1h 20m 11 min read 21,182
Broke But Not Broken w/ Vincent Brathwaite
Chris Do and designer Vincent Brathwaite discuss how to apply design principles to overcome incredible hardship and build a fulfilling life.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · October 30, 2020
The Unbearable Weight of a World-Class Education
He had a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), one of the most prestigious art and design institutions in the world. He was running his own design consultancy in Atlanta. By any external measure, Vincent Brathwaite was on a clear path to success. Yet in 2011, he found himself staring at a concoction of pills, Red Bull, and Clorox bleach, ready to end it all.
The path from a celebrated institution to the brink of suicide is paved with a particular kind of pressure. “Expectations can be deadly,” Chris Do notes, a sentiment that perfectly captures Brathwaite’s crisis. The disconnect between a rigorous academic environment and the harsh realities of professional life creates a dangerous gap.
RISD trains its students for an uncompromising level of excellence. The environment is a crucible of critique and high-concept exploration. In this academic bubble, students have a safety net. “If you fail, okay you get a bad grade on your project,” Brathwaite explains. “Outside of an institution…you fail, you lose your job. You lose your house, you lose your car. You may not be able to eat for a couple days.”
The stakes are infinitely higher.
For Brathwaite, the transition was jarring. He was trying to build a business, but the client work felt misaligned with the grand, impactful problem-solving he was trained for. The progress was slower than he’d envisioned. The praise was less frequent. The daily grind felt more like a failure to live up to the promise of his pedigree.
“Because I had such grand expectations…and I wasn't seeing that as much in the work that I was doing…for me it was a missing of the mark,” he shares. “And so for me for that to take place, I felt like well, if this is constantly happening then what's the point of continuing to push?”
This dissonance, this chasm between the ideal and the real, fueled a profound sense of anxiety and hopelessness. He had built his identity around the skills he possessed and the institution that validated them. When the external world didn’t reflect that identity back to him, the foundation crumbled. He felt it was an easier route to call it quits than to face what he perceived as the inevitable failure just around the corner.
He took a picture of the lethal cocktail on his kitchen island, his Bible sitting nearby. It was a moment of complete fatigue. A fatigue of faith, of career, of self. The attempt failed. He woke up, annoyed and frustrated, but alive.
That moment became a dark, defining baseline. “I realized that obviously if that didn't work, I need to still be here,” Brathwaite reflects. “And I need to continue to push past these things that I see as barriers for me.” The first step was not to find a new client or a new strategy. It was to admit he couldn't do it alone and ask for help.
Broke But Not Broken
Brathwaite’s story doesn’t start at RISD. It starts in a place of financial precarity. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to parents from Trinidad, he grew up knowing what it meant to be broke. As he recounts in his 2017 TEDx talk, Broke but Not Broken, his family relied on resilience to navigate hardship. They always found a way.
This background is crucial. It’s a powerful counter-narrative to the assumption that attending a top school is a story of pure privilege. For Brathwaite, getting into RISD was an incredible leap, but it also set him apart from his family’s financial reality. After graduation, the parental safety net wasn't there in the same way. “They didn't have a reserve of funds to be like, ‘Okay, we're gonna give you an investment of money to help you with your design career’,” he says. “It really was just me relying on myself.”
This solo journey amplified the mental toll. The pressure to succeed wasn’t just about ambition; it was about survival. This history gives weight to his core personal values, which he sees as the operating principles of his life:
- Integrity: The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
- Kindness: The quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.
- Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
- Resilience: The ability to withstand or recover from difficult conditions.
- Courage: The ability to do something that frightens one.
For a long time, Brathwaite was hesitant to share his story of attempting suicide, fearing the shame and judgment. He anticipated the question: “What are you talking about? Life couldn't have been that bad for you, right?” But vulnerability is the foundation of a real personal brand and authentic connection. His willingness to speak about this darkness is what gives his message of hope its power.
It reframes the narrative from a simple success story into a complex testament to human resilience. The title of his talk says it all. Being broke financially is a circumstance. Being broken mentally is a state of being. He had experienced both, and understood that only one of them had the power to truly defeat him.
The Unpaid Apprenticeship That Changed Everything
Fast forward to 2014. Three years after his lowest point, Brathwaite was in Los Angeles, facing another transition. His client work was drying up again, but this time, his mindset was different. He wasn't spiraling into despair. Instead, he was asking a new question: “What's next for me as a designer?”
He felt a growing dissatisfaction with his work. His goal was to use design thinking to help people, but he found himself spending most of his energy educating stakeholders on the value of design rather than actually doing impactful work. “This is not why I got into design,” he realized. “I want to do more. I want to make more of an impact.”
This internal questioning led him to search for inspiration online. He stumbled upon a series of YouTube videos featuring Chris Do and Jose Caballer. He started with a video on making money, then fell into a rabbit hole, devouring content on client management, freelancing, and closing sales.
“I was like, oh my gosh, where have these two people been in my career and why do I not know them?” Brathwaite recalls. To him, watching Do and Caballer was like seeing the two hemispheres of his own brain in action: Do, the analytical, strategic left brain, and Caballer, the blue-sky, creative right brain.
Then, an email arrived. The Futur (then known as The Skool) was looking for an apprentice. The position was unpaid. Brathwaite was in no financial position to work for free. His funds were dwindling. But he saw it not as a loss of income, but as something else entirely.
He saw an opportunity.
In his framework, opportunity is the circumstance to create something. It’s an untapped potential, a space for exploration. It is also inherently risky. “It's about an investment in myself,” he says. “I felt like I was at a point where I wanted to learn more. Here are these two individuals who have established careers, who know what they're talking about...and now I have an opportunity to sit under them and learn. Absolutely, I'm going to take this chance on myself.”
He applied, interviewed with Caballer, and was accepted. He walked into the Blind offices in Santa Monica and began a new chapter. This decision, to trade immediate financial security for long-term knowledge and mentorship, was a pivotal act of courage that would fundamentally alter his career trajectory. It was a conscious choice to invest in himself, a lesson often discussed by entrepreneurs who understand that not all value is monetary, a point explored deeply in Your Dream Doesn't Need Money, It Needs This.
Learning by Osmosis: The Principles in Practice
Walking into the Blind studio was like stepping into a living laboratory. For Brathwaite, it wasn't just about the tasks he was assigned for The Futur's nascent YouTube channel. It was about observing how a successful creative business operated from the inside.
“It was seeing you all practice what you preach,” he tells Do. “It was seeing two creative individuals who have a background primarily in design using design principles and design methodologies to run a business, to start a company, to start an initiative, which I have not seen done before.”
He watched Do, then deeply uncomfortable in front of the camera, push through that fear to build a platform he believed in. “I remember you yourself saying how like, ‘Listen, I am not comfortable being in front of the camera, but here I am’,” Brathwaite recalls. “And I saw you do it, and I saw how well you were doing at it, that it was inspirational for me.”
This was a real-world lesson in courage. If someone with an established, multi-million dollar business to lose could embrace such vulnerability and uncertainty, what was holding him back?
He also observed the culture of the studio. It was a space defined by both discipline and autonomy. There was a level of respect and trust that empowered the team to do their best work. “It was almost like there's like the symphony of what was happening in this space,” he describes. “And so for me, I learned a lot of that. I was taking notes, I was taking my mental notes about all of the things that I was observing.”
He paid attention to how Do delivered critique, inspiring and encouraging his team while pushing for better work. He watched the process of building an audience from scratch, reaching out to the design community, and navigating the uncertainty of launching a new venture. This was a masterclass in how an entrepreneurial mindset operates, not in a classroom, but in the trenches.
The experience transformed his understanding of what a design career could be. It wasn't just about delivering solutions to clients. It was about designing systems, building platforms, and creating your own opportunities. His time at The Futur provided a new model, one that merged design thinking with business strategy and personal development.
Designing Your Life: A Five-Part Framework
Brathwaite’s experiences, from the depths of despair to the heart of a thriving creative business, crystallized into a powerful methodology he calls **Designing Your Life**. It’s a framework that takes the principles of User Experience (UX) design and applies them to the most complex project of all: yourself.
UX, at its core, is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. It involves research to understand users, synthesis to find patterns, ideation to explore solutions, and implementation to create a better experience. Brathwaite argues that we can, and should, use this exact process on ourselves.
The framework consists of five core principles.
First is to be curious. This is the research phase. It’s about asking open-ended questions and observing without judgment. “Who are you outside of design?” Brathwaite asks. “What are you bringing to the table aside from the skills that you have?” For much of his career, he had hidden behind his skills. The real work began when he got curious about Vincent the person, not just Vincent the designer.
Second is to be objective (or, as Do suggests, be centered). This is the synthesis phase. It’s about seeing situations for what they are, without the distortion of emotion. Brathwaite cites Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, and its principle: “Don’t take things personally.” It is about separating fact from the stories you tell yourself about those facts.
Third is to be creative. This is the ideation phase. It’s about exploring unconventional options and challenging your own biases. This doesn’t just apply to work. “This is being creative with the books that you decide to read, or the places you decide to go, or the videos you decide to watch,” he explains. It’s about intentionally stepping outside your comfort zone to expose yourself to new inputs.
Fourth is to be authentic. This is about prototyping and testing. Once you know who you are (from curiosity) and accept the world as it is (from objectivity), you can show up as your true self. “I am silly, passionate, empathetic, and direct,” Brathwaite states. Trying to fit the mold of every space you enter is exhausting. Authenticity is efficiency. It’s a core tenet of building an effective personal brand.
Fifth, and most crucial, is to be courageous. This is the implementation phase. It’s taking the leap. “Ultimately, it's about stepping into the unknown, not letting fear paralyze you from making steps,” he says. Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the decision to act despite it. This was the principle that led him to the apprenticeship, and it’s the engine of all forward motion.
The Framework in Action: From New York to a New Narrative
A framework is useless if it remains theoretical. Brathwaite lives his, using it to navigate major life decisions and to guide his students.
A prime example was his decision to teach at General Assembly in New York. The opportunity was a significant step up in responsibility, leading a large class of aspiring UX designers. But there was a catch. “Honestly, I did not want to be in New York,” he admits. “It just didn't really match sort of my vibe.”
Here, the principles collided. His curiosity about what he was capable of as an educator pushed him to consider it. His authenticity told him the city wasn't a fit. But courage won. He took the chance on himself, embracing the unknown. “I got the plane ticket. I didn't know where I was gonna stay,” he says. “Nothing was really lined up when I said yes to the opportunity, but I said yes and I figured everything else afterwards.” That move became a transformational period in his life and career.
His peripatetic life is a testament to this process. Born in Tulsa, he grew up in Miami, then lived in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and even Paris. He and his wife are now planning a move to Singapore. This constant movement is a physical manifestation of a mindset that prioritizes exploration over comfort and resists the baggage of a settled life.
He now brings this methodology directly into his classroom at RISD. In his course, titled UX and Racism: Designing a New Narrative, he helps students use design thinking to tackle one of society's most intractable problems. But he also turns the lens inward.
He instructs his students to perform “user interviews” on themselves by talking to the people closest to them.
- He asks them to have honest conversations with friends and family.
- The prompt is simple: “How am I showing up to you? What was your last experience when we went and ate out together?”
- He then has them synthesize this “data” on sticky notes, looking for patterns in how they are perceived.
The exercise is a vulnerable, humbling, and often emotional process. “They were learning things about themselves that they did not know,” he explains. It’s a practical application of his framework: using curiosity and objectivity to understand the user experience of being in a relationship with yourself. This kind of self-awareness is fundamental to navigating a successful and fulfilling career, a theme explored in What Successful Personal Brands Do Differently.
From a RISD classroom to the stage at the Design Ops Summit, Brathwaite is now sharing this perspective. He is stepping into the light, owning his full story, and teaching others that the same tools they use to design products and services can be used to design something far more important.
A life. A life that is not free of difficulty, fear, or uncertainty, but one that is deliberately and courageously built.
TRANSCRIPT
[Music] so [Music] me [Music] hello beautiful people what's up donation futurist doers and donuts today we're going to be talking about designing your life i know that sounds crazy big and ambitious but i think i have the right person to talk to about this very subject now before we do that we're going
to do a little time travel yes we're going to go kind of old school you guys remember this guy jose caballere well there's a gentleman over there in the upper right corner and that's who we're gonna be talking about so we're gonna we're gonna go back to the future uh my my guest
on today's episode is an adjunct professor at rhode island school of design ux designer speaker educator leader that's titles that kind of fit him for right now he was also ux writing contributor for adobe xd distinguished faculty program member at general assembly which i think he has worked with for over four years
he's a member of the design leadership forum and also a tedx speaker in 2017. his educational background was more varied than i thought but now looking at this it makes perfect sense he studied industrial design at rhode island school of design also studied psychology and philosophy at city university new york data analytics
and product management at general assembly i'm wondering if he did that before he started teaching there and also studied product design and development at mit sloan school of management everybody please help me to welcome vincent brathwaite vincent welcome to the show okay now before we get started i need to let everybody know
he's on the east coast everything has been working prior to us going live and then we're having some spotty internet and i was just joking with jonah maybe we could do the show without vincent but that's not quite possible so vincent it's so good to see your face it's been a while since
i've talked to you last so uh i just want to say welcome back man it's so good to see you first of all oh man i i love that blast from the past image that you put up there my goodness oh maurice uh it's so good to be here with you chris and
to to speak with you again uh live and in color and to see your face so thank you for having me awesome okay so for people who don't know who you are tell us a little bit about yourself i mean you did such a wonderful introduction what more from that today honestly what
was the part of the what wasn't a part of the intro is that uh i am a caribbean american so both of my parents are uh tartallion uh so this is a little island in the caribbean um uh that they were born and uh but i was born here in the us in
tulsa oklahoma um and uh the other thing that you should know about me is that i operate out of the my core personal values which is integrity the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles kindness the quality of being friendly generous and considerate empathy the ability to understand and share feelings
of another resilience ability able to withstand to recover from difficult conditions which we'll talk about i'm sure and uh courage the ability to do something that frightens one um so those are the principles in which i operate uh under so that's a little bit more about me but i'm sure we'll get into
some more things as we have this discussion about designing life i'm ready to go there right now and i think before we get to the future we have to go back to the past and i'm i've already included this link to your ted talk that you did in 2017 in the show notes
so if you want to you guys can open that later but it's a very powerful and moving and just just an amazing delivery of a talk it's i think it's under 10 minutes it's only like eight minutes long but it's so good now when you talk about resilience and honesty integrity and overcoming
things you have a lot of things to overcome because in that ted talk you mentioned about growing up broke and not having enough you ate what was available and at one point in your life it got really dark and i'm just going to go ahead and say if it's okay with you is
that you not only contemplated suicide you actually attempted to kill yourself i did tell me about what was going on there set that up and i want to talk about that before we get into like i know your life is good now but back to the past yeah absolutely so that was a
really um defining moment for me it was a dark time obviously and so this was back when i was living in atlanta georgia and i was fairly early in my design consultancy and working with different clients and so i had a couple of clients that i was working with and i was very
active in the community both in um the professional world as well as the design community and uh it just got to a point where things were overwhelming for me personally where i felt like i wasn't getting as many clients as i needed or i felt like i wasn't getting the response from all
the work that i was doing and that coupled with just my own sort of anxiety about um where i was in life and how i was being perceived i felt like i got to a point where it's like what's the point you know what's the point of continuing on and so um i
actually made the attempt i i talk about it in my in my ted talk but um i actually took uh some pills as well as um using clorox um to try and create this concoction to take me out but it didn't work obviously um instead i i woke up you know just sort
of annoyed and frustrated um but i i looked at that also once once i got kind of over that that feeling and sort of that perception that i had after this attempt i realized that obviously if that didn't work i need to still be here and i need to continue to push past
these things that i see as barriers for me and so i'm glad that i did because the story is very different than it was then i have so many questions i asked you about this one moment and i want to live in this spot thank you first of all for sharing it so
openly and i think some of the things that you're talking about the themes and the through line of your life are going to resonate and connect with so many people so i forgot to mention this at the top of the show i think we're going to move into some some more adult oriented
themes and subject matter so if you're around with kids and the idea of suicide and all this stuff i'm sorry i'm supposed to say that up front we're not going to be swearing or talking about anything inappropriate but it's part of the narrative here i have to ask you a couple of quick
questions what year was this and how old are you at this point this was in 2011 and i was in early 20s like mid to early 20s okay this is after risd then right it's after isd yep wow doctor yeah okay so it it i i know that people are going to connect
to this message today because a lot of people are going through this when you talk about starting your design agency or consultancy and not kind of making the progress that you thought you were going to make for people who don't know this risd is one of the top 10 design schools in the
country period you need to know it's a very high pedigree some very famous successful people have come from risd one of our one of them is my good friend so how does one go from attending a school like this especially because of the the rough start that you had in life being broke
living in the projects you talk about this in your ted talk about being being broke but not broken to go into risd and then starting a design like a lot of people would say like man you are privileged to go to bristol first of all how does one go from that to like
it's not worth living anymore yeah wow i love these questions we're really going there we don't waste any time i appreciate it because it's a very real thing and and part of me kind of take it a step back and just say that i for the longest time did not want to share
that story um because of the shame that it's attached to it because of that very sort of setup that you just presented with me which is that i have had this sort of path in this journey that one could look at and say what are you talking about like life couldn't have been
that bad for you right um and so for me it was really just a lot of unresolved things that i had just floating in my mind i think that what happens for for some of us potentially is that we create a situation that's actually bigger than what it would what it is actually
is and i was doing that so for me because i had such grand expectations because i did go to an institution like risd which it trained me to operate as such a caliber and a capacity that i wasn't seeing that as much in the work that i was doing and how i was
moving through the space that for me it was a it was a missing of the mark and so for me for that to take place i felt like well if this is constantly happening then what's the point of continuing to push if i'm going to continue to keep missing the mark as it
relates to what i've been trained to do what i know i'm capable of doing um and so even though i've kind of i've had the experience of being broke in terms of financially and and the support of my family and that was a different time because i had i was relying on my
my parents right i had that like if you know we were broke but they somehow they figured it out they found a way to make it do they found a way to put food on the table they found a way to support us and support me in the dreams that i had as
it relates to pursuing art and design education and so now i was at a point where i didn't really have that sort of support like they didn't have a reserve of funds to be like okay we're gonna give you an investment of money to help you with your with your design uh career
you having this your own business um so it really was just me relying on myself uh and so because of that it just it took a toll in turn on me mentally um and i just wanted to kind of call it quits at that point wow i i have and i've shared this
before as a teenager with wild crazy emotions and hormones have often felt like oh life is really hard i've contemplated suicide but i've never gone to that step and i think it does seem counterintuitive but i think it's actually a pretty i know people are going to give me flack for this it's
actually there's a lot of courage to actually take that next step because we all fantasize about these kinds of things i think at some point like oh she hates me or everybody i was embarrassed at school like life is not worth living but we don't actually go and you talk about this in
your ted talk a can of red bull pills and a and a cap full of bleach and i don't know if you stared that for a long time or you just counted it to 10 and just threw it down and went to sleep or whatever and hoped that that was it but i
also i'm just thinking about this because i think you're a person of faith too right yes and then like that's a like i i believe that's like one of the biggest sins if i remember uh catholic school you know you take your life is worse than killing somebody else i believe so all
kinds of stuff must have been going on your head take me through that yeah so what's what's really interesting about you even bringing that up uh you know the fact that i am a man of faith in that i had all these things laid out on my my dining room the island counter
and i took a picture of it i took a picture of it because in my mind because i was i'm pretty stubborn so once i make up my mind about something it's pretty much a done deal and so once i made up my at this point i figured this is pretty much it
so i took a picture of it so that there was this sort of memory or somebody could you know grab my phone and they'll see that this thing is here so there it would always be there um and on the counter i actually had my bible as well um and and so i
had in the picture there is a bible there's clark beach there's a can of red well there are the pills all sitting there before i actually took them and for me it was it was a fatigue again it was this like fatigue of everything it was a fatigue of of my my faith
it was a fatigue of um my my wanting to continue to pursue you know my career etc um and so despite the fact that a lot of the decisions that i made before that was based on my faith i think i just because i am human um i still just got tired i
was just like i am done done like i'm done done for real um and and so that's that's how that that took place for me so it's not to say that because i i am a man of faith that i don't still have those sort of those thoughts uh um as as life
would have it to happen on you i think the difference for me is that now um you know i can go back and i can i can really tap into um you know understanding more about going deeper in my faith to allow myself to continue to um not just it's not just about
it's not about thinking positive but allow myself to get more understanding um and and i think for me relying on the help of other people as well because i couldn't walk on the journey uh by myself and that's one of the things that i think is really important whenever if ever someone is
in that that space and that mindset is really getting help and really being vulnerable and saying look this is what this is where i am um and i would love your help all on this journey and that's one of the things that i immediately did afterwards was to to get help um with
uh by some friends uh because i i didn't i didn't have the money to pay for uh for therapy um but i did go to the next best thing uh which were the people that i trusted okay let me let me pause right here and and i'm gonna let our audience know so
that well what did we just tune into it's like the dark hour in the future i just wanna let you guys know a couple things i'm going to say something i'm going to ask vincent a question and then we're going to move on okay um i won't let everybody know this that i
think a lot of times people talk about their success and it seems like an overnight thing and that they were given certain things and they live a very privileged wonderful life and the path to becoming a successful teacher ux designer a person who's sought after for their ideas and their thinking it's like
a linear path and it's not it's full of zigs and zags and that's why i think it's so beautiful that you're willing to share the story so i want to be able to anchor the story and so this is the part the the left end of the bookshelf we'll get to the right
in a second but the question i want to ask you is this i guess maybe it's two parts the first part is like expectations can be deadly whether they're from external or internal and you mentioned as i want to pull this out in the conversation is that going to a school like risd
where you have this kind of rigor in the program and standards are very high you're used to critiquing and pushing work to that high level and as a student it's wonderful because you get to do anything you want to do so whatever comes your mind however crazy you want to make it you
get to do that and then slap on the emergency brake this is the real world now and it's pretty different from this academic bubble you live in and you're talking about these high standards and then like wait a minute it's like that david burns song like this is not my beautiful wife this
is not my you know family what is going on and is that dissonance between those two extremes is what makes what we would call normal life much worse in your mind the narrative yeah i i think so um again because there was a there is a net that uh when when in an
institution like risd um despite the fact that there's this rigor there's still a net that's there like you know if you fail okay you get a bad grade on your project right um outside of an institution like brizzy or any institution you fail you lose your job i mean you lose your house
you lose your car you you know you may not be able to eat for a couple days like the the severity of not doing well increases uh and so for me i was sort of facing that in in in seeing that as a very real thing for me and i didn't like that
space of being uncomfortable um even though i wasn't in a place where um i still had my i still had my apartment i still had my car i still had the things but because they were like within eyesight uh because i wasn't sure on how to really navigate this new journey as an
entrepreneur as a design entrepreneur that um i didn't want to face that inevitability that i thought was right around the corner so i felt like that would have been an easier route than to face this sort of unmet expectation of achieving you know these sort of goals of you know being able to
use design to really impact people and just you know solutions for uh clients etc yeah well in real life the stakes are high yeah as i believe the daily soul song goes okay let's jump forward and now that i i know this because i didn't know this before we met it was only
three years before you apprenticed with the school okay so people don't know this we have history you and i we have history we have studies yeah we have some history that the the thing that connects two of us is our friend jose caballer so yeah how the heck did we meet tell the
people the story there yes so okay so this was um i had just moved to la in 2013. and so i moved to l.a i was really excited about this transition and then in 2014 i was at this really pivotal moment where i was facing another sort of transition in terms of i
was asking myself this question of what's next for me as a designer and um i was i my clients were starting to sort of like die down a little bit they were starting to like dry up but i wasn't i wasn't back in that head space of like okay i'm losing clients and
you know the end is near it was more so i was looking at it as a sign of um you know what what else can i do because although clients were sort of drying up if you will i wasn't as interested um in the work that i was doing as much as i
was before because my goal in design was to like was to be able to you know use design thinking to help people and i felt for me at the time that i was not helping really people i was spending most of my time trying to educate stakeholders about the value of design and
so by the time i got around to actually doing the work it felt like i was just you know producing something to hand to them um and so i was like this is not why i got into design i want to do more i want to make more of an impact and so
what does that look like and so there were these two things that were meeting each other so there was like the reduction of clients but also me asking myself this question of who am i in this next phase of my design journey and career that i started to look online to get more
inspiration to see you know what else is out there to something that could trigger me and so i stumbled across some videos you and jose and i think one of the first videos that i saw was making money which you know was writing right in line with where my mind was and so
i saw this video i was like oh okay yeah um here are these two creative people talking about making money like i haven't seen anything like that before and so i just got into this rabbit hole of like watching all the videos i went from making the making money to the the design
industry to problem clients freelancing versus agency closing the cell text i mean all of the videos and i just was like just eating it up and i was like oh my gosh where have these two people been in my career and why do i not know them so i think i signed up
for an email newsletter or something and um in that process of receiving like when the next video was coming out there was an email uh that came out that said that you all were looking for an apprentice and i was just like what the opportunity to like be in the presence of jose
cavaliere and chris doe what so you didn't realize only four people were on that email list at that time so you're one of four people who received it it was gold to me at that time because it was gold and so um so yeah so i saw this and and again because like
you know money was kind of getting lower and lower and lower and i was like you know they know what they're talking about and watching you too was like watching the manifestation of both sides of my brain it was like seeing the left side you know the analytical part which was you and
then seeing the right side which was sort of just like you know very um blue sky emotional piece just like operating and i was like they're in my head um and so i applied i applied to to be an apprentice knowing that there was no money involved this would be completely voluntary uh
for me and i was in no position to not be working for money but this speaks to something that we'll talk about which is this you know investment in myself and i felt like i was at a point where i wanted to learn more here are these two individuals who have established careers
who know what they're talking about and and i really admire and respect and now i have an opportunity to sit under them and learn absolutely i'm going to take this chance on myself and so i did and i went through the process and met with um jose i believe first and then through
this interview and then he was like sure come on in and i came in and met at uh at the blind studios and yeah and that's how we got connected i want to highlight this word because you also mention it in your ted talk which is the word opportunity when you see this
email and you're like this is an opportunity even though you probably could not afford this quote unquote opportunity of doing free work basically volunteering and being an apprentice what is opportunity what's the definition of opportunity opportunity for me is is a space of exploration it's it's an untapped potential right it's being able
to um to take sort of take this blank space if you will and and do something with it right um and and a lot of discovery happens in opportunity there's a lot of risk also in opportunity because with opportunity it's not always laid out exactly what's going to happen once you embrace that
but for me it's it's really about an investment it's about you know being able to create in a different way and to explore not just um you know end results but explore explore more about self which is which is one of the things why i wanted to take this opportunity was because i
wanted to learn what else what else do i not know that i can learn that i can then apply that could help me grow as a designer as a entrepreneur as a professional in this industry yeah in the ted talk you mentioned opportunity is the circumstance to create something and there's it's it's
deliberately open like it's kind of just something good something bad we just don't know but you have to be willing to make that move so i have to ask you i'm very proud of what you've done since then and who you've become i don't have any authorship or ownership over that but i'm
just saying just as a human being one human being to another i'm very proud of you what did you learn and how did you apply this to your life or to life in general yeah so i learned so much um from the both of you i think for me it was it was
seeing you all practice what you preach it was seeing two creative individuals who have a background primarily in design using design principles and design methodologies to run a business to start a company to start an initiative which i have not seen done before me being someone who has sort of an entrepreneurial mindset
but has training and design i had not seen that done in this capacity so it was watching you like give birth to something um and and really sort of test things out and being unafraid um about how it was taking shape and being uncomfortable because there were moments in in the early stages
of the production of what is now the future where i remember you yourself saying how like listen i am not comfortable being in front of the camera but here i am and you were and i saw you do it and i saw how well you were doing at it that it was it
was inspirational for me to be able to say you know what whatever those things are that's making me uncomfortable or not wanting to pursue or jump as it relates to um you know designing my next phase in my career here's someone who is doing it who has so much more to lose like
you had a whole business to lose you know but you were you were deciding listen i'm gonna do it because i believe in this vision and so i saw that um i saw how you know you were in the process still managing um this this this business that you know you were responsible
for other individuals and the work that they were doing uh so not only was i coming in to help with you know what was the school at the time but i was also seeing how how blind was being run and operated and how there was such a level of discipline with the people
that were in the space and there was still also a level of respect and an autonomy because people were like they knew what they needed to do they were doing it and it was just it was like awesome to watch it was almost like there's like the symphony of what was happening in
this space you know and so for me i had not seen that in this way and so i learned a lot of that i was taking notes i was taking my mental notes about all of the things that i was observing and i was hearing how you spoke with people and how you
know you you really encouraged and inspired as you were critiquing you know the work that was being presented to you as well as what was happening with the development of you know these these videos and and reaching out to the design community so i learned so much about just how to navigate the
uncertainty as it relates to um you know achieving and going to the next phase or the evolution of of your design career that's ultimately what i what i learned from from the both of you um well thanks for saying that and i want to give her credit where credit is due because i
had no hand in sending out that email no hand in interviewing you or picking you and jose i mean hats off to him he he found nicole he found you he found aaron and he found others to bring into the fold and back in the early days it was a little bit wild
wild west for sure you know because today it's like no we're not taking anybody and you have to go through all these hurdles to get through the gates but back then there was like oh there's no gate you just push on it it just falls right you responded you show up you're present
we like you you're an honest guy and then everything else falls into place okay yeah very good now i know that we we call this episode designing your life and we're gonna get to that but i want to just quickly now fast forward now back to the real future let's just catch up
with where you're at today because i've been watching you you know with general assembly and teaching ux i was like dang this guy's going places and i saw this ted talk from you i was thinking smooth you know nerves of steel up there and everything okay so what are you up to today
and what's going on in your life yeah so right now as you mentioned earlier in the intro so i'm teaching at risd the place in where i cut my teeth in design if you will um which has been an honor and a privilege to be back in the department that i learned so
much from and being able to share with the next wave of product designers industrial designers that will be coming out um in the next year so i'm there i'm here actually i'm in providence rhode island right now and i am teaching a course called ux and racism designing a new narrative so it's
allowing me to be able to merge both you know my love for design um and my experience in that but also with something that is near and dear to my heart as a as an individual as a black man in america in this issue of race and being able to pull those things
together and still have the design focus on it and because of the power that i believe that design has to solve all kinds of problems so that's what i'm doing right now as well as working on a platform that solves a problem for junior designers and tech talent as well as entrepreneurs that's
still in the development um and then i'm also speaking a lot more um with uh institutions in organizations like ux strat i just spoke at their recent conference um that that took place a couple weeks ago as well as the design ops summit uh which i was a featured keynote speaker that took
place um last week so for me it's about being able to step into the light a little bit more and to share my experience my my understanding of of design in all of the different facets of it and how it can continue to give up another perspective to other individuals that are in
this space whether leaders or people that are emerging into into this space so teaching more speaking more and and just sharing in other capacities um as well as like i said building a product that i want to help people so okay so a lot of your professional life posts your time with us
in 2014 has been in the ux space he's either as a practitioner or an educator or maybe building something but okay there's people who are tuning into this channel like who is this guy what is ux and what is the overlap between ux and racism i think i understand both a little bit
maybe not so much to overlap where they cross over so just to take a huge step back so we're all speaking and using the same language what the heck is ux because people use this a lot and maybe not always in the correct way so let's start there professor yeah yes so let
me put on my professor hat no nice hat by the way i want to acknowledge that um thank you absolutely so um ux user experience essentially used barrett's design is uh is a human-centered essentially designed thinking it is about it's it's about using methodology specific methodologies to be able to solve problems for
individuals now oftentimes when it's being used or said it is connected to the digital space right but ux design can and is applicable to physical products as well as services where there's a there's a section within ux call service design where you know uh improving or enhancing the way in which people navigate
through a space or use some sort of service uh the same methodologies can be applied so this is uh conducting user research this is synthesizing that research this is then uh creating some ideas around that synthesis and then finally implementing that in some form of a solution that's essentially what ux design is
all about process um and being able to derive at a solution from that process that is focused on individuals who will ultimately have to use that product or service i'm going to take advantage of this opportunity right now because i get asked this question quite a lot people asked me online just yesterday
what's what are good resources if i want to learn ux because you sound like you know what you're talking about and i definitely do not what are some online courses that somebody can take that you would recommend or books or a book that you would recommend yeah so i would recommend design of
everything things um as one book um there are oh man there so on there's ux collective which is a um they're a group that's connected to medium essentially um that shares articles from people who are practicing um ux um you know as a previous instructor of ga they do have online courses that
you can take as well um another book that i would recommend um that there's a couple books by steve krug if you just look up steve krug he has a couple of books that i would recommend that you would read to read um trying to think there is user experience the elements of
user experience um by his name is slipping me uh his name is jared um it's his it's his last name but the elements of user experience design um is another book that i would recommend that individuals pick up to learn more about ux very good so some books there and then a community
to join how about an online course i i never know what to say to that i'm like i don't know yeah well you know so the ones that i'm more familiar with obviously is there's one through uh ga uh sometimes they offer free introductory courses to us i've taught a couple of those
um just to kind of learn what it what the heck is this thing um so i would go to the general sim blee uh website um to uh to find out what when those are when they're occurring um and there might be some others out there i'm not sure if linda has any
i know the nng the nielsen norman group they also have videos oftentimes sharing um what ux is all about that you can learn and some courses there but those courses are um they're pretty pricey but um yeah yes they are but they're available online now because i always thought ga was kind of
like an you go to school like there's a space and you're you meet but especially not right now so yeah there are online courses okay yep okay very good okay so that's kind of like what you're up to so everybody knows and you did do a very good job of answering that in
a very professorial way synthesizing and you know talking about human factors and all that kind of i get it all right all right all right all right i got you i mean i'm okay you know that's not always the standard sometimes you're like hey can i get on the show yeah yeah you're
the standard i know okay okay so here we go let's get into it let's get into the meat of this is designing your life that sounds like a crazy big idea and the question i have for you are well so what are the principles of this thing that we're talking about designing your
life i assume you're going to bring ux into this conversation but i'll turn it over to you absolutely absolutely i'm going to bring you guys into this so um the principles that are involved with designing your life is uh first to be curious um and when it comes to curiosity it's about asking
open-ended questions and observing the situation or circumstances around you so that can look like um you know you being able to ask yourself you know who are you outside of design right um what are you bringing to the table aside from the skills that you have and being able to uh answer that
um and explore that whatever that answer is right so um for me i had built my identity around what i did and what i was good at and without looking at the person who's actually doing the things and so i hid behind a skill and a knowledge when the reality was part of
what made me successful in my journey was me like just me being me so being curious about who i am and who i was as a designer is something that um is is vital to you designing your life is sort of the first step is to understand um how are you showing up
to people um how are you showing up you know to yourself right like how do you perceive yourself um in the world um the next is to be objective so this is you know stating facts that are essentially tied to what's actually happening the experiences that are actually happening without taking an emotional
uh a lens to it now it doesn't mean that you don't get emotional just means that you don't operate from that place uh 100 um you know that there's this great book that uh i would encourage everyone to check out it's called the four agreements by don miguel ruiz um and one of
the agreements is to not take things personally which is essentially what being objective is all about right uh it's essentially about you know taking again what is being said what is being presented to you and having sort of this objective um outlook about it um and pursuing that with uh a level of
say truth and authenticity the third one is being creative so exploring options that are unconventional in challenges biased perceptions so this essentially is just trying something different so this is maybe trying a new software trying a new method in which you operate in your design but as it relates to life this is
being created with the books that you decide to read or the places you decide to go or the videos you decide to watch right being able to step outside of your comfort zone um and being creative about how you're in taking information and exploring the world around you um then is being authentic
uh remaining true to yourself and evolving through education and continual growth um when you know who you are then you can constantly show up in that way um and that's what i try to do in everything that i do when it comes to teaching when it comes to opportunities like this when speaking
with you um i try to bring as much as myself to the table as possible um so i am silly passionate empathetic and direct uh and we exist in several different spaces so it's easy to try and fit the mold of that space that we're in but in doing so you end up
tiring yourself out and so in designing the life that you ultimately want you have to again answer that first question about you being curious to yourself and then be authentic about how you show up um based on the answers that you that you receive and then being courageous taking chances that will allow
you to discover new possibilities so ultimately it's about stepping into the unknown not letting fear paralyze you from making steps um as we've talked about before in my connection with you chris was you know i took a chance on myself i stepped into an unknown as it relates to this apprenticeship um and
that that courage has taken me far beyond i couldn't even imagine um at the time and so you know still embracing fear and saying okay you know i'm nervous about this step i'm nervous about coming back on and having this conversation with with chris because i respect who he is i respect the
platform and i know that there's a certain level of which um there's an expectation that you have with everything that you produce but saying you know what despite the fact that i'm nervous about this i'm still gonna do it you know before i even reached out to you and saying that i would
love to have a conversation um you know i questioned that i was like oh crap what did i just do why did why did i ask this question um but in that being courageous is really where new ideas are found um this is where discovery happens right this is where you're alive allowing
yourself to really be able to explore the life or the things that you weren't aware that was possible for you right uh and so that's the hardest part when trying to design the life that that you essentially want is to do that final step which is again to be be uh courageous so
as a recap um it is uh first being curious right about yourself about the situation around you being objective about how things show up right and operating in a space of truth um be creative in terms of how you navigate um you know the the conversations the media that you take in um
the places that you go uh being authentic about who you are and how you show up and then being courageous and actually taking a step forward and trying something that you don't know what the outcome is going to look like um which is a lot of these things we do when we do
our design work right we're curious about you know a new program or software where we uh try to be you know objective when we are explaining or pitching our ideas to um clients etc right we are trying to be as creative as possible with our solutions um and we try to be authentic
in terms of how we present ourselves to maybe get the job or to get the next bid et cetera and then courageous by taking on that that client that might be larger than what you may think you deserve etc but all of these things that you we do in our sort of our
careers uh in our practices we can do the same thing for ourselves to really unlock um this sort of like unknown possibility as it relates to our life and letting it be a lot more fulfilling um than it did than it has been excellent i thought that was really wonderful except for one
part which is you have the three c's and you just need to change the objective to some other c word then you got the four c's right you know i was going to bring that up it's like my my attention is you know what i'm going to take that and i'm going to
take that so i thought about it i thought about it allow me to offer something up to you here so be curious maybe be centered to be objective in your outlook to be really in the in the middle and not let your bias and your lens distort the truth and then be creative
and be courageous to to take action and before i dive into my next question here i just want to say thank you to reyes the entrepreneur for doing the super chat function thank you very much we do appreciate that totally not necessary so it's uh just very generous of you to do that
okay let's get back to the conversation now we've heard ideas like this before we we know that people say things like this like be courageous be creative i get that let's apply it to something either apply to something that you've seen in your life or something that you personally had to use these
principles and maybe how that might have impacted the decision that you made yeah so one of them specifically has to do with taking the opportunity to teach at general assembly in new york and that was me being courageous for example where at the time i there wasn't sort of an indication that this
is going to lead to anything bigger or that i had essentially um stability in in making this decision to jump from what i was doing and so um it required me to essentially leave los angeles and go to a city that honestly i did not want to be in i get to be
quiet right and i've said this to other people before new york was not very appealing to me um you know i had other opportunities in the past to go there but for me it just didn't really match sort of my vibe i i wasn't it really and no no offense to people who
live in new york who love new york i respect it i get it but it wasn't me um and so because of that i had to and i wanted to again in my curiosity of what i can do i was courageous enough to take on the opportunity that was presented to me to
go to a place that i didn't want to be in um to try and take on a responsibility that i did not have before where i was essentially leading a much larger class of individuals who wanted to learn more about ux prior to taking on that role i was only maybe teaching i
was teaching part-time and i was teaching maybe a few students at a time and so this now put me in sort of like this capacity where it's like i had again more responsibility and unfamiliar territory a lot of unknown things and so i did it i was courageous enough i got the plane
ticket i didn't know where i was gonna stay i found that i found a place um you know nothing was really lined up when i said yes to the opportunity but i said yes and i figured everything else afterwards um and that just was that became a transformational thing for me um in
terms of the people that i was able to connect with the impact that i was able to have on the individuals who are now working in the field um and so that's one example of being courageous very good you know the interesting thing is you traveled a lot and we're not done with
the traveling part and we know this about a lot of people they don't really venture far out from where they were raised you set your roots down and you start to fall into a rhythm and think about this and ask yourself how many places have i lived in my life what kind of
chances am i taking because if i can't remember where you were born but i where were you born again i was born in tulsa oklahoma tulsa oklahoma i think you lived in miami for a while right i lived in miami that's where i grew up so right and then atlanta los angeles new
york rhode island and where else are you gonna go you told me before we went live you're planning on actually going to another place into your next adventure my wife and i we are looking at going to singapore so a completely different place um you know with again unfamiliar territory um a lot
of new things to to learn and to discover but thankfully uh my wife and i we both share the interest of exploration and wanting to learn in the in the space of being in new new spaces um and you know that to me is a joy because it would be very difficult to
have these desires and to be with someone who didn't share them as well um i also lived abroad so this wouldn't be our my first time living abroad because i also lived in paris um as well so just throw that out there like that that's how you take a bite out of your
baguette and have a glass of wine okay easy there yeah you know there was that one stint that i lived in paris don't worry about it i'm not gonna i'm not gonna talk about that too much all right all right we're gonna throw it out here i might as well throw that yes
you are just flossing a little bit i get it i get it okay just give me a hard time i i admire that and i think maybe you know this about yourself maybe you don't but people who do pick up and and and move from city to city place to place and experience
different cultures and people and climates they don't put a lot down you don't start collecting too much because that becomes part of the baggage you carry with you because then it makes it harder to move and uproot and i'm going to guess that you're not that i'm the opposite of that because i'm
a bit of a pack rat i can't let go of things so i'm i'm stuck where i'm at you know but i admire that so my my escape is to travel for short periods and then ultimately return to home base but i i just sit there and think singapore would be really cool
yeah and the funny thing about it though chris is that when i moved to l.a i honestly thought that that was it i thought that that was that was it like that was i was going to set roots down that's how i was kind of you know as i started connecting within the
community and getting connected with people etc uh becoming more involved because in my mind i thought that my moving to los angeles was pretty much sort of like the the me just settling down and you know again um as as my life would have it in terms of me setting the intention there
are some things that i still wanted to do and the opportunity to travel to new york and teach at uh teach ux at general assembly was in line with with one of the things that i still wanted to do and so because of that because i was open to that um i took
the chance it and went forward and didn't allow the fact that i had acquired some things um living in l.a um that i had made you know some really great connections with individuals who i still am connected with um i didn't let that stop me from exploring the opportunity where i can still
learn more about myself and what i could potentially do in the field of design yeah okay i have more questions for you but at this point in the show we need to turn this over to our our audience who have tuned in to start hitting you up with some questions i'm sure you
have a whole bunch so start sending them in and jonah and i will do our best to find the best questions to ask vincent we want to take advantage of his presence here and his his generosity but before i do that too i also want to thank danny mirabal hopefully i said that
right danny mirabal thank you very much for the super chat so i'm going to start the question and then from this point forward we're going to start to field questions from our audience thanks for sticking in there with us in case you guys have are tuning in right now i'm talking to vincent
brathwaite and you guys can reach out to him on social media at vj brathwaite and you can visit his website vincentjbrathweight.com hopefully i got that right did i get that right that is absolutely correct okay so back to the show i want to ask you this you're talking about like ux designing your
life yeah it sounds like a cool idea yeah but i want to find another application for this you talked about you making these decisions to travel and to pursue this thing now that you're a teacher i'm just curious when you meet students how can you instill some of these ideas into the students
and maybe you can find a practical example of how maybe a student was struggling with something and you're able to help them unlock somehow you got a lighting situation going on there yeah there's a bit of a lighting situation that's happening right now as long as the network as long as the ethernet's
okay or the internet we're we're still good we're good can you at least still see me okay okay um so i want to i want to kind of go if you could sort of distill again because i was paying attention to the like what the question is yeah i can ask you a
question again yeah so let's try to design life again as a teacher both at general assembly and now at risd have you met a student where they were stuck and you're able to help them get unstuck using one of your principles yes absolutely so one of the things that i have instructed one
of my students to do and i've instructed many of them to do actually as it relates to life is to um have conversations with individuals that they're close to where they're basically conducting user interviews on themselves right to see this is where that curiosity comes in where you're now saying how am i
showing up to you uh when you what was your last experience when we went and ate out together right and so it puts you in a very vulnerable spot because you never really have those kind of conversations with people that you're closing like yeah tell me how i am in your life right
but in that process of you getting that data getting that information about yourself i then instructed them to go through the synthesis phase of like uh writing down all of the information and then putting them on stick on post-it notes and then putting them on the wall and seeing what patterns emerge how
are you showing up to people in a way um that is authentic to you or authentic to um even to them and so i had one person who looked at me sort of like cross-eyed like wait what you want me to do no and they did it and they said it was it
was a very humbling but also emotional thing for them to do because again they were learning things about themselves that they did not know because of the questions that they were asking these individuals that that were a part of their life so being curious about themselves and then distilling that information into some
things that they could then look at and then be more intentional about as they move forward and making decisions uh about what their next steps are going to be how they're going to uh continue to apply for jobs how they're going to uh showcase their work um but ultimately being curious them being
objective so that way once they have that data they can be authentic and then be more courageous about the steps that they're going to make uh in moving forward so absolutely they i have had them do this and they did and then they then on top of that they shared it with their
friends they like walk their friends through how to do the same process for them so that they can tap into uh designing a more intentional sort of life if you will okay um i i think it was greek philosopher thales i hope i said that correctly so my greek friends correct me if
i'm wrong when asked like what's the most difficult thing he said to know yourself so self-awareness is not an easy path so i'm i'm really intrigued with this whole concept of interviewing yourself as maybe the beginning steps to get to know who you are i'm just curious if you don't mind sharing what
kind of questions am i going to ask myself can you drop a couple with with us and like let us all just take a moment to think about what that answer might be and i'll try to respond like how well do i know myself i don't know yeah um how do you how
do you make others feel when you're in their presence okay okay let's stop right there how do you make others feel when you're in when they're in your presence when you're in their presence okay let me just think about that jonah you're gonna have to help me with this one because i'm gonna
give you a couple answers and then jonah can say and actually vincent you can do this too because we know each other in real life right okay the first thing that i make people feel especially people who work with me is a certain kind of tension exists they know that i bring a
very discerning eye and high expectations and i'm not known for my patience so you put those two together and sometimes people are on the edge and on pins and needles even though i think hey i'm a really friendly guy i smile a lot there's a lot of latitude there's a lot of grace
given and i i do my best never to make it personal i try to keep it almost always objectively and almost to a point cold now i'll give you this example the example is i remember one time when we were talking i was talking to my students back when i was teaching at
art center and they're like could you be a little bit more generous with the compliments because you're so thrifty it doesn't cost you anything but you can give out a few more i said fine i could do that so the very next opportunity i started to compliment them and they're like oh that's
so gross it just feels so fake coming from you i want the old chris back go ahead and rip it apart so i'm like i can't win what is it what do you want from me okay so first we're going to move to jonah i gave him enough time to think put him
on the hot seat a little bit and then we'll bounce to you it's like did i get it right do i put people on edge jonah oh yeah definitely but i couldn't agree more okay okay expand on that what do you mean no it's exactly for those reasons that you mentioned like you
have these high expectations and a critical eye and like a crazy level of dead attention to detail so whenever you come by i want to make sure well like for me at least i want to make sure my stuff looks clean and yeah be aware of that so and jonah's just naturally jumping
so every time i come in office i'm like hey johnny he's like everything i don't think i don't think it's always me i just think he's naturally jumpy okay now turn it over to vincent did i get that right do i know myself in that way you do know yourself in that way
you you do in a way help to bring out the best in people it's just it's a similar criticism that i got once before where they someone said to me vincent somewhat some sometimes a person's good enough is just that good enough and i think what you do is that you don't take
that as as the standard right you don't take well as a person's good enough you see beyond then you're like no you can you can give me more so give me more um am i right jonah oh that sounds like militaristic there are you sure oh you guys who's getting hot in here
i don't know what's going on right well what is enough what is more and and what do you mean so one of my things is i challenge myself all the time i want to see what the limits are and i i think the human potential a human's potential is almost limitless there are
some physical constraints but other than that it's like if you were to roll back the tape and and say what were we thinking 300 a.d do we think we can go to the moon that the moon is even a thing no but we imagined it and we imagined things that we couldn't see
like on a on a microscopic level concepts that we couldn't understand and through that imagination we started to investigate and see if it was real so the human mind is capable so much and i think it's one of the great tragedies in life if you just settle yeah and this is a point
of friction for my wife and i a lot she said can you just relax i'm like why would we relax what's the point of relaxing am i about to die soon if not i'm going to keep going forward so vincent please chime in here save my marriage i don't know if i can
do that but i uh i definitely can agree in a test that that is something that you you do you you you reach um not only hire for i mean obviously for yourself but for other people which you know when if they understand where it's coming from then it's appreciated because i think
it's one of those things where if if no if the person doesn't understand that it's coming from a place of where you're trying to pull out the best in them that they can see take it as a negative things like oh my gosh so critical you're just always telling me about the bad
things that i'm doing ah chris stop it but it's really about no i the reason why i'm invested in wanting you to do or i'm asking more on being critical is because i actually see something in you that you can give me more of and i know that that's possible and that's what
you do and that's what i saw you do uh when i was in your presence so yeah you're always pushing us to constantly improve yeah okay okay now i want to read a question here from oh i lost my place here you guys sorry i want to ask a question here from raphael
and i think this is really important and maybe you can shed some insight on this raphael sandoval is asking what is your present challenge in teaching as it relates to keeping people and capturing their attention because now as we're teaching and we're doing this it's it's remote and the joke is to cut
school today you just turn off the camera and hit mute and you're out right so that's a challenge so mr design thinking mr human factors help us solve this problem because a lot of teachers are struggling through this right now it's about the other principle of being authentic honestly people especially when it
comes to you know younger individuals you know they they can sniff out the real right and if you're not being you if you're not bringing your full self to the table then they're not interested right and i think that that goes in hand with any relationship or any sort of like communication or
exchange that you have with another person if you're not being authentic if you're not if you're you're putting on that can be a turn off to somebody and i think that when it comes especially when it comes to education and when it comes to this sort of virtual landscape that we're in right
now where trying to get keep people's attention is really hard and really but also really important you have to make sure that you are being your authentic self and whatever that means you have to of course define that but making sure that you bring that so that people want to listen to you
they want to you know do what it is that you are asking them to do or to not turn off their camera and you know take a nap on you right so it's really about just being authentic and being yourself okay so coach me how do i be more myself how do i
be authentic you define who you are who are you right who how do you show up going back to that question like how if i if you know that you show up in a way that is sometimes seen as critical right um but it has this lens of you trying to pull out
the best in someone is being able to you know be more of that just like when your students ask you to give them give you some give a little give them something nicer in terms of your your response to them in their critique and when you did that wasn't really you that's not
how you that's not how you operated and so when that came up when that showed up it didn't feel right so they were like nah chris give me the old you because i don't like this this doesn't feel right this feels so wrong i don't like it right so it's it's knowing that
it's knowing that okay i can be really critical or i am very passionate when i talk about this thing or i am uh i can be silly or i have corny jokes right you may not see them as corny but you know i have these jokes that many very few people laugh at
if that's how you want to define it but it's being able to say like these are the things that make me me and i'm going to show up and i'm going to bring that when i present when i talk about a subject matter etc okay i want to add to this i want
to add to this okay and then of course fire back if you feel different i think you show up as who you are many times not always and in different circumstances you hide some of yourself yes and then you also bring with you something that people then have expectations of you which also
don't always line up with you or is one sliver of you so if somebody had just tuned in at the moment when we're talking about these very dark thoughts about suicide and attempting suicide they're going to walk away thinking vincent is this kind of person yeah you know he doesn't have the fortitude
to make it or if they hear that you're a professor at risd oh he's an academic and they bring all these thoughts and sometimes the collision of who you think you are who you truly are and who people perceive you to be those three are not always in alignment yeah and we're working
through that in our life right yes that is very true but then you have to take on the responsibility of the things that you actually can't control because guess what i cannot control i cannot control how you think and your interpretation of how i show up right right and so if i take
that on as a responsibility then i'm constantly having to shape-shift and try to match every interpretation that is based on the individual sort of own understanding and experience etc that i have no control over honestly at the end of the day so really it is recognizing again just who i am and showing
up and trying to be consistent in that way even though yes i may have people who will perceive me in one way with the hair this portion or they see me in this capacity but i know that in all of these different facets of the things that i do uh i mean how
i show up to people if i bring myself that is this passionate that is this empathetic person who is genuine about how i engage and show up then i've done my job right the the reception and the interpretation of that i have very little control over beautifully said so how did you get
to this point in which you were courageous enough to show your true self because i think a lot of us are fearful that we would rather be the person that others perceive us to be yeah how did you do that practice just like with anything honestly this does not this being authentic and
is showing up how i am doesn't just happen overnight it does require just like with any skill it requires practice it requires me saying okay i'm going to show up like this with these individuals and i'm going to go to this event and i'm going to show up like this at this event
i'm going to you know go to this meeting and i'm going to show in the same way again and continuing to get comfortable being in your own shoes and practicing it over and over again to the point where it doesn't eliminate the fact that you're aware of how people perceive you or the
fact that people are perceiving you slightly differently you're still i'm still aware of that but it the effect of it is not as great as maybe when the first time i did it because then i'm like hyper aware like oh my gosh this person said this about me or this person like took
my words and took them out of context etc uh but is being consistent and practicing it over and over and over to the point where you know like this is the skin that i'm in and this is the skin that i continue to grow in and involve it that's how you continue to
do that i just had i'm tripping out right now because i feel like i was just having some deja vu oh like i and i experienced this quite often that i feel like you and i have had this conversation before i don't think we have but it was just like like i don't
have hair but if i had hair to be standing up on the back of my head right now it's like whoa something's really interesting what's going on so i think there's something universal something very true about the things that you're saying that must be connecting me to previous conversations or my subconscious or
something people are like they're tripping no drugs no drugs here you guys i'm super people that way right i do want to say this and people have commented before like chris you've changed so much and i dispute that i've not changed that much i've grown a lot but what you're experiencing has changed
is me coming to my true self and you're exactly right at least for me you expose a little bit of yourself and if people don't stab that all over the place you're like hey that wasn't so bad i can let a little bit more in i can tell a little bit of this
story or the story that i used to be ashamed of saying or thought that i would be ridiculed for i just exposed a little bit more and a little bit more you probably don't want to do it all at once because that's super scary yeah but if you keep doing this you're going
to get a different benefit the benefit is now you can be really comfortable that idea you mentioned being comfortable in your own skin this suit that you wear that you can be accepted or not accepted for exactly who you are and you don't have to use so much energy to maintain this facade
to be something you're truly not it's it's draining i have to tell you yeah as i've done this for a period of my life yeah same here that's what's like it's it's tiring honestly to have to continue to try and you know as some would say put on right um just for the
sake of appeasing other people when the reality is is that you know they're again their interpretation is going to be persuaded by factors that you have no knowledge of and also no control over um and and honestly people are drawn to you when you become and show up more as yourself um you
start getting more opportunities because i honestly the things that have been presented my way as it relates to the opportunities in my career has started to open up the more i'd be presented me uh and who i am and how i think in in allowing myself to grow in that way that people
are now more curious about what i can share what i have to say or what i can do um which has you know affected my professional sort of growth in trajectory 100 100 and as my friend mo is my will say big facts big facts look we're almost out of time i have
something that i have to do but before we do that i have another question here but jonah before i ask that question maybe you have a better one if you don't i'll ask the question that i've highlighted do you have one jonah okay we'll give him a second to find it give me
a second here stand by everybody i'm really enjoying this conversation i have no idea where these conversations go and we we started really deep and we got into some conceptual stuff and we're making it super i think applicable right now yeah i love it i love this conversation very much so if i'm
gonna do this over myself what do you what do you consider to be the greatest barrier to that authenticity and self-understanding to design their lives fear what are we afraid of fear um for me it was being misunderstood that was that was the biggest fear it was because i have such a desire
to help people that i never want people to take my actions out of context and be seen in another way and so the fear of being misunderstood kept kept me from sharing kept me from producing kept me from showing up in a way that really showed the fullness of who i am um
and the the less i kind of you know held on to this fear of being misunderstood the more people actually were getting me or understanding me and we're actually wanting to hear more from me or see more of what i can do um and so i think honestly the fear in general is
what is a barrier that keeps people from from operating in that space but for me it was the fear of being misunderstood awesome i want to add something and i think we have time for one more question we're going to try to do this before the hours up here is this idea of
the barrier comes from us internalizing a critical voice we tend to sadly parent ourselves the way we are parented so it's a super critical voice and then the fear is no one will love like or even accept me for myself and that's why we keep hiding that we're just trying not to face
that but the reality of it and i like when i said 100 and you and i have realized this in our own lives in very real ways the more you are true to who you are the more opportunities open up look at this guys we're about to hit a million subscribers i just
did a talk for adobe and and and sponsors are showing up and saying we'd like to collaborate with you we want to give you money for just you being you i'm like dang it this being yourself is pretty good vincent great i like it there's money in this right yeah there it is
and gosh you're on it people like me okay here we go here's the question for you and this is from sid sid this is the last question okay sid asks in terms of self-awareness how do you help people to see and realize their blind spots because sometimes it's hard especially when you're telling
them the truth that they could be in denial this is an interesting question it's a loaded question how do you want to respond to that it is a loaded question actually because in it you're the per sid you're you're saying you're doing two things one you want to hold someone at the same
time you're telling someone about themselves right which when you're when you're trying to give someone access to their blind spot you're less likely for them to get there by by telling them something about themselves because then they're not going to necessarily pay attention to that it's better if you should ask questions right
if you ask someone questions that gets them to the point where they can start trying to go on their own to explore and answer those questions right and so if you're saying you know oh um you know i noticed this well can you tell me why you do this in this way right
rather than saying oh you do this in this way and you shouldn't be doing that way you should look at to see why you do no you ask the question right and give the person the the opportunity to be able to answer for themselves because it's in that thinking that they'll start to
kind of explore okay well why is it that i do things this way or why did i respond or why did i uh you know take on this you know work or client or whatever the thing is um that's how you get people to get access to their blind spots as you give
them the opportunity that word again you give them the space so that they can find they have the opportunity to explore in this space that is unknown to them but when you point it out you're like say here's the chair now tell me why that you know there's a chair you do the
whatever the case may be you you i can't even think of what the thing okay i want to say a couple things here on this is that this is a journey it's not like a quick destination and you're helping the person to do their own self-discovery yeah and one way to do this
and this is a really interesting tactic to take which is this is part of critical thinking rhetoric is you say what's your feeling or id on this like a what question so it's very neutral and then if you had to assume the opposite argument how would you debate that and so let's argue
from the opposite side and then all of a sudden they can see holes in their own logic yes and that's the true gift and there's this other idea that you say like you want to tell them the truth well i think we mistakenly labeled an opinion and observation with judgment a lot of
judgment actually and we've called it truth and now now you're supposing you have a superior point of view and you're diminishing their own self-worth by saying well let me tell you i don't think that's a great way to begin a conversation especially one that's so difficult in the blind spot so i think
vincent you're totally right we want to ask questions we want to ask very carefully constructed neutral questions that don't label or judge or to suppose that one is right over the other because really in especially something like this truth real truth is actually very hard to uncover what we're talking about is opinion
yeah absolutely you said it so well thank you so much i really enjoyed this conversation do you have any parting thoughts before i tell people who you are and how to get in touch with you etc do you have any final thoughts here you know i say overall if you take nothing away
from all the things that chris and i have talked about when it comes to designing your life it really is just about um you being able to really understand exactly essentially who you are how you show up in the world and it's a journey as you said chris even when it comes to
answering this question about you know access to blind spot this design in your life is a journey and you have to embrace the unknown and the things that you are scared of um you know you may feel that fear but embrace it and continue to move forward and get people alongside of you
to help hold you accountable as you go through the journey so um continue to push forward it can happen um chris and all that he is doing is a great example of that and um yeah those are my parting words beautiful beautiful summary just on the spot just like that jonah that's your
warning because we're wrapping up the show so on behalf of everybody that's tuning in all couple hundred of you guys jonah and myself vince thank you very much for doing this this talk was long overdue but maybe just exactly at the right time so in case you guys don't know that was vincent
brathwaite you can check them out on social media at vj vincent j brathwaite and also at vincentjbrathwaite.com thank you very much for doing this and i hope you guys enjoy this and have a wonderful weekend thank you everybody for being a part of our one billion mission to teach people how to make
a living doing what they love don't forget to go ahead and like comment and subscribe and hit the bell for notifications thank you very much everybody and we're out of here
Enjoyed this? There’s more where it came from.
Get insights on creativity, business, and design from The Futur.
You can unsubscribe anytime. By submitting, you agree to receive communications and to our Privacy Policy.
“I took a chance on myself.”
— Chris Do
Key Takeaways
Subscribe
Details
- Length
- 1h 20m
- Views
- 21,182
- Topic
- PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT