social media team who are doing those things and I'm not, yeah, I see that it annoys the hell out of me, but I'm not going to focus on the things that I don't have the resources for right now. I'm going to do the best work with the resources available and be okay with that.

Kim Rittberg (14:30):

Yeah, I love somebody who worked for me said, I think I asked them for something and they were like, which would you like me to do first this or that other thing? Because basically making it clear that I was asking for too many things at once and I was like, huh, I never stood up to a bus like that. And so it was a really little eye-opening to have an employee stand up to me and we're, we were more peer. I was like, yeah, okay, you're right. Do that one first and then that one tomorrow and the next day whenever it fits in. But I'll always ask for more because I've always been asked for four more from myself by my boss. So I like that idea that when things happen to a balloon, I thought your balloon analogy was going to be like what happens to a balloon? And I was going to say, you hold it up in the air and it flies off and then it kills a pigeon. But that's not the answer.

Jason Feifer (15:14):

Could do that too.

Kim Rittberg (15:14):

Yeah, that was about it. One other thing I wanted to ask you about. You had this story that you posted to social that just cracked me up and it ma made me go searching in my memorabilia. Talk to me about getting fired from a job in your early twenties at a small time newspaper. Oh yeah. Tell me about the story and what you took away from it. I just loved reading that and I was like, I want to ask you about it.

Jason Feifer (15:34):

Oh, well thanks. Yeah. So that was my very first newspaper job. I graduated college and I became a small town newspaper reporter at the Gardner News circulation 6,000, getting paid like 20 grand and about a year and change in, I got this letter from my boss who left it on my desk or something. His name was Stu, and the letter was pretty nasty. It told me that I was a detriment and drag on the newsroom and that I had a week or so to basically shape up or he was going to boot me out the door. Then there was a lot of stuff about how I was supposed to write two stories a day and I wasn't, and he counted and whatever. I remember reading that letter and feeling very embarrassed and then looking around and being like, do people know that I just got this letter?

(16:25):

But I'll tell you what that letter did. What that letter did was it prompted me to quit a job that I did not. I was not happy there and I don't think that I was aware the degree to which it was very clear that I wasn't happy there. Clearly Stu knew it. I mean, Stu was also part of the reason I was unhappy cause he was crappy boss. But that's beside the point. It was my job to make sure that I was in a good situation for me or to create a good situation for me and it wasn't happening at that job. And so I quit. I quit and I sat in my bedroom and I started to cold pitch as a freelancer. That was really the thing that accelerated my career. I later came to realize that a thing that I had done was that I'd gone from a situation where I was bitter because I was sitting around waiting for someone to notice me, to say, oh, that Jason Pfeiffer guy's real good at his job and maybe we should hire him at our much larger paper. The New York Times was going to read some story I did about the middle school dance and be like, we should get that guy not

Kim Rittberg (17:19):

Enough focus on middle school dances in New York City.

Jason Feifer (17:21):

No, not at all. Not, I mean, I'm sure there, we'll find out soon enough because I live in New York City and we have elementary schoolers, but I was not going to get that call. But I was sitting around as if I was going to get that call and as if the people I worked with were somehow holding me back from it and that wasn't true. So what I eventually did because of that letter was that I quit and I started to go to them. Don't sit around waiting for people to come to you. I realized go to them. Which in that case for me was All right, I want to write for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Well, lemme go find them. Lemme go get in front of them. Let me go pitch stories to them and try to prove to them that I can work at that level, which is what I did.

(17:58):

It took a long time. It was not easy, but I figured it out and I don't know that I would have if I just kept sitting around at that paper. So I really loved that I got that nasty note from my boss. I think of it as a real piece of value to me that he pushed me. I mean, he was not doing it because he was a good manager. He was doing it because he was a bad manager. But it had the result of good management, which was to identify that somebody was in a place that they didn't belong and they needed to go figure out what they did belong doing.

Kim Rittberg (18:25):

I love that lesson. I've sort of shifted in the last year or two of my business and I've done more speaking engagements and I've been teaching more and people are like, I feel like you're everywhere. You do it. I'm very methodically. Yes, if you feel like I'm everywhere, that's great. It means I'm succeeding, but I can't sit in my work from home office with beautiful wallpaper and wait for someone to realize Kim Ricker is such an amazing video strategy can really help grow my business. I have to be out there and pushing that narrative and I like to say, humility doesn't pay the bills. I will tell you that I've won awards. I will put the trophies in my frame. Hopefully it's not obnoxious, but also I don't care because no one's going to be like, tap, tap, tap. You look like you might be a great freelancer, staffer, consultant, whatever. You have to be there, be in the mix and check in with yourself. Are you doing what you want to be doing? Are you doing what you're meant to be doing? What lights you up? And Stu can see that you're not. So yes, get out there and go chase that.

Jason Feifer (19:16):

That's

Kim Rittberg (19:16):

Right. And I would love for you, when you talk about Build for Tomorrow, there's one other thing that I struck me because I have started when I'm good about it, doing postmortems after projects and looking at things. Talk to me about systems that you recommend for people to take into actually be doing when things aren't going or how to make sure you're on the right path. I know that some of the things in the book, I had read the copy and paste method and giving yourself advice in the pre-mortem, which I thought were really fresh ideas because I've done a post-mortem and I was always like, oh no, what if we all tell each other we hate each other? And this project went terribly. I think we're all sensitive to feedback, but I like how you're framing it of when you're not sure what you should be doing. Ideas of ways to tap into it.

Jason Feifer (19:55):

Yeah. Yeah. Pre-mortem was an interesting idea. So that wasn't one that I came up with myself. I actually, maybe you have it in front of you. It either came from Warren Hatch from Good Judgment or it came from Katie Milkman of Wharton. They were the two experts in that chapter. So credit to B, well credit to both of them cause they were both great thinkers. The pre-mortem was a really interesting idea, which is essentially, as I remember it was to as you're going to embark upon something, ask yourself if in X amount of time I look back and say this went horribly wrong, what would the reason for that have been? And start to plot out what it is that success and failure could look like. And the way that fits into my brain, to be honest with you, is another thing that I think a lot about which is similar, which is to compare the risk of action to the risk of inaction.

(20:44):

I just got an email today from a woman who had read my newsletter. I have this newsletter, it's called One Thing Better and I subscribe. It's fabulous. Oh, thank you so much. Well, if you would like to be like him, then the one thing better.email is a thing that you can plug into your browser. One thing better.email and it'll take you there Anyway, it's a H week one thing. And so this week's was about how to feel okay, quitting something without feeling like you have to start over, which I think is the thing that holds a lot of people back. I got this email from this woman who was telling me about how she's in this unhappy marriage. It's been years, it's awful. They live together, they've gone to therapy many times, nothing works, but she's stayed because she's afraid of what to do next and they're staying together for the kids.

(21:31):

But also the kids are clearly aware that the parents are miserable and anyway, she just doesn't know what to do. And what I wrote her back was like, look, I'm not a marriage counselor or a therapist, so take this all with a grain of assault. But what I would do is I would think about what's the risk of inaction versus the risk of what's the risk of action versus the risk of inaction? Because clearly you are thinking a lot about the risk of action, but you're not spending any time thinking about the risk of inaction and the risk of not doing something in this situation seems to actually be pretty great. And if you play out what happens years from now on, both of those, the risk of action, getting a divorce and going through that, that's going to be awful for a while. There's no way to make that an easy process.

(22:09):

But what happens on the other side of it is yours for the making, whereas inaction years from now, same situation if not worse. And I just don't think that people think through it like that. So when I think of a preor in a way, what I think of is asking yourself that question of beyond the thing that I'm immediately thinking about, which is how difficult this is to start or how hard it is to make this decision. What happens when you play it out and you look further into the future? What does it look like and how can you manage what those potential expectations are and are you willing to take those risks, which are the better risks? What we always want to be evaluating for is what better problem can we create for ourselves? We're not going to create a perfect solution. So what is the better problem that we can create for ourselves?

(22:55):

And then start to measure problem against problem, which I think is just a really valuable way to think about it. I'll give you one other thing that I remember either Katie or Warren had told me, which was the idea of the ProCon list was a really interesting one. So obviously everyone's heard of a ProCon list, and I don't know that I've ever made one in my life because it just seemed like a stupid thing to do. But Warren, I think it was told me people understand the ProCon list all wrong. The ProCon list, if you just make it once, is just a snapshot in time of how you're feeling right now. But actually one of the greatest challenges to making a decision is that we can't separate what matters to us from the noise in our own heads. And so we need to find some system by which we can identify what is a consistent thing that matters and what is simply noise, what we feel like today.

(23:44):

And one of the, that he suggests doing that is to make a ProCon list of whatever decision it is that you're trying to make. Then set it aside. Don't look at it a week, two weeks later, whatever, make another one. Set that aside. Don't look at it, do it again a week or two. And after you have three or four ProCon lists, then you look at them and you see which things consistently show up in pro, which things consistently show up in and which things are moving around or making appearance and then disappear. Now you have a better sense of the things that actually matter to you versus the things that are noise. And you can start to make decisions based on what are the better problems of fulfilling at least some of those things.

Kim Rittberg (24:23):

I love that. I also think you could do that for a New Year's resolution list where you start thinking about it weekly from September or monthly from September through December. So you're not just getting how I felt on December 22nd, but you're getting how I feel in Q4 or q3. Alright. I'm conscious of your time because you're very busy in important. So I have two quick questions. We could do it rapid fire or not. Okay. I know you get to meet some of the most successful people on earth, so I'd love the top advice that you've gotten from some of the most successful people that you've interviewed.

Jason Feifer (24:51):

Okay, great. One of my favorite pieces of advice came from Ryan Reynolds. Everyone loves Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds told me that, so we were talking about how he had transitioned from being just an actor to being a real really smart business guy, lots of different businesses, et cetera. Anyway, what he said was, you can't be good at something without willing to be bad and can't be good at something without being willing to be bad. That is a really powerful way of thinking because what he's really saying here is that we often think that doing something new is a test of whether or not we are going to be good at it. So we try a new thing and it either works or it doesn't, or we don't feel as comfortable in it as we'd like and we say, ah, well I guess I'm not very good at that and we quit.

(25:33):

But what Ryan is saying is no, actually the difference maker is not whether or not you are good at something at the beginning. The difference maker is whether or not you are able to or willing to tolerate being bad for long enough to get to good because everyone is bad at things at the start. You and I, after the things that we do, we were bad at them at the beginning, bad if you and I had this conversation 10 years ago, I mean, I don't know about you, but I would've not been able to handle my side of the conversation at all. It would've been bad. But the thing was that we just went through enough being bad and stuck with it enough to get to good. And I, it's a really powerful way of thinking. I'll share one other thing that I really loved, which was I talked to Malcolm Gladwell and Malcolm Gladwell bestselling author, podcaster, et cetera, a line that I was asking him what a Malcolm Gladwell project is like, how does he know what a Malcolm Gladwell project is?

(26:25):

Because they all have a distinctiveness to them. And he said, to the best of his ability, he tries not to define what a Malcolm Gladwell project is because he said self-conception are powerfully limiting. That if you have a too narrow idea of who you are and what you do, then you will turn down these unexpected opportunities along the way, which could actually be the best new thing for you. So self-conception are powerfully limiting. I love that line. I wrote both of those. To be good at something, you have to be willing to bad and self-conception are powerfully limiting both of those. As soon as those guys said them to me, I wrote 'em down on a piece of paper, I stuck it on the wall.

Kim Rittberg (27:02):

I love that. My very last question for you, you're a dad. How old are your kids?

Jason Feifer (27:05):

Almost eight and four.

Kim Rittberg (27:07):

Do you have a funny or embarrassing parenting story?

Jason Feifer (27:13):

I mean, I'm sure I do. It's like it's, it's funny because all of that stuff lives in a totally different part of my brain than what we've been accessing. Well, I'll tell you usually because I've trained myself to always speak in lessons as you've heard, and kids stuff often actually doesn't come with a lot of lessons for me. But I know that they're full of lessons for other people. But for me, it's just getting through the date. But I'll just tell you an amazing moment, which was that I remember when we just had one, when our older one was maybe three or something before our younger one came along. We were in the kitchen and he was really obsessed with hard boiled eggs. And so he wanted a hard boiled egg and he wanted it like now. And we didn't have time to boil the thing. And so I just thought, I know everyone who's ever done this or knows anything about food, which I don't is going to say, you idiot. I just thought you could microwave it. So I put an egg in the microwave in a, I guess a bowl of water or something, and I just crank it up like eight minutes or something. Anyway, so we're, me and my wife and our son are in the kitchen and the thing is humming along and we're doing whatever we're doing, and

Kim Rittberg (28:22):

Then, oh my God.

Jason Feifer (28:23):

And then of course, just abruptly don't get a, it's not in the movies where there's a creaking noise before something crazy happens. It just happens. It felt like a bomb went off in the kitchen and the microwave door flew it. Yeah, the microwave door flew across and hit the island, little kitchen island and just crap everywhere. It was a actual bomb explosion, and fortunately nobody was hurt. Nobody was standing in front of the microwave. Our kid was sitting at the island, but at a different part of it, so nobody was hurt. So it's like boom, just loud explosion. And then everybody's startled and we look and the microwave door goes flying and it hits the thing and then it lands on the ground, and now there's just stuff dripping everywhere and my wife and I are just frozen, don't know what to do, and then our Fen or son says, is my egg ready? What I loved about that moment was the logic of that question is that the way to make a hard boiled egg is to put it in the microwave, wait, have a

Kim Rittberg (29:33):

Door fly off.

Jason Feifer (29:35):

Of a massive explosion, and then that's when the egg is ready.

Kim Rittberg (29:39):

So I'm not going to defend your cooking skills or your parenting skills, but I will say sometimes when you go into places like Dunky Donuts, it's obviously microwave their eggs. So some people microwave eggs like Yeah, that's true. I'm just trying to be nice. I'm also an optimist you, I'm like, well, technically someone microwaves an egg, just like maybe not like that. Right?

Jason Feifer (29:56):

Yeah, I appreciate that. I'll take that. It's the last time I've ever and will ever microwave an egg.

Kim Rittberg (30:02):

That feels right. Yeah. Jason, thank you so much for joining me. I know we have the book Built for Tomorrow and people can sign up for your newsletter. I'm going to link that all out in the show notes. Yeah.

Jason Feifer (30:12):

Awesome.

Kim Rittberg (30:13):

Thank you so much for joining me.

Jason Feifer (30:15):

Hey, thank you. This was so fun.

Kim Rittberg (30:18):

A big thank you to Jason for making the time. You can grab his book Build for Tomorrow. It's all linked out in the show notes, and you can sign up for his one thing Better newsletter. And he also has a podcast called Build for Tomorrow. I love sharing wins from listeners. This one is from Rebecca Chuff. She's a student from my video bootcamp coaching course and educational consultant who just published a book.

Rebekah Shoaf (30:39):

I'm Rebecca Shoaf, and as of this week, I am a published author. This week I published my very first book from Wiley called Educating with Passion and Purpose, keep the Fire Going Without Burning Out. It's a book, especially for teachers and leaders, and I co-wrote it with my friend and colleague, Meredith Matson. Meredith and I first got the idea for the book way back in 2013 when we were teacher leaders together. But life got in the way and we both pursued a variety of personal and professional goals over the next few years. It wasn't until April of 2020 that we both had the time to get started. So the way that we wrote the book was by assigning ourselves homework. We actually wrote on our own every week, and then we met on Zoom once a week to read each other's writing and give each other feedback. It took us about a year and a half to get to the point where we were ready to pitch the book to a publisher. Then we got a deal, and then we spent another year actually putting what we had written into book form. We're so excited that the book is finally out now from Josie Bassett Wiley, and we are so excited for folks to start reading it and telling us what they think.

Kim Rittberg (31:46):

You can find out more and buy the book at beatingteacherburnout.com. And if you want to submit your own story so I can celebrate you, visit moms exit interview.com. While you're there, you can sign up for our newsletter and it would be amazing if you could please tell two people you know about the show. That is how us Indie podcasters grow the show and share our hard work.

(32:07):

Thank you so much for listening. Make sure to drop a review, and if you want to send in a real mom moment that we'll share on the air, check out moms exit interview.com. And if you're a professional or small business owner looking to grow your brand through amazing content with no silly dances and with no burnout, check out my website, kim rit bird.com, and you can hit contact to chat with me. And thanks for listening. Like this is the most amazing community and you guys send in the best feedback. So share it with your friends. Let anyone know who you think would appreciate it. And this is Mom's Exit interview. I'm your host and executive producer, Kim rit. The show is produced by Henry Street Media. Jillian Grover edited this episode, and Eliza Friedlander is our editorial producer and publicist. I'll see you next time.

Kim RittbergMay 31, 2023Comment