If they’re bad at this, they feel more pain and discomfort, and thus seek changes proactively; better able to access uncomfortable and deep emotions, but worse at compartmentalizing.
If they’re good at this, they may quell discomfort with convenient narratives, and thus put off life changes; better able to compartmentalize, but harder to access uncomfortable and deep emotions.
People who are too deep on either end of the spectrum will be too hard to help.
Our personas have a big variance in emotional regulation.
…
Part 1 Personas – Lost, not sure what to do
👭
Cindy – uninterested and unfulfilled by her job, but doesn’t want to leave b/c she doesn’t want to lose her friendships w her coworkers. turns out that she didn’t actually believe her friendships w her coworkers were all that deep or meaningful. her fear was actually of needing to make new coworker friends if she joined a new company. and this fear wasn’t resolved by acknowledging she has a set of non-work friends who she sees frequently and has meaningful relationships with. this is very interesting because in contrast, she was super extroverted during MIT CPW, before retreating into her introverted shell in most settings for the rest of MIT.
🏳️
Kathleen – burnt out by McKinsey, so she quit. Gave herself 12 months to introspect and do inner work, before figuring out what career to do next. 7 months in, had read many introspective books, joined a church, and began pushing her boundaries in her personal life, yet felt no closer to knowing what to do next with her career.
🏦
Ariel – one year into P72 as a hedge fund analyst, he was working long hours, getting berated by his boss, and not enjoying work or his minimal life outside of it at all. he revealed that beyond long hours, freedom to work remotely, being micro-managed, and not having investing agency, his core fear is not being impressive to his friends, and forever being the runt and joke of his friend group. he felt lost because he thought all the pain of Wall St. would be worth it once his friends found him impressive, but no one did. by talking with his friends, he discovered they unanimously believe the most impressive people unapologetically build genuinely fulfilling lives – not people who chase status and recognition. paradoxically, respect was given to those who didn’t seek it. thus, he tried to set aside this need and ask himself what he really wants out of his career to experience genuine fulfillment.
Poor emotional regulation.
🎫
Connor – fired from Robigo, a biotech startup he founded, by a third co-founder that joined later. the reason was he wasn’t competent as a CEO in her eyes. he revealed he is deeply fearful of seeming/being “incompetent,” and being laid off hit him hard. he idolizes “competent” people. his mom – who he loves – has many professional and community accolades, and his dad – who he looks down on – is a chicken farmer. he felt lost because he studied bio engineering, and wasn’t sure what to do next to seem competent. by setting aside a need to feel “competent” and shifting his focus to what he knows he wants in a career, and what he knows he wants to explore, he created a set of criteria that both Scale (under Ruben) and Passes (with Lucy Guo) would satisfy – both hard pivots away from bio engineering. In his current role with Lucy, he has been accused of being “incompetent” by college classmates, bio engineering connections, and even Lucy, and while it triggers him, he grounds himself by returning to his reasons for being there.
🍇
Jeffrey – before quitting Scale | before leaving Gather.
Details on “My Story” page
🤹
Tom – Fell out of love with crypto. Not impressed by the people. Tried and failed to sell his fund. Considering next moves. Has many interest, struggles to commit to anything without a lot of conviction. Reads lots of hackernews, reddit, twitter, and blogs right now since he feels lost.
…
🚲
Lauren – Laid off from job, 3 months later finds herself nervous and procrastinating on the next chapter of her life. Picked up cycling as a hobby in the meantime. Had talked about going to grad school after a year at her last job, but after being laid off before the year mark, finds herself hesitating on applying to grad school too.
Mathura – college senior feeling very overwhelmed by needing to find “the best full-time job,” trying to go super wide and deep with her exploration, needs and wants focus but is scared to close any doors. her fear of losing optionality is clear in the major she picked, her interviewing for and trying to accept multiple different internships (SWE, VC, Grant-supported Entrepreneurship, APM).
There’s a chance her resistance to picking one career path stems from her not actually wanting to make a choice – maybe the act of “working towards figuring out one career path” is a fulfilling state to be in, rather than a process to get to a fulfilling state.
😇
Chris – four years into a Chem PhD he hates but stuck with b/c he believed it was “God’s plan for him,” before applying to Meta for a DS internship. deeply ashamed of going against “God’s plan for him” because he feels religion saved him in the past, and his mother is still deeply religious.
Part 2 Personas – Has a goal, needs help executing it
⚖️
Logan – before quitting Scale | before leaving Crypto.
…
🏦
Christien – been interested in doing a startup for years. however, keeps putting off actually doing it. each time he feels anxious about his progress, he quells these negative emotions by justifying his actions with convenient narratives. thus, it was a very slow and gradual process for him to finally acknowledge maybe he’s wasting his time and he should just start doing his startup.
Strong emotional regulation.
🎨
Brandon – three years into his startup Koodos, before quitting.
Before: Felt dissatisfied even though things going well. Found himself spending more time on side projects and wondering if this was a phase or if he was going to slowly grow more dissatisfied and eventually leave in a year. Was embarrassed by the idea of quitting his startup. Was scared by the idea of working on side projects full-time without a stable salary.
Inner Compass Work: By uncovering his tenets and building his Inner Compass, he realized that he currently values agility (small teams), creativity (what to work on and how to do it), tangible impact and value (instead of speculative value), and minimal company distractions (avoid hiring, managing, fundraising, investor relations, internal politics).
Result: Decided to leave his startup. Informed his co-founder, employees, and investors. Enabled his direct report to take over his role. Exited the company smoothly and amicably within two weeks. Began working as an indie developer building a portfolio of profitable lightweight software products.
Inner Compass helped him decide to leave his old path, navigate the difficult and emotional process of leaving, and design his current path.
His new path lets him creatively and agilely build multiple software products with tangible impact without the need for (many) team members.
♻️
Nikil – seven years into enterprise SaaS sales feeling his work isn’t meaningful to the world, interested in pivoting to climate, but unable to build conviction to do so. he is good at projecting everything is going well, and has a hard time embracing the abyss.
Before: Felt dissatisfied even though things going well. Found himself spending more time on things outside of work (e.g., real estate) and reading more about companies tackling climate change. Was struggling to find a way to shift to a climate-focused company while leveraging his enterprise sales skills and maintaining enough income to support his child and their lifestyle.
Inner Compass Work: By uncovering his tenets and building his Inner Compass, he realized that he currently values time affluence (time with kid whenever), autonomy (decide how to grow his businesses), and impact (unblock progress tackling climate change).
Result: Decided to leave his job. Decided against working directly at a climate-focused company. Began expanding his real estate agent business, growing his real estate investment portfolio, and angel investing in promising entrepreneurs interested in tackling climate change.
Inner Compass helped him decide to leave his old path, pass on a potential path, and design his current path.
His new path gives him time affluence and business autonomy, and let’s him feel impactful to the climate change problem he’s passionate about by unlocking a huge bottleneck for, and staying involved with, the climate industry, all while shielding himself from it’s uninteresting minutiae.
💼
Nathan – having two job offers in hand, after talking to many “mentors,” feeling completely lost about what to prioritize. after identifying what matters to him, his decision became clear.
——
Kate – having three job offers in hand, after talking to many “mentors,” feeling completely lost about what to prioritize. Talking to her godmother was most useful because:
No projection of external goals
Other mentors she talked to made her more confused. They were older people who had navigated career shifts before, and all their advice was maximizing her odds of joining the next Facebook – which is NOT her goal.
She was unable to talk to her friends her age, bc most have not had the life experience of navigating a career shift, so they wouldn’t be able to give real advice.
Articulated her North Star goal for her, based on what she knew abt Kate
Based on what Kate had expressed when she joined Tesla (working for really brilliant tech minds) and what she was saying about her current decision, her Godmother realized pushed Kate to articulate her true North Star goal: Become someone who can be the CEO to a brilliant tech mind.
Once identifying this North Star goal, she asked what Kate lacked to achieve this goal (business skills), and identified that Scale was the best fit (over the smaller LLM companies or HBS) to get those skills.
She has strong convictions about why she’s joining Scale (even though to the public eye, she’s joining a “safe” bet for a “director” title), and can fall back on those convictions to help her navigate the abyss.
🔍
Sylvie – after quitting job, going on one month trip to Joshua tree, and starting to interview again w 40 co’s, this time with a clear set of values. set up trial periods at companies, etc. overall, very intentional.
…
People with less introspective ability, ready to act but less prepared to introspect.
Scenarios/mindset they may enter with:
Feeling completely lost, don’t know what to do with life at all. Went down the beaten path but have no direction to follow now
People with more introspective ability, but less ready to act.
