Jason Feifer: evaluation

Transcript context

…Can you just explain what that is and why that is so important to you? Oh, yeah, sure. In front of you right now, you, Lenny, you everyone listening, watching, there are two sets of opportunities. Opportunity set A and opportunity set B, opportunity set A is everything that's asks of you. If you have a job, it's what your boss expects of you. If you have your own company, it's what everybody expects of you. Doing good at those things is really important. That's a measurement of success. That's opportunity set A, everything that's asked of you. Then there's opportunity set B and opportunity set B is what's available to you, even though nobody's asking you to do it. That could be, again, if you have a job, that could be taking on new responsibilities or joining a new team or something. Personally, it could be pursuing a hobby. It could be starting a podcast because you like listening to podcasts, anything. What I have found throughout my own career is that opportunity set B is always more important, infinitely more important. The thing is that if you only focus on opportunity set A, then you are only qualified to do the things that you're already doing. Opportunity set B is where growth happens and where you push yourself in different directions. I found a long time ago that it was just really helpful to think about these two things. Oftentimes, maybe we don't do opportunity set B because we don't know how it's going to pay off, or we don't know where we're going to find the time. I have always found, always, that engaging in these things of what is available to me, what's available to me right now around me, and nobody's asking me to do, leads to the next growth either because it turns into an actual opportunity or because it informs some future opportunity. I got to Entrepreneur Magazine, zero, zero people, when I became editor in chief, zero people said, "You should hit the speaking circuit. You should get really good at being interviewed on podcasts. You should write a book." Nobody said any of that. My job was to make a good magazine and direct the editorial of the brand, but all those things were available to me, and once I recognized that, I realized that I can pursue them and in doing so, also think differently about who I am. Am I a magazine editor? Not really anymore. That's one of the things that I do now. I think of myself as an entrepreneur, as a person who is now in the business of helping others. I'm an entrepreneur who helps entrepreneurs. That's what I think of myself as. I only got there because I was thinking, I am here and therefore I can get there. Nobody's ever going to ask me to do it. I have to do it myself. It's the thing that I always think about, and it's the thing that keeps me up at night. What am I doing now that is leading me to something else? I'm the only one who can figure it out. Beautiful. It reminds me of a recent podcast guest's advice, which is the best way to track your progress in your career and in life too is just measuring how many, "Oh shit" moments you have because those are the moments where you're growing, you're doing something. I think maybe it's an example of an opportunity set B where it wasn't the default path that's like, "oh, I think I should do this, even though it's really hard."…

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