Jason Feifer: Building Adaptability in Business, Intentions Over Goals

Full Episode Page: Jason Feifer: Building Adaptability in Business, Intentions Over Goals 

Jason Feifer is editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine and best-selling author of Build for Tomorrow.

Jason Feifer joins host Nick Berry to explain how business owners can build adaptability through intentions instead of rigid goals. They explore leadership flexibility, defining identity beyond job titles, transferable skills, and how to use the right kind of fear to drive growth. Jason also shares his yearly theme framework and strategies for building a personal brand that scales with your career. 

What You’ll Learn

• How yearly themes drive clarity without rigid goals
• Why control beats outcome fixation in strategy
• Define identity by transferable value, not title
• Use core skills to pivot across roles and industries
• Adopt the right fear to move fast on new opportunities
• Build a personal brand that evolves as you grow

Links

• Jason Feifer's Personal Website
• Build for Tomorrow (Book)
• One Thing Better Newsletter
• Jason Feifer on LinkedIn
• Jason Feifer on Instagram 

Chapters
00:00 Intentional Leadership and Setting Themes for Adaptability in Business
04:08 Identity and Leadership Beyond Job Titles
07:19 Why Adaptability in Business Is the Most Important Skill
15:20 Personal Brand Strategy and Transferable Skills in Business
23:20 Growth Mindset, Fear, and Future Opportunities

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Transcript

Transcript for: Jason Feifer: Building Adaptability in Business Through Intentions, Not Goals

00:00 Intentional Leadership and Setting Themes for Adaptability in Business

04:08 Identity and Leadership Beyond Job Titles

07:19 Why Adaptability in Business Is the Most Important Skill

15:20 Personal Brand Strategy and Transferable Skills in Business

23:20 Growth Mindset, Fear, and Future Opportunities

Jason Feifer (00:00)

So there are two kinds of fear. There's the fear of losing what we had, which is a fear that causes us to want to hold on to what came before.

And then there is the fear of not finding the next answer fast enough. And that is a fear that propels us forward. That is a fear that is rooted in hope and optimism, which is that there is a next thing. There is a new opportunity somewhere and we just need to be the ones that get it first. And that is what she was really doing. She was fearful of not figuring out the next move fast enough. And that is a form of adaptability where we step back and we look at

What is truly motivating us? What is truly driving us? What are we truly afraid of? And then we need to recalibrate to make sure that the things that are driving our energy and attention are forward motion, not holding on to what came before.

Nick Berry (01:05)

Why do some entrepreneurs keep winning as the world's changing while others get stuck protecting what used to work? That question's exactly why I invited Jason Feifer on. Jason's the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and he believes adaptability is the most important skill in business today. He spent years studying founders and leaders who evolved without losing themselves in the process.

This conversation is about building a business and an identity that can survive constant change. Expect to learn how adaptability in business actually gets built. Jason's take on intentions versus rigid goals. How to define identity beyond a job title. Whether control matters more than outcomes. How fear can fuel growth and how transferable skills keep you relevant. Enjoy this episode with Jason Feifer.

Nick Berry (01:48)

was reading about your 2026 theme that you wrote about. And so I'd like to start there if you don't mind and just talk about, your theme, why you chose it, the importance of a theme to entrepreneurs.

Jason Feifer (02:00)

So that is something that came out of my newsletter, which is called One Thing Better, And that is a newsletter where each week I share one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company that you love. And I had shared how I, at the very end of every year,

I declare a theme for the next year. And that theme, give you an example. So in 2023, I had a bunch of big contracts that ended and I realized that I was staring down a financial cliff. And so I realized that 2024 needed to be the year of opportunity creation. That was the theme that I gave it, which is to say, I identified a…

challenge that I'm facing. And then instead of setting a very hyper-specific benchmark for what I wanted, I instead gave myself an intention for the year, a theme for the year, the year of opportunity creation. I told my wife that, I told my friends that, I told my business partners that, and I said, this is what I'm going to be focused on next year. And in this way, it focuses me, it orients me, it gives me a year to find out what that means and how to accomplish it.

which I really like because I don't like narrowing myself down to specific, tangible outcomes that I may not be able to reach or that I might want to reach in ways that aren't as productive. So that was the theme of 2024. And then by the end of 2024, I had created quite a lot of opportunity for myself. And so I was overwhelmed. And I said, the big problem that I want to solve for next year is that I'm feeling overwhelmed and I don't have the time to just enjoy life. So I said 2025 will be the year.

of opportunity balance. And that's what I spent this year doing, trying to figure out what that means for me to feel balanced with the opportunities and everything else I want to do with my time. So I reeled back on a bunch of commitments. I started to say no to more things. It started to be a little more intentional about what I was saying yes to and how. And then I've decided that next year, 2026 is going to be the year of less work, more people, which isn't to say that I'm going to stop working by any means, but it is going to be that I have

set the intention throughout the course of the year to figure out what it means to spend more time focusing on the relationships in my life and not just the work in my life. So I think that this is a really powerful and useful thing for anybody to do. It's not a, you know, I'm to go to the gym next year. It's not, I'm going to make a hundred thousand dollars more money next year. It is really about identifying an intention that you can spend an entire year understanding and growing into.

and that is designed to solve a core problem in your business or your life.

Nick Berry (04:42)

Yeah, I think the word intention is the magic in there for me. It's like, it needs to be specific enough that it can give you, you can act with intentionality. And I think you said that you don't care to go into a lot of specific goals. From my perspective, I think you probably, you can, or you don't have to, as long as you've gotten enough clarity that you can be intentional with how you approach things. What do you think?

Jason Feifer (05:06)

Yeah,

I mean, I don't like hyper specific goals. And the reason for that is because it's often the hyper specific goals tend to be oriented around something that you don't have control of yourself. So for example, if I said I'm going to have, you know, X amount more revenue or I'm going to have, and look, I understand that like as a business, you should be setting goals and benchmarks, but I'm just talking more personally here.

Let me back up and tell you like a root observation that I had and where I kind of came to this idea of the goal thing, which was that when I had my book, which was called Build for Tomorrow come out in 2022, people kept asking me, � there it is. You've got it. that's a, that's a delight. Thank you. I appreciate that. people kept, asking me, so is your goal to get on the New York times bestseller list? And look, that would be nice, but that's not my goal.

And the reason that's not my goal is because I can't control for that. I don't, I am not the person who makes the decision about what books end up on the New York Times bestseller list. So if that's my goal, then I am handing the line between success and failure over to somebody else. And I don't like that one bit. So I want to set goals that I can control. And so maybe the goal was I'm going to

pour everything that I have in terms of energy and connections into this book launch. And my goal is that I want to see it improve the other facets of my business in some way. Okay, that's good goal. I can do everything in my power and we'll see what happens. But I really don't like anchoring to things that I can't control. And I feel like people often do some version of that. People come up to me all the time and they tell me,

My goal is to be an entrepreneur magazine. And it's like, that is a terrible goal. really, that is a terrible goal. And because exactly, because I have control over it. So like that's, that can't be your goal because there's nothing you can do about that. There's nothing you can do about that except like hound me, I guess. But I don't want you to hound me. And I got too many people hounding me. So like find a thing that is your goal that you can control so that you have control over whether you're a success or not.

Nick Berry (06:57)

because you have control over it, not them, right?

some of what you said just made me think about, you seem to be shaping your theme around using it to help you shape your identity, Or maybe you're using your identity to help you shape or determine your theme, but I feel there's a connection there, You're using these things to move you toward the way that you want to be or you want things to be.

Jason Feifer (07:39)

Yeah, well, you know, identity is a separate but also related concept here. I talk quite a lot about that. I think that people anchor their identities too closely to the output of their work or the role that they occupy. So if someone came up to you at a party and asked what you do, your answer would be some version of I do blank at blank or I have X company or something like that.

But the problem is that those things are just so changeable. And if we anchor our identity to the way in which we do our work or the specific role that we occupy, then when those things change, they feel like a challenge to who we are. And that's very disorienting. So I like to orient identity at least internally. I'm not saying externally, like, you this is what I'm about to say. You don't have to go around saying at parties, but I like to come up with a, what I call a mission statement for myself, for others, which is a single sentence.

A single short sentence starts with I, every word carefully selected so that it's not anchored to something easily changeable. So it's the difference between I'm a magazine editor, which is a terrible identity. It's very easily changeable. All it takes is a magazine closing, somebody firing me. That's that. Or here's things you don't have control over. Exactly. So, or this, I tell stories in my own voice. That's a totally different way of thinking about identity.

Nick Berry (08:49)

things you don't have control over.

Jason Feifer (08:57)

In that identity, I'm identifying the core transferable value that I have, which is storytelling. And I can do that in multiple formats, in multiple mediums. It doesn't even have to be in a medium. It could be in person. It could be when a founder calls me up because I'm on their advisory board and they're working on some challenge. And it reminds me of something that I talked to somebody else about. I can tell them about it they can feel some sense of clarity. That's storytelling too. I can do that.

I have full control next, are seizing on that word control and rightly so, like that is what I am doing. I'm finding the place where I have control and where I can execute it to the highest level. So I tell stories, stories is something in my control in my own voice, me setting the terms for how I want to operate. And that I think is a far more powerful way to think about our identity. Now you can see I'm doing a similar thing there.

that I do with the theme, which is to say I'm finding things that are really flexible, that aren't anchored to things that are uncontrollable, things that are easily changeable. What we want to do is give ourselves maximum flexibility to articulate the core value that we have or the core intention that we have during a period of time.

Nick Berry (10:07)

So we don't unintentionally block ourselves out of the application or utility of it somewhere.

Jason Feifer (10:13)

Sure. Malcolm Gladwell told me self-conceptions are powerfully limiting, and I think that's a really, really great advice. Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. So if you have too narrow definition of who you are, then you will turn down all of these other opportunities around you that don't match that narrow definition. So I want to make sure that my self-conception isn't so narrow. And it was for a lot of my career. spent…

so many years working in magazines and I just thought of myself as a guy who makes magazines, which means that if I'm not at a magazine, I have nothing. I'm not good for anything. I don't know anything, right? It's a really terrible way to think about yourself is to anchor to a specific thing that you do. And I hear people do it all the time. I'm only good at this. I only know how to do that. Well, if that's the case, then you are giving away your power. You are now making somebody else responsible for your future.

because it's entirely based upon whether or not they will employ you to do this one thing that you're convinced you do well. And I just, we just can't live like that. We have to give ourselves more freedom and flexibility.

Nick Berry (11:19)

Yeah, how did you come to the realization that's what you were doing wrong? Or you didn't want to be that way?

Jason Feifer (11:25)

well, you know, there was a really interesting moment that happened when I first got to entrepreneur, which was about 10 years ago, where I became editor in chief. And then people started to invite me onto podcasts and onto stages. And they were, they were treating me like I was an authority and I didn't feel like an authority. You know, I'm not a 10 years ago. I didn't really know that much about entrepreneurship. I just knew how to make magazines and I got.

I got a role helping a media brand evolve its offerings. But what I came to realize was if I could become the person that everyone thought I was, which is to say everyone thought that I was some kind of business or entrepreneurship or thought leader personality. If I could be that person, then there were massive opportunities ahead for me.

and I didn't even know what they were. just knew that if I could do it, I could see over the over the hill, you know, and see what was on the other side of it. And that required some really deep searching because I had come to entrepreneur magazine as a media guy. I knew how to make media. I had worked at many magazines. My my skill set was oriented around magazine making and.

Eventually, I realized that actually the larger opportunity was to understand how to be relevant to and deeply engaged with this audience. And doing that transformed me too, because the more I started to spend time with entrepreneurs, not thinking of them as just sources, but as people who I admire and work with and partner with, the more in which I started to change the way that I thought as well. And I stopped thinking of myself as a media person. I started to think of myself as an entrepreneur and I started to

build companies with people and get involved in people's companies. And that process wasn't easy. And it required a constant recalibration of what is my offering now? What is my value now? What do I actually have to say to people? Why am I relevant to people? What do I build upon? What problem do I solve for others? Right? It's like building a brand. You have to know what problem you solve for others. I'm asking that of myself. I'm treating myself as a product and a project. And then I'm forcing it.

to evolve, to meet the market opportunity. And it was really that process that taught me how important it was to think of yourself with broad flexibility because I mean, well, frankly, Nick, I just, saw the results. mean, the results were that I made more money than I ever had and that I was more in demand than I had ever been. And that, and that I'm now able to walk into

endless different kinds of situations. 10, 12 years ago, all I could have done is walk into a magazine and make a magazine. And now, put me on an advisory board, get me in a sales meeting with people from enterprise clients. I'm advising, I'm building, I'm growing, I'm partnering, I'm doing all this stuff that to me is actually it's the same skill set, the same skill set of

processing information quickly and then being able to communicate it to people in interesting and memorable ways. That's basically all I do. And I used to think that that was only applicable to magazines and now I realize it's applicable to much more. And if you can find that transition, that revelation in your own work, in your own world, you will discover that the amount of value that you can bring to others

grows exponentially.

Nick Berry (14:55)

Yeah. it's endless. Cause you mentioned when you were attached to, being a magazine guy, right. You didn't, that was the only place, the only environment that you were going to be able to deliver that value. But now you probably unlocked the ability where you could start from scratch tomorrow and you know, you could go and you could create value in a lot of different ways and recreate a lot of the success that you've been able to.

Jason Feifer (15:00)

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Nick Berry (15:17)

to create to this point. That's super powerful.

Jason Feifer (15:20)

It is, isn't it? It's

a completely different way of thinking about yourself, but it gives you this maximum flexibility, which is especially what we need in an ever evolving world.

Nick Berry (15:29)

So then that might be a good segue. Let's talk about adaptability because that's you like to say adaptability is the most important skill in business ownership, right? So let's talk about that. Why do you say?

Jason Feifer (15:38)

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I say that because I've spent the last 10 years learning and studying from the world's most impressive leaders and entrepreneurs. And that's the thing that I saw that the most successful people were the most adaptable full stop. They were the ones who understood that the thing that works today is not the thing that's going to work tomorrow. And that if you anchor yourself to yesterday, then you are not going to seize upon the opportunities ahead. And what I found was that this is not some magic magic trait that

people either had or they didn't. It was a thing that people could work on. And I think that we prove to ourselves over and over again, as we do this in first small and then in larger ways that the more adaptable we can become, which requires a kind of interesting balance of being really deeply engaged and caring about the thing that you're doing, but also having a level of detachment about it so that if it needs to change, it can. If you need to abandon something that used to work,

you can, these are hard things to do. But ultimately, I think the thing that separates successful people and for unsuccessful people is not whether they're good at something at the start and then hang on to it forever, but rather whether they're willing to be bad long enough to get to good. And then are they willing to constantly reconsider themselves along the way?

Nick Berry (16:56)

Yeah. So there's the kind of this theme in the things that we're talking about where, you mentioned about like leaving flexibility in there introducing too much rigor to the adaptability and the need to be able to, maneuver around things as, as they evolve. it all, makes perfect sense too, because if you've, if you've been in an entrepreneur at all,

Can you name an endeavor that is more uncertain, more complex, like is more changing on the fly than that? You have to leave that room for, or you have to be able to adapt or it will crush you.

Jason Feifer (17:23)

Right.

Yeah. And, and anyone who's been in business for any period of time understands that the thing that you take to market is not the thing that's going to actually work. Right. I mean, there's endless great lines about this. One of my favorites is from Reid Hoffman, who says that, if you aren't embarrassed by your first product launch, then you launched too late. The idea of being that there's no way to possibly produce something that is perfect. is not embarrassing. Instead, you just have to get something out there.

and then evolve it endlessly. I remember having a conversation once with Michelle Feifer and she told me, because she had started this, this fragrance company called Henry Rose. And she told me that she had a really interesting experience launching this company was the first time she'd done that versus launching a movie because making a movie, you spend a lot of concentrated time making this movie and then it wraps.

And then it comes out and there's some amount of promotion that you have to do on it. And then that's it. And then you move on and you never have to think about that movie again. There's nothing else to do. It is a finished thing and people could watch it if they want, but you don't have to do anything else ever. But launching a business is the exact opposite. She was like, we launched a business. And then I realized that the launch was actually the beginning of an endless process, right? It's like you launch a movie and you're done. You launch a business and you've just started.

Nick Berry (18:49)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Feifer (18:53)

And so what is that? Like what is the actual action that is taking place after the launch? And the answer is a constant evolution. And the crazy thing is that it's not just an evolution of the business, but it has to be an evolution of you too, because any founder that I have talked to that has grown, whose business has grown, has found that they need to consistently reinvent who they are as a leader.

the leader that you need to be at a startup stage is not the leader that you need to be when you have a thousand employees. When you have 5,000 employees, you have to be a completely different person serving a completely different function for what is now a completely different team. And that requires, again, adaptability. And some people can do that and some people can't. And that I really do believe is the dividing line between whether you'll succeed or not.

Nick Berry (19:40)

how does one work on adaptability?

Jason Feifer (19:44)

Well, the starting point is some of the stuff that we had talked about before, which is to really recognize what your core transferable skills are and to also recognize what you're genuinely good at and what you're not. We don't all need to be excellent at everything. I think as we grow, we can find the things that we're good at and not. And then we also need to surround ourselves with people who are going to challenge and push us.

who are not going to allow us to calcify into one kind of person with one kind of idea. And I love surrounding myself with people who are gonna tell me that my ideas are bad, who are gonna push back on me. think that's just a critical, that is something that I look for in the people who I work with most closely is, can you tell me that my idea is bad? And another thing that I would,

I would challenge people to think about is what motivates you? by that I mean, I once had dinner, this was the last dinner that I went to before COVID shut everything down. And so the whole world is shutting down around us. I'm sitting next to this woman named Megan Asha who at the time was running a company called Foundermade. It was a

trade show company. And I said, Megan, the live events are shutting down. What, how are you doing? Are you like freaking out? Cause your company is a live events company. And she said, you know, no, I'm not actually freaking out. And the, I'm actually kind of excited about it. And the reason is because we've had all these ideas for new lines of revenue, new things that we could do with founder made. And yet we never got to explore them because our energy was always put towards the live events.

But if the live events are on hold, then we can start to think about other things that we can do with this business. I, you know, at first I thought this is a woman with no fear, like just what a crazy thing to be able to say. But what I eventually realized was that's not the case at all. Megan is not a person with no fear. Megan is a person with the right kind of fear. So there are two kinds of fear. There's the fear of losing what we had, which is a fear that causes us to want to hold on to what came before.

And then there is the fear of not finding the next answer fast enough. And that is a fear that propels us forward. That is a fear that is rooted in hope and optimism, which is that there is a next thing. There is a new opportunity somewhere and we just need to be the ones that get it first. And that is what she was really doing. She was fearful of not figuring out the next move fast enough. And that is a form of adaptability where we step back and we look at

What is truly motivating us? What is truly driving us? What are we truly afraid of? And then we need to recalibrate to make sure that the things that are driving our energy and attention are forward motion, not holding on to what came before.

Nick Berry (22:32)

Yeah. And that could be probably a tough conversation to have on your own, right? That like, probably helps to have some guidance there.

Jason Feifer (22:38)

Mm hmm.

Which is the reason why you want a great team or you want great confidence or you you want the people who you trust, who are endlessly curious the way that you are, who can push you to reconsider the things that you might have just started to do on autopilot or started to take for granted.

I mean, everybody has some version of this in their own work. And yes, it is endlessly easy to stay in place. That's the easiest thing that we can do in our lives right now is stay in place. But that is not very obviously what gets us ahead.

Nick Berry (23:21)

Yeah, there's not much room for that as an entrepreneur.

Okay, so I'm going to shift gears a little bit. do you see yourself a brand or as a business?

Jason Feifer (23:30)

as a brand or a business,

I mean, I guess both. mean, look, I think of Jason Feifer as a product in many ways. And it's my job as Jason Feifer to sell Jason Feifer. And so that means that you have to do what a product does, which is that you have to understand who it's for. You have to find a product market fit for that product. And you have to understand what kind of problems that

product solves and then how to articulate that. And that by itself will change over time. You know, there are lots of different facets of Jason Feifer, the product, right? There is Jason Feifer, the collaborator, which is to say the product that you're picking up is a connector, an idea generator, is a good person to call in a pinch.

But then there's also the product that I'm selling to a corporate audience for keynotes, which is Jason Feifer, the guy who can energize people from the stage and who can get people thinking and give people tactical and practical information who can make an event better. Then there is Jason Feifer, the person who's on your advisory board and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I always want to be thinking in the same way that any business

builder is thinking, I want to be thinking, if, if I'm in the business of creating value and opportunity, related to my involvement in something, then how do I understand what people are looking for from me or what people are looking for that I can solve for them? How do I best communicate that? And then how do I, how do I constantly broaden out that marketplace? So.

For example, know, I've spent my first keynote talks were about how to get press for your business. That is a irrelevant topic now. And it was also a pretty limited market, you know, getting press for your business. You basically only talk to business conferences. And so then I wanted to get into corporate keynotes. And so that meant I needed to understand what that marketplace was. I needed to understand what the primary topics of corporate events were.

And then I needed to understand how I could leverage my perceived value in the world as a guy who has access to lots of people through entrepreneur. and, and, and then, that offers something that wasn't entrepreneurship because obviously Clorox is not going to have me show up and tell everybody to leave Clorox and start their own companies. That doesn't make sense. So instead, what is it that I have access to through entrepreneur?

that gives me something that I can offer them, right? Which is where we got to this insight of, well, I study the world's most impressive leaders and entrepreneurs. I see that they're adaptable. I can teach you adaptability, like sort of how I'm like bridging that gap. so I'm constantly thinking about, but you know, that was just the current evolution. I would say that if we talked five, 10 years from now, it would have evolved more. I would have realized more opportunity. I would have discovered that actually I'm talking about myself in the wrong way.

you know, I have people come up to me all the time and tell me what they think I do. And, you know, it's very interesting. Somebody recently, it was like, you're the Anthony Bourdain of human potential. And I was like, that is a really weird phrase, but, but like, I like the idea of human potentials or something that I could do there. Is that bigger than change? But at the same time, is that like kind of more exciting and more specific? So I don't know. You know, I'm just like, you're like, like anybody, you should be constantly playing around with the language that you use and find the stuff that

is going to meet the moment.

Nick Berry (26:47)

thank you so much. I really do appreciate you doing this.

Jason Feifer (26:49)

yeah, hey well thanks. Thanks for having me and you I'll just say you know if everyone if you are interested in getting more from me the newsletter that Nick and I talked about in the beginning, which is called one thing better. You can just get that at onethingbetter.email which is a web address. So just plug that into a browser onethingbetter.email and then if you ever want to get in touch, just hit reply to the email and as Nick can attest it goes right to my inbox and I reply.

Nick Berry (27:11)

Yes, he