How Josh Berman Got His Awesome Job at Level 1 Productions

BT: How did you get your awesome job? Jacob: Like Robert Johnson, I sold my soul to the Devil...Actually, I have long been an aficionado of the intersection between music and culture. As a fan of music and travel, it made sense to combine my two passions. I received my Masters Degree in Ethnomusicology from UCLA and after finishing school I started working for a small start-up--a world music distributor and record label. We weren't very big, but the work we did got a lot of attention within the world music community, and Dan Storper, the CEO and founder of Putumayo, liked the work we were doing. I met Dan at a music industry conference in New Orleans in 1997, and we immediately hit it off. Up until he hired me, Dan had done most of the music research himself, but he realized that he didn't have the time to do justice to the job, so he hired me to take over the responsibility of listening to the hundreds of demos and traveling the world to discover new music and artists. It's not always an easy job, though. I have to suffer through a lot of pretty bad music in search of those hidden musical gems that end up on Putumayo compilations. Also, we have a limited number of slots each year for new artists and music, so there are many more great artists that haven't yet been on a Putumayo compilation. BT: What do you love most about your job? Jacob: I love the fact that I learn something new every day. Really, the work I do at Putumayo is like school, except I get paid for it. There's always something new to discover--new areas of the world with music that I've never heard before. I also get to read up on a lot of other non-musical things, such as the history of wine, coffee, and tea for our food-themed collections. I also feel really happy with the fact that hundreds of thousands of people around the world have discovered new music and been introduced to other cultures through Putumayo. I know from personal experience what an impact discovering new music can have on people, and I have received many letters from Putumayo's fans over the years commenting on how the collections have opened up new worlds for them and helped set them on a totally different life path. The ultimate goal of the compilations is to foster awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity, and I feel that they've helped a lot of people learn new things about the world around them that they might not have otherwise been exposed to. BT: What advice do you have for someone who wants to do what you do? Jacob: I have a unique job, so I can't really say that it's a likely career path for many people. Most ethnomusicologists pursue careers in academia or the public sector, and not many have made a career in the commercial music business. My best advice is to follow your passion, learn as much as you can, and always try to excel...good things will come to you. BT: What the worst job-related travel experience you've ever had? Jacob: Funny, I can't think of one. My trips are usually over too soon, but otherwise I've never had any dramatically bad experiences on any of my journeys. BT: How has your job changed the way you travel? Jacob: I rarely have time to see the sights, museums, or usual tourist attractions. I've been to Paris dozens of times over the past 10 years, but it wasn't until I went with my family last year that I actually visited the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame. I usually spend most of my time at record stores, recording studios, music production offices, festival sites, and concert venues. Usually, I have a local person who's an expert on the local music scene who takes me around and gets me into places most people wouldn't have access to. I often find myself hanging out backstage or in recording studios with artists who are considered superstars in their local countries and who most people there would never be able to hang with. It's kind of like if someone from some far-off land went to England to do music research and spent his time driving around with Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney. My job has taught me that it's really important to try to establish a local connection before you go to a country, because that person can help you get behind closed doors and show you things that reflect how people in that country actually live, not just how they are experienced by outsiders.

BT: How did you get your awesome job? Kevin: I was working as a mountain guide in my hometown of Whistler, British Columbia. In 1996, the Eco-Challenge Expedition Race came to Whistler. (The Eco-Challenge was a multi-sport endurance race that was held in a different international location each year. It was filmed for television) The Race Technical Director, Scott Flavelle, gave me a job working as a guide for a camera crew on the mountain section of the race course. From this initial opportunity, I was offered a position as the Race Coordinator for the 1997 race in Australia. I eventually became the Race Manager for Eco-Challenge , a position which took me to Morocco, Argentina, Chile, Malaysian Borneo, New Zealand, and Fiji. The work with Eco-Challenge led to other opportunities such as producing challenges for Survivor and Treasure Hunters. BT: What do you love most about your job? Kevin: I find that working in other countries, as opposed to just traveling through them, really exposes you to different elements of the location, culture, and people. I suppose what I love the most about the job is seeing such an authentic side of so many foreign countries. I have met countless life-long friends this way. BT: What advice do you have for someone who wants to do what you do? Kevin: Currently, I spilt my time guiding in the mountains and working as a television producer. For anyone that wants to become a professional mountain guide, my first piece of advice would be become certified by either the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides or the American Mountain Guides Association. Being a certified guide should present you with many exciting opportunities. For work in television production, here is the bad news; you usually have to start at the bottom. The good news is that there are a lot of opportunities to move up quickly. Go out, get your feet wet, work hard and keep your eyes out for opportunities that will allow you to advance. Don't stagnate in a dead end position. You're better than that! BT: What the worst job-related travel experience you've ever had? Kevin: It has to do with being in a taxi cab late at night in Nairobi, Kenya. The cab driver was lost in a dodgy part of town and keep pulling over to ask directions from very suspect individuals. Why was this so bad? Let's just say they don't call it Nai-robbery for nothing. BT: How has your job changed the way you travel? Kevin: It has certainly made me a more efficient traveler. I know a lot of little tricks that make travel more streamlined and less of a hassle, like get a window seat so you can lean against it and sleep, or bring your own snacks and water and don't count on the airline to do anything but get you there. A lot of times, if you can get off the plane and out of the airport smoothly then the hardest part of the journey is over!

BT: How did you get your awesome job? Tony: In 1972, I was recently married, 25 years old and just graduating with an MBA. Maureen (the other half of the 'recently married') and I decided to take a year off and get travel out of our systems by following the 'hippy trail' across Asia to Australia. We had such an amazing time in places like Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and South-East Asia -- remember the Vietnam war was still on -- that we wrote a book about it, Across Asia on the Cheap, and that was the start of Lonely Planet. BT: What do you love most about your job? Tony: Of course LP today has hundreds of writers, and although I still love guidebook writing and try and do some every year, I'm no longer necessary for the company. Nor am I needed on the business side; we have lots of hard-working and dedicated staff that's far more talented in the business sense than I am. But I still get to travel a lot and get to do a lot of what made LP's name in the first place--getting to those really unusual out-of-the-way places. How many people can claim they've been a tourist in Afghanistan, Angola, Central African Republic, and Iraq in the past 12 months? BT: What advice do you have for someone who wants to do what you do? Tony: Travel. There's no other way of learning the travel business than to travel. It's a learn- by-doing job. BT: What the worst job-related travel experience you've ever had? Tony: I don't think I've ever had a really bad experience. I've said often enough that you can be cold, tired, hungry, fed up, frightened but never, ever are you bored. And in the world today, that's worth a lot. I think of moments like being with a bunch of people on a fishing boat crossing from Nukufetau to Vaitupu in the Tuvalu Islands, so crowded the only space was on deck and then going through a rainstorm where you got soaking wet and freezing cold. But wow, there you are out in the middle of the Pacific. I wouldn't miss that for anything. BT: How has your job changed the way you travel? Tony: Well, the fact that I get to do a lot of it is obviously important. But you can never switch off. Any restaurant you eat in, you take notes. What I particularly like are the extremes. In the last few months I've stayed at the Minaret of Jam guest house in Afghanistan, where you unroll your sleeping bag on the floor, and the Banyan Tree Resort in Phuket, Thailand, where you have your own swimming pool in your own garden. Last year, I flew from Cape Town to Casablanca via nine different African countries with an assortment of mainly American travel addicts (and not a Bush voter amongst them!) in a chartered aircraft. But I also traveled from Singapore to Shanghai via Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and finally China, and stuck strictly to surface-level public transport: bus, train, car, boat, motorcycle (quite a few motorcycle taxis along the way), and even the back of a truck in Cambodia.

BT: How did you get your awesome job? Lori: After graduating from college, I became a pastry chef and was ultimately asked to work for Trader Joe's on a special project simplifying Trader Joe's sandwich making, which used to be done in each store. I never left. My job has evolved over the course of 25+ years to be what it is. BT: What do you love most about your job? Lori: I get to work in a medium that I love and have the freedom to be creative every day. Plus, I feel good about developing delicious, healthy, affordable food for customers. I really believe that what I do helps to improve the quality of peoples' lives in a small, and hopefully significant, way. BT: What advice do you have for someone who wants to do what you do? Lori: You have to be in the right place at the right time...honestly! Once you're in the door, you have to be passionate about whatever you are doing. BT: What the worst job-related travel experience you've ever had? Lori: I really haven't had any bad travel related experiences that I can recall other than eating some tainted smoked salmon in Paris just before I drove to the south of France. I was violently sick the whole way down and the trip took forever. BT: How has your job changed the way you travel? Lori: I'm not a very good tourist as a result of all of the business travel I do. And not for the reasons you might think. It's because I really love what I do and thoroughly enjoy hunting for new products and visiting with current suppliers. When I'm not on a business trip, I find myself interested in the same things I am for work. I go to outdoor markets and grocery stores to see what things are like in different countries. I might do a bit of sightseeing if there's something significant where I am, but that's often not the thrust of what I end up doing. If I'm not traveling for business, I am most likely lying on a beach somewhere.