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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk with Nii Codjoe (COO at Personality Hacker) about how to figure out what to do with your life and his experience in navigating his own career as a millennial.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Nii Codjoe – ENTJ
- Adaptability is one of the essential skills needed in the world today.
- People who are graduating from school today struggle with adapting to the changes in the world.
- Emotional & psychological adaptability.
- Create an educational program to survive in the world today.
- Invite successful people to coffee and ask them questions about how they became successful.
- At the end of the “coffee chat”, Nii would ask, “Is there anyone else you would recommend I talk to?”
- This is how he built a tribe of people who were more successful than him.
- Learn how to learn.
- There is a process to learning things and turning knowledge into wisdom.
- Understanding persuasion, sales and marketing, and communication are potent tools to have.
- These people aren’t larger than life. They are human.
- What is the formula for turning knowledge into wisdom?
- The first level is awareness and exposure – there are things out there you aren’t aware of. Keep seeking.
- Accelerate learning by getting into action and implementing new ideas immediately.
- Get your hands dirty.
- Gain data from multiple mistakes.
- Fail as much as you can to learn the fastest.
- Books can’t teach you everything.
- Read a book then take the knowledge and immediately test it in the outer world.
- Refine the knowledge.
- Go back and reread the book and see how your understanding has changed.
- Passion project = 1-3 month projects
- Approach someone who has some knowledge you can use to improve your data.
- Patterns start to emerge.
- Begin to see the same principles emerge over a wide array of concepts.
- Career paths are often an emergent we discover over time.
- Adaptability is important.
- The wrong question: “What should I do with my life?”
- Some jobs we may excel at don’t even exist yet.
- Instead of focusing on passion focus on developing skills.
- “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” Cal Newport?
- Focus on developing rare and valuable skills.
- Career capital.
- We tend to be passionate about the things we are good at.
- The most effective way of landing a job is through these coffee chats.
- Write down a list of people you know who are in a situation about which you are curious.
- Start with your parents or family friends, former professors, classmates who are in the field you are interested in.
- “I’m just exploring my options…”
- “I’ve noticed you have a really successful career in…. I would love to buy you a quick cup of coffee to pick your brain and find out how you got into your career.”
- Create an email template and mail it to a few people on your list.
- Write down questions you would like to know:
- How did you figure out what you wanted to do with your life?
- How much education did you get?
- Always buy them coffee at a location convenient to them.
- Build a relationship.
- Ask them how they got where they are.
- Take notes.
- Review.
- “Who are two other people you would recommend I talk to learn more about this subject?”
- People are more open to passing on a legacy than you think.
- Don’t underestimate the power of relationships.
- You are the average of the five people you hang around.
- Write down the five people closest to you.
- You are the average of those five people.
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18 comments
I decided to share OUR story because well I felt a need to share our voice. I am 28 my husband is 27 and we have 3 kids together. Growing up and trying to fit in with another generation has been challenging, however, the MBTI has helped us beyond ways I could explain. Friends and family tell us it’s all BS but for us, the MBTI bridged the gaps between our relationship and the relationship with ourselves and finding ourselves — that to me isn’t BS. After hearing this last podcast I realize how much it resonates with me because of the new generation we fall under. Some of the jobs that will be in demand in 10 years are jobs that have not even been thought of yet and that gives me so much hope that I don’t have to have my life completely figured out yet (despite the fact that I have a 10-year-old and 6 year old twins). So to wrap this up thank you Joel Mark Witt and Antonia Dodge (LOL those names are so engraved in my head from hearing your intros on the podcast) thank you for all the wisdom and guidance you share with your listeners.
As I am nearing towards the end of my undergraduate career, this episode really resonated with where I am in life. Stress over finding an entry level full time position looms over my peers and me. I have been practicing the art of informational interviews these past few months, and it can be intimidating to talk to an experienced working professional with decades worth of experience as a college student. But as y’all were saying, people are typically willing to help/answer any questions we may have, as long as we do so in an appreciative, intentional way.
We need to focus more on the importance of generating career capital, and to reiterate what Nii was saying: “You can have all the passion, but what good is that passion without a skillset?” Going to analyze the gaps in my skillset and re-frame the question of, “What do I want to do with my life?” to “What skills do I need to and what small projects could I partake in to hone in those skills?” Thank you so much Nii, Antonia, and Joel!
This was so great! I’m switching careers later in life ( I’m 54), but I’ve learned so much more about my chosen field by interning and talking with professionals than I learned in class. Nii gave a great interview, and I’ll be listening to this one again.