Changing the Rules

Guest Co-host:  Kris Parsons:  [email protected]

Kris' Website:  https://parsons-pr.com/

Podcast Guest: Sharon McCullough

Sharon's Website:  http://www.expertevents.com/

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:03

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:17

Good morning, everybody. And today we have Kristine Parsons and myself in the studio. Yay in wildfire podcast, Emporium I think it is in scenic Woodbury, New Jersey, and we're going to bring in our special guest Sharon McCullough in a little bit. But let's, we're talking about changing the rules. So, you know, one of the things that we found out, especially during this COVID thing is we've had even more rules thrust upon us. And we've seen, you know, what happens when people throw rules at people? I mean, you get rebellions, you get people, uprising on airplanes, and all kinds of other things. You know, and I think this brings to a point to bear that rules for the sake of rules, can cause all kinds of issues that maybe we don't want them to have. But we do all need rules. And we have choices here. We can pick those rules that give us the guidance to design our lives the way we want to design them, and the luckiest people in the world here do that. And we have another one of those luckiest people in the world. We're bringing your back, Sharon McCullough, we interviewed her a couple months ago. Yeah, but let me introduce Kris Parsons. Kris is on Parsons, PR and she pushes around our PR system the whole like she's supposed to. I brand you, I brand you. Yeah. And talk a little bit about our guest Kris and where we are going today.

Kris Parsons01:51

I will.  Well Sharon, welcome back. We're happy to see you again. Oh, Sharon is a good friend of mine and also a business partner. She and I do a lot of events together. We have some wonderful stories of big fundraisers, we've done in places we've gone. So both of us kind of had a  you know, put the brakes on our heels when everything got canceled for COVID. So, but Sharon is the president and CEO of expert events. I like to say that Sharon is an expert in eliminating boredom because she leaves people who attend her events feeling like they had the most fun evening and that the evening didn't last a lifetime. She is often her events have reflected in higher donations, repeat attendance, and a program that accurately and effectively speaks to what the organization's mission is. So Sharon is the real deal. She found that expert events and what is it 1992 Sharon. And that was after years at the University of Pennsylvania where she spearheaded their key fundraising events such as their 25th 250th-anniversary campaign and alumni homecoming. So she focuses specifically on academic and nonprofit institutions because of her unique experience understanding them, combining the mission and messaging to best engage constituents. In addition, though, and this has been very prevalent during this pandemic time, she provides her clients with the strategic evaluations of existing in house operations to help them streamline efforts with staffing, budgeting, logistical recommendations, because you know, now when you can't do any events is the best time to really re-evaluate and decide if you're doing the right thing. So Sharon, how about you start talking, and tell us a little bit about what you do and how you as a luckiest person in the world because you are one have pivoted, and you're doing things a little differently. Now, since we've had to kind of cut back on a lot of the events.

Sharon McCullough  03:51

Well, it was a very, very sharp halt. In 2020. The previous fall, I had had eight major events over the course of two months in five different states. So I was running as fast as I could and then all of a sudden there was nothing except getting through the cancellation of and re-booking of contracts for everything that was canceling for the spring of 2020. And then we went through that again, for the folks that had rescheduled for 2021. We still couldn't do it. So we were evaluated and there was another addendum of the contracts. So that was what I was supplying my current clients with was the expertise of looking at those documents and trying to make sure that clauses for future health related issues. There's something called the force majeure clause in a contract that you know if there's a hurricane or a labor strike or Terrorism got added after 911. But there really wasn't anything that related to something like COVID, to make sure those addendums was those were written in so that if we came up against it again, we could have, once again, get out of it, or finally get our money back from the deposits that had been that have been made, instead of just continuing to let the sites hold the money for another year. Because the organizations could certainly make good use of that in some other way or for their virtual events. So we did do a few events that, you know, some of the clients that were forward-thinking enough to kind of get a grasp on how to move into a more virtual realm for their events. And, you know, we've saw across the board, a lot of difference in how people approach that and trying to get work with clients to understand that, you know, the event was not going to necessarily be a whole lot less expensive, you would just allocate the budget lines a little differently, that, you know, you may not have a catering line, but your AV and tech support would probably be higher than an in-person event. So we did a lot of consultation, a lot of talking with our clients. But what I finally pivoted to do was to take a look at and I took a couple stabs at this because it was hard to tell when it was best to market it. I've done it twice for other organizations where we just jump in and interview everybody that moves in the organization or has done anything event-related, or even people who had rented space at a client for their own events and how they got through the system of being able to do that specifically University-related that was something that I have done for Pace University, where we just completely re-evaluated how their events program was instituted. And we did the same thing for the Inova health system in Northern Virginia. And it's particularly useful for, you know, well, two or two types of organizations, one large organizations like that, that have multiple locations, and Nova had five hospitals and pace had four different campuses, and how they were managing their events, in addition to how they were focused on, you know, what was important for getting those done. So in looking at coming back from COVID, what I have been working with, I just went back through my list of you know, all my former clients and said, Hey, you know, you're coming back to be able to do this. And basically, the worst thing people could do would just be to say, Well, hey, we've always done it this way. So we're just gonna jump right back in and do it again. So we're trying to help organizations really evaluate. And in many instances, I mean, it sounds counterproductive to running an event business. But in many instances, my first advice is, you're doing way too many events. Just you're getting into the same pockets for their money and even more important, their time. You're asking them to participate in too many things, and maybe a combination of events, a total retooling? Did you budget correctly, you know, all of those kind of analyses that lots of people make the mistake of once the events over, the follow up doesn't get done all that well. And they never really evaluate how successful they really were.

Ray Loewe08:55

You know, can we back up a little bit here, because I so much has changed here. And let's talk a little bit about your normal group that you service first, which are nonprofits and educational events. Right. So what are the kinds of boards and staff that you're dealing with here? These are boards are voluntary in a lot of cases. Right. Right. Well, almost and not particularly experienced and not particularly thinking about these things, other than the fact that this is the way we've always done it. Right? 

Kris Parsons09:34

Which is counterproductive to changing the rules, right?

Ray Loewe09:36

Yeah. Okay. And, so now, not only have you had this, stop, put on things, but we've already started, we started but we started differently. So this whole concept of technology has come into play. That wasn't there before. That again, the people that you're working with, don't know necessarily have a lot of background in. Okay. And yet, this is a wonderful tool, I would think in those events where you actually brought in technology, how would you describe the way the events came?

Sharon McCullough  10:15

Well, the biggest thing that we did with that was for an organization out of South Carolina, and it was what was dubbed in, you know, I'm not sure hybrid event is totally correct, because as we move forward, that term will be used more to indicate an audience and a live event, supplemented with a stream of, uh, you know, streaming that out what we did in South Carolina, there wasn't an audience with the live event, but we set up two shooting studios, we had some live things going on. And it was a three-day conference. And there are now dozens, probably, of what are called platforms for doing a virtual event. And one was chosen by our client before we got on board. And it was a lot of ramp up because every one of them's a little different to all the pieces that we as the planners had to do. For the setup, there had to be, you know, all the speakers got put into one thing, and then that went up on an agenda. And everybody got to launch in and literally create their own conference agenda for themselves. And walk through that and everything that was live in their offices, we made it like walking into the ballroom for the keynotes. Because you literally went back to that segment, every time there were going to be MC announcements. So we had a live segment. And then the platform supported panels, and individual keynotes, some of which were pre-recorded and sent to us. And we could control those. Everything else went through a platform. And we had a speaker from Germany, we had a speaker from Switzerland we had, and people just tapped in the audience tapped in. We had probably seven or 800 people virtually, and generally, the conference live had about 250 people prior to that.

Ray Loewe12:28

So you can do all of these things virtually. And I would think that from the standpoint of an attendee Wow, my cost just went way down.

Sharon McCullough  12:41

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna be the biggest challenge of relaunching, especially I think, for conferences, sure, you know, the local nonprofit that it's their gala fundraiser, Yeah could you join virtually and not have to get all dressed up. Yeah. And people will still do that. But I think that format for a gala, got a little tired over the course of 18 months. So you know,

Kris Parsons13:12

People still like to be in person.

Sharon McCullough  13:16

Ray's is good one that if I'm going to travel to Texas for a conference, I'm not only paying the conference fee, I'm paying an airline ticket, I'm paying for a hotel. And if I only get by within a conference fee, I can stay right at home. I think that those are going to be the hardest things to reboot up to live events. 

Ray Loewe13:38

Especially if you can create an aura with good technology, right? But that makes it tolerable, okay? Because now you've got some real savings so I kind of see where you're going right now. So what's happening from your perspective is you got all of these potential clients, all these past clients who haven't been able to do what they wanted to do their way. Okay, and the first job is smacking them across the face of a couple times and saying, get over this, because we have something new here.

Kris Parsons14:13

That's better, that's actually better.

Ray Loewe14:14

That's often better. And, it can integrate, you know, in-person and virtual events, and you have the ability to do things that you never had a chance to do before. But you got to plan differently. Right.

Sharon McCullough  14:30

You do.  And then the other benefit is, is it really does allow organizations to get a bigger reach on their geographic range, because people you know, even a local event, you know if you're out in the burbs in Philly, you may not want to drive downtown at night Park, do all that stuff to go to the event. I mean, they could increase their audience by you know, pretty decent percentage. And that's the Difference Between now and say, I don't know, eight or 10 years ago, because people would videotape their events and then make that available. people watched it, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But now, you know, with live streaming at those events, the people in the room have the same experience that they've ever had. But if you attend virtually, you're doing it in real-time. And I think that also makes a difference.

Ray Loewe15:29

So here we are, we're at what we thought the end of COVID. Right. And now we have no clue as to what the end of this thing is, right? And people have to plan events. I mean, one of the things that are nonprofit has to do is they can't stop doing this stuff, right? They need the fundraising. Yeah, cuz they've got you got to support the staff, you got to do all of these things. So now the thinking is different. And what you're bringing to the table, I think, is this wealth of experience in the ability to help people analyze, where they should go, am I correct? And maybe how they should go there? And should we be doing more virtual things? Shall we? You know, hold back, I noticed you said earlier, maybe we do less events and we do them differently. So all this thinking comes into play. So how does an organization with limited staff and a nonprofit board of volunteers do this?

Kris Parsons16:34

They hire Sharon.

Ray Loewe16:37

We set you up on that one Sharon

Sharon McCullough  16:40

that, you know, people are starting to think a little more strategically. And that is, it's going to make a difference. And the scary part is for me, I have a conversation with the client this afternoon. Because their event is supposed to be in October. And, you know, when the how much further do we watch what's happening? And I think, you know, some, but we've got to be able to know when to pivot, again, using that word, since they were going to live stream the event and have a live audience as well. When do we pivot to totally, totally virtual, if things go downhill again when we hit the fall. So that's a conversation that I also have to have with a few people, I had a conference that's been postponed twice, that's going to be an international conference up in Rhode Island. And they've just resurfaced to start talking about doing what we plan to do in 2020 and 2022. And we're gonna, you know, approach it, like we're going to do it, but also have some and that they will hit a point. And I think people really do need to think about this, that if they have just postponed and postponed again, and not taken up that virtual baton, that they're going to have to do it because they're totally losing connection to us.

Kris Parsons18:18

The longer you are not connecting. And that's another thing I think you and I talked about Sharon, how people even though this, everything came to a complete standstill, you don't stop communicating, you have to keep communicating, you have to keep, you know, keeping your constituents abreast of what's going on. And you're still going and we you and I actually experienced that where some of our clients just stop talking. And we're like, you got to go back and talk to them. Tell them that this is what our plans are, we're doing this and we're doing that, and still keep talking about the mission. So I mean, I think honestly, in a time like this, the communication is more, not less. So. And that's why we were so happy that you participated a lot in our, our virtual things that we had, we had the virtual coffee hour and cocktail hour, because that was how you and I networked and got out and connected with people.

Ray Loewe19:07

You know, the thing is, still has to happen. And I think you brought this up this, this concept of a podcast, which is one way, okay. You know, we're sitting here, we're deciding what information we're distributing and the people that are listening, it can't communicate back, okay. And there's this element that has to be there. We do it with coffee and cocktail hours, where we have small groups of people that can sit down and we actually can have a conversation because you can't get rid of the conversation today. Right. So let me we're getting near the end of our time, unfortunately. And I want to kind of summarize a couple things. So we met first at the beginning of this COVID thing when all of a sudden you guys canceled. I don't know how many live events within like a couple of weeks of this thing. Right? And then all of a sudden everybody kind of drew in their horns, you know, and they sat there and said, Okay, what do we do and nobody did much of anything for a while. And then we came up with this whole concept of the virtual conference, the virtual ability to communicate. And now we find that's being overdone. And if you don't do it right, it's boring and you don't get the results that you want to get. And now we're coming up with maybe a hybrid conference in the future, and maybe we don't know when. So the importance of a coach or consultant here, I think is critical to this kind of a business. And I think what they really have to do is have the plan with the right clauses and the contingency plan. At least that's what I got out of this conversation. So am I on the right track?

Kris Parsons20:51

Well, what's interesting, I didn't even know some, you know, I didn't even know some of these clauses are important. I mean, Sharon, Sharon is very good at making sure people don't lose lots of money. You know, because when you sign a contract, you're signing a lot of money away. Oh, yeah. And knowing these clauses, I mean, these are some of the little sneaky details that like you said, Sharon, some of the people on the board Don't even think about don't know, don't have any idea. And yes, more than ever, I think you need an X, you need an expert events. You need someone who understands that so you get rid of some of the headaches. 

Ray Loewe21:21

So how do we find you, Sharon? You got a website? I do expertevents.com. Okay. And we'll make sure we put that with our podcasting notes. And one of the things that we ought to do is we ought to schedule you for one of our cocktail hours so that people who listen to this thing can actually have a conversation with you, you know, and it's always good to see you anyway. Yeah. Well, okay, so we're

21:50

Burn wood and make an old fashion to do it.

Kris Parsons21:56

Sure. Yeah, Sharon came to one of our cocktails where we actually made a cocktail. And then Sharon, didn't you and your husband ended up making it at home? You had a great time?

Ray Loewe22:07

We did. So we're done. We're at the end of our time. So, any last-minute questions or comments from you?

Kris Parsons22:14

Know, just that, glad to have you on Sharon. And it's fascinating to see how you're, you're kind of its events, post-pandemic, and we appreciate you coming to our coffee and cocktail hours. So we can all keep the conversations going. Yeah, you

Ray Loewe22:27

know, and you and you prove a point to our listeners. And the point is that you know, people that have that focus on what they want to do find a way to get it done. And it's never easy, is it? never easy. And there's always, always a COVID of some kind out there. Some kind of pandemic and what you got to do is you got to understand that pivoting is part of the nature of the game, and that the luckiest people in the world do design their own lives, but that life changes periodically, and it changes because life changes. So you know, thank you so much for being with us again. You're always a joy to be with and to spend time with and you're always motivating. Yes. So I really enjoyed being with you. Great. So everybody. Have a great day. A great weekend. We'll see you all next week with some new exciting guests.

Kris Parsons23:24

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host of Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Guest Co-host:  Kris Parsons:  [email protected]

Kris' website:  https://parsons-pr.com/

Podcast Guest:  Will Becker:  [email protected]

Transcription:  

Kris Parsons00:02

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:16

This is your lively host you know I'm not sure how lively I am this morning, but we're here in our wonderful podcast studio in Woodbury, New Jersey wildfire podcast. And we're here with our engineer Taylor. And we're here with our two guests, our co-host, Kris Parsons, who will introduce in a minute, and Will Becker, the famous Will Becker, by the way, okay. And let me remind you of what we're all about to start with we call our podcast, changing the rules. And it's because we have too many rules in life, and rules tend to get in the way and when we're obeying all the rules we're living somebody else's life. Okay. So the key is to be able to sift and sort through the rules and make them work for us. And when we do that, we get the freedom to live our own life. And we're talking about the luckiest people in the world that do that. Because when you're able to live your own life, you feel lucky, you feel happy, you know, things tend to go well, it's not the simplest thing in the world. There's some struggles that go on in here. And we have a new book coming out, which we're going to announce shortly. It's guess what it's called the luckiest people in the world, you know, and we talk some somewhat in the air about the mindsets, the luckiest people in the world have. And today, you're going to see one particularly come forward. And that is that we all have a personal brand. And the luckiest people in the world know who they are. And they know how they show up with that brand. And once they do that, they're able to tweak it, they're able to make that part of life work for them. And life gets better and better and better. So kris Parsons, Parsons, PR? Yes, I got that. Right. That right? I should we've known each other for how long? It's been about at least four years, maybe at least. Oh, it's not 400. It's only four?

Kris Parsons02:19

only four.

Ray Loewe02:20

only four. And Kris is our co-host this month, she also is our PR person. And Kris, why don't you introduce yourself and then introduce our guest?

Kris Parsons02:30

I will. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. Yes, I'm excited to I actually got a chance to read the book The draft, first-time last night. So I'm very excited. It's a wonderful book. It's a great. It's a great guide and a lot of exciting, interesting stories. So well. Will Becker, Will Becker is a friend of mine his family, we've been friends. We've been friends for more than four years, right? Probably 10-15. I don't know. Yeah. closer to 15. At this point, yeah, we do it by our kids, right. And when our kids get older, 

Ray Loewe02:56

You're getting me jealous. There's another man in your life?

Kris Parsons02:59

There's another man, I'm sorry. And including my husband's Oh, okay. But that's neither here nor there. Anyway, Will, we are good friends, but also Will is a wonderful professional. He's an IT professional. He's in the financial services and insurance industry. And he focuses on business and quality assurance analysis. He has been employed at Aqua soft for the past three years. And he leads the business analysis team for them. It's a big team for the US region. Now, Will was introduced to Ray about, I don't know, maybe two years ago, a year and a half ago, when he was in transition your 15 years working for other insurance carriers, right. And then this was before he joined Aqua soft. He took one of Ray's courses. And that's available on our website. Right, Ray? Yes, ma'am. Okay, and he says it changed the course of his career by helping him see a different side of himself. And that side proved to be the one that landed in this region, his job at Aqua soft, which is exciting. So we want to hear about that story Will, how about you tell us a little bit about what course you took? And what did it say about yourself that was very insightful to you? Yeah.

Will Becker04:10

Great. Thanks, Kris. Good morning. Good morning, Ray. Thanks for having me back. Good morning. It's nice to see you after three, three years. So it's not like

Kris Parsons04:19

And COVID where we've been virtually seeing each other, right?

Will Becker04:21

Yes. So yeah, so I can give you a little background of how I met Ray. And when I was going through transition, I was probably out of work, three, four months, trying to find my next position after 15 years working for the same company. And as I did that, I struggled to figure out like your term right brand, trying to figure out who I am and who I wanted to be and my next phase of a career, and I took the courses that Ray offered started with the Kolbe A and learned some more data analytics way of looking at myself. And I transitioned over to the second phase of that was a unique ability test and That really opened my eyes to trying to figure out who I am and where I want to be. I was struggling a little bit in trying to figure out what jobs to apply for. Is this really the position I want long-term I wasn't looking to job hop. And the unique ability really opened my eyes to internalize what I am as a person, what I am as an employee when I am as a leader to other people that work for the company I work at, and where I was wanting to go. And it really steered me in a direction where I was able to take a position at Aqua soft because it felt right to my brand and who I am, as I learned through the unique ability,

Ray Loewe05:39

You know you made a statement that I absolutely love. And that is you want it to be the same Will at home, as you are at the office. 

Will Becker05:48

Yeah, Ray. That's probably the biggest eye-opener I had. And it's a simple way of describing my view of life. And how you helped me bridge that. 

Ray Loewe05:57

You know let's go back a little bit. I mean, it because I remember when we started having our first conversations, and you're like a whole lot of other people, you know, you're between jobs, and you let go for whatever reason, and usually has nothing to do with you. It has to do with corporate downsizing, or somebody changed their mind somewhere. And you've got to feel like you're under tremendous pressure. And the pressure is to conform to the rules. The rules, say, you know, I got to go out and get a job, and I don't care what job it is, I just got to get a job. So I got money putting on the table. And you know, it's one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of people make. And sometimes it's what you have to do. But when you have the luxury of finding out who you are. And you know, can you talk a little bit about how your job interviews changed, once you all of a sudden realized the Will you want to combine Will, the home Will, and the business Will.

Will Becker06:57

So I'll tell you that the biggest lesson I learned was being when you're the home person, it's you are at work, you become the natural person of who you are at work. And so you've become very genuine in the interview process. And so when I struggled with when I was before that I would go to an interview. And I think I was giving them the answer I needed to provide to get the position. And what I realized was once I wanted to be the same person at home as I am at work, and I figured out what that meant to me and how to describe that and influence. People during the interview. The interview became a conversation, right? There wasn't enough time to continue the dialogue, we flowed, there was no boundaries to the question and answer it, was tell me about who you are. And two hours later, I look up and they're making an offer because it felt natural. I knew on my side of the equation that it was the right home for me to go to at least explore its long-term career for me. And for them, it was an easy no-brainer, because I made it easy on them to see the value that I could bring to the table. Yep.

Ray Loewe07:57

So now you're part of an organization and you're obviously doing your thing and making huge contributions. Because I think you told me when you entered your employee number 364. We're up to 750. Yeah. And doesn't it feel great to be part of a growing organization where you fit?

Will Becker08:17

Yeah, that's the most exciting piece of it is that you get two things with that one, you get to be part of the success, but you also get to influence the success. And that was what keeps me excited about going to work every day.

Ray Loewe08:29

Okay, so you made another revelation during our pre-interview, which I thought was unbelievable. And let me just bring up the boss that didn't like me. Oh, yeah.

Will Becker08:41

No, I think she just didn't understand me. And I think that's probably most people go through that challenge is trying to fit into an organization that was small and growing. So there's a core group of associates to just know each other and they just do what they need. And then you have those that are trying to inject themselves into that environment. And it's a challenge. So I had this boss who was on a project for a good six months, and I felt I was doing the right things struggling as a new employee. But in the end, I learned to find out pretty quickly that the upper leadership did not like me. I was not delivering their own expectations. And she was very blunt about it to me that she almost hesitated about considering either one letting me go and two never bringing in someone who came from the insurance side. Forget. So that was a rude awakening. I'll tell you, Ray.

Ray Loewe09:30

Yeah, but what happened? What was the end result?

Will Becker09:34

So a patient slid out so I was able to transition to a different project where it took and embraced my natural skills. So the first project I didn't feel like I was being the natural person that I thought I said I would be at the company. And then when I moved to a different client, the reviews and feedback coming from the new client was raving and they've said, Well, maybe I'll take a second look on who you are. And so this boss came to me about two years later, after having hesitancy, and asked me to come in and support a project in Australia. And my role was to come in as a traffic cop and kind of lead them through process reorientation. And it really focuses on how we do things at Aqua soft. And it kind of shocked me right? To be honest, like I was the ambassador for this, after having such a hard start to the horizon, the to delivering the way we deliver. And so what I ended up doing was getting on these calls every night. And at the end of my first week, I was asked to write an email that went all the way up to the CEO of both companies. And she wrote back to me the next day, she goes who is this person? She didn't really she's like, dude, how did I not know you had all this engagement skill in you that you could give a message so eloquently to the client, that she could talk up to the leaders as well as to the people doing the work, and her eyes just opened up. And she's been a big fan of mine ever since. And.

Ray Loewe10:52

Well, that's because you are who you are. And, who you are, is probably pretty good. It seems right.

Kris Parsons10:59

Well, that kind of leads into what we were talking about as well, the perception, right? We have a perception of ourselves, but other people have a perception of us. And sometimes it's good to look outside what you think and find out what did you call that your unique ability? Yes. So tell us that little exercise you did that I think everybody could do I mean, I got to go home and do it myself.

Will Becker11:20

So some of the beauties of Ray's program that I found most useful is the unique ability assessment. And so that was a simple task where Ray asked me to email and write to my 10 closest people that I may know whether they were work associates or friends or family, and ask them the simple question, tell me the one thing that makes me unique to you. And I got all the feedback. And I analyzed it. And I found four to five came back with the same response, which was you help make complex things simple. And that became to I think I like your term, Ray, brand. Yes, your brand, it really helped me keep a perspective, like, this is my value, I've realized I don't have value across everything nobody does. But if I can emphasize one aspect of who I am, to my family, to my friends, and to my employer, is that concept, to keep things simple.

Ray Loewe12:10

Well, you know, you just said something that I want to comment on because it's really important and really interesting. And that is, we aren't the same value to everybody. Exactly. And I think that's really important for us to understand. And you know, when you're looking for a job it's especially important. See if you can match your value to the values that are needed by the organization. If you can take a project that you're on and match your values to those values, then all of a sudden, everything shows up. Great. And when it doesn't it, you're like a fish out of water. And I think that the biggest lesson that you are practicing right now is that you're not afraid to be you because you have confidence that you are a wonderful person, you're you know, I am who I am, you know, you take me for what I am Yes, I'll tweak things a little bit here and there to make things go. And do you speak Australian now?

Will Becker13:12

I can interpret it in my head, but not quite.

Kris Parsons13:15

Well, it also goes to the fact that you were talking about the interview process. I mean, it's true. People even though they have a whole list of job descriptions and qualities and responsibilities, people want to know that they can work with you, people want to know that they can talk to you day in and day out and have a good relationship with you. So it really is a relationship. And like he said it turned into a conversation, right? It wasn't an interview. And then right there people go, yeah, this guy will fit in fine. Right. So so I think that's being your genuine self is what's important. And it's a lot harder than you think, in all of us have done the interviews all of us have gone out and you know, end up trying to conform to what we think they want, when really in actuality we should just really be ourselves. Yeah.

Ray Loewe13:57

I think so too. And so one of the things that you're doing now is I think you find yourself both as a manager and a coach, you want to comment on the relationship there?

Will Becker14:08

Yeah, I think it's actually inseparable, right. So as many times we get managers, I tend to use the term leader. So where I try to influence people is to help people understand that now in my team, but others in the organization is to realize that every day is not going to be easy. Some days are going to be natural, and some aren't. But every time I get a chance where someone comes to me and says it doesn't feel right, I'm having hesitation about either a specific assignment or maybe even the role in the company. I tend to pull them aside and I try to break it down simple for them to listen, you have to look within yourself, kind of coach them to their strengths again, so they can start feeling value, and then give them a path forward on how to overcome and succeed in the areas they don't feel like they're, making great inroads on And to your point of being a coach, there's no boundaries to that. So it doesn't have to be somebody reports to Me, and Ray, I know you didn't plan this, but I got a phone call from another leader this morning at my company, who I have to call after this call to kind of help coach them through some of the struggles, they're going through with the role that they're in now and help them see the light at the end of the tunnel that they'll get there with some guidance.

Ray Loewe15:16

And all those because you're being you.

Will Becker15:20

And that's why they reached out to Ray, to be honest. I mean, they felt that could be a natural delivery of that experience. And I can share the story I shared with you about my initial struggles. In parallel, this person's going through a similar challenge themselves. And it helps people to understand that they're not in it alone, that there is a way to get to the successful end of the road.

Ray Loewe15:38

Cool. So we've kind of talked about where you were, and where do you see yourself going in your company? What do you see yourself doing? How are you going to amplify on all this? I know, that's really an unfair question.

Will Becker15:52

No, it's a good one, because actually, I think now that I've kind of bridged the senior leadership and understand them, understanding who I am and what values I can have, I've been given some internal training. So we're getting some training on leadership that I accept because there's never enough training, right? There's always something you can learn and grow within your company. And it's nice that they're offering it. And the second piece is I've been enjoying this part more being brought in to help coach other leaders at the company. Because I did come with 15 years of management and leadership experience. It just only happens to be about two years where I'm at now. So they're recognizing that experience, and then I can help coach other newer leaders into a more mature leadership style.

Kris Parsons16:33

What you mean, we're not only hiring young people that have one year of experience? Age is really good you mean.

Ray Loewe16:41

Age is a good thing. Age is a good thing. So the next question, let's go off into a different value. You have a couple of kids at home. Okay. So and they're teenagers, I think, right? 

Will Becker16:53

Yeah, 16 and one's 12. So they're okay, they're there.

Ray Loewe16:57

So here you are, you have this whole unique ability thing that you're growing with? How does this translate down into your kids and the advice that you give them? And where are we going? 

Will Becker17:08

Yeah, that's another area Ray where there's no boundary, right? So yeah, the experience that I had going through the unique ability, I've shared it with both my children. So my older son is starting to look at colleges, and he's a junior in high school, and he's having those questions. Where do I go? What do I do, and what I shared with him is you really want to go down that path that makes you most comfortable as a natural fit. So don't try to pick a school that aligns just because that's where they say you should go or it's the cool place to go. Second, is when you're looking at what you want to learn and study, it has to be something you're interested in, you can't be something that's just because it makes money, or that's what the other kids are doing. It has to be you it has to fit you. So I've asked him to start thinking about himself in the same context, I did on the unique ability, so he could do it at a younger age to try to figure out what makes him unique and special to others.

Ray Loewe17:59

Yeah, this is pretty heavy stuff for a 16-year-old. But you know, it works. And I remember going back to our old college money days when what we were doing was helping people get into college and figuring out how to pay for the darn thing. And you know, we found out that there are three kinds of colleges out there. And there's an example that actually makes sense in here. But there are those that are kind of the snotty colleges that set their rules and you don't break the rules okay. There's a whole bunch that are designed for their state colleges that don't have a lot that they can give, you know, again, you play their rules. And there's a whole bunch of colleges in the middle, a lot of them that are really looking for kids who want to be there. And when they find that match, the money comes on the table correct. Okay. And not only does money come on the table, but the whole experience is a better experience. Because you see these kids today dropping out of college and stuff like that. So I think the wisdom that you're imparting to your son over here about figuring out what's really important to you, and you know, you got to understand is going to change. Yeah, you should want to be a fireman.

Will Becker19:13

The easiest part about it isn't because it's such a simple question to ask. kids understand it, and they're a lot smarter than we may give them credit for, and what they want and where they want to go. It's getting it out of them to understand as parents, and I think to us while it seems like a serious topic, but it's a really easy bridge to a simple car ride conversation.

Ray Loewe19:36

Cool, cool. Yeah, we'll bring you in as a counselor to kids now.

Kris Parsons19:42

That chapter of the book.

Ray Loewe19:44

Unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our time here. So Kristine, do you have any last questions you want to ask Will or any comments you want to make?

Kris Parsons19:51

Ah, well, not really, other than if there's any one phrase that you would say to anybody else that wanted to either take one of the courses or get involved with the friend's connection or all the things that are in our luckiest people in the world wheelhouse. What would you say?

Will Becker20:06

I would say start the path down and try to figure out which courses fit you best. I think that's what I learned, you know, I've done some of these analytic ones before, and it was a nice supplement. But it took me the next step to get to the unique ability that really opened my eyes and I live it now going forward, Ray.  It's not just an activity. 

Ray Loewe20:20

And I remember we were starting it was like, twisting arms to get you to take it because you never had enough time. Right? Right. That's right. And this is a really important thing. The good things take time, you have to create time to be one of the luckiest people in the world. And unfortunately, life moves us. Correct. And sometimes it's like a roller coaster, you just don't have any choice. Okay, so any last comments you want to make Will or any final things that you want to say?

Will Becker20:57

I would just like to end it Ray that I appreciate all the work you do for coaching people. I mean, it's hard enough to find good advice, let alone consistent, good advice. And we've now met over three years. And I can say every day I wake up, I get a chance to learn from our engagements when we've had them. And again, it does, it doesn't bet itself. So to anyone that's interested in I do recommend reaching out to Ray

Ray Loewe21:22

Gee, I feel like I have to pat myself on the back. But no, thank you for being you. First of all, thank you for being a guest here and thank you for being an example and there's no question you're going to be successful moving forward, both in your, the Will at work and the Will at home, which by the way is one Will.

Kris Parsons21:42

Same person now.

Ray Loewe21:43

Same person one Will, okay, so, next week, we're going to be back with another great guest and we're going to explore the luckiest people in the world and what they do to make themselves lucky. And everybody have a great day. Thank you much.

Kris Parsons22:00

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Guest Co-host:  Kris Parsons:  [email protected]

Kris' Website:  https://parsons-pr.com/

Podcast Guest:  Ruth Kinsler:  [email protected]

Ruth's Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/mystrokeofluckruthie

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:02

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:16

Good morning, everybody and welcome to our podcasting studios in scenic Woodbury, New Jersey, our engineer, Taylor is manning the controls and keeping us on the straight and narrow. And we're here today with two guests, we have our co-host, Kris Parsons we'll let her talk in a couple of minutes and we're bringing back Ruth Kinsler with an S not a Z okay. And Ruth is going to continue the story that she started with us last time. But let me start a little bit by going back and telling you about why we are doing changing the rules as a podcast. And the reason is that we're cluttered with too many rules in our life. And I think Steve Jobs was one of the people that said, You can't live somebody else's life, you have to live yours and you can't live it if you're following everybody else's rules. You know, most rules were set here because other people wanted to control what we did. Okay? And only when you take those rules and sift and sort through them and figure out how you're going to make them work for you. Do you become free to be you? And you got to remember as we go through this, that being creative here is not about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself. So Kris Parsons and Kris starts this introduction about the liveliest host, and I'm not the liveliest host I'm the most caffeinated.

Kris Parsons01:44

This morning Ray is a little over-caffeinated. That's because our last podcast had a coffee person on it. 

Ray Loewe01:51

Yeah, so Kris introduce yourself. And then I'll let you introduce Ruth with an S, not Z. 

Kri Parsons01:59

Yes. Hi, everyone.  I'm Kris Parsons of Parsons, PR. And I have been with Ray for a while now doing a lot of fun things, exciting things. And it's always an adventure with him. And I'm always thrilled to be working with him because he takes me in many directions. But Ruth, I don't know a lot of you maybe remember maybe a lot of you have because Ruth had the most likes and followers of her podcast. Her podcasts was here about a year ago. She has an amazing story, a very inspirational story. And actually, whenever I'm feeling down in the dumps, I go back and listen to her episode. Ruth was a very active businesswoman. She had a fabulous career, enjoyed life, and traveled to the fullest. She has many friends great family, life was really, really good for Ruth until one day at age 52. Right? Yeah, 52 she was blindsided by a stroke that paralyzed her from her chest down. Having to pivot, right, that if you listen to her story, which is very inspiring, I encourage you to listen to the whole story, it would have been very easy to curl up and give up. But not Ruth. She plowed through rehab and now walked into the studio with me. And she started a new catering career from her experience. And she named it a Stroke of Luck. Talk about a positive way. So I think we brought Ruth back just because we want to hear her story again, but also to see how she has changed a little bit and what has happened in her life since then, and what she finds inspiring, and how do you keep that positive attitude?

Ruth Kinsler03:33

Well, first of all, I just want to thank you both for having me back again. I have to tell you, I went back this week and I listened to some of the previous podcasts and to think that I have or I never thought that I was of that caliber of inspiration. Listening to them?

Ray Loewe03:53

Oh, yes you are.

Ruth Kinsler03:54

I know but just listening to them. It really it struck a chord with me and it you know, it really touched me. So I want to thank you for sort of opening my eyes and letting me realize that I do have a story and I do have the capability to you know, maybe be an inspiration to some.

Kris Parsons04:11

Yes, she's very humble too, she's very humble.

Ray Loewe04:15

Well, okay, I'm sure so lots has happened. So you know, you've had this stroke, you're, you know, in a hospital, you can't move. Uh, you know, your job is not going to be the same. And, you know, you made one quote when we did our pre-interview, let's get that on the table really early. And that is that I don't focus on what I used to be able to do.

Ruth Kinsler04:38

Very, very important. As if I did focus on those things then like Chris said, I would be home curled up in a ball sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself, but that's just not in my makeup.

Ray Loewe04:52

Yeah, and we're gonna steal that quote. probably put it on a coffee mug because I think it's who you are. And, I think some of that comes from your internal makeup, some of that comes because well, it all comes to some extent because of your mindset and your internal makeup but it's because you actually sat down and said, You know, I'm not gonna feel sorry for myself, I'm gonna make some things happen. And that is why you do have a story to tell. So let's go back and talk a little bit about the invention of the company Stroke of Luck, and what happened there and then some of the things that happened during the pandemic, because I think I want listeners to understand that, you know, sometimes you come up with this great idea. And it's really a great idea, it's still a great idea, and it's gonna happen, but things happen that make you pivot constantly. And the luckiest people in the world have this common trait. And that is that they're constantly reinventing themselves because life is constantly changing. Okay. And we have to remember that tell us a little bit about building your bake shop at home, where it's going, what are some of the things that you had to go from there?

Ruth Kinsler06:12

Okay. So, after my incident, it was probably a year, maybe a year after the incident, I realized that I was just not one. I couldn't go back to work. But I still wanted to be doing something that was giving back to others. I was so grateful to the rehabilitation center that forced me and pushed me to work hard to be able to be independent. On my own walking, I walk with one cane, now I went from a wheelchair, went from a bed to a wheelchair, to one cane now. So I'm very, very proud of myself for that. I had to come up with something that I enjoyed doing, I didn't want to do something just because I wanted to stay busy or earn a little extra cash. So I decided I wanted to do something that I loved and that I could help somebody in a way. So I came up with this idea that I loved to cook, I always enjoy cooking, and I was pretty good at it. So I started this business called a Stroke of Luck Catering, basically a lot of baked goods, but I do a lot of comfort foods. And I decided I was going to give a certain percentage of my proceeds back to McGee rehabilitation center. little plug there,

Kris Parsons07:27

they deserved it, they deserve 

Ruth Kinsler07:28

They deserve it for sure. So that's what I did. I started my Facebook account a Stroke of Luck Catering, and I said, you know, all my, some of my proceeds are going to be going back to McGee and I was surprised at how successful it was. Um,

Ray Loewe07:45

Can I stop you for a minute? Because there's another element here that I think we want to get in, you know, the laws were not totally in favor of you doing this were they? They were not. And I and it's changed. 

Ruth Kinsler08:02

Yes just recently, the home bakers Association, made it completely legal for home bakers to sell out of their homes. 

Kris Parsons08:09

There were a lot of home I think there were a lot more people doing things cooking and baking at home during this.

Ray Loewe08:09

So you were very limited when you started, you know because we always comply with the law. Right? Exactly. Change the rules to comply with the law. And okay, so that's one of the positive things that occurred in the world out of this mess that we had. Okay, so. You know, and what do you do? You

Ruth Kinsler08:34

It's unfortunate because when you are a baker at home, you're not allowed to as clean as you are. And as much as you follow the rules, you're still not allowed to sell your items at markets. What do you call those things?

Ray Loewe08:49

a flea market or farmer's market farmers

Ruth Kinsler08:51

I had a brain fart there. Farmers markets and stores, local stores in your community, you know, you're just sort of limited to a friend's family. You keep your money down your, costs down close to your you know your sell price close to your expenses, then you have to consider the proceeds that I give away. So I had to be very, very careful about how I ran the business. 

Ray Loewe09:15

Okay, so now you're more free than you used to be. But there were some other things that happened in yours. Oh, tell us a verse of the story.

Ruth Kinsler09:22

Well, after your mean with COVID

Ray Loewe09:25

Yeah, well, the whole idea you started with the stroke then we had the bakery then we had COVID.

Ruth Kinsler09:35

And I tell you like like your last guest. I mean, it really slowed down. People were very, very fearful of any kind of, you know, communication, especially purchasing food from somebody that they didn't know or from somebody you know, somebody whose kitchen so for a while it was a little tough there and you know, people would say just put it on the front step and I'll leave you money in the mailbox or You know, people were pretty scared and then eventually got really, really slow. So again, once again, I was sitting around and thinking, this isn't for me. I continue to post things and try to market myself but I decided to take a part-time job. And I am currently also doing my bakery but working in a nursing facility, assisted living facility doing part-time and I absolutely love it. I love the seniors. I love the fact that they're faster than me.

Ray Loewe10:31

Us old people do okay, you know.

Ruth Kinsler10:33

They do they amaze me. And, you know, they inspire me.

Ray Loewe10:38

So here you are you had to do another pivot in here. Okay. And this is important, because, you know, too many people say, you know, I'm going to start my bakery. Okay, it's not working. So I failed. And that's not true at all. No, not at all. Not at all. And it just means that you have to do some tweaking, change the rules a little bit, you know, make them work for you. And now not only are you back baking, but you're also doing something else that you love to and.

Ruth Kinsler11:07

And I also bake and bring it in and I treat them to all my cupcakes and my goodies. Oh, yeah. No, they love you. And it just keeps me It keeps me motivated. It keeps me you know, doing learning. I'm still learning making new recipes. And I try it out on my coworkers and the residents and they love it.

Ray Loewe11:24

Okay, so where is all of this taking you? Do you think?

Ruth Kinsler11:28

I'm not sure, Ray? I mean, that's the honest answer. I'm looking forward to the fall because menus change in the fall. soups are one of my number one seller, so I'm really looking forward to changing things up and really pushing that aspect of it. I'm doing my very first catering job for 40 people on Saturday, since the pandemic. So things will continue to peak. Right. You know, we pray that that happens. But I'm still continuing to I'm going to continue to work part-time and get the enjoyment out of the elders and the seniors at the resident home.

Ray Loewe12:08

Well, that's because you're a multi-dimensional person see. I think let's talk soup for a minute so what's your best soup?

Kris Parsons12:15

Ray loves to eat.

Ray Loewe12:18

And I love soup and you know, soups or maligned. You know, they're one of the best foods in the world. 

Ruth Kinsler12:24

They are and it's really one of my favorites to make. My favorite soup is the creamy potato soup. It's the biggest seller. Amazing. Really good. So I do want to apologize because my intention was to bring you in some cupcakes this morning and I got so busy. That it didn't but

Ray Loewe12:44

you know you can look at my waist over here and say hey, yeah. With a soup later on.

Ruth Kinsler12:52

Yes, I promise I'll make that up for you. But I do the potato soup. I do the mini meatball soup. I do a lemon chicken soup. It's I mean, I just try with different things and I have a whole crew that will order my soups every week. You know and I am looking forward to that.

Kris Parsons13:07

And that all comes back to sort of what we're all talking about this whole connection right the COVID got us unconnected. Soap is a great connector soup and salad and soup every it's a comfort food. It helps us people love to talk about it. Love to have it there soup parties. I know people have soup parties. 

Ray Loewe13:24

Oh yeah, they're soups and different breads. And it's a great way to connect. So we need to create a new feature on our coffee on Thursday. Where Ruthie comes on and gives us the soup menu for the day. And all you got to do is to stay on for five minutes. Because if you stay on any longer than that we're all going to drool.

Kris Parsons13:45

And if anybody misbehaves, we say no soup for you,

Ruth Kinsler13:49

right? And all of my soups come with homemade biscuits by the way.

Kris Parsons13:54

Say you better get your order in now.

Ray Loewe13:56

How do we order stuff from you?

Ruth Kinsler13:58

Oh, well, I don't have a web page yet. But I do have a Facebook page is called a Stroke of Luck.

Ray Loewe14:03

Okay. And what is there a menu posted there?

Ruth Kinsler14:06

There's photos. There's pictures of everything that I do. I do take special requests

Ray Loewe14:11

And how far advanced do we have to order?

Ruth Kinsler14:14

Oh, just a week, a couple of days, a couple of days. And by the grace of God, I drive so I can deliver. Oh, cool. Yeah, that's you know, that's one thing that I'm just truly grateful for that I've been given the opportunity to keep moving and that's what I'm planning on doing. 

Ray Loewe14:33

You know, the whole flavor of our show is changing here. Okay, I can't handle all these. Well, the last podcast we did we talked about coffee, right? In an essence with your muffins. Right? We should we're going from like coffee, to muffins, to soup. 

Kris Parsons14:48

Should we change this to a Food Show?

Ray Loewe14:50

Yeah, you know, instead of changing the rules, we'll say changing the menu and we can do this. Okay, so the reincarnation of the Soup Nazi only you're the nice one and the muffin lady and you're going to do this and meanwhile, you're doing some things with seniors. What else have you learned from this process about you?

Ruth Kinsler15:15

I just learned that I'm a fighter. I learned that I'm a fighter and I never thought I was before I just, you know when something like this happens to, you don't have time to think. And if you think too much, then it's going to take you in another direction. You know, you just have to, you have to dig deep. And I'm a spiritual person. I believe that the, you know, the Lord above is the one that gave me my second chance in life and I'm just gonna go with it.

Ray Loewe15:45

Okay, now there are other things you're doing to you know, see most people What did you tell him? Well, let's talk about a supper club. Oh, I took good notes.

Ruth Kinsler16:00

I did. Oh, that's so funny that you remember that? I did. I live in a condominium complex. There's 500 units. And I just felt like I needed to bring the community together, there was so much negativity regarding I don't know if either of you have ever lived in an HOA, but there's just always some negative things. So me and four of the other residents got together, we decided that we were going to host what's called the supper club on the Delaware because we live right on the Delaware River and we overlook this beautiful Yacht Club. So we started doing that we start doing that on Wednesdays, we're going to do it every season, winter, spring, summer, fall. And we just get all of our, all of our residents together, you have great dinner overlooking the beautiful Delaware with your neighbors and your friends, and you're allowed to bring, you know, family outside of the community. So it's just a nice thing for everybody to get to know their neighbors now that it's safe to do people are dying to get out and to communicate and to you know, one on one to actually see faces and feel emotions and

Kris Parsons17:03

and we decided to spread positivity. You know, it says it seems corny sometimes but it really is necessary and when you practice it, practice positivity. It becomes a habit it becomes natural. 

Ray Loewe17:14

Well, I think again, this is part of your story. The story you didn't know you had exactly. But it is your you're a people person, you're out there, you're not going to sit still. Things happen to you. Okay, so what? Okay, you go through it, you do what has to do, and you go on to the next positive thing. I love the supper club. And guess what? The supper club? You can have soup? Oh, yes. You know we get this cold winter day when nobody wants to drive. We'll just do soup, right?

Ruth Kinsler17:46

Our first one was a pasta night and our next one is going to be a good old-fashioned Texas barbecue.

Kris Parsons17:52

We'll see. And that's why I think I like what's happening here with changing the rules and our coffee hours on our cocktail hours. You know, Ruthie he didn't know she had a story she was and I didn't know. And then when she saw how many people liked it and followed her and how we're asking her to do this again. You know, it does build confidence, like wow, I guess I do matter. I have a story. And it's a story that helps others.

Ray Loewe18:12

So you know I can see fortune muffins developing. I like that idea. You know, I've always wanted to write fortune, a fortune cookies. You ever, you know, they're so bad? We have a new forum here. You know, we'll break the muffin apart and out will pop a new fortune for the day.

Ruth Kinsler18:29

how about I make the muffins and you write the fortune? Oh,

Kris Parsons18:33

He's got some good ones. One of my favorite ones of Ray is, Let's just assume I'm right, I'll make everything easier.

Ray Loewe18:42

Okay, so I think we've kind of brought you up to date in terms of what you're doing. Do you have any visions about some of the things that maybe you would like to do now that cropped up out of all of this stuff that's going on?

Ruth Kinsler18:57

Well, I've always always wanted to have my own storefront. And I'm still I'm not backing down from that hope and dream that someday that's what I will do. I love to feed people, I guess you can see the tie in between the supper club, feeding the residents and the seniors at my long-term care facility, and then the Stroke of Luck Catering. So I guess food is something that I'm you know, I'm in love with and I just want to share it with people.

Ray Loewe19:23

So I'm hoping that it has something to do with that. Well, you'll have it there's only so much question you'll have it. It's a question of just when and you know, we learned from the last podcast we did on coffee that reopening coffee shops is it's not quite on time yet. So keep the dream. Keep the basics going. Which you have you know you have. You have your bakery, you've got your system set up. And uh, there's no doubt it'll happen and we'll do a podcast for the grand opening from the storefront Taylor will wheel out his portable podcast, and we'll deal with this. Alright, okay, we're kind of near the end of our time. Why don't we would Kristine make some closing remarks? And then we'll come back to you and let you make some. All right.

Kris Parsons20:14

Yeah, great. Well, it's always fascinating. It's always fascinating to talk to you, Ruth. Ruth is a good friend of mine. But also I get inspired every time I talk to her. So thank you for coming. I know you've been very busy. So this is great. And I want to encourage all the listeners to go back to her podcasts or original one. And you'll see it, they're all listed on the website, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com, long, long website. But still, it's one more theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com. See everything that we have to offer. And please join us, we'd love more people to come because as you can see from people we're interviewing, here, we're getting inspired every day. And we'll get Ruthie to come on coffee someday, and we'll all be able to place soup orders.

Ruth Kinsler20:56

I love that. Thank you so much for having me. I really, really was, I was nervous. I told Kris, I was a little nervous to come back today. Just because, you know, the result of the pandemic really did hit a lot of people really hard.

Ray Loewe21:10

It's so important that you're willing to tell that story because, you know, everybody's been in this thing. And those words together, those of us that bounce back, you know, into say, Okay, I'm going to find a way are going to be here and are going to be happy and the vision will keep going and, you know, again, I want to just come back to these two things. You know, maybe I do have a story. And I think everybody ought to think this way. Yes, I think I think you know, what's the story that you have. And the second and this is really important is I don't focus on what I used to be able to do. And Ruth, thanks for being you. And thanks for being an inspiration to all of us. And muffins and soup. Right? Yeah.

Ruth Kinsler21:53

Thank you both very much.

Ray Loewe21:54

All right, everybody, have a great day. And we'll see you in a week with another great guest.

Guest Co-host:  Kris Parsons:  [email protected]

Kris' website:  https://parsons-pr.com/

Podcast guest:  Jeff Lincoln:  [email protected]

Jeff's website:  https://passeroscoffee.com/

Podcast Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:02

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:16

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to scenic Woodbury, New Jersey. We're here in the wildcast podcasting studios with our engineer Taylor, and he's keeping us straight and honest. And we have a great guest today. A great guest. We are talking to President Lincoln. And we're bringing him well you know, we needed a lot of coffee to get him up and running over here. And that's our subject for the day coffee. And Kris, in her lead into this thing always talks about lively guest. Actually, I'm over-caffeinated.

Kris Parsons00:53

I could tell Yeah, that's because you call it wild cast podcasting, it's wildfire podcasting.

Ray Loewe01:00

So we're gonna let Kris Parsons and Jeff Lincoln talk in a minute. But before that, I have to do a quick introduction. Because we're all about something called changing the rules. And you know, during our lives, everybody always feeds us rules, because they want us to live our lives their way. And it gets to the point where if you really want to be free, and do it your way, you have to figure out how to deal with everybody else's rules. Now we need rules because we have to have some sort of stability in our life. But the idea is that if you sift in sort, you can get your rules. And if you get your rules, you can live your own life, and be one of the luckiest people in the world. So that's what we're all about. And Kristine. Kristine of Parsons PR, why don't you introduce yourself, Kristine is our co-host this month. And during the next Actually, we have three podcasting sessions, which are going to be six podcasts. And Kristine is helping put it together and she will be on-site in the studio helping interview. And these are great people, most of which are longtime friends of hers. So give us a brief introduction on you. And then let's bring in President Lincoln.

Kris Parsons02:19

Yes, thank you. Right, and it's good. It's good to be back. It's good to be back in the studio, talking to you seeing you even though we are a little socially distanced just still. But yeah, it's great. And this month, our focus, we kind of have a theme this month, we're bringing back people that have already been interviewed on changing the rules, they've already done a podcast. So we encourage you to go back to our website, the luckiest people in the world, and find these interviews and hear them again, because they first of all, they sound better the second time. And we're trying to kind of see how the people that we interviewed before how they were changed or how they use some of the tools that we've been giving them with changing the rules podcast with our morning coffee hours and cocktail hours. Actually, Jeff Lincoln has been a big part of our coffee hours. I'm gonna lead right into him. Jeff right now, just so you know. I'll save this in case there's any traffic noise. Jeff is actually on what the turnpike Jeff right now heading to Lake Placid.

Jeff Lincoln03:18

Yeah, highway 87 in the Adirondacks. So

Kris Parsons03:23

there you go. So see how this is how wonderfully committed he is. He's taking time out of his vacation to meet all of you. It's how smart he is.

Ray Loewe03:32

You know, we're sitting in a dingy studio here with fluorescent lighting. True. And he's out in the wilds.

Kris Parsons03:40

Right? That's right. Well, he's right. He's still on the highway in the wild yet. All right. Let's talk coffee. Let's talk coffee. Well, Jeff Lincoln. If you any of you remember from the podcast, he's the founder of Passero's Coffee Roasters. It was founded in 1990. He opened his first shop in suburban train station in Philly. And he's added more. He grew up in northern Northern California and he moved to Philadelphia after falling in love with the Jersey girl who's driving the car right now. Linda Passero, hence the Passero's coffee. So we have had some wonderful talks with Jeff and I think what we want to talk about today is how Passero's Coffee pivoted a little bit. And also how Jeff by participating in some of our events and activities has gotten some more what inspiration, Jeff, you'd say?

Jeff Lincoln04:31

Yeah, definitely. First of all, good to be on with you guys. Ray and Kris? Always, uh, always a pleasure to be in your company. Yeah. You know, do you know Ray, I think in the introduction that people should go back and, and listen to some of the other podcasts. I got to tell you, you know, being on with you guys and seeing other people and hearing other people you know, has been inspiring, during, you know, this is a very challenging year and a half we've all gone through, for my business, it's been really, really hard because I've had most of my retail shops closed during this entire period. And so it  has been one of those times where, you know, hearing and talking to other people and you know, just discussing stuff really helped me as an owner, and, you know, I've been focused so much on retail, because we have three, you know, really busy shops or they used to be busy and soon will be again, we hope. But you know, what do you do? What do you do when your business of 30 years gets kind of stopped in its tracks. And so, you know, changing lives certainly gave me a focus on hearing other people's stories and, you know, discussing stuff on the coffee connection, that I've been on a few different times with those folks. You know, it's just it's been an inspiration to help me kind of develop our online business that we'd never had as well as our wholesale side of our business. 

Ray Loewe06:10

Well, you know, there's an expression that when the tough when the going gets tough, the luckiest people in the world get going.

Kris Parsons06:18

Or they have coffee.

Ray Loewe06:21

And they start by drinking coffee. Right.

Jeff Lincoln06:26

Certainly, I agree.

Kris Parsons06:28

And I know, I think what we did learn, and actually, Ray even took advantage of it was you used this time to focus on your online business, which you already were thinking about. But this gave you a little impetus to kind of strengthen that because everybody was online during this COVID time.

Jeff Lincoln06:45

Yeah, 100%

Ray Loewe06:46

Let me throw out a couple of things that are important. And they'll add to our discussion. So I remember a long ago, we had you were on as our guest for coffee and we're sitting around with a group of, you know, 10, or 12 of us online. And somebody said, Gee, we should do a coffee tasting, I've never been to one. So what Jeff did is he went back into his creative genius, and pulled out a virtual coffee tasting event, right. And I know I took that virtual coffee tasting event. And I did a family event. And I have kind of an eclectic family. I mean, you know, we all like each other, but we don't talk to each other that much. And we did this great coffee thing, which Jeff led, and we shipped out some coffee. And you know, coffee isn't about drinking the stuff that comes from beans. It's about the experience that comes with it. And Jeff, that's what your business has always been. So tell us a little bit more about where you're going to go with some of this stuff and then Kristine, you can introduce our November six thing.

Jeff Lincoln07:55

right? Well, yeah, without a doubt, pre-COVID. You know, we would have not only educational coffee tastings up at our roasting facility in Port Richmond, just north of Center City, Philadelphia. But you know, through some of those discussions, it was like, well, gosh, we're zooming, why don't we do you know, some online coffee tastings for, you know, for different people like yourself Ray, for family events, or for businesses that want to try to bring their people together. And so we've done it that way. There's online at passeroscoffee.com we do have a what's called a coffee adventure tasting kit where people can order that and that takes them actually to a YouTube video that I walk them through a coffee tasting of the coffee that's been delivered to them. So there's a variety of ways we do it. And you know, it's a great way, in this time where we're, you know, not in person as much as we have been to, you know, do something fun, do something different and bring people together. Because coffee is about community.

Ray Loewe09:03

It is. So, let's go back a little bit and we'll recreate trauma in your life and stress, Jeff. So we had this day not too long ago when one day your coffee shops were all open. They were all flourishing. You had your busy, so busy, you couldn't think other than about how to get the coffee made and sold. And then kind of what happened and what went through your head. And then what were some of the corrections that you made as we went and because you're back and you know, maybe you're not back to the extent that you want but things are going to be different and better when you're done, I think

Jeff Lincoln09:48

Well, you know, I've been in the retail side of this business for 30 years. I started when I was very young. I'll just put that out there and You know, we're in downtown Philadelphia commuters in the train station and large buildings. So we had, you know, excellent locations with lots of people and lots of demand. And they were, you know, really busy little cafes, and then boom, you know, we're told, well, we all everybody, were not going to close everything down for two to three weeks. Because that was the plan.

Kris Parsons10:25

Just two to three weeks.

Jeff Lincoln10:27

Yeah, exactly. Here we are 18 plus months later, and, you know, I've got one of my shops has been open for a year and the other one, we just reopened a month ago. And the third one down in Train Station still is not reopened, hopefully, September 7, we'll get that one going again, as well as people, start to return. But this has, this period has allowed me the time to look outside the retail side of this business, and then the online selling coffee online for people at home or businesses and then really focusing more on pushing our great coffee because we really do have amazing organic coffees that we roast, you know, here in Philly to get them out to some restaurants and some other you know, cafes. And so it's given me You know, it really has been an opportunity. That's what you have to, you know, have to do. That's the whole idea of pivot. And, where else can you look to do you know what you're doing, but in a different way?

Kris Parsons11:28

And I'm certainly grateful because it also gave you the time to actually appear on our podcasts, and then get to know this community as well because that has been the problem, people are just so busy, that they don't have the time to be on these different shows to inform others. And then like you said, You've just now been introduced to a new community, the luckiest people in the world community and hopefully, the networking that we've done with you and that actually leads to more brainstorming that we have the beauty of these, not only the podcast but these Thursday morning coffee hours and the Thursday afternoon cocktail hours is it's almost like going to a bar and having the networking that you do normally when you're in business. So we've been doing it very early. And it's a lot cheaper to buy drinks at the bar.

Ray Loewe12:19

So one of the events that Jeff came up with, you know, he kind of badgered us a little bit but on November 6, we're going to create an event and hopefully, it will be live. And guess what, if it won't be live, we'll do in any way and we'll find a way to because that's what we've learned. So we're going to your coffee roasting facilities, kind of explain what we're going to go through Jeff,

Kris Parsons12:44

Where's that again?

Jeff Lincoln12:47

Sure it's again, up in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, it's on 100 years old, old, beautiful brick building. And we've got not only our area where we do our roasting, and you know, I'm gonna tour people through that and kind of explain, you know, the steps of roasting but certainly talk about how coffee is developed and cultivated and what all the hard, hard work that the farmers put in to get really high-quality coffees. And then from there we're actually going to you know, do an actual safe cupping a little different than we had done in the past because of course we can all slurp out of the same cup anymore for safety reasons but it won't take it away you know, that won't change things at all the ideas if we're able to do it in person it'll be just wonderful because you know you when you're tasting coffees side by side you really are able to see the difference in taste the difference between the different coffees because every coffee has a different flavor profile and it's exciting to get people you know excited about wow I can really taste the fruit in this one or the chocolate in that one.

Kris Parsons14:00

You can smell it if we're in person right.

Jeff Lincoln14:02

yeah 100 100%

Ray Loewe14:05

you know, coffee has made a journey in and of itself. I think I remember going back to college. I've always been a big coffee drinker. But the difference was that pre-college it was you know, you just brew a cup of coffee in a pot that was overheated and burned and you slopped in some milk and sugar or whatever it was and you drank it and it wasn't an experience it was just the event of getting hot water and hot fluid into you and becoming caffeinated so that you can study right. right. right. Right and look what's happened and I guess probably go to give Starbucks the biggest chunk of credit just because they promoted it better than anybody else. But a coffee went from 50 cents a cup to what, 4 or $5 a cup and we love paying for it isn't that amazing?

Kris Parsons15:02

It's become an art now. And like now it's that you know, we have wine tastings, we now have coffee tastings. And I just think this is such a clever idea. You know that Ray took advantage of this for Christmas. Well, we've got another Christmas coming up. And what a cool idea to instead of sending, you know, the same old gifts over and over again, send them a coffee basket, and then use that opportunity to talk with your family about the coffee tasting. And it's wonderful and Jeff can be there to break up any family fights.

Ray Loewe15:31

If you've got a big enough family, Jeff will be there, right? But otherwise, you go to the web and the videos are there. But you know, this was amazing. Because here was a kit that went on to every one of my family members, it had three little bags of coffee in it, I believe. They were all different. We did a little homework in advance of we decided who had grinders at home and who needed ground coffee. And then Jeff showed us how to brew it by the cup. Where we did coffee, slurping I love it. Now my mother used to get really mad at me when I slurped my coffee. But with Jeff It's okay. Yeah, right?

Kris Parsons16:11

That's right. it's because you're changing the rules.

Ray Loewe16:17

So this is just a neat kind of thing, you know, and if you've never done a coffee tasting like this, I think the experience is just amazing. Because it gives you an appreciation much more than you can get by just going in and talking to the barista and getting the flavor of the week or whatever it is. And it's helped me appreciate what I used to take for granted like everything else,

Kris Parsons16:42

which is I think, has happened this whole year. Hmm. 

Ray Loewe16:45

So Jeff, any other comments you want to make about your adventure through this whole period of time and focus a little bit on what you're going to change going forward? I know you're going to go back and open the shops, but what are you going to do that's different over and above that?

Jeff Lincoln17:04

Well, on the retail front, you know, we've always been about creating a community, even though we're downtown, the reality is with the commuters, we would see our customers five days a week. So we were able to build up relationships. And that's always been a kind of a keystone of Passero's success and appeal, not only great, you know, locally roasted organic coffees, and so that part isn't going to change. But the idea that a lot of people aren't going to be coming in five days a week anymore. And so, again, trying to get them to, you know, take the coffee home when they're working from home, you know, and either buy it online or buy it at the shop. And so that, you know, it's kind of an extension, take the service home, which we had not really promoted anywhere close to the extent we do now. We've increased the sales space on the shop, it's been open for over a year at Chestnut Street, to really try to promote bean sales and without a doubt, we've seen that side of the business grow. So we'll continue to try to reconnect with our customers, they come back to work, but extend that out to, you know, to sell, to selling beans, to selling coffee tastings, to selling you know, gift baskets and boxes, and all that good stuff to support our customers.

Ray Loewe18:25

So how much have you built up your website, because I know, a lot of people just never really took the time to learn how to brew coffee. I mean, I'm one of the guilty ones, I have my little Keurig at home. And but there's a difference, you know, when you take the time to actually brew stuff and smell the aroma and slow down it changes the whole aura of what coffee is all about. So what are you doing here to help people and then give us your website again, so everybody knows where to go?

Jeff Lincoln18:58

Sure. Well, one thing I believe doesn't matter what your situation is, we as a world have gone through this pandemic. And it is allowed and forced. All of us I believe to kind of reevaluate where we are in our, in our lives, and what we want and it has forced I think most of us to slow down just a little bit I know it has for me. And so you know along with that you hopefully you know, put your head up and look around and see the beautiful You know, birds and trees and tastes the delicious coffee, the great food that someone just made and you know that's really what life should be about is appreciate whatever you're doing at that moment and so, you know, great coffee falls right into that category of starting your morning off, you know, with a smile and wow, that's tasty. You know, instead of just rushing off and downing the cup of coffee to wake up to commute in and, you know, run through your day. So, it you know, it kind of it really helps that a lot of people have that same point of view and, you know, appreciation across the board. And whatever you're doing is I think, hopefully, what we all have taken away from this difficult period. Great.

Ray Loewe20:20

Kristine, we are getting near the end of our time, unfortunately. So do you have any final comments that you want to add? Then we'll let Jeff come back? 

Kris Parsons20:26

Yeah, sure. Well, I just want to thank Jeff for coming back. And, you know, telling us how he was inspired by some of the programs that we have done these past couple months, actually, almost over a year now. And that we hope we've inspired other people to listen and go back to listen to his episode and hear more about that. And we would love everyone to come onto our website, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com. I know, it's long, but it's all one word, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com. And there'll be information about the November 6 event, this will be our first in-person, friends connection event since the pandemic started, and we're still hoping it'll be in person, we're pretty certain it will be. 

Ray Loewe21:11

You know, Jeff, you indicated that you picked up some inspiration. But it goes the other way too. I think every time I get a chance to do one of these podcasts, I get inspired again because I'm looking at the people out there that have to face these issues. And the people we interview are different. Because they don't you know stand in a corner and hide, you know, they actually sit down and dig out the solutions and figure out how they're going to package them and make things happen. And it's the difference between the luckiest people in the world who play by their rules. So thanks again, Jeff, for being one of us. And we appreciate you much.

Kris Parsons21:50

You're one of the club.

Jeff Lincoln21:53

Well, you guys have been an inspiration. And certainly, you know, I do encourage people to go back and listen to some of the other podcasts because just some great guests you guys have had on and some great interviews. And, you know, it is just wonderful and inspiring to just hear how people are doing their different businesses and trying to help change the world. And their lives. You know, one day at a time.

Ray Loewe22:16

Let's drink coffee, right? Passeroscoffee.com right is where we go to get all of this stuff. We're going to be talking more about our November 6 event, which I think is great. You know, we're going to spend a couple of hours slurping coffee, and we're allowed to slurp. And, and all of this stuff. And Jeff, thanks for being part of our community. And thanks for being you and have a great day everybody.

Jeff Lincoln22:47

Take care. Thanks.

Kris Parsons22:49

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host of Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world. 

Co-host & Podcast Guest:  Kris Parsons:  [email protected]

Kris' Website:  https://parsons-pr.com/

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:02

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:16

Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. And I'm sitting here in our wonderful studios in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I've got a great guest today, her name is Kris Parson, and I'm gonna let her talk in a minute, but not quite yet. Because I want to take a minute and just review with everybody what our podcast is all about. We're changing the rules. And that's because we're just tired of putting up with everybody's rules. And you know, when you live by somebody else's rules, you're not living your own life. That's true. So we find that the luckiest people in the world are really good at handling rules. You know, they know that rules are necessary, they know that we need some structure, but they also know that we've been cluttered with rules throughout our own life. And so what they want to do is design their own lives free of rules. And you know, life is not about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself.

Kris Parsons01:16

Oh, that's interesting.

Ray Loewe01:17

So with that, let me introduce Kris Parsons, of Parsons, PR. And Kris has been with us many, many times. And actually, Kris is going to be our co-host. for the month of August. Yes, I'm excited. And she's going to be digging up past guests. It's going to be an interesting session. So Kris, introduce yourself first. You can get the plugin about Parsons PR if you want. Okay. Okay. And then we'll get into the good stuff.

Kris Parsons01:44

Great. Well, thank you, Ray, and I hope everyone's doing well today, we finally have a cool spell of this crazy, crazy weather in the east. Those of you in the West might not know, but you've got your own problems in the West. Anyway, Kris Parsons, Parsons PR, I have my own PR firm for about eight years now. And I've been doing various things. And what I like most is coming on Ray's show and talking about changing the rules. But that's not all you do. I mean, the nice thing about the luckiest people in the world is you've done many things. 

Ray Loewe02:17

So why don't you tell me what I've done?  It might be revealing.

Kris Parsons02:23

You've probably forgot because you're involved in that? Well, you know, you started off with a series of books and courses. This was after you had a whole giant career with college money, and were interviewed all over the country about that helping people save money for college, right? Yep. So now then you decided to pivot, you decided to change. And now you're doing the luckiest people in the world? Which do you remember when I first met you? I said to you, oh my gosh, how are we going to introduce you? That's the longest name in the world. Hi, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com, but you wouldn't let me change it.

Ray Loewe02:56

But it's expression because it's who I am and you know, it's the interesting thing is I have a lot of restaurants I frequent, or at least I did before this pandemic thing. And they have no idea what my real name is. But they know I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And so it's branding.

Kris Parsons03:17

Right. Well, it's also conversation-starting, particularly when you're sitting at the bar.

Ray Loewe03:21

Yep. So anyway, what we're going to talk about, over the next few minutes here is we decided to do something really different for the month of August, right. But it's not different. We are bringing some of the luckiest people in the world, on the air. And we're going to show why they're lucky. And we're going to talk about their journeys. And what's happened is, a lot of the people that you're helping me bring back on now have been on before pre-pandemic, or during the pandemic, right? Yeah, we had both and we're gonna find out what happened to them. And we're going to find out how the luckiest people in the world make changes to facilitate this ongoing life that they have, which just gets better and better and better and better.

Kris Parsons04:17

Right. And I think what's exciting about this, and I think it's a great topic for August, it's subtle, you know, we ask people to come on and to come on as guests to come to your coffee and cocktails. I don't know if everybody knows the coffee and cocktails that was kind of created out of the pandemic where we would have a virtual networking session, right, we'd have coffee in the morning and cocktails in the evening and kind of just have people talk. And then the nice thing is, afterwards, if you wanted to go online and talk to somebody specific who was at the coffee or cocktails, we sent you the email, same thing you would do at a regular cocktail hour and hand somebody your business card. So that was kind of nice, and I think the subtle changes that people has a lot of people we had on there, met somebody, got a job offer, decided to partner, had somebody help them change their business, it was kind of fun to watch

Ray Loewe05:09

But you know, it was so much better because you know, when you're stuck with somebody at a real cocktail party, you can't get away from them, here you can have internet failure. You can disappear and say, Oh, I'm sorry. But the interesting thing is that we realize that we haven't been able to see people right, face to face. And you know, conversation is such an important part of the lives of the luckiest people in the world. It is, and it's what drives things. And you know, I went on somebody else's community not too long ago, and I was asking him, why community is so important to them. So let me read a couple things. Over here. So some of the comments I got were, the reason that I'm part of a community is the commonality that I have with other people. And that I find that when I get together with people that have the same mindset, as I have several things happen. Number one, I feel comfortable and I feel safe. Good, okay. It's fun. I am able to find ever-expanding growth because I've got people who kind of think the same way I do. And I can play on their growth I can look at their experiences, and I can emulate what I want to emulate. One of the comments I got is that communities have a lot of the same people going the same direction, but often for different reasons. Okay. Most members of communities are there because they're seeking ways to be better. Okay. Okay. And, one of the most interesting one is, this young lady said, I go to these events, and often don't say much, you know, but I'm sitting there, and I get a chance to work through my own stuff, while I listen to others, and get energized and re-excited about life.

Kris Parsons07:19

No, it's absolutely, I mean, I feel that when I come on to the morning, coffee hours are the cocktail hours. And when I listen to the podcast, because, you know, we talk about change, and we say it's hard to change, but you can get something from hearing how somebody else did it. You know you can get Oh, they did it that way. Well, maybe I can try it. And if you do subtle things, you find all the sudden you're changing, you don't even know it. Sure. 

Ray Loewe07:43

So let's talk a little bit about a couple of people that we know are going to be on in August. Okay, great, and what we hope to get from them. So let's start with a guy you know very well, Jeff Lincoln.

Kris Parsons07:55

Yes, yes. All right, Jeff, the coffee man, Jeff, coffee, man, Jeff, Jeff and I actually have known each other for many, many years. In fact, our children when they were little, and our children are in their 20s. Now, we played together we did Halloween trick or treating together. It was really great. And he and his wife, Linda Passero, own Passero'scoffee. And they've had that for years. And I've watched them grow and expand I might not be correct here. But I think he's got four locations. But he had to close a few down because of the pandemic. So we kind of reconnected with him during the pandemic, where he was kind of I have to kind of rework my business plan. Now, he always had the idea of doing more online shopping, more online coffee selling, more online events. That was always in his plan. But he didn't have enough time, because he had all these stores open when he had to close them on the pandemic that gave him the time. And he used us by being on our podcast and following some of your ideas to kind of take that step and be more serious with that.

Ray Loewe09:01

And I know when he came on one of our virtual coffee events. Somebody got so excited about learning about coffee that they asked him if he would do a virtual coffee tasting. Yes. And I think he worked that into his plan and I know I hired him to do a family virtual coffee tasting event. Right? 

Kris Parsons09:22

That was very clever. I like that.

Ray Loewe09:23

But this is what happens when people get together and have conversations. It's not that all the ideas are new, although sometimes new ideas come into play. But it's getting that impetus and that energy going. It's sometimes you get permission from the group. And permissions is an interesting word here you get permission from the group to take the next step and move. 

Kris Parsons09:51

Right, right, exactly what I think this is what I like so much about the things that you're doing with your company is that you said you give them permission. It's a safe place. There's no rules. It's not like, oh, who's supposed to speak and what happens next? It's really just a conversation. And some of the conversations that come out of it are completely in left field. But they lead to something else. And it's and it's very exciting and we connect people.

Ray Loewe10:13

Yeah. So Jeff is going to be a guest, yes, he's gonna be on August 4, yeah,he's gonna come back and talk a little bit about his experience so that we can learn how he was able to handle this business situation could have been disastrous. And yet, guess what, He's here. He's reopening. He's excited about things. You know, it all worked. And, and I would like to think we were part of that. Maybe we were and maybe we weren't,

Kris Parsons10:43

I think you were in fact, that's why Jeff's coming on because he says, You were, I mean, like I said, we give people sometimes the little kernel that they need to take that next step. They might have had it already in their head. But this is a nice way and the coffee, we just by introducing him to, you've got like 1000 - 2000 followers, just introducing those folks to his coffee is benefit enough.

Ray Loewe11:06

Yeah. And I even got to taste some coffee that I wouldn't have tasted otherwise. 

Kris Parsons11:10

That's right, he has very unusual names of his coffee. I love that.

Ray Loewe11:14

Okay, so one of the other people that we're bringing back is another friend of yours. I have a lot of friends, Will Becker. Okay. And tell us a little bit about Will and give us kind of a preview. We don't know what he's going to say. But maybe we do. 

Kris Parsons11:29

Well, the reason why I think Will is going to be very interesting is Will was in transition. He's another friend that I've known for years, he and his wife, Anna, who's an artist, she's amazing. He was in transition for a job. And he kept going to interviews and not getting the job because he kept kind of saying maybe the same thing or saying what he thought the interviewee or interviewer wanted to hear as an interviewee. But then, when he came to one of our podcasts, or you interviewed him, somewhere, he said, You taught him how to find out what you want. Like, instead of having the interview be about I'm giving the company what they want, what do you want, and bring more of yourself into the interview. And he did that. And the next interview, he got the job.

Ray Loewe12:19

You know, this is one of the mistakes that we all make, you know, we try to be somebody else. That's true. We try to live somebody else's life. And you know, we all have a brand that is uniquely ours.

Kris Parsons12:31

We just don't know it a lot. We don't know. 

Ray Loewe12:33

Yeah and hopefully one of the things that we're helping people do here is to figure out what their brand is by listening to the way other people package themselves. And we have some online courses that I think were extremely helpful to Will in this case, but we're going to find out because he's going to come back and he's going to talk a little bit about his journey, and where he's going next. And that's what I'm really interested in because life is a continuing journey.

Kris Parsons13:05

I won't share it now. Because I want you to listen. And that's going to be August 17th. Will's going to talk to you about the 10 things, the 10 things you ask people, and I'm not going to tell you what it is I really want everyone to tune in. Especially a lot of people there's a lot of people in transition now, a lot of people looking for jobs. It's very interesting what Will has learned about himself what he's learned about others, and about perception, about the perception that people have of you, and what you think they perceive. And oftentimes we're really wrong. What we think people perceive of us.

Ray Loewe13:40

Well, yeah, because we like to think about what's real. And we all know from reality TV and everything else going on. That doesn't make any difference. It's all about perception. Okay, so another person that I know we're going to be talking to is Bill Hughes. Now Bill Hughes has been kind of a regular he's actually going to be one of our co-hosts out in the future. I think it's October, but Bill is a thinker. He's a very, very smart guy. He does a tremendous amount of reading.  He's on our coffee and cocktail event, almost always.

Kris Parsons14:20

Yes, I know he's a regular which we like because if not, sometimes we have little lean, lean days, and he's good to have on there.

Ray Loewe14:27

Well, one of the things I think he does is is he just observes and, he looks at what other people are doing. And he doesn't say an awful lot on these things. You know, he just sits there and listens. And I think the value that he gets from all of this is observing what other people are doing and that affects his life and he's also an executive coach and that helps him explain concepts and things to other people.

Kris Parsons14:53

Right. Well, you know, I have a favorite saying that and I think Bill falls right into this. The written word is your master, the spoken word is your equal, and the silent word is your servant. So I feel that Bill is great like that because he's a wonderful listener. And he's very silent, so when he does open his mouth to say something, people are all they want to hear what he has to say. Because it's important.

Ray Loewe15:19

I didn't know you were that erudite. I have all sorts of little things. And I didn't know that I knew the word erudite, either. So you know, so whatever it is, okay, so who else might we look forward to?

Kris Parsons15:32

Oh, well, another colleague of mine, and I've been working with her for years, Sharon McCullough, she is the owner and CEO of Expert Events. And she has an interesting story, because she like me, we have a little bit of downtime with COVID, all the events completely shut down. In fact, that first week in March, or whenever that was, we shut down four events that week. And these are huge events, like hundreds of 1000s of people. And it was pretty amazing how we had to pivot. But she is talking about how she's changing and how we're all changing with this virtual, you know, now, even going forward, where we all can see one another. Events are now all looking to include some kind of a hybrid, where you can still tune in to watch it because some of these galas people don't even like to come to, they just like to give them money and see what's going on. And now you can do it virtually. 

Ray Loewe16:26

And it saves a ton of money. And parking. And parking. But interesting when Sharon comes on now, Sharon has been on before.

Kris Parsons16:35

She has all these people have been on before on their own particular podcast. So I encourage everyone, please go back to Ray's website, the luckiest people in the world, and find some of these episodes, because they're on there all the time. And so you can listen to them again, you know, they're all cataloged, they're all archived. 

Ray Loewe16:54

And one of the big things here is that we kind of caught a lot of these people when they were getting shut down. Yes, when things were going the wrong way. And now they're back going the right way. And I think what we're going to learn a lot is how these people think, how they solve problems, and how they're always looking for a positive solution. And they find it right.

Kris Parsons17:19

I was very impressed by everyone. There's not a lot of naysayers. I mean, this was a tough time, and everybody was very positive and said, Okay, here's what we have to do now. And that's the whole essence of your company anyway, right?

Ray Loewe17:32

Yeah. And then we're gonna bring some new people on, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, some kind of what much more famous than we are? People? Okay, well, we're going to bring some Philly sportspeople on. And again, we're going to look at their journey. Because, again,  it's all different ways that we can think about life and the idea is if we can find that niche that fits us, if we can brand ourselves the right way, all of a sudden, life just takes on new meaning. And it starts to get exciting, and it starts to move forward. Right?

Kris Parsons18:05

Well, you know, they say that people are brought into your life for different reasons, sometimes to take it from step a to step B. And I just really encourage people to participate in some of the things that you're doing now your website, your coffee hours and we're looking to have the friends connection come back now we've done it virtual for a couple times. But now we're looking to have a comeback. We might actually do it in Philadelphia with Jeff at his coffee roastery in Port Richmond, that might be fun. And we're looking to maybe go elsewhere go national to Atlanta, Georgia, like linear we might do. What is it our barbecue smoker with Kevin?

Ray Loewe18:41

Yeah, we're gonna bring back people who said they were master barbecuists. We're gonna find out if that's really true. Exactly, exactly. So what are some of the other things that we're going to look forward to in August?

Kris Parsons18:52

Well, I just I would like everyone to know what you have going on. Because you started this company three or four years ago. You've built on it. You've got the podcasts, you've got your courses and books, you have a 90-day plan, right? You still have a 90-day plan to help people make change because change is hard for people. You've got your virtual coffee hours and cocktail hours. We've got the friends connection, and we hope fingers crossed, that we can bring back the travel connection soon. 

Ray Loewe19:20

Yeah, I think the travel connection will be back next year.

Kris Parsons19:23

I hope so. We missed out on a fabulous cruise to Greece. That was a shame. 

Ray Loewe19:27

Well, we'll redo it and it will be better because we know more and because we now know how to protect ourselves. And you know, we learned so much over the last year and I'm excited because over the last year we've grown in a different way. So we've interviewed some 50 people over the last year, okay, that are all luckiest people in the world. Many of them we didn't know before.

Kris Parsons19:56

No, we just found them

Ray Loewe19:58

Through the connection. Through the networking caused by the other members in our community leading us to people that they think are interesting. And although we have a mission here, and the mission is to learn how to become luckier and luckier and luckier by reinventing ourselves constantly. Correct. I think the other thing that came out of here is that the luckiest people in the world, I think, are actually the most interesting people.

Kris Parsons20:27

They are and you know, and it makes for more interesting cocktail hours and coffee hours, right? Yeah. Nobody likes to sit and talk to a really dull person? 

Ray Loewe20:34

Well, I don't think we've had a really dull meeting. And, one of the things that's happening is now more and more of the people that we've interviewed on our podcast are coming to our virtual coffee and cocktails. Oh, yes. And it gives us a chance to actually have a conversation with people as opposed to just hearing in a one-way monologue, what they're all about. And there's a lot to learn here, because I know one of the people who've come to the coffee session a number of times, we're not going to mention names here, but she's a young lady that's between jobs. Uh-huh. And, you know, again, it's what I think she's learning is that she doesn't necessarily just have to go back and repeat what she did before. Exactly. She's learning by listening to these other people that there are ways that you can take the best of what you did before. And focus on that, and figure out how to get rid of the junk that you did before.

Kris Parsons21:37

That's certainly what I did seven years ago when I opened up my own company. 

Ray Loewe21:41

And the whole idea here is to be able to repackage things and to refigure out how to make your life better and better and better because life is short for us. And we want to make the most of it. And we want to have happy people.

Kris Parsons21:55

Right? And it shouldn't be afraid. I think fear steps in a lot. And you know, with money and things like that, but I think honestly if you take that first step or small steps and that's what I think we give people here with your podcasts and your you know, Friends connection, and we give people like small little kernels of wanting to try this.

Ray Loewe22:16

kernels, kernels what is that like corn.

Kris Parsons22:18

Kernels of Knowledge, kernels.

Ray Loewe22:20

It's jersey corn time it is. Anyway, we're about done, Kristine, So any parting comments?

Kris Parsons22:28

No, thank you for having me on. It's actually you know, it's kind of fun. I like to say as a PR person, I am behind the scenes, I usually put people in front. So it's nice to every now and then be on the microphone and express some of my views because I'm always propping up other people.

Ray Loewe22:44

And you know, keep listening to the podcast in there are gems, you know, and not everyone fits every person but they're all up on Apple iTunes. You can listen to them. And you can choose carefully which ones you only listen to, and you can fast forward through them and get the gist of things. And then I think one of the biggest things is come to coffee, virtual coffee, virtual cocktails every Thursday, and you can sign up on our website,

Kris Parsons23:14

8:45 for the coffee and 4:45 for the cocktails, we end up getting people from the west coast to the 4:45. Because they're not going to get up at 5:30 for coffee.

Ray Loewe23:26

Now you never know. Right? Right. But but but the whole idea is you know, the more you show up, the more you get involved, the more we all get out of it. And it's a two-way piece here. It's what we learn from listening to others and what we get because new people participate, and we get new seeds that we can plant in our own gardens and make work.

Kris Parsons23:50

And you find it's a small world it becomes a smaller world. Some of the people get on I don't even know or people don't know. And then they find out they know them or they know them through somebody else. And next thing you know you have a new friend.

Ray Loewe24:01

Yep. All right. So Thank you, everybody, for being with us. 

Kris Parsons24:05

Yes, Thank you. Please go to the website. Yep, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com

Ray Loewe24:10

I know it's long.com. But it's all one word, the luckiest people in the world.com. And once you get in your browser, you don't have to type it in anymore. That's true. All right, everybody. Have a great week. And join us again next week, when we're going to have one of Kristine's lively guest. Yeah, join us. And I'm not true which one but it's going to be interesting, amusing and fun. We'll have some previous talk to everybody later. Thank you.

Kris Parsons24:39

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Guest Co-host:  Bonnie Shay:  [email protected]

Bonnie's Website:  https://mariposaphotoorganizing.com/

Donna Lubow:  [email protected]

Donna's Website:  https://www.shortstorytheatre.com/

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:02

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too.  Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:16

Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. And one of the reasons I'm lucky as I'm sitting here in the podcast studios at wildfire podcasts in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I have an engineer here, Taylor, who just takes care of everything. So I don't have to think about any of this stuff that goes on in the background. So uh, thanks, Taylor for being you. And thanks for being here. And today, our guest is a really interesting Young lady, her name is Donna Lubow. And we're gonna bring her on in a couple minutes. But she's going to talk about storytelling in a unique way. And but before we bring her on, let me kind of refresh everybody's memory that the name of our program is changing the rules. And the reason that we believe in changing the rules is that we have too many of them. We're given rules by our parents, by our jobs, by our church, by our schools. And sooner or later, they just kind of start to clutter our lives. And one of the interesting things is if you want to live your own life, you have to live by your own rules. We do need rules, but we need to make sure that the rules are our rules. And you're going to see here that both Bonnie and Donna who our guest today, both do adjust the rules to suit them, and make them work for them. So our guest today, first of all, our co-host is Bonnie Shay. And Bonnie has been with us a number of times she's been the co-host for the month of July. And Bonnie, thank you so much for doing all of this for us. And she's been a guest on several podcasts in her own right. So, Bonnie, good morning. Good morning, Ray. And you're going to introduce us to Donna. So why don't you do that? And then we'll get into this really good stuff that we have to talk about today.

Bonnie Shay02:13

Absolutely. So I want to sort of set the stage on how and no pun intended set the stage on how I met Donna. I met her when I attended her short story theater about six years ago, right near my house, literally down the block from my house, and I loved the event. And during her emceeing of the event, she gives out a request to everybody in the audience asking for future storytellers. And you need to understand her short story theater is not for professional storytellers. She believes everyone has a story to tell. So she has given the opportunity to so many people to tell a story over the years that she's had this theater. So I took it, I took up the opportunity. And I would have to say the experience, the telling my own story was life-changing for me without a doubt. So when I chose the theme of our podcast Ray as co-host, the theme was storytelling, I immediately said, I would love to have Donna on as a guest because like you say she has a unique way to weave storytelling into people's lives. And I would love to have her as a guest. So luckily, she was available. And knows she's going to have some fun. So Donna, thank you for joining us. I'm so happy that we have you here. And I'd love to just let's get off the bat. Let's have you share your story, please have your journey to what brought you to establish the short story theatre.

Donna Lubow03:50

Okay, hello, Bonnie. And hello, Ray. I'm very happy to be here. And I think that my path was kind of circuitous. But I think because I started out as an editor, and a writer, and then became an English teacher. Speech and English teacher and then eventually went on to get a theater degree. It kind of all led up to this storytelling, I think because it takes in both the written word and the spoken word. And so it has it certainly has been a pleasure working with you, Bonnie, and knowing that in some way that I enhanced your life because I think that's what this is all about. I think part of the reason that we started this is that we did want to give people in the neighborhood an opportunity to tell stories, and I mean, yes, we do have some actors. And we do have some professional storytellers on occasion. But most of the people that we have are people that are just from a neighborhood and have different backgrounds, whether they're doctors, dentists, advertising people, we get A lot of people from advertising and business people and so on. But, you know, I think that you know, my background lends itself to this. And, hopefully, it's something that we can continue after the pandemic is over. And that's my hope.

Ray Loewe05:18

You know, Donna, I know you started early in your career as a copywriter. Yes. And, you know, I had, we had somebody else that we interviewed who started as a copywriter. And she was telling her that her father never forgave her because she went through all this schooling, only to be schooled into being able to write in complete sentences.

Donna Lubow05:42

Well, I certainly had to learn how to write strange things like trash cans, because I wrote catalog copy for Montgomery Ward's, I don't know if anybody remembers that company, it's long gone. But that's kind of what I did. So and I had to always keep it very brief for the catalog. So I had a certain amount of space to write that copy. I don't think my parents ever even gave it a thought, frankly, I think they were just happy that I had a job.

Ray Loewe06:09

A job is a job. But you started with copywriting? Then you taught school? And would give us a quick summary of your school teaching experience here. What grades did you teach? uh, what subjects did you teach?

Donna Lubow06:24

I taught, my main job was as a high school English teacher and I taught for and then sophomores, and I taught both speech and English. And, you know, basically, I was one of my strong areas was composition. And I did have, I was kind of a composition Chair of the Department for a while. And that, you know, I was always interested in writing. And because before that, I'd also been an editor for a dental magazine, which was a very difficult job, because I had a lot of people sending in from foreign countries, and I had to basically put their words into perfect English if I could. But anyway, back to teaching. And then I also taught sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. For part-time, and that was a whole different kind of experience with teaching, but, you know, basically, composition was my strength, teaching that and of course, literature, I'll never forget that I, taught Silas Marner. And, and, you know, the great expectations and things like that. And so, you know, that literature background, I think also helped me, eventually, in learning how to tell stories.

Ray Loewe07:38

Yeah, I think it kind of sets you up for what you're doing now. And I also understand that during the course of your life, you started a couple of community theaters. You're actively involved in neighborhood newsletters and things like that. So you're a person who's out in your community. And it's, I don't know that it's a natural step to start a storytelling cafe, but it certainly is not out of character for you.

08:05

No, and the theater did. A lot of the, you know, the storytellers that tell stories for us have come from that theater background. They're actors that I've worked with, but they're not professional actors are primarily amateur actors. I did work for a couple of professional theatres thrown in there. But the ones that I actually started on my own, I got to know a lot of people in the neighborhood. And, you know, so I would say that, you know, out of, I think we have about, we have had about 70 storytellers over the course of the past several years. And I'd say a good 20 of those people have been in place that I've seen or directed or in on, there's another group that comes from the neighborhood. And, you know, frankly, every time I met somebody, whether it was my dentist or you know, somebody just at a grocery store, I'd say to them, you know, I'm running this storytelling event, and maybe you have a story I'd like to tell honestly got my dentist has told stories three times now. And so when I when I'm sitting in his chair, it's really a lot of fun because it starts telling these stories, and I can't answer him, but

Ray Loewe09:17

Evil dentists, I know. They're all alike right?

Donna Lubow09:20

He likes to tell jokes, but he's also a pretty good storyteller. But you can't laugh when your mouth is open with the dentist, you know, so. So a lot of them, they're also some authors I've known and I've got a couple people who have published authors that have, you know, come to us, they're not necessarily you know, oral storytellers, but they know how to at least put a story together and we kind of give them hints and techniques of how to present their stories, so.

Ray Loewe09:53

So how does one all of a sudden craft the idea I mean, I understand your background and I understand where you're coming from. But how does all of a sudden one decide to invent a storytelling cafe or Bistro?

Donna Lubow10:10

Well, it started with my brother, who also has an advertising background. And he also was a producer for NBC the today's show. And he decided that he wanted to get some insurance rather inexpensively. So he enrolled as a full-time student at Northwestern University here in the Chicago area. And he had to take several classes. And to register as a full-time student and one of the classes he took was a storytelling class. And he just excelled at it, because that's part of what he did for the today's show is he helped produce stories that one of the correspondents had, Mike Leonard had put together. And so he told stories at a venue in Chicago, that was pretty well known for storytellers. And I went to see him a couple times. And I said This is so much fun. And their format was kind of the format that I adopted, they had four storytellers. And each storyteller told a 10-minute story had to be a very personal story. And some of them were better than others. That's always the case. And my but when I listened to my brother tell his story, and I heard the audience response. And I thought This is fantastic. We don't do this in the suburbs that I knew of. And I thought because I was with a friend, I thought, we've got to start this in the, in the area that's closer to where we live. So we don't have to trek to the city for this, and so I got my brother involved and a friend involved. And that's how we started. And so actually the three of us. And then we got one other person, they were actually four of us, to begin with, we started out with just four people, and we were the only ones telling stories for a few of the sessions. And then what wound up as Bonnie said, we would always ask audience members to think about if they had a story, and we encouraged audience members to submit stories. And that's how we kind of built up to having, you know, seventy different storytellers over the years. 

Ray Loewe12:18

Okay, so let me switch back to Bonnie for a minute, so Bonnie you went through the experience of telling the story in the environment that Donna set up. And I think if you're going to make this grow Donna obviously has a knack that she hasn't talked about yet about how to make people feeling comfortable and excited about telling their stories. So make a couple comments here.

Bonnie Shay12:45

Well, what's great is like Donna said, she's looking for people to tell personal stories that have to be true. That's one absolute rule. So that people really get that the story happened. It's not just a fantasy, or you know, something made up. And you submit because it has to be, you know, reviewed. And like she said, she gives you tips a little bit on how to storytelling, because just writing a linear story, it may not be as interesting. So you can mix it up a little bit just to, you know, maybe build in some suspense or some surprise or whatever. And I want to point out Ray and Donna that these stories can be funny, they can be sad, they can be lots of different emotions, it's depending on the nature of the story, but you never know where they're gonna go. And it's always entertaining. So I did one initially, and I've done three more. I even did one with my partner, we did one together. And that's sort of fun to have a buddy like Ray, you and I are co-hosting the podcast. What about co-hosting a story? You know, it's sort of a similar thing, sort of fun?

Ray Loewe13:54

Well, I think it's a great idea. But I think it takes talent because Donna actually was able to set this up in a format that made you feel comfortable. Because I knowing you, you're not a person that naturally gets up and says I want to tell a story, right? Maybe one on one, but not before a whole group of people. And yet, here you were right.

Bonnie Shay14:17

But let me lay out Ray that typically the people at the storytelling event, it may be strangers that just know about it and come but oftentimes you invite your family and friends. So it's a friendly audience. It's a safe audience. You know, it's something that you're familiar with. And I think many of us had a fear of public speaking, which this is sort of a format of public speaking. But when as kids we were taught public speaking, you were making up speeches of other people's messages and other people's expertise, and you had to memorize it. And that was just like, Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and stand up in front of your class. Well, this is your own story that you know, real well. And Donna, I think this needs to be pointed out because it's key. She has you write your story and read it. You know, you have a notebook on the stand in front of you that you read it. So you're not memorizing your story, although a couple people like to do that. You can make eye contact with the information with the people, but you're reading it. So you're not worried about forgetting something, or, you know, saying the wrong word. The words are right in front of you. So it's very comfortable.

Ray Loewe15:29

Yeah. So, Donna, you've created something that is comfortable for people. That is, I think, significant. So you get standing room only at these sessions, don't you? Yes, that seems to be the case. Uh, yeah. And yeah. And so, you know, where are you going with this when you, you know, we had an excuse to hide during this pandemic? I think that's largely over now. Where are you going with this whole storytelling concept? What's next?

Donna Lubow16:01

All right, now we're doing Audio Stories. And that's available, people who have signed up for our mailing list, get those, and we have a website that tells you to go to Facebook to short story theater, and you can listen to the stories. But you know, I think that is sort of coming to an end, I have a few more stories to do Audio Stories to put on. But I'm hoping that in the fall, that we can go back to a live venue and I have not talked to the venue at all. It's a shame because if it had been outside, we could have done this outdoors this summer. But I don't think our audience would be ready for then our audience does skew older, we seem to have more people, you know, over the age of 50, and up through their 80s telling stories and in our audience, and it's pretty crowded, and people are right on top of each other. And I wasn't sure you know, this summer that that would be a good way to approach it. But maybe in the fall, we'll you know, we'll start it up again. And try to get it going.

Ray Loewe17:05

Well, you know, what a successful venture out of an idea. And I think you know, one of the things that makes you one of our luckiest people in the world is that you were able to craft this idea and build it basically out of nothing out of scratch. But let me ask you a couple of other questions. Let's talk for a couple minutes about the importance of storytelling in life. And I think you were telling me a while ago about you've got a husband to tell stories to right?.

Donna Lubow17:37

Yes, he's very good. He's actually arrived. He was also in advertising he had his own ad agency for many years. And he's had many short stories published in magazines, you know, worldwide. So he's, you know, primarily a writer and but he's actually I actually have to tell one story for us. I think it was on our anniversary. And then I got him to get up at our storytelling to tell a story about what he likes to do. And he's been doing you know, every he writes every single day, he sits in his computer and he writes, and they're all memoirs things from his past he calls them souvenirs from his past and he when I watched him writing, he sits at his computer, he's got a big smile on his face. He enjoys it so much and the latest thing he's been doing is reading stories for our grandchildren. So I know you introduced me as young Ray young lady but I think I'm closer to your age and anyway our grandchildren every Monday night we call them my he calls them Monday night tales they get an email from him telling a story something about his childhood and his past and so he's sharing with our kids and of course our son the father of these grand of these children also hears the story sometimes for the first time and I think it's just an important way to have your family know about your life. Any My husband has also written a couple other memoir-type books, which are you know, which are about events in his life. And I think that's what a lot of people do as they get older. They like to reminisce and a lot of our stories are like that people talk about their past but some of the stories are based on things that happened yesterday. You know, there could still with my husband to he will tell about a birdie saw and make a whole story out of it for the grandchildren. So it doesn't have to always be from your past or from your childhood.

Ray Loewe19:42

Well you know, I love this "stories are souvenirs of the past." Yes, what a great quote. And we're gonna steal that from you and somewhere and put it up.

Donna Lubow19:54

He's ready to write his next book that's got that title.

Ray Loewe19:57

Well, we'll give him But, you know, it's the way we ought to think about things because stories are are souvenirs of the past. But they're also ways to communicate with new people and new acquaintances. So I think one of the other things that you were telling me when we did our prep thing about you have some Australian relationships that you've cultivated recently.

Donna Lubow20:22

I heard from a distant Australian cousin, and I did not know of her existence. And basically, she said was your grandfather's sister named Dinah? And I said, Oh, yes, I knew that right away, because and then we started exchanging little bits of stories that we added a few more people to this Facebook page. And we've been going back and forth saying, Well, do you remember this uncle lived in California, and he was in the music business, and he was in a Roy Rogers movie. And so we're hearing like all sorts of little stories. The other day, my brother actually is on this site now too. And he found a picture of our great grandfather. And we put that on, no one had ever seen that before. These distant cousins didn't know that our great grandfather who was there, great grandfather, or great, great grandfather, they had no idea what his name was even. So it was kind of fun sharing information with them. And, you know, that's the kind of, that's the kind of it was stranger, basically, they're strangers, but we hope we do hope to me, it's kind of cool that she's from Australia, but you know, she was originally from here.

Ray Loewe21:32

Well, and it's, kind of cool that stories, start the conversation, they tie life together. And whether you're dealing with grandchildren, based on what your husband's doing, whether you're talking to new people that you've met from Australia, and you're telling these stories that create common thoughts and things like that, and then go back to your cafe, your storytelling theater concept. I think you've done some wonderful things here. And can you take a minute, and if one of our listeners wants to get on your storytelling theater, somehow, what do they need to do?

Donna Lubow22:10

Well, they can contact me via our website, which is www.shortstorytheatre.com and theatre we spell with an R E. And, or they can go on the Facebook page or short story theatre and, you know, contact me that way. But if they would like to be on our mailing list, and they get, they're can hear, the Audio Stories, and then they can also get notification of when we're going to start live again. And they should also on our website also has a list of guidelines before submitting stories. And I think that's really important. I'm not sure everybody always looks at it, but we have, you know, things on it, like, you know, make sure your story is based on a true event and make sure it's only between 10 and 12 minutes long because that's what audiences, that's pretty much you know, what audiences want to hear. Otherwise, they start getting fidgety. And things like your story should have a universal theme, something that everybody could relate to. So there's a lot of good pointers on it, and even some pointers about, you know, the presentation of it. Like we really suggest that people, we don't ask anyone to memorize, but we suggest that you know, the introduction to your story, so that you can immediately connect with the audience. And you don't have to read that. And you know, your conclusion. And we often say, by the way, that the introduction. And a conclusion should somehow it shouldn't be sort of circular. That's the conclusion of your story should somehow tie back to the beginning. And that just makes everybody you know, understand the story even more. So I mean, we've got a lot of good guidelines on that website. We've got bios of all the 70 or so storytellers that we've had, and they come from such fascinating backgrounds. You couldn't get over it if you looked at it, you'd be so surprised.

Ray Loewe24:03

Well, unfortunately, we're near the end of our time. So we have time for a couple of closing remarks. So Bonnie, do you have any closing remarks that you want to make before we end this?

Bonnie Shay24:14

Well, my closing remarks, first of all, would be to thank Donna for what she's done. Because as we've identified, she's made a difference. She's changed people's lives, that have come to hear the stories that have told the stories and have learned something new in their life, which is always learning is always a good thing. But I also want to wrap up Ray, to tell our listeners that you are on the docket for writing a story and for contributing to short story theater. You know, you're not local. So we have to do it on the Facebook page. But you took that idea and you want to do it. So we're going to hold you to it. Yeah. Uh Oh, you've written a book. So you can write a 10-minute story if you've written a couple of bucks or a few bucks,

Ray Loewe25:02

well, I think the short stories are harder to tell you the truth. But again, Donna makes it so easy to do this. And I think that's one of the things that Donna is done here is it's not only the concept and the idea, but it's a way to actually get people who otherwise might be on this fence to do something. So, Donna, any closing remarks from your standpoint?

Donna Lubow25:24

Um, no, but I appreciate Bonnie's comments. And it certainly is gratifying to know that somehow that what we've done has made a difference in people's lives. That's probably the number one thing that makes me feel happy that we're doing this has changed lives in some way.

Ray Loewe25:42

Yeah, you know, I've just learned that storytelling is so important. It's the way to communicate and have people understand and remember what you're talking about. So what you've done here is magnificent. And I look forward to I will be on your website and look at this thing. And I'll get a story off the shelf over here. And maybe somebody will actually listen to it even. Maybe, well we all want to be known? Okay, so well, I'll trust you on that one. And we'll see how this experience works out. And I'll let everybody know so. So thanks, everybody for being with us. Donna, thank you for being here. Bonnie, thank you for being our co-host. And you know, stay tuned next week because we're going to have another guest and the podcasts go on. And we have some great lucky people who are sharing their lives and their experiences with us. And we found that those lucky people are not only lucky they're some of the most interesting people in the world too. So thanks, everybody for being with us and Taylor, you can sign us off.

Kris Parsons26:52

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Guest Co-host:  Bonnie Shay:  [email protected]

Bonnie's Website:  https://mariposaphotoorganizing.com/

Podcast Guest:  Arielle Nobile:  [email protected]

Arielle's Websites:  https://www.legacyconnectionsfilms.com/  

                                             https://www.belongingintheusa.com/

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:02

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:15

Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe and I am the luckiest guy in the world. And I'm sitting here The reason I'm the luckiest guy in the world is I'm sitting here in Woodbury, New Jersey, and Taylor is running this whole show for me, so I don't have to do any work. Alright, our show, changing the rules is all about the luckiest people in the world and how they rebuild their lives under their terms, and then live them to the fullest. And one of the things that they realize is that they have to handle rules easily, and they're not opposed to changing the rules and making them work for them. You know, one of the things about rules is that they tend to dominate our lives. And if we live our lives by other people's rules, we're not living our own lives. So this month, we have a co-host, her name is Bonnie Shay, Bonnie has been on a number of times, and she is a photo organizer based in Chicago, Illinois. And you can find out all about her if you go back and listen to some of our past podcasts. But we have such a great guest today that I want to save time for that. And the theme of our podcast this month is the power of a story. And this time, we're going to talk a little bit about stories in film. So Bonnie say hello, and then introduce our guest.

Bonnie Shay01:37

Excellent. Good morning. Hello, everybody. So our guest today is Arielle, Nobile, and Arielle and I met eight years ago, time flies when you're having fun. And she was working on a documentary film for a family. And she needed someone to assist on the photo portion. And she lived in Colorado, and she was working with a Chicago-based family so she needed some help. So we collaborated from afar. And since then we have collaborated on several family documentaries. And then she moved to the same northern suburb of Chicago that I live in. So we've been able to work in person, even have taken exercise classes together, and our kids have been in the same Dual Language School. That's a whole nother podcast. I digress. So Arielle and I both tell our clients stories, Arielle, with interviewing and video. And I was photos, but they overlap. Because they're both visual. And they're all about stories. She does some other type of video work as well that she'll share with us today as we chat along. So Arielle, Good morning, and welcome to our podcast. I'd love for you to share your story of how you got to this point, the journey that you have chosen, and it's a very exciting journey. It's far from boring. So let's go.

Arielle Nobile03:01

Thank you so much for having me Bonnie and Ray, it's pleasure to be here. And yes, it's amazing, you know, to think about, I've been asked this question many times and sort of, you know, which sort of way in do I want to go? Because that's something about a story that I think your listeners, you know, probably are already aware of, on some level, but also could consider it's, you know, from where do we enter a story and then what, from what vantage point and that answer is actually always from, like, the present moment where we are right now. And how did I get here? Well, I, as a young young child, I can picture myself, there's these fabulous pictures of me dressed up in my great grandmother's old like, honestly, like negligees, I want to say like nightgowns, sorry, these silk nightgowns and her hats and her shoes. And I just thought I wanted to be a movie star. I just thought that would be fabulous that I could just perform and everyone would clap for me and then as I evolved and grew up, I thought, well, I just love stories. I love telling stories. I love reading stories. I love creating stories. There's my kitty green with me in the background, if you can hear that. And I started studying at Pivot Theatre Workshop as a young child in Evanston, Illinois. And then I also had the fortune of having this amazing woman, I believe her name was learning with Mrs. Shapiro and she came into our fourth-grade classroom, Mr. Haley's classroom. And she did a whole poetry unit with us. And something about poetry just really resonated with me and I remember actually feeling a little bit stumped with the assignment. And then I looked out the window and this poem just came to me and I titled it when I look out the window. Well, that poem, I guess, was inspired enough. channeled perhaps to give me the winning slot. Well, the second were two winning slides of fourth grade that year, and all of Illinois and I Won Gwendolyn Brooks, annual Poet Laureate contest for fourth graders that went all the way through high school and I got to go meet Gwendolyn Brooks who was on the Illinois Poet Laureate. And she gave me my first journal and wrote in it, I'm so proud of you. And that inspired me to continue writing and telling stories. And well, I could go on to go to NYU and study experimental theater, and move towards my dream of movie stardom. And I did start I did actually work in film and was on, you know, a blip on a show it really, I showed it didn't last long on MTV, that was a sketch comedy show. And I was in some independent films, I quickly realized that was not where my heart was at. And that what I really wanted to do was be more active and telling stories, especially as a woman at that time in Hollywood, there just wasn't a lot of great representation and not a lot of female stories being told by women. I think that's changed in the last 20 years. Thankfully, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who recognized the sort of slim pickings. And I just was someone I love. A good story, I want to also not be, I wanted to be able to be myself and still tell stories. And that is one of the ways I got into documentary.

Ray Loewe06:26

Okay, so there were a couple of pivotal things, I think that we discussed earlier and talk to us a little bit about the soldier with the machine gun that took your camera away from you.

Arielle Nobile06:39

Yeah, so that was so I graduated from NYU in 2001 when New York was still sort of an innocent city, it sounds funny to say that, but it was, you know, Giuliani had done this cleanup thing. And it was an amazing time in New York City. And then 9-11 happened a few months later. And as the whole world watched in horror and shock, in the aftermath of that I actually had been living in Chicago again, and I moved back, I decided to move back to New York. And on a sort of exploratory trip, I went back to see where I was going to be living. And then I was flying back to Chicago to get my stuff. I was at LaGuardia. And this was, I think this was three weeks post 9-11. And I'm at the security checkpoint, and this is back in the day. I mean, younger audiences won't even remember when you didn't have to take off your shoes, or check your water, you know, go through all of these machines. And there was a soldier with a machine gun at the end of the security, and I was just so shocked. But my first thought was, I need to document this. I don't ask me why. But I had my little point and shoot film camera. And so I got it out to take a picture of the security with a machine gun because I'd been to other countries where I'd seen soldiers with machine guns, but I'd never seen that in our airport in our society. And which says a lot about honestly, my privilege actually in the society, because I know there's communities where that's not the case. And the soldier yells with this machine gun, in my memory pointed at me started yelling at me and saying put down the camera and took the camera away from me. I said I haven't taken any pictures yet. And I believe that was a sort of discussion, but I was really scared. And I was also really angry. And he took he said, You're not allowed to take pictures here. And like, I think did give me back my camera. I honestly at this point, wonder if I had been a different color would that have happened? Would it have gone down the same way? What I've gotten my camera back etcetera. But when I left security, I was so shaken up. And what did I do? This says a lot about who I am, I think I went and I found a young man, a young man in uniform, who was um, who was a soldier who was I think, returning home or being sent out, I don't remember and told him what had just happened and sort of said what is going on. And he actually took me into this, the USO area. And I interviewed him, I took some photographs of him. And I basically in my own way, I know, I was told I can't swear, but I basically, you know, gave the finger to, to the whole to the soldier in my mind and screamed at me and scared me by interviewing this other young soldier and sort of getting also a sense of what was going on in our country and in the psyche, and how this young man felt about it. And that was my beginning in some ways of documentary, although I didn't make I didn't tell you this before, Ray. But I did make a documentary about the meaning of life, my senior year of high school. So that was actually the first documentary I made.

Ray Loewe09:44

Okay, so, you know, it's interesting that there are certain things that affect all of us if we let them affect us and, and I think this whole story of this soldier in the machine gun was a pivotal one that you know, Helped you go where you're gonna go? Okay. You know, there was one other story I think you told us as a parable. And, again, I think it tells us a little bit about who you are and where you were going and tell us a little bit about the horse story if you would?

Arielle Nobile10:19

yes, I'm doing this I love I meditate every day. And I'm currently redoing a 40-day transformation course with David G, who is a teacher. And you can anyone can do this if you pay for it, it's on insight timer, it's an app and David G the other day told this story about this farmer, who and this is a parable that goes I think it's like taken from all these different ancient traditions, Sophie's and other Asian cultures. So this farmer has a horse and he wakes up in the morning and the horse, someone has his son, left the gate open and the horse is gone, the whole village comes to commiserate with him and basically say, Oh my gosh, that's terrible luck. How horrible this happened to you. Now you're not gonna be able to plow your fields, your horse is gone. And the farmer's responses? Well, I don't know, let's wait and see what happens. We don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. And the next day his horse returns with five wild horses in tow. And all the villagers come back and they're like, Oh, my gosh, you're so lucky. And this is amazing. Look, there you have six horses, and now you'll have more help plowing your fields. And again, the farmer's response is basically like, sound, we'll see, we'll see if this is a good thing or a bad thing, you know, time will tell. And the next day, the farmer's son is trying to you know, tame, one of these wild horses and he falls off and he breaks his arm. Again, the villagers come and they're like, Oh, my gosh, this is horrible. Your son isn't gonna be able to help you with an arm that is broken. What a tragedy. This is terrible. So sorry. And again, the farmers like we'll see, we'll see, we don't know if this is good or bad. Well, the following day, the army shows up in this village and going taking all the young and able-bodied men on a suicide mission, basically. And the whole village comes out the ones who are left come up to say, this farmer, you are so lucky, your son doesn't have to go because of his broken arm. And you're too old. And wow, you are so fortunate. And the farmers like well, we'll wait and see. And then, of course, this story could go on forever. But the next thing that David G I believe added to this was that the whole all the people it turns out not to be a suicide mission. And all the people who went come back with like millions of dollars and all this fortune. And this could just go on forever. Right? Yeah, sort of luck of the draw. And actually, this you know, I love the idea of luck. And I love your podcast being about being lucky. But I also think it is all in the eye of the beholder, right? And also, it's about our Interstate, not necessarily at all what's happening in the outer world or around us, we have no control over that.

Ray Loewe13:09

And this, I think, is who you are, because the impression I get from the few times I've had the opportunity to talk with you is that you tend to follow the opportunities, you know, and you tend, you know, you don't get the opportunities out of these if you don't open up your eyes and look at them. And I think it demonstrates to a large extent your whole concept of filmmaking and I want to get into that, but I'm gonna let Bonnie come back on and say hello, I haven't let her get a word in edgewise here. Okay, but let's look a little bit at belonging in the USA and Bonnie once you introduce what Arielle is doing and because it's exciting.

Bonnie Shay13:50

it is exciting. And so Arielle has sort of taken another fork in the road in the video and documentary world, realizing that there are stories out there that not everybody knows. And they're important stories. They're maybe not even in history books, or in the headlines in the newspaper, but they are these underlying stories and themes in our world that need airing and they need explaining and all that. So she created belonging in the USA as the umbrella title of her series of documentaries that address the various stories that she feels are very important to our world. So Arielle, why don't you explain and expand about a little bit on that so people can understand and what they're going to look forward to coming out.

Arielle Nobile14:40

Thank you, Bonnie. Yes. And you know, it's so funny because you're catching me again in a moment where I'm in this, I would say a state of expansion and transformation. So the title of the series Yes, is belonging in the USA stories from our neighbors, and yet I actually am toying and I always had the bigger sense that I wanted it to be called belonging in the world or belonging in on this planet because I don't feel like it's only the US that I'm interested in, of course, and part of why I called it that was a little bit tongue in cheek because I really believe that if you exist, you belong, that the United States is built up of people from everywhere in the world. So we all belong in this world if we are here. And so each film, as you said, tells a different story and journey of a individual, a couple, or an entire family line that somehow intersects with some of the bigger social issues that we're having at this time in history, and some of the bigger conversations that I feel like we have to be having. And so this is my morning voice. It's very deep and sultry I warned you guys. So I feel like there's just so much that we aren't comfortable talking about. And I feel like films are a way of telling stories that give people a way into bigger conversations and dialogue. And that's part of the whole experience of watching one of these films. So I have screenings, I've had them before the pandemic, I had them all over the country at different festivals, and then libraries and other community centers, where the film was the film would be screened. And then there would be a big group conversation, discussion that hopefully leads into more conversations and discussions because I feel like one of the things that we are lacking right now is this dialogue and willingness to engage in human-to-human conversation. So I don't know if you want me to go into what each film is. The first one is, you know, about a black panther from the west side of Chicago, who is now a renowned world-renowned storyteller and lives in LA and helps inmates in the California prison system tell their stories and better themselves. The second is about a couple who were disappeared, or political prisoners during the Argentinian dictatorship, who were exiled to the United States, and who have made it their life's work to be human rights activists, as well as parents and just all-around amazing people. And the woman in that story is a poet as well, so dear to my heart. And then the third story is one of your guests that you had Lourdes Nichols, it's her family's story about the, you know, pre-Japanese incarceration to the fallout from that, and the long term effects of such othering and such bigotry on a family system. And what also can come out three generations later, basically, in the form of, you know, pro-activism and in terms of making people more aware of how important it is to remember that we are a we. And when you look down I love this idea that when you look down from space at this planet, you don't see borders, you don't see country, you don't see neighborhoods, you just see one us, one we, and we are human, we are the human race. And we are lucky to be here we are, we all are for different reasons. But I also really do think, you know, we can use stories, to catalyze and to bring more awareness and to bring more love and unconditional love and awareness of our shared humanity to the planet. And that's basically my mission. 

Ray Loewe18:36

Yeah, and in addition to the film, you're doing a series of podcasts also are you not.

Arielle Nobile18:42

Yes, I have. Well, we're about to unleash to the world our belonging in the USA podcast, which is something that came about because of the pandemic and my desire to continue these dialogues with more people. So that will be launching later this summer. Hopefully, your listeners will subscribe and share you can find out all about everything we're doing at belongingintheUSA.com there will be a sign-up for our newsletter where I send I wouldn't even say monthly quarterly inspiration and updates and we will have more about the podcast there as well. And you can watch trailers for all of the films and sign up to host screenings and you can contribute because we are fundraising always because it is we are a guerilla grassroots filmmaking organization independent to a fault sometimes. Yeah, we need all the support we can get.

Ray Loewe19:37

Okay, so so there's one last thing that we have to talk about here that I think is incredibly interesting and important and when I asked you you know what to find you at some point in time, what made you get the direction that you wanted, you came up with an interesting two word, phrase regretted or regret. Regretted longing, longing, tell us what regretted longing is.

Arielle Nobile20:07

So I have a company called legacy connections films that I started in 2005 by making documentary films about both of my grandmother's who are thankfully still with us at 91 and 93 years old, and I began that company in that vein of filmmaking. Because I experienced what I always say is regretted logging. I had been lucky enough to have all of my grandparents in my life until my early 20s. And three of my great grandmother's one of them lived until I was a freshman in college. So I had sort of peopled history that have wisdom or not necessarily wisdom, but of history that I could have tapped into and asked more questions. And so the regret comes from the fact that I didn't ask my great grandmother who lived to be 100, more about her journey from the Ukraine, to Chicago, and really about her life in general, I just don't know much. I remember her, but I don't know much about that journey. And the longing comes from wishing that I did, and especially with my grandfather's one of whom I was particularly close to Gosh, I just miss him so much to this day, even though I do feel his spirit and presence. I can't ask him the questions, you know. And I think I told you the story of my other grandfather, my paternal grandfather fought in World War Two in Japan. I know that he was very affected by that and had a reverence for Japanese culture, and what including you know making us all room of our shoes all the time in his house, which I still do to this day. But I wish now that I'm working on his film about that, I could ask him more because my grandmother met him after his time as a soldier. So she didn't you know, she got some stories, but I don't know. Did he have PD PTSD? Did he see battle? What did he see? What did he experience? What was it like to be him this young Jewish boy in Japan at that time, I just really wish I could get more details on that. You know, on the other hand, I'll say this, and I say this to a lot of my clients that I work with. Sometimes the mystery of our history, is what inspires us to be more curious, in general in life. And so that regretted longing fueled me but they also I mean it's I don't regret the regretted longing if that makes sense. It's sort of.

Ray Loewe22:44

Only you would not regret the regretted longing Arielle. All right, we're close to the end of our time here. Do you have any final comments you want to make before we sign off, and we'll make sure we post your website so that people can find belonging in the USA, the podcast, and the film? Okay.

Arielle Nobile23:02

And like and legacy connections films too. And yes, I wanted to because I just was hearing myself laugh and remembering you wanted me to mention my so after I graduated NYU, I went on to do the I was in the first class of the directing program at second city in Chicago, which is, for those of you who don't know, a hugely world-famous comedy, theater, sketch comedy, and most of the major famous comedians that you know, have probably started at second city, Saturday Night Live came out of Second City sctv, all these things came out of all these people, and I made amazing cultural, comedic icons came out of Second City. So I started, you know, I did directing there. And that's important because to me, part of getting not just getting through life, but enjoying and thriving, and maybe what you call lucky, is my sense of humor, and having a sense of humor in being able to notice, even in the midst of horrible difficult, you know, tragedy or crises, to continue to have a sense of humor. So all of the films that I mentioned, for the belonging series that I, you know, deal with very intense topics, but I will tell you this, the audience is laughing. And that's one of the reasons I've sort of paused the screenings because it's not as satisfying both to the audience or me to not be able to have that shared reading experience, because the laughter is what fuels the depth. If you can make somebody laugh, if you can touch their heart in that way, that's touching our humanity. We, you know, I don't know I have amazing cats, but I've never really seen them laugh. I don't know if you all have seen animals laugh. I think that's one of the things that makes us uniquely human. So I always want to touch people's hearts in that way and be able to bring that kind of joy so that I can also get to the transformational space that we're able to create when we have access to our feelings and laughter is one of the Best. And I think it's a privilege to be able to make people laugh, though. And that's something I've learned through Second City. So I wanted to make sure to mention that.

Ray Loewe25:08

That's great. And we'll look forward to following you and looking at what you're going to bring out here. And Bonnie, do you have any last-minute comments?

Bonnie Shay25:16

I do because I want to sort of summarize how Arielle has changed the rules from my perspective, just through this podcast, although I've known her for a long time. To me, she moved around a lot. She didn't stay like I grew up in Highland Park, which is where I still live and probably will never move. So personally, it's very inspirational. She's traveled a lot. She's very curious, as she mentioned today, she has a sense of humor that she tries to weave into even some serious work that she's doing because she gets the richness of life. It's not all positive, it's not all negative, you weave it together, and it really tells the story and makes the impact. And then lastly, I think, Arielle, I can just see you following your heart. Follow your head, too, but I feel like you're following your heart, mostly. And they're like in front. Like, that's what leads you through so many of these choices that's just inspirational, and thanks for what you are doing and how you're teaching us all.

Arielle Nobile26:20

Thank you, Bonnie. And you know, I love that you said that about following heart, my heart because literally, that is the main motivation for me. I read Carlos Castaneda books very young, in my early 20s. And one of the premises of all of his work is, you ask the question, is this a path with heart? And if it is, you follow it, and if you don't, it's not your path. And that's the way I check-in and check. It's my vibe, check. It's how I make my decisions. It's how I choose who I work with and what I work on. And because I from having, of course, chosen things, not based on my heart in my life, I know the Fallout and the consequences of that. So a path with heart is what I'm after. 

Ray Loewe27:08

Well, there's nothing more to say after that. So we'll all follow our heart. Hopefully, we can do it like you do, Arielle, and, you know, thanks again for listening to our podcast and show up next week. We're going to have another great guest and see everybody soon have a safe time. Bye

Guest Co-Host:  Bonnie Shay:  bonnie@mariposaphotoorganizing

Bonnie's website:  https://mariposaphotoorganizing.com/

Podcast Guest:  Michele Heftman:  [email protected]

Michele's Website:  https://www.inthebestlightpossible.com/ 

Michele's Instagram:  Best Light Collections

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:00

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe also known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:13

Hi, everybody and this is Ray Loewe. And I am the luckiest guy in the world. And I'm sitting here in our wonderful studios in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I've got our engineer Taylor here, and he's going to make sure that this podcast actually works in spite of me. So everybody, good morning. And we're talking as usual, about changing the rules. And you know, throughout our whole lives, we're fed a bunch of rules. And those rules start to accumulate after a while. And some of them that were pertinent once are no longer relevant. And what we find is that if we're living our lives by other people's rules, we're not living our lives. And so we need to figure out how we're going to change those and make those rules work for us. And we've had a series of guests, and we've got another great one today, that's going to talk about her journey and to changing her rules to make rules work for her. And she has redesigned the life that she wants to live and she's living it. So we have a co-host this month. And our co-host is Bonnie Shay. And Bonnie is a photo organizer from Chicago. And the theme that we're working on today is something we call the power of the story. And Bonnie and I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and we talked a little bit about the fact that there are different ways to tell stories. But if you can weave stories into your life, you add power to the way you communicate with people. And so Bonnie Say hi, first. Good morning. Hello, everybody. You didn't say hi. You had to say good morning, you change the rules didn't you. I'm on the right podcast, Ray. Yeah, I know. And you're good at changing those rules. And Bonnie certainly is one of the luckiest people in the world. And if you want to know more about Bonnie, we've had several podcasts with her and you can go back into our archives. And it would just take me too long to say too much. So Bonnie, why don't you introduce our guest today. And I'm excited about this particular interview in zoom land because it's really an exciting story.

Bonnie Shay02:30

Excellent. So I am introducing to our podcast listeners, Michele Heftman. And I want to explain how I met Michelle, a mutual friend introduced us because she realized that both Michelle and I have our own businesses, and we curate large photo collections. And we happen to live in neighboring suburbs in the Chicago area. I personally work on large printed photo collections that are my clients, personal family photos. So they are the family's specific photographic story and their history. Michelle, on the other hand, works on large photo collections that are her clients. And they have purchased these photos, typically, and she'll share lots of good information with the basic summary is her clients collect photographs, mostly done by well-known photographers, and or that they follow a specific theme, like a collector of anything collector of antiques, right? They have a theme, and they have what they love. But all of the photos, intrigue, and interest, Michelle, so excuse me, her clients, so they collect them, and they love them, but they need some help on these curated collections. So that's where Michelle steps in. And the overall arching similarities that we both work on large photo collections. And we both do a lot of detective work. So Michelle will share some of the detective work that she does. As we chat with her. So Michelle, can I ask you directly, what is your story? How did you get to this point where you have your own business called the best light? And you do some extraordinary work? 

Michele Heftman04:16

Of course. Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. I've really been looking forward to the conversation. Um, my background, a little bit about me, I'm from the Detroit area. And my mother was an artist and my dad was a computer guy and I kind of landed somewhere in the middle. So when I went to school, I went to art school, I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and I focused on photography, that's my own passion, and also arts administration, to work in museums. That was my drive as a young adult. And I started my career right around the time when museums were moving on from their old card catalog systems and starting to embrace these large museum databases to manage their collections. And that's really where I found my niche. It was really my computer skills that got me into this very competitive career. Or it opened the door for me, I should say.

Ray Loewe05:18

You know, Michele, it sounds like you were bred for this job. I mean, here you are. You got a mother. That's an artist. You got a father who's in a databases and computers and stuff like this. I mean, what else could you be? Right?

Michele Heftman05:32

It really did feel like it's a very unique niche, but it was made for me. Cool.

Bonnie Shay05:37

And I need to ask you, Michele, what did your parents get you for your 13th birthday? They built me a darkroom. Yeah, I mean, what a gift, right? Yeah.

Michele Heftman05:49

I've always loved to like hands-on making photos like working in the darkroom, the way, the way it should be done back in the day, you know.

Ray Loewe05:59

So you have this background in photography. And I think for a while you, were a photographer, and then you kind of did some museum photography. And then you kind of got where you are. So what does a museum photographer do?

Michele Heftman06:15

Well, primarily, the museum photographer works with the objects in the collection, documents, their condition, any restoration processes, they might go through, and works with the database manager to pair those photos with any information associated with the pieces. Museums usually have a larger staff where the photographer can just focus on photography. Now, I kind of my umbrella is much larger than that I need to manage both sides of those things, the database, and the photos.

Ray Loewe06:50

Okay, so we're gonna get into where you're going a little bit. That will further tell the story about what you do. But let's take a minute and go back and talk about you specifically because you took a break from all this, you started this exciting career, and then you took a break to raise a family, right?

Michele Heftman07:07

Like so many people do. Right? It was time and I had my son. And I wanted to stay home. So I put my career on pause.

Ray Loewe07:18

You know, and like most or many moms do. And yet you're able to work your way back into the industry in a way that made you happy. And this is something that a lot of moms don't get to do. So why don't you talk for a minute if you're willing to about how you made this transition? I mean, because you still have young children at home, is that correct?

Michele Heftman07:43

Yeah, I mean, my son is now entering high school, and my daughter entering Middle School. So about five years ago, I was looking at my life, and it was time to focus on me, my kids were old enough, and they're independent. And it was really time to turn that focus back to myself and how I wanted to return to my career. I started by working in arts education, teaching some art classes. But the museum world is very competitive, and how was I going to do that. But on my own terms, that was something I always grappled with. I was working with a friend and they had an opportunity that they wanted me to be involved with, it was for a larger organization. And so in order to apply, I had to fill out an online job portal application, which was not something I had done or really intended to do. So I filled out the profile. And as I was doing that the system bleeped and brought up a job posting, and it was very obscure language, part-time, flexible hours, so that piqued my interest. And looking for a photo file, someone who loves photography, and database management, and all these things, but there were really no specifics surrounding the job. But I just looked at the skillset, and I thought, hmm, that kind of sounds like me, that sounds like what I do. And without really thinking about it, I just hit Send and I sent off my newly formed online resume. And I got a call and it was my first client. It was a private collector who was looking for some way to help manage his large collection. And I felt that was very serendipitous the way this all happened is and I'm so grateful to this person for helping me get started in this industry again, and really sharing my good word, and letting people know what I'm all about.

Ray Loewe09:51

Well, you know, we all get breaks, but I think the people that are lucky enough to find those breaks really have a sense of what they want to do and I think you've defined early in your life, this whole concept of categorizing things, the photography, all the pieces kind of came together. And, so now you're a happy camper, you're managing young children at home, you're able to get out there and work and you're building back, you're a business that you have control of, what can we do better than that? Oh, I don't, not much. Okay,

Bonnie Shay10:27

And I want to outline Ray, I just want to pause for a moment, because I think, as our listeners are listening to the story, I want to sort of declare some universal strengths and choices that Michele made that I think were key in this whole process. She said, Yes, instead of No, you clicked on that, you know, that pop-up message that came? And she's like, Oh, yeah. And she said, Yes, instead of No. And I think she follows the signs of the universe. I think those are her words, actually, that she was sharing with us.

Michele Heftman10:58

I do know, I meant to add to that little story is that when I started to realize, Hey, this is really my niche, this is something that I can really do. I sat down and I wrote on a card, I am going to make this happen for myself. And I put it upright in front of my door that I pass every day. So it was like the first thing I saw in my mind every morning. And you know, I worked to make it happen.

Ray Loewe11:28

Absolutely outstanding and this is a key, I think, to other people who are listening to this who want to get out of, or make changes in their life and redesign their life that you have to do. Take some time, figure out what your strengths are, figure out what you want to do, and then put up the sign that says, I'm going to make this happen. I think that's a great idea. I think I'm going to have to do that now. So I can get my life under control. Anyway, Michele, so that was the past. And I'm sure we'll kind of get back to that at some point in time. But let's talk about the future. Let's talk about what you do. And what you want to do. And where are you going because you have a business when where you can control it? And, and I love the name of your business, by the way in the best light. It's, just such a great way of focusing on what you're trying to do. So tell us about your future. Where are we going?

Michele Heftman12:25

Well, what I've done with these large collections. These collections are 1000s of photographs. So I have some collections more than 5000 photos large and they need accessibility. So what I've done is create computer systems, databases, and apps for my clients where they can scroll through their collection, they can flag, and determine what they want to donate or what they want to loan to a certain place. And they can easily access these photos and engage with them. In you know, some of these photos, they spend their lives in storage. And this is a way for my collectors to see them and enjoy them. And so really, that's where I started was building these systems just simply for their needs. And each system is different based on what my collector wants to use it for. Now, what I'm pivoting, that's the word right. What I'm doing is taking these systems and we are now granting access to the public, and creating accessibility to use these photos as a tool for education.

Ray Loewe13:47

Okay, so talk more about this. So first of all, this whole world of private collections is kind of strange to me, because especially when you have 5,000, 10,000 photos, and they're kind of bundled, then hidden away. How do you enjoy them? And I think you're saying this is how you do this, but talk a little bit about making them public for education and what you do there? And is this anything I can access? Can I get online and Google Photos by theme and find out where they are?

Michele Heftman14:24

Well, sure, we're working towards that. Some of my clients do have their own website up. But right now what I'd like to do are we are starting to partner with universities or nonprofits, like-minded organizations that might be interested in using these photos, maybe exhibiting them in their offices or using them to teach students about current events or past events. I mean, Bonnie talks a lot about storytelling through photos and I love how our jobs are kind of like two heads of the same coin. And I do a lot of storytelling with photographs. But I also think about history telling through photographs. So one of my clients, he's very passionate about social justice initiatives. And so we are partnering with the university to share some photos from the civil rights movement in some of their classes, and they're using those photos to teach about the march from Selma to Montgomery, and I think that's very exciting.

Ray Loewe15:35

Okay, so you're doing these projects where you're bringing photos out of the closet? Can I use that word? Sure. Okay. And, you know, I think one of the other things that Bonnie mentioned that I want to get into a little bit about you guys think you're detectives here, right. There is detective work for sure. Well, and you mentioned this thing about James Joyce a while ago when we were talking earlier. So there's a whole story here and I don't know how to begin it, but I think you do. So why don't you talk to us about this? Because it's one of the reasons I think you get excited about what you do.

Michele Heftman16:11

Absolutely. This was kind of just exciting research. I love research. Some research is  not as exciting as others. So we acquired this client acquired a series of portraits by the photographer, she's El Frond, and they were some beautiful portraits, one of James Joyce, one of Simone de Bouvier. But there was also a photo it just tucked into the room, which was a bookshelf and a chair. And I thought, well, you know, what is this about? And I don't know why I was drawn to this photo, but I was there were a lot of knickknacks on the shelf, I spent a lot of time looking very closely. But there was also some notations from the photographer on the back. So these were handmade photos from 1936. And the photographer had made them in the darkroom and had written certain things. And the on the back, it said, shae Lucy Leon. And I was like, well, shae Lucy Leon, like, Who's Lucy Leon. And the, you know, it said James Joyce's chair, and I was like, Well, why does she have James Joyce's chair? And so that's kind of where I started. And I began to research Lucy Leon, she was very interesting in her own right, she was an editor of French Vogue. She was a child, prodigy, pianist, and also the subject of a painting as a child. I could go on and on about her but her husband Paul, had a friendship with James Joyce, and they wrote together, and every day he would come to their house in Paris and sit in this chair, and they would write and they wrote Finnegans Wake and, you know, well Joyce did, Paul Leone helped him with languages and that sort of thing. And they had a very good friendship. So, in 1939, Nora and James Joyce and Lucy and Paul Leon fled Paris together, they fled the Nazis to unoccupied France. And James Joyce lived his final years with this other couple out there. And after he passed, it was Paul Leon, who stole back into Nazi-occupied Paris, to rescue items that had been left in the Joyce's apartment because they had fled so quickly. And he boxed up all these papers, the original papers of Finnegans Wake and portrait of an artist, his very early writings, and he put them into 19, brown Manila envelopes. And he brought them to the Irish embassy with the proviso that they should not be open for 50 years. And they sat there for 50 years. And he rescued all of these writings for James Joyce. But he was in danger. And so before he returned home, he was captured by the Nazis and he was murdered in the deportation of French Jews. But this photo was taken after the war, not in 1936. Like we had originally thought it was taken in the 50s by Giselle Frond she had returned to the house at Lucile Leone's request to document the items for which Paul Leon gave his life. And the story is a long-forgotten story. It was actually the story how I found this story is kind of funny too, and another indicative of me following the signs of the universe, if you want to call it that, I was with my son who was pursuing Eagle Scout, he's going to, he's doing his Eagle Scout project and to that end. And he was volunteering at a local library after a flood in their basement helping them clean up. And I was there just waiting for him to finish. And I was in the basement and I saw just like, it was almost like a beam of light shining onto a pile of books. And there was a book about Giselle Frond. And I picked it up because I was that photo was in my head. And I started paging through. And the last photo in the book was the photo of the chair. And it had the story and the photo in the book had been out of print since the 60s. So I never would have found it, I never would have unearthed that story. And it's still one of my favorite little piece of detective work.

Ray Loewe20:52

I think, Michelle, you found a way to have a blessed life here. Okay. I think you found a way to, you know, stay interested. I mean, you know, talk about the power of a story that came out of a picture. Now, you know, you had to do some work to get the story out of the picture. But it's there. And I am envious in a way of the fact that you've got a career right now where you get a chance to follow these passions. And, o these things that you're excited about using skillsets that, you know, were ingrained in you from the beginning of your life. And I think you're a very, very luckiest person, a lucky person. And welcome to being one of the luckiest people in the world.

Michele Heftman21:34

Oh, well, thank you so much. I feel very lucky.

Ray Loewe21:37

Good. Yeah, we're almost out of time. So let's do two things. First of all, Michelle, do you have any last-minute statements that you just want to make about what you do or where you're going or anything? 

21:50

Well I, guess it would be about you know, this outreach. Now, you know, I'm lucky enough to look at these photos. And I think other people should, too. I, you know, I said before these photos spend their lives in storage, and isn't that a shame, we should bring them out to the public? And so that's where I'm moving right now.

Ray Loewe22:11

Okay, you know, how do people reach you give us your website, and then we're gonna post this with our podcast notes, people will be able to find you.

Michele Heftman22:20

Okay, so my personal business page is inthebestlightpossible.com. But if you'd like to see what I'm working on, and the photos that I handle day to day, Instagram is a great place to find me at best light collections.

Ray Loewe22:37

And, Bonnie, your turn, any last-minute comments you want to make before we showing off here?

Bonnie Shay22:44

No, I just think Michelle is such a great representation of putting the pieces of a puzzle together for what she wanted to do with her life. And I think I thought about for a lot of my life, you know, we go to college, we go to become a stockbroker, a lawyer, a doctor, a museum, you know, specific things. And we think that's all there is out there to do. But Michelle was able to piece together parts of different professions, quote, unquote, and figure out what made her happy and where she is strong. And, Michelle, I want to thank you for what you do. Because now with your outreach, you're really making a difference not only in your client's lives, because you're helping with them with their challenges or what they need help on. But you're helping our world in education and outreach with people that will learn from these projects that you're doing.

Ray Loewe23:36

Well, you know, thanks to both of you for being here. And there's a lot of thought that's going to go through my head on this a lot of thought about the journey that you're taking Michele, where you're winding up, the things that you're doing is all very, very exciting. So, unfortunately, we got to sign off. So we want to thank our listeners for being with us today. And join us next week, we're going to have Bonnie Shay back as a co-host. Again, we're going to continue with this theme of the power of a story and different ways that you can tell it and Taylor it's that time.

Kris Parsons24:11

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Podcast Guest:  Bonnie Shay:  [email protected]

Bonnie's Company Website:  https://mariposaphotoorganizing.com/

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:03

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:17

Good morning, everybody. And welcome to scenic Woodbury, New Jersey, where we're at the studios of wildfire podcasting. And we're here with our engineer Taylor, who's going to make sure that, this podcast actually airs the way it's supposed to. And our podcast today is gonna be a little different because we have a co-host for the month of July and her name is Bonnie Shay. And Bonnie and I decided to do kind of a prep podcast because what she's bringing to the table is so new and so interesting that we kind of wanted to give you a preview and kind of give you some tips on why you want to listen to this and how you might want to listen. So Bonnie Shay say hello. Hello, everybody. Good morning. And Bonnie has been on our podcast before. So she may sound familiar to you. And Bonnie is Chicago-based. And she has a firm called Mariposa photo organizing and Bonnie has done a couple of things for me long ago. And also far away. She helped me organize my photos in a Zen folio portfolio. And so I have a photo website now and she did a magnificent job of that. And then I think she decided that I was too boring. And she decided to transition her business away from digital photographs to paper photographs. Is that right, Bonnie?

Bonnie Shay01:48

I don't know the boring part is right. But yes, I'm only working on printed photo collections now.

Ray Loewe01:53

Yeah. And you seem to be intrigued. And,you're known in some circles as the photo detective, I think. Right?

Bonnie Shay02:04

Yeah, it's Yeah, it's like being a detective. I love it.

Ray Loewe02:07

Okay, so anyway, Bonnie's got a tremendous amount of background in storytelling. And she's what we're going to talk today about is we're going to, I guess the title of this, Bonnie is the power of a story. Is that where we're going? Yes. Okay. And stories are so, so powerful. And let's talk a little bit for a minute on why they're so powerful, and why people need to take an interest in this. So I know I can start this off by you know, a lot of people as they get older, want to be remembered. Or they have a mission that they've been on or a story to tell. They want to be able to tell that story and how to tell it right? And, stories help us communicate better, and stories help us maybe have better relationships with grandchildren. And so, add to this, Bonnie, why do we want to learn to tell stories?

Bonnie Shay03:10

Well, I sort of consider that stories, provide four general things. And I want to preface that with that I think we all appreciate stories differently during the course of our life, I think we appreciate pictures differently in the course of our life as well, but then sort of a subset of stories. So I can say that at my age at 62 almost. Stories are more meaningful to me than ever before, and true stories to be very specific are my favorite. But the four general things I think stories do for us as human beings are one they educate and instruct. So I want to share this funny story that I think back to how bored I was in history class in school, because they often just recited facts and figures and details. And we were supposed to memorize all of that. Well, I think to myself, they had taught us more through stories, I would have paid better attention, and probably learned more. So for me, biographies are my favorite ways of learning about history because they're stories, someone's life, but it really gives you a good, you know, information, to educate and instruct,

Ray Loewe04:22

Can I amplify on that a little bit? Because I think that's a really good point. I mean, you know, we all went through these teachers in our lives, and some of them were notable, and some of them were not. And you know, when I go back and think about it, the ones that told the stories, the one that the ones that put everything in a story format, are much more memorable, and I got much more out of the class. And I think this is true when you're talking to your grandchildren to, you know, kids remember stories, you know, they tend not to remember facts. So I think that's a really good point. And anyway, sorry I interrupted, go on, please.

Bonnie Shay05:01

No, that's good. Cuz I'm going to add one more thing because you just made me think of this, we think of our teachers and the really boring ones that were dry, like, you know, stood at a lectern, and just lectured to us really dryly, but sort of no facial emotion. You know, we all fell asleep and didn't learn. But if you have someone tell a story, they're more likely to be animated, you know, because they're like, it's alive, it comes alive. So I think that's another layer of,

Ray Loewe05:29

you know, we just went through this whole COVID thing and zoom became either our best friend, our worst enemy, or something in between. and I think one of the big problems that we had, were communicating with children and grandchildren, during this period of time, and I know that a number of people did better when they had storytime with their grandchildren, and whether they read stories or whether they made up stories and I remember talking to, to at least one person, and names are going to elude me right now. But the idea of grandpa got on the phone with his grandchildren, and once a week, and creators a story and sometimes put pictures in that story. So please continue Miss Bonnie.

Bonnie Shay06:21

Well, I'm gonna mention that that story you just shared with us, we're gonna hear it on our podcast, because that was from Donna Lubow, who is one of our podcasts people coming up this month. So it all connects, it all connects. So another way stories add to our life is they entertain us, as we know, they can make us laugh, they can make us cry, you know, they can be bittersweet, but they give us a variety of emotions. So we just connect with them. I also think stories, documents, people, places, things, events, you know, a lot of information woven into the story. So I like that it preserves information for now and for future generations so that it's always available. And then to me, lastly, the big piece of what I think stories provides that I learned a lot on recent months and more elaborated on it as we talk. stories can be therapeutic, both for the writer and or the listener, they can vary. They can be, very powerful.

Ray Loewe07:27

You know, I think I came back from a lot of travel. And we have a mutual friend Rebecca Hoffman, who's also been one of our co-hosts on our show a while ago. And she's big into storytelling too. And she helped me craft a number of stories. And when you come back from a trip, or you come back from any kind of event, weaving things into a story makes you more interesting and more memorable. I remember going over to a friend's house and their trip was not a story it was 543 photographs of a trip. And I think that gets old really fast. But the ones that show a relatively smaller number of photos and things like that, and tell stories about their experiences and add the flavors and the colors and the scenes and the noise and everything else that came in are much more interesting to talk to. So we have these four things, we have the fact that stories are educational, they're entertaining, they can be documentary, and they can be therapeutic. Do you want to spend a couple of minutes on therapeutic?

Bonnie Shay08:45

Um, yes. So I, during this pandemic, joined a memoir class, and it was on zoom, and there were about a dozen of us. And the teacher before class gave us some prompts. So that we could each write, a version of our memoir, and not a version of a slice of our memoir. And so I came to the first class, you know, we all came we had turned our homework in because we didn't want detention after class that night. So the teacher said she was going to read them for all of us. And what was very interesting is one of the people that was there asked the teacher if she could read her own, like she didn't think she liked the idea of the teacher reading the story and the teacher very politely said to her, I would like to read it because you will hear it very differently coming out of my mouth as the teacher than if you read your own words. And it was unbelievable Ray, Who would have ever thought of this little tweak. But when you hear someone else saying your word, it's almost like you're reading someone else's words yourself and sort of the reverse of that. So that was very powerful. But we have about 12 people In the class, and the teacher read all of the stories, and we're listening. And we give feedback to each other after each story so that people can get feedback how their story was to the listeners. But a lot of the people were they're sharing very traumatic and heartbreaking stories from their childhood. Oh, you know, I won't go into detail. But it was unbelievable some of these stories. And it was heartbreaking. But what I realized it was therapeutic. A for the writer because they had gone through the process of writing their story, they were brave and courageous to share it, obviously, we were in a safe environment, you know, they knew who was there. But it was very therapeutic for them to write and share. And this was from way back in their life. And to me, it was also therapeutic for the listeners, because we were maybe relating to some of our own stories, or just recognizing that these people were brave, and what stories can do for all of us.

Ray Loewe11:03

Okay, let's, take a minute because when we were prepping for this call, you were talking also about different ways of telling a story. And then after you give us the list, I'd like to go and talk a little bit about the people that you're going to be bringing into our podcast over the month of July, and what they do and how they do it differently. And then I want to come back and talk about the fact that everybody has a story because many of us don't think we do. So let's talk about the different ways to tell a story first.

Bonnie Shay11:38

Yeah, so to me, the different types of stories are the written word, the spoken word, photos, videos, and movies. And then you can get into the cultural arts, like dance. People tell stories through dance, through visual art, you know, they could paint a story. Pantomime, you know, think of Marcel Marceau, you told us stories, music of any sort, you know, instruments or singing. And then comics, animation cartoons, tell us stories. You know, a lot of us grew up reading comic books, but we were reading stories. So those are the different types of stories that I came up with.

Ray Loewe12:20

Okay, so you are bringing a number of guests to our podcast. And thank you for that because I think the benefit of having a co-host here that's different every month or so is that we get a different flavor of people coming in. So let's talk about a couple of the people that you're going to introduce to us. And let's start on, well let you start with where you want to start.

Bonnie Shay12:47

Eeny meeny miney Moe, let's talk about Arielle. Okay, Arielle Nobile and Ray, why don't you share what you know of her.

Ray Loewe12:55

You've met her? Well, I know Arielle is a filmmaker of note. Excuse me. And she is working for some of the people that we've actually had on our podcast before. So I have met her, she's a delightful person and she is extraordinarily creative and now tell me more Bonnie.

Bonnie Shay13:18

Well, she basically has her niche or her focus are documentary films. So she's not making films that she's trying to provide for an Academy Award and hiring, hiring actors and actresses and all that. She's interviewing people who want their family's story told. So she and I have collaborated. In fact, that's how we met she needed a photo organizer to help with one of her films. Because what she does is she merges together, the interviews she does, and then we've digitized printed photos. We've digitized old movie clips, and then she weaves them together into the end result. So she's focused, go ahead,

Ray Loewe14:01

No, go ahead. And so she would be. She's gonna talk to a large extent about people who know they have a story. Okay. Either they built a business, they built a family. They've done something creative in their life. And this story needs to be told and they want to document it for eternity. Right. Is that pretty much where we're going there? Correct. Okay, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So let's take one of the other people you're going to introduce us to because it's different. It is different. How about Michelle?

Bonnie Shay14:37

Yes. So Michelle Heftman is someone who I met relatively recently and we live near each other. And what she does is she helps people with their photo collections, but I help people with their personal photo collections, photos of themselves. What Michelle does is she has clients who have collected photos taken by other people, quite a few that were infamous, you know, photographers that we would recognize names of in our history. And they have these huge collections, they might have hundreds or 1000s of collections. And what she does, and she'll share a lot of interesting stories with us is, organizes them documents them. And then sometimes just like general antique dealers, they sometimes reach a limit of how much that they can have on their collection. So they let go of some antique so that they can bring in some new. So think of that. That's what Michelle does. So work with her client to let go of a few sell them, to make room to come in with their collection with some new pieces. Yeah.

Ray Loewe15:49

She also, well help people that have collections that are notable and set them up for display in a museum or an exhibit of some kind.

Bonnie Shay16:00

Exactly. And one of her most passionate projects right now is someone who has collected photos specifically along the theme of social justice. And so they're working with a local institution here in Chicago to have an exhibit because the client wants people to be educated by their photos besides being just visually, you know, interesting.

Ray Loewe16:27

Okay, so let's talk about Donna, again, this is a totally different way of looking at things.

Bonnie Shay16:35

Right. So Donna Lubow founded short story theater here in my community about seven or eight years ago. And it's basically having amateurs just people like you and me, you know, once again, not actors and actresses telling a story. And you are suggest that you come up with a story between 10 and 12 minutes in length, and it has to be a true, that's the one rule it has to be a true story. And then you go and you perform it. And she picks four people each time, she has this event, pre-pandemic. And it takes place in a local restaurant with a, you know, a back room, and there's about 50 people, most of the people, there are friends and families of the storytellers. But then some people have just come just to enjoy. And it's been going on for eight years, and the stories that are told and the people you meet, and I've performed several times, and she's just a fascinating woman that has other background stuff. So I really thought it'd be fun to have her on the show.

Ray Loewe17:38

Okay, so we're gonna have three really creative new people in the month of July. And maybe we'll add a fourth in there somewhere, but the idea is, these are people who can show us how to tell stories in different ways. Now, let's back up a little bit and dwell a little bit or spend a little more time on this concept of why do you want to tell a story? Why bother? I mean, I talk to a lot of people and they say, I don't have a story. Nobody wants to hear about me or my life or my experiences. And I find 99% of the time. That's not true.

Bonnie Shay18:18

You're absolutely right. And I can have two examples of that. One was from one of your own podcasts when you interviewed Nora Kerr, who has a memoir writer that I've known here in Chicago for a while. And she shared with us some of the challenges she has in the work that she does. And she shared with us, you know, as listeners that she would be hired by an adult child, and she had to contact the parent to interview them because that's who story she was going to be telling. So she'd call mom or dad, whoever the, you know, the story was going to be about, and she'd say, so let's make a date. You know, so I can hear your story and interview, et cetera. And the people oftentimes will reply, I don't have a story. I'm nobody special, who will want to read my story. It's not important, and you know, sort of play down their story. Be beyond humble, right? And so Nora came up with a great way to ask them to spin it around. And she would say, Susie, for conversation just using a name. Susie, how wonderful would it be if you had your parent's story written down and documented to be able to read and appreciate and value and it was like, magic in a split second, these people would switch their minds and say, oh, and they would get it. So it's not like she's trying to raid, you know, write a story about a famous person that's going to sell 100,000 copies. That's not for who her audiences. It's the children, it's the grandchildren, etc. So I thought that was a great way to spin it around. And I've used that with my own clients, Ray. Because some people who call me to want to hire me, they tell me, I don't know what to do with my photos. My kids tell me they don't want them. You know, there's too many boxes of them. I don't want, they don't want them. And I very courteously and diplomatically explain. we all appreciate photos in different ways in different parts of our lives. And maybe where these children are right now, they don't get it. But they will be sorry, they don't have your photos if you're gone and not here to tell the stories photographically or orally. So that gives my clients a real sense of Okay, our kids may not get it right now. But someday, and we don't want to get to that point. Right. When it's too late.

Ray Loewe20:50

Yeah, that's what Nora has said to and, handing him a box of photos that are on organizes, is why I want to throw them out. You know, but their stories in there, that can be told and I think it was Nora that mentioned the fact that she had written a story about her father, just before he died. And one day she went in to check on her son. And here he was awake reading the book about her father. Yes. So there are reasons everybody's got stories, and everybody really needs to think about telling them and I think you're right, Bonnie, you go back and you say, would I have liked to have had more information about my parents? Would I have liked to know more about my grandparents? And almost invariably The answer is yes. And so why wouldn't they want to hear your story, too? Okay. Let's, talk a little bit about some of the other reasons may be that people want to tell stories it has to do with the fact that we have grandchildren that we want to communicate with? And how do you work with them? How do you, you know, what's the best vehicle to be part of your grandchildren's lives? And I think stories have a place in there. Any other comments about why we want to tell stories and why we're gonna want to listen to these people coming up?

Bonnie Shay22:29

Well, when I think I tell people is there's no one way to tell a story. And each of us have different strengths and different interests. So let me go back to the memoir writing class that I was at. First I signed up for I want to do it, but at first, I'm like, if someone told me to sit down or write a memoir, I'd sit down at my desk, and I look at a blank piece of paper and say, Oh, my gosh, where do I start? What do I say? I don't know. Or if I had a, you know, a blank screen on my computer, because I was going to type it like, oh, gee, it's like, how could I just start with a blank piece of paper. But when our teacher gave us prompts, one-word prompts, I'll give you some examples, right? Few prompts, were maps, fifth grade, nicknames, pets. I mean, they were random, they were all over the board, any topic, the minute I would see one of those prompts fifth grade, it would take me back to fifth grade. And I'd say, Oh, I remember that day. And I would sit down at my computer. And I would bang out five pages in a matter of minutes. Because you have a particular place that you went right back to. So it's not like I'm trying to tell my life story. Bonnie was born in 1959 and then go through that story. So you're just taking a slice. So I think people maybe get scared about doing stories because they think well, what am I going to tell or it's gonna be too long or whatever. But a prompt is really a very specific way to do it. So I think it's an easy way to start. And let me remind people, our listeners, you're the only person that can tell your story. Right? So it's for you to do, no one else is going to write it. And so we want to hear from your perspective. Exactly.

Ray Loewe24:24

Yeah. And you know, one other thing that I know you do is when you're organizing people's photographs, you start to sit down and talk to them about what happened in that photograph. And all of a sudden stories appear. And so there are lots of places to start here. And I think what we want or at least what I'd like our listeners to do is to think about the stories that you would like to tell and don't cut it off. And stay tuned over the next month because you're going to hear some incredible people talk about why stories are important and how to tell them in different ways to and then sit down and be creative with your past and figure out how you're going to tell it to your kids, your grandchildren, and maybe other people in some cases. So we're almost out of time. And I know you had a couple of quotes that you wanted to get on the table. So it's quote time Bonnie.

Bonnie Shay25:20

quotes time, okay. So what really turned me on to stories A number of years ago is, I had the book 1000 places to see before you die, which I'm guessing a lot of people have heard about, or maybe even have a copy. And one of my favorite pieces of that book was in the introduction, the quote is, There's no such thing as a bad trip. Just good travel stories to tell back home." And once again, it's sort of outlines that the more memorable happenings are the things that you're going to remember. And things when they don't go as planned, are oftentimes more memorable. So think about, you know, Ray, maybe you have an example. But I tell people think about, have you been to a wedding or a birthday party or a trip or some kind of event where things didn't go as planned, and they become more memorable? Like, who's been to a wedding where the bride trips down the aisle on her dress? I'm guessing that's gonna be more memorable in your category of weddings in your mind, than all the ones that went as planned and there was no, no, no surprise, right?

Ray Loewe26:30

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let's hope that people sit down and think a little bit about Do I have a story? Or what is my story? How do I want to tell it not do I want to tell it? And let's get prepared for the next month of July because it's going to be intriguing. And if you think a little bit about what you want to do, you'll have some great output from our podcasts, any last-minute other things that you want to leave with our listeners Bonnie?

Bonnie Shay27:04

Now, I think we'll leave them in suspense till our rest of the podcast, but I think we've intrigued people and, Oh, actually, one thing I would like to share. So I've known Ray for quite a few years. And I learned very early on one of his favorite words is interesting. And I've been thinking that along the line of storytelling because interesting is more memorable than boring.

Ray Loewe27:30

Yes, always, always, you know, and, you know, storytelling will help you at a cocktail party. It'll help you communicate with your children, grandchildren, and people around you. It will make uh some of the things that you want to leave memorable. And let me close this thing with one last story. This is one of my stories. My wife, Sandy, and I were in Antarctica a while ago. And when you're on one of these expedition, style trips, what happens as you get up in the morning, going out on an excursion you come back for lunch, you go out late in the afternoon, usually after a nap. And you can do that because it's light 24 hours a day. And we met a couple at dinner the night before, and we didn't see them on the excursion the next day to see a particular type of penguin in this case. And when we accosted them at dinner that night, they said, Well, we got up in the morning and we looked at the hill, we had to walk up and we didn't think we could make it up the hill. And I just was shocked that they didn't go and I just didn't say anything. And they added in there that we put off this trip until we felt financially secure. And now we are we have plenty of money. But we can't do those things physically that we wanted to be able to do. And the interesting thing about this is when I tell this penguin story, people come up to me they remember the penguins, you know, and they remember the story. And so crafting storytelling is an art form that any of us can develop. And we have all these media that Bonnie brought forth. Photos, film writings, just oral storytelling. So, Bonnie, I look forward to the month of July, and hopefully, you do too. And we're going to have some great guests and I hope everybody stays tuned. Have a great day everybody.

Kris Parsons29:36

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Podcast Co-host and Guest:  Jeff Wuorio:   [email protected]

Transcription:

Kris Parsons00:00

Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe00:15

Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. I don't know if I'm the one. I'm the lively host, but I'm certainly a host. And I'm sitting here in scenic downtown Woodbury, New Jersey, with my engineer Taylor, and he's gonna make sure that this program runs really well for us. And our guest today is Jeff Wuorio. And Jeff has been on before. And we're going to do a really interesting show today because basically, we're gonna write the last chapter in a book. So good morning, Jeff, how are you today? I'm excellent. How are you? Good. So let me introduce Jeff a little bit further. Jeff is a writing and publishing consultant. He's also a ghostwriter. I met Jeff years and years ago when he was a writer for Money magazine. And we've kind of stayed in touch over probably a 30 year, timespan. And Jeff has been on our podcast as a guest. And if you go back to Episode 42, you'll find out everything you want to know about Jeff. So Jeff, good morning. And the subject today is a little different. Because Jeff, you helped us write a book. And we're gonna talk a little bit about that. So, first of all, explain to, our listeners, what a ghostwriter does.

Jeff Wuorio01:39

Basically, the term is very apt because it does kind of describe in its entirety, what a ghostwriter does.  A ghostwriter essentially works with people to write a book without usually the requisite amount of credit that goes to writers, there may be a width, you know, he's with someone or something like that. But for the most part, we are behind the scenes largely. And it's a wonderful way to write because you meet remarkable people as a matter of routine, and help them express their thoughts and ideas to the best of your ability. So in that sense. It's like being smart, but somebody else is supplying the intelligence. And all you're doing is kind of massaging it a little bit so. 

Ray Loewe02:43

Well, you know, it's a really interesting experience, because KC, who was my co-host for since the inception on this, changing the rules podcast, and I started this book, and then we got stuck. And we went to our friend Jeff, and Jeff got us unstuck. And I think it's kind of a two-way street. Because I think in one sense, you provide expertise that we don't have, you provided a flow for us, when we got stuck, you were able to make the words go together the right way. And so one of the things I would strongly suggest is that anybody who's got a book in their head, and has been thinking about trying to get it out that you use somebody like Jeff to get it out on the table. And we're mostly done with this book right now. And the interesting part of our podcast today is I think we're going to use it to write the last chapter. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions. Jeff, I think this writing is a two-way street because we learn from you and I think you learn from us. So as we put together this book on the luckiest people in the world. What did you learn about the luckiest people in the world?

Jeff Wuorio04:03

It's really been inspiring, that, if any, if I gleaned anything from it, it is just how inspiring some people can be in living their lives in terms of going outside the norm and going outside the prescribed box that a lot of us are supposed to be in personally professionally and what have you and the creative and innovative ways in which they do that. It's just remarkable. How and when I guess one of the messages of the book is that there are so many avenues with which you can do this. That it's open to everyone who's willing to at least experiment to a certain extent.

Ray Loewe04:53

Yeah, and I think anybody can be the luckiest people in the world. But  you have to want to do this. And I think a lot of times, we sit there and we're not inspired. Let me go back to my old financial planning days. And tell a quick story. We had a lot of people that were in their 60s, who had tons of money and claimed they hated their jobs. And yet they refuse to quit. And why? And that's a rhetorical question, I really don't want to answer it, we'll answer it in a minute. And, then we had some other people who were in their same zone 50, 60, 70 claim they hated their jobs. And quickly, as soon as they thought they had the opportunity runoff and, stop doing what they were doing. And I think what happens in here is two things, it's the same thing. And in both cases, there wasn't a plan, and there wasn't some thinking about where you want to go. And those who had the money and refused to leave just didn't feel comfortable with the future, they didn't feel comfortable with change. And so they tend to, stay where they are, and put up with the agony that they had and the dislike of their current situation because they didn't know how to do it better. And, many of the others that ran off, were unhappy with their jobs. And what we found out is after three or four or five years, guess what they were back to being unhappy because they had no direction as to where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. And, you know, one of the things that we're trying to say in this book here is that the luckiest people in the world are those people who personally design their own lives, and then live them under their own terms. And the interesting thing is, these people are happy almost all the time, they're challenged and fulfilled, they know who they are, and what they want out of life. And they found a way to spend their time following what's fascinating and motivating to them without taking on obligations that they're not mentally or emotionally committed to. And when you think about this, and you think about the people that have been able to achieve this, you have to ask the question. So who wouldn't want to do this? Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Wuorio07:28

Just a quick thought, who wouldn't want to do this? Well, I think one thing that's, you know, for better or worse, we're all creatures of habit. We defer to the familiar. And I think that's a kind of a compelling reason why people, you know, this is the way it is, this is the way it was for my parents, my grandparents, that kind of thing. It's just the natural way of how things are and going outside of that is unnerving for a lot of people just because it's a break in habits, a breaking routine, and it's a breaking the status quo. And that can be very, very unsettling for a lot of people you know.

Ray Loewe08:15

Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head here because to,  make changes, you actually have to change. And, you know, we talk about changing the rules on this podcast all the time that, we get, ensconced in everybody else's rules and past situations, and a lot of people say, you know, the reason I hate work is because it's supposed to hate it, no, that's why they call it work. And the fact is, you don't have to do that. But you really do have to make change, and you have to want to make change, and you have to be able to implement those changes. And that I think, is what sets everybody else apart.

Jeff Wuorio09:01

Yeah, I'm working with a gentleman now, who basically one of his essential messages that he's trying to convey is that we are always unhappy or unhappier than we need to be, when we let you know, forces outside of ourselves dictate how we live our lives. The dictum of, you know, you go to school, you go get a job, you get married, you know, all these kinds of things that are external forces. And if you fall victim to them, as he says, you not only are going to be less happy than you can be but all the more important, you're going to be a whole lot less fulfilled and successful. however, you define success in terms of how you live your life. So it's not just touchy-feely, good kind of things. There is a pragmatic and practical element to this because you're more successful in what you deem an important component of success by not letting others dictate what you do and why?

Ray Loewe10:09

Yeah, and so this is what we tried to do in this book. And, Jeff, you did a masterful job in helping me lay this out. But we talked a little bit about this definition of the luckiest people. And we, have tons of stories in there about people who do this in their regular life, who have the mindsets that are necessary to feel lucky and be lucky. And we laid out what those mindsets are, and you know, often is still not quite enough. And that's what we kind of want to do in this last chapter that we're going to try and write today while we're on the air. And, that is that people tend to need support, that you can kind of want to be the luckiest person in the world, you can kind of try to be it. But it's a lot easier, it's a lot more fun when you hang out with other luckiest people in the world. And, and we have a community that has been forming over the last umpteen years of the luckiest people in the world. And what we've been trying to do is to try to do some things to support that community. So what we found is that change keeps occurring, that the world doesn't stay static. So one day, we feel like we're the luckiest people in the world, and then we get hit by COVID. And all of a sudden, the world shuts down. And those people that really are the luckiest people in the world have found a way to handle it and change. And usually, they do this because they have other friends that they can talk to other people that they can listen to. And that's the purpose of the podcast that we're doing right now. It's to kind of put in front of people, other people who are the luckiest people in the world, and allow you to sit there and say Why? Why are they? And what can I learn from them? So one of the things we've been trying to do, Jeff is put together a community and we actually have several things that we do to support this community. One is this podcast, where we try and put in front of everybody, a whole series of luckiest people in the world. So that you can sit there and say, Wow, this person did something that maybe I can do to or I can never do that in a million years. They don't all work but in there somewhere is something that will work for you if you listen to enough of them. And we also have this thing called coffee and conversation that we do and cocktails and conversation. And every Thursday, we get small groups of people together. And we try and have a conversation about what's going on in the world, and how we can feel luckier, and how we can learn from other people. We do a conference a couple times a year, and that conferences are either virtual or their real life, where we bring in some speakers to talk about how to feel luckier. And you know, one of the big things that I want to try to talk about a little bit before we get off the air today is .travel. And the travel connection that we put together because traveling is a great way to meet new people and to see the world through the eyes of other people. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that for the last year and a half. But we're getting back into the concept of being able to travel together. So what we hope to do is to invite people to join our group of the luckiest people in the world or form your own, whichever works for you. So go ahead, Jeff, I'm monopolizing this conversation, as I often do.

Jeff Wuorio13:48

By no means, I think in terms of the group, just the fact that there is such a group or there are such groups, I think helps mitigate that fear of doing something different because if nothing else, you realize you're not alone in doing this. There are other people who have considered this and have done so successfully. So you don't feel quite so singularly adventurous as it were, you find out there are other people doing the exact same thing, and here's what they're doing. And that's comforting and supportive. And I think the another thing to bear in mind is that when we say you know, the luckiest people in the world, it doesn't have to be a wholesale 100% other revision of your entire life. You know you don't have to be working on Wall Street pulling down $5 million a year. And then you chuck all that to become a pearl diver or something like that. There are gradations and there are levels of change. That can be very, very rewarding. And it doesn't have to be a complete redo of your entire life, even if just a component or two is changed, and make a world of difference in how you see that, how you feel, and how you view everything else.

Ray Loewe15:12

You know, that's a really good point. And I've got a couple of examples. But let me quantify this a little bit there,  tend to be three groups of people that need this kind of a community. There's a group of people out there that have made up their mind somewhere that they want to feel luckier than they are that they really want to take the time and design their own lives and live in the way they want. But they're stuck. They don't know how to do that. And a lot of times, they're stuck by circumstances, you know, they feel closed in they need the money that they have because they have a family, they've got kids that are going to go to college. And so they can't just chuck their job like you said. So how can they become lucky? So hold that thought for a minute. The second group that we get in here, are a group of people that say, you know, I used to feel like a lucky person in the world. But now for some reason, I don't. And I've gotten into this Limbo status. And it could be because of sickness or illness, it could be a change in family, it could be something like this COVID thing that we went through. And the idea is you fall off the wagon, and how do you get back. And one of the best ways of doing that is to have people to talk to, and maybe a mentor to help pull you out of that abyss that you're in. And the third group that fits in here are those people who truly feel like they're the luckiest people in the world now, but they don't want to fall off. And they're always looking for more, you know, if you stay status quo in life, you're usually going to wind up back where you were, at some point in time, you have to keep moving ahead and keep looking for what you want and how to expand and we have a whole bunch of people who are actively looking for how do I steal the next best thing that you're doing from you? Because I want to do it too. Okay, yeah. So I took some time before this podcast, I called up a couple of the people that are a show up all the time in our luckiest group, membership group. And I was talking to a guy by the name of Bill Hughes, and Bill is an executive coach. And he's been in the financial services business for most of his life. But one of the comments that he hit is this goes back to what you were saying before, it's not an all-or-nothing thing. And he finds that a lot of people get stuck because they're busy. You know, it could be a housewife that's got two or three screaming kids at home and is trying to work a job and take care of the family and do all these things. And when Is there time for me? And he said he uses something called opportunity days all the time with his clients. I think it's a wonderful thing. Where you know, you take a day off once a month, and you say, I'm going to find a way to create a day for me. And then I'm going to use that day to start to work on this, how do I get lucky? Or how do I get more control over my own life? How do I move forward? Okay. And then that one day maybe becomes two days a month, and then three days a month, and before you know it, it takes over and becomes the norm. So thanks to Bill Hughes for that comment, because I think it solves this issue of this all-or-nothing thing that you were talking about before. We had a young lady on our podcast not too long ago, her name was Lourdes Nichols. And Lourdes has a full-time job. She likes her job. She does advertising work with some of the newspapers in the Greater Chicago area. But she had an event that took place years ago when she was in high school and she found out that her mother was born in a Japanese internment during World War Two. And she was so horrified by this experience of people just losing a portion of their life. When maybe they didn't deserve it. You know, there were a lot of reasons why these camps were, put together. Most of them not good. But anyway, if you find yourself in that kind of situation, what do you do? Well, what Lourdes has been able to do is she said, I'm not going to quit my job, but I am going to take this cause I am going to make this cause part of my life's work. And I'm going to get engaged in it and I'm going to be fulfilled by it. And she's created this portion of her life for herself without quitting her job. Again, all of this comes from being able to listen to podcasts of what other people are doing, being able to talk to other people and find out what's important to them and how they're managing to do this stuff. You know, I think one of the people that we wrote about in our book, Ruth Kinzler. Ruth had a stroke during a summer event down at the Jersey Shore, and all of a sudden found herself partially paralyzed. So what did she do? She quit her job. And she started doing what she loved to do baking and cooking for people. And it just created a career for her. And it's, you know, how do you find out about these things? How do you get motivated to do these things? Well, I think you listen to podcasts, you talk to other people.

Jeff Wuorio20:54

And I think to, again, the group in its various forms. If nothing else, it just gets I hope I and I believe it will just get people thinking a little bit, if nothing else, in terms of maybe it's never crossed their mind that they could do something else. Or maybe it's never crossed their mind that they could keep the job that they like, and yet have this adjunct element of their life that they find incredibly rewarding. It's just a Kickstarter for creativity and thinking in ways that perhaps you never have before.

Ray Loewe21:30

Yeah. And again, you need help you need somebody to seed the idea for you, because we, unfortunately, can't think of all these things that are out there. And then how do you make it happen? How do you take little chunks and make those chunks bigger and bigger and bigger? You know, one of the other people I talked to prepare for this podcast was a young lady by the name of Bonnie Shay. And Bonnie is a professional organizer. And she specializes in photo organizing, and she's on all of these, she listened to all of these podcasts. And she said, You know, I've realized that I was brought up by my parents to be self-sufficient. They told me and I guess, parents like to do this, they want to raise you. So you're independent, and you can do whatever you have to do. And she said, By listening to these things and talking to other people, I realized that this is really a strength-based world. And I have certain strengths and things that I'm really good at. And when I do them, I'm happy. And when I do those things, I can't do very well, I'm not happy. But there are other people out there that can do those things for me. Yep. Yep. And part of this collaboration. Go ahead, Jeff,

Jeff Wuorio22:45

just interject very quickly, a very dear friend of mine that I see often here we play music together after he retired from an engineering post, began a financial planning practice, because he'd always wanted to do that. And he's enjoying it like nobody's business. It's wonderful. And when we got together this weekend, he as it happens, he said, I'm going to be hiring an assistant in the coming year, and I said, Well, that's great, you know, you're growing, you'll need some help. And he goes really that and I want to really clearly delineate what I do versus what I want my assistant to do, I want to do the things that I enjoy doing that I am good at that I value. And I do not want to do the things that I'm not particularly good at or don't particularly enjoy. And that's going to be the function of my assistant. So I can really focus on what really resonates with me. And it really parallels what you were just saying,

Ray Loewe23:46

and see this is how you craft your own life. This is you know, if you're gonna do what you want to do, you have to realize that there are a whole bunch of things that need to be done. It's just that you don't have to do them, you have to figure out how you're going to put this together. You know, another comment that Bonnie made to me, that was really interesting. She was sick for a while she had to get some radiation treatment for something and she was radioactive and she wasn't sick, sick. But she couldn't see other people and she said, You know, I had people delivering meals to my door because they knew I needed help. And you know, I would never think about giving a meal to somebody because it would have had to be perfect. And all of a sudden she realized that these meals that she got weren't perfect. They were just gifts and she appreciated them so much that she realized now she can give this gift other people don't have to be perfect. All right. So all of these wonderful things come from sharing and they come from talking to other people and they come from learning. So this is what we want people to do. It's if you want to be the luckiest one of the luckiest people in the world. You know you got to have the right mindset, you got to have the right kind of plan. And then you have to surround yourself with people who can support you.

Jeff Wuorio25:10

I also think it's important to point out that this does not necessarily focus specifically on older people, for, however, you care to define that the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, that kind of thing. This group and this mindset is for everyone, and, to a certain extent, you know, and again, to, it can be difficult for young people, you know, if you're just married, and you know, you've got a new mortgage, and you've got a baby on the way and things like that, you can say, oh, I've just got too much on my plate. But even if you can carve out a small amount of time, to have this, this element that really you value most, you're incredibly lucky, then because you're, you're gonna jump on something so important than something so wonderful that people, older people, like myself, didn't get to until later in life. And it reminds me of the story of in the book that you share about going to the Antarctic and going to see the penguins and one of the members of the group so that we couldn't go see the penguins because we were no longer physically capable of doing it. illustrating that, you know, if you put this off too long, you may not be able, to accomplish or even experiment with something that is of true value to you. So it's a call to action for everyone.

Ray Loewe26:41

Yeah, and it's a call to action that everybody should take, because why live in a state of unhappiness for a period of time. And let me just give you another example, I have a friend of mine who's 40 ish, okay. She's got a great job in the standpoint it provider with a lot of income and a lot of money. And she's got two kids at home. And she realized that her job is just not fulfilling. It's, great from the standpoint of making money, she's doing some good things, but she's not doing those things that she feels passionate about. So she took some time during this whole COVID thing when she was forced to stay at home, and went back to school and an online version and started taking courses. And those courses now are giving her the ammunition to start opening up maybe a new job search or new thinking about what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go. So it's all there. But we need to get those ideas thrown at us we need to feel. Find the passion, you know, one last story, and then we're going to kind of have to wind up. But we used to do these trips all the time with our clients. When I was in the financial planning business and uh. We're doing them now again, with the luckiest people in the world is a group. And we'll get active again, now that COVID is pretty much under wraps, and start traveling. But my wife, Sandy, and I did some traveling on our own. And it was great because we got to share experiences with ourselves. And we got to dictate where the trip went. But we also did a lot of traveling with other people. And we found out that when we traveled with other people, we not only saw the world through our own eyes, but we got the chance to see them through other people's eyes. And not only that, but the other people shared other experiences with them. And all of a sudden you sit there as you check countries off around the world that you've been to now. And every time I check off one country Jeff, I wind up with three or four new ones, because I'm getting the shared experience of other people. And they're just getting me excited about life and what I can do. So this is this is

Jeff Wuorio29:04

In our experience, too. And travel my wife and I, a couple of years ago before COVID went to Scandinavia for a month. And yes, you do see how other people live. And you talk to them. And it's wonderful to see different value systems, different priorities, different lifestyles, things of that nature. But it's also reciprocal in that. I remember meeting these two young Italian women on the train with my wife, and they were just fascinated to see, you know, as fascinating as we were to hear what they how they lived. They said tell us about America, you know, what is it like, you know, you know, what stereotypes Do we have about America, but I'm not entirely accurate. And so it's a very reciprocal kind of benefit. You know you gain a lot but you also give a lot?

Ray Loewe30:02

Well, you know, unfortunately, Jeff, we're at about the end of our time over here. And I think the idea is that we've got this book ready to go, which should be out in the next couple of months. And we're excited about it because it shares how you can become one of the luckiest people in the world. But one of the big parts, and it's going to be the end of this book is that it's much more fun to do it with other people. And it's much easier to do with other people. And finding the community where you can get excited about life and people keep you there is really a great thing. So uh

Jeff Wuorio30:40

I look at it is to say, You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Ray Loewe30:45

Yep. any last comments before we cut off Jeff?

Jeff Wuorio30:48

know that that I was saving that pearl for the end? So let's wrap up with that

Ray Loewe30:52

So okay, we'll have to back up. That was the end. All right. So everybody, stay with us over the next couple of weeks. We're gonna have another great podcast next week. And we'll try and give you more and more ideas about how you can be the luckiest people in the world and be part of that group, and enjoy life more and more and more. So thanks for being with us.

Kris Parsons31:19

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.