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Speaker A: I have been thinking a lot lately about a conversation I had last spring with the technology writer Ed Zitron. It was a Slate plus episode called the Rise of the Do Nothing Middle Manager. And Ed’s main point was that if you notice your experience on tech platforms and Internet search getting worse, you’re not alone. And he argues that it’s because a lot of managers these days in all kinds of workplaces have have become less focused on making stuff that’s good and more focused on making sure revenue is going up.

Speaker B: Everything must grow. Everything must grow at all times, even if it means chopping people off, even if it means making things worse. It’s why so many companies in tech are not really innovating. Because think about it. If you replace all the people whose job is to build the future, replace them with people who answer the question of how do we make software make us money? You’re not going to build much of a future. You’re going to build the future of business, which is an entirely different thing.

Speaker A: Obviously, there are economic implications to what Ed is talking about here, but he’s also describing something simpler, just a lousy workplace, one that isn’t very creative, where it can be hard to take pride in your work, where you might become an expense line item that’s eliminated. And that’s why we wanted to include Ed as we answered some of your advice questions about when to change careers and pivot to something totally different. For the last few months, we’ve been getting your questions about career pivots. Some of you have already made big changes and others of you are at a crossroads, wondering if a big leap is worth the risk. And others of you just needed to vent about how so much of how you make money is feeling precarious or under threat in the very near future. Along with Ed to help me answer your questions, we invited on two other savvy people who have been both observers of and participants in the current economy. One of them is Sophia Chang, who is a mainstay in the New York City arts and culture scene. She spent years as a talent agent for hip hop artists and now works as a life coach and started a nonprofit mentorship program for women of color. And we also hear from Luke Peterson, who’s a farmer in Minnesot who grew up in an agricultural community but is the first in his family to try to make it in farming. He started off with no land, no equipment, and after quitting a much more stable job with benefits. And of course, Ed Zitron shares some of his own big shifts through PR work and hosting his own podcast and building a business.

Speaker B: As a critic of the tech industry, if you are feeling a pull towards something, try and go for it. But the big thing is work out what success looks like. Find a goal of something you can be proud of, because if you don’t have that, you’re gonna jump and then you’re gonna burn yourself out.

Speaker A: This is Death, Sex and Money, the show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. I’m Anna. Many of our listeners who are at different ages and from different fields are feeling the ground shift beneath their feet at work. Some of you are wondering, do I need to make a move or just wait until the bottom falls out? Like this listener whom we’re calling Leah.

Speaker C: Hi Anna. And Sucks Money. I am contemplating a big career shift. I work in a field that, let’s just say, is losing a lot of funding and is in a big retreat. Given the current political climate of our country, there aren’t a lot of jobs in what I do out there right now. So my question about the big career shift is how do I know when is it the right time? Do I just continue in the same field I’m in and just grind until I find something there and wait it out? Or do I invest in making a big shift and even if that means investing a lot of time and money and learning something new?

Speaker A: And I’ll say for context, I’m about 50 years old, so it feels a little late to start something new, but I’m not sure what other options I have for guidance here. I want to first turn to Sophia Chang. I first met her when she came along with the musician Raphael Siddiq when he was on the show. Sophia spent years managing big name artists, including multiple members of the Wu Tang Clan and the singer d’ Angelo and others. She wrote a memoir about her time in the music industry called the Baddest B**** in the Room. Now she’s a life coach, and she started a nonprofit mentorship program for women of color.

Speaker D: Whenever people talk to me about career pivots, my clients talk about it. When my mentees talk about it, the first question I’m always going to ask is about safety. I mean, I think many of us fantasize and dream about I’d like to do this and I’d like to do that. But the first, the fundamental question is, if you make this pivot, will you and anybody that you take care of be safe? If you’re a single mother of three and Making this career pivot could be really enthralling, but you put yourself at risk. You know, I was a single mother of two. If I made some big career pivot and it put my children at risk of being unhoused or hungry, it would have been irresponsible for me to do, even if I had always dreamed of being the prima ballerina, whatever. So assuming that she has some degree of safety, then I would say, look, I run a mentorship program for women of color and there is no ceiling to the age because I believe that we can be mentored at any time. And in particular, we as women often have many comings of age, particularly if we have family. So we have a lot of women applying to the program who are 40, who are 50, that are having exactly this kind of existential crisis is probably a big word, but an existential moment where they are reconsidering their path. I am always going to advocate for making the change. I’m also glad that you played the audio as opposed to us just reading this question, because I feel what I hear in her voice is she sounds disillusioned with her path. She sounds like she’s disheartened. And she said, so what do I do? Do I just grind it out and wait until something goes along? And for me, immediately that signals that she, she is not satisfied with where she is. So if she can make the pivot safely, I would absolutely tell her to make it safely. It is, as far as I’m concerned, it is never too late. It is never, ever too late.

Speaker A: The tech writer Ed Zittron also has thoughts for Leah. He started his own PR firm a while back, and once that gig was stable, he added more jobs to his plate. He writes the newsletter where’s your Ed At? Where he reports on changes in the tech sector and launched a podcast called Better Offline.

Speaker B: Sophia makes the really good point about stability. You have to I’ve got a kid, people who depend on me. You can’t just make these choices. So my writing was subsidized by my PR firm for the first five years of it. I wrote it on the side when I had time. I focused on what would make sure my son ate and we had a place to live in. I also think that I am dyspraxic. I have adhd, I have autism. I. I had a lot of people when I started writing, betting against me. I PR firm guy, what could he possibly know, couldn’t possibly learn finance, accountancy, learned all of it. You just sit down and do It. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s something that was. They took hours and hours and a lot of, like, pushing and a lot of mental health work as well, because you have to. It’s not even a confidence thing because it’s not about being better, it’s about doing it. And it’s tough. It is not easy to make the transition. It’s also never too late. My dad, in his 50s, I think maybe his 60s, even became a lawyer after being successful management consultant. Dear friend of mine, Peter Stormer, an actor, told me a story once. He’s, like, asked his father when he lost money, like, what do I do here? What do I do? He goes, you have two hands, deep voice, Swedish. But you’ve got these two hands. And it is true. It is true that, sure, you’re older, but it really comes down to you have the benefit of experience. Enjoy it, people. Anyone who is ageist towards you, destroy them, just like run them over. Be better than them. Someone who needs to bring up your age doesn’t have the talent to beat you.

Speaker A: The other expert in our panel is Luke Peterson, a farmer in the small town of Dawson, Minnesota. He’s 36 and has already made several big pivots in his work life so far. First, he pivoted to farming from a much more stable job. Then he shifted from conventional farming to organic, and then he changed his operation again to do regenerative farming. That’s where you rotate and add different crops to your mix so that your farming works with and improves soil and the overall ecosystem. I first met Luke and heard about these big leaps last fall when I went to Farm Aid, which is the annual concert that Willie Nelson and friends have been putting on for 40 years to support small family farming operations in agricultural communities.

Speaker E: And Willie’s the man, isn’t he, Willie?

Speaker A: I mean, we can all agree on that. Always. Luke, the thing that I really took away when we ran into each other at Farm Aid was you leapt before you had a net in front of you when you got into farming in a way that is pretty nervy, like you had some nerve. That question of timing. Will you tell the story of what happened when you were 23? Your wife works in nursing, you had your first child together, you had a good state job with benefits and a pension working for the Natural Resources Agency, and you decided, I’m going to quit.

Speaker E: Yeah, I can start there. So I was the irresponsible one and definitely had unrealistic dreams. I had a huge Benefit of having, like, an aha moment that really pushed me in the direction that I. That I have moved. But, you know, we had kids at the time. My wife wanted to go back to school to be a nurse practitioner. She was currently an rn. I was working on the road five days a week working for the Department of Natural Resources. And in order for my wife to go back to school, one of us was going to have to be home with the kids or I was going to have to be at home with the kids. So we made the decision together that I was going to figure out how to have an income while watching the kids and what we moved into, you know, the easiest, you know, most practical thing at the time seemed to be that we would just start farming. We’re from an agricultural community. I had worked for a farmer while Ali was going to school in Fargo for three years. And I thought I could pull it off. I punched the numbers on a piece of scratch paper and it was like, this is no big deal. And I quit my job. I told my boss, I said, I want to stay home with the kids. I don’t want to drop them off at daycare. My wife wants to go back to school. I’m going to quit this job, which has it. Which he told me. He said, you’ll never find a job with these kind of benefits or this health care package. And even then, I. I had the motivation of, you know, having children for the first time and just wanting to be with them really motivated me. Walked out of the office. I had the pair of boots on that the place had bought for me. And on the way out, my boss asked me if I was going to bring the boots back. And I said, I’ll bring them back. I don’t have another pair with me, but I’ll bring them back. And, yeah, we started farming. We started pulling equipment out of groves and out of old machine sheds. It was equipment that should have been in the junkyard. It was basically equipment at the price of scrap iron. And we started piecing it together and started moving forward.

Speaker D: Please tell me you did not give him back his boots.

Speaker E: There’s a really good story with that. And I did, like, three years later. And the reason it took me three years is because I couldn’t afford a pair of boots for three more years after I quit my job. But I did bring them back, and they were completely worn out.

Speaker A: Great, great. Yep, yep. But the timing. You didn’t have financing lined up? No, you didn’t have, like, what you had was an imperative from your Family. And you didn’t mention this, but you always secretly wanted to be a farmer. You’re surrounded by farm kids your whole life and you don’t get to be one. And then you’re like, here’s my shot. I’m gonna learn how to be my own farmer. Even though I didn’t inherit any of the privileges of having land or equipment.

Speaker E: Yeah, I wanted to be one. I think ever since I was probably old enough to push a little toy tractor around in my toy box. But the timing piece back to her question is that on one hand, you know, being responsible is great, but on the other hand is like, when is there a good time to do anything? Yeah. And why, why is she. What is telling her to make this move? Is there something out there that’s. Does she. She sees something for her to be, you know, talking to herself about making a shift. But if I look back as far as, you know, once I got involved with farming, I farmed conventionally for two years. And the first year in, I knew that I had to make a shift. And then it took me another year to actually pull it off. And then I transitioned to organic. One year into organic, something was telling me, you need to keep moving. The writing is on the wall. And something pushed me into regenerative. So like just that small voice must. There must be a reason for it. I would listen to it.

Speaker A: We got another question from a listener who’s weighing this sense of stability versus passion. Let’s listen to what she’s sent in.

Speaker F: Hi there. I’m in my mid-20s and I have been pursuing a career as an opera singer. I’ve been pretty lucky so far. I went straight from my training into a two year full time contract at an opera company. But that contract is coming to an end in May. I am looking at a pretty empty calendar for next year. So it’ll be a few gigs freelancing here and there and then a day job. And I’m not sure what that would be because I’ve never really been in this freelancing position before. I’ve always been a student or working full time. So I’m at a bit of a crossroads about it. On the one hand, I really value my career. It’s a big part of my identity. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. But on the other hand, I’m craving more stability and a sense of home. I moved away from my hometown eight years ago to start on this path and I miss it. I miss my friends and my family. And often I Dream about what it would be like to go back to school, retrain in a more stable career, and just really focus on my relationships, my hobbies, spending time outdoors and hopefully finding a partner and settling down, which is something that’s been hard to do while I’ve been pursuing my career in opera. So I guess my question is, should I be brave and try to push through and see what might be waiting for me on the other side in terms of my opera career, or should I listen to the part of me that’s craving stability in home and go back to school? Some career paths I’m considering are becoming a therapist or maybe going to law school. So that’s my question, and I’d really love any advice you can give. So thanks in advance.

Speaker A: What I hear here is the question about, like, I’m imagining what it might be like if I redefine my identity and work, pursuing my passion as my work is not at the center of it. But she also says there, should I be brave and try to push through? So I have a question of where fear is. How much fear is driving this pull towards stability at home as she describes Ed, what did you hear in that question? Because I think that you’re somebody. I think of who’s worked for companies, you’ve worked freelance, you have defined your life around your work. What did you hear? What do you want her to think about?

Speaker B: A lot of things. So a lot of that felt like a lot of societal pressures working on her, like finding a partner, stability, job, career. Also, those are two very different fields. Becoming a therapist. So, like, are you going to. Because depending on what kind of therapist you become, that’s seven years of work to become a doctor and like, a great deal of actual work to do it. Become a social worker. Great. What does success look like there? Is there a way. And Sophia knows much more about music than me. Is there a way of still scratching the itch of singing? I love singing personally. Was trained as a kid like you were. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Man of many talents.

Speaker B: If there’s a way of doing that on the side, obviously pursuing an opera career requires a great deal of physical labor and training and discipline that might not be possible as a lawyer or a social worker or what have you. I think the solution to all of this is actually working out what she wants. Because she didn’t sound enthusiastic about opera.

Speaker G: Exactly.

Speaker B: When I talk about my work, I start popping off a bit. It’s one of the reasons I get up in the morning. I love what I do. It’s why I Feel very lucky for what I’ve done. I think in this case, this person needs to find their priorities. And I don’t mean that as a condescending thing. I mean literally just sit down and be like, do you wanna do art, bro? Cause it doesn’t sound like you’re super excited about it. Sounds like you miss your friends. Sounds like you miss stability and reliability of a life. Maybe that isn’t becoming a lawyer, maybe that isn’t becoming a social worker. What is the life you want? Start there and work out where opera and jobs fit into it.

Speaker A: Sofia, what did you hear?

Speaker D: I agree. I thought it was ironic because she’s in this very specific creative field and you would imagine that somebody saying the opposite, which is, you know, I’m an accountant, I’m a therapist, I’m an attorney, but I’ve always had this dream of being an opera singer. And this is a woman, God bless her, that she walked out of college and she had a two year contract. That’s amazing. So she’s gotten to live this amazing dream. And I agree with Ed as well, that there are all sorts of voices in her head. And what I always say is try to quiet the voices as much as possible. Try to ignore what society, community, parents, friends, peers, lovers, what everybody is saying, and get really, really, really still and think about what you really want. That is not an easy exercise. It means a lot of unlearning. It means a lot of divesting from all of the things that we have been taught. And the other thing that I would always add to say to any woman, if she is a birthing person, that to always consider when she says, settle down. I think that that might include family. And I am so not about, hey, every woman or every person with a womb needs to have a baby. I’m not that at all. The earth is groaning under the pressure of the pressure that we have put on it as humans. But I know that I knew nothing about fertility growing up. Nothing. I was told how not to get pregnant.

Speaker A: I was not taught anything else in terms of sex education.

Speaker D: And by the time I had my children at virtually 35 and 37, I was a geriatric mother, a Jerry.

Speaker A: Well, that we can. That’s what the medical system calls us when we have babies after three months.

Speaker D: That’s right. That’s what the medical system tells us.

Speaker A: We don’t all have to adopt them.

Speaker D: No, of course not. But I would also say that for all of the astonishing advances in medicine, one among them is not any kind of slowing of ovarian aging.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker D: And so, again, I have no investment in anybody having babies and reproducing. I do care if people are educated about it. So she’s thinking about that. That is simply something that I would add to the calculus in terms of her future.

Speaker A: You make a good point. And, Luke, I want to just bring in for you. She has this paradigm, it seems, of kind of being out in the world and trying and being brave with her opera career or going back to her hometown, which she associates with deep relationships and stability. You live in the town where you grew up. What I know of your farming career is it’s been exciting and you have put down roots, but it’s. Stable might not be the word that I would use to describe what you have experienced as you’ve tried to build your farming business. And I also know that you’re an artist. Like, one of the things you did, you have done, is you’ve been a chainsaw artist. So you’ve made creative work as part of your life in your hometown. So I just wanted to see if you have anything to sort of add about when you’re a creative person and you’ve been moved by making things and performing. Like, how. How can that fit into a life that is also deeply embedded in a. In a community where you grew up.

Speaker E: Yeah. Maybe she can bring something back to her home community. So what we did is we built a life around all of it at the same time. So how can we include our kids in the lives that we want to live every day? So I have intentionally, like, built that into my career, my kids. That was part of why we started. Right, Was I needed to be home with the kids and then build a career where I could financially make money while being with the kids. So we’ve kind of built it all into one working structure that makes sense.

Speaker A: It’s part of the design. It’s all there.

Speaker E: It’s all part of the design. And that’s the beauty of being creative and then building your own. Your own situation is that you get to make the choices and the timeline and your schedule and all those things.

Speaker A: Career pivots can be jarring whether you choose to switch jobs or if the choice is made for you. Chris Sanger was one of the thousands of workers who were laid off last year from the federal government after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed budgets and cut some programs altogether. Chris had been a foreign aid worker for 17 years, and now in his late 40s, he’s dealing with a career pivot. That’s especially hard because he really loved his job.

Speaker H: The impact that my work at USAID had on my life and my family’s life just so transcends the idea of a 9 to 5. We picked our entire life, all of our furniture, all of our stuff, our car, our pets, and we moved it across the world for some number of years, got ourselves all set up there as best we could, and then moved again and moved again. And that had tremendous benefits and growth and a richness I wouldn’t trade for anything. But also really profound challenges and a lot of tears and a lot of loss of places we loved and people we had grown to care about.

Speaker A: In our Slate plus episode this week, I talk with Chris about how you cope when you have to leave a job that you love. One thing Chris did was start a podcast. It’s called It Was Never a Job, where he reminisces with other aid workers about the thrills and dangers of foreign aid work. In my conversation with Chris, we also talk about what it’s like to be in career limbo.

Speaker H: I’ve actually commiserated a little bit with my son, who’s in the midst of the college admissions process that everybody, everyone has the same question for us, which is like, where are you gonna go next? What’s your.

Speaker B: What’s your next thing?

Speaker A: Stop asking me that again. That conversation is right there in your Slate plus feed. If you are not yet a Slate plus member, you can get that episode right now by signing up. Go to slate.com dsnplus or you can sign up directly on the Death, Sex and Money show page on Apple Podcasts or in the Spotify app. In addition to these extra episodes, you also get ad free listening to our show and all the podcasts that Slate makes. And you get to feel good because you’ll be supporting our work and all the journalism work that happens at Slate. Please join today. This is Death, Sex and Money from Slate. I’m Anna Sale. I want to turn now to a question from a listener named Mike. This voice memo, it’s really stayed with me because it underlines the risk of doing this kind of episode where we give people advice where there are real stakes in their financial and creative and professional lives. It’s important to give advice that doesn’t sound too obvious or cliche or like a platitude you’ve heard a zillion times. And Mike challenges us on that.

Speaker I: Hi Anna, I’m writing for advice on the next phase of my professional life. I went to school for graphic Design and felt like I had found my thing. And for over a decade I was getting better and bigger gigs. And now I’m feeling the stress of AI. I see co workers and clients demand stuff faster and faster. There is no care for quality. It is just producing slop so fast that it can be here today and gone tomorrow. On social media, the idea of a professional design career looks wildly different than what was sold to us in undergraduate school. Suddenly no one has a budget, timelines shrink and demands are ever higher. All photo shoots became AI and I’m exhausted. The world around us is on fire and frankly, no one needs a new logo. At this point, I don’t know what to pivot to. I live in nyc, so earning a lesser wage is not possible. I have other interests in history. Cooking, baking, powerlifting. All my other interests don’t make money and I hate monetizing pleasure. I refuse to be an influencer or a creator. I find those positions just as precarious. I grew up in the Midwest, lower middle class, and I know the pain of not having a big network. My risk level isn’t high. I got into a heated argument a while ago with a career coach while I was possibly going to use her services and found my anger at AI made me irritable, especially when she says AI is just inevitable. And I don’t know, I see this tech for what it is. A deskilling of skilled labor so billionaires can collect more wealth. I’m not sure what new advice is out there that doesn’t rely on either building a community, being in the right networks, or being affluent. I just don’t know. But also, it’s just to the point where like, you know, making these big pivots is very hard and you’re taking a risk and you’re making a bet and those are things that are not, are not things I really feel safe to do. So I’m just trying to figure out what is something that I can actually do to prepare myself. Like, I’m nearing 40 and I need something to hold onto.

Speaker A: Oh, Mike, I love this message. And I just. One of the things that it really made me think about is how much I hear similar things from fellow journalists and people who work in media that the work that, that we started in, the environments we started in and the quality of the workplaces, the depth of the work we were able to make, like all of that has changed as economies have changed and how we do our work has changed. And I just first want to lift out that. Mike, what I hear is Part of this message is not just like what do I do? It’s also grief about how your industry has changed. And I think taking a moment and taking that like acknowledging that that change has happened and you miss how it used to be can be an important part in sort of being able to look clear eyed at what your choices ahead of you might be. Ed, you think about AI and the effect of tech on all of us workers a lot. What did Mike make you think about?

Speaker B: So he is facing. He is a victim of a con. So a lot of what you’re seeing with AI today is a result of subsidized models. These models can’t. They are not. They do not make money. They only lose money. Venture capital and private equity and private debt is holding all of this up. It will eventually roll back because these models are not sustainable. Nor will there just be easily accessible chatbots within the next few years. I’m confident of this in the interim and I think everyone needs to realize this. We are all of us. All of these things are happening because everyone’s trying to get back to 2019. They’re trying to act like the world is like how it was before the pandemic. AI is just an extrapolation of that investment from private equity. Venture capital doesn’t make sense anym. So they’re just cramming money in one thing going this will work right? In the interim. Yes. You’re in an industry where people were already trying to replace you with 99designs and Fiverr and other cheap slop. They just found another slot machine. There will always be slot machine. So it’s a question of do you want. What is the work that is being paid for in your field? Go and find it. Because there is something. Sure. You’re not making logos anymore. You’re not going to be making web frames. Tailwind CSS and other web templates are probably also getting in the way of that too. Do it’s time to realize that there is a competitor and it’s not AI. It’s lazy and stupid bosses who don’t know what you’re doing. You have to consider that most laborers are currently at war with those paying them. That we are at war with people that do not understand our jobs and thus will demand things that are unrealistic. I am serious that I think a lot of this is going to get rolled back. But in the meantime, it’s time to get mean. It’s time to get lean. It’s time to get mean. It’s time to actually find out what people are paying for these days. Speak to your peers, because I’m more so sure and I hear the agony in your voice. I know that your other peers are feeling this. Go and talk to them. Maybe you’re gonna find that all of them are feeling the same way. Who the h*** knows? But the truth is, speak to as many of them as possible because the people telling you you’re going to be replaced think that they won’t be replaced. Like your bosses think that they are irreplaceable. Truth is that once this rolls back, they’re all going to have no idea what to do. Find your value. Actually find it. And you know what? The thing about not monetizing your passion. I did it, mate. It’s fantastic. It’s so much better. I get to read about stuff that I find naturally interesting and I’ll get to wake up and I get to do that and then I get to like it. Doesn’t kill it because I’ve made sure to have good boundaries and to know when work is over. But I get the. I feel for you, man. I feel for you. I know it’s frustrating because you’re already exhausted, you’re already run down by this, you’re already tired. You want something that someone can tell you, nah, it’s time to get scrappy and it sucks. You shouldn’t have to cause these slot merchants. Also, remember every boss that tries to replace you for the rest of your life.

Speaker A: Ed, I love that you have given Mike so many talking points for when he is moving from being what he feels sad about and frustrated about to move into a pep talk to think about. He said building community. Don’t tell me just to go build community like you reframing it as connecting with your peers and colleagues as a way of appreciating your power and reminding yourself of your power together in networks. Sophia, if you could just talk through the very basics of when you are in a period of career uncertainty. You hear go out, connect with your peers, meet new people like that. What I find is sometimes when you’re getting that advice, it’s at a period when maybe you’re at your, you know, not at your highest self confidence, don’t quite know how to identify what your passions are or what you’re looking for. And you sort of hear this advice like, go out, connect. Build your community. Like how? How can you sort of like reframe that so it seems like something that could be fun for Mike?

Speaker D: I don’t reframe it.

Speaker A: You don’t?

Speaker D: No. I Mean, the three core Cs of unlock and potential are cultivating community, coalition, and citizenry.

Speaker A: So I do not take a cynical look at that at all.

Speaker D: It is deeply heartfelt for me. I have told every one of my coaching clients and every one of my mentees to build community. And Mike. And look, Ed’s reframe of it. I don’t think that Ed is saying don’t build community. I think he’s just saying it differently. I’m pretty sure that Luke has a pretty strong community where he is. And it’s. You know, I can’t. I’ve never done this alone. I can’t do any of it alone. I am constantly calling people to say, all right, so I’m at a fork in the road, you know, I’m not really sure what to do, okay? I’m broke as f***. I’m not really sure where I’m gonna go, Okay? I wanna punch this m*********** in the face. Talk me off the ledge so I don’t go to jail, right? So this is how I define community, is the folks that are there to buttress me and to support me. I want propellers. I do not want anchors. And I turn to them every f****** day.

Speaker A: Mm, I love that. Propellers and not anchors. You’re making me remember that. When I had the experience of being laid off, I can remember the moment when I realized, oh, they can’t take my relationships away from me. I don’t have a laptop. I don’t have my email address anymore. I have to change where I’m working and figure that out. But they can’t take my relationships away. And it was so heartening.

Speaker D: And when that moment happened to you, Anna, right? Did you just go home and, like, close all the blinds and quiet everything and turn off all your devices, or did you call somebody?

Speaker A: I did all of the above. Sometimes I called people with all my devices and the lights turned off and cried. And then sometimes I did it by myself. I guess when I was saying the need to reframe networking for some people say you’re an introvert. You don’t move through the world like a camp counselor wanting to collect new friends. It’s a little harder for you. And the idea of networking sounds kind of dreary and daunting.

Speaker D: Luke.

Speaker A: And daunting. Luke. I don’t know if you think of yourself like an extrovert or an introvert, but your work is place based. It’s. It’s attached. You know, there’s a lot of work, parts of it that I imagine Are quite solitary. Like, have you had to figure out how to find your people as the way that you’ve worked has continued to evolve? Like, where have you found them?

Speaker E: So if I were to list out all of the people that I am involved with, it’s an insane web. There are so many people that I depend on to make what I do possible. And likewise, I. I am a part of that equation to make what they’re doing possible. And I quickly realized early on that I. Because I kind of got kind of bully in the beginning, right? Like, I wanted to be an organic farmer. I wanted to be a regenerative farmer. But I don’t have any markets, I don’t have any processing equipment and I don’t have any farming.

Speaker A: Your neighbors weren’t farming in this way.

Speaker E: Not at all.

Speaker A: Like, who’s this guy think he.

Speaker E: Exactly. Like, I don’t have any land. I don’t have anything that I need to do this. Like, but a lot of people around me did. I had to make friends with the processing industry. I had to make friends with landowners. I had to make friends with people with old machinery in the sheds. Like, my operation depends on a very large, complex community.

Speaker A: Are you a phone call guy? Are you an email guy? Are you an Instagram DM guy? Where do these relationships start?

Speaker E: Start in person. When I first started, I wanted to grow one extra crop. I was growing corn and soybeans. I wanted to grow wheat, which was mind blowing for my area. Right now we’re growing up to 12 different crops. But in the beginning, growing one extra crop was insane. I basically got in my car, I drove to the nearest city, Minneapolis, and I started talking to bakers and millers. Like, who uses wheat? Let’s go talk to them. I want to tell them about my dream, my passion. Like, I wanted to tell them about how I wanted to plant a cover crop. Right?

Speaker D: That’s networking.

Speaker E: That’s networking. Why am I getting emotional about this? But like, planting that wheat crop was not easy. And then what that wheat crop was going to give me in return was very significant. I ran into a miller and a baker and his name was Steve Horton in Minneapolis. And he offered to buy one sack of cleaned wheat from me. And I brought it down there in a pickup. Now I am sending a semi load a month to Minneapolis. H*** yeah. Through that same mill that rules. And I grew with them, they grew with me, I grew with them. And I have duplicated that process with all of my crops. I have made friends, I have been honest with them. They’re honest with me and like, together we are building a better future going forward.

Speaker B: I’m rules.

Speaker D: Yes. And I just want to say something to your point of being an introvert. Yes. I have the pleasure and the privilege of being a tremendous extrovert. And I understand it is absolutely more difficult for people who are introverted to go out and network. That does not. I will not diminish how difficult it is, nor will I diminish how important I think it is. I do know that we can change our personalities. I am deeply invested in the notion of neuroplasticity that is creating new neural pathways and is learning new ways to be. There is a book called Me But Better by an author named Olga Kazan. So we in our personality, the social sciences, they have essentially established that we have five major personality traits. Ocean openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. All right, so extroversion is one of them. She took the test and she considered herself and she came back, Olga, you’re an introvert. She did all this research, she did all of this work towards becoming more extroverted. And she took the test again and she is now an extrovert. Now that is not to say that everybody has to do that, but for those people who feel like they are stuck in any one, in any modality, I do believe, even at 60, that I am still evolving and I’m working on things to change them. So there is a world in which introverts can become more extroverted. That does not mean that extroverts are better than introverts. There are just some things that we are better served at being extroverts. And it’s the same for introverts. So this is not, you know, one is better, but specifically for networking. Yes, it does help to be an extrovert. And I just want to say that there is a way to work on those things if it is something that people want to do.

Speaker B: I gotta add one thing as someone on the spectrum, because this is something that people really don’t like talking about. I pretty much taught myself to socialize, like, like another skill. But I don’t mean like. I mean that if it feels weird, it’s probably because it is. It doesn’t. Nothing has ever come naturally to me, ever. Not like I spent. I, up until like two years ago, didn’t think I. I was human, really. I had to go through a lot of therapy. I only got diagnosed a year ago that. I mean, the 15th 10,000 word article should have really told me I was autistic. A lot of socializing comes down to practice and building up to it. It’s really easy. I don’t mean this derisively to say go and socialize, go and network. People are gonna say, oh, you take the leap. It will be fine. Sometimes it won’t be. Expect that there’s gonna be times where you feel self conscious. It sucks those people, People don’t know you. They don’t pay your mortgage. Great place to start is therapy. I know it sucks to hear this. Oh, go to therapy. Yeah, you should. And actually stick with it. Like all things. The problem is if you don’t stick with it, it doesn’t work. And yeah, right now to the guy speaking who was in that clip, yeah, life really f****** sucks right now. I get it. You sound burned out, you sound exhausted with everything. It’s not that you wouldn’t monetize your passion, it’s that it sounds like that everything hurts and is tiring right now. Accept that. Acknowledge that and be realistic and kind to yourself. And then make a f****** plan to do something. Because feeling like this sucks. I’m not gonna be like, oh, it’s an option. No, you’re in. Circumstances were chosen for you. It’s time to find what would actually what good would look like, what feeling better would feel like. And going after that.

Speaker A: Our next listener really made me. You mentioned therapy, Ed. And I think one of the great gifts that therapy has given me is as a perpetual people pleaser. It’s really helped me kind of come to grips with when external validation is driving my decision making and choices. And therapy has helped me get in touch with what I really care about. Sydney share this story of what she’s gone through. Let’s listen to this.

Speaker G: Hi, Anna. I heard a recent episode in which you were inviting listeners to share their stories of career changes. So I have my undergraduate degree from an Ivy League university. I have my master’s degree from another top university, and currently I do hair. How I got here is after I graduated with my master’s degree, I got the quote unquote dream job in my field with the six figure salary and, and worked there for several months, realized that it was not for me and I ended up losing my job. Now this was a very challenging thing for me because my whole life was seemingly leading up to me getting this dream position that I thought I would stay in for years and finally build the career I’ve always wanted. But when that went away, I decided to think a little bit differently. About what I’m going to do to earn money. So I took a class to learn a specific hairstyle and I started my own business doing hair. Further context, I had zero experience prior in the beauty industry at all that I had no interest, no experience. That was never part of what I saw myself doing in life. Now I have a very lucrative business, regular clientele, I’m making really great money working less hours, and I get to create the right balance in my life. So I say all that to say I love to encourage people to think beyond and if they have like this white collar thinking, well, I have these degrees and I have this background. I’ve done all these things on my resume. I like to encourage people to think beyond that because there are so many outstanding opportunities, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship that could far exceed what you might experience working for an employer.

Speaker A: I love Sydney’s story. Luke, let me ask you, when you describe what you do when you walk into a room, what are the words that you use?

Speaker E: Yeah, so I could simply say that I’m a farmer, but that would not do it justice. I do a few different things. I’m an ROC grain and livestock farmer. I own a small ingredient business and I also work with CPG companies to bring value.

Speaker A: What’s cpg?

Speaker B: Consumer packaged goods.

Speaker E: Consumer packaged goods.

Speaker A: Thank you, Ed.

Speaker E: Yep. Got put on the spot there and I went blank. So, you know when you go in the grocery store and there’s a box of granola bars on the shelf, an example of a company that I work with is called Little bucks or another example is simple mills. They have a package good on the shelf of crackers or granola bars or whatever, cookies, things like that. So yeah, so what I with the CPG companies, I educate them on what regenerative farming is. I don’t think there’s like a clear definition yet. It’s fairly new. There’s a lot of different terms, a lot of different definitions being thrown around for it. So what I bring to the table is my definition. This is what I think regenerative agriculture is. And by working directly with the CPG companies, I can bring them value because we can relay this information to the consumers who also need to understand what regenerative agriculture is, what they’re buying, why are they paying a premium for it, what certifications or which labels should they be looking for in the grocery store. But yeah, so all those things kind of bundled together. They all work together really nicely.

Speaker A: I ask because what Sydney made me think about was, you know, she comes from a World where credentials and fancy sounding titles are what was the cultural currency? And I think it’s kind of neat that she now works in a field where she can say, I do hair. She can call herself a stylist, she can call herself a beauty consultant. Like, there’s this like accordion of the ways that she can describe herself depending on her audience that also allows her to be. It can be this sort of Rorschach test. Like, I think it’s probably interesting for you, when you introduce yourself as a farmer in some audiences, to see how people respond, how they treat you, what they think the nature of your work is.

Speaker E: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker A: Sophia, have you had clients who are walking away from traditional career paths and have to kind of come to grips with what their family might think if they’re walking away from the time and money that’s been invested in credentials? What, that kind of process of allowing yourself, giving yourself permission to do that.

Speaker E: What?

Speaker A: That’s like many.

Speaker D: I think this is something that is pretty prevalent in. For first gen children of immigrants that, whether they are Asian or South Asian, that has been my most direct experience. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on us to go into what are considered to be safe professions. Doctor, lawyer, accountant. I mean, I myself was supposed to be a professor.

Speaker A: Oh, you were?

Speaker D: Yeah, I was supposed to be a French professor. I can imagine immigrant parents being like, okay, we left our family, our culture, our ancestry, our language, our food, our home. We came all the way across this f****** ocean to give you a better life, and now you want to be a sculptor. Oh, I don’t think that s*** is happening, happening. And I understand now, I have now been the child and I am now a parent, that if either of my kids. First of all, when my kids are growing up, I said, you can do anything you want except be a rapper. This is off the table.

Speaker A: I do not want. Oh, you said that. Now you do you have two rappers children and others.

Speaker I: I do not.

Speaker D: I do not. I do not. I do not. But I really understand now that the number one thing I believe that we want as parents is for our children to be safe. We want them to be happy. Oh, but we want them to be safe first. Because if happiness is something that puts you in danger, I don’t want you to do that. If it’s heroin, if it’s bungee jumping, if it’s free soloing, whatever it is, I don’t actually want you to do that. So, yes, there are plenty of people that, you know, I lecture at a lot of universities and when I was at mit. This one woman stood up. She’s South Asian of heritage, and she said, I am doing a degree essentially for my parents, and this is not what I want to be doing. And so she is going to be on this track. I don’t know for how long, Anna. And it is going to feel. It already felt. Even in her early 20s, it already felt onerous to her. But I also understand how beholden she feels to making sure that she is being the dutiful daughter. I mean, I was raised with Confucian values. It’s very hard to break out of that. And I applaud anybody. I applaud anybody that does it. But I’m always going to say that we should take the time to interrogate whether how deeply tethered we truly, at our core, are to these things. So I’ve had many clients and many mentees and myself who have been in those points of transition. Like, I’m gonna walk away from this traditional thing and I’m going to take the flyer. And like I said, as long as you are fundamentally safe, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Right. As long as your foundation is safe, then, yeah, take a risk. And, Ed, I also want to say bravo, Bravo, bravo for your journey of neuroplasticity, because that’s really what it is. When you said that, you basically trained your brain to think a certain way. Is that what you’re saying?

Speaker B: I mean, sure. I mean, I’m just quite spiteful. I don’t like being told that I can’t do something unless I truly know I can’t. And also, I think credentialism is a plague. I am confident in saying that I know more than most financial analysts talking about the AI bubble, because people can have all the credentials in the world and still be full of s***.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Also, I think it’s really easy to just think that you’re unable to do something without trying. If you can’t do something, fine. Really. If you can’t. But you must give it a old college try. And that doesn’t mean, oh, I’m just gonna try it for a week or two.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I am learning piano at the moment. I’m 39 years old. I’m getting pretty far. I finally know how to read some music. It’s the first time I’ve ever gone and this was after saying I couldn’t do music. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to, but I’m gonna try.

Speaker A: Well, I feel really puffed up by the Three of you and Sidney and her hair styling. And I want to transition back to a. Just kind of a question about where do I go next? This is from a listener named Fern. Let’s listen.

Speaker J: Hi, Anna. I am about to turn 30 in March. I am less considering a career change so much as sort of finally trying to embark on a longer term career. I got out of college and it was Covid. So then I had a really hard time sort of networking and talking to folks. And so I’ve worked a bunch of different jobs and I’m trying to go into education because it’s something that I’ve done when I was younger and then sort of was out of. And I’m trying to get back in. I’m trying to think about a master’s potentially to do sort of classroom teaching in either an elementary or a middle school level. But it’s really intimidating to know that you love teaching, but to hear all of these teachers talk about how, as a field, education is in crisis and, and what it means to sort of go into a field that you worry is gonna burn you out in that way, despite having a big passion for it.

Speaker A: Fern also added, we reached out to say, like, what kind of jobs have you had as you’re trying to start that first career job? And Fern mentioned working at a botanical garden, worked at a summer camp that had a gardening program, worked growing legal weed for a year, cleaned houses for another two, did an AmeriCorps year at a nonprofit, and then worked for food bank that owns farmland on a small scale regenerative farm. So Fern has done a lot of stuff. And Fern also told us that they’ve struggled with some mental health difficulties in the last few years. They’re trans. There’s just a lot that they’re figuring out. And so when I was listening to this, I really thought about, like, you know, the traditional kind of career counseling advice that young people get is, you know, figure out what your passion is, tap into where, you know, create a vision. And I just think there are a lot of young people who came out of school during COVID They didn’t have a first step job that kind of made sense to them. A lot of other things that they were handling as they went through those years, and it’s hard to figure out how to make that first step towards what feels like a career. And I hear Fern going, maybe it’s going into a program so I can get credentialed to teach and get a master’s maybe. But I don’t hear certainty there So I don’t know. Anything you want to say to Fern, Anna?

Speaker D: The one thing that Fern did sound certain about, I think, didn’t they say their love for teaching? Did they mean their love or just in general?

Speaker A: I think they said that they’ve enjoyed teaching in the past. They love teaching, but feels intimidated by all the burnout talk from career educators. Is not sure that it’s, you know, seems like it’s a career in crisis too.

Speaker D: I think that if I knew that I loved doing something, I would say to try it. I know it’s a bigger commitment for them because it would mean taking the master’s degree. But the thing that I always talk to my clients and my mentees about is I never want you to live with regret. I don’t want you to turn around in 5, 10, 20, 30 years and say, wow, you know, I really, I wish I had. Daniel Pink wrote this book called I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s about regrets. And he categorized thousands and thousands of regrets into five different categories. And one of them is like a boldness regret. And I wouldn’t want Fern to turn around in 30 years. And maybe they’ve gone into another field and said, you know, when I was X years old, I found that I really loved teaching and I think I would have found that truly fulfilling. And now it’s too late. So I’m always going to say I’m always going to be the person because I’ve done it so many times. And yes, sometimes I’ve been really broke and many times I have been fired and laid off and disappointed. But I, I have always for myself, even with those outcomes that were not the best outcomes. I have always appreciated, okay, that I took this chance and I landed on my feet because I also believe that taking risks, I believe that it builds our confidence. And your confidence is going to infuse every single aspect of your life.

Speaker A: Let’s end with a listener named Matt who is struggling to translate the skills that he has built in a long career into thinking about how it might lead to paid opportunities in other fields. Let’s listen to what he had to say.

Speaker K: I work in the entertainment industry and we are in the middle of a very serious rupture as it transitions from an entertainment based model of, you know, getting eyeballs on things and putting butts in seats, so to speak, to some sort of tech model that I don’t think anybody knows what that is yet, looking to change careers. It’s been difficult. It’s been difficult for A lot of people I know, I think that from our side, people with, you know, 20 plus years in the entertainment industry, there’s so many things that we feel like we could do. Logistics, all these things that you work on so much in our business. My feeling is that the outside perception is that it’s so different from other industries that employers and recruiters are unwilling to bite on people with entertainment resumes. So, yeah, it’s been a long transition and I’m still hoping for it to end up somewhere good. And I think a lot of people are in my same boat. Thanks.

Speaker A: I loved Matt’s voice memo. And he also shared with us that part of his work he’s done is he’s been a story producer for unscripted tv, like, reality shows. And he also added, like, what if the jobs that I’ve been doing give me a sense of embarrassment about my resume, even if they’ve been hard work with decent pay? So what I hear him asking about is like, how do I describ the actual skills I have that are marketable to other fields that might not know how to evaluate what I actually know how to do because they aren’t rooted in the entertainment industry? Ed, do you have any thoughts on this?

Speaker B: Yeah. Work out how to describe how money comes out of your actions.

Speaker A: Ooh, that’s nice.

Speaker B: Describe how someone hiring you makes money off of hiring you. My writing, I mean, I have a fairly straightforward model in that I have a premium subscription and other channels drive to that, interviews I do, and so on and so forth. PR firm. I have clients that I get press, I get the media, talk to them, cover them. That translates into traffic, or it translates it to business, or it gives them the kind of validation that allows them to raise investment. My podcast is advertising, and I have a contract through iHeartRadio. I keep, like, the way I make money on that is I am paid by them, but they make money by doing advertising. I know this sounds very simple, but a lot of things are, sit down and literally write how your action, the thing you do, leads to money. It is illustrative.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: So even if it’s money for someone else, but lead to. And once you can explain that, kind of like I just did, that’ll help you find different ways to make money. Because it’s really easy to get paid for something for your whole life without really understanding how the money comes out.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is actually kind of what’s hitting the entertainment industry right now. Streaming is the worst thing to happen to entertainment in its history. Honestly, one of the worst. I think streaming’s devalued everything and turned. Ugh, I could go on for hours.

Speaker J: Yeah.

Speaker A: Sophia, you’ve had a lot of friends and colleagues who’ve worked in entertainment in all sorts of fields. Like, have you. How do you think about this?

Speaker D: So the majority of my career until I was 30 was spent in the entertainment industry and it’s where I’m most closely associated for a lot of people because I was in the music business. And it took me a while to realize that I have highly transferable skills. So there’s this book by David Epstein called why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. I very much associate with being a generalist. And there are skills that I have, even though it was in such a specific milieu of hip hop that can just go everywhere. So I agree with Ed in terms of the framing of these skills that you have. You know, I believe that he said something about operations ops. Everybody needs ops. Everybody, a three person company needs to know how to do ops. I would also say that although people might think that you wouldn’t look at an entertainment resume, my experience has been that folks from outside of entertainment really appreciate the perspective that we bring because it is an outside perspective and it is also informed by something that is media based. And I think that that can be really enriching. So I would think about what is it? Don’t tell me about your. I don’t need to know about your experience in terms of I worked with this television show or I promoted this record or I created these videos. Tell me more about what is the skill set that undergirded all of those jobs. I am excellent at communications. I am great at budgets. I am really good at organization. I am fantastic at negotiating. All of these skills can move and you can be a generalist. So if you peg yourself as and be a little bit apologetic about it. You know what, Luke? I come from the entertainment industry and I know that I probably don’t have a lot to offer on your farm, then Luke is not going to really look at me that way. Whereas if I go to Luke and say, look, here are my areas of expertise. I’m great at A, B, C, D, E. Luke could say, oh, okay. Despite the fact that these two worlds, that there is not even any real overlap there. Practical, pragmatic overlap, material, manifest overlap, I can see that Sophia has these skills that could really help in terms of my Operation Sophia. So I would look at it from a broader perspective. And the other thing that I tell people in media is in Media, we are storytellers. And storytelling can travel to a lot of different industries.

Speaker A: Yeah. When you look up Luke Peterson Farms on Instagram, you can see that Luke is also a storytelling.

Speaker D: I love those stories. Absolutely.

Speaker A: I think that the thing that you three, even though you come at this from very different places, have made me think a lot about. It’s like, how can I think about the skills I have, the drive I have, what fuels me and really connect to building relationships and messaging, what I can offer the marketplace so that I feel like I have agency and can see where there’s opportunity to build power with people who are similarly aligned. I really want to thank each of you for joining Luke. I think one of the things that it’s also made me think about is how important it is for no matter what industry you’re in, to also really think of yourself as an entrepreneur in this time because of how much is changing that we’re not in charge of, because that reminds us that creating room to maneuver is part of it. And that’s what I think of when I think of your farm. I think of a very entrepreneurial farm that has responded over and over again to different market conditions and the needs of the land. Ed Zitron, thank you for joining us. I know you have to go back to work. Thank you for having me delivering value to the people who are giving you money.

Speaker B: There we go.

Speaker A: Sophia Chang, thank you so much for joining us too. Your memoir is the baddest b**** in the room. And Luke Peterson of Luke Peterson Farms, thanks so much for joining us from your home in Minnesota. And I love talking with you about how you’ve continually reimagined what farming can look like and how you can be a part of it.

Speaker D: Sorry, can I just say two last things?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker D: Number one, whoever out there is listening. And if you’re a boss, if somebody comes to you and says, I’m gonna do something different and I wanna try this other thing with my life, don’t be the m*********** that said to Luke, you’re never gonna get a job with. That’s like that.

Speaker A: That’s like the man.

Speaker I: That’s.

Speaker D: If you try to break up with a man and he’s like, you’ll never find somebody better than me. Right there, you saying that bullshit.

Speaker A: I already know that’s your side.

Speaker D: I already know your story, m***********, and I’m gonna find somebody better than you. And Luke, you going and finding the f******. What did you say? You went to the Baker Bakery.

Speaker A: He just drove and knocked on the door.

Speaker D: Talk about being entrepreneurial and like knocking down doors, literally and showing up like that. That f****** means something. If I own that bakery, I look at Luke and go, you know what? Just based on your f****** moxie, I want to know more about you. That’s incredible. It’s such an inspirational story. So bravo, bravo, bravo.

Speaker E: And I can add to that. If you have something good to sell, you don’t have to be a very good salesman. Your product will sell itself self.

Speaker A: That is Luke Peterson, Sophia Chang and Ed Zitron. We will put links in the show page where you can follow their work and find out what keeps shifting for them in the future. And thank you to all of you who sent in advice questions. We appreciate it. This episode was produced produced by Zoe Ajulet and Cameron Drews. Andrew Dunn is also on the Death, Sex and Money show team. Daisy Rosario is our senior supervising producer. Mia Lobel is executive producer of Slate Podcast and Hilary Fry is Slate’s Editor in chief. If you appreciate this type of episode where you get to hear from your fellow listeners and just feel like you’re not on your own, please consider joining Slate plus and join with your fellow listeners to support the production of our show. Slate memberships keep our show healthy and financially stable, and those funds give us the flexibility to make episodes that take a little longer and include more voices. If you want to help make episodes like this possible, sign up today@slate.com dsmplus or sign up in Apple Podcasts or on Spotify on the Death, Sex and Money show page. We will thank you with extra episodes and ad free listening and so much appreciation. Our theme music is by the Reverend John DeLore and Steve Lewis. If you’re new to our show, welcome. We’re glad you’re here. You can find us and follow us on Instagram at deathsexmoney. And I write a weekly newsletter. You can sign up for that@annasale.substack.com and you can reach our show team at the email death sex money slate.com we love hearing from you, your feedback, your questions and your ideas for new episodes. Thanks again to our panel of experts. It was fun talking to Ed and Luke and Sophia. Even our sound check at the beginning of the episode was lively. Can you tell me what you had for breakfast this morning?

Speaker D: Smoothie.

Speaker A: Did you make it or did you purchase it?

Speaker D: Oh, I’m an immigrant, sweetheart.

Speaker A: I made it.

Speaker D: I’m never gonna purchase something that I can make.

Speaker A: I’m Anna, say Dale. And this is Death, Sex and Money from slate.