Kyung B. Yoon on Making Passion for Fighting Poverty Your Career

In Chapter 2 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung B. Yoon answers "How Did Your Passion for Alleviating Poverty Develop and How Has It Been a Common Thread in Your Career?"  Yoon sees connecting her passion to dealing with poverty issues across her career.  From working in economic development to non-profit filmmaking to broadcast journalism to her current role at KACF, Yoon's focus on poverty and social inequality stays central to her work. 

Kyung B. Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

Jullien Gordon on Innovating Human Capital Strategy

In Chapter 19 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business coach Jullien Gordon "What Has Your Corporate Work Taught You About Innovation Needs in Human Resources?"  In his human resources strategy work, uses an interviewing approach - called innerviewing - to better understand employee growth, development, and needs beyond the new hire onboarding stage.  Jullien Gordon is a high performance coach and consultant to organizations, individuals and teams who want to increase employee performance, motivation, engagement and retention.  He earned a BA from UCLA, an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a Masters of Education from Stanford University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What has your corporate work taught you about innovation needs in human resources?

Jullien Gordon: Innovation has always been focused on the machine and the product, and how we deliver that service. And where I see that connecting with human resources, that innovation is really about how we manage, retain and grow our people now. Because everybody can replicate your technology now, they can get your product, dissect it, see what you did, and replicate that in a month now, right? So really the innovation, which can’t be replicated as easily, is your human capital. And so that’s where I’ve seen it connecting, and that the organizations that are committed to innovating around the way that they work with their human capital are the ones that are winning. You look at Zappos for example. You look at Southwest for example. All of these places are known for their great organizational culture and that’s why they have dominated their industries over the past few years.

Erik Michielsen: How do you start that conversation with the senior HR leader about making those changes to stay ahead of the curve?

Jullien Gordon: So the first question that I ask HR professionals is: Do you know who’s on your team? When you interviewed them, you got information about them in terms of their résumés, their past accomplishments, where they were educated, but now it’s six months in or a year in or 18 months in, and do you still know who that person is? We, as human beings, are evolving so quickly in this day and age that this person may have gotten married, like myself. They may have kids. And their original intention for coming to your organization may have changed. When they originally came to your organization, it may have been to pay off their student loans, it may have been for leadership opportunities and travel opportunities, then all of a sudden, life has occurred for them, and now their top priorities are no longer those three things, they’re actually mentorship, flexibility, and… certain types of projects, right? But if we never stop and ask those questions, then we are developing our human capital strategy based on who we hired 18 months ago, not who we have on our team today.

And so I help organizations close the gap between what their employees really want and expect from their employer, and their current human capital strategy. And I do that through my process called “innerviewing.” We all know what an interview is. That’s how you get the job. But innerviewing is a constant process of going back to your team and asking the right questions. What do they expect from work? Why are they even at this company? Because we don’t even ask that in the interview, we assume that we know the answer because they accepted the job offer. And then we’re also asking them, how do they define success? And is this company helping them achieve their definition of success? That’s the greatest employee retention strategy of all time, is to help them achieve their definition of success.

Now, a company may say, I do that by giving them a bonus, or higher pay, and then they can take that money and do what they want to create the life that they want outside of the work space, but I find that, for this generation, they don’t just want money, they also want to make meaning and because we spend so much time in our work environment, that has to be a space that’s fulfilling and engaging, and so when you ask somebody what’s their definition of success, and you ask them how their work actually fits in to that, you find that if you’re helping them achieve their definition of success, not just at work but in their life in general, then it’s gonna be harder for them to leave because it’s happening for them here through you and your organization.

And so, again, the question is, who’s on your team, or do you even know who’s on your team? Yeah, you hired them this long ago, but do you know who’s on your team right now? Do you know what their definition of success is? Do you know what their expectations are of work? And do you even know why they work beyond just money? And if you actually get answers to those three questions, I think you’ll find information that you can use to close the gap between what your employees really want and your human capital strategy.

And the reason I’m so important in doing this work is because oftentimes HR may send out a survey, and a survey already has bias in it based on who wrote the survey. And then some HR organizations are—or departments say that they’ve done focus groups. Well, I’ve found that anonymity is actually the best way to get the most authentic answers from employees, and so that’s where I go in to organizations. I actually go in, ask the high performers these core questions, take those insights and then help the organization close the gap between what their high performers that they want to retain really want and their human capital strategy.

Hattie Elliot on Using a Passion for Travel in an Event Planning Career

In Chapter 4 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, female entrepreneur Hattie Grace Elliot answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?   Starting her business, The Grace List, by embracing her passion for entertaining and connecting, Elliot evolves her model by adding a destination travel and event element to what she does.  By crafting destination trips, from wine adventures New Year's yacht sailing trips, Elliot is able to take her event production business to new levels.  Hattie Grace Elliot is the founder and CEO of The Grace List, a social networking company that creates destination events and experiences to forge lasting personal and professional connections across its young professional members. Elliot graduated from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she studied economics, philosophy, and politics.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Hattie Elliot: Wow. That’s kind of a difficult question, because I feel like I built my business, the kind of the forefront of my business was taking advantage for my real passion for entertaining and taking care of people. I guess that shifted slightly because we’ve kind of focused more in the last—and this is kind of very specific to what’s going on in my company right now, but I love traveling and experiencing the world and so I’ve kind of taken that ability to connect people, like great people great events, and taking it on the road, taking it on the plane, taking it on the boat, with these Saint Barths trips that we do and created that experience in different countries and different destinations and my events always, our weekly events that we threw were always based around like learning and doing something new, whether it was a food and wine pairing event, or private flying lessons.

We go to places that I personally am very passionate about, and you’re really able to craft this really thoughtful customized experience which is really impactful when you think about the first time maybe someone’s going to Italy and these wonderful, you know, little vineyards that you arrange for them to go to and winemakers that they meet and really it’s a pretty powerful thing to be able to, you know, forever in their mind when they think back to Italy, or even when they drink a glass of wine, that’s gonna change the way that they, like, you know, their whole experience of it, and that’s kind of powerful and wonderful and what the wonderful thing about—I’ve always been passionate about traveling and how I think as I’ve had the ability to with my clients, I’ve kind of infused the business more with the destination kind of side of—kind of event production, and that’s definitely kind of taken everything to the next level of the company. 

Adam Carter on Helping Charitable Trusts Identify and Fund Projects

In Chapter 10 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Carter talks about how he finds value in a liaison role between charitable trusts and the social impact areas they seek to affect.  Carter gives local assistance to global non-profit organizations, helping them identify, design, and implement projects in areas such as Brazilian favelas and shanty towns. 

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.

Mark Graham: How to Develop Passions In and Out of Work

In Chapter 17 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Graham notes that he is fortunate to spend most of his professional life pursuing his passions in his personal life such as television, music, film, and books.  He notes that as he gets more experience, he learns to separate work time from "me time" and enjoy the personal experiences instead of constantly chronicling them.  In the office, Graham puts a short-term priority on learning video editing skills such as Final Cut Pro so he may be more engaged with the video production teams working at VH1. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Mark Graham: I’ve got a lot of different passions. I’m a pop culture fiend. I love movies. I love music. I love TV. I love reading. Fortunately I’m in a position where I spend most of my professional life actively pursuing passions that I have in my personal life, which is really cool. I think one of the things that I’ve learned over—particularly over the last year and so, is that you do need to make time to create a little barrier between things that you’re passionate about and things that you do professionally, and by that I mean every time I used to go to a concert for example, I would always take notes during concerts and always write about things like that and I’ve sort of learned to pick things that are going to work for work and things that are more just sort of for “me time” to lay back, kick back, you know, drink a couple of root beers, enjoy the experience rather than sort of constantly chronicling it. I’m sending out tweets and Instagrams and taking notes and things like that, so I’ve really tried to focus this year on making sure that I do allow some sort of personal time for me in that way. 

And so the ways that I’m trying to apply passions in a new direction, you know, one of the things that I’m really trying to focus on over the course of the next year and some change, I haven’t gotten started on this yet but it’s one of the things that’s on my list of things to do this summer, I like to start learning how to do video editing. I think that that’s a skill set that is very important to someone who’s in my particular space, if you’re—the more trades that you can sort of do, the more relevant and useful you are to an organization. And also ways that you can help give better feedback and direction to people that you are working with. So as I’m spending more time working with video, with people who are operating cameras, and people who are sitting in editing base, and editing on Final Cut. You know, helping to understand their language, and the way that they work and the ways that we can help create a good product, end-product for a consumer, helping them get to that place is something that I’d definitely like to spend more time learning and developing. 

Conrad Doucette on What Makes a Music Career Meaningful

In Chapter 2 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?"  Doucette finds music engages him in a heartfelt, soulful way.  All his life Doucette has wanted to play music and it is a feeling he cannot imagine not having in his life. 

Conrad Doucette is a Brooklyn musician and the drummer for Takka Takka, which released its 3rd studio album, AM Landscapes, in late 2012.  He has performed with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, The National, Alina Simone, and many other leading acts.  When not performing music, Doucette is the communications and brand director at music licensing and publishing startup Jingle Punks.  Doucette earned a BA in History from the University of Michigan.

Why Song Order and Set Lists Matter in Music - Conrad Doucette

In Chapter 13 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "What Role Does Song Order Play When Producing an Album?"  Conrad Conrad expresses why song order is so important to him and his band, referencing his younger days following the Grateful Dead and being passionate about the different show set lists and the stories that come with them.  He notes the same is true when making an album and how song order is fundamental to the emotions and feelings an album listening experience can create in the narrative or storytelling it delivers.  Doucette is a Brooklyn musician and the drummer for Takka Takka, which released its 3rd studio album, AM Landscapes, in late 2012.  He has performed with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, The National, Alina Simone, and many other leading acts.  When not performing music, Doucette is the communications and brand director at music licensing and publishing startup Jingle Punks.  Doucette earned a BA in History from the University of Michigan.

Garren Katz: Why to Invest Savings in Friends and Not Stocks

In Chapter 14 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "How Has Being Open to New Opportunities Shaped Your Investing Experience?"  Katz shares his progression from traditional investing - Roth IRA, SEP IRA, securities - in his 20s to investing in friends in his 30s.  He notes how more and more of his friends have been starting businesses and why he is choosing more and more to invest in these people rather than those traditional outlets. 

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. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How has being open to new opportunities shaped your investing experience?

Garren Katz: Wow, I would say when I was in my 20s, I invested very traditionally, Roth IRA, SEP-IRA, in securities and that type of thing. You know, we live in a time now where more than likely somebody you know, or a buddy or a friend or a family member, they’re up to something. And they’re up to a neat idea. And they probably could use some money to help them along.  

So I’ve really shifted some of my money that goes towards investments into a pool where I want to invest in people, especially friends, folks you know. It’s so much more rewarding on so many different levels, if I invest in a stock and that stock does well, that feeds my ego a bit, and it’s kind of a one-dimensional satisfaction, whereas putting money into a project that a friend’s working on is rewarding on a multitude of levels, and honestly, I would have to say I get more satisfaction out of investing in a friend or a friend’s project that might not float than I do out of a successful stock transaction because it’s—it creates a new element to our relationship. So I really, really enjoy investing in other people’s passions, what other people are up to, what other people are taking on, I love being a part of it.

Simon Sinek on Learning New Ways to Use Your Passions

In Chapter 15 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Sinek first gets clear on what he wants to do - "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" - and then plays the game of finding new ways to do it.  From branching out skills into short-form and long-form writing to working in new industries such as military, politics and government, Sinek sees himself as a student of inspiration and leadership always looking to learn more and grow.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  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 you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Simon Sinek:  The goal of life is to know why you do what you do, right? To wake up every single day with a clear sense of purpose or cause or belief. And the fun of life is just find all the different ways to do that, right? So like I said, I know why I get out of bed in the morning. It’s to inspire people to do what inspires them, right? If we can do that together, we can change the world. Then I imagine this world, I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day to inspire to go to work and come home every single day fulfilled by the work that they do. So to find new ways to do that is almost the game, you know, I can speak, I can write, I can teach, you know? I can write short form, I can long—I can write long form. It also makes me open to other people’s ideas. It makes me open to new industries. I never imagined I’d be working in even half the industries I’ve been exposed to. From government to politics to military, big business, you know, entrepreneurs and every industry you can imagine. And it’s always because it’s—I’m not saying, oh, I’m this kind of consultant, or I’m this kind of expert, I mean—anybody who calls themselves an expert, be very cautious, you know? Because if you think you’re an expert, it means you have—you don’t think you have anything else to learn, right? If anything, I’m a student of inspiration, I’m a student of leadership, I’m a student of these things. You know, I show up every day to want to learn more.

How to Be an Advocate for Your Local Community - Randall Metting

In Chapter 1 of 7 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, brand marketer and on-air radio personality Randall Metting answers "How Has Being a Local Radio DJ in Austin, Texas Brought You Closer to the Austin Community?"  Metting shares how joining the Austin community as a radio DJ at KGSR has taught him new ways to advocate for the community across culture, entertainment, and charitable causes.  Randall Metting is an on-air radio personality at 93.3 KGSR Radio in Austin, Texas.  When not on the radio, Metting consults organizations on integrated marketing strategy and brand development.  He also writes the Austin community music and entertainment blog at www.randallmetting.com.  Metting earned a B.A. in Advertising from the University of Florida.

How to Make the Most of Living in Your City - Randall Metting

In Chapter 2 of 7 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, brand marketer and on-air radio personality Randall Metting answers "How Do You Make the Most of Living in a City?"  Metting shared how he embraced living in Austin, Texas after relocating from St. Petersburg, Florida.  Learning about the arts and entertainment scene helps Metting identify charities and get involved supporting non-profits.  Ultimately this research shapes his approach to fully embrace his Austin city living experience.  Randall Metting is an on-air radio personality at 93.3 KGSR Radio in Austin, Texas.  When not on the radio, Metting consults organizations on integrated marketing strategy and brand development.  He also writes the Austin community music and entertainment blog at www.randallmetting.com.  Metting earned a B.A. in Advertising from the University of Florida.

Thinking for a Living Working in Design - Ross Floate

In Chapter 14 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "How Do You Use Design as a Process to Solve Problems?"  Floate shares how getting to solve a wide array of interesting problems allows him to have a career where he goes to a job where he thinks for a living.  He notes the ease of doing jobs on topics that match your interests, and shares the reward of applying a design discipline and enthusiasm to different kinds of companies.  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.

What Keeps Startup CEO Excited About His Job - Richard Moross

In Chapter 1 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "What Do You Enjoy Most About What You Do?"  Moross finds reward working with his colleagues, channeling his passion in its product and doing so all the while learning new business skills.  Collectively, the people, passion, and purpose allow him to tie his curiosity and expression to creating value in the world.  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.

How to Stay Ahead of the Innovation Curve - Richard Moross

In Chapter 9 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Moross shares how making design more accessible to people means he must consider looking beyond paper products to serve his customers.  This requires him to look beyond paper to future options that may evolve from physical to digital.  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 How to Use Your Passion to Lose Weight and Stay Fit

In Chapter 1 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Stump applies his passion for programming and the software building process to his diet.  As a result, he is able to lose nearly 40 pounds in less than a year.  He compares the software programming process to dieting and the importance of turning bad habits to good habits and making it sustainable.  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: How are you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Joe Stump: I am at heart a hacker and a tinkerer. I like puzzles. I've always been that way, you know, I was the kid that had more Legos than he knew what to do with it and was always kind of putting them together in different ways. And I've taken that and have kind of started applying it to other areas in my life.

The hacking -- Probably the recent successful hack has been the fact that I've lost about 35, 40 pounds over the last year-ish and I approached it very much in the same way that I approached triaging a software bug. And when you're triaging a software bug, the first thing you do is you get a baseline, right? Where are we at right now? You then get a – you then do logging and statistics and kind of figure out, you know – basically you gather information as much as you can, right? After you’ve established your baseline. And then as you're gathering your information, hopefully you figure out what the problem is and you can then resolve it, right?

And I kind of basically applied that same approach to my diet where basically I started doing research and started tracking all sorts of things. And I actually, when I approached it, I approached it from -- again, in a very similar way to the way I approach bugs. So, when I go and change someone else’s code, I try to be as minimally invasive as possible. Because I don’t know whether or not if I change too much code, I don’t know whether or not that code will be sustainable. I may introduce other bugs. So, with dieting and changing health, like I wanted to change bad habits and the good habits and I wanted it to be sustainable.

And I think a lot of people, you know, you hear a lot of people talk about this with diet where they try and go cold turkey or they try to like do some really extreme diet and they end up falling off the wagon and they end up going back to poor eating habits. So I did things like I tracked how often I biked to work. I didn’t track how far; I just tracked yes or no. Did I ride my bike to work? And my goal was I wanted to ride my bike to work half of the time. I also wanted to cut down on my diet soda intake, so I tracked that. And if I had less than two, cool; if I had more than two, not cool, right?

And then I ended up going and getting really geeky and ended up getting like this thing called a DEXA Scan that tells you all this terrifying information about your body that you don’t want to know, like how much you're intestines weigh and how much muscle mass you don’t have when thought you were all ripped. And having that very objective analytical view into my body and how it worked really helped me approach turning the knobs in a much more nuanced way.

So, rather than going and saying, “I'm going to train for an Ironman and that’s how I'm going to lose 40 pounds.” I was like I’m going to go and bike to work half the time. I'm going to drink a little less soda, I’m gonna cut down my sugar a bit and introduce a very, very small amount of exercise. And it worked out very well. I've been able to sustain that over time. And what was really interesting also was when you overextend your body, you're basically shocking the system and when you shock the system like think about when there's a five-alarm fire, right?

People miss the little things that are happening around them when there's a five-alarm fire and I feel it's the same way with your body. When I introduced small changes, I was able to be a little bit more perceptive about what my body was telling, whereas if I had went really extreme and was like on a fasting diet or total vegetarian, my body would have been like -- and I wouldn’t have been able -- my body overwhelmingly would have been saying, “What are you doing?” whereas if you introduced a little bit more incrementally. It was like, you know, you can basically say, it's almost like committing transactions to a database.

So transactions to a database, you can commit like, you can do something and then if it didn’t work you can roll it back. No harm, no foul, right? And so if you do that incrementally, that’s what I was basically doing. I was like, I'm going to step in here, okay, that worked, cool. And then I'm going to step in here, that didn’t work, roll back, right? It was like a very iterative kind of process and it's allowed me to really be a lot more perceptive to what my body is telling me.

So now, what's kind of nice about this is I've been on the road a lot for the last six months and I've been eating – I’ve been cycling basically, eating like utter crap while I’m on the road. It's really hard to eat really healthy when you're on the road to cycling in the good habits. It's like my body tells me basically, “Dude, you're eating sugar. You got to like up your protein,” and I'm a lot better at listening to that now.

Joe Stump on Finding Meaningful Work Making Software

In Chapter 3 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?"  At his core, Stump simply loves helping people.  He finds software provides him an opportunity to empower and help people at scale.  His current company, Sprint.ly, makes product management software that Stump hopes, jokingly, will "make life in a cubicle a little nicer."  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 makes your work meaningful?

Joe Stump: You know me fairly well and I like helping people. I like helping people a lot and one of the things that I think software can do is it can enable, empower, and help people. And the software that, you know, really the software that I'm building now is kind of it’s software as a service, it's business software.

Most people would look at it -- I mean, it's product management software. People are not like -- people shouldn’t love that kind of software, right? But our customers love it. They say like, the number one word that comes back and like when people respond back is love. They love using it.

And I often say that like jokingly, I say that our mission at Sprint.ly is to make life in a cubicle a little nicer.  And I think that, you know, you can have a huge impact through software because if I was just a philanthropist I could help maybe dozens of people but I'm now enabling thousands of people to hopefully get a few less grey hairs.

Jon Kolko: Why Entrepreneurial Leadership Starts With Passion

In Chapter 5 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  Kolko looks at what he has learned about developing as a leader through the lens of his students.  For him, he sees drive, passion, resiliency and curiosity form the foundation that help select entrepreneurs thrive professionally and lead in their respective fields.  Jon Kolko the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Jon Kolko: I think that there are a lot of things around confidence that play into leadership. I think there’s qualities of charisma but I don’t know. I feel like those are ancillary. I feel like there's something else at the core and it might actually have to do with drive and passion. I have a hard time looking at myself through that lens. 

So maybe we could look in some of my students through that lens and the students that are most successful in starting companies, meaning in becoming leaders, seem to have an unending passion for whatever it is they're doing. And so, when you do anything in design or business, it's a constant struggle. When you start your own company, which you know it's a huge constant struggle and it almost feels from one perspective like anything that can go wrong will go wrong over and over and over, and it takes a certain unending passion to get through that because it's very easy and it's almost like the logical thing to do is to give up and at some point to just throw in the towel and say it's easier to go to work for somebody else or do something else. But I've just seen in the students that have graduated that have formed these companies and then going on to be successful, each time something sort of difficult or complicated comes at them or a reason why they should give up, the ones that are truly passionate about it don’t and use it to somehow gain leverage on a situation to turn it into something positive. 

That probably begs the question of what is passion and I'm not sure I have like a ready flip answer for it, but it does seem like just a massive curiosity and a need to know things, and that passion in the context of a business is contained within the business. But generally it's just a thirst to know how the world works right? And how people are and why things are the way they are.

Why Psychologist Chooses Design Career - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 4 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Inspires You to Work at the Intersection of Design and Psychology?"  Stallings finds psychology work making peoples lives more meaningful and products and services more useful is an intrinsic motivator.  After graduate school, Stallings looks for an opportunity to use his background and found design work a great outlet for his psychology passion.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.