Monday Series: Tips to Boost Your Productivity
August 18, 2020 (San Francisco)
This past Monday, on August 17th, Harmony Plus continued our Future Entrepreneur Challenge (FEC) talkshow. For our tenth episode, we interviewed Julie Stanescu, Founder of RETHINK, which focuses on solving people problems using human-centered design and strategic thinking. She is building a design leadership community which currently has over 7,000 individuals, and has over 13 years of experience in working with Fortune 500 companies and startups.
When Julie first identified the opportunity to build and grow a community of designers, she noted that there were two important factors to consider. The first was appropriately understanding the problem, and the second was having the skill and passion to be able to solve those problems. By having conversations with people who were facing similar problems, Julie decided to organize an event in which all of those people could come together and discuss their challenges. The very first event had 300 people in attendance, leading Julie to the realization that the challenges, as well as the number of people who were trying to address them, were much larger than expected. This also became the motivation for her to focus on educational projects and programs for the design community to overcome those challenges.
However, there are also other factors that need to take into account when trying to stay connected with the audience as well as building products and experiences that they are interested in. Julie states that these two factors are observing people in action and listening to what they have to say in order to understand the obstacles that they’re facing. She does this by having frequent community surveys and having informal conversations with community members via phone and video calls.
“I think it’s important, as an entrepreneur, to be very proactive about reaching out to people, especially the people that you see coming back to use your product or your service. But I also think it’s important to spend time where your audience hangs out… If you realize that your product is serving a community of designers and they all hang out on Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s important for you to be there and share a conversation with them so you really understand the challenges they’re facing.”
With regards to the current pandemic, Julie recalled that one of the biggest changes that RETHINK had to go through was moving away from in-person events, which was the core of the services that the company offered. This led to the creation of several new initiatives, offering mentorship and coaching programs for design professionals who were facing new difficulties in light of the pandemic, and started a series of interactive online workshops to allow individuals to practice and advance their career.
“I think when you see yourself in the unknown, you actually have to dive deeper into that, try to experiment, challenge yourself, talk with the community, and understand how to solve those problems with the resources that you have and the moment that you are in.”
Julie also weighed in on staying productive, commenting on two basic components: defining the outcome you are trying to achieve and understanding the set of actions you might take to achieve that outcome. Defining the outcome can be achieved by setting clear goals and expectations, writing down all the tasks that need to be completed, prioritizing those tasks based on audience/business value, and giving yourself space every week to reflect on the things that bring you closer to your goal.
Similarly, Julie manages work-related stress by planning ahead of time. This allows her, to an extent, to see and prepare for the larger picture and the challenges that come with it. She also takes time to step back and reflect on things that helped her completely disconnect from work, such as spending time with her daughter. This allows her to re-approach the problem with a fresh perspective.
“I think it’s important…to think about that one thing that really disconnects you completely from the worries and stress. And try to experiment with that on a weekly basis and see if that brings your energy back.”
Julie also offered some advice for aspiring student entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of being persistent and to not be afraid of mistakes and failures. Rather, one should take those mistakes and failures as a learning experience and grow from it.
“Really try to understand what are the problems that you can solve for a certain group of people and how you can do that better and faster than anyone else.”
If you are interested in learning more about Julie’s story, you can watch the full video here.
