The Art of Doing

Author: Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield

How to Shape a Story with Celebrity Spin Doctor
Mike Sitrick

Everyone understands the importance of shaping a story but few are as shrewdly proficient at manipulating the media as L.A. crisis manager Mike Sitrick, who the Los Angeles Times called “The Wizard of Spin.”

Mike Sitrick Art of Doing How Superachievers do What They Do and How They Do It So WellEveryone understands the importance of shaping a story but few are as shrewdly proficient at manipulating the media as L.A. crisis manager Mike Sitrick, who the Los Angeles Times called “The Wizard of Spin.”  A celebrity, arrested for soliciting a prostitute or going on a drunken rampage, confronted with a frenzied pack of reporters, is likely to call Sitrick whose firm has defended and rebuilt the reputations of scores of entertainers, athletes and other high-profile clients caught in the media glare. (His clients have included Paris Hilton, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Vick and Chris Brown to name a few, as well as embattled companies and high profile executives, many of whom Sitrick can only discuss off the record if at all.) Sitrick, whose uncanny ability to assess and understand the intricacies of how the media behaves and what makes an individual journalist tick, has a lot to teach anyone about how to deal with the media. His advice in a nutshell: “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.”

Continue reading “How to Shape a Story with Celebrity Spin Doctor
Mike Sitrick”

Inside the Mind of David Chang:
A Restaurateur’s Word Cloud

What does it take to make a great restaurant? From this Word Cloud, based on our interview with David Chang, chef/owner of Momofuku restaurant group, for our book, “The Art of Doing,” we can see what matters most to this award-winning Korean-American restaurateur.

David Chang Word Cloud

Frequency is the currency of a word cloud. The more a word is repeated, the larger it appears in the cloud. Click here to see the interactive version.

David Chang the art of doing momofukuWhat does it take to make a great restaurant? From this word cloud, based on our interview with David Chang, chef/owner of Momofuku restaurant group, for our book “The Art of Doing,” we can see what matters most to this award-winning Korean-American restaurateur. Rather than the reality TV caricature of a pathological screaming chef, Chang’s focus on words such as ‘work,’ ‘love,’ ‘good,’ ‘care,’ ‘make,’ ‘hard,’ ‘great’ and ‘open’ reveal his obsessive devotion to food as well as those who prepare and eat it. His concern for co-workers, customers and all that occurs within his kitchens and what goes out of them borders on the religious. His words even hint at the feelings of a doting mother serving her family. Is it any wonder that the combination of Chang’s priestly devotion, his culinary brilliance and killer work ethic is impressing critics, attracting talented staff and feeding a growing number of happy customers in country after country?

Read our story on David Chang and “The Secret Ingredient for Success” in The New York Times here. Check out artist/illustrator Scott Menchin’s Art of Doing Artist Interpretation of David Chang here.

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Book Talk: The Art of Doing at SXSW, a Forbes Review

Reading at SXSW 2013
Camille Sweeney (yes, in cowboy boots!) reads from “The Art of Doing” at SXSW Interactive on Sat March 9 Austin Convention Center Ballroom G
Forbes’s Meghan Casserly reports from SXSW: “Super-Achievers Call ‘Community’ The Real Secret Of Success”
South By Southwest has become something of a Mecca for super-achievers, or more accurately, would-be super-achievers hoping to change the world one idea at a time. So it was unsurprising to find an Austin ballroom packed with more than 300 conference attendees on a humid Saturday morning to hear Camille Sweeney, a co-author of the new book “The Art Of Doing” share her findings on the common qualities of more than 36 of the world’s highest achieving humans.

Continue reading “Book Talk: The Art of Doing at SXSW, a Forbes Review”

The Art of Doing at SXSW
Austin Convention Center on Sat March 9 at 10AM

sxsw
Come hear co-authors Camille Sweeney & Josh Gosfield in talks at SXSW 2013

We know that it takes hard work, talent and the occasional dose of luck for someone to make it to the top of their chosen field…but is that all?

To find out we asked dozens of extraordinary people including celebrities, businessmen, artists and iconoclastic achievers, “How do you do what you do?”

The result is our book “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well” (Plume 2013). We talked to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, actor Alec Baldwin, Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner, actress Laura Linney, rockers OK Go, startup king Bill Gross, wire walker Philippe Petit, business guru Guy Kawasaki and many more. We discovered that these superachievers, however diverse their goals, shared many fascinating qualities that contributed to their success.

At Camille’s book talk at SXSW she’ll discuss what you can learn from their strategies, principles and tips and how you can apply them to your own work and personal life. Join us after in the SXSW bookstore for a signing. And from 6:30 to 8 PM come to Happy Hour at Maggie Mae’s 323 E 6th St, Austin, TX.

Josh will speak, too, in a SXSW presentation on Creativity on Tues March 12 at 12:30. Follow Josh on Twitter: Here

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When Failure Is Not An Option,
Typical Career Advice Does Not Apply
[Philippe Petit Part 2]

“Art happens when you work millions of hours not to make it look hard but to make it look effortless,” says famed World Trade Center high-wire walker Philippe Petit. Read on for more insight that applies to entrepreneurs as well as daredevils.

In 1974, Philippe Petit committed the “artistic crime of the century” when he wire-walked across the void between the two world trade center towers. Since then, Petit has gone on to perform many other spectacular wire walks, authored over half a dozen books and singlehandedly built a barn using eighteenth-century tools and design. But, for all of his meticulous preparation, Petit bristles at any attempt to systematize his methods. Asked to explain his artistic process, he says, “It can be boiled down to a few words–from chaos to total control to perfection.”

We found Petit’s philosophy of how he lives his entire life as if he’s on the high wire could be applied to anyone’s work or personal life. Continue reading “When Failure Is Not An Option,
Typical Career Advice Does Not Apply
[Philippe Petit Part 2]”

How to Live Life on the High Wire with Philippe Petit [Part 1]

Photo: Flickr user Carolina Pastrana

On a summer day in 1974, a 24-year-old Frenchman stepped onto the world stage with one of the most astonishing performances in modern history–walking back and forth on a wire illegally rigged across the void between New York’s World Trade Center Towers, three quarters of a mile above spellbound onlookers. It all began six years earlier when the young Philippe Petit was inspired by a rendering of the not-yet-constructed towers he saw in a magazine. He spent the following years refining his wire walking skills and making countless visits to the towers to plot how to surreptitiously enter the buildings and solve the complicated logistics of rigging his wire between the swaying towers. Petit has gone on to perform many other spectacular wire walks, authored over half a dozen books, was the subject of the acclaimed documentary Man on Wire, and singlehandedly built a barn using eighteenth-century tools and design. Whether on the high wire or not, Petit’s philosophy is epitomized in his response to reporters shouting “Why?” after his dramatic Twin Towers crossing. Petit’s answer: “The beauty of it is, there is no ‘why.’” Continue reading “How to Live Life on the High Wire with Philippe Petit [Part 1]”

Teen Solo Circumnavigator Jessica Watson: An Artist’s Interpretation

Artist Amy Crehore’s artistic interpretation of Teen Solo Circumnavigator Jessica Watson

The Art of Doing Artist’s Interpretation Project is a collaboration between us and artists we’ve asked to depict superachievers from our book, “The Art of Doing.”

Because of her affinity for nature and her ability to evoke the dreamlike quality of life, we asked artist Amy Crehore to capture a moment of the incredible journey of Jessica Watson. Watson, who we interviewed for our book in the chapter, “How to Sail Around the World,” first dreamed of taking her epic journey when she was only 11 years old. It took her five years, many skills to acquire and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to overcome before she set sail from Sydney Harbor on a 34-foot sailboat The Pink Lady. And once she was at sea, Watson had to endure loneliness, boredom, fear and mechanical failures. She was weeks away from help in storms that threw her boat upside down in waves that looked like “giant black mountains,” before she returned seven and a half months later, the youngest person ever to sail the world solo.

Watson told us that despite her struggles, the most important advice she got from the fellow circumnavigators she had turned to before she began her journey was to remember to take time to enjoy herself:

“I had read and reread books about solo sailing around the world but once I set off on my voyage, I began to understand their stories in a whole new way. The feeling of solitude, when all I could see in any direction was endless ocean and endless sky, made me feel connected to them, even to Joshua Slocum, who’d done the sail more than a century before me. On The Pink Lady there was only the moment. Looking out at the horizon, I felt alive and exhilarated.”

More posts on Jessica Watson here and here.

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