The Passionistas Project Podcast

Jessica Craven Provides Daily Action in Five Minutes or Less

Jessica Craven is a community organizer, activist and newly elected member of the California Democratic party’s County Central Committee. Jessica is the author of "Chop Wood, Carry Water," a daily actions e-mail that’s been published five days a week since November of 2016. Her emails provide detailed text and scripts for the everyday person to reach out to their Congress people and Senators to take action on the important issues of the day. She’s made it her mission to get regular people more involved with politics on both a federal and local level.

 

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Full Transcript:

 

PASSIONISTAS: Hi, and welcome to The Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington.

 

Before we start our interview today, we wanted to tell you about our upcoming event from Friday, August 21st through Sunday, August 23rd, we'll be hosting the passion project women's equality summit. The three-day event will feature live panel discussions, prerecorded presentations, daily workshops, The Passionistas Portraits storyteller event. The LUNAFEST® short film festival, a virtual marketplace, and a pay it forward portal. The weekend is centered around the theme of women's equality and intersectional feminism from a range of perspectives, including racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, financial equity, voter suppression, ageism, physical and mental health issues, religious persecution, and so much more. And best of all, it's free for the weekend. Go to ThePassionistasProject.com to register.

 

And now for today's interview, we're talking with Jessica Craven, community organizer, activist, and newly elected member of the California Democratic Party's County Central Committee. Jessica is the author of Chop Wood, Carry Water, a daily actions email that's been published five days a week since November of 2016. Her emails provide detailed text and scripts for the everyday person to reach out to their Congress people and senators to take action on the important issues of the day. She's made it her mission to get regular people more involved with politics on both a federal and local level. Please welcome to the show, Jessica Craven.

 

JESSICA CRAVEN: Yay. Hi, how are you?

 

PASSIONISTAS: We’re so excited to have you.

 

JESSICA: Not as excited as I am. I am very, this is a great honor. Thank you very much.

 

PASSIONISTAS: It's an honor for us to. What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

 

JESSICA: I am an action advocate. Uh, I find that action is the antidote to despair. Um, and that it is the one thing that I need to be doing if I want to see change. So I guess action, and also getting others to act I'm very, very passionate about sort of, uh, encouraging others to do this work because I think it's important not just for our country, but for our own personal well-being.

 

PASSIONISTAS: To that end, talk about Chop Wood, Carry Water and what it is. Explain it to people who might not know.

 

JESSICA: What I try to do with Chop Wood, Carry Water, and I started doing this right after Trump was elected because everybody was so shell shocked and so upset. And I guess I tend to be the kind of person who, when something like that happens, I want to find a solution or something to do. I'm someone who needs to do something. So in the very, very beginning, I started, you know, sort of realizing like we should make, there's some calls that we should make. And I started making calls and, and, and also sort of researching around to see what calls needed to be made and what groups were talking about it. And I would then turn around and sort of send a quick email to a handful of family and friends and, and they seem to find it useful and they seem to want to make the calls.

 

And, and then I, I started including a little, a little bit of like a pep talk, you know, just a little bit of like been through some stuff as we all haven't and I've found some tools for dealing with difficulties. And I, I just would share those as part of the email. Like, you know, when I went through my horrible divorce, my father said to me, I mean, this is where Chop Wood, Carry Water comes from is, is, is that my dad told me that phrase when I was going through a divorce, I don't know, 15, 15, 20 years ago at this point, but I said, “How am I going to get through this? This is, I feel like I'm never going to get through this.” And he said, “You're just going to chop wood, carry water. And one day it'll be over.” So that's why the newsletter is called Chop Wood, Carry Water.

 

And, and I, and I told people that story, a number of times in the beginning, and it sort of turned into this thing where every day people would ask to be added to the list, or someone would say, I have a friend who wants to be added to your list. And I became really obsessed with following politics. Yeah. Following everything that was happening, uh, subscribing to every single newsletter that had actions for people to take. And in the beginning, there were a ton of them. And then sort of what I wanted to do, try to do was, was to distill that all down into five minutes for the average person, because I will take action all day long. Like that is who I am, but most people want to do something and then go back to their lives. They don't want to think about this all the time, but I do want to feel like they're doing something.

 

So what I decided to do it was sort of provide the service where I would read all the stuff and subscribe to all the things and then just distill it down into five minutes. So my idea was that you would just make just a couple of calls every day. You would call both of your senators. You would call your congressional rep. And then there would be like an extra credit thing to call some other, whoever it was. It used to be Scott Pruitt a lot in the beginning, cause I I'm an environmentalist at heart. And then eventually I added a resist bot text because people love resist bot so much. And I thought that was a good place to sort of add an action. That was a little bit or a script that was a bit longer that people could just send as a resist bot text.

 

And that's what Chop Wood, Carry Water is to this day. It's a, it's a little short pep-talk, it's a call to your members of Congress. It's like one or two extra things. I started including a lot of election related links in one of the sections. Just so if people wanted to find me or text bank or write postcards, I I've, I add those in. And then it's a resist bot text. And the idea is you can do it all in, in five minutes, which I think actually you genuinely, can't what I try to do tell people is just those five minutes can make such a huge difference. And if enough of us make those calls, you know, it really, I mean, we learned it with the, the attacks on the ACA and, and with so many other things I made, eventually Scott Pruitt did go away and, uh, you know, so many victories we have had have just been, because people have kind of hammered on the doors every single day, you know, using their voices and it does make a difference.

 

And I think that one of the big enemies in this situation has been despair, which leads to hopelessness, which leads to apathy. And then we really are in trouble. So my whole thing has been that when I make those five minutes of calls, I actually feel better. I feel more empowered. I feel more hopeful. And that's why I always say hope is an action because I don't become hopeful from just sitting around trying to like gin up hope in myself. I become hopeful when I actually make those calls or, or take any action, which bear in mind. I usually don't want to do. I almost never want to make my calls and I don't want to show up for protests. I don't want to show up at any of this stuff I do. But when I do it, I feel better. So there's very selfish, motives behind all of this.

 

It's really to help me not go into a tailspin, but it also turns out to help our democracy a lot.

 

PASSIONISTAS: With so much going on in the world, how do you determine each day? What issues to spotlight?

 

JESSICA: I'm on this all day? So all day I am taking emails from tons of people who are wanting to send me actions. I'm reading, uh, the, the few other action emails that are still out there. I'm a very active indivisible member. So I'm on a bunch of channels with other indivisible members and, and other action leaders. And there's a Facebook page for people who have action, you know, platforms. So we're all working on this together. So almost any action you see and Chop Wood, Carry Water, you know, is probably also being amplified by several other amazing individuals or groups. But, you know, I also read the news all day.

 

I also listened to a lot of podcasts and do really deep dives on policies. And I just am immersed in this all day. Every day. My husband always says, I don't know how you spend so much time. Like I would go crazy reading the news as much as you do, but I really am trying to absorb all this stuff. So that again, when I get to Chop Wood, Carry Water, I can distill it in a really simple way so that you guys don't have to spend your entire days doing this. So, and I'm an information junkie. I like to, you know, I like to learn, but in the morning I will generally go through all my emails and scan through my sort of typical sources and pull things from various places and, and, you know, work on the actual writing of the email, which takes about an hour, hour and a half in the morning.

 

But it's also been sort of cooking for the previous 24 hours before that. And then sometimes it's something will come up. I mean, this morning we have yet another news item talking about the sort of appalling, lack of personal protective equipment for our medical personnel. So then that becomes something that I sort of make sure is the focus of my newsletter. So, so part of it is trying to be nimble with events that are unfolding very quickly. And some of it is returning over and over and over again to things that we've been working on for sometimes weeks or months or even longer.

 

PASSIONISTAS: What are some of the big issues that you have been tackling, trying to tackle for a while and that are really on the forefront for you right now?

 

JESSICA: Well, that's a really good question. I mean, election security is a huge one that we're just returning to every week.

 

I make sure to put something in about it because especially now with the COVID-19 our elections in November, we sort of have to get those to a vote by mail status. They just, they just are going to have to be. And so far the funding for that is just not there. So while we want the States to, you know, step up and they probably will have to, we're pushing very hard for the federal government to fund it. And that's just an enormous push. That is it's hard. I mean, Mitch McConnell doesn't want it. So we're just working very hard because otherwise we're going to find ourselves in August, September, and just, it's going to be bad because we're not going to be able to go to the polls the way we have been used to so that, you know, climate change is an ongoing issue that I returned to constantly gun violence prevention.

 

I think you guys know I'm a pretty active member of moms demand action. So we return to that cyclically judges, you know, when, when Congress is in session and voting, we will always call on judges. And that tends to be something that gets less attention, but obviously we all know is, is so unbelievably important. And fortunately there are groups like indivisible San Francisco, which, which has a whole little chapter of their group that does nothing, but watch those judicial races. So I go there for a lot of information. I mean, I could literally go on there, there isn't any sector of our democracy that is not under attack right now. And, and the, you know, the fires are everywhere. So we throw water here and we throw water there and we throw water all around and then we come back and throw it again. But, you know, eventually we do see victories.

 

I mean the whole first year of Chop Wood, Carry Water. I had a section where we wrote to Scott Pruitt. It was just called the Scott Pruitt section. And we wrote about this pesticide chlorpyrifos, which I was really determined to help get banned because it's a neurotoxin that we were spraying on our, on our crops, by the millions of tons. I mean, it's a Dow chemical product. It's disgusting. And we call him that forever. And, uh, and then I kinda got distracted. And after about a year or a year and a half of, of those calls, we moved on to other things, well, chlorpyrifos has, it's abandoned California. Now it's banned in several other States. And some of it's the, the main production is actually being cut. So even though we haven't succeeded in an overarching federal ban, we have succeeded in largely gutting it to use.

 

And so, you know, these things have taken years, some of them, and we don't stop all the judges, but we have stopped some of the worst and we haven't prevented every horrible climate, you know, attack, but we have prevented some. And, and it's, you know, I really encourage people to focus on the victories, not the defeats because whatever we focus on grows, I really believe that.

 

PASSIONISTAS:  What did you do before November, November, 2016?

 

JESSICA: I've always been very interested in politics, but I actually did not work in politics full time. I worked in sales for a very long time. Ironically, for Tiffany and company, I worked there for about eight years. So in high end luxury sales, which, you know, was never really something. I was talking about passion. I was not passionate about it, but it was a, a paycheck. And it was a, you know, it was a respectable one.

 

And, and that was what I did for money. And before that I was a singer. So I performed for most of my young adult life. I was in a band called the Chapin Sisters for a long time with my, my two sisters who are still in that band. I come from a family of folk singers on one side, and my father made horror movies. I have a kind of weird background that would not necessarily, you would think lend itself to this. But the funny thing I have found is that my training in sales, which, which Tiffany provides excellent training, and also my training and performance have all come in very handy. As I have moved into this, this phase of my life. I mean, it turns out that I am very comfortable getting up and talking in front of people. I'm very good at encouraging people and I'm good at selling things so I can sell activism.

 

I can sell involvement and I'm comfortable talking to people, which is really what most of this is about. So for example, people are very afraid to call their reps. Like that's something that never occurred to me, but it turns out that folks are, are really intimidated and they don't know how to do it. They don't know what it even sounds like. People are afraid they're going to be challenged by the people they talk to on the other end. So at one point, my stepfather overheard me calling my reps one day when I was visiting my family in New York. And he said, you know, you should just make a little video of yourself doing that because you think it's easy, but most people really don't even know what that looks like. And so I did that. I posted a video of myself just calling my reps and people really responded to it.

 

And again, because I come from sort of a performance background and, you know, I'm not uncomfortable talking in front of other people in it. I can sorta, I'm good at showing people how to do things. And so that's been something that I did. One of those videos actually just today, just to sort of show people what it looks like to call and say a given thing, because we read these scripts and sometimes they're very clunky and stilted, and it's hard to know how to turn that into an actual phone call. So I guess all of those funny backgrounds that, you know, they don't make a lot of sense when you put them on a resume, but I also did screenwriting for three years. So like the writing skills, you know, it's all sort of come into play in what I do now. So I don't do much singing anymore, but I, I do a lot of bird-dogging and, uh, I don't know a lot of the skills translate for some reason.

 

PASSIONISTAS: We’re Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Jessica Craven. We're excited to announce that Jessica will be conducting her workshop Activism 101 on Saturday, August 22nd. During The Passionistas Project Women's Equality Summit. To register for free for the online event visit thepassionistasproject.com.

 

To get a membership to Jessica's daily newsletter, Chop Wood, Carry Water, and support her activism, go to patreon.com/chopwoodcarrywater. Now here's more of our interview with Jessica.

 

PASSIONISTAS: What advice would you have for some of those maybe a little bit apprehensive about getting involved or that thinks that their voice doesn't matter?

 

JESSICA: Well, for one thing, I mean, just a couple of practical issues about calling your reps that people don't always realize. And this is, sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, but I think there are people who don't necessarily know that when you call your reps, you're not going to get your rep on the phone. So that seems really obvious, but that is possibly not obvious to everybody. So you're going to get an aide or more likely you're going to get a voicemail. People worry a lot that they're going to get challenged like that. They're going to have to defend what they say, that they have to be super educated on something, but you absolutely don't. No one will ever challenge you. When you get an eight on the phone. They're generally very nice. They will take the comment. They will say, I will pass that along to the Senator or the Congress member.

 

And that's it. I don't know of anybody who's ever been challenged by an aid. It maybe has happened somewhere, but that's not ever been my experience. There are several different numbers you can call. You don't have to just call the number that they generally give you. The, the DC office. There are usually about four senators, about five other field offices. You can call any of them. So I find it really useful to have all five phone numbers for my senators and, and to the two phone numbers, my Congress member, I think all Congress members have a DCN and a field office. I have them all in my phone. So I just say, Hey, Siri, call Diane Feinstein. And, and you know, I, I call one of the field offices. So all of those are our basic points. And then why do it? I've been asked this a million times.

 

I have people who live in Kentucky who say, I just don't see the point of calling, you know, Mitch McConnell. He doesn't care. Or in a lot of States, I have people say like, my rep just doesn't care. They're hopeless. And what I always say, or you have people say, well, my rep is good. They're always going to do the right thing. Okay. So either way, I sort of compare it to, to having a, to being a boss and having an employee who works remotely. So if we sort of give that employee the job and then walk away and never check in with them, even the most honest employee after a while is going to start to just Slack at their job, because why wouldn't they, if they're having no oversight and, and no, no one checking in. So we are our representatives boss. Like they work for us.

 

So my job every day is to call and tell them what I want them focusing on. If they don't hear that from me, they're just going to do what they want. And even the most ethical is going to maybe miss something that is actually very important to their constituents. Also, it is really important to know that. So I go meetings with the staff of Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris. Cause I, I go with a group of indivisible leaders and they always tell us, we need your calls. We need your calls. First of all, it helps the Senator to know where to focus her attention. And secondly, when she goes into a hearing she, or, or, or to a vote, she might say, you know, I got 150 calls on this yesterday. And the day before that I got 500 calls on this. So she's armed with evidence that her constituents care we can think, well, she must know that I care about this, but if she's not hearing it, then does she know maybe, but you'd be surprised how out of touch these offices can be with what their constituents are actually thinking.

 

I can't tell you how many times we've been meeting with one of those senators staffs, and we've brought up an issue that they had no idea about an issue. That to me was like very, very obvious, and that we'd been talking about a lot. They had not heard anything about it. So I just tell people, never assume, never assume that they don't need to hear from you. They do. And it's also an exercise for, for yourself. It's a, it's a way to say like, Hey, this is my country. This is my democracy. And you are going to listen to me every day. I am going to call you every day. And even if I called you about something yesterday, I'm going to call you about it again today because I'm your boss. And I want you to hear that this matters to me. I can't overemphasize the importance of it, honestly.

 

PASSIONISTAS: Now you're newly elected to the California Democratic Party's County Central Committee. So what does that organization do and what's your role?

 

JESSICA: I ran for it because I had run for something even smaller called aid Dems, which I won last year. And these are all sort of California State Party roles. So a Dems was an election that it wasn't even on the main federal ballot. It was a kind of a smaller election that people had to actually show up physically to vote for. And that enabled me to sort of have a very small voice in the California democratic party. So County central committee is basically a step up in that chain. I was on the same ballot as like the presidential candidates this time, which was really exciting. And I basically will have a seat at the table to vote on how the California democratic party spends its money, who we endorse, especially on sort of a state level. I'll get to vote on endorsements for like district attorney and city council and things that don't sound super sexy, but that are so important in the running of our state.

 

And it just gives me a tiny bit more clout and weight. Uh, California elected officials will take me a little bit more seriously. My senators will take me a little bit more seriously. And honestly, for me, it's all about bringing a progressive voice to the state party itself, which can be surprisingly, still sort of centrist and has had some corruption, quite frankly. So a bunch of us who are grassroots have been running for these seats just to get people into them who are actually sort of in touch with the grassroots community. And it's honestly the same reason that I'm serving as a PTA president at my daughter's public school. It's just, you know, we've heard these words like run for something, if you want to help run for something. And, and I've been like, all right, well, what can I run for? And these have been the things that have presented themselves to me.

 

So whether it's sort of bringing more progressive politics to, you know, fighting to get an electric leaf blower at my daughter's school, because it's better for the environment or advocating to endorse a more progressive city council candidate on the California, you know, the County central committee, it's, it's just bringing more of what I'm already doing to places where more people can hear. I mean, I guess it's all about sort of building a bigger platform, but I'm just going to keep fighting for better, you know, stronger action on climate, strong direction, on guns, stronger action on, you know, uh, election security and criminal justice reform, the same stuff, you know, basically I already do.

 

PASSIONISTAS: Why is local government as important really as federal government?

 

JESSICA: Over the last three years, we've watched as our federal government and Congress have basically grown to a halt. I mean, they have passed some things, but even having flipped the house, we just can't get anything through the Senate and it's discouraging.

 

And you just start to feel like there's so little we're able to do right now on a federal level. And in general, on a federal level, even when Obama was president, it's just hard to get things through, unless you have like a super majority everywhere, which is rare now on the state level, it turns out we can just get a lot more done and on a city level, we can get a lot of stuff done. And I guess the more, the longer I've paid attention to this, the more I've realized that while the federal government is incredibly frustrating and sort of just jammed up state governments are passing amazing climate bills, or they're not, they're passing great, you know, pro-choice bills or they're passing horrible pro-life bills, they're passing gun bills, or they're not. Cities are getting really, really active on helping our unhoused populations or they're sitting on their hands and doing nothing.

 

They're passing, you know, climate bills or they're not. And, and these are places where we actually can really affect change by working to elect great state legislators, uh, by working to elect city council members. I actually, in this past, the primaries that just passed in California were the election I was running in. There were also several, uh, city council seats. And there were all of these amazing challengers to incumbent city council members. And I spent all of my time canvasing for like three different city council candidates, because I've come to realize that the city council, as unglamorous as it is, is actually a place where if you want to make change, say to fight climate change, that's a really good place to do it. And Los Angeles has a notoriously sort of corrupt and awful, sorry, but pretty terrible city council right now, very ineffective.

 

And frankly, as I said, a lot of them are really corrupt. And so working to flip some of those seats, I worked on, on the, on the race of this woman, Nythia Roman, who was challenging one of our city council members and, and she, she made it to a runoff with a hugely funded incumbent. And that was just done by people power and her being a great candidate. I helped flip a seat, a city council seat in Glendale by canvassing for, for a guy named Dan Brotman, who was a climate champion and had stopped a huge power plant expansion in Glendale. And so I decided to put a lot of time into his race and he won. So meanwhile, you know, my presidential candidate of choice did not win and probably wouldn't have won if I had knocked doors for her, every single one of those days, unfortunately, just because of the nature of, you know, systemic sexism or whatever.

 

But the people I canvas for city council, why did, and, and their races are really exciting because if they win, they can make a huge difference in my day to day life. And that's the thing I would love people to remember is that the people that you have working in your state legislature and in your city council, in your school boards, those people are going to be affecting your life. They're going to be affecting the air, your kids breathe, or that you breathe. They will be affecting whether or not there are, you know, tons and tons of people housed who need it or not. And so many other things they'll affect how your state is spending money in so many different ways. Moms demand action is so great because they do a tremendous amount of advocacy on a state level. And they have sort of recognized that the federal level is, you know, we do do a work there, but on a state level, we can get so much more done.

 

And so I've actually gotten very into pushing calls on to state legislators as well. And I have a whole list of people who I will text and say, Hey, call your legislator today on this California bill, because we have a lot of power there. And we've seen California just passed phenomenal bills in the last few years. And we have a lot further to go on that, but this is a great place to put your energy. And if you don't know what you know what to do as the next set of elections, roll around, look for a small election in your area and work on it. You can make a really big difference and you can help somebody. When Dan brought me in one by, I don't know, I think it was a thousand or 2000 votes, and I canvas for him about eight times. So I feel like I had a real part in that race and it feels really good.

 

So I can't encourage that enough. Check out your state level races or check out a great organization like sister district. There were these amazing organizations doing great work on a state level and a future now is the other one, check those out. They're doing great work. And that's all they focus on our state elections and, and those are critical. And plus we have redistricting coming up in, in 2021. And if we don't win these States back, we're looking at bad representation there on a federal level for another 10 years. So it really matters.

 

PASSIONISTAS: What's your secret to a rewarding life?

 

JESSICA: Look for ways to help other people. I mean, that's, that's it in a nutshell, you know, and I I'm in 12 step programs. So, so I got this there that if I want to be happy myself, I need to look for ways to make other people happy.

 

And if I want to feel less anxious, I need to find a way to help other people feel less anxious. I mean, that's Chop Wood, Carry Water was born out of that. Basically, you know, the night Trump was elected. One of my girlfriends called me hysterically crying, and I was also crying. But in that moment, she needed me to comfort her. And as I comforted her, trying to find the words of comfort that I could pull out of wherever, I realized that in comforting her, I felt a modicum of comfort myself. And, and to this day, that is what keeps me going. Is that when I feel despair, when I feel hopeless, when I feel like I just don't see how we're going to get out of this, I turn around and try to find somebody else who's feeling that way and give them hope.

 

And that's why I do the pep talks in Chop Wood, Carry Water, because I need to hear them. And the, and as I do them, I feel better and I feel stronger. So I guess that the secret to joy for me is trying to help other people find joy themselves.

 

PASSIONISTAS: Is there a mantra that you live by?

 

JESSICA: A couple. “Chop Wood, Carry Water” is one. And again, just that idea of just what is the next thing in front of me to do what is in front of me right here? Is it, do I need to get my email out? Do I need to call my reps? Do I need to feed myself and my family to what is the thing right in front of me to do not, how am I going to be in 10 years or what's going to happen next year? But like, what is right here and trust in God and call your reps.

 

I mean, you know, I guess that would be my other mantra and on a spiritual plane. What I use when I meditate a lot is breathe in faith and breathe out fear, which helps a lot for me, just to sort of on a physical level, be breathing in the idea that it's all going to be okay, and be breathing out that anxiety. Cause again, the anxiety will make me ineffective and cripple me. And also it's the anxiety is so fed by our social media and media world that, that it becomes in and of itself an enemy that I have to fight. And I can do that by caring for the physical plant, feeding myself and meditating, exercising, those, those little things, making sure I spend, you know, engaged time with my family, all of that, to make sure that I can fill the well.

 

PASSIONISTAS: What advice would you give to a young woman who wants to get more involved and become an activist?

 

JESSICA: Find a local campaign and volunteer, pick your passion.

 

If it's climate change, find somebody who's running for any office where they can have some impact on that and, and help them. If you're young, join the sunrise movement. They're amazing. They're so great. I can't recommend them highly enough. If climate change is your, is your big thing. If criminal justice reform is your thing, look for it. Look for someone running for district attorney who wants to change things up there. We have a great race in Los Angeles that I'm going to be volunteering for. If education is your thing, work on a school board race. There is no campaign that will not jump up and down for joy. When they get a phone call from someone saying, I want to volunteer, there's no campaign that has so many volunteers that they will turn them away. They all need you desperately. So sign up to do what you can.

 

If you are not willing to go canvas, make phone calls. If you don't think you can do that, offer to go and stuff on envelopes for them or answer phones or bring them food. But again, get involved in it in a local race. I mean the presidential race obviously will matter so much, but to get started, if you start on a small race, you will then get to know those people. And the next time they're working on a campaign, you'll be like, Hey, I know. So and so they were, you know, a field rep in, in, in, so, and so's campaign, I'm going to call them up and see if I can get in, you know, uh, here as maybe like a paid, maybe I can get a paid job and suddenly you're sort of working your way up, but everybody who works in politics starts as a volunteer. I worked for a great organization called open progress for almost two years, uh, doing their social media. And I started out as a volunteer. I worked for them for probably four months as a volunteer and that turned into a job. So you just never know, but, but volunteering is where it's at. Just, just, just raise your hand and ask where you can help and you'll be off. Your journey will begin.

 

PASSIONISTAS: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Jessica Craven.

 

To get a membership to Jessica's daily newsletter, Chop Wood, Carry Water, and support her activism, go to patreon.com/chopwoodcarrywater.

 

Don't forget to register for the Passionistas Project Women's Equality Summit to take part in Jessica's workshop Activism 101 on Saturday, August 22. The summit is sponsored by LUNA, whole nutrition bars, the premium beverage company, Tea Drops and public speaking coaching company, ubu skills. A portion of the proceeds from the summit will go to Girls Inc. and Black Girls Code. To register for free for the online event visit thepassionistasproject.com.

 

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Suz Carpenter Is Helping Her Clients Win at Losing Weight

Suz Carpenter created a virtual nutrition education company called CarpenterOne80 whose mission is to provide affordable and simple programs that can clear up food confusion so that people can win at losing weight. She is a Certified Nutritional Consultant and the CEO and Founder of CarpenterOne80, as well as the creator of Babysit My Plate, The Food Peace University and S.O.S. (Suz on your shoulder). These three different virtual bite-sized nutrition courses were designed to teach you what you need to know to create sustainable results.

More info about Suz.

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Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. Before we start our interview today, we wanted to tell you about our upcoming event. From Friday, August 21st through Sunday, August 23rd, we'll be hosting the Passionistas Project Women's Equality Virtual Summit. The three-day event will feature live panel discussions, prerecorded presentations, daily workshops. The Passionistas Portraits storyteller event, the LUNAFEST® short film festival, a Virtual Marketplace and a Pay It Forward Portal. The weekend is centered around the theme of women's equality and intersectional feminism from a range of perspectives, including racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, financial equity, voter suppression, ageism, physical and mental health issues, religious persecution and so much more. And best of all, it's free for the weekend. Go to ThePassionistasProject.com to register.

And now for today's interview, we're talking with Suz Carpenter an approachable, sincere, fun, loving and passionate leader who loves to see personal improvement and transformation in those she teaches. Through her successful ten-year nutrition career Suz saw a gap in the industry, and a trend in society. Americans are more confused and overwhelmed than ever when it comes to actually losing weight and keeping it off. She created a virtual nutrition education company called CarpenterOne80, whose mission is to provide affordable and simple programs that can clear up food confusion so that people can win at losing weight. Suz is a certified nutritional consultant, the CEO and founder of CarpenterOne80 as well as the creator of BabysitMyPlate, the FoodPeaceUniversity and SOS (Suz On Your Shoulder). These three different virtual bite-size nutrition courses were designed to teach you what you need to know to create sustainable results. So please welcome to the show, Suz Carpenter.

Suz: I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me on with you today.

Passionistas: What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Suz: Without a doubt, food peace. And I'm going to tease that out for you a little bit more. Once upon a time, I was asked this question where somebody said, you know, "you say you would die for your kids, but would you change for them?" And that question kept me up at night and hit me square between the eyes because I didn't have food peace. In fact, I had an eating disorder that I had struggled with since I was a teenager. So that question meant that I was going to need to get help and face what was really my greatest shame. And in walking that out, what I discovered was food peace and it's changed my life. And it's the thing that I'm passionate about spreading to others, because I know it's what people are suffering with.

Passionistas: So how does that translate into what you do for a living?

Suz: I seek to educate people on what foods to eat and why, so that they are not, influenced, but so they understand because from there I can empower somebody to do this on their own, to lose the weight and maintain the weight, and then be inspired to share it with their families and beyond. Because what I've been able to do my whole life and is when I understand science, I can explain it in a way that a first grader can get it. And I did used to teach first grade once upon a time. So when I stumbled into the beginning of my healing, I started to see patterns in nutrition. And I kept thinking, why was I not taught this? When I was in high school? How come these basic things were so covered up and made so confusing that I couldn't find the answers that I was looking for because I was struggling for so many years. So my life's work now is really just to educate on what all of us should have been taught when we were a lot younger, because it's not so complicated, it just needs to be spelled out.

Passionistas: Tell us what CarpenterOne80 is, what inspired you to create it?

Suz: So it came from me getting the help with my eating disorder and tackling that ugly voice in my head and understanding the basics of protein, fat and fiber, every meal to make maintaining or losing weight, no big deal. And the exercise was a part of the healthy living equation, but not necessarily part of the weight loss equation. And so with working with people, I started to notice that we wanted things fast, more like a microwave than an oven. And my clients were struggling with wanting to work and get results, but not having the time or the finances to invest in a one-on-one program. They also felt very, very overwhelmed by all the information available. Like I think about the days when we had to study for our final exams or board tests, and we had all the books on our desk and we were so overwhelmed by all the material that you, you kind of felt that pressure going into the test, that you don't know that you studied the right thing.

And then when you walk out of the test, you could feel the information leaking out of your ears. That's how people feel about pursuing a healthy lifestyle. They don't know really what to listen to. It feels very overwhelming. And a lot of times they stop before they ever make traction. Okay. So what started out as me just getting help for myself with no intention of building out CarpenterOne80 suddenly became this mission to pay forward. It's almost like I'm talking to myself, my younger 20 to 37 year old self. So CarpenterOne80 means — Carpenter's my last name, but carpenters build things. 180 is a direction, 180 degree turn, but you have to make one intentional decision for 80 days in a row because it takes about 66 days to make a habit so that we can make a lifestyle no longer a fad diet, but it's going to take time of failing forward and doing it bad perfect.

So that was kind of how I birthed out the idea of the company name. But with working with people, I saw that I absolutely still want the one on one platform so that my heart stays attached to people and I stay relevant and connected and sharp. But I know that there's a lot of people who are more interested in self-learning meaning that's where you insert the video courses and they want to learn from somebody that's not scary. That's a teacher. That's a little bit fun. That's based in science and is like a girlfriend that's approachable. So that's why I'm going to do I teach the video courses. And then the one that I'm the most excited about is the one that I just custom catered to all the concerns that I heard from people. I don't have enough time. I'm overwhelmed. I don't have enough money.

So SOS stands for Susan on your Shoulder. And it's like that angel on your shoulder whispering in your ear because I made them into three and four minute soundbites that come right to somebody's text message. So they don't even have to go find it. It comes right to them. It's every day. And it's teaching people what they need to know in the right sequence to begin to learn and apply and get results and feel better and create a lifestyle. But as they start to get results out of those initial first soundbites, those first couple of weeks of me teaching, then the learning starts to happen where instead of following safe food rules, which we don't want to do instead, because you understand what protein, fat and fiber can do for turning off hungry hormones and balancing cravings and turning your body where it'll burn fat for fuel, rather than store fat, it begins to make so much sense that eating any other way becomes illogical. And you learn how to incorporate in the foods you love rather than take them out. And in doing that, in that consistency, in that repetition learning happens. Because you begin to attach cues or words to things that mean something in a way that you can apply it to make lifelong change. So this is my way of really giving back in an inexpensive way so that people can find, like I said, the food peace that mattered so much to me,

Passionistas: I think people sometimes look at weight loss as just changing their diet. But you also focus on overcoming shame and inferiority and low self-esteem. So why is that important? And what are the keys to helping people change their attitudes about those issues, too?

Suz: So losing weight is really intimate and it's really vulnerable, and anybody can get a food plan offline or have a trainer, who's wonderful, give you a list of foods to eat, and maybe you're going to stick with it for four or five days, but you took out your favorite foods. Most women can stick with something that's a diet and restrictive for about four weeks, men about six weeks. And then we blow it. So how come like how can we do something in a way that we can have real results? So that means we have to do two things. One, we have to figure out how to pull in the foods that matter. But two, we have to address the emotional component because food brings us pleasure. Food makes us feel happy. Food fills in the gaps for people. So we have to get to where the beginning part is practical and boring. Like we're talking, we have to learn about bringing in the groceries and the right foods to put for meals. But really quick, really quick, after that,

You've got to dig into the emotional side of this and understand the difference between emotional eating or emotional hunger and physical hunger. Because we have this as humans, we are wired that we want to feel happy and we want to feel good. And in life, you're guaranteed to struggle. It's not, if it's when. And so we have these things, it's called the feeling spectrum. If you look at your left hand and say, put it on the table and pretend like that table is a hot stove, it is so painful. You can't keep your hand there and you have to pick it up. Now on the right, You put your hand down and that's such joy. It's also not sustainable, like say Christmas morning or endorphins for a run. Now, when we are feeling pain, which is over by the left hand, our body is wired to do things, to move us towards happiness.

So there are certain things that we could do that could give us endorphins, that society frowns on that we don't turn to as much — gambling, stealing, driving, too fast, overshopping drugs, uh, whatever, something in that category, smoking. Now you can also turn to food to make yourself feel better. And society does not frown on that. So it's easy to turn to that with out having a social ramification. So here's what happens. We have some form of pain. It could be somebody died, a relationship stress, financial stress, job stress, uh, could be pace of life. It could be kids running around and fighting could be an email. You don't want to write or a hard conversation. Anything that's causing you pain is over on the left hand, by your left hand. So let's say you start to think, gosh, I really want some Ben and Jerry's or some pretzels really what's happening is you're eating the food for comfort to make that pain go away.

So while you're eating the Ben and Jerry's or the pretzels or whatever, it's as though somebody put a blanket over that pain and numbed it out and made it go away. And that feels really good. But as soon as you're at the bottom of the ice cream or at the end of the chip bag, what happens is the blanket comes off the pain you're left with the problem. And now you have a feeling of blood sugar going up and down, which feels bad. Your belly might hurt, which feels bad. And then if you're looking to lose weight or you're struggling with body image, that's going to add to shame or regret. And that is a bad feeling. So if we can identify that it's normal to want to eat, to make yourself feel better. That is a first step to empowering. The second thing is starting to think, okay, so what am I emotionally hungry for when I'm going for the Ben and Jerry's am I wanting to feel comfort?

Am I wanting to be food? Am I bored? Am I looking to feel like I accomplished something? Am I avoiding an email? Like we need to look at what the trigger is that caused the emotional need to go for the food. And then to recognize this is the one that I love is a lot of times the foods we're going for or what we call comfort foods and the reason we're going for the comfort food. If you think about this, I bet if you're thinking in your head right now, what are your top five favorite comfort foods? One or two of them would probably be things you ate when you were a child. So we're going for foods, probably, they were something we ate in our childhood because that reminds us of a time where we were secure and safe and comfortable. And it makes more sense when you begin to understand the why you're doing something, and then it makes the, how, which is the practical a lot easier.

And the reason I want to address those types of things about why we emotionally eat, why the comfort food is wanting to make people feel better to realize that it's normal. Two, because then you can begin to get a handle on what's going on and begin to potentially reverse the situation you don't want to be in. Because what I can't stand is the idea that when somebody is getting dressed in the morning and their hair's wet, cause they just got out of the shower and you put the skirt on or the pair of pants and you buckle in and you feel that sense of inferiority or the tight pants remind you that you're, you just don't feel like you're enough. And you're talking ugly to yourself. That position of disempowerment is a big mountain to have to climb over in order to start your day off in your powerful, authentic, bold, confident self that needs to show up in this world to do something amazing. So I'm really the unfancy part of somebody's life shoring up the health, helping them to really begin to get the success with the weight, because what I'm really looking to do is get their feet back underneath them so they feel competent and bold and go add value into all areas of their life.

Passionistas: So you said that, you know, everybody has the same excuses of I'm too busy. I don't have time. It's, you know, I'm too broke. So how does what you do help with all of those excuses?

Suz: That's what I tried to navigate with SOS. If somebody says, I don't have time, I'm like you have three or four minutes a day and you can listen to these while you're driving to the gas station. Or I'm broke. Okay. So I started SOS so everybody can try seven days free to see if it's even a fit for them. But in those first seven days, I'm equipping with what you need to really get off to a strong start to make a change. But then it's $15 a month. That's not so bad. People spend that with a drive through at Chick-fil-A. And then with the, you know, like I don't have time or I don't know enough, or I have an event coming up. The biggest obstacles I heard you guys for years were things like I have a trip coming, so I don't want to start now or we have Christmas coming, so I don't want to do that and then have to stop and start.

Where here now, even in this COVID time, we don't have those obstacles yet. It's still difficult to begin to create a lifestyle. So I found that the hurdles really are uncertainty. They are, I've tried things before. And I don't know if this will work for me worse yet. I've tried something. I lost 10 pounds. It was really, really hard. And when I stopped, I gained 12 and I feel so discouraged. I don't know if I can dig in again. And that trust fall into when you don't know what you don't know, you don't know what you know. So teaching somebody, if I get you eating protein, fat and fiber, and you feel full and have weight loss without hunger, and you're not craving foods like crazy, and you're seeing results, it's going to be a lot easier to show up to this meal and show up to these foods and yourself. And you will begin to feel encouraged.

But I mean, I think we all can identify with, I did something before it was so impossibly hard. I'm scared to try again because I don't know if I have it in me. And that's where you need somebody who is a role model, who is an encourager, who is showing the way, who's making it not seem so scary and restricted, but rather she eats food that looks really good. And she's food has chocolate in it. I think I could get behind this. And so I try to navigate some of the obstacles, but a lot of them have to come back to just fear and uncertainty.

Passionistas: You had me at chocolate.

Suz: I'm like everybody. I go to Starbucks and see the big fancy copies and the scones and chocolates. And I want them like, I very much want them, but I don't want to be constantly battling with having to gain and lose 10 pounds because I understand if I go after the scone and the chocolate, it's like, you have to use compromise and discipline in every area of your life. You have to with business was showing up to an appointment on time. You have to use compromise and discipline with weight loss and weight management in your health. So I can look at a scone and go, it looks so good, but it's actually not one of my top five favorite foods of all time. So maybe I'm gonna pass on this so that I can have what I really want a little bit later. And so that's why I've worked hard to create recipes that are just kind of healthier swaps of foods that we love, like cookies, but they're not quite as expensive to our bodies in terms of calories and, um, slowing weight loss.

Passionistas: And do you provide recipes to people as well?

Suz: I do. I always call them kid approved because I run it all by my family. And, and so, you know, they're, they're just things like I'll, I'll trade out, say regular flour for cooking with almond flour, but I'll add in unflavored fiber because fiber negates carbohydrate and in the absence of net carbs, the body will burn fat for fuel. So in a lot of my recipes, if I can significantly up the fiber count, I lower the net carb amount, which means, Hmm, we're going to actually be losing weight or maintaining weight. And this is not going to be such an expensive dessert. So definitely provide these recipes for people because it's one thing to hear eating a certain way. It's entirely different to know what actually to go get at the grocery store and what to put on your plate. That's practical because we need tactical hands on things that we can do and eat to get the results. Especially in the beginning,

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Suz Carpenter. To learn more about her business, visit CarpenterOne80.com. Now here's more of our interview with Suz.

As we're recording this we're right in the middle of the Corona virus. What advice do you have for people who want to get started with this now? But it's hard to keep focus for everyone right now.

Suz: It's true. And first off is don't underestimate getting enough sleep and getting enough water. Those are really important fundamentals that we're in a health crisis. So you do need to take care of yourself. And those are two simple things that have been taken off the plate for a lot of people. So here's what I would love for everybody to do is to start looking to find fiber and incorporate this into breakfast, lunch and bridge snack and dinner. So fiber versus zero calorie, part of a carbohydrate it's found in fruits and vegetables, whole grains legumes. Fiber is something that as Americans, we're not getting enough of in our diet. Now before the industrial revolution, we were probably getting a hundred to 200 grams, but when we started manufacturing food, they started stripping fiber, started going for more simplified carbohydrates. And then what happened is the waistlines got bigger, right? During the industrial revolution, you can see it.

So studies show that if an American who gets about nine to 15 grams of fiber right now, ups their fiber to around 24 grams a day you'll malabsorbe about 90 calories a day. So over the course of a year, that can lead to a 10 pound weight loss by addition, by adding in fiber. So it's the zero calorie part to a carbohydrate. Your body cannot break it down. It cannot digest it, but it is going to burn calories called thermogenesis, trying to break down the fiber. So fiber acts like a broom in a sponge, it'll soak up extra calories that send toxins and usher them into the toilet bowl. It has a lot of bulk. And so since you're drinking your water, your stomach will stretch and that will help you to feel full. But these foods that are high in fiber are very low in calories. So that's why I say you can have weight loss without hunger.

The other part of fiber, it's just a super unsexy nutrient, but the health benefits are, what's so amazing. It'll reduce risk for blood pressure, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, l reduce the risk for estrogen dominance or colon cancer helps to reduce inflammation in the body leading to a healthier GI track. The health benefits are, what's so amazing, and this is stuff we're buying from the grocery store. And the side effect of getting healthy is actually that you're going to have weight loss and weight loss without hunger. So if your listeners can right away, you know, through this COVID time, especially, but moving forward the first week shoot for 24 grams, you're going to feel full. You'll be more regular. And then the next week, I would say, try to shoot up to 35 grams that way we're above what the recommended daily allowance is, but we're definitely getting to take advantage of feeling nice and full while I'm revving our metabolism and getting healthier.

Passionistas: This is also kind of an emotional time with the shutdown. So are there any tips that you have specifically for people and kind of just their mental state right now?

Suz: First off, we can not be continuing to think that we have to take out our favorite foods in order to maintain or lose weight. Because we're looking to create a pattern of eating that you can do right now that you can do when you're 70. And if, if, if that's not the case, we haven't found the right pattern of eating. So when I'm working with people, one of the exercises we do is figuring out their top five favorite foods. And this is a little harder than you think to really dial in what are my top five favorite? So that doesn't mean Italian. It means, um, very specific type of Italian. Is it chicken piccata or is it Fettuccine Alfredo. Get really specific about what your top five favorite foods are and write them down. This, this is the activity is doing that because then what happens is during this time, if you come across your top five favorite food, all right, we're in there. That's something that you're going to go for.

But if you're in front of a food that you don't necessarily love, like, say for me, I don't love Oreos. I'll buy them for the family, but I won't touch them because I don't love them. So if you're around something like, say Oreos, I'm not going to splurge on something like that. That is a total waste. However, I love chocolate chips. And if those are around, I'd be more likely to splurge on that. But now let me frame splurge. Instead of the old way, which was eat it all until it's gone, which that's what I used to do in my eating disorder days. Instead I have a thoughtful indulgence and that is having three bites. And I get it. I get hearing right now, even the person that said three bites, I don't want to listen to this anymore. I really understand it because that right there requires you to show up and use compromise and discipline.

But if you can, if you can just try to lean into this idea, the first bite's the one that tastes the best, that's the one where it explodes in your mouth and you get endorphin rush. The second best bite is the last one. It's that one that lingers. And then the only difference is, do you have one bite in the middle or do you have a thousand, which is gluttony? Do you have one bite that lets you have a thoughtful indulgence where you feel empowered and you enjoyed it and you still feel in control or do you have 200 and you ate the whole thing and you wake up with regret and shame and sore belly and feeling bad about yourself. So have it, especially if it's a top five, but begin to practice having three bites and a thoughtful indulgence.

But I promise you're going to do it bad. You're going to goof up and have 20 bites. It's normal. This is practice. That's why it's CarpenterOne80. 80 days to make a new habit. You've going to have to fail forward iand do it bad perfect. And just keep showing up. And if you have your favorite food and you stick to and you don't stick to three bites, you blow it. You just think to yourself, okay, I'm going to do this bad perfect. I'm going to fail forward and think about when you were a kid and you're in line at school. And if you fell out of line, you just got back in line and that's all we're going to do because we're just beginning to make new habits that are better, that will serve you and your intentions.

If you are basically filling your plate with protein, fat and fiber, and that's the foundation, because like I said, that's going to turn off eight hungry hormones so that when you get in front of your favorite food, if you've already set that solid foundation, you're much more likely to approach it in control, but it's not until you set that foundation that you can really feel the truth of what I'm saying. Right now it's more like I can anticipate you're trying to put yourself in that place, but it's nowhere you've been before. So it's difficult to understand, not having to exercise so much willpower. Eventually it'll get a lot easier, but I also want to honor people and that it's work. Like it does work, but it is working. It does require you being awake and showing them to your life and pursuing the best version of yourself and being willing to have to be disciplined, to just wait to not have the blueberry cake, to have the chocolate cake and a couple of days, because you'd rather have. I absolutely agree, understand that feeling of, but I want everything, but that gets us in trouble. 70% of Americans are overweight. We cannot get away with eating, whatever we want whenever we want. That's a lie. So if we can start to instead hear these messages of, I just have to use compromise and discipline. I can have what I really, really want, but it doesn't mean I can have everything. It just, it looks like there are so many people that can eat whatever they want without ever gaining weight. I mean, my thighs are not made of Teflon. I have to, I have to take my own advice.

Passionistas: What's the biggest risk you ever took and how did it pay off?

Suz: Biggest risk I ever took? To me, it feels selfish to say this, but it was admitting that I had the eating disorder and, and this is why I wrote that secret is such a big shame. I was so ashamed of it that I thought if I spoke it out loud, that I was going to lose all the relationships that I loved, I thought I was going to be an impostor or not authentic. So I was terrified. And I remember the first time I said it out loud, I felt like my bones were going to fall out of my body. I remember the heat coming up, my neck. I still remember my hair sweating. I was so scared, but I was met with love and compassion. And I have been met with that with everybody that I've shared my story with to find out I'm not so alone. So it was such a shame that it was so terrifying and risky for me to say it out loud. But the outcome has me here talking to you and has me been in this space for 10 years where I get to change lives one at a time.

Passionistas: Do you mind if I ask why you finally were able to make that decision to share your story?

Suz: Well, it was definitely the question that I was asked. It was when they said, you know, "You would die for your kids, but would you change for them?" Because what I realized is I was the ugliest voice in my head and I had this fractured relationship with food where I'd starve myself all day and then I would binge, and then I would exercise as an eraser. And then I got into abusing laxatives. And that question made me recognize that my girls were probably going to do the same thing that I did if I didn't get help for me. And I couldn't see in the idea of them talking to themselves that way in the mirror or them struggling with food like I had. So that made me stir the feelings up that I was going to have to do something, but I still wasn't quite ready because I was giving life 110%.

And I believe that's what a lot of people are doing. I was doing everything that I knew to do, and I was looking for answers and I'm still falling short. So it was very difficult for me to believe that talking with someone else, a dietician and a counselor and a therapist that I could ever really release this eating disorder, because I didn't know that there was a different way that I could eat and live. So I had to be brave and accept that I was going to have to be willing to walk it out and continue to just keep trying. And I didn't know if I would succeed or not. And that was what was so terrifying. So for me, what I had to do as I need steps, like I need to know how somebody actually did it. I had to talk to myself first.

Then I had to journal and practice journaling and putting words behind it in a book rather than to a person. And then the first person I told was actually my counselor, not my husband. I was paying somebody. So I didn't have as close of a relationship, but I was still so scared. And it was her that helped me reframe and expect what my husband would say and what others would say. And you know, of course my husband is just, was terribly, just terribly upset that I kept the secret and this burden and was hurting. And he was, she had helped or been able to help

Passionistas: What's the first thing you do in the morning. And what's the last thing you do at night?

Suz: First thing I do in the morning is I turn on a couple of lights to set the tone. And I sit down with my journal, with my copy and I write out 10 things that I am ridiculously grateful for. And a lot of times I start with batteries and light bulbs just to remind me of the blessings we have. And then I write out my 10 goals and some of them are goals to accomplish in the near future. Others are long-term. For instance, I'm an extraordinary wife and I am close with all of my children. Those are long-term goals that I always keep my eye on. And then I write down 10 mantras that, and that's kind of like putting my brain on for the day. Every single morning I wake up and I almost forget every single one of those parts of my morning routine. And it gets me ready for the day. And then the last thing that I do before I go to bed is I review those 10 goals again, of what I want to be and what I want to accomplish. And then that way kind of think that during the nighttime, while I'm sleeping, my brain is looking for ways to solve those problems.

Passionistas: Is there a lesson you've learned on your journey so far that really sticks with you?

Suz: Yes. My lesson would be, it was a statement, decide what it is that you need most in this world and go do that. And that statement's very empowering to me. And the lesson within that statement is there's room for you. You have a voice. There is somebody that needs your message. Be brave and show up. But there is a space for you.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Suz Carpenter. To learn more about her business, visit CarpenterOne80.com. Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast, our subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans and our upcoming Passionistas Project Women's Equality Virtual Summit. And be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast, so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

Katy Dolan shining a light on the dark sides of life as a young professional

Katy Dolan is a Harvard-trained sociologist with years of experience in marketing and research. Katy leveraged her expertise in the varied fields of tech, venture capital, politics, and non-profits to launch Katy Dolan Consulting, strategizing and executing marketing campaigns and research projects to serve growing clients. Just 23-years-old, Katy admits that becoming self-employed this soon out of college was not part of her master plan. But she’s on a mission to shine a light on the darker sides of life as a young professional.

More info about Katy.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to The Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And today we're talking with Katy Dolan, a Harvard trained psychologist with years of experience in marketing and research. Katy leveraged her expertise in the varied fields of tech, venture capital, politics and nonprofits to launch Katy Dolan consulting, strategizing and executing marketing campaigns and research projects to serve growing clients. Just 23 years old, Katy admits that becoming self-employed this soon out of college was not part of our master plan, but she's on a mission to shine a light on the darker side of life as a young professional.

So please welcome to the show, Katy Dolan.

Katy Dolan: Thank you all for having me.

Passionistas: What is the one thing you're most passionate about?

Katy: As you alluded to in my bio there, I became very passionate about work life balance and how to navigate your career as a young professional. After I graduated from college and found that, you know, I wasn't having the most fun time navigating the professional world myself as a 22 and early 23 year old. And so as I began to have those issues, I of course talks about them with my peers and my friends and discovered that those issues were actually very, very common. And we didn't feel like enough folks were talking about how difficult it can be to graduate college and enter the professional world and not really know the best decision to make or know whether the things that are making you unhappy are your fault or someone else's fault, or, you know, all sorts of things like that.

And so I've become really passionate about talking about those first years out of college and your profession and what you can do to make that experience a little bit better for you both in terms of your professional success, but also more importantly, your mental health and your kind of sanity.

Passionistas: If you will talk about how your passion relates to what you do for a living.

Katy: To be honest, I'm still exploring the best way for my passion to relate to what I do for a living on the one hand, my passion relates to what I'm doing for a living, because what I'm doing for a living with my solution out of the problem that my passion relates to, if that makes sense. So I was very dissatisfied in my career in the first couple of years out of college. And so ultimately the best decision that I could make was to become self-employed and launched my consultancy and worked for myself.

And, you know, that was my solution to the problem that I'm passionate about. But that solution has helped me to kind of enjoy professional satisfaction at this point, but it's not helping the many, many, many other young people who were in the same boat. And so I'm still working on that solution. It's maybe a book it's maybe a company it's maybe a blog series. I'm not quite sure, but I know that there is something there from all these conversations I've had with young people who are feeling the same things that I did right out of college.

Passionistas: So what are the common threads? What are you hearing from these young people?

Katy: On the one hand, there are issues with your manager or your boss, your supervisor at your workplace. So I think a lot of folks are trying to navigate in many for the first time working full time with a manager, with whom they do not necessarily get along on a day to day basis.

And it's very difficult. I think to tell when you are shortly out of college, whether the challenges that you have with people in the workplace, particularly your manager, but also, you know, colleagues or other folks, whether those challenges are related to your attitude in the workplace to your contributions, or whether in some cases you are working in more of a dysfunctional workplace and your manager isn't really well equipped to manage folks. And so really where to put the blame is the question that I think haunts a lot of young people that I've spoken to. And I certainly felt that myself, right, when you come home after having a hard day where you had a bad interaction with your manager, it's very difficult to get in your head and wonder if that was your fault. And in some cases, it almost certainly is because you're a young professional and you don't know how to navigate that situation, but in other cases, it is your manager's fault, or it is your workplace's fault for not setting you up to be better prepared in that situation or whatever the issue may have been.

And I think that anxiety about, you know, whether it's you all the time, whether it's other people, whether it's some blend of both can really cause you to spiral into wondering what's going on in your workplace and why it's affecting you so badly. So one thread is kind of managers. I think another big thread of course, is just satisfaction and feeling fulfilled with what you're doing. So, you know, so many people get their first job out of college. And I think it's a very common cultural trope that your first job is just supposed to suck and supposed to be bad. Even when you talk to family members or friends or people you meet at a cocktail party or whoever it might be. And you describe that, well, this is my first job out of college. The instant response is this sympathetic like, Oh yeah, first job out of college.

Tough. Right? And I think so many people recognize that that first job is so often not particularly fulfilling. It's not really what you want to be doing. You haven't yet found what it is that you want to be doing. And so you're toiling every day doing often kind of menial junior level work sometimes in industries and fields that you're just not passionate about. You're not interested in, you've maybe realized through working there for the last one to two years, that it's not what you want to do for the rest of your life. And so that meaning is really not there in your day to day experience. And that is only worsened by working 10, 12 hour days, which a lot of people are doing in these junior level positions. And so particularly when you combine that kind of the trifecta of those bad experiences, you maybe have a bad boss or a bad manager.

You're not doing work. That's fulfilling to you. And you're working 10, 12 hour days with very little time for a personal life that can be really oppressive as a 22 and 23 year old. And you're not sure where to go in terms of your career to make it feel less oppressive than it is.

Passionistas: Talk about your personal experiences after you went to college and your first job.

Katy: I think in my first job and really couple of jobs out of college, I struggled with a lot of the same issues that I described previously. There were certain interactions with people that I wasn't sure why they kept happening and why they were so unpleasant, why I was having such a hard time proving my value in the workplace, why I was having such a hard time, even kind of fulfilling requests and, and meeting the expectations of my colleagues and my managers.

I think I certainly struggled some though, not as much as some of my peers with hours and balance. I think it's, it's difficult to come from college and then suddenly have an email, a professional email inbox that needs to be responded to at all hours of the day. And, you know, receiving emails late at night that you feel pressured to respond to. And those things are difficult. And I certainly dealt with that. And then also I would say just as a, as a broader point was just struggling with what I was supposed to be doing and whether this was what I'm supposed to be doing, whether this is fulfilling enough to sustain a 30, 40, 50 year career from this point. And it got to the point where most, every day I was sitting there wondering if I really could, if I could stomach doing this for even six more months, much less, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

And that was in some ways the industry I was in, but in other ways, just the day to day work that I was doing and the culture of the places I was working, wasn't sure it was sustainable. And so just a lot of questioning I would say is what I was doing in those first couple of years, wondering what was wrong, whether it was me that was wrong, whether it was my fault and what to do about it, if there was anything to do about it.

Passionistas: Let’s go back a little bit. How did you get your start in marketing and tell us about the charity you founded in high school?

Katy: In high school, I was a very, very enthusiastic member of the band and I had played piano for a long time, but I played flute in the school band and our band program at my high school was pretty serious and pretty elite and pretty competitive, particularly when it came to marching band.

And so we had a marching band. I ultimately became the drum major of the marching band, which is the student conductor. And we traveled in competitions around the Pacific Northwest where I grew up and were pretty successful in competitions and things like that. So band was really a huge, huge portion of what I was spending my time on and music and student leadership within the band. And one of the issues that became apparent to me being involved in the band is that at least where I grew up in this is not the same everywhere across the country, thankfully, but at least where I grew up, you had to provide your own musical instrument in order to participate in the band or also the orchestra. And obviously for many students that poses a financial barrier instruments are very expensive. Obviously purchasing an instrument can be several thousand dollars, but even just renting an instrument from, you know, the local music shop can be anywhere from, you know, $50 a month to several hundred, depending on the quality of the instrument.

And so for many families that additional expense is not feasible and it caused many families where I was from to, you know, lean away from choosing band or orchestra in favor of other activities when band or orchestra has significant scientifically proven positive impacts on adolescent development. And so my best friend and I in high school kind of came together and realized this problem. And at the same time that we realized the problem also kind of realized a potential solution, which is that many people keep musical instruments in the top of their closet gathering dust from when their child played it 30 years ago. And so they have these trumpets, these clarinets, these violins, all these instruments that really aren't doing any good for anyone and don't have a ton of value but would have a ton of value if they were in the hands of the student learning how to play.

And so we created a nonprofit organization that kind of matched those two sides of the market, if you will. So we tried to collect musical instrument donations from those who had them laying around the house and then put those instruments into the hands of kids who wanted to participate in band or orchestra. That was our core programming. In addition to that, we also did some kind of music instruction clinics with community centers and youth groups and other kind of young people around the area. And then we also gave some scholarships, some monetary scholarships to participate in band or orchestra to cover some of the, you know, more monetary fees that are separate of instruments. And so we'd started that organization and really kind of started a business if you will, when we were 15 years old and ran it for several years. And at that point, the most exciting part of running that little business, which was a nonprofit, was the marketing and the getting the word out about what we were doing.

And that was everything from designing the first logo, which looked absolutely horrific. And I believe I designed in Microsoft paint, which I do not recommend all the way from this really janky looking logo up to actually, you know, putting that logo on a website and on social media and developing content for social media that could get the word out because a study and more followers get more people to understand that they could donate instruments and all of those sorts of things. And so my starting marketing was really that when I was 15, it was marketing the organization that my best friend and I had started together and trying to make as much of an impact as we could, by getting more and more folks in our community to realize what we were up to. So that was really the start in marketing and have obviously kind of expressed it now in many, many more ways in the eight plus years, since we started that nonprofit.

Passionistas: Where did you go to college and what did you study?

Katy: I went to Harvard for college. Harvard does not have any kind of quote unquote practical majors in the way that most colleges do. So it's a, it's a liberal arts school. And Harvard is very laser focused on maintaining that liberal arts focus. And so that means that all of the majors at Harvard are disciplines like sociology, which was my major, but, you know, even a business major at Harvard is the closest thing is an economics degree, which is, you know, much more theoretical than a typical business degree from other schools. And so there was not a way to study marketing specifically at Harvard, but I studied marketing if you will, through internships and extracurricular experiences that often put me close to marketing, whether directly or indirectly. And so for many of my kind of extracurricular commitments at Harvard, I found myself doing a lot of the same things that I had done for my nonprofit, whether it was brand strategy and kind of creating a visual aesthetic and expressing it on a website and on social media, whether it was developing content that could, you know, get more eyes to our programming and whatever, you know, toward whatever objective that we needed to. 

And then in internships also worked on various marketing initiatives. I worked at the Make-A-Wish foundation and my first summer in college and helped them with things like press releases and kind of packaging all these really inspirational, wonderful wish stories into content for social media and beyond. And in my senior summer, I worked at a public relations firm that assists democratic campaigns and progressive causes with advertising public relations and communications. And so kind of furthered the informal study of marketing there, if you will.

Passionistas: And did you also intern at the White House?

Katy: Yes. I also interned at the white house. That one was not so much marketing focused, but in my sophomore summer, I interned at the white house. This was my politics will show through here. This was the last golden summer of the Obama administration, the summer of 2016. And I worked as an advanced intern at the white house, which means that whenever the president and this is true in any administration, not just the Obama administration, whenever the president makes any sort of public appearance, that's outside the white house, whether it's a speech in DC or whether it's a big international trip to France or Japan or wherever here, ultimately she might be headed. 

The administration sends an advanced team out to prepare for that event. And so I worked as an advanced intern. We were helping to prepare all of these appearances and speeches on behalf of the president. And so that was everything from booking travel and managing the receipts of that travel booking, which obviously it was a scintillating job all the way up to actually getting to staff the president at those appearances in DC. And then ultimately, I also took a trip to California with him in August of 2016 for a speech on climate change. And so that was a really wonderful, wonderful summer, obviously, to be so close to an area of politics that I was very passionate about. But really if you do want to kind of project a thread onto it in the past, there is some marketing involved in advance. You're dealing with members of the press.

That's actually a big component of advanced work is wrangling press that obviously show up to presidential appearances. And you're also trying to, you know, in your setup of the event, help to craft the narrative that the press and the public can interpret from the president's appearance. So that's everything from who sits behind him or her when they're making a speech all the way to the experience that those, that those attendees have when they first walk in the room. And so there was a little bit of marketing involved, but that was definitely not one of my more marketing focused summers, but it was still a very fun summer. Nonetheless.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington, and you're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Katy Dolan to learn more about her business, visit KatyDolan.com. Now here's more of her interview with Katy.

In 2019, you founded Katy Dolan consulting. So talk about what inspired that and why you wanted to focus on startup companies.

Katy: Specifically, as I have described, I was having some professional difficulties, I would say in my first year and a half or so out of school and realizing that I was perhaps not cut out for the kind of typical nine to five job. I desired a really high level of work life balance. So meaning that it mattered greatly to me to take the nights and weekends off and to have a reasonable amount of vacation and that I wanted to learn a bit more than I was really able to learn. And then in the roles that I happen to have, I wanted to be more exposed to different kinds of projects, and also get back to some of the work that I have really loved from the beginning, which did happen to be marketing and branding.

And so I was beginning to realize that there was maybe an opportunity to act on some of these wishes and hopes. And I began taking on a bit of freelance work here or there while I was still employed full time. So I began kind of leveraging my network to get back in touch with a couple of startup founders that I had met in VR through various ways prior to that point and asking if I could do just little projects here or there for them, these were not major moneymaking projects. These were not projects that were really core to the business in most cases, but anything to help me kind of build my independent portfolio as a freelancer or as a consultant. And ultimately I kept doing that work to kind of prove to myself that there was product market fit. If you will, to use a startup term to prove to myself that I could basically generate enough income from freelancing and consulting to replace a full time job income.

And so ultimately I did, you know, kind of demonstrate that fit and prove to myself that it was possible. And from then made a pretty hasty decision to quit my job and launch my consultancy full time and become self-employed. And in doing so, I had been exposed obviously to many inspiring people who also are freelancers or consultants. The vast majority of the ones I know and am inspired by do happen to be women. And many of these women had showed me or told me directly that one of the most important things to do if you're launching a consultancy or freelance career is to have a bit of a brand or a bit of a niche for yourself. And as I began to think about what I wanted that brand or that niche to be startups really made the most sense because when I looked back at my experience thus far, whether it was starting my own nonprofit, whether it was working for other organizations through college.

And then when I worked in venture capital post-college and it was obviously working with startups, the common thread was really organizations that were just starting organizations that were really young. Didn't have big budgets, didn't have 50 staff members had a really lean and scrappy team and a lean and scrappy budget, but we're still trying to get the word out about themselves as much as possible. That was true with my nonprofit and it's true with most every startup company. And so I decided that my niche and my focus within my consulting business would be startup organizations. And so I call myself a startup consultant. And when I say that, I really don't just mean startups as our culture typically interprets that word. I E like venture capital backed tech companies, startups. I also mean small businesses and nonprofits and political movements and campaigns, really any type of organization that is small growing and looking to get the word out, which is pretty standard, you know, the, the motivations and kind of the tactics that you use are actually pretty standard, whether you're for profit, nonprofit, political, whatever it might be.

And so that was the reasoning behind both launching the consultancy and then ultimately focusing on specifically startup clients.

Passionistas: And you also mainly focused on marketing and research when you work with clients. Why those two areas specifically?

Katy: As we've kind of spoken about marketing had been a big thread of mine throughout much of the work I've done, whether it was my own nonprofit many years ago, all the way through several of these organizations that I've worked with since. And it's really the most exciting work of startups, in my opinion, it is, as I said before, that process of using all of the resources you have available, which is often very few to actually teach people and get the word out about what you're doing, which is at least as a, as a founder, in my experience, one of the most exciting things that you can recognize when people, when you realize that people actually know what you're doing, and you didn't actually tell them they found out organically, or maybe by a paid advertising or whatever it might be, but they found out by some other method than you telling them.

It's very exciting to learn that someone actually knows about your company, your knows about your organization, that they just came across on the internet somehow. And so I think marketing is very exciting work, not only as a marketer and myself, but also to work with founders who get really excited and realizing that, you know, we've done something that actually allowed them to have greater reach and their messages resonating with more people. And so marketing was kind of a natural fit. It's something that I knew a lot of the tactics about a new, a lot of the strategy to accomplish. And then the research angle was perhaps a bit less intuitive but was something that mattered a lot to me. So we haven't really spoken about it yet, but in college at Harvard, I studied sociology, which I'm also very passionate about and the discipline of sociology, which is, which is the study of really how people relate to each other.

So there's psychology, which is kind of how you relate to your own mind. But then we move into sociology. When we start to talk about how more than one person relates to each other, whether it's in a pair or a small group, or even, you know, whole societies at large. So I studied sociology and a big component of the field of sociology is in depth interviewing and trying to get people's stories from them directly and use people as primary sources. And I had done a lot of interview based studies, including my senior honors thesis, which had been entirely interview based. And I knew, and I know to this day that there is so much power in talking to people about their experience. And it's not an area that a lot of startup founders are really thinking about when they start their company or their organization or whatever it might be, but it's really critically important toward understanding your consumer, understanding your target audience, or even understanding your own employees or your own folks within the organization.

There's many ways to use it. And so I really wanted to kind of share that gospel if you will, with my clients, that it's really important to take the time to do these in depth interviews and to actually get the stories of people who you're impacting and use those stories to impact both your marketing efforts, but also your product development or whatever it is, whatever else it might be. And so, in addition to marketing, which is kind of my core service at this point today, I also do research studies with certain clients. And that typically takes the form of user research where in advance of launching a product or launching a new feature of a product, we go out and speak to a whole bunch of members of the target audience of that product or software in order to see how the products will impact their lived experience in this, in this certain field or industry that we're working in, and then translate all of those insights into kind of actionable tips and things as a company or organization can do in their product development, in their marketing, in whatever it might be to make sure that what they're doing really resonates with that end user. So that's the, both the marketing and the research components of my consultancy.

Passionistas: What do you think is the most important marketing tool in the modern world?

Katy: I think it depends on whether we're talking tool and kind of an abstract sense, the most important voice or content we can share, or whether we're talking tool in a tactical way, whether it's like email or social. So on the ladder, if it's the tactics, obviously social media is very ubiquitous in today's day and age. And I think when we were, you know, back eight to 10 years ago, social was seen as kind of the next area that any company needed to get up to speed on and their marketing program, obviously, because many of these social media platforms had only even started at that point. And so we were still learning how to do social, in my opinion.

And I think this is not necessarily the opinion shared by every marketer. Social is at this point. So ubiquitous that as long as you accomplish kind of a base level competence in it, I think you're kind of all set and people will always go to your Twitter and expect you to have tweets there for them to read, but honestly, the kind of margin of improvement that you can have on all those tweets over any other brand's tweets is it's fairly small, I think at this point, because social is so ubiquitous. And so for me, I think the real area of opportunity for many brands is, is more content marketing. And it's actually having more in depth content, whether that's written content in the form of like a blog or audio content in the form of a podcast or video content, obviously in the form of video, all of those things are kind of the next level that I think many brands can get to, to really take them from zero to one.

And so I work with a lot of companies and encourage many other prospective clients or folks that I just talked to really think about how they can begin telling some stories via content. Once I, once again, whether it's in writing or by audio, because I think that's really the thing that takes consumers now from just this base level appreciation of, okay, this brand has an Instagram page. Cool, got it. But, Oh, this brand has all this cool stuff that I like to read and watch and listen to. And this makes me feel much more close to the people that are running this company and makes me much more likely to buy or endorse or promote within my own network. And so I think content marketing is, is kind of the next thing to be unlocked by a lot of companies and organizations out there.

Passionistas: So what type of clients have you worked with, and what's been your biggest success story?

Katy: So far, I have worked with a wide range of clients at this point, and that's very intentional at this pretty early point in my career. I don't really want to be a really niche down specific strategist. I want to be more of a generalist. I want to be exposed to all sorts of different companies across all sorts of different industries. And so unlike many other freelancers or consultants, I try not to work too much within say e-commerce consumer package goods or within B2B software as a service or, or any of those niche disciplines. I try to work with a lot of clients and that has been my focus in the last year or so of running. This consultancy has been a diverse client set, which I do have, but I think one client that I've worked with a, for a long time and pretty extensively, and B has been really successful in that time that we've worked together is tiny hood, which is a company made by parents for parents, the founders of tiny hood or two moms themselves.

And they in their own parenting experience decided that there had to be some way to make parenting a bit easier and more information out there. So you didn't have to feel so lost and uncertain when it came time to breastfeed your baby or introduce solids to your baby for the first time, or make sure you were up to date on CPR, infant CPR. And so Becky and Suzanne, these two moms created a company called tiny hood that is trying to help parents feel more confident in their parenting. And in the previous history of the company that was really expressed as forming communities of parents and connecting parents to each other, which is obviously vitally helpful for a lot of moms and dads out there who don't necessarily know a lot of parents, or just need more input from a network that is a bit more expert than they are in parenting.

And so the company was pretty successful with those communities, but in the last year or so, what we've been working on more together is the launch of really a new class of product for tiny hood, which is online parenting classes. The challenge has been, how can we communicate this expert led content? So these classes are all taught by certified experts in their field. How can we use these experts to speak directly to new moms and dads about how to take care of their babies and children? And so in late 2019, and I believe December of last year, we really went ahead with like a launch of the online parents class product. But that product launch had been proceeded by a lot of user research that I had assisted with on talking to a lot of new moms, a lot of pregnant women and a lot of new moms about what they needed to know about parenting, what they weren't getting from the current parenting market and how a new company could really come into and significantly assist on their parenting journey.

And so what the result has been is a suite of online parenting classes that I think, and I think the company agrees are really well tailored to what we heard from parents throughout that user research process and have been really, really successful in the several months that they've been online thus far. And I've also been proud. This was not at all my decision in any way in March, but I've been proud of the decision that the company made to offer some of their breastfeeding classes for free in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Obviously a lot of pregnant women and new moms were planning to go to the hospitals to take certain classes specifically on breastfeeding. And now the hospital has canceled their classes. Even if the classes aren't canceled, a lot of pregnant women don't want to go to the hospital and risk infection in their sensitive state.

And so tiny had made the decision to offer a lot of these breastfeeding classes for free, and there's been really enormous demand that has been demonstrated. And so once again, we've gotten reassurance that these products really do meet the needs of a lot of moms. So that's a great client case study if you will, and has been a company that I've really, really enjoyed working with over the last six plus months,

Passionistas: What's your definition of success?

Katy: My definition of success is, is balance is just true balance both personally and professionally. And obviously I think that different people have a different balance that works for them. I am in no way saying that, you know, for every single person, it should be 50% and 50% professional in terms of the way you spend your time. But having a balance is the definition of success and is crucially important.

And I think there are a lot of folks, particularly in my generation who have not yet achieved that balance because we are not told that that is the most important thing. We are told that professional success that, you know, the amount of money you make, the prestigious of your job title, you know, working at a McKinsey, working at a Goldman Sachs is success. That's the best thing you can do for yourself. But really success is actually not feeling incredibly overwhelmed with work all the time. It's feeling like you do have very solid friendships and relationships with your family and romantic relationships. If you so choose, and that you have hobbies that you're genuinely interested in and dedicated to that you're able to travel and see the world and broaden your mindset. That balance that comes from not being such a devotee to the hustle-porn culture.

That balance is for me, at least the definition of success and was a big motivation towards me launching my consultancy because I could then better control that balance for myself.

Passionistas: What advice would you give to a young woman who wants to be an entrepreneur?

Katy: Fake it till you make it really, even when you do not think that you are prepared, you are probably prepared somehow, you know, and you're pro you're probably not considering doing something that you are wholly unprepared for because you probably wouldn't be considering it if you're wholly unprepared for it. Like, obviously if you studied, like I did say you studied sociology, you're more of a marketing and businessperson. Then you're probably wholly unprepared to take on like a medical tele-health startup that requires a lot of medicinal knowledge that you don't have, but you probably wouldn't be considering doing that if you were in this position.

So anything that you are reasonably considering doing, you're probably prepared to do because the idea came to your head as something that you could do. And so faking it till you make it and taking those ideas and running with them and seeking the opportunity always saying yes is really the best thing you can do. I think early in your career to learn as much as possible to get a wide and diverse range of experiences that you can then help to triangulate what exactly you really want to do when you grow up, which is probably not what you're doing in many cases when you're 23 and 24 and 25, but having a lot of diverse experiences and, and faking it until you make it specifically in terms of entrepreneurship helps you to be better prepared to make those crucial decisions when they come a bit later in your life and career, that help you actually find that core central place where you'll land

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Katy Dolan to learn more about her business, visit KatyDolan.com.

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