"Building a Meaningful Career" feat. Mark Herschberg

[00:00:00] , Networking and Job Searching. There's a lot of parallels across all of them, but to your point, it is about investing the time. And if you think about your best friendships, they're probably your longest friendships are probably people where you've built up that relationship over time.

[00:00:15] Now, you do have different tiers of friends. You have your very close friends. You've got your, hey, I like these people friends. You have some more casual acquaintances. Your network will be like that too. Not everyone's on equal footing, but again, it's going to take time.

[00:00:36] Everyone, welcome back to the Intelligent Conversations podcast. Today I have the honor to learn from Mark Hirschberg. Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500 companies and in academia.

[00:00:53] With over a dozen patents to his name, he has started the career success accelerator at MIT. As a graduate of MIT and Harvard, he has received a BS in physics, electrical engineering, computer science and mechanical engineering. He also is just a brilliant, brilliant guy. Great communicator.

[00:01:13] This conversation that I had with Mark is for those of you that are interested no matter what walk of life and leveling up your career. This conversation with Mark just has so much knowledge that we can use in our everyday lives.

[00:01:28] I don't want to spoil the rest of the show. This conversation with Mark was fun and just relaxed. He's a great communicator. So without further ado, let's welcome Mark Hirschberg to the show. I'm Mark Hirschberg and I'm a professional ballroom dancer.

[00:01:44] I did take a ballroom class. I see the appeal. It's fun. I see why some people judge that hardcore, but it is fun. It's something I wouldn't do professionally in something like that, but it's fun. I think that's something that gets hate on.

[00:02:00] It's one of the best things I ever did and it was helpful to me. Obviously, physically it's great exercise. Helpful to me personally. I made lots of great friends. It is helpful to me professionally. It is just a wonderful activity I recommend to lots of people.

[00:02:17] That's yeah. It's fun. And especially on the exercise part, I agree with that. There are times where I came out of that like, wait, did I just break a sweat? Like I played basketball and other sports. I'm like, what the...

[00:02:29] Like I'm breaking a sweat here and it blew my mind. A friend of mine described it very well. He said, imagine running a 400 meter race, running with Poxito, balancing a plate on your head, two music while smiling the whole time.

[00:02:45] If you can do that, you just did round one of the first event of a weekend long competition. That's wild. And you're doing it backwards and in heels. Yeah. Oh, that's even crazier, right? Wow. That's impressive.

[00:03:03] So I want to ask this. How do you, I guess, find your hobby? Because I think especially someone my age, how do you, I guess, kind of find that thing you love and explore and find that hobby, something you'll love because like you said, there's benefits.

[00:03:19] You need to be open minded. So I'll give you the background on this. When I was in sixth grade, my mother forced me to take ballroom dance lessons. The community I grew up in, a lot of the kids did Catillion.

[00:03:31] So they all got sent to this class and my mom sent me as well, even though we weren't doing Catillion. He said, Mom, I don't want to do this. He said, no, no, you need to do this. You need to learn how to dance for your wedding.

[00:03:43] To which I said, I will never do ballroom dancing at my wedding. But as forced to go, the boys wore Jack and in ties. The girls would all wear dresses. Terrible experience because of course this is sixth grade. No one had their cootie shots yet.

[00:03:57] And I suffered through it said, I'm never doing that again. When I got to college, a friend of mine tried to get me to join the ballroom dance club. To which I said, no, been there. Not happening. And so for years I refused.

[00:04:15] But when I was a senior, I got set up with a girl from Wellesley and that went well. So I thought, okay, well, I want to start seeing her. And during MIT's intercession, we have a January intercession period. You don't have to come back for it.

[00:04:32] But if you do, there's a thousand different things going on. You can go skiing, you can learn origami, you can learn special relativity, all sorts of different academic things. And one of the more popular ones were ballroom dance lessons.

[00:04:46] So I thought, oh, this is a fun couple's activity. It's on campus. It only costs two dollars. Oh, that's killer, right? Especially as a college student. So we started doing the ballroom dance classes together and by this point,

[00:05:00] we were in college so we all did have cootie shots. Yeah, well-thinking. Much, much safer that way. And it was a lot more fun. And the music wasn't just that really old music that why would I want to dance to this?

[00:05:13] It was modern music, although it turns out I like some of that old music too. And even as she and I didn't date very long, she's still a friend of mine to this day, ballroom dancing was a lot more fun.

[00:05:25] I got into it and started to do the club. I then started dating a new girl. She had a dance background. She used to do dance troupe. I got her into ballroom dancing.

[00:05:35] And after doing it for a bit, she decided she wanted to compete and join the team, which apparently meant I had also decided I wanted to compete and join the team. And I am so glad that happened because it as I said,

[00:05:50] just put me on this path of an amazing experience that stuck with me to this day. That's so cool. And like you said at the beginning, I think the benefits as you said that came out of that. When you first started out, you came in with that mindset.

[00:06:07] I don't really know about this, but like I tried that been there and done that. But, you know, sometimes we just don't really know what the outcome is going to be. And it's just having that courage to try something new and put yourself out there

[00:06:22] and have an open mind like you said in the beginning. Here's the thing if you're a college student, really take advantage of what's on campus. So ballroom dancing is a great example. If I wanted to start ballroom dancing right now, lessons,

[00:06:38] private lessons will cost me about $100 an hour these days. I don't know the current rate, but ballpark that rate. And finding a partner isn't easy. The costumes are very expensive. There are group classes in cities, but often they don't have them at advanced levels.

[00:06:57] But because I did it through a college team, we could bring in instructors, we could advertise the cost, we could have high level group classes. The type that you wouldn't normally find in a studio,

[00:07:08] but there were enough of us that we could do it together as a group. We had a costume closet. For men, it's not that big of a deal, but for women, $1,000, multi-thousand dollar dress, but you could borrow them from the team.

[00:07:22] And so something that's very expensive and inaccessible suddenly became easier. There was an electric car club, a solar car club at MIT. Try building a solar car in your backyard with friends. It's not so easy, but MIT, you will have parts donated.

[00:07:39] You don't have to buy the knife. It's true. You can turn to the professors or the automotive companies will stop by and try to help you out. You have access to so much when you are on campus. The cost is much lower, the financial cost.

[00:07:56] Even things like time, even things like if I wish I had taken fencing because I could have just gone to the fencing PEU, and then just gone home and showered. In New York, okay, after work, I have to head over to the fencing club,

[00:08:12] pay a lot of money for it. And then I'm all sweaty. I have to go back and shower and change. It's just so much easier when things are on campus. So do all these random bizarre things you wouldn't normally think of.

[00:08:25] It is so much more accessible while you're in college. Thank you for that. That's great advice. I know I'm going to be thinking about that too. And I think that plays into something called networking, which you've written in your book, the career toolkit and the importance of that.

[00:08:41] So could we kind of touch on that? And I mean, obviously, right? Hobbies are one way of networking. Just making friends, honestly, is one aspect of it. But I guess what's your approach to networking? Good. Well, you hit the nail on the head when you said making friends.

[00:09:01] Networking is about relationships. What most people get wrong, they have this image of a salesperson walks into a conference and an hour later she comes out with 20 business cards. Oh, she networked. Look at all those business cards. Well, saying she got 20 business cards and now she's networked.

[00:09:21] That's like saying, oh, I add 20 people on LinkedIn. They're all now in my network. And people think that's networking too. But let's even use another analogy. You're on a dating app. You're swiping right, swiping right. Yeah. Swipes back. So, okay, hey, I just matched with this girl.

[00:09:38] We both swiped right. Great. I'm now dating her. Go hold on a second. You're not dating. No, no, no. That's not how it works. It's not yet in a relationship. You've expressed interest, but now you actually have to go on a date.

[00:09:51] And after a few dates, maybe then you're dating her, maybe then you're in a relationship, but swiping right is not a relationship. And yet people think, oh, I added you on LinkedIn or I got your business card.

[00:10:03] We now have a relationship and you don't think of it as networking is relationship building. It just means meeting people. And it's the same thing. Now your dates are not romantic and oriented. They can orient in orientation. It may be, hey, let's just meet up for coffee.

[00:10:22] Let's just do a call. Let's just chat. Let's see ways we can get to know each other, help each other, not for anything romantic, but it's the same concept. So you want to say I want to build a relationship with other people going

[00:10:34] with that mentality, not the, let me get business cards. Let me get people following me on social media or, hey, can you get me a job? No, done next. That's transactional. That's like the guy picking up someone at a bar and saying, are you going to

[00:10:49] sleep with me? No. Next one. Yeah. It doesn't work long term and correct me if I'm wrong. It probably takes time as well, which is in this world. People, people don't want to do right. It takes time to invest into someone get to know them, their

[00:11:06] interests, all that, you know, fun stuff about a human being. And I mean, I'm guilty of this too. Right. So, you know, the span is just so short. You're like, all right, next. So it's wild out there. I'll tell you that, especially the dating, just for, uh,

[00:11:25] And networking and job searching. There's a lot of parallels across all of them. But to your point, it is about investing the time. And if you think about your best friendships, they're probably your longest friendships are probably people where you've built up that relationship over time.

[00:11:42] You've got different tiers of friends. You have your very close friends. You've got your, hey, I like these people friends. You have some more casual acquaintances. Your network will be like that too. Not everyone's on equal footing. But again, it's going to take time.

[00:11:56] So I guess what are some strategies you can do to, I guess, What are good approaches to invest that time in a smart way? When you meet people, it's first remembering much like swiping right on the app or meeting someone at a bar. There's a next step.

[00:12:15] There's a few next step you have to do the date. You want to do that with your relationships. I'll say, Hey, it was great meeting you. Okay, but then what's going to happen next? Now there's a couple of things you can do.

[00:12:29] You could say, Hey, let's meet up for coffee. Let's get together. We'll exchange information and we'll meet up in the future. If you can find something in common. Say, Oh, I want to talk to you more about the internship you had last summer.

[00:12:43] I hear what it was like working at that company. I want to learn something from you. In fact, here's something that's helpful again, both on dates and in networking. Now I've been on a lot of bad dates. Well, a lot of boring dates.

[00:12:58] I wouldn't say horrible, but on some horrible ones. When I'm on a date thinking, Okay, I just sat down. I can tell in 10 minutes this is not going to work, but I don't want to be rude. I'm going to be 30 or so minutes.

[00:13:11] The way I focus myself is, Okay, this woman, there is something about her. That's interesting. It might be something she knows. Maybe it's something she does some hobby. Maybe it's where she grew up. Maybe it's a place she's been traveled to. Maybe it's a perspective she has.

[00:13:31] I don't know what it is, but there is something interesting about this person. My job is to find it. That keeps me focused. It keeps things interesting too, right? Why put yourself through a horrible date? Just not enjoy the time there.

[00:13:50] It's like, well, might as well get to know something fascinating about you and try. Maybe we're completely opposites and this is just not going to work, but let's try and find something interesting that, one, I just don't know about and learn about. Exactly.

[00:14:08] But you can use the same technique in non-dates. When you meet someone at an event, you say, Hey, there's something interesting about this person. I wonder what it is. And what this does, it helps you stay focused because you have to pay attention to the conversation,

[00:14:25] but you're also focusing attention on the person. The favorite topic of everyone on this planet is themselves. So you've been talking about where they've been, what they think, what they do, they love it. And so they're going to have a positive experience with that interaction with you.

[00:14:45] You're going to learn something and you're going to start to build that relationship. That's true, especially on the part where most favorite thing to talk about is ourselves because it's the best thing we know, right?

[00:14:59] We know ourselves better than anyone else does and we want to share that with other people. It's just natural. So on that, I also want to add this is something as you were talking that kind of made sense.

[00:15:11] And I've actually been kind of emphasizing this just even with recent episodes and that's communication as well. I think that's also very helpful because yeah, you can ask a question, but if you can't communicate, so speak, right?

[00:15:26] Your interests or whatever it may be that well, it makes it really hard for that relationship to really blossom. Would you kind of agree on that? That communication is important as well. We see so many challenges because people are talking past each other. They're miscommunicating.

[00:15:46] They're not explaining well what they're trying to get across. If you think about we all in our heads, we have this mental model in our head. I can approximate that model with the words I use, but it's not perfect.

[00:16:01] I can't exactly take what I'm putting in your head. I have to use some words that are an imperfect representation. And then you're going to hear those words and you're going to put them into a model in your head based on how you understand words.

[00:16:17] And it's kind of like a copy of a copy of a copy. We're starting to lose something. So learning how you can get closer is really critical. And so it's learning to speak other people language or mental models.

[00:16:34] And not to get into machines, but almost reduce that gap in receiving and transmitting information. Essentially what you were saying, you're transmitting information to them. And to you it may make sense, but I think the other part that's important is you have to receive that information as well.

[00:16:54] And that's the part that sometimes we may forget is that, okay, we have to receive that information. Now we have new information and then we got to transmit it back out. But humans are way more complicated than machines. So let's maybe stay away from that.

[00:17:10] At the closer I can get to the mental model in your head, the less hops in this game of telephone and the more fidelity I can get with my message to you. I like that. I like that a lot.

[00:17:25] So I hate to kind of like change gears here, but freshmen in college just started going to school. They want to have a successful career. If you had to just write off the bat, get down to those fine details to help them have a successful career.

[00:17:43] What would those questions be? This applies at any year and honestly first years are probably going to be just focused on adjusting to college. But two very important things you can do is one just try to me as many people as possible.

[00:18:00] Meet obviously other students, but also talk to the faculty, talk to the staff, talk to the people who come to campus. The great thing about colleges is they are magnets for ideas and people. People show up to do lectures, companies come to do presentations, to do events.

[00:18:21] Where I am, I don't just have people knocking on my door or down the hall for me saying, oh yeah, we're doing an event. Why don't you just come by and learn things? So take advantage and meet lots of different people.

[00:18:31] And especially as a student, people are very open to meeting you. In fact, even off campus it is very easy to meet people. I'll give you an example. If I just write to a stranger on the internet and say, hey, curious about this, can you help me?

[00:18:48] They're going to say, who are you weirdo? But you say I am a student. I'm a rising sophomore and I'm curious to learn more about your industry. You have a higher chance of getting a response.

[00:19:00] And certainly if you're reaching out to your alumni network, then you have a very high chance of getting a response. We all remember what was like to be a student and so we're all sympathetic to what you're going through.

[00:19:14] Now that goes to the second piece of your meeting lots of people. Talk to people about what they're doing. And this is where a lot of people make mistakes because we think we know what a job is, but most of us don't actually know. So here's an example.

[00:19:28] If you said to someone, what does a lawyer do? So I know because I've watched them, Law TV show and it involves very dramatic courtroom events and arguing back and forth with opposing counsel. And depending on the show probably lots of drinking and or sex.

[00:19:47] If you talk to a lawyer about what they actually do. Most lawyers do not spend much time, if at all in the court. They sit in their office and they sit by themselves and they have a contract and they sit there redlining the contract.

[00:20:03] They spend time sitting on calls with irate clients. They spend time trying to research legal precedent and writing briefs. It is actually not the dramatic exciting courtroom theme we see on TV. It is so different than that.

[00:20:19] And they probably, I mean, this is just my understanding of lawyers. Most of the time they're usually writing stuff up to protect them from even going to the courtroom in the first place. That's exactly it.

[00:20:30] And so the experience, it's not in court and the excitement and oh I like debate in high school so I want to be a lawyer. It's the I'm a quiet introvert and I like time by myself reading and focus time. That's what you get in law.

[00:20:47] And when people are misaligned when I think well I'm going to be in court, go wait a second no I'm not. That's a problem. Medicine was a doctor do take care of sick people was a doctor actually doing private practice.

[00:21:00] You spend a lot of time doing paperwork and billing and oh you're running a private practice. You have to hire staff to find a whole bunch of things that aren't taking care of sick people. So when you meet all these different interesting people, ask them about their jobs.

[00:21:17] But don't just say hey what do you do as a petroleum engineer say what do you do in a typical week? What's the fun part? What's the boring part? How much time do you spend doing different things? What do you wish you could change?

[00:21:31] What do you wish you knew going into this? What are the things that someone thinking about this would make them attracted to it or not attracted to it? What do you think is going to happen to the industry in a few years? Ask them all these details.

[00:21:44] That's going to help you understand what might be a fit. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's actually not only helpful for me but for those listening as well. That's interesting that you bring up the point that because sometimes right when we're looking at jobs so to speak,

[00:22:04] we look at the glamorous right like the oh in the courtroom right the debate but you.

[00:22:09] I like the point that you said hey just talk to them what the day like a typical week looks like because there's a lot of mundane and boring aspects of any job really and it's not going to be this constant.

[00:22:23] I'm just learning I'm looking for you for a guy, I guess. I'm just waiting. Your first date, your second date, you're dressing up, you're going somewhere fun.

[00:22:36] When you're married, hopefully you're still having those good times and doing fun things but there's also the day to day boring of doing the dishes. And the right relationship isn't just why have a great time with you when we're partying at some bar.

[00:22:51] It's can you sit next to this person at breakfast for years on end and say I am happy doing this. If you can't do that, that's not a good marriage for you.

[00:23:01] It's not a good job for you when yeah we get to do this exciting thing but all the other stuff in between if you're not happy doing that is it worth it for you. Interesting.

[00:23:12] So how I guess do you shift that mindset to maybe not necessarily become obsessed with the mundane but like, I guess find joy in it because. We're human beings we want to be happy and we want to like enjoy life.

[00:23:28] Well the question is for the non exciting parts. Is it just neutral. Okay, you know do dishes no one gets excited about doing dishes, but if you hate doing dishes okay that's a negative. And look in every job there will probably be something that's negative.

[00:23:45] But it's a question of when you think positive neutral negative. How positive how negative and what percentage of the time where you're doing positive and negative. If you're getting 60% is positive and great and you love it and 5% it's yeah it's not great it's negative but small negative.

[00:24:04] Well this job overall is good there's lots of positive there's some neutral little bit of negative. But if you're saying, hey it's 80% negative.

[00:24:14] And it's a lot of negative over and over, but maybe like 2% of the time I get some great positive this annual event we put on and that's so much fun. The rest of time I hate it it's a grind.

[00:24:28] Is it worth it for that 2%. This may not be the right job for you. That's true.

[00:24:33] Yeah, and so I don't know is that are there jobs because I've heard the phrase where it's like, if you want to like in regards to money if you want to make a lot of money either do something people will not do like at all, or do something that they can't do like just the knowledge that you have no one else has.

[00:24:53] So we need people I guess to do kind of those mundane jobs and are boring. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there. I think I know where you're going. It's all relative. Now there are some things sanitation workers are well compensated because it's not a great job.

[00:25:14] You're outside in the rain in the cold. You're literally dealing with garbage. It's smelly. It's physically taxing. It's even dangerous. They actually have a pretty high injury rate. I don't know that. And so they're well compensated for that.

[00:25:29] And probably most people would not say I'm looking forward to doing that. On the other hand, if you think about people, there are people spend their days doing analysis in spreadsheets all day. They're staring at spreadsheets.

[00:25:42] They're getting the columns to line up writing and getting all the numbers to work out. And there are people say this is torture because you're sitting in a room by yourself staring at a screen. This is painful. And then there are other people say that is wonderful.

[00:25:57] That is my dream. I love doing that. And so that's where we get this labor arbitrage that some people say I love being in the room staring at a spreadsheet eight hours a day.

[00:26:06] And other people say I love going to an event and being in rooms full of a thousand strangers and trying to meet them. Where as the introvert might say that's my idea of torture.

[00:26:15] So it's finding what you enjoy doing because I guarantee you someone else does not like it. And they will pay you for you being able to do that. And that's I mean, that's what we should do.

[00:26:25] That's you should get paid for something you like and you'll bring more energy to the job which usually I'm not going to say always usually implies that you're going to do better work than the guy that's just now I'm here for the money.

[00:26:41] So I want to ask this then it's maybe the jobs that aren't necessarily high pay and maybe that's something you desire right you want to make a lot of money.

[00:26:53] But maybe that job that you enjoy, you kind of like you're looking at it doesn't cap out at a point where you would be satisfied. What would be kind of the advice there to kind of I guess get both right.

[00:27:11] The optimization is not about your job and this is a mistake lots of people make they focus on how do I get the right job and then try to fit their life. Around it, you need to optimize for your life and make sure your job fits into that.

[00:27:28] There's an example in the book we talked about ballroom dancing earlier. I knew a guy who was a very serious ballroom dancer. His job was basically some I can't remember what is I may have put in the book.

[00:27:42] It was some mundane job it didn't pay a lot it was not exciting at all.

[00:27:46] But the job gave him enough money to pay for his ballroom dancing it gave him flexibility so he could go off every weekend to take off early on Fridays to go to a weekend competition. And that's what he wanted to do that optimized his life. For me.

[00:28:03] Now I was never I never turned professional I was on we're all on the amateur circuit back then there were very clear rules about you either amateur or professional. And I had people friends of mine who did turn pro.

[00:28:16] I maybe could have tried to try I could have turned prime would not have been the top pro but I've been good. I could have made money, but I wanted a different career as much as they love ballroom dancing. I didn't want to do it professionally.

[00:28:33] And so I chose a different path. And for me having more money than I would have made in ballroom is one of the reasons there's other reasons as well not just financial but this other guy chose a different path.

[00:28:46] So it's really what are you trying to do in life and then does the job even the job itself doesn't make you completely happy. Does it lead to your net happiness in life. I'll give you one more example.

[00:28:59] There was a guy I met who is actually an MIT alum is very interested in cancer research. He was not a great researcher.

[00:29:08] This is why he told me said he was not great and he realized quickly he probably wasn't going to get a PhD and if he did he'd be not so great have trouble getting jobs not make a lot of money, but he turned out to be a great sales guy.

[00:29:21] And so by going into sales and making a lot of money in sales, he was able to donate to cancer research centers to hire better researchers than he could be. And that's how he was able to achieve his goal of having impact on cancer research.

[00:29:38] It just wasn't him doing the research. So he found a way to achieve his goal indirectly not by being the hands on guy focus on what you want in life. And how does your job achieve your overall life goal? And that's what you should be optimizing for.

[00:29:55] Thank you. So just right off the bat then how do you I guess find that overall life goal because I mean this is just me I'm looking at it's like okay in my early 20s and I'm looking ahead. And it's like life life.

[00:30:13] I don't know maybe I'm wrong because I've heard otherwise but I'm like 30 40 50 years. That's a long time in my mind.

[00:30:21] How how do you I guess find kind of that overall life goal if there's so many things that could change at moments notice what you'll find is when you're in a job, you'll be on projects that are many months long.

[00:30:34] This can be a little hard to understand when you're in school because in school, the biggest project you ever do is a professor saying here is your semester long project. And it's a well defined well scope project.

[00:30:46] The professor isn't going to halfway through say, oh, we're going to change it up and you do something else. But in the workplace you'll do these big projects that can last many months even years.

[00:30:56] And as you start down the path, you're going to hear oh wait we're changing what we're trying to do or throw that out or we can't do this or competitive something now we need to shift it up.

[00:31:07] This happens all the time, but we still need to create project plans and the key with our project plans. If you tell me mark here's a year long project is January 1 figure out a plan to do by the end of the year.

[00:31:20] I don't know what I'm doing on October 25. But I'm going to say well around September I need to be here October I need to be here November there I don't know the exact details I know roughly where I should be.

[00:31:32] Now what am I doing next Tuesday, I have a pretty clear plan because that is closer to me. And so I have a concrete a better defined plan the first let's say 30 days.

[00:31:43] I have some generally clear ideas what I'm doing maybe next month or two and then I have these fuzzy placeholders further out. But of course as I get closer now things will shift as they go and why thought I needed to be doing October is going to change.

[00:31:59] But by the time we get to September that should be a little more clear and fixed and now I know what I will be doing October 1 second and so on. The same thing is true for our lives. So you want to have that long term.

[00:32:13] Hey here's where I'm trying to go. I think I want to get married in my early 30s. I'm thinking I want to live maybe on the West Coast. I'd like to work in this type of industry and be at this level and make this money.

[00:32:26] But let's talk about what I'm doing this next year. How am I going to concretely achieve getting that promotion building up the skill learning about this tour industry that you want to have more concrete. And to help you figure this out I have a list of questions.

[00:32:44] They're in the book by also put them on the website. And so under the resources page of my website the career planning questions is a list of 20 starting questions.

[00:32:54] These aren't the only questions but they're starting questions to just ask yourself how do I feel about this and think about how you might feel about today. How that might change five or 10 years from now. Talk to your friends.

[00:33:07] How do they feel about maybe they have some thoughts that you hadn't thought of and that's going to change your perspective. These questions by the way you can also use when you're talking to all those people about their careers.

[00:33:18] These older people you're meeting ask them some of these questions how they think about four ideas. The because it never stops is I guess what you're saying is you're constantly. You're finding it interesting.

[00:33:32] So it's almost like having you know that long term like that vision right that's in our head.

[00:33:38] And then the goals so to speak are like maybe the milestones you want to hit or you know in months and years but then like next week to a day that's where you have the fine details of exactly what you're going to do to reach towards that vision and as that vision maybe adjusts everything else kind of.

[00:33:59] Falls into place. You just continue to realize Eisenhower famously said I'm pretty sure other people said before him plans are worthless but planning is everything so don't worry about what's my plan to get it right.

[00:34:15] What happens if I change it because you will and then you might have to wait I'm not even following my plan and that's okay too. But the act of planning the act of asking these questions of yourself of talking about with friends and colleagues and mentors.

[00:34:30] It's going to help you think through some of it not that you'll have a definitive answer and you say done but just thinking through it will help you so when you face questions and situations you'll have been warmed up and you'll approach it having had all that forethought and that's really what's important here.

[00:34:47] Thank you. I appreciate that that's something I'm going to end on that. I think that's perfect just that last phrase there.

[00:34:58] So and thank you just for sharing the knowledge and wisdom on that so now I mean I've looked at the website and the PDF your blog by the way is phenomenal you write really really great blog posts.

[00:35:12] I really sparked the mind and some stuff I'm already interested in. But if people want to reach out to you find you all that fun stuff what's the best way they can do that. I'm going to give you two websites.

[00:35:27] The first is the career toolkit book dot com. That's a website for my book you can see where to buy the book the blogs are all posted there all the blog articles that come out every week.

[00:35:38] There is the resources page we mentioned there's a whole bunch of completely free resources you only have to sign up for an email list you can just download this stuff including the career plan questions so you can help will help you think through this.

[00:35:53] There are questions there's another list what you should ask as a candidate so when you're interviewing with companies here are things you should be asking them. So a whole bunch of other resources too all of that is at the career toolkit book dot com.

[00:36:05] I'm going to give you a second website brain bump app dot com. Now this is a free app and it is linked if you go the app page on the first website links to there. This is a free app on the Android and iPhone stores.

[00:36:22] It has all the tips in my book and all the tips in my blog articles and tips from other books and blogs and podcasts and we can add more kind of cool. It puts them all in your pocket.

[00:36:37] So you don't have to take note as you're reading the book they're all there for you and what's great they're in your pocket so you can use it one of two ways.

[00:36:46] You can set up for example a daily or weekly reminder you might set up these questions we talked about for career planning you might just say every Monday at nine o'clock I want one of those questions to pop up.

[00:36:59] And I'm just going to think about that question for 20 minutes and that's it so it gives you that little knowledge that low prompt to help keep it top of mind.

[00:37:08] But then you can also use it just in time we talked about networking and there's a whole bunch of networking tips concrete actual things you can do they're all in the app too so imagine you're walking into a networking event.

[00:37:21] You just open the app you everything's tagged by topic so you select networking as the topic. All the networking kept just flipped through those right before you walk in the room and now they're all there yeah. So that's all completely free and at brain bump app dot com.

[00:37:41] Awesome. Well thank you Mark for coming on here and sharing the knowledge and wisdom that you share today and.

[00:37:49] Yeah so just thank you and thanks for sharing this mark. All right everyone as you can tell that is Mark Hirschberg he's a very intelligent person has great things to share.

[00:37:58] I challenge you guys if anything stuck out to you or if you're interested in learning more about what Mark does go check out his website he gave you some information there and also the brain dump app as well.

[00:38:10] Stay tuned till next week we have a great guest lined up for you guys see you guys next week and let's get after it.

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