Arik Hesseldahl on Unshackling Your Career: Lessons from a Journalist-Turned-Comms Leader

Discover the power of asking the right questions and pivoting careers with former journalist turned communications leader, Arik Hesseldahl. In this transformative episode, learn how breaking free from self-imposed career constraints can lead to unexpected opportunities and success.

Guest Bio:

Arik Hesseldahl is a seasoned communications leader with over 20 years of experience as a business and technology writer for major media outlets including Recode, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Forbes. He has interviewed tech giants like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, and later transitioned to corporate communications, leading SAP's 32-person global content and multimedia team for seven years.

Content Sample:

- Uncover Arik's innovative approach to problem-solving that led to a groundbreaking hologram presentation at a major tech conference.

- Learn the transformative realization that freed Arik from his self-imposed career limitations.

- Discover the unexpected way Arik landed his first corporate communications job within weeks of leaving journalism.

Key Takeaways:

1. [00:01:43] The importance of getting the story right in both journalism and corporate communications.

2. [00:05:16] Breaking free from self-imposed career constraints can open up new opportunities.

3. [00:11:47] Asking the right questions, even seemingly "dumb" ones, can lead to innovative solutions.

4. [00:17:43] Taking time to learn and adapt in a new role is crucial for long-term success.

5. [00:20:19] Cultivating healthy information consumption habits by avoiding cable news and focusing on quality sources.

Memorable Quotes:

1. "I didn't make a bargain with anybody. I didn't sign a contract with the world that said I had to be a journalist for the rest of my life."

2. "People don't ask the right questions enough... I'm not afraid of asking the impertinent question, the question that's likely to tick somebody off or the seemingly dumb question that a lot of other people might not be willing to ask."

3. "I can talk to almost anybody. Given the right set of circumstances... I can draw interesting nuggets out of them and then I can come back with interesting questions."

Related Content:

1. "The Art of Asking: Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers" by Terry J. Fadem - A book that complements Arik's insights on the power of asking the right questions.

2. "Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One" by Jenny Blake - Explores career transitions and finding new opportunities, aligning with Arik's journey from journalism to communications.

Suggestions:

Subscribe to the Career Wanderlust Podcast for more inspiring stories of career evolution. Follow Arik Hesseldahl on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahess247/ to stay updated on his insights in communications and technology.

Host and Platform Information:

This insightful session was hosted by Jolie Downs with Paradigm, for more in career evolution and growth, you can connect with Jolie here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joliedowns/

If you enjoy learning from others, please give us a like, subscribe, and share with a friend. If you are looking to add talent to your public relations, marketing, communications, sales, or business development team with the best talent, and quickly, check us out at paradigmstaffing.com.

Ending Note:

What self-imposed limitations might be holding you back in your career? We invite you to share your thoughts and experiences with career transitions in the comments. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll explore more fascinating career journeys and insights!

Transcript

Arik Hesseldahl 

[00:00:06] Jolie Downs: Welcome to the Career Wanderlust Podcast, your compass for new career horizons. Today we are speaking with Arik Hesseldahl. Arik is a former journalist turned communications leader. For more than 20 years, he was a business and technology writer for media outlets, including Recode, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Forbes.

[00:00:26] He interviewed hundreds of tech CEOs and Founders, including Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Meg Whitman, and Michael Dell. In 2016, he turned his newsroom skills to working with corporate clients. First as the head of his own boutique communications firm, working with accounts that included Accenture, ServiceNow, and VMware.

[00:00:47] And then in 2018, one of those clients, the technology giant SAP, hired him to run its 32 person global content and multimedia team, which he did for seven years. I'm really excited to learn more. Arik, thank you for joining us on the Career Wanderlust Podcast.

[00:01:01] Arik Hesseldahl: Thank you for having me. This is great. 

[00:01:03] Jolie Downs: I'm really looking forward to hearing more from you.

[00:01:06] Please, could you share with us, you've done a lot in your career, and I love that you started as a journalist, you moved into communications. What do you feel has been some of your favorite career advice and why? What has helped carry you through all of these different aspects of your career?

[00:01:22] Arik Hesseldahl: There was never any one single piece of advice, but the thing that's really resonated with me for the most part is get the story right. Make the story count. Thank you for that. It applies equally to journalism and corporate communications. If you're getting it wrong in any of those contexts, something's not right.

[00:01:43] Jolie Downs: And it seems like that's a big thing these days. There is a lot that goes out that is incorrect, if you will. What are your comments on that? How do you think we should be dealing with that? 

[00:01:55] Arik Hesseldahl: From a journalist's perspective, it's survival. So you have to get that stuff right.

[00:02:02] And I've screwed up many stories as a journalist, but in corporate communications, you have a lot of control over what said and when, and you can at least, in my experience, and time isn't always optimal, but you can usually take the time and the effort to get it right. You can do that extra round of checking.

[00:02:23] You can do that extra gut checking with the people who know the right answers. And I've seen that fail a few times and, the results are predictable every single time. 

[00:02:35] Jolie Downs: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Has that happened to you before? 

[00:02:38] Arik Hesseldahl: I've got lots of, I've written lots of corrections on stories.

[00:02:41] I got really good at writing the word sorry at the end of my post for all things D'Enrico. And I would get something wrong. It was always embarrassing. 

[00:02:52] I was going to ask, if a communications professional got something wrong on accident, is there a suggestion you would have in the best way to deal with that? 

[00:03:01] Don't hide, don't run, fix it immediately in whatever way makes the most sense. Whether it's a social media post, whether it's republishing a release. With the team that I ran at SAP, there were times when errors got through even the most rigorous fact checking process and we would fix it, we would fix it as quickly as we could.

[00:03:21] And rarely was it something material. But it happens, it does happen. So you just have to have a procedure for doing it and, own up to it. Like I said, don't run, don't hide. 

[00:03:31] Jolie Downs: Yeah, I love it. I completely agree. It's just transparent. We're human, made a mistake. Let's go fix it.

[00:03:41] Now, I'd love to hear a story. I'm sure you have a plethora of stories, I would imagine. Is there a story that something that happened to you in your career that ended up being an impactful lesson, something that you ended up learning from and by sharing other people might learn something from it as well?

[00:03:56] Arik Hesseldahl: The big one that I talk about most often, and I've never really talked about it publicly. I talk about it with my friends and people I work with all the time, but it was the how I made the shift from being a journalist and there was this wonderful moment. I was talking with my therapist.

[00:04:13] You have all these personal insights when you're talking with your therapist, my therapist. It must have been, I don't know, 2016 and I was newly married and I was well into a career in journalism and trying to stick it out. And I was still convinced, I was a graduate of Columbia University

[00:04:32] journalism school. And I felt that the bargain I had made with the world was that I was going to be a journalist. That was the peg that I was going to fit into for the rest of my working life. And I thought that for some reason it was required of me that I stick it out. And at some point, like I said, I was newly married.

[00:04:51] I had my daughter on the way. And I was really stuck. And I'm not very happy with what the work I was doing anymore because it was getting too much of the same thing over and over again. And I suddenly had the realization that I didn't make a bargain with anybody. I didn't sign a contract with the world that said I had to be a journalist for the rest of my life.

[00:05:16] And suddenly, that was a really powerful realization. And once I had it, I was suddenly free to start thinking about what I could do next. And it wasn't long before I had to figure that out in real time. And so the next big step in this story came in 2016, summer of 2016 is right about now actually end of July.

[00:05:42] And there was a new Editor in Chief at Recode and he fundamentally didn't understand my beat and didn't think that it was all that worth pursuing or maintaining a full time reporter for and he let me go. And frankly, I was fine with it. I should have been more freaked out than I was, but somehow I knew it was going to be okay.

[00:06:07] Jolie Downs: Oh, that's great. 

[00:06:07] Arik Hesseldahl: Negotiated my exit. And then I tweeted, I did that thing where you write the statement out on your phone and you take a screenshot of the note and you put it out on Twitter as an image. And that was a period when I was still really active on what was then still called Twitter.

[00:06:24] And I put it out. And I heard almost immediately, I got an email from a guy named Peter So, he was a Managing Director at Accenture and he had been a reader, and a regular reader. I'd never met the man. But he introduced me to a person who had recently joined Accenture and was spinning up a new storytelling content operation within Accenture digital.

[00:06:49] And so I went to lunch with that guy,

[00:06:52] and I had a contract job lined up within three to six weeks. Fantastic. And that was my first exposure to working directly in corporate comms. I'd done some little projects here and there. I had moderated some panels and I had done some ghost writing for blogs and whatever. But that was not, this was full stack, busy content creation for one of the largest companies in the world.

[00:07:17] I had no idea what I was doing. None whatsoever. 

[00:07:22] Jolie Downs: How did you feel when you were doing it? Were you nervous? Did you feel ready? What was that? Cause it's a big deal making a switch from one career even with it, even though you're taking all your skillsets and really, it's a great switch from journalists to communications, I believe. It still has its challenges and

[00:07:40] uncertainties, if you will. 

[00:07:42] Arik Hesseldahl: Yeah. I became a quick convert to the notion that my skills were transferable and I found that they were, there was a lot of writing work that I was made for writing under tight deadline pressure, improving things that were not very good. But then there was also, there was this one particular project that I always cite when I talk about this experience.

[00:08:05] It had to do with a keynote. There was an executive giving a keynote at a big conference in Dubai, one of the world's biggest tech conferences, one of the world's most sophisticated, high spending technology audiences was going to be at this keynote. And the fundamental truth, and I'm not going to name this person.

[00:08:22] He's a great executive. He's long since left Accenture. Great executive. He wasn't a really strong, at least for these purposes, he wasn't a really strong speaker, at least not from what we know. And the material that had been prepared for him, which I had no hand into this point, was really not all that special.

[00:08:42] And so I asked a couple of questions. I was said what can we do? I was asked, what could we do to improve this? And I started asking questions, like a reporter. There's this other executive who's a really strong speaker. Is he in Dubai? Could we maybe call him in to help out? No, he's going to be in New York.

[00:09:01] What did we see? What did you do with the address last year? Let me go look at some of the speeches. And there was this one speech. This is the 2015 G Tex that Accenture had given that involved a hologram technology. And it was really exciting looking, but it was demonstrated in the most boring way possible.

[00:09:18] It had three people sitting on couches backstage and their likeness was projected onto the stage in front of the audience. And that was interesting to look at, but they weren't saying anything special. It was boring. Not memorable at all. I said, okay, what's the deal with this technology, this hologram technology?

[00:09:35] It turns out Accenture had invented it. I don't remember how it worked, but basically it gave the impression of a person standing on stage as if they were there and they could be somewhere else. I said, does it work remotely? The answer was yes. The speaker, the really strong speaker, he's still with Accenture and I will name him because if anybody knows him, they know that his speaking is his superpower.

[00:09:59] His name is Paul Doherty. He's the CTO of Accenture, superpower, super dynamic speaker, really excellent, always does a great job. He's going to be in New York. Could he conceivably appear on stage as a hologram from New York in Dubai? And I worked up a proposal for that and it went up the chain of command and the answer came down.

[00:10:22] Yes. And it was fantastic. And anybody who was there, doesn't remember what they said. And I worked on the dual talk tracks and there were multiple, probably dozens of people working on the slide, where the PowerPoint decks to accompany each of them. Everybody who was in the room, and I was not, but everybody who was in the room remembers that Paul Doherty blinked on the stage in Dubai from New York and did a joint address with the other fellow.

[00:10:51] Absolutely. And so that was my first big success at Accenture. And it help me make my way in there. Ultimately, the person I worked with looked me straight in the eye, even after that. And he said, I'm not going to onboard you here. You're going to have to figure yourself out here.

[00:11:08] And I could not, that pivot proved too hard for me. And frankly, I had built enough and my daughter was due in November that year. So I had basically made enough to fund, to self fund my paternal leave. Oh, I took a break. But that's, that was how I broke into corporate communications. Amazing. 

[00:11:31] Jolie Downs: I love that. It's a great, it's a great example all around too. Just simply to ask the simple question, how can we make this better? Such a simple question, but so powerful. 

[00:11:42] Arik Hesseldahl: Yeah, and what I think about that is that people don't ask the right questions enough.

[00:11:47] And that's the advice I try to give people. And that's another thing, another example where my reporters skill set comes into play. I can ask the right questions because I've been paid. I've made my living asking questions for many years. And so I'm not afraid of asking the impertinent question, the question that's likely to tick somebody off or the dumb, the seemingly dumb question that a lot of other people might not be willing to ask.

[00:12:18] I'm willing to do that. 

[00:12:20] Jolie Downs: Those are all 

[00:12:20] Arik Hesseldahl: incredibly important. 

[00:12:23] Jolie Downs: You have to, I'm curious because the question I think, you're absolutely right. Learning to ask the right questions is an invaluable skill set to have. And the right questions are going to depend on the situation and who you're speaking with.

[00:12:36] I completely understand that. But I'm wondering if you've found certain questions to be incredibly valuable to you throughout in different situations or certain questions that you go to often that you could share with us that we could maybe add to our own toolkit, if you will. 

[00:12:53] Arik Hesseldahl: That's an interesting, I have never really thought about it that way about is there one go to question.

[00:12:58] In the early days when I was an up and coming tech writer at Forbes or even before that in electronic news with, there was an old trade journal I worked out. I was interested in how things worked. And so I would ask, how does that work? What does that mean? 

[00:13:15] And in the nineties, everything was telecom. Everybody was building telecom infrastructure in those days. So I had a telecom terminology encyclopedia at my desk so I could always look things up. And that turned out to be important, but it soon got away from that, cause I got tired of having to describe how electrons fly across a chip or what a router does or why is computer memory expensive or cheap.

[00:13:45] Those were actual stories that I did. Sometimes they would help tell a story, but really it came down to why are you doing this? Why are you creating this business? What problem are you trying to solve? And that really became the fundamental story I was always trying to tell. And that's where I started to have the most fun is, the people.

[00:14:10] The people creating something new and I learned when I went to Forbes magazine. I joined that was early in my career. Over five or six years I was there. I picked up the formula. There's a formula to writing a Forbes story for the magazine and it at the time I was I detailed to the website.

[00:14:28] That's how I joined Forbes was writing for Forbes.com. But over time, I started being asked to write magazine features too. And there was a formula and the formula was always very simple. There was a smart person challenging the established convention. This or that. Challenging the assumptions of this or that industry and finding a better way.

[00:14:48] And suddenly money is raining hot. That's how it works. That's the capitalist tool theory of storytelling. And I did some of the same work at business week with a little bit more of a news focused business, the old McGraw Hill owned Business Week. It's now Bloomberg Business Week.

[00:15:08] I learned to tell that kind of formula story and it serves me well. I'm still using that formula in my client work today when I do case studies and that sort of thing. There's always a hero, there's always a beginning state, a problem, a solution, and an end state. Nothing changes about that.

[00:15:29] Jolie Downs: Yeah, we love that formula, don't we? As people. Yeah, we do love that formula. 

[00:15:36] Arik Hesseldahl: And it's really hard for people who haven't learned it. It's really hard I found. In a lot of corporate communication settings, people think they know the story and they really don't. You have to know what your story is about.

[00:15:48] Yeah. 

[00:15:49] Jolie Downs: And going back to that question you shared, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? That is a magic question in so many different avenues of career and personal life, really. Get into that route and you can figure things out from there. So that's fantastic. I'm curious, have you had any really big challenge?

[00:16:08] Everyone's had big challenges. What's been a really big challenge that you faced in your career that you're willing to share with us? And how did you overcome it? 

[00:16:14] Arik Hesseldahl: So I as you said in the setup, one of my clients hired me to run a SAP hired me in 2018 to come in and run his global content team.

[00:16:24] And the fact that it had a global content team, it was literally called SAP news. So I was in charge of internal storytelling. So we had a dedicated internal news site for 100,000 employees around the world. I also was in charge of the external news site. So everything where all the publish, all the press releases were published, all the feature stories, corporate blogs, all of that stuff was under my portfolio in English and multiple languages, by the way.

[00:16:48] Then I also had video and social media. So I had the YouTube channel, and Twitter, and LinkedIn and presences as well. I was in charge of a big portfolio for one of the biggest technology companies in the world. And it was great. The fact that they had a staff of a well resourced team of creative storytellers, some of who had been journalists in the past, like me, spoke very well.

[00:17:13] But I get to this company the first day and I have absolutely no idea what's going on. People are using phrases and words and terminology that I don't understand. And I'm like, again, it was a little bit like Accenture. Accenture was you know multiple fire hoses and it proved to be too much for me. SAP was one great big fire hose with its own internal language and I had to learn it quickly but the most important piece of advice I got from my boss, Nikola Leska, at the time was take your time.

[00:17:43] Thankfully, she gave me permission to bring myself up to speed over time and figure out where I fit in the organization and how I was going to manage these 32 people. And that was another thing. And I found over time that I was a pretty good manager. I was a good, empathetic boss. I say that without any humility, but I was willing to listen and I was willing to work with them.

[00:18:09] So that was the big challenge was learning how to fit within a large organization and trusting my gut, trusting my instincts a lot more. 

[00:18:18] Jolie Downs: And that's taking your time is great advice. Just to slow down and take it in, really absorb what's happening. Think about the best ways to go about things.

[00:18:28] Often we feel like we have to do things quickly. And I think when we're feeling that way. We don't take everything in that we could be taking it. And often we'll maybe make a little bit of a mistake in the decisions we make moving forward. So I think that's great advice and advice that we can all use a little more of these days. 

[00:18:44] Yeah. 

[00:18:44] Arik Hesseldahl: It was antithetical to the journalist in me. I was used to hourly news cycles switching on and off and having to get a story turned around in hours or minutes sometimes. And thankfully, large corporations have a tendency to move a lot slower. Decisions take a lot longer to happen. Sometimes things get rushed and there's plenty of opportunity for that.

[00:19:07] But I did have that opportunity to learn. And there was also an annual cycle of things. There's things that happened in this quarter and things that happened in the fourth quarter. And then thankfully the summer is really slow. So I had the opportunity to learn. And if you take those opportunities to get yourself out of fire hose mode and learn what's going on. Especially in that first year to 18 months when you're at with a new employer, it's worth all the valuable time in the world. 

[00:19:33] Jolie Downs: Oh yeah. You can add so much more value as you move forward when you do that. 

[00:19:38] Arik Hesseldahl: Exactly. And that's precisely what I learned.

[00:19:40] And that lines up exactly with how I would say it. 

[00:19:42] Jolie Downs: Yeah. 

[00:19:42] Arik Hesseldahl: Yeah. 

[00:19:45] Jolie Downs: So that's great. Now one of the questions I always like to ask, just because I'm curious what you have to say about this, because we are being fed constantly, even without our permission. We're always being fed information.

[00:19:56] So I love to know what people read or watch or listen to, to proactively feed their mind to positively impact their life in some way. So what's something that you have read, watched, or listened to that positively impacted you that you think could help others as well? 

[00:20:13] Arik Hesseldahl: First advice I try to tell people is to turn off cable news.

[00:20:19] Yes. I have stopped it. I will occasionally. Looking on Rachel Maddow but no, cable news is not the constructive force for good that it once was. And I don't care what your persuasion is, it's not good for you. I agree. Right off. So that's advice number one. I'm still pretty old school in my consumption habits.

[00:20:42] Arik Hesseldahl: Everything is for the most part digital. New York Times and Washington post and The Wall Street Journal, those are my big three. I'm also a big fan of the economist. I've been reading that for a really long time. I think it's very smart. I don't always agree with it, but it's smart.

[00:20:57] Challenges me. I started reading it in my late twenties and I never stopped. So those are my big four. Nice. New York Review of Books, I read that a lot. That makes me feel very smart. 

[00:21:11] Jolie Downs: I admit I have not been looking at the New York Review of Books. That is something I need to have on my repertoire for sure.

[00:21:17] Arik Hesseldahl: Yeah, that's a good, it's a good one. I picked it up. One day I had this habit of stopping by this really terrific newsstand when I lived in New York City. I would pick up a lot of interesting things and I picked up that on a lark and I just really fell in love with it. So I've been reading it ever since.

[00:21:31] Jolie Downs: Thank you. I'm going to check that out. That's very helpful. So last question before you go, and I just like to throw this out just to see what you have to say, but I believe we all have personal superpowers that I mean a lot of times we're born with certain things that were just have natural gifts.

[00:21:48] And a lot of times we also develop these superpowers over time. I'm curious if you have a personal superpower that has perhaps one that you developed over time that has really benefited you in life. 

[00:22:01] Arik Hesseldahl: I can talk to almost anybody. Given the right set of circumstances. I'm naturally shy by inclination.

[00:22:07] It's just true. I'm not as extroverted as I sometimes make myself out to be. But when I have that opportunity to talk to pretty much anybody,

[00:22:17] I can talk to anybody about almost any subject, even if I'd known nothing about that subject, I can draw interesting nuggets out of them and then I can come back with interesting questions. And have a conversation with them. And it's a skill that you hone doing literally thousands of interviews, which I've done. But also, sitting at bar stools in New York City, you could, so I was always practicing it and I never really noticed that it was a superpower until it started coming to me that, yeah, I could do that. And people would ask me and actually pay me decent money to do interviews, either virtually or in person or whatever, because they didn't have anybody who could do it comfortably, with an executive or a founder or somebody of that nature.

[00:23:01] So that's my superpower, I don't know what you call that. Interviewing? You call that conversation? I don't know. Connection? 

[00:23:08] Jolie Downs: Yeah. Just being able to talk to people and anyone, anywhere, it is an absolute superpower. And getting them, being able to get them to actually speak with you, share something with you. I can tell that you're someone that probably makes people feel very comfortable to share their story or open up and what have you. Is there, I asked you about go to questions workwise. Is there a go to question you have when you meet someone you've never met before, like the person on the bar stool, if you will?

[00:23:38] Arik Hesseldahl: Yeah, I used to go to this one bar on the Upper West Side of New York. It's not there anymore. But there was a turned out there was a committee of regulars that I lived close by, so I went to this bar a lot and I got to know all the committee of regulars. And there was this one magazine editor who I got to know really well.

[00:23:54] And there was another guy who was a musician and there was another guy who was a photographer and I could talk to them about anything that there was going on. And we talked about what was going on in the news. And we would talk about, what's going on at the office and, who's getting, who's having trouble at home or whatever.

[00:24:11] All these interesting personal questions. And it just became, tell me what's going on, what's happening. Tell me about you, tell me about what's important to you and why. That's basically, 

[00:24:22] I'm winding my way to that point. But it was different versions of that.

[00:24:30] Jolie Downs: Yeah. People love to talk about that and what's important to them and why. It lights them up, right? It's a great way to make connection. Arik, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on the Career Wonderlust Podcast. 

[00:24:42] Arik Hesseldahl: Thank you. It's been great. 

[00:24:47] Jolie Downs: Thank you for joining us on the Career Wanderlust Podcast. If you find value in learning from others, give us a like and subscribe. If you're looking to grow your communications, marketing, public relations, or sales and biz dev team with the best talent and quickly, check us out at ParadigmStaffing. com and submit a request.

[00:25:11] We are wishing you a most successful and fulfilling career. Until next time.