Episode 92: Creating a Career on Your Own Terms with Yuri Cataldo

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

When we think about what careers should be, what we are told they’re supposed to look like when we are kids growing up, we’re told that careers are supposed to be linear. They’re supposed to be stable, one defined thing and you’re going to do that for the next 40 years of your life. And so many of the people who find the Career Clarity Show, just don’t buy that.

But the problem is that while intellectually, and in a heart level, you don’t buy that you have to be in one job for the rest of your days, It can be really hard to find the role models and examples of people creating career paths that are more risky, or more creative, but are absolutely more meaningful and more fulfilling more growth oriented. On today’s episode of the podcast, I am really excited to get to share with you the story of Yuri Cataldo who is distinctly doing this career thing on their own terms and has lots of cool, exciting stories to share. 

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

SHOW NOTES:

• Yuri Cataldo
• Advance Your Art
• Instagram: @YCataldo
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, and welcome to the Career Clarity Show. I’m Lisa Miller. And I am excited to have you with us today because today’s episode of the podcast is going to be about twists and turns and creating a career on your own terms. I’m so excited to bring today’s guest to you. Because I think that in a lot of ways when we think about what careers should be what they’re supposed to be how we are told they’re supposed to look when we are we we kiddos growing up, we impressionable youth, we’re told that careers are supposed to be linear. They’re supposed to be stable, they’re supposed to be it’s a one thing, you’ve defined your one thing and you’re going to do that for the next 40 years of your life. And so many of the people who find who find me who find Career Clarity Show who find this community, just don’t buy that. But the problem is, is that intellectually, and in a heart level, you don’t buy that you have to be in one job for the rest of your days. But sometimes it can be really hard to find the role models, it can be really difficult to see the examples of people creating career paths that are perhaps looking more risky, or more creative, but are absolutely more meaningful and more fulfilling more growth oriented. So on today’s episode of the podcast, I am really excited to get to share with you the story of somebody who is distinctly doing this career thing on their own terms and has lots of cool, exciting stories to share with you today. So this episode is for you if you have been feeling loneliness and your desire to do something that doesn’t look like what everybody else is doing. This episode is for you. If you identify as feeling like you have a lot of interests, you’re multi passionate, you might even identify with the term of being a multi potential life. If you have heard Emily watt, Nick’s amazing TED Talk. And this episode of the podcast is for you. If you ever felt scared, if you felt like you have an ambition and aspiration, a hope and a dream. But there’s this fear barrier that makes it feel like I can’t dream that I’m not allowed to have that I could never do that. That that could never be true for me. I wish I could have that. Because I think you’re gonna walk away from today’s conversation on the podcast with a little bit more dream and inspiration fodder. To help you go from feeling like you’re on the edge of these fears to the edge of inspiration and hopefulness about what is to come. Today’s guest for the podcast is Yuri Cataldo. Yuri Cataldo is an award winning entrepreneur, keynote speaker, best selling author and emerging tech strategist who combines the mindsets of an artist and a technologist named at one of the 40 under 40. business leaders in Indiana Yuri brings years of experience in the arts design, entrepreneurship, marketing, innovation and publicity to his advising of founders, artists and students. In 2011, he founded in the Indigo h2o, the only multiple award winning bottled alkaline water in the world. And he is the founder of art tech Media Group, which works with and advises tech blockchain and creative companies on PR marketing, product launches and customer engagement. He has written a book, he’s a frequent guest lecturer on PR entrepreneurship and innovation at universities across the country, and has one of the most fascinating career evolution stories I have ever heard. So with that, I am delighted to welcome Yuri to the Career Clarity Show.

Yuri Cataldo  4:13  

Thank you so much for having me. It’s an absolute pleasure to join you here today.

Lisa Lewis Miller  4:18  

Well, it’s a delight to get to have you and to get to dig into the nuances and the weirdness and the wildness and the coolness of the ways that you’ve made decisions throughout the course of your career and your life. And I feel like that’s where we where we can dive in for today is I almost want to start us with this this idea of you’ve made a lot of decisions in your career and in your life that are different from how other people would make decisions. Where do you feel like was the first moment early in your career or maybe even in your life where you made a decision that looked a little bit Perhaps unexpected or odd to the outside observer.

Yuri Cataldo  5:05  

Sure. Yeah. So odd decisions, I think is a great way to describe my my career so far. So to be perfectly honest, the let’s say the first different decision from the norm that I made, was when I was a teenager. And that actually was a decision to go to college. So I’m, I grew up in a very conservative household. My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses. And growing up, that was not something that people did. Most of the people I grew up with did not like they still live in northern Indiana, and, you know, stay within the church. And that was a decision I made on my own. And I never thought that just like saying I’m going to a higher education would be like, something controversial, but it really was. And it was something that I wanted to do and needed to do and made that decision. And so I went off on my own and yeah, went to went to school, which in the beginning, meant that I was studying engineering, because that was what I wanted to become in the beginning. I studied Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. which honestly was a mistake, because I thought it was industrial design. As it turns out, had I actually known what I know, today, what I wanted to become was an industrial designer, someone who designs products. And that’s where I thought mechanical engineering was. And that is not it is totally different. And that also is the beginning of where I made a bunch of decisions just out of necessity, because I went down one path and was like, Nope, that’s not what I want to do. And then I pivoted into something else. So mechanical engineering quickly became writing, and then theater, which is where I landed on, and then kind of took off from there.

Lisa Lewis Miller  7:05  

Well, let’s, let’s keep going down the pathway. In your professional career, and what were the decisions you were making there?

Yuri Cataldo  7:15  

Sure, sure. Okay, so I landed in theater. And I, there’s one thing that like, the common thread among everything I do is i’m a bit of an overachiever. I am that like annoying person who has a lot of goals and ambition and just like, constantly finding ways to push myself and it’s, it’s something that has always been innate inside of me, and I can’t help it for one reason or another. So it’s like, I always I’m trying to, like, just see what I can do and make myself uncomfortable on purpose, which is just again, it’s not how the average person operates. I just I don’t know, I don’t know how to not do that. So from the beginning of my theater days, and I went to Indiana University, South Bend, the moment I decided I wanted to go to school for theater, I knew that I wanted to then work on Broadway. And I was like, great. So how do I do that, and I started tracking other people’s careers who got there and then I’m like, and then back to them, backdate to them basically. And so I noticed some few trends, I would also would reach out to a lot of designers and ask them what they wanted, how they did there and what they wanted to do. And so that’s what I did. And for like four years, I changed what schools I went to, I changed what I was working on to focus on this one singular goal of working on Broadway. And that goal led me to, you know, working at the Santa Fe opera, which then led me to having a year at Juilliard, which then led to the Yale drama school and by every thing that other people have done, my career to Broadway was like checkbox checkbox checkbox. I was doing everything correct. And I graduated from the drama school and in 2008, and I worked on Broadway, I actually worked on two shows. I worked on West Side Story, I was the assistant for that, which was that the brand new production that had launched and then White Christmas simultaneously. I also was working with a couple other designers on some larger operas. I worked on the movie when in Rome. And I thought at that moment like this is great. I did it like I accomplished this goal. And then 2008 2009 happens and everything collapses. And you know, the economy did what it did. suddenly everybody I was working with these professional designers. They had no jobs and when they have no jobs, everything calm trickles down and I watched everything around me crumble Actually, after working on the Broadway shows, I was working for Broadway producer, I thought I may want to do that at the same time. So I was helping them develop the Broadway show once, which then went on to win a lot of awards. When I was there, everything went away. Also, at the same time, I went through a divorce. So like, everything that potentially goes wrong with your life happened to me simultaneously. And so at 29, I had to figure out now what, because the only thing I ever wanted to do or think that I was qualified to do, I could no longer do. And so I moved back to Indiana, which is where I’m from live with my parents who were, who were very generous and gracious. And I started over from scratch, because there wasn’t really any theater happening professionally, anyway, in Indiana. And part of that, you know, I made bad financial decisions, I married somebody who also wasn’t good with financial decisions. And so there was a lot of debt that I was carrying with me both from student loans. And then also, you know, we bought a house, which was then underwater. So, yeah, a lot of things were were going against me, and the only thing that I could do was just keep moving forward, which is kind of a trend, I think, in my my career. And so that led me to, you know, first talking my way into getting a job for a local TV station. And then I ended up talking my way into, you know, getting a job as a professor part time, at actually the same university, I originally started my, my career at, and kind of building up from there, I also cleaned offices at night, this is all the same time, the office is at night. And then I also worked as a waiter. So I had like four jobs simultaneously, because all four of them didn’t pay very well. And while all this was happening, I knew that, you know, if I wanted to get out of my current situation, I had to change what was happening, I couldn’t just react to everything around me. And fortunately, my son, my parents are both entrepreneurial. I, you know, my relatives are entrepreneurial. My father was a Thai and my mother is Russian. So I come from two sets of immigrants who came with nothing, and they kind of they built themselves up. And so I’ve been surrounded by groups of people who look for opportunities and look for other areas that they can develop themselves. And I stumbled into this idea of starting my own bottle water company. And what I would do is I had no idea how any of this started, like business businesses or anything, because that was one thing that I was never taught through any of these art schools, was how to actually run a company and do business. And so, you know, while I was selling advertising, I would stop for lunch at Barnes and Nobles. And I would go through business books, and I would make Barnes and Nobles, my personal library, basically, and I’d walk in and I’d read books, and I put them back, and then come back the next day, drink coffee, that kind of stuff. And through that process, I developed a business plan. And through my parents, I met some mentors and launched a Indigo h2o, a company that actually would go on to become Indigo h2o. That’s a deeper story, but and then from 2010 2015, I ran this bottle water company and I learned on the job as the CEO, how to run a company and how to get adverts like advertise your company and make yourself different, and I did a really good job at that. Ultimately, I made bottled water sexy for a lot of people in a lot of decisions that I made. And when I closed the company in 2015, it had been, you know, I’ve had distribution around the world. Mostly in whole foods in a lot of locations. I was featured at the Oscars, the Emmys the Golden Globes, is where I won the award for the one of the 40 under 40 business leaders in Indiana. And a lot of that, honestly came from my own personal story of like, why is this theater kid now running a bottle water company? What’s up with that? Like that’s where a lot of the, let’s say the journey came from. Unfortunately, I got too good at PR I’m sorry. If I keep going so so the company closed, I’ll go briefly into that one, the company closed because I got too good at PR. And sometimes government agencies don’t like change. And so I was trying to affect change in Indiana through bottled water and startup syrup landscape, which is what led me down with my current path is now and I made local politicians upset and they turned every single regulation on my company that they possibly could and bankrupted my company. Two weeks after I had the best week of my entire life, so it was like two half, two weeks after I was in the Oscar gift bags. And two weeks after I was featured at your at the Oscars, and given the award for the best tasting water in the world, everything came crashing down with a single email, which then collapsed all of that. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  15:23  

So, hold on timeout, timeout, we got a story. There’s, there’s so much to unpack there. Um, I mean, I feel like we need to answer that question of what the heck is a theater kid doing reading a bottle of water company, but so let’s let’s start with that one. And then I’ve got some other follow ups for you.

Yuri Cataldo  15:42  

Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. Yes. So bottled water, why bottled water. Partially is because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But the real reason why bottled water was I grew up with a health condition called fallacy Mia menorah, or Mediterranean anemia. And it basically means my red, my red, red blood cells are smaller than the average person’s. So I don’t know if you’ve ever had Oh, my gosh, Kenny right now. So basically, what happens is, when I turned to I turned 16, I went from being a very active person to suddenly just being exhausted all the time, mano, that’s it. Like if like if you have mono. So if you’ve read mono before, and you’re just exhausted all the time, that’s what my life was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like four months. And I didn’t know what to do about it. And my parents took me to multiple doctors and, and it took us a little bit to get a diagnosis. And when we did, there wasn’t much they could really do. They just said, well, we’ll take more red iron pills. And so it was through the process of meeting some more people. And I end up going to a natural doctor, who ran me through some tests to find out what vitamins and minerals I was lacking. And that’s the way we went. And I felt 1000 times better after that. Part of what that process led to is me being more cognizant of just drinking water, and the type of water I was drinking. So at 17, I became water obsessed. And we you know, in northern Indiana, we’ve got great kinds of water. So I never really thought about it after that. And then so then I, you know, forget about it. Healthy me go on to college. And so when I came back to Indiana, I was like, Well, I know water, because I’ve been obsessed with it. I bet there is an angle I can find with bottled water. That’s different. And at the same time, my parents had just come from a conference. They actually in the process of me getting healthy. Both my parents became interested in in the natural world, and natural path world. And so they both became natural doctors. And so me coming back to Indiana, 12 years later, they had just headed attended a conference where they had heard about this idea of alkaline water and alkalizing your body. And so they showed some some me some brochures and some literature and I read about it. I was like, well, this is great. Like there’s nobody, nobody is being the like premium brand of alkaline water right now. It’s a wide open market. And so the more I read, the more I was like this is like, It’s seems like a no brainer, like why don’t I just be that. And then we’ll see what happens like I was, I was smart enough and lucky enough to come across the book, multiple books that showed me how to test an idea without sinking a lot of money into it. So my initial costs for this company, were $200. That’s how much I had had everything failed. Like I set it up so that when I was ready, I could bottle the water and ship it out and like have everything kind of lined up. But But yeah, that was that love of water and health is what inspired me to build the company and to make it the better version of bottled water. So everything about the company, I cared about 110% and wanted to make it different from the Nestle’s of the world. So it was like a glass bottle recyclable reusable. So like part of what I partnered with the charity 1% for the planet. So we gave money to help build wells and third world countries. And so I just wanted to do to make it a better company and a better world with bottled water, which is a little bit of a, you know, oxymoron but but still, like, that’s what that was my goal was and it was, you know, a labor of love in that as well. And I would had I not been sued. I probably still would be doing that right now.

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:58  

Well, I feel like there’s so many juicy tidbits in your story that I want to make sure to, to underline, I think one of them being the incredible resilience of the human soul. Like you got yourself kicked in the face in theater, of like, here’s the economy crashing funding for the arts is going down the toilet. Let me figure out a pivot. I’m gonna just do whatever I can to make some money and get back on my feet restabilize. And then you had this idea which came from a an interest that had been sort of dormant in you for a decade. And you were willing to be smart and strategic about testing, and vetting and validating and finding product market fit, to then grow this business on a completely unrelated path. And you didn’t limit yourself to thinking the only things that I can do have to be in this theater box. Because I invested all this time and energy and money, and all these degrees, or all these different educational experiences into being able to be here, you really gave yourself permission to lean into what was feeling true and real and interesting and compelling in that moment. And despite, like a really awful tide turn on you. You’re still on your feet. It didn’t. I mean, it was the probably the worst thing anybody could possibly imagine happening to a business. And you’re still standing it, obviously doing some different things now, but even when when people think about their fears around taking a risk and trying something new, you oftentimes have your brain go to the worst case scenario, like what is the worst, worst, worst, worst, worst thing that could happen? And that’s exactly. And you tell me if I’m going a little too far here, but like, that’s effectively what happened in your situation. And you survived. And you’re still here to tell the tale and you like a phoenix, rebirth yourself from ashes, to go into even more interesting career trajectories, using the lessons that you learned using the experiences that you had as this new springboard and platform and leverage to move into something that continues to feel interesting and engaging. So I want to make sure that that the listeners hearing that, that you did this and you didn’t die, because it’s really easy to convince ourselves psychologically, that failure is death. And that that we can’t recover. That’s it’s the end. It’s it’s like the the curtain has dropped, the credits are over, you’re just staring at a blank screen. And while it sounds like it was extraordinarily painful, it also wasn’t the end. The end of a chapter, certainly. But also the foundation for a really interesting next pivot.

Yuri Cataldo  23:05  

Yes, yeah. So what’s, what’s interesting is had, I mean, have my life worked out, like I wanted to, I wouldn’t be talking with you today. And you know, if everything worked out, I would, although it’s interesting, with even more that if my life were delicate, I wanted to I would be struggling to figure out what to do next. Because, you know, the entire arts industry has been decimated for the last year, and I won’t be coming back until maybe the summertime. So it’s like, it would have hit me again, 10 years later. But I what I’ve been fortunate about is, is you’re right, like I have hit, sometimes maybe the worst case scenario and a couple of different circumstances. And the first time when everything collapsed it I was in a really bad psychological state. Like it’s, it’s, I can talk about it now because I’m totally fine with it. But like, everything hit me at the same time, and I was in a bad place. And therapy and family helped a lot with those and it helped rebuild back up. So that when it happened again, I was in a much better place. And I took it, it was still like it still hurt like the the bottle water company was my baby, it hurt a lot to suddenly have circumstances beyond my control happen. And then there wasn’t anything I could do about it. And I had to just deal with the situation in the moment and that time and I did. Fortunately, I’ve picked up some techniques around fear setting which is a bad terminology for it. But that’s basically it like because of what happened to me 10 years ago, I oftentimes in circumstances where I feel like okay, well if I do this or not i i game out the worst case scenario, and when the worst case scenario happens, okay, what do I do next? You’re right. in every circumstance, I will I never die. Like I mean, I’m still here, still chatting, still still breathing, like death has never been one of those those forest circumstances, but I gave out what to do next. And I’m not right ever on my like gaming these things out, but it does help me think through. Okay, so if this doesn’t work anymore, what are some other options I can do. And it’s helped me a lot and looking back at what I’d done in theater and art, and then also the bottle water company and lessons I had learned, and then ways that I can take those and make myself unique enough so that I can find another opportunity in another way. Because each of the circumstances while they suck, they do make me unique when I approach, you know, companies or clients, and I’m like I did this and then this. And oftentimes, again, it’s like the way so you’re the theater kid who ran a bottle water company that the government shutdown. Let’s talk about that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:04  

I love that. And, you know, what’s interesting is in the way that you’re talking about the sort of portfolio of experiences that you bring to the table, by virtue of being you, there’s a certain amount of risk management strategy, that becomes a part of that, it’s like by doing the fear setting process and mapping out all the different contingencies and what might go wrong, and what your options and alternatives are. You’re diversifying your scope of possibilities, in such a way that nothing is going to be able to really kick you in the face in the same way ever again. Because you know, what your options are, you know, the new levers to pull are the people to pick up the phone and call?

Yuri Cataldo  26:50  

Yeah, I’ve become very self reliant. And every single time, excuse me, something bad happens like that, that becomes even more reinforced of like, you know, what, if this doesn’t work out, I know that I have the skills within me to do something else and to adapt to another circumstance. And I have taught myself to look for opportunities that I may not have noticed in the in the past. So like, so the answer your other question was, so once a bottle water company closed, simultaneously, and this has happens a lot in my, in my career, there’s like a yes. And part of me that just can’t do one thing that I taught myself during good because in the end, I have a career as a freelance designer, you’re never doing just one show, you’re doing multiple shows. And so I’ve picked up that habit now through my career, there’s not just one thing I do. It’s like, it’s what I’m currently doing. And then maybe there’s something else that I’m interested in. So I start finding ways to work into that future. Because then if it works out, I can jump over there. But if it doesn’t, then it’s just a fun hobby. And I can do something else. In the middle of a bottle water company, I became the set design professor for Indiana University. And what was interesting was, I came into this program, and nothing had changed since I had gone to theater school. Nobody was in the arts was learning about business. So I was like, Hey, why don’t I start teaching some classes because I’m, again, I went to school here. And now I run a bottle water company. There’s definitely connections that I’ve noticed between the two of them. And so the the Dean was like, Yeah, I don’t care what you do teach these classes. So I started developing my own classes, which then led to a couple of just again, TEST TEST courses over the summertime. And I think I had like 10 students who were smart or dumb enough, I don’t know, to sign up until let me just like lecture at them about all these random ideas I had. And what happened is, so my bottle water company closes. I know that my contract is also ending with the set to being a set design professor. So I started looking for arts entrepreneurship, or creative entrepreneurship programs. I knew they existed in other universities, because I was the only one who was noticing this. And that led to me speaking at Notre Dame at Stanford at Princeton, about the connection between the arts and the entrepreneurship world. And that led to my career move, which was I was hired shortly after Mike, my company closed by Emerson College in Boston, which also while I’m in Boston, to be the architect of their new program, called the business of creative enterprises. And so I came in very shortly after that, and built up this like the program as I described it as the program I wish that I had when I was in school. So I was taking the best of the arts classes and the best of their business classes and smashing them all together. And I hired some new professors also come in that were teaching classes that I were developing that would commingle both of them so you would understand how To use your art degree in the business world, and and vice versa. So that, you know, students were then leaving, I was going away soon, but then leave with this pragmatic art degree where they could create what they wanted to, but also create their own opportunities and design the future they wanted. And so this was like the, the, at the time, the position I thought I was like, destined for because everything was just going well and was awesome. And I had created this program, like I had students from around the world contacting me, it was the cash cow of the school for a little bit. I had student I had parents loved me, because who doesn’t love a pragmatic art degree? And I had one parent asked me this very bizarre question, like, at the last open house I gave, and she was like, your story is fantastic. I love the idea of this program. But it seems to be very much on your shoulders. What happens if you leave, and I was like, Well, I’m not going to leave this is like, this is the program I want to design. So two months later,

Yuri Cataldo  31:05  

I get fired. And I can now say fired, basically, my contract was not renewed. And what happened was, a new dean came in and saw that I had created this cash cow and got in, in with the the chair of the park department I was in. And I was trying to create my own department. So I was trying, I had failed at being good at the politics of academia, basically. And so I was trying to create this cash cow at the same time, pull it out, and create my own program in my own department. And that was not what a few other people wanted to do. And my con and I, I had the unfortunate luck of just having yearly renewed contracts. And so the new dean came in and was like, Hey, thank you so much for creating this program for us. We’re gonna make a lot of money off it. I don’t think we need you anymore. And I was like, What do you mean? He’s like, oh, we’re, we’re not gonna extend your contract. I was like, okay, you mean like, for next year, they’re like, no, today, today is your last day, goodbye. And so that’s how we left it. And it was really jarring. Because I had just bought a condo in, in just north of Boston. And I was like, creating my new life. And I’m like, Oh, my God, it’s 2008 all over again. Or suddenly, now I’m going to be stuck with with housing that I can’t afford. Fortunately, I had done myself of great service in being the person that all the students, I was the face of the program. So there were boston globe articles about me creating this program. There were like multiple articles. I was the the direct contact to all of the the media and the students. And that freaked out the university. And so they paid me to go away. And I was like, thank God, I got paid to go away, because it was just enough for me to cover my bills and cover everything else. Because they were worried that I was gonna go straight to the press, and bad mouth, everybody, which I never thought of, because I’m a nice guy. But I was like, Yeah, okay, I totally could have done that. Cool. And so, you know, here I am, again, this other career path, I thought I’d be this academic entrepreneur, like I was speaking at conferences, and then all of that disappears and goes away. And so I went through another place short stint in, in Boston, trying to figure out well, what’s what’s next for me? What do I want to do next. And fortunately, because of my job at Emerson, I had met a lot of people. I am and Boston is a wonderfully diverse place. And so there is you know, there’s there’s tech companies, there’s academia, there’s all kinds of stuff, just like in a smash together in Boston. And so I feel very fortunate that I landed in Boston for this move, because I created a bottled water company and I made water interesting. I had a lot of job offers to be the marketer for startups. So startups don’t didn’t care that I don’t have a traditional MBA or business background. They only cared that I knew what startups were like that I could get the work done, and I was good at it. And so I was hired fairly quickly at a tech startup called scout met. And what we did was we would 3d scan your face and create a perfectly pair, a perfect pair of sunglasses for your face through 3d printing. So I came in and met these two very smart engineers who had an idea but that was about it. And they needed somebody to help them launch this idea. And I was like, well, I did this with bottled water, and they loved it. So I was like their number three. And it was great. And for nine months. That’s what I did. I was in this 3d printing world, a world that I hadn’t had no About, but was smart enough to just go You know what? I don’t know what I don’t know. But I’m going to learn. And I spent a lot of time asking them questions researching, like what 3d printing even meant a different types of materials, and educating myself very quickly on, on what it was like so that I could launch this 3d printed sunglasses.

Yuri Cataldo  35:25  

So I so this is also another story that ends in not the best way. But the the short version of this is we launched the launch, the company launched the product, I didn’t learn well enough for my first time around that sometimes too much press as a bad thing. I get the founders featured on the Discovery Channel TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, the book, like may, I did a an exceptional job of getting our product featured in like dozens of articles and magazines and our sales skyrocketed. The problem was the moment the both the founders got on the Discovery Channel, and they became Forbes 30, under 30. Suddenly, they thought that they knew everything about what our product was and the world we were living in. And we pivoted from being a tech company, which is what I want us to be to being a product. And they want us to go head to head as a brand against Reebok. And so we’re going up against Reebok, we’re going up against Nike, which is not what you want to do when you really don’t have any money. And so the moment that happened, we were going into our angel investor rounds and our venture capital rounds. And all of those tanked. And the money dried up very, very quickly. And I I saw the writing on the wall pretty quickly. And rather than kind of like stick it out and argue with them, I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna do my next thing. And fortunately, because of other connections I had made, I was able to move very quickly, in 2017, to a role at the tech company Autodesk, as a part of their open innovation strategy. And why they hired me was, again, was because I was weird. I had, you know, I demonstrated that I could network Well, with lots of groups of people, I was very good with working with individuals, both internally and externally. They liked that I had a little bit of a marketing, you know, this, and that and that I was, you know, just good at getting things done. I’m very flexible. And so they saw that and they were like, you know, we’re not sure what this role is, but we need somebody who’s gonna got your, your bizarre skills. So if you want come on over, and you can work with us, and then we’ll see what happens. And, and that’s basically how I got my my first real corporate gig at Autodesk, which I’m technically still working at right now.

Lisa Lewis Miller  37:51  

One of the things that keeps standing out to me as I am listening to your story is is your sense of of fearlessness of I’m gonna go, I’m going to throw myself into this, I’m going to see how it works. And if it doesn’t work, I trust that I can land on my feet, somehow, is going from, I mean, it’s funny because hearing you talk about academia, so many people hold up academia on this pedestal about this is the place to go work because of tenure. Because it’s because you’ll have something forever. And so I sort of love that your story of academia, and it’s such a spectacular sort of flame out because there’s so many assumptions about academia, about why it would be desirable that number one are often not true and number to oftentimes avoid some of the other realities of what it’s like to work in academia, with it being incredibly bureaucratic, and people having very specific personal agendas, and all sorts of stuff like that, that can make it miserable.

Lisa Lewis Miller  38:49  

I love that you were your instinct was like, Okay, let’s go, like hitched my wagon to a startup, let’s go see what happens. Let’s see how I can bring this capability that I have for creating media mania over things that I have proven that I have done with water, with this grad program or with this academic program. And then now I can do here. And it’s cool that your willingness to be flexible on the industry, or the cause has made it such that this quote unquote, weird background makes you wildly interesting and desirable, because of the uniqueness of the sectors and the ways in which you’ve solved similar problems in really different contexts.

Yuri Cataldo  39:35  

Yeah, it’s so it’s, it’s both a blessing and a curse. So I have, you know, multiple times tried to, let’s say, move on to other positions. And because of my lack of a traditional corporate background, HR hates me. So I have learned that if I want to go somewhere else, and again, same with a startup, I had to think a little differently. I can’t Approach everything, like people tell you you’re supposed to do, which is like go to HR and apply to jobs online. Like that’s never worked for me, I have to know somebody, I have to network my way in, I have to demonstrate some kind of else like some other kind of other benefit. that then gets me in the door, like with this job at Autodesk. And I try to go through it traditionally, through HR, I probably would have been rejected in the beginning for not checking the correct box. Whereas here, I met my boss first and he was like, yep, you’re hired. HR will just, you know, greenlight everything else. And so, so yeah, so it’s, it’s just part of, I think, why I have been successful with this, like, I wish I could say that this was all part of a master plan. And it wasn’t a live, it was just like, adapting in the moment. I I’m positive person. And I know that no matter what I rely on myself, and rely on just, you know, the abundance principle of just like, you know, the world ultimately will just start kind of coming in line, no matter how much I push against things. And so I am, in that sense, fearless to try out ideas, because I see them as tests. And if they don’t work out, then I know there’s something else that I can also pivot over to or jump over to. But in the same time, when I start new projects, and there are many, and we’re not going to have time, for those, I don’t, I do them on the side, like, I’m interested in cryptocurrency wrote a book about it, I didn’t quit my job to write a book because I was like, Great, now now become a professional author, or there’s like a couple of companies I was working on on the side, two of them already failed in the process. And so I have, I’ve gotten better at just being able to balance a couple of different things, and take my current job in the corporate world and get the benefits and things that I really like and focus on those. And then also supplement that on the side now with design work sometimes, or consulting work or other kinds of things. And, you know, at the same time, kind of just keeping things balanced. And if there is an opportunity that comes around that’s able to, you know, whether it’s you know, monetarily or my interest wise will shift me from my current job. And that’s great. And then, you know, for a while, I’ll do both, and then I’ll just step over, and then do the other thing and take off with that one. But the one thing I refuse to do, and and won’t ever Yeah, well, I’m advisable against doing is like I won’t suddenly just quit everything, and start something new from scratch. Because I think if I did that, then I would like totally freak myself out and not know what to do.

Lisa Lewis Miller  42:45  

It’s a really untraditional way to think about risk management, but beautiful in that way. I mean, I think it’s important. I think one of the biggest things that that becomes a fear for anybody is the fear of the risk. And whatever risk means to them, is it reputational risk, is it financial risk is it going to be unhireable. And so thinking about always having a couple of things kind of cook in, making sure to invest in your network, invest in your relationships, invest in being willing to tell your story to people so that they know you and remember you and are willing to stick out their necks for you in the future, are all beautiful pieces of this. And I want to bring us in for a landing for today’s conversation. But the last thing that I want to have you share with listeners is about this venture capital situation happening. Can you talk about that, and then we’ll properly put a bow on today’s episode?

Yuri Cataldo  43:38  

Sure I can very briefly as I learned, now having starting it that there’s only so much so much I can say about it, but I am, I’m co launching a venture capital firm Fund, which what I’ve always wanted to do. And I’ve been interested in actually for the last four years, with a co founder and I and we’re focused on investing in startups with founders from underserved communities. So the women lead founders, black community, immigrants, people of color. What’s happened a lot in the venture capital world in general is that it’s it’s run by a lot of white guys, and I’m one of them, kind of, but you know, they oftentimes invest in companies with founders who look just like them. And they’re always going for the it’s called the unicorn. But so you have this, this big influx of capital from Silicon Valley from other areas, but it’s only going to a bunch of white dudes, most of which their companies are really boring. And there’s a lot of the rest of the world with the rest of the founders, who are just as just as awesome and their companies are just as great, but they don’t get as much attention because of whatever reason. And so our goal is to find those companies and to work with those startups and those founders and to bring them up So that’s that’s the goal with it. And it’s in the early early stages. And I’m not legally allowed to talk a lot of it. But that’s, but I could talk about that part.

Lisa Lewis Miller  45:09  

Well, maybe that’s a beautiful place to end today’s podcast episode with the if people are intrigued if they’ve been listening to your story, and they’re so curious to keep tabs on what you’re doing next, and what’s happening in your world, where the best places for people to stay in touch.

Yuri Cataldo  45:25  

Sure. So the easiest place to do that all on ones is to go to my website, it’s Yuri cataldo.com. And there I talked about where I’m speaking projects, I’m on the podcast, I’m running the books, I’m writing, all the weird stuff. I’m also very easy to find online. There’s only only like three Eureka todos in the world. And I am better at SEO than all of them. So I come on top all the time.

Lisa Lewis Miller  45:49  

I love that URI. I’m gonna have to hire you. Because back when I was just Lisa Lewis, I had a ton of SEO competition. And one of the the biggest SEO competition, people that I had was the woman who does the naked news in Canada. Lisa Lewis, yeah, obviously not the same person. But I thought, okay, when I get married Lisa Lewis Miller, how many Lisa Lewis Miller is could there possibly be? And the answer is that when I put my book out into the world, and I was putting, you know, the book on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble and all that these websites were pulling in an author bio for a different Lisa Lewis Miller, who was not me. So having a unique story, and a unique name can definitely be a cool blessing. But Yuri, thank you so much for coming on the Career Clarity Show today.

Yuri Cataldo  46:43  

Of course, Lisa, it’s my absolute pleasure. And I hope that your listeners got out of this. And again, I’m always happy to help anybody. So if any questions please feel free to reach out reach out to me at any time, and I’m always happy to jump on the call.

Lisa Lewis Miller  47:02  

And that’s a wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests and topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity Show finally find the work that fits your values and lifestyle. For the link to order it go to getCareerClarity.com/book. And don’t forget to get your other tools resources and helpful goodies at getCareerClarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the Career Clarity Show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up to talk to you next time.