5 Steps to Get Unstuck in Your Career | Ethan Evans (Retired VP Amazon)
The magic loop to grow your career, how to build trust even after a screw-up with Jeff Bezos, and how Ethan built a $700K coaching business part-time
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share a new episode with Ethan Evans (retired Amazon VP).
Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Ethan grew to Amazon VP over 15 years and then retired to build a $700K coaching business leveling up leaders to executives. We had a great conversation about:
(00:00) Why trust is built more in negative events
(02:11) The Magic Loop framework to grow your career
(04:46) Where people get stuck in the Magic Loop
(07:09) How to ask your manager for constructive feedback
(11:02) The #1 thing that leaders need to do well
(16:38) How to get your manager to invest in you
(22:51) How Ethan built trust by taking a risk to disagree with his SVP
(29:41) How NVIDIA succeeded by simply surviving
(31:28) How Ethan recovered from failing Jeff Bezos
(37:39) How to build a $700K business while in retirement
(44:31) What every tech person should be doing right now
I learn so much every time I talk to Ethan. Keep reading for the interview takeaways.
Five steps to get unstuck in your career
Welcome, Ethan! To start, can you share the Magic Loop you’ve used to help 1000s of people grow their careers?
Sure, the magic loop has five steps:
Do your job well. Check-in regularly with your managers and peers to verify that you’re doing your current job well.
Ask your manager how you can help them. Managers love getting asked this question and always have something they need help with.
Do what they ask. Get it done, and keep your manager updated along the way. Repeat steps 2-3 a few times to build trust.
Ask how you can help in a way that aligns with your goals. This could include increasing your scope, getting promoted, or joining a new team.
Do what they ask and repeat the loop from step 4.
This loop works because it helps you build a collaborative, mutually beneficial relationship with your manager.
Now, let’s talk about where people get stuck in this loop. In step 1, how do you verify with your manager if you’re doing a good job without it becoming awkward?
If your manager isn’t giving you regular feedback already, start the conversation with:
I’d love to understand how I’m doing, what’s going well, and what areas need improvement.
Start with what’s going well because most people get promoted for their superpowers. Then, you can ask what’s holding you back from the next level.
When your manager gives you feedback, it’s critical to listen and write down the feedback in a shared document. Create an action plan with your manager to leverage your superpowers and fill your gaps to reach the next level.
In steps 2 and 3, how can you take on more work from your manager without negatively affecting your current job?
Well, first, let me say that just asking your manager, “How can I help you?” will already make you stand out.
Most people don’t ask because they’re afraid of getting too much work or work that’s not interesting. But step 2 is critical to:
Show your manager that you want to help them vs. just thinking about how they can help you.
To answer your question, here’s how you can balance the additional work:
Align with your manager upfront about what work is essential and what can be paused or stopped.
Delegate work to others. Work that is boring to you may be a great opportunity for someone else on the team.
Audit, audit, audit. For work you delegate, ask questions like “Where do you think this could go wrong?” and identify cues (e.g., if things seem fuzzy/squishy) to identify when to dig further.
Let’s dig further into delegating work. How do you know who to delegate to?
You should always be teaching and developing the people around you.
Have 1:1s to understand what each person wants to do and where they want to step up. Sometimes, people might be at a life stage where they’re happy not to take on more scope because they value their work-life balance.
Other times, people might have the competence and ambition to step up but lack confidence.
The bottom line is that to help your manager (steps 2-3), you must empower others. What’s draining to you may be an exciting opportunity for someone on your team who has yet to do it 50 times like you have. Find and delegate those tasks.
In step 4 (ask how you can help in a way that aligns with your goals), how can you talk to your manager about a project that’s outside of their scope or if you want to switch teams altogether?
When I asked my manager about moving from Amazon to Twitch, he said “no” point blank. He wanted me to stay because I was highly valuable in my role.
So I had to reframe his options—either let me go to Twitch and still be part of his organization, or I would leave his organization entirely. He quickly changed his mind in 24 hours.
I could only have this discussion with my manager because I had already used steps 1-3 of the Loop to build a strong relationship.
Here are some other tactics you can use:
Explain that migrating to the new team can still reflect positively on your manager. Your success is a feather in their gap.
Ask how you can spend the next months doing work that prepares you for the new role while still being a star on the current team.
Brainstorm creating a new role or getting a new project that meets your needs. Things aren't always fixed.
The truth is that every manager has reports that they invest in and reports that they don’t. Frame your goals from their perspective.
Sounds like all of this comes down to emotional intelligence at the end of the day.
Yes! People are proud of things like technical prowess, but in my experience, emotional intelligence is more important for career success.
Just working hard and hoping to get noticed is a low level strategy.
You have to use the Magic Loop and learn how to promote yourself.
It's an interesting parallel to being an online creator. You can have the best course, but no one will know about it if you don't promote it yourself.
Exactly.
How to rebuild trust after a major screw-up with Jeff Bezos
So this is a good segue into our second topic, building trust internally. What does "build trust" mean exactly? What is the currency of trust?
Trust is a combination of predictability and consistency over time. It means having faith that someone will act in expected ways without needing to see or hear it directly.
What most people don’t realize is that:
Trust is built slowly through positive events and more dramatically through adverse events.
The classic case of deep trust is between people in crises, like soldiers in foxholes risking their lives for one another.
At work, trust is forged most quickly when someone has to make sacrifices during a service outage, angry boss incident, or customer crisis. That's when you see who steps up in ways that make you think, "I can rely on this person."
Can you share an example of a time you had to rebuild trust after a major screw-up?
One of my biggest screw-ups was when trying to launch Amazon's App Store where Jeff Bezos got personally mad at me. Here’s what happened: