Episode 341: What Lisa Fain Learned Growing Up in an Entrepreneurial Home

Lisa Fain, C.E.O. of the Center for Mentoring Excellence, says that growing up in a 1980s entrepreneurial home gave her a sense of purpose, place, and accountability. It reinforced an understanding that Lisa could contribute to the world, shape her work, and be independent. This independent thinking started in her formative years when Lisa and her brother were encouraged to make plans and prepare their meals.

When Dr. Lois Zachary founded Leadership Development Services, L.L.C., and its Center for Mentoring Excellence, her daughter, Lisa Fain, was in high school. Women entrepreneurship was on the rise, “according to the 1988 State of Small Business Report, the number of sole proprietorships owned by women increased 62 percent between 1980 and 1986. I found this impressive since women weren’t encouraged to start businesses until 1972, with a few exceptions like Mary Kay Ash, who founded Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963. 

In 1972, the floodgates opened for women when Title IX (a federal civil rights act) was passed prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from our federal government. Women’s organized sports began their rise alongside business ownership because federal monies started flowing into them.

Now, “women account for 41% of the global workforce and control more than $20 trillion in annual spending. Predictions are that this number will go up to $28 trillion in the next few years.” 

As Dr. Zachary built her educational consultancy and her husband, Ed Zachary expanded his legal firm in Syracuse, New York; they still managed to be present and engaged parents. Role modeling the benefits of fulfilling work fueled Lisa’s entrepreneurial spirit that sprouted in her 30s and 40s. Hear how Lisa took her diverse interests in political science, sociology, and economics with a social justice bend to acquire an interdisciplinary degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. Two required courses taught by a cherished mentor helped Lisa understand ways to repair the world. Eventually, she became a lawyer, mediator, coach, and C.E.O. at the Center for Mentoring Excellence.

Other Conversation Highlights

* Although not a fair way to measure oneself, comparing Lisa’s start to someone else’s finish was a benefit in determining Lisa’s major.

* The next generation. They are raising Talia and Emily with David in their entrepreneurial home.

* Lisa’s lifework of inclusion, diversity, and equity. Creating a mentoring culture for retention and attraction.

* Insights into Millennials and Gen Zs.

* Alternatives to the Peanut Butter approach.

My conversation with Lisa sparked my curiosity to research the newest female entrepreneurship statistics. I am excited to report that we’re progressing globally on inclusion, diversity, and equity. Check out the statistics below.

Key Female Entrepreneurship 2022 Statistics 

* 22.4% of small business owners in the U.S. are women.

* 17% of black women are in the process of starting or running a new business.

* The female entrepreneurial activity rate in the U.S. is 13.6%.

* 14% of women-owned bus...

Episode 340: 4 Key Concepts to Bridging Differences with Dr. Lois Zachary

Happy Halloween!  Here is a Reader’s Digest joke for you that isn’t scary.

Q: The maker of this product does not want it, the buyer does not use it, and the user does not see it. What is it?A: A coffin.  

October 27th was National Mentoring Day. I retrieved this groundbreaking conversation from the archives to elevate mentoring and acknowledge two luminaries in the field of mentoring excellence. A mother-and-daughter team focused on inclusion. Dr. Lois Zachary discusses her background, defines mentoring and the difference between coaching and mentoring, and four key concepts that can bridge differences in mentoring relationships.

I say ‘groundbreaking conversation’ because in 1972 when Dr. Lois Zachary started her career, there were over 400,000 women-owned businesses in America. Today, more than 13 million businesses are owned by women thanks to women like Dr. Lois Zachary, who pioneered a path for us.

Her daughter, Lois Fain, is the new CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence to role model what they preach, teach, and write about in Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring. Their newest and first co-authored book. 

Dr. Lois Zachary is an internationally recognized expert on mentoring and has been cited as “one of the top 100 minds in leadership” today. You’ve likely seen mention of Dr. Zachary’s books, or read her quotes, in The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Inc. magazine, T&D, Leadership Excellence, The Chronicle of Higher Education, or other business and leadership news outlets.

“Mentors and mentees may come from different backgrounds and have a limited understanding of each other’s cultures and outlooks, but mentorship remains one of the most powerful tools for inclusion, professional development, and talent retention,” writes Dr. Lois Zachary and Lisa Fain.

Listen as we focus on how Lois Zachary became the author, Ph.D. graduate, and entrepreneurial leader who founded Leadership Development Services, LLC and its Center for Mentoring Excellence. You will also learn Dr. Zachary’s definition of mentoring, the difference between coaching and mentoring, and four key concepts that bridge differences in mentoring relationships. You will also learn that she has a supportive husband, Ed. They married within six months of meeting in 1969 and have two adult children.

Mentoring Definition

Dr. Zachary and her daughter, Lisa Fain, define mentoring as “a reciprocal learning relationship in which a mentor and mentee agree to a partnership where they work collaboratively toward achievement of mutually defined goals that will develop a mentee’s skills, abilities, knowledge, and/or thinking.” They focus on “four key concepts that relate most closely to bridging differences in a mentoring relationship: reciprocal, learning, relationship, and partnering.” Tune in to learn more about these four key concepts. Also, learn how adults make meaning and a big reveal at the end of our conversation. A hint, guess her maiden name. DOWNLOAD

 

 

NEXT STEP: Challenge yourself and do the Conscious Attentive Leadership Mentoring (C.A.L.M.) Activities, below. 

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Episode 339: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows with Dr. Melanie Joy

Every day we are confronted with a relational paradox that begs an answer to these two questions. “What enables caring people to participate in, or otherwise support, practices that harm others, be they human or nonhuman? And what, then, could help shift this psychological orientation?” Questions Dr. Melanie Joy found answers to by researching the psychosociology of eating animals, a phenomenon she named carnism.

What Dr. Joy concluded is this. “Eating (certain) animals results from extensive social and psychological conditioning that causes naturally empathic and rational people to distort their perceptions and block their empathy so that they act against their values of compassion and justice without fully realizing what they’re doing. In other words, carnism teaches us to violate the Golden Rule without knowing or caring that we’re doing so.” Deconstructing our carnistic system taught her how violent or oppressive ideologies are structured. (Powerarchy, 2019)

When Melanie was twenty-three years old, she ate a contaminated hamburger (campylobacter) and became severely sick, needing hospitalization. Surviving this incident—and questioning other aspects of how she and most of the rest of us were raised—took her on a journey from meat-eater, and vegetarian to vegan and activist, theorist, author, social entrepreneur, and the eighth recipient of the Ahimsa Award validating her work on global nonviolence. The Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela received this same award. You can hear her brilliance as we discuss Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows.

Today, our purpose is not to convince you to eat a plant-based diet.

Our goal is to expand your awareness about choices and encourage becoming an ally.

What compelled our family to become vegan in 2021 was a long journey that began by reading World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle, Ph.D., during yoga teacher training in 2016. Dr. Tuttle’s belief floored me. It was a disturbing ‘aha’ moment. He believes we will not have world peace until we stop killing animals. Growing up on a dairy farm, I was initially horrified by how many animals we killed and ate. I realized we were not allowed to name our cows and pigs because seeing these animals as pets would make it almost impossible to kill them, so we were taught emotional detachment.

Of course, our farmers aren’t in the business of killing animals. They are in the business of raising animals and crops to provide food to others, us consumers. What does a farmer do when their livelihood needs to change? They reconfigure their businesses. You will find out how a global sausage maker transformed his business.

Pondering that new awareness about how I grew up, our daughter, Olivia, encouraged us to watch documentaries like Cowspiracy, Inconvenient Truth, Blackfish, Seaspiracy, and What The Health. After that last documentary, we committed to going 98% vegan. There are situations where there are no plant-food based, so we allow ourselves to choose. 

My learning continues. I have read books like How Not To Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM and founder of nutritionfacts.org, and The Proof is in The Plants by Simon Hill. What has made it easier to live a plant-based lifestyle was helped with the results of today’s Guest Mentor’s work and Dr. Melanie Joy’s collaborations with other organizations to transform how food producers and manufacturers run their businesses. A positive consequence is more options in the grocery store. Transitioning to plant-based foods is more accessible now because we have more choices, i.e., coconut and almond milk, chia seeds to replace sugar, beyond burgers,

Episode 338: Building Relational Literacy with Dr. Melanie Joy

In 2021, our daughter, Olivia, turned me on to Guest Mentor Dr. Melanie Joy. I have devoured her books, podcast conversations, and TEDTALKs. I use her relational literacy tips by noticing the flexibility that love and acceptance bring. I align boundaries around my values of fairness and kindness, for example. Or, notice how I feel when my rights are overstepped, angry, and feel empowered to do something constructive about it. As a result, I feel more connected with those in my life, and you can too.  Enjoy this transformative podcast conversation I am re-airing to promote relational literacy to get us out of the dark ages.

Melanie is an amazingly gifted, brilliant social psychologist, theorist, educator, and international award-winning author of six books. She is a pioneer with a global mission to raise awareness of the obstacles preventing people from interacting in ways that create a sense of mutual connection. These obstacles are internal (psychological) and external (social), which are key reasons why we act against our interests and others—often without realizing that we’re doing so. With awareness, we can think freely and act compassionately to create healthier and more fulfilling relationships and a more equitable and sustainable world.

Melanie says, “Most of the problems in our lives and world are caused by relational dysfunction, a dysfunction in how we relate: as social groups, as individuals, to animals and the environment, and even to ourselves. Therefore, developing relational literacy—the understanding of and ability to practice healthy ways of relating—is essential for personal, social, and ecological transformation.” She has been influential in raising my awareness and has helped me transform my behaviors in three areas we talk about: how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the world at large.

Today we discuss one of her six books. A one-stop guide to building relational literacy, Getting Relationships Right: How to Build Resilience and Thrive in Life, Love, and Work. We haven’t been taught relational literacy. As a result, we are in the dark ages. You will understand more as you listen. Our conversation will facilitate your ability to move the pendulum toward healthier relating; even a little movement makes a difference.

Some of the gems in our conversation include:

* How we have bought into the narratives that drive unconscious choices.

* The mentality and thinking behind nonrelational behaviors.

* Two sides to a coin, the nonrelational and relational.

* The Formula for Healthy Relating.

* Tips for Healthy Expressing.

* Solving life’s more pressing problems start with learning relational literacy. Hear how that is possible and how it relates to the issues you are solving through your business entity.

Melanie joins me in conversation from Berlin, Germany, where she lives with her husband and colleague, Sebastian Joy. They are interdependent, powerful together, and apart. Successful and connected in their life work. You will learn how they practice healthy relating personally and as world leaders.

Sebastian is transforming food systems by working with world leaders replacing conventional animal products with plant-based and cultured alternatives. Melanie is building relational literacy facilitating transformation in how we participate in the invisible belief system, or ideology, that conditions us to eat certain animals, known as carnism. A term coined by Melanie in 2001. 

This a transformative conversation because it is thought-provoking. You won’t want to miss it.

Episode 337: What takes precedence your entity or its mission?

“It matters what we do,” says Dr. Daniel Libby of the Veterans Yoga Project. He is on a mission to support recovery and resilience among our veterans, families, and communities. And has the data to prove it. Daniel Libby is the founder and executive director of the Veterans Yoga Project and believes its mission takes precedence over its entity. Find out why he says this.

Veterans Yoga Project reaches over 2000 veterans monthly through yoga and mindfulness practices. Daniel knows and has the data that compassion fatigue can be transformed into compassionate resilience, which is particularly relevant as we evolve with the covid-19 pandemic.  

How do you answer the question: “What is more important: Your entity or its mission?” Does it make a difference whether the entity is a for-profit business or a non-profit organization?

Daniel’s original vision, mission, and philosophy of organically growing his venture have stayed the same, but everything else has changed. Common in entrepreneurship, where you start isn’t necessarily where you meet the needs of those you serve. The real work begins with deep diving into understanding how your mission and offerings can adapt to client needs and the changing marketplace. The landscape in providing Yoga to veterans changed even before 2020. You can contrast Daniel’s journey to see how it mimics or differs from your entrepreneurial journey when you tune in to our podcast conversation.

Despite my overzealous attempt to add value, it was refreshing to hear Daniel’s surprise as he acquired new leadership skills and expressed how his mission grew after conducting a survey with 170 VA treatment centers. Daniel published the study in 2012 in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy which expanded awareness. The study showed that yoga teachers in V.A. treatment centers had no training in military culture and P.T.S.D. A lack of space and government funding were barriers to helping veterans heal and lead successful lives.

In 2018, when I first aired this conversation, the government started implementing yoga offerings for veterans as a whole health initiative. A huge success! Daniel was pleased. Expanding awareness by publishing his study prompted more government funding to support veterans in addressing all stages of their recovery. With the results in hand, Daniel changed his business model and added military culture and P.T.S.D. sensitivity into his yoga teacher training and works with government agencies to provide space and funding so veterans, their families, and our communities can access a full range of mind-body practices that facilitate recovery and resilience. He is counting his wins.

Our conversation brings us full circle to last week’s conversation about leadership and burnout and the benefits of mindfulness and yoga practices. Ensuring the business model and mission of the Veterans Yoga Project are congruent with veteran offerings is an ongoing process. Since 2020, they have added resiliency training for first responders, caregivers, and more.

Life is hard and full of challenges. The more we plant our feet on the ground, the more impact we can make and the less likely we are to discount our influence in the world. A statement Daniel emphasizes at the end of our conversation.

Daniel also says, “If you haven’t served in the military, Veterans Yoga Project is an opportunity for you to give to those who have served.” Consider how you can get involved. Daniel has embraced the phrase, “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” Check out the 9th Annual Veterans Gratitude Week & a Warrior Salute, November 4 -13, 2022. 

Episode 336: Creating Space for Post-Traumatic Growth with Dr. Daniel Libby

What is the opposite of leadership? “Burnout,” says Dr. Daniel Libby. If you are starting today with feelings of stress and overwhelm or fatigue, this conversation with Daniel Libby, Ph.D., R.Y.T., founder and executive director of the Veteran Yoga Project, can help. We discuss those feelings and a few techniques to alter your neurological pathways to relieve stress and burnout. You can join in on a breathing exercise at the end of our conversation and continue with it after listening.

We met on April 9th, 2018, when Daniel launched the Veteran Yoga Project in the Twin Cities with yoga classes and teacher training for those working with veterans. My husband, Matthew Foli, and I took one of his yoga classes later featured on the local news station, KSTP. Daniel’s calming and soothing voice melted away any stress I felt before we started our conversation and after listening to it a second time before re-airing it today.

Daniel lives with his wife and now 10-year-old daughter in Alameda, California. He grew up in the Queens Village of New York, describing his upbringing with his brother as latchkey kids supported by their extended family. He has also lived in Florida, Washington, and Montana.

Feathered Pipe Ranch in Helena, Montana, is where Daniel found his direction in the world as an integrative healer helping others through bodywork for the mind and soul. He went from being a physical therapist and massage therapist to becoming a clinical psychologist when psycho-emotional content arose as he worked on people’s bodies. Interweaving the body and mind, soul and spirit, and entrepreneurship has created a meaningful life for Daniel and those he mentors.

His entrepreneurial characteristics of applying his learnings and passion for holistic healing emerged during yoga teacher training. He studiously organized the resources to launch the Veterans Yoga Project in 2010. The entity’s transition into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2014 positioned Daniel to emerge as a national entity offering yoga to veterans and their families and yoga teacher training.

Although Daniel is not a veteran, he has traced his family roots, noting that his grandfather fought in the Korean War and WWII. His Uncle Jimmy was killed in an Air Force accident about seven months after enlisting. Daniel was four years old at the time. That traumatic event affected his parents and, subsequently, him. “Scars of war linger,” he says.

Calling challenges into our lives through business ownership and innovation is stressful. Honoring our body, mind, and spirit is the best way to lead, influence others, and do excellent work is what Daniel believes, as do I.

Through yoga, post-traumatic stress converts to post-traumatic growth, where veterans and their families attune their goals to their values and master themselves. Yoga is a system for self-mastery in the leadership of the mind, body, and spirit. Breathing, moving, and resting makes us more excellent. Simple tools can help you continue to grow as a leader, like recognizing your signs and symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, overwhelm, and stress.

One of the symptoms of burnout is feeling like what you are doing is ineffective or doesn’t matter. To counter burnout, we discuss celebrating wins by tracking them. I talk about my dad achieving a lingering goal to build a cabin. See the pictures of his round cabin and our (Matthew Foli – my husband, our daughter, Olivia, and my parents) celebrating the 37-year goal thought to be unreachable at age 83. He did it! It reminds us to never give up on those goals deep inside us and celebrate our accomplishments.

Episode 335: Fantastic Client News and How to Sustain Your Focus

Fantastic Client News!

Mohamud Ali and Saido Jama founded Midwest Bakery & Café in 2019. I have been working with them to get their Halal whole wheat and white loaves of bread and whole wheat hoagie buns into Cub Foods on 28th and Lake Street in Minneapolis to test the market. Guess what? We did it! Midwest Bakery & Café is now in its first Cub Foods grocery store. (For those of you outside of the midwest. Cub Foods is a supermarket chain of 45 stores.)

Congratulations to Mohamud and Saido and their family! On the first day, we sold out and rushed to refill the order. The two bottom shelves are now bread. The detergent was replaced. We moved so fast that I didn’t get a picture of Saido and their adult children working to fill the orders.

They have expanded their customer base from restaurants and daycare centers to Cub Foods customers. The demand for their loaves of bread and hoagie buns is growing. I am thrilled to collaborate with them to expand their bakery and evolve their businesses. They also own Midwest Auto Repairs. I’ll have them on the podcast soon so you can hear them describe their multi-venture entrepreneurial journey.

Among the many things I appreciate about Mohamud and Saido is that they reached out for mentoring so I could help them cross this particular finish line and set the next big goal. They knew they needed help getting their six types of loaves of bread and hoagies buns on the shelves at Cub Foods. I knew I could deliver.

In under a week, they have passed the market test. Now, we can work steadily to evolve with the needs of their customers and set new processes and systems in place to maintain efficiency as the demand continues to grow and the offerings expand to other locations.

 You can purchase their loaves of bread and hoagie buns at 28th and Lake Street. I just had one for lunch after helping them fill orders; it was so good. The picture is Mohamud delivering their first order last week.

With fast growth, sustaining focus under pressure is critical. Today’s podcast meditation will help you sustain your focus with the pressures you are under.

How to Sustain Your Focus

Can you focus on the right things at the right time, most of the time? If so, you are practicing the first of four aspects connected with one mind skill: FOCUS. To start focusing, we need to direct our attention to what we want to think about. We then sustain attention as long as we need and want to, controlling impulses and noticing when our attention wanders and redirecting our mind back to its focal point. Once the task is complete, we can relax our attention, resting our minds for a few minutes before directing our attention to a new task. Sounds easy, right?

We resist so often what is good for us, especially when it comes to our minds. Sitting down for a few minutes to calm our thoughts and let go is difficult. Sometimes, I find it challenging to sit with myself, especially if I feel anxious or have nervous energy. This means something big lurks underneath all that nervousness, and I don’t know if I want to know what it is just yet. Giving myself permission to sit and see what happens takes the pressure off.

Last week we practiced Directing Focus. Today is the complimentary 6-minute meditation; How to Sustain Your Focus. I first aired this episode on March 7, 2022.

Episode 334: Direct Your Focus and Eliminate Distraction

 Have you ever felt challenged to direct your focus? Today more than ever, right? Every time I turn on my phone, my ability to stay focused on a task is challenged. Even in our physical environments, we can enter a room to get something and forget what we need in that room once there. Only to leave the room, remember, and then schlep back to get the forgotten item. Distraction is time-consuming and toxic.

What if we could reverse the trend by learning to catch ourselves before getting distracted? I aired this 6-minute meditation in February of this year and feel this change in seasons is an excellent time to practice directing our attention.

An ability to keep your focus, control impulses, and keep your mind from wandering directionless. Focus is a skill set with four aspects: directing, sustaining, noticing, and relaxing attention. Directing attention is focusing on the right things at the right time, like a flashlight shedding light on the task.

Because meditation can reduce lapses in attention and positively impact our work and relationships, we can all learn this first aspect of focus. After you complete the 6-minute meditation, share it with your leadership team, staff, and family. You can hear what others go through in learning this skill of directing our attention to the right things at the right time.  

The inspiration for this meditation originated from Healthy Minds Innovation and Healthy Minds @Work. I recommend downloading the free Healthy Minds APP to track your progress as you build a calm, clear, and stable mind. It is not unlike building muscles in other parts of the body. Repetitions, consistency, and intensity strengthen muscle tissue in different muscle groups building skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles over time. Researchers have found that regular meditators have stronger activation levels in the temporal parietal junctures, a part of the brain where we feel empathy. You practice cognitive control whenever you bring your attention back to your focal point.

Imagine being in a meditative state of mindful alertness all day. Directing your attention here and there, feeling empowered and joyful, not distracted with toxicity growing inside. It is possible with a mindful meditation practice. DOWNLOAD

 

 

 

 

 

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After listening, do these three C.A.L.M. Activities:

* Take this risk or do this adventurous task: DOWNLOAD and complete this 6-minute meditation exercise to learn how to direct your attention. You can start each day this week with this meditation as an ...

Episode 333: A Serious Way of Looking at Food and Your Imprint

God Bless Britain’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022), who passed on Thursday, September 8, 2022. Affection for the Queen will be in many of our memories.      Her stability and consistency are something we love about her. When I was born in 1961, Queen Elizabeth II, mother of three at the time, was doing Royal Tours addressing 250,000 people in India. She was eight years into her 70-year reign as Queen. Can you imagine leading and being a role model of stability and formality of the monarchy for that length of time? “Elizabeth remained determinedly committed to the hallmark aloofness, formality, and pageantry in preserving its mystique that underpinned its existence and survival. Her courtyard reserved manner changed little,” as noted in The New York Times (9/9/22).

The Queen’s tours in India reminded me of today’s Guest Mentor, Gita Mazumdar. Gita was born in India. Our two conversations aired at the end of 2019. Here is our first conversation, if you missed it.

In our second conversation, you will hear Gita’s profound way of looking at food and your imprint through her project, Mystic Murrabba. Gita’s mantra, “From the earth came seed, from seed came to the food. From food came man. Man is essentially the essence of food.” “This is a reminder,” says Gita, “of where we are as a big chain in the cycle of one part of this larger aspect of being.”

Mike Kabeya is my sound engineer, videographer, and photographer. After recording our two conversations, Mike and I had a good laugh. We were leaving Gita’s home in St. Paul, MN, and Mike leaned over and said, “I have never thought that much about food.” I paused a minute to take in the way he said, “I have NEVER thought THAT MUCH about FOOD,” and burst out laughing. That is so true, isn’t it.

Chef Gita has the well-being of others and their bellies in mind when she prepares her food. When you are not the preparer, little, if any, of one’s time is spent thinking about food. Our bellies were pleasantly satisfied when we left, and our view of food forever changed. A part of what led me to become a vegan, but that is a topic for another day.

Entrepreneurs are the preparers of innovations they infuse into the marketplace. Gita brings home-cooked community service and speaks to the conundrum every entrepreneur I know thinks about and needs to work through when creating an entity (for-profit or not-for-profit). When taking your idea into the marketplace, will I lose myself and what I am trying to achieve? Another way of asking the question is, will I compromise a part of me and my vision in a way that doesn’t feel right by legalizing my business? Will it be sanitized and distilled to a degree where I will lose all the joy and effervescence of creating it? Will it be disconnected from the Ecosystem? How can I sustain it, stay human, do my lifework, and participate constructively in our Ecosystem?

Gita tried creating a commercial entity. You will hear how she used the commercialization process to clarify what she is doing. Can that work in the American system if you abandon a for-profit entity and create a community project named Mystic Murrabba? Learn how she has carved out a niche that nourishes her local community and aligns with her Ayurvedic way of living and being in the community with others.

I received an email from Gita yesterday. She is in London with her husband, Jim, visiting the year-round farmers markets, taking long walks, and writing her cookbook. She says, "my book is creeping along, but is shaping into something cohesive." That sounds familiar. Enjoy our conversation.

Episode 332: Food Connects Us

Happy Labor Day! We’re keeping people employed in America, with 9.5 million jobs added to the economy since 2021. Unemployment is at a 53-year low of 3.5%. For the history of Labor Day and other statistics, click here.

We’re doing it. I have been writing my book, working on client projects, and revamping WeMentor Mondays with Nancy podcast for the two months since my last post. I am sure you have been working hard too. I have updates on all three fronts.

The writing continues. I have a wise editor flushing out concepts and helping me keep the content coming. Steady progress.

Updating you on client projects I am working on is a no-no in mentoring because entrepreneurial leadership development is confidential. I can say that infusing new products and services into the marketplace is centered around end-user acceptance, our nimbleness in responding to consumer demand, and ruling out avenues for growth not penetrable. Not every end-user wants what we are selling.

Exploring which avenues are viable for growth and which are not is time-consuming. Here are a few tips. Viewing each ‘no’ as a step closer to getting a ‘yes’ keeps your mind focused on completing the task. Rejection is part of our job as disruptors. I practice and encourage persistence, perseverance, and patience as part of the pursuit. The critical ‘Ps’ require us to keep learning, clarifying, and doing the navigational work to bring new opportunities to fruition.

Even in everyday life, you can encounter rejection. I asked a Lunds & Byerly’s baker to add a happy birthday to my father-in-law’s half-red velvet birthday cake and was met with a surprise ‘no, I can’t do that.’ After offering a few more rejected ideas, I finally said, ‘please find your way to yes.’ And she did. Keep finding creative ways to get your products and services through what initially appears to be a closed door. After all, we are dealing with other humans and their processes. Whether you are selling directly to consumers like at the State Fair or whether you are working at getting your products into a big box retailer. We just need to find the next customer who says yes.

I am re-airing my 1st of two podcast conversations with Guest Mentor Gita Mazumdar today. I want to coordinate new podcast conversations with the content in my book, so book completion comes first. New podcast conversations will air in 2023.

Gita Mazumdar says, “She was made in India, on the coconutty west coast along the Arabian Sea. What luck to have been nurtured by a playful father, an orderly mother, and both her grandmothers.”

In Gita’s first few years, “she was held for long hours by her beloved Badi, an elderly Adivasi (indigenous) woman who cared for her while her parents, both doctors, worked. Gita’s first food was Badi’s unusual grains cooked in clay. Gita cried for Badi when they moved away from that early home. The story is that Gita refused food, chanting ‘Badi’ a hundred and eight times before her father lost count. Her paternal grandmother, Mein, prepared bhakri, confident that it would break the spell. Hours past bedtime, Mein placed the spiced bread in front of Gita. She regarded it silently, looked up, and wailed ‘Baadiiii!” Exasperated, Mein said, ‘Eat your Badi’s fat chapattis’ and snapped off the lights. The next morning, there were no signs of bhakri and no more chanting.” This is how I begin today’s podcast conversation with Gita Mazumdar. An Ayurvedic Indian Cuisine chef, photographer, wife, mother, friend, filmmaker, and conscientious community connector. She continues describing a life that eventually circles back to her paternal grandmother Mean’s recipes and how women pass on their stories from one generation to another. Food is at the center of things. Read More and Download EPISODE I