10 Life Lessons I Learned Interviewing People During the Pandemic
During 2020, when the world was coming to terms with COVID and how to manage lockdown, I did a series of interviews for my blog with friends and family. I called it Life During Lockdown. I wanted to see how they were getting by during that difficult time. I asked the same four questions of each person but got wildly different answers. Everyone was able to articulate some important lesson they’d learned during that time of adversity. I decided to put these things together into a presentation I could share.
While I interviewed about 35 people, I condensed this down to 10 who had representative things to say. I don’t want to take anything away from friends who aren’t listed below; virtually everyone had important and thoughtful lessons to share.
1. Russ Pillar
Russ has an infectious passion for his family and for life. His excitement — about food, sports, his kids, a new business opportunity — pulls you into his orbit in the best way. Russ and I became friends in 2008, while we both served on the board of environmental nonprofit Heal the Bay. But we had actually “met” a year before that, when Russ ran in the 10K that I owned, and I gave him a special low number reserved for Heal the Bay supporters and friends. He and I clicked immediately, and soon after getting to know each other Russ led the purchase of the Los Angeles Marathon. He asked me to join him there as the CMO. So in the span of three months, Russ became a close friend, a colleague and my boss. Our time together rebuilding the marathon was professionally one of the most exciting chapters of my career, and the most fun. We successfully rebuilt the event around the mission of inspiring athletes and connecting communities, and we both learned firsthand how important it is for an organization to stand for something. Since that time, we’ve collaborated on several other businesses, and we’re closer friends than ever. We try and run, hike, ski or ride bikes when we can, and our time spent outdoors together provides a background for our most productive conversations.
2. Valorie Kondos Field
In 2016 I was asked to help create (along with my friend Neal Foard) a series of video conversations for UCLA called The Optimists. Valorie was one of the participants, along with professor Carol Bakhos and Alex Korb, in a discussion about gratitude. It’s worth a watch. Before we even met, I felt that Miss Val (that’s what all her athletes call her) and I should be friends. Some people are just like that. Val was for 29 years the head gymnastics coach at UCLA, during which time she won seven NCAA Championships. I went to see her teams compete a number of times, and what always struck me was how they performed and owned the floor beyond executing their routines. If you watch Katelyn Ohashi’s routine (with over 220 MILLION views on YouTube), you immediately see this. Val was trained as a choreographer and brought a completely unique point of view to gymnastics coaching. She’s also a breast cancer survivor and author who credits gratitude for getting her though that ordeal. She speaks from experience. To learn more about Valorie you can visit her website or listen to this outstanding podcast interview with Michael Gervais. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from her.
3. Jim Fairchild
Jim Fairchild and I were introduced by our friend Russ Pillar. We immediately connected around music, storytelling and a mutual curiosity about where the world is going. He’s one of a few professional musicians, along with Jason Luckett and Mikael Jorgensen, that I interviewed for this series. Jim has been a member of some super important bands that I was a huge fan of before we ever met: Grandaddy and Modest Mouse. In fact, Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump album was an essential part of my life in the early 2000s. Jim is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and Director of A&R at Dangerbird Records. I loved what he had to say here about the value of music during difficult times.
4. Aliphine Tuliamuk
I got to know Aliphine because she’s a member of the HOKA NAZ Elite professional running team, where I serve on the board. When you meet her for the first time, you’re immediately swept up in her personal force field of positive energy. Aliphine lights up a room when she walks in. You may know her from watching her win the Olympic Trials Marathon in February of 2020. When the Tokyo Olympic Games were postponed by a year, she decided to have a child. She came back from that and made it to the starting line in Japan last year. Aliphine was born in a small village in Kenya, she has 32 brothers and sisters and she came to the US to run in college, graduating from Wichita State University. She became a US citizen in 2016, and she also has a thriving small business knitting and selling her signature beanie hats. For me, Aliphine personifies the American dream, and I feel lucky that she’s my friend & colleague.
5. David Swain
David and I met through our mutual love of endurance sports. As it happens we also share a passion for technology and marketing. David spent years managing communications at Facebook and then Instagram during their years of skyrocketing growth. He has generously shared with me some of his learnings from those extraordinary experiences. He also started a storytelling platform (with Angela Zaeh), Prokit, for endurance athletes, and he’s now a senior executive at Strava. He and I both feel that outdoor activities, athletes, and events need more storytelling and exposure. David lives with his family in Marin County, and he was crystal clear with me about the importance of moving outdoors.
6. David Epstein
David is one of my favorite journalists, thinkers and authors. He digs into the places where science and life intersect; that could be in sports or in other areas. You may have read his book The Sports Gene or any number of his important investigative pieces for Sports Illustrated or ProPublica. I first became aware of David via his excellent reporting on doping in sports: He broke the stories about Alex Rodriguez using steroids in 2009 and, in 2015, he detailed how Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar pressured his athletes to use banned substances. Last year I read David’s New York Times #1 bestselling book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, which had a huge impact on me, as a generalist myself. His highly successful TED Talks have been viewed over 8 million times. David explained to me how a story establishes a one-to-one connection between the storyteller and reader. I’d never considered this, and I think it’s really profound.
7. Brandon Valentine-Parris
In the wake of the George Floyd murder last year, I helped my client Canyon Bicycles create an action plan to increase diversity in cycling. Part of the plan was to sponsor the groundbreaking cycling team at St Augustine’s University, an HBCU in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was the nation’s first Black college bike racing program, and I was excited about the possibilities.
I traveled back and forth for a year to shoot video at their campus and tell stories about their journey. Along the way I spent a lot of time with the coach, Mark Janas, and the student-athletes on the team. I learned something really important, illustrated by Brandon’t simple quote below: because of our shared passion for cycling, I have more in common with the Black athletes on this team than I do with, for example, a 50 year old white guy who lives next door to me in LA but who does not ride bikes. We can all use our interests, whatever they may be, to build bridges to other communities and cultures.
8. Ralph Abraham
My father is a prominent mathematician, chaos theorist and world wide web pioneer who taught at UC Santa Cruz for many years. He’s published more books than I can keep track of, and he spent many years developing the innovative curriculum at The Ross School in East Hampton, New York. Recently retired from academic life, he still travels, writes, and skis. While my parents were divorced when I was five years old, and my brother and I lived most of the time with our mom and step dad, our father is responsible for getting us out on skis as soon as we could walk. We spent most of our youth skiing with our dad every chance we could. You can learn more about him here. I love what he has to say about the importance of creating without worrying who, or how many people, see your work.
9. Caroline Blakemore
I also interviewed my mom, Caroline Blakemore, about how she was doing during the pandemic. She was raised in Ann Arbor Michigan as the daughter of European immigrants and attended the University of Michigan, where she met my father. After living in New York City (where my brother John and I were born), Vermont, and New Jersey, Caroline and her young family ended up in Berkeley then Santa Cruz at the height of the ’60s revolution. After a divorce, and remarrying to my step dad Richard Blakemore, our family settled in Northern San Diego County, where Caroline became a reading specialist at Valley Center Elementary School. She’s now retired and living in Ventura, California, equidistant between her two sets of grandchildren. She has a relentlessly positive outlook on life, and she’s always been a thoughtful and caring mom to her family. Along with her husband Larry, Caroline keeps busy with travel, painting, and plant based cooking. Her thoughts on introspection are wise, articulate and thoughtful.
10. Carl Finer
Carl and I got to know each other through the running community back when I worked at the LA Marathon, and we both trained with Track Club LA. Carl is a teacher at the Animo-Jefferson Charter Middle School near downtown LA. He’s also been a teacher/leader/coach with the amazing Students Run LA program, where I once served on the board. That group trains about 3,000 middle and high school students every year to run the full LA Marathon. Over 70% of the SRLA participants are from below the poverty line, and training for the marathon is like Goalsetting 101; over 90% of the kids who finish the marathon go on to post-secondary education. It’s an extraordinary experience that illustrates the transformational power of sport. Carl is thoughtful about leading students, and I think this is such an important point about opening the minds of middle school students. Wow.
11. Bonus: Mark Satkiewicz
Mark and I both lived in LA — riding bikes, working for consumer brands — during the same time frame. Unfortunately, we didn’t know each other then. It was not until I rode his fantastic SBT GRVL event (co-founded with Ken Benesh and Amy Charity) in 2019 that we got to meet in person. Mark brought years of experience working with consumer brands (Nike, SmartWool, TOMS) to his event as well as a deep passion for riding bicycles. What makes this final lesson poignant for me is that 60 days after doing the interview, Mark tragically passed away from heart failure during a bike ride near his home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Our conversation was his last communication to the outside world, and I’m so grateful that he was able to share that he’d spent so much time with his family during what were, in hindsight, his final days on earth.
Here’s the List:
