Episode 75: Redefining Success

“There becomes this thing inside of us that we know if we don’t jump we’re going to die inside just a little. ”

— Whitney Johnson

“I wanted to explore why I was so obsessed with this idea that I had failed in my ambition - that I had failed in not really pursuing it to the ends of the earth. ”

— Tess Vigeland

It's the end of the year - a time when a lot of us think about changing our lives in one way or another. In this show we talk to two traditionally successful women who left their old work lives for the unknown. But jumping meant leaving their identities behind as well as their paychecks. 

Tess vigeland

Tess Vigeland is the former host of Marketplace Money, the public radio show here in the US. She left her job at the top of her game, and initially wondered if she was nuts to have done so. She writes about it in Leap - Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want. Whitney Johnson was itching to move away from her comfortable existence at Merrill Lynch and challenge herself in new ways. She invites other people to do something similar in her book, Disrupt Yourself - even if you may not think you need disrupting. 

whitney johnson

This episode of the show is sponsored by Foreign Affairs. Listeners can get three-quarters off a year's subscription by going to ForeignAffairs.com/broad.

Since the three of us spoke, Tess has begun her life on the road in Vietnam - you can follow her travel blog. You can read Whitney Johnson's Harvard Business Review posts here. 

You can also read a transcript of the show. 

Episode 74: On Confidence

“You see a man in a job interview and he answers off the cuff of his sleeve, he doesn’t think, oh my gosh, I might not able to do that, or could I do that?”

— Denise Barreto

“The times when I’ve had to ask for things it’s seemed so hard, it’s almost unthinkable that I would be able to ask for something and that I deserved it.”

— Stacey Vanek Smith

Study after study shows women have less confidence than men. But you hardly need a study to work that out. Just look around you - how many women do you know who exude the same self-belief as the men in your life? Confidence, or the lack of it, is a big issue in many women's careers, including my own. In this show I talk to business owner Denise Barreto, whose confidence I envy, and NPR reporter Stacey Vanek Smith, who shares a lot of my hangups. She has to psych herself up to ask for things at work, because she's not quite sure she deserves it - but she says you can use that discomfort to your advantage.  

You can also read a transcript of the show. 

Don't forget to check out my sponsor for this episode, M.M. LaFleur - if you order your Bento Box between now and December 31st, 2015 you'll be entered into a draw for a $300 gift card.

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Further reading:

Women's Confidence Gap in the Workplace, via Refinery 29.

The Confidence Gap and Women Entrepreneurs, from Forbes. 

Men's 'Honest Overconfidence' May Lead to Male Domination in the C-Suite, via Columbia Business School. 

This Atlantic piece is written by Confidence Code authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman.