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Jimbo Paris Show #71- Accelerate Your Career (Mark Herschberg)
6 Plays3 years ago
“All of us can get better if we train and the same is true for charisma, as well as skills in my book like leadership, networking and negotiating.”
-Mark Herschberg
Welcome to The Jimbo Paris Show #71- Accelerate Your Career (Mark Herschberg)
Mark Herschberg is the author of “The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You”. From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia.
He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator,” where he teaches annually. At MIT, he received a B.S. in physics, a B.S. in electrical engineering & computer science, and a M.Eng. in electrical engineering & computer science, focusing on cryptography.
At Harvard Business School, Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, including Techie Youth and Plant A Million Corals.
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►Watch Our Previous Episodes:
Jimbo Paris Show #8- Outrageous Freedom (Allyson Roberts)
Jimbo Paris Show #65- Mental Health Support for Men (Tony Lynch)
Jimbo Paris Show #66- Expanding Human Potential (Judy Ryan)
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Transcript
Introduction to the Show
00:00:06
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jimbo Paris and you're listening to the Jimbo Paris show.
Guest Introduction: Mark Hershberg
00:00:16
Speaker
So today we have Mark Hershberg, great man. He is the he's the big man. He is basically the chief of Avaron and it's basically he's a cryptographer, a university instructor, even a ballroom dancer. So let's see what he has to say. I'm definitely interested.
00:00:37
Speaker
What's up, man?
Virtual Backgrounds and Memorabilia
00:00:38
Speaker
And Jimbo, thanks for having me on the show. Oh, you got a lot going on in the background there.
00:00:47
Speaker
Thanks. Yeah, I set this up once I started doing a virtual tour during COVID, and I went on lots of podcasts, many of whom have videos like you do, I realized I needed to get a background set up. And so I've got my book, but then also a bunch of things from just my life and things that I've done.
Dual Career Path and Leadership Skills
00:01:09
Speaker
quite familiar with the law of those things, especially that night chess piece in the upper right corner. We're going to talk a lot about that. I was a competitive chess player as a kid, and so chess has always been a big part of my life. So let's sort of expand on everything. Can you kind of give me a gist of who you are, what you're about, and what your message is?
Teaching Unconventional Skills at MIT
00:01:31
Speaker
Sure, I have this really interesting dual career path in my life. I started out as a software engineer when I graduated from MIT. I began during the dot com era. I realized early on that I wanted to become a CTO, a chief technology officer, the person in charge of the engineers.
00:01:50
Speaker
And I realized that to get that job, it wasn't just about being a good engineer. I needed other skills, leadership, communication, networking, negotiating. No one ever taught this to me. So I had to develop those skills in myself. As I began to do so, I realized these skills aren't just for executives. They are for everyone.
00:02:12
Speaker
the most junior people at the companies, founders and entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, all of us benefit from these skills. And I began to train up people on my team. As I was doing so, MIT had surveyed companies, and they found these are the skills that companies wanted as well. And so what they did is created a program referred to as the Career Success Accelerator. When I heard they were putting this together, I reached out, and so I'm happy to help share some of my content.
00:02:40
Speaker
They asked me not only to share content but to help develop additional content and then to stay and help teach. So in addition to being a CTO building tech startups and helping Fortune 500s innovate, I've also been teaching at MIT and elsewhere for the past 20 years and now have the book and speaking and other things that I do. Interesting. Interesting.
Motivation and Learning from Parents
00:03:03
Speaker
Now, the first question I'd like to ask, what motivates you?
00:03:10
Speaker
I am motivated by my own success, but also helping others. Helping people with their professional efficacy really drives me. And it pains me when I see people who can do so much more in their lives and their careers, but they just don't know how to take that next step. How did you become self motivated?
00:03:34
Speaker
I really attribute that to my parents. From an early age, they always fostered learning, growing, developing as a person. And so it's just, I think, part of who I am as a person thanks to them. Why MIT?
Choosing MIT: A Nerd's Paradise
00:03:54
Speaker
I grew up a classic nerd. I love chess, physics, science, math, Star Trek, everything you'd expect. And MIT is really the mecca of STEM education. That is the place to be. And when I looked at colleges and I saw MIT, I realized this was the place to be. That's where I belonged. And it has always felt like home to me ever since I first set foot on campus.
Public Speaking Confidence and Dance
00:04:23
Speaker
or a pants zipped up and are people looking at me and comb my hair and you have this nervousness and it holds you back.
00:04:32
Speaker
And more than anything else, we just need confidence to say, I'm up here. And maybe I forgot to zip my pants. Maybe my hair is not perfectly combed. In fact, for this presentation, I've got seven lights. I realized I only turned on six of them while my lights is off. But you know what? I don't care. It doesn't matter. I can keep going. Sometimes you'll screw up and no one notices. Sometimes you screw up and they notice and you don't get called back. And that's okay.
00:05:00
Speaker
Life goes on. There will be another round, another competition. No one laughs at you when you screw up. In fact, one of the things I love about Ballroom, rarely, but sometimes people will trip and fall. And when that happens, as a couple gets back up, the entire audience will cheer for them. They will applaud for them saying, we are with you. We support you. We've all fallen down in our life. And we're behind you. Don't feel shame. Keep going.
00:05:26
Speaker
And when you get that confidence, when you've been out on the floor, when you screwed up and say, oh, my God, I can't believe I just did that. That must be so embarrassing. But you keep going. That's the confidence I carry with me when I do talks, whether it's on video or live talks. Yeah, I'll screw up. I don't care. I've screwed up worse and I've gotten through it. That's the interesting thing. You know, you raise an extremely interesting point because
00:05:51
Speaker
I never thought of it like that, but most people think I hate public speaking when in reality, what it is is I hate being the center of attention. I hate being focused on by tons of people. It's because they're afraid of making mistakes. People don't mind being the center of attention at a party. If everyone's paying attention to you and they're laughing at your jokes, you love it. Most people, but it's, Oh, I'm on stage and I'm being judged. And I'm afraid of being embarrassed.
00:06:20
Speaker
How did you carry that over to your chess? Chess? Well, I did chess earlier and chess is probably a little less embarrassing. Now there's a term in chess called a blunder and that's when you make a really stupid move. And suddenly you just realize your opponent can take a piece. There's nothing you can do about it. Or you just put yourself in a bad position. We've all blundered. And I think it's just part of the game that
00:06:48
Speaker
You kind of go, oh, I can't believe I did that. But you move on. It's not so much a reflection of you, because it's the pieces. Whereas when you're on stage, whether you're performing in ballroom dancing or standing near a presentation, it's you. It's your body. It's your words that are being judged. So I think it's a little more personal in that circumstance. Talked a lot about what you were sort of doing there, but can you sort
Electronic Voting and Security Concerns
00:07:12
Speaker
of get into
00:07:14
Speaker
your master's thesis, securing electronic voting over the World Wide Web? Sure. My graduate work at MIT was in cryptography. And for my master's thesis, it was secure electronic voting over the World Wide Web, finding a way people could vote from their laptops.
00:07:33
Speaker
For this, we use cryptographic protocols, ways to ensure that it's really you who is voting, that you don't vote more than once, that no one secretly threw out your vote. And so we can use these mathematical algorithms to prove this happens. That being said, we should never vote online. I emphasize I'm going to say it again, never vote online. That is the fastest way to destroy our democracy.
00:08:03
Speaker
Because even though we can say, well, the math works out. The math works. We can prove it mathematically. Still, we know when we write software, there are bugs in the software. We make mistakes all the time. So even if the math works, the software could be buggy. Even if the software isn't buggy, the operating system could be buggy. We all know we have to patch our operating systems because there are vulnerabilities.
00:08:28
Speaker
even if the operating system is secure, the hardware could have vulnerabilities. That's really interesting. Well, you learn something new every day. Thank you for that. Let's kind of go back a little bit to that discussion we had before.
Learning Charisma and Negotiation Skills
00:08:42
Speaker
I think there's a lot of people here trying to build their own social skills too. And one book in particular, does this one sound interesting to you? The Charisma Myth. It is Olivia Fox Caban, who's the author of the book, is a personal friend of mine.
00:08:57
Speaker
I've known her for years and that is a fantastic book. I actually reference it in mine and recommend it.
00:09:07
Speaker
basically teaches charisma something you can learn. And in fact, all the skills that we talk about, we know we could learn to play golf. We know we can learn to do chemistry. Now, some people are naturally better at science or at a sport, but it doesn't mean the rest of us can't learn to do it. I was terrible at all sports, including dancing, but I trained and became a national champion.
00:09:32
Speaker
All of us can get better if we train and the same is true for charisma as well as skills in my book like leadership, networking, and negotiating. And so she breaks down here are the components of charisma. Here's how to do it. Here's how to change how you think about it. In fact, that book helped me improve just my charisma. So it's a wonderful book. I highly recommend to people.
00:09:55
Speaker
Are you an advocate of talent or hard work? Because coming from a guy that came from MIT and somebody that started chess at the age of 10, forgive me if this sounds a bit strange, but you sound like a talented individual. We get there because we put the work into it. The natural talent is just your starting point, but it is the work that gets you further in life. You're saying,
00:10:24
Speaker
essentially, there is natural talent, but there are no natural masters. Yes, that is I like that line. The mastery comes from the work. Some of us might just be a little closer based on our natural talent, but all of us need to work hard to get there. So you're a small details guy. You need to be a small details guy as well as a big strategy person. Well, oh,
00:10:54
Speaker
I'll back that up. You need a team to have people who worry not only about the big strategy and big issues, but those small details. Some people are better at one over the other. And if that's the case, make sure you have as a partner, someone who can handle that other piece of it. Now, just for a quick summary, what do you think are some of the biggest problems?
00:11:17
Speaker
that you address in the book.
The Career Toolkit: Book Structure
00:11:19
Speaker
And you don't have to go too deep into it because I want people to read it, but just kind of. Well, I'll give the 10 skills. There are three sections, 10 chapters, section one careers, chapter one, how to create and execute a career plan. Most of us don't even have plans, let alone how to execute on them. Chapter two, working effectively. Things like managing your manager, understanding corporate culture.
00:11:44
Speaker
Chapter three is interviewing. Now there's lots of content how to be a candidate, very little on how to actually hire other people, and so many of us have to hire our co-workers, but we don't teach people how to do that. The second section, leadership and management, a chapter on leadership, and then management, I look at the people side of management and the process side of management.
00:12:08
Speaker
And the third section, Interpersonal Dynamics, covers communication, networking, negotiation, and ethics. In each chapter, there is a mental shift, a way to change how you think about this particular skill, and then specific actionable items you can do to better implement and execute on that.
00:12:28
Speaker
And it's designed, I call it the career toolkit because you can just pick up any tool, any chapter. You can say, you know what, I've got the book. I'd recommend start with chapter one. It's only seven pages long. That's the intro, the intro, not chapter one. But then you jump right to chapter seven. Then you go to chapter two, then to chapter six. Read them in any order you want. Work on the skill you want when you want.
00:12:52
Speaker
because the chapters stand alone, they do reinforce each other a bit, but you can read each other alone. So whatever skill you need to work on, this is going to get you started.
Career Resources and Free Tools
00:13:02
Speaker
So in addition to the book, if you go to my website, thecareertoolkitbook.com,
00:13:09
Speaker
There's a blog where I have more information and talk about more of these topics. There is a free app. I create a free companion app for the book available from the Android and iPhone stores and link from the website. Because one of the challenges when you read a business book or a self-help book, you read the book, you say, wow, there's a lot of great information, but then you forget two weeks later. And so with the app,
00:13:33
Speaker
what you can do is you can download it and then you can use it one of two ways. Each day it's going to pop up one of the pieces of advice from the book, one of the tips, it just pops up as a notification on your phone at time you set, you look at, then you just swipe it away. That's going to help you retain, it's going to keep it top of mind, but just pop up, look, swipe. It takes two seconds a day, you don't even need to open the app. Or you can say, I'm about to go into a negotiation. What were all those tips?
00:14:01
Speaker
OK, I'm going to now open the negotiation set, and I'm going to flip through those tips as a refresher. So the app, which you can see on the website right there up top, you can see the app page. If you go there, I link to the Android and iPhone stores, and you can download that free app. There's also the resources page. And on the resources page, I list other books I recommend if you want to go deeper on a topic, including Olivia's Great Book, The Charisma Myth.
00:14:28
Speaker
Then I linked to free resources online if you want to go deeper in some of these topics using online tools. And I have a number of free downloads.
00:14:38
Speaker
including career planning questions, including a professional development guide companies can use to upskill their entire organization. All of this is free on my website. I give it away because I want to help other people and organizations improve. So all of this is at thecareertoolkitbook.com. What's the next important page? Because you seem to have a lot of tabs here. So author, awards, media speaking. Well, let's go to the app page for a second.
00:15:06
Speaker
And we can look on the app page. We can see what the app looks like. There we go. On the app page. So if you, you can see that's what it looks like. You're going to have, if you scroll down a little more, and those are the two links to the Apple store and Google play store. So I'll take you right to the store to download. So you can do this on your phone, go to the career toolkit book on your phone, go to that app page, and then click one of those two links. I'll be ready to download.
00:15:32
Speaker
But if we scroll down on that page a bit, you'll see some screenshots. So you see we have different categories, so certain types of tips. And there on the right is an example of a tip. That's the type of thing they'll just pop up on your phone. So this one, never just drop your mentor when it's time to move on. Thank your mentor and let them know why you're moving on. That's going to help you better maintain a relationship if you want to go back. But that's it. It takes you two seconds to read that when it pops up on your phone. Swipe it away and say, all right, that was a good tip.
00:16:01
Speaker
Glad I got reminded of that. Done for the day. This has been a great interview. If there's any final things you would like to tell the audience, what would you say to them?
Practicing Skills in Groups
00:16:11
Speaker
When you work on these skills, they are things that it's best not to simply read them, but to try them. Like learning a sport. You can't just say, well, here are the rules of the sport. You're done. You have to try it. You have to drill. You have to scrimmage. You have to practice. And it's best done with other people. So I recommend creating groups of people. Think of it like a book club or a reading group.
00:16:35
Speaker
And I describe how to do it in that professional, the career toolkit development program, that first download on the resources page. If your company doesn't want to do it, do it yourself, create a local meetup group, find other people in your organization or just friends or others you have, create that group and together work on these skills. And that's going to move you along much faster.
00:16:59
Speaker
Excellent, excellent.
Closing and Sponsor Acknowledgments
00:17:01
Speaker
And to just finish this off, I'd like to get a special thanks to our sponsors by Alison Roberts' book, Behind the Power. It's a powerful tool concerned on actually transforming people's life patterns and giving them a positive change mentally and spiritually. And then the next sponsor we have is Judy Ryan, our life work systems affiliate focused on helping organizations and companies build the kind business structure that they really need.
00:17:27
Speaker
and also we're available on our Roku channel as well we are a full-on tv channel so looking at us on there this is Jimbo Paris and this is the Jimbo Paris show thanks again
00:18:28
Speaker
Thank you for listening.