Learning from Everything with Maggie Blackburn, Jill-of-All Trades

It was a single phrase that immediately made me want to have Maggie Blackburn on my podcast. We were part of the same career coaching group (with past guest, Jenni Gritters) and Maggie described herself as having a “portfolio career” and supporting women who wanted the same thing. This idea seemed beautifully aligned with the career path I have followed and what some— but not all—Renaissance People follow. Maggie has a wonderful variety of work she does and shares my passion for bringing people together to build community as well as my love of volleyball among other things.

Promised Show Notes Materials (take a drink):

• Sign up for updates on my podcast and what’s happening in the Renaissance People Community.
• What’s this Renaissance Mindset I keep talking about? This “quasi-manifesto” episode seeks to explain it
• Work with me to Find Your Golden Thread
• Join Fertile Grounds, the monthly gathering of the Renaissance People Community
• Check out my video shorts series, “The Growth of Growing” (here’s the first video on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram)
• My newsletter for job seekers is “Take it With You”, where I talk about the role of translation in the job search particularly if you’re changing from one industry or discipline to another
• Ep. 9: A Mind for Memory with Brian Skellenger, Survivalist (my brain refused to remember the UW-Madison volleyball player he referenced, Dana Rettke. She was interview in this YouTube video about her mindset that led to her success in dance and volleyball).
• My reference about most athletes not being like Tiger Woods came from Range: Why Generalists Thrive in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Ep. 10: The Forever Revolution with Jenni Gritters, Multi-Passionate
• Jana Carlson’s The Co-Promotion Club (Co-Pro Club for short)
• Maggie’s LinkedIn post and Instagram video about completing a 40-day Instagram challenge and what she learned
• Maggie’s website and newsletter, “Feeling Free”

Follow Maggie on Social Media:

LinkedIn | Instagram

A few things Maggie and I discuss:

8:04 Why the “Jill-of-All-Trades” term’s actionable nature is a draw for Maggie

9:04 Sara’s expanding definition of “Renaissance Person”

10:59 The definition of a portfolio career and why it is particularly valuable today

14:56 Comparing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic vs AI on people

19:57 Maggie’s experience with dot connecting as a product marketer

21:24 Boundary spanners serving as translators

25:18 Maggie’s evolution from information systems and database designing to marketing at Slack

29:41 The drive of first-born daughters to be challenged

32:58 Don’t tell us “we’ve always done it this way”

35:20 Why short athletes inspire us (the U. of Minnesota player I was referencing was Shannon Schonrock)

36:20 Answering the dreaded question, “What do you do?” by thinking about the other person first.

41:43 Improv Game

44:47 Rapidish Fire Questions

45: 12What taking a job in college mainly for the money taught us

49:40 Metaphor options for a portfolio career

Quotes from the episode:

(Sara) I know that it's really important for us to gather live, to bounce ideas off each other, to share resources, to just get inspired by other people, because when you listen to a creative Renaissance Person talking and sharing what they're doing, it just gets you revved up and excited to do something yourself.

(Maggie) I right now am building a portfolio career. So the way that I describe it, is a career of multiple interests and income streams. And it sort of changes over time, which is nice because it relieves the pressure of having to think about what is the one thing that I'm gonna do next. And instead it can be, what am I gonna do in the next few months? And then maybe that changes or it builds out and becomes more stable.

(Sara) I'd argue in today's world, it's almost more reliable to have more of that portfolio style or idea to your work because we can't trust one company to protect us and be the “company man”, and you get a watch when you've been there for 25 years, and your name on the door. Like, that's not the dream that I think a lot of people of our generation and younger generations even have, because it doesn't really seem feasible in a lot of spaces.

(Maggie) I think again with the market changes and the shift, I feel like it does make you question how you fit into the world and how you want to show up next. I think similarly with the AI movement and people again not knowing exactly what's going to happen. It's sort of a moment to pause and be like, "OK, how is this gonna work? Where do I have control?" I think when there's no control, people try to latch onto what they have control onto.

(Sara) The worst positions I've been in are the ones where somebody higher up than me or someone with more power than me says, "We're doing it this way because this is how we've always done it." I hate that phrase!

(Maggie) It's the worst!

(Sara) I've taken pay cuts other times in my career just because, again, it's that values that we talked about way at the beginning, is you realize what your values are when you do something that isn't values-aligned. And that doing the non-values aligned thing isn't necessarily a bad thing if you learn from it and complete whatever you promised you were gonna complete, and you're responsible and that sort of thing, 'cause we're also the oldest daughters, so we learned responsibility very early. But you complete what you're supposed to do, and then you say, "And moving on. Next thing."

(Maggie) Totally! You learn from everything

(Maggie) I was technically a janitor in college for the gym, but it was called something like “facilities” something? Like, something a little bit better, made it sound nicer.

(Sara) And you're like, "I was a janitor. Let's admit it."

(Maggie) I cleaned the bathroom.

(Sara) Ooh, that's fun.

Follow me, Renaissance Woman Sara Kobilka, on LinkedIn, where I put most of my social media energy, and Facebook.

If you’re extra curious, check out Renaissance Woman Consulting to learn more about some of the many types of work I do.

And should you care to support the production of this podcast, I’d love it if you’d buy me an oat milk cappuccino, my caffeinated beverage of choice.

This podcast is hosted and edited by Sara Kobilka.

Theme music is by Brian Skellenger

Podcast distribution support provided by K.O. Myers of Particulate Media