Reclaiming Your Hue
About:
At Reclaiming Your Hue, I am dedicated to empowering women to embrace and amplify their inherent brilliance. My mission is to inspire mothers and entrepreneurs to unlock their full potential and radiate their true selves.
I believe in nurturing both the entrepreneurial spirit and the nurturing essence of motherhood, recognizing that our light is not just for us but for the community we build and inspire. I am committed to providing support, resources, and a platform for women to not only reclaim their vibrancy but to also illuminate the paths for others.
My goal is to foster an environment where diminishing oneself is unnecessary, and where every woman is encouraged to shine boldly and without reservation, as we are all born to manifest the greatness within us. By liberating ourselves from our doubts, we collectively empower each other to live fearlessly and vibrantly!
Core Values of RYH:
Faith: Believing in the power of faith to guide and sustain us, trusting in our journey, and finding strength and resilience through spiritual connection and conviction.
Empowerment: Dedicated to empowering women to embrace and amplify their inherent brilliance, inspiring mothers and entrepreneurs to unlock their full potential and radiate their true selves.
Community and Support: Committed to nurturing both the entrepreneurial spirit and the nurturing essence of motherhood, recognizing that our light is for the community we build and inspire. Providing support, resources, and a platform for women to reclaim their vibrancy and illuminate paths for others.
Encouragement and Boldness: Fostering an environment where diminishing oneself is unnecessary, encouraging every woman to shine boldly and without reservation, manifesting the greatness within.
Fearlessness and Vibrancy: Liberating ourselves from doubts to collectively empower each other to live fearlessly and vibrantly, embracing and celebrating our inherent brilliance.
Reclaiming Your Hue
Ep. 54 with Alisa Rabin Bell | Founder of Lionheart Ventures
What happens when life forces you to completely reinvent yourself—not just once, but multiple times? Alisa Rabin Bell journey illuminates the powerful transformations that occur when we embrace life's unexpected turns rather than resist them.
From the moment her daughter was born in 2004, Alisa knew her priorities had fundamentally shifted. The corporate career she'd built no longer aligned with her deepest values, leading to her first entrepreneurial experiment with Mary Kay while staying home with her child. What followed was a winding path through nonprofit leadership, technology sales, and significant health challenges—each transition revealing new strengths and possibilities.
The most compelling aspect of Alisa' story may be how she navigated a major career pivot at age 45, transitioning from nonprofit fundraising to technology sales. "I wanted to show my daughter that you can redefine yourself at any age," she explains. This courage to reinvent herself repeatedly demonstrates the agility and resilience we rarely celebrate in our professional narratives. When health challenges later forced another pivot, she didn't simply survive—she used this difficult period to reconnect with her purpose and values.
Today, as founder of Lionheart Ventures, Alisa helps faith-based businesses create meaningful social impact programs that align with their core values. Her work reflects her unique spiritual journey as a Jewish woman who embraced Christianity, allowing her to bridge different traditions and perspectives. Meanwhile, her women's networking group, Moxie Mixer, addresses a practical need she identified in her community—further evidence of her entrepreneurial mindset.
Whether you're contemplating a career change, navigating health challenges, or considering entrepreneurship in midlife, Alisa's journey offers valuable wisdom. Her practical advice—"Don't give up your day job first, build clientele on evenings and weekends, but definitely leap because it's worth it"—speaks to both the challenges and rewards of charting your own path. Connect with Alisa through her website at lionheartventures.biz or find her on LinkedIn to learn more about aligning your business values with meaningful community impact.
Connect with Alisa:
- Website: LionHeart Ventures
- LinkedIn: Alisa Rabin Bell
Contact the Host, Kelly Kirk:
- Email: info.ryh7@gmail.com
Get Connected/Follow:
- IG: @ryh_pod & @thekelly.tanke.kirk
- Facebook: Reclaiming Your Hue Facebook Page
- YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@RYHReclaimingYourHue
Credits:
- Editor: Joseph Kirk
- Music: Kristofer Tanke
Thanks for listening & cheers to Reclaiming Your Hue!
Good morning Alisa.
Speaker 1:Good morning Kelly.
Speaker 2:How are you? I'm good, good, good. Now I think it's important to share with our listeners how it is that we got connected and, truthfully, I don't I can't even remember this. Actually, I think I do. Why don't you go ahead and share it sounds it looks like you've got a better idea of it than I do, but I think I do. Why don't you go ahead and share it? Looks like you've got a better idea of it than I do, but I think I've got it.
Speaker 1:I had to look it up too, because I couldn't remember either. So I looked back at our conversation and I had just met Diane Erdman, and then I saw a post that she had done, that she was going to be on your podcast and listen to her podcast, listen to her story, and I think I reached out to you, but then after that, somehow we kept running into each other at just about every event and organization, amplify Mission and some other events.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, it was through LinkedIn, so I got a message. I think I got a message from you on LinkedIn and then it was that tie to Diane and then I just love like then I'm, I'm bumping into at Amplify or I think one of the people that you were like hey, you should definitely connect with her was Laura King. I bumped into her at an event. Your name got brought up. Yeah, it was. It's just. I love how the world works. I love how God works. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1:He's pretty amazing, yeah, and it's a. It's a small community here in the Twin Cities. It's getting it seems smaller every day, every event, and I do a ton of networking and every event and opportunity that I go to, I see more and more people that I know or that I've met recently.
Speaker 2:And it's very cool. It's very fun. It really is. I want to. We're going to dive into this networking that you do. However, let's table it for just a second. I want you to share with the listeners what came first for you. Was it motherhood or was it entrepreneurship?
Speaker 1:Definitely motherhood, and I was thinking about a little bit. Some of your previous podcasts sparked some reminders for me which I thought was interesting, very type A working in. I'd been in the nonprofit space for many years and at the time I was at a big hospital foundation in town and my well, let's see. So my daughter was born in 2004, november of 2004. And within minutes of me having her, I'm like I cannot go back into corporate America.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go back to my job and was blessed enough to be able to stay home with her for two years, but it was during that time that I started a Mary Kay business, a home you know a home business, thinking I can do this. I want to work for myself, I want to be an entrepreneur. And that didn't last very long in terms of entrepreneurship. I did go back into working for nonprofits and doing some other work after that.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool. Isn't it so funny that until I have these moments too, alisa, so just bear with me, but we have until we get the date down, we're kind of like, when was that? When was that? Oh, that's right, it was that. And then you can, okay, based off of this, this state, then all of this stuff started to happen. Yeah, I am so like that now, like everything has to be based off of, like when Maddie arrived, or pre pre like meeting Joe and getting introduced to the boys. It's just just wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because all of the major transformative stuff for me personally didn't really happen until family unit happened. Maddie came and all of a sudden there's just this fundamental change that happens for you as a woman when you have a family unit, when you have children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, From type A to. I need to stay home with this child. No one else can raise her but me. I need to be with my family.
Speaker 2:Still a little type A there, right.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm back to type A now, I think, but at the time it just went away, I was like I need to be, I need to get away from work for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And be a mom.
Speaker 2:Tell me, like so it sounds like that happened pretty, pretty quickly for you, that you were like this just isn't gonna work for me in terms of what were, what do you feel, the reasonings for you making that switch, that mindset shift?
Speaker 1:I have no idea. I think it was hormonal.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. Well, let me back up. Yeah, perhaps maybe giving you a little bit more context. I do feel like I've had many other women on who have come from that corporate setting and there's just specific aspects of being in a corporate environment that perhaps aren't conducive to, or there is. There is conduciveness to a degree, and then anything above and beyond that becomes a little bit more challenging when it comes to having a family unit in place. So were there things that you were kind of picking up on during your pregnancy and then after the fact where you're like that just is not going to work for me.
Speaker 1:Well, interestingly enough, I had planned on going back to work. However, during my maternity leave, I remember not actively looking for daycare, not actively finding someone to take care of her when I went back to work. And then I got to the end and I'm like where did those three, four months go so quickly? And I had to scramble. And so that month that I went back to work, I literally had a different woman from church. I had to put together a calendar because my brain wasn't working. I put together a calendar because a different mom from church would watch. I'd literally drop her off at a friend's house every day of the week. For a month. I went back to work, put in my two weeks notice, had to work two more weeks. I worked for a month, couldn't remember where I left my kid. I had. Thankfully, I had a printed calendar to say oh yeah, she's at so-and-so's house today and so-and-so's house today it's a different person's house. I did that for a month and and then I'm like I need to be home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was crazy. Nothing about that seems appealing whatsoever. And stack on top of it the emotions that are already running high because your hormones are super out of whack.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And the emotions that come around being away from your child to that like there's some real raw emotions.
Speaker 2:I came across a video of like. I think it was on Instagram and I don't know the full context of of what it was, but it was in relation to like, when you have children here in the US and that maternity leave time frame that you get. Versus other parts of the world where that maternity leave can be extended, it's much more extended, there's just more time, and you think about it and you go interesting that we get. For some people it's like two weeks. You know, if you are in this entrepreneurial world, it's very, uh, indicative of like what sort of industry pathway that you're down, that you're going down. But I, just where I'm going with all of this, lisa is like how high our emotions are already, as is, stack on top of it, this notion of like having to be away from your child. And then also, how am I, how am I gonna like really work through all of this stuff with getting back into the work environment?
Speaker 1:It's tough yeah compartmentalizing your brain is hard enough, but when you, when it's flooded with hormones and you're emotional and all the things you're going through, it's not easy.
Speaker 2:But something that I enjoyed hearing you say is the importance of like even just this small habit of having a calendar in place to keep everything straight, instead of trying to do it all solely, like in your own head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely had to keep track of that. And, um, and my story goes back, I'm a little older than you, and so my little daughter is 20 years old and on her own now.
Speaker 2:So um.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's a whole other, that's a whole story. But uh, at at the time, you know, I don't even think we had a cell phone like it was even before cell phones, so everything was like paper calendars. I had a ginormous day planner thing that. I carried everywhere and and so everything was written down and having that printed out calendar, so I knew exactly what I was doing. Where was so important?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Let's give frame of reference. So this would have been about 20 years ago and and you decided that you were going to stay home with your daughter and you just have just one right.
Speaker 2:So you stayed home with her, and what a blessing to be able to do that, um, because that certainly creates a massive peace of mind when you're like I don't have to worry about financial constraints or you know any other sort of constraint that otherwise might hold me back from making this decision. Um, but what was the timeframe that you stayed home with her?
Speaker 1:It was about two years two years.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what do you feel like you learned in those two years? Like, did you experience any sort of like ups and downs while being at home with her? Or did you feel like, wow, I just just absolutely love this nurturing time that I'm having with her. Yeah, it was it was great.
Speaker 1:Actually, I really appreciated all of the time. I mean, she was obviously pretty little but we were able to do so much. I took her everywhere I went. She became kind of my mini me, and when I started the home-based business I took her to networking meetings. She'd sit in her little high chair at some of these little breakfast networking meetings with me. So she, she went everywhere she. And as an only child she has kind of a different perspective in that she was around adults a lot. So we started early with, you know, language and and relationships and communication and that sort of thing. Um, but it was fun, it was uh, it was a good time.
Speaker 1:I mean it was hard, it wasn't easy. My um and this will take us down another path in a minute but but my husband was still playing baseball, so he was. He was a minor league um professional athlete and wasn't around a lot, so it was really just her and I for big chunks of time while he was still in that world and so we bonded and had fun and parks and museums and all the things you do with an itty bitty.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh my gosh, I can imagine the bond that you have. And now you're in a. How long have you been in this phase of empty nester, or is she? Or is she at home still?
Speaker 1:No, so she. First of all, this is very fun, the term empty nest. I had a friend who corrected me when I said that she says you're not an empty nester, you're a birdwatcher, and I'm like that's fabulous.
Speaker 2:I did a LinkedIn post on that. I was just going to say it because I was like this is so cool. Yeah, we're not empty nesters, we're birdwatchers.
Speaker 1:So she didn't go to college. She chose a different path, just really quick. She was a junior senior during the pandemic and spent a lot of time in her room and just wasn't. She wasn't having it. She's like I cannot sit in front of a laptop or in a cube the rest of my life, mom, there's no way I'm I can do that. I don't even want to go to college, and you know, of course I went. Wait, what right? You know, college is a thing, you have to go to college.
Speaker 1:But with her very strong artistic ability she's incredible. Um, and during the pandemic we all started. You know what we all did? We binge watch shows. Uh-huh, we came across a show called Inkmasters and her light bulb.
Speaker 1:I have never seen her light bulb go off because she had been depressed as a lot of teenagers where we all were during the pandemic, but especially teenagers and she was just going to settle in her life to do what she had to do and do art on the side. Her life to do what she had to do and do art on the side. We saw Ink Masters and she lit up. She said wait a minute, you can do something as cool as tattooing and get paid to do it and you can be an artist and get paid Like that alone was mind boggling for her. So she decided not to go to college, stayed home for a couple of years and worked. But right after she turned 18, she walked in confidence. This girl has confidence. She was a Montessori kid. She walked into a tattoo shop in Minneapolis and got herself an apprenticeship. The youngest artist in the shop did that for a couple of years at the shop and before she turned 20, became a licensed tattoo artist. So super proud of her. She's amazing.
Speaker 2:That's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're just really proud of her. She's done some gorgeous, gorgeous work and, trust me, tattoos were not on my bingo card. Certainly not tattoos in your 50s.
Speaker 2:You sound like my mother. She got her first tattoo and she called it her like midlife crisis. Yeah, and now.
Speaker 1:I have three. So yeah, but she picked up in February and moved to Massachusetts. So she's out there right now. Her boyfriend's finishing college. They're they're doing the thing. They've been together like four years. They're wonderful and, um, hopefully they'll be back by the end of the year. We'll see. And she's she got herself a job out there. She's very confident. She's incredibly talented. We're proud of her.
Speaker 2:So we're watching I a couple of things that I just want to note and I love that you are sharing. So we're watching such a young age and being around you know, older individuals like adults, and having that exposure can only help, as long as it's a positive, influential, you know, impact, right, Because we could go the other way too with that, but it seems like you were around some pretty incredible people yourself, which has an impact on you as a mother and then how you're able to show up for your child is it's it's impactful, Right? So then it has an impact on her. And here she is, you know, walking in to get an apprenticeship without any sort of like. You know, I'm sure she had some nerves, but she may have hit it Well, like we've got a child here in this house that is very confident but does have nerves and hides it very, very well.
Speaker 1:Well, if you don't have nerves, you know yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:I think having a little bit of nervousness means you're in the right spot and you're doing the right things. Nervousness means you're in the right spot and you're doing the right things. You're walking the right path. She wasn't familiar with Minneapolis so, to be honest, she was very nervous. I drove her to her appointment. I drove her to her interview. Mom, you have to stay in the car though. So fine, I wasn't a helicopter mom at all. I waited in the car patiently for an hour while she went in and had her interview and talked to him, because she just didn't know the road, she didn't know the city, and that was fine. Plus, I didn't want her driving nervous. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But she walked out standing tall, I got the job, I got the apprenticeship. Standing tall, I got the job, I got the apprenticeship. And yeah, I mean, I think part of it is how we raised her, I think part of it is her Montessori experience. You know, when you find good adults, good people around your they, they learn from them as well. They're you know, she had some great, uh, adults that spoke into her life and and um, that's a whole different experience. That Montessori was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so cool. The um, my bonus boys, uh, both of them went to a Montessori school in Richfield and it just seems like those kids have such incredible manners and I do think a lot of it stemmed from, like being a part of that Montessori setting. And now, with our daughter Maddie, she's in a daycare. That's an, it's an academy and it is foundationally like a part of the Wooddale church, so there's a faith component to that as well. But because she hears manners flying around this place and if manners aren't like happening, then we're correcting it pretty quickly. So then, same thing with her. Like she's seeing that it's being modeled for her and I just think it's so cool. I think it's so cool.
Speaker 2:It is I want to step back to this this moment in time and you just kind of glossed over it, your experience with Mary Kay just kind of glossed over it. Your experience with Mary Kay I do think let's talk about this because that was really sort of like your first step, Like you dipped the toe in entrepreneurship. That's, network marketing, is a fantastic way to begin the journey of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:I mean you are literally, you're literally dipping your toe in all of these different areas. It's like you have to advocate for yourself in a network marketing environment. You networking is very important. You're networking within that business, right, but then you have, you're, you're networking with your sphere of influence and then outside of that as well.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about what this experience was like for you, perhaps the impact it had for you, what it meant for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I remember very clearly I'd been to a couple of Mary Kay parties, like at one point in the early early 2000s and I don't know if it's still going on today, because I don't really get invited to those much anymore but, like, I was getting invited to candle parties and basket parties and makeup parties and all kinds of you name it off the wall kinds of things that people were trying and doing, and I had been using some of the products for a little while and just found, you know, with my I think she was Raelynn, was probably about six months old, and I remember clearly my Mary Kay friend came to my house and Raelynn's sitting in her little high chair you know she was right there, and I said, yeah, let's give this a try, and I jumped into it wholeheartedly. It was a lot of fun. I loved doing the parties. I loved, you know, doing decorative kinds of things. You do displays and that kind of thing, and the makeup. Of course, that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:What I found really quickly, though, was, I mean, it wasn't cheap, right, like you want to have products on your shelf and, and I could sell products, but the challenge I think with network marketing is bringing more people in to work with you, to partner with you, come alongside you, and I think that was the part that I struggled with a little bit. I had some people say that I made it look too complicated, so I thought, well, that's an interesting statement, that like I could wear the makeup, I could look good, I could do all the things that went along with it and sell product. But like, to get someone to come alongside you was a little more challenging. And I think if you've done strength finders, you're familiar with the one of the very bottom ones. Woo like winning other people over, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah that is not high on my list of strength finders. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:The interview that I just had last week. I won't share her name, I won't share her name, I won't spoil it for everyone, but, um, she, she does a lot with this strength finders and like coaching people through it. Now she, her, she's got two separate businesses. She does coaching but then she also has another business. Again, I won't, I won't share too much. Um, but she, she was like this strength finder thing is there, like it's very important and usually your strengths, like it's not going to shift, like it doesn't mean that you necessarily have to do it over and over and over again on a consistent basis, like there should be some consistencies with your strengths.
Speaker 1:Well, what's interesting? You think otherwise A little bit. I think it adjusts a little bit depending on where you are in your life, depending the seasons matter and your uh, your, your emotional state when you're doing it. So the very first time I did strength finders, I think was in 2009. And I did it through work and I just nailed it Like everything that was going on was the perfect timing for where I was in my life, what I was doing, everything lined up. And then I did it again, probably about eight, nine years later, I think, maybe 2017. And what I found was I had, of the first five, the first time I did it, two were the same and a few were different. But if you look, what's interesting? I have a friend who looks at the top 10. If you look at the top 10, they were very similar and they did a little bit of shifting around.
Speaker 2:But they were still kind of in there in the top 10. I'm pulling mine up right now and I want to just I'm going to rattle these off for you Consistency, futuristic empathy, discipline, connectiveness. So those are like she was telling me, she's going to do an assessment with me. Through all of this, she's like I want to see all of them, though, like all of the 34, 35, it is so she's like I'm going to go through all of it with you and I was like really Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the first time I did it, my top I can't remember my exact top five like communication, adaptability, restorative activator and belief. That was the first time I did it. I remember those very clearly. And then, when I redid it, they're now harmony those very clearly. And then, when I redid it, they're now harmony maximizer, arranger, adaptability and individualization. So they're. They're different, but but when you look at the top 10, there is a lot there. Those first five are still in my top 10. They've just adjusted and moved around.
Speaker 2:So this is what it's worth. Yeah, I'll just touch on this and then we can continue down your story path. I should ask her and I actually your episode is going to drop after her, so I will mention her name. It's Catherine um Gaiola. I'm pronouncing her last name wrong. I'm totally butchering it, just like I butchered your first name, um. But I should ask, like, what do you feel is the amount of time Like is there when you have like pivotal moments in your life or seasons? Like I do think, going back to what I was sharing earlier about how we as women fundamentally change when we have children, Yep.
Speaker 2:Fundamentally change, and so I am. I will ask her this question. I'll report back, um, but anyways. So going back to this, this moment in time, with Mary Kay and that experience, how long were you doing that? How long were you?
Speaker 1:doing that Actively probably five or six years, okay, and then just kind of dwindled off and just had been buying products, which is kind of all I do now. Okay, yeah, it's not a big part of anything anymore, it was. It was just kind of that initial when I was thinking about motherhood versus entrepreneurship and the timing of it.
Speaker 2:It was very close together because I was trying to figure out how to not go back into corporate America. Yeah, I just again I have to touch on this because I do think it's important, like network marketing, while some people poo poo on network marketing and call it pyramid schemes and stuff and I'm like, hey, we're, we're in a specific century now, like we can kind of get away from this pyramids scheme concept. Yeah, some, there are people there are pyramid schemes out there.
Speaker 1:Be careful, be careful. There are legitimate companies too, but there are legitimate companies too.
Speaker 2:But there are legitimate companies and what I've advocated before because I've been a part of a couple of network marketing opportunities companies and there's so much growth that can happen from it.
Speaker 2:Self-growth and learning is very impactful to being in this world of motherhood and then also in entrepreneurship right Like we're ever evolving, we're ever growing, but I've always said and advocated for the companies that push that, where they encourage this growth and learning and like how are you like pushing the narrative in the envelope for yourself so that you can be a better person? I'm like do it, do it like, do your research on the company Absolutely. However, if it's a, if it's a company that's based on a good foundation they've been around for a long time, like Mary Kay, for instance it's a great company.
Speaker 2:It is a great company. Yeah, absolutely. I had to mention that and bring that up because I think that was like and maybe I'm just making that connection but it cool to go back in in that amount of time and go. That was kind of a start for you. So let's, let's kind of carry this, this storyline, on from there. What happens next?
Speaker 1:What happens next. So, yes, I was home with her for a couple of years and then went back, and this is how I learned about Montessori and how we got her into Montessori is. I went and worked for an organization called the Montessori Training Center in Minnesota and I was there for about a year when an opportunity to run the Woodbury Community Foundation came up.
Speaker 1:And so I got a chance to work closer to home and help really launch an organization. They'd been all volunteer run and I was the first executive director. So that was amazing. I had a lot of flexibility. They knew I was a new mom. I was able to put my daughter into Montessori school. She started before she turned three. She was at the at school and um was there.
Speaker 1:I was at the Montessori school for about or excuse me at um Woodbury community foundation for about uh four or five years. Okay, and um. Then family stuff came up, took a little time off. Um was trying to figure out what was next. Um got an opportunity to uh work at an association management firm. From there, keep in mind, I had been at the hospital foundation for about eight years prior to that. So I had a long career in nonprofit space and and different, different nonprofit kinds of work. So the association management firm I did that for about a year. That was probably the most interesting year of my career. Too much to go into details, suffice it to say. A new guy came in. They hired as a COO and he fired me pretty quick, like okay. So yeah, having you know job loss is a big part of my story.
Speaker 1:It's not fun to be fired, but I realized that that was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Speaker 2:It was a weird environment.
Speaker 1:I was there for a year. There was a lot, of, a lot of upheaval. Okay, let's just, let's just put it that way there's a lot of upheaval there and it was a. It was a tough year and, um, this guy was, he wasn't a good guy, but whatever. And uh, I took probably a day to be angry and then I'm like this was great. I didn't really want to be there anymore.
Speaker 2:And now I can look for the silver lining.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was great silver lining, I mean it was. It was shocking and stressful at first, but then I took a little more time and was able to kind of dig in a little deeper and go okay, what do I want to do next? So my husband's an IT guy. He says, well, why don't you look at going into IT? And I thought I don't know anything about technology. But he said you know, well, there's the people side of the tech world, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Human resources, marketing and sales. Well, I had just spent I don't know how many 15, 20 years in the nonprofit space and I thought, okay, I've been fundraising and if you've ever done fundraising, you're basically selling happy, good feelings and then going back and asking for more money without giving people anything other than more happy, good feelings and appreciation. It's hard. Fundraising is not easy. God bless all the fundraisers in the world.
Speaker 2:Certainly not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 1:It isn't for the faint of heart. And when you get paid to do it, it's one thing, but volunteers, it's another, whole other story. So people that are doing that, it's amazing work, it's important work, it's hard work, it's important work it's hard work, so yeah.
Speaker 2:And you did that for how long?
Speaker 1:I think it was in the nonprofit space in one way or another for about 20 years. Okay and yeah. So I started poking around the Twin Cities to different tech companies, thinking I can totally translate my fundraising skills into sales, no problem. And every tech company I had talked to and interviewed with looked at me like I was crazy. They thought there's no way you could translate sales, fundraising and nonprofit management and program management all the things that I had done in the nonprofit space into technology. But I could see it and I finally found a company, a big tech company out of South Carolina, that had just bought a little tech company here in Edina and they sold into the nonprofit and foundation space. And so when I went and met with them they said you're just what we're looking for. You speak the language we can teach you how to sell. Perfect, Pick me, I'm in.
Speaker 1:And it was amazing. It was so much fun to actually get paid to do some work. I got commissions. I'd never seen a commission check before. It was so much fun to actually like get paid to do some work. I got commissions. I'd never seen a commission check before. That was crazy.
Speaker 2:And that world is crazy.
Speaker 1:It is, it was but it was a lot of fun and uh, so I, I was in that space.
Speaker 1:I got to travel around the whole upper Midwest and and going to South Carolina a few times and, on someone else's dime, this was amazing and I just you know my family was really supportive. My daughter was old enough that it wasn't a big deal for mom to be gone for like three, four days at a time and really what I felt like I was showing her because I was I think I was 45, 46 when I made a complete career change, Like from nonprofit to tech sales and what I felt like I was able to show her was that you can do anything, first of all, and you can redefine yourself at any age, and that's I wanted her to be proud of me. That I think that was always my underlying motivating source for pretty much everything I did in my career was for her to be, for her to be proud of me, for her to see that her mom was capable and, you know, smart and could, could do anything too, and that was really important to me.
Speaker 2:I empathize with this so much. I certainly have those, those emotions that are are really rolling through me and probably, if I'm going to kind of dig into the subconscious of Kelly Kirk, probably had a lot to do with me making a transition from where I was at before in the mortgage industry to what I'm doing now, not only with the podcast and having these conversations and talking about these transformations that can happen and the reinventions of us as a woman. That can happen. But then going into business with my husband too, I'm like we're doing a lot of modeling for all three of the kids and it's so cool.
Speaker 2:But I love that you're bringing up this like I want to be able to show her and let her see that like this reinvention of self can come at any time. It really can. It can happen as early as you want it to, it can happen all of the time in between and it can even happen when we quote unquote from society. Think that we're like at the end of our rope, right Like the forties and fifties. And now I'm like seeing Gary V go. You're not even halfway through your life, where our, our lifespans are extending out like reinvent yourself if you want to in your forties and fifties.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:What's stopping you?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:For the longest time, it has been how society has viewed us in in terms of age and ageism and I just am so like wow, wow, wow, wow. It's so cool, yeah, Well, yeah it was fun I did.
Speaker 1:I ended up in tech sales for about seven, eight years, through the pandemic, through the ups and downs of all of that, ended up at a ginormous tech company that shall be unnamed in 2021 and thought, oh yeah, no problem, I can sell for them. And it had come because I had gotten laid off from the previous job. So the other factor that was new to me was layoffs in the tech space during all of the chaos. So I'd gotten. I left the first company, went to another company, was there for the two years during the pandemic and survived some layoffs, got caught up in some other ones, met some amazing people and then got let go at the end of 2021. But was already in talks with this other behemoth company and I thought, okay, perfect, I'll just go do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What I didn't realize was how big it was and how difficult it was going to be. I'd come from a company that was like 600 some employees, and the previous one was maybe 3000. This other company is like 150,000 employees around the world. I was like barely a number and a blip in anyone's radar and I was selling a product that, in products that I just to be honest and to be, you know, really transparent, I just could not wrap my brain around. I went from software to hardware and it just it didn't make sense to my brain. Well, the future, you know, follow up of going from motherhood, what was next was, you know, then I'm in menopause and didn't know I had meant was going through menopause, had no clue because, for a variety of reasons, wasn't didn't know that was even going on, and so my, my brain couldn't wrap around, I couldn't focus, I couldn't understand everything that was I was trying to learn, understand everything that was I was trying to learn. Well, so this next part of my journey so I started in, like I said, november of 2021, at this company, by May of 2022, out of the blue, started having horrible vertigo attacks, was so sick and couldn't figure out what was causing it.
Speaker 1:I do have what's called Meniere's disease and so losing hearing in my right ear, and have had dizzy spells off and on over the years, but nothing major. This was crazy. So May of 2022 through January of 2023 was so sick I barely could get off the couch for two or three days at a time. My husband had about 10 seconds to get me from my office chair to the couch with a washcloth and a bucket next to me and like covering my head, like I was having just this incredible loss of everything. It was horrible, just horrible, and we were thinking part of it was part of it had to have been menopause and hormonal changes. Um, but finally had a friend who said you need to go see this doctor. I have a friend who visits this doctor down in Red Wing and he was a Christian. He's a chiropractor but a natural health care doctor, and he ran all kinds of tests on me. Keep in mind this was six months of this.
Speaker 1:We were just desperate and he says oh well, here's the problem. You're gluten sensitive. I'm like, excuse me, crazy. I sat in my car and cried after he gave me this diagnosis because I'm like I don't even know what to do with this. So he says you need to immediately go cold turkey, no more gluten, no dairy, because dairy mimics gluten. Wow, you need to be drinking half your body weight in ounces of water every day. You need to be doing all these exercises. You need to eat like gallons of vegetables every day. You need to be there, all of these things and it just shook my world, just shook me, but I did because I was so miserable. I'm like something has to change. Um, but by then it was too late for my job and so we mutually decided I didn't want to work there anymore, which was fine. So March of 2023, left that company and have been feeling worlds better since. The other thing that was high on his testing was adrenal glands. My stress levels were off the charts, off the charts.
Speaker 1:I mean most tech companies, most tech sales. It's like you have. You have monthly and quarterly goals and KPIs you have to meet. This company was weekly. If you weren't producing like hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly, you were, you just weren't going to make it. It wasn't going to work and and fair enough. Like there are people that are super successful and they're doing that and they're great and they know that. It just wasn't right for me, right, and and thankfully, we figured that out pretty quick and it worked out. So, yeah, so since then, I I pretty much took the rest of 2023 to to heal, to learn how to cook differently, learn how to eat differently, cleaned out a lot in our house. I mean, my family still eats some of that, but I've been helping them eat healthier.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I haven't had an incident since, thank God.
Speaker 2:What a game changer. Game changer Absol a game changer, game changer. Absolute game changer, and I know that you brought up that this individual down in Red Wing has the Christian background too, and how that probably played a fundamental role. Hold on a second Did it play a fundamental role for you, or were at that point, because I know that there's a story too you had talked through this when we first got connected right about your faith my faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my my faith journey is a whole story. I mean, yes, the the doctor is a Christian and every everyone that works for him is a strong Christian. And they were praying over me as well, like every appointment, every, every therapy that I was getting, cause I was down there. I was down there a couple of times a week. For the first month or so, my husband had to drive. I didn't drive for a good six months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean if you have a vertigo spell it's it was dangerous. It's yeah, you are. You're a danger to yourself and other people Exactly People at that point.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so they, the faith factor was really important. They were praying over me and and and even for myself on those days where I was laying on the couch and couldn't function there, couldn't watch TV, I couldn't read a book, I couldn't do anything. I just needed to be and I'd lay on the couch with cold compresses and ice packs. I've got those migraine freezer head things you put.
Speaker 1:I looked crazy, but it felt so good to have that ice pack on my head and I just would lay there and pray and there were scriptures that that would come to me and just talk. I just laid there and talked to God because I didn't have a choice. I I needed healing. There's a um, there's a Solomon. For the life of me I can't remember off the top of my head right now, but it was basically in one of the Psalms where I prayed to God for healing and he healed me and it was powerful. I just kept praying that over and, over and over again and it just was what I needed at the time.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so I guess, backing up almost 30 years now, my faith story. I'm Jewish, I'm 100% Jewish. I grew up in Southern California. Both my parents are Jewish. Just was part of my culture. It's just as who I was wasn't. We weren't religious. We didn't go to synagogue, but except for if someone got married, got bar mitzvahed or died like that, was pretty much the only time we were in a synagogue.
Speaker 2:So have you ever heard of the term priesters?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's sort of like that the equivalent of 100%, yep, but.
Speaker 1:But the thing is about Judaism is that it's a nationality, it's a culture and it's a religion. It's genetic. When you do those DNA tests people do DNA tests, right Mine shows up as like 99.5% Ashkenazi, jewish. It's DNA, it isn't just a religion. And then a lot of people, I think, make the mistake thinking that it's just a religion. It isn't, it's in your DNA and so yeah, so I Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2:That's something new for me and I'm really walking in this faith journey and owning it, but I have yet a lot to learn, just in terms of the different you know different religions and like how that plays into Christianity as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, so I grew up in Southern California, I went to UCLA. So yeah, so I grew up in Southern California, I went to UCLA, and at UCLA I met a Minnesotan. Didn't even know where Minnesota was on the map and met this Minnesota guy who was different, and we hit it off. We dated for four years and then, after college, we got married.
Speaker 2:So this is now your. No this is not.
Speaker 1:This is not no, so this is part of my story. This is um 1993. We got married out of college and um picked up, moved to ann arbor, michigan, put him through grad school, he got his, he got his mba, michigan and um, while we were there, like I had to work, I had to do something while we were there for two years. So I got a job at Domino's. That was fun. Yeah, um, they have a great big, cool uh headquarters in Ann Arbor, michigan, so I worked in the. That was my first it job. Actually I worked in the little IT job and little IT department. It was great, it was a lot of fun. We moved back to Minnesota because he got a job with a company here and within a year of moving back here we got divorced. So here I am, 2000 miles from home. I had just started a new job at the Hospital Foundation and on my own, bought a little town home. It was great $90,000. I think it was. I know this was 1997.
Speaker 2:What a time period. Right, I know, bought a little town home.
Speaker 1:I'm like Mary Tyler Moore, which I love. You know the Mary Tyler Moore show. Grew up watching her again, didn't know where Minnesota was back in the day.
Speaker 2:Now you know now, it's now you're connecting. Now I'm connected.
Speaker 1:So here I am, I'm like I'm going to toss my hat in the air. I'm going to stay in Minnesota after this divorce. I'm going to do this on my own, for you and like, I bought a town home and I, I had a job and I had new friends and through the divorce I found there's a little church near our house. It was through the divorce that I came to faith, actually. So I, he wasn't, he was Christian, and so a couple of times I go to church with him, but it wasn't really like that's fine, that's for you, it's not for me, I'm not interested, but I'll go with you. Sure. So I had been to church. It just wasn't anything that sparked anything for me.
Speaker 1:Sure, but during this divorce, during this terribly painful time in my life, we walked into a little church in Woodbury and everyone there was so nice and so just interesting and kind and conversational and relational, and they welcomed me in. And what was interesting was I also started digging into my own faith a little bit more. I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to go to a synagogue and see what that's about, because maybe I'm supposed to be Jewish, maybe I don't know what I'm doing. The interesting thing was. I went to a synagogue. I went to a couple of Judaism classes just to kind of learn a little more Because, like I said, we were very non-religious growing up.
Speaker 1:And the synagogue that I went to a couple of times. I remember very clearly walking in and sitting by myself and no one said anything. It was okay, they were sort of welcoming, but just not really remember telling the pastor, the pastor, the rabbi. I went back and was talking to the rabbi and and told him that I wouldn't be coming back anymore Cause I had discovered Christianity in this little church and I and I was going down that path and he was he says, well, like what? Why you can't do that, like we don't want to lose any, you know, jewish people, whatever his, his reasoning was. But I said well, you know, it didn't feel I didn't feel welcome here, like I. But you can bet the next time, like I did go back like one or two more times just to like whatever, and I got bombarded by people there she is.
Speaker 2:Go say hi to her, go get her. Let's see if we can swing her back. The other direction.
Speaker 1:It's fine. The interesting thing is, through this transition, this change in my views, I opened up a lot more about all of my faith. I'm much more Jewish now than I've ever been in my whole life. I'm much more into reading the whole Bible I don't just read New Testament. All the scripture, all the stories, all the gospel, the Tanakh. The Old Testament is beautiful and amazing and interesting, and so I'm much more in my faith as a Jewish believer. Is how I refer to myself as a Jewish believer. In my faith as a Jewish believer is how I refer to myself as a Jewish believer than I ever was prior.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. You took it upon yourself to go okay. Yeah, I feel so welcome at this church that has a Christian backing, but I do want to explore what my roots are. Yeah, absolutely, and to then be able to go like how does it all? Kind of like, how can we spin the plates together?
Speaker 1:Well, one of the cool things was the pastor at the little church in Woodbury introduced me to a young couple that was there. The interesting thing was, as they were, you know, here I am seeking out, you know, christianity and like what is this all about? And who is this Jesus guy? And wait a minute, he was Jewish. Like what's up.
Speaker 2:Seriously, this is something that I just like. Did you just learn?
Speaker 1:that Jesus was Jewish.
Speaker 2:I did, I know, and some of the people who are listening right now are probably like really, but it wasn't like like I watched the Chosen.
Speaker 1:Yes, brilliant.
Speaker 2:Like I'm such a visual person and I've really appreciated the dive that I've been doing into specific parts of scripture, understanding the importance of Old Testament, new Testament, how New Testament really reflects a lot of the Old Testament. But it wasn't until I watched the Chosen. Now I kind of take some of it with. You know, a grain of salt, right.
Speaker 1:Right, we weren't there. They have to assume some things, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, peacock, some of that a little bit but it was just so impactful for me to kind of connect those dots of what I've been reading and then when we're at church on Sundays and going ah yes, like I remember watching part of this in the Chosen and just like it was super impactful for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, what's amazing to me was this young couple at the church that the pastor introduced me to.
Speaker 1:They were seeking out the Jewishness of their Christian roots as I was seeking out the Christianity of Jesus if that makes sense, right, so we were kind of at this crossroads together and they ended up going to be missionaries in Israel for like 14 years through an organization and it just was just so cool. It was just amazing to me and I felt more called to be like sharing the Jewishness of the Christian faith with my Gentile friends here. So, like I've done teachings on Passover which we just had and I've done, I don't know, I've shared with Gentile friends who don't know that Jesus was Jewish, right, yeah, and going through some of that with folks that are answering questions that I can answer for people. I mean, I'm no biblical scholar by any means, but lived experience and that sort of thing, so yeah, so it's just interesting to me when I meet Christians who, or anybody who, just people who are only looking at New Testament, right, and when you only look at half the Bible, you're only getting half the picture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jesus only had Old Testament. We call it Old Testament. He only had the Tanakh. He had the Torah, the Nevi'im and the Ketuvim, the books of his father and his time, anything that starts in and then filling all of it right yeah, so it, yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:um, I feel very blessed to have I joke that we get all the holidays. Um, how cool, right, we, we do, we do, uh, you know, we do a messianic hanukkah. We do a Messianic Hanukkah. We do a Messianic Passover. You know, we do Christmas and Easter. Although my husband and I we didn't actually go to church on Easter because it was so crowded, we left, we decided we're anti-Christers. So we're going to go to church on every day except Christmas and Easter, because everybody who's the Christers show up on those two days, and I mean it's, it's a joke.
Speaker 1:It's funny but it's. It was just a lot, it was.
Speaker 2:we just don't do a lot of crowds, so it's kind of funny, fair enough, and so this happened. Um, like, all of this happened kind of off the heels of the divorce.
Speaker 1:Divorce yes, Divorce was happening and off the heels of that Okay so, picking up the story there, got divorced and lived a carefree life for a couple of years. New baby Christian had a lot of friends. I was working, I was having a lot of fun, I dated a little bit. Christian had a lot of friends, I was working, I was having a lot of fun, I dated a little bit. And then a girlfriend invited me to a St Paul Saints game. She had a house down here in Minneapolis somewhere. She rented out rooms to some of the players and coaches when they needed space, and so she got free tickets to games all the time. Sure, I'll go to a game with you, and it was right before the all star break in 1999. Go to a game with her. Game's over. I am not a night owl, I'm like I'm going home. No, no, you have to come with me.
Speaker 2:She wanted to go.
Speaker 1:She's basically dragged me to a little, a little restaurant, bar restaurant that was near the stadium that a lot of the players hang out at. Okay, fine, so I go there and players show up and different people, and we're talking. You know, everybody's talking, having fun, and I think I'm what am I? I think I was like 28 at the time and so just young, carefree, having fun, young, carefree having fun, and the party, the bar shuts down, the party moves to the apartments next door, so we're all like this whole group of people, and people were having fun and drinking and talking and eating and whatever. And so I'm at this, I'm at this apartment and one very drunk baseball player starts playing like Stairway to Heaven or something really cheesy, and I'm like shaking my head, going okay. And then I look over in the corner over here and this big dude, big brown dude, bald guy, arms crossed, scowling, just shaking his head, going he's an idiot, don't listen to him, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, the big, tall, brown guy in the corner came over to me and looked at me and saw that I was wearing a UCLA sweatshirt and that was enough for him to be brave and have a conversation. We started talking, realized we grew up 40 minutes apart from each other in southern california. He had just gotten to the team, he had just gotten to minnesota and he was a pitcher for the team and it was all-star break and we had a couple of days to kind of hang out and talk and we went on our first date the next night. So this was, I don't know, middle of summer 1999 and we have been together since. So, oh my gosh, the funny. It's just funny because, um well, one everybody's like oh, watch out for professional ball players, for all kinds because they're about all professionals, right, all professional athletes.
Speaker 1:They got a girl in every port, that kind of thing yeah.
Speaker 1:And he, just, he was different. He didn't, he was. He was treated me like a queen, like just an amazing, an amazing man. Um he uh. He traveled a lot for baseball but you know, when he was around we'd hang out. We had a ton of things in common. Our first date, we went. It was very funny. He didn't have a car here, so I picked him up. We went to grand avenue in saint paul and and got dessert and coffee. And then we walked down the street and went and got another coffee because he was very tired he was. He was on running on fumes and picked up a newspaper because they still had newspapers back then, picked up a newspaper that we saw lying around. I'm like, oh, star Wars just came out, star Wars Episode One. We were both total Star Wars geeks.
Speaker 2:Gotta love this.
Speaker 1:Right, we went to see Star Wars Episode One. It was probably like a Tuesday night at like 10 o'clock that there was no one in the theater.
Speaker 2:It was just fun and you were not getting out of there until after midnight.
Speaker 1:yeah, it was late it was a long movie, it's late, but it was so much fun and and that's kind of where our love story began we, we, we met in 1999. We dated. It was probably it was by the end of the season. He, I thought, oh, this is fun, this was a fun, you know, yeah, summer fling boys, you know boys of summer kind of a thing. And so at the end of summer he said I think I'm going to stay in Minnesota. I'm looking at him like he's crazy. No, this was just a summer dating for a little bit thing. I said you need to have a place to live, you need to have a job and you need to have a car, because I can't support you, you're not living with me, I'm not, you know, we're not doing that. Sure enough, within a week he had all three and I'm like, okay, lord, I see you, I see you. And we, he stayed. He was very cold winter, by the way. He, he had never experienced that before. And, um, yeah, and so that was, that was 1999. Um, we, we dated. You know, he stayed here.
Speaker 1:He came back, played baseball again the next year for the saints. He played for team usa spring of 2001,. He went to Taiwan to play baseball for six months overseas, and I went to Israel to visit my friends who were over there and spend a couple of weeks in Israel, and it was during that time instant message was just starting to be a thing and so we would message from Israel to Taiwan and I was at a point where I think I was going to break up with him because I'm like I don't know this is, I'm not sure this is going to work, that sort of thing, and he could tell, like he could read me through messages, through I don't know, I guess I'm that readable, I don't know.
Speaker 1:And he, he just could tell and and he's like well, good, have a nice life, see you later. Bye, huh, well, that was interesting. Well, I ended up. Well, I ended up, his. His mom took me and one of his sisters to taiwan in summer of 2001, went over there and he proposed we got engaged in taiwan. It was crazy. We we had so I don't know what changed for both of us, for me, but it changed and we got engaged in the summer of 2001. We're like, oh, we'll get married in february, we'll do oh two, oh two, oh two. And then 9-11 happened and he barely made it home. They were having typhoons, they wouldn't let him leave, they held his passport. He finally comes home. Like our whole wedding story is a whole other long, complicated but amazing God story. He barely made it home two days before we got married. I planned the whole wedding in three weeks. You know the world's going to end, let's just get married now. We wow, it was. It was crazy.
Speaker 1:All there were so many little details and things that happened that were off the charts and um yeah so he gets home on october 5th and we get married on october 7th in 2001 wow and still to this day, have never taken a honeymoon we, we never did either, because we were.
Speaker 2:I mean well, yeah, we were pregnant, yeah we.
Speaker 1:Well, the world was ending in in 2001, 9-11, so so nobody was flying anywhere. I had, I had walking pneumonia. He played baseball in Mexico and then he came home. That was a whole other story, but yeah, all the things. So anyways, yeah.
Speaker 2:I knew that this was like such a because for the listeners. Um, when guests come here, we oftentimes are having conversations before we go on air and then there's a lot of amazing conversations that happen after the fact too. But you had mentioned, like I had shared, a little bit about my story. You, you know, with meeting Joe and getting engaged and all the stuff that happened, I thought planning a wedding in two and a half months I don't even think it was that was tough and you did it in three weeks.
Speaker 2:So, bravo to you. But you were sharing with me about how cool your guys' story cool and crazy your story was of getting married and he also. So now you can say yeah, we're talking about you.
Speaker 1:Talking about you, rich. Yeah, this morning he says make sure you talk about me. Yeah, he's kind of funny, that, like that.
Speaker 2:Well, let's let's spend a little bit of time talking about Rich too, because I would like to hear about your transition into what you're doing now and I don't want to gloss over anything. So if we miss something, just let me know and we can share that with the listeners. But let's talk about the support that you have around you. How impactful Rich has been. I'm sure he would love to hear this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know talking. We talked earlier about my health in 2022. He was incredible. Like there's no way I would have survived it without him. He jumped into nurse mode immediately and took care of me for better or or for worse.
Speaker 1:For better or for worse. Man, those are true words If you're newly married, just so you know, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, it's all 100% true. Yeah, so he's been an incredible support. There have been, like I said, throughout my career. There have been times where I've taken time off of work, where I had two years off when our daughter was born. I had a year off here, a year off there, some some of our own choosing, and some where I got laid off and had. You know, it wasn't my choice, and this last time wasn't totally my choice, but it was because I just couldn't. I couldn't work there anymore, and and so that was in March of 2023. He is. He's been an incredible encouragement, incredible support, and has been helping me and driving me to do this. You know, find what my next is. You know we're not independently wealthy. I do need to work, I need to have some income, and so you know, his encouragement and his support has been off the charts. It's been. You know, I couldn't clearly have done any of it without him, and so he's been encouraging me to find my next, and so what you know, coming back around full circle to entrepreneurship and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Um, in 2023, 2024, as I I started thinking about what I wanted to do next and what my um you know career could look like. What it was that I wanted to be doing. Every time I had you know, I'd I'd send resumes and it was like, oh, I don't know, entrepreneurship. When I think about it, it's a big part of my family. A lot of my family members are doing their own thing. My dad, from the time I can remember he started his own computer consulting business back in the I think it was in the eighties, before computers were really a thing. Um, he had, he had studied computers in college and started his own computer consulting business back in the day. Um, my, my brother out in California, um went to school, master's, phd, all the things, spent a lot of time in school systems and then I think it was 2019 started his own consulting business, consulting back and doing like infographics and information for schools, school districts and in the education system. It's, it's fascinating, it's. He's so talented.
Speaker 1:And even my mom she, you know, she's done admin, different work, different kinds of things, but she's always been a writer and loved those sort of things. Well, she's in her 70s and she started her own resume writing LinkedIn profile business a few years ago. She's killing it. Wow. She wasn't even on LinkedIn in 2020, and she starts getting one or two followers, one or two connections Look, look, I have 30. I have this Now. She's probably blown past me in the the number of people and she's a master on LinkedIn. She's really good at what she's doing.
Speaker 1:Women's in her like late seventies, like dang and, and so entrepreneurship is just kind of always been an idea, something that I've always wanted to do, and I've been trying. I'm still trying, to figure it out. To be honest, I'm not super successful at it yet, but I'm not giving up, but I'm. I'm still. You know, it's still an idea. It's still a work in progress, but I decided to take a look at what I've done in the past and, um, looking at my, my nonprofit experience, and wanted to come up with something that was unique, something different. There's a lot of you know there's there's people that are doing a lot of the same things out there, and I know there's plenty of work for everybody there's. You know, you can have all the the I don't know salespeople and coaches and career people, and you know recruiters and other kinds of things out there. There's plenty of work for everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I always felt like I, I, I wanted to do something different, something unique to me, and so, thinking about that, I I went. You mentioned Laura King earlier. I went through her pursue your purpose workshop and that's where it solidified for me was I want to do corporate philanthropy. I want to help these corporate companies with their employee engagement, employee volunteerism, grant making, giving their money away, that sort of thing. And so I call it fractional social impact, which is I don't know.
Speaker 1:Whenever I talk to people about it, nobody's ever heard that term or that phrase. It's like I'm kind of making things up as I go because why not? When I needed to have business cards and I wanted to put a title on there, I didn't even know what to call myself at the time, and so I put chief connector, because I love networking and all of the things, and my husband's just laughing. He's like you can call yourself that, I can call myself whatever I want. It's my business. So I made up, I just make up things as I go along and hopefully they work out. But the the idea is the idea is to help private small and mid-sized business owners faith-based. So I talk about like I'm narrowing this, this niche is really narrow Faith-based.
Speaker 1:So I talk about, like I'm narrowing this, this niche is really narrow Faith-based business owners with aligning their values to the nonprofits they're supporting, the community that they're supporting.
Speaker 1:There are all kinds of strong statistics these days showing that people really want to work with companies that they align with in their values, on all sides of the political spectrum, and we don't need to go down any of that. It's just people want to work with companies that they align with in their values, on all sides of the political spectrum, and we don't need to go down any of that. It's just people. People want to work with companies that that they share values with. They want to buy from companies that share their values. Right More than ever, because of social media, because of the internet, people can see and know who you're supporting, what you're doing, what that looks like, and so I want to help. I want to serve kingdom-minded business owners and help them find those nonprofits that fit their values, to help them set up processes and procedures and technology all the stuff right, but help them do that because I know the technology.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of that stuff and help them brainstorm, help them come up with ideas, help them support their employees. Recruitment and retention, as well as customer loyalty, are all impacted these days by all of this. And so if you are, you know, a business owner, you and your company have the backbone of Judeo-Christian values. You want to partner with organizations that fit those values and, to be honest, it's biblical either way to put it all over. You know to tout it and share it in social media and you're telling everybody what you're doing and what you want to. You know the organizations you're partnering with cause you're, you're lifting them up, you're sharing and helping them. But it's also biblical to say we want to do this quietly, because God says you know you give your money away. You do it quietly, you don't have to tell anybody, and I I'm all about that too.
Speaker 1:Like, if you want to keep it to yourself, you don't put it anywhere on your website, you don't put it anywhere on your social media? Cool, we can do that too and just quietly support and partner with nonprofits that you're aligned with. So that's where I'm at now working to build some clientele, working to build a pipeline, working to find people and, like we said at the very beginning, my daughter's moved out of the house. I can go anywhere in the country. I'm not limited by geography.
Speaker 2:It's so cool Like you're literally giving me a segue into having that conversation about like seasons of life, right, I've had such a vast I mean you're my 54th interview so far and, like I've had women on here who just had babies within six months and are in business with their husbands. I've had people on here who have been in business for 10 plus years and it's a humming business and you know a couple children as well. And I've also had individuals on here who are in, you know, either entering into this season of life where there are becoming birdwatchers, empty nesters or, you know, have a couple years of that empty nester birdwatching already under their belt and it's just a different. It becomes a different mentality.
Speaker 2:Yeah a different season of life, but at the core of all of it, you're still a mom that never goes away. That never just is mom in a different capacity.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's talk through what this has looked like for you over, you know, the last call it year or so, and going back to us talking about how modeling has impacted your daughter. Well she's an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:Right, she's got her own little. She's got her own business. She's she's selling her services. Um, she's using social media. She's using word of mouth. Um, she was confident and bold enough to say I don't want to do what everybody else is doing, Um, and chose a different path. So she, yeah, she. She decided not to go to college, decided to do her own thing and is building her own clientele, building a business, building a reputation. Um, her artwork is, it's all over her, it's on her social media and her, her Instagram page. If people want to follow her, her ink sense on Instagram, her ink sense.
Speaker 2:I'm going to make sure to drop that into the show notes. I would love that, yeah.
Speaker 1:She always laughs. She's like where are all these people following me from? Oh, I talk about you all the time. I'm always at a networking event or somewhere and I brag on her as much as I can and show off you know, the couple of two, three tattoos that that I have that I can show and and share and show give people if you're on Instagram. Here's her page follow her, I'll be, following her here after this. So we'll make sure to get that popped on to but like, let's talk.
Speaker 2:Um, I love that you are sharing more about her, but let's talk about how you have sort of like evolved in what you're doing and how, in making this transition into entrepreneurship, how have you sort of harmonized that with what season of life you're in as well?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Being a birdwatcher, so yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1:it's interesting, like if you're in as well, yeah, being a bird watcher, so yeah, so it's, it's not a bird like if you're just hopping on right now and listening, elisa's not a bird watcher, it's just she.
Speaker 2:Instead of calling herself an empty nester, yeah, she's calling herself a bird watcher, right, because our kids are soaring, they're not yeah we didn we. We do kick them out of the nest sometimes, but you have to kick them out of the nest, but they're but but we're watching them with their own wings, watching them soar.
Speaker 1:Um, for me, this stage of life, um, there's a lot of freedom. Um, there's a lot of new joy. Um, my husband and I and I think you know all relationships go through ups and downs. We've been together 25 years, that's to say lots of ups and downs. Right, We've had our good times, We've had our tough times. It's never been perfect. However, we're just really enjoying the two of us. We have our two dogs. We're enjoying this season of life.
Speaker 1:The two of us, we do stuff around the house, we go for drives, we go for bike rides, our two dogs. We're enjoying this season of life, the two of us. Um, we're, you know, we do stuff around the house, we go for drives, we go for bike rides now that it's warming up again and and so really enjoying that it's. It's us and and my husband is incredibly supportive of the work that I want to do Um, and he's, you know, he's been, he's been pushing because, you know again, not independently wealthy, but he's he's been, you know, a huge encouragement and, and I love that that he and I are kind of renewing our relationship and our love. Twenty five years is a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For those of you who are newly married or with itty bitties at home, when you look back, you also blink, and like don't blink is what I'm saying. Like you don't. You don't know where the time goes.
Speaker 2:Find the tape. Tape the eyelids open Right.
Speaker 1:It all goes. I can't believe that we've it's been this long and I've had this kind of a career, and I feel very blessed to have this opportunity now to be stepping into entrepreneurship. I think what I struggle with right now, one of my challenges, is am I supposed to be doing this all on my own? What I'm trying to figure out now, and what I've been noodling on and praying about, is I feel like I need to be doing this in partnership with one or more people, like with some other folks and, um, and I don't know what that looks like. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:And I I feel called to this. I feel like this is a really unique idea or unique concept and and that I'm uniquely created to do this, and I feel like I need to find people to do it with. Yeah Right, and that's. Entrepreneurship doesn't mean solo, it doesn't necessarily mean you're doing it totally by yourself, and so that's kind of a new revelation, a new aha. For me is like I'm trying to figure out how to do this better, do this really well, and and find some partners to do it alongside, because I I think I've struggled to to do everything I get. I get bogged down into the, into the weeds. I mean I'm you, you, you do the partnership with your husband on both the podcast and your, your business, and and and having even one other person to come alongside so it's instrumental, it really is.
Speaker 2:And I mean I, if this isn't something that I would say, a lot of the women who have been on the podcast have probably, and maybe they haven't openly shared it, but, like I have to believe that there's just been this moment in time where you go, I literally I can't do it on my own, I can't and whether that means you hire an executive assistant to be alongside of you or you're hiring on a social media manager, or you're getting to this scale of business where, like, it is time to scale and what does that mean in terms of calling somebody else into the business? What you're saying is like I might need a couple of partners to come alongside me to like push this further down the road, because there is an opportunity. I wholeheartedly agree with you. It's like. It's just like continuing the networking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lots of networking and the prayer is very important.
Speaker 2:God's timing is going to be very important in all of it too, and when that happens, you're going to look back and go, oh, because I needed to learn this, or oh, I just it took. I had to wait for that person because they had their timing. That needed to happen.
Speaker 1:I am wholeheartedly hanging on to God's timing for everything right now.
Speaker 2:I'm with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100% on that. Yeah, there's a lot that I think about with relation to all of this and you know, kind of coming back to the networking thing, I feel like I've done a lot of connecting, a lot of networking, a lot of seed planting over the past year. I'm waiting for God to sprout my seeds, planting all these seeds. I'm waiting for things to sprout and to come full circle. I'm trying to do some thought leadership online. I probably could I need to do some more posting or some articles on LinkedIn. The I think the hardest thing is I've got like lists and lists of all these things I could be doing and should be doing, and so then I, you just kind of are all over the place.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I need to just like pick, pick something and do that pick that and focus on that and do that I did with all the networking. There's a ton of events that go on around the Twin Cities all the time and you could you could be busy, you know, eight, 10 hours a day going to networking things, being someone who lives on the far east side of the Twin Cities cities.
Speaker 1:If you're not from around here, I live in woodbury, I'm practically bumping into wisconsin yeah and all of the networking is on the far west side so driving 45 minutes to an hour each way depending on the season it could be longer in winter is a lot, and I've been doing that for the last year and a half.
Speaker 2:It's a lot, you a lot. You found a problem. I found a problem, so I started my own networking event. I was just going to say there's a solution, there is a solution.
Speaker 1:I started my own. I started a women's networking group called the Moxie Mixer. It meets out on the east side of town, basically St Paul to Hudson, wisconsin, somewhere in there. I'm always looking for speakers. It started out just as like, hey, let's get together and have drinks at a bar. And it's expanded now to we have a speaker, we have an eight-minute moxie message is what we call it. I have a featured nonprofit to hark into and be a part of. My philanthrop, my philanthropic roots, um, and there's a lot of networking and hosts and sponsors, but the the idea is that the hosts are women, business owners, women, um, women run businesses out on the East side and and to bring women together to to learn from each other and and um and connect. But you know, women live on the East side of town too.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:I and I I couldn't agree more with you Like there is, there is a need out there. Um, I formerly lived in Woodbury. Now I was in a very different season of life, that was my mortgage era and so the networking there was a ton of networking that was happening over there, whether it be through the chambers or through Rotary or BNI, just to name a few of the things that I dabbled in. But it's totally dependent on which arena you're looking in, right. It's totally dependent on which arena you're looking in right. And so I love, love, love that you saw a problem and said there's got to be a solution. I guess I'm just going to do it myself.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of my career was doing event planning and bringing people together and networking and that sort of thing, so anyone's welcome. The information's on my website Lionheartventuresbiz is my website.
Speaker 2:I love it. I'll make sure to drop that information to the show notes as well, because for all of you sad women who are just in dire need of some networking and some good feels and amazing connections, this would be for you. Yeah, I want to start to land the plane. We might do it gradually, but I I we've touched on so many different things. We've touched on the networking, we've touched on your business, we've touched on the story leading up to all of those specific aspects. I am curious what has through all of this and we did talk pretty heavily on this big benchmark of health with you but what has self-care looked like for you? Maybe that had shifted after you had your visit down to Red Wang, but let's talk through that for the listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking about that kind of in preparation for this conversation, in that one of the things that my grandmother always said was always take your vitamins and exercise, I mean, and she was in her 70s, 80s, she was in her 90s when she finally passed away a handful of years ago. But for younger women like I'm, in my mid-50s, weird stuff can happen at any time and we just have no idea. But the thing that I was thinking about that is one of the most important is what they always say. You talk about landing plane Plain analogy you put your mask on first before you can help someone else. They always say that, right, it's so true. If you aren't taking care of yourself as a new mama, as an older mama, as a friend, as a spouse, if you're not taking care of your own health first, you can't help anybody else.
Speaker 1:And as women, we're natural nurturers and we want to help take care of everybody. I mean, even when I'm working full time, I'm still doing all the things that I like to do and want to do to serve my family at home. So for me it was so important because our household just stopped, like everybody had to take care of me, and I hate that, like I don't want that. So I'm very careful about what I eat. I'm very careful about making sure I exercise, you know, at least three, four, five times a week, if not more. I'm very careful to. You know I take supplements and visit the doctor once a. You know I go get a chiropractic adjustment once a month, and so for me that's just it's. You have to take care of yourself. You have to as much as you want to put everybody else first. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't help anybody else.
Speaker 2:I love this analogy of like, putting the mask on first before you go to help other people, otherwise you're going to pass out. You know it's like. And to put that even in more clear concept like you, if you're not taking care of yourself, what's the end result that could happen? Like, do I need to say it plainly? Like I, I love, love, love that you, you had this advice that was given to you from somebody who was older, wiser and and carried that through and continue to carry it through.
Speaker 1:You've probably heard this too. Because if you, in addition to all of that physical care, is your emotional and your spiritual care and prayer and being connected to God there's so many analogies being plugged into the source if we're not plugged into God, our light can't light, we can't shine for other people. Our light can't light, we can't shine for other people, right? You've heard the. I think there's another one where you have to pour into yourself with I journal. Every day I read scripture. Every day I spend time with God in prayer. Just sometimes driving, I turn the radio and the book off in the car and I just talk to God when I'm driving, the book off in the car and I just talk to God when I'm driving. But if you're filling yourself up, then you have leftover to pour into other people.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I've probably alluded to this on other podcasts, but it's like the proverbial, like pouring into your cup and letting that cup pour in to let it overflow into other people and plugging into God. And not everybody who's been on the podcast, not everybody who listens to the podcast is of Christian faith, right, but like whatever that like plugging into needs to look like for you so that you can get that renewed energy emotional spiritual care, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then that energy can flow into the people around you, first and foremost your, your family, and then everyone else around you too, yeah, it's just so impactful.
Speaker 2:I love that. This is the approach that you've taken and I think it's incredible, it's so cool, it really is. Um, and there's a lot of parallels that I have with how you approach that and almost some aha moments for me, like you know. I think some people probably can relate to this, some of the listeners right now um, you have sometimes we have our moments where we just kind of, you know, like we do real a little bit. I think about how it's been Easter and candy and I'm like little bit I think about how it's been easter and candy and I'm like, oh my gosh, I've just like ate a whole bowl of candy, but the rest of like 90, 90, 95 percent of the time we're still human, doing a doing a pretty darn good job.
Speaker 2:But but I do think that like how we pour into ourselves well, whether it's physically, emotionally, spiritually, and the food, that in the nutrients that we're getting, whole other topic of conversation that we could go to a whole other podcast.
Speaker 1:Food is life.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes, like if I could create a garden back here, like I'm actually thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Come garden. In my house we have a garden. I put it we built a garden because yeah, that. I love that's. That's my happy place in the summer.
Speaker 2:Oh, we should talk about this off air. I've got a couple of things I want to talk to you about off air, but yeah, I just I think that, like for us as women, especially after having children, there's just so much that's evolving and changing with our bodies, with our hormones, and the nutrient replenishment has to be important as well. So, you know, vitamins or the greens that we're intaking and all of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, this could be a whole other that's a whole other podcast conversation.
Speaker 2:Who? Who would be a whole other, that's a whole other podcast conversation. Who who would be a good connection for you in this given moment?
Speaker 1:oh, um, business owners, uh, faith-based business owners who are looking to either start or expand their, their giving into the community. They feel called to do more than they're doing for their employees, for their, their community, in terms of volunteerism, donations, engagement, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Love it and if you are listening right now and you have somebody that would be a really great or key connection for Elisa, we will make sure to drop all of the information of how to get connected with Elisa. So, with that being said, how can people get connected to?
Speaker 1:you.
Speaker 2:And then I've got two more follow-up questions.
Speaker 1:Okay, my website lionheartventuresbiz. I'll contact information's on there or LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, Elisa Rabin-Bell.
Speaker 2:Cool Three questions.
Speaker 1:Oh, three questions Go.
Speaker 2:How did you get to the name of your business?
Speaker 1:My first tattoo. Okay, so it's on my back. My daughter drew it. It was her again. Part of her tattoo story, she decided she wanted to be a tattoo artist. She had to have a tattoo. You can't get them in Minnesota under 18. She and dad drove to Colorado because you can get tattoos, and then the next year she's like Mom, you need a tattoo too, really. Okay, fine, well, it's got to be your art at a minimum. I know she couldn't do it, yet it had to be her art, so she drew. So on my back I have half of a lion face, joshua 1.9. Do not be afraid, be courageous. It's got a Star of David, a Star of David and a cross and then our birth flowers and it's. It's beautiful. I'll show you after but it so.
Speaker 1:So that's the lion, the lion heart piece and, yeah, the ventures piece. Now, this is kind of funny, but I might need to rebrand my company here anytime soon, because I keep getting calls for people who think I'm a venture capitalist and I'm like I don't have money to give you. But here's who I am and what I do and let me help you. So it's yeah, so we'll see. I might be rebranding, we'll see, but I, I like the Lionheart piece. So I don't know, but that's where the name came from.
Speaker 2:I have somebody who I might be able to connect you with in terms of the branding. That could be very much, or you may actually know this person. So anyways, um, what's a piece of advice that you would give?
Speaker 1:a younger version of yourself, knowing all that you know. You're in this lane and you can only do this thing. Do more than one thing, because there's a lot of options out there do more than one thing, because there's a lot of options out there.
Speaker 2:That's so good and, spoken like a true, true individual that's been through you know all of the different avenues. That's applicable to your life, right? So what's a piece of advice that you would give a woman who's listening right now? Um, that's nibbling on the edges of entrepreneurship that's nibbling on the edges of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1:Let's see One don't give up your day job. Do it on the side, do evenings, weekends, whenever you can. First, and build up a clientele before you. Leap, but leap.
Speaker 2:Do it because it's worth it.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely worth it. You need to do it, but don't give up the day job first. Okay.
Speaker 2:I like it Practical. It is very practical. I can appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Realistic.
Speaker 2:Well, Elisa, I have been just so so over the moon about hearing your story and um, all of the fun different, like tangentals, that we went down. This is so indicative of the podcast, by the way.
Speaker 2:So there's no, there's nothing unique about that tangential in in our conversation, but I'm so grateful to see you again to have the opportunity for the opportunity for the listeners to hear your story, your adventure, how you have, in a way, shape and form, reclaimed a different kind of hue along the way, and I am looking forward to hearing more about your rebranding and how all of this continues to unfold with potential partnerships and stuff. So, again, if you're listening and you have enjoyed Elisa's story and what the impact is that she is having, do yourself a favor and connect with her and do yourself a favor. If you've got that key connection for Elisa, do not hesitate to reach out to her and get her connected. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel so blessed to know you know more of your story, how you are impacting, and so I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. Good, I'm glad.
Speaker 2:I hope you have a great rest of the it. Thank you so much this has been a lot of fun. Good, I'm glad. I hope you have a great rest of the day. Thank you, you too, thank you.
