Changing the Rules

For more info visit: memoirsandmore.com

Reach Clemence Scouten at: [email protected]

TRANSCRIPT

Unknown Speaker  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe. In the wonderful Wildfire Podcast studios in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. And Spring has sprung, the trees are starting to bloom. And since I'm not somebody that suffers with allergies, I can enjoy it to the fullest. Good morning, Ray,

Ray Loewe  0:36  

a spring has sprung. Yeah, I remember a poem

KC Dempster  0:40  

I knew you were gonna say,

Ray Loewe  0:41  

spring has sprung, the grasses is riz. I wonder where the birdies is? So with that, how are you gonna recover from that one?

KC Dempster  0:50  

Well, I've heard it so many times. You didn't set me back with it.

Ray Loewe  0:54  

Okay, so we have with us today, one of the luckiest people in the world. And, and it's interesting, you know, we're getting a pattern here. And and we know that the luckiest people in the world are those people who kind of reinvent their lives, who who sit down, they personally decide what it is they want to do. They lay it out for themselves. And then they step into it, and they live life the way they want to live. And there are some patterns that come up in terms of the kind of people that are likely to do this. I mean, it's available to everybody. Sure. But but but some of it, you know, just kind of works its way into our lives. But you have to be willing at some point in time to change the rules.

KC Dempster  1:38  

That's correct. And that's why we call this Changing the Rules.

Ray Loewe  1:40  

Yeah. And the problem with changing the rules is you actually have to change. That's correct. Yes. So we have a young lady today, her name is I'm going to I'm going to worry about this Clemence. Scouten Perfect. Perfect. Okay. Perfect. And and that's because I had lessons on this. Okay. And I Clemence is really as an interesting background. Yes. Okay. Yes. And she is Philadelphia based. And she writes memoirs for people.

KC Dempster  2:16  

But there's so much more going on than that.

Ray Loewe  2:18  

Oh, it's incredible. It's a you know, the it's it's memoirs, but it's archiving documents. It's all kinds of things. So, so Clemence Welcome to Changing the Rules, and say hi, everybody

Clemence Scouten  2:30  

Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me. It's so exciting to be here with you guys.

Ray Loewe  2:34  

Okay, so So let's go back into history. And and the reason I want to do that is your background is so incredibly interesting. And I think there's some some things that we need to learn as to how your journey evolved into where you are now. So you were born in the US, is that correct?

Clemence Scouten  2:58  

That's right, right here in Philadelphia,

Ray Loewe  3:00  

and here in Philadelphia, and then you became a foreign nationalist in a way.

Clemence Scouten  3:06  

I didn't give up my citizenship.

Ray Loewe  3:13  

You left us right. And you move to where?

Clemence Scouten  3:18  

Well, my, my family moved to the suburbs of Paris.

KC Dempster  3:24  

I'm so envious.

Clemence Scouten  3:27  

So we had our very own castle in my little town.

KC Dempster  3:30  

Oh, how wonderful.

Ray Loewe  3:31  

So so Okay, so here you are, you spent the first 20 years of your life here. And then you're kind of moved to a different country. And tell us a little bit about the experience of growing up overseas.

Clemence Scouten  3:45  

Sure. So it was very different than here. I mean, talk about change, right? I was in a little lovey dovey, everybody gets hugged and as a sweetie pie, elementary school, and you know, in bluebell, and lovely, happy little place, and we move to France into the and I put in the French school system. And the French school system is very different than the American school system. You march in to buy to use it when you're told to sit if an adult enters the classroom, you stand up without being told, right? These are all things that happen automatically. I didn't know any of those rules and was kind of the only kid sitting when an adult stood in the room thinking why is everybody standing up? Yeah. And so it was a big, big, big difference for me. And for my parents too, but my mom was French she got it. My dad was American. So lots of change early on in the life.

Ray Loewe  4:44  

Okay, so what do you consider your primary language or at least back then what did you consider your primary language was?

Clemence Scouten  4:52  

English has always been dominant, though. During my high school years, you really think you're perfectly I was perfectly bilingual. I still am perfectly bilingual. But it my French has taken a hit now that I don't speak French anymore.

Ray Loewe  5:06  

So you grew up overseas and then you came back to the US. You went to college here.

Clemence Scouten  5:11  

Correct here in my hometown.

Ray Loewe  5:14  

Yeah. And and Philadelphia, you went to Penn, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then actually, you went back to Paris.

Clemence Scouten  5:23  

I did. My father died a few weeks before I graduated from college. And I felt it was important to spend some time back home with my mom. I didn't actually go to graduate school for the sake of going to graduate school. It's kind of something I did while I was back home. And which is a huge benefit of the French school system, of course, that you can just register for classes and you're in basically, wow. Yeah.

Ray Loewe  5:46  

Okay, cool.

KC Dempster  5:47  

I always wondered what I, you know, we didn't really go into that. I didn't know how you got back to the Sorbonne. So that's

Ray Loewe  5:55  

okay. So now, now we get to the heart of the matter. You came, you came back to of all places, Boston, right? Yeah. Yes. And you went into the car insurance business?

KC Dempster  6:09  

Is that bizarre or what?

Clemence Scouten  6:12  

wasn't meant to be my career? I mean, who do you know, that actually grows up to say, you know, I've always wanted to work in car insurance. Well, no, I have a lot of friends like that.

KC Dempster  6:22  

Well, I have two cousins. But that's because their father had his own brokerage firm. So they went to an insurance college.

Clemence Scouten  6:28  

Oh, interesting. Yeah. But only business. Yeah.

Ray Loewe  6:32  

But part of this. Now this, this was actually a key point in your life. Because I think you told me that you spent 17 years in the car business and you hated most of it is that

Clemence Scouten  6:42  

well, so I was meant to be the job to pay the rent, why I found a real job. And I stayed there for 15 years, and I didn't hate all of it, I will say it was a great place to learn and grow. It was a young entrepreneurial company, I was young and love to learn. And so for a long time, it was a very good fit. It just, you know, I don't care about car insurance. So at some point, you really say to yourself, why am I devoting my, you know, all the talents and energy I have to something I really don't care about? Hmm, okay, so

Ray Loewe  7:12  

now, now enter the next phase of your life, because this kind of just took you in, in a direction that you capitalized on, just put it that way, I'm not sure it was the right direction, initially, but you made it the right direction. So So what happened, you kind of migrated out of being in marketing and the car insurance and you started working for the owner of the company in a different way?

Clemence Scouten  7:37  

That's right. And this is, you know, when I hear you talk about taking control of kind of the events of your life, and you know, make it making change happen, as opposed to being the subject of change that others are imposing on you. This is where it really resonates. Because So by now, my mother dies, and I'm not interested in car insurance. And I'm thinking, Well, you know, and I turned 40. And, you know, all the I don't live in Philadelphia, which is, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest city in the nation and where I want to be. And so, you know, I had to, I felt I had a choice to make, like, was I gonna keep plugging along and in, in this industry of insurance, or do something that excited me, and that made me feel like I actually was a lucky person? And the answer was, yes. And so I, I quit my job. I emailed the founder of the company, who I knew because, you know, had been a small company wants now it's quite large. And he said, wait, wait, wait, don't go, I have a better idea. You're going to come and work in philanthropy with me and run my corporate foundation here at the company, but also my personal family foundation. So huge pivot, got very lucky, but I think that luck was due to me taking a huge risk. Absolutely,

KC Dempster  8:52  

absolutely. And I think that's where people stumble, is that that that first step into the unknown is terrifying. Oh, yes.

Ray Loewe  8:59  

Yeah. And we're gonna get into what you actually do now, which is where you wound up, but I really think for the sake of our listeners, you know, we're all in this kind of a situation in life where we find ourselves often in places we don't want to be. And I think there was a Gallup poll out not too long ago that said something like 80% of people hate their stupid jobs. Now, I'm not sure that they really hate their stupid jobs, but I think they don't like them. Okay. Right. And and, and they they feel stuck because like you said it was a paycheck. So here you are, you've kind of you know, work your way into something. So So tell us a little bit about the foundation experience that you had and how it helped you to go into your next phase?

KC Dempster  9:45  

Right, because I think you even controlled that, did you Not?

Clemence Scouten  9:50  

A little bit. Yes. Let me just say one more thing before we move on because I think your listeners might find it interesting when I when I did this when I quit the job and I told everybody in the company, which by I'd been there for a dozen years already. so i knew a lot of people about a lot of people came up to me and about half of them said oh my gosh i'm so envious i could never do what you've done because i'm terrified and then the other half came up to me and said you're nuts you are absolutely nuts this is gonna fail you're gonna fail

KC Dempster  10:19  

yeah yeah those are the people to steer clear of

Clemence Scouten  10:23  

yeah i understood what they were saying i was afraid of failing to write i mean that's that's the terror that you just mentioned how terrifying it is right right you know it's so anyway so yeah so so now i'm in philanthropy and this was another you know thing i was grateful for it was a hugely humbling experience i had never been in a school that you have to walk through a metal detector to get in i had never spent time in a housing project and your eyes are really opened or at least mine were to to what you knew intellectually had been a nice life but you don't really understand the disparity until you actually see living conditions for people who have lives not as comfortable as yours

Ray Loewe  11:03  

so your job was to give away money basically and but yes but to do it to people that were underprivileged to people who didn't have what we were fortunate enough to have they didn't grow up in paris

Clemence Scouten  11:16  

right although i will say we moved to france for financial reasons but the the yes the foundation and the owner Jim and Kathy focus a lot on education so i spent a lot of time in schools and with principals and teachers thinking about how to try and help kids you know do better in school by you know various programs and projects and so on

Ray Loewe  11:42  

okay so at some point in time you severed your your relationships with the foundation and started your own business

Clemence Scouten  11:51  

yes well so there you go again this this having jumped off the cliff and having someone catch me with this wonderful opportunity made me realize that jumping off cliffs actually is something you need to do relatively often so i did it again i spent three years three wonderful years working in this foundation stuff but still i wasn't in Philadelphia which is my dream my dream was to come back to philadelphia and so one of the things i had discovered in this job was that people people keep a lot of archives and personal documents and records which i think we all know that intuitively that we all have archives and documents but that there might be an opportunity as a job as a business to help people organize those and save those properly and also transform them into books and other media that would be enjoyable for future generations and so that's what i decided to do

KC Dempster  12:49  

but you started doing that with Jim and Kathy correct

Clemence Scouten  12:52  

i did it yep i started doing with Jim and Kathy these these philanthropists and that's what opened my eyes to that it could be a business

KC Dempster  13:01  

right because you mentioned that we all have archives i think that if you were to say that to most people they would look at you like you're crazy because to me that that implies that it's organized i would say we all have we all have documents and we all have photographs but they're not necessarily archives yet

Ray Loewe  13:20  

it's called it's called stuff

KC Dempster  13:23  

stuff yes yes the

Clemence Scouten  13:25  

opportunity to have archives yeah

KC Dempster  13:27  

right yes

Ray Loewe  13:28  

okay so so here you are now you're back in philly okay with no paycheck right

Clemence Scouten  13:34  

that's right

Ray Loewe  13:35  

okay so tell us went through your what went through your head and kind of what came first you know that that was pivotal in making happen where we're eventually going here

Clemence Scouten  13:48  

well i mean i i'm not sure how to answer that it was it was an idea that i had that i knew that this you know there was a demand for this type of services i didn't understand that there are other people already do this i mean i knew that like if you're a Rockefeller or something you have several archivists who work for you because your papers are so extensive but i didn't know that an everyday person would hire someone to write their memoir or to create a family history book for them based on their family stories and so i i you know did that for a friend's dad i helped him write his memoirs as an experiment and once having done that i thought okay well actually this is going to be terrific this is this is let's go this is a business let's find more clients

Ray Loewe  14:35  

okay so let's let's go back now and to all the objections you get from people when you say to them let me write your memoirs or let's write your memoirs i mean how many people actually sit down and say i want to write my memoirs

Clemence Scouten  14:52  

well i think a lot of people think it secretly and then there are a couple concepts that derail them and one of them is and they're all unfortunate because they're none of them are really legitimate. They're just irrational fears. So people think oftentimes that it's it's narcissistic, that it's a total ego trip to write your memoirs. And therefore, it's not worth doing because you're going to be thought of as a, you know, as a belly button worshiper.

Ray Loewe  15:25  

Okay, that's an interesting term. We're gonna we're gonna

KC Dempster  15:27  

I need to I need to think on that.

Ray Loewe  15:31  

Okay, so the ego ship and and you have a blog on your website, that's three myths sabotage her legacy, and that's right. And that was one of them. Do you remember the other two? Or do you need proper?

Clemence Scouten  15:44  

Good homework? Right? The others are very close, closely connected. A lot of people feel that their life isn't that interesting? Oh, I haven't. I haven't done anything special. I didn't invent anything. I didn't cure cancer. And therefore it my life isn't worth recording. And and I say no, that's absolutely incorrect. And if you think about it, in terms of one of your ancestors, so for instance, would you like to read 50 or 100 pages that your grandfather wrote, or your great grandfather wrote, even if that person had not done anything, as so described as interesting, of course, you'd like to read that document? Actually, it would be a treasured family heirloom. So why is that not the case? For you? It is in fact,

Ray Loewe  16:28  

yeah, I really think that that's the issue at heart. If you go back and you ask yourself the question, would I like to know more about my grandparents, or my great parent parents? And and I think mine were all horse thieves. But, but, but but they were interesting horse thieves?

KC Dempster  16:44  

Well, sure. What's more interesting than that? Yeah.

Ray Loewe  16:46  

And, and so the idea is that if you can go back and ask that question to yourself and say, Do I want to know more about a relative that I had in the past or all my relatives? Then why shouldn't you leave that legacy for your kids and your grandchildren?

Clemence Scouten  17:06  

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, they're gonna, these your kids love you. And therefore, they're going to love what you write. I mean, it's that simple.

Ray Loewe  17:17  

Yeah. And and maybe they're not interested today.

KC Dempster  17:20  

Right. Right. That's right.

Ray Loewe  17:22  

But I think they're interested in, you know, I was talking to somebody else A while ago. And I remember the comment coming up, coming up that she wrote a book about her father. And one day she walked in to tuck one of her kids in, and I think the kid was 10 or 11 years old, and found him reading the book about his grandparents. Wow. And, you know, that's kind of an eye opening moment that, you know, people are interested, but they can't be interested if you don't provide them with the material. And so this is what you do, or part of what you do now, is that correct?

Clemence Scouten  17:55  

Yeah, it's the, it's the core of what I do this, this idea of helping someone or a family, identify the stories, the traditions, the values, you know, all these intangibles. You know, collect those, identify those, and then put them down on paper and a beautiful book that you're going to be proud to hand to your kids and grandkids and that they will treasure and cherish for the rest of their lives. I mean, you're right, the 16 year old may or may not be interested in family history. I mean, you know, 16 year olds care about themselves, just totally normal,

KC Dempster  18:30  

and only themselves,

Clemence Scouten  18:31  

and only themselves. But when they get older, when they have their own kid, when they become a grandparent, you bet they're going to be happy. They have that book.

KC Dempster  18:39  

Right, right. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking stories about one of my grandmother's that, you know, we as children, heard because, you know, my mother would tell these stories about her mother, but I'm thinking my kids probably haven't heard these stories. So I'm probably gonna have to do some jotting.

Clemence Scouten  18:57  

You should. And it's so easy. I mean, of course, I would love it if people hired me. But there are so many things that you can do on your own. I mean, just hit record on your phone, a story comes to mind hit record on your phone, it just keep a little notebook and say, Oh, the story about when Tommy fell out of the tree and broke his arm. Or, you know, you look at your old photo albums, and you say, Oh my gosh, that's Grandma, so and so. And she did X, Y, and Z and just take notes. And then it's much easier to like, get your thoughts in order because you're starting from a list.

Ray Loewe  19:27  

Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that you have on your website, by the way, is a free memoir writing worksheet. Yes. Okay. So So, you know, that's probably a great place to start. If you don't know what you're doing yet. You don't know what you want to do yet. Go there. So tell us a little bit about what's in that worksheet and, and how you get people to start thinking about this kind of a project and then how it can evolve it to a self completed project or sometimes when people know they need you.

Clemence Scouten  20:00  

Sure, you know, writing your memoir is actually a lot of work. And I think people get discouraged because it's, you know, it just feels like an insurmountable project, right? We don't very few people go to school and take a class on memoir writing. And so with big projects, any big project in my view, and this applies for archiving and other family projects, break it down into small pieces. So, you know, start small, spend, you know, devote a couple hours to writing a story about your childhood or talking about, you know, what it was like going to school back in the day or learning to ride a bike or your first car? Your first car is a great one, it's easy to talk about your first car, What color was it what model was it? Was it new? Was it used? Who taught you to drive it? Was it a standard or an automatic, you know, there's so many descriptors, and just talking about something like that, that give a snapshot of a point in time, that doesn't exist anymore. And just to finish my thought, the just starting with a tiny little story, like that is a great way to gauge whether or not you have the appetite for, you know, writing 100 more pages.

Ray Loewe  21:14  

Well, and stories, you know, there's nothing better than a story well told, okay. And we and we all have them, it's sometimes you have to think a little bit about them. And, and I love your analogy about start small. I remember somebody asked me once upon a time, how do you eat an elephant? And the answer is I don't eat elephants.

KC Dempster  21:35  

The true answer is one bite at a time

Ray Loewe  21:37  

one bite the time so.So. Okay, we're unfortunately near the end of our time here. But

KC Dempster  21:44  

I wanted, I want to jump in and ask Clemence to give us her website so that people can access this wonderful material.

Clemence Scouten  21:52  

Thank you for asking. So the name of the business is memoirs, and more. And the website is memoirs and more calm.

KC Dempster  21:59  

Oh, that's easy.

Ray Loewe  22:00  

Okay. And more is the important part,

Clemence Scouten  22:03  

right? Sure. That's right. Because memoirs is one part of your, you know, your story. But you can do a family history book, too. We mean, you all these photographs, and these birth certificates, and these ship manifests and all the objects, we have all that stuff, scan it, photograph it, let's make a book and include that with the stories that makes you know, any photo makes the story better.

Ray Loewe  22:25  

And, you know, I think the thing that really hit home with me here is that, you know, if you go back and you ask yourself the question, do I wish I knew more about my parents and grandparents and great grandparents? And if the answer to that is yes, then you need to write your memoir somewhere along the way. And whether you do it yourself, whether you make it into a large project, whatever it is. So, again, we're nearing the end of our time. So Clemence, what, what other comments Do you need to make before we sign off?

Clemence Scouten  22:57  

Well, I just say you touched on something about telling a great story. That is actually one of the reasons people freeze up and are afraid to write because they feel they're not good writers or they're gonna make mistakes. And you know, the fear of the red pen is like, absolutely real. But don't be too hard on yourself. No, you know, we're not getting you on the New York Times bestseller list here. That's not what this is about. It's, people are gonna love it because they love you, you know, they're gonna hear your voice. I mean, it's an act of love. It's a gift of love to write these things. And so that's what you should keep in mind.

KC Dempster  23:28  

I think that really, that kind of sums it up.

Ray Loewe  23:31  

It sums it up. So Memoirs and More. Okay. Clemence, right. We have to pronounce your name right if we're going to work with you, right. And, and, yeah, sit down and think about what you don't know about your relatives and what your kids ought to know about you. Right? You got it. Great. So thanks for joining us today and KC why don't you sign us off and take us to next week.

KC Dempster  23:59  

Yes, next week we are going to be talking with and the timings perfect because it's spring, Mother Nature. So tune in because this is going to be amazing.

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Reach Nora Kerr through, memoirforme.com

TRANSCRIPT

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dunster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe in the Wildfire Podcast studios in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey.

Ray Loewe  0:26  

It's the wonderful Wildfire Studios.

KC Dempster  0:28  

Who's giving this introduction?

Ray Loewe  0:30  

Well, I'm going to jump in here because of the wonderful Wildfire Studios. You know, we still have no idea how to do a podcast, you know that?

KC Dempster  0:39  

I don't know, I think you're kind of getting broken in. Ithink. I mean, you don't know the technical stuff. But you don't have to because we have Wildfire here to support us

Ray Loewe  0:47  

And they do it all right?

KC Dempster  0:48  

Yes, they do.

Ray Loewe  0:49  

So So tell us why we're talking about Changing the Rules?

KC Dempster  0:53  

Well, we're talking about changing the rules, because we believe that there are a lot of people in the world who are actually what we would call the luckiest people in the world. And these are people who design the life that they want to live. And then they live it to the max without letting somebody else tell them what to do. They want to live their own life. Yeah.

Ray Loewe  1:14  

And you know, we're saddled with all these rules from the beginning of our life, from school, from parents, from church, from jobs from all these things society, and you know, if you live by other people's rules, you're not living your own life. You got it. Very good. Okay. So the whole idea is to filter through the rules, finds the one, find the ones that work for you, and go out and do it.

KC Dempster  1:39  

Correct. And make some rules for yourself that will work for you.

Ray Loewe  1:42  

Cool. So we've got a great guest today. Yes. Okay. She's out there in the wilds of Chicago. And Nora Kerr, Nora Kerr. Okay, say hello, Nora.

Nora Kerr  1:55  

Hi, everyone.

Ray Loewe  1:56  

Okay, so so Nora runs a company called memory Memoirs for Me. All right. And we're gonna let her tell you later as we go, what that means, because her story kind of just builds right into it. But where I want to start, Nora is way back when you went to college, because unlike most people, you actually did things in college that are reflecting in your life today.

KC Dempster  2:24  

Even if you didn't know that they would.

Ray Loewe  2:26  

Yeah. So so so tell you went to Wittenberg college. Right, which is now Wittenberg university, I believe. And you wrote your thesis in what?

Nora Kerr  2:36  

Family storytelling? What made

KC Dempster  2:40  

what, what made that come to you?

Nora Kerr  2:43  

Well, if you can imagine my, my family, it was pretty funny cast of characters. And they just, you know, I wasn't always in creative writing classes. And it always came back to my family, like growing up with my siblings, and, you know, this big Irish rowdy family and I just knew there was a lot of content there. Ripe for pickin

Ray Loewe  3:07  

So family lives in fear of what you might publish about them? Is that what it is?

Nora Kerr  3:13  

Well, as the great Anne Lamott said, You can't worry about that, if they if you want to, if they they should have behaved better that she has.

KC Dempster  3:24  

Absolutely, yes, I have, after all, you are going to school to be a writer, correct?

Nora Kerr  3:29  

Correct. Yeah, I probably thought I was gonna be a journalist or I didn't know. You know, I was still pretty directionless back then. But

Ray Loewe  3:37  

well, I think I think we all are, but but I think people are going to find out how significant as that is, as we get into your journey and where you're going. But But you also mentioned that you spent hours in the dark room. Now I don't think we have dark rooms anymore. Okay.

Nora Kerr  3:52  

So sad. Yeah,

Ray Loewe  3:53  

yeah, it is. But but it was an element of photography in here as well as writing. And both of these kind of meshed eventually into your business meant Memoirs for Me. So So let's talk a little bit about how you got into this whole thing and talk a little bit about the job you hated talk about some other things that happened in your life and then talked a little bit about how this whole thing unfolded.

Nora Kerr  4:24  

Sure. So in 2015, I was in a job that I told, you know, I mentioned that I was chasing a paycheck for I would say most of my 20s and 30s. And, not surprisingly, was not feeling very fulfilled in my career life. And at the same time I was, I had two young kids, my dad in 20. So that would have been 2014 was diagnosed, he was living with prostate cancer for many years. And then in 2015, we got a pretty scary prognosis and just I just think like, all those factors came together. And I really felt like I was in a crisis, like, emotionally and wasn't handling the news about my father, who I love very much very well. And, you know, it's, it's funny, you go back to what you know, and I just went back to writing and asking questions and just, I just, you know, clearly realized there was so much about my dad, I didn't know. And here we had this six months, you know, prognosis with him. And that was, I think, on on the on the high, the long end. So I was working with a coach, a life coach, life slash career coach, and trying to figure out my next professional move. And, you know, you do all those skill assessments and stuff and interviewing and writing kept coming up. And I was like, you know, what, I'm going to tell my dad's story. And I think at that point, I was just, it was more of an emotional coping thing than any kind of professional goal. And just, it was just this trans, transformative process in my life. And I found out all these amazing things about my dad that I never knew. Because who asked these questions of their parents when, you know, until until you realize you don't have the time to ask them anymore. So I found out all these things that, you know, my dad struggled in his career, never knew that, you know, he just always outward, he had this outward projection of success and happiness about him. He struggled with depression for much of his life, like, and he was very forthcoming about this, or I would never speak so openly about it. You know, I think when you get to the end of your life, like just all those kind of filters and everything that he kind of held, held in for so long, just came out. Right. It was just awesome. Just a great experience, though, you know,

Ray Loewe  6:53  

some people would think that that would be a depressing experience. Obviously, that was not,

Nora Kerr  6:58  

you know, it wasn't Ray because I think I, you know, it was, I was trying to understand my dad's story. And what I really came away with is a better understanding of my own. And it was just It was just like, oh, that's why I feel the way I feel. You know, like, I'm not alone. You know, these people in my life have gone through these things before me. Like we just we just always think that we're like, the first thing first people going through hardships.

KC Dempster  7:28  

Yeah. Okay.

Ray Loewe  7:29  

So this is the forerunner of what is today your business, right? So I was sitting down with your coach, I think she, he or she probably said, Hey, you know, this is where you're going. Right? And this is where you went?

Nora Kerr  7:44  

Yeah, she was like, would you ever? She's like, what about this? You know, what about making a go of this? And, you know, we have a lot of talk with my husband about whether we could financially make it work. Thankfully, you know,

KC Dempster  8:00  

that's always a consideration. I mean, you have to take that into account. You know, yes, we all want to be doing something we love to do, but sometimes transitioning to that from one place to another. It can't be just jumping off the cliff.

Ray Loewe  8:15  

Yeah, but the point is, it's possible Yeah. And the point is a to many people today are just trapped in jobs that they hate. I think it was a Gallup statistic A while ago, that said something like 80% of the people either hate their jobs or don't like them, okay. And, and that's appalling when you think about it. And here, you are able to go back to your college courses, you were able to, you know, put it all together or take a relatively sad situation, and turn it into a very fulfilling situation and build a business.

KC Dempster  8:51  

So let's get to that.

Ray Loewe  8:52  

Okay, so, on your website, you have a bunch of blogs, okay. And I want to go after them right away. So So let's start with the greatest story ever told,

Nora Kerr  9:07  

hmm. Yes, big language around a very simple idea. So that blog was about a recent event, I was trying to get my kids into bed, and you know, doing the usual harried parent thing that I just, you know, was trying to wrap the day and I wanted to, like relax myself. It had been a long day and my I passed by my 11 year old son's room, and he was quietly reading. And I was surprised to find out it was the book I did on my dad back in 2015. So he's had a copy sitting on his bookshelf for many years and just for whatever reason, he decided to pull it out and he just he had all these questions and it just became this like, like, it just stopped me in my tracks to see it. And then we had this beautiful conversation about his G-pa you know, my dad, and It really struck struck me. I know this right in my life that this this is a beautiful thing that, like stories are amazing. But the lasting power of them, you know? Yes. So it was just a great experience and I had to write I had to write about it.

Ray Loewe  10:20  

So So what would you suggest here, I mean, we all have family members here. And you found a an interesting way of building a relationship with people by writing about them. You know, and and how many of your other family members have you picked on?

Nora Kerr  10:39  

My mother and her three sisters, I did a separate book project for them.

Ray Loewe  10:46  

Okay. And you and your firm now have written several 100 of these for other people. Is that correct?

Nora Kerr  10:52  

Yeah, we're pretty close to 200 stories. Okay. Wow.

Ray Loewe  10:55  

Okay. And every one of them, you pull out of people, things that, you know, we don't know why. I mean, when I go back and look at my grandmother, she was an extraordinary cook. And nobody wrote down the recipes, because she didn't willingly write them down. Okay, and they're all gone. Now. Right there. They're lost, right? And, and it's because we never took the time to do what you did with your father, I found the same thing is true with she and My mother spoke Hungarian in the house. I, I kind of walked away from that. Now I sit back and I say, Gee, I wish I would have taken advantage of that opportunity.

KC Dempster  11:40  

Well, in fairness to you, Ray, a lot of times they spoke it so that you didn't know what they were saying.

Ray Loewe  11:46  

Well, that's true. But But you know, getting back to Nora over here and what she's doing for people how? Well let me let me hit a different blog that you have on your website over here you have one on reluctant storytellers. And, and I think that most people are afraid to go back to their relatives because they don't know how to start the conversation. Okay. And talk to us a little bit about reluctant storytellers.

Nora Kerr  12:18  

Yeah, so this could look different, depending on the family. But you know, I've heard every barrier there is from I don't have a story to tell, who would care about my story. You know, nothing happened in my life, like just totally downplaying their own life story. I've also heard, you know, there's parts of my life I'm not real proud of, you know, almost like a shame kind of barrier. Right? So, and both are very valid. You know, I always try to make sure my, the clients know that they're in control. So we might talk about uncomfortable situations, but that's not, you know, that's not the focal point. It's like, how did you get through it? And what did you learn from it? And how did you grow from it? Like back to Ray, you were talking about, you know, the experience with my dad, it could have been very sad if I sat and dwelled on his challenges, but we talked about how he got through it. You know, I mean, he was a living testimony that you can get through tough things.

Ray Loewe  13:18  

So, shall we, when you get clients in, Does it come with the person whose story it is? Or does it initiate from somebody who wants to find out what the story is about somebody else?

Nora Kerr  13:32  

It's usually their adult children. So right there, that's another, you know, just telling them there is somebody who wants to hear your story, you know, the fact that they reached out to me and they want to document. So usually, by the end of the interview, they're like, Wow, I didn't, I guess I do have a story to tell. Like there's there is a realization and to me, that is a really beautiful moment.

Ray Loewe  13:58  

Okay, so you had another blog up there. And it was when you were the happiest,

Nora Kerr  14:04  

Hmm, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I have the unique position that I get to talk to all these elders. Going back to I do feel that I am one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to get to hear these stories. And oftentimes, I hear about, I'll ask them, when were you happiest? And it's oftentimes when their children were little, you know, when life was completely chaotic. And here I am kind of sitting in that position in my life and it's just this weird kind of meta situation where I'm like, it has truly made me pause like when I'm in the middle of a chaotic parenting moment. I do think about, you know, those these seniors that I talked to saying this you know, enjoy it, enjoy it while it lasts.

Ray Loewe  14:57  

So now the pressures on because now You have to take notes when you're in these chaotic moments, right? Because somebody is going to ask you about this later, probably you. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about how you approach this. I mean, I think we all have either a story we want to tell, or we know people that we'd like to get the story out of. And, you know, we could go to somebody like you. And I think that there's a bridge before that. Because we don't always feel confident that we have that story to tell. So So how do you what are the questions that you ask people to kind of know that there's a story? And how do you get started with this stuff?

Nora Kerr  15:42  

I always know there's a story. I mean, even when I have worked with people that are tough nuts to crack, and yet they do still crack.

KC Dempster  15:54  

Well, yeah, and you know, like, I think that, that when they say, Well, I don't have a story to tell they're thinking in terms of movie worthy. But that's not what you're looking for. Right?

Nora Kerr  16:05  

Right. Yeah, I you know, I always love asking about, what did you What did you eat when you were a kid? You know, it sounds it says so much. You know, was there enough food? Who prepared it? What cultural traditions are seen in those family meals? What you know, what was talked about who was sitting around the table? Like, it just paints such a beautiful picture. And everyone had that experience? Like, even if they were hungry? Like then tell me that story? So I'm sorry, you were somewhere else? Right? No, in terms of photos?

Ray Loewe  16:38  

No, I'm not. You're right, where I kind of am interested in hearing about things because I always anticipate this reluctant storyteller out there, this, this person who's got this story, but you know, they think nobody's interested in this. And here I am, you know, that the telling tale here is when your son picked up the book about your father. So there is an audience.

Nora Kerr  17:03  

Yeah. And he's gonna pick that book up in five to 10 years, and probably find something else in there right now. Right? It's like a conversation starter. That's what I think is so cool about it. So he's not here anymore. But yet, these stories are here to ensure that his legacy is still very much relevant.

Ray Loewe  17:24  

Okay, so you had also on there tips for Do It Yourself interviews? Why don't you give us a few of those, and then we're going to segue back into how people use somebody like you to get the job done when they don't have the time, or they don't know how,

Nora Kerr  17:41  

yeah. Yeah, you know, yes, we do this for a business. And, of course, I'd love everyone to be a customer, but I'm aware that, you know, it is an investment in time and, and money. And so some people do want to do it themselves. So a lot of what we do is just talk about how you can do that it's almost become it's become a mission, personal mission for me. So, we do have a lot of free resources on our website. And, you know, my number one tip is to start with pictures, you know, pull out, pull out old photos. And I mean, it can be as simple as, you know, pulling out that old shoe box and sitting down with mom, or grandma or whoever it is, and just saying, who's this?

You know, or, you know, where was this taken or just, you would be surprised of the stories even like memory care patients we've worked with, you know, if you get them sitting with some pictures long enough, maybe play some old music, pull out old yearbooks, stories just will organically start spilling out.

KC Dempster  18:47  

That's fantastic. I didn't realize you worked with memory care patients. And that I think is such a gift to, to the person to the families. Wow.

Nora Kerr  18:57  

I'm not gonna pretend that I have any kind of medical or any professional background, but we've done enough of these interviews that it's just you just have to be patient. And usually, you just see work with the family. Right, right, right.

Ray Loewe  19:10  

Now, if I were doing this myself, I would have to have writing skills. I, I mean, I could see myself sitting down and putting a picture in front of relatives and stuff like that, and tell him Tell me about this. What I can't say is taking notes and turning it into a meaningful manuscript of some kind. So let's talk a little bit more specifically about what you do here because I know you have several packages available to people. Some are you know, maybe we do everything some or maybe you do almost everything but how do you work with people here? What what happens?

Nora Kerr  19:47  

Well, we say we're a full service company. So you don't really have to do anything. We'll guide you through the whole thing. But, you know if we have worked with clients that have written pieces pulled together And we'll help edit and lay it out. As part of our process, we use audio recorders, we use video recorders, and then we transcribe. So even though Yes, there is some there, there is writing involved, a lot of it is, your loved ones own words, is a bulk of the story. So we're just kind of helping to shape it, you know, clean it up, make them sound as as brilliant as as possible. But we'd like to keep, like, you know, they're, they're the terms that we they would use, or, you know, we've even done once, you know, with accents, or we worked with someone whose English was limited, and it was like, almost like a, you know, a bit of that Spanish English English mix. So we kind of peppered that in her in her quotes. So yeah, technology is great for, you know, do it yourself. So audio recorders on your smartphone, just that like that voice memo app is great. You just hit record, pull out some pictures and, and you're, you're rocking and rolling. So

Ray Loewe  21:09  

So the end result winds up to be a book of some kind that your kids can read when you're tucking them in at the end of a hassled day. And you're pleasantly surprised by gee, they are actually involved in their family's history, right? I think what you're doing is wonderful, I wouldn't what I'm not sure of yet is how you set the stage to do this. I mean, if I were going to do this, do I go to grandma and say, Grandma, I'm going to bring somebody in. And I want you to tell your story.

Nora Kerr  21:41  

I always say, ask them if they wish they had the story of their parents. So like, once you flip it around, and they see the value it is to the next generation, then they're usually a little more forthcoming.

Ray Loewe  21:57  

So once Yeah, of course,

Nora Kerr  21:59  

they wish they had the story of their parents or their grandparents. Right. So. Okay, so

Ray Loewe  22:05  

that's the key right there. Boy, do you wish you had the story of your parents or your grandparents or other family members or whatever? That's, that's wonderful. Okay, we're near the end of our time. So do you have any comments that you want to make that you want our listeners to think about?

Nora Kerr  22:22  

You know, just the sense of urgency. Obviously, for my own example, I don't recommend waiting until you have a scary prognosis. If you have a loved one who's in good health. And you want to their story, and it doesn't, it can be at any point of their life, right? It's just a snapshot. So don't feel like you have to wait for a certain milestone birthday, or, you know, oh, maybe they're not old enough. Like, that's ridiculous. So just do it. Just start start asking those questions now. Because, you know, you just never know, that's true. And

KC Dempster  22:59  

I think that the other thing to make it seem less daunting is to have people understand that this is not the autobiography, where they start at the day they were born and have to record every single event up until today.

Nora Kerr  23:13  

Yeah, that's a great point. Like, you know, I personally was really in a crisis with my career. So I wanted to hear about my dad's career. So I, that's where we started, like, there was no chronological order to it. It's like, what are you interested in and start there.

Ray Loewe  23:29  

And one of the things that you can do is you can go to Nora's website memoirs for me, okay. And she's got some lists of some of the things that they do for other people with some ideas of prices on there, too. So this doesn't have to be this huge, expensive project that we think it is. And, you know, we've been doing a series of stories for a while here on storytelling. One of the things I think is a story well told is just that special, okay. And when I look back with regrets, by the way, of all that I didn't capture when I had the opportunity. And now when I think about it, it's not there anymore. Okay. So I would suggest you, you know, take a look at this kind of a thing and see about how you might weave this, this kind of storytelling in your life. And Nora is a great place to start, and any again, I'll give you one last chance at last comments, Nora, you can do?

Nora Kerr  24:32  

Well, so it's memoirforme.com, just singular for that. Yeah, we have a we have a free interview kit, like a toolkit. If you drop us an email, you can download that. So that's completely free on our website. That's a great place to start. And, yeah, it's never too late. That that is my parting words.

KC Dempster  24:53  

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah,

Ray Loewe  24:55  

and thanks for sharing the significance of all of this with us and have a great day. And KC, where we go next.

KC Dempster  25:02  

We're going into another podcast next week and you haven't told me who the guest is as usual. So thank you everybody Tune in next week because I'm sure that even though I can't tell you who it is, it's going to be great.

Ray Loewe  25:16  

Better than you think. We'll see you next week.

Kris Parsons  25:21  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world

Lisa Corrado: lisacorrado.com

Transcript:

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dunster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:11  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here in wonderful, downtown Woodbury, New Jersey at the Wildfire Podcast studios. And we are ready to have a fantastic podcast with you. You know, Changing the Rules is about taking control of your life, and deciding what works for you and what doesn't work for you. And our guest today has done that in the most amazing fashion more than once.

Ray Loewe  0:43  

Yeah. And she really changed the rules. And she is one of these luckiest people in the world who have personally redesigned their lives and then are living them under their terms.

KC Dempster  0:56  

That's correct.

Ray Loewe  0:57  

That is Lisa Corrado. to a tee. I believe. So good morning, Lisa, welcome to Changing the Rules.  

Lisa Corrado  1:07  

Good morning. I'm excited to be here. And I'm glad I get to be in the luckiest people in the world club now.

Ray Loewe  1:14  

Well, I think you've always been there. I you know, and and it's interesting, and this is a good time to comment on this is there are some people who go who become the luckiest people in the world, and then they kind of fall out of it at times. And that's one of the reasons that we're here. It's it's kind of KC hates this word. It's like a rope of hope,  towards bringing people back in. And I think that, you know, when we get into your journey, you're going to show people that you kind of done this multiple times in your life. And I think you said it's something like on a 13 year cycle.

Lisa Corrado  1:51  

You seem to I don't know if I'm like a cicada. But yes, I seem to 13 year cycle for for big changes. So Alright,

Ray Loewe  2:02  

interesting. What's the let's let's skip the mundane. Let's start with the exciting. So a while ago, you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I did. So tell us a little bit about this.

Lisa Corrado  2:16  

So we, I would say when my husband was 58 or 59. He said, Do you know what I want to do for my 60th birthday? And I said no. And he said, I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I said, that's great, honey. That's terrific. Because I knew nothing about it. And I said, Give me a little information and get back to me. And when I learned that it was one of the you know, one of the Seven Summits, the highest peak in Africa. It was like a scary, dangerous thing. I said, oh, we're not doing that. I'll take you out to dinner instead.

KC Dempster  2:55  

Talk about mundane.

Lisa Corrado  2:57  

Yeah. And what actually happened was we, we he embarked upon a campaign that I joined in on to learn more about it. And as I did, I got really, really excited. I was so excited to see the possibility of actually doing this thing that he wanted to do and that I became excited about. So we did some a lot of research. We spoke with a lot of people. And then we said, okay, we're gonna do this. And it's one of the greatest journeys of our lives. No question.

Ray Loewe  3:30  

And you managed to do this right on his birthday, didn't you? Yes,

Lisa Corrado  3:35  

yes. So somehow it worked out that our climb wound up with summiting on his 60th birthday, and there is nothing was that we had, when you climb Mount Kilimanjaro, if you're doing it with a reputable trekking company, you have a lot of people with you, to help keep you safe to carry things, all that stuff. And this group, this crew, this amazing crew that we worked with, sang Happy birthday, it's so unbelievable. We have a video of that, and we play it all the time because it's you can't help but smile when you see this. It's just really something else.

KC Dempster  4:14  

It's the memory of a lifetime. Yeah,

Ray Loewe  4:17  

I don't think that just happened. I think that was part of Lisa's plan. And we're gonna get into that planning stuff in a little bit, right? Yes. Okay. So so you climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and I know you're an active traveler and you have all kinds of plans to do some other things. So is there anything that's that spawned this or is just this just a natural part of who Lisa is.

Lisa Corrado  4:44  

We have always liked to travel but we had kind of a catalytic event happen that really spawned even more travel. So in 2010, I was diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma. And I went through many months of chemotherapy. And then I went through about a year of recovery. And my husband, Fred will call him Fred, because that's his name. Fred. Fred said, when we when you are done with this, we're, he said, I want to do something special and want to give you like your own Eat, Pray Love experience. And that's the Elizabeth Gilbert book where she took a year off, went to Italy, India and Indonesia. And he said, You know, I want to figure out something like that. And from there, we realized, boy, we've really dodged a bullet here. And there's no time to waste. Let's get out into that world. So since then we owe our big thing is travel. That's what we spend our money on. And it's all we talk about it seems we're always planning the next trip, even as we're on a trip. And we've done some truly remarkable things. I mean, Kilimanjaro was great. Last year, we did, we were in Peru, and we did the Salkantay Pass, which was about 15,000 feet. So Kilimanjaro is over 19,000 so Salkantay Pass is over 15,000 feet. So that was a nice big hiking trip, that we have plans to go to Patagonia. Next year.

Ray Loewe  6:25  

Cool. Okay, so we've established you as an adventurer. Okay, now, how the heck did you get from computers to there?

Lisa Corrado  6:38  

Well, so I know what you're referring to by so my undergrad is in computers. And my first my corporate job was, which was 13 years was working as a director of project management for a technical division of a marketing research company. And I, you know, loved the work, but I didn't, I didn't feel fulfilled, I didn't feel like what I did actually mattered in the scheme of things. So I did a great job with my clients, I had big consumer packaged goods, clients who sold products like soda, and beer and cigarettes and things like that. And I didn't have their passion for their products. So it, it began to really weigh on me, absolutely weighed on me every single day at work. And don't get me wrong, I had a great corporate life, I had a great salary, I had a beautiful office with a water view. I had somebody who watered my plants, I had somebody who fixed my printer, you know, I had all the things that you're supposed to want to have. And I was so miserable, because I didn't feel like I was making any kind of difference. And it became like, I started to become sick from it. I had a stomach ache every day, I lay on that lay on the floor of that really beautiful office with my door shot looked up at the window, the ceiling and I thought there's got to be a better way than this. Like this can't be, this can't be right. So I spent some time trying to figure out well, if I'm not going to do this, what am I going to do? And I just did a simple exercise where I walked around my house and tried to figure out okay, what do I really love to do? How do I spend my time when I'm not at work? And I got really clear on a few things. One, I have a book addiction problem. I had just tons of books all over the place. And I also noticed I bought a lot of books about nutrition. So I thought, well, that's interesting. And I started to explore a couple of different career paths, looking into being a librarian, and being a nutritionist, and honestly, it came down to the availability of the graduate school program, nutrition, nutrition won out because I love them both. So I you know, as I was still in corporate, I went to grad school on the weekends and got a master's in nutrition. And then you would think, the then all of a sudden, I'm in my new business being a nutritionist, but actually, I was really afraid to leave my corporate job. Because I think I might have mentioned the money, the plant water, you know, and all of these great things and of course, security. So, so I, I waited. And while I was waiting, I got a flyer in the mail about a culinary school in Manhattan. And I'd always love to cook and it never occurred to me that I could go to culinary school until I got this letter. And I thought, Uh huh. That's what I'm going to do. So I went to culinary school, also on the weekends. And I knew that in the course of that I would figure out how do I pair this with nutrition? Because they made sense to me. I knew they went hand in hand, but I didn't know exactly what kind of job I was going to create and While I was in culinary school, I learned about the concept of a personal chef. And I said, that's it. There we go. So I finished my coursework work, had to quit my job so that I could do the practical work. I had to work in a restaurant for several months before I could graduate. And then I just hung up my shingle, and I was a nutritionist, a personal chef, I was a nutritionist for 13 years, I was a personal chef for probably about five of those. And I absolutely loved it. absolutely loved creating this.

Ray Loewe  10:32  

Okay, so this is why we consider you one of the luckiest people in the world right here. Because when you look at your story, you took into account what was important to you and what you love to do, and you acted on them. And you were willing to put the high paying plant watered, office in the corner, the window view over the water kind of a thing at risk, and step out. And I think it takes a lot of guts to do this. So what were some of your thoughts as you went through this?

Lisa Corrado  11:08  

Um, well, once I got over the initial fear, because there was quite a bit of fear. I mean, all joking aside, I really was afraid of leaving the security because I didn't know anybody who had I thought I didn't know anybody who had done it. And my family thought I was insane. Except for my husband. My husband was like, we got this, you know, so I left my office, my corporate job on a Wednesday, Thursday morning, I woke up and I was like, Did we lose the house? Fred said, No, no, we didn't we still have a house. So we're good. But I was I was really afraid. And I had a lot of people around like my grandparents were alive at that time. And they just couldn't fathom, you know, making this leap. And my, my parents are supportive. My dad always said, you know, it's really important to do what you love. And I also realized a few years into my switch. So when I worked as a personal chef, I would, I was in the kitchen all day, and I was cooking all day, and I played the radio, I listened to jazz, you know, I just really, really enjoyed it. And I realized that when I was a little girl, my grandparents took me to visit friends of theirs who ran a bed and breakfast. And I, I really, I remember standing in the doorway of the kitchen of this bed and breakfast. And this couple is listening to opera on the radio. And they are, you know, cooking for their guests. And they're having fun. And I remember thinking like, Oh my gosh, I want my day to feel like this. Like, this is how I want to feel when I'm at work. And it was really my first example of somebody who did a job that wasn't a nine to five job. And I must have just tucked that away because it wasn't a conscious thought until, you know, one day and at the same doing the dishes, looking out the window, listening to my radio, making some food and I thought, oh my goodness, I'm doing exactly that. I'm doing exactly what I said, I've created a day that I absolutely love.

Ray Loewe  13:11  

Can we repeat that again? I want to like my day.

Lisa Corrado  13:16  

I want to like my day.

Ray Loewe  13:18  

Yeah. Because this is a message that a whole lot of people I think think about and don't act on it. And if you know, somewhere, you know, the name of our show is Changing the Rules, you know, well, if you want to change rules somewhere, sooner or later, you got to change. Right. Okay. And and I think this this bit about making the change when it was time to change. I think this bit a little bit about following what was kind of fascinating and motivating for you is really an important message. If you want to be one of the luckiest people in the world. This is what you have to be willing to do. Right? I mean, if the corporate job is great then stay in the corporate job, that's okay. Right. But but so you were a chef, for 13 years.

Lisa Corrado  14:11  

I did the personal chef worked for I think about five when the economy tanked in 2008. Suddenly, people didn't have the budget to for a luxury item, like having someone come in and cook for them. Which was fine. At that point. It's a very physical job. I started started culinary school when I was I think in my late 30s. It's really young person's job, like you need to start. You need to be 18 when you're starting out so but I loved it and I was ready to switch and focus solely so there was even a shift in that because then I thought I have an opportunity to focus solely on the nutrition. And I you know, I did that for 13 years until it was time for me to make another change.

Ray Loewe  14:54  

Okay, so so one of the comments that you kind of made to me during our Pre interview is, and this is kind of a precursor to where you're going is a lot of people said to you that you showed us the pathway out?

Lisa Corrado  15:13  

Uh huh. Yes. So when, after I left corporate, which, you know, was just such a wacky thing to do, I didn't know anybody else who had left to do something completely different. meeting some of my co workers. Sometime afterwards, one of them said, You showed us that you could leave, you showed us that we could leave and do something different. And since then, I've reconnected with coworkers who have gone on to do completely different things. There's one of my co workers, he and his wife owned a bed and breakfast in Massachusetts, someone else became a police officer, which was very different than what we did. You know? And that's just a couple of the people who have said, Oh, yeah, I guess we can do something else. So maybe you just need a little permission, you know, I find this with my clients, sometimes you just need a little permission to do the thing you want to do. And you maybe need to see an example of somebody else doing it so that you can feel a little more confidence yourself.

KC Dempster  16:13  

Yeah, I've always felt that we were sort of dealt a bill of goods by the Puritans and their, their ethic, which was, you weren't supposed to be happy if you were happy than meant you were doing something sinful. That's why so many people, I think, stay in jobs that they hate, because they feel like well, but you know, it's my work ethic. It's the, you know, I have to do this. And that's not necessarily the case. And I think it's, it's very hard for us, but we do need to learn how to let that go. If we're forcing ourselves to continue in something that's not making us happy.

Ray Loewe  16:47  

Well, this is why we have coaches around. Okay, so enter the next 13 year segue here, Lisa. And I have no idea where we're gonna go with the next 13 year segue. But we won't worry about that one yet. So, so enter this one, and what happened? And where are we and what are we doing?

Lisa Corrado  17:08  

So once I wrapped up my 13 year cycle, as a nutritionist, I realized that what I really loved about that work was helping people create change in their lives. I really love the coaching aspect of it, I wound up wrapping up my nutrition practice, because I was working with people who had very serious illnesses, and I got burned out, it became too much for me to handle. So like I've done with all of my changes, I realized there's something there things about that I loved, I can do something else with it. So I took that component of really connecting with people meeting people where they are helping them really understand, you know, what, what do you want your life to be like what you know, and I work specifically with women business owners, how do you want your business to be how do you want to be as the business owner, and let's help you get there. So. So it takes what I loved about my past jobs, and allows me to work with a different population and in a slightly different way. And the kind of, you know, so what I'm my, and I always tell my clients, I don't have an agenda for you, my agenda is your agenda. But my agenda really is to help them create the change that they want to create, and help them see that there's, there's probably even more possible than they're thinking. So I tried to help them think even bigger than they're thinking for themselves, because I can look at them and say, you can do this, I can see how you can do this. You just need the confidence and the permission. And, you know, the the mindset to do it.

Ray Loewe  18:45  

You know, I think there are a couple things that you've shown here. You know, number one, you had this great job that everybody would love to have, except you. Okay. And then like the 13 year locust you have found at the end of a period of time that you weren't as happy as you wanted to be. And you went out and searched for the next thing. And then built on that, because you built from the culinary thing to the coaching business that you're now in. And I want to go back to one statement that you make again, because I think the business plan that you offer, everybody is I want to like my day. And what a great place to be.

Lisa Corrado  19:26  

Yes, yes. And I, I might I think I told you when I first left corporate and I worked with SCORE, which is an amazing free organization to help you know, fledgling business owners. They said you have to come up with a business plan and I said great, I'm on it and the business plan I came back with was literally I want to like my day and they looked at me like I was nuts. You're gonna need a lot more here and I said, No, no, I don't need a lot more. I just need that. I've had a lot more What I want is to like my day Yeah. And that's, that's been my core business plan for since 2003. Since I left corporate, that it always comes back to that if I don't like my day, I'm doing it wrong, and it's time to make a change.

Ray Loewe  20:13  

Okay, unfortunately, we are near the end of our time, and I want to hit a couple of things that are on your website. You had a couple of quotes that are on there. I'm going to start them and you're going to finish them, hopefully, right. Well, if not, you know, we'll go we'll work through it. But But when you walk up to opportunities door, don't knock.

Lisa Corrado  20:34  

Kick that bitch in and introduce yourself.

KC Dempster  20:36  

I Love it.

Ray Loewe  20:41  

Yeah, absolutely. And, and this reflects your coaching style, and this reflects what people really have to be willing to do here. Okay, so it's not hell yes. If it's not, hell, yes.

Lisa Corrado  20:54  

It's a no, it's not a hell yes. It's a no. swearing on my website, apparently, clearly.

KC Dempster  21:04  

But it just means you're passionate about it.

Lisa Corrado  21:07  

And I think it really speaks to, like you really have to, or I believe that we all have the opportunity to really love what we do. And if we don't love it, then do something different. Because there's so many things that we can do. So that's why I say if it's not a hell, yes, then don't waste your time with it.

Ray Loewe  21:29  

And well, we waste our time, because we're learning I think, you know, we all go through this process of trying to figure out what we want to be, but I think that the thing that that differentiates, differentiates you is that you weren't afraid to, to do the research and then take action. Okay. So So, we're going to come back. Well, let me let me Let's do another quote here. Alice Cooper.

KC Dempster  21:53  

My favorite one, the one from Alice Cooper.

Lisa Corrado  21:57  

Oh, the Alice Cooper quote, yes. Never let a wake up call go to voicemail.

KC Dempster  22:03  

I just think that is stunning. You know, of course, it's dated to because?

Lisa Corrado  22:12  

Well, we still have voicemail Yeah, we

KC Dempster  22:14  

do. But I just I just think that that is a motto. It's a motto to live by? Mm hmm.

Lisa Corrado  22:24  

Yeah. And I said, that's what we did. When when I was diagnosed with cancer. My husband and I both circled the wagons and we're like, boy, the What a great wake up call. What a great opportunity to really just throw ourselves out into what we want to do.

Ray Loewe  22:40  

Yeah, well, let's not hope everybody has to get cancer to get a wake up call. And, you know, let's let's kind of end this with with Lisa Corrado. And what is your email, or not your email but your website so that people can find you and we'll list this in our podcast note.

Lisa Corrado  23:02  

My website is Lisacorrado.com. And my last name is spelled c o r r a d as in dog. Oh.

Ray Loewe  23:13  

And And besides, it's not hell, yes. Then it's No. And besides, when you walk into opportunities, opportunities door don't knock kick the darn thing in. Okay. And last would never wake up. Never let a wake up call go to voicemail. And the most important thing is, I want to like my day. So Lisa, thanks for being one of the luckiest people in the world. You know, you're part of the club, whether you like it or not now,

Lisa Corrado  23:45  

I'm so happy about

Ray Loewe  23:46  

that. And thanks so much for being with us. And we're gonna get you on to one of our cocktail or coffee hour sometimes so that people who listen to this have an opportunity to meet you, but we'll talk about that going forward. And have a great day up in Connecticut and thanks so much for being with us and where we go next, KC.

KC Dempster  24:06  

Well, given that tomorrow, St. Patty's Day I don't know

Ray Loewe  24:09  

The bars are open.

KC Dempster  24:13  

We have a wonderful podcast coming up next week with guess what an Irish girl. And so tune in again, because we've got so much wisdom for you from her

Ray Loewe  24:22  

and say goodbye, Lisa,

Lisa Corrado  24:25  

very much for having me. I really appreciate it and goodbye.

KC Dempster  24:29  

Bye bye, Lisa. Thanks,

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com

TRANSCRIPT

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe. But I'm not going to allow him to take co host responsibilities today because he is going to be my guest. Good morning, Ray?

Should I run in fear? No. Okay. So I'm not allowed to say anything until you prompt me?

KC Dempster  0:36  

Well, okay, let me get started. I'm changing the rules, this podcast about the luckiest people in the world. And our definition of the luckiest people in the world, is that they are people who personally design their own lives, and then they live them on their own terms. And sometimes they have to change some rules in order to get it to be on their own terms. And, you know, we we identified this group of people, and to further help others along in in discovering how they can to, to can be the luckiest people in the world. We've talked about what makes them I mean, to say they design their own lives. That's sort of like the overarching thing. But then there's certain characteristics of the luckiest people in the world. And let's start there.

Ray Loewe  1:29  

Yeah, you know, I think a better word for characteristics is mindset. Because this whole thing is about attitude. It's about the way you think. And if you want to think like you're unlucky all the time, guess what, you're going to be unlucky all the time. If you if you want to think about how great things are, I think that it just kind of feeds on itself and leads to other things. So we've identified at this point about a dozen mindsets, and I think we're going to go through them. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the luckiest people in the world community and what's evolving, not of us, okay, but but let's start with the whole concept of changing the rules, you know, used to do this introduction on changing the rules and why it was important. And all these rules that we used to get, why don't you kind of

KC Dempster  2:19  

Right well, you know, when we're, when, when we're children, there are a lot of rules that we have to follow when they're given to us by our parents, by the schools, by the community, by our churches, or whatever. And they're initially intended to a keep us safe, and be a kind of guide us into becoming the appropriate adults that we should be. But as time goes on, a lot of times, we continue to follow those rules out of habit, or because authority figures are still trying to impose them on us, even though maybe they're not necessarily appropriate anymore. So we believe that the people who are the luckiest people in the world recognize that maybe not all of those rules are necessary for their lives. And they decide which ones can help them to continue in a positive way. And which ones are probably not so important. And they can kind of let them drift off to the side. And maybe they make even some more new rules for themselves.

Ray Loewe  3:24  

Yeah. And what's important is that we all need rules. Right? Right. And the rules create the structure that we're going to operate in. And, you know, last week, we had a great guest. He was the original, Phillie Phanatic. And he was telling one of the stories about he was requested to appear in a church service Now talk about changing the rules, right,

right. And especially probably, at the time, I think, maybe was in the early 80s, or even in the whenever in at that point in time. That would have been considered an extremely disrespectful,

yeah, but but it got everybody's attention had a happy outcome, and did what the priest wanted it to do. Exactly. So changing the rules always gives us a positive outcome. I think, Well, maybe not all

Well, I guess it depends on who's changing them and how they're changing them.

So anyway, mindset number two, is that the luckiest people in the world always believe that there's a positive solution to everything. And it may not be apparent at the beginning. But if you search for it, you can always find that positive solution.

KC Dempster  4:40  

Yeah, and I think that I think that a sense or an attitude of positivity kind of permeates their lives in all respects. And that's why it's so easy. Or so I don't know if easy's the right word, but but the lucky People in the World find that positive solution because they're coming in with that mindset to begin with.

Ray Loewe  5:05  

And you know, a good example of that is we interviewed a young lady by the name of Ruth Kinzler A long time ago. And and and Ruth had this, this crazy medical thing happened to her she actually had a stroke in her spine, and it caused all kinds of, of issues on her being able to work. So what did she do? She quit her job and started her own business and was extremely successful. And she found the positive solution that was gonna work for her and make things happen. Right,

KC Dempster  5:33  

right. Good. Yeah. It's kind of a kind of like that Pollyanna attitude, but which is not such a bad thing. Some people kind of use that in a disparaging way. But I think that having that positive outlook or looking for the positive, or the silver lining is is such a valuable tool.

Ray Loewe  5:51  

Now, the next one, okay, is this the luckiest people in the world take that positive solution. And they learn from it, and they carry it forward. Now we're in this whole area of COVID these days, and everybody has been confined. But I think we've learned some things. You know, we we talked to a young lady by the name of Sky Bergman A while ago, and, and she's a filmmaker. And one of the things that she's been doing with her latest film, which is going to air on PBS soon, okay, is doing showings all over the world. And she said, I never could have done that without Zoom.

KC Dempster  6:30  

That's true. I think that and here, again, is the silver lining. I mean, almost a year ago, I mean, to the day, we the world was shut down, basically. And people didn't know what to do, the businesses either had to shut down, or they had to figure out how to continue doing business under different circumstances. And, you know, there was a period of time where people were floundering. And, and I think that pretty quickly though, they started to adjust and adapt. And, and they took some of those adaptations and created a whole new way of doing business. And it's, it's really been an interesting year.

Ray Loewe  7:20  

And that's what the luckiest people in the world do. Okay, now, again, last podcast we did was with the original Philly fanatic David Ramond. And it takes care of our next mindset, which is that the luckiest people in the world understand that they have the power to make themselves happy.

KC Dempster  7:43  

That's true. And I know that you often say, if you're not happy, how can you make somebody else happy. But the fact of the matter is, we are responsible for making ourselves happy. And we really don't have to make other people happy. That's their responsibility. But I think that when you're doing it for yourself, it's communicating to others.

Ray Loewe  8:04  

And, and, and what's important is, again, it's attitude. And it's this idea of you're not happy, you know, life isn't fun. And, and the whole idea is that there are structures to do this. We had John Freeman A while ago on on, john is a financial advisor in Kansas City, but he's also a professional clown. Right? And one of his comments was the the, the smile on the faces of others, directly proportional to the size of the nose that he puts on. So putting on the makeup creates happiness for him, which he then transmits to others. Right,

right. Okay.

Next one on the list. Yeah,

KC Dempster  8:44  

I know, this is this is an interesting one. And we had a great podcast with Ashley Allen, where we explored this, the luckiest people in the world understand who they are, and how they are perceived by others. And that's something that we don't always think about. Is other is someone else's perception of me what I want it to be. And it's not to say that we should be acting, it's to, to say, what do I want to protect? And am I doing that? And if I'm not, what do I have to do in order to project that?

Ray Loewe  9:19  

Oh, and if you're aware of it, you have the ability to change it. Right? And And so again, this is a matter of being able to control your life the way you want. And and this is a design factor that's built in, right, right. Okay, the next one on our list is know what you want,

right? And figure out how to get it. And sometimes you have to let something go and pick up something else.

Well, and part of this is knowing that what you want is going to change. And I think this is the misconception with this mindset. You know, there are a lot of people that get frustrated because they sit down they write out a plan. They think they know what They want and then the world changes on them. And knowing what you want is a journey. And it's always in flux. And it's always in change. And if you treat it that way, you can know what you want. And you can get it.

Right, right, you might might just have to, I hate to use this word because it's been so overused, but pivot, and maybe take a different path towards the same goal, but it's going getting there in a different way.

Now, I'm going to skip a couple of here, because they're great mindsets, but there are a couple we want to get one on. And we want to end this thing with talking a little bit about the luckiest people in the world. But lifelong use of talents, okay, you know, we're all given talents and skills that we've accrued over life. And, and I think, the luckiest people in the world tend to take that through the rest of their life in some way, shape, or form may not be a job, it may just be being kind in general, the people, it just may be creating friendships. We have some interesting people that attend our coffee and cocktail things. And there are people who are in their 80s, who have been isolated, right in their homes. And all of a sudden, they join us. And we have great conversations, right? We had a gentleman called Ajit George energy on his 65th birthday or there abouts decided that he was going to take an old warehouse, and he was going to turn it into hydroponic gardens. And then he was going to hire a bunch of people out of the prisons, because he thought people were better engaged with good jobs than being in prison for the rest of their life. Right,

KC Dempster  11:43  

and that they needed a second chance. And, and, you know, these were not violent offenders. But he, you know, no matter what, when you come out of prison, there are a lot of hurdles that are placed in front of you. And he was trying to help people get over those hurdles

Ray Loewe  12:00  

you know, and and, and there are two more that I want to hit over here. You know, one is, this is one that I believe in, and, and it doesn't have to be the mindset of everybody. But I believe that you ought to live in expansive life and enjoy the adventures that follow. I personally think that the world was made for us to be unique and different, and has all these wonderful things that we can do and, and we have a choice, we can stay at home, we can be happy with what we've got. And there's nothing wrong with that choice. Or we can go out and explore. And I find I travel a lot. And the more I travel, the more I want to see and it just is expanding, and I get excited about life and where we're going

KC Dempster  12:44  

true, but then I'll be the opposite. I'm very happy to not travel a lot, I enjoy being at home, it gives me the opportunity to read. And that is sometimes a way of learning more and getting more exposed to what else is available. And you know, so there's different ways to look at this. And nobody should feel that they have to live someone else's life,

Ray Loewe  13:10  

your mindset or the way you think when you approach a situation. And I think most of the luckiest people are going to go along with these mindsets that we've had. But there are there's the right to be different. Correct? Okay, correct. All right. Last one I want to throw out 

KC Dempster

I like this one a lot.

Stop thinking about aging and start thinking about living. Yeah. I'm not gonna say anymore. Okay. All right. Okay. So let's go on now to we have this group of people now that are lucky. And we know why. Okay. And we also have something that we call the luckiest people in the world community. Right. Okay. And this is something that's evolving. It wasn't planned, per se, but it just just started to gather groups of people that were lucky and things started happening and, and the luckiest people in the community is where people come to expand and enhance their lives. Okay, and designing your life is not a one time thing. It's a journey. Correct. Okay. So, so why is this thing evolving? Okay. And I think I think there are a couple there, there are people who would like to feel luckier, and luckier and luckier, and don't know how, for example, one of the big stumbling point over here is that people try and design a plan for their own lives and don't take into account that life changes, okay? And, and so they need some coaching and some help to help them understand what's going on. And when they get that feeling, then all of a sudden, they start feeling luckier and luckier and luckier, and one of the barriers to being lucky goes just goes out of whack.

KC Dempster  14:54  

Right? And another another thing that this community can can do for people is something times people might not realize that there's that they are looking for something more, like they may have retired because they were tired of their job or what, for whatever reason, maybe they were sort of forced to retire because of their industry. And they're kind of like, Oh, great, you know, I can sleep in, I can play golf, I can do all these things. But after a while, and that's great. But after a while, it starts to pet to pale. And, and then they're kind of at loose ends, like they're really not sure so. So one of the things that this community can do is that it can invite these people in or expose them to a lot of other people who are further along in the process. And, and that's kind of what we're doing with these podcasts,

Ray Loewe  15:48  

even even the luckiest people in the world go into Limbo every once in a while. And, and and Limbo is when you know, your life was pretty good. And all of a sudden you get hit with something or it could be the death of family members, it can be an illness, it could be losing your job, it could be a whole other thing. And again, if you adopt the mindsets that we talk, or most of them, at least, all of a sudden, you can pull yourself out of limbo. And it's easier if you have a couple of people who help you do that. Right. Right. So so those are kind of the things that this community is designed to do. So let's talk a minute about why. Okay. So for example, I think people need planning guidance up to a point. It's, it's, it's really hard to sit down and say, I'm going to craft a plan for my life. And one of the things that we've noticed with this COVID thing is that many of us had long term plans, many businesses have long term plans, and they're out the window because of changes that get in the way. So So the question is, how do you do this? And and it's a necessary thing to do. And we're going to give you the solutions in a minute. But let me just go through this quickly. So it's a one of them is to get new and expanded ideas. Where do you go to find out what other people are doing that you might like to do? Where do you go to get some expert guided learning? these podcasts are set up for that. Where do you go to get a conversation? And I think conversation is one of the biggest things in the world that we need, and we're not getting right now.

KC Dempster  17:31  

Yeah, yeah.

Ray Loewe  17:33  

So what the luckiest people in the world community has done is they've done several things. Number one, we have a podcast, right. And the purpose of the podcast is to highlight some of the luckiest people in the world every week. So that we can get inspired by their lives, the path that they took, and where they are and where they're going. Correct. And we can realize that they all didn't get there the same way. And there are different ways to skin a cat. And we just need to understand that there are different ways that we can get luckier and luckier and luckier. The second thing that we do in the podcast is we try to take some tools, maybe that people don't know about that can be used to help us do this kind of a thing.

Right? Right. And that's our storytelling that we've been talking about recently. and things of that nature, yes.

Then we have something we call coffee, cocktails, and conversation. So I'm gonna let you describe this.

KC Dempster  18:40  

Well, this, this is something actually that grew out of the pandemic, and grew out of the fact that Ray was being confined at home. And he didn't have a lot of people to talk to. So we started a on every Thursday, we have a coffee zoom call at 845 to 930. And we we stick to that timeframe so that people who come in know exactly what they're signing up for. And, you know, we ask people to register just so that we you know, have control the number of seats so that you can have a decent conversation. We never know from one week to the next who's going to choose to come in and who isn't. And we've had some actually amazing conversations and introductions to people that we maybe never would have met before. And then we we do it again, Thursday afternoon at 4:45 with cocktails, because sometimes people are still working and they can't do coffee. And so they but they are happy to do a little bit of a happy hour at the end of the day.

Ray Loewe  19:43  

And drinking is always a good thing. So so so yeah, one of the things that the pandemic has done is it's cut conversation. You know, you don't have conversations at the watercooler at work anymore. You know, walk around the cubicle barrier and say hi to the people that are next To you, and we tend to forget how important relationships are. And there have been some statistics that came out that just show that people have lost as much as 40% of the relationships that they had beforehand, because there's no follow through,

right? So coffee and conversations is a way that we would like to do that. And by the way, anybody can find out when these are on our website on the front page, and they can register. Now, we also created a couple of events long ago, and oh, so far away. We actually had a live Friends Connection Conference. Yes. And we had it down in Center City, Philadelphia, had a great hotel, we had incredible food, we had a bartender come in and and actually craft signature cocktails for the luckiest people in the world. And for the Friends Connection. And we just had a great time, man, it was a learning experience and a networking experience and a way that you could expand your thinking, Well, that was shut down. Okay, about a month before our next conference was going to be able to Correct,

correct. So we were kind of left, like, okay, we were planning this great program. Now what?

Well, we did it virtually. So what, so we have a series of virtual conferences, we have them about every three months. And again, you know, one of the things that we learned is that people don't take the time to plan. And so the primary purpose of these virtual conferences is to get people together for an hour and a half, and learn but think about their lives. And think about where they're going. It's not a formal plan. It's not a formal planning process. But it's, it's a way that you can get some time. And in addition to that, we've got some great speakers and we usually have some entertainment, add Coffee Roasters on we've had da mix world famous Mixologist, on at the next one we're going to do we actually have a barbecue pitmaster.

Yeah. And who knows what we're going to do, but it'll be lunchtime. So the interest I

KC Dempster  22:12  

everybody's going to be hungry.

Ray Loewe  22:13  

Yeah. And and we will resume the live conferences when things open up, because I don't think there's anything better than being able to actually shake hands with people and, and see them up close and personal. Right. talk for a minute about the Travel our Connection. And again, this is something who got shortchanged, right, right off the bat. Yeah,

KC Dempster  22:35  

the Travel Connection was a way to travel and go to a place that you've always wanted to go, but to have some interesting people that are like minded, that go along with you. And we've done we did this a couple of times, when you still had the financial planning practice where some clients went on some trips with us. And it really was a very engaging and revelatory experiences, because there was no business involved in those trips, it was purely social. So you really got to know people on another plane. And so that's kind of what we do with the Travel Connection, our trip that was scheduled for Fall of 2020, obviously was canceled. And so you know, we look forward to getting that, that going again,

Ray Loewe  23:22  

it will be back. And and you know, one of the biggest things I get out of traveling with people is I get to see the world through their eyes. And they see things that are different than I see. And it expands the whole experience.

So stay tuned for information on the Travel Connection, it's again posted on our website. And when we go live again, it'll be a wonderful experience that you want to be at. The two last things on that I want to talk about kind of go together. You know, how do you get to be one of the luckiest people in the world? How do you plan? How do you do this, this kind of planning where you're not trying to plan the rest of your life and get frustrated by changes. So we have some online courses. We call them our discovery sessions, right. And I think it's time to commit to this we have a new book coming out it'll it'll probably take another quarter or two to get out physically. But it's the story of the luckiest people in the world and a story a little bit about the community. And it deals a lot with some of the great people that we've met during these podcasts and some of the incredibly interesting things that they're doing. So the whole idea is join us at the luckiest people in the world community. Join in, the more you show up at these things, the more we will all be better off.

KC Dempster  24:47  

That's true. So I want to give everybody our website because that's where access to a lot of these things can be found. It's theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com Simple as that.

Ray Loewe  24:59  

coming along, isn't it?

KC Dempster  25:02  

Yeah, it is. And you know, we've got around about that. But hey,

Ray Loewe  25:06  

okay, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com take a look around and  join us for some of these events. We'll look forward to seeing everybody a coffee or cocktails or both. Right, right. So KC we're at the end of another podcast and we have a more coming I'm not gonna tell you who the guests are next time but they're they're great.

KC Dempster  25:25  

That's true. Right? Ray never tells me that far in advance who our upcoming guests are? Or if he does, I don't listen. So anyway, join us again next week for a wonderful Changing the Rules podcast with another fascinating guest.

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world

Find David Raymond at daveraymondspeaks.com or by email to [email protected]

TRANSCRIPT

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe in the

Ray Loewe  0:21  

wonderful.

KC Dempster  0:22  

You jumped on my line.

Ray Loewe  0:24  

I did.

KC Dempster  0:25  

Okay, well now you can stop for a minute. We are in the ever evolving, Wildfire Podcast Studios in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey, and it's a little chilly, but we are in meteorological spring. So that is something to lift everybody spirits.

Ray Loewe  0:44  

Yes. Because everything gets better over the next three months. I heard that on the news yesterday, too. So that's cool.

KC Dempster  0:49  

Yes. Yes. So welcome, Ray,

Ray Loewe  0:52  

so So we have a great podcast today. I mean, it This, this, maybe is the is the highlight of our whole podcasting career. So, you know, we've talked a lot about the luckiest people in the world. And we've set this definition that the luckiest people in the world are those people who design their own lives personally. And then once that life is designed, they live it under their terms. Well, we have a gentleman today who has certainly done that. I think at the beginning, he got some extra lock because he got nudged in a way that most of us don't get nudged. But he also exudes one of the mindsets here of the luckiest people in the world. And that mindset is that we all have the power to be happy. And Dave Raymond of all people, I think, has the power to be happy and can show us how to be happy. So Dave Raymond Happy Tuesday, are you that

Dave Raymond  1:55  

I just have to tell you how much I love the podcast format. And even more so when you have co hosts? Because I've got more people to point out to say, Well, that wasn't me. That was somebody else.

Ray Loewe  2:07  

Well, you know, it keeps us on track. I you know, KC really runs this whole podcast over here. But let's spend some time going back into history because you've had an incredible journey in your life. And and take it back to I guess, college. And you were a football player. And you were related to some guy who is probably one of the most infamous and best football coaches ever.

Dave Raymond  2:37  

Well, it was, I had an idyllic life, that's for sure. And I I certainly fit with the topic because I've always looked at my life as being exceptionally lucky. But I grew up with, you know, my hero was my father and he was an icon and his name is was Tubby Raymond. He was a not only a head football coach at University of Delaware, but he he was there for 50 years first as the head baseball coach and then an assistant football coach. And it's a type of career that will never be rivaled again. He was very good friends with Joe Paterno and Joe Paterno used to say I'm not retiring until Tubby Raymond retires.

And they both had that, you know, that situation where they were at one university for the majority of their career, and I'm very proud of my dad, you know, he's not with us. He passed away three years ago, this December. But I live this dream I want all I want to do Ray and KC was to play football for him. I wasn't thinking about education, I just, and then I thought, well, of course I'll be a football coach then. And, and and, and he was happy with that concept. But he knew better than I did in this regard. And he said, Listen, you know, let's take a look at some other options too. I'll help you but and you've got a couple of years before you graduate. You're playing football here. You're having a good time. Why don't I help you get a summer job with the Phillies because he knew Ruly and Bob Carpenter senior who owned the Phillies and I also like to say like Malcolm Gladwell, I had this access and, and then I was soon to have 10,000 plus hours of practice. I just wasn't expecting it to be the practice that it turned out because when my dad told me the most important thing about getting the job with the Phillies for summers was you'll never know who you meet or what might happen. And and that was prophetic. And after a couple of summers working for the Phillies, I went Why do I want to be a football coach?

I can't I can't I couldn't believe that I could have a full time job working for a professional baseball team because back then, you know in this in the 70s there was no such thing as a sports marketing degree. Right. And, and that's that's how it all started.

Ray Loewe  4:51  

Okay, so here you are. You're working for the Phillies. And then I think the Phillies asked you to do something that you probably thought was a little weird at The time

Dave Raymond  5:02  

that's that's an understatement of the decade. I, I said, Well, when I after the second year, it was supposed to be a two year internship and I had another year to go in school. So I was concerned that I was going to go have to graduate. And then they would get back to me and say, Well, maybe we'll have something for you, David. Instead, that third summer, early in the spring, they called me. I was on campus at the University of Delaware living in my fraternity house and they said, you know, do you want to have your job back? I'm like, Oh, my gosh, sure. What do you want me to do? Go to New York and get fitted for the costume.

Whoa, and I started, I didn't protest, but I started to, you know, I show some, you know, I was a little incredulous about this concept. And they said, No, no, David, look, just go to New York and get fitted for the costume. You know, I did that. And I walked the big surprise was walking into a place that in the garment district that look like Gipetto's puppet studio. And I mean, it was exactly like that. It was a place that you never would expect except in a Disney movie. And I met this woman who turned out to be one of Jim Henson's original designers. She did Statler and Waldorf, she helped design Miss Piggy. And she told me here this is what we're, this is what we're building for the Phillies. And I looked at the picture and I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna be a muppet.

Ray Loewe  6:25  

Well, yeah, this, this shows you are lucky again, because you could have been Miss Piggy.

Dave Raymond  6:33  

I don't know. Maybe I could have done that. Well, right. You never know. my, you know, I've got a lot of I have a lot of range.

KC Dempster  6:39  

Yeah, yeah, you know, and I'm visualizing the, the Phanatic outfit and Oscar the Grouch. And I think they're related.

Dave Raymond  6:49  

Well, they, you know, I would just say there is some lineage to the the beauty and the personalities of the Muppets in general. So that because, you know, we had people who understood, you know, that type of puppetry, that type of character, and, of course, that type of costume. But it was really the brilliance of Bill Giles, too, because Bill, you know, worked with the Bonnie and they were they collaborated together. And the result was, you know, what we currently had fallen in love with is the fanatic, but, you know, the, the personality was, and I think it was wonderful enlightened leadership, you know, Bill, because I was petrified, going, you know, I didn't look like we had a plan. The costume fit me, it was delivered the first day, I was supposed to wear it with no instruction. And, and Bill was just telling me, well, you're just gonna go out? And I said, Yeah, but what do you want me to do? And he he finally he saw the fear on my face. And he said, David, you just you have to go out and have fun. If you don't do that it's it's not going to work in front of our fans. well that directive that Prime Directive released all my fear and, and when I went running out of his office, he screamed at me and this is the honest to god truth, you scream, g rated fun, David g rated.

Sure, he had put the fun in the box. And I do believe that the 40, 43 years guys that the Phanatic has been, that his success has been driven by that, that original directive. And, and it was taken really seriously. But in my mind that I didn't want to betray trust. And then I just did, what all great Philadelphia fans would do, and go put my emotions on my sleeve, show my insecurity, show my passion for my team. And then of course, mix that with all of the slapstick humor, which was just I thought, beautiful comedy to me. So cartoon characters, and The Three Stooges and, and all and all the, you know, Laurel and Hardy, all of those were, you know, shaped my young life in terms of entertainment. And I just squish that all together. And what the product was this wonderful personality we have is the Phanatic.

Ray Loewe  9:04  

So So now the original Philly Phanatic was born. And you were actually not only the original Philly Phanatic, but you were really the forerunner of all of these mascots weren't you?

Dave Raymond  9:18  

Well, we have to give a lot of credit to the modern day mascot that was started in San Diego by the San Diego Chicken. And that really was we had a junior executive by the name of Danny Lehman, who was on the west coast. About a year and a half. Right, right. When I started as an intern in 76, who came back after seeing this crazy character in San Diego that was a guy in a chicken suit and went to build jobs and said, Hey, this, this is really something that's that's special that's going on. The people are paying more attention to this chicken than they are to the to the Padres. And at the time, they were an expansion team and they weren't winning and that that of course, was a relatively easy thing to do. distract the fans from the mess that was going on on the field. And then that's when Bill first started to curate this concept of Well, we're on the forefront of doing wild and wacky and crazy promotions here. For the Phillies games, we have to fill up a stadium that has 60,000 seats for baseball, which was relatively unheard of. So we need to do more. And that's that's how the Phanatics was born. And then I think after that, this concept of what sports mascots could do, not only for, you know, for the fans, but for the business, and once it becomes a successful business operation, then, you know, kind of all bets are off on how big it could become. Right, right.

Ray Loewe  10:41  

Yeah, I remember you telling me we during our kind of pre conference over here that the Philly Phanatic was actually born in the Galapagos Islands, we

Dave Raymond  10:50  

he was and you know, and sick because of what you do with the luckiest folks in the world. And you do some travel. And it's a perfect example of how seriously the Phillies take the Phanatic's backstory that we created to end and they one day, they said, we're gonna send you along with the Phanatic to the Galapagos Islands, so you could kind of witness where the fanatic was born. So I actually got to go to the Galapagos Islands, because we made up this fanciful story, just to have a connection of some kind to how the Phanatic came to Philadelphia and got me to the Galapagos Islands,

Ray Loewe  11:27  

and all over the country, and probably more than that, so so you now we're in this furry, fuzzy green costume. And your job was to bring happiness to the world? Then how old were you? You are, you're just getting out of college at that time.

Dave Raymond  11:47  

I was 21 years old when I started in 1978.

Ray Loewe  11:51  

You know, that's a lot of responsibility for a 20 year old, you know, you bring happiness to the whole world. And yet, and yet you've done this, okay, and, and you're still doing it. So how long ago did your actual career as the Phanatic where you dressed up in a costume, and

Dave Raymond  12:12  

I was I was there for 16 years. And after the, in 1993, we went to the World Series somewhat unexpectedly, we had such great characters on that baseball team that the Phanatic sometimes got overshadowed by by the characters that were playing baseball like john Kruc and Darren Dalton and Lenny Dykstra, and Mitch Williams, and I got to be at that point. Over time, I got to be friendly with many of the players, but I had some really close friends on that team. And I mean, Darren Dalton came to my bachelor party, which, which was a great way to get a lot of young ladies interested in coming to that bachelor party. My father in law was there. And that's a whole nother story. But he said, hey, look, how many young ladies are following me into our room. I said, I said to my father in law, Wayne, it's Darren Dalton. That's why he's here. But that was a great group of people, good friends. And then when that ended, you know, I decided, probably at the beginning of that season, that I wanted to figure out what I could do for a living that didn't require me to sweat and toil on this giant fur costume. Because I at some point, physically, I would be incapable of doing what I was getting paid to do. And I would still be quite young, and I needed to figure out a way to, to pay the bills and to bill and that's that when, when my venture into entrepreneurial focus came into play, and it was the best decision I ever made in my life as crazy as that might sound giving up that job.

Ray Loewe  13:42  

So cool. So before we leave the fanatic, though, you performed in some crazy places. I think I was looking at some of your YouTube videos and things before, and you've actually done as the Phanatic funerals. Oh, yeah, sure. Services. take a couple minutes and talk about some of this stuff. Okay.

Dave Raymond  14:03  

Well, I think the the concept started because it's so funny how this works by rote Ray. And KC, it isn't something that was necessary planned for this type of success. It was let's do something different. Let's have some fun. Well, what happened was immediately people wanted the Phanatic to come to local appearances. So there were car dealerships and fairs and, you know, birthday celebrations and bigger events, that made sense. But while at the same time we were getting requests to go to places where really I would look at the piece of paper that, you know, this contract was placed going, Well, what am I going to do there, you know, General Electric polymer engineers convention, doing events where there were no children. And then and then, of course, very early in the career a request from a family whose patriarch had lived a wonderful long life into his 90s and he was A huge Phillies fan and he had actually expressed that he wanted the Phanatic at his wake he actually had put it in his last wishes get God because I want this to be a party and I was very nervous about doing that. I don't know what I was expecting. But I basically walked into a party they were celebrating a life well lived. And and having the Phanatic there because of the connection to Philadelphia made a ton of sense. So after that, I'm like, this works everywhere I a Catholic mass, who were I met, a very good friend of mine is still a mentor me Father, Jim Dever, who was at at St. Charles, the Borromeo and cinnaminson at the time, and he wanted me to sneak in behind his precession before he gave Mass and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, but I can't do that. And he said, you know, Mike, my homily is about the unexpected circumstances. He said, curveballs that life throws our way. So we had a theme, and we did it. And it worked. And I, I mean, the whole congregation was aghast at first because they thought I was just doing it on my own as a Phanatic. And once they saw that Father, Deborah was happy with it. They recognize it was okay with the Lord. And it works.

But my favorite all time appearance was was getting to know Ethel Kennedy, when they're just after Bobby Bobby's assassination, and they started the RFK Memorial tennis foundation for kids with mental challenges. And so she would go all over the country before the Flushing Meadows event, which was the big signature event of the year, she met me as the Phanatic in Philadelphia. I got to know her personally. She invited me to come to Flushing Meadows. And then after the Phanatic was successful there, I was working with Schwarzenegger and Chevy Chase and Cheryl Tiegs, it was it was just a mind blowing experience. She then said to me, I want you to come to Hickory Hill during one of our family gatherings. And I said, well, Mrs. Kennedy, What, what do you want the fanatic to do there, she said, you know, as Kennedys we get together. And before dinner, there's always some sports contests and somebody's mad at somebody else. And by the time dinner rolls around, nobody's talking, I'm going to bring you in, and you're going to be the official referee for the Kennedy sports contest. There's no way they can take it seriously. And there I was, you know, in Camelot, keeping the Kennedys away from each other's throats. And, and it it was, it was a special time I have this wonderful letter from, from Ethel Kennedy thanking me. You know, it just there's a I mean, these are the types of benefits that I received from being kind. I mean, it's, you know, I'm being kind and I'm getting this enormous amount of benefit from meeting wonderful people and having these great memories. And that was one of my favorite, but the message is that this there is no place that that a dose of this will not work. And that that is the universal quality of fun.

Ray Loewe  17:56  

You know, there's one other story I'd like you to get into. And then we're going to go into where are we now and where are we going? But I think you had to go to was in LA as the Phanatic. And you're on the field with a band.

Dave Raymond  18:10  

Yes, it was. It was one of those times where, you know, youth collides with common sense. And I was so young when they were asking me to go to Los Angeles very early in the 80s. So just a few years after the Phanatic was born, and the Dodgers had heard that the Phanatic was very successful in pregame they're in baseball, there's a wonderful environment of getting prepared for the game, unlike any other sports. So you, you go get your hot dog, you get your soda, the kids get to walk around the stadium, and then things just start to happen somewhat unannounced on the field that its value added entertainment and bands were part of that. And then my my directive with the Phillies was anything that's going on the field, you have carte blanche, they trusted me to do spontaneous work with whatever's going on. And that always highlighted those guys. It was like a laser pointer for the fans. They go look, there's a Phanatic. And then wherever the fanatic would go, they would watch so it made the band performances better. And I was course was meeting with the band directors saying this is what I'm gonna do. And when I went to LA, number one, I was just excited about going to Los Angeles and working in front of new fans. Instead, when I got out there, they were booing the heck out of me. Like I had 20 minutes, you know, to win them over and over and I'm like, Oh, yeah, right. I'm, I'm the enemy. Of course, you're booing me. But I wasn't ready for that. And then this band filed out to centerfield. I go, Oh, this is how I'm going to distract them because they'll love this. And I ran out and started playing with the band and the band director came on the field and started to grab me and he's trying to drag me off the field. He's screaming get off the field. You're gonna ruin the show. Do you know how hard my students have worked and you're gonna ruin it? Because I hadn't asked for permission. He thought I was some nut that jumped out of the stands. So the funny thing that happened was as he's dragging me off the field, I saw two big Los Angeles police officers running on the field. And I thought, Oh my gosh, they're gonna, they think, you know, they think that this guy's caught an intruder, they're gonna throw me in LA jail, And I was never gonna get out. Instead, the police officers ran right past that for that fanatic and grabbed the band director and tracked him off the field. And I'm like, Yeah, like somebody, and the band gets a standing ovation. And I, you know, I go back into the locker room and I say shed myself of fanatics personality and, and I felt bad for the band director, like, he didn't know what was going on. So I wouldn't had a conversation with him. And he stopped me and said, Do not apologize. I just saw my band get a standing ovation from the Los Angeles crowd. I didn't know you were approved. I didn't know you were a professional. I, you know, and you helped you because of the interaction, you helped the band get a standing ovation. I said, Well, you, you were the you know, I was your straight man.

You took care of the rest. And so what happened was, I understood that if I'm going to go do this, and I'm going to do it in an unexpected way, in unexpected circumstances, I needed to make sure that people knew that I was I was a professional, I knew how to make this work. And I'm going to show the leaders ROI. So in this case, I would have said to him, Hey, how 'bout if your band got a standing ovation from the Los Angeles, Los Angeles Dodgers crowd? Would you like that? And they would say, yeah, how do I do that? Well, here's what we're going to do. And so you know, if fun is going to work everywhere in our world today, just think about where we are in our world today. We better make sure it is a it's a serious endeavor to produce very big and unexpected return. And and that is that's also and I'm glad you brought that up, Ray, Because that's a very important part of, hey, we're gonna have fun everywhere. But guess what, we understand how to roll it out.

Ray Loewe  21:54  

Okay, so today, you've graduated, although I'm not sure that it's a graduation, to tell you the truth. I, I think that's that's just an incredible life that you lived there during that time. But now you're on a mission. And your mission is to get everybody to be happy, and to have fun. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing?

Dave Raymond  22:14  

Well, it's a wonderful pivot point. And, and I was in the midst of doing this pivot anyway, I have a sports marketing business that is centered around creating and developing characters that will sell messaging by creating very powerful, memorable moments. That is a wonderful marketing tool, if you could ever find a marketing tool that when it interacts with folks, they don't know they're being sold. And they and they're going to take a snapshot of this moment and always talk about it, that that's what my business Raymond Entertainment does. But I've created the power of fun brand, because, you know, this, this wonderful time in this in another personality, and the delivery of kindness. And then the study of positive psychology made me realize that I was living this real time without knowing there is empirical data to support everything that I've been talking about, which is why is the fanatic so powerful? Why after 43 years, he still is doing the same thing? And the answer is because they've engaged the power of fun. And so what I what's happened is I've always spoken to groups, community groups, since my early years with the Phillies. But in the beginning, it was Oh, yeah, this is what it's like to be the Phanatic. And that was interesting. But now it's like, here's how you can learn from that experience, to build long term sustainable happiness in your life. And I and I always joke with people, when they say, Well, you know, who's this talk good for? Well, good, want to be happy for the rest of your life, that you would, you'd be one of the people want to talk to, if you don't want to be happy, I don't want to have anything to do with you. You know, it's, it's obvious that it everybody wants to hear this during any time. So it's timeless. But in today's world, because of what we've all gone through since March of last year, this is a tool that not only will help you overcome this challenge, it will build resilience, and it will help you thrive when life is good. It's the same process. And it was all you know, taught to me by my experience, where I lived an idyllic life Ray and KC until life smacked me upside the head with, you know, with the struggles of my my young mother, 59 years old, who passed away with a brain cancer and at the same time, right at the same time, my marriage collapsed, and everybody knows that they've gone through challenges. That's the way life works. You know, you can get a double blow of brutality, when you're, you know, when you're least expecting it. And for me, if you think about my life up to that point, nothing had gone wrong. And then I get hit with a double shot of the brutality of life. And it was the Phanatics personality that saved me and those are the lessons I've extrapolated, deconstructed And that's what I, I talk in all my keynotes. And I'm, I'm talking to large conferences and events, but I'm also talking to small leadership groups. We do training for people who are just looking to build happiness, and to overcome and it has been the it's, I believe, Ray, that my entire life has put me in this place specifically to do this at this time. And, and that's what I wake up every morning, just, I'm so excited, I get out of breath, just thinking about what I'm going to do next.

Ray Loewe  25:30  

Unbelievable. So one quick thing, you have a book out, it's called the power of fun. We're gonna where do people get that?

Dave Raymond  25:39  

In every app, you know, I've decided not to give Amazon any more strength than they need. So I put I self published, but I'm very proud of the book and I and it gets wonderful reviews. So I will leave it at that. But Dave, Raymond speaks.com, is where you can get the book you can and for free, you can join our newsletter, which, you know, is been a really labor of love for me once a month to send that out the 5:30 the last Friday of every month, because I for some reason, that's the most popular Friday. I think we're moving to the next month week. Okay, that's behind us. Now, it's Friday at 5:30. So I'm looking forward to the weekend. And this is an easy read, it takes, you know, 15 minutes to read the entire thing unless you dive into the links. And it's just promotes the tips and tricks about how to be happy. And the book does the same thing.

Ray Loewe  26:29  

And I can tell you, I've read a couple of issues. And they each have made me smile.

Dave Raymond  26:36  

That's that's so wonderful to hear. Thank you.

Ray Loewe  26:38  

So we're at the end of our time, David, it's been a wonderful time block here. And we need to get you back sometime and continue these great stories that you've had. But do you have any last parting words that you'd like to leave?

Dave Raymond  26:52  

It's very simple Ray, and KC, and I want you to do two things. Stop asking people how they're doing and instead say, Tell me something good. And watch the fun that ensues in after that. And remember that your happiness truly is up to you. You have to decide how happy you want to be and then you have to work at it. Just like any other thing that's worth it in life, you have to work hard at your happiness every day.

Ray Loewe  27:17  

So words of wisdom from a fuzzy green thing. Right. And and Dave Raymond, thanks for being our guest on Changing the Rules. And it was a wonderful time slot. So I look forward to listening to it again. So have a great day, everybody and KC, where we go next.

KC Dempster  27:36  

And join us next week for another great Changing the Rules Talk.

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Reach Sky Bergman at [email protected]. To learn more visit her website lives-well-lived.com  

TRANSCRIPT

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:12  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe. At the, here we go, wonderful Wildfire Podcast Studios in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey.

Ray Loewe  0:27  

You did that all by yourself? That was extraordinary.

KC Dempster  0:30  

Yeah, that's because I'm extraordinary

Ray Loewe  0:32  

must be Tuesday.

KC Dempster  0:36  

Yes, and we have an amazing, amazing guest to talk with today. And, Ray, do you want to say a few words before we get jump right in?

Ray Loewe  0:44  

Yeah, we have a young lady by the name of Sky Bergman, we're going to introduce her in a second here. And the whole project that she's been working on just kind of fits the luckiest people in the world. So well. Okay, and let's just get right to it. Because there's just so much to say. So let me start by saying that Sky Bergman is a photographer, and a filmmaker. I'm going to give her more kind of the takeaway is she's got this extraordinary film that we're gonna be talking about today, which will be aired on PBS in May. So this is, you know, top notch stuff here. We're not, we're not in the minor leagues.

KC Dempster  1:25  

Yeah, we're getting into the a list here.

Ray Loewe  1:27  

Yeah. And so sky has been professional photography and videography at Cal Poly state in San Luis Obispo in California. And she's been there for quite a while. So you know, she's established her herself. She also is a fine art photographer, and she has displays in museums all over the world. Okay. She in her earlier career was a travel photographer.

KC Dempster  1:53  

That's fascinating.

Ray Loewe  1:54  

It was only fascination it's near and dear to my heart. I wish I could do that. Yeah, I love to travel. I love to take pictures. I just haven't figured out how to be good enough to do that. Yeah. And lastly, she's a filmmaker and sky Say hello.

Sky Bergman  2:08  

Hi, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with both of you.

Ray Loewe  2:13  

Well, I think the opportunity is ours more than yours, because you have an extraordinary project here. And let's start off by getting right into the project part of this. And talk a little bit about what you had in mind when this whole thing. Well, actually, let's back up a little bit. Let's talk about your grandmother first.

Sky Bergman  2:38  

Absolutely near and dear to my heart. I always love talking about my grandmother.My grandmother was an amazing woman and really was my hero and my role model. And she came out to visit me for the very first time she lived in Florida. And as you mentioned, I live in California. And she came out to visit me for the first time when she was 96. Wow. For the next four summers. She spent the month of August with me which if you had been in Florida in August, you know it was a good time to leave here. And we would spend that month cooking, we go to the farmers market, we come home we cook because I realized like all good cooks. She never wrote a recipe down. And I really wanted to capture her cooking and her essence. And I guess in a way I realized that that was really the way she showed her love was through her cooking. And we had a remarkable time of filming what we called our Cucina Nonna series. And I should say I never did any video up until that point. But it was my grandmother that inspired me to do that. And, and so it was just wonderful. But when she was turning 100 I went back with her to Florida and she was working still working out of the gym. She started at the age of 80. So it is now too late to start something new. I wanted to use that as an excuse, no excuses.

But I thought I better filmer because I mean nobody's gonna believe that almost 100 she's still working out at the gym. And I had a I had her miced, thankfully. And I said, Grandma, can you give me some words of wisdom. And she said things like live life to the limits and be kind. And I came back from that trip. And I was looking at approaching 50 I'm now 55 but I was in my late 40s and I was looking for role models of what I wanted the rest of my life to look like. And you know, I think that when we look at the those types of things in movies on TV, there's they're so stereotypical, and they're, they're terrible. It's not, you know, they're not positive role models of aging. So I was really specifically looking for positive role models of aging. And so I put a call out to my friends, family and all my alum that I've taught over the 26 years I've been here at Cal Poly. And I said, here's a link to this one minute video that I put together my grandmother, and if you have somebody like her that's an inspiration as much as she is To me, please nominate them for this project. And it was just amazing the heartwarming, heartfelt nominations that I received and four years later and 40 interviews later, I had a film. There must be inspiration.

KC Dempster  5:17  

I was gonna say there must be more to it than that, because it's an amazing film.

Ray Loewe  5:20  

Yeah. So let's, let's, let's get into the project. So you're you are a professor, for good or bad, right? So So it's, it's natural that you would take this thing and turn it into a project and involve your students. So to talk a little bit about the project itself, and how you got involved in some of the things that happened?

Sky Bergman  5:44  

Sure, well, you know, I had I created this film. And I had, like I said, 40 people with 3000 years of collective life experience, and we had a very successful theatrical release. And I would go to audiences. And I would say to them all, how many of you know somebody that would have been perfect for the film, and of course, like 98% of the hands would go up. And one of the things that I realized as I was doing the film, in the research for the film is I found that the last 100 years, is the first time in human history that we've looked to anyone other than our elders for advice. And I really feel the world is suffering as a result. And so I realized, I have all these people that watch the film, and think, wow, I know somebody that would be great to interview to connect with as a result of watching this film, why not make an intergenerational project that has makes that happen, and connect the generations and and make sure that those, you know that history is not lost, and that youth and students have that wisdom of our elders that is also being lost, I very much take for or used to take for granted that I was very close to my grandparents, and even had my great grandmother lived to be 97. I was 19, when she passed away. So she was very much also an influence in my life, but so many people don't have that. And so I collaborated with somebody here at my university that teaches the psychology of aging class. And we started showing the film and then to elders and to students. And then having those students and elders Connect, pairing them up. And they use the questions that I formulated for the film, to really get to know each other throughout the quarter. And then we do a big wrap party at the end, where they get to present what they've learned. And it's it's just such a wonderful experience that's happened in many universities and high schools across the country. This is just the first place that we did it and kind of created this learning module that can be plugged in played into other institutions. And we're doing it virtually now. We're working with senior planet, members throughout the country and our students here. And so it's it's just it's amazing. And I think, you know, one of the things that the Coronavirus has spotlighted is issues of loneliness and social isolation. And these intergenerational connections really minimize the divide between generations. And you it's really hard to have a stereotype belief about another group of people if you know somebody from that group of people. So I feel like I'm combating ageism one story and one connection at a time.

Ray Loewe  8:20  

Well, you know, that's all true that the COVID thing has caused this disruption in the force here. But But I think there's something more to that. And you were telling me about one of your students, I think his name was James, who you took out with you and you don't talk about his comments from?

Sky Bergman  8:36  

Oh, yeah. So I have this wonderful student, when I would do these interviews for the film, I would try and take a student with me more so that they would learn and they can help me set up lights and things like that. And he was on the interview with me for lucky Louie who was a wonderful man who used to make fresh mozzarella every morning for his daughter's deli right up until a week before he passed away. And he was 97 when he passed away, but when we interviewed him, he was 92. And and this and and he is just lucky Louie just talks up a storm and so engaging. And James and I kind of went out to lunch after we did the interview and had a little bit of a, you know, wrap about, Hey, what did you think of this interview? And James said to me, wow, I never knew that older people talked so much. I mean, you know, it's kind of funny, right? Because I grew up with my grandparents. They're Italian. They talk all the time.

But I said to him, Well, James, don't you have any, any elders in your life? And he said, Well, I have a grandfather, but I've never really talked to him. And I said, Okay, no, it's coming up on Thanksgiving. And I said, Here's your assignment. I want you to take this list of questions. And I want you to start the conversation with the grandfather. And he came back from that trip and he was beaming from ear to ear because he had he didn't know how to start the conversation and I don't think his grandfather did either and they had the most incredible time. And I think that that's one of the things that this kind of module that we put together really works, because it's really hard to say to somebody, just tell me about your life, you know, it's much easier if you have a list of questions that you can go down that kind of start that conversation. And what a gift that was for me to see James's reaction after having that dialogue and that conversation with his grandfather after all these years, and James is like in his 20s. So it's not like he's a young kid. But he just, I think that neither the grandfather nor nor the grandson knew where to start the conversation. And so putting it in some kind of a framework helped to open up a really wonderful relationship for both of them.

Ray Loewe  10:47  

You know, this is so important. And we had a mini project here, my wife is an educator, and we took a class of eighth graders and connected them with a long term care at home group. And we brought the kids in to talk to the senior citizens. And once we got going, we couldn't shut them up. So you're absolutely right, there's a need for a starting point. And one of the problems with what we did is we had to get all these permission slips to get kids to go out of the classroom. So Zoom is done as another favor here in a way. Okay, absolutely. So, so other than the fact that your project has recorded seniors, which is wonderful, it's gotten students to understand how to talk to seniors. Are there any other notable things that you want to mention here?

Sky Bergman  11:44  

Well, I mean, I think it's also, you know, especially in this time that the film, really one of the things that I that I did when I I didn't know, first of all, I should go back step back a moment. I didn't know that I was creating a film when I started this project. I really just thought I was collecting the stories of elders, and maybe it'd be a web series or something, but it ended up when I there was one woman that I interviewed, who had came over on the very first Kindertransport, and she still had the cardboard number that she was wearing around her neck. When she came on that Kindertransport, which was the Quakers in the for those of you that know, don't know what the Kindertransport is the Quakers in the United Kingdom, were trying to save as many Jewish children from Austria and Germany as they could before the war broke out, and they save 10,000 Kids Wow. And she was one of them. And I'm Jewish, and I didn't even know that story. And she, like I said, still had this cardboard number that she wore around her neck. And I thought I have this has to be a film, this has to be something more than just a web series. Now, I've never done a film before why I thought I could do that. I don't know. But I've always been one of those people that I say why instead of you know, I say why not? Instead of why. And I just if it's my passion, I just follow it. But you know, I think that the the film right now, these these stories of resilience and overcoming obstacles, is really resonating with people and helping us get through this time of the pandemic, because we're all going through this unique time together. And I think that one of the things that is so notable for me from the film that has really helped me is Evy Justesen, she's one of the people that I interviewed from the film talks about reading Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. And the thing that she got out of that was that there are many times when you can't control the things that are happening around you. But what you can control is your attitude. Your attitude is really the only thing that you can control. And the moment that, you know, we can't control that there's a pandemic going on. But we can control our attitude. And we can learn to pivot. And, you know, like you were saying, Ray, that now this has opened up a whole new world of people being online and connecting in different ways than we would have. And I've done screenings literally all over the world that maybe wouldn't have happened with Q and A's. And you know, where I can be part of it, because I'm doing it from my house and streaming it anywhere in the world. And so, I think that, in this moment, those stories of resilience, it gives us hope that we can get through this time as well.

KC Dempster  14:17  

Sky, did you run into any I know, especially centering around survivors of the the camps in World War Two, that a lot of times they didn't want to talk about it. So that's why their family didn't know anything. Did you run into that? Or you know, anything like that?

Sky Bergman  14:36  

I did. I actually, you know, I think Well, part of it is I think that because I was doing the film as a total labor of love and the people that I was interviewing and knew the story of my grandmother and they could and I could show the footage of her and really that's why I was doing the film they could they could sense that that true love, right? So they opened to me in ways that they hadn't opened up to other people, including family members. I mean, I think of the story of Emmy Cleves, who I interviewed her because she does the yoga that I do. And she's been a teacher that yoga practice for many, many years. She was in her 80s. When I interviewed her, she's now 92. And she, I didn't know this whole other story, but she and her mother escaped Riga, Latvia, and it's a long story short, they were trying to get on a plane on a train, they were on a train platform, and her mom was on the train platform. And she was handing up the bags to her mom and the doors, the train just closed, and the train took off. And she was left on the train platform by herself. At the age of I think 16. And she really had never shared that story before. And I remember the moment that she shared it with me as I was interviewing her. And my jaw just dropped. And then I had to keep going with the interview and just, you know, pivot because Okay, I was thinking, I was interviewing her for one reason, which was, wow, you're doing this amazing thing. And you've been doing this your whole life. And here, she had this great tragedy that happened in her life. And, you know, I can't help but think, what was I doing at that age? And how would I have reacted? How would I have gotten through that? And so, yes, there were certainly those stories that I think came out. And what I found interesting was that these people knew, at a certain point, knew that I was making a film. And yet they're still incredibly open and trusting. And I think, in that was a real gift for me that they were so trusting with their stories. And I, I said that I was on a panel discussion with five of the people that were in the film, one of them being Paul Wolf, Marion's husband. And I said that and he said, you know, we, we are so thankful to you, because you cared enough to collect our stories. And so I think at a certain moment, these people are at the point where they really want their stories to be heard, and they want it preserved for the next generations to come. And so maybe that just was at the right moment in time for me to collect some of those stories that they didn't feel comfortable talking about earlier.

KC Dempster  17:14  

So So do you think it's that your audience is should be geared more towards younger people to to show them the impact of what they should be doing? Or continue or not continue? I'm making an assumption, but to be showing it to people who are in their 70s 80s 90s, who have stories to tell? I mean, where? Or is it like across the board?

Sky Bergman  17:39  

It's really across the board. I mean, I think what it does is every generation gets something different out of watching the film. So you know, 70s 80s and 90s, maybe it makes you realize, wow, I should think about recording my story and sharing that so that I can, you know, leave that as my legacy. I think people who are like my age. I'm actually I'm a Gen Xer, but you know, Gen Xers and boomers. And I hate to put people in categories, but there is that those categories are those categories. I think it helps us look at what do we have to look forward to as we age, you know, and then I think, for younger generations, like the students in high schools and colleges that have primarily dealing with these intergenerational projects, it gives them a connection to the history and a connection to learning something about, you know, what they can look forward to in terms of their life and how they can put it in perspective. And, you know, I often have students comment, when they have seen the film, and when they've done this project, that one of the biggest takeaways for them is that the really the only difference between the student and the elder is age and that they there's so they find that there's so much more that they have in common than they ever thought they would. And that's so wonderful to hear. Because I think again, there's this stereotypical belief that it's like, well, if you're older, you're I'm not gonna have anything that I can talk to you about. And that's just not true. And I think it's just it takes that time of sitting down with somebody over an extended period of time to realize that those those stereotypical beliefs that we had can be thrown out the window. Yeah, yeah.

No, the the website that you have this on is www dot lives hyphen, well, hyphen, lives.com. And, and, you know, you've talked a little bit about the conversations you had with some of these people about their past. But one of the things that I gathered out of looking at this thing is the part about the lives well lived. So can you take a minute and talk about what is a life well lived?

That's a really good question. And I would say, you know what, when I put together the film, one of the things that I really tried to make sure of was that in every story that I told there was a poignant moment, a word of wisdom and humorous moment because we all need humor to get through the tough times. So you know, the words of wisdom that I collected, you can actually see them on the website. If you go to the film stars page, my favorite quotes from everyone in the film are on that page. And but I think, you know, I can sum up the best quote, and probably the best definition of a life well lived that I heard from one of the people in the film was from Lucky Louie, who said, "Happiness is a state of mind, you can be happy with what you have, or miserable with what you don't have. You decide." And I think of that often. You know, it's really again, it comes down to your attitude. But I think that, for me, my definition of a life well lived is it really comes from my grandmother, which is, she had this adage to just always be kind. And I think that she really lived her life that way. And if we were all just a little kinder to each other, imagine what a better world this would be. That's for sure. And that is, that is my definition of a life well lived is to be kind to each other.

Ray Loewe  21:06  

Okay, well, unfortunately, we're at the end of our time. And I think your last statement is a great way to kind of end here. And we're gonna post your website along with our podcast notes. So people are going to be able to find you. And I would encourage people to look at this. It is wonderful. It's it's mind boggling. It's motivational. It's brings out all the emotions in you when you go through this. And you can do private airings of this, if you wish, if you have your own group. And there's a nominal cost to do that. And I'm sure Sky will show up and make her comments along the way. Is that is that true Sky?

Sky Bergman  21:45  

Indeed, indeed.

Ray Loewe  21:46  

And and so just thank you so much for being with us. And thank you for showing us that you're one of the luckiest people in the world and for introducing us to a whole bunch of other luckiest people in the world. So thanks so much for being with us.

Sky Bergman  22:02  

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

KC Dempster  22:04  

And thank you everybody for tuning in. Again, a fabulous podcast, share it with your friends, and tune in again next week when we'll have another great guest for you.

Kris Parsons  22:15  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Reach Francesca through her website, DressedSmart.com, or at [email protected]

TRANSCRIPTION

This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. This is KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe in our wonderful Wildfire Podcast Studios in Woodbury, New Jersey. And we are enjoying a spring like day, it's in the 40s. We're so happy. It's only gonna last today, though. But anyway, this is a podcast about designing your own life and living it the way you want to live. And that's what we love to talk about. So Ray, good morning.

Ray Loewe  0:40  

Good morning. And see there's no lull here because we're live in the studio.

KC Dempster  0:44  

That is correct.

Ray Loewe  0:45  

And real quickly, a kind of a commercial for wildfire over here, because we couldn't do it without them. We have no idea how to do a podcast. And we've done 50 to a home or something like that. And we don't have to know because the wonderful people at Wildfire just lead us through it. Yeah, everything is done. And Taylor takes care of life. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, you started saying that we're here because we're interviewing the people who create their own lives, and then live them the way they want. And we have a great guest for that today. And we have Francine and I'm going to go

KC Dempster  1:24  

Whoa, whoa, whoa,

Ray Loewe  1:25  

Francesca,

KC Dempster  1:26  

that would be better. See,

Ray Loewe  1:27  

I knew you when I set you up, but chance to correct me.

KC Dempster  1:32  

That's what I live for.

Ray Loewe  1:33  

So if you thought that was one, wait until we get to the last name here. So so let me introduce Francesca Zampaglione. A

KC Dempster  1:42  

excellent. We just had an Italian lesson this morning, everyone how to pronounce her last name properly.

Ray Loewe  1:48  

And Francesco. Welcome to Changing the Rules. And did we butcher your name too badly?

Francesca Zampaglione  1:54  

No, you did a great job and thank you for having me.

Ray Loewe  1:56  

Okay, so you got to tell the story about your name before we get started

Francesca Zampaglione  2:00  

the story that I just told you about what it means. Yeah, so the the Italian lesson that the studio received today was that the G and the L when it's together in a word is a soft g like familia like family in Italian like la familia that restaurant Philadelphia. So if you translate that into my last name, it's Zampaglione, and not Zam pag Leone, I often have to say it that way. Right? Because it, there's a lot of letters and people become overwhelmed, but it's something unique. And we did a great job.

Ray Loewe  2:33  

And we wouldn't have any idea. But what does it mean?

Francesca Zampaglione  2:36  

Ah, it means Lion's paw. So zampa is a Paul in Italian and Leona is a lion. So lions, Paul, and to know the language, the adjectives come after the noun. So that's why it's Paw lion, not Zam, right. Right? So the attitude comes after she

Ray Loewe  2:57  

those of us who have German and Hungarian descent don't have that problem. Just a lie and pure because that's what my last name mean. So we're obviously going to do some roaring today. So let's get started. Let's get started. So so we want to start of what what we're going to do today is we're going to take you through the journey that we went through kind of our prep interview earlier, and because it's a great journey, and it is a perfect jury for showing the world why you're one of the luckiest people in the world because you've taken control of your life. The early part was kind of constrained for you, by the way, it was set up and you've broken free and you're now on a rampage to freedom and living life the way you would love to live it right indeed. Did I do that? Okay.

KC Dempster  3:44  

Yes, you did. Okay,

Ray Loewe  3:45  

so let's start. Your parents came to the US.

Francesca Zampaglione  3:48  

They did. They immigrated here in 1960, with my sister who was two years old at the time. And she taught them English, actually,

KC Dempster  3:57  

oh, that's hysterical.

Francesca Zampaglione  3:58  

So as she learned English. She taught them English. And they were entrepreneurs. My father was a Mason. He was an amazing, incredible Mason. My mother was a seamstress. So they took they brought over their trades, and they knew and that's some pretty incredible work.

Ray Loewe  4:16  

And they kind of ingrain that entrepreneurial ism into you, I think, right and DNA,

Francesca Zampaglione  4:23  

its DNA. Yeah. That the hard work ethic. Yes. The resiliency, the tenacity. These are things that I saw growing up and that helped formed my future, right? That's right. And

KC Dempster  4:35  

just a little aside, Italian is your first language.

Francesca Zampaglione  4:38  

Italian is my first language. Thank you, KC. So at the time, my grandparents my mother's parents who I'm named after Francesca, and Carmelo, my mother's parents lived with us until I was six and then they went back to Italy full time. Okay.

Ray Loewe  4:55  

Okay, and so Italian was spoken at home

Francesca Zampaglione  4:59  

Italian spoken. At home,

Ray Loewe  5:00  

and you were telling me that you were doing your father's payroll when you were eight years old. This is important because it has to do

KC Dempster  5:09  

with a stepping stone

Ray Loewe  5:10  

with your the pattern of where you went. So, so yeah, so you were the Mad accountant at home.

Francesca Zampaglione  5:15  

I was. And at eight years old, I didn't believe the story myself. And I had to ask my best friend and I said, was I only eight? Or was i 10? She said, No, you're eight years old. And your father would bring you inside and said that you had to make the payroll checks. So that was my first first job. But the best part, I don't know if I shared this. I got to write a check for myself. That was the deal.

That was The deal?

Ray Loewe  5:41  

Talk about incentives. Right? Awesome. Okay, so show. You had this accounting background instilled in you early, and then you were the first one in your family to go to college. Is that true?

Francesca Zampaglione  5:52  

That is true. Yeah, my older sister went, but she never got to finish because she had a personal injury. And she went to, to attend an associate's degree. So she didn't go for a Bachelor's. So she wasn't able to finish when she started. And then she got married. And that that was her life and everything. So. So it was interesting. fighting the battle to convince my father that I was going to finish the job. Yeah, I was there from start to finish. Right

Ray Loewe  6:20  

Wait a minute, you finish the paychecks, didn't you?

Francesca Zampaglione  6:23  

Yeah, but school was a different thing. Yeah. You

KC Dempster  6:25  

know, and, and I, you know, I'm not sure where you fall in generationally, but I know when I was growing up, although women or girls did go to college, it was for very limited career options. And the expectation really, was that you were going to find a husband and get married, and stay home and have a family.

Francesca Zampaglione  6:46  

Right. And where my parents came from, it wasn't expected at all because they didn't attend university and the education system in Italy is completely different. So there was zero expectation from an education perspective. Right on my side.

Ray Loewe  7:02  

Yeah. Okay, so we got to get this on the table because you and KC went to the same college.

KC Dempster  7:08  

Yes, we did. Yes. We found out we're alums. Show. And I suspect our graduation years are a little different.

Ray Loewe  7:17  

Oh, you suspect? Okay. Well, I'll they're different. We'll just make that firm. So anyway, you both went to Widener, right? Yeah. You both got through and then on. You took Francesca what probably was a natural course in a sense, because you went into the accounting field, right? I did. And you went into one of the one I was in the accounting business. We had a big 8. I know when you were in there. What was it a big two and a half or actually,

Francesca Zampaglione  7:47  

they had just started the merging process. So I interned with Touche Ross. And then I was the first class of Deloitte and Touche because they merged while I was wrapping up my senior year at Widener.

Ray Loewe  8:03  

Okay, so here you are, now you're a college grad, congratulations, okay. And you're at one of the largest public accounting firms following the footsteps of writing payroll check. Alright, and that's nowhere where you are now

Francesca Zampaglione  8:22  

that is nowhere where I am now. But

Ray Loewe  8:24  

so what broke?

Francesca Zampaglione  8:27  

Well, you know, there were a couple of steps on the way before entrepreneurship started in 2017. So I started at a big, now it's a big four. So I started at Deloitte work there for about a decade went with one of one of their subsidiaries then went to a CPA Association, which is where

KC Dempster  8:48  

that that's where we met you.

Francesca Zampaglione  8:50  

Right, which we didn't realize until we were prepping for this Podcast.

KC Dempster  8:54  

It was an amazing story. We had met you. And I knew it had to do with accounting, but I wasn't sure. Where, right.

Francesca Zampaglione  9:02  

And then at the association, I was in charge of learning and development for CPAs. So even though I didn't practice accounting anymore, I kept the interest because it was easy enough to do so. I needed to test out the materials and the courses. So it helped me do my job, right. But while I was there, I created a course, which is what we'll get to in a few minutes.

Ray Loewe  9:26  

So that was an evil course that started you on a different course. Yeah.

Francesca Zampaglione  9:33  

Yep, it piqued an interest,

KC Dempster  9:35  

yes

Ray Loewe  9:35  

or no, no, this was interesting up to this point, because I think a lot of people get stuck in kind of a rut of a job. And certainly when you were working at the accounting firm, I mean, this was a prestigious job. This was a great job. And when you start thinking about, you know, the unstructured roots of college and your family and stuff like that, You're obviously successful getting to where you are. But obviously, something didn't make you happy here.

Francesca Zampaglione  10:07  

Well, it's didn't make me happy. Well, I

Ray Loewe  10:12  

just Well, you can change those words,

Francesca Zampaglione  10:14  

I can change those words. Right? It was just time for the next thing. Right? It was just time to move on. And, you know, things change within industries. Let's go back to public accounting, there was a lot, there are a lot of hours that you have to put in Oh, yeah, I mean, tremendous amount of, there's very little balance, there's more. And those are decisions that people make and that are often okay with. So it was, there was a time for me to move on from there, right. And then working for the association. I thought that was fantastic. Because accounting was great. And I developed amazing relationships. But I knew that that wasn't the end all be all right? I knew that when I went into accounting, that it's the basis of all business, and that is the decision that I stayed with. And that knowing that that would help me in my future.

Ray Loewe  11:07  

Okay, but the important thing, I think, here is that you weren't afraid to make the change. You know, we find so many people that get stuck in, you know, that Good job, or at least that job, that's okay, it pays the bills, and it's prestige. It's got everything there that everybody on the surface would like, except there are too many hours and you're working too hard. Yeah. Okay. And you weren't afraid to say, Okay, it's time to make a change, and it's time to set a plan. Okay. So let's take the next step. So you went through the, the CPA firm, you went through the association, one of the things that you did while you were at the association was designed this course. And I think this is probably a good time to talk about the course a little bit because it set the stage for where you're going.

Francesca Zampaglione  11:55  

That's right. So I kept in touch with all of the accounting partners that I was working with, because like I said, I developed incredible relationships. So I was having a very casual relationship or conversation with someone. And I said, so how are things going? And he goes, Oh, gosh, Francesca, these millennials, they don't know how to dress. I said, What do you mean? Well, you know, the, the young men, they don't shave their face, and I have to keep shaving cream and a razor in my desk drawer to get them out to the client. And it goes, I can't even talk to the young woman. And we can't really have these conversations. Because, you know, it's a tough conversation, right? Well I'll tell them. So I created a presentation, delivered it and it went over well, and then other accounting firms heard about it, and I went there, and colleges and universities. And basically, it's delivering the message of how important your image is in your career success and how important the decisions that you make every morning, and putting on that outfit of the day, how that's the perception that people are going to have whether you're smart or not, whether you're good enough to do the work, right. And KC, you and I talked about this, it's in how we're dealing with it today, during the pandemic and everything being virtual, it's a mindset, and how we still prepare ourselves regardless, right?

KC Dempster  13:15  

I had said that it is foreign to me the concept of working in my pajamas. And I had worked at home prior to the, to this whole pandemic thing in a couple of different scenarios. And I always got dressed before I sat down to my computer. I just it's just I felt like, now I'm ready to go to work.

Francesca Zampaglione  13:38  

Right? It's a mindset. And, you know, we were all scared last March. So march of 2020, we didn't know what to expect. So I can understand a lot of people not sure how to make the transition from their bedroom to their other room, right. But now we've had that time. And what makes us feel good is getting up taking a shower, brushing our teeth and sitting down at our desk, we still have to go through the same motions, right. In fact, I don't know if I shared with you that I've created a fake commute. So I don't have to commute anymore, right? Like You I started working from home prior to the pandemic, but I just needed something extra. And that's something extra is going for my cup of coffee. So I listen to my podcasts in the morning and it's beautiful because there's no traffic, right? And in fact, if there is traffic, I'm grateful for them. Like Yes, another two minutes on the podcast. So this these are just things that I do to help me prepare right

KC Dempster  14:42  

It gets you in the right mental space. Exactly.

Ray Loewe  14:45  

Okay, so you're building on this and I'm not sure what came first year, but but you've gone through several phases of transition away from the CPA environment. So I think one of the things that you did is you got into the clothing business. To some extent, and that's, that's an extension of how to dress right an

Francesca Zampaglione  15:02  

That's an extension of how to dress. So that's the actually the first thing that I did when I left corporate right that in that thank you for bringing that up. So I had the opportunity to work with corporate and women who were my target, you know, they were too busy to shop and just needed that right appropriate outfit for meetings and presentations. So I carried a certain line of clothing and was able to work with my clients that way and clean out their closets, and just help them feel good about their day. Right. But it's still all about the image. That is what has stayed with me to create the course. So that was the gap that you just asked me to fill.

Ray Loewe  15:41  

So yeah, no, no, we had another kind of disturbance in the force here. Because somebody knew what you did, and asked a favor of you. And we're gonna get to how this is all coming together in your life today. But But talk a little bit about the the estate problem, ah, dwell on this, because it's fascinating. Okay,

Francesca Zampaglione  16:07  

thank you. So and that's a great segue. So I was helping corporate women clean out their closets. So I developed a number of relationships with consignment shop owners, right. So a good friend of mine kept a stack of my business cards in her shop. In the event that someone came in and said, You know, I really don't know how to go through my thing. So she would hand them my card. But this one particular instance, she handed out my card, and she called me immediately, and she said, Francesca, there's someone who just came in here, and I'm wondering, actually, I'm pretty sure you can help him, his mother passed away. And he doesn't know what's consignable, and you know, where things should go. And I think you can help him. I said, Okay, so we connected. And then I went to the home a couple of days later. And there were there were a lot of things that his mother's things had not been touched. So I'm sneezing alot. And noticing there's a significant amount of dust on the dust bags, which you typically don't say, I'm also noticing secretly, and I didn't say it out loud, that the styles were from a while ago, at least 10 years. So after about four hours, I said, so how long ago did your mother pass away? And he said 2006

Ray Loewe  17:30  

G, so and nobody was dealing with us?

Francesca Zampaglione  17:33  

Nobody dealt with it, right. And then the accounting brain kicked in. And I'm calculating the loss of investment income here, because of all the money that went into real estate, property and maintenance and everything that had to happen to keep that property alive. And who knows paying off the mortgage or whatever, right? So my heart sank to the floor. And I said, Oh, my gosh, this poor family, because at the time, they were still struggling with what to let go. Right? So after all of that time, which is, you know, close to a decade and a half at the time, you would think some people are ready, but they still weren't ready. It was still difficult. And the other thing so they had the emotional overwhelm. So that's point number one. Point number two was they lived nowhere near their childhood home. son lives on the west coast. The daughter lives in New York. So it's not like it's around the corner. It's not like it's a weekend jaunt to, you know, our house. And let's clean it out. Right? So I started to ask questions about, you know, is there a need? And are there people that need this type of work just to help them get started, they just maybe need a conversation, to think about where to start, and I can help guide them. And the first name that popped into my head was Estate Angels. And I said, that's it. But then I started having a conversation with others like, Oh, no, you don't want to use that word angels that it has a religious denomination. So I fought myself with this thought and then shared it with my hairstylist who said, Oh, no, no one had a problem with Charlie's Angels in the 70s. That is Your name

so no, he said that was your first name. I said, Yeah, just popped into my head. He said, that's it. So actually, yeah, here's my business card.

Ray Loewe  19:22  

So I knew when we started this conversation that I had died and gone to heaven. Oh,

Francesca Zampaglione  19:28  

you did

KC Dempster  19:28  

what a silver tongued devil

Ray Loewe  19:31  

you know, let's think about this. Because this is a magnificent story, you know that this is people often get trapped in life. And this is one of the the missions of our show and the missions of what we do. It's, it's all about taking control of your life and sometimes it starts with being observant. It starts with understanding what you like and what you don't like. It understand with the freedom to be able to work the way you want to work. And this is you, this is where you're at. So So what we've done is all this started because of millennials, right?

KC Dempster  20:14  

It started because she's a fashionista.

Francesca Zampaglione  20:19  

Well, thank you for mentioning that it is it's a matter of awareness, right? You have to pay attention to certain things, I could have just ignored that phone call from that consignment shop owner, I could have just ignored the need that this that this family had. But I looked at it and you know, you need to, to listen to your heart and say, Where can you be a value to others, right? Because I truly believe that we are all here for a reason, and that we're all here to help others. So right, what is that? And how can I do that? Personally, with what I know, what are my innate natural things, in ways that I can help? And that's how I've come up with that. These nice ideas.

KC Dempster  21:02  

And and so so now there's even another entrepreneur entrepreneurial, bent. Yep. And that you are developing online courses

Francesca Zampaglione  21:11  

I am. So I'm a course creator. So it's been a lot of fun. I spent the summer teaching myself the software that that makes the course available. And I will and this is just, well, it's public knowledge now, because I'm putting it on the podcast, but I will probably develop on for Estate Angels as well. Because it's all a learning process, and how can I share information that I know that can help others, right, so now that I have that learning under my belt, I can also do it for other businesses,

Ray Loewe  21:45  

right. So unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our time, your time flies when you're having fun. I don't know how. But you know, thanks for being here and sharing your journey. Because, you know, there's some key points, you obviously are designing your life the way you want to design it, and you're living it. And you're not letting traditional rules get in your way. I think one of the other things that came out here is that you have a tendency to follow what's fascinating and motivating. These, these are all mindsets of the luckiest people in the world. So welcome to the luckiest people in the world. You may not have known you were one before, but you are. And you're not trapped in the in the in the whole system here. So since we're at the end of their time, KC, do you have any final remark? Well,

KC Dempster  22:31  

I was just going to ask Francesca to share how people can reach out to her, especially with the online courses, which are for dressing smart for interviews and things along that line. And if they're interested in that, how would they access it?

Francesca Zampaglione  22:46  

Thank you, KC. So I will be making the link available on LinkedIn, which is where I'll be posting this podcast link as well. And that's where people that is the best place for people to find me. I'm updating my website to host that public link. So that'll be available. You know, momentarily, so I hate to say right timestamp. So right now, the course is available, but I'm making the public link available through LinkedIn. Okay. And it is Dress Smart for Virtual Interviews. And all of my work has been copy written. That is another thing that I went for on my own. And I'm pretty happy about that. Dress Smart for Virtual Interviews, Dressing to Win. So to continue their career success and closet tips again, to all embrace the importance of image for career success. Excellent

Ray Loewe  23:37  

and any last minute comments you have.

Francesca Zampaglione  23:39  

I can't thank you enough. This has been tremendous for reaching out and, and just acknowledging that I indeed am the luckiest person alive you had did ask me. So what is the takeaway? What do I want to leave people with? So if there's nothing else, right? If people just listen to their heart, that's what I ask in that is what has helped me move forward. Listen to what you want, and just start moving towards it. And little by little, you will get there. Right?

Ray Loewe  24:15  

Well, there's nothing more to say. So sign off for us.

KC Dempster  24:19  

Okay. Well, thank you all for joining us. I hope you really enjoyed Francesca's message, and tune in next week when we will have an amazing visit with a filmmaker. And that's all I'm going to tell you right now. So tune in next week. And thank you for joining us.

Kris Parsons  24:36  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Reach out to Bonnie Shay at [email protected]

TRANSCRIPT

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:14  
Good morning, everybody.

Ray Loewe  0:19  
lead in for me, you're just gonna leave it flat like that these days.

KC Dempster  0:22  
Yeah, I didn't want to keep talking over David Bowie

Ray Loewe  0:28  
You used to talk a little bit about the fact that you were in Wldfire Studios. Wonderful, Wild, but we're not there because we have snow. Right. Right. Right, social distancing. So Taylor is there Taylor is in wonderful Wildfire Studios. And he's orchestrating this whole thing for us, so that we don't have to know what we're doing. And it all comes out wonderfully well, right back.

KC Dempster  0:52  
That's right. He braved the elements. And he made his way in he probably snowshoed in and But anyway, we're all happy to be here. We have a wonderful show for you today, Changing the Rules, as our intro set is about designing your own life and then living it to the fullest. And so I will turn it over to Ray.

Ray Loewe  1:17  
Yeah, so we have a returning guest, Bonnie Shay from the wonderful world of Chicago, where there's about a foot of snow right now. And she's coming back, because we're going to talk more about storytelling. And we're going to talk about some of the things that our luckiest people in the world could do to make their lives more interesting. And to make the story of their lives come out the way they want it to be. Know, we've had some interesting guests have started this, we had a young lady A while ago by the name of Ashley Allen. And she came on and she talked about your personal brand, and the fact that are you showing up the way you want, you know, we we're all seen by those around us. But we actually have the opportunity to craft that story to make it what we want. We also have talked about engaging with our friends, our community in an exciting way, and keeping life exciting. So Bonnie actually started this thing because she was talking about photo organizing her specialty. And then we're gonna branch off our way beyond this. But the whole thing kind of is like storytelling can give the view of you that you want other people to have. It can also allow you to work with other people to create relationships the way you want to have them. So with all that, and it's kind of a wide open kind of a thing Bonnie Shay, Chicagoans. Extraordinary snowshoer. You know, what else are you doing these days? Why

Bonnie Shay  3:01  
cross country skiing to get through the snow? Absolutely.

Ray Loewe  3:07  
Right? The bicycle doesn't work. Exactly right. It's

Bonnie Shay  3:12  
a little snowy for bicycles. So you got it cross country skis, you know, you don't need batteries, you don't need gas, you can just need snow, and we got it. So we're in good shape.

Ray Loewe  3:24  
So let's start at the beginning here. And we got a lot to cover. And you've got some magnificent ideas for us. But let's go back to photo organizing. And let's go back to the fact that some people have these piles of photos that don't have much meaning anymore. They're in a binder somewhere and in attic and they gather dust. And if they're not put together the right way the kids eventually toss them

Bonnie Shay  3:52  
out. Right. Exactly, exactly. So when I started to be helpful, Ray and KC is I'm going to give sort of a background of what I do, and how I've changed especially with this pandemic, because so many people have found their boxes and boxes of printed photos, hiding in their closets and attics and basements because we've been extra time at home, looking around and organizing our lives. So my specialty is I curate large family photo collections of printed matter. And because I think that they're at the highest risk of getting lost or damaged in our day and age right now, we're not backing up our printed photos, like we are our digital photos. So I help my clients basically by A: putting them their photos in chronological order, and then editing them to the best of the best because we want to look at quality over quantity. We don't need all of their photos. And then scanning them digitizing them so that they're now available to share with others. And I realized over the years having a fabulous digital scanned photo collection on a Thumb Drive or an external hard drive was only part of the gift that my clients were giving to themselves or to their children. The priceless part of the gift is capturing the stories behind the photos, so that they can relive the memories, and have them to share with their kids, grandkids and future generations. So professionally in recent months, I've thought of multiple ways to share stories. But I want to give you a little more background on giving people not overwhelming your listeners. Because sometimes this could be like so overwhelming to think of, Oh, I have to tell my story now not just digitize my photos. So let me share with you. I think a lot of people think of their mountain of photos, than their mountain of stories is like sitting in front of them. And they don't know how to climb a mountain. They don't have the equipment, they don't have the training, they don't have the time, like how do I climb the mountain. So I think if you have a lifetime of photos, you don't feel like you can accomplish the organizing or the stories overnight, because it's a lifetime of photos. So it takes time. And what I suggest people do is chunk it up, chunk up your photo collection or chunk up your story. So my one of my favorite adages, and I think I've shared this with you guys before is I have a question for you. How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Thank you, KC Exactly. So if we have this mountain of photos in front of us, or we have our lifetime story, because we're 60 or 70, or 80 years old, we got to chunk it up, we can't eat that elephant in one bite, we got to do one bite at a time. So I can connect Ashley Allen to this, this podcast because she gave me a gift many many years ago. And it was a five year journal. Basically, it's a blank journal and you have one page for each date. And on each page, there's five years worth of opening, you know, lines that you could put five years worth of each date on that. To me, the gift right now that I'm getting is I'm in the fifth year. So when I went to journal on February 1, I can look back at the last four years of February 1 that tells me what was I doing? What was I feeling? What was I thinking, and it's a little snippet once again, chunking it up? I'm not writing pages and pages about each day, I'm writing little chunks. So that to me is a beautiful. And my last thing I'll say before we get into more stories is one of my favorite quotes is in the book of 1000 places to visit before you die. And in fact, Ray, I think you gifted me that book. It's an introduction. And the quote is, "there is no such thing as a bad trip. Just good stories to tell when you get home.

Ray Loewe  7:48  
Yeah, stories get better. The better the trip, the better the story,

Bonnie Shay  7:53  
the more memorable, right? So I want people to look at their lives, even if they think they don't have a story to tell they do.

Ray Loewe  8:03  
You're setting me up over here. So we're now we're talking about chunk up your stories that fit into the bubble of chaos that we talked about in the last podcast that we did KC. or separate. I guess it's separate. Yeah. Anyway, Bonnie. We've got so much to cover. So let's go in with a couple specifics. I know that you work recently with a client that was an older client, and you basically took some photos that she was in or she was involved with. And you interviewed this person. So tell us about the process. Tell us about what the mission was. And tell us about the results that you've got out of it.

Bonnie Shay  8:43  
Awesome. So yes, my client asked me to record his mom telling stories about some of the photos. And I already knew some of the stories because I had grown up with this family. And so we had about 20 different little vignettes that I wanted her to talk about. So we sat at a table together with my iPhone, I didn't use high tech equipment, I use my iPhone, and we recorded on a voice memo, her voice telling a story. And sometimes I prompted her with a follow up question because I knew there was a piece that she was omitting. And so she had fun just telling the stories, and you can hear it in her voice like she's like reliving this memory. So it was a gift to her to do that. It was a gift to her son and her grandkids because now they have mom's voice telling them stories. Maybe they've heard the story before. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they've seen the photo, maybe they didn't. And what I did was I took the audio track and the digitized photos and use iMovie which is the basic moviemaking program and made little one to three minutes snippets of these stories. And so they all sat around their TV one night a couple weeks ago and watch them and the wise was like a gift and it started conversations and so they added more stories. Just as they were sitting around the TV watching these little snippets, and there's just a beauty into hearing someone's voice and seeing a photo that they're talking about. And that's what we created.

Ray Loewe  10:12  
So so, this is something that anybody could do if you have older people in your family or even younger people, and you have photos that are interesting, take the photo and make it come to life with a story. Okay? And you don't need high tech equipment. And even though you're a pro with this, you don't have to be a pro to make it happen.

Bonnie Shay  10:33  
Exactly. And initially, I thought I want to videotape his mom doing the stories. But that was higher tech, and that would be distracting visually, because it's really about the photo. And so it was a perfect combination of senses to engage.

Ray Loewe  10:47  
Okay, now, you also told me that there are a whole bunch of tools out there, right? You mentioned me that you're taking a memoir, memoir writing class? Why tell us about that? How does, how does that fit into this kind of thing?

Bonnie Shay  11:04  
Well, because I'm getting practice on telling my own story. And I was introduced in the first class, the idea that someone might decide they're going to sit down or write their memoir, well, they think they need a whole week if they're going to sit down and write their whole memoir, because they're thinking I got to write my whole memoir. And they said, No, a snippet. And so what we do is in this class, and I'm going to encourage your listeners to take a class in the local wherever they are, or it doesn't have to be local, because we are on zoom all the time now is they give us a prompt for our class. So we have homeright homework. So today, the cry of class tonight, the prompts are fifth grade, friends and nicknames. So just in the beautiful part of that is that you don't have a blank slate that you're sitting down to our blank piece of paper a blank screen to like start writing your story. No, it got me right to exact stories. Fifth grade? Oh, yeah, I was friends with Mark Goodman. In fifth grade, we did this we did that I could capture. Once again, we're chunking it up in a memoir class by just saying, Okay, let's get a little slice of what I did. And what I who I was.

Ray Loewe  12:14  
So how important do you find the class the sharing the stories?

Bonnie Shay  12:21  
Um, well, the interesting twist on it was we all wanted to read our own stories, because in class, we were told that they were going to be read for us so we could listen. And we like, no, it's my story, I got to read it. But lo and behold, the teacher read it. And she said, because she wants us to listen and hear our own words being spoken by her. And then it's really it's like who such a simple thing, but it's powerful. And we all were asked to take notes so that we could give feedback, because there's nine of us in the class, we could each give feedback to each of each of the reading, you know, the person's. So we're getting good constructive feedback. And you just realized the value in your story.

Ray Loewe  13:07  
So there's lots of things that can help out there on the internet, right? You introduced me to something called Meaningful Photos. They were out in Berkeley. This was a nonprofit kind of thing. And it was just another way to get people to start telling their stories.

Bonnie Shay  13:26  
Exactly, yes. And you can take some photos and tell a story. It could be a new photo, it could be an old photo, it's timeless, you can do it in any part of your life.

Ray Loewe  13:37  
And if you need help with it, you can get other people to do that. So you were telling me about somebody who memoirs for me? Okay, this is somebody who will actually write your memoirs for you if you want.

Bonnie Shay  13:49  
Correct, she interviews you and then writes the memoirs. Exactly.

Ray Loewe  13:53  
Okay, now, I want to do an about face on you and put you on the spot. Okay. So we've been talking pretty much about somebody who is older, who has thoughts and memoirs writing about them. Okay, what can we do with stories the other way? Let's suppose that I'm a grandparent, I want to bond with my grandkids, you know, how can I create these memories with my grandkids involved in them? Any thoughts?

Bonnie Shay  14:29  
Well, I'll borrow the concept from you. Because when you and I were talking a couple weeks ago, you mentioned the idea of like, let's say I'm a grandparent, and I take my kids to the zoo. And we go for a day in the zoo, and we see all the animals and we take pictures. And I could write a book. And I'm just talking about a basic book for kids with a few photos and little captions to tell them about the story because maybe they were only two years old or four years old, and they're not going to remember in 20 years, but let's capture it and it's going to be a book. If They're in the book, kids always love their own picture we all do. So it's a gift that they can still read over and over again before bedtime whenever grandma and grandpa comes over

Ray Loewe  15:13  
and read when they're in their 20s to their grandkids, okay, because, again, it's a book about them. All right. And, and, and the stories go on, you know, we had Rebecca Hoffman on while ago, and she was telling about the power of a story told, well, what good story told well, and their stories are everywhere. So the whole idea is, how do we capture them? How do we help them, we take them to photos, we can write them in form of memoirs, we can go to a memoir writing class. You know, KC, you know, you did something with old family videos. Now. You've told the story before. So give us a short version?

KC Dempster  15:57  
Oh, oh, fine. Thanks. Yes, my, you know, growing up, my father had a 16 millimeter camera that he would take family movies, and we found out that he really was taken with our Christmas trees, because we have a million pans up and down of Christmas trees. But my sister had all of those reels of film. And she sent them away and had them digitized and sent out to all the brothers and sisters, there's seven of us. And so one night, I set up a zoom call, and everybody got on, and I played the video. And we all watched it together. And we're laughing. And, you know, our family's pretty spread out in age. So some of the younger siblings didn't know who some of the people in the earlier videos were. So we were telling them who they were. And, and it was really, it was a most enjoyable evening. And it went a little bit long, but it was great.

Ray Loewe  16:59  
Okay, so so let me bring this back to the luckiest people in the world. Okay, so we have this group of people who call themselves are the luckiest people in the world. And that's because they stay engaged, they make their own lives, they don't put up with rules that don't belong to them. And they, they want to keep going, you know, they don't want to sit down on their rear ends and let life just go by. And somebody gave me a quote the other day that's perfect for that. But it's that these people don't sit there and worry about aging. They instead think about life. So how do we add life to things and I think we've got a couple of good threads over here. Number one, if you are a senior citizen, and you want to tell people about you want to impart your wisdom to them, you know, how do you do it in an interesting way, so that people will actually read it and stay there. So Bonnie gave us some great ideas here, you know, you use the pictures, you use the word. I think the other thing here too, is how do you engage with your grandchildren? And how do you kind of tell a story that they'll be interested in? It's not your story anymore? It's our story. How do you get the whole family involved? And and I think what we're going to do as we move forward here is we're going to be talking a number of times, about how you do this from different perspectives. And it not all doesn't all work for everybody, you got to do it in different ways. I know the kind of work that Bonnie does. I I know if I wanted to be interviewed about a photo, she would be the one who would be interviewing me. And we would probably spend the entire day laughing.

KC Dempster  18:52  
Yeah. And, you know, I was gonna point out that, you know, generations ago, families pretty much lived around each other, there was not a lot of moving away. So kids growing up, were hearing oral history all the time. Because the the, you know, the adults would sit around and talk about things and kids Listen, and they absorb things even if they don't realize they are. But nowadays, we really do have to make more of an effort to to get that story out there. And so I love this idea of taking a picture and telling the story of it. I think that's a great idea. And the memory of just just picking one little era of your life or one experience and and telling the story makes it so much less daunting.

Ray Loewe  19:42  
Yeah, except I have this picture of trying to eat an elephant my head.

Bonnie Shay  19:49  
Ray, I'll get you a chocolate elephant and you'll have no problem. Except you'll eat the whole elephant, right? Well, you

Ray Loewe  19:57  
probably couldn't put it in a cup. Pour hot milk over marshmallows.

KC Dempster  20:03  
Well, Bonnie's not aware of that yet.

Bonnie Shay  20:07  
I've heard of it. I've heard of it. I want to tap on to KC, what you were mentioning, too, because a lot of my clients come to me and say, Bonnie, my daughter, my son, whatever, they don't want these photos, they don't care about the photos, whatever. I mean, many say there, they do, but some don't. And I explained to them that, you know, with my perspective, you know, in my 60s, each generation has a different perspective on photos, stories, videos, history, you name it, and it changes as you grow older. And the minute I had children, my appreciation of my parents as parents was totally different than when I was a kid. And then unfortunately, I lost both of my parents at very young ages. And so I did not have them to tell me the stories as I wished. So I'm just wanting to impart suggestions on people, even if you think your kids could care less about your photos. It's just because they're at a time in their life, that maybe they're so busy raising their own kids or working or whatever. But when you are gone, they will wish they had your story.

Ray Loewe  21:13  
And especially if you edit them down to a relatively small number of really meaningful photos, as opposed to the hodgepodge in the book. One of the things that we have now, this COVID stuff has been a pain in the rear ended on a lot of ways. But it's given us time to think it's given us time to work on these projects. And now's the time to take advantage of those things. We're going to be here for a little while yet and take the opportunity to create history one way or another add a good story, well told is worse. You know, somebody told me this a good story well told is worth 1000 words that doesn't quite fit

KC Dempster  21:56  
somehow. I think you're I think you're you're combining two sayings, but that's fine, because it's very meaningful.

Ray Loewe  22:02  
Well, well, but I can't even talk anymore. So Bonnie, thanks so much for being with us. And it's Bonnie Shay, Mariposa of for photo organizer.com. Right. Am I close? And it will be on our website in case you have questions for Bonnie or you need her services in any way. So have a great day, everybody and KC, what's happening, going? Well,

KC Dempster  22:30  
we want people to keep tuning into our podcasts. We're going to talk more about stories, we're going to talk about some other themes that were lining up. Because we we we want people to take control of their lives and and there's a lot of aspects to that. So keep coming back.

Ray Loewe  22:49  
Cool. And see you next week everybody.

Kris Parsons  22:53  
Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world
 

Find Kelly on Facebook at Fairyland Confections.

TRANSCRIPTION

This is Changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody.

Ray Loewe  0:17  

Good morning. You're waiting for me? Yes, I

KC Dempster  0:21  

Well, you were so busy leading the chorus. I wanted to welcome everybody to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And we are experiencing what many schoolchildren would have been over the moon about, but I don't know how many actually are getting a snow day today because of the ability to homeschool. But it's it's a challenge. And we're all in our toasty warm homes and welcome, Ray.

Ray Loewe  0:51  

Well, you know, I was watching television the other night, and this, this actually relates to our guest today. Okay. But there was a song that they were airing where they had all these kids singing, there's no school tomorrow. Yeah, great song. Okay,

KC Dempster  1:07  

I know, it gets stuck in my head every time I hear it.

Ray Loewe  1:11  

mood changes and stuff like that. And, and now we don't get that anymore. It's it's part of this virus stuff. Because you never stop going to school, whether they like it or not. And the advantages are there. And the disadvantages are there. But hey, kids, that's what you got to put up with in life as we grow old right?

KC Dempster  1:33  

Well, you know, they all love their technology. You know, there's a good side and a bad side, I guess you could say.

Ray Loewe  1:39  

Yeah, so we have a great guest today. And, you know, we're kind of going back to our theme last year here, where we're talking about, you know, getting smacked in this change. I think one of our previous podcast people, Kevin Davis was referring to the bubble of chaos that, that we've all been thrown in and, and all of a sudden, the things that were there are not there anymore. So I want to bring on to the show a young lady, her name is Kelly Lyons. Okay. And and you can get an idea of her character when you see that her email address, says something lioness.com Okay, you know, so there's something feral about this, this person here. But Kelly has a really interesting career and, and it has nothing to do. Well, maybe it has something to do it really nothing to do with what you're doing now. Is that right, Kelly?

Kelly Lyons  2:42  

Very little to do. You know, I've definitely rode the wave of whatever was coming at me. I kind of tried to follow inspiration. This time. I didn't guide it at all.

Ray Loewe  2:54  

Well, that that's the story we want to tell. But let's give a little background first, because you grew up in this area in the Delaware Valley. Right?

Kelly Lyons  3:02  

I did.

Ray Loewe  3:03  

And then you found your way to Hollywood. And we we were told we can't get you to tell Hollywood Stories. So we're like, okay, but what did you do in Hollywood? Because it kind of fits your own career.

Kelly Lyons  3:17  

It does. I, I was a science consultant and a set decorator for 20th Century Fox Television. So I worked on a TV show called Angel which was a spin off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So very iconic. I worked for Joss Whedon. And now he's a household name. But I you know, I was with him and worked with him. I worked for Mutant Enemy and 20th Century Fox and I had a wonderful time doing that, and met a lot of great people and did a lot of fun, fun stuff.

Ray Loewe  3:47  

Okay, and then you came back here, and you got into the education business. So what were you doing?

Kelly Lyons  3:55  

Well, when I first came back from Hollywood, I actually taught science in North Philadelphia while I was getting my master's degree, and I got my masters in the business of education, which is kind of funny. And so then I stopped teaching science at a position opened up at the Garden State Discovery Museum. And I went to be the director of the museum in 2004. So...okay.

Ray Loewe  4:25  

And there your primary function. You describe this Discovery Museum, because it's an interesting concept. And it kind of sets the stage for where you are, which makes your transformation even more amazing.

Kelly Lyons  4:39  

Well, it was kind of funny, the museum. The museum was very unique. The Garden State Discovery Museum is a children's museum, which now is kind of a household name, but the Garden State Discovery Museum is actually 26 years old and at the time, that it came to be, it was a very unique idea. It was there was only about 25 Children's museums in the whole country and the Garden State Discovery Museum started, actually as a small business and not a nonprofit. And so it broke the doors off of every museum model that anyone was ever aware of. They worked with the Small Business Development Center at Rutgers and it was owned by two women. And so it was it was a lot of groundbreaking, and concept. And then since then, you know, there's 300 - 400 Children's Museum now, children's museums now in the world. We'll see after this bubble of chaos, how many are left. But you know, I had some great opportunities with that company, I actually went to Turkey and consulted on the very first Children's Museum and opened the first Children's Museum in Turkey and assemble, opened it as a business with two women who wanted to start a children's museum. In Turkey. I consulted on a project in India as well for a children's museum in a mall in India. So I've had a lot of fun and a lot of very unique business experience, as well as just you know, out of the box thinking, very different kind of corporate world. So that's amazing.

Ray Loewe  6:12  

All of a sudden, now, okay. You're the rules changed,

Kelly Lyons  6:18  

the rules changed,

Ray Loewe  6:19  

the rules changed. And one day, you're director of this museum The next day, the museum didn't exist anymore.

Kelly Lyons  6:27  

That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, one day I had 165 employees and basically the next day I had zero.

Ray Loewe  6:36  

Okay, so so most people here would sit at home and cry a lot. Okay, and hide a lot. And you didn't do that. So you created from nothing out of this bubble of chaos, a new life for yourself in effect. Right? And give us give us a little background about what it is you're doing, how you describe yourself where you're going? And then you know one of the other things that I'll give them the hint is that part of this is you learned how to make bombs

Kelly Lyons  7:09  

I did

Ray Loewe  7:11  

okay, hold on, we're not being destructive, but we'll get into the positives. Okay, all right, so Kelly, the bomb maker tell us about what you're doing.

Kelly Lyons  7:20  

So you know, we're talking about we're now what home 11 months 12 months now almost i was i was done work on March 17. Which, you know, I'm Irish, so that sounded fine to me at the time. It was St. Patrick's Day that the museum was it was done. But I really thought we were gonna be closed for two weeks not you know, not gone. So you know, there was a lot of introspection, there was a lot of looking into different industries that were coming up at the time, the thing that I've learned at the museum being out of the box and I've gotten to mentor some women entrepreneurs and and talk business plans and really and develop a few different companies through the museum and so I really love that part. I love the development of creation new things happening you know, kind of you know what's going to happen next and and so instead of crying and hiding Ray, I decided to really enjoy the time at home with myself my son and because I hadn't been home and I've never been home ever like this so this was a new thing for me. So I just kind of started looking into a way to use my creative energy and I started tooling with a few things and I landed very squarely in October in chocolate bombs not on purpose I was actually just wanted to play around with them saw them on Pinterest I has wanted to make some and I made some for my friends and I gave them out as Halloween gifts to like my nieces and next thing I know people were they were so excited by them they were videotaping their kids having chocolate bombs and putting them on Facebook and tagging me and next thing I know people are Can you make these for me? Can I buy these from you? Do you make these for a living? How many can I get? Can you make them this way? Can you make them that way? So it became it came it became an entity of its very own which went from sure I can make these for you and oh no problem I can deliver to between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I made over 4000 chocolate bombs which was way too many for anyone to make in a month but it was very it was amazing. The this what what what happened at that? Yeah.

KC Dempster  9:37  

I was just gonna say I think for the for our listeners their imagination about what a chocolate bomb is must be running wild from like chocolate coming down the walls. So Kelly, describe for us what your chocolate bombs actually are.

Kelly Lyons  9:53  

Actually, if you're right, I'm sorry, I should have prefaced by that. It's a hollow chocolate ball. It's about two and a half inches sphere, you know, a little bit like probably the size of a baseball, and it's hollow. And on the inside of the chocolate bomb is cocoa powder and marshmallows. And so you put the bomb in the bottom of a mug, and then you pour hot milk over top of it. And it melts and bursts open with all the marshmallows and all the marshmallows rise to the top and then you stir it up and it's it's hot chocolate.

KC Dempster  10:30  

It's Chocolate

Ray Loewe  10:33  

is what it is. And that's different. Okay, let me let me regress a little bit because you blew the image of the bomber. Okay, you know, you had to fess up and, you know, chocolate bombs, you know, what can I tell you? But there are a couple of things here. Kelly is one of our luckiest people in the world. There's no question about it. And, and if you look at some of the things that she's done, you can see. So first of all, she's living her life on her own terms. Now, maybe she didn't always do that. But the circumstances changed. And she was able to just totally redesign her own life. Okay. And part of that is you deals well with rules, so somebody changed the rules on her, so she didn't just succumb to the new rules tree. You know, she's social distancing, I'm sure, you know, she's doing this at home or in her kitchen. And so that there's, she's, she's playing by those rules that are important, but you change the ones that matter to her, she's not going to get constrained to be forced to live somebody else's life. And one of the things that, that she found is the luckiest people in the world always find a positive solution of everything. You know, and you had to look for it a little bit, right. But you know, it was there.

elly Lyons  11:55  

I really embraced the quarantine Actually, I really enjoyed it. I have to say, there was no way I was gonna, you know, I really didn't, I didn't want it to destroy my life. And I was really excited to see what was going to happen next. And being somebody who's a creative person. The thing about major change. My favorite thing about major change is seeing everything that comes next. What happens now what's going to happen now and as much as there's a bubble of chaos right now for everybody. I'm loving to see what's developing out of this. You know, it's happened all over the world all through history. What's going to happen next, what happened after World War One what happened after World War two? What happened after the Spanish Spanish flu? What happened in industry? What rose to the occasion? I'm very interested in that.

Ray Loewe  12:41  

And what better than chocolate bombs?

Kelly Lyons  12:45  

The end of the day, chocolate

KC Dempster  12:49  

In addition, in addition to the chocolate bombs, Kelly has some Valentine's Day specials, these breakable hearts, which if you go to her website page or on Facebook, and it's called Fairyland confections. And if you go there, you can see all of the products. One of the chocolate bombs is made to look like a panda. Panda Bear, not Panda, polar bear. And I just think it's the cutest thing. But these these breakable hearts are fascinating because you say people can purchase them already filled or they can sell them themselves. So how does how does that work?

Kelly Lyons  13:26  

So they're actually just the top of the heart and it goes down onto a cake board and they're about eight inches wide. Now. I thought they were supposed to be sealed too. But then everybody kept saying oh, no, you can just sell them just the top and then people can. So the pert the first person who asked me to make a breakable heart is a newlywed. It's their first Valentine's together. He's putting jewelry and love letters in it. He just wanted the top and I said all right, no problem. So they're doing very well. I don't know if it's an aggressive thing or again, Ray is an activity that people are really embracing but it's just you when you take a lobster hammer hammer and you whack open this this chocolate heart to see what's inside.

Ray Loewe  14:08  

Well, I think there's more to it than that. I mean, it kind of started with this idea about building bombs, okay, and and expanding it, but I think you do some other things with it. So you create events for other people.

Kelly Lyons  14:22  

I love to do that. That was probably my favorite thing to do.

Ray Loewe  14:26  

Okay, so talk about some of the events that you're helping people create with chocolate bars.

Kelly Lyons  14:32  

Okay, well, you know I did. They had a drive by baby shower for somebody. So the mother reached out to me and asked me to do the favors for her drive by baby shower, which were strawberry and cream. It was a baby girl. So she, we did that. But this Friday Whistlers inn in cinnaminson is having a polar Party, which I think is like such a great idea. They're going to use their outdoor dining space and they're just going to let the heaters run and they're going to have a polar party. And so I reached out and said, Hey, I make hot chocolate bombs in the shape of polar bears. Do you guys want those? And they said, Yes, we definitely want those. So they're gonna add Kahlua, or vodka or whatever you want to those, those bombs. And so they're super excited about that. And this weekend, I have an open house at grazing goat farm, so they'll have all kinds of stuff there. And I'm also working on gender reveal cocoa bombs with

Ray Loewe  15:29  

what's in it in blue or pink?

Kelly Lyons  15:31  

Yep, they're pink and blue. So it's either a girl or boy, they have to tell me what I'm making but they won't know until it pops open. What's in the belly? And that one's a bear too, but he's a brown bear.

Ray Loewe  15:45  

Couple of things. Number one, you went from running a children's museum to how does one begin a career in crafting chocolate?

Kelly Lyons  15:55  

I you know, this is one of those things where you I I didn't plan it. I had no idea it was gonna happen. I've always worked around and with food. My mother's a chef, my parents owned restaurants. I love to work with food. I love to have people at my house. I love to entertain. I love to make dinners. I love to make things and drop them off to people. I've been doing that my whole life and that's really how the chocolate bomb started. I saw them on Pinterest. I made them and drop them off at peoples houses. I just didn't know that it was gonna take gotta get the legs that it got I had no I was I had no idea.

Ray Loewe  16:29  

Okay, so is there an end to this? Or do we just have chocolate bars forevermore?

Kelly Lyons  16:34  

I you know, I now I have kind of come up with this new concept for the company and I named it you know, I called it Fairyland Confections. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna be very transparent about that there. I am not a chocolatier. So the reason it was even called Fairyland Confections is because my decorations are a little crazy. And the reason the decorations are so crazy is because sometimes my chocolate has holes in it and has divots in it and because I'm not a chocolatier, so I had to cover it with a lot of icing and throw a bunch of stuff on top. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna make this a thing we're gonna call it Fairyland confections like the fairies took over the piping bag and the decorations and and then with that, you know, I have I'm hoping that at some point, I may open it a Fairyland cafe because that that's definitely because I do unicorn bombs and, and, you know, I like sparkles. I mean, I always tell everybody when there's sadness in the world, and they try to talk to me about it. I say, you know what, I really only deal in rainbows and unicorns. That's really my thing. I've always been that way. I like to keep it I like to keep the vibration high. And you know, I like I like stuff like that. So I'm hoping that we may be able to make Fairyland Confections and actual cafe and I'm working on tea bombs. Oh,

you'll love those KC, they are a clear sugar ball with the tea bags inside and flower like edible flowers. They're beautiful. Oh, cool. That will be spring. So.

Ray Loewe  18:09  

Okay, so we have the ability to do hot chocolate do can we do like alcoholic beverages and stuff like that. Now, you indicated, we're gonna do that this weekend. So what do you do just put the Bailey's, you just put whatever the confection is on the inside?

Kelly Lyons  18:28  

I could do it on the inside. I'm having a logistical issue with this. But how Whistlers is going to do it is they're going to have the mug they're going to pour the kalua or the Bailey's or whatever, they're gonna pour the shot into the bottom of the mug. Set the polar bear on top and then pour the hot milk over top of them. Because my problem is, is when you put the alcohol in the bomb, which I can, it dissolves the marshmallows. Marshmallows, I have to figure out a way to make half of it filled with alcohol and half of the marshmallows kind of in the top and then seal it together so that it doesn't mess up the marshmallows.

Ray Loewe  19:06  

Who would have thunk that Marshmallows would do that.

Kelly Lyons  19:10  

So yes, I mean, I've made rumchata for my friends, but I didn't put the Mark I did we put the marshmallows in it, but then by the time we put the bomb in that there was no marshmallow.

Ray Loewe  19:19  

Okay, let's talk about some of the creativity that people can do here. So, so there is no reason you're sitting at home today. And you have these people getting tired of zoom calls, right? Yeah. So what if we just sent out a whole bunch of cocoa bombs to people, and we had a cocoa Salute on zoom, right?

Kelly Lyons  19:44  

It's a good idea. You can either add or add some alcohol to it. Whatever you want to do.

Ray Loewe  19:50  

So so people can take this concept of yours the sugar, sugar concept sugar is always a good thing. And and and do creative things. And and the idea the parties creating the parties and creating themed parties. And I love the baby reveal one.

Kelly Lyons  20:08  

Oh, yeah, that's gonna be.

Ray Loewe  20:11  

And then what happens if the baby comes out to be the opposite of what everybody predicted?

Kelly Lyons  20:16  

I'm not making the call. They're telling me what the doctor said.

KC Dempster  20:24  

Yeah, I'm sure it has happened in the past.

Ray Loewe  20:31  

Or the end of our timeframe work here. But let's recap on a couple things. So. So Kelly is one of our luckiest people in the world. Okay, and we know that because she is creating her own life, and she's moving forward in and ignoring the bubble of chaos. Right. Okay. The creativity that that you hear is interesting, I guess, in totally unique and different. But it's the concept of creating the events out of it that I think is really where the edge is. And so we have the ability to order these things, and ship them to our friends. And we can do that and the website we put on our podcast notes. But what is the website again?

KC Dempster  21:16  

It's in Facebook, and it's Fairyland Confections. Really easy to find.

Ray Loewe  21:24  

Okay, yeah. And do you have any other words of wisdom for those who are caught in the bubble of chaos, or those of us who are just chocoholics, or those of us who want to make bombs?

Kelly Lyons  21:40  

I would say yeah, me here. Here's my words of wisdom. take a little time to quiet your mind. And don't overthink things and next thing you know the answers coming.

KC Dempster  21:52  

That's very wise, very sage. Thank

Kelly Lyons  21:56  

Follow your joy, follow your joy. Next thing you know, everything works out just fine.

Ray Loewe  21:59  

It follow your joy. And with that, there's nothing else to say is there?

Kelly Lyons  22:03  

that's it, follow your joy.

Ray Loewe  22:04  

So join us. Next week. We'll have another intriguing gush. Look up Kelly on her Facebook thing, and eat, well drink chocolate in this

Kelly Lyons  22:18  

way. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate that. Thanks, Kelly. Have a great day.

Kris Parsons  22:24  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

TRANSCRIPT:

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe. And we have a wonderful show ahead for you. We are broadcasting from Wildfire Podcast Studios. And it's a beautiful day in Woodbury, New Jersey.

Ray Loewe  0:32  

You know, one comment that I make frequently, but we've been doing podcasts now for a little over a year, and we have no idea what we're doing. And and the advantages we don't have to know because we have Taylor, and we have Wildfire, and they lead us through this thing. And all we have to do is get great guests. And then our guests lead us to wonderful podcasts. It make it sound so easy.

KC Dempster  0:55  

Why do I get so stressed?

Ray Loewe  0:57  

It is? Well, Rebecca Hoffman, who's our guest today was on once before last year, yes, she very definitely is one of the luckiest people in the world. And we so acknowledge that with a mug. Okay, yes. She's been mugged. And, Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us. And let's start because I want to get some semblance of your creativity on the line before we get into substance here. So the name of your company is

Rebecca Hoffman  1:29  

Good Egg Concepts.

Ray Loewe  1:30  

Where the heck did that come from?

Rebecca Hoffman  1:33  

Well, it's funny, you should ask that. Because I was for some reason thinking about that. This morning. The notion of a good egg came up years before I even had a business. And I was living in Miami and we would receive our email was through the county. And it was like a computer code email address, which was impossible to remember. And you could check your email at the library or at the University where I worked. So I have this sort of difficult email address. And then at some point, somebody said to me, You can make your own email address on something called Yahoo. And so I became the good [email protected] because I turned to my friend and I said, Well, how do you make an email name? Like, how do you do that? And this was probably in the mid 90s. And they said, well, you're a good egg, just be the good [email protected]. wonders, things happened, don't that, you know, well and 30 years later, I still have this name hanging around, which is kind of funny, but I guess that's the power of a name.

Ray Loewe  2:33  

Yeah. And and Rebecca, by the way, has her own marketing consulting practice. And she's kind of a branding expert. And you can see she's got the good egg. But she did some wonderful things for me. Yes, a long ago, while maybe it's not that long ago, and I am better through a friend of mine. And I was in Chicago on a business trip. And we met and I think we met in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel, in downtown there. Pardon? Yep. Yep. And, and we started talking, and we were talking about a trip I had just completed, I just gotten back from Africa. And I was telling all these wonderful stories, and all of a sudden, Rebecca says, "You know, you have to, you have to structure these a little bit. You have to can them because they're wonderful parables. And they have morals to them. And if you tell them and create them the right way people will remember them." And yes, Rebecca, that was true. That was a that was a defining moment. Thank you very much.

C Dempster  3:37  

Right. And we've been, we've been calling re Aesop for his fables ever since then.

Ray Loewe  3:42  

Well, you know, and, and one of the stories and I'm not going to tell the story, but but it's about penguins in Antarctica, because we expanded this from Africa. And, and people come up, and they just say, remember the penguins, you know, and, and, and it's all there. So one of the things that we want to talk today about is the power of storytelling, and why we should all use this more, whether it's in business or personal life, and whether you're trying to build relationships with your grandchildren, or your grandparents, or whatever it is. So Rebecca, tell us a little bit about storytelling and where you position this in your life and your business.

Rebecca Hoffman  4:26  

So storytelling, plays a big role in my life, both personally and professionally, and it always has. And I think one of the things I've always marked in my life is that I like a story well told, in a book and a movie, in a poem in something that someone is telling me. When I get together with my friends, I always say "what's new Tell me a good story I want to hear." And so I think the essence of good storytelling for any person and it's I think it's what anthropologists would call a human universal is that there's every human on Earth likes to hear story well told. And so, stories bind us to each other. They they aren't just plot and summary. They are narratives that either can teach us or inspire us or give us some sense of perspective, or some way to reflect upon any issue that we're thinking about. And it really works either in the personal realm or the professional realm, in my opinion. So I think storytelling, it's probably been going on since time immemorial, right, because it predates writing and publishing. And I think oral histories and oral storytelling are passed on century to century generation, to generation in every culture we can find.

Ray Loewe  5:42  

And it's an art form. And yet, it makes things more interesting, and it makes them more memorable. You know, one of the things that we were talking about the other day, is that the time that we're in right now, and I think one of the comments that you made is it's time to take the about us on our website And tell stories.

Rebecca Hoffman  6:05  

Yes. from a business standpoint, anybody who owns a business or works in business, who has the opportunity to influence what we call like the About Us page, or the team page, or whatever it is on your business website page, or in your marketing collateral, if you tell a good story, people will remember it and it brings them closer, I can give an example that probably everybody we talked to if we asked them, What could you tell me about Steve Jobs at Apple, even though he's passed away a few years now, pretty much everybody who uses technology can say something about him as if they've met him. And so they've done a beautiful job in the corporate realm of creating what they call the origin story, you know, about, he didn't finish school, he was in a garage, he was making stuff. So he was a disrupter. He was difficult. But he was interesting. And he was persuasive. You could say all this stuff as if you've eaten lunch with him. And so the story gets through to people because it's interesting. It's memorable, it's well told, and it's told over and over again. And so we see that in all of the successful enterprises, whether they're small businesses or giant corporations, and those stories help bring customers closer and make them feel part of the ecosystem of the brand. And I think that also helps people feel like what we would loosely call evangelists, like people who are who celebrate a brand because they're familiar with it, and therefore it starts to feel like their team, or they have an affinity for it.

KC Dempster  7:37  

That's really, remarkably deep. And I know we all laughed, but I didn't mean that to be funny. I think that it's really a very thoughtful concept.

Ray Loewe  7:51  

Well, what do you want for a good day, right? I mean, after all, but but you know, it is, it is true, we're going to take our podcast going forward. And we're going to spend quite a bit of time on storytelling going forward. And we're gonna look at it in all different kinds of perspectives. So Rebecca, you were just kind of the lead, that's going to get us started on this. And I know what you did for me with my stories, and I had, I'm since learning how to craft stories, but but you look at all of the different things. We're where you can use them. So how do we leave? How do we leave memories for people? Well, right. Go ahead.

Rebecca Hoffman  8:33  

Well, I think I yeah, so I think that a story allows people a way to transmit memory or history or impressions or emotions. Sometimes it's really very fact based, such as in such year and such year your grandfather came to this country, or, you know, more in a family and people will describe the challenges they face and how they overcame them and little children. And actually it gets older than little children. But it begins with little children will ask Tell me a story before bed or before a nap or when there's some quiet time or you're in the car. You know, my kids aren't that young, and they still ask for stories from our family. And I think that storytelling, at least according to psycho therapists, and I think they're right, builds resilience when people know what it took to get, the moment that you're in now. The hard stories, the sad stories, the big stories, the complicated ones. They are really invested in the storytelling. And if it's part of a family system, it makes them feel even more connected and close to the generations. And so I think that's the piece for people at home to think about. And I think psycho therapists would call it like, a sense of generativity. How do you pass your sense of yourself and your history to the next generation in hopes that they'll then tell that again, or be inspired by it and live a life kind of in accord with that?

Ray Loewe  9:54  

So what Let's talk for a minute about stories last. Oh, okay. And let me set the stage here because I've seen people have books of photographs. And and yet during this dusty album, you open them up, nobody has any clue as to who's in the photo, what's going on. It's a story of lost. Opportunity lost. I remember my grandmother, okay. And and I remember my grandmother because I can smell the cooking in the kitchen. Uh huh. So, so the story comes from there. So so how do we, you know, if we're looking at ways of telling stories, and let me set a couple scenarios. So number one, maybe we have older parents, grandparents, and they're still here, and before we lose their presence, how do we craft the stories and what do we do?

Rebecca Hoffman  10:57  

Yes, I think there's probably a couple top level points I would think about in a situation where we want to capture information before it could possibly be forgotten or missing, or misinterpreted or placed in a box and not seen for decades, you have to probably set out a bite sized goal. So you may need to because I think people are home more than normal right now. I think we can all agree we're all more homebound than usual. So we actually have an opportunity with more time to kind of think about this. Literally sketch on a piece of paper or on your iPad, an area of your family history or story that you want told. And then go after those photos and provide them with a context whether you photograph them and you make a digital file, or scan them in, or you already have them digitally organized. And I think probably the most important thing is the narrative, the captioning the ordering of things. So like you said about your grandmother, if you let's say you had some photos in a box of her, could you not organize them in such a way that you could then show someone else who'd never met her? This was my grandmother, she was a remarkable cook. And she made the following things and I can still smell those foods today. And I wish I could eat them right now. Then you're telling an interesting story, versus here's a box of pictures of my grandmother, if you want to see them, you're welcome to have a look. And that person on the outside has no idea what to do with that.

Ray Loewe  12:21  

Yeah, she was a card shark too incredible Pinochle player. Okay.

Rebecca Hoffman  12:27  

So these are things that you don't want lost in the dustbin of history, because she was an interesting person. And she probably had specific things that she cooked that were just delicious.

Ray Loewe  12:38  

Yeah, nobody can recreate. Nobody can recreate them anymore, because the recipes were in her head. So you know, the whole idea is these ideas, I want to explore the opposite approach to a little bit. So. So let's, let's take the situation where you're a grandparent right now, and you have grandchildren, and you want to create stories that the grandchildren will remember. So instead of being initiated by the children, let's initiate it by grandparents and, and how do we do the same kind of thing I know I'm putting you on the spot here. But But

Rebecca Hoffman  13:16  

I think so the grandparents who was thinking about this at home, probably needs to get some of those photos, or the videos or whatever media they have that can support the storytelling to the extent that they're able, it could be family books could be artifacts, it's just you have to think of yourself like a cultural anthropologist in your own house. Find those elements that are interesting. And then bring them to life because a child is interested in like, show and tell. So if the grandmother has specific cooking pot and made a specific stew, invite that child assuming they're not too young to come and help you make the stew and talk about it and show the pictures and describe what happened. And as you're doing it, maybe even have them write the steps with a crayon as a first step to investing in the memory of the story. And you bring it to life because stories have beginnings, middles and ends. But stories also have exciting details, which is why some movies are more interesting to people than others, or some books are more interesting to people than others. And it varies per person, but the skillful grandparent will think about what their grandchild might find interesting if their grandchild likes to eat, then cook something that the that the grandparent makes and transmit the experience to the child. So it's extremely rewarding and memorable so that they say could we do it again? Or if it's not that then it's looking at the photos and like I remember showing my kids some photographs of my grandfather recently, I said he had a dog here was his dog. His name was Scamper. And he was a very friendly dog. And they like looking at the pictures of my grandfather with his dog. But if I didn't do that, they wouldn't have known This. Right? Yeah, you know, and there's so much you can do

Ray Loewe  14:57  

I mean, even going to the zoo, taking your grandchildren The zoo and, and taking no more than a dozen pictures. And and and putting them in a little book and turn it into stories that you can tell at bedtime, you know to craft and create the memories. You know, one of the reasons we have Rebecca on here, by the way is I know that Rebecca's secret desire is she wants to write for Saturday Night Live. This is why we get all this creativity from her and why she is a master star storyteller. And and you know, one of the things I I know that you study people who tell stories, too, so, so So give us a couple of people that maybe we can look at if we don't know how to tell stories. One way is to mimic other people. And I think you mentioned Spalding Gray. One time, right. I know about Garrison Keillor, right? Absolutely.

Rebecca Hoffman  15:49  

There's so many. And there's so many kinds of great stories. So Ira Glass, This American Life is a superb storyteller, an interviewer on National Public Radio Spalding Gray, who's since passed away. You can dig up his videos, he sits at a desk and you think, oh god, how am I gonna get through this? Watch this man and a flannel shirt for two hours talk. And you don't even notice the time passing. He's so good. There's a new one. I think I might have mentioned this to you. When we were talking the other day, john Wilson, there's a show on HBO called "How To with john Wilson." There's six episodes. And this man is a videographer, a filmmaker, and probably a little OCD lives in New York. And he's phenomenal. He kind of swirls together how to he likes a how to video like you find on social channels. And then he melds it with like his own personal problems and observations in New York. And he had to build a scaffold because he said there's scaffolding everywhere in New York City, how to make small talk, how to make risotto and he goes and finds a stranger on the street and gets into his kitchen. And makes rissoto with this man. It's all six in a row. They're half an hour each. So you need like three, four hours to do this. Make some popcorn. And you're in the hands of a master?

KC Dempster  17:07  

Did Ray tell you that today is or last week was national popcorn? Yeah.

Rebecca Hoffman  17:12  

Well, I do know, that's because I received a card from Ray, my Kansas morning, and we will have some popcorn.

Ray Loewe  17:19  

It's an important event, you know, and one of the things that people do is they tend not to let events become important. And I think this is one of the things that we want to highlight this year as we go through these podcasts. And we'll have you back later, when we won't put you on the spot. So much we'll kind of set you up in advance with some stuff that you can really think out. But but the whole concept here is number one stories have a message, they're much more interesting than a lot of other ways to relate things. You know that what what's the key to a good story? You know, I don't know that we had the time to really go into that today.

Rebecca Hoffman  18:01  

But well, I would just say one thing with respect to a good story is you need a good use of vocabulary because people don't like dull words like it was a really nice day. I like the color pink. People want specificity. They want details. So anyone can come up with great details. And don't be afraid to share them because that's what people hang on and remember.

Ray Loewe  18:20  

So what is it a pink day today?

Rebecca Hoffman  18:23  

There's an ounce of sunshine, where I am in the Chicago area.

Ray Loewe  18:31  

So you know whether it's business, whether it's a business story, or whether it's a grandparent, trying to create a memory for grandchildren or whether it is a grandchild or a child trying to capture things from a grandparent while they're still here. And while we have a chance to capture the memories. I think it's a mission worth taking, huh?

Rebecca Hoffman  18:56  

Absolutely. And it's true. You could almost have a continuum from grandparent to business, it really doesn't matter we should presume and understand that all humans, whatever they're reading, whether it's a marketing brochure, or a family history, it should be interesting. And interesting as if it has been true in real details, the good parts and the bad parts, you know, to help people understand why something matters.

Ray Loewe  19:21  

Well, we're going to explore over the next several weeks different ways to do this, we're going to bring Bonnie Shea our photo organizer in and she's going to talk a little bit about how to make photos live as opposed to just being digital records.

Rebecca Hoffman  19:37  

She does brilliant work because one of the challenges in the digital time that we're in is it's easy as you say to go to the zoo, it's a lot harder to take 12 photos than it is to take 120 so if you can hold yourself to that kind of almost minimalist standard, you're gonna have an easier time especially for the grandparent at home. Doesn't want to Sift through 1000 photos from a day at the park. Right? You want to capture some moments, they don't have to be Ansel Adams the perfect image, you know, you know, it can just be the most, the informal casual moments are really very satisfying to so people probably get hung up on perfection. And that's the enemy of good, right. So if you can get a small selection of photos, you have an easier time creating a story about the time you had together then a giant compendium of photos.

Ray Loewe  20:29  

Now, we're also going to try and bring in some tools that are out there, there, there are places where organizations will send you a question every week or every month. And and it gives you a chance to organize the stories that you want to tell about your life. And, and, and maybe about your life with your family or your life with another person or your life with a business. The whole idea here is that storytelling.

KC Dempster  20:57  

It's it's a teachable tool, a teaching tool. It's an entertainment tool. And, and, you know, I had, I'll be very quick about this. But in my family, we have a cousin who's going through some real health struggles. And my sister was calling me with an update of what she had heard. And she just was feeling such despair over a lot of the circumstances surrounding this. And I and I said to her, you know, Mary, we come from a family of strong women. And I reminded her of my grandmother on my mother's side, my father's mother, and also our own mother, and the mother of this cousin. And I said, You know, I just reminded her of the stories behind these four women. And I and she took she took comfort in that and said, You know, I never thought of it. But But all of these women were challenged and all of them were able to step up and it was through the stories that we've heard over the years.

Ray Loewe  21:55  

Okay, so our mission, should we decide to accept it. Okay. It's going to be to tell stories. I think so. And I think there's some wonderful stories out there. Rebecca, thank you so much for your insights today, because I think you're gonna get us started here.

Rebecca Hoffman  22:11  

Oh, yeah. Thank you, KC and Ray. I think This is the year for storytelling.

Ray Loewe  22:17  

Yes. Any any final words of wisdom before we have to sign off here?

Rebecca Hoffman  22:22  

I think that the the only piece I would say is take a chance don't don't wait and hesitate because the moment can get missed.

Ray Loewe  22:31  

Okay, well, thank you so much for being with us. Again, Rebecca, one of the luckiest people in the world and and you kind of get a sense of why. Okay, and and Rebecca, we will have you back and you can bring your eggs along with you if you wish. And, you know, have a great day. And thanks again for being here. Thank you, Paul. Good to talk to you.

KC Dempster  22:55  

Thank you everybody for listening. Tune in again next week when we have another fantastic guest one of the luckiest people in the world who will have a lot of wonderful information to share with you

Ray Loewe  23:06  

And maybesome stories even

KC Dempster  23:08  

maybe. 

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.