[00:00:00] Voice Over: Facebook is taking action to keep its platform safe. In the last six years, Facebook spent over 16 billion enough to build seven pro stadiums, all to help create safer connections. Learn more about the work ahead at facebook.com/action. 

[00:00:17] Jason Feifer: Most people we think horizontally. We do this and we put it out into the world and then we move onto the next thing and we put that out into the world and we move onto the next one.

[00:00:25] Entrepreneurs don't think that way. Entrepreneurs think vertically. They think the only reason to do something is because it is the foundation upon which the next thing will be built. When we put ourselves in positions, where we are learning. We are also opening new opportunities for growth that we cannot anticipate.

[00:00:46] And I will tell you the greatest opportunities, that you will experience were the ones that you could not have possibly ever put on the roadmap and you could have never set a goal for them.[00:01:00] 

[00:01:02] Hala Taha: What is up Young and Profiteers? You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcasts where we interview the brightest minds in the world and turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast Princess. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

[00:01:34] Hey Jason, welcome back to Young and Profiting Podcasts. 

[00:01:38] Jason Feifer: I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:39] Hala Taha: I'm super excited for this conversation. So I first had you on the show. Episode number 70, Stop Resisting Change. That was back in 2020, and you gave my listeners some excellent advice about how to build our skill sets from job to job and how to integrate change into our lives.

[00:01:54] And this time around. I wanna dive deeper on this topic of change in celebration of your new book [00:02:00] Build For Tomorrow, which is out right now. Super excited to get into all of that and a quick introduction. To all my listeners who may not know you, Jason Feifer is an author. He's a keynote speaker. He is a champion of change.

[00:02:11] He's also the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and is the host of several podcasts, most notably Build For Tomorrow same title as his book. And Build For Tomorrow was previously named Pessimist Archive. And so I wanna start here. And we run in a lot of the same circles. We're both big podcasters.

[00:02:28] We've got a lot of the same podcaster friends. And I remember when we first met, you were talking about this huge rebranding that you were undertaking, and you had this already popular podcast that thousands of people listen to called Pessimist Archive. And you decided that you were eventually gonna change your name to Build For Tomorrow after lots of research and data and studies.

[00:02:48] And so I'd love to start there. Why did you decide to call your podcast Build For Tomorrow and now your book Build For Tomorrow? 

[00:02:54] Jason Feifer: Okay. So first of all, I have a friend named Rochelle Devo, [00:03:00] and she is an audience insights researcher, and she did the research actually on my show. And she does tons of other work, and she always tells people. You do not know your audience as well as you think you do.

[00:03:14] And when she tells CEOs this, they don't like to hear it because of course you think if I serve people. I know them, I know what they want and I know how to provide that. But that's not true because the thing is we tend to run on a lot of assumptions, about the things that we think our audience wants or how we're best serving people, and we may not know how we fit into their lives.

[00:03:38] Give you a quick example, and then I promise I'll actually talk about this podcast that you ask, but this is this was such a revelation for me, and it has really driven a lot of how I now understand my own work and how I think other people can improve theirs. That I think it's worth understanding.

[00:03:51] So Rochelle. She has this process by which she identifies the best customers for a brand. And then she understands she interviews them, she talks [00:04:00] to like, and I asked her to tell me this story. I said, Can you explain what it looks like for this kind of transformation to happen?

[00:04:08] She said, Okay. There's a sock company called VIM & VIGR. It was started by an athlete who needed compression socks to help her feet feel better while she was performing. And so she makes this company and it does she, they make these socks or athletes and it does quite well for a while, and then sales level off and they can't figure out why.

[00:04:29] And so they hire Rochelle, and Rochelle comes in and she identifies the best customers. Which is to say she, right? Who are the people who are buying the most? Who are the people who are the most engaged? Who are the people leaving the best reviews? And she interviews them and she discovers Hala this crazy thing, which is that the best customers for this company. Which sells compression socks to athlete.

[00:04:50] The best customers are not athletes. They are not, Who are they? They are people who spend all day working on their feet. They're like nurses. And [00:05:00] so this company had really been succeeding despite itself because it thought that it was serving athletes and it wasn't. It was serving a completely different audience and it wasn't even trying to market to them.

[00:05:08] So once they knew that. They could change how they market. How they talk to people, things about the product themselves. And that unlocked the growth. So with that as context, that's what I did for my podcast too. I had Rochelle interview tons of my audience, and she learned that even though back then when it was called Pessimist Archive. It was more of a history show that was interested in why people resisted new things.

[00:05:35] Like why was the teddy bear something that was very scary to people when it was new? Why was the bicycle something that people thought was gonna make people go insane and women become ine and all this crazy stuff? And I thought it was a history show. She told me that my audience. Told her the reason they listened to the show is because it helps them feel more resilient about the future. Which is to say they were hearing a history show and they were using it for themselves, and I didn't know that.

[00:05:57] And also that the podcast [00:06:00] name was turning them off because it had the word pessimist in it, but they are optimist. And so I realized the real opportunity in front of me here is to serve this audience that is with me, despite me, they're with me. Despite, that I wasn't properly fully serving them. And so I made this change. Which is to change the name to something that felt optimistic, that drove towards how people can grow and embrace what's new and find great new opportunities.

[00:06:27] And then I leaned more heavily into talking about more contemporary issues because I knew that people were looking for that connection to their lives. And again, that totally unlocked. 

[00:06:37] Hala Taha: I love that. And what a great business lesson in general. Anybody who's selling a product or anybody who has a community, go talk to your super fans.

[00:06:45] Go talk to your most engaged clients and customers. Ask them what they like, what they don't like, and see how you can mold your messaging to reach more people like them. So I love that business lesson in there. So another thing that I wanna bring up before we really get into the [00:07:00] meat of this interview is this idea that we talked about last time you were on the show, but I wanted to bring it up again.

[00:07:04] It's called Opportunity set A and set B. So you have this theory that you always have two sets of opportunities. Opportunities set A and set B. Set A is all the things that you're asked to do, let's say at your job. It's the things that things that you are supposed to do. And set B is what's available to you that nobody is talking about or asking you to do.

[00:07:26] So let's talk about that because I think that's how you really set off your whole career. I think this is another like just broader life lesson, that I'd love for my listeners who especially don't know you to know about. 

[00:07:36] Jason Feifer: I appreciate that. So you summarized it really there. I call this work your next job, and I think that we should all be at all times building ourselves so that we are more relevant to bigger opportunities in the future.

[00:07:49] Because if you only focus on opportunity set A like you just said there. Which is just the things that are asked of you, you show up at work, what does your boss need from you? How are you being evaluated? [00:08:00] If you only focus on that. You are only going to be qualified to do the things that you're already doing.

[00:08:05] But opportunity set B is where real growth happens. Now what? What can that look like? It's interesting because oftentimes, I think people feel like if they're gonna devote some time to something. We should maybe talk next about how to find the time, to add more to your day. Cause I'm sure people feel busy.

[00:08:21] They feel like I don't have the time for that, so I have an answer to that. We'll get to it. But if you feel like. Okay, if I'm gonna devote time to something. I should know how it's gonna pay off. And to which I say no. I don't think that's correct. I think that what you need to do is instead pursue the things that you find interesting. That feel like they're pushing you to expand or to refine, but that you don't exactly know how they're gonna pay off on.

[00:08:45] Because the great thing about developing new skill sets is that they will come in handy. When new opportunities arise that you could not have anticipated. I'll give you, here's a random example. Let's say that you listen to the Young and Profiting show and you think to yourself. I [00:09:00] would like to start a podcast.

[00:09:01] I should start a podcast. But you know what Hala is really good at talking. About business and growth. I'm more of a, I'm more of a comedy person, really. I think I'm gonna start a comedy podcast. You start a comedy podcast and let's say that it's very bad, because most comedy podcasts are pretty bad.

[00:09:18] You put this thing out and nobody really listens to it. So maybe you think that this is a failure, but you know what? Maybe it's not. Because in the process of starting this comedy podcast. You also taught yourself a few things about microphones and about audio editing. And maybe you bought some equipment and figured out how to use that.

[00:09:35] And then maybe let's say. I don't know, your friend has a band and they reach out and they're like, we would like to record something. You have some mics and know how to edit stuff, right? Can you just record us? And you say, Sure, why not? And so you do it and it comes out pretty well. And your friend tells other friends and know you got other bands who are coming and asking you for help.

[00:09:53] And eventually you think, maybe I need to start working at a studio. So you start working at a studio and you're recording bands and it's going pretty well. [00:10:00] And then you think, maybe actually I should start my own studio. And then you go and do that, and now you've got yourself a completely new business and a completely new line of work.

[00:10:07] And it all happened because you started a crappy podcast. That nobody listened to because you're bad at comedy. And that is what I like to call the zigzag payoff. When we put ourselves in positions where we are learning. We are also opening new opportunities for growth that we cannot anticipate. And I will tell you, Hala. I'm sure you've experienced this yourself.

[00:10:27] I certainly have the greatest opportunities. That you will experience were the ones that you could not have possibly ever put on the roadmap, and you could have never set a goal for them. I have gotten so much out of being the editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine at the beginning of my career. I had never heard of Entrepreneur Magazine.

[00:10:46] It could not have been part of my goals because I never knew it existed. And what did I do? I instead just continued to push myself to develop new skills and ultimately. Eventually, When this opportunity arose. I had the [00:11:00] necessary things that people were that the people who were hiring the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine position, were looking for one of them.

[00:11:05] For example, I had gotten involved in the video department at Fast Company, which is a magazine I worked at years earlier. Nobody asked me to do it. Did it lead to a TV show? It did not. I didn't get any TV workout of being on video, but I did learn how to be on camera. They were hiring the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, one of the things they wanted was someone who could go out and represent the brand well, which meant being good on camera.

[00:11:27] It was a skill. I didn't know what it was for. I found out what it was for. After push yourself to grow. 

[00:11:32] Hala Taha: I love this concept of zig zag payoff. You're zigging one way and then you ended up learning something else. So you're zagging the other way and becoming super successful. I can think about it with my own journey.

[00:11:43] I remember when I was working at Hot 97. It was a radio station. Funny enough. I started blogging on the side for one of the DJs, DJing, that taught me how to do web SEO, graphic design write. Then I started my own blog when I left a station. And it I wasn't getting paid. I was following my [00:12:00] curiosity, not necessarily the money, which I think is really important. When you're trying to build new skills as a young person.

[00:12:05] Don't follow the money, follow your curiosity, your passion, and just learn. 

[00:12:10] Jason Feifer: I could not agree more. I think that we all need to have at all times a situational awareness of what we know and what we don't know. What can we feel in the gap on that's going to get us to the next step of our career? Earlier in my career when I had a more straightforward career. I now I'm all over the place, but when I was a magazine editor purely for many years. And I can remember looking at a magazine and looking at the jobs, that people were working and saying. Here's what I know how to do, and here are the parts that I don't.

[00:12:44] I know how to edit these short little pieces, but I don't really know how to assign and edit those longer pieces. So I better figure that out. I need the situational awareness, not just to say, Oh, I'm so good that I can do it, but rather to say, Let me put myself in a position where I can learn.

[00:12:59] [00:13:00] Because like you said, the more that you do that you set yourself up for whatever can come next. Now, I think the zigzag payoff is a really wonderful way to think about what your potential career path can be, because what you just described Hala, for your own career and what I've experienced from mine, there's a logic to it.

[00:13:20] You did this, which led to that. Which led to that. Which led to that, right? It's logical as it happens, but you could not have either predicted it or planned it, and it seems like crazy chaos. If you zoom out too far from it. Wait, so she started as, she was blogging at a radio and now she's got this.

[00:13:38] How does that work exactly, but it makes sense. When you actually go step by step. So what we need to do is just always be aware of how we can develop new skills. That can open up that next step for us. Not because that next step is the final step or the best step, but rather because it is contributing to the growth that we need to [00:14:00] eventually get the payoff we're looking for.

[00:14:01] Hala Taha: And now the big biggest excuse that people use when they're talking about gaining new skills is that they don't have the time. A lot of people say if they, especially if they have kids, a lot of people use time as an excuse if they have a day job. They use time as an excuse. But you know what, Everybody has the same amount of time.

[00:14:19] So talk to us about how we can build the time to create new skills. 

[00:14:23] Jason Feifer: Have you ever heard of Parkinson's law? 

[00:14:26] Hala Taha: No. 

[00:14:27] Jason Feifer: Parkinson's law states that work expands to fit the time allotted. So if you have a lot of time to do a project. It will take a lot of time. If you have a small amount of time, it will take a small amount of time.

[00:14:37] This is just a truth. All right, let me set that aside for a second and tell you this. Here's what I've figured out. And speaking as a guy who thinks that I do, I run this national magazine, Entrepreneur magazine. I host two podcasts. I do quite a lot of speaking, so I'm traveling around a lot. I wrote this book.

[00:14:54] I do some television development. I do startup advising. I'm doing a lot and I have a three year old and a seven year [00:15:00] old. And we do not have help at home. I don't have a large team. I am doing all of this myself. So how am I doing this? Here's the answer. Time is like a balloon. If you are to fill a balloon or rather, I think it's important to say what we say often just to remind people, cause this is what you just said, is we say, I don't have the time.

[00:15:20] If only I had the time. I would do that if only, yes, I would love to do that if only I had the time. But nobody just has the time. Nobody has an hour or two to just fill in their schedule. Because of Parkinson's law, because our work will always fill the time that we have. So nobody just has the time.

[00:15:38] Time is like a balloon. You know what we don't say? We don't say, I am going to expand this balloon so that I can fit air into it. That is not how you fill a balloon. You don't do not expand the balloon and then fit air into it. It doesn't work like that. How does it work? You blow air into the balloon and then it expands.

[00:15:55] Similarly, time you do not say, I shall make the [00:16:00] time for something and then I shall do that thing. No, because you will never have that time. Instead, what you do is you add the stuff to your existing schedule. Time expands under pressure just like a balloon expands with air. So when you add more to your day. I will tell you what you do.

[00:16:18] You are forced then to rethink. How you do everything else. Am I doing this efficiently enough? Am I doing this for a good reason? Maybe there are some things that you're doing that you should just flat out drop because it's not actually getting you something. But here's one thing that I did one time, my podcast Problem Solvers. I used to do with this like whole highly produced script thing and it took forever and it was, and I eventually realized, you know what?

[00:16:41] I need to find a more efficient way to do this show. I rethought the entire show and I cut in half the amount of time that it took me to make that show. And then I was able to use that time for other things. The more that you add to yourself. The more you will force yourself to be more efficient and thoughtful about how you [00:17:00] use all of your time. Then you will be able to do more and you will also drop the stuff that doesn't really matter.

[00:17:06] Hala Taha: I love that it forces you to prioritize. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. 

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[00:20:57] shopify.com/profiting.[00:21:00] 

[00:21:02] All right, so let's move on to some entrepreneurial topics. I wanna talk about why entrepreneurial thinking matters to everyone, because we're talking about change. A lot of people think Oh, this is only relevant if you work for yourself, if you're your own boss. But really entrepreneurial thinking and the ability to adapt and reinvent yourself is applicable to everyone.

[00:21:24] So let's talk about your definition of an entrepreneur. 

[00:21:27] Jason Feifer: Very simple. To me, an entrepreneur is someone who makes things happen for themselves. It is not someone who happens to own a business, although those people certainly are entrepreneurs. It is not someone who has any particular career path. I think that we all can learn so much from and think like entrepreneurs in our own lives. That we should all be willing to embrace that term.

[00:21:49] Hala Taha: And do you consider yourself to be an entrepreneur then? 

[00:21:53] Jason Feifer: I do now. I didn't at first. When I got to entrepreneur, ironically. I did not at all. I thought of myself as a [00:22:00] media guy, as an editor. It wasn't really until much later that I realized. That I had thought entrepreneurial about my own career and that I could really lean into it.

[00:22:10] You, one of the big moments of change for me, there was many years ago towards the earlier phase of my time at Entrepreneur, my wife and I, you said, this is my first book and it is but actually there's a little asterisk to that. Which is that my wife and I co-authored a novel together many years ago.

[00:22:27] And so it was a romantic comedy. It has absolutely nothing to do with my work now. And so I, always talk about Build For Tomorrow. My new book is really my first book. But we did write this book together and when this book came out. A really interesting thing happened, Hala. I got two totally different reactions depending on who I was talking to my media friends, to my writer friends.

[00:22:46] When I said that we had sold this romantic comedy, they always said, That's awesome. Congratulations. So cool. And then when I told entrepreneurs about it. They said, Oh, that's interesting. What are you gonna do with that? Which [00:23:00] is to that to the writers having just done the book by itself was an accomplishment to entrepreneurs.

[00:23:08] It had to be the foundation for something else. Because I realized that most people, including the world that I had come from. We think horizontally. We do this and we put it out into the world and we move onto the next thing and we put that out into the world and we move onto the next thing. We put that onto the world and move onto the next thing.

[00:23:23] But entrepreneurs don't think that way. Entrepreneurs think vertically. They think the only reason to do something is because it is the foundation upon which the next thing will be built. So when they saw that I put out a romantic comedy. They thought, What am I gonna do? Am I gonna, I must be doing something with it.

[00:23:39] Am I gonna start running classes on writing romance novels, or what is it gonna be? They didn't know. And the answer was it, I wasn't thinking horizontally. I wasn't thinking vertically at all. I was thinking horizontally. So that realization really forced me to shift the way that I think, and started to make me say, everything that I do should drive towards the next.

[00:23:59] Because [00:24:00] that's the only way to build for tomorrow. Otherwise, if I'm thinking horizontally, if I'm just thinking about how to maybe do the thing that I'm already doing, but do it better, faster, cheaper, then my inclination is always gonna be to clinging as tightly as possible to the thing that I'm already doing. Or to the things that I already know or to whatever came in the past.

[00:24:20] Because that is where growth is going to seem to be for me. It's gonna be in the past. Vertical thinking, thinking about how doing things leads to other things. That everything that you do should be driving towards some kind of growth. That's an unlock. And that's when I started to say, You know what? I can think that way and I can run my career that way and then I can be an entrepreneur.

[00:24:42] Hala Taha: Yeah. And this is a great segue to talk about your book Build For Tomorrow. What was the genesis of this book? Why did you decide that you were gonna put this book out to the world, when you have a podcast that's talks about similar things? 

[00:24:54] Jason Feifer: A couple things happened. Number one, I had this realization early on in my career. Which[00:25:00] early on in my time at entrepreneur rather. Where I realized if you listen to the questions that people ask you, you discovered that what they're really doing when they ask questions is they're telling you what they think your value is to them.

[00:25:16] And if you can take that very seriously, then you can better understand how to serve them. I don't know how, Have you noticed that yourself, like people, you do. You do so much. You have built yourself as an authority in multiple spaces. People must ask you the same questions over and over again.

[00:25:33] When you're out. 

[00:25:34] Hala Taha: Yeah, for sure. 

[00:25:35] Jason Feifer: And so you hear those and you think. If people are asking me those questions, this is what they think I'm an authority on. 

[00:25:41] Hala Taha: 100%. And you can capitalize on that demand. If you pay attention to it.

[00:25:46] Jason Feifer: Right? People were asking me, What are the qualities of a successful entrepreneur?

[00:25:50] That's what the question was. And I realized the reason that they're asking me that is because they see me as a pattern matcher. I'm the guy who gets to talk to lots of people, and therefore I'm [00:26:00] the person who should be able to see across those people and understand what the patterns are. Great. Now I need an answer to that question because I now establish. What people trust me to deliver on.

[00:26:09] And I realized after a lot of talking and thinking and exploring. I spent years on this, that the answer was, the most successful people are the most adaptable. That is the thing that drives success. And so then the question was how? Cuz it's not something that people are born with. It's a skill that they can learn.

[00:26:26] And when the pandemic came along. It created the answer to this question because I got to see. We all got to see in this fascinating way that the same change came to everyone at the same time, but people did different things with it. Some people advanced quickly, some people more slowly, some people clung to the past, and I wanted to know what was the thing that was dividing all these people.

[00:26:54] I realized that change for everybody happens in four phases. [00:27:00] Panic number one, then adaptation the new normal, and then wouldn't go back this moment. Where we say, I have something so new and valuable that I wouldn't wanna go back to a time before I had it. And I felt like if I could understand, what was driving that and how the most adaptable people were getting through those early phases and redefining themselves and their businesses. I would have something that's just really useful and would finally answer that question that people kept asking me all those years ago.

[00:27:29] And that's why I felt like I had to write the book. 

[00:27:31] Hala Taha: I love that. So let's stick on the Covid example because I feel like that's something that everybody can relate to. You just talked about the four different phases. Panicked, adaptation, new normal, wouldn't go back. I love the fact that everything that you put in your book is a new concept.

[00:27:46] A lot of people have fluffy books. I felt like your book was really easy to read. That there was actually a lot of new stories, new concepts, great research. So thank you for that. But let's go through these four steps at a high level and let's use Covid as an example so [00:28:00] that people can start to understand what the faces.

[00:28:01] Jason Feifer: Great. So phase one panic. Look, I'm sure everyone's gonna be familiar with that. Panic is loss, I think is the reason why we experience change with such difficulty. Now, look, the pandemic is a unique experience in that there was very real intangible loss for a lot of people. And so let's not discount that or treat that as if it's a minor thing.

[00:28:26] It's not. But what we often do, whether it's during a global pandemic or just a change at our jobs. We immediately equate change with loss. We say, because this is changing. I will lose this thing that I'm familiar with, this way of doing things or this status that I have or this system that I've built.

[00:28:48] And because I've lost that. I will now lose this other thing. Because what we wanna do, we always wanna know what's coming next. And so we are gonna extrapolate based on whatever information we have. If we see [00:29:00] changes, loss. So we're gonna extrapolate the loss, We're gonna say this change, and therefore that changes and therefore I lose this and therefore I lose that.

[00:29:06] And that suddenly we feel like we're in a tailspin. And so what we need to do to start getting through the panic stage is we need to, one, recognize that this is what we're doing. And then two, drive ourselves to identify gain, because that is there. It was there in the pandemic. To speak to the pandemic specifically, right?

[00:29:27] I think that a lot of people. People who were just worried about their jobs. Let's say during the pandemic, leaving aside all, the sort of health and personal loss. A lot of us, I think were afraid that not only am I going to maybe lose my current job, but I might lose access to my ability to ever do my job or the way that I do my job.

[00:29:46] I was hired in the early days of the pandemic to speak to a pharmaceutical company, a major global pharmaceutical company. And the reason why they wanted me to come in and speak to their team was because their sales people were so used to working in person, [00:30:00] and they had started to identify themselves as in person sales people.

[00:30:04] And they thought to themselves. I don't even know how to begin to do sales virtually. I am not a virtual salesperson. You cannot get me to do this cuz it's not my skillset. And right, you could see how these people were now seeing loss. Instead of opportunity because there was a big opportunity, there in front of them to get good at that, to do it better than others.

[00:30:27] Because look at a moment of great change. They may have been disrupted in the way that they can do sales, but frankly, the people that they were selling to have been disrupted to. And what they need more than anything is someone with solutions to come and say, You know what? Things are crazy right now. I gotcha.

[00:30:42] Here's what we're gonna do. Here's how I'm gonna help you. Like the more that you can step up and do that, you actually have a major opportunity. Where others see loss. You can see gain. You can get ahead. 

[00:30:54] Hala Taha: Yeah. So just sticking on this let's spend a little time on each one of these phases. So we're talking [00:31:00] about panic and loss.

[00:31:01] In your book, you tell this really cute story about your son and how he really hated switching his shoes. And I thought this is such a great example, of like we just love what's familiar and just changing what's familiar can be so hard. So let's talk about the fact that we tend to like things that we already have and that's why we're so scared of change and makes us panic.

[00:31:24] Jason Feifer: So the story that I tell, I appreciate you, you pulling that one out. So my son, who is seven now, but we have been dealing with this with him for years and years. He hates new shoes. Every time that we buy him a new pair of shoes and we buy him a pair of new shoes. When one of two things has happened, either his old shoes have fallen apart or they've become just so smelly that we cannot stand it anymore.

[00:31:49] And so we get these new shoes and he hates them. He refuses to wear them. If we can get them on his feet, he will like stomp around and scream and rip [00:32:00] them off as fast as possible. And I always try to tell him it has not worked because I don't think that his brain can really comprehend this yet. But I always try to tell him.

[00:32:07] Sorry to say these new shoes. First of all, they're just like your old shoes, but also your old shoes were once your new shoes, like the shoes that you want, that we got rid of. You hated those shoes too when they were new and then you came to love them. And so if you loved your old new shoes, you will love these shoes too.

[00:32:29] This is a cycle. Now, he cannot comprehend that. And frankly, I don't think that most of us can comprehend that either, because what we do over and over again is we embrace something new at some time, and then that new thing becomes extremely comfortable. And then we believe that whatever comes next cannot possibly be as good as the current old thing that we have.

[00:32:53] And we forget that you know what? We come from the future. We are products of [00:33:00] change. Everything that we like. If you zoom out far enough, everything that we like and know. Was once considered terrible and scary to previous people. But we don't think that about ourselves. We think that the things that we have are new and great.

[00:33:13] Look, we all do it with music, right? Like the music we listen to when we were 15 is the greatest music we've ever heard. And then the music that kids listen to when we're 35 or 40 is absolute garbage. And we cannot believe that anyone would tolerate it. And you know what? That cycle will just repeat itself forever and ever.

[00:33:29] And there's something natural about it, but we have an opportunity to step outside of it and to say, I'm just going to take on faith. That this new thing that I have, even though it's not as familiar and comfortable as the old thing, is going to have some kind of value. And my great challenge right now is not to push against it, but rather to try to figure out what that value is and maximize it as fast as possible.

[00:33:56] Hala Taha: And I love that saying we come from the feature. Just remembering that [00:34:00] this has happened before, right? History repeats itself. So something that I love about you, Jason, and for those who may not be familiar with your work. You're like this history book, in my opinion. You've learned so much about the past, so many different stories.

[00:34:13] So I think this would be a fun place to talk about what were some of the normal things that we take for granted today, that people were really scared of back in the day. 

[00:34:23] Jason Feifer: Oh yeah. I appreciate that so much. I had mentioned teddy bears earlier, so I'll just, I'll pay off on that one in case people were curious.

[00:34:30] All right, so there was a national moral crisis in America in 1907 over the teddy bear. The teddy bear. People thought that teddy bear was dangerous. Damaging schools were banning teddy bears. Priests were preaching against teddy bears. Now, what was happening here. What was happening was that there was an, know, we gotta go back to the social standards of 1907. Which are very different from ours.

[00:34:55] Where the belief was that women or rather girls had one [00:35:00] job and that was to grow up and become mothers and dolls. When they played with dolls, the belief was the doll helped them develop a maternal instinct. So you had these traditionalists in 1907 who were seeing teddy bears who, which was a brand new thing.

[00:35:14] Teddy bears were invented only a few years earlier in Germany, and then they'd come over to America and they'd become a big sensation. And they were seeing girls set aside the dolls and play with teddy bear. And they were saying, if the girl is playing with a bear instead of a doll, she will not develop a maternal instinct.

[00:35:30] And then she will of course not grow up to be a mother and then that will be the end of the human race. That was their real belief. . That's crazy. But I will tell you that we do versions of that too. Where we see some kind of change and we draw it out to the end possible degree. We say that, Oh, because.

[00:35:53] Children are now. I Just to use another societal example from now, because children are now communicating on [00:36:00] social media. They will never learn how to interact in person. And they will have social issues forever. And look, that's not to say that there isn't like downside to using social media and that people can't have negative experiences, but like that is just not being born out.

[00:36:16] People have learned how to use new things in productive and unproductive ways. And that's just a cycle. That's how it is. So over and over again, I think what we tend to do is that we tend to confuse the thing that we're seeing with the foundational change that it represents. What I have found throughout my own studies in history is that we fear that new things will replace old things.

[00:36:45] That's why people feared that the teddy bear will replace the doll and therefore everything that they associated is good with the doll. But that never happens. Instead, what happens over and over again in our own personal lives and also societally, is that instead of [00:37:00] replacement, what we see is integration.

[00:37:02] We see that we take the best of the old and the best of the new, and we combine them together. Which is the reason why children today play with teddy bears and dolls. And it's the reason why we have cars and bicycles. And it's the reason why we listened to Spotify. Which was once the recorded music technology was when it came out in the turn of the century, was absolutely, it was treated as just the end of times to musicians.

[00:37:33] Musicians hated recorded music technology, they hated radio. Now we listen to Spotify and we also sing to our children both. We do both of those things. And in work, we aren't all going to never go back to an office again. We are all not going to just completely alter the way that we work in some kind of unfamiliar way.

[00:37:51] We will take the best of the old. We will take the best of new. We will combine them together and we have an opportunity at all stages to be an active [00:38:00] participant in doing that. 

[00:38:01] Hala Taha: What like a big lesson right there. There's always a middle ground, right? There's always a place where the new and the old can meet and live in harmony.

[00:38:09] I think that's such a great lesson in itself. So before we move on to the next phase. Just one more like foundational concept. In your book you talk about the sisyphean and cycle that happens in the panic phase. It's based on the character from Greek mythology. Who is doomed to roll a boulder up and down a hill for eternity.

[00:38:27] Talk to us about how that's related to the panic phase. 

[00:38:31] Jason Feifer: So that comes from the sisyphean cycle of technology panic comes from a researcher like brilliant technology researcher named Amy Orben. Who was trying to understand why these fears repeat themselves over time. Why do we look back in time and see people writing about how radio is going to be addictive?

[00:38:48] And then tech television is going to be addictive, and now here we have with social media is going to be addictive. And so she broke down, in this paper that I really love these four phases in which the cycle happens. And [00:39:00] look, it's a whole detailed thing. The very brief of it is that what she sees is that there's a new thing, and people are concerned because it appears to impact. What they consider to be a vulnerable population.

[00:39:10] Typically children, but also women because there's a lot of a lot of men out there who think that they know better. So once there's enough little kind of worrying bubbling in the culture, media picks up on it because of course media's very interested in what people are concerned about.

[00:39:22] And so starts reporting on it and then politicians say, Aha, here's something to get worked up about. And now they're like, hearings being held. Once the politicians are very interested, money starts to become available to study these things, to figure out what's really going on. And so scientists now have funding available to start to do research. Into what are the the long term ramifications of X or Y change.

[00:39:46] But here's the problem. Science takes time. Science is a process. It takes many years to come to a good answer. And what we typically see is that a scientist will publish something and then somebody else will review it and they'll say I don't know if that's quite right. And they'll do a kind of different study and we'll eventually get to a better place [00:40:00] of understanding.

[00:40:00] But this process of the sisyphean cycle doesn't really have time for that. And politicians certainly don't have time for that because politicians want answers now. So what happens is the first alarming studies from the first people. Who do these studies get trotted out in the halls of Congress or whatever, and you get crazy kooks or just true believers.

[00:40:20] Who don't really have their methodology quite right. Like Fredric Wertham, who was the psychologist who claimed decades ago that comic books, were incredibly dangerous to to children. Fredric Wertham had a whole big hearing in front of Congress, and it led to this massive censorship in the comic book industry was completely terrible.

[00:40:38] And it's stifled creativity for a generation. It was awful. But this is what happens. And then so anyway, the early science gets picked up by the politicians. The politicians make a lot of hay out of it. And then of course. They don't either don't do that much, or they pass something that is meaningless, but makes people feel like something was done.

[00:40:53] Ultimately, in the end, nothing really gets accomplished. Everybody spun their wheels for a long time, and then we all move on to [00:41:00] the next thing because then some other new panic comes along and the media picks up on some new thing. And we start the process all over again without having learned anything.

[00:41:06] And I think that there's an important lesson here for individuals, and that is that we do not have to put ourselves through this, through our own versions of this. You don't have to listen to every fear mongering crazy thing that you hear in the news, and you also don't have to get worked up every time that somebody says, You know what?

[00:41:24] This terrible thing is going to happen. Because what we instead should be focused on is short circuiting that entirely and saying. Okay, there's a new thing. Is this valuable to me? That's the most important question. Is this valuable to me? Possibly the answer is no. That's okay. But possibly the answer is, You know what?

[00:41:40] I'm going to see if I can hop on this before other people can, because if you can do that. You will be sitting there with a great business or great idea or some kind of great growth, while everybody else is just spinning themselves into circles in the dust. And that is a crazy way to be.

[00:41:56] Hala Taha: I bet you as you're reading through headlines. You read them in such a different way [00:42:00] than everyone else.

[00:42:00] Now you probably see right past through the Vs. . 

[00:42:05] Jason Feifer: I do the most important question. I think whenever I, whenever you see this kind of stuff is. Did this happen before? And if it did, possibly the reason that people are concerned is different, than what is actually happening. I always look at this stuff differently now, and I encourage others to do as well.

[00:42:24] Hala Taha: And now a quick break from our sponsors. This episode of YAP is brought to you by JustWorks. Attention, small and medium business owners. Are you looking for an easier way to onboard and manage remote and in-person employees? Are you doing HR all by yourself using multiple disparate tools? Young and Profiteers, there is certainly an easier and more cost effective way to run your HR, and that's JustWorks.

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[00:44:00] This episode of YAP is brought to you by Sabio. I know so many of you listeners out there are looking to make a career change. Something that's gonna bring you more financial security. Make you Young and Profiting, allow you to work from home and give you a better work life balance.

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[00:45:41] This episode of YAP is brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:45:44] You guys may know that Jordan Harbinger is my all time favorite podcaster. So much so that I've willed him to become my podcast mentor and we now talk every single day. In fact, he's in my Slack channel. The Jordan Harbinger Show is the absolute best show for Young and [00:46:00] Profiteers to add to the rotation.

[00:46:01] This is the only show I really recommend The Jordan Harbinger Show was named Best of Apple 2018, and is aimed at making you a more informed, more critical thinker. And in each episode, Jordan unpacks his guest wisdom and to practical nuggets that you can then use to improve your life. It's very similar to YAP in terms that there's no fluff and you always walk away learning something.

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[00:47:23] Okay, let's move on to phase two adaptation. So that means change is coming, right? So the second phase is all about becoming comfortable with adaptation. What do we need to know about that? 

[00:47:33] Jason Feifer: Okay, so one of the things that I think is important to do is something we've already talked about, which is to work your next job.

[00:47:40] The more that you can set yourself up for adaptation, to always be focused on those opportunity set B. The more you are going to have more to draw from in a moment of change. So when change comes to you, after the panic kind of settles, you can say, What else do I know? What else have I learned?

[00:47:56] What skill sets do I have that maybe I wasn't fully tapping [00:48:00] into? That's really valuable. I'll tell you one other thing that I think is really critical to do. Obviously the book has a whole bunch of examples, but I'll tell you one other thing, and that is to make a separation between what you do and why you do it.

[00:48:13] I think that oftentimes the greatest challenge we have is that we identify too closely with the product of our work. With the output of our work, right? Hala, if you were to only think of yourself as a podcaster, I, you do so many things that I'm sure that's not, You won't wake up every day and think, I am just a podcaster.

[00:48:31] But if you did, then if tomorrow the podcasting industry just took an absolute dump. Then you would feel like, Oh my God, now I'm nothing. Now I have nothing. Because you identified with the product of your work. But if you can instead dig deeper, identify the core value that you have, that does not change. That is not subject to big changes, then at that point, you know what changes and what doesn't.

[00:48:59] And you can [00:49:00] feel steady in moments of disruption. So for me, for example, I spent a long time thinking to myself, I started in newspapers. I thought, I'm just a newspaper reporter. And then I thought, I'm a magazine editor, but now I have this other way of thinking about myself, and it is this. I tell stories in my own voice.

[00:49:16] That's my mission for myself. I tell stories in my own voice. Listen to that. I tell stories, not magazine stories, not newspaper stories, not podcast stories, not books. Take one away from me and I still have a million other ways to tell stories in my own voice. I am now setting the terms in which I will do the work, and I think we all need to push ourselves to have some version of that.

[00:49:38] Something where we know. What we have to offer regardless of what changes and how when one door closes, we know how to open another. That is going to give you some grounding, that you will need for the next phases of this journey. 

[00:49:53] Hala Taha: I completely agree. I think about my own journey. I've always wanted to be a positive voice for my generation.

[00:49:59] When I was [00:50:00] 20 years old, I thought I was gonna be a singer and that's how I was gonna accomplish it. Then I thought I was gonna be on the radio, then I thought I was gonna be like this blogger. But the platform always changed. The avenue always changed, but the mission never did. So I completely agree with what you're saying.

[00:50:15] Jason Feifer: I love that and I love that phrase that you have there a positive voice for my generation. Because you can see, and people should really step back. And watch how once you have a filter like that, everything else flows from it. Even the name of your show is a version of that thing that you just said.

[00:50:33] A positive voice for my generation. Okay. My generation there. You have Young in your name and then a positive voice. You're talking about Profiting, you're talking about growth, right? Once you have that filter. It shapes literally everything that you do. And I'm sure ha there've probably been people who bring you opportunities and maybe they even pay well.

[00:50:52] But you look at them and you say, But you know what? This is not really a part of being a positive voice for my generation, and therefore I understand why I should say [00:51:00] no to this because it's going to be a distraction. 

[00:51:02] Hala Taha: 100% helps you figure out what you need to say no to. So one more question in terms of add adaptation.

[00:51:08] Why do we need to overcome the fear of permanence? So fear often feels like it's forever. Why do we need to change that thinking? 

[00:51:16] Jason Feifer: The answer is because we will constantly be changing. Everything that we do will eventually feel old. But it's interesting. I give you a something that Katy Milkman told me.

[00:51:27] She's a Wharton professor.

[00:51:29] Hala Taha: I love her.

[00:51:29] Jason Feifer: She's fantastic. She said one of the problems that we have is that we think that everything that we do must be a long-term commitment. And therefore it feels very scary to try something new because we feel like we must. We must forever commit to it. But if we were to just think of things as experiments. That everything that we're going to try is simply an experiment.

[00:51:51] We're gonna run an experiment for some amount of time. It doesn't mean that we fully committed to it. Then suddenly everything feels a little different. It feels it's just an experiment. Might as well try it. I'll see what happens. Can't hurt. [00:52:00] Similarly I just interviewed, she's not in the book.

[00:52:03] Annie Duke is not former poker player. Bestselling author who's a decision making expert. I just interviewed her about this new book that she has about Quitting called Quit. And she said, it's helpful to think of things in terms of dating. Imagine what would happen if you had to marry the first person that you went on a date with

[00:52:23] It would, your approach to dating would be pretty different, wouldn't it? Like you wouldn't go. It would take a very long time to even try to go on a date. You might be so paralyzed with fear that you never go on a date. But the reason why we are able to date, if we're in that phase of our lives, is because we can quit.

[00:52:40] We can try. We can go on a date. We can see if somebody is compatible. We can try that out for a while. And if it doesn't work out, we can quit. And that's what we need to do with everything else. We can try out new ideas. We try out new opportunities. Everything that we're doing we're dating ideas. We're dating opportunities, and we should be able to [00:53:00] walk away from them and say, That wasn't so good, but maybe I learned something.

[00:53:04] And I can take that learning and apply it to something else, but I don't have to fully commit to that think permanent. The idea of permanent really holds us back from trying anything, because if something's gonna be permanent. We gotta make sure that it's the best thing possible and there is no perfect and there's no way to know if something's gonna be perfect until you start doing it.

[00:53:24] Hala Taha: Great advice. All right, let's move on to the third phase. New normal. So change has arrived. It's inescapable. This is where we have to embrace this new change. So what's your guidance for this step? 

[00:53:36] Jason Feifer: So one of the most important things I think that we can do is to build off of actually something that we just previously talked about is to treat failure as data.

[00:53:46] I think we struggle with failure. Understandably failure's hard every time that I've failed to something. It's been a real gut punch. But what if we instead just [00:54:00] reframe every negative experience as, what did I learn from this? This had to have told me something. And what is it? I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are so grateful for the failures that they went through, because it taught them what people needed and what they didn't.

[00:54:21] It taught them what was good about their idea and what wasn't. There are so many classic stories Stewart Butterfield, had a failing video game company and then decided to spin out the internal communication. The system that they had built for the video game into its own company, and that became Slack and then that was the success.

[00:54:41] There are endless versions of that, and I think that the more that we can, and it's hard. I know it's really hard, but we're gonna go through this, this phase of new normal. We're gonna have adapted. We're gonna have tried to figure out what new things do we have to work with? We're gonna try to implement some of them. We're gonna try new things and they're not always going to work.

[00:54:59] But [00:55:00] when you fail, something that other people do not. You learn something by being on the front lines of that failure that can inform the next thing that you do. So it's worth stepping back and just saying, What did I learn from that? Because when you drain the emotion out of that. It gives you a whole new way to process it.

[00:55:18] One other quick anecdote on this is I interviewed Michael Dell of Dell. He told me that he actually keeps mementos from the company's failures in his office, like products that failed. And the reason is not because it's a kind of graveyard of bad ideas, but rather because he wants to remind himself and his team, that they learned so much from trying, taking a risk, doing something that didn't work out. Informed the next step that they took, and that step led to success.

[00:55:56] So these wonderful failures deserve a place in his [00:56:00] office because they drove growth to. 

[00:56:02] Hala Taha: It's so interesting that you're talking about this. I interview a lot of people. I've been through my own up and downs, and lately. Whenever somebody talks about failure, I have an image of a house. And every time you fail, the house collapses into the foundation and the foundation gets more compact.

[00:56:20] And more strong. And then you build the next house, and then maybe that crashes down, but your foundation gets more compact, more strong. And I just think about my own journey. I was rejected by radio. I was rejected by tv, but then by the time I had my podcast, my foundation was so strong that nobody could tear down my house.

[00:56:36] And so I always think about that analogy now, and you reminded me of that. 

[00:56:41] Jason Feifer: I love that analogy. It's a really great visual. It also is just, it's true like cities are built on top of the compact of fa of their previous versions. When anthropologists go and excavate sites. They find basically centuries worth of communities just compact underneath them.[00:57:00] 

[00:57:00] This is exactly what we do, and the greatness of everything that we have is built upon the compacted failure of everything that came before. 

[00:57:08] Hala Taha: Okay, step number four. That is, we wouldn't go back, so the wouldn't go back phase is actually the most important phase. Why? 

[00:57:17] Jason Feifer: Because this is the moment where you say, I have something so new and valuable that I wouldn't want to go back to a time before I had it.

[00:57:22] This is the payoff for this whole crazy thing that we've experienced. And again, this has happen. This could happen in large and small ways, right? This could be just something that changes at your work and a year later you say, I'm I got a promotion and I'm so much better for it.

[00:57:36] But it just all started from this very uncomfortable thing. Or it could be that some, the pandemic came and you lost your job and you had to figure it out. And now you have a whole different career wave. You built a car. Who knows, right? Whatever it is, this is the most important one. And to get there, we need to reconsider the impossible.

[00:57:52] I'll tell you a quick story. There's a woman in Baltimore, her name is Lena. She has a company called Lena's Wigs, and she operated Lena's wigs as a storefront, a storefront. [00:58:00] People walk in off the street and then the pandemic arrived. And she could no longer operate as a storefront anymore. She didn't know what to do.

[00:58:07] So she's looking for solutions. The only one she can come to is something that she was aware of. This is an option, but she'd never taken it seriously. And that is appointment only viewing. To make her company appointment only. You gotta make an appointment to come in and look at a wig. Now, why did she never do that before?

[00:58:22] Because that sounded like a terrible way to run a business. Why add friction to your customer experience? You wanna just let people walk in and at their leisure. Which is why she'd run it as a storefront. And frankly, she had also hired a person to greet the people who come in off the street like a normal store would.

[00:58:40] But she cannot operate as a storefront. So she goes to appointment only, and when she does. She discovers two amazing things. Number one, customers are happier. Number two, sales and profits go up. Why? Two reasons. Number one, people who walk in off the street do not buy wigs. They don't buy wigs. You know what they do?

[00:58:57] They like to look at wigs. They don't buy wigs. [00:59:00] So the person who is coming in off the street. Is not her customer and she was spending money on a person to greet these people who are going to come in off the street and never buy something. Now, number two, who is her customer? Her customer is someone who is shopping generally for a very personal reason religious or a medical reason.

[00:59:17] Those people aren't very happy to have a private appointment. Very happy to explore wigs without a bunch of randos coming in off the street. So as Lena was operating her company the way that she thought she had to, she was actually creating a worse experience for her best customers, and she was spending money on people who would never spend money on her.

[00:59:40] That is a crazy way to run a business, but that made sense. It made sense because she had split into to what she thought was possible and what she thought was impossible. Possible running a storefront impossible appointment. And then she was forced to reconsider the impossible to say, What if the ideas that are best [01:00:00] for me were ones that I actually left outside my box?

[01:00:04] What if I actually need to look around and say the things that I thought were the best ideas are no longer working? What happens if I try something that seemed too difficult or too challenging, or too impossible? And when we do that, I will tell you, I hear stories about this all the time. When we push ourselves to do that. We discover that there is so much growth left for us, and it came from places that we didn't take seriously.

[01:00:35] We must as this guy Brian Burkey, who's also a Wharton professor. Talked to a lot of Wharton professors, he said, A moment of crisis forces us to shift the window on what we collectively take seriously, to shift the window on what we're willing to take seriously. We have options. We have infinite options.

[01:00:50] We narrow in on what we think the good options are, and I will tell you something, we're not correct. There are other good options available and what we need to do is push ourselves [01:01:00] to find that better one. And when we do that, we will say, of course I wouldn't want to go back to the time before I had that.

[01:01:07] Hala Taha: Amazing. Guys, Young and Profiteers. I want you to go pick up Jason's book Build for Tomorrow. He also has a podcast called Build for Tomorrow. Jason, we always ask the same couple of questions to wrap up the show. The first one is actionable advice. So what does one actionable thing are Young and Profiteers can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

[01:01:27] Jason Feifer: Okay, here's what I want you to do. Grab a piece of paper, write these words on it. I will do the best work with the resources available. That is not a sexy phrase, but it is my motto. And the reason it is because. It is a reminder to me that I cannot compare myself against what, I would be doing if I had more resources, more time, more money, more people, more whatever.

[01:01:51] Instead, I wanna focus on what I can do with the resources available. What is actually possible for me to [01:02:00] do, and how can I be smarter about it? Do not overwhelm yourself with comparisons against what you simply cannot do. Work within the resources available, you will succeed. 

[01:02:11] Hala Taha: That's fantastic and so practical.

[01:02:14] Okay, so last question. What is your secret to profiting in life? 

[01:02:19] Jason Feifer: I think that my secret to profiting in life has been that relationships matter above all else. It's funny, I could probably have run a different playbook and I probably could have been a little more cutthroat in the way that I did things in my career.

[01:02:34] And I probably could have alienated more people and possibly been making more money now, but to me that's not profiting. To me, profiting is doing really well and building every part of your life. Chip Gaines, Magnolia Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines. I love Chip. And Chip and I were talking once and he said that, the thing that is most important to him is building a network.

[01:02:59] It's about [01:03:00] identifying the people that matter and building something so that they all can thrive and succeed inside of it. And I really love that and I have found that when I do that. Opportunities come, this book that I, that we've been talking about, Build for Tomorrow. Where it began on a playground with my son's friend's dad, who I was just chit chatting with as we killed time on a playground.

[01:03:23] And I was telling him about my podcast and he said he'd check it out. Turns out he's a book agent and a pretty successful one. And his name is Matt Black. We became really good friends and we was talking about this book and then in the very beginning of the pandemic. He calls me and he says, Jason, we've been talking about doing a book on change for a long time.

[01:03:43] Everyone is going through massive change right now. It's time to do it. Now. Could I have gone around and been like, you know what I could be a fancy author. I should find like the biggest shot agent in the world. No, Matt is a great agent. He knows his stuff and he's a friend and we built a relationship. And that means that he's gonna care about me and I care [01:04:00] about him and we're gonna do great things together.

[01:04:01] And that is how I run basically every part of my business. I work with people who I build relationships with and it has gotten me very far. 

[01:04:08] Hala Taha: And not to mention. Probably more fulfilling. You've got a lot of friends along the way. It's not all about money. 

[01:04:14] Jason Feifer: Totally. 

[01:04:15] Hala Taha: Yeah. So Jason, where can everyone learn more about you and everything that you do?

[01:04:19] Jason Feifer: So you could pick up the book Build for Tomorrow. I hope you will. You can find it anywhere you get books. If you cannot think of a place that sells books. I will help you out jasonfeifer.com/book is a great place. Also, if you wanna reach out to me. I would love to hear, and I've actually Hala, I have heard from many Young and Profiting listeners from being on your show before.

[01:04:39] So I love that. I will always respond. You can find me on Instagram @heyfeifer. You can find me on Linkedin just search my name, Jason Pfeiffer. I'd love to hear from you and hear what you think of the book. 

[01:04:49] Hala Taha: Thanks, Jason. It was such a pleasure. 

[01:04:52] Jason Feifer: Thank you.

[01:04:52] Hala Taha: There you have at Young and Profiteers number 188 is officially a wrap. Jason Pfeiffer's work is [01:05:00] so beneficial to every entrepreneur and aspiring entrepreneur, who hopes to shape the world. Young and Profiteers you have to remember that we must accept that the future is not optional. We can't opt out of it.

[01:05:13] We can't slow it down. We can't stop it. We can, however, participate in the future and benefit from it. And that means we need to get good at change. We need to be able to start to see the opportunity, that change brings before everyone else does. That's gonna be the key advantage and what a blessing that we have gotten to speak with Jason Feifer for the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, my friend that has been interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs for nearly a decade, and who's known to be the champion of change.

[01:05:48] Jason breaks down change into four different phases, panic, adaptation, new normal, and wouldn't go back. A great example for us to quickly walk through is Covid. At first we [01:06:00] panicked. Planning seemed nearly impossible. Our lives became completely unfamiliar, and then we slowly adapted the dust cleared and we saw what was possible.

[01:06:10] The people who adapted first one the most. During this time period, many people started new businesses, capitalized on this new change, started new business model, smart businesses adapted by moving online. Working from home became the new normal, and shopping was more convenient, door to door delivery. We got comfortable with this new way of life, and now we seem to be never going back to the way it was.

[01:06:38] And so I think it's important to remember these four phases and like I mentioned before, to start to look at things that are happening in the world from a bird's eye perspective and realize, Oh, I've seen this story before. Everyone's in panic mode. How do I move to the adaptation mode quicker than everyone else and [01:07:00] capitalize on what's going on instead of being afraid of it?

[01:07:03] I also appreciated the unique way that Jason defines entrepreneurship. This is really meaningful to me because I recently switched our Young and Profiting podcast category from education to entrepreneurship and business. Because it's been four or five years since I started this podcast, and now I'm an entrepreneur.

[01:07:19] I'm a business owner, and a lot of the things that we talk about end up being about entrepreneurship and business. But I know that not all my listeners are entrepreneurs, but when I wasn't an entrepreneur. I was listening to entrepreneurship podcast and trying to get entrepreneurial thinking, and it's important for everyone to think like an entrepreneur. That's beneficial to all, no matter where you are right now.

[01:07:42] So Jason defines entrepreneur differently, and I'm in complete alignment with what he says. It's not about having a particular job or income level. An entrepreneur is someone who makes things happen for themselves. And we say that again for everyone in the back. An entrepreneur is someone who makes things [01:08:00] happen for themselves.

[01:08:01] Anyone who listens to a podcast like Young and Profiting fits into this category, and I don't care what career you have, I don't care if you work for someone else or if you work for yourself or for nobody at all. If you make things happen for yourself or you aspire to do you are an entrepreneur and you should be listening to podcasts.

[01:08:17] That gets you thinking in an entrepreneurial way. And this conversation today applies to everyone who wants to build. Because we are always building on shifting ground. The world is moving so fast and we need to understand the best way to navigate all of this. And although we live in a continuously changing world. There is a happy ending.

[01:08:36] There's always the good that comes with the bad. It's that wouldn't go back phase the most important phase of all. For example, we talked about covid, but let's talk about the bubonic plate. It killed 60% of Europe in the 13 hundreds and it changed the way we work forever. When businesses wanted to open back up, there was a shortage of labor and business owners had to compete for labor for the first time.

[01:08:57] The people who have been surfs, who are [01:09:00] essentially slaves working for free, were filing now in a position to negotiate and demand for payment for their work. And thus, for the first time ever. The concept of employee contracts and getting compensated for labor was born. And millions of people died for us to reach this economic achievement.

[01:09:17] But still, would we ever wanna go back to a time before the bubonic plague. When everyone was essentially a slave before the modern economy as we know it? Similarly, would we ever wanna go back to a time where we were forced to go to the office every day and waste away our precious time, the most valuable asset that we have?

[01:09:36] Hell no, we wouldn't want to. And so these are epic wouldn't go back moments, and they're great examples of the good, that can come out of the bad. So I'll leave you with this today. 

[01:09:46] YAP fam, we may not be able to predict what's coming, but there is work that we can do right now. We can begin to build trust inside ourselves to feel confidence that we can make the most out of our future.

[01:09:58] Change will always be a part of our [01:10:00] journey. We'll only do ourselves harm if we clinging to the past. If we believe that yesterday contains all the answers, it doesn't. We must build and there's only one direction to build in. It's toward tomorrow. Thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.

[01:10:16] And be sure to check out Jason Feifer new book, Build for Tomorrow. It's an incredible read and I also love his podcast. It's called the same thing, Build for Tomorrow. Everything is linked in the show notes and hit me up on social Young and Profiteers. I love to hear what you think about each episode.

[01:10:31] I've been getting a lot of traction on Linkedin lately. You can find me @yapwithhala. We're also on YouTube if you prefer to watch these videos. My YouTube is on fire these days. Big thanks to my YAP team. As always, this is your host, Hala Taha, signing off.[01:11:00]