From episode: Zach White
Working with leaders from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix. Again, like I said, every top innovative company out there, I want to know too much. So we might have to meet again. I'd love to. Whatever we need to do. But give us a little bit of your background. I mean, how did this become the path, especially with your educational background? I'm fascinated. And I always want to know, did you turn corners at any point? Did you have a plan? Did you change paths? Like this is so fascinating to me what you've been able to do. And so, yeah, you can start from when you were two or you can start at 23, whatever you want to do. Why don't we start where I left Purdue University with my mechanical engineering degree, young and inspired to go change the world through engineering. And I grew up loving math and land in the engineering career field. And part of how I ended up partnering with all these amazing innovative companies is because the work I still do focuses around engineering and technology leadership. But in my journey, Katie, I would describe three big chapters. There was my coming out of college, hungry for career success with no idea what I was doing, chapter one, which ended in a glorious flame out, complete burnout, grinding my face against rock bottom in massive failure, divorce, depression and disappointment. Chapter two was the healing, the recovery and the journey towards a whole new life and discovering what is now lifestyle engineering. But at the time, it was the school of hard knocks. It was tapping into every resource I had to say there must be a better way to do career and life because I miserably failed in chapter one. And the great news is chapter two is a huge success. I had tremendous success in my career. Five promotions in five years doubled my income. Everything that I was wanting, I was getting within my career and it was awesome. But to your point about redirection, there's a chapter three, which is where we are right now. And I didn't know it at the time, but I didn't actually become an engineer to do engineering. And we can explain that more later. But now I know that I'm placed on the earth for a different calling. And that's to take the journey I went through in chapter one and two and help these other amazing leaders in engineering today to avoid that burnout, to dodge the bullets that hit me right between the eyes and say, how do you do it different from the start? Mastering these skills that we call lifestyle engineering. What is that blueprint for success? Not just to become a CTO if that's your ambition, but also to have an amazing family, to have amazing health and vitality, to have an amazing spiritual life, all the things you value. How do we solve the equation of our whole life picture?
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