When I am asked today about my movement practice, typically while I’m doing handstands in the park, I just say “circus acrobat.”
The truth, though, is more complex – ever since I dropped out of cross country in high school, I have practiced a wide range of physical disciplines ranging from surfing to swing dance, Brazilian jiu jitsu to classical ballet.
One coach I met along the way (incidentally, while doing handstands in the park) was Johnny Sapinoso, who offered me words I now apply well beyond my daily movement practice.
When asked how he structured his daily practice, Johnny advised:
“Follow the thread of your interest.”
There is more to learn than any of us can complete in a lifetime. Whether it’s a movement practice or a professional skill like sales, part of the joy of learning is that the learning never ends. But one result of these never ending possibilities is that the decision of where to focus next can be crippling.
In my business, I’ve recently been applying this mindset to sales and persuasion. My company Zander Media’s historical close rate is greater than 90%, but in the last three months for 2022, we were rejected by more than two dozen clients. Understandably, I was feeling really down about sales!
This business necessity has fueled my desire to re-evaluate and improve my ability to sell. Where I could be feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of sales advice and strategy that exists out in the world, I instead heard Johnny’s words and connected to my curiosity to learn and solve this problem.
Follow the Thread of Your Interest
Know your “why” – Know why you are pursuing a discipline of study. Without a clear understanding of your purpose, it is much more difficult to stay engaged. Sales was something that I needed to improve in order to keep Zander Media going during a difficult economic time. Even more so, though, the ability to sell will help me in the future, and provides a fascinating glimpse into human psychology.
Study around a theme – Choose your theme. If you are trying to learn too many different disciplines in the same period, you probably won’t have enough time or focus to learn any of them well. When you are trying to decide what book to read next, what movie to watch, or who to interview, explore in more detail what was most interesting to you about the subject you’ve just been exploring.
Flexible Goals – Life is too unpredictable to commit to hard-and-fast curriculum or outcomes. If I get out of bed with a sore shoulder, I shouldn’t do handstands that day. That said, if my plan was to do handstands, I’ll still go to the gym and explore what’s possible given this unexpected limitation. Maintaining flexible goals gives you the ability to adapt to a changing learning environment.
Relevant Inputs – When I’m trying to learn something new (for example, to develop better habits around sales and persuasion), I surround myself with that subject matter in both my work time and my personal time. I don’t set out my curriculum entirely in advance. Instead, I surround myself with books, podcasts, and email newsletters that help me keep thinking about the topics, actively and passively.
Structure Your Time – I find it helpful to pick between one and three disciplines, and shift focus between them when I feel overwhelmed or uninspired. Every four to six weeks, I re-evaluate and consider which, if any of these disciplines I want to swap for something different.
I carve out between 30 and 90 minutes each day to read or otherwise learn about the subject, and I also make a point to deliberately digest that information. (I suggest journaling about the subject in the early morning or just before bed.)
Enjoy the Process – if you don’t enjoy the process of learning, you won’t stick with it. That doesn’t mean every moment is pleasurable, but look for some joy in the process. My favorite technique is to deliberately celebrate as a way to reinforce your desired behaviors.
If you’re reading Evolve, then chances are you have areas you’re interested in growing and learning. By deciding on a subject matter and then “following the thread of your interest” for a specific period, learning becomes much more deliberate and you can avoid the pitfalls of information overload and sputtering enthusiasm.
My bookResponsive: What It Takes To Create a Thriving Organizationis free today on Amazon! Responsive chronicles the stories of organizations from around the world that are designed to thrive amidst chaos. Today only, Responsive is free on Amazon. Get it here!
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August 2016 was a wild time for me. Three months prior, with no experience and little idea what I was getting myself into, I opened Robin’s Cafe. We were just figuring out how to operate the restaurant and August was our busiest month so far.
I also was just one month out from hosting Responsive Conference, my first convening about the future of work.
But one thing stands out from that time more than any other: a phone call to my father at the end of each day to report on the numbers. While so much of sales is dominated by aggression and pressure, the call with my father developed into a sweet habit. “We sold two tickets to Responsive!” I’d report, or “Today, we broke $10,000 at the restaurant for the first time!” During one of the most stressful months of my life, those short phone calls are a reason I came to love selling and the thing I remember the most.
Knowing now what I do about behavior change, it makes sense that those celebratory phone calls made a difference. Celebration, as it happens, is a secret trick for forming new habits quickly and easily.
Emotions create habits
Here’s how it works: when we have a pleasurable experience, dopamine is released in the brain. Over time, we learn to repeat that behavior for the resulting dopamine hit.
We tend to think that emotions occur as a result of a behavior. I do something successfully and then feel good as a result. Behavior -> dopamine.
But actually this pattern works in reverse, too. I can deliberately decide to feel good and that good feeling triggers dopamine, which reinforces the behavior. Dopamine -> behavior.
This reversal of the typical f behavior -> dopamine pattern opens up a hack for reinforcing desired behaviors quickly and easily. By cultivating a feeling of success and confidence (in other words, by celebrating), we manufacture an internal state in which we’re more likely to repeat a new behavior and turn it into a habit.
Learn to Celebrate
Celebration can take many forms.
When I get out of my 39 degree cold plunge, I scream like The Hulk. At other times, I just say “yes” to myself in the mirror, pump my fist, or tell myself I’ve done a good job. During that memorable month in August 2016, I phoned my father to celebrate the day’s numbers.
The key is to feel good about ourselves, intentionally, for a few moments.
Celebrate Together
Celebrating with another person is an easy path towards solidifying habits. I can’t say for sure that Robin’s Cafe and Responsive Conference wouldn’t have been a success without those nightly celebratory calls with my dad, but I do know those phone calls ingrained my sales habit, which contributed to the success of those businesses.
One of my favorite practices is the “What went well” exercise, coined by the founder of positive psychology Martin Seligman in his book Flourish. Phone a friend and celebrate one thing that’s gone well today. That simple act of celebrating changes your state and reinforces the celebrated behavior.
Practice Celebrating
One additional trick to use celebration to create a dopamine pathway and thus to cultivate new habits is to practice, multiple times and in quick iteration the new behavior we want and to celebrate the behavior each time.
For instance, one habit I’m cultivating is taking a supplement called Glycemic Health after every meal. I can celebrate, explicitly, whenever I take Glycemic Health after a meal, but I can also open the bottle of Glycemic Health and celebrate, close the bottle, put it away, then come back mere moments later and repeat this behavior and the celebration.
Doing this 10 times in a row will give me a lot of practice celebrating this new behavior (I.e. opening my bottle of Glycemic Health), which will then encode the sensation of feeling good with having opened the bottle. As a result, I’m much more likely to reach for the supplement.
Looking back seven years later, I’m proud of all that I accomplished building Robin’s Cafe and Responsive Conference. Mostly, though, what I remember is the good feeling I manufactured through celebrating each evening with my father. Amidst a trying time, I found solace in a nightly routine and felt good about myself, reinforced a sales habit that has served me well ever since, and strengthened my relationship with my father.
Further Reading
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg – I’m biased because I had the chance to work closely with BJ Fogg and his behavior change lab at Stanford, but he’s written more thoughtfully about the value of celebration in habit formation than anyone else I’ve seen.
Here’s an article BJ wrote for TED.com on how to use celebration for habit formation, specifically.
Flourish by Martin Seligman – Marty Seligman is the founder of Positive Psychology, the branch of psychology dedicated to improving wellbeing. Flourish is his seminal work on happiness and wellbeing, summarizing 10 years of research into what actually works to improve the human condition.
Responsive: What It Takes To Create a Thriving Organization – From Navy SEALs in Iraq to technology giants experimenting in Silicon Valley, from the inner workings of a sex cult to how a group of anonymous activists can change politics, I wrote this book to distilled tactics from forward-thinking practitioners about building resilient organizations. And if you get it today, Responsive is free on Amazon!
A few weeks ago in NYC, I led a strategy workshop for an exclusive group of CEOs and founders who are building companies designed to thrive in the Future of Work.
Every organization is tasked with issues that seem insurmountable. Often, the process to accomplishing a huge goal can be so overwhelming that we never get started. Behavior change can help make seemingly impossible goals feel smaller and more attainable.
What we want to accomplish is not going to happen in a single day. Instead, break the large goal down into the smallest steps possible, steps so small that they are almost ridiculously easy. When you succeed at accomplishing that tiny step, you will be encouraged to continue.
This is how we build new habits and behavior changes that eventually create monumental differences in our organizations and lives.
In this episode, my friend, Daniel Stillman, interviews me for his podcast, The Conversation Factory. We discuss how to ask better questions, the value of loving, non- judgmental questions, and my story.
I hope you enjoy today’s podcast as Daniel flips the script and interviews me on the art of asking questions.
I sold my cafe after spending almost 3 years building it up from nothing. When I began Robin’s Cafe, there was a parking lot across the street. Today, that parking lot is literally a park and a playground. I was able to grow the cafe because of a ton of factors: good timing, a great neighborhood, a lenient lease, and a whole ton of effort. When I left, the cafe employed 15 people on staff, up from 1 person on our first day of operations.
Every morning since I sold my business, I’ve woken up at 7am with a thrill because I don’t have to solve food service emergencies anymore! But a few days after selling Robin’s Cafe, I had an insight and my first tinge of regret about selling my business.
But I promise: the regret isn’t what you think. I don’t regret starting the business, and I certainly don’t regret selling it. The only thing I really wish I had done differently is document every step of the journey along the way.
When we started out, I did document. Here was my first video:
I sold my cafe after spending almost 3 years building it up from nothing. When I began Robin’s Cafe there was a parking lot across the street. Today, that parking lot is literally quite literally a park and playground. I was able to grow the cafe because of a ton of factors: good timing, a great neighborhood, a lenient lease, and a whole ton of effort. When I left, the cafe employed 15 people on staff, up from 1 person on our first day of operations.
Every morning since I sold my business, I’ve woken up at 7am with a thrill because I don’t have to solve food service emergencies anymore! But a few days after selling Robin’s Cafe, I had an insight and my first tinge of regret about selling my business.
But I promise: the regret isn’t what you think. I don’t regret starting the business, and I certainly don’t regret selling it. The only thing I really wish I had done differently is document every step of the journey along the way.
When we started out, I did document. Here was my first video:
And I documented pieces of the journey on Instagram, and I wrote a series of posts about the early days (see Parts I, II, and III). But I really wish I had hired a full-time videographer to capture every moment.
There were ridiculous moments, like when I learned the hard way that our espresso machine drain pipe was too narrow:
One afternoon, during our first month of business, I got a frantic call from my manager, saying that the espresso machine was backed up. I quickly realized that the situation wasn’t going to be easily resolved and would take several hours of sorting and deconstruction before we could adequately address the issue.
That evening, equipped with an air compressor that my friend and investor, Krista Schnell, had acquired, we proceeded to attempt to blow out the clogged pipe. The first two attempts failed, because we had failed to adequately secure the pipes we were attempting to clean, but the 3rd time we succeeded. 50 pounds of air pressure was more than sufficient to clean the ¼ inch diameter pipe of years of built up espresso grounds and spoilt milk. Unfortunately, I’d had my head down near the drain pipe, to report on the success of our cleaning endeavors. The resulting expulsion from the stuck pipe sprayed espresso and milk goop all over the wall 10 feet away, ceiling 15 feet above, and my entire head and torso.
There were moments that are much more difficult to talk about, like when Frank didn’t show up for work, and I found out that he had died. When I published that story, it turned out that this is something other companies have had to deal with, and there are almost no resources about process grief or how to support a company grieving for a colleague. I wish I had a video detailing my experience to share with others a resource for them. (That’s one of the reasons we are creating content about grief at my new company, Motion.)
I wish I had footage of my nephew walking into Robin’s Cafe for the first time, looking in awe at my ice cream machine, and asking, in hushed tones, “Uncle Robin, do you own that Ice Cream Machine?!”
Most of all, I always wanted to have a digital representation of our physical bricks-and-mortar coffeeshop. I had hoped to create something online that customers could point to and be proud of in the same way they were proud of our store. Of course, I communicated with 5000+ customers via newsletter, spent countless hours talking with customers onsite, and developed meaningful personal relationship with vendors, staff, and neighbors. I even conducted a few podcast interview with vendors, like Andrew Barnett, founder of our coffee roaster Linea. But I never did create the digital equivalent of our physical store.
If I had it all to do over, I would have hired a full-time videographer onsite at Robin’s Cafe every single day to record and and create a short video every day about the building of our shop. This would have had a variety of benefits:
Captured endless hours of content which we would have turned into dozens or even hundreds of videos. Even if 90% of those videos were never viewed, some would have landed with our customers and a broader audience.
Parsed those videos into platform-specific content for LinkedIn, Instagram, and others. Some of that would even have made its way as strict audio onto my podcast The Robin Zander Show.
Learned advertising much earlier. Throughout much of 2018, I finally learned a bit about Facebook advertising and began advertising Robin’s Cafe to folks in the 94110 zip code. If I had been investing the money and time in creating videos, I would have also explored paid advertising much earlier.
Creating video would have been a forcing function for a variety of on-site efforts. I got better over time at having fliers on the doors and windows, teaching our staff to up-sell customers, and even promoting relevant podcasts to the 200+ customers who came through our doors each day. With fresh cafe videos daily, I would have done that much earlier, more often, and more effectively.
When I look at the potential upside of these efforts, I would have 2x or 3x our revenue in our first two years of business. Conservatively.
I’m not displeased with our numbers. As it was, we saw 50-80% growth every year. But the cafe could have performed better, and I would have even better stories to share.
I’m not making this mistake again. I’ve begun a new company, Motion, which provides online and in-person tools in those areas many people need a bit more support. We discuss the taboo topics: things like money, grief, mental health, and behavior change. And our first full-time employee is, in fact, a videographer!
Additionally, I’ve started documenting the journey of building Motion myself via my new Zander Vlog. (Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel!)
I hope this story is useful to you! If it is, please let me know by liking this post and leaving a comment below! Thanks for reading.
It has been almost 3 years since I began Robin’s Cafe, as a service to the attendees of the conference I was running onsite. I wanted coffee and sandwiches for our conference attendees, saw an opportunity to serve the neighborhood, and on 3 weeks notice, opened a cafe.
Now, 3 year later, I have learned a ton, and I’m ready to turn my attention to new adventures. I’ve left Robin’s Cafe in the very capable hands of my (former) team and the new owners. The new owners have owned a cafe previously and had been looking for just the right cafe to operate in San Francisco for several years. Even more, though, the team I left in place are the heartbeat of the organization, and they are excited for the continued tweaks and improvements to come.
Over the next few months, I hope to share some lessons learned from opening, building, and selling my cafe. (If you missed Part 1, you might want to begin there.) I hope you enjoy!
Silicon Valley celebrates “Exits”. We shouldn’t.
The number of times I’ve heard people bragging about their successful “exists” on the streets of San Francisco… If you aren’t familiar, an “exit” means selling your business or getting bought by another business. I was a bit skeptical, but like many in the Bay Area, I was also excited by the prospect of selling a company. It sounds like fun!
It isn’t. First of all, the number of hoops that have to be jumped through are outrageous. Legal, bureaucratic, logistic, financial, and – finally – people.
Really, though, we shouldn’t celebrate exits because it puts the focus in the wrong place – building unsustainable companies. Even though I’ve sold Robin’s Cafe at a profit, doing so is a mark that I am no longer the right person to run the business I started. For me, operating a cafe longterm is unrealistic and unsustainable. I am not a good long term fit for the role of “coffee shop owner”, in no small part because I consistently have other projects that keep me from solving the day-to-day minutiae that come up when running a restaurant.
Law is a Required Skill
When I opened Robin’s Cafe, I, my manager at the time, and the then-Executive Director of our landlord company, ODC, wrote and signed a 12 page lease that has served as our operating and guiding document ever since. It didn’t occur to any of us to have an attorney proof the lease, nor, as I found out 2 years later, did ODC’s Board of Directors approve the lease.
The terms of a lease will make or break your business. We have served more than 25,000 avocado toasts in 3 years, but that by itself isn’t enough. It isn’t sufficient to provide great service or be constantly busy. If the terms of a lease aren’t service-able, the business is going to fail.
I’ve signed a lot of documents in my life without reading the fine print. You probably have, too. I can’t keep track of the number of times Facebook or Gmail have changed their terms of service. But what am I going to do? Stop using my email? And it turns out the importance of a legally binding document, that will impact the livelihood of your business for years to come, is fundamentally important.
People Matter More Than Anything
I’ve seen over 50 employees come and go through Robin’s Cafe, and the cafe generally has about 15 people on staff at any time. Through this, I’ve discovered that the people behind the counter – the staff – are the heartbeat of an organization.
There’s the obvious stuff: you can’t serve customers without someone behind the counter to serve them. But more importantly, the culture of Robin’s Cafe has become a reflection of the culture of the staff.
Conway’s Law states that the shape of an organization dictates the shape of the products that company creates. In our case, though the cafe sells coffee and avocado toast, the real product was community. The community we had behind the counter is the real asset of Robin’s Cafe, and it is reflected in the quality of our patrons. Many companies say something like “We <3 our customers.” Walking into Robin’s Cafe, any day of the week, it is clear that they really do.
But when I say “People Matter More Than Anything”, I’m not just talking about customers. Yes, you can’t run a cafe without customers. But that’s just the gravy. Serving food and coffee is the job. Forming community for your customers? That’s the bonus, for when everything else is going well. And things only go well when the employees – those people doing the day-to-day work of the restaurant – are happy and satisfied themselves. There are lots of little ways to do this, but the single biggest, is spending time with each individual person within the organization, knowing them, knowing what matters for them, and following up – day after day.
Certainly, I’ve failed at this at times. There have been months at a time when I didn’t spend enough time with my staff. But that process, the regular, day-to-day attention, is what makes a cafe successful.
The Cost of Doing Business
There is a lot of talk about entrepreneurship right now. Unlike a decade ago, starting your own company is hip. There’s going to come a time in the next few years when that isn’t true, and we don’t put starting a business on a pedestal, but meanwhile…
Speaking as the “entrepreneur” behind several companies and with a successful “exit” under my belt, running a small business isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. Though we celebrate entrepreneurship at the moment, we aren’t talking about what it actually takes to maintain a successful company. Especially where a “successful” company means one that has a profit, doesn’t take on outsized debt, and remains in business!
What they don’t tell you, and I wish I’d known in starting Robin’s Cafe, is the bureaucratic hoops that have to be jumped every step of the way. To successfully operate Robin’s Cafe, I had to get and maintain the following permits:
California State Limited Liability Company
DBA (Doing Business As) Registration
California State Seller’s Permit
San Francisco Business Permit
San Francisco Health Department Permit
San Francisco Alcoholic Beverage Control Permit
Outdoor Tables and Chairs Permitting
And several more…
The logistics necessary to manage all of that permitting isn’t what most people who dream about opening up a cafe want to do. But that’s the necessary work, just in order to be in the game!
Have You Always Wanted to Own a Cafe? Don’t!
To all of those people who have approached me over the last few years and said: “I’ve always dreamed of owning a cafe” – and there have been hundreds – my response is this:
Don’t! Or at least: Know Yourself.
Here are some questions that I wish someone had asked me before I opened up Robin’s Cafe. I would still have begun the coffeeshop, but I would perhaps have done so with eyes just a bit more wide open.
Some questions to consider:
Are you interested in sweeping up spilled coffee grounds? Everyday? Forever?
Are you excited for the challenge of dealing with a dozen or more vendors, on a daily basis, each with their own schedules, pay structure, and delivery errors?
Are you sure you want to work in an industry that has the highest turnover of any industry in the world?
Does solving customer’s problems excite you, truly?
If so, then by all means! But these aren’t things most people who want to run a cafe, are eager to do. And this is the job.
The folks I’ve met are excited by the idea of running a cafe want different things. They want the philosophical elements – the beautiful space, building a community, the moments of delight for a customer. These things are the upside of a successful cafe, but not the reason to run one.
I remember the first time I learned – the hard way – that our espresso machine drain pipe is too small. One afternoon I got a frantic call from my then-manager, saying that the espresso machine was backed up, resulting in a very difficult time serving lattes, cappuccinos, and other espresso drinks. I quickly realized that the situation wasn’t going to be easily resolved, and would take several hours of sorting and deconstruction before we could adequately address the issue.
That evening, equipped with an air compressor that my friend and investor, Krista, had acquired for the purpose, we proceeded to attempt to blow out the clogged pipe. The first two attempts failed, because we had failed to adequately secure the pipes we were attempting to clean, but the 3rd time we succeeded. 50 pounds of air pressure was more than sufficient to clean the ¼ inch diameter pipe of years of built up espresso grounds and spoilt milk. Unfortunately, I’d had my head down near the drain pipe, to report on the success of our cleaning endeavors. The resulting expulsion from the stuck pipe, sprayed espresso and milk goop all over the wall 10 feet away, ceiling 15 feet above, and my entire head and torso.
Closing
When I look back at Robin’s Cafe, and especially now that a month has gone by, I’m mostly just grateful. To the 50+ employees I’ve had the pleasure of working with, the 200+ customers we’ve served each day, for the recognition of just how much work is required, and for all that I have learned along the way.
Larissa Conte is a systems coach, ceremony designer, and rites of passage guide through her business, Wayfinding. She also works with The Ready doing organization transformation to fuel the future of work. Larissa specializes in facilitating transformation and alignment across scales to foster power that serves.
With deep experience in the energetics and mechanics of transformation, Larissa helps individuals and groups develop refined sensing and listening, shed what no longer serves, and dynamically steward greater creative energy in their lives and companies. Her work weaves 10+ years of experience in the diverse fields of leadership coaching, organizational culture consulting, ecosystems science, strategy design, holistic healing/wellness, ceremony, somatic intimacy coaching, and wilderness survival. She’s worked with hundreds of leaders across startups and the Fortune 100, and is based in San Francisco.
As change agents, within or outside of organizations, attendees of Responsive Conference are those most responsible for other’s transformation. Onstage at this year’s conference, Larissa will invite us to consider our own blind spots, and the taboos we are failing to address that keep us from doing our best work.
Show Notes 3:00 Thinking and sensing 7:30 Physical injuries and emotional challenges
9:45 Wayfinding 13:00 Moved by feeling 17:30 Minimum amount of challenge for maximum change 19:15 Rite of passage 23:45 Larissa’s personal rituals 26:30 Beginnings and endings 30:00 Closing a meeting 31:15 What is going on culturally 36:30 Tensions coming to the surface 42:00 Unique voice
Mentions: Josh Waitzkin – Searching for Bobby Fischer
I hope you enjoy this talk from Responsive Conference 2016 with former Navy SEAL and New York Times best-selling author Chris Fussell (@fussellchris) alongside Rachel Mendelowitz (@rachelowitz) as they discuss “Team of Teams” and new ways of organizing companies of the future.
Alongside General Stan McChrystal, Chris runs the McChrystal Group – an organizational design consultancy that works with companies all over the world to do in industry what Stan, Chris and the US Military did during the Iraq War. In the book Teams of Teams, Stanley McChrystal and Chris outline how they took the special operations branch of the US Military – a stereotypically bureaucratic organization – and transformed it into a adaptive, agile system.
This video was recorded at the 1st Annual Responsive Conference in 2016.
I’m very pleased to share, exclusively for this podcast, a chapter of my book, Responsive: What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization. The full audiobook version of Responsive comes out in late September 2018, but in the meantime, I am excited to share it out in podcast form.
Here’s an excerpt. Subscribe and listen to The Robin Zander Show for the full chapter!
…as the pace of change accelerates, the challenges we face are becoming less and less predictable. Those practices that were so successful in the past are counter-productive in less predictable environments. In contrast, Responsive Organizations are designed to thrive in less predictable environments…
— Responsive Org Manifesto
The world is changing more rapidly than we have ever seen before in human history. According to 2012 estimates, members of the S&P 500 were expected on average to remain in the index for only eighteen years, compared to the sixty-one years they might have expected in 1958. The anticipated lifespan of companies has dropped dramatically over the last few decades.
We also see this in the rise of the ridesharing industry—Lyft and Uber, among others—which was enabled by the proliferation of smartphones. This new industry seized a large part of the taxi market, which previously had been considered stable, if not untouchable. Similarly, the rise of home sharing—and most notably, AirBNB—was made possible by the hyper-connectivity of the Internet Age, and disrupted the traditional hotel industry.
Another example of the changing nature of the business landscape is the 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon.com. The day the acquisition was announced, Whole Foods stock rocketed almost 30%, while the value of competitors in the grocery business dropped precipitously. The presumption, it seems, is that disruption of the grocery industry is now inevitable.
There’s a broad lesson in the emergence of ride sharing, home sharing, and the Whole Foods acquisition—which is that any organization or industry is liable to be shaken up at any moment. The goal of every company in the 21st century should be to become resilient, flexible, and have the capacity to respond to inevitable change. Industries, today, can change with unprecedented speed.
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If you’ve enjoyed Chapter 2 of Responsive, you can purchase a Kindle or print version of the book on Amazon. And be sure to check out the Responsive Conference, coming up September 24-25th in Queens, NY.
I’m very pleased to share, exclusively for this podcast, the first chapter of my book, Responsive: What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization. The full audiobook version of Responsive comes out in late September 2018, but in the meantime, I am excited to share it out in podcast form.
Here’s an excerpt. Subscribe and listen to The Robin Zander Show for the full chapter!
On the Shoulders of Giants
Responsive has been built on a community of which I am just a single member.
I am grateful to the six people wrote the Responsive Org manifesto, and began a movement: Adam Pisoni, Aaron Dignan, Matthew Partovi, Mike Arauz, Steve Hopkins and Alexis Gonzales-Black. They put words to a problem faced by organizations today and gave us a language to describe the challenges and tensions that have long existed in the workplace.
I would not have written this book without the friendship of Steve Hopkins, who taught me how to run an un-conference, and the handful of collaborators with whom I produced my first Responsive events.
I’m indebted to the fifty-plus leaders who I’ve interviewed on my podcast, The Robin Zander Show, who described big ideas like non-hierarchy and holacracy in simple language and gave me hope that I could write a book to do the same.
How To Use This Book
My career path has never followed a traditional route. My first job out of college was as a management consultant, with a gig as a circus performer nights and weekends. Of course, I couldn’t tell the consulting company that I was in the circus, but I also couldn’t admit to my fellow circus artists that I wore a suit to work. I am not content to live in such a binary world. I want to live in a world that encourages the full expression of every individual, and I am dedicated to building it. Improving the ways we work seems like a great place to start.
Responsive is a compilation of tactics and accompanying short stories about innovators on the front lines of the future of work. It is designed to be a choose-your-own-adventure exploration into how we work in the modern era, the approaches and perspectives employed by high performing organizations, and what makes those methods so effective.
While this book can be read cover to cover, I have designed it so that you can jump to those sections most interesting or relevant to you right now. Ultimately Responsive is intended as a reference guide as much as a road map—a resource you can return to again and again as you dive deeper into Responsive and the future of work.
A Responsive Café
I have a vested interest in discovering what works for myself and my small team. Throughout this book, I’ll share stories about my small business, a coffee shop in San Francisco, where I work with my ten-person staff to serve coffee and avocado toast and to build community.
I founded “Robin’s Café” in late April 2016, with no prior experience as a restaurateur but armed with a clear purpose: to foster a nascent community that I knew could exist in our corner of San Francisco. We had exactly three weeks from inception to opening day, so, unsurprisingly, our first week of operations was a mess. Attendees of a conference I had organized on site wanted to support the café, creating a bona fide lunch rush on our very first day.
In those early weeks, we were a team of four, often making up recipes on the spot to cover orders. I look back on those times now, after having a tough day, and realize that no matter how terrible things might seem, it will never be as chaotic and insane as those first few weeks.
We desperately needed additional staff. One day, a man named Frank quietly dropped off his resume during our usual morning rush. I was up to my elbows managing an exploding keg of cold brew. But even in the midst of a coffee emergency, it quickly became clear that Frank was professional, playful, and knowledgeable about the food service industry. I hired him, and he soon became indispensable at the café.
On May 20, 2016, Frank had been scheduled to open the café. Around 9:30 a.m., I got a call that Frank hadn’t shown up. “Was he sick?” I wondered. I checked to see if he’d sent me any messages, but there were none. I called him, but it went to voicemail. A week later, I sent an email, mostly in jest, with the subject, “Are you still alive?” The staff and I just assumed that Frank became a “no call, no show,” something not uncommon in the service industry. Frank’s cutting contact was a simple case of job abandonment. Still, it somehow didn’t seem like Frank, and I wanted to make sure he was okay. I tracked down his brother on social media and messaged him. I heard nothing for several days.
Then, out of the blue, Frank’s brother called me. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” I remember him saying, “My brother is dead. He was hit and killed by a train.” In that moment of shock, while I digested what I’d just heard, Frank’s brother went on: “I want you to know how happy he was to be working at Robin’s Café.”
Frank’s death is a constant reminder to me of how truly transient and changeable business—and life—can be. As a small business owner in those first few weeks, I had to be resilient, not just in my response to Frank’s death, but to be able to mentor and support those at our café and in the community who knew him. I was determined to build into the ethos of our organization this realization that circumstances can change in an instant. I wanted my team to be resilient when times got tough and grateful for the days when work felt more like play. I like to think that in some way this commitment to resilience and good humor is a small homage to Frank.
That same ethos is what has compelled me to write this book and to share just some of the ways that ground-breaking organizations and individuals are exploring human-centered work. This book is an invitation to see the value of Responsive approaches and bring them into your organization as fits your vision and culture.
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If you’ve enjoyed Chapter 1 of Responsive, you can purchase a Kindle or print version of the book on Amazon. And be sure to check out the Responsive Conference, coming up September 24-25th in Queens, NY.
This video was recorded live at the 1st Annual Responsive Conference in 2016. Come see Adam Pisoni live again this year at the 3rd Annual Responsive Conference on September 24 and 25, 2018 in Queens, New York.
Building Yammer
Adam Pisoni (@adampisoni) co-founded Yammer (which sold to Microsoft for 1.2 billion dollars). He recounts how he learned about about Conway’s law. “At Yammer, we believed in rapid product iteration. Once we realized the organizational structure was part of the product, we then had to believe in rapid organization iteration.” The engineering mantra at Yammer became: “We’re not smarter than other people. We just iterate faster.”
This insight led Adam to recognize that he and the engineering and product teams at Yammer were not just building a product but building a company (at least, if they were going to be effective). He began to investigate what it would mean not just to rapidly iterate on Yammer’s product but to iterate the organization’s structure itself.
In other words, he began to explore whether Yammer could become more Responsive. What Adam was clear on, was that their product didn’t exist in isolation. Yammer, as a communication platform for enterprise businesses, was particularly well placed to recognize the challenges of the current working world. Eventually, Adam put these thoughts into a manifesto and shared them with CEOs and C-level executives. The response was an enthusiastic affirmation of their ideas. The result of this thinking led Adam to co-found the Responsive Org movement.
Experiments in Education
Adam realized the education system in North America is largely still reliant on an assembly-model way of teaching and thinking. Consider the structure of most schools: there are grades, segregated by age; there are alarm bells which tell students when to move from one classroom to the next. The most common form of learning is to passively sit and absorb lectured lessons.
More subtly, subjects are taught according to a linear progression. Math education in the United States, for example, moves from algebra, to geometry, to advanced algebra, to precalculus, to calculus. This progression to trains students to think about math in a way that only entrenches a hierarchical, linear view of how to how the world works. School in the 21st Century is still designed to produce people to work in factories.
Adam was bold enough to tackle revitalizing the education system, by optimizing administrators’ time and budgets. He founded Abl Schools, a collaborative platform for administrators and teachers. Abl has re-envisioned how principals relate with their teachers and facilities and how schools use their time. The idea is to help schools better manage the day-to-day to be able to achieve its educational goals, starting with the company’s first product, a cloud-based master scheduler.
Exciting possibilities emerge when we reconsider even behemoth institutions like the U.S. education system and experiment with new approaches that leverage technology and new models of collaborating. What is necessary, is the willingness to experiment.
A Diverse Founding Team
Adam Pisoni has been open about the challenges of creating diversity in founding his company Abl Schools. He writes:
“If your founding team is homogenous, it will likely develop a narrow culture which is well suited for that narrow group of people. That culture won’t be as self-aware of the lack of inclusion in the culture, but it will feel inclusive for everyone within the tight knit founding team. As new employees with different backgrounds join, they will be more likely to reject or be rejected from the culture than to add to it. While you may be celebrating how strong a culture and tight a team you have, you may also be unaware of the ways you’re actually reminding that new employee that they don’t belong.”
While there is a lot of conversation about fostering an inclusive company culture, very few Silicon Valley companies have an equal gender split between male and female employees, and even fewer have women or underrepresented groups at the highest levels of leadership.
As Adam explains, this doesn’t actually mean teams of straight white men can’t produce great companies. He argues: “I believe diverse founding teams can produce better outcomes. A team of white men can come up with good ideas. But I believe a diverse team can come up with better ones.” The curiosity and perseverance Adam has demonstrated at Abl Schools is an example of what can be done in any number of genres by founders just starting out.
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If you enjoyed this episode of the Robin Zander Show, you might also enjoy hearing me and Adam in conversation, recorded at the Responsive book launch party last November.
At Responsive Conference 2018, Adam will be joined onstage by Anthony Kim (Founder, Education Elements) to dive deeply into the problems facing our current educational practices, and what can be done to improve them.
I hope you enjoy this talk with Jennifer Dennard from Responsive Conference 2016. Jennifer is the co-founder of Range Labs and the former Head of People and Culture at Medium, focusing on organization design, people operations, and diversity & inclusion.
Jennifer is passionate about helping teams work together better. In this talk, Jennifer talks about human resources and a future of work that is best for our employees.
This talk was recorded live at the 1st Annual Responsive Conference in September 2016. Learn more at http://responsiveconference.com
I’m pleased to share this talk at Responsive Conference 2017 with Charles Best (@CharlesBest), founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org.
Charles Best is an American philanthropist and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding platform for K-12 teachers serving in US schools.
Charles launched the organization out of a Bronx public high school where he taught history. DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey’s “ultimate favorite things” and was named by Fast Company as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.”
This video was recorded at the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference in New York City in 2017. Learn more: http://responsiveconference.com
I’m pleased to share this talk at Responsive Conference 2017 with Steve Hopkins (@stevehopkins), Director of Customer Success at Culture Amp and a founding member of the Responsive Org movement.
Steve is passionate about helping clients develop a responsive operating culture that they can be proud of. At Culture Amp, Steve does this by guiding clients through successful culture change programs using the Culture Amp HR and People Analytics platform.
This talk was recorded live at the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference in September 2017. Learn more at http://responsiveconference.com
I’m pleased to share this talk at Responsive Conference 2017 with Meg Poe, professor at New York University.
Megan Poe is a psychiatrist and interpersonal psychoanalyst who teaches one of New York University’s most popular and fastest-growing classes. Her topic? Love! At this year’s Responsive Conference, she’ll explore with us what it takes to live, love, and work well.
In addition to her professorship at NYU, Meg has a private practice in New York City. Meg’s mission is to help people feel most present and alive in their creative flow and inner life. She specializes in helping adults create more-intimate, fulfilling relationships in their lives and work.
This talk was recorded live at the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference in September 2017. Learn more at http://responsiveconference.com
I’m pleased to share this keynote address by my friend Aaron Dignan (@aarondignan), founder of The Ready, at Responsive Conference 2017.
Aaron Dignan sees the same phenomenon everywhere he looks. Our most trusted and important institutions – in business, healthcare, government, philanthropy, and beyond – are struggling. They’re confronted with the fact that the scale and bureaucracy that once made them strong are liabilities in an era of constant change.
Aaron is the founder of The Ready and a founding member of the Responsive Org movement.
This talk was recorded live at the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference in September 2017. We’re gearing up for Responsive Conference 2018, and excited to have The Ready leading an interactive Teaming simulation.
I am so excited for today’s interview with two guests. Today we are speaking with Anthony Kim (@Anthonx), the founder and CEO of Education Elements, as well as Alexis Gonzales-Black (@Gonzalesblack), a former guest on the podcast and speaker at Responsive Conference.
1:30 How Anthony and Alexis met 4:30 Holacracy at Education Elements 7:00 Check ins and check outs 9:00 Balancing tensions 12:15 Assumptions versus known facts 14:15 Alexis’ background in education 15:30 Recruitment and retention 17:45 Inefficient processes in education 24:00 Team of teams autonomy 27:15 Tailor Responsive concepts to fit your personal teams 30:00 Sharing information transparently 32:30 School structures have not revolutionized enough 36:00 The New School Rules book structure 38:00 Planning and predicting 42:15 How to make change with mini experiments 45:15 Creating better work conditions for teachers 49:30 Safe enough to try 52:30 Contact Alexis and Anthony: Website: The New School Rules Amazon: The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools – If you like the book, please leave a review! Linkedin: Alexis and Anthony Twitter: Alexis, Anthony, The New School Rules Anthony’s Website: Education Elements Alexis’ Website: Thoughtful Org
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If you enjoyed this interview you’ll also enjoy my first interview with Alexis Gonzales-Black, where we discussed her backstory, rolling out Holacracy at Zappos and much more.
And, don’t forget, tickets are on sale now for Responsive Conference 2018 – where both Alexis and Anthony will be onstage!
I first got to know today’s guest through my work at Socos, alongside Vivienne Ming. Over the last several years, I’ve heard a name mentioned in a variety of unlikely contexts – by Chris Anderson, the CEO of TED, Perry Chen, the Co-Founder of Kickstarter, and Beth Comstock, the Vice Chair at GE.
My guest today is Sunny Bates, a behind-the-scenes master connector of many of the most innovative companies, personalities, and artists that you’ve heard of, and many that you haven’t.
Sunny sits on the board of Kickstarter, the MIT Media Lab, and TED. She advises companies like GE and Credit Suisse on new initiatives and is the go-to resource when companies like P&G and The Guardian need a new breakthrough.
As you’ll hear, Sunny is deeply committed to culture and the arts. I was startled to learn that she had hosted world-famous musician, Amanda Palmer, and blogger, Maria Popova, to her home for a house party.
In this interview, we discuss how Sunny has built an incredible network of innovators, spanning more than 40,000 people, how her enthusiasm for spontaneous encounters led to her role at Kickstarter, among others, and some of the trends she is most excited for in the future.
Please enjoy!
Show Notes 2:30 Sunny’s connections 5:30 Building a network 10:30 Adding value to other’s work and lives 13:30 We learn quickest alongside an expert 16:45 Exploring our creative side 19:15 Kickstarter 22:00 Looking at the big picture 24:30 A career as a series of projects 29:00 Trends in the future of work 32:15 Equality 34:45 Acknowledgment and gratitude 38:00 It’s never too late to give thanks or apologize 39:45 Compensation 44:00 Books: The State of Affairs by Esther Perel 46:30 Website: sunnybates.com Twitter: @SunnyBates Ted Talk
Every year, for nearly the last decade, I’ve conducted an annual review.
When writing a personal annual review, my process looks like this:
Going on the week by week view of my 2017 calendar and listing out every single thing that I spent my time doing. Given that most days I usually have 10-20 things on my calendar scheduled per day, this ends up being 4 or 5 handwritten pages. It goes faster than I would expect but usually takes about 2 hours. I list everything from phone calls, trips, and time spent in transit to meals (personal or professional), time at the cafe, time spent meeting vendors, and weekly standing meetings.
I go through and sort all of the items listed by category: business appointments, hours spent writing, hours spent exercising, hours working at the cafe.
Once I’ve organized everything by category, I give it a positive value judgement – a score from 1-10 on how much joy I derived from this activity, and a negative value judgement – a score from negative 1-10 on how much dissatisfaction I got from this activity. Each data point gets two specific numbers.
I mostly pay attention to the high scores of joy and the high scores of dissatisfaction. I circle the 8, 9, 10s of both positive and negative. I’ll list those out by peak experience by the positives like surfing, travel with my family, and time with my girlfriend, and the negatives like raising sponsorship, handling vendors at Robin’s Cafe, and time spent driving.
Next, I take this into action for the new year by grading the quality of my experiences over the year. If there are specific people that fall in the negative 8, 9, or 10 category, I may have to sever ties with them, which can be very challenging. I may email the person outlining the reasons why I am taking steps to set new boundaries in our relationship.
Ex: When I did this reflection in 2016, I noticed that there was a person that I had spent a lot of time with that year who I hadn’t enjoyed the quality of our time spent together. I asked myself – would I rather spend this time with this person or would I rather spend this time alone? To make a change going forward, I stopped calling him up. He invited me to a few things this year, and I declined. It was a pretty easy change.
Ex: Writing – I spent a lot of time writing in 2017. How much satisfaction did I get from the act of that process? Is that something worth repeating in 2018?
Ex: Time spent exercising – I spent significantly less time exercising in 2017 than in 2015 when I studied ballet every day. Is that amount of time per day enough? If the answer is no, I can schedule time to exercise everyday for a few hours in my calendar for 2018 for first few months.
Finally, I write down the 3 – 5 most significant changes or projects that I accomplished for the year (my trip to Morocco, my training in Puerto Rico, the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference, Responsive the book, and my relationship).
Significant Events & Projects in 2017
Morocco
I’ve written about cultural lessons learned on my trip to Morocco but less so about the importance of time spent with my parents. Growing up, I traveled with my immediate family several weeks per year but have not done so regularly as an adult. For my 30th birthday present, my parents took me on a 5 week trip to Morocco. What is interesting, in retrospect, is that even more than the cultural experience of traveling, was the importance of that time with my family. Taking time as an adult to get to know each of my parents, see myself in them, and be grateful for the quality of time spent has been, and continues to be, life changing.
Puerto Rico training
I spent 4 years in my early 20’s studying deep somatic practice with Anat Baniel and another 4 years studying at the Option Institute. While I no longer participate in either organization, I achieved a level of mastery with the tool sets that each of these organizations teach and continue to practice them to this day. On my first day of my first training with Anat Baniel, I told her that someday I would like to teach this material, and now 10 years later, I have done so only minimally.
The Puerto Rico training, which I co-taught with a friend in June of 2017, was my first public offering to teach and further refine the tool sets that I was fortunate enough to be exposed to and truly changed my life throughout my 20s. I am excited to further teach these tools through a variety of mediums in 2018.
The 1st annual Responsive Conference was a giant unknown as I had never previously curated and directed an event of that magnitude before. The 2nd Annual Responsive Conference was less of an exploration and more of a refinement. My single biggest goal was to form a cohesive organizing team, and in that I succeeded magnificently. Further, I sought to make intentional the curatorial choices I had begun in 2016 including factors like venue, speakers, and working with speakers to present fresh and relevant content. Across the board, the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference was a triumph. We had 225 people from more than 10 countries and with the help of my production team, the event went off pristinely. I am excited in 2018 to further refine and automate the processes that made the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference a success – aka to do less!
Responsive: What It Takes To Create A Thriving Organization
I have never been able to write as other than a very intentional act, and writing had been one of the primary things I avoided throughout most of 2017. Thus, I am thrilled to have actually publishedResponsive: What it Takes to Create a Thriving Organization which is a compilation of three years of interviews and curation on the future of work.
Relationships
Finally, and by no means least important, I entered into a new relationship midway through the year. I moved in with my girlfriend in December of 2017. This is far and away, the most significant romantic relationship I have ever had, and it’s no coincidence that we have become collaborators on multiple professional, as well as personal, projects. Relationships of all kinds are perhaps one of the three most important aspects in any of our lives, and I couldn’t be any more pleased with this developing romance.
What were your highlights in 2017? Lowlights? What do you want to build on in the year ahead? Let me know in the comments!
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Robin’s Cafe with Adam Pisoni, co-founder and former CTO at Yammer, co-founder of the Responsive Org movement, and founder and CEO at Abl Schools.
In conversation from stage and then Q&A with the audience, we discussed founding Yammer, the Responsive Org movement, and his efforts at Abl Schools to revitalize the U.S.education system. Exciting possibilities emerge when we reconsider that even behemoth institutions like the U.S. education system can become Responsive!
While there is a lot of conversation about fostering an inclusive company culture, very few Silicon Valley companies have an equal gender split between male and female employees, and even fewer have women or underrepresented groups at the highest levels of leadership.
We will explore the challenges and lessons learned at Abl Schools, and tactics any founder can apply in the effort to build a Responsive organization.
Show Notes
4:00 Intentions 7:00 Yammer and Conway’s Law 10:00 Starting Responsive Org 11:45 Theory of Responsive 13:30 Challenges of these changes 16:00 Iterate in the shape of your organization 18:00 Adam mentions:
19:15 Adams transition to education 21:30 Mindsets 24:30 Dropping out of high school 26:30 Education limitations 30:00 Diverse founding teams – podcast and article 36:15 Social emotional skills 40:00 Responsive Org tensions 46:45 Balancing success and time with experimentation 51:30 Egos and fear of failure 53:30 Integrative decision making 57:30 Value of experience 1:01:00 Diversity 1:04:45 Abl’s work in public schools 1:07:30 Measuring impact 1:10:00 Playing with boundaries of leadership and structure 1:15:00 Hiring that focuses on diversity 1:20:00 Purpose of diversity 1:24:30 VC’s reporting on diversity of companies they fund 1:26:15 Robin’s Book: Responsive: What It Takes to Create A Thriving Organization
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Don’t forget to give a listen to my first podcast with Adam Pisoni, as well.
I took up Thai Kickboxing towards the beginning of 2016, after several years dedicated to the study of ballet. I had wanted more Muay Thai (the formal Thai name for the sport) ever since having tried the form for a few intense weeks in 2013.
Early 2016 was a transitional time for me. I had just quit my full-time job for the educational company Socos, was exploring what would become the Responsive Conference, and looking for something to compliment my training in gymnastics and ballet. I joined “El Niño’s,” a fight gym in San Francisco owned by professional fighter Gilbert “El Niño” Melendez. Thai Kickboxing is an unusually effective form at the intersection between sport and practical self-defense. I had never thrown a punch and wanted to try.
As is often the case when I begin a new physical practice, I quickly began to take class 3 and then 5 days a week, and to practice ‘shadow boxing’ (sparing without a partner or bag) while on phone calls or in the shower. It was fascinating to see how much the intensity of the martial form complemented the rest of my life, and I found myself wanting more.
Muay Thai is called the “art of 8 limbs” because in addition to kicking and punching, the form uses elbows and knees. In traditional Thai fights, there is a great deal of ritual, followed by some of the most abrupt violence I have ever witnessed.
I have never been prone to violence. Growing up, my mother taught me to believe that violence should always be avoided. It wasn’t until my early 20s that I considered the difference between the concepts of aggression and violence. The practice of a deliberately violent sport was far outside my experience. In Muay Thai we train with heavily padded gloves and pads, and it is still scary to throw my weight into a punch at someone’s head. Above all, my study of the form was as an exploration of fear — the fear of getting hit and of hitting another (albeit, consenting) person.
I’m not proud of everything that came out of my time practicing Muay Thai; I experienced significant downsides. And through my daily study of controlled violence I discovered a level of confidence and courage that will serve me well for years to come.
From 4th grade until early high school, I was an outsider — the “sensitive” kid in a community that valued hyper-masculinity. I sported boy-band long blond hair in defiance of the buzz cuts of my peers. I was called “girl,” which was the biggest insult any of us could think of. I remember one day in 5th grade getting invited to play basketball, only to have the ball thrown at my face, breaking my nose.
Fortunately, I grew out of those years, and it took a decade to find an appreciation of team sports and even longer to begin practicing martial forms. That today I enjoy watching professional fighters compete would have shocked my 10- or 15-year old self.
I remember the first time I felt like a predator at El Niño’s. My fight gym has some world class fighters who practice with us. Merely hearing their exhalations when they strike is enough to make me want to take a step back, and the force of some of their explosive kicks against a bag makes me cringe.
In my first month, I was paired with a fellow — call him Miguel — who was in his first week. He was a few inches shorter and maybe 10 pounds lighter than me. We were taught a sequence of punches, kicks, elbows, and knees designed to help us practice a specific type of attack and defense. It wasn’t especially challenging to hold pads while Miguel executed this series against me. When it came my turn to attack, it was clear that he was tired and bit scared. Like a tiger sensing prey, my aggression spiked and I went after him more intensely. This aggressive drive continued to spiral, until I found myself thinking — through a fog of effort — “I could kill him!” While he was never in any danger, that fleeting thought — that I was capable of causing physical harm to another — rocked me.
I don’t walk around afraid anymore. When someone attempted to steal the tip jar at my café a month ago, I had no compunction about stopping him physically. I was also surprised at how angry I became.
In August 2016 I spent a week camping with my family in the Sierras. One evening we found ourselves in a heated discussion, and I got increasingly angry to the point that I literally punched a tree. My parents were shocked, in 30 years never having seen me angry to the point of violence. I was surprised, too, and somewhat bewildered by my own actions. My bloody knuckles were a useful reminder for the next several days.
This and similar violent outbursts could be attributed to the stress of my professional life — opening the café, running the Responsive Conference — but that would be false attribution. It was tied to the daily practice of violence and aggression. When I walked away from Muay Thai in September, I left behind the intensity of the practice and the anger.
I’m glad not be practicing Thai Kickboxing for the time being, and I’m extremely grateful for the range of experiences, practice facing fear, and understanding of violence I learned.
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This post was originally published on Medium. If you’ve enjoyed this article, join my newsletter for a short weekly updates with articles, stories about building culture at Robin’s Cafe, and more.
I walk into the ballet studio at 3pm on a sunny Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco’s Castro District. I’m 29 and have been dancing ballet 6 or 7 days each week for more than a year. At this time of day, most of peers who work in technology in San Francisco, in science at University of California, San Francisco, or as doctors or lawyers, are looking forward to getting off of work soon and enjoying what’s left of the afternoon with friends. Instead, as I step through the ballet studio doors, I am enter a world filled with 14 year old dancers who have 10 years more ballet experience and better performance to show for it. I will be taking four ballet classes this evening, along side a group of students just finishing up high school.
My name is Robin, I’m 29 years old, and I’m new to ballet.
As you might guess, I did not grow up dancing. While I have always been physically active, on my family’s 4-acre farm and on the high school cross-country team, I didn’t start dancing until college. While attending Reed College, I discovered a love for movement and sports, and quickly started gymnastics, Capoeira, modern dance, and a variety of other forms. After college I attempted to train dance but the siren call of an adult life led me to explore other paths.
In the years since I’ve maintained a physical practice that has spanned gymnastics, Argentine tango, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and many other forms. But eventually I found myself drawn back to ballet, and especially the classical pas de deux and men’s technique that I couldn’t get outside of a very strenuous pre-professional ballet program.
In the last year I have made sacrifices to accommodate the schedule I now enjoy. I haven’t been able to enjoy the perks of a well-funded technology company or attend graduate school because those wouldn’t allow time for my practice of ballet. On the other hand, I did recently finish a 10-week contract performing with the San Francisco Opera’s Les Troyens.
My goal in sharing this story is to inspire others who have similar hesitations — at any age — to explore the things we believe we are too old to begin. You are never too old to start something new. I don’t have time right now to share the entire story. I have to get to class. But if my example can serve in any way, I hope that it can show that if you want something enough, you can get there.
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This post was originally published on Medium. If you’ve enjoyed this post, join my newsletter for more on fear and physical learning.
My guest today is the award-winning author, speaker and small business strategist Pamela Slim (@pamslim).
I first began following Pam’s work with the publication of her first book, Escape from Cubicle Nation, and have watched with enthusiasm as she has transitioned over her career across several very different industries and classes of business.
Her latest, bestselling book, Body of Work, gives a fresh perspective on skills required in the new world of work for people in all work modes, from corporate to nonprofit to small business.
As the founder of K’é in downtown Mesa, Arizona, she now supports small businesses through classes, networking events, and virtual programs.
As the owner of a small cafe in the San Francisco Mission, I was very interested to hear Pam thoughts on why small business is not only necessary but also a great place to build within, with enormous potential.
We discuss a trait that Pam has embodied throughout her career, which I think of as being a lifelong learner or autodidact – and what Pam calls being a multipotentialite.
Pam will be speaking at the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference on Sept. 18-19th 2017 in NYC. I hope you enjoy this interview and hope you’ll consider joining us!
Show Notes
03:00 Capoeira 06:30 Lessons learned from Capoeira 09:30 Pam’s move to Mesa, Arizona – Pam mentions the film “Dolores” by Peter Bratt 14:15 Small business is sexy 18:30 Tactical learning 21:30 Work mode 27:30 Different aspects of self 29:30 Pam’s time in college studying in Mexico and Columbia 33:00 Having multiple career choices – Pam mentions How to Be Everything by Emilie Wapnick and her TED Talk 36:00 Body of Work in practice 38:30 Characteristics of Pam’s Incubator 41:00 Building networks 44:00 Growing small, innovative businesses in small, unexpected locations 49:15 New cities becoming hubs 52:00 Enjoying the process 55:00 Pam’s physical practice 57:45 Learn more about Pam:
If you enjoyed this episode with Pam Slim, I think you will enjoy the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference this September 18-19th in New York City.
Could you do me a favor? If you’ve enjoyed the Robin Zander Show, I would really appreciate a review on iTunes. Reviews help others find the podcast, and more importantly let me know that you’re enjoying what you’re hearing. Thank you!
You can also keep track of the podcast and all of my projects via my newsletter. Just visit RobinPZander.com and click Newsletter.
Megan Poe is a psychiatrist and interpersonal psychoanalyst who teaches one of New York University’s most popular and fastest-growing classes. Her topic? Love! At this year’s Responsive Conference, she’ll explore with us what it takes to live, love, and work well.
In addition to her professorship at NYU, Meg has a private practice in New York City. Meg’s mission is to help people feel most present and alive in their creative flow and inner life. She specializes in helping adults create more-intimate, fulfilling relationships in their lives and work.
In this interview we cover a ton of ground – why Meg’s class at NYC is so popular, the definition of self-love, and how Meg thinks about love both chronologically over a lifetime, and in different roles – mentorship, familial love, romantic love, and more. We discuss Megs background as a doctor, but also her exploration into sound healing and kundalini yoga – and how these influence her work today.
I really enjoyed this wide ranging conversation and can’t wait to see her onstage at the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference. I hope you enjoy today’s interview with Megan Poe.
Show Notes
3:00 Meg’s class on love at NYU 9:30 Collaboration 13:00 Teams and projects that bring people together 16:30 Dream analysis 21:30 Kundalini yoga 24:45 Kundalini rising 28:30 Working with students 33:30 Love that is not regarded as love 37:45 How Meg began looking at love 42:30 Self acceptance 48:00 Expanding our understanding of love 50:30 Lack of self love 52:45 Tools for self love 1:01:30 Mixing science and art 1:06:00 Med school 1:10:00 Find Meg:
If you enjoyed this episode with Megan Poe, I think you will enjoy the 2nd Annual Responsive Conference, which will be taking place this September in New York City.
Could you do me a favor? If you’ve enjoyed the Robin Zander Show, I would really appreciate a review on iTunes. Reviews help others find the podcast, and more importantly let me know that you’re enjoying what you’re hearing. Thank you!
D. Cody Fielding is a professional coach who has worked in the fields of fitness, wellness, and performance enhancement for more than 20 years. I met Cody in 2008, shortly after moving to San Francisco, just as I began my own career as a personal trainer, and he had a profound impact on my own thinking about movement and the body.
We conducted this interview in Cody’s private studio in the Mission District of San Francisco. Cody’s backgrounds includes the study and practice of biomechanics, posture, nutrition, evolutionary biology, psychology, and physics. He has worked with and studied the works of everyone from Joseph Pilates, Moshe Feldenkrais, Scott Sonnon, Mel Siff, and many others.
I’ve been consistently impressed with Cody’s diligence and examination of how to improve performance, but also the subtler elements that make a peak performer. Once, over coffee, Cody interviewed me with a quality of complete focus that contributed to my own desire to learn to conduct interviews. Similarly, over the course of one memorable hour Cody taught me how to throw a football, which is something I had never done previously. His thoughtfulness and thoroughness made learning to throw a football effortless, and for the first time, fun.
Cody and I delve pretty deep into what he calls “physical culture,” which is to say the study and practice of movement and the human body. I have learned an enormous amount about performance, movement, and the body from Cody and I hope you enjoy this interview.
Much of what I know about hand balancing I learned from today’s guest – professional acrobat Cory Tabino. To celebrate I’ve re-released my book How To Do A Handstand and just this week I am giving it away for free. Visit fearlesshandstands.com for your own free copy.
Now, onwards with the Show!
I’m thrilled to share today’s guest – Cory Tabino – who is a professional circus performer and acrobat. Cory was my first hand balancing instructor and paved the way for much of my performance career since.
Cory has been a professional circus artist for more than 20 years, having done performances ranging from sideshow to Cirque du Soleil. He is full of hilarious stories about the life of an acrobat, and he shares them throughout the show.
Back alley surgeries?
Stage fright?
Training with Marines?
I’m thrilled to announce the FREE release of my second ebook today: Unstuck. Check it out on Amazon!
I’ve been hard at work on this project for many months, and in many ways it is actually the work of a decade. In Unstuck I describe the trajectory of my last ten years of physical activity and exploration, breaking down specific tools I’ve cultivated in a wide variety of sports and physical activities.
Here’s a condensed version of my History of a Compulsion 1998 – I began as a runner by attempting and failing to keep up with family marathons 2000 – Competed in my first cross-country race 2002 – Achieved Varsity Cross-Country status, high status among runners but not in high school. 2003 – Began juggling, which did not elevate my social status but did introduce me to the world of circus arts
Gymnastics
November 2003 – Walked off the cross-country team at my peak, began rock climbing, fencing, enrolled in dance classes, discovered gymnastics November 2008 – Landed on my head on a trampoline, thereby ending my aspirations of a career with Cirque Du Soleil November 2012 – Hesitantly reentered a gymnastic gym 2013 – Mastered my gymnastics giant, front and back flips, handstands, and more
Blues Dancing
2011 – Hesitantly walked into my first Blues dance venue 2012 – Co-founded Fuse, a social dance performance company 2013 – Took multiple trips to Buenos Aires, Argentina to study tango
Martial Arts
1995-1998 – Repeatedly bullied in middle school 1999 – Helpless in the face of a pit bull attacking me and my dog Sandy April 2013 – Attempted to learn 12 martial arts in 1 week 2013 – Continued to study and compete in Muay Thai, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, despite leaving sessions shaking with fear and adrenaline 2014 – Wrestled with a pit bull, fearlessly
2014 and Beyond
December 2013 – Took my first ballet class since 2009 January 2014 – Abandoned gymnastics, jiu-jitsu, Blues dance, and all the rest in favor of classical ballet August 2014 – Joined a pre-professional ballet training program 30 hours/week April 2015 – Contracted to perform with the San Francisco Opera
This week continues to be a wild ride! On Monday, I published my first book, “How To Do A Handstand” which hit the #1 Fitness Ebook on Amazon! In case you missed the excitement, here’s the description and cover photo. Below, you will find a ton of additional resources, including a Slideshare I created to teach handstands, and 36 short videos which detail all of the incremental steps. You can download the book for FREE on Amazon through Friday.
Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering Handstands in 20 Days
Handstands are a common exercise that are almost never learned correctly. Balancing upside down is something most people tried as children, but which adults have long since given up on. When handstands are attempted by adults they are done so in just one way: push up against a wall and hope for the best. Handstands need not be learned through this method of repeated failure.
Why Everyone Fails
Those who do attempt to learn handstands as an adult do so through throwing themselves up and hoping that they’ll be able to manage to balance. The result is discouragement, embarrassment, and pain. No one has been taught the simple steps necessary to learn to balance, or the mental and physical impediments they will encounter along the way.
In How To Learn A Handstand Robin teaches all of the steps necessary to go from novice to expert in 20 days, and shares the 3 reasons most people never master a fearless handstand.
How To Learn A Handstand includes a day-by-day breakdown for learning how to balance a handstand in 20 days. The book includes 36 videos, 50+ images and a worksheet which details every step.
Would You Like To Know More?
You don’t have to fail repeatedly in order to eventually succeed. Follow this 20-day plan and make gradual progress to master your own fearless handstand. You will come away with the concrete knowledge of how to progress from where you are to the next level, overcome any fear you have of being upside down, and have fun! Download now, and begin to practice your own fearless handstands.
Slideshare presentation on several of the most important topics covered in the book.
There are a lot of new and exciting changes in my life. Over the last 2 years I’ve gone out social dancing 6x nights a week, training gymnastics until 10 or 11pm some nights, and working early into the morning hours. It was a not uncommon occurrence for a flatmate to be getting up for breakfast and find me fixing myself a 5am pre-bedtime snack. Well, that’s changed…
I am currently organizing the biggest event I’ve ever put on. We are organizing a thousand person workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area for The Son-Rise Program®: Essentials workshop – a transformative three days workshop for parents and professionals with children with autism. There are some free upcoming talks, here.
Additionally, I’ve switched from dancing Blues/Fusion and Argentine Tango to ballet. I am currently taking ballet class at LINES ballet six times each week.
These changes make me harder to find than I was just a couple of months ago. I am used to seeing a lot of people regularly on dance floors around the Bay Area and won’t be, for the foreseeable future. So I’m instigating a new, weekly (free) event. I have been certified to practice the Anat Baniel Method, a modern variant of the Feldenkrais Method, and a gentle style of movement education that I’ve used to overcome some severe injuries. This is the same sort of thing I do with autistic kids. I’ve done a lot of movement in my life – from founding a dance company to trying a dozen martial arts in a week. I have studied with some amazing teachers. And I’ve never met someone with a more thorough applied understanding of human motor learning than Anat Baniel. I want to continue to learning with you…
Movement has always been at the center of my pursuits and practices. I now have the honor and privilege of taking more than two decades work of experience and applying these skills to children with special needs. Through an understanding of the basic science of human motor learning acquisition – or how people learn to move better – I apply the skills I have acquired to help children learn to move better.
