00:00:59Overstock and how it led them to where they are today, and the lessons with in there have been. So I opening for me, and hopefully for you the listeners. And, and I've been really struggling with what to talk about today because I didn't really know how to follow up about women-owned business and truth and business. All of this, all of this heavy, heavy topics. And I was, I was talking to Nick. He said, we were talking about the stories and I said, we know everybody just loves to talk about themselves. And so, it's really free. When someone asks you, what do you do and tell me about a time when it wasn't perfect? And I was thinking that I haven't really shared or been that vulnerable with you on the podcast early on some of the stories were more, you know, funny and and talking about, you know, my Idaho is showing and things like that.

00:02:59Talked about all the stuff out loud, baby forever. So, you know, it's interesting because I always had this dream to be in the Peace Corps and to travel and it was very difficult to get there. I think if you don't go right after college when you're single, I mean, it's just really hard to pay off all of your bills pack up all of your stuff and go. And I'm fortunate to be married to test people at in the world and he embraced my dream and it happen at a time where I was really in like a big transition. I had worked for about 10 years as a professional graphic designer and did a lot of In-House graphic design work marketing. A lot of just collateral out. There was largely before websites for really what they are today. The web work was starting to get more into

00:04:59We were in Kazakhstan from 2004 to 2006 teaching English and people always want to know how old were they. How old were the kids that you taught? And it was like, all ages. I had a couple classes with, you know, kindergarteners and 1st and 2nd graders all the way up through University. I travel to the city for a while in and how to University, but the, the work I really loved was in a village called turkey again. And I was primarily teaching kids in eighth grade through high school. And then also teaching I had a little group of young women that were in the local college and it was mostly just sitting around and drinking tea, and talking and we called it English Club, but I think that, you know, it's different than what you would experience and you know, like a, I don't know the rush.

00:06:59When is -20 and you don't have central heat? You find yourself being really cold? Even if you're one of those people that's never cold. It really does. Make you cold one time. I sat so close to a heater. That was just like two, electrodes kind of tied together with screws plugged into the wall. It was just a giant fire hazard. So close to it. I actually burned a hole in my pants and it wasn't until we smelled fabric burning. That we realized that I had like got too close to it. Thankfully. Nobody was hurt. It was just that cold. And so you can imagine the disappointment when, you know, because you're the outsider and this is a place where people left us. They wanted us to be successful. They love the work that we did, but no matter what we were, never truly a part of the culture because we were born there.

00:08:59Attic, but kind of how you feel right? When you feel completely excluded from what's going on around you. And you don't understand why, and you feel like you're really just not part of it, nothing, you expect to be, but, you know, kind of and when things like that happen, the first year of Peace Corps because he scores a two-year commitment. It's really disappointing. And you take it personally. And you find yourself saying things like, well, if they just had their act together, you know, if they would just figure this out and honestly for me, that's the beauty of Peace Corps. Being 2 years is a by the second-year. Those feelings transitioned into. Wow. I'm really fortunate in the United States because I'm part of it and I'm always in the know and I'm not a member of the other one is an English major in at the University of Idaho. We talked about the other a lot and the other actually is almost like a character in fiction, right? It's the other

00:10:23And I think that sometimes we need to consider those times when we are creating the other.

00:11:23Studies about race and implicit bias. In fact, I would encourage everybody to go and take the Harvard test about implicit bias. I'll put it in the show notes for you. If you're interested. Just that you can see how even more not aware of it. We all have biases. We all have things that we do and things that we say and assumptions. We make that are based on where we grew up, what, what what we look like and experiences that we have and how those experiences can change us. And so my experiences in Peace, Corps, change me, and that I came back and I started to see things in a much different way because I had experience as being the other. I began to be a lot more aware of when other people were made to feel like they should be on the outside ticker lyrics for the Muslim Community in a watching people cross the street.

00:13:22Of this Earth and so that changed me. And, and in the work that I did at the city. I mean I came back from Peace Corps. I ran a project for a local nonprofit, Portland, State and got a master's degree and sustainable development leadership, and the time, when I left Portland State, it was the Great Recession and they're just, they're just weren't grants to go back overseas and work. I had landed a position at the city, just a part-time gig, you know that the year before my second year of grad school, the whole time. I worked at the city of Portland and it grew into a full-time gig. The summer after I left you I miss you. And I thought well just kind of hang out until the money comes back, you know, and it took a while longer than anticipated for the economy to bounce back and in the meantime in a we bought a house

00:14:58Because I wasn't like my light wasn't really allowed to shine. No matter what I did. I worked in Tech, you know, no matter what I did, if I said it, I had to wait for a guy in the room to say it before it got heard. If I had a really good idea. I always had to make it somebody else's good idea before I could see it happen. And there were just so many challenges, the bureaucratic process, even though I studied government. It's maddeningly slow. And by the time some ideas come to the fore. It's like well that we can't even do that anymore and you're kind of stuck because it took so long for policy to pass that you're you're stuck with this old process in this old way of doing things and you have to do it because that was what was agreed upon and then you add to that a layer of institutional knowledge, which is

00:16:58We're just going to keep using the ideas without providing any feedback and without sharing where the idea came from. And I knew that if I worked longer than the expectation, would be that I always work those hours. And yet I had created these expectations. I hope he's had to keep meeting and meeting and meeting and so I became like this tape recorder that was just running over and over and over again going home to my husband and talking about how difficult work was and how much I didn't like it and all of the things running about what I didn't want but I didn't like this and that and the other thing.

00:18:19Now we just get to see now. We just get to see you like what happens and and what happens next? And that's Freedom. That's focusing on the good and then having an expectation that we're good will come to you and wanting the good things to come and wanting the good things to happen and it has it all been good. No, that be crazy. That would be me lying to you and telling you let you know. It's something that it isn't owning a business isn't easy and it isn't all good, but it is not bad. And I think the biggest thing is that I've learned from people that I've been talking to for the third paddling and even clients that I have. But like the thing about having a business's, it's all on you. And that's why I talk about things like truth and authenticity and project management and all of these things because, well, first of all project management is kind of my thing, kind of like talking.

00:20:16And I think that based on my experiences of not being listened to, you know, in the corporate or government world and then hearing a man city, exact same thing and get credit for it. I think it going overseas and being treated like a queen except a little details that are actually really important like a school open today. I think that when you have all of these experiences, it's what makes you better in business and it's what makes for liked, great, networking, stories and things like that. But I also think it's what drives you at the end of the day, to be the best, you and what helps you with figuring out what your wires with figuring out, what your passion is. And I think that as much as sometimes we all struggle with what's good, and what's bad and was easy and was hard. I think that we just need to acknowledge that.

00:22:16Working out, it didn't work out and that felt like a failure and it felt like I was leaving my family in a worse place and I felt like I had my heart ripped out. Give my boss a resignation letter, which I had written a year prior cuz I had known for a long time and it wasn't working out. I just didn't have the guts to leave.

00:23:29I'm here to help, but I also get to choose and that's a freedom that I didn't have before I get to choose who I work with, get to choose if we don't get to work together anymore cuz I do good work and I put in a lot of time and one of the reasons why I left my job was because I didn't enjoy the people that I worked for and I ultimately ended up working with a lot with people. I was working for and if it's not fun and if you're not getting something out of it, like learning something new or working with cool people or hopefully both and making some money along the way. And it's just not worth it. Just not. And I think that that is the biggest thing for me was that I was so stuck in this idea that I had to, please somebody else that the money mattered, more than anything else. The money mattered, more than pleasing other people mattered more.

00:25:30That's me, you know, and it's kind of like the third. Pedal is kind of an extension of that. The third panel is like, yeah, you're stuck. Hey, do you know their battle here and help you and it's because service is such a big part of who I am and I thought that it had to be public service within this. Certain within this certain structure, at the public service, had to be this label that I have placed on it. And then I began to realize and public services, like Circe your community service to others of service to businesses, its surface to yourself, practicing self-care doing all of those things. And I think that that's one of the most important things that we can talk about. Those are the things that I'm passionate about. That's why I'm here, and I think that's why I've always been on this Earth, is to work hard and be of service to us.

00:27:28And that's why I want to keep finding these fabulous stories of people in service to you. Thanks for listening.