313: What’s the pebble in your shoe? Pivoting from Wall Street to RadReads with Khe Hy

Pivot with Jenny Blake

Is change whispering to you? For Khe Hy, a former investment banker on the fast track of keeping up with the corporate Joneses, the discomfort from following the status quo first started feeling like a pebble in his shoe. “Psst! There’s more out there for you,” it whispered.

In this conversation, we talk about his decision to leave Black Rock, how he follows his instincts when building his new content and education business, and how sneaky “shoulds” and insecurity often stem from unmet needs we had growing up.

Be sure also to check out Khe’s episodes on Free Time: 163: Leveraging Idea Kernels to Create Compelling Content with Khe Hy, and 129: The $10K Work Framework with Khe Hy.

More About Khe: Khe Hy is the founder and CEO of RadReads, an online education company that helps professionals lead productive, examined, and joyful lives. Khe is creator of the $10K Work productivity method and teaches the popular cohort-based course Supercharge Your Productivity. RadReads provides guides, trainings, and coaching for over 36,000 professionals to help them gain back free time, scale their impact and make their little dent in the universe.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

• Make an angel investment in yourself: Designate (and save) an amount of money you can afford to lose that would give you enough time to pursue your ideas and experiment to see what sticks.
• The 5 Whys Concept can help you identify the real feelings and motivations for your decisions. Ask yourself why you did something. Then ask why the answer is important to you. Then why that answer is important to you. After 5 “whys” you will almost always be at the root of what you want or feel.
• Manage your energy instead of your time. Email, for example, can usually be done when feeling low-energy rather than using your best and highest energy on it. Techniques like RIZE (Reach Inbox Zero Everywhere) can help you do it quickly, efficiently, and in appropriate amounts.

✅ Try This Next: Twice a week, take a piece of paper and a pen, go somewhere quiet, and reflect on a question about your life or business. Ask yourself, "What is the pebble in my shoe?” or, “If everything went great, what would my life look like in ten years?” This is less about having precise answers and more about creating the space for reflection.

📘Books:

• Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business
• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, Life After College
• The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Mate

🔗Resources:

• Khe on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn
• Courses: Supercharge Your Productivity, Life Operating System, $10K Work Accelerator
• Free Time Operations Dashboard
• Video: Sheng Wang on Coscto Pants
• Articles: The Magic of Doing $10,000 Per Hour Work, How to be the Chief Unblocking Officer (Article), CNN: Meet Khe He, the Oprah for Millennials

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

• 282: The Honor Roll Hangover with Melody Wilding
• 296: Top 3 Do’s and Dont’s When Leaving a Corporate Job
• 272: Love It or Leave It with Samantha Clarke
• Khe on Free Time 163: Leveraging Idea Kernels to Create Compelling Content with Khe Hy and 129: The $10K Work Framework with Khe Hy

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💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot courses on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move, Holding 1:1 Career Conversations With Your Team, Managing Introverts, Coaching New Hires, and Coaching New Managers

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📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/313

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