Crystal Cha — Dragon #08

Crystal is a storyteller if I’ve ever seen one. I’ve said this before, but it’s one of the greatest marketing skills one can have.

Published in

Marketing Dragons

6 min readOct 6, 2021

I regret not having a chance to work with Crystal. While we started as LinkedIn buddies, I now (weirdly) feel a deep sense of respect for her thoughts, what she cares about, what she writes about. Say what you will about social networks, they do connect people in humbling ways. From the benefits of her unschooling to great book recommendations, Crystal is a must-read.

What’s an unusual fact or story about yourself that not a lot of people know?

I was homeschooled since Grade 3 as my parents (primarily my mum, who used to be a kindergarten teacher) wanted us to have an unconventional education. I often did my school work lying on the living room floor!

I learnt at an early age how to manage my time and set self-paced goals — the faster we finished our schoolwork, the more time to play! We’d go on field trips to the aquarium or the zoo on a Monday when everyone else was at school — and have the whole place to ourselves. I think it’s this “unschooling” experience I’ve had that’s set me up for what I’m doing in life now and given me the ability to bring a different perspective to a situation, to work extremely independently, and to improvise and adapt with whatever is at hand.

Is there one thing about your morning routine that you can’t live without?

As cliched as it sounds, I’m going to have to say coffee! The aroma itself wakes me up (I’m not a morning person) and after living in Finland (the world’s top coffee-consuming nation per capita) for two years, the habit (and appreciation) has only deepened.

What books have influenced your professional life the most and why?

The theme of “the journey is more important than the destination” has been prevalent in all the books that have influenced my career.

In the first five years, it was books like Seth Godin’s Linchpin, (which explored how to make yourself indispensable to your organization), Mastery by George Leonard (which focused on the long and winding path to mastery and the temptation to settle for dabbling, hacking, and obsessing instead of staying the course), and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and the concept of the 10,000-hour rule (or how it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills).

These books gave me the fuel to invest time in developing and honing skills in and out of work. I don’t really remember a time in my life since I was 14 that I haven’t held a part-time job or side gig while studying or working a day job.

In recent years, however, I’ve started to be influenced more by different themes. While in my 20s the big themes for me were drive, ambition, passion, persistence, and hustle (even at the expense of physical and mental health at times) — in my 30s, the big themes for me are integration, connecting the dots, and finding that inner peace. Three books that fall within these themes are:

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, which talks about how passion cannot sustain a lifelong career you love, but rather, it’s having the mindset of a craftsman, of constantly honing and integrating existing skills that leads to work we love and gives us valuable career capital and bargaining power.
In Praise of Slow by Carl Honoré, which talks about how our obsession with “the cult of speed” is driving us into burnout and explores how around the world, a quiet but powerfully transformative movement has been growing — the Slow Movement (summed up in a single word: balance, or seeking to live at what tempo guisto — the right speed). This book forced me to rethink the pace at which I was living and think about what kind of speed I can see myself living at, sustainably, for a long time to come.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, which similarly to Cal Newport’s book, focuses on extensive research into the trajectories of people who have had wildly successful careers. They found their way into fulfilling work not through early specialization — but through taking on short-term goals and any opportunity in front of them to hone their skills, rather than fixating on a singular big aspiration.

What these books ultimately taught me that the joy is in the journey — rather than looking at what I can get out of a job, I also look at what I can learn and bring to the table along the way, and how I can take the journey at an appropriate pace.

What quality do you look for when hiring someone for your team?

I guess broadly, the answers are the same as many hiring managers — a growth mindset, humility, and the willingness to learn.

But more specifically, in terms of marketing, a few traits I look for are relentless thoughtfulness and customer-centricity (including seeing colleagues and bosses as a sort of customer too), the ability to translate and simplify complex ideas, and someone who is willing to beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission, because marketing requires the courage to experiment and fail.

And finally, as a writer/creative — someone who is not afraid to redo work again and again because you very rarely get a great piece of work at the first or even second attempt. Someone who can not only take my ruthless editing but grows from it.

What’s the worst advice someone’s ever given you?

When I was an intern, I was told to tell a potential customer that I was an Editorial Assistant (that was not my official title) and not an intern, otherwise, I wouldn’t be taken seriously.

Much later on, I read another similar piece of career advice (I can’t remember exactly where, but it was aimed at women, from a woman), and the gist of it was “Lean in and take your seat at the table — don’t bring brownies to meetings if you want people to take you seriously”.

While I appreciate the sentiment underlying both pieces of advice and I know it’s a common adage to “fake it till you make it”, my best professional opportunities and strongest partnerships have emerged out of authenticity, honesty, and bringing my full self to the table — even if it includes wearing a dress and bringing brownies to work, because I like baking and feeding my colleagues. If I have to shrink myself to succeed somewhere — that’s probably not a place I want to be in the long-term anyway. And I think it’s your personal presence, not titles, that people remember in the end.

Is there anything that has improved your life since the very first lockdown? It could be an investment of money or time, or a new habit, a gadget.

Not a new habit — but a rekindling of an old one. Taking the time out of back-to-back Zoom calls and just doing five minutes of breathing in the middle of the day or 15 minutes of yoga at the end of the day has been so helpful in navigating the stress, change, and uncertainty of it all.

What do you do when you feel stressed and overwhelmed at work?

The above + heart-to-heart chats with longtime friends make a huge difference — they remind me of who I am and why I do what I do. Sometimes something as simple as opening up to a colleague and saying “Today’s not a great day for me” already makes a huge difference and allows some steam to escape, just by being human with another person.