Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - How to Be a Good Person in the World

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00:00:27.000 Oh, Hungry, oh, Henry.

00:00:36.620 Hello, hello, hello.

00:00:38.600 You are listening to Under the Influence, and I'm your host, Jo Piazza.

00:00:43.480 Thanks for being here with me today, guys.

00:00:46.120 It just started snowing outside my window.

00:00:49.160 And part of me wants to go outside and frolic around in it,

00:00:52.740 And the other part wants to get under my covers and go to sleep. And I don't know who's going to

00:00:58.860 win. I really don't. I don't. We've got a great guest for you today and I can't wait to tell you

00:01:04.700 about her. But first, just a little announcement. We are doing our big, big early push for orders

00:01:12.600 for everyone is lying to you right now, mostly because stores like Target and Walmart and then

00:01:19.980 the big stores like Barnes & Noble and Amazon, they're all deciding how many they want to order

00:01:24.860 and they actually look at pre-order numbers, which is crazy and weird. And I hate asking

00:01:31.280 you to do this, but also it's part of my job, so I don't feel bad. Pre-order, everyone is lying to

00:01:39.320 you right now. You can order it from anywhere that you want. Let's get those numbers up. It is a

00:01:44.500 twisty, turny, trad wife murder mystery. And it's what we need right now in the midst of this 0.97

00:01:51.580 bullshit patriarchy. It really is. So that's my big public service announcement for the day. 0.99

00:01:56.640 That is it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you so much. Get your orders in today.

00:02:02.920 If we all ordered it right now, then we're in good shape for lunch. So again, thank you.

00:02:08.440 My guest today is a dear friend of mine, Dr. Kimberly McGlon. I find Kimberly so inspiring

00:02:17.100 in so many different ways. We work in the same workspace, and when I run into her,

00:02:23.000 she is just a ray of sunshine and hope, and she truly makes me believe that the world can be

00:02:30.920 a better place. She recently wrote a book called Build It Boldly, and you'll hear me tell her in

00:02:37.240 this episode, that the book is really just a blueprint for how to be a good person in a world

00:02:43.280 that is real messed up. And I think we can all use that blueprint these days, or we definitely know

00:02:49.500 someone who could, in which case we should just slip this book into their backpack. Kimberly is

00:02:54.820 calling on all of us to be common everyday heroes. She wants us all to put people and the planet

00:03:02.620 ahead of profit. And she truly believes that all of us can have a really powerful impact

00:03:08.580 just by doing the things that we do every day. You're going to love this conversation.

00:03:15.560 Here's Kimberly.

00:03:19.100 Hello, my love.

00:03:20.780 Hello, my love.

00:03:22.460 So I'm going to, I just want to say it. The title of your book is Build It Boldly,

00:03:27.780 but I've been describing it to people and I also think it's like how to just be a goddamn good

00:03:34.180 person in the world basically when the world is weird and hard and how can you just be

00:03:40.500 just be a good person basically it's just like a primer on you two have it in you you two have it

00:03:49.000 in you to just and I think it's so interesting because media is so fragmented now our lives

00:03:56.820 are fragmented community is hard and different than it was I think when we were growing up

00:04:02.360 yeah and so where are the models for how to be a person yeah I uh I was telling someone earlier

00:04:10.460 today that I was I gave a keynote on Saturday to like 500 undergraduates at Temple and the

00:04:16.280 questions I would the talk was about design into the talk these are the four questions I get from

00:04:21.160 four very different people young black guy stands up he asked me about my spiritual journey a young

00:04:26.500 queer person, kind of gender androgynous stands up. They ask me about shame and what to do with 0.90

00:04:32.400 shame, where to put shame, how to process shame. A young Latina woman stands up and she asks about

00:04:37.960 confidence. She says, in this time as a woman, I'm really struggling with knowing how to be in space,

00:04:43.660 how to take up space, how to be quiet, figuring out that balance. And then a young covering Muslim, 0.99

00:04:49.340 she gives the final question and she uses Google Translate to ask about her relationship with her 0.98

00:04:55.320 parents and her her just the challenge of not being who they want her to be and so when I think

00:05:02.720 about the book like you I think it's what it's creating is a conversation for these other

00:05:08.120 philosophies of human development and and business is just one manifestation of that journey

00:05:14.140 it's just one manifestation I mean I there's so there's so much that goes into us as human beings

00:05:25.000 right? So we've got the work self, we've got the personal friend self, we've got the mom self.

00:05:30.460 And we're all trying in all of these spheres. And I think, you know, it's sometimes it's hard

00:05:37.020 to remember that we're all the same self. We're all the same person. Yes. And I'm learning that

00:05:42.240 that's where the real, the unlock happens when you realize, at least for me, a different level

00:05:47.980 level of actualization happened when I realized that I was actually spending and particularly in

00:05:53.400 my 20s and my 30s, a lot of energy with hitting a switch where it was like, okay, in this room

00:06:00.300 is this body language. In this room, it's this diction. In this conversation, it's this tone.

00:06:05.680 And now I've learned as I've settled into my sense of self and my fuller sense of self-acceptance

00:06:11.760 that the best self for me is a singular one. Right? Talk to my kid the same way I talk to

00:06:18.800 my colleagues, the same way I talk to my employees. There's one Kimberly. And I think

00:06:22.820 that's a part of that like life construction which gets filtered out into how we show up in our lives

00:06:28.160 away from our homes yeah yeah I mean I I talk to everyone the same for better or worse yeah at this

00:06:35.020 point I talk to my kids the same as I talk to my book agents I believe that completely I do I do

00:06:41.960 and you know we've we've had to have some long talks about strong language but uh it's fine it's

00:06:48.100 fine uh we've worked through it i want to get into your story and your background because i think

00:06:54.940 that you're first off you know we talk about this all the time stories matter we have to tell our

00:07:01.000 stories boldly and loudly because i believe that stories breed empathy yeah um and it also helps

00:07:10.940 a little bit to talk about where you're at now and how you came to these ideas about being a good

00:07:19.620 person in the world and building it boldly. I think I love that idea of framing the way that

00:07:26.740 we appreciate stories under this glazing of the richer the stories that we tell of ourselves are

00:07:34.380 the more multiplicities that we hold of each other at one time, the more they expand our capacity to

00:07:40.020 hold other people's multiple truths as all relevant and meaningful beside ours. And I think

00:07:47.840 as an adjacency to that, where we start our stories matter too. And so to your question,

00:07:53.920 my story starts on the north side of Milwaukee, and it starts in a story of a real particular

00:08:00.480 kind of scrappiness that my parents had to anchor their lives in just because of the nature of their

00:08:07.500 childhoods and the it starts in their pursuit of the middle class which for them came through i

00:08:14.540 think a lens for i would imagine a lot of a lot of listeners right now is the is union protected

00:08:20.340 work they were postal workers yeah yeah i mean it is everything old is new again right that's

00:08:26.780 exactly right and and that postal work allowed them the income and the and like the credit to

00:08:33.560 be able to become first generation homebuyers. So by the time I was about 12, there were these

00:08:40.120 signs of this collapse. And the first visible one that I could feel came when my mom moved out. So

00:08:47.620 she moved about maybe a mile and a half away. And I think I saw her maybe about four times

00:08:54.300 when I was in high school. Oh, my gosh. That's insane. I mean, that's such that's a that's a

00:09:00.780 huge thing, a huge change. It was a huge, huge change. And my dad, who had always kind of been

00:09:07.060 an anchor, he was a cook. He was like a gardener. So he did a lot of nurturing for us. He was

00:09:13.300 struggling too in his own way with her departure. And he got caught up in just an addiction. It was

00:09:18.740 a cocaine addiction at the time. So he was there, but he was gone. And that switched from being

00:09:26.120 solidly in the middle class to having to figure out how I was going to take care of myself.

00:09:32.340 It changed my, I should say, it probably widened my aperture for seeing how hard it is to be poor.

00:09:40.260 And so that filters into everything that I do in life. And certainly the first company that I built,

00:09:46.460 Grant Boulevard, and its aspirations to show up for women who come home from prison. And it

00:09:53.840 continues to shape how i think about what we have to address as a country yeah i mean how how could

00:09:59.800 it not and i think that that is one of the reasons that that our stories do matter and you know

00:10:05.880 leading with them so that people really know where we're coming from and and and i think also the why

00:10:13.880 of of you know why we're building something why we're doing something and and which characters

00:10:20.520 we choose the center in the stories that we tell you know and and what are the journeys that our

00:10:24.520 protagonists are on i think in stories they're always a reflection of what we know or what we

00:10:29.800 want to know and or better understand and my approach to building brands has always been

00:10:35.640 anchored in story so you know this the the book that i write uh this was i just released build

00:10:41.460 it boldly it talks about it's anchored in one particular brand grant boulevard but the story

00:10:45.800 of Black Ivy Thrift, which is a second brand that I built, is also about stories. That one's the

00:10:50.660 story of the civil rights movement and how we arrived at this limited, perhaps, in other places,

00:10:58.120 meaningful progress in the pursuit of democracy. So, you know, yeah, stories really matter. And

00:11:03.760 how we get to hold space for stories, I think, is where we discover our own superpowers.

00:11:10.760 Yes, yes.

00:11:11.760 How we hold space, where we hold space, who holds space, all of that, all of that.

00:11:17.660 All right, we're going to take a quick break.

00:11:18.820 And when we get back, I want to talk about Grant Boulevard.

00:11:22.140 I love that.

00:11:31.080 Okay, we're back.

00:11:32.960 Grant Boulevard was the first brand that you built.

00:11:36.920 Tell me a little bit about that.

00:11:38.860 for people who've never heard of it. I've obviously heard about it. I love it. It's

00:11:43.700 fantastic. How did that come about and what is it? Yeah. So Great Boulevard, it started

00:11:50.620 during my days as a classroom teacher, which is a really unusual starting point, I think,

00:11:56.540 for an entrepreneur, though there are a number of us. Shout out to all the teachers who open

00:12:00.200 businesses. Shout out to all the teachers who open businesses. You know, I'm meeting more and

00:12:04.200 more teachers who are opening their own businesses, who are entrepreneurs, a lot of teachers who are

00:12:09.860 influencers. And in fact, I just saw a video on the Instagram that many of the Eagles cheerleaders

00:12:15.020 are also public school teachers. Fascinating. You didn't know that. Yeah. And also chemists

00:12:20.780 and accountants. It was such a good video. I have to find it and share it because it had

00:12:26.240 videos of them on the field and then videos of them at their day jobs. Oh, I love that. Please

00:12:31.280 share. Yeah, I will. I will. It was so badass and cool. So you were a teacher. What were you

00:12:35.360 teaching? I was teaching a course in colonialism. So looking at the world as it is, the lens of the

00:12:42.460 stories that we know and that we sometimes ignore of how colonialism kind of came to be. So going

00:12:52.200 back to the Berlin Conference and how it was a gathering of these European leaders, all men,

00:12:59.520 who decided how they would divide up Africa and why they chose certain outposts and how they drew

00:13:05.440 lines for the continent, what they saw when they got there, the problematic language that they used

00:13:11.920 in describing their arrival, what they took and what they left and what the kind of lasting

00:13:19.280 legacies of colonialism have been, not just on Africa, but on Afghanistan, on India. So we really

00:13:25.480 spent an entire year using literature as a as a as an entryway into understanding the modern world

00:13:32.540 i want to take this class it was great and then i taught a course in marginalization disenfranchisement

00:13:38.500 in the american story so you know we all read many of us read to kill a mockingbird but instead

00:13:43.460 of zooming in on atticus and on on scout i really focused my teaching practice on tom robinson and

00:13:50.900 what the story and experience of of alabama through the lens of tom robinson tells us about

00:13:56.540 the longer narrative arc of of american um government and governance so it was really it

00:14:04.660 was great i did i want to take this class too i mean i'm here i'm here for all of this i want to

00:14:11.260 back up just one quick second to go into a little bit more of your story so how did you go from this

00:14:16.720 young woman, this teenager who is experiencing poverty for the first time, you know, largely

00:14:22.540 figuring out the world on your own in so many ways to getting a PhD, to becoming a professor,

00:14:29.060 to teaching these courses. I know. So crazy. I had these incredible women around me. And I think for

00:14:34.760 a lot of us, we make it because there's someone who's who has been placed in proximity to us that

00:14:39.960 sees a potential in us that we don't have the wisdom or the or the esteem to see in ourselves. 0.99

00:14:44.700 And they were diverse women. They were black and they were Indian and they were white. They were my guidance counselors, my English teachers, a woman who was my best friend's mom. They just wrapped their arms around me and they just said, you're going to get out of here. And so they helped me navigate the college application process and the test taking process. And they pushed me out. They literally said, you cannot stay here. You have to leave. 1.00

00:15:11.640 And so I found my way to Louisiana. I wanted to study abroad. Louisiana was the next best thing, I think.

00:15:19.800 Louisiana feels like a different country.

00:15:21.300 Yeah, absolutely. Language, dance, music, you know, food, it's fully formed. And so I ended up there studying literature, southern literature. And then that led me into the classroom. And that led me into thinking about theories of design and theories of education and learning.

00:15:41.640 And and although I knew no one who had a Ph.D., I was in my 20s and I was just like, well, I finished some coursework.

00:15:49.340 I could get a Ph.D.

00:15:53.900 And and so I just did it.

00:15:57.040 You just did it.

00:15:58.080 That's I just did it.

00:15:59.020 I just kept going.

00:16:00.960 Which I think, you know, also such a great lesson.

00:16:05.120 You know, you didn't let any kind of imposter syndrome or anything hold you back.

00:16:11.020 you're like, no, this is something I can do. Yeah, I'm going to try this. Yeah, I can. I'm

00:16:16.160 going to go for it. And I learned like that progress that we need to make towards the big

00:16:20.460 things. It's all incremental. It's one grad class. It's one paper. It's one deadline.

00:16:25.060 And you repeat that. You build that muscle of one one thing, one measurable thing at a time before

00:16:30.860 you know it. The Legos have aligned and you've built a structure. And the same is true for taking

00:16:35.660 the leap from being in the classroom to starting that first company, which went on to become the

00:16:40.420 first black-led B Corps in the fashion space in North America. And I didn't, in the beginning of

00:16:46.180 that company, I wasn't setting out to really be the first of anything necessarily. I just saw

00:16:51.560 that there was a crisis and I was like, I want to design something that I think might serve a

00:16:56.060 solution. And I built it with the same attitude, one collection at a time, one hire at a time,

00:17:02.940 one website refresh at a time. And then eight years later, we had achieved a really remarkable

00:17:09.400 feat of surviving that long and always paying a living wage to our garment workers in Philadelphia.

00:17:16.360 Which is huge. It's just it's so huge. It is amazing when you start digging into fashion

00:17:24.060 and retail and you realize how many people are not making a living wage, especially women,

00:17:31.520 especially women of color. Yep. So talk to me. What was Grant Boulevard in the beginning?

00:17:37.280 Yeah. In the beginning, Grand Boulevard was experimenting with what are ultimately the most stringent approaches to sustainable design in the world of fashion. It started with how do we take existing garments and reimagine them? It evolved into how do we get to small batch production through using what's called deadstock, which are overages, essentially waste from multinational companies.

00:18:02.100 And then it moved into how do we really focus on a material strategy that allows us to play as often as we want, but in a way that still still like just stands 10 toes down on our belief that garments need to be produced using more sustainable pathways.

00:18:18.700 And so we just focused on a couple of different fabrics that we really believed in. And we continued to pursue teaching women who'd come home from prison how to sew and experimenting with how do we create exposures to yoga and to financial literacy and to self-care as a core driver of what would be a phenomenal company culture.

00:18:42.600 so now yeah now we produce garments really thinking about the lives of women away from work

00:18:50.700 like what happens how do you take care of yourself when no one's watching and so that's what we that's

00:18:55.520 a beautiful evolution for that that journey and building something that felt for me

00:18:59.640 in an industry so toxic really bold how do you take care of yourself when no one's watching

00:19:06.120 is a bold idea to me it just it it just is right i mean i i hate what like quote-unquote self-care

00:19:16.020 has become i know in the media um on on instagram on social media and i think about it a lot i thought

00:19:25.040 about it a lot last week you know we were we were supposed to do this interview last week the day

00:19:29.440 that the book launched uh and i was in the hospital the day that the book launched with

00:19:33.860 pneumonia wild right and i i what i kept thinking about when i started to feel better because

00:19:40.660 i had the antibiotics and as my doctor friend said the antibiotics are the grumbly parents who

00:19:47.660 are going to get everyone out of the party and i'm like they really are they got the they got

00:19:51.220 everyone out of the party uh they cleared the house there was like semi the semi-sonic song

00:19:57.340 closing time started playing and i but what i kept thinking about the second that i felt a little bit

00:20:04.460 better was oh my god we take this for granted we take this feeling this baseline feeling of good

00:20:10.720 of fine for granted except when we start to get sick and i started thinking about how i mean how

00:20:18.140 i had not gotten the flu shot but i'd gotten it for all of my children right right um and so how

00:20:24.040 do i how do i take care of myself no one's when no one's watching and you know infusing that kind

00:20:30.740 of culture into a company is just so so brilliant to me and i think you did a great job and you talk

00:20:38.080 about this in building in build it bold like about how much culture matters yeah i mean especially

00:20:45.200 when you were living in one that is so full of things that are um essentially i think they gas

00:20:50.960 light us, quite frankly. Yes. Yes. We are constantly being gaslit. We are constantly

00:20:55.300 being gaslit. And I also think that coming into awareness of that is where we open up the

00:21:01.520 possibility to see other potentialities. So I think the first thing about even examining culture

00:21:08.140 is the process of examining culture. It's like stepping out and saying, well, I'm actually going

00:21:14.080 to sit down and see this apparatus as it exists so I can better understand, one, how to navigate it

00:21:20.780 into how to how to pursue some sense of resistance to it. And and in that way, when we think about

00:21:27.120 like Buddhist takes on radical kindness and radical acceptance, I think that this idea of radical

00:21:32.900 self-care is one that transcends. I mean, it is a mixture of things. It's both the things that you

00:21:37.880 can that you can purchase because there is there are something to be said about services and

00:21:42.380 products that support our wellness and services and products can support our wellness.

00:21:47.600 I love a massage. I love a massage. OK. Or a pedicure. Right. I'm dying. I'm dying for a pedicure. I cannot wait. Those are things that like being well, I don't take for granted. And then it becomes when we're pursuing these products or these services, how do we also infuse the time away from those products and services for the mindset shifts that allow us to to to to experience deeper and different solitude and silence and stillness, which is where the real care comes.

00:22:16.660 it does it does you know one of the things that i've been noticing recently is laying in bed

00:22:25.540 and doing nothing is such a wonderful thing staring at the wall just staring at a wall and

00:22:33.800 like letting my mind go blank not scrolling a screen and right now nick gets up with uh the

00:22:39.280 kids about 15 he was up with everyone while i was sick so shout out to that man um not because

00:22:45.800 he's a dad and did a thing but because he took on all of the parenting duties uh as you know you do

00:22:51.680 when one partner is down for the count but every day he gets up about 10-15 minutes earlier and

00:22:56.800 gets them out of their beds and i have just been laying there i just lay and i just lay and that

00:23:03.260 for me is a form of self-care it is because it's telling yourself giving yourself permission to just

00:23:08.440 two things one to indulge in going slow and secondly accepting with with gratitude that

00:23:15.800 everything will get done and other people can do the doing. Other people can do the doing is

00:23:22.300 something that it took me a long time to figure out. When do you think you figured that out?

00:23:28.400 Um, oh, I, you know, it was, it was really interesting. I was probably in my, in my teaching

00:23:34.720 practice. I was interestingly, I want to say, I hadn't thought about this this way before,

00:23:39.660 Joe. So this is just like, I'm just processing. We're going to workshop this. That's what we do

00:23:43.800 on this podcast. We workshop, we workshop life right here, right here. I think part of it came

00:23:49.600 in, in a teaching practice where I, I feel, I began to feel like I was the only one doing the

00:23:56.920 heavy lifting. And it was probably tied to the fact that I was the only person of color in this

00:24:02.520 high school on teaching faculty. Like the grounds crew was made up of people of color. There was 0.98

00:24:08.100 one or two people in the kitchen who were people of color. The cleaning crew, definitely mostly 0.99

00:24:12.940 people of color. But when it came to the teaching faculty, not the aides, I was the only one. And

00:24:17.980 there were moments where we needed to have these hard conversations about what was being held as

00:24:23.920 acceptable or dismissed when it came to just toxic masculinity, bullying, racism, all of those

00:24:32.040 isms. And I got tired of being the only one to do the damn work. I got tired of being the only one 0.99

00:24:36.040 to raise the point, to ask the question, to push back, to investigate, to defend. And at some point

00:24:41.440 And I was just like, look, I can't be the only one doing all the work.

00:24:44.420 I'm not. That's not I'm not doing that.

00:24:46.720 That's probably had. That was probably not the moment, perhaps, but a moment where I decided, you know what?

00:24:53.480 This this changes when everyone else cares about it changing.

00:24:56.640 I can't be the only one who cares. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:01.000 Which is inviting people to the doing. It's inviting people to the doing.

00:25:04.980 And that's what I want to dig into when we get back from our next break.

00:25:11.440 okay we're back inviting people to the doing talk to me about that because you know i i also think

00:25:24.080 about that a lot after after we talked about that like what does it mean to invite people to the

00:25:28.800 doing i think it means that two things maybe one is that you build systems that involve other people

00:25:36.600 knowing their role in what's going to happen. So that's like an intentional architecture to like,

00:25:42.500 who does the dishes? Who does the garbage? Who does the mornings? Who does the bath time?

00:25:47.000 For those of us who are in that life stage, for those of us who are in other life stages,

00:25:51.280 it's like, who's going to do the drop off? Who's going to do the pickup? Who's going to pay the

00:25:54.440 bills? And I think that delegation is a part of knowing that other people are being invited to

00:26:00.720 participate and that they have a clear sense of what they're going to own. And I think oftentimes

00:26:05.620 as women and then those of us who identify as moms caretakers of parents or siblings we are

00:26:11.980 reluctant to let go of that control and that's the second thing the second thing in letting other

00:26:17.040 people do the doing is you got to let them do it which means you might have to let them do it their

00:26:20.640 way and that for I think is a hard thing to come into like that surrendering that if you're going

00:26:26.080 to the goal is that you're going to do the dishes you might not do the dishes the way I do it dishes

00:26:29.900 but guess what damn it I don't want to do the dishes all the time and if getting the dishes

00:26:33.820 done means doing them that way then so be it i'm walking away yes yes yes and yes i'm not allowed 0.95

00:26:39.800 to load the dishwasher in our house uh because i refuse to learn how nick astor believes the

00:26:45.320 dishwasher should be loaded and this um weaponized incompetence has served me well because i i do not

00:26:52.540 touch a dish yeah i yes put it where he says it needs to be yeah i put it in the sink and he may

00:26:58.400 deal with it i don't i can't see it after that it's gone it's gone for my world that

00:27:02.140 I was about 11 when my dad would ask me to iron his clothes and I one I was not good at it and

00:27:07.700 two I did not wish to be good at it so I would just give him wrinkly clothes and he'd be like 0.99

00:27:12.360 girl you cannot iron I'd be like nope sure can't no I sure can't sure can't yep yep because men

00:27:21.900 have been using weaponized incompetence since the beginning of men uh so and I think as women

00:27:27.520 And we're so much more apt to be like, I will figure it out and I will get it right and I will do it.

00:27:32.560 No, that's not me anymore.

00:27:34.320 No, can't be.

00:27:35.340 Can't be.

00:27:35.800 I was just talking to my best friend yesterday about this.

00:27:37.600 She's a behavior psychologist and she's having like a real sense of frustration with her peers who refuse to just do what needs to be done.

00:27:44.580 Instead, they keep asking her, well, how about let's do it your way.

00:27:47.640 Can you show us the way you do it?

00:27:49.280 And I'm like, girl, your job is not to be a trainer for your colleagues.

00:27:53.760 No, no, it sure isn't.

00:27:56.480 It's not.

00:27:57.520 you have a whole chapter in build it boldly about surfing the wave which is about pivoting which is

00:28:05.520 something that as the world is constantly changing as the rug is constantly being pulled under

00:28:11.780 out from under our feet i think we're all having to pivot a lot now right a little bit a lot we all

00:28:17.960 have to recognize that you know we we all have to carry this bulky board which is our tools which

00:28:24.860 is what we've learned over our lives and we're always considering pushing out into the dark

00:28:29.560 waters of yet another form of the unknown and surfing the wave is about developing cultivating

00:28:35.920 the muscle to do that and to recognize that you know you're only going out into the water well

00:28:40.440 two reasons sometimes we go out into the water because we're running away from what's on the

00:28:43.880 shore which is the shores of what we already know and what we can't stomach anymore about those

00:28:49.480 shores and sometimes we're going out because it's not that we don't we really comes the place of

00:28:54.140 feeling unsafe or really uncomfortable where we are. It's just that we believe that there's a

00:28:59.660 wave that we just want to experience writing. And surfing the wave is like, is that, is that

00:29:04.640 recognizing that there's joy in facing that, that fear and then chasing that thing that calls you.

00:29:11.080 And yeah, there's a whole chapter about what I've learned about, about moving from being a teacher

00:29:16.500 to joining a university faculty, to launching that first company, to the second, to moving into VP

00:29:22.220 roles and larger corporations and it's always been for me that mixture of like i don't know joe

00:29:28.280 is it time for me to leave because i don't want to be here anymore or is there some new adventure

00:29:32.540 that's calling me and how do you how do you know i think that is a really hard thing for me i trust

00:29:38.740 my gut like i'm a big gut truster but how do you know i think it's it is that it's and gut is like

00:29:47.520 one way of describing it for me I think the word word is spirit and oh yeah I've heard you I've

00:29:52.380 heard you say this before yeah yeah and I think for me spirit is the voice that says I feel like

00:29:57.500 I'm in this this is probably always been my actually my my due north I always try to listen

00:30:02.400 to where spirit is asking me to go and be of service and that doesn't mean that service means

00:30:07.300 always necessarily self-sacrifice or poverty or struggle it just means showing up and so for me

00:30:14.380 I try to listen to where is there an opportunity for me to be put in the game by a larger coach

00:30:20.920 that's telling me that I have the talents to move something forward. And I think I try to

00:30:27.440 listen to that. I discovered in nature, I discovered in art museums and creative spaces

00:30:33.180 and through journaling. And I try to be open to what Spear is telling me to do next.

00:30:38.480 yeah yeah I yeah well well and I think it's that openness that matters right so it's listening

00:30:48.720 it's being being ready to hear it or to feel it you know to hear it if it's spirit to feel it if

00:30:56.180 it's your gut and then trusting trusting that that that that you are being led in the right

00:31:01.740 direction I think it is a lot of trust it is a hard thing to have it is and I think too for me

00:31:07.180 sometimes it's realizing when an environment hasn't stopped offering me anything. Like when

00:31:13.100 it gets to the point where it's like, oh, I offer a lot to this environment, but this environment

00:31:17.260 doesn't offer me. And it's not reciprocal in that way. That's where I get that. When the math starts

00:31:22.940 to math against that, that's a signal that it's time for me to go. Yeah. And that's not selfish.

00:31:27.620 And I think a lot of women think that that is selfish because, you know, a lot of us do have

00:31:33.440 kind of a martyr complex and we have to do the math that way and say is this serving me is this

00:31:40.700 serving the purpose that I'm trying to move towards yes and that takes a lot of courage

00:31:47.380 so much courage so much courage what is the most important thing that you think you've learned

00:31:54.540 from a massive failure oh wow just see i just like we just we just we just we just workshop

00:32:03.260 life here massive failures wow um it doesn't it doesn't have to be a massive no no no no

00:32:10.780 something that didn't work out yeah i'm here for it i'm here for it i i'm not afraid

00:32:15.080 i just had to process it um i think the personal side one massive failure might have been

00:32:25.200 you know not not listening to someone when they told me their own assessment about what they

00:32:32.720 couldn't do because i i wanted to believe that they could do more than they that they believe

00:32:37.000 that they could do massive milk you know like when people tell you not even my angela says

00:32:43.160 When they tell you who they are, believe them the first time.

00:32:45.160 Yes.

00:32:45.620 And when they tell you what they can't do, accept that.

00:32:49.860 Believe them.

00:32:50.760 Believe them.

00:32:51.160 Because they know.

00:32:52.560 Because most people know best.

00:32:54.720 Yeah, for themselves.

00:32:55.860 Even when, like, you know, this is the teacher in me where it's like, no, but if you just do one more draft, if you just edit it one more time, it'll get better.

00:33:03.600 And sometimes it's like, no, I don't have any more words.

00:33:06.960 I don't have anything.

00:33:08.080 I have nothing to offer.

00:33:09.120 And I think it's hard for us to accept that.

00:33:10.500 so that's been a failure just like not letting not letting other people's truths just just be

00:33:16.780 what they are even when they're not the truth that I want them to be and then I think on the

00:33:21.780 professional side I think one thing I was just reading about this just very like a headline is

00:33:29.400 is like I am not afraid to surf but sometimes we I haven't always picked up my board quickly enough

00:33:35.320 and that's just about like knowing when it's when it's the timing of the pivot it's not there's one

00:33:40.160 thing to say i'm willing to pivot it's another thing to learn about how to how to time the pivot

00:33:45.220 yeah yeah exactly exactly you're making me want to watch point break right now

00:33:50.560 it was on it was on when i was in the hospital and i was so loaded on drugs

00:33:55.840 come on keanu reeves and patrick and patrick sways i've never seen it actually well i'm like

00:34:03.020 i i clearly i know what you're referencing totally i mean it's just so many abs just a

00:34:07.780 lot of rock hard abs is what it is yeah and some good I mean some really truly excellent surfing

00:34:13.800 metaphors to be honest okay I'm gonna write down point break we're gonna put that new show notes

00:34:18.420 yeah it's weird it's it's a weird movie but uh but special in its it's very particular 80s 90s

00:34:25.820 way it was a time it was a time it was a vibe totally totally well I I love build it boldly

00:34:34.100 it's one of those books that i'm prescribing for people what am i not asking you right now

00:34:39.100 um maybe what i hope people get out of it tell me what you hope people get out of it

00:34:45.620 i think i hope my hope for the offering which is i think the beauty of literature of art is

00:34:52.220 just an offering that this offering gives people who are navigating the recalibration of their

00:34:59.280 lives in the direction of something that feels inspiring. Both a vulnerable take on the deep

00:35:06.960 kind of self-analysis that can be so helpful in setting your compass. And then some concrete

00:35:13.560 advice in terms of the step-by-step, some helpful execution strategies for how to move from maybe

00:35:23.140 the life you've built and that something tells you is not quite the life that you should continue

00:35:28.680 on with and how to imagine building something that is a different expression of your awareness

00:35:37.940 and concern for the state of our country, the state of your neighborhood, the state of people

00:35:44.160 who look like you, who feel like you. I hope it encourages them to tune into that voice and to

00:35:51.420 show up at that front line because of all the things I think we need right now is we need more

00:35:57.620 more everyday common heroes. And I hope that this book inspires the readers to figure out how their

00:36:04.120 lives will be a part of the solution in the ways that they feel most, most, most inspired and, and,

00:36:10.980 and excited to be. More everyday common heroes. Listen, let's put that on a t-shirt.

00:36:18.760 That's all we need. We need more everyday common heroes. We do. We do. No one all souped up. We

00:36:24.120 We don't need super common heroes.

00:36:26.120 No, we don't.

00:36:26.840 No self-important common, no self-important heroes.

00:36:29.740 We need regular people.

00:36:31.220 Regular people doing the work.

00:36:33.080 Doing on themselves and offering those lessons to the creation of something that stands in service of other people on the planet.

00:36:43.160 I love that.

00:36:44.460 Thank you for being here today.

00:36:45.980 Thank you so much for having me, Jo.

00:36:48.340 You're so incredible.

00:36:49.380 You're incredible.

00:36:50.860 And that is all we have for today.

00:36:51.920 thank you so much for joining us. I loved having you here. Go do something nice for yourself. If

00:36:57.780 you can manage it, do something nice for someone else too. And have a wonderful, wonderful day.

00:37:03.420 I made up my mind. I'm not going to frolic in the snow. I'm going to crawl right into bed.

00:37:08.220 And you should too.

00:37:21.920 We'll see you next time.

00:37:51.920 You

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 11, 2025

How to Be a Good Person in the World

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