Episode Notes
In this episode, host of Out of the Clouds Anne Muhlethaler interviews Wesley Faulkner.
Wesley is a first-generation American, public speaker, and podcaster, and he currently works as a Head of Community at SingleStore, co-hosts the developer relations focused podcast Community Pulse and serves on the board for South by Southwest. He is a founding member of the government transparency group Open Austin and a staunch supporter of racial justice, workplace equity and neurodiversity.
A tech enthusiast since his teens, Wesley first trained as an electrical and computer engineer (despite growing up without owning a personal computer himself). He shares the arc of his multipronged career from hardware to software, how being an early adopter of Twitter led him to social media management, and later to ‘dev rel’ (or developer relations).
The two discuss how Wesley navigated his life and career with a late diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia, and how he became a passionate advocate for neurodiverse populations in the work environment.
His THAT conference keynote, ‘Be like me… different’ was a great starting point to discuss how ‘community shapes us’, in which Wesley offers his perspective on the evolution of the role of social media manager, what to consider to create a community and his vision for the metaverse.
Finally, Wesley offers his thoughts on how organisations can work towards being more inclusive for neurodivergent team members, including by measuring effort, not just success, and encouraging experimentation.
A very passionate, in-depth and honest conversation. Happy listening!
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Selected links from episode
You cand find Wesley on Polywork and on Twitter
On LinkedIn – Wesley Faulkner
AMD – AMD.com
DevRel – or developer relations
THAT conference – that.us
Wesley’s keynote ‘Be just like me… different’
which you can watch on Youtube
The Workology Podcast with Wesley Faulkner
Priya Parker book – The Art of Gathering
You Can Change Other People book
The End of Bias book by Jessica Nordell
Don’t Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin
Full episode transcript
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. And I’m your host, Anne Muhlethaler. My guest today is Wesley Faulkner. Wesley, as he will explain to you, is a first generation American who is currently head of community at SingleStore. Wesley is also a [inaudible 00:00:34], and we’ll dig into that. He has a very interesting and wide ranging experience that spans from hardware to software and crosses over from community management, social media, and now developer relations. He’s also neurodiverse, which he will explain in some more details, and has become an advocate for racial justice, workplace equity and neurodiversity. I was also excited to discover that Wesley serves on the board of South by Southwest, which I’ve always wanted to attend, and he tells me all about how he became involved.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So I’m excited about sharing this conversation with you, discussing Wesley’s keynote and how community shapes us. We also talk about rules and integrity as well as his personal journey to self-acceptance. I’m so happy to have had the privilege to get to know Wesley and indulge in asking him so many questions. This makes it quite a long interview, but I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I did. Thank you so much and happy listening.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Welcome, Wesley. So nice to meet you.
Wesley Faulkner:
I have to say that I’m extremely honored to be on your podcast today.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure to have you in front of me, even though it’s virtual. I would love to get started by telling our listeners that we are meeting today rather serendipitously because I joined recently a new professional network called Polywork. And there you were, literally in the middle of my screen, and I thought, huh, he looks interesting. And there, I found out about all of the wonderfully interesting things that you do. And here we are. So the magic of Polywork is underway. Now, having that said, I’d love for you to talk to our listeners about your journey and maybe just get us started by telling us where we are finding you today, who you are and what it is that you do.
Wesley Faulkner:
I currently live in the states, and the current city is Eau Claire in Wisconsin. It’s a little, small, small, small town. My family and I relocated here April of last year, in 2021, from Austin, Texas. My wife and her family are from this area and so we relocated because in the age of remote work, it made it flexible for us to be able to pick up and move. And her parents are getting up in age and have some medical concerns and so it made it easier to be here to help take care of them. And so it’s a decision that we made to make sure that we can give the support to our parents who we love and that need us. And when I met my wife in Austin, we spent all of our relationship there where my family lives. And so it seemed only fair to relocate to make sure that hers are taken care of.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s very kind of you.
Wesley Faulkner:
And a lot of things in terms of Austin is kind of like the forge in which I was formed. It’s where I went to school, it’s where I got my first big boy job, it’s where I bought my first house. I grew up in Houston, Texas, which is not terribly too far from Austin, Texas. And my best friend that I went to high school with got accepted into University of Texas and so I decided to go there as well and we were roommates and I majored in electrical and computer engineering. So my love of technology and computers really put me on a track going there. I grew up fairly poor, didn’t have access to a computer at all. And so I majored in electrical and computer engineering basically not using a computer. And so I got into technology, spent a lot of time in the computer lab, used my roommate’s computer, which is my best friend, Chris. Thank you, Chris. And took it apart, broke it multiple times and then fixed it. And basically, I learned by doing. Unfortunately, I did it on my roommate’s computer.
Wesley Faulkner:
And that led me to one of my first jobs outside of school, which was working as a computer nerd, which is the name of the company, where they fixed and repaired computers. And from there, I worked for Dell. From Dell, I did phone support and then graduated into working on servers and high end storage devices. And while I was at Dell, one of my last jobs there was to be a regional support person. So I moved to Cincinnati for a year and a year and a half. And I was on a plane once or twice a week because I was doing emergency break fix. So if NASDAQ went down or Honeywell went down or something like that, I would just hop on a plane and just fly to the location and fix their systems. And when I say NASDAQ goes down, I mean that literally, NASDAQ went down once on a Friday night and I flew out there to be out there Saturday morning. And they said, “Hey, if you don’t get this fixed by Monday, we’ll say that Dell is the reason why NASDAQ didn’t open. So no pressure.” And so that job was very demanding and I could plan for nothing. Someone would say, “Hey, my birthday’s this weekend. Are you coming?” I’m like, “Don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll be in town.”
Wesley Faulkner:
And so eventually, I relocated back to Austin by transferring and changing careers into something totally different. I was a product development engineer at AMD, and it sounds like a fancy title, but basically, I was the liaison between engineering and between marketing. And I helped them talking to each other. Marketing says, “Hey, I want something fancy.” And then engineering would need to know, “Hey, here are some of the technologies that we’re going to work on, some of the transitions. Here are the pluses and minuses of we can do a prototype really quickly and get something to show, but it will be something we have to continuously patch. Or this is something that’ll take a long time for us to get first proof of work, but it’ll be more stable in the end.” And so taking the requirements and tradeoffs and tracking and timeline and bug fixes and all of that stuff and working between the two groups.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so that was very, very new for me because all the work I did at Dell was basically all hardware. All the work that I did in this job for AMD was also mostly software. So working with low level software like drivers, to interactions between video and audio and images on the screen. So it was very, very new and very different. I was at Dell for six years and I ended up being at AMD for five and a half years.
Wesley Faulkner:
The great thing about AMD, you talked about Polywork, how it’s for multi hyphenates, so people who have a lot of different nuance to their titles. And while I was there, I was a recruiter for AMD for a bit. So a university recruiter. So I would go to universities-
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh that’s awesome.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. And I did a lot of community work there as well, some volunteering. And then one of the things that I also did was I was one of the founding members of AMD’s social media committee. So [inaudible 00:07:39] who are trying to figure out how the company can use this newfangled thing called social media. I’m dating myself now about when this was. And surprise, surprise, this is not the first time someone has reached out to me and to say randomly, “Let’s do an interview.” So that was probably the first time. When I was at AMD, I was on Twitter when Twitter was still brand spanking new. And I tweeted all the time about my job because I love my job. I was a big fan of AMD before I worked there. And so I was super excited about the things that I was working on. I was like, oh, can you believe that I actually have this title? I’m an engineer. Callback. I never graduated from college. I dropped out because I ran out of money.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so that’s why I started my first do job at Dell, because I needed to pay for school. And so I planned to go to work for a semester and then use the money that I got from working and then go back to school when I had the funds, but that never ended up happening. Longer story so I’ll go back.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so I was at AMD. Every day, I would tweet something like, oh, look at this new development or hey, AMD’s in the news today. Isn’t it cool that we’re doing better this quarter or we’re releasing this new feature or something like that. And it was really catchy and engaging because it wasn’t super markety and promotey. And it felt like a sneaky way of getting people to be excited about AMD. But it wasn’t sneaky. I really was excited. And someone from Forrester, Forrester Research, contacted me and said, “Hey, I would love to talk to you about what you and your strategy team are doing at AMD to really engage on social.” I was like, “What now?” I was like, “I’m just a guy.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s so awesome. You’re just a very excited guy about your job.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. So I contacted PR, saying, “Hey, this person wants to talk to me.” And it wasn’t the only request; it was just the first request. And so eventually, I got PR trained so I can talk to the press. And then that’s when an SVP pulled me into his office saying, “Teach me how to use this Twitter thing.” And then the group formed and I was brought on to the group to help with kind of giving my perspective of what are some of the best tactics and ways of using Twitter.
Wesley Faulkner:
And at the same time, I was doing a lot of my own knowledge and expansion of what social media is and how people use it and what companies do. So I went to a lot of meetings. There was a social media club in Austin. There was something called a social media breakfast that I went to. And I went to everything and anything that had to do with social and I soaked up all that knowledge. And that was basically my last three years while I was at AMD, learning about social, and I was like, let’s do it. Let’s make it real. And I switched careers again, did social media marketing for several different companies, mostly tech companies, because I still love technology. It’s not just something I did. It’s something that I was really passionate about. So I did social for these companies and really got invested in the products that I worked on and just shared my passion as part of the strategy.
Wesley Faulkner:
A friend of mine, who I used to go to the same social media club meetings with, was at the head of global social media and influencer programs and IBM for IBM Systems. And she said, “We’re doing this thing, this newfangled thing, called developer relations. Have you heard of it?” I’m like, “No.” But basically, “It’s being really outgoing, and personable, and technical, and representing the company. And I think with your social media marketing background and your technical background, that would be a good fit for you.” And I was like, “Yeah, that sounds exactly like me.” And so that was my first job in developer relations, was being a developer advocate for IBM.
Wesley Faulkner:
And at the time, IBM, actually at the time, but still, IBM was kind of like a stodgy old brand that people didn’t really know how it was relevant for their life or how anyone should pay attention to them. And so the thing that I was tasked to do was just go out and just mingle. Going to the communities saying, “Oh, you know IBM does this. IBM also does this. Or IBM produces this software. Did you know that it can help you with this?” So just finding opportunities to talk about it in a way that was natural and not overbearing and not super markety, was kind of my role. Since I was the first in the job, I kind of architected that role for IBM. So I was learning how to do it while I was doing it from other people and then trying to internally evangelize why this was a thing.
Wesley Faulkner:
So almost every week, every other week, every month, I was not only creating the role, but defending the role and saying why it was so awesome and then talking about here are best practices. And kind of found my tribe because I found the community of people who are already doing it, talking to them, realizing all the different ways that DevRel can really impact a company and how it should work. And it turned out that DevRel was not a good fit for IBM because of its structured nature. It wasn’t one where you can just make change. And so I moved to several different companies, doing a combination of developer relations as an advocate and doing developer relations as a technical community manager. So one is out speaking and one is out gathering. And so my current role is I’m head of community at a database company called SingleStore. And so that is my journey.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And I’m going to take one minute to just take this all in. That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m fascinated about the journey and all of the ways in which you sort of pivoted bit by bit and followed your instinct. I can’t imagine that it’s been easy for you every time you move into a different direction that really feels like a departure from your previous role. In a keynote that you gave last year, you very aptly explained all of the ways in which you shifted identities in your life as saying, “Wesley 1.0, 1.1.” And so I’d like to know, is there anything that helped you in making these choices?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes. Let’s go back to when I was at AMD and I switched over to doing social media marketing. That was a very different environment, different rule set, different cohort of people that you moved through a career with. And I would say that the most stark and obvious person that helped me make that transition was my partner, my girlfriend at the time, and now my wife, where I was like, “Hey, I think this is interesting and I think I want to do it.” And she said, “Okay, do it.” It was just so effortless to her to just say just to follow what I was passionate about.
Wesley Faulkner:
And one thing I want to highlight about each one of those transitions is that I was almost preparing for each transition from the previous role. And that with technology these days, it’s not something that I planned for, but something that was invented along the way. Social media marketing wasn’t really a thing when I was going to school. Developer relations wasn’t a thing when I was doing social media marketing. And it’s a continual learning and growing towards the things that I’m passionate about, not a means to an end. So I wasn’t doing these things because I wanted to get those jobs. I was doing these things because I wanted to do these things. And so in a way, it’s less that I adapted to each role and more that each role was created to catch up to what path I was already on. So it was a transition in terms of mindset from knowledge and past experiences about how things were done. And I moved into a reliance on my own self instinct and moral compass and passion to how things should be. So I think that’s kind of been my journey of seeing the world as a whole, as a total, and just trying to manifest the thing or the job or the environment that I want to be part of.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m glad that you said the word passion, because the one thing I can tell you for sure that I picked up on about your path and your personality, I would guess if you ever do work on your core values, that passion would come up as one of your leading values. And I’m sure that it is a major help in making transitions, in sustaining a momentum even when things can feel difficult because it’s not easy to switch roles, especially when things are brand new.
Wesley Faulkner:
And we haven’t talked about it yet, but I’m neurodivergent.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was about to come to that. Yes, please explain this.
Wesley Faulkner:
I have dyslexia and I have also have ADHD. And there are some traits as I’ve become older and done more research. And it’s really hard to be motivated when you have ADHD if you’re not doing something you’re passionate about or something that interests you. And so I couldn’t ignore or sidestep how I got here without realizing that is a trait of something that’s innate within me that has also been a driving force to move me in this direction. Another trait of ADHD is a sense of justice and making sure that things are right. And I can’t say that it’s independent of being ADHD. I don’t like to say it’s something I have. It’s something that’s part of me. And I don’t think you can unwind one trait or aspect without really mentioning the other.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much for bringing this up. So one of the things that caught my eye when I saw your profile and watched the keynote is how you have become outspoken in explaining your journey in life as someone who didn’t know what was wrong, what felt wrong for a number of years. And I have found it incredibly interesting to see a couple of the other places where you were interviewed with other people who are neurodivergent. Our society is starting to talk about this. So I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about how you chose to become outspoken and to talk about it publicly.
Wesley Faulkner:
So I wasn’t diagnosed until I was a sophomore in college. And so everything leading up to that, I had no idea about dyslexia or ADHD or any of that stuff. So growing up, if I didn’t understand something or I approached a problem differently than other people, I would be called weird, strange, stupid, some really hurtful things where it went beyond one incident, but became one of those things where people who were in authority or people who had a lot of sway were saying these things about me. And as a kid hearing this from grownups, it’s hard to say that I don’t have any words or even leg to stand on to defend myself so what they’re saying must be right. And when I look at my peers, and raise your hand if you think this is the answer, raise your hand if you think B is the answer, and I would always think of something else that didn’t really fit the box.
Wesley Faulkner:
For instance, they say if one crow flies away and then others follow, what are the reasons? One, the crow’s scared. Two, the crow’s scared and the other crows are following it. Three, all the crows are scared, but one just takes off before the other. All of these possibilities and I have to choose one. I was like, any of those are valid so I don’t know the answer. How would I know the answer? I’m not there. I didn’t see what happened. And so I would really, in some ways, overthink or be able to think of the possibilities of all of the different ways that any of those could be the answer. But for other people, it seemed to come easier for them and they were like, “Oh, I know the answer.” I still don’t know the answer, by the way. That type of thought process where people were like, “Whoa, you’re just weird.”
Wesley Faulkner:
So one of those things where it’s later in life where it becomes an asset, but when you’re young and basically the thing that limits or dictates your success is how much you blend in and not how much you stand out, it was a real detriment to me to be othered. And also, I’m Black, I’m in the United States, which has not been necessarily a good thing. And so it was another aspect of being othered, that I was already othered. And also, both my parents are immigrants, which means I’m a first generation American. And so their cultures, their routines, their habits, I also didn’t fit in. So there’s a lot of ways in which I was just the weird kid. And I always felt like I was going to be the weird kid. And my struggle for acceptance meant actually really paying attention to others. So both indications that I’m doing something wrong but also ways that I can mimic what they’re doing to try to be accepted was a big, big mental burden on me.
Wesley Faulkner:
So going forward to the original question about how that’s shaped me and changed me, and this evolution of myself has been kind of a releasing of that stress or that shame of being who I am. And the process of being able to shed that and transition over has shaped me in the point of where I’ve moved to a place of self-acceptance, where I went into leaning into the things that I’m good at, has helped me transition into really having the confidence to rely on the thing that makes me different and hang my shingle on that rather than spending the mental energy to try to prop up all the ways and all the things that I don’t do well.
Wesley Faulkner:
And in 2020, I was fired for my job. Let’s just call it what it is. And I was in an abusive situation at work where I was continuously gaslit. And so a lot of the things that had happened in my childhood in terms of being told I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I can’t believe that you made it this far, really landed like a brick. And so 2020 was a really hard time for me where just lost my job, there’s a global pandemic, there is a renewed trauma of the racial injustice in this country by the passing or murder of George Floyd, the general outcry from regular people and then the foe support from corporations who say that racial justice is something that they champion in their companies, and seeing a message from the company that had just fired me after severely being, let’s say, abused by this company, sparked something in me and put me on a path of reading and learning to separate about what traits are me and what responsibilities society has in supporting me and what companies, according to their own structures and what they say they champion, what they’re required to do to fulfill their own mandate.
Wesley Faulkner:
And learning the differences between who I am and what I am and the differences of what society and what systems are in place and how it’s endemic and nothing that I can do or have done has put me in this situation, it just was before I was there, and how my being is almost a front to the situation because it’s not made for me. Both from a neurodiversity standpoint and for a racial standpoint and a sense of political equity standpoint, it was not made for me to be in it. And so the struggles that I have aren’t necessarily because of who I am, it is because of the way the system was created and who it was created for.
Wesley Faulkner:
And I actually think I might have lost the thread of the question so I kind of got off. So hopefully I answered it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s okay because I really appreciate you coming to that point. So first I want to say I’m very, very touched about the openness, the vulnerability and the honesty that you bring to the table. And that’s what I had liked so much in the other interviews I had seen of you. And I feel personally so connected when you talk about that shame of not feeling good enough and being put in situations where people around you are assigning you a label of not good enough, not this, not that and how painful that is, especially when it retriggers something that comes back from childhood.
Anne Muhlethaler:
There’s one thing about that keynote that I … So just for the people who haven’t watched it who are listening to us, we’ll get to talk about it a little bit more. But one of the essential elements that you repeated many times is community shapes us, shapes who we are, helps shape our identity, or I guess in a way, shapes the ways in which we feel that we don’t belong. And I remember one particular moment where you talked about walking away when you realize that the community is also, you didn’t use the word toxic, but I will, when you find yourself in an environment that you can step away from to get yourself within a different space that can support you. Am I getting it right that this is something that you are now wanting to express to people in your advocacy?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. I think there’s a lot of moral or situational environments that people find themselves in that there is an unwritten social contract that keeps them there. And I want to help free up people from being obligated to stay in toxic environments, relationships, families where there is an overwhelming amount of harm to them or to their mental health or their wellbeing. One example personally is that my father was very mentally abusive to me and so I left that relationship. I am estranged from my dad and in a way that makes it so that I feel that severing that relationship almost similar to the construct of he’s not that way because of me, he is that way because of him and that I do not fit in in the structure that he’s created in terms of how I can be myself and be accepted. So I think I talked about it in that talk, about I’m not a “man’s man.” I don’t do all the masculine stuff that people expect or society expects of me and so I don’t feel like I can fit into his structure of what’s acceptable.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow. That’s-
Wesley Faulkner:
What’s acceptable?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow, that’s a big deal. I really appreciated that you explained that actually. Because from the outset, there are so many things that we don’t know when we see someone walking on stage and talking about community and it’s very daring to come back and just to remember the community is also our nuclear family, where we grew up, where we get a sense of what we’re allowed to do and not allowed to do.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was actually fascinated that you were able to extract yourself from this situation and follow your dream. But then again, your passionate, so I guess that you have the inner drive to go towards what you feel is right for you.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes and I think the experience of trying is also something that I like doing, regardless of success, or regardless of when I say success, I mean the external, outwardly appearance of success to other people. The journey is part of the process. I know that’s so cliche. But I’ve been able to do things that people don’t understand and fail at them and so when I have conversations about those same things like running for office, for instance, I have a really good intimate understanding of the subject, even if I wasn’t “successful” because of understanding and really embodying the process, where it’s like in my bones and not something I read, but something I experienced. And so that experience itself is so useful for me.
Wesley Faulkner:
It’s so… It’s part of me and I like having that integration of different experiences and it being in my bones and my soul, so that I can draw upon that knowledge, sometimes reactionary or reflective, but also it’s something that’s just integrated into every approach, like bringing and drawing all of my approaches from these different domains, because I was able to kind of like try these things, not necessarily have them be my career or even a hobby, be able to just experience and inhabit these things as if I’ve watched a whole bunch of movies and now I known Kung Fu. No, it’s more like…
Anne Muhlethaler:
That would be fun.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes, that would be fun but it’s more of like going to a karate class, being in a tournament, losing a tournament, and then understanding what is the lead up to that and what is the experience like and what is the adrenaline feel like to be on a stage or in competition in front of a lot of people? The karate thing is I just made that up, so don’t look.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome.
Wesley Faulkner:
That’s just an example of like, just doing something. Here’s an example. I learned as a kid that someone told me, I don’t even know if this is true. They said only 10% of the world’s population can lift their own body weight. Like, whoa. I want to be part of the 10%. And I did it. Or, only so many percentage of people can do 20 pushups. And I was like, oh, I can do that. Just finding myself in these little categories where I figure out that those were all fitness challenges, but there’s also experiences like jumping out of a plane and parachuting that people just don’t do and I love feeling like I can gather all these different experiences and just enjoy them.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s really wonderful. I really appreciated the way that you talked about embodiment. So you go through the step of trying. You go and experience, then you integrate the experience, and so once it’s part of you are able to pull on that whenever it becomes useful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think that this speaks to the polymath in you. Right? It feels like this is something that you’ve learned how to find joy from. I was going to say success, but I don’t mean outward success. Just find your way through things, because you are able to tap into all of who you are, rather than pushing bits of you away. That speaks to me a lot.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So you did mention, in passing, that you ran for city council. Can you please tell us that story because I am very, very keen to hear it.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes. I don’t want it to come off as though I have an idea and then I do them, just like randomly. Like, what is it Tuesday? Let me run for office.
Anne Muhlethaler:
No, I’m sorry. I hope that’s not how I said this stuff. I’m sorry.
Wesley Faulkner:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just, I do so many different things and I just don’t want to seem like I’m a split brain person that can’t decide on one thing. It’s more like I’m a base and, so I let possibilities happen, but I do do my due diligence.
Wesley Faulkner:
So in 2013, I did this program called Leadership Austin. So in the seventies, there was a lot of Leadership X and just fill in the X with a city, a metropolitan city; Leadership Miami, Leadership New York, Leadership Whatever. These groups were made by the Chamber of Commerce of these respective cities to gather, influence, and help shape leaders in these areas. And so when the Chamber of Commerce wanted to push through an idea, they would have a Rolodex of people who are influencers, who are in places of power, that they could reach out to and help lobby for whatever their initiative is to help that actually become a reality.
Wesley Faulkner:
The Leadership Austin chapter splintered away from the Chamber of Commerce in Austin and just became a leadership training program for the city, where it’s 10 months, where it’s a very extensive leadership program where they accept only 60 people a year from the entire city, from different professions, different groups that they have already demonstrated leadership.
Wesley Faulkner:
I joined this group. I applied. Got in. Met a lot of people who were lawyers, or nonprofits, or teachers, who did so many different things, that we all learned together, not just how to be a leader, but a leader of leaders, which is also a very unique skill. When you’re in a room full of people who want to take the reins and do their own thing, being able to focus that group was something that I learned and that was where I got exposure to understanding that the legacy, or the alumni of this group, a lot of them were city council people and that it was made known early that this was a possibility because of the people who have gone through the program and the amount of influence that they have created and the amount of support that was almost inherent from going through the program.
Wesley Faulkner:
So when I ran for the 2016 election, there was a series of economic changes. If you’re familiar with Austin, it’s almost like another tech hub, like San Francisco.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I’m familiar with it. It’s very hyped up at the moment. I know lots of people have moved there even from New York, from LA. It’s a great lifestyle,
Wesley Faulkner:
Great lifestyle. Great place to raise a family. It’s still was economically obtainable to own a home at that time, but becoming less so. And people were being pushed out of the city center where a lot of these tech companies are building their headquarters, or closer to the outskirts of the city because of home prices, and also traffic was becoming really, really bad in the city.
Wesley Faulkner:
The representative in my district, which was District Two, didn’t seem to really too concerned with the flagship or the banner on Austin being a really great place and the difference between the tagline and in our specific community, how it was not very equitable because this boom was not reaching everyone everywhere.
Wesley Faulkner:
So, I wanted to run for office because of my roots in the tech community and also my roots in my own community and seeing the differences and understanding how the way things were didn’t have to be that way and how policies were just really focused on the top end, bringing these big companies with these masses amount of budget to build headquarters and to say that we’re really going all in on tech.
Wesley Faulkner:
But the policies were bringing people into the city center, these companies, by giving them massive tax breaks, which more people were moving to Austin, but the taxes were still going up. So, we were having the expanding tax base, with an extended tax bill, and it kept going in that direction where we’re amassing more money that we’re then just handing over to corporations and then that cycle will just keep going.
Wesley Faulkner:
I wanted to try to change things, to make sure that people who were in the city, could take advantage and not just be, I guess, just resources for these massive tech companies. I love tech. I mentioned that before, but I think that there’s always better ways of doing things.
Wesley Faulkner:
Austin’s very attractive. We didn’t need subsidies to bring companies in, so I wanted to end those. Also, moving headquarters from city center to other places, if we were going to give some subsidies, let’s help them move to not downtown. All these trucks and cars are moving are driving down downtown at the beginning of the day, and then leaving at the end of the day, which causes massive, massive pile-ups, accidents, and just delays and pollution.
Wesley Faulkner:
If we had all of these hubs, these headquarters around the city, then people can live next to where they work and they wouldn’t have to all go to the same place and so we would be able to have these neighborhoods, these restaurants, these retail chains, around these new headquarters, around the city, be able to take part, even if they weren’t directly in tech, they would be influenced by the people who lived in the area and the type of people being able to patronize these businesses that were in their little neighborhoods and reduce traffic, increase the wealth disbursement around the city and that was basically my platform. Let’s make Austin for everyone and not just Austin for these people who have all this money to spend because they’re in tech.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much for talking me through this. It sounds like a problem I would imagine a lot of other cities around the world are having, when they are trying to attract businesses and the difficulties that comes with money and gentrification and stuff like that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How was the experience of running and how was the experience even at that local level of politics for you?
Wesley Faulkner:
I mentioned before that, I don’t necessarily think like everyone else.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Which is great. That’s why we’re talking.
Wesley Faulkner:
So Texas is notorious for being a red state and Austin is notorious for being…
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh really?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I kidding.
Wesley Faulkner:
It’s a big secret. I don’t know if I’m breaking news here. So when the city council is a non let’s say, party race, you could be…
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. So you don’t need to be a Republican or a Democrat and you don’t need to identify and it’s not listed on the ballot or anything. So I was, when I lived in Texas, a registered Republican. The reason for that is because I wanted to, in order to vote in primaries, you can only vote in the primary that you’re registered under and I didn’t like a majority of Republicans and so I registered as a Republican, so I can vote in the primaries to help eliminate those who I thought was not good and because to me, it made sense. It doesn’t matter.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s so smart. That’s so smart. Love how you think.
Wesley Faulkner:
If everyone did this, then we would have better Republicans running, at least. If Republican is going to win anyway, I would like to choose the best of the worst anyway. And so when I ran, me being registered as Republican, was really bad. They didn’t like it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh yeah.
Wesley Faulkner:
And no one bought my explanation. They said, oh, I’m just making this up because I got “caught” and so that was really hard.
Wesley Faulkner:
I also learned how much of state politics played in the city race. There were a lot of city positions that were influenced by money and people who were in the state legislature, because it was seen as a staging ground, breeding ground, or the beginning of where someone could graduate up to and so there’s money poured down and influence poured down on these races, to help with kind of like shaping people and races so that they can get the people they want and it’s seen as a favor to be paid back, as they progress through their career. And so me being outside that influence made it really hard for me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Wesley Faulkner:
… To do things because of the support of the incumbent. I was running against an incumbent, which is also not the smartest thing, but I was running against incumbent because I thought I could do a better job.
Wesley Faulkner:
I learned a lot about the process and how nasty it can get and how the system, where they make it so when you do these town forums that I think you see the debates, the national debates where people go after their opponent. But in the city races, you’re not supposed to address your opponent at all. You can only talk about your own record and so you can’t really contrast directly. And so following rules, it made it harder for me to really say what I would do different or why I was better than my opponent, because I couldn’t really use my opponent’s name in these opening speeches or addressing these questions, which made it really hard.
Wesley Faulkner:
I learned a lot about how the machine actually works and why it’s so hard because of the way that the financing and elections work. At the time, I don’t know if it’s changed since then, you couldn’t raise money unless you had a treasurer and you couldn’t spend your own money unless you had a treasurer, which means you have to get a treasurer on board that you can’t pay, because you don’t have a treasurer and you can’t raise money to hire a treasurer or get pledges for money to hire a treasurer because you don’t have a treasurer. It is just one of those things. But if you’re a candidate, you’re also a known quantity that you already have had a treasurer, so you could raise money before your opponent because where the declaration of where you can say that you’re an actual candidate is opposing an existing candidate, the deadline was a lot further on so that anyone who’s an incumbent has months of lead time in both raising money, because they’re mathematically or like able to, because of the time difference.
Wesley Faulkner:
The hard part of getting started as a candidate, finding someone who is willing to be on the hook for any inconsistencies of money dealing with politics, for no money initially, and no understanding or promise of how much money that they would get paid. And so it made it really hard just to get started and I didn’t have that understanding before actually doing it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, listen, I really appreciate you. First of all, congratulations for trying because a lot of us have vision and most people I know, I mean, everyone I know, has a lot of things to say about how government runs things or cities are run, countries, et cetera, et cetera and we don’t necessarily do that much.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think it’s quite wonderful to see someone who decided to actually act according to your vision and your values and to try and do something different. Would you ever consider doing that again in the future? I wonder?
Wesley Faulkner:
Probably not. It was really hard on my family because I did have a full-time job. It was me and my treasurer. I never, all the support that I thought I had, kind of like people didn’t want to be involved. So in the tech community, no one wanted to publicly support me because I was running against an incumbent and they didn’t want to anger the incumbent or have their name associated. So all these friends that I had, they didn’t want to take a chance on me. People would say, “Hey, let me know if you need anything.” “Hey, I need something.” “Oh, no, I’m busy.” It’s just like…
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, wow.
Wesley Faulkner:
All those promises were, a lot of them were empty and so in the morning before work, I would do all my reading. I would read all the news, all the local news, and then watch some back recordings of City Council meetings, where my opponent was talking and what referendums that they voted for didn’t vote for and figure out exactly where their stance on things.
Wesley Faulkner:
Here, all the constituents, I would get approached all the time from people from like the bicycle lobby to the tech lobby or to the chamber lobby of, “Hey, we’d like to interview you to see if you’re one of the candidates we would endorse.” And so I’d have to fill out these giant forms these questionnaires about my stance on different issues.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Wesley Faulkner:
I did a lot of that in the mornings and then do my job in the day and maybe take a break to go to a forum that was being held by either the official debates, or a forum held by any political group that were doing debates and wanted to talk to the candidates, kind of a things and I would do those. Then at night I would work with different contractors for different things.
Wesley Faulkner:
I paid someone for my logo. I paid someone to help design my website. I paid to have some copy editing done. I would work with those people that would have to pay and then also do outreach for fundraising, which is a big chunk of it because that was keeping me going. Then I would do my own social ads, do my own lawn signs and then do my own door knocking, which also took a lot of time to walk the neighborhoods and knock on doors, had some t-shirts made and stuff like that and passing out signs and working with the printers. It sucked up a ton of time. Keep in mind that this was something that I was close to, this is something I was passionate about, and this is something I actually had some concrete ideas of how to change.
Wesley Faulkner:
If there is a something that would be something I’m really passionate about and something, I feel like I can actually make a difference and I had the support, and I had the finances, and I was able to be able to take the lessons that I learned and incorporate for those things that I didn’t know about, maybe. But it is a big endeavor, it’s not something that you just sign in and turn in some forms, and then it’s done.
Wesley Faulkner:
Learning also that people don’t care about the same things you care about and know the same things you know about. I would knock on doors and people would know that there was an election and some people wouldn’t know there was an election. Some people would know what district they’re in. Some people would not. Some people have never heard of the City Council or what they did or all the ways that my opponent had neglected them because they have jobs. They have lives. They wake up, they go to work, they kick care of their family and they do it all over again and politics is not front and center into necessarily the thing that they are aware of and crossing that Rubicon of getting people to understand how it affects them, have them understand that they have a voice and that they should care about something and then motivate them to go through all of the steps, which Texas is notorious for making it hard for people to vote.
Wesley Faulkner:
Go through all those steps and then show up and make time in their day, or to take time off their jobs to do this thing, where they don’t then understand the ripple effects of what their impact actually did. It was very, very hard and I now understand that there’s a lot of pre-work that probably would need to be done before really running for office to make sure that there is a ground swell of people who actually are educated and learn and know about the stuff to participate.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You mentioned that you are married. You have kids as well, right?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes. I have a son who’s nine and a daughter who is six.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, okay. Fantastic. So I wonder, do you think that their generation, I know they’re tiny, but do you think they’re going to see things any differently than we do?
Wesley Faulkner:
Oh, they already do. Yeah. When we were kids, I’m sure we had television and we had movies and we would think that the people who got on television and who were in movies, it was a privileged position that they had to work towards, they had to be selected for, and something that they would have to… It’s not super easy.
Wesley Faulkner:
My kids don’t have that feeling because they see YouTube and they’re like, “Well, let’s just make a YouTube video and just put it out there.” So in terms of the controllers of who gets on the radio, or who gets on television, they feel that they have that power because I can play something that they recorded as cute song through our speakers. That is the same speakers that play music, so it seems as if the medium is open for everyone. The spectrum is wider and more welcoming in some ways.
Wesley Faulkner:
Being able to watch cartoons and to watch reality and being able to distinguish the difference between the two is, through the eyes of a kid, is something that is also explaining what is real and what is not real. Because when you see a slick, high quality sci-fi movie, you know that’s not real. But then we’re also in the age where you see a news report, or you see a headline and you have to be able to say, “Okay, let’s think about that. Could that be fake?” That is the difference between the burden that I think my parents had, to what I have as a parent, to be able to tell my kids that, “Okay, you’re watching this YouTube thing. You see that they’re talking about this product a lot. You realize this is product placement. This is an ad. They don’t genuinely believe all this stuff.”
Wesley Faulkner:
So, with this accessibility, it’s great, but also this caveat of skeptability that they have to basically, they need to learn to question everything, which is, they don’t have the comfort of knowing that the world is what they see and that they must be vigilant to really not let their guard down to separate reality and the world and they’re not the same.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks. I’m glad I went that way. I wanted to talk about communication and actually I was wondering about how you approach parenting as someone who is neurodivergent, and also how you explain this to your children. I’d love for you to talk us through as well and this is, I know I’m piling on the question here, how you have learned to express different ways in which you can, and would like to be communicated to, in order to address some of the ways in which you process information.
Wesley Faulkner:
Wow,
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sorry. Excuse me. I knew it was a big one. I’m like, I know I’m told a lot. I’m sorry.
Wesley Faulkner:
No worries. One thing is that I should explain that my partner is neuro typical and is an amazing parent and I do my best to follow her lead. I think that she sees things I don’t, just because our kids are, kind of feels like they’re both, they’re all different. It feels like they’re truly a part of us and so there’s some ways that I can really connect with my kids that she can’t, and there’s ways that she definitely sees things and understands what they’re going through that I just don’t.
Wesley Faulkner:
I would say without her, it would be really hard to parent in general. You know, I bring this up from like, knowing that as a parent, we kind of draw on our own experiences as kids and our own parents are examples, whether or not they’re good examples or not. And so being able to not fall back on the things of that we were taught is really, really hard. And so, we try to counterbalance each other, but I have to say that she has, I would like to say an instinct for this, but she’s also extremely, extremely smart. One of the smartest people that I’ve ever met. She has two Master’s degrees and a Doctorate.
Wesley Faulkner:
If I was with anyone else, I don’t know if I could have a person help with arbitrating my perception, with my kids’ realities too, and being able to bridge and have a conversation with someone who has the vocabulary to explain this. She is truly the best partner in terms of parenting. With my kids, I am able to sometimes see things that they see too, and able to explain some things or show them things that they haven’t seen or noticed. I think that the way that I observe things, allows me to explain things that are nuanced from an observation standpoint of like, “Did you see that? I bet this is what’s going on.” Because I try to deconstruct how things are made like the video example that I talked about.
Wesley Faulkner:
My wife will observe an interaction with another kid, or my kids with me, and then see their face change, hear their tone change, see that their body changes and because of my neurodiversity, I may not pick up on those and then she’ll be able to set us both down and say, “Hey, how do you feel talking to our children?” And help them express and then help bridge the gap between if I sigh, it’s not a sign of frustration, it’s my own personal soothing and relaxing. Me, not able to necessarily control what I’m communicating and be able to explain that most of that communication is internal and not really meant to be external. So, it is a struggle and it’s hard, but it’s one that would be impossible without my partner.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much for talking me through that. Let’s go back to part two of my super long, hard question that made no sense earlier. It’s a leading question because I heard an interview with, I think the podcast was called Workology and you talked about some of the things you were able to work on with HR departments that were supportive of someone who is neurodivergent. Well, you can talk to me about the challenges…
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well… you can talk to you about the challenges and the things that worked and the things that didn’t. Because, as someone who was a manager for many years, I feel like I would’ve greatly benefited from hearing some of these ideas.
Wesley Faulkner:
I think we’re just getting started with how people and organizations understand, not just diversity but inclusion. And that includes the workplace and making it a space for people who are neurodivergent because, I think, accommodations, the way it’s trained or professionalized in the HR space, it usually has to do with people who have physical disabilities; visual impairment, or mobility impairment, or even some ergonomic changes that they need to make it easier for them to work. And that is an environment that’s almost onto the individual. It’s not made in relation to other people.
Wesley Faulkner:
So neurodivergent people, which I don’t want to speak for everyone, but in my experience, a lot of the accommodations that I actually require or need have to do with interfacing with other groups or other people, which requires not only a change on that other person but an organizational awareness and a duty to make sure that that is done and taken care of.
Wesley Faulkner:
And one of the changes that I required in my current role was to have goals that are in SMART format. And I forget even what the acronym means, but basically that it is simple, measurable, attainable, and able to record it, and it’s time-bound. I’m making [inaudible 01:00:01]
Anne Muhlethaler:
You did it.
Wesley Faulkner:
… up. But it’s one of those things where I need to have a defined goal that needs to be attainable, instead of… For instance, let’s take my current role: Head of Community. What is community? And community can be defined as two people in a room or the whole entire world. And so, it needs to be defined exactly of, what are the community that I am in charge of?
Wesley Faulkner:
And measurable. Can you say how many people are happy in the community? You could, with some sort of survey, but you need to understand what metric am I hitting? Is it a one to five scale, and I need to hit an average of four? Average of three? What percentage of the community needs to fill out this form for it to be representative? I don’t know. It needs to be some sort of thing that could be measurable. People click on a link; that’s measurable. Some things are easier to measure than others.
Wesley Faulkner:
And it needs to be time-bound. Is this in the quarter? Is this in a year? When do I need to really do this thing? Under what time circumstances? When will it be due? Sometimes in the past, I’ve gotten feedback such as, “You’re not where we want you to be,” or “I need you to step up your game,” or, “I need you to participate more.” These are, what I call, “subjective goals” that don’t fit in smart format. And that people, because I’m different, those subjective goals or observations have been used as a club against me where people have, “I don’t know. He’s a little off, but I don’t know why or how. And so I’ll just use, “He makes me feel weird, or he doesn’t do at his job.” And I would be able to say, “Well, look, I’ve doubled or tripled our engagement,” or, “I’ve increased our retention rate by this.” And I would have all of these numbers; by any measure, shows that I’m doing my job, and it’s successful.
Wesley Faulkner:
But then, these things would come out of left field about how I’m not doing my job, or I was too assertive or… I don’t know. These things would come up, and I’m, “What? Why is that even related?” And so, that’s why an accommodation for me is that I have goals that are in a SMART format that people need to actually write down what they expect of me, so I’m actually doing the thing that they want me to do.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so, this ask has evolved. I think one of my first asks was a screen reader and a text-to-speech program so that it can dictate my papers or write-ups or emails. And as I moved through, it was easier to meet, I guess… Or the biggest of my two conditions, I thought being dyslexic was the thing that was holding me back the most. And I’ve transitioned to realize how much ADHD has changed how I do my job, because I need to know what to do when. And in order for me to prioritize my work, I need this thing that I know that I’m working towards, something that will be rewarded or be appreciated. Because when I turn in something or do the work, and I hear, “Oh, that’s not what I expected,” or, “That’s not what I wanted,” that is a real detection for me and really takes a blow to my motivation which makes it harder to do my job. It works on multiple facets.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so, it’s something that I feel it’s not just a nice to have. It’s something, if I don’t know that I’m working towards something that is expected. And I have all these anxiety of, oh my gosh, am I doing the right thing? If I’m not tackling the right problem in the eyes of the person I’m doing it for, then that can be an issue. Going back, just if I could, little aside?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Of course.
Wesley Faulkner:
When I worked for a company that was a big competitor to Slack, I did this thing where I was really friendly to them, and we talked a bit. And then I built up a relationship with them, which relationships take time. And I understand that that’s a process. For people who are looking on the outside, they may not have understood or saw that this was a gradual ramp to an end result.
Wesley Faulkner:
Instead, they wanted this thing that was almost automatic or in and itself gave a result. And so, me and my approach to things is more like, “We need to nurture this relationship,” as opposed to, “Oh, you did something? How come they’re not your friends? Because you sent a friend request.” I know it doesn’t work that way. And I know it needs to work towards that. And that’s an example of where, towards the end, by the time I left, everything that I wanted to do was checked off. And everything in the results you were seeing was proven. But they didn’t see it at the beginning because they could not understand something that was extremely obvious to me, about what needed to happen to get there.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Well, I worked in PR communications and social media for a long time. And I want to tell you that, I feel like this is a problem that a lot of people are having. Because you have to cultivate relationships in order to get results. And yet, most larger companies, as you very well know, want to see data. They want to see results in data format. And sometimes you cannot give that, even though you are doing everything right. That said, I wanted to ask you about what it’s like to work in community now versus what it was like for you when you started. Because it must be a wild ride in terms of the evolution of what even the word “community” means. Right?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. Community, when I started was you’re on social, and you interact and let people know you’re there. And being a community manager would be, you come up with a post; you spend some time thinking about what is the thing that you want people to action, like click a link or to read an article or whatever, or to buy a product? You try to put it in a place where those people were, and then that was it. You would see it roll in. You would hear some of the feedback or comments and then roll in those changes into the next time saying, “Oh, I know people will be mad if I say this word or this person,” or, “I know that they really connect with this type of language or this type of hopeful message.”
Wesley Faulkner:
And then it graduated to you, if you want engagement, you need to have an image attached to your copy. And so, now you have to be good at Photoshop and image editing and make sure that you have a gallery of images or stock photos that you could draw upon to edit and to do everything. And then, “Oh, no, video is what’s really engaging.” And then, “Oh, the video needs to be short. And make sure that it really captures the attention, but on mute because it’s going to not play audio. So, you need to make sure that even with no audio, that your video is engaging.” And then moved into optimizing for search engines to make sure that people who were not on the property could find it. And then it moved over into buying ads and making sure that you understood your segmentation.
Wesley Faulkner:
And then it moved to type fonts. And then it moved to taking the same thing and then making sure it’s in multiple formats and that you understood the long tail. And… And… and, and, and. And so, all of these things were being piled on to the role. And so, a social media manager now is different than a social media manager back then, because of all the things that they’re required to know and do. And the role’s evolved to not only has the weight of what the skill level needs to be, but it’s also feel like it’s commoditized to the point where they think they can get anyone to do it. And so, that the pay rate has also really taken a nose-dive because they feel “Well, anyone could do TikTok, or anyone can do YouTube.” It’s almost like, if you’re a race car driver, “Anyone can drive a car.”
Wesley Faulkner:
And just because they see people doing it, they don’t understand all the skill and work that is to get to the point where, “Yeah, I did a two-minute TikTok. It took me 36 hours to do.” And they don’t…
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Wesley Faulkner:
that math.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I completely agree.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. And so, it’s changed a lot because when the accessibility of people doing this stuff and where you don’t need a huge computer or a giant facility or a record label to do this, they feel, because it is democratized in that sense, that the knowledge and expertise is also democratized. So, a community manager, “Oh, you just make a forum or whatever.” And then, “How hard could it be?” People don’t really know that it can be extremely hard to do it right. Yes, anyone can do it. But do you do it in a way that’s sustainable? That’s scalable? That really curates the people that you want to come to your community and to make sure there’s a sense of safety and care so that a rogue actor doesn’t disrupt your community?
Wesley Faulkner:
There’s a really great book called The Art of Gathering.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. By Priya Parker.
Wesley Faulkner:
Priya Parker, who I saw at South by, which is awesome. She’s amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Ooh.
Wesley Faulkner:
That really talks about, if you don’t take ownership, or you neglect a space, or you neglect an item, that you’re making someone else in the community or someone else in the environment say, “Well, this is the role of how you do X, Y, or Z; the thing that doesn’t have that attention.” So, you’re ceding power to someone else, if you don’t take that responsibility and take that benevolent care of saying, “This is a structure that’s acceptable or not.” And if you’re just doing a community, you may not know that. That all of this domain and all of the people, you’re a caretaker, you’re a facilitator. You don’t control them, but you do control the environment. And that’s something that can help get you to the conversations that you want to have.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much for explaining it like that. Because you used really important keywords for me. The word “care,” the word “benevolent.” I think that, behind that, I’m also sensing you need to have a clear intention of what kind of interactions you want to foster within that community. And recently, I became involved with a very interesting company. It’s very early days for me to support them. And it was interesting to note that they hadn’t been introduced to this idea. It’s about giving them guidelines so that they know the community uses how they can and how they should be interacting. And also what’s not going to be accepted. Right? Because I feel like it’s hard to really engage in any community if you don’t feel safe. So, I think “safety” would be, probably, another key word? Or “respect”?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes. And external cues of what’s acceptable or not, but internal policies about when things get violated, what’s going to happen and what it’s going to look like. I think the week that we’re talking, just last weekend was the Oscars. And Will Smith assaulted the person on stage, Chris Rock. And as more information’s coming out about what happened and the timeline. And then, the Academy said that they asked Will Smith to leave, and he said, no. And also, someone literally went on stage and assaulted someone, and security didn’t come out. And the host was good enough to be able to adjust and just roll with it. And is that expected of everyone? I don’t know. If every host, they have to be expected that they could be assaulted; nothing will happen to the person who assaulted them. And then they just need to continue the show like nothing happened.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so, now they have to do the hard thing of, after the fact, “All right, how are we going to punish this to show that it was something that is going to be retaliated against? Saying, “You cannot do this during our show.” But they didn’t do the pre-planning and the pre-thought to know and act, right when it happened. And that is also a form of harm and signals that you can do whatever you want, and the repercussions will come possibly at a later date.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. What I find even most shocking is the standing ovation. I find that harder to consider through everything else. But coming back to what you had said earlier about your dad being a man’s man, I feel like what we expect or tolerate from men’s behavior when it’s protecting or supporting family, wife, or country is something that I find really hard to accept as a person and something that, probably, we all need to have a conversation around. Because I was thinking, what if it had been a woman? What if a woman had shown up and gone and punched Chris Rock for her partner being attacked? Wouldn’t everyone call her crazy? Would she have gotten a standing ovation?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah, we talked when I was speaking with my dad about the societal norms made that an option for Will Smith to do. Made him so that that is a possibility. And not only that, it was the thing that he thinks that he should have done. But also, let’s talk about the societal norms that kept everyone in their seat and watched this happening. The society norms like you’re talking about: the standing ovation. That the powerful force of how society shapes us, makes that whole situation possible with the people who did the deed and the people who didn’t do anything. Because the organizers of the Academy, their thought of, well, no one would do this, was because taking for granted the societal norm saying, “Well, we’ve just said that you can’t do bad stuff. And so, no one will do bad stuff because we’ve said it,” and not putting the things in place to ensure that stuff does or does not happen.
Wesley Faulkner:
I think that lack of, going back to why did the pro fly away, and thinking of those possibilities, this is where diversity on multiple forms could have possibly maybe not prevented this from happening, but may have given the right response at the right time to at least protect some people. And some of the victims that fell that were part of this… Of course, Will Smith, Chris Rock. They both are being harmed. Chris Rock was not super innocent in this. He did make an offensive joke. He’s apologized. Will Smith has apologized. But also, think of the people who are sitting next to Will Smith, a person who just assaulted someone. And they have to sit next to them. Think of the people who work the event, who hands the trophies to the winners. They had to do this. They had to hand the trophy over to someone who they know could be dangerous.
Wesley Faulkner:
And then, he won an Oscar for King James. And no one’s talking about that movie. No one’s talking about Venus and Serena. I say, “No one,” but I just say that his actions overshadowed and harmed them, where it could be their moment to really shine and use this to uplift the work and their journey in their career. And they’re being harmed. And the Academy Awards. All these good moments that are just leaking out with Lady Gaga and Liza Minnelli, for instance. I barely saw that. It barely has a little bit of a blip of the news cycle because of this thing that he did. And it would be much better off if Will Smith removed after assaulting Chris Rock. And then, everything else that followed.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I feel particularly sad for Coda because it’s a film that’s making history as well. And hopefully, in the days to come, more attention will come to all of those highly deserving prize winners, as things settle down. But now we’ve talked about that, I’d love to hear your thoughts about what you think helps build a thriving community.
Wesley Faulkner:
Well, I mentioned the environment already. The other is a clear target objective of who’s invited. And when you talk about community, it is a collection of people with like-minded feelings, thoughts, or interests. But you also need to make sure that you draw a bright red line about who is not in the community. That is just as important as saying who is welcome, by also saying who and what behaviors are not welcome.
Wesley Faulkner:
And it’s important to make sure that, in a community, that I mentioned about rules; it’s funny how we keep coming back to that. That it’s enforced in a way that’s predictable and equitable for everyone. Because if someone is, because they have a lot of following, they have a lot of influence, that they can skirt the rules and nothing will happen to them. Then you’re making a power dynamic where it’s not participating in a way that’s most important.
Wesley Faulkner:
It’s more like gathering your own little fiat of people, that’s more important, that can circumvent these rules. So, having a set of behaviors and rules that you want to incentivize is really great. And speaking of incentives, figuring out ways to reward positive behavior. I think every community should have things that are done that really show, “Not only do we want you to do these things, but it’s highly valued.” Sometimes it’s monetary rewards. Sometimes it’s a tee shirt or stickers. But even just a shout-out, a thank you, or just clicking the like on a comment. All of these are rewards and reinforcement of positive behavior.
Wesley Faulkner:
And in order for a community to really be a community and be sticky, it’s not just people being there; it’s that people are there to interact with others who are also in the community. So, make sure that any community has a space where this interaction is actually encouraged and a place where people can do the things that make them themselves.
Wesley Faulkner:
It’s not just the thing you gather around, but the thing that makes you a person that’s important. And so, sharing these aspects that really connect us from an intimate part is where you want to make sure that people feel free to share the thing that’s outside of the group, so that people can be less homogenous, but more detailed in their presentation of themselves.
Wesley Faulkner:
And then, what you also want to do is make sure that your community is sticky. So, if you’re a sewing group, make it so that it’s an environment that you go to, not just because you want to talk about sewing, but you love talking to other people who are in the group. I think a lot of the groups that I go to, or I’m a part of, we all gather for the same reason. And sometimes it’s almost an excuse to get together. But we are there for the people, and the community gives us the space and the permission to do this on a regular basis. And I think any community should have that kind of aspect.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much for sharing. I think that there’s a lot of amazing advice for people. And I know that, right now, most brands are worried about just that. Because it’s not just about sales nowadays; it’s about, well, finally, I’m hoping, a lot of people are paying attention to loyalty and how to build it. It’s not just about how much money you can make, but the quality of the relationship, the durability of those relationship with your clients.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And we all want community with the business. I’d love to ask you: with all of the talk about how the metaverse is going to be developing and how there are different aspects or ways into community, through different or new portals, what would you like to see be the future of community-building?
Wesley Faulkner:
I mentioned that the community manager builds an environment. And when you’re talking about the metaverse, it’s actually literally building an environment for people.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Building worlds.
Wesley Faulkner:
But I think, with this open canvas, it’d be nice to allow a way for people to self-assemble and build these own environments. I mentioned that you have to come up with rules in which you say who’s in and who’s out. With an environment where you can actually really dictate who you don’t want in your environment and who you do, these communities can be self-assembling, based on shared models of rules and things that people do want and explicitly don’t want.
Wesley Faulkner:
I think these algorithms can work to bring people together who are like-minded because they’re able to articulate what their mind is. So, if I never, ever want to see a racist, homophobic, transphobic remark, ever, or be around people who have said any of these things, ever, I should be able to really outline those things and not see or not have to deal with those people who fall into the areas where I’d rather not interact with them.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so that my metaverse can be filled with people that will make it feel safe and welcoming to me. The same with other people. If they don’t ever want to see or deal with a person that crosses their red line, or is the thing that can trigger a memory… For instance, let’s say I’m scared of birds; I don’t ever want to see birds in the metaverse. That should be allowed to allow people to be able to find and create their own safe space or bubble so that they can interact with those who violate their own social contract. I think the world is a huge place. It’s a giant place. Making it smaller, in some ways, is not necessarily super limiting when we’re talking about all the different options of people that are available.
Wesley Faulkner:
And if I’m going to go into a new space that is going to be based on technology, I should be able to make it a place of my own. Because if I do want to interact with those types of people, it’s not like I’m doing something where that prevents me from doing that in the real world. It’s only in this virtual space. So, if people might say, “Well, the world’s not like that. Well, you’re going to have to have thicker skin,” or, “You have to deal with all this harassment because that’s what the world’s like; you just have to get used to it.” You don’t, if it’s something where you’re making a new space.
Wesley Faulkner:
Some of the things that really, really anger you or can cause you mental harm, you don’t need to expose yourself to that. And I would love to be able to have that option of saying, “I just can’t today. My bag of spoons is empty, and I don’t want to give out to anyone else. And so, I’m going to go to a place where I know it will be enriching to my life and not send me in a deep depression spiral.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m so happy that you went down this road because first of all, that’s a metaverse that totally feels engaging to me. So, I think it’s a really great way for people to envisage what it could mean for each of us to find a space that is essentially what we talked about earlier: stepping into communities that do foster a sense of wanting to support who is with them; a way of feeling held or feeling seen. And making that choice. At least having the possibility, some part of the day, to make that choice, to feel supported, and that the people near you want to see you thrive.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. And handing over the control to the individual instead of the organization. I might be in a lot of white spaces a lot. And maybe I want to go to metaverse saying, “No white people.” It sounds racist, but it’s just like, “I just need a lot of Black people right now.” Let’s put it in the positive. “I just need to have that experience in that community. And so, I just want to be in a space where I don’t feel like I stick out so much.” And that can be the therapeutic. Let’s say I’m super racist. Let’s say that. And I don’t want to see any Black people. Sure, have your virtual space where you can do that. And maybe that’s healthy. Maybe that’s not healthy. But I’m going to leave it up to the person to experience the world in the way that they want to, because it’s a virtual world. The rules do not have to apply.
Wesley Faulkner:
And it can be in a way that makes people be where they want to be. And also, let’s say I just came out of a super religious environment, and I feel like I’m recovering from this. And I don’t want to see anyone who is affiliated with any religion, ever. It doesn’t have to be something that is permanent. It could be a filter. It could be a setting that you turn on, turn off as you need it, depending on your day or your hour. It doesn’t have to be a permanent flag. But if it’s a world that you want to see, of your own making, I think inherently, whatever makes you feel safe and welcome and feel good is what we need.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. To recharge ourselves. I liked your bag of spoons metaphor. So before I go to my closing questions, I wanted to ask you about your affiliation with South by Southwest, because I was supposed to go a few years ago. I had to cancel for another trip. And then I moved back to Europe and left corporate world. And so, I have never had the opportunity to go. And it does sound kind of fabulous. Do you mind telling us about how you became involved and what it’s like? And how was it this year?
Wesley Faulkner:
Oh, it was great this year.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, it sounded good.
Wesley Faulkner:
Oh. Yeah. So good to be back because, doubly so, there wasn’t a South by the last three years. And also, I moved away from Austin, so coming back to South by was also coming home to me, in a way. I’ve been to every South by, since 2008, that was-
Wesley Faulkner:
… home to me in a way. I’ve been to every South By since 2008. That was when I was with AMD, and that was my exposure to meeting people who are in the social media space. And that’s actually why I really latched onto it because I really loved the left brain, right brain interaction with people there. And back then, it was extremely intimate not only with the person on stage giving a keynote or a talk, but they would come down and talk to us forever and while the other person talked, to where we would go in a hallway. And people who were movers and shakers and the space would just walk down the hall and you can just say hi to them and sit down on the corner and just have a really deep conversation.
Wesley Faulkner:
The people I’ve met there, it felt like it was a big giant beacon of the value system almost signaling, and the people who were attracted to that were all birds of the same feather. And so I felt like I met a lot of people who felt the same way that I did, who saw the world the way that I did, who were making bold changes the way that I thought should happen. And we were all just regular people, and some created technologies, some made empires since then and some people have done some colossal failures in terms of their persona non grata, but it was like we’re all together.
Wesley Faulkner:
And getting the nuance of we’re here for an agenda, which were the sessions, but then there was all this other space that had no agenda at all. And we just kind of expanded to really have those deep connections where we were talking to each other, but skipping a whole bunch of steps, no small talk, no getting to know you. I’ve seen you online. I kind of know all that stuff. Let’s continue from there. Whew, in that experience where you can do that in a hallway, you can do that at a party, you can do that on the street, you can do that at restaurant, you can do that everywhere you are while you’re at South By. It just is so unique because it’s multi day. It’s not one day. It’s not two days. It’s almost a whole week or a week plus depending on what you’re going to do. And so you can have that same experience even with that same person multiple times throughout that engagement.
Wesley Faulkner:
So South By, I’ve never been to a place like it. I’ve never had experiences like it. And it’s a lot bigger than where it started. And right when it started getting bigger in 2010, I wrote a blog post about … I called it the good, the bad, the ugly, evaluating South By about how it’s changed and what I’ve gotten from it and how they could do better and how they could really accommodate more people and stuff like that. And at that time, once again, the people of the festival, you can run into them, talk to them, chit chat. They read this article, sent it to Hugh Forrest, who was the head of Interactive at the time. And he’s like, “Hey, if you have so much to say, how about you do it from the inside?” And he asked me to be part of the advisory board.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yeah. And so I’ve been helping to shape panels and part of the conference since then. This year I was a judge for the innovation awards. So everyone gets a job to help with determining who gets in and who gets out, who doesn’t get in of South By. And so that was my role this year.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so that’s how I got involved. And that’s why I keep going, because not only do … The people who get accepted are so high quality and so high caliber that it also … It’s not the people whose names you necessarily know or the concepts that you’re super familiar with, and being able to be exposed to those things is so amazing.
Wesley Faulkner:
I went to a panel about diversity, equity, inclusion without the D and the I, so it was only about equity. And I’ve never been to a panel just about equity. And so hearing that and just focusing on that narrow target was amazing. I went to one that was about inclusion, but the people who were on the panel were someone who, who was sex trafficked, someone who was a refugee, and someone who was previously incarcerated. And when I hear about inclusion, that’s usually not who comes up, those people on the stage.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so that is the kind of thing where it’s like, oh my gosh, I am really glad that I came here. And at the same time I saw Lizzo on stage, which is awesome, but big names in a place where they’re crying, they’re getting really personal about their journey, their experience, and just people that I think I know I see aspects that I didn’t see, and things that I thought I knew, I see a different dimension or a different side that I didn’t even contemplate until I got there. I just love South By. This year, it was about a third of the size that it was in 2019 when I went, but it was every bit of South By [inaudible 01:32:11] that all of the makings that make it such a great festival is still in the DNA, and it’s still a joy and a delight.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. I hope that I’ll make it next year. Who knows?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes. And you should reach out to me, and we’ll meet up.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Absolutely. That’d be awesome. So before I come to my closing questions, you’ve come to know that the podcast is like me standing, or, let’s say, rather, working at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. And I would love to know, especially in … Well, you have a lot of meta awareness, and so I’m guessing that having heard so much wisdom from you, you must have some interesting tactics or tools to keep balanced or to find yourself more grounded when things are difficult. Anything that you can share with our audience about what helps you in feeling more present?
Wesley Faulkner:
Well, I do a lot of reading. You mentioned meta, and I do study this thing called metacognition, so thinking about how people think. And several books have helped me on that journey. One is called You Can Change Other People, is a really great book. And part of it is being able to empathize with a, quote, unquote opposing party or person who’s on the other side. And I shouldn’t say empathize, but just really relate to their position and understand, if you can even imagine how their actions came to be, whether it’s valid or not, just think of a way to justify what they’re doing, that in itself allows for a little of understanding, which makes things able to be released on my end. By saying that they’re evil or just putting someone who is one dimensional, making them one-dimensional, when people have different facets and different reasons and have their own different struggle. That’s one thing.
Wesley Faulkner:
I also like to put things in context. Even when I have a bad day, think of like, how are things this week? How are things this year? How are things this month? How are things in my whole life journey, when I think about the way things were when I grew up and my childhood? Being able to put things in perspective really helps me stay present and grounded and not spiral down into catastrophe. And I know I said community a lot, but seriously, it’s part of it, being surrounded with people who will gas me up and lift me up and just tell me how amazing I am, or just to point out the things that I take for granted because they are easy to me to think of, or even my journey, people just able to see me for, for me.
Wesley Faulkner:
And another way that I don’t see myself, which is also … It just really helps me. Just having that well and being able to dip into it when I need to is really good for me. And the innocence of my kids is also really great. They’re so creative, and they’re at the age when they can actually teach me things that I am not exposed to or say something, because when they’re young, I feel like I’m giving, giving, giving, which is not bad. But it’s when they’re able to give back, and just say, okay, tell me more about this. Just hearing and seeing the world through their eyes and their perspective is also something that’s really, really good.
Wesley Faulkner:
And of course, coming home to my partner, she’s an amazing woman. And having her in my life, just like back when she gave me the boost of being able to just change careers, she does that all the time. She’s able to just give me permission to be me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s really wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. So before I give you some of my favorite questions, is there anything that we didn’t cover or anything that you wanted to say that I didn’t bring you to in the last hour and a half or more that we’ve been talking already?
Wesley Faulkner:
We’ve talked about the future. We’ve talked about the metaverse. We’ve talked about my work and my work journey. I would love to be able to use this as a forum, if I could, to talk about a way of being inclusive in the work space, specifically around rigid structures of expectations, both either in a job description or the way that the process is done. One thing that I feel that a lot of companies could benefit from is to decouple process and outcome and to foster an environment where people can approach a problem in a myriad of different ways, but just measure the outcome. I’ve seen where companies feel like you have to do a presentation, then you have to do buy in, and then you have to do some pre-research, and then you can do the thing, which it makes sense. It does make sense. But also make it so that people can say, well, let’s do something, then measure it, then see the impact, and then determine whether it was worth doing, so that experimentation attitude.
Wesley Faulkner:
Also measure effort, not just outcome. How hard someone works may produce no really measurable impact to the bottom line. But doing that work in and of itself is something that is valuable, and maybe you know now now know 20,000 ways not to get to that end results, which kind of can still be fed into the process to limit your downside and help increase your upside by doing things that don’t necessarily work and make that acceptable. I think if you only measure the success and not the effort, you make an environment where people try to hide the things that are not successful and bury that experience that is worth something, because learning from mistakes is something that can help improve outcomes as well. And just tweaking numbers or only showing the good side of things really makes it a culture of where you’re hiding all the great learning, even if it is bad. So the basis of that is psychological safety and just an expansion of that, of being open and having open discussions for things that may not be flattering to an individual.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Experimentation, I think, is a big keyword here, so that we can get to the result in our own way. Thank you so much for sharing that. I find that I’m really inspired. I don’t have a company or a team to take this to, but at least we can put this out in the world, and hopefully others will benefit from listening to your thoughts on this. And I’m hoping we will see change, but I think the more of us talk about it, the more likely change is likely to happen. So a few more questions, and I liberate you from this interview. So tell me, what is a favorite word of yours, one that you would tattoo on yourself? Not that I’m telling you should tattoo yourself.
Wesley Faulkner:
Context. I think context is almost everything, like we talked about community could be one person, two people, or the whole world. Success can be cast into getting results or actually accomplishing a task that you set out to do. But it also could be the journey. Context is king. Words even change with different contexts. Expressions change with different contexts. Right solutions work for one company, but also are failures in others. So when someone says they have a lot of experience, it could be experience based on that context. And so I think context really helps focus our lens to the one thing, but also darkens the outer edges so that it’s not a destruction. So to me it would be context.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s a beautiful metaphor. That could make a nice tattoo.
Wesley Faulkner:
Thanks.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What song best represents you?
Wesley Faulkner:
Wow.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I know it’s a tough one.
Wesley Faulkner:
I would say maybe not represents me, but one that drives me is old Bobby McFerrin song, Don’t Worry Be Happy, for two reasons. One, it’s poppy, and it’s very repetitive, but also an ear worm where, if it’s in your head, you can’t get rid of it. And so I think I like to live by that for both a metaphor of how I want my own soundtrack in my head to go. But also my influence. I would love to be able to influence others to the point where, even when they’re not thinking about, it’ll just come back in their head.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I love that. That’s amazing. What is a secret super power that you have?
Wesley Faulkner:
A secret super power that I have is that I’m able to make really bad jokes about almost anything.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome.
Wesley Faulkner:
It sucks in some ways, but that’s something that a lot of people don’t know that I crack really, really bad jokes all the time, that I’ve been restraining myself through this whole interview to make sure not to do it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh my God. And I remember because didn’t you at one point at school think that you could get more friends if you were telling jokes and you learned a lot of them?
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes. Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
See, I paid attention.
Wesley Faulkner:
That’s one of those times where I was like, oh, people who are popular are funny. I’ll just be funny. Let me just read this book of 101 jokes or something that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. What is a favorite book that you’d like to share with us?
Wesley Faulkner:
I am going to go with a book that’s right next to me. It’s called The End of Bias, and I love this book right now because it really explains the human condition from both sides, those experiencing bias and those who are affected by it, which is everybody in different contexts. All right. And not only that, like a lot of these books, when I read them, it says, and so here’s the problem, and we all need to do better. But this book actually has really real world examples of people who were able to overcome bias, processes that have been able to overcome bias, and people who are in environments that have eradicated certain types of bias. And so it’s not just an aspirational thing that we need to do better, but says, here are ways that people can do better and how people have implemented them. And here are the real successes of those and how, if you are thinking about the world in this way, here’s how to interrupt your bias. So I love this book. It’s one that’s a lot of stories, a lot of personal stories, but also a lot of data, and it is scientific work that is … The statistics do not lie. And so it’s from the anecdotal and also really hard hitting numbers that really reinforce the notion of bias does exist, and bias can be interrupted.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow. I’m definitely buying it. Thank you so much for making the recommendation. Where is somewhere you visited that you felt had a real impact on who you are today?
Wesley Faulkner:
Hmm. it would be Haiti. And I need to give a little bit more explanation of that, is because my mom’s Haitian. And so we went when we were kids. We didn’t go when we were older. And seeing my mom in that context where, in this country, she was always one that’s fitting in … That is her role. She’s the one who has an accent. She’s the one who is learning about and asking questions about things. But going to Haiti with her and seeing how she was the navigator. She was telling us where to go, where not to go, who to talk to, who not to talk to really put her in a different light. And playing with my cousins who … At the time, I didn’t speak a lick of French or Creole, and they didn’t speak a lick of English. And then being able to cross that barrier and that interaction nonverbally was really, really big for me.
Wesley Faulkner:
And so being in a place where I was fully uncomfortable and where I relied on other people and I didn’t feel like I can just use the same rule set to navigate an area, really gave me a different type of perspective that I keep with me now. So when I travel, I need to understand that I am the person that is visiting, and that I need to take it in and understand that this is an environment that is made for the people. And I need to understand how to be more welcoming and accepting of others and myself. Sometimes here in America, they’re like, well, why don’t you speak better English? Or why don’t you use the right hand or fork or whatever? The cultural constraints, how they really are very arbitrary, and people make their own norms depending on where they are. When I was in Ireland … And when you’re expecting a vehicle to come from another direction that you’re not used to, it really can wake you up about how you really need to start paying attention to your environment and not go on autopilot all the time.
Anne Muhlethaler:
When you said Ireland, that’s not where I thought you were going to go, but, yes, I understand. I completely agree with you. Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s really beautiful. So now imagine that you can step into a future version of yourself. What most important advice do you think that future you would give present state you?
Wesley Faulkner:
If they’re smart, it would be stock tips, and tell me what to invest in, please. But most likely it would be … I would hope that they would tell me, going back to the keynote, the version of myself that could be. I’m always changing and always evolving, and I’m always trying to be better as a person. And I don’t know what my limit is. I don’t know if I’ve… Am I 98% of a 100% possibility, or am I 30% of a 100% possibility? How much further can I go? And how much further do I need to work to get to this place? I know, every day, I’m probably the best version of myself, but how great could I be based on my own value system? So I would love for my future version, if they could give me some advice, that they would give me that perspective of ways that I can open my mind, ways that I can open possibilities to get to that spot.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s interesting, because hearing you say that, it’s taking me to how you’ve used the word journey. And here you talk about the place. So I wonder if that future you would tell you to focus on the journey.
Wesley Faulkner:
They probably would. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Exactly. Last question, my favorite question. What brings you happiness?
Wesley Faulkner:
I think happiness is a state that I float in and out of. There’s so many emotions that are part of the human condition, and happiness is not a place that I stay all the time. But the thing that I try to do in terms of bringing my own happiness is having a sense of accomplishment and making a change, checking off a to-do list even, showing up to a meeting on time. Finding the places where I feel that I’m doing the thing that I want to do and that I did it in a way that I wanted to makes me feel happy. And so I find the little things and then the long things where I’m rolling out a program, and it actually is a thing that brings me happiness. Getting in front of my computer on time is happiness. Waking up and not hitting the snooze is happiness.
Wesley Faulkner:
So I just try to find delight in all the things that I’m able to do that is actually the things that I said that I was going to do. I’ve been trying to work out every day, and whenever I do it, I feel happiness. I’ve been trying to answer emails and really stay on top of my connections. And when I do that, I feel happiness. So it changes from day to day. There’s no one thing that I try to do that can guarantee happiness. But I try to make sure that, when I’m true to myself and when I look back and I actually say, good on you, I make sure to really, really roll around in that happiness when I can.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. Wesley, thank you for the wonderful amount of time and the thoughtful answers, the wisdom. It’s been such a great conversation. For anyone who would like to find out more about you, can you please tell them where to find you?
Wesley Faulkner:
Well, you mentioned Polywork, so I’m there. So if you go to Polywork.com/Wesley83 … That’s W-E-S-L-E-Y-83. You can find all my stuff there, and there’s a little button where you can contact me just like you did. But I’m also on Twitter a lot. So if you go to Twitter.com/Wesley83, I’m there, and my DMs are open. And if you’re one of those people who wanted to say hi and that’s all you wanted to say, please do so. I mentioned earlier in the podcast about the percentage of people who can lift their own body weight or all these small things. There’s a small percentage of people who actually reach out and try to talk to me. And so anyone who’s listening to this can be one of those people. And so take a chance if you want. Reach out to me. Say hi.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. Thank you so much. I will put the links as well in the show notes for the books, the recommendations, and anything else that we talked about that was relevant for our listeners. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful rest of the day. And hopefully we’ll connect again soon, perhaps one day in person.
Wesley Faulkner:
Yes, hopefully at South By even.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’d be so cool. Thanks so much, Wesley.
Wesley Faulkner:
Thanks for having me on.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks again to Wesley for being my guest on the show today. You can find him on Twitter or on Polywork.com at Wesley84, and you’ll find these and other relevant links in the show notes. So friends and listeners, thank you again for joining me today. If you’d like to hear more, you can subscribe to the show, wherever it is that you listen to your podcasts. If you’d like to connect, you can get in touch with me at Anne V on Twitter; or on LinkedIn, Anne Muhlethaler, and on Instagram at _OutOfTheClouds, where I also share some daily or weekly musings about mindfulness, podcast. You can find all of my episodes and more at AnneVMuhlethaler.com. If you don’t know how to spell it, it’s also in the show notes, and you can subscribe if you’d like to receive my monthly newsletter. So that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds, and I hope that you’ll join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe, and take care.