August 9, 2025 • 24 mins
One of the things I am most proud of is the way in business I have had to reinvent my self over the past 45 years of my career. I think this is a skill that serves entrepreneurs well.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is an author and keynote speaker whose work explores how technology, social class, and cultural change are reshaping the way we live and work. Her upcoming book, "The Slingshot Effect", makes the case that pulling back—professionally, financially, creatively—isn’t failure, but often the smartest way to move forward. Carmen’s career is built on bold reinvention and small business roots.
After starting at Goldman Sachs, she took a surprising step back—becoming an office manager—to create space for her first major pivot into writing. Her blog on race and pop culture, Racialicious, gained national attention and made her a sought-after speaker. From there, she co-founded a karate school in Brooklyn, then launched a family travel brand that grew into a multiple six-figure content business with over a million followers and major brand partnerships.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-small-business-radio-show--3306444/support.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is an author and keynote speaker whose work explores how technology, social class, and cultural change are reshaping the way we live and work. Her upcoming book, "The Slingshot Effect", makes the case that pulling back—professionally, financially, creatively—isn’t failure, but often the smartest way to move forward. Carmen’s career is built on bold reinvention and small business roots.
After starting at Goldman Sachs, she took a surprising step back—becoming an office manager—to create space for her first major pivot into writing. Her blog on race and pop culture, Racialicious, gained national attention and made her a sought-after speaker. From there, she co-founded a karate school in Brooklyn, then launched a family travel brand that grew into a multiple six-figure content business with over a million followers and major brand partnerships.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-small-business-radio-show--3306444/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get ready for all the craziness of small business. It's
exactly that craziness that makes it exciting and totally unbelievable.
Small Business Radio is now on the air with your host,
Barry Moultz.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, thanks for joining this week's radio show. Remember this
is the final word in small business. For those keeping track,
this is now show number eight.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hundred and forty three.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, one of the things I'm most proud of in
my career and business is how I've had to reinvent
myself over the last forty five years of my entire career.
I think this is a skill that really serves entrepreneurs. Well,
my guest is Carmen van Kirkhove, who's an author, a
keynote speaker whose work explores how technology, social class, and
(00:49):
cultural change are reshaping the way we live in work.
Our upcoming book is called The Slingshot Effect and makes
the case that pulling back professionally financially created is in
failure but often the smartest way to move forward. Carmen,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Barry, thanks so much for having me. It's been great
to reconnect.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And great so let's talk about your career because you've
done a lot of different things, a lot of different
kind of reinvention. You started your career at Goldman Sachs.
Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yes, so I started on the straight and narrow, and
then things turned harry. So I kind of did the
typical you know, go to a good school, get good grades,
graduate to you know, an investment banking job, and then
from there. I there were a few things that happened
in my corporate career where I realized, oh, there's actually
(01:41):
a different path forward. So at one point I was
working in ad sales and I was about to get
fired from this job. Unfortunately, I was terrible at sales,
is something I realized, and so I quickly just sort
of slid into an office manager position that was open
at the time. And at that point I thought, oh,
this is probably not great for my career. I was
(02:02):
doing this just to you know, sort of by myself sometime.
But then once I was in that position, I realized, oh,
this is actually a pretty great gig. Of the hours
are great, the pay wasn't too far off the base
I was making anyway, and it gave me a lot
of time and space to work on a side project
that I was working on which was a blog about
(02:22):
the intersection of race and pop culture. And so because
I took this much less prestigious position, it gave me
the ability to work on the side project, which ended
up actually growing and becoming pretty big, and so I
became a pretty sought after speaker on different college campuses.
I was doing consulting and training. I was very sought
after as a media commentator on CNN and PR all
(02:45):
of these major media outlets. And so as I grew
this platform, there were also a few changes in my
life where I got married, I had a baby, and
actually I decided, you know what, I'm actually going to
walk away from this and help my husband open a
martial arts school in our Brooklyn neighborhood. So I walked
away from something on a kind of national stage, pretty big,
(03:08):
walked into something much smaller. And I think during that
era is where you and I first met Barry. And
so I got into small business marketing and really enjoyed
that time. And you know, as well as that business went,
ultimately I was really helping my husband build his dream
and it wasn't really my dream. And so after a
(03:28):
while I felt that calling to do something for myself again.
And so from there I actually became a travel influencer.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Which is amazing for me. All these pivots are just amazing.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
All completely unconnected as well. So for almost a decade
we actually created content around luxury family travel and so
me and my husband and our two kids, we would
travel around the world, make videos documented show families how
they can do it as well, and that was really terrific. However,
(04:00):
I again felt that calling to, you know, do something
different again, to shift away. And you know, there's a
lot of complex reasons, but you know, the short answer
is I started getting uncomfortable with fame essentially, you know,
of like having us and my kids in public, right, Yeah,
And so you know I decided to pull away again.
(04:22):
And it was in that final pullback that I thought,
what is going on with me? This is now the
second time in my career I've built up a national
media platform and then decided to walk away. And so
in that analysis is actually the where the kernel of
the book idea came from. So the Flingshot effect is
all about the idea that we're so conditioned to think
(04:44):
of careers as the things that we have to always
move upward and forward, and in my experience, it's actually
always been the times where I've pulled back and actually
taken a step down from the thing that looks really successful,
prestigious on the outside, and taking a step back or
step down and really realigned and took a pause and thought, well,
(05:07):
what do I actually want to do? And it's that
process that's very much like a slingshot, you know when
you pull a slingshot back. It's that pullback that creates
the focus and the momentum so that when you let go,
you are able to launch forward with power and with precision.
And that's really what the book is about.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And pulling back is really hard. I remember last year
I decided that after twenty years, I wasn't going to
do motivational small business speaking anymore. I was done with traveling,
I was done with speaking and entertaining audience and things
like that. And it was hard to do that and
say no to future gigs, but it just felt right
at the stage of my career. How do we how
(05:49):
do we, I guess, tell people that it's okay to
stop because there's so many things in our culture said
you got to move forward, you got to get bigger,
you got to get better all of those kinds of things,
because people see pulling back as some kind of failure.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Absolutely, and this is exactly what I want to challenge,
right because prestige can be a heck of a drug,
right where we all get sure high on it, we
all are drawn to it. We're scared of what people
will think if we walk away from prestige. But the
reality is that taking a strategic pause can actually save
(06:23):
you years of building in the wrong direction, which you know,
it sounds like you kind of got to that point
where you realized, is this really what I want anymore?
And I think taking that pause is so important because
it gives you space to evaluate rather than just going
on autopilot where I'm doing the thing that everyone tells
me I'm supposed to want. Is it really what I
(06:44):
want anymore? Is this working anymore? And understand that it's
okay for life to have different seasons, right Like I
was in a season when I first started the travel
content that I wanted to be on a plane every
other week. It was intoxicating. We loved it, you know,
really genuinely, and then we got to a season where
we realized, you know, what we were really craving some
(07:05):
stability and being at home and you know, being relishing
the more mundane aspects of life, and now that that
feels really right in the season. So I think we're
so conditioned to constantly chase momentum, but sometimes the smartest
thing you can do is pause and ask is this
still working for me?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
And I think there's also a difference, as you talk about,
between burnout, right and a slingshot moment. Like I didn't
feel that when I ended speaking that I was burned out.
I just felt that my speaking career was complete, right, Yea.
I accomplished everything I had accomplished everything I had accomplished.
I spoken in front of audiences up to ten thousand people,
I travel all over the country, all of the world,
(07:46):
and I was complete. I wanted to do other kinds
of things in my career before I've retired.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So I don't think you just do it through burnout, correct.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
And I think what you're really hitting on there is
the emotional intelligence aspect of it, right. These things like clarity,
self awareness, agility, these are really the elements that are
going to create success for small business owners, for entrepreneurs
in the future because it's not just about who can
hustle the hardest, who can be the loudest in the room.
(08:19):
It's really about who has the most clarity about what
they are genuinely wanting to do and what feels most aligned.
Because I think audiences, and you know, you may have
felt this to some extent, but audiences can tell when
you're phoning it in. And I think that that is
part of the point that I got to in some
(08:42):
of these points where I decided to walk away, where
I realized that, you know what, my heart isn't in
it in that same way that it was before. And
I don't want to shortchange my audience and pretend like
I'm still the person that I was before, because it
doesn't feel often and they're going to catch onto that,
you know, in a very subconscious way. And so I
(09:05):
think sometimes it's also a way for you to actually
serve people better by not forcing yourself to keep going
on that same path.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
And it's hard, though, I think, to convince yourself sometimes
that your heart's not in it. You know, there's are
all saying that if you find yourself in a hole,
the first thing I do is stop digging.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It is really hard.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I think in our society to actually close down a
business voluntarily, and when it's doing okay, right, and so,
how do you convince yourself that you know that it
is really time to move on?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
How do you?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I guess the question really is how do you reinvent
your business without bringing it all down? How do you
do a successful pivot?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Yeah? And I think sometimes the question is is it
time to pivot or do I walk away completely? Because
different situations will call for different things. And so when
I think back to my own career, for example, that
first blog that I was running, I ended up walking
away from it, but really I could have actually decided
(10:09):
to pivot instead. And what I mean specifically is that
the part that I didn't love anymore was the media
commentary aspect. It got to a point where I felt
like I was just an opinion factory where anytime something
happened in the news there was some you know, awful
injustice that happened, I had to just quickly come up
(10:31):
with a SoundBite and get on camera and say my piece,
and you know be And I was good at it, right,
which is why I was always called back over and
over that it started feeling really shallow to me, and
so you know, there were obviously, you know, a lot
of changes in my life as well that contributed to it.
But when I think back on it, instead of walking away,
I could have pivoted, right, I could have just deemphasized
(10:53):
the media commentary part focused on some of these other
aspects where I felt like I was really controlling, you know,
maybe having a more long form narrative of actually writing
or speaking and stepping away from the media a little bit.
So I think that's one example where I could have
pivoted rather than you know, completely walked away. And then
now with this most recent transition out of the travel content,
(11:17):
that is really a point where I had to walk
away from actually creating family content because my concerns were,
I want my children to have a normal life. I
don't want them to grow up in this cage of
fame that I have built Break by Briack video by video,
and so in order to do that, they cannot be
(11:37):
in the content moving forward. And so that was less
of a pivot and more of a complete exit. So
I think that, you know, for small business owners and entrepreneurs,
there's always going to be that point where you have
to decide is it is it one specific aspect of
my business from my career that's not working anymore, And
if so, how can I shift away from that or
(12:00):
eliminate that one bottleneck or that one part that's not
making me happy? Or is it something that is completely
fundamental to the existence of this business or this career,
in which case, actually it's time to do a complete exit.
But even when you do that, you know, like you mentioned,
you don't have to burn it all down, right, This
can be a gradual process. And I think that's another
(12:21):
reason I feel very strongly about writing this book, which
is that in entrepreneurship especially, there's so much emphasis on this,
you know, burn the ships. You can't give yourself an exit.
You got to go all the way in. Yeah, exactly.
And it's like, listen, a lot of the people who
(12:42):
are telling you to burn the ships have safety nuts
that they want, right. They have they have rich parents,
have a rich spouse. They you know, they have a
huge nestag from selling a previous business. You know, for
the rest of us, we still need to pay bills, right,
We can't afford to have these grand gestures, as attractive
(13:02):
as they may be. And so you know, the idea
of stepping down a little bit in order to pivot,
I think is an idea that is going to help
a lot of people because it's really given you permission, like, hey,
you don't have to completely just quit your multiple six
figure job and go and open a bakery. Why don't you,
you know, switch to a less demanding position that pays
(13:26):
you a little bit less, but you're still able to
cover your build and that just buys you a little
more breathing room to be able to start the next thing.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And it's easy in our society today to have some
kind of side hustle to start it, you know, you know,
temporarily or part time.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
But I guess my.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Question Krmen is you know it's it's scary to make
these changes, right, I mean, could you say, hey, I'm
good at this, I know I can do this, I
know I can earn money at this. Where do you
find the courage to get over the fear of doing
something new?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And I believe that as you age, it gets.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Increasingly difficult to pivot and do something new.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
You know, that's so interesting because I actually find maybe
the opposite is true, that I find that learning to
quit things is an important skill that we don't emphasize
enough love that. And you know, there's a lot of
focus on grit, you know, oh you've got to like
stick it through, you know, determination, stamina, Those are the
(14:24):
qualities that are really lauded in society. But I've actually
found that knowing when to walk away from something, knowing
when to quit is just as important, if not more important.
And I've actually found that time and time again, the
more times I've quit something, the better I get at it,
and the more I'm able to notice in myself when
(14:46):
when the signals are there that it's it's time to
make a change. So I actually think that, you know,
maybe in terms of I don't know, financial structure, it
may feel like the older people get, the more risk
averse they are. But I actually think that if you
make it a habit to really practice this art of
quitting and quitting well and you know, quitting with strategy,
(15:09):
not just on a whim and you know, on an
emotional outburst, I actually think that that is an important
skill because then it comes with a lot of other
things like self awareness, clarity, those all feed into your
final decision. So I actually have found that the older
I get, the better I am. I'm making these transitions.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
You know, And I can't stand, Carmen, that's saying that
quitters never win, winners never quit. And of course I
like the other expression that winners know when to quit,
right yeah, because they know when to really get out.
There's a local and they're not local anymore. The big
restaurant company around called let Us Entertain You. And you
know this guy named Melman, Richard Melman. He always knew
(15:53):
when to close down his restaurants and when they weren't working.
And to me, that's a tremendous skill to actually know
when to quit. And I think that somewhere along the line,
since I've reinvented myself so many times, you do get
the confidence that you know something, it's going to be okay.
I will figure it out and we'll be able to
get to another place and I'll be much happier than
(16:15):
I'm in the place where I'm right now. But there
is a transition. So what do you say to yourself, Carmen,
when you've gone through these transitions? What do you say
to yourself in those transitionary moments, which I think can
be the hardest.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yes, And I think really the hardest part of this
is learning to be able to sit in the stillness
and the discomfort because that pullback phase, the pause, that's
the hardest part, because the silence is almost deafening, right,
and you feel like nothing is happening, nothing is working,
(16:52):
and on the surface it seems like there's no progress
being made. But I think you have to understand that
it's important to really use that time to really ohone
in on what is working and what is not working
about your career, about your life, and sometimes that you know,
to get a little woo woo like. Sometimes that goes
(17:14):
into also feeling what your body is telling you. You know,
I think sometimes we are so in our minds that
we sometimes don't realize that actually there's a lot of
signals sometimes that our body is sending us in a
way that doesn't even get to the level of our brains.
And what I mean by that is, you know, sometimes
you're in a situation and you just feel tightness tightness,
(17:38):
like a constriction in your chest, or maybe you're even
a little bit out of breath, or things just feel
really tense, and there's nothing sort of logically or intellectually
wrong with the situation. You're in. But sometimes that that's
your body telling you, hey, pay attention to this. Something
is out of alignment here. And you know, I think
when you're able to take that pause and that pullback,
(18:00):
you have the space to be able to pay attention
to these kinds of sometimes subtle signals. I mean, sometimes
it'll knock you over the head right, And sometimes what
happens is you ignore the subtle signals and then and
then you get the bunk over the head where it's like, oh, okay,
I get it, I need to stop doing this thing.
But yeah, I think it's learning to be comfortable in
(18:21):
the discomfort that is frankly difficult, but also something that
you get better with practice.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You know. It's interesting for me you were saying about
something in your body, because one of the reasons I
decided to complete my speaking career is my body really
didn't want to be on an airplane every week.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I just didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I just want to check into one more hotel and
not knowing where I was. You know, if I woke
up in the morning and there was someone in my bed,
I hopefully I was at home, you know, And so
I just I just didn't want to do that.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Anymore. So, I think your body does tell you signals.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
What do you do when perhaps your spouse, your partner
isn't supportive or there are afraid of the pivot or
the change you're going to make?
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, I mean I think this is I don't have
an easy answer for this, but I will.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, because I don't know the answer.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
That it's two of us. Well, I would say that
what I have noticed in my life and in the
lives of people around me, is that sometimes if you
keep pushing off the change, life will change it for
you in a way that you don't like. Right, So
I think also the idea of the slingshot is pull
(19:40):
back before you get to that point, like you want
to be able to make that transition and notice these
needs for a change before you know the world does
it for you and you have no choice because very
often you know inside of you what would you need
to do right on some deep level. You may not
(20:01):
know the specifics, but you know when something is not working,
and I think very often we tend to ignore that
feeling for as long as possible until it gets to
a point where something terrible happens. And you know, in
your case, if you didn't listen to that voice, and
you kept speaking, you kept getting on a plane over
and over again. It's possible that it could lead to
(20:24):
a major health problem, right because you're just like not
paying attention to what your body is telling you, what
your heart is telling you, and you keep going and
pushing ahead. And so you know, when it comes to
a partner who doesn't maybe share your vision, I think
maybe that is something to talk about, where you know,
you talk about, well, what's what's the worst case scenario
(20:46):
if I keep going on this path? What's the very
negative thing that can happen? And doesn't make more sense
for us to pivot now and find a way to
a different path rather than charging forward to this sort
of inevitable disaster. And you know, because I think it's
human to want to avoid discomfort or you know, to
(21:11):
to avoid negative things rather than going towards positive things.
But isn't there a urn But that's something avoidance. I
can't think of it right now, but you know it's
it's I think it's human nature for us to want
to avoid unpleasant things more than for us to gravitate
towards something possive. So absolutely that could be that could
be a tool in the toolbox.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So so how did you and your husband how have
you dealt with all of this because you've had a
lot of different transitions in pivoting, and so is he,
you know, closing down his karate for the pandemic in
the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Yeah, I mean it's it hasn't been easy. And I
think anytime that you close a business, it's like giving
up a part of your yourself or or giving up
on a dream, right, because I really think like every
small business ultimately started as a dream to some extent,
and I think it's not easy. And I think a
(22:03):
lot of this really comes down to identity shifts. And
I think, you know, when I walked away from the
blog and the media commentary to become basically Sense's wife
and Sean's mom, for me, that was a big identity shift,
right because it felt like you're going from something bigger
to something smaller, and you know, same thing for him.
(22:23):
I think when he moved from being Sensey to being
essentially a YouTuber. I remember what we ran into one
of our students reatly and he was like, ooh, sense
you're a YouTuber now, and like it's it's just so
funny that we can hold all these different identities. But
(22:44):
I think that that's why it's important to do some
of this inner work, because work is going to change
all around you. Businesses change, careers change. Sometimes it's by choice,
sometimes it's not. And if you don't know who you
are outside of what work you do, it's going to
be really hard when you have to grapple with a
(23:06):
change in that and do the inner work at the
same time while you're also trying to figure out how
to make a living. I think that's why, you know,
I write on substack every week about career reinvention and
the future of work, and I think you know, we're
hurtling towards this time of enormous change with the rise
of AI and mass layoffs, and I think a lot
of people are realizing, wow, I need to figure out
(23:28):
who I am outside of this job title, because you know,
some of us will have the luxury of pivoting by choice,
but a lot of people are going to be shoved
into it without any choice. And I think when you
are both reeling from the loss of your job and
your livelihood and at the same time trying to figure
(23:48):
out who you are and do this identity work. That's
going to be a lot harder than trying to grapple
with some of those questions now before you get to
that point where you're also dealing with sort of the
real life challenges of what that means.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Well, Karmen, and I appreciate me on the show. I
know you have an upcoming book, The Slingshot Effect. But
where can people catch up with you on your substack?
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Yes, so you can find me on substack. You can
either look up my name Carmen van Kirkhov or the
publication title is Pack Lightlift Full.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Carmen, thanks so much, and I want to thank everyone
for joining this week's radio show. I got to thank
our incredible booking producer Sarah Schaffrin. If you're serious bout
be more successful in twenty twenty five, give me a
callupsee have a private line seven seven three eight three
seven eight two five zero, or email me at Barry
at Molts dot com. Remember, love everyone, trust a few,
(24:40):
and pal your own canoe. Have a profitable and passionate week.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
If you can find Barrymoltz on the web at Barrymolts
dot com or more episodes of Small Business Radio at
smallbuzradioshow dot com,
Get ready for all the craziness of small business. It's
exactly that craziness that makes it exciting and totally unbelievable.
Small Business Radio is now on the air with your host,
Barry Moultz.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, thanks for joining this week's radio show. Remember this
is the final word in small business. For those keeping track,
this is now show number eight.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hundred and forty three.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, one of the things I'm most proud of in
my career and business is how I've had to reinvent
myself over the last forty five years of my entire career.
I think this is a skill that really serves entrepreneurs. Well,
my guest is Carmen van Kirkhove, who's an author, a
keynote speaker whose work explores how technology, social class, and
(00:49):
cultural change are reshaping the way we live in work.
Our upcoming book is called The Slingshot Effect and makes
the case that pulling back professionally financially created is in
failure but often the smartest way to move forward. Carmen,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Barry, thanks so much for having me. It's been great
to reconnect.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And great so let's talk about your career because you've
done a lot of different things, a lot of different
kind of reinvention. You started your career at Goldman Sachs.
Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yes, so I started on the straight and narrow, and
then things turned harry. So I kind of did the
typical you know, go to a good school, get good grades,
graduate to you know, an investment banking job, and then
from there. I there were a few things that happened
in my corporate career where I realized, oh, there's actually
(01:41):
a different path forward. So at one point I was
working in ad sales and I was about to get
fired from this job. Unfortunately, I was terrible at sales,
is something I realized, and so I quickly just sort
of slid into an office manager position that was open
at the time. And at that point I thought, oh,
this is probably not great for my career. I was
(02:02):
doing this just to you know, sort of by myself sometime.
But then once I was in that position, I realized, oh,
this is actually a pretty great gig. Of the hours
are great, the pay wasn't too far off the base
I was making anyway, and it gave me a lot
of time and space to work on a side project
that I was working on which was a blog about
(02:22):
the intersection of race and pop culture. And so because
I took this much less prestigious position, it gave me
the ability to work on the side project, which ended
up actually growing and becoming pretty big, and so I
became a pretty sought after speaker on different college campuses.
I was doing consulting and training. I was very sought
after as a media commentator on CNN and PR all
(02:45):
of these major media outlets. And so as I grew
this platform, there were also a few changes in my
life where I got married, I had a baby, and
actually I decided, you know what, I'm actually going to
walk away from this and help my husband open a
martial arts school in our Brooklyn neighborhood. So I walked
away from something on a kind of national stage, pretty big,
(03:08):
walked into something much smaller. And I think during that
era is where you and I first met Barry. And
so I got into small business marketing and really enjoyed
that time. And you know, as well as that business went,
ultimately I was really helping my husband build his dream
and it wasn't really my dream. And so after a
(03:28):
while I felt that calling to do something for myself again.
And so from there I actually became a travel influencer.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Which is amazing for me. All these pivots are just amazing.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
All completely unconnected as well. So for almost a decade
we actually created content around luxury family travel and so
me and my husband and our two kids, we would
travel around the world, make videos documented show families how
they can do it as well, and that was really terrific. However,
(04:00):
I again felt that calling to, you know, do something
different again, to shift away. And you know, there's a
lot of complex reasons, but you know, the short answer
is I started getting uncomfortable with fame essentially, you know,
of like having us and my kids in public, right, Yeah,
And so you know I decided to pull away again.
(04:22):
And it was in that final pullback that I thought,
what is going on with me? This is now the
second time in my career I've built up a national
media platform and then decided to walk away. And so
in that analysis is actually the where the kernel of
the book idea came from. So the Flingshot effect is
all about the idea that we're so conditioned to think
(04:44):
of careers as the things that we have to always
move upward and forward, and in my experience, it's actually
always been the times where I've pulled back and actually
taken a step down from the thing that looks really successful,
prestigious on the outside, and taking a step back or
step down and really realigned and took a pause and thought, well,
(05:07):
what do I actually want to do? And it's that
process that's very much like a slingshot, you know when
you pull a slingshot back. It's that pullback that creates
the focus and the momentum so that when you let go,
you are able to launch forward with power and with precision.
And that's really what the book is about.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And pulling back is really hard. I remember last year
I decided that after twenty years, I wasn't going to
do motivational small business speaking anymore. I was done with traveling,
I was done with speaking and entertaining audience and things
like that. And it was hard to do that and
say no to future gigs, but it just felt right
at the stage of my career. How do we how
(05:49):
do we, I guess, tell people that it's okay to
stop because there's so many things in our culture said
you got to move forward, you got to get bigger,
you got to get better all of those kinds of things,
because people see pulling back as some kind of failure.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Absolutely, and this is exactly what I want to challenge,
right because prestige can be a heck of a drug,
right where we all get sure high on it, we
all are drawn to it. We're scared of what people
will think if we walk away from prestige. But the
reality is that taking a strategic pause can actually save
(06:23):
you years of building in the wrong direction, which you know,
it sounds like you kind of got to that point
where you realized, is this really what I want anymore?
And I think taking that pause is so important because
it gives you space to evaluate rather than just going
on autopilot where I'm doing the thing that everyone tells
me I'm supposed to want. Is it really what I
(06:44):
want anymore? Is this working anymore? And understand that it's
okay for life to have different seasons, right Like I
was in a season when I first started the travel
content that I wanted to be on a plane every
other week. It was intoxicating. We loved it, you know,
really genuinely, and then we got to a season where
we realized, you know, what we were really craving some
(07:05):
stability and being at home and you know, being relishing
the more mundane aspects of life, and now that that
feels really right in the season. So I think we're
so conditioned to constantly chase momentum, but sometimes the smartest
thing you can do is pause and ask is this
still working for me?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
And I think there's also a difference, as you talk about,
between burnout, right and a slingshot moment. Like I didn't
feel that when I ended speaking that I was burned out.
I just felt that my speaking career was complete, right, Yea.
I accomplished everything I had accomplished everything I had accomplished.
I spoken in front of audiences up to ten thousand people,
I travel all over the country, all of the world,
(07:46):
and I was complete. I wanted to do other kinds
of things in my career before I've retired.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So I don't think you just do it through burnout, correct.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
And I think what you're really hitting on there is
the emotional intelligence aspect of it, right. These things like clarity,
self awareness, agility, these are really the elements that are
going to create success for small business owners, for entrepreneurs
in the future because it's not just about who can
hustle the hardest, who can be the loudest in the room.
(08:19):
It's really about who has the most clarity about what
they are genuinely wanting to do and what feels most aligned.
Because I think audiences, and you know, you may have
felt this to some extent, but audiences can tell when
you're phoning it in. And I think that that is
part of the point that I got to in some
(08:42):
of these points where I decided to walk away, where
I realized that, you know what, my heart isn't in
it in that same way that it was before. And
I don't want to shortchange my audience and pretend like
I'm still the person that I was before, because it
doesn't feel often and they're going to catch onto that,
you know, in a very subconscious way. And so I
(09:05):
think sometimes it's also a way for you to actually
serve people better by not forcing yourself to keep going
on that same path.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
And it's hard, though, I think, to convince yourself sometimes
that your heart's not in it. You know, there's are
all saying that if you find yourself in a hole,
the first thing I do is stop digging.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It is really hard.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I think in our society to actually close down a
business voluntarily, and when it's doing okay, right, and so,
how do you convince yourself that you know that it
is really time to move on?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
How do you?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I guess the question really is how do you reinvent
your business without bringing it all down? How do you
do a successful pivot?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Yeah? And I think sometimes the question is is it
time to pivot or do I walk away completely? Because
different situations will call for different things. And so when
I think back to my own career, for example, that
first blog that I was running, I ended up walking
away from it, but really I could have actually decided
(10:09):
to pivot instead. And what I mean specifically is that
the part that I didn't love anymore was the media
commentary aspect. It got to a point where I felt
like I was just an opinion factory where anytime something
happened in the news there was some you know, awful
injustice that happened, I had to just quickly come up
(10:31):
with a SoundBite and get on camera and say my piece,
and you know be And I was good at it, right,
which is why I was always called back over and
over that it started feeling really shallow to me, and
so you know, there were obviously, you know, a lot
of changes in my life as well that contributed to it.
But when I think back on it, instead of walking away,
I could have pivoted, right, I could have just deemphasized
(10:53):
the media commentary part focused on some of these other
aspects where I felt like I was really controlling, you know,
maybe having a more long form narrative of actually writing
or speaking and stepping away from the media a little bit.
So I think that's one example where I could have
pivoted rather than you know, completely walked away. And then
now with this most recent transition out of the travel content,
(11:17):
that is really a point where I had to walk
away from actually creating family content because my concerns were,
I want my children to have a normal life. I
don't want them to grow up in this cage of
fame that I have built Break by Briack video by video,
and so in order to do that, they cannot be
(11:37):
in the content moving forward. And so that was less
of a pivot and more of a complete exit. So
I think that, you know, for small business owners and entrepreneurs,
there's always going to be that point where you have
to decide is it is it one specific aspect of
my business from my career that's not working anymore, And
if so, how can I shift away from that or
(12:00):
eliminate that one bottleneck or that one part that's not
making me happy? Or is it something that is completely
fundamental to the existence of this business or this career,
in which case, actually it's time to do a complete exit.
But even when you do that, you know, like you mentioned,
you don't have to burn it all down, right, This
can be a gradual process. And I think that's another
(12:21):
reason I feel very strongly about writing this book, which
is that in entrepreneurship especially, there's so much emphasis on this,
you know, burn the ships. You can't give yourself an exit.
You got to go all the way in. Yeah, exactly.
And it's like, listen, a lot of the people who
(12:42):
are telling you to burn the ships have safety nuts
that they want, right. They have they have rich parents,
have a rich spouse. They you know, they have a
huge nestag from selling a previous business. You know, for
the rest of us, we still need to pay bills, right,
We can't afford to have these grand gestures, as attractive
(13:02):
as they may be. And so you know, the idea
of stepping down a little bit in order to pivot,
I think is an idea that is going to help
a lot of people because it's really given you permission, like, hey,
you don't have to completely just quit your multiple six
figure job and go and open a bakery. Why don't you,
you know, switch to a less demanding position that pays
(13:26):
you a little bit less, but you're still able to
cover your build and that just buys you a little
more breathing room to be able to start the next thing.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And it's easy in our society today to have some
kind of side hustle to start it, you know, you know,
temporarily or part time.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
But I guess my.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Question Krmen is you know it's it's scary to make
these changes, right, I mean, could you say, hey, I'm
good at this, I know I can do this, I
know I can earn money at this. Where do you
find the courage to get over the fear of doing
something new?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And I believe that as you age, it gets.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Increasingly difficult to pivot and do something new.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
You know, that's so interesting because I actually find maybe
the opposite is true, that I find that learning to
quit things is an important skill that we don't emphasize
enough love that. And you know, there's a lot of
focus on grit, you know, oh you've got to like
stick it through, you know, determination, stamina, Those are the
(14:24):
qualities that are really lauded in society. But I've actually
found that knowing when to walk away from something, knowing
when to quit is just as important, if not more important.
And I've actually found that time and time again, the
more times I've quit something, the better I get at it,
and the more I'm able to notice in myself when
(14:46):
when the signals are there that it's it's time to
make a change. So I actually think that, you know,
maybe in terms of I don't know, financial structure, it
may feel like the older people get, the more risk
averse they are. But I actually think that if you
make it a habit to really practice this art of
quitting and quitting well and you know, quitting with strategy,
(15:09):
not just on a whim and you know, on an
emotional outburst, I actually think that that is an important
skill because then it comes with a lot of other
things like self awareness, clarity, those all feed into your
final decision. So I actually have found that the older
I get, the better I am. I'm making these transitions.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
You know, And I can't stand, Carmen, that's saying that
quitters never win, winners never quit. And of course I
like the other expression that winners know when to quit,
right yeah, because they know when to really get out.
There's a local and they're not local anymore. The big
restaurant company around called let Us Entertain You. And you
know this guy named Melman, Richard Melman. He always knew
(15:53):
when to close down his restaurants and when they weren't working.
And to me, that's a tremendous skill to actually know
when to quit. And I think that somewhere along the line,
since I've reinvented myself so many times, you do get
the confidence that you know something, it's going to be okay.
I will figure it out and we'll be able to
get to another place and I'll be much happier than
(16:15):
I'm in the place where I'm right now. But there
is a transition. So what do you say to yourself, Carmen,
when you've gone through these transitions? What do you say
to yourself in those transitionary moments, which I think can
be the hardest.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yes, And I think really the hardest part of this
is learning to be able to sit in the stillness
and the discomfort because that pullback phase, the pause, that's
the hardest part, because the silence is almost deafening, right,
and you feel like nothing is happening, nothing is working,
(16:52):
and on the surface it seems like there's no progress
being made. But I think you have to understand that
it's important to really use that time to really ohone
in on what is working and what is not working
about your career, about your life, and sometimes that you know,
to get a little woo woo like. Sometimes that goes
(17:14):
into also feeling what your body is telling you. You know,
I think sometimes we are so in our minds that
we sometimes don't realize that actually there's a lot of
signals sometimes that our body is sending us in a
way that doesn't even get to the level of our brains.
And what I mean by that is, you know, sometimes
you're in a situation and you just feel tightness tightness,
(17:38):
like a constriction in your chest, or maybe you're even
a little bit out of breath, or things just feel
really tense, and there's nothing sort of logically or intellectually
wrong with the situation. You're in. But sometimes that that's
your body telling you, hey, pay attention to this. Something
is out of alignment here. And you know, I think
when you're able to take that pause and that pullback,
(18:00):
you have the space to be able to pay attention
to these kinds of sometimes subtle signals. I mean, sometimes
it'll knock you over the head right, And sometimes what
happens is you ignore the subtle signals and then and
then you get the bunk over the head where it's like, oh, okay,
I get it, I need to stop doing this thing.
But yeah, I think it's learning to be comfortable in
(18:21):
the discomfort that is frankly difficult, but also something that
you get better with practice.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You know. It's interesting for me you were saying about
something in your body, because one of the reasons I
decided to complete my speaking career is my body really
didn't want to be on an airplane every week.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I just didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I just want to check into one more hotel and
not knowing where I was. You know, if I woke
up in the morning and there was someone in my bed,
I hopefully I was at home, you know, And so
I just I just didn't want to do that.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Anymore. So, I think your body does tell you signals.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
What do you do when perhaps your spouse, your partner
isn't supportive or there are afraid of the pivot or
the change you're going to make?
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, I mean I think this is I don't have
an easy answer for this, but I will.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, because I don't know the answer.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
That it's two of us. Well, I would say that
what I have noticed in my life and in the
lives of people around me, is that sometimes if you
keep pushing off the change, life will change it for
you in a way that you don't like. Right, So
I think also the idea of the slingshot is pull
(19:40):
back before you get to that point, like you want
to be able to make that transition and notice these
needs for a change before you know the world does
it for you and you have no choice because very
often you know inside of you what would you need
to do right on some deep level. You may not
(20:01):
know the specifics, but you know when something is not working,
and I think very often we tend to ignore that
feeling for as long as possible until it gets to
a point where something terrible happens. And you know, in
your case, if you didn't listen to that voice, and
you kept speaking, you kept getting on a plane over
and over again. It's possible that it could lead to
(20:24):
a major health problem, right because you're just like not
paying attention to what your body is telling you, what
your heart is telling you, and you keep going and
pushing ahead. And so you know, when it comes to
a partner who doesn't maybe share your vision, I think
maybe that is something to talk about, where you know,
you talk about, well, what's what's the worst case scenario
(20:46):
if I keep going on this path? What's the very
negative thing that can happen? And doesn't make more sense
for us to pivot now and find a way to
a different path rather than charging forward to this sort
of inevitable disaster. And you know, because I think it's
human to want to avoid discomfort or you know, to
(21:11):
to avoid negative things rather than going towards positive things.
But isn't there a urn But that's something avoidance. I
can't think of it right now, but you know it's
it's I think it's human nature for us to want
to avoid unpleasant things more than for us to gravitate
towards something possive. So absolutely that could be that could
be a tool in the toolbox.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So so how did you and your husband how have
you dealt with all of this because you've had a
lot of different transitions in pivoting, and so is he,
you know, closing down his karate for the pandemic in
the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Yeah, I mean it's it hasn't been easy. And I
think anytime that you close a business, it's like giving
up a part of your yourself or or giving up
on a dream, right, because I really think like every
small business ultimately started as a dream to some extent,
and I think it's not easy. And I think a
(22:03):
lot of this really comes down to identity shifts. And
I think, you know, when I walked away from the
blog and the media commentary to become basically Sense's wife
and Sean's mom, for me, that was a big identity shift,
right because it felt like you're going from something bigger
to something smaller, and you know, same thing for him.
(22:23):
I think when he moved from being Sensey to being
essentially a YouTuber. I remember what we ran into one
of our students reatly and he was like, ooh, sense
you're a YouTuber now, and like it's it's just so
funny that we can hold all these different identities. But
(22:44):
I think that that's why it's important to do some
of this inner work, because work is going to change
all around you. Businesses change, careers change. Sometimes it's by choice,
sometimes it's not. And if you don't know who you
are outside of what work you do, it's going to
be really hard when you have to grapple with a
(23:06):
change in that and do the inner work at the
same time while you're also trying to figure out how
to make a living. I think that's why, you know,
I write on substack every week about career reinvention and
the future of work, and I think you know, we're
hurtling towards this time of enormous change with the rise
of AI and mass layoffs, and I think a lot
of people are realizing, wow, I need to figure out
(23:28):
who I am outside of this job title, because you know,
some of us will have the luxury of pivoting by choice,
but a lot of people are going to be shoved
into it without any choice. And I think when you
are both reeling from the loss of your job and
your livelihood and at the same time trying to figure
(23:48):
out who you are and do this identity work. That's
going to be a lot harder than trying to grapple
with some of those questions now before you get to
that point where you're also dealing with sort of the
real life challenges of what that means.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Well, Karmen, and I appreciate me on the show. I
know you have an upcoming book, The Slingshot Effect. But
where can people catch up with you on your substack?
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Yes, so you can find me on substack. You can
either look up my name Carmen van Kirkhov or the
publication title is Pack Lightlift Full.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Carmen, thanks so much, and I want to thank everyone
for joining this week's radio show. I got to thank
our incredible booking producer Sarah Schaffrin. If you're serious bout
be more successful in twenty twenty five, give me a
callupsee have a private line seven seven three eight three
seven eight two five zero, or email me at Barry
at Molts dot com. Remember, love everyone, trust a few,
(24:40):
and pal your own canoe. Have a profitable and passionate week.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
If you can find Barrymoltz on the web at Barrymolts
dot com or more episodes of Small Business Radio at
smallbuzradioshow dot com,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.