How to Renew Life Purpose After a Devastating Break Up - Maurizio de Franciscis

In Chapter 11 of 19 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, education entrepreneur and Global Campus (www.globalcampus.com) founder Maurizio de Franciscis finds courage to take a risk and start a company after a heart-breaking break up. He finds freedom in the moment and takes responsibility to try something - starting a company - that initially seemed impossible. De Franciscis finds perspective by thinking about how his story would translate into film, keeping an eye on the protagonist and his ability to maintain momentum and make big decisions.

Why to Expose Children to International Travel Early in Life - Ramsey Pryor

In Chapter 5 of 22 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, international Internet product management executive Ramsey Pryor shares why he and his wife prioritize exposing their children to foreign culture and travel early in life. Pryor, a fluent Spanish speaker, and his wife, a fluent Greek speaker, see foreign as something not to be questioned but to be embraced. The foreign culture exposure becomes a natural experience and counters any isolation that would occur without it.

Why Living Up to Your Potential is the Best Definition of Success - Ramsey Pryor

In Chapter 1 of 22 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, international Internet product management executive Ramsey Pryor shares why living to one's potential is the greatest and most difficult challenge, but also one worth aspiring to each day. Pryor finds fulfillment doing a little of a lot, gaining incremental perspective through his undertakings. He surrounds himself with social workers, doctors, and others pursuing different professional paths to learn from different approaches. These in turn help shape his ideas of fulfillment.

How to Teach Healthy Eating Habits and Promote Home Cooking - Sarah Simmons

In Chapter 16 of 16 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Food and Wine Magazine 2010 Home Cook Superstar, Bon Appetit contributor, and food entrepreneur Sarah Simmons shares how she teaches others to eat healthier. Concerned with an increasingly accepted and de facto quick serve restaurant (QSR) eating culture, Simmons promotes home cooking as the central means to create a healthier American food culture. Learn more about Sarah at http://sarahmcsimmons.com.

How Jamie Oliver TED Prize Inspires Fresh Food Advocacy Project - Sarah Simmons

In Chapter 15 of 16 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Food and Wine Magazine 2010 Home Cook Superstar, Bon Appetit contributor, and food entrepreneur Sarah Simmons shares how TED Prize winner chef Jamie Oliver inspired her to create a program to train home cooks and promote healthier eating. Simmons' program, "Me Times Three", overcomes the intimidation cooking poses by providing encouragement, information resources, and prizes to promote program adoption. Learn more about Sarah at http://sarahmcsimmons.com.

Why Conscious Eating Habits Create a Healthier Lifestyle - Sarah Simmons

In Chapter 14 of 16 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Food and Wine Magazine 2010 Home Cook Superstar, Bon Appetit contributor, and food entrepreneur Sarah Simmons shares why she strives to raise food consciousness - an awareness of what we eat - in her fresh food advocacy, writing, and cooking pursuits. Simmons sets a priority on educating and communicating food nutrition and ingredients to help transform an American culture long on fast food and dining out and short on culinary nutritional understanding and acknowledgment. Learn more about Sarah at http://sarahmcsimmons.com.

How Home Cooking Helps Overcome Eating Disorder - Sarah Simmons

In Chapter 3 of 16 of her 2010 interview with Capture Your Flag host Erik Michielsen, food writer and entrepreneur Sarah Simmons discusses her health battle with an eating disorder and the associated physical and mental challenges. Simmons turns to home cooking, focusing her attention on pleasing others with food, to help her regain a normal relationship with food. Keep up with Simmons, an award-winning home cook and food entrepreneur, at http://sarahmcsimmons.com.

How Life Experiences Provoke Food Career Ambition - Sarah Simmons

In Chapter 1 of 16 of her 2010 interview with Capture Your Flag host Erik Michielsen, Bon Appetit magazine contributor and food entrepreneur Sarah Simmons shares the life experiences, from a mother's catering business to childhood obesity to a rising national nutrition consciousness movement, that have shaped the narrative arch behind transition from business consultant to food professional. Read more about Sarah on her site http://sarahmcsimmons.com.

Jullien Gordon on How Aligning Mind With Time Turns Passions into Skills

In Chapter 14 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares the importance of identifying skills and the accumulation of hours already invested. To crystallize a passion into a skill, defined as an experience or outcome you can replicate better than an average person, Gordon pushes coaching clients to invest time in building that experience. Gordon references author Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour rule - known as "practice time" - detailed in his book "Outliers" as one way aligning one's mind with time turns passion into skills and competitive advantage. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How do you coach others to align their mind with their time to put turn their passions into skills?

Jullien Gordon: Even though this isn’t Gladwell’s theory, it came up in his book “The Ten Thousand Hour Rule”.  I really get people to – The ten thousand hours is basically 20 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 10 years.  So, whatever it is that you want to position yourself as an expert at, you have to set aside at least 20 hours a week for 50 weeks a year for 10 years to make that happen.  In reality because I think we’re always moving toward our purpose, whether we know it or not, the challenges that we are facing are only moving us toward our purpose, and the happiness that we’re experiencing is because we’re in line with our purpose. 

Many people already have thousands of hours accumulated, but they weren’t aware that they were actually developing some sort of skill.  You doing these interviews, you being on your forty-fifth interview over the past year, all of that is accumulation of hours toward some sort of skill set that you’re developing.  You might not even have the language around it yet – I know we talked about leadership skills and development – but we are always developing, developing, developing. So, it’s really about crystallizing your passion into a skill.  A skill is basically something that you can replicate more frequently than someone who isn’t as skilled.  So, the only reason that people are getting paid millions of dollars to play on the Yankees is because they can hit an 80 mph fast ball better than you and I can.  They can replicate that experience better than you and I can.  And that’s what a skill is, being able to replicate a particular experience or outcome better than the average person.

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Jullien Gordon on How Dashboard Tool Improves Goal Planning and Achievement

In Chapter 12 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why creating a dashboard is helpful in managing success metrics contributing to goal planning and achievement. Gordon emphasizes dashboards to overcome pitfalls of adopting societal success - fame, money, power - or family success - parent suggestions - to personalize goals at the individual level. By choosing the right variables and monitoring them over time, Gordon pushes those he teaches to maximize their performance. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Why do encourage people to create personal dashboards and why are they helpful?

Jullien Gordon: If you try to drive a car without a dashboard a lot of things can happen.  You can get a speeding ticket. You can run out of gas.  You can be overheating. So, I think if we don’t create our own dashboard for success, we just adopt society’s dashboard, which is wealth, fame, beauty, etc.  And so you can end up moving the needle on all those metrics and still be unfulfilled because it doesn’t align with your personal dashboard, and I think from generation to generation, especially the dashboards change drastically.  So, if you were living a life based on your parents’ dashboard of success, even though your parents want the best for you and they are the ones pushing you into a particular career path and certain decision, they want the best for you but they want the best for you based on their dashboard.  So, it’s important to define our own dashboard and our own metric of success and then live a life that moves those needles every single day.

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Jullien Gordon on Why Underemployment Limits Career Potential

In Chapter 8 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why underemployment, where employees are not engaged, using their passions, and reaching their potential. Gordon believes that creating clarity of purpose allows individuals to align with the right professional role and create the most value. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What is underemployment and why do you see this as being such a massive problem today?

Jullien Gordon:  Oh, man! Underemployment is the biggest problem in the world today and I’ll tell you why.  A lot of people think unemployment is the metric for a bad economy, right?  But if you look at the economy only 10% are unemployed, and that’s a lot of people, but when you think about it – when you look at research from Gallop and other statistics, in fact 50% of employees are underemployed.  Which means that they are not using their passions, they’re not reaching their full potential, they’re not making the highest contribution, therefore they’re definitely not creating the most value possible for the organization that they’re in.  A lot of us don’t even know how we end up on certain career paths, we just know we’re not happy there.  You probably hear once a day people say, ‘I have my job.’ Right?  You just look at people on the subway you know how many people hate their jobs.  The actual economy suffers when you have somebody who actually wants to be a teacher being a consultant, right? When you have somebody who really wants to be a healer or a doctor being a banker.  So, you people misplaced. 

I call it ‘Career Music Chairs’ where people are bouncing around musical chairs and nobody is in the seat where they can create the most value in.  So, that’s why I think underemployment is the biggest issue that we face as an economy, but it gets overlooked because it’s like ‘You know what? People have jobs, so they’re good.”  But when you look at the emptiness that they are facing and knowing that they’re not happy at work.  When they – going back to when they’re not happy, therefore the customer isn’t getting the best service, therefore the company and the investors aren’t getting the greatest return on their invest and it just starts this loop.  So, we have to get people aligned with their purpose and professions, so going back to the quote, ‘A man who knows his why can bare almost any how.”  When you have somebody who is in a professional path where they are clear on their purpose and that they can be themselves in that space, that’s when they’re going to create the highest amount of value.

Jullien Gordon on How Stanford Grad Uses MBA and Education Masters Degree in Career

In Chapter 7 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why he chose to earn both a masters in education and a masters in business administration (MBA) from Stanford University. Coming out of college at UCLA, Gordon works for Students Heightening Academic Performance Through Education (SHAPE). There he learns his passion is education, but not of the classroom type. Gordon chooses to attend Stanford to craft a career as a motivation teacher, using education classes to provide the tools, systems, and processes to help people self motivate and learn. He pairs this with business school knowledge - marketing, finance, etc. - to create value and make a living doing what he loves.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What motivated you to purse dual master degrees in education and business administration when going back to Stanford University?

Jullien Gordon: Coming out of UCLA, I was committed to – I was working at an education outreach program called The Shape Program – and so my passions were both in education and business but I never saw myself necessarily in the educational system but I really wanted to understand – the education degree was to understand how people learn and the business degree was to how to create value, and that’s what I do. I’m a motivation teacher now.  So, I teach people – not a motivational speaker.  A motivational speaker comes and get you excited, “Rah, Rah” and as soon as they leave all the energy dies.  As a motivation teacher, I leave people with tools, systems and processes that allow them to motivate themselves and self motivate.  So, I’m a teacher and I understand how people learn and how they consume information and what sticks and on the business side, that just gives me the skill set to make a living doing what I love.

Jullien Gordon on How Understanding Purpose Increases Probability of Success

In Chapter 6 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares how clarity of purpose, or why you do what you do, increases your commitment and probability of success. Gordon highlights "The Drive" author Daniel Pink's work to understand intrinsic motivational tools, in particular purpose. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How do you use ‘Why’ as a driving factor in structuring actual commitment in what you do and teach?

Jullien Gordon:  Definitely.  So, I always start with the ‘why’.  One of my favorite quotes is, ‘The X Factor to success is knowing your why.”  The clearer you are on your reason or your why or your purpose for doing anything the more likely you are to succeed.  So, rather than setting up all these incentives and things like that, I think the best thing is to help the individual get clarity on why this is important to them and to the other people that it’s going to affect and that is going to be the primary driver and motivator.  In Daniel Pink’s book “The Drive” he talks about these false motivators and how they can actually work as disincentives instead of incentives, though that’s how corporate organizations work.  So, purpose is one of the things that he has found as the key motivator of people – once people feel purposeful about something, you can step out of the way.  You don’t need to do anything else because their commitment is already built in.  Their intrinsic motivation is tapped in and intrinsic motivation is always better than extrinsic motivators.

Jullien Gordon on How to Increase Personal Potential Using a 30-Day Goal Framework

In Chapter 5 of 14 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon shares why he pushes others to achieve goals in 30-day increments. This is part of his "30 Day Do-It" program, that uses accountability controls to push participants beyond their perceived limits and move toward reaching their full potential. Accountability controls, costs, are designed to tip scales on the cost-benefit analysis we all use for intrinsic motivation. Gordon uses creative applications to then motivate program participants to execute on plans within predetermined deadlines. Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Why do you push people so hard to achieve goals in thirty-day increments?

Jullien Gordon: Well, you’ve heard the quote, “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it’s yours.”  I don’t believe that. [laughs]  I believe if you love something you should push it and if it comes back then you should push it harder.  It has been my understand that it’s not till you push something to it’s perceived limits, like say this table is the limit, that it actually realizes that it’s limitless.  A lot of us actually confine ourselves in what we think is possible for our lives. So, I’m willing to take a stand for the people that come to me, to push them beyond their own perceived limits of who they are because I believe we are infinite beings and I want to see people reach their full potential and I can see potential in them that they don’t necessarily see in themselves.  So, I just challenge them to expand who they are and that’s why I challenge them to do as much as they can in these thirty-day increments. 

Erik Michielsen: What tools do you use to hold others accountable for their actions?

Jullien Gordon:  The biggest part in 30 Day Do Its is actually creating a cost.  So, what I’ve actually discovered is when you have a cost-benefit analysis, if the cost out weighs the benefit you don’t move, if the benefit out weighs the cost you move.  In most cases when we set goals, the cost and benefit are equal.  The benefit of saying I wrote a book verses the cost the one-hundred hours it going to take to write that book are pretty equal, but if you tip the balance and you increase the benefit or add more cost it actually gets people move because now they have to make a choice.  By not moving, they can’t stay in the same place.  So, they know that they go backwards.  So, I bet my friends who want support from me and accountability, I said, “Okay. Write me a check for $100 right now and give it to me and if you accomplish the goal I’ll rip it up and if you don’t, I’ll cash it.”  So, that’s how I get people to move forward on their journey.

Jullien Gordon on How Stanford MBA Creates His Own Career Path

In Chapter 3 of 14 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon learns from an alcoholic parent that choosing from a career option menu is not the only way. Instead, Gordon creates his own career path as a motivation teacher and purpose finder. Gordon believes we all have the capacity to create our own careers. Most importantly, Gordon advises others to pursue a career where you answer "What do you do?" with "I'm just me all day." Gordon holds an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University and a BA from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What did your mother’s battle with alcoholism teach you about self-education?

Jullien Gordon: In the past generations they were under the premise that ‘go be a teacher, doctor, lawyer, engineer ’ and you’re just guaranteed success and happiness and so people were actually choosing from a menu of career options rather than exploring who they are and who they wanted to be and coming out of business school at Stanford, I realized that ‘You know what? I’m looking on all these recruiters coming to campus and things like that and I don’t see myself – see any opportunities for me to step into one of these organizations and actually be myself’ and I had to carve out or create a career path that I wanted to be – that I wanted and so that’s where the notion of purpose finder came in, I mean how many purpose finders do you know? Right? So, it was a career path that I created. 

I think the number of career paths that are actually in the world are exactly correlated to number of people in the world, right? But instead we try to fit ourselves into these boxes, ‘I’m a marketer. I’m a banker. I’m a consultant. I’m a teacher.”  When at the end of the day, the best career is the one where you can say – when someone asks you, ‘So, what do you do?’ – ‘I’m just me all day.’  That’s really what we want and so – but you have to have self awareness or else that fear and that gap will force you or cause you to choose something you think you know.  Because many times we don’t even know the career path that we say we want to be.

Why Prioritize Passion Over Security Crafting Your Career - Adam Carter

In Chapter 13 or 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter shares how his non-traditional approach to career development has allowed him to pursue his passions. Carter sacrifices security and chooses instead to pursue his passion by working four months a year as a Chicago Cubs and White Sox beer vendor and traveling the world eight months a year as a micro-philanthropist. Carter suggests young professionals to follow their passion first and build a career from there. It is risky, but, as Carter highlights, it is also rewarding.

How to Win Parents Support for Non-Traditional Career Path - Adam Carter

In Chapter 12 or 16, micro-philanthropist and humanitarian Adam Carter highlights the importance of involving one's parents in the process of defining a career, especially a non-traditional one. Carter learns early that continuous communications, inclusiveness, and sharing with his parents creates a supportive, versus a combative, relationship built on trust and understanding. This gives Carter the confidence necessary to develop a non-traditional career built on a cultural anthropology education and extensive international travels. Carter, a micro-philanthropist, founded the Cause and Affect Foundation (www.causeandaffectfoundation.org). He also is a beer vendor at Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball games each summer.

Why to Pursue a Joint MBA and MPH Degree - Michael Olsen

In Chapter 16 of 16, social entrepreneur and technology consultant Michael Olsen finds his passion by starting and developing non-profit Kilifi Kids (www.kilifikids.org). The intersection of developing world scope, public health, and technology captures his interest and Olsen decides to immerse himself further in these areas by pursuing a joint Masters of Public Health (MPH) and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Emory University in Atlanta.