See What Sticks: Innovation Lessons from Eddie Murphy

At nearly 29 years old, there aren't many things I can say I've been doing reliably for twenty years. But one of them is, "watch Saturday Night Live." Each Saturday around 11:25, my whole family gathered in the living room (sometimes playing Scrabble too, sometimes not), and we laughed together. The Marfos are a funny family, and memories like this always serve as a good reminder of that fact.

So I dove into Live From New York, the 2002 anthology of the show with the same fervor and excitement with which someone might explore their own family history. I expected to learn more about the interpersonal relationships between clast members, the frenetic pace and schedule of the writing, and the experiences of several hosts during their "tours of duty" in Studio 8H. But I also learned something exceptional about what hard work and team play can get you.

I've always had a difficult time balancing impulses to innovate and creating, with the need to be able to "fit" into a corporate, hierarchical structure. The more I foster the former side of my personality, the harder complying with the latter seems to be. But I've learned from several years of practice: you earn the ride to bend the rules when you spend time following and learning within them. SNL has had no greater beneficiary of this strategy than Eddie Murphy.

Brought on during Lorne Michaels' five-year absence as showrunner, Eddie Murphy proved a bright talent from the start, but struggled from underutilization (in large part because the showrunners in place had little experience with comedy). Though he was young (hardly twenty), he worked hard to get noticed and contributed strongly to the success of the fill cast. As we know, he went on to become one of the show's most successful alumni, with franchises such as Beverly Hills Cop, The Nutty Professor, and Shrek to his name, as well as a notable dramatic turn in Dreamgirls.

So what can we learn from Eddie Murphy's meteoric rise, even during what was considered a time of creative crisis for the show?

Work Hard. One of my current favorite motivational quotes is, "The dream is free. The hustle costs extra." It's not Shakespeare, but it gets the point across: wanting anything of significance requires hard work. Eddie Murphy wanted to be successful, and everyone on the show knew it. Talent coordinator Neil Levy noticed an interesting relic of Murphy's desire: bathroom graffiti saying "Eddie Murphy, No. 1." The more success he gained on the show, and eventually in movies, the bigger the words got. He erased, he wrote larger, he switched to pen. That belief in his talent extended to the full-time writers, who spent the most time with him:

All you had to do with eddie at that time was be a real good stenographer. Because you'd get him in the office and he'd have the character down, and he'd have the voice down and then if you had a good ear, you could figure it out and give him the stuff right back and he would just kick ass.

Lesson: dreams don't work unless you do. And even when he wasn't his very happiest, Murphy put in the time and energy to earn the camera time. Most would say it paid off!

Create Strong Alliances. Part of Eddie's rise to reliable utility player didn't come until he found the right writers to partner with. David Sheffield and Barry Blaustein. After a strong start transforming a random idea of Sheffield's into a sketch that, as he put it, "jumped off screen," they kept the relationship going-a relationship that spawned iconic characters like Buckwheat and Mr. Robinson.

But his dedication to creating strong characters didn't end with himself. Having spent time feeling underused on the show, he stood up in the writers room for castmates who were feeling the same way. Even as his starpower rose, cast members like Brad Hall remember him for his commitment to ensuring it wasn't all about him.

Lesson: who are the people around you that have the blend of talent and personality to elevate your work? Seek out these people, ally yourself, and create a product where you all can shine. Then, find the people who need you in a role to elevate their work, and do that too.

Then, Push. Once you've done the hard work to get established and learned the organization, and added value for those around you, then you can start to bend some established rules. Some organizations, the more attentive ones that will recognize this in you, may help you in that bending of the rules. In Murphy's final year as a cast member, he was being wooed away with major movie deals and film shoots. But as a strong producer and collaborator, NBC brass wanted to keep him. So he was offered an unprecedented deal to work on only half the season, filling in gaps with pre-recorded segments that would stretch his presence. Additionally, he remains the only cast member to serve as host in the same season that he was a cast member, taking over the role after a previously scheduled host backed out.

Lesson: once your value is proven, you can start to gently buck the norms that have been set for you in your role. as long as you can prove that value to the organization.

Another one of my favorite work-fueling quotes is, "Work hard and be nice to people." My desire to balance a challenging and creative work schedule, while appreciating the people that help me make it happen, strongly informs my definition of success. While Eddie Murphy's returns to SNL are infrequent, he truly does credit and appreciate the show's role in his stardom. And it was that combination of work, collaboration, and gratitude that helped him break free from the show's standard operating procedure- and could do the same for you!

Episode 5 - Controlling Your Own Destiny

Kevin shares the up's and down's of 8 months in his start-ups and how rewarding but difficult it is when you control your own destiny. Show notes:

• Intro
• We answer Matt Ebert's questions - What is the difference between professional niche's and personal niche's?
• Introduce Matt to Dustin Ramsdell of HigherEdGeek
• Kevin talks about the four things that influence his destiny.

Contact Kevin: @koco83 kevin@thenichemovement.com

Ask your questions: @nichemovement

Episodes every Tuesday (and Thursday, if we're lucky ;)

Coming to iTunes & Sticher soon.

Top 5 Reasons Everyone Should Work for a Small Startup Once in their Lives

I was 18-years-old when I got my first job as a cashier at a local burger joint. I showed up to work almost every day after school in a Super Duper Burger t-shirt, jeans and black non-slip shoes and worked until around 11:00 pm. Since then, I’ve had my fair share of work experience; anywhere from administrative positions to marketing internships. Each job varied in its tasks and responsibilities, however, one aspect remained the same: the rigidity and hierarchical structure of the companies. This aspect of the workplace is what drove me to look for a small startup for my final summer internship. Over the past month I have had the opportunity to work with The Niche Movement, an organization created by Kevin O’Connell, and have discovered why so many new companies (as well as some more established ones) are adopting a more lax work environment. Here are the top 5 reasons I think everyone should work for a startup once in their lives:

Wear Multiple Hats

As a member of a newly established team, you have the opportunity to play within your formal role. You can take on as much or as little as you want and who knows, maybe that extra responsibility will launch you to a higher position.

Initiate Your Own Projects

When you’re in a smaller working environment, you can better gauge a company’s needs and take the initiative to find a solution to those problems. Taking on more than what’s specified in your contract shows both your competence as an individual and also your value to the company as a whole.

Relaxed Working Hours

With the level of technology that is available, people have the ability to work within a variety of conditions, whether that be from home or from across the country. Applications, such as Buffer and Hootsuite, give people the freedom to schedule the publication for their work ahead of time so they don’t have to be chained to their devices, on call at all times. Many startups (including The Niche Movement) take advantage of this and allow employees the freedom to choose their own hours.

Less Rigid Organizational Structure

At smaller companies, employees at every level work and interact closely. Not only does this decrease the formality of office interactions, but it also increases the ease of communication and the clarity/transparency within the organization.

Accelerated Opportunity for Growth

Startups are known to have a tendency for rapid growth. This may mean that the company is constantly bringing on new employees, but it also means that those within the company have greater opportunities for professional growth.

Grow in Dog Years

After many years of traveling, living abroad, and continually challenging myself to try new things, something I've realized is that, it’s not traveling that I truly enjoy; its personal growth that comes with getting outside of your comfort zone. Why? Because when we travel time becomes distorted. One day in a foreign country can forever change the way that you think about life. One week trekking through the amazon, or taking a road trip will often be more impressionable on you than a year in university. A few months working abroad can forever shape what you want out of your career and your life.

I believe that anytime someone puts themselves outside of their comfort zone, it leads to an accelerated hyper growth; what I now refer to as “growing in dog years”. In the same way that a dog theoretically ages 7 years in a year, I believe that when we travel, try new challenging things, and get outside of our comfort zones, we grow at a more rapid pace; we grow in “Dog Years”.

You see, when we get outside of our comfort zones and try new things, we realize that time is not created equally. When time is maximized, and we pack as many overwhelming experiences into a short period of time, we grow at an accelerated rate because, quite simply, we experience more. The more that you experience, the more that you grow.

This is why when we return home from our travels it is so hard to relate to our friends. So much has taken place for us in the last year, but for them their lives have remained essentially the same. They might have a new job, or a new girlfriend/boyfriend, but in reality their lives haven’t changed much throughout the course of that last year. They haven’t experienced the same intensity and acceleration of growth because quite simply, they haven’t experienced as much.

In my opinion, it is simply because you have grown more than they have in that same year. You have had more experiences. You have learned more things. You have widened your perspective in a way that they haven’t. So you are literally no longer at the same points in your life, you have accelerated your own growth and are now years ahead of where they are. In the same year that they grew only one year, you have grown probably 3-4x what they have.

Have you ever been in a position where you look back at the last 6 months and say to yourself, “I feel like the last six months have passed by in the snap of a finger, but at the same time so much has happened and it feels like an eternity ago!” This happens because you packed new experiences into your life, which made time pass by seemingly fast, but these experiences also accumulated at an insanely fast pace, making it seem like an eternity has passed. It’s quite the contradictory feeling.

I look at it like “hacking time”. If you want to get the most that you can out of your life, your goal should be to pack in as many new experiences as you possibly can into every year. If you look back on the last year of your life, how many new things did you try? How many impressionable events can you name? How many times did you take a new trip somewhere? How hard did you push yourself at work? How many new skills did you pick up? The more things you can list out, the more that you have grown.

Take something like Vipassana meditation for example. Although it might be a mere ten days long, in those ten days you will experience years of personal growth because it is such a novel and challenging experience. When you come out, you have grown more in the last ten days than your friends who didn’t do it with you.

Unfortunately, I also think that it’s necessary to touch on hardship, because hardship has a way of manipulating time, but in a bad way. Hardships and struggle have the potential to cause adverse growth. They have the ability to debilitate people and slow life down.

Hardships have a tendency to debilitate people. Something bad happens, and we sit in our rooms and sulk. We stop working. We stop moving forward. We stop growing. Months can pass in this way. Have you ever had a friend go through a failure and take months to get over it? Or a friend who broke up with a girlfriend/boyfriend and they take a year to get over it? Or, in the worst case scenario, the death of a family member? Situations like these have the ability to slow or entirely halt your growth, and it is important to be cognizant of this.

Hardships and struggle have the potential to either debilitate or motivate, and it is up to us with how we handle these hardships. We can either use them as an opportunity to grow, or a time to recess. Am I saying that if something bad happens ignore it and keep moving? Absolutely not. I am instead saying that with every struggle comes an opportunity for growth, and in the end it’s up to you how long you let that struggle knock you on your ass, or get back up and keep fighting.

Where positive experiences speed life up and cause one to say “time flies when you’re having fun”, negative experiences have the ability to slow life down and make it seem like it passes forever. Have you ever noticed that when you are in a bad mood the day seems to pass by incredibly slowly? Or remember back to those days of sitting in a classroom and staring at a clock waiting for time to pass, and then you go outside for recess and it feels like you didn’t get enough time to play? Funny how time becomes distorted depending on our mindset and how we are perceiving our experience of said time.

This is why it is so important to schedule things into your year that will have the maximum impact on your growth. This is why it is so important to choose a challenging career path, travel and work abroad when the opportunity arises, and jump at novel experiences every time you get the chance. It’s like the phrase “getting the best bang for your buck”, but instead I look at it as, “get the most shine for your time” ;) (ok ok I’m working on it!)

Time is not created equally. It’s up to you how you spend your time on this planet, and how fast or slow you want to grow. You have the ability to grow like everyone else, or grow in dog years. Personally, I choose to get the most out of every day that I am here on this planet and grow in dog years, and I encourage everyone else to do the same :)

The Fake Smile Expert: Depressed & Working in Customer Service

When you're going through depression, pretending to be chipper and enthusiastic feels about as uncomfortable as squeezing into jeans that are four sizes too small. Yet, that's exactly what you're required to do when you're depressed and working in customer service. If you have ever worked in customer service before, you know that most of what your job entails is a big smile, the ability to build rapport with your customers, and the capacity to have a genuine interest in how a stranger's day is going. When you're struggling with depression and you can barely summon interest in your actual hobbies, how are you supposed to feign excitement about a stranger's weekend plans?

From experience, I can tell you what helps and what doesn't.

First, what doesn't help: ignoring that you have a problem. Depression is an illness just like any other and it ought to be treated as such. If you are forcing a happy-go-lucky mood and trying to "fake it 'til you make it", that's about as healthy as a person with cancer deciding that since they can't actually see the cancerous cells, the cells basically don't exist. Telling yourself this lie only exacerbates the problem by wasting precious time that could be spent trying different forms of treatment. I knew I had a problem long before I did anything to solve it, which means I felt horrible for longer than I needed to.

Instead of ignoring your feelings, the first step you should take is to see your doctor. They will help you find the treatment that works best for you, which could come in the form of a little blue pill, regular therapy sessions, or even getting more sleep. It might take awhile for you to feel better, but you will eventually find the magic combination that makes you you again. For me, it's a a mix of medication, regular exercise, and getting outside as much as possible.

Along with seeing a professional, you need to get some face time with someone at your workplace who you are comfortable sharing this information with. It could be your boss or even a person in human resources. They need to know about the health issues you are having (again, just as a cancer patient would let their employer know about their illness). Your employer will appreciate you confiding in them and should support you in getting help. When I talked with my boss about my depression, her first response was to tell me that my health comes before work and that she supports whatever I need to do. She understands that I need to feel 100% to bring 100% effort to my job every day. If your employer doesn't understand this, then it might be time to update your resume and move on to a place that will.

When it comes to interacting with customers, the one method that helps me get through the tough days is to remember that the customer in front of me does not know what I'm going through. They have no way of knowing how difficult it is for me to muster the obligatory small talk, so I have to be patient and kind when they expect me to chat about the weather. How I feel is not their fault, so they deserve my best effort at small talk. Even the unkind customers deserve respect, because I understand that they might have something going on in their lives that is causing them to act out. Use your illness as a reminder that everyone is dealing with their own issues and that a little empathy can go a long way.

Even more important than being patient and kind with customers, in my opinion, is to be patient and kind to yourself. If, after cycling through all the treatment options and talking with your employer, you still aren't feeling up to par when it's time to clock in and greet the first customer of the day, then it's possible that your job is not a good fit for you. There is nothing wrong with deciding it's time for a change and looking for something else. Your health is more important than what you do from nine to five.

If you are struggling with depression and have not gotten up the courage to make an appointment with your doctor or discuss it with your employer, I urge you to do it today. You deserve to feel better, first for yourself, second for your friends and family, and lastly, for your career.