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.
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Step 208: Career Advice from Don Draper of Mad Men

Christa Avampato

“Our agency was being swallowed whole. I realized I could die of boredom or holster up my guns.” ~ Don Draper, Mad Men

I spent Sunday night in Syracuse, New York. Since I either wanted to be with my family in Florida or in my apartment in New York, having my flight diverted and grounded overnight in Syracuse was not optimal. Luckily, the people I met were exceedingly kind and sympathetic to the situation. It also helped that I could watch the Mad Men season premiere in a comfy hotel room.

The quote above closed out the season premiere episode of Mad Men. Don is being interviewed about the new agency he and his colleagues formed. It’s a quote that hit me like a ton of bricks and I drifted off to sleep thinking about how many titan companies of today may be in the same boat as Sterling Cooper, the original agency where Don is employed. No one at the time could imagine big Madison Avenue agencies folding or losing business the way so many eventually did. Who would think that start-up, nimble, lean companies could replace their big, powerful predecessors? And yet, that’s exactly what happened, and continues to happen, in advertising and almost every other industry.

A lot of Don’s behavior is deplorable (we love his character anyway because it’s superbly written and acted), though I greatly admire his bold attitude and confidence in his creativity. He offers his advice at the end of the episode to every employee who finds each passing day of work less than stimulating. Life’s too short to spend a single day devoid of creativity, and we’ve all got it, whether it’s in your job title or not. Holster up, folks.

books, marketing, social media

Step 207: How Greg Verdino’s Ebook Inspires Me

Christa Avampato

I love Greg Verdino’s blog. I find him interesting, controversial, and wicked smart. He’s also humble, curious, and consist and constantly learning and sharing. He started up his blog almost 4 years ago; I’ve been reading his blog for about a year. Mostly, Greg writes about social media and marketing though conversations (in any form) and relationships always seem to be his underlying topics to me. I’ve been looking back over a number of his posts as I prep the curriculum for the marketing class I will be teaching at LIM College in the Fall.

On my plane ride back from vacation, I finally read Greg’s ebook 4 & 20 Blog Posts, a selection of his writings from his first two years of blogging. As someone considering a career shift, I found his book and back-story very inspiring. Greg was “the social media guy” at Digitas when he started blogging and a brilliant marketer. Then he went to crayon, and now is part of Powered, a full-service social media agency. Conversations are now the mainstay of his profession. I think that’s a great answer to the “what do you do for a living?” question: “I talk to people.”

You don’t need to be a marketer or involved with social media to enjoy Greg’s ebook, the same way you don’t need to be a chef to enjoy Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations. Yes, if you love talking with and listening to customers in a variety of ways, Greg’s writing will be not only enjoyable but incredibly useful to you.

Greg is a guy who enjoys his life, has undergone a number of personal and professional changes since beginning his blogging life, and shares that every day with his readers. He gives us big ideas to chew on, visions that inspire us, and calls to action that makes us want to roll up our sleeves and get to work on the work that most interests us, whatever that work may be.

Give his ebook a read (it’s available for free download on his website) and let me know what you think. Greg’s book microMarketing will be published by McGraw-Hill in August.

dreams, family, learning, relationships

Step 206: Dreams Must Be Lived

Christa Avampato

My niece, Lorelei, lives in her tutu. It’s one of the first things she asks for in the morning. She loves to put it on, along with her dancing shoes (little black patent leather shoes with bows on the sides), and tap around on the kitchen tiles. She’d be thrilled if we could tile the whole world like a kitchen. She’ll spin, belt out a few Disney musical tunes, and take a bow. She invites everyone else to join in.

Her tutu transforms her – she takes on a new persona with it. It’s her special everyday costume. As I danced around the kitchen with her almost every morning of my vacation, I wondered what my tutu is. What is that one thing I have that transforms me into exactly the person I want to be? What helps me put away any fears I feel for the sake of just living to the fullest?

I have a white puffy calf-length skirt that I bought several years ago. I live in it during the summer. I love to twirl around in it. It makes me feel like I’m in some far away place, like I’m an explorer. It’s one of the few things that survived the fire in my apartment building. I have no idea how the specialty cleaner got the smoke and soot out of it. I bet they bleached the heck out it, and I’m glad they did. That skirt is my version of a tutu.

I’m not a clotheshorse – I actually hate shopping, particularly shopping for clothing. I do think it’s important to have one item that helps us to actualize and crystallize our lives exactly as we wish them to be. It helps to keep dreams in the forefront of our minds.

This week, I worked on numbers, letters, and vocabulary with Lorelei. She taught me about the value of not only having dreams, but also acting out our dreams. I think I got the better end of the deal.

The photo above is my niece, Lorelei, dancing in her tutu. If you have your version of a tutu, I’d love to hear about it!

family, time, travel

Step 205: Choosing to Board, or Not

Christa Avampato

Delta sent me a message this morning that read “time to check-in” and my immediate reaction was “no”. I’ve been having a blast with my family, especially my little nieces, and I’m not ready for the fun to end tomorrow morning at 6am. I love my life in NYC – my friends, my neighborhood, and my projects that are coming up in the Fall. Some parts of my life need sprucing up.

1.) Dating for the summer has been fun, actually dating for the past year has been fun, and now I’m ready to be in a relationship again. I wasn’t sure this day was going to arrive, but here it is. To read more on the topic of relationships, check out my Owning Pink blog.

2.) More than anything, I need more flexibility with my time, mostly from a geographic stand-point. This trip to Florida showed me that I need to watch my nieces grow up. I need to travel even more than I do. There are conferences and events all over the country (and globe for that matter) that I want to attend. My work, at least a portion of it, needs to be wherever I am.

Those two areas are heavy ones for me, each with plenty of sprucing needed. They’ll be getting some focus and attention, long overdue, in the weeks ahead.

choices, creative process, curiosity, discovery, dreams, experience, productivity, success

Step 204: Better to Never Finish Than Never Begin

Christa Avampato

“Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes – work never begun.” – Christina Rossetti

I saw this quote this morning on Twitter courtesy of Bridget Ayers, President of Get Smart Web Consulting. Over this week in Florida, I’ve been planning some new projects including a new blog / book idea about yoga and personal finance, my LIM College class about social media marketing, and schools where I can pilot Innovation Station, my after-school program for middle school students that teaches them about product design. I’ve had some moments of doubt about these projects – Are they valuable to people? Do I have enough experience to pull them together? What if they don’t work?

Doubts are important in the same way that a healthy fear of the ocean keeps us from drowning. After doubts initially occur to me, I remember to be grateful for them. Doubts, if handled properly, can dramatically improve our ideas. Doubts should be incorporated into our product development, but they should not deter us from getting started.

We should always begin, and if our projects don’t work out, we should just begin again. There’s no harm in giving something a go. The real harm is in never giving ourselves a chance.

friendship, relationships, success

Step 203: Get a Buddy

Christa Avampato

Nutrition experts have long extolled the positive benefits of having a buddy to encourage us to stick to healthy eating and exercise habits. Many scientific studies show that a group (even as small as 2 people) that agrees to lose weight and get healthy together has a far greater chance to get and stay healthy. So why not get a buddy for just about everything we want to achieve?

I thought about this idea yesterday when I received an email from a friend of mine whom I met through my yoga teacher training. She has been wanting to do daily meditation and pranayama (breath work), and has had a tough time getting motivated. She asked me if I’d be her meditation buddy and I gladly accepted.

In January 2009 I became very interested in starting my own business, and though I have many friends who are also interested in this endeavor, most have not taken the plunge just yet. I needed to get out there and meet some other would-be entrepreneurs so I started writing a column about entrepreneurship for Examiner.com. In 15 months I wrote 125 columns, most of them featuring start-ups. A collection of 27 of those stories became my first e-book, Hope in Progress. That group of entrepreneurs became my de-facto start-up buddies, people who inspired to get in gear, and they did. I founded Compass Yoga, my own yoga instruction business, in May.

Buddies have taken root in other areas of my life, too. I have writing buddies who inspire me and my writing. I’ve had job search buddies and apartment hunt buddies (you need these in NYC with this rental market!). Buddies have also come to my aid on Innovation Station, my extracurricular education program for middle school students. When I think of the areas of my life where I found the most success, in each I had a buddy.

So where else could I use a buddy these days? Certainly as I ramp up for my first gig as a college professor at LIM College next month. Today I learned about Sprouter, a new online community for entrepreneurs who have just launched – an area where I’d like to connect with other new start-ups. As I’ve gotten more interested in new technology, I started looking for some offline communities in this space. Digital Dumbo is a group of like-minded individuals who are working to make Brooklyn into the next Silicon Valley. I’m attending my first Digital event next Thursday.

What areas of your life could use a buddy?

family, happiness, harmony, sunshine, thankful, time

Step 202: Making Moments

Christa Avampato

Yesterday, the fam and I headed out to New Smyrna Beach, Florida. We splashed around in the salty surf, hung out on the sand in our sun dome – so much better than an umbrella, collected seashells, and looked for jellies washed in by the waves (my niece, Lorelei’s, favorite beach activity). Perfect temperatures, both air and water, made for a relaxing, care-free afternoon.

My sister, Weez, snapped pictures of us and as I looked at those photos I was reminded of how special days and moments like these will be treasured for many years to come. My nieces are growing fast. I imagined how we’d think about these days when the girls are older, how we’d long for these very moments as life trolls on. I was glad and grateful to appreciate them in real-time, for what they are now and what they will mean in the days ahead.

That awareness is something I’m working to harness. We have special moments all the time; we just don’t always know they were special until they’ve passed. I’d like to catch them by the tail as they whiz by, in the hopes that I can hang on to them for just a little bit longer.

The image above is a picture of New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

change, choices, courage, discovery, encouragement, frustration, gifts, gratitude, loss, opportunity, yoga

Step 201: Obstacles as Path

Christa Avampato

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” –Alfred D. Souza

I keep thinking about the idea of “the path of least resistance.” I don’t know what that path looks like. I work and work and work, and eventually a pathway opens, but never constitutes taking the easy road. This quote helped me put this idea in perspective. When I think about the things I’m most proud of in my life, they all resulted from overcoming obstacles. It wasn’t always a fun journey, but the results were worth it.

I’ve written about Ganesha, the Hindu god of obstacles, and how much I learned about him during my yoga teacher training. Some people have interpreted his role as a remover of obstacles. That view is mostly right. It needs the addition of “removed of obstacles on our life’s path.” Sometimes, as Alfred Souza so eloquently states, obstacles need to be placed in our way to help us realize our path.

There’s no shame in having obstacles; there’s no need for us to bemoan their presence. They can be our reasons to be grateful. They show us our strength, and if we can recognize their gifts and their reasons for being, we can often find our way around them.

family, happiness, simplicity

Step 200: Getting to Simple

Christa Avampato

“Power is the ability not to have to please.” ~ Elizabeth Janeway, American author and critic

Simplicity is hard work. It involves letting go of preconceived notions, the opinions of others, and every would, could, and should that we encounter daily. A lot of people, products, services, and companies want to complicate our lives; they want to keep us on our toes and on the go for their own purposes. Gaining and maintaining simplicity requires power and willpower.

I am in Florida this week with my family and we’re enjoying a lot of simple fun. Hanging out with the kids, going to the beach tomorrow, easy meals, morning cartoons, and afternoon siestas. Every day this week will feel like Saturday. A few times I’ve caught myself making to-do lists and panicking that this, that, and the other thing need to be done. And they do – but not right now. Chores can, and will, wait.

Even when I get back to New York City life, I’m going to give it my best shot to keep it simple. Complication is easy – it’s everywhere, comes in every flavor, and can be taken up at any time. Simplicity is the harder road, the more challenging goal, but in the end I think it’s the way to more happiness. Just check out the grin on my face above.

The image above is my niece, Lorelei, giving me a kiss to wake me up from a nap I was taking in the car.

creativity, determination, frustration, learning, Life, loss, luck, mistakes, presentation, producer, television, trend

Step 199: Why I Hate Reality TV Shows With Elimination Rounds

Christa Avampato

I have a hard time watching reality TV, especially when elimination rounds are involved. I get nervous for the contestants as if I’m on the show myself. I never knew why until my brother-in-law recently shared his view on these shows: “You don’t get judged on the body of your work; one mistake and you’re gone.” This is a horrible lesson to reinforce in our society.

Real success comes from trying a lot of different ideas, taking risks, and learning from failures as well as achievements. To support the idea that one false move means you’re down for the count is just plain dumb. Real life isn’t like that, making the idea of this kind of “reality” TV anything but.

My brother-in-law had an idea: why don’t we let all of the contestants stay until the end and have the judging be on the full season of work, not just one dish, one task, or one song? Have the weekly winners actually win something extra. Let people learn from their weekly mistakes, and actually see what they do with what they learn. That would be a reality TV show worth watching.