Transcript
WEBVTT
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Here's a question for you.
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What's important in your career and life beyond just money and fame?
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No, seriously, what's really, really important?
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I was making more money than I've ever made in my entire life.
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It did not make me happy.
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I make less money now, but I'm way happier and I'm no longer depressed.
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My name is Nirish Shakya and I'm a UX designer, educator and coach based in London.
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And I'm also the founder and host of the Design Feeling Podcast.
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And today I am speaking to you from my good friend, Kim's apartment here in Grand Canaria.
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You have the power in your life and in your career to make decisions about how you're going to spend your time.
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So my guest today, Larry Connett, is a former designer and executive turned freedom coach.
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Larry spent 20 years in Silicon Valley working for big names like Apple and IBM and Yahoo.
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And he left all of that to start a life in the mountains with his family and help others take more agency over their own careers.
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You are going to be successful because you're taking control, you're not waiting for a boss to take care of you.
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You're not going to expect a company to take care of you because they won't.
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And they aren't.
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We see that now.
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This episode felt like a mentorship conversation that I desperately needed as Larry helped me tackle some of my own challenges shaping my work and putting myself out there.
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A lot of people are really unhappy.
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They're depressed.
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They're full of anxiety.
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They're all talking about struggling with trauma from stuff that they do in work.
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In this episode we talk about defining your own success in a way that gives you more agency over your career and your choices and also helps you increase your clarity on what you really need to feel more fulfilled.
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Also talk about why it's so important to untangle your identity and your career from your job title and your employer.
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Because I think that's when you start to get to the true identity of someone is like, who do you really care about solving problems for in this world?
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And if you're someone like me who feels really cringe to put yourself online and share your thoughts and voice
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you're worried that everybody's paying attention.
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It's like, you wish you had that problem.
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No one's paying attention.
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No one cares
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Larry Cornett.
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Welcome to Design Feeling.
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Have you been?
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Uh, Ben.
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Well, thanks for having me on the show.
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This is exciting.
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That's right.
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yeah,
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I actually first came across you and your work, um, to my friend, Tim Yo, who was one of my guests, um, on design feeling a couple of years ago.
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he was, you know, saying great things about you.
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Um, and I checked you out.
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Um, and I also attended recently one of your workshops on building, and invincible a career as a solo solopreneur.
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And yeah, there's lots of nuggets of wisdom that I picked away from that took from that course
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Oh, good.
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Good.
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And, um, I thought it'd be great to deep dive into some of those topics and, you know, share some of your insights with the rest of the crowd who might be thinking along the same lines in terms of how might we take, you know, a better agency of as
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Yeah.
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designers, as tech people, as You know, product people, makers, whoever we might be.
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Um, you know, for a long time in my career, I felt like I was an autopilot.
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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of just pressed the autopilot.
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You know, do your night of five, come into work, tick off your, you know, check boxes and go home,
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And there comes a point when they're like, what's the point of all this?
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Am
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Yeah.
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Even even you know doing something that actually gives me the joy and the meaning that I seek in life
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Great.
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I realize that is you know It does take a lot of self work to to do that and also To be able to take time away From your day job as well
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Right.
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So i'm really excited for this chat um But before we you know Go into the juicy bits.
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Um, I wanted to just cast your mind back to your origin story.
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Mm.
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imagine, Larry, that they've made a movie out of your life.
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So we're at the theater.
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That's the, uh, the projection that just started.
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What's the opening scene?
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Describe that opening scene of your life.
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movie of your life,
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Um, so I would say if I had to choose an opening scene, it would probably be about seven years ago when I finally left Silicon Valley, moved away and moved up closer to the mountains, which is something I've wanted ever since I was a little kid.
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Um, But it took a long time to get here, right?
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So it, you know, it took over 30 some years to get here.
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And, uh, just that feeling of finally being somewhere and kind of almost like pinching yourself, like, am I really here, uh, surrounded by the forest and, and open spaces and going up into the mountains and the lakes and just, um, being where I wanted to be and kind of not believing it.
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It takes a long time to sink in.
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Am I actually here now?
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And, and is this, am I going to survive up here?
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Am I going to be able to make a living up here?
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And just, um, such a change from what life was like the previous 20 years of living in pretty large cities and living the city life and working a corporate career.
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And so, yeah, the opening scene would be that transition seven years ago where I'm finally where I want to be.
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How did you come to that decision
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Mm.
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move?
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So I've been thinking about it, I mean, way back when, um, I remember buying a book back when people bought paper books.
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I don't know if people remember, remember real bookstores, uh, big old, big old book.
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Uh, that was, I think it was called something like finding your ideal country home, and it wasn't just about the home, right?
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It was about everything.
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Um, and very thorough, like where you want to live, you know, considerations around land and water and clean air and pollution and being careful where you moved and all this stuff.
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And it was really detailed.
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And I remember reading that and thinking someday, you know, someday, someday, um, and we were living in Houston at the time, which is a very large city in, in Texas and the U S.
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Um, massive city, you know, huge pop, millions and millions of people.
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And so it was very much the city life, um, and then moved to Silicon Valley.
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So I got a job working in tech and Silicon Valley.
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And so we moved out there and I think our very first home.
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Um, we were renting a home and we thought it was expensive then.
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That's funny considering Silicon Valley now.
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Uh, and I remember every evening we take our, our babies for a walk through the neighborhood at night to help them get to sleep, you know, and so we'd have one and carrying one in a front pack and one in a stroller and you could see the mountains.
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So the Santa Cruz mountains are visible from where our, our house was.
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And so.
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As the sun was setting and when twilight was coming, it was getting darker.
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You could see these little glowing lights up in the mountains and that was little homes like cabins and homes like tucked into the forest up in the mountains.
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And I remember looking up there with my wife and saying, someday that's going to be us.
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I want to be out of the city and I want to be up there.
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I want that to be our warm twinkling lights in our cabin in the forest.
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And so that's where I think this, it started is wanting that, but I knew.
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It was going to take a lot of planning and a lot of time in my career and putting money aside and thinking hard about that path.
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And that's why I tell people, think about your career path.
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Like money.
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What will enable that path and how do I get there and what will set me up to be in a place like that and not necessarily have to be commuted to an office and things like that.
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And that took a while.
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It really did.
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I mean, I was back in the Jeez, when was that?
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95, 96.
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So a long time ago is when that all started.
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And then you get focused on career.
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And so I was really focused on my tech career.
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I'd been working at IBM and now I was working at Apple, uh, and going through the dot com boom and crash, you know, and saying, Oh, geez, you know, what am I going to do now?
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And then a slow kind of coming back from that and investing in my career in the corporate life and all that kind of stuff, but never forgetting where I wanted to be.
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And even though it took a long, long time, we eventually got there.
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And at some point it's a leap of faith.
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It really is.
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It's a leap of faith because I remember at the time this was pre COVID, um, remote work wasn't super common and especially remote work as a leader, right?
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So at that time, pre COVID way back when I was a VP at Yahoo, it's like you don't work remotely as a, an executive for a company.
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It's just not, it's not done, not been, I'll tell you that.
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Uh, and so I knew at some point.
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It was going to be that leap of faith.
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I'd have to make a break and say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to exit this.
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I can't keep doing this, but what am I going to do?
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Um, and so that's how I finally came up here and started the coaching practice, which allowed me to have control over my, I'll call it my destiny, but control over my life and my income and work remotely.
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Right.
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I work with people all over the world.
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And so I no longer was tied to a geographic location, which kind of gave me the ultimate freedom to make the move.
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Mm.
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So it seems like you really value freedom in your life, um, and
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Yeah.
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teaching to, um, enable that freedom in their lives.
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Yeah.
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So it took a while to get there too.
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I didn't.
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I didn't.
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Think I fully understood it.
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You know, a lot of my coaching requires introspection.
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And I ask people to think deeply about who they are and to ask a lot of questions and to peel the layers back.
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Um, kind of doing the five why's, you know, saying, well, I want this.
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Well, why do you want that?
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Well, I want because of this.
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And ultimately when you get to the center of peeling back those layers, it's like people want control over their life.
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They want to be able to do what they want to do.
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They don't want to be told they can't do something like, Hey, I want to go visit my parents.
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I'm worried about them.
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Sorry, you don't have vacation time.
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You can't do that.
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You know, or I want to go spend a month and be near my children.
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I'm sorry, you can't do that, you know?
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Um, and so that's where, you know, it finally, for me, it took a while because I chased a lot of stuff like everybody does, you know, I chased title, I chased income, you know, I chased the big dream.
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I had a tech startup and yeah, we were going to be the next big startup, right.
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Uh, and, and make it a billion dollar company.
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And as I was doing all that, it's like, those were all just a means to an end.
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And I think that's the thing is people have to ask themselves if they're chasing title, if they're chasing money, which is a very common one, um, recognition, fame, fortune, whatever, why, what's on the other side of that?
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Why do you want that?
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And I think if people look really hard at what's on the other side of that, it is.
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The freedom of to do what you want with your time, because if you look at all the people who have been very successful, and I, I follow a lot of successful people, I'm sure a lot of folks listening do.
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You follow them in the arc of their life and their career, and when they finally make it and they make a lot of money or they sell their startup, what did they do?
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They realize, I want to be free.
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I want time freedom.
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I think Ryan Holiday said it.
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I think Tim Ferriss has said it.
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Um, you know, the, Tom, the MySpace founder, what did he do?
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He vanished.
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He sold his company and disappeared.
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And he's somewhere in Bali, I think, so he's like, he's like, I want my life back.
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I want freedom.
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And you'll notice, and that's kind of an indicator that if there are people who reach that level of success, it's no longer about the money because they could keep chasing it, but they're not, they want their time, freedom back.
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And because life is precious, it's the one thing you can't get more of.
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You cannot get more time.
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And so if you're not using it the way you want and spending your life the way you want, you're not going to get another chance.
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You don't get more time at the end.
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I don't care if you have a hundred million dollars, you can't buy more time.
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And that's, that kind of hit me, and I was like, I want my life back.
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I want time.
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Hmm.
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So the freedom you're referring to, um, is that mainly for people who have achieved a certain, you know, state of success in their life?
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Or is that something that we can proactively build into our lives, you know,
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Right.
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our career that we might be in?
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How
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that was the other realization is I was chasing fame and fortune and money thinking I was going to buy my freedom, which a lot of people do, right?
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It's like, I need to make so many million dollars or whatever it is, and then I'll be free.
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Uh, and then you realize at some point, I think most people do, it's like the odds of that kind of success are really low.
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I mean, most tech startups fail, right?
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The odds of becoming a multimillionaire or a billionaire, billionaire, give me a break.
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It's like super low.
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You're better.
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You'd go out on your porch and get struck by lightning more often than become a billionaire.
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Um, and so you, at some point you have to say, is this happening or not?
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And Kind of pull the plug on it and say, I still want my freedom.
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And so you have to make a change in your life.
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And I, and I think this is possible at every phase of your life.
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So I think there are, there are a couple of things that, that do this.
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One is I call it optionality and people talk about it that way, but it's like, if you are always in demand, you have.
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The power in your life and in your career to make decisions about how you're going to spend your time.
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And so it's a lot easier to tell your boss, no, I'm not working this weekend.
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If you feel like you have that power, if you know that any moment you could pick up the phone and call a friend.
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And you could have a job in a week if you don't feel that power.
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If you feel like, what am I going to do if I lose this job?
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You will put up with anything you put up with a lot of mistreatment.
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I did.
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And I know a lot of people that do.
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But when I finally realized that the power was me having optionality, that's like knowing that any given moment I, I can have another job.
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I'll find another job or I'll work for myself.
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Cause I had done that way back when, um, when I left Apple, I started, or I went to a startup and then it got sold and bad stuff happened after we were acquired.
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Um, but I started my very first business way back then and I realized I can provide for myself.
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I can support my family.
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And I think that gave me a feeling of.
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Confidence and power that I carried with me the rest of my career saying, I don't have to put up with this because at any given moment I can get another job or I can start working for myself.
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So the way this is going to work in my career and my job is the way I want it to, and that is, that is freedom.
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Power is part of that too.
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Power and confidence give you freedom.
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So I think anybody can do it, but you have to be willing to constantly market yourself and be in demand.
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You really do.
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is this more of a mindset issue in terms of like how you think about the circumstances that you're in, or are there practical things you can do to set up your life in a way that you to, um, um, I guess go for that freedom?
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Right.
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Right.
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Because, um, to
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Yeah, sure.
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you know, people might be listening right now who might be in a, in a job, let's say a 95 job, um, who are comfortable in that job.
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Um, they're not like, you know, super passionate about it, but they're comfortable, pays the bills.
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Um, but they might not yet have the freedom that they seek.
00:17:18.289 --> 00:17:25.055
Hmm.
00:17:26.619 --> 00:17:38.910
So I think One of the things I think I'd started way back, even when I was kind of working blue collar jobs and paying my way through college is always trying to better myself.
00:17:39.809 --> 00:17:46.789
And so I always was thinking, how do I make myself more attractive in the market and more valuable?
00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:49.069
My skills, my knowledge, all that kind of stuff.
00:17:49.730 --> 00:17:53.599
And it constantly just trying to strive for that.
00:17:53.599 --> 00:17:54.234
Okay.
00:17:54.525 --> 00:18:04.275
And the other was always trying to think of how do I level up what I'm doing financially with my job, my career and because money is important.
