The Passionistas Project Podcast

Helen Torres: Preparing Latinas for Civic Participation

Helen Torres is the CEO of HOPE — Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, one of the nation's most influential Latino organizations. She has been instrumental in the development and implementation of the HOPE Leadership Institute (HLI), a program that prepares adult Latinas for the next level of civic participation. HLI has resulted in more than 180 Latinas being appointed to state and local commissions and over 200 Latinas serving on nonprofit boards to improve local communities. To date more than 565 Latinas have graduated from HLI.

Learn more about Helen and HOPE.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same.

We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And today we're talking with Helen Torres, the CEO of HOPE — Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, one of the nation's most influential Latino organizations. Helen has been instrumental in the development and implementation of the HOPE Leadership Institute, a program that prepares adult Latinas for the next level of civic participation. HLI has resulted in more than 180 Latinas being appointed to state and local commissions and over 200 Latinas serving on nonprofit boards to improve local communities. To date more than 565 Latinas have graduated from HLI.

So please welcome to the show, Helen Torres.

Helen: Thank you so much, Nancy and Amy. It's a pleasure to be part of this.

Passionistas: We're really happy to have you here. What are you most passionate about?

Helen: The first thing that comes to mind is my family. I'm most passionate about my family and making sure they're okay. Especially my twin boys, Adam and Joshua, who are teenage boys. And I want to make sure they grow up to be good kind people with a feminist streak and a Star Wars fans.

Right now are good in kind. They definitely understand that I'm a feminist and I can hear them speaking in those terms as well. And we are all Star Wars fans in our family. So I think I'm on the right route with them on that. Outside of my family, I am very passionate about our democracy. And very passionate of creating opportunities for everyone to be a part of this huge social contract and to really, truly define how we can all, you know, have the pursuit of happiness.

And so I do that through HOPE ensuring that Latinas are part of that equation. Ensuring that Latinas are part of government non-profits corporations, businesses, so that we're really creating a place where there's liberty, freedom and justice for all.

Passionistas: Love that and love that you're raising Star Wars fans. That's very, very, very important. Talk more about the work that you do at HOPE how do you do the things that you just described?

Helen: Everything that we do at HOPE has a civic engagement lens, as well as a financial literacy education lens. And so how we do it, we break it down into three key bucket areas, if you will. First is around leadership development. And we have leadership programs for high school students, college students, young professionals and Latinas who are already at the executive level. And all of those programs are to ensure like from a high school program is to ensure those young ladies are already finding and defining what type of leaders they want to be.

Engaging them in the political system. So understanding how they can be advocates around education in their school board. How they can engage their community and position themselves as community leaders. And then the ultimate goal is to ensure that they see a pathway into college. So we have 92% of the young women that go through our program end up being accepted into a college program as well, which is way above the national average.

So we found that civic engagement. Coupled with realistic learnings of a pathways. Works in college. What we do for our college age, Latinas is still, we give them a civic engagement project. If it's voter registration, if it's getting more people to sign up in their community around the census, and then we give them a format to run a town hall among their peers.

Yeah, Rhonda subject area that they decide to tackle. We give them a lot of professional development around workforce integration. How do you interview for your job during these COVID-19 distanced zone times? Right? How do you position it? You write that resume. How do you review? We do a lot about how they're reviewing their social media.

And positioning themselves. And then we connect them with various corporations, business opportunities. So that they can hear from peers in these organizations or role models. So they understand what they can expect when they're going into the workforce. So that's our college program. This college program enrolled over 3000 people in the census they added outreach for.

And so we're really proud of our college program. Then what we're known for is our HOPE Leadership Institute, which is, target audience is about a Latina that's about 35 years old. Ari has to prove quite a bit of years of community activism. And this Institute is designed to get the Latina to her next level of civic engagement.

About 10% of them will end up running for office. About half of them will serve on a local or statewide commission and close to 80% will be serving on nonprofits or running nonprofits. So it's really seen that civic engagement taken to another level. And that's a program that we're really proud of as well.

The HOPE Leadership Institute. The last program we launched three years ago is the binational fellowship where it's for Latinas across the United States and in Mexico who are already at the executive level and are looking to take their leadership at either a national level or international. So we have two sessions with policy experts on trade, workforce development, the future of the two countries and negotiations and political understanding of each other.

But also we have a lot of conversations about how to really truly bring best practices around policy to each other as well. That's our leadership development and that's really what we are known for.

We also have an advocacy agenda where we create reports. We do a lot of studying a lot of reports on the status of Latinas. How are Latinas fairing in the United States? And how are they fairing specifically here in California? And from those reports, we create an advocacy agenda. So for example, we did our economic status of Latinos report about two months ago and found that 60% of Latinos overall made up the COVID-19 cases here in California.

And our population's 40%. Over representation in an area that we don't want to see over representation in. Right. We also know that for the first three months of the shutdown that we had back in March through May 30% of Latinos lost their jobs. So what does that mean to us economically? We're able, when we do these types of reports, we're then able to go advocate in Sacramento, in Washington, DC, around policies of like, how do we help individuals that are losing their jobs during this time?

To reenter into the workforce. Is there training programs? Is there the stimulus package that did not reach Latina micro businesses or small businesses? Is there an opportunity for the third stimulus package to be much more concentrated on small businesses and micro businesses? So that's what our advocacy agenda looks like.

We do a lot around health care reform issues. Wanting to ensure when we first started healthcare reform conversations and part of the coalitions about 20 years ago, the uninsured rate of Latinas was at 30%. Now we're at 13%. So it's incredible to see that, you know, and a lot of that's because of the Affordable Care Act, but advocacy works.

You just have to be patient and know that it's going to happen eventually. And then the last thing we do is what we call this bigger education bucket. We do do a lot to educate the general market and ourselves about the impact Latinas are having on our government, on our corporations, on our businesses and our civic society overall.

Passionistas: So let's take a step back. Let's talk about growing up. What were your experiences that led you to be interested in this kind of work?

Helen: I blame my mom a hundred percent. And I mean that with all well, with a lot of endearment and love, my mother was a single mother in, in Puerto Rico, beautiful Island, a Commonwealth of the United States. She had to work really hard in the garment industry, in Puerto Rico. I was born with a heart defect and disease. And that she was advised to come to the United States to ensure I had the best care. Everyone knew that eventually I would have to have open-heart surgery by the age of 12. And some of the best doctors happened to be in Detroit, Michigan, where also I had an aunt and uncle were living.

So it made it easy, somewhat for her to migrate to the United States, but it was really difficult for her. And as her daughter, I witnessed the struggles she had with people accepting her accent. You know, as she was learning English, she was made fun of a lot. People ridiculing her, correcting her. And just little by little, you saw this very independent woman just being her spirit, been chip away at.

When we moved, when my mother remarried and our stepfather moved us out to the suburbs. She even had a harder time because in Detroit, we at least had community the, of fellow Puerto Rican's and Mexicanos that we could, you know, she would at least have friendships with, but it was when she went outside of that community, taking me to my hospital visits, doing banking transitions, trying to get a job is where things really kind of, it showed me the level of, I would quite frankly say discrimination that so many people face, right.

When we moved to the suburbs that even multiplied because we moved into a very blue collar, very lovely in so many ways, but blue collar, a hundred percent Caucasian. Give you an example. When I graduated from high school, our high school itself had 2000 people. I think we were four Latino families out of those 2000. It just gives you a sense of the isolation she was feeling.

I always hated there, there was this one moment in my history that crystallized, I think my pathway into advocacy and being very passionate about people being included and ensuring that we have an inclusive society. I was in third grade. It was the first year that I was going to a public school.

We always had a, I went to Catholic school up until that point. And my mother received a call from another mother that was organizing some kind of bake sale or something for the school. There was something lost in translation. My mother just understood that she was asked to bring a cake. So she baked this beautiful cake.

When she showed up with the cake, the mother that was organizing on this just really yelled at her saying, I meant cupcakes, not a cake. You have to learn how to speak English. And even at that age, being a third grader, I step in between them. And I yelled at the woman saying, how dare you? My mother knows two languages and these are beautiful cupcakes.

I think that's where the advocate in me started. It's crazy to think, even in third grade, you can see some injustice. So I always think of that incident. And I experienced similar changes in my mom. She went through her own stage of depression. It wasn't until I was in college, that I really started getting more involved in political and started really understanding the need to understand how the system works and the part that I can play in it.

But at the end of the day, I found HOPE the organization I run as a place to ensure what happened to my mother doesn't happen to other Latinas. Now, of course, we're not a hundred percent in making that happen, but I feel like I'm working towards that. And that's why I'm so passionate. My mom is still very politically active.

She's still my role model in so many ways. I often think, you know, she, wasn't given a form, an opportunity for a formal education. And I think somebody, women in our society have not been given that especially of different generations and just the waste of human capital, that if we don't invest in each other, what does that mean to our society?

Passionistas: So you were saying, obviously there's still a lot of work to be done, but, but how do you think those kinds of issues have changed since your mother's time and what still needs to be done?

Helen: Education is the incredible gateway and a lot has changed to ensure education, especially through a public education system and the United States that everyone has access to education. But we also know that that access doesn't look the same. In the quality doesn't look the same. It's really much based on your ZIP code is very much based on your income level. So I think there's a lot more to be done. So I think we've seen more accessibility. Now we really need to talk about the quality of the education.

We have to be very honest about what the workforce of the future is going to look like. Are we marrying education and opportunities and innovation with what the future is going to hold for us? So I think that's where a lot of work needs to be done, especially for Latinas. We are one of the few groups that are not going into STEM education, if you will, at the level that we should too, when we're looking at the future of the workforce. A lot of that is because of the access to certain science courses, advanced science courses are not being made available in low income communities. I always think that's one of the key factors that you can look at.

So we know through our reports at hope that we're seeing a great increase, almost 13% over the last 10 years of Latinas, not only graduated from high school, but going on right across California. So we see these great numbers moving in the right direction. Not only do we need to continue that and grow that movement forward, but we need to think about quality of education and how we're preparing young Latinas as well as Latinas of all ages for this new workforce. So I think that's really important and I'm very much proud to be part of that work.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington, and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Helen Torres. To learn more about Hispanics Organized for Political Equality, visit Latinas.org.

If you're enjoying this interview and would like to help us continue to create inspiring content, please consider becoming a patron by visiting ThePassionistasProject.com/podcast and clicking on the patron button. Even $1 a month can help us continue our mission of inspiring women to follow their passions. Now here's more of our interview with Helen.

Tell us about your education and what path you took to get to where you are now.

Helen: I was one of those individuals that was told from a very early age and probably cause my mother's experience and not being able to access formal education. She didn't know the pathway. Right. But she just always would tell my sister and I. You have to go to college. You just have to go to college. I don't know how you get to college. I don't know how we're going to pay for college. I don't know how to answer any of those questions. So we fumbled a lot and we figured it out.

I went to Michigan State University, which is one of the great public universities in Michigan. My first year was really hard. It wasn't like anyone in my immediate family could tell me, this is what you can expect in college. This is how you should study how to work 30 hours a week while going to school to help pay and make sure I wasn't going into debt.

That was really important for my mom. Not to have a huge student loan at the end, always reconciling these two things, this mandate to go to college, but also this mandate that you have to work. You have to not get into debt. We didn't know. We didn't know that it was okay to have a little bit of debt because you'd make it up sooner in, you know, in better wages and salaries.

So that was interesting. Michigan State University. Found a passion around communications, but not PR or advertising. It was actually the study of communication. So one of the things I did and I had a great experience with a professor was we studied a deception model. How can you detect the differentiation around men and women and how they, what they consider as deception. So that was a fantastic study. I went on for my master's degree in communications and urban studies, which is more like a sociology really was, became very interested in how. Communities are shaped in urban areas and how people interact in urban areas around civic engagement.

And I took a little bit of a breather. I thought I was going to go on for my PhD program in Santa Barbara, actually. But then I had to have this real honest conversation with myself. I didn't like writing. I still don't like writing. When you go out for your PhD, you've really got to love writing. I love the research part.

I love the human interaction and understanding how humans thought about communication and. The implications of the study of how that can enhance communications either interpersonally or culturally, but I just didn't like writing and it made me really miserable. So in a whim, I came out to California. I had one friend that lived out here and after my master's program, I met her boss.

He was in public relations. He saw that I had a communications degree and just assumed that I knew what public relations was. And so I'm like, sure. Why not? Um, and that's how I ended up in California, but all my degrees are from Michigan State university.

Passionistas: And how did you get involved with HOPE?

Helen: I went through five years of being very miserable in public relations. I was really great at the pitch and getting media coverage. But once again, that writing thing came back to haunt me just was not happy, ready, and all these press releases and whatnot and white papers. So I did it and I did it fine, but it was just not where I was. I didn't find my passion there. And then I just said, you know, I'm not using my master's degree, the way that I envisioned that I would about really building community and understanding the psychology and sociology behind community building.

So I just applied it, you know, from a, an, an ad to United Way of Greater Los Angeles. They needed fundraisers. I thought that would get me my foot in the door because I felt PR is very much about sales as well. Just made that transition. They hired me. It worked out, I loved the opportunity, not only to fundraise for great causes like you doing United Way, but there was a lot around the community development piece that I was also exposed to that I just loved.

And I was very fortunate that one of the board members of United way was the founder of hope. Maria Contreras-Sweet an incredible leader and trailblazer in the Latino community. Maria know, founding the organization always recruited people to volunteer. So I started volunteering at HOPE and HOPE at that time was about 98% volunteer run.

That 2% was consultants and administrator that would just help the train keep on moving if you will. And I always said, gosh, you know, if we can ever get a grant that can hire an executive director, that's my job. So what happened? After volunteering for almost two and a half years, this opportunity came up.

I was all of 31 years old. That was 20 years ago. I just followed my passion. I had this vision of where I could see the potential and the growth of the organization. And here I am 20 years with really a pride moment of not only the growth, but the impact that the organization's making in California and nationally now.

Passionistas: Tell us about that growth. What was the organization like when you started with it? And we know how far it's come but tell us about that process.

Helen: Part of it is, I always say, you said you're, you're, you're handed this beautiful gift of that is made up of a vision and a pretty good brand at, by that time. Right? Cause HOPE was already 10 years old by the time I was hired, but no infrastructure. No real long-term funds. Uh, so I had to come in and kind of be this operational person of not only raising money, not only keeping the vision and the excitement that was around hope already, but really developing programs that foundations and corporations and individuals would invest in.

So it was putting, you know, five years of my life, I would say that I started at 31. I remember my 35th birthday. I said, Oh my gosh, all I have done is hope. All my friends are part of HOPE my mom tesingly would always say, you know, who is this Hope person that keeps you from visiting us and stuff? Cause they were still in Michigan.

Uh, but she, you know, she said that jokingly of course she knew it was my job, but she didn't understand what I was doing. Right. I think sometimes it's a little bit hard to explain to your parents when you get involved in civics and politics. Exactly what you do. It consumed me because I had to put in the infrastructure of one day hoping to hire staff. Right? So putting in that infrastructure with you, following all the rules and regulations fundraising for the first two years was my mandate so I can build up the team.

So we went from an organization that was driven by event to event. You know, you just fundraise whatever you need to get that event going to the next to an organization that now has four established programs, has an advocacy agenda, 10 staff members, one located in Sacramento as a policy director and has a national profile where we're able to provide not only the governor.

But, you know, the new incoming administration names of women, they should be considering in appointments. It was about professionalizing it, the first five years were, you know, very difficult because it was building it up, building up your board, building up your stakeholders. And then we went into a recession.

Thank goodness. We built it up. And we had this great brand and credible programs for five years that people can see that track record. So we survived the recession, but we didn't do any growth really, you know, and sometimes just surviving is pretty incredible. Right. Then we were back into a growth pattern where we were becoming even more statewide because we were very much a regional organization to begin with in LA, but now we're going through COVID-19 in, which is very interesting because it's provided us an opportunity through our virtual programming.

We pivot within a month. Everything went virtual for us, which allowed us to get to a bigger audience. And so, as we're looking almost like at a hybrid model next year, we're really thinking about how do we market even to, for all our programs, not just one to a much larger audience. So that's part of the growth and the trajectory of HOPE

Passionistas: You mentioned all of the different programs that you do. Are there one or two specific success stories of girls or women that really stand out to you as ones you're proud of?

Helen: One from the HOPE youth leadership program, the first class, which was 15 years ago, now two of the participants, one of them is now a chief of staff for an assembly member in CA in Sacramento.

So it was just great to see that the other one is. A co-leader of an advocate national advocacy group that has done incredible grassroots work to ensure larger Latino and Latina civic engagement and voter registration specifically is in at great success in this past election. So those two come to my mind from the youth leadership. We've had a couple of the youth leadership women after their graduation, from college that they went on and ran for their school boards.

So we have to have those success stories when it comes to our Hope Leadership Institute, uh, success stories. We've had quite a few, we have elected officials that are now serving in.

Or have served in the state Senate. We have a couple that are now serving the assembly. The most recent is we had a high-level appointment in governor Newsome's cabinet that came from HLI. So that was an incredible success story as well. But we have so many grassroots success stories from the hope leadership Institute.

And even success stories of how these women come together and support each other. We are a nonpartisan nonprofit, so we don't get into a electionary. We can't support a candidate individually. This network can do that. And they individually really came together to support the first Latina supervisor in San Diego County.

Those are some of the success stories of HLI. They often the women often help each other. So they're from Silicon Valley view of our alumni a few years ago. Donated X amount of, uh, computers to alumni that was working at LA USD. And so there was this great computer exchange that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Right. So those are some, a great success stories.

The binational is a little bit early still to see how that evolves. We are starting to really measure the impact where you are going to be entering with a contract with Dr. Manuel Pastore to do this great study of the impact mentors of HLI or our leadership Institute, women, but of Latinas that they're, that we're having in local communities, either through civic engagement. Or because of our economic contributions, they're starting businesses being part of the workforce, going to be a one-year study. So it's going to be pretty intense.

Passionistas: And you yourself are a success story from the HOPE leadership Institute you were graduate yourself. So what did you learn personally from that experience that you've taken away?

Helen: I thought I was pretty already savvy about understanding how government works. Right. We all probably took those civic classes that aren't as offered as much as we need them to be offered now. But, you know, through civics, through being engaged in college and working on some campaigns when I was in college, too volunteering, when I was a professional.

But when I started going through the leadership Institute, it was really that insider baseball about how the sausage is made both from a policy perspective, but how candidates are brought along and that road, that was incredibly insightful. So that's one of the things that we constantly do is we create this environment of people feeling safe.

So they can share stories because see, you can learn from a textbook about how a bill gets passed, but you need to understand the census building that you have to do, how you bring together, what does negotiations look like? How do you even plant that seed with that legislature? What's the timing of it?

We do so much around budgeting people sometimes don't realize that your state budget is really your blueprint of how advocacy and how programs are going to be funded. Right. So part of it makes a lot of sense. But if you're a strong advocate in your community, you need to understand what the budget looks like. And you need to understand how you can influence where the dollars are going. So that's what I got out of the HOPE leadership Institute was that more minutia, that detail of how government works and the role that advocacy can play in it to be effective.

And then the second thing, and this is. I say the second thing for me, but from all our evaluations from the alumni, they say the number one thing is the network itself. Is meeting other Latinas who have probably very similar, humble, beginning stories. We don't all think alike. We don't all approach students the same way, and we're not all friends. But through the Institute, you learn from each other and you really do create a bond in which there's this unspoken promise to be of support.

Passionistas: And as non-Latinas, how can we be supportive of your community?

Helen: Come and be part of the training. Come and understanding, you know, read our reports. I think part of it is we're always looking to have this exchange of how do we understand each other better? How do we walk in each other's shoes? And there's a lot of opportunities. Most of our trainers, half of them are Latinos and half are not.

And we do a lot around putting the women in situations. Where they're not always surrounded with people that are thinking the same way or come from the same background. That's what's true. Leadership is, is when you're able to bring everyone together. So I think that's one of the key ways. And then we create so many reports that hope that really is for people to understand our community, reading those reports, getting those reports out, understanding that Latino lens, if you will.

And that data. I think it's just beneficial, especially in a state like California, where there is no clear majority, even though Latinos are now at 40%, but there is no clear majority. And we also know that future generations and you can see this already with gen Z. There's going to be a lot of mixture happening, right.

And that's a beautiful thing and that needs to be celebrated. And I think also it's the celebration of understanding each other's cultures and having those exchanged and you know, why do you see the world the way that you do? And that comes from a place of judgment, but really come from a place of understanding.

Passionistas: What's the most rewarding part of what you do.

Helen: Seeing the success and the impact our graduates are doing, or when we've been advocating for a specific policy issues, seen it implemented next to being with my boys and my husband. That is like the biggest thing that gives me a smile on my face, the success of our graduates across the state and the nation, literally all pun intended, that's what gives me hope.

I get to see it every day, but not everybody else does. It just makes you think, okay. For all the craziness that we sometimes think about what's going on in our nation or in our state, there's a lot of good things going on too. And I get to witness those daily. I get to hear those stories.

Passionistas: And what does your mother think about what you're doing and the success that you've had?

Helen: When we hope publications and stuff, she looks through things and says, well, where's your picture? Where are you? I go, mom, that's not, it's not about me. It's about the women that we're putting forward. I think at the end of the day, she's just proud that I followed my dreams and that I've been able to create a life that it brings happiness to me. And so that, that brings a lot of joy to her.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Helen Torres. To learn more about Hispanics organized for political Equality, visit latinas.org.

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Until next time stay well and stay passionate.

Cara Reedy: Helping People with Disabilities Control Their Own Narratives

Cara Reedy is the Program Manager for Disability and Media Alliance Project, aka D-MAP. She's a journalist, an actor, a director and a photographer. She worked at CNN for ten years, produced documentaries, wrote about food and reported on disability. And in 2019, she co-produced a short documentary for The Guardian called "Dwarfism and Me." Her goal within her work in the media is to have disabled people control their own narratives.

Learn more about Cara and D-Map.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to The Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Cara Reedy, the program manager for Disability and Media Alliance Project also known as D-MAP. She's a journalist, an actor, a director and a photographer. Cara worked at CNN for 10 years, produced documentaries, did some food writing and reported on disability. And in 2019, she co-produced a short documentary for the guardian called “Dwarfism and Me.” Her goal within her work in the media is to have disabled people control their own narratives. So please welcome to the show, Cara Reedy.

Cara Reedy: Hi, thanks for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

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

Cara: Justice and equity because for so much of my life, I haven't really received a lot of that. So it's made me kind of fighting mad about it. Everything I do, I believe should further the cause for other people like me, because at some point we have to stop treating people, poorly black people, disabled people, like all of the cross sections that I inhabit. But more than that, once you start fighting in this space, it becomes more clear how much the system kind of keeps us down and it keeps everyone down. And I think that's what people don't really realize is that you may think that, okay, well, it's just the disabled people that are not doing well. It's like, no, when disabled people aren't doing well, we're all actually not doing well because the system is broken. That means that system's broken.

Passionistas: Take us back to your childhood. And you know, you said that you feel like you've often been treated unfairly. So tell us about that.

Cara: Growing up, I had a really good childhood. I would say I have great parents and a great brother. So I didn't experience any of that at home. But when I went outside of my home space, there was a lot of, no, you can't do that. Whatever I wanted to do, there were a lot of barriers put up that had nothing to do with me that had to do with other people's perceptions. I was a dancer. I still call myself a dancer because I started off when I was six and I had a wonderful dance teacher who was like, you can't do ballet just because of the way your legs are, but you can do all of these other things, things growing up from elementary school, I had this really great kind of support system between my parents, the dance teacher, Mrs. Wren, I'm going to shout out her name. She's gone now, but she's amazing when I hit high school, that's when I felt it. I was an actor too. Like I love performing. I perform all the time. Even when I'm in the grocery store, like, this is just who I am. I like to tell stories and stuff. But when I got to high school, there was a definite like, Oh no, I don't. So you don't think you really fit in the place. And if you do, maybe you can go into the chorus, but kind of somewhere where we can't see you, I ended up my senior year trying to trick the system. And I figured out that if I tried out for a kid's part, they would have to give it to me. So I played a kid my senior year, which was super embarrassing, but I did it cause I was like, well, I want to perform.

And I want to be in the senior play. So I'll play a kid. So I think I played Agnes in, meet me in St. Louis. Well, all of these, like sophomores were playing my big sister and there were times when there were dance choruses and I would try out theirs. We did anything goes, which is a tap show. And like tap dancing is my that's my jam. And so I go up to audition and the choreographer said, do the time, step on my Cher did it because I've been doing timestamps since I was six. And then she said, do the double-time step. Oh, okay. Did that do the triple did it? And then she kind of looked at me because that's something you get when you're different. You figure out people are testing you and trying to figure out how they can eliminate you quickly. So she said, okay. And then I looked at her and I said, you want me to do a quadruple? Like, how far do you want me to go? I know all of 'em and she went, no, that's fine. When the call sheet was put up, I was in like chorus B, no dancing at all. There were girls in the dance chorus who had never put on a tap shoe in their life. It was like, well, you know, she has a creative vision. C’mon it's high school. What creative vision does this lady have? She's not going to Broadway. This is it for her. So like, what, what is this? And my dad just lost it, which he does sometimes. And he wrote her a note and just said, yeah, you're super prejudice. I'm calling you out. He go, he handed me the letter, ISA, don't read it. Don't say anything to anybody. And just put it on her desk and walk away. I said, all right. So I did that morning, went to class and it was in the middle of the Spanish class. And there's a knock on the door. Also in the letter, he said to her, do not speak to care about this. And she went and knocked on the door, pulled me out of Spanish class to yell and cry at me about how unfair I was being. And what did I tell my father and how dare you?
 
Me prejudice. And she was balling like just flipping out balling. And I was just standing there, not in class while managing this grown woman's emotions. That to me was one of the pivotal moments in my childhood. I realized I don't really have protection because no one would do that. No one would do that to any other kid. They would never pull a kid out of a class. She ended up calling Mike because my dad left his phone number in the note and said, call me. And she ended up calling. And I was in the house when she called and she was crying and screaming on the phone. She said, you called me racist. And he said, Oh no, I called your prejudice for height. And he said, but now you make me think you're racist too. And then she flipped out. And then I ended up getting in the court in the dance course because she had no case. What could she say? There are girls that don't even own tap shoes in the chorus. I went from there to college where I was like, college is going to be my space. And it wasn't at all. I got into theater program at Loyola. We did a freshman showcase and everyone, I think we did a scene from Antigony Tiffany and I played and Tiffany sister, everyone, after the freshman showcase, all of the teachers came up to me and say, you are talented, really talented. And I thought, Oh my God. I mean, a year I did it. I got it. All right.
 
And then the head of the department pulled me aside and he said, I want to talk to you privately. So make a meeting with me. And I'm 18. I don't know any, like I literally had just turned 18. I didn't know any better. So I was like, okay. And so I saw, I, I schedule an appointment with him and I go in and he says, I really want to work with you, but there's so many challenges with this, but we'll figure it out. 40 five-year-old Cara would understand what that meant. ATM care of thought, Oh, he's going to work with me. And then year after year, there was nothing. His wife also taught there. She was my advisor. And I went to her and I said, I don't know what I'm doing. Like I'm an actor. And I mostly just work on the crew. I don't know how to move past this.
 
She said, well, I think what you need to do is go write your own stuff. You're telling a 19 year old, who's paying thousands and thousands of dollars for you to train her that she needs to do it on our own. So I left for a year because I had a meltdown and my mom said, you can do one or two things. You can transfer schools or you can go abroad a year, pick your poison. And I chose to go abroad. And I studied at the Lee Strasberg acting school in London. And it was fantastic. It was the best thing that's ever happened to me. My teacher was Mariana Hill, who was in the godfather movies. She was Freightos wife. And she was also in a bunch of Elvis movies, wacky lady, she's still alive. She's super awesome. And she was, it was the first time I was in an acting class where the teacher, first of all, trained me second, whole leaned down and said, you're very talented.
 
And I want you to keep going. And I almost lost it in there. Cause it was the first time anyone had said it to me. I come back from London and I go to reregister at Loyola that summer. And I was staying with friends and we all went out drinking. And the head of the department ended up out drinking with us, which is a different inappropriate, like why was he out with us? But there you go. I turned to him and I said, listen, this is my senior year. And I just came back more than I was at Lee Strausberg school. I did really well there. I learned a lot. What do I need to do to get into a show? And he said, Hmm, well, if you really enjoyed it so much over there, you should go back. And Oh, I melted down. I melted down in a way immediately.
 
I had a meltdown, but then I also had like a mid-life crisis at 21 where I didn't know what I was going to do. I took some paths that weren't the best. After that I graduated, my mom said I was a double major anyway. And she said, drop theater. Just forget it. She didn't mean like, forget it as in your life, but forget it at Loyola. And so I dropped it, graduated with a degree in political science, like got out in that year, pushed through, but I also started drinking heavily. And I'll be honest about that. Yeah. I started drinking. Cause that was all I knew. And I didn't know where I was going to go.

Passionistas: Was it an option for you to return to London at that point?

Cara: My mom just was like, we can't, they couldn't afford to sit because it was so expensive and that's why they calculated that they could pay for a year there. Or if I transferred, I would probably have to do extra time in college. And so that was the calculation. I tried to go back because I also was in college over there. Not only acting school and the Dean of the college professor Hilditch I love this man, Scottish man. He tried his best and offered me scholarships. That's why I loved London so much because I sort of found my place in my people. And I had a Dean who loved me and was trying to figure out a way for me to stay financially. It just didn't work out. That was a big heartbreak and I've never really returned fully to acting since then I've been in and out of it.
 
And I think that happens to a lot of people when you experience trauma like that, you dip in and then someone says something the wrong way. And you're like, Oh, Hey, well, all right, that's enough. Latner okay. And I've done that. I did the improv scene and experienced some things there. Abel ism, sexism, like all of the things that people are reporting. Now I saw I never got raped or anything. There were a lot of people that did. And I had some friends that almost got raped in the improv scene, nothing like that happened to me, but there was definitely an aura, a massage journey that was really prevalent. And I don't think they've mastered that and gotten rid of it yet. So I dipped out of that because people are like, how come you didn't make a team? I was like, cause I didn't even graduate from improv school.
 
I dropped out. I've been in and out of sort of performance and that kind of space for years. I finally decided in 2017, after I quit CNN that if I was going to be in performance or I was going to do any performance, then I had to control it. So I have, from this point on is controlled everything done. I taught myself how to direct. I know how to produce because I worked at CNN for 10 years. So I learned those skills. They're not by their choice by mine because they didn't want me to. But I was like, well, I'm here. I'm going to do it. Everything I've ever done, I've manipulated systems to get there because if I don't, I'm not going to go. I'm not going to ever walk in somewhere. And they're going to be like, here are the one because that's not what people see when they see me.
 
That's not the image of a little person. An image of a little person is a clown. Someone that's not very serious or someone that's super sad and kind of an isolated figure. I always get comments on the street. Sometimes people will come up and they want to like, talk to me like I'm a pet. I smart off because that's who I am and I'll get responses like, well, you're not very nice. I don't know why you expected me to be. You walked up to a random stranger on the street and decided that they would be nice because of their body. I'm not nice at all. I mean, I am nice, but not, not to randos on the street, talking to me like, that's not going to happen. You chose this. This is not my choice for you. It was not great for me, CNN. There was great.
 
And it also was not great. I learned a lot. I know a lot of things about production, about how networks work, how decisions are made, but that's by accident. That's because I was in rooms where people didn't know I existed. Like they knew existed, like, you know, doorknobs exist, but they don't think of you as a thinking human being that can take this information in and use it. The 10 years at Santan was awful.

Passionistas: How did you last so long there? That seems like a long time to put up with that.

Cara: I mean, I tried to get out multiple times. I applied for other jobs, but early in my career I was working for a particular anchor. I won't name that person. I went to this person and said, I'd like to produce, I was their assistant. They said, okay. You know? Yeah. I think you should be pretty good at that.
 
Every time I would get like a little project to do, they would spend that time kind of sabotaging my time, but I would still get it done and get it done really well. But because I was running this person's life, they weren't into me doing other things, even though I was running their life and doing it because I understood that that was the deal. Like I couldn't shark my duties on the other side, but it just was not that person was like no way, no way. And so that was a pretty brutal that person actually started sabotaging my work in really, really gross ways. And I've kind of never talked publicly about this people know, but I've never spoken publicly about it. And there's, I can't get into too much detail about it, but I will tell you the, I got fired from that job because they couldn't really pin anything on me because there was nothing to pin.
 
It was all this weird, like, Whoa, you're not managing her expectations and blah, blah, blah. And like all these weird words and the, uh, final straw I was, I was leaving and I was going, but I was staying at CNN, but going to a different job. And the executive producer who had been my champion up until that point, you know, it was my last day with this person. And they said, I want to speak with you before the day ends because it was also the holiday. So it was like, everybody's last day before the break. And I said, okay. And my friend who sat with me, it was an assistant to, she looked at me and said, you cannot cry in that meeting. Do not show any emotion. And I was like, okay. And she was right, like, totally right. But I needed her to sort of prep me.
 
And so I got into the meeting and it was just a character assassination. He said, we thought you would be good at production. You're not, you're not ever going to go anywhere in it. We really had high hopes for you, but it's not, you should not pursue you. You can't pursue it that he said, but you're going to be an assistant again. And I think this'll be a good move for you. I said, okay, okay. Okay, walked out. He walked out smart. He walked out smiling. Like he had done something great and left. And then I am just crying. That was another pretty dark period after that conversation, because I was stuck with basically what they had done was all of the credits that I'd worked up towards those past two years, they erased. They just completely erased it. So I wasn't assistant again. And every time I try, I would try to tell someone that I had done all this other stuff.
 
They would sort of look at me like, you're crazy. That didn't happen. And no one would vouch for me. So I was done. That was also why I couldn't get out of CNN because I kept getting kind of punched. I didn't have any credits, so I couldn't leave. So kind of got stuck. No believe me and I had no references. So I went off to be an assistant again. And I was an assistant until I left. I ended up in a safer space. I won't call it safe, but a safer space. When I went to the digital side, I had a boss that kind of just was like, listen, you can do whatever you want to do and just get your job done. So I started writing there. I actually started writing because I knew that no one could take it away from me. And once you get a byline, it's yours.
 
And it's PR the internet is written in ink. I went to cat kinsmen who is now at food and wine. And then she was starting the ITAR Crecy blog. And I just went to, I was like, can I write for you? I've never written about food, but I'll figure it out. She said, yeah. And so she gave me a break. She gave me the two biggest breaks at CNN. There was that one. And then she was doing a series where people could kind of like talk about their biggest, I don't want to say fear, but it's kind of talk about their feelings around something that makes them different. And so she had me write about being a little person and what that's like, and that was in 2014 and it went viral, translated into other languages when all over the place. So without Kat, I wouldn't be here.
 
She really saw me and kind of helped me and propelled me and did great things. She was one of the only people like in my career that just didn't have any idea whether I could do it, but said, let's try. It just worked. That's a long road. That's why I think I'm so passionate about it. Never happening to anyone else because it's still brutal and expensive quite frankly, to deal with this stuff. I haven't had a full-time job since Santa Ana. I mean, not until I went to D map and that's because I couldn't, I was so messed up in the head because when people spend years telling you that, you know, and absolutely not. Why would you even think that I'm giving like the big picture of what happened at CNN? There was so many microaggressions that happened there where people would come up to me and you know, when I would write a piece, they would go with me and be like, Oh, you could write.
 
And what do you mean who I could write? Well, I did this. Let's be some kind of like magical thing that you just come out. Right? And I'm like, no, I went to college. I worked for somebody at some company and it was like, Oh, where all fine black writers. Um, and at the time Ebony was still around. Essence was still around. I'm like, go poach, gal patch, all those people there really talented. You got BT down the street. I mean, that's why those places exist. Disabled people. Don't sort of have those spaces yet. So were locked out in, we're locked out everywhere. I had a meeting with somebody recently and they said, Oh, we're working on a project and you were referred. Have you ever covered the subject? And I said, no. And they were like, Oh, like kind of like, why did you, why am I being referred to you?
 
And I said, I haven't covered it because I haven't been allowed to cover it. No, one's been allowed to cover it. Like no disabled people have been allowed to cover it. I said, are there people that could cover it yet? Let me name some people that could cover it. And they're like, Oh, and like, I'm not blaming that person. Cause they were, they were just literally trying to find people like that's, that's not what I'm saying here. It's it's that there's because we aren't seen no one knows where to start. And there's people that are out there, like guy I was talking to the other day, he's actually actively like, okay, how do we do this? Like, let's do this. So there are, I feel like there are people, all of a sudden waking up to the fact that there are disabled people in the world that need to have their issues covered and they need to be in film. They need to be in all of these places. So it's starting at D map. I'm trying to push it forward faster, a little faster. Cause I'm impatient. And I'm like, let's move on. C’mon guys.

Passionistas: Tell us more about what D-MAP does. And how did you get involved?

Cara: Actually Lawrence Carter long. Who's the director of D map and of communications for draft, which is our parent non-profits disability rights, education and defense fund. Right after I did, uh, the doc dwarfism and me, one of my friends from CNN, one of my good friends who actually saw all of the things that happened to me. He was at NBC at the time and he emailed me and he goes, why is it this vine about dwarfism? And you gave this to somebody else. I'm like, Whoa, first of all, it wasn't my initial idea. And he's like, fool, we should talk about doing something together. So we ended up talking about it. And then as the news business does about a week after I sent him the proposal, he got laid off, he said, he said, I'm out, but let me transfer. You won't be the big doc we were thinking of, but let me transfer you to this smaller department.
 
And maybe we can get something cooking there for you. I pitched this very small thing. It's about inspiration porn because it's something I want to kill. It's my goal to murder all of it before all of this was over inspiration. Porn will be dead. I've decided we were going to do this little thing. And I wanted, I really wanted to find someone that has either written about inspiration porn or has been the subject of it. Moritz was a March of dimes poster child. So in my research I found Lawrence and I was like, he was a poster child. So I called him and he, we ended up talking and he came in, did the interview. Then about a month later he messaged me and he said, can we, can we set up a zoom chat? Yeah, sure. He said, I want some, I want to talk to you about something.
 
And he said, I really think that you should come work, get this D map started. And D maps been going on since 2008, but there's sort of like this resurgence now that they're trying to build it up. And Judith human who was in Crip camp and is the leader of the disability rights movement. She's w is, uh, she wrote a paper for Ford that actually started this new iteration of D map. Lawrence called me in. And I interviewed with him basically. Then I interviewed with Judy and then I interviewed with Susan who's the executive director, Susan. Then they brought me on and that's how it started. But what we've decided is we're going to do is sort of be where the infrastructure, the support system for disabled creatives, journalists, all the things that I never had, I am building up for everyone. That's my goal.
 
So we're starting the disabled journalist association. We're starting really focusing on journalism. So we're doing some programming where we take issues that the news media hasn't quite covered as a disability issue. And we're going to really deep dive into it, but all of the programs are going to be run by disabled journalists. And then we're going to invite the other news media just yet so that they can see what they've been missing. Not only in content, but also people so that they can see. Well, I can't find a disabled journalist. Yes you can. It's right here. It's right here. It's all right here. Come up, take your pick. That's our goal, disabled creators in particular, don't get the support that other creators get. I did a lot of interviews over the summer. Not only with journalists, but actors and comedians. Like what is it that you need? And a lot of it is basic stuff. Like I need captioning or I can't find a job. I don't know. I don't have the network to find a job. So we're trying to build all those networks. So those connections so that people can come and find us. And if we don't have it right, then, then we'll go between Lawrence, me, Judy, Susan, like we'll, we'll figure it out for them. Which is because when you're a disabled creator, you're really by yourself most of the time, because nobody wants you to do it anyway. Like just give that up.
 
So we're actually working with Selena Buddha who was a previous passionista and we've had a lot of deep conversations over the last month. And a lot of it was, well, people told me not to talk about my disability because no one will like that. I used to hear that journalism too, where I would pitch stories about disabled people and it was always, Oh, nobody wants to know, Oh God, that's too much. No one will click on that. That's depressing. It's like, but 26% of the population is disabled. Just for business purposes, you are leaving 26% of the population's money on the table and walking away from it because you're afraid. And how many people are actually disabled in this room. But won't say it because you say things like this, like how do you get there when no one wants to talk about it?

Passionistas: As people who don't have disabilities, what can we be doing to be better advocates and allies?

Cara: I think the biggest thing is listening. Cause there's so much, especially in the disability space, there's so much talking, being done by non-disabled people for us in particular because our agency has been taken away and it, you know, people are like, well, we have to give disabled people agency. It's like, no, they already have it. Like you just have to stop talking. I think that's the biggest thing, because some people will be like, I don't know what to do about the disabled people. Well, be quiet, like, and listen, because there's all these movements and things happening within the disability community. But no one knows about because no one's listening or they'll go to some organization that is not run by disabled people. Those people will like have ideas about what disabled people want and it maybe isn't maybe you going to them. It's probably not the best thing. And not to say that there's not advocates that are non-disabled, there's a lot of parents that are really good at it. But for this for a while, can we just listen to disabled people like truly listen to them.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Cara Reedy. To learn more about Cara, follow her on Instagram @infamouslyshort. To learn more about the Disability Media Alliance Project, go to d hyphen map dot org. Now here's more of our interview with Cara. Please visit thepassionistasproject.com to learn more about our podcast and our subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your passions. Sign up for our mailing list, to get 10% off your first purchase. And be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guest. Until next time stay well and stay passionate.

Kimberly Stewart Helps Creative Women Design the Life They Want

Kimberly Stewart is the founder of Be Weird Make Money. She helps people design a life and make a living in a world where they feel like they don't belong. She works with creative people to identify different ways to combine their passions and talents to build completely unique individualized profitable businesses.

Learn more about Kimberly.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And today we're talking with Kimberly Stewart, the founder of Be Weird Make Money. She helps people design a life and make a living in a world where they feel like they don't belong. She helps creative people identify different ways to combine their passions and talents to build completely unique individualized profitable businesses. So please welcome to the show. Kimberly Stewart.

Kimberly: Thanks guys, for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

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

Kimberly: Doing your own thing and you know, me doing my own thing and helping others to do the same. It's the one thing I can remember throughout my entire life being a driving force is, you know, being able to be myself, be original. My rallying cry, you know, like my Superman moment is when I hear people being marginalized or, Oh, you can't do that or, Oh, just be quiet or, you know, and I just really want to help people be more themselves in the world. Cause I think that's what the world needs.

Passionistas: So what is the name of your company and how do you help people do that with your topic?

Kimberly: So being weird, make money, uh, came about from when I was applying to speak at a convention. And they said, if you, you know, what would the title of your talk be? Because at the time I was more, uh, my company was catalyst Kim productions and, you know, catalyst being, you know, the chemical production that gets things moving.

And I thought, you know, I've been to a lot of really fun, funky conventions. And if I was looking through the program to see which talks I wanted to go to, I said, be weird, make money. I would go to that. It was short sweet. And to the point I've been helping people in some form or fashion for the last 17 years, create their own livelihoods. My mentor, my one mentor, Valerie Young created changing course and the profit from your passions consulting. And so I was trained in that. And the guiding question with that is what do you want your life to look like? You know, I had been trying to help people in what felt like a very normal standard mainstream way. And I wanted to break out of that because I didn't quite understand the folks from like the cubicle farm people were, you know, having regular jobs and stuff like that, which are very fine, you know, just regular things.

And you know, here I am, I'm very creative. I'm a theater person, Renaissance festivals, sci-fi conventions, I wrote a book about how to have Halloween based businesses. And so I was like, there's a whole world of people who are ignored by traditional career counselor. So like all those people who want better jobs or better careers, there's plenty of people to help them. But the people who are like soft and nerfy and weird, you know, who want to do like really odd ball things, it's, there's no one really to help guide them. And so it was like, I will be the pied Piper of weird little businesses. So, you know, and how I help them is I kind of identify what they love and what they want their lives to look like, which again is not a traditional career question. Usually people, when they say, when they're talking about work or jobs, they know your life is going to look like most likely it's going to be nine to five or eight to late, you know, 50 weeks a year. And I don't want assume that ever once I get an idea of what people want their lives to look like and what they love and, you know, then we can start generating some ideas. And so that's kind of the basis of where I start.

Passionistas:  Let's go back a little bit. Tell us about where you went to college and when you were there, you were a success team leader. So tell us what that is and how that helped you in your path.

Kimberly: I went to college at Naropa University, uh, here in Boulder, Colorado, and that's a Buddhist based liberal arts college. And I was studying psychology and visual art. I had originally gone there wanting to be an art therapist and kind of halfway through my studies there, I, I became aware of Barbara Cher and her work, creating success teams. And I remember I had listened to one of her audio books on a road trip. And I, she mentioned success teams, which is a group of about six people who get together for, you know, and help each other identify and go after goals. And I thought, wow, you know, I could use one of those. And I know a whole bunch of people who could use one of those. I wonder if there's one in Boulder. And at that time she had just started registering people as success, team leaders.

She couldn't do this all herself, so she needed to be able to train people to do this. And so I wrote to her and she goes, I think you'd be a great fit for, for being a leader. And I said, okay, if you say so, and I signed up and got trained, she came out to Boulder later that year with Valerie young and Barbara winter. And they ran this really cool four day event. And before it, you know, Barbara called me and said, Hey, do you want to come attend as my guest? And I was like, sure. And so I got to meet all kinds of really neat people and kind of get started really with this process because secretly, you know, I picked her up at the airport cause I was the local team leader. And as soon as she got in the car, I was like, Barbara, I have a confession to make.

I registered as a team leader back in February and now it's June and I haven't run a team. She's like, Oh, don't worry about it. Nobody has yet. I thought it was a failure. And you know, she's like, Oh no, don't worry. No, one's no one's really run one yet. So she helped me kind of leapfrog. And soon after I think it was within like three or four weeks of that event in June, I ran my first success team. And you know, I'm still in contact with some of those people, you know, so was all the way back in 2003, since then, I've, I've run about 15 teams and on average about one a year. And they're just amazing. I really love the people that I get to meet what I love about this work and what keeps me coming back to it is that moment when someone feels heard, you know, because they've often been holding onto this like quirky little idea that they're afraid that they're going to get laughed at.

If they tell anyone and they just kind of share it with me in the group. And everyone's like, yeah, I think that's how it's great. And they're just like, really? You mean, this could happen. It's just such a beautiful thing. I mean, even as I'm talking, I'm getting goosebumps because it's happened so frequently. And one of the fun things about the success team, so a formal success team runs for eight weeks and in the seventh week after people have been kind of working on their goals and making progress because each week you talk about like, okay, so, you know, once you figured out your goal, what are you going to do this week? And then you report back in and you said, your team will be like, okay, how did it go? And a lot of times, like, I didn't actually get anything done. She was never going to reprimand you or be me.

That was like, okay, okay, what do you need help with? You get it done with the idea party in the seventh week, you invite friends and family and you say, okay, I've been working on this school. Here's my dream. Here's my obstacle. Does anybody have anything for me? The best story I ever had from an idea party was there was these two fellows in Denver and one guy was born in Denver. The other guy was born in Ghana, in Africa and their goal, their dream was to get mechanized farming equipment from the United States or wherever to Ghana, to help people who were still farming by hand. And it's not that the land wasn't good. It's just that they didn't have the technology. And the guys said, here's our goal. We don't have any money. We don't have any equipment. We just have this dream. And so, you know, they're like, does anybody have any ideas to help us? And so one day raises his hand and says, well, why don't you contact the manufacturers of farming equipment to see if they would sell you or donate to old equipment or something like that? As I live in breeze, the second person to raise her hand said my brother-in-law is the retired CEO of John Deere.

I was like, get that lady's phone number. I lost touch with them to find out what happened after that. But it was just that kind of power of you never know what, you know, until somebody asks you. And so I've been doing the success teamwork, and I love that. And, but that, and that's group work. And then from the initial event in Boulder, in 2003, I met Valerie Young, who I mentioned earlier, and she has a training program that teaches people how to work with people. One-on-one and I love that too. And so I kind of blend them both. And that's kind of again, where be weird, make money was born from, it's kind of my synthesis of, of the training I've gotten from them.

Passionistas: So talk about how you work with people one-on-one. What's that process like?

Kimberly: First I have them do, uh, some homework where I have them write out, you know, thing, all the things that they love, even if it doesn't feel like it would be part of the money-making process. And then I have them do an exercise that's called the ideal day. And some people can do the ideal day, week, month, year, whatever. So I can get a picture again, of what they want their lives to look like a funny example that, that Valerie gave that I realized it applies to my folks too, is I would often start our working together process with the question. So what time of day, you know, what time in the morning do you want to wake up? And somebody said, does it have to be morning? Nope. I guess not particularly for my tribe,

A lot of really nocturnal people, but it's, it's kind of like, um, if people want to work in bursts, like if they want to work for half the year, six months, a year and travel half the year, again, that's something I can accommodate. So we, you know, have them fill out their assignment and then we have a 90 minute talk where, you know, I get a clearer picture because what they write is one thing, but it's that listening to when they talk and when they get excited or when they're really excited, usually the voice drops a little and because they're afraid because it's, it's very special. And so that's, that's what talking to them. And then once we kind of bendy about some ideas, I'm like, okay, do you want to make a living that is connected to your passion? Or do you want to make enough money to, to have a comfortable life, you know, so that you can work on your passion?

Cause sometimes people, especially creative people sometimes there's that fine line of, I don't want to create on command, you know, because that takes the fun out of it. I just want time to work on my creative projects and I don't, I almost don't care what the work is, as long as it pays the bills. So then we, you know, once we kind of figured that out then I walked him down the nuts and bolts process of, okay, well, here's what you need to do. You know, here's the, the steps, the first steps that you're going to need, something I've learned to say is I help bridge the gap between knowing how to art and knowing how to business, because I have studied small business for so long because that's, that's a passion of mine. Even though if it's like straightforward, boring, boring business, you can apply creative fields to that.

But a lot people aren't necessarily doing that. So that's what I like to do that. And so that last part, the nuts and bolts part is that bridging the gap, like, okay, so here's where you need to go. Here's who you need to talk to. Sometimes I don't really know how to do the thing, but I know what you need to do. And so I'll say I'll tell people right out of the gate, you know, like, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to make a website, but I know you need one. You can go to help. You know, here's the best practices for website. I just don't know how to do it. And that's okay. Like, you know, for a long time I used to be really shy like, Oh, golly, I don't know how to do this. And it's like, why do I have to know how to do, I just have to know where to send people and be a resource.

Passionistas: Do you find that there's a common, like stumbling block or issue that gets in the way of your clients getting started?

Kimberly: You know, a lot of times it's one of two things. One it's the, I don't know how to monetize this or, you know, I just don't know like what this would look like as a business. I know I love to do this, but I don't know if anybody would pay me for it. But then the other part is something that my mentor, Valerie actually wrote a book about the imposter syndrome. And that's that lack of confidence that fear of being found out as a fraud and that, who am I to be doing this? Who am I to be sharing this? But it's like, why would anybody pay me to do this? I think the biggest thing is kind of like the lack of confidence. And then the, the lack of just basic know-how, you know, cause I think once people are with, Oh, that's how people make money with that. Okay. I can do that. You know, it just it's like learning a new practice of anything, you know, learning a new exercise and muscle memory. It's just like, Oh, okay. I never knew that nobody ever taught that to me. So now that fills in that gap and now I know how to move forward.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kimberly Stewart, the founder of Be Weird Make Money. Learn more about Kimberly at BeWeirdMakeMoney.com. Now here's more of our interview with Kimberly.

What are some of your success stories that if people you've dealt with and has there ever been anything so weird that you weren't able to help them figure out how to make it into your business?

Kimberly: My favorite success story ever of someone I worked with was this young lady. I helped she, she was an artist and we met at, uh, where I was doing a live event. She was like, wow. So what do you do? And I told her, I, you know, I'd help people be creative and get paid for it. And she's like, great. I want you to do a thousand things. Cool. I want you to do it all sounds and all of them, but we have to start with one. And so we started working together and it turned out that she wanted to get her artwork printed on a multitude of different products.

Like t-shirts mugs, beer cozies, you know, that sort of thing. And she's like, but I don't know how to do that. And she's like, I want to use this one printing process called sublimation printing, which is where it actually imprints it into the material rather than just on top of. And so we, we talked about it, but as we talked, she kind of let me know that one of the things she really struggled with is she had a lot of health considerations. She had cluster migraines and everything, and it just made it really hard for her to commit to jobs and stuff. And so she's like, you know, I just, I'm embarrassed cause I'm broke all the time. Cause I can't work. I want to create. And I was like, all right, cool. So we, we found some people who did sublimation printing here in Colorado.

And I said, all right, go see if you can get some samples made up, either you or someone else can present the samples to different shops in town to see if they'd carry your stuff. And these big printing guys wouldn't even talk to her because she wasn't ordering in bulk. So because she wasn't going to order like a thousand, they, she wasn't worth their time. I kind of know what we can do. I don't know how to do it, but I said, I want you to go to your local small business development center. Every town or County has one. And I want you to talk to them about getting a loan or a grant for this printer, because I was like, how much do they cost? And she goes, well, you know, they can go up to $25,000, but you can get a real basic one for $5,000.

And I said, great, because you are a woman. And because you, you know, facing are facing other challenges, there are monies available to you because they want to help you start a business because they know, you know, you've had a rough go of it. She went to them and she got a grant for a machine. And so, you know, about a month later she had her machine and it was fantastic. And she was all excited because she's like, wow, now I can start printing my stuff and then we can start doing this. And I said, now hold up. I said, what's really cool is now you get to be the small batch printer for all your local friends and artists that those other turkeys wouldn't talk to. And she just stopped. And she was like, Oh my God, you're right. You know? And she's like, I didn't even think of that.

And I was like, that's why he hired me. It was just one of those moments where it was like, and she she's said to me, you know, over the years we've kept in touch. She's like, I can see a time when I can be a really, truly like contributing member of my household and my community and everything in a way that I never would have been able to before. And so that by and large is my favorite success story. That's kind of why I want to do the work that I do because a lot of people would have said, Oh, you can't work a whole lot. Then you're probably just destined to not make a lot of money. It's not even about, you know, about like a number or whatever, but it's just her feeling. Her confidence grow sometimes even for me, I'm just like, huh.

So I was at, I was at a horror and Halloween convention, um, with my Halloween business book and I was doing kind of on the spot consultations, which is something I like to do just again, a quick snapshot to have somebody tell me what they love and I'll say, well, have you thought about doing this, this there, so this and this one kid comes up and you just kind of stares at, you know, he's like, so what do you do? And they told him, he just kind of blurts out. I have over 600 skeletons. I was like, what they, you know, and I just kind of read it. Cause I was like, that makes a lot of questions for the human animal. Do I need to call the cops? But he goes on to say the little 12 inch toys. And I was like, no, no, no, you didn't.

But I can work with that. Really? How can I make money with that challenge accepted? You know? And I said, all right, so you have 600 skeletons. I said, first off, you'd give them all names and personalities like the Smurfs, right? Dokie, skeleton, Papa, skeleton, whatever. And then, you know, I said, you could do any number of things. She was also an artist, a visual artist. And he said, you could make a comic book about them. You can make stop motion animation. You could create a series of calendars. You know, you can have a web comic. Well, you know, it's the adventures of Skelly town in Wisconsin. There's the house on the rock, which is a roadside attraction. And they boast that they have over 6,000 Santa clauses. So he said, all right, so you're one 10th of the way there with your skeletons. They said, kill miniature trains.

And you don't have them sit in the cafe or whatever and charging mission. And he was just like, what? Like a fool. I gave him my business card and I said, call me and let me know what to do with this. And I did not capture his information. So people who are listening always make sure you get the contact information of people you'd like to follow up with. I always wondered what happened to that kid. And I thought, how many watch lists would I get put on? If I put something out like on Craigslist, you know, in the misconnections, Hey, do you have over 600 skeletons? You want to be calling me the FBI? Excuse me. Ma'am is there something we need to know? Like I said, I don't know what happened to him, but I was always very curious because I was just one of those times that even for me who I think I'm pretty worldly and up first, anything, I was like, huh.

Passionistas: That is brilliant. But I can't believe you came up with so many ideas. So when we were researching you, we read that you say that it's an asset rather than a hindrance.

Kimberly: When you don't have money when you're starting your own business or it can be so talk about that because that sounds something a lot of people think. But yeah, I think traditionally it's the thought is, you know, you have to have money to make money and while money can be helpful, that's for sure. What's nice about not having any money to start. Is it forces you to be really creative because if you just have money to throw at problems, it doesn't really help you learn a whole lot. That could be important lessons. And maybe you're just wasting money because maybe you're, you're being taken advantage of by service people who are like, Oh, this person just has lots of money, you know? So I'll just keep telling them, Oh yeah, we need to keep doing this project. Or yeah, I just need more money to get your website up or whatever. And so it kind of fosters some creativity also now more than ever. There's a lot of power in social capital and the way things are going with crowdfunding, et cetera, you know, there's something really powerful about putting your goals and dreams out there, which that's something that a lot of people are very nervous about.

They've held onto this idea for so long that they don't want to put the baby out there either to get stolen. Like, no, don't take my idea. It's mine. Also that fear of what if nobody likes it. That's the other part. That's another asset of not having a whole lot of money, because if, if you don't have a million dollars to put into a product before you launch it, what if you create a dud? What if you spend all that time and money and nobody wants it. And so, you know, if you don't have a lot of money, you have to be resourceful, try things out things out on a small scale and try it out with people to see if anybody would want it. And you know, you can adjust as you go something. I, I suggest to people when they're like, when they have say, you know, a product that they want to sell and they're not sure what people would want.

I tell them have an old school Tupperware party type thing, but nobody's allowed to buy anything. It's just, you print out, say you're making like soap or jewelry. You, you invite friends over and you give them cider and donuts and you have your wares out on a table and you just sit back and watch, what do people pick up? What, you know, what do people like, like, Ooh, clearly you kind of see this. And then that's a lot of invaluable market research right there. And then you can even say, you're not allowed to buy anything today, but what would you pay for that? You know, because that's, you know, a lot of people have questions. What should I price my stuff at? So you can just ask. So again, having to be creative about things and be resourceful without wasting a lot of money is, is really good.

I just think you learn a whole lot more about yourself and what you're trying to sell, whatever that might be. If it's a product or service information, whatever, it just helps build a solid foundation. And what about people like the woman you were talking about earlier who do need some kind of seed money and don't know where to go for it? What suggestions do you have definitely check with your SP your small business development center, wherever you are, see what might be available to you because you never know, there's all kinds of little grants and loan programs that they will know about that you might not necessarily have access to. Also, you know, again, the, the crowdfunding model is becoming so powerful as a resource for people, because if you can get out there and get your story out there, even if you don't have a prototype or a product yet, if you can, you know, tell the story strongly enough and get people behind you and to back you become essentially your initial investors, that might be a really good way.

But again, that that's kind of encouraging you to be really resourceful and ask for help, because I think that's something, a lot of people that's a big stumbling block for a lot of people is, you know, needing to ask for the help that they need. People want to help other people, the idea parties that I was talking about earlier, that just, you know, that's a really great example of, if you just tell somebody in a way I want this, but I can't because this do you know anything, people will just automatically help. You can do that. You know, in public, on the bus and strangers are even better because they don't have any investment, but like, Oh, have you tried this? Or maybe you could go here and it's, I think people are inherently helpful. And, um, we forget that when, when we're having our negative self-talk of who am I, why should I be doing this? Blah, blah, blah.

Passionistas: And what about the woman you spoke about who came to you with a thousand ideas? What's your advice for people who have multiple passions, they want to pursue and want to create more than one revenue stream?

Kimberly: I love them. So that's something I also learned from Barbara Cher. She identified those folks as scanners. That's someone who has a lot of different interests and, you know, they have a lot of energy. They get kind of a bad rap because they get into stuff. And then when they get what they need out of it, they leave it. And a lot of people want you to finish things and stick with it. But I say, I want you to do all of those things, but in all honesty, you do have to pick one, one to start with at least another person I mentioned earlier, Barbara winter uses this analogy a lot that I love. And it's that of the plate spinner. If you see a street, Esker somebody who is spinning plates, they don't take all 10 plates, they get one on their foot and they get that one going.

And then they get the one on their knee going, and then they have the one on their shoulder going. You choose that with projects as well. I love when people have multiple streams of income, because you never know when one is going to dry up or, you know, when one's going to take off, if you want to have a couple of different things going, that's great, but you do need to give enough life. You know, you need to give enough breath to bring it to life. I am also a scanner. So I understand that desire of wanting to do lots of different things, or I don't term it for myself as getting bored easily. I just have a lot of interests and I like to have things to go to. So it's, it's figuring out where the energy is strongest for someone. Sometimes it comes down to picking what would be the easiest, fastest win to kind of get the energy going and the momentum going.

So it's like, okay, we get this going. And then now what what's next? Because there are some things that you only want to do once there are some things that you do a couple of times a year. There's some things that you work on all the time. So I think that's the other thing that people get overwhelmed with or bogged down by is they think, Oh my gosh, it's so overwhelming. I'm going to be doing this all of these all the time. No, no, you're not. Everything takes its turn. And, but you have to figure out what that looks like. And again, that's kind of where I help people determine, you know, kind of like what that might look like for, I never tell anybody what to do. I always give suggestions and then I let people figure out what it looks like for them. But I think just the permission that it's okay to want to do a lot of things is, is really powerful. And so again, that's part of my mission is in the world, if everybody to do their own thing, no matter what that looks like, even if it's doing thousand things,

Passionistas: Do you have a weird business idea of your own that you haven't tried yet?

Kimberly: I'm kind of in the midst of trying that out, you know, cause I've done a bunch of things. I was a candle maker for a while. My bread and butter business is as a massage therapist. I've tried a lot of really interesting things. And what I'm hoping to move into more with be weird, make money is go on a, like almost like a larger scale and start reaching branching out into all the different areas that feel like weird or non-traditional or whatever. And just finding these people and highlighting them. I did, um, two things earlier this year, a virtual summits. And you know, we're, it's a different topic for each summit and you interview people who are making money. Like the last one I did was about gaming. So if you love games or video games, board games, role playing games, whatever it is. And everyone's always told you, or you can't make money, playing games, just grow up and get a real job.

You know, what are you going to live in your mom's basement forever? You know, I talked to some really awesome, fascinating people who are really killing it in games. And so I wanted to highlight them and say here's who are really doing it. And so I want to just keep branching out, kind of become a pied Piper of weird businesses and be like, great, whatever you're into. We can probably find a way to either monetize it or find a way for you to bring in money so that you can enjoy life. What's your dream for weird women everywhere. I want weird women to be able to share their ideas with out fear of shame and ridicule. Like I always think of myself as skewing younger as far as like who I'm attracting or who I want to talk to. Like, I want to save people from lives of quiet desperation of, you know, doing that thing for 20 or 30 years that they hate trying to fit in.

But this market of women over 60 who come to me and again, they have this like, Oh, you know, I never really wanted to tell anybody about this. Cause I feel it make fun of me. I want to help them, but I want that to not have to be a thing. I want everyone to, you know, I want all these weird women to just be fearless and bold and be like, I am doing this cool thing and I know you guys are gonna love it. And Curtis, yeah, that's that's my dream is to, you know, take, take the fear of ridicule away.

Passionistas: What advice would you give to a young woman who wants to start a business based on her passion?

Kimberly: Try it. Don't be afraid. Be careful who you talk to about it because you know, when dreams are new or read somewhere, every great idea is born drowning. And so you need to foster that little idea, but just give it a shot because you don't know. So just try it. And what's nice is when you're just starting out, if you sit on that idea and never try it, you won't ever know whether or not it will work or something people don't often talk about is if you're even going to like it. Because I think some things are, you know, sound really good on paper or in your head. But in reality it's like, Oh yeah, I didn't realize that, but there's no harm in trying. And so just get out there, find some supportive people and you know, maybe who are also going after dreams. So they're going to be less likely to bash yours, give it a shot. I think that would be my biggest advice is just get out there and try it

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kimberly Stewart, the founder of Be Weird Make Money. Learn more about Kimberly at BeWeirdMakeMoney.com.

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