The Passionistas Project Podcast

Actor and Activist Selene Luna Fights for Disability Justice PART 1

Selene Luna is best known as the voice of Tia Rosita in Disney Pixar's Coco. She is an established presence in Hollywood with multiple roles in movies and TV shows, including Margaret Cho's "The Cho Show. " The Mexican American actress, who lives with a physical disability, has also broken ground as a featured burlesque dancer in five national tours of the undisputed queen of burlesque Deeta Von Teese. She is also an advocate for people living with disabilities including a 2019 trip to DC to meet with legislators and speak at a rally on Capitol Hill.

More about Selene.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

Full Transcript:

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

Before we start our show this week, we wanted to tell you about a podcast. We just discovered through the OSSA collective, the show was called Brunch and Slay, where they remember that "if she can, I can, we all can." Host Ameerah Saine is the founder of the lifestyle brand Brunch and Slay which she created to inspire women to live their best lives every day. We think you'll really enjoy the show. So be sure to check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

Now for today's episode, which is Part 1 of a two-part interview with Selene Luna, best known as the voice of Tia Rosita in Disney Pixar's Coco. Selene is an established presence in Hollywood with multiple roles in movies and TV shows, including Margaret Cho's "The Cho Show. " The Mexican American actress, who lives with a physical disability, has also broken ground as a featured burlesque dancer in five national tours of the undisputed queen of burlesque Deeta Von Teese.

In 2019, Selena went to Washington DC to meet with legislators like US Representative Maxine Waters at the 2019 Conference on Independent Living to advocate for disability rights and spoke at a rally on Capitol Hill alongside US Senator Chuck Schumer.

And this October 28th, we're collaborating with Selene to produce Chronically Funny: A Comedy Revolution Featuring an All-Disabled Lineup of Women. This virtual comedy show will be followed by a round table discussion with the performers.

So please welcome to the show Selene Luna.

Selene: Hi ladies. Thank you so much for having me

Passionistas: We're happy to have you here. We're really excited to talk to you about all of these amazing things that you've been doing. What are you most passionate about?

Selene: What I am most passionate about is disability justice. And I guess you could call me an advocate for disabled justice. And it's not necessarily a fire in my belly that II must do this. It's a necessity that I have to do with, I have better things to do with my time. Uh, being an advocate for social injustice is really exhausting. And it's an absolute shame to me that we have to go to such measures just to be heard. Um, and so that is why I am, uh, I guess you would say an advocate for disability justice because it impacts my life personally and those and those around me, uh, people in my life and I, as, as early as I could remember, as a little child, nothing got under my skin, then things that were not fair unfairness drove me nuts and it still does. And so, so I guess you could say I'm very passionate about injustice when it comes to, uh, individuals with, and it's driven by my own personal challenges in a society that openly discriminates against people with disabilities. So, um, it's not a joyful passion. It's just a necessity in my life.

Passionistas: Why do you think, I think it is still this way. Why do you think that we've come such a small distance to tackle this issue? It feels like we should be further along.

Selene: I agree with you and I have the same question. It absolutely blows my mind, but then the same question could be like, why is this country still racist? Um, you know, so many questions. Why do women not, uh, have income equality in the work force? So these are all great questions I have too. It's like, what planet are we on?

I guess, to have some sort of an answer. I think, um, I can't understand exactly why, but we are in a society for generations, hundreds of years. I mean, as early as time going back to the early days of Egypt, uh, people with disabilities were, uh, mutilated discriminated against, um, violently tortured simply because they were born in a body that they can't help. They, as a disabled person. The most frustrating thing is my response to society is how do you think I feel? I didn't choose this body.

You know? So then you're punished on top of something. You had no choice over. So it blows my mind. And I can say simply put, that the biggest struggle as a person with a disability is not my actual disability. It's society's perception of disability. Because like many disabled people I know myself included, uh, we are fine in our bodies and our different bodies with different abilities. And I, I have to give a disclaimer, I hate the term differently abled. And I think I just kind of used it. So bad on me, but, um, we're totally fine. We just need equal access to what everyone else has. And for those watching who weren't familiar with me, you can't tell on camera, but I'm a little person I'm only three feet, 10 inches tall. And, uh, and it's not easy. I do have a lot of, um, physical things. I mean, I have, I suffer from chronic pain, intense, debilitating, chronic pain due to the structure of my skeleton. So, so the right things I I'm, I have to get through, but it's the least of my troubles. My greater troubles are society's open discrimination.

Passionistas: So take us back to when you were a young girl and what your childhood was like, and when you first knew you were funny and why you think you sort of became funny.

Selene: My childhood was I'm riddled with adversity. Uh, I'm a Mexican immigrant. So my parents brought our family to the, uh, to the United States from Mexico when I was three years old. So I don't really have a memory of that, but, uh, but the challenges we faced were like a lot of racism and bigotry because we were Mexican, we were new to the country. Um, and I'm, there was no, I was the only person who with a disability in my family.

Actually correction. My father is actually disabled as well, but he wasn't born with a disability. Like the majority of statistics, uh, say the majority of people with disabilities were not born disabled. And so that's why it blows my mind that people are so dismissive of it because you never know who's next. I mean, you could be hit by a car and in one second, your life changes.

So that's what happened to my father before I was born, he was in a horrific accident when he was 18 and he lost his entire right arm. Uh, he's an amputee. So, um, but I forget honestly, because the way we grew up was, um, never really talking too much about it. You know, we were, I grew up in the seventies, my parents are old school. You just suck it up and you get on with life. So that was great for me in many ways, but it also was not good for me because then I felt very isolated. None of, no one in my family was a little person and nobody really had a disability that was addressed, um, directly, uh, everyone's needs were met, but there wasn't a conversation about disability at all. And my dad was busy working two jobs, you know, it wasn't, we just don't even talk about feelings.

And, um, so what I'm getting at is that's a little bit of my background. So my upbringing upbringing as a disabled little girl, it was very isolating. I, it was very dark. I felt very alone. I was never immersed in any type of support network. I was never exposed to a disabled community. And my only point of references were, uh, disabled people being ridiculed on television. And like, you, you know, I grew up watching, um, like Billy Barty, the Buggaloos , uh, you know, things like where the creatures on television were, little people in costumes. It was very dehumanizing. And the irony is, and I grew up to do that myself, but as a child that had a lot of internalized shame, enablism, it's the only images I identified with, were the d humanizing images of little people on television and movies, including the Wizard of Oz that brought up a lot of anxiety for me.

Uh, and I didn't feel human. I didn't, I felt like I'm not a human being like my siblings or my parents, like I'm something different and it must be really shameful cause we don't talk about it. So it was really awful, no gentle way to say this. Uh, but grew up old school, you just bare and grin it and you chug along and you don't complain. And so that's where the funny comes in at a very young age, I think around the age of five. I think that's about when you start having a little self awareness, maybe five, six. I remember in kindergarten, I remember really in first grade that's when it really hit me that I was not like the others. And when I started to have this self-awareness as a defense mechanism, I was really joking all the time and never serious. And it was really a distraction. It was really to help me survive.

And I think a lot of kids or dealing with a heavy things at home use humor to protect themselves. I mean, I'm always concerned now as an adult, I look back if there was a class clown in the room in the classroom, that's a pro... There was a problem at home. And so I was a clown. I was always, uh, using humor as I just figured if I can make them laugh, they'll forget about what I look like. And so I think anyway, long story short, I think that was my childhood.

Passionistas: You had these experiences seeing these images on television and in movies, and yet you chose to go into the entertainment industry. So what drew you to that in as a career?

Selene: What drew me to it is while I was having this realization of, you know, when I was very young realizing what I was, I didn't understand what I was, but I knew I was different and in a shameful way, not like cute different. Um, so I, and I grew up in Los Angeles. So Hollywood was very much on the radar, uh, socially. And, uh, so as a little kid, I thought, well, if I can make them laugh and I figured I can go into showbiz because I thought I could be the one who changes the images that make me feel ashamed. And also it would be an opportunity to be in control of the dialogue. I figured if people were gonna laugh and point at me, it would be on my terms. And so that's how I saw that platform. On top of having no real education, I thought, and I'm not implying that you don't need an education to get into entertainment, but I just thought my talent would be to entertain people and make them see me the way I want to be seen and heard. And, uh, but you know, once I did it, it was a very different reality.

Passionistas: So, tell us about that reality. Tell us about how you broke into the business. What, what were your first gigs? What were auditions like?

Selene: Well, the reality was a pretty harsh in the sense where, um, I, you know, I had my mind made up that it's going to be up to me to create a new image for people like me, but I didn't really realize that I wouldn't have the actual platform to execute my plan. Uh, I, you know, I'm 20 years into this career to this day. I can tell you easily, maybe 98% of my auditions or opportunities are to play a creature or a monster of faceless character to this day. And, uh, but I mean, things are actually literally just changing now. I mean this year, uh, there are new roles now, but, um, that we never had. Uh, so that was sobering for me. So what I did was I, and this is like the mid-nineties, early- to mid-nineties. I am, I was five years old, kidding.

Um, this is around the mid-nineties. I took a workshop class, summer workshop of how to write, stand up comedy at the, uh, at the world, famous Hollywood Improv. And so I took like a summer kind of workshop and I fell in love with it. I was like, this is it. I have a microphone. And people just have to sit and listen ‘til I'm done. And, um, and it went really well. I really excelled and so much so that, um, one of my greatest regrets in life was a failed opportunity on my part, Bud Friedman who's a legend in the comedy world. He started the Improv. Uh, he saw one of my workshop like showcases and he came over and he pulled me aside. I mean, this man created careers for people like Roseanne Barr and he's major. And he pulled me aside and says, it was really old school.And he's like, "You got it kid, you know?"

And he invited me to perform at regular shows. And so I started performing at the Improv, but I was riddled with so much shame and self- loathing and so insecure and not fully developed as a person. Then I was easily intimidated. Uh, even in the nineties, it was still very much a man's world, the comedy club. And, um, I, I just felt really scared and intimidated being around all these funny men. And they weren't welcoming to me at all or warm. Um, but that's not their job. You know, my friend and I, one of my dearest friends in the business Murray Hill, he's a comic in New York, uh, we have an ongoing joke. It's called showbiz, not show therapy. So you can expect to be coddled if you're feeling nervous or anxious, you either gonna do it or you're not.

So I wasn't ready. I didn't have the skin. And after a year of Bud Friedman, you know, bringing me under his wing, I quit. I quit like an idiot. I throw in the towel. It was so scary. It was never fun for me. I practically wanted to cry after every show. And just the guys, the men were so tough and I just, um, I was invisible to them. And, um, anyway, so that's how that all started. But flash forward, about 10 years after that, I went back into it, ready to go. Uh, I was much saltier.

Passionistas: What experience did you have in that 10 year period that made you so salty?

Selene: I had a very interesting experience that really helped me to develop as a performer. And it was one of those things that it was something I needed that I didn't know I needed. Literally two weeks after quitting the Improv, I found myself at a party. And at this party I met some women who are still great friends of mine. Some of my closest closest friends is this grow a group of girlfriends and they were all doing, um, a dance troupe called the Velvet Hammer Burlesque. And at the time, uh, there was no one else doing it. I mean, I know burlesque is very popular now it's had a huge resurgence, but this was the very early days of the Neo Burlesque Movement at the time, the only people doing it were the stupa girls that I befriended the Velvet Hammer, Deeta Von Teese, who is now world famous and Catherine Delish and also a handful of gals in New York.

And when I was introduced to this, I didn't even, uh, couldn't wrap my head around what they were doing. I didn't totally get it, you know, other than having seen maybe some burlesque and like old timey movies, but I didn't quite understand what they were doing. And it was very punk rock. And, uh, so they invited me to perform with them. And next thing I know, I ended up performing and developing as a burlesque dancer for about 11 years. And I got to tour the country a little bit of Europe. And that's where I really found my footing as a stage performer. And, and it's not that I was like excited about stripping in front of anybody. To this day, I mean, I get dressed in the dark, but I had a, I have a very confrontational attitude about what I do because my entire life I've been told what I cannot do because of what I look like.

One of those things was, and every disabled person relates to this. You weren't neutered. If you're disabled, you are neutered. You are never seen as a sexual person with adult desires in any way, shape or form. Uh, it's almost angelic you're on this like, sorry, pedestal. Like you can't be a full human with full human desires. So that is what drove me to do it. I agreed to perform with these women because I just thought, you know, this will be an opportunity to show the world that I am as feminine as any other woman in the show. And, um, my first time performing, it was to over a thousand people and I was just luck here goes nothing. And I really thought I would get laughed off stage, you know, for being the freaky looking one. And the audience was amazing. They loved me and I kept doing it for another 11 years.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Selene Luna. To learn more about Selene, visit her website, SeleneLuna.com. And find out more about Chronically Funny: A Comedy Revolution Featuring All-Disabled Lineup of Women on October 28th at 8:00 PM Eastern | 5:00 PM Pacific at ThePassionistasProject.com. Now here's more of our interview with Selene.

You were talking about how the world of comedy was so male dominated and that contributed to you not being ready to be in that world at that time. Do you think the fact that this was women who were supporting each other and surrounding each other with positive energy, do you think that helped you overcome that? Not liking to be undressed in front of people?

Selene: 100%? Absolutely. It was like a different planet compared to the comedy clubs. There was no male energy. Uh, not that I don't enjoy male energy, but, um, and also there were men involved in the show, but they, they were like feminist guys, you, they were like really cool creative dudes. And still great friends with them to this day. I mean, we were like a family. And we're all still in touch and love these, this group of people madly. And they helped me grow up as an artist. I felt like raised by them. And, um, they were, a lot of them were experienced artists and been doing it much longer than I had. And I learned a lot from them. And the, the women in the show made me feel like I was part of a sisterhood. They were very nurturing about it. They embraced me, everyone supported each other.

But I also want to clarify that this wasn't some feminist group. It wasn't like a feminist movement. It wasn't like I'm woman hear me roar. That's why I'm stripping it. It wasn't that these were just rock and roll chicks who were really wrapped up in the vintage lifestyle. And we had a lot of fun getting dolled up and glamorous. And, you know, we, it, it was a real bonding thing. It was kind of like almost like a quilting circle. We would make our costumes, we would, you know, get together and have a costume making circle, you know, it was bonding like that. And it was very like glitzy and glamorous. And so it wasn't like some feminist thing. We were trying to be pretty, you know, we're trying to be cute, but it was a bunch of bad-ass girls.

Passionistas: What do you think was the most important thing you learned about yourself from that time in the burlesque show?

Selene: That's a great question. I think what I learned about myself is that I am in fact, a complete woman and, um, and I deserve and have the right to be as feminine as I want to be and claim my sexuality. It made me feel like essential individual. And it gave me the permission to do that.

Passionistas: So then how did you transition from that back into the world of standup?

Selene: Well, during that period of time, uh, that's when I met my now very dear friend, Margaret Cho, um, world famous comic. At the time, her husband, Al, he was involved with our troop. Actually it, he was, uh, he had his own kind of performance art group, either really cool artists. And, um, what we would do back then is, um, our show's producer, well, our show's creator got him on board and, uh, him and his, um, performance art friends would do a fake picket in front of our show. Cause we were a bunch of ladies stripping. And so, um, so he and his buddies, uh, they would dress up like priests and have big signs and, uh, and they would picket in front of the theater and that's how we would sell out because it would draw attention. It's like old school marketing. And, and, um, so it was just, we always had a real sense of humor about what we were doing. We didn't take it seriously.

And, um, so, so he was involved with us at that capacity. And, uh, and then that's how I met Margaret Cho, uh, at the time, they're no longer together, but at the time, uh, she would come and watch the show. Cause you know, her husband was kind of part of our marketing gag and it was really funny. And um, and then eventually she and I had a lot of friends in common. We became friends. She actually started doing burlesque performing. She's actually a dancer herself. She's a belly, uh, trained belly dancer. And she started doing burlesque and then she started producing a burlesque comedy show. She asked me if I wanted to be in it. And so that was really the start of our relationship. So we were starting to share the stage. She would do comedy. And I was one of the featured burlesque dancers.

And over the years doing the show, we did the show for years and over time, she and I got to know each other more and more, and we became friends and she began to encourage me to do stand up. And, uh, she w I'll never forget, you know, one day she pulled me aside and she said, you know, in stand up comedy, nobody cares what you look like and you have full control of your dialogue. So, uh, so she really encouraged me to go back and do it. And that's how I went back. But, you know, it's a craft that it takes many, many years to develop. And so my little stint for a year, you know, at the Improv was barely scratching the surface. I felt like it was as if I'd never done it, you know, compared to where you need to be. And, uh, so yeah, and Margaret became my mentor in stand up and was my greatest support and encourager.

Passionistas: What unique challenges do you face doing standup as a woman with disability?

Selene: I'm very fortunate, uh, to say, I don't think I've really encountered many. I really haven't. I'm now, uh, uh, pretty bold. I'm, I'm, I'm now pretty bold and aggressive and I'm not shy about getting what I need. And I think that energy just comes off of me and I get what I need. Um, I really honestly have not had many challenges, but I'm very fortunate in that way. There are other performers with disabilities, you know, I know personal friends of mine who are also disabled comics and they face challenges that I don't face.

For example, being in a wheelchair, uh, there aren't any stages with ramps. It just doesn't exist. I mean, that's been my experience. And so they face challenges like that. And then, so, um, individually, for example, somebody in a wheelchair has to be put up onto the stage, uh, by my staff. That's not accessibility, you know, it's invasive and, uh, but that's a comedy clubs idea of accessibility. So those are the kinds of challenges I see from my peers face.

But I'm fortunate that I haven't really, I mean, other than, you know, as a dancer, I did tour tremendously and, uh, in many old, old, old theater houses and they're not accessible. I mean, like there's crazy flights of stairs. You gotta go like, you know, five flights of stairs to get to your number. And then I gotta run back up. There's no elevator went back up, do a costume change, you get three minutes and you gotta be back. Well, I don't have that physical ability to fly up and down stairs. You know, I gotta take my time. I gotta hang on. I could barely walk in heels. So it's those kinds of things.

Passionistas: And how, how has the world of standup changed for you during COVID? Is it all virtual? Are you doing virtual shows and everything?

Selene: Yeah, it's all virtual and it's strange. It's weird. It's absolutely not the ideal for a performing artist, a live performer, because especially with comedy, the audience is equally as important as the comics material. It's, it's a bad way we're doing together. If I don't, you can't feel the same kind of human energy that like invisible energy, you can feel in a room like a room that's alive or dead. And you just don't feel that I'm doing, you know, shows on Zoom. So it's been a learning experience. I'm still stumbling through it. I'm still trying to, uh... It takes real finesse.

Because with Zoom, as we addressed earlier, you know, there was a delay. So you deliver a joke. There was a two second delay, uh, for the audience to get the G to receive the joke. And then there's another two second delay for the comic to hear them laugh if they're laughing. So then we're looking at a four second delay. So you just delivered your punchline and you're just sitting there quiet for four minutes and you have no idea if what you said even works. It's very uncomfortable.

Passionistas: What kind of topics do you cover in your, your act? And are you ever concerned about the reaction you're going to get to it from the audience?

Selene: For the most part I mean like 99% of the time. I mean, I should just say all the time, uh, I just cover my own life, experience, my own observation. Uh, I try to make my life experience relatable. I work hard to make it universal because if people are, if people are laughing about my experience as a disabled person, you know, they're laughing with me and if they're relating at the same time, uh, that's huge for me. I feel heard. And so many times people have come up to me after a show. And they'll just say, now I understand, like now I get it. You know?

So being able to craft something where just about anyone can walk in your shoes and just the humor of it, people relate to that. You know, humor is very disarming. It's, it's a real unifier and that's why I gravitate to it. It's not something that's easy for me to execute. I struggle. I am not like this. I'm not like this talented joke writer. I don't write like amazing punchlines. I have to work really, really hard, but that's because it's important for me to be heard. I'm never concerned with anyone's reaction. I haven't been embraced. I'm not embraced all the time. I bomb all the time. And that's just part of the process. I don't care.

I mean, offending somebody, Oh, gee, that's the worst that could happen to me. That's child's play. I don't, I don't care. You know, and I, but I think that's a general kind of comic attitude and look, I'm not looking to offend anyone. And I know I have, and I've learned from it. I don't enjoy that. That's not at all what I'm driven to do, but it happens sometimes with, you know, I, I haven't quite figured out my footing on a concept and I have offended people and I feel horrible because I never want an audience to have a bad experience or to walk away, you know, feeling bad about something. But, um, but there were, so it's a balance of feeling free to speak your mind, but also being inclusive.

Passionistas: Is there a show or a performance that you've had that really stands out to you as like your best night in comedy?

Selene: One show that stands out in my mind is, um, I was lucky enough to open for Margaret show at the Wiltern, which is, um, a very well respected, huge theater here in Los Angeles. And, uh, so I, I was really nervous leading up to it and to speak. There was a lot of pressure. I mean, you know, doing a show in LA is very tough. Uh, it's like everybody's in the business. You know, the first front row is like folding their arms. They're all industry people. It's like, make me laugh, come on. And, uh, you know, I had friends and families, I, everybody came out. And so I was really nervous, but, um, I killed it that night. And so I felt very proud of that.

Passionistas: What's the most rewarding part of your career?

Selene: The most rewarding part of my career, I would have to say, and I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but is, uh, people respecting my narrative. I created a certain image. I've done certain works and have been, uh, respected by my fellow artists and also audiences. And that's been incredibly validating and it's made me feel like a, a whole, a complete person.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and Part 1 of our interview with Selene Luna. Check back next week for Part 2. To learn more about Selene, visit her website, SeleneLuna.com.

And find out more about Chronically Funny: A Comedy Revolution, Featuring an All-Disabled Lineup of Women on October 28th at 8:00 PM Eastern | 5:00 PM Pacific at ThePassionistasProject.com.

While you're there, you can learn more about our podcast and 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 passion needs just project podcast. So you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests until next time stay well and stay passionate.

Heike Yates Empowers Women Over 50 to Take Back Their Health and Strength

Heike Yates is a fitness and nutrition expert with over 30 years of experience. She is empowering women over 50 to take back their health and strength by designing balanced and straightforward fitness, nutrition, and mindset programs. Heike is the creator of Pursue Your Spark and host of the Pursue Your Spark Podcast. She has developed a reputation for creating real-life solutions and lasting results.

More about Heike.

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 Heike Yates, a fitness and nutrition expert. With over 30 years of experience, she is empowering women over 50 to take back their health and strength by designing, balanced, and straightforward fitness, nutrition, and mindset programs. Heike is the creator of Pursue Your Spark and the host of the Pursue Your Spark Podcast. And she's developed a reputation for creating real life solutions and lasting results. So please welcome to the show. Heike Yates.

Heike: Hey ladies. So happy to be with you. Thank you for having me on the show.

Passionistas: Oh, it's our pleasure. So Heike, what's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Heike: Well, that's a tough one because if you have to just pick one thing I would say is empowering other people. And in this case, empowering women, that's the most, what I'm most passionate about. I know that's a broad term empowerment, but if you're giving somebody the tools to do something, whatever it is, it's mindset, body, or nutrition or exercise, whatever it is, you've given them the tool to do something, to get better at where they're at.

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

Heike: I don't just say here's a diet, here's an exercise program. Now go do it. It's more like, what do you want to do? Where are you in your journey? What have you experienced already that worked and didn't work? What would you like to do in the ideal world? If you go all crazy, all out, well, what would it look like for you? And then rebuilding around those things and putting them all together with the spark system to, to first figure out what somebody wants and their background, how they can put this in a plan for them that works for them and not for me or anyone of you. Um, but that it works for them personally, and that they also can continue to build on the baby steps. As I like to call them, to grow with the system, to grow with what they're learning and they're not stuck.

And once let's assume the program is over, you're like, okay, now what? That there is something afterwards that you can take the tools learned and go, okay, this is great. Now I know how to put a meal together. What, what does a meal involve? And I don't have to go and say, Oh, now I have to find a recipe. And now I have to, Oh, can I eat this? Can I not eat this? No, this meal will have all components and you just make out of them what it is you would like to make out of them.

Passionistas: So let's take a step backwards for a second. You grew up in Germany and then you moved to DC. So what brought you to the States? What was that journey?

Heike: I love to travel. This is my, one of my other passions. I love to explore new things and this passion for empowerment travels into everything that I do. And I wanted to literally just travel the world, the world, and a job at the foreign service here in Washington, D C and well, that's where my travel ended. I met my first husband. We had two amazing kids and my kids are now all over the world. And I'm still here in Washington, DC and people wonder why I'm still here. I'm like, I just love it. I mean, you can say about what you wanted about, do you see, and it's a government city and so forth, but it has everything that I need and want. And I can do my little travels to the beach from here. It's three hours to the beach and I can go hiking within an hour. So it has that sense of freedom and independence that I'm looking for when I initially started out in Germany.

Passionistas: So then why did you leave that nine to five corporate life that you had come to have here?

Heike: It's so boring. I'm so sorry. It's just really boring to sit on your butt ski. As I like to call it for such a long period of time and there's, to me, there was no adventure. It was sitting from nine to five in the same office, on the same chair, on the same desk, doing the same work. And he just kept doing the same things over and over. And I didn't feel like it in besides I had two amazing kids and I draw, they wanted to spend my time with them and sitting somewhere, doing boring work. And my husband at that point, he was working. So we had an income, even though it was small, I still was able to stay home with the kids at least one at first and, um, hang out with him at this point. And I said, you know, let's just go.

I mean, I gotta bite the bullet and let go of the money. But staying home as a mom, wasn't that easy. Why not? Because you're home alone suddenly with a toddler and you don't have any conversations. You don't go anywhere. You have a couple of friends who basically on the same boat and we're all like, okay, so our careers are left behind and now you're here with the kids. Now what, where is us? Where's the person that I was before I became a office worker before I became a mom. What happened to Heike at that point? Where does she? So that was a little tough.

Passionistas: So how did that lead to a career in fitness and nutrition?

Heike: It goes with empowerment and my freedom of independence, my seeking independence. Well, I got really big when I was pregnant. I had, before that I had quit smoking. Cause I guess I was smoking back in the days everybody smoked. And, uh, you know, if you stop smoking, you eat more clearly. So I was ginormous ended at month eight. I looked like a pink elephant. And I remember the day when I wore this pink outfit with golden glitter on and I was, I thought I was looking so cute. My husband said, you're look fantastic. And I look at the picture and I said, Oh, I look like a pink elephant.

And having children, sometimes the weight just doesn't come off. Many women say, Oh, you just go nurse the baby. And the pounds will fall off. And you look like before, well, none of that happened. I had still 30 pounds to lose. And my girlfriend said there is a class at the church from the local YMCA, a, uh, community service based, uh, exercise programs and just, I did music. It's like dancing, let's go. And so we took the class and I could bring my son, which ended up screaming for the entire time in the nursery. But I didn't know that. So I was fine and I loved the class, but I would have not thought that I was going to teach this class, but they were looking for teachers and they said, Hey, you moved a well in class. Why don't you start teaching for us?

And they actually teach, you're trained me for the program. And so I had training, I had my son in daycare who kept screaming. I don't know. He kept screaming and screaming, but at some point I think things went better, but, and that's how I started out. And that gave me just a little bit of money and a little bit of away from home, away from the kid and gave me my own identity. Back to that, I hike. It can create now something brand new that has nothing to do with office work and government and all this kind of stuff. It's something that I would have never, ever thought I would ever do. Teaching aerobics classes, me, but that's how my fitness journey third. And then when did you bring the nutrition element into it? Once I started teaching classes, people ask you all kinds of things.

And, well, I didn't know that much about nutrition, but I knew how to eat healthy and cook healthy meals. And that was always part of how we grew up at home. But then I became also certified as a personal trainer along the way. So as I kept teaching classes, I was just interested in more things. It's like, Oh, if I can teach glasses, what else can I do? Oh, I can become a personal trainer. I can teach somebody how to lift weights. Oh, this is cool. But most people want to get in shape and want to maybe lose a couple of pounds. Well, how do they have to eat? Oh, okay. They have to eat this way. They have to exercise that way. And then it translated actually into what I was starting to do personally, you know, growing up in Germany, you exercise automatically.

You don't, uh, oftentimes at least back in the days gyms were there, but people would bike and walk everywhere and we'd walk to the grocery store and you take public transportation. It's not like in the States where everything is in the car, in the Metro and people move very little. And so being exposed, this new fitness environment, I was like, this is really cool. How can I help somebody that I'm not training with weights and bands and all this stuff to get in shape? How can I help them eat better, get more energy. And like I said, maybe lose a few pounds or answer questions about, should I eat more protein? Should I have a high carb diet or what, what is Keto and all these things. And so I took what I've learned through certifications and educational classes, um, for my own training. And the first thing I did, I became a bodybuilder.

So a bodybuilder needs to know how to eat correctly or not eat or hydrate or build big muscles. I mean, guys, I never got huge. I was much more muscular than I am now and much more cut, but this is another whole different learning process of how can you eat this way in order to get bulk? How do you eat this way in order to lean out? Um, and that was another perfect learning environment. And that then translated, you know, the story goes on and on. I became a runner as a runner, you eat completely different than you eat for building mass. So I started marathon running. So now I had to learn about endurance training and endurance nutrition. And what should you eat when you're out for a 20 mile run? Or how should you, as everybody loves to do the cart loading before a big race. Uh, and so all these steps then going into becoming an ultra marathon runner. So that's over 26 miles. So I ran the JFK 50 miler and again, another completely different way of eating. Cause when you think as a marathoner, you eat your goos or your liquid gels, that is all sugar. And you're done in a relatively short period of time. When you train for longer, Oh my God, you eat chips and M&Ms and salt and cookies. You would not believe [inaudible] told me about that a long time ago.

Good stuff is out there on a trail race that is offered. But you, again, you're out there for 15, 20 hours or even longer for longer races. So you need a whole different type of nutrition. And so then I was like, okay, this is great. And I want to do something different. So I got into triathlons. Well, here we go. Another completely different system. You're swimming, you're biking and you're running. So I had this running nutrition under control. I didn't know anything about the bike nutrition or what do you do when you swim two miles, you clearly don't stop and have a sandwich or, you know, and so it was a learning process of the different sports that I chose, uh, that taught me a lot about nutrition. But along the way, I've always believed you need solid education and or certification or a really good ground where you can grow from.

So I became a precision nutrition certified coach for, um, sports performance. And that really helps a lot explaining why something is and why your body metabolizes this way and how you can get the best nutrition for different sports. And it's the same works for anybody. If you come to me, it's a hike. I walk, well, I can tell you the same thing because it's all about biomechanics kinesiology and, and metabolizing foods and so forth.

Passionistas: So now how did all of this lead to working with women over 50?

Heike: I am almost 60. So I experienced what a lot of women around me experience slower metabolism, no energy, belly fat, um, here, not shiny, uh, lack luster. And you know, when I look at how I have trained, I got to a point, despite all my training, I'm changing hard, I'm doing everything right. I kept gaining weight.

I nothing really works. So I, once again had to switch gears and going, okay, so everything that's worked until my mid forties, early fifties doesn't work now anymore. My thyroid is not the way it should be. I had changes in, I don't have a thyroid at all, but it's still I'm affected by different hormone changes in my body. As funny as it sounds right? So I'm past menopause, but I'm still going through the hot flashes or I can tell in your listeners probably can hold their ears, but I can tell if I were to get my period, my stomach gets rounder. I get these bloated feelings that if you ask somebody, they're like, Oh, you're just making this up. This is really not happening. And, and you way past this, but it's not true. And my endocrinologist choose these as your body will continue to go through hormone changes.

And so we have to adapt your thyroid levels based on where you are. Every six months, we need to test so many women around me have said the same things. And they're like, man, nothing's working. What can I do if I exercise my butt off and still nothing happens. So we need to do things differently than we've done them before. And with the 30 years in the experience in the field, I think I have a lot to offer when it comes to over 50 and how to do things better. Now that we're older and that we're not the spring chicken, we're not with the same metabolism and also not the same needs. I mean, I am not particularly crazy about a high intensity interval, crack class. I don't know about you, but my knees are not. I mean, yes, I run, but I can take care of my knees, but jumping around and doing some super hard stuff is just, and that's what I hear from many women.

They, they feel the same way. And so that's, I'm here to help. And you also fitness nutrition, and then mindset is kind of the third component. So why is that an important element in all of this? I would almost go the backwards it's mindset, exercise nutrition, or you can the change the last two pieces. But I think the mindset is really where it starts with self care. It starts with, how do we feel about ourselves? How do we empower ourselves? What do we think about ourselves? The self value that we have, the old stories, the old beliefs that we, we keep telling ourselves that we are not good enough, not smart enough. We don't know these things. And they translate into a fitness and nutrition package. Let's put it that way as well. Because if you start out not taking care of yourself, you don't know how to exercise, right?

You don't know how to eat, right? You do everything maybe for somebody else or you as I call it, you dim your light and you just stay under your little light and never shine for what your true potential could be. And that's why I think the mindset component is really the key to the success in overcoming these obstacles that we come along in over 50 lifestyles. And then yes, we can't help our skin gets saggy. I mean, it's just the whole hormone changes again, but we definitely can do about something about how we think about ourselves and how we treat ourselves, how we treat ourselves, right?

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passioistas Project Podcast in our interview with Heike Yates. To learn more about her, Pursue Your Spark Podcast, visit HeikeYates.com. Now here's more of our interview with Heike.

Talk about Pursue Your Spark and what spark stands for.

Heike: Pursue Your Spark! Pursue Your Spark is in simple terms, the cook, the opposite of sim your lights So pursue your spark came out of a whole bunch of reinventions of this brand. It had different names before, and none of them really grabbed me and, and expressed what I wanted to be it's that any woman can pursue any spark in their lives. Does it mean, uh, you want to get a new haircut? That's a spark. You want to try new lipstick. That's a spark. You want to empower yourself to eat better. That's igniting a spark. It's the catalyst. And they become the catalyst, something bigger. There's this gateway that they can open up with, pursue your spark, to become something bigger than themselves. Something more than they thought they could reach and something that empowers them to do better than they did before.

Passionistas: And what is the SPARK method?

Heike: Oh, this is my top secret. No, I'm just kidding. Secret SPARK method. And it is built very similar to what I just mentioned is you first, you evaluate where you are. So you start, you look at where you are, you see where, uh, where you need help with and, and, uh, where you can grow where your basis is basically, then you take your basis and then you start a plan, a thing, things like I'm a Walker. I know I can walk two miles, but I would love to do a 10 K race. That'd be like, I always dreamed about this. Okay. So you currently work walking two miles. So how this is your base. What will be the next step is to create a plan that is sensible and doable for you to get to the 10 K that we'll be planning phase number two.

And then you go into also the dream and this, in this case, it will be the dream thing. Okay. The 10 key is my stepping stone to the next thing to maybe something bigger, but it doesn't have to be. And then you're looking at what's possible and what's not possible. And that's where the roadblocks come in. The mindset like my feet hurt after three miles, this sucks. It's hot, it's raining. Um, I don't know if I can do this or I don't have good shoes. So what do I do now? And these roadblocks that sometimes are just imagined roadblocks, but they're there. And then as I say, in the end, we kick ass and we're going to follow up on the plan that we had from the get go. And so you keep evaluating each phase and you're like, okay. So here's my dream. Here's my goal.

Here's the first plan that I had. Okay. This works great. So we keep going, Oh, we'll tweak it. If it's not working great, let's get the roadblocks out of the way. So we're not thinking of things that are maybe not there, or if it's a new pair of shoes, we'd get a new pair of shoes. And then we'll pursue that goal. That spark till you get to the finish line and you go like, I'm over the finish line, whether I want it rented or anyway, but you did it. And that's a spark method. Talk about what your clients sign up for with your services and maybe how that's changing right now. So I have a brick and mortar business, which I've had for a long time. And I've pivoted these people that I've known for many, many years into an online program. And that online program is, is an, I offer this to anybody, even if you haven't been my client before one-on-one is like, I work with you over zoom or any other channel that's convenient to you.

So I can see you in person. And we're doing basically the SPARK methods to start with and determining what you need, what your goals are. And based on that, I'll train you over the internet virtually for one hour. So that's one part. I have small group training programs where you're in a small group of up to 10 people and everybody is in the small group together, and everybody does the same program. And this group also will meet online through a Facebook group. So you have connections and contacts. And I offer larger programs for individuals that are three months or 12 week programs that are geared exactly to who you are, where you are, where you want to go in a three months span. So these are those programs. I am about to start the 4-Week Lean program. And that is a 28 day program for women over 50.

They want to boost their metabolism, learn about intermittent fasting. And now I'm a huge fan of intermittent fasting, and they want to take their life now and say, okay, I want to learn how to exercise and includes exercises for the whole 28 days, strategies, habit, building strategies, and help somebody to kickstart or tune up their fitness lifestyle. So if you, if you're the person who knows everything about intermittent fasting, that's not the program for you. If you're the person who wants really hard, tough busting exercises, this is not the program for you. And so these are the programs that I offer. And then I have a couple of free guides that I offer the five, four 50 lifestyle, again, a tuneup guide that you can get for free on my website and the kick quick start to intermittent fasting. That's also a free guide for anybody that wants it.

So I'm thinking, keeping busy over the Corona virus, building programs, and, and finally, in a good sense, I had time to sit down and create this content, shoot the videos for the programs, write out everything and put it together. And you know, everything that goes with it, the behind the scenes stuff that nobody sees. And they're like, Whoa, look at this. And you're like, yeah, this took me a year to do. And I mean, I can't complain. I'm sorry about the situation. And I do miss my friends. Then I do miss seeing my in-person clients. But on the other hand, I'm meeting some amazing women online that I can connect through this way and can offer services that I know make a difference.

Passionistas: And you also have a podcast which is called Pursue Your Spark. So tell everybody about that and what you hope women take away from that podcast.

Heike: My podcast started out solely me and, uh, I'm talking about fitness, nutrition, mindset strategies for the woman in midlife and specifically the women over 50. And I coach everything through my podcasts that you may get in block form, or you can, um, get on my posts on social media. But my, my podcast is really a free source for you to learn more about intermittent fasting, more how to exercise, um, how to deal with mindset strategies when it comes to overeating or whatever the components are that we're talking about. But since I'm a very social person, I'm inviting guests as well. And my guests come from all walks of life. What they all have in common is that they overcome or overcame an obstacle. You find anybody. And this week's guest is, um, somebody who's battled breast cancer for a long time with a double mastectomy. So she will be on this week's podcast

Or you can find somebody that is a much more crazy runner than I am, who ran into Infinitus is a 888 mile, 888 kilometer race self-supported. So you can find her, or you can find somebody like my friend, John Dre, who is a, what used to be a jet fighter pilot, who had to battle the health system too, which is where she is now alive, because she said, if I didn't fight the healthcare system, I would be dead today. So what do these women have in common? They overcame obstacles. They empower you the listener to take action. And you may find yourself in those stories and saying, man, yeah, I know about this one that had Lyme disease. Oh, I can talk to her and ask her questions or the bladder. I have problems with my bladder. Oh, I can reach out to hike this podcast and talk to the person that she had as a guest.

And these stories help us not only be empowered and learn about each other, but also know that we're not alone, that you're not alone in your struggles that somebody else somewhere in the world has probably the same or a similar problem. And we'd love to connect with you, or we'd love to love for you to listen to their story and to help you out with what they experienced and what they've learned along the way. And that's my goal of the podcast. I love my podcast.

Passionistas: What do you think is your best habit?

Heike: Best habit is I'm very disciplined. I am extremely disciplined. If I set a goal, I'm going to go and do it. And, or oftentimes get myself in situations where I said, this sounds like a great idea, like becoming a bodybuilder and I'm at it. And I'm learning everything. And I'm very disciplined when it comes to the practice, to the, doing it, to the executing it. And just a little side note for the bodybuilding story, my girlfriend who got me into all of this, she did not compete she's I just couldn't get it together. I come and cheer for you. And I was like, Oh, I thought we were doing it together. I think that's my I'm very disciplined.

Passionistas: What's the most rewarding part of your career?

Heike: I get to kick everybody's buttski. I wouldn't say that. Um, but, well, it's true though. No, I get to help people be healthier. You know, my clients in my career have ranged from kids age eight to now my oldest client is 94 94. And when you look at the range of needs, these different people in different age groups in brackets have, it's just you, you I'm like your cheerleader by the side. Oh, you get to stand up from the toilet. Yes. Winner. Or you can run a race. Me and yes, I want to see the metal. It's just helping people to move forward with their health and not get stuck in what is so prevalent in the U S is heart disease overweight. I'm like, I'm here for you and you don't have to be definitely not perfect. And you don't, I will always cheer you on not no matter how little your accomplishments are.

Cause it doesn't matter to me what Susie down the road does or how wonderful she did, whatever it matters to me, what you do and what you can accomplish every day. And when somebody comes in and says, hi guys, I've been really bad. I'm like, what do you mean by that? Well, I didn't eat a clean diet. I may have had a muffin or whatever this week. And I didn't stick to the plan that I was thought I was going to do. And I'm like, well, if you only had one muffin, that's a win right there. You didn't need the whole box.

Passionistas: Do you have a dream for women? And what is it?

Heike: Not really a dream. But I would say, I like to think of it as a more of a reality that we need to step up to the plate without fear too much. And right now in the past, in the past with the me too movement is like, we're sitting there hoping that somebody will do something for us to fix something or to make it better. And instead we need to step up to the plate with a clear message of what we want and how we want things to be and what we're not standing for. That's what I, my, my vision is. Um, and I hope I raised my daughter this cause she doesn't stand for any of that. She is like, Nope, she's after it. But I think instead I like rather than a dream, it's, it's really a reality cause we're right in the midst of it.

And there's no better time for women to step up to the plate then right now to speak their mind. But clearly and succinctly. And um, one of my podcast guests has actually helped me through her book to do that in a, in a part of my life that, um, and it was about asking for something and not instead of saying yes, I wish could you potentially, and maybe wouldn't it be nice if to say, no, I deserve this because I do this and this, and here is why I deserve this thing or this raise or whatever it may be that we really step up and not be afraid of the consequences that the reaction is from the other person, which I think a lot of women still, and I'm not excluding myself. They're either grapple with that. I'd rather sometimes not say something because I'm thinking, Hmm, what are they going to come back with? And this is something we need to move forward.

Passionistas: What do you think is your secret to a rewarding life?

Heike: Happiness. It's all there is to it. If you're not happy from the inside out, then your life could be as beautiful as shiny inexpensive and whatever. But if you're not happy, happiness to me is everything. And it's like, what I tell my kids is like, are you healthy? Are you fine? Yes. But then my next question is, are you happy? Because if you're not happy, then to me, at least nothing really matters.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Heike Yates. To learn more about pursue your spark visit HeikeYatescom.

We're currently taking orders for the fall Passionistas Project Pack, subscription box. Our theme this quarter is Passionistas Persist and the box is full of products from women owned businesses. We hope these items inspire you to stand in your power, roar at the top of your lungs, take care of yourself and remember to laugh because without joy, what's it all for. If we all support one another and stay persistent, great things will happen.

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Until next time stay well and stay passionate

Jennifer Reitman Covers Cultural Issues Through the Lens of Women

Jennifer Reitman is the founder and publisher of DAME Magazine, a digital news site covering the issues of our time through the lens of women. DAME provides critical context around the political, cultural and societal issues of our time. Independent, women-owned and women edited, DAME breaks through conventional narratives to deliver the insight readers need to understand today’s complex cultural landscape.

More about DAME Magazine.

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 Jennifer Reitman, the founder and publisher of DAME magazine. DAME provides critical context around the political, cultural and societal issues of our time. Independent women-owned and women-edited DAME breaks through conventional narratives to deliver the insight readers need to understand today's complex cultural landscape.

So please welcome to the show. Jennifer Reitman.

Jennifer Reitman: So happy to be here. Thank you

Passionistas: Really looking forward to talking to you. What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Jennifer: It's clearly about driving equality in the media landscape. We live in a world where women are just over 51% of the population, but we own only 11% of all media. And this is coupled with holding only 37% of all media and journalism jobs. And I always say that that when you look at those statistics, what that tells us is that the stories that are being told the framing of the news is an, is an incomplete picture because those voices aren't equally reflected.

Passionistas: How do you make sure those voices are reflected through the magazine?

Jennifer: First and foremost, of course, is that we're a hundred percent women edited. And our stories themselves, the news we cover is bylined, I would say 99.9, 9% by women. Occasionally we'll publish a story by a man, but nearly everything is bylined by women. And that, that matters. And it matters because the language we use, the framing, the context and the analysis, when you're looking to create equality in media, you have to have that reflected in the stories and in the coverage.

Passionistas: Tell us your journey from before you started DAME. What happened leading up to that?

Jennifer: I've worked in the publishing industry for very long time, the reason I came out to California in fact, was to work for a small, independent print publishing company. And one of those titles happened to be what at the time was called a laddy book at guys magazine, sort of in the Maxim, FHM, Esquire category. And what I, what I found working there was here was this, this magazine that was targeting young men and it was humorous and irreverent, but it had great long form reporting. And it didn't talk about men's bodies. It didn't talk about how to be a better lover. It didn't talk about rooming tips. Maybe it did a little bit, but it, but it wasn't front and central and, and sort of the, the germ of, uh, of the idea for DAME really started then that I thought, gosh, women's publishing just doesn't really look like me or my friends or the, or really reflect the kinds of conversations that I was having.

And so the idea primarily started then, and this was a, you know, the nineties, but I had always been influenced by magazines because my father, funny enough work to publishers clearing house when I was a young girl. And so we had stacks and stacks and stacks of magazines in the house all the time. And I realized sort of the power of the written word, probably as young as, you know, seven, six or seven. And so it's always been in my bones, but I think that the idea that there was a place in the market for women's media, that wasn't about fashion beauty or sex tips really started the nineties. And, and as we got into the, you know, the two thousands, I started to sit down and really write down the business plan for the brand.

Passionistas: Having worked at magazines, how did you figure out how to actually launch your own?

Jennifer: Um, gosh, I don't even know if I figured it out yet today when I first came up with the idea for DAME, the plan was to be in print, frankly, because it was 2008 when the original idea came to me. And so I, I just took years of having worked in the business in terms of what does the right advertising model look like? What is the right circulation model look like? And who are the people that I know can carry forward from an editorial standpoint, the vision that I have for the brand, but that's evolved, you know, like any smart business. And I, I hope that we're a smart business. We change we've pivoted many times because people change culture changes, society changes it's happening right now, as we're on this call. So the original vision was, I think cheekier more irreverent, more in the vein of Jessica Bell perhaps, or even Jane the original vision was not something so focused on social justice, but, but we had to evolve over the years. And that that pivot really came, I would say in 2012 backstory, we had to close down for a little while when I originally launched because of the great recession, like so many media outlets. And so Dame really came back in, in full effect in 2014, but, but we started testing a new model in 2012. So the business evolved over the years, but, but the original concept, you know, was really just best practices in terms of publishing publishing and reaching an audience. And that's, that's grown over the years.

Passionistas: Talk a little bit about the current state of media and how it's changed and some of the challenges that you're facing.

Jennifer: Is this the part of the interview where I start to cry? Well, the current and the, you know, the current state of our union, as we say, the current state of, of, of media is dire it's frankly dire, but it's not, it's not as a result of, of this administration necessarily. That's been amplified with his enemy of the people language. My beloved industry has been suffering for a very long, long time. And so I worry tremendously about it because there are lots of sayings about journalism, right? The first drafted history, but really you don't have democracy without a free and fair press. And while on the business side of things, there's been a erosion for years and years in terms of what works from a business model and how to survive financially, what brings me great, great concern is the erosion in trust of, of the institution of press today.

And so on the business side, I think you'll see things, you know, things will change and models will pivot and tech, new technologies will come out and, and those who survive, and those who don't. But so I'm a little less concerned about that and tremendously concerned around how do we, as an industry, how do we encourage people and get them to understand the role of, of our business in their daily lives? And this is particularly important at the local level. DAME is obviously not a local news outlet. Many of our stories are pegged to local news issues, but, but we don't, we're not a beat outlet and say, you know, Bennis, California, we are the guard rails in so many ways. You know, we, we are the ones who, who, it's not about the big stories that you read in the New York times or Washington post, as important as those are.

We're the ones who talk about embezzlement at your city council level, right? Or, you know, school, board issues, pothole fixes, and, and those that's important as essential as, as anything else that goes on at the federal level. And so when you see such a distrust of the media and such disdain for the reporters who are in large part, not all of them, but in large part, the majority are here to help you. The citizen. It really is heartbreaking as someone who works in this business, we're here to protect you from bad people and bad things through information, through context and through analysis. And, and so my, my short, but very long answer is that is what worries me the most.

Passionistas: So how do you combat that?

Jennifer: Transparency. The very quick and dirty answer is you change administrations first and you get a government in place that actually believes in the first amendment believes in freedom of the press and, and does things to, to support it. But, but we all know that already at the, at the business level, at the, at the platform, at the outlet level, it's about transparency in so many ways. It's about, it's about putting faces to your writers and editors. It's about showing your work. There's a little inside baseball thing. When you're editing a story. A lot of times you'll send a note back to a writer saying, show, don't tell meaning, where are the sources on this? Explain, you know, explain this in detail. Don't just tell us what, what you see, give, give examples to demonstrate why this is such, you know, such and such.

And, and I think we have to, we have to do a better job as a, as an industry at large at showing what is fact checking me, right? What does, when we call sources, what's the process of that? Why did this story get picked and not another story? There's lots of work around that in terms of, of, you know, solutions, journalism as well, not just sort of hyperbolic headlines, but actually really tying in what's happening in certain communities. And who's actually doing the work to either fix or solve or change that brings about transparency as well because it's public interest reporting in large part. And so I think there are solutions that technology can support right there, little things that sites can do many sites already do it. Dame is small. So we don't often have the opportunity to do some of those things on the fly. But I also think that there, there are some bad habits that the Beltway press has, right? And we know them. We can, we complain about them. Both side is forced neutrality and objectivity. And we live in an era with those things that may be 50 years ago worked. They don't so much anymore in the absence of a fairness doctrine. And the reality is that journalism is not AI. There is a person who writes every story and to one, you know, assume or demand that there is not some kind of biases to fool ourselves in some part, all of us readers and, and outlets. And so I think there's a little bit of growing up that the established sort of benchmark media needs to do in terms of the way that they handle headlines, the way that they tap dance around certain words like why you know, we've spent three and a half years watching the biggest newspapers in the country avoid the word lie.

When, when everyone knows that it's a law, and these are, these are habits that wall, they may have served a purpose in the past. I think it's time to dispense with some of this stuff, but, but that's, you know, that's me small publisher who could make change quickly. Right? I don't have a board of directors. I don't have shareholders. I don't have stock. I'm not on the, we're not a publicly traded company. And so we have a lot of control and we also don't position as a breaking news outlet, right. We're, we're for all intents and purposes and editorial site with long form reporting. So we can take a position, we can take a saw and we don't shy away from it. And I think that's, you know, in part our special sauce,

Passionistas: And there's no umbrella organization saying these are the rules of being a journalist of being a media outlet. Right? So how does that change?

Jennifer:  And we don't really want that, right?

Passionstas: Right.

Jennifer:  You know, there's lots of discussion that goes on, you know, should, should, should all media be publicly funded, right? You hear these conversations should the government funded. So when you don't have, uh, you know, uh, uh, there are plenty of bodies that, that work to unify standards of course. Right. And there are tons of nonprofit organizations that are supportive of, of different, of different media outlets. Uh, but you're right. There is no overarching, this is the way this industry is supposed to, you know, that's why I brought up the fairness doctrine. And so, yeah, and it's also democratized. I mean, I'm not young, right? And so I came up a Vinny long before there was the internet and long before, you know, publishing was print or a newspaper or union magazines and newspaper. And so, you know, anybody can say anything now on the internet and lots of people who are not media or journalists, or refer to themselves as that.

And, and you run into a slippery slope because who gets to say what you can't, you can't tell people they can't publish what they want to publish. Of course they can. The issue becomes who do you platform for me, that's the issue, right? For established media, whose voices are you platforming? So anybody can say anything on their own. I, I fully stand behind that. What I, what I don't stand behind is for those, you know, benchmark outlets to give voice and platform to everybody because not everybody deserves to be heard. They deserve to write what they want, but they don't deserve necessarily to be heard. And that can be controversial. I don't know, but that's my personal opinion.

Passionistas: You're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Jennifer Reitman to subscribe to DAME visit DAMEmagazine.com. And while you're there, be sure to check out their comprehensive guide, to voting in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. You can see the voter registration deadlines for vote by mail and in person options, get details on early voting and requesting an absentee ballot, learn about your voting rights and get your polling location. Now here's more of our interview with Jennifer.

Passionistas: You mentioned that 99.9% of the by-lines are by women and that women speak differently. So to you, what’s the voice of a DAME journalist and how has it,

Jennifer: There's actually a few things that are really consistent across the board without all of our contributors and writers. The first thing is they're unabashed, right? They are confirmed in their thoughts and not in, not in an obstinate way and not in a, a sort of defiantly ignorant way, but they are subject matter experts. Most of our writers are coming from a place of lived experience. And so the voice, one aspect of their voice is just this, this core authenticity. They know what they speak of, and that, and that really does come through. I think the other thing that's been that I notice in all of our features, whether it's reported, whether it's a first person, op ed, is the thoughtfulness and the care in the voice and the approach to the topic that they're writing on, we inherently are so blessed that the people who write for us and agreed to write for us, or are just good, decent kind people.

And that, that part of them comes through in their voice. Without question. I think that the, the other thing that's consistent for us is there is, you know, a bit of provocative tour in, in almost everything we write. And I think in some ways you could attribute that to the subject matter, but I think it's also, you know, I think it's also who, who feels that we're the right platform for us consistently. Some of the feedback we get from writers is their appreciation of the freedom we give them to be themselves. And, and, you know, I look at that again is the authenticity, but it's also, we allow them to push their own personal boundaries in their writing, which in turn, our hope is that pushes the boundaries for anybody reading those features, because that's what we want to do. We want to, you know, we want to stimulate dialogue and in turn, hopefully change an action

Passionistas: In the last few years there have been several key turning points. It seems like in the women's movement on the, you know, the me too movement, the time's up movement, and even the women's March that started in 2017, have those things changed what you guys have been writing about as well?

Jennifer: I don't think it's changed. I think it's funny you point that out. I was going through for our newsletter today. I was pulling a selection of links of some of the most read pieces we've done on race. And it's interesting when it comes to sort of feminism, some of the stuff we've done on, on feminism, I see an evolution around that. Not necessarily on the site, but just out there, right. This sort of, you know, I think the acknowledgement that, that feminism for me, but not for me, has really impacted women of color and black women and, and the commodification of, of white feminism in so many ways and sort of the discounting of the true issues. But what I found slightly disheartening, frankly, is as I went through the archives, the same issues that we're talking about today in terms of, of equality and racial justice, we've been publishing forever and, and amongst many other outlets, right?

We're, we're certainly not, you know, exclusive in that category, but, but, you know, I was particularly struck reading some of them that I, there were several pieces that I realized that we could have published yesterday, literally. And they would have been as timely and as, as newsy as they were in 2014. And I think that that speaks volumes and not in a, not in a great way. And so I think that that what has changed is, you know, on the positive side is no shortage of things to talk about. Whereas we've been covering these topics for a long time, because this is what we do, but I look at it in context of some, you know, newer entrance into the, into the industry, or perhaps some outlets that have been around for a long time, I'm heartened by the fact that their pages include these topics.

Well, as well, because they're nobody shouldn't be considering publishing on all of this. Right? So the, you know, everyone needs to have social justice and center on their site, racial justice, front and center on their site or in their pages, paper pages. But I don't, I don't think we've evolved. I, I think we've done this for so long that that it's simply we've gone where the narrative goes. Right. And so if the, if the debate in 2015 was about, you know, is it finally time for a woman president the question today? You know, maybe why wasn't it. So it's, it's just, it's more about, um, how the, how our culture changes. And I think our editorial reflects that more than anything else.

Passionistas: What is DAME’s plan moving into this intensified election period? How do you guys handle election coverage?

Jennifer: It's interesting. There's a few things that we'll be launching that are, will be a little different for us. In fact, we're going to be launching a lot more coverage of disinformation and that's because I personally have such an incredible fear of the impact, you know, with the hindsight of 2016, I feel a responsibility to do a lot more coverage on what just info ops are out there to debunk it as much as possible, because that really is a service to the electorate, right? We, we have to inform, we've always done a ton of election coverage, right? We, we, you know, we did ongoing series leading up to 2060, obviously in 2016, we did a ton, but, but leading up to the 2018, we covered all of the congressional women candidates running, leading up to the presidential primary. We had a series running on all of the, a weekly series on all the women candidates running for president.

And so we'll, we'll stay there in terms of Senate races. Now we've moved onto the Senate races. So I don't think we'll change much of our election coverage in terms of actual races. That is not our core expertise. We're not DC beltway reporters in that way. We'll probably stick with what we're best at, which are the issues that are relevant to any race. So we've got a lot more disinfect work to do, and we'll probably do far more explainers around the core issues that will be on the ballot, basically what we're voting for when we vote in 2016, not so much about the candidacy, but, but more about, you know, all of the things that go into the federal government. We did a piece that was sort of overarching, right? What we're voting for in that way, but we'll drill down into each of those issues like the judiciary or, or the, you know, federal agencies. So I think those will be two, two big things that we'll focus on is leading it

Passionistas: As we are recording this. Now the country is seeing an uprising like we haven't seen in decades, and there's a lot of protesting around the horrible death of George Floyd. And in fact, DAME magazine sent out an email this morning about elevating the Black voice. So what kind of steps are you taking in that regard?

Jennifer: Well, we've always taken that step. I have to say that, that we're very conscious as a white owned, uh, I'm white and I endeavor whenever possible to be publishing black women, but we need to do more, you know, we need to do more and I need to spend some time making sure that there's parody within our own digital pages. I think one of the things that I've consciously tried to make an effort around is to not relegate our black journalists, to just writing about race, right. That, you know, I want black women to be writing on the economy and on, you know, technology and cultural issues. To me that that's one of the best things I can do to continue to expand outside of, of sort of saying, well, the only thing you can write about, and we do that in all of our categories, frankly, but, but I think it's essential for me to, to every single day be conscious about that. That for every story we assign that I really am not just talking the talk and making sure that that if there is, is a black writer who, who is an expert in tech or an expert in, in economic issues or the law that, that we're publishing that voice, it's essential, but, but we've published, you know, so much over the years. And I think I'm, I'm proud of the work we done. I just know that we can do better because everybody can do better. I don't care what business you're in beyond amazing diverse voices.

Passionistas: What's your overall vision for DAME in the years ahead?

Jennifer: Stay in business in a, in a crazy media world. You know, it's funny, people always ask me, like, they asked me this question and consistently, and as much as I joke, stay in business, it really is stay in business. And I don't mean that from a sort of like, Oh, you know, the industry is, is, is embattled. And it's so hard to keep publishing. I made it in the context of women only own 11% of all media. And as I see many outlets that are either owned or run by women fall by the wayside and go out of business. I, I worry about that. I feel, I feel a deep responsibility to keep going every single day. And, and so my vision is to, you know, is to keep doing what we do to try to do it better every day than we did the day before, to always ensure that if our mission is to elevate and amplify marginalized voices, that I, that I remind myself to do that.

And that as stories come in, that the language we use is careful and considered for, for all groups. But I don't have ambitions to be, you know, some trillion dollar media company. That's not my goal. My goal is to, is for us to, you know, survive and thrive, but in a meaningful way, big isn't always better. And, you know, being a little bit ears to the ground and, and, and boots on the ground, I think affords us a, an intimacy with our readers that a lot of other outlets don't have. So, so my vision is to, is to keep us going, to keep us going in a direction that improves the work that we do every day and in turn, hopefully improves our reader's lives.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Jennifer Reitman. To subscribe to DAME magazine and get lots of voting information for your state visit DAMEmagazine.com.

We're currently taking orders for the fall Passionistas Project Pack subscription box. Our theme, this quarter is Passionistas Persist, and the box is full of products from women-­owned businesses. We hope these items inspire you to stand in your power verse at the top of your lungs, take care of yourself and remember to laugh because without joy, what's it all for. If we support one another and stay persistent, great things will happen. You can find out how to subscribe to the box at the ThePassionistasProject.com.

And while you're there, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter to find out more about our upcoming Passionate Project Women's Equality monthly events, and subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

Until next time stay well and stay passionate.

Charlotte Harrington Looks at the World Through a Fresh Lens

Charlotte Harrington is the host of The Fresh Lens Podcast and our niece. At just 12 years of age, Charlotte is a social justice advocate whose passion for women's rights and support of the Black Lives Matter movement, among other issues, has inspired her to launch her own weekly show to tackle the tough issues.

Listen to The Fresh Lens Podcast.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Kat Calvin Helps Spread the Vote

Kat Calvin is the Founder and Executive Director of Spread The Vote and the Co-Founder and CEO of Project ID. A lawyer, activist and social entrepreneur, Kat has built a national organization that helps Americans obtain the ID they need for jobs, housing and life, and that also allows them to go to the polls. Kat is also the co-host, along with Andrea Hailey of Vote! The Podcast.

 

More info about Kat.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And 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 Summit. The three-day virtual 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. We'll also be presenting the first annual Passionistas Persist Humanitarian Award to a very special honoree. The weekend is centered around the theme of women's equality and intersectional feminism from a range of perspectives, including racial equality, LGBTQ plus 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 Kat Calvin, the Founder and Executive Director of Spread the Vote and the Co-Founder and CEO of Project ID. A lawyer activist and social entrepreneur, Kat has built a national organization that helps Americans obtain the ID they need for jobs, housing and life. And that also allows them to go to the polls. Kat is an advisor to Ragtag and DemCast and sits on the boards of the California Women's List. Kat is one of the Time magazines 16 people in groups fighting for a more equal America, 2018 Fast Company 100 most creative people in business and has been a Business Insider 30 under 30, Grios 100 and more. So please welcome to the show. Kat Calvin.

Kat: Thanks so much for having me.

Passionistas: Thanks for joining us today. What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Kat: That's an incredibly difficult question, probably movies. I love movies more than anything. That's probably my greatest passion in life. What is it about movies that mean so much to you? I came up in theater and I love storytelling and I love accessible storytelling. And so I sort of studied a lot of theater and sort of the difference between the way theater was during the times of Eschalas and Shakespeare, what it was for the commons. And now it's less successful, but TV and film and took lately. Now that we have streaming, et cetera, it's accessible for everyone. And I think that great storytelling that everyone can see is really amazing. And I come from a big movie loving family. So it's most of my early memories have to do with like Butch and Sundance or Hitchcock or something.

It's pretty much what I talk about all the time. If I'm not talking about IDs or voting, most people like you are the wrong business. If I had to choose one great passion, I'm sure the answers should be something related to what I do for a living, but it's actually movies, which is no secret to anybody.

Passionistas: So let's talk a little bit about what you do for a living. So talk about Spread the Vote. What inspired you to start it.

Kat: At Spread the Vote we help people get government issued photo ID, which they use for jobs, housing, to get food at many food banks to sleep in many shelters, etc, everything you need an ID for in life. And then in many States across the country, they also use them to vote. So we help folks get all of the documents required. Birth certificates, proofs of residency insurance, not insurance identity, etc. We pay for everything. We provide transportation advocacy at the DMV and government offices and do whatever it takes to get an ID of their hands. This is all pre apocalypse, of course. And then when an election comes around, we make sure they're all registered to vote. And then we do a lot of voter education. 77% of our clients have never voted before. So we do a lot of helping just walk folks through the process and what's going to be on the ballot and how to vote, et cetera. And then we take them to the polls. So that's sort of the process A to Z. I started it after the 2016 elections. Actually we're about to have our third birthday. I started December of 16, but we count our official birthday is May 6, which is when we launched our first chapter. And so now we're in 12 States. We're working hard, getting ideas everyday until like a month ago. And now we're all just like waiting for the zombies to come.

Passionistas: Don't watch any more zombie movies. That's not going to help you right now. It's just going to make it harder. That is an incredible mission to be on. Was there an inciting incident that inspired you to do this, or was it just kind of something that had been on your mind?

Kat: I would say the election in November of 2016 was the inciting incident. I had studied voting rights in law school and some done a lot of work around it and sort of the voting rights act, but we still had one at that time. I didn't really feel that it was a really pressing me to like go into voting rights work. And I went into some other spaces. And then when the VRA was declined in 2013, we started to see a lot of things change about voting in America, particularly voter ID laws were being passed pretty quickly. And then the '16 elections were the first national elections where we didn't have the protections of the voting rights act and where we saw the effects of a lot of these new laws and rules. I'm including the effects of voter ID laws I'm and I had run some other organizations and I had some health issues.

I had sort of decided to retire that lasted a year, then the election happened. And so then I knew I had to sort of get started again. And there were a lot of really fantastic organizations trying to fight voter ID laws through judicial or legislative remedies, which have been less successful than would be desired, but there weren't any organizations, national organizations just getting IDs. So that sort of made sense to me as a good place to start.

Passionistas: Talk about the nuts and bolts of it. How do you go about finding the people who need these ideas and how do you help them?

Kat: Well, there are over 21 million people in the country over the age of 18 who do not have government issued photo ID. So finding people who need help getting ideas, not a challenge. We partner with a ton of organizations, uh, any type of organization that works with the same 11% of the population that we work with. Um, if you don't have an ID, then you can't get a job. I get housing, et cetera. So it's a large percentage of people who are experiencing homelessness, a lot of returning citizens, um, a lot of seniors and students with low or no incomes. Um, so we partner with shelters and food banks and prisons and jails and public defenders and schools and senior centers and just all of those types of organizations.

And we either go to them or they refer people to us, depending on the situation. You know, we work with a lot of, uh, domestic violence. I'm the shelters. And so, you know, there, we have to be specially trained and they refer people to us versus if we're going to a food bank once a week. So we really work with each community based on what works best for them. I am. And then we have our mostly volunteers. We have over 600 trained volunteers, but then we also have a few field staff who go into these spaces, um, and, and connect with the clients. Uh, we also get, you know, at this point, a lot of people who call us or email us, or fill out a form online that we have, but they all get connected with someone who then walks them through that process of helping them get those documents, paying for everything, helping them get to final records and the DMV and wherever they need to go and making sure they get the idea in their hand.

Passionistas: Why is this so important right now?

Kat: Now it's important because there are over 21 million people in this country who don't have the ID. They need to see a doctor, right? Like there are really immediate needs. You can't do anything really without an ID. And so when you think about, you know, people who need to get employed, one of the first things that happens almost every time we get someone IDs, they say, I can apply for jobs now, or we have a lot of people who get jobs. I can't start them because they don't have ID. And so, you know, you cannot escape poverty without an ID. Um, you can't get off the streets independently without an ID. And so being able to help someone get that means that they are able to, you know, pursue employment opportunities. Um, you know, a lot of cities and, and shelters have place housing placement services, but you can't get one without 90.

And I'm the reason we work with a lot of government agencies and shelters, et cetera, is because they don't have the capacity and knowledge to get ideas. So, you know, we've got people lining up around multiple city blocks to go to food banks right now, most food banks require ID. So they're necessary for life. They are, they can literally be life and death. And we've seen that more than once, but they are also a requirement to be able to change one circumstance. And then on top of that in a quite few States, you need an ID to be able to vote. And so if you don't have that identification, then you don't have the ability to exercise a basic fundamental rights.

Passionistas: This is also for us an obvious question. I mean, we need to get an ID. We need to know the real ID that's coming out. So we have to gather together our social security card and a electric bill and go to the DMV, but someone who's homeless and living on the streets, doesn't have an electric bill and doesn't maybe have access to the social security card. So how do you help them actually qualify to even get an ID?

Kat: So every state has very long lists of the types of documents that you can bring to the DMV. For most people, it's a mortgage or, or a, you know, uh, electric bill or whatever. And so those are sort of the top things on the list that most people go and get. However, there are a lot of other types of documents. And so it depends on the state and it depends on the person's situation. Um, but you know, we can frequently use a church or a shelter address, uh, to get, uh, to use for the DMV.

One great thing about voter registration is that a voter registration card counts as a proof of identity in most States. So we can use that. We have frequently had to chase down. We're constantly having to chase down records from the Department of Corrections or military records because we have a lot of veterans get IDs and they can't get the VA VA benefits without IDs, but they're veterans don't just get IDs. And so I'm depending sort of on that their background, or we, you know, track down sort of medical records or old school records or sort of whatever. So it, depending on the state and on the person situation, we go through the very long list of what documents are accepted by the DMV. And then we compare that with what the person has or what their history is. And so we figure out what it is we think we can get for them.

Passionistas: The amount of people on your team must have to be enormous. Can you talk about your team and how you've built that over the course of the last few years?

Kat: Yeah. I mean, we certainly need a ginormous team. I mean, we're lucky we have, we have a lot of really incredible volunteers and we have an online training program that they go through to get certified. I mean, I invented this certification, but I can't say, but they get trained to be able to work with our clients and get ideas. We have some field staff members in the, in some of our States who are incredible and sort of just get ideas full time, that's their job. And they do a really amazing job at that. And then we have a, you know, sort of small national team that helps with yeah, you know, our general counsel who is just constantly busy. I am, you know, and, and helping organize things. And our volunteer director, who's one person who's managing a risk, et cetera, volunteers.

We are mostly working with volunteers and mostly just working really hard to recruit and train and support our volunteers and, you know, 12 States with as many people as there are, there's always some adventure every day. There's a phone call with a new situation. Um, and so sort of dealing with all of that while also having, um, you know, we're lucky enough to have some field staff who are able to just everyday do this. We have some volunteers who've been with us since actually, since they helped us get our, the volunteers that helped us get our very first IDs in Virginia years ago are still with us and are now up to hundreds and are now probably the world's leading experts in getting ideas.

And then, you know, we have a field staff who I've gotten hundreds of ideas and I do it every day, um, et cetera. And so for the first year or a little under, if the first year I was our only employee, I sort of did everything. And then I'm just, you know, it's a nonprofit. So it's just all fundraising all the time. I was able to fundraise enough to start hiring staff and was able to bring in some great people. And then we sort of grew and built it out and sort of tried to figure out an experiment, like what makes the most sense as far as staffing and sort of just a lot of this sort of basic startup stuff of you, throw it out there, you figure it out. And I just ended up with this really great team.

Passionistas: Obviously the current state of voting rights issues is a little crazy. There's a lot going on. There's a big election coming up. So why is this issue important and why should people care about what's going on with voting rights right now?

Kat: Life is interesting right now. So there's a couple of things happening. The first is we have zero idea what life is going to look like in November. You know, hopefully I will be allowed to leave my house soon, or I might burn it down. I am, but you know, we don't know what the world is going to look like. And so a lot of us, I think most of us in this space are really trying to build out like 12 contingency plans. Everyone saw the disaster in Wisconsin, uh, forcing people to vote, uh, forcing them to vote in fewer polling places where now we, you know, they've had multiple, I think the last I saw was 19, but it's so highly contagious at that number will go up of COVID cases that are coming out of that situation.

And so everyone, I think, recognizes that regardless of what the world looks like in November and whether we're allowed back out, it's not going to be anything close to normal. We're still going to have to avoid gathering in large groups. And it's going to be very, very important to keep as many people away from the polling places as possible so that people who have to vote in person are able to. So there is a big movement right now towards vote by mail, which is fantastic. I vote by mail is by no means a panacea. It should not be the only option in any state. However, it should be part of a really great comprehensive voting package. And so the goal is to get all of the States that don't have vote by mail or easy vote by mail. A lot of States, you can do it if you are absentee with certain excuses, things like that, to open that up so that, um, anyone can vote by mail, which would significantly reduce the number of people that go to polling places and we'll have some increase on, on voter turnout as well.

So I think that's one thing that's really moving forward. The irony is that no state, well, there's a possible Kentucky exception, which I'll talk about, but the idea's not required when you vote by mail, which is ironic because the only type of voter fraud that exists in a very, very, very small percentage is by mail. However, fraud is used as the excuse to pass the ID laws of it's not. So, you know, that is one benefit to it. Kentucky just took time out of a pandemic to pass an even stricter voter ID law that they already had. And they are trying something new. They are trying to make people have to make a photocopy of their ID to send in with their vote by mail ballot, which I can't imagine standing in courts for one thing who owns a printer, nobody owns a printer.

I like the idea that this is a thing that could happen. I think it's bonkers. I might, but it is something that they're trying. So we'll see. But that is, I think that's a new thing in pretty much every other state, you don't have to show ID to vote by mail. There are other problems with vote by mail studies have shown over and over again, that people of color have their ballots thrown out at a much higher percentage than white voters. And so that is something that, you know, that's why a lot of people of color choose to vote in person, because there is no guarantee that if you vote, your ballot is ever actually going to be counted. I think that there are a lot of things that we can do to try to make that process more secure, but we're also in a global pandemic. And so for a lot of us, the choice will be vote by mail don't. I vote by mail every election because I don't believe in wearing pants when I'm voting. Like where my PJ's, I have a glass of wine. I can vote like vote pantsless. It's just, it's the only way to go.

So I think that's one big thing we're seeing. Another big thing we're seeing is trying to get young people to be poll workers, poll workers are traditionally heavily elderly ladies. My mother is always a poll worker. My mother is always one of the youngest people there and there, there are these wonderful, amazing, dedicated women who do this. And, and you know, a lot of men, there's a lot of older ladies and it is poor work hard. It's a miserable job. I always have to help my mother clean up and set up. And it's a very difficult thing that I think they go very under appreciated. But right now the exact population who we really need to stay inside and be protected is the population that usually works the polls.

And so there are now some efforts being made to really try to get younger people, to be trained, to work the polls. In many States, you get paid some amount of money in order to do it. You know, it's an important service and we really need a different demographic to come out and choose to do that. So there's an effort to recruit folks to do more of that. So I think that, that everyone is sort of trying to figure out there's also, this has really changed the way we do geo TV. I mean, normally, you know, normally my organization would be out getting IDs right now as I speak and we're not, I am. And so we're having to change the way we work and do work virtually and, you know, do more things if state agencies, you know, a jail that we're working with got 27 IDs last week because they can still do that. And so we're trying to do as much work as we can in the ways that we can.

This is right now at the time when voting rights organizations would be out talking to communities of color, low income communities and starting to, you know, not even starting, really being in the middle of the process of talking to people about voting because the get out the vote process is a very long process. It's not something you can just do an October. Um, and there are a lot of communities that don't have access to the internet or to phone. And so we, there's, it's a difficult thing to do right now. So everyone's trying to adapt and trying to figure out, okay, if we can all leave our houses in August, then that gives us, you know, two and a half months maybe to be able to like, get back on the streets and work. And what does that look like? So there are some efforts being made. There's also just a lot of contingency planning and there's some just sort of like, okay, well, we're going to do what we can now have been, wait and see what happens because we don't know what the world's going to look like in November,

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kat Calvin. We're excited to announce the Kat will be moderating the panel "How far have we come in a 100 years? Making sure all women can vote" on Saturday, August 22nd during the Passionistas Project Women's Equality Summit. To register for free for the online event visit ThePassionistasProject.com. Visit, SpreadTheVote.org and ProjectID.org to learn more about the work Kat is doing. And be sure to tune in, to Vote! The Podcast with her cohost, Andrea Hayley, available wherever you get your podcasts. Now here's more of our interview with Kat.

So during these crazy times, what can the average person do to help you and your organization? And also just in terms of keeping focused on the election I had, what can we do do to help?

Kat: So you can go to SpreadTheVote.org/volunteer. Luckily all of our training is already online. So you can I'm if you live in one of our 12 States, which you can find on our website, you can get trained. We're going to have, we also already do all of our volunteer summits virtually, and we had one planned for this summer. So I, we are working very hard to build an even bigger volunteer army so that the day that we can get back on the streets, we can go out in full force and try to make up for some lost time. I also recommend, you know, I, I am, I am always going to, uh, preach in favor of local elections and say, stop paying attention to the iron throne. It really doesn't matter all that much local elections matter and state elections matter. And Congress matters and candidates are working very hard to make sure that there are virtual conflicts come up with virtual ways to campaign.

And, you know, we had some already text making and phone banking and things like that. They're coming up with creative ways, find some local candidates who you care about, like, who is your Senator? Who is your con your representative in Congress? Who are your state legislative representatives and work on supporting them and helping to get out the vote and particularly looking at and press them on, how are they working to reach communities of color and low income communities that they traditionally would either be reaching out to in person or frankly, most don't really pay attention to even when they should be, because they really need to be thinking about what that looks like, and they really need support. And I think there are a lot of people who think that they can't support candidates right now because they can't like go knock on doors or they can't have a texting party and you still can't. So that's really critical.

And then, you know, I always point people towards Indivisible, which is a fantastic organization, which has a lot of local. I think they have at least two chapters in every district in the country. It doesn't say please, working on finding really innovative and great ways for people to get involved, whether it's virtual, I now, or in person later. Everyone right now is trying very hard to figure out what to do and, and, you know, sort of switch methods as much as possible. And we really need people to help get involved, whether it's doing a lot right now, or whether it's prepping right now to be able to do a lot, the second we can get back on the ground.

Passionistas: Is there a particular trait that you think has helped you succeed?

Kat: Well, I mean, I guess, I mean, I could say perseverance is such a cliche, but it's true. I don't think you can't be a successful entrepreneur without it are probably successful. Anything else, but I've only ever been a successful entrepreneur, perseverance, like just knowing, all right, I'm doing this thing. It's important. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to fail like 8,000 times and yeah, but that's fine. Like I'm gonna make it work, I think is really important. And so whether that's perseverance or a little bit of grit or both I think is, is really key because you will hit so many roadblocks and have so many tragedies and you know, like I, if I could burn just all of last year to the ground, I would, I am. And like, you just have to really just keep getting up every day,

“Frozen 2,” first of all, if you haven't watched Frozen 2,” turn this off, watch “Frozen 2” come back and finish this. It's incredible. It's not Disney+, which is the greatest thing to happen to 2020, which is a low bar, but still, but the best song in “Frozen 2,” it's "Into the Unknown." Sorry, I'll say it's actually "The Next Right Thing." And it is a sign. As soon as I heard it, I was like, “Oh my God, this is my life.” Because it's all about how, when everything is terrible, you just have to take one more step. If you just have to think, what is the next thing I'm supposed to do? And sometimes that's just like, get out of bed can be really hard. And that's when you are an entrepreneur, when you're trying to do something new or something no one's ever done before, it's going to be really difficult.

And you're going to have a lot of people tell you all of the reasons that you are an idiot and a failure, and this will never work. And you're a terrible person and you're wasting time or whatever. And, you know, things will get really hard. And if you can just do next right thing, just take the next steps. Send the next email. Send the next, you know, fundraising letter or whatever like that actually does get you through. Cause then you look back, if you did 10 things and now you're, you're at a better place. Um, and that, that I think is probably the biggest key to my like still being alive and still running this thing.

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

Kat: And I think it's the other side of that. I was very afraid to go into this year because last year was so terrible. And then I was talking to someone and they were like, yeah, but you survived last year and you're here. And I was like, Oh, actually, that's true. If I survived that, I stupidly that I could survive anything, not knowing the apocalypse. I may not survive being stuck in my house for the rest of my life. But I'm, you know, I think that it's the constant lesson and this has been a big lesson just of my entire life. And like the older I get, the more that I learned this is like, things seem so terrible when you're on one side of it, particularly when you're young, like when I was in my teens and twenties, like one bad thing would happen and I thought it was the end of the world.

But then the older you get, you realize, Oh, actually I survived that. And I forgot about it. That thing that I thought was going to kill me six months ago, I don't even remember anymore. I am another thing I was obsessing about for weeks can't even remember that person's name. And so I think that, you know, and then the older you get and the more you do and the bigger risks you take and the more successful you are, the crashes are harder and they're still very frequent, but you get through them more quickly and more easily because you know, I'm going to get through this. I survived that last thing I can survive this. It's okay if I'm super obsessing about this today, because in three days, I know I won't be, you just have that perspective, which you can only get through just living and just failing and just trying things failing again.

It's like, you know, I, I love to run and workout and every run, well, not everyone is easier, but like six months, you know, I can do a run and, you know, like the 10 miles is way easier than I can think back, like, Oh my God, six months ago, like eight was really hard, you know? And it's the same thing with life experience. And I think that that makes you more willing to try big things. I'm and it also, it makes the inevitable failures a little easier because you know, you're going to get through it. You have before.

Passionistas: So what's the most rewarding part of your career?

Kat: Oh, the people who, uh, who we have good IDs and, you know, we get just every day, there's, you know, there's so many stories that come in of peoples whose lives have changed and people who didn't have IDs for sometimes six months sometimes, you know, I think the person who we helped get an ID who didn't have one the longest was 40 years and everything in between. And just knowing that every single day we're able to help someone get the thing that they need to change their lives, that they couldn't get on their own. And that was the big barrier between them living the lives that they, they want to live, that they hope to live, um, and stuck in the same place. So just getting to do that every day and getting to do that with a really amazing group of people, uh, is, is completely rewarding.

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

Kat: Oh, definitely this, I quit my job and drove my car across the country with some money we raised on, uh, like me have some volunteers raised with a little crowdfunding campaign and was like, I'll just start a nonprofit if it works out. And I'll put all of this on my Amex and figure out how to pay it off later. Um, like that was, was, you know, I've taken a little risks, I've started other things, but this was by far the biggest risk. And I mean, I'm gonna knock on all the words so far has paid off. Like even, even if disaster strikes and we entered the greatest depression and you know, I have to shut all the doors and move under a bridge. I, you know, there are thousands and thousands of people who have IDs now whose lives were changed because of the work we did. And so that will always stand. So no matter what happens in the future, it is 100% worth everything had to go through because, you know, there's that person whose life was changed because of this.

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

Kat: Don't go to law school. I could go back. I don't go to law school. Don't do anything that would have you acquire student loans. I, you don't need to go to that incredibly expensive school, go to the great, fantastic state school, state school that will either be less expensive or give you a full ride. So that's my first thing. Like student loans will kill you and it makes it much more difficult to be an entrepreneur. Sure. Also, I know there's a big trend towards trend. I mean, at this point, it's as old as I am, but you know, like being very young and starting a thing, but then there's a reason that we so often see those companies either have horrifically bad managers who torture their staffs or they're running Ponzi schemes, or they're feeling an ethic ways or, you know, going to prison. Sometimes I, you know, there is real value in learning from people who've been there before you, I learned, well, I have had some horrible jobs at places that people think are really great and are actually like insidious hell holes.

And I learned a lot there. And a lot of what I do is like things that I learned not to do and those corporations or those large nonprofits or whatever, but you just, you get so much experience everything that I am using that I used to build, Spread the Vote are lessons that I learned and things I learned how to do, or at least learned the basics of from previous jobs. And I think it's so important. And also, you know, I try to listen and learn from people who are older than me, as much as possible if I'm talking to an older person and they start a story with "during the war," like my whole day is canceled. I am staying there. I will keep buying these during the war. That is literally, I live for that. I've heard great stories from old men at bars about like stuff Vietnam.

And I'm sure 80% of it is a total lie and I don't care. You know, it's, it's so important, you know, um, we know always have people who are older than me, you know, working at the organization or as mentors or whatever. And you can just learn so much from people who've been there before you. And it even feels weird to me to say that, but there's this like such derision against anyone who's not like a 21 year old genius and there are no 21 year old geniuses. And so I think that really being sure you're learning and that you're giving yourself plenty of opportunities to figure out who you really are and what you really want to do. Um, and then that you're studying that space.

I get so many young people who want to talk to me about their businesses and, you know, say I spoke to a young woman, wants to, she wanted to start a business in fashion. And I mentioned something about Women's Wear Daily and she didn't know what it was. And it's like, well, you can't, you can't run an organization, a business and fashion. If you don't know, Women's Wear Daily, it's the like cornerstone fashion magazine. Right? And like, you have to do your research. You have to know the basics. If you're going into voting rights, read every book about voting rights, know the text of the voting rights act, know who came before you and what they've done. You know, we, I think we interviewed everybody that we could find for me, but Brendan center, it's a local organizations, as we were trying to figure out, what do people tried before? What has worked? Why has it worked? You know? And then we would come up with ideas and we'd call back, you know, some of the same people and say, what do you think about this?

And they'd say this is going to work. And that's a terrible idea. And this is why this has failed 85 times. And that's what help is get to a solution that worked. You have to do your homework and you have to be knowledgeable. Um, there's nothing cute or fun or interesting about being an entrepreneur who doesn't know their space and Google is free. So really you ha you have to know what you're doing are know the business you're getting into in order to be able to know what you're doing. And don't go to law school for the love of God.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kat Calvin. Visit SpreadTheVote.org and ProjectID.org to learn more about the work Kat is doing. And be sure to tune in, to Vote! The Podcast with her cohost, Andrea Hayley, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Don't forget to register for the Passionistas Project Women's Equality Summit to hear Kat's live panel "How far have we come in a 100 years? Making sure all women can vote" on Saturday, August 22nd. The summit is sponsored by Annette Kahler innovation and intellectual property attorney, LA Pride/Christopher Street West, Luna whole nutrition bars, the premium beverage company Tea Drops, TrizCom Public Relations and public speaking coaching company, ubu skills. To register for free for the online event visit ThePassionistasProject.com and be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

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.

 

More info about Jess.

 

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

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.

 

And be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast, so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

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.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

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.

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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.

Go to thepassionistasproject.com to get more information about our podcast, subscription box, and the first annual Passionistas Project Women’s Equality Virtual Summit this August 21st through 23rd, featuring panels, presentations, workshops and more — all with the mission of empowering women.

And be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast. So you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

 

Linda Hollander Is Helping Women Get Sponsorships

Linda Hollander, CEO of Sponsor Concierge and the founder of the Sponsor Secrets Seminar, has been featured by Inc magazine as the leading expert on corporate sponsorship. She has over 20 years of experience as a small business owner, and as the industry leader in teaching people how to tap into the awesome power of corporate sponsors. She's the author of the number one bestseller "Corporate Sponsorship in Three Easy Steps." She's also the CEO of Sponsor Concierge and the founder of the Sponsor Secrets Seminar. Her sponsors include Microsoft Epson, Wells Fargo, Dun and Bradstreet, FedEx, American Airlines, Staples, HealthNet, Marriott, IBM aandt Walmart. Al Lapin Jr. The founder of IHOP restaurants says, "If your goal is to be a success, Linda Hollander has paved the way for you."

Learn more about Linda.

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 Linda Hollander. Linda has been featured by Inc magazine as the leading expert on corporate sponsorship. She has over 20 years of experience as a small business owner, and as the industry leader in teaching people how to tap into the awesome power of corporate sponsors. She's the author of the number one bestseller "Corporate Sponsorship in Three Easy Steps." She's also the CEO of Sponsor Concierge and the founder of the Sponsor Secrets Seminar. Her sponsors include Microsoft Epson, Wells Fargo, Dun and Bradstreet, FedEx, American Airlines, Staples, HealthNet, Marriott, IBM aandt Walmart. Al Lapin Jr. The founder of IHOP restaurants says, "If your goal is to be a success, Linda Hollander has paved the way for you." So please welcome to the show Linda Hollander.

Linda: Hey, great to be here, ladies.

Passionistas: We're so excited to have you. Thank you, Linda. What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Linda: Oh wow. Just one thing. Uh, well I'm, I am actually a Sponsor Passionista and that's what I'm most excited about. I love empowering women financially, so they can make better choices in life, so they can live their passion as you teach them to do. Uh, so they can send their kids to better schools, uh, so they can have better lives. Uh, and I want everybody has a challenge and my goal in life is to have people discover and achieve their greatness.

Passionistas: Tell us a little bit about your background and how that led to you getting into the world of corporate sponsorships.

Linda: Okay. Well, remember when I told me that everybody has challenges and especially now where we're working with a lot of challenges, what I did is I started a company with my best friend, Cheryl. And that's why I love forums like this because I am all about women's empowerment. And I've been in that movement for over 20 years. So Cheryl and I though, we met when we were 13 years old at recess and we became bonded. We became, I guess, kind of closer than sisters. And I know you two have a lot of girl power going on. Uh, so we said, "Oh my God, when we grow up, if we do something together, it's going to be amazing and it's going to be absolutely phenomenal." So we started this company, uh, it was all about bags, uh, because I was an art major. I didn't study business at all in college.

Uh, everything I took was art. I thought business was boring. She was a, a cinema major. Uh, but, uh, we got together and we started this company producing bags. And when I say bags, I don't mean ladies purses. I mean, promotional shopping bags, the ones that you see at trade shows and at shopping malls. And our clients were Disney and Mattel and Nissan. And, you know, we had all know, we turned this little silly, stupid idea of producing bags into a multi-million dollar business. Now that's all well and good. And Oh my God, working with your best friend is amazing. Uh, but it wasn't always that way for me, because before I started my business, I was in a dead end job. Uh, I wasn't making enough money at my job. So I borrowed on credit cards and then pretty quickly I saw that, Oh my God, when I went to the mailbox, my hand would literally shake when I opened that mailbox because there were bills there that I could never, ever afford to pay.

And I wasn't living larger or anything. I was just kind of trying to make my rent every month. And sometimes it was, it was a struggle. A lot of times it was a struggle. I had to work with people that I didn't like. Uh, I had a very abrasive relationship with my boss and you know, my heart and my soul was absolutely crying out because I had the fire of an entrepreneur. And this kind of was a toxic situation to be in, in that business. Sometimes at lunch, I would go into my car and I would cry.

And on my, uh, personal side, in my personal life, I was in a relationship with an abusive man. And I stayed in that relationship for many years because basically I thought that was what I deserved. And I couldn't see a way out of it. Fortunately, ladies, one day I had an epiphany and, uh, uh, I fired my boss. Uh, I dumped the abusive boyfriend and I called my friend Cheryl. And I said, do you want to take the biggest adventure ride of our lives together and start a business? And fortunately she said, yes.

So that started me on a trajectory. I was able to move out of my little rent controlled apartment. I bought my first home as a single woman. I was able to travel the world. I was able to pay down that debt. That was absolutely choking me. But what I loved most was mentoring other people in business because they didn't just come to me to order bags. And by the way, we were one of the only female owned packaging companies. So we walk, we work with a lot of women business owners and they said, "Linda, how do I do sales? How do I do marketing?" So then I came up with the idea of creating a women's small business expo because I wanted to show other women how to empower themselves by learning entrepreneurship.

And then I looked and I said, "Oh my God, to do this event the way I want to do it. Cause I wanted to do a really high class event. Uh, it's going to be a lot of money." So that's when I went on the internet and I said, what are these things called sponsors? And I found out that sponsors would underwrite — write this down. If you're near a piece of paper — your business, your event, uh, if you're a speaker, if you're an author, you can get sponsors. If you have a podcast, if you have a blog, if you're a social influencer, if you have a show, you could get a sponsor. And lastly, if you want to start a nonprofit charity, you can get sponsors. And I work with a lot of people who do projects like documentary filmmakers. And then what I'm going to tell you today about getting sponsors. You could apply to your child also. Because if your child is in an after-school group or a sports team, you can use these techniques for your child.

So basically my first sponsors were bank of America, Walmart and IBM. And this was working from my home, uh, actually from my kitchen table with the cat as my only employee. Uh, and, uh, you know, I had no experience. I'd never done an event in my life. Here's what I did though. I sold them on the concept and I'm going to tell you how to get sponsors by selling them on the concept of what you do. And then people would come to the events and they'd say, "Linda, I love this, but how are you getting all these sponsors?" And so now we do events and I do consulting about how you can get corporate sponsors to fund your dreams.

Passionistas: How can people identify their potential sponsors?

Linda: The best way to identify your potential sponsors is by your demographics. Write this down. If you're near a paint pen and paper — demographics are destiny. So I'll give you my demographic. And it, at the time it was women's business owners. So women business owners, oh my God, there's such spending power. There there's such economic power. There. Women are starting businesses at twice. The rate of men, women make or influence over 85% of the purchasing decisions in America. Women in America spend more than five countries combined. So I researched this and that's what I, how I chose my sponsors. Another way to find your sponsors is to look at similar properties and who's sponsoring them.

So what you have now, it's called a property. Whether it's your business or your event or your book or your speaking, or your show, it's called a property in the world of sponsors. So what I did was I looked at other women's business conferences and saw who the sponsors were. And they could be my sponsors too. And people say, "Oh my God, Linda on isn't their budget gone if they're sponsoring this and that?" No, absolutely not. And then you don't have to educate them on the value of what you're doing, because they're already in that particular space.

Passionistas: What are sponsors looking for?

Linda: Exactly the most important thing that you have to sell to your sponsors. And I'm going to repeat it again, is your audience, your audience. The definition sponsorship is connecting a company to people who buy things. So sponsors are looking for return on investment. So let's say you're in the parenting space and you teach parents, parents how to effectively raise their kids. Okay. The mom market, the parent market is a two point $4 trillion market, uh, in America. So that's why sponsors will pay you because you can connect them to people who can buy their stuff. It is basically a marketing play.

Passionistas: What do you think is the biggest mistake people make when they're looking for sponsors?

Linda: Uh, just one. Okay. We'll do a couple. Uh, the first is not charging enough money. Uh, if you don't ask for enough money from your sponsors, uh, basically it's going to hurt you in the sponsor world because you're telling your sponsors that you have nothing of value to offer and it's not worth their time. Uh, basically sponsorship is kind of a team sport. Uh, so what you do is you have one person in the company, that's your hero. And then they tell other people in the company about you. And eventually they decide to give you money and sponsor you. And by the way, stay tuned because I want to tell you how much you can make. So we'll talk about that a little bit later. Uh, but so not asking for enough money is one of the biggest mistakes that people make in the world of sponsorship because they don't take you seriously. And then they have to spend some time with you convince their colleagues about the value that you bring to the company.

So that's one mistake, a and then a second mistake, I guess, is just not believing in yourself because when people are just getting started in the world of sponsorships, one of the things that holds them back is why would a sponsor give money to little old me? You know, who the heck am I? And that's what I thought too. I live in Los Angeles. So guess what? I was in a traffic jam and I'm cursing the traffic jam. I'm hot, I'm bothered, I'm tired. But I look up and I see a billboard for Bank of America.

And that is another way that you could find sponsors is to monitor the media. If there's some company that's putting a lot of money into media campaigns, take note of that, cause they're more likely to sponsor you. So I see this billboard for bank of America and I said, "Oh my God, what if Bank of America could sponsor me?" Now at this point, it was just an idea in my head, um, that I didn't have any events under my belt. I didn't know if it had legs. I didn't know if people would come. Uh, so I went back to my office and basically what I did was I self-sabotaged. Because I said, "What am I crazy? You know, I'm just a little frizzy here, Jewish girl here in her kitchen. They're not going to take me seriously. Uh, and I'm going to get rejected and I really don't want that."

So I buried it for about two, but my passion like yours to help women was so strong that after the two weeks I said, what have I got to lose? Let's let's make a couple of calls. And I did call Bank of America. One person led me to another and uh, I got a guy saying, yeah, come up, come on by. So when I came by to meet them, uh, I wore my one good suit. Uh, I had a car that was more rust than paint and it was embarrassing. So I parked it like two blocks down. So nobody would see that car. And I gave them my proposal. Now, when you meet with your perspective sponsor, don't just bring one proposal. I brought four proposals so he can share it with his colleagues. Thank God. There was a desk between us, cause my knees were knocking.

And so he read over my proposal. He said, "Great. We'll we'll sponsor you." And it was a five figure sponsorship, my very first sponsorship. And I had to act like I did this all the time. And then he wanted to shake my hand and my hand was all sweaty. So I had to wipe it on the back of my one good suit, really shake his hand. Uh, and man, when I got back to my car, I did the happy dance and I waived all the Bank of America's on the way home. So I want to illustrate that even if you're just starting out, even if you have no experience, even if you have no following, I didn't even have a following or a fan base at the time I had my parents and my brother-in-law and that was it. If I could have put the cat on there, I would have, so I didn't have a following either, but you can do it because everybody has to start somewhere.

Passionistas: What's your advice on the best way to approach prospective sponsors and to muster up that courage to do the big ask?

Linda: I think asking for things is especially hard for women because in high school we waited for the cute guy to ask us to the dance. You know, we didn't go up and ask them. So it's kind of been programmed into us from the time where we're young, uh, not to ask for things. So you of kind of get over that the best way to approach a sponsor is by email. They want you to introduce yourself by email because a lot of sponsors have told me, uh, things off the record in the past 20 years. And one of them is that they don't want to be interrupted by a phone call, uh, because they're usually busy with something. They've usually got a boss breathing down their neck. Um, so they want you to introduce yourself by email, uh, and send a couple of emails and then you'll have a conversation with your sponsors. Uh, so that's really the best way

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And you're listening to the Passionists Project Podcast and our interview with Linda Hollander. To learn more about Linda and how to get sponsors, go to SuccessWithSponsors.com. Now here's more of our interview with Linda.

What should be in that sponsor package that you bring with you to the first meeting?

Linda: Well, it goes into the sponsor package is a description of what you do and make it brief description. I've seen descriptions that go three, four pages. No, no, no. Remember that it should be easy to skim your sponsor proposal. You want to write the benefits of the sponsorship there. It needs to be benefit rich, or you will not get funded. Uh, and you want to write compelling benefits for the sponsors. Uh, some benefits for the sponsors are email marketing, social media, video marketing, award presentations, press releases, spokespersons work. You could be a spokesperson for a sponsor. You could do contests and all of these benefits that I'm giving you are very low costs. Some are they even no cost, but they have a high perceived value to your sponsor.

You want testimonials. If people have given you testimonials, you want to put it there. You want a marketing plan in your sponsor proposal because marketing can make or break whatever you're doing. You don't want to be the best kept secret. So tell your sponsors how you're going to market yourself. How are people going to find out about you? How are people going to read your book or see you speak or come to your event or listen to your show or donate to your nonprofit. So you want that marketing plan in there. Uh, and then lastly, storytelling, the way that we do sponsor proposals that nobody else in the country does is with storytelling. You want your story or the story of somebody that you've helped in that proposal. And I'll tell you why, because a lot of people say, "Oh, well, I'm sending this proposal to a big company and I'm going to fill it with facts and figures" and it becomes dull. It becomes boring. And I want you to stand out from the crowd.

So the storytelling creates an emotional connection and it shows the humanity of what you do. I have put in my sponsor proposals that I've been in the poverty trap, that I'd been in an abusive relationship. Uh, so you know, and that that's gotten me sponsors because it's not a faceless corporation. That's going to sponsor you. It is a human being. Who's going to make that decision and human beings make decisions emotionally.

Passionistas: You also recommend that people partner with a nonprofit. So what value does that bring to your offering?

Linda: It brings a lot of value. Um, most companies now have a social responsibility department because they've realized that cause marketing works and cause marketing CUSC use marketing is so hot that it is absolutely scorching, uh, take Target stores. When you buy from Target stores, they give money to Feeding America. So people feel better about buying at Target and especially the moms feel better about buying at Target. Um, most companies that you're going to see a Subaru has a Share the Love campaign, where if you buy a Subaru, you can choose what charity they're going to to either the Humane Society or Habitat for Humanity or Stand Up to Cancer. They have a few different ones. And people really feel good and really companies want to give back and let people know that they're giving back to the community. Because there's something called the Halo Effect there. Uh, so, uh, and people like to buy from companies that support good causes.

Passionistas: You also recommend that people get media partners. So talk about how that works.

Linda: You approach them the same as you approach your cash sponsors. So, uh, with a media partner, you're going to send the same proposal to them. Uh, but the media is a little bit different because they do, what's called an in kind sponsorship. Now with an in kind sponsorship. It's a trading of benefits and services. No money changes hands, but they give you a whole lot of value. And it is budget relieving. I had a radio station that was a partner of mine that gave me all kinds of stuff. They gave me 30 second and 60 second commercials and a sponsor spotlight. And, and I was up on their website and you know, it was great because I think they had like a listenership of 75,000 people. Uh, and it is budget relieving because it was probably a $25,000 program. Not a dime came out of my pocket. One day I was driving and I heard my own commercial. That was really surreal. I almost crashed the car, but it was okay. Um, but that's how you get media partners.

And I want to talk a little bit about virtual events. Cause a lot of people have been asking me about that. So sponsors will fund a virtual event, but you have to offer them a bigger benefit package. Uh, you don't want to just show their logo, uh, at your virtual event, you want to offer them yearlong benefits, uh, for that event. Uh, and you know, you want to offer a virtual event bag. You want to offer like all of these goodies post-marketing okay. So for an event, there's three phases. There's, pre-marketing, there's a marketing during that event and then there's post event marketing. So the post event sponsorship is after the events over say, "Hey, thanks so much for being on our virtual event. And here's some goodies from our sponsors. We want you to check out." Uh, so you've got to make a pretty complete program for virtual.

And the best combination is a virtual event followed by a live event. And I'll tell you why, because the virtual event, you can promote the live event. Uh, and you know, it's kind of a one, two punch. Because a lot of people are going strictly virtual. It's not as valuable to sponsors unless you have the virtual and the live. If you can only do virtual. Great, but tell them that some point in the future, you want to talk about a live event, you know, whether it happens or not.

Passionistas: And how do people determine the other benefits that they, they have to offer a sponsor?

Linda: It's a real simple answer. You want to ask your sponsor. So the first conversation that you have with your sponsor is a fact finding expedition. You want to make them open up to you. You want to say, Hey, what are your marketing goals? How can I help you achieve them? What are your demographics? What are your upcoming campaigns? When I got FedEx as a sponsor, that's what I did. I talked to him and I said, well, what are you looking for? And you know, he said, well, we don't want a trade show booth. We don't want banners. We don't want signage. And that's what people, most people think sponsorship is. He said, everybody knows FedEx. If we have a trade show booth, they just pick up the little freebies that we have at the booth. And signage does nothing. We want to tell women business owners that we're not the expensive white glove delivery service. And we're very comparable with ups is their, their major competition.

Um, so they wanted a speaking opportunity. They wanted an untoward presentation. They wanted press releases. So if I had come to him and said, okay, we're going to offer you a trade show booth and some signage I never would have worked with FedEx. I delved in. And before I went into my presentation, I made sure that I wanted to find out what he wanted and then offer some brilliant solutions. And then the happy ending to that story is that they sponsored me for four years because we were so attentive to what they wanted.

Passionistas: How do people use research to strengthen their offering to a sponsor?

Linda: It is so much easier now than it ever was before you could do your research very, very quickly. Uh, Google is my best friend and it's probably yours. So you're going to Google the company that you want to be your sponsor. You're going to see their website on their website. You look at their press room. The press room is kind of an interesting thing because it shows how they message the company. It shows the articles about the company. It shows how they want you to perceive their brand. You're going to look at the about us section and then the, the investor relations section.

But don't just stop at the website, go to their social media, too, and see what kind of posts they put out there and tweets and see, you know, what's going on on their social media, but I'm telling you, you could do this really, really quickly. Um, and that's the best way to do research about the company. And when you talk to the sponsors, they want to know, they want to know that you've done the research because that means that you are respecting their time. So if they've got a certain program out there, say, "Hey, I see you're promoting this particular program." And they love that. They love when you show that you've really done your homework.

Passionistas: So now here's the big question. How do people know how much to ask for?

Linda: Oh, this is my favorite. This is my favorite one. Because most people, like I said, no, tortuously undercharge. And then women have a hard time charging a lot of money. So, um, here's what most of our clients get from their sponsors. $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 and a $100,000. Now that is per year and renewable. So let me talk to you about renewals, because remember when I told you that FedEx, uh, you know, sponsored me for four years, that is your, your cash machine is the renewals. If a sponsor likes you, they can sponsor you this year and the next year and the next year. So that's renewables, which are absolutely delicious. And I had a multi-year contracts and renewals with Citibank too. And my clients have had renewals with the Verizon and Dole foods and Black and Decker, just to name a few.

Uh, so those are, remember yearly benefits if you're doing an event, okay, don't go event by event because that's how I did it at first. And I realized I was being stupid because I could get a lot more money if I give them benefits for the whole year. Um, and if you do a few events a year bundle the events, even the virtual events, and by the way, semantics are important. So call it a virtual event. Don't call it a webinar. Don't call it Facebook live, you know, because people really expect those things are free. So call it a virtual event if that's what you're doing.

Passionistas: What did your mother teach you about women's roles in society when you were growing up?

Linda: Oh my God, my mom and I are so different. My mom, when she got married, uh, she worked for a while, but you know, she was a stay at home mom and, you know, she was really, really good at it. Um, and, uh, the only thing was that she was completely dependent on my father. And I saw that growing up and I said, you know what, it's good for their marriage, but it's not how I want my marriage to be. I don't want to be dependent on anybody. And I am. That's kind of what made me very fiercely independent, uh, was seeing my mom. Now, my mom influenced me in some really good ways. Uh, she's an artist and that's where I got my at my art from, and my love of art, my love of beauty, because she had that. And if I have any compassion, if I have any humanity, uh, it is from my mother. And I think the more creative you are, the more successful you are in business. So all of those things, creativity and compassion were gifts from my mother.

Passionistas: What's your dream for women?

Linda: My dream for women is that we can all respect each other's choices. I told you about my mom and how she chose to be a stay at home. Mom. I respect that. You know, I don't think, you know, people like that are any less than the woman who goes out and works every day and need to be even makes more than her husband and is the, the, the breadwinner for the family. So I think that's where we're moving as women is, you know, just to have good choices.

And that's why I'm such a proponent of entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship helps you make good choices. Uh, Oprah Winfrey, you know, she doesn't have to worry about money. She doesn't have to worry about paying the bills so she can work on having schools in Africa and really affecting world change. And it's the same with Melinda Gates and Bill Gates. You know, they don't have to worry about paying their bills every month so they can work on things of a higher nature. And Sara Blakely, two of Spanx who I've talked to. Uh, so that's where I see women's the trajectory of women's success going.

Passionistas: Do you think that there's a particular trait that has helped you be successful?

Linda: Tenacity. Uh, because you know, um, this is your business. If you can't go through the front door, go through the side window, that's kinda been, uh, my definition of success, uh, you know, and do whatever you can to be successful because it's not just for you, it's for all the people that you're going to help. I mean, you have gifts to give to the world. And if you deny people those gifts, that's the ultimate act of selfishness. Cause I'm not even an outgoing person. I'm very introverted, very shy by nature. And that's what somebody told me. They said, you know, I see you go to a party or an event. You don't really talk to people and you're being selfish because you're denying them all the gifts that you have that can help them. So don't think of it as just for you. Think of it. As you know, for transforming the world. When I was doing the women's small business expo, women met their perfect business partners there, and women got the pieces of the puzzle that they needed to create their own multi-million dollar businesses. And on my deathbed, I will be so proud of the work that I did. And it was all because of sponsors.

Passionistas: Linda, you mentioned to us that you wanted to make an offer to our listeners.

Linda: I want to give a gift to the listeners. They can get the number one secret to getting sponsors. If they go to SuccessWithSponsors.com. So it's SuccessWithSponsors.com. Also, if you go to SuccessWithSponsors.com, you can make an appointment to talk with me personally, I do free sponsor strategy sessions. So I will look at what you're doing. We'll work on your winning proposal and we'll work on your success strategy for getting your sponsors.

Passionistas: And seriously, ladies, if you are listening to this and you are even remotely considering whether to do this or not do it, we cannot recommend Linda strongly enough. She is amazing. She's absolutely amazing.

Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Linda Hollander. To learn more about Linda and to receive your free gift, go to SuccessWithSponsors.com.

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Gina Fattore Is Writing About Overcoming Anxiety and Becoming Unfrozen

Gina Fattore is a television writer and producer turned novelist who just released her debut book The Spinster Diaries. The story centers around a writer, obsessed with chick lit, who is overcoming her anxiety to become unfrozen and have enough hope to move forward. Gina's TV credits include Dare Me, Better Things, UnREAL, Masters of Sex, Parenthood, Californication, Gilmore Girls and Dawson’s Creek.

Learn more about Gina.

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 Gina Fattore. Gina is a television writer whose credits include, Dare Me, Better Things, Unreal, Masters of Sex, Parenthood, Californication, Gilmore Girls and Dawson's Creek. Her Ted X talk become what you believe has more than 16,000 views in her essays, reviews and comedy pieces have appeared to the Chicago reader, entertainment weekly salon, the millions and Mick Sweeney's internet tendency, and she just published her debut novel, The Spinster Diaries, a semi-autobiographical story, but a TV writer obsessed with chick lit. So please welcome to the show. Gina Fattore.

Gina Fattore: Thank you so much for having me here. It's an honor… to be considered a Passionista is a big honor. Thank you.

Passionistas: And we're excited to have you. We love the book and you have written some of our favorite television shows, so we can't wait to talk to you.

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

Gina Fattore: My gut said to say writing, but maybe I need to be more specific than that because I write so many things, but it's always been writing. I am one of those people who I was 11, 10 or 11 when I, you know, first got, I guess praised for my writing. I went to the young authors conference when I was in the fifth grade with my first book, which, you know, remains unpublished because everyone's fifth grade book should probably remain unpublished. Um, but, uh, yeah, and I just, I always knew it's, it's the weirdest thing. It, it, I had a friend once say to me, a college friend who just, she called it a calling and especially when we had just graduated from college, and I believe everybody should sort of wander in their twenties until they land on the thing that is right for them. But I always had in the back of my mind, this idea of the calling, and I knew it was about writing.

Passionistas: Talk about that path from that fifth grade book to becoming a television writer.

Gina Fattore: (LAUGHING) Yeah. That was kind of a long journey. There aren't a lot of 11 year old television writers. I grew up in Indiana in this town called Valparaiso, which is in the part of Indiana. That's, it's like the Northwest corner of Indiana that's actually closer to Chicago than Indianapolis, but still like a small town, uh, sort of Friday Night Lights kind of place where people go to the football game or the basketball game every Friday night. And I was always that, you know, high school journalist person, you know, I did the yearbook, I did the newspaper, I did it all and I had this scheme or this plan that involved going to Columbia, which uh, was a funny thing in Indiana because nobody in Indiana actually knows what Columbia is. I know it's like this impressive school. It's in the Ivy league, but there's a lot of confusion with the university of Missouri at Columbia.

So it's, it costs a lot of money and it's difficult to impress people. But somehow I got it and my parents were on board with this and I moved to New York and at 18 as all Columbia freshmen do and I was an English major. I always knew I was going to be an English major. There wasn't a film studies or film major or anything like that available to undergraduates at Columbia. When I was there and I, I wouldn't have, I don't know that I would've wanted to do that anyway. It really did not occur to me that writing was screenwriting. I loved TV, I loved movies, but I really hadn't thought of it that way. It was all books and magazines and journalism to me. And then the accident that changed my life. When I graduated from Columbia, I was an English major, as I said, totally unqualified to really do anything in the world.

And I started applying for jobs at different places. And the one that I ended up getting was at the New York public library in the fundraising office. And I worked in major gifts and planned giving. I answered the phone, you know, we did research on the various donors we were trying to get money from. We would hold parties and events and my boss was this lovely, lovely woman named Judy Daniels and her son is a television writer. His name is Greg Daniels, and he created The Office, the American version of The Office and Parks and Rec and King of the Hill. And Judy Daniels, I always say was my first agent. She essentially said to me, I think you should move to LA and work for my son and he should help you be a TV writer. And he did and I became a TV writer. I was his assistant for two years when he was starting King of the Hill with Mike Judge back in the mid-nineties and that was how I got my start.

He assigned me a freelance episode in the second season, which is a very traditional way for TV writer to get a break as you get to write one episode of a show. And based on that I was able to get an agent and the agent helped me get my first real job as a staff writer. You know, when I didn't have to answer the phone anymore. That was the biggest victory of my professional life.

Passionistas: That's a pretty impressive person to land without in LA. Did you learn anything specific from him that sticks with you?

Gina Fattore: The thing that sticks with me the most is always about story. You know, Greg is a comedy writer and you know, even before King of the Hill, he had worked on the Simpsons and on Saturday night live, but he was incredibly rigorous about story. So maybe it's not an accident that you know, I ended up being a drama writer more than a comedy writer, but I can remember him saying to me, you know about my own spec scripts and I was trying to write at the time, you know, to just make a beat sheet and go through every scene and you know, just ask yourself very, what is this scene doing?

And if you can't summarize it in, you know, one short sentence with a sort of active sounding verb in it, then there's probably a problem with that scene. And that's advice that he gave me that I think about 20 years later all the time.

Passionistas: Your book, The Spinster Diaries, is a semi-autobiographical story about being a TV writer. And I think it paints a really good picture of the fact that even though people may think it's a really glamorous life, it's a lot of hard work and not only the work itself but going from show to show, getting jobs is hard work. So can you talk a little bit about your experiences in Hollywood, some of the shows you worked on and what that lifestyle is like?

Gina Fattore: I would say to start that, that is one of the revelations that people have read my book and come back to me and said, this actually explains what it's like to be a TV writer. And that wasn't one of the reasons why I wrote the book, but it's just the world that I live in. So I was portraying it really accurately. And many TV writers have actually said this to me that like this is almost given them flashbacks and stuff in weird ways because the system of TV has changed a lot. The book has said it actually in 2006 which was a time when there were a lot more network TV shows and a lot more shows where we would make 22-23 episodes a year, which is the system that I started in. And nowadays we have these really short orders for shows, which has made it even more pronounced.

This nature of the job is insecurity and you know, you move from one thing to the next. I've been on many shows. I had to run and vibing three shows in a row that got canceled within those first 12 you know, so sometimes you make all 12 and you get paid for all 12 but one show we got canceled. You know, we were actually shooting episode eight and I don't think we finished shooting the rest of those. You know, you just stop when you're canceled. Everything just stops. I mean we're living through this weird moment now with production shutdowns for the virus reasons, but being canceled. It's odd. Cause I mean the great part about it is that everybody's in it together. But that's also the horrible part is that, you know, 200 people have lost their jobs in one day. But the funny thing about being on a show is that it is sort of more like a real job than I think people anticipate because there's this idea about movie writers, which is true that they kind of like sit by their pool or they're like in a cafe somewhere writing and you know, TV writers.

Honestly, I think in some ways we're more like journalists. Like we have a deadline, we're working together to put something out. And sometimes I think that because I worked at a newspaper in my twenties I worked at an alternative weekly newspaper. Maybe that's why I view it that way, but it is what it is. You know, if you're making 23 episodes of a show, everybody has to be on board with what are those episodes about? So a large part of what we're doing when we're writing a TV show is just making sure that there's one story that we're telling that all the characters are behaving consistently. And the writer's room, which back in the day when I started was standard. Not all shows are written that way anymore, but that was what allowed us to just stay on the same page and we had to be flexible.

And of course the showrunner had ultimate control over what the story would be. And so your job as a writer is just to spend all day thinking of pitches that will support what the story is. And there was one year I remember on Dawson's Creek, I season five I only wrote like two episodes and normally I would write first drafts more than that and I missed it. And I realized when you're in the room coming up with ideas, 80% of what you do gets rejected and that's a really high rate to, you know, keep yourself going at where you have to just keep pitching ideas and they might not be accepted. It's heartbreaking. So you have to have a pretty thick skin for that. How do you develop that thick skin? How do you not take it personally? I think you just said the exact phrase, which is not taking it personally.

And I think it did take me a really long time. I think season three when I was working on Dawson's Creek was my first real immersion in one hour drama writing. And again that was a 23 episode season, which I don't know that I had done one of those yet. And I would use all these little tricks. Sometimes I would tell myself, you know, you're writing the first draft for free. The first draft is what you want it to be. It's all this stuff. What they're paying you for is the 10 offer drafts that you're doing, where people are saying, do it my way, do it my way, do it my way. And early on in my career I had this great moment with a friend who, he's a graphic designer and at the time he was maybe working at the New York times or something like that, but his own work as a graphic designer was constantly being, you know, noted and all this stuff like do it again and do it again. Do it again.

And you know, it just becomes not what the person wanted and you just have to tell yourself over and over again that mantra I think because it's just not what they wanted. And when you're writing something for money, that's what your job is, is to give the person what they wanted. And in TV it's always very clear that person is the showrunner. And then once they're happy with it, they got to go and deal with the network and the studio. There's a whole other level of people who might not be happy with it.

Passionistas: As a writer that's not the showrunner, you're kind of shielded from having those conversations. But last season you developed and executive produced and wrote the TV series Dare Me. So talk about how you became the showrunner of and what it was like to be in that position versus on staff.

Gina Fattore:  It was kind of amazing to get to this place where this pilot that I had written with Meghan Abbott, based on her novel Dare Me, we made a pilot in the summer of 2018 really it was when we made the pilot and then all of 2019 was when we were making the, the nine additional episodes. And here I was finally doing this job that we, for a long time I had basically resigned myself to the idea that none of my pilots would ever proceed forward and become serious cause I had written so many of them and I knew how hard the job was. I mean frankly I was the showrunners assistant. So who knows better than the showrunners assistant, how hard the job is. And so I think what happens in TV a lot of times is that the person who becomes the showrunner is perhaps a novelist or a playwright or a screenwriter.

Especially if you win an Oscar, they will just basically give you a TV show. So essentially that person is really overwhelmed just by the sheer idea of what it means to be a showrunner, which is that you're not just a writer anymore, you're a producer and you're the boss who's hiring everyone and who's also responsible for making sure that everyone's working well together to actualize the vision that you have in your head. So in a funny way, I have to say, I knew it was going to be hard, so it was hard, but it wasn't as hard, I don't think, as it would have been for someone who hadn't been working on TV shows for essentially 20 years at that point. I mean, I like to joke, and this is terrible, but I was like, you know, like the American presidency running a television show, it is a job that sometimes goes to someone who's never done it before, but sometimes that person has actually been the secretary of state, or sometimes they've been the first lady, maybe they've been a Senator, so that person might have a better idea of how this whole thing works than someone who's never worked in government before.

And that's how I felt. I felt like I was that person and I ended up being so proud of the work itself. The episodes I think are brilliant, but also just really proud of all the people who told me how much they enjoyed working on the show. I mean, honestly, the costume designer, the, you know, the cinematographer, like all of the directors, like just knowing that they felt like they were in an environment where they were being heard and appreciated even when their ideas were rejected meant so much to me. Because looking back, I can see there were many jobs where I didn't have that and that was the hard part to keep going. When you don't feel like you're being heard, it's one thing to be rejected, but it's another to be sort of ignored or dismissed.

Passionistas: You're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Gina Fattore. Visit GinaFattore.com to find out more about Gina and her book, The Spinster Diaries, now available at IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and more.

Now here's more of our interview with Gina.

Talk about The Spinster Diaries and why did you decide with your busy television schedule, why did you decide to write a book?

Gina Fattore: Well, you know, I realized, I think I already set this up because I talked a little about the frustrations of being a writer who is on staff on a show, but you're not the boss. And at the time I started writing the book, I really did start writing the book around the time that it set. So like 2006, 2007 and I had been working on shows at that point, well, you know, I guess about eight years. So I was at the point where I was doing this job that was a dream job to me. And you know, it, it, I had far exceeded any dreams that I had, you know, as a young person in Indiana, I was living in LA and I was going from job to job, but definitely, you know, uh, making money and working with interesting people and it was all great.

But the one thing I didn't have was any kind of control over what story was being told. I mean you're always rewritten when you're a writer on staff. Like it's very, very rare. When I was working on Dawson's Creek, I was genuinely, I don't know, I had been there for so long that by the time we got to the end, those were my episodes. Those were my words. Like especially the last one that I wrote, I did all the rewriting on them. They're my work, but that's very unusual. The more usual way is to just write and contribute, but you never have any say over the final product. And so I think I just started writing pros because it was, first of all, it was what I originally wrote when I was a young person and I was a high school newspaper editor and all of that.

But also just because I knew I could control it and I didn't even know at first what I was writing. I think I really was just writing, you know, on the weekends I'd just be like, well, I have something I need to say. And then I just kept writing and went on this journey and it really did take me a very long time to get someone to publish the book essentially because it is a little unconventional. I think they were fooled by the opening of the book and they thought that it would be more of a conventional Bridget Jones's diary type book and then suddenly they're reading about this woman from the 18th century, like it's about TV writing and they think, I think that there was some confusion about what the book was, but I really persevered because I knew at that point I was like, well, I have my other job, which I never quit, which is my day job writing and producing television and I know that I'm good at that.

Um, especially it's no small part of it is the producing part. Like that's a completely separate skill from writing. And now that I've done Dare Me and been a showrunner, I've done that on every level. So I figured my book didn't have to be something that was going to be a bestseller or a big source of income for me. I could just make it whatever I wanted to be. Just be playful with it and have fun.

Passionistas: You say that it's some I autobiographical. So how much of it is based on you? Obviously the TV writing part is.

Gina Fattore: Yeah, I'm laughing because like I really wanted to be one of those fancy novelists who's all like, ah, I made it all up, or whatever. That's what fiction writers do. But it's all, it's all true. Basically. Like all of it. It's true. I was interested in the idea of biography and autobiography.

So if the narrator of my book is sort of this exaggerated unreliable version of me, and she's telling you a story though about this other writer from the 18th century, so how reliable is she? But if you read the book, I should make a disclaimer that it is actually a biography of the writer from the 18th century whose name is Francis Barney, and she was a novelist who wrote at the end of the 18th century. She's really the person who inspired Jane Austin in many ways. Her books were read by Jane Austin and Jane Jane Austin makes reference to Francis. Bernie's novels at like six different places within her own work.

Passionistas: Why are you fascinated with Frances Burney and why did she become such a central character in the book?

Gina Fattore: I was just talking about this with someone who I know from college because I did read Frances Burney for the first time when I was in college. I was an English major at Columbia. There was, I think looking back, I've now researched this like in the, in the eighties the feminist scholars in the English departments all over the country were looking for female writers, you know, trying to resuscitate them. And at the end of the 18th century was a time in England when there were actually quite a number of female novelists. And so I read her work and then it, but it wasn't in college. It was like later in my twenties I learned about her diaries. She kept them her entire life. They've, they've finally finished editing all of them and they are 24 volumes long. So it was really like a blog. I mean, I think when I first read her diaries, I didn't even know what a blog was. It was probably like 95 but it was like you're hearing the unfiltered voice of this woman who lived, I mean, she actually lived from 1752 to 1840 but the time period in her life that would most fascinated me was sort of, you know, her coming of age and her first novel was written when she was 25 and I think when I, the more I learned about her story, it was something that captured my imagination when I was that age in my mid-twenties and I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know how I was going to get there.

I mean, I think it was even before I started working for Greg Daniels, I was 27 when I actually moved to LA and started working for him and ultimately became a TV writer. But all those years of my twenties I knew I wanted to be a writer and I was writing. But you know, you don't, you have a day job, you know, it's hard. You don't know really what you should be writing and what's the right format for your voice. And all those things. And I just kept reading about her more and more. And I was always just so convinced that there was something very modern about her life. Also in that anytime we hear about women from that era, they're generally very wealthy women. And so the stories, while they're these sort of odd princess stories about like duchesses and ladies and all that stuff, or think of Downton Abbey, right?

Those three sisters are incredibly wealthy and aristocratic. And for instance, Bernie, her father was a music teacher, so she was the equivalent of what we would think of as middle class. And for me growing up, you know, as I mentioned, I grew up in Indiana, so I am not from aristocrats, let's just say, um, my grandparents are all from Italy. So yeah, I think I, I love this idea of a role model who had, you know, been a writer from the time she was in her teens. And also looking back, I can see where I think like maybe a role model who isn't, you know, isn't Jane Austin or George Elliot or the Bronte sisters is a little better. At least for me it felt better. Like I feel like there's the people who you admire so much that it kind of stops you.

You know, like I've had that feeling before where you watch your all-time favorite movie, are you, you know, read your all-time favorite book for the zillion with time and there's a part of you that thinks I could never achieve that or I could never do that. Whereas I don't know. There was something about Frances Burney as a role model that I guess made me think, you know, she just did her best and kept writing and that's what you need to hear. Especially when you're 25 and you're just starting on your journey.

Passionistas: What do you hope readers take away from reading the book?

Gina Fattore: I've already gotten some feedback from people from what they did take away and it's been surprising, I guess I would say in a big way. I realized that the book is about anxiety and so it's very odd that it's coming out at this time where everybody is, you know, really just swimming and anxiety because anxiety is different than fear, you know, fear.

The idea is that fear is like there's a lion about to come and eat you and you know what that is and you need to respond to what the lion that's directly in front of you. But anxiety is that more free floating feeling. I at a certain point, I did realize that like years ago, like years, you know, years before it was published, I thought, Oh, the book is really about anxiety and that's a valuable lesson right now. And also the journey of the character she goes on is about like just getting out of a paralysis and the paralysis is sort of, you know, people always talk about fight or flight, right? That idea that if you're in this stressful situation, either you'll lash out and you'll fight or you're flee, but the other thing you do is you just freeze. And that's a very real reaction.

I mean I, I don't think I'm making that up. I think there is actual psychology to base that on, but it's always been my personal experience that you get frozen and the character is frozen. So the journey of the book is really to become unfrozen and to have enough hope to move forward. And I think that is a really vital message at this time.

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

Gina Fattore: I was just thinking about this, like the idea of this journey cause I was talking, the thing that's been so great to talk to old friends and this time, you know, like there's, there's just been a little more of that. Like people reaching out, like high school friends, college friends, like let's do a zoom. And it was making me think about my younger days and I had this sense when I was very young, that little things made an enormous difference.

I mean that a little bit in terms of writing, you know, that like precision and detail and all that stuff. Um, but also just, I don't know, this idea that things could change in an instant or that everything was kind of on a Razor's edge. And I think just what I learned this past two years in being the boss and making a show is that idea that not everything has to be perfect. And you think I would have known that earlier in life because as anyone who a writer knows, there's always a rough draft. There's always a first draft and it's a process to make it better. But I think this is a particular problem for women, which is this idea of perfectionism and how it holds you back because you're not willing to do the sloppy version of something.

And one of the coolest things I learned when I was making the show was I was like, I've been doing this for so long. TV is a process and the process is not, you start with the thing that the people see when it's on TV streaming. You know, you start so far back from that, you know, you start with some note cards on a board, you know, you turn that into an outline, you turn that into a script. There's so many steps of the process and being the boss and doing that really made me remember that, that like you have so many other chances to, to do that, that thing and to make it right. You know, not that it's not important to meet your deadlines and be conscientious and all that stuff, but I do wish I had felt that a little more when I was younger. Just let yourself be wrong.

Passionistas: What's your definition of success?

Gina Fattore:  I guess in some way I do think it's, it's liking what you do for work because we all, almost all of us have to work. And uh, even people who don't have to work for financial reasons, you know, I guess that's the famous Freud quote, write about love and work. And I mean, my had a next door neighbor who lived next door to me for 10 years. Ever since I bought my house, my neighbor next door, he was elderly. He was 79 when I moved in and he passed away at 89 and he worked like three or four days a week at this job up until he was like 87 and the minute he wasn't able to work anymore, he just shut down and you could see it so clearly. And he got so depressed and he, this is a person of like, you know, the world war II generation practically. He, well, Korean war I guess is the one he fought in and people like that don't use the word depressed lightly, you know?

And, and I could see that in him and I feel like it makes me so happy. You know, when people talk to me about their job and you can see that they're suited to the job and they get some kind of reward back from it, I think that is just a huge part of being successful in life.

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

Gina Fattore: Sadly, right? Is the only advice that, I mean, I know there's all this stuff about, you know, uh, I don't know, networking. And there's a lot of classes now you can take and stuff like that. But you learn, you do learn by doing and you know, I think you just need to keep writing and that everything you write, you learn something from that. And you know the feedback. Showing it to other people honestly is the hard part.

That to me is, is harder than the writing. I know some people have a problem with that, but you know, that's where the introverts win because the part of the job where you are alone in the room with the piece of paper, that doesn't scare me. And I think that it's got the main benefit of you can control it. You can try things out, you know, I mean, Oh, this is terrible. But like when I started, I had a typewriter in college. Like you had to do the whiteout, you know, you had to do all that stuff. Like nowadays, whatever, just try something and if it doesn't work, you know, uh, I was going to say delete, but don't delete, just save it and another file. You might need it again someday.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to our interview with Gina Fattore. Visit GinaFattore.com to find out more about Gina and her book, The Spinster Diaries now available at IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and more.

Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and 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.

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Rita Reimers and Linda Hall Are Helping People Understand Cat Behavior

Rita Reimers is the founder of Just for Cats, a company that has been providing cat behavior services and cats-only pet-sitting for the last 18 years. She's the world's most in demand cat behaviorist and has written a new book called The Lucky Cat Approach to Cat Behavior Correction, which will give people the knowledge and tools to better understand and develop a deep bond with their cats. She is joined by her Executive Director Linda Hall who worked with health and fitness guru Richard Simmons for 17 years, where she met Rita. When Richard retired Linda joined Just for Cats.

Learn more about Rita.

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 Rita Reimers and Linda Hall of Just for Cats, a company that has been providing cat behavior services and cat-only pet sitting for the last 18 years. Rita, the world's most in demand cat behaviorist, has written a new book called "The Lucky Cat Approach to Cat Behavior Correction," which will give people the knowledge and tools to better understand and develop a deep bond with their cats. Rita also writes a hugely popular cat behavior help and advice column called "A New Cattitude" which answers questions through her membership only group Club Cattitude and is launching a new line of USA-made cat toys and bedding called Gracie and Esther. Linda worked with health and fitness guru Richard Simmons for 17 years, which is where she met Rita. Linda was Richard's customer service manager on his website — working with site visitors, posting content and participating in chats. When Richard retired, Linda joined just for cats as executive director. So please welcome to the show, Rita Reimers at Linda Hall.

Rita: Great. Thank you so much for having us.

Passionistas: Oh, I'm so glad I am exhausted just reading that intro.

Rita: But we love it. I've dedicated my life to cats. I left a six figure salary job to start over from scratch. It's actually 18 years now. Um, I left corporate America about 15 years ago, but the first three I did was doing both cat sitting and cat behavior counseling. Actually three things. I was still in corporate America and working for Richard Simmons all at the same time. And I thought, how can I make my life harder? I know I'll quit the job that makes all the money and I've not looked back. I've not looked back since I'm, I'm very blessed.

Passionistas: We like to ask our very first question on both of you is, and I think we know the answer, but what are you most passionate about?

Rita: Cats. Keeping cats more than that. Keeping cats in people's homes. Helping somebody with a behavior issue that may have meant the cat. What's going to end up being surrendered if we didn't fix it?

Linda: Yes. Cats are so often misunderstood. You know, dogs are so, they're just dogs. They're in their way. Tail is wagging and you hopefully know, I mean there are constant speech bubbles over dogs hands, right? Take you for a walk. Feed me. Cats are so much more complicated than that and the signs are so much less obvious. And Rita has really taught people how to read their cats behaviors, how to read their moods. Um, I can tell now by the way, the tail is curled that he's curious. Blinky eyes means I love you. I mean this whole language that exists and understanding the cats and in solving some problems, there are relatively small problems, which seem really big when you're dealing with it. Like your cat urinating on your bed every night. This gets really big.

Rita: That's a big problem.

Linda: People rehomed their cats over it and it may just be that her litter box, they had just changed litter. The cat liked the letter. So I started. So they changed back and it was all better and things like this. And of course some problems are a lot more complicated than that, but I've seen people on the verge of rehoming their cats that then Rita has spoken to them and given them answers. And these cats can stay home and safe. And that's huge. I mean that's just, I can't think of anything bigger than that than saving lives and keeping families.

Rita: I agree. I agree. That's what it's all about. Saving lives. Yes.

Passionistas: So where does this love of cats come from?

Rita: I think I was born with it. Um, I was given a cat when I was eight years old. We couldn't keep it cause my dad was allergic. Um, but I always felt this affinity towards cats since I was, you know, like two years old. I'd go near a cat. My mom would say, don't put your face near him. And I'd say, I have a cat. He understands. I made my cat, my mom dressed me as a cat, every holiday, um, every, uh, trick or treat Halloween. Thank you. Um, and then my dad had an aunt, my great aunt Chesser who lived in the country and I think she was the original cat person in our family. She did TNR, trap, neuter, release before it was a thing. She fed all the outdoor cats. A few of them became tame and became her pets, but we would, various members of the family go down to Smithville Falx, New York and help her get the kitties and to the vet to be spayed and neutered. Um, I just fell in love with cats then I think.

Passionistas: How about you Linda?

Linda: Uh, yeah, I didn't have cats, like Rita, Rita, Stan was allergic. It was my mom. So we had dogs and I love animals and I love having a pet, but you know that in your face stuff is a little much for me sometimes. Plus taking them outside again, I live where there's snow. It's just not my thing. And so when I got a cat it was like this, this is my, this is my match, this is my soul animal, this is my match. And then, you know, as we got more and found all the differences in cats and, and brought more into the house, it just, it's amazing the things you learn and the feeling. Yeah. And it's just, it's indescribable. I just, I don't know. It's in my soul.

Rita: Well, to make you earn their love, I always say a dog will love you until you give them a reason not to, but account won't love you until you give them a reason to love you.

Linda: That's true.

Passionistas: I love that. So tell us a little bit about your journey separately towards working together.

Rita: Um, well Linda first started working for Richard Simmons way before I did. Um, so Linda, do you want to talk about what you did for and why I snagged you for my company?

Linda: Yeah, I worked for him for 17 and a half years before he officially retired and I started out working as a typing angel, helping him to get his responses to people out, did some infomercials with and worked on some infomercials. We got to do a lot of fun stuff with him. And then I went into managing his clubhouse. So when he retired and Rita was thinking about starting up a cat club house so that people can have more access to her and her behavior, how she called me and she said, I heard Richard's retiring and you're losing your job. And I said, yes, I'm so stressed. And she said, lack of work for me. Yes, please.

Rita: No, I needed your skill set. And I knew Linda through Richard Simmons and the clubhouse plus I, uh, produced radios, uh, Richard's radio show on Sirius for three years. It was a live call in radio show three hours every Sunday. Um, so I got my cred of working for Richard. So the other people that worked for Richard Simmons knew I was a genuine, you know, person and not just someone trying to get close to Richard. Um, so Linda and I started developing a friendship. Um, I moved back to the Carolinas from LA and right away I was so fortunate to be offered the opportunity to do some videos for Catster magazine. And the producer of the videos happened to be right here in Charlotte because I said, darn, I can't do it. I just left LA and they're like, well, you know what, the producers are in Charlotte five miles away from me.

So I started doing those videos, uh, there actually for a website at the time called Pecha that's now owned by chewy. Everything's been changed around a little bit. And through that, um, Catster offered me the New Cattitude column right around the time I was wanting to launch the clubhouse. And Linda became free and she had been coming to me for cat advice anyway as her cat family was growing. And I knew she had the skill set to help me make a success of this clubhouse. And the reason I'm doing the clubhouses, you know, not everybody can afford a personal cat behavior session. Plus I'm in, just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I can't be everywhere. I can't go everywhere, reach everyone. Um, and not everyone can afford that anyway. So I wanted to have a clubhouse where people can have a community of other likeminded people or other people who've had similar problems and access to me and my staff.

Um, so they can come to us for cat behavior help, funny stories. Some camaraderie with each other. We've got some awesome sponsors with some great prizes from, um, Litter Genie, uh, Pretty Litter, Catster magazine of course. Um, and then, uh, the Cat Lady Box came aboard and oddly enough Spanglers candy, which that's good too. Doesn't love candy. Um, they were originally going to be sponsoring our Catstitute Cruise, but we can't do that right now with the COVID 19. So the clubhouse is even more important for people to join. We actually just cut the price in half. It was $19 a month. It's now $9.95 a month because I want everyone to be able to afford to have a cat behaviorist in their toolbox when they have a problem. Come to me, come to the clubhouse, come to the people there. Come to Linda who has eight cata and a dog. Um, Nikki and Sebastian, a married couple who have five cats. Um, we all know cats. Right. And what fun. It's fun to giving away.

Linda: Yes. Yes, yes. Well, when we took the clubhouse, she was saying, you know, with Covdshould we offer a month free or something? Everybody's struggling. People are off work. So we decided to do a $1 for the first month and the dollar is going until June. We're donating it to a local rescue here in Ohio, Friends of Felines. And then after that we'll switch to another rescue so that you can get a month for a dollar and you're donating the dollar to a rescue. So rescues are in trouble right now. So yeah.

Passionistas: Rita, you were saying that you had a six figure career. It's one thing to love cats and want to have a lot of cats. It's another thing to decide to make it your career. So what inspired you to do this full time?

Rita: Well, I had a very successful career in information technology. I was somewhat of a hybrid between the tech people and the business people. And I was good at my job, but honestly I was bored. Mmm. My last position was with a nonprofit organization that's awesome, called the California Endowment, but by and large, my career has been spent working for companies, making the people up at the top, rich, not contributing anything much to society. And then doing pet sitting on the side, at the time I did both cats and dogs, seeing what some of these animals go through.

Linda: Um, and then volunteering for rescues. Really getting a look firsthand at how many animals needlessly wind up in the shelters, let alone the ones that are born because people don't span neuter. Mmm. I knew I had to change the focus of my life and with the cat sitting, that was the first start, you know, towards getting into people's homes, getting people's ear, you know, having them trust me as a cat expert and listen to what I had to say if they came to me for advice. You know, I had to be very careful because someone came coming to me for pet-sitting cats and didn't necessarily want advice, but if they asked, they got it, you know, or if I, thought that something was really a miss and had to be addressed. No, I find a way to bring it up subtly. Uh, I know it was so much more rewarding even though at first it didn't pay well.

It still doesn't really pay anywhere near what I was making. I don't care. I'm happier. And I want to leave a legacy behind of, um, having more people understand cat behavior. A goal of mine and Linda's is to go into the schools and teach children at a young age about appropriate behavior with all kinds of pets, not just cats, but cats tend to be the ones that get picked on a lot by children who really don't understand animals have the same heart, soul and feelings that we do. Um, I don't have children, so I'm looking to lend us children to carry on the legacy. When she and I and her husband, Brian, are no longer here. I want to leave something behind that. It makes a positive dent in cats lives and the lives of their owners, owners. I hate to use that word. We don't really own the cat.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's another reason we're looking at launching this. USA-made pet Caroline too. Um, something that I've been talking about doing for years. I've seen the tide change. People want more USA-made products. Um, so Linda and I right now we're working on um, catnip and cat toys, a spray catnip that's made from homegrown organic cotton grown in defiance, Ohio. And some cat toys that have this organic catnip in them don't have any loose. You know, sometimes you'll see little whiskers, a little eyes on the toys and you know, cats can eat those, swallow them, choke on them. So, um, Linda and Nicki, her, her daughter who works for us hand so's everyone by hand. Of course when we make it big, we'll have to go into a manufacturing situation, but we make them in such a way that even if the cat was to chew on the thread, somehow it won't come apart. Linda, talk about that a little bit.

Linda: Yeah, I, so about an inch and then I back up and go forward. And so an inch, so if at any point it comes, and this, this was quite an eye opening thing that Rita taught me, you know, we buy toys that are cute and attractive to us, right? Googly eyes, your cat couldn't care less about that space or go go. They just want the toy. And we had, I remember we had a booking for when we had the cat sitting business and the lady called and said her cat was an emergency stomach surgery. He had ripped open his toy and eaten insides, weaker jingle bell or whatever and it was lodged in his intestine, emergency surgery, darn near die. You know, you don't think about this stuff. You just assume anything you buy is safe. And then you know, some of the materials have a lot of dyes on them. You see it water bowl and then your water bowl turns blue. Your cat slobbering on this is all very, very scary. So you know, you don't need tails and Danglies and, and you know your cat just monster.

Rita: The thing is if it's shaped like a mouse or a square or something round, they don't care. I'm like little mice just for the owner. Exactly.

Linda: But yeah, no eyes, no jingle bells sticking on them, nothing like that. And yeah, sewing and stopping and sewing and stopping because that was another thing. String causing obstruction or they can um, get it tangled around their neck. So this way, the most they're going to unravel is about an inch at a time. So they'll be separate pieces. So yeah.

Rita: And why are we called Gracie and Esther?

Linda: Gracie and Esther are our alternate personalities. You were any pet sitting conference and Rita gets these colds or whatever sinus thing and she can't hear. And what exactly, it's really fun sharing a hotel room with her because you say something and, and you'll hear, I think you said something, but I have no idea what it was or so one point I was just tired and loopy and said, Esther put your hearing aid and you can't hear a thing. It's so this just became this thing.

Rita: Then her daughter became little girl.

Linda: It just kind of took off on its own. So we decided that was a cute name to brand our business.

Rita: It'll be just for cats by Gracie and Esther.

Linda: Gracie and Esther.

Rita: You gotta laugh. That's the other thing. You know, we laugh a lot. I didn't laugh in the corporate world, you know, we laugh a lot, even though we see some tragic things, you know, wait, we try to end the day on some kind of humorous note. My cats make me laugh all the time. I know Linda's yours do too.

 

Linda: We've learned to laugh at everything. Best thing on earth is to be talking to Rita and have her come out and tear you out. Who did that? You know, as she steps in that pilot bar for whatever. So I finally told her one day, this is the epitaph that's going on your gravestone. Who did that?

Rita: Cause I'm a behaviorist. My cats are not perfect. I have 19 I just don't have the fighting or any of that. They get along well sometimes. But you know, I have little jealousy issues. I sometimes have pee pee on the floor accidents or you know, whenever they have a hairball, they're not going to do it on my wood floor. They're going to do it on my big area rug. Right, or the sofa or the bed. Yeah, there was like three nights in a row. This week I slept on the sofa because my two shy cats that are a little bit, yeah. Skiddish where on my bed? On my pillow, on my side and I'm like, I can't disturb them for three nights.

 

Linda:… gave up the bed one night and tried to go to the couch and they were mauling her and I got this text in the middle of the night. I'm just going to sleep on the floor in my office.

Rita: So I went upstairs into their bedroom. I slept on it one of the nights, but you know, 10 of them found me. Unbelievable.

Linda: Everyone the key to me, you know, it sounds crazy having 19 cats read and did not go to a shelter and decide no. Her cat house with 19 cats. I can find me. The key to Rita is send her a picture of a cat with the soulful eyes, you know, looking right into the camera and then tell her the story about how it's got a dangling leg or it's unadoptable or it's going to be euthanized. And she will be in the car and go get that kid.

Rita: I've got one just three minutes before we went on the air. I can't do it. I can't take it anymore. I can't. So I CC'd my mom, who runs the humane society of Lancaster, South Carolina, and I said, can you get photos? Can you, can you shop this around on your web, on your internet, on your website, on your Facebook? I can't take anymore. 20 is max? That doesn't mean I have an opening at night. An empty spot. We're perfect right now. The last two that I adopted were kittens. I didn't mean to adopt them, but of course, you know, a friend of mine found an orange kitchen and she had 12 cats and she's like, I know this kitten's yours. I know you love orange kitties. I took the kitten and he was great. He was getting along with my adult cats but were going nuts cause he was hyperactive so I purposefully went out and got this last kitten Sweetie Pie and the two of them are best buddies since she's kind of my heart cat now. I'm glad I went and got her, but she's the only cat I ever went and got on purpose and I'm done. No more.

Passionistas: You're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Rita Reimers and Linda Hall. During the month of June, Rita is offering cat lovers the first month's membership to Club Cattistude for only $1. She's also donating that dollar directly to Friends of Felines Rescue Center in Defiance, Ohio. To join visit RitaReimers.com/joinclubcattitude and use the discount code HELPFFRC to donate to Friends of Felines Rescue Center. Now here's more of our interview with Rita and Linda.

Why do you think people who like cats are so open to having so many cats?

Rita: Well I know what happened to Linda. It would probably help us to a lot of people. You go out and you adopt cat and you think, I want this wonderful lap cat. I want this cat to love me and sit with me. And you know, maybe you don't end up with that kind of cat and then you already have, then you start thinking, well how would I want to be the only cat in a house full of people? I should get one more. Everybody says it's easier with two, I should get one more. So you go get one more. Maybe those two get along. Maybe they don't. And you still don't get your laptop. You sit on the sofa at night and you're like, okay, I got to get another one. But then what happens is the rescue or shelter, they got your pegged and they're like, Oh, that's a sucker. So then, then she had went public and I know this happened to Linda and Brian. Linda, we just took in this cat. Oh yes, we have to find out a home. This was latte, right? Do you want to tell the story?

Linda: Latte had been born in the rescue. I went and started with my daughter who needed a cat fix. So she wanted to volunteer at this, at the local rescue friends of felines, and, but she was under 16 so she needed an adult to go with her. Fine. I'm just going to sit and watch the cats. Right. So of course I fall in love when we come home and my husband has decided he hates cats, which I guarantee you, he's sitting in a chair of the cat in his lap right now. Guaranteed. So it didn't stick. So now he hates cats. No cats, no cats. So then finally it's all right. One can't go get super that you keep. So I went and got super, and then it's like, you know, everybody says you need to. So okay. So we went and we got back and then we went to this fall festival and the owner was selling things to raise money for her rescue. I was just thinking of you. She says this mama cat had had these babies, her name was Java. They got all got coffee names. They were all adopted out for some reason. Latte's Parents had to move lattes, lived in a home for a few years and Oh shoot, I just don't want to put her back at the rest. We went and got the cat. But you know, I find being a former dog person, when you sit down on the couch, your dog is jumping up with you.

I had three cats was looking around. Where's the cats? You know, they're laying in the, I mean I have eight cats. All I can see one laying in the window right now, but nobody's in this bedroom with me right now. So you gotta have more to have interaction all the time

Rita: They don't need as much focused energy and attention as a dog. So you can have I think three cops to one dog. Yeah. Still not be expanding the amount of energy it takes to take care of a dog. I love dogs. But they just, they were require more constant energy.

Passionistas: So tell us a little bit about the book, Rita.

Rita: "The Lucky Cat Approach," I'm working on that one right now. And that is based on, um, what I've learned from doing some cat behavior sessions with people. Um, I remember one session I did with this couple and they, they adopted this cat and the wife really wanted to keep the cat but he kept attacking the husband. I want to go out there to do the session. This is kind of sad. He was kind of treating the cat like people used to treat dogs with the rolled of newspaper, smacking it over the head.

Well the cat would get, you know, bite him or nip at him cause he was trying to play cause he was never raised right. He was raised in a shelter. He didn't know what it was like to be in a home and the guy would yell at the dog or the cat and knock it on the nose and then wonder why when he went near the cat, the cat lunged at him. Okay. So I had to teach him. Let me, let me call it up on my other computer so that I tell you exactly the acronym correctly. Mmm. It's really all this will spell lucky cat. It's about loving your cat unconditionally, just the way he is. And understanding your cat's point of view on life and his unique capabilities, which means, you know, you may want a lap cat, you might not be a lap cat cause you don't know when he went through before he got to you.

Right. I have one Picasso. She was very neglected. She wasn't really abused, she was just neglected. And she'll come to me when she's scared of something I thought were strong or what have you. She'll come to me and let me Pat her. I could scratch her under the chin, behind the ear with whatever. Other than that, I can't really touch her because she is not used to that. So I have to accept that that is her capability. That's the level of interaction she can accept. And that's it. I can't turn her into a lap cat like my Simba. Um, and you've got to communicate with your cat every day. Some people don't bring a cat home though. I care. I have a cat. They put it down and that's it. They never interact with it again. They expect the cat to come to them when it needs something.

That's not how it works. You've got to communicate, you've got to seek out your cat every day. Mmm. And you've gotta be kind to your cat because that's what strengthens the bond between, right. If you're treating it like that man who was, you know, smacking the cat for not acting right. Or even the water bottle. I don't really believe in the water bottle. You know, your cat is going to start being afraid of you. That's going to cause all kinds of anxiety and behavior issues. Maybe you can't even solve them because the cat becomes some petrified of people ends up in the shelter and get euthanized. Right. So, you know, you've gotta be an active participant in molding your cat's personality. You can't just have them sit under the bed and be an aloof cat. You know, you've got to actively participate in drawing them out with toys and treats sitting by him, reading to, you know, showing him you're not going to hurt him.

Mmm. Consistency is really the key to making it all work and the amount of tension and time you spend with your cats is critical to keeping that bond between you. So you have a cat, you know you've been paying attention to forever or you're, your daughter has been instrumental in this cat's daily life and then she goes off to college. Well somebody who's going to have to fill in, you can't just let that cat sit there cause he'll start to revert to his natural tendencies to be aloof. It's scared of people because um, the most important thing that people need to know about cats I think is that they're both predator and prey. Unlike dogs, their constant life is spent in a hypervigilant state waiting for something to have them for dinner. Okay. They are wither hunted or being hunted. So yeah, that's why cats get so startled when there's noises, when there's new smells in the household. That's why when somebody comes to your door, most cats will take off running to hide because their first instinct is self preservation. And you have to know that and that that's really what drives us 95% of what your cats do. Oh,

Not a lot of people do realize that. You know. And another thing too is like we, we went out and we domesticated dogs. We turned them into working dogs and we bred them and made different types of dogs. Cat's decided to come to us. They domesticated themselves. They started coming to our, you know, many thousands of years ago to our, our camps, you know, to take the little scraps of food to eat the mice that were attracted by our food and slowly, you know, worm their way into our hearts. Cause if you look at kitten or even a full grown cat, look at their face, a lot of it resembles a human face. Their cry sounds like a baby cry. Okay. It gets right into our hearts. But they decided to become part of our lives. We didn't go out and domesticate them. So our relationship with cuts is a lot more fragile than it is with dogs.

Passionistas: That's so interesting. Um, you, um, you also have a, um, cat behavior and help advice column called "A New Cattitude,” which I love, love that name. Um, is there, are, you know, is there one or two stories, are there one or two stories that stand out to you from your years of doing that, that kind of resonate with you? Some of your favorites are some of the more challenging questions you've been asked?

Rita: I think, um, biggest challenge that I, I hate to pick on people that I know, but it just happens to be Linda's daughter and son-in-law when they were engaged to be married. And Sebastian and NICU moved in together to say, go for the wedding. She had two cats and I'll did he on tartar harder to not, he's a momma's cat. He did not like Sebastian at all. He would swipe at and his Adam and they didn't know what they were going to do. So I suggested make Sebastian the one that does the feeding, make him be the one that gives the treats, you know, make him be the one that puts the food down at night and talks to him. Slowly but surely they forged a relationship and I think he can even pet tiger now. Am I right Linda?

Linda: Yeah, tight tigers. A cranky old man. That's, we just call him the grumpy old man and he even scares that tax not to need a lot of vet techs. Hand ones. You just see him with Nikki. He's like such a loving, wonderful kid. And then anybody else, it's like watch your face. He's not an ego. So he's, I don't think he's in love with Sebastian, but he tolerates Sebastian and Sebastian is allowed to sleep with his wife and that is a very good outcome. It's luck. It's, they're allowed to share a bed cause he wouldn't have and he'd wedge in between them and he'd growl and his like, the wedding's off. Tiger doesn't like me.

Rita: That's an important factor though. I mean if your pets don't like your spouse, that's bad. Really bad. I think another one is I went to this behavior session here in Charlotte and they have three cats each living in a separate room and I said to them, How long have you been been in this situation? You know, two or three years. You can't live like that, but they were hesitant to do the introduction too because of course it looks like what children, they're not going to love each other at first. A few merge a husband and wife like a Brady Bunch, and you merge human children. There's going to be a resistance. Just like with cats. What are you going to do separate them? Your kids live on this side of the house and live on the side of the house.

When they move out, we can get back together. There's ways to work through the painful process. Most often the posturing and the noise you hear when you're introducing cats to each other or even to a dog, it's noise, you know? Very seldom do you really see physical fighting and blood. That's very rare, but people, you know, it hurts them to see that. So they'd rather live with their cats all separated forever or they'd go through that pain.

Linda: 90% of the time it's just bark. Like kids fighting with each other.

Rita: Yeah, right, exactly. Even my cat that love each other, pinky and booboo, brother, sister love each other. Booboo gets a wild hair and he'll just decide to antagonize his sister and she'll yell at him and know she's like, what's going on in the background? Just pink and verbose. I don't even get up anymore. I think me teaching people that, that's just, you know, it's a temporary painful hatch they have to go through and it's much worse for them than it is for the cats. The cats, they either love each other or they learn to be respectful, be distinct from each other.

Passionistas: Have you found a new behavioral issues arising during this time of COVID 19 and if you had tips for people about how to deal with the togetherness?

Rita: Yeah. You know, at first, if you don't work at home and you're at home, you're interrupting your cats sleeping period. Usually they're sleeping during the day. They're like, why are you here? Get out of my, get off my sofa. I want to slip there. You know? Then after a while they're used to being there. Mmm. Then you're going to go back to work and they're going to go through separation anxiety. They're like, why aren't you there? I used to be on there at my Beck and call. I could lie on you whenever I want. Um, so I always suggest that people do what I'm doing right now. I shut myself in my office. There's no cats in here. Let them have some time. Apart from you, let them have their routine. You know, they're looking at, they're making a new routine. Cats don't like change. You disrupted their routine by being at home. Now you have to make a new routine, which I think includes having them be on their own and having you be in a separate room or go outside for a walk or do something to be apart from them.

Um, so I noticed that I have a cat that's very attached to me. Smoochy I've had her since she was four weeks. She's three legged. She's always been extremely attached to me, but it's getting worse. Mmm. She's practically under my rear end when I sleep on it. When I sit on the sofa, I sleep all the stuff I want. I sit on the sofa and she started like lunging and parking at the other cats when they come near me. So I have to consciously make sure I get up here for a few hours every day. And that seems to be, make her relax a little bit, not be quite so anxious that she's got to be right up against me every moment of the day. Um, and the other thing I think that's important is cultivating this routine around, um, what I call the four PEGS of cat behavior. There's four basic behaviors that cats do every day to ensure their survival.

One of them is they hunt for Prey. That's the P. We may make that by playing with them. So really take a wild type toy or something. You can make them chase around, mimic that they're hunting, let them catch it and then feed them. That's the E in the pigs is they eat, they'll eat their dinner or breakfast and then right away count's instinct is to groom and they do this cause out of nature. They want to get all the particles of remnants of their kill off of them so that their predators cap find them. Yeah, fine. Aren't attracted by the smell of the prey. And so they won't become someone's dinner. And then lastly they're going to go to sleep. That's pegs. So I always suggest people, even when they're home, practice those morning and night, because in the morning you're going to do play, eat, groom, sleep. You're going to go off to work, so sleeping or you're going to be up in your office or what have you. And then at night I'm going to do it again. So I always do it really, you know, maybe an hour or so before I want to go to bed. I do play, eat grim sleep, so they're ready to sleep when I'm ready to sleep. And that way they won't tend to wake you up at three o'clock in the morning when they have you captive and they want to expend that energy. You've already done that by doing PEGS and whatever other antics you might do with them during the middle of the day.

Passionistas: Is this a good time for people to adopt a cat as far as you're concerned?

Rita: I would say so. Um, because you're home, you're able to bond with the cat, especially if you've got introductions to do with other cats or dogs. Um, or children in the household. Um, I know some facilities they are doing video pre adoption screening. Um, so when you go to the shelter or rescue, you know, you get to see the cat that you've been talking about seeing on the video or what have you. Cause too, they're trying to cut down on their, you know, exposure to people as well. So it's not like you can go and walk through the shelters or rescues like you could before I know the shelter, her leg, Castro hasn't even been open. The rescues are, um, I know FFRC they're doing some of that, Linda, it's not what Jack had.

Linda: I just talked to Jackie yesterday and she said it's, it's exhausting. This woman, she's don't, she's just given her life to, that's in her own way and has built this rescue onto her home and it keeps building and she's all about the cats. She's up early, she's up late. Well they have a webcam. So for one thing people can watch a cat and be like, Oh, I love that cat. But you know, often you, you decide, Oh this cat and then you get there and the cats really aloof and not your cat. So she's taking appointments and she's got thumpers room that she can let the cats and people interact one at a time and then they leave and they scrub everything down and disinfect it and then they take the next one. And so it's exhasuting , but it's kitten season and you know, they're getting full, they need help.

Rita: So, and I know she's lost a lot of volunteers due to COVID. And the fear of growing, this is the backbone of what runs our rescues. So it's quite a detail deal, but they're making it work.

Well you talked to a lot of places need fosters now because it's getting season. So they need people to hold onto the cats and socialize them. Maybe not adopt them, but, um, they need places to put all these kids. That's always a need. But I think it's more so now.

Passionistas: So what's the most rewarding part of what you do?

Rita: I am so blessed that I get to make money doing what I love. Um, and at night when I sit down to unwind, watch TV, I have all this unconditional love around me and I have so many people that support me. I didn't know were in my corner. Um, like I won't say her name, but she knows who she is, who hooked me up with my PR firm and my, my manager who believes in what I do so much. He's working pro bono right now and he's a big name. Um, you have support sometimes where you don't even know you have it. And once I started really being open about how many cats, what I do, it's, I'm just amazed. People that I knew from high school. I'm getting support from, I'm working with, um, somebody now who makes jewelry and I knew her in high school and her brother was actually in a Richard Simmons video. I grew up with him too. So everything converging it together. She's selling the jewelry to support animal rescue. She's a big animal rescue person. So we're going to write an article about her. So it's like people from all the aspects of my life are coming back into my life. It's amazing to me how many people care about animals.

Linda: Well, I absolutely can't imagine read it. If there was a number out there somewhere of cats that have not gone to a shelter because of you. I mean, I'm not talking about the 19 you've rescued that, that alone. Well, plus, I mean the cats have come and gone in your life, but how many times somebody has just been, this is it. I can't do it anymore. And I'm going to, and then you help them find a solution and that cat gets to stay in the home. That's money.

Rita: And one of our Richard Simmons friends, Wendy a cat, came up to her door. She'd never had a cat before, largely because I was able to answer questions from her. She kept this cat smokey Simone who passed away recently. She was heartbroken, but I helped her, you know, just, just answering a few questions and encouraging her that, you know, cats need love just like dogs do. It's just in a different way.

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

Rita: I think loving what you do for a living. I'm one of those people that whatever I do for a living, it kind of becomes my life. When I was in information technology, it was a big, huge part of my life. Um, uh, it's kind of my identity. Uh, to me it works. You know, I have to be happy in my work and have it be fulfilling and fit in with my lifestyle. Yeah.

Linda: If you can feel good about what you're doing, which isn't not, I mean like all jobs are necessary. I'm going to get really upset if everybody leaves burger King because I crave a Whopper every once in a while. This is rewarding stuff. But when you have put yourself, you know, working for Richard, I was helping people and support them and getting a healthy lifestyle and answering their questions and that was just, that was a high. And when he was here I was like, I don't know that I can go just work behind a desk and answer phones. I know I'm helping someone, but this was such an onboard and now here I am in this, you know, cat versus weight loss, but still a passion and helping people. That's huge. And if you know that your life has mattered and you help people, that's yeah, that's worth a lot more than money or anything.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to our interview with Rita Ramers and Linda Hall. During the month of June, Rita is offering cat lovers the first month membership to Club Cattitude for only $1. She's also donating that dollar directly to Friends of Felines Rescue Center in Defiance, Ohio. To join, visit RitaReimers.com/joinclubcatittude and use the discount code HELPFFRC to donate to the Friends of Felines Rescue Center.

Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and 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.

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LIVE EVENT — RoHo Founder Caleigh Hernandez

RoHo founder talks about pivoting from selling goods made by women in Africa to selling face masks made out of African fabric to help her artisans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Hear Caleigh's full episode here.

 

LIVE EVENT — Mae and Sashee Chandran

We have a tea party with Tea Drops Founder Sashee Chandran.  And her mother Mae walks us through her scone recipe and award winning marmalade secrets.

Listen to Sashee's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.

Listen to Mae's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.

Dia Bondi Helping Women Ask Like an Auctioneer

Dia Bondi is the Creator of Ask Like An Auctioneer. After 20 years as a communications coach, she combined those skills with her impact hobby of fundraising auctioneering for nonprofits that are women-led or that benefit women and girls. Her goal is to help one million women ask for more and get it.

Learn more about Dia.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: 

Passionistas: Hi and welcome to The Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. Today we're talking with Dia Bondi, a communications coach, speaker, and creator of Ask Like an Auctioneer. For the last 20 years, Dia has coached some of the highest profile, most extraordinary world leaders, CEOs, philanthropists, visionaries and innovators.

She's helped Rio de Janeiro secure the 2016 summer Olympics, worked with countless thought leaders, entrepreneurs across industries and Changemakers at the Clinton global initiative and the Commonwealth games Federation among many others.

Dia founded Ask Like an Auctioneer, combining her skills as a communication coach and her impact hobby of fundraising auctioneering for women led nonprofits and nonprofits benefiting women and girls. Her goal is to help one million women and underrepresented folks ask for more and get it.

So please welcome to the show Dia Bondi.

Dia: Hi everybody.

Passionistas: Thanks for being here. We're really excited to talk to you today.

Dia: I'm excited too.

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

Dia: This is such a tough question for me when I get any questions about what's your favorite ice cream? What's your favorite color? What's the one thing I'm like, there's so many things and that's been sort of the definition of my career has been being a multi passionate, you know, I mean I, I, I really am, which is, you know, adventure is one of my core values and that means like trying a lot of different things. And so, you know, in my work I think whether I'm helping somebody sort of elevate their impact on stage or helping in a workshop for aspect, can auctioneer a woman craft a powerful ask, the kind that can change everything across the board when I'm really passionate about is sort of getting to the heart of the matter and helping people be honest with the world about what they want.

Passionistas: So talk about how that does translate into your work as a communications coach.

Dia: I'm a CEO activator and the SHEEO network and I was talking to Vicky Saunders who's the founder of CEO and about what it is that I do. And yes, I help, you know, leaders stand on stage and have impact. Helps sometimes help them put together the story, their signature talk or, or to put together their 12 minutes on stage for a crucial communications moment as a leader in their organization. But what I'm really doing is, is asking like who are you and how do you want to show up and what kind of impact do you really want to have? And then how do we strategically tie that to the mission of your organization or your entrepreneurial journey or the, you know, your business that you're running. So it's really a lot about like who are you?

And like what? Like if you honestly say who you are on stage and what you're about, of course we're going to be nuanced and we're going to be intentional about the language that we use. But that's really a lot of what I do inside of that work. And then you know how it shows up, that stuff directly translates over to project as like an auctioneer because I'm kind of asking the same question. I'm asking women like, wait a second, what do you really want? And then how do we craft a powerful ask that actually gets you there more quickly? And a lot of folks sometimes think about that as like, Oh you mean negotiations and yeah, sometimes we're talking about negotiation, but negotiation starts with getting really clear about what are you really asking for? And knowing that depends on what do you really want.

Passionistas: What inspired you to become a communications coach?

Dia: There was a very specific moment that really took the small flame into a full on campfire for me. But leading into that, it was really, I started my career in fitness and fitness is about building muscle. Mass fitness is about, you know, increasing your range of motion. Fitness is about stability. Fitness is about whole health. But what is the part that I really loved about teaching group fitness, which I did all through college, was helping folks in my room have a sense of personal power in their bodies like that. That's just what ends up happening. That sort of the after-glow or the, you know, the halo effect of moving your body is the energy and sort of the embodiment you get from that. And that was something that was really an important part of that work.

Aside from the fact that I've always been kind of entrepreneurial, you know, in college I didn't want to work in the bookstore for eight bucks an hour at that time, so long ago, $6.25 an hour. I wanted to teach group fitness on my own terms with the schedule that I determined for 50 bucks an hour. You know, that it made a big difference because free time matters to me. And it turns out that I really loved that work. And after college I was an international economics major, which was, I mean even my professors were like, I'm sorry, are you in the right place? They were like, you know, marketing and communications is down the hall. And I'm like, no, but I want to study statistics. It was an interesting match for me, but when I was done with that work, I was really interested in like international development.

And so I went out and had a bunch of interviews with organizations like the world bank and the IMF and the labor department and in all of those interviews I basically all of his interviews put me in a state of anxiety that made me look at a career of quote unquote working my way up a ladder, starting from a, you know, an analyst position to whatever else inside a air filtered building with soundproofing and cubicles. And I just wanted to die and I'll, all I wanted to do was do the thing I was doing in a fitness room, helping people feel powerful in themselves and do it in a business context. And I learned about this thing called training and development, which now we call learning and development because training is a very specific thing. And through a lot of talking, my process out loud with my community met somebody who taught communications classes at large technology companies all over the world.

He had a small practice with a few other trainers out on the road and I managed to wiggle my way into getting to watch him teach one of his courses. And as I sat at the back of the room and watched people stand up with his coaching skills and have his, his facilitation skills, craft a powerful story and then deliver it in the front of the room. And these are like manager types, director level finance people, and it just turned out that it happened to be the CFO in that class for that large organization. When I say large, I mean like 45,000 employees globally. I watched him go from a sort of, I would say like an energy and impact level of a three on a scale of one to 10 to an energy and impact level without having to be outwardly, you know, demonstrative, but energetically go both in terms of the impact of his story and how he delivered it to go from a three to a nine of the course of those three days.

When I watched that happen, it almost took my breath away. I felt so clear that this is what I want to help people do. I want to help people grow their voice and their selfness in business. And I learned that storytelling, what we call Ben corporate storytelling, which was like nobody was talking about it then. I'm just that old now. Storytelling is everywhere. That transformation had me so transfixed and it again took my little flame to like, I think I want to do something in the world of training and development, whatever that means to like, Oh my God, if I don't do this work, I'm going to die. And as an outcome of that week, I got so clear that I wanted to learn how to do that work even though I had no, I mean what? I was a group fitness instructor and I just graduated with a degree in international economics.

I had no, you know, didn't come to the acting world. I didn't have a bunch of teaching background outside of the fitness context. I wasn't a writer. You know, I didn't have a liberal arts degree that showed that I could put together a powerful story. And I ended up making, actually that month I made the single most powerful ask I've ever made in my career. The ask. That changed everything, which I started now looking backwards. My husband reminded me like, Dia, you've been helping people ask powerfully forever. In fact, you made an ask that changed everything 20 years ago and he's referring to the ask I made of the man who was teaching that class, which was, will you teach me? And he said, yes, there are few things in my life I've been so singularly and sort of courageously determined to get to do.

And that was really one of the first ones in my life that I was really clear that like I want to do this come hell or high water and if he doesn't get me my big break, somebody else's going to, I have to do this work.

Passionistas: And then how did to build your own business?

Dia: Well, I worked with him for about eight years and ended up sort of being a lead in his organization. You know, the way training and development organizations work or training companies work are often, everyone's in a 10 99 and that's changed in California. But that was how we worked. So it was perfect for me because I had this wonderful life of autonomy and connectedness at the same time. You know, I was delivering his work out into the world for his clients all over the place. But every gig that came through I could say yes or no to with no punishment.

So it was really wonderful balance of, you know, getting to do the work I wanted, being connected to what was going on with our office in New York, but then also being able to exercise a lot of autonomy. I was with him for about eight years and then I had a kiddo and I thought, how can I do this all over the world? There's no way. I have a tiny kiddo. And I thought I was just going to say goodbye to that work. And when my son was about a year and a half, I was really starting to feel the itchy scratchies to get back to be in the context of teaching, which feels like a performance. But it also is so enabling. You get to, you get to witness other people's transformation. You get to, you know, solve problems. It's a very dynamic experience. You know, I just like I just to be in that context with something I was really missing, whether it's a coaching engagement or a training room, right.

What you think of as a training room and one day I got a call that sounded like a not such a big deal. It was sort of like, Hey, we are doing really interesting international project. We heard you're really good. Could you give me a call? I thought, Oh, this is garbage, but I'm going to follow up on it anyhow. And once I got on the phone with a person that I reached out, to me, it turned out that that was a gig where I got to go to Rio de Janeiro for two months and help the Rio bidding team deliver the stories they needed to deliver to the decision makers during the race for who would host the 2016 games. Now the competition for hosting Olympic games, whether it's summer or winter, the landscape and that has changed since that time. Fewer cities are bidding, but during the time it was a very, it was a very competitive race and it was a great experience and that kind of launched me into the 2.0 when I got finished with that project I really realized, Oh I do love this.

There is a way for me to do it and I want to expand my practice into doing remote one-on-one leadership coaching as well. So I use that as sort of a launching point to then grow my one on one coaching practice and doing more bespoke training to solve really specific communication problems in mid and large size organizations for specific groups. And it just kind of like I just started to get to some momentum and grew from there.

Passionistas: What do you think sets you apart from people that do the same thing in your field?

Dia: I want to challenge that idea for a second. You know, I work with a lot of people, particularly when I coach one-on-one with individual entrepreneurs. You know there's all this like get your differentiation statement, get your different, how are you different? How are you, how do you distinguish yourself? And what I don't like about that question is that it forces us to craft who we are based on who we're not like, hi, how are you different?

Well I'm not like that. I'm not like that and I'm not like that. And it, and it tends to kind of put us on our heels. And so what I find instead is a more powerful question for me, even when I did my own brand exercise is who am I? Like what is it that I do do? Cause there's lots of people do really similar work and then let sort of the chips fall where they may and how folks perceive that as a disk, as something that's distinguishable from how other folks role. And for me, like what I do in the world is I help folks find the courage to speak from the heart in a way that is honest to who they are. Take control of a very crucial moment in their career right now. That means applied to like onstage and on their goals so that they can elevate their impact in what they do.

And so that shows up in talks that I give, that shows up in my one on one coaching that shows up in the workshops that I deliver. And that's really what, that's the heart of the work that I do. In terms of style, I would say that, you know, my style both with my one-on-one clients and onstage is pretty punk rock. Yeah. I would say if you have a face, I'm usually going to be in it, you know, talk about why authenticity is so important. Well, what is authenticity? Authenticity is actually having who you are, what you do and how you do it all show up in a way that is aligned. That doesn't mean you're inflexible. You might have a range, you know, of the, how you show up. But I think it's important because it creates trust and consistency, you know? And I think it also, uh, you can keep track of yourself a lot better when we show up, honestly, about who we are and how we like to roll.

And it helps us reach our goals faster. You know, I was teaching, uh, I've, uh, I have a workshop for ask, like an auctioneer called your most powerful ask live. And last year I was in a session, I had a woman in the room during one of the sort of live coaching aspects of the workshop. I asked, you know, tell me one of your goals. And a woman in the room raised her hand. She said, I have a goal. I have a goal. I said, great, let me, let me hear it. She said, she's a lawyer in house somewhere and she big technology company. She said, this next year I really want to keep learning and growing. And all I could think of was, that's a pile of crap. That's not a goal. That's an activity. Okay, let's do it again. What is your goal?

And she said, all right, all right, I want to be in house general counsel someday. And I was like, now we're onto something that is an authentic, honest answer about what you really want. And we have to have that in order to actually have an honest, authentic pathway to try to pursue that goal. We can't get somewhere if we're not authentic about what we really want, you know, because the destination isn't accurate. So I think of authenticity in two ways. One, in being honest with ourselves about what we want. And then secondly, how do we actually pursue it in a way that's aligned to actually who we are and how we roll in the world.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Dia Bondi to learn how you can ask like an auctioneer visit diabondi.com. Now here's more of our interview with deal.

Passionsitas: We know you're very discreet, so we're not going to ask you to name any names, but what are some of your proudest accomplishments as a communications coach?

Dia: What's a bit actually been a struggle and for me in my, in my coaching practice, because the thing that I'm doing with my clients are actually their accomplishments, not mine. You know, I feel like the moment, uh, my client, if it's an ovation kind of moment, the moment they have that ovation, I'm fading to black. Like I'm already on an airplane. You know, they did it. I didn't do it. But I will say that the, the, the thing that I am most proud of in my communications work isn't about the who. It's much more about the, how I have made a decision to be courageous with my clients and to not let them squeeze out of making a decision to be honest with the world about who they are when they have a chance to say their point of view, to not pull punches.

And that scares the crap out of me every single time because every time I go to push on a client, every time I have to activate my own courage to say no Dia, you made a decision to make sure that we get all the way there with your client no matter who they are, how quote unquote important they are committing to. That is something I'm actually really proud of and it is very, it's very, it's, it can be hard, especially when, you know, in a production context, sometimes the producers that I'm working with and the teams are more, have to sort of be beholden to the hierarchy of the client. I'm of the thing we're working on and we'll deploy me on to working with a leader with a bunch of caveats about who that leader is and how to work with them and to what to be touchy about and what they don't like, et cetera, et cetera.

And when it comes really down to it, that's all bullshit. That the great way for me to make sure that I'm friendly and my client is not successful is to believe all the stories we have about who people are and how to treat them. Instead, I need privacy and courage to work with every client in the way they need to be worked with agnostic to their title.

Passionistas: And what's your fear? What makes that scary to you?

Dia: Oh, that I'd be wrong. That they'll reject it. That they'll push up against it. It's the same fear or the same nervousness or trepidation or anxiety or how it rolls out for you is the same fear we have when we, I mean, just to take this right back to our ask work to ask for something and somebody says no, what if they say no? You know, it's rejection.

It's, you know, doing it wrong. It's being punished for pushing too hard. It's, you know, it's, it's, I don't know how they'll react. That's sort of the first feeling. When did you know is no, no, no idea. Remember the courageous way is the way, go do it. Ask the question. Of course. There's all these, there's always big fantasies we have about what will happen if we, if we really go there, whether, you know, it's asking for what we really want or if it's for me, you know, coaching really courageously and being direct. Um, you know, we all have these fantasies about the leader you're working with. You know, something, it's kind of fantasies, the scenes that you could see in a movie of them going, what? Oh, do you think you are? And storming off, you know, but that just doesn't happen. Um, it has happened once, actually, now that I look back once I had a client who was basically ref in real time, refused to take my direction and blamed me for his inability to improve.

But because I know who I am and I stand in the decisions that I make, I, I could treat him both with empathy and boundaries.

Passionistas: How did all this lead to you becoming a licensed auctioneer?

Dia: In California, we don't have a licensing. Just to be clear with your listeners, some States you do have a licensing process. We do have to have a bond here in California, which I hold, but there's no real licensing. Anybody could stand up and be an auctioneer if you're bonded. And a lot of folks do just on a voluntary basis. But in other States, that's not so true. So I took a bet every seven years I kind of get tired. I mean, I'm tired a lot. I don't know about you ladies, but I'm tired a lot and I took an 18 months sort of self-imposed working sabbatical, you know, folks that I, some of my creative collaborators in the world invited me to do a few projects with them during that time.

I took on a few clients here and there, but really kind of had the disposition in the world that I just wasn't working outwardly and I wasn't pushing anything forward. And during that time, you know, I was sort of like, ha, my coaching work is really interdisciplinary. Like I draw on lots of different stuff to do it. And I, during that time I was like, I need to learn something that isn't, that isn't squarely in the vein of my coaching work. You know, I want to, you know, to have it not be a direct like professional development, but just a experience. You could go do something weird. I think I said at the beginning of our call that one of my values is adventure. And so I was thinking about it. My husband said, remember that thing you'd, that you done? You said you do?

I said, yeah. And so I packed my bags. I went to St. Louis and I went to auctioneering school for 10 days. It was me and a hundred Cowboys on the side of route 66 and a holiday Inn express learning how to auctioneer. Well, and I had the question, what am I, what am I doing with this? You know, I, I threatened to do it 10 years before. I have a 12 year old denim and a nine year old. And in our early preschool days we were part of a preschool co-op. Maybe some of your listeners who are parents and caregivers have kiddos that are in co-ops where it was just a parent run preschool and we had a fundraiser every year and one year when, when I was there, we were there for six years. Actually the fundraising committee said, Hey Dia, you know, you're, you're competent on stage.

And I'm like, yes I am. And they said, we didn't know nobody in the preschool right now wants to be the live auctioneer and MC for our upcoming fundraiser. Would you do it? And I thought, I don't know. I don't know how the hell to do that. And I did it and at the end I was like, that was a blast. It's onstage but in a really different way because I'm used to giving talks, you know, and coaching where it's all like, you know, we're solving a problem and it's very serious and all this stuff. Although auctioneering for fundraising is very serious cause we were fundraising for some really serious needs. But at the dinner table one night, I said, you know what I would do someday? I'd actually do that thing for real. Just like actually learn how to do it. Excuse me. And the 10 years later was that during my sabbatical.

So when I was, when I was there, I thought, what idea for real, what am I going to do with this? So I'm here. I spent a lot of time away from my family. It did this thing with a bunch of Cowboys. What am I doing with this? And, and I, I was like, well of course I'm fairly active in the world of women in work. Something I care about. There aren't a lot of women auctioneers in California. I thought, okay, well I'm, when I get home, I'm going to do this as an impact hobby for women led nonprofits and nonprofits that benefit women and girls. Because if you're a woman who's running, you know, a nonprofit that does environmental wetlands studies to protect lands in the central Valley, I want you to be successful in your project. And if I can help you get more dollars in your hands, I want to be the one to do that.

If you're, even if you're a dude running a nonprofit that's benefiting women and girls, I want to help get more money in your hands so you can be successful with that. So that's what I've been doing for the last couple of years and I don't do it for free. I'll tell you that I don't do it for free because it's a nominal fee compared to the other work that I do. But clients show up a lot better when they, they've got a little skin in the game. So I do call it my impact hobby, but I don't do it fully pro bono.

Passionistas: And so why did you set the goal of helping one million women and how many of you helped so far with a new project?

Dia: I just launched last year. I'm not at a million. So one night I'm a fallen asleep and I'm thinking, God, this last year has been so amazing.

A chance to stand on stage and auctioneer for all these nonprofits. I'm learning how to make direct pledges. It's a different way of being on stage then you know, giving a talk. And it's so interesting like so many of the women that I work with in my communications work, entrepreneurs and beyond, you know, many of them have to make at the end of their communications moment, whether it's a pitch or whether it's a, you know, a talk at an industry conference or if it's, you know, them standing in front of the room at, at an all hands. And most importantly, what I really care about are women who are growing, you know, businesses on their own terms. How like when they go to make asks, which you know, every time you stand on stage there's a CTA at the end. Isn't there? I mean in business we think of that language all the time.

What is the call to action in the room and it would be so amazing. I was thinking one night if the women that I worked with who have to make an ask had a chance to stand on stage like I've gotten to do in the last couple of years as an auctioneer and make an ask like I do like there's so much stuff I've learned in auctioneering that would be so relevant to the world of how we make asks in our businesses and in the business world. I mean think about it as an auctioneer, that's all I'm doing. I'm asking, I'm asking, I'm opening the bid right now at a hundred dollars any minute at two I bought three and went to like $300 looking for a $400 bid. Anyone at four I'm just asking and finding out, asking and finding out to see if I can get the most that the, that the room will yield.

So how interesting would it be if all women had a chance just once to stand on stage and ask like I get to that to borrow all of the ways we do that and then transfer it over to the way we make asks in business. Wouldn't it be wonderful? Have all women had a chance just for a second, just once to ask like an auctioneer and I flipped my light on and wrote it down and I thought this is a weird idea. Maybe there's something here. And I started to speak it out loud to a few of the communities I'm in. Hey, I got this weird idea. Hey, I got this idea, wouldn't it be interesting? And I had a couple of conversations and then I had an opportunity to go give a talk at a women's meetup. And the woman who invited me is a technique, a technology meetup for women in tech and down in the peninsula.

And she said, Hey, can you come talk about personal branding and storytelling or something? And I was like, no, bad question. Wrong question. No. What I'd like to do though is come, I have this crazy idea called ask like an auctioneer and I want to teach women how to take what I do in auctioneering and use it to ask more powerfully in our businesses and in our careers and I want to, can I try it out? And she was like, yes, that sounds so weird. So I, I had the chance to actually write down the ideas to go like, okay, here's actually the two core principles that we use in auctioneering that make a, well one and one idea. We use an auctioneering and one thing that actually prevents us from doing what we do in engineering and our business world. And then here's the nine things in the world of auctioneering that we can you borrow to help make bolder and more courageous asks.

And I got in front of this room and I said, okay ladies, here's the thing I'm going to share with you something I'm calling ask like an auctioneer, it might be total crap. Your job tonight is to listen for me. I had 25 minutes or something. There was about 65 women in the room. I said, your job is to listen. And at the end tell me if it is in fact crap or if I should keep going. Cause I mean really like my whole world is just a big lab, right? I'm not going to squirrel away and develop an idea that I think is great and then deploy it into everybody's heads and it's not great at all. Like I needed to put it in a lab, you know? So I got done at the end and as woman raised her hand in the back and said two things, she said, you are my spirit animal and to please keep going.

And everyone in the room raised their hand and were like, yes, you need to keep going with this. So over the course of the next couple of months actually developed the ideas. And then in last year, middle of last year, 2019 actually launched it and it, it is project asked like an auctioneer. And I realized that my big hairy audacious goal is to reach a million women with that work. I don't know how the hell I'm going to do it. It's going to be a combination of the live experiences I do going to other people's audiences. I'm hoping to write the book like for me, this is my next body of work. What's the one tip that you would give for someone who wants to ask like an auctioneer, stop framing your asks in order to get a yes and start making asks to actually aim for getting a no and be willing to get a no.

Passionistas: Elaborate on that a little bit.

Dia: Every time I sit down and work with somebody, my communications work, what do we do? The first thing I need to ask is what do you want? Okay, we're going to craft your 20 minutes story, but what do you want? Who are you really talking to and what do you want? What's the goal of this thing? What do you want from your audience? And inevitably the answer I get is another question. And the question is this, Oh, I don't know Dia, what do you think I can get? And so what we end up doing is crafting the kinds of asks that we think can guarantee a yes and we inevitably leave money and opportunity on the table because we don't like to get a know in auctioneering. What we do is we ask and ask and ask and ask until we get what.

Until we get to know until we know I'm in a $5,500 bidder, I'm looking for a $6,000 bidder in the room. Is there anyone in the room that would like to pay $6,000 for this piece of art? I'm going to $5,500 bid looking for 6,000 if I've got the person who's been bidding, shaking his head at me or hit her head at me saying, Nope, I'm not in at 6,000 I can say sold. Did I sell it for 6,000 I did not. I sold it for 5,500 I always sell it for less than I ask, but I always ask until I get a note. We don't do that in business. We don't want to know. We want a yes cause a yes feels good. A yes feels positive. A yes feels like you're on the right path. Yes, feels like approval, but it ends up inevitably leaving money on the table.

When I send a proposal out to do, to do work, to do a speaking gig, to do a workshop, whatever, and my client says, yes, great, we'll send you a PO. All I can think of was I should have asked for more. What I love about auctioneering and what it's taught me that I think is so valuable is to stop personalizing the negotiation. We have to stop personalizing it. We just have to ask and find out. Look, that doesn't mean we're blind. We're dumb or we're using Brit, you know, brute force and how we make our ass. But it does mean that we can stop bringing our hands and just ask and find out. Just ask and find out. You've done your research. Maybe you're making a salary, you know you're making a salary request for a new role. You've done your research, you've surveyed people in your business to understand what the range might be and then what do you do?

Do you ask at the bottom of the range or the top? Let me tell you what's happening is that women are doubling their salaries. What's happening is they're getting more headcount for their teams. What's happening is they're getting mentorship from people they never thought that they thought were untouchable in their organizations cause he asks, we make aren't just about money.

Passionistas: What's your dream for women?

Dia: My dream for women is to really, really be able to leave behind apologizing for wanting, having an acting on their power, like it just wouldn't even be in our DNA anymore like that. It would be so far behind our way of moving in the world that it's, you only read about it in books.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Dia Bondi. To learn how you can ask like an auctioneer, visit diabondi.com.

Please visit The PassionistasProjectPodcast.com to learn more about our podcast and new 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.

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