The Power of Reinvention: Switching Things Up at Any Age

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Boredom can be a useful signal to leave

  At 30, after four years at the White House Office of Management and Budget working on nuclear energy policy, Ina Garten felt she worked very hard and still nothing changed. She also believed no one would ever choose a woman to run OMB. She wrote, "There has to be something more fun than this," and says her low tolerance for boredom made her willing to take big risks to get out of it.

• 02

  "Do what you think is fun. If it's fun, you'll be really good at it"

  Her husband Jeffrey said this when she told him about a newspaper ad for a food store. Ina reads it as a return to what you enjoyed at 10, before the "shoulds" (lawyer, doctor) took over. Jeffrey later admitted he thought he was just humoring her when he agreed to drive up and look at the store.

• 03

  Your past prepares you more than you think

  Only when she wrote her 2024 memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, did Ina connect the dots. In Washington she had taught herself to cook, renovated and sold old houses, negotiated bank loans and gone to business school at night. The store was the first job that combined everything she loved. She also sees cooking as science: you test things, but you end up with roast chicken instead of gibberellic acid.

• 04

  Jump in the pond rather than deciding from the edge

  "Working scared" means you can't tell how cold or deep the pond is from the bank. You get in, splash around and see what's there, and from inside you may spot a better place to go. Mel ties this to John Grisham's "golden moment": a light goes on inside you, and following it changes the direction of your life.

• 05

  "Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see farther"

  A friend passed Ina this line, attributed to J.P. Morgan. She never plans where she's going. She starts each day with a purpose, does the best job she can, and decides tomorrow's task before stopping. Mel says she wasted decades as an unhappy lawyer looking for her calling. You don't need the whole picture, only the recognition that the current path is no longer yours.

• 06

  Treat a business as an experiment and don't assume you know the answer

  Her fancy dishes, like veal with morels and herb-covered roast chicken on large platters, didn't sell. The same chickens in red-and-white checked paper trays sold in ten minutes. Her conclusion: people have elegant taste but want simple, earthy food at home. She would put out five things and see what people chose. "If you decide in advance that you think you know what the answer is, you're wrong."

• 07

  Before you do something, decide how you'll do it better and your own way

  For her first cookbook she set three rules: simple recipes that work every time, beautiful photographs and ingredients from the grocery store. She refuses to write "the cookbook that sells" or the one other people think she should write. Mel calls this getting clear on how and why you want to do something and blocking out the noise.

• 08

  Start the hard conversation even when you don't know the outcome

  Ten years into the marriage, while running the new store, Ina told Jeffrey on a beach walk that she needed to be on her own. She didn't know if it was for now or forever. You can't control the response, she says, but the response shows whether the other person can bend. Jeffrey said, "If you feel like you need to be on your own," which made her love him more.

• 09

  Exercise your power like a muscle by asking

  Ina quotes a line attributed to George Lucas: "We're all living in cages with the door wide open." Her advice is to ask for what you want, for example twice the salary offered, and accept that the answer may be no. Then ask someone else, or do it yourself. Mel tells her daughters that if plenty of less capable people have figured it out, so can they.