00;00;04;24 - 00;00;28;24
Erica Machulak
Welcome to The Hikma Collective Podcast. I'm Erika Machulak. In this season we're exploring the creative power of in betweeness and the roles that people play in transforming ideas into action. We'll hear from leaders in the startup world, the social sector and higher ed about roads that diverge and the pathways through which ideas take shape and travel and thrive.
00;00;31;02 - 00;01;01;28
Erica Machulak
In this episode, I'm chatting with Aaron Mitchell Finegold about the language of entrepreneurship, social media culture, and how to take the long view in your career path. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. All right, everyone. Today we're speaking with Aaron Mitchell Finegold, who is a growth and customer strategy leader with a breadth of experience across sectors, functions and geographies.
00;01;02;17 - 00;01;26;19
Erica Machulak
Aaron holds a B.A. with high honors in English and American literature and psychology from Brandeis University and an MBA from INSEAD, where he was one of the two student commencement speakers and selected to present INSEAD at the WEF annual meeting in Davos. Aaron happens to serve as a current leader in LinkedIn's business operations function. Previously an associate partner in McKinsey Company and a worldwide marketing strategy consultant at Ogilvy.
00;01;27;04 - 00;01;50;05
Erica Machulak
As a queer leader of color, Aaron has contributed to advancing diversity and inclusion agendas at several companies across his career. He has been involved with a wide variety of nonprofits, including Pine Street and previously opened in Boston, Europe, in New York, Chicago and L.A., and Congregation Emanuel in San Francisco. He's also a published author with guidelines in Thrive Global, The Forward and McKinsey Insights.
00;01;50;10 - 00;01;52;09
Erica Machulak
Aaron, thank you for joining us. How are you?
00;01;52;21 - 00;01;55;27
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great. How are you?
00;01;56;15 - 00;02;09;06
Erica Machulak
I'm wonderful, thanks. It's really great to be here with you. So that was quite a bio. Let's start with talking about how much of that was planned and how much of that was by accident. Tell us about the story of your career path.
00;02;10;26 - 00;02;40;04
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I think that at every moment, probably of my life, up until age, maybe 25 or 26, I had every future moment of my life planned, meaning I could tell you to a pretty exacting level of granularity exactly what choices I was going to make, where I was going to be, what position I was going to be in at work, where I was going to live, geographically.
00;02;41;12 - 00;03;12;02
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And then, of course, that none of that happened. But the point is, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted for a very long time. And despite none of that actually materializing, it served me because at the very least, it was a useful framework for decision making. I was trying to make both micro and macro decisions that were going to help lead me to that path that, as I said, I had charted out in great detail. At around age 25, 26.
00;03;12;02 - 00;03;50;28
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Let's say I then suddenly felt much less of a need to have such a TV guide like program established for my future and felt more comfortable, I think, going with the flow. But honestly, it required a few years of gaining work experience, getting some degree of positive feedback or reinforcement that I was on the right track. And it took also the first big events, the first big episode of unforeseen change for me to get the confidence.
00;03;50;28 - 00;04;15;29
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
That said, actually, you can make these big pivots and sometimes unexpected things will happen to you that aren't part of that plan, that end up being way better than the plan ever was. And so as a result, you can then hold yourself with a degree of comfort that even without the plan, chances are not only will the choices you make, but the outcomes that they engender will end up being pretty great.
00;04;17;03 - 00;04;20;28
Erica Machulak
So I wonder if you can tell us what that unforseen piece was.
00;04;22;17 - 00;04;41;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Well, I will tell you this. My entire time from from the point when I was a senior in high school up until I was 2 to 3 years into the working world, I thought that I was going to live my entire career at an advertising agency. So when I was a senior in high school, I decided this was what I wanted to do.
00;04;41;25 - 00;05;09;01
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I learned that this was a job which we can talk more about that. But there's a whole path, I think, for people who are in high school to learn about careers other than the careers they see their parents and their peers parents fulfilling. But anyways, I learned that being on the on the business side, so to speak, in the non-creative side of ad agency work was a possibility when I was a senior in high school and I said, okay, I want to do that.
00;05;09;01 - 00;05;28;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I want to graduate college and go to New York and work at a top level agency. In this capacity. And so, as I said, all the choices that I made when I was a senior in high school and throughout all four years of college, were 100% focused on making that happen. And they really did unlock that opportunity for me.
00;05;28;25 - 00;05;55;21
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I went to join Ogilvy and Mather, which is a top, top agency in and its global headquarters in New York, working on its flagship business, IBM, starting in 2009. And I had done that for a number of years. And then in 2012, McKinsey called me and said, We're hiring junior talent for our marketing and sales functional practice, which is growing in size, going into impact.
00;05;56;03 - 00;06;29;14
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And we'd love to consider you. And I never thought that I was going to go work in management consulting. It felt very foreign to me. It felt very formal and conservative and overly quantitative. It felt very far outside my comfort zone, but I was willing to take the leap because I had reached learning and stimulation and challenge plateau, so to speak, and I made the leap and it ended up being a really, really great decision.
00;06;29;15 - 00;06;42;09
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Life changing in more ways than I can really comprehend. To be honest, I think everything about my life from that point on was shaped in some way by the fact that I had made that change.
00;06;43;18 - 00;06;52;24
Erica Machulak
Well, now that we have a little bit more of the context, it sounds like a great time to walk into our vocabulary lesson. Are you ready for the rapid fire?
00;06;53;25 - 00;06;54;07
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Sure.
00;06;55;01 - 00;07;03;02
Erica Machulak
Okay. All right, listeners, I have told Aaron in advance that I was going to give him a few very businessy terms and ask him to translate.
00;07;03;03 - 00;07;13;20
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
A lot of me, just to caveat, doesn't mean that I actually prepared the definitions or remember what they are. So bear with me. I have to pause.
00;07;13;28 - 00;07;16;29
Erica Machulak
All right. Aaron, are you ready for our rapid fire vocab lesson?
00;07;17;23 - 00;07;18;11
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I am.
00;07;19;15 - 00;07;20;00
Erica Machulak
Okay. Innovation.
00;07;20;15 - 00;08;10;06
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Innovation is redefining a category or breaking outside of the mold of what exists in the status quo. There are many, many, many different kinds of innovation. And to be honest, I think a lot of companies conflate the idea of incremental improvements to their existing offering with innovation or true breakthrough innovation, but ultimately, in my mind, innovation is introducing something new to the world that hasn't been understood or hasn't been fully grappled with before.
00;08;10;28 - 00;08;22;15
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
That yields productive results, whether that's it meets a need or it fulfills a pocket of demand or it makes something more efficient. That's my definition of innovation.
00;08;23;29 - 00;08;27;14
Erica Machulak
Okay. Consulting.
00;08;28;07 - 00;09;01;28
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Well, I think that historically, when I used to tell people that I was a consultant, they would often look at me quizzically and ask What kind of consultant? Because I could be anything from a landscaping consultant to a culinary consultant to what I was doing, management consulting. So, you know, by kind of definition and the word consultant just refers to anybody who is advising someone else.
00;09;02;21 - 00;09;54;07
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And in theory, that person is also not a central decision maker, if that makes sense? So as I advise you, you then have the responsibility to interpret my advice and decide for yourself whether or not you want to pursue that path or you want to action what I'm recommending. In terms of my personal experience as a management consultant and consulting very much as about understanding your client, their business, the category they operate in, their competitive landscape extremely well, but also bringing to them insights that they wouldn't otherwise see or have within their own four walls.
00;09;54;24 - 00;10;17;05
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And so it's this balance between being an insider enough that you speak their language, you understand the nuance, but outsider enough that you're able to bring a new way of looking at things that is really valuable and would be really hard to achieve or take a really long time to achieve without going externally.
00;10;17;05 - 00;10;19;05
Erica Machulak
Great. Entrepreneurship.
00;10;21;02 - 00;10;55;21
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So I think classically a lot of people would say entrepreneurship means founding a startup, but to me I think that's pretty narrow. And I would say that just like leadership, which again historically or classically might mean having hundreds and hundreds of reports and being a leader in that way. I think that similarly, entrepreneurship can actually manifest in so many different ways outside of that limited definition.
00;10;55;21 - 00;11;19;16
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I think entrepreneurship is in a way, it's kind of linked to innovation. It's any time you say, "Hey, I have observed something, I think there's a better way to do this. Or if you say, Hey, I realize that there is a gap, there is not an offering in this space where which is adjacent to other spaces, maybe where there are offerings, but this doesn't exist".
00;11;20;19 - 00;11;35;07
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So entrepreneurship is really, in my mind, very much tied to innovation. And that it is any time you, in observing the world around you, have essentially decided that something new is needed or would be beneficial.
00;11;36;06 - 00;11;42;03
Erica Machulak
Okay. How about thought leader?
00;11;42;28 - 00;12;19;28
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
A thought leader is somebody who is respected and has a degree of authority or expertize on a topic, is visible and present in places where these conversations are happening and is sought out for her or his or their opinion. And I think that often I think for a lot of individuals thought leadership is closely tied to publishing or speaking engagements.
00;12;20;01 - 00;13;01;15
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I think that those are really powerful, useful outlets for thought leadership. There are many, many outlets, as we know, of course, media and media consumption flash the general idea of where these ideas are getting germinated and then shared is fragmenting. And I think that there are lots of outlets and lots of ways to be a thought leader. But I do think that having some degree of meaningful experience and therefore expertize in a given topic is a prerequisite.
00;13;02;28 - 00;13;08;25
Erica Machula
Great. Okay. I have a few more for you. What is market research?
00;13;09;21 - 00;13;49;26
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
To me, market research is an umbrella term that comprises several different methodologies, uses to gain a new level of understanding of something that exists in the market outside of what you currently know. And so that can be market research that's launched to understand a whole broad set of competitors, that can be market research that's launched to understand a broad set of consumers, that can be market research that's launched to understand where an industry is going.
00;13;50;19 - 00;14;24;03
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
But either way, it's always designed to deliver some kind of counterintuitive, surprising and ultimate outlay actionable, but not necessarily immediately actionable. We can talk about that in a bit, but ultimately actionable insight again about the world at large and how either a product or a brand positioning or something that you internally are generating is going to interact with, and hopefully elevate.
00;14;24;04 - 00;15;02;21
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And so, essentially, what I mean by that is if I'm, let's say, creating a new product and I say, I think that people need a new tool that helps them. Let's say this was back in, you know, like days of pre iPhone. I say, okay, I think people I think people need some kind of tool that allows them to talk on the phone, maintain a calendar, have that calendar, get updated automatically when changes are made on the computer, do email, text message, take notes, take photos, etc..
00;15;04;12 - 00;15;32;15
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
One of the things that I would want to validate through market research is questions such as "How large is this need? So what's the what's the market? So to speak? Are these needs thought about individually or together? Do consumers already show certain behaviors?" That would lead me to say, "If we put this listen in front of them, they're likely to adopt it or not?"
00;15;34;06 - 00;15;37;19
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
That's an example of market research.
00;15;37;29 - 00;16;10;00
Erica Machulak
Great. Thank you. I do want to pick up on that ultimately actionable piece. And maybe before we go there, I'll just give you the context for why I asked you to do this Blitz vocabulary lesson. And so, as you know, I'm interviewing you as part of our Entrepreneurship for PhDs course, which is, a Haikma collective program that we're developing to help students these identify alternative career pathways, either through starting your own business or finding or creating some other kind of meaningful work and a big part of that process.
00;16;10;11 - 00;16;46;16
Erica Machulak
So our rationale goes for the program is about translation is about taking existing competencies around how you understand systems, how you communicate, and translating that framework into other professional contexts. And so many of the things that you've described strike me as components of systems thinking that are also part of the academic track. So before we dove into the idea of testing that we're talking about today, I want to talk a little bit more about how your background and humanity and psychology has informed the way that you approach these topics.
00;16;48;02 - 00;17;23;19
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Oh, absolutely. I'm more than happy to talk about that. In fact, it was actually the topic of conversation at a dinner just a little over a week ago. We were engaged in a debate about, so what degree was my academic training in English and American literature useful to my success today in the private sector? Vis a vis an unknowable training that could potentially have happened either to me or anyone else in computer science.
00;17;23;19 - 00;17;52;10
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And the debate was was quite lively in the sense that I think that there were differing opinions. I'll tell you my and my, it is essentially threefold. A) I use the training that I got as an English major in college, in my work life every day, but b) even more, an even stronger statement than that is that I think some of those skills have been the most influential in my success or the closest tied.
00;17;52;20 - 00;18;15;20
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Now, of course, I can't go back and run the actual, just the progression to tell you how correlated these variables are but from my perception, it can be biased but I really do think that not only have they been useful every day, they've been the most useful. And then I think C) is that you don't have to be exceptional.
00;18;15;20 - 00;18;49;01
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So there was this belief that was expressed at this dinner conversation that you have to be exceptional in order to major in a humanities discipline and then later have a successful career in the private sector. And I actually would really, really challenge that. I think that the logic there is essentially that if you learn computer science and you become a software engineer, even if you're mediocre, there's so much demand in the market for that skill set that you'll always have job security, you'll always have some kind of income.
00;18;49;01 - 00;19;13;07
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And because of the way the dynamics of the industry, you're going to be paid pretty well. If you're a humanities major, essentially the thinking goes, it'll be really hard for you. You'll have to really stand out in order to have an equal level of success. And if you're mediocre, you're basically much at a facing a much lower probability of success than the mediocre software engineer.
00;19;14;02 - 00;19;43;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And I fundamentally disagree with that because I think that with a humanities background, as long as you have a deep understanding of what it is you want to do, that you can use that background absolutely to your advantage. I think what often happens and what was potentially being confided in in this conversation I'm referencing is that there are some humanities majors in college who don't have a clear sense of what they want to pursue.
00;19;44;05 - 00;20;13;00
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And so, of course, naturally, somebody who doesn't know what she/he/they want to pursue is always going to have a harder time landing, that really amazing post-college opportunity vis a vis somebody who is very focused and very certain exactly what he's sure they want to do. And also layer on top of that the right experiences, the right sets of internships, the right exposure to topics, leaders, companies, etc..
00;20;13;11 - 00;20;41;01
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So I really think that for me, the training I got as an English major and less so as a psychology major, I can talk a little bit about my view of the psychology major in a bit, but I think to me the training I got as an English major in terms of structuring an argument, providing evidentiary support for a thesis, understanding themes and doing the work of literary analysis on a daily basis.
00;20;41;17 - 00;21;08;11
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
All of that has been so, so crucial in my ability to wake up and put together a meaningful CEO presentation and polish it to the point where it's concise and it's high impact in a matter of minutes. Now, I think the reason I'm so efficient at it is because I spent so much time writing essays about Mansfield Park and Emma and Northanger Abbey when I was in college.
00;21;09;12 - 00;21;44;07
Erica Machulak
Interesting. I love that description, but I wonder, I'm trying to balance that with the description of the history you gave earlier, where you came in with a very clear plan and then somewhere around your mid-twenties you described getting this feedback and having these experiences that started shifting you in a different direction. So I wonder what kind of advice you would give to, say, an English pasty who has always anticipated that they would be a professor and is now getting to the point where they're realizing that either they don't want to do that, or because of the constraints of the academic job market, it's simply not an option.
00;21;44;07 - 00;21;56;18
Erican Machulak
So they may not have a clear goal in the private sector. Can you talk a little bit about what you would advise for a person like that in terms of how to apply their skills to their job search?
00;21;57;13 - 00;22;33;27
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Yeah, it's a it's a fantastic question. And by the way, I am aware of how contradictory these messages could potentially come across. Just to clarify, I personally think it was really important for me, frankly, throughout all of college to have my sights set on a specific goal. I then achieved that goal, and by virtue of achieving it, or in the process of achieving it, realized then that that very act of achievement was actually a pretty meaningful foundation to then go off and do other things.
00;22;34;14 - 00;23;13;27
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
But I do think that achieving that first success is a really important milestone. I think without that it would have been a lot harder for me to adopt this mindset of I'm very open to a number of future possibilities and I don't need to plan as meticulously anymore. It just gave me personally the self-confidence and I think honestly it also was really valuable signaling to the outside because ultimately when people are being hired, of course you know, we'd love to move to a world where this isn't the case anymore, but I think a lot of employers will really want to understand what's your past experience, i.e., what's your pedigree?
00;23;13;27 - 00;23;37;05
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Again, knowing full well that many, many of us wish to move away from pedigree based hiring. But I do think that is largely the norm today. So anyway, to answer your question about what would I tell a Ph.D. student who, by the way, I have in my life, I have interacted with many, many academics at various stages of their journey.
00;23;37;29 - 00;24;04;22
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And I've seen probably as many permutations, at least as I can think of in terms of what does one do from the minute you start a Ph.D. course to whatever the final outcome is, you know, some of whom finish and then go on and become scholars and get a tenure track position and everything else. That's a possibility.
00;24;04;22 - 00;24;44;06
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So anyway, what would I advise? I would say essentially that by virtue of having the level of self-discipline, I'd say to enter into a Ph.D. program and do the coursework, do the orals, and then work on the dissertation. And you've probably demonstrated a really high degree of competence in a number of areas that are relevant outside of the pure, quote unquote, pure academic track.
00;24;44;06 - 00;25;03;18
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And I think that that is a really important first message to convey, because I think a lot of academics, or PhD students, in particular would probably think about the training that they're getting as relatively specialized. Do you agree?
00;25;03;18 - 00;25;04;00
Erica Machulak
Yes.
00;25;05;13 - 00;25;28;27
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And I think that there's a lot of messaging that happens, which is your study in this niche topic. Right. Like the whole point of the Ph.D. is to add to human knowledge. So by very definition, the only way you can do that is by going specific. Like if you were to go abroad and try to add to human knowledge, essentially that was not possible that nobody really has the bandwidth to do that.
00;25;28;27 - 00;25;54;14
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
You have to go specific and say, okay, I am going to say something new about the conversion of Southern Midwestern churches from Catholic to Protestant in the late 1890s. Like you have to go that specific and then you can actually say we've discovered something new that nobody else has ever published on. And so I think from a content standpoint, it really feels specific.
00;25;54;22 - 00;26;19;18
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
But what I would urge is to re-lens this and start thinking about it in terms of the content expertize and think about in terms of the skills expertize. And to be honest, that's a lot of how I view my training as an English major. Did I use the content that I know Samuel Taylor Coleridge and I know Bram Stoker and I know Jane Austen super well in my professional life.
00;26;19;18 - 00;26;46;22
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
No, I mean, it was maybe useful at a few cocktail parties, but the point is, on a day to day basis, I don't refer back to what I know about Herman Melville when I'm talking to CEOs about what they should do with their business. However, it doesn't matter that the content is irrelevant, what matters is that the skills I talked about argumentation, I talked about writing, I talked about structuring, evidentiary support that ladders up to a thesis.
00;26;47;01 - 00;27;06;15
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Those skills are paramount to me being able to do my job and have been for the last several years. And so I think for a Ph.D. as well, you say, "Oh, but I'm studying this very niche intersection between philosophy and neuroscience, and I'm trying to understand how what happens on a chemical level and the potassium channel, what that tells us about free will." Fine.
00;27;06;18 - 00;27;17;06
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
That may be a very niche topic, but the actual content should be divorceable from the skills and capabilities that you're mastering by virtue of being in the PhD in first place.
00;27;18;22 - 00;27;37;06
Erica Machulak
Right. And I would add to that, it's it's the skills of being able to scaffold that argument, but it's also the skills of being able to work across frameworks like all of the examples you've just described involve taking components of different disciplines and integrating them together in order to kind of form a very, as you say, niche understanding of a particular area.
00;27;37;20 - 00;27;48;04
Eric Machulak
And if I can paraphrase what you're saying a little bit, it's that ability to focus on something that's specific and find the new within it. That is a skill in itself as well or a constellation of skills.
00;27;49;01 - 00;28;16;28
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think that it's really valuable to be able to say, 'Hey, I brought a new understanding to this topic and the way that I did that was synthesizing across existing work and the existing disciplines, specific paradigms". So the example I just gave about neuroscience and philosophy, while obviously there is a neuroscience way to look at a problem, there is a philosophy way to look at a problem.
00;28;17;04 - 00;28;51;14
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
The fact that someone has identified that there's an intersection there is, first of all, groundbreaking in and of itself. And then the ability to do that translation, which I think is the theme, as you said, for your course or at least for this episode to do that translation is really important. And I think that it's not dissimilar from, as I think about my experience in the private sector, I think that a lot of what needs to happen at any given organization is a lot of translation across functions.
00;28;51;20 - 00;29;23;01
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So we don't have disciplines the way an academic institution does, but companies will have a finance organization, possibly a risk management organization, a marketing and sales organization. They'll have technology. And by understanding how different functions approach similar problems that are really important and sometimes even existential for the company to solve e.g. something like growth or profitability. That's really hard to do.
00;29;23;01 - 00;29;39;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And the reason it's hard to do is because each function is so trained in their ability to look at a problem with their specific lens. It can be really hard, especially after years and years of that specific paradigm being reinforced, can be really hard to move outside that.
00;29;40;21 - 00;30;07;29
Erican Machulak
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right. On that note, I want to I want to change slightly to a related topic that also goes back to some of the things you said that really sparked for me in the beginning of the episode. This concept of feedback. So as we've been talking about, these are very complex thinkers who can work across those different disciplines or worlds or frameworks.
00;30;08;26 - 00;30;31;06
Erica Machulak
They might manifest differently in different contexts. But I think one of the things that I myself had struggle with as a business owner, moving from, you know, a Ph.D. that took me seven years and involved a lot of deep, sustained thinking about one thing is how to test. And so we've sort of come full circle to the last term that I had given you for that translation quiz on that term was minimum viable product.
00;30;31;10 - 00;30;34;15
Erica Machulak
Can you tell us what that means?
00;30;34;15 - 00;31;15;26
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So in a lot of thinking around agile methodologies or agile ceremonies and then later up to a methodology, a lot of the thinking for a long time has been rather than build something and keep it under wraps until it's perfect, at which point then it gets released to the world. Build the thing that solves the need that it's meant to address in the lightest weight possible way, and get user feedback early and often, to inform rapid iteration.
00;31;16;13 - 00;32;00;22
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So let's imagine a world where I was trying to essentially give you, let's say like an email software, like a piece of software that you download on your computer and it allows you to read emails. It's kind of like the mail client on an Apple computers pre-installed. Let's say I did that and let's say that there was some really fundamental design choice in the beginning, which was about replying to or viewing emails grouped chronologically or grouped by thread.
00;32;01;02 - 00;32;28;02
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
What I mean by this is, let's say you and I have an exchange and we have 20 back and forths. And one of the dissenters I have to make in my software is whether or not I want to display all those back and forth script together, or I want to show you all your emails as they've come in in order, even if that means that these back and forth are then broken up by all the emails that came in in-between in the meantime.
00;32;28;14 - 00;32;57;15
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And let's say, you know, obviously, maybe in an ideal state now today we know that users like to have the choice. But let's say at a certain point in time, we felt like we could only do one or the other or we didn't even know that providing the choice was going to be meaningful. If we put out there a product that had made one of those design choices and then gotten to the nth degree of Polish, and we found out that our users really, really had an allergic reaction to that design choice.
00;32;57;15 - 00;33;21;19
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
We would have wasted all the time that we spent from that design choice onward, creating all the all the polish versus if we had gotten them a more quote unquote barebones version of this and heard users say, 'I really don't like this central aspect of this program. I really am turned off from using it because of this". That's really, really important.
00;33;21;19 - 00;33;46;09
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And useful. And it allows us as the developers of this product or the designers of this product to go back and say, okay, we need to make a pretty fundamental shift here. And then once we can once we put that back on the market, get user saying, "Oh, we like the structure much better, then we can add the next layer of polish and do that in a way that allows us not to waste time getting everything perfect.
00;33;47;05 - 00;34;05;11
Erica Machulak
And are there analogies there for, say, a freelancer working alone who's just starting to work? And let's say we've got a grant development freelancer who's working one on one with clients. Do you see any examples of a minimum viable product and that kind of industry?
00;34;05;11 - 00;34;30;24
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I think that there are a few things that you can do as a freelancer where this thinking maybe relevant. The first is you're going to want to productize your offering to the greatest possible extent. So you're going to want to be able to talk about, say, on your website or in any materials that you have to share your value proposition.
00;34;30;24 - 00;35;07;19
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Essentially, with prospective clients. You're going to want to be able to describe the different things that you do. And I think that that's where a minimum viable product can be useful because you paint for these prospective clients a high level picture of what it is you can offer and allow them to give you feedback on where they'd want to see you take it. Versus you kind of pre imagining, let's say, what exactly the market as defined by again your your set of prospective clients or customers for need.
00;35;08;02 - 00;35;47;23
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So that's one. And then the second is through the process of doing freelance work, I always find it useful, whenever there is any kind of client service construct involved, it's always useful to align early on something that's much less polished but much more fundamental in terms of the way it answers questions or the direction that's going. I think that's the idea too if I had a freelancer working with me on anything, brand development or otherwise, and that freelancer and I spoke about essentially the brief for a project and then the freelancer away for eight weeks and then came back with something that was totally finished.
00;35;48;09 - 00;36;13;27
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
The chances of that freelancer getting exactly right, whatever the brief was, the chances are pretty low. And it's frustrating to me because I think those eight weeks could have been so much better spent if we had done a check in even just a brief 15 minute check in or it doesn't even have to be live. Maybe it's over email, just something on a much more regular cadence so that I as a client can help you course.
00;36;13;27 - 00;36;59;00
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Correct. I think that's crucial. It allows me to not only one, get that emotional assurance that your time is being well spent and therefore my money, which is buying your time is well-spent. But to also to be honest, even if the end of the eight weeks the freelancer who went away and hold him/her/themself up in a you know, in a study and then came back with a product, even if that product were perfect, I still think that it's a much better outcome for me as a client to feel like I have helped to co-create this and there's just going to be a much lower risk of organ rejection
00;36;59;00 - 00;37;24;08
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
If that's the case. If I have played a role in shaping this and I feel bought in and as a really good freelancer, you not only brought your own ideas to the table, but you also made me feel like some of your ideas were my ideas. That's a great relationship for a freelancer in a client to have, and to me that only happens through iteration.
00;37;25;21 - 00;37;38;16
Erica Machulak
I would agree. And there's a trust piece there too, right? If people enjoy working with you and feel like your time together is co-creative and productive and their opinions are being internalized and accounted for, it's more likely that you'll get to work together in the future.
00;37;39;18 - 00;38;09;12
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Yes, absolutely. I think that's one of the things that I learned very early on, is that the experience that people have of working with you has to be stellar. And that is the key to a great reputation. And the reputation is the key to essentially doing what you want and being fulfilled in life. And I'm not trying to oversimplify. There are other things, of course, that lead to life fulfillment besides just having a great reputation.
00;38;09;23 - 00;38;40;08
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
But when you have a reputation, it creates market demand for what you do and. When there's market demand, that enables choice. And the best place you could possibly be in is a place where you're turning down projects all the time because there's so much demand and you're saying, "No, I'm being really selective right now. I really want to work on the stuff that gets me excited versus the other stuff that, yeah I can do I'm qualified to do, but is a little bit further away from my passion".
00;38;41;20 - 00;39;05;22
Erica Machulak
That's an interesting segway into a theory I have, and I wonder if we can start to wind down by you giving me your thoughts about this. So many PhDs don't necessarily have robust social media networks, or they do, but they may not be the networks where their clients are. And so in some cases, they're starting from scratch or building new networks along the way.
00;39;06;08 - 00;39;23;10
Erica Machulak
And so I imagine that many people who are listening right now are probably in that phase of trying to figure out where to build out relationships, how to build out relationships, how to present themselves in new markets. And that, too, is an act of translation, right? Where you're trying to figure out what language to use, what skills to highlight.
00;39;24;07 - 00;39;39;03
Erica Machulak
And I think here there's also a sense that you need to have the perfect profile. You need to have everything figured out to have the base that you would leave us with for how to start building that new kind of reputation for yourself.
00;39;40;25 - 00;40;14;05
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Yeah, it's definitely hard. I can tell you from a personal experience standpoint, when I started to get into writing that number one piece of advice for me, I found this very odd that this was so important. But I realized in hindsight that actually it was was being active on Twitter, which isn't a social network that I had previously ever used or taken seriously or spent the time to understand.
00;40;15;01 - 00;40;46;08
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And I feel very adept at a few other social platforms and I still have to admit I'm not very fluent at Twitter. I haven't yet invested the time, but I do know how it feels. It can be very intimidating, this idea that you have to learn a whole new social network with, not only its own rules from a UI and functionality standpoint, although that can certainly be hard, especially if you're trying to learn Snapchat.
00;40;46;23 - 00;41;31;10
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
But from an unspoken norms standpoint and what is actually done on the platform, because to be honest, every social media platform has slightly different unspoken rules or norms about what is accepted or what gets promoted, what gets a lot of attention. And that's tough. There's no question. It's really hard to learn that. And so I would say for anybody who is trying to break into a new social media platform is to learn through both observation and experimentation.
00;41;31;10 - 00;42;04;18
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And so I think, Erica, this is the whole central premise here of minimum viable products and testing is that by putting out a little bit of information about you or starting to experiment with posts, you can start to see in a very real time and very quantitative way what the response is. And that can be useful feedback. I would say it's not the only thing that matters.
00;42;04;18 - 00;42;34;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
So as feedback goes, it's one input. If you post something that you really love and it doesn't get a lot of engagement that doesn't mean you should never put something like that in the future, but it will help you understand where there's kind of some gravitational pull. And you might even be so lucky as to get private messages back from people who say, "Hey, I noticed you wrote this thing in your profile just so you know, that's not really what people do here".
00;42;35;01 - 00;42;57;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
"It's kind of countercultural. It may come across as X, Y and Z adjective that you weren't anticipating". I've certainly gotten that feedback before and it can be really helpful. So I think the best thing you can hope for, so to speak, is to put something out there and have people come back and say, Hey, you might want to adjust this.
00;42;58;06 - 00;43;35;05
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Now, the one caveat that I'll mention, Erica, you and I were talking about this before was like weeks ago before we did this recording is that in today's heightened environment, where we have a new level of, I would call it social consciousness about racial injustice and inequity in general across different marginalized or underrepresented groups. I think the stakes are higher in the sense that you can put out their mistakes, quote unquote, or content, your information, your profile.
00;43;35;12 - 00;43;54;10
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
That is slightly off from what that social media platform expects. But I would be really diligent about making sure that the content you put out there doesn't create an accidental harm. If that makes sense.
00;43;56;01 - 00;44;13;10
Erica Machulak
It does make sense. But I also want to point out that you can also get positive feedback on the posts that you present. So for instance, the whole course that we're designing right now, the genesis of that was in part that I published an article in Inside Higher Ed in September of 2020 and got a lot of positive results.
00;44;13;10 - 00;44;35;05
Erica Machulak
People coming out of the woodwork saying, "Wow, I'm a Ph.D. in felt like I've been totally knocked out of the academic community. And I read your article and suddenly I feel like maybe there is a place for me in this context". And that's that's what started to build this community. So I take your point, and I think you're absolutely right that we need to be careful and mindful and ethical and I think I think that's true.
00;44;35;05 - 00;44;42;20
Erica Machulak
But I wonder if you could leave us with an example of something we shared that you were rewarded for in a positive way?
00;44;43;29 - 00;45;14;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Sure. Absolutely I am. There are tons of things that I have shared recently. I have the two are two articles. One was about networking strategy, specifically a virtual networking strategy that I published, I posted in a few places and then the other, which I mean, that got like a kind of lukewarm response, if you will. It was like, fine, but I posted something that was really different for me.
00;45;14;25 - 00;45;53;02
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Frankly, it was about my experience as a Jew of color and my relationship to the presidential election that was taking place in November of last year. And I wrote this article for the forum and then I posted it in a number of places. I was really hesitant to be honest about posting it on LinkedIn because I have all these questions running through my mind about "What is the content people really want to read on LinkedIn and is this appropriate, etc., etc." But I ended up posting it and I got a really positive response from a number of readers, from a number of colleagues.
00;45;53;24 - 00;46;13;24
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And you know, since I work at LinkedIn, I think that they are probably, you know, in theory the most up to date. So to speak, on what is isn't appropriate for the platforms. And a lot of them wrote back and they said "This was so eye opening. Thank you for sharing this. It broadened my perspective it help me understand you in a way that I didn't before".
00;46;13;24 - 00;46;44;27
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
"Help me understand these issues". And that was a really great feeling. So it made me feel confident then going forward, to your point about what that positive reinforcement can then lead to, it made me feel confident. Whenever I have a piece that is similar in tone or subject matter, etc., to post it and to help let it as it was intended, inform the dialog that's taking place in a wide variety of forums.
00;46;44;27 - 00;46;59;17
Erica Machulak
I'm really glad to hear that you had that experience and that you created that space for yourself, Aaron and that's great. Well, I know we're about out of time. Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with before we sign off?
00;46;59;17 - 00;47;28;00
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I would just say that I think the most important important thing that someone can do over time, and this sounds a little bit out of left field, but I think that one of the things that is very much in the zeitgeist we talk about a lot is gratitude. And we talk about gratitude as it relates to mindfulness and gratitude as it relates to happiness.
00;47;28;13 - 00;47;45;2
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
This idea that the reason that a lot of us are unhappy is because we're on this hedonic treadmill and we're not grateful for the things we have. One thing that I would just offer, and I think this is so true of PhD students who are trying to make a pivot, is remember to be grateful not just for the things you have, but for the things you've accomplished.
00;47;46;23 - 00;48;10;02
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
And I know that there's going to be people who hear that and they immediately reject it, and they say, "That sounds like resting on your laurels. That's not what we're here to do. We're not supposed to be grateful to we accomplished. We're supposed to look at the horizon and say, what's the next mountain to climb?" And I get that a genuinely like there is a very deeply rooted, insecure over to me who understands that mindset.
00;48;10;24 - 00;48;36;02
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
But I think gratitude for our accomplishments is honestly the only way that we can ever live life. Not fixated on that next mountain to climb. If we have gratitude for our previous accomplishments, we can be aware of the next mountain to climb in a way that's healthy and in a way that tells us our identity and self-worth isn't tied to whether or not we climb that mountain and whether we climb it faster than anyone else.
00;48;36;26 - 00;49;06;25
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I think that being grateful for the things that you've accomplished is very uncomfortable because it feels like resting on your laurels, but very important and has been for me a really important breakthrough, quote unquote, in reaching a new level of happiness and also equanimity, so to speak, about kind of my, quote, career prospects. Like if something goes wrong, I no longer freak out and say, oh, now I am completely like the unhirable, which is the way I would have reacted in the past.
00;49;06;25 - 00;49;40;29
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
I now say this is one event that happened among thousands, if not millions. And yeah, I think that in the grand perspective of things, I've accomplished a lot. And so for all of you PhD students, just by virtue of applying to and getting into a program which is already extremely selective, much less doing the work, passing orals, writing a dissertation, adding to the body of human knowledge, all of those are accomplishments that should 100% be acknowledged and thought of in your own mental frame.
00;49;41;08 - 00;49;44;20
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Very, very highly.
00;49;44;20 - 00;49;54;06
Erica Machulak
Thank you, Aaron. It is a great words to end on. I'm so glad that our listeners will get to hear that. Really appreciate your time. This has been wonderful. Thanks. Thanks for coming along.
00;49;55;08 - 00;50;00;00
Aaron Mitchell Finegold
Thank you very much for having me.
00;50;00;00 - 00;50;26;19
Erica Machulak
We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Hikma Collective podcast. I'm your host, Erica Machulak, writer, medievalist and founder of Hikma. The production of this episode was led by our fearless creative director, Sophia van Hees in collaboration with Nicole Markland, Dashara Greeen, Eufemia Baldassarre and Matthew Tomkinson. Matthew composed the original music you hear now in his capacity as the 2022 Hikma Artist in Residence.
00;50;27;19 - 00;50;55;18
Erica Machulak
This podcast has been made possible with generous support from Innovate B.C.,Tech Nation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. You can find show notes, links and transcripts at www.hikma.studio/podcast. Hikma is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the ən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people. We are grateful to be here and to share this space with you.
00;50;56;13 - 00;51;06;13
Erica Machulak
Our speakers, team members and listeners are based all over the world and wherever you are listening, we encourage you to learn more about whose lands you're on.
