John Tarnoff: The Hidden Power of Career Reinvention

Speaker A: Welcome to the Disrupt yout Career Podcast, brought to you by Claire Harbour and Antoine Tirard.

Speaker B: We're passionate about helping everyone find fulfillment in their work life.

Speaker A: We believe that big, messy, uncharted career changes are inevitable, and it's up to you to decide.

Speaker B: Will you take control and disrupt or allow yourself to be disrupted?

Speaker A: We wrote the book about it, and now we share here our conversations with other thinkers in this crucial area.

Speaker B: Settle down, um, and get ready to listen to this dose of wisdom.

Speaker A: So in this times episode of the Disrupt yout Career Podcast, I'm really happy to be having with me John Tarnoff. He's a career transition coach, an author, and a former Hollywood executive who helps mid and late career professionals reinvent their careers with purpose and clarity. Through his book Boomer, his coaching programs, and his courses, he offers a structured approach to navigating change in a rapidly evolving world of work. John, thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker B: Pleasure to be here, Claire. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker A: All right, let's get straight away going into the story really behind the reinvention that you went through. You spent decades in Hollywood before your career was disrupted, and I'm wondering, what did that moment force you to confront?

Speaker B: I had this. I wouldn't say tempestuous, but it was certainly a volatile career in a volatile business. A, uh, lot of change going on. I like to say that the rest of the world has become as volatile as Hollywood always was in that we took job transitions for granted because we were all buffeted about by box office failures and successes and management changes and creative differences and all of these kinds of strange fragments of the way the business worked and still works. So I became used to needing to look for a job every few years or sooner in some cases. Some of it had to do with my performance or lack thereof. Most of the time, it was because I was looking for new opportunities and was able to transition into a new job. But a significant part of time it was that I was fired, right? I was fired from a job for whatever reason. And so in my TEDx talk in 2012, I did the numbers on this, and I thought, well, I need to prove some validation here for why I'm standing up and talking to you about careers. And I came up with this idea, this number that I've been fired 39% of the time in my Hollywood career. And I said it kind of as a joke, and people laughed nervously because, I mean, who talks about getting fired and puts a number on it, right? So the point that I was making was that we've evolved our, uh, thinking about career transitions over the last 20, 30, maybe even 40 years from understanding that jobs are much less permanent than they used to be. When I was growing up, if you got a job coming out of school, chances are you would be with that company for many years, perhaps the entire career, going through various stages and roles. And the compact between the company and the employee was a solid thing. And company would nurture you and promote you. And if you did well, you had a life at that company. And that is, of course, no longer the case. It hasn't been the case for some time. We no longer even expect this to be the case. It is actually really a pitched battle between companies and employees in today's world. So it's not about your performance, it's about fit. And because the economy is changing so fast, fit is changing as fast as that. And so we find ourselves in a job for a couple years, out of a job for a period of time into the next one. The average job tenure across the board, I believe, is between three and four years. You can't expect to stay at a company for a long time. But back to your question about what led to my kind of key career reinvention moment. I had a startup in the 90s. I was kind of transitioning out of mainline entertainment. I was fascinated by computer progress and development, and I was kind of an early adopter. Had the computer on my desk in the mid-80s. So when multimedia came in in the 90s, CD ROM games, et cetera, I just thought, oh, this is really great. Dove in head first, wound up connecting with another individual who became my partner. And we started a company. We started a dot com company in the mid-90s, which then we were able to raise money, release product. We were going up, we were doing really well. And then 2001 hit. The stock market crashed. Everything went to pieces. Our investors went away, our clients went away, and I was done, right? So that was my confrontation. That was my moment of saying, well, where do I go? Because there was nothing going on in tech. I was the CEO of a failed startup along with dozens of other CEOs of failed startups. There was no job for me to go to. I'd kind of outgrown those jobs that I had done. I didn't really keep up with people in the same way that I probably should have, although I still had a really good network. But I didn't want to go back to being a studio executive. And I had launched a company, right? I had a different mindset going. So I decided to go back to school. I thought, I need a change of pace, I need a change of attitude. I need to think about myself differently. I need to figure out what could I possibly do, where could I possibly land. So I took a psychology degree. I um, knew about this particular psychology program. Some people I had known had been through it and had transition to different aspects of their lives as a result of it. And so I thought, well, this is great, let me see what happens and see where I wind up. And that led me to a very key moment in the transition which led to what I'm doing today in a very strange way. I was introduced to some people at DreamWorks Animation and the catch was that there was no job at DreamWorks. And my connection thought, oh well, it would be great if you could join us here at dreamworks, but, uh, there's no job. But let me introduce you to some people. Because there was no job, the conversations became these informational interviews where we were talking about the business, the state of play, et cetera.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, low stakes, very open ended conversations. Well, it turns out that one of the things that was fascinating me about their company was their creative and technical staffing. And they were at a particular point in their evolution where they really couldn't afford to think about the future of their intellectual and creative capital. And I was asking them questions about this that they hadn't been asking themselves or they had been asking, but they really hadn't thought about what to do about it. And all of a sudden these questions kind of came back around and they said to me, we want you actually to come in and help us solve that problem. So it was a really interesting lesson in what I've now come to call the superpower in the work that I do. So no one can expect their career, as it's configured today, to remain the same. M people have to pivot. What I learned in having to pivot my career was an early lesson in what everyone is confronted with today, which is you have to be resilient. You have to know what it is that you do, what it is that you offer. And that's what's going to give you the resilience to pursue your career through all of the transitions, the changes, the evolutions that are going to take place.

Speaker A: Thank you. I love this idea of superpower and how that emerged for you as you got into those exploratory conversations. Why do you think it is that so many experienced professionals do struggle in these mid career transitions? I'm guessing that you're going to say it's because they haven't identified their superpower. But, uh, tell us more about how that looks.

Speaker B: People in mid career are facing a couple of interesting conjunctions. The first one is that you've now learned a lot. You've accomplished a lot of your goals, you're familiar with the process of your roles, your industry, your knowledge, your domain knowledge. You're looking ahead and going well. So what's next? Where do I go from here? Career progress. Career ascension tends to be pyramidal, so you've got fewer opportunities. The higher up you go, more is expected of you. It becomes really harder to navigate when you've got competition coming up from the younger generation, less room at the top, and as happens to us psychologically in midlife. In any event, it is a challenge to understand who we are today. That is the sum of everything that we've learned and have been, but we don't really think about, where do I want to go tomorrow? Right. We're not future focused. And that is perhaps the greatest challenge for people that I work with, which is that they tend to look at their past as, uh, validation for the future. But as they say in financial services, past performance is not an indicator of future results. So this is the conundrum, I think, that many people face at this stage.

Speaker A: Indeed, past, future, and being stuck in that opposite of a bulge. It's a squeeze of all kinds. Okay, so you've talked in your book, in your external communication of all kinds, about the fact that applying for jobs online in particular is often ineffective and that the hidden job market is where most opportunities lie. You also talked about the fact that although you'd built a pretty good network while working in Hollywood, it wasn't actually the network you needed at the time. So let's think about this shift from job search to career reinvention. What's the hardest mindset shift that people really need to make?

Speaker B: I think the hardest mindset shift is going from thinking of yourself as an employee to thinking of yourself as a consultant. And I like to say that you never want to approach your job search as an employee looking to be supervised by a manager. You always want to think of yourself as a consultant looking to provide value to a client. So that's the big mind shift. The other thing that goes along with that is this kind of master or servant relationship that we have with employers. And by that I mean that our usual instinct and practice when we are looking for a job is to trot out the resume, update it, polish it a Little bit. Maybe get someone to rewrite the format, but focus on how we can fit into available openings and adjust the resume accordingly. So one of the prime directives and job searches, always adapt your resume to the job description you're applying to. Stress in your resume the things that they're looking for, remove the things that they're not interested in. So make your resume adaptable to the position. This is chasing your tail, right? Because in an earlier era when you were applying to maybe a handful of jobs and getting interviews for half of them and landing one today, as a job seeker, as an applicant, as a candidate, you are facing at least 250 other applicants to that position. In the AI era, you are probably facing at least double that, maybe more. And I've seen this coming now for the past couple of years. I mean, it's the battle of the bots, right? Your bot is writing your resume, their bot is reading your resume and rejecting you. So the idea that you could adapt your resume to each one of the 150 applications that you are making to find a job is ridiculous. And you find yourself in this very discouraging position of being a supplicant, trying to go, oh, please, sir, may I have this job? Look at me. You know, um, here's something that makes me special, and it is going to drive you crazy. It's going to diminish and dilute the value of what you present. You just don't know who you are anymore. You're just trying to fit yourself in. That's a terrible tactic. And, you know, this goes back to the idea of being the consultant. If you're a consultant, you are providing a very specific service or product implementation to your client. That is the mindset that every person going for a salaried position needs to adopt. Because employers today particularly are looking for specialists, not generalists. And this is part of the curse of being mid career. You are invariably going to think of yourself as a generalist. And I'm a big fan of generalists. I'm a generalist. Generalists have a contextual understanding of what they do, of the contiguous roles and factors that affect the work that they do in their role. But employers want specialists. They want someone to solve the particular problem that they have. They think this job description is going to that problem. And you want to establish yourself as a person with a specific set of skills, experiences, abilities, values, approaches, practices that solves this one problem or set of problems, performs this one service. And that's how you're going to cut through the noise and turn this broken hiring system ship around and give yourself a chance to actually get an interview, much less a job.

Speaker A: Indeed. I mean, it sounds as though you're describing at least parts of a framework you've defined, which you beautifully call the Boomer reinvention framework. Would you be kind enough to take us through the main elements through, uh, this structured approach to change?

Speaker B: Sure. So this started out as a five element framework. It's now down to three, because I really realized it's simpler than what I had thought. And this is, you know, coming from doing this news coaching practice for the last 10 years, right? Yeah. So it is a little simpler. I think it's a little bit clearer. I call it the three elements framework. The first element is define your superpower. And you were alluding to the term before. Again, the superpower is that combination of skills, experiences, abilities, talents, values, best practices and connections that define the work that you do and encapsulate it. So you go from being a person who touts their responsibilities. You know, I've led teams of 40 or 50 people. It's like, well, great. What did you actually deliver? The superpower is focused on what you deliver, because this is really the key to getting traction in your job search. And it also helps you kind of redefine yourself. After all of these years of doing all of these things and gaining all of these great experiences and abilities, what is the most leveraged value and deliverable that you can offer to an employer? And if you can define that, then you have essentially productized yourself in a very positive way. You want to be seen as a product, a valuable product, because that simplifies everything. From there on, you're no longer scrambling around, trying to fit yourself into this job or that job, or figure out what the pitch is here. And you're not making any compromises in that area anymore. You have a very clear offer that you are making to everyone, whether it's an employer, it is a connection of yours, a colleague, and you have it down. Your LinkedIn profile becomes the expression of this superpower. And this gets into the second element, which is to create a community of shared interests around that superpower. So this is networking at a much more refined level. You're not going out to just accumulate names and business cards. It really is intentional. It really is trying to find people who understand what you do, who vibe with you and what you do, who recognize the value of it, who can market for you, who can understand it, who can share what you do. By defining your superpower, you make it Much easier. For example, typical experience of people that I work with, they say, oh, I hate networking. You know, it just. I don't know what to do. You know, I meet these people and, and I give them the card or whatever. And, uh, they say, what do I do? And I tell them, and they say, well, if I hear of anything, I will call you. And they never do.

Speaker A: Never.

Speaker B: Why is that? And that's because you haven't defined your superpower. Because if you have your superpower clearly laid out, they know how to help you. They know whom to refer you to. Right. They know what kind of feedback to give you. If you're a generalist and define yourself as a generalist, they don't know where to start. Are you this? Are you that? I worked with a guy last year who has had two really very clearly defined sets of experiences. One was sales oriented, the other was operational. I said to him, you gotta choose. You can't be both. And I said, in a perfect world, I would love to be able to tell you that you can sell yourself as a, both a sales and an operations guy. You can't. You're going to use that other side of you. Wherever you land, it's going to be a plus for you. But you're not going to land based on these two horses that you're trying to ride simultaneously. And this is a, uh, problem that a lot of people have. So back to the superpower. That's really the crux of it. The network, the community that you build, is your engine for opportunities. Because going back to the concept of the hidden job market, the hidden job market is not really a market. It is the concept of referrals. It's the idea that people would rather trust a candidate who is referred by a trusted source than consider someone who's just coming in over the transom with a resume. So be that person, be that referral. Use that community to ladder your way, lattice your way to a network of people who understand you. You know, back to my experience at Dreamworks Animation, that series of informational interviews was key to them not just offering me a job, but creating a job for me. Because they realized in those conversations that they had a gap and that, uh, I could fill it. So they said, okay, we're going to create a position for you to do this. I've worked with clients who have had that same experience.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Me too. Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, because they have been able to define what they do. And someone said, wow, we don't have that. We need that. So it's A much more dynamic approach to career. And then the third element is the answer to the question, okay, so I've been networking. I've got all these people. What do I do? Do I call everybody, uh, every couple of weeks and ask them what's going on? Well, no, you can't do that. That's annoying.

Speaker A: Right? So, thank you.

Speaker B: You want to create what is essentially, in today's marketing terms, an inbound approach where you are engaging on your own in your community, both online and offline, as a subject matter expert in your field, related to your superpower, so that there is a constant stream of engagement coming out of you that people can react to. Whether you are posting on LinkedIn, maybe you have a newsletter, maybe you do what I do here, go on podcasts and talk about this process, whether you are getting involved in professional organizations in your field to organize events, whether you're going out and doing lunch, and learns for colleagues to help educate their teams with your expertise, whether you are mentoring or adjunct teaching, there's so many opportunities for you as a professional, as a subject matter expertise to build trust and credibility around what you do. And that is going to do two things. One, it's going to help your network stay current, keep you top of mind as they look for opportunities or see opportunities, and then connect them back to you. But most importantly, it provides a trail of breadcrumbs for employers to see as they're evaluating you. Because not only are they looking at your CV and your background, and not only are they listening to what you say in the interview about, you know, your approach to your work and how that could fit into their environment, you also have this track record out there of activity, whether it, again, is online or offline, where you've been involved as a leader in your field. So that builds that trust. And an example that, um, I'm always reminded of in this context is a man who I profile in my book, who had been a industrial product salesman for many, many years and had done very well in that business, but got into a bad situation during the 2008, 2009 recession. Company took a turn. They fired him. He was in his 50s. He didn't quite know what to do. He was kind of concerned about being able to find another sales job. And his wife said to him, look, you've been investing our, um, our money now for 15 years. You've done really well. We've got this great nest egg. Why don't you do this full time? Why don't you become a financial advisor? He said, oh, I don't want to go work for the big companies. And she said, no, no, no. I mean, get your own certifications and open up your own shop. And he thought about it, and he did, and he started doing well. But what he realized is if he started a blog and started, you know, giving financial advice and, um, talking about the market, that would be a calling card for him with clients. And he could say to the clients, if you're interested in working with me or you're concerned, you have doubts about working with me, read the blog and look at what I said six months ago about the market. And if that makes sense to you, looking back today, what I said, then you think my judgment is good enough. We should work together. And I also. That was a great example of why this kind of engagement as a thought leader is so important, because it gives people a real sense over time about who you are, how you function, how you think.

Speaker A: Indeed. I think there's something else here that is really coming out to me, which is that what you're describing is ways of becoming visible and the obvious choice with this superpower and even of networking that are actually functional and enjoyable and help people to shift from, oh, I hate networking to, wow, not only is this new type of activity that I'm engaging in to become more visible enjoyable, but it will eventually be my path to the next opportunity, whatever that may be. And that seems like a, uh, beautiful, virtuous circle. So thank you for highlighting that.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I also think it goes to this question, this objection that I get all the time about networking, which is, oh, I hate networking. I'm terrible at networking, and I can't sell myself. I can sell anything, but I can't sell myself. And I get this from experienced sales executives.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: And my response to that is, I'm not asking you to sell yourself. I'm asking you to define what drives you and what you love to do and what you do well, and just share about that. You don't have to sell anything.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: If you are presenting a complete package, then all you're doing is looking to connect with people and be curious about them and how you can achieve some kind of rapport with them to see if there's a connection. It's not about selling anything. Selling absolutely actually detracts from who you are and what you provide. As you said, it's about having fun with it and being enthusiastic about it. So if you get up every morning going, I've defined my superpower. I can't wait to get an opportunity to do It. And someone says, so, what's going on? Have you found a job yet? You say, well, I'm, um, still searching, but I'm very excited because I just read this article about XYZ that applies exactly to this area that I'm focused on and that everyone should be thinking about. And they may say, wow, that's great. I actually know someone, uh, who kind of shares your opinion. Would you like to meet them?

Speaker A: Indeed. Then it's natural and fun. Let's move on to the questions of ageism and identity. What do people need to let go of as they move into their later stages of career? And where do they perhaps unknowingly, hold themselves back because of how they see themselves?

Speaker B: In a funny way, what people need to let go of later in life is this association that they have with their professional role. You know, someone asks you a question, so what do you do? And you say, I'm a director, um, of sales, or I'm a operations manager, or I'm a this or I'm a that. But that's inaccurate. Your job is not your identity.

Speaker A: It is so not.

Speaker B: It would be more accurate to say, I work as. Take a little step back from that role and understand that you are more than that role. You are more than that resume. And this is, I think, a big challenge for most of us because we've spent our lives, one way or another, one company or more, identifying with that role. We're being seen as that role within the company. We have a certain position, we have a certain cachet. And, um, status is a very seductive but ultimately destructive force in our lives. So this is part of this evolution from employee to consultant. The challenge is to stop identifying yourself in terms of external validation and external position and to revalidate yourself in terms of what's going on inside you. And one of the two principles that I bring to bear in the book and in my practice, the two principles are, number one, the job you want is already inside you. You already know what it is that you do well, that you love to do, that other people will hire you to do. You just have to get all of the other distractions out of the way so you can just focus on that. And the second principle is that in order to create the future, you have to reconcile the past. And one of the big issues that we have at ages 45, 50, 55, 60 plus is that we've got baggage. We all have baggage. We've all had a job, uh, that we got fired from or a deal that went bad, or relationships that maybe we blew up or bad things were done to us, we got kicked out unceremoniously onto the street in a humiliating fashion. It's happened to me. So if you don't reconcile all of those experiences, all that baggage, as steps along the way, as lessons learned and opportunities to do more, do better, do something that's more aligned, then you're doing yourself a disservice. And you are bringing all of those experiences, all of that unresolved baggage into every single meeting and conversation that you have. You can't hide it. People get it. People read you much better than you think. And they will see that there's something off. And I see these postings on LinkedIn about people who've been out of work for a year or two years and they're at wit's end and they don't know what they're doing wrong. And there may be a lot of procedural things that they're doing wrong, but I can't help but thinking that a lot of it is the way they're presenting themselves, that they're coming in with low self esteem, trepidation, defensiveness, they're kind of worried about being rejected again, so they get rejected again. And this is toxic. You know, this is the big challenge that I think we all have at this stage, is to reconcile the past in order to be able to create the future.

Speaker A: Thank you for that. I think that could be summarized by wherever you go, there you are. Yeah, but thank you. It's crucial. So as we begin to get towards wrapping up, I'm wondering if somebody who's listening is at a point of disruption right now and they're feeling frustrated, desperate, whatever they might be, what would be the one teeny tiny thing that you would want them to understand first?

Speaker B: One way is to say that if your life has been disrupted or you're seeing that it's about to be disrupted, you see that there is kind of this end to the Runway that, uh, you didn't think was there before, that maybe you had avoided thinking about. Now it is upon you. First thing I want you to do is start a daily journal. I want you to start reflecting on these many questions that are coming up, these many feelings that are coming up about where you are. You need to look at the baggage. I suggest that you write one page a day, every day. Maybe it's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning, maybe it's the last thing you do before bed at night, but write free form about whatever is coming up for you. Ideas, feelings, judgments, successes, regrets. The purpose of this exercise is not to kind of do this teenage diary record of your life.

Speaker A: No credit.

Speaker B: It's not a confessional.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It is actually a bridge that you're building between your conscious self and your unconscious self. And this may sound a little woo, but it is very grounded in psychology. You have an inner knowing that you are not accessing. You are, again, focusing externally on all of these things that are happening to you, all what you're hearing and all of your fears that are coming up around the unknowable, around the future. That is a waste of time. Instead, you want to get back to this sense of wholeness, find that superpower within you, do the reflection that starts to weave yourself back together again. And the first thing that I do with clients is give them the ikigai exercise. The ikigai is this Japanese concept of life's purpose that has been translated into the west as this Venn diagram with four, uh, questions. What do you love to do? What do you do? Well, what does your world need? And what can you get paid for? And at the intersection of those four questions to me are, uh, the seeds of your reinvention, of your taking these next steps. And it's a natural kind of dialogue that you can begin to engage in with yourself through your journal, but also with others. So I will offer this to your listeners if you go to john tarnoff.com four questions, the number four questions, no, uh, spaces. You can get a downloadable version of the Zeke Guy exercise to begin this process and start to put some of these ideas in motion, which will help you better understand where your superpower could be, how you could start connecting with other people, what the topic of those informational interviews could be as you go out into the world to try to figure out your next incarnation, your next iteration.

Speaker A: John, that's a very beautiful offer that you made. And, um, the image of all these listeners who may have been feeling a little more desperate before hearing this than they are now, weaving themselves back together, I think will stay with everybody. So thank you for spending time with me today, for sharing with us so many rich and fertile ideas that will be of undoubted use to everybody listening, whatever stage of their career they are at. So thank you, John, once again for taking the time and joining me today.

Speaker B: I hope this has been helpful to your listeners. Um, and, you know, again, if you want to learn more about the program or the practice or connect with me, LinkedIn is the best place to do that. So don't hesitate to reach out.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. John M.

Speaker B: We hope you enjoyed hearing from this month's guest as much as we did.

Speaker A: Do go and check out our work on disrupt-your-career.com and come back soon. Thank you.