#15 :: Who Do I Want to Be When This Ends? with Debra Giunta - Prismatic

In this powerful interview we hear from Debra Giunta who took a deep look during the pandemic instead of surrendering to a fear-based response. Learn about the silver linings she found with her three ventures and how we can all benefit from a similar type of inquiry and structure.

Brainchild Collective: https://www.brainchildcollective.co/

Design Dance: https://www.designdance.net/

Prismatic: https://www.prismaticmovement.org/

Recorded on 01.13.21

TRANSCRIPT

Laurie Pillow: So you guys, welcome back to the 100 CEO Project podcast. And we're kicking it off with a really inspiring topic and even more inspiring person. Her name is Debra Giunta. She is a social entrepreneur focusing on youth development through the arts. She's got three companies that have launched between 2008 and 2020. Starting off with Design Dance, then Prismatic, which is a nonprofit, and most recently, the Brainchild Collective. So first and foremost, thanks for joining us, Debra.

Debra Giunta: Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

LP: So we have a lot of topics we want to talk to you about - that you're not just a dancer, since a little kid, but you're also very much into empowerment, youth literacy through the arts, and in entrepreneurs. So it's really unusual for somebody who is a performance artist to be able to take that and mesh it with entrepreneurial endeavors and make something that impacts lives and as sustainable as a business. And you've done it again, not just once but three times. You have partnered with the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, Art Institute of Chicago; you’re serving thousands of kids around the Chicago area, and employing over 40 or 50 people who are dance teaching artists.

Andrea Spirov: So Debra, last time we talked you were saying that there were a lot of silver linings from 2020. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the events that happened? I know you had some disruption to your business and how you coped and how they were silver linings?

DG: Yeah. Well, it was a huge disruption to the business right before. You know, we were not unlike anyone else in COVID, you know, everything really shut down March 13. That was like the end of everything for us. And right before that, we had been awarded 14 grants from the city. So we had 14 new partnerships that were launching, we were full steam ahead, I had just hired on three new employees to my internal team. So I actually had one of them started just over a week before the shutdown. And so it was a huge, huge inflection point. You know, a lot of our grants, all of those grants were government grants. And we had no idea if they were going to continue to fund those programs, or if they were going to pause funding, we had no idea what virtual learning was going to look like. It was a free for all, you know, some people were in my industry were just mass laying off everybody on their team, shutting everything down immediately. All of our teaching artists, you know, I have an internal administrative team. And then I have a teaching artists team, we have dance educators, and they are all contractors. And so it was, you know, they are working on these specific grants as they come through, I had no idea if I'd be able to keep them on. So just a lot of uncertainty. 

And I think, you know, entrepreneurs are really, I think made for this kind of moment. And I think, you know, we are people and I think in my heart, that's who I am is I'm an entrepreneur. And I think, you know, Laurie, you touched on this, the transition from being an artist to being an entrepreneur, is in my mind, there's, you know, I see from the outside that they seem different. But in my mind, they’re so seamless because it really is about seeing what's around you, being able to reflect on it, and being able to create a vision that doesn't exist yet. And so, I, you know, my team pivoted very quickly to virtual learning, and we tried a lot of different things. I will say, I could go through each thing that we've tried, some things have been really successful, some things have really not been successful. But the silver lining of it is I think there's been a few. One has been my team. It was pretty much entirely new team. I had turned over my staff pretty, pretty entirely this year. And this team has bonded in a way that I have never in 12 years experienced. Like the fact that they had to pivot together - that we had folks who were brand new who were still training in a job that didn't really even exist, you know, some of the people that I had hired were planning to do work that didn't, that we no longer have for them. And so, you know, I had to look at them and say, you know, I want to keep you on, I want to do everything I can to keep you on. But if that's the case, you're going to have to help just figure this out, like get in the mess, start to figure out what virtual learning might look like, let's start to do research on grants and federal funding. And let's take it one day at a time. And that digging in, I think it really, it really likened back to the days when we were first to startup and those first couple years where everybody was kind of figuring out and it was messy, and everyone was doing every job. And I think over the years, we have lost some of that, because we aren’t a startup anymore. And being able to go back to that phase really bonded everybody together so well. So that's been a huge silver lining, I feel like I really have one of the best teams I've ever had. They're just such a wonderful, cohesive, really passionate group that I think is very bought into supporting each other. 

I think another piece is, you know, we Design Dance has grown in a lot of ways that aren't working; that haven't been working for us for a little while. And I think sometimes this is the case with any entrepreneurial endeavor, you try a lot of stuff. And so I'm always doing this hand motion with my staff, but like, we've scaled this way. And we need to scale this way. You know, we want to be better at really focusing in on what what impact you want to make. You know, Prismatic and Brainchild Collective, those are newer brands, they have a much more focus and direct impact vision. Design dance has evolved over the years and as we've continued to evolve who we are, our client base is really broad, our scope is really broad. And and we've been feeling it, you know, our team, I think there's some confusion and some lack of focus in this space. And we have really dug into what our vision is, who we want to be, and looking at how do we come back next school year for a really strong company that really knows what our identity is. And it's been really exciting. I think I, I have never been quite so focused and connected to where I want to go with this company since the very beginning. Like it almost feels like we're having a second startup phase, which is really exciting. So those are the two things that really pop up. I imagine that years from now, I will be reflecting back on those silver linings of 2020. And I'm sure there's things, in retrospect that I don't even know are happening right now that that we’ll experience later.

7:35  

AS: Last time we talked, you talked about how even when some people advised you all to maybe just lay off for this year, that you went back to this values piece. And you just mentioned vision. Can you share a little bit about that vision and values that really hold your team together?

DG: Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that is, certainly I felt and I don't know that everyone, everyone experiences, but I felt very much like there was everybody was kind of running in different directions. When I  say everybody, I mean the folks in my community, you know, other entrepreneurs, other arts organization leaders. Everyone was kind of running in different directions out of fear and insecurity. And I had a feeling -  hopefully this doesn't sound too existential or something. But I had this feeling like I was sitting in the center of this. And everything around me was just circulating very quickly, like I was in the center of a tornado. And everybody, everybody I would talk to really wanted to be an expert. I mean, if you've ever experienced this, you're talking to someone and it's clear, they don't know either, and no one knows, no one knew what was gonna happen with COVID. Especially in those first few weeks, we had no projection on this no past previous knowledge. But everyone I talked to you seems to have some really great framework for how we should all handle it. And it was all dramatically different than anyone else. Everybody, I talked to had a different idea. And I think sometimes when there's so many different ideas coming at you, it becomes even easier to hear yourself. Because you can say, there's too much; like I can't, I could never do all of these things I could never buy into all of these different ideologies for what to do next. And I started to just look internally and say, you know, I have no idea what's happening next, if it's possible, I'm going to lose my whole company. If it's possible, then I'm going to have to start completely over. Then who do I want to be right now in this moment? There will not... I like it was very clear, I think to everybody that this was going to be an unprecedented time that for the rest of our lives, we're going to look back and say that we lived through this. And so what do I want to say? Who do I want to be in this moment? Who do I want to say that I was in this moment? How will I feel best looking, looking back and I started from that place and I think for me, at my heart I'm really an entrepreneur like I really want to be creating solutions. So what this would not have been a time that I wanted to shut down to create the most amount of money in my bank account, this was the time I wanted to say I did my best to come up with solutions. Even if it meant that we weren't making as much money, or didn't have as much money in the bank or as much safety net, as we would have had I laid off my team. 

I will say it turned out to be lucrative for us. I mean, we stayed on and we were able to serve a ton of families through paid like tuition based virtual programming, we ended up being able to pivot, all those 14 contracts that we had, we ended up being able to deliver on all of those virtually. My team learned how to do video editing, learned how to, you know, create safe environments online for our students, we didn't do nearly as much as we normally do. But we did a lot. And we were able to pay for the team. And we were able to get enough funding through those opportunities to hold us over, you know, we also got some federal funding, we got the EIDL, we got the PPP loan, but we needed some some gap in between, you know, obviously, that those things took a while to get approved and apply for that. So we had these different pieces in place. And we're still doing that, you know, we've even, you know, the landscape of education has changed a lot, even from the spring to the fall. So now that we're in another school year, you know, we've been adapting even more figuring out what is the what our school partners need now, and it is really challenging, but when I think about how much momentum we would have lost, had I had I shut down, I would not have had the team to deliver on those clients, I would have lost all of that money. So there was opportunities. And I remember talking to I taught during this tornado phase, I was talking to an HR consultant, and he was a consultant for like big corporations that, frankly, were not that impacted by COVID. But they were, like many peopl,e really fearful that they were going to be impacted by COVID. And he sent to me, um, you know, I just got off the phone, you know, right before he talked to me, he said, You know, I just got off the phone with one of my clients. And, you know, they just laid off 100 people today. And so they're in the midst of a lot of stress. And I said, Oh, my goodness, like, and hearing stories like that were hard because I thought, like, should I be doing that? There's just not a roadmap for this - am I supposed to be? I was really uncertain. You know, this feels like the right thing to do to keep people on. But, you know, big companies are laying off 100 people on their staff, you know, who am I in this industry, that's basically shut down right now to keep people on? And I said, I said that to him, you know, I expressed my concern or my anxiety hearing that and he said, Well, you know, Debra, it doesn't make sense to keep people on if they're not doing anything. And you know, some of these companies, they have the money, but it's a waste of money to pay people who aren't doing anything. And it struck me as so short sighted that anyone would say, we have the money. But this person doesn't have anything to do, like, come up with something for them to do. And I thought about our company - that actually solidified it more to me, I said, if we can afford to keep you blind even for a little bit, there is work to be done. Like there's always work to be done. Especially working with kids who have never had more uncertainty and distress and mental health issues since we launched the company, this is the time where most needed. So it might not be their job they got hired for might not exist anymore. But there's always work to do. And there's always opportunities to explore how we can make an impact. So that's really been our mentality throughout the whole process. That doesn't mean it hasn't been in many ways, really, really challenging. I don't want to make it sound easy. There's been a lot of I've had my first panic attacks of my whole life in this process, I've had a lot of stress, a lot of sleepless nights, it's hard to have the weight of a staff during a time where you have no idea whether or not you're going to be able to sustain the company. It is hard. But I don't think I'd feel less stressed out if I was shutting down the company. If I had shut everything down and said I guess it's over, you know that that wouldn't give me less stress either. So at least in this moment, and this strategy, we're moving forward, and we're having an impact, and we're keeping things moving and it feels, that part feels good and productive.

14:10  

LP: That makes me think of your TED Talk. Your TEDx talk was called Normalizing Failure, I think. So, if you're so capable of finding the silver lining and literally turning it into something fantastic. Then how do you define failure? And through, for example, your work with Prismatic movement, and these curricula that teach social emotional learning to children? How are you able to teach them about failure, normalize it and engage them with activities that allow them to become more resilient?

14:48  

DG: Yeah, that's a good question and certainly one that I can teach about it and I can talk about my what what I am in my best self and in my best moments, and I will also say that there are definitely times where I still struggle with that I'm still struggle with the the pressure to, to succeed and achieve everything, all of the goals that I have. I think the main thing is the mindset shift between the end goal being achievement of the goal or the end goal being curiosity and learning. So I think if you can, if you can shift your perspective, and that's where I really try and talk myself through it. And this is something that we try and teach our students as well and through Prismatic is, how do you approach your life with curiosity, and with a passion and dedication to learning. And when you have a dedication to learning, there is no failure, it's all just another opportunity to learn something. So every time there is something and I do have very ambitious goals, you know, I set very high standards for where I want to be. And often I don't reach those things. So you know, there's but no matter what it is that we do, having the big goal helps me to expand my perspective of what I'm capable of. And at every point, if I don't reach that goal, there's always something to learn from it. There's always a way to be curious. And so it's continuing to ask yourself that. 

I think going back to your the initial question of how do I define failure, I actually think it goes back to this values piece, and there's something that I've started to notice within myself, is that the only times I do feel a true failure, like I look back and I feel regret, is when I acted out of alignment with my values. So when I've been in moments where I did things that I thought I was supposed to do, even if on the surface, they were successful. There's been times where I have done things that were successful on their face, but they were ultimately not super aligned with my values, or I was being convinced by someone else, that it was the right thing. So I was doing it or, or sometimes it's doing something just to get recognition, just you know, an ego driven effort. Those are the moments that I have a tendency to feel, looking back, uncomfortable about the fact that I did those things, um, but the moments where I can look back, whether it's a specific goal, an achievement, or you know, the way that I might interact with my staff, or the way I lead a meeting, or the way that I would pitch a funder or a board member, going into those conversations too saying, you know, what are my values? Who do I want to be in this moment, what's the higher purpose behind who I am and who I want to be, no matter what comes out of my mouth, no matter what ends up coming out of a meeting, or a partnership or business endeavor, the process around that is usually going to be something that makes me feel successful. And that's something we really again, talk about with our students, it really aligns back to they look at success as a particular career path when they come to us. And what we try and get them to understand is, if they understand themselves, and their purpose and their values, regardless of what their job is, or regardless of whether they experience success or failure, that alignment with who they are is what's going to help them to feel like they are always learning like they are becoming their best selves. And they will feel more success and achievement, regardless of again, what it looks like on paper.

18:19  

AS: I love that: who you're being not what you're doing.

DG: Mm hmm. Yes, that was a great way to sum that up, who you're being not what you're doing.

AS: It’s still such a perfect time, though, to give kids direction. I mean, I just remember being in high school and having still the most vague ideas of what was coming next. I think it's really important to me, if you get them at the high school level is the critical time and there's not enough of that. What is my life going to be? Who am I going to be?

DG: Yeah.

AS: What are my values in high school? Yeah,

18:52  

DG: Yeah, we see a lot of kids. Part of the reason we launched Prismatic is because there are a lot of great college and career readiness programs that exist for teens, but they're really focused on this traditional pathway of graduating high school, getting into college. And when I launched Prismatic, I was going to all of these events. It was right when I was really getting very involved and invested in the female entrepreneurship scene in Chicago. So I was at all these networking events that I'm sure that the two of you have been to a million of these. There's all these panelists talking about their, their journey and their what they want to launch and I could not get over how many women who were middle aged who on the surface I would have said, you know, these women are so successful, they make really good money. They have a beautiful family. They have beautiful house. Great title, you know, you would just think they're so accomplished. They’re sitting on these panels talking about how they're miserable. You know, they just felt like they had taken the wrong path. They majored in something in college and it set them on this track that they don't know how they got there and now they feel trapped. You know, they have all this, they have a family. They can't leave, they can't do what they really want to do. Like, I was just shocked to see, you know, something is really broken in our system and the way that we talk about career development if you've got people who are really at the top, who have had the most privilege, who that who have had really the picture of what the American dream for career success looks like, and they're miserable. So how, what are we missing here and the way that we talk about career development. And then if you go all the way, you know, to the students that we work with who are in very low income communities, they have even less access to conversations and introductions that can really help them design, not what will be successful, but what is actually going to bring them fulfillment so that we don't have another generation of middle aged individuals who are like, I don't know how I got here. I don't know why I'm here doing this job that I'm unhappy in. So we really designed a program that wasn't based on those metrics of just graduation and college entry, but was really more focused on taking a step before they even explore what their post high school education is going to be, and talk about, what do they even want? And then how do we help them get to where that is. And a lot of that is about self exploration, understanding who they are, what kind of relationships they need, and building off of those things to really help them design their own future.

21:22

LP: So when it comes to other social entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs in general, those who you know, navigated the 2020 pandemic, did you notice in your peers or just others in the business base, if they were if they actually were embodying these five pillars of social emotional learning? Or did you notice that there's one particular of those five that adults might be, should work on.

DG: Hmm. Well, I will say if there's one thing that Prismatic has taught me, I, every time we do a Prismatic workshop, where we bring in volunteers, so the program itself is 12 weeks long, and about five of those weeks, we bring in adults who come and speak to our kids. Every single time I follow up with these volunteers, and I say, How did it go? What did you think? And they always say, we need this for adults, you know, like, I need this, I struggle with this. And I think that the real answer is we all have a lot of work to do on ourselves, we have a lot of work to do in figuring out how to embody these emotional principles. I think that the pandemic has triggered a lot of fear. And I think that when we have fear, we go into fight or flight mode. And so I think for a lot of leaders, I've heard from a lot of leaders, things like, well, how do you know that your team is working when they're, when they're not in the office? How do you know that they're working? And it's this very fear based mentality that somehow you have control. And I'll tell you, like, I've worked in an office with people and I had no control and I work now we all work from home, and I have no control and none of us have control over anybody else. The best thing we can do as leaders, is to really get to know our team, and really get to know what they need and do our very best to like, create a work environment that inspires motivation and productivity. But that's it, it's a false sense of control that we have when we're working in an office together. So I think that's an example of fear. But I think we all have experienced a lot of different fear. And I think a lot of leaders going through COVID have reacted based on fear, whether it's a mass layoff, I've seen a lot of people out of fear, just create a lot of unrelated product offerings. I have an entrepreneur friend that calls this, the COVID snake oil, where, where there's a bunch of entrepreneurs that are just saying, you know, I have to adapt, I have to adapt and going so far away from what the impact or mission of their company is that they're just creating anything for the sake of creating it. And I think it's important that again, we really come back to that self awareness piece. Notice when we're being triggered by fear, and asking ourselves, you know, am I creating something now, that's going to serve me in the long term, even if it is something temporary? Even if it is just a COVID response? Is it something that's going to teach you something or add value to yourself, your team, your company that you're going to be able to take with you after COVID because if all we have to look back on is a bunch of erratic fear based responses, that's not going to serve us in the long term. And we are going to get through this and we are going to be someone at the end of this. So the question is, yeah, who do we want to be and in order to get to that place, we have to take the time to take care of ourselves, check in with what we're going through and respond in a really responsible way. And I do think, you know, women are socialized to do this a little easier than men, I will say, a lot of my male friends who are in the business world are the ones who are the most concerned about these issues. And I think it's a great opportunity for individuals who maybe don't have as much practice with these types of skills to really lean into this time of learning and practicing some of those emotional intelligence pieces.

25:27  

AS: Amazing, amazing advice. So my final, we always have a personalized question. My question goes back to the children. So this time period is really hard for kids. You even mentioned in general kids having uncertainty, stress, mental health issues coming up during the pandemic. And you want to go back to a 2018 interview that you did when you were quoted in Chicago magazine. And you said that “constant connectivity and ambitious scheduling have overridden these instincts, exposing kids to the same type of information overload that affects grownups.” Now, it's almost like they do still have the information overload, we almost been forced, though, to swing to the opposite. So they might be more unscheduled. And I'm just curious what tips you have for parents to really support our young people right now and their social emotional learning and development through these hard times.

DG: Yeah, I think one of the one of the things that research really shows that can be really healing and comforting, is creating some routine and something that our kids can come to come to expect. I've actually seen this too, from management. I was just reading an HBR article about this, about how managers can support their team, also through creating these routines. And it's so funny because it relates so well back to child development, having something we don't need to over schedule our kids, especially now, but creating something that they can come to expect every week. I personally can't advocate enough for being movement based. Kids need to be moving - it helps them process their emotions that helps them release energy. But whatever it is that your child really looks forward to, having something that you are just married to either you're not going to move that thing, especially right now it's so uncertain, and they're hearing their parents, all the adults in their life, their parents, or teachers, you know, kids have more access to the news and through social media than they've ever had before. So they're seeing all this uncertainty from the adults in their life that are really supposed to be giving them certainty, and comfort and structure. So having something every Saturday morning, we make pancakes or every Sunday night, we watch this show and we play this game, you know, something that they can always rely on is so healing and grounding in this time, and I think parents will find that it's also a feeling of grounding for them too. I think, us adults need something really concrete to look forward to and expect as well.

LP: A very special thanks to Debra Giunta, for sharing her wisdom and her insights about how to continue to grow in a different kind of world. How can they find you?

DG: Yes, so our work is all culminated under our parent company, the Brainchild Collective so you can go to brainchildcollective.co to learn more about Design Dance and Prismatic as well. 

LP: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today.

DG: Yes, thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.

LP: Hey, guys, we hope you've enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, please share it with your friends and colleagues who also have to navigate this leadership stuff. As you can see, this project is about to be a mini masterclass in every episode. Best part. It's free. So if you like it, please do us a favor and take a screenshot, share it on social with the hashtag #100CEO. That way we can say thanks and share it in our stories. And finally, if you've got some insights you'd like to share and you're a CEO, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at 100CEOProject.com, or on LinkedIn at the 100 CEO Project. Until next time, keep leading by example.

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Hosted by: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov

Writing and research: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov

Edited by: Laurie Pillow

Produced by: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov