Your Life After Tech

Ep 013: Nicole Menkhoff: From Tech Leader to Consultant

• Life After Tech • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Nicole Menkhoff takes us on a captivating journey through her professional evolution... from aerospace engineering with a focus on rocket propulsion to leadership roles at tech giants like Google, Twitter, and Apple, before launching her own consulting business in late 2024.

Nicole recognized the tech industry's gradual shift away from true innovation and toward an overemphasis on profit and shareholder value. This sparked Nicole v3.0, a transformation from corporate tech leader to independent consultant helping organizations reinvent productivity and enhance national security.

We chatted about redefining success beyond the size of your paycheck and breaking free from outdated personal narratives, or as Nicole brilliantly said, updating her internal "algorithm" that was still weighing old, obsolete data too heavily. We also discussed some of the physical manifestations of stress, and listening to our bodies.

For anyone contemplating their own career transformation, Nicole emphasizes the importance of thoroughly exploring your motivations and comparing your current values with how you're working and living. 

Find Nicole at nfmso.com.



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Debbie Levitt:

Welcome to the your Life After Tech podcast. This is episode 13. I'm Debbie Levitt. Don't forget to check out our lifeaftertech. info multiverse, including our book, Discord, community coaching, live events and more, Because you might be done with tech, tech might be done with you, or you're thinking about adding non-tech work to your tech career. Today's guest is Nicole Menkhoff, N-I-C-O-L-E-M-E-N-K-H-O-F-F. After an impressive career, Nicole started her own consulting company in 2024. You can learn more at nfmsoc. com. We'll be discussing her interesting journey and being guided by values. Let's get to know Nicole.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, thanks, Debbie, I'm excited to chat with you today. So, most importantly, you know, beyond work, who I am. I am someone that I love music, art, running, I love geology. It's one of my special interests, though, were math and science, and, as such, when I went to get my formal education, I went that route, and so I have a degree in aerospace engineering with a focus in rocket propulsion, with minors in math and computer science. But since college, my professional career has been a fun journey, and I can say that with hindsight now there's been some themes looking across all of it helping others, choosing roles that are at the intersection of technology and strategy and decision-making. That seems to be a recurring theme for me as well, as I am been pretty good about trying and delivering new things. Um, one of my job criteria is do I know how to do this? And if the answer is no, I'm probably more excited than if I already know how to do it.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Um, honestly, all of that occurred in roughly a few phases too, and you're catching me at the start of what is essentially like a third phase. It's why I like, in your book, the concept of a Phoenix. So this is the third rising, if you will, or version three here. And the first phase was like the first 11, 12 years of my professional career. I worked for the US government in national security space too, and then the last 10 years the phase I'm just sort of departing I've been in the tech sector, and then today I'm speaking to you in this latest phase where I'm bringing it all together. I own advising and consulting business, nfmso Consulting, and I started that in October, so we're just about a handful of months into that. So that's pretty much been my journey and I'm pretty excited to say that it's been mostly fun.

Debbie Levitt:

Excellent. Yeah, I'll be asking you more about that later. First, I want to ask a little bit more about the past. Can you please tell me about some of the different types of tech work you've done in previous Nicole versions?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it started. My journey in tech started in Google and I was first in the Android and the consumer hardware spaces, but then most of my time I was actually over at Google X and I was leading operations for what was their largest robotics project. It was really amazing experience and it was definitely hard to sort of leave that and I knew it was time to try something new. So then I moved to Twitter and and at Twitter I was doing machine learning and security first machine learning and then security strategy and operations work and so a lot of that was partnering with the leaders on the technical side and then helping to define and drive strategy and then operationalizing those strategies on a day-to-day basis.

Nicole Menkhoff:

I departed Twitter happenstance just as Elon was coming on board that was a total coincidence, legitimately and I went to Apple and at Apple I led a specific angle of operating system and user security work. It was in their software engineering division and so it was more security sort of threat type work. And then, most recently, I was at Ford Motor Company within their electric vehicle, digital and design areas. Many people don't think of Ford as a tech company and Ford in many ways is involving itself to be a technology product company, especially in electric vehicle digital space, and I was in that area doing change and operations management.

Debbie Levitt:

Awesome stuff and woof woof to my cousin behind the scenes there. I wanted to ask. So it sounds like, nicole, version 3.0 is not necessarily leaving tech, but maybe just kind of creating more control around your world or time or energy. Maybe you know? Tell us about when you first started thinking about that move.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, that's a really good way to put it too. I think it was when I was with Apple and in many ways it was more of a personal awakening in that I was starting to realize certain things about me and my priorities were shifting, shifting and I was comparing that sort of internal state to the external surroundings. And anyway, that personal awakening, I think, was one of the reasons that made me sort of explore beyond tech.

Debbie Levitt:

And.

Nicole Menkhoff:

I think it was what helped me leave. What other was otherwise was a great job. My time at Apple was amazing, to be honest. I had one of the best bosses I had ever had, and to this day but in many ways, I felt like it was coming about that. I'm not necessarily done with tech, but I'm done with tech in terms of working on their terms and I'm happy to share a little bit more on that if you'd like, and I'm happy to share a little more on that if you'd like.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, so pattern recognition and flying pretty close to the sun for several years led me to observe that the tech sector decision-making was slowly but surely moving away from innovation and making things that help the world to being a bit more focused on profit and shareholder value, which is important, but they were becoming overemphasized in the decision making and that was, in turn, having an effect, in my opinion, that tech companies were losing their edge and the things that made them great and, honestly, the things that make me wanted to, inspired me to want to be in tech.

Nicole Menkhoff:

So for not having true innovation, what are we having? I saw a lot of, and to this day, I see a lot of incremental innovation, which can be fine, but for me it's not particularly motivating. And then, even worse, some companies are barely incrementally innovative and now they're reactive. There's a lot of reacting, especially as markets go all over the place, and so in many ways I felt sort of done with that kind of decision-making. I will say startups are perhaps the only part of tech left that is still largely innovation-driven. But even that is slowing, especially if your startup involves hardware in any way, shape or form, because hardware is so capital intensive. But yeah, sort of recognizing that, combined with, like, the personal awakening I was describing, is really, I think, how this first came about.

Debbie Levitt:

And so before we started recording, you were telling me a little bit about how part of your journey included having to redefine success. Tell us more about that, please.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a little bit of a vulnerable topic and I'm happy to share more on it. So in your book you talk about sense of reward, and that was something I really had to do a lot of work on before I was totally comfortable and confident leaving tech and starting my own business. What I really ended up needing to do was to redefine success. I needed to update my definition of success. I think there I'm not alone in saying that.

Nicole Menkhoff:

You know, I spent a portion of my life judging how successful I was based off of the size of my paycheck, for example, and that actually, you know, the more I examined that it no longer really fit. It didn't make sense to me anymore. That didn't. It isn't actually what was mattering to me as my values and priorities were shifting. Yes, I want to make a comfortable living, but it didn't. It wasn't the end all be all.

Nicole Menkhoff:

You know definition of what makes me successful, and so I really had to do a lot of work to understand that and then, to you know, sort of cut, that direct link between size of paycheck equals how successful I am, what my value is, um, and it took a lot of work, but I'm still working through it, to be honest, but I think I'm in a much healthier place and I feel pretty great about it.

Nicole Menkhoff:

And, tactically, another thing that was important for me was to allow myself to actually tap into my savings account, and, you know, the money had always gone in for years, and now I was, for the first time, going to take some money out, and that was an emotional experience. I wasn't expecting to be difficult, but it was, and so I also needed to learn to sort of allow myself to receive, like old me did a lot, burned herself out, had a lot of success in terms of finances let's, you know, use some of that now to make sure that I can propel myself forward in this new space with, you know, better alignment to my values and priorities. And so, thank you, old me, I'm going to allow myself to use some of that.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, that's what it's there for.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Exactly.

Debbie Levitt:

So we're recording this in April 2025. I think you were saying that you were starting your new venture in October. So we're just over a half a year in.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Tell us what you're doing and possibly how it's different or similar to what you were doing yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks for asking, um, so I'm running my own advising consulting businesses and it focuses on helping those who are looking to reinvent productivity and or enhance national security, and there is an overlap in that Venn diagram and so obviously that is an area that I'm also targeting.

Nicole Menkhoff:

So if you're one of those folks but you know the status quo isn't working and you're really trying to have more impact with your product or the work that you're doing, but you're not exactly sure how to most effectively move forward, that's where partnering with me might be worth exploring. So, 20 years of experience in numerous challenging environments I'm excited to pull that together and use that to help a large variety of people instead of just helping one company by being their employee. So in many ways, I get to pull everything together and help more people, and I also get to do it on my terms in the ways that I believe are most effective, and I think that's where I honestly stand apart in my approach, and so advising and consulting can be super effective, but it's more effective when it's blended with actionable and personalized coaching.

Debbie Levitt:

The advising and consulting can target the business issue and the conditions, but the coaching is where you target the human element and, let's just be honest, most business issues have either a very strong human component that's causing the challenge or it's the root cause, and so being able to tackle both of those is where I like to focus yeah, and I was thinking a little bit about that Venn diagram and what made me curious is, at least when we're recording this, we hear so much about vibe coding and about people who think they want to be fast and innovative using AI tools, sometimes avoiding working with engineers and specialists like you, and they think, look, I'm just going to tell an AI system I need an innovative thingy to do thingy, and then I'm just going to put it out and the money's going to roll in.

Debbie Levitt:

And I feel like they're not thinking about all kinds of points in that journey from am I solving a real problem? To am I easily hackable? So what are some of your? You're welcome to disagree, but what are some of your thoughts on that wave right now?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, I don't disagree. I am excited about the wave because I do think there's a lot of opportunity to open up productivity if you can smartly partner with AI. But the trick is to partner, not delegate. And I don't think we're at a place where you can confidently or you should confidently delegate, especially when it comes to this sort of problem solving, including because I don't think the AIs in particular understand the human element, the culture of your particular workplace.

Nicole Menkhoff:

And when I say culture, what do I mean? I mean, like the common experiences and beliefs that people have because of the way things happen there. That is very different from team to team, let alone company to company. If you're actually going to solve something at its root, you have to include that human element, and if you don't, you're going to end up having to resolve the problem later, and I'm real big on trying to solve things at their root cause. And so I do agree that AI can help with certain things and can get you sort of moving in a good direction, but the trick is you have to actually partner with it, not delegate.

Debbie Levitt:

I love that. Thanks so much for saying that. It's a great way to look at it. I also wanted to. I've been asking everybody this, so now you're on the hot seat as well, thinking about your new business venture. How would you say that this ties in with some of your core personal qualities, who you are at the core?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, yeah, and you have a chapter in your book around that and I really appreciated it. It resonated with me and I think really being able to flesh out what my core values are today as Nicole today is one of the things that allowed me to sort of turn disappointment and chaos in terms of my feelings about tech into like action that was able to inspire me and move me forward. So I was no longer wanting to run from something. Instead, because I understood my values. It's almost like I had a compass and I could excitedly move towards something. So the foundation of my work today comes from that, and it just feels really great to be able to say that I now have a job where I can legitimately help people because I'm able to give my best, because I'm able to use all my experience and my expertise and my superpowers, my ability to work the way I know I need to and to live my values. And if all of those conditions are true, then you get the best of me and I can deliver a hell of a lot more than I could.

Nicole Menkhoff:

The way that I was needing to work or being asked to work in a sector that I don't know just doesn't align with you know who I am on the inside anymore and for what it's worth. My particular values there are ease, it's important. If something feels hard, it's probably because I'm approaching it, maybe smartly, but I should look at it from a more of a wisdom perspective. What is the wise way to move forward with something I enjoy? Connection, connecting with others, connecting into my superpowers, feeling alive while I'm doing something is another value of mine. If I don't feel fully engaged, at least some of the time, then chances are it's probably out of alignment with my values and and using my superpowers and my privilege for good. It's really important that I use my privilege for good and, um, I'm excited to be able to lean into that now.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, great way to say it. I was recently doing an exercise in the coaching school I'm going to and they were asking some question about these types of things, and all I could think of was I can only hope that every day, someone will call me an ally.

Nicole Menkhoff:

I like that. Yes, I couldn't agree more.

Debbie Levitt:

I hope to earn it. Yeah, I thought you might might be feeling that. Um, on the flip side, looking back, especially at version 3.0 pivot, is there anything you think might've been a mistake or a regret?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, that's a. It's a great question. Um, I don't. I don't know if it's mistake or regret, or like I wish I would have had knowledge I have now. Whatever that word is. It summarizes all that, but yeah, there definitely is. I think that I think I spent far too long not realizing I was letting myself be driven by old stories I was telling myself about myself, or another way I like to think about it is the algorithm wasn't updated. It was still waiting old, bad data, if you will, and not necessarily waiting the more recent data that was fed into it. And so, because I think too long, let myself stay in that space. I missed out on opportunities to help more people and I missed out on opportunities to improve my own well-being and my happiness.

Debbie Levitt:

So I wish I would have sort of come online, updated the software whatever words you want to use sooner. That's such a great point and thanks for sharing that, because sometimes between these podcasts and other conversations, like in our Discord community, there are people who are starting to realize I'm not sure tech, working in tech, was as good or fulfilling as I thought it was at the time, like they're looking back with, with, uh, fresh lenses or, you know, a new perspective. Did any of that happen to you?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Oh, yeah, yeah, completely Um, for what's worth. Most of the things you talk about in the life after tech book resonated with me. It sort of I stumbled my way and fell through it. I wish I would have read the book before that I started on this journey, and after reading it it was very validating for what it's worth, and what you just described is definitely what happened to me.

Nicole Menkhoff:

It's through hindsight that I was able to have an honest conversation with myself and just admit that certain things weren't working for me, but that takes a certain amount of, I say, grit or courage, because there are a lot of people that will pass negative judgment on your decision to not live the way they do. And what I found, though, in examining that like actually sort of removing my emotions from it and examining that sort of situation is that there are many, many others who are exhausted and they're unfulfilled and they're afraid to admit it to themselves and others, and they're often the first or most likely to pass judgment on your decision not to live the way they are. And so I realize now that when that happens, or I experience that I'm on the receiving end of it, more often than not it has nothing to do with me, and so I'm able to sort of put that aside and move forward.

Debbie Levitt:

Excellent, excellent point there about that that we can accidentally be that mirror to someone else and their decisions and they're kind of trying to live through us in some way or give us advice that isn't really finely attuned to what we might need or prefer. I also wanted to mention hashtag not sponsored really quickly, because I did not ask you to plug the book. I didn't even know that you read it and I just feel so honored that you keep mentioning it. So thank you, oh yeah.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, no, like it was. If you haven't read the book, it legitimately will save you thousands of hours and stress. It mirrored very well the experience I sort of fumbled through and I wish I would have known this. You know cheat sheets ahead of time, although I am someone where it's hard to tell me what to do and so in many ways, maybe it needed to be me figuring it out and I figured it out and it, you know the book very well, summarizes it.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, it's that I tend to think of my audience as smart, critical thinkers, and so how much do you tell them what to do? No, not that much, but hopefully you can guide them down the paths where they'll have their own realizations.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, yeah, I think for me, the part of the book that I thought was the most wise was when you ended it talking about moving past fear, cause, honestly, that's what all of this really is. Um, and I've gotten, I have a new like a, a way that I think about fear now. Um, so what I like to do, for myself at least, is when my body throws the notification like fight or flight. I know what that feels like.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Oh, for me it's like my head feels full and I can feel heavy in my chest. So when I get that notification, instead of just reacting to it fight or flight freeze I instead examine the notification. Like think about all the notifications you get on your phone. Do you really respond to all of them at the exact moment they come in? Is it spam? Is it a legit emergency? Is it someone you don't care to speak to anymore? Does it you know? Is it Comcast telling you the bill is due? Like I don't want to be at the mercy of my notifications.

Nicole Menkhoff:

And so when my body sort of throws the, it's time to be scared. I do my best to pause and be like do we really, do I really need to? It's an email. Why are we fight or flighting an email? Or let's actually not be at the mercy of what my body may actually my body may actually think is you know something that we need to be scared about? More often than not, I found that when I feel that sort of energy, it's just because I'm excited, I'm about to do something new that I've never done before. It's not that I'm scared and in danger, but I needed to slow down and learn to have that kind of relationship with with fear, to be honest. But yeah, I thought that was great that you ended the book with that part.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, thanks, and that was even before I went to coaching school, where now we've learned so much about somatics and the idea of so many things about our thoughts and beliefs and all these other things are reflected in the body, whether it's that quick sensation in your chest or something much larger, and I think, even though they don't say, in coaching, they're teaching us like now we have to ask ourselves is that truth or illusion, that that our body is reflecting back to us? But but my question for some people would be are we listening or are we medicating?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, that's smart. Are we listening or medicating? Yeah, yeah, in many ways it means having a relationship with your physical body, and I don't know if a lot of people have one and they just think they are their body. And I'm one of those folks that when you think about me, I hope you don't think about my hand like I'm not. I'm not my body, and so if you continue down that thought pattern, you realize that you can have like a very defined relationship with with your body and in many ways that can help with a lot of this.

Debbie Levitt:

To be honest, with your body and in many ways that can help with a lot of this. To be honest, yeah, Listening to, to those messages cause the messages will keep coming, and I learned over 20 years ago that when my right arm starts kind of freezing up, that I'm not exactly burnt out, but I'm much more stressed out than I'm allowing myself to know. And when I feel that, that's when I say, oh, wait a minute, that's my message that I'm at a high stress level, I'm going to turn off the computer, I'm going to talk to some dogs, I'm gonna cook something, I'm gonna go do something to to you know, kind of create that break. You don't have to share yours with us, but do you feel those types of things as well?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, yeah, that's really great that you recognize that. I think for me, if something feels urgent like the house is burning down, urgent I'm like, okay, let's check ourselves right now. And is this email really worth all of me being this sort of invested, for example, really worth all me, you know, all of me being this sort of invested, for example? Um, then, also in terms of stress indicators uh, my nails stop growing, um, and that means I've spent maybe a few weeks in periods where my nails just become. I spent a few weeks in stress and then my nails just become brittle.

Nicole Menkhoff:

And then also, this eye, just the left, one will have micro twitches that no one could see, but I can feel them, um, and so yeah, that's when my body is like clearly on the edge of being burnt out, or I'm pushing it, you know, past the point of having enough gas to keep going, and and so I need to do something, which usually means closing the laptop and going outside.

Debbie Levitt:

Right, touch the grass. One of the exercises I put on my coaching website was like trying to, before you feel burnt out or super stressed out, learn to recognize some of those early signs. Because we do get those signs, whether they're thoughts or feelings, or a sense of unmet needs or the the somatics of the body. Just how early can we recognize those? And then can we you know I hate to sound too cheesy, but can we love ourselves enough to to take action on those?

Nicole Menkhoff:

yeah, yeah, and the love ourselves enough can be hard for some folks to like, hear, listen, buy into, act on, which is, I think, another way to say the same thing, then, is can we have a relationship with our body where we're taking care of it, like it's our iPhone or our car or these other things that we always like? If something goes wrong, we attend to it? Always like, if something goes wrong, we attend to it? Um, and we notice the notification, we see the light on the dashboard, like, okay, then you take an action when you should.

Debbie Levitt:

most people do, um, and so that's, I think, another way to perhaps approach it from you know, with the same intent um, yeah, I love the way you said that, because it's such a great reminder that if the check engine light came on, we would eventually do something. If our dog is hungry, we're going to do something. And can we see our own check engine light? Can we see our own hungry dog?

Debbie Levitt:

yes, perfect, exactly exactly um, we've got a couple more questions for our adventure together today. Um, one is that, uh, some of our listeners might be thinking about making some sort of career shift, maybe adding non-tech work to their universe, or transitioning out of tech or more into entrepreneurialism. What advice would you give them?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, um, uh, explore. I think the advice I would give is to you know, fully, explore that thought, um, figure out what is driving it, um, and maybe even take some time to examine. You know who you are today and what you value, and then compare who you are today and those values to how you're needing to live or how you're working, and if you can compare those two and see there might be a gap, that might be an indicator that, yeah, you are making the right decision to move forward, even if others are saying no, why would you leave such a great job and all those other things? They don't live your life. You have to live yours, and so just doing it from a place where you've done some examination to really understand it, so you can have the confidence to take steps forward.

Debbie Levitt:

Yeah, thank you, love that. And finally, how can people get in touch with you if they want to connect with you? Or please, everyone, hire Nicole. How do we find you?

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yeah, thanks. So the fastest way to the source of truth really is my website, so nfmsoc. com. That will tell you more about myself, my business services. I offer and provide an email for you to reach out. I'm happy to talk to folks. We can swap stories, we can explore how I might be able to help you on your journey. Just in general, I'm always appreciative to hear from folks.

Debbie Levitt:

Wonderful. I hope people will reach out to Nicole and Nicole, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Nicole Menkhoff:

Yes, thank you. I've enjoyed the conversation and it's been really great, so, thank you.

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