171: Figuring Out Your Life’s Best Work with Yuri Kruman

Scott Barlow: Hey, welcome back to Happen To Your Career. I’m excited about the guest I have with me, particularly about his story. I have a ridiculous number of questions, like always, but some are off the wall questions. Before we get too far into it I want to say welcome to Happen To Your Career Yuri Kruman. How are you?

Yuri Kruman: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it and am excited to be on.

Scott Barlow: I’m excited to have you here. Let’s do this. You have this very interesting past that weaves, bobs, and ducks. I’m out of adjectives, verbs, and any other descriptions but you have an interesting past we will dig into. What do you do nowadays?

Yuri Kruman: A few things, I help mid-career millennials coming out of banks or health care organizations, or any large companies, to build their own startups from scratch. I help first time founders or help them transition to a start-up where they can do their life’s best work.

Scott Barlow: Perfect, it seems like you are in the right place and people can see why you are here to talk about this. We started talking before we recorded about the concept and how-to identify what could be a really great career move for you and how to go about that process. We will dig into that but I want to go way back first. This has been a long, arduous, crazy, roller coaster journey for you based on what I know. Where does this journey start?

Yuri Kruman: It starts in a small town in the Soviet Union, now Russia, called Pushchino, about 80 miles south of Moscow. I had academic parents. My father was a physicist my mom was a neuroscientist. We made it out, that was our big thing. The day Bill Clinton was elected we moved to Lexington, Kentucky.

Scott Barlow: When you say you made it out, give some explanation.

Yuri Kruman: The usual situation for a Soviet immigrant is to come as a refugee through Italy, Austria, Israel, and maybe have a chance to go to the United States. For my family it was different because my mom was a scientist. All the academic centers in the U.S. wanted cheap amazing labor. That is how we got here. She was a professor.

Scott Barlow: That was the ticket.

Yuri Kruman: Yes.

Scott Barlow: What happened then? I want to come back to that because I’m sure that was formative for you. What took place from there?

Yuri Kruman: We arrived and at first you have an initial shock, everyone is driving a car and we are the fools walking to the grocery in the winter. At the grocery there are all these fruits. They had no taste. It was an initial surprise about everything. In the Soviet Union we had this idea that the streets were paved in gold in the United States.

Scott Barlow: They aren’t?

Yuri Kruman: I’m still looking.

Scott Barlow: So you get here and there is no gold leafing on the streets and just asphalt.

Yuri Kruman: Yes and we are walking on it, but we are Russian so we have good clothing for the winter. I grew up there and had the Midwestern experience growing up with wholesome values. People will stab you in the back not in the front like in the Soviet Union. I’m glad I grew up in Kentucky and not New York. I see kids running around thinking they know and have seen everything. It’s tough. You want nature and playing as a kid. And not thinking about college when you are 8 years old. I’m happy to have that part of my life. But when I arrived in college it was a completely different level. I was a good student, but you had a bunch of kids from prep schools working crazy hours and it was tough to compete. I came to the University to do pre-med. I wasn’t a good pre-med student. I loved the subject matter but I really loved humanities. That was my thing but it took me a long time to figure that out. In true immigrant fashion I kept going because you need a graduate degree and my mom was a neuroscientist. If you aren’t going to do an MD do a PhD at least. That is how I arrived in NY.

Scott Barlow: You had a lot of pressures?

Yuri Kruman: The pressures were massive right from the beginning. We came to the U.S. to have a good job, not having to think about anti-Semitism, to have an opportunity to become something great, to make a lot of money, and to get the graduate degree because you have two parents with PhDs that are academics which means you have to get a PhD.

Scott Barlow: You are obligated at that point, probably more than one.

Yuri Kruman: The trouble is during the first year in graduate school, I came to New York with bright eyes and big lights and I was not really thrilled to be in the program. I liked the subject matter but being in a lab all the time is not for me. I created my first start-up while in graduate school. Instead of going to lab I created “juicyjews.com” my first start-up.

Scott Barlow: Perfect. As it should be called.

Yuri Kruman: I still have the t-shirts and will be happy to send one to you.

Scott Barlow: I need a picture of that logo.

Yuri Kruman: My mom said you are going to create an anti-Semitic conspiracy. “C’mon mom, we are past that.”

Scott Barlow: You do the startup you have the t-shirts, fantastic logo, and what happens?

Yuri Kruman: These guys in India built this website from my savings, making 24k a year. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I built a network of 14,000 people on Facebook. I created an algorithm to figure out who was Jewish, which was about 98% accurate. I launched with a massive spike in traffic and then it died. I learned that my registration process was too long. I got the bug. I knew I wanted to do my own company at some point down the road.

I spent a year in graduate school and they politely asked me to leave because it was not a good fit. It wasn’t what I should be doing; not my focus. I said thank you and went. I needed a graduate degree so I apply to law school and worked a year as a paralegal. It wasn’t so bad. I wanted to practice constitutional law. Yeah, law school, it’s going to be awesome. I started a year later and worked a lot of different internships. I did something on Fifth Avenue for legal consulting, which I don’t know what the hell is. She advised a lot of big politicians making $500 an hour or more advising on something called legal consulting. That was my first experience. Then I started writing a novel mid-way through law school.

That is one of the things I have done. It took me about 7 years to do it. It got finished because I met my then girlfriend, now wife. She said either you finish it or I’m out of here.

Scott Barlow: Tell me about that. I knew you had wrote a couple novels but I didn’t realize that one took 7 years to finish. What was going on? What was the hold up?

Yuri Kruman: Between a quarter million in law school debt, to graduating in the single worse job market of all time in the last few generations; then there is the realization that I really should not be doing law. It is not what I love. I can’t do document review for the next 5 to 6 years. Frankly I wasn’t a very good student. It’s another factor. It’s a running theme. When I’m not into something it is hard for me to pretend. It took me a very long time to figure out that I needed to do something I’m passionate about. That is why I ended up doing coaching. I’ve been teaching and coaching my whole life. Telling people here is what you need to get healthier, here is a tool, or a strategy. I’ve always been doing that but didn’t think it would pay. Maybe when I was more established I would teach in a university.

Scott Barlow: The someday syndrome.

Yuri Kruman: Someday, some PhD or PhD-like scenario.

Scott Barlow: Let me ask you about a couple of these things. Not to dovetail too far but I’m really curious about some of the pieces that lead up to it. First, I heard you say that they politely asked me to leave. First of all what did that look like, I’m guessing it didn’t feel great, but how did it go down? What was it like?

Yuri Kruman: It was traumatic. It wasn’t because they asked me to leave, but because my mom was seeing my declining grades. In high school I was a good student. In college the other people were running circles around me. My grades are sliding down and down and I get to graduate school and think it’s my salvation and I mess it up. It’s a massive let down to my mom who was hoping to have me as a colleague. I’m doing research for six summers, some with her. It was this terrible feeling that Iet my mom down of all people

Scott Barlow: This is interesting though. Because I think it happens to a lot of people. Not that everyone’s mom is expecting to have them as a colleague, but to some degree many parents have hopes and expectations, whether they mean to or not, that get passed on or moved to our hopes and expectations. We have a tendency to pull those into ourselves and create our own web of what we should do.

How did you work through that because clearly you were in that web of expectations? Then all of that disappointment that we force on ourselves.

Yuri Kruman: Mostly I don’t know that I worked through it for a long time. I bottled it up. I’ve thought a lot about this. I have had a lot of Soviet people that are my clients. If they aren’t Soviets they were born to Soviet parents. You want to go through hard experiences to gain credibility in the eyes of your parents and grandparents because they went through Hitler, Stalin, discrimination at every level at the university, pursuits and the Soviet Union that was hell. It’s almost like you have to weather your own passage to gain credibility. Like I have street cred. I’m part of it.

Scott Barlow: Other than just that problem of Facebook.

Yuri Kruman: It’s a martyr’s complex. It’s a strong thing people go through. Their parents might be accomplished. They’ve gone through absolute hell. You feel like you are far above it and don’t know your value in the world because you haven’t seen the misery. It weighs on you for a long time until something either happens: trauma or inspiration, or something else forces you to caste it off. There is nothing in your life, in this world that has to make you suffer or continue suffering just because you have credibility. That is nonsense.

Scott Barlow: It is self-induced to some degree. Maybe not a first but eventually. How did you caste it off? Was there a single event? What is the first time you remember casting it off?

Yuri Kruman: It’s a series of events. Put yourself in this scenario. You just finished law school, you know you don’t want to practice law and it isn’t for you. You need to pay bills - you have a quarter million in debt. I had to move back home with mom for about 2 months. I couldn’t do longer than that. You become the little boy again. It’s not the chores, it’s you have your own worldview. You can’t go back. I moved back to New York and I lived between two friends, one that is getting married this weekend in Israel. I moved back and I get a job at a hedge fund. It’s a project not a job. My girlfriend of 4 1/2 years just left me and I met my current wife, shout out to her sitting right here. We met at that time and went on a date. A girl from Morocco. She is an engineer and French. We were engaged after 2 months. We didn’t have a place to live. Both of us lived with friends. We were having a drink and I get an email. One of our friends was moving, getting married, and had an apartment. We discussed it and said it was nuts, we both need a place to live how about we move in together. She wanted to ask her mom and grandma and they said yes miraculously. We moved in to this great apartment next to a university. It was a sublet. Two weeks later I went to get a ring. It was serious let’s do it. She miraculously said yes. She is shaking her head like my god.

Scott Barlow: This is the real secret about how we get the true story. We sit the other people right alongside to fact check on the spot.

Yuri Kruman: That’s right. I tell my story very gladly for my clients because that is the real stuff. It’s not cryptic. It’s so crazy that it could only happen in real life.

The bottom line is I’m with massive debt on my back. I don’t know how to manage my finances. I’m working projects here and there. Bad stuff. Pressure from having a wife or someone you are going to marry. She learns what is going on and it’s terrible. It almost broke us apart. We stuck it out and I had to start figuring out how to manage debt and revenue. Eventually I got to a point where I got so sick of my own nonsense. I didn’t have anything together. I wasn’t growing in the right direction. It wasn’t a good situation.

At that point I decided I had to do something and change my life. It’s really the feeling of being sick of myself and my own nonsense that spurred me to read guys like Tim Ferriss, James Altucher, and Ramit Sethi. To research how people have overcome all of these issues. I knew I wasn’t the first. I had to realize that others have been through all these things. That is the hardest when you have a martyr complex. I need the street cred and to suffer. When you get out of that you see light and see people have solved the problems. Follow their path because they are successful. That was the key. It wasn’t overnight, not even two or three years. It is a process that took a long time to see. I’m tired of going between projects and having gaps where I’m unemployed, freaking out, how am I going to support my family. I kept working for start-ups for peanuts hoping the equity someday would be worth something. It’s not a great scenario.

This dovetails into this last year. I’m going to write a book about it. All of that times three. Last April our second daughter was born. We learned that she has Retinoblastoma which is cancer of the retina. You can imagine. All of this with the startup not working. There is that plus a sick kid. We are talking about stage 3. It wasn’t metastasis. Thank god. We scatter and figure out how to treat this. We are lucky to be in New York because the best specialist is here. We pray and get things together. I decide I need to be at home to take care of her.

I decide to start my own business. I got on the muse and I see I’m getting good results for my clients. I really love it and I’m good at it. The business coming together with law, finance, and my love of teaching. It is my story, who I am. I was meant to go through all of this craziness to help other people. At one point everything comes together and most things make sense. That is how my company came about. That is how I am where I am today. Because I finally realized after eleven years of struggle and craziness and asking where am I going, who I am, and what am I meant to do. It coalesced into something I’m connected to. It’s my four pillars.

Scott Barlow: I would love to have you describe those to our listeners. HTYC-ers will benefit greatly from talking through those. I love talking about this stuff. We could talk 9-10 hours straight on this. Four pillars. What if I’m in the situation that most HTYC-ers are where they are looking at making the career change, identifying what they should be doing, and have similar experiences to you where it isn’t working? I’m going this direction because of someone else’s expectation and I know it isn’t right, but what then?

Yuri Kruman: There are four keys to this puzzle. It’s not that you do this and everything magically opens up.

Scott Barlow: No magic beans?

Yuri Kruman: It lifts a burden. You are used to thinking a certain way but you turn it around. It’s your show. Not their rules, not their terms. You are driving the process.

The first pillar is life mission. This is when you wake up in the morning and you check Facebook and get the nonsense out of the way and you start thinking about what you really want to work on. You don’t have to worry about money, track record, what others think. If you could do anything in this world what do you try to solve? Curing cancer, creating a new iPhone, building something that doesn’t exist, improving something? What is it?

Second is values. Looking at your circle of friends and family what is it you like about them that you would want in your co-workers and colleagues? A lot of us roll our eyes, cynically and say it’s my work place. I deal with these people on a daily basis and my comfort zone is at home. Those people determine the quality of your work. If your boss is a micro-manager or your colleagues don’t hold up their end you won’t last there long if they don’t see it in the same way.

Third is outcomes. What do you like to do for other people? We are talking, not about deliverables or particular role or title or industry, but if you found yourself in a situation to help someone else how can you help them? Is it choosing to improve their health, choosing to help them organize finances, distress, make their business process cheaper better faster. What do you always find yourself doing for others?

Fourth is roles. Not title, job, responsibilities, but where do you fit on the spectrum of people in an organization. Any organization, it may be the visionary leader who is always evangelizing about the most important problem in the world saying we need to increase access to HIV drugs in sub-Saharan Africa, or increase information through a better iPhone.

Or you might be the person who says I do not care about mambo jumbo. Let’s just get sh*t done. Get it done on time and under budget. That is the CEO.

You might be the in-house expert on economics. An academic safe haven. You are they person to whom everyone else comes for expertise or analysis on a narrow subject. You might be the caretaker. You help everyone else do their life’s best work by providing material and support. There are other roles but those are the main ones I’ve encountered.

Scott Barlow: Let me ask you about that. I get e-mail after e-mail and we talk to our students and clients and listeners of this show. We get constant questions about roles. I want to clarify this and what you mean when you say roles. I think people jump to job title, and other things like that. What do you mean when you really say role and more importantly how should they categorize themselves or should they when talking about role? Everyone wants to do that.

Yuri Kruman: It is important to understand role is not about title or the job you have. It’s not about your career per se. It is about the situations in your life that you encounter - there tends to be a pattern of how you behave, how you help other people, what kinds of responsibilities you find yourself taking to help others. It may be a volunteer activity.

Someone says “hey, Scott listen I know you are the best person to solve this problem and you are the most motivated.” What is that? Not from work, not your boss, but just from a friend you choose to spend your time with. For example, they know you are the person that is good at researching and analyzing the local foody scene. You will have that hot restaurant to recommend. They always come to you because you are the “curator”. You research, analyze, and give that deliverable of this is the place to go.

How do I monetize that? I don’t know. I can’t be a restaurant analyst. Wrong!

Think of it in those terms. You don’t have to work in the restaurant industry or be an analyst for a newspaper or bank. But you know your comfort zone is in filtering and curating a lot of information for others to use. Think about the context which you can do that on a daily basis or regular basis. That is your natural role in any situation which also means your organization and workplace.

Scott Barlow: This is really interesting and I’d love to keep digging into this because I find this to be quite possibly the number one challenge that people experience. They have a really hard time wrapping their head around, if this is my natural playing role in many areas of my life how does it translate into something else? That is the part because there are so many variables that gets overwhelming. How do you help them understand the context you mentioned and help them break it apart so they can see it in a more obvious way versus getting lost for example, in the “I make people laugh so I should be a comedian?”

Yuri Kruman: Here is how I approach this. When people say I’m dazed and confused I have them do the four pillars. I should mention a couple other things. Look at founding stories which is one of the keys, When you look at high school you usually had an idea of I want to be x, not knowing the context but knowing it was something you really wanted to do. It’s often based on your personality, who you are, your aspirations, and how you want to help others. That innocence might be key to the process.

How do I help people go from the four pillars to a title? I focus on two components, psychology and language. I’ve been trying to understand myself and other people to get my message across since I was a kid and I’ve done many different things in my career and life. I’ve met so many different people and worked from janitor to CEO and back. My life experiences have set me up well to read people and understand their motivations. Where do they come from so I can to get them to tell me the founding stories? Why did they go into what they went into and how to use that innocent view to reconnect to their essence? They can then say I need to do this in my job in some form or fashion. A lot of it is a science. Not a personality test but looking back at what I know from my background and experience, plus clients, I have helped and identify patterns. There are always patterns in how people see the world and what they should do.

There are people on one side that are quantitative: How can they organize this? It’s the engineer, coder, person who sees things in matrices and progressions, parallels, etc. You have others on the other side that see nuance. Psychology, language, humanities. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t people with both components but one is usually more predominant than the other. That dominance needs examined. I was always dominant with math and science on paper. I wanted to be pre-med and go in PhD programs. I was better at humanities. It should have been a sign to do something with humanities but I ignored it. I had external factors telling me to not go for what I’m stronger in and to not focus on it because I am better at it. I think about it all the time. Not neuroscience or whatever on the math side. Going through the process, identifying patterns, helping clients focus on the essence, and understanding what it looks like in a title and industry, and I give them context.

Maybe you are funny and want to be a comedian but it might not pay unless you are really committed. But what in your job gets you to talk to people and lower their barriers? Maybe it is selling. They never thought about it. It’s the threads we pull out, that’s how we find out what they like to do on their comfort level when they aren’t thinking about their brand and in technical terms.

Scott Barlow: What can they do if they don’t have a Yuri right in front of them? They could call Yuri but if they want to attempt this for themselves, what can they do to pull out some of the patterns. I love that, there is always a pattern. I totally agree that the same way you might go to a mechanic to fix your car versus trying to do it yourself you might have someone help that can find the patterns. What would you advise someone to do if they want to attempt to find the patterns on their own?

Yuri Kruman: The simplest thing you can do is two-fold:

1) Get away from your usual context. This is the one thing I advise my clients to do. Get away from parents friends, clients, and advisers. Anyone you associate with that stereotypes you: “my little boy, or the lazy schmuck that doesn’t finish is spreadsheets on time.” People that deal with us on a regular basis have a fixed image of who we are and what we are capable of. That layer keeps us from breaking through when going through a deep career exploration, pillars, and personality tests. You need to go to a different part of town, coffee shop, away from anyone and everyone that can recall the image you have of yourself through their eyes. It’s all the external filters that we put on throughout the day by necessity because we have to function and respond to peoples requests. Get away and go through the process alone with no distractions and see what comes out.

Do it with a pen and paper because your brain works fundamentally different than using a computer. When you bring out your fears and negative scripts and write them down on paper it’s like you get them out of your system. You acknowledge they are real and they affect you less. Once it’s on paper it becomes real. It becomes tangible, something to focus on and build upon. That is the number one thing.

2) The easiest thing you can do if it is a good fit short of going and spending your time doing it is talking to people who have been through similar transformations. If you want to go from working in a bank to working in a health technology startup talk to people who have made the transition. Find them on LinkedIn and through networks and get them to tell you their story. What do I do all day in my work besides the practical counseling? I tell my story because I will always find something to help the person see themselves in new light. That’s the number one most important thing.

Scott Barlow: I love a couple things you said. I liked what you were talking about in getting away. I interpreted that as giving yourself the time and space in a different place, context, and area, even physical, to get to new conclusions rather than your old mold of what it must mean. I love that. I don’t think we do that even though we know we should. We don’t understand the benefit of giving ourselves the time and space.

Yuri Kruman: Let me re-frame it. Imagine you are addicted to cigarettes. What you are really addicted to is nicotine, right? But it’s context. You smoke with the same people every day and you talk to them in a different way than nonsmoking coworkers. It’s the physical context. The time and space you engage in the same behaviors over and over that you need to break. It’s the physical component of getting away from the usual place, home, work, etc. It opens up parts that you forgotten. You are more than a friend, a son, a colleague, but you forgot because you are pressured by bills, bosses, track records, and fears. They add up.

Scott Barlow: Absolutely love that. The other thing I enjoyed that a lot people don’t realize or forget, but is valuable in this process, is pen and paper. For example, they can’t see it but I’m literally writing on an iPad with a pen, not because iPads are great but it is as close as I can get to duplicating the physiological thoughts meet pen and paper process. You can get places you couldn’t before. It helps me even in our conversation and if I was typing it wouldn’t be the same. Big take away there.

A question for you to pull this together and wrap some of it up. For people who are in this place and want to go through these four pillars and do some of this what would you say is one of the biggest things to get started? What is the one parting piece of advice? We have more than a few people in this situation.

Yuri Kruman: I mentioned that in my process of coming to terms of who I am, my situation and all the components, the foundational piece was becoming sick of engaging in the same behaviors and contexts. I wanted to become better. I wanted to transcend the crap around me. That was the number one thing that forced me to get out of the martyr’s complex and gloom and doom and go do something. The way you do that is go and learn from people who have already jumped from the dark to the light. How have they done it? What concrete techniques and strategies have they used? What do they recommend? What is their story? What can you take away from the stories? Reap as many as you can. Form a fuller picture in your mind of what applies to you and go do something.

If you have the money and time take a coach because they are there to guide you and short circuit the dark alleys and trial and error if they are a good coach. If they aren’t good you will be there for a while.

That is the number one thing whether you take a coach you must become sick of your own crap in order to change. That is the number one take away if there is one. When you are that point choose to say no to the BS to say no to people not improving your life, that want to occupy your time and provide no value. Say no, that is from James Altucher. Maybe you’ve read it. He is one of my favorites and has been influential in my life. That alone, saying no consistently, to control your life, your message, and branding, and how you see the world. Say no.

Scott Barlow: I really appreciate it very much, you taking and making the time to come on the show and telling your story. I absolutely love this. Some of the pieces are incredibly valuable. I have a notepad filled with all of these things as well. I want to urge people to go on the website happentoyourcareer.com/171 and find everything we talked about. How can they get in touch with you and find out more?

Yuri Kruman: Go to my website MasterTheTalk.com. Everything is there.

Scott Barlow: Head on over there. I’ve been on it. Great website. Yuri does a variety of things. We just scratched the surface. Thank you so much. I do really appreciate it. We’ll see you next time.

Yuri Kruman: With pleasure. Thank you for having me on. It’s been a great hour. I appreciate your time.