In Chapter 14 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "What is Your Process for Designing Career Learning Products and Programs?" Gordon goes into detail on how he takes action on inspiring moments and creates learning products and expeirences that help others. Gordon shares the step-by-step evolution of that idea and how he packages the idea and delivers it to an audience. From this, Gordon, develops an annual framework that allows him to continuously turn new ideas into learning and career education products. Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America. He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What is your process for designing career-learning products and programs?
Jullien Gordon: The first process is for inspiration. For instance, the Route 66 tour started out of being inspired by a statistic from the National Association of Colleges and Employers in 2009, that only 20% of college grads had jobs on hand at graduation and I had two little brothers who had been through college and that was inspiration. I was just like, you know what I have to do something about this, this is a huge problem.
From there I wrote a blog entry called 66 things to do before you graduate then I tried to share that blog entry with as many people as possible so I reached out in the National Society of Collegiate Scholars who I was a member of during undergrad and all I originally wanted them to do was send it out to their membership. When they saw it, they invited me in to come share it as a presentation. They loved the presentation and we formed a partnership and that became a tour. So that’s kind of been processes starting with being fully inspired and committed to solving a particular specific problem, from there packaging it or creating some sort of comprehensive way of delivering it. For this instance we chose a book and a presentation and a tour and then from there just going and doing the work.
So I noticed that I have this rhythm in my life that has been occurring for the past three years, which is in the summer is like my down time when I’m actually in creation mode. That’s when The Innerview was produced, that’s when 8 Cylinders of Success was produce, Good Excuse Goals, Route 66, those were all produced in this summer type area and then I go out in the fall and I try to test them. I test them in small places at first and then to see if they work in those test markets and once I get proof that they work then I commit the rest of the next year to actually expanding them and spreading them as widely as possible.
So I have this rhythm in my life of this creation phase like in June, July, August, this experiment phase towards the end of the year and then this execution phase from January to June of the next year. So that’s kind of been my cycle and my rhythm of creating the products that I’ve created.