Meet the Mentor: Frazer Buntin (part 3)

We hope you’ve been enjoying the feature on Frazer so far! If you haven’t read the previous parts yet, you can catch them here and here. Today, Frazer will be answering some questions I threw his way.

What are three principles that leaders should live by?

1.      Intense personal reflection

2.      Don’t give a shit

3.      Facilitate radical candor

What three words would you use to describe yourself?

1.      Intuitive

2.      Active

3.      Controlling (see, not all roses and rainbows!)

What’s the best advice that someone has ever given you?

“Use your head”

If there’s an aspect of your journey that has surprised you so far, what would you say it is?

How quickly we can adapt to change

Now-Frazer meets early-20’s-Frazer. What advice would you give him?

If I could give my early-20’s “me” some advice, it would be to not listen to my 42-year old self if I ever show up from the future with advice. Our paths need to happen. Our paths need to unfold. The unfolding is our life.

My incredibly wise words to college seniors when I go back to Sewanee to speak are:

“Do something! As that something will lead to something else.”

There is no defined path for us. There is no single right answer. However, if forced, I would tell myself to take more chances, live interesting places, do more cool shit that I haven’t done before, keep cultivating friends, let love happen, reflect intensely, don’t give such a shit.

Congratulations! You just won a million dollars. What are you going to do with it?

If I won a million dollars, I would perhaps start one micro-foundation of something for each of my kids, for something that are passionate about. I would use it as a way to help them create and cultivate something worthy over their lives. I think this could be a really cool experience for my kids to participate in running a micro-foundation. This perhaps could be the most valuable education they could receive and a really fun way for me to spend time with them.

If you were invited to give a TED talk, what would you speak about?

I would absolutely give a TED talk on the intersection of intense personal reflection and not giving a shit.

What’s your favourite book, and recommended reading for others?

Favorite book:

Panther in the Sky by James Alexander Thom.  It’s not my favorite book from a content standpoint but it was the book that really got me connected into reading at a young age so for that reason, it is my favorite book.

Recommended reading:

A New Earth by Ekhart Tolle

Reflections of a Ghost by Andrew Lytle

Working Days by John Steinbeck

Your biggest source of strength is…

…consciousness.

Do you know what your goals and ambitions are going forward?

My goals and ambitions going forward are to live a full life, moment by moment. That’s as specific as I am right now.

If you could host a dinner party and invite any three people, dead or alive, who would they be?

I would invite my wife, my son, and my daughter. We would dress up in formal wear and listen to hip hop music.

Many people have different success rituals. Which are yours?

For success rituals, we also would need dozens of pages to cover this topic. I am a very ritualistic person, and I have many rituals that I constantly refine and use to extreme degrees. These rituals include morning routines, workload and schedule management, parenting, nutrition, exercise, sleep. Perhaps we can do a follow-up on these and get into more detail (editor’s note: keep an eye out for this!).

In my first post, I mentioned that Frazer is working on an exciting new project – he’s working to add a new title under his belt – that of ‘author’. Back to Frazer…

Yes, I am working on a book project right now, which includes some of the topics covered in these posts. It is a book about feelings. Specifically, the way we feel throughout our professional careers during points of intensity. Typically, behind any extreme period within our careers (highs, lows, frustrations, fears), there are a set of common feelings. “I feel like I am drowning in work.” “I feel like I am stuck.” “I feel like no one cares about my career.” “I feel like a monkey can do my job.”

I explore why we have these feelings, with deep context of the underlying causes. I also use my experiences throughout my career of having these same feelings to explain tactics to cope through the friction that these feelings create. I have had some crazy-ass experiences in my career, and they have given me some deep points of context. A rare few get context in our professional careers, so the value of the book will hopefully be both understanding that context and taking action from it. The output of this context is this same professional acceleration.

I was inspired to write this book over a long period of time but especially after doing a mentoring session with a large group of professionals at Evolent. One of the participants sent me an email afterward that tipped me over the edge into action.

Similar to mentoring, my ability to share wisdom through context creates efficiency out of inefficiency. The audience for the book is likely primarily individuals who are earlier in their career. However, the spectrum of feelings can span across a broad scope of levels and points of time, so there is value in the material for most folks. I hope to help others understand these periods of intense feelings and equip them with some tools to deal with these periods. At the same time, I hope to make them laugh, as some of the stuff that has happened to me is damn funny.

If anyone is interested further in learning more about the project, you can reach me at fbuntin@contactliving.com.

Thanks much for inviting me to contribute!

  

Meet the Mentor: Frazer Buntin (part 2)

In part 1 last week, we met my mentor, Frazer Buntin, and learnt about his early life and education background. Today, he'll talk to us about his career so far.

Work background

Right after school, I worked for my father’s company for about a year. I wanted to see if the business clicked with me and additionally, my older brother, with whom I am very close, was there as well. My plan was to work and live at home and eat Ramen noodles to save as much money as possible for an epic adventure.

I absolutely love adventure. I love adventure more and more throughout my life and also regret not adventuring more along the way. This particular adventure was about 3 months of tramping around New Zealand and Australia with a back pack and a $500 car that I bought off a cork board advertisement in the first hostel I came to in NZ. I hiked and camped and climbed mountains and fly fished and sat in silence for long periods during the middle of the day.

One rainy afternoon, I simply started writing while lying in a bunk bed in a $5 a night hostel. I wrote about what kind of person I wanted to be. I wrote about the values I wanted to hold true to in my life. Many of these values had always been present but had been dulled by the norms of college. Some of these values were new. That day – and the entire trip – ended up being a bit of a personal reset button for me. I came away from that experience with clarity on how I wanted to “show up” to life at my most fundamental level. I cherish that time still today and feel that it set me on a course personally that I still benefit from today.

My professional career has spanned some incredible and crazy-ass experiences. I have worked for huge companies and started companies and have been CEO twice and have travelled all over the US. I have had unbelievable successes and epic failures. My path has been so winding that it would take dozens of pages to describe the way my career has unfolded.

Today, I am president of a large division of a high-growth healthcare company called Evolent Health. Evolent has gone from having 3 employees to over 2,600 in 5 years. We have gone from an idea to a $1 billion IPO in 5 years. Someone once said:

 When you have a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask which seat is yours, just sit down.

That is how I feel about Evolent. We have smart people, great culture, and most importantly, our work is meaningful and interesting to me. Those last two items are the ticket-to-the-dance requirements for me. My main job functions are to hire good people, set the strategy, monitor their behaviors, and measure our results. On a “Monday morning”, that means I am usually on the phone or in a meeting or working on a task that involves making decisions on improving our business. Leading people and solving problems consume most of my time. I have essentially no recurring work and nearly every task, every day is unique.

My successes will have little context for you unless you have worked in the fields or industries that I have, so it’s difficult to make those come alive for you. It is similar with the low points. Just know that I have knocked some home runs out of the park and I have absolutely fallen on my face in parts of my career as well.

All of these stories are long and usually funny, so perhaps, we’ll run into each other sometime and I’ll tell some of them. I will share that when you have the highs and the successes, you should absolutely cherish them. Marinate in them (there’s that word again). Feel like those days never want to end. Let yourself get goosebumps on how well you succeeded. During the lows and the failures, make them right beyond your own expectations. Take something away from them that you learned. Remember careers are a long-game. And then let that shit go.

I can attribute my success to hitting the parent lottery, growing up on a farm, great education, eye-opening experiences, mental wiring for problem-solving, and a knack for motivating people. Deeper than that, I attribute my success over time (not as individual) to intense personal reflection. I have always, throughout my career, taken time to think about what is working and what isn’t working for me – and then to do something about it. That process of reflection has accelerated my pathway down the career “funnel”. This reflection has also allowed me always to be learning. Always to be finding new tactics, methods, and strategies I can apply for all kinds of different scenarios throughout my career. I think I have a knack for surfacing and using tactics very well.

As for key role models, I have covered my parents already. Beyond that, I see anyone as a role model who has found the intersection of doing actual work they are good at doing, in an industry of which they are passionate, and have found a way to be well-compensated. This is the sweet spot of a work career when work doesn’t feel like work. Many of us only get one, a few two, and a very rare few get all three. These are the role models for me.

Regarding work-life balance, I have totally blown this one in my past and had to earn my way back into a balance. I never expected my career to involve as much travel as it has but here I am, 20 years into it, and I have logged A LOT of miles. More so than that, for a long time, I carried work with me as a thinking obsession. Maybe even a thinking addiction.

We would need more pages to give this topic the time it deserves but I am in my own personal “recovery”. Some of you will get this instantly and some might get it 10 years from now.

However, I have found the other side of the Venn diagram. I mentioned the concept of “intense personal reflection” previously as a driver of success. As our biggest strengths are also our biggest weaknesses, I needed another side of the coin to balance me. The other side of my Venn diagram that gives me work-life balance is not to give a shit.

I don’t mean that I don’t care, as I care – intensely. What I mean is that I do intense personal reflection, I make some decisions, I take some action – and then I don’t give a shit after that. I let go of control or expectation or wanting or needing some outcome to happen. I let go of the desire for some future event or thing to bring me happiness. Our brains are tools we use for survival but we must put them down when we are done. If we don’t put them down, we aren’t not actually living our lives, we are living our future lives. This is hard as crap to do for me so it is a practice. There are a whole series of tactics below the level of not giving a shit that we also would need more pages to cover adequately. I am putting a lot of effort into this though and it is working. I can feel myself living a few feet above myself.

Mentors are rare. Good mentors are unicorns. The best type of mentors are when you get lucky and have a direct manager who is also a good mentor. These people are like unicorns, riding a unicorn. I have had a few people who have helped me along the way including one or two unicorns riding unicorns. In hindsight, I am deeply appreciative of these people. Their wisdom was a huge accelerant for me personally and professionally.

For me, I enjoy helping others find their way. I enjoy helping others “be okay” with where they are and where they are going. I enjoy helping others take my tactics and experiences and wisdom and do something even better with them than I have. I think I would have been, and perhaps may be at some point in the future, a decent teacher. Part of my enjoyment of passing on wisdom or guidance or experiences is creating efficiency out of inefficiency. Wisdom should be scaled. Knowledge gained from experiences should be scaled. Again, I was taught to care about things and this is one I care about. If I can get scale on the things I have learned with several other people throughout my life, then I am potentially putting a massive accelerant underneath those people. Perhaps then, their experiences and wisdom and knowledge over time far exceeds mine. If they are inclined, they do the same and we are accelerating the advancement of the human state of mind. That is pretty rad.