Whenever I meet someone who’s got a really cool job, who runs a thriving business, or who has completed an amazing project, I always want to know: “How did you do that?”

I’m always curious to hear the “behind-the-scenes story”—who they emailed, what they said, how they got their first client, how they got their foot in the door—the exact steps that they took to achieve their goal.

HOW DID YOU DO THAT? is an interview series where we get to hear the REAL story behind someone’s success—not the polished, neat and tidy version.

To see a complete list of all the interviews that have been completed to date, head over here.

Name: Eric Scheur and Reba Sparrow
Location: Portland, Oregon
Profession: The Mystery Box Show

You run a live storytelling event called The Mystery Box Show. It’s a show dedicated to true stories about sex and sexuality. People get onstage and share incredible stories from their lives. This show has become really popular, with lots of sponsors and about 400 people in the audience each time. How did this all start? Where did the idea come from?

ERIC & REBA: Like most ambitious projects, it’s probably helpful if you have a little bit of blind naiveté about exactly what you’re signing up for!

In the beginning it was just Eric, who didn’t have any experience putting on shows at all. He was just a fan of storytelling podcasts like Risk! and The Moth, and local storytelling shows as well. The simple fact is that he was always a little more interested when the stories turned to the topic of sex, and he thought it would be fun to see a show with only sex stories. He assumed one must already exist in Portland, but when he couldn’t find one, he started his own.

It’s true that the show has grown, but we started off small, in a wonderful and intimate improv space called The Brody Theatre. It only held about 98 people and was the perfect space for an experiment like this. Eric reached out to friends, and friends of friends, and posted on Craigslist to find anyone who would share their personal sex stories on stage—and then he coached each storyteller to refine their story. It was important that the stories were curated and polished so the night didn’t just become an evening of sexual bragging on stage. The stories needed a narrative structure, stakes, and if possible, a character arc.

The first show was a surprise sold-out success, and the audience asked “When’s the next one?!” So that meant we had to do more. It never occurred to Eric that it would be a regular thing, really. All of the energy went into making that first show.

We continued to pack the house almost every time we did a show, and the audience loved the stories and the storytellers. But things really began to grow when Reba came on board a year later. Reba brought a few key elements that the show had been needing: organization, structure, audience care (that’s a big one, deserving an essay in and of itself), and most importantly, emotions!

When Reba started coaching storytellers, she was able to use her background in theatre to dig into storytellers’ tales and really pull out the emotions that the audience connected with.

The change in the stories on stage was noticeable, and the audience related to the stories more than they ever had before. It wasn’t long until we had to look for a larger venue (again, all orchestrated by Reba), and then a larger venue still! Not bad for a show that didn’t think it would move past its first appearance.

Reba, after you came onboard as Executive Producer for the show, what did you want to change–and why? How did you evolve the show into what it is today?

REBA: It was clear that there was excitement at the shows. It was a small theatre and, honestly, when people are talking about sex in a compressed space, it’s going to create energy. These shows felt like a party, and that’s a great place to start from.

I tend to watch shows with the eyes of a producer. This probably comes from my background in theatre, and forensics before that. During the first few Mystery Box Shows I went to, I felt that the stories could have been more developed. They always ended before I’d heard everything I wanted to hear from them: things like “But how did that experience leave you feeling? What changed for you?” or “I didn’t see how this part of the story related to the other part of the story—that could have been strengthened.”

When Eric and I started coaching the storytellers together, I was able to ask those questions and the stories got richer. When we coach together, Eric is really good at helping to build the narrative structure, and I’m really good at digging for the deeper emotions in a story. It’s a combination that really works well together, but a lot of those deeper emotions weren’t as present at the first few shows.

The other thing I saw at the live show was that Eric was running himself thin trying to produce the show, host the show, prepare the green room, interact with the audience, and help the storytellers feel comfortable before going on stage. That’s a LOT for one person to do, and I don’t think even Eric realized how much he was trying to do at once. I knew that I could bring my experience of stage managing, which would give the show a more solid foundation.

The stuff that happens backstage before (and leading up to) the show is the foundation of what makes a show suffer or what makes a show great. What I saw was that the show needed more time focused on what happened BEFORE the night of the show: working with the storytellers, establishing the pace of the show, things like that.

It’s all very invisible. The show got tighter, better produced. But I don’t think that the audience would be able to point to a specific thing to say “Ah, this is why the show is better.” It’s just something that the audience walks away feeling.

Describe what the very first Mystery Box Show was like. Where did it happen? How did you feel (nervous, excited, both?) Did anybody show up to watch the show?

ERIC: At the very first show we had a packed house. That was a bit of a surprise, to be honest. A lot of those people were my friends, or friends of the storytellers, or people who probably saw an ad that said “sex” and thought, “Ooh, I’ll check that out!”

Interestingly, the second show was the one where only about half of the seats were filled. Who can say why? It definitely felt like a disappointment after the success of the first show. It’s funny, too, because if we’d been half-full for that first show, we would have considered it a runaway success! As the shows continued, audience numbers went up and down, but tended to trend towards getting larger and larger. Seems like a good lesson about perseverance?

Lots of people dream about starting a cool business or project, but they worry that “nobody will care” and “nobody will show up.” You have created a very enthusiastic following for The Mystery Box Show. Talk a little about how that happened. What are some of the specific things you’ve done to build excitement for your shows and sell tickets?

ERIC & REBA: It’ll sound cliché, but we’re putting on the show that we would want to go see. It feels like that’s probably a factor in why the show means something to people: because it means something to us and that resonates. The show has our voice and our aesthetic, which makes it personal. Much more personal than trying to figure out what people would want to see and then catering it to them. We cater the show to us and trust that the audience will find it matches with their tastes as well.

That’s not to say we don’t care about the audience. In fact, Reba is focused very intently on making sure the audience feels special, and this manifests itself in subtle ways throughout the live show, and even in our social media presence. Here are a few examples of things we consciously do, or consciously don’t do:

• We don’t lecture our audience. No telling them how they should feel about a certain story, or about their own relationship with sex, their insecurities, issues of shame, or displays of enthusiasm.

• We curate our stories to be relatable to just about everyone. While most of us have many, many, many different sexual experiences, the emotions tied to those experiences tend to be universal. A favorite example of this is that most of us probably can’t relate to the experience of having sex in a public sex club, surrounded by onlookers. But most of us can probably relate to issues of being comfortable with our bodies, and feeling judged because our bodies aren’t “perfect” according to cultural/media standards. When those emotions become the focus of the story, and the sex club becomes the mere circumstantial details, the audience feels invited in.

• We make sure that our show is an inclusive show. That is to say, everyone is welcome, and we make an effort for everyone to feel comfortable and safe. We’re not just here for kinky people, and not just for vanilla people. No gender expression, sexual orientation, or relationship model is seen as more special or righteous than any other. (This is our own interpretation of “being the change you want to see in the world.”)

We don’t have any charts or graphs that show how those kinds of things translate directly into ticket sales, but we know that it does make a difference.

What’s one of the most difficult things you’ve had to deal with? Has there ever been a setback that made you think, “Maybe we should stop doing this show,” or “This is just too hard.” What was that moment, and how did you get through it?

ERIC & REBA: Ooh, this is a good one! There’s actually been a new challenge in the last year and a half, as the show has grown: negative feedback.

In the early days, most of the response to the show was overwhelmingly positive. And to be fair, that overwhelmingly positive response is still there. But that positive response is now peppered with e-mails or Twitter reactions from people who have been offended by the stories at the show, or whose past trauma has been triggered by the subjects mentioned on stage.

This is a tough one for us, because while we honestly believe in the stories we put on stage (which showcase the range of human sexuality, and can occasionally go dark or extreme), we don’t want to make our audience feel unsafe.

We’re still working through the best way to make sure our audience feels good about the stories in the show, without compromising our vision of what we want the show to be. Our current method is to offer Trigger Warnings before each story that might have some obvious traumatic content such as sexual violence, non-consent, etc. The trouble is that just about anything, obvious or not, can trigger unpleasant emotions, depending on the person. There’s no real way to predict what will be difficult material for certain audience members. And there have been audience members who were not shy about speaking up in e-mail or on social media after having been exposed to material that put them in a darker space.

So we’re trying to find a balance that means we can both take care of our audience, but also still feature stories that exist all across the spectrum of sexual experiences. It’s not always easy, but honestly, it’s nothing that’s ever made us think about stopping the show. It just opens us up to creative thinking about how to approach the problem.

If there’s anything that has made us think about things being too hard, it’s the time commitment. Reba is a single mother and an actor, and Eric has a full-time job as well. When you factor in trying to produce and promote a show, not to mention the hours we spend every week finding and coaching storytellers (it’s a lot of hours), that’s probably been the thing we struggle most with: Time.

Storytelling tips, please! If someone is getting onstage to tell a true story—like at an open mic night—what is one thing they definitely should do, and one thing they definitely should NOT do?

Ha! Excellent question. We’ll try to keep it simple, though ‘cuz here’s the thing: “storytelling tips” can apply to any story, whether you’re on stage or not. But since you’ve asked specifically about getting on stage (or, let’s say, even in front of a group of friends, or a business meeting)…

• DO be vulnerable.

Be yourself and allow your own emotions to come out in the story. Use “I statements” (I saw an apple, I felt frightened, I opened my e-mail) to place yourself in the story. That will let the listener follow along with your experiences.

• DON’T lose focus.

Make sure every piece of the story you’re sharing, every scene you’re building, every character you’re introducing, relates to the point you’re trying to make with your story. (Bonus Hint: KNOW YOUR ENDING) If you are concise and deliberate, your story beats will stick with your listener, leading them through the story towards the end.

If someone is interested in starting some kind of “show” or “live storytelling event” in their city, what are the first 3 things they should do?

1. Be organized.

Plot out the show from beginning to end, almost to the point of making a script you can follow, and then figure out how to make sure all of those pieces end up on stage.

2. Just do it. Dive in.

You’re not going to get it perfect the first time, so embrace those imperfections. You’ll make improvements once you see the show on its feet.

3. Tell everyone and their sister to come to the show and spread the word about it.

Selling tickets is not easy, and you’re going to need everyone to be as enthusiastic about you show as you are. Show them that you have something exciting and valuable, and they’ll be excited to tell more people about it the next time you take the stage.

ONE MORE THING…

Do you have “one more quick question” that you’d like to ask Reba and Eric? Email me and tell me what you want to know! I might choose your question for my ONE MORE THING… Podcast (Coming soon!!!)

YOUR #1 CAREER GOAL: ACHIEVED

Do you need some encouragement to help you achieve a big, daunting career goal? Would you like to have a career coach/strategist in your corner—feeding you ideas that you’d never considered before, helping you figure out who to contact, and what to say, and checking in to make sure you don’t procrastinate? If so… click here to find out how we can work together. I’d love to coach you!

Whenever I meet someone who’s got a really cool job, who runs a thriving business, or who has completed an amazing project, I always want to know: “How did you do that?”

I’m always curious to hear the “behind-the-scenes story”—who they emailed, what they said, how they got their first client, how they got their foot in the door—the exact steps that they took to achieve their goal.

HOW DID YOU DO THAT? is an interview series where we get to hear the REAL story behind someone’s success—not the polished, neat and tidy version.

To see a complete list of all the interviews that have been completed to date, head over here.

Name: Rachael Soroka
Location: Garden Valley, California
Profession: Owner of Soroka Violins, a violin repair shop

You run a violin repair shop. What an unusual and fascinating career! How did you find your way into this work? Did you play violin as a kid? Did you study music in college? Have you always been interested in taking things apart and putting them back together? How did this happen?

I started playing the violin when I was eight, and my mom dug my great-grandpa’s old fiddle out of grandpa’s attic and we took it to a violin shop to have it fixed up.

I was totally smitten with the shop. It was in Cleveland in an old burned-out industrial part of town in a decrepit reclaimed factory building. The elevator had a human operator! The ceilings were twenty feet tall, and the huge windows looked out over Lake Erie. The workshop was a treasure-trove—wood and violin parts in little cubbies stacked up and piled up and bits stuck in here and there, surrounding an old wooden workbench packed with every kind of blade and hand tool imaginable.

The violin maker, Peter Horn, was a gentleman in his sixties who chain-smoked cigarettes and had a thick German accent. I loved going to his shop! I remember asking him how he got to be a violin maker, and he told me that he studied at the violin making school in Marneukirchen, Germany.

I didn’t think I could ever do that, so I put the idea of being a violin maker myself out of my mind. Until one summer in college when I was working at Pinewoods Camp, a folk music and dance camp for adults near Plymouth, Massachusetts. There was a workshop there that I was allowed to use, and in my free time I tried to make a violin, just for fun, because I had found an old 19th century manual in the local library. Being a folk music camp, lots of fiddlers came through and one of them was a violin maker! He told me that there were schools in America, too, and that some people just learned by apprenticeship. That was enough to launch me!

I dropped out of college that next semester and walked back into Peter Horn’s shop. I asked to be his apprentice. He looked at me like I was crazy and said that usually people paid him to teach them… and I certainly didn’t have any money. But he was a really social and sweet person, and sitting at the workbench can be a pretty solitary activity. So I stood around and chatted with him most of that day, and at the end I asked if I could come back and chat some more. “Of course!” he said. And that’s how I sneaked into an apprenticeship. I got a job waiting tables, and on all my days off, I went to Cleveland and stood behind Peter Horn and watched and asked questions, and listened to polka music on the radio, and breathed second-hand smoke. It was wonderful. After doing that for about a year, he hired me because he said I knew too much to be helping him out for free. And so I had my foot in the door and a traditional violin maker’s apprenticeship on my résumé.


Wow! That’s an incredible story. Someone needs to turn your life into an Oscar-winning movie called The Violin Maker’s Apprentice, or something like that! Take us back to the early days of your business. How did it feel to open your own shop? Did you have customers right away? Or did things feel “quiet” and “empty” at first? Did you feel excited? Nervous? Both?

It’s funny, I don’t remember being nervous when I left the safety of a salary and went to work for myself. I took a part-time administrative job for a local business as a buffer, and started working on violins from home. I had contract work from other violin shops right away—the shop I had been working in sent me work, and then more shops found me and started sending me work. And then local people starting finding me and coming in, and they would tell people so more people would come… It has been a steady and pretty stress-free process.


Have you ever had a customer who made you feel a little star-struck—like a famous musician, composer, or conductor? Did you start babbling with excitement, or were you able to keep your cool?

I’m not that prone to being star-struck by people, and there’s something about a person who thinks they are a star that pretty much turns me off. We are all on the road of mastery, and some people are a little farther along is all.

But when I have felt star-struck is seeing old instruments made by the masters who’ve been dead and gone for centuries already. I’ve worked on instruments that are 300 years old! Just holding one of those old beautiful masterpieces is a thrill—I can feel the thousands and thousands of hours of music that have been played, the generations of humans who have come and gone using that instrument as the tool to do the work of the muse, and the artistry and dedication of a lifetime that the violin maker put into that wood so many years ago. It’s really breathtaking.

Has there ever been a moment in your career where you felt really discouraged—or a moment when you considered shutting down your business? What happened, how did you feel, and how did you get yourself through that moment?

The worst time was when I was working for a violin shop in Vermont. The two men who owned the shop were amazing—they both played for the symphony, and they were both really skilled in the shop in two different ways: one knew about identifying and valuing instruments and all the business aspects of running the shop, and the other was the violin maker. I learned so much from both of them!

But after a few years there, they sold the shop, and the folks who bought it and I just did not click. At all. They were business people and didn’t know much about violins, and so they made me “head of the repair shop,” which I did not feel qualified for, and I really wanted to keep learning from someone out ahead of me. I felt really lonely and the “suits” kept pushing me to push the other repair-people in the business who were now working under me to work harder and faster, but they kept hiring totally unskilled and inexperienced people who weren’t capable of doing better or faster work. It was so awful.

So I sent résumé s around to be best shops in the country, looking for a new job, and I ended up in a world-famous shop in San Francisco working for a violin maker who had studied as a young man at the violin making school in Germany, and then came to the USA to work for the best shop in the country at the time under the “father of modern violin making.” So, I was back to learning and growing under this master’s feedback. Problem solved.

What’s the most rewarding part of your work—the moments that make you think, “Wow, I’m so grateful this is my job”?

I love to learn and grow. And the best part of being a violin maker is that one can never actually master anything. As soon as your hands get good at something, your eye gets better too and pretty soon the eye is pointing out how your hands can improve. Then your hands catch back up and the process repeats. In addition, there are many ways to skin a cat and you can always learn from other people and try new approaches and new materials.

I imagine that restoring violins will keep me intrigued until I die. So far, I’m still fascinated, and it’s been 17 years!

3 Things

If someone wants to start a career building and repairing musical instruments, like you, what are the first 3 things they should do?

1. Make art.

Paintings and sculptures, especially. This will train your eye and train your ability to see something in your mind and then make it happen in the physical realm.

2. Learn to work with wood.

Learn which tools to use and when. Learn to sharpen blades until you can use them as razors. Learn how wood behaves. To get started, sign up for a general woodworking class at a local community college—especially if the class uses hand tools rather than machines.

3. Play music.

Pick up an instrument. Take some lessons. Whether it’s in a formal classroom setting or hanging out in a master’s studio and chatting, always keep learning!

ONE MORE THING…

Do you have “one more quick question” that you’d like to ask Rachael? Email me and tell me what you want to know! I might choose your question for my ONE MORE THING… Podcast (Coming soon!!!)

YOUR #1 CAREER GOAL: ACHIEVED

Do you need some encouragement to help you achieve a big, daunting career goal? Would you like to have a career coach/strategist in your corner—feeding you ideas that you’d never considered before, helping you figure out who to contact, and what to say, and checking in to make sure you don’t procrastinate? If so… click here to find out how we can work together. I’d love to coach you!

Whenever I meet someone who’s got a really cool job, who runs a thriving business, or who has completed an amazing project, I always want to know: “How did you do that?”

I’m always curious to hear the “behind-the-scenes story”—who they emailed, what they said, how they got their first client, how they got their foot in the door—the exact steps that they took to achieve their goal.

HOW DID YOU DO THAT? is an interview series where we get to hear the REAL story behind someone’s success—not the polished, neat and tidy version.

To see a complete list of all the interviews that have been completed to date, head over here.

Name: Kate Spencer
Location: Los Angeles, California
Profession: Comedian, Writer, Recovering Coffee Addict

You are a comedian, writer, and a mom. How do you juggle all of those balls at once? What does a typical day look like for you? Do you manage everything serenely like a graceful swan, or is it crazy-town-madness from dawn till dusk?

I’d like to think it’s graceful madness! But that’s probably wishful thinking. I juggle all those balls by dropping them a lot, then picking them up and trying again.

A typical day involves mornings spent nagging my kids to eat breakfast, get dressed, brush their teeth, make sure they have their underwear on, and then hustling everyone out of the house. My husband and I tag team the mornings but it’s still always a frantic rush.

I work on my writing (freelance assignments and books) when they’re at school, and at night after they’re in bed and on weekends. Then after I pick them up, it’s Costco, dance/art/gymnastics lessons, walking the dog, cleaning the house, and on and on and on.

I’d love to say we all sit down and eat dinner together and have meaningful, heartfelt conversations about our day, but that’s not an everyday thing around here because we’re all busy and on different schedules. But I think those moments happen throughout our days together, so I don’t try to get too hung up on it. We do homework, playtime, books and bedtime with our kids (er, and the occasional bath), and then it’s back to the grind of cleaning up and making lunches and snacks for tomorrow.

I’ve recently stopped having my iPhone with me in our bedroom so I am actually reading books again at night before I go to bed! Then I pass out to my white noise machine and do it all over again.

Your writing has been published in so many places: Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, Refinery29, Women’s Health, Salon, The Huffington Post… the list goes on and on. How did you line up those kinds of writing opportunities? Did you email each publication and say, “Hi, I’d love to write for you, and here’s my article idea…”? Did a colleague recommend you for a project? Or something else? Walk us through the sequence of events.

It is a combination of all sorts of things. Some editors I pitch cold, on my own. Sometimes someone recommends me for something, or an old colleague or friend reaches out. I’ve had people read a tweet I wrote and asked if I could expand it into a longer piece. I think the most important thing is being consistent, communicative, meeting your deadlines and delivering good work so that they ask or recommend you again.

Here’s my advice if you’re cold pitching: be professional, concise and clear in your email. State who you are, your experience, and then a 1-2 line pitch of your piece in the email. Then attach it as a Word doc AND paste it in the body of the email, if you don’t know how the editor’s preference. Have your entire piece written out, revised, spell-checked, and crafted before you send it. Make sure your name is on the document. If you don’t hear back, follow up in 2 weeks. If you don’t hear back again, give it another 2-3 weeks and check in once more. If your piece is rejected, pitch it somewhere else!

I think the most important thing when you’re cold pitching is not to half-ass it. Professionalism really counts (at least it did to me when I was an editor). I always appreciated people who had checked their work for mistakes and typos.

You have a book coming out this fall about women whose mothers died when they were young, as yours did. It sounds like such a beautiful project, and I can’t wait to read it. Your book is being released by Seal Press, a division of the Hachette Book Group. I’m always curious to find out how people get their book deals. Did you have to find a literary agent first? Did the publisher approach you, or did you approach them? Tell us the story, please.

My story is unique in that I did not land my agent by querying. I have a good friend who is a literary agent, Holly Root, and she and I often talked about my writing. She was always open to hearing about projects I was working on, even when they were just seedlings of ideas, and left the door open for me to send her something when I was ready. It took me a long time to do this!

I spent about 8 months working on my book proposal. (I wrote one whole proposal, tossed it, and started again from the beginning.) I have no idea if this is a normal length of time but I was very particular and precious about it, and wanted it to be perfect(ish) before I showed it to her. I didn’t want to waste her time, or hand her something that didn’t feel like it could actually become a book. So when I was ready I nervously emailed it to her. I’d long admired Holly for her expertise, professionalism, and vision (she represents so many amazing authors), and was thrilled when she offered to represent me and my book proposal.

She then sent my proposal out to various editors at different publishing houses, and I’m so thrilled Stephanie Knapp at Seal Press saw something in it and picked it up. She’s been wonderful to work with and I’m really excited to be at Seal.

I’m making this process sound very easy breezy, but please know it involved lots of nail biting, soul searching, fear, and self-medicating with In-N-Out, too!

(Note from Ellen: You can pre-order Kate’s book, The Dead Mom’s Club:A Memoir about Death, Grief and Surviving the Mother of  All Losses, It will be released on November 21, 2017)

Ten years from now, what type of work do you imagine yourself doing? Exactly what you’re doing now? Or something different?

I’m currently working on a screenplay with a friend and am outlining a novel that’s totally different from my memoir, and anything I’ve ever written. Ideally I’ll be doing work that challenges and excites me, and brings happiness to others. That’s all I can really ask for.

3 Things

What are your top 3 pieces of advice for someone who wants to be a professional writer—specifically, a hysterically funny comedic writer like you?

• Do the work.

Write. Do it even when it feels miserable. I learn this every single damn day, over and over again. The only way to write is to write. The only way you’ll ever finish The Thing is to just finish it.

• Anne Lamott’s advice is the best in the world: “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper.”

I have re-read her book Bird By Bird so many times because her advice and knowledge is so spot on. Everything I write is terrible in the beginning. Most of it stays terrible, but occasionally one thing keeps growing and growing and you find the thing. And then you have to REVISE it, over and over again, to get it to shine.

• Make your own opportunities.

I wrote for myself (for free) on my personal blog long before I ever wrote professionally. When it came to my improv comedy teams, we’d put together our own shows if we couldn’t get on the stage or show we wanted. There are so many platforms these days on which to create things. No one can stop you from making the stuff you want to make.

ONE MORE THING…

Do you have “one more quick question” that you’d like to ask Kate? Email me and tell me what you want to know! I might choose your question for my ONE MORE THING… Podcast (Coming soon!!!)

YOUR #1 CAREER GOAL: ACHIEVED

Do you need some encouragement to help you achieve a big, daunting career goal? Would you like to have a career coach/strategist in your corner—feeding you ideas that you’d never considered before, helping you figure out who to contact, and what to say, and checking in to make sure you don’t procrastinate? If so… click here to find out how we can work together. I’d love to coach you!

Whenever I meet someone who’s got a really cool job, who runs a thriving business, or who has completed an amazing project, I always want to know: “How did you do that?”

I’m always curious to hear the “behind-the-scenes story”—who they emailed, what they said, how they got their first client, how they got their foot in the door—the exact steps that they took to achieve their goal.

HOW DID YOU DO THAT? is an interview series where we get to hear the REAL story behind someone’s success—not the polished, neat and tidy version.

To see a complete list of all the interviews that have been completed to date, head over here.

Name: Dr. Kenneth (“Kenny”) Blumenfeld
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Profession: Senior Climatologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

You’re a meteorologist. You study hazardous weather conditions—things like tornadoes and extreme snowstorms. That’s such a fascinating career! I’m sure lots of people have asked you, “How did you become a meteorologist?” Did you just wake up one morning and decide, “I want to study weather patterns”? Walk us through the sequence of events.

I absolutely adore the weather—being in it, observing it, thinking about it, talking about it. I’ve been this way since I was very young. I can’t help it.

I grew up in Minnesota, which has legendary winters and sees its share of thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, and other weather hazards. Some of my most powerful early memories are of the sky turning heavy and purple, and of the civil defense sirens sounding, and people running to their basements. That terror definitely hooked and fascinated me. So basically, once my obsession with garbage trucks ended around age five, it was Weather Forever.

When I hear “meteorology,” I immediately picture a stereotypical “weather guy” on TV, giving storm updates in a raincoat out on a blustery street corner. Aside from becoming a TV weather reporter, what else can you do with a degree in meteorology? What are the job opportunities that people can pursue?

TV meteorologists are certainly the most visible and best-known atmospheric scientists—that’s what the field is called—but working on TV is definitely not the only career option.

The weather has become an industry unto itself, with a wide array of public and private-sector research scientists, technology developers (we’re talking everything from forecasting apps to billion-dollar satellite systems), computer programmers, and of course, forecasters.

The US government employs thousands of forecasters and research scientists who work at 150+ offices and laboratories, and who provide the backbone of everything you see on a TV weather segment or get on your app. Without that government component, we’d all know a lot less about the weather.

Hundreds if not thousands of atmospheric scientists work at universities and research laboratories, too. The private sector is booming as well, with forecasting firms, technology companies, and gigantic contracting firms that build the weather equipment and infrastructure for the government.

So yes, there’s a lot you can do with a degree in atmospheric science. Reporting live from a windy street corner is just one of many options.

You dropped out of college because you hated studying—especially for math classes. But then after drifting around for a while, you re-enrolled and decided to give college another try. The second time around, you really applied yourself, and you wound up earning your Bachelor’s degree, followed by a Master’s and a Ph.D. How did you do that? What was different for you the second time around? Did you have a different mindset? Different habits? What changed for you?

If I ever write a book about my life, it will have to be called DON’T DO WHAT I DID. Seriously, aspiring meteorologists: don’t do what I did!

Although I’ve had a lifelong obsession with the weather, I was never an outstanding student. Truly, I was horrible. The absolute worst. I underachieved chronically. I rarely started—let alone finished—my homework, and I barely made it out of high school.

When I got to college (how I even got in is another story altogether), there were no miracles. I still stunk at school, and since meteorology is mathematically intensive, I found I really stunk at math. I got kicked out of college on academic grounds after my first year. I appealed, got re-admitted, and was kicked out for good the very next semester.

My poor discipline had caught up with me. I moved home and tried to figure out what my future would be like if I wasn’t working in some kind of weather-related profession. It was agonizing, and I knew that I had broken my own heart. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I felt no sense of purpose.

I spent two years working food service jobs, relocating a couple times, and generally faking my way through life—pretending like I didn’t care about studying weather anymore, which wasn’t true at all. After awhile, I realized that my fake ambitions were leading me nowhere. So I took many deep breaths, decided that I wanted the weather back in my life, and developed a very long-term plan to try it again.

This time, I got specific. I knew I wanted to take my fascination with the atmosphere all the way. I understood I had a lot to learn, that it was going to be a treacherous path because of all my terrible studying habits, and that I would need to keep working the entire time to cover the costs. I was 22. I set a goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in meteorology—or some closely related field—by the time I was 35. It was a long timeline, but I wanted to do it right, and I had a lot of obstacles to clear first.

Once I hammered out the plan, I enrolled in a life-changing class about becoming a better student. That’s where I learned—for the first time—how to take notes, how to break assignments into steps, how to start and finish things, how to manage time, what to do when you’re stuck, and how to view the professor as an ally. In other words, I learned skills most people have developed by middle school. It was demoralizing progress, but progress nonetheless.

Then I started taking real college classes, one at a time for a year, then two at a time, and then three. Of course, I was still fighting the old terrible habits, and I’d fall behind constantly. It took me a while to learn to head it off by meeting with the instructor and developing a battle plan early in the semester. My biggest challenges were in math courses, which do not forgive you for past sins. If you half-ass factoring in algebra, or don’t really get those trigonometric identities, calculus will punish you relentlessly until you get it right.

It took three years for me to earn enough credits and build up a decent enough record to get admitted as a full-time undergraduate student. This was a big deal for me, and I dove all the way in. I participated in and formed student groups, went to research seminars, joined a multi-year field research project, took interesting and challenging courses, wrote a successful research grant proposal, and got to know my professors. After five semesters, I had developed a good reputation, had won a couple awards, and graduated with a bruised but acceptable grade-point average.

I rode my newfound momentum into graduate school, where I had a clean slate. It took me about three years to complete my Master’s degree, and at age 35, I received my Ph.D., right on schedule!

All together, it took 13 years to cross the finish line—while navigating my first marriage, the birth of my two kids, a divorce, working day jobs to support my family, and tons of pressure and upheaval—but I made it. Completing that Ph.D. program felt really special.

3 Things

If someone is interested in becoming a meteorologist, what are the first 3 things they should do?

1. Ask yourself very honestly, “Do I really want to do this professionally? Or would this be better as a hobby for me?”

A lot of people just want to know more about the weather, which you can do without going to college. The Internet is brimming with information that can help you be the smartest weather enthusiast at the party.

2. Improve your math skills, because you will be using them heavily.

Math is often the gatekeeper that determines who continues on and becomes a meteorologist, and who majors in something else but lives on as a weather hobbyist. (There is no shame in the latter!)

3. Consume information.

Be curious. Stare into the sky, wonder about things, write down your questions, and research to find answers. Want to know why your area has been so wet/dry/hot/cold/stormy? Why did it snow 400 miles to your north but rain where you live? Why does the wind shift directions? What do different clouds mean? Read books. Visit websites. Read blogs and sign up for newsletters written by weather nuts like me. There’s so much information out there for you… for free!

For general weather, I recommend the Weather Underground Category 6 blog (https://www.wunderground.com/cat6). There’s also a ton of great information available at climate.gov. People may like their Beyond the Data blog/feature (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/department/beyond-data). And, my  website is also filled with fun stories and information, especially if you live in Minnesota or Wisconsin.

If you’re really curious about something, why wait to get formal training to learn about it? You can start now.

ONE MORE THING…

Do you have “one more quick question” that you’d like to ask Kenny? Email me and tell me what you want to know! I might choose your question for my ONE MORE THING… Podcast (Coming soon!!!)

YOUR #1 CAREER GOAL: ACHIEVED

Do you need some encouragement to help you achieve a big, daunting career goal? Would you like to have a career coach/strategist in your corner—feeding you ideas that you’d never considered before, helping you figure out who to contact, and what to say, and checking in to make sure you don’t procrastinate? If so… click here to find out how we can work together. I’d love to coach you!

Whenever I meet someone who’s got a really cool job, who runs a thriving business, or who has completed an amazing project, I always want to know: “How did you do that?”

I’m always curious to hear the “behind-the-scenes story”—who they emailed, what they said, how they got their first client, how they got their foot in the door—the exact steps that they took to achieve their goal.

HOW DID YOU DO THAT? is an interview series where we get to hear the REAL story behind someone’s success—not the polished, neat and tidy version.

To see a complete list of all the interviews that have been completed to date, head over here.

Name: Eve DeNies Küttemann
Location: Portland, Oregon
Profession: Chef

You’ve worked at some of the best restaurants in the entire world, including L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris. Then you moved back to the United States, settled in Portland, and these days, you run a business called Sage Hen. How did you get started as a chef?

I started my career working in small restaurants in Portland and Ohio before heading to France. I started out working on the savory side of the kitchen, but after about eight years in the business, I took my first position doing desserts.  It was actually a pretty practical decision. I had met my husband, who’s also a cook, and we decided we should diversify our skills (in reality, it’s possible we just didn’t want to compete with each other!) and I was the one least averse to pastry. Nine years later, I have never regretted that choice.

With Sage Hen, you take classic American dessert recipes that are 100+ years old, and you throw fabulous parties where you serve all kinds of desserts paired with fun historical facts. What inspired you to start Sage Hen?

The impulse to focus on old American recipes was a product of four things that all led me to feel like American cuisine had centuries of context that I had yet to discover.

First, the sense of historical gravity that I absorbed from French culinary culture; Second, what I perceived as the soullessness that can sometimes infect modernism in American cuisine. Third, the realization that Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire, the book that defined what is now known as classic French cuisine, was first published a full decade AFTER a similar encyclopedia was published in the United States (by Charles Ranhofer of Delmonico’s Restaurant). And fourth, an incredible cookbook that a friend lent me that was written in 1903 by Marion Harland. It was a real gem, a family heirloom my friend received from her grandmother, full of hand-written notes.

It’s a topic that has proven to be endlessly and incredibly enriching, as a cook, host, eater, and member of my community.

Starting a new business—or any kind of creative project—can feel really overwhelming. There are so many logistics to consider—buying supplies, getting city permits, finding the right location, and of course, finding customers! How have things been going for you so far?

It is! There are so many obstacles, both logistical and emotional. The first few events I did in the bakery space at Trifecta were a cliff jump from pure euphoric idealism to bone crushing defeat.

I learned really quickly that coming up with a fun idea and planning it out is the easy part—but a project will only be completely successful through lots of practice, trial and error, and experience. In the end, I’ve come to rely on a hefty dose of patience to pick me back up again. I really love running Sage Hen, so giving up has never been an option.

What’s been the most overwhelming thing you’ve had to deal with in the past year or so? What happened, how did you feel, and how did you get through it?

The best example I have is a classic failed-cake story—every pastry chef has one! It was the second or third Sage Hen event, and there were several VIPs that night: media, bloggers, cameras…

That night, the “main event” was a Philadelphia White Mountain Cake, a simple layer cake that was highly prized in the late 1800s for its ethereal fluffiness—something hard to come by at a time when eggs had to be whisked for an hour by hand. I had given it a modern touch by shrouding the cake just before the event in big, undulating shards of crispy meringue. I put a box over it to hide it for the big reveal in front of the customers an hour later.

The event was going very well. Everyone was enjoying themselves despite the chaos of pictures being taken from every angle and a continual stream of questions from the reporters. The time came to present the cake. I made a few remarks about the history of the cake, lifted the box, and… all the meringues had softened into limp, wrinkly squares scantily covering the cake. It looked like someone had tossed a bunch of wet rags all over it. Cameras snapping, my heart sank. The diners—and reporters—scarfed it up and described it as a classed-up Twinkie, but needless to say, when I made the cake again the next day, the meringue shards went on at the last minute!

Think back to the very first Sage Hen dessert party. Were you nervous that nobody would show up? Did anything go terribly wrong? What did you learn from doing that very first event?

I’m so glad I did a trial run, because that was a real eye-opener. The first Sage Hen event was all coworkers and family, but with varying degrees of sobriety, interest in the project, and animosity towards others in the room…

It was a very intimate space. Just eight guests all seated right at my workspace, so “hostess skills” were the first thing I learned! I was trying to take drink orders, pour champagne, hang coats, get people seated, plate dishes, serve them, clear them, answer questions, all while telling the stories behind the dishes and not losing my train of thought. I was never much of a “performer,” but all of a sudden I felt like I was onstage with blinding lights shining in my face. I was nervous, for sure. I faked total confidence the whole time. To my surprise, by the end of the event even the most reluctant attendees told me they had fun. I still have no idea how that happened!

In addition to being a super-talented chef, you’re also very politically active. You did a fundraiser last year where you sold Thanksgiving pies to raise money for Planned Parenthood. Was that a spur-of-the-moment idea? How did it go? How did people in your community respond?

I do think about the world a lot, but I’m generally reluctant to blast my opinions publicly, especially from a business platform, which some people see—understandably—as inappropriate.

The Thanksgiving fundraiser was an idea that emerged in a conversation with some industry friends over drinks the day after the election. So it was certainly impulsive in its inception, but over the following few days I realized that I have never been in a financial position to make big donations and by using the platform I had created with Sage Hen, all of a sudden, I could.

Plus, Sage Hen was still a very small project—very personal, and flexible enough that I felt I could experiment. The reception in the Portland community was hugely positive. I had no backlash, only people who felt (as I did) the overwhelming desire to do SOMETHING, anything, to voice our values. Plus, I mean, we’re talking about pies on Thanksgiving! A lot of people just liked the idea of serving Shoofly Pie to their family! Between the smell of butter and molasses, the holiday atmosphere, and the enthusiasm coming from the customers, that day was euphoric.

In addition to running Sage Hen, you also work at a restaurant called Nomad.PDX. Is it challenging to balance your “day job,” so to speak, with your business? How do you create time to do both things? How do you avoid getting burnt out?

It’s taken me awhile to find a balance between earning a living and building Sage Hen, but for me anyway, it’s those early morning hours that are key!

Baking bread at Nomad allows me to start the day with my hands full of flour, which I find deeply satisfying and grounding. Doing something I love is motivation enough for me to spend the rest of the day on all the variables involved in running Sage Hen. Then, equally important, I make sure that when the day is over, I don’t take my work home with me—compartmentalization of my life has saved me from burnout many times. I’m not expert at this system yet, but the better I get at it, the better I do in each of my roles.

3 Things

If someone is interested in becoming a chef, what are the first 3 things they should do?

1. First, try it out!

In the industry, we call it a “stage” [pronounced stahhhj, rhymes with oz]  which is essentially an unpaid internship for a day or two. Working in a kitchen is nothing like what they show on TV, and the only way to know if it’s really for you is by trying it.

2. Learn on the job.

Find the hardest kitchen you can and get a job there. You will have to start at the bottom, do really hard work, and endure demoralizing treatment. Embrace it—this is a crucial step that will serve you for the rest of your career.

Whatever you do, my advice is… don’t waste your money on culinary school. You’ll put yourself in debt with no way out. You can learn all that stuff on the job, and moreover some of my best chefs actually preferred cooks who didn’t go to culinary school. University of the Streets is the way to go.

3. Always keep learning.

As you gain experience, remember that there is no peak after which you just sit back and bask in your perfected skill set. The greatest cooks in the world are constantly—and actively—learning more. That’s the beauty of cooking—there is always a new technique to learn, a new ingredient to discover. There are hidden gems in the most unlikely places. Even, as it turns out, in centuries-old American cookbooks—right between “A Cheap and Delicious Dessert Dish” and “Fried Mush”!

ONE MORE THING…

Do you have “one more quick question” that you’d like to ask Eve? Email me and tell me what you want to know! I might choose your question for my ONE MORE THING… Podcast (Coming soon!!!)

YOUR #1 CAREER GOAL: ACHIEVED

Do you need some encouragement to help you achieve a big, daunting career goal? Would you like to have a career coach/strategist in your corner—feeding you ideas that you’d never considered before, helping you figure out who to contact, and what to say, and checking in to make sure you don’t procrastinate? If so… click here to find out how we can work together. I’d love to coach you!

Photos by The Oregonian, Rabbit Hole Photo and Sage Hen.