A conversation with Ivy Eisenberg, an award-winning humor writer. She shares her passion for the human side of technology through her IT and innovation consultancy, Our IdeaWorks (www.ourideaworks.com).
Ivy Eisenberg is the founder and CEO of Our IdeaWorks as well as an award winning humor writer and Moth StorySLAM winning storyteller and comedian.
Ivy shares her money journey. She began working at the age of 14, lying about her age in order to have some spending money! It has always been important to her to have a steady paycheck in order maintain her lifestyle.
Ivy discusses how it has been possible for her to have a 9 to 5 day job while giving time to her passion. She worked as a technical writer and then as a designer of user experience. At the same time, she pursued her interest in stand-up comedy and storytelling.
"I never wanted to sell my belongings and live meagerly just to be creative. I like my stuff. I like my house. I like to shop at Whole Foods." Ivy Eisenberg
Key Takeaways:
- Understand your strengths. Ivy uses her gift with language and of understanding how others think to explain technical things to non-technical people.
- Find something you love to do and the money will follow. Ivy enjoyed learning about new, cutting edge technologies in her various roles. In her own words, she was obsessed with her work and the art of human communication, rather than being obsessed with the money as others were.
- Know your definition of enough. In Ivy’s case, she knew she wouldn’t be happy scrimping and living meagerly in order to follow her creative muses. She has always had a day job to support her lifestyle. And this sense of being supported enables her to truly put her energy into her “after work” life, without worrying about paying the bills.
About the guest:
Ivy Eisenberg (www.ivyeisenberg.com) is an award-winning humor writer, Moth StorySLAM winning storyteller and comedian, who performs throughout the Greater NYC area and Washington, DC. She has appeared in PBS’s Stories from the Stage, She Makes Me Laugh Comedy Festival, and several other shows. Ivy co-produces “Solo Heroes,” a revue of solo shows in progress, and “Storyboom,” a storytelling show. She also coaches storytellers. By day, Ivy runs an IT and Innovation consultancy, Our IdeaWorks (www.ourideaworks.com)
Linkedin:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivyeisenberg/
Facebook:- https://www.facebook.com/ivy.eisenberg.5
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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment or financial advice. It’s for informational purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.
Ivy Eisenberg: I never wanted to sell my belongings and live meagerly just to be creative. I like my stuff. I like my house. I like to shop at Whole Foods. I just want that for myself. Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves.
Now, here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rotter.
Laura Rotter: I am so excited to have as my guest today, Ivy Eisenberg, who I've known for quite a long time. Ivy is an award-winning writer, comedian, and storyteller. She's appeared on stages throughout the greater New York City area, and in Washington, DC. I have been to several StoryBoom shows that she co-produces and they take place in White Plains, which is North of New York City.
Ivy's, also the founder and of an innovation and information technology consultancy, Our IdeaWorks and we'll learn a bit about both, on our podcast today. So welcome Ivy. Thank you so much for agreeing to be a guest.
Ivy Eisenberg: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Laura Rotter: I'm looking forward to hearing about your journey.
I want to start off with a question just to set the stage for the lens through which you might think about our conversation together. And that question is, what was money like in your house growing up?
Ivy Eisenberg: So, growing up, we always were taught to be independent, and my dad always told us we are rich in love whenever we asked if we had a lot of money, because we never had a lot of money. We always had enough, and my dad always came home to have dinner with us by six o'clock, and he had always told us that if he had worked all crazy hours, he might have had more money, but he wouldn't have had to spend time with us.
So, I'm one of five children. We had a lot of kids. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my dad supported us by having his own independent business. He did start to make more money when I was much, much older and just about out of the house. Most of us were out of the house, but growing up, we didn't really know what his finances were.
We just knew that we had food on the table. We had clothing on our bodies, even if it was discount clothing. Four girls and one boy. We were always taught to be independent and be honest and work for our money. We work during summers and things like that.
Laura Rotter: I love the fact that it was communicated very clearly to you Ivy, that relationships and family are the most important thing and money was secondary.
Ivy Eisenberg: Yes.
Laura Rotter: So how did growing up feeling secure, though perhaps not, that money was bountiful, can you remember your first job? How did that affect your journey moving forward?
Ivy Eisenberg: My first job was at the Pink Poodle Coffee Shop. I was 14 years old. I lied about my age. I lied about my experience.
I was a waitress. I was an awful waitress. I lasted about a week, and they let me go. I worked in the Catskills; I talked my way into a job at a camp. It was a camp where they wanted me to be the maid for the bunks, not one of the counselors. I left after two days, and they only paid me for one day, and I would not accept that.
I said they had to pay me for both days, and my dad was thrilled that I stuck up for myself and I insisted that I got paid. Then from the time I was 15, I worked in the summers at camps or at hotels. My older sisters used to work in the city. They were good typists and clerk typists, so they made a lot of money, but I made less money.
You know, I was working from the time I was 14. Then, when I was 16, I had a job during the year at the Pickwick Coffee house at Far Rockaway. It was a very popular place, and I started to get a little better at waitressing.
Laura Rotter: Were you expected to use that spending money in your day-to-day or were you encouraged to save it? What was the role of your earning at that young age?
Ivy Eisenberg: We were encouraged to use it for our leisure expenses. We had a savings account at the Jamaica Savings Bank, but we never were taught to save money in that way.
We just basically used it. We were not very organized in our expenses. I didn't have the option to go to a college where it cost money, so I had a choice of any college I wanted if it was in the CUNY system, which tuition was free. So, there was never an opportunity for me to consider what I might do in terms of my academic career. I really had to beg my parents to let me go to a SUNY school.
And I went there on loans, which I paid back, and a regent scholarship, which was just a tiny bit of money, but yeah.
Laura Rotter: I heard one of your standup stories where you mentioned going in the snowbelt. Where did you go to school?
Ivy Eisenberg: I went to school in Fredonia, New York. It's part of the SUNY system.
It's one of the colleges, not the universities, and it's way in western New York. It's 45 miles from Erie, Pennsylvania, so it's in between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania, on a beautiful lake. A small school that used to be a teachers’ college. I found plenty of challenges and you know, it was fine. I really loved school and it was fine.
Laura Rotter: I’m just curious why you pushed for SUNY. What about that school was more attractive than just leaving the New York metropolitan area?
Ivy Eisenberg: Right, so the only schools I was allowed to go to were SUNY schools because they were much, much, much, much cheaper. I didn't like the concept of maybe I can get a scholarship or maybe I can work my way through school.
I was very much limited by this boundary of choice. So, the SUNY schools had at the time, four universities and eight colleges, and I applied to several of them. And I had a friend who was a year behind me in school, though my age, we thought we would go to school together and that was the one she could get.
Oh, so that was the one we both chose. And then in the summer she changed her mind and went to Miami, Florida, and I was stuck up there.
Laura Rotter: So it wasn't some amazing curriculum that that school had that the others didn’t?
Ivy Eisenberg No, no. I mean, I could spin it. It was originally a school devoted to teachers and I got a degree to teach English, so maybe that was it.
You know that I started off as a drama major. I majored in drama for half a year and then I switched.
Laura Rotter: Interesting. So, you were Ivy interested in drama even though asself-described you, you know, you maybe weren't the most confident person. Is that correct? When I listen to your stories?
Ivy Eisenberg: So yes, that is true.
A lot of times people who are professional, people in the theater and who perform are not necessarily confident and not necessarily outgoing. People who are comedians are not necessarily funny in real life. A lot of times they have very sad, depressing lives and pertinent to the discussion of finances and your values.
I never wanted to have this career where I was with dysfunctional people who were sort of living hand to mouth. So even as a freshman in college, I switched from theater to English because I didn't want to be a theater person. I didn't want to have that unpredictability and that sort of craziness of, being in the theater.
I was looking for something that was more solid even back then, because I have sort of this left-brain component to me. I'm not totally creative or totally analytic.I have like a bit of practicality in me. Plus, my mom told me there was performer in the family and that's enough. So, I'm not allowed to be a performer because my older sister's a singer.
Laura Rotter: That's so interesting that, I guess it's probably generational, right? The parents feel that it's their role, to help almost what your career choices are. It's very interesting to hear that. So, what was your reaction to that? What was your first job out of college?
Ivy Eisenberg: My first job outside of college was as a substitute teacher.
So, I got a degree to teach English from Fredonia, a school that people hadn't heard of. I grew up in Far Rockaway, which had a reputation of being a sort of a slum area, and I was applying to teach English in schools in Westchester and Long Island. So, I had very good references. I had a typo on my resume that nobody saw, which is interesting.
I didn't realize that till like 20 years later. I sent out a hundred resumes. I got six interviews; I got no jobs. I substitute taught for half a year. Then I got an AAL job in the city to make money. Then I went back to grad school. I thought my dream job would be to teach freshman composition in a college, and instead of making 6,000 a year as a grad student, if I could only make 12,000 a year, I would be happy.
I would be able to support myself, and I would be doing what I loved, which was writing.
Laura Rotter: That so resonates with me. I still remember when I met my husband and he looked at me and said things like, what planet did you fall from? I thought I had bigger goals. I was like, if I could just make $25,000, that sounded like so much money.
I guess both you and I grew up sort of similarly. Nobody talked about money, right? So, I had no idea what a reasonable amount of money was, but I graduated as an English lit major and my first job paid under $12,000. I was at 11,000 something.
Ivy Eisenberg: So, what happened was, I was so broke being a graduate student, and if I would've asked my parents for money, they would have given me money, but I didn't want to ask.
I was too proud to ask because I was already in graduate school, so I had run out my time in my own mind to depend on parents. I was so broke, and I would use money to photocopy extra things for the students rather than feed myself. When I was in graduate school, I took some tech writing classes, and somebody came into our class and sort of explained her path for how she got a job as a technical writer.
So, when I graduated, I looked for jobs as a technical writer. I had some ability there, so I switched my career.
After graduate school, I got a job as a technical writer. It was so much easier to get a job. I never went into editorials and publishing. I went into technical writing, and that's what got me into the field of technology. That's how I pivoted there.
Laura Rotter: So, were you writing? You were an employee for a technical publication or for a firm? Who were you working for?
Ivy Eisenberg: I was a writer for a company that developed software systems for healthcare organizations, nursing homes, hospitals, and they needed technical writers to explain to users how to use their software.
I was a technical/promotional writer. I did a little bit of each because I had the skills. I mean, one of my gigs in between was after I graduated undergrad, was I did book jackets for Simon and Schuster for paperbacks. That's for Weston’s, and that's really cool. Romance novels.
So that was cool. I got a job working for a healthcare computing company, a small company, and then after that I got a job working at a Chemical Bank as a systems analyst and technical writer.
So, my title was systems analyst because my whole thing was, I was the person to explain technical concepts to a non-technical audience. I would speak with the technical team with empathy and understanding and make an effort to understand what they were doing. Then I would also speak to the business users who were not technical and determine what they were using. I was the link between the two groups.
Laura Rotter: I mean, it's very easy to use the language of a certain field as a technical person and speak with peers, but to explain it to people is not that easy to do and takes a gift with language, takes a gift of understanding how others think.
So, just to understand the continuum, that first job with healthcare tech company, that was early eighties? When was that? I don't want to date you.
Ivy Eisenberg: ‘83. No, that's fine, I was already old out of graduate school. It was 1983, October, 1983, and then I started at Chemical Bank in April of 84.
So, I stayed at that first job for six months. I stayed at Chemical Bank for three years, went to first Boston, which is now Credit Suisse.
Laura Rotter: That no longer exists, right?
Ivy Eisenberg: Yeah, So it's like I was Chemical Bank, which then became Chase Manhattan, which then became JP Morgan Chase, and then I went to First Boston, which then became Credit Suisse first Boston, which his now Credit Suisse.
Yes, yes. Then I went to Nynex, which then became Bell Atlantic, which then became Verizon. Yeah.
Laura Rotter: So the job, all the jobs were, as you just said, what you're doing today professionally, which is explaining technical things to non-technical audiences or that were all always a part of the job.
Ivy Eisenberg: It started that, that was a part of the job, and then what happened, is in working with the technology teams, I discovered that I was the first non-technical person to touch the systems.
So, then I became sort of a designer of the interface of how these systems need to interact with people. It got to be more sort of a design requirements role of describing how the systems should look as opposed to just explaining them after they were already built.
So I moved further back into the, the process where they were first conceiving and designing systems for people, and I drove the design.
Laura Rotter: That sounds like what I understand now to be called user experience, would you say, right?
Ivy Eisenberg: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. And it was before the term user experience was used, but that's what I did.
Laura Rotter: First,
I'm curious how that evolved to where you are today, as well as when did it occur to you that there were other passions that you had that you wanted to integrate into your life?
Ivy Eisenberg: How it evolved was, in 1990, I started working at what was then Nynex. Now Verizon, I had my first baby in 92. I was more about the sort of the work-life balance.
I wasn't necessarily looking to, to do this and that. I always kept my career. I was a consultant at the time, and then I became an employee. I had my second baby in 95. So, from 1990 to 2006, 16 years, I just worked at Verizon in a variety of different capacities, enjoying all the work.
I was using my skills in various ways, mostly working with technology. The Verizon work, at first, I was working in their advanced technology department research and technology, and that was very exciting because that's a sort of a creative department of technology where they're thinking about what needs to be done in the future.
So, the technology is the same. What needs to be done right now versus what needs to be done in the future. What needs to be done in the future? You're envisioning technology that doesn't exist. So, I worked in artificial intelligence and expert systems in 1990, which now everybody's all about AI.
Now computing power is enabling things to happen. That couldn't happen back then, but I was up to speed and, and again, I was really the communicator in the group, not the technologist, but because of how I work, I learned a lot about all these different technologies.
Laura Rotter: When you've talked about the past, to stay in one place for 16 years really indicates to me that it was creative for you and that you were learning, and you weren't just there for the pay.
How lucky.
Ivy Eisenberg: Yes. Right. You did have that ability. Yes.
I was in financial services before that; a lot of people who start in financial services stay there. A lot of my colleagues who I work with were people I worked with in the eighties. People sort of stick around each other.
Then going into the phone company, a lot of people who work at the phone company work in that same industry their whole lives.
I left financial services because I didn't like the environment. At First Boston, I felt it was very greedy and backstabbing, and people were obsessed with the market and money. That wasn't me. I was obsessed with work and quality of work and human communication.
Laura Rotter: Interesting. Even on the technology side, which is clearly not sort of the profit side, it is a cost side, and yet you could tell the same culture.
Ivy Eisenberg: Yeah.
So, I've always been creative. I've always written, I've always written parody songs ever since I was a child and after I left graduate school and I got a little bit used to the work life of an Aztec writer, I started writing on my own. So, in 1985, I started taking classes at the West Side Y.
They had this writer's voice workshop. They were great. I've always done writing on the side. I did a few screenplays and some fiction, but I really discovered that my genre was sort of a short humor essay, and when I had children, as often happens. That was sort of a creative muse, where all of a sudden you have a lot of funny things to say.
So, I was writing. I've been writing all along and also did some readings of my work throughout the nineties. I was associated with this organization called the International Women's Writing Guild, and they would have readings. I did a few readings with them, and then I designed my own for Northern Westchester Center.
The center of the Arts in March is Women's History Month, so we did women's humor performances there. Then there was an organization in Norwalk, Connecticut that had these shows that were multidisciplinary, there would be two dance performances, two music performances, and two writers reading. I did those about four or five times.
I produced a few of those. I did all of that, you know, so I, I got my work out there. I submitted some things for publication. Nothing was ever finished, like for publication. I do get feedback from some people that my writing is best when I'm reading it, as opposed to reading it on the page.
You know, I mean, my creative piece of my career has sort of morphed into storytelling, which is really that same sort of genre, like 650 to 800 words of a story that's told live and it, and it sort of brings my voice, my portable voice together with my voice in writing, and it seems to be a fun genre for me.
Laura Rotter: So, it really, it sounds like you were always a creative writer with a tilt towards humor. You were doing it parallel or with your day job. And I'm frankly, I'm impressed as you talk about Ivy, you know, you had two young kids, you had a full-time job and. You were reaching out, submitting your work, producing, where do you think the energy came from to do that?
Ivy Eisenberg: Going for my MBA at night at NYU, moving when my eldest one was eight and the younger one was five. We moved, we were renting, and we bought the house and we bought a wreck to be fixed up. Yeah, so I did have, I have a lot of energy, I guess. Yeah.
Laura Rotter: I'm assuming you still have that energy.
I always feel like we have energy for things that really make us feel alive and make us feel like ourselves. So you were pursuing things that you were really driven? Given your level of energy, which sounds high, you're able to do other things without having to sacrifice what feels like enough to you, right?
Ivy Eisenberg:
Right. I get gratification in the day job. I feel good about what I do. I feel good about the human beings I interact with. I really like the work, which is convenient because it is renumerated it. Yes.
Laura Rotter: So as we get, um, towards the end of our time together, I'm curious if you could talk a bit about what you're doing on the more creative side of your life.
Ivy Eisenberg: So, I started to write a show and then I realized it was beyond me. So, I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is a very well regarded training ground for improv storytelling and sketch comedy. I met a teacher there, Marga Lightman. She's now in LA, and she told me about this storytelling organization called The Moth, where people get up and they tell true first person stories.
So, I learned about it, and the light bulb went off and I'm like, TA, this is great. This is a great genre.
Laura Rotter: When did you do the class at The Upright?
Ivy Eisenberg: So, I was doing comedy. I think it was 2010/2011 next. So between 2010-2012 was when I started to do a little bit of standup comedy. I had never done standup comedy, but everybody thought I was a comedian.
Everyone's like, oh, Ivy does standup. I'm like, I really don't do standup. I do storytelling, but I started training a little bit in it. It's, it's, it's very different. Then I got laid off, and I started to work on a solo show about getting laid off at 56 and trying to reinvent myself. I did a whole solo show and I think it's pretty funny. I think I'm going to revive it. I started to teach humor writing in Tarrytown after I got laid off, while among the different things I was doing.
I taught humor writing, storytelling, and I taught a humor class at the Washington Heights Y. I did a couple of different things. None of those would've even paid for the electric bill, let alone my expenses, right? But gave me joy, and I met somebody who wanted to start a storytelling show.
So, around 2013, I really started to get into storytelling, which really has that element. The true first-person humorous tale, which is sort of my best genre, and being able to tell it live in front of an audience.
Laura Rotter: I’m curious of the skills that you get from just getting up and telling the story in front of the group and how that translates to the other work you do.
Ivy Eisenberg: Sometimes it does. So, my day job a lot of times is very much detail oriented and I get very much into the detail, nitty gritty, you know, the 10 decimal point, nitty gritty of making things happen. Like I'm working on a billing system now and, and there's a lot of very complicated things happening.
I sometimes lose myself in the details when I'm on a meeting because I'm thinking through and I'm thinking faster than I can talk. Interestingly, the individual I work for has said to me, I'm so surprised because you're so clear and coherent when you're telling a story, but then you get so convoluted when you're at a meeting and that's because when you're telling a story, you sort of have to be prepared.
You know where you're going. The arc of the story is taking you where you want to be and it's all about where you wind up. Everything has to lead to where you wind up. I don't often think of a meeting as where I want to wind up. I often think of it as sort of discovering things as I'm going along and sort of reacting to something that's coming in the moment.
So also, a dialogue is different than when you have the mic and you're the only one talking. It doesn't always translate. What does translate is sort of my belief in human connection and my listening story, listening as opposed to storytelling, which is what I use very effectively in my day job. I listen to people's stories, so even if it's about the content of the work, it's really a human being that I'm working with and that really helps my day.
Laura Rotter: So, this is a podcast around money and how when our life changes, money changes as you've grown and aged. Talk about getting laid off at 56. How has your definition of success and specifically financial success shifted?
Ivy Eisenberg: I have so much less anxiety now at 66 than I had at 56, because I feel like I had a financial planner help us with, you know, what, what our big picture is.
I have a very vibrant day job that's bringing in money and I've made a plan to retire when I'm 70 from my day job. I have good confidence that even in worst case scenario or best case scenario, according to that grid and all of that analysis, I'll be able to survive. I know that I'll be able to live the, uh, lifestyle that I like.
I know what that means now, for the first time in my life it just in the past year, I just know, I know because I'm at that point. You know, like I can, acquire or buy the things I want to buy, and things don't matter. Sometimes things don't matter to me as much anymore, and it's not always about the, the things I'm not in any way, shape or form decluttering, but I'm trying not to acquire as much.
I'm trying to declutter, but it's not working. Right and mean the things that bring me joy or clutter. So, it's like that whole Kondo thing is ridiculous. Right. So, my definition of money isn't that like anxiety ridden, like I have to do this, otherwise I'm going to lose the roof over my head.
Because 10 years ago I thought I was going to be homeless. I had nightmares that I was going to be on the street.
Laura Rotter: This is after that unexpected layoff. Wow.
Ivy Eisenberg: You know, My older kid was just starting college. The younger one was still in high school.
You know, we weren't in as of a good financial situation. The mortgage was, you know, much less of the mortgage was paid off. It's still almost all paid off. I just was looking up at this mountain and that was a lot, and the severance was nothing. It was really like the rug pulled out from under you.
It was just criminal. Then it was very hard to try and get a job at 56 years old. It was hard. Now I don't care as much anymore and I feel like it's easier in some ways. I don't know why. Maybe because I know what my lane is, but it was hard for me. It was hard for me to interview.
I was like, I was old and floppy and, and I was weird. I mean, I'm a bad interviewee. I'm bad. Back to your question, I no longer have this nebulous. I don't know what it’s going to take for me to retire. I sort of have a little bit of an idea in my mind of how much I'm putting away for the next few years .
At 70 and a half I'm going to retire, from my day job. I might not, I might be something where I'll be a consultant for two days a week and not five. It might be. That I don't stop. It might be that I stop sooner. It might be that I switch to only doing actual work one day a week and then just placing other consultants as my career.
Something like that, in some variation. I don't know, I'm in a, a contract where I'm sort of dependent on, and it's very comfortable there, but I don't know what's going to happen if the market changes or they change direction. It might be that this one contract I have ends when I'm 67, and then I have to figure out, okay, how am I going to close the gap for three and a half years?
And I just picked 70 and a half as an arbitrary thing because at the time it was like, okay, that's when the max social security. So that's when I'll do it. You know, like I just, I, I had to pick something and that's what I did.
Laura Rotter: Right. 70 is a nice round number and that's when you've hit the max of social security.
I guess what I'm hearing is that perhaps the definition hasn't shifted, but you're closer to the age. You have a plan in place, so you actually understand what needs to be done, and perhaps your kids are more or less off the payroll, which I know in my own life was very helpful in taking some of the pressure off.
So Ivy, if people listen to this and feel like, I would love to build my storytelling voice, how can they reach you and learn about the shows that you're hosting?
Ivy Eisenberg: The best place to go is to my website, ivyeisenberg.com. It'll give you everything you want to know about me that I'm willing to share.
From there, you have links to a few of my recordings, my story, and what I offer. Links to my Facebook page, which is a lot of stuff, links to my LinkedIn and my professional profile, but I would start with ivyeisenberg.com. You can email me from that site and that would be the best place to reach me. Great.
Laura Rotter: I know you've already mentioned some resources. There was the course that you took, I guess about a decade or so ago. Are they still around?
Ivy Eisenberg: No, they're not around. Upright Citizens Brigade is not around. The place where you would go if you wanted to do storytelling is you can go to the moth.org and they
They have some training. Ah, there's a place called the Pit. It stands for People's Improv Theater, and they have training and there is a very vibrant community that has a group on Facebook NYC storytelling, and a lot of people who teach and offer storytelling classes post on that new NYC storytelling Facebook.
There's also Northeast storytelling, New Jersey storytelling, DC storytelling. So the Facebook groups, I find that's where I get a lot of information about. Classes to take shows, things like that, and people can always reach out to me. I will, you know, expectorate my knowledge.
Laura Rotter: I would assume happy more available on, you know, online workshops than there used to be as well.
Ivy Eisenberg: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yes. I actually take an improv class online on Monday night.
Laura Rotter: Thank you again for spending the time with me. Ivy, I really enjoyed learning about this journey with you over time.
Ivy Eisenberg: Thank you.
Laura Rotter: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Ivy Eisenberg, founder and CEO of Our Idea Works. I'd like to share some takeaways I took from our conversation.
First takeaway is understand your strengths. Ivy uses her gift with language and of understanding how others think to explain technical things to non-technical people.
Second takeaway, find something you love to do and the money will follow. Ivy enjoyed learning about new cutting edge technologies in her various roles and in her own words, She was obsessed with her work and the art of human communication rather than being obsessed with the money as others she worked with were. Finally know your definition of enough.
In Ivy's case, she knew she wouldn't be happy scrimping and living meagerly in order to follow her creative muses. She always has had a day job to support her lifestyle and this sense of being supported enables her to truly put her energy into her after-work life without having to worry about paying the bills.
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