How to figure out what to do next in your career
Lessons from Michael Jordan's trainer, a 106 year old business and more...
Note: If you would like to listen to the audio version of this article please scroll to the end of the article where you will find the link.
In this article, I will share how I figured out what to do next in my career. It’s a theme of questions that I have received over the past 2 years from entrepreneurs and executives. In 2018 after I sold my last software company I was fortunate enough to take a little over 12 months off. During that time I went through a process of exploring entrepreneurship as an investor, advisor, and coach. All of these roles were fulfilling. However, I still had a restless feeling. I shook off the rust and embarked on a process of figuring out “what’s next”. I have learned that this is something that many struggle with. This article explores this process with the hopes that you can tweak it for your circumstances and use it.
The five phases I went through were:
1. Rest & Space —>2. Activation—>3. Tinkering—>4. ”Buckets”—>5. Cycles
Let’s explore each one.
Rest & Space
Right after I exited the last chapter in my career I met an entrepreneur that encouraged me to take as much time off as possible. He had gone through multiple exits and reminded me that rest is needed to go from a human-doing to a human-being. This was a reminder to me, as in my twenties I left a dangerous career and intuitively took almost a year off in solitude to figure out what to do next in my life. I took my friend’s advice and rested for one year. Many people asked if I felt bored, if I felt guilty and if I missed my business. To be honest, the answer was “no” to all three of those questions. I got to connect deeper with my wife, our four kids and I rested. I acknowledge the privileged situation I was in, to be able to do this. I am very aware that many cannot do this. Even if one were to take a week or two off to rest between chapters that would be beneficial. Creating space could be viewed as a tool that allows one to connect to their own intuition and reactivate their internal voice. In my time off I met other post-exit entrepreneurs that told me they wished they did the same thing as they feel they would have made better decisions about what to do next.
What do you do to rest and create space? What is your meditative practice to help you support this rest period?
Activation
When professional athletes arrive at the arena to play their chosen support, one of the initial parts of their routine is called activation. This is where they go through various exercises and massage therapy to activate their muscles to get ready to warm up for the game. It’s the warm-up before the warm-up. After my rest period, I went through an activation period of about three to four months. To be transparent, I had to shake off some rust, laziness, and complacency after over a year off. To help support my activation process, I increased the intensity and discipline around my diet, exercise, and sleep to help give me the energy to activate myself. For example, while I was running my last business I would sleep only 4 hours a night and wake at 4 am each day. During my activation time, I forced myself to be in bed for seven to eight hours a night. For exercise, I changed my general fitness routine and adopted a pretty intense power routine (called “Jump Attack” sent to me by Tim Grover) meant to try to get my 43-year-old body to dunk a basketball again. As a side note, I was able to get up high enough to dunk a volleyball but I’m still working on dunking the much larger basketball.
Do you have rust that you also have to shake off? How will you do this?
Tinkering
After I felt I was activated I went into a phase of tinkering and experimentation I referred to as the “lab”. This is where I challenged my ideas of what I could do for work. I explored non-entrepreneurial paths. I started accepting requests from entrepreneurs to coach them. I enjoyed this and plan to keep a small handful of these coaching clients. However, I don’t want to be a full-time coach. I started exploring writing. I love this and realized that I want to be working on one book at a time very slowly. I gave public speeches. I angel invested. I joined a few boards. One day while meditating at the local public botanical gardens near my home I approached the gardeners that were bringing the rose gardens back to life and asked what it took to do their job. They told me I needed to go back to school to get a horticultural degree. I ruled that one out.
All of this was part of me being in the lab. I didn’t know this at the time. The important indicator for me that subtly hinted that I was moving from tinkering to making a decision of what to do next was the feeling of frustration. At the beginning of my tinkering phase, I over-committed to so many things. I gained energy from it and it was enjoyable. Then there was a subtle change when I noticed certain things were taking energy away from me instead of replenishing me. I made a note of these things and realized I needed help decoding what it all meant. That’s when I went to one of the secret weapons I have been using for years to help me fast-track decisions. I called up two specific mentors and sought their help as a sounding board and advisors that would give me the brutal truth.
Is there something you have always been told you would be great at but have not tried? Can you start tinkering with it?
“Buckets”
Before I dive into this section I want to acknowledge someone and something. I am married to a brilliant person. She is routinely the person that gives me the swiftest and best advice. I am routinely the person that has a tough time realizing that in the moment. This is something I hope to continue to get better at over time. I find that mentors also help me to hear what my better half has been telling me all along.
I am a long-time believer in the power of mentorship so I took this feeling of wanting to figure out what is next to two mentors of mine (Pulin Chandaria and Tim Grover). They both have different backgrounds but similar values that are important to me.
Pulin Chandaria is part of a large family business that is over a century old. He has been a mentor of mine for over 10 years. His values and the values of his family’s business have impacted me greatly over the years. From philanthropy to doing good to developing an interior meditative life. The business he helps to oversee owns hundreds of businesses, employs thousands, and gives much of their proceeds away to charity.
Tim Grover is the guy behind building the bodies and minds of almost all of the greatest basketball players of my generation (most notably Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwayne Wade). He was side by side with Michael for 15 years and with the late Kobe for most of his career. He is a vault of knowledge on the topic of developing a relentless mindset and shares the brutal truth of what it takes to win consistently.
(If you’d like to know how I am able to find and build great mentor relationships, send me a note and I will email you my Mentorship Blueprint).
Ok, let’s get back to the process of figuring out “what’s next”.
Both of these mentors said the same thing:
It was a good thing that I took time off to rest and gain perspective after running my last business for 17 years. However, it’s time to get back to my craft.
My craft is not being a full-time investor and advisor.
I am over-committed and I need to start saying no to everything other than my top priorities. Tim was critical here as he urged me to make a “No” list and then call, text or email all my withdrawals from commitments that did not serve me. He challenged me to do this in 24 hours. I did this right away. I had 37 people to contact. It was surprisingly easier than I thought. Then we spoke the following week and we came up with the concept of me committing to only three things. I called these things “buckets”, and gave each bucket a label. My buckets were called:
a. “Bucket 1: Find Entrepreneurial Venture”.
b. “Bucket 2: Write Book”.
c. “Bucket 3: Positively impact equity, diversity, and anti-racism in my neighborhood.”
I even did some research as to the various sizes of buckets as I wanted to visualize what these buckets would physically look like. On my whiteboard, I made my large bucket(bucket 1) a 10-gallon bucket, my medium bucket (bucket 2) a 5-gallon bucket, and my small bucket (bucket 3) a 2.5-gallon bucket.
As a side note, the context of my buckets was related to the one-third of my day that I devote to work. The other two-thirds is where I rest, pursue family, parenting, relationship, enrichment, health, and spiritual goals.
This concept of buckets has been transformative for me, and I will share a few further insights in case it also resonates with you and you find it useful.
Bucket rules:
a. I themed my buckets so I can reuse them moving forward: For example, for bucket number two, once I finish writing my current book, I can refill the bucket with the next book I want to write.
b. It’s okay to lay a bucket on its side: Sometimes the demands of one bucket becomes very consuming. Instead of going crazy trying to balance all the commitments of all three buckets, I gave myself permission to lay one bucket on its side. Tim helped to guide me to this realization. He shared with me that as Michael’s career at the Bulls progressed he had many commitments. When he was off-season he would juggle all of his buckets. However, when he was in the season he would lay all the other buckets on their sides and then focus on his bucket 1 which was winning another championship, and bucket 2 which was indulging his obsession - golf.
c. Pour from one bucket to the next: At one point things in my first bucket were starting to pick up momentum. I laid my small bucket (bucket 3 devoted to local social justice causes) on its side. Now that I was not devoting energy to bucket 3, I poured the energy I would have given to bucket 3 into bucket 1. This bucket went from 10 gallons to 12.5 gallons on my whiteboard. It was very freeing knowing that I did not abandon bucket 3, I just paused it and used the energy from that bucket to help with bucket 1.
What are your buckets? How many do you need to have in your life now? What will you label them? How will you proportion them?
Cycles
This process helped to guide me to what was next through three realizations. It might be easiest for me to explain it in terms of the bucket labels above.
Bucket 1/Realization 1: I am an entrepreneur. I want to be part of one main venture. I don’t want to be on the sidelines, I want to be in the game. I also realize that we all have a certain amount of cycles in us for our respective careers. As an entrepreneur, I feel like I have two to three more cycles left in me. Until these cycles have exhausted themselves this will be my main career focus. How many cycles do you have left in your current career?
Bucket 2/Realization 2: I have a need and desire to write. I want to birth several books, one at a time. I am fortunate enough to be planning a book with a great co-author currently.
Bucket 3/Realization 3: Due to my background I have a deep need to help make the world a more equal place. I am going to start with my neighborhood.
This process of:
1. Rest & Space —>2. Activation—>3. Tinkering—>4. ”Buckets”—>5. Cycles
led me to the venture I selected to pursue, during this cycle of my career. In my next article, I will delve into what made me decide on one venture in particular. It wasn’t the product or service, but something much different. It is also the criteria seasoned investors look for when deciding if to invest in a startup. My belief is if entrepreneurs and executives understood these criteria they would have much more fun at their current workplaces and make a bigger impact.
Click here to listen to the audio version of this article: https://bit.ly/33Q5O6p
Have a great day!
Saud Juman
#OwnYourExit
How to figure out what to do next in your career
Hi Saud! Thank you for your article. This is extremely insightful for me as a try to figure out what to do next in my career after spending a decade abroad as an expat and travelling the world. I feel the urgency to quickly figure out what to do next and make a decision quick. However your article stresses the importance of taking the time to rest, step back and ticker with things I want to do in my life that I never have. (I'd love to do some 1-on-1 life coaching).
I also see why I need some mentors now more than ever that will help bring some perspective into my life especially as I reflect on how many cycles I have left in my career and what I'd like to spend my life on. Thank you Saud!
Hi Basim - I am happy that the article resonated with you and you found it helpful.