Hello and welcome to
another episode of The Traveling Introvert.
And of course, this is the Career Conversations segment.
I would like to welcome our guest here today.
It's Mike. Mike, how are you?
I'm doing wonderful. It's a beautiful day out here in San Francisco,
in the Bayview. More specific, leave the neighborhood
of Hunters Point Bayview in a new community called the
San Francisco Shipyard. Okay,
now I want to know more, but I'm not going to get sidetracked.
Mike, first question I ask everybody is, are you
an introvert? I am an introvert.
I took the Brighmires test a while back.
I'm an INFJ. Or I was an
INFJ. I think I
might be, like, an extroverted introvert now. Okay,
and what does introversion mean to you?
So growing up, I was a shy kid.
I kind of like being left alone,
just kind of being like,
tensive quiet. Like I
said, I was shy. So I think
for me, like, introversion just the word introversion is
just thinking
within.
And would you say that that has helped you
in your career?
Well, the work that I used to do in tech,
well, first I started off as a designer
designing websites starting back in 1995.
I was a concert promoter in college, so I had to design the
concert posters. And I had a buddy of mine, Chris Jensen,
who helped teach me desktop publishing.
So working in tech,
I was used to just putting on my headphones
and just doing work
and just kind of keeping to myself.
So in that regards, yeah,
introversion has helped me out because it
allows you to just kind of think about
things for
the most part, like by yourself.
I think in that regard, introversion has. Helped me out and
I guess have your workplaces been set
up in such a way to enable you to do that deep work by yourself?
They have, yeah. Working as my
first job was well,
I worked for a company called Creative Internet
Design in Pasadena in 1997.
It was just myself, Ari Petrajaska,
who was one of three co founders of
Creative Internet Design, but his other two founders left to
go work for MGM Studios,
and there was a female engineer,
so it was just the three of us. So I
basically just put on my headphones and do my work.
And then the other companies I worked for was a
small design agency called Adjacency. Got it. Acquired by Sapien.
I was at Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Travel for four
years. I was at LinkedIn for four years, four months, and Zinger for two and
a half years. Yeah, I own all those jobs.
I was working as either a productions designer,
visual designer, user interface designer,
and I could just kind of, like,
be working on my laptop or
workstation with the headphones on and just work.
Aside from reviewing my work with my creative director
or my team, I was pretty much left alone.
Okay. And so you've talked about doing
a lot of UX work and design work. Can you tell me about any
misconceptions that people might have about your job and or
industry.
In terms of tech? I think of
a lot of people think about what used to be Fang,
facebook, Apple,
Amazon, Netflix,
Google now Google's Alphabet,
and Facebook is Meta.
I guess people have an image of, like, techies from, like, say,
The Social Network, the story about Mark
Zuckerberg and his founding of Facebook.
So I guess people have the image of techies, like, wearing t
shirts and jeans. On my case, it was
mostly like, t shirts and short
pants or sweatpants.
It's kind of accurate, actually.
I didn't ever in my career have
to wear suit and tie until until
I worked for Sapien. And kind
of like when the bubble was crashing, they wanted people
to be more professional.
So I actually had to buy some button
down shirts. I just got them at a thrift store.
I mean, I wasn't really meeting clients, so I'm not sure why they wanted
the dress code. The professional
dress code. I could go on about what professional means and
doesn't mean, but I'm not going to.
Is there something actually, first question is,
can you tell me about a connection that you have made that has
changed your life?
Yeah. So my first job in
tech in the San Francisco bay
area was with Bernie Deshant.
He was one of four co founders
of Adjacency, which started off
in Madison, Wisconsin, and they later moved
out to San Francisco.
Adjacency had some incredible clients
considering how small they were.
They designed websites for Apple,
land Rover, nordstrom Tire
Bar, specialized Bikes,
virgin Music tag,
Hoyer Patagonia.
I mean, the list was amazing.
They got acquired by a company called Sapient,
and at the time, we're about 50 people,
actually about 57 people, they got acquired for $50
million.
Sapient had actually acquired a company
called Studio Archetype that was run by Clement Mock
that was double our size,
but for half of what we got
acquired for. So they probably had something like 110
employees getting acquired for 25 million.
And Clement really didn't give much stock to his employees. They were pissed
when we got acquired because the principals,
andrew Sather, Bernie mostly
Andrew had equity, was very generous with
the equity that he gave us.
So Bernie has a really sharp
eye, always had really good feedback.
They kind of took a chance on me.
I came in as a production designer. That means that I was coding
HTML and doing Iterative design for
clients like Rollerblade and
Power Bar.
So he was really a mentor. And then I
ended up getting diagnosed with bipolar one disorder in
the summer of 2015 when I had my first Janice episode.
And he's really been there during the times that
I've been severely depressed. He's always like a
person that's non judgmental and someone that I
know I can reach out to when I'm in
a depressed state. I mean, I've been so severely
depressed where I was in Taipei,
Taiwan, with my parents, and I spent six months
literally in bed and would go like, maybe a week
or two without showering or shaving and
not even caring that I didn't
do any of those things in terms of well being.
And so how different do you think your life would be if
you hadn't made that connection?
I mean, adjacency basically started my
career in the San Francisco bay area.
I had a job offer from adjacency and
a company called circumstance.
I got laid off from Sapient in a fourth round,
and I had a coworker of mine that got laid off in an earlier
round, and he got a job at yahoo.
And he referred me into Yahoo.
And had it not been for the fact that I had
a job at Adjacency, I don't think
my life would have taken a completely different course.
I wouldn't have worked at the companies that I had.
Yeah, okay. And so as part of that,
and this might lead on from that, is is
there something that you do regularly that has
improved your life, career and or business?
Yeah, absolutely, 100%.
So being physically
active, exercising is
one of the best things to do for
your mental health, especially when you're depressed, or in
my case, severely depressed.
I go to an orange theory fitness
studio in Mission Bay in San Francisco,
and that's something that really has helped me out.
I reached out to Ellen lawfam, who founded
orange Theory fitness, and she actually replied back
to me. I let her know
when I first started at Ordinary Fitness,
that doing workouts
with Ordinary Fitness was really going to be something that was going
to help me out with my mental health. And she agreed. The says exercising
releases like dopamines.
In my case, I find working out and exercising
way more effective than medication because
the medication that I've taken in the past, lithium,
is not good for your liver.
I've taken medication which has made me gain weight.
Some of the stuff even has given me, like, penal rectal dysfunction,
and sometimes I can't
even sleep. So right now, I'm not on
any medication.
I actually art directed
a t shirt with my designer Damai
out of Indonesia that says, orange theory fitness
is my drug.
That's wonderful, and I hope to see you wearing it in
the fitness place where you work out.
Yeah, I've done 97 workouts
at orange 30 fitness starting two and a half years ago.
So on my 100th workout,
I'm going to wear the t shirt that says, oranger fitness is
my drug. And I'm going to get a photo with the
staff holding a sign that celebrates my 100th
workout. And we will then send the photo
of the t shirt to the owner of the franchise in
San Francisco to see if we can make it an official collaboration
between my merge company, t shirts Matter
and Orange Fitness in the San Francisco Bay area.
But since I've already communicated with Ellen Latham,
who is the founder of Orangebury Fitness, I'd like to
make it international because they have studios around the world.
That is awesome, and I cannot wait to see the
photos. That's a great thing. So you said about two and a half years.
So you were able to keep this up during the Pandemic.
I worked out
at Orange 30 Fitness for a couple of times during
the Pandemic,
but I ended up getting
severely depressed again because I
was worried about money because the stock market crashed
during the pandemic, and I ended back up in
Taipei, Taiwan for like, six months. Got it.
Okay. Yeah. In Taipei, Taiwan,
there is a track that
I had a fitbit at the time, and the
goal of fitbit is hitting your 10,000 steps. So that's
what I was doing in Taipei that I want is trying to hit those 10,000
steps. Okay. So with
exercise being something that you say yes to and do on a regular basis
to improve your life, what is something that you say no to?
So I
have a t shirt that I
would say it's inspired by Taylor Swift because I'm a huge fan.
I stand Taylor. It's a lyric
from her song Shake it off. It says,
haters going to hate. So I just shake off that negativity.
I say no to negativity. Okay,
that's a good one. I haven't heard that one. And so can
you tell me something that you've encountered
while going through your career and building your business that
has surprised you?
That's a really good question. Something that
has surprised me.
I don't know if this is a surprise me, but I'm pretty resilient.
I actually today was on a Google me call with
a guy who ran a company that only works with,
I think, something like five clients
per quarter. And it was supposed to be like a
30 minutes call. And I was
talking to him about my new idea about
an urban camping airbnb experience.
And I was showing him the new boards,
and I have another tab open, kind of
like showing stuff. And then I go back to the
main room, and he's not there.
We're basically like, 15 minutes in.
And so I was like, okay, I'm not sure what happened.
So I disconnect. I log back in. He's not
there. I go check my
LinkedIn inbox, and I
see that he's blocked me.
I have no clue why. You know,
it's like,
well, he did say that, you know, with the companies that they work with,
that they have to
be generating like, monthly $50,000,
and they've actually spent $150,000,000 on ads.
So in the form where they put, how much do you make monthly?
I'm like, well, if they're looking for companies that make $50,000
monthly, I'm going to put kind of like the little wavy thing, like approximately like
$50,000? Yes. But in my case, it would have
been like approximately zero. I pretty
much filled up the form to tell them what they
wanted to hear. I think
probably the reason why he dropped off the call. He's like, why is this guy
telling me about this airbnb camping experience when I only work with companies that
make at least 50,000 monthly?
But he did block me on
LinkedIn, which is kind of curious. I mean, he's like,
British, and he also
has, like, a mustache.
He kind of looked like a pedophile.
And so you wanted to get to talk because you filled
out the form, so why did you want to get to talk to him?
He was able to scale, according to his website,
these companies, like, working and doing ads and
really accelerating the companies.
I'm basically a rocket ship. I'm a rocket ship.
I'm on the launching pad. All I need is some
fuel and someone to hit
the button to go and then I'm a
rocket. And that's actually
what they call like,
startups, so called unicorns that are worth
over a billion dollars. Get ready for a ride
on the rocket ship. It's going to be the most amazing experience
of your life. LinkedIn was the most
amazing professional experience
of my life.
That was a rocket ship.
And so, I mean, he must know
that people do that because you can't be the first person who's done that.
And maybe if he'd been a little bit more curious and
or asked questions, that would have come through
instead of just blocking. People don't have curiosity
anymore. At any point, he just
said, hey, pause. Things aren't working.
I don't think it's going to work out. It's not a good fit. But no,
he just left the conversation and blocking on LinkedIn. Yeah,
communication would have been nice. Communication would have been
nice, especially he specifically says
that with the clients they work with, since they work with so
few that it feels like an extension of your team,
you'd think that he'd have more people skills. Yeah,
you're right. All right, so final question
for you. It's the mystery question. Is a hot
dog a sandwich?
Is a hot dog a sandwich?
No, the hot dog is not a sandwich.
Why?
Like a sandwich has, like, the circular buns. A hot
dog does not have a circular bun. I mean, unless you put like,
you know, like like, let's say three hot dogs, you know,
between two hangar hamburger buns, then I
would say it might be a sandwich, but no, it's not. No way.
Emphatically, I disagree. Okay.
I like that. I like when people are like, no, this is what I think
and why. Thank you for that answer. So please let
my listeners know where they can find out more about you
and what you do.
So I was actually an
early LinkedIn employee when I started at LinkedIn
in May of 2006. I was a 42nd well,
there are 42 people at the company. I was a 43rd employee and the second
visual second user interface designer
there. So I'd say, take a look at me on LinkedIn.
It's LinkedIn.com in
Mikelin.
M-I-K-E-L-I-N-I have
links to press articles
about what I've done with T shirts
matter. I have press
articles about what I did with my Scope Day event.
My instagram is instagram.com.
Mikelin SF.
M-I-K-E-L-I-N-S-F-S-F as
in San Francisco? The T shirt company is Tshirtsmatter.com.
The instagram is instagram.com.
Tshirtsmatter.
The hyphen
is really important. There's actually a company that's Tshirtsmatter.com
without the Hyphen. I've had people looking at the website
saying, hey, you have this product. I'm like, no,
you're on the wrong website.
Yeah,
there's also linktree L-I-N-K-T-R-E-E
capital T, capital S-H-I-R-T-S
capital M. Lowercase A-T-T-E-R.
That link has links to everything. Thanks.
Awesome. Thank you so very much for sharing your
stories and your time with me today. I really appreciate
it. And, yeah, that person who ghosted.
All right, thank you so very much. And this is Janice
last thing. I'm currently working on self publishing my memoir
in the next three to six months. And the name of my memoir
is called The Way Out is Through My
Mental Health Journey living with Bipolar One Disorder by Mike Lynn.
And that's inspired well, that's a song by Nine
Chanel's on the fragile, the Way I Deserve.
I have so many questions now. That is a great title and
I am intrigued. Yes. So we're going to make
sure all the links are there, and please let me know when that does come
out, so then we can add of that too. Thank you all
for listening. This is Janice@thecareintrovert.com helping you build your brand and
get hired. Have a great rest of your week.