Jullien Gordon on Why Living a Fulfilled Life Starts With Being Yourself

In Chapter 9 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business coach Jullien Gordon answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?"  For Gordon, it comes down to lifestyle design and in this, personal and professional are the same thing.  Gordon notes that at the end of the day your life is integrated and your behaviors need to be aligned to create conistent behaviors that support that.  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: How are your personal experiences shaping your professional aspirations?

Jullien Gordon: There’s no division between who I am and what I do, they are very linked. And so this is about lifestyle design for me, and my career is part of my life, there’s four domains of my life which are myself, my family, my career, and my community. So who I am is actually informing everything that I do, and I think that when we move through life in that way, we just feel more integrated and we feel more satisfied.

The way I think about it is that oftentimes we’re moving through life and there’s five different versions of ourselves. There’s who you really are, there’s who we think we are, there’s who we want to be, there’s who others think we are, and there’s what others need us to be. And to the extent that those five different versions of ourselves are spread out and they aren’t one, is where we find that we’re unfulfilled. Those are where leaks occur in our happiness and our joy. And to the extent that those things can be aligned, and you don’t feel like you have to be someone else—somebody else for somebody else, and that who you are becoming and who you are, are actually one, I find that that’s where I feel most alive and most fulfilled.

So, again, who I am informs what I do and so I don’t see a separation. There’s no separation between our personal and professional lives. If there was, where would it be? At our front door? At the driveway? At the parking lot? At our desk? There’s no line. It’s helpful to talk about them separately sometimes, but at the end of the day, our life is integrated, it’s one thing, it’s not these different compartments. If your day at work sucks then that’s gonna filter into your “personal life.” If your personal life is sucking, that’s gonna filter into your professional life. So there’s no distinction for me between the two. They’re all one for me.

Lulu Chen on How Personal Priorities Change With Age

In Chapter 1 of 16 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, art director Lulu Chen answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing With Age?"  Chen notes how she has learned not always to be a people pleaser and to let go of guilt of not always helping others and put herself first sometimes.  By taking care of herself she is able to be more helpful to friends and family. 

Lulu Chen is a photo art director working in retail e-commerce in New York City.  Previously, Chen worked as a freelance stylist for leading fashion catalogs and magazines.  She earned a BFA in design and art history from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your personal priorities changing with age?

Lulu Chen: I definitely try to strive for a better work/life balance. And as I get older I prioritize my personal—my own needs more than everyone else’s.

Erik Michielsen: For example?

Lulu Chen: I was always a people pleaser and I always wanted to make everybody else happy, and I worked really hard, but sometimes, you know, you just keep going and you don’t actually step back and think about yourself. You’re just too busy accomplishing all the tasks or all the roles that you’re supposed to play, or just, you know, doing the right thing, or you just get busy, and you forget to think about yourself sometimes.

Erik Michielsen: What approach have you taken to create that time for yourself?

Lulu Chen: Well, I’ve learned how to say “no,” to every event, or any events that I don’t want to attend or can’t attend, or, you know, I’ve let go of a lot of guilt, you know. And I realize I’m putting my own mask on first, you know, like on the airplane, how they tell you, “You can’t really help anyone else if you can’t help yourself first.”

Erik Michielsen: Does that also involve getting more comfortable being in a quiet place?

Lulu Chen: Oh, literally and figuratively? Both? Yeah. I think you have to be more comfortable with yourself. I think maybe you kind of settle down as you get older too, and you’re not going out every night, or, you know, definitely in my 20s, I think I worked every day and probably went out a lot, you know, whether it be to see friends, or industry events, or just parties in general, you know. And I definitely think now I take more time for myself, and I try to carve out more time with close friends, family, and my boyfriend.

Hattie Elliot on Turning 30 and Updating Life and Career Plans

In Chapter 8 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, female entrepreneur Hattie Grace Elliot answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?"  Elliot shares how she recently turned 30 and how it has put a more immediate timeframe on her personal and professional goals.  From meeting your financial and savings goals to getting married and starting a family, Elliot makes a point to work through what she wants and how she is going to achieve those goals.  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 your personal experiences shaping your professional aspirations?

Hattie Elliot: Well, I’m getting older. I don’t know if I would say I’m necessarily super wiser, but older. And I think part of that is that, you know, I—there’s certain things that I’ve really wanted in my life, and it’s a lot easier when you’re in your, you know, early 20s, I turned 30 last year, I’m gonna be 31 this year. I’ve really enjoyed getting older, but at the same time you’re not in that position anymore where you’re like, “Someday I’ll have a family.” “Someday I’m gonna buy a house.” Someday this, someday that, like, today is that someday. 

So I think that that these personal aspirations and personal experiences and where you wanna be—especially when it comes to having a business in your professional life, you realize you kind of have to make sure that your professional life, especially in the case when you have your own business is able to provide you or that you’re able to, to the best of your ability, attain the personal aspirations that you want with the professional means that you have. That comes, you know, monetarily, you know, sense of security, because you wanna start building, like, a nest for yourself. A nest egg and be able to take care of yourself, and if you have kids, hope—you know, your kids and your parents as they get older, and your family. You want to be able to just live the life you wanna live. You know, you don’t wanna constantly be nickel and dime’ing it. 

If you wanna travel, or you want to live in a certain area, you wanna be able to actually provide that and be able to build that and do that for yourself and so you have to, you know, be able to—you know, whether it’s you feel like you need more time in order to do so more, personal time to, you know, build real relationships, to build a romantic relationship, to maintain relationships with friends and family to make you happy. You need more money to be able to actually just, you know, live your life the way that you wanna live it, you have to take that into account and structure your professional life accordingly. Whether it’s, you know, having more flexibility time-wise, and, you know, being more disciplined about that, or bringing in, you know, the amount of, you know, fiscal income that you need. So I’ve definitely become, you know, much more aware of that, and become much more strict about it.

Adam Carter on How to Be More Health Conscious in Your Late 30s

In Chapter 2 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing as You Get Older?"  At 38 years old, Carter talks about the increasing priority he has set on healthy living as he has advanced into his late 30s.  He discusses how exercise, diet, and meditation collectively help him achieve a healthier lifestyle. 

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 personal priorities changing as you get older?

Adam Carter: That’s an interesting question because I’m 38 years old, and it’s hard for me sometimes to believe I’m 38 years old. Only when someone asks me how old I am, and I say, “38,” do I realize, wow, I’m actually 38 years old. So in the last—I think everybody in their 30s hits a point where they realize that they have to be more conscious of their health, and they have to start to think more about their future, so that’s—I think I share some of those. I’m very health conscious, and this is something that has allowed me I think to maintain a lot of the vitality that I have. I’m a very steadfast practitioner of yoga and some meditation, so that’s definitely helped me, and as I’ve grown I’ve also become a lot more conscious of what I’m eating and what I’m putting into my body, so that’s helped me deal with the, how would you say, the reality of our age which is the one thing that we can’t slow down. So I think that at the core, I’m still driven by the same ideals, and it’s just something that being a little more conscious of the body of the shell of, you know, the body is the temple to keep us going and keep us on the path that we have decided.

Mark Graham on How Family Relationships Change With Age

In Chapter 4 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing as You Get Older?" Graham, who lives in New York City, talks about the challenges of not being close by to his parents and siblings, who are Michigan, and finding ways to better keep in touch.  He adds how getting married in the past year has given him a new family support system of in-laws. 

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 your family relationships changing as you get older?

Mark Graham: Family relationships have been a challenge. And by that I mean not through any sort of relationship crises or anything like that, but having distance away from my family. I live here in New York City now. My family is back in Michigan. My mother, my father, my brother, they all live out there, and so there are clearly challenges, you know, particularly as I’m in my first year of marriage right now, you know, it’s really important for Megan and myself to really continue to build and grow our relationship and really sort of solidify that foundation. And so consequently I haven’t had as much time to get back home and spend time with my immediate family back home. 

So that’s definitely been a real challenge and it’s something I’ll sort of candidly admit that I have not been really great at and something I want recognize and improve upon in the future to get home more, to call more, you know, to email and text more, like my mom just got an iPhone which is exciting, so I can text now instead of, you know, exclusively relying on the Sunday night phone conversations and things like that. 

So, you know, that’s been a real change in my life and, you know, I’ve also gained new family through the course of being married as well. My in-laws are here in the city. They’re up in Westchester, which is a 20-25 minute train ride north of the city. And it’s been fantastic to build a relationship with them and to have somebody here who’s close, who you can lean on. Not exactly in the same way that you lean on your family that you grew up with, but they’ve been an incredible support system through all of the rigors of getting married and going and moving and all of that fun stuff building a new life together. 

So relationships continue to change and continue to evolve and I want to continue to place emphasis on family, and particularly my family back in Michigan, getting to spend more time with them in the future is something I need to spend more time and focus on.

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.

Conrad Doucette on How Personal Priorities Change With Age

In Chapter 1 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing as You Get Older?"  In his younger days, Doucette notes how his life was more narrowly focused.  As he gets older and his family relationships grow, he becomes more aware of the people in his life and caring for their respective needs and wellbeing. 

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.

Conrad Doucette: The Best Part About Being a Professional Musician

In Chapter 3 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "What Do You Enjoy Most About What You Do?"  As a professional musician, Doucette compares playing music to getting a natural high or "runner's high."  Playing music forces Doucette to face his own self, to engage his mind, and to receive the physical adrenaline, all of which electrify and inspire him and his work. 

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.

How Being Assertive Builds Confidence - Conrad Doucette

In Chapter 19 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "Where Are You Becoming More Confident?"  Doucette notes how he is becoming more confident by asserting himself.  He notes how he is becoming more aware in his life and career and the experience that comes with it.  By being more aware, Doucette better knows when to assert himself and take action, which gives him confidence he can do it more regularly and in different aspects of his life.  It teaches Doucette to bring out the best in other people and to identify his own weak points and make them stronger.  As he sets future goals, including releasing and promoting a new Takka Takka album - AM Landscapes - and playing with musicians outside his band. 

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.

Matt Ruby on How Personal Priorities Change With Age

In Chapter 8 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing as You Get Older?"  Ruby notes how personal connections are becoming more important to him as he gets older.  Also, he notes how before he wanted to experience a lot of little things and now he prefers to do big things while getting things done with his work.  He talks about how mortality is a motivator and Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He produces a video comic strip at Vooza.com, co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and writes a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University. 

How to Stop Being Busy and Better Manage Time Commitments

In Chapter 12 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "How Are You Learning to Better Manage Your Time and Commitments?"  Katz shares how he has worked to change his behavior over time.  He finds himself in an "always busy" mode focused on minutiae and avoiding what was important.  He learns to clear out the busy work and focus on priorities that provide the greatest benefit for his energy. 

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 are you learning to better manage your time and commitments? 

Garren Katz: That’s making the assumption that I am learning to manage my time and commitments better. I would say I used to make myself extremely busy, which I never realized what I was, in essence, doing, was doing a fantastic job of avoiding, avoiding what truly is important, or what I deem is important, the priority that I’ve made it. When you clear out the busy-ness and it’s amazing when you actually look at how you spend your time or when I would look—speaking specifically for myself, how I would spend my time, a great deal of my time was spent working on things that really weren’t significant, just busy work, you know, the difference between, you know, being in action and being active. I’m more focused now on what my priorities are and that’s made making time commitments actually much easier because I’m taking on less. 

Erik Michielsen: And what were those priorities before and what are those priorities now?

Garren Katz: The priorities before were, you know, the squeaky hinge, whatever happened to be in front of me, that’s what I would take on, or whatever popped into my head. Now, taking a moment and pausing, and really thinking: what is the benefit of this action? Is this necessary? Could my time be better spent dedicated to something else? Whether it’s a 5-minute project or a week-long activity, where would I benefit the most—where would my partner and I benefit the most? Where should my energy go? That’s how—that’s the decision making process I go through now— not always, of course, but that’s what I go through now whereas before it was whatever the flavor of the week was, whatever the flavor of the moment was, chasing as opposed to really having a focus.

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.

How Hands On Experience Shapes Design Career Path - Ross Floate

In Chapter 17 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "How Has Working With Your Hands Shaped Your Design Education?"  Floate finds it is less about the physical act of making things and, rather, taking pride in the things you make.  Floate finds he dislikes cooking for others, which helps him think about why hands-on work as a child also didn't register with him.  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.

How Creativity Motivates Manufacturing CEO - Richard Moross

In Chapter 11 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "What Role Does Creativity Play in What You Do As a CEO?"  Moross is driven by a need to make things.  He channels this drive in his design and manufacturing business.  Product innovation in the engineering and design continually renews Moross' purpose in his work.  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.

When to Hire An Assistant and Get Your Life Back - Richard Moross

In Chapter 13 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "How Are You Learning to Better Manage Your Time and Commitments?"  Overwhelmed with work, Moross learns first to recognize and admit he has a problem and then, second, to do something about it.  He takes steps to hire an assistant and delegate responsibility, even things he feels he does better than anyone else such as managing his travel.  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.

What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 1 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  As a strategist working at a design company, Stallings notes how it is getting easier to bring his varied skills together to serve clients.  He notes a growing challenge is understanding that more and more of his work is different than anything done before, which pushes him to look outside his industry as he crafts client strategic plans.  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. 

How Fear Can Be a Motivational Tool - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 22 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?"  Hammans finds self awareness helps him recognize when he has fear or anxiety in his life and uses that state as a motivational instance to improve and learn.  By working through fears and learning from the experience, he puts a process in place to work through future fears that will arise.  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.