Questioning Presidents, Learning from Sons: Ben Feller on Finding Ultimate Perspective

Gwynne Oosterbaan: Hi everybody, welcome to the Zest for More podcast.

Alison Woo: where we are all about finding joy beyond your job.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: I'm Gwynne Oosterbaan

Alison Woo: and I'm Alison Woo

Gwynne Oosterbaan: We are two former communications colleagues and friends who found ourselves asking a lot of the same questions.

Alison Woo: like how do do more than just survive? And how can you thrive with or without the corporate grind? How does passion and performance and purpose ⁓ all sit along inside one another? Or ⁓ are they even one in same thing?

Gwynne Oosterbaan: So we put this podcast together and we're dedicating it to talk to others who are asking a lot of the same questions seeking the answers.

Alison Woo: And our guest today is someone who has made a career out of asking the tough questions in some of the toughest rooms and maybe even of himself.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: Ben Feller is an award-winning reporter who covered the White House for the Associated Press during the Bush and the Obama administrations. Almost feels like a lifetime ago. He traded DC for New York City, where he helps organizations of all sizes find the right words to make people care and open the right doors. He also wrote a children's book inspired by his son, and he co-hosts the podcast, Pour It On, about male friendship and communication. No bromance here, honest conversation. ⁓ then bonus points because Alison and I are living now in Pennsylvania. Ben is a Pennsylvania native. Welcome to the show, Ben. ⁓

Ben Feller: Mm hmm. I feel honored to be one of your first guests. It's great to see you, Gwynne and Alison want to make sure as a guest, when you say find joy behind your job, like I find it in this podcast, right? That's like the deal. Or do you expect me to share some thoughts? Because I guess I could do that, too. OK.

Alison Woo: absolute Both, actually.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: Absolutely both.

Alison Woo: So Ben, as a former journalist myself, I'm always fascinated with how people come to the vocation. was it for you? Was it a calling or how did you get inspired to become a journalist?

Ben Feller: ⁓ just panic, really. So I was, I was a very college student at Penn State and was focused on getting good grades because I thought if made Dean's List, ⁓ I'm good. And the rest of life was just fun. And I did that for my freshman, sophomore and year. ⁓ And then I studied abroad in England as a, ⁓ as a junior at Penn State ⁓ and came back I realized like, wow, there is a big world out there outside of Center County, Pennsylvania. have a year ⁓ figure out what I'm going to do with some kind of pliable skills because I need to make money. ⁓ I don't really like what I'm studying because psychology was my major. like how funny I want to make people tick, but it just wasn't really going anywhere. ⁓ so all of sudden I had this urgency as a senior and I'm like, I got it. I got to switch. Do I go into English? Do I go into journalism? I've always liked writing. journalism made most sense so that I didn't actually stay at Penn State on the seven-year plan and start all over. so as a senior, I showed up and I didn't have any courses enrolled because all the journalism classes were filled. And I actually showed up as a senior almost like ⁓ a dropout, which did not make my parents proud, but I knew what I was doing, wink, wink. And I sat in on the classes until the journalism professors just ⁓ scared the hell out of the freshmen. With how tough it was going to be and this is not public relations and you need to rewrite every time and you need to have integrity and you need to able to stand up to power and they're like, ⁓ my gosh, so seats opened up I grabbed them and ⁓ switched into journalism at the very end of my college career and it stayed a little longer. and then ⁓ started working for the local paper the center daily times, as a as a freelancer basically and then when the I graduated they had a very very opening level position that I had earned the right to have. And that's how it got started. it was ⁓ really that experience of studying abroad made me think bigger. And then that was really the first time, Alison, in a series of times throughout my career where I took a bet on myself and said, I need to see if this is the way to go. And it worked out.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: Well, that's an awesome story and I can't believe I hadn't heard it before. But sort of reflecting on the journalism experience, obviously a huge part and amazing career, you shifted gears from that and you were coming from clearly and arguably like a pinnacle experience where you are covering a place where you're actually almost part of the story that you're covering because of how visible it is. So you're in the scene, so what was it like to switch gears and be an advisor behind the scenes?

Ben Feller: The first thing that comes to mind is that it was hard. It was a transition that was Not so much a professional transition, but an identity transition My main motivation at that time I'd been on the job for 20 years straight and Six those were covering the White House. And so that was a special kind of urgency and I had become dad I really started to think for the first time about the premise that you all have raised about joy beyond the job. still early-ish in my career and needing to earn. so I just checked, hey, what else is out here? And I just kind of like put my foot out and there this big expanse of public relations, but I didn't really understand it. And it wasn't that attracted to that because I had been on the receiving end for so many years of bad, ill-timed pitches. that had nothing to do with what I covered. came at the wrong time. I was in the middle of covering a presidential press conference. Like they got my name wrong. And I'm like, I don't want to do that for a living. And so, uh, so as I did a search, um, I, I was so expansive. I'm like, I like sports. I'll go talk to major league baseball and the NFL and I like mission. So I'll go talk to the Ford foundation. And, and then as I got further into the search, I got a better understanding about what agency life was like and that there's all kinds of agencies and they calibrate differently on what they do. I found a place which I ended up staying for nine years called Mercury Public Affairs, doing narrative work and strategic counsel and communications and kind of figuring out what it was like to be in business. ⁓ and so, but the first year was tough Gwynne because, I just kept thinking, you know, when president Obama would have a news conference, I would know what he was going to say. And then I would know who he was going to call it. And I would know what they were going to ask. And I just kind of played out in my head. like, you know, I'm not in that world anymore. I'm over here. I need to put my energy towards thinking about business, my clients, the next opportunities. And once that clicked, I was able to let go pretty quickly.

Alison Woo: I know when I left News, I felt like it was going from a diet of lot of sugar to eating a lot of vegetables and protein. ⁓ Much healthier for you, ⁓ but...

Ben Feller: Right.

Alison Woo: it didn't really have the same thrill, right? You didn't have the same buzz that you had from before. But as a reporter, you were always listening and interviewing and waiting to hear for that perfect sound bite, right? So how are you helping clients say the right thing at the right time, the while they have to be authentic, they have to be persuasive, ⁓ they have to be compelling?

Ben Feller: Mm-hmm. the thing I do is when I work with any client who's thinks about engaging with me is getting them to really put aside all these different constructs of hiring a firm and types of firms and types of contracts. And should we ⁓ try get on the today show and all these different tactics and just say, listen, what is it that you want to achieve? What's your definition of success? Like really, no matter whom you hire, what is it that you want to do and get them to be very calmly and strategically focused on if we do this. We will win. And then after that, I say, okay, now based on that, it can I help you and how can I help you? And typically across my, I guess, 12 plus years in consulting, it's been, can you help us figure out what we need to say? So for a long time, I basically did that on my own as a consultant and thinking through my journalism experience of the basic questions. Who are you? What do you do? How is it different? Why should people care? If you can nail those four and most of the clients I've worked with have not, then you're much better off. But then that but what are you basing the answers to those things on and so for a long time I did it on my experience and that worked and then I went to work for a place that had research as a key part of what it did and so now we're bringing in What audiences need to hear right? That's really the the magic is that if you have a strategic lens on how to tell a story and you have that the ammunition of Audiences saying every time you say this I'm lost every time you go here It sounds like you're trying to sell me in something every time you do this. It sounds like you're trying to ⁓ you know, convince investors, I'm not an investor. ⁓ wait a minute. There's this place over here that I finally get it. If you tell your story that way, I'm much more likely to, to engage. And that is, that's the how, right? It's really the mix of both of those things. If you could do both and you know, what, what ultimately works Alison is that when you go all the way back to the beginning, I've had so many conversations like this with my teams. Remember why they hired us. ⁓ didn't hire us for a PowerPoint deck. They didn't hire us right for 42 slides. They are trying to solve something and it's usually not even a communications challenge. It's a business challenge and communications is the thing that that there's our way into solving that challenge if you're able to tie it all the way back to the beginning ⁓ you have really good work what you see is people just they go aha, you know, everyone's like, they do where they happy was the client happy and like, you know what happiness is for the client. It's often relief. It's a sense of relief like, we finally have it. You know, so that's been the path that I've been on ever since I left the newsroom.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: Switching gears to a different audience, a much younger audience, age in the you wrote a book for kids, and I think really their parents. It's called Big Problems, Problems. I personally wish we had met when my children were much, much smaller. But ⁓ when we did meet and you gifted me a copy, I did read it with my son who was a tween at that time, and it was entertaining. It like being a dad has also really helped you reframe the scale of problems. We're talking about language problems just now. how do you think about the and pressure ⁓ and your son older? Has it changed ⁓ what parenting looks

Ben Feller: Mm-hmm. parenting has had a profound effect on how I think about work and certainly how I think about joy. It was the beginning of my decision to switch careers. parenting has had a profound effect on how I think about work and certainly how I think about joy. It was the beginning of my decision to switch careers. The book is about raising Sam and breaking down his frustration about what I thought were small things, little things. And he, as a young person, thought they were big things because he doesn't have perspective. No kid does when they're three or four if they can't find a toy and they can't zip their coat. they get overwhelmed. And so we just had a pattern of I would get on one knee, we take some deep breaths, we'd ask him what was wrong. The problem was usually very easy to solve for me, but not for him. And so I would do it and then and then model how I did it so he could do it. He would get some pride. We'd have a hug and a handshake and go on our way. I just made that whole thing up, but that's what we did because it worked. And then we just started repeating it because that's what parenting is. And then coming back into the city here in New York one day, I was massively frustrated by traffic. We couldn't move no matter how many times the light turned green. And I let loose a very colorful series of words, which are not appropriate for this podcast. And Sam was in the car seat and said, daddy, don't get frustrated. Is this a big problem or a little problem? And he usually, I mean, he literally used his hands to kind of show it's okay. And so the language of our living, you know, what frustration means, what perspective means, what patience means, I worked on these words with him. And he taught it back to me. And that's when I decided in that moment to write the book, because I felt like, my gosh, so other parents, I think, would benefit from this. But to, I think, your broader point, Gwynne, the whole act of being a parent has given perspective to my work, because this is hard for me to say. ⁓ But sometimes we is just not as important as we think it is. And I say that, why is that? That doesn't seem that hard to say, because I never want anybody I work with to think that I'm not putting incredible importance in every single thing I do. the story gets out, the client deliverable goes out, you've done your best, but my son Sam, ⁓ few times in the last year, has thanked me for doing something with him that is important to him. He's thanked me for it, which is polite, but I'm like, buddy, if you're interested, I'm interested. I you want to do it with me it's a game a comic book some show you want to stop me and walk me through why this robot can has a skill that the other one does like it's not innately interesting to me at that time because I've got a whole bunch of dishes to do but what a treasure that your kid wants to show it to you and so I probably would not have done that had I stayed covering the White House

Alison Woo: How old is Sam now, Ben? if he came to you and said, Dad, I want to become a journalist, what would be your advice ⁓ him now, given the state of the world today? ⁓

Ben Feller: He's 14. I'd say, well, buddy, there's only five jobs out there left. Whatever he wants to do, I would lead with my heart and say, if that's a passion for you, let's talk about it. ⁓ course, there are news outlets and storytelling outlets of all kinds out there. And there's always going to be a need for really smart people to be figuring out what's going on and telling other people. So I probably wouldn't lead with the macro demise of the industry answer and lead with if my son has interest, how can I foster it? His mom is a former journalist too. there's something in there about him and storytelling. That would be ⁓ great. he wants to work Netflix, that's fine too. And then it'll be parodied by the studio and then we'll get tickets to things. Alison, there's a whole... Secret plan in the background.

Alison Woo: think you've thought about this. Well, lots of ways to tell stories. You're absolutely right. Podcasting is one of them, right? And that's something you have already done and have started. I love Pour It On podcast. Could you to us a little bit about what was the idea behind that? How do come with the stories you guys talk about? What's the bigger plan for it?

Ben Feller: So it's interesting even listening to your questions, even though we're talking about my own life, how I'm starting to see a pattern here. the change into journalism was following an instinct. I felt a sense of urgency. The children's book came about in that moment, you know, when that moment happened and I thought how I want to write this. The podcast was also really not sort of this methodical strategic conversation. was there. I met two guys, Sean Emerson and Chris Lozier, who have a podcast called If You've Come This Far. Which you all will become fans of if you haven't heard it yet, and it's really they interview people who have kind of cut their own path in life and figured out their own path to happiness and I found them when I wrote my children's book. I was looking for vehicles to talk about the book and and parenting and fatherhood and and that they came up and had a great conversation and then a couple years later I looked them back up and said, Hey, I miss you guys. And they said, Hey, you know, you're still employed. Congratulations. Do you want to come back on the podcast? And we did it. And then after that, I said, you know, I just like talking to you guys. Can we, can we do something? And they said, sure. What? I said, now this is the part that is not my greatest skillset. I can, I can figure out instinctively, like who needs to be together and then find my way towards the answer. But I don't always know the what, like what, what, what's the way to do something together? And they said, why don't we just do a podcast? And I said, well, that sounds great, except you already have a podcast, you know? And they said, yeah, but this one would be different because it would have you. And I'll just never forget that. Like they were actually getting a different kind of energy, enjoy talking to me as much as I was with them. within ⁓ week, Alison, we had the name, ⁓ logo kind of decided on a schedule, put together, you know, ⁓ way that we were going to do it, which is pretty informal. And we were off and running and boy, that was also awesome because how often on our life do we have to go through so many different steps? And it was like, we were up and recording, a week. So that's how it came about. And it is three men ⁓ vulnerably about life and picking different topics, which I think is different, just like the children's book was a father, son story about emotional connection, which is also different. But Gwynne can attest, it is for everyone. It is not the manosphere. is the other direction of. ⁓ How can we talk about these things? So we've chapters of life, stress, know, money, when to join things, when to drop out of things. How do you have actually have a healthy life? And it's been really good for me, healthy for me.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: And it was definitely a lot of inspiration when Alison and I started chatting about podcasting ourselves. So thank you for leading the way and getting me to get through long post school drop off rides. One of the topics that you and I've also talked about in that kind of vein of living a healthier life, which I know is your most recent podcast.

Ben Feller: Hahaha

Gwynne Oosterbaan: But how do you manage the day to day? You live this incredibly busy life in New York. Can you share any tidbits, hacks?

Ben Feller: ⁓ Well, the first thing I guess I'd say is you got to, I guess I'm going back to my definition of success example, like what would feel great? So for a long time I felt like, balance these things and don't do this and do this and get up here. And I've lived long enough to know that that construct isn't tenable for me. It's hard for me to let it go, but you got to kind of make it smaller. Like these things are going to happen. You you're always going to be busy. So ⁓ do you... ⁓ what can you do to inject some, peace into it? And, you know, for me, I try to get up in the morning and make sure that I have some quiet time before the day starts. it's just very grounding for me now that the negative framing of that is I want to be up and doing things before anybody can bother me. you know, nobody's really on you. That's, you know, six o'clock in the morning typically. And so I would go in a certain spot in my living room and have a cup of coffee and try not to do anything except look out the window. And that doesn't fit the model of meditation, but it is for me because it's like, okay, this is for me. This is quiet. And I crave the peace. And then there's a kind of a whole smattering of other things. I think probably where I don't do it well enough yet, Gwynne, because I feel it that I want this is just more of a sense of Like no matter what happens.

Alison Woo: Do you look at your life now and say to yourself, there are things I wish I could have known 10 years ago that would have made my life a little easier that you are very sure of now?

Ben Feller: Yeah, mean, well, I'm going to cheat, Alison, and give you two. Because the first one I bring into raising my son, when you're in a stage of life, you don't get to see years the road to say, if I do this now, it's going to lead to this in seven years. It's just so to know that and think that way. so, you know, ⁓ when was young, my parents made me take piano And was horrible. And it wasn't because I wasn't naturally gifted. I don't think I am, but I could have figured it out. But the whole atmosphere around it was so rigid and so unfun. And I had friends playing outside, and I'm like, ⁓ you haven't really made me understand the value of this. This is a chore. So this is beautiful skill that I learned and they're like, well then you've got to go tell the teacher, even the responsibility of it was like, and I was like, okay, so I'll do it. And then I'd stopped doing it and I'm like, ⁓ I got my freedom. I disappointed my parents, but I got my freedom. And if they said like, this is a lifelong skill the line, if you really, really want to stop, but I think for now, and there's so many things like that, how you exercise, how you eat, learning languages. Like I wish these things would have been presented to me as I can promise you these will pay off down the road. And instead didn't. And so I just didn't do a lot of them. And then when you become an adult, you acquire skills, but I don't know how to speak Spanish. Like that's a, that's not a luxury. That's a deficiency. Well, they'll just do it tonight. Get on Duolingo. are you doing, Ben? I'm like, okay, so then the clock starts again. Now I've just lost the piece, right? Cause I'm supposed to be in some catching up. So I think some of those things of just, we can see the future for you. on so many things we can't, if you do these things, it's going to pay off because I've learned them. That I wish I would have known. And then the other thing is a version of what I said a little bit ago, which is. Don't worry so much like don't generally like it's all going to work out. It's like, no, you know, if you if you miss the train and you're late for the meeting and you don't get the bid because you were late, like that didn't work out like you should have got up earlier. But generally speaking, there are things that I was worried about a lot in just pick any year. 2007, don't know what I was worried about in 2007, but at the time, I'm sure I was carrying it harder than anybody else around me, you know, ⁓ and I'm trying to Remember that still.

Alison Woo: One of the things I heard you talk about when we first logged on was a little bit about your love of ⁓ I didn't realize we have another Yankees fan here in the house.

Ben Feller: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We'll see. I grew up on the Yankees, even though I grew up in central Pennsylvania. I was equidistant, roughly, between Philly and Pittsburgh. And so we didn't really have a connection. And the Yankee games would get piped in on Channel 11, my black and white in my sister's room, and I would go and sneak in there and watch. And those guys that played at the time in the late 70s were larger than life. And so I just created they created a fan in me.

Alison Woo: Yeah.

Ben Feller: And then I moved here when I was in my early forties and had a son and just decided to raise him properly by taking him to the Yankee games. And he went to his first game, Alison, when he was one, like one and a half. We didn't stay very long, but he stayed a little longer and a little longer. And so we, made a tradition starting at age one of going to every opening day, no matter what. And, we've kept that going. So he's gone every year, except for the pandemic year.

Alison Woo: ⁓ my gosh.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: You

Alison Woo: Aww.

Ben Feller: And it's a marvelous transit tradition. And I actually asked him right about this time of year, I'll say, Hey, do you want to go? And I'll say, of course. I'm like, no, pick your head up from the phone and looking at him. Like, I don't want to do things that we used to do just because we've always done them. You're now old enough that you get to, it's kind of the piano lesson thing. Like, is this important to you? I'm not going to say I wouldn't be disappointed, but I would get over it, but I don't want to do things ever just because the fun things. And he's like, no, I would hate missing that.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: That was great. Okay, so from baseball back to writing, you mentioned a future book, a second book maybe, can you share more?

Ben Feller: ⁓ It would be great to say, written another one and what's it about, but that's not quite enough. I want it be something like I'm really excited to write the second one because it does this for readers or does this for me. So I'm thinking about that. And then there's this other big ⁓ amorphous category of, you know, ⁓ writing a novel. I've thought many times about one that ⁓ would be based on my in covering politics. And I a couple ideas about it. has never gotten deeper than that. when you put that up against everything else I'm juggling in life, that always been like, all right, well, I should probably at least have a really good idea first. Then I'll go through the hell of the process and the pitching. But if I'm just like, it sounds like fun to write a book, I need to be a little bit more serious. And it's kind of stayed in that state for

Alison Woo: You must have amazing stories though. They probably need an outlet.

Ben Feller: Yes, well, I mean, I thought I was just come on this podcast like once a week. But if you want me to get to work, Alison, that's fine. could start to do a manuscript.

Alison Woo: you

Gwynne Oosterbaan: You can always come back on the podcast.

Alison Woo: So what's next? What's next in terms of adventures? ⁓ What are you forward to? ⁓

Ben Feller: Yeah, so this is a year of change for me. So ⁓ covered my progression from 20 years in journalism to partnerships and consulting at ⁓ Mercury Affairs and at Maslansky and Partners where I've done a lot of this work on what's the exact language audiences need to hear based on research. starting this year, I'm about to pivot to a really new adventure and I'm so excited about it. that fun feeling right before you jump into something before all the all the weight of it comes on It's like hey I get to do this I'm going to work for ⁓ a marketing company called Applecart that has a real specialty in knowing exactly how to reach the decision makers of America ⁓ people in business and government and world academia ⁓ who decisions on things how do you how do you actually know that you can reach them with your content. And so it's a company built on technology and platform that it developed. But also really ⁓ value what clients value, which is strategic counsel from people who have lived in those jobs, lived in those shoes, lived in the fire. And so I'll be a strategic counselor to clients and talking about how we can solve the problem. ⁓ that's about to ⁓ And ⁓ I'm about that. And You know, everything else about 2026 is is ahead of me. You know, there'll be adventures with my son. There'll be adventures with my Hopefully Yankees win on opening day and, you continue the podcast like it's a pretty it's a pretty full life.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: just make sure you come to New Hope so that we can do that in-person version.

Ben Feller: Yes, yes. And see, Alison, there's another thing. Come to come to New Hope. What I would love to do that.

Alison Woo: Exactly.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: River Town. That's what my promo is today.

Ben Feller: Love it.

Alison Woo: Pennsylvania has been this Mecca and this great draw and so it's amazing. We have a bunch of New Yorkers all kind of reconvening here. So please come on back.

Ben Feller: Pennsylvania always, love when, I don't love every part of this drive, but when I go to visit my dad and stepmom in State College, you know, getting out of the city is painful, but then you get, pass that sign, says welcome to Pennsylvania. It always hits me right, you know?

Alison Woo: So Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Where can people catch up with you or follow

Ben Feller: thank you Alison and Gwynne for the invitation to the podcast. I'm really excited about this one I'm so glad that you have you're doing it together I know you guys are longtime friends and colleagues But there's a there's a voice that that I think needs to be out there about What is beyond the job and at a personal level and what can we all take from it? So I'm really excited about your podcast

Alison Woo: you?

Ben Feller: The easiest place for people to find me is I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and I post quite a bit about all the topics we just talked about. So follow me there and drop me a line if you want. I'd love to engage.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: think it's so interesting ⁓ on it because, you know, we talked to Paul who you knew ⁓ than I do. you get sort of gems and insights because it's a podcast that you don't always get in your day to day conversation. I just like how he said the thing of waking up and sitting in his living room before anyone can find him. And he said, it's not meditation maybe formally, but it's my peace and I crave it. So the phrase of craving the peace I thought was kind of like sound bite that I want to hold on to from this one. ⁓ about you? ⁓

Alison Woo: for sure. Yeah, you know, it's interesting in our lives, right? It's easy to see our lives 2020 when you look back. it's rare that we do take the time. to look back and really reflect and see that our lives do have very definite patterns, right, of making those choices and changes. And I think we're living in a time right now where there is so much external change in the world, and that's also causing a lot of internal changes, whether you're, you know, working for a large company, big or small, whether you work for yourself. And I think everybody is really taking some time to think about what is meaningful to them. ⁓ But there is a point in your life where you can stop and start going, I accomplished a bit. Let me take a beat ⁓ and really figure out now what it that I want to do? And it's just wonderful to have this time to be able to do that. And that just made me very appreciative.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, also being able to... become friends with your work colleagues like we have. you know, Ben was another person like, you're really smart. Like, I really like hearing what you have to say. Like, just having that, that's another kind of gratitude thing is like when we work in interesting places and we get to see people from a range of different experiences, all trying to solve this problem, to use his problem ⁓ concept the book of ⁓ how we reach people and connect? It's really hard.

Alison Woo: Why?

Gwynne Oosterbaan: ⁓ think that's another big takeaway. ⁓

Alison Woo: and just taking that time to extend yourself. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are colleagues that one has and you think, I'd like to know that person a little more. Ask them to lunch, ask them for coffee, spend a little time with them, do something different and you'll never know what can become of it. Some really amazing lifetime friendships.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: that is a good hack, Alison.

Alison Woo: So that is it for this episode. Thank you so much everybody for joining us. You can log on to zestformore.com to subscribe. We are on Apple and Spotify and everywhere you are listening to your podcasts.

Gwynne Oosterbaan: great week. Alison.

Alison Woo: Bye.