From New York City to Motor City

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Katherine

What would you do if you were stuck at Detroit airport with a five hour flight delay?

With a biblical storm licking across the country the planes were grounded and we weren’t going anywhere quickly so we decided to postpone the joy of airport security lines and body scanners. We grabbed a rented car and zoomed out of the parking lot to catch a glimpse of Motor City.

There was the Detroit that I had read about – the project of city planners and artists and the setting for the award-winning book Middlesex. I had heard a lot about the place. I thought I was well prepared to see the city.

I had read about the mass exodus from the city but I had also heard stories of hope, of vacant lots turned into urban farm land, of the burgeoning food scene, of the money poured into downtown.

And all of that was true but it missed the utter emptiness of Detroit, the ghostly lack of people. Coasting down the city’s potted streets, the history of the place was visceral. The city threw a party, it erected some stunning architecture and soaring skyscrapers. The population swelled and then it burst. I wasn’t prepared for the eeriness of the shell it left behind.

It is a haunting place to be and yet it is also clear that the city is fighting. It has a life and an energy that peaks up between the cracks. Eminem’s super bowl video has a lot of truth behind it and there are many people who still believe that Detroit has a future.

As we drove through Midtown we saw new galleries and crepe shops dotting the streets between boarded up shops and we swept past the gleaming, imposing façade of the art institute and the public library.

We didn’t have long, our flight was set to take off in three hours so we swung back through the ghost streets of downtown and back towards the airport through Corktown. In the towering shadow of the abandoned Michigan Central Station, Slows Bar BQ looked intriguing with its salvaged wood exterior and line of customers snaking out the door. Inside the pulsing restaurant the city’s lifeline seems stronger than ever. Hipsters squeezed in next to old-timers to scoff down the tender pulled pork and beef brisket.

Driving back to the airport all I could see was the colour of Detroit – the painted murals on the side of buildings, a concert happening by the side of the road and green grass growing between the houses. From an urban planning perspective it is fascinating. How do you resurrect a crumbling city like Detroit? It is a place where people are willing to try anything to make that happen.

But that is all still just potential. In the very brief time I spent there it was a difficult place to be. A sad place with pockets of hope.

Humans were not designed for flight

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Katherine

In two days I am about to travel halfway across the country.

It is nothing remarkable and far from newsworthy but I am already having the occasional night sweat.

My speech is more shattered than normal as the nervous energy jumps across my body.

Irrational as it may be, I am embarrassed to say that I am vaguely afraid of flying.

It is not the sort of impressive fear that results in screaming hysterics and sobbing fits at the sight of overhead lockers and smell of re-circulated air. No, my fear is a quieter more pathetic beast. I pretend that I like nothing more than hanging mid-air in a metal box and start making rabid conversation with anyone in earshot. I eat whatever food is put in front of me, make lame jokes, stare manically at my book and try not to imagine what it would sound like if the engine suddenly stopped.

I had done a pretty impressive job of putting the fear resolutely out of my mind until I read this article this morning. You can imagine my joy. Someone pass the Valium.

The strange piece is that I used to love flying. At 12 years old I was set on a career as a commercial jet pilot. At 16 I was well on my way, taking flying lessons every weekend in a Cessna powered only by a spinning propeller. At 21 I was high over Kenya looking down at the Great Rift Valley from the cockpit of a 6 person plane listening to Dylan sing ‘Hurricane’ at the top of his lungs.

Then one day someone took off my rose tinted glasses and unkindly stepped on them.

As a child I assumed that everyone’s parents flew separately. I cheerily accepted the news that mum and dad got on separate flights when they were going on a trip without me ‘just incase one of them goes down’. Today I all too clearly see their orphaned child worries for what they were.

Luckily my fear of flying is neatly balanced by a need to travel. My compulsion to go to new places, meet new people and periodically get back to England to spend a night with old friends in the pub, forces me to buckle up and pray.

It seems like I’m not alone. A friend of mine recently told me that she phones her friends and family before a flight ‘just incase’. So, I shall follow in her happy footsteps, stop writing and get on the phone right now…

Once upon a time flying was glamourous and relaxing. Could someone bring back those easy days please?

Out With It: My chameleon book

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Katherine

Out With It started off as a dream, a vague idea of finding myself in the voices of others. To face myself, to spend a year immersed in the subject I had spent a lifetime running away from.

As I started researching I got drawn into 100 lives across America. I spent a year as ‘the interviewer’. I listened to people’s lives, sat in their living rooms, drank their coffee and met their families. I became enchanted by each of them. What made them tick, where did they take their strength from, what worked for them, how did the rest of the world react to them?

I replayed their voices back as I transcribed their words, listened for the intonation in their voices. With my headphones on, blocking out the rest of the world, I was captivated by the variety of their stutterers, the specific cadence of each voice, their unique rhythm.

When I started writing Out With It I wanted to include all of the people I had met. Painfully I narrowed them down to a handful. My picks were neither the best nor the worst. They were just the ones I chose. The book that I wrote was a dedication to all 100 of them.

But it didn’t quite work. The characters didn’t stand out enough. The format of walking into someone’s home, or meeting in a coffee shop or even meeting on the street, started to sound repetitive. I was still hiding behind the stance of ‘the reporter’.

I had spent a year finding out about all these individuals. But, as different as we were, meeting each of them was like looking in a antique mirror. There were pieces where the reflection was dulled, where we didn’t reflect each other so clearly. But we had all worn the same shoes and any differences broadened my understanding, opening my eyes to pieces I hadn’t seen or known before.

What began as a book of oral histories morphed into a memoir. The writing was much more riddled with self-doubt and yet it was honest and vulnerable and I hopefed it would be compelling.

If I’m honest, I probably came to America searching for a cure. Not surprisingly that didn’t go so well but the book is about finding so much more than that. It is about the struggle we all make to accept ourselves as perfectly imperfect.

Image courtesy of Don Moyer

Frugal Living: Limbering up for the extreme sport of penny pinching

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Katherine

An article I wrote recently went ‘viral’. I have yet to decipher the magical workings of freelance writing but somehow over 1000 people decided to comment on the piece. A couple weeks ago I would have thought the subject for such heated debate would have to be war, or health or even the sad story of Rupert Murdock. No no, 1000 people decided to voice their opinion on the controversial subject of ‘Extreme Couponing’.

You may ask yourself what extreme couponing is all about. A month ago I had no idea. The title arrived from my editor who clearly feels that penniless writer = frugal living expert. Fair enough but I was sadly in the dark on the subject of extreme couponing.

After a foray into the world of TLC reality programming and some internet research on the subject, I quickly realized that serious couponing translated to penny pinching as an extreme sport.

The experts are not haphazardly cutting coupons from the Sunday papers. No, this is an organized, cross-referenced art form. In the spirit of research I looked into internet coupons, newspaper cut-outs and supermarket handouts. Laziness quickly overtook my impulse to save and I realized that it takes a stronger resolve than mine to make a go of it. I’m competitive by nature but I know which battles I can win and I know I would quickly be put to shame by the televised image of a women buying a shopping trolley full of goods for a handful of nickels and dimes.

I think my failure to really embrace the joy of extreme couponing may also have something to do with the fact that I live in New York. Despite the fact that I live in one of the most expensive cities in America, New York living does not translate well to dedicated coupon cutting. I bike to our local supermarket and our pint-sized apartment is not well equipped to handle bulk purchases of any kind.

So extreme couponing may not offer the way forward for frugal living in the city that never sleeps but there are other ways to live the NY high life on a shoestring:

1) Finding a great apartment. Don’t be shy. The topic of rent is as synonymous with New York as chat of the weather is in London. Tell everyone what you want and ignore anyone who tells you it can’t be done. Ask around…who has a rent stabilized apartment, how much are your friends paying, does anyone know someone with a great apartment who is moving out? Give yourself the time for the proper hunt, it may take a while.

2) Eating. I love eating out and we treat ourselves more often than we should but I will chuck my chopstick at the next person who tells me that eating out is as cheap as eating at home in the city. If it is then I want them to tell me which restaurant they eat at and where on earth they do their food shopping.

3) Partying. Embrace happy hours and free events in the city. In the summer, something fabulously free is happening every day of the week and you can always mingle with the after work crew or the late night stoop-outs for some cheap off-peak drinking.

4) More eating. If you have a hardy stomach and a penchant for meat and rice, street vendors are your ‘go to’ in the city. Look for the ones with high turnover and long lines. If you are close to Union Square skip the lines at Whole Paycheck and pay a visit to the guy with the big smile on 14^th and 3^rd.

5) Getting around. Dust off your old bike. It may be steamy and hot in the city but you will arrive at your destinations ‘glowing’ and basking in the knowledge that you have saved money on either subway riding or taxis. Just watch out for those pesky car doors, keep your biking excursions to under a few miles if possible and pack deodorant or an extra top for those 90 degree days.

For all the same reasons that I failed at extreme couponing, I regularly fail at living as frugally as I would like. Finally I have realized that it is a balance and all the mea culpas are unnecessary. Saving here and there makes spending the money when we want to all that much more of a treat.

In that vein I am off to ride my bike to our favorite seltzer and breakfast spot in Brooklyn. More on that next time…

New York Living: City by the beach

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Katherine

I learnt two things about myself this week. First, my rose-tinted memories of childhood summers all involve time idyllically spent by the ocean. Second, when the stress of life as an entrepreneur/writer gets too much for me I am all too tempted to escape. The combination of these means that, when the going gets tough in New York, I look longing towards the beach.

Shockingly this is a part of New York

On top of minor things like money and failure worries, I spent last week worrying that I was missing the summer. I spend most of my days working from home, looking at the blue glow of my computer screen. The window is normally cranked open and I can hear the old Italians shooting the breeze on the stoops below. It is not a bad way to spend my days but it is largely an indoor-bound affair.

So this weekend we decided to embrace the spirit of July 4^th, take the day off work and feel the sunshine on our skin. We toyed with the idea of heading out to the Hamptons but it felt too industrious for a Saturday morning so we decided to check out one of the city beaches less than half and hour from our apartment.

The Rockaways are a strange place. Half looming high rises and half unexplored semi-wilderness. I had been in the off-season and, much like winter in Coney Island, the beaches gave off a wind-sweep melancholy. I had been told that the beaches were heaving with people in the summer. However, I had read about a stretch of pristine, secluded shoreline far to the west (thank you New York Times). So we set off to Fort Tilden, somewhat tentatively, towels and books in hand.

In short it was perfect. The ideal escape. There were sand dunes, only a smattering of people, not a building in sight and the Atlantic Ocean lapping temptingly at our feet. The only people I saw looking industrious all day were two cops and they were riding horseback in the surf talking to a few girls in bikinis…it felt like the whole city was taking a break.

The Rockaways are technically in Queens but they summarize much of what I love about Brooklyn. An urban smorgasbord of ugliness, beauty, chaos and peacefulness.

If you live in New York, go. Go now. Take a picnic. Happy 4^th of July!

It hard to be mad at a place with road signs like this

10 interview tips that I learnt the hard way

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Katherine

I had a big interview this week (hence why I have been quiet on the blog front) so I started reading up on the notes I made years earlier about the art of interviewing.

At the end of 2008, I spent a year interviewing 100 hundred people around America. It was one of the most humbling and formative years of my life. I started off clueless. It was a crash course in the craft of interviewing and I learnt on the job. I know for sure that I started off terribly and got better (my apologies to my first few victims who sat across from me as I quizzed them Gestapo style and flicked through my reams of questions).

My year of interviews ended late in 2009 when I decided it was time to wrap up the research and start writing my book. Today it has been almost 2 years since my last formal interview.

Naturally I was vaguely petrified. My subject also happened to be one of the most famous journalists of our time. Things weren’t looking promising. So I decided to look over my notes and try to take some of my own advice. These were some of the interview tips that I came up with:

A list of heavily researched questions might be a good framework but the best interviews are conversations. Largely one-sided conversations. People have stories that they want to tell. It is the interviewers job to get out of the way and let them tell it. Listening, really listening, matters more than anything else in getting a gutsy interview. Watch their bodies and their faces and their eyes. Listen for the inflection in their voice. Pay attention to what they are telling you not what you want to hear.
Care about the people you’re interviewing. Take time with them, don’t hurry the process along. If they can see that you are genuinely curious about their thoughts they may open up to you. I spent 3 hours with Bill Withers. A lot of the interview was just chatting, getting to know each other. We giggled a lot.
Let pauses linger. Silence can be uncomfortable but try to relax. Let the time expand and let them say everything they want to say.
Looking stupid to them is worse than looking stupid to your reader. Lots of scientists I spoke to had to describe things to me as if I was a schoolchild. I have no doubt that they questioned my intelligence but I came away with a fuller understanding of the story than if I had feigned knowledge I didn’t have.
Use lots of open-ended and follow-up questions: “What do you mean by that?”, “What makes you say that?”, “What happened next?”, “Can you give me an example?”
Ask one question at a time. It is all too tempting to structure a multi-part question but don’t get complicated, don’t try and sound clever when you’re asking questions. Remember that it is the answers, not the questions, that matter. Keep it simple but not too simple. Don’t ask anything that could be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Think about the timing. Don’t jump in with your hardest hitting question. You haven’t built up the trust yet. Start broad and go specific. On the flip side, don’t leave your most important question to the end. You might run out of time.
What’s the news? Listen out for something surprising or something they haven’t mentioned before.
Don’t self censor. Just ask.
This may be a personal bias but I’m not a fan of phone interviews. My clumsiness comes out (I hung up on Jack Welch and Skype ruthlessly disconnected Emily Blunt) and I find it difficult to read people. My best interviews have been in people’s homes. Maybe it is a trust thing. I interviewed Bill Walton in his sitting room recovering from surgery and it was one of my most honest and moving interviews.

I’m still learning. Any comments or ideas for you would be amazing to hear.

Luckily the interview went well. I was nervous as hell but my recorder worked like a charm and my poor victim was an awesome storyteller. Now I just have to write something vaguely cohesive. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Katherine

A writer.

The answer was always a writer.

Today is a sort national holiday for writers worldwide. It is Bloomsday and a fine day to reflect on a career that has always held a fascination for me.

As a child, I envisioned an older version of myself in a house in the hills of Italy, writing my ink-stained manuscripts by day and cooking meals with friends every night. Small details never hindered my imagination. My lack of fluency in Italian was never an issue to my invented friends, I was never lonely, money rarely entered my thoughts. I certainly never had to deal with any sort of rejection.

In reality, making it as a writer is very different. It is not always easy, it can be painful, it is full of rejection and I am often racked by self-doubt. It is not the idyll that I had in my mind’s eye.

And yet I have to admit, with James Joyce on my mind, that writing is wonderful. When the blank page gives way to words that flow or sentences speak beyond their distinct outlines. When an article comes together, when a chapter of my book sits proudly on my desk, or when I feel I have eloquently described my chaotic inner monologue. Writing is a drug. An addiction that drives you through the low points and pummels you towards something worthwhile.

Today I am a writer, a public speaker and the Creative Director of a young business (www.ExchangeMyPhone.com). I could have never dreamed up that long-winded title as a naïve adolescent. I would have never imagined that my dream to be a writer would have taken me around America, would have introduced me to a new world, would have landed me in New York starting a business with someone I love.

My real life, and my hybrid career, works. In reality, the house in Italy would be lonely. I would miss the chatter of the big city, the amazing friends and family I have here, the buzzing potential of the start-up world.

In the immortally cool words of the Rolling Stones…

Teaching public speaking and secretly loving it

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Katherine

I taught my second class on public speaking last week. I tweeted about it and mentioned it on my facebook but I rarely brought it up in the real ‘offline’ world. I know I should just get over myself but, despite all my chat of being entirely comfortable with my speech, I still feel awkward telling people that I teach public speaking.

As a general rule, most people who do hear about it are fiercely supportive. Betraying none of the skepticism that I assume they quietly harbor.

And yet there are some people who openly frown when I tell them, whose face seems to question if I realize that I stutter. They ask me what will happen if I block on every word? They prod and poke…am I not nervous? I answer them honestly…yes. I’m petrified. I call my sanity in to question hours before each class begins.

However, my nerves do make me relate to my students…perhaps more deeply than is convenient. I understand any fears that they might have. I have walked in their shoes.

Ultimately, I believe that nerves are normal for all of us. Once the moment comes and we do get up there to speak, it is never as terrifying as we had dreamed up. In fact it is oddly wonderful.

As much as I kvetch about the class beforehand, once I am there, looking at their faces, I realize that my fears are ungrounded. That I love teaching. I love sharing ideas and potentially helping others. I love speaking and stuttering and not worrying about being perfect. I love feeling that I am making an audible mark, however small, in the world.

More than that, I love the people I meet. I love the fact that working with Skillshare intimately ties me into the pulsing heart of the New York startup scene. The students in my class are uniformly impressive. They are entrepreneurs and app creators and management consultants and teachers. They are young and ambitious and looking to improve.

The New York startup scene, particularly the tech scene, has a momentum in the city that can sweep you up. Most of the people are working for startups or creating them. It is intimidating and supportive all at once. There’s a network to tap into, a creative flow of ideas.

However much fear I feel in the days running up to the class, it is worth it. More than worth it. It is my lifeline to the city and an introduction to strangers I would never otherwise meet.

The necessary evil of networking

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Katherine

I like meeting people. In fact, in love it. In a world where facebook and twitter mean that you can interact with the world from the crusty safety of your pajamas, there is nothing as powerful as actually seeing people’s faces, striking up a real conversation, listening to them and maybe even putting on some glad rags for the occasion.

Dinner plans, I’m keen. Drinks, start my bar tab. Housewarming, I’ll bring the bubbly. I’ll happily get on board for the odd art gallery opening, book signing or music gig. But if someone tells me that I’m going to a networking event, my mouth goes dry and I experience the stage fright of a wobbly teenager.

Studying Don Draper’s skills is becoming a great excuse to watch Mad Men re-runs

This is by no means ideal. Having just launched a phone recycling business, Jeremy and I are doing our best to meet people and broaden our community in the city. Business cards are swapped as frequently as Jeremy once traded baseball cards. There’s lots of elevator pitches and hand shaking to be done. The whole experience leaves me in a cold sweat and, just writing the words, I’m beginning to feel a little hot under the collar.

I sense that my speech has something to do with it. I’m sure it plays a role, it makes me a little more apprehensive, a little less ready to launch into the fray. But I don’t think that my stutter plays the staring role, more a ready and willing understudy. I know I will stutter meeting someone new, I have a 95% chance of stuttering on my name at least, and that certainty is almost reassuring, I have some idea of what will happen, how the conversation with the stranger across the room with play out.

So, if not the stutter, what is it? Why the aversion to the business chat? I think it has something to do with the honest fact that I’m not brilliant at it. It is not that I’m not passionate about the company. I am deeply passionate about it but when I start my pitch I feel uncomfortable, aware of my crassness, of the blatancy of my approach.

I have friends in the city who are champion networkers. The type who laugh and banter and only when you leave at the end of the night do you realize that you are more fascinated by their company than any other venture you have heard of in the past month. You are compelled to Google them as soon as you arrive home. You like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter because you want to be part of their world. If they weren’t so damn likeable I’d hate them for it.

So how do you become a great saleswoman or networker? I’m very keen to find out. I’m of the belief that practice can help anything but, to spare me the slow months of a steep learning curve, any thoughts from you would be much appreciated.

Startup Life: The start of some big dreams

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Katherine

‘You know that old mobile we have, the one can now only receive calls?’ I nodded my head absent-mindedly from the passenger seat. I knew it well. The cell phone in question was from 10 years ago, it had been bedazzled and was now clinging to a few of the forlorn original sparkles. It had a couple keys missing and the ‘abc’ key had gone on strike 2 years ago making every text an exercise with a thesaurus. It was my mum’s old cell phone that she often ‘kindly’ lent me when I stayed in England. ‘I think it’s time to chuck it in the bin’.

I turned to look at her, my mouth slightly ajar. Then, realizing what she had said, she laughed at her slip of the tongue. Oh the old days. The days when we didn’t recycle anything. When we threw our useless electronics in the rubbish with no thought of landfills or toxic metals or any of that other boring stuff.

But the old days were not so old and the reason that she caught herself so quickly was that she knew all about the dangers of cell phone waste. She knew more than most people. She had heard all about it for over a year.

From Chicago to New York, Jeremy and I had been working on creating a phone recycling startup. Somewhere that people could get paid for recycling their old, broken and generally useless phones.

And finally, after a lot of hair pulling and all-nighters, we have launched the site and www.ExchangeMyPhone.com is now a living breathing business. Jeremy is the founder, the mastermind, and I’m the Creative Director. Basically I do the fun writing stuff and Jeremy does the hard work.

Now all mum has to do is go to the website and we’ll pay for her to ship her old brick to us so we can safely recycle it. Or she could just had it to me…but I do like getting post. If she ever wants to get rid of her fancy blackberry we could even pay her for it.

Every part of the website has been thought over, and it is not perfect but we are ready to start telling people about it. So emails are being sent out and two people who stutter are picking up the phone every day. Business cards are arriving in the post and our office is getting more crowded by the minute. It is all very exciting and somewhat petrifying.

Now we just have to let people know about it. Mum’s comment is by no means unusual. Millions and millions of phones are thrown in the rubbish bin every year. So we are trying to let people know that they have a different option. They can easily recycle their phones and get paid for doing good.

If you have any brilliantly creative ideas for getting the word out send them my way. The crazier the better!