How to Build a Stronger Korean American Community - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 13 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?"  Yoon shares how she is building the bridge between the first immigration wave from Korea which focused on survival and the second, which is now thriving.  She details how she is working across the Korean American community to utilize the assets to make deeper contributions to America.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

Using Communications Training to Lead a Community - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 14 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "How Has Your Communications Experience in Film and News Been Most Valuable in Your Non-Profit Work?"  Yoon notes how her communications training has been a transferable skill from media reporting to the other side of the camera in her non-profit philantrophy and community organizer work.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

How to Choose the Right Community Service Project - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 15 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "How Can One Make His or Her Community Service More Impactful?"  Yoon focuses her answer on identifying and addressing the root causes of poverty and inequality as well as separating emotion - namely emotional or impulse responses - to more clearly understand sustainable impact potential.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

How Board of Directors Impacts Non-Profit Success - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 16 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "Why is a Board of Directors Important to a Non-Profit Organization's Success?"  Yoon discusses how a highly functioning and committed board of directors provides financial management and sets strategic vision for the organization.  She notes how her organization is more effectively recruiting potential board members.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

How Non-Profit Sets Priorities to Manage Future Growth - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 17 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "What Priorities are You Setting to Manage Future Organizational Growth?"  Yoon talks about the meaning of celebrating her organization's 10th Year Anniversary and how it relates to the evolution and expansion of its mission.  Over time, the organization uncovers unmet community needs and evolves its mission to provide not only physical health but also mental health services.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

How Executive Defines Non-Profit Success - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 18 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "As a Non-Profit Executive, How Do You Define and Measure Success in What You Do?"  Running a non-profit, Yoon learns it is clearly a business, complete with managing revenues and expenses.  She finds it important to measure outcomes, however these do differ from for-profit metrics of returns to shareholders.  Non-profit returns, such has how many abused women and trafficking victims are provided shelter at the New York Asian Women's Center.  These experiences shape Yoon's perspective on what it means to lead in a community-focused non-profit.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

How Non-Profit Creates Sustainable Growth Framework - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 19 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "What Are You Doing to Make Your Non-Profit More Sustainable?"  Yoon highlights four areas the drive non-profit sustainability.  First, her organization is strengthening its grant making ability to better support the non-profits it serves.  Second, her organization is focusing on diversifying fundraising streams. Third, board development - creating a pipeline of potential board members - ties into more effective strategic visioncasting.  Lastly, financial management  Lastly, financial accounting and management improvements allow both sponsors and partners have visibility into the organization.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.

Jullien Gordon on What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder

In Chapter 1 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  Gordon, who shares his recent engagement to be married, notes how a progressive challenge is staying balanced as his relationship becomes a larger part of his life.  He notes how not forcing things and being present in the moment is allowing him to live more fluidly, productively, and stress free.  He notes the big moments have come through relationships, most often through being true to himself.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What’s getting easier and what’s getting harder in your life?

Jullien Gordon:  Wow!  So I just got engaged about two weeks ago, yeah so I’m excited about that.  So what’s getting more difficult is, how I actually shift my business model so that I’m not traveling as much as I currently do so definitely looking into the productization of the things that I’m doing and how to scale that via licensing, training the trainer etcetera.  So that’s definitely getting more difficult is holding that balance now that I’m committed to another person and of course in the future other little persons.  So really just thinking about that now before it gets out of balance and out of control. 

What’s getting easier is…what’s getting easier?  I don’t know if anything’s getting easier.  What’s getting easier is me not forcing things and me just being very present in the moment, being who I’m being and trusting that things will come.  I would say when I started out on this path a lot of things were forced, I was pushing, pushing, pushing and now as I’m moving through the world in a great alignment with my purpose I really feel an attraction based –yeah, I had like – when I look at all my deals and relationships and things like that, they’ve all come through just my relationships.  They haven’t been me doing SCO optimization or advertising on Google or great designs of flyers and banners.  It hasn’t been any of that that has led to the business that I’ve been able to generate and so I realize that as I’m more of who I am and making my – being clear about my unique contribution that opportunities are coming out of every different direction and so I come into the new year and like yeah I think my business is gonna go in this direction and then all of a sudden these two opportunities come and I’m in this direction and this direction still doing my purpose but in ways that I couldn’t even imagine on my own.

Jullien Gordon on How to Create Mindful Moments and Find Personal Best

In Chapter 2 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "When Are You At Your Best?"  Gordon finds his best in what he calls "first period" or the beginning of each day.  He makes it a point to listen to himself, set an action plan for the day, and then take action on what he needs to do.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  When are you are your best?

Jullien Gordon:  I’m at my best at the start of the day.  At the start of the day I mean that’s when I’m well rested, that’s when my energy is the highest, that’s when there’s no interruptions, there’s not email, there’s not phone calls it’s really just quiet time and I actually call that space in my life, first period, you know it’s the first period of my day and I can save that space for myself and that’s when I’m able to listen to myself and really get a good vision of what I’m supposed to be doing that day and how I’m supposed to be allocating my time and energy so I definitely think that the start of the day is when I’m at my best.

Jullien Gordon on How Purpose Motivates High Energy Performance

In Chapter 3 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "Where Do You Get Your Energy?"  Gordon references Daniel Pink's book, "Drive" and shares how he gets his energy by living in alignment with his purpose.  He understands living in his purpose acts as an intrinsic motivator that allows him to make the most out of each day.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Where do you get your energy?

Jullien Gordon:  To be honest going back to Daniel Pink’s drive I think purpose is where I get my energy from.  When I’m in alignment with my purpose I get this wind behind my sail that allows me to do things that I couldn’t have imagined doing on my own.  When you’re in alignment with a current of energy it just takes you in places as opposed to trying to swim against the current like no I’m going up this stream no matter what.  No, I’m – when you’re in alignment with your purpose I feel like you’re going with this universal current and that’s where I think a lot of my energy comes from.  

My diet isn’t the greatest diet, I don’t exercise, I want to do all those things well but I do know that where my high level of energy comes from is this deep sense of purpose.  This intrinsic motivation that’s within me and that’s where I think my most powerful and my spiritual source is.  My purpose is my connection to my spiritual source.  It’s the single most important reason why I’m here.  

Now a lot of us go through life and we have all these to do this lists and we check off all kinds of things on our to do lists and by the end of life we’re like yeah I checked off all this stuff but the big question is did you do the one thing that you were uniquely created to do and I feel like I’m moving in alignment with that right now and so that’s where my energy comes from.

Jullien Gordon on How to Personalize a Leadership Lifestyle

In Chapter 4 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  Gordon shares the stages of his own leadership journey and how experiences have shaped his approach to being a leader in his actions and ambitions.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Jullien Gordon:  Wow!  What does it mean to be a leader?  For me leadership has always been defined as creating more leaders and if you’re not creating more leaders then -- well actually that’s the external version of leadership.  I think leadership actually starts with self leadership and actually directing your life in the way that you want it to go and then from there, by that example, you actually inspire others to take control and full responsibility for the decisions and the choices that they’re making. 

So I definitely think leadership actually comes back to are you taking full responsibility for your choices, or are you letting life and other external factors actually influence your choice and therefore your choice being inauthentic.  Leadership is I think this space where you are actually continually making authentic choices based on what you think is best for you and those around you.

Erik Michielsen:  And how have you learned about leadership as your career has developed?

Jullien Gordon:  In undergrad I actually was a student leader of various organizations.  When I graduated I actually became executive director of a program called the Shake program where I was managing 32 part-time undergrads plus a team of volunteers and so that was my first real experience of full time leadership, then I went to business school and then I worked with MLT for quite some time. I developed a team there at MLT and from there I’ve been building my business on my own for the past few years now.  I would say that it’s all been about self-leadership for me. 

I haven’t figured out how I’m gonna take full responsibility for a team of people and still have the balance that I want in my life so I haven’t really committed to that responsibility.  I have part time people who work with me on various things. I have administrators, assistants, legal team, sales team etcetera but they’re all part-time so in terms of leading other people I haven’t been in that space for quite some time where I feel fully responsible for the life of someone else or for the economic future of someone else and so I’m still exploring that and do I actually want to have a big building out like the ones out here in New York is that ultimately my goal or is my goal actually time freedom. 

As I’ve navigated my journey over the past three years I’ve realized that it’s not about financial freedom for me it’s actually about time freedom which gives me the freedom to make choices and spend my time the way I want to spend it and that means that my business also isn’t necessarily about profit maximization. 

I’m actually using entrepreneurship as a vehicle to create a lifestyle that aligns with who I am and what I want and so as I think about my leadership it’s really been about time freedom and so a lot of leadership has been with self and not necessarily leading hordes of people or teams.  Of course when I’m speaking, at my speaking engagements, I’m leading people for that given time or if I’m doing a training for a corporation or a college, I’m leading people in that moment but I haven’t – it hasn’t been – it’s been a while since I’ve actually been responsible for leading people on a daily basis.

Jullien Gordon on How to Rule Out Career Options and Follow Your Passion

In Chapter 5 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "How Has Ruling Out Career Options Helped You Better Focus On What You Really Want to Do?"  He notes that when you get great at something you hate, you attract more of the thing that you hate.  Going into his Stanford MBA program, Gordon ruled out more traditional paths he did not find appealing and created his own career as a Purpose Finder.  He notes how we often are anchored to a limited number of careers because of an unwillingness to identify and explore paths we did not know previously existed.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has ruling out career options helped you better focus on what you really want to do?

Jullien Gordon:  I could be good at a lot of things.  I could be great at a lot of things and often times people move through life and they get great at things that they hate and when you get great at something that you hate all you do is you attract more of the thing that you hate and so going into business school I knew that consulting, investment banking, brand management weren’t for me, not to say that they’re bad career paths, I just want people to move in a way where the career path that are there are actually for them and I couldn’t find one where I felt like I would be able to be fully present on a daily basis so I had to create one and that’s why I call myself a purpose finder.  It’s not a life coach, it’s not a motivational speaker, I’m a purpose finder and it’s a career path that I’m actually paving through my life experiences. 

I’ve met other purpose finders, they haven’t called themselves that – with that kind of language but I’ve met people who do very similar work and so there’s all – there’s an infinite number of career paths that are out there but for some reason we choose from this limited menu of career paths based on what’s prestigious, based on big brand name companies that come to recruit on campus and there may be other paths out there that are a good fit for you.  There something I have called the career choice circle and there’s a small circle of career paths that we know exist and think we know a lot about but the only way you really know about a career is if you have done it for about six months. 

So often times we choose careers with a lot of imperfect information, then there’s this other circle around that called careers that you know exist but you know you know nothing about.  For instance for me firefighter, I know it exists but I don’t know a lot about it. I could say, oh yeah they put out fires and they save cats from trees, right?  But is that really what they do on a daily basis?  That’s a microcosm of what they do.  But where I like to push people is this notion of career paths that we don’t know exist therefore we know nothing about and when you’re driving home, you see these companies on these buildings and you don’t know what that company does, you’ve never even seen the name before but that company is obviously creating value if they’re still here and there may be people and roles within that organization when you are an absolute fit.

Jullien Gordon on How to Do What You Love and Attract Support

In Chapter 6 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "How Have Your Reconciled Your Personal Ambition for That Projected Upon You By Others?"  Gordon finds his ambition had to get reconciled with his parents' notions of success and security.  By continuing to do great work and share the results with them, he helps them understand his non-traditional career path and, in turn, receives support.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How have you reconciled your personal ambition for that projected upon you by others?

Jullien Gordon:  I’ve taken so much ownership of my personal brand especially with my relationship with my parents because parents are a big influence on what we choose to do in life that – there hasn’t been too much outside influence or projection on what I should do or should be doing. 

My mother, she’s still concerned because that’s her motherly energy of you need to have this traditional career because she was a doctor you know what I’m saying?  She went to undergrad, then went to medical school, then whatever you do after that but the steps were laid out for basically until you’re after 30 years old for a doctor and that’s what she has known as success or security. But I listen to her but I still do my own thing and the way I actually prove to my parents that I’m gonna be alright is just by continuing to do great work and sharing those results with them. 

When they saw me spoke at – speak, when they saw speak at my UCLA graduation and my Stanford graduation they knew that I was gonna be alright, even if I was taking this non-traditional path and so – yeah, like I said going back to my purpose, my influences come from my spiritual source more so than anywhere else and even if you read Success Built to Last by Jerry Porras where he studied 500 of the world’s most successful people; Olympians, Nobel peace prize winners, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, US Presidents, they are more concerned with doing what they love than being loved and that’s a hard distinction for a lot of people to make. 

A lot of people move through the world and they try to be loved, right?  And in the process of being loved and people pleasing, end up hating themselves but what I found is when you’re doing what you love, the only thing that you can attract back to you is love.  I’ve only met amazing people like you, other Capture Your Flag alumni and you’re doing what you love and that’s what’s attracting these Capture Your Flag alumni to you is because you’re doing what you love, people want to be around that kind of energy.  So it’s just easier to just do what you love if your ultimate goal is actually to have love in your life.

Jullien Gordon on How to Maximize Quality of Life on Your Own Terms

In Chapter 7 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "Why Do You Differentiate Between Cost of Living and Quality of Living?"  Gordon finds quality of living and cost of living are not necessarily positively correlated.  He finds financial freedom does not always create time freedom and chooses to have time freedom as he lives.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Why do you differentiate between cost of living versus quality of living?

Jullien Gordon:  Wow!  So I think in regards to the American dream, we bought into this notion that our quality of living increases with our cost of living, that they’re correlative, right?  But I found that knowing what my cost of living is, what is enough for me has actually given me the freedom to actually move more powerfully with any excess income that I have beyond my cost of living. 

My cost of living is a lot of lower than a lot of people yet my quality of living is a lot higher and so we bought into this notion and played this game of income maximization as if financial freedom is actually always gonna give us time freedom and that’s not always true.  If you’re working 80 hours a week for $150,000 a year you’re actually losing out on time freedom and you have to delay your time freedom until the end of life called “retirement.”  I’m actually having my time freedom as I go along life and even Gallop did some research on well-being where they showed that the average retirement age of people who live beyond the age of 95 was 85 years old.  It wasn’t 65 years old, right? 

So this notion of “Oh I want to retire early” most people who want to retire early actually hate what they do and so since our career is such a big chunk of our lives we need to figure out how to make that fulfilling, make it feel like vacation when you’re doing your work because you love it so much and there’s this hidden tax that we have on us when we’re doing things that we hate, psychologically and physically that we don’t acknowledge until our clock stops ticking and so I’m more concerned with quality of life than anything and so to be honest my cost of living though I’m – I don’t have kids and I don’t own a home, my cost of living is about $3000 a month and that’s with my student loans and my quality of living is through the roof and so for me that just breaks this assumption that cost of living and quality of living are directly connected or correlated.

Jullien Gordon on How to Use Your Network to Make Big Life Decisions

In Chapter 8 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "How Do You Use Your Network to Get Help Making Career and Life Decisions?"  First, Gordon makes it a point to establish a network and one way he creates this is by hosting monthly potluck dinners.  Second, Gordon chooses to "network up" and build relationships with a select group of more experienced advisors.  Lastly, Gordon makes sure to find quiet time to reflect on what he learns from his network and how he applies it to career decision making.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How do you use your network to get help making career and life decisions?

Jullien Gordon:  First and foremost I make sure that my network or what I actually call my community is there before I need them.  So by hosting monthly potlucks at my home over the past four years in New York, I’ve met over 400 people through that space. And so these are 400 people who know who I am, know my vision, know what I’m about and are there to support me when I need them. 

When I think about tough decisions, I actually use my network up, that’s what I like to call which is my personal board of directors.  So these are my mentors, these are my advisors, these are seasoned professionals, these are experts in certain areas.  So I reach out to them for advice on certain decisions.  At the end of the day they don’t necessarily influence the decision, they give more information to consider, but the ultimate decision actually has to come from me and the best way I like to make decisions is by getting in a place of stillness and quietness after I’ve gotten the information that I need and then making the decision from there.

Jullien Gordon on How Standup Comedy Facilitates Self-Discovery

In Chapter 9 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "What Did Taking a Standup Comedy Class Teach You About Yourself?"  Gordon notes how the experience helped him "uncan" himself, allowing him to loosen up, be himself, and be corny and silly in his life.  Gordon learns to use humor and comedy to get people to open up and be more receptive to the more challenging messages he delivers.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What did taking a stand up comedy class teach you about yourself?

Jullien Gordon:  Oh wow.  I really enjoyed that experience.  The term I like to put to it is that it really let me un-can myself because being a professional coming from Stanford and just being in this business world, often times we can ourselves and we have these prepackaged ways of delivering ourselves to other people and taking a comedy class just loosened me up and allowed me to be more of who am I. At the end of the day I’m really corny.  I’m really corny.  I make corny jokes at home with my friends, they even know me as corny and it allowed me to bring that corniness into every space that I’m in and not be ashamed of it and so I really loved that experience.

 Ultimately when I speak I bring the truth to people to the best of the my ability or the truth that I see just so that they can be exposed to it but when I would just deliver the truth, a lot of people might close off.  So through comedy and humor I’m actually able to open people up so that they’re smiling in the way that you are and then once people are open they’re more receptive to the messages that you deliver and then I can give the harder things that people have to consider.  So it has really helped me become a better communicator, a better speaker and so I’m really grateful for that experience.

Jullien Gordon on How Storytelling Class Improves Public Speaking

In Chapter 10 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "How is Your Public Speaking Experience Teaching You to More Effectively Engage an Audience?"  Gordon shares how taking a storytelling course helps him better share his experiences and connect with audiences.  The storytelling, combined with what he learns taking a stand-up comedy course, help him create more actionable personal and professional development messages to his audience.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How is your public speaking experience teaching you to more effectively engage an audience?

Jullien Gordon:  In addition to my comedy class I’ve actually taken a storytelling class with a company called Narrative, and I know just based on my own experiences and the messages and the guidelines for life that have stuck with me, have all come through stories and so I’m actually working on things to become a better storyteller, like I said I went to a comedy class to become a better communicator and when I’ve coupled these things with the messages that I already have, this comedy and this storytelling, has allowed the messages that I have to share with the world to actually stick and land in a deeper place for people and so it’s just -- it’s been amazing to be able to touch people in so many ways. 

One of the most beautiful things that I love is getting emails from people within like 48 hours after a speaking engagement because you know speaking engagements they can inspire you in a lot ways, but for me inspiration isn’t enough.  I actually need to see people make changes in their life otherwise the inspiration it comes and it goes and that’s not enough to actually cause change.  I like to see when people actually make a change in their life as a result of something I said and when I get those emails back about people’s new commitments based on what I shared with them, that means the world to me.

Jullien Gordon on How to Adapt a Message to Reach New Audiences

In Chapter 11 of 16 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, motivation teacher Jullien Gordon answers "How Are You Learning to Adapt Your Message to Reach Different Audiences?"  Gordon details how he has found his initial audience, the millennial generation, may not value his message as much as the older baby boomer generation.  He finds the boomer generation has changed jobs multiple times and identify with Gordon's career development insight because of their deeper experience.  He then shares how he is approaching a transition to speaking to older, more experienced generations.  Gordon is the founder of the Department of Motivated Vehicles, a personal and professional development company that helps clients identify purpose and map it to successful outcomes. Gordon has written five books and speaks regularly to college students across America.  He earned masters degrees in education and business from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How are you learning to adapt your message to reach different audiences?

Jullien Gordon:  That’s the big thing on the table right now which has been really hard for me to understand is that the millennial generation which I’m a part of, and who I’ve been intentionally trying to impact and expose may not be my ultimate audience.  My ultimate audience actually may be the older generation -- people who are going through the midlife crisis etcetera.  Now I just did a call for alumni at Cornell who were out of employment or considering changing their jobs and these people were 40, 50, 60, 70 years old and the way they received my messages it was just a completely different shift for them. 

Sometimes young people perceive that they know it already, that’s just part of our generation.  We think we know exactly what we’re doing but who really needs what I have to share the most may actually be the older generation.  So for my messages, sometimes people have to stumble a few times on their own to actually get it.  So my messages actually resonate with people who actually have changed jobs two or three times. Not necessarily that person who’s in their first job, it’s the person who’s like you know I’ve tried this on my own and I haven’t been able to get to where I want to go and when you think about who’s in that space in the market place, it’s actually older generation of people actually above 30 and 35 years old who are going through the midlife crisis and realize that they’ve been trying it on their own for quite some time and they haven’t been able to get the results that they want from their career, from their life, from their relationships and so my audience actually may be shifting and I’m taking that into consideration as I go into 2012.

The big question is how do I access that audience is that audience going to be able to receive me and will they listen to me because of my youthfulness and so I’m thinking about partnerships that will give me an entryway to that because the ideas that I have resonate with my generation because we’re technological, we think in this forward thinking way and the people who might be most receptive to those kind of messages are people who think in the old paradigm and that’s actually our parents’ generation, generation X and the boomers and so I’m actually thinking about making shifts in regards to my market because that’s where the biggest change from point A to point B might actually occur.