Entrepreneur Life Myths and Realities - Hattie Elliot

In Chapter 13 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, The Grace List founder and entrepreneur Hattie Elliot answers "In Retrospect, What Has Been the Most Difficult Part About Being an Entrepreneur?"  Elliot shares how entrepreneurship is an exhausting pursuit full of fast and unexpected changes and lots of hard work.  She notes how youth culture is conditioned via media to expect big prizes and rewards come with little effort.  Elliot notes how far away this is from the entrepreneur life reality.  Elliot is the founder and CEO of The Grace List, which is redefining the dating world by creating opportunities for singles to revitalize personal interests and find intriguing people who will influence their lives.  Before founding The Grace List, Elliot worked as a social entrepreneur and business development consultant.  Elliott graduated from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she studied economics, philosophy, and politics.

Stacie Bloom: How to Sell Yourself in a College Admissions Interview

In Chapter 5 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "What Did Your Georgetown Admissions Experience Teach You About the Importance of Interviewing for Potential?" She notes the importance of interviewing skills, specifically the interpersonal, non-tangible element and its ability to give you an edge. Interviewing for a Georgetown PhD program, she learns how few spots exist and how competitive the selection process can be. The experience teachers her to believe in herself and be confident when faced with challenges.

Stacie Grossman Bloom is the Executive Director at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). She earned her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York City. She earned her BA in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Delaware.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What did your Georgetown admissions experience teach you about the importance of interviewing for potential?

Stacie Grossman Bloom: Interview skills are so super important and it’s always that interpersonal non-tangible element that gives you an edge I think over the competition. When I finally decided to go to graduate school and was interviewing for graduate school, I was not a qualified applicant. A lot of the people who I was competing against had pretty extensive laboratory experience, and the number of spots in the programs are very small. It’s not like a medical school class with two hundred people or a law school class with five hundred people. When you are going to a graduate school department there is usually five spots or eight slots or two spots. So the competition is pretty fierce. And, I really sold myself, I mean I went on my interview and I did everything short of begging to try to prove that I would succeed in school there. And after I was accepted, one of the women who was on the admissions team told me, “you know, you weren’t the most qualified applicant but we just knew you could do it.”

Erik Michielsen: How did that make you feel?

Stacie Grossman Bloom: You know, it made me realize that I should have the confidence to speak up for what I believe I can do and not to be embarrassed of it and not to step down from it.

How Entrepreneurial Spirit Brings Out Best Performance - Slava Rubin

In Chapter 1 of 12 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, IndieGoGo co-founder and entrepreneur Slava Rubin answers "When are You at Your Best?" Beyond surrounding himself with great people and getting sleep, Rubin makes it a point to set priorities and make lists. As an entrepreneur, he finds value in his conviction that anything can get done. This helps him bring out his best in what he does. Rubin is co-founder and CEO of IndieGoGo.com, a crowdfunding startup whose platform helps individuals and groups finance their passions. Before IndieGoGo, Rubin worked in management consulting for Diamond Consulting, now a PWC company. Rubin founded and manages non-profit Music Against Myeloma to raise funds and awareness to fight cancer. He earned a BBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  When are you at your best?

Slava Rubin:  When I’m surrounded by good people and I get enough sleep.

Erik Michielsen:  How do you manage that?

Slava Rubin:  Well, it’s tricky because, you know, when you’re an entrepreneur, there is never something that you shouldn’t be doing.  There is always more work to be done.  But it’s just about prioritizing, you know, putting everything in a list and then execute them.

Erik Michielsen:  How has being an entrepreneur brought out your best?

Slava Rubin:  I mean I would say just the whole risk/reward part of it and really trying to understand that the people that can stop you, hopefully, are just yourselves, right?  So if you have the entrepreneur spirit, you think anything can be done, and, really, that can be applied really well towards anything in life.

Courtney Spence on How Haiti Relief Trip Teaches Commitment to a Cause

In Chapter 7 of 16 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, non-profit founder and executive Courtney Spence answers "What Did Traveling to Port Au Prince, Haiti One Year After the Earthquake Teach You About Commitment to a Cause?" Traveling to Haiti for five days during the one-year anniversary of the earthquake educates Spence on why and how relief efforts must be long-term focused. During her trip she meets local students, artisans and young professionals. Drawing on experiences from Uganda and New Orleans, Spence prioritizes spotlighting recovery and reconstruction after the tragedy. Spence is founder and executive director of Students of the World, a non-profit that partners with passionate college students to create new media to highlight global issues and the organizations working to address them. Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What did traveling to Haiti one year after the earthquake teach you about commitment to a cause?

Courtney Spence:  Traveling to Haiti and being there the anniversary of the earthquake, January 12th, I think it was 4:57 p.m., I don’t know the exact time in the afternoon it was.  It was very – it’s very hard to describe.  I was only there for five days, but those five days have certainly changed the course of my life, and I know that Haiti will always be a part of my personal life and most likely now my professional life as well, but the things that I saw and the people that I met, it was both a feeling of ‘oh my gosh, that has happened a year ago and there is still so much, you know, rubble, collapsed buildings, people living in tents.  Port-au-Prince is just – I mean the traffic and the population density that all of these people that, you know, 80% of them don’t have jobs, and you see this, it’s very, very visual, and I don’t have something to reference it from a year ago.

I have been told by people that have been there for a while that it actually looks, you know, much better than it did before, but I don’t think I appreciated the true massive event that it was because when I went I’ve never seen anything like that ever in all of my travels, and so there was a part of me that, particularly on the day, that was the anniversary, how do we understand that in, you know, forty seconds of time, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and millions of people were displaced and are now, you know, without homes?  That – it’s overwhelming, and at the same time, you know, you – I had a really incredible opportunity to meet with individuals that are pushing along, pushing forward, that’s what you do, life is hard, and there’s this understanding that I really felt from every Haitian that I met that this is just how life is.  We got dealt this, you know, this hand of cards, and we’re just gonna do something with it.  

So it’s, you know, meeting young people that are going into IT world and helping bring wireless access to rural parts of Haiti.  It’s people that, you know, artists that have now been able through great NGOs and organizations have made a deal with Macy’s and anthropology to get their -- their vases, and, you know, their paper-mâché, beautiful, beautiful artwork sold in the U.S., and are making a living as an artist in Haiti.  It’s meeting these people, these individuals that are so positive about where they’re headed and so encouraged by what they can do and what the Haitian people can do.  It’s also staggering to see that.  Having those two overwhelming senses when I was there that happened to be on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake, and although I think it did get some news coverage, I felt that it was overshadowed by other news of the day, and it was all in all very disappointing to me in some regards because I’ve seen this in New Orleans with Katrina, I’ve seen it in northern Uganda where, you know, the LRA has left, and so we have now forgotten these people that still have to rebuild their lives and that are at their most critical moment of rebuilding their lives.  

That’s when we need to be there.  That’s when the media needs to be shining a light on the progress that’s made but the progress that still yet to be made because, you know, we have so many things that pull us in so many different directions, and we seem to really gravitate towards the massive tragedies and not really think about what is the long, hard, marathon, running work of rebuilding and reconstructing and building back better, and that’s the place that I wanna be in, not just the immediate ‘oh my gosh, can you believe how horrible this is?’  It’s ‘oh my gosh, it’s a year later, and where are they, and what can we be doing, and why don’t we feel the sense of urgency now that we felt then because they still need help and we have abilities to that?’  So it was a – yeah, it was a – it was an incredible, incredible trip.

Why Problem Solving is a Design Process - Jon Kolko

In Chapter 5 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, designer and educator Jon Kolko shares why problem solving is neither an art nor science. He sees problem solving as a design process. Kolko sees science as a bucket containing things about the natural world. He sees art as a bucket of self-expression. He also sees design as a third bucket, containing things about the culture and the humanization of technology. Kolko is the executive director of design strategy at venture accelerator, Thinktiv (www.thinktiv.com). He is the founder and director of the Austin School for Design (www.ac4d.com). Previously, he worked at frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). He has authored multiple books on design. Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Why Patience is Important to Startup Success - Dan Street

In Chapter 4 of 20 of his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, software entrepreneur and Loku founder and CEO Dan Street shares why patience is important when measuring success. Street discounts myths that startups become billion dollar companies overnight. He believes patience is about sticking to your vision, developing ideas over time, and finding support to help execute that vision. Street is the founder and CEO of Austin, Texas based Loku, previously named Borrowed Sugar, which develops Internet software to strengthen local communities. Previously, Street worked in private equity at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) and management consulting at Bain & Co. He earned a BA in music and business from Rice University.

How Chocolate Passion Teaches Storytelling Skills - Michael Margolis

In Chapter 4 of 13 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with Erik Michielsen, storyteller and entrepreneur Michael Margolis shares his passion for chocolate, its history, and its relevance in his life. Margolis, who describes his Switzerland-based early years as a "Willie Wonka Childhood", explains how his love of cacao and chocolate have helped him bring people together and also understand narrative and storytelling. Margolis is the founder and president of Get Storied (http://www.getstoried.com), an education and publishing platform dedicated to teaching the world how to think in narrative. As a consultant, educator and writer he uses storytelling to create more effective branding, innovation and culture change. Margolis earned a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Tufts University.

How Teaching Social and Emotional Health Improves Education - Louise Davis Langheier

In Chapter 5 of 9 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, non-profit founder and executive Louise Davis Langheier shares her view that education is about empowering individuals to succeed in life and society. She notes this empowerment comes from a confluence of academic skills and social and emotional health development. Langheier finds satisfaction seeing momentum continue on this blended learning perspective, but notes there is much work to be done to make it standard practice. Langheier is founder and CEO of Peer Health Exchange (http://www.peerhealthexchange.com ), a non-profit that trains college students to teach health education in public high schools. She graduated Yale University with a B.A. in History and serves on the board of directors of Dwight Hall at Yale, the center for public service and social justice.

Simon Sinek on When to Risk Something You Cannot Afford to Lose

In Chapter 16 of 20 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, author and leadership expert Simon Sinek shares why risk sharing is so important to a successful partnership. First, Simon differentiates between a vendor and a partner. He then notes a partnership - whether it be a personal relationship, a marriage, or a business relationship - requires risk. He offers that if you are starting something new, to do so in a way where all partners invest in something they cannot afford to lose, whether it be time, energy, financial, or beliefs. The more people willing to share in that risk allows for greater potential in the endeavor. Simon Sinek is a trained ethnographer who applies his curiosity around why people do what they do to teach leaders and companies how to inspire people. He is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action". Sinek holds a BA degree in cultural anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen: Why is risk-sharing so important to a successful partnership?

Simon Sinek: People who don’t put skin in the game, aren’t taking risks. Um, you know, when somebody, refuses to put skin in the game but wants a reward, that’s not a partnership, that’s a vendor. You know, somebody who says, “We want to be your partner, now pay us,” that’s fine; that’s a vendor relationship, that’s not a partnership. Partnerships require shared risk; that is what a partnership means. And that could be a personal relationship, a marriage or, more importantly, a business relationship. Business relationships require risk. 

It’s one of the old, you know, small business maxims, which is “never go into business with a millionaire” because the reason is, cause they’re not hungry, you know? You want to go into business with somebody who if they don’t work hard, it’s all over. And that’s not to say you shouldn’t accept money from millionaires, that’s fine, but risk –it’s the investing proverb, which is never invest more money than you can afford to lose, but if you’re gonna start something entirely new, you want everybody to invest in something that they can’t afford to lose. 

You gotta make this work, whether it’s financial, or time, or energy, or belief, or the problem you’re trying to solve … “We have to solve this problem, otherwise bad things happen,” or, we can make the world a better place.” I think, you know, and the more people who are willing to share in that risk, the results can only be good. If only one person is only  is willing to take a risk, then the other people will leave him high and dry. There’s no reason to go the extra mile, right?

Why College Graduates Should Network With Confidence - Alayne Cotterill

In Chapter 6 of 13 in her 2010 interview with Capture Your Flag Host Erik Michielsen, wildlife biologist Alayne Cotterill details how she landed her first conservation job working with lions in the African wild. As a young twenty-something, Cotterill exerts confidence speaking with others at a cocktail party and is rewarded with a fully funded project opportunity. Learn more about Alayne's work at http://www.lionconservation.org.

How to Sell a Product That Does Not Yet Exist - Maurizio de Franciscis

In Chapter 19 of 19 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, education entrepreneur and Global Campus (www.globalcampus.com) founder Maurizio de Franciscis shares how to sell customers a product that does not yet exist. He prioritizes providing prospective clients a visible representation, as he finds this builds credibility and overcomes objections. He pairs this with a clear understanding of facts, story, and needs analysis. Before founding Global Campus, de Franciscis worked at General Electric. He graduated from Universita degli Studi di Roma - La Sapienza - and earned his MBA from INSEAD.

How Education Enables Social Justice in a Knowledge Economy - Maurizio de Franciscis

In Chapter 14 of 19 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, education entrepreneur and Global Campus (www.globalcampus.com) founder Maurizio de Franciscis shares how education is the first step to social justice in a progressively global knowledge economy. Education is about empowering individuals to participate and creating a global meritocracy. He highlights the increasing importance of education and the need to evenly distribute college education opportunity access globally. Before founding Global Campus, de Franciscis worked at General Electric. He graduated from Universita degli Studi di Roma - La Sapienza - and earned his MBA from INSEAD.

What Do Entrepreneurs and Food Professionals Have in Common - Sarah Simmons

In Chapter 11 of 16 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Food and Wine Magazine 2010 Home Cook Superstar, Bon Appetit contributor, and food entrepreneur Sarah Simmons shares common approaches between entrepreneurs and aspiring food professionals. Simmons, who left a digital marketing career for one in food, shares how commitment and perseverance help both sides through the long work hours and bootstrapping process. Learn more about Sarah at http://sarahmcsimmons.com.

How to Resist Peer Pressure When Starting a Career - Adam Carter

In Chapter 14 or 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter shares how he has managed peer pressure and pressure to conform when carving his own, non-traditional career path. Upon graduating the University of Michigan in 1996, Carter opts to travel the world for several years, financing his travels through fund raising and a summer job selling beer at Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox baseball games. Viewed by many as not having direction, Carter continues his travel and, over time, evolves into graduate school at George Washington University and, then, a non-profit micro-philanthropy career financing communities projects.

Courtney Spence on How Rejection Can Strengthen Fundraising Resolve

In Chapter 15 of 15 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "How did the Duke University Administration help your organization get started?" Spence shares how she secured school administration financing to launch what would eventually become her non-profit Students of the World. Spence pitches the idea to several Duke University administration officials. Early rejection pushes Spence to refine her pitch and continue presenting it to potential investors. Ultimately, Spence connects with the Vice President of Student Affairs, receives financing, and goes back to those who had rejected the idea and ultimately finance the project.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How did the Duke University Administration help your organization get started?

Courtney Spence:  I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the Duke Administration, both for the people that said yes and for the people that said no.  I think I went on this journey my sophomore year and I tried to take a meeting with any person at Duke that would sit down and talk with me. Even if I didn’t think they were necessarily directly related to international documentary work and student activism and organizations.  I would take a meeting just to say, “Hey, let me tell you about this idea I have.  What do you think?”  And if it made sense for me to say, “Hey, would you – your office – would this be something you would invest in?” Or approach people for money, or who else should I speak to, or just for advice.  And we got a lot of “No’s” at the beginning and a lot of people were, I think sometimes, I think rightly so, administrations are a little bit hesitate to start up student organizations because they happen so frequently and because of turnover you see them die out once the founder graduates.  So, there is a hesitancy to invest heavily in sort of the crazier ideas initially, but I think by the people saying “No” it challenges you to go back and be like, “Do I really want to keep doing this? So, yes I do and yes I can.” 

And it also challenges you – “Well, what’s not quite right about this?  Why am I getting so many ‘No’s’ on this front?”  And then for us, it was a woman, Janet Dickerson, she was the Vice-President of Student Affairs at Duke at the time.  An incredible woman and I’ll never forget, we walked into her office – it was me and another student that was sort of co-founding the organization at that point.  We walked into Janet Dickerson’s office, told her what we wanted to do, had our little presentation and she said, “Yes.” When she said, “Yes.” She said, “Five thousand dollars.” “I’m going to set up a lunch meeting other related administrators and faculty members and sort of put their feet to the fire because I think this concept is new and kind of exciting.”  But what was really the most rewarding was there was a gentleman who had said, “No” you know that fall, so and you know, as we were trying to start the organization.  So, I went to him and he was like, “I think this is a great idea, but not one I think my office can invest in.”  I went back the following year and said, “Hey, so here’s what we did and this year we’re going to Cuba and is this something you want to be invested in?”  And he said, “Yes.”

How Entrepreneur Learns Not to Take Rejection Personally - J.T. Allen

In Chapter 14 of 14, business owner J.T. Allen has faced the greatest confidence-building tests raising capital to finance business operations over his 10-year entrepreneurial career with www.myfootpath.com.   Evolving the bussiness concept over time, Allen has learned to not take rejection personally. By believing in his business and purpose, Allen has managed highs and lows and built momentum.

How to Cultivate a Passion for Music into a Fulfilling Career - Conrad Doucette

In Chapter 2 of 13, Takka Takka drummer and writer (Fuse.tv, Blender.com) Conrad Doucette shares building blocks shaping his sense of fulfillment - interaction, teamwork, patience, and focus - and how they enable his passion for music. He elaborates on importance of asserting a focus to "make a certain type of music with a certain group of people" while developing non-performance music interests in media and publishing.

How Self-Confidence Grows by Starting Conversations - Conrad Doucette

In Chapter 1 of 13, Takka Takka drummer and music journalist Conrad Doucette (Fuse.tv, Blender.com) highlights the engaging feeling present when progressing on the fulfillment path. Not only is the engaging personal feeling uplifting, but also it creates a confidence boost resulting in improved communication with others that benefits all.