Author: Christa Avampato

The short of it: Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day. The long of it: My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events. While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series. A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist. My company: I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media: • I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference; • I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable; • I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me. Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
curiosity, education, running, safety, yoga

Beginning: Learning How to Breathe, Run Barefoot, and Ditch Conventional Wisdom

Christa Avampato
http://www.runningmetronome.com/

Last week I attend my first class at The Breathing Project with Leslie Kaminoff. I used his anatomy book as a part of my yoga teacher training, and since then have been curious about his renegade style and obsession with how we breathe. In traditional yoga classes, we learn the 3-part breath by filling up the belly, then the chest, and then the collar-bone area. Leslie flips that around, literally and figuratively. He advises students to fill up on breath from top to bottom. At this suggestion, my brain began to twist and turn, trying to rewire its thinking about breath.

Similarly, last week I began reading intensely about barefoot running after an article in the New York Times Magazine, The Once and Future Way to Run. I’m entering the lottery to run the New York City marathon in 2012 and looking for the most efficient way to complete my training and beat my time from the Chicago marathon that I ran in 2001. For a number of years, I’ve heard about these barefoot runners and mostly written them off as just a hair shy of completely insane.

Turns out I may be the crazy one. Heel-to-toe running, which most of us do, is just about the worst possible way to beat up our bodies. Making contact around the mid-foot / toe region takes advantage of our bodies’ natural springing motion, protecting the body from undue injury, increasing our speed, and making our motion more efficient. Like Leslie’s class on breathing, this idea from barefoot running sent my mind happily reeling toward new possibilities.

Both of these ideas ask us to harken back to childhood, remembering how we used to act as children and how we have been misled as adults. We pick up so many bad habits on our journey into adulthood and sometimes we forget to question the new learnings that generate these bad habits. The result of losing our courage to question conventional wisdom? Harming our own bodies and minds.

This questioning of how to breathe and how to run, two very basic actions that we all do all the time, got me thinking about all the other “truths” that I may have accepted to easily. Business is loaded with them. “Experts” tell us that we MUST have a fully baked business plan, perfect products, and so much market research that we scarcely have time to look at all of the findings, much less make sense of them. Phooey!

What if we try this: go against the grain. Go ahead and put some kind of business plan in place, and then be prepared to change every blessed word of it. Launch good-enough products as quickly as possible to get real-time input on design from a live market, and then commit to iterating future versions just as quickly with real feedback. Forget market research composed of focus groups and other traditional methods. Make the business one giant market research experiment.

Here’s what would happen: our rate and level of innovation would increase, more people would create things of value to others, more people would take their futures into their own hands through entrepreneurship, and we’d all learn more. Oh, and we’d have a greater rate of jobs creation – quite possibly the biggest hot-button economic issue in our country today.

What do we have to lose by ditching conventional wisdom? Bad habits – we’ll breathe more fully, run with greater ease, and have a healthier economy. The value of taking conventional wisdom at face value? Staying right where we are.

Which option sounds better to you?  

business, cooking, finance, food, teaching

Beginning: Professor Cupcake: Teach What You Know and Make Some Money in the Process

Christa Avampato

We could learn a lot from a cupcake.

Last week, I wrote a post about the point of all teaching – to help others rise. That statement can be taken literally and figuratively, as I recently found out through a cupcake baking class at Butter Lane Bakery. Joe, our teacher and cupcake baker (and frosting!) extraordinaire, helped me recognize a very important business principle that we should learn from: we all have something to teach and should make it a part of our business model. (Yes, thoughts that profound can be found in the depths of a cupcake.)

Joe counseled us on the proper techniques to cream butter and sugar, why we need to add in the dry ingredients with a minimal amount of mixing, and the short window in which we have to add the dairy. With our fluffy cakes baked, he taught us the “pat down” frosting technique which produces a cute little wisp worthy of a Real Simple Magazine cover. (Okay, mine weren’t that good but they were damn close!)

The result: little pillows of sugar-sweet happiness, and more importantly, confidence in the kitchen. I can whip up a delicious dinner in not time; my baking skills are less-than-adequate, but this class helped me understand baking on a more intellectual level. The nerd in me needed that boost of knowledge, and I got it thanks to Joe.

Butter Lane Bakery could just keep churning out these sinfully sweet little indulgences and keeping its customers in the dark on how the magic happens. Instead, they invite people into the bakery for a small class fee, and share everything they know about their specialty. And it’s working – their class schedule is sold out months in advance. Follow their lead.

Get creative with your business model – there are more revenue streams in there than you think there are. 

government, grateful, gratitude, health, yoga

Beginning: The Other 1% – Our Veterans

Christa Avampato

There’s been a lot of talk in the media recently about the privileged 1%. Today we honor another 1%: our veterans, the brave men and women who put on their uniforms every day and make our freedom their mission.

At a veterans health conference in June, I was shocked to learn that only 1% of all Americans ever serve in the military. Those soldiers and their families make enormous sacrifices for all of us. We can aspire, dream, and create because they have pledged the other 99% of us. It’s a humbling ideal and they deserve more than a day of celebration. We should be thanking veterans every day of the year because every day of the year they are giving us a chance to live the lives we imagine.

To show our gratitude and concern for the struggles that face veterans and their families when they return home, Compass Yoga is putting together a holiday gift for them as part of our veterans program. Over the next few weeks, we’re filming several short yoga videos and meditation podcasts that will be readily freely available for any veterans and their family members who wish to start down the road to better health. The package videos and podcasts will be available just before Christmas, and we’ll be sure to let you know about their release. In January, we’re starting a yoga class for veterans and their family members at the Muhlenberg Branch of the New York Public Library. (Details here.)

It’s our way of serving them when they return home from serving us. There will never be enough ways to thank them for all they’ve done, but this is a start.

business, goals, priorities, productivity

Beginning: The 1-1-1 Productivity Plan Inspired by Herman Cain

Christa Avampato
Herman Cain and his claim to fame

It really is true that we can learn something from everyone, Herman Cain included.

He certainly has gotten himself into a good deal of hot sauce this last week. (So much so, that the man known for his 9-9-9 plan needs a PR 9-1-1 plan in a hurry!) The self-proclaimed Godfather of Pizza has been tossing out catch-phrases to make him a memorable candidate. No doubt this is due to his early training creating marketing messages on cardboard boxes filled with cheesy, saucy goodness. His 9-9-9 plan is another recipe for disaster that we don’t need, but there’s something valuable in his approach: to embrace a plan of any size, it’s got to be so simple that we can walk around repeating it to ourselves. It doesn’t need a 30 page memo and a matrix process plan to understand the basic architecture.

I recently had lunch with my pal, Jeff, a marketing whiz, comedian, and constant seeker of improvement. He wanted some answers – how do I maintain my productivity and my sanity? I’ve got a plan for productivity that’s similar in structure to Herman Cain’s plan for the economy, but mine’s been tested and approved.

I call it 1-1-1: For my three main goals for the year, I make a pact every weekend to do one thing to further each of those goals. This past weekend, I wanted to write 1 chapter of the book I’m working on, send out 1 letter of introduction for Compass Yoga‘s business development, and take 1 yoga class. If I could tick off those 3 boxes, then the weekend would be a triple win. In reality, if felt so good to get these 3 wins that I actually did more than I promised myself I would do. And then that felt even better, even more productive. Warning: productivity is addictive.

Success is all about context. We need to work hard and get a lot done – that’s true for any business owner. To-do items will compete for our attention and beg for priority in the queue. They’re needy, but don’t let them charm you. Stay focused:

1.) What are your top 3 goals for the year? Make those your structure of productivity, the frame you’ll hang your actions on.

2.) Now in any given day, week, or month, what is the one thing you’ll do to advance each of those goals? Those are your resolutions, and ultimately your accomplishments.

That’s how I stay productive, limit distractions, and keep my confidence up. What works for you?

career, television, work, writing

Beginning: Career Advice from Andy Rooney

Christa Avampato
Andy Rooney as we will always remember him

Last week we lost a great icon of opinion writing. I will never forget the 60 Minutes episode in 2010 where Andy Rooney went to the Super Bowl, a pilgrimage for him for over 40 years running. I loved getting a glimpse of him out from behind his now-famous desk and in the world – driving his car, going through the stadium turnstile, and making his way to his seat. Episodes like this let us know that the Andy we knew and loved on television was exactly as he appeared to be – nothing more and nothing less.

When he stepped down from his post at 60 Minutes, I got the same horrible feeling I had when Steve Jobs stepped down from his post at Apple. He loved his job so much that this could only mean one thing: his time with us was coming to a close in every sense. Though we know him for his curmudgionly opinions and writing, he was also a solid defacto career coach.

At every age, he presented exactly who he was. He never towed any company line and he never tried to make nice for the sake of politics. His opinions were strong and well-researched. Disagree with him all you want, but there was no way to refute his intellect. Sometimes this “area of development”, as some would unfortunately term it, cost him his job. It’s also what made him distinctive and memorable. There will never be another Andy Rooney.

Most people I know scorn the idea of being defined by their jobs. Not Andy. He had a secret: if you work at what you love, then there’s no problem with the job defining who you are. The job is who you are. Like it or not, most of us spend a great deal of our waking lives at work. And if we’re going to spend that many hours working, then we might as well like it.

Andy persistently and adamantly did only work he loved. On Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes, we watched Morley Safer interview Andy Rooney on the eve of his retirement. Watching the piece, it seemed so strange to me that he is no longer among us. Just weeks ago, he was so full of life, wit, and yes, opinions. Morley asked him what he’d do with his time if he had his career to do over again. Without missing a beat, Andy replied, “I’d get a weekly spot on 60 Minutes where I’d give my opinion about anything I wanted to talk about. I’d write it and I’d say it. I complain about a lot of things, but one thing I can’t complain about is my life.”

When my days are up, I hope I feel the same way. And I hope I have the chance to work at doing something I love until the ripe old age of 92 or beyond. What more from life, or a career, could we ask for? Thanks, Andy, for this final lesson. You will be missed.

business, career, change, time, writing

Beginning: My New Content Plan

Christa Avampato

For the past few years, my daily posts have revolved around a specific theme. In 2009, I wrote about my quest to have more hope. In 2010, I chronicled my steps toward building an extraordinary life. This year, I’ve taken up the challenge to become an expert beginner. As of late, I’ve found myself preoccupied, in writing and in living, with raising a call to action. In 2009, I learned the very painful and abundantly helpful truth that we are here on borrowed time. My apartment building fire cost me almost all of my belongings and nearly cost me my life. We don’t get to choose how long we’re here, and so if we’re waiting to do what we really want to do then we’re just wasting time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my content will evolve in 2012. What should my theme be? Who am I trying to help? What’s the biggest challenge I’m trying to overcome? I started to panic. No lightbulb moment seemed to find me. And then I remember the one simple question that starts every new product development project – “What gives you pain?”

By the end of 2012, I want to control how I spend all of my time. So my next journey is toward the goal of being my own boss and you’re invited to join me on this wild ride. To this end, my posts are going to take on a decidedly different direction. They’ll be a little punchier, a little more opinionated. I’ll let you in on what I’m reading, using, and doing to turn this idea into a reality. And it will all be related to the idea of “making business make sense.” Hence, this site’s new tagline. “Curating a Creative Life” served me well for 4. 5 years and I learned so much from it. Now it’s time to move on and embrace a new frontier that combines my love for business, creativity, and simplicity.

Taking my own advice, I decided not to wait until 2012 to kick off this new content strategy. Waiting never got anyone anywhere. The only way to move forward is to take a step in that direction, so here I go. Compass Yoga is taking off quickly, and I need to respond to this stroke of good fortune.

The greatest thing I learned in my year of beginnings is that NOW is the best time for a new beginning. Don’t wait for the calendar to turn to make a resolution, to dive into a new project, to seize the lucky moment. And in this moment, the world is asking for the business world to be simpler and more straight-forward. I can serve that mission; this moment was made for me.

As an editorial aside, taking control of all of my time means that I’ll be doing a considerable amount of other writing projects and business development work, particularly because Compass Yoga’s incorporation status moved much faster than I expected. To give myself that space and time, I’ll publish on this site 5 times per week – Monday to Friday, excluding major holidays – effective immediately.

Here’s to action!    

goals, healthcare, opportunity, yoga

Beginning: Opportunity is Everywhere – Build a Beautiful Company By Filtering

Christa Avampato

“In a painting you create beauty with the addition of each brush stroke. In a company you create it with the addition of each talented, engaged person and with each thoughtful act.” ~ Bill Witherspoon

There’s a lot of lip service paid to talent management in companies and organizations, and that lip service is fine as long as it’s backed up with action. As the Board of Directors and I work on shaping Compass Yoga, we’re very conscious about the beauty of the company, staying true to the mission of serving students with mental and physical health challenges and partnering with like-minded teachers and organizations.We’re picky about who we bring into the fold, and because we are a service organization our product is our people. They are the key ingredient to making this work, and it’s such a joy to find these kindred spirits. It’s also a lot of work.

We’re discerning, and growing more so all the time. We have a filter that we use to evaluate our partnerships and our opportunities thanks to Michael Vito, one of the very talented board members:

1.) Does the partnership or opportunity align with our mission?

2.) Is there a material benefit to gain from the partnership or opportunity?

3.) Is the partnership or opportunity financially beneficial to both parties?

Michael developed this filter for us because everywhere we look we see opportunity for Compass. Because we are still bootstrapping the organization, we have to be very careful about where we deploy our resources. We need to focus so that we can keep an eye on our beautiful long-term goal – improving our healthcare system.

student, teaching, yoga

Beginning: Meet Your Students Where They Are

Christa Avampato
Yoga teacher Rodney Yee and one of his students

“Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Start with what they know; build with what they have. But with the best of leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say, we have done this ourselves.” ~Lao Tzu

Teaching isn’t about the teacher; it’s about the student. There’s no trick to teaching. No silver bullet. No magic. It only requires our awareness and willingness to be there for students. What does he or she need right at this moment? What can we offer to serve that end?

The best teachers I know step back so the student can shine. It’s about the cause (their students) and not the credit (their egos.) It requires great confidence and generosity to teach. When we’re that present our preconceived notions get tossed aside in favor of our intuition, our gut.

We have to give our students room to build their own experience while giving them the support that instills confidence in their own abilities. It’s this delicate balance between space and support that makes for a masterful teacher. (Thank you to one of my teachers, Arturo Peal, for that message.) And it’s that balance that helps students to rise above and beyond their own circumstances.

This is the point of all teaching – to help others rise.

business, career, creativity, ideas, yoga

Beginning: Start A Business by Starting with Your Best You

Christa Avampato

A few of my friends are in the midst of starting to craft their own businesses, either as incremental income streams or as a replacement for their full-time jobs working for someone else. The companies vary from an online stationery store to career coaching to senior care, and some have mentioned that they’re worried about the originality of their ideas. Differentiation is important. A wholly original idea is not.

Facebook was not the first social network. The iPod was not the first MP3 player. Amazon was not the first online retailer nor the first online bookseller. These founders saw an idea in the market that met a need and then they used their own spin on the idea to delight customers. It’s that delight factor that truly made the difference.

There are a lot of yoga teachers in the world. There are a number of them who are interested in working on the healthcare industry. I know Compass Yoga isn’t unique in that pursuit but we’ve got a few surprising insights, and a few plans to set us apart and help more people in the process. And that’s really all anyone needs to get going on a new venture. Just be your best version of you.

commitment, courage, creativity, time, vision

Beginning: Kick the Perfection Addiction

Christa Avampato

“The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.” ~ George Eliot, British writer

Yesterday’s post was a call to action and it caused me to think about all of the things that may prevent us from acting, from getting our creative ideas out into the world. We’re afraid of criticism, we’re afraid we don’t know enough, and we’re afraid that our ideas just aren’t good enough. I don’t think that fear is the main reason we fail to act. I think it’s our addiction to perfection. I get this need on a very serious level. I used to pride myself on my perfection. I gleaned most of my self-worth from it, and in the process I wasted a lot of time. And time is more valuable than perfection.

Our addiction is well-justified: we are highly protective of our intellectual property (with good reason) and we want to find our groove before we offer the big reveal. But here’s the rub: we find our groove by acting on our ideas and collaborating with others. We can’t find our way by sitting on our couch. We have to get out into the world and try our ideas on for size as we let others do the same. Perfection stands in stark contrast to that truth. Perfection leaves us sitting on the couch.

Get out the chisel and break yourself free of the need to be perfect because it’s not a need at all. It’s a perception, a legacy system that needs to be left behind if we are going to progress. Thank that tiny voice of perfection for its input, turn the volume all the way down, and get your creative work done. The world needs you just as you are – perfection not required.