We are now living in a free agent world. — *location: 211* ^ref-33086 --- The business strategies employed by highly successful startups and the career strategies employed by highly successful individuals are strikingly similar. — *location: 253* ^ref-10603 --- This is a book about making the Silicon Valley way work for you. — *location: 356* ^ref-28526 --- We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers. We believe it is essential to keep your career in “permanent beta.” — *location: 362* ^ref-32341 --- This approach, when applied to your career, forces you to acknowledge that you have bugs, that there’s new development to do on yourself, that you will need to adapt and evolve. But at the same time, it’s a mindset brimming with optimism because it celebrates the fact that you have the power to improve yourself. — *location: 366* ^ref-56602 --- To live in permanent beta is to make a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth—to living according to yet. Approaching your career this way will give you an edge as the world changes, your competition changes, and you change. Professional life, after all, doesn’t take place in a vacuum; it takes place in markets, which are always moving toward new horizons. It’s Day 1. Every single day. — *location: 381* ^ref-62700 --- Conventional career planning can work under conditions of relative stability, but in times of uncertainty and inexorable change, it is severely limiting, if not dangerous. — *location: 428* ^ref-7452 --- If you want to chart a course that differentiates you from other professionals in the marketplace, the first step is being able to complete the sentence “A company would hire me over other professionals because…” — *location: 471* ^ref-61459 >My stratevic alpha --- determine which (smaller) niche allows you to develop a competitive advantage. — *location: 489* ^ref-32281 --- The interplay of three different components form your competitive advantage: your assets, your aspirations/values, and the market realities, i.e., the supply and demand for what you offer the marketplace relative to the competition. — *location: 495* ^ref-42674 --- During a career transition or a previously inconceivable crisis, someone who can go six to twelve months without the pressure of needing to earn money has a significant advantage over someone who can’t go more than a month or two without a paycheck. — *location: 518* ^ref-43822 --- So, if you adopt an investing mindset, where do you put your time? Developing hard or soft assets? — *location: 524* ^ref-28407 --- Our advice is to go all-in on soft assets. Learn new skills, make new connections, and work on building your brand. — *location: 525* ^ref-35981 --- for most of us it’s easier to be in the top 10 percent skill area in two or more skills and blend them together than it is to shoot for world-class status in just one. — *location: 546* ^ref-22173 --- Technology companies focus on learning over profitability in the early years to maximize revenue in the later years. So, ask yourself: “Which career options will grow my soft assets the fastest?” Even simpler: “Which offers the most learning potential?” — *location: 568* ^ref-61015 --- Become an expert at a niche skill that others are slow to adopt, — *location: 576* ^ref-38703 --- Companies that employ part-time consultants and for-hire workers often seek specialists with very specific skills whom they can briefly “plug in” to a broader overall project. It’s easier to plug in a specialist whose role and value-add are clear than it is with a generalist whose exact roles and responsibilities may be more ambiguous. — *location: 581* ^ref-17726 --- when you know more about something specific than the average professional—even if it’s just one thing!—you can more easily deliver unique value to people in your network. — *location: 591* ^ref-31157 --- In adulthood, you’ll get a greater ROI (return on investment) from investing in your strengths than in your weaknesses. — *location: 613* ^ref-24608 --- As you think about which industries to work in, which skills to obtain, and which books to read, study the types of tech startups that were recently funded by venture capitalists at the Series A and Series B stages because these tend to be on the cutting edge of emerging trends. For example, Coinbase raised its Series A and Series B funding in 2013. If you invested in learning about cryptocurrencies in the years following Coinbase’s Series A, there would have been an abundance of life-changing crypto career opportunities for you, in part because at that time crypto knowledge was rare in a growing market. Study what venture capitalists are investing in to glimpse the trends or markets on the rise. — *location: 648* ^ref-36987 --- Ask yourself a similar question related to the soft assets in your career. What skills are timeless? — *location: 666* ^ref-21604 --- For the startup of you, establishing a core idea to use as a career compass can be just as transformative. Before you have an external brand that people know you by, you need to have an internal brand you know yourself by. — *location: 705* ^ref-11229 --- You can sometimes get away with connecting the dots of meaning looking backward instead of looking forward, as Steve Jobs once advised. — *location: 719* ^ref-25883 --- Don’t go looking for your passion. Instead, go looking for a meaningful place to start cultivating your soft assets. Go find skills that will be high-yield for others. This will give you a sense of purpose and mastery, and your passions will likely emerge organically. — *location: 770* ^ref-48038 --- Your true self doesn’t get found. It emerges. — *location: 774* ^ref-47408 --- If no one will pay you for your services in the career marketplace, it’s going to be a very hard slog. You aren’t entitled to anything. — *location: 808* ^ref-57674 --- “Pick an industry, not a job.” Which is to say, focus on working in a sector that’s hot. Then, once you get to know that industry a bit, pick a company. And from there pick whatever job inside that company is available and roughly in line with your skills and aspirations. Your specific job doesn’t matter nearly as much as the company growth trajectory. — *location: 822* ^ref-30355 --- Working at a hot company can extend your personal brand and endow you with legitimacy, or just increase the odds of strategic serendipity. — *location: 825* ^ref-60274 --- Part of what makes a growth loop special is that you don’t have to keep investing in it. You turn the flywheel once and it keeps spinning on its own. So think about career assets that could involve a similar domino effect—if you knock over one, others might follow. Here are some ideas: — *location: 928* ^ref-41676 --- relationship with a superconnector. — *location: 931* ^ref-50628 --- asset that helps you build your brand. — *location: 933* ^ref-29228 --- Increasing your overall network. — *location: 937* ^ref-49291 --- In reality, most companies don’t execute a single brilliant master plan. They go through stops and starts, a couple near-death experiences, and a great deal of adaptation. — *location: 1084* ^ref-25187 --- It’s important to understand, though, that while entrepreneurial companies and people are always evolving, the choices they’re making are disciplined, not haphazard. There is real planning going on, even if there are no firm plans. We call this kind of disciplined, adaptive approach ABZ Planning. — *location: 1101* ^ref-36029 --- Plan A is what you’re doing right now. It’s your current implementation of your competitive advantage. Within a Plan A you make minor adjustments as you learn; you iterate regularly. Plan B is what you pivot to when you need to change either your goal or the route for getting there. — *location: 1107* ^ref-56502 --- Plan Z is the fallback position: your lifeboat if you end up being thrown into rough waters. — *location: 1114* ^ref-10729 --- The certainty of Plan Z is what allows you to take on uncertainty and risk in your Plans A and B. — *location: 1116* ^ref-5151 --- The best thing to do is to think and plan two steps ahead. — *location: 1124* ^ref-33976 --- Sometimes the first step toward a goal is disarmingly simple: Physically move to the epicenter of your desired industry and start networking! — *location: 1128* ^ref-42580 --- If you’re unsure what your first, or even your second, step should be, pick a first step with high option value, meaning that it could lead to a broad range of options. Taking a job in management consulting is a classic career move that maximizes “optionality” because the skills and experiences gained in consulting can be applied toward many other next steps, even if you’re not sure what those steps are yet. — *location: 1129* ^ref-42131 --- A good Plan A is one that offers flexibility to pivot to a range of possible Plan B’s; similarly, a good first step generates a large number of possible follow-on second steps. Start angling for that next promotion. Gratification will come eventually. — *location: 1132* ^ref-319 --- Here’s how most entrepreneurs penetrate the fog of the unknown: They test specific hypotheses through action-based trial and error. Ask experts on cognition or learning and they’ll agree with this entrepreneurial instinct. They’ll tell you that practical knowledge is best developed by doing, not just thinking or planning. — *location: 1215* ^ref-29777 --- The trouble is, when we want to embark on an exciting and potentially rich new career path, too often we wait until we feel ready. Don’t wait until you feel ready—because we’re almost never “ready” for the biggest and best developments of our lives. — *location: 1259* ^ref-63347 --- The only thing you can safely know about the future is that it will be sooner and stranger than you think. So instead of trying to do the impossible and predict when an inflection point will threaten, prepare for the unknown. Build up your soft assets (including your brand and preferably skills that are easily transferable) and proactively embrace new technology so that if and when the inflection point does come, you are ready to swiftly parlay skills into a Plan B. — *location: 1286* ^ref-57700 --- To change the world, startup entrepreneurs need to capitalize on the relatively small number of transformative opportunities they encounter early on in their journeys. This is equally true when it comes to your career. — *location: 2141* ^ref-2426 --- But great opportunities don’t just land in our laps, even if it might seem that way at times. You need to actively engineer the projects, connections, experiences—and yes, strokes of luck—that will lead to periods of unusually explosive career growth. — *location: 2146* ^ref-40534 --- Serendipity involves being alert to potential opportunity and acting on it. You have to cultivate it. — *location: 2156* ^ref-18986 --- A career move that makes you feel like you’re in over your head stretches you in new dimensions. — *location: 2190* ^ref-8204 --- There’s one disposition and mindset that must be turned on to power all the other opportunity-seeking behaviors: curiosity. — *location: 2208* ^ref-2134 --- You could say that entrepreneurship often begins in frustrated wonderment. — *location: 2215* ^ref-3745 --- Courting randomness can be as simple as seeking out more information than your peers do. It’s simple math: The more information you consume, the more likely you are to happen upon something that will light your mind on fire. — *location: 2252* ^ref-4758 --- Courting upside randomness can also mean extending your next work trip to visit a different city or getting coffee with an acquaintance you’ve had intriguing conversations with on Twitter but never met in person. Or attending a professional event where you don’t know anyone. — *location: 2256* ^ref-32228 --- But if the goal is to court advantageous randomness, you don’t want to be too directed in your motion, either. Most of the time you simply do not know when, where, and how opportunity will knock. You must search and drift, wander and calibrate. — *location: 2263* ^ref-35244 --- A company doesn’t offer you a job, people do. A successful career is about people, people, people. — *location: 2275* ^ref-4064 --- If you’re applying to a job through the front door where an HR person is the first to review your résumé, you’re doing something wrong. — *location: 2480* ^ref-6991 --- The best opportunities for you almost never arrive at moments that fit your schedule. — *location: 2490* ^ref-5191 --- Serendipity can often force you to pivot ahead of schedule. But breakthrough opportunities won’t hang around and wait for you to be ready. — *location: 2494* ^ref-56080 --- making a decision reduces opportunities in the short run, but increases opportunities in the long run. To move forward in your career, you have to commit to specific opportunities even in the face of doubt and inconvenience. — *location: 2500* ^ref-59749 --- Practicing strategic serendipity in your career increases your chances of producing moments of explosive possibility. Be infinitely curious about the world as well as your own emotions. Be prepared to hustle and court randomness. Learn to recognize breakout opportunities for what they are, then seize them before they vanish. — *location: 2510* ^ref-56330 --- “If you are not genuinely pained by the risk involved in your strategic choices, it’s not much of a strategy,” says Reed Hastings of Netflix, one of the great, judicious risk-takers of his generation.[ — *location: 2618* ^ref-49297 --- If you don’t have to seriously think about the risk involved in a career opportunity, it’s probably not the breakout opportunity you’re looking for. — *location: 2621* ^ref-42692 --- If you don’t feel the need to contemplate the risk related to a career opportunity—if you feel no fear—it’s probably not a breakout opportunity. — *location: 2622* ^ref-46157 --- You are changing, the competition is changing, industries are changing. — *location: 2634* ^ref-60764 --- It’s the first thing you want to ask of a possible opportunity: If the worst-case scenario comes to pass, would I still be in the game? If I were pummeled, could I get back up? — *location: 2667* ^ref-42711 --- Jeff Bezos calls this overall idea the difference between “one-way doors” and “two-way doors.” One-way doors are those you walk through and then can never look back. Two-way doors allow you to reverse course if needed. One-way doors, in other words, carry a higher degree of risk. — *location: 2690* ^ref-29564 --- In the short run, low volatility means stability. In the long run, though, low volatility leads to increased vulnerability, because it renders the system less resilient to unthinkable external shocks. — *location: 2788* ^ref-5645 --- For the startup of you, the only long-term answer to risk is resilience. — *location: 2828* ^ref-35204 --- If you don’t find risk, risk will find you. — *location: 2829* ^ref-21776 --- In 1999, at the turn of the new millennium, Bill Gates wrote: “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.”[1] — *location: 2848* ^ref-43086 --- If we aren’t good with information, then we won’t be good with decisions either. — *location: 2854* ^ref-46753 --- I founded LinkedIn because I saw an opportunity to create a place in the social media landscape where our professional identities could reside. But it was also more than that. I also wanted to build a person-to-person superhighway of professional intelligence. — *location: 2868* ^ref-21132 --- What you get when you connect to other people’s brains is called network intelligence. — *location: 2889* ^ref-23278 >80% of knowledge is relational --- people offer personalized, contextualized advice, often without doing so on purpose—it just happens naturally. — *location: 2909* ^ref-6857 --- In an age of information overload, the value of this ability to filter is hard to overstate. — *location: 2916* ^ref-34210 --- “What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned over the past few months?” Other questions that are all-purpose and useful include: What’s keeping you up at night? What’s a good book you’ve read recently? What bad habit are you trying to overcome? What’s a trend in your industry that wouldn’t be obvious to outsiders? What have you changed your mind about recently? Are you following any new and interesting voices on Twitter? What’s something hotly debated in your field? — *location: 3008* ^ref-17207 --- To get the highest-quality intelligence you’ll want to frame the same question in multiple ways. — *location: 3027* ^ref-54218 --- To jump-start a cycle of reciprocity, share intelligence and advice of your own that may be useful to the other person. — *location: 3044* ^ref-26047 --- However, when you do have enough time to consult your network, we suggest doing gut-checks twice—both before you tap your network, to make sure you know what your intuition is telling you with the current information you have, and after, to see if your gut feeling has changed after incorporating all the new information you’ve acquired from people you know. — *location: 3054* ^ref-14992 --- Between these two gut checks, we suggest you do everything you can to challenge your baseline assumptions so that you don’t fall into the trap of confirmation bias: only seeking out people who reaffirm your first instinct. Ask yourself, “What data would change my gut feeling?” Then see if those data exist. — *location: 3060* ^ref-19610 --- In her excellent book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott cites another writer, E. L. Doctorow, who said: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” — *location: 3180* ^ref-49047 ---