Speaker 1: Welcome to On the Job. Since we're focusing on pivots
Speaker 1: this season, we hear at OTJ figured why not check
Speaker 1: in with someone who knows all about pivots, the guy
Speaker 1: that literally wrote the book on them.
Speaker 2: So on today's.
Speaker 1: Episode, we're going to speak with Adam Markel, who, after
Speaker 1: a pivot of his own, went on to write a
Speaker 1: book called Well What Else?
Speaker 2: Pivot?
Speaker 1: Well more accurately Pivot, The Art and Science of reinventing
Speaker 1: your career and life. So stick around to hear some
Speaker 1: very useful advice from the pivot guru himself on how
Speaker 1: you can best tackle your next pivot. Before Adam Markel
Speaker 1: ever thought of becoming an author and keynote speaker, he
Speaker 1: was a lawyer in New York City, and a successful
Speaker 1: one at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I liked winning.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be really honest in my answer to you, Avery,
Speaker 3: and there's a part of you when you beat somebody
Speaker 3: in court that is just an exhilarating experience, especially when
Speaker 3: your client is super happy because you helped them out.
Speaker 1: And there were even parts of the job to fulfill them.
Speaker 3: On a psychological level, I was bullied as a kid,
Speaker 3: and at a certain point when I decided I wasn't
Speaker 3: that wasn't going to be my life experience anymore. I
Speaker 3: became the Carnivor's part of why I became a lawyer
Speaker 3: to gain the power, to be in control and to
Speaker 3: wield power.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like and I think.
Speaker 3: A lot of lawyers are kind of control freaks and
Speaker 3: have some aspect of their personality, you know, leans into
Speaker 3: that as well.
Speaker 1: And as you can imagine, being a lawyer in Manhattan
Speaker 1: was quite lucrative.
Speaker 3: You can make a lot of money, a lot of money,
Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of money in a very controlled environment.
Speaker 3: Like I'm a business owner now, but on a good day,
Speaker 3: business is really difficult.
Speaker 2: And the legal profession is a business.
Speaker 3: But it's a very traditional business with some very traditional parameters.
Speaker 3: And so if you're not a complete idiot, and if
Speaker 3: you follow the rules and you don't you know, screw people,
Speaker 3: you can just like steadily earn a lot of money
Speaker 3: for a long period of time in this very conventional
Speaker 3: and sort of dependable way.
Speaker 1: So on the surface of things, Adam Markell's life was ideal.
Speaker 1: He had the great job, the nice suits, and a
Speaker 1: lovely house out in a quiet leafy suburb where he
Speaker 1: and his wife could raise their children away from the
Speaker 1: noise and mania of the city. In short, Adam Markell's
Speaker 1: life was the type of life that so many people
Speaker 1: dream of having. And yet despite all the success, all
Speaker 1: the money, and all those courtroom wins, Adam could feel
Speaker 1: that something was off, or, more accurately, he could hear it.
Speaker 3: I would I could describe it almost like it was
Speaker 3: a hum, you know, like this like this noise in
Speaker 3: the background is very dull and only.
Speaker 2: And I would say, you know, it's like saying to
Speaker 2: somebody do you hear that?
Speaker 3: And they look at you like you're out of your mind,
Speaker 3: you know, like because you hear it, but nobody else
Speaker 3: hears it. And I say that because it was really
Speaker 3: successful in my practice. I made plenty of money and
Speaker 3: amazing family and married to my college sweetheart who to
Speaker 3: this day is the love of my life, and we
Speaker 3: have four healthy kids, and you know, life was really
Speaker 3: really good. So for me to say do you hear that?
Speaker 3: They go, they go, what are you talking about? I'll go,
Speaker 3: it's that home. It's that there's like this dull thing
Speaker 3: out that says this sucks.
Speaker 2: This is not right. But nobody heard it except me.
Speaker 1: So each morning he'd leave his house in the suburbs
Speaker 1: and make his way into the concrete canyons of New
Speaker 1: York City. But before he even got into the city,
Speaker 1: that home would start up again. He'd be on the
Speaker 1: train and there it'd be that buzzing in his head.
Speaker 2: And I would start to develop feel anxiety.
Speaker 3: I kind of fit well up in me when I
Speaker 3: got in the tunnel sometimes, and I'm not claustrophobic, not really,
Speaker 3: you know, but I would feel it then.
Speaker 1: So Adam, being the pragmatist that he is, tried different
Speaker 1: ways of commuting, wondering if maybe he just needed to
Speaker 1: make a change in how he got to work.
Speaker 3: Well, I commuted like most people that live in around
Speaker 3: a metro area, but New York in particular. I tried driving.
Speaker 3: I tried the train, I tried the bus. The only
Speaker 3: thing I didn't do was walk, you know. And I
Speaker 3: did each of those things for some period of time,
Speaker 3: because at various points they all sucked. I mean, and
Speaker 3: I mean truly, because you're just aggravated and you're tense
Speaker 3: and anxious.
Speaker 1: So no matter how he made his way into the city,
Speaker 1: there was that home and deep down in his gut,
Speaker 1: Adam knew that this hum was trying to tell him something,
Speaker 1: that he had to make a change.
Speaker 2: But what could he do.
Speaker 1: He had his job, his family, his life was already
Speaker 1: set in motion, and so Adam just tried to pretend
Speaker 1: this HUM wasn't there, to focus more on his work, or,
Speaker 1: as he explained it, to become even more of an
Speaker 1: agro aggressive attorney. Until one day.
Speaker 3: You know, I ended up with a serious anxiety attack
Speaker 3: at one point, ended up in the hospital, and you know,
Speaker 3: the whole I'm thinking, I'm dying of art attack experience.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for Adam, the doctors checked him out and said
Speaker 1: it was okay that he's still at his health But
Speaker 1: he knew if he didn't make a change soon, it
Speaker 1: was only a matter of time, no matter how good
Speaker 1: his life looked on paper. But to understand the change
Speaker 1: that Adam made, we need to go back a few years,
Speaker 1: back to Adam's teenage years when he was a lifeguard
Speaker 1: on Long Island.
Speaker 3: I worked at a place called Jones Beach, was really
Speaker 3: active beach on the Atlantic Ocean, and we made like
Speaker 3: and I kid you not, we made one hundred plus
Speaker 3: saves every Saturday or Sunday in the summer, because we
Speaker 3: had one hundred thousand people on that beach and they
Speaker 3: were rip currents and they were always moving and changing,
Speaker 3: and the lifeguards we were or to those recurrencies suck
Speaker 3: because it would literally suck everything out to deeper water.
Speaker 1: But more than just being a beautiful place to swim
Speaker 1: and work on your tan and make a few bucks,
Speaker 1: adam summers at Jones Beach were a transformational time in
Speaker 1: his life, a period when he went from being this
Speaker 1: kid who was frequently bullied to being this heroic figure
Speaker 1: up there in the lifeguard chair, wielding the power of
Speaker 1: the whistle and ready to dive into action to save
Speaker 1: people in need. And the more Adam thought back on
Speaker 1: those times, the more he realized that not only did
Speaker 1: he miss the beach, but that he drifted so far
Speaker 1: from that version of himself that he loved. How he'd
Speaker 1: let himself become something of a bully himself, albeit in
Speaker 1: the courtroom.
Speaker 3: I think, as I look at it now, the pendulum
Speaker 3: swung quite a distance from being the bullied one to
Speaker 3: being the bully. Honestly, as a lawyer, I had that
Speaker 3: opportunity too, and I represented a lot of people who
Speaker 3: were being believed to be honest and fair. I got
Speaker 3: to use my power in a pretty decent way. But
Speaker 3: at a certain point I just realized that this was
Speaker 3: a bit of a pretense. It really wasn't who I
Speaker 3: was inside, and I didn't quite know who was inside,
Speaker 3: but I knew there was that divine discontent that was happening.
Speaker 1: So Adam found himself sitting with his wife and admitting
Speaker 1: to her that he was tired of being a lawyer,
Speaker 1: tired of being a bully, and what he really wanted
Speaker 1: was to give up on the big city lawyer life
Speaker 1: entirely and once again feel the sand beneath his feet.
Speaker 3: And why I feel so incredibly blessed to be married
Speaker 3: to the woman that I am married to is because
Speaker 3: she was good with that.
Speaker 2: She was good with you know what the big picture here?
Speaker 2: What's the big picture? We love each other. We have
Speaker 2: great family, great relationship. Will be great.
Speaker 3: Where we are, no matter what happens, will be great
Speaker 3: because we have each other. That's big picture. She's a
Speaker 3: much more advanced soul than I am.
Speaker 1: And with the support of his wife, Randy Adam said
Speaker 1: goodbye to the rat race of New York City. And
Speaker 1: then he and the family packed up all their belongings
Speaker 1: and moved way out to San Diego, California.
Speaker 3: I mean, we were uprooting our entire family. I figured
Speaker 3: I was going to have some therapy bills down the road.
Speaker 2: You know, we have four kids, like I said, two dogs.
Speaker 2: You know, we know a lot going on in our lives.
Speaker 3: And we were literally moving from you know, the East
Speaker 3: Coast we were living in Freehold, New Jersey at the time,
Speaker 3: to southern California, San Diego, and they're they're very different cultures.
Speaker 3: You know, people are people, but culturally speaking, they're different places.
Speaker 1: But moving across the country was just one of the
Speaker 1: pivots that Adam made. Because I didn't call up Adam
Speaker 1: Markel to talk about legal stuff. I called him to
Speaker 1: discuss a book that he wrote called Pivot. So when
Speaker 1: we come back from the break, we'll gain some Pivot
Speaker 1: advice from the Pivot master himself.
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Speaker 1: We're back with Adam Markel, who, after leaving his job
Speaker 1: as a big shot lawyer in New York City, moved
Speaker 1: his family out to southern California, where he's now an author,
Speaker 1: keynote speaker, and business mentor. And that massive mid career
Speaker 1: pivot that Adam made was a big influence on his
Speaker 1: decision to write a book all about pivoting.
Speaker 2: It's called pivot. I mean, it's just that simple. That's
Speaker 2: why I held it up when you said it.
Speaker 3: I wish I had like a nickel or a dime
Speaker 3: or a dollar for every time a person's used word pivots.
Speaker 3: Since this book came out, it hit the shelves in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, assignment and s just the book. It was hardcover,
Speaker 3: and now it's the second edition it's a paperback. But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it was a pejorative term, kind of a negative thing
Speaker 3: back in the day. I wrote it in part because
Speaker 3: I wanted to shift that sort of the vernacular a bit.
Speaker 3: And I will not claim any credit for having done.
Speaker 3: So there's some pretty big shows with that term now.
Speaker 3: But when I wrote the book, honestly, it was pretty
Speaker 3: new and different. I felt like we were ahead of
Speaker 3: the curve.
Speaker 2: And who pivots? Is it just individuals? Is it businesses
Speaker 2: as well? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Everybody pivots And the best businesses, the ones that we
Speaker 3: try to position ourselves to work with, are the ones
Speaker 3: that are are thinking about those pivots before the marketplace
Speaker 3: is forcing them upon that organization or those teams.
Speaker 1: And while pivots take all shapes and sizes, there are
Speaker 1: basically two versions of a pivot, those we consciously choose
Speaker 1: and those that are forced upon us.
Speaker 3: You have to have a plan. And because we pivot
Speaker 3: either by default or by design, I'll say, and the
Speaker 3: design pivot is what the book is really about. The
Speaker 3: default pivot is when you are forced to make a
Speaker 3: change in life. Because I'll give you some examples. Your
Speaker 3: spouse or your partner leaves you, or they die, or
Speaker 3: your business ghoes bust and you have to file bankruptcy,
Speaker 3: or your health takes a turn for the worse and
Speaker 3: you get a diagnosis and now, oh wow, I guess
Speaker 3: I do have to change what I do and how
Speaker 3: I live, etc. Those are default pivots, and I think again,
Speaker 3: because people are afraid of change, we have to override
Speaker 3: that with design, and that's what the book Pivot is
Speaker 3: about designing your changes in life.
Speaker 1: So his advice for you on the job listeners is
Speaker 1: the plan ahead to take a proactive approach to your life.
Speaker 3: Listening to you the instincts that you have, paying attention
Speaker 3: to them, being having enough time during the day when
Speaker 3: you're breathing in a gentle way and your mind is
Speaker 3: not racing all over the place, you're not amped up
Speaker 3: on caffeine or touringe or you know whatever. In those
Speaker 3: moments when you can actually hear yourself think to use
Speaker 3: the term I grew up hearing a lot, or hear
Speaker 3: yourself feel.
Speaker 2: Then you can get instincts.
Speaker 3: And if you follow those instincts, you're rarely ever wrong.
Speaker 3: And that's a pretty bold statement because I don't know everybody. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I don't know everybody's life experience. But I can say
Speaker 3: with almost absolute certainty that when you follow your instincts,
Speaker 3: which I could also say is following your heart, I
Speaker 3: don't think you go astray. You might pivot off into
Speaker 3: the you know off the highway for a bit. You
Speaker 3: might be on a road that's unfamiliar and dark and
Speaker 3: is it's a bit and it's uncertainty scary for you.
Speaker 2: But all those roads lead to where they're supposed to
Speaker 2: lead to.
Speaker 3: So my advice to people that are looking for vice,
Speaker 3: you know, from somebody they'd never heard from before, is
Speaker 3: that you just pay attention be present in your own life.
Speaker 2: Again, great sort of like statement.
Speaker 3: It's not as profound as it sounds, but to actually
Speaker 3: be more conscious and aware, self aware and present in
Speaker 3: your life means that you will have access to insights
Speaker 3: and an inner guidance, a wisdom of sorts, and a
Speaker 3: gut instinct you could call it. And for those that
Speaker 3: are more spiritually inclined, there's ways to describe it through
Speaker 3: that lens as well, where you'll just realize.
Speaker 2: That it's time for something to shift.
Speaker 1: And then when you do feel it's time to make
Speaker 1: a change in your life, Adam wants to remind you
Speaker 1: that it's all about that first step, however small it
Speaker 1: might seem.
Speaker 3: And then you'll be inspired to do the one small thing.
Speaker 3: Like in Pivot, I talk about the process, and that
Speaker 3: process always starts with the tiniest little step what we
Speaker 3: like to refer to as the small domino, the very
Speaker 3: smallest domino that you can think of. And a lot
Speaker 3: of people don't do that tiny thing because they think
Speaker 3: this tiny thing is meaningless in the grand scope. If
Speaker 3: I'm unhappy, if I'm in pain, if I'm not making
Speaker 3: enough money, if I'm in the wrong relationship, if my
Speaker 3: health is south, you know, I can't just start with
Speaker 3: one tiny thing. How I need this massive change. So
Speaker 3: it's ironic because they're afraid of the massive change at
Speaker 3: the same time as they won't take the tiny step
Speaker 3: because they think that's insignificant.
Speaker 1: But I should clarify that neither Adam nor I are
Speaker 1: saying that you have to drop everything and move across
Speaker 1: the country or change careers.
Speaker 3: There's something really amazing when you find yourself in a
Speaker 3: role in an organization, in a profession that you could
Speaker 3: you could be there for decades and experience it, grow
Speaker 3: in it and love it. Not maybe loving it every
Speaker 3: second or every day even, but just realistically, the trajectory
Speaker 3: is I love what I do. I love the impact
Speaker 3: I have, I love the people I get to work with.
Speaker 2: That's the best man. I don't think you pivot for
Speaker 2: pivot's sake. That's that would be silly. That's the equivalent
Speaker 2: of like when you're.
Speaker 3: Eight years old and you're bored, and so you just
Speaker 3: got to go break something or you got to go
Speaker 3: do something stupid because you're bored. Well, an eight year
Speaker 3: old is not a lot different than when they're you know,
Speaker 3: like than a twenty eight year.
Speaker 2: Old or a forty eight year old. Like, we're all
Speaker 2: just the same person.
Speaker 3: And so my caution would be if you're thinking of
Speaker 3: a pivot because you're bored, be careful of that.
Speaker 1: Whether we realize it or not, we're all pivoting all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: Every day, we're leaving our old self behind.
Speaker 3: And not to be too philosophical here about it, but
Speaker 3: I believe it's true that we are constantly growing and
Speaker 3: our cells are replicating in our bodies. Old cells die
Speaker 3: and new cells are created. This is the fa this
Speaker 3: is the cycle of life.
Speaker 2: This is not and make it up. This is what
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 3: So you either recognize that that's the truth of who
Speaker 3: you are, or you try to stay the same somehow,
Speaker 3: thinking that staying the same is more stable, it is
Speaker 3: more secure or safe or something. And then you're literally
Speaker 3: resisting life, and to live in resistance to life. I
Speaker 3: just don't have to say what comes to that. We
Speaker 3: all get it, like intuitively, we know it's just not
Speaker 3: setting yourself up for success to do that.
Speaker 1: So, whether your next pivot is going to be as
Speaker 1: big as Adams or as subtle as a change in
Speaker 1: your perspective, make sure that you listen to that voice
Speaker 1: in your head, to that gut instinct that we're all
Speaker 1: so lucky to have, then make that initial step, however
Speaker 1: small it might be. As for Adam, he'll admit that
Speaker 1: the first few years of relocating weren't always easy, and
Speaker 1: there are days that he's still misses being a lawyer,
Speaker 1: But he and his family have pushed through that challenging period, which,
Speaker 1: to be fair, is part of any pivot story.
Speaker 3: If I look back today, it's sort of twelve thirteen
Speaker 3: years later. Every one of my kids and my wife
Speaker 3: and I we would say best decision we ever made,
Speaker 3: would never change a thing, So happy we're here.
Speaker 2: I do a lot of research these days.
Speaker 3: For my books as well as for the talks, because
Speaker 3: we have a company called work well, and it works
Speaker 3: with organizations to create workplaces of well.
Speaker 2: Being, and so my life today is not the grind.
Speaker 3: And so when you learn that, then you can create
Speaker 3: a day where you can toggle back and forth between
Speaker 3: your focus and your productivity and still feel the energy
Speaker 3: that when I come home, I have energy for my kids,
Speaker 3: I have energy for the people I love. I have
Speaker 3: energy for the things I want to do for myself,
Speaker 3: whether it's to swim or play tennis, or golf or read, write,
Speaker 3: you know whatever.
Speaker 1: Are you living the Southern California lifestyle?
Speaker 2: Brother? I am.
Speaker 3: I love the sun, I love to surf, I love
Speaker 3: to play tennis, and I love Southern California.
Speaker 2: I just don't love the taxes. But you know, that's
Speaker 2: a whole other bag, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's certainly not all play and no work for
Speaker 1: Adam Markel. He's got a thriving business and a new
Speaker 1: book out called Change Proof, which you should definitely check out,
Speaker 1: but not before you read Pivot, because come on, folks,
Speaker 1: haven't you been listening? Pivots are so hot right now
Speaker 1: for on the job. I'm Avery Thompson,