What is balance?
Join us in honest conversation with writer, educator, digital strategist and equity-inclusion facilitator, Tristan Katz (they/he) as we explore questions at the heart of activism, impact and self care.
Tristan holds space for learning and unlearning about gender as it relates to trans inclusion and queer competency, and teaches marketing practices to foster business growth from a justice and equity-focused perspective. They have been named one of Yoga Journal’s 2021 Game Changers. They serve on the Board of Directors at Accessible Yoga—a non-profit working, through education and advocacy, to share the teachings and benefits of yoga with those who have been marginalized, and to identify and remove barriers to access, build strong networks, and advocate for an accessible, equitable yoga culture.
We first met Tristan in 2021, and with so much mission and vision alignment, immediately dove head first into collaborations. BWB has learned so much about how to create safer spaces and deeply engage in solidarity work through their trans inclusion counsel.
In 2021, Tristan spoke at a BWB conference on a panel titled: Activism in Action: Centering Impact. The conversation was so epic that we decided to start this conversation from some of the seeds and lingering tendrils of that discussion.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Connect with Tristan
Connect with BWB
Be sure to subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and leave us a 5-star rating + review!
Podcast Song: Holding you by Prigida
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/holding-you
License code: CELWR55ONTDIFRSS
What is balance?
Join us in honest conversation with writer, educator, digital strategist and equity-inclusion facilitator, Tristan Katz (they/he) as we explore questions at the heart of activism, impact and self care.
Tristan holds space for learning and unlearning about gender as it relates to trans inclusion and queer competency, and teaches marketing practices to foster business growth from a justice and equity-focused perspective. They have been named one of Yoga Journal’s 2021 Game Changers. They serve on the Board of Directors at Accessible Yoga—a non-profit working, through education and advocacy, to share the teachings and benefits of yoga with those who have been marginalized, and to identify and remove barriers to access, build strong networks, and advocate for an accessible, equitable yoga culture.
We first met Tristan in 2021, and with so much mission and vision alignment, immediately dove head first into collaborations. BWB has learned so much about how to create safer spaces and deeply engage in solidarity work through their trans inclusion counsel.
In 2021, Tristan spoke at a BWB conference on a panel titled: Activism in Action: Centering Impact. The conversation was so epic that we decided to start this conversation from some of the seeds and lingering tendrils of that discussion.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Connect with Tristan
Connect with BWB
Be sure to subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and leave us a 5-star rating + review!
Podcast Song: Holding you by Prigida
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/holding-you
License code: CELWR55ONTDIFRSS
CASEY: Welcome to the Questions to Hold podcast. I'm your host and BWB founder, Casey Carroll. In a world that often praises answers over questions, the act of holding a question is an act of resistance, presence, and devotion. In this podcast, I hold space for discussion at the intersection of life's biggest questions and our personal and professional worlds.
These are honest conversations with progressive leaders dedicated to questioning our institutions, igniting change, and provoking new possibilities.
Join me for my next discussion.
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CASEY: Hello everyone and welcome to Questions to Hold. Um, I am so lucky on this episode to be talking to Tristan Katz, who will be introducing themself in just a second. But I just wanna say what an honor, Tristan, it's been to get to know you over this last year and a half, I think at this point, and really a joy that, you know, these connections can be made across state lines through connections that we didn't even know existed before, and that it immediately lands somebody in your life who is meant to kind of change and impact it for the better. Which, you know, I think we're just scratching the surface of so far in our conversations, and hopefully we'll go deeper in today. All of that to say is, I'm one of your biggest fans and I'm really grateful that you're in conversation with me and all of us today. So I'll kick it over to you. You can introduce yourself in whatever way feels true for you in the moment – social locations, land acknowledgement, really anything that feels in your practice that feels relevant for, uh, the listeners to have some context.
TRISTAN: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me Casey, and for that warm introduction, I'm really grateful. So my name is Tristan Katz, as you mentioned. My pronouns are they/them. I'll start by acknowledging that I'm on the land of the Cowlitz and Clackamas Peoples and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ron and Sea Lets Indians, um, which is colonized as Portland, Oregon, and I am a white trans– I'm gonna use all the words– trans, non-binary, queer, and gay. Those are all the four words that I'm using to describe my gender and sexuality at the moment, which feels really important for me to name because it just feels like an ever-evolving understanding of who I am, given that I'm now 40 and has been so heavily influenced, and I'll even use the word indoctrinated, by cis heteronormativity for so many years, that claiming all four of those words just feels really important for me at this moment. I'm also, I have financial privilege. I'm middle class. I own a car, I rent a house. I live in a body that I'm starting to understand is on the disability spectrum. My mental health is mostly good. I've experienced some neurodivergence and I learned English as a first language. Um, US citizen. And I am college educated with a master's degree. Um, I'm doing a lot of closing of the eyes, uh, in this moment. I did name my whiteness first, right? I'm sure I did. That's what I always wanna name first, so I'm sure I did and I just don't even remember doing it. But yes, I'm a white person who is holding a lot of different experiences in my body, given my identities. Um, and I'm also a dog parent. She, the pup, is sleeping next to my feet right now. And, um, I'll share too that I'm, I guess I would say a survivor of domestic violence currently going through a lot of trauma healing and in love in a way that I've never been before in my life and that feels exciting to name as well. So I'll stop there. I guess I could share about my work too, if that's helpful.
CASEY: I was gonna say, I didn't hear entrepreneur in the many identities that we were talking about, which is okay, but just curious about it. So if you wanna name it, let's name it.
TRISTAN: Yeah, let's name it. So I started my business in 2018 and it's evolved a lot since then, but I currently consider myself an educator, facilitator, speaker, and writer. I teach queer and trans inclusion and competency work, and I also teach, uh, marketing, um, through a justice and equity centered lens. And I'm currently working on my first book.
CASEY: Woohoo!
TRISTAN: Hopefully a process that I will have more time for in the coming months. But it's happening. It's like, finally getting clear about what it is and what it wants to be, and I edit and and have a podcast. So that's gonna shift soon and I do lots of other things in my work too, as many of us do when we're entrepreneurs and sold entrepreneurs.
CASEY: Yeah, lots of hats. Yeah. Yeah, so cool. Thank you for sharing all of that. And I will just say if your podcast is still around when this airs, I recently just listened to one of the episodes where you actually were interviewed and shared so generously about your kind of origin story with your work and your trajectory theory into your business evolution and what kind of has come to be and, and where you're going. And, um, I think that's, you know, for anybody out there listening, another really great thing to check out to learn more about Tristan and also just, you know, what it is to be all of the identities you named intersecting with your work and in this constant larger process of evolution together, um, in, in all the ways it was.
And I was really impacted by that. So, Thank you.
TRISTAN: Yeah, the podcast will live on, even as it shifts, um, the episodes will still be available. So yeah, definitely check that out if that, if that whole thing intrigues you at all. Those who are listening.
CASEY: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, and I'll say too, so earlier this year, which as I was prepping for this interview, I was laughing cuz I was going to say last year, but somehow this year has felt like five years.
TRISTAN: Yeah.
CASEY: And it was this year.
TRISTAN: Yeah.
CASEY: But, um, my company, BWB, held a conference and we had you join a really powerful panel on a conversation that we were calling Activism in Action. And I know for myself and for a lot of the participants and the feedback that we got from the conference was that, that, you know, whole session was fire. It evoked so many, you know, questions and ways for people to be thinking about their work differently. And, um, I just wanted to kind of start there and see where the conversation goes and, and see how. How you wanna answer or how you wanna begin to take on the question of where activism sits in your life and work, and if it's something that you even really identify with, or if not, how you know, what feels more right for you in terms of the word like activism in your work?
TRISTAN: Yeah, thank you. It's a great question. It's actually something I've been thinking about a lot. The word activist, I think I really conceptualized an activist as somebody who was on the ground in the streets and I'm starting to understand, and I think I, I can't remember, you know, as all of us do, I'm like, “I saw it on social media somewhere”, somewhere on social media I saw a post that said something like, an activist is someone who wants to see change and who is a part of working towards that change. And I just thought, oh yeah. I, when I think about it in that sense, then yes, I am an activist. Not to say that I haven't showed up on the ground, in the streets. I, I have at times in my life, but I definitely wanna see change and, and work towards that change and I have been a part of that movement, as it were, since I was young and, and started to understand inequities, um, in our, in our country and beyond. And so I, when I started my business, I didn't conceptualize myself as an activist, but I very much wanted to be a part of, um, social justice focused conversations and spaces. And I didn't see myself as an educator or a teacher or a speaker in that work. I just positioned myself as a learner. And over time understood that people were asking me to use my voice. And I think that as I've come to use my voice and also unpack my identities, both the ways in which I hold privilege and have access to ease and power and advantage given our systems and culture and, and institutions. And also the ways in which I'm being harmed, marginalized, depressed, um, given other aspects of my identities. I've come to really understand that even just like my existence is a form of activism, and this is one of the things that I think I said in that conference, on that panel conversation, and I'm not saying, Me, specifically, Tristan. Um, though yes, me, specifically, Tristan, my existence, but also like anyone who is queer and trans. Anyone who holds an identity that is deemed as other, that is deemed as not normal. That is deemed as less than that is, you know, that is experiencing marginalization and oppression that has to, those of us who have to fight for basic human rights like that means that my very existence is a form of, of activism. And I find that the more I do the work that I do in both the equity inclusion work, um, and the, the, the justice focused marketing work, um, the more my work becomes a form of activism. So it is like as simple as me just simply like saying, My name is Tristan and my pronouns are they/them. Like that is an interruption of dominant culture. And when I show up to hold space for conversations and learning and unlearning, and when I show up to be in the work of my own learning and unlearning, all of this, to me, is a form of activism. And so I, I really, you know, I've always wanted to make, it sounds so cliche, I've always wanted to be a part of making the world a better place.
Um, and sometimes I am hopeless about all of that, but I know that I still have to be a part of that process. Even if I don't see the change in my lifetime. So yeah, that's where I'm at currently in relationship to that, that term and word.
CASEY: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I know we named this as well, but one of the things that Caitlin and I realized as well and why we held that panel conversation was just around, oh, BWB is our activism, you know, in so many ways. And we kept trying to say like, how is our activism being applied? Or, you know, and I had to navigate similar things with you of like, well, if I'm not out on the streets, because my anxiety would get really activated in those spaces. Oh, you know, I would get on myself about my privilege of being a choice about being on those streets or not. And my mind had this one idea of activism, you know, that that's kind of what it looked like. And I had to look for other examples and ways in which it was really living differently. Um, outside of that, that helped me then see, okay, BWB is my activism. Holding that conversation where, you know, you brought some of that forward and the others did as well. So that makes perfect sense. And I, I know how you introduced yourself at the beginning of it being really important that you use those four specific trans, queer, non-binary and gay. I wonder if you wanna speak to anything around why that's, you know, especially at this understanding, everything's evolving all the time, but kind of a claiming or affirmation that you're doing.
TRISTAN: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I think, you know, and I'm, I'm having this conversation a lot too, that like the language we use really matters and it means nothing and like we need words and phrases and language in order to understand things and understand ourselves and unpack like who we really are, apart from who we've been taught to be. We're not trying to create more boxes. I, I, I think that the goal is to make all the boxes, you know, uh, interrupt all the boxes, dismantle all the boxes, but we're not there yet. And so we, we do need language in order to fight for rights, right? And to understand ourselves. And that in that sense, I think language can be liberating. And what I'm finding is after, you know, a lifetime of thinking that I was a woman, cuz that's what I was told, and thinking that my body was inherently a woman's body. In some ways, I feel like I'm just starting to understand the degree to which gender is made up Um, it has very real circumstances, connotations, power, influence, um, implications. And if it's made up, What are our gender identities? Right? And so to me it feels really important to first claim myself as trans because I don't identify as the sex I was assigned at birth. And that's what trans means. And so that feels important. And then I always say like non-binary next, because it's like non-binary is an aspect of my transness and, and it feels like sometimes I just wanna name trans. Sometimes I just wanna name non-binary, but I'm always both of those experiences of myself, um, and both feel like political statements on some level that hold meaning in terms of like what I care about and who I care for and what I want to see in the world, um, and what I wanna interrupt in the world, you know, and, and next to that also is someone who like, I mean, from an early age, I knew that I was fluid in terms of my romantic and physical and sexual attraction, but I'm just, again, at 40 starting to understand like what that fluidity means to me and how it intersects with my gender. And really trying to figure out like what has been happening for me my whole life, because I–
cis het romcoms, like love them. But, but you know, and I, I loved having boyfriends when I was a kid. Yeah. Like, those are fond memories, but like, what does that mean about who I am as a sexual, romantic being, right? Does it mean what I thought it meant? Um, am I looking to quote, looking at masculinity and men because I'm attracted to it or because I am envious and want to experience it in myself? Like these are some of the questions I'm having and as I'm in my first like actual partnership, visibly queer. I'm, I'm like, oh, I think gay too. Like gay feels really powerful for me to claim, especially in, given that I grew up thinking that gay was reserved only for these two types of people over here, and like not all of these words are for us to figure out on our own and self define and self claim and self understand. Nobody gets to tell us, no, you can't claim this, right? If that is a word that feels resonant for you and your experiences, then that's your word to claim. And so right now it feels important to name my queerness because of, you know, my gender and my sexual fluidity. But it also feels really important to claim the word gay as a way to empower myself. In the aftermath or on the journey of, again, uncovering like what, what's real to me? You know, um, what's real to me? What was taught to me? What is my truth versus what is the truth that was projected onto me and then like, conditioned into me like a mantra, you know? So yeah, I could, I mean obviously I could talk about that for freaking hours, but that's like the long of it .
CASEY: Well, and I, what I really appreciate among any things that you're talking about right now are really, is what you're modeling, which is at the heart of what you know, I know you and I have talked about, but in general is that this like questioning process of like, you know, this larger indoctrination that we're talking about here and these, all these different conditionings depending on, you know, our identities and where we're kind of coming into this conversation with, but it's pervasive. Nobody is left out of that conversation. And so questions and questioning is a core practice to be able to, as you said, not definitively answer, but be in this ongoing inquiry of like, oh, okay, maybe that was then. Now here I am and what does this mean and why does it mean this? And I wouldn't hope we had any answers in our conversation today. And that instead it's more questions.
TRISTAN: Yes.
CASEY: And sitting with those questions and actually sitting with them for the rest of our life.
TRISTAN: Yes.
CASEY: Um, and as you said, continuing to unpack and unravel them because it's not like you open the box and you're like, what's my gender identity? And then it's like, does it pop up and it's perfect for 80 years? You know, that's not possible. So getting really curious and doing all the questioning that you're doing, you know, privately. But then I think what's so generous is that you are offering that process. To others, you know, showing others your own journey with that, but then supporting others in kind of how to, how to engage in that kind of process for themself in a way that will benefit their work and their marketing and with the inclusion work that will benefit their team and organization to hold more space for people to be in question with themselves in the world.
TRISTAN: Yeah. Yeah. So, Really good. Thank you for that.
CASEY: And I, yeah, thank you. I know my own feeling, which I don't wanna project onto you, which was a hesitancy I had around activism is some ways in which I had seen it in the past where it did kind of lend itself to the hopelessness that you mentioned.
TRISTAN: Yeah.
CASEY: Or this, um, burnout or anger that I was feeling, all of which are very present I think, in anybody who's working for change or a very real experience to it. So I'm wondering, cuz I know we've talked, you know, at different points about how to do this in a way that doesn't let the hopelessness take up too much space and does center the pleasure and joy and reimagines what activism in general can, an embodied experience of it can be. So let's start there and then maybe you can share with us like how you really are exploring taking care of yourself in this work.
TRISTAN: Yeah. I mean, I do experience, not to say that I don't wanna be, like, my baseline is anger, but I do feel like ultimately I'm all, anger is always in me. I, I don't know that I have any like day or week where I don't feel angry about something. So I, I, I wanna acknowledge that and. And also, you know, reiterate like the hopelessness, which is so real. And I find it's like, again, this sounds so cliche, but like, it's the simple things like, like showing up in a training space or in, you know, at an event or in a community learning conversation and feeling like there are other people who are wanting to have the conversation, right? Um, and other people who are wanting to understand and, and work towards cultural shifts. Like those moments give me hope. I feel hope when I, sometimes, when I feel hope when I open Instagram and, and see what people are saying and how many people are, are speaking out and using that platform for activism. I see hope too. You know, when I, when I show up, especially around, I mean, really in all the work that I do, even when I'm under-resourced and depleted and exhausted and I'm like, I don't think I can get another, on another Zoom call today, when I show up, like, something happens, you know, and I just had this experience recently where I was, um, facilitating a guest session in a yoga teacher training, and I was exhausted. I had been up since 5:30. I had taught that morning at like 6:30 my time to a bunch of private boarding school students and had had a very interesting experience around the gender conversation with them. And then like later that afternoon and it was Friday and I was like, I don't wanna teach on a Friday afternoon and I'm exhausted. And that, that morning session zapped me. And then we started just talking about our identities and privilege and social location and positionality and what it means to be in the work of solidarity. And that conversation gave me so much hope because the people were so in it. Like it wasn't like, oh, here we are again talking about privilege. Like they were in it. They wanted to have the conversation, they were curious. They were asking the questions, like we were all just holding it together. And so present and engaged that I left feeling renewed and restored and inspired again, and hopeful again. And so I just think, like, I have to be present to those moments when that's available. And if I'm not noticing them, then I'm doing myself and the larger work a disservice. And it is like, it does feel like a practice, right? Like, where am I gonna, where am I gonna resource myself with hope this week? And I don't think about that when I wake up and look at my calendar, but it is like why I show up as a student in certain trainings. Right? It's like I need to be reminded, I need to have space held for me to receive, you know?
CASEY: Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. I'm curious about that too, because even before we got on, we were talking about this tendency to over commit, which I think is really embedded in activism, is one, people that are impassioned by this change. And so there can be these moments where it's like, well, I'm gonna keep showing up, and then we get the renewal through some of that showing up as well. But you also are speaking to something around like maintaining a level of presence to what's right in front of you and being able to resource from that, which I know also requires other things like a potentially some sort of a mindfulness practice or something in that realm, a contemplative practice or rest or, or friends that you can talk to outside of it. So I'm just wondering what's kind of feeding you to present to, to some of that other when you're in the work that's kind of feeding you back as well?
TRISTAN: Yeah. Uh, good question. I'm still learning, um, first of all, and I feel like the first or the last few years, I feel like I was in this, this cycle, like wake up early. Sit for meditation, take the dog for a walk, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Go for a walk with the dog again, work, work, work, work, work. Sit down, watch tv, and eat food, and then do it all again the next day. Like I honestly feel like that isn't all I was doing for two and a half years, but it does feel like that was a big part of my life. And by the end of the day, I felt like all I did, my entire day, was focused on work, which was meaningful, and I love what I do, so it was hard to stop, but like, where was my joy? Right? Where was joy? That was not work related? Where was joy in relationship to rest or being in my body? And so in the last six to eight months or so. Um, really since I fell in, started falling in love, I was like, I don't have a choice. Like now I'm in love, and so like, I have to stay up until midnight because I am in my joy, like, and I, I have to cancel this meeting because this joy is more important than that meeting and I have to sleep in. And part of it too is getting COVID, frankly, like I got COVID in the summer. And I had to rest, like my body literally wouldn't let me do anything else. And between falling in love and getting COVID, I feel like I've been having these wake up moments of like I was asleep. Like I was moving through my life partially asleep. And even my meditation practice was not illuminating that truth to me. Um, cuz I was like half checked out and going through the motions. And so I think I'm in this place right now of trying to find a balance between like, acknowledging when I need to rest or when I need to like be in play or, or do something that has nothing to do with a screen, right? While also saying like, how do I stay committed to grounding, centering? And right now it looks like reconnecting to my yoga practice, my physical yoga practice, and, and reconnecting to like moving my body for a 30 minute workout. Like those things help me feel like I have agency and autonomy to create the kind of space in life that I, I am available to creating and not like I'm beholden to the computer screen and work. Like I need to carve out time away from the computer screen and away from work in order to see that I can do it and like, and that I have to recommit to it over and over and over again, and that I have to give myself permission to sleep in past eight, even on a weekday, which is like, I'm still operating from like the school mindset that like, I've gotta be at my desk by eight. Right? And it's not just school, it's like mainstream corporate capitalist workplace culture. But I'm an entrepreneur, like I get to do whatever the hell I want. That's part of the beauty. And I'm responsible and I can trust myself, so why can't I just trust myself, you know?
CASEY: Mm-hmm.
TRISTAN: This is a large, like, this is a huge practice for me, but really it comes back to figuring out the balance between working to live and living to work and, and how do I do it and stay committed to it and, and not forget how important it is to remember that there's something outside of the computer. And a big part of that too is community, like in person real community and prioritizing it and saying like, yes, I'm exhausted. And yes, I'm an introvert, and yes, I've been holding space on the computer all day, but now I'm gonna go to this family dinner or this housewarming and be with friends and be funny and playful and do something that I wouldn't normally do, like play a weird board game. You know? Like I need to remind myself that there's life happening around me, and that it's not just all in a tiny square on Zoom.
CASEY: Yeah, I think a lot about, I mean, what you're bringing in about balance is, you know, something I've been thinking about with it is just that it's not fixed. Right? Right. So, um, you know, this whole question that I sit with as well of like, work-life balance, what's my balance between working to live, living to work, et cetera. And where I fuck it up is when I try to answer.
TRISTAN: Exactly.
CASEY: Like, oh, my balance is whatever. Yeah. Um, and then that's wrong tomorrow, and it was wrong the day before. So I love what you're naming too, because I really think this question, that's, that's where I fuck it up, is when I try to answer it. But if I was to ask myself every day, what's balance today? Is it staying up till 12 with my beloved? Because my joy is there? Prioritize today and then tomorrow, you know, my balance is actually like staying out late, in attending that conference and engaging the work in a different way and things flip flop. So I think about that quite a bit and that that is one way I stay, uh, centered in the work is just that each day is a different balance and I can't get on myself if I'm like, oh, I didn't do my exercise practice that day, so I'm outta balance. It's like, wow, fuck it. Maybe that didn't fit into, maybe that's for tomorrow's balance, and then we're just starting over again. Um, because I, again, it's just such a legacy of sloughing off so much mandates and beliefs on what, uh, how to use our time. Especially, and how to, how to be in conversation with our time and our relationship to it. So, I'm appreciating you bringing that and I think it's just the ongoing question really, you know, to explore, especially as your work is gonna continue to change for you. Um, I'd love you to share, I mean, there's a million things we could continue to talk about and. We're gonna continue to talk about them, so there's no problem with that. But I'd love you to share just a little bit about your kind of upcoming programs that you have coming up specifically, cuz this is a little bit, you know, where some of our, um, dreamy eyes for each other met in your work in social justice and marketing and BWB's work, kind of integrating identity into brand identity work. So I'd love to hear what you have cooking up for that this year, coming into next year, and really where you see some. You know that offering and going forward impacting your work?
TRISTAN: I've been teaching a group mentorship program for the last, I think, I think it's been a full year now since I started it. Um, and it's been called Yoga, Social Justice, and Marketing. And I've run two cohorts. Um, and this most recent cohort really like, invited me into a lot of growth and learning. And so through that process I, I was like, I feel like there was a mirror held up to me that said, Hey, You have more work to do around decentering your own whiteness and we always have work to do around that. Like there's no end point. But I saw like the next move in the process and the next move in the process meant shifting this program slightly. It is in the midst of, of being reimagined. Um, and I'm not sure where that's gonna take me, but it is gonna take on a new name, um, and a slightly new feel, but it will still be centered around integrating social justice practice with marketing strategies and the conversations I think are going to be like the program so far has been really like marketing underlies all the social justice conversations that are happening in the space. And then social justice conversations underlie the marketing conversations that's happening in this space. And so I, I wanna keep exploring how those two topics and, and, and points of practice come together. And I wanna be accountable, like, to who's in the space and my own points of privilege and the things that I cannot see based on my identities and lived experiences. And so all of that to say that the program will be relaunched at some point in 2023, my guess is the new iteration will start in the fall of 2023. Um, name TBD. Um, but a lot of the topics will, will continue to cover in terms of, you know, unpacking positionality of course, and, and what it means to be in the work of solidarity and allyship. And I have several guest facilitators coming in to hold space for conversations that I can't hold, um, given my identities. And it's a really cool learning space, and I've heard from a lot of folks that they feel held in community in this space in a way that they really crave a need, particularly around like marketing and business strategy stuff. But that there's also like, some normalizing that happens along the way of, of that people need to hear in relationship to marketing and business strategy and that people need to hear too, in relationship to activism and allyship. And there's like moments of tension, right? As they're unlearning must be when we're having these conversations. So it's a, I think of course I'm biased, but it's a very cool experience. Um, and, and that'll be available on my website as. As soon as it's clearer about what it's going to be.
CASEY: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, and we'll obviously put all of that in show notes as well. I just find maybe I'll even be in that program, so we'll have to see. But I find it so interesting. I mean, we're running, BWB is running a program right now where we're actually, um, kind of collectively defining branding. Or brand. Or brand identity. And personal branding, et cetera. Using it as an exercise to kind of break up that definition that's out there. And so I even when you're talking, I'm even in my own mind starting to question like, why is there an and and why is it social justice and marketing? Why, you know? What is, what is marketing actually, you know, if it's not, um, also social justice in a sense, or can we redefine marketing so that it, there isn't a need for an ampersand in there. Anyways, that's what my, and I know that's kind of what you're exploring really, as you said, like each is an undercurrent of each. They are not, they're not compartmentalized, they are not boundaried among each other. They are with each other. So the more we g with that whole conversation, the better we can be, um, across the board in our businesses. So I know that program is offering that, but I just kept thinking that in my mind of like, God, it's so interesting. We're still using like the “and”. Where are we gonna go with this? Which I'm excited to see where, where you go with it, with that. Yeah. And I mean, just to say you're bringing up some really huge things about what it means to be living in these questions and the way that you are and how you have to adjust your business to accommodate the more you learn, like changing the program, really being in that question, how do I decenter my whiteness? I don't know.
TRISTAN: Totally. I know my next move. Here's what's gonna happen here. We're gonna do it here. You're gonna learn your next move there and you're gonna keep moving. And I think that's what is kind of like so refreshing to me about always being in conversation with you because it's this kind of process of advancement without always knowing the end goal. Yeah. You know, in that, in that way and it, I just respect and appreciate that and I hope, I'm sure everybody listening also is feeling motivated by that as well. So Thanks Casey. I feel like in some way I just got like a mild little mini brand coaching session from you.I'm like, yeah, maybe there is no ampersand. So thank you and thank you. For everything you just said.
CASEY: Yeah, no, sometimes you can't help it just like sneaks into…
TRISTAN: I know . Like that's why you always have to say, and I'm trained in da, da da, so it may show up in this program.
CASEY: Exactly. I can't hold these things back. Um, but I didn't intend for it to mean that way.I just am in that same question with you in this work. Yeah. I love it. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you Tristan. And we will be continuing the conversation soon.
TRISTAN: Thank you Casey. Really appreciate it.
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CASEY: Thank you for listening to the Questions to Hold podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and are leaving the conversation with way more questions than answers.
I invite you to build a more meaningful relationship with yourself and the world around you through the simple yet profound act of holding questions. Visit questionstohold.com and wearebwb.com to learn more about this practice, our Questions to Hold card deck, and explore more conversations. See you there.