Hello and welcome to another episode of The Traveling Introvert. And of course, this is the Career Conversations segment. I would like to welcome our guest here today. It's Mike. Mike, how are you? I'm doing wonderful. It's a beautiful day out here in San Francisco, in the Bayview. More specific, leave the neighborhood of Hunters Point Bayview in a new community called the San Francisco Shipyard. Okay, now I want to know more, but I'm not going to get sidetracked.
Mike, first question I ask everybody is, are you an introvert? I am an introvert. I took the Brighmires test a while back. I'm an INFJ. Or I was an INFJ. I think I might be, like, an extroverted introvert now. Okay, and what does introversion mean to you? So growing up, I was a shy kid. I kind of like being left alone, just kind of being like, tensive quiet. Like I said, I was shy. So I think for me, like, introversion just the word introversion is just thinking within.
And would you say that that has helped you in your career? Well, the work that I used to do in tech, well, first I started off as a designer designing websites starting back in 1995. I was a concert promoter in college, so I had to design the concert posters. And I had a buddy of mine, Chris Jensen, who helped teach me desktop publishing. So working in tech, I was used to just putting on my headphones and just doing work and just kind of keeping to myself.
So in that regards, yeah, introversion has helped me out because it allows you to just kind of think about things for the most part, like by yourself. I think in that regard, introversion has. Helped me out and I guess have your workplaces been set up in such a way to enable you to do that deep work by yourself? They have, yeah. Working as my first job was well, I worked for a company called Creative Internet Design in Pasadena in 1997.
It was just myself, Ari Petrajaska, who was one of three co founders of Creative Internet Design, but his other two founders left to go work for MGM Studios, and there was a female engineer, so it was just the three of us. So I basically just put on my headphones and do my work. And then the other companies I worked for was a small design agency called Adjacency. Got it. Acquired by Sapien. I was at Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Travel for four
years. I was at LinkedIn for four years, four months, and Zinger for two and a half years. Yeah, I own all those jobs. I was working as either a productions designer, visual designer, user interface designer, and I could just kind of, like, be working on my laptop or workstation with the headphones on and just work. Aside from reviewing my work with my creative director or my team, I was pretty much left alone. Okay. And so you've talked about doing
a lot of UX work and design work. Can you tell me about any misconceptions that people might have about your job and or industry. In terms of tech? I think of a lot of people think about what used to be Fang, facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google now Google's Alphabet, and Facebook is Meta. I guess people have an image of, like, techies from, like, say, The Social Network, the story about Mark Zuckerberg and his founding of Facebook.
So I guess people have the image of techies, like, wearing t shirts and jeans. On my case, it was mostly like, t shirts and short pants or sweatpants. It's kind of accurate, actually. I didn't ever in my career have to wear suit and tie until until I worked for Sapien. And kind of like when the bubble was crashing, they wanted people to be more professional. So I actually had to buy some button down shirts. I just got them at a thrift store.
I mean, I wasn't really meeting clients, so I'm not sure why they wanted the dress code. The professional dress code. I could go on about what professional means and doesn't mean, but I'm not going to. Is there something actually, first question is, can you tell me about a connection that you have made that has changed your life? Yeah. So my first job in tech in the San Francisco bay area was with Bernie Deshant.
He was one of four co founders of Adjacency, which started off in Madison, Wisconsin, and they later moved out to San Francisco. Adjacency had some incredible clients considering how small they were. They designed websites for Apple, land Rover, nordstrom Tire Bar, specialized Bikes, virgin Music tag, Hoyer Patagonia. I mean, the list was amazing. They got acquired by a company called Sapient, and at the time, we're about 50 people, actually about 57 people, they got acquired for $50 million.
Sapient had actually acquired a company called Studio Archetype that was run by Clement Mock that was double our size, but for half of what we got acquired for. So they probably had something like 110 employees getting acquired for 25 million. And Clement really didn't give much stock to his employees. They were pissed when we got acquired because the principals, andrew Sather, Bernie mostly Andrew had equity, was very generous with the equity that he gave us.
So Bernie has a really sharp eye, always had really good feedback. They kind of took a chance on me. I came in as a production designer. That means that I was coding HTML and doing Iterative design for clients like Rollerblade and Power Bar. So he was really a mentor. And then I ended up getting diagnosed with bipolar one disorder in the summer of 2015 when I had my first Janice episode. And he's really been there during the times that
I've been severely depressed. He's always like a person that's non judgmental and someone that I know I can reach out to when I'm in a depressed state. I mean, I've been so severely depressed where I was in Taipei, Taiwan, with my parents, and I spent six months literally in bed and would go like, maybe a week or two without showering or shaving and not even caring that I didn't do any of those things in terms of well being.
And so how different do you think your life would be if you hadn't made that connection? I mean, adjacency basically started my career in the San Francisco bay area. I had a job offer from adjacency and a company called circumstance. I got laid off from Sapient in a fourth round, and I had a coworker of mine that got laid off in an earlier round, and he got a job at yahoo. And he referred me into Yahoo.
And had it not been for the fact that I had a job at Adjacency, I don't think my life would have taken a completely different course. I wouldn't have worked at the companies that I had. Yeah, okay. And so as part of that, and this might lead on from that, is is there something that you do regularly that has improved your life, career and or business? Yeah, absolutely, 100%.
So being physically active, exercising is one of the best things to do for your mental health, especially when you're depressed, or in my case, severely depressed. I go to an orange theory fitness studio in Mission Bay in San Francisco, and that's something that really has helped me out. I reached out to Ellen lawfam, who founded orange Theory fitness, and she actually replied back
to me. I let her know when I first started at Ordinary Fitness, that doing workouts with Ordinary Fitness was really going to be something that was going to help me out with my mental health. And she agreed. The says exercising releases like dopamines. In my case, I find working out and exercising way more effective than medication because the medication that I've taken in the past, lithium, is not good for your liver. I've taken medication which has made me gain weight.
Some of the stuff even has given me, like, penal rectal dysfunction, and sometimes I can't even sleep. So right now, I'm not on any medication. I actually art directed a t shirt with my designer Damai out of Indonesia that says, orange theory fitness is my drug. That's wonderful, and I hope to see you wearing it in the fitness place where you work out. Yeah, I've done 97 workouts at orange 30 fitness starting two and a half years ago.
So on my 100th workout, I'm going to wear the t shirt that says, oranger fitness is my drug. And I'm going to get a photo with the staff holding a sign that celebrates my 100th workout. And we will then send the photo of the t shirt to the owner of the franchise in San Francisco to see if we can make it an official collaboration between my merge company, t shirts Matter and Orange Fitness in the San Francisco Bay area.
But since I've already communicated with Ellen Latham, who is the founder of Orangebury Fitness, I'd like to make it international because they have studios around the world. That is awesome, and I cannot wait to see the photos. That's a great thing. So you said about two and a half years. So you were able to keep this up during the Pandemic.
I worked out at Orange 30 Fitness for a couple of times during the Pandemic, but I ended up getting severely depressed again because I was worried about money because the stock market crashed during the pandemic, and I ended back up in Taipei, Taiwan for like, six months. Got it. Okay. Yeah. In Taipei, Taiwan, there is a track that I had a fitbit at the time, and the goal of fitbit is hitting your 10,000 steps. So that's what I was doing in Taipei that I want is trying to hit those 10,000
steps. Okay. So with exercise being something that you say yes to and do on a regular basis to improve your life, what is something that you say no to? So I have a t shirt that I would say it's inspired by Taylor Swift because I'm a huge fan. I stand Taylor. It's a lyric from her song Shake it off. It says, haters going to hate. So I just shake off that negativity. I say no to negativity. Okay,
that's a good one. I haven't heard that one. And so can you tell me something that you've encountered while going through your career and building your business that has surprised you? That's a really good question. Something that has surprised me. I don't know if this is a surprise me, but I'm pretty resilient. I actually today was on a Google me call with a guy who ran a company that only works with, I think, something like five clients per quarter. And it was supposed to be like a
30 minutes call. And I was talking to him about my new idea about an urban camping airbnb experience. And I was showing him the new boards, and I have another tab open, kind of like showing stuff. And then I go back to the main room, and he's not there. We're basically like, 15 minutes in. And so I was like, okay, I'm not sure what happened. So I disconnect. I log back in. He's not there. I go check my LinkedIn inbox, and I see that he's blocked me.
I have no clue why. You know, it's like, well, he did say that, you know, with the companies that they work with, that they have to be generating like, monthly $50,000, and they've actually spent $150,000,000 on ads. So in the form where they put, how much do you make monthly? I'm like, well, if they're looking for companies that make $50,000 monthly, I'm going to put kind of like the little wavy thing, like approximately like $50,000? Yes. But in my case, it would have
been like approximately zero. I pretty much filled up the form to tell them what they wanted to hear. I think probably the reason why he dropped off the call. He's like, why is this guy telling me about this airbnb camping experience when I only work with companies that make at least 50,000 monthly? But he did block me on LinkedIn, which is kind of curious. I mean, he's like, British, and he also has, like, a mustache. He kind of looked like a pedophile.
And so you wanted to get to talk because you filled out the form, so why did you want to get to talk to him? He was able to scale, according to his website, these companies, like, working and doing ads and really accelerating the companies. I'm basically a rocket ship. I'm a rocket ship. I'm on the launching pad. All I need is some fuel and someone to hit the button to go and then I'm a rocket. And that's actually what they call like, startups, so called unicorns that are worth
over a billion dollars. Get ready for a ride on the rocket ship. It's going to be the most amazing experience of your life. LinkedIn was the most amazing professional experience of my life. That was a rocket ship. And so, I mean, he must know that people do that because you can't be the first person who's done that. And maybe if he'd been a little bit more curious and or asked questions, that would have come through instead of just blocking. People don't have curiosity
anymore. At any point, he just said, hey, pause. Things aren't working. I don't think it's going to work out. It's not a good fit. But no, he just left the conversation and blocking on LinkedIn. Yeah, communication would have been nice. Communication would have been nice, especially he specifically says that with the clients they work with, since they work with so few that it feels like an extension of your team, you'd think that he'd have more people skills. Yeah,
you're right. All right, so final question for you. It's the mystery question. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Is a hot dog a sandwich? No, the hot dog is not a sandwich. Why? Like a sandwich has, like, the circular buns. A hot dog does not have a circular bun. I mean, unless you put like, you know, like like, let's say three hot dogs, you know, between two hangar hamburger buns, then I would say it might be a sandwich, but no, it's not. No way. Emphatically, I disagree. Okay.
I like that. I like when people are like, no, this is what I think and why. Thank you for that answer. So please let my listeners know where they can find out more about you and what you do. So I was actually an early LinkedIn employee when I started at LinkedIn in May of 2006. I was a 42nd well, there are 42 people at the company. I was a 43rd employee and the second visual second user interface designer there. So I'd say, take a look at me on LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn.com in Mikelin.
M-I-K-E-L-I-N-I have links to press articles about what I've done with T shirts matter. I have press articles about what I did with my Scope Day event. My instagram is instagram.com. Mikelin SF. M-I-K-E-L-I-N-S-F-S-F as in San Francisco? The T shirt company is Tshirtsmatter.com. The instagram is instagram.com. Tshirtsmatter. Tshirtsmatter. The hyphen is really important. There's actually a company that's Tshirtsmatter.com without the Hyphen. I've had people looking at the website
saying, hey, you have this product. I'm like, no, you're on the wrong website. Yeah, there's also linktree L-I-N-K-T-R-E-E capital T, capital S-H-I-R-T-S capital M. Lowercase A-T-T-E-R. That link has links to everything. Thanks. Awesome. Thank you so very much for sharing your stories and your time with me today. I really appreciate it. And, yeah, that person who ghosted. All right, thank you so very much. And this is Janice last thing. I'm currently working on self publishing my memoir
in the next three to six months. And the name of my memoir is called The Way Out is Through My Mental Health Journey living with Bipolar One Disorder by Mike Lynn. And that's inspired well, that's a song by Nine Chanel's on the fragile, the Way I Deserve. I have so many questions now. That is a great title and I am intrigued. Yes. So we're going to make sure all the links are there, and please let me know when that does come out, so then we can add of that too. Thank you all
for listening. This is Janice@thecareintrovert.com helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.