Adam Carter on What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder

In Chapter 7 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  Carter finds it progressively easier learning to live in different locations and cultures.  After traveling to 80 different countries, he finds it progressively difficult to be financially secure after walking away from a seasonal job and moving to Brazil full time. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What is getting easier and what is getting harder in your life?

Adam Carter: Well, what is getting easier is learning how to be comfortable living in other places and in other cultures.  I have so much experience traveling the world now over the last 16 years of living all over the place that I found that it’s easier for me to immerse myself in a culture, find—carve out my little niche, make myself feel at home. You know, communication has made that so much easier now. It’s so much easier for me to stay in touch with my family and my friends. So it’s been easier for me to feel at home in so many parts of the world, and what’s become more difficult… Well, it’s become more difficult to keep this—to continue to finance this lifestyle. You know, all the charity work that I do is—all the travel I pay for, which is fine. I can still handle it, but I think when I had a summer—when I had my summer job in Chicago where it was easy for me to just go back for the summer and make good money and then travel, it was easier to keep this lifestyle. You know, I’ve had to adjust now because I decided to walk away from that job, and so now I have to obviously seek out other means of income in order to support my passion. So that’s been a bit of a challenge of kind of trying to figure out what my place is and in a professional light and not just in a humanitarian light.

Adam Carter: How to Find Micro-Philanthropy Project Work in India

In Chapter 9 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What Did Doing Your Recent Micro-Philanthropy Project in India Teach You?"  Carter talks about his past experience traveling to India and how a recent trip collaborating with VANNI working with deaf children in Kolkata taught him the power of communication.  Carter travels to India to help the non-profit improve how it creates education materials for hearing-impaired children living in poverty. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What did doing your recent micro-philanthropy project in India teach you?

Adam Carter: Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in India over the years, and it’s a place that has always attracted me. It’s something about the combination of the millennia of history and culture. It’s always kind of been that real exotic place in the world, and even now after having been to, I don’t know, 80 plus countries, I’m still drawn back to India time and time again. This recent trip I was in Calcutta in the eastern part of India and I think the most—what it really taught me, I guess, as far as a lesson is, I would say, the importance of communication, and the reason I say that is because I was working with a project called VAANI which is an amazing project, that’s kind of an award-winning project, really, really dynamic director, and what they do is they work with deaf children in the slums of Calcutta.

So as you can imagine, not a pretty place, a very, very rough place to live, to grow up, and for a lot of these families, you know, they have a lot of children, and often one of the children has some kind of deformity, or whether they’re born with some condition. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources there to act upon that, and in the case of this project, what we’re working with are deaf children, and unfortunately, many of these families that have deaf children, first of all, a lot of them don’t even really realize that their kids are deaf. They haven’t really fully been diagnosed, so they kind of have this idea that, oh, well, he doesn’t really understand, he’s a little slow, this or that. And even if they know, that, okay, my kid can’t hear. They don’t know the resources that are out there, which is really a shame because these kids grow up, basically, kept at home, not going to school, and kind of ignored by their family, and these kids, their mind is perfectly functional. I mean, it’s horrific to imagine really being trapped inside your body where you can’t communicate with your family, and nobody knows what you’re saying, what you’re thinking.

So thankfully this project, first of all, they send social workers out into these neighborhoods to look for these children and to tell the families, “look, there’s an answer here. We’re gonna help your kid, and you’re gonna see that your kid is just as smart as all the others, and he can actually participate in a regular school setting.” So it was incredibly heartwarming to see these kids now that are getting one-on-one education, educational help from a trained practitioner, you know, that works with deaf children. They’re learning how to do sign language. They’re learning how to speak a bit. Some of them that don’t have complete deafness are getting the hearing aids that they need to be able to hear more and more. The mothers are brought in with the kids, so they’re both there, and they’re both learning sign language because it’s important for them to communicate. This is the bridge that’s gonna allow this kid to communicate with his parents and with his family.

Erik Michielsen: How did you get involved in that project?

Adam Carter: I knew I wanted to go back to India, so sometimes I focus on an issue. Sometimes I focus on a place. In this instance, it was kind of a combination of the two. I knew I wanted to go back to India, and I was speaking with my mentor. He had mentioned how he had come across some—a project helping some deaf people in Asia, and I thought, well, that’s a group that I don’t know much about, I haven’t worked with before, personally, but I think we can all understand it’s a pretty black and white issue. So I started to do some research before I went about to see if there were any organizations that were addressing this on a local or national level. There’s a project called VAANI, which is the first kind of nationally—it’s based in Calcutta, but they’re planning to expand it nationally. They now have projects in West Bengal which is the state of Calcutta and up in Assam which is further up in the northeast, and so I communicated with them. I did some research on the organization and found out that it has an amazing reputation. And, so, I met with them and I visited all of their projects, and then I sat down with the director and with a few other of the staff and we talked about what would be the most effective ways of improving the project, and what we came up with was—is wonderful because these kids are coming in so if you have a deaf child that’s coming in, let’s say, twice a week, with his mother for this training. They have different ways of teaching them. They have a lot of educational materials, and then a lot of it has to do with the teacher one-on-one. 

The only kind of gap in this process is the fact that when the kid goes home, until he comes back later in the week or the next week, he’s kind of at a standstill.  Sure he and the mother could practice what they’ve learned, but the problem is he has to leave the educational materials at the project because they need them for the next kid. So what we came up with was, well, why don’t we improve this process by producing more of these educational materials, producing kind of like, you know, sets of them like booklet sets, so that the kids can take them home with them, practice it over the course of the week with the rest of their family, the father who may be working, the brothers and sisters who are in the house. So we’re creating really nice, heavy laminated, very durable materials that will be able to really improve the interpersonal communication, which is so important.

Adam Carter on Building Mother-Son Bonds After Mom Retires

In Chapter 12 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Have You Grown Closer to Your Mother as She Has Moved into Retirement?"  An only child, Carter shares how the bond with his Mom has grown over time, mainly through traveling together internationally.  After his mother retires to Guatemala and begins volunteering, Carter and his Mom bond as peers and learn from each other working on micro-philanthropy projects together. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How have you grown closer to your mother as she’s moved into retirement?

Adam Carter: Well, my mother and I have always had a very close relationship. I, like yourself, am an only child, and so I always had a very strong bond with my mother. And our relationship has really evolved over the years which is something that really has warmed my heart because I think this started—once I started to travel after college, I think my mom realized that she needed to—in order to see her son, she needed to kind of get out there and start crossing continents, and so we’ve had—we’ve met up and traveled in Spain, in Nepal, in Italy, in Brazil, in India, in Central America, so that’s been a wonderful dimension, but beyond that, my mom got to the point where she was able to retire. 

And she realized that she wanted to lead a more fulfilling life. So she retired to Guatemala, and she’s currently living there, and she’s speaking Spanish, and she’s volunteering with a variety of organizations, and she’s really found her heart’s calling. And to me that’s been extremely rewarding because it shows that this relationship between mother and son is not—you know, I think when we’re little we have this idea that, okay, our mother is there to teach us, and that as we get older we will always be looking to our mother, you know, the mother guides, the mother teaches, and while that’s still the case, all of a sudden, I think we can see that we’re learning from each other, and that my mother is, you know, I’m helping guide my mother, and my mother’s learning things from me, so I think it’s a wonderful circle there where a parent is able to create something in a child where that child becomes an adult with a meaningful life that can then help teach and guide the parent. 

So that’s been wonderful, and what’s been extremely rewarding about this is being able to participate with her in some of these projects with Cause & Affect. Being based down in Guatemala, and working with these organizations on her own, my mother is a perfect scout, as you will. She’s on the ground, and so, for example, when I recently went down there in February, she had been traveling with one of these projects to some of the rural villages in Guatemala and she came across this family that just—it just broke her heart to see the living conditions that this family was living in. It was a father and his two children, and the mother had died five years earlier, which presented a real challenge because this is a part of Guatemala where most of the men go off to do seasonal work, agricultural work, in other parts of Guatemala. He wasn’t able to do that because he couldn’t leave his two little kids in the house alone, so they had a real financial problem, and their home, as a result, was really just a shack made of kind of wood and mud, and there was a lot of bugs and mosquitoes and rodents. It just was not a safe place. They were cooking in—they were cooking over a fire in the house, which was very bad with the smoke inhalation. It was just one tiny room, which was not a place for this family. 

So it was my mother and I, and we were able to find a local organization that helps build houses for families like this. And we were able to help finance it so that they could live in a new home, and three weeks later, there it was—a 2-bedroom house. You know, obviously, dispartan, you now, but real floors, windows, some security, safety, health, so that was wonderful for my mother and I to be in a position where we’re working together, because much of what I‘ve put into Cause & Affect, the reason that I got here is because she instilled that compassion in me, and it’s really just been a means of me directing that compassion that she instilled in me outwards. So to be able to do it together as a team has been very rewarding.

Adam Carter on Growing a Step-Sister Relationship

In Chapter 13 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing With Age?"  Carter talks about building a relationship with his step-sister and taking her on a micro-philanthropy project trip after she graduated high school.  By giving her an opportunity to raise money and do micro-philanthropy, Carter bonds with his little sister and opens her eyes to non-traditional education possibilities, which leads her to do the Global Citizen Year program. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Adam Carter: Well, in the march of time as we all get older; it’s really interesting to see how our relationships and our roles change with each other, whether it’s between son and mother, son and father or even son and sibling.

In the case of—My father was remarried and had two children so, technically my half-sister, which I affectionately call my sister. My sister is 20 years younger than myself. She was born when I was in college. So when I started traveling the world, she was 2-3 years old.

So as she got older, I can only imagine what ideas she had of her big brother—this guy that would come from faraway lands. Each year he’d come back, he’d look different, he’d have a different hairstyle, he’d have different facial hair, he’d have different clothes, whatever, and so over time, we formed a really wonderful bond.

And as she started to mature, she became more interested in these places that I was going and this lifestyle that I was leading, and I could really sense that interest. So I asked her if she would want to join me on one of these trips, and she said, “of course, how can we make it happen?” We were thinking about— in Illinois, you’re able to take your child out to home school them. So we had spoken with the principal. We had gotten permission to do that. It turns out that that was—would be a challenge because she would have to be learning certain classes while we were doing that, and taking my sister around Latin America and teaching her trigonometry and biology didn’t seem to be too cohesive.

So what we did is she was able to graduate early from high school, and so she graduated a semester early, and then she came and traveled with me for four months, and I really approached this as kind of a, almost kind of like a training session. I mean, I wanted it to be as fun and as enriching as possible, and so first thing that we did is she raised money in Chicago before she left. She made these bracelets that she sews and was able to sell those to friends and family and, you know, members of their congregation, whatever, and came up with $1,200, which is quite a nice sum of money, and she was then able visit projects with me on behalf of Cause & Affect, and not only be an observer, but be a participant. Since this was money that she had raised, I allowed her to have a role in—really just teach her the process from the ground up, which is, okay, here we are.

So we started in Guatemala, and we did some wonderful projects there. We repaired some cleft palates. Some of these babies that are born with cleft palates. Surgery, parents can’t afford it. They can’t afford it throughout the life of their kids, unfortunately, and so a lot of these kids grow up almost as a shame—an object of shame for the families, so we’re able to work with an organization that we partnered with before, and do some of these surgeries, which is incredible. It’s $200 each, so, I mean, simply with $600, she’s able to say, “Okay, look, we just completely changed the life of three of these babies.” I mean that’s the kind of thing that you can really feel that effect. And then I took her down to Panama. She had also had another friend that had amassed all these little teddy bears and things. It’s kind of her own pet project.

So we went down to a children’s hospital there in Panama City, and we were able to distribute these to all these kids, and, you know, that was a wonderful experience also to be able to, you know, see all these smiles. Even though it’s a small gesture for each of these kids it was—it brightened their day. And then from there we went down to Brazil and we spent a month in Rio, and she was volunteering with me at some of the organizations that I worked with, and it was incredible to see. I mean, you know, you grow up with somebody, and this is how you talk about the different relationships, you’re used to somebody like, okay, I changed your diapers and we’re playing hide and seek, and you’re getting older and we’re playing around, and here we are in our house—it’s our comfortable surroundings, right. And all of a sudden, here I am, I’m in the middle of Rocinha, this big favela, and we’re going up to visit this project, and we’re walking through these tight alleyways, or we’re on the back of a, you know, they have these moto-taxis to zoom around, and I kind of had a catharsis at one point, where I’m on the back of this guy’s motorcycle and I see my sister zooming up the hill on the back of this other guy’s motorcycle, and you’re just like, “wow, you know, we’ve come a long way.”

So it’s been wonderful to see her open her world and help be a part of that consciousness being born, and she’s actually now back in Brazil. She’s doing a really cool exchange program where she’s working with a social organization down there. It’s a program called Global Citizen Year, which is an incredible, kind of like a gap year program. So it’s been really fun to help, kind of propel her into this new adventure, and, you know, so many people have said, “Oh, man, she’s so lucky to have a brother that can take her to do this.” And I said, “Yeah, she is lucky. I wish I had that.” You know, 20 years ago, I definitely had to kind of jump in headfirst and learn the hard way, but, yeah, it’s been wonderful to see that relationship being able to evolve, in that sense.

Anatole Faykin on How to Make the Most of Living in a City

In Chapter 1 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "How Do You Make the Most of Living in the City?"  For Faykin, it comes down to walkable cities.  Cities such as Beijing challenge Faykin because they are not very walkable.  He contrasts this with Shanghai which has more pedestrian and walker friendly neighborhoods.  He finds New York City a very walkable city and as a result has enjoyed exploring it and living in it. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Anatole Faykin on Getting to Know Yourself By Traveling Abroad

In Chapter 2 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "What Did Traveling Abroad This Past Year Teach You About Yourself?"   Faykin shares two abroad experiences and how they each informed his understanding of self.  First, he takes a trip with his best friends to Peru to hike Machu Picchu, which reminds him about the importance of friendship in his life.  The second trip is a wedding hopping trip to Australia, Singapore and Indonesia - three weddings in five weeks in the Far East.  Traveling alone in between the weddings, Faykin realizes he does not enjoy traveling alone as much as he used to in his younger days. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Garren Katz on Why Travel to Distant and Unfamiliar Places

In Chapter 7 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Traveling to distant and unfamiliar places teaches Katz about people.  He finds this is something he is unable to get by watching TV or movies - being present in a foreign place connects him not only to people he meets but also to humanity in general. 

Garren Katz is a business and personal coach based in State College, PA and advises his national client base on small business management, entrepreneurship, relationships, and personal finances.  He is also an active angel investor in several business ventures.  He earned his BA from Western Michigan University. 

Simon Sinek on How Growing Up All Over World Shapes Family Values

In Chapter 3 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "What Childhood Experiences Have Been Most Fundamental in Shaping Who You Are Today?"  By the age of 10, Sinek had lived on four continents - North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Moving frequently, Simon and his sister do not develop traditional roots and friendships.  Instead, Simon and his family become very close and learn to rely on and support one another.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  His goal is to "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" and help others find fulfillment in their work.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Simon Sinek:  My sister and I are adults now. And so we have adult conversations, we will ask each other all kinds of advice that we used to ask our parents about, career advice, relationship advice, things that we used to go to our parents, you know, we go to each other now. And also you know on some level, there’s a click when you grow up at home, you’re at home, from you know, zero to 18, and then whether you go to college or go on to do something else. You leave.

And the problem is, is you keep growing up, or at least I can speak for myself, I kept growing up, but my parents knew me from when I left the house at 18, and so they would still treat me very much like the 18-year-old even though I was still growing up. And they would give me some credit as I sort of entered the workforce, you know, but they still treated me like the person they knew very, very well, even though things had changed, I’ve matured in some ways and—less mature in other ways but the point is that for a good chunk of time most of my 20’s I would say they kind of had a little warped vision of who I was because they’re treating me like the thing they knew, right?

And so I think what has happened now is it’s evened out, which is my parents are still my parents, and there’s that wonderful dynamic but we’re peers much more now. And we treat each other as peers, which is nice. It’s an amazing experience when your parents come to you for advice about something that they’re dealing with, or that my dad and I will have a business conversation, it’s just not me asking him for advice, it’s now him asking me for advice, and that’s been sort of incredible to be able to have that kind of dynamic with my parents. Yeah, huge respect, huge mutual respect. And not sort of the traditional sort of parental respect, oh, you’re my parents. But respect for each other for who we are, not just for the role we play.

Simon Sinek on Why Travel to Distant and Unfamiliar Places

In Chapter 4 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Sinek notes how anytime you go somewhere new, exotic or not, takes you away from your day to day life.  Getting exposed to people who think differently and see the world differently you learn new things.  Sinek finds this keeps his mind open while still making close, personal connections in his travels.  Sinek also points out the single most important leadership quality is curiosity.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  His goal is to "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" and help others find fulfillment in their work.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  What have you found most rewarding about traveling to new places?

Simon Sinek:  I mean, any time you go somewhere new, it takes you away from your desk, right? And you can’t learn anything when you’re sitting at home seeing the same thing every day. And so, traveling to new places, they don’t have to be exotic places, you can go to, you know, the middle of the country, you know? If you live in New York, that is an exotic place, but—you know, when you’re exposed to the way – to different people who think differently, see the world differently, you know, you learn new things. You find things that you—that have been there plainly obviously before but you never saw them before, right? And so it keeps your mind open, and more importantly, you also find that no matter where you go, you’ll find people that you connect with on a deep personal level. Any culture, any language, you can find close personal connections. And I think that’s—you know, if anybody who’s sort of afraid to venture, it’s the most eye opening thing you could do is to go away. Not to mention the fact that the single most important quality of leadership is curiosity. And so those who are curious about others and curious about the world, it only benefits you in everything else you do.

Why Traveling Abroad Can Help You Understand Home - Ross Floate

In Chapter 8 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Floate finds traveling to distant places helps remind him about what is good about his home, Melbourne, Australia.  He grounds this in a concept from Sigmund Freud called the narcissism of small differences.  Travel experience teaches Floate to determine the amount of time he needs to travel to be successful in business.  Ross Floate is a principal at Melbourne, Australia-based Floate Design Partners.  Experienced in branding, design and both online and offline publishing, Floate and his team provide marketing services to clients seeking to better communicate business and culture goals via image, messaging, and story. He is a graduate of RMIT University.

Why Travel to Distant and Unfamiliar Places - Richard Moross

In Chapter 14 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Moross notes that as a heavy business traveler, he finds Western culture between the United States and Europe is no longer mysterious and new.  He finds this mystery and excitement traveling Asia. It reminds him the world is a big world full of differences to be explored and appreciated.  Moross is founder and CEO of Moo.com and a leader in the London startup scene.  Before starting Moo.com, an award-winning online print business, Moross was a strategist at Imagination, the world's largest independent design company.  He graduated from the University of Sussex, where he majored in philosophy and politics.

Joe Stump on Bringing Entrepreneurial Optimism to Cynical Cultures

In Chapter 10 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "What Has Working Internationally Taught You About Communicating Across Cultures?"  By advising a British company, Stump learns how a culture of optimism contrasts with a culture of cynicism and doubt.  He compares general country cultures - American, British, Indian, Chinese - and how an entrepreneurship mindset is influenced by the national mindset.  He details what he did to transform the mindset inside that British company to be more opportunistic and confident.  Joe Stump is a serial entrepreneur based in Portland, OR. He is CEO and co-founder of Sprint.ly, a product management software company.  Previously he founded SimpleGeo, which was sold to Urban Airship in October 2011.  He advises several startups - including attachments.me and ngmoco:) - as well as VC firm Freestyle Capital.  He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems (CIS) from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What has working internationally taught you about communicating across cultures?

Joe Stump: I'm an adviser for a company in the UK. I go over there and I spend about a week every quarter over there. And I think Americans and Brits kind of like to think that it's big brother, little brother, we're in the same family. Our cultures are drastically different in a lot of ways and I think working with them -- it was really disheartening to come from the startup world where everything’s “can do” attitude and go to an environment that -- I mean this was named, the company I work for is named one of the top 50 companies in the UK to work for.

They're a great company. I love working with these guys. But there are little things that really kind of trick you up that were kind of like a bummer. Like, in the United States, a grilled cheese company got $50 million in funding from one of the best venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. That is the very definition of like all ideas go. It's wide-open space. There are more eternal optimists bred everyday in the United States than anywhere else, right? The American dream is basically if you want to do it, it's yours for the taking, whereas in I talk with -- Alex Hunter is a buddy of mine. His wife is from California. He spent considerable time here. Actually he doesn’t even have a British accent anymore, he spent so much time here.

But he’s from Britain and he’s put it best to me, in Britain, I mean, everybody knows that they have a very cynical sense of humor right? And I think that pervades the entire society. Where he says, “You come up with a new idea,” and like British society will go, “Oh, you have a new idea? Let's see if it flies.” It is like poopoo it before it's even had a chance to even get out on the launch pad. And working with that company in the UK has taught me that when I come in and I’ll say, “Hey, guys, we need to do X, Y, and Z so that we can move on to this next phase.” They will be, “Well, we really can't do X because of A, B, and C.” And I'm like, “You can do X. What you're telling me is that you don’t want to do X because of A, B, and C. You can fix A, B, and C.”

There is no unsolvable problem, right? And I think that’s something that really comes up a lot across Europe. They're a lot more conservative I would say. Exact opposite when you go to India and Asia. Man, those guys are like, it's wide open territory. I mean, like, dude, China is growing. That is a massive economy, a billion people and it's growing at 10 to 12% a year. It's really interesting. You go to all these different places and the emphasis because of culture, like emphasis in South Africa, for instance, is on revenue, early revenue. A lot of the investment deals are all tied to revenue goals and stuff.

Europe is a little bit similar. The United States they’re like nobody thought Facebook was ever going to make money and now it's making $4 billion a year. Right? And because of our culture, we're a lot more open to risk and we’ll go ahead and take that. And I think that now that other major economies are starting to sputter to life and they're starting to get their own version of the American dream, India and China, I think are two very good examples

There are a lot programmers in India that are just like starting to realize that they don’t have to work at call center. They can go and they can raise a small amount of cash and they have a billion people there that are all ready to pay a little bit of money. If you can get a billion people to pay you 10 cents, that’s real coin, right? So, they're embracing it. And also because travel is becoming cheaper, obviously they're making more money and their economies are coming up so they're able to come here. It's been really interesting to see that the America dream is alive and well and it just happens to be in a communist country and India, which is a socialist country. It's been interesting.

I like interfacing and talking with people like that. I like spreading the dream. Like and I've been telling -- we actually had a little luncheon at the company in the UK and they were like, “What's the most frustrating thing about working with us?” I was like, “You guys are so much better than you give yourselves credit for. Quit being so cynical.” You can do it. You just got to like go do it. This isn’t like rocket science stuff here. Every time I’m like, I come up with something like, “We need to fix this,” and they're like, “Well, maybe we should probably do this other thing instead.” It’s just like…Just do that, get it over with, move on to the next thing.

It was kind of funny. There was actually some nodding in the room and then afterwards one of the guys came up to me, he's like, “I'm really glad you said that because I didn’t even realize that I was doing that. And now I realize that I'm poopooing stuff that I know I can do and I don’t even know why I'm doing it. I don’t know why I'm poopooing this. I can do it.” It was really cool that they were like, “Yeah, we can do that.” They’ve really grown as a company. I’ve seen them -- It's a 1,200 person company and I've seen them move more, and more quickly, they're getting a lot more confident that they can take on those bigger challenges. I didn’t have a whole lot to do with that other than basically saying you know, telling them that, “Look, guys, you can do this. You just got to do it.”

Why to Travel to Foreign Places

In Chapter 2 of 15 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Audrey Parker French answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?" French not only learns to be more open to new experiences while traveling abroad but also to embrace home more fully after getting a new sense of appreciation for Austin, Texas. 

Audrey Parker French returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview after a one-year sabbatical from work and getting married.  She co-founded CLEAResult, an energy management consulting firm.  In 2010, CLEAResult ranked #144 in the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies.  In late 2010, CLEAResult was sold to General Catalyst Partners.  She graduated from Wake Forest University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What have you found most rewarding about traveling to new places?

Audrey Parker French: I find that traveling to new places and experiencing new things just reminds us all that we can have new eyes when we look at things, a new perspective. And for the 6 weeks abroad that my husband and I enjoyed last fall, just really having the freshness of perspective to see that people’s lives are lived in all different ways, in all different languages, in all different cultures, and it helps free up any of the, you know, everyone does it this way, I have to do it this way kind of things that just run in the background of our minds that we don’t necessarily pay attention to.

It’s just like, well, this is how everybody does it, and when I – when we got the opportunity to travel and look around and see not everybody does this like this, not everybody eats like this or goes to work with the same attitude or for the same purposes or lives the same lifestyle, there’s just – there are so many new things to see and travelling is just an opportunity to have perspective on our own lives and learn anything and everything that we didn’t even know is out there to learn.

You can go to a new place and before you know it, you’re learning things about that place that make it special and unique, and it has you realize the special and unique things where you live, where – it was amazing just to come home. We started seeing our home – our hometown, Austin, Texas with new eyes. And really comparing it to other cities and countries and just saying, “We really have a new appreciation for where we live.” Seeing the quirks and the culture and the flavor and the things that for us are like home for us, and yet they are very different to other cultures. Other people of other places would come here and point out all sorts of things that they thought were different or interesting and to us it’s life -- it feels home, so it brought an expanded perspective to us of how other people live and a new appreciation for how we live here and just the fact that we love where we live and we love the culture and the people, and it really could be – all those things could be very, very different.

How to Manage Travel Stress When Vacationing With Your Spouse

In Chapter 3 of 15 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Audrey Parker French answers "What Did Traveling Abroad This Past Year Teach You About Yourself?"  She travels abroad with her new husband and discovers quirks about each other, including experiencing stress when things happen outside your control.  She learns to be more accepting of both unexpected situations and behaviors that happen in those moments. 

Audrey Parker French returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview after a one-year sabbatical from work and getting married.  She co-founded CLEAResult, an energy management consulting firm.  In 2010, CLEAResult ranked #144 in the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies.  In late 2010, CLEAResult was sold to General Catalyst Partners.  She graduated from Wake Forest University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What did travelling abroad this past year teach you about yourself?

Audrey Parker French: Well, that I get really grumpy when I haven’t have a good night sleep, and I’m hungry, and I don’t speak the language, and we might miss the train. My husband and I both learned our – some little quirks about each other. We learned about where we get tense and how we get tense, things about, you know, having something be out of our control, where a train stops, the announcement is happening and we don’t understand the language to know why the train just stopped or if we’re gonna make our connecting train and we got to really experience, you know, how each other are under those really stressful circumstances, and we could be both really hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up, ‘Oh I really – that was terrible of me to get so angry and frustrated’ and then later we could be like, “Well, I guess we can just keep in mind that if I ever am over tired, hungry, about to miss a train, and can’t speak the language, that I’ll probably be a little grumpy.” You know?

Just having more of an understanding that you know sometimes you throw in a lot of different variables and a person is gonna react a certain way, so just learning our limits and learning how to be more flexible. We definitely noticed at the end of our 6-week European kind of tour and experience, we found ourselves being a lot more relaxed in circumstances that initially had us feel very uncomfortable, by the end, we realized that we might be offending people unintentionally because we don’t know the culture and we don’t know what we – the taboos and we finally just started letting that be okay and just being like, “Well, that happened again.”

As opposed to early on, we felt very, you know, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” We just offended someone and, “Oh, we have to make sure we don’t do that again.” But the rules change everywhere, so finally we just really relaxed, so it helped us become more comfortable with the unknown and with difficult circumstances.

Matt Curtis on Researching Family Roots and Meeting Distant Relatives

In Chapter 1 of 18 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, public affairs and communications strategist Matt Curtis answers "How Did You Research Your Family Roots and Plan a Family History Trip?" Curtis shares his process of reconnecting with distant relatives in the village of Attymass in County Mayo, Ireland. He initiates the conversation by writing a letter and what happens next is history. Matt Curtis is the director of government relations at HomeAway Inc. Previously he was communications director for Austin mayors Lee Leffingwell and Will Wynn. In 2011, Curtis won "Austinite of the Year" in the Austin Under 40 Awards. He earned his bachelor's degree in radio, television and film from the University of North Texas.

Matt Curtis on Taking a Trip to Ireland to Meet Distant Family

In Chapter 2 of 18 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, public affairs and communications strategist Matt Curtis answers "What Did You Learn About Yourself by Traveling Abroad to Meet Distant Family?" Curtis plans a trip to his grandparents' birthplace in Western Ireland - specifically Attymass in County Mayo - to meet distant relatives. The trip allows Curtis to not only meet family and learn about the geography, but also it was about understanding core values and characteristics that remain present in his family today. Matt Curtis is the director of government relations at HomeAway Inc. Previously he was communications director for Austin mayors Lee Leffingwell and Will Wynn. In 2011, Curtis won "Austinite of the Year" in the Austin Under 40 Awards. He earned his bachelor's degree in radio, television and film from the University of North Texas.

Matt Curtis on Losing 160 Pounds and Taking First International Trip

In Chapter 3 of 18 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, public affairs and communications strategist Matt Curtis answers "What Was it Like to Take Your First International Trip?" Curtis shares how he overcame embarrassment about his weight and fear of the unknown to take an overseas trip to Ireland in his late 30s. He talks about the times in his 20s and 30s when he was overweight and felt it was not even an option to travel long distances by plane.  Now 160 pounds lighter but still a big man, he shares how easy it turned out to be and how the experience has opened new doors to future international travel plans. Matt Curtis is the director of government relations at HomeAway Inc. Previously he was communications director for Austin mayors Lee Leffingwell and Will Wynn. In 2011, Curtis won "Austinite of the Year" in the Austin Under 40 Awards. He earned his bachelor's degree in radio, television and film from the University of North Texas.

How to Be More Creative by Changing Your Surroundings

In Chapter 5 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, leadership philosopher Bijoy Goswami answers "How Has Changing Your Surroundings Made You More Creative?"  He notes how altering patterns and routines creates a more open-minded or curious mindset that fuels his creative thinking. 

Bijoy Goswami is a writer, teacher, and community leader based in Austin, Texas.  He develops learning models, including MRE, youPlusU, and Bootstrap, to help others live more meaningfully.  Previously, he co-founded Aviri Software after working at Trilogy Software.  Goswami graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Computer Science, Economics, and History. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  How has changing your surroundings made you more creative?

Bijoy Goswami:  You know, you get into patterns, right? So, when I'm in Austin I'm in my pattern. I mean, there’s a set of things that I do and I think Austin is a very creative place because there’s so much serendipity that happens both from things like South By and other festivals, Fuse Box and things like that happen through the year and they sort of immerse you into these different environments but otherwise with those happening you’re kind of on a particular pattern.

I think you start to get grooved in, you know, things start to solidify and you don’t really think outside the box but when things like South By happens, it’s really interesting because it’s actually an experience layered on to the same environment all of a sudden I'm in a different mode, you know, and so it’s a very interesting thing because you’re not going toward something you’re more open to receiving things. So, your mindset is very different. You’re saying, oh, what’s new? What’s interesting? You’re looking up and around rather than forward and ahead. So, I think that’s what that does, I mean, in Austin our festivals do that.

For me, it’s whenever I travel that’s what happens. I mean, you know, I go to London or go to UK or I was in Oslo last year, I mean, it’s just always interesting because – and it’s also funny because you see the similarities of what makes culture the same but you also see all these differences and you’re like, oh, that’s really interesting and I can see where that came from and the weather influenced this and, you know. So, I think it just jogs you out of your routine, which is really cool.