Reinventing Yourself (2021)– Obstacles Are Opportunities In Disguise

I have often wondered: why are some people stuck and others so adept at change that they always seem to land on their feet? Why do some people stay in a career, in a company, in a discipline, their entire lives to discover the market? I moved on and left them behind. I realized that what allowed me to reinvent myself and potentially revolutionize the education industry is because I have always seen

obstacles

as a gift. Obstacles are a gift. Change is a calling. Taking action is an opportunity to transform

yourself

and become more than you thought you were capable of, so when I went from being a graphic designer to a motion graphic designer and started my own company, I went from doing motion design to doing brand strategy and then ultimately content creation, YouTube video creation, the key, the theme that ties it all together, is that each of them had this turning point: were they going to continue in the true path or would you try something different?

And for me, fortune favors the bold, follow a different path, it is an opportunity for you to grow, so in this talk I am going to share some personal stories and some of my friends who have been able to accept the obstacle as the way forward. and unfortunately some companies and brands I couldn't, so the next 25 minutes I'm going to share this with you, let's get into it. I'm going to do this in six parts following the classic story structure, first there's the rejection of the call and then a mentor appears. To help me cross the threshold, I went through a series of trials and tribulations and then there was an outcome and a conclusion in 2013.

My wife, who is also a designer, would accompany me to the art center where I taught sequential design after each class. I really want to do it. After hearing her comments during our drive home, I valued her opinion because she wasn't afraid to be critical on one particular night while we were driving back to Santa Monica. I asked her then, what do you think she said? I see why you love teaching so much. You really come alive and are able to express everything and it's wonderful to see your students' eyes light up in class, but there's always a butt here, let me ask you this question, she says, I suddenly felt the need to brace myself for impact. this is what you teach every semester the same thing over and over again well i make some adjustments but it's essentially the same yeah more or less do you ever feel like more people would benefit from your teaching rather than just a handful of students?

So she went. for the killing blow i don't think teaching this way allows you to reach your full potential you have more to give stunned i sat in silence potential potential what do you mean living up to my potential wasn't it? I was already doing more than what I was asked to teach and run a design studio and of course I was having this dialogue inside my head, every fiber of my body was fighting this, even though I knew it was true, it hurt, but I wasn't ready. admitting he was right just took something that gave me so much joy and ripped it out instead left the hole another obstacle to overcome it was a long drive home and I do what I normally do when I don't know what to say In retrospect I turned on the radio.

I was silently going through the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, but I was mostly stuck in the denial and anger part. obstacle and this obstacle was traditional teaching it was repetitive and had a limited scope I didn't know how to solve it I hadn't learned this yet but every problem is an opportunity in

disguise

Months had passed since that fateful impulse that was when old art center classmate José caballere reappeared in my life now jose was not someone i would normally hang out with he was loud obnoxious a little messy he spoke too fast and used a lot of silicon valley buzzwords since he graduated he had been working in the tech industry since i worked at the motion industry and I needed help with a web project and he very kindly offered his services while we were working together he suggested we make youtube videos and I felt comfortable making videos just not being in front of the camera I didn't want to be a part of it at all , I hated the way my voice sounded and a quick risk analysis told me that I had so much more to lose than gain by doing this, none of our clients would want to see me. talk about our projects and share my true feelings about the industry, so I said to myself: José, very determined, made me an offer I couldn't refuse, he said, sit next to me, I'll do all the talking, just say something if you feel like it. do it and I feel comfortable enough to do it, the obstacle in front of me was that I didn't know what to say, I was self-conscious and lacked confidence, I felt uncomfortable in front of the camera and risked alienating clients and colleagues, There was no way to back out now.

Joseph had removed all the

obstacles

he had. I remember my jaw hurt the next day when I watched the recording again. I realized that he had clenched his teeth the entire time. With each video recorded, my anxiety decreased and my discomfort decreased. It was never easy, but. It became easier now, after six or seven videos, I actually started to feel comfortable, it wasn't so bad anymore and I dare say it was even fun to do it sometimes in a way that I had entered a new world of youtubers, content creators and influencers. I struggled with two dilemmas: one, the videos didn't get many views and I'll talk more about this later.

Two, I couldn't stand the sound of my own voice, in fact, I made a policy for our editors to mute videos if they ever saw me walking after dinner one night I asked my wife to watch a video we had just published? Does that sound like me? I asked I rationalized that maybe the compression algorithm was distorting my voice because it sounded terrible she turned on the video and confirmed that it was indeed my voice and it was normal now dissatisfied with that answer I called our two children and gave them very clear instructions. I'll leave the room when I do.

I want you to watch this video and tell me. Me, if that sounds like me, minutes later they ran to my side and yelled, yes, it's you dad, as they ran back to their rooms, this was devastating to me, like some big secret had been revealed during my entire life. life. I thought it sounded cooler than it actually was. I did, but I realized that all my friends and everyone who cared about me already accepted my not-so-great voice, since now I needed to do the same. On average our videos were getting about 50 views a day at launch, not exactly viral from Mr.

B. numbers again my wife to the rescue I watched your video today honey, after a few minutes I couldn't watch it anymore it's everywhere and It's very difficult to follow I love you but you can't see each other She was right I had learned to accept This time her comments were more elegant and I knew what to do. I told José that instead of having a loose agenda and talking points, I'm going to prepare a talk that night. I stayed up until four in the morning organizing, writing and designing the rule. no presentations, no sales, just give it value.

That video was called identity and brand design. The video isn't perfect, but it was the first video we made that took off today. It has 750,000 views and ranks in the top 10 brand search results on YouTube. the obstacle hated the sound of my own voice and lack of preparation by now you have no doubt picked up on a recurring theme of obstacles innovation and reinvention are the byproducts of how you respond to obstacles ryan holliday writes about this in his book the obstacle is the way obstacles are an opportunity to express and practice virtue, patience, courage, humility, ingenuity, reason, justice and creativity, you have to learn to retrain your brain to Look at obstacles differently, we have to learn how to turn obstacles into

opportunities

, how to discover what people want. then take small steps to make it happen and adjust as you go when you encounter an obstacle do like the marines improvise, adapt and overcome now i want to share two stories that sum up this philosophy, the first is alex preston and this is the story of how he went from being an artist to a game developer, so the obstacle standing in Alex's way was that he was an artist and a gamer, a nerd if you will, and his health was failing, he had been hospitalized and was dealing with an illness autoimmune and a variety of allergies his hospital bills were rising at the time he owed over thirty thousand dollars he had a laptop and about an hour of power each day where he was healthy enough to do some work alex used his illness and threat of imminent death as a motivator, he had his priorities very clear and eliminated all the nonsense from his life.

He just didn't have time with the waning energy he had. He was talking on Skype with his friend's boyfriend and was thinking about an idea he had for a game based on his love. for 8-bit adventure games they shared screens, one coding while the other painted pixel art. He finally launched a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of raising 27,000, enough money to pay him and make an MVP version of the game. When he finished the campaign, he raised more than 600 thousand dollars. Hyper Light Drifter was born and it was a viral hit. He was courted by big game publishers and even caught the attention of none other than Kanye West himself with Hyper Light Drifter under his belt.

He is no longer self-employed as an artist. He is hard at work on a top secret yet to be announced. The story of game number two. Karen Wang. She went from a burnt-out illustrator to a gaming wizard. The obstacle standing in Karen's way was that she had fallen. she left school due to financial pressure and her last business had failed, she was exhausted and having an existential crisis playing dungeons and dragons with her friends gave her so much joy that it helped her get out of her depressive state and she noticed a lack of targeted products There were surely more female table gamers thinking the same thing, so she decided to make handmade designer dice for the aesthetically conscious gamer.

The next obstacle that stood in her way was that she had no business experience or manufacturing experience and was looking for sources and she didn't know how to roll dice or use a digital camera. This is what she came up with: beautiful jewel-like dice with flecks of brightly iridescent-colored metal that looked as good in a case as they did in your hand. Her hypothesis was quickly confirmed. confirmed as her Twitter account and her Instagram account attracted a lot of attention and instant fandom eight months after telling me about her idea to launch a Kickstarter campaign, Karen was broke and living mostly on ramen.

She finally committed to releasing it in March, on November 6, 2019, but she gets these two. Weeks before the launch, her banker called and said she was overdrawn by 12 dollars, that is, negative 12. As the day approached, her campaign petered out. 24 hours into her campaign, she already had $1.2 million in support, surpassing all of her funding goals by the end. From her Kickstarter campaign, Karen had raised $2.3 million and an additional $875,000 in backing. This girl, my former student, intern and protégé, was now a billionaire. What I want you to remember is this little formula of how you respond. one obstacle equals your result o-r-e-o two years after making youtube videos we were starting to build followers my wife's challenge years before to be a more effective teacher was starting to take shape but the future was not born I was still straddling the barrier between making commercials and teaching online i hadn't figured out how to build a sustainable business around my new hobby, both aaga and the arts center were well established and already had a built-in audience much larger than ours, i didn't want to compete with them, so I offered to help with Aiga.

I saw several obstacles. They knew that design had grown beyond print. I needed to include movement and web. So they were looking for the relevance they needed to serve a diverse community. And for more than just students, we had an embarrassment of riches of having access to a large group of designer superstars, media professionals and innovative studios. My idea: put them online, make videos and share them with the world with a green light. I produced self-recorded and edited speaker videos once completed. I needed it. direction on where the videos should be if they were on youtube vimeo the aiga website the regional or national site will be blocked or free for everyone to see those are decisions they had to make and I didn't get a response for over nine months so the videos stayed down i finally gave up it was one of the last faculty meetings i had at the art center as a nick instructorhafermass the chair of the graphic design department lamented the institution's forgetfulness rate the professors were aging some like arts teacher doyle young passed away others were suffering from early stages of dementia with each step we were losing some incredible instructors and a lifetime of learning how we could continue to pass on their teachings how we can preserve their knowledge and legacy for generations to come the obstacle at our center was that the instructors were aging and were dealing with the rising cost of tuition and there were issues related to diversity inclusion and access, the answer seemed very obvious, especially since earlier that year lynda.com was sold to linkedin for 1.5 billion and the b made linda wyman number 55 on the US Forbes list. the richest self-made women and linda was a former arts center teacher my suggestion take the online courses the model has already been built and tested and I was more than happy to help the response laughter and scorn was being alarmist and exaggerating, said people They always want what we offer and they have heard all this before with self-publishing and it was not going to happen.

I tried it twice. I failed twice. The obstacle in front of them. For me, we had a small audience, lacked credibility and were relatively unknown, without a clear business model. Maya Angelou says what you're supposed to do when you don't like something is change it, if you can't change it, change the way you think. about it, but don't complain, so I stopped complaining, rolled up my sleeves, put my head down and got to work. Thus the future was born, one million subscribers later. I'm glad you both rejected the call to action if you had said. yes, I would have forgotten my own dream and built theirs, instead it was my opportunity wrapped inside the obstacle, okay, so how do we apply what we are talking about?

We divide this into three parts. You have to deal with attachment. Redefine your own identity. and being able to spot trends attachment is really about holding on to your old ideas of identity and ways of working we become attached to where we live who we spend time with what typefaces we prefer tools we use our own work how we see ourselves same rituals and customs Even if we are not happy with it, we have to learn to let it go. It is driven by a loss aversion. We feel the psychological pain of losing twice as powerfully as we feel the pleasure of winning.

In other words, we don't want to give up what we already have. Although something else could be much better, it is why change is so difficult. Philosopher Krishna Murthy puts it this way. The highest form of human intelligence is to observe

yourself

without judgment, therefore it is pattern matching if you want to connect the dots better. learn to observe them without judgment, attachments or expectations, part two, identity labels matter, they have a broader and more holistic self-identity story, it is full of companies and organizations that could not see beyond what they did, unfortunately, to Despite being the first innovators and market leaders, they are no longer so.

Today, Tower Records should have become Spotify, but they didn't because they defined themselves as a retail music franchise where people bought physical copies of music instead of a place where music lovers came to Discover, listen, organize and enjoy your favorite music. became Netflix, but they didn't because they defined themselves as a rental service for home movies and video games, didn't recognize changing consumer priorities, charged ridiculous late fees, and the emergence of low-quality DVDs. cost finally killed off blockbusters if they had to find less for what they do and more for the value they create they might have been able to avoid their fate.

The blockbuster should have been the top spot for movie fans who want to enjoy movies in the comfort of their homes. Kodak should have been Canon, Sony or Panasonic, but they didn't because they defined themselves as manufacturers of photographic supplies, film, chemical paper and inexpensive cameras. By 1976, Kodak controlled 90 percent of film cells and 85 percent of camera sales in the United States; They even developed and patented the first portable digital camera in 1975. Unfortunately, the product was abandoned because they feared it would cannibalize their photographic film business. If they had been defined as a means to help people capture, preserve and share their memories, they could have avoided his fate. doing is a byproduct of who you serve, how you improve people's lives, and the value you create for others.

I used to define myself as a graphic designer who solves graphic and visual problems. I now describe myself as a hyper-learning educator that happens. live at the intersection between design and entrepreneurship the words you choose to define yourself are important, they open up or limit how you see your future self, so choose carefully here is a simple exercise that I have developed to help you rebrand, start with what you do, answer the questions of why does it matter, how does this benefit and create value for others, now here is the creative part, ask yourself how else could we achieve this, so let's take a look at how it could work, so what do you?

I make logos, why is it important? I help people create an identity that reflects their values, how else could we create identities that resonate if we start here instead of what we do? It opens the door to many other things, such as personal branding, building brand archetypes in any format that takes place online, and digital branding of companies that use their social networks to discover a more interesting engaging experience when designing presentations or even creating sound brands that you see when you reframe what you do why it's important and look through that lens, the world opens up, part three, trend to spot how you can see the future before it happens when asked why it has So successful, the great Wayne Gretzky said: I skate where the puck is going, not where it has been, what we must do is recognize the interconnected nature of our world, small insignificant changes. can have enormous effects edward lorenz refers to this as the butterfly effect how, metaphorically speaking, a tornado is influenced by minor disturbances, such as the flapping of the butterfly's wings weeks before, remember sir isaac newton's third law of motion, for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction where there is loss there is gain what goes up must come down when something disappears something takes its place To illustrate, let's take a look at what is happening right now during this pandemic of greed 19.

Ask yourself this question: what is disappearing and what observations can you make to improve large offices are going to disappear because we can't meet in small spaces indoors commercial spaces are going to disappear travel and hospitality live events and theaters don't focus on this part change your thinking to what which will replace it, so if big offices are going to disappear When they disappear, the equal and opposite reaction is to work from home and that is creating all kinds of new

opportunities

, so this is what we see in terms of trends: DIY, home improvement, gardening, residential real estate prices are going up, food delivery, general delivery, home office. decoration Faster Internet and Wi-Fi cloud storage distance learning streaming van life home gyms fitness equipment video conferencing telemedicine home automation online shopping self-development social engagement virtual content creation everything and the return to neighborhoods what should do with this list?

These are industries that are growing and will need you to design your life and business to navigate these trends, so if we take a look at one of the trends we can see that van life has become something that seems natural. because we have been stuck inside and are questioning how we live and conduct our lives, people are taking their lives and homes off the road, van life conversions and companies like Earth Roamer Winnebago Thule yakima Airstream and Brooder and vehicle manufacturers off-roaders like the Bolinger Canoe and Rivien are seeing an increase in attention. and demand, as a result, need help with branding and marketing.

Now would be a good time to reach out if you make videos maybe one of these companies needs a marketing video, if you do graphics maybe one of these companies needs some really cool fancy vinyl. wrap for your van now let's look at one more category, the fitness equipment industry, look at what's happening with Peloton, the interactive stationary bike company offering a live soul cycle experience with no fees, according to the site of investments. 500 percent over the past year driven by accelerating demand for connected fitness products during the pandemic. This is an opportunity for anyone working in ux and ui.

He makes videos. Offers live streaming services. Accessories manufacturers. Fitness trainers. Memberships. Communities. The best way to predict your future is to create it so that reinvention doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Try applying the 80 20 rule. Stick to 80 of what works. Invest 20 of your time, energy and resources in new initiatives. Think of it as your personal research is an excellent insurance policy to prepare your life for the future, so my final thoughts I want to leave you with this nugget from Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces, a hero goes on an adventure, goes out victorious in a decisive crisis and returns to the ordinary.

The world has changed or transformed and he shares that gift with his community before any of this can happen, the hero must answer the call to adventure and in all stories the hero is reluctant at first to reject the call. A mentor appears who helps him cross the threshold, leaving the ordinary. world for the new in real life it can be difficult to recognize a call to adventure it is almost always something you are afraid to do but there is something you should do inside appears as an obstacle to being the hero of your story I must answer the call and the obstacle is the path.

Now, before I go, I've included some additional reading material for you on the last slide. Thank you so much.