435: How to Stop Waiting & Start Doing - Go After What You Want - Jenny Wood

ELLA: 00:00:03

Welcome, you're on air with Ella, where we share simple strategies and tips for living a little better every day.

If you're interested in mindset and wellness or healthy habits and relationships, honestly, if you're into just living better and with more energy, then you're in the right place. We're not here for perfect. We're here for a little better every day. Let's go. Hey, you're on air with Ella. And today I am joined by Jenny Wood.

Hey, Jenny, how are you?

Jenny Wood: 00:00:31

Good. How's it going, Ella?

ELLA: 00:00:33

Ah, it's going well. I would love it if you could tell us who you are and what you do.

Jenny Wood: 00:00:38

I'm Jenny Wood. I am a keynote speaker, a, an executive coach, one on one small group coaching.

And I have a newsletter that helps people go after what they want and get it. I'm also. Oh, I forgot that I'm the author of the New York Times bestselling book Wild Courage. Go after what you want and get it. Only.

Only like my, my, my love child. The last four years of my life.

ELLA: 00:01:01

It was bound to come up, Jenny.

Jenny Wood: 00:01:04

And maybe I have PTSD from how much time, energy and money I put into this bad boy and so I just plopped it out.

ELLA: 00:01:11

No, I love, I love the book.

Jenny Wood: 00:01:13

And I'm so excited to share it with the world. I'm actually exceptionally proud of this book. I think that people, women, have a hard time saying that they're proud of something.

I am so damn proud of this book, it freaking rocks.

ELLA: 00:01:25

I am proud of you being proud of this book. And thanks for my copy of Wild Courage. I'll be sharing that with everybody at the end of the episode.

But I really want to talk to you about not just the principles that you espouse, Jenny, but the ones that have been behind your extensive career for years and years and years. I want to say an 18 year tenure at Google, Former Harvard Business school researcher. Tell me about that.

Jenny Wood: 00:01:48

Yeah, I did three years doing research at Harvard.

One year negotiations, One year technological substitution and one year organizational behavior management leadership, figuring out how people tick within organizations.

ELLA: 00:01:59

Congratulations. Because I have to commend you one more time because normally if somebody's vegan or they went to Harvard, you find out about it first.

Like it's the first thing you hear. So you have shown enormous restraint. Are you vegan?

Jenny Wood: 00:02:12

I am not vegan. But I will say there is a joke that goes, how do you know if there's a pilot at a party? Don't worry, they'll tell you. Yeah, always same idea.

So Now I feel like I have to say, I am also a pilot.

ELLA: 00:02:26

Wait, are you?

Jenny Wood: 00:02:27

I am.

ELLA: 00:02:28

Okay, you guys, I promise you, we're going to be talking about things that will stick with you for the rest of your life. But first I need to know, when did you get your pilot's license?

Jenny Wood: 00:02:35

ight before I got engaged. So: 2013

I was working at Google, and I was so damn tired of being impatient for him to propose to me. I was like, well, I'm just going to do something that takes my mind off of it. And I'm like such a not.

Not kind of like, wait for the ring kind of girl. I mean, I.

at started this whole book in: 2011

ELLA: 00:03:15

License, as one does. Are you instrument rated?

Jenny Wood: 00:03:19

No, I'm not. And I would. I like, barely have time to fly.

ELLA: 00:03:22

Right now, so that takes nothing away from your accomplishment.

Jenny Wood: 00:03:25

The fact that you're asking if I'm instrument rated tells me that you know things about being a private pilot.

ELLA: 00:03:30

Okay, we'll talk about it later.

Jenny Wood: 00:03:31

Okay.

ELLA: 00:03:32

Oh, my gosh. I love this, you guys. That's the most impressive thing I've learned about Jenny so far, and she's a very impressive person.

with us, and it ties back to: 2011

And spoiler alert. By chasing him off the subway.

Jenny Wood: 00:03:55

Yeah. So it's: 2011

Gorgeous blue eyes, thick brown wavy hair, the whole works. And even though I want to talk to him, something holds me back. What if he's a convicted felon? What if he's married?

What if a hundred people stare at me, this packed train, while I make a fool of myself?

Well, I later came to realize that underneath those questions were fears that hold so many people back and fears that had held me back so much of life. Fear of failure.

ELLA: 00:04:24

Well, rejection.

Jenny Wood: 00:04:25

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, fear of rejection or failure, I'd call it. Maybe kind of similar, like. But fear of uncertainty, fear of judgment of others.

What if a hundred people stare at me and think, like, look at this girl making a fool of herself? So I sit there and I do nothing as the train passes stop after stop after stop, and as life passes me by.

But I make a deal with the universe, and I say, if he gets off at my stop, then maybe I'll try to strike up a conversation with him. And if not, then say lovey. He gets off at the next stop, and I slump down in my seat, thinking, oh, like such a, you know, missed opportunity.

And then, just as the doors are about to close, I feel this wave of, no joke, wild courage wash over me and practically push me out of my subway seat and off that damn train. And I chase to catch up with him. I tap him on the shoulder as he's exiting the station, and I say, excuse me. I'm sorry to bother you.

You're wearing gloves, so I can't tell if you're wearing a wedding ring, but in the event that you're not married, you were on my subway, and I thought you were cute. Any chance I could give you my business card? And then I wait for what feels like forever, thinking, this was a terrible idea.

But then eventually, he takes the card, he calls the next day, we go on a date a week later, and we've now been married 11 years with two small children. So wild courage for you, baby.

ELLA: 00:05:37

It's not just courage. It's wild. I know.

Jenny Wood: 00:05:40

Well, people often ask, like, what's the difference between courage and wild courage? Mostly I say, well, it all started with me chasing a damn stranger off a subway. So, yeah, there you go.

ELLA: 00:05:50

There's a reason, obviously, that I wanted to ask you about that story, but tell me something.

Connect this a little bit to the courage that you took in, to your career, particularly at Google, which I would imagine was particularly challenging an environment to stand out in. Tell me about it. And tell me what wild courage meant in that environment.

Jenny Wood: 00:06:11

Hmm. Such a good call. Out. So it really was the day that I adopted wild courage as a habit.

And I applied it to my relationships, to my personal life, and most importantly, to my professional life. So it was about asking my VP to meet with me once a quarter and mentor me.

It was about separating the big and important stuff at work from the small and unimportant stuff. It was about avoiding what I call Nap work, not actually promotable work. Being the person to take notes in every meeting.

Being the person to always plan the company off site picnic, right? Like some of the things that have to get done. Some people call this glue work or, or invisible work. I call it nap work. Not actually promotable work.

And so I stopped doing that. I had the wild courage to say no without feeling like a jerk. I had the wild courage to, you know, push the engineers.

I was on an operations team that sat between sales and engineering, and I led a global team of people who are helping improve Google's ad products.

Instead of saying, well, who am I to give feedback to the engineers, like, I just had the wild courage to thoughtfully disagree with some strategy direction or product direction because I knew it would better serve the customers.

So in all these areas, I started being more bold, being more selfish, being in the best way, being more shameless, and how I would promote my, my own work and advocate for my team. So I grew, you know, kept getting promoted, ultimately having various kinds of COO type roles within Google.

And then one day walking out of an engineering meeting where I was delivering some bugs, I said, well, maybe I'll try to tap into my wild courage even more and spread this message further. So I put together a career development program at Google, a document initially of my best career tips for Googlers to help them get promoted.

And so I did that on a piece of, on a Google Doc. And I thought maybe 35 people would come to this training. I was going to lead based on this doc. Well, 2,000 people came to that first training, Ella.

And then ultimately this program grew to 56,000 Googlers using it across almost 100 countries. So I think that was actually the moment.

Founding this own your career program as a passion project, that was like the most wild, wild, couragey thing I did in my career. Because I got no approvals. I didn't talk to anybody in HR or people operations or comms or legal. I just did it.

And I knew that I was doing it in all the right ways, but I just did it without running it up every inch of the flagpole, only for it to die in committee.

ELLA: 00:08:23

Yeah, we asked for permission too much. And by we I'm gonna go ahead and say women, we ask for permission too much.

Jenny Wood: 00:08:29

Totally.

ELLA: 00:08:29

Okay. There's several lessons in there for us.

And one I'm just going to underscore, you covered it well, but I'm just going to underscore the necessity, necessity of avoiding nap work. Great acronym. Not actually promotable.

That is work that Women, the data suggests, tend to step up for more because we have, of course, tied our value and our worth to our productivity. And what is the error in that? From your position, you're not being selfish enough.

Jenny Wood: 00:08:59

Right. And selfish is one of these, one of the nine traits that I help people reclaim.

To me, selfish is the courage, the wild courage to be your own champion. Give everybody else a leg up at your own expense and you'll end up getting trampled. So start showing up for yourself.

Sometimes, you know, it is the productivity kind of dopamine hit, but it's also the I feel bad saying no or they need somebody to lead the well being pillar.

So rather than sitting here uncomfortably in silence, I'm going to raise my hand in this meeting of nine people because nobody else is raising their hand. Even though you led the well being pillar for the last three years.

Right now these things are good for community building, they're good for culture, they're good for teamwork and collaboration.

But if you are doing more than 15% of your time in these types of activities, you're doing yourself a disservice and you are not being selfish enough about the actual work. That moves the needle, what moves the business. Because what moves the business is what moves your career.

ELLA: 00:09:51

If you're here, then I know you're already interested in being the best that you can be and getting the most out of this one life we have. And podcasts are obviously great for inspiration and information, but true transformation requires action.

If you're ready to finally take the next step toward your next level, whatever your goal may be, then consider working with me directly one on one for six weeks of personal coaching.

If you're feeling called to take purposeful action towards your biggest goals, this one on one coaching will provide a customized roadmap to get you the there faster. So let's not just talk about change, let's make it happen for you. Visit on airella.com to fill out an application and see if it's a good fit.

You can find it@onairela.com in the coaching tab. If this is the season where you are ready to invest in your next step, let's talk.

Okay, this is one of my favorite things about you is that you take nine traits that typically have been mm. They've been associated with negative qualities.

Honestly, I want to talk about women in the workplace, but Jenny, I also want to just talk about living in this world as a woman, which is to me an honor and a privilege. Like no problem, no chip on my shoulder about it. But you raise nine traits.

Obsessed, weird, selfish, shameless, nosy, manipulative, brutal, reckless and bossy. And you flip them on their head. You reclaim these traits that are often seen as negative, and you flip the script.

I want to call some out and I want you to tell me what women need to know. And we've talked a little bit about selfish. I want to. I want to start there because that is something I'm super passionate about on this platform.

And that is that taking care of yourself is not self selfish. And what I mean by that is it's not selfish in a negative way.

Jenny Wood: 00:11:53

Exactly. In the classic definition of it. Yeah.

ELLA: 00:11:55

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I love that you highlighted that, but I want to call some of these out that I find utterly fascinating. Talk to me about obsessed and why.

Jenny Wood: 00:12:05

We should be obsessed. Reclaimed is the courage to push, perform, persist.

And I'm glad you're leading with this one, Ella, because none of these other traits will serve you well if you don't learn to deliver not for some company, but to achieve your own ambitions. I have a funny story about this.

I do a lot of keynote speaking and I wasn't going to hire a keynote coach, someone to like, help develop the content and give me feedback on my presentation. So I was like, ah, I can do it myself. But I ultimately did, even though I'm cheap, but I ultimately did.

And it was actually the best money I'd ever spent. And he's like, jenny, I read the book, but I skipped over the obsessed chapter. It just sounded exhausting. I'd like, you know, I just kind of want to.

I want to be more mindful of work, life, balance. And I'm so tired. And in some ways I want to lean out more than I want to lean in just in my career overall.

And so then as we're working together, he's like, oh, Jenny, I thought of another great idea for the second half of your speech. And then he came back the next day. He's like, jenny, can we hop on a call?

Because I have this really cool idea of how you can use an interactive poll in a way that isn't complicated tech wise, but really helps the audience stay awake. I was like, great, let's do it. And then he's like, hey there, I want you to watch this TED Talk by Ramit Sethi.

Because I love how he interacts with the audience when he does Q and A. And I was like, mike, I know that you skipped the obsessed chapter, but everything that you are doing right now are obsessed tendencies.

You Care so much about the outcome that you have no option to be anything but obsessed. You know, I definitely fall prey to this. And we can talk about trait traps, which are when you take a trait too far.

So that obsession is about a healthy enthusiasm about your work or your project or your livelihood or your family or your friends. It's not dialing up so high that you become an obsess, like a. You got yourself into a workaholic pull.

But I pointed out to Mike, my keynote coach, that I was like, no, this is obsession in action. You care so much about the outcome. You care so much about me. You want to make this the best possible product.

Like, anyone listening might want to make their current product launch the best possible launch. They might want to make their, you know, promotion packet the best possible bullets. Right?

They might want to make their next interview the best possible. The best they've performed in any interview. That is what I call healthy obsession. And it's wonderful to celebrate.

I oftentimes talk with my therapist about how I feel guilty that I don't talk more in therapy about my kids. And I talk so much about my work.

And she's like, jenny, just own the fact that you love what you do and you are creating incredible value for the world and that you like helping and coaching people to be better than they think they can be.

Don't beat yourself up about the fact that you are kind of obsessed with your book or your work or, you know, putting your ideas out into the world like that is okay. And so I want people, especially women, to reclaim that feeling of enthusiasm about what they're bringing to the world.

ELLA: 00:14:42

What I think is really important about that is that it's predicated on.

On intention to discover what you like, what you love, what flows for you, what aligns with your gifts and your values, and it is predicated on that intention. And. Or you do a job, it's not necessarily your greatest passion in life, but. But you find the things in that zone that light you up.

Jenny Wood: 00:15:07

Exactly.

ELLA: 00:15:08

I really like what's at the foundation of that. And to me, a life well lived is one where we get to do things that we happily, helpfully obsess about. I mean, what a privilege.

Jenny Wood: 00:15:20

Yeah, totally.

And I love what you're saying, that your current job might not be your life's passion, but whatever it is, it's a stepping stone into your next thing. So you've got two options.

One, you could work your next job, and you could kind of phone it in in your current job, but you can only get away with that for so long, or you can find the elements that really enjoy and you can push past the discomfort or the fear or the, you know, frustration of the things you don't. And I have a specific tool on this to help you push past that procrastination. It's called the pencil sharpener. And this is an obsessed tool.

It is when your boss gives you some scary project that you're not sure what to do with for. For example, my boss once said to me, jenny, you're inheriting five individual contributors and one manager from a totally different part of Google.

And I was like, what the. What the heck is this? Like, this makes no sense to me, this reorg. But it made sense to somebody else higher up in the organization. So fine, I had to.

I had to roll with it. So rather than like, stressing out and, and not knowing how to handle it and not knowing what to do, I got obsessed. I opened a Google Doc.

I gave myself a limit of a half page. I put five categories. Culture metrics, communications, change management, and manager alignment. I don't. Maybe I repeated one there.

Then I just wrote a couple bullets under each one. Here's the thing. It doesn't have to be perfect.

All it does is it shows that you're moving the ball down the field and then send that pencil sharpener to your boss within 24 hours.

Because the expectations are so low, if you're doing something right away, then they'll comment in the doc, they'll email you back, they'll say, no, that's not quite the right deadline. Maybe I put like, June 30 to plan the comms plan. They might be like, no, they need to know by May 15th.

And so it just allows the project to get started without all this pressure on yourself that it has to be perfect. Like, obsessed does not mean perfect. And because you're doing it so quickly, it lowers the bar for you, it lowers the bar for your manager.

And that's a way that you can be obsessed in your job. Even if it's not your favorite job, it's not perfect.

Or you get handed a shit project that you're like, I don't know what to do with this and I don't want to deal with it. It really decreases the. The anxiety of how to handle something complicated like I experienced in that case.

ELLA: 00:17:14

I love sharing specific frameworks and techniques. And it sounds to me like the pencil sharpener technique can be used to combat procrastination.

Can you break it down for me, though, and maybe give Me a non work example of how we can use the pencil sharpener technique in our life to stop delaying and stop obsessing over the fear part before we take action on something.

Jenny Wood: 00:17:41

Yeah, definitely. Well, we're actually kind of introducing another trait here which is reckless. And that's the courage to err on the side of action.

Because better to learn from your mistakes rather than waste time predicting the consequences of every freaking possible action, right or decision. So think fast and fearless and if you're on the fence, do it. So we just had to make the hard decision to let our nanny go.

And man Ella, the amount of back and forth I did with my husband, like, oh, but she's really good at this. And what will the transition look like for our kids? And my son really likes her. My daughter doesn't get along with her as much.

Hopefully she's not a listener of yours as after the fact. And, and, and like here's, here's my performance review of hers live on air.

But the reality is, I mean, she wasn't, she was regularly not showing up to work with no warning. She was regularly missing texts from me about like specific during the day.

Forgot to pick my daughter up from school one day, you know, So I think it was warranted. But the amount of back and forth I did deciding whether to keep her or not was just really, really impressive in a bad way.

Um, there's, there's work by psychologist Barry Schwartz called the paradox of choice. And it's one of the best bodies of work out there on decision, like on indecision. And that was me. And I tend to deliberate a lot.

So what the pencil sharpener could have looked like in this case would have been, I don't know, let's see. If I did a pencil sharpener around transitioning to a new nanny, I would have five categories. Let's call it timeline.

Let's call it splitting the work. Maybe we split childcare and house management. So what could splitting the work look like?

Maybe it would be sunsetting her thoughtfully as opposed to letting her go right away. Like, what's the sunset plan? And maybe, I don't know, you could probably fill in the blanks of one more that I could have done there.

But it applies to everything and it just, it gets you, it gets you moving, right? Action, not thinking provides clarity. Action, not thinking provides clarity.

And so if you put those 3, 4, 5 categories down on a piece of paper and just start filling in the bullets, you are able to make so much more progress than the constant back and forth in your head. And that's, and even that is an act of recklessness. It's an act of erring on the side of action.

By putting pen to paper and putting something, or, you know, keyboard to Google Doc and, and making something concrete that helps you really solidify what, what you're thinking about. You're not etching a plan in stone. You're just jotting down a couple initial thoughts to change your mindset to get the ball rolling.

ELLA: 00:19:53

Yeah, I have never thought my way out of any kind of stuck place, any kind of rut. Always action and never the perfect action. Never.

If we're waiting for motivation, if we're waiting for perfection, we gonna be waiting for a minute and then there's, there's a, there's something that's been repeated time and time again, but inspiration is truly on the other side of starting. But so many of us don't defer our dreams and defer our goals because we keep waiting for this like divine inspiration of some sort.

Yeah, I love the idea of just sharpening that pencil and just scratching something out. In this case, literally.

Jenny Wood: 00:20:31

Yes.

ELLA: 00:20:32

Jenny, I want to ask you about one more framework because I could talk about habit formation and goal setting, which I don't ever call it goal setting, to be totally honest with you. I call it building the habits that you want and releasing the habits that you do not.

And you have a goal setting, practice, rock, chalk, talk and walk. Did I say that right? Let me see.

Jenny Wood: 00:20:53

You sure did.

ELLA: 00:20:54

Rock, chalk, talk and walk.

Okay, I want you to give us again, give me, give me an example of someone who is ready to start taking care of their physical well being, who has not for a hot minute. How might they use the rock, chalk, talk and walk method to start pursuit of that goal? Yeah.

Jenny Wood: 00:21:14

So let's say that you want to lose weight. You know, maybe I should even use an example. I'm 45. I don't, maybe I should use one that I like actually want to start. I'll kind of.

I'm going to do this live, so we'll see if I can put it in the framework. But everyone says like 45, you should be doing strength training.

It's the number one thing you need to do to, you know, combat osteoporosis and to take care of yourself. And I just, I used to be good at strength training, but I have not done, I haven't lifted a weight in the last 10 years.

So let's say that I have a goal of wanting to do more weight training. Well, that's very vague and it's not really going to get me very far. Rock is the very specific thing I want to do.

So let's say I want to increase my, you know, adjust my BMI by X percent, right? That would be the rock. What is the big thing that. The big goal that you want to push up the hill? The big rock. Right.

nd. Right. So maybe by August: 2026

But right here, just you can see I have a rock written on my sticky note on my monitor.

ELLA: 00:22:20

There's such magic in using pen and paper and committing your goals in writing. It's so different even than. I'm not even saying I do it well, Jenny. I'm just saying it's even.

It hits your brain differently than just putting it in a digital note, for example, in your phone, right?

Jenny Wood: 00:22:38

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There is actually a lot of research on something called implementation intentions.

And so just writing it down and indicating like when you would do this action or where you would do this action increases your likelihood to take the action significantly. So I would write down the rock or sorry, I'd write down the rock.

Then chalk is, you know, physically writing it down and putting it somewhere where you can see it. So it might say, increase my BMI by increase decrease. This is me. I'm so far out of the.

ELLA: 00:23:05

Like, forget bmi. You want to build muscle. You have put a metric to it.

Jenny Wood: 00:23:09

Exactly. But like, I do think the number's important, so let's change it.

Maybe it's, maybe it's, I want to lift 20 pounds up from 8 pounds that I can currently press. I think that's a better example.

ELLA: 00:23:19

BMI is a terrible metric. Don't get me started.

Jenny Wood: 00:23:21

Okay, okay. Right before all the people comment on this episode and say, jenny's calculating BMI wrong. I hear you. I am guilty as charged. I totally am. Lights.

ELLA: 00:23:29

Terrible. BMI penalizes short muscular people. Oh, terrible. BMI says that I am almost over. Like almost obese.

Jenny Wood: 00:23:38

That's a little bit of an assessment.

I'm looking at your buff arms right now and I know that you, you're wearing a tank top because it's sweltering in your house and you said you had a cute jacket you were going to put on. But as a result, I get to benefit from your kick ass muscles that I am looking at right now.

So hashtag jealous, hashtag inspired, and hashtag I don't think we use hashtag anymore.

ELLA: 00:23:58

It's okay. We'll fully dork out here. As long as you keep talking about how great I look, that we're, we're fine. We got all the time in the world.

Let's extend the interview. Okay, carry on.

Jenny Wood: 00:24:07

by August: 2026

And by the way, not August, August 30, like have an actual date, right? That's part of your chalk.

ELLA: 00:24:21

Got it.

Jenny Wood: 00:24:22

And then you want to say it out loud. I should go on podcasts and say, this is my goal, right?

I was, I've been talking to friends, hiking, and I'm like, hey, Marcia, you have a personal trainer. How much is do you like her and what should I be doing? And then Marsha was like, Jenny, just do 10 pushups a day.

And like, you don't have to go start with a personal trainer. So even just talking it out loud allows my dear friend Marcia to push back on me and be like, you are thinking about this the wrong way.

So I'm like a right here, right now. How can we work on this together? What feedback do you have? Do you have a trainer? How much does she cost? How often do you go, should I do it?

You know, what apps do you like? What YouTube videos do you like? And so that to me is the benefit of talk. People want to give you resources, right? Like wisdom of the crowds.

And then walk is walk the walk. What's one thing you can do today? So let's say you wanted to lose ten pounds.

Maybe the one thing your walk is you trade the big dishes in your kitchen for little dishes. That's one action you can take today. In my case, maybe it is putting on my calendar 20 minute YouTube training session with X.

You know, and put the link to the YouTube thing and go on Amazon and buy, you know, a set of 5, 10, 15 and 20 pounds and just do it at home. So that is my one walk. That probably is the first walk I should do.

In fact, Ella, for when we stop recording there, we're going to have like two minutes of catch up and like, oh, how do you think it went? Because that's what happens after every podcast. I do not want you to let me hang up until I have pressed purchase on Amazon on a set of weights.

ELLA: 00:25:41

Girl, I got you covered. I'm gonna send you the Link.

Jenny Wood: 00:25:44

Amazing. So that is rock, chalk, talk, walk, goal setting in a nutshell.

ELLA: 00:25:49

Okay, okay, okay, okay. We have time for one more trait. I want you to choose manipulative, brutal or bossy.

Jenny Wood: 00:25:58

I knew those were going to be the three you were going to pick.

ELLA: 00:26:00

I love manipulative because the root of the word is Latin for hand. The M A, N. And I don't know what Latin is for hand. Okay. I just know that mano, like manos.

Jenny Wood: 00:26:11

Yeah.

ELLA: 00:26:11

Yes. Is using your hands. You are manipulating something literally.

To me, there are so many ways for us to be strategic and to be intentional in our lives that I love the idea of reclaiming the word manipulative. Of course. With zero nefarious intent. Yeah, that's my TED Talk. You get to pick.

Jenny Wood: 00:26:32

Well, let's stay on this one because it's just so. It's the most cringe worthy. Right. Of all these that I have shared. And it's the one.

ELLA: 00:26:38

It is. It has an ick factor, right?

Jenny Wood: 00:26:39

Oh, def.

Well, it's so funny you say that because this book came to be when I was working with my editor and we were trying to figure out the right packaging, edit, all this professional development advice, all this personal development advice.

And we were sitting in person in New York and my agent and my editor and me and we, like, hadn't quite figured out the right packaging for all of my content. Content. David. One of my editors said, jenny, on the.

On your flight home from New York back to Boulder, Colorado, where I live, said, I want you to write down everything you've done in your life that has helped you be successful professionally, personally, relationship wise. That could have a bit of an ick factor. So it's funny you bring up the ick factor because the ick factor is what created this whole book.

And so I opened up a blank document and I wrote down everything from like, I'm a small fish in my agent's big pond. She's got all the big names. And then there's Jenny Wood, who no one's ever heard of.

And so when I first started working with her, I sent her a handwritten thank you note. And I said, you know, just how much I loved working with her, how much I valued her, how much I admired her, and sure, could you call it kissing ass?

Well, no, she probably loved getting snail mail because nobody gets snail mail anymore these days. And I figured maybe she would give me a little bit of extra attention. Extra attention.

Because she knew that I was, like, in it to win it, that I deeply cared about this book that I admired her. And everyone likes to hear a nice thing about why their client likes working with them as an agent.

It was kind of win, win, like she got to feel good.

She got some snail mail, and I maybe got a little bit of more of her mind share as opposed to all the other small potatoes authors she had taken on who maybe didn't put as much effort into it. And it's like we think back in high school, oh, we've got to play it cool. Let's pretend we didn't study for the test, right?

And then, like, we get an A, it's like, oh, my gosh, how did that happen? But we're almost protecting ourselves where if we get a. A lower grade, then we don't have to say, oh, I put all this energy and effort into it.

Manipulative is the courage to build influence through empathy. Because whether you're selling a product, an idea, or yourself, your ability to win friends, allies, and partners is all about mutual benefit.

So figure out what people want and go get it for them. And so maybe Lisa, maybe I benefited her by helping her feel good. Maybe I benefited her by her recognizing that she was valuable. Right.

And so it's just a win win. Was it manipulative because I was trying to handle hand, you know, like, change the situation.

Call it manipulation, But I do this all the time in life. I build relationships strategically. I add value to people so that it helps them and they might want to help me one day.

And that, to me, is really thoughtful manipulation.

ELLA: 00:29:04

I just like the device that you've used in your writing. I like the device of flipping the script on these traits, and I think it's super, super clever.

And everything that you just described to me is intentionally thoughtful. And there ain't nothing wrong with that where I'm coming from.

Jenny Wood: 00:29:22

Exactly. It's planful. It's strategic.

ELLA: 00:29:24

Well, my friends, if you want to know more about nosy, or perhaps you want to know about bossy, or perhaps you want to know about weird, or you want to know more about the ones that we've talked about today, then I have to recommend to you Jenny's book, Wild Courage. How am I not going to love a book called Wild Courage? Jenny? New York Times bestseller.

Jenny Wood: 00:29:43

Good job. Thank you. I manipulated a lot of people and situations in a totally healthy and wholesome way.

ELLA: 00:29:51

All right. If you want to know how to go after what you want and how to get it, then connect with Jenny. Jenny, thank you so much.

Jenny Wood: 00:29:58

Amazing. Thanks for having me.

ELLA: 00:30:00

Okay, if you enjoyed today's show.

Please share it with someone you care about and be sure to check out our new YouTube channel and head to on airela.com for today's show notes and I would love to hear from you, so if you DM me on Instagram, I promise I will reply. P.S. all the links you need for us to connect are right here in your podcast app in the description for today's episode. Check them out.

Thanks for listening and thanks for inspiring me. You are, quite simply awesome.