You Only Go Once (Y.O.G.O.)
Cheryl and Eileen explore different topics around the limited time we have on this earth to create a fully layered life. Because...You Only Go Once!
You Only Go Once (Y.O.G.O.)
Navigating Life's Digital Currents and Building Bridges with Anne Gemmell
Joining us is the dynamic Anne Gemmell, a force of nature in policy-making and entrepreneurship, who has left an indelible mark on fields ranging from education to tech. Anne's storytelling captivates as she recounts her pivotal role in Philadelphia's sweeping advancements in early childhood education through the Pre-K for PA campaign. Witness the evolution of a career that refuses to be pinned down, as Anne transitions into a 'collaboration architect', guiding leaders of large institutions in crafting strategic partnerships that reshape problem-solving.
In a candid exchange, Anne and Eileen, both veterans of the chalkboard, reflect on the evolving landscape of education and the challenges that educators and students face in a world increasingly dominated by screens. We share a personal and professional perspective on the digital era's toll on human behavior and mental health, underscored by Anne's own journey towards digital minimalism. This is a story of personal discovery and societal insight, a compelling case for sometimes just unplugging and finding solace and power in reclaiming time and privacy.
As we wrap up, Anne's candor in discussing the highs and lows of her business ventures is both grounding and enlightening. She speaks to the humility of starting anew in life's later chapters and the courage it takes to align one's work with deeply held values. Anne's experiences serve as a compass for navigating the complex terrain of innovation, technology, and business, urging us to redefine success and find harmony between our personal aspirations and professional endeavors. Tune in for a deep dive into the intertwining of policy, collaboration, and the pursuit of a life well-lived.
Hi, I'm Anne Gemmel and I hope when you look back on your life you know you found the courage to begin again, because you only go once.
Speaker 2:Good evening listeners. You are back with us for another episode of you Only Go Once. I am Aileen Grimes and I'm here with my amazing, wonderful friend and co-host, cheryl Cantafio, and we are so excited tonight to introduce a guest here on the you Only Go Once podcast, where we explore stories around the limited time we have on this earth to create a fully layered life. Without any further ado, I am going to pass it to Cheryl to introduce our guest for tonight.
Speaker 3:Thanks, eileen. Entrepreneur, collaboration architect and pragmatic futurist Translator from future to present, from idea to vision to playbook. Builder of deep and intentional collaboration across sectors and systems. Leader of Philadelphia's future of Work Policy Response In 2016, led the Equitable Design of PHL Pre-K Program, which now provides thousands of children with a quality start to learning and life. In 2012, anne Gemmel played a key role leading the effort to decriminalize marijuana in Philadelphia. She is a writer, speaker, advocacy and policy expert and solopreneur. Everyone, please welcome Anne Gemmel. Thank you, anne, for joining us. We're thrilled to have you here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Cheryl and Eileen. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, we're so excited there's so many. I mean, we were introduced to you by one of our previous guests and so excited to to kind of get to know you and I mean that's for me, this is what's really fun is kind of learning about guests before they come on and seeing all the different things that they're engaged in in the world, and it gets my, my brain going down a ton of rabbit holes. So I'm very excited to have some conversations with you tonight. So, anne, tell us just a little bit about you, know the work that you're doing right now and, yeah, what's kind of lighting you up in this moment?
Speaker 1:Thank, you so much for having me again. Good question, eileen. So right now, in the moment, I am in year four now no, still in year three, almost in year four of building my own business doing consulting work and, over the pandemic, like a lot of other people, I had a career disruption and decided to become trained as collaboration architect. So little did I know there's this science of collaboration and there's a certain methodology for high level strategic collaborations and I was also starting to come into my own about my expertise and superpowers. You know, when you sit down to start a business you have to think about what value can I create? Who is going to pay me to do what I had to do, some reflection about the change-making that I had done over the previous 25, 30 years or so and really distill that into a business model.
Speaker 1:When everyone said to it'll take you three years to figure this out as a, you know, to figure out your business model and the iteration, and it definitely has taken at least that long. But I think in this day and age that's just a constant, constant reevaluation and constantly listening to clients and listening to you know. What do they see that is so valuable and how to replicate that. So right now I'm super excited about the clients that I'm serving. They have a lot of things in common. They tend to be leaders of large institutions or large departments or leaders of governments. Even so, it's super exciting to sit down with people at that level and help them solve clearly defined problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. It's so interesting because I, you know, as you're talking about sort of that thing in the pandemic is sort of the impetus for for some of this right. You know, as we look at supporting these organizations I do consulting work also the business world changed after COVID. So, whether you know, even relying on the skills that we had in the past didn't even necessarily, I mean, they certainly apply, but there's new things being learned all the time, and so the evolution of what your business can even be now is fascinating and wonderful, and there's just so much room for expansion and growth based on what you can bring to the table, and I found that really fun to explore and kind of build towards what your interests are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Right now I'm trying to move the business from a space that just involves me and my skills and concrete services to a client around a defined scope to really distilling my expertise and organizing it in a way that finds a niche market and, you know, can generate, you know, passive income and reach a market you know well beyond the network of people I've actually met or who have heard of me or know what work I've done in the past. So the internet's a wonderful thing like that. Of course, there's drawbacks to the internet. It's been incredibly disruptive to lots of our ways of doing things, but one amazing thing that it has done is just allowed people with innovative ideas and expertise to reach so many more people, whether it's to help them or to create value for them or just to communicate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. The communication piece is so key in that right and there's so many different avenues that you can go to do that.
Speaker 3:What drew you to government?
Speaker 1:So it's kind of an accident actually. It's a funny story. I really was an advocate a little bit of you know. In advocacy you're asking the powers that be to take action and make a change right, whether it's a law or redesign of a program or even just their talking points. Right, like change your talking points, talk more about this issue instead of that issue, talk more about this issue instead of that issue.
Speaker 1:And I was the Pennsylvania Southeast Pennsylvania field director for an advocacy campaign called Pre-K for PA and we successfully built relationships with the governor in Pennsylvania, governor Wolf.
Speaker 1:He invested, you know, over a hundred million dollars more in early childhood education. But when I looked at Philadelphia and looked around and saw how many three and four-year-olds we have, we have 40,000 three and four-year-olds in Philadelphia Even with the governor adding more and more funds, it would still have taken 25 years for every three and four year old to access high quality pre-K in Philadelphia at the rate of, you know, incremental increases in the budget. So I went to at that time to a council person who was thinking about running for mayor and told him you know how important and high impact pre-K quality pre-K would be. He agreed he put it into his campaign. Then when he won, you know, and became the mayor, he was like, okay, I've been talking about pre-K, now who's going to, like, lead the charge? You, you've been talking about this for years, like come on into government and and do this. So I really wasn't drawn to government.
Speaker 1:I was sort of sucked into it as a you know like, hey, big mouth, come on over here and get it done now. So that was, that was great it was. It was Mayor Kenney's. You know I think it'll be the primary, you know legacy of his, and of course it wasn't just me there were. You know there was, and of course it wasn't just me there was. You know there was a whole coalition of amazing advocates and you know city council people that voted for the soda tax and it was quite a year of, um, you know, really a bold thing like, and it was. It's a great experience.
Speaker 1:So governments, governments uh, not, you know it's, it's like I mentioned a legacy sort of place this is. It's like slow to change and I think it's difficult those types of settings of large, like well-established sort of systems or institutions are. I think they're very hard spaces for innovators or futurists to thrive in. For sure. And that was, you know, a little bit of my experience. Like you know I have. I've learned, maybe after my forties I guess, and teenagers, the patience, the power of patience, you know, and sometimes people, people aren't ready yet. Ideas need to ripen.
Speaker 2:And I think I'm still waiting for that patience to kick in. So Well, wait, do you have teenagers? No, I have not yet. I have a 10 year old and I have a six year old. I did teach high school math, so I worked with teenagers for a little while.
Speaker 1:Oh, we have that in common. I taught high school history, actually. Oh, there you go, nice Long time ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually loved teenagers. I thought they were fascinating and wonderful, and both my parents were high school teachers Also. My dad taught math, my mom taught music, so that was always sort of a thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, still working on that, because I want to push and, push and push as Cheryl knows, to not get my way, but like I'm like if I see something that needs to be done and that I care about and I'm passionate about, like yeah, I want to see change and I'm going to keep pushing for it, and to my own detriment sometimes but yeah, that's, that's definitely something we have in common, you know, and that that was one of the things like when I was a high school history teacher.
Speaker 1:Again, you know, you're just like, oh, why do we still do it this way? This makes no sense or that way or this way. And you know you're in a school district, right, and they have liability and they have risk and you know the it's just not the place where you know, um, you're not going to have an Elon Musk in the K to 12 system, you know. So I didn't laugh. I spent a nice decade, um, on and off, like with maternity leaves and whatnot in the schools and it was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about different leadership styles, different principles. Principles really make or break schools. So I learned a lot about leadership and those in that decade. But when people ask me like, oh, do you ever? Do you miss teaching? No, it is so hard. I have so much respect, especially post pandemic, for every teacher. It's it's just a extremely emotionally taxing, important role, you know, in our yeah. So, yeah, I have a lot of admiration, but I don't miss it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I have to say I have a a few friends that are, who are teachers, and they really went through it during the pandemic and especially teaching, you know, where maybe not all the resources were readily available so they had to improvise. And then even you know, even knowing that not all, you know, that all kids learn differently and you know, even knowing that not all you know, that all kids learn differently. So you know, sometimes you know this, like we're looking at each other in Zooms worked for some kids and others they kind of spaced out or you know, you know, found other things to work at or their computers weren't working and everything like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, girls are increasingly. You know there's so much more pressure to look I mean to look good on camera. You know the filters, everything. It's a completely different world than when, you know, I was 14 or any of us, Right. And so adding that every single day, like where a young, you know person, insecure in their friend group or whatever even secure in their friend group, has to look at themselves on screen, that's really hard. That's tough. I don't like it.
Speaker 3:No, no, and I do this all day where I'm like, and it's almost difficult not to look and go like, oh, is that my yep, my makeup is off. Okay, I've rubbed all my makeup off. This is this is terrific, this is a good look. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:It's helpful for you, though, because then you can monitor your face, or facial expressions, at least right, cheryl oh thank goodness, yeah, because honestly, this face tells a whole story.
Speaker 3:There's a whole story that's untold when I use my voice, but my face will tell you a thousand stories, and some of them maybe I need to tone them down a little bit.
Speaker 1:So yes, yes, I mean, hasn't every accomplished woman been told to turn it, tone it down, though I mean?
Speaker 3:oh, sure, sure, sure. I just know with my face like there have been times where eileen's had to shut her camera off because my face look at you yeah, it's literally like what is what just happened here? Did something happen? What? How do we go this far off topic like it was? You know, I always had this face and people were like cheryl, do you have something to say? No, because I don't realize I'm doing it. And now that I have the Zoom camera, I'm like, oh, that's the OK, I got it. I got it.
Speaker 1:Right, right and besides, your eyebrows are telling the whole story anyway.
Speaker 3:So they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, there's that, yes, and you're right, though, that's the that's saying right, it's the. Well-behaved women rarely make history.
Speaker 1:That's right. So yeah, yeah, yeah, no, couldn't be, couldn't be more true, shorter fuses for the kind of bias that maybe we just swim in and forget about. Until we don't forget about it, until it's too evident, and I think more and more. You know, people are just, as we've seen with this like great realization. People like to say, oh, is the great resignation. I think it was a great realization that happened, that people are really capable of seeing things more clearly and then acting on it, instead of sticking around and being miserable.
Speaker 3:Mm. Hmm, yes, definitely, it was definitely tough, you know. I also think that there were some companies that definitely did it right in terms of you know, and I will say, I think I think the company for for whom I work did it right Like they made sure everybody was taken care of everything like that. I've seen some I think it was WebMD yeah who's yeah? Oh, that was awkward.
Speaker 2:So if you people can't see my face, but it was not a good look.
Speaker 3:Yeah, WebMD kind of had this whole video about return to work and it was wow, you know, and there's nothing more that can fuel more aggravation than you know being tone deaf about meeting people where they are and I'm sure you, you, you see that a lot and in in your role.
Speaker 3:So, as a collaboration architect which I love, that title I I actually want to look into that. Um, you know you want to see people collaborating and sometimes they're just not there. Would you say, how do I put this? What would you say is your method to your?
Speaker 1:madness of getting people to collaborate. Well, I actually have. I have to give some credit where credit is due. So I was after, after I was laid off from city government during the pandemic, I lifted up a project called Future Works Alliance, which was really the first year of my consulting business. I just was having a little inertia with my career identity between public servant and, you know, private sector consultant. I wasn't really ready to drop the identity of public servant because really my whole life had been motivated by, you know, kind of like the public good, the common good, you know, positive change, positive systemic changes, teaching, right.
Speaker 1:And that project landed in the paper a few times because it was calling for more attention to the disruptions that were going to happen to certain populations in the labor market due to automation and AI. And this was in 20,. This was way before ChatGPT, you know a few years, not way before a few years. So it landed in the paper. And Iupi Tea, you know a few years, not way before a few years. So it landed in the paper and I was quoted, as you know, calling on the region's leaders to collaborate around this coming problem Right.
Speaker 1:That it didn't have to be a problem Like we could shape the future as much as have it happen to us Right, like technology is not really slowing down at all. And so the founder of the company who trains collaboration architects reached out to me and said you would be perfect for this, we wanna train you. And they spent several years distilling a methodology that it basically encapsulates, and there's a technology to support the best practices of collaboration, and I mean. The fact of the matter is, people are very uncomfortable publicly disagreeing with one another, even in email.
Speaker 1:You know we struggle to disagree with one another, even in email. You know we struggle to disagree with one another, but it's in that disagreement that you actually can do the work to get to the place where no one will resist the change right that there's when there's enough alignment and enough agreement and enough clarity about the direction that any group of people are moving in. That's when you can actually create a lot of change. The project can be successful. You can reach your goals right. So this methodology sort of strips away a lot of the hierarchy or the ego and it instead puts in place a ton of listening, and I mean it's thorough listening, because another thing humans like to do is like we'd like to talk about the things that we agree on, right, and that's wonderful, we can all pat each other on the back, but when we do that, we're not talking about the things we actually need to talk about. We're not talking about the elephants in the room.
Speaker 1:We're not digging into the really difficult stuff that makes everybody get quiet in the room. So a lot of the methodology is asynchronous, right, and it's de-identified. So you say what you think and then everybody learns what everybody else thinks, but they don't know who said what. And then they get to say how strongly they agree or disagree with everything else was said and it's a whole multi-step process that you know is built on hundreds of case studies of which collaborations worked and which collaborations failed. And the most interesting thing about this, I was very skeptical at first. I'm like who is this person reaching out to me? Because they read my name in a paper like this is kind of weird, right. It's like who are you? I don't know.
Speaker 1:So you know I did the Googling, had a few meetings, kicked the tires, that kind of thing, and when I actually sat down and did the course, it was incredibly consistent with what I call the art of collaboration, which my whole career had really previously been the art of collaboration like coalition building, understanding different levers of power, keeping in mind the with them. Right, like what's in it for me? Why am I at this collective table? Why should I help you reach a goal right. All of those things were the art of collaboration right, and I had kind of mastered that successfully. I mean, pre-k wouldn't have happened without the art of collaboration right.
Speaker 1:And then along comes this course, that sort of validated everything I had experienced, you know, for 10 or 15 years. That sort of validated everything I had experienced, you know, for 10 or 15 years. So it was just one of those moments where it's like kind of followed my gut a little bit, like I'm going to take this course, you know, let's see what happens with this. And it's worked out pretty well. And it's not the only thing I do in my consulting service, my consulting business, but it's, it's, it seems to be one of the popular offerings.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, so we're having this discussion right now at work also, and it's we were starting to talk about this before we started recording, but there's this article out on Wired, that's it's called. It's the title the AI fueled future of work needs humans, uh, more than ever. Right, and so conceptually right. Like these things like collaboration, um, this people to people collaboration and empathy and problem solving, like active listening, all of those things are going to be the most essential skills for humans to have in an AI world. Right, and I just I think that that's so profound Our humanness is going to be the most important thing for us to be able to do and use and, um, going forward, and I just like what you're saying like those, those things are so key into this, this world of AI. I mean, we say you know the future of AI, we're in the future, it exists, it's here, it's here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, it's, we are, we are on. Um, I feel like we're buckled in to a roller coaster that we're not quite aware of how fast it's going to go or how how tall the loop, the loops, are going to be. You know, my, I have three children and well, they're not children, they're twenty seven, twenty three and twenty, and you know I'm worried that they are this. That's the generation I think that's going to live through the churn. You know, I think everything, everything's going to be a little volatile and somewhat chaotic for a while. Um, I mean, you can just look no further than what technology has done to politics. I mean, social media alone has completely disrupted the skill set that a candidate needs on the campaign trail versus the skill set that you need to govern well and manage, like large bureaucracies and pretty much 90% overlapping, with social media and the age of misinformation and the fragmentation of journalism and media, the skill sets of candidates. You know to win an election, you know that team and that candidate needs entirely different skill sets than what it takes to govern effectively. And so we haven't caught up. Right, we haven't caught up and we you have. It's just disturbing what's happening, to say the least. So a lot of institutions and systems are going to have similar disruptions and it's going to take a minute, like meaning a gen. I think it'll take a generation for our institutions to to reset and adjust, and I couldn't agree more that.
Speaker 1:You know, human it's only. There's a great book, um, only humans need apply. It's probably on myself, I. I read it, I don't know, I don't know like four or five years ago, but yeah, that that ought. That um researcher and author said essentially the same thing that you know that the art, this, the things that make us uniquely human, are going to be the most important things. But I also, I would also add to that that you have to understand human nature too, and that's something that you know, you have you can't do and that's something that you know you ha, you can't do.
Speaker 1:I think that's something that's kind of harming the kids that are in college now is like that isolation that they had in high school. You know they, they lost out on some key developmental years and I, and then maybe the other that's just from my experience, anecdotally, there was probably other kids that you know are missing something that they normally would have gotten, um, if not for the pandemic, but understanding human nature. Because you, we're not going to be able to understand the impacts of technology unless we really think about how are humans going to receive or embrace or reject different iterations of technology? We don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and well, I mean gosh, that takes me down a whole other path. But just the impact that technology has on humans, right, the way that we see we were talking about social media and all those different things in the filters and like what does that do to someone's psyche and mental health, and all of those pieces as well. And how do you, how do you support humans who are also using this technology, that it's changing them, right, we're, we're, we're. There's a, there's certainly an ecosystem of us together in this and it's changing us just as much as we're changing it, and I just I think that that's that's also sort of a fascinating piece.
Speaker 1:Definitely, like even just cervical vertebrae. You know, people are getting like our bodies are getting changed. From looking at the phones all the time, it's like we're, we are so in it and it's, it's, it's uh. There's people who are very self-aware about what's happening and then there's others who are just kind of going along with the technology that's around them, right, like you're, you're in this pool and you're swimming in it, and so it's. It's very hard to, you know, kind of discern, like, how do you adapt and also remain self-aware about the potential negative, unintended consequences. You know, it's really it's. It's a really challenging time, I think. And you know, if you've ever gone on a new I don't know if any of you have removed apps from your phone, but it's pretty freeing.
Speaker 1:I worked for Service Employee International Union, seiu, during the Occupy movement and I don't know if you know, but SEIU organizes low-wage workers around the world and tries to ensure that they have better wages and benefits, even though they're in sectors that traditionally pay a little lower. So Occupy was right up their alley, you know, with the focus on income inequality but the I forget where I was going with this. But the Occupy movement really, you know, know, made me so plugged in to twitter and so plugged in to, I was like a little um too attached to my phone and at some point, because there was an intensity about that movement it was very short but it was very intense. Like every city that had an Occupy was just like it kind of took over your life for a short time and cell phones were a huge part of that. Right, like organizing the marches and organizing the protests in bank lobbies and staying connected to one another as you move through and it was just like super intense.
Speaker 1:And after that movement settled down, my New Year's resolution that year was like to take those apps off my phone. So I took Facebook off my phone and plus, facebook Messenger had like terrible privacy rules too, like there was. I just had much more heightened awareness around privacy because weird things were happening to certain people, certain protesters electronics were having weird things happen to them. But anyway, the whole surveillance thing, it was like a little spooky. I'm not in that mindset anymore, but but I took that fee.
Speaker 1:I took the Facebook off my phone. It was so freeing, you know, and this was again 2012, right, so every year I try to cut back on, you know, the things that notify me, so just to protect my time, and I think that it's impossible to really tap into your purpose and achieve. You know, it takes a certain amount of quiet in your life and quiet in your day to really be in touch with purpose, or intuition if you will. And so all those distractions really pull at that and I think they undermine your time first and foremost, but worse than that, the notifications and the distractions undermine your ability to tap purpose.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, it definitely grabs attention. I know that, you know. For a while I was on the Doomscroll struggle bus, like that was you know. For a while I was on the doom scroll struggle bus, like that was you know, even if I was trying to watch a film, I would be, you know, I would look something up and then it would just trigger something else and I would just keep going. I think it does. It's almost like a detriment to your attention span, to you know, from the perspective of you really need to focus on this. This is important. You're like what's on there, what's happening, and I don't know like, do you're, like you said, you have 20 somethings now what's the advice that you give to them to help them, kind of stay focused?
Speaker 1:help them kind of stay focused. They've actually, interestingly, um, they've really limited their own social media. So my, except for my youngest my youngest is like an Instagram and Tik TOK junkie, but my older two really weren't big social. They they kind of were leery of it and didn't really.
Speaker 1:You know they're more spectators, they don't, they don't let it distract them all that much. But the advice is the advice I just shared, you know, to just be aware that you're, and it's it's hard for 20 somethings to hear that that time is your most precious resource and you know, because they have it, they have it to squander. I guess when you know I think it was when my oldest turned 10, I was just completely astonished that a decade had passed and it, just, it, just. I remember just being really freaked out that a decade had just passed, you know, in the blip, and that was like the beginning of my kind of freakish attention to hours in the day and also my willingness to like sleep less and just kind of be a weirdo about like every who did I give time to, why did I spend time on things? And, of course, like we all fritter hours away.
Speaker 1:You know, no one is innocent from that, but just like the acute awareness came from watching them, you know, years just spin by. So I feel like no mom can say anything, that that really individuals have to learn it on their own. You know what? What do they want to spend their time doing, I mean, and that is really life like. And I think that the biggest thing that I talk to them about is like I do believe they were here for like you're here for a reason, I'm your mom for a reason, you think I'm the biggest pain in the ass you've ever met, but you picked me like we're stuck here, we're in this life, you know and you know, so I just I just constantly talk about purpose and intuition and it's you know they roll their eyes and but they'll get it someday.
Speaker 2:you know they roll their eyes and but they'll get it someday. Oh, and we are, I just so. My son, just like I said he, he just turned 10 in November. So I felt that very deeply with the decade. I was like, oh shit, what how?
Speaker 1:how does that make sense at all?
Speaker 2:Double digits. Yeah, it was intense and for me and he didn't he's like, well, I'm older, it's great. But actually recently had a conversation with him also where he what did he say? He was something like I don't ever want a boss and like I want to do what I want to do with this life, cause I only get to live this one life, and I was like, yes, you've nailed it, good for you.
Speaker 1:Yoga, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Right, and so that's the part of it and I and Cheryl and I have talked about this before too and for me, like I go through these phases of like, consuming and creating, and there are just the times where I'm like, oh my, I feel like I'm just seeing everyone else's stuff. I want to put something out into the world. I'm like, oh my, I feel like I'm just seeing everyone else's stuff. I want to put something out into the world. I like there is something that I am feeling the need to cause. It's just I feel full of all of the stuff that I've just, you know, whether it's the social media or even reading sometimes where I'm like I've, I've, I've taken in so much. It's time for me to now put something out into the world, whatever that may be. And and I don't know, I just like I have to tap into my own body for getting that, that knowing and then allowing the space to create whatever it is. That's kind of calling to me next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, I feel like writing. So I constantly, when I was, um, I don't know, grade school, high school I learned about the flow state playing basketball. I played basketball day in and day out. Um and it, it, it was just, I just loved the game and it ended up paying for college and that was wonderful and everything.
Speaker 1:But that learning about that flow state at such a young age you're like you're, you're constantly looking for like nothing is good enough unless you're tapping the flow state, you know. And so the adult version was sort of writing. You know, writing gave me the flow state as an adult that basketball gave writing. You know, writing gave me the flow state as an adult that basketball gave me. You know, as a teenager and young, uh, like a college, uh, it kind of wore off in college.
Speaker 1:Honestly, the, the game meant something different for me then. It was more like, uh felt like the army in college, like after, you know, you work so hard to get the scholarship and then you're like, oh my God, really this and so. But writing gives me that flow state and and you don't even have to publish it, you know, it doesn't even have to be for other people's benefit, it's, it's really just for for clarity. It it really forces your thoughts um to crystallize, because you, you know that's that's what to me that's the benefit of writing is that it's selfishly, puts me in the flow state but, you know, really helps ideas develop much, much more fully. Do you journal?
Speaker 2:Because that's certainly something that helps me yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do. I used to, you know, when my kids were really little I was like, oh my God, so many funny things happen every day and I'm like blurry eyed at the end. You know, so I do. I have some journals from when they were little and then put it down for a while but then picked it up again, just like a basic, you know, gratitude journal. You know, just my father passed away last year so I just felt like, you know, instead of being sad.
Speaker 1:Of course you can't get rid of all the sad, of course you can't get rid of all the sad, but a basic gratitude journal is really has done pretty good wonders since his passing. You know, it just helped capture some memories and helped get things to the present. And you know, just think about, like, all the good things that are still here. But then you say like, oh well, he's missing all that. You know it's a little bit of catch 22, but no, it's, it's been really um, a good tool for that and it's, it's uh, it's different than professional writing. Obviously, it's more of like, uh, like an uh centering practice, you know.
Speaker 2:So I'm just going to jump in Cheryl. So Cheryl has a book that she published actually, um, that was around grief and silence, talk about it, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So my mom passed away back in April of 2022 from pancreatic cancer and I admittedly didn't handle it well, and what I found was that it was very soothing to start writing, uh poems now. I originally started writing the poems as part of a contest and then found out the contest was a scam, so ended that really quickly, was out of 50 bucks, totally fine, but what it did was it opened up a different means for me to express myself, express, express feelings, and, as a result of that, I wrote around I don't know 110 poems, something like that.
Speaker 3:They came together in a book and it's called my Stay with the Sisters and it's the sisters are grief and gratitude and they invite you into their house where you can explore different rooms where different poems are that express different emotions, like there's a rage room, there's a kitchen for nostalgia, there's a garden where you learn to kind of grow from the grief and the loss, and then at the end there's always a key that says whenever you need to come back, you can come back to it.
Speaker 2:That says whenever you need to come back you can come back to it.
Speaker 3:So I find the whole I love that you're a writer and I love that you talk about things like future proofing and things like that. I'm also very encouraged to hear that you journal, because I do think that there's an important element to that as well, and I think that you know, sometimes I don't know if it's so Flow State. Thank you for that information. Sometimes I don't know if it's so flow state. Thank you for that information, because I don't know if it was flow state. But for me I find it like if I get something in my head, I have to write it down.
Speaker 3:And my notes app is like my favorite thing because I'll just jot that down and that eventually it'll make its way into Word. So yeah, that's very cool. That's very cool that you use the journaling to kind of get it to get it out.
Speaker 1:That's very cool. That's very cool that you use the journaling to kind of get it, to get it out, and that time is short and that's the, that's the overall thing that gets burgled from us when, when things like that God, that was fast and sudden, so I know that that was really hard. My dad had mesothelioma and he had a little bit of time where we knew his life wasn't going to be as long as we thought it would be, but it wasn't weeks or months, it was. So, yeah, thanks, and, and it's really ironic, you know, griefing your book, it's great, the sister's grief and gratitude, you know, and that's kind of what, what brought me to the journaling, to the flip side of the coin there.
Speaker 3:It's that, you know, I learned a lot about things like anticipatory grief and then complex grief, and, uh, it's for me. I was hoping that with the book, we could, you know, make a connection to others and let them know that they're not alone. And uh, yeah, so it's. It's the little book that could. And uh, uh, you know, the great irony is that I never would have written it, probably if my mom hadn't passed and that was tough, but I do. She was always happy to read whatever I wrote, and some of my stuff was downright goofy, so, but this was just a way to just kind of honor her as well.
Speaker 1:So um yeah I feel like I have a book in me, but I I can't decide if it's, if it would be personal or professional. I'm still kind of, you know, there's a lot of things written down in a lot of different places and, uh, you know, again, like the time, the just figuring out, um, but I definitely feel like that's a part of the future for me. It's like there, I feel like I'm a book in me and now that I've said it, I probably jinxed myself no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Do it, even if you're putting it out to the universe.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. And you know what? Every first draft is the crappiest thing you'll ever write oh, I know that you know what.
Speaker 1:Every first draft is the crappiest thing you'll ever write. Oh, I know that you know what.
Speaker 3:I mean, Like that's you know, so you just kind of have to put it out there and see what happens and where it takes you, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's going to be built slowly, like on a website or LinkedIn posts or whatever. Pull a thread together. Pull a thread together, I mean even the future proofing columns, like after um, uh, they were all like 20, 20, 21, 20, a little bit in 22. And then, so you know, all of a sudden you look back and there I had, like you know, 15 or 16 and that particular publication that was posting them. They really went for long form. So I mean there's, there's definitely enough there for you know that I have it in me like I can write the volume right it's just organizing it in a, in a way that matters, that anybody would read Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cheryl and I have been talking about creating a book from just even these podcasts episodes that we've had, and finding themes and bringing out some of that stuff.
Speaker 2:And so then so I, as I said, I have my math background, so the data nerd part of me is like okay, we can make a table and we can look in Excel spreadsheet and then we'll put in themes from the different episodes. So I guarantee you've got something. I guarantee that there is something there that can be shared with the world and I'll read it. You just let me know.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think one of the interesting things about the world that we live in and the world that our kids are going to grow up and thrive in hopefully thrive is that you know the everyone talks about lifelong learning and the mindset of continuous, continuous learning, continuous acquisition of skills, like always, sort of like I don't. I don't know if that, if it's really sunk in to the majority of people you know in the workforce or even people generally, this whole lifelong learning thing. It's a lot easier said than done. But the flip side of that is that you are going to shift identity quite a bit and that is really hard for humans to do and I speak from personal experience, right, really hard for humans to do and I speak from personal experience, right, that you know. Just like that transition from a college athlete to not college athlete.
Speaker 1:Well, what are you now? Right, from not a mom to a mom, from a teacher to like, um, you know, activists, right, like all these different shifts. That, I think, is I'm a little atypical for Gen X, but it's very typical, I think, for millennial and younger people in the workforce, like these different jobs, different industries, like moving around, and it's that like, where does that sense of self come from? If you are someone who defines yourself by how you make a living or you know, where does that confidence or courage come from to just shift identities and keep changing? You know your sense of self. I think it. I think that's a skill set our schools probably aren't teaching right now. Right Like how to shape, shift without having you know anxiety or crisis.
Speaker 2:I would pose to that that maybe it's not an identity shift, it's an identity centering and coming, coming to a more close version of who you understand yourself to be, cause I mean, look, in our 20s I didn't know who I was, I not really like I was figuring it out, right? Um, and I think technology is a piece of some of that right. Where there is access to knowledge, there is access to, um, new ways of knowing and exploring some of those things. And, um, you know, my kids are actually in Montessori school because I I wanted them to learn how to learn and for me, that was one of the most important skills, like, if you're told you have to meet these standards and do this, like this is where you're at every single day and blah, blah, blah, like I.
Speaker 2:Just for me, the Montessori method was just so wonderful because it is that it's an exploration, it's a lifelong exploration of learning and to have access to that and to at least this is for me. I'm a technical, I'm an older millennial, but it's been more of a. I don't know what exactly is right for me, but I'm figuring that out and I'm getting closer to that as I explore this life and these. What is a career and what does that look like? For me, that it's not necessarily a shifting of who I am. It's a better understanding of what I can do in this world based on what I've known, learned and experienced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no love that. That's great, I think too. It's like I think the I mean the hardest thing obviously is just failing, and even harder than that is like failing in public, right, like I've done that a few times and that was super hard to go through, but it was also led to some of the best transformations, like some of the richest transformations for, you know, reaching the next level, right, it really was hard to be in it. You know some of the shifts like just, you know, can't even. You know, and when you start a business, people say like, well, you know you're going to fall on your face a few times, like, and that that was like the greatest thing about starting a business not falling on my face, but the greatest thing about it was getting comfortable being a beginner again. You know, you reach, like I was at a certain level in my career as, like expert advocate, and then you know, expert advocate, and then you know, went into government, created, you know, did, did really good things in government, like work on understanding the systems, like working in cross-collaborative ways, like did really good things and then laid off and it's like, okay, I've never started a business before, but I knew it was now or never. Yeah Right, started business.
Speaker 1:What I underestimated was just the, the challenges involved of being a beginner in your in your early fifties. Right, you're, you're. That's not comfortable, but that that discomfort, um, was so good. Climbing those mountains of discomfort and climbing those mountains of being a beginner again and working through that mental work of it was invaluable. I guess it was a combination of the pandemic and then that experience of being a beginner again.
Speaker 1:It really forced me to detach, like, my value and contributions professionally from the income that I was able to earn in the early years. Right, it's like I get to decide my value, you know, and it's okay if I'm not earning. I just started a business. So even though everyone tells you you're not going to make you know the same, it's going to take you a few years to get back to your income level. Like you need to mentally prepare for that. Blah, blah, blah. Um, I didn't believe them and then I was frustrated by that and then I extracted. I got so many good, um, transformative lessons from that that I that I I'm carrying through now, even even though I'm earning. I earn more in my business now that I did, you know, in in a payroll position. But those early years were dark Like they. They were talk about struggle, boss right. Being a beginner, you know, living in this space where we all attach you know our earnings and our value are equated. It's not the case, you know. Ask any mom right Like how about that unpaid labor Right?
Speaker 1:So that that was, but that was really um, those were, those were huge lessons and I I'm really glad that I pushed through the, the dark days, the struggle plus days.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I, um, I want it. We're already, I mean, we're already over time, so we'll just want to be conscientious of your time. Also, I uh, back in 2020, I I wrote my own eulogy, which is why so many things have changed for me. But I also went on and, um, I also wanted an exploration of defining success, right, like, what the hell does success actually mean to me? Not what I thought it was, or not what I've heard it was, or you know what are, whatever. And so, for me, I looked at all the different dimensions of what success can really mean for me and, right, like, impact is one of the things that I that matters for me. And you know, there's, there's financial there's. You know, there's all different ways of looking at success, and I think that that it sounds like you've also had an exploration of that, doing this work too, and kind of going through that. That it's like, if success isn't just the money, right, there's so much more to it than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually that was. It's really interesting you say that because money, if I'm honest, money was never really a driver for me. I never really.
Speaker 1:I was a teacher, you know and I always cared much more about impact and I just wanted to be, you know, compensated fairly and and have a respectable compensation. I didn't want anybody to take advantage or whatnot, but that was never my main driver to take advantage or whatnot, but that was never my main driver. Um, I always went. Every time I had to think about, like, what I was going to do next, I would honestly look around and say what organizations do I admire, what companies, what leaders do I want to work with, and I would seek roles with those people. And it's worked out like really well and led to high impact results and not shabby compensation either. Right, but it's always been. It was always an afterthought for me and that was one of the biggest problems that I had stepping out into private consulting, because it can't be an afterthought when you're in business for yourself, like you can't just focus aboutthought when you're in business for yourself Like
Speaker 1:you can't just focus about the impact, you have to. So that was. That was a lot of growing pains too, like what, what are your rates? What, what's a fair compensation? How is this going to be viable for me? Right, and so I wanted to do, and that that was.
Speaker 1:You know, when you, when you work for city government, and someone calls you and says, hey, can you help me with this? I, you know, when you, when you work for city government, and someone calls you and says, hey, can you help me with this? I, you know this, that the other thing, the public servant, um, culture, and my approach was absolutely, let me take an hour or two and help you out with that. Right, I had to consciously undo that and then get to reality, where it was like, okay, I'll have a sure, we can have coffee. Okay, you can't have three coffees. Hey, can I pick your brain? No, you know.
Speaker 1:So, like, figuring out like, how to adjust that, like, wow, this could lead to, even though I knew like it could lead to high impact results or whatever, I still had to change the, the way I thought about the conversations I have, the, the pick your brain stuff that you give away. You know, I think, too, like women are acculturated to be accommodating and, like you know, yes, I can help you with that, and but no, no, so I had to have. I had to get some pro tips from actually, one client of mine, uh, from last year, is an absolute pro at this. He has he's total toolkit, you know know, to address this problem and he taught me how to handle that problem and it's been great, you know, and and it. But thinking, you know, that whole shift was really tough because it's I was always more focused on impact than I was on money, and so it was like you got to figure out the balance, and that works when you're in business for yourself, you know.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I just want to keep talking to you forever, but you know that's wonderful.
Speaker 2:However, we should probably wrap things up here. I'm going to, you know we kind of wrap things up here. I'm going to, you know, we kind of. I think we may have touched on it a little bit with the book, but I have sort of a last question that we talked through and it's the this is happening. So this podcast happened after a 10 pm. Text to Cheryl where I said Cheryl, we need to make a podcast together and this is happening Right. Text to Cheryl where I said Cheryl, we need to make a podcast together and this is happening Right. We're doing it and here we are Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a good time to you know all the things and pieces to come together and stuff like that. But for me it was something that I was just like. I just know that this needs to exist in the world and I feel this very deeply in my heart and of the trillion ideas that go through my brain in the day, I know this one's going to exist in the world and I just feel that happening. Do you have anything on your heart that you can foresee, whether it's for your business, personal life? You know, I know you talked about the book and that's something that you know you kind of thinking of, but is there anything that's for you feeling like this is happening that you want to share?
Speaker 1:Well, that second part that you want to share, right, that's the part that takes a lot of courage to like no you're being recorded and you're going to put that out there. I think that I've been a very effective change maker and I think that there's a toolkit for that. I think that there's a playbook for that, and that's what I want to put in the world, and that's what I want to put in the world.
Speaker 1:I think that the world needs as many people trying to do good in it, right, to make the changes that we need, but there's a lot of people that don't know how to do that well, frustrated, and they leave movements or they bail on coalitions or they give up on systems Right.
Speaker 1:And I feel like the thing that I need to put into the world is this is how you do this. These are the questions you ask yourself. This is how you become like a great change maker, and it would just be all the lessons I learned the hard way, and it would be a combination of my failures and successes put out into the world for the benefit of other you know, do-gooders or people who want to. You know, it's really the kind of energy that we need to create, like the country and the world that we need and the cities that we need is massive, and that's the kind of that's the thing that might be my book. It might not be my book, I don't know, but that's the thing I feel like needs to happen and, um, you know that I feel like I can help with that.
Speaker 3:That's fantastic. Thank you, I'll be one of the first in line for that. That would be amazing. That would be so amazing. And how do people get in contact with you?
Speaker 1:The best way. Thanks for asking that. This has been an awesome conversation. I'm glad you two started your podcast because you both have really good voices, like just like the literal voice that you have, but also your perspectives, like both voice. You can find me on LinkedIn is the best way I do. I own my domain name, but it's not really there yet, so but I did get it but right now it's just, it's just LinkedIn so Great.
Speaker 3:That's great, and we'll make sure we share that on our socials as well, so that people can get in touch with you. Thank you. On behalf of Eileen and myself, I just want to say thank you so much, anne, for your time. And this concludes our episode of you Only Go Once. This is also the eve of the International Day of Women, so I'm so thrilled that we spent time with an amazing woman tonight. So thank you, anne, and for everybody out there, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you later. Bye.
