Jeff Gothelf | Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You

Jeff Gothelf helps organizations build better products and executives build the cultures that build better products. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Lean UX and the Harvard Business Review Press book Sense & Respond.

Starting off as a software designer, Jeff now works as a coach, consultant and keynote speaker helping companies bridge the gaps between business agility, digital transformation, product management and human-centered design.

Most recently Jeff co-founded Sense & Respond Press, a publishing house for practical business books for busy executives. His most recent book, Forever Employable, was published in June 2020.

Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You

Rafael Testai, co-host

ABOUT BEING AN ENGINEER

The Being an Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Being an Engineer Podcast.

Help us rank as the #1 engineering podcast on Apple and Spotify by leaving a review for us.

You can find us under the category: mechanical engineering podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Being an Engineer podcast is a go-to resource and podcast for engineering students on Spotify, too.

Aaron Moncur and Rafael Testai love hearing from their listeners. Feel free to email us, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast and Spotify!

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Transcript

Presenter: 0:00

Hi everyone. We've set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository, if you will, we hope it'll be a tool where engineers can learn about and connect with other companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show.

Rafael Testai: 0:17

Hello, everyone, welcome to the being an engineer podcast today we have another very special guest, Jeff Gothelf, Jeff helps organizations build better products and executives build the cultures that build better products. He's the co author of the award winning book, learn UX, and the Harvard Business Review, Press book sense and respond. Starting off as a software designer, Jeff now works as a coach, consulting and keynote speaker helping companies bridge the gap between business agility, digital transformation, product management and human centered design. Most recently, Jeff co founded sense and respond press, a publishing house for practical business books for busy executives, some of you listening now, his most recent book, forever employable, which we're going to discuss in depth was published in June 2020. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Jeff Gothelf: 1:29

Thanks so much for having Rafael.

Rafael Testai: 1:32

Well, I need to start out, this is my personality. And the thing that interested me the most, when I found out about you, you have a book called Forever employable. And the link will be in the show notes before how to stop looking for work and let your next job find you. Now, if that doesn't get your interest as a listener, I don't know what we'll there's a lot of people out there looking for their next opportunity. And with their great resignation happening in and out. I'm myself I'm very happy where I'm at right now pipeline. But for those who you listening, can you give us some golden nuggets of your book forever employable?

Jeff Gothelf: 2:08

Sure the book is semi autobiographical. So it starts off with my story and how I built the career that I have today, which is a writer, speaker, trainer, that type of thing and consultant as well. And it really focuses on why I went down this particular path and why I think it's really important that other folks have this as a backup plan. Because, look, I do think the idea of company loyalty is dead. I do think that there's a tremendous opportunity for mobility in the job market itself. But the folks who really get the opportunities today are folks who have built up a reputation for themselves folks who have leveraged their expertise and their experience, and have begun to build a personal brand around them. And they're recognized for that experience and that expertise. And to me, that is the best resume that you can have, you know, Google me is the best resume that you can have. And really creating a relationship with an industry and a community by giving back generously to that community. And that's what the book is about. It's my story about how I did that, why I did that kind of what what where the panic kind of came in that initially drove me to, to quit my full time job and or at least to start to transition out of full time work into this, basically, forever employable, self employed, work. And then there are lots of other stories, lots of other case studies in there and stories about celebrities and people you haven't heard of before who've done the same thing from all walks of life. So it's not just a tech thing. It's not just an engineering thing. It's an option for people in any industry.

Rafael Testai: 3:57

Fantastic. I like how you give me a concise response that I can work off of and ask you more questions about. So before I take any advice from anyone, this is something I'm sure it's gonna go through our listeners heads. I want to know what have they achieved in order to give that advice? Perfect example before ask a couple tickets bus, my wife and I marriage advice. I want to see if there be married for 20 years or something. So what have you achieved in your professional career that you're very proud about that makes you feel like you're qualified to give this kind of advice?

Jeff Gothelf: 4:26

Well, I mean, look, I started down the same path as as pretty much everybody else the path that that my parents told me to follow and that that path is, you know, go to go to college, get a degree, get a job, work your way up the ladder, you know, make lateral moves and do that and look, and it's fine. Like, there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's nothing inherently wrong with that particular path. But at some point, it dawned on me that this wasn't going to create the kind of stability that I was looking for. And this wasn't going to be gives me the kind of control that I wanted to have in my career. And so after a decade of working for other people, I began to take my expertise, that thing that I was learning at work, and I began to write about it, first in blog posts, and then it's in speeches at conferences. And then eventually, as my first book, and all of those talks, and all of those podcasts, and all those speeches, and everything in the book as well, was me giving back to the community. It was me sharing my expertise, and not asking for anything. Right, there was no, there was no call to action, at the end of my blog posts, other than, you know, read next week's blog post that was about, you know, there's no call to action in the book, as well, the first book, Lean UX, it's just really is about here's how we solve a particular problem. And we think it might help you. And what that did is it built a reputation for me, as someone who he has had experience, doing initially designed work, product management work, digital product development work. And then as someone who had solved specific problems in that space, and as someone who was willing to share that expertise with everybody else, and that's really where things begin to change. That's where the opportunities really begin to come in is the opportunity to start to push you towards, well, the opportunity start to initially to speak, to be a guest to share your expertise in other venues. And then eventually, it taken you write a book, hey, can you teach a class? Hey, can you do some consulting? Hey, can you help? Do you want to, you know, would you consider working for us, all those things begin to come in over time, because you've developed that reputation. And I've done all of those things. And that's exactly what the what forever employable is about is sharing that journey.

Rafael Testai: 6:50

Fantastic. I also want to add to the listeners that Jeff has a four and a half star review. And 269 ratings on his book on Amazon. That's pretty cool. We're going to talk about the book, how you got those ratings later? What went on out, like, how did you get 269 ratings?

Jeff Gothelf: 7:08

I asked for them. I mean, really, I know that I know that sounds basic. But that's literally it's how you get it right? Unless, you know, unless you've got a massive marketing campaign, or you're already a well known author, the only way to get these reviews is to ask for them. I mean, I literally every single person, that I put a book in their hands, if there was somebody who's literally got a book from me physically, I asked, please write a review. If I send somebody an email in my email signature, Hey, did you read my book, please write a review of some if somebody emailed me and said, Hey, Jeff, I read your book, I really liked it. I have a question. I would answer the question. I say, Listen, thanks so much for that. Here's, here's your answer. Please. Do you mind writing a review? It's it's really that's that's how I did it is i i asked for every single one of those. And it's amazing people will actually do if you if you ask them, it's pretty cool.

Rafael Testai: 8:04

How do you find the balance of not being too pushy? When making the ask? Do you just make it once and leave it alone? Or do you follow up on it? With this

Jeff Gothelf: 8:12

kind of ask? I only do it once, right? This is one of those things where it's like, look, I'd love you to help me. Usually it's right after I've helped them, right? If I've answered a question, or I've given them a copy of the book, or I've signed something or whatever, if they've been to a talk, that type of thing. And so then it's a one time ask, right? Hey, would you please write a review of the book? But look, I mean, but that's the sort of the direct one on one request. I mean, when sort of the, when it's a one to many requests, like on LinkedIn or in my newsletter or on Twitter, then that was a fairly regular request on there. Because there was it was one too many. So I didn't feel too too badly. But first of all, a small ask like this, something fairly transactional, one to one I asked once and that's it. Like, if they're not going to do it, they're not going to do it, right. There's no, this isn't a thing that I'm going to lose reputation points over. I'm not gonna harass somebody to write a review of the book.

Rafael Testai: 9:07

Absolutely. So let's see. So many things I want to ask you, okay. The cover of your book is the sign of infinity. Pencil twisted in the sign of infinity, almost like a pretzel of engineers listening, you know, what the sign of infinity looks like? And the point of the pencil touching the eraser? What's the logic behind that?

Jeff Gothelf: 9:31

I think that I think is just an opportunity to close the loop there, right is the fact that it is really an infinite loop and that by following the advice in the book, you can become infinitely employable. Right? The idea the idea here in the book is to create a safety net, it's to create a continuous stream of inbound opportunities. So that when the next pandemic happens when your boss gets tired of you one day, when, you know your company gets acquired and all of a sudden you're made redundant or who knows, right? Maybe your company goes out of business. Maybe Elon Musk buys your company, right? Who knows? All kinds of stuff could happen. Right? There are two ways to deal with that. One is to be reactive, and say, Oh crap, Elon Musk bought my company. And now I'm redundant. So I better spruce up my resume, you know, dust off my LinkedIn profile and get to work looking for a job. Or you can be proactive. And proactive means you, you start to create this inbound flow of continuous opportunities. So that when something like that happens, you're not scared, right? There's, hey, I can grab that speaking gig that'll pay a little bit of money, or, Hey, I can I can write for this magazine, or I can start doing some consulting work or teach a class or, you know, build a course or whatever it is, you've got a tremendous amount of opportunities, where you're not caught flat footed when these events that inevitably happen, happen to you that happen, everybody.

Rafael Testai: 11:01

I see. What's something that you've taught people, you say, you've done a lot of giving back, and thank you for that, that when you taught people this, they were particularly grateful, and they went out of your way to thank you for this something that happened often, like a specific piece of advice,

Jeff Gothelf: 11:19

the most, I mean, the most successful book I've written is lean UX. It's ironically, my first book, I've written four total books. And so far anyway, and lean UX is a solution to a problem that every software development team in the world has, which is how do you combine good design practices with Agile Software engineering practices? And that is an issue that nearly every team in the world has, there's a reason why that book has been so successful. And in that book, we provide an answer. Right? An answer based on experience, and people truly appreciate the advice in that book, there's a lot of there's a lot of it's not that long of a book. And it's obviously there's a lot of tactical stuff in there. But but even if you boiled it down to four, or five, six key points, people know those points at this point. And they're super grateful for the fact that this thing exists, that they can hand this to their boss and say, look, I can we want to work this way. This is what I'd like you to do for me. And that goes a really long way in seeing folks in making folks successful. And that's usually when I hear from them. Oh, my God, we were struggling with this. We read your book, we put it into action. And things are better now. And to me, that's, that's the greatest compliment somebody could pay me is that not only did they consume the thing that I made, but it actually worked for them and actually made them more successful? And that's, that's why I did it.

Rafael Testai: 12:43

Geez, this may seem like a dumb question. I'm a little embarrassed to ask it. But obviously, what metric do you use to judge the success of your books? Because I'm comparing the Lean UX book, and he says, it's got 45 ratings, and the other one has 269. So what do you look at what metric to assess the success?

Jeff Gothelf: 13:03

So a couple of things. So it's a fair question. Lean UX, the millennial actually looking at on Amazon right now is the third edition of Lean UX, which came out late last year. So it doesn't surprise me that it has 45 reviews, or only 45, in comparison to forever employable simply because the books been around for 10 years. And there's other versions of it that also that have hundreds of reviews on them as well. The success of the book, you can measure in a few different ways. Obviously, sales, sales is an easy metric, how many copies that you sell, and generally speaking, most books don't sell even 1000 copies. So if you beat 1000, you're doing better than most books. So so well done there. Why you wrote the book helps determine other measures of success. If, for example, if you wrote it to make money, then the revenue you generated off the book is important, right, which doesn't necessarily equate to the number of books you sold, right? For example, Lean UX over the course of the last decade has sold about 100,000 copies, maybe even maybe even more

Rafael Testai: 14:04

100,000 copies. I imagine like what percentage of authors get to sell 100,000 copies or more? Not? Very few,

Jeff Gothelf: 14:12

very few, very few. And look, it's in it's in nine languages, right. But I published it with a traditional publisher with O'Reilly, they're a technical publisher, right? So I don't make a lot of money on every sale of the book, I get a royalty check every month, you know, it's enough to take my wife out to a nice dinner every month. And that's about it. It's nice. I'm not complaining about it, but I don't make a ton of money that conversely, I self published forever employable. Right? So for every copy of forever employable that I sell, I literally make 10 times more money than for every copy of Lean UX, right? So you can measure success that way. For me, honestly, it's about impact impact on the communities that I write for. And the amount of feedback that I get that says that helps me believe helps me understand whether or not I've had impact. And lean UX is clearly successful by those standards. And forever employable, too. I mean, look, for every employable, a sold about 10,000 copies to date. And, and people reach out all the time saying how much it's helped them and how grateful they are for it. So impact goes a long way.

Rafael Testai: 15:21

If you could give somebody advice that they're thinking they have an expertise, they have somewhat of a network, and they're thinking about writing a book, but this is something that they've never done before. So what resource would you give them that can expedite their learning curve? And how to write a book?

Jeff Gothelf: 15:35

Oh, that's a great question. Look, there's there's infinite resources on this. So the best thing that I think you can do, in this case, I mean, it looks a couple of a couple of reasons, you want to resource, the resource that I like, a lot. There's a website called Read z.com, R, E, D, S, Y. And it's like a, it's a marketplace for authors for people selling services to authors. And so you're going to find editors there. Cotton, developmental editors, copy editors, book designers, cover designers, publishers, you name it, authors, writing coaches, all that kind of stuff, ghost writers, all those things are there, that's a good resource, because you'll find a lot of resources about how to write a book there. But ultimately, if your goal is to write a book, my advice to you is just to start writing and not to write the manuscript so much, but to start to break it down into smaller tasks, and start publishing those smaller tasks or blog posts, 500 words, 1000 words, right? nothing bigger than that, and just start doing that on a regular basis, weekly, you know, twice a week, every other day, something like that, where you're starting to get the writing muscle trained, and you're getting content out there. For example, I'll give you an example. The book I'd like to write next is about a thing called objectives and key results. It's a new goal setting framework, that new political setting framework that is very popular these days, and I'm one of the leading voices about this. I have been writing a blog post about objectives and key results once a week for the last 18 to 20 months. My blog posts are about 1000 words. And so I've already written about 20,000 words, for that book. Right? At some point, I'll put all that together and flesh it out and smooth it over. But this gives me an opportunity to write less, to write more often. And to get a sense from my audience, which content actually resonates with them. Right? What was what people put it people read, what do people react to, and then helps me understand how to focus the book as well.

Rafael Testai: 17:49

So I'm browsing through your website. And as Jeff got health.com, it'll be in the show notes. And I'm looking through your different blogs at the moment. I've heard a lot of people do blogs, I've done some blogging myself. After you write the blog, what can one do to start getting some traction on the blogs?

Jeff Gothelf: 18:09

What you have to let people know that it's there. I mean, really, you know, if particularly if you're publishing on your own site, there's no algorithm to promote your work to anybody else. Right. So you've got to let people know, that you've published and so you let them know on social media, I mean, and, you know, wherever, wherever that that lives for you. Twitter's Twitter's big for me, LinkedIn is big for me. You know, if you're using Tiktok, or Instagram, or Facebook or whatever, right, those those are all viable channels, as well. But I mean, really, wherever people listen to you, or pay attention to you, or you have some followers, even if it's friends and family, start there, let them know and ask them to help spread the word about it, so that other people discover you, but you've got Oh, and this is coming back to your question from before. This should not be a one time ask this, people will ignore this, you've got to hit them over the head with it over and over and over and over again, until eventually they read it and eventually they share it and they tell their friends. So this is where you really double down on the requests.

Rafael Testai: 19:14

Perfect. Real quick, I just want to take a short break and share with our listeners. That team pipeline.us is where you can learn more about how we can help medical device and other product engineering or manufacturing teams develop turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines to correct arise, inspect, assemble, manufacture and perform verification testing on your devices. So we're here with our guest, Jeff Gothelf. And how did you get to 33,000 followers on LinkedIn any tips for some content creators

Unknown: 19:50

As creating content I mean, look, the real again, this listening. is there's i I always joke with us people like Hey, Jeff, how did you how did you build your following How did you you know, get get this client or to do that work or whatever it is. I'm a one trick pony Rafael, I know how to do one thing. And that's content marketing, right i and it's not even that marketing so much as it's because there's no real, like I said, there's no real call to action. I write I write on a regular basis I share for me, that's my, that's the channel that works well for me. So I'm LinkedIn, I share content on a regular basis. And it's content that comes from my blog. It's not like I'm recreating new stuff. Every week, I'm repurposing content, from other channels, into LinkedIn, into Twitter, into YouTube into whatever into my newsletter. And so it's it's create once and publish infinitely, right, you just repurpose it, you chop it up, you, you know, you edit it into the proper format for the for each channel. And so that's what builds an audience. Because if you publish regularly, eventually something will hit, eventually, people will start paying attention. And that happens over time, maybe it's one out of 10, the first time you start, but then once you have a couple of hits, then maybe it's two times out of 10, or three times out of 10, that something hits. And there's a compounding effect here, where your popularity will grow more, the more you write, and it's just a matter of getting stuff out there and seeing what sticks. If you fret over how perfect it is, or how polished it is, or how good it is or how bad it is. You'll never get it done. You'll never build this just start shipping stuff out there.

Rafael Testai: 21:35

Who's someone that does Did you call content marketing, we said, who someone that does content marketing that you really admire, and you strive that that just really doesn't? Well, and you look up to in that regard?

Jeff Gothelf: 21:50

So I think I mean, there's some big names, right? So like, Gary Vaynerchuk, really impressive, right? You don't have to love his content. But the guy went from selling wine to running a massive marketing company. Through content, he made YouTube videos about why, you know, he screamed into the ether for a year before anybody paid attention to him. He does a great job of taking one bit of content and repurposing it across a variety of channels. Right. So again, you don't have to love his content. But his execution is brilliant. It's very, very good. So that I think that's really impressive. Other folks who do a great job is a colleague of mine named Melissa Perry. She's an expert in the product management space, she does a fantastic job of podcasting and writing and speaking, and teaching, and really taking her content and building a tremendous following and building a huge business on top of it as well. She's tremendously successful, as well. And so I encourage you to look at her for inspiration as

Rafael Testai: 22:47

Melissa Perri how do you spell her name? well.

Unknown: 22:51

P E R R I

Rafael Testai: 22:54

I, perfect. I'll look her up later on LinkedIn. So you mentioned actually one bit of content and you do you chop it up, you redistributed? Where do you first posted a piece of content? Is it on your website?

Jeff Gothelf: 23:08

So these days, yes, that's exactly where it starts. So I've I've done that people know me enough. Again, it's not a massive blog or success. But it's it's enough of a success that people know to come to my blog and read about it. So yes, so that's where it starts. It starts on the blog. And then it percolates out to Twitter it percolates out to LinkedIn. Sometimes I'll make a YouTube video about it. I've got a very small, a nascent YouTube channel. And so that is, you know, that that's where it starts. But I definitely always start on my blog, because that's a weekly ritual for me, I publish every Monday, there's a new blog post on there. And then based on how it works, and how it succeeds, we decide kind of where to chop it up, how to repurpose it, where it's gonna go from there.

Rafael Testai: 23:54

So imagine you say we have a team that helps you with this.

Jeff Gothelf: 23:58

I do have a team. That's right. So I do the writing. And then I've got the content, the content team that I work with, who chop the stuff up, repurpose it, they schedule it for publication, and they really helped me sort of create all these assets from the thing that I made. So I make one thing a week, and they make 10 things out of it. Every week.

Rafael Testai: 24:23

A lot of it. Thank you so much for giving us these insights into what year this is already given back and providing a lot of value for the listeners. Let me think how some of this is obviously innate talent, but how did you become a good writer?

Jeff Gothelf: 24:41

I like to believe that these days, I am a I'm a good writer. But I wasn't always a good writer. When I lean UX. took me four tries to take get published, I wrote that manuscript four times. And the reason why I wrote it four times, because I was bad at writing, I'd never written a book before. And no one taught me how to write a book. I had written some blog posts, but that was about it. The way that I got good, or the way that I got better at writing, is by writing. And I know that sounds against simple and obvious, but that's the trick. There's really nothing. I mean, look, you can obviously you can take some courses, or you can read some books, and it's lots of great like Twitter threads, lots of experts out there sharing lots of writing tips. And those are great. Those are those really help. But those are frameworks. Those are guidelines, those are methods, those are processes, but they're no substitution for you writing regularly, it's like working out, right? How do you get strong, you get strong by lifting weights by working out, right, it's the same thing, you're exercising a muscle here, you get better at writing, by writing. And then ideally, ideally, you work with someone who can give you really good, critical feedback on your writing, I was very fortunate to work with my longtime co author, business partner and friend, Josh, Sidon, Josh and I work really well together. And we've built up a long relationship of trust, that allows us to be brutally honest with each other. When something's great, we call each other out on it. And when something is not great, we call each other out on it. And having that perspective is really, really helpful. So finding a writing partner, it's kind of like a running partner, you know, it's you don't even have to write together, right, you can write in parallel, and then just read each other's stuff and provide critique. And that's, that's really important, I think, it's to get that objective point of view, and to be able to, to take it, because you know, someone's gonna call your baby ugly. And you're gonna have to deal with that. And that's okay, because that's how you get better.

Rafael Testai: 27:04

Someone's gonna call your baby. Oh, well, that's one. Let's see. Your point, how did you find your writing partner?

Jeff Gothelf: 27:12

Well, he and at this point, he's my is my long term, business partner as well. We were doing similar work at different companies at the same time. So I was working on Wall Street, I was working somewhere else in, in New York at the time. And everywhere, every time I ended up and I remember, I started doing some speaking gigs and that kind of thing. Every time I ended up on a panel, or at a conference, particularly in New York, or in San Francisco, I've looked at my left and my right, and Josh was always there every time. It's like, why is this guy always like, every time I go somewhere, there's this guy, he's always there. It's really strange, right? And so we just started chatting to kind of get to know each other because we were spending time on stage together. And it turned out that we have a lot in common facing similar challenges leading similar teams. And that really turned into a collaboration that has spanned more than 10 years, 12 years at this point.

Rafael Testai: 28:15

So if we're jumping around with my questions, but sometimes it's the nature of a good conversation I just had in the tip of my tongue, I'd love to ask you a question about this. Okay, how do you know when you're ready to write a book? Let me let me provide some context. A lot of people feel like they have impostor syndrome, that they're not ready, why them? How do you know when it's time for you to write a book?

Jeff Gothelf: 28:40

I will tell you a quick, quick story. I knew a guy once I haven't talked to him a long time. And I still know him. I just haven't chatted with him in a while. He went to film school. And he told me the stories at first day of film school, you go to university, you go to whatever, film school 101 is, right? Whatever that first class is. It's one of those big amphitheater classes, there's 800 kids or 1000 kids, you know, and the professor got up in front of the class. And he looked at all these kids inspiring filmmakers. And he said to them, he said, Do you want to make a movie? Or do you want to have made a movie? And I thought that was just brilliant, right? Because it really challenges you to think about why you would even write a book like do you actually have something to say that is book worthy? In other words, do you want to write a book? Or do you want the glory of having written a book? Right? Do you want to have written a book? Do you want to have made a movie? And I think that's a really good first question to ask yourself, right? Do you really have something that's book worthy something to share something that you could write 30 40,000 words about maybe more, right? Or do you just want to be able to say, well, I wrote a book, because if it's the latter, you're probably not ready to write a book. Right? But if it's the former, that's a good place to start. I think the next thing that you want to do is ask

Rafael Testai: 30:03

you something. I have to ask you, how do you know if you have something that's worth you to write a book about? Is it feedback from people?

Jeff Gothelf: 30:09

Yeah. So that's, that's, that's where I'm headed. Right? So initially, so So first of all, like, that's the first thing like, Well, how do you how do you feel about like, are you? Are you in it for the work? Like to do the work? Are you in it for the glory? Right? I think if you're in it to do the work, and to truly, really think that you've got something that might be big, then might, the next thing is as they start running experiments, right? Instead of writing 30,000 words, write 1000 words, and publish it, and see what happens and tell everybody, and then next week, write another 750 or 1000 words and publish it and see what happens, right? And start to figure out how to tell your story, what channels it works for what language resonates with your readers who those readers are, why they're reading this, right. And I think if you can do that, if you can build that, that cadence of experimentation, you can start to sort of narrow down whether or not there's enough here for you to write a book about, and whether there's an audience for that book, as well. And then most importantly, how to tell that story. And I think that's really important as well.

Rafael Testai: 31:16

Perfect. Well, I'll just come in here to the end of our conversation, and our audience may not know this, but Jeff has been living in Barcelona for five years, is that correct? So I'm going to ask Jeff a question in Spanish and I want the listeners I'm going to really going to put Jeff on the spot here. But in America, it's not common to have a native English speaker or an American speak Spanish so well, so everyone listen to this one a Jeff Sandino a webinar Antonio Brown and Kathy Shanna upon y'all. Korea server Siona is ice cream you our own blog and Epinal

Jeff Gothelf: 31:51

si si Mira, a rad Si Si Si mirrors and LinkedIn. I are Manos almeno cinco sace a articulos K videos tambien que scritto a en espanol he, I forgot to say mana. Insane. Yeah, una clase en Espanol. Aki in Barcelona for more federal federal loyalty.

Rafael Testai: 32:22

Na fantastico take Euler difference. Yes. Yeah. Luna referensi and allow the NCR gavel upon y'all. You know the NCAA gambling lists. I want to correct that eatigo

Jeff Gothelf: 32:33

Mira, a level that is I Ds basis krokus. There's no single versus single. This is mass palabras en Inglis que en espanol por eso es mas facil express our miscellaneous a scrivere miscellaneous and Inglis por que quiero ser mas specifical que en espanol E. coli cuando incendio en espanol or script is a scribble scribble scribble Espanol as dificil para me a decir la la si de as como los Cabos tengo en cuanto tiempo in Myka Betha money

Rafael Testai: 33:25

machina. So basically, whereas Jeff, if he had ever written any blogs in Spanish, and he says yes, but not only that, he's taught classes in Spanish, which I think is pretty cool. But then this is my question, Jeff said that English has a five times more words than Spanish. And I want to ask you, what does that mean five times more words?

Jeff Gothelf: 33:48

So there's there's about 100,000 words in Spanish, and there's about half a million words in English. Roughly speaking,

Rafael Testai: 33:56

what do you mean by number of words,

Jeff Gothelf: 33:58

literally, like literally the quantity of words like if you were to if you were to count how many words are in the language? Right? There's about 100,000 words in Spanish, and it's about 500,000 in English,

Rafael Testai: 34:09

forgive my skeptical back, and sorry to interrupt that, like, who comes up with that statistic?

Jeff Gothelf: 34:16

Google, I've Googled it. That's where I got the data. I can't remember the exact source. But, but the difference is, is that you're able to express yourself much more specifically, in English I am I'm able to speak for myself, I am able to express myself in granted. I'm still new to Spanish, but I am able to express myself in English much more specifically, much more explicitly than I feel like I can do in Spanish. It's not to say that it can't be done in Spanish. But there's just so many more words It feels like it. It's it's easier.

Rafael Testai: 34:57

Geez, for some reason, I have to challenge that a little bit. Let me ask you one specific question. What's a phrase or a word that it's available in English that isn't in Spanish?

Unknown: 35:07

No, that's fair. So let's take a word like raro. Right? Okay. Raro means weird. It also means rare. Exactly. Right. Right. But you wouldn't say so for example, in Spanish, and it's, it's just the one that first one that came to mind, right? So it's just an example where in English, you'd say something is rare, or something is weird. Those aren't the same things, right? That word? Those two words means something different in English, but in Spanish, you use the same word for that. esperar is another is another example. Right? To hope, or to wait. Right? A similar, like, you're kind of hoping and you're kind of waiting. But but in English, you've got two different words for that. And so it's it just feels like there's just more division. In in English, but again, that's, that's just two examples that come come to mind right off the bat. I don't know if that helps my case or not. But

Rafael Testai: 36:11

I've been I came to the United States when I was 13. And I'm 31. Now, so I'm like half and a half bilingual. And I think that there's truth to this statement, but it's gonna marinate in my mind, even after this call is over. Yeah, I'm gonna think about this. Well, what's something that I haven't asked you that I should have asked you that you want to share with our audience?

Jeff Gothelf: 36:31

Think? What should you have asked me that you should have asked me. I don't know. Should have asked me about how the pandemic has changed my career.

Rafael Testai: 36:48

I'm thinking that we want to talk about the pandemic, or people fed up with the pandemic. Did you have some insights that people may not have heard elsewhere about pandemic?

Unknown: 36:56

Oh, I don't know. I mean, look, I'll just I'll keep it short, right. We don't talk about the pandemic, but the changes themselves. The fact is, I don't travel anymore, which has been tremendous. I used to travel every week for work. And it's allowed me to completely reinvent my services, as an as a kind of at home delivery. And that's fundamentally improved my personal life, I get to be home, I get to see my kids, see my wife make, you know, hang out with my friends, build routines, which is something I've really missed. Before, before travel stopped. And now that travel is coming back. I'm not rushing to get back on airplanes. I'm really happy just being home. And now so that's been transformational for me for the last couple of years.

Rafael Testai: 37:36

Exactly. Because if you go to Jeff gohealth.com, your website, if you scroll about a third down, it says work with Jeff remote coaching, training and Keynote learn more. So the key word is remote. In the beginning, how do you handle the inquiries that want you to fly out to places? Do you simply just say no, but how do you present the remote to them?

Unknown: 37:57

Well, so there haven't been that many inquiries to do that recently. Although that to be fair, a couple have started coming in. So it's sort of starting to roll in again. These days, generally speaking, the answer is no, unless, honestly, if there's no real, it's no real formula to this. Other than, it's a place I want to go or a place I haven't been, or the work sounds interesting. Or there's maybe there's somebody in that city that I haven't seen in a long time, and I want to go see a friend or family member. I give an example. Recently, I got an inbound inquiry for an onsite workshop in Estonia. I've never been to Estonia, I'd like to go here. It's awesome. And so I'm considering it, right? Because it's not that far. Right. It's two and a half, three hour flight for me. And I've never been sounds interesting. And so maybe I'll go to Estonia, but but that's the consideration that consideration is like do I want to go? Is it a cool place? That type of thing, you know,

Rafael Testai: 38:58

fantastical? Well, any last words of inspiration for our listeners, before we go?

Jeff Gothelf: 39:03

The inspiration is, look, if you've got a burning passion, if you've got an expedite your passion, you got expertise in your work, you had experience in your work, start sharing it be generous, give back, it doesn't matter that even if you feel like you should be paid for that, do it anyway. People will thank you, people will remember you. And when it's time for them to need something in that discipline. They'll come to you because they'll remember you as the generous person that gave them something without asking for anything in return.

Rafael Testai: 39:30

That's amazing. It's been a treat having you on the podcast. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Gothelf: 39:34

My pleasure, Rafael. Thanks so much for having me.

Aaron Moncur: 39:39

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines and with product design, visit us at Team pipeline.us. Thanks For listening