Are You Doing What You Really Want to Do?

by | Oct 10, 2018 | Careers, Change, Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media, Work/Life

These beautiful photos of my farewell celebration are by Jessica Sterling

If you’re here, it’s because I really like you.

That’s how I started my remarks at my corporate farewell event exactly one month ago today.

As is my writing practice, I thought about what I wanted to say, who I wanted to thank, and how I hoped people would feel. I gave myself the speechwriting assignment and let my subconscious go to work on it. I find that ideas pop up while I’m doing other things.

Except with everyone else going on, it wasn’t quite done by the time the event arrived. Usually I like to ideate, write, iterate, memorize and then speak without notes. That didn’t happen this time.

This next part is for my colleagues who have told me I always seem prepared and poised. You may get a zing of delight to know that I was still writing my remarks in my Evernote app while my husband Kevin was driving us to the event.

So of course I couldn’t memorize it. And in the spirit of keeping it short, I left out a lot of what I wanted to say. So I’m sharing it here, for my friends and colleagues who were there, and for many others who aren’t in Southern California and couldn’t be there.

______

My daughter was 11 months old when I came to work at DIRECTV as a communications manager.

In my interview, Jeff Torkelson said, “It’s really busy here. Do you think you can handle it?”

Those words haunted me at the end of my first week. Everyone was running around with their hair on fire. No one seemed to leave at the end of the day. It didn’t seem like anyone else had a baby at home. I realized I’d made a big mistake in taking the job.

But I couldn’t quit after a week. So I decided I would commit to a year. After that I would find a new job.

But then I found ways to succeed in the environment, like doing thinking and writing projects in the early mornings. And without my even asking, my male and female bosses offered me the ability to work from home one day a week when I returned to work after my son was born.

So much opportunity grabbed me. And it didn’t let go.

A transitional time like this reminds me of wise words from great leaders.

Eddy Hartenstein, the charismatic pioneer who founded DIRECTV and the father of modern-day satellite television, said upon leaving the company many years earlier that “we are victors, not victims.”

I remember Eddy coming to my office to practice his talk before his farewell event. My colleague Tina Morefield and I listened and tried not to shed tears. I still get chills thinking about it.

Mike White, another legendary leader at DIRECTV, often said that “sometimes you need to replant yourself.” He is a model of ongoing reinvention and lifelong learning. He’s a super-smart English major who became a CEO.

After 30 years in the corporate world (!), it was time for me to replant myself. It felt like being in my 20s again, graduating from UCLA and wondering what to do with the rest of my life. So I began to look back over the years for clues.

When I was 5 years old, I loved to read and write. My uncle gave me what used to be known as a typewriter (younger readers can Google it). I’d type up stories, letters and calendars. Anything, really.

My grandmother and my mother encouraged my writing (along with my parents requiring that I take math and science every year in high school). My dad suggested I study English in college. But I wondered what kind of a career I could have. How would I become financially independent? If only I’d known then about where Mike White’s career journey would lead.

So I studied economics. And I ultimately found corporate communications, at the intersection of business and writing. It fits perfectly with my Strong Interest Inventory profile of artistic, social and enterprising interests.

Julia Cameron who wrote The Artist’s Way might have called it a shadow career. Because I really wanted to be a writer. But I didn’t know how to do it and live the life that I wanted.

That’s probably why I started an internal blog at DIRECTV in 2012 when my team launched a social collaboration website. And I started this blog on New Year’s Day 2015 to explore the future of corporate communications. I had a lot of support and encouragement from my boss at the time, Joe Bosch, our chief human resources officer.

Now writing is the foundation of what I’m doing as an emerging entrepreneur. I’m writing, consulting, speaking and teaching about how professionals can grow their careers and business owners can grow their companies through social media.

With that said, the time with my colleagues in the corporate world was anything but a shadow career.

That’s because of all the incredible things we did together. There were so many challenging projects. But we brought everyone’s talents together, worked as a team and made it happen, again and again. It was fun and rewarding along the way.

At our first-ever dealer conference called Dealer Revolution, I remember dancing the night away in what was then the Texas Stadium after Kerin Lau and her events team made the 2,000-person event happen. We got to meet Rod Stewart before he performed that night. When it came time to take photos, I hoped I wouldn’t be taller than him. I wasn’t disappointed.

The ever-incredible events team

There are KaBOOM! playgrounds in New Orleans, Atlanta and Las Vegas. Children are probably happily playing on them right now, thanks to the work by Tina Morefield, Brooke Hanson, Brynne Dunn Jones, Jamie Zamora, Andy Bailey and so many more.

Anthony Martini joined us when many of the installation and service technician companies were insourced. Out of nothing, he built the corporate communications infrastructure. And working with Carlos Botero, those communications helped create a workforce so engaged that Willis Towers Watson wrote a case study on it.

Launching social collaboration with Michael Ambrozewicz and Thyda Nhek Vanhook and IT colleagues Mike Benson, Frank Palase, Brian Ulm and many others was my first real introduction to social media. It made me want to crawl under my desk and hide until it went away.

But that didn’t happen so I had to conquer my fears and move forward. I launched an internal blog so I could learn and model what it was like to try new things, look silly in the process and learn from everyone in the community.

Creating an employer brand with Michael Ambrozewicz, Linda Simon and Rosanne Setoguchi along with Mark Schumman bordered on the sublime. I remember the electrifying moment when Vanessa Sestina completed the puzzle with our tagline, we entertain the future. 

Then it came time for the corporate campus to be upgraded. It meant new ways of working in open and collaborative space. There was a lot of hand wringing. Fellow members of the Campus Launch Advisory Board will remember. In the end, Paul James and Hilary Hatch did an incredible job and Tyler Jacobson communicated it to perfection, with great counsel from Reza Ahmadi.

When we got the news that AT&T was going to acquire DIRECTV, it was the thrill of a lifetime to be part of the integration team led by Jennifer Cho at DIRECTV and Jeff McElfresh at AT&T. What seemed at first like having a front-row seat to a Harvard Business Review case study was actually like getting an MBA in real time.

Through it all, I was passionate about advancing women at the company through mentoring circles and employee resource groups. What a thrill when Dan York brought the Academy Award-winning actor Geena Davis to speak at the company not once, but three times. She is doing incredible work to bring gender parity to television and film roles. And Phil Goswitz was able to have Gywnne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, come and speak to our women’s resource group.

Some of my mentoring circle friends

And as a capstone, I got to work with Fiona Carter as she championed gender equality and inclusion in the company’s advertising and media. I’ll always remember the inspiring work to measure and communicate inclusion with Chris Cervenka, Bill Moseley, Eric Ryan, Michelle Smith, Brett Levecchio, Caitlyn Wooldridge and so many more.

I’m beyond proud of the inclusive advertising being produced by Val Vargas, Sarita Rao, Sandra Howard and many others at the company. They are all role models that I hope many others in the industry will follow.

And whenever I didn’t know what to do or needed to brush off criticism, I got the best advice from my husband Kevin. Borrowed from the film Madagascar, he’d always say, “Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.”

There are so many more incredible memories and people (like my most recent team members Stephen Santiago and Sabrina McKnight). It’s been an honor to work with all of you. I learned so much from you. We’ll always be connected by the DIRECTV and AT&T family.

Things came full circle last week when I heard from Tina Quinn, who was my coach over the last year. She recommended Steven Pressfield’s book, The Artist’s Journey.

It picks up where Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey leave off. Early in my corporate career I read about the hero’s journey. It articulates the timeless sequence of events for nearly every story, novel or film.

“The artist’s journey comes after the hero’s journey,” Pressfield says in his book about the lifelong pursuit of meaning. “Everything that has happened to us up to this point is rehearsal for us to act, now, as our true self and to find and speak in our true voice.”

There is a rich personal history that I draw upon now. It’s in no small part thanks to the people I spent the last few decades working with.

You have each inspired me in your own way. I am profoundly grateful.

So my question to you is, are you doing what you really want to do?Where is your artist’s journey leading you?

Thanks to Jessica Sterling at JessicaSterling.com for these beautiful photos of my farewell celebration

18 Ways to Live Tweet an Event

by | Jul 29, 2017 | Social Media

Want to peek into the future of technology and entertainment?

Thousands of people got to do just that at SHAPE, the AT&T Tech & Entertainment Expo at Warner Bros. Studios.

I was one of them. And I wanted to share the experience. So I live tweeted some of the sound bites I heard from some of the spellbinding speakers. (Here’s where I say that opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)

Live tweeting – or snapping or gramming, depending on the social platform – is something you can do at every event you attend.

Why not share valuable content with your social networks? It’s an important part of any social media savvy strategy for your professional life.

Here’s a roadmap.

 

BEFORE THE EVENT: Get Ready

Get familiar with the event. Download the event app. Peruse the agenda. Plan how you’ll spend your time.

Learn about the speakers. Read their bios. Check out their Twitter feed or their Instagram presence or their Snap story.

Know the event’s social strategy. See what social networks the event is using and decide which one(s) you’ll use. Check out the event hashtags. Search them and view existing content.

Follow the event’s Twitter handle(s). In this case, @attdeveloper and @attshape had great tweets throughout the event.

Share your plans to attend. Post pre-event content in your social networks. You may discover friends who will also be there and other people you can take the opportunity to meet in person.

 

AT THE EVENT: Tell a Compelling Story

Curate your feed. Once the event begins, think of it like a story. Consider the story you want to tell and tweet accordingly. Don’t tweet content unrelated to the event until after it’s over.

Pick a good seat. Sit as close to the front and the center as possible. You’ll be able to get better photos that way. Chat with people sitting near you to see what they’re enjoying about the event and how they’re experiencing it.

Capture images. Take pictures of on-screen images before the speakers begin. You’ll have plenty of visual assets to create your story. And you might be able to use them in a collage.

Take pictures during the talk. Capture interesting visuals. Get up-close pictures of the panel and individual speakers. Capture speakers in action, making expansive and dramatic gestures.

Use photos that show people in the best light. Delete unflattering pictures, such as when a speaker’s eyes are closed or they’re in an awkward pose.

Edit photos for lighting and color. Crop them so they’ll show up well in your tweet. This takes a little trial and error. I’m still learning.

Vary the number of photos you include with each tweet. You can include 1, 2 or 4 photos per tweet. And don’t forget that video can accompany a tweet too.

Listen for sound bites. The AT&T SHAPE app had an invaluable section in each presentation to take notes. So I captured sound bites that grabbed me. It was easier to copy and paste them into a tweet as well as synthesize a number of messages into a single tweet.

If a friend asked you for the one thing you learned, or for 3 key takeaways from a talk, what would you say? Use that same line of reasoning for your tweets. Listen for the best content from the speakers and share the most valuable information.

Use the hashtag(s). In every tweet or post, use the event hashtag. That makes your content more discoverable, and therefore more likely to be liked and shared.

Mention people. Give credit to speakers and panelists by mentioning them in tweets and posts. Use their Twitter handle. If they don’t have a handle, use their name with a hashtag, e.g., #FionaCarter, so the content is more discoverable.

Mention organizations. If a company is involved in some way, weave their Twitter handle into the tweet. By mentioning @Tribeca, one of my tweets was retweeted by the organization. That generated 5,000 impressions!

Keep tabs on the event’s Twitter handle and the event hashtag(s). Look at what the primary event handle is tweeting. Search on the hashtag during the event to see what people are sharing. That leads to the next strategy . . .

Engage with related content. Like and retweet content that adds to the story you want to tell. Use the “quote tweet” feature to include your perspective on the original tweet. Here’s one from my colleague Brooke Hanson.

However, if the “quote tweet” feature eliminates the image from the original tweet (i.e., if it becomes text only), consider a straight retweet so you get the benefit of the visual appearing. Why? Tweets with images get 150% more retweets.

Build relationships. Promote the content and ideas of speakers you know or want to get to know by tweeting about them or retweeting their content. Do the same for people attending the event who are sharing their experience of it.

Look at the Twitter feeds of people who followed you as a result of the event. Follow back the people whose content you want to be associated with.

 

AFTER THE EVENT: Extend the Experience

Tweet a close to your story. What tweet will put the right finish on your event story? It could be the final tweet from the event’s Twitter handle. Or it could be your biggest takeaway from the event.

Analyze your analytics. Check out your Twitter analytics to see which tweets got the most impressions and the most engagement. Create a hypothesis as to why. This will help you create more engaging tweets, whether it’s the next thing you tweet about or the next event you attend.

Extend the experience. What did you learn at the event? What made the biggest impact on you? What will you change or do differently as a result?

Think about ways you could share those learnings with your social networks. Maybe it’s a final tweet or a maybe it’s a blog post that you share in a tweet.

Apply what you learned. Find at least one thing you’ll do differently as a result of attending the event. Commit to putting it into action right away.

For me, it was sharing how I live tweet an event in this post. This caused me to reflect on the process I use and how it’s evolved over the course of several events.

What I thought was simply an intuitive process actually has several concrete steps. It was a surprise to unpack it and think through each step in the process. And analyzing the analytics from live tweeting will help make it better the next time.

How do you live tweet an event?