January 6, 2020 • 40 mins
Who’s in your community? If the idea of finding your people feels abstract, scary, or totally impossible, press play! Our guest is Stephanie Pereira, a community engagement expert and the Director of NEW INC, an incubator for creators working at the intersection of art, design and technology. Tune in for game-changing tips on how to build a real following and successfully launch your next great creative idea into the world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell.
We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality,
(00:20):
and embrace the and not the ore so you can
turn everything you love into a custom built career that's
as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel
that one path may not be your only path, and
you call yourself a human vend Diagram, then you are
in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing
your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. Who's
(00:44):
in your community? Do you have a group of people
who inspire, support and show up for you or are
you a human Venn Diagram who feels like you don't
quite fit in anywhere. Maybe you're just starting out, or
you've taken time off, or you've changed paths and you
have no idea where your people are, or maybe you
feel like your interests are so unlike anyone else's that
(01:07):
your best option is to go it alone. If the
idea of finding or building a community of your own
fields abstract, scary, or totally impossible, I think this episode
is going to change that. Yes, our gas. This week
is Stephanie Pereira, who is a community engagement expert. Stephanie
is currently the director of New Inc, which is an
(01:28):
incubator for creators who are working at the intersection of
three of our favorite things, art, design, and technology. But
Stephanie's community expertise doesn't end there. She has over six
years of experience at Kickstarter as a member of its
leadership team, and she created a very popular skill share
class in which she gives insider tips on successfully launching
(01:49):
a new idea into the world. Do we ask Stephanie
to share those tips with us? You better believe it.
We also discuss the difference between laziness and disconnect super important,
as Stephanie tells us how she went from barely passing
to making the Dean's List just by being true to herself. Yeah,
and how she broke free from crying in her cubicle
(02:12):
to find her place in the world. Important note tacos
were involved. Tacos. Anyway, let's meet Stephanie. Let's do it.
Your bio describes you as this community engagement expert. What
does that actually mean? What does that mean to be
(02:33):
a community engagement expert? Yeah, it's a great question. UM,
I kind of invented it always. I think, you know,
in this moment where a lot of our communities are
you know, have been taken online. A lot of people
are doing deep engagement online. We're doing listening, active listening,
we're talking, We're doing all of the things. There's this
(02:54):
sort of emerging class of professionals who are experts and
understanding how do you set up how to manage, how
to engage, how to support other people and facilitating those
kinds of spaces and starting ages. Ago through some work
I was doing in public schools for since Chicago and
then in New York City. UM, and then you know,
through my work working at community arts organizations, I this
(03:16):
is like it was sort of a happenstancet of skills
that I developed. And then working at Kickstarter, which is
in the tech sector, which there is this known sort
of community manager role. UM, I picked up a lot
of actual, like true professional experience, and along the way
learned that it's a field that is just currently professionalizing.
The rules are still being written. There's a CMX is
(03:37):
one of the biggest community manager sort of gatherings, and
they've I think they're like five years old. So I mean,
I think, yeah, understanding how do you navigate big, diverse
communities in a professional way, not just in a human
way is new. But I feel I also do feel
like someone who's been I've been at it for long
enough of my career I can call myself an expert.
(03:57):
What do community in mean to you? Right? Like? What
does that even look like right now? And could you
share some tips on how someone can meaningfully begin to
build their own community or engage and or engage within it.
I'm going to use it just a really super concrete example.
When I first landed in New York, I was, you know,
(04:19):
an arts administrator. UM. I sought out my fellow arts administrators.
It turns out there was a sort of nascent group
of emerging leaders and arts administration that had this desire
to start to gather those of us who were new
in the field, asking some tough questions and hoping to
change the field. As we grew, and we started as
five people, we then started organizing events UM and a
(04:40):
lot of people showed up. I mean by the time
I left, I think our list serve was like ten
thousand people strong. Um. Yeah, And we were doing events
at the green space, like quarterly events with a podcast.
We were really um things were happening. In l it's
called El Naya. Continues to exist today. That however, there
was a point, it's called emerging Leaders in New York.
There is a point where I aged out of the
(05:00):
group and I had to move on. I was no
longer emerging. However, there was a core group of maybe
five of us that continued to meet at like eight
am on Wednesday morning for a long time, and I
would still call that a community. So the fact that
we we went from sort of organizers of this multi
thousand person community to five people meeting for breakfast once
a month at eight am, we were still people who
(05:22):
were sort of peer to peer getting together, listening to
each other, helping each other, advising each other. And I
think that those that sort of like core sort of
motivation remains true. Yeah, so you mentioned your experience at Kickstarter,
and you have over six years of experience there, and
you also have this incredibly popular skill share class on
(05:45):
the topic of Kickstarter, and so the minor internet celebrity, Yeah,
they've done skill share. It's amazing. And so we want
to take this opportunity to get some of that inside
scoop from you on what makes a Kickstarter campaign successful,
and certainly to talk about the idea of like, not
only do you want to make a project, but you've
(06:07):
got to fund it, and funding it means right, having
real support in every sense of the word right. One
of the questions we often get with people saying like,
I made this great project, I have a product, I
have a thing like, and now I need to sell
it right now. I need to get the funding for it.
And they you know, I think several of my friends
have put something up on Kickstarter and it didn't get funded, right,
(06:32):
it wasn't successful. And then they're like, well, wait, how
is how are all these other things getting like fully
funded on day three? And I had mine up there
for thirty or sixty days and I didn't meet my goal.
And that was not even my stretch goal. That was
like my lowboll goal. You have to set it up
for success and not just hope that random Internet strangers
will find you and want to give you their money. Yeah, yeah,
(06:54):
can you talk us through that process? Amazing if we
live in a world random and that strangers on the
regular just found us, it gave us money. I mean,
it does happen. That's one reason kickstarter captures so many
people's imaginations because you have those stories of that person
who launched that project and it went viral, very rare.
Um for most of us, it does require a lot
(07:15):
of this stuff. We're talking about community and community building
and how we sort of gather people around us in
these very vulnerable ways, how we we make the choice
to show up for each other in vulnerable moments. Um.
All of that holds true on Kickstarter, and so UM
I think, you know, interestingly, a lot of the work
that I ended up doing in coaching people through preparing
(07:36):
to launch their campaign. You would think that it would
be a lot around this sort of the money management
logistics all that stuff. But the truth is that I
think you know, currently the success rate is at like
thirty something per cent, So that means that sixty something
percent are never reaching their funding goal, and that's their
low ball goal. And so it's really helping people understand, um,
(07:56):
you know, not just what their idea is, but how
do they tell the story of their idea in a
way that matters that people will get excited about. How
did they start practicing telling that story, How do they
find people who will care about that story and how
do they start building those relationships? Well before they launched
their Kickstarter campaign, a friend of mine who is a
musician and an artist, and he started building um sort
(08:19):
of engagement and camaraderie around his project eighteen months before
he launched his Kickstarter kids. And that was because he
was he's known sort of. He's actually a pretty well
known musician. He's known for a certain kind of music,
a certain kind of art, and he wanted to change
that narrative. And I was like, your fans are not
going to back you if you just launched this random
project that they don't understand and I've never heard of,
(08:41):
So you need to start seating that. And another thing
he did along the way, too, is thinking about how
to grow his audience. So not only how to adjust
his community's expectations and get them excited about this new
thing he was working on, but also how does he
have greater reach? So thinking about strategically, like, who are
some other artists and musicians that have great reach that
would be cited about his work and how could he
(09:01):
start collaborating with them in the lead up to the
launch of his campaign and it was sort of all
of that very careful plotting work, um which I think
was great for him too because it actually helped him.
And this is the other thing I always tell kicks
art creators, because they're always like, God, that sounds like
an enormous world of work. It is. It is that
if you're doing it well, it's good work. You're you're
(09:23):
you're going to release a product to the world that
is better that you're going to be that much more
excited about. And then it's going to have long term legs.
It's not going to be a blip on the radar.
It's going to be something that people are going to
want to um take and advocate and carry forward in
the world. For you, well, it just reminds me of
a line one of my acting teachers once set in college,
which is like, for you to be an actor, there
(09:45):
needs to be an audience, otherwise you're just a crazy
person talking to yourself in a dark room, right, And
I think there's a lot of artists and and makers
of all stripes were sort of like, I just want
to do the work. I don't want to have to
sell it. I don't want to have to find in
the audience that like, that's the business side. I just
want to be a creator and I get that instinct,
(10:07):
I do. But part of this is knowing who your
audience is and you know what that relationship is that
you have with them. Why are you making this for them?
And where does this fit in their life? And understanding
and building that audience is just as much a part
of your practice as the technique and the skills of
doing the work itself. Unfortunately, it is not something that
(10:31):
they teach people in art school or school. What it
took me quite some time to realize as someone who
just started making work because I didn't want to be
talking to myself in a dark room alone, is is
that you know, it takes as much work to market something.
And by marketing, I mean, you know, in the most
(10:52):
organic sense of that word, in just the sense of
like sharing, finding your audience, sharing it with them, right,
trial and error, like what is my plan? It takes time.
It takes really the same amount of creativity in my
experience as it does to create the actual thing. Right,
(11:14):
So really, I love you. Know. Your step one in
this wrap up article that you wrote is identify your
goals and that those can be anything from you know,
in addition to the financial support, growing your community, getting pressed,
attracting a buyer or publisher, meeting new collaborators. And what
(11:34):
I love about those questions is they really encourage you
to think holistically and think, well, you know, money is
really just going to come as a product of all
of those other things too. What are a couple of
common Kickstarters stumbling blocks that you would run into when
working with creator Stephanie. I know, for one, it's it's
hard to factor in the financial effects of things like taxes, funding, fees,
(11:59):
back or rewards in that number that you're asking for.
I think it's anticipating the launch and how you're going
to manage that communication strategy. UM. That does not come
naturally to most people. UM. And so even if that's
acknowledging that that is not your thing and figuring out
a plan for working around that and or making that
work rewarding for you too. It's what you just alluded to,
(12:20):
which is understanding the difference between um, the sort of
gross raise of your Kickstarter campaign UM, and really truly
all the expenses that come with all the things that
you're trying to do. I think another thing people don't
anticipate is the long tale of communication. So the campaign
doesn't end thirty days when you in when you're funded,
(12:41):
but it ends once you've fulfilled all the rewards. And
usually the journey from like getting the money to actually
making and shipping the thing is much longer and much
more fraught than people plan. For someone who has a
couple of things that still hasn't been delivered several years
after I backed them a common story. Um. And what
(13:02):
we've seen is that if a creator is set up
for that and handles that with grace and is like
very communicative throughout that whole process. Again, general life roles
here that it's not really people don't mind. People don't
mind waiting the two years for the film to come
out or whatever it is. It's like a surprise two
years later, Oh I paid for that. Yeah, yeah, totally.
(13:24):
Um And I honestly, I would say those are the
three biggies. It's the communication, it's the it's the money,
and it's the planning for the launch or the three
that continuously really set people up for for struggle. You
(13:53):
did a b f A and visual arts and then
you did this master as in arts administration. So you
you really did from a you know, education will standpoint,
learned both sides of that equation, the maker side and
kind of the business management side of this. Did you
plan to be a full time artist when you were
doing your b f A or did you already know
(14:14):
that kind of the arts administration path was something that
was more interesting. Yeah, so I have a totally uh
backwards story and that my mom made me go to
art school. That's the first time I've been said on
the show. Fascinated by this. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, well, okay,
so basically my mom um is a quite talented artist.
(14:35):
Um didn't get to be an artist. She ended up
being a computer programmer, which actually involved a lot of creativity.
It sounds like my mom is amazing um and I'm
very lucky to be her daughter. But she did do
a very classic mom thing where she sort of like
invested her failed dreams in me. And when I was
in high school, I you know, I wasn't doing very well.
(14:56):
I wasn't like an academic like achiever, and so my
mom was like, you should just go to art school.
You don't need to be like good at academics to
be an art school. And I really you know. So
I ended up applying to a bunch of art schools.
Got in Um what was your medium? Um? Well I
ended up. This is a sign of my true laziness.
I have majoring in photography because it was just super easy.
(15:20):
Apologies to any photographers who would like to wait, I'm
not a yeah, I mean worth noting that I'm not
a professional or famous artist photographer, so I'm easy to
you know, get the grades, not to do the work.
I'm just still amazed by this reverse parenting. I'm so
into it. I know. It's like when I go to
the movies with my dad and he's like, get more
(15:40):
candy because he loves candy and he feels guilty about it,
and it's a total reverse parenting. You're going to art
school photography. Did you have this end goal of I'm
just going to get through art school and then study
arts administration or what happened? So? Yeah, a couple of
things happened to me in college. Why is I actually
woke up finally? Um, it turns out that public school
(16:01):
was my problem, not school. Um, I actually do love
making art. Um, I'm never going to be an artist.
I would never have been an artist. I do like
making stuff, so I enjoyed it. Um. But there was
also a level of intellectual rigor that I started experiencing
in my in my non art classes that I really enjoyed.
And so I had this sort of moment where I
actually thought about leaving and I explored other schools. But
(16:22):
I didn't want to stay in college any longer than
I had to, and I would have it would have
added like two extra years into my college experience. So
I said, you know what, I'm just going to power
through art school and then I'll figure it out. Um.
And along the way, all my friends were artists, and
I learned that I'm really good at the business stuff
and they are not. UM. I also learned that I
love spending time with artists, I love being in art spaces.
(16:46):
I really just really wanted them to be successful so
there could be more of that in the world. And
so again another sign of my laziness. One day, sitting
on a couch um, the woman I was living with
at the time was applying to grad school. There was
a grad school catalog on the couch next to me.
I picked it up. I learned about this idea of
an arts administration degree. I applied to one school I
got in. I love this because sometimes people are like,
(17:10):
you know, I had this master plan, I did all
of this work. This was like mapped out ten years
in advance, and I think sometimes our listeners are like,
but that's not me. So very encouraging your honesty. I
talked to a lot of college kids, and I always
impressed this upon them. I'm like, you know, you're the
path that life hands you. Is not a path, it's
(17:32):
just where you happen to be um, and when you
start to make choices along that path and how you
make them, Like, the most important thing is that you're
making choices that feel good to you. And so the
thing for me is it wasn't until I found myself
actually in grad school and studying arts administration and understanding
that there was this whole um sort of business field
related to this world I really cared about that. I
(17:53):
started to actually be super intentional and how I moved
through my career, and I at that from that point on,
I've been actually quite on point. But yeah, it was
really just kind of lazy and random up until then.
But I love that realization too, is that you're sort
of like am I lazier. Am I just not connecting
with this thing that's in front of me, and that
when you do stumble on that thing that gets you
(18:15):
fired up, all of a sudden you're doing the work,
You're showing up and making the choices, and it's not
hard because it's exactly what gets you out of bed
in the morning. Yeah. I mean I went from being
like a barely passing anything student to Dean's List, getting
straight as every semester. Yeah. So it really once I
(18:36):
once I found the thing that was for me, and
that was a heat. That's like a huge lesson for
me as someone who marches to the beat of my
own drummer. Um is that I really did spend a
lot of my early you know, like high school and
even the beginning of college, thinking that I was something
was wrong with me. And it wasn't until I found
the thing I cared about and completely made this one
eight because I was applying myself in a different way,
(18:58):
in a way that was true to me who I
am and how I like to show up. That I
was able to be quote unquote successful. That's so inspiring,
it really is. I think recently I had this great
revelation that I hate to sit at a desk, like
I'm just not made to sit at desk. I hate them.
And the only reason I realized why I think that
I should have because in school, I you know, got
(19:20):
in trouble for sitting on the floor or for standing
up at lunch. And it was just this like huge
lightbulb moment that was like, oh my god, like there's
nothing wrong with me, it just didn't fit that way
right like that, that was it. And for you to
to share that stuff, and he is so inspiring because
you're right, Christina. We so often call like not the
right fit that we often blame it on things like laziness. Sure,
(19:44):
I mean I think this is true for anyone who
who feels like they don't fit in into whatever circumstances environment, school,
um job that they're in where they're like, I don't fit.
So it's probably me that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah, In reality,
I think we have enough data points between the three
of us and however many guests we've had on this
(20:05):
show to be like or maybe it's just not the
right fit for you and your work. Should you choose
to accept it is to to do the zig zag
until you find the place that is the right fit.
So I left to go to Chicago for grad school.
I saved for a couple of years, and then I
came back to New York and I came um, sort
(20:25):
of engaged in a job, and then like literally day one,
crying in my cubicle, kind of like, wow, I made
a huge mistake. Um. And then but you know, I'm
I'm someone who you know needs a paycheck, and so
I sort of stuck with it. Yeah, So I stuck
with it. And so three months in it was New
(20:47):
Year's Eve and I was hanging out. It was you know,
classic New York City, New York New Year's Eves or
at a moment, I'm like in a loft and everyone
there is like so fascinating and blah blah blah, and
I'm like, New York is amazing. What am I doing
in the cubicle? Right? Cry every day? And so I
gave myself twenty days to figure out some way to
make enough money to Like, at the time, I was
(21:08):
like years old, and I you know, I didn't have
any debt. I know, luckily had no credit card debt.
I have no cars, I had no mortgage, I had
no kids, I had nothing really like holding me back
from being a little broke for a while, and so
I gave myself till the I wanted to give two
weeks notice on January fourteen because I wanted to like
start fresh on February one. So I gave myself the
(21:29):
beginning of the month to figure out a way. How
do I just like pay rent and feed myself like
the most basic food. Um. And I did it. And
I have to say I spent the next eighteen months
doing the most random weird stuff. I mean, I volunteered
on a festival. I was like an educator at the
New Museum where I now work, which is really funny. Um.
I worked in public schools. I was a researcher, I
(21:50):
was a grant editor. I did all this stuff and
it was all in service of figuring out, you know,
a New York is again. It's amazing, how do I
make the most of my time here and not just
like drudge drudge through some job that makes me cry,
but also be like what do I want to be?
How do I want to show up? What is my profession?
I had been doing this work. I did a complete
one eight in my career. I'd become this accidental professional
(22:13):
in like arts education in public school and I was
really good at it, and I you know, I was
speaking at conferences, I was co authoring papers. It was happening.
I was on this path, and I'm like, I don't
want to work in public schools. I mean, I think
they're important, but it's not for me, so I you know,
but eighteen months in and then it really it took
a year and a half of being poor and eating
(22:33):
homemade taco is not fancy five dollars two until I've
really found the thing that was calling to me and
was able to reset myself for you to say, like,
I'm just going to have this exploration phase, in this
fact finding phase. You know, I think so much of
the time we feel like, oh if I don't have
it figured out again, going back to what we were
just saying, I'm behind. Something's wrong with me. I don't
(22:55):
know what to do. So I've just got to keep
driving forward in this kind of you know, mildly unhappy,
frustrated state, rather than say I'm going to give myself
this block of time and I'm going to use it
in this specific way and I'm going to eat by
the way great food choice, some homemade tacos and really
pare down. Then you're like building in this structure that
(23:17):
I think in the big wash of life can feel
really hard to find when you're uncertain and remembering like
two data points does not equal a line, right. I
think I struggle with this personally a lot, which is like,
if I make this choice and I'm going off in
that direction, is that the new future for myself? Like
is that forever? And you're like, it's just two data
(23:38):
points or maybe three, or maybe it's a line for
eighteen months, and then you're going to zigzag again. Right.
It's not like, oh my gosh, I made this choice
and now I am off on this other path and
I can never change it again. Right, It's like the seasons.
I'm gonna do this for a while. I'm gonna learn
what I can, and it's going to give me the
(24:00):
things that I don't know and that will tell me
what to do next. I mean, I do this now.
In my full time job, I write down what are
the five things I want to get done and not
get Rather than getting caught up in the day to day,
I'll just write, like in the next six months, I
want to do these five things, and you know, every
once in a while just making sure I'm checking those
five things off, meaning that like I'm not getting sucked
(24:20):
into the sitting at my desk or you know, the
drudgery of checking my email. We hear people talk about
this all the time, how your your job or your
career becomes almost like the administrative tasks of executing on
your job rather than the thing you care about. Actually,
last year, I was at a festival and they had
this thing where you could send your post self a
postcard one year in the future, and I just got
(24:42):
my my one year later postcard, and it was so
good because it was like Stephanie knowing you, um, you've
either done a lot in the past year and you're
not patting yourself on the back, or you're totally upset
that you haven't done all the things you want to do,
and don't worry, you probably worked really hard. It was
like such the best note from the past, and it
was crazy about the note was that I actually did
(25:04):
do a lot in last year, and I feel like
I did congratulate myself for it. So I also grew
so much in that I have a different person than
I was a year ago and that I thought that
I would have treated myself well, well, kudos to you.
I'm glad you both of those counts. Yeah, I highly
recommend setting yourself the postcard when you're in the future activity.
(25:39):
What is an incubator and why does a museum have one? Yeah,
great question. An incubator is a place for people who
have early stage ideas, early stage businesses, UM, creative practices,
major projects, something that UM they're trying to bring to life.
Our incubator environment is a place to help them that
(26:00):
to life, and we do that in a few different ways.
We do that by providing UM sort of a very
rich community experience. So we currently have eighty three teams
or a hundred and seven members in residence at New inc.
We provide professional development and mentorship, and we make a
lot of introductions and provide network opportunities. So we do
everything we can to support people from getting from A
(26:20):
to B whatever they're a to be is the New
Museum has one because in they had some extra space
and they were trying to figure out what to do
with it. And as they're sort of you know, traveling
around the city, one thing they kept coming across was
all these tech incubators. This was like a big moment,
and coworking spaces were in full swing. Um. And you know,
(26:41):
one thing that occurred to them is that in a
city that graduates more art students than any other city, um,
why is there not a space like this for artists?
Also recognizing the fact that technology is very important and
having a moment and there's in the museum has long
been interested in this intersection of art and technology and
so decided to claim that space and open its doors
(27:04):
inviting those kinds of people in. Oh, this is so exciting, Stephanie.
So I have to say that to me, the idea,
the concept of an incubator, I have to admit, is
really new. And I think I'm so struck by this
idea of community because we all know that it's such
a crucial part of you know, feeling fulfillment and having
(27:25):
real relationships no matter what you're doing, and it can
feel so difficult to find one for yourself, particularly when
you're sort of forging your own type of career and
you go, well, I don't even know if my people
exist yet, right. So new Ink boasts some impressive statistics
from the last five years, half of your participants have
(27:46):
been women and half have been people of color. How
have you been so successful at discovering and attracting diverse creators?
When the New Museum started Newing, it was very white
and very male, and knowing the demographics of New York City,
knowing the demographics of the community that we serve on
the Lower East Side, it just didn't make sense. And
so for them, they said, all right, we're gonna we're
(28:08):
gonna fix this, and so they brought on a full
time director of Community whose job it was to incrementally
bring us to where we are today, which is this
five year cumulative average of fifty fifty men, women, people
of color, and otherwise. Yeah, it was intentional, and it
continues to be intentional, and we continue to have to
make sure that we're not just speaking to our friends
(28:28):
and the people that we can see six inches in
front of our face and the people and our email us,
and making sure that we're always reaching and reaching and
reaching to discover new communities and new people to invite
into the program. So, if a creator isn't on your radar,
how do they get on it? How do you where
do you look for kind of the undiscovered talent. Yeah,
(28:50):
so this is actually it's interesting because the truth is
UM and I'm sure lots of people have experienced this
with any sort of recruiting cycle, is that personal referrals
are quite power full. They do usually yield great results.
And so we do two approaches. One is looking for
partnerships or opportunities to UM reach new networks that are
not our own networks. So, for example, there's a really
(29:13):
sort of very popular Latin X media site called ROMs Club.
We reached out to them last year to say, hey,
we have this really incredible incubator. You have a community
of people who are making are using technology to do
what they do. We serve your population. However, as far
as we know, we're not really doing anything together. So
let's do an event. Let's have a party, let's meet
(29:33):
each other. That's one approach, and that's a very typical
approach for us, is where we look at just other networks.
But going back to the personal referral thing. I don't
know if you've ever done. This is one of my
favorite party tricks where you UM ask someone else to
open up there like their Twitter feed on their phone. UM.
Note how different it looks from yours. And one thing
I've learned through that because I use my Twitter quite
(29:55):
heavily to discover people, UM, is to discover people. So
I will you know someone and say, like, I know
the people I fellow, who were the hundred you fellow?
Who's in your feed? Who who's Twitter referring for you
to check out? It's actually quite effective. Same for LinkedIn.
That's such a smart hack there. Especially the Twitter feed
(30:15):
is a very relevant one. I remember about a year
ago one of my Twitter followers really challenged a lot
of the white people that were following her to say, hey,
how many black people do you follow? How many Latin
X people are you following? Um? And she put out
a call and said, you know, look look who follows me,
(30:36):
Look who I follow, and pick fifty people and just
start following them. It made a material difference in the
voices I was hearing, the articles that were being surfaced,
the kind of opposite opinions on something that I just
wasn't seeing in any of my other communities. And it
made me realize how insular sometimes a lot of times, yeah,
(31:01):
the people I serve myself are, and and and how
much I have to decide to get out of that.
I was just gonna say, I use Twitter in that
way with um, I find around conferences, convenience festivals, looking
at who's using hashtags, who's talking to each other. Um, yeah,
I'm kind of I'm always in this mission to expand
my point of view, and but I've also just found
(31:24):
asking other people to open up on Twitter feed through
me is usually pretty helpful. Well, it's so important to
challenge the algorithms and serve up to the algorithm, right,
like different data so that it can spin it back
to you because otherwise, you know, we've talked about this
on the show before, Christina, just the echo chamber that exists.
But so Stephanie, we have obviously a ton of listeners
(31:44):
who are interdisciplinary who may have never heard about incubators before.
You know, how can how can our listeners learn about
similar incubators opportunities things like this, Because I think it's
really easy to feel like I'm out here by myself
and um, you know, hopefully someone will discover me through
(32:06):
someone else's Twitter feed or whatever. But how can I
sort of be an active participant in finding these opportunities
for myself? Can? Can you straight up apply to new
Ink or similar opportunities in your experience, what would you
say to someone who's like, oh, I want to be
a part of something like that. Yeah, I mean, every
every program is different. We for sure do an open
(32:26):
call every year. UM. It's actually something we spend quite
a lot of energy on. UM. We run it for
somewhere between like sixty and ninety days depending. That's the
case for Newing, and I think many other programs like
our Summer invite only Summer. As you said, hard to
find UM. For example, if you were to look at
a list of incubators in New York City, you probably
wouldn't see Newing on it because we're so weird. UM.
(32:48):
We love so I know exactly, And I think it's
the weird stuff that's the good stuff. So I think
the other thing that I would recommend that people do
is do an Internet search where you find the thing
you like and then try to monkey bar from that
thing to the next thing to the next thing. So,
for example, if you find something like Newing, look at
who they're following on Twitter, UM or on some other
(33:10):
social media platform. Look at who they're retweeting or sharing.
So I try to figure out who's in their network. UM.
I've found that. UM. I used to in my previous
role at Kickstarter. I would like have to always land
in a city and find all the most interesting people
in like five minutes and then meet all of them,
which was an impossible job. UM. And I actually found
the social media search thing I just described to be
(33:30):
a quite effective way to find, you know, all the
underground artist run spaces, all of the interesting people making
the most you know, the most provocative documentary films, all
the social entrepreneurs who were changing the landscape of their city.
That is how I found them. It was through these
sort of um, these social network different platforms. I love
that monkey barring yeah from one note to another, because
(33:51):
I think that's such a great point. Right, if you
go down the internet rabbit hole, people who are doing
this work, no other people who are doing this work.
And even if maybe you are in the middle of
the country and you say, well, I can't move to
New York, I can't go and be part of New Ink.
But let's see who new Ink knows, and maybe we
can monkey bar away to someone in Kansas City or St.
Louis or Houston. Right, So I love that idea. I
(34:21):
love the idea of writing to your future self and Christina,
I totally do this. Um. Yeah, so last year when
I was going through old boxes, my parents were like
cleaning out their storage locker and they were like, take
your stuff. Anyway, I found that my elementary school teachers
had us do this at the end of each year.
So I had letters from like my fifth grade self
(34:42):
who wrote these words of encouragement to my sixth grade self.
I mean, that's a lot of insight. I'm sure you
had as like a ten year old. Well, it was
really because like the main two themes were like relax
more and like don't let boys affect your feelings someone,
I'm on brand, honestly on brand, Kate, thanks for um.
(35:05):
But they were like so just endearing and and honestly
truly inspiring to my current self that I started doing
it again. So basically, I wrote a handwritten letter to
myself last New Year's Eve that I will this New
Year's Eve. Yeah, and I put it in an envelope
and wrote it to Kate. And I don't know where
I put it. Hopefully I'll find it okay in time.
(35:27):
But you know, a friend of mine told me about
a great website called future me dot org where you
can send your future self an email. And the cool
thing is you have to schedule it at least thirty
days in the future, and whenever I get one, I've
somehow completely forgotten that I sent it to myself, And
it always feels like it comes right on time, and
it's a really nice surprise. That is the sweetest thing.
(35:50):
Future me dot org. I'm going to have to check
this out, So, okay, I do something sort of similar.
I use a platform called ten q that is a
slightly different take on it. So every year in late
September early October, I think they time it with Rasha
Shanna Um. It emails you one question a day for
ten days, so ten q and asks you to reflect
(36:14):
on the past year or to make predictions for the
future one and it's a mix of like personal things
and what's going on in the world, something that you
challenged yourself with, like a really wide range, and then
it locks up your answers in the vault for a year,
and then the next year, right before it starts, they
(36:34):
send you last year's answers so you can reread them
and sort of reflect on what the last year has
been like before you do it again. And I've been
doing this for almost a decade. Now I can go
back and reread any of my answers going back to like,
I love that, And I also love the idea of
curated questions too, Like I'm like, I want to build
(36:57):
this into my handwritten letter to myself. It's just it's
a it's a really interesting way to see sort of
structured growth or change over time, you know. I also
I love Stephanie's point about laying real groundwork for your
Kickstarter campaign or you know, anything that you make, because
you have to know who your audience is and you
(37:18):
have to understand your relationship with them in order to
you know, build something that will be meaningful to them
and that they'll keep showing up for. It's not just
about getting someone to send you money once. You know.
Something that that someone told me in the theater one
time is that the audience is really the final ensemble member,
(37:38):
right Like that relationship that I know I love when
I'm on stage. That's so crucial to the form itself.
It's so valuable to think about that in any art form,
in any expression of creativity, that it's really about building
a real and lasting relationship, right, like building a group
(37:59):
of pole who are invested in you and you in them,
And you know that really takes thoughtfulness in time. It
doesn't happen overnight, and that's okay, right, absolutely, So this week,
let's think about building your community, and let's start on
social media. I loved this suggestion from Stephanie. Pick a
handful of people, institutions, organizations, whomever you think are interesting
(38:22):
and look at who they're following, and then follow the
ones of you know from their list that are interesting
or crucially different from the people that you're currently following.
I know when I get a note from someone who
I don't know as well on social media, or or
maybe somebody don't even know, but it's really thoughtful and
it's like, hey, I just I saw that thing that
you did and I thought it was cool or whatever.
(38:44):
It really gives life to a place that can feel
like it's the opposite of human interaction. You can really
start to find human connection and inspiration in this space
if you approach it that way, How else are you
growing your community? We want to know and we love
hearing your updates and questions or honestly, just send us
(39:05):
a note telling us that you're part of this community. Yes,
please Hello Human ven Diagrams. You can reach us on
Twitter or Instagram at t L d n E pod
or email us at Hello at t L d n
E podcast dot com. That's right, or you can leave
us a voicemail at eight three three high t L
d n E. That's eight three three four eight five
(39:28):
three six three, and don't forget to dial the extension
eight oh three when you call to leave a voicemail,
and we'll link to Stephanie's skill share class her LinkedIn
article and to new inc in the show notes. In
case you want to check out the community of creators
that she has gathered, you can find those at t
L d n E podcast dot com Slash one oh three.
(39:56):
Thanks so much to our producer Maya Coole and t
you for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and
review on Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard,
It really helps us get the word out to fellow
human ven Diagrams. Until next time, remember the limit does
not exist. The Limit does not Exist is a production
(40:20):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah.
The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell.
We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality,
(00:20):
and embrace the and not the ore so you can
turn everything you love into a custom built career that's
as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel
that one path may not be your only path, and
you call yourself a human vend Diagram, then you are
in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing
your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. Who's
(00:44):
in your community? Do you have a group of people
who inspire, support and show up for you or are
you a human Venn Diagram who feels like you don't
quite fit in anywhere. Maybe you're just starting out, or
you've taken time off, or you've changed paths and you
have no idea where your people are, or maybe you
feel like your interests are so unlike anyone else's that
(01:07):
your best option is to go it alone. If the
idea of finding or building a community of your own
fields abstract, scary, or totally impossible, I think this episode
is going to change that. Yes, our gas. This week
is Stephanie Pereira, who is a community engagement expert. Stephanie
is currently the director of New Inc, which is an
(01:28):
incubator for creators who are working at the intersection of
three of our favorite things, art, design, and technology. But
Stephanie's community expertise doesn't end there. She has over six
years of experience at Kickstarter as a member of its
leadership team, and she created a very popular skill share
class in which she gives insider tips on successfully launching
(01:49):
a new idea into the world. Do we ask Stephanie
to share those tips with us? You better believe it.
We also discuss the difference between laziness and disconnect super important,
as Stephanie tells us how she went from barely passing
to making the Dean's List just by being true to herself. Yeah,
and how she broke free from crying in her cubicle
(02:12):
to find her place in the world. Important note tacos
were involved. Tacos. Anyway, let's meet Stephanie. Let's do it.
Your bio describes you as this community engagement expert. What
does that actually mean? What does that mean to be
(02:33):
a community engagement expert? Yeah, it's a great question. UM,
I kind of invented it always. I think, you know,
in this moment where a lot of our communities are
you know, have been taken online. A lot of people
are doing deep engagement online. We're doing listening, active listening,
we're talking, We're doing all of the things. There's this
(02:54):
sort of emerging class of professionals who are experts and
understanding how do you set up how to manage, how
to engage, how to support other people and facilitating those
kinds of spaces and starting ages. Ago through some work
I was doing in public schools for since Chicago and
then in New York City. UM, and then you know,
through my work working at community arts organizations, I this
(03:16):
is like it was sort of a happenstancet of skills
that I developed. And then working at Kickstarter, which is
in the tech sector, which there is this known sort
of community manager role. UM, I picked up a lot
of actual, like true professional experience, and along the way
learned that it's a field that is just currently professionalizing.
The rules are still being written. There's a CMX is
(03:37):
one of the biggest community manager sort of gatherings, and
they've I think they're like five years old. So I mean,
I think, yeah, understanding how do you navigate big, diverse
communities in a professional way, not just in a human
way is new. But I feel I also do feel
like someone who's been I've been at it for long
enough of my career I can call myself an expert.
(03:57):
What do community in mean to you? Right? Like? What
does that even look like right now? And could you
share some tips on how someone can meaningfully begin to
build their own community or engage and or engage within it.
I'm going to use it just a really super concrete example.
When I first landed in New York, I was, you know,
(04:19):
an arts administrator. UM. I sought out my fellow arts administrators.
It turns out there was a sort of nascent group
of emerging leaders and arts administration that had this desire
to start to gather those of us who were new
in the field, asking some tough questions and hoping to
change the field. As we grew, and we started as
five people, we then started organizing events UM and a
(04:40):
lot of people showed up. I mean by the time
I left, I think our list serve was like ten
thousand people strong. Um. Yeah, And we were doing events
at the green space, like quarterly events with a podcast.
We were really um things were happening. In l it's
called El Naya. Continues to exist today. That however, there
was a point, it's called emerging Leaders in New York.
There is a point where I aged out of the
(05:00):
group and I had to move on. I was no
longer emerging. However, there was a core group of maybe
five of us that continued to meet at like eight
am on Wednesday morning for a long time, and I
would still call that a community. So the fact that
we we went from sort of organizers of this multi
thousand person community to five people meeting for breakfast once
a month at eight am, we were still people who
(05:22):
were sort of peer to peer getting together, listening to
each other, helping each other, advising each other. And I
think that those that sort of like core sort of
motivation remains true. Yeah, so you mentioned your experience at Kickstarter,
and you have over six years of experience there, and
you also have this incredibly popular skill share class on
(05:45):
the topic of Kickstarter, and so the minor internet celebrity, Yeah,
they've done skill share. It's amazing. And so we want
to take this opportunity to get some of that inside
scoop from you on what makes a Kickstarter campaign successful,
and certainly to talk about the idea of like, not
only do you want to make a project, but you've
(06:07):
got to fund it, and funding it means right, having
real support in every sense of the word right. One
of the questions we often get with people saying like,
I made this great project, I have a product, I
have a thing like, and now I need to sell
it right now. I need to get the funding for it.
And they you know, I think several of my friends
have put something up on Kickstarter and it didn't get funded, right,
(06:32):
it wasn't successful. And then they're like, well, wait, how
is how are all these other things getting like fully
funded on day three? And I had mine up there
for thirty or sixty days and I didn't meet my goal.
And that was not even my stretch goal. That was
like my lowboll goal. You have to set it up
for success and not just hope that random Internet strangers
will find you and want to give you their money. Yeah, yeah,
(06:54):
can you talk us through that process? Amazing if we
live in a world random and that strangers on the
regular just found us, it gave us money. I mean,
it does happen. That's one reason kickstarter captures so many
people's imaginations because you have those stories of that person
who launched that project and it went viral, very rare.
Um for most of us, it does require a lot
(07:15):
of this stuff. We're talking about community and community building
and how we sort of gather people around us in
these very vulnerable ways, how we we make the choice
to show up for each other in vulnerable moments. Um.
All of that holds true on Kickstarter, and so UM
I think, you know, interestingly, a lot of the work
that I ended up doing in coaching people through preparing
(07:36):
to launch their campaign. You would think that it would
be a lot around this sort of the money management
logistics all that stuff. But the truth is that I
think you know, currently the success rate is at like
thirty something per cent, So that means that sixty something
percent are never reaching their funding goal, and that's their
low ball goal. And so it's really helping people understand, um,
(07:56):
you know, not just what their idea is, but how
do they tell the story of their idea in a
way that matters that people will get excited about. How
did they start practicing telling that story, How do they
find people who will care about that story and how
do they start building those relationships? Well before they launched
their Kickstarter campaign, a friend of mine who is a
musician and an artist, and he started building um sort
(08:19):
of engagement and camaraderie around his project eighteen months before
he launched his Kickstarter kids. And that was because he
was he's known sort of. He's actually a pretty well
known musician. He's known for a certain kind of music,
a certain kind of art, and he wanted to change
that narrative. And I was like, your fans are not
going to back you if you just launched this random
project that they don't understand and I've never heard of,
(08:41):
So you need to start seating that. And another thing
he did along the way, too, is thinking about how
to grow his audience. So not only how to adjust
his community's expectations and get them excited about this new
thing he was working on, but also how does he
have greater reach? So thinking about strategically, like, who are
some other artists and musicians that have great reach that
would be cited about his work and how could he
(09:01):
start collaborating with them in the lead up to the
launch of his campaign and it was sort of all
of that very careful plotting work, um which I think
was great for him too because it actually helped him.
And this is the other thing I always tell kicks
art creators, because they're always like, God, that sounds like
an enormous world of work. It is. It is that
if you're doing it well, it's good work. You're you're
(09:23):
you're going to release a product to the world that
is better that you're going to be that much more
excited about. And then it's going to have long term legs.
It's not going to be a blip on the radar.
It's going to be something that people are going to
want to um take and advocate and carry forward in
the world. For you, well, it just reminds me of
a line one of my acting teachers once set in college,
which is like, for you to be an actor, there
(09:45):
needs to be an audience, otherwise you're just a crazy
person talking to yourself in a dark room, right, And
I think there's a lot of artists and and makers
of all stripes were sort of like, I just want
to do the work. I don't want to have to
sell it. I don't want to have to find in
the audience that like, that's the business side. I just
want to be a creator and I get that instinct,
(10:07):
I do. But part of this is knowing who your
audience is and you know what that relationship is that
you have with them. Why are you making this for them?
And where does this fit in their life? And understanding
and building that audience is just as much a part
of your practice as the technique and the skills of
doing the work itself. Unfortunately, it is not something that
(10:31):
they teach people in art school or school. What it
took me quite some time to realize as someone who
just started making work because I didn't want to be
talking to myself in a dark room alone, is is
that you know, it takes as much work to market something.
And by marketing, I mean, you know, in the most
(10:52):
organic sense of that word, in just the sense of
like sharing, finding your audience, sharing it with them, right,
trial and error, like what is my plan? It takes time.
It takes really the same amount of creativity in my
experience as it does to create the actual thing. Right,
(11:14):
So really, I love you. Know. Your step one in
this wrap up article that you wrote is identify your
goals and that those can be anything from you know,
in addition to the financial support, growing your community, getting pressed,
attracting a buyer or publisher, meeting new collaborators. And what
(11:34):
I love about those questions is they really encourage you
to think holistically and think, well, you know, money is
really just going to come as a product of all
of those other things too. What are a couple of
common Kickstarters stumbling blocks that you would run into when
working with creator Stephanie. I know, for one, it's it's
hard to factor in the financial effects of things like taxes, funding, fees,
(11:59):
back or rewards in that number that you're asking for.
I think it's anticipating the launch and how you're going
to manage that communication strategy. UM. That does not come
naturally to most people. UM. And so even if that's
acknowledging that that is not your thing and figuring out
a plan for working around that and or making that
work rewarding for you too. It's what you just alluded to,
(12:20):
which is understanding the difference between um, the sort of
gross raise of your Kickstarter campaign UM, and really truly
all the expenses that come with all the things that
you're trying to do. I think another thing people don't
anticipate is the long tale of communication. So the campaign
doesn't end thirty days when you in when you're funded,
(12:41):
but it ends once you've fulfilled all the rewards. And
usually the journey from like getting the money to actually
making and shipping the thing is much longer and much
more fraught than people plan. For someone who has a
couple of things that still hasn't been delivered several years
after I backed them a common story. Um. And what
(13:02):
we've seen is that if a creator is set up
for that and handles that with grace and is like
very communicative throughout that whole process. Again, general life roles
here that it's not really people don't mind. People don't
mind waiting the two years for the film to come
out or whatever it is. It's like a surprise two
years later, Oh I paid for that. Yeah, yeah, totally.
(13:24):
Um And I honestly, I would say those are the
three biggies. It's the communication, it's the it's the money,
and it's the planning for the launch or the three
that continuously really set people up for for struggle. You
(13:53):
did a b f A and visual arts and then
you did this master as in arts administration. So you
you really did from a you know, education will standpoint,
learned both sides of that equation, the maker side and
kind of the business management side of this. Did you
plan to be a full time artist when you were
doing your b f A or did you already know
(14:14):
that kind of the arts administration path was something that
was more interesting. Yeah, so I have a totally uh
backwards story and that my mom made me go to
art school. That's the first time I've been said on
the show. Fascinated by this. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, well, okay,
so basically my mom um is a quite talented artist.
(14:35):
Um didn't get to be an artist. She ended up
being a computer programmer, which actually involved a lot of creativity.
It sounds like my mom is amazing um and I'm
very lucky to be her daughter. But she did do
a very classic mom thing where she sort of like
invested her failed dreams in me. And when I was
in high school, I you know, I wasn't doing very well.
(14:56):
I wasn't like an academic like achiever, and so my
mom was like, you should just go to art school.
You don't need to be like good at academics to
be an art school. And I really you know. So
I ended up applying to a bunch of art schools.
Got in Um what was your medium? Um? Well I
ended up. This is a sign of my true laziness.
I have majoring in photography because it was just super easy.
(15:20):
Apologies to any photographers who would like to wait, I'm
not a yeah, I mean worth noting that I'm not
a professional or famous artist photographer, so I'm easy to
you know, get the grades, not to do the work.
I'm just still amazed by this reverse parenting. I'm so
into it. I know. It's like when I go to
the movies with my dad and he's like, get more
(15:40):
candy because he loves candy and he feels guilty about it,
and it's a total reverse parenting. You're going to art
school photography. Did you have this end goal of I'm
just going to get through art school and then study
arts administration or what happened? So? Yeah, a couple of
things happened to me in college. Why is I actually
woke up finally? Um, it turns out that public school
(16:01):
was my problem, not school. Um, I actually do love
making art. Um, I'm never going to be an artist.
I would never have been an artist. I do like
making stuff, so I enjoyed it. Um. But there was
also a level of intellectual rigor that I started experiencing
in my in my non art classes that I really enjoyed.
And so I had this sort of moment where I
actually thought about leaving and I explored other schools. But
(16:22):
I didn't want to stay in college any longer than
I had to, and I would have it would have
added like two extra years into my college experience. So
I said, you know what, I'm just going to power
through art school and then I'll figure it out. Um.
And along the way, all my friends were artists, and
I learned that I'm really good at the business stuff
and they are not. UM. I also learned that I
love spending time with artists, I love being in art spaces.
(16:46):
I really just really wanted them to be successful so
there could be more of that in the world. And
so again another sign of my laziness. One day, sitting
on a couch um, the woman I was living with
at the time was applying to grad school. There was
a grad school catalog on the couch next to me.
I picked it up. I learned about this idea of
an arts administration degree. I applied to one school I
got in. I love this because sometimes people are like,
(17:10):
you know, I had this master plan, I did all
of this work. This was like mapped out ten years
in advance, and I think sometimes our listeners are like,
but that's not me. So very encouraging your honesty. I
talked to a lot of college kids, and I always
impressed this upon them. I'm like, you know, you're the
path that life hands you. Is not a path, it's
(17:32):
just where you happen to be um, and when you
start to make choices along that path and how you
make them, Like, the most important thing is that you're
making choices that feel good to you. And so the
thing for me is it wasn't until I found myself
actually in grad school and studying arts administration and understanding
that there was this whole um sort of business field
related to this world I really cared about that. I
(17:53):
started to actually be super intentional and how I moved
through my career, and I at that from that point on,
I've been actually quite on point. But yeah, it was
really just kind of lazy and random up until then.
But I love that realization too, is that you're sort
of like am I lazier. Am I just not connecting
with this thing that's in front of me, and that
when you do stumble on that thing that gets you
(18:15):
fired up, all of a sudden you're doing the work,
You're showing up and making the choices, and it's not
hard because it's exactly what gets you out of bed
in the morning. Yeah. I mean I went from being
like a barely passing anything student to Dean's List, getting
straight as every semester. Yeah. So it really once I
(18:36):
once I found the thing that was for me, and
that was a heat. That's like a huge lesson for
me as someone who marches to the beat of my
own drummer. Um is that I really did spend a
lot of my early you know, like high school and
even the beginning of college, thinking that I was something
was wrong with me. And it wasn't until I found
the thing I cared about and completely made this one
eight because I was applying myself in a different way,
(18:58):
in a way that was true to me who I
am and how I like to show up. That I
was able to be quote unquote successful. That's so inspiring,
it really is. I think recently I had this great
revelation that I hate to sit at a desk, like
I'm just not made to sit at desk. I hate them.
And the only reason I realized why I think that
I should have because in school, I you know, got
(19:20):
in trouble for sitting on the floor or for standing
up at lunch. And it was just this like huge
lightbulb moment that was like, oh my god, like there's
nothing wrong with me, it just didn't fit that way
right like that, that was it. And for you to
to share that stuff, and he is so inspiring because
you're right, Christina. We so often call like not the
right fit that we often blame it on things like laziness. Sure,
(19:44):
I mean I think this is true for anyone who
who feels like they don't fit in into whatever circumstances environment, school,
um job that they're in where they're like, I don't fit.
So it's probably me that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah, In reality,
I think we have enough data points between the three
of us and however many guests we've had on this
(20:05):
show to be like or maybe it's just not the
right fit for you and your work. Should you choose
to accept it is to to do the zig zag
until you find the place that is the right fit.
So I left to go to Chicago for grad school.
I saved for a couple of years, and then I
came back to New York and I came um, sort
(20:25):
of engaged in a job, and then like literally day one,
crying in my cubicle, kind of like, wow, I made
a huge mistake. Um. And then but you know, I'm
I'm someone who you know needs a paycheck, and so
I sort of stuck with it. Yeah, So I stuck
with it. And so three months in it was New
(20:47):
Year's Eve and I was hanging out. It was you know,
classic New York City, New York New Year's Eves or
at a moment, I'm like in a loft and everyone
there is like so fascinating and blah blah blah, and
I'm like, New York is amazing. What am I doing
in the cubicle? Right? Cry every day? And so I
gave myself twenty days to figure out some way to
make enough money to Like, at the time, I was
(21:08):
like years old, and I you know, I didn't have
any debt. I know, luckily had no credit card debt.
I have no cars, I had no mortgage, I had
no kids, I had nothing really like holding me back
from being a little broke for a while, and so
I gave myself till the I wanted to give two
weeks notice on January fourteen because I wanted to like
start fresh on February one. So I gave myself the
(21:29):
beginning of the month to figure out a way. How
do I just like pay rent and feed myself like
the most basic food. Um. And I did it. And
I have to say I spent the next eighteen months
doing the most random weird stuff. I mean, I volunteered
on a festival. I was like an educator at the
New Museum where I now work, which is really funny. Um.
I worked in public schools. I was a researcher, I
(21:50):
was a grant editor. I did all this stuff and
it was all in service of figuring out, you know,
a New York is again. It's amazing, how do I
make the most of my time here and not just
like drudge drudge through some job that makes me cry,
but also be like what do I want to be?
How do I want to show up? What is my profession?
I had been doing this work. I did a complete
one eight in my career. I'd become this accidental professional
(22:13):
in like arts education in public school and I was
really good at it, and I you know, I was
speaking at conferences, I was co authoring papers. It was happening.
I was on this path, and I'm like, I don't
want to work in public schools. I mean, I think
they're important, but it's not for me, so I you know,
but eighteen months in and then it really it took
a year and a half of being poor and eating
(22:33):
homemade taco is not fancy five dollars two until I've
really found the thing that was calling to me and
was able to reset myself for you to say, like,
I'm just going to have this exploration phase, in this
fact finding phase. You know, I think so much of
the time we feel like, oh if I don't have
it figured out again, going back to what we were
just saying, I'm behind. Something's wrong with me. I don't
(22:55):
know what to do. So I've just got to keep
driving forward in this kind of you know, mildly unhappy,
frustrated state, rather than say I'm going to give myself
this block of time and I'm going to use it
in this specific way and I'm going to eat by
the way great food choice, some homemade tacos and really
pare down. Then you're like building in this structure that
(23:17):
I think in the big wash of life can feel
really hard to find when you're uncertain and remembering like
two data points does not equal a line, right. I
think I struggle with this personally a lot, which is like,
if I make this choice and I'm going off in
that direction, is that the new future for myself? Like
is that forever? And you're like, it's just two data
(23:38):
points or maybe three, or maybe it's a line for
eighteen months, and then you're going to zigzag again. Right.
It's not like, oh my gosh, I made this choice
and now I am off on this other path and
I can never change it again. Right, It's like the seasons.
I'm gonna do this for a while. I'm gonna learn
what I can, and it's going to give me the
(24:00):
things that I don't know and that will tell me
what to do next. I mean, I do this now.
In my full time job, I write down what are
the five things I want to get done and not
get Rather than getting caught up in the day to day,
I'll just write, like in the next six months, I
want to do these five things, and you know, every
once in a while just making sure I'm checking those
five things off, meaning that like I'm not getting sucked
(24:20):
into the sitting at my desk or you know, the
drudgery of checking my email. We hear people talk about
this all the time, how your your job or your
career becomes almost like the administrative tasks of executing on
your job rather than the thing you care about. Actually,
last year, I was at a festival and they had
this thing where you could send your post self a
postcard one year in the future, and I just got
(24:42):
my my one year later postcard, and it was so
good because it was like Stephanie knowing you, um, you've
either done a lot in the past year and you're
not patting yourself on the back, or you're totally upset
that you haven't done all the things you want to do,
and don't worry, you probably worked really hard. It was
like such the best note from the past, and it
was crazy about the note was that I actually did
(25:04):
do a lot in last year, and I feel like
I did congratulate myself for it. So I also grew
so much in that I have a different person than
I was a year ago and that I thought that
I would have treated myself well, well, kudos to you.
I'm glad you both of those counts. Yeah, I highly
recommend setting yourself the postcard when you're in the future activity.
(25:39):
What is an incubator and why does a museum have one? Yeah,
great question. An incubator is a place for people who
have early stage ideas, early stage businesses, UM, creative practices,
major projects, something that UM they're trying to bring to life.
Our incubator environment is a place to help them that
(26:00):
to life, and we do that in a few different ways.
We do that by providing UM sort of a very
rich community experience. So we currently have eighty three teams
or a hundred and seven members in residence at New inc.
We provide professional development and mentorship, and we make a
lot of introductions and provide network opportunities. So we do
everything we can to support people from getting from A
(26:20):
to B whatever they're a to be is the New
Museum has one because in they had some extra space
and they were trying to figure out what to do
with it. And as they're sort of you know, traveling
around the city, one thing they kept coming across was
all these tech incubators. This was like a big moment,
and coworking spaces were in full swing. Um. And you know,
(26:41):
one thing that occurred to them is that in a
city that graduates more art students than any other city, um,
why is there not a space like this for artists?
Also recognizing the fact that technology is very important and
having a moment and there's in the museum has long
been interested in this intersection of art and technology and
so decided to claim that space and open its doors
(27:04):
inviting those kinds of people in. Oh, this is so exciting, Stephanie.
So I have to say that to me, the idea,
the concept of an incubator, I have to admit, is
really new. And I think I'm so struck by this
idea of community because we all know that it's such
a crucial part of you know, feeling fulfillment and having
(27:25):
real relationships no matter what you're doing, and it can
feel so difficult to find one for yourself, particularly when
you're sort of forging your own type of career and
you go, well, I don't even know if my people
exist yet, right. So new Ink boasts some impressive statistics
from the last five years, half of your participants have
(27:46):
been women and half have been people of color. How
have you been so successful at discovering and attracting diverse creators?
When the New Museum started Newing, it was very white
and very male, and knowing the demographics of New York City,
knowing the demographics of the community that we serve on
the Lower East Side, it just didn't make sense. And
so for them, they said, all right, we're gonna we're
(28:08):
gonna fix this, and so they brought on a full
time director of Community whose job it was to incrementally
bring us to where we are today, which is this
five year cumulative average of fifty fifty men, women, people
of color, and otherwise. Yeah, it was intentional, and it
continues to be intentional, and we continue to have to
make sure that we're not just speaking to our friends
(28:28):
and the people that we can see six inches in
front of our face and the people and our email us,
and making sure that we're always reaching and reaching and
reaching to discover new communities and new people to invite
into the program. So, if a creator isn't on your radar,
how do they get on it? How do you where
do you look for kind of the undiscovered talent. Yeah,
(28:50):
so this is actually it's interesting because the truth is
UM and I'm sure lots of people have experienced this
with any sort of recruiting cycle, is that personal referrals
are quite power full. They do usually yield great results.
And so we do two approaches. One is looking for
partnerships or opportunities to UM reach new networks that are
not our own networks. So, for example, there's a really
(29:13):
sort of very popular Latin X media site called ROMs Club.
We reached out to them last year to say, hey,
we have this really incredible incubator. You have a community
of people who are making are using technology to do
what they do. We serve your population. However, as far
as we know, we're not really doing anything together. So
let's do an event. Let's have a party, let's meet
(29:33):
each other. That's one approach, and that's a very typical
approach for us, is where we look at just other networks.
But going back to the personal referral thing. I don't
know if you've ever done. This is one of my
favorite party tricks where you UM ask someone else to
open up there like their Twitter feed on their phone. UM.
Note how different it looks from yours. And one thing
I've learned through that because I use my Twitter quite
(29:55):
heavily to discover people, UM, is to discover people. So
I will you know someone and say, like, I know
the people I fellow, who were the hundred you fellow?
Who's in your feed? Who who's Twitter referring for you
to check out? It's actually quite effective. Same for LinkedIn.
That's such a smart hack there. Especially the Twitter feed
(30:15):
is a very relevant one. I remember about a year
ago one of my Twitter followers really challenged a lot
of the white people that were following her to say, hey,
how many black people do you follow? How many Latin
X people are you following? Um? And she put out
a call and said, you know, look look who follows me,
(30:36):
Look who I follow, and pick fifty people and just
start following them. It made a material difference in the
voices I was hearing, the articles that were being surfaced,
the kind of opposite opinions on something that I just
wasn't seeing in any of my other communities. And it
made me realize how insular sometimes a lot of times, yeah,
(31:01):
the people I serve myself are, and and and how
much I have to decide to get out of that.
I was just gonna say, I use Twitter in that
way with um, I find around conferences, convenience festivals, looking
at who's using hashtags, who's talking to each other. Um, yeah,
I'm kind of I'm always in this mission to expand
my point of view, and but I've also just found
(31:24):
asking other people to open up on Twitter feed through
me is usually pretty helpful. Well, it's so important to
challenge the algorithms and serve up to the algorithm, right,
like different data so that it can spin it back
to you because otherwise, you know, we've talked about this
on the show before, Christina, just the echo chamber that exists.
But so Stephanie, we have obviously a ton of listeners
(31:44):
who are interdisciplinary who may have never heard about incubators before.
You know, how can how can our listeners learn about
similar incubators opportunities things like this, Because I think it's
really easy to feel like I'm out here by myself
and um, you know, hopefully someone will discover me through
(32:06):
someone else's Twitter feed or whatever. But how can I
sort of be an active participant in finding these opportunities
for myself? Can? Can you straight up apply to new
Ink or similar opportunities in your experience, what would you
say to someone who's like, oh, I want to be
a part of something like that. Yeah, I mean, every
every program is different. We for sure do an open
(32:26):
call every year. UM. It's actually something we spend quite
a lot of energy on. UM. We run it for
somewhere between like sixty and ninety days depending. That's the
case for Newing, and I think many other programs like
our Summer invite only Summer. As you said, hard to
find UM. For example, if you were to look at
a list of incubators in New York City, you probably
wouldn't see Newing on it because we're so weird. UM.
(32:48):
We love so I know exactly, And I think it's
the weird stuff that's the good stuff. So I think
the other thing that I would recommend that people do
is do an Internet search where you find the thing
you like and then try to monkey bar from that
thing to the next thing to the next thing. So,
for example, if you find something like Newing, look at
who they're following on Twitter, UM or on some other
(33:10):
social media platform. Look at who they're retweeting or sharing.
So I try to figure out who's in their network. UM.
I've found that. UM. I used to in my previous
role at Kickstarter. I would like have to always land
in a city and find all the most interesting people
in like five minutes and then meet all of them,
which was an impossible job. UM. And I actually found
the social media search thing I just described to be
(33:30):
a quite effective way to find, you know, all the
underground artist run spaces, all of the interesting people making
the most you know, the most provocative documentary films, all
the social entrepreneurs who were changing the landscape of their city.
That is how I found them. It was through these
sort of um, these social network different platforms. I love
that monkey barring yeah from one note to another, because
(33:51):
I think that's such a great point. Right, if you
go down the internet rabbit hole, people who are doing
this work, no other people who are doing this work.
And even if maybe you are in the middle of
the country and you say, well, I can't move to
New York, I can't go and be part of New Ink.
But let's see who new Ink knows, and maybe we
can monkey bar away to someone in Kansas City or St.
Louis or Houston. Right, So I love that idea. I
(34:21):
love the idea of writing to your future self and Christina,
I totally do this. Um. Yeah, so last year when
I was going through old boxes, my parents were like
cleaning out their storage locker and they were like, take
your stuff. Anyway, I found that my elementary school teachers
had us do this at the end of each year.
So I had letters from like my fifth grade self
(34:42):
who wrote these words of encouragement to my sixth grade self.
I mean, that's a lot of insight. I'm sure you
had as like a ten year old. Well, it was
really because like the main two themes were like relax
more and like don't let boys affect your feelings someone,
I'm on brand, honestly on brand, Kate, thanks for um.
(35:05):
But they were like so just endearing and and honestly
truly inspiring to my current self that I started doing
it again. So basically, I wrote a handwritten letter to
myself last New Year's Eve that I will this New
Year's Eve. Yeah, and I put it in an envelope
and wrote it to Kate. And I don't know where
I put it. Hopefully I'll find it okay in time.
(35:27):
But you know, a friend of mine told me about
a great website called future me dot org where you
can send your future self an email. And the cool
thing is you have to schedule it at least thirty
days in the future, and whenever I get one, I've
somehow completely forgotten that I sent it to myself, And
it always feels like it comes right on time, and
it's a really nice surprise. That is the sweetest thing.
(35:50):
Future me dot org. I'm going to have to check
this out, So, okay, I do something sort of similar.
I use a platform called ten q that is a
slightly different take on it. So every year in late
September early October, I think they time it with Rasha
Shanna Um. It emails you one question a day for
ten days, so ten q and asks you to reflect
(36:14):
on the past year or to make predictions for the
future one and it's a mix of like personal things
and what's going on in the world, something that you
challenged yourself with, like a really wide range, and then
it locks up your answers in the vault for a year,
and then the next year, right before it starts, they
(36:34):
send you last year's answers so you can reread them
and sort of reflect on what the last year has
been like before you do it again. And I've been
doing this for almost a decade. Now I can go
back and reread any of my answers going back to like,
I love that, And I also love the idea of
curated questions too, Like I'm like, I want to build
(36:57):
this into my handwritten letter to myself. It's just it's
a it's a really interesting way to see sort of
structured growth or change over time, you know. I also
I love Stephanie's point about laying real groundwork for your
Kickstarter campaign or you know, anything that you make, because
you have to know who your audience is and you
(37:18):
have to understand your relationship with them in order to
you know, build something that will be meaningful to them
and that they'll keep showing up for. It's not just
about getting someone to send you money once. You know.
Something that that someone told me in the theater one
time is that the audience is really the final ensemble member,
(37:38):
right Like that relationship that I know I love when
I'm on stage. That's so crucial to the form itself.
It's so valuable to think about that in any art form,
in any expression of creativity, that it's really about building
a real and lasting relationship, right, like building a group
(37:59):
of pole who are invested in you and you in them,
And you know that really takes thoughtfulness in time. It
doesn't happen overnight, and that's okay, right, absolutely, So this week,
let's think about building your community, and let's start on
social media. I loved this suggestion from Stephanie. Pick a
handful of people, institutions, organizations, whomever you think are interesting
(38:22):
and look at who they're following, and then follow the
ones of you know from their list that are interesting
or crucially different from the people that you're currently following.
I know when I get a note from someone who
I don't know as well on social media, or or
maybe somebody don't even know, but it's really thoughtful and
it's like, hey, I just I saw that thing that
you did and I thought it was cool or whatever.
(38:44):
It really gives life to a place that can feel
like it's the opposite of human interaction. You can really
start to find human connection and inspiration in this space
if you approach it that way, How else are you
growing your community? We want to know and we love
hearing your updates and questions or honestly, just send us
(39:05):
a note telling us that you're part of this community. Yes,
please Hello Human ven Diagrams. You can reach us on
Twitter or Instagram at t L d n E pod
or email us at Hello at t L d n
E podcast dot com. That's right, or you can leave
us a voicemail at eight three three high t L
d n E. That's eight three three four eight five
(39:28):
three six three, and don't forget to dial the extension
eight oh three when you call to leave a voicemail,
and we'll link to Stephanie's skill share class her LinkedIn
article and to new inc in the show notes. In
case you want to check out the community of creators
that she has gathered, you can find those at t
L d n E podcast dot com Slash one oh three.
(39:56):
Thanks so much to our producer Maya Coole and t
you for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and
review on Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard,
It really helps us get the word out to fellow
human ven Diagrams. Until next time, remember the limit does
not exist. The Limit does not Exist is a production
(40:20):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah.
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