How I Got Hired

137: John Tarnoff: From Hollywood Film Producer to Career Reinvention Advocate, Embracing Resilience, Creativity, Aging and the Power of Relationships

• Sonal Bahl

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Could a Hollywood talent agent and film producer teach you how to navigate your career with resilience and creativity? That's exactly what John Tarnoff, our guest for this episode, has been doing after an impressive 50-year stint in the film industry. Hear firsthand how John, who contributed to iconic movies like "The Power of One" and "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," draws from his experiences to help others successfully transition through various career stages. From securing early roles to redefining oneself in later years, this conversation promises to shed light on turning job losses into opportunities for growth and learning.

Imagine leaving a secure career path only to face unexpected challenges. That's a reality I once navigated, stepping away from entertainment to pursue a tech startup, only to confront a major crash. Through networking and an open mind, I found new opportunities at DreamWorks Animation. This episode emphasizes the power of relationships and adaptability over traditional job applications, especially in mid-career stages. Through stories of transformation and serendipity, we highlight how self-discovery can lead you to your dream role, even when the path seems uncertain.

We also tackle some of today’s most pressing job market challenges, like ageism and navigating online job searches. Is the "Open to Work" banner on LinkedIn a proactive step or a misunderstood shortcut? Together with John, we discuss how to handle such perceptions and biases. By exploring the Japanese concept of ikigai, John offers a framework for aligning passion and profession, encouraging you to view career reinvention through a lens of intention and community support. Don’t miss his valuable resources and insights that can kickstart your own career transition journey.

Learn more about John Tarnoff here:

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntarnoff/
johntarnoff.com/blog (Blog)
midcareerlab.com (Company)



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Speaker 1:

Hey there, welcome to the how I Got Hired podcast. I'm your host, sonal Behal, former HR director and founder of Supercharge, and I have had an insane corporate career that started out in India, then moved to South America and then to Europe, often working only in Spanish or French, which I had to learn there from scratch. Now, why do I call my career insane? Because while I've experienced complete highs, like working across geographies and industries, while navigating challenges like needing visa sponsorships, zero network locally during recessions, and often while being a new mom to one of my two kids, I have seen career heartbreak and multiple layoffs, as well. As a career strategist, I strongly believe that a fulfilling career is a birthright and not a privilege for the lucky few who have access to prestigious education, capital and networks. And now I am on a mission to democratize access to high value career advice by designing affordable digital courses with my YouTube channel and this podcast right here, where we learn together from ordinary people like you and me and how they created extraordinary career success. I hope this episode reminds you that if they could do it, you can do it too. Now get ready to get supercharged, let's go. Hey, welcome back. Welcome back. So glad you decided to join us today.

Speaker 1:

My guest today is John Tarnoff, and he is coming to us all the way from Los Angeles, california, and if you're anything like me, you think LA and you think Hollywood. So, as a matter of fact, the reason I brought that up is because John started his career in the movies. Yes, so he's done a variety of roles, not necessarily on screen, but all of the magic that happens off screen. Not necessarily on screen, but all of the magic that happens off screen. So, right from being a talent agent to working in film production and if you're wondering which films are these, I'm going to name drop a couple of these right now. I saw on his bio Power of One Morgan Freeman was in there Bill and Ted's excellent adventure with keanu reeves something that I grew up with so silly made me laugh. That's exactly what movies are all about. And then he moved to dreamworks animation we all know dreamworks and developed top talent over there that was working on films like kung fu Panda and how to Train your Dragon. So I hope you're setting up and I hope I've got your attention. So this is a very, very interesting person to talk to.

Speaker 1:

Now, what has John been up to since 2012?. He has worked as a career coach and I think that, although all of these reasons are super impressive to bring John to the show Because, as you know, dear listener, I'm so picky about the people I invite to the show Another reason I wanted to bring John on is because he has opinions, just like I do, and is not afraid to share his opinions and sometimes go against the grain if need be. John's career spans almost 50 years five zero 50 years and we have so much to learn from him. So excited for this conversation, we're going to learn so much from you, john. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, sonal, it's great to be here. Thanks for that great intro.

Speaker 1:

You're most welcome, john.

Speaker 1:

Let's get right into it, because you have so much to teach us in the decades that you have been working since the early 70s and I have a greedy three-part question here so your early career, your mid-career and the later career just before you left corporate and moved to the coaching side, right?

Speaker 1:

So in this period of time, let's start with the early career, because I my question is going to be about roles that made a huge, deliverable impression on you and how you got hired into those roles, because that's the name of the show, how I got hired. But want to start with the first part of your career where, like I said, you were in the movies, right, and this is an industry Hollywood I think any movie industry is notorious for handing out rejections like you know, hot potatoes, like like you hear a no, yeah, it's like it's going out of style. You just keep hearing no and you know, I don't know how that builds that resilience muscle which I'm sure you learned a lot. But talk to us about, during this period of time, what waser or late career, because there are some key differentiators that I think people who are experienced will go oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that describes it.

Speaker 2:

People who are at the younger end of the spectrum will be wondering about that. Is that in the early career, what I want to talk about is how you get a job In the mid-career. I want to talk about is how you get a job In the mid-career. I want to talk about how you pivot in your career, how you transition Then in the late career if I'm any example and I think this is really I'm seeing this more and more with my clients it's about how you hire yourself in late career.

Speaker 2:

We'll go back to the beginning or not quite the beginning and really talk about this question of resilience because, as you know from looking at my TEDx talk, I dine out on the idea and back to being controversial and saying things that make people uncomfortable. I dine out on the fact that in my career in entertainment, I was fired 39% of the time and I came up with that number in the TEDx talk kind of as a joke, and people laughed, but there was a nervous laughter because I mean, who talks about this right? Who talks about getting fired as if it's a metric or?

Speaker 1:

something to be proud of, as if it's a badge of honor.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right, yes, but I mean this is 2012. We're coming out of the recession. I'm talking about how people later in their careers particularly boomers, but now we're talking about Gen X are at an inflection point and at that time a lot of people were having trouble recovering from the recession and it was a big wake-up call for a lot of people who had lost a lot of their house value, their 401k, their retirement savings were vastly reduced. So the question that I was posing was well, how do we recover from this right, particularly with ageism, the fact that people are living longer, people don't want to retire, people can't afford to retire, I mean parenthetically.

Speaker 2:

If you think that you've saved enough for retirement and you're in your 50s and you think you're going to retire at 60 or 62, you've got a pretty good chance of living through your 80s, maybe even into your 90s. Can you afford 30 years of retirement based on what you've saved? Today, I would say that most people will say no, they've examined the books. They'll say no, no, no. I need to keep working and, by the way, working in a work that you love or where you feel useful keeps you more engaged, more vital, more mentally acute, more engaged with people. It's a kind of a growth mindset approach More young as well right.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to use the word young because I don't want to get into the age thing, because what's young, what's old, right? Oh? People say oh, you know, you look, you look young for your age.

Speaker 1:

It's like no, you're right. You're right. That is horrible for your age, and especially when they do that with women. The gendered part, let me. Let me rephrase that um, yeah, fresh, keeps you. Yes, yes, right fresh right.

Speaker 2:

Fresh, vital, engaged, aware, curious, right? All of these great qualities that we associate with youth, but that don't have to be exclusively the purview of youth, right? We want to keep those qualities going throughout our lives, right? Yeah, so off the soapbox for a second. So back to this question of career stages. What I've kind of come to the conclusion about in getting hired, going into career and through that early stage, applies to everyone and applies to me and my clients today as it did to me back in the day which is I never used my resume to get a job In a volatile, people-oriented, fast-moving business culture, like entertainment, it's all about relationships.

Speaker 2:

No one gets a job because they submit a resume to an open position. It's all because of networking. It's all because someone calls and gets you in. That's the number one thing that I learned early on in this volatile business. Then I would say the other thing is to be really proactive about what you want to do, what you can do and how to articulate it and speak about it, to not be afraid to engage with the position, the hiring manager, the recruiter, and have a negotiation to determine whether you are the right fit. You don't want to, even at a young age. You don't want to go in to a job opportunity as a supplicant? Please, please, hire me for this job. I'll be a good boy or girl. No, you want to go in providing value.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you a story about something that happened to me, which was a bit of a surprise, but it was something I did out of necessity. It turned into a really good example of this. I was working for a company that had some as a production executive supervising the development and the production of feature films. This is the 1980s. The head of the company had raised a lot of money. He had set up offices overseas. There was a company in Australia that he had started. He had started building a studio in Australia. Things were not going well. The films that we were producing were not successful at the box office. It was slowly going downhill.

Speaker 2:

So one day the guy who was running the office in Australia called me up and he said look, you guys are going out of business. You've got six months. He said I want to hire you to come work for me at the Australian affiliate and what we're going to do is we're going to get investors, we're going to buy the company away from the US company. We're going to start our own thing and I want you to run the Los Angeles office. I said, great, we did all of that. Sure enough, we found an investor. The investor came in, they bought the company, but they weren't so sold on the idea of having a Los Angeles office.

Speaker 2:

One of their associates, one of the colleagues of the CEO, was in Los Angeles and he came to see me to kind of check out the office and what we were doing. I showed him the films we were working on, blah, blah, blah. He says to me look, they're not into this idea of having the office here. He said nothing against you, you're a perfectly good guy, but we're going to shut it down. And I thought, oh great, you know, I got to go out and look for a job again and then I had an idea. I said to him would you be open to reading a proposal about the business and about what the value of this office is and taking it back to Australia? And he said sure. He said, can you get it to me tomorrow morning? I said yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I went home, I worked most of the night on this proposal and this is, of course, you know, I'm on a real typewriter, right, there's no word processors. So I come back in, give him this five 10-page report and he looks through, says interesting, and he goes away and I wait. And I wait for a day, nothing. Second day he calls. He says we like it. He says, as a matter of fact, we like it so much that we're going to keep the office open.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to come in and run it. You're going to be the executive VP, I'm going to run the business side and the distribution side. You're going to run the production side and we're going to be the executive VP. I'm going to run the business side and the distribution side. You're going to run the production side. And we're going to make movies in Australia. We're going to blah, blah, blah. So I saved that job and I built myself a runway for the next five years and upgraded my role and my profile because I took the initiative to not take no for an answer. Yes, and I like this answer because not just the initiative to not take no for an answer.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and I like this answer because not just the initiative and being proactive, but you're exactly exemplifying what you talked about earlier. Which people would say, yeah, but such a risky move, I would say it's risky not to do it.

Speaker 2:

I agree. You have nothing to lose, because the worst case is they're letting you go.

Speaker 1:

No, literally, you have nothing to lose except a couple of hours of sleep at night, right, and that bought you five years of runway. So brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I love this. So I want to just recap this for the listener, because John's going to give us these examples of early, mid career and later career, and it doesn't matter whether we are talking about hiring in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond, because at the end of the day, people are people, right. We said we were John and I were chatting backstage.

Speaker 1:

There's a very famous expression in French the more things change, the more they remain the same, right, we don't tend to go that far from the pendulum. So this is a great example. I'm also excited to hear about the mid-career and I'm especially excited to hear about later career, at 50 plus, because I know you have a linkedin learning course on how to get hired at 50 and in certain cultures, unfortunately, there is ageism that exists and and you're seen as less desirable, which is obviously, we all know, complete nonsense. But how do we address that bias, et cetera. So before we get there I'm getting ahead of myself Talk to us about the next role after you've got 15, 20 years in your belt. That was a difference maker.

Speaker 2:

So the mid-career is about the pivot, and I see this developmentally, from a psychological point of view all over the place. After you get to a certain point, you've climbed the mountain, personally, professionally, you've gotten promoted, you've got some achievements under your belt, you've got some experience, you've made some mistakes and you have kind of something to sell at this point. But developmentally, in midlife, you're starting to think, well, what's it all about? And you're starting to kind of question now, from this vantage point, what is your purpose, what is the meaning of life and career?

Speaker 1:

What am I doing? Can you tell me when you had that, john, because I think a lot of people can relate with what you're saying? Can you tell us at what point you had these thoughts, like your age?

Speaker 2:

It really was 50. It was plus or minus 50. For me it kind of coincided with this occurrence professionally around the loss of my startup. So I had I had kind of taken a sabbatical from entertainment in the 90s when multimedia came in and cd-rom games were a thing and uh, I thought, wow, what another great way to tell. And I was a bit of a tech nerd and had been working with computers since the mid-80s and I thought, oh, this will be fun, this will be another interesting opportunity. And one thing led to another. I met a guy. We started a company together. We built a technology and raised money in the bubble in the mid to late 90s. We had this company going. We had a couple of big contracts. This was a customer service-oriented company using artificial intelligence, which was very new.

Speaker 1:

Novel at the time.

Speaker 2:

yes, this was very, very early and very rudimentary from what we have today. Nonetheless, we were making traction and then, in the spring of 2001, the market crashed and everything crashed with it, including our company, and all of the investors that we had. Raising additional money for us went away, and the clients went away.

Speaker 1:

And within about six months to a year, and there were all sorts of crazy things going on. No, but there was also 9-11 a few months later.

Speaker 2:

And then there was 9-11.

Speaker 1:

That didn't help. And then there was 9-11, right.

Speaker 2:

So it was just a crazy time and I realized that I was going to have to, we were going to have to shut this thing down, and I didn't know what I wanted to do and I felt like I had not so much turned my back on entertainment, but I was no longer as interested in those jobs playing the politics and I had kind of again, I hadn't burned bridges but I really hadn't. But you moved on. Yeah, exactly, I really kind of moved on and I didn't burned bridges, but I really hadn't. But you moved on. Yeah, exactly, I really kind of moved on and I didn't know what to do and I thought, okay, well, what are my options? I thought I've got to do something. I have to do a pattern. Interrupt here, right, I can't. What's the Einstein line about? You can't solve a problem at the same level at which it was created.

Speaker 2:

So I thought I got to do something and it occurred to me that I should go back to school and I knew of a program this program in spiritual psychology, a small graduate institution in Santa Monica. A number of people I knew had been through the program, not to become psychologists, but because it was a great break for them to learn more about themselves, learn more about how to engage with other people, how to solve problems. I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to just get clear and learn about myself, but I was going to have to raise the money to do it, so I had to take another mortgage on the house. I knew I had about a nine-month ramp to figure this out Somewhere along the line. Get another job In October of 2002, when I started this. If you had told me nine months from now you're going to be sitting at an office at DreamWorks Animation making Hollywood money again, doing this amazing job that you'd never have done before, working with great people, I would have said you were smoking something.

Speaker 1:

Never say never, never say never.

Speaker 2:

It seems so unbelievable. Yeah, but what I did was I started networking in a different way, new things and having new subjects to talk about and discovering new stuff and kind of on this growth spurt, as it were. Intellectually, I started coming across differently. I didn't come across like, oh, here's a guy whose startup just failed, he needs a job. I was coming across as someone who's kind of engaged with ideas and asking questions and interested in what was going on. That was new, that was technological, about transitions, about whatever.

Speaker 2:

And I started having meetings and one of those meetings was with a friend of mine who was working at DreamWorks and he said wow, it sounds like you've been doing some interesting stuff and it sounds like your company was interesting. Would you ever think about joining us at DreamWorks? I said are you kidding that would. It sounds like you've been doing some interesting stuff and it sounds like your company was interesting. So would you ever think about joining us at DreamWorks? I said are you kidding? That would be fantastic. I said is there a job? He said no, we're not looking for anybody right now. I thought, oh great, he said, but let me start introducing you to some of my colleagues over there and let's start getting some conversations going. Let's start getting some conversations going.

Speaker 2:

Well, sure enough, it took six months of conversations, but I started to get traction through that process and the lesson here for me, for the purposes of our call, is that in mid-career, to a large extent at all stages in your career, you get jobs through conversations, not through applications. So you want to get yourself into as many conversations as possible where you can get to know people, they can get to know you, and magic happens. And magic happened for me at DreamWorks yes, yes, and at a certain point they realized that I was a valuable piece of talent that they needed to create a role for, turned out to map to a number of skills that I happen to have regarding technology, adoption, movie production, team management and development. Yeah, and that brought me in and I was there for over six years in this unique role. That really was the best job that I had.

Speaker 1:

I love the story so much. There's so many lessons in here. I do agree with you about applications versus conversations. I'm not always sure it's either, or Sometimes it helps, oh, I agree, but the later you are in your career, it is definitely the conversations that trump applications because of the relationships and a lot of those positions are not even advertised. Classic example exhibit A is that role, and they created an exception for you. People don't realize when people fall in love. They tend to help you. They fall in love with you. They're like I'm interesting guy. However, the reason it doesn't work with a lot of people is because it takes time and you said six years, uh, six months.

Speaker 1:

I had a. Yeah, I had a guy on my show who talked about adobe and it was his dream company.

Speaker 1:

It took him three years to get into it and you need patience and when it happened it was so organic and people said lucky, overnight success. And they're like he doesn't. They don't see all the schmoozing and all the conversations I had to do, but you know it it's. It's hard work, so I love this. Um, I love this idea that you said. I never thought of it in this way, although I, you know, I have a couple of videos on my youtube channel about if you're not sure what to do, an MBA is a good idea, but the pattern interrupt. I like that. You said pattern interrupt a master's program, mba, and in this case, a master's in spiritual psychology. I mean, I love that. That sounds so California right now, guilty, so this sounds so juicy guilty.

Speaker 2:

so, um, this sounds so juicy and um, so let me, let me, let me just put a put a little bit of a of a specification on that program, because the the spiritual, psychology aspect of it is about taking personal responsibility for everything that goes on in your life, right, that's in fact perfect, because I had a follow-up question for you here.

Speaker 1:

I know this was a while ago, but for someone who's listening and maybe tiny bit curious about spiritual psychology, is there one particular thing that you still remember today in terms of the lessons learned? A quick one.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I use this every day. I use this every day in my coaching program Tell us, tell us which one you know. And, and, and it starts with this question of personal responsibility and uh, and you know, as time goes on in our careers, we accumulate baggage and it's normal. You know. You go through life, you get dinged right, you get beaten up a little bit, and whether it's getting fired, whether it's making a bad decision, whether it's having a toxic boss, whether you have workplace relationships that don't go well, whether you make a mistake and find yourself in a job that's the wrong job for you, there is no straight line and we are kind of taught to be ashamed of ourselves. If there is no straight line, you know what's wrong with you. My mother used to say why can't you hold a job in that business? You're always changing jobs. Why can't you hold a job? Because in an earlier era, in the industrial era, the idea was you were a cog in the machine. You got hired at 20. You worked for 40.

Speaker 1:

And you were a lifer. And you were a lifer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you were a lifer and then they took care of you, but of course that's all gone. So the idea of spiritual psychology, reallyate it on the inside as a way of engaging more proactively and successfully on the outside. I remember the person who was my supervisor at DreamWorks, who was the COO, and I'll talk about her in another instance in a second at DreamWorks, who was the COO and I'll talk about her in another instance in a second. She in one meeting. She said to me um, you seem to have no ego because you're so kind of cooperative and engaging. I said, well, I wouldn't say I'm a cooperative, uh. And she would say, well, yeah, I guess, I guess you're not necessarily cooperative. I said, but but those questions of ego seem kind of irrelevant to me for me, that's the honestly, that's the ultimate compliment.

Speaker 1:

If someone says you, you appear like you have no ego, because I do think the ego can be the enemy at times.

Speaker 2:

Well, the, the ego, can be the enemy, absolutely. But uh, that, I think, goes to my training, my psychology training, because I'll tell you an interesting idea, an interesting, interesting incident. I haven't thought about this in a while. There was a period of time when I was, I think, early on in the DreamWorks job where I had an opportunity to move back into production and I had said to them, going in, I don't want to do production anymore, I want to do people stuff. And there was this opportunity it was kind of like this shiny carrot that was kind of dangled at me to go and produce this film.

Speaker 2:

And so I started kind of veering towards that and all of a sudden I noticed that things were different. I would walk down the hall and people weren't looking at me directly, they weren't talking to me. That's the way it felt, and I wasn't feeling balanced around this decision. And the minute I thought, okay, I'm letting this go, I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm going to pull my. As we say in America, you know, you throw your hat in the ring, you kind of declare your candidacy. I pulled my hat back out of the ring, I said I'm not interested in this position anymore and everything changed back again and it was like oh hi, how are you?

Speaker 1:

It was like all of a sudden, the energy, energy came back and I thought, oh, that's interesting, that's the universe. So many signals telling you dude, don't do it.

Speaker 2:

That's the universe telling me. I'm on the right track here. I need to. I need to follow this track so this is another lesson for me, for the people that I work with, for all of us about. About, watch those signals, right? Oh yeah, watch those signals and don't be in denial about it. Right, don't be afraid to kind of confront the reality of what you see. Anyway, some lessons from spiritual psychology.

Speaker 1:

I love that. And also, you know I wasn't planning to ask you this, john, but this is so interesting because you worked with people, you identified them, you developed them, you retained them. Some of the top people that went on to make legendary stuff that my kids have grown up with and love Kung Fu Panda, how to Train your Dragon oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

I see their credits. I mean I watch animated movies and I see their credits. I I mean I watch animated movies and I see their credits, and they're now producing and directing these movies. I'm going oh, I hired them out of school yeah, they were babies.

Speaker 1:

So talk to us about how do you identify who's got the it factor back them.

Speaker 2:

Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that these are people who never say no, Whether it is their willingness to take on an assignment. Go the extra mile, not allow their boundaries to be overrun. These are some of the qualities, I think, that make a leader, Because, at the end of the day, these are leadership qualities and I think the people who are successful, even if they are not in quote-unquote leadership roles, they're exercising leadership.

Speaker 1:

That's great. I have so many videos on my YouTube channel where I talk about this stuff. I said this is hard to teach. It's easier to discern the hard technical skills, but if you had everyone with the same level of technical skills you know animation and motion graphics and all of that stuff being equal, the attitude right, uh, is harder to train. You either kind of see it, you got it or you don't. So this is so confirming, this is so affirming, so thank you. So I appreciate this.

Speaker 1:

And now talk to us about getting hired in your 50s and beyond, because you've been through this journey, right, and you've seen this with your clients, and there can be I hate to say this, but there can be a little bit of a victim mindset. You know it's so bitter, it does feel like you're, you know, removed from contention because of literally a factor that you cannot change, which is on your passport and your birth certificate, and that victimhood can be very addictive as well. You know, I hear things like I'm in my 50s, I'm a white man, so it's, you know, and I'm like you know, it'm a white man, sonal, I'm like it's so hard to win with that attitude. Help us with that, sorry, and help us with that, but also tell us from your own example on. I don't want to say how do you beat ageism, but in the sense that, how do you play the game?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we got a lot to unpack here. I just had this conversation yesterday with a prospective client who he didn't want to say it in the call, but I said to him you're experiencing the old white guy syndrome. He's getting right to the final interviews and they're not hiring him. Yeah, and he is. He's not being given the feedback directly, but he is, in some cases, able to navigate around to find out who got the job. And so let's talk about the third element and this idea of firing yourself and a couple of things about that.

Speaker 2:

One is that I actually I did fire myself at DreamWorks, which is crazy, but I had gotten to the point and this is 2010, where the programs that I had started were in place, they were running, and I went to the COO one day and I said look, this is a crazy meeting. But here's my question Is there anything left for me to do around here? And she turned right red and she said I'm going to answer the question. She said but first of all, I want you to know we love you. You've done an amazing job and no one else could have done it the way, and it was the perfect. You were the perfect person for us at this time, she said, but to answer your question, probably not yeah, wow, what courage, john.

Speaker 1:

What courage to ask the question because, you know again, your instincts were telling you dude, this is a well-oiled machine, you've done a good job and it can run without you I was starting to feel like I was eating myself up and I and I felt like I was smiling less right I don't know if that was true.

Speaker 2:

I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Speaker 1:

There are times we can even like you know, soul crushing can also be a description sometimes.

Speaker 2:

The job had been so good, it had been so much fun. There's so much energy. The people I worked with were great. I had this fantastic team and I think when you have that kind of a good experience, when it starts to go south, it's such a contrast that I mean, in my case, I thought I got to do something about this and I really wanted to stay there. I didn't want to fire myself. I would have been happy to stay there.

Speaker 2:

And the COO said look, you know everyone around here. She said go talk to everyone and see. You know what we're doing. You know all the initiatives that are going on. See if there's something that you feel like you can plug yourself into. And the only thing that I could have done was because we were doing overseas ventures in India and China and I thought, well, I could move to India or China, but I wasn't going to do that. I was going to India or China, but I wasn't going to do that. I was going to you know, pick my, you know, pull my kid out of high school and, you know, go to India or China. So I realized that there wasn't anything there and I kept trying to come up with new ideas and and it. I wanted to do more in the education space and it just, it just wasn't the time. You know, the company was going in a different direction. So we negotiated a very civilized exit and unusual for Hollywood. There's a lot of bad endings in Hollywood.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but did you get this John from family or friends? Like dude, what did you do? Like why did you like this wasn't broken? Like why did you have to go in and and you know what I mean Like, right, sure.

Speaker 2:

Sure, I did get that from. I did get that from some people. But I explained, I said you know, it's just, I kind of came to the end of the rope here and I and I, I kind of I kind of have done what I was called to do. You know, the mission was done and in a in a sense that's a lot of how this business works. When you go on a movie, you do the project right, you're all about the project, and when the project's done, the project's done right, and you go off and you do a new project. So in that sense it was similar to to the production cycle.

Speaker 2:

But at age 60 or so I thought, well, I'm getting out of here, but I don't want to get another job, I do not want to go work for another company.

Speaker 2:

I am at the stage in my life and this kind of goes to the third career stage where I'm not going to be a good employee.

Speaker 2:

I have too many ideas. It's not that I'm set in my ways, it's that I'm going to want to do it kind of my way and I'm not going to just lie down and take orders. So either I'm running a show or I'm doing my own thing and I thought, well, I've never really done my own thing and I've never really done my own thing in this area because I was very fired up about education and training and development and all of the stuff that led to my career coaching practice. I wasn't sure that that's what I was going to do at that time, but this was the direction that I wanted to go in, and I had built up this grounding at DreamWorks in education and wound up, actually, right out of DreamWorks, being called by one of the universities that we were working with to hire kids into entry-level programs and they said, well, we have a new program in LA, we'd like you to come in and help us run that.

Speaker 1:

And I did that for 10 years. They found you. They found you out of the blue.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, they knew me, I'd been working with them. So again, it was relationships, right, yeah, they remembered you. I built relationships with 40 different universities over the years that I'd been at DreamWorks doing these entry-level hiring programs. So they came to me and they said hey, we see you're leaving. Do you want to talk to us about coming to work with us in this program?

Speaker 1:

And it was a it was a half time. How did they know, sorry? How did they know you were leaving? Because you know LinkedIn and you know the feed. It wasn't the same as it is today, so you did something to stay. Well, I announced it.

Speaker 2:

I announced it. I said I'm leaving. I'm leaving to go off and do my own consulting practice.

Speaker 2:

You sent like an email no or I don't think I sent a blanket announcement like a birth announcement or something, personalized it, but I let people know Good, good, right, it was really important that it be my decision Right, even though it was kind of, you know, was half my decision, half their decision. We just came to a parting of the ways. It was different. They were very generous about it. I had my final meeting with Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was the CEO, legendary guy. He said so what can I do for you? You know, is there something I can do for you on your way out? I said, yeah, you can write me a recommendation. And he said, sure, of course. So he said, why don't you write the first draft? Perfect Right, and that's just like to insert that If you walk out with your head high, to insert that if you walk out with your head high, even if they fire you, you want to walk out with your head high because you don't want to burn the bridge, you want to turn that to your advantage.

Speaker 2:

So stop and this is the ego thing again stop thinking about how a victim, what a victim you are and why you got fired and someone else didn't get fired, and how unfair it is and how the world is terrible, and think, okay, how can I turn this into an advantage? How can I do the best with this situation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And to the question of ageism now. And why? Why ageism? And what do we do about ageism? Well, we're not going to get anywhere by complaining about it. We have to circumvent it.

Speaker 2:

I think this goes to picking up from that 50-year-old mid-career question about meaning and purpose and now, in late career mid to late career really putting that into the forefront. Because if you can articulate the value that you deliver not the roles that you perform or the tasks that you do, but the real value that you deliver, the product, really, the outcome, the transformation that you deliver through your work, and you can articulate this in a way that really establishes that value, then people don't care how old you are. They want that value. You have to sell it. You have to position it for the customer, for the client, for the employer.

Speaker 2:

It's not about well, here's what I do, here's what I can do, here's what I deliver for you, I can do anything. It's like no, here's what you need. What if we could create this result for you. Talk about that strategy. Don't give away your secret sauce, but talk about that strategy. Talk about that outcome. Create this in their imagination, this vision of what it would be like if you were working for them. And no matter what you do whether you are going for a full-time position or a consultancy or a part-time position always take the attitude of a consultant delivering value to a client. Never think of yourself as an employee looking for direction from a supervisor. It's a key mindset difference.

Speaker 1:

Yes, very much, very much. The key mindset difference yes, very much, very much. I talk about that as well. And also the consultant slash CEO of your career as opposed to an order taker. We're more than that. We're all more than that. I love this. I also one thing I want to credit you for and we talked about this offline it was refreshing to see your LinkedIn profile, john, because, first of all, I think everybody should read the about section. It's written so well. It takes me, you know. It's like you're holding our hand and you're taking us down a journey to the story and you do what a lot of gurus I'm going to put this in air code career gurus, especially in the US they advise us not to do, and that is. You have mentioned your graduation year.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I have mentioned it as well, and many people say do not, and ageism bias, but you're like, I don't care, I'm going to do it because eventually people are gonna find out who cares. Exactly now. In that vein, I want to stay here for a minute and appeal to the opinionated john, which we have all started to enjoy a lot, which is honestly a breath of fresh air. I want to highlight a post that you published late last year and I highly recommend to our listener to check it out. It's in John's featured section. It's very hard to miss it, and in this post you talked about the green open to work banner.

Speaker 1:

You took a lot of heat on that post, john. Oh my gosh, the comment section is so brutal and I want to know, since you have published this post, what is your latest position on the open to work banner. You know, sometimes when we publish something, you know, like Adam Grant says, think again. You're like we're allowed to slightly, you know, change our mind or adapt our position on the situation. And the part two is I also want to know about the comment section because, until and unless the listener doesn't read them. I mean you were so much under attack and some of the attacks were personal, like it was hard to read and you have not only displayed them, not only have you not blocked those people, but it's in your featured section. So talk about being battered and bruised. So this is a two-parter your position on the open to a green banner and life in the comment section trolls.

Speaker 2:

So for me, just the position on the green banner hasn't really changed that much. Position on the green banner hasn't really changed that much. The green banner is kind of a lazy job seeker's way of pursuing a job. If you think that putting that open to work badge on your profile picture is going to get you a job and you can just kind of sit back and pray and people will notice and people will see you're a good guy, good gal, you want to be hired, please hire me. I'd need to work harder.

Speaker 2:

And first of all, everyone on LinkedIn 100% of people who are on LinkedIn are open to work. It's why we're on LinkedIn by default. Yes, right. So that's a kind of a coy little way that we can kind of raise our little hand and go please hire me. You know that bugs me, right? Because I think it's a very brutal hiring marketplace out there. People are getting fired, people are working in toxic workplaces.

Speaker 2:

We're still talking about return to work and hybrid work. What is it now that one of the FANG companies I don't know if it's Microsoft that if you are out of the office more than one day or two days a week, you are ineligible for promotion? Oh my gosh, yeah, right, so we're seeing all sorts of bias and crazy behavior going on from management still, and you need to be more proactive about it, and that was my message is it's just not gonna serve you. You know if and that was my message is it's just not going to serve you. You know, if you think that this is going to do it and you're going to just be waiting for the email to hit your inbox, it's not going to happen.

Speaker 1:

No, I understand.

Speaker 2:

That's a fair point and that was my point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, if it's done. First of all, I don't think people who gave such hate in the comments, I don't think they actually read Well they didn't read the blog post, right.

Speaker 2:

They didn't read the article, right, because the blog post is really much more about. Okay, don't stop here. Here's what you do, right? Here's how to be more proactive about it.

Speaker 1:

The lazy part I've understood. If that is all you do and you pray, it's not enough.

Speaker 2:

That's completely fair and I just that's completely fair help someone get their job and it basically is a networking style post, a default LinkedIn post which says please refer me to if you hear of anything I'm interested in a job, and then it says so-and-so is interested in this, this and this, and it's similar. My response to that is similar to the open to work badge, because you can't go out with the default wording that LinkedIn gives you. You have to amplify that and be specific about the work you're looking for, the kinds of companies you want to work at.

Speaker 1:

A hundred percent. I wouldn't count on the AI in the message section. Oh my God, like you know, they'll be like hey, oh, john, it's been some time. How are you doing? You know those templates that AI suggests. They're terrible. So we have to apply our own sort of initiative and intelligence. No, so that's a very good point. Doing that alone is not enough, but doing that in conjunction with something else. We need a strategy, right, first of all. Second of all, the people who had a big problem with your post. They say things like I look for people, I proactively look for people who have the open to work banner because they think that they're immediately available. They are hungry. I totally get that. I get that and I love that. I love that they are being open about it.

Speaker 2:

Right? Well, they are few and far between.

Speaker 1:

They are few and far between Exactly what. They don't understand all the recruiters that the rest of us, when we talk to them.

Speaker 2:

I talk to them, you talk to them understand that someone's value is not dependent upon whether they are currently employed. An employer, however, wants the person who is employed the employer does not want to deal with the question of why did they get let go from their prior position? Blah, blah, blah. Because that employer, that hiring manager supervisor, is going to say where did you hire that person from? Where were they last?

Speaker 1:

And that is a problem? No, that is a problem.

Speaker 2:

Well, they were let go from. You hired someone who was unemployed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now the thing is ultimately there is a problem. This is the problem, this is the way of thinking which is problematic. That is the source, right, that is the source. So we're beating up the wrong sort of beast here. And secondly, they're the guys who pay the bill, right? They're the ones who pay the executive, recruiters, et cetera. Exactly, is it fair? No, of course not, but I'm a pragmatist and I think you are as well. It's not about what's fair. It's not about doing the right thing A lot of those people talk about. Either they talk about doing the right thing because it's a cruel market, or they talk about this is how I do it, that, or they talk about this is how I do it, that virtue sort of signaling. Both are true. The third point is there is a big majority of people who are not actively logged on to LinkedIn 14 hours a day and make these kind of messages. Those are people in their own bubbles who are not living on LinkedIn, who want someone who already works.

Speaker 2:

I had plenty of recruiters reach out to me on that post and say you're right.

Speaker 1:

But they will not say. That's the whole point. I have a problem. They will not say it publicly.

Speaker 2:

Oh, but if you look on that thread and I don't want to kind of get back into it, it was so long ago but there are plenty of people on that thread who were positive about it and said no, I get that, but a lot of them will not say it publicly.

Speaker 1:

but they don't want to get attacked. They don't want to get attacked. You took it for the team.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you, and when I first saw the flaming going on I felt really dejected. Because I'm a people pleaser, I want you know.

Speaker 1:

I talk about. I think you wouldn't be human if you didn't get dejected.

Speaker 2:

Right. I mean, I wanted to be a bit of a scold on a certain level. Yeah, I wanted to kind of encourage people to do better. That was the idea and that kind of that's what gets me riled up. But then I thought, after about an hour of feeling like, oh shit, I'm going to really, you know, people don't like me and whatever, I'm in trouble now I thought no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is good, this is good. I've generated some controversy. I really don't care about these people. They are. They are defensive because they've got something that's going on with them. Spiritual psychology again. Right, this is their problem.

Speaker 1:

And it's interesting because they said the opposite. They said, ah, but this guy, why is he saying this? Because he's peddling, you know, career services and resumes, and I was know what.

Speaker 2:

here's the thing that. Here's the thing, not so much about the uh, the, the uh, open to work badge, but what got people really, really upset was when I said if you are unemployed, you want to make the first bullet on your experience. Section a consult, consultancy. Right, you want to portray yourself as someone who is not unemployed. You are continually working and open to consulting work in your field.

Speaker 1:

And some of the best LinkedIn trainers have made the same point on my LinkedIn live sessions. For the reason, exactly for the reason that LinkedIn penalizes you.

Speaker 2:

If you are the worst comments I got were people who didn't like that. They said you're telling people to lie, Lie, yeah, Right. A consultant just someone who loses their job is not a consultant, right. A consultant is someone who is this and this and this and you're telling people this is garbage, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Last thing I'm going to say is when any of those people, if they were ever to lose their job, they would probably put the consultant's title as well.

Speaker 2:

Well, I hope they would I hope they would Full circle.

Speaker 1:

But thank you, john, really appreciate the frankness here in this conversation. And there's one particular question I ask all my guests and I want to hear from you. And there's one particular question I ask all my guests and I want to hear from you. When you look back on this illustrious decades-long career I think 50, almost 50 or 50-plus years is there one standout defining moment that supercharged your career and helped you to move closer to your current success?

Speaker 2:

I saw that question and I had an answer, but another answer just occurred to me, and it's a moment, it's literally a single moment, where the first film that I got to produce on my own 1986, a film that bombed, by the way, a little action-adventure thriller movie, but we were filming one night it was a dance hall scene and the good guy is being chased through this dance club by the bad guy and interrupts the band and runs through the band and knocks the band over and goes offstage 500 extras, some club in Hollywood, some big cavernous club in Hollywood, and I was standing I was actually standing on the bar in the one corner as all this was going on and I thought, wow, this is something that started inside my head. I woke up one morning with an idea for a movie and here we are, yeah, two years later, and we're making it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I thought, wow, that is, that's just a powerful feeling to have accomplished that. And I kind of say that because I want people to feel like your ideas matter and you can manifest your ideas. It may not be easy to do. It may not be easy to do, it may not happen fast, but if you set a clear intention and engage with your community to support you, enlist that support most things are possible yeah, well, definitely, thoughts become things.

Speaker 1:

I got so many goosebumps listening to this story because, yeah, it's like, I think of it as the OBE I call it OBE outer body experiences. It's like, literally, you're looking at, you know, john, there's a big John looking at the I don't want to say little John, but you know looking and then you're like dude, what are we doing here? Right, how did this happen? How did this happen? And you're like dude, yeah, what are we doing here? Right, how did this happen? How did this happen?

Speaker 1:

And you're talking about an idea in 1984 and he made it into a movie in 1986. What happens to the movie? That's besides, the point. That's and you had so many successes so it doesn't matter, it rounds off. But here we are talking about it in 2024, 40 years. How awesome is that? Amazing, amazing, john. So what is the best way? Cause you have a lot of stuff going on. You've got a podcast, you've got a book, you've got a TEDx, you've got a very active presence on LinkedIn, as we just talked about. So what is the best way for people to learn more about you and your work?

Speaker 2:

Well, absolutely Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm the only John Tarnoff on LinkedIn, so can find me there If you're interested in getting started on this career process. I want to encourage you to start with this concept of the ikigai, the Japanese notion of life's purpose. It is interpreted in the West as really having to do with four questions, and it is interpreted in the West as really having to do with four questions what do you love to do? What are you good at? What does your world need? The classic question is what does the world need? That's too much. What does your world need, what does your business need, your industry, your community, and what can you get paid for? At the intersection of those four questions is the beginning of your career transition, career reinvention, reimagination, and there is an exercise worksheet that you can download from my site. So it's johntarnoffcom slash. Four questions the number. Four questions, no spaces.

Speaker 1:

I will make sure that link is in the show notes so people can take advantage. So, John, this has been such a delight. Thank you so much for your time, your generosity, your candor today, and we wish you continued success with everything you venture into.

Speaker 2:

It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 1:

Hey there, thank you for taking the time to listen to today's show. If you loved it, please do leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. I search high and low to bring you the very best guests, and I'm so proud to bring you their stories and game-changing career lessons. The best compliment that you could ever give me is taking a screenshot of today's episode and sharing it with your LinkedIn network and tagging me at Sonal Behl S-O-N-A-L-B-A-H-L. All right, I look forward to spending time together on the next episode of the how I Got Hired podcast. Take care of yourself and bye for now.