From Adversity to Executive Leadership | Carmen Johnson

What does it take to overcome your past, lead with purpose, and adapt in a world that’s changing faster than ever?

In this episode of The Dap & A Hug Podcast, I sit down with Carmen Johnson, Chief Financial & Administrative Officer at ORC, for a conversation that goes far beyond the boardroom.

Carmen opens up about growing up with a mother battling addiction and a father who was her dealer, how those experiences shaped her drive, and what it took to break generational patterns. We also discuss leadership, emotional intelligence, resilience, AI, breast cancer, and why our choices—not our past—define who we become.

Carmen shares her personal experience with breast cancer, how it changed her perspective, and why support matters so much for women going through the disease. She also discusses her contribution to Rising Above: Our Transformational Journey to Wholeness After Breast Cancer, an anthology led by Gillian Lichota that features deeply personal stories of resilience, healing, and life after breast cancer.

Whether you’re a business leader, entrepreneur, student, or simply navigating a season of change, this conversation offers practical wisdom and a powerful reminder that growth begins with the choices we make every day.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Growing up with addiction and breaking generational patterns
• Overcoming imposter syndrome and self-doubt
• Leadership through empathy and emotional intelligence
• AI, the future of work, and why adaptability matters
• Building resilient teams and healthy workplace cultures
• Fear, failure, and the power of taking the first step
• Carmen’s personal experience with breast cancer
• The importance of support for women facing breast cancer
• Contributing to Rising Above: Our Transformational Journey to Wholeness After Breast Cancer
• Why people—not products—are every organization’s greatest asset

Guest: Carmen Johnson
Chief Financial & Administrative Officer at ORC

📸 Connect with Carmen
Instagram: @wildatheartleo

🌐 Learn more about ORC
https://www.orcolan.com

📖 Featured Book
Rising Above: Our Transformational Journey to Wholeness After Breast Cancer
By Gillian Lichota and other contributing authors, including Carmen Johnson
Available on Amazon: https://a.co/d/05lUSEh6

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow The Dap & A Hug Podcast, leave a rating or review, and share it with someone who could benefit from the conversation.

Peace and Love at The Dap and A Hug

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Carmen Johnson.

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I'm doing well. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Yeah, I appreciate the invite. It was really cool meeting you the other day.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

It really was. We'll get into that, like how we met everything here shortly. Um, for the record, can you state your name, the company you're affiliated with, and your title?

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Absolutely. My name is Carmen Johnson. I'm the chief financial and administrative officer. You might ask what administrative means. It means that I also have HR and finance in my bucket. So that's a lot of fun. I work for a company called OR COLINASOCES. Everyone says, what is that? So I'm going to give you the brief bio on that. We do land acquisition for large infrastructure projects. So think anybody that needs road, airport, environmental impact, transmission lines, distribution lines, cell phone towers. If you need land for infrastructure, then our company works on that.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Nice. Very well. Before the title and the position and the name, like who are you at your core?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Oh, I love that. The authentic self. We just had a conversation about that. I have a very interesting background of how I got here. And at my core, I believe that everybody deserves an opportunity. And it's we have to be involved in finding that opportunity. So don't get me wrong, but there are no victims in life. We just have choices. Choices about how we handle situations, what happens when situations happen, and really looking at our backgrounds and making opportunities for ourselves. And I believe that choices define you.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Sounds like you lean into ownership, taking ownership and accountability for oneself.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Absolutely. But also ownership and accountability for you as an adult, right? We all have baggage. Some of us have really terrible upbringings and ways that we got our stories. Our stories are our stories. The stories are true. And as adults, we get to decide how we deal with those stories, what the story defines.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah, and we all learn over the years it's not good to act out of or react out of emotion, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

And it's hard not to react out of emotion, right? It's really hard not to. And where we met, I was talking a lot about resilience and how to deal with ambiguity. And it we all have triggers. It's learning how to deal with those triggers and how to not let them trigger you in negative ways.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

There are positive ways, but we don't want to show up negatively.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Absolutely. Um the symposium at Wenthip University, that's where we met. So was that February? It was February. February or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yes, it was February.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

What was the moment in your life that really led you to where you are today that you can think back on?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Well, I I told you I was gonna decide if I how authentic I wanted to be, and I am an authentic person, so I'm gonna actually go to childhood.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Um, the thing that I don't talk about a lot is I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. My mother was an addict, my father was her dealer, and that creates an interesting story, but it's not a great story when you're a kid, and it's certainly not a great story when you're 20, when you're trying to find yourself. And that story is really what defined my what I call my enough syndrome. You know, I'm never gonna be good enough, I'm never gonna work hard enough, I'm never gonna be pretty enough, I'm never gonna be skinny enough, I'm never going to reach enough of my goals, I'm never whatever, put enough behind anything in the world, and I will tell you I have an enough syndrome. And what that comes out as, tell me I can't, and I'll show you I can. I promise you I can do it.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Always up for a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

That's one thing that people can get tripped up on throughout life trying to like prove things to other people. Yes. And I think we all got that innate like thing in ourselves that like want to prove people wrong. I don't know. I don't know what that is. If that's just like part of the human condition, if that if there is such a thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

That's both negative and positive, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

The yin and the yang, right? So at what point on your journey did you feel, or did you have that coming, that acknowledgement moment to where you were aware that you were good with both numbers and people?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

People came later. I in my youth, I was driving. And I like to use the analogy of a speedboat, I was always moving forward, never looking back at the wake behind me. I had no idea what it was leaving behind. I just kept moving. And if you happened to be in the wake, I apologize for that as my adult self. But if you happened to be in the wake, I probably didn't even understand what I did, let alone that I did it. And as I matured and as I had children, and as I watched the dysfunction of my own parenting, which thank God, if my children are listening to this, I hope they would tell you that they are amazing friends of mine today, as young adults. But as young children, it wasn't easy. And I looked back at some point in my life and I went, oh my gosh, what have I done to my own children after my upbringing? And here I've done it to them, and and went through a repair phase, a phase of life where I was very intent on what it looked like to do self-discovery, on what it looked like to improve oneself. And in that, one of my promises to self was to step back when I created the wake and make my apologies.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

So I still make a wake. I move fast. But I when I recognize it, I always step back and bring everybody back up with me.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah, I think that's one thing that I had came uh in my mind was to like not dwell on the past, but do a healthy reflection. Exactly. I think that's very important. And you know, looking back on certain bridges, you try to rebuild them, but some of them can't be rebuilt, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Well, it's how we grow.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Yeah, it's part of growth, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

I don't know that they can't be rebuilt, they get built differently. And sometimes we make a decision that we don't need to build them.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

There are some things we don't need to have in our space to be healthy.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yeah. Mental health is a very top priority for me.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

As it should be for everybody. There are things that give us energy and things that take energy away from us. Find the things that give you energy.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Right. Um, now, so you've had around about 30 years in HR, finance, uh, those two departments, also operations.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Uh reflecting back back to the reflection thing, uh, can you think of uh some pivotal moments that you had in the decision making that got you where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yeah, one of my very first was, I don't know, 20-something, let's say 25 years old. And I'm from Wyoming. I'm from a small town in Wyoming, and my first job was uh for a construction company. And my very first project for said construction company for males in their 60s was to do a cost analysis on did we rent a semi or did we purchase one? Very simple cost analysis. So you would think. So I do this cost analysis, and I walk in and I'm super excited and nervous. It's my very first big project, and my very first time in a boardroom, and I've got all these men there, and I bring my papers out and I hand it to them, and a man stands up and starts yelling at me. The only thing wrong with this company is a woman's making this decision. And he throws my papers across the room. Oh, okay. This is the moment in life that I'm realizing I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna walk out, I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna give it back. And before that moment, I don't know that I had that in me. Maybe I did. I had a tough upbringing, so I was a tough child, but I hadn't had a tough career. I hadn't worked with people that told me I didn't know what I was doing. And that was my first HR moment. Wow. As well as my first finance moment, right? Because they came together. And I was in small town Wyoming where this was acceptable. You know, just was. It was acceptable that this man talked to me. Nobody was gonna say anything about it. So I came out of that moment knowing that how I led was gonna look very different from that. I knew that I needed to leave with compassion and heart and lead with authority and expectation at the same time because you can have both.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, I love teachable moments like that. You know, I kind of told you a little story before we got, you know, I hit the record button. And I learned like from past jobs not to like dwell on like, oh, they treated me like this, or I saw them treating people like that. I just know how not to treat people.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Take the negative and turn into a positive, use that information and use those like teachable moments as fuel, as motivation. Inspire yourself and also inspire others, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

I agree, and you take those teachable moments and you learn how to create influence from them. So maybe in the one, the first one, I had no influence, right? But 30 years later, I have influence. I've created that through time, and I've created that through resilience of not giving up. And yeah, you knocked me down once, maybe even twice, but I'm gonna keep coming. And that resilience is the key to to getting to where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

100%.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

We talked about that a little bit too. What's what's next in your life? Yeah, you know, just keep keep going.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Was there ever time on this path that you doubted yourself? Every day you had to make like a huge pivot.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Every single day.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Is that one like really big one that stands out though?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Imposter syndrome is real, yeah. It is real. Um, I I grew up disadvantaged, poor in a ghetto. Um, I remember somebody saying to me, You didn't grow up in a ghetto, you grew up in a trailer park. I was like, wow, that tells me a lot about what you know from socioeconomic disadvantaged. Whether I grew up in a project or a trailer park, the fact is I grew up in a home full of drug dealers. So I got what that looked like. And then I entered this business world recognizing that I was smart and I didn't know that growing up. So I went through a part in life where I distanced from my family because the only way that I could be somebody different was to remove myself from it. And then going into a life I didn't know. Every single day I walked in going, I'm not good enough. They're gonna see through the facade, they're gonna see that I'm not like them, they're gonna judge me for X, Y, and Z. And every day I showed up again. And every day I didn't one more time until I started believing that I was better, that I was different, that I wasn't what I grew up in. But every day I had to show up and tell myself that. Same with work. My resiliency got me here, but trust me, I I've done a thousand projects, not all of them perfect. And when you don't do them perfect, and you look back and you're like, oh gosh, somebody please don't recognize that.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Right? So we're not perfect, and we're not perfect in other situations. You might find me perfect in one situation where somebody else can't stand me. It's just we all have again different triggers and things that that get us moving. And those things that get us moving, different people attract to different things.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Absolutely. You can't please everybody.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

You can't.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Please don't live your life like that trying to please everybody. You lose yourself.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

100%.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

It's tough. What's something about your journey that people may not expect?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Uh, about my journey. Well, I think I I told you about my upbringing. That's usually the one that people are like, what? You know, it's you, you've done well, you're successful. I would say that success is different for everybody. And when I I look at my life and I look at success, I can remember the day that I got promoted to CFO. It was a big day for me, and I was sad. Every goal I had ever created, I achieved. And now I didn't have a goal.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

I had a clean slate.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

I had no goal.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Back to the drawing board.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Back to the drawing board. And that was the day that I stepped back and I went, I did it with a cost. I did it with a huge cost. I did it with leaving my children behind in the wake. I did it without raising my boys to be men. I did it as a single parent and not having enough support. And I wonder, I won't say which, I wonder how life would have been different had I slowed down. Had I stayed back, and had I supported my children better in their youth. Now, I will say I'm an amazing adult mom. My my son has his own business. I help him develop it, grow it. He's doing really well. He's very successful. So I know I'm part of that.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Go ahead and give him a shout out.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Truest Construction. If you need a general contractor, he's the best.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

He's awesome. Um, built his own home, has done many renovations in town, and is building a subdivision now.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

At 30 years old.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Congratulations to him.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yes, I agree. And I know I'm part of that. I know that every time something comes on, I can be part of that. The thing I learned from him is do you need your mom or your business partner? Because those are not the same people. Those are not, those do not show up in the same way. And I try to ask that question when he comes to me. How do you need me to show up right now? Because if you need your mom, that's a different thing than your business partner.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah. Like you literally wear different hats when it comes to that.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Literally different hats.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Um, is that the one does he do jujitsu?

SPEAKER_01 14:21

He's the one that does the jiu-jitsu. See, he he knows about their resilience.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

At what age did he start?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

He didn't start until an adult, um, maybe 24.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Okay. Um he's getting a resiliency up there.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Well, hmm.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

I'm gonna I'm gonna give you this story. He might kill me if he re listens to this. Might not either. We had an armed home invasion. And he was 15 years old. He was beaten brutally. And he was beaten until the hammer on the dumbas broke. And the next morning he says to me, He says, Mom, I don't know why God saved me, but I know it's my purpose to figure it out. And he took a few years to figure out what that meant for him in his world. And then he went to seminary and then he started his business. And when he started his business, he said to me, He said, You know, Mom, I thought I was gonna get into youth and I was gonna do youth pastoring or ministering or, you know, seed plants playing basketball. I said, but the truth is I need to be working every day with people that need to hear the news, not the people that are in the church. Yeah, and that's what he did. He started his general contracting business.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Nice. That's amazing. How does that make you feel when you look back and um like you said, you weren't the mother part role, like you know what I'm saying? You felt that, but then you had the opportunity to help him in his business.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

How does that make you feel? Like if you can just like put that in a one word. Honored honored that's powerful stuff right there. Single mama, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, look what you've done.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

I I have an amazing son who is married to an amazing woman who has an amazing family, and I believe we'll be married forever and raise a very cool family. I can't remiss to say I have three other children. So it would not be nice to say, not mention them, but this one is doing some amazing things and started out in all the wrong ways.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Gosh. We're gonna switch gears. Thank you for sharing that. Um, he's 15 years old, you said right when it happened.

unknown 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Uh so we're gonna switch gears and talk about where we met. Yeah. Uh the Winthum Symposium. Uh it was based on, I want to say change management, but that's specifically what you talked about that caught my attention about you. But just about like AI in the workplace and like college students going into the workplace and stuff like that. What did you take mostly from that symposium itself?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

I thought the symposium was great. And what I took as a business leader is we need to help our children be more prepared for what the future workforce is gonna look like. Um, so I will say to here and all your audience that I believe strongly that we will have no shortage of jobs in the future. So people that are worried about not having a job or AI taking over your job, that's just plain not true. What is true is AI is gonna change your job every single day. And you're gonna do it differently, and you're gonna have to be resilient, and you're gonna have to have critical thinking and problem solving, and you're gonna have to think in bigger terms about what that looks like because it's gonna be constantly changing, and ambiguity is gonna be the key. And people that have trouble with change are going to have a difficult time in the future workforce because where AI can automate, it will. We're not gonna get our hair cut from a robot, at least I'm not. But even in my son's business as a general contractor, do not think I'm not gonna automate all the bookkeeping and all of the things that don't need two hands to do. And that'll be the way of the future. But we do need workers, we need all levels of workers, we need them everywhere. How the future education system teaches this, I don't know. Because they are used to teaching textbook style. And what we need in the future is behavioral things. The people that do really well and are successful learn more successful. Lots, there's lots of success to be out had out there. But the people that really understand interpersonal dynamics and the emotional intelligence, they will rise further and faster than those that don't. And we all see this in the people we know. And some people are more difficult to work with because they get angry or they're not don't adapt quickly, or they can't change and they don't move fast, right? And others plow through things, like I was saying, leaving the wake behind me. Others plow through things and don't see what they're impacting either. So it takes people that have good, genuine ability to understand other people to interpret all that and understand the why. So change management is about how we deal with change. How resistant are we to change, how resilient are we with change, how adaptable are we with change, how quickly can we change? And the mode of the pace of change today is faster than we've ever seen it. When we think about our us as kids before me, before me, the calculator. Promise it was before me. So in the 1960s, and we're coming up with the scientific calculator, and the scientific calculator is the new cool thing, and schools won't adopt them because they don't trust it. And then we come to our generation and we've got computers and internet, and think about how that took off. And now we're at AI. Let me tell you what I did today. True story. I used Claude, and I thought it would be really cool in my son's attic to put in a Ninja Warrior course for my toddler grandbaby. I was like, this would be really cool. And I'm like, how do you design that? What do you do? So I'm talking to Claude and I'm telling Claude all this and prints me out a whole diagram of what to do and how to do it. Supply list, the whole bit. It was beautiful. But take it one step further. I then took that plan it created me and I uploaded it to PowerPoint and said, create me a persuasive presentation for my son asking if I can make the best grandchild gift ever and be win the number one award. And PowerPoint just wrote the presentation for me. I did nothing. I sat there and worked while it worked in the background. I did it all.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

You're brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

This is our future. I'm not brilliant. So, first of all, let's be clear. That's a tool. That's not me, that's a tool. I learned how to use a tool. That's the future. Learning agility. How do we get there further, faster, quicker? Being curious. How do we become curious?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

I'm very curious. And let me ask you this because I think you did mention Claude. Is it Claude or Claude? Claude.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

C-L-A-U-D-E. Claude.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Uh given what I do. Uh I use Chat GPT on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

What how would I distinguish between when I should use chat for certain things versus uh Claude?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Great question. So they're both great at at different things. Right. From a marketing perspective, I think that chat's really wonderful. I think that it's it gives you great bullet points, how to do your your Instagram post and give you great ideas, create some great visuals for you. Really good at that. Claude, I would say, is more business analytics. So I'll give you another example. This is a true example about two months ago. It was after I met you. It was literally after I met you. I went to a girlfriend's house. She happens to pastor a small sea church. And she said to me, She says, I have to do this profit and loss statement. I've never done one before. I have all my bank statements here. What do you think? And I'm looking at her bank statements somewhere on her phone as pictures. Not kidding you, they weren't even downloaded, they were pictures. And I said, Friend, can you get into your bank account and download the activity for 12 months? She says, Yeah, I can. I said, okay, do that for me. I then took 12 months of activity. I uploaded it into Claude and I said, Claude, please create me a profit and loss statement with categories with 12 months and total it for the year. And walked away and had a glass of wine with my friend and came back and it was done.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Boom.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Boom. Just like that. So it's a tool.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

And people are afraid of the tool because they don't understand the tool and it's the big new thing. And yes, it's learning. It is machine learning. It is learning. It is learning about me every time that I do something. Now, unless we're gonna hibernate somewhere, we need to adapt.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

We have to.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

We have to. And I'd say it's getting pretty hard to hibernate somewhere in this world, either.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah. It is.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

So Claude, I would use for more of an analysis introspective type of situation. Really great with finance like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Okay. Oh, so back to the symposium. Was there anything that you heard that kind of changed your perspective on business and everything?

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Um well, no, nothing that I heard that changed my perspective. But what I heard was even though there were other people on that panel with me, a lot of people still didn't understand. Right? Some of the people that were talking were talking about how they're interacting with it in their jobs, not how they're choosing to create it to interact with us for a bigger idea.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Right? Be curious again. So yeah, my my work created an agent that now says I need to put all this stuff in and it analyzes my invoice against my employee list and says, okay, these two things are different. That's awesome. It does it for you. But thinking bigger and creating it, my income statement example, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Those are the people that are gonna do really well. The other thing I really learned from that symposium is I am more valuable than I've ever been in my life because I have institutional knowledge to create those bots. The kids coming up today have no idea. Yeah, they need me now to help them make it. But once it's made, what do we do?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

I don't know. Like I say, brilliant. Um why do you think people are so resistant to change? Because it's scary. Is that the reason why?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

I think fear drives us all. Um, I I use the the term blameless problem solving all the time at work. I'm known for this. Um, just try it. Just try it. What's gonna happen? Okay, you messed up. We'll fix it. Who cares? Some people are so driven by fear that they never try anything. So think about sports. I don't run. I am not a runner, I am not fast, and I don't want to learn to run. Is it fear? Maybe. Maybe I don't want to fall, I don't want to look like a fool, I don't want to break my ankle, whatever it is, right? I remember baseball. I played baseball when I was a kid, and I remember the girls laughing at me when I swung and missed the ball, right? So we have fears that we create when we don't do things right.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

If we can learn not to be fearful of it and look at it as an experiment, as being naturally curious and it being fun, how different is that?

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I know all about it. Like I said ever since I surrendered. So fear drives us, and all the shame goes away. I've swung and missed 11 times. So what? Swing the 12.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Might be a home run.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Agree.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Grand Slam, as they say. So when most organizations try to implement change, what would you say is one of the like biggest like mistakes that you've seen?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

We forget the people aspect.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

You asked me about HR in the beginning and what we tend to do as humans. I told you, that's why. Because I said so. We do it as parents, too, right? Hey, I I get it, but I told you, get in the shower. You know, we don't know that the shower head's broken because we didn't give them enough time to tell them that, right? So change really requires us to step back and listen. Listen to everybody around us, figure out what the true fears are. Why, why don't you want to move forward? What is it I don't know that you know? How do we overcome that obstacle? What are the things that we need to do or not do in order to make change less scary?

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Gotta get out of your own way.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Got to get out of your own way.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

It could be cliche, but a lot of these conversations I have like lead back to that us getting out of our own way. Whatever the inner demons, so you so you'll say, or mental health things that are going on. We gotta heal before we can even be successful at this stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

I wasn't trying to go on a tangent, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

No, but I do agree. I think they're we're all broken, we're all human. We are all broken at some level. There is no such thing as perfection, but yet every one of us has created a view of our expectation of others. And when we hold our expectation to somebody else, how unfair is that? Nobody will ever live up. The only person we can be accountable to is us. And we tend to worry about what everybody else thinks, and when we do that, we get stuck.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

How do you lead people through change instead of forcing them?

SPEAKER_01 28:40

For me, and I I I believe that we'd find this in the ADCAR model too, but for me, I find you really have to listen. And listening can be different in different people in different ways. Some person just needs to feel heard, just let them put it all out there. What are the the concerns that are happening? Not all things can be acted on, right? We know that, but let them feel seen and heard.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Active listening.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

For some, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yes. Others want to have a voice in it.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Did you think of? No, I didn't. Thank you for bringing that up. I'm so glad you did because we're gonna save somebody else from going through that.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Yeah. It's kind of like that's kind of like a I'm sorry, like a validation, not validation, but just knowing that you came up with a good idea and like you're actually part of the solution. You're part of the village.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

In a sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Collaborating, yeah, I think is incredibly important. We don't do enough of it. Um, we have a tendency to be lone roofs, right? And in corporate jobs, a lot of times we create cubicles where you this is your task, and this is your task, and this is your task. But when we collaborate, we are all more and bigger together.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, you see how the different pieces create the whole.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

I was just thinking about this story I told you. Um about let's have that meeting so we can all get on the same page to clear up some of this. Uh at the end of the day, it created a toxic environment. Um, but no, you want to look at the data instead of back to what you said the human side. We have to maintain human, that human connective tissue, and that's why I feel like I'm important in what I'm doing. And the one question that I had at the symposium, I wasn't able to answer it. One other lady asked a question like it was because of a time restraint. But I had walked up to uh the dean, Saxena. Shout out to him. And um, the question I was gonna ask that I asked him was do you see, if any, um value in maintaining human connections? And it's an obviously like a rhetorical question, like, yes, you know, because he he agreed. I'm pretty sure anyone with a logical mindset, the way they think, would agree to that. And I'm like, well, how are these messages getting put out to the public, like here in Raquel for like where how are they seeing these conversations that we're having? So that's why, again, thank you for coming here because what you were talking about was very important and like it clicked with me. I felt like you were just talking to me. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Yes, and I will add to that. I say all the time, you have to keep the human in the loop.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Got to.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

We do not want to be machines, humans. We are human, we are infallible, we will always have feelings, and the machine is being built by humans, so we can create the machine to be better too, right? I I truly do this. Chat, I just had a hard time, hard conversation with an employee, and here's my perception of them the situation. What could I do better next time? If we only cared enough to do better next time. And chat gave me the response back. The other thing I do, and I challenge you to do this today, actually, because now that we have this really cool conversation going on, take the transcript afterwards and put it into chat and ask it for feedback.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

I'll do that.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

It's amazing what a meeting transcript will give you. It'll give you so much information about the dynamics of the situation, about what you could do differently, better, how you could use that for your marketing to better and elevate. There's it's a gold mine of information, and the analysis that it does is so much quicker than our human brains.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

I could do that to write a book too, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

I have done that.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Yeah, I remember you mentioned something about how you wrote a book and chat helped you.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah. Can you think about a time where you tried to implement change, but it it didn't go as planned? Like, what did you learn from that?

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yeah, I have a thousand change situations that um didn't go as planned. I I could use those from business situations or personal situations. My son that we've been talking about started his business. And when he started his business, one of the first things he did is he was he was working as a construction worker, and he had done some work in my house, and he was so excited about it. So incredibly excited about it. And I walked down and I said, Well, you know, you shouldn't have put the tiles together like that. What you should have is blah blah blah. And what did I do? I shut him down. I shut him down. He he didn't want to hear it again. And I realized it again. The learning I realized it. And the next time he did a really good project. Here's my change. I went and I looked at his project and I was like, you are amazing, you have come so far. I am so proud of you. And when you're ready, can I give you some feedback about it?

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Now, how was that different?

SPEAKER_00 34:14

It's literally not what you say, it's like literally how you say it.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

100%, and that's why the human has to stay in it. That's why we need emotional intelligence, and that's why change is so important. Now, I didn't get into the basics of change on how we identify what the change is, right? But just changing the way I approached the change made all the difference. There's nothing here to be scary, there's nothing to be fearful about. We're all doing the best we can. We're gonna continue to do the best we can. Nobody fails on purpose, so why do we treat people like they do?

SPEAKER_00 34:50

I wonder that's a good question. Is it one of those things that were like we some people kind of what's it called, project because they're dealing with something on the inside and they see it in somebody else, so they kind of like like I said, projecting. I wonder if that's part of it. Like, cause I know I make a lot of mistakes and I have a 10-year-old and she makes mistakes, and sometimes I have to sit back and be like, there's no reason to even get mad at her because I I've been through that tenfold.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Like, you have to give people grace.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

100% you have to give them grace.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

You sound like you sound like me. Like I'm continuously checking myself every day.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

I I hey, I'm much better today than I was 10 years ago, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:32

You and me both.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Um I I I I haven't always been proud of myself, you know. Um today I genuinely am proud of myself on most days. Most days.

unknown 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

But that's not always the case.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

The wrong decision is indecision.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Ooh, we read that.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 35:57

I believe wholeheartedly that we sit and analyze things and continue to analyze things and think, what if I did do this? Well, should I do this? What if it changed? If I just wait three more months, maybe maybe it'll be different. We define ourselves through our choices. And when we choose not to do anything, that is a choice. So if you're experiencing something bad and you want to get out of it, choose to get out of it. If you have a bad partner, choose to do something about it. Not saying get out of it, but choose to do something about it. When we choose indecision, we just step on the route on the wheel, on the hamster wheel. And the hamster wheel keeps turning. If you want to get off the roller coaster, step off of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Amen. It's a beautiful thing, like talking to you because again, it's just like you're preaching to me in a way. That hamster wheel is rough and rugged and exhausting, but we're gonna keep it positive. How do you balance uh speed versus clarity when making high-stakes decisions?

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Um, I have been given a gift that not everybody has. I do understand complexity in a different way. My mom used to always say, you know, give her lemons, she'll turn it into lemonade. Because I just have the ability to act. So, you know, you get in a car accident, and the first thing you do is call the insurance company and then you blah, blah, blah, all the things. But some people freeze. My daughter got in a car accident the other day and she started crying and called me. She didn't call the police, she didn't call the insurance company, she called me. Right? Now, she knew who to call, so do not get me wrong. I'm very grateful to be the person she called. I'm very grateful to be the person she called. But having the ability to know what to do next is super important. And for me, whenever crisis happens, I get extremely calm. Probably because I grew up in chaos. Quite frankly, I my resiliency is very high. And I know that it's very high. I know it's abnormally high. And it's probably because I grew up in craos, and instead of going to chaos, I go to calm. So when anything happens, I'm literally focused in and dialed in. Okay, okay, how are we gonna get out of this? We've got five different things that could happen. And then what's the worst case scenario if this happens? And I will go through them like that to make a decision very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

That's an amazing gift.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

It is a gift. I recognize it's a new gift, but I am a person that will look at all ends. I also am a person that unfortunately or fortunately, I will always look at what's worst case scenario, and can I live with that? So those are also important. If worst case scenario happened, is it livable? All right, then how worried do I need to be about it? And the other one I am really good at, and this is trained behavior, so I'm gonna give this one to you because this is trained behavior. Am I gonna care in five minutes? And I'm gonna care in five days, and I'm gonna care in five months, and a year, and five years. And how I act may depend on that answer. Because if I'm not gonna care in five minutes, I'm gonna let it roll right off me. I am not gonna join in. As my friend says, I did not buy tickets to that event. So sometimes I make choices based on that filter.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Can you think of a time where you had to make an um, excuse me, a decision that was unpopular, but it was very necessary. Maybe to it was like unpopular to like your colleagues, but you knew it had to be done, like your peers, or maybe even like upper management. But you you're pretty much part of upper management.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Um, I am part of upper management, and I do this actually quite frequently. I am known, and it's because of the human aspect. I am known for when somebody makes a decision, even if I agree with the decision, if I think somebody else may find it unfair to point it out, guys. I get that you want to give that person a bonus. I agree, they've worked really hard and they probably deserve that bonus. But what is Sally gonna say? Because she's been working really hard too. And what are you gonna say to Sally when she comes to you and says, that's not fair? And how are we gonna handle that situation? So I tend to look through that lens. I believe in equity. I don't believe in the good old boys network. Does that mean I I don't have favorites? Of course I have favorites. We all have favorites, we all see that young person that has high potential that you want to put a lot into. You should put a lot into them.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Right. Give everybody an equal, like you said, equity is very important. Give everybody the equal chance that opportunity. That's right. Let's see what they can do. So, what separates a good leader from a great one, would you say?

SPEAKER_01 41:29

I we we've been hitting on it right here, but I do think it's emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

And how about this? Instead of good leader, or how about a great, a good leader versus an effective, good versus effective?

SPEAKER_01 41:40

I I will still say emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

Um when you can show you care and you will support a human being through thick and thin, they will stay by your side and they will continue to work hard. I I'm a breast cancer survivor.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

I was gonna ask you about it. I'm glad you brought it up.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Yeah, I um remember when I got sick and I had all of my team asking them to step up. I needed more out of them because I had to take some time off, and I needed more, and I was asking for more. And they learned a lot through that time, and they all grew and they all developed in really phenomenal ways. And part of being a good leader is that I had people that stepped up for me. They stepped up for me because I'd always been there for them. I was there when they needed me, I was there when they had babies, got married, whatever. And it wasn't a question. And I've always been that human, keeping the human in it. You know, one of my one of my top performers, her dad died, and it was very sudden and very hard for her. And I'm like, do whatever you need, take time off, go to the funeral. I paid for the hotel for her to go to her dad's. Go, right? Yeah, how do I help you? When you truly care about people, they will always work hard for you.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah, that's some good reciprocity, right? Uh you gotta be careful about your circle and the people you let in, like that. You know, a lot of people don't reciprocate that kind of love and that grace. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Well, that's about your circle and who you let in.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Personal and business, you know, all aspects of life, really.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

I I learned this during breast cancer. Honestly, this is when I really learned it. Um, I talked a little while ago about energy. I learned during breast cancer that I had a finite amount of energy, and things either gave me energy or they took things away, took energy away because I didn't have enough. And I learned that more in that period of my life than ever before, and I literally excused people from. My life. Because I learned that I had friendships that no longer treated me well. They were sucking it out of me.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Like Pastor Kurt shot Pastor Kurt, you can't give all your oil away. You can't.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

No. And I just I didn't have enough. And now people are asking things of me that I'm just like, I can't do. In my love language, I'm an acts of service. So that's probably no surprise to you when you and I talked about this podcast. And I said, of course, of course. This is the gift that I have, right? So share the gift. So during breast cancer, I didn't have it to give. So please don't ask me for something I don't have. I learned it. And my circle got a little bit smaller and a lot bigger.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

You got your peace of mind though.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

It's so underrated. Peace of mind.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

It is.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Some people go out their lives and never even see it on the horizon.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

What does a healthy workplace look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 45:06

I believe, and I hope to believe, that I have exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Um by design. And I have worked in toxic workplaces. Um, I have worked where people don't care and people don't listen, and you know, the person in the cubicle next to you might be trying to step all over you and might be trying to destroy your job because they want it. I I've worked in that place. Thankfully, I've been here for 22 years, so I've had an active part in growing and developing that. And I believe, and hopefully, some of my coworkers will say this, that they will hear this and say, this is true, but I believe we work hard at caring about people. And when you truly care about people and their development and their growth and their career and their families and what they have to give, then you have an honest, compassionate place. When you don't care, that's when it goes backwards.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

Everybody's a disgruntled.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Everybody's disgruntled. Everybody feels like it's not uh it's not equal playing field, there's no equity, and equity isn't always the same. I need to point that out. Because we are human, what we want is different. What one person wants is they want to be out the door at five o'clock every day because they have a toddler at home, and that home time is super important to them. Yeah, they need to be out on time, and respecting that and making sure they get that is incredibly important.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

That's huge.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

While another person, what they have is frisbee golf at four o'clock on Tuesdays. They want to be out on Tuesday. Can I get out on Tuesday? Everybody's thing is different.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

You let the frisbee golf person get off early?

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Yes. You bet.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

You ever played this golf?

SPEAKER_01 47:05

No. No, I'm not an athlete. I I sit in the background, and um, I'm more the sit on the beach type of girl.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I played one time last year. I played. It's fun, but I was terrible at it. Terrible.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

I yeah, see? Fear. Fear. Just keep playing and you'll be good at it.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

So, how do you build teams that trust each other that can perform well?

SPEAKER_01 47:33

I wish I had a special answer to that. I think it's blameless problem solving. When we can take the fear away, people will be curious and they will try different things. Whenever we act out of fear of whatever it is, of repercussion of any kind, then we're not gonna get the best out of people. And we're not gonna get trust. We're not gonna trust that when I messed up, you're gonna make a big deal out of it, and so I'm not gonna try again. Right? I need to trust that I can try. I need to trust that if I do mess up, you're gonna teach me.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

Teach me how to do it right.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

That's how you build that trust. It's almost like an unconditional love aspect. If at first you don't succeed, pick yourself up and try again. I think Aelea said that, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:31

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

So when it comes to differentiating, like developing people versus managing them, like how do you draw that line? Like, what's the difference?

SPEAKER_01 48:42

Um well, I think they're very different. So being a leader is not being a manager, right? We manage tasks, we lead people, we manage what needs to be accomplished during the day.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

And I'm sorry, if you train people and lead people correctly across the board, then there's no managing that needs to happen because you won't have to micromanage.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Yeah, they know what they need to do. Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 49:07

Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

No, but you're right. It's absolutely the truth. I if you understand your job and you've learned all of the things that you need to do, you're just gonna do your job. Leading is understanding people's unique gifts and what they have to give. Thank you. And that's not just business, that's we're we're human, right? We're all different at different things. So figuring out who's really analytical and detail-oriented, and who's the visionary, and who can create that crazy PowerPoint that you would have never thought about, right? Putting people where they succeed, understanding those strengths and playing to those strengths. That's what a leader does. They understand differences in personality types and knowing that I'm an Enneagram eight. I don't know what you are, I'm gonna guess you're a three. And you're gonna go take the Enneagram later. Just kidding. Um, but knowing that, and knowing that I show up differently than you, I'm always gonna show up differently than you. Right, that doesn't mean I can't support you. We're we're always going to have things that are harder between us because we're different people. That's not wrong, it just is. When we embrace the is, it's it's beautiful. It's beautiful that we're all unique. But yet we're not given the space to be unique. We're trying too hard to put everybody in a cookie cutter.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

It's so counterintuitive. What do you think a lot of companies get communication wrong and how they communicate with their like subordinates and just people in the company across the board?

SPEAKER_01 50:51

We get communication wrong when we don't ask what's in it for me. So if I'm writing a communication to any group of people, I need to understand what's in it for them. Why are they interested? Why do they want to do it? Why would they support this? How do they know to support this? So making sure that we're really writing to the audience, and that audience understands the why. And when we understand the why, are we not more apt to support?

SPEAKER_00 51:24

100%.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

But we spend we don't spend enough time explaining the why, just dictating.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Why is that? Well, I think we're just rushing.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

That's part of it for sure, is we're rushing to get through something. We've got a hundred things on our desk and we're just you know flying them off our desk as fast as we can.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

You're very mindful with your approach, obviously. Not a lot of strategic planning.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

I do a lot of strategic planning, but I'm not always mindful. And I think that my employees would tell you my emails are very direct and short.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

I don't use a lot of words. It is nice when I just want a task done. It's not nice when there's more to ask.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

So being clear about when there's more to ask.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Okay. Now the business landscape, you might have, I'm sure you touched on this earlier. How do you see AI changing that?

SPEAKER_01 52:19

Well, in the business as aspect, I see any jobs that are rule-based, and so finance jobs are rule-based, uh, but anything that you can think of that's rule-based, they will be automated. So be adaptable.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Hey, yeah. So, what kind of advice would you give people in that situation right now to go ahead and prepare themselves? Like, you gotta like work on your soft skills.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Work on what it looks like to have an open mind. Um, growth mindset versus fixed mindset is is a program out there that you know, psychologists talk about, and you really need to have that growth mindset of continue to be curious, learn the skills to be curious, don't automatically go in with can't be done that way. What if it could be done?

SPEAKER_00 53:14

And like you said, the obstacle is fear. What kind of advice would you give them? Like a general way of advice is how to overcome whatever the fear is.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Overcoming fear. Well, how many things do you really have to be afraid of? That's I'm I mean that. I mean, if you look at the worst case scenario and it's not that bad, then what why are we afraid? Why are we afraid if somebody laughs at us or thinks it's silly? Why I I don't have I don't have this huge fear mindset. So I'm very thankful for that. I don't even use the word fear in my vocabulary when people when people talk about um failure. That's the word I really meant. I don't use the word failure in my vocabulary. People talk about, oh, I failed at that. Like, what did you fail at? You tried it. So what? It didn't turn out the way you thought it would. Is that failure? You didn't make a home run. That's not failure.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

I think the real failure comes when you don't try again, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Yeah, just keep trying. Because I I'm sorry, last time I looked, nobody learned how to walk overnight either. My sweet little grandbaby is eight months. She's crawling right now, she crawls everywhere, she's the cutest thing. But think about what we would be like if we had that mindset again. Every day she gets up so excited to just move a little bit further, so excited to pull herself up on a chair, so excited to try and put one foot in front of the other. We lost that as adults. We lost it.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

You're telling the truth.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

Yes. Why did we lose it? We lose lost it because of peer pressure, expectations, all of the other things in the world, perceived failures.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

Yeah. When it comes to AI, do you think the general population are underestimating it or overestimating it?

SPEAKER_01 55:10

I think they're afraid of it.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

That's a fair.

SPEAKER_01 55:13

I think they're underestimating it because they don't understand it, and the general population has taken no time to try and understand it. There are people that do. There are situations, there are a lot of people that use ChatGTP as their extended browser, right? And now we're gonna plan our dinner on chat instead of on Google because it's faster and it's easier. But people that really get into it and use it like a business partner in the ways I was talking about earlier are rare. There are not a lot of people that do that. When I show examples, people are always blown away. Like, what? You just did that? Yeah, I did. Isn't it cool? So back to the curiosity, being naturally curious. Jump in.

SPEAKER_00 55:59

What's the best advice you can give young professionals that are about to go into the workforce to be as best prepared for AI as possible? I know, like learn about it, but do you have steps on how they can learn?

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Yeah, so as far as learning, there are there are courses out there, there are certifications for it, there are all kinds of things. All of that's great from an educational perspective, from a textbook perspective. I know I said this in the symposium. I think that really the biggest amount of learning that anybody can do are the soft skills learning that we're not teaching in school. Figure out how to be resilient, how to be adaptable, how to have better emotional intelligence, how to regulate yourself, regulate your emotions, know when to speak up, influence, how to influence others and when. These are not skills we teach in school, and they are all skills that we need with AI and in everything we do.

SPEAKER_00 56:55

I had like a light bulb moment going. It's something crazy, but I feel like you could probably type up something or come up with some type of plan to implement in schools to prepare the youth for future generations. Like I said, brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

I have thoughts, but I don't know how you turn it into textbook learning. And I think that's the difference.

SPEAKER_02 57:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

Is this all experiential learning, which I think colleges should do? So, to your point, if we sat in round tables like this in class all day and talked about our feelings and how we deal with this, how different would that be?

SPEAKER_00 57:28

It has to be a way to somehow implement like your ideas. I don't know. I mean, have you thought about talking to like officials, like school people that like superintendents and whatnot?

SPEAKER_01 57:40

I have not, but I have been asked before, not just you.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Oh, yeah, I know I'm not the first person that's approached you about this. No way.

SPEAKER_01 57:48

If I if I would um help talk through, you know, what education of the future could look like in this, because I I think I I think there's a lot of opportunity. I look at my own children, for example, and um I failed them in many ways to not be prepared for what the world looks like. And my children come from an entitled generation. The next generation is coming from this AI generation of knowledge. That I mean, the knowledge at your fingertips is just ridiculous, right? And we've never focused on what it looks like to be truly resilient, and how we teach that, I don't know. I'm gonna put some thought in this because now you've got me spinning around it. I have I have a young girl that rents from me, and she's moving out, one of her roommates isn't, and one of her roommates I said, You don't need to paint your walls. I like the color blue, that's beautiful. Don't even worry about it, you can leave it. And the other girl, I said, Your wall is bright crimson orange, and I need you to repaint that wall back to gray. I that wall's terrible, and I got 17 pages of texts about why that wasn't fair, why they weren't all treated the same. And I responded to her finally, and I said, I don't understand why you would want to punish your roommates also. Because yes, I can follow the lease and have everybody paint their walls back to gray. So maybe that was the right answer. I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have given flexibility to one and not the other. I said, I will follow the rules then. If that's what you want. You, I've made it her choice. If you want to punish your roommates, then have a conversation with them about painting your wall.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

Doesn't that legit on my truth in a way?

SPEAKER_01 59:47

I I'm like, wow, I just got 17 pages of text because you painted the wall orange on a rental that you knew you had to pay back. But it's not fair because I didn't tell her roommate. But that's what we've created in our youth. The lack of resilience. Why is it that? And you knew the rules.

unknown 1:00:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

I think that's why conversations like this are very important, especially coming from somebody like you. I had a little dose of uh imposter syndrome earlier. Well, after you mentioned it, I'm like, what am I doing here? What are we doing? I know you like you mentioned your upbringing, and but I do want to ask if there's anything specific that comes to mind, like how you handle like pressure, being like the CFO, and like how do you say grounded when it time times get tough when they don't go the way you feel like they should?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

I think I have really good breathing techniques. I mean that really.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

No, I got a book right there about breathing techniques. Yeah, I'm not sure. Please invite me on what you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

I I I mentioned earlier I get to a place of peace. Yes, I have to calm my whole body down. Um, I know that my heart can race, and inside does not look anything like the outside. People comment, you're always so calm. Oh no, let me tell you, all this stuff in here is still going off, right? But learning how to regulate that and breathing techniques, they talk about the box exercise. Um, it's real. Um, that's my only advice. Learn how to calm yourself in the crisis, any crisis, any pressure, anything. I will not tell you that I have not been um decomposed and lost my crap and looked really stupid many a times in my world, in my life, in my career. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

Hey, I've also well I've spiraled myself. So hey.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Absolutely I've done it. I do it less as I've aged.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

Yeah. Yeah, it's almost like just like it's just life experience. Because I'm gonna tell you, man, I was spoiled as a kid. Were you? I know you said that they were entitled. I don't know if that's the exact same thing, but I made good grades. Well, like also positive reinforcement, but I was very spoiled. Didn't have like a lot of chores and stuff like that. And I think that goes back to what we were talking we were talking about earlier about just being a part of the village, having responsibilities as a child to prepare yourself. Or you want that for your kids to prepare them for the future for everything that's gonna come at them. Can't send them out into the wilderness without teaching them how to, you know, tie, you know, a spearhead against a stick and go hunt.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

I agree. And and I think that happens through community. I think that we need like-minded community, whether that's church or some other like-minded set of people, um, I think it's very important. We learn a lot through other people. We need people in our corners that we trust with our children, and there are a lot we can't trust. So do not get me wrong in that statement. But we are not, we're not this way in our friendships, we're not this way in our marriages, and we certainly can't be this way as parents.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

If we think about anybody in our lives that fulfill all our buckets, try to come up with one. I have the best friend that's funny that I want to hang out with when I'm sad. I have the best friend that's solid with good advice when I need something that needs advice. I have the friend that is gonna go on a vacation at a moment's notice. Hey, I want to go. You know, everybody fills a different bucket, including our spouses. When we ask somebody to fill all the buckets, we have set them up to fail.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:44

Yeah, it's not fair to them or you. And it's back to the basics of human resources.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

That's what it starts. Before you even get a job, we need to think about human resources. Like we're all resources, we can use each other symbiotically.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

I'm not gonna talk about symbiosis again, but that's really like my mindset with this whole thing I got going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:00

I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

How do you uh trickle autonomy in the workplace?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:07

Well, I I believe everybody is autonomous until you've proved to me you can't be. I'm not a micromanager. So I that's back to the blameless problem solving. If you don't chastise people for what they do wrong and you teach them when there are teaching moments, they are more apt to continue to be autonomous. People are not autonomous when they don't understand their expectations, they don't understand what the job entails, they don't understand what they need to have do and when. And if they if they can't operate autonomously, then there is another problem. It's a skill set problem, it's an expectation problem, maybe they don't know the job, but there is something else because we as people, I don't believe, want to be micromanaged. We're micromanaged when you have somebody that doesn't trust you or you don't know your job. One of those two things.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:03

Oh, maybe that person doesn't trust themselves, they don't know what the hell are they doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:06

Well, sometimes that happens, but if you want, if you if you want to be autonomous in what you do and you can't do it in this job because you don't know what you're doing, then maybe you're in the wrong job. Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

Maybe you're I got a name of a company where you need to go train the manager. I mean, do you train like managers and stuff in different companies?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:26

Um, I have not done any of that, but that I mean, maybe in the past.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:33

I I am yeah, I I I could see doing that in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:37

Yeah, absolutely. What would you say to your younger self if you could go back in the in the past and sit down, maybe around like a teenage, like you're like high school, kind of trying to figure out what you want to do? High school.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

I went to seven different high schools. Seven. I would say hang in there because life doesn't look anything like what you think it will.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

Wait, wait, now during that journey, at what point did you move out of Wyoming and come over there to the East Coast?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:03

So I moved here in 2008. I went from Wyoming to Idaho to um Poisy, Idaho to Fort Lauderdale.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

I graduated, that's why I was smiling, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:15

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

Yeah, I went to go ahead. It's kind of it's a circumstance. It's a coincidence.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:21

I love it. Yeah. So I um yeah I moved I moved to Fort Lauderdale and then Charlotte. So just a little bit of a roundabout.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:34

Yeah I've never been to Wyoming or Florida for that matter, but I do plan on visiting Florida. I like to go out to Wyoming too. I got into hunting recently so whenever I get some white tail under my belt I'm gonna go out there and try to get like a moose or elk or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:48

It's beautiful country. You absolutely should do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:51

I mean I don't even want to ask any more questions. You covered everything. You know what I'm saying? I mean this was awesome I will say this though I'm gonna ask this question. Um and if you could like look directly to the camera whenever you answer it. If there's anyone that's like like in a situation a mindset that are like stuck or they want to make a change with their like back to that fear thing what's the best first step and what type of advice would you give them I love this one.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:18

I said earlier that your life is not defined by your past it's defined by your choices. Your next first step can be a hundred of them but you got to take the first step it's sometimes it's hard to look at choices and understand what they are. I am a person that I am reflective but I spend a lot of time on the you know the right and the left column what must have what I won't have and everything else in between is go. So that's okay but understanding what you won't have and won't do is critically important to getting to what you must have so until you're ready to shed some of that you can't get to the better self and that's super important and it just takes one choice one choice and you'll step back it's always two forward one back always eh no you don't get there overnight and then the question would be what help do you need to get there so what keeps falling back is it new friends who are a product of the people you hang out with and the books you read so make sure that you're setting up yourself for success and sometimes that's hard sometimes that means putting things behind you including family um be the best version of you and how can people access your book if they want to buy it oh I love that so um I have two things going on so I have a book that is specifically for um breast cancer and it is an anthology of 1322 stories um it's beautiful and I have escaped me on the actual title of it it's Rising Above Journey of breast cancer stories you should have not put me on the spot for that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:16

I can um if I go back and edit it I can put like a picture of a postproduction or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:20

Yeah Jillian Lashado is the prime author of that. It's beautiful for anybody that's going through tragedy and what that looks like to survive tragedy this book is very close to my heart because it is all stories of young women that are metastatic meaning they are terminal and to me it breaks my heart to see a 30 year old woman with children and watching her her future fade um it's really important to me that we do more for this this group of women I am fortunate enough that I am over 50 and although breast cancer was hard for me it was not hard for me in the same ways it was not hard for me in the ways that alter your life my life is very good and I am very blessed and I have lots of grace in my life and I know that and I went to treatments every day where women didn't have that where they were single they didn't have a spouse maybe not a job and my most favorite of these is they have a toddler whose husband decided it was just too much and left them. So every day I watch these women and their stories and I got involved in the the book because of that. Anyway the second book that I'm working on right now is also an anthology it is unnamed yet but I will let you know when it comes out it will probably be Unseen Heroes and the book is the caregivers and the caregivers story and the people behind the people with illness the people that stand up in the face of adversity and support those that are going through it. So I talked about earlier that I didn't have the best upbringing my mother was an addict my mother died of leukemia and when my mother was sick I brought her home to live with me and to care for my mother and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life and that story is much different than the breast cancer story.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:35

Wow thank you for sharing all that you're very uh humble thank you because uh brilliant is an understatement in my opinion your trials and tribulations everything you've been through caused you to be this amazing human being seriously I appreciate that I think that um I was put here for a purpose I think that my children's upbringing as though it wasn't perfect it was better than mine and it was purposeful and I would state that I think it is the legacy of changing lives because my children will never know what it was like to have a parent that was an addict and their children will never know what it was like to be poor.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

And that's changing lives.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:27

That's changing history breaking generational patterns that's right you know what I mean a lot of people say curses but I think when we recognize the patterns and for real make that change inside ourselves and start working on those patterns and making that change that's how we do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

That's right my children know no different part of that that part of that hurts me though I I will say there is a part of me that that that hurts my 20 year old my 20 year old daughter is more entitled than the boys.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:53

The boys are all very different than the girl she's younger she's and I look at that and I'm like how did I raise a child that thinks she deserves this much I have not figured out the balance between helping and hindering an entitlement because there is a certain amount I want to give them to have pray for discernment regarding your company if someone was interested in y'all's services like what separates y'all from the competitors out there?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:34

People very clearly people um we spend a lot on our culture I mean that we believe in a high performing culture we believe in our values we believe in not just our values our fundamentals we have 25 fundamentals one of them being practice blame and playmeless problem solving we have fundamentals that to the core of who we are are the behaviors that we require and we invest in our people we invest in what it looks like to develop and career paths and all the things most of our competitors don't do that boom by design.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:11

Right thank you so much for being here thank you Karma Johnson uh this has been another episode of the Dap and the Hub Podcast thank you for my listeners peace and love