“The Portfolio Life” – Have you ever considered your personal interests and activities to be a portfolio?  A portfolio worth assessing and diversifying? In this interview with author Christina Wallace, you’ll learn about the four pillars of creating a portfolio life, how they might inform your personal brand, and three exercises to help you be more purposeful in your life – beyond what’s on your business card.

CHRISTINA WALLACE

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• Book “The Portfolio Life” – https://amzn.to/3DxUd0U
  
• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinawallace/
  
• Website – https://christinawallace.com/
  
• Christina’s recommendations:
  
• The Anxious Achiever by Morra Aarons Mele – https://amzn.to/3VJ58ew
  
• The Perfect Story by Karen Eber – https://amzn.to/4iJcs3A
  

CONNECT WITH ANDREA 

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• LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
  
• LinkedIn – Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/
  
• Website: https://www.TalkAboutTalk.com
  
• Newsletter:  https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/
  
• YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/
  

TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever considered this?  If you are 100% focused on your job and you lose your job, then of course you lose everything.  YIKES.

That voice, by the way, belongs to Christina Wallace, the author of a book I highly recommend, called “The Portfolio Life.”  I met Chistina a few months ago at a conference, where she gave a talk about her book. The exercises that Christina outlines in her book can change your life. This is definitely not an understatement.  Are you ready to learn more?

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #179, 

“The Portfolio Life and Your Personal Brand with Christina Wallace”

You’re about to hear my conversation with Christina, where you will learn about a framework and several exercises that will help you identify your personal priorities. You’ll also hear the full spectrum of emotion – from crying about my lost friend, to laughing out loud. 

Here’s an excerpt from her the book jacket fr “The Portfolio Life” that I think you’ll find compelling. Here’s what it says: 

Whether you’re sick of being told you’re worth is inextricably tied to your work, or that setting boundaries and protecting your personal life means you aren’t all in, this book will walk you step-by-step through the process of designing a strategy for the long-haul. Because you deserve rest, relationships, and a rewarding career – not someday, but today. After all, you only live once.

Yes, that’s pretty compelling

Of course, I always see these things through the lens of our respective personal brands. These exercise provide powerful insight into our true brands.  As you’ll hear me I admit to Christina, I assigned one of her exercises in a personal branding bootcamp that I ran recently. And it went exactly as she forecasted: the first part was easy.  Simple.  But then it got very difficult,  And of course, that where the magic happens. 

Let’s dive in. I’m going to interview Christina and then we’ll get right to the interview. After the interview as always, I will summarize with three main learnings that I want to reinforce for you. This time it will be three exercises that I hope you’ll try. Are you ready?

A self-described “human Venn diagram”, Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, an active angel investor, and a co-producer of Broadway musicals. Her latest book called “The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build A Life Bigger Than Your Business Card” was published in 2023.  This is the book we reference in our conversation that you’re about to hear. You can find the link to this book in the shownotes for this episode. 

A serial entrepreneur, Christina has built businesses in ecommerce, edtech, and media. In 2019, she also co-authored, “New To Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth,”  and was the co-host of “The Limit Does Not Exist”, an iHeart podcast with millions of downloads over 3 seasons and 125 episodes.

In her free time, Christina sings with various chamber choirs, embarks on adventure travel, and is a mediocre endurance athlete. Yes, those are her words. Christina lives in Cambridge Massachusetts with her husband and their two children.

INTERVIEW

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Christina, for being here today to talk to us about the portfolio life.

Christina Wallace: Thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So when I looked at the table of contents, Christina, I loved how you structured the book. You’ve got the 3 parts, the why we’re doing this, the what we’re doing and the how we’re doing it. And then you also present the 4 pillars. So I was wondering if you could start by sharing with the listeners what each of the 4 pillars represents.

Christina Wallace: Sure, when I was trying to ground this model in sort of a structure of like. what is it giving you right like you think about this from startup pitches all the time, or any sort of product like, stop telling me about the features.

Tell me about what problem it solves what it gives. You know the person who’s thinking about it. That’s how I came to these 4 pillars. It effectively says, here is why and how the portfolio. Life delivers on what it does for you. Number one. 

And I have experienced this. It was incredibly destabilizing, and I think because of that, many people stay in jobs longer than they would want to. They stay in entire career paths because they can’t imagine a version where they might have to reinvent themselves. And it’s just very, very like narrowing as you get older. And so it starts with this notion of like, how could you build an identity, define an identity even that it isn’t about how you monetize your time. And instead is based on these components of, like the world you live in the skills you have access to the networks you’re a part of, and build this out via a Venn diagram, as you see, sort of those intersections is where you have a unique perspective. and once you have that understanding of your identity, you can see that I’m more than one thing that gives you optionality pillar, 2 which says, like, you can always do more than one thing. You never are stuck.

If you can see that you have options and those options can be really small. They can be like, Hey, let’s find a different context for doing this work. You love the work you hate the company. Let’s find a different place and define very positively. What are you going toward? Not what are you running away from?

But in many other cases it’s bigger options. It’s you did this 1st season of life that was great. And now let’s zigzag. Let’s pull something else out of your Venn diagram and drive with that for the next decade. And so really understanding that like, basically, unless you’re on your deathbed, you still have options that you can pursue. But you have to see them right. And this becomes a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

And that brings us to the 3rd pillar, which is diversification.

That’s actually where I started the entire model. The portfolio life is very much based on this idea of a financial portfolio. Right? We think about how we diversify our financial portfolio. and we can allocate our assets and allowing us to take some risk. because you have to have risk in order to get returns.

But you can mitigate that risk through diversification by thinking about how can I?

Can? I, you know, invest here that won’t be correlated with that thing over there, and if one thing falls apart, the whole portfolio doesn’t fall apart. It’s the same way with our lives that the only way to survive the amount of disruption we are currently facing is to be diversified. There are so many moving pieces that we can’t foresee. We can’t plan for that. You can’t be linear about your strategy. So instead, how do you think about? Are there hobbies? And again, networks, relationships, side hustles, whatever that is. that both gives you something on a day-to-day basis. You’re not doing everything just because of doomsday. but by having sort of that diversified a base of activities and people and skills.

If and when disaster befalls your industry, your geography, your relationship, whatever you have other irons in the fire that you can, you can access. and ultimately that brings us to the 4th pillar. The point of this entire model is flexibility.

The generations that came before us, our parents, our grandparents.

On the one hand, they might have had it quote easier, right? A slightly less disruptive world, a slightly more predictable place, but I think they also were stuck on a linear path, whether they wanted to or not. You picked a thing, and then you did it for 40 years.

And I see the moments where I think my family would have really appreciated the idea, to reinvent themselves, or to take a different path for a different chapter of life, but that wasn’t an option for them. So as much as it can be annoying that we’re like everything is getting thrown up in the air every few years or every few weeks, even right like the world is changing and we can’t. We can’t ever have nice things at the same time it offers us this huge amount of flexibility.

That means we can build for a season of life. and when that season shifts, when the thing that we’ve built no longer serves us. You know we’ve got new friction that wasn’t there before rebalance your portfolio, so you can think about what’s that season when I have small children. That’s the season I’m in right now, or the season where I need to take care of my parents, or where I have a major health issue that I need to address or or I’m burnt out. And I need a sabbatical right? It allows us to bit really creative and flexible, about meeting our needs and allowing our goals and motives to change, which is just human nature.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love your term seasons. I think it’s I think it’s almost empowering right, because people might think, you know I’ve reached this. you know, pinnacle in my career. And then something happens. And they, I know they freak out people. I get these emails from people. Andrea, my professional brand. My identity is changing. Help, help. And I say. 1st of all congratulations, a breath, you’re going to be okay.

Christina Wallace: Oh, yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I think it’s fantastic. So with these 4 pillars, I’m hearing a couple things that that the benefit is personal in terms of your life satisfaction definitely, your career satisfaction, and probably even your life satisfaction. Right? So it is a shame that our parents weren’t thinking this way in previous generations.

Christina Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of empathy for them where you’re kind of like you had to pick a thing at 16 or 22.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Christina Wallace: And the version of you at that stage maybe even wanted that thing deeply. And then you turned out to be moderately good at that thing in the best case scenario, and that thing is all you ever got to be. And you know I see the joy in many cases of my mother-in-law getting to retirement after a fabulous career as an executive, and realizing that, like A, she’s not dead yet. and has a ton to offer. And B. There was this whole piece of her that she hadn’t really been in touch with. Since college, which was art, art, history, and Spanish. She had studied them in college, she hadn’t touched them for her entire career, and now, at 70 something is retired and is like, I’m going to go. Be a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I’m going to give tours in Spanish to tourists. There’s this whole piece of me that that had to be at a 0% allocation for a really long time. But I’m existing in this same world today and the world today, says I still have another season ahead, so I think as frustrating as it may have been for them in those seasons where they didn’t have that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Flexible.

Christina Wallace: The joy is, they’re still here, and this applies to them, too. And so, you know, I see a lot of people thinking this book is really applicable, for, you know, young graduates or people reaching new parent status or going through those transitions. But I think it’s just as relevant for folks at any stage of transition across a career.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So speaking of this transition, I’m thinking there are catalysts that may happen like retirement, or like being told.

You know you’ve kind of reached your cap in this organization.

Christina Wallace: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Or your family role change, you become a parent, or you become an empty nester. There’s these catalysts that happen. But there’s also an opportunity, I think, for people when they read the portfolio life and really internalize it and act on it. To be proactive and to and to, you know, take advantage of this opportunity when you were talking about your mother-in-law, I was thinking I had a very. very dire conversation with a friend of mine that was dying of brain cancer.

Christina Wallace: Hmm.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And he said to me, I asked him if he had any advice for me, and he said. I, I just hope that before you are in the stage that I’m in, Andrea, that you will live your life and not have any regrets, and if there’s something right now that in the back of your mind. You’re thinking you should do.

Go do it for me, Andrea, and for you. Please do it. And I was like right away. I thought. you’re going to make me cry. No, you know. But you know what the thing was, though, Christina I had to paint. I literally went home and signed up for a painting class.

Christina Wallace: Yup!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So many of it. So, for your mother-in-law was painting for me. It was.

Christina Wallace: Also fainting.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: But we most of us have things.

Christina Wallace: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That we are.

Christina Wallace: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What’s the word we’re hiding? We’re ignoring.

Christina Wallace: Yeah, I talk about the work of excavating right? There’s so much of who we are that has been there from the beginning. Right once you see these things about yourself, then you go back and you’re like.

Oh, I have a story from when I was 6 that my mom used to always tell. That is a perfect example of this exact thing. And you’re like, Oh, I’ve always been who I’ve always been. But as we grow up it’s good thing I’m not wearing mascara today.

As we grow up, we feel like, and in some cases are explicitly told. But in many cases this is self editing.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We feel like we have to put those things away so that we can be serious and grow up.

Christina Wallace: And pick the things that are appropriate for the level of education, ambition, etc., that that we aspire to. and many of those things we put away as childish things, and what we, what we lose in doing that is, while it may be true. You were never going to have a career as a painter. I don’t know. I haven’t seen your work. There’s something brilliant that you get out of the act of painting that is separate from the value of the finished object. and when you decide that the value of the finished object you can’t monetize enough to pay your mortgage. you get rid of the entire practice of.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh!

Christina Wallace: And you lose something in that process. Which is why I think many of us, when we get to this, like, you know, sort of midlife crisis era. It’s because we have lost so many like limbs and attributes and elements of who we are, simply because in capitalism the outputs of that work wasn’t valuable.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow! You have no idea. Actually, you probably do have some idea of how much that resonates with me. And I can. I can hear, you know, my coaching clients saying, Yes, yes.

So in the work that I do with my clients on personal branding. This is a similar way of saying some of saying what you’re saying. I think I encourage them to really think deeply about their unique identity and not to follow the expected path. And I’ve said this like I feel like a million times, you can be a very strong B plus by copying others and following the expected path. But if you really want to knock it out of the park, if you really want to be successful and happy.

Then think deeply about your unique interests. So of the 4 pillars, I’d really like to focus on identity, because I think we can get. We can get some traction here.

Can you describe your Venn diagram and also what? What? Generally your I guess portfolio Venn diagram could or should look like.

Christina Wallace: Yes, absolutely. So. The Venn diagram I talk about sort of these 2. I love circles. All sorts of circles. So the Venn diagram, we obviously know, is like the intersection of various sets from set theory, intersection of various circles. I think of this as who you are and your portfolio is what you do.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Christina Wallace: So your Venn diagram, on the whole, is pretty static now. It can change over time. Certainly, as you develop new interests, they might show up in different ways, or as you start to see the expression of some of this work, you see, like, Oh, wow! This is actually part of a bigger picture. Let me kind of reframe. What’s in those buckets, those circles? But it’s pretty steady over time. Now. There are pieces of your Venn diagram you might not be using day in and day out. They might be at a 0% allocation in your portfolio. But it doesn’t change that. They are part of you. So I hear a lot of people in my I say in the very simplified version of my Venn diagram.

I’ve built a career at the intersection of business technology and the arts. So you go back and you look at I was a music, a very serious musician, a classical musician. And then I added theater as an actor and director, and now a producer to that, and tried some arts management. And then I went off to business school and got into the tech world. And I did startups and investing right like on the surface. The linear, you know, chronology makes no sense. But when you look at it in sort of these categories, you’re like, okay, I can see where those intersections gave you this. And these intersections gave you that and the joy of that is, you can start to see where there are intersections that you haven’t played in yet.

We were like, oh, maybe there’s opportunity there for me to take this information and that network and like find something interesting. So it can also point out opportunity that you haven’t considered. But I think in a broader, slightly less simplified Venn diagram. You know, I have industries. But I also have skills like storytelling.

You could argue. That’s part of arts. But I think it’s just part of communicating and communicating through story that I have found to be deeply relevant to who I am and how I experience the world and what I offer a room.

And that storytelling is written, it’s performative, it’s live. It’s recorded in all these different formats. And so, as a result, that actually makes me a pretty decent marketer. Right? So you can see how like the skill plus the business and the technology is like, oh, you could fit in in a marketing role at a startup.

But then there are also other things like, I’m a mediocre athlete, and I’m really quite serious about that. I’m a mediocre athlete. I’m not good, but I keep trying. I’m 6 feet tall. I should have been an athlete, and I just wasn’t for a lot of reasons, and for a long time I internalized again the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

I internalize this as like. I am not an athlete. I shouldn’t even try. And then, after my 1st startup failed and I was facing this crisis of identity.

I was like, you know what screw it. I am so bad at being bad at things like I won’t even try something if I think I’m going to be bad at it. That I’m going to just force myself to do something. I know I’m bad at which is running.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And so I took up long distance, running.

Christina Wallace: And I. You can’t escape the fact that you’re bad for a very you just one step in front of the other, and you’re like, oh, this sucks! This is taking forever! I’m exhausted, and I still to this day I’m a terrible runner. I’ll run marathons. They take 5 and a half hours. That’s nothing to brag about. But I keep doing it. And by continuing to show up 2 things happened. Number one, I actually started to get a little better. and I started to recognize all the ways in which investing in my body and my health and my movement really mattered for my overall happiness. Certainly, as I think about some of my longer term goals in life, a lot of that rests on staying in good health. and it’s not something you can take it like for granted at 40, the way you can at 25.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Christina Wallace: But the other thing it taught me was like I could change that story from I’m someone who succeeds to. I’m someone who shows up and works really hard. and that opens up a lot of worlds to me. It allows me to be an amateur at 41, when otherwise I would say, well, the boat has sailed. If I haven’t become an expert, I’m never going to right like a lot of these beliefs about who we are self imposed.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Christina Wallace: And sometimes they’re based on, you know, data from a childhood moment, or a teacher or a comment a partner had. Right? Like, I’m not saying we invented it whole cloth. but I would argue that a lot of this case the data has expired.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And we talk about this in startup world all the time. Right? How old is the data.

Christina Wallace: Have you refresh the data to make current conclusions. And so in a lot of cases, when I hear people say, Well, I’m not that. Oh, I’d be. I’d be terrible at that like, I can’t even think about that. I’m like, How do you know?

Yeah, how recent? Only have you tried.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: Would you like to go? Run some experiments and see if that’s still true?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So this sounds like a growth mindset, right? But it’s not just okay. I’m going to try and learn this. It’s changing your mind from. I can’t do that to. I’m at least going to give it a shot. and you just made me think of thing of something that again, personally that happened to me. 3 degrees in business.

I’ve taken plenty, of course.

Christina Wallace: Slight overachiever there. No day.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, it’s all business commerce, Mba. Doctorate in business, and you know, of course, over that time I took several courses on entrepreneurship. I always admired people who were entrepreneurs, and I always said explicitly, directly, I said, I don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. And then I came across this passion of coaching executives, and now I’ve built a business around it, and my friends are like, Oh, my goodness, Andrea, like what have you done? And I’m like.

I know I’m reading. I’m listening and reading to books about building businesses all the time now, and it’s like my identity it went from. I am not that kind of person to. This is something that I’m going for like and spending. Talk about my portfolio like a significant amount of my time on it.

Christina Wallace: Of course.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: But I think a big part of that, too. I mean, I love that you are so focused on communication. And how do you think about. You know who you are and how you share that and what that looks like when you show up in the world. Because a lot of this is also relevant to like.

Well, what do you when you say, entrepreneur? What’s in your head? Is it a 25 year old Harvard dropout white dude in a hoodie in Silicon Valley, raising Vc. Funding and building something that goes to a billion dollars.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.

Christina Wallace: Like. That’s what most of us think, and that is one flavor of an entrepreneur. There are so many types of businesses, there are so many types of things. And so part of this is like changing what you see yourself as right. The stories you tell yourself, and the other part is like being sure that you’re seeing the world accurately like when we use these words. What does that mean? And are there versions of this that that might be more relevant to you than not. And how might this fit into your life? Right you go, go into that with like that design, thinking phrase of like. How might we? Rather than like I can’t. I shouldn’t I won’t it won’t. It won’t work, you know, and I think so much of that is like, we have these understandably. So we have these shortcuts, these proxies.

For how we understand people and roles and industries and spaces and geographies. because the world is so complex that we.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Christina Wallace: Possibly take in all the information every single minute, and be able to make the judgment calls we have to make right. This is evolutionary brain.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, we have to. Otherwise we wouldn’t survive or never mind thrive. Right? Yeah.

Christina Wallace: And 2 things can be true. My favorite parenting phrase.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: And those proxies, those shortcuts that we’ve used to understand. The world might be out of date. and we need to refresh them with current data and see.

Is that still what I think it is, and is it still not relevant to me the way I thought it wasn’t.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, you’re reminding me of a conversation I had very recently actually with Professor Jerry Zaltman. He’s emeritus from Hbs. And we were talking about archetypes. And so my clients love being diagnosed with what of the 12 professional identity archetypes do? What resonates the most, and then how that can provide me with direction and focus. I think it might be similar to. I guess you could say diagnosing what your Venn diagram looks like right. And Jerry was cautioning me to also caution my clients that that you know your archetype can certainly, and probably should change over time. Don’t get stuck. Yeah, right. This is the flexibility pillar, I think.

Huge. Yeah, I mean, I think even one very sort of simple version of that right now, as a professor.

Christina Wallace: I’m not managing anyone right. No one reports to me. I report to no one. Academia is a very strange place. It is and for someone who built a career as a leader and a manager.

To take a role for a big season of life where I’m not managing. Anyone can feel, you know, contradictory. You’re kind of like. Well, that’s not for me. Right like I’ve specialized in this other thing. And so those moments where you say that that gut reaction that’s not for me. I am blank. Those are exactly the moments where I want you to freeze and write down those statements. and then, like, break them apart. pull back the layers and say, like, is this true? Must this be true? What is it about being a manager that’s so crucial to my identity? Is it about the power and the prestige.

Is it about the impact, the scale of my hour? It’s not just a 1 to one like an individual contributor. Well, I get scale as a professor. I get 90 students, a semester, and they’re going to go on to become some of the biggest leaders in the world like that’s pretty good for a multiple on my hour of work. So as you start pulling that apart, you realize that, like the elements of what I’m getting out of this. What I’m interested in can be met through a huge again, the optionality, a huge set of options. But it requires just a little bit of more nuanced thinking than I think. Many of us give ourselves the time for when we’re sort of living in a world where you’re making snap judgments and having to make decisions every 30 min.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So when I heard you at the summit, live giving the presentation about your book, and then when I read it, and now again, when I’m talking to you, I’m thinking about. If you could think of it as a continuum or a spectrum.

Ranging from the thesis of the book range  right where I can’t remember the author’s name, talks about how the most successful folks are the ones that have diversification and variety in their background versus the whole. You know 30,000 touches of the ball is the only thing that’s going to get you there, and you need to be laser focused right? And it sounds like you are not necessarily prescribing a certain place on the continuum. But you’re encouraging people to be open to the range. Thesis of diversification, diversification.

Christina Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I think 2 things can be true. I think it is absolutely true that there is a whole host of worlds where specialization 30 touches on the ball, whatever that looks like is super relevant. And I’m not saying, go half ass everything and put 2% of your portfolio into 50 things right like that’s not a good portfolio.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Great.

Christina Wallace: At the same time. whether you are becoming an expert neurosurgeon or professional basketball player or artist, or anything. you literally cannot do it 24 HA day.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: And that’s where we see burnout. That’s where we see. Because, in addition to like, you need to rest a underestimated thing among high performing people. Sometimes, in addition to that, even the most fulfilling work  doesn’t meet all of your needs. Right? So if you think about this, you start this model from like, what do I need? I have financial needs. Sure. Those are probably front of mind and easiest to quantify. But then there are things like, I have growth needs, I have creative needs. I have needs around community and relationship. I have needs around impact. And knowing that my work matters, no matter what you do. It is unlikely that it is meeting all of your needs.

So, as you specialize on that thing you might recognize like, Hey, I love this thing I’m doing. and I need to have this hobby that meets this one little piece, this painting hobby. I’m not any good at it, but it gives me the meditation.

It allows me to sort of de-stress and process and be active with my hands, so I can’t get sucked into technology. and. you know, create something, and just like, let those thoughts out of my head so that that everything else has space.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: Right, and that makes me better at this other thing I’m doing. And I see you see this in the stories, in the literature. Even that supports this idea, that, like people who have something else, whatever that something else is, makes them better at the 1st thing right?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: The term consilience. I keep thinking right.

Christina Wallace: Yes, because you’re both like you get new information by stepping out into a different space. Right? We know this from like second and 3rd order network nodes are more valuable than 1st order network nodes, because they have access to new information as opposed to in our direct network. We’re all talking to the same people, reading the same things, talking, you know, about the same ideas, but in addition to that, like stepping away from something actually gives space for the 1st thing to marinate. And so I want my neurosurgeon to have a hobby I want right? I want. And they’re a big part of that is, it makes them better at what they’re doing. But the other piece of it is that it means that on the day that they’re no longer loving what they’re doing.

They won’t force themselves to do it for a single day longer than that, because they have something else that brings. So I love that that gives them identity. And I think that’s a piece that we can certainly see in society right now a whole generation that was never allowed to have anything else other than their jobs, and now they are holding on to power for far longer than they should.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm.

Christina Wallace: Because who are they? If not the name on their business card? Right? And so I agree with specialization. Certainly there are fields that necessitate that. But I also agree with range. I believe that you can’t just be one thing no one is. We’re all 3 dimensional. And so, recognizing what are all of those other elements of me? I think about this, like the O’Hare snow in Airport test, which is like on hour 5 of being stranded at the airport. What are we talking about? Because at that point we’ve covered the basics we’ve covered politics. We’ve covered Taylor Swift. We’ve covered, you know what you’re thinking about for Q. 4. At that point we’re down a rabbit hole.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: And I am probably telling you about some random Broadway production that Mary Zimmerman directed in 1998. And you’re probably telling me about whatever, and those are the things that you’re like. Oh, that’s what lights you up.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? Okay, so this is a beautiful segue to one of the exercises that I learned about when I was listening to your presentation that I stole and prescribed to a personal branding boot camp that I just a couple weeks ago I challenged the folks in the boot camp to do your 100 wishes for your life exercise, and I think it’s similar to what you were just saying. Right after an hour you get to.  So do you want to describe that exercise.

Christina Wallace: I love this exercise, and I even got it from a wonderful ux designer who has written quite extensively about this work. And so it’s all sort of. I attribute this to like the best of the Internet. When we all just build on each other’s ideas, open source, Internet world 100 wishes. The idea is we’re not talking about goals. Goals are things you achieve. Wishes are a little bit different.

And you think about on your deathbed. We want to get all nice and sappy. What are the things that you want to leave behind.

What is the imprint that your life has had? And so that’s everything from like the artifacts, the organizations, the work, the paintings, the whatever that will outlast you, but also. who do you want to have loved? And what do you want to have seen and experience? What are the stories that you’re telling in that moment right? Like, what is the measure of your life?

And I put sort of like the 100 100 feels insane because you start writing. You’re like 100. Can’t be that hard. You get to like 30, and you’re like I have to do 100.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Got to 30, Christina. I got to 30, and I I know I know my mind was playing with me a little bit. said at about 30 to 35. It got really hard.

Christina Wallace: I know I.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Then.

Christina Wallace: You’ve got.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: The magic happens.

Christina Wallace: Grab a glass of wine, grab some something, and go take a walk and keep thinking. And that’s where the magic happens, because after 30. You get through the obvious resume stuff and the easy stuff like, I want to have a family and you get to. You’re like, what does that even mean, what does that mean? It forces you to start getting really specific. I got like, I want to have a relationship with my adult children where we are still actively in each other’s lives.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm.

Christina Wallace: That requires a huge investment in the relationship we build from childhood onward.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Christina Wallace: Because that’s not guaranteed. You don’t just show up, and you both live long enough, and you get to be in each other’s lives as adults. I want to be able to pick up my grandkids when I’m 90. That’s an investment in my health that I have to start making. Now. I want to win a Tony Award.

I wrote that one down 5 years before I started producing Broadway. and it was for me it came. It was surprised me that I was like, really you. You stepped away from a theater career 15 years ago, like interesting. And it wasn’t about the award. I mean. Obviously the award is lovely.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Awards are good. Yeah.

Christina Wallace: It was. It was the notion that, like I’m not done with that part of my life yet I miss it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I want to be back, and I want to be back in a meaningful way, not like a community theater. Help out with the school play way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but like I’m talking big leagues.

Christina Wallace: And so when that moment arrived, it was like, Hey, do you want to invest in this Broadway show? Do you want to get involved as a producer. Do you know what that means? I was like? Oh, that’s an easy yes. because I already excavated that part of me and realized. I want it. I want it, even if it seems silly to want it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: At this age.

Christina Wallace: So you start writing things down, and this is the moment where and then, you know, once you’ve got the long list, you sort of put them into buckets. and it gives you a sense of like. Is there a whole piece of my life that I haven’t been investing in? And I haven’t for a while, which is not uncommon right. You get to midlife. You’ve got a family. You’ve got responsibilities. There might be a whole piece of you that, like kind of has been ignored for a decade.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Are the seasons right?

Christina Wallace: These are the seasons, and there might be a moment where you’re like. Huh! I mean, you can’t pursue all 100 wishes every single day of the week, obviously. But if you’ve got this whole category of wishes you’re like.

I haven’t touched that in a couple of decades. It’s usually a sign that like.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: Maybe you put a 5% allocation on that. You find a way to like slot that in as like a once a week, an hour, a week, something.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: And in doing that work as you realize what needs its meeting, how it’s, it’s contributing to your happiness and your community and your growth and your just whole personness. You might realize, like, actually, I kind of want to dial that up to like 10%. 15%. Maybe this becomes like little side hustle.

Maybe this might be my next season of full-time work, and I want to start laying the groundwork for that before I step away from my day job to sort of de-risk that transition in a really intentional way, right? And, like all of these things could be true, but it allows you, if you like, actually listen to your heart’s desire as silly as that might sound. You know what you want out of your life.

You just got to sit long enough and listen to the things where you’re like. Feel so stupid writing this down.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I can do.

Christina Wallace: It, write it down.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: All right. So listen up. Talk about talk listeners. Here’s what here’s your homework, create your Venn diagram with. I know you said. Usually it’s 3 or more. It could be 5 or.

Christina Wallace: Could be. It could be 5 at about like 6 or 7. You probably want to think about a slightly different way to organize right, find the similarities and categorize a little bit, because, like 7 can feel overwhelming. But yeah, it’s there’s no fixed.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So create your Venn diagram. Look at where it’s overlapping. Think about where you’re spending your time on that Venn diagram and where the opportunities may be, and then take it to the next level and list your 100 wishes for your life.

Christina Wallace: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: This is the imprint that you want to make the legacy that you want to leave, but also the experiences that you want to have.

I think it’s fair to say that there could be goals in there, but it’s not.

Christina Wallace: For sure.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Not all goals. It’s more experiences. And what do you want to have happen and categorize them? And then and then I think it’s beautiful you can. You can proactively pursue those things, but also just that exercise will keep those themes top of mind. I love your story, Christina, about how, when the opportunity came to you to be a Broadway producer. You were like done. I already know that that’s 1 of the most important things in my life that I need to check off.

Christina Wallace: But I think oh.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, okay.

Christina Wallace: I think this is so relevant as you bring it back to personal brand. I mean, I feel like it always comes back to personal brand, because this is about who you are and how you show up in the world. No, when you have excavated things that matter to you.

The people around. You want to help you right? Everyone in your network. Everyone who works with you and knows you and loves you want to help you, but like no one’s thinking about you most of the time. and so to help you, they need to know what you need, what you want what you’re looking for. And so, having that clarity to say, I’m building this business, I’m interested in this thing. But like also, I’m kind of psyched about anything related to theater like. you know anyone if you come across right like even just saying the words out loud.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.

Christina Wallace: Allows the universe to help make it happen.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes.

Christina Wallace: Because the reason I even got to invest in that Broadway. That very 1st Broadway show is because someone in my network knew that I was a total theater. Geek!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Nice. Okay.

Christina Wallace: He got the opportunity and couldn’t take it, and said, You know who you should talk to Christina.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh! Oh!

Christina Wallace: So like this brings me these things.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Join.

Christina Wallace: Having them. Top of mind is what allows your network to show up for you.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: But you have to be clear on it, and it can’t be all over the place right? This is where, like the buckets, the organization of that story really matters, because most people can remember what 3 things about you so dial it in.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So you just said that this, the magic story word I. When I turn to chapter 9, tell your story. I was like, okay. Now it’s time to sit down and get comfortable and devour this and start writing in the margins.

You talk about how to answer the question. Tell me about yourself. You talk about avoiding being the reasons we don’t want to be the qualified quiet.

Christina Wallace: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You talk about being your own Cmo chief marketing officer.

Christina Wallace: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And you talk about having your one sentence. So I mean, there’s so much that we can unpack here. I’m just going to say, folks. You got to read the book. It’s amazing. But do you have any other stories about how this you know you do the work up front, and then you end up telling the story, not just to yourself, but sharing it with others, and the impact that that can have.

Christina Wallace: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately it sort of for me comes down to 2 things, number one. As I said, no one’s thinking about you. And so you have to arm them with the information right? And I think a lot of people really struggle with like, I don’t want to be self promotional. I’m like, it’s literally it’s not. It’s.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I hear it every day, Christina, every day, every.

Christina Wallace: Not so promotional. You’re just literally telling me, who are you like? Arm me with the things I need to know, to understand who you are, and how to help you, but the other piece of it, and that I have found very effective for me, especially as, like a slightly strange path person, a weirdo. And I say that lovingly is, I try to leave breadcrumbs of who I am in the world. And I let those people find me. And so, okay, what the hell does that mean? That means things like writing blog posts or having a sub stack or writing on LinkedIn on a regular basis, having some thought leadership that you put out in the world. I had a podcast for a while same idea, it is being part of communities and sort of showing up to things and raising my hand and making it very clear that, like this is part of who I am, and I’m going to just leave that nugget.

So that even sort of asynchronously, almost, I get inbounds constantly through my website. I have a website you’re like, well, of course you do. You’re a professor and author. I had a website. When I graduated from Harvard Business School, which is insane. I was 26. I had an Mba. And I was like, you know what I need a website. I need to be findable.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Name.

Christina Wallace: And that website has changed so many times over the years. And like the Wayback machine and the Internet Archive can be a Testament to this. It has had so many lives. But the point is, I was out there. I had a front door in the Internet world, and I was findable by the people looking for someone like me.

And almost every opportunity I’ve had up to this point has been inbound. I put my work out there and then other people say, actually, I’m looking for exactly someone like you. Do you want to speak at this event? Do you want to write that book? Do you want to come and teach here, and so like. You don’t have to be blasting your story on a soapbox on the corner, but you can leave artifacts, leave breadcrumbs and then be easily findable. 

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Love it, so be purposeful, be public. I was also just reading and writing and thinking about private versus public thought leadership right? There’s so many advantages to creating a body of public thought leadership. Oh, boy, and avoid being.

Christina Wallace: Truly this book would not exist without my public thought leadership, because part of what told me that there was a book to write, and that convinced my editor that she should buy the book, was getting the comments and the conversation in. I was originally writing articles for Forbes years ago, and seeing the reaction, the responses and the feedback loop 2 specific articles I was like. This isn’t anything. I just need to write it to meet my quota for the month, and then, like it goes viral. And you’re like, Oh. is that? Huh? That’s a unique point of view, right? Like you’re letting the market literally tell you which of your ideas are unique or specific and new and fresh. You don’t have to be right. You just have to put work out there and like literally, let your audience tell you what they want more of.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So this is very compelling evidence, for why we don’t want to be the qualified quiet. But I know many of my clients they’re like, I’m not writing for Forbes. I’m not writing for Hbr, I don’t even have a blog. And I don’t want a blog. Nor do I want a podcast and I think my answer to them is. when you introduce yourself, even as simple as when you introduce yourself at the beginning of a meeting or at a networking event.

You’re not saying that you’re good at everything, but put your stake in the ground and tell them what you’re all about. You know what differentiates me compared to other communication coaches, or what differentiates me compared to other tech executives, is my whatever right.

Christina Wallace: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Christina Wallace: Well, and a big part of this, I think, is remembering with any story it starts with, Who’s the audience? And so if you’re in a room of all tech executives.

You could probably give a very high level like, oh, I am the head of product development for blank, and they all understand what that means. You don’t have to get into the details there and then you can provide something else. And you know I’m a silver medalist skier from the Olympics, right? Whatever that thing is like, because you have this shared body of knowledge in one area. You don’t have to go deep there, and you can provide like what is different about me. Based on this room. Now, if you go to a dinner for a whole bunch of Olympians.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Christina Wallace: Then, right again, what you have in common is different than what you’re different on right? And so, as I think about this is where the Venn diagram comes into play every time. Yeah, I’m not the best entrepreneur in the world. I’m not the best Broadway producer in the world. I’m not the best business person in the world, but I am the damn well, best entrepreneurial Broadway producer at a business school. So where is that combination for you? Edit your story to that one sentence. Here’s what I have to offer, and here’s where I stand out. 

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oof you will be quoted on that, Christina, I promise.

Christina Wallace: Excellent.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. I want to move now to the 3 rapid fire questions. Are you ready.

Christina Wallace: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Question number one, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Christina Wallace: I’m an ambivert. I need both. and I know this very explicitly, because, like many performers, I have a ton of energy that I emit when I’m on, and then when I get off stage or out of class, or whatever I go and like, lay on the floor of my office and just stare at the ceiling for an hour. However, you’re like, Okay, that makes you an introvert. No, during the pandemic. when I was inside for like 36 straight days.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Derek.

Christina Wallace: Bring up my 3 month old, which was basically a potato. At that point she had no personality. While my husband was working in the other room. Nonstop. I was like, I need human interaction. This is not going to work for me, so I’m an ambivert. I need a little bit of both.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, question number 2.

Christina Wallace: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What are your communication, pet peeves?

Christina Wallace: Hmm. That throat clearing, and I don’t mean the literal throat clearing. I mean the apologizing for what you’re about to say rather than just saying it or the like. Well, I know I’m not really the expert here or the Internet, and like you, fill up a solid 30 seconds, or however long you’ve been allotted.

Just start saying the things that you want to say, and we don’t have to worry about all of that. We call it throat clearing, especially when you’re writing, and it’s almost always that 1st paragraph, and you just delete the 1st paragraph, and by the second you’ve like gotten into it. Start with the second paragraph.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, very well put. I love that so. No more weak language, no more apologizing, no more posturing.

Christina Wallace: No.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Be direct. Okay. I got the head nod last rapid fire question, is there a podcast or a book, or maybe both, that you find yourself recommending lately.

Christina Wallace: A little bit of both. I have 2 books, and one book is also a. Podcast so I’ll start with that one. It’s called the Anxious Achiever by Maura Aarons Mele. It’s through, I think, LinkedIn Podcasts. And she also has a book related to it that I, freaking love and I love it a ton, and not just because she quoted me in it, but as someone who has been anxious my whole life who’s on medication for anxiety, I I really struggled with, you know, like, how might this hinder my career and all the things? And when I met Maura and we were able to actually talk about this. I realized that so many of my superpowers as a manager, as a communicator actually stem from. My anxiety right like my ability to read the room and notice micro changes in facial expressions when I’m giving a talk, and therefore allow me to adjust how fast I’m going, whether I’m dropping some of the humor that’s not being received, whether I’m pivoting, how I use proxies in my storytelling. All of that comes from like the hyper alertness of anxiety. And so I was like, oh, yes, it’s something to be managed. It’s not. I’m not going to go and encourage everyone to just lean into your anxiety. But it’s also not something to be feared. And it’s not it’s not a shortcoming. It’s just something I can harness for

how I show up in the world. So I love that one. The other one is Karen Eber, the perfect story.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Christina Wallace: It is a fantastic book. It just came out last year on literally the art and science of storytelling. She’s a storytelling coach, and it is just a brilliant playbook for anyone who’s never really thought about the mechanics, the structure, and the delivery of storytelling. It’s a whole discipline, and she sort of just lays it out there for you. So those are my 2 things.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I have thought about the mechanics, the structure of storytelling, but I’m not familiar with that book, so I can’t wait to read it.

Christina Wallace: Out!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I will put links to the podcast and both of those books in the show notes. Is there any last thought that you want to share with the talk about talk listeners about maybe the advantages of the portfolio life, or how to embody it.

Christina Wallace: I mean, I think this is why I’ve put the entire last piece the last 3, rd I would say 3, rd but it’s actually half the book on the how? Because there’s the theory, right? That’s the 1st 3rd and there’s the like, you know why you should do it. And that’s amazing, but the work of actually doing it is like a whole discipline. And so I think, if this is something that is appealing to you. I want to encourage you to actually like. Do the work. You can’t just think about it, and then hope your life will change, which is an obvious thing to say. But like also, you know, I read a lot of great books, and I’m like, that’s interesting. And then I go back and do nothing about incorporating those ideas. And and this is one of those that I think is a meaningful. As you said, like, there are people going through big moments of transitions where there’s an obvious catalyst for this. But there’s also these, these micro moments of like. There’s friction in my life that didn’t used to be there.

 Huh! That friction usually means like your needs are not getting met, or the things that used to fill you are no longer filling you, and these are the early signs before the midlife crisis, before the moments of big transition that, like, maybe I just need to tweak my portfolio a little bit, so to the extent that you want to read the book, pull up some of the exercises, grab a friend. I love doing these with friends, and sort of sit down and and like, make this your your project for a couple of weekends. I think you’d be really surprised by how much you might get out of just a couple hours of doing the work.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I can tell you that this has already made a big impact on me. And I just want to say, Thank you, Christina. I’ve learned a lot, and I really enjoyed learning even more about the portfolio life. Thank you.

Christina Wallace: Thank you so much for having me.

CLOSING

Wow.  That was an intense conversation. Tears, laughter, the whole gamut. Incredible. Thank you Christina.

Now, as always, I’m going to share with you three key learnings that I hope to reinforce coming out of this conversation with Christina. Actually, it’s more like three exercises that I hope you will try. Even just one of them.  Choose one f these three and see how it goes.  Then try another. And then another. 

Because here’s the thing. AT some point, your life is up to you. Let’s do this with our eyes wide open.  These exercises can help.  They can also illuminate some of the themes in our personal brand.

The first exercise is your personal Venn diagram. Maybe limit it to your professional life.  What are the 3-5 themes that represent your passion and your expertise?  For Christina, she said it’s business, technology and theatre.  For me, it’s  brand marketing, teaching or coaching, and communication. Maybe I’d re-label that third one self-expression. I realize that throughout my career, and even personally, I’m kind of obsessed with these three things. Now the fun starts by plotting down my various activities into these circles and where they overlap.  I hope you’ll try the same thing. What are the 3 circles in your personal Venn diagram?

The second exercise is to list the 100 wishes for your life.  Like I said, like Christina said,. The first 30—35 are easy. Then it gets tough.  Uncomfortable even.  But that’s where the magic happens.  Once you’re done your list of 100 wishes, you can start to categorize them.  And make sure you’re leaving breadcrumbs, as Chistina says, and thinking about how you’re allocating your time.

Which leads me to the third exercise.  We didn’t talk about this directly in the interview, although we did talk about it indirectly, And it’s covered in detail in The Portfolio Life Book.  It’s the exercise of allocating your time.  This is about identifying what proportion of your time, what percent you’re spending on your physical health, sleeping, working out, with your family, enjoying the outdoors focused on each of the circles in your Venn diagram, socializing with friends, looking after our children, caring for our parents, and on and on. 

I just loved how Christina highlighted how we have different seasons in our lives. SO maybe if you’re in the sandwich generation, you’re looking after your children AND your aging parents, maybe that’s not when you have time to explore your creative side,  But then the seasons change and suddenly you do. I guess the idea here is to be conscious, to be proactive about this. TO be mindful about where you’re spending your time, so you don’t have any regrets. 

After I met with Christina, I created my own pie chart of how I currently spend my time. Then one for how I wished I was spending my time. Then a third one for how I’d like to spend my time 5 years from now, when my three kids are gone and I’m an empty nester. This is important stuff.

So those are the 3 exercises that I encourage you to try. Before you embark on these exercises, I encourage you to buy Christina’s book “The Portfolio Life”. There’s a link to the book in the shownotes. I have to tell you this book is interesting.  On one hand, it’s a n easy tread.  As you can gather from our conversation, Christina is very easy to talk to.  She writes the same way that she speaks. SO in a way it’s an easy read.  But if you take her suggestions to heart, this is not at all an easy read.  I mean, creating your personal Venn diagram,. Listing your 100 wishes, and recording how you all