Author Lindsey Pollak watched her thriving speaking career hit a wall when the pandemic hit a year ago. The career and workplace expert realized she had ignored her own advice, and had all her eggs in one basket. Lindsey gets refreshingly candid about how bad it got, what she did, and how we can all do better.
Financial Grownup Tip #1: Social media is more than social. Certainly during the pandemic depending on your business, it has become an important tool for your career. Take the time to master the ones that fit your business. It’s not just about being social- it is about career success -and sometimes survival as well.
Financial Grownup Tip #2- If you are on social media- don’t forget to participate. Staying on the sidelines will keep you there. So for example, if you are in clubhouse- raise your hand and add to the conversation. By the way, it is invitation only but I do have invites so DM me if you need one. And please join my club on clubhouse- Money Tips for Grownups. I’d love to connect with you there.
Buy your copy of Recalculating : Navigate Your Career Through The Changing World of Work.
Follow Lindsey!
Twitter- @LindseyPollak
LinkedIn- Lindsey Pollak
Website- lindseypollak.com
Instagram- @LindseyPollak
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Full Transcript-
Bobbi Rebell: Go to grownupgear.com and be sure to check my Instagram, @bobbirebell1, for discount codes. And thank you for supporting this venture and for supporting the podcast.
Lindsey Pollak : I had a fully booked calendar and a lot of deposits. And within a two week period, I lost six figures in speaking bookings. And my calendar went from completely full to completely empty.
Bobbi Rebell: You're listening to financial grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup. And you know what? Being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money. But it's okay. We're going to get there together. I'm going to bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.
Bobbi Rebell: It's been a year guys. If you want to get technical, it's been a year and about a week. Although most of us, frankly, lost count of the days and didn't even know which day of the week it was for a while. The pandemic put so many of our lives on hold and so many of our businesses in the tank.
Bobbi Rebell: For people who make their living talking to people in-person, they went from thriving to, well, there's no cute pun here. The business died. There was nothing there. For my friend, Lindsey Pollak, who is a top speaker and bestselling author, ironically in the career space, her career literally went poof last March with no end in sight.
Bobbi Rebell: This was literally unchartered territory for pretty much anyone alive these days. Two weeks to stop the spread was one thing, but getting back to packed rooms with over 1,000 people as she was used to, yeah, crickets. Even now. Lindsey agreed to share her experience with us in the hopes that many of us can at least relate to and get some solace from her experiences.
Bobbi Rebell: She also has, as she always has, great and specific advice on how we can better be prepared for the future and the unimaginable. She also managed to write a fantastic book in quarantine. It is called Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work. we do a little sneak peak at the end of our interview. Here is Lindsey Pollak. Lindsey Pollak, you are a financial grownup and welcome back to the show.
Lindsey Pollak : It is an honor to be back for the second time. Thank you.
Bobbi Rebell: We're going to talk about your new book, which was written in quarantine and has a lot of really relevant advice for anyone who is thinking of recalculating. That's also the name of the book. But first you brought us a very relevant story that happened to you just when quarantine was starting. And sadly, too many of us can relate to this. Tell us your money story, Lindsey.
Lindsey Pollak : I'd be happy to. So, like many people in March of 2020, everything stopped and everything changed. And I think we hear about food service people and certain jobs that you know would be destroyed by the pandemic or pushed off. Professional speakers were in that category.
Lindsey Pollak : I had at that time, been doing about 70 to 80 live speaking events per year. And I had a fully booked calendar and a lot of deposits. And within a two week period, I lost six figures. I can't even say it. I stumble on the words. I lost six figures in speaking bookings and my calendar went from completely full to completely empty.
Bobbi Rebell: Just to explain how speaking works, you had deposits. How does the contract work? Did you have to return all the deposits or did they reschedule or was it just gone?
Lindsey Pollak : So, you know what's interesting is, my contract said that the deposits were nonrefundable and that we would make our best efforts to reschedule if something got canceled. Several people took me up on that, I will say, and let me keep the deposits.
Lindsey Pollak : Several requested for their own financial difficulties to return it and I made the decision to do that, to keep the relationships because I understood that people were in really tough times. So I did return them. So it sort of went beyond the contract. And for anything that had been booked, but not yet paid, of course, that just disappeared. Bobbi Rebell: So then what?
Lindsey Pollak : It was tough. And I'll tell you a couple of things, because it's a financial podcast. Number one, just by luck, about a year before my bookkeeper had said, "You really need to have a credit line for your business." I had contacted my bank, Chase Bank, and gotten a very significant credit line because I have good credit that I'm extremely proud of. It's one of the proudest things in my life that I have good credit. And I got a significant six-figure credit line, which saved me.
Lindsey Pollak : I paid it all back ultimately over time, but having that fund to dip into to make sure that I could continue to pay my assistant and my rent and so on. I cut back on expenses tremendously, and I started reaching out. And it's really interesting as I didn't have a plan for where the money would come from, but I've always relied on the fact that relationships are where opportunities come from.
Lindsey Pollak : And I just called people, checked in, "How are you doing? What's going on? How are you?" I mean, for about four weeks, it was just, "Oh my gosh, what's happening?" And slowly but surely, a relationship with a UK firm that had been pending for a while, took off. Slowly but surely, people who had never booked for years were like, "Hey, could you do a session on how to work remotely?" And I was like, "Yes, I can." That had been one slide in my presentation. And now, suddenly that became a presentation.
Lindsey Pollak : It was nowhere near what I had projected for the year, but the year turned out okay. And this miracle moment was on May 5th. I'll never remember. I got an email from my agent about something totally different. And at the very bottom of the email, she said, "And by the way, do you think you might want to write a book during this pandemic experience? I feel like you might have something to say." And that one sentence turned into Recalculating, which we're here today to talk about.
Bobbi Rebell: So perfect. So you basically pivoted from doing speaking to going back to book writing, which you were always doing. This is I think number four, number five? I can't keep track of you, Lindsey.
Lindsey Pollak : I think of them like children and I had been writing a book every five years. And I had written the remix last year in 2019. And I say it's like my accidental fourth child. I didn't mean to have a child so quickly after my third, but so it happens. Bobbi Rebell: Well, it's a wonderful book. We're going to talk about it soon, but tell me what is the lesson for our listeners from this?
Lindsey Pollak : It's something that I think is such a cliche, but true. Necessity is the mother of invention. I was a speaker. I was like, I'm a speaker. That's what I do. And I realized I can't only be a speaker.
Lindsey Pollak : And when I look at the people I most admire in my world, people like you, it's do you have a podcast? Do you have online courses? Do you have newsletters? Do you get paid to write? And what I remembered is sometimes you go back to basics, which I think is the other lesson.
Lindsey Pollak : When I was first starting out, I didn't make enough money from speaking. So I was freelance writing. I was coaching. I was doing resume reviews. I was doing anything I could. And I realized I have to get back into that mindset that I'm not "just a speaker." And that's what led to these other opportunities.
Lindsey Pollak : Now, I don't want to say it was easy. I don't want to say I wasn't scared, or I didn't stay up at night, or I wasn't uncomfortable dipping into my savings or my credit line, which I did do. But ultimately, what got me through it, was going back to basics and realizing I have to get creative.
Bobbi Rebell: Looking back, what would you have done differently in terms of setting up your life? Would you have diversified your business more in advance?
Lindsey Pollak : Yes. Sometimes success is not so good because you get so deep into one area that you put all your eggs in one basket. And what's really funny is I've advised job seekers for years, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Even if you're happily employed, keep your network going. Don't just apply for jobs in one field." And I had to take my own advice.
Bobbi Rebell: Very well said. And it's good to know that even people far along and super successful in their careers, sometimes have to take their own advice, which they move past. I love this. You brought with you an everyday money tip and I'm going to give a little bit of a spoiler. One part of this made you $2,000 in just extra cash. Tell us your everyday money tip because this is so fascinating. I had no idea this was such a big thing.
Lindsey Pollak : Okay. So at my heart, I grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, the burbs. I am just a suburban girl. And in my high school, I remember they had all these categories, best dressed, best looking, all that. There was informal stuff that we would just send around to be silly.
Lindsey Pollak : And mine was most likely to drive a station wagon in the suburbs. Which by the way, I have not done, but my money tip was to clip coupons. And in the old days, I remember going to the grocery store with my mom and she had an envelope. Right. And she would hand the coupons to the checkout person. And apparently, I used to play that at home, handing the coupons to the checkout person. Bobbi Rebell: I think we all did.
Lindsey Pollak : I think we all did. Right. Bobbi Rebell: My mom definitely had the coupons. And a whole organizer. There was a coupon organizer box.
Lindsey Pollak : Oh yeah. A little box. Bobbi Rebell: And she would organize what she was going to bring that day. And you were waiting for the double coupon day.
Lindsey Pollak : And here we are, talking about personal finances on a podcast. So, the modern day version of that, it used to be called Ebates. Now it's called Rakuten. Rakuten is I have this little widget on my browser and on my phone that tells me that I can get cash back if you shop through Ebates or Rakuten.
Lindsey Pollak : And over the past several years, I've made $2,000 using that little widget to get little discounts on things. And yeah, of course, I look like, "Ooh, that's fine. I can get a little bit more cash back than if I shop at such and such." And it's funny. I always did it. My husband would make fun of me like, "Ooh, you got your $7.53 check today." And then I looked and I saw, wow, over a few years, I've made $2,000 back and that's real money.
Bobbi Rebell: And that was basically on money you were probably going to spend anyway. Now you might've chosen one retailer over another because of it, but still, it's money.
Lindsey Pollak : Target is my favorite one. The Target app I've saved, I think $110. We've been quarantining in Connecticut. And I think I've saved $110 this year, which is only $10 a month, but hey, I used that credit for other good stuff.
Bobbi Rebell: Oh, absolutely. So I have in my hand, my early copy. This is one of my favorite perks of doing this podcast. I have an early copy of Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work, which you wrote during quarantine. So, tell us what is different now, both in quarantine and hopefully, very soon as we emerge from quarantine, in terms of how we recalculate our careers and our life?
Lindsey Pollak : The first thing to think about is, recalculating is not one thing that you do in a moment and then it's over. Right. It's not like a fork in the road. I think we all need to be re-skilling, up-skilling pivoting, diversifying all the things that we talked about in my own story.
Lindsey Pollak : What we've learned through COVID is you cannot coast. Right. You can't just say, "Well, I'm comfortable where I am and I'm going to keep moving forward." You probably never could. But I think we all know that now more than ever.
Lindsey Pollak : And a really important piece of that, that I know you're so good at and is important to you, is if you're not getting good at virtual communication, and remote communication, and email, and texting, and Slack, and social media, you are not keeping up with the tools that you need to have to succeed now and into the future. It's no longer a nice to have. It's an absolute must have skill.
Bobbi Rebell: Yes, I am always learning different things. I mean, for example, right now, I started this merch store and I had to learn all this stuff about how to connect it to Instagram and so on. But it's actually really fun and you feel very accomplished. So, technical skills and learning new ways of doing business is very important.
Bobbi Rebell: And on that note, a lot of people have questions about how to use social media differently while we're in this pandemic, because it does become more important when we can't be social in person. Right.
Lindsey Pollak : Absolutely. But I think there are parallels. And so, the parallels are you've got to remember that each social network, if you're looking at it from a professional standpoint, like networking to find a job or new clients. Just like it's different to chat with people at the supermarket than to chat with people at a black tie gala, you have to see the social networks as different. You can't be the same or use the same language and style, or even necessarily profile photo, on Twitter as you would on LinkedIn, or on Instagram, or on Clubhouse, or what have you. So, number one is to acknowledge that they're all different.
Lindsey Pollak : Number two is I think you do use them in the same way you would in-person networking. So, you and I, let's say, may bond on Facebook because you're wearing a cute shirt or I see a cute picture of your son. I'm not going to say, "Do you have a job." Or, "Can I send you my resume?" I'm going to say, "Hey, great photo. Hey, do you want to get together and talk sometime about work stuff?" It's an entry point, just as if I saw you on the sidelines of a soccer game, we would talk about the game. I wouldn't start to launch into my sales pitch.
Lindsey Pollak : So, I think that social media should be seen as these personal moments where you might "bump into somebody." And then you take it to the next level off of that social network to have the professional conversation. LinkedIn is a bit different. I think LinkedIn is like a professional conference where people go, no one's going to be offended if you try to network professionally on LinkedIn. That's the point. It's like being at a conference. But for all the other sites, it's about building and solidifying real, authentic, personal relationships. And then you take the conversation elsewhere after that. Bobbi Rebell: And what do you think about Clubhouse? Because you're very successful on Clubhouse. I love dropping in on the rooms that you're in and the conversations. What's your take and your advice to people on how to use Clubhouse?
Lindsey Pollak : So that's a really good example of like, "I don't know, I'll give it a try. This is a new thing, and I'm going to try it." And I wasn't sure. To me, it's like a mix between listening to the radio and dropping in on a podcast or a webinar. But sometimes you get to talk.
Lindsey Pollak : What's absolutely amazing to me is how much free advice is there. I'm providing it myself. I do a career chat every Wednesday at one o'clock with a bunch of career experts and people just ask their questions. And what's really cool is, not only do we give our thoughts or advice, but other people on the call can raise their hand and say, "Hey, I know somebody." Or, "Oh, I have an idea for you."
Lindsey Pollak : And so, what's happening is like these conference moments in the Clubhouse app. So I'd really encourage people to give it a try. And if it's not for you, it's not for you, but it's just another tool where you might bond. And just funny things like bumping into each other. I was on it yesterday. I went to graduate school in Australia at this school called Monash University, which is just outside of Melbourne. Most people have never heard of it.
Lindsey Pollak : There was a woman on the call who had gone to Monash University and had moved to the United States. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, you're kidding." And we met on Clubhouse. So you just never know what kinds of moments like that can happen wherever you decide to show up, but you have to decide to show up.
Bobbi Rebell: Absolutely. So, everyone should follow Lindsey on Clubhouse. And also me. I'm on Clubhouse too.
Lindsey Pollak : Yeah. Bobbi Rebell: And I'm still learning the ropes, but I'm having a great time on it too. So, please follow both of us. Your book Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work is going to be available everywhere, March 23rd. Where can people get in touch with you?
Lindsey Pollak : So my website is my name, lindseypollock.com. I'll spell it for you because it's a doozy. L-I-N-D-S-E-Y-P-O-L-L-A-K. I'm the only one in the world who spells it that exact way. And I'd be delighted to connect with anyone there or on social media.
Bobbi Rebell: Thank you so much.
Lindsey Pollak : Thank you, Bobbi. Bobbi Rebell: Here we go. Financial grownup tip number one. Social media is a lot more than social these days. Certainly during the pandemic, depending on your business, it became an important tool for your career. Take the time to master the onesthat fit your business. It's not just about being social. It is about career success and sometimes career survival as well.
Bobbi Rebell: Financial grownup tip number two. If you are on social media, don't forget to participate. Staying on the sidelines will keep you there. So for example, if you are in Clubhouse, raise your hand and add to the conversation. By the way, it is invitation only, but I do have invites, so DM me if you need one. And please join my club on Clubhouse, Money tips for Grownups. I'd love to connect with you there.
Bobbi Rebell: If you enjoy the podcast, please take a screenshot and share it on social media. And if you tag me, @bobbirebell1, that will also enter you into our book and merch giveaways. I also want to encourage everyone to pre-order a copy of Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work by Lindsey Pollak. It is a bit complicated, but it really helps Lindsey if you pre-order it.
Bobbi Rebell: And this episode is dropping about a week before it's released, so you still have a week to get it done. And it is truly a big deal to Lindsey, so thank you for doing that. I promise you will love it. And big thanks to my friend, Lindsey Pollak, for helping us all be financial grownups.
Bobbi Rebell: The Financial Grownup podcast is a production of BRK Media. The podcast is hosted by me, Bobbi Rebell, but the real magic happens behind the scenes with our team. Steve Stewart is our editor and producer. And Amanda Savan is our talent coordinator and content creator. So yeah, that means she does the show notes you can get for every show right on our website and all the fantastic graphics that you can see on our social media channels.
Bobbi Rebell: Our mission here at Financial Grownup is to help you be at your financial best in every stage of life. And this year, we want to help you get there by giving away some of our favorite money books. To get yours, make sure you are on the grownup list. Go to bobbirebell.com to sign up for free.
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@ bobbirebell. You can email us at hello@financialgrownup.com. And if you enjoy the show, please tell a friend and maybe leave a review on Apple Podcast. It only takes a couple minutes. Join us next time for more stories to help you live your best grown-up life.