Transcript
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Okay guys. I recently had my identity stolen and it was awful. It felt like a gross icky violation, like somebody got into my digital house and locked me out. Getting your identity stolen means putting a hold on your card and replacing everything. So when that happens, there is no time to wait. You want to be able to get hold of your bank right away. One thing I love about Chime is that they have 24. 7 customer support available. So if you notice an unexpected charge or lose your wallet, you can connect with a real person right away to get it all sorted out. Chime also offers fee free checking accounts and ATMs. No more monthly maintenance fees. Work on your financial goals with Chime today. Open an account@chime.com helpwanted that's chime.com helpwanted Chime feels like progress. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA Members FDIC Spot Me Eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out of network ATMs. Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to US News and World Report 2023 Chime checking account requ.
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This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor in chief of.
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Entrepreneur magazine, and I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.
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And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.
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And it starts now.
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You are considering something new, but you're stuck. Maybe it's something small, like taking a class, or something big, like exploring a career change. You're curious, but you keep thinking, what if I don't like it? What if I'm stuck with something I regret? So you do nothing and the opportunity passes you by. Today I will show you how to break free from this paralysis by borrowing insights from both behavioral science and business strategy. The secret is this Stop making decisions and start running experiments. Before I explain how it works, I'm going to share how I first learned this myself. A few years ago, I interviewed behavioral scientist Katie Milkman for my book Build for Tomorrow. We were talking about how to make change and what finally pushes us to act. Then she told me something that changed. How I think she said this she said, this is going to sound like the weirdest piece of advice, but when we're trying to figure out the right next step, one of the things we do, too little of is experiment. Here's the problem, Katie said. When we consider new things, we start to fear premature permanence. Which is to say we think of every change as a long term commitment. Alter our job well, we must be stuck with it for years. Try a new hobby, we better do it forever. That is why we hold ourselves back. We're not afraid of new things. We're afraid of committing to them before knowing if they're right. But if you reframe new things as experiments, you lower the barrier to entry. Think of it. When scientists run experiments, they're not trying to guarantee outcomes, they're just gathering data. Maybe the experiment works, maybe it doesn't. Either way, the result was useful. When you frame something new as an experiment, you remove the pressure. The goal isn't to find the perfect solution anymore, it's just to test a hypothesis, actually label it. This is an experiment, Katie Milkman told me. It's not the end, it's not the end goal. It's just you exploring. And you know what? I'm going to take it even further. Don't just label something as an experiment. Actually define the experiment. How long will the experiment last? What data are you trying to gather? Recently, for example, a friend asked me to collaborate on a project. It was intriguing and potentially lucrative, but it was also way beyond what I usually do and I wasn't sure that I'd like it. I didn't want to say yes. Yes means that I'm all in. Yes is commitment. So I told him this instead. I said, let's try this for three months, then we can step back and assess what was I helpful? Was I worth the money to you? And was the money worth it to me? And was I able to manage this with my existing workload? Now I have established clear expectations for my friend, but very importantly, and perhaps even more importantly for myself, I also created a way to say yes when I might have otherwise been too afraid to. And if your experiment fails, do not worry, because most experiments should fail. That is something that I Learned from the CEO of GoDaddy. His name is Aman Bhutani and I spoke to him a few years ago. He loves experiments, pushing his teams to try new ideas, test novel concepts. He also tracks all experiments because he wants to see how many succeed and fail. And here's where this gets surprising. He wants to make sure that his team is regularly failing. This is what Iman Bhutani told me. He said, if you're pushing lots of new ideas and you're doing really innovative things, then your success rate is going to be lower than a third. If win rates are very high, that means people are just doing whatever they want and calling it an experiment. Consider his logic here. If you play it safe, your experiments will all be successes. But that means that you never really pushed yourself. And if you never really push yourself, then you never discover new abilities or interests. And if you do push yourself, you will fail a lot, but also discover transformative things. Therefore, true growth comes with a high failure rate. Or to put it even more plainly, when your experiments fail, you are doing it right. That is one of the most liberating ideas I've ever heard. As I reflect on this, I keep coming back to an old memory. In college, my girlfriend was considering a career in neuroscience. She loved reading books about the brain, but she wasn't sure if she would like the work. So she did something bold. She got a six month internship at a local hospital. Turns out she hated it and totally lost interest in neuroscience. At the time I thought she had wasted all that effort. But she said she was very satisfied because imagine the alternative. She said she could have spent years studying neuroscience and only then discovered that she didn't like the work. She was right. Her six month internship was a valuable experiment and the failure was a great success. The world is unpredictable, but it is also testable. There are many things that we don't know. Will we like or hate something? Will we have a great or a terrible time? Will it be fun or awkward? There is only one way to know this. We must do it. Stop waiting for the perfect opportunity. Stop hoping for guaranteed success. Just start experimenting. Label it as such. Give it time to develop. And remember that the goal isn't to succeed at everything. It is to learn from everything. Failure means that you're doing it right and that is all that matters. Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason.
