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Originally published in ?‍☠️ Category Pirates: It’s not a weekly newsletter. It’s a weekly mini-book.

Lately, there has been a fundamental, dare I say, seminal change in the category design of human beings. That is to say, the definition of what a human is has changed. You see, if you’re 35 and up, you are the last of a dying breed called Native Analogs. If you’re 35 or younger, you are the first generation of Native Digitals.

Native Digital’s experience life in a digital first way, and an analog way, second. Native Digitals have come of age integrated with the machines. Your smartphone and technology overall is like part of who you are as a person.

Most Native Analogs do not get this. Most people are not ready for the fact that everything is moving from an analog paradigm to a native digital world. So in this two-part series of Follow Your Different, we explore Native Digitals versus Native Analogs, and how it is important to realize that we are shifting to a digital paradigm faster than you think.

Category Neglect

First off, we start as to why it is important to recognize category shifts like the one we are experiencing now. Most category kings and queens tend to fall into a trap, in which they ignore new categories that may be adjacent or indirectly related to theirs.

When a new category arises (seemingly out of nowhere), the incumbent doesn’t topple over because they were unaware of the new category queen. More often than not, they fall because they dismissed what was happening right before their very eyes.

It’s not ignorance. It is arrogance coupled with the gravitational pull of “the way it is.” Because the people profiting in the present want things to stay the same.

This is called Category Neglect. Category Neglect doesn’t come from people being stupid or lacking sufficient data and resources to spot the headwinds and tailwinds of the future. It comes from a refusal to acknowledge which direction the wind is really blowing.

Why do they fall to such a seemingly obvious trap? This happens because the gravitational pull is too strong. A company gets used to earning hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars per year, and thinks it can do no wrong.

The company becomes deeply invested in the present. Anything that threatens the way it is now is dismissed.

Native Analogs vs Native Digitals

One of the most profound shifts happening in the world today is rooted in the ever-escalating debate between generations young and old. It is a shift hiding in plain sight. Just like the Tymshare executives staring out the window at Apple’s cranes building the headquarters of the company that would ultimately put them out of business, most people over 35 years old can’t see this shift happening.

Instead, they say to themselves, “Eh, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

As Category Pirates, we feel it is our obligation to sound the alarm when we see rocky shores ahead. Some of us are facing a once-in-a-generation set of headwinds that could not just stymie growth, but sink our entire ship. If those of us over age 35 aren’t careful, this divide could result in one of the greatest instances of Category Neglect.

However, those who see this mega shift and act on it, on the other hand, will sail into the sunset a lot of happy pirates, make more money, and make a way bigger difference in the world.

With that said, let’s first give a better definition of what a Native Analog and Native Digital are. We’ll also define where their biggest difference lies.

There are two types of people on planet earth today.

• The first are Native Analogs. These are Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, born anywhere from the 1940s all the way up to the early ‘80s. Today, they range between the ages of 40 to 75, and make up approximately 136.8 million Americans.
• The second are Native Digitals. These are Millennials and Gen Zers, born between the early 1980s to as recently as the 2010s. These demographics are around 35 years of age on the high end, down to as young as 6 years old. They make up approximately 140.1 million Americans.

The difference?

Native analogs grew up in a time where technology was an addition or a distraction from their real lives.

Native digitals grew up in a time where their “real” lives were a distraction from their digital lives.

This is a profound shift—and no one seems to be talking about it. Even more stunning, some of the largest native digital brands on the planet are run by Native Analogs. Who don’t get it either.

To learn why it is important to know more about Native Digitals and how it can affect your category and businesses, download and listen to this episode. You can also check it out at Category Pirates.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Most people want to have a great life and do great work. But we are told that the way to achieve legendary results is either to have talent, or “practice” 10,000 hours a day. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dr. Ron Friedman talks about a different, more proven way to achieve greatness that even mere mortals can embrace.

Dr. Ron Friedman is a PhD and award-winning Social Psychologist. He is the author of the no.1 bestseller called Decoding Greatness.

In this episode, we go deep on how you can decode greatness. We also discuss what legends before us have done using their approaches, models, and thinking to turbocharge our lives, our success, and our ability to make a difference.

Dr. Ron Friedman on Decoding Greatness

Dr. Friedman talks about his new book, Decoding Greatness and where he got the idea for it. His first book, The Best Place to Work, focused on giving people access to the best research on what it takes to perform at the highest levels and create a great workplace.

Though Dr. Friedman felt that there was something missing in his first book. He figured that even within a top-performing business or team, there’s still a range of performance levels. Some people are top performers, while some are still great but not at that level yet.

“In this book, Decoding Greatness, I was curious about what is it that top performers are doing differently. And what I discovered is that they’re using a method that most people don’t talk about. And yet it is far more common than we recognize.” – Dr. Ron Friedman

What We were Led to Believe

Dr. Friedman comments that there are two main stories that we are told about when it comes to achieving the highest levels. One of which is that it takes talent to do so, that you have to be born with certain strengths. You then have to match your talents to the appropriate fields that allow those strengths to shine.

Then there’s the big story about Practice. You know the one: 10,000 hours, practice, practice, practice. You have to exert yourself and have the right practice to be able to succeed.

Though according to Dr. Friedman, there is a third story that people don’t often talk about.

“There’s a third story and people don’t often talk about it. Yet it is remarkably common from entrepreneurs to inventors. to marketers. And that approach is reverse engineering, which simply means finding extraordinary examples in your field. By taking them apart, working backward, and figuring out how they were created, you can then apply those lessons to create something entirely new.” – Dr. Ron Friedman

Turning the Gap to a Learning Experience

There are those who say that those who perform at the top level are there because of their talents. Which can be insulting to all the work that person has also done to achieve his goals. Sometimes, people forget that even those who have certain advantages need to work their butts off to achieve greatness.

Dr. Friedman chooses to view it from another angle. He explains that if you apply Reverse Engineering on these extraordinary people and their achievements, you can turn it into a guideline for yourself.

“When you look at extraordinary performances through the lens of reverse engineering, you’ll have a different perspective. That different perspective is, “what can I learn from this? How can I improve my game through unpacking the methodologies and strategies that they are applying?”

So now that emotion, which would have been negative and uncomfortable and probably unhelpful in a way, I can turn that into a positive emotion and apply it to new learnings and insights, because now I have a mechanism by which to understand how he succeeded.” – Dr. Ron Friedman

To hear more from Dr. Ron Friedman and how to Decode Greatness and become a top performer, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Ron Friedman, Ph.D., is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes in human motivation.

His new book, The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, has been described as “stunning,” “eye-opening,” and “a contemporary classic,” and praised by best-selling authors Daniel Pink, David Allen, Marshall Goldsmith, Susan Cain, and Adam Grant.

Dr. Friedman has served on the faculty of the University of Rochester, Nazareth College, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and has consulted for Fortune 500 companies, political leaders, and the world’s leading non-profits. Popular accounts of his research have appeared on NPR and in major newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, the Globe and Mail, The Guardian, as well as magazines such as Men’s Health, Shape, and Allure.

He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, CNN, Forbes, Fast Company, and Psychology Today.

Links

Connect with Dr. Ron Friedman today!

Websites:

Ignite80.com

RonFriedmanPhD.com

LinkedIn: in/RonFriedmanPhD

Check out Dr. Ron Friedman’s bestselling works today!

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Have you been feeling burned out over the last handful of months? Well, you are not alone. We live at a time that is extraordinarily challenging, yet exciting. This has caused many to freak out, or feel blown out or burned out. Our guest today, Jennifer Moss, calls what has been happening a “Macro Stress Event”. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we explore the Burnout Epidemic and more.

Jennifer Moss is the author of the brand-new number one bestseller Burnout Epidemic: The rise of Chronic Stress and how we can fix it. She has an extraordinary point of view on the matter, particularly on how to transform this stress experience into what she calls a post-traumatic growth.

We get into what are the real causes of burnout, and what organizations can do to prevent it. There’s also the idea of building an anti-burnout strategy based on prevention, and not offering them after the fact. We also discuss why traditional wellness initiatives seem to fall short these days.

Jennifer Moss and Working on Happiness

Jennifer Moss has always worked on the domain of happiness. Which makes it seem weird that she is talking about burnout, which is the direct opposite of it. Though according to Jennifer, happiness and unhappiness go hand-in-hand.

“You can’t actually experience an increase in happiness set point, unless you’ve gone through some sort of challenge in your life that gives you that ability to experience resilience and rebound.” – Jennifer Moss

Having the Right Mindset is the Key

For Jennifer, this experience came from seeing his husband come back from being acutely paralyzed to recovering remarkably well in an unanticipated rate. A huge part of this was that athletes go through an incredible amount of psychological fitness training very early on in their lives.

They go through that process of learning how to rebound, how to deal with loss, how to have emotional flexibility. All these things that actually lead to high levels of happiness, and be able to have post traumatic growth moments after they go through these pretty serious things.

“Part of what we noticed when Jim was in the hospital rehabbing was that this attitude played a big role in his healing. So six weeks later, he was walking out of the hospital. They had said, he may not ever walk again, or then it was a year, yet he’s walking out after six weeks.

So it sort of became our mindset shift at that point to understand what it was that that contributed to that healing.” – Jennifer Moss

Prevention is Better than Cure

With this shift of mindset, Jennifer and her husband founded Plasticity Labs, and worked on the happiness space and how to help companies further develop theirs in the workplace.

Though Jennifer noticed that they were working with companies that already have good happiness spaces and burnout prevention strategies in place. They just needed to improve on it and take it to the next level. But what about those companies who didn’t have any semblance of one, and are burning out their employees left and right?

Which is why she wanted find a way to let such businesses and companies know how to prevent burnout from happening in the first place, rather than having to put the fires down later.

To hear more from Jennifer Moss and how to prevent burnout for yourself and your team, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Jennifer Moss is a Harvard Business Review contributor and nationally syndicated radio columnist.

She also sits on the Global Happiness Council—a small group of leading scientists and economists that support the UN’s sustainable goals related to global well-being and the Annual Global Happiness Policy Report.

Prior to this, Moss worked in Silicon Valley, eventually joining Barack Obama’s California social team during his historic presidential campaign.

To acknowledge her contributions to business and public service, Moss was named a Canadian Innovator of the Year, an International Female Entrepreneur of the Year, and recipient of the Public Service Award from the Office of President Obama.

Her new book, The Burnout Epidemic, published by Harvard Business Press, launched September 28, 2021.

Links

Connect with Jennifer Moss!

Website: Jennifer-Moss.com

Twitter: @JenniferMossInc

TikTok: @JenLeighMoss

Instagram: @JenniferMossInc

Check out her new book: The Burnout Epidemic

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Our ability to communicate and collaborate is core to our humanity. Yet we live in a time where many of us seem to have a very tough time having real, powerful dialogues. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Celeste Headlee shows us how it’s done.

Celeste Headlee is the author of the bestselling book; We Need to Talk: How to have conversations that matter. She has also given out a TED talk, titled 10 Ways to have Better Conversations, which has 25 million views. Her most recent book is called Speaking of Race, which emphasizes the need to talk about racism, and how to do it.

What you’re about to hear is a deep conversation on why authentic conversations matter and how to have them. Also, pay close attention to her ideas on how you can be a more powerful conversationalist, and why our brain rewards us when we have real dialogue.

Celeste Headlee and the Passion for Conversation

The conversation starts off with Celeste sharing where her passion for conversations came from. Celeste shares that there are a few things that bother her as one gets older. Though the one thing that upsets her is when there are things that can be fixed, that are totally fixable, though having proper conversations.

“I mean, there’s just very little that we can’t talk through as human beings. And so I’m passionate about it because it’s universal. Every single person on the planet needs to be able to converse with others and communicate with others well, and be it’s just the root of problem solving. I mean, this is what solves problems, period, whatever they are.” – Celeste Headlee

Why People are not having Meaningful Conversations

Celeste shares her thoughts as to why people seem to have lost the ability to have a meaningful conversation. She has discovered an interesting tidbit while researching for her second book, and it dates all the way back to the Industrial Revolution.

While recent developments and social norms may have exacerbated the situation, the turning point seems to have happened when one guy discovered how to use steam to make our lives better.

“Prior to the Industrial Revolution. Most people lived in rural areas, most people interacted with maybe 100 or 150 people over the course of their lives. Then all of a sudden, the Industrial Revolution came in. Everybody flips over till most people are living in urban areas. Because of that, most people are encountering 1000s of people over the course of a week or a month instead. And it just happened too quickly. We weren’t able to adjust evolve that fast.” – Celeste Headlee

Bringing Back Good and Meaningful Conversations

Celeste thinks that most people don’t know what conversation is anymore. There are some who say that they are good conversationalists. That is, they are good talkers. Those are not the same thing at all.

In order to be a good conversationalist, you have to not only be a good talker. You also have to listen as well as you talk.

“I imagine (Oscar Wilde) was not a good conversationalist. Fantastic talker, but not good in conversation. Why? Because you have to be able to listen as well as you talk. And the smarter you are, the harder that challenge becomes. The wittier you are, the funnier you are, the harder that becomes. But also, listening is just hard. It’s hard for our species.

I think that some of the people that we think of as not being good in conversations are much better than they get credit for. And those are the people who speak less than they listen.” – Celeste Headlee

To hear more from Celeste Headlee on the importance of having a meaningful conversation, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Celeste Headlee is an award-winning journalist who has appeared on NPR, PBS World, PRI, CNN, BBC and other international networks.  She was formerly a host at National Public Radio, anchoring shows including Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. For many years, Celeste has been a mentor and managing editor for NPR’s Next Generation Radio Project, training young reporters and editors in broadcasting.

Celeste is co-host to the Scene on Radio podcast—MEN with the podcast’s producer, Duke University’s CDS audio director, John Biewen. John describes the season: “Co-host Celeste Headlee and I will take a similar approach to the Seeing White series, which explored the history and meaning of whiteness. With MEN, we’ll be asking questions like, What’s up with this male-dominated world? Is male supremacy inevitable? How did we get sexism/patriarchy/misogyny, and what can we do about it?”

Celeste will co-host new episodes of The Retro Report with Masud Olufani. Retro Report is a non-profit news organization that produces mini documentaries looking at today’s news stories through the lens of history and context.

Until February, 2017 Celeste was the Executive Producer and host of the daily talk show called “On Second Thought” for Georgia Public Broadcasting in Atlanta.

You can listen live to On Second Thought, weekdays from 9 – 10 a.m. EST on the GPB News website. Click here for archives from past shows.

In 2014, Celeste narrated the documentary “Packard: The Last Shift” for the Detroit Free Press. She has won numerous awards for reporting from the Associated Press and SPJ.

Celeste was selected twice to be a Getty/Annenberg Journalism Fellow and was selected as a fellow with the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. She was also among the first fellows in Reporting on Native Stories for National Native News.

Until September of 2012, Celeste was the co-host of the national morning news show, The Takeaway, from PRI and WNYC and anchored presidential coverage in 2012 for PBS World Channel.

Links

Follow Celeste Headlee today! 

Twitter: @CelesteHeadlee

Check out her new book: Speaking of Race

Watch her Ted Talk: 10 ways to have a better conversation

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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In this episode of Follow Your Different, we are joined by Brittany Fuisz, the founder of Malibu Mylk. She is an entrepreneur and a friend who I respect and admire deeply.

When Brittany was trying to have a baby for the first time, she was having some difficulty. So she went to work, specifically on improving her diet. She then discovered some huge problems with some of the major categories of alternate milk, like oat and almond milk. So she got busy in her kitchen.

What you’re about to hear is an extraordinarily powerful example of what a mission driven founder is. Someone with a point of view, someone who wants to move the world from the way it is, to a new and different place.

Brittany Fuisz and How Malibu Mylk came to be

Brittany starts off by sharing how she got the idea for Malibu Mylk. She got the idea for it around March of 2018, when she was still working at Yelp. Though she didn’t really go for it full time until she left Yelp later that year.

She had the idea for it when she was trying to have a baby for the first time. After consulting with the doctor, she opted to try a strict diet called the Elimination Diet or Autoimmune Protocol. Basically, she had to eliminate all major allergens in her diet. This means no dairy, nuts, gluten, soy, etc.

So while looking for milk alternatives, she discovered a huge problem: most milk substitutes either have nuts, soy, or gluten. That’s when she had the idea to use something different.

“I was driving past downtown LA and I thought, what if I make milk from flaxseed? Like it was just a sign in the sky. I needed to make flax milk. And so I went home that day, I pulled out my blender. I did go to culinary school many years ago. So I know how to cook.” – Brittany Fuisz

Hitting the Ground Running with Malibu Mylk

After trying out and getting her desired results with the flaxseed milk, Brittany did what any aspiring entrepreneur would do. She reached out to Whole Foods Market with her idea. Brittany pitched the idea for Malibu Mylk, and was surprised when the buyer immediately set up a meeting for it.

While Brittany wanted to delay the meeting to better prepare for it, the buyer said that the meeting was set. So she had to take a crash course on the food and beverage industry and learn the ropes quickly.

“I did a crash course in food and beverage with a friend who’s in the industry the day before the meeting. And I went in with little samples. I had some mock packaging made up. Then I learned about margins, which is how the grocery world works. I went in and I pitched the buyer on the dream that is now Malibu Mylk. She tasted my samples and she said, “Well, I’d love to get this in stores the coming weeks”. I thought well I can’t do the coming weeks, but we can do it in the coming months.

Actually, the timing worked out beautifully because I’d have to go into my first production run, knowing that Whole Foods is going to be a customer.” – Brittany Fuisz

Brittany’s Challenges with Malibu Mylk

Brittany further explains the challenges she had at the beginning of Malibu Mylk. The biggest challenge for her was finding a great manufacturer, a co-packer. There weren’t many that produced her type of product, and the ones she found were awful and expensive. When she finally found one she liked, they said no to her.

So she got an acquaintance who was already manufacturing something in that company, and asked for an introduction. She wasn’t deterred by the first and succeeding No’s that she received, and kept pushing on.

“You’re gonna hear a lot of No’s that you’re gonna hear no, again and again and again. And if you’re not willing to turn it into a yes, some way or another, it won’t work.” – Brittany Fuisz

To hear more from Brittany Fuisz and how she created Malibu Mylk to what it is today, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Brittany Fuisz is the Founder/CEO of Malibu Mylk, the world’s first organic flax milk. Allergen-free (dairy free, gluten free, nut free, soy free), full of fiber and omega-3s, Malibu Mylk is creamy and thick and is good for our bodies and our planet.

She is a seasoned Marketing Maven and published writer with leadership skills and a track record of driving growth and brand building. A social connector with experience in consumer apps, direct response, media and sales.

Brittany attained her degree in marketing and management from Georgetown University, and then a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu. She began her career with Hillstone Restaurant Group in their manager training program. She spent time working on the line at three Michelin star Le Bernardin in NYC, as well as the Food Network in new business development. Brittany has also appeared on KTLA news, as a guide to the City of Angels.

Links

Website: MalibuMylk.com

Instagram: @MalibuMylk

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Do you know what it feels like to be duped, or lied to in an extraordinarily manner? Imagine falling in love, and having a whirlwind romance with a doctor, who also serves in the military, claimed to have been stationed at Guantanamo Bay for a time, and claim many other extraordinary things about his life and career. Imagine being proposed to and expecting to marry this amazing man who also worked at the Pentagon. Then imagine it was all a big lie. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Abby Ellin shares her story and more.

Abby Ellin is an extraordinary bestselling author, New York Times writer, and contributor to a ton of other prestigious publications. Her book is called Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married.

In our dialogue, we go deep into her story, and find out why agrees that you can’t see red flags through rose colored glasses.

Abby Ellin on being Duped

The conversation starts off reminiscing about meeting famous people in the past, when we can all actually go outside. The topic then got to Leonard Cohen, and how they were a fan of his work. This segues into the topic at hand, as Leonard Cohen himself was duped by his longtime manager.

Abby Ellin’s book, Duped, seems very personal, and it was radically transparent on what transpired in her life. She didn’t appear to do anything to make herself look good. It was an unembellished account of what she had gone through, and the manipulation that she was subjected to.

“When I write, I can write something but I’m also controlling what you know, and I was totally willing to sound like an asshole and duped because that was part of what needed to be done for that story. I was trying to channel the way other people think about someone who gets deceived, that I was engaged to a pathological liar. He went to jail. And everyone I know who I said that story to have their own story or knew somebody who did. Some of them didn’t want to tell the story publicly or use their names because they felt like such idiots. I was like, “Hey, man. I’m an idiot and I own it. Because it happens and it’s real.” – Abby Ellin

Monetized Suffering

I then comment on Abby’s book, and how it reads and feels like a suspense novel. Abby appreciates the description, and shares that she actually sold the rights to it. So at the very least, someone shares that sentiment as well.

“The operative words here are monetize suffering. So when, when life gives you lemons, you make lemon meringue pie and you eat it and you don’t worry about getting fat. I saw the podcast writes and it’s coming out in September, I think, but it’s going to be like a six part series, and it’s like a suspense thing.” – Abby Ellin

Abby Ellin on Quitting Diet Coke

We then talk about the article that Abby wrote about Diet Coke, and how she quit from it. She has had it since she was around 12 years old, and had been drinking it ever since.

People have told her to quit, but she told them to mind their own business. Yet she knew she was addicted. She was drinking three to four cans a day, and go looking for it when she didn’t have any in reach. But something happened that prompted her to consider quitting.

“My stomach started hurting a lot recently and no one knew why. And I was tasting this diet coke and it started to taste really chemical-y. I asked them if they changed the formula and they said no, but I just was like, I’m done. And I that was it.” – Abby Ellin

To hear more from Abby Ellin and her story on being duped, diet cokes and her thoughts on the Madoff scam, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Abby Ellin is an award-winning journalist and the author of “Duped: Double Lives, False Identities and the Con Man I Almost Married” and “Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs

In On Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help.”

For five years she wrote the “Preludes” column about young people and money for the Sunday Money and Business section of the New York Times.

She is also a regular contributor to the Health, Style, Business and Education sections of the New York Times.

Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, New York, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Psychology Today, Time, Newsweek, the Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, Salon, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Spy (RIP).

She has been a resident at the Yaddo Corporation and Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina, and has two useless Masters Degrees: an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University.

As of this writing, her greatest accomplishments are learning to play the cello at age 35, summiting Kilimanjaro (with a broken wrist in a cast!) and naming “Karamel Sutra” ice cream for Ben and Jerry’s.

Links

Follow Abby Ellin today!

Website: AbbyEllin.com

Twitter: @AbbyEllin

Check out the 6-part series, Impostors: The Commander

More on Abby Ellin:

NYTimes: Why do we love scammers so much?

NYTimes: I was powerless over diet coke

Washington Post: A Journalist almost married a con man. It turns out, she wasn’t the only one.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!