Diana Alt [00:00:02]:
Hey there, everybody. Welcome to Work Should Feel good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt, and today my guest Eric Nerlik and I are going to discuss how embracing your personal agency can help you reduce your burnout and lead you to a life that you love as a leader with more impact. Eric is an executive coach who draws on his experience intact to help leaders increase their impact. He loves challenging mindsets and habits that hold people back from the next level. Before becoming a coach, Eric served as an engineer and a product manager after my own heart. I had those roles too in startups before joining Google, where he worked his way up to chief of staff of a little tiny business unit known as Google Search ads. Eric is the author of you have a Choice Beyond Hard work to meaningful Impact, which he wrote to share the mindsets and principles he uses as a coach with a broader audience.

Diana Alt [00:00:57]:
Welcome to the party. Eric, how are you?

Eric Nehrlich [00:01:00]:
Thanks, Diana. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here and yeah, of course, should feel good. Let's make that happen.

Diana Alt [00:01:07]:
I'm excited to nerd out with you, which I. I was telling Eric before I smashed the record button that I consider him a high priority guest ever since I saw the front of his book. We were in like some sort of coaching cohort with Angie Callan or networking something, and I saw your book and I was like, I must know this person because you talk about agency in your life and in your career, and I think a lot of people are sorely missing that. So we're going to get to that. But first I want to hit on something from the Wayback Machine that you might not even realize. I know I do. Recon, aka read your whole LinkedIn profile. We were.

Diana Alt [00:01:48]:
You were at MIT and Stanford. You were in the chamber corral while studying physics. Many people do not think those things go together. So I'm interested in a little bit more about your involvement in music and how you feel like that has helped you in any aspects of your career.

Eric Nehrlich [00:02:12]:
Well, that's not a question I've heard before.

Diana Alt [00:02:15]:
Welcome to the show. I told you I don't ask the same eight questions.

Eric Nehrlich [00:02:19]:
So I love it. So, yeah. Choral singing so my mom is. My mom was Korean. So like every other Korean child I was started on. You get to choose between violin. Piano. So I was starting played violin from age three.

Diana Alt [00:02:36]:
Okay.

Eric Nehrlich [00:02:38]:
And so I was in the orchestra all the way through middle school into high school. And we had a problem my junior year where the orchestra conflicted with the AP English class. Oh, so being Korean mom, you choose the academics? Of course. But, yeah, Korean mom is like, you can't not have music.

Diana Alt [00:02:59]:
Right?

Eric Nehrlich [00:02:59]:
So she's like, you're going to do chorus. I'm like, I've never done singing in my life, so that's so funny. But it fit into my schedule around all the AP classes. So I started singing in the chorus, and it turned out I loved it. In fact, I loved it a lot more than the violin. So I ended up singing in choruses for over 20 years. So chamber chorus at MIT and at Stanford, and after I left Stanford, actually joined the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for six years, so.

Diana Alt [00:03:28]:
Oh.

Eric Nehrlich [00:03:30]:
It'S been a big part of my life.

Diana Alt [00:03:32]:
Yeah, I thought about doing that. So I'm a mu. I was. I grew. I grew up with teachers in my house that were musicians. My dad, like, basically only he. He was like a clarinet player through college. He was in the band in college.

Diana Alt [00:03:46]:
And my mom did all the things from the time she was tiny. She is 82 years old and she still plays the piano for the teeny, tiny church choir in our small town. And I also went to engineering school and also was in music while I was there. I did the actual madrigal singers when I was in college, but when I was in high school, I was in the concert choir, and I also did the show choir, Glee club, whatever you call it, so.

Eric Nehrlich [00:04:14]:
Oh, wow.

Diana Alt [00:04:15]:
I love. I love it. And I see so many people that when. So often when I meet somebody that's really compelling or that I'm very drawn to, that works in anything in stem, I find out that they had either a music or an art background. So.

Eric Nehrlich [00:04:33]:
Yeah, and you had asked about, like, what. How does it relate to the rest of this? You know, how's it related to physics? I mean, there is a technical component to music. Like, it requires precision, it requires attention to detail. There's math, and it requires connection. Like, it's. It's kind of like, you do need that. Right? Brain connection. You need to work with other people and you need to.

Eric Nehrlich [00:04:52]:
What I love about choral singing in particular is, like, it's not about you as an individual. It's about how do you fit with a larger group. So, like, funny story, like, when I was auditioning for the Stanford Chamber Chorus, I made it to the callbacks, and he had. The conductor had to start singing in different groups together, like different sets of 2 and 3, to see how we sounded together. Not just individual voices, but as units. And at one point, he Was like, hey, guys, check this out. He had me sing with one person, and he had me sing with a different person. And he was like, did everybody notice how Eric's voice changed to blend in.

Diana Alt [00:05:29]:
With the other person?

Eric Nehrlich [00:05:30]:
I'm a blender. Yeah. So he was like, yeah. Eric listens to what's next to him and blends into it. And you need people like that in the chorus. You can't have all the strong voices because they don't mesh, but if you put a blender between them, it creates a more consistent sound.

Diana Alt [00:05:48]:
Well, yeah, I did a lot of solo work, too, whenever I was singing, and I was always a. Well, I was mostly a soprano. There was, like, one random year I sang alto and show choir because I tried out and I could. I had the range for it. And they're like, we don't have a soprano slot. Do you want to be an alto? And at first I was pissed, but then I did it, so it was good. But I sang solos. But I also had the ability to blend in.

Diana Alt [00:06:15]:
And there was a gal that I'm thinking of in our choir that definitely was not. And she, like, she and I made the all state choir, but you could hear her. You could pick her out of our, you know, chorus of 75 people, or however many people were in that. Which is not. That's not ideal.

Eric Nehrlich [00:06:32]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:06:33]:
Choir, so. Well, thanks for. Thanks for walking down the memory lane. Did they have the pirate certificate when you were at mit? Do you know about the pirate certificate?

Eric Nehrlich [00:06:44]:
Oh, my gosh.

Diana Alt [00:06:46]:
You can take, like, archery. I don't know. There's like, two or three things that you can do.

Eric Nehrlich [00:06:51]:
Pistol, archery, and sailing. Yes.

Diana Alt [00:06:54]:
Yeah. My best friend's daughter. I went to school at Missouri University of Science and Technology at UC called the University of Missouri Rolla. And my best friend's daughter went there, too. And she decided when she was young that she wanted to go there. And I'm like, you have to go there. Jokingly, like, you have to go there unless you get into MIT and then you can go get the pirates or for certificate.

Eric Nehrlich [00:07:14]:
So I just looked it up. It became. It became available in the fall of 2011. So 20 years after I got.

Diana Alt [00:07:22]:
Okay. I feel like you should be able to go back and get that. You know, there should be an endorsement. What? You. You started out as a physicist, which also caught my attention. My dad had a bachelor's and a master's degree in physics, and he ended up teaching at the junior college level all the pre engineering stuff. What drew you to physics?

Eric Nehrlich [00:07:45]:
I wanted to be Richard Feynman when I grew up. So Richard Feynman was a famous physicist. He worked on the nuclear bomb, the Manhattan Project. He was a Caltech professor. He wrote the definitive set of lectures on physics. But he mostly was just really fun. He wrote a book called Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman.

Eric Nehrlich [00:08:02]:
And he loves, like, playing samba music in Brazil and like, doing physics in Japan. And he was just, like, wandering the world, solving problems. I'm like, that sounds like an amazing life. I want to be like that.

Diana Alt [00:08:15]:
I didn't like physics that much. I liked chemistry a lot better. So.

Eric Nehrlich [00:08:21]:
I didn't like physics that much either. But I was good enough at it to get into MIT and then Stanford, and. And so I was like, yeah, I was like, ah, this is great. I could do this. And then around once I was in grad school in my PhD program, I realized, like, yeah, I don't love this enough to do this all the time. And that turns out to be a real problem if you're in grad school, because that's.

Diana Alt [00:08:42]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:08:43]:
All the time.

Diana Alt [00:08:44]:
I know people that finish the doctorate, not because they like the subject and not even. Like, some people are just like, I want the doctorate, like, I might do something else. I think that's just. My brother has a doctorate in. He has a PhD in electrical engineering. And I cannot imagine anything worse than spending that much time in school for something that you didn't really love. So I'm glad you found your way to something cooler. So you've wandered.

Diana Alt [00:09:09]:
You. You went from physics, and then you kind of wandered your way. Well, maybe not wandered. It looked pretty direct whenever I was looking at your LinkedIn. You went into the software engineering space. So talk to me a little bit about your journey from baby software engineer through this chief of staff place that you ended up because. Yeah, that's not a path people are used to seeing. So tell me a little bit about that.

Eric Nehrlich [00:09:37]:
Sure. Happy to. So, yeah, I started off as a software engineer, mostly because I was dropping out of grad school and I knew how to program computers, so I programmed computers. That's what you did back then?

Diana Alt [00:09:49]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:09:51]:
And I was happy doing that again. Turns out I was good at it, but didn't really love it, which turns out to be important later. But at my second job, I was at a really cool biotech startup. We were doing really cool technical work stuff nobody else in the world could do. Really talented people. I was very excited by what we were up to. And then the company went bankrupt because the leadership was Terrible. And I was like, wait a second.

Eric Nehrlich [00:10:18]:
We're doing great technical work. We're exceeding all our goals. We're doing stuff nobody else can do. What happened? I don't understand, like, how this work was born.

Diana Alt [00:10:31]:
So.

Eric Nehrlich [00:10:31]:
And that was my origin story as executive coach. It's like, man, it doesn't matter how good your team is if the leadership is terrible. Because the leadership could just nuke it all by being terrible.

Diana Alt [00:10:42]:
Yes.

Eric Nehrlich [00:10:43]:
And that was like, oh, oh, yeah. I would understand this better. So those that are watching on video can see the bookshelf behind me. That's why I started reading all these business and strategy and leadership books, because I'm like, what the hell happened here?

Diana Alt [00:10:56]:
Yeah, I don't understand.

Eric Nehrlich [00:10:59]:
And so, yeah, I was still doing software engineer at this point. I at some point became a product manager and then decided to pivot into trying to pivot into management and business because it was like, that's the leverage point that I saw available to me.

Diana Alt [00:11:15]:
Yeah. And I think that's even more true now because, like, I was a product manager for a long time. Can you see all the reasons why I wanted to talk to you? I was a product manager for a long time. And the thing that has happened and it's accelerated even more in the last five years, is that product management, when I was trained, was about understanding how to solve a market problem. And now people think it's about the product, which I think is dull. I think the market problems were interesting. I think the. The.

Diana Alt [00:11:46]:
What does this product do? I always say that if your product manager knows the most about your product, you have a big, bad product manager or a bad product management culture. So what are some of the books. What are a couple of the books that you read back then that made you really start to think some of your favorites?

Eric Nehrlich [00:12:05]:
Oh, gosh, I don't know. I have. I. That's too hard a question to spring on me without. Without giving you time to do research. It's. Yeah. Well, I can think of one that just kind of just is a funny story.

Eric Nehrlich [00:12:21]:
Like.

Diana Alt [00:12:22]:
Sure.

Eric Nehrlich [00:12:22]:
Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Diana Alt [00:12:25]:
Underrated.

Eric Nehrlich [00:12:27]:
Well, and the funny part is I had read that book when I was a teenager because everybody said, this is a great book.

Diana Alt [00:12:34]:
It was like a book you got for high school graduation in the era when we were getting out of school. Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:12:40]:
Yeah. So I read it in high school, and I'm like, this is the dumbest, fakest book I've ever read. This is junk. This is like used car salesman tactics. I hate this. This is useless. I then later read it 20 years later in my 30s, 10 years into my career, and I'm like, I just spent the last 20 years figuring it all. Figuring out all the stuff in this book.

Eric Nehrlich [00:13:04]:
Yep, darn it.

Diana Alt [00:13:07]:
Read it probably since my 30s, like my early 30s. And that's 20, almost 20 years ago for me. So I'm probably due for a reread on that one. But that one definitely holds up, in my opinion, because no matter what you're doing, like, your point of how can you have brilliant technology and still lose the company? How can you be a brilliant technologist and not progress in your career? Is the corollary to that question. So very cool.

Eric Nehrlich [00:13:36]:
One other one, if you want to really geek out, is I read a bunch of this French philosopher named Bruno Latour who studies how does science get made? So he was doing social science of study of the social science of studying scientists.

Diana Alt [00:13:51]:
Stop. And that's so meta.

Eric Nehrlich [00:13:54]:
It is so meta. And I was like, as. As somebody that had been a physicist and been on the inside and saw people making these decisions, it's like, it's like, you know, the. The story is, the myth is the brave scientist goes into the lab, creates the experiment, it changes the world. And this guy was like saying, but most of what scientists do is go to meetings and talk to each other and arrange for and go get funding. And it's like, where is the science actually? Is it happening in the laboratory? But you need funding and you need these meetings and need these collaborations. And it's like all this other stuff interesting is part of this as well. So it's like the science is the output, but the process of science is much more complex and part of this ecosystem.

Eric Nehrlich [00:14:38]:
And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Because I had seen it as a working physicist, like, that's how it works. And it was actually part of what dissuaded me from sticking in physics because I watched my professor, literally. This is funny story. I had my professor would sneak into the lab late at night, 7 or 8pm to do some real physics.

Diana Alt [00:14:58]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:14:58]:
Yes. Because they'd spend all day in meetings. I'm like, wait, so I'm going to work for seven years to get a PhD, another couple of years of postdocs, try to go get tenure. So 20 years down the road, I can sit in meetings all day and never do. Do the physics. Like this doesn't seem like a good deal.

Diana Alt [00:15:12]:
So you can pay like $15 an hour to the master's student to do your Physics for you. There's a whole lot of that going on. So I didn't, I didn't like the lab. Like, I would. I would have been a terrible research scientist. And there was a point in time where I thought I wanted to get a PhD and then I started making friends with people a few years older than me. I'm like, oh, that looks terrible. Terrible.

Eric Nehrlich [00:15:39]:
I actually loved the lab. It turns out I like the experiment and technology part. So how do we get this stuff to work? How do we jury rig something together? How do we write the software? That part I loved. It turns out that's not actually physics, that's just being a technologist. So that was the other thing I learned over time. Yeah, Anyway. Yeah. So Bruno Latour, if you want to really geek out about the meta, what it means to be a scientist and how we work together, as in, in social domains, like, he's an interesting character.

Diana Alt [00:16:11]:
Okay, I'm so writing that down. I'm going to try to find it. Maybe I can put it in the show notes. Because show notes are important. Guys, you should read. You should click our links. That's a very big deal. So you decided to go into this management, the business management side of it.

Diana Alt [00:16:31]:
When did you make that shift and what was your first kind of role that you had in that realm?

Eric Nehrlich [00:16:38]:
It was. Two things happened. Well, I guess the big shift was there was a famous engineering blogger, a guy named Joel Spolsky, Joel on software, who was running a software startup in New York, and he was looking for management interns. He's like, I don't want MBAs. I want real people who know how to program computers. I will mold them into becoming the managers I want.

Diana Alt [00:17:03]:
Nice.

Eric Nehrlich [00:17:04]:
I'm like, great. That's what I want to do. I want to go from software to management. This guy wants that. So I went to go work for him. And as part of that, there was a program at Columbia University that was specifically designed for people going for technology to business. So it's called the master's degree in technology management, but it's basically an MBA targeted at tech people 10 years into their career. That's a really, you know, technology.

Eric Nehrlich [00:17:32]:
We're going to teach you the MBA speak so that you can go navigate executive level stuff.

Diana Alt [00:17:37]:
Yeah. And you, like I saw on your LinkedIn, did you go immediately after that degree into your finance because you had a finance role?

Eric Nehrlich [00:17:46]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:17:47]:
That was your first Google job, right? Was the finance. Yeah. So was that a hard pivot to make? Because I don't see very many people and maybe it's just because there's not a lot of people taking advantage of a program like the one at Columbia, but you don't, you don't see a whole lot of that.

Eric Nehrlich [00:18:04]:
So it's very unusual. I. If you had asked me a month before I got like, before I started interviewing for the job, I would like. But no, I'm not a finance person. I would never go into finance.

Diana Alt [00:18:15]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:18:15]:
But one of my professors at the Columbia program hammered into our heads that if you want to understand how executives think, you have to understand the money. And I was like, I don't understand the money. And I realized that was the missing piece that I didn't understand. When the company went bankrupt, I didn't understand the money. So that professor made us read P and L statements. He made us read, you know, earnings reports. And it really hammered home, like, I gotta understand the money better.

Diana Alt [00:18:47]:
Are you familiar. Have you ever heard of the book Financial Intelligence?

Eric Nehrlich [00:18:53]:
I sounds familiar. I don't think I've read it.

Diana Alt [00:18:55]:
It's like a finance book for non finance people. It's. I've, I've given it to a couple of executive coaching clients who are like, I'm hitting the level where I have to be able to talk about this. It's for the exact same reason that you went to, to work in the, in the financial analyst role. But it could be a good one for you to check out for your, for your people.

Eric Nehrlich [00:19:15]:
So, yeah, I'll look it up. But yeah. So a few months later, when I graduated from the program, I started looking for a job. This opportunity came across my thing to become a revenue forecasting analyst at Google. And I'm like, google's cool. I always wanted to work at Google. And I bet you if I'm the one forecasting and analyze the revenue, I'll really understand the money.

Diana Alt [00:19:35]:
Figure out the money. Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:19:38]:
And so I talked my way into the role. I wasn't like, they were looking for an mba. Instead they got this weird background person. But the manager liked me, so he hired me. And boy was my professor. Right. Because six months after I started that job, I'm standing in front of Eric Schmidt and Larry and Sergey and the CFO talking about revenue, and they're like, what's going to happen with revenue? And you're the expert here. And like the entire leadership team of Google is looking at me to tell them what to do because I understood the money.

Eric Nehrlich [00:20:09]:
I was like, well, holy. Don't want to swear too much on your podcast. But yeah, it was a Definite shock to the system. And, yeah, because of that, I would do all the top people running the ads programs. And that eventually led to becoming the chief of staff for the search Ads team. Because I knew their money, I knew the business model, I knew the revenue streams inside and out. And they're like, come help us under, make sure, help us run the business.

Diana Alt [00:20:34]:
Did you find you had a natural? Like, how hard was it for you to get to the point where you really felt like you groked the money, where you could stand up in that room with the big dogs?

Eric Nehrlich [00:20:47]:
I mean, the funny thing was nobody actually had looked at the money that carefully up until that point. Like, the guy that hired me, a guy named Shane Antos, had started this revenue team just a year or two before, because before, like, nobody at Google had ever cared about money because money was literally falling from the sky. Like, billions of dollars were just appearing in the bank account. So you don't need to track. Just appears. There's no. It's like, yeah, there's a waterfall. Why would you, like, track the water? Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:21:17]:
But he was like, maybe. Maybe we should understand exactly what affects our revenue and how this, how this works. So, like, I was among the first people he hired. And so, like, just the fact that I was looking at it on a daily basis put me way ahead of everybody else at the company.

Diana Alt [00:21:34]:
And so, yeah, expert. I remember very distinctly I was working as a product manager at a company and they had a very. It was a small company that had been bought by emc, and then they shoved us in RSA because they kind of didn't know what to do with us. But we were governance, risk and compliance. And they're like, risk security. Yeah, let's do that. And I remember at one point getting told I needed to take over the product offering for our hosting solution, which is like the precursor to traditional SaaS. And I knew nothing.

Diana Alt [00:22:09]:
I had to go learn IT operations. And my director of product just said, look, all you have to do is show that you can learn this, and the ops people will tell you everything because they're just happy to be asked. So you don't have to know it all. If you know more than the other people in the room, you're the expert. So there you go. And it was an interesting experience.

Eric Nehrlich [00:22:34]:
And to the earlier comments about being a blender, so we had these PhD quantitative analysts on our team, like people that actually understood the numbers to a level of modeling that were being beyond what I cared to do. But they couldn't speak executive. And so in these meetings with the ADS VPs and the CFO, they would ask a question, the quants would say something and nobody would understand them. I'm like, so what they're trying to say is. And you know, so I was the translator between the quants and the VPs, and the quants liked it because I under, I had enough background, I had the physics background. Like I could actually understand what they said legitimately and speak for them in a way that was simpler. Simpler but not misleading. So they liked, like, okay, this guy's actually saying the right things.

Eric Nehrlich [00:23:21]:
And the VPs liked it because basically.

Diana Alt [00:23:22]:
Been a translator, you've always been a translator. That's really, I do that too. I, I, I think that there's so many people that are like that. Like I, I work, my client base is, it's mostly people that have sat at that intersection of business and technology, which can happen in multiple different ways. I've worked with tons of product managers because I was in that space. And then project managers, you know, that kind of people. And then like engineering leaders that are trying to figure out like, oh, I need to be able to talk about more than like how many tickets are in JIRA now. And it's such a wild space to inhabit because when you've never had to know anything about business and then suddenly you have to know something about business, you need that WD40.

Diana Alt [00:24:09]:
So that's the role you're playing. Very cool. And so how you wandered over, you wandered your way. I say that flippantly. I know you worked hard for it, but into this chief of staff role. And chief of staff roles are really interesting because in some places they can be almost like a senior executive assistant, which clearly is not what you were doing when you were running like a hundred, what was a hundred million dollar business unit or for Google Search. So talk to me about what life looked like for you as a big company. Chief of staff.

Eric Nehrlich [00:24:49]:
Yeah, so when I became chief of staff, it was still a relatively new role in the corporate world. And like, it didn't, I didn't have a job. Like, I basically didn't have a job description. The, I was burned out. I was looking for a new role. The ADS VP learned of this and said, hey, want to come be my chief of staff? I'm like, what's the chief of staff? He's like, I don't know, you know my business, come help me run the business. Like, okay, I'm burned out anyway. Let me try something new.

Eric Nehrlich [00:25:19]:
So that's kind of how it happened.

Diana Alt [00:25:21]:
Nice.

Eric Nehrlich [00:25:27]:
Excuse me, I'm getting over a cold here. Yeah. So what was it like? I mean, it's a kind of a grab bag of a role. You really can't define it. I tell potential chiefs of staff, like there's. Yeah, like you said, it could be an executive assistant, it could be the number two chief operating officer of a whole. Of a whole org and everything in between.

Diana Alt [00:25:47]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:25:48]:
So for people considering the role, if you need to ask, what does success look like in this role? You know, if I'm, if I'm doing a good job, what do you expect me to be doing? And some people say, like, organize my calendar. Like, oh, yeah, no, not that. And some people are like, let me, I want you to take over like this whole operational segment and make it, make it work. So I was kind of a hybrid of that. I was, I was in some sense a force multiplier for my vp where there was stuff you didn't have time to look at. And my job was to go look at what's going on and figure it out like, okay. And come back with a recommendation.

Diana Alt [00:26:21]:
How well did you understand that business? Like, did you walk in there with an understanding of the ads business or were you teaching, teaching yourself that business at the same time that you were ramping up on this role?

Eric Nehrlich [00:26:34]:
Well, that's what the three years as the revenue analyst had done. Like, I knew that business inside and out. I knew the revenue better than anybody at that in the org. Like, I knew it better than the execs because I'd been the one on the finance side analyzing it. And, and I had all this, you know, interest in leadership and organizational theory and stuff like that under my belt as well. So it was a role where I really got to do have a lot of freedom to explore what I wanted.

Diana Alt [00:27:01]:
What about, what are you proudest of doing? Like, what are you proudest of achieving in that chief of staff role? That last role you had at Google?

Eric Nehrlich [00:27:11]:
You know, it's funny because, like the chief of staff role, it's really hard to measure your impact because the real impact is helping the org work more effectively. And it's kind of hard to measure. Like, I believe the org was, I don't know, a couple percent more effective as a result of me being there. But if you take a couple percent over a couple thousand people, like, that's a big impact.

Diana Alt [00:27:34]:
It's a lot.

Eric Nehrlich [00:27:36]:
But what I'll say is when I joined as chief of staff, the search as business was heading towards a math problem where we'd hit Complete saturation. On the desktop side, we hit complete saturation of most developed countries and that meant growth was going to start dying in 2016.

Diana Alt [00:27:58]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:27:59]:
And I, this was like 2011 or I guess 2012. When I was like pointing this out, I was like hammering the table, like, this is our destiny unless we change something drastic here. And you know, my, my hammer horses were like, we got to learn, we got to do mobile and we got to get into emerging countries. And you know, four years later, we did not hit that cliff because they did a lot of work on mobile and emerging countries. And like, is that all due to me? No, everybody saw it, but I was definitely one of the people pounding the table, doing the analysis, making sure it came up in every meeting so that it was on the top of people's mind to make sure we paid attention to it.

Diana Alt [00:28:36]:
Nice.

Eric Nehrlich [00:28:36]:
And so I believe I had a deal that was it, navigating that that.

Diana Alt [00:28:41]:
Might not have killed Google if they hadn't done it, but Google would not be the Google that we've known the last several years if that had not happened, if they hadn't gotten the program.

Eric Nehrlich [00:28:52]:
And like I said, there were a lot of people working on mobile within Google. It's not like I'm the single handed savior here, but like from my role as analyst and chief of staff, I made sure we kept attention on it. And I think that does have an impact.

Diana Alt [00:29:05]:
I remember when Facebook went public, which was like 2010, 2011, something like that, and they had a mobile app. The way I look at it is like there's being on mobile and then there's monetizing on mobile and building an actual business that works with mobile. And I remember people I bought, I bought in the IPO because I was like, I use this product, I have some money, let's do it. I have not been sad about that investment, but really interesting because people are like, there's no way they're gonna die. It's the, they won't, they'll never figure out making money. And I'm like, Mark Zuckerberg is going to figure out how to make money on mobile. It's gonna happen.

Eric Nehrlich [00:29:47]:
So I mean, as somebody that lived through that time, like, you know, we'd seen Friendster, we'd seen MySpace, we'd seen a bunch of people, companies die. So it was like I was cynical because I was like, yeah, this will just dial, this be another fad, just like these other ones. And boy, was I wrong about that.

Diana Alt [00:30:03]:
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just, I, I basically had enough I had an amount of money that me and my financial advisor decided we could, we could play with and, but it was interesting and it got me interested in the business side of these large tech companies because I, I'd always been touching business but I didn't work at any fangs like you did. I, I live in the Midwest. We had limited opportunity for that. So yeah, now you're so much of what you're doing now as a coach, as an author is rooted in your burnout story which happened while you were at Google. So can you talk us a little bit through how, like how long, how long were you burned out before you really knew that you were burned out? What did that evolution look like and how did you manage to shift? Because so many people feel like they have to leave the org, like I can't do it, I'm burned out, I must leave my company. And it sounds like you didn't do that.

Eric Nehrlich [00:31:03]:
So I did not do that. Yeah. So I already mentioned this. So like six months after I started Google I'm like in these meetings with the Google leadership team and I'm feeling like I'm so important, I'm so valuable. Like it's pretty cool. It was really good for.

Diana Alt [00:31:21]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:31:22]:
And the fact that I was working like 100 hour weeks, like 8am to midnight every day, all most weekends. Like I remember that first year, I don't, I did not. I worked a full day every holiday I think until thanks. I think maybe I took off Thanksgiving Day and it was just like I was working non stop but it was like ego gratifying, like people were paying attention, they were listening to what I had to say. Like the, that I was having an impact. Like the leaders of Google were listening to me and that was something I had not had much of in my career where people listened to me. So I was like, yeah, this is great. I'm willing to work this hard because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Eric Nehrlich [00:32:00]:
I mean just freaking Google. So. So yeah, that was great. And so one year, two years pass and then I made a mistake. And the mistake was I was offered a bigger role and I took it. And the bigger role was running finance for emerging products. So things like Google Wallet, Google shopping, books offers, things like that and a bunch of stuff and I was going to be running a team for the first time. And the critical part for your show work should feel good.

Eric Nehrlich [00:32:35]:
My weakness had always been in operations and process and details. Like that was just not what I was going to. I'm good at big picture strategy Thinking like, where should we go? Vision direction.

Diana Alt [00:32:46]:
You can have a vision, you can synthesize like crazy information from multiple sources. But please don't make me write an sop.

Eric Nehrlich [00:32:56]:
Yeah, the nitty gritty of getting it all done, not my strength. So me being the arrogant young man I was, I was like, well, you know what? I'm going to make that my job. Because if I make it my job, I'll have to get better at it.

Diana Alt [00:33:08]:
It worked. It worked when you walked into finance, so it makes sense how you got there mentally.

Eric Nehrlich [00:33:15]:
Yeah. So that's what I did. I became a finance manager of a team that was doing process and operations. We were managing headcount, we were managing budget, we were managing all these profit and loss statements like the financial reporting. And that was really hard. I was really not good at it. And so I'm working really hard on something I'm not good at that drains me every day. And after a year and a half of doing that, then my body just collapsed.

Eric Nehrlich [00:33:43]:
It was just like, yeah, this is not. Because working 100 hours on something a week on something that was exciting and active, energizing for me, I was able to keep that pace.

Diana Alt [00:33:52]:
You can do that. You can do that in your working.

Eric Nehrlich [00:33:54]:
Hundred hours a week on something draining that was. I'm bad at that was just a recipe for disaster.

Diana Alt [00:34:01]:
Yeah, that's. I love that you brought that up. Because so much, so much of what the conversation is around workplace engagement and being happy at work and all of that, the people automatically go to this trite. Well, people don't leave, but they don't leave companies. They leave bosses. It's all about the bad boss. And that's like, kind of true, but it usually comes up number two on lists. And the number one ends up being.

Diana Alt [00:34:32]:
And it's fairly close, but on all the surveys that I've seen about this, number one ends up being, I can't grow in the direction that I want to grow. So you grew and you were in this thing. But I created a model that I call my aligned. My aligned, career cornerstones and leader is one of them. But the most important one is the right work. So if you're doing work that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye with a fork all day, I don't care how good you're getting paid, I don't care how great your boss says, eventually it's going to fall apart. So how did that did. Did you end up on medical leave? I mean, I don't want to get too nosy, but Were you in the mode of like, my gosh, I have to take FMLA and be off for a few months or how did that.

Eric Nehrlich [00:35:19]:
It didn't get that bad. But for me, the way it showed up was I'd been pushing hard. It was Q4. We're doing all the financial planning for the next year. Got to get everything, every resource ask has to be tied out across 15 spreadsheets and synchronized exactly. And I'm double checking and triple checking everything and I'm like my, in my brain I'm like, this sucks, but I just have to make it to Christmas. This sucks, but I just have to make it to Christmas.

Diana Alt [00:35:43]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:35:43]:
So I make it to Christmas. Looking forward. I'm going to spend some time with my family and I wake up Christmas morning with 103 degree fever and my body's just collapsed. Like, I literally, I basically didn't get out of bed for a week. I was just like, my body's like, you told us to make it to Christmas, we got you there, now you're paying.

Diana Alt [00:36:02]:
I had that. Not to that severe of a degree, but I worked for Cerner, which is now part of Oracle Healthcare. IT when I was early in my career and I was doing a lot of cool stuff, like I was, you know, a, an engineer and then a business analyst. I eventually went into sales operations and I noticed after about three years that every single time I took a vacation, I ended up getting sick. So I'd take a week vacation and be gone for three extra days because halfway through vacation I ended up sick. And it wasn't like, cough, cough, it was like, I'm catatonic, I can't do it. And it took me a while because I was young and dumb to realize that my body was like valiantly fighting off illness all the time. And when I took a break, it's like, oh, okay, well we have a break now, so we can, we can take care of this.

Diana Alt [00:36:55]:
We can alert the immune system. And that's when I like, I finally started making some shifts and eventually left about a year and a half after that. So it's rough though. But I have, I have worked with, I'm sure you have too. I've worked with multiple people that their sign of burnout is that they ended up in the hospital or that they ended up having to actually take medical leave because they just could, they completely collapsed. So. Yeah. So what'd you do, like after that week? How long did it take you to go from.

Diana Alt [00:37:29]:
Oh my gosh, I lost my whole week of Christmas too. I'm gonna make substantive change at work. Did you go right back in the new year and say, I can't do this anymore or did it take some time?

Eric Nehrlich [00:37:42]:
So to your point about the realization, like part of it was in the year leading up to that, I had never seen my friends. They're like, you're work. You're a workaholic. You're working all the time. And I'm like, I'm not a workaholic. This. They're like, you're workaholics.

Diana Alt [00:37:57]:
You know who says that? Workaholics.

Eric Nehrlich [00:38:00]:
But I mean, the funny thing is, like, you know that that was what was so weird to me. Like, I'd never been a workaholic in my life. I'd never worked late in my life. It had never been a thing for me. Like, I. Okay, because I was like, you know, I would be going to play volleyball or I'd be going to the chorus. Like, I had stuff to do in the evenings and I would go do other things. Like, I had a full, well rounded life until I got to Google and then I just took over my life because, like, oh, it's temporary.

Eric Nehrlich [00:38:24]:
And then three years later, it was not temporary. It was just my new way of being. So that was, had been a bit of a wake up call. But to answer your question, like, it was during that week, I was like, wait, why am I doing this? I haven't seen my friends, I have not seen my family. I'm not enjoying this. It kind of sucks. And the reason I'm doing it at the end of the day was like, I was told that's what it took to get a promotion. I was like, someone doing their promotion.

Diana Alt [00:38:51]:
We kill ourselves for promotions we don't even want.

Eric Nehrlich [00:38:54]:
Yeah. I was like, what if that promotion wasn't like, if this is what it takes to get that promotion, maybe I don't want the promotion. I was like, whoa, that's a concept that had never entered my head. Like, wait, can I not want a promotion? Is that something you can do? Never occurred. Never even occurred to me. And that's why you mentioned my book. My book is called you have a choice. That was the first time I was like, wait, I could choose not to work towards the promotion.

Eric Nehrlich [00:39:23]:
Like, completely blew my mind that that was even a choice to make. Because of course you have to get the promotion. Of course you have to do whatever your manager says. That was the first time I was like, maybe I don't. Maybe I can choose differently. So I come in after Christmas at my first one on one with my manager, I said, I'm not working that hard anymore. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, that was really bad. That was not good for me.

Eric Nehrlich [00:39:53]:
Like, I cannot work that hard anymore. Like, well, if you can't work that hard, you know, you're not meeting expectations, you're not going to get that promotion. I'm like, yeah, I get that. If you're not going to work that. If you're not. If you can't handle the work, I'm going to give it to somebody that can. Like, I guess that's what you got to do.

Diana Alt [00:40:10]:
If I took away handhold being exploited by you, you will find someone else to exploit. Got it?

Eric Nehrlich [00:40:17]:
Yeah. So they took away half my team slash my performance rating. And so there were consequences. People like, oh, happy ending. You stood up for yourself. It's like, no, there were consequences to me taking that stand.

Diana Alt [00:40:29]:
That's really important because in that consequences realm, so many people worry about the consequences. And when I talk to people, I don't tell me if you ever experienced this or if any of your clients have experienced it. I'll be talking through someone where they're like, in a similar crossroads, or they're just burned out and barely even. Even acknowledging it. And I'll ask them, do you actually want this thing? And they can't fathom. They're. They're in that I'm supposed to want this mode. Or they're afraid.

Diana Alt [00:41:03]:
They're desperately afraid today in this current market, which is different than when you were just different. But you're desperately afraid that if they do not agree to ruin their health, they're going to get laid off. I'm like, well, you're going to be in a hospital anyway. So, yeah, it's difficult. So it's very difficult. But.

Eric Nehrlich [00:41:24]:
But I. I want to say, like, that's where the choice lies. We don't. We don't. We don't have a choice until we are willing to accept consequences. If we don't think we can handle the consequences, we don't have a choice. And that's that. So it's.

Eric Nehrlich [00:41:42]:
This is so critical to understanding this concept because there's a. One of my clients had a situation where, like, well, they had a toxic manager. They're like, this sucks. I have to go. Like, I have. But I have to do what she says. She's my boss. I'm like, well, there are options.

Eric Nehrlich [00:41:56]:
You know, there's. There are other jobs in the world. She's like, no, no, but this is the best job. Like, I just have to do it. I'm like, okay. And eventually she agreed to go, like, apply to a couple other jobs. And not surprising, because she was awesome. She got accepted.

Eric Nehrlich [00:42:12]:
She got a proposal, an offer from another company. It was a really good offer. It had some of the stuff she'd been wanting for the promotion, the title thing, more compensation. And she turned it down because she was like, well, because she. When she thought she had to do.

Diana Alt [00:42:29]:
The job, it was harder when she realized she didn't have options. I got you. That makes a lot of sense.

Eric Nehrlich [00:42:35]:
Now then, now she had actual choice facing her. Like, I could go to this other company. It's got some advantages, the title and the compensation. But the work wasn't exciting as exciting. And she was like, actually, the chance I have at this company is worth putting up with my manager. I choose that. I'm going to choose this situation instead of feeling like I'm stuck with it. And it completely changed her mindset overnight.

Eric Nehrlich [00:42:58]:
Like, oh, I'm choosing this. I'm not stuck here. I'm choosing this and that. To your point about agency, that's the essence of agency, is saying that I choose these circumstances.

Diana Alt [00:43:08]:
I think I talk about choice a lot and I love that example that you just gave another. Another way it comes up in conversations that I have is people will claim that they want to change. It's that, you know, the whole saying that the pain of the change has to be less than the pain of staying the same or you can't change, like that kind of thing when people are kind of right on that balancing edge sometimes. The point that I like to make is you do have a choice. You're choosing what you're in every day that you wake up and you go in and you do the same thing. You're choosing that. So if you hate it, you need to either choose it and mean it and stop bitching, or more likely, like, try to actually have positive change. Like be a part of the change that you want to see at the company or you need to make a plan to get the fuck out.

Diana Alt [00:43:59]:
Like, sitting there miserable every day and torn is not a way to live because you're. You have a choice and you're not acknowledging that you're making choice.

Eric Nehrlich [00:44:09]:
So, yeah, I'll say two things there. I agree. I love. I. I say a similar thing. Like, every time you show up to work, you're making a choice. You're saying, it's worth it to keep this job and I'll show up to work for it like that. That's a choice.

Eric Nehrlich [00:44:21]:
It's the default choice, but it's still a choice.

Diana Alt [00:44:24]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:44:24]:
And secondly, that, that. Oh, sorry, let me finish this. Continue the. That pain. Like, oh, I. The frustration and the pain and the anxiety, like sometimes that is necessary to, as you said, build up the frustration so that it's worth making the change. Like when you acknowledge and recognize and pay attention to the pain you are experiencing on a day to day basis, you're like, this sucks.

Diana Alt [00:44:51]:
I would actually rather feel the pain because there's like. Humans are really good at like smashing emotions down and not ignoring them until they. And ignoring them until they explode. And I actually would rather people feel the pain because they might be able to make a change faster. So that's a really great point that you break up. So. So you wrote a book. Let's go to that.

Diana Alt [00:45:16]:
The two. I read the intro of the book and then I kind of picked and choose. So anybody listening to this? If you read it and you feel like Diana's full of shit and didn't read the book, it's because I didn't read the whole book. But I did read the intro. And there's two key principles that are at the very beginning in the intro that I think are incredibly powerful. So you want to tell people what they are. You know what I'm talking about. You wrote the book.

Diana Alt [00:45:40]:
I can help you if you need.

Eric Nehrlich [00:45:42]:
Well, the two principles. I mean, principle number one is, how are you the problem? That's the essence of agency. Like, what are you doing to contribute to the situation? So my job sucks. My manager's miserable. They treat me like terribly. They make me do all this stuff. What are you. But how are you the problem? You keep showing up, you keep saying.

Diana Alt [00:46:05]:
I've heard this stated in a really powerful way. I can't remember who did it, but I've heard it a few times. How are you complicit in creating the conditions that you claim that you don't want? Which is a Jerry, who is it?

Eric Nehrlich [00:46:19]:
Jerry Colonna question.

Diana Alt [00:46:21]:
Okay, great.

Eric Nehrlich [00:46:21]:
Jerry Colonna is the CEO whisperer. He works at Reboot. Yeah. How are you complicit in the circumstances you say you don't want? In creating the circumstances you say you don't want?

Diana Alt [00:46:33]:
I like it because it's snarky. I should probably follow that guy more. But it's like, what do you mean I'm creating? I didn't say you were bad. But the point of what can you do? So, yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:46:46]:
And he's Very thoughtful about it. Because he says complicit.

Diana Alt [00:46:48]:
He's not a dick.

Eric Nehrlich [00:46:49]:
It's like, it's not saying like you're responsible. Like I'm not. Like, I say you're the problem. He's like complicit. You're just like an accomplice. You're like, you know, in the background kind of gently helping along.

Diana Alt [00:47:00]:
You're in the back seat of the getaway car for the bank robbery.

Eric Nehrlich [00:47:03]:
So you're not the criminal here. And I'm like, no, you're the criminal. Like, just.

Diana Alt [00:47:09]:
So how are you the problem? What are some of the ways that people like when you have a client that's stuck and they're like, they don't see that they're a problem. What are some of the common things that they're doing or like ways that you get them out of that?

Eric Nehrlich [00:47:24]:
Yeah, I mean, so the reason I want to quickly say why is this important? Because the reason it's important is the only thing you have control of in a situation is your own behavior. You can't change other people. You can't, you can't change the past either.

Diana Alt [00:47:45]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:47:45]:
And the future, it's really kind of unpredictable.

Diana Alt [00:47:47]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [00:47:48]:
So like one of the things I say in the intro is the only thing you really, really, really have control over is what do you, you do next?

Diana Alt [00:47:56]:
Your next skill nerd by any chance?

Eric Nehrlich [00:47:59]:
No, I mean it's, it's all the same stuff though, still. It is all the same.

Diana Alt [00:48:04]:
But I, like, I'm very much in into that. I lean on, I lean sometimes I don't. It's part of who I am and I talk about it occasionally. But the whole control thing, I was raised by teachers, rule followers, like, and I'm, I was always the black sheep, the family. I am still to this day. But I was raised in an environment where we were given the mistaken belief that we could control more than we can. It took me decades to beat that out of myself. So.

Diana Alt [00:48:34]:
And, and reading, reading 2000 year old dead Guys like is one of the ways that I handled that. So you can only control your next action. One of the things I liked in the book was that you focused on the next thing because of the whole, you can't change the past and you can, you can't know what's going on in the future, just what you're going to do. So.

Eric Nehrlich [00:49:00]:
Yeah. So to use an example, as you said, what's an example from a client? A very common one. One I literally just got off the phone with another Client is like the people pleaser. Like, I end up with all this work that's not valuable. Yeah, what can I do?

Diana Alt [00:49:17]:
Stop saying yes.

Eric Nehrlich [00:49:17]:
Stop saying yes. Like it seems obvious from the outside, but if you've been wired your whole life, and by the way, if you're a woman or from certain cultures, like, you are like heavily pressured to say yes and conditioned to do this, but if you are wired, conditioned to do that, it's really hard to say no. And you don't realize how often you say yes. So, like, one of the exercises I give my clients talk about practically, what can you do next? Like, never say yes in the moment. Instead say, I'm going to write that down, I'm going to check my other priorities and I'll get back to you later today. People are like, oh, that sounds reasonable. And because in the moment you're like, it's 15, 20, 30 minutes. I could do that.

Diana Alt [00:50:06]:
But if you make this list of them in a day.

Eric Nehrlich [00:50:08]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you make the list, my clients often found, like, oh my God, there's like 10 or 15 things on this list every day. And if each one takes 15 or 30 minutes, like, that's a full world. Like, I'm saying yes to a full workday of work every single day. No wonder I could never get ahead.

Diana Alt [00:50:25]:
It isn't my responsibility, really. That's a really good one. The other thing is like, something I did because I've, I, I'm, I was reaching a point in my career where that whole, it's that whole, like, what got you here won't get you there thing where you're trying to have to discern. And I had a really great boss when I was a product manager of way too many teams in reporting and analytics space. And not everybody understands reporting. Like, you can't just plop another product manager that doesn't grok data into this to help. So it was a big struggle. And I finally just sat down and gave him a post it.

Diana Alt [00:51:07]:
And I said, I need you to write on the post it what I have to do, what, what I, what outcomes I have to achieve. And he did it. And I started saying no to almost everything else. And boy howdy, were people pissed. Yeah, they were not happy because suddenly they had to do their jobs. So it did not make me popular, but it made my life better.

Eric Nehrlich [00:51:32]:
Yeah, I had a, I had a similar moment when I was chief of staff. So when I became chief of staff, like I said, there was no job description. It was like, like, just help run the Org. And some people came and said, hey, can you do this? And I would say, yes, I could do that. Lots of things. I'm pretty capable. And by the end of the first year, I was buried under all this useless work and kind of miserable and hitting life and ready to quit. But I'd learned a little bit in my career at that point.

Eric Nehrlich [00:51:58]:
And I was like, before I quit, maybe I could do this crazy thing and go talk to my manager. What? So I went to. Man, I went to my vp. I'm like, so I've been doing this chief of staff thing about a year now, and I think I'm doing okay, but I'm like, I'm doing all this kind of work, and there's some other, like, really cool, strategic, insightful work that I think I could be doing, but I don't have time for. He's like, I want you doing the strategic work. Like, get rid of that other stuff. Like, stop doing that. Like, go find, like, if you need to help finding somebody else to do it.

Eric Nehrlich [00:52:30]:
I'll help you. So, like, we pivoted my work to the stuff that was much more, first of all, much better suited for me because again, I'm not a process and operations guy. I'm a strategic big thinker guy. So we pivoted into stuff that I'm good at. I'm energized by. I became much more impactful. But it started with me learning to say no to stuff that I could do. I was capable of doing it, but I wasn't an expert.

Eric Nehrlich [00:52:55]:
I wasn't great at it. Yeah, it wasn't. It was draining for me.

Diana Alt [00:52:58]:
And.

Eric Nehrlich [00:52:58]:
And like, that's to your. The title of your show, Work should feel Good. Like, that's the thing that helps you navigate your career. Do less draining stuff. Do more energizing stuff. If you just have that as your navigation, you're going to get a better career.

Diana Alt [00:53:14]:
Yeah, I think that's really important. And it can go down to a micro level. To me, it's always amazing how I've had people that say they're miserable in their jobs and they're miserable. You know, this is people that are not liking the work side, you know, the right work side in my model. And I will ask them, I'll kind of go through, like, what are you doing? And we'll find out that there's a thing that's like 5 or 10% of their entire workload that is dragging them completely down. And when they finally get up the nerve to go and talk to their peers or their boss about it. They find that somebody else is dying to do that. They're wishing.

Diana Alt [00:53:55]:
They're wishing they had the opportunity to do that. And to me, a boils. A big thing I see is like, that all boils down into a big bucket that people suck out, which is asking for help. To me, I think probably the most limiting thing that I did in my corporate career was that I was too accountable. Which is hilarious because sometimes people try to. People that don't understand what accountability is will try to gaslight the, you know, farther down on the food chain employee that says, I have too much to do. They'll be like, well, you just need to be accountable. I can't.

Diana Alt [00:54:32]:
There's no accountability if you didn't sign up for the stuff. If you just shove it at me. That's not accountability. That's bullshit is what it is. But I have this weird idea that I was raised in this wrong view of accountability. I was afraid of boundaries, and I was afraid that asking for help would mean that I was incompetent, not that.

Eric Nehrlich [00:54:56]:
I was built on that point. Yeah, you were trained that way for. In 20 years in school. Because working with somebody else in school is called cheating.

Diana Alt [00:55:06]:
Yes.

Eric Nehrlich [00:55:06]:
Asking for help is cheating.

Diana Alt [00:55:08]:
Yes.

Eric Nehrlich [00:55:09]:
And if you're a good student, as many of us on this podcast are, you're like, well, of course you don't learn to ask for help because you were told.

Diana Alt [00:55:17]:
You and I. You're. You're a good, solid Gen Xer, just like me. I think you're maybe a couple years older than me, but we didn't do group projects very often. We definitely didn't do them in elementary school. I don't remember having a substantial number of group projects until I was in college. And I always was the one that ended up. Like, I had teachers for parents.

Diana Alt [00:55:39]:
We make A's in our house. So I was definitely not good at projects.

Eric Nehrlich [00:55:44]:
Group projects just mean I do all the work for four people instead of one.

Diana Alt [00:55:47]:
Exactly.

Eric Nehrlich [00:55:48]:
That's what it means.

Diana Alt [00:55:49]:
Yeah. So. And I like doing team stuff now, but I. I'm. I like working independently and I like doing team things every so often. And it was important for me to realize that because we throw around, like, one of the date. One of the most toxic things in corporate America right now is everybody pretends that they want to collaborate on everything whenever some work isn't suited to that, and nobody actually knows what the hell collaboration actually means. Fun fact, it's not setting up another site in SharePoint.

Diana Alt [00:56:19]:
And it's not Making everybody sit in the same room. But yeah, so. But the asking for help, we are conditioned to not do that.

Eric Nehrlich [00:56:28]:
And, and I want to say something else. Pick up on something else you said, which is really important, which is that sometimes the work. Well, not sometimes the work that we find draining somebody else will find energizing.

Diana Alt [00:56:40]:
Yes.

Eric Nehrlich [00:56:41]:
And that's. When you say collaboration. That's the part I never understood. Like, I assumed everybody was like me and everyone's like, like, thinks process operation sucks. And I'm like, well, I wouldn't want to give the sucky work to somebody else. Like, that's mean.

Diana Alt [00:56:54]:
Right?

Eric Nehrlich [00:56:54]:
And then I met some people who, like, that was their, like, delight they had. They loved nothing more than making long checklists and checking them off and take great glee and checking things off the list. And I'm just like, you're a space alien. But great. Like, we could work together. And like, the best work in my career has come when I found somebody like that to work with because then we could both do what we were good at. Like, that's collaborations. We both get to more spend more time on the stuff where we are energized.

Eric Nehrlich [00:57:23]:
We have our own genius. Like, that is. That is the pie. Expanding collaboration.

Diana Alt [00:57:30]:
Like, I'm. I'm a CliftonStrengths nerd. And it's one of the. Which probably saved my business. And it helped me realize a lot of things about my business. I had all. I've been involved with that like the. My first exposure to it was over 15 years ago.

Diana Alt [00:57:47]:
And then I have used it with coaching some of my clients. And I had a gal that I worked with at my last corporate job that I was working on a career transition job search stuff with, and I had her take the test. And she. She and I were close enough that she's like, okay, well, you challenged me on this for like three sessions. I showed you yours, you show me mine. And I hadn't opened mine in a while and I opened it up and I was like, oh. I knew two things. Number one, why my last job ended up sucking because my good boss got replaced with a shitty boss.

Diana Alt [00:58:21]:
And number two, why my website for my business wasn't built. And it's because I am a strategic thinker. My lowest domain is execution and CliftonStrengths is strategic thinking. Relationship building, influence, and execution are the four domains. And there's 34 strengths that are sprinkled among those. Six of my top 10 strengths were in strategic thinking and zero out of my top 10 wherein execution I'm like, no wonder my website isn't done because I knew I had the technical skill to do it, but I just didn't want to do it.

Eric Nehrlich [00:59:00]:
There's. Yeah, that, that hits home for me also because let me tell you my, my website has not been updated in six years. I keep saying like, I'm going to get to it does not get to it.

Diana Alt [00:59:10]:
I found I ended up hiring an offshore a Filipino based VA agency that did my first website. And, and I've worked with them for five and a half years. I wouldn't have a podcast if it wasn't for them. I probably would have had to go back and get a real job if I would have. Trying to muscle through that myself. So we are getting really like we're at an hour and I want to respect your time. What I would love to know, like you have this, this big book in the back with the triangle. You are.

Diana Alt [00:59:39]:
You have a choice. Y' all should read that. I definitely will finish reading it probably by the time this episode drops in a few weeks if there is one change. And I don't just mean keeping the principles in mind because duh, we need to do that. But what is one of the most important tactical changes people have made to increase your. Their impact that you could share with people?

Eric Nehrlich [01:00:06]:
I think it's being intentional about where your time goes. Intentional prioritization. So you can do this. Like, I learned to do this when I was at Google on a weekly level. Like on Monday morning I would send my VP when I was chief of staff. Here's a three to five. Well, I'd say three top priorities for the week. This is what I'm working on.

Eric Nehrlich [01:00:31]:
And then I would also say like, what did I actually do last week? And that weekly accountability. That, that word again of like, this is what I said I would do. This is what I actually did. This is what I said I would do. This is what I actually did. Like, it kept me go, oh, when I don't do what I say I'm going to do. Like what got in the way, what, what kept me from doing it. And it made me much more aware of like the ways I got derailed by projects or people or people pleasing or saying yes to things I shouldn't.

Eric Nehrlich [01:00:59]:
So having that priority listed in my head of like, this is the top three things. If I'm not working on those three things, I need to say no to other stuff because those things gotta get done. So you can do it at the weekly level. I've also if, if that's Too, too long a feedback loop. Daily works. You get up in the morning, you say, what is one thing that if I got it done today would mean the day was a success. Like, I like the simple version of that. Like, today would be a success if I did this.

Eric Nehrlich [01:01:27]:
Like, if everything else would be bonus.

Diana Alt [01:01:30]:
Yeah, great.

Eric Nehrlich [01:01:31]:
Now get it done. And if you don't get it done at the end of the day, you look back at like, what got in the way? How did I stop myself? What else was I doing that didn't get me to get to the one thing.

Diana Alt [01:01:41]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [01:01:41]:
Did I bite off? Was it too big? Okay, I need to scope down for tomorrow.

Diana Alt [01:01:45]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [01:01:45]:
Try to do less. Did I say yes to other people? What? Like, whatever it is, we start to notice. Here's the obstacles, here's our. Here's how I'm not getting done what I intend to do. But if you keep the most important.

Diana Alt [01:01:58]:
Piece of that too. I want people to really hear what he said is checking back because you can put such and such is the top priority for the day. You can do that every day. But if you don't check it, like, this podcast interview was actually my top priority for today. I didn't record it till 1:30, so I clearly did some other stuff today. But the whole going back and did I do it and why didn't I do it is huge. And I, I find that like, weekly is really good. I make a list of like a bunch of different things that I could do for the week, but I highlight the few that have to get done, the things that are the most important priority.

Diana Alt [01:02:38]:
And then, you know, I had a. I had a coaching client this morning, bail and another business meeting. Bail because the person like had to go to the dentist and couldn't really talk. And I knew exactly what to do next whenever that got moved. But it's that checking back and constantly having the rigor. And I've dealt with autoimmune stuff too. So by knowing, well, if it happens in the week, that's good. If I know exactly why those things are at the top of the list.

Diana Alt [01:03:10]:
So I can manage accordingly. That's good. And then I would match the work to my energy because I can't always match it to the calendar whenever you need a two hour nap in the afternoon. So.

Eric Nehrlich [01:03:21]:
Yeah, well, Eric, wait, wait, wait. Can I respond to that, please? Like, I think that's so incredibly, like, valuable. Like, not like, I mean, the illness part is tough, but like, the prioritization is like, my capacity can change from day to day. And hour to hour. And if you're not clear about what's most important, you're not going to get to it. Like, it's like, oh, I'll do it later. Like, no, I have limited capacity and I got to get to it in the time I. In the.

Eric Nehrlich [01:03:50]:
With the capacity that I have.

Diana Alt [01:03:52]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [01:03:53]:
And you know, I often tell people, like, you think that if you have more capacity, you'll get everything done, and that's just not true. I could tell you this because I was the chief of staff of the search Ads team, which had basically infinite budget and we still had about four times the number of things we wanted to do that we actually got to. Because when your capacity expands, your desires expand, you say you want to do more. So people that say, like, well, I'm stressed. I'm like overworked now, but like, I can, I'll. I'll be fine when I get more capacity. It's just not true.

Diana Alt [01:04:24]:
It'll be fine in January. No, it won't.

Eric Nehrlich [01:04:27]:
No, it won't. And until you learn to like, do this kind of intentional prioritization of saying this is most important. Yeah, it's not going to change. But if you start doing the most important thing first, really using your time and capacity to impactful stuff, that's how you make a difference.

Diana Alt [01:04:46]:
Yeah, there's a couple other things I quickly add to that too. And then I'm going to go into like a lightning ish round like a couple things I ask everybody. But it's okay. If joy is the most important thing that you're going to do that day. It really absolutely is. Especially if you're taking a half day off. Like, in particular, like, my goal is to enjoy my half day. The most important thing I'm going to do is enjoy my half day.

Diana Alt [01:05:10]:
The number two thing is that I got to get this report out or go to the status meeting or what the hell ever. But you get to be on your own fucking list. Like, yes, you, your needs get to be on your own freaking list. Another thing is if you're feeling drained by your work and you go back and think about your highest priority and how you feel about them, if you consistently have as the top one to three, one for the day or like three to five for the week, things that you don't enjoy doing or things that you have to work on with people that just you don't gel with for some reason, that is a signal that something is systemically wrong with your business. You need to look for ways to shift that Whether that is reallocating the work, whether that is finding a new job, whether that is a transfer. But if your top priorities are things you don't like, you have to make a change eventually. Because just prioritizing does not create the kind of magic that Eric wants to help create for you and that I want to help create for you. So anyway, that's my sermon.

Eric Nehrlich [01:06:24]:
No, I appreciate that. And like, I want to just reiterate what you said, that sometimes rest or joy is the most important thing. Because I always find myself like, say, like, oh, I'm gonna take this time off. But that'd be so stressed by like all the things I wasn't doing that I didn't actually get any of the benefit of recharging. It's like, that's, that's.

Diana Alt [01:06:40]:
I have not been there. I have definitely been there. And it's really rough.

Eric Nehrlich [01:06:48]:
Yeah, it is rough. And then one last personal anecdote like this idea of deciding what's most important applies to how we measure our lives too. So I'm search ads chief of staff for over six years. I'm on the way up. My VP is about to get promoted running all of that. So he's going to be, instead of running a 2000% or he's going to run like a 15,000 person org and I'm his chief of staff. And that's when I quit and go start a coaching business. So I'm about to have more responsibility, more impact, more scope, more money than I've ever had before.

Eric Nehrlich [01:07:20]:
And I walked away. And people like, why would you do that? And the answer was I had a kid. I had a kid and I was like, I would not be able to do that job and be around for.

Diana Alt [01:07:33]:
My kids, Be the dad that you want to be. So no, that's really great. That's a really great example for sure. So I'm gonna go to a couple questions that I ask everybody and then we'll close. So what is the worst piece of career advice you have personally ever received?

Eric Nehrlich [01:07:59]:
It's probably something along the lines of pay your dues. Like, you're miserable now, but it'll get better later.

Diana Alt [01:08:05]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [01:08:06]:
And sometimes it's true and sometimes you're just miserable. So like, yeah, what I tell people is like, people think like, oh, if it's hard, it must be good for me. It's like, well, there's hard of learning.

Diana Alt [01:08:19]:
Something good for you.

Eric Nehrlich [01:08:20]:
But yeah, so like, there's hard where you're learning, you're growing, you're like pushing yourself against your limitations. And that's a good kind of hard. The hardware, you're beating your head into the wall, not so good.

Diana Alt [01:08:32]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [01:08:32]:
Make sure it's the right kind of hard.

Diana Alt [01:08:33]:
Make sure that when you're pushing hard really is important. I think that's a really great message. What are you paying your dues for? If. If it's that, like, one thing that drives me crazy is when people say you have to earn your way to do strategic work. And I'm not talking about, like, this chief of staff for 2,000 people. I'm talking about they're taking someone that's 26 years old and giving them buttons to press and telling them they haven't earned the right to do strategy. It's like, well, I suck at tactics, so could we. Am I just supposed to suck at tactics and never get promoted or what's the deal? So understanding exactly why something feels hard is really important.

Diana Alt [01:09:11]:
What is a personal habit that has helped you be really successful?

Eric Nehrlich [01:09:20]:
Ooh, what's a personal habit? I guess I will say self reflection. So I've been writing, journaling, or writing in for a long time. And when I don't, like, I guess maybe it's. Maybe it's curiosity more than that. It's like, what the heck is going on here? Like, when the company went bankrupt, Like, I don't understand what happened. Like, this bugs me. I cannot put the picture together what happened here.

Diana Alt [01:09:49]:
Yeah.

Eric Nehrlich [01:09:50]:
And that led to then, like I said, going to get this degree and ending up on the business side and this chief of staff role, like, all that came from that question, like, what the heck is going on here? And a lot of my work as a coach now is like, this person is very confident. I work with a lot of high achievers, done great things in their career, and they're stuck. And there's something stopping them. They're getting in their own way somehow. I'm like, what is going on here? Like, that curiosity both about myself and others. I think that's pretty much the habit of, like, what? You know, I think here's one more tip I'll share. People in general are not stupid or evil. They're not trying to be ignorant.

Eric Nehrlich [01:10:35]:
They're not trying to be evil. If they're doing something, there is a good reason for it in their world. So if you don't understand what they're doing, the question I ask myself is, like, what must be true in their world that would explain their behavior? Because there's something that they is true for them that's not True for me, and that's why I'm not seeing it. But if I can figure out what is true in their world, then we can have a conversation.

Diana Alt [01:11:01]:
I think that's really important, especially in the polarized age that we live in. If you can think through that, you might not change anybody's mind, but at least you can have a clear conscience that you tried to understand a little bit instead of just jerking knees all the time. My last question before we go is, what is something that you have changed your mind about fairly recently?

Eric Nehrlich [01:11:28]:
I think the bigger realization of my last year was that effort doesn't matter as much as I think it does. So I've always been a hard worker. I want to try really hard and push really hard. And last year we had our third kid about a year ago, and so we took a lot of. I took a bunch of parental leave last year, so I wasn't working, and I intentionally, like, shut things off. Wasn't working on the business, wasn't marketing, and I'm like, oh, my God, this is gonna be catastrophic for my business. And it wasn't. It was fine.

Eric Nehrlich [01:12:01]:
I mean, I lost a little bit of, like, I lost a little bit of revenue, but I also took three months off. Like, yeah, that's expected. It was like, wait, so I've been stressing and working and, like, tearing my hair out, and it doesn't really make that much difference. That's. That's interesting.

Diana Alt [01:12:18]:
It is. It's interesting how often that's true. I heard that. I heard a runner's analogy for that one time. I can't remember who it was. Maybe it was John Acuff. I'm not sure. But I.

Diana Alt [01:12:29]:
I read it in one of the zillion books that I read, and the person talked about how they're a runner and they had a certain pace that they would consistently hit, and they decided they wanted to do better. So they really went out and they pushed themselves, and they were miserable at the end of the run, and it only saved, like. Like 10 seconds or something off of their pace. And so they just decided, I don't need to do it. Like, I hate running whenever I run that way. So I'm gonna run, you know, the 10 second slower pace. And there's such power in making that decision. Well, Eric, thank you so much for coming.

Eric Nehrlich [01:13:02]:
I think I know the story you're talking about.

Diana Alt [01:13:05]:
Go for it.

Eric Nehrlich [01:13:06]:
Sorry.

Diana Alt [01:13:06]:
No, you're fine.

Eric Nehrlich [01:13:07]:
I think it's a Derek. It's a Derek Sivers story.

Diana Alt [01:13:09]:
Is it a Derek Sivers story? Okay.

Eric Nehrlich [01:13:12]:
If that's an author you've read, I'll send it. I'll send.

Diana Alt [01:13:14]:
I have read it. I have read him.

Eric Nehrlich [01:13:16]:
Yeah, it's one of my favorite stories.

Diana Alt [01:13:19]:
Yes, but you have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the books. You're the person I'm going to go to from now on when I need books. You have all of them. But it's a really important thing. It's like when the pushing gets you to where you're miserable for a tiny return. Like, there is no point in that. None at all. So thank you so much for coming on.

Diana Alt [01:13:44]:
Work should feel good. I was delighted to talk to you. I knew I wanted to talk to you the minute I heard the title of your book. And you did not disappoint. So everybody, thanks so much. And I will see you guys next time.

Eric Nehrlich [01:13:59]:
Thank you, Diane.