Cathy Erway on Using Reflection to Hone Writing Focus

In Chapter 6 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, writer and healthy food advocate Cathy Erway answers "What Role Has Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?"  Writing a memoir and charting two years of her life helps Erway focus on healthy, just, local and seasonal eating advocacy projects.  Writing, from blog or recipe posts to magazine articles, provides Erway a timeline of experiences she can reflect upon and learn from over time. 

Cathy Erway is a Brooklyn-based author, part-time cook, freelance writer, radio host and teacher focused on healthy food advocacy.  Her first book, "The Art of Eating In" developed from her blog "Not Eating Out in New York".  She earned a BA in creative writing from Emerson College.

Cathy Erway on Finding Better Ways to Teach Cooking

In Chapter 17 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, writer and healthy food advocate Cathy Erway answers "How Are You Becoming a Better Teacher?"  Erway shares how she is getting more relaxed and confident the more she teaches cooking classes from her home.  Feedback teaches Erway to focus on a specific topic and do so in the casual, loose style she enjoys. 

Cathy Erway is a Brooklyn-based author, part-time cook, freelance writer, radio host and teacher focused on healthy food advocacy.  Her first book, "The Art of Eating In" developed from her blog "Not Eating Out in New York".  She earned a BA in creative writing from Emerson College.

Andrew Epstein on Setting Work Expectations When Starting a Family

In Chapter 16 of 23 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, charter school CFO Andrew Epstein answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?"  Epstein speaks to the work-life balance he is struggling to better understand.  As his career aspirations grow as a higher education executive, so do his family aspirations to start a family.  This is the challenge he now faces in his late 30s. 

Andrew Epstein is CFO of the Ascend Learning Charter School Network.  Previously, Epstein was a finance executive at Democracy Prep Public Schools and an operations executive at Universal Music Group's Island Def Jam Records.  He is a former Teach for America corps member and middle-school science teacher.  He holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Andrew Epstein on How Personal Priorities Change With Age

In Chapter 21 of 23 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, charter school CFO Andrew Epstein answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing as You Get Older?"  Happy to be living in Brooklyn, New York, Epstein does note how getting older focuses his time more on family, work, and scaling back how often he goes out with friends to see live music. 

Andrew Epstein is CFO of the Ascend Learning Charter School Network.  Previously, Epstein was a finance executive at Democracy Prep Public Schools and an operations executive at Universal Music Group's Island Def Jam Records.  He is a former Teach for America corps member and middle-school science teacher.  He holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Kyung B. Yoon on Career Advice for Gen Y Women Professionals

In Chapter 7 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung B. Yoon answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?"  As a Wellesley student, Yoon remembers wanting to have it all.  Experience teaches her you can have it all but not have it all at the same time.  She advises young Gen Y female professionals to invest in careers early to gain educational credentials and work experience to provide negotiating and bargaining leverage later in life and career. 

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.

Kyung B. Yoon on How to Perform Under Pressure and Meet Goals

In Chapter 8 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung B. Yoon answers "What Does It Mean to Perform Under Pressure in the Work That You Do?"  In her work raising funds in a challenging economic climate, Yoon learns to manage pressure by sharing responsibilities across her teams.  By creating team-oriented goals and supportive inspiration and motivation, Yoon is able to better achieve short-term and long-term goals. 

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.

Kyung B. Yoon on Improving Job Skills to Be a Better Non-Profit Leader

In Chapter 14 of 17 in her 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung B. Yoon answers "What Skills Are You Working on Right Now to Become Better at Your Job?"  First, Yoon makes it a point to learn how to be a better community funder and how to better invest the funds she raises in the community.  Second, she continues to look at ways to raise funds beyond special events.  Third, as she works with Korean immigrants regularly, Yoon also focuses on improving her reading and writing to better connect with the Korean speaking immigrants she serves. 

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 Why to Set New Year's Intentions and Not Goals

In Chapter 8 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business coach Jullien Gordon answers "How Are You Helping Others Plan, Commit to, and Achieve New Year's Goals?"  Gordon shares how he helps people set their intentions by putting out his annual "New Year Guide."  He focuses not on the outcome or goal but the intention or the underlying initiative behind that goal or outcome.  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 you helping others plan, commit to, and achieve New Year’s Resolution goals?

Jullien Gordon: So as you know, every year I put out the New Year Guide which is a tool to help people set their intentions. I have shifted my beliefs in a lot of ways from setting goals to really setting intentions. And the difference is that with a goal, a goal is usually connected to some sort of outcome. And while it’s okay to have a desired outcome, an intention is more about what’s behind the desired outcome. So for instance, a lot of people will set weight loss goals this year. “I wanna lose 30 pounds.” That’s the goal, right? And that’s connected to a certain outcome. If they don’t achieve that outcome, they feel that they failed.

Whereas an intention is I wanna be healthier. And one of the goals connected to being healthier may be to lose 30 pounds. And so I’m focused on helping people get clear on their intention, and then also knowing that when you do have a desired outcome that we don’t always control the outcomes as human beings. I can do everything that Shaun T tells me to do and P90X and still not get a body that looks like his, right? But if I’m connected to the outcome then I feel like I failed. But what I can control, the only thing that’s in our control is our effort. What I can tell Shaun T is that I showed up every single day for 90 days. And I did what I was supposed to. And that may not have gotten me to that kind of physique, but it may have gotten me somewhere along the direction of where I ultimately wanted to be.

And so, one, getting clear on the distinction between goals and intentions, and really focusing on intentions and making sure the intention is right which is your why behind the goal, and then also being clear about the distinction between effort and outcome and knowing that you only have full control over the effort, we don’t have full control over the outcome. And when you start with your why and make sure that the why is big enough, you know, Viktor Frankl says a man who knows his why can bear almost any how. And what I found is that when I’m clear on my intention or my why behind something, the how tends to manifest itself. When I look back at my goals from last year, I accomplished a lot of them in ways that I didn’t even anticipate it. They happen in their own way. But that’s because the intention was strong and they manifested themselves, they didn’t manifest themselves the way I thought they would but they manifested themselves nonetheless. And so really making those distinctions clear.

Jullien Gordon on How to Build Career Coaching Conversation Skiils

In Chapter 13 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business coach Jullien Gordon answers "How Are Your Coaching Skills Improving as You Build Experience?"  Gordon learns ways to ask someone questions to understand where they are coming from.  He learns different ways to improve the questions he asks and the coaching conversation - and outcome - that results.  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 coaching skills improving as you build experience?

Jullien Gordon: So my coaching skills, they come from my personal journey, but before anything, rather than coaching from my experience, I actually coach from my listening. So I actually focus on listening to the individual first. What I found is that oftentimes, especially when you think about self-help books and things of that nature, a lot of times when you read those books and then we try to apply somebody else’s framework or definition of success to our life, it doesn’t work out, because that’s theirs. And so when I coach, I don’t necessarily just take my experiences and translate them to the individual and say, “Here, do this,” instead, I start with deep listening and really thinking about what their situation is and then try to put myself in their shoes and then based on my experiences and my insights regarding that situation, it may inform my answer, but sometimes when I’m helping them, I’m really focused on asking the right questions. Rather than giving people answers, I’m focused on asking the right questions, because I think that when you ask the right questions, then the individual gets insights, and that insight leads to authentic answer for them. And so I think there are some coaches out there who take their experiences and then try to superimpose those experiences on the individual and say, “This worked for me, you should do exactly this,” and that’s not really the way I coach. My experiences help me understand an individual and where they’re coming from in a deeper way, especially as not only I have my experiences but I hear and have the experiences of others that I coach and that I connect with, all those stories are in my listening but I pull bits and pieces from them to help ask the right questions, not necessarily give answers for my coaching clients.

Erik Michielsen: That’s great. How are you learning to ask the right question?

Jullien Gordon: Pausing like this. Not trying to be right. And trusting that the individual, or my audience when I’m speaking to larger groups, have the answers within them, and that I’m just creating the space for them to actually explore what’s best for them. That’s really what it’s been for me. And like I said, sometimes my experiences and the stories that I hear from others help shape the question but I stay with questions rather than answers. A lot of people want answers, but I think when you give somebody a standard answer and they apply it, it may not work for them in the same way that it worked for you.

Hattie Elliot: How to Stay Composed and Perform Under Pressure

In Chapter 12 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, female entrepreneur Hattie Grace Elliot answers "What Does It Mean to Perform Under Pressure in the Work That You Do?"  Elliot embraces working in complicated environments with many moving parts.  Experience and reflection teach her to stay calm and be mindful of what is most important when unexpected things happen in her event planning and destination travel business. 

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: What does it mean to perform under pressure in the work that you do?

Hattie Elliot: Wow, I think that that’s one of the reasons that I can do what I do. When you’re dealing with so many people and so many personalities and so many vendors, and then on top of that, just kind of any sort of production, planning these trips, these events, these destinations, you know, it’s a perfect storm, there’s always gonna be, you know, anything and everything you can imagine could go wrong, will at some point. It will. It just—It’s just the nature of the beast, it’s the nature of the business.

So being able to not freak out, not like completely lose my marbles, but keep calm, has really—Number one, I think I would absolutely hate, hate, hate, hate what I do if I got freaked out easily. It takes a lot to ruffle my feathers, that’s like one positive attribute I have, like, it really takes a lot to ruffle my feathers. So—but I really genuinely I don’t think could work in the business I did if I couldn’t operate under extreme pressure and extreme kind of crazy circumstances as if nothing’s happening and the sun is shining and the grass is green, and there’s birds tweeting, and rainbows everywhere, like, sometimes you just gotta just keep your eye on the prize and compartmentalize when everything is—when shit is hitting the fan, just like, you know, great, awesome, like, we’ll put that shit in the corner there and pretend there’s like rainbows and butterflies and just, you know, and just, you know, move forward, and it’s part insanity and part brilliance I think that it takes to do that but it’s what I do.

And I think it’s the reason I’ve been able to be successful at the business that I’m in. And I think for people that I know, I used to—I have to say this is learned. I have not always been like this. I’ve really, through the years, made a vested effort, and it’s part of this whole idea of really acknowledging and reflecting where you are. I think it gives you a really, a healthy and honest perspective on what really matters. So if the electric goes out, if, you know, the—we’re on a trip and, you know, literally, like, shit hits the fan and a holding tank explodes onto the boat which is a foul situation, don’t get me wrong. It kind of makes you realize, honestly, if no one’s dying, and no one’s sick, that everything else is kind of like, you can figure it out, you can MacGyver it, you know, it gives you that kind of perspective when you’ve really gone through adversity, you really realize what matters and, yeah, and maybe that’s why it takes a lot to ruffle my feathers. But I feel like I’ve got a pretty, you know, healthy perspective on what’s worth really, you know, having a breakdown about, and there’s not much. 

Adam Carter on Adding Reflection Into Daily Routines

In Chapter 3 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What Role as Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?"  Carter details the importance of starting each day with a personalized yoga routine and meditation practice and how he has developed his daily routine over time.  This helps prepare him for the day and gives him a daily opportunity to reflect and be mindful of his environment, his decisions and his plans. 

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 role has reflection played in shaping your personal growth?

Adam Carter: I think we all have our own form of spirituality, and for me personally, I’m a very regular practitioner of yoga and meditation, so, for me, about five days a week, you know, I start my day with a yoga routine that I’ve developed over the course of the last decade, that continues to evolve, and, so, for me, being able to start each day, ground myself, and my practice ends with meditation that really helps me focus on the day, and helps me focus on and who I am, and it really helps me. I think sometimes, you know, we’ll wake up, people wake up, they have that cup of coffee and it’s just like, the day just like hits them head on, like, full on. It’s really been valuable for me to be able to kind of ease into my day and to be mindful, and doing meditation really helps me kind of be mindful throughout the day. Whenever I can I try to just kind of take a deep breath, take a step back and just kind of, center myself because things can get stressful when you let them pile up and your mind’s going a mile a minute. So for me to be able to ground myself every day has been especially important because I’m often living in different places, and I don’t have the routine that a lot of people have, so I might be waking up in a completely different bed. I might be—find myself in a completely different—it could be a city, it could be a shanty town, it could be on a farm, you know, who knows where I am, but having that—being able to ground myself in that sense, or with that sense of reflection has really allowed me to maintain some consistency in my life.

Ken Rona on How to Be a More Engaged Parent

In Chapter 4 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "What Does It Mean For You to Be Engaged in Your Children's Education?"  Rona reflects back on his own childhood education experience growing up with Eastern European immigrant parents and taking on school more or less alone.  As a parent, Rona shares how he stays engaged as an advocate for his 7-year old daughter and his son in Pre-Kindergarten. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What does it mean for you to be engaged in your children’s education?

Ken Rona: I think folks would say I’m a very engaged parent. When I was growing up, my parents were busy earning a living. That they worked very hard to keep food on the table, and keep us, you know, in clothes, you know, we had a lower middle cla—what I would call lower middle class existence. And we had everything we needed but not much more. We had, you know, a few toys but it was, you know, a pretty modest life. And I kind of had to figure out school by myself. I more or less was left alone to kind of figure that stuff out. And I made some choices—I’m not exactly sure that they were wrong, I mean I certainly turned out well. 

But certainly early on, certainly like from junior high school, high school, and into college, parents weren’t very involved. Partly by my design, truthfully, they probably wanted to be more involved and I kind of kept things at arms bay and—because I thought that I could make—I was a person on the ground, right, I was a person that could make decisions better. And part of it is because my parents were eastern European immigrants, right? 

So part of my involvement with their education is to say I believe that you can have a better experience than mine in school. And I am one of the science dads, me and one of the other dads come in and do science experiments for the kids. Charlotte certainly understands what an experiment hypothesis is—at least on a basic level. I’ve tried very hard not to be, you know—what I’m committed to is not being a helicopter parent, right? The kids have to figure out their own way but in an appropriate pace, right? 

So I’m sure by—I’m sure by grade 12, our involvement will be much less after colleges are picked. But for now, I’m very committed to staying engaged and making sure that Charlotte has a good experience and that she has an advocate. So I would say actually that the primary way I’m involved with Charlotte’s school is that I’m an advocate for her, not that—and I’m trying to teach her to advocate for herself. Both my wife and I would say that I think that—and you know, she’s 7, so she’s not really in a position—although she does a—I think a pretty good job of it. 

So my involvement is, you know, is to be an appropriate advocate. I’m not planning on—I’m not planning on being one of these parents that calls up your kid’s first job and say why didn’t you promote him, right? That’s not—That’s—They’ve gotta run there.  But I think at age 7, at age 8, you know, for the foreseeable future, her mother and I and Doyle—you know, Doyle requires less advocacy at this moment, because he’s in preschool, but I would expect that we will continue advocacy, but interestingly you know, we—You also have to be really thoughtful about when you don’t advocate. 

So—just today, we got the class list for what class she’s—Charlotte’s gonna be in next year, and she’s—there are 3 classes in her school, each class has 21 kids, and there’s a shuffling from year 1—from 1st grade to 2nd grade, and Charlotte’s—like we’re not super thrilled with Charlotte’s shuffle. There are a very few friends from that class in her new class, right? Seems like—and I think that’s a shame, right? Because we just moved to Atlanta. And I—My wife and I haven’t discussed it but I’m pretty sure we’re on the same side of it like we’re not gonna advocate for changing a class, we’re not gonna—like Charlotte’s gotta kind of figure out how to be successful in an environment which is very friendly, right. Is it exactly what I would’ve wished for her? No. But like that is part of our existence, right, that you—that—this is not an incredible hardship, right? She certainly has friends in the class, she will make other friends. She knows all of those children. I would’ve liked that one or two of her close friends would’ve been in the class, that didn’t go that way. It’s gonna be fine, right? 

So I think that part of what you need to be able to do in supporting your children’s education is knowing when to not advocate, right, when to hold back and not be involved, because I think being involved is actually easy. You can just say yeah I gonna be involved. I think restraint is the harder part.

Ken Rona on Making a Career Transition from Specialist to Generalist

In Chapter 7 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "What Do You Enjoy Most About What You Do?"  Rona talks about the rewarding elements of his progressive managerial responsibilities interfacing with C-level executives and his related career transition from more specialist-oriented job roles to more generalist-oriented ones. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What do you enjoy most about what you do?

Ken Rona: I notice a shift in my—in what I spend my time doing—in the last year. The team is functioning I think very effectively. Instead, my job has more evolved to—I have to communicate what the team does. Right? To people—to people outside the organization or even inside the division I’m in. To monitor what’s going on in the industry. To interface with our C-level officers.

So I think—I think that’s been a shift in the role and I found that very interesting. It’s no longer am I solely valued for my analytic skills or my product management, my analytic product management skills. Now my value is coming from how I communicate with our senior folk and other folks that are kind of in the industry.

And that’s been—That’s been very interesting. As I say it’s—it requires a bit of a shift in mentality. As I say, it’s like –It’s a seat change, or it’s a step change, in what I was doing. So I felt like this year in particular, my career has taken a—my job has shifted. That it’s—it still encompasses the old stuff but it has a much more of a component around communication.

Ken Rona: What It Means to Be a Leader Working in Management

In Chapter 12 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  As a leader of a team, Rona sees his role as less about thought leadership and more about helping his team solve problems, develop their own staff, and identify where and where not to decide what projects to pursue. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University.

Transcript: 

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

Ken Rona: There are leaders in multiple elements of my job, right? There’s the leader of the teams. It’s my job to help them figure out what to work on. But my job isn’t really to be a thought leader in advanced statistics or operations research; it’s not my gig. My gig is more to help them solve prioritization problems, to solve conflict, to help them better develop their staff, to identify areas of the business where they might have impact—places that they can take ownership. I’ve also encouraged them on places where we’ve identified areas where we could take ownership; there are things where I have said we are not going to. 

So part of kind of leadership in the job, the product side of what we do is a good understanding of what to say no to. There’s this thing called multivariate testing that lets you, let’s say swap out different headlines and see which headlines are more attractive, that’s how you get these crazy headlines from Huffington Post, you know? See who’s vacationing at the Riviera. They didn’t write that, what they did was they wrote four different headlines and then saw which one led to most traffic, and that’s the one you’re seeing. So there was an opportunity to be more of an advocate at Turner for it and I said to the person who wanted to do this, like, you know, I don’t think that that is—I think we are fully engaged in the things we’re working on. And this is something that I agree would be good for Turner but what are we gonna give up? 

So I think part of what—part of what you have to do as a leader, you know, within my job is to say, what are we not going to do. So one of the things I really help the team do, I think is keep focus. 

And the other thing I do is I hold them accountable. So that’s another piece, right, where people have made commitments, and I try like any good manager, not leader but say—I try to say what day is something due. And if the thing isn’t due that day, “what’s up?” I ask, “What’s up?” And there’s always a reason, right, there’s always a reason. My direct reports don’t get to have excuses. They have to deliver. And what I tell them is if you don’t deliver, I mean the way I perceive that is, you know, either you are not—you know, you didn’t do a good job forecasting which I think you get like some passes on but at some point you should know that like some things always take longer than you think and you should be able to make that mental adjustment. But so, either you’ve done a bad job at forecasting, you need to get better at that, or you’re a liar. And that I think--but that’s my point about learning, I try to make it a little shocking so that they can—that they grab onto it. 

So I think part of that is you know the holding people accountable, and I say like you asked before about what happens in a big company, it’s a little harder to hold people strictly accountable in a big company, because you have to operate in a particular HR environment. But I think that’s an area where—and truthfully it’s an area where I would probably be more aggressive if I were in a smaller company. I’d have more freedom on it. I’d probably hold people even more accountable.

Ken Rona on What It Means to Be Productive at Work

In Chapter 13 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "How Do You Get Yourself into a Flow State of Productivity?"  Rona talks about what it means to be productive in his work and how it has changed as he has transitioned out of a developer and analyst role and into general management.  Part of this is understanding that "flow state" productivity is more relevant in individual contributor roles than in management roles. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How do you get yourself into a flow state of productivity?

Ken Rona: I don’t really need to be. My job is different. I think if you’re a developer then you need to be able to get into that flow. That’s an individual contributor kind of question, right? Or somebody who does individual contributor work, you know, analytics or programming or art, right? And then, you know, if you’re managing people, you kind of have to go back and forth. That’s not really what I do. 

My career has kind of taken a different turn in that I’m not an analyst anymore. I don’t do that. I can use our tools. So one of the things I’ve tried to do is make it so that I understand how our analytic tools work and I can get into data if I need to, if I’m curious about something. Or I want to role model something, which I’ve done. 

But in terms of like producing deliverables, my deliverables are not so much pieces of paper anymore, my deliverables are discussions, and giving advice, and taking advice, and doing internal PR or internal marketing or—so that kind of—that kind of state is less relevant, it’s less relevant for me now that I have to be a good—I actually believe this, I really believe—I’m very ample about this. I believe that you should have focus. You shouldn’t work on too many things at once. And I don’t but I work on many things over the course of a day, but I’m pretty kind of unified—pretty focused on the thing I’m doing at that moment. But as I say the things that I do at that moment aren’t the kind of things that require the kind of extreme focus that I needed when I was a developer and analyst

Mark Graham on Doing Original News Reporting in a Digital Media Career

In Chapter 15 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Is News Reporting Becoming Increasingly Relevant in Your Career?"  Graham discusses his work covering the entertainment world and how working at VH1 gives him access to music and pop culture talent, which he is able to integrate into original news content.  This allows him and his team to enhance VH1 brand marketing and brand promotion.  He provides examples of interviewing Gym Class Heroes for VH1 Unplugged as well as doing interviews with Lana Del Rey, Maroon 5, and Rebecca Ferguson. 

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 is news reporting becoming increasingly relevant in your career?

Mark Graham: As everyone sort of knows there are literally thousands of websites, blogs, Twitter feeds, people and their Facebook pages, everyone is sort of a news source right now and disseminating. And the way that you can separate your coverage from other people’s coverage is to bring original reporting into the light, into the world. And so one of the advantages that we have at VH1 that a lot of other of our other competitors don’t necessarily have is the fact that we have access to talent, be they bands, musicians, actors, things of that importance, so because we have access to talent and because talent does drive a lot of conversation, you know, not only in terms of what people are interested in reading, but they’re also a disseminator of news sources. 

If you work together with a band, and put together an interview that you feel has met your objectives in terms of what information people are looking to get out, and also something that they are interested in promote—using to promote a project that they’re working on at the current time, that’s a really powerful way to get your story out past your normal core readership. So original reporting is super important and something that we have been focusing tons of time and effort on and something that I’ve personally been working really hard on building up my skills in that sort of arena over the course of—largely since the last time I did this last year, my Year 2 interview. 

This year I’ve interviewed a number of musicians, both sort of small, breaking artists as well as bigger names. You know, earlier this year, I got a chance to interview Lana Del Rey who is a new musician, that went really well. I talked to Maroon 5 at the Crosby Hotel last week, which was really great. I had sat down with Gym Class Heroes for a recent VH1 Unplugged Special, as well as some, you know, younger artists who people really haven’t heard of, there’s an artist named Rebecca Ferguson who is going to be our July and August You Oughta Know artist for VH1, and really sort of, you know, I’m sort of honing my skills in talking to these people about their work and their craft and what motivates them, and what drives them to create the art that they put out into the world, and the universe. And those are things that frankly a lot of other sites that we compete with don’t have that sort of access. 

And so being original and coming up with ideas to present content to them in a fun way, that they’re willing to play ball with, that we’re able to put together into fun interesting packages for people to consume largely in video online is hugely important and a major differentiator, and frankly, one of the only ways that we can get, that we can bring new readers into the fold. 

Anatole Faykin: Why to Have Startup Co-Founders Who Are Lawyers

In Chapter 12 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "What Has Working With Lawyers Taught You About Business?"  Faykin joins a startup founded by two lawyers as a co-founder.  He quickly realizes each brings very different skills and, over time, learns to complement their negotiation and contract work with an operations and product development focus. 

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.

Matt Ruby on How to Use Deadlines to Achieve Writing Goals

In Chapter 10 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "How Are You Learning to Better Manage Your Time and Commitments?"  Ruby acknowledges he spends too much time responding to other people - for example using social media - that doing his own thing.  To be more productive, Ruby uses deadlines to achieve his writing and comedy performance goals. 

Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and manages a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University.