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The artisan podcast taps into creativity, inspiration and the determination it takes to be an artisan. Guests share stories of lessons learned along their creative journey. This podcast is brought to you by artisan creative, a staffing and recruitment agency focused on creative, digital and marketing roles. artisancreative.com Follow-us on LI, IS and FB @artisancreative and on Twitter @artisanupdates.
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Monday Jul 18, 2022
Monday Jul 18, 2022
Suzan Oslin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzan-oslin/
Suzan is an independent XR creator with a focus on persistent, geo-spatially located AR. She uses immersive technology to build aspirational futures that reflect her own wonder and awe for the beauty of life–at the same time revealing ugly truths that endanger our very existence. Using her mastery of experience design, she crafts interactions intended to engender empathy and motivate positive action.
Katty
Where are you? It's beautiful where you're sitting.
Suzan
I’m at the AR House here in Los Angeles, and it's a co-working, co-living space run by Aidan Wolf and Lucas Rizzotto. Every month, they bring in ten new artists, where we live and collaborate together for four weeks. And it's in a beautiful house in the hills of Hollywood. We have a pool and a sauna and we invite people in from the public to be a part of the community and it's just a really amazing place for artists and creators to be inspired, build relationships, and build cool stuff.
Katty
What a beautiful idea for collaboration. All AR projects?
Suzan
Not necessarily but it's pretty much AR/VR as far as I know. Some artists come in and they're not necessarily developers, they're designers or illustrators, but they're pretty passionate about the AR/VR space, and they'll work usually with one of the devs to build stuff.
Katty
Okay, let's step backwards just in case there are some people in the audience who may not be familiar with AR/VR. Can you just give us a quick little rundown of augmented reality/ virtual reality and then we'll start with how you got started in this.
Suzan
There's sometimes a lot of confusion about that. Virtual reality is when you're completely immersed within a digital or virtual world, and that's usually through a headset, and there's no relationship to the outside world at all. You're completely in a created and fabricated world.
Augmented reality is when you are in the real world and your real world is being augmented by digital or virtual objects. So it's a layer over top of the real world, and usually that's done with your phone, or augmented reality glasses. There used to be a distinction of mixed reality. Mixed reality and augmented reality are kind of coming together into one thing and people talk less about mixed reality. I think it pretty much put it all together with augmented reality.
Katty
And how does that play into where your career started from, which is in the UX space and what was the trajectory for you and the transition for you from traditional UX into what you're doing now?
Suzan
Well, my career actually didn't start in UX. So when you and I met, my UX career was starting. I actually have a background in visual effects and animation and I've worked in the film industry for a number of years, so the 3D world is not a stranger to me. I had been doing UX for about 12 years.
I don't think I wrote a single line of code in that whole time and my background is very much in technical art. To be honest, I was getting a little bit bored with user experience design and wasn't challenged in the way that technology really challenges you. I was in a space where I was looking for my next evolution of my career. That's when I started to see, around 2018, and I started to see a lot of posts on LinkedIn and whatnot about augmented reality and virtual reality. It was more virtual reality at that time. To me, it seems like a no brainer to kind of go back to my roots, but also bring with me, my user experience design and hope to make an impact in terms of a new technology and bring in those concepts of user experience design. So often when a new technology is being created, a lot of the applications and experiences are created by the developers. And I know it makes sense because they're the ones figuring out the technology. So those are the ones that get built first and so I really wanted to have a presence of user experience in this burgeoning industry.
Katty
To have both technology background, the design background, and the visual effects background in that space. I imagine the three of them together really play off of each other to help create the alternative universes that we're working on. How does Metaverse play into this?
Suzan
There's a lot of debate in the industry about what exactly the Metaverse means. I just try to stay away from it. I think many of us do. I can tell you what the Metaverse means to me. Most of my work now is really in the augmented reality space and specifically in city-scale augmented reality because my vision for the future is where the digital and the physical worlds really come together and are one and that we can have digital content in context.
So that's why I'm really interested in physically located location-based augmented reality. Because it's like being in context, I think is where it's really going to make a lot of meaning and have impact. But I also believe, and I’ve believed for a long time that virtual reality and augmented reality will really come together as just being one spectrum of the other, of the same thing. So I can imagine, being in a space and putting on a pair of glasses and completely removing the light and going into a virtual reality space. There's a lot of, in terms of co-presence, having virtual people in your space, sit down next to a virtual being. Sit down next to you, so there's, that kind of mix of virtual and augmented reality. So, that's my idea and Metaverse is really the bringing together and combining the virtual, digital virtual, and physical worlds. But also having those spaces that are purely virtual and having it all connect and be interoperable and not be separate spaces. You know, similar to how the web is now, you can go anywhere on the web. That's how I see the Metaverse. It's really just an evolution of the web in 3D. In real space 3D in our world, not 3D on the screen, but in our present.
Katty
You know where my mind went as you were just explaining that… this is gonna sound maybe strange, but this is the space that I've been in lately because of the book that I wrote, The Butterfly Years, which is my journey through grief. As you were talking about being there, the memory that came out for me was can I have a conversation with my loved ones?
Suzan
That have past?
Katty
Yeah. Like they're physically there.
Suzan
In a way, yes. My father passed away shortly after I got into this industry and it was always very sad for me because the technology is there now where we can do a volume capture, a 3D capture of a person and pretty much create a hologram like you see in Star Wars in real life and how I wish I had had an opportunity to capture my father before his passing.
In very rudimentary ways, that is possible and they've even been talking about this yesterday. They've even brought back to life people that have passed on and recreated their figure in 3D just through photographs, and you know, I'm sure quite a bit of 3D modeling clean up. It's pretty exciting some of the technology that's being developed in terms of presence. I think really the thing that people are after right now is creating that co-presence with people that are actually here. You have someone in Bulgaria and you're in the United States and bringing that likeness through holography into your actual space, where you can sit across from each other and have a conversation and you're digital in their world and they’re digital in your world but you physically have that connection.
Katty
I've been fortunate to be at a conference where the speaker, from my very elementary vocabulary, had been beamed into that space and the facilitator and the guests were having this conversation and the facilitator was there in person, but the guest was a hologram. And it was fascinating to be in that space. And this is several years ago, so I'm sure that technology has just exponentially grown from there. But even there, it was so fascinating to be able to hear someone and it was just different than to watch a YouTube video of them. They were there, but they weren't, but they were so it was just really fascinating for them to be there and be able to answer your questions. Live, if you will.
Suzan
Yeah, because you get their whole presence and all their mannerisms.
Katty
When you describe what you do to people, how do you go about it to the layman audience when you tell them what it is you do, how do you how do you tell them? Do you say I'm more of a creative do you say I'm more of a technologist, what do you say?
Susan
I use the term creative technologist now. When I first moved into and got interested in virtual reality and augmented reality, my goal was to work as a consultant as a UX expert, but I really got interested in making things and becoming a creator. So I see myself more as an experience creator and experience director, using the technology to create experiences out in the real world. I don't know how I describe myself! But for the longest time when I was a UX designer, people would ask me what I did, like my family or someone that really doesn't have a lot of understanding of the technology industry, I would just say I was a web designer and it was close enough, but I can't really say that anymore. Sometimes, I just say I'm a designer. But if I'm talking to someone who understands the technology I say, I'm an XR creator, creative technologist.
Katty
I would imagine. Some people don't even understand what it is that I do, even though to me it's just such an easy thing. But anyway, where does inspiration come from for you? Is it in the real world, is it in the digital world, how do you get inspired?
Suzan
I would say it's the internal world. Just taking time to be quiet and allow inspiration to come to me. I would say it's like divinely inspired. That's where the predominant inspiration comes from.
Katty
Is there a practice for you.. do you meditate on it?
Suzan
Well I don't meditate on it, but I do have a regular daily meditation practice and I do yoga, so I definitely take quiet time for myself. I believe that myself and everyone, had been brought here with unique talent and gifts and to become quiet, I think we're pushed in that direction and we're driven to whatever that is.
But it requires getting quiet, to really listen, to know what that is. And so that's really my inspiration. That's my primary inspiration and outside I think I've always been very involved in communities. All the way back when I was in marketing, I’ve always been a part of the community and I think that's really important to know what other people are doing and know what people are doing locally. I'm very involved in the AWE, the Augmented World Expo, which has been around for I think 12 years now. I think it was the first and continues to be the biggest Expo for this technology. And I myself and my partner, Ray Mosco have been co-producing AWE Nights LA for our fourth year now. So the local chapter for AWE. I worked for many years at the LA User Experience meetup doing programs and participating. I did a mentorship program for about 4 years in Downtown Los Angeles, where once a month, designers would come in and just show their work and they had an opportunity to get feedback from whoever was there and that was really rewarding.
Katty
Thank you for that. That's always been something that I've really admired about you. Is this drive to give back to the community. I do remember you are very, very active in the user experience meetup space, always posting, always welcoming me and inviting me to the events that you were having, and just even given what you're doing now and where you are now. The AR house just really speaks volumes about the impact of community and the impact of collaboration and how powerful that can be. It also takes me to mentorship and whether we mentor or are mentored, how important that opportunity is to be able to give constructive feedback, to be able to help someone along on their path. So hats off to you. Ever since I've known you, you've been doing that. I’m sure the creative community thanks you. I'm sure you've influenced a lot of people.
Katty
But speaking of mentoring and giving feedback, it's hard to sometimes give constructive feedback and receive constructive feedback. Is there anything that you can share with people who maybe are earlier on in their careers and listening to this and getting excited about trying something new? Maybe you can share about your lessons learned? As you've grown on your path and the type of feedback that you've received or you've given.
Suzan
Some organizations do have a culture where open communication and feedback is welcomed, but I think many more don't have that. I don't think it's very much a part of our culture in the United States. I can't say about other cultures. I think we would all be better off if it was more a part of our culture. I think that when someone offers you feedback, it's really a gift. I think most of the time it's intended to help you and help you to grow and help you to get better or help you to evolve. I think it's really great when people are willing to give me honest feedback, because then I can get better. When people are reluctant to give honest feedback, then you can't grow.
Katty
It's difficult to receive it sometimes though, especially with art and creatives. Sometimes, it maybe difficult to separate the person and the piece. When giving feedback on resumes and when giving feedback on portfolios, sometimes the way it's received… somebody's identity is so tied into that piece versus we're trying to give feedback as to like, this is beautiful. It's just not what this particular client is looking for because of XY and Z. And I can see how difficult sometimes that is for somebody to hear, especially early in their path when maybe they're second guessing themselves.
Suzan
I kind of feel like the distinction that is really important is that when you're doing a piece of art, if we can make a distinction between art and design is when you're doing a piece of art. You're really expressing yourself, right and it's whatever it is, and someone else's criticism, maybe doesn't really matter. Maybe you have an art teacher who's trying to develop your technique, or whatever.
But it's very different when you are getting hired as a designer. You're being hired to solve a problem. You're not being hired to express your innermost creativity. It's great when those two things can intersect, but more often than not, they may not. And so you really have to stay focused on what's the problem that you're trying to solve? Who's the audience, what are their needs, what are their goals, whether that's the client or the end consumer? It's really important that you stay focused on who your audience is and what are the needs of them. And I think then maybe that helps a little bit. So it's not about you. It's not about you. It's not about your vision. It's really about solving a problem.
Katty
Right, being able to extract yourself from the middle of it. Great insights. Thank you for that. And for you personally, how do you evolve? How do you continually learn and grow? What keeps you curious all the time?
Suzan
I don't know that anything keeps me curious, I just am curious. That's why my career is always evolving into something new. I like that constant learning, building, and growing. It's part of what I love about my career and so I think the one thing people in technology have is that passion to learn more and be curious. I think that's just part of my makeup.
I remember when I was doing the mentorship downtown in Los Angeles, and a lot of people would come wanting to switch into UX design from graphic design. We had psychology majors from school wanting to know how to get into UX design or people from all different things. I think that what I've always done is when I become curious about something, I start to explore it. Some people might have a plan where they're going to do this in that amount of time but I just kind of start exploring and go to the community and get involved with the community and doors start to open and I find my way. When I started in XR, and XR is a term that combines VR and AR for listeners that may not know, so when I started my journey in XR, I was going to plan to be a consultant as a UX designer, and ended up getting interested really in creating.
Katty
Love that. You talked about community again, and I'd love to just hear from you as you're looking to hire people or you're looking for other collaborators. What is it that you look for? What's important to you? Is it skills, is it fit? Is it vision? What specifically draws you?
Suzan
It's definitely skills. It's important to have the skills to be able to get the job done. But aside from that, what's really important to me is how they are as a communicator. Are they able to have conversations openly about their work and receive feedback? Are they good about letting me know what their schedule is or scheduled shifts so I can count on the delivery? So I'd say a second to skill is really communication is so important in any career.
Katty
At every stage from the interview stage, all the way through.
Suzan
Even how you present yourself online is a form of communication.
Katty
Absolutely. 100% and I think a lot of people forget and they certainly forget that with social media. A lot of hiring managers do have an opportunity to evaluate and get a peek into communication styles and/or skills and so forth. I mean our portfolios, our LinkedIn profiles, all of that is an extension of who we are right now. What is it that you now know, as a creative technologist, or as just someone who's been in this field for many years and has seen your career morph and evolve to where it is today, what is it that you wished you had known when you first started in your path?
Katty
Okay, think about that we’ll come back to that before we wrap up. I’d love to, again, take you back to the earlier days. Lessons learned along the way?
Suzan
I think my lessons learned are don't take things personally.. Even though I think many creatives tend to take things personally. Never assume you know why a choice was made in your favor or to your disfavor. There's always 100 things going on that don't have anything to do with you. I've learned over the years not to personalize things, because that can be very constricting, and I think damaging to self confidence. That's something I've definitely learned along the way. It's something that I see other people, especially younger people struggle with. So that's the big one. I think the other thing is that there's not a finite number of opportunities. There's really an infinite number of opportunities and to believe in the possibilities of your dreams coming true and to follow those dreams wherever they take you. And there's always going to be an opportunity at the right place and the right time.
Katty
Beautiful. Well you can see I have “dwell in possibilities” on my wall so I’m a big fan of just seeing what else is out there and if there isn’t, really this opportunity that we've always had but it’s probably been amplified even more now because of COVID, this opportunity to just create possibilities. To venture out to do what it is that one wants to do if a traditional 9-5 job isn’t it, that opportunity, especially in the freelance space, that we’re in. We’ve always known that this exists… this opportunity for entrepreneurship… and creating our possibilities is a beautiful thing.
Suzan
Yeah, now is a good time for that. COVID had some positive impacts. I think our work-life was definitely one of them, at least for technologists and creatives, the ability to work from home and opening up so much more opportunities for freelance has been really great.
Katty
How was that overall impact for you? You’ve always worked from home, have you not?
Suzan
No, I haven’t always worked from home. Twice in my career I was a solopreneur. Earlier in my career when I first met you and more recently. But when I was in UX design I was, for the most part working at companies.
That’s interesting. When COVID hit it wasn’t all that different for me because at the time, I was working from home. But, that’s not entirely true because I think the intensity of being forced to be at home and the lack of human contact, and having my kids home everyday from school.. it was challenging. We live in a small house so it was really challenging and I’ve always been very much of an introvert and not really good at when I go to events. I tend to go late and leave early so I don’t have to do a lot of the networking, even though that’s the reason I go. It’s a little bit challenging for me to really put myself out there on a one-on-one basis when networking.
After COVID, the first party that I went to I was walking up to people and saying hi and introducing myself and it was completely natural because there was such a hunger for human connection. For me, that was a really positive impact, because I have a much easier time networking. In fact, that’s how I met the people here who run the AR House, and that’s how I got here.
It was the first party I had been to since COVID a few months back and I had recognized Lucas Rizzotto because I see a lot of his work online and I just walked up to him and said I love your work, I follow your work. We got to talking and he introduced me to his business partner, Aidan and I was talking about my project downtown in Pershing Square, which is a location-based AR project. Coincidentally that month, they were being sponsored by Niantic, and Niantic is in the process of putting out there location-based technology visual positioning system. So he said “hey, you should come by and hang out when Niantic is here and get to know the cohort. I did, and then the next month, I applied to come and live here.
Katty
I love how that kind of came back full circle for you back into being with community. Are you able to talk a little bit about your Pershing Square project?
Suzan
Absolutely, it’s my personal project so there is no NDA. Early on I got involved with the Open Air Cloud which is a Non-profit organization that promotes open and interoperable standards for the Metaverse, the air cloud, whatever we want to call it.
I had been working with them for some time and when their technology got mature enough to build something with, I decided I wanted to make a location-based something. For whatever reason I picked Pershing Square and I brought on a design partner, Laura Garcia, to collaborate with and she did some research. I wanted to do something that was impactful, socially impactful and meaningful so we threw around a bunch of different ideas and we ended up deciding on water conservation.
Pershing Square has a history around the fountain and the design right now. The fountain is now dry, but the design was created to represent the water that is diverted to other places to Los Angeles, so it already had this history around water. We decided to do a project around water conservation and it’s coming along very slowly. I had a small development team come together for the AWE AR Cloud challenge back in November. We won the challenge and I’ve continued to develop the design. I am now in the stage where I am applying for funding. I’ve applied for three grants now… My first time doing grant applications. Hopefully, one of them says yes. The goal of the project was to do something that was impactful and also that I believed could get funded. So a lot of thought has gone into this exhibit that will be throughout Pershing Square that educates people about the water ecosystem in LA. The fact that we get our water from all these different places. The seriousness of this drought, I know we’re going to fill it this Summer.
I know June 1st there’s legislation happening where we’re going to start getting restricted on our water usage and there is discussion on if we stop watering outside, and all the trees died what a huge environmental disaster that would be and how difficult that would be to recreate that. We’re not in a very good place around water. The exhibit is intended to raise that awareness and also engage people in interactions, where we have the opportunity to interact with content that is more engaging and more immersive and hopefully drive behavior change.
We’ve put a lot of thought into how we would measure that and create partnerships with local businesses and municipalities to help us measure and bring the whole community together around the issue.
Katty
Beautiful, I got goosebumps. Beautiful, congratulations.
Suzan
Thank you. Well, congratulate me when I actually get the money to build it.
Katty
The first step is to have the idea and the concept and putting it to a true social impact, environmental impact cause so, you are there. I do remember in Pershing Square, there is even like a sculpture the represents the aqueduct if I’m not mistaken.
Suzan
Yeah, it’s like a big purple wall and that's where the water used to come down the purple wall into the fountain and it doesn’t do that anymore.
Katty
The symbolism doesn't escape me that even that’s dry.
Suzan
We’re going to put water back there. People will create an oasis by engaging in these water-saving activities. Then we’ll have the plants grow and the more people that contribute, the more beautiful that the oasis is.
Katty
Is there a way for the public to help support? Is there a GoFundMe if a listener here hears it and say I’m interested?
Suzan
That is not set up yet, but I do have a website, it’s still a bit of a work in progress but my contact information at least is there and it’s concreteoasis.city.
Katty
We’ll put that in the show notes. Where else besides Concrete Oasis can people find you? Are you available for projects? Are you available for new opportunities? How could people find you and reach out to you?
Suzan
The best way to find me is on LinkedIn, that’s where I’m the most active. So it’s Suzan Oslin. I’m also on Twitter.
Suzan, thank you so much for being here and really educating us on this amazing new space that you're forging into and taking us along with you.
Thursday Jun 09, 2022
Thursday Jun 09, 2022
Daniel Sieberg
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Katty
Welcome to the artisan podcast as we welcome Daniel Seiberg as our next guest. Daniel is the Co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Good Trust and the Director of Innovation Marketing at Moody’s. But above all, Daniel is a storyteller. Throughout his career he has told stories of brands and stories of people as a journalist, as an author, as an entrepreneur. He has traveled to over 70 countries and has worked in marketing, communications, product, and partnerships at many well known companies including Google as well as many news outlets. I’m so excited to have Daniel here so that we can talk about storytelling and how that impacts interviewing and how we can show up as our authentic selves, not only to an interview but any role that we start. So, with that, let’s welcome Daniel.
Daniel
Hi, Katty. It’s wonderful to be with you and dwell in possibilities as the sign over your shoulder reads and talk about storytelling. Probably one of my favorite subjects.
Katty
Yeah, thank you. I was fascinated when we had met a few weeks ago just to talk about the concept of storytelling and wanted to bring that to the audience here. Obviously, the audience who listens here are all storytellers… whether they're visual storytellers, or writers, or marketers. But this concept of storytelling is so important, and as we are recording this, the gardeners have come. So for the audience, just giving you a little warning if you're hearing noise, it’s out of my control.
Daniel
This is all part of our story right now.
Katty
This is the story of working from home.
Daniel
Yes, exactly.
Katty
It is what it is.
Daniel
Yep, life in 2022.
Katty
Yep, we will speak loudly to overcome that. So, Daniel, how did you get started on this path? Let’s go there first.
Daniel
Yeah, absolutely and I will keep my origin story relatively tight. I would just say that my father spent his career as an engineering electronics technician working with oceanographers who went to the North Pole to study climate change. So I was exposed to the “how does anything work” kinds of questions from an early age. My family believes in service and my sister is a nurse practitioner. So that's a little bit of my orientation in the world.
And then coupled with that, my maternal grandmother died of complications from Alzheimer's and I can distinctly remember what it was like to see her at her 75th birthday party, and as an awkward 14-year-old walk up to her with a present and for her to say, “Oh, this is lovely, dear, thank you, and who are you?” And for the two of us to sort of die in front of each other in that moment. So what struck me is the value of our stories and how we pass them on. How we convey them. They're sort of the storytelling or how we do that. There’s the tools that we use to tell those stories, there's the subject matter, that people, and everything wrapped up in what it means to tell a story and of course to listen, to receive, or to watch. So that, I think, is what ultimately pushed me into a career of being a journalist. In my case, it was science and technology. I did a master's degree in journalism with a focus of technology at The University of British Columbia…. a long time ago.
The arc of my career went through working at CNN, covering those subjects including space and environment, and on to CBS News, and ABC and then I pivoted away from being a practicing journalist, if you will, to focusing on technology and I would say helping others use technology to tell stories. So I spent several years at Google and helped to create a couple of teams in service of empowering newsrooms to use technology to tell stories in new ways with data through different tools, training journalists, helping to identify new markets and thinking about success metrics and a lot of stuff that newsrooms are thinking about back then integrating that into their workflow.
And then left all of that about four and a half years ago and went into entrepreneurship. I continued to stay close to the idea of storytelling and I co-founded a blockchain startup at one point. I've been an advisor to many startups, started my own company that was about an immersive kind of AR augmented reality, virtual reality kind of an experience to communicate with people and hear stories of the past. A couple of years ago, I connected with a former fellow Googler who I didn't know and we embarked on this journey of co-writing a book together. And in parallel, building a company called Good Trust, which is all about this idea of digital legacy. So now that we have the first book I wrote was called Digital Diet, which was all about living with technology. And now here we are ten years later, and we're all sort of dying with it in sort of a morbid way. But this is the way that we've evolved through technology and how it captures our stories. And so, this is where I find myself, somewhere at that intersection of technology, storytelling, and all of us mere humans.
Katty
It speaks to me and it resonates with me, because I wrote a book about grief and that whole journey through loss and certainly, memories and stories of our loved ones are particularly near and dear to my heart. And making sure that we're preserving them and being able to share that legacy. But you bring up a digital legacy, and that's pretty interesting. And I think what I gathered from what I learned from that you had shared with me about your book, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's really kind of just being mindful and being aware of the digital legacy and the footprint that we're leaving behind. Right?
Daniel
Exactly, and I mean, to the degree to which if we look back or up into our family tree, if you will, and the creative output that became the sum total of someone's identity. So for example, we hope, maybe we're not all of us, many of us have an Ancestry or My Heritage profile, right? Particularly as we age, we start to think about how to capture all of that with just one or two generations earlier.
Maybe the artifacts that we have with those people are a postcard or to a letter, a handful of photos. You know, if the person lives into the 60s and 70s, maybe there's some video, but it's in a format is hard to share and hard to preserve. But now as we get into the 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, the output of each of us has grown exponentially that reflection of who we are. We create 10x of what we have on somebody's ancestry profile every day in our email, the photos that are found and you know, the accounts we have and social media posts and on and on. And if somebody had access to all of that, you know if I could see what my grandfather actually created or thought or did or said.
I would personally be fascinated by it. Now for somebody else to come across that maybe that starts to feel a little creepy, or there are privacy issues and ethics and all the rest of it. But I do think that awareness, part of it that you referenced, is something that we've thought a lot about with Good Trust, because if somebody passes away whether you're in your immediate family, or even a friend and you don't know that they have, you know, a Facebook, a LinkedIn, still have a MySpace, like all these places where they've got all this stuff, that's sort of an early challenge. And then on another level, is there some crypto somewhere that you don't know about? Is there a retirement account that somebody forgot to tell you about its password? And all of a sudden there were these pragmatic reasons to be aware of all of this too. So there's like the emotional and the pragmatic side to know all this.
Katty
And for sure, and I imagine now with creatives, and NFTs, that's a whole nother piece to keep track of.
Daniel
Exactly. You know, we've tried to create ways for people to do that through something we've called a digital vault, with kind of this notion that you can assign a trusted contact to help you to do this on your behalf after you pass away or to help somebody who is already a family of somebody who's already passed away to take care of all of this, because the reality is that the average person spends about, the exact number is, six hours and fifty-two minutes a day online. I think through the pandemic, that's probably gone up. Let's just say, most of your waking hours during the day are spent somehow connected to the internet.
How much of that time you actually are creating something you want to save and remember and pass on to people? Maybe it's like 10 to 20%, but still on a daily basis, that's a lot. I mean, just today, you know, if I go back to get those notifications of a memory and remember back on this day, right? And those are photos and like I do not want those photos to get lost. These are photos and it doesn't even have to be some huge occasion when anniversary or birthday. Sometimes it's those every day, I'm using air quotes for people who can't see us because “every day” moments where you know, your kids do something and you want to remember. When you were building a tree fort, and you know, those are the kinds of photos you want to pass on to people. So how to identify those, how do you pass them on in a way that feels tangible to someone else to do something on your behalf? This is really what we're talking about with digital legacy. It's the story of you, just in a digital capacity.
Daniel
And who gets to see it and who gets to access it. And these days, we have some AI ways to think about this. For example, you can animate a photo through our site where you can sort of bring it to life, if you will. So if you have a picture for let's say, you know, from 60 or 70 years ago, you can animate it in a way that the person now has some expressions and nice to feel like so you can kind of capture their essence a little bit more and share all of that.
There are other companies, there's one called HereAfter that allows you to have a conversation with somebody who has passed away. If you ask them some questions, so for example, if I asked you a series of 100 questions about your life, what Hereafter will do is take that data or you can do it on your own behalf and create a conversational AI experience so that you could learn about your history and you know, even after the person passed away, you have these memories and you can use your smartphone device. You know, be with the family and ask them questions. There's a video one called StoryFile, which you can do with video you can do as an app on your phone and it's now sort of talking to you, you know. And it could be somebody who's already passed away. They did this at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and at a certain point with Holocaust survivors, you could ask them questions. So this is the direction that we're going with the stories. They are being created in a digital way, preserved in a digital way, and now sort of passed on in this digital way.
Katty
Yeah, I was talking to someone yesterday actually on another podcast about augmented reality, And how cool would it be if we could create something where a hologram of a person passed could be a conversation that we're having.
Daniel
Absolutely. And, you know, today it's possible in a limited way for people who either have the money or the means to do that. So for example, Kanye West gave his wife at the time Kim Kardashian, a hologram of her deceased father, Robert Kardashian for her birthday and she could actually see it and interact with it and he was sort of speaking to her you know, if you will from the afterlife. There's an example of a mother in Korea, who her daughter had died at a young age seven or eight, horribly tragic event as tragic as anybody could imagine. And what this company offered her was a virtual reality experience to interact with her daughter. They created kind of a digital version of her daughter, and then the mom got to sort of say hi, and kind of, you know, bring her back to life if you will. The mom was so emotional and watching it is difficult, and there's some part of you that, or at least for me, that's conflicted, or you think, is this what she should be doing to deal with her grief or not. On the other hand, this is how she feels she wanted to do it. And maybe it's cathartic in some ways for her to experience all of this in that way. So,fascinating discussions about all that.
Katty
Yeah, for sure. I could talk to you about this for a long time, but for this podcast lets bring it back to creatives. And actually I think mostly sharing just in terms of the story we're telling about ourselves online. That's an important piece and we always on the recruitment side of our business, we're always talking to candidates about, what does your online presence depict? Is there a through line between what you say you want to do and how you've created your LinkedIn profile, for example. And then you have all these other assets that you're creating. So what could you share with us in terms of our online story? When it comes to branding, our personal brand and how that represents online? Is there something that we can tie that back into what is my story as a candidate, what's my story as a job seeker?
Daniel
Here's what I would say. First of all, for me personally, I'm going to call myself a digital immigrant insofar as you know, I didn't grow up with the Internet. And, you know, it became part of my life at a certain point. But for of course, a whole other generation that we're talking about, you know, millennials Gen Z, this is just what they know. And so their life is captured in this digital way from the beginning, if you will, right? Their parents are sharing photos of them and then they have a digital presence. So they have a digital self from day one to think about.
And I think what I wish I could tell my younger self was be authentic you in every case, whether it's something you're talking about in a broader public context, like social media, or something you're sharing a little more privately or whatever it is, just be the authentic you. Kind of imagine that somebody could either look over your shoulder or look at your account or see what you were posting, just be the same person, accept who you are. I've gotten better at doing as I’ve aged, I wish I sort of figured all this out much younger,because I think what can happen is that social media of course triggers our ego, this sense of projecting, and, you know, I think pulls out a lot of our insecurities. We may not be that person in our entirety.
When I worked at Google, we used to say that social media was a reflection of of someone's ego and search was more of your id, what are you really thinking? Right? So if you could see what people search history is versus what they posted on Facebook could be quite different. Right? And I think that prospective employers can now start to sense that if not detected you know, whether it's within your resume, does that line up with what you're saying you did or how you conduct yourself, all of those kinds of sensitivities to think about.
I think that the earlier on in your life that you can just be that one person no matter what the medium is. Just have that reflected out into the world. I just feel like the more confident you'll be, the more successful you'll be. But this is again, I wish I could tell my younger self all this in this sort of sense. It's easier to say than to do.
Katty
Yeah. Why do you think storytelling is so important? Why stories?
Daniel
You know, somebody told me once that there are six words that if you say that it's anybody, they will trigger a part of the brain and their words are, “let me tell you a story.” And there's something that's universal about stories and the way that it captures our attention, and our engagement and our curiosity. Some of the best sort of human traits are fired up when we know there's a story coming. What can we learn? What does this mean? What happened? Tell me more, right? And I think for anybody who has kids, when you stop reading this story, like halfway through they’re like no, no, no, no…. you have to keep going. And it's kind of wonderful in a way to see that because but it does require, it asks of us to be this listener and somebody who is paying attention, if you will. And I think that, to me, stories are the way that knowledge is passed on, yes, but perhaps more importantly, experience and wisdom.
For a time I had this idea of a product that was like a wisdom engine. These days, we think about the search for knowledge and understanding the facts and all of that, but what about all this tremendous wisdom that we all possess and how do we find that from other people? We can read about it and books and learn philosophy and all that. It used to be that we would sign up as human beings in a philosophy house that was what we sort of ascribed to a particular philosophy and that was our way of looking at the world, and we were a stoic and that's kind of what we thought and we talked about that and discussed it with people. These days of course, there's some of that with faith or with religion, but philosophically, I feel like stories contain so much of that philosophy and so much we can learn from them. And they manifest in different ways, movie, TV show, a commercial, an ad can be a little bit of a story, a website, an email.
I just think that they are universal and there's a finite number of universal truths that appear in an infinite number of stories. It's when people would say there are really only 16 original stories in the world and they're a million different ways to tell the same story throughout history, but I think it's one of the best ways for people to learn, and to capture something that feels fundamentally important as human beings. We started by trying to tell people things through cave drawings…look, just pay attention to this thing. I don't know how to, speak your language or get you to listen to me, but I'm going to draw it here and just look at this thing, right?
And now people are scrolling through TikTok, and we start to lose people's attention spans.
This is my great concern with stories. Is that they're going to be lost, because people can't pay attention for more than a few seconds. When I watch films now, I'm like, can we hold a shot for longer than two seconds before we have to go to the next thing and the next thing. Let's read the person's expression, let's sit for a second in this moment. I get that the world's moving at a faster pace, and I don't want to be the fuddy duddy who's like can we go back to fax machines and slow things down? I'm on the cutting edge, I like being out on the frontier,but there's something about a linear understanding of something that requires the story to capture people's attention and to learn. And if you weren't able to do that or don't have that opportunity, I feel like we're losing something as a species as a society. I'll get off my soapbox now.
Katty
I agree because I think stories pull you in. As you said, “let me tell you a story”, and that naturally just makes people lean in and ask, ”what's coming next?” Question for you, kind of going back to candidates and interviewing. How can one tell their story in a short way? Are there any tips in terms of how a candidate in an interview can just authentically show who they are whether it's through their resume or in the interview process that is concise? They can't start the interview with like, let me tell you a story. But you know, a traditional question is like, “tell me about yourself?” “How did you get started?” So are there any recommendations that you can leave our audience with in terms of how to be able to weave their story into the facts of what it is that they do?
Daniel
I love when people can tell a story. I'm going to see if I can just wrap this in the right way but like, a humbly confident manner. So in other words, they're aware, they're self aware enough in their place in their own story, such that they can tell it in a sort of an articulate way. They can describe what they learned, maybe throughout their life and in their career. But they're not saying it in a way that's sort of like well, “I've figured it all out and just like everybody out of my way, obviously you should hire me!” It's more of a journey and kind of giving you a sense of how they got here. And I love being pulled into those stories and people talking about you know, I I went through this health scare, but I what I discovered about myself was this, and then I went on to create this thing, and I thought I had figured it all out but then this happened, and then I joined up with this person and we built this thing. I love hearing those stories. I remember when I was in journalism, early journalism classes, I had a writing professor who said, anytime you write a biography about somebody, you've got to include a nose picker. Like a something about the person that isn't this lofty, they were this great, whatever, right? We all have our nose pickers about ourselves. Nobody's a perfect person.
I think when we go into an interview, the sense is to project, I'm perfect, not only am I perfect, but I'm perfect for the job, and clearly you should hire me and let's get to it. Sometimes I think younger people are unsure of where the balance is, they don't want to seem like they're not confident, on the other hand, if you're overconfident people tend to sort of lean back a little bit. They're like, alright, well, sorry the room isn't big enough for your ego. So I think there's some amount that needs to come into how you convey yourself and just admit that you have your own failings, right? We all have our nose picker kind of things that we can highlight.
The classic kind of thing when people say “what's a negative attribute you would say about yourself?” The one that people have been told not to say it's like, I'm too much of a perfectionist. I just wanted to write “Oh, are you Oh, you're too much of a perfectionist?” Versus If someone were to ask me what is my nose picker? I would say I've done lots of different personality tests, so it's sort of a scary and exciting to kind of learn these things about yourself. But I feel like one of the things for me that can be a nose picker is that I consider myself a leader with passion, somebody who wants to move forward as solutions oriented. “Hey, everybody, like let's go this way. We'll figure it out. Like come on, like how can you do this? Great, awesome idea. Let's do it.” Right? And then the flip side of that, in terms of the optics of it is that it can be seen a little too intense. So people are like, Okay, well Daniel, slow down and let's pause for a minute and talk about all this and do more measures. So, I can get caught up in my head overthinking that too. So I love when I can observe somebody else who's great at all of this, this kind of being humbly confident or whoever you sort of think about it, and observing them and saying like, I want to be like that. That's how I want to be getting out of my own way sometimes because I think also I can be able to be Canadian.I’m from Canada originally I feel like I'm an honorary New Yorker after 16 years, but I can be a little too Canadian and think, I need to defer to others or not be as you know, little forthright in what I think are my opinions.
And Canadian are terrible at apologizing all the time and wanting to be liked because we're just just like America's hat, up there and you know, “Gosh, darn it, I hope people will think we're all right in the world.” And, so rather than being this kind of like bold, American I know it's we can do this and, might so often they're in there like just wrestling way and I tried to smooth those waters to some degree and be a little more of like the calm like the duck, with the feet under the water paddling and I’m just the duck. I don’t wanna say Swan, I don’t quite put myself in that category.
Katty
But they’re paddling really, really fast!
Daniel
They are paddling really fast. There's definitely that side of me, beneath the surface. But I know people don't like to see that because it makes them anxious.
Katty
Yeah, exactly. That's so funny. It brings it back to authenticity, right like if you're in that interview, and you can't show up as who you are then.
Daniel
Yeah. And if for whatever reason, it doesn't work out and oh my gosh, we've all had those moments. Then you sort of say okay, just wasn't meant to be. And I think that this is something else I've needed to learn over the course of my career is that the more you can be your authentic self and live in the moment and whatever's going on and accept that you know, there will be an outcome from that. It may not be exactly what you'd imagine. If it isn't, then okay, but maybe sort of no expectations, I think is another thing. I think we all sometimes put high expectations and put it on ourselves or in a situation where we want to stay and we push ourselves and that can come across too or it's like just wow, okay, whoa…iit goes back to the intensity. And so I think I've needed to regulate that and modulate that in some ways. And just, you know, a little bit the, you know, Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers has asked children to, or ask parents to say to their children, I love you just the way you are.
And I think if you can do that with yourself in a little bit of a self affirming sort of way, which I know that this can all sound a little too out there for some people, but if you can have these kinds of conversations with yourself, and really like who you are, and when you go into a job interview, or to have a discussion with somebody, allow that authentic self to come out. Ideally, it connects with that person. And if it doesn't, then it wasn't meant to be and rather than sort of regretting it, or trying to force it, think okay, on to the next. See that there's always another adventure or opportunity out there.
Katty
Yeah, good point. If we don't show up as our authentic self, and we put on airs during the interview, certainly, that's something that when we show up to the job, day after day, day after day, it has to be our authentic self. There's no way that we would want to or even can hold up a pretense. It's just not going to work. It's not going to be the right job.
Daniel
Exactly, it's not and that's when you drift into, I don't know if people have read Catcher in the Rye recently but you start to become Holden Caufield and you just feel like a phony, and I have had jobs where I felt like phony, because I sort of got my way in the door, if you will and then by the end, then a month or two months later, you know, it started to feel awful. And then it just goes down. And it's really hard to recover from that. And so, rather than trying to come up with this fake story.
When I interviewed younger people now I would rather they told me that they don't have a ton of experience, but they really want to learn, or that they haven't done this thing yet, but they did this thing and here's what they discovered.
At Google, when we would hire people, and I was involved in a lot of different interviews and hiring people at Google. I think you could actually get a badge internally, I think, mine got up to 75 or whatever it was six years. So anyway, enough people that I loved just that experience. And there were different quadrants to assess as people would come in: role related knowledge and, what was their experience and just all this stuff, and Googliness was one that people still probably have a hard time kind of figuring out. The one that to me that was most important was categorized as GCA, so general cognitive ability. The way that was expressed to me was not is the person smart or not, or what was the SAT… that doesn't matter. It's could that person, if you brought them in under one particular job description, and let's say that product went away, for whatever reason, sunsetted, wasn't renewed or funded again..could that person be moved over to a completely different job, different team, different product and perform and excel in that environment, because they have that general cognitive ability to adapt to a whole different thing? If the answer is yes, that you think that that person scores high there, that to me was the most valuable aspect of evaluating somebody. Because that's what we're all asked to do, is to adapt, be solutions oriented, have the growth mindset, all of these attributes we look for people. When I came across somebody who I felt possessed that, and there are people who I hired at Google who are still there, and I love seeing the arc of their career, and in my head, I'm like, I knew that they would be that person. I'm like, I told you, Google people, I don't work there anymore. You know what I mean, I'm in the background cheering them on, because I think this is exactly what companies need,are these people who can who have that neuroplasticity, and growth mindset and can adapt because companies change even big companies that think they're never going to change?
Katty
Yeah, one of our core values at Artisan is agility of thought and action, because at least in the 27 years we've had Artisan our clients have changed drastically from exacto knives and paste up boards to where we are today. And they will probably continue changing and evolving like we were just talking about AR and VR and where the world is going. So, agility fits into GCA, general cognitive abilities. I’ll ask you this as a final question, did you have a favorite interview question that you always asked? I always hear Google questions are pretty unique but what was your favorite question to ask?
Daniel
I know some of the Google questions, I’m mean, there are even like sites dedicated to like trend questions. And for a long time they were like, the question is, like, why is a manhole cover round, you know just these kinds of random things, right. I don't know, because the equipment anyway, people would obsess over these things, right?
I gave a talk about this recently about failure, and what it means to fail and I always loved hearing people share their stories of failure. And to me, if people have that failure story, they know what that failure moment was and they can identify it and they can express it and talk about it in a way that you can see that they've clearly evolved through it and taken what they can from it.
I read recently about the concept of failure compost that even though you may have failed, the project, failed idea whatever it was, you can sort of take some of that and turn it into fertilizer for your next project.
Katty
Yeah, like that.
Daniel
I'm gonna give full credit to the Google X team. It was part of a moonshot email, but they were describing this whole concept of failure compost. I just think there's something wonderfully sort of like a virtuous cycle of, of life almost in a way because people can put so much of themselves into something that fails and if, if you can go through that and see how it refined you, and then come out the other side, and remember to not identify yourself as a failure, and to be able to say, Yes, I failed,but here's what I learned and I'm ready for the next thing.
I mean, you know, someone like Michael Jordan is famous for his success, of course. But one of his quotes that I think people love to follow up on is the number of times he missed shots, was was given the ball at the last second to win the game and missed and he says, you know, I failed over and over and over again, and that's why I succeeded. It's such a powerful way to think about success.
I mean, there's a tremendous book by Srikumar Rao, who is at Columbia Business School Professor has this whole framework around how to approach your life and business and really the book is called Are you ready to succeed? And to me the flip of that, of course, is in your head like, are you ready to fail? No, I don't want to fail. But so how do you kind of think about that and cope with it and, and ideally thrive out of those kinds of situations. So anyway, that was my favorite question,and I always loved hearing about it. There's never any judgment. I mean, it's not. So I just loved having those conversations with people.
Katty
Well, it brings us back to being authentic. Right? You can not be authentic if you've never failed before, because we all have at some point, we've all fallen down and then gotten up, dusted ourselves off and said, Oh, right now what now? Where do I go?
Daniel
I think it gets to a path of trust much faster. Especially in an interview or when you're meeting somebody for the first time, if you can acknowledge that place. Because you know that to me is what helps to build and broker trust is, and ideally when you get the job, and you go through that together, and you fail, you succeed, that brings people together. It's like connective tissue being in the trenches you’re figuring it out together. But if you can kind of get that in the early moments with somebody and kind of understand it and be a bit vulnerable. I just think they're on a great path.
Katty
Beautiful, beautiful words, and I think a great lesson, just the authenticity. I see it so much when we interview hundreds of candidates in a given time period and I cannot tell you how many people have told me, that when I've asked them so what happened at the previous job? Why did you leave? Like hardly anyone's ever says that I was fired. And then you do a reference check and it comes back but they were fired. We'll just say it just, just say and share why and not have these surprises in the little box that’s going pop up like a little Jack in the Box.
So this goes back to what you were saying just being authentic. What's the lesson learned, what happened, what were the circumstances, what did you do, what did you not do, and what have you learned from that?
Daniel
Exactly. Well, I think the gardeners must have stopped to listen in on our conversation or something.
Katty
Yeah, it’s nice and quite. They’re done. They were buzzing away at the height of our conversation so I’ll listen and see what they said but you know what.. we’re being authentic here, so.
Daniel
We persevered through it.
Thursday Apr 07, 2022
Thursday Apr 07, 2022
Dr. Heidi Hanna is a best-selling author of 7 books, is an authority on stress mastery and brain-based health and performance.
https://heidihanna.com/stress-toolkit/
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/managing-stress-for-positive-change
--------------------------------
Very nice to have you here. And you and I have worked together several times through the Entrepreneurs Organization and I was on your podcast for stress mastery. I would just really love to have a conversation about stress and specifically as it pertains to creativity since the audience that we are speaking to is primarily on the creative side, both writers as well as designers and marketers.
Let's talk about stress. But let’s before that talk about how did you fall into this field?
Heidi: Well, I'll give you the shorter version of the story. So we don't take up all of our time. But I really struggled with stress from an early age, so much so that I ended up fainting and losing consciousness and went to a lot of different doctors. This is around the age of 11 to 12 years old, went to a bunch of doctors, they couldn't figure out what was going on. I was diagnosed with a lot of different confusing things.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, they said it's probably just stress. And so that word meant a lot to me at a very early age and I couldn't understand it. Of course, my parents did the best they could to try to teach me how to cope with that. But it's just something we're not really taught. We're not really taught what stress is or how to cope effectively with it. I think we're talking about it more now. But it still seems like it's this big, bad beast that's out there that we're fighting against. Instead of the way I like to look at it ,it's a relationship we have with the circumstances of our lives, based on our demand versus capacity.
And so it can be physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, or social. Creative people certainly have a lot of unique challenges in the stress space, which I know we'll talk a little bit more about. And a lot of us who are creative are also highly sensitive to stress. So we can get moved by stress in either direction, positively or negatively. And I think that that was me even though I didn't see myself as a creative person as a child. I was very influenced by the emotion and the energy around me. And so stress became really kind of debilitating in some ways and led me down this path to understand it. So I studied nutrition, exercise, physiology, psychology, neuroscience, everything to kind of come to a better understanding of what's actually happening when we say that we're feeling stressed.
Katty: What is actually happening?
Heidi: I do think that the first thing again, to keep in mind is that it's a relationship that each of us has, and so it's very much based on a perception of this gap between demand and capacity. So if we believe that we have the resources that we need to cope with those demands, then we have a very different stress reaction pattern that's more like acute stress.
So if there's actually an emergency and we have to do something, we have the production of adrenaline. We have that kind of fight or flight feeling, but that's for a short period of time. That's only if something's about 30 minutes or less. If we experienced more chronic stress or we don't think that we have the resources to deal with what's being asked of us, then it moves into more of a chronic state, primarily fueled by cortisol, which is a more long-term survival hormone. And this is where we start seeing immune function go down, brain function go down, memory attention and we see the more toxic side of the stress reaction pattern which estimates are that stress like that is responsible for about 75 to 90% of medical visits.
So we know that stress has this toxic side. But I would also remind us all that if we didn't care about something, we wouldn't feel stressed. So stress can also be an indication of what really matters to us. And I think that's where as a creative person, I personally think everyone's creative and everyone has that in them. But if we're trying to tap into that creative side of who we are, that stress can really be like, GPS for where we're off. Where we need to course correct some things that we're working on or even when we just need to recharge our own battery and stop trying to force out of a capacity that might be lower than then would be ideal. So
Katty: There's been so many triggers for so many people. And there are so many I think tools that you talk about and that you have on your site, whether it be meditation, whether it be exercise. Rules that anyone can embrace and really run with to help manage their stress. Can you talk a little bit about some of the best practices that you've seen out there for people to bring themselves back to a place of de-stress? Would that be the right word?
Heidi: Well, I think it's the balance. It's that being more feeling more in control, not even control because we're not ever really in control, feeling more capable will feeling like you have more resources.
So there's two things to look at if we're looking at stress as what happens in the gap between demand and capacity as you can either decrease the demand on your system or you can increase your capacity. So you can look at the different types of practices similarly, with you know, what is it doing? Am I decreasing all the stuff on my to-do list or am I increasing my own capacity to get those things done by changing my environment or changing my energy by going for a walk or spending time outside? Certainly listening to music and meditation.
I find that most people know the types of things to do, but it's really the story we tell ourselves about making them a priority. Are you proactively building your own capacity so that when you hit the demand, you're more able to cope?
And then do you have some of these techniques reactively in the moment when you find yourself feeling stressed, it really takes both, so that's why this idea of stress mastery is not eliminating stress but being more able to use stress as fuel for positive change. In order to do that, we have to again have that capacity. So thinking proactively, having a morning ritual that you do every day that helps you to really anchor into what's most important to you is probably one of the most important things.
And I know for me and maybe people listening, I do morning pages from The Artists Way. Whether I'm being creative or not, that's just something that really helps me, but I also listen to a meditation, I also try to get a daily walk or two or three depending on the stress I'm feeling.
But that morning ritual and then also before bed an evening ritual that helps us to prepare the brain to be able to sleep and I know a lot of creative people their brains are so active and especially if you've got stress hormones, fueling your energy throughout the day you feel tired and wired at the same time.
At night, it can be hard to fall asleep or stay asleep. So having a proactive routine that you do again, same types of things, music meditation, taking a warm bath, going for a walk, petting your cat…All those types of things start to give us a good bookend for when we're starting and stopping our day. And then just super important to prioritize breaks during the day, recharge breaks I call them to replenish your capacity and to go back to where we started.
I still think it's less about the techniques you use and more about the story you tell yourself that makes it a priority so that you're not either just over-scheduling yourself or getting stuck with a creative block, but actually oscillating.
Because everything about the human system, including our energy and our creativity is supposed to oscillate. We're gonna have times where we're really productive and times where we have to recharge. But especially in today's world, we're not very good at the downtime, you know, that nourishment time, and I will say coming out of COVID-19 that we're now starting to see in the research less of an impact of what we would typically call stress symptoms, but we're seeing a massive increase, like 90%, almost in post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms which means that most people are starting to get the sense that the stress part is over or getting more manageable, but the reaction to that is a little bit more long-term. So more fatigue, more brain fog, that kind of exhaustion that a lot of people are feeling. It's hard to get creative juices going when you're feeling really fatigued.
Katty:: So well said. Where I agree with you initially in preparation for this conversation. As I was thinking for myself, as I was actually planning my morning. My morning was completely out of whack, as I just came back from vacation and suddenly check emails and so on and so forth. I'm glad that we're not talking about you know, eliminating stress because that's not gonna happen. It's really diminishing that time between the demand and the capacities and what we're talking about and how can we refuel that capacity over and over again by various techniques to give us the power, if you will, to be able to deal with a capacity that comes at us.
This morning, as I was getting ready for us here and also just getting through all the emails that were waiting for me, what I realized, which is counter to how I usually do my day, realized that you know, I didn't have anything organized, I had everything saved to my brain as opposed to on my to-do list. Even though I started my morning with a walk and then a meditation, and then I turned on my emails and like everything just went out the door. Right?
So I'd love to kind of talk about multitasking and this false narrative, speaking of stories, we tell ourselves. This false narrative that at least I know I tell myself that I can juggle it up all without really an organized method to move forward with everything that I need to do as multitasking exists.
Heidi: Well, so we know the brain can't actually multitask. We love to think that it can and this conversation actually came up last week when I was doing a training co-facilitating with your husband and we were talking about multitasking and somebody said, Well, my wife says that she can do it really well. And I said well, that's great.
Women are more hard-wired to so-called multitask, what we're really doing is switching tasks back and forth. So yes, we think we can do something better, but it's actually really harmful, so it's not something to brag about, that we're constantly switching because there is a cost with that there's a time and energy and even a stress reaction cost.
If we are trying to force the brain to focus on multiple things in a short period of time. That is a signal to the brain that there's an emergency because that wouldn't be a good way of doing things if you are in a calm capable state. So it just doesn't make sense to the brain otherwise to do that. So stress hormones are going to increase which is going to cause some inflammation, things you're not necessarily going to feel in the moment, but you're going to feel more tired or you're going to feel more wired as a result of doing that and I would encourage people to just try it for a day. Just try really being single task focused even if you have to cut the time to like 15 minutes on this and then this and then this, being intentional about it and notice if you feel differently, by the end of the day. If you find yourself more able to actually relax.
You have to do it for a couple of days before you really notice it but when you have a lot of screens going, for example, it is definitely more exhausting, but it's also causing that stimulation to increase. So sometimes people feel better multitasking, it's almost like doing a drug that makes you feel better because it's stimulating in the moment, but long-term has this negative consequence to it.
And because we're talking about creativity, I mean creativity is something where we really need more depth of focus. We actually may not even need as much time but we need to be able to go a little bit deeper with our processing and with putting connections together in new ways. And so you know, if we think about it that way, think about the energy you bring to the time that you have not just how many things can I get done in a shorter period of time? That really changes everything and I know for me, that was a huge shift because I didn't see myself as creative to finally say, the way that I work I probably get more done in four hours than most people do in eight or nine because the intensity is so high, but there's also a huge demand in that. So in order to do that, I probably have four hours of just brain fitness time in my day where I'm just recharging or eating healthy food or getting time outside. So it's just making the adjustment less multitasking and more single-task focus knowing you're going deeper. The deeper you go with your energy the more you actually have to recharge your own battery to get yourself into that balance.
Katty: I love that, brain fitness. Unfortunately, physical fitness is something that I think most people think about when we're talking about fitness, but mental health as a whole and just brain fitness, that is definitely not something that is an everyday vocabulary for many, myself included. I have to be intentional about sitting down and saying okay, now it's time for my meditation or it's time for my walk. It's not something that just naturally happens.
Heidi: Yeah, it is a different way of thinking about it. I guess for me, I just keep kind of going back to this idea that our energy is our most valuable resource. It's the energy we bring to the time that we have and the brain is the master conductor of our energy. So from our perspective and our mindsets, which can dramatically change through training and it's not training that it always has to be work. Again keeping in mind that sometimes it's actually just being still, which is super hard when we all feel like we have to be productive all the time.
One of my favorite things to do is just to lay on the floor with my arms just sprawled out and just feel gravity supporting me like just that feeling of grounding. And there's a lot of different ways that people can practice that as well, is so important just to continue to kind of get ourselves back to that place that we really want to be to be our best selves. I think we've just been kind of taught that it's all about time management, being productive, and working all the time and you're lazy if you're not putting out great content 24/7. You know, it's just it's not sustainable.
Katty: Yeah, and certainly talking about creativity, we need inspiration, right? That's not gonna come from just staring at the screen 24 hours either. So whether it's the walks that you were talking about or good nutrition, something to take us away from being locked into this square here or rectangle here and have to be on all the time.
Heidi: I think most people will say that they have their best ideas in the shower, or while they're on a walk. For me. I tried to get a massage every week. And that for me is my most creative time. I used to actually take a notebook in with me because that's where I wrote a lot of my books was getting a massage because as the body relaxes, and the mind relaxes all these ideas start coming together. Now I'm at the point I don't do that anymore. I just say hey, if it's meant to be it'll still be there when I’m done because I want to just enjoy it. Took some practice to get there. But I think that's another example of being proactive. Everyone's different as to what's going to recharge their battery but if you invest in yourself, you know, Julia Cameron talks about the artist date, which to me is just kind of, you know, what do you do for yourself where you can just play and be creative with no output, no outcome needed? We just don't do that very much anymore. We feel selfish if we do that. And it's to me it's just as much an investment in your business as anything else that you do.
Katty: Yes, we feel guilty when we step away or when we take that time for ourselves and not necessarily on the deliverables at hand. Although we'll make the deliverables a lot richer when we have that time. It's so funny that you've referenced a couple of times to yourself as not being creative and I think you've written four or five books?
Heidi: Seven now.
Katty: Seven books! And you're constantly creating coursework, you're creating meditations for others, you're creating online content that you're teaching others so you're constantly actually in the state of creating. Yeah, it's funny that, you know, we don't like ourselves that way.
Heidi: It is funny to me and that's one of the reasons I mean, I read The Artists Way now several times, but even when it's like the artists’ date. I'm like, “Well, I'm not an artist.” So I'll just call it creativity. I think as a child, I probably actually would have called myself creative. I mean, I was singing and acting and doing photography. So obviously I have that in me. But I think someone along the path convinced me that I wasn't and I know so many people struggle with that. So I love this. I love the whole conversation. In fact, I mentioned to you that I'm posting a creativity retreat at Canyon Ranch with a colleague of mine who teaches a course on creativity at Harvard. So that's gonna be really fun to explore, and I look forward to getting just as much out of it as I do being able to lead some of those conversations because I think we are all creative. I just think we have some creativity wounds that need to be healed.
Katty: Yeah, there's definitely an opportunity to be able to tap into that. Because you know, we we've had this conversation before I'd never thought of myself as a creative. I always call myself a creative groupie, that the artists that we represent and the marketers and they're the writers that work with Artisan Creative. I've always been so fascinated and enamored with their portfolios and the work that they do. And when somebody asks me, “Well, are you a creative yourself?” I'm like, “Oh, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm on the business side of it and I'm a groupie.” But I've come to terms with the fact that I too, authored a book that took forever to do. But I have and now I'm working on this journal that's going to be coming out. So I'm happy to step into this space and say that you know, what inspiration and creativity was there. I just didn't know how to get into it. And finally, I've learned how to do that.
Heidi: Yeah, that's beautiful. And now you're helping other people do that too, with that podcast and other things that you're doing, which is great.
Katty: Thank you. I appreciate that. I would love to talk about a little bit more about just stress mastery, not necessarily management, stress mastery, and see if there are a few tips that we can leave for the audience, especially with the holidays coming or working from home like all of those things. Can we talk about two or three things that on a regular basis people can embrace with mastering this thing we call stress?
Heidi: Yeah, I have a stress mastery formula, and it's super simple, and it's just a good thing, I think to keep in mind when we're having that experience. And you don't necessarily have to do all three of them. But if you can move through these three really simple steps, I think that's where we find the lesson and what stress is trying to teach us.
The three steps are: Assess, Appreciate, and Adjust. So the first thing is to assess and it's not doing a full assessment or anything but to actually ask yourself what you're feeling. Because stress really isn't a feeling. There's usually a feeling associated with stress, but if we can uncover that like, “Are you tired? Are you sad, scared, vulnerable? What emotion is actually coming up in you that you're labeling as stress?”
Because if you say to me, I'm feeling stressed. I don't know what that means. Right? That's really the energy that you're feeling. Maybe anxiety, tension, whatever, but what's really under the surface? And if you can look under the surface a little bit, I'd also ask, what value is being threatened? And this is something that really I started doing last year when I was just so overwhelmed and I was trying to do presentations, and I just could barely get out of bed. And I started thinking about this what value is being threatened? Why is this happening? And I realized it's the value of doing good work, but it was also the value of people's time. If I'm doing a presentation and people are coming. I want them to get something out of it. And I would get myself so worked up about that, that it would totally hijack me. So when I asked myself what am I feeling? Am I feeling vulnerable, or am I feeling scared or whatever it is, and it's because I really want to create value for these people.
Then we go to the next step of appreciation, which is appreciating that something's important to us, appreciating ourselves for having that value, appreciating what we do have to offer so it's a shift from something that's negative and depleting to something that's now more positive. I actually appreciate that I care so much that I'm concerned and now I can work with that. So it's no longer hijacking me. Now I break the circuit.
And I lean into that and say, okay, so if I really care, what's one adjustment that I can make right now when would the smallest thing that would have the best impact? So do I need a new slide? Or do I need to just go for a walk? What adjustment is going to actually help me feel that I can create more value? So now I'm not focused on the problem of stress? I'm focused on creating value and then the adjustment is just something small, it can be problem-focused. The problem is my slides are terrible. So I'm just gonna do one new slide and that's it. Or it could be emotion-focused, which is that I just need to feel better. I need to do some aromatherapy or talk with a friend or watch a funny video or something like that.
So assess, appreciate, adjust is the simple way to kind of think through that. Assess what's really going on, what value is being threatened, appreciate yourself and the resources that you have to bring which is going to lift your energy, give you more capacity, and then make a small adjustment. And just no matter how small it could be walk around the block one time once you get started, your energy is a little bit better. You have a whole new perspective on the situation.
Katty: I love that. Thank you. Thank you. I think I'm gonna put those words on my vision board here, so I can look at them every day.
Heidi: A lot of times we don't assess, but we tend to just adjust. So what can I fix, tell me what to fix? And I think we really miss the blessing of stress, which is that it's trying to teach us something. So that's where I think we just need to slow down for a second and figure out what's going on and why it's there and appreciate ourselves in that. Because when we shift from a stress state to a gratitude or appreciation state we changed like over 1000 chemical mechanisms in our brain and body that move us to you know, be able to be creative. And then a lot of ways whether you're creative or not, this is what we're trying to move people to problem-solve more effectively. So now they see more possibilities, more choices, and more opportunities in the experience than they would if they were just shut down.
Katty: It's interesting that you used the wording of the blessing of stress, really kind of utilizing stress as that beacon if you will, to kind of figure out what is going on.
Heidi: Yeah, one of my favorite things that I kind of go back to is that stressing is a blessing when we know how to use it for good. So if you think about the most challenging things in your life, oftentimes there when we grow the most, where relationships you know, people show up for us the most. I know you talked about that in your book and those types of things. So I do think that the experience of stress is trying to help us. It only hurts us when we kind of push it down or push it away. We avoid it or ignore it. That's where it becomes toxic and that's where it can build up. But if we can lean into it a little bit more. That's where the growth happens. So post-traumatic stress growth instead of disorder. It's possible.
Katty: Yeah, exactly. I think, just to be able to have some tools not to freeze in the face of stress.
Heidi: Right. And those things breathing, meditation, music, I always say you know proactively practice those so that reactively in the moment, you can go back to it. I have what I call a brain recharge process, which is to just breathe, feel a positive emotion and then focus on how you want to show up. And that can be something people can practice, practice, practice so that in the moment if you're feeling triggered and you need to circuit break the stress, you can move into that quickly. Other things like a certain song or a certain aromatherapy blend, or techniques like that, a certain place that you go to. I have a specific meditation person, I listen to you and as soon as I hear his voice, I'm in that space, it's just practice, practice, practice. So that when you're in the moment and you need something, you can go to it and you can circuit very quickly.
Katty: It’s interesting too, you said aromatherapy. I have little vials of lavender or different kinds of scents in my pockets, in my purse, especially on the plane. I'd love to put it on but scents are such a positive trigger for me. And I know that people think of triggers as bad always. I don't think so I think how we react to them. Marshall Goldsmith, quoting him, “Triggers neither good or bad. It's our reaction our behaviors towards it determine whether they're good or not.”
So scents are a great positive trigger for me, and when I find myself stressed, I didn't realize that I was assessing, but now it makes sense when I get really stressed and try to figure out like, Am I really hungry? If I wasn't hungry, would whatever occurred have impacted me as much or am I really tired if somebody had said the same thing to me when I've had eight hours of sleep, versus if I only had four hours of sleep would my reaction still be the same? And it never is. I can deal with it much better, so that goes back to what you were saying before is replenishing the capacity.
Heidi: Yeah, and in that way stress is kind of like the gaslight going off in our car. We wouldn't smash the gaslight and try to make it go away we go get gas. So in a lot of ways, the stress could be that we haven't eaten or we haven't had enough water, we haven't had enough sunlight or whatever it is. It's just giving us a message.
Katty: Or when it's too hot. I just can't deal with it when it's too hot. So that stresses me out. But air conditioning comes in handy for that. What are you working on these days yourself? What's what's keeping the creative juices flowing for you? You said the Canyon Ranch event is something you're getting ready for?
Heidi: Yes. And I'm in an interesting season right now. There's been obviously a lot of change for everyone. In addition to that, I've had some pretty severe losses in my life during COVID. So there's just been a lot of adjustment and I think I'm in a season of cocooning. Which is an interesting space to be in and I'm trying to trust that, where I am noticing a lot more fatigue and trying to be still more and listen more. I'm doing a lot of writing but just for the sake of journaling and expressing myself. I actually have to kind of force myself to not create content because I've been doing that for so long. So it's really interesting.
So I think in some ways trying to find the creativity in the stillness, and being patient and trusting enough that it will come back. I think that's a scary place to be and I'm sure I'm not alone. In seasons of life where it's like, life is just kind of saying to be still in trust and have faith and not always easy to do. So that's where I'm at, and I'm kind of just keeping it open-minded for what's ahead in the future. And I'm super grateful that I have four courses on LinkedIn Learning where my content can exist and I don't have to keep creating it so people are getting a chance to experience it there. And my hope is that coming out of all of this, it'll be really clear how I can best serve next, certainly paying a lot of attention to mental health in organizations and this kind of post COVID once we get there, fatigue that a lot of people are going to be dealing with as we try to be adaptable for what's ahead.
Katty: Thank you for saying that. In our day-to-day work, we encounter so many people who've lost their jobs, in this previous year and have not yet been able to secure something even though there are so many open jobs for whatever reason that connection just hasn't happened for them. And in speaking to them that stressful energy or that energy that exudes sometimes is of desperation or just giving up because no one's responding to their resume or no one's picking up the phone. And so I think it's just wise words to just sit with it for a moment and even think about it like it's what I've been doing all these years. Is it still something that I want to continue doing and if not, are there other opportunities for me to brush up on my current skills or add new ones so that I can be in a new season.
Heidi: I've been thinking a lot and speaking a little bit about possibility thinking that like when things are uncertain, just trying to allow ourselves to think about the positive possibilities. It's just really difficult. Uncertainty is one of the most difficult things that we experience as humans. The brain will just kind of go bonkers. We don't like uncertainty. So we tend to prefer misery that we know versus uncertainty that could be really wonderful on the other side of it. So I think that practice as well as just thinking about every moment there's a possibility for a new beginning a new chapter. Yeah, I love that. Dwell in possibilities. I love that and kind of soaking in that too. And just being in that for a little bit, I think is a beautiful experience to have.
Katty: Yeah, this is one of my favorite quotes. Emily Dickinson and you just never know what's around the corner, what the next possibility can be. So just dwelling on that is something that I embrace. And I need a reminder of it. That's why there's a sign on my wall.
Heidi: It gives us hope and I think that's what a lot of people need now more than anything is that sense of hope.
Katty: That sense of hope and then also with everything that you've shared, not only to just sit there and be wishful thinking that hope something magical will happen, but to have some tools to be able to make that hope happen or to make those possibilities come to life. Someone asked me the other day what my thoughts were on change, and what did I think about change? And I said, “I think there's a lot of creativity that sits within change. We don't know what we don't know. But when that change does happen, just kind of as you were saying just lean into it and see what are the opportunities and what are the possibilities out there.
Heidi: Yeah, well, and I think creating is changing, right? I mean, it's new, you're creating, you're bringing something new to life or to light that wasn't there before. So I don't think you can have one without the other. I guess you could change without creativity, which would leave you kind of stuck in the dust a little bit if we can’t adapt in some way to what's new. But yeah, I think that's a whole different way to look at change is that it's an opportunity for creativity. We can lean into that.
Katty: Yes, and I certainly hope that for all the listeners out there all the creatives who are in between opportunities all the ones looking for new jobs, for you for me, for all of us, we will just naturally encounter change and possibilities and stress and all of that. Could we be able to utilize some of the tools and techniques that you've talked about to replenish our capacity so that we can deal with everything that is on our plate.
Katty: Heidi, where can people find you? Can you talk a little bit more about the LinkedIn Learning that you mentioned, if anybody wanted to sign up or any of that.
Heidi: Yeah, so the easiest place to find me is probably my website, which is Heidihanna.com. The other one is LinkedIn, because I do teach several courses there. I’m a little bit more active there than other social media platforms. And I have four courses available. At least two of them right now are free. You don't even need to have a LinkedIn Learning account. So if someone's listening, and you would like a free trial, you can actually send me a message on LinkedIn and let me know that you heard me through this podcast that way I'll know to accept the invitation. And say that you're looking for the free trial and I can send you a link that actually gives you 30 days to the whole library doesn't have to just be my courses. But I have a course on stress mastery;I have one on energy management; one is on dealing with feeling overwhelmed, which actually came out the beginning of last year, which is kind of amazing timing. And then this year, I created a course on how to prepare to go back to work. So some of the emotional, the anxiety, the uncertainty of going back into the workplace. So those are all available there and people can connect with me there as well.
Katty: Fantastic. And yes, that is itself very stress-inducing. Navigating, that new terrain that we're in.
Heidi: Yeah, and it's changing all the time. People ask me all this time, to give some kind of best practices and things like that. And it's hard to manage anything right now other than our emotions and our relationships and how we communicate and how we bring our energy and manage all those pieces of what's in our control because things are changing all the time.
I'm getting booked for things in person that they are virtual, which then turn into pre-recorded and it's like, you just don't know and as much as we'd like to plan for early next year. We still don't know exactly where we're going to be. Like I said it's a great lesson in flexibility and creativity. I think we just have to make sure we're really taking care of ourselves because it requires more energy to do that. So self-compassion, compassion for others, and recharging our own battery. I think those are the most important things.
Katty: Beautiful, beautiful words to bring our conversation to a close and I hope that everybody listens out there, self-compassion is so important to be able to embrace. Thank you Heidi for being here and for sharing your wisdom. I will absolutely share your website and all your great books for all the audience to follow up on. Thank you.
Sunday Feb 06, 2022
Sunday Feb 06, 2022
Our guest today is Finnian Kelly. Finnian has 12 years of entrepreneurship experience. He’s started 7 companies and has had 3 successful exits, 2 acquisitions, 2 failures, and 2 he’s still busy with and running. He has won multiple awards for being an impact-driven leader. He’s here today to talk to us about the power of intentionality and what it means to go inwards and really feel your way through your intentions as you plan your career, your next step, your job, or your next freelance opportunity. Enjoy.
You can find Finnian Kelly at:
- financiallyhappy.com
- @TheFinnianKelly
- FinnianKelly.com
- linkedin.com/in/thefinniankelly/
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Finnian: So I like to think of all freelancers, really, they're all entrepreneurs. Every entrepreneur in some regard started as a freelancer, like, let's face it, we were all offering something. And then we managed to realize that perhaps our skill sets were great at bringing other people involved into the vision, and then we grew into something bigger.
So even just having that mindset that there's potentially something more available to you, is part of the intentionality process. When I think about intentionality, I define it as it's all about defining how you want to feel, and then taking deliberate action towards it. That combination of vision plus action.
Now freelancers were intentional to make the decision to become a freelancer. There was a reason you were like, I want to feel free. I want to feel like I have a choice. I want to feel liberated from not having to work in a corporate day job. So there was a vision. And then they took some action. They went well, “I'm going to stop putting myself up for some services or some jobs. I'm going to promote myself a little bit. I've had to like quit my day job and move into this realm.”
Now then what happens is sometimes what worked for us then is what holds us back. So we're getting into this place. And now to keep that vision going, we start focusing on “I've got to do this, I've got to do that.” And we forget about the bigger vision. What's the next vision from that? And we can get stuck into the minutiae and feeling like well, I've got to get this next job to be able to pay for these needs and we feel constricted so the freelancer suddenly becomes constricted from the life that they've created for themselves.
So we need to step back and go back to that moment that you did when you decided to move from the corporate world perhaps it was corporate world or another small business into a freelancer. You had a vision and this needs to be a continuous process and go “Alright, where I'm at right now… Yes, it was my original vision. But is this still my vision? Or is this something more? Perhaps I'm not working with the clients that I really want to be working with. Perhaps I'm I don't have as much freedom as I thought I'm actually working nonstop, and I'm always just catching my tail.”
So getting connected to that big picture would be really, really wonderful, and I talk about that it's not just a vision of materialistic objects, it's all about feelings. Get connected to those feelings. That's the fundamental thing of intentionality is how do you want to feel?
And with the new year coming up, it's a great time whenever this is shared, it's going to be in the new year. And having that awareness of stepping back and going, “Okay, I'm where I'm at right now. What is it that I really want to be feeling? Perhaps I want to feel more inspiration with my work, perhaps I want to feel more proud. Perhaps I want to feel more fulfilled.” And get connected to those feelings and then start going, “Okay, I want those feelings, what are some potential pathways that I need to take in order to get there and that will help me line up the action that I need to take throughout that year.” So that's where I'd be starting.
Katty: I've heard you say intentionality and really focusing on the end part, the inner journey of that versus being something extrinsic and influenced by other people–it really is that person's personal goal, right?
Finnian: Yeah. Yeah, it really is. One of my keynotes is the only way out is in intentionality. And this idea that so often, we feel trapped or we're not happy, and we're always looking external. We're looking for the external environment, and we're going well, it's because of this, this situation or because I don't have enough money, or it's because my partner isn't giving me what I need.
But really, all of those things if you rely on the external to make you feel good, you're always basically out of control and you're always at the victim or the circumstances of other people changing things.
And I'll give you a great example, my girlfriend's mom just passed away in a tragic accident, and I know you've spoken a lot about grief and in those moments you really get tested. You really see, “Am I in line with what matters to me? Is the work that I'm doing important to me?” Now, this was a beautiful moment, we had a number of retreats that we're about to do very high impactful, it was gonna be a lot of energy. And I straightaway went, well, we can't do those retreats because I want to create space for what we're doing. And she was like, “No, that's exactly where I want to be right now. Like around a healing retreat that you're running around people we love and we care about. That's, that's where we need to be.”
And our life didn't change. We're dealing with a tragedy like we're dealing with grief. That's gonna be a very, very long journey. But there was no question about what should we change about our life. And that's the power of intentionality like it's complete alignment and confidence that yes, outside things can occur, but it doesn't have to change the inside. And that's just a little test and that's where death can actually become a really great teacher and a great friend. And it's why I like what the Buddhist talk about have a relationship with death regularly because it makes you sort of value your time a little bit more and also really check in am I doing if I only had a week to live or a year to live? Like how would I live? And if it's not the same then perhaps we need to change some things.
Katty: It's those moments when it does make you question, right? And I think what I'm hearing you say is just be certain and keep questioning yourself throughout it that don't necessarily let those moments be the defining point to question, and just go inward and keep questioning. It is easier though, to blame the outside and not to take the time to really focus on working on the inside but boy is it powerful when that happens.
Finnian: It is and it's funny, it's easier in the short term, but I can tell you it's not easier in the long term. Because continuously our life just feels out of control and we just feel like we can't become happy or we just need this one thing and then once you realize that everything that has happened in your life you have contributed to you have been part of this. It's very scary to start because then you can go into it easily go into a shame spiral. About what how could I do this? How could I allow this partner to abuse me? How could I have put myself in that situation where I injured myself? How could I have put myself in that position where I was taken advantage of. And in that moment we need to have compassion and drop in with ourselves and love ourselves because shame just compounds the issue. The ego is starting to feel like that it has an opportunity to go like it's losing, you're about to take control of it, and then it hits you with shame.
But in that moment, if you realize, “Well if I put myself into that situation. That also means that I can get myself out of the situation.” Because that's the power when you take extreme ownership, extreme responsibility, you realize that you actually have the ability to influence whatever thing in your life in whatever capacity it needs to be. And that becomes a very liberating process. And that's, that's what I want everyone to get connected with and realize like you don't have to live this life like this. There's an extraordinary life for you. And this is what I love about freelancers. They all had that moment, just like every entrepreneur, they all had that moment where they went, I don't have to live this life anymore. There's a different way, but then they forget that. You got to keep connected to that feeling and keep coming back to it. I love what you said like keep questioning, keep questioning and I'm not saying you have to build a team. Just question, “Is this my path right now? Is this who I want to work with? Am I doing work that matters? Am I providing enough for my family? Is there a way that I could actually uplevel the people I work with for the same amount of work and get actually high a lot of output for my family and my loved ones?”
Katty: It's beautiful what you're saying especially right now I mean we keep hearing about the great resignation and the change in the workforce and what the future of work is going to be looking like and so many people are taking that path of saying you know, “I want a little bit more flexibility. I want a little bit more freedom. I want to be able to kind of carve my own path for myself.” But what you said about the adversity and you know, people blaming themselves and putting themselves in that position of shame. I sometimes, come across this often is where you know, with creative work, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and people doing creative work for others, and then the feedback that may come back from others doesn't quite lend the way they were expecting it to. Or people who are going through the interviewing process, and they go through multiple interviews and they do panel interviews and so on and so forth, but they don't get the job at the end. And it's so easy to then think, “Oh my gosh, I must have said something wrong”, or it’s that imposter syndrome piece that shows up. Anything you can share about that and how to kind of tame that beast and be comfortable in that uncomfortable moment when you get that feedback that you weren't expecting?
Finnian: Yeah, I've definitely suffered with this myself. And I've worked with it over many, many years. And what I identified a lot of the time was why I was hurt was because I was actually seeking validation or I wasn’t doing it out of my own love.
Like for example if I create something, I should be proud of myself, and then if the other person recognizes it great, but also if they don't, it's your creation it's your love, your passion. And no one else should be able to take that away from you.
It's also why we've got to be careful of attaching to the highs. Because if we attached to the highs, like when that person gives you that validation and we just think we're great. That means that we're setting ourselves up for a moment where someone else could take that away from you by saying it's not great. So I've actually learned as a speaker and someone who does transformational healing work in big retreats, one of the greatest things I have to do is when people recognize me, I appreciate it, I let it marinate but as soon as I get this good feeling. I actually have to go away and I sweep it off. I wash it off me because I know that if I get too attached to that, then I'm going to set myself up for a low in the little bit future when I don't get that. Say, for example, I get off a keynote stage and I don't get a standing ovation. I don't get people sending me messages, then I'm going to feel like perhaps it was a massive failure.
Now, sometimes people just receive things differently. And if we attach to how they sense feedback, we can really set ourselves up for failure. Great example: my first ever all Spanish audience for a keynote. Normally, I get so much engagement during the sessions, I feed off it there. I'm asking them a question they give me recognition, they will naturally say great things. This time I got crickets, and it was really really hard. It was challenging. I saw myself start perspiring. I started judging myself and I'm like, “Whoa, is this any good?” And I started losing myself a little bit like I was losing my own ability. And I've managed to pull myself a little bit. We had a videographer there, and it wasn't till I heard afterward, that I wasn't involved in the videographer asking questions. I didn't even ask him to do this. He just started going around and asking people about their experiences. And I watched those videos, and I just laughed at myself because here I was creating this mass story, which is stopping me from enjoying the moment, connecting actually having more impact. And if you heard that what people were saying, it was off the charts, it was wonderful, it was amazing. And I realized that I stopped myself from enjoying that day. That could have been a really enjoyable day for me. And it was an experience which I'll only get that one time. You only get your first ever Spanish-speaking audience one time and I could have enjoyed it more if I'd stopped seeking external validation and just trusted in my own process. And that was an awakening moment for me. And I think that works really well for freelancers, I work with freelancers a lot. I've had to learn this to have a better relationship with freelancers that often, by me not saying much, it's because actually trust the work is really good, and we're just in an improvement process. So I actually realized I wouldn't say anything positive. I just feel like I just have such trust in you. That was my thing. So I just like, “Oh, this could be better. Let's do this. Let's do that.”
And I realized that some freelancers were taking that on as I wasn't appreciative of their work. It was actually that I trusted them so much, it was just the way I give feedback. I still thought we were in an iterative and improving process. Now, luckily, over time, I've learned that a little bit better. And even though that's my style, I don't need to do that. I can change it. So now I'm very aware when I work with people saying, “Wow, this is great. Thank you.” Asking, “Are you ready for insights or observations?” Help them let me know where they're at in the process because sometimes they actually don't want feedback. They just might want to say are we on the same page or, or anything. And I think that's where freelancers can work with their customers a little bit better, and let them know. All right, what role do they need to play right now? Are they picking up minor area errors? Are they coaching, advising, critiquing? That would really, really help.
Katty: And not immediately go into their critiquing. You're right. Well, it goes back to what you were saying before about intentionality is about again, going back into that inner, inner space and to self empower and not need that external validation to know that their work is good and really have faith and believe in their creative abilities. And by all means, not everybody thinks art is the same. Everybody looks at it very, very differently. And kind of just recognizing that, if somebody doesn't like a piece of art, it's not you. You are not your art. Although it may feel like it, you are not your business, I'm not my business, although it's so much part of who we are.
Finnian: Yeah, and perhaps the journey, you're putting your artwork and then them not liking it, actually that is the art. The being able to receive that feedback, and then go all right we can go a complete 180 and then getting to that place like, “I think there's magic in that as well. There's there's a skillset in that dynamic”.
Katty: You know, you go to a museum and you see an incredible piece of art hanging on the wall that somebody paid millions of dollars for. And the next person looks at that piece and says, “What is that? I don't get it. I don't like it.” Again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
One thing I wanted to ask you was the change that we've had in work. My company has been remote for 11 years. So the remote workspace is not a new thing for me or for my team. But I know that it is for a lot of people and for people who have traditionally been used to getting their validation from the person sitting next to them in their cubby or the person walking behind them and saying, “Hey, good job. You're doing great.” And now they're in this for some in a vacuum. Can you talk a little bit about self-motivation and kind of self-empowerment? And again, all goes back to that piece of just really looking inward. What tools or experiences can you share with people about motivating themselves and just lifting themselves?
Finnian: Yeah, so whenever situations change we've gone from a physical to a remote place. We need to understand that we still want the same feeling and we can create that feeling in a different environment. We just have to be intentional about it.
I've run a remote company for years as well. They go, “How do you get the connection?” And I'm like, we have an insane connection. It is amazing when someone gets sick, the only person they hear from is a team member who sends a care package to the other side of the world, not a family member. So we've seen the direct evidence of the connection in teams, but it just doesn't happen by default. It happens by design. You have to be very aware of okay, “What are our needs?” We need to have little catch-ups. We need to have a little sharing chats.
And that's what I would really encourage anyone who's gone from that place is remember okay, what were the things I really enjoyed about that environment? What is it about how I felt and then how can I recreate that in a digital world in another way? So for example, if you receive validation from a person next to you, perhaps you have a little group that you just agree to that we share things with and it's like a little cheering group. It's a little validating Whatsapp group for example. I have that with my friends where it's a celebration to just help ourselves being motivated. So that would be one thing I'd really focused on.
And, then another thing, and I keep going back to these feelings but if you can get connected to an intention in the morning it is amazing what can happen. I've seen this. People pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to help them just connect with an intention in the morning because it's a power move. You wake up in the morning and you smile. And I always say smile for 17 seconds at a minimum and naturally, you'll start releasing hormones that will make you feel more joy more happy. And then get connected to an intention.
We have the Seven Principles of Intentionality which you can connect to but it could just be my intention today is love. My intention is to feel joy, to feel pride, whatever it is, and you just get connected to the intention. And then you start seeing yourself going through that day. Feeling that level, that feeling that intention that you've set. And then through the day, why this intention is the magic is because every moment you have an opportunity to move closer to their intention or away from that attention. Something happens, you get triggered. And if your moment is what I want love today, you're going to go well, “I'm not going to just suddenly react and yell at that person. Perhaps I'm going to take a breath, perhaps I'm going to respond in a way that's going to lead me towards love, rather than trying to prove that I'm right. So I'm just going to go in and give a hug.” And then you feel a little bit more of an intention. And just that one act is going to drive all these other acts throughout the day and you're going to get to the end of the day and where you went, “Wow I didn't really need to plan today.” Because you didn't, because you had a guiding force pushing you in the right direction.
So I see that as the most powerful, motivating force you could do. Just getting connected to that morning intention and at the end of the day, reflecting on how you went against that intention. And it's not a moment to shame yourself. It's just like I learned some things and if I had my opportunity tomorrow, how would I do it differently? And by that, you're just uncovering your potentially subconscious programs, which are holding you back. You're uncovering where things in your life aren't leading to that intention and then you get to program yourself for tomorrow to have another opportunity and I guarantee if you come up against that same situation. Once you've reflected on it, you will do it differently. And that's where we really change. So it doesn't take much to self-motivate. You just got to wake up with the intention.
Katty: And smile for 17 seconds. Love that. For sure. Thank you. You know what I really like what you're saying, I'm going to emphasize it. An intention that is tight. It's a feeling. It's not an intention of, “Oh, I'm going to get my project out today.” No, it's not your to-do list. It's an intention that's going to come from your heart and it's that's an emotion and it's set in your feelings and you allow that to be your guide all day. Love that very much.
Finnian: And the reason why that is is because if you get too focused on your to-do list, stuff could happen that day, and something could happen. Like it could be a new job opportunity came through or something happened to a family member, we had to drop everything. And then you could look at the end of the day and because you didn't achieve that to-do list, you could feel like a failure. And however, actually, you might have had the greatest day because you might have shown up in every circumstance with love. Or you might have just been such a good inspirer because that was your intention you wanted to inspire throughout the day, and that is more powerful. You can get caught in the to-dos and you can not go anywhere. You've got to connect the to-dos of the feeling but allow it to be flexible that life can change and it can play out in a different way than what you imagined.
Katty: I really really liked that. I will embrace that myself. For sure. Thank you. One final question because I know you also talk very much about financial freedom and being financially happy and you yourself were an incredibly successful entrepreneur with multiple businesses and so on and so forth. Can you just briefly, because we're talking about the creatives out there and the freelancers out there talk a little bit about that intentionality and define financial happiness and how that kind of comes together for someone who has to be managing their finances from literally from contract to contract?
Finnian: So I'm glad you brought that in because I see there's something which holds back a lot of creators. I think it holds back spiritual people as well, this relationship with money. And we often think we have a story, “I'm creative or artistic or I'm spiritual. It's wrong for me to ask for money or it's evil if I earn good amounts of money.” And I just want you to just allow yourself to just go, perhaps there's a story running, which isn't working for you right now. And if you go to my website for financially happy, there's a quiz on there, so it's financiallyhappy.com And there's a 12 money saboteurs quiz, which is the archetype of your money story. And you're going to uncover that you've got – we've rate the three top money saboteurs and these are personas which are in your things like the dependent, the compensator, the gambler, the hoarder, and you're going to start seeing how this is showing up in your life and directly into interacting with you with how money shows up in your life as well. So that would be a great starting point to just even uncover a little bit about what's happening for you.
Now with the freelance world is often we can do the same amount of work with a different customer or a different value proposition and get a lot more money in return. And there's no shame in that. There's certain people who value paying a lot of money because they're getting value extraction back. And part of our journey is to identify what is the work that we want to be doing? How do you want it to be translated into my life? There's a reason why you've gone into the freelance world. It was to get more choice, more freedom, it really connected to what it is that you need from that and then start looking at ways that it's going to make that easier.
Perhaps you just need to position the value a little bit differently. Perhaps you need to go after a different demographic of clients. Perhaps you have to change the fee structure that you're doing it more on project-based work rather than hours-based. And suddenly then you start getting more connected to it. And you start feeling the energy flowing through from you providing energy, through your service or your creation, then feeling that energy that translates to their life and then sending energy back to you in a monetary form. And then we have this circular form of money. And once you get connected to that, you start realizing that you can be really abundant and only you were holding yourself back from actually earning more money.
Everyone has the same opportunity out there especially now that the wonderful thing about technology in the freelance world. We all have the same opportunity, it’s just that some people are capitalizing more than others and I believe it all starts with you getting to value yourself. If you don't value yourself, no one else can value you. We've seen it. Part of this with any positioning is like yeah, I'm confident in my ability of the value I can add, and naturally, then people are willing to pay more money for you for that service. Now, eventually, you get called out if you're positioning your value more than it actually is. Eventually, you get called out but there's a part of it where you honor the value of putting into the world and then other people will honor it as well.
Katty: You beautifully wrapped it up but bringing it back to intentionality is really being clear about who is the client, how do I want to be living my life on a day-to-day basis, and put a plan together for it and be intentional.
Finnian: Yeah, and there needs to be unconditional trust as well. Self-trust. It's actually more than that, it's in the universe, it's in source energy and whatever it is. And just know that if you get really connected to what you want in life to these feelings, and then you take action towards it, it's going to happen for you. Now in the short term evidence might show you otherwise. Like you might be like “Oh, I'm making this abundant manifestation I'm calling you all these opportunities and things.” And then the next day, you don't get any new calls, because you've got bills coming through. And that's the moment that matters. In that moment you have to get so connected to the manifestation that you did yesterday. Otherwise, you lose it. Now, the outcome of that day is not the outcome of the manifestation the day before. It's from the unconscious manifestation you were doing two months before where you're saying that I don't have enough. It's hard to get business, all of those things. That's what's happening. There's always a lag so you have to be able to get connected. Even though in the short term, the evidence might be telling you otherwise. And that's where it all happens.
Katty: When you do that when you're in the mode for manifestation and just really putting it out there. Are you meditating in doing that? Are you journaling? What is your process to just be still?
Finnian: Yeah, so what I do first is I always start with gratitude. And I get connected to the feelings that I want to feel, this is fundamental. If you can't feel what you're wanting to bring in, then that means you don't have it and you have lack and actually in your manifestation, you're going to just attract more of it. So if I want to bring more abundance in or if I want to bring more clients in, there's an element of me that believes that I don't have enough right now. But there's part of me which also knows that I have that in front of me like I can be so grateful for the clients I have right now and get connected to those feelings. I can get so grateful for the amount of money I do have right now and the choice I have. So I get that gratitude pumping through me first. So I'm in a state of having oxytocin flowing through me. I have serotonin. I feel really really wonderful. You know, that gratitude feeling you have that warm feeling in your heart. I breathe in and out of my heart because that's the place where manifestation occurs. That doesn't happen in the head. The head is all about fear. It's all about the future, past. It's like telling me why I can't do that. So I drop into my heart. And then I start feeling those feelings that I want to bring more in because it's activated in me already. And then I start just playing with it and I start to see how that would be possible.
Now the key with a manifestation is you want to be as detailed as you can, but you still got to believe it. As soon as you start going on. If you hear a story, that's not possible, you've gone too detailed. You need to open it up and as you get more practice with each day, you can get more and more detailed because you'll build more and more trust and you'll start seeing signs and that's the fundamental thing for me. It's all about the feelings and just playing with it and then trusting that it's going to happen.
Finnian: And I also journal. I also journal as well in the morning. I also will write out things. I will write out my best day. “I am having such a great day. This person called me. I got another opportunity I got a review sent to me.” And I just start playing with things like that all in like that it's happened in present tense. I'm not hoping this has happened and I'll just free write. And that's a regular practice.
Katty: Oh, I see. You’re not journaling about the day before. You’re putting it out there as to what your day is going to be like.
Finnian: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, “this felt so good, this is amazing, this opportunity came to me. I crushed this podcast.” Just whatever it was. And then how do you think you’re going to show up for the day? You’re going to show up in a way that’s going to lead to that.
Katty: Fantastic. Well, I think this is a beautiful place to leave it at and allow people to just take a moment, sit down and write how their future day is going to look like and it comes from the heart. Thank you, Finnian for taking the time to be here. Wishing you all the best in your next travels. Tell people where they can find you.
Finnian: Wonderful, thanks Katty. So, my Instagram is TheFinnianKelly and my website is FinnianKelly.com you can get everything from there and there’s lots of resources. Just start the journey, that’s all you need to do to honor this. Just take one action, I would say you’re one breath away from intentionality because that’s a chance to change from reaction to response.
financiallyhappy.com
@TheFinnianKelly
FinnianKelly.com
Sunday Dec 26, 2021
Sunday Dec 26, 2021
Check out our episode with Keith Roberts, Entrepreneur | Author & Keynote Speaker | Creator of the Oak Journal.
We chat about creativity, mentorship, entrepreneurship and so much more/
Read the rest of this entry »Monday Dec 06, 2021
Monday Dec 06, 2021
Jaime Levy, Ux Strategist, Speaker and author of UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Digital Solutions
available in 6 languages and now also on Audible
You can find Jaime on LinkedIn and on jaimelevy.com
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Katty: I’ve been watching your career trajectory, and I was super excited to see that you had written a book, UX Strategy and that the audio version has just come out. So I wanted to have a conversation about you, about the book, and how you started your path.
One thing that I've noticed is this trend of reinvention with you from a designer to a strategist to an author to a public speaker to a professor, and how all of that's going to come together for you. I just found that fascinating, so I'd love for you to talk about your origin story and what's steps you've taken to come here.
Jaime: Let's see. Well, I guess it started even before the browser when I was creating my floppy disk magazines, and I was a graduate student at NYU, and just really interested in nonlinear storytelling.
And then trying to invent this new medium like it was just this total insane dreamer thing. And I guess because of the floppy disk I made, I actually finished it, and then I successfully brought the product to market by selling it. A floppy disk that opened into a HyperCard or Director presentation. I know for all the newbies, they're like, “What are you talking about?” Don't worry, you don't need to know this old-school stuff.
But you know it used to be really hard to make interactive presentations, but the upside of all of that was that you could be the first or you could do something that is only mediocre in design. But because it was the first it was like “yay.”
That was how I started out. I was a horrible interface designer and a horrible coder. But I just kept pounding on these floppy disks, and then, the short version of it is Billy Idol bought one, and then it got launched as a commercial endeavor and then I got my gigs at EMI records and Viacom. And it all just kept going from there you know to eventually, doing an online magazine, and then getting a creative director role and just constantly working.
I really believe that if you just keep working, and applying yourself, and learning new things, that eventually you'll connect and get whatever it is that you want. Some job, or some gig, or an opportunity. And I think that relentlessness to persevere was something that has stayed with me, and I actually need to kind of manifest it now as I'm starting the next chapter of my career.
Before UX, it was called interface design and then after interface design, then it was web design and then after web design, then we had information architecture and interaction design. And by the time I got back to LA after 9/11 and the dot com thing crashed in New York, as well as, San Francisco and LA, I came back here and it seemed at that point I needed to focus.
And I should mention early on as a result of the (floppy) disk I was asked to be a part-time professor at NYU, and I did get flown around the country and the world, to speak at conferences, and I think like when you have that success when you start out you think that's normal. And so for me, it's just been catching up with my old normal, and it's a curse and a blessing, and the blessing is obvious because you're like, oh, I just want to continue to be a public speaker, I want to continue being known or recognized for my work. But the negative consequences, it's an addiction, it's like a high that you set here and you think, Oh, I always have to be at this level of an overachiever. And so, you know, in that sense I feel like I didn't engage in my own personal life, you know because I sacrificed it for my career so much and didn't really like relax into it until my 30s when I got back to Los Angeles.
Katty: Interesting. I saw you actually speak about it in one of your talks. I think was your Brazil talk about being an overachiever and what that means and constantly trying to do things, new things, or do things in a new way. I found that fascinating, it went through that same reinvention theme that I recognized in what you were talking about. So thanks for sharing that. So you mentioned, the new chapter, a new iteration of Jaime.
Jaime: New? It's in progress. So, you know, I did my first book and I did really well with the first book. I was insane to write a book. That was so crazy. But I just felt like UX strategy was so interesting and even though nobody was paying me to write it, you certainly don't make money off of the book. I just was like okay I'll take a year and a half and spend my savings and write a book and sit in the library. And it was really rewarding.
And so then when it came time to do a second edition, if I want to be current I did that. And I did it during the lockdown so that was kind of a good thing to do when you can't really go teach in a classroom or go run workshops in a public space. But basically, my book is now out in the second edition and is being translated into languages, and I just found out it's in German and Italian, and Portuguese this time, you know, on top of the other six languages and that's really exciting.
But the thing with the book is you need to promote it, and you know and you need to go do things to market it. Whenever you make anything whether it be a floppy disk or a website or an app or a book or you're marketing yourself as a public speaker, it's one thing that you do it, but the other half of it is in order to be successful, you just got to market yourself or your product. And it's fine when I get paid to do growth design and markets and run experiments to market other people's products. But I think, I'm kind of at least right now, I feel I'm just kind of over-marketing myself. All of a sudden I feel like, ah, can't life just be simple again? Let me just get a job ideally as a UX strategist and, you know, and that's it, let things quiet down.
And so you can say it's an existential post-midlife crisis, or maybe it's a phase but I just had a job interview with a company that I hope I get, and they were telling me that they just had written an article related to this subject about so many people basically looking at their careers and saying, “Do I even want to do this?”
I feel like COVID Hit the reset button for a ton of people and so now I'm less killing myself about, “Oh wow, I'm really not going to go crazy promoting this book because I don't feel like it? Is there something wrong with me? Or is it just like maybe I just have to accept to let people read the book. I hope they like it.” And if people ask me to speak fine, but you know, I think it's like at a certain point you have to say okay where's friction and friction is trying to go tour and do workshops at what we hope might be the end of the pandemic but isn't. You know, it's like I suffered the same fate as people who, you know we're in an orchestra, you know, or who had movies that came out. So I'm in great company of people who made their money by doing things for the public and in person and now that you know, there's no UX conferences really planned. I'm speaking at the one in Estonia, one, this year, zero last year zero the year before, you know. So it makes you say what am I going to do now?
Katty: You're right, it definitely has been a reset button on many fronts. We've seen this so much with so many other candidates that we work with who are re-evaluating “I've been doing XYZ until now, do I still want to do it, do I still want to live here?” Just really evaluating everything, but I totally hear you about the book because I also wrote a book during this pandemic. I had been working on it for three years, which was far too long but that's just the length of time that it took. The circumstances where we found ourselves allowed me to finish it, so I am grateful for that. That was the silver lining in this crazy year and t it allowed me to finish it and get it out. But it's just sitting there and it's nowhere near where it needs to be... but it is what it is. It's a story I needed to get out. I got it out. Now, if people find it, awesome, and if they don't then we’ll cross that bridge.
Jaime: What's your book called?
Katty: It's called The Butterfly Years, and it's just my personal story dealing with grief and has nothing to do with Artisan Creative and it has everything to do with me. Obviously, as somebody who's running a company, it is going to have to come to grips with having to manage grief and make that work otherwise it permeates everything.
Katty: If it helps people out there, it's there. If somebody is going through it and they need to hear somebody else's story who's been in the same boat. Then I've done my job.
Katty: Yeah, So when I heard that you had done your second edition and you had just done an audiobook. I thought you know I want to talk to her and see how that whole process was for her.
Katty: Congratulations on your interview and I hope that it ends up being the right next thing.
Jaime: I hope so too. That would be great if my first interview turned into a job offer.
Katty: Putting out the good vibes.
Jaime: They were very surprised because it was a UX strategy position and I didn't have anywhere in my portfolio that I wrote it. I didn't want to say that I literally wrote the book on UX strategy because then they think oh she's not humble or she's too experienced so I didn't mention it. They saw something in there and I'm like, “Oh yeah, I wrote a book kind of related to UX strategy.” and they're like what's it called, I'm like, UX Strategy. I can't even own it. I can't even own it, you know, I'm just like, ahh so shocking. Yeah, you know, I want the opportunity to practice what I preach. Enough, running around with the same lectures and enough training.
I've done so much training in the last year, I think sometimes we just need to go back and forth and be okay with it. I'm not saying I'll never do workshops again, I just need to take a break from that part of it or and pursue it. So yeah hopefully something will come up for me that is enjoyable. Because I think it's important to have a job if you like and what I was shocked by when I looked at the job market this time was, oh my god there's 8,624 UX jobs in this country and 30 or 40% of them are remote, and there's actually jobs advertised for UX strategist title. It used to just be me and two other people. I don't know if my book helped define the industry but it seems like when I read the job description, it had everything that I wrote about in my book so it's a really exciting time that there's so much opportunity out there.
Katty: Yeah, for sure. I'd love for you to maybe help define that a little bit, because obviously, we hear you know there's on the design side of it, UX there's XD. Now it's customer experience, employee experience. Can you talk a little bit about that I know for just what I've heard you talk about before, it’s really the research and the strategy is the precursor before you even get into the design part of it. And I learned that thinking time is so important to be able to do that? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Katty: A little bit of both, actually.
Jaime: Sure. So I basically define UX strategy as the intersection between product design and business strategy. So business strategy is the top-level vision of an organization. How do we make money, who are our customers? You know business is defined, ultimately by their customers.
So they have a vision and the vision might be a platform, multiple products, a suite of products, or one product. And then it's like how do you really elevate that product, and bring it to market? So that when people have that first whiff of it, they're like, smells awesome. And so when I started doing discovery phases back in 2008, 2009 for Schematic and for Huge, I really fell in love with it. Because I love doing competitive research. So interesting, I mean who doesn't want to get paid to research the marketplace? And I loved the idea of finally getting to do user research. And so that was when I really became interested in it and realized that there was nothing out there that told us how to do it. I would just make things up as I went along and as I moved from different organizations, I would clean up my deliverables and take them to the next level.
And then when Lean Startup came out--People don't think of Lean Startup, as a product strategy methodology but I certainly do. It's this idea to build the smallest version of your product, get it in front of your target customer, learn from it, whether it be an alpha or prototype, extract data from these learnings and learn from it, and then iterate.
All of a sudden the discovery phase became not something like Waterfall; first, we do discovery, then we do the implementation, then we do usability testing and find out at the very end that not only does our product suck but nobody wants it. It was insane. And now all of a sudden, the discovery phase became something that can be iterative and cross into the implementation phase, and you can start building products and doing strategy, and testing it and validating it in much smaller loops all along the way. So that's what's really exciting is an opportunity to run some kind of experiments to knock out, to do rapid prototyping, to use whatever it is like sketch XD, other prototyping tools to get business concepts in front of the target users, and start doing user research that's more focused on validating a value proposition, versus, you know, is this thing usable? Even if it's really usable, but nobody wants it, then who cares if it's usable, right?
Katty: Yep. Very good, and with plenty of products out there with great usability but they're sitting on the shelf. I probably have a few of them.
Katty: Fantastic. You talked a little bit about this but I think, given where you are going, pivoting, and where you see the future to be for you at this juncture. What can you share with people who are either just starting out in their career path? And/or because of this past year, lost their positions, and they have to reinvent themselves. Where is it that you dig down deep to find that inspiration and that determination to just say you know what, this isn't working, let me figure out where it is that I want to go?
Jaime: Yeah, I think just to be honest it's very different for someone like me with two to three decades in the industry versus somebody who's starting out. So I wouldn't give someone the same advice I would give myself, there's definitely different things going on. I can remember very well when I was starting out and the same feelings that I have now are similar. My dad gave me this great advice. When you're looking for a job, or when you're starting on your career, and when you interview with people, you want to be careful that you don't have this flashing L on your head. Loser, loser, loser.
Because people will spot this lack of confidence or low self-esteem, you know, and it doesn't matter how successful you are, or have been, like me. Because you can still have low self-esteem or imposter syndrome, and so, it's like you need to somehow put all of these fears of I suck;. I'm not gonna make it; I'm an imposter;I am so crazy that I thought I could do this film, to begin with. I'm too old or I'm too young or my portfolio doesn't have X, X, X.
I have to constantly work on this, to this minute, which is spinning a much more positive narrative in my head that, “No, no, I have something of value to give”. And then putting that negative energy into therapy, exercise, whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, but I still to this day, put it into how can I showcase my work, what's missing? You know, look at my portfolio. Okay, it has all this but it's missing, you know, this one deliverable. Well, I better make it, fake it till you make it, you know, and figure out a way to like get it in there.
And the funny thing is is they may not even ask for it on that job interview, but if it's like this thing that you think is missing, then it's going to be flashing the L on your forehead and so to me, it's like puffing yourself up and what is it going to do to make you confident for these interviews and if showing your portfolio and getting excited around the storytelling of your UX design which, it still is for me, then get that into your portfolio and any missing things. Don't spend eight hours a day looking for a job, spend four hours and the other four hours teaching yourself a new tool because there's always going to be new things to learn. And if you're not open to learning new things, up until, you know, your 50s and 60s, then whenever that is where you're not open to new things, you better be at that last job that you're going to station yourself at, because the industry, I promise you, just keeps on changing. You know it's amazing.
Katty: Gosh. Great advice. I think for all levels of career and years in the industry and also not even to have to do with business. I think for anything where we tend to sometimes focus in on the thing we don't have versus on the things that we do have it's just such a great lesson to say you know what to say we have to reshift that mindset.
There's a great book that I read a couple of years ago by this woman called Sally Helgason, and it's called How Women Rise, and she talks a lot about specifically women and how we get into this mindset of, oh, but you know what, let me work harder because I'm missing this 10% thing and not focus on the 90% that I have and it's just crazy. I see it all the time. I see it, not just in candidates I see it in myself. And putting myself out for a conversation or a talk or something and if I don't get it's like, oh, that's because I didn't talk about this. You know what, maybe just wasn't the right thing. So, yeah, great lesson. And I think also that that whole thing also speaks of desperation, and I think that that comes through, so loud and clear, it erodes the confidence that would naturally be there if somebody has worked on their craft.
Jaime: Yeah and we need to in this field of product design or research, ultimately we're making something that we need to upsell, at the very end, even if it's to our boss and say yeah this is awesome, you know, and it's like, oh my gosh if we come to it from this place of fear, we're never going to sell it. So I think it's easy to focus on the negatives for a lot of us, and we can't afford to do that in our field because we're always upselling our work.
Katty: Yeah. Have you ever taken the StrengthsFinder assessment? Have you ever done that?
Jaime: No, I don't even know what that is.
Katty: It's similar to a DISC or Myers-Briggs. But it focuses on your strengths. The reason I like it, we do it for our company and we talk about our strengths all the time. Its created by Don Clifton, and is now as part of Gallup and it’s a personality assessment. The reason for him creating this was that he felt people focused on their weaknesses, and not on their strengths. The whole thing is about what are your top five strengths and let's lead with your strengths and not focus on a thing that is number 30 something for you, let's focus on the things that you're really good at and then find someone else who your bottom five is their top five and then collaborate. So it sounds like it's just human nature that we go there. If we could learn not to go there, it would be less, I think less of a headache for all of us.
Katty: Crazy. So, I know you're teaching, you're doing online courses, you mentioned that you're doing a talk in Estonia. Are you doing that in person, are you doing that virtually? How are you managing your time and all the different places you need to be, or how did you manage your time and all the different places you need to be?
Jaime: Yeah, I don't know how I'm managing my time right now yet. I'm still waiting to see where a bunch of things land. But the Estonia conference is the first onsite conference since COVID, since March of 2020. Well, basically there's very few conferences in the beginning of the year for the first quarter anyway.
So, anyway, it's Web Usability Day I think is their legacy name. But it's a one-day conference and then there's workshops, three days prior to it. It's in Estonia, it's very affordable, it's gonna bring in like a massive crowd of UX professionals. A lot of new ones but people mid-level and all over the place. And they're coming from Estonia, but they're also coming across the Baltic from Finland, and a couple of other Baltic states. So, I'm closing the conference, I guess I'm kind of headlining it, and then my workshop is one day right before that. So November 25th,iis my UX Strategy Workshop and then November 26th is the conference. It's a Thursday, Friday, so but I'll be in Berlin back in November, and then I'm doing a couple of talks, just private ones where I'm flying in. And then going back to Berlin and then I'm going to do this thing in Estonia.
I am so over this idea of more online workshops. I think they're a joke, sorry guys, but the whole point of conferences was to get people together physically in a space to network and touch base with other people and build relationships. And it seems I've done a bunch of these fake conferences, and it doesn't feel the same, they never pay and it's a joke. So I'm not into those anymore. I'm really stoked that these people you know, the COVID cases are extremely low [in Estonia]. I've had my third vaccine. already so I'm totally going. I won't be taking too much risk but definitely, I'm really excited to be around humans and doing my thing.
Katty: Yeah, humans, human connection. I'm traveling internationally for the first time since March of last year as well, and I'm going to Mexico and then to Dubai. But, I have to navigate the whole PCR test thing because I'm not going to be in the States for three days before I go so I got to figure that part out.
Jaime: Yeah. It's a crazy time. I can't believe really what happened. How much the pandemic just changed everything, it's just, it's shocking.
Katty: Are you seeing that in the world of products, are you seeing what's happened with a pandemic impact, whether it be design thinking or about how people are approaching research. I would imagine that it's changed how people are looking at how they go forward.
Jaime: Yeah well, everything's online now. When I left Huge back in 2009, 2010. It was because I didn't want to drive in my car in rush hour to agency land in Culver City, and I didn't want to work in person, I wanted to work from home. So I've been working remote since 2010 and it's not new to me, and Cisco Systems when I worked for them as a UX strategist, everybody was a remote workforce. So finally, the rest of the world is catching up with us and learning that it is possible, and even outside of product so I think it's opening up opportunities in many ways. But, the negative consequence, and I felt this when I taught my last course at Claremont University, was that my students who were graduating, were just getting internships, but they're online.
At Facebook or wherever, and at any point in your life where you need human contact, and you need the nuance of someone kind of seeing that you're confused, and you need mentoring or you need to get the confidence to ask for help, we need that to be in person. I feel like the people that are getting the worst end of the deal is the college graduates, the people who are just starting their career who have to start it by themselves in Zoom rooms. Hopefully, there's going to be some way that it isn't just this experience of online collaboration, because I just feel even when I had my second or third cat life of getting into the UX world, I can't even imagine that I would have had the trust and camaraderie that I had with people at Schematic who came over and showed me how to wireframe when nobody was looking. So hopefully maybe there's some way that people can reach out and have people to connect with for that kind of support since they can't get it in person.
Katty: The whole mentoring piece of it. Yeah, taking somebody under your wing. It's harder to do it this way. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I have some nieces and nephews who started their first year in college last year. You've worked really hard to get into the school of your choice, but you don’t get a chance to really experience that. So now as a sophomore, they're getting to experience it for the first time because now some other classes are in person. So really interesting to kind of watch this new generation of those who are starting and those who are graduating, it's just a very different world, for sure.
Jaime: Yeah it's crazy. It's really crazy and maybe five years from now we'll look back on that and go, Oh man, it was so great, why didn't we just do all that remote work and it was so easy. But it is weird, I just got off the phone with a client and he's just saying that he's not leaving the house and he doesn't want to get the vaccine because he almost died from a vaccine from something else a long time ago, so he's just like staying in his house for his whole life. And I just, I feel in our field where we're designing products for customers and users, it's like, “Nah, we need to have human contact and get out there.” When I'm feeling really low, I reach out to a friend and I have to dump, and say “Ugh”, and have them tell me. I just hope we don't lose everything as a result of this, online world that we live in now.
Katty: I don't think so. I mean I certainly hope not. I do feel that there's a hybrid version of it that's going to be more pronounced. I mean we went to such an extreme this past year, I do think there's going to be a hybrid world in front of us. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but little by little I think we'll fall into place. Let's end on a couple of inspiration pieces. Where do you get your inspiration?
Jaime: My inspiration now is probably-- I consume a lot of film. I like to have a big impact. I actually went to the movie theater, on Sunday, by myself, bought a ticket to go see Ich bin dein Mensch, I’m Your Man, a German film about a man robot who was built to learn on what a woman wants and then they program him to be the perfect partner. It was amusing, to walk into it, to have it open up and see all of Mitte Berlin and see the TV tower and see the food and see inside the flat. I miss Berlin so much right now, I felt like when I got out of there I had just gone to Berlin. It just reminded me of all these tiny little things. So I get a lot of inspiration from being able to transport myself into different realities physically and through film, and right now, traveling is limited,but I definitely get my inspiration from seeing other cultures, other ways to live.
I lived in Berlin for most of the pandemic, and it took months, but after being there and away from here for so many months it really-- when you experience other cultures, it makes you appreciate and also find things you don't like about your own culture. But I feel like having perspective is what inspires me.
Katty: Love that, and for creativity to bloom, do you need that spark of inspiration for creativity to happen, or is there another thing you tap into when you sit down to write or to do another wireframe or to create, what would you tap into for that?
Jaime: I don't know, I wish I could answer that. I don't know. I spend my days at the computer then I go and walk on a trail. It’s extremely important for me to get out and walk in nature and I do that every day and I listen to the same 3 podcasts. The New York Times Day thing, The Berlin Briefing, and then Doug Rushkoff’s Team Human And that stuff, while I'm like in nature and walking around listening to these podcasts, again, I guess I feel transported and I feel immersed. I think that when I leave the house, and when I come back, whether I'm jogging or listening to music and weird experimental atonal music that nobody would like unless they’re into weird music. That helps me really reset the crazy stuff we're telling ourselves in our head or just like being in a mundane moment. I think sitting at a computer for more than four hours, not healthy for me.
Katty: I love that. Both for creativity and inspiration, it's not going to happen nine to five necessarily looking at a little screen. To be able to get out of this and just get other influences. I find nature so healing in so many ways and my ideation just goes off the roof when I'm out and about.
Jaime: Where do you go, where do you get your nature?
Katty: My favorite place is Point Doom in Malibu. It's a very easy little hike, but you are at eye level of the pelicans flying by. It’s just the most incredible sensation sitting there and you see these majestic birds flying right at your eye level. So whenever I can, whether it's a birthday or an anniversary or something special, that's where I like to go.
Jaime: Nice. Yeah.
Katty: Well Jamie where can people find you?
Jaime: People can find me on LinkedIn, @Jaimerlevy. I'm on Twitter, I'm not tweeting so much. I was told I need to get on Instagram but I'm like, “What?”. And then Jaimelevy.com and then the book userexperiencestrategy.com. I'd love to just mention if people don't like to go walk in nature. I recorded my audible book at this great studio in the valley, where I grew up, and it's me reading my book and doing some impressions of myself, and it's a lot of stories and so far the reviews have been really favorable. And so if you're not a big reader like me I hate it, I don't really like reading. I can read an article but long-format, not so good. Check out my audible book if you're not sure go to userexperiencestrategy.com and listen to the first two chapters and try it on. But I'm really excited about the audible, you know for my book I self-produced it, paid for it, and it's mine. So that was important to me, you know.
Monday Oct 18, 2021
Monday Oct 18, 2021
Seth Silver is an Executive Creative Director who is on a mission to put creativity at the center of business growth. We chat about creativity, and the intersection of art, culture, and design. You can find Seth at Sethsilver.io or on https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethsilver/
And a should out to The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising where both Seth and I graduated from. #artisancreative #theartisanpodcast #FIDM
Wednesday Sep 08, 2021
Wednesday Sep 08, 2021
Check out our conversation with Branding Copywriter, Brennan McNally about music, humor, inspiration, and cats!
Branding copywriter + cat lover. Check out Brennan's work here (and see Daphne's pictures too!) https://www.onlybrens.com/
From working with Conan O'Brien while he was in college at UCLA to touring the country multiple times and earning a living playing the bass, to being a writer and creative director at a variety of agencies, startups, and corporations. Brennan brings humor to every opportunity.
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Erica M. Hart is a documentary director, video editor, and podcast creator. She is the creator and co-host of the survivor-led podcast Gray Area Stories about the healing journeys of survivors of sexual assault. She is the director of the short documentary Gray Area, which follows her calm conversation with a man who sexually assaulted her.
Erica's recent work as an editor has included shows for MTV, Nickelodeon, CMT, the PBS feature documentary How Sweet the Sound and the Disney/Parkwood Entertainment film Black is King.
Erica is passionate about feminism, storytelling, and conversations between humans which serve to reduce shame and stigma. In her spare time, she volunteers to clean up the loose shards each time a glass ceiling is shattered.
You can find Erica at www.ericamhart.com/
Friday Jun 25, 2021
Friday Jun 25, 2021
Tune in a hear Brionna Simons share her insights about Account Management, Marketing, and the collaboration between creative and account teams to bring forth an exceptional client experience. She'll also share how she crafted her job search to lead her to her ideal role at OBE (On Board Experiential), where she is currently a Sr. Account Manager
Brionna is an experiential & Multicultural Marketer and Strategist. Prior to OBE, she was at XPrize.
She has spent the past 12 years in marketing with a specialty in strategy, events, and account management. She is passionate about advancing diversity in the workplace, the marketing industry, and the world. She thrives on creating processes out of chaos and building long-term relationships.
In her free time, she is the Co-VP of Culture & Equity for Soapbox Women.
You can find Brionna on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brionnasimons/ or at www.brionnasimons.com
Info on OBE can be found here: https://www.obexp.com/