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Zach has the honor of sitting down to chat with Mary-Frances Winters, the founder and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., about black equity and power. Mary-Frances shares some of the top things she believes that majority leadership groups are doing today that undermine their own workplace equity efforts and explains her perspective on why chief inclusion/people/culture officers are typically white folks. Check the links in the show notes to find out more about The Winters Group!Connect with Mary-Frances on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Links in order:https://bit.ly/2Bs8pZBhttps://bit.ly/2ZXoMYlhttps://bit.ly/3csD9qbLearn more about The Winters Group on their website. http://bit.ly/33pqotqCheck out the Inclusion Solution blog.https://bit.ly/2yX2quXYou can connect with The Winters Group on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Links in order:http://bit.ly/2WrDjtghttp://bit.ly/3d69LYhhttps://bit.ly/2XUy6t7Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here or below.https://bit.ly/2Ug4l5KHelp food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.https://bit.ly/2WD73UkCheck out our website.https://bit.ly/living-corporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and look, it's Tuesday. The day of this recording is May 4th, so May the 4th be with you. We have incredible guests every single time we come on, and today is no different, because what we're trying to do is what we always do, right? Which is center and amplify marginalized voices in the workplace. Now, I would like to think Living Corporate is a little bit unique in that we're having these conversations, but not only are we having these conversations that are centering marginalized voices, but we're having these conversations with marginalized identity groups, right? So a lot of times when you think about this diversity, equity and inclusion space, it's folks who don't look like me using fairly esoteric, like, heady language to describe things that they really don't experience, right? Like, not to put too fine a point on it. Just look... I'm just gonna be honest, right? Just gonna be a straight shooter, okay? And I'm proud of the fact that we've been able to have incredible guests that have not only the lived experience but have the practical knowledge and expertise to talk about real subjects, and so that's why our tagline for Living Corporate is real talk for a corporate world. Now, look, some of y'all have been listening to us and been rocking with us for a while, but every episode is somebody's first episode, so I just want to make sure I kind of level set a little bit. So with all that being said, I'm really excited to have our guest today, Mary-Frances Winters. Mary-Frances Winters is the founder and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., a global organization development and diversity and inclusion consulting firm with over 35 years--count 'em, y'all, 35... more than I've been alive--more than 35 years of experience. She truly believes that diversity and inclusion work is her “passion and calling.” She's been dubbed a thought leader in the field for the past three decades and has impacted over hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals with her thought-provoking messages, and her approach to diversity and inclusion. Ms. Winters is a master strategist with experience in strategic planning, change management, diversity, organization development, training and facilitation, systems thinking--yo, shout-out to systems thinking--and qualitative and quantitative research methods, and she has extensive experience in working with senior leadership teams to drive organizational change. My goodness, gracious. With all that being said, Mary-Frances, welcome to the show.Mary-Frances: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. You're definitely dating me, but that's all right. I'll take it. [laughing]Zach: I apologize. I wasn't trying to date you. I was trying to speak to the depth and breadth of the work that you've been doing, 'cause I think a lot of times it's easy, you know--like, pausing on, just, like, this conversation, but kind of, like, thinking about generational tensions, right? So I think there's, like, a lot of frustrations sometimes with folks who--like, millennials, you know, folks, like, in their early 30s or even, like, mid-20s to late-20s crowd who just think that, like, all of these frustrations that we're seeing now are new, right, but there have been folks who have built foundations before us that allow us to actually move forward, so it's just incredible that you've been in this space and doing this for a significant amount of time. I don't believe that should be taken lightly at all.Mary-Frances: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I accept it with honor and respect, so thank you so much.Zach: Thank you so much. So how are you doing during this time? Like I said, we're recording this on May 4th. How are you and your loved ones?Mary-Frances: We're well, we're well. We're doing well. You know, it is unprecedented times. It's very, very difficult times for the world, but, you know, we're doing well, and thank you for asking.Zach: So let's get right into it. Diversity, equity and inclusion work is about marginalized identities, yet the loudest voices in this space tend to be those of the majority, right? So, like, when you think about these big, big organizations and you look at, like, the chief inclusion officer or the chief people officer or the chief culture officer, they're typically white folks. Why do you think that is?Mary-Frances: Well, I don't think that the dominant group sees diversity and inclusion as being about marginalized folks. They see it as being about everybody. "We have to include everybody," and so some of what my frustration has been, as you mentioned, 35 years, and so when we used to talk about it, you know, in the days of affirmative action, they were protected groups, right? So the initiatives were targeted towards those protected groups. When we started to talk about it as being diversity, then it broadened and everybody got included in diversity, and the group that gets least talked about now are black folks, because they don't want to talk about black people. So I don't think that the dominant group that controls the narrative, I don't think that they see it about being about marginalized identities only, right? And so the focus may or may not be there, you know, depending, and so we did a session for a client not too long ago to talk about the relevancy of white men in the organization. So, you know, you've got to be inclusive of white men. [both laughing] Yeah, so that's why I think--you asked me why I think that is? That's why I think that is, yeah. Because in the corporate world, we don't even use the word "marginalized identities." So it's not a new term in sociology, but let me tell you, 35 years in this business, it's a new term in the corporate world. It's starting to be used, and I think it is because of the influence of the millennials. We've been doing some work in some organizations that, you know, normally--some of these older, traditional organizations have been around 150 years and still got baby boomers at the helm, right? Some of these other organizations have been around 15, 20 years, they've got a lot of millennials at the helm. Those organizations are using this language, the social justice language. The traditional organizations? Not so much.Zach: [laughs] So one, thank you. I'm really curious--that really is a good segue into the next question I have for you about just you showing up doing this work as a black woman, and not to, like--again, not to age you, we're talking about the fact that--[Mary-Frances laughs] It's not like you're a black woman who just graduated from college and, you know, you're in this space, or you just finished B school, like, you're someone who has seen this space grow and evolve and change and shift and permutate, you know, various times over over the past three and a half decades, and so I'm curious, like, what does it look like for you to operate in this space, and then specifically going into the example that you just provided, how do you respond to narratives like that? That, you know, white men need to feel just as included as black men or other marginalized groups?Mary-Frances: Yeah. So as a black woman in this work, a cisgender heterosexual black woman, baby boomer, there are different ways it impacts me. So one way that it impacts me is "Oh, yeah, let's get Mary-Frances because she can bring the voice of black folks." Um, no. Mary-Frances brings her voice, not all black folks, right? That's one way. This other way is, "Gee, we really can't hire The Winters Group to do this--" This is a black person talking now. "Because you're black and I'm black, and, you know, the optics of it, it looks like we might be giving you, you know, preferential treatment." The third way is when I stand in front of a group, to the question about, you know, white men, I do--if my question is gonna get across, I do in some ways have to disarm white men, because they're gonna--they see me coming in with my sister locks and, you know, "This black woman is gonna come in and she's gonna tell us, you know, how racist we are. She's gonna make us feel bad," and so what I've learned over the years is that you've gotta get them to like you first. No matter what they've gotta like you, right? And they have to think that the message resonates. So I learned the language. I learned the language of the organization. I connect my message to whatever their business plan is, whatever their business strategy is. You know, I connect it to that, because, you know, you're already coming in being black, being a woman. So those are two, you know, marginalized groups, historically marginalized groups. And so yeah, so there are different ways. And, you know, we talk about code switching, right? So we have to code switch a lot of times in order to get the work done, particularly in corporate spaces. Now, I don't know if you've noticed--well, I'm sure you've noticed because you know my colleague, Brittany J. Harris, who is the vice president of The Winters Group, and we're doing a series right now in our inclusion solution blog on decolonizing DEI work, and, you know, part of that--and I wrote a couple of weeks ago about decolonizing particularly the corporate world with, you know, corporate speak. So you come in and they have to have a business case, and the business case has to be "How does this help my business, you know, perform better?" That's, like, the classic corporate business case, and that's kind of centering this capitalist narrative, right? We're about the profits, and you can [show?] me by hiring black folks and hiring women, whoever else you want me to hire. If you can show me that that can help me to sell more whatever I'm trying to sell, then it's okay. So I think that, you know, to some extent--you know, I was just talking to a very large client just before this--I will not name that client. Very old client, 150, 160 years old, you know, very old. [laughing] You know, middle of the country, and they're just trying to get this stuff off the ground and you come in talking about marginalized groups and whatnot to a bunch of these white men, they're just not gonna--it's just not gonna happen. So it's this delicate balance, Zach, of on one hand, you know, you have to be able to engage the groups that they listen, and on the other hand you're trying to dismantle, you know, this dominant sort of narrative that doesn't necessarily work, and it hasn't worked. 35 years, 36 years, all of the same issues that I was teaching and talking about 36 years ago are the same. As a matter of fact, my book Black Fatigue will be coming out in February. Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit comes out in February, and I have a chapter in that book, Chapter 3, called Then is Now, and so I go back and I look at data from whatever point you want to take. You can take it from 1965, 1975, it doesn't really matter what you want to take it. When you look at our data and our statistics, we have not made progress. We're stuck, and we're at this standstill. Brown vs. the Board of Education was 1954, which was desegregate schools. Our schools are more segregated today than then. You know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You know, all of this legislation, housing. In 1975, 43% of black people owned their own homes. In 2019, 43% of black people own their own homes. The net worth--and, you know, net worth is, like, what you're worth, right? Net worth. A single black woman's net worth is $500, versus the net worth of a white woman, single white woman, which is [$5000?], still low. The net worth of white people, at 150 something thousand dollars, is 10 times that of a black person, and it follows even if you look at college-educated. So somebody who has a PhD who is a black woman college professor with a PhD makes 20% less than a white man who has a PhD and 7 to 8% less than a woman who has a PhD, and so all of these inequities--and I'm using those just as an example--is about Then is Now, that we haven't really turned the corner. So we're fatigued. [?] And it's particularly tiring for me because, like you said, I've been doing it for over 35 years. [both laughing] I'm tired.Zach: You're absolutely right, and we've had conversations about that on Living Corporate, and we cite the study Umbrellas Don't Make It Rain that really goes into dispelling the myth that higher education will, you know, somehow close the wealth gap, and it hasn't and it doesn't. So let's talk about this. There's a variety of folks that we've had on Living Corporate who have said, you know, diversity and inclusion, corporate diversity and inclusion, is inherently [anti]-black, not just in its external doings but at the internal politics. Do you have any thoughts on the voracity of that position?Mary-Frances: Well, society is inherently anti-black, so by extension the corporate world is inherently anti-black. We live in a society that has historically and continues to be anti-black. I don't know--yeah, so I agree. [both laugh] I mean, right? So yeah, you know, D&I is inherently anti-black. It is because that's the society--you know, when I wrote this book Black Fatigue and I was telling people about this, "Oh, please write about black and brown fatigue and, you know, all deference to indigenous people and native people and Latinos and everybody, right?" But the black experience in the United States has been different than any of those other experiences, and because of that the stereotypes and the marginalization plays out differently, and so I really felt a need--even though [?]--I show statistics for Latinos and Asians, you know, as well in the book, but I really wanted to focus on how this is playing out for black folks, because let me tell you. I say--you know, [?]--race is diversity's four-letter word, and particularly when you talk about black folks, people don't want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about the black and whiteness of it. "Let's talk about Asians. Let's talk about Latinos," right? So this anti-black--so that's one way anti-black plays out. You know, we have to include the other groups that we have [?]. I had a call with a client just on Friday, and they talked about how the psychologist or sociologist, whoever we were quoting--I forgot who it was--was black, and so we were like, "Uh, yeah," and they said, "Well, you know, perhaps we need to get some other experts included in this data set." What's that about? "Are there some Asian people who have spoke on this too?" [laughs] So yeah, I mean, we live in an anti-black world, and by extension our corporations are anti-black. I mean, look at things like the recent legislation around the CROWN Act. Why does anybody freaking care how I wear my hair? Why do we have to have legislation for people to be able to wear their hair--for black people to be able to wear their hair the way they want to wear their hair. You know, the young man wrestler, right, and they made him--Zach: Yes, made him cut his hair. His dreads.Mary-Frances: His dreads, right. Exactly. Right there. You know? I mean, why do you care? You don't have to like--what I say to folks is, "I don't care if you like it. You don't have to like my hair. I'm not asking you to like my hair." [laughing] But, I mean, are we still in a slavery, there's no freedom, that we can't even wear our hair the way we want to wear our hair? You know what, I heard about hair 36 years ago when I was in the corporate world and I had a very short afro, and one day a colleague--wasn't even my boss, a colleague--comes in my office and says, "Will your hair grow?" And I just looked at him and I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Well, you oughta let it," and he walked out of my office.Zach: Wow.Mary-Frances: That's why I left corporate. One of the reasons anyway. But anyway, so yes, is it an anti-black world? Yes, indeed. Indeed, it is. Unfortunately, you know, it is. And when you say that--and the problem is when you say that to white people they think that you're calling them a racist, and I'm not. I'm not. What I'm saying is the very foundation and structure upon which our various societies and the way we think and the policies and all those things are based on anti-black sentiments, anti-black beliefs if you will. Zach: You know, I'm really curious about, like--because you're right, we had Brittany Harris on the show some time ago, and we were talking about decolonization and dismantling and deconstructing systems, right? So it was more so about, like, kind of, like, trying to make some shifts and some headway in this work, because like you said, there's a lot of conversations that have just been happening, they've been recycling for years, and I'm curious to know, what are you seeing some other, like, DEI groups or, like, kind of names, things that they're saying that you're like, "Man, we've been doing that." Like, "We've been working on that," or "That's not new. Like, y'all think it's new, but it's not new." Like, does anything like that stick out to you?Mary-Frances: Yeah, I think that, you know, the whole idea of, you know, oppression, marginalization, privilege, all of those kinds of things I think have been out there for--you know, for a long time. You know, we can all remember--those of us in this work--Peggy McIntosh's White Privilege. Judith Katz, my colleague, did something on heterosexual privilege back in the '90s, and the Peggy McIntosh book was back in the '70s. You know, Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes, which shows, you know, bias. We now call it unconscious bias, but Jane Elliott, you know, put that out in, I don't know, the '70s, '60s or '70s. I was using that video--now that you've already dated me I'll just keep going with it--but I was using that video [laughing]--Zach: I'm so sorry. [laughing]Mary-Frances: No, no, no. You're fine, I'm just teasing you. [laughing] You know, I was using that video in the '80s, right? And now I hear people like, "Oh, do you know about Jane Elliott's video Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes?" And that's the other thing, [?] why I wrote Black Fatigue is because--and I'm not saying this is about millennials. This is not about generations at all thinking this stuff is new. This is about folks who are, like, in my age group to who this is all, like, a revelation, right? "We didn't know." So here, case in point. We know that COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting particularly black people, and when it came out, this proportionality, it was like, "Oh, wow, we have health disparities?" This is not new. I mean, these health disparities have been--they have been well-researched, well-written about, and they continue. They have not improved. Even middle-class black women are twice as likely to die in childbirth. You know, these are not new, and so that's what's part of, you know, the frustrating thing. You know, I really respect some of the newer folks who are coming into this space, and I think that they're doing remarkable work, and I'm hoping that perhaps they can put a different spin--I know Brittany, as a millennial, has brought definitely a different spin to our work. When Brittany came on board, which was, like, four years ago now I guess, we had started to talk about the intersection of social justice and corporate speak, because, you know, the language was all different, right? Everything was different. So we talk about mapping the intersection. What is the intersection of social justice and corporations? So corporations worried about the bottom line. Why should they be worried about, you know, social justice as well, and how do we get that languge? So I think at The Winters Group we're a little bit further ahead of mapping that intersection of saying that it's not one or the other. It really is a both and, because if you help to alleviate the social ills of this world or even of this country or even of the place that you operate your business, your business is going to be better.Zach: No, I'm right there with you, and I really think that segues well into this next question, which is just, you know, what trends do you see in this work from a thought leadership perspective, and if you were to kind of look across the landscape of this work and when you think about workplace equity as a whole, you know, where are the biggest places you think we have to grow?Mary-Frances: So where I see that we have places to grow in this work is fixing organizational cultures so that they truly are inclusive and we're not just using the word, that we're not just saying that we're inclusive, because the surveys that we do inside corporations would suggest that the cultures are not inclusive, particularly--PARTICULARLY--for black folks. Particularly. Now, when we do surveys with Latinos and Asians, culturally they may not be having a good experience, but they're not gonna tell us that because culturally they don't talk ill of--and I'm stereotyping, I know I'm stereotyping big time right now, but for the most part Latinos and Asians don't speak ill of their employers. That's a cultural thing, right? And so they're gonna say, you know, everything is good. We, you know, coming from a history of descension, a history of sort of laying it out there. You know, "No justice, no peace." Zach: Give us us free, yes.Mary-Frances: Yeah, right. We're willing to say, "No, this is not a good experience," if we answer the survey. We did a big survey for a corporation recently, and not many black people answered the survey. So then I did a focus group with them and they said, "Oh, no, we're not answering that survey. They can figure out who we are because there's only about 100 of us in the whole company." So the point is that organizational cultures, the traditional organizational cultures, are designed for dominant groups. They always have been. In the '70s when I was in the corporate world, they decided to bring in a whole bunch of black people, a whole bunch of black professionals, because they didn't have enough, and they just said, "Let's bring 'em all in here." Within a year, every single one of them were gone except one. There was probably about 30 people. Every single one of them left because the culture was not friendly, was not conducive. There were micro-aggressions all day long. [?] I told you about the micro-aggression about my hair. Here's another one. So the company sent me to some banquet or something, and I was sitting there--and I got to represent the company, so I was sitting at the head table, and we had a little fruit cup, you know, as our appetizer or something, and so the person sitting next to me said, "Oh, look at that, you have more watermelon in your fruit cup than anybody at the table." Now, why would you even say that? What would even make you part your lips to speak like that? Yeah. So you know what I did? I said, "Oh, you like watermelon? Would you like mine? I'll trade with you." [both laughing] So my point is that hasn't changed in 30 however many ever years that is. That hasn't changed. And so, you know, where we still need to grow is to really get at the culture, and the only way we're gonna get at the culture is to hold people accountable, and because the experience that people have in their organizations are 1:1 with their direct manager, right, and so if the direct manager is not talking the talk, walking the walk, it's not happening for that person. We often times focus on the top leadership, top of the house--"Let's start at the top of the house." I say that we need to focus on first-line leadership, those individuals who are most likely to have the greatest span of control. First-line leaders have more reports than the CEO. The CEO probably has six or seven direct reports, right? All the senior vice presidents, and then it goes down from there. So the biggest span of control and the biggest opportunity for change is at that first level, and we often times don't work with that first level of leadership because they don't have the budget for it or, you know, all of these other excuses. So I really think--and I've been saying this for years, so I don't know if this is a trend or not, but I've been saying this for years, that we have to get to that level. The other places that we still need to grow is pay inequity. You know, pay inequity for women and, you know, women of color in that equation too. That's an easy fix. You look at your data and you see who--if you have a disparity with women not being paid the same amount, then you fix it. You see, this is why if organizations wanted to do it, they could. Any aspect of diversity. If they wanted to do it, they would absolutely do it. So those are areas, I mean, in just terms of very tactical places, in terms of--cultures are really, really hard to change. So I had a call with a client this morning, and they had a question on the survey--they wanted me to review their survey. We have our own survey, but they got somebody else to do their survey, but they wanted me to review the questions. Here's one of the questions. "I fit in well at this organization."Zach: Hm, that's a good question.Mary-Frances: Huh? No, that's a bad question.Zach: Talk to me. Educate me why it's a bad question.Mary-Frances: Okay. Because it's about fitting in. Fitting in is about assimilation. Fitting in is about "I fit in," meaning that--Zach: I'm adjusting myself.Mary-Frances: I'm adjusting myself. I fit in, right? I mean, you still may get at it, but the whole idea of--even putting the language out there. So that's, you know, colonizing language, "fit," you know? Because what do we say when we hire somebody? We say, "Oh, yeah, they'd be a really good fit," and what "a really good fit" means is what? "They're like us."Zach: It's interesting, because the reason I was saying it's a good question is because I know a lot of--I know for me I would be like, "No."Mary-Frances: Right, exactly, and that's what they're hoping to get, but you see how the message could be from the other side, that you need to fit in.Zach: It absolves the organization of responsibility and onus in creating an inclusive work environment for that person.Mary-Frances: Exactly. So I said, "Why don't you have the question "I feel included at this organization?"" Right? I mean, you're gonna get the same answer, right, but you're now using language that is language that's about inclusion rather than fitting in, because fitting in is basically saying, you know, "Yeah, we need you to fit in. We need you to be like us." Zach: Okay, okay. Let's talk about black male presenting identities in this space, right? I could be speaking selfishly, but it seems as if they're still not highlighted with the same level of attention or nuance of some other people groups. Am I being fair? And, you know, if you agree with that, then could you kind of talk to me about why you think that may be?Mary-Frances: Yeah. So, you know, this is so interesting, because the chapter in Black Fatigue, it's called I Can't Breathe: Black Men's Fatigue, and I also have a chapter in the book called Say My Name: Black Women's Fatigue. So for the black women's chapter it's almost, like, twice as long as the black man's chapter, right? And I'm like, "Wait a minute." I said, "Is it because I'm a black woman and, you know, I relate to the experiences more?" So yes, and I'll tell you--this is the absolute truth. I am not kidding. I have been wrestling with this all weekend because I want to modify the chapter on black men to bring more of that voice. So with black women I could talk about, you know, #BlackGirlMagic, right? You know, what's the analogous movement for black men?Zach: There's nothing that big. I would say, you know, you have Black Boy Joy, but it's not as big, and there's some tension in that because a lot of black men are like, "Well, I'm not a boy. Don't call me a child. I'm a man." You know? So I'm not sure. That's a good question.Mary-Frances: So I write in the book about two experiences, two stories I tell. One story is about somebody who actually now--he has a degree in human resources, but he prefers to work with his hands, and he comes over and he tunes up our air conditioning in the spring and changes the filters and all that kind of stuff. So he was over the other day, and he worked for a large heating and air conditioning organization and was doing really well. They had him in their commercials on TV and everything and, you know, he said he just couldn't take it anymore. We would talk about entrepreneurship while he was still working there, 'cause he knew I was an entrepreneur and everything. So he finally left, and he's been on his own for 18 months, and he works 14, 16 hours a day. Nicest guy in the world. Got a young family, you know? Just really very customer service-oriented. He said, "Yeah, you know, when I go knocking on the doors, I've got to know how I'm coming," he said, "Because when they see that I'm black, you know, they get a little afraid." Ryan is all of 5'6" and, you know, maybe 150 pounds. He's a slightly built man. Zach: Slight guy, yeah.Mary-Frances: So he said, you know, "Why is this? Why do I have to exist like this, where, you know, I'm just trying to live and I'm just trying to, you know, run a business?" And he ran into--while he was in the corporate world, they told him one time that he couldn't get promoted because he was so good at his job that they needed him to stay in that job. That's why he couldn't be promoted, 'cause he was so good. [both laugh] Another time he was told that--he was promoting a particular service that they had, the air conditioning or whatever, and they said, "You're selling too much of this service." That's why he couldn't be promoted. So that's one. Another black guy, who had been with this organization for over 30 years, very well respected externally because he was in manufacturing and he has this particular knack for--he was called the turn-around man. He has a particular knack for going into a manufacturing operation and being able to, you know, whip it into shape, you know? The key performance indicators, the KPIs and all those kinds of things. I mean, he's a guru at that, right? [Lead?] manufacturing and all of that kind of stuff. And they would always send him to the place that was performing the worst, and he would go. So then they decided they were gonna put him in D&I, and this was after 30 years [?], so he's out of his element in D&I. He's gonna do his KPIs, he's gonna do his, you know, manufacturing operations. I think he turned just a few people off, right? So he ended up retiring early. No retirement party after all this. He's doing so well on the outside because he's got articles, he's got--he's well-known in this space, but he was kind of forced out of the organization because somebody didn't like, you know, what he said. So I think, you know, black men, one of the [?] chapters in my book, I have Tall, Dark, and Handsome, right? So when a white man is tall, he's paid more. When a black man is tall, he's actually paid less. The darker-skinned the black male man is, the less that he gets paid, right? Lighter-skinned black men get paid more than dark-skinned black men. So you take a black man who is tall and dark-skinned, you know, that feeds a whole lot of stereotypes, right? You know, and the handsome, you know, like I said in my book, black women [think they're handsome?, laughing] but the majority group probably doesn't. Not so much, right? But you're penalized. You know, black men are penalized, you know, for being tall. Black men are penalized for being darker-skinned. So my son, who is--he went to Harvard, Duke and Princeton, he studied under Cornell West. He is now a tenured associate professor of religion at Duke University. So when he was a kid he was always big. Joe's about, like, 6'5", so he was always big, and they always told him, you know, "You're gonna hurt the other kids. You gotta, you know--" So he's this gentle giant now because he was told, you know, "Don't be too aggressive." Up until the fourth grade there was something wrong with Joe all the time. We had to see a psychologist. You know, he just wasn't adjusting right, and he just da-da-da-da. All of these things. You know, he was in a white school district and usually the only black kid, one of two in his class. So in the fourth grade he had a teacher, he was a white male teacher, who said, "You know what? I think the only thing wrong with Joe is that he's brilliant." He said, "That's the only thing I think is wrong with him." And as soon as Joe started to see himself as brilliant and everybody else started to see himself as brilliant, guess what? Joe become brilliant, and voila, Harvard, Duke, Princeton grad, but if somebody hadn't told him that he was--[?], right? And so Joe writes about hip-hop and religion. He writes about the African-American experience. His book is--you might want to interview my son. His book is called "Hope: Draped in Black," and--Zach: I'd love to interview him, yeah. Let's talk about it offline for sure.Mary-Frances: Yeah, but what he talks about is how you hold hope in the wake of, you know, all of the oppression and whatnot. But, you know, we talked this weekend about black men and about, you know, the hip-hop culture and the gangster and, you know, the rape culture, and we talked about all of that and how that plays out and, you know, why that is, and yeah, it's--black men are very complex, very complex, and they have been, you know, obviously treated the worst. So it's tied up in self-concept. It's tied up in a whole lot of--and what one study found is that black men who have a good self-concept and are also able to figure out how to navigate, you know, the system, they do well in a corporation, but you've got to come first with a good self-concept, and I think, as quiet as its kept, all that bravado sometimes with black men, you know, "Show me some respect" and all that kind of stuff, you know, and "I'm all of that," I think underneath is really a lot of trauma.Zach: Oh, I agree with that. I think you're 100%, I mean, just spot on, and I also think, you know, when you think about black men in this space--it's interesting because black men and white women have something in common, where black men are black, yet they benefit to a much lesser degree, but they still benefit to a degree, from patriarchy, and white women are women of course, but then they benefit from white supremacy. So there's some dynamics there that are nuanced, and yet in a way that black women don't. So black women are women and they're black, right? So it's like, okay, there's no pool that you can pull from or there's nothing that you can really pull from a position of privilege. Of course you have able-bodied privilege, and if you're cisgender and all those things, but I'm talking about, like, just at a high level. So then--but I was gonna say that, you know, it's hard to talk about that because black men benefit from patriarchy, but it's like, "But it shouldn't be hard to at least try to engage in the subject a bit more intentionally," because, I mean, it hasn't stopped white women from being the center of attention for diversity and inclusion efforts for decades.Mary-Frances: Right, exactly. Yeah, no. I think you're right, and so in the book Black Fatigue I question whether, you know--so to a certain extent yes, I guess I would agree that black men benefit from patriarchy, but it's more intra-culture than it is inter-culture.Zach: Right, 'cause black men ain't out here about to just be out here disrespecting white women at work.Mary-Frances: Right. Yes, there you go. Yeah, not unless [?]--nobody better know about it anyway, right? [laughs]Zach: Well, shoot. [laughs] Well, and that's the thing that blows my mind. Like, I had a conversation. I'll never forget. This was some years ago. I had a conversation with somebody who tried to, like, insinuate that the reason why I spoke so much at work was because, you know, I was the only man, and perhaps because as a man I'm used to dominating conversations. And I said, "Look, I might be the only man in this space, but I'm also the only black person in this space, and certainly the only black man," and I said, "So if you think that the reason why I'm quote-unquote dominating this conversation is because I'm a man and y'all are a bunch of white women, that's false." I said, "I would actually be more akin to being quiet," as it took me time to find my voice as a black man in white spaces. I said, "I would challenge you to ask why you would use the language that I'm dominating anything by simply raising my voice in a meeting," right? But there's, like, this--I agree with you. I think that there's a, like, lack of nuance when we talk about even how patriarchy is mobilized for black men. I think black men are benefiting from patriarchy with other black people. They don't benefit from patriarchy, like, from--like, if it's me or Karen, Karen is gonna win out.Mary-Frances: Right, exactly. And for reasons like I was saying earlier. These studies show, you know, a tall--you know, you've got your stature if you will, that's a negative. You've got the color that's a negative, right? And so yeah, in white spaces, I think that it is an intersectionality in white spaces. You're black and you're a man. It's a marginalized identity.Zach: So, you know, your colleague Brittany Harris, VP of learning and innovation at The Winters Group, who we've had on in the past, has said that power is the silent P in this work. I'd love to hear more from you on the concept of power and how it fits into this engagement of workplace equity.Mary-Frances: Yeah. I mean, it is very much at the center, and it's complex, and when folks have power, why would they want to give it up? So I am not a proponent of power and privilege discussions with novices in this work. So folks who have not--I'm talking about people who are trying to teach, people who are trying to teach who have not had years of kind of understanding how all this plays out, I'm not in favor of going in and telling them that they have power and privilege. Yeah, I have it and I want to keep it. [laughs] Right? I mean, why would someone want to give that up? [?] Black people standing in front of a bunch of white men talking about, "You have power and privilege." Yeah. And so [they're?] like, "Yeah, what's wrong with that?" [laughs] I mean, they don't say that, but. And the other thing is how do they relinquish that power? I mean, that's really difficult to do. And the other problem that I have with that--so yeah, there's this inequitable power dynamic, but the other problem that I have with that is that we are accepting that we don't have power. We're rendering ourselves powerless, right? And so in the corporate world what is the key term? Empower. We want to empower our people. E-M, right? Empower, right? That is somebody giving you their power. So this is part of the corporate speak, you know, that I don't like, right? It's part of the dominant culture of corporate speak. I should have written about that one in my book. I might still. Anyway, I want to turn that around, that E-M to M-E. Me power. I have power. And so we have agency, but we don't take it. We don't use it because we have internalized that we don't have the power, we don't have power, and we cannot continue to--this is one of the trends I'd like to see, not to continue to talk to folks about power and just use our power, not to magnify the inequities. So everybody knows that if you're a white man in a corporation and whatnot and you're the manager or the leader or the director or the whatever, everybody knows you got power, right? [laughs] You know? You gotta tell me you have power? Why you gotta tell me that? Right? And so I think that there are other ways to claim power. I think that part of that is just the confidence that we come with, the self-concept that we come with. I think that we have to be ready to leave spaces, because there are consequences for us exercising power, and we have to have some safety nets, more safety nets than we have. So I left, you know, some 30 something years ago. I just stepped out on faith, I mean, 'cause I have a strong faith, and I didn't know what was gonna happen, but I just knew I couldn't stay there. We do know that black women, they're 40% more likely to start their own businesses than any other group, right? Because we recognize that it's traumatizing, and so this whole idea of--so who came up with the idea of power and power and privilege? White folks. To tell us that there's a power inequity... Surprise, surprise. And you know what? We're not gonna change that by telling white people that they have power. That is not gonna change that. The only thing that's gonna change it is for us to claim our power and to recognize that we have it. Zach: I love it. No, I'm right there with you.Mary-Frances: Right? [laughing] Stop telling white folks what they already know, that they got power. They already know that.Zach: No, that's true. Like, them not, like, screaming it from the rooftops doesn't mean that they don't know that.Mary-Frances: Well, exactly. Why would I scream it from the rooftops? Again, the dominant group, it's not something that they probably even--even when we call their attention to it, there are many who will want to say, "Uh-huh. And let me figure out how I'm gonna maintain it." There might be others who are curious. "Hm, there is this dynamic. Maybe I should, you know, do something to work on that," but the forces are so strong and entrenched, right, over 400 years of entrenchment, that it's not gonna change. You know, two or three or the small groups that you might get who are all for shifting that power dynamic, they're not strong enough to overcome that larger group who wants to maintain the status quo. So we just have to take it. We have to grab the power. We have to first of all understand we have it already. It's not grabbing anything. We already have it. We just have to use it and accept that there will be consequences sometimes for using that power, and if we don't have the strong safety nets in our community to, you know, accept and to protect those folks who, you know, get fired, you know, are out there, you know, being called out on social media because they're telling the truth or, you know, whatever it might be. We as a people don't support and protect our own as much as we should.Zach: Man, that's, like, a whole separate [?], and what we need to do is make sure we bring you back on when your book is closer to being published and talk about that, because I do think that, you know, how we--so, you know, we had Robin DiAngelo on some time ago, and she talked about white solidarity and the concept of essentially the formal or informal closing of ranks that white folks do to protect one another, often times at the detriment or harm of black and brown folks, and yet I don't--you know, because of colonization and because of just internalized oppression, you know, we don't have that I don't think in the same--Mary-Frances: We don't, yeah.Zach: And that's created so many challenges for us. I mean, since antebellum to today, right? Like, we've had so many issues because we don't necessarily practice to the same degree, protection of one another. So let's do this. You know, as you look across these leadership groups, especially during this pandemic, what are some of the top things you believe that majority leadership groups are doing today that undermine their own workplace equity efforts?Mary-Frances: They have not educated themselves, so they are not--they think that they know, they think that their good intentions are good enough. So I've heard leaders say, "I don't care if it's the right thing to do for business," you know, the business case that we talked about earlier, "I just think it's the right thing to do, so now go forth and do it." However, because they don't have an understanding of the history or they know the history that was told wrong, they really don't know what to do. So they're making wrong decisions based on ignorance or, you know, a lack of information. I think the second thing that majority leadership does, particularly in the corporate world, is that they still have to speak to and answer to shareholders, and so they're not going to do anything that is going to, you know, jeopardize that. And so even when you're looking at board members, and what I hear often times is, you know, "Oh, the board won't go for that," or "We've gotta satisfy the board." Well, you need to change the board then. The board may not be--you know, you may not have the right people, because boards are tokenized [when] they have one token black person and one, you know, token woman on the board, right? So those are two things, and I think during the pandemic, I think because of this ignorance they are just not aware, big companies are just not aware of the world that some of the folks on the lowest rung face, and so when you say, you know, "shelter in place, stay home," that home may not be safe. That home may be filled with violence, right? You know, you make decisions about "Who are essential workers and who are not essential workers?" and you don't--you know, are you thinking about the health--again, talking with a client today, you know, talking about some of their contingent, you know, workforce, and they were saying, you know, "Well, are we gonna pay the sick pay or aren't we gonna pay the sick pay?" You know, [?], and so all of these kinds of questions, and they realized that "Yeah, we absolutely need to do that," and so I don't think that there's enough understanding of what marginalized groups face regardless of their socio-economic. So they're making decisions from their own lens, from their own--I'll use the word privileged--from their own privileged lens, and they're missing things. It's coming to light, right? A lot of this stuff is now coming to light, but some of the earlier decisions missed just the horrific impact that this is having on everybody, but particularly those who are in the lowest low end of the economic chain.Zach: Mary-Frances, this has been an incredible conversation. You know, I'd love to make sure that I give you space to talk a little bit more about The Winters Group, what you're most excited about, what you're looking forward to, even during times as uncertain and extraordinary as these. I'd love to just give you space to talk a little bit more about your company. Mary-Frances: Yeah, so we're looking forward to, you know, transforming ourselves as we always do, but this pandemic has made it absolutely imperative, and we've already been doing virtual learning, but we are looking at innovative ways to do virtual, ways that other people are not doing virtual. You know, we have whiteboards, and we have ways that we can break people out into groups. Like, the technology allows that, but I think the ways that we're doing it--we're doing simulations, and so I think this is an opportunity for us to be really, really innovative in terms of how we deliver our message. I did a virtual keynote, you know, a few weeks ago. I think it's also an opportunity for us to continue our [?] of the corporate message and the social justice message, because they have certainly come together with COVID-19 in terms of just what I was just talking about, how we see how marginalized people are even more marginalized. You know, as the saying goes, "When the world gets a cold, black people get pneumonia. When the world gets pneumonia, black people die," and so we're seeing that now, and I think it's the opportunity for us to even more strongly advocate for the intersection of social justice and corporate.Zach: Man, thank you so much, Mary-Frances. This has been phenomenal. And y'all, that does it for us on the Living Corporate podcast. You know we do this every week. Coming to y'all with real talk in a corporate world. Make sure you check us out everywhere, okay? So you pull up your Google or your, I don't know, Bing, or your Yahoo or whatever search engine machine you're using, and you just type in Living Corporate. We're gonna pop up there, okay? Make sure you check out the show notes. Make sure you check out The Winters Group. Check out all the work that they're doing. Shout-out to The Winters Group and all of their incredible work. Shout-out to black women out here holding everybody down per usual. Thank you for all of your work. And shoot, 'til next time, we'll catch y'all. This has been Zach. You've been listening to Mary-Frances Winters, CEO and founder of The Winters Group, leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm. Been out here laying the groundwork for y'all, setting legacies, and [they're] probably your favorite consultant's favorite consulting agency, okay? They've been out here. They've been doing the work. 'Til next time. Peace.

No Sports, No Problem Mike and Zach give you their top 10 movies all time and a few honorable mentions!

Welcome to season 1, episode 28 of the Clinical Hacks Podcast Mac Jones passed out just prior to the recording due to stress and anxiety, don't worry he's ok Kevin and Zach powered through.  This was recording during Thanksgiving week and the gang wanted to give thanks for different dental products that make their life easier or save/make them money. Highlights include, but are not limited to: Optragate Hedy Isodam Vortex Blue 15.04 Edge Glidepath Canon Rebel DSLR Lester Dine Camera System Flash Air Cards Samsung Tap A 10" Pac-Dent IMatrix Parkell Diamonds Teflon Tape Koolbond SE (a clone of Prelude SE) Cerec If you want to interact with us, head over to the closed Facebook Group Clinical Hacks We want to produce episodes about the questions you have, it's a great place to post a clinical topic, you don't even have to post a photo!

Zach and Ade stop by for a brief New Year's intermission in this special episode of the Living Corporate podcast. Living Corporate's CBE Week Series continues next week, but for now, enjoy this check-in! They discuss the importance of effective goal setting and share their New Year's resolutions.Find out more about CBEWeek here! https://www.cbeweek.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? That's right, it's Zach.Ade: And it's Ade.Zach: Aye. And listen, we're not back back, and we ain't even really back, but we're here in the middle of our CBE Week Speaker Series.Ade: Yes.Zach: Yes, that's right, just to say Happy New Year.Ade: Happy New Year.Zach: Happy New Year. So look, it's 2019. Now, I don't know how many of y'all do resolutions or how often y'all do resolutions, but we had some resolutions we wanted to, you know, just talk about as we think about 2019, as we prepare for 2019 mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, all of that different stuff. So yeah, here we go. So Ade, look, before we get into these resolutions, do you do resolutions often? Like, is this a thing for you? Or is this, like, a new thing or what? Ade: So it's weird. I don't really do New Year's resolutions. I do birthday resolutions. I think that starting with the new year is not necessarily as significant for me personally as starting with my birthday, because my birth--I mean, not to sound self-centered, but it's about me and on my timeline, and so for me it's more honest, actually, to say that in my 23rd year, or in my 24th year, or in my 25th year, I would like to make these changes, and this is who I aspire to be, and becoming a better person starts on November 1st because that's when my life started. Now, January 1st is great though because it sort of allows you to have accountability partners, and you're better able to say, "Me and my group of friends will be doing XYZ in order to get to ABC goal." Does that make sense?Zach: Yeah, it does, definitely. No, I get that. You didn't ask me, but--no. [laughs]Ade: [laughing] Haha, haha. Well, you--I asked to clarify.Zach: Also I didn't really give you any space to say anything. [inaudible].Ade: You really didn't, you really didn't.Zach: No, I didn't. I just hopped right in there.Ade: You did, so back up off me, bruh. [laughs]Zach: [laughing] No, no, that's a good point. I mean, it's funny that you say that, 'cause I think--I'm not a big resolutions person. This is probably, like, the--I don't know, maybe fourth or fifth time in my life that I've done New Year's resolutions, but when I think about making resolutions to myself, typically they're around my birthday or more recently, in the past half-decade, they've been around my wedding anniversary with my wife. So we'll make them together, right?Ade: Dope, yeah.Zach: At the same time, I think whenever you can identify some type of pace or cadence to create some goals and points of progress of yourself, all good, right? It doesn't have to be--it can be whatever date you want it to be, but I think as long as you're doing--you're mindful of that in some way, I think it's good for you. Okay, so let's get into it. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?Ade: You go first. I think I liked what you were talking about earlier, and I want you to share with the people, you know? Look at me, a gracious host. [laughs]Zach: Look at you. [laughs] Okay, so my resolutions--so the first one is to read more, right? So I feel like I read a good bit. Like, I read--I read okay. Like, I definitely read a lot of articles. I read a lot of, you know, just pieces as they come up, especially as the world has been going on today. I read a lot of political pieces. I read The Atlantic often. I don't really read The New Yorker as much, but I read. I'd like to read more. I'd like to read about a book every other month. You see what I'm saying? I didn't give myself a crazy--like, "a book a month." Like, I'm not gonna do that.Ade: Look at you.Zach: Right? So I'd like to read six books by the end of 2019. The second thing is of course just continuing to get healthier. I want to be around. The world is crazy as it is, you know? Plenty of things could take you out any day, so you don't want one of those things to be yourself if you can help it. Ade: Right. Don't be your own enemy of progress.Zach: Right, do not be your own enemy of progress, yes. And then the third thing, which kind of connects to the second thing, drinking a lot more water, right? Ade: Hallelu.Zach: Right? So, like, you know, there are people out there--Ade: I just--I just want to take a second here. I really hate to interrupt you, but if you're listening, go ahead and find a glass of water and sip with us. All right, carry on, Zach.Zach: Yes, a sip. Sip, yes. No, seriously, it's delicious. You can have it cold. You can have it room temperature. You can have it hot, but-- Ade: Wait, hold on. Do you--do you just run around drinking hot water? [laughs]Zach: Ayo. So listen, actually--I do not, right? But I have a good friend of mine who--no, he loves hot water. Like, he loves it. Man, listen. Ade: Okay, I would like to speak to your--like, bring him on this show. I have so many questions.Zach: No, no. I'ma bring him on this show. I'm not gonna--I'm not gonna drop his name, 'cause this is very impromptu, but--Ade: This is--this is a safe space. I just have some questions for you, young man, because... huh? Okay, sorry. Carry on. I got us so off-track just then.Zach: No, no, no. So no, he does. He drinks hot water, and it was funny--so he's one of the people--I don't know if you have people like this in your life. You look up to them, like, to the point where, you know, if they do something that you're not really familiar with, and if other people did that thing you would clown them, but if they do it you're like, "Well, dang, why are you doing that? Let me--"Ade: "Maybe it's valid. Maybe I should give it a whirl."Zach: "Maybe it's valid. Maybe I should give it a whirl." "Maybe I should give it a whirl." Okay. [laughing]Ade: Okay, so first of all, you're not about to come for me, sir.Zach: "Give it a whirl"?Ade: "Give it a whirl." I said what I said.Zach: No, it's funny. [laughing] No, so he--so he was like--I came into his home and he was like, "Zach, so I've been drinking--I've been doing this thing. I've been drinking hot water," and I said, "Really? What?" And he said, "Yeah, would you like some?" And I said, "Sure," and let me tell you something, it was just hot water. It wasn't--I was like--Ade: I really was expecting to be like, "And it changed my life. It revolutionized how I look at water intake." No?Zach: No, it did not. In fact, I was like, "Man, I really would like some cold water right now." Anyway, where was I? Yeah, so drinking more water. So, you know, this kind of a case of two Americas. So there's a--for my non-melanated folks, you know, there's a phrase called "drinking water and minding your business." So drinking water and minding your business, it just saves a lot--it saves you a lot of stress and drama, right? So you look at Paul Rudd. Again, speaking to my--speaking to the majority, right? If you look at Paul Rudd, Paul Rudd is the greatest example of drinking water and minding your business, right? He looks great. He hasn't aged a day. He looks the same as he did in 1993. Right? He does. He looks phenomenal, right? Drinking water and minding your business--you know, I plan on drinking a lot of water, but I--because of the nature of our podcast, I don't know if I plan on minding, quote unquote, my business. I mean--you know what I mean? Like, my business is--yeah, like, my business--Ade: Your business is sort of everybody's business.Zach: Lowkey, right? Like, I'm not messy. Like, I'm not out here, like, Messy Mya. RIP Messy Mya. Look, now I'm talking to the black folks. I'm more so trying to--but I am trying to, like, be more hydrated, right? And, you know, there's the--our bodies are a majority water, so it's--everyone knows at this point it's 2019. Wow, it's 2019. So I don't have to--I shouldn't have to debate with y'all to drink more water, but please, drink more water. And also, speaking of--'cause, you know, we also do Favorite Things. We talk about music and stuff. A sleeper, shout-out Joe Budden Podcast, is the Mick Jenkins' "Drink More Water" project he put out, it was--Ade: You have lost me. You have lost me. I don't know what you're talking about. I also don't listen to Joe Budden's podcast, so maybe that's where the disconnect is right now, my friend. Zach: So "sleeper" is a term, like, you know, this is some music maybe y'all have missed or y'all don't really know about.Ade: Oh, 'cause the first thing I thought was a sleeper cell, and I was like, "All right, well, I--I have to bow out of this conversation, because I don't know anything about sleeper cells."Zach: No, no, no. No sleeper cells. Nothing like that around here. Please. Feds, please don't--don't get us. Ade: Right? We've got to go.Zach: Yeah, right? Now, look, we're gonna have to delete all of this, because Aaron's gonna transcribe this, and then it's gonna be all on Google and stuff. There's gonna be "sleeper cells"--Ade: Oh, see--nah, mm-mm. Aaron, just go ahead and--Zach: Delete all of this.Ade: Yeah. Zach: Yeah. [laughs] Anyway, so yeah, you know, I'm excited about that. I feel as if those are some smart goals. I feel like they're very attainable, they're realistic, and they're helpful for me for what I'm trying to do, right? They're very straightforward. So that's me. Those are my New Year's resolutions.Ade: Okay, okay. Now, I want to push back a little bit. Part of what is important when you're setting goals is to set intentional goals, right? There's this concept of SMART goals, and so that is--so you set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals, and that way you have much more--you're more likely to achieve those goals. So by specific, I mean [inaudible] drink water--by smart I mean you want to drink water, so do you want to drink a gallon of water a day? Do you want to set time goals, like, "By 9:00 a.m., I've had 16 ounces of water." So I think goals and resolutions are all talk until you are able to really discern for yourself what those goals are, how you're going to make them happen, and what that timeline's gonna look like. So I'm gonna repeat what SMART is. You have Specific, you have Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound or Time-sensitive goals. So to give you an example, this year, in 2019, I want to get my solutions architect cert, my AWS solutions architect cert. I want to do that by July '19. So that is a specific goal. It's measurable because it's a certification, it's achievable 'cause, I mean, I can study for it. It's relevant to my larger kind of goal for my life, and it's time-bound. I have set a hard deadline of July 2019 to get that certification, do you see what I'm saying?Zach: No, I definitely understand what you're saying, and you're right. So opposed to me saying, "I want to drink more water," I should be saying, "I want to drink about a gallon of water a day." Instead of me saying, "I want to get healthier," I should say something like, "I'd like to work out at least two to three times a week and cut out sugary and processed foods." And, you know, I kind of did it with the book one when I said I'd like to read a book every other month. So no, I get it. You're absolutely right, and to your point, when we--when we're not specific and really truly smart--let's go ahead and just give out the acronyms to smart real fast. So it's--Ade: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Now, there are also some people who say it's SMARTER, where you have all of those that I just mentioned, and then you have Evaluated and Reviewed, which I think are also important parts of the goal setting process, but we don't have to go quite that far right now.Zach: [laughing] No, no, no. This is great. So, you know, it's important, because I think we--the less specific we are with the goals that we say we have, the more of an out we give ourselves to short-change ourselves in the future, right? So--and then also, if they're not specific to you, then you can end up kind of moving the goal posts on yourself and not really ever achieving [inaudible]. So if you say, "Man, I really want to lose some weight," right? I'm gonna pick on losing weight because losing weight is--like, almost everybody feels like they either need to or would like to lose some weight.Ade: Or the alternative for those of us skinny-minis who want to gain some weight, but gain healthy weight.Zach: There you go. Some people want to gain some healthy weight. Thank you. Let's be inclusive of all of our body types and health spaces. Ade: Aye.Zach: Aye. [laughs] So when you say, "Hey, I'd like to have this health goal," if you're not really specific in, like, the numbers you're trying to achieve or the--just what you're outcome is, then you can end up saying, "Well," you know, "I didn't really have to work out today. I just want to work out more," and you end up--you end up cheating yourself. Or you say, "Well, I didn't say I wanted to eat perfectly healthy. I just wanted to eat more vegetables," and it's like, "Okay..." And you just end up cheating yourself. So I think the more specific you can be and, like, more granular you can be with what your goals are, the harder it will be for you to ignore the fact that you're either off-track on them or not really driving towards them. So I super agree with that.Ade: Right. On that note, I'll share some of my goals. And I know I got on you for SMART, and some of mine aren't necessarily SMART goals, but we move. Anyway, so I would like to read and discuss five meaningful articles a week. Zach: Okay, okay.Ade: So that's whether they're in The Atlantic or whether I'm scrolling through Medium and some of the software engineering spaces that I follow. I'd like to be able to read and discuss five articles, and part of that is in finding some of the computer science fundamentals. Base CS has some really great--I don't know if I want to even call those articles, but some really great write-ups on computer science fundamentals, which are important for me to learn. So I'd like to do that five times a week. I would like to get my solutions [inaudible] earlier, my AWS solutions architect certification, by July 2019. This is--this next one I haven't quite figured out how I'm gonna do yet, but I want to reinvent my wardrobe. Now, I say that because I was having a conversation with my partner, and often times when we're out or we really have to go out, I'll just, like, throw on sweatpants and a t-shirt or whatever, and then when we get out I'll complain about looking like a hobo. Okay, that wasn't necessarily how I wanted to say that, but I'll complain about not looking my best self.Zach: Right.Ade: And part of that is just I didn't--I don't necessarily have all of the pieces that I want, and I want to show up, like, how I feel. I want to show up looking and representing myself in my best light, and so part of that--I'm still always going to be a joggers and tennis shoes kind of girl, but I don't have to be a four sizes too large sweatpants and t-shirt that I bought when I was in 7th grade sort of girl, you know? So that's important to me as well. I want to go to the gym once a week and work out of home three times a week. I'm going to create three projects for my portfolio, and I'm going to attend AfroTech in November this year. Those are my goals.Zach: That sounds--that sounds incredible. Those are great goals.Ade: AfroTech is also lit, and if anybody's trying to sponsor me to go to AfroTech, hit your girl up.Zach: Man, listen. Y'all want to sponsor Ade, y'all want to sponsor Living Corporate and we'll send Ade? Man, let's--come on. Get in our inbox.Ade: Let's go. Let us know.Zach: DMs are open for everybody. They are. True.Ade: Okay, uh, let's clarify. Not that open. [laughing]Zach: They are though. They're open on all the social medias. No, but that's--you know, to your first point, it's so interesting how, like--so as kind of, like, a fashion point, like, if you notice, like, there's--there's enough clothes out here to curate a bunch of different looks. Like, if you want to be, like, hobo chic, right, you could get, like, some really form-fitting--Ade: I'm trying to--I'm trying to really walk away from the hobo chic look, because I thought that was what I was doing. Upon further reflection, it's just--it's further towards the hobo end of the spectrum than the chic, so we're just gonna let that dream go.Zach: Got you, got you. 'Cause I was gonna say, like--and I don't know, like, what your preference is, but, like--you know, 'cause you could wear, like, some fitted--not fitted, but, like, nicely-fitting sweatpants, right? You could wear some nicely-fitting sweatpants.Ade: You're right, you're right. Look, if there are any listeners who are designers, who have an eye for fashion, hit your girl up, because I am confused. Okay? Okay.Zach: [laughs] And then [inaudible], that's also great. And then the five [inaudible] with these articles--you're gonna share the articles with me.Ade: Ooh, bet. I like that, yes. We can do that.Zach: Yeah, share the articles with me, 'cause I love--I love reading a good article. I think it's easier to read than reading a whole book. It's, like, typically one subject. It's not clearly as long, but I love articles, so yeah, please. I'd love to check out what you got going on. Then AfroTech of course, that's super dope.Ade: Yeah, yeah. I'm really ready.Zach: Okay. Now, look, I think--I know those are our resolutions. Before we get out of here though, what was the best thing you ate over the holiday break? Ade: Ooh. Oh, Lord. Jesus. I just want to let everybody know about the greatness of my girlfriend's shrimp and grits. So on New Year's Day, she made shrimp and grits, I made rum cheesecake-stuffed French toast, and we lived our best lives. Do you have actually--before we move forward, do you do the pork chop, collard greens, and black-eyed peas ritual?Zach: So I don't--it's not, like, a super traditional thing. Like, we don't do it every year, but I definitely have had it, like, multiple times in my life for New Year's. And, you know, outside of New Year's, but yeah. Ade: Yeah. So I did that as well.Zach: Oh, yeah. That's good.Ade: So for those of you who don't know, some African-American families, some black families, have a tradition wherein in the New Year they eat a pork chop or a pork product of some sort, black-eyed peas, collard greens, and some will throw in cornbread. And I made all of it. I don't eat pork obviously, but she enjoyed it. She seemed to like her plate, so that was great. And what else did we eat this break? We didn't spend a whole ton of time cooking a whole lot, but cooking is my favorite thing. I made a really dope burger for us both. It was--I don't know. I can't wait to cook for you honestly. I want you to come here so that I can feed you, and I'm honestly probably not gonna help your goals of losing weight, but the important part is that the food tastes good.Zach: No, I'm excited. I'll just have to--I'll just do a bunch of pre-workouts, you know what I mean? And post-workouts. It's all good.Ade: See? Yeah, there you go. There you go. And you might have to do two-a-days honestly, but--Zach: Wow, okay. Appreciate the honesty. So what else? So we talked about food. We talked about--we talked about our resolutions. Hm. Ade, what are you most excited about in 2019?Ade: I am most excited about leveling up. I think every new year is an opportunity to excel, and again, this is part of why I kind of count my new year at my birthday as opposed to at the calendar date, but it's a new year to kind of show the little person that you once were how dope everything could be, how dope you could be, how dope life could be, how dope you could make life be for those around you, and part of that is in wanting to wake up every day and crush it. And I don't mean to sound like we're in a huddle and I'm giving you a pep talk, but I think it's exciting when you're able to look your fears in the face, or look a whole new year in the face, and be like, "Yeah, I'm comin' for you." I was gonna say, "I'm coming for that" something else, but I don't think we're quite that explicit on this show.Zach: No, we're not that explicit. That's funny though.Ade: Okay. [laughs] Ultimately, I am excited about being granted another opportunity to get it right and get it right and excel at it, you know? So what are you excited about?Zach: Well, you know, it's funny. I really feel like I'm excited about the same thing. Like, 2019, it's an exciting time because there's so much positive momentum that I'm hearing from last year. Relationships made, some in-roads created with various things and people and projects, and of course Living Corporate. I'm really excited to continue that forward. We have a whole--[Lord say the same?]--we have another 12 months of this thing going on, you know, unless the earth ends, and so I'm excited about us just continuing forward. There's so much to do, especially when you talk about inclusion and diversity work. I feel like the whole field has just been blowing up the past few years, and it seems like every year, like, there's something new that comes along, some new, quote unquote, new piece of learning that everyone's gravitating towards, and I just think that, like, we're ripe in the season to be doing the work that we're doing. So I'm really, really excited about that. I'm excited about the content that's gonna be coming out of the Living Corporate platform. We have a writing team that we're very aggressively building up right now. We have some amazing guests that--you know, that you all will be hearing for Season 2. We just have a lot of stuff--we just have a lot of stuff cooking, and so I'm excited for us to grow, and then I'm really excited for our audience to see it and be a part of it and hopefully grow with us. I'm really excited about that.Ade: Yeah, that's amazing.Zach: Okay. Well, I guess that does it. I'm done. Do you have anything else, Ade?Ade: Yeah. So I just want to wish everybody a happy, safe New Year. I hope that, even if your year hasn't started on the highest note--if 2018 was not good to you, I pray that 2019 will, and I pray that, you know, this New Year is full of opportunities for you, and I hope that we are able to help foster a space that excites you and motivates you. That's it from me. Zach: Man, you always got the dope words. See, that's a great sign-off. [both laugh]Zach: That's a great sign-off. Yes, okay. Well, listen, y'all. You will be hearing more of us on the Living Corporate podcast later this month. This was just a New Year's hello kind of intermission type thing in the middle of our CBE Week Speaker Series. I hope that you all are listening to the series. I'm looking at the download numbers. Y'all are, but I need y'all to pick it up. That's right, I'm talking to you. Listen to the--listen to the show. Listen to the series. It's very good, and then make sure that you stay tuned, because we're gonna have more information about CBE Week as it comes up. So with that being said, my name is Zach.Ade: And I'm Ade. Both: Peace.

We discuss the idea of professional reinvention and sit down with sales executive and entreprenuer Edward Nunn to hear his 33 year journey. Length: 54:08Host: Zach | AdeEdward Nunn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-nunn-7851ba11/NunnAbove www.nunnabove.comLiving Corporate Patreon and All Major Links: https://linktr.ee/livingcorporateTRANSCRIPTAde: "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." The context of this apocryphal quote commonly attributed to Darwin is related to this theory of biological evolution, but I believe there's something more there. For many of us, we don't want to just survive, we want to thrive. We want to achieve as much as we can while being our best selves, or at least while striving to find out who our best selves are. So with that in mind, what does change responsiveness look like for us in our careers? How do we adapt professionally to make sure we're constantly setting ourselves up for long-term success? What does that even mean? What does that look like? This is Ade, and you're listening to Living Corporate. It's the remix. Zach: What?Ade: Thank you for joining us. [laughs] My bad. Today we're talking about reinventing yourself professionally, so I thought it was contextually appropriate. So the act of making a career change that is in-line with your long-term career goals.Zach: Oh, okay. Yes, gotcha. Yes. [laughs]Ade: Yeah. [laughs]Zach: This is really important though. Like, the concept of looking where you believe you're trending professionally and making adjustments. Sometimes they're major adjustments where appropriate. Speaking of which, Ade, would you mind talking to us about your journey to becoming an engineer?Ade: It's been a pretty rough, rough trip so far, and--I mean, some of it has been very enjoyable, and I mean that with all sincerity. I've had some amazing experience, but a lot of it has just been, you know, having to teach yourself a whole new--brand new field of knowledge. I like to describe myself as a learner, but having to teach yourself a whole new field of knowledge when you have nothing to base that field on is incredibly daunting. And I've had some, you know, technical issues, technical difficulties along the way, and I've also had some very, like, up at 2 A.M. in the morning like, "I don't think I can do this." Like, "I don't think that I am up to the task of making this switch," and that's not because I don't find this interesting or I don't find this, like, mind-meltingly awesome, it's that I just don't feel like I'm capable. And so those doubts always exist, but the fun thing about the switch is that in reinventing yourself you discover parts of yourself that you didn't know were there. And so it's difficult, it's daunting, but it's also really, really rewarding. Like, sometimes I get to a point where [inaudible] or my portfolio site comes together and I'm like, "Oh, my God. I did it. I did it, and I didn't--" I mean, yes, I used Stack Overflow more than once, but I did it, you know? You get that sense of accomplishment that you're not actually steering your life right off a cliff, and there's that duality of on the one hand "Am I even supposed to be here?" And on the other hand, on the days where, you know, you do feel like you're in the right room or you do feel like you're doing the right thing and you do feel like "I'm right where I need to be," it's this breathless wonder, I suppose is the best way of putting it, at just how dope everything can be.Zach: That's so cool. I know of a few people, right, who have made similar changes in terms of--not similar changes in terms of becoming an engineer, but similar decisions to kind of make a pivot, right, career-wise, and you know, I've seen people who have transitioned from being, like, HR managers to being fashion bloggers. I've seen--I have friends who have transitioned from being teachers to being full-time photographers. I've had friends who worked in the government and now they're, like, running intramural sports leagues. And I can't speak to the bag, like, how much money they're making, but I can say that each and every one of them seemed much more fulfilled in their day-to-day activities. And so, like, I'm really excited for you because you're going through a journey yourself, and I'm excited to see what the other side of that looks like for you.Ade: [laughs] So am I.Zach: [laughs] And I know that regardless of whatever, you know, ultimately it is, you're gonna be a better version of yourself coming out of it, so I'm really excited for you for that.Ade: Aye. And here's where we insert the celebratory Milly Rock. [laughs] But yeah, you know what? I think it would be super interesting to talk to someone who has had to professionally maybe reinvent themselves a couple times over, several times over. I'm thinking major changes, something like transitioning from education to car sales to, I don't know, stock brokering? To maybe pharmaceuticals to--hm, let's go with hospice care, and bonus points if this person was somehow related, in some form or fashion, to one of our Living Corporate hosts.Zach: Oh, you mean like our guest, my dad Ed Nunn?Ade & Zach: Whaaaaat? Zach: [imitates airhorns][Sound Man throws 'em in]Zach: Sound Man, listen, now. You gonna give me my pow-pow-pows, but then you also give me a couple pow-pow-pows 'cause it's my dad, okay? So pow-pow-pow. Give me a couple more.[Sound Man obliges]Zach: Give me some pow-pow-pows. Boy, that needs to be on a t-shirt somewhere. Anyway, keep it in. All right, so next we're gonna get into our interview with our guest, my dad Ed Nunn.Ade: We're back. Welcome to this portion of the show called the interview section. Y'all know how we go. So today we have the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Mr. Ed Nunn with us.[Sound Man throws in cheers]Ade: Ed, welcome to the show.Ed: Thank you. Appreciate it, Ade. Ade: Most certainly. So for those of us who don't know you, do you mind sharing a bit of your background? Tell us a bit about yourself.Ed: I'm 53 years old, Midwesterner. Right now I'm married, living in--outside of St. Paul. Five children. One of them happens to be one of your colleagues, Zach Nunn.Ade: Yeah, yeah.Ed: His siblings are a bit younger. We have a dog. My mother-in-law lives with us here in the suburbs. Ade: Okay. I love dogs, so I'm not gonna, like, go down that line of inquiry 'cause I'm gonna sit up here all day talking to you about your dog. But that sounds wonderful. It sounds like you have a nice, cozy life with a nice, cozy family, which is something I definitely aspire to, but today we're talking a little bit about professional reinvention, kind of remaking your career, which is something that's near and dear to my heart, and the path to getting there. You mind walking us through your own 33-year journey to being who you are now?Ed: Mm-hmm. You know what? When you put it that way, there's a--I look back, and I think about it, and I haven't really thought about it until you put it that way. 33 years.Ade: [laughs] Right.Ed: You know, I recall when I first went to college I had an academic scholarship to Jackson State University, and I recall going to college, and honor student and all that stuff, and my mom had talked to me--you know, I remember taking these trips with my mom and dad and the family to Saint Louis and Mississippi and California, and every time we'd go some place, you know, she'd talk about these roads and these build--I'm sorry, these bridges, and she said, "You know, son, you can be an engineer. You could build these. You could design these." My mom and dad weren't--were not educated, didn't graduate high school, but their aspiration was of course for all of us to do much more, much greater things, and they poured a lot of expectations and resources, time, and love and all of that into us to do that. So I went to school and I was gonna be an engineer. Not a civil engineer, I decided I'd try my hand at being a mechanical engineer and found out that I didn't like engineering. [laughs] So instead of--'cause I went to Jackson State, transferred to Mississippi State, went back to Jackson State and finished up my math degree. So I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, and I said, "Okay, now I'm out. Now what do I do with that?" Thought about being a teacher, tried my hand at teaching mathematics high school for a couple of years, realized I didn't like that. Left that and went into working as a recruiter for a liberal arts college in the Midwest. Left that and became a stockbroker. Really, really changed gears there because we--at that time I was married, and we decided to leave the Quad City area. When I got out of mathematics and moved back home to the Quad Cities I started the recruitment for the liberal arts college, became a stockbroker and wanted to leave the Quad Cities just to--the idea of having a family and being able to raise a family in a more cosmopolitan, diverse--you name it. You can put anything you want, it wasn't the Quad Cities.Ade: Right. The stakes were different.Ed: Well, yeah. It was just different, right, and so we decided to go to Minneapolis, the Minneapolis area, and got up to the Minneapolis area and realized I didn't really want to start all over again building a book of business after three or four years of doing it in the Quad Cities, so I started working in the field of pharmaceutical sales. Left pharmaceutical sales, went into selling copiers and printing and multi-function devices. Left that and went into--well, previously I went to telecommunications, then to--no, I'm sorry, it was telecommunications after selling printers, and then I found myself at a point where I was just kind of burnt out, you know? I'm hopping from place to place, industry to industry, and not really finding what I'm looking for. It was okay for a little while, get bored. Literally get bored of it, and I took a break, flat out took a break. There was a place where the pharmaceutical industry dried up. A lot of reps--the companies were downsizing, and I recall--I recall talking to my wife and saying, "You know what? I'm tired of this." It really wasn't sales, it was walking in and, you know, pop-up ads all you were. You weren't having an opportunity to have a discussion with people around their needs and how to solve them.Ade: Right.Ed: So I took a break, and I just started my own little deal. I got involved with some guys that had an investment idea, and we formed a company and started--we're manufacturing, with some partners in Asia, some technology, and then we have formed a company to actually--a separate company aside from our investment. We were going to import it and start selling it to resellers, and I did that for a couple years, and it was good. I enjoyed it. We saw some growth, my partner and I did. That went awry because the original investor group kind of--they were at odds with each other, and there were some issues that came about, and so that kind of blew up on that side, which it then kind of obviously cratered the business that we had importing the product and trying to sell it to the resellers. And so there I am again thinking, "Okay, great, now what?" So as I sat there, you know, I recall a couple of weeks just saying, "Okay, what am I gonna do? What do I want to do?" I got a phone call, and this was the beginning of what I've been doing for the last few years of my life. I got a phone call from a hospice company, and they--I picked the phone up and the lady said, "Hey, you know, I'm looking for Ed Nunn." Said, "This is he." "Hey, Ed, I'm So-and-so from, you know, so-and-so hospice. Have you ever thought about hospice?" I said, "No." "Would you like to?" I said, "No." [laughs] "What I know about hospice is death. I--you know, I'm not there yet. I'm not ready to talk about it, I'm not ready to experience it, so I'm not really interested. Thank you very much." "Well, just keep my name, and if you ever change your mind please call," you know? "We got your name from So-and-so and we'd like to talk to you." "Okay, thanks. Goodbye." I hung that up, and my wife said, "Who was that?" So I told her. She says, "You know, you may want to think about that." I said, "Sheila, I thought about it. No thank you."Ade: Right.Ed: But I gave it a little more thought. I don't know what happened, but I gave it some thought. I didn't have anything else lined up necessarily. I didn't have anything in my mind I wanted to do, and, you know, after I thought about it, there's got to be more to hospice than just death. I mean, it's something we're all gonna do is what I recall thinking, and I end up wanting to find out more about it. So a couple days have passed. I pick the phone up and call the lady back, and, you know, a couple, three, four weeks later, I find myself hired by this company, which at the time was one of the largest, if not the largest home health care company. It was a large company. 60,000 employees here in the states. For what they did, they were a big company. And so I found myself in the world of--still in health care, but now in hospice, and I've been in hospice ever since. And that was 2012, I believe. So for the last six years I've been in hospice, working for three different hospice companies. The third one, you know, actually was purchased, and they decided to shut down a third of their operations in the country to kind of get control of five different platforms. It was just spread out too far, and they chose to shut down the two offices I was running here in Minnesota as well as the other 25 to 30 they shut down. And so I got tired of doing hospice for others, and I opened my own hospice company, and so right now I own part of a hospice company, and I'm still working for yet another one, doing sales and marketing for them here in the Twin Cities area. So that's me.Ade: Wow. So first of all, I want to take a break. [laughs] I want to, like, sit back and be like, "That was a whole lot," and I feel like I've earned it, but yeah, it sounds like you've gone through a process of constant reinvention and experiences that have built one upon the other. Not necessarily a 1:1 correlation there, but it does sound like you've had a wealth of experiences. Have any of them really stuck with you, or any feedback that you've gotten from the people around you, have those stuck with you to the extent that you've utilized those thoughts or you've utilized that process in other areas of your life, maybe in building your previous companies or in building this one?Ed: Yes. As a matter of fact, the very first time I stepped out into the world of commission-based earning versus, you know, an hourly salary or some hourly pay rather versus salary, just doing it on commission. The very first thing I heard was from my father, and he told me, "What are you doing? You need to get you a job that pays you a solid hourly rate and will just--" "You can pay your bills, and--what are you talking about, commission? You don't know what you're gonna make," and he didn't care that it was a--that I had just been interviewed and I was the first person of color in the Quad Cities to actually have a Series 7 to be a licensed stockbroker with the company that I was working with, and they had been there in one form or another--for 93 years been around, and he didn't care. That wasn't a focus. He was--you know, my father grew up John Deere and forging metal and grinding it and that kind of thing. He's like, "Better get you a job." [laughs] And so that experience, his objection to it, was so strong. I'll never forget it. I'm thinking, "You know what? You may be right, but I'm gonna try this," and it was the best thing I ever did, and I always go back to that thinking no--you really have to have faith in yourself and the things you do, and if you really are passionate about it and--you just have to believe in it and go for it, and I'll never forget that. As the first thing--the first time I tried to do something outside the realm of what my parents had kind of modeled for me, that was the one thing that--it stuck out, like, "Wow, okay. I'm out here by myself now." "You're on your own." But yeah, that one stuck out with me because--I kept that mindset. It was uncomfortable, Ade. It was very uncomfortable going from a known, you know, to the unknown in terms of my pay because yeah, you know, I had a house, you know? All these things you're doing and you need to pay for, and all of a sudden--*claps*--you know? You know, when they first start you out as a broker, you know--I started out, and they give you a pay, rather a salary, and wean you off of it, and the goal is to be a year, a year and a half or so, that you're 100% commission-based. Well, after the first three months, I was doing enough in commissions--my commissions far exceeded my salary, so after three months I said, "You know what? You keep your salary. I'll just go commission here on in," and it was the best thing I ever did. And so I look back and think about the fact that had I not done that, had I not gone through that, had I not weathered the storm of my father telling me not to do it and going ahead and doing it, I wouldn't have ventured out and done some of the things I've done in the last few years.Ade: Right. And you've kind of touched on it, but I do wanna backtrack and get, like, an explicit conversation about the motivation behind a few of these shifts. So you mentioned that a few of them were by necessity, but you made some jumps and you made some decisions that weren't necessarily necessities, they were just you making decisions based off of your own motivations 'cause you speak to those.Ed: Well, I've always found it odd that when someone would look at my resume, and this was--you know, I'm 53 now, so when I was in my mid-30s someone would look at my resume--'cause there was a time when, and I didn't mention this, my wife and I actually went to Japan for a couple of years and taught English. We just--we stopped it all and said, "You know what? We don't have kids. Before we go, we're just gonna go." To get started we're just gonna go to Japan, and we're gonna start and teach for a while and get an experience, but when you get back and you sit down with folks and they look at your resume, and they're looking for--you know, they're looking for [inaudible], right? Whatever that [inaudible] is, that's what they're looking for. I've got widgets over here. All I've got is widgets. Now, some of mine are yellow, some are green, but I don't have [inaudible], and I'm thinking, "Why are you looking for that? Why don't you look--and I know that you're looking for something in terms of what you're trying to do for this position. You want these qualities you want this person to fill, and they've got this list, but I--and they're trying to, you know, jam me into that, or jam anybody into it, and what I realized was that after a while--for a while [inaudible] I was frustrated because I didn't have [inaudible] and I didn't fit the mold because I didn't stay nine years here, I didn't stay five years there, and the older I got, the more experience I got, the more I realized that's fine, it just wasn't a fit. But while I was going through it it was frustrating, and so the decisions that I made to move, at first they were very uncomfortable when I was--you know, I'd move. I'd want to do something. It was intentional. I didn't like what I was doing, and my thought was "Why stay here? Just because I don't fit this mold I have to stay until I fit this mold? Who tells me--and when is it okay to move because I'm miserable here? How long do I stay here and be miserable so I can do another move here?" And I realized, "No, that's just not gonna work. If that's not a fit because of me moving, well, then that's not a fit, and I'll just keep moving." What I came to realize in the end was I wasn't going to be happy getting a job somewhere necessarily. It's gonna have to be something--and I know a lot of folks come to it on their own. It took me a while to get to it, you know, get to the fact that it was okay, it was okay to not be comfortable. It was okay to not fit the mold, and it was okay to go and make your own money your own way, and if you stumbled along the way, you didn't make all the money you thought you were gonna make, and whatever that stuff was in the middle that I was kind of, you know, letting get in my way, that was okay too because the goal was to kind of, you know, be true to myself, and I know it sounds kind of cliche, but I really was trying to find something that I didn't have, and so it was okay getting through all that to get to, you know, trying to be happy with what I was initially rather going to wind up with, which was a journey in terms of just feeling like I was accomplishing something, you know? For me and myself, because I tell my kids all the time, Ade, and I know I kinda strayed here, but I tell my kids all the time that my life is--my life, I identify myself by my family. I'm only doing what I'm doing because of them in terms of trying to provide for them, but if I'm not happy doing it then they're in trouble because I'm--[laughs] They're in trouble, so that being the case I need to be happy while I'm trying to provide and give them the things that I really want them to have just like my folks did for me.Ade: Right. Yeah, so, you know, I think a lot about the current trajectory for a lot of my friends, or for even me myself, and just thinking about how people map their three-year plan, their five-year plan, their seven-year plan, their ten-year plan, I think a lot of it is based in that community where it's [inaudible]. Ed: [inaudible]. [laughs]Ade: [inaudible], yes. It makes me think of, like, my dog chewing on my shoes or something. Now I'm scared that he's chewing on my shoes downstairs. [laughs] But anyway, I've noticed that for a lot of my cohorts, we rely on that continuity and will even, like, rewrite resumes, and we'll just, like, try to shave the edges off of the square peg to fit in a round hole. And it sounds very much that you were like, "Nope, the square peg is still the square peg," and so that process for you, do you have any advice for anybody who's navigating that current trajectory on their own, such as myself? How we should go about it, just kind of presenting your experiences and how that might--and how your experiences might help us or edify us in any way.Ed: You know what? The first thing first and foremost is get comfortable with the idea of being very uncomfortable.Ade: Yikes. [laughs]Ed: I mean, you know, you've heard the--you know, those adages, and you've heard, you know, "If you want to succeed," you know, "you're either burning the bridge or burning the boat that got you there," so you're stuck there, those kinds of things. You know, that's true. You--I'm not saying you burn your, you know, your contacts and you burn people, but in your mind you have to just get used to the fact that "Wow, I just did something that--" "Oh, okay. I let that go," and you have to be comfortable letting it go and not going back to it. You let it go for a reason, and you get--you know, sometimes you can get a--you know, you get afraid of where you're going 'cause you're not quite sure and you kind of want to hold onto some things, but I would tell you that number one, get very comfortable being uncomfortable. Number two, I would say that you're going to--even if you have that mindset, some of those personality traits--you know, the gambler type of personality.Ade: [laughs]Ed: Seriously, you know, that doesn't mean that the gambler is 100% certain of themselves, but just know that--[laughs]--when you make that call, you're gonna fall. You really are, but that doesn't mean you made the wrong call. Be comfortable, you know, with being uncomfortable. Know that you're gonna fall down along the way, but you have to stay true. You really have to have faith in what you've chosen and faith in yourself because I'm telling you this much, if you put yourself out there and you don't have this privileged mindset, you will make it happen for yourself. I can guarantee you. If you sincerely understand that--the mindset that, "You know what? I don't know what this problem--I don't know how to solve this one, but I will figure it out. I'll use my resources. I'll call some friends. I'll have these conversations." You do what you have to do. You talk to folks, and it'll come to you, but you have to know that when you put yourself out there it's gonna be challenging, but if you have serious faith in what you're doing--and if you don't panic, overly panic...Ade: So panicking a little bit is fine. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] It's fine. You're gonna panic a little bit, because, you know, there are times when I might need a good chunk of change to do something I'm working to do. I've got a few projects now I'm working on that have nothing to do with my employer, they have nothing to do with, you know, my children right now. They have a sibling band, and they have--you know, they're actually doing pretty good. They're starting to get going a little bit. They're actually featured on this season's America's Got Talent and that kind of stuff. Not featured, but they're actually gonna be on the show. I can say that because I was told I could. Ade: [laughs] I'm looking forward to rooting for them.Ed: Pardon me?Ade: I said I'm looking forward to rooting for them.Ed: Oh, I appreciate it, and I'm sure they would too, but I've got another project I'm working on that I've been working on for five years, and there are times I--you know, you have a money crunch. If you need--you know, and I'm not a rich guy, so if I need 30, 40, $50,000, or even $10,000, and I need it next week and I don't have it, you have to start being creative. "How am I getting this money up?" You know, I'm not looking to go borrow money and go into debt, and so you just have some faith that you'll figure it out. And, you know, you do. You really do if your mindset--if you condition yourself to knowing that, "Okay, I'm gonna hit some things that I don't know how to handle. I'm gonna hit some snags. Don't panic overly so. Just go ahead and--" You know, 'cause there's a process to it, and typically my process has been to put different things in play so I have different areas or different things I can go back to to help me out.Ade: Right, so basically having a backup plan.Ed: Well, not just a backup plan. I'm talking multiple things that are going on at once. You know, the idea of having just one source of income scares the snot out of me. I don't know how folks do that. They have one job, and I look at that and think, "You're one management change away from twiddling your thumbs," and I'm thinking, "How do you navigate that?" And I realize you might have your--a year worth of savings, or two years worth of savings, or whatever you've got in your savings 401K to survive and why you--but why do it that way? Well, you know what, if that's what you want to do, great. My thought is just--I don't see it that way. I just like to have a little bit more control.Ade: Sure, yeah. Yeah. So I'm definitely gonna be looking into other streams of income now because you just dragged me by my edges just then.Ed: That wasn't the intent. That wasn't the intent, but--Ade: Look, I take it with all the love and the good sentiments behind that one. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] Well, no. I mean, and it's not anything that's--there's nothing elaborate, you know? Real estate, you know? For 20 something years I've owned real estate, you know? From several houses and/or multi-unit buildings to individual, you know, houses, but that stuff, for the last 20 something years, has kept me afloat, and it gave me the opportunity to make the choices and say, "You know what? I don't want to do that." You know, right now I have a project where I'm building these--I build these quarter-scale cars, and these things are--these are, like, four feet long, and they're huge, and they're quarter-scale. I mean, these things are 50 pounds maybe. They have their functioning engines, whether the engines be eight-cylinder gasoline engines or nitromethane engines. They have working lights, doors, you name it. They're actually scale cars. These things sell for about--you know, they sell for a lot of money, so that's something I do on the side as well. Just a lot of different things going on that help as you want to make a change, and they also take up your time, but they're a part of the plan, because the plan for me has always been--I go back to what I'm doing this for. It's just to make sure I get this group of people through this to a point where they can, on their own, start navigating. That's my purpose. That's my plan. That's all I'm here to do right now. That's it, and so I'm taking everything I can with me that I'm using to do just that, period the end. Ade: That's brilliant. I think that it's important, you know, the thought you just elucidated, that it's great and it's a good idea to reinvent yourself, but you also should have something to fall back on while you do that because it's a good thing to take the leap of faith, but you should have a parachute.Ed: Oh, certainly. Well, if you don't, it's a hard, rough landing. [laughs] I've been there too.Ade: [laughs] Right. But yeah, I mean, thank goodness for, you know, parachutes because every once in a while taking that step of faith is just kind of like, "I don't know. That's a mighty long way down."Ed: But you know, you guys, you're much younger. I mean, I look at--I look at you and Zach and, you know, folks your age, and I say, "Wow, you don't have to worry about that nonsense, someone looking at your resume saying, "Gee, you know, you were only here for two years. You were only here for three years."" Ade: Right.Ed: You know, that's not a question that people are posing. That's not even a mindset anymore. Well, you know, 30 years ago it certainly was. The idea of stability was--it was different, and I look at that flexibility that you have to--you know, to shape yourselves, your careers, your destinies. I think you have--I think you have more flexibility. I think you--there's an opportunity, a greater one, a much more easy opportunity to do just that than I had. So I think that's really cool.Ade: Yeah, I really like that. I think those were all the questions that we have today. Are there any thoughts that you would like to share that we haven't gotten to? Anything that you really think would benefit us? Ed: I guess--let me ask you a question.Ade: Sure.Ed: Education-wise.Ade: Yeah.Ed: What is your education?Ade: I have a B.A. in political science and legal studies. I think I had a minor's in philosophy. I really wanted to go to law school at the time, and then I began a master's in sociology, the focus being [inaudible] science, but I never completed my master's, and I'm now working on a front-end nanodegree at Udacity. It's a Google scholarship that allows people to kind of learn programming skills, which is what I'm interested in. So I really, really, really, really, really want to become a software engineer. That's my eventual goal. I want to build my own apps, but I also want to work at--not a Google or a Facebook. I think those are way too large for my personality type. Maybe eventually. Right now, I definitely want to work at more of a mid-sized company where I get the mentorship that I'm really looking for and ownership of my products, honestly so I can be outchea. [laughs] No, I'm kidding. I mean, that is it a little bit. I think that--I think that I'm really invested in a bit of freedom, and most of the software engineers that I know and most of the jobs that I look at are like, "Oh, yeah, you can work 90% of the time remote," which to me means, you know, I can spend a solid 90% of my time coding on beaches, which I know you don't know much about me, but I'm very much a water person, so the idea of being able to do something that I enjoy in a place I enjoy really, really appeals to me. So I have that freedom, and my whole life isn't sitting behind a desk somewhere.Ed: So if I'm not mistaken, what I'm hearing you say is that this education you're pursuing, you're doing so in order to gain some freedom in life and control.Ade: Yeah.Ed: Okay. If you didn't have to work, what would you be doing?Ade: If I didn't have to work, I would own a restaurant. Ed: You don't think that's work?Ade: No. [laughs] It's funny. I actually don't know if we'll keep all of this in the conversation. I don't know. Where is this going? Ed: [laughs] I'm asking the question 'cause you asked me--I'm getting somewhere. I'm going somewhere.Ade: Okay, okay. If I didn't have to work, I would have a restaurant. I actually have a book of recipe ideas and meals that I want to cook. The idea is to have a restaurant that is diasporic, so all of the food in the restaurant would from the African diaspora, from West African, East African-inspired meals to the Caribbeans to Latin America and meals that are typically in Afro-Latino homes. Just everything that brings us together as one community. I'm very much a community-oriented person, and I think that--to me, one of the most beautiful things about the diaspora is how similar but different food is, and Anthony Bourdain, who was, like, one of the, like, biggest influences for my love of food and cooking and people, had this thing where he talked about food being the center of humanity. Like, once you talk about a people's food, you're talking about people. So culture is built on that, and I could wax poetic about this all day, but essentially I'd be cooking. I'd own a kitchen or a food truck or a series of them and just feed people, 'cause I'm African and that's what we like doing. [laughs]Ed: So here's my question to you, and I mean, it's--you know, I listen to you talk, and the last couple of minutes have been real talk from you. It's been--I can tell it in your tone. I can tell from the fact that you have this knowledge about, this breath and this passion about it. I marvel at that because I'm wondering, "Okay, so how many of these changes are you gonna take yourself through before you say, "You know what? I'm ready for that change now.""Ade: Yikes. [laugh]Ed: Because I have a couple things that I'd like to do for me, and I'm 53, and I'm working towards them. One of them I've already started, with these cars. It's a passion. I love cars, and I like the idea of control or whatever. You know, life is extremely obviously random, but however you can eliminate some of that randomness--but that's one of the things I want to do. It's just taken a long time to get here. Dealing with my family, working with my family and having my kids and my wife around, that's something that I've always wanted to and I hold dear to. So the idea of working with them with their music career right now, that's really big for me, but it's taken a long time to get there. Some of that--well, I didn't have a family, you know, 30 years ago like this, but to get to something I really love--you already knew it, or know it rather. I didn't know 'til I got here. You already have something that is really, really dear and tender, and I'm listening to you talk about this nano this and this MBA that and this wizzy-wazzy this, and it was just interesting, and then when you started talking about the food I'm thinking, "Okay, this is real for her," and I'm just wondering: What are you gonna do, and when are you gonna decide to do that?Ade: It's funny that you ask because my partner is a tax lawyer, and her thing is constantly, like, "We need to get a food truck for you,", right? [laughs] And so I think that it's definitely something I want to work towards within the next five or so ten--five to ten years because I think that for me it's the security of the job, because, for example, I kind of provide for my family as well, and it's difficult for me to take a leap of faith with, like, a mini-parachute on my back when I know that, like, there are people who are relying on me to not break my legs on the way down, you know? So that's always--that's the fear. So there's the passion behind the cooking, right? And it's like--I'm definitely not gonna die without putting at least a plate in front of somebody's face and like, anticipating the look on their face when they eat it, right? But I also know that the amount that I have to lose right now is keeping me--is what's keeping me from it. So I think that the process of reinvention for me has to start from a place of absolute commitment, not a place of one foot in the commitment and one foot in the fear ,if that makes any sense. Yeah. Fingers crossed, man. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] Well, I just--I'm looking forward to hearing your story later when both feet, you know, finally land on the commitment side, and I'm wondering if it'll be the--you know, the pain to change was less than the pain to stay the same is what they say, right? So I'm just wondering what's your motivation, what actually gets you to that point? I realize you've got other things, that your people are depending on you. I got that. Hey, I got the same thing, and it's always interesting to hear what people's story is, what their story is, because I've gone through it too. So I'll be looking to hear the end of this one.Ade: Most definitely, and I'm looking forward to, like, feeding you at some point. [laughs] Putting a plate on your table, and hopefully I've written, like, my own e-commerce platform or something of the sort, so merging those two loves.Ed: Well, I've got to tell you this. I've listened to you guys with this Living Corporate, and I was--I've got some friends who listen to it too, and we marvel at it because--Ade: Really?Ed: Yes, yes. I think it's--I think it's relevant. My wife thinks it's extremely cool, because I think you guys have hit upon something.Ade: Thank you.Ed: Well, we think you've hit upon something because, you know, the idea of this--it's one thing to acknowledge, it's another to accept. And, you know, what you're doing is not new with respect to wanting, you know, this acceptance, not just acknowledgement in Corporate America for different peoples. But you guys have been able to reach beyond walls of these companies and connect it with this technology and have this conversation. And, you know, I've been at different companies, large companies, you know? A lot of them. You know, Xerox, Lilly. Some big companies, and within the walls, yeah, there's a lot of acknowledgement of different groups of people, and these different groups are formed, and they can have a platform of some sort, but typically in the past my experience has always been it's been a pat on the head, right? "Yeah, that's nice. That's nice. You guys go over there in the corner and talk, and I'll take it back to the board, and that'll be that." [inaudible] "I'll take this report that you guys had a meeting back too. That'll be nice," but you guys have decided that "No, we're not gonna center it in one particular place. We're just gonna put it out here for everybody," and you've taken this technology and taken this conversation to a different level, and it's so relevant. It's because it's now something that isn't confined to somebody's little bitty, you know, pat on the head from the corporate leadership. No, this is real, and we get to talk about this stuff, and we need to talk about it. And so I look at Living Corporate and say, "My God, that's a really cool idea. Man, they--talk about hitting on something that makes sense," and I enjoy listening to it. I enjoy listening to you guys. Your platform, the way you guys put it together, the music, the artwork - it's cool.Ade: Thank you. I really appreciate that it's making this much of an impact, and we've certainly been getting, you know, great feedback from people, and we really appreciate all of those things. So before we close out, do you have any final thoughts, anything that you'd like to share? Any shout outs you'd like to give? Whatever. The floor is yours.Ed: A big shout out to NUNNABOVE. That's the musical group that Zach's siblings have formed. They've been together for a few years doing their music together. They're young, they're young, but I ask that you check 'em out on America's Got Talent and support 'em, and a big shout out to my wife. She doesn't know that I'm gonna shout her out here, put her out here, but, you know, I mentioned--I mentioned all that changing and all those decisions I made to do different things to support my family. Without my wife there to be the support, it wouldn't have been able to be accomplished. I couldn't have--I couldn't have made the decisions and actually made them work without her. Not someone like her, but her here taking care of the things that needed to be taken care of in--you know, within the walls necessarily when I'm out trying out to figure out and knock down--you know, figure out a new path, knock down trees and break up big rocks. It makes it easier if you've got someone that can--that can do that for you. So a big, big, big shout out to her, big shout out to you guys, and seriously, I know that I don't need to do that 'cause you guys are--it's your show, but I'm just very proud of the fact that he's part of this effort that you guys are bringing forth.Ade: Thank you. Thank you very much, and I'm definitely gonna, like, hit him up like, "Your dad is the coolest ever." I did tell him that you were dragging me though. I informed him.Ed: That I was what? I was what?Ade: That you were dragging me. Like, you spent a solid chunk of our conversation today just, like, tugging on my wig all the way through. [laughs]Ed: [laughs] Well, it wasn't intentional. I just--but I do appreciate it, and you guys--I love the website. I was telling Zach there's some things that you guys are doing, the fact you got some pictures, and the way you guys have set it up, and I love the fonts. I love just the look and appeal of it. This is a really slick--I love the sound of it. When I listen to it, it makes you--it makes you want to listen. You want to engage. Like, "Okay, what did he say? Let me back that up. What did [inaudible] say? What? Oh, that was pretty cool." Ade: [laughs] Okay, I have appreciated the full length of this conversation. I am telling Zach about how amazing all of this is and how we're probably gonna have to put this on our Patreon 'cause people can't get this one for free. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you.Ed: Thanks, Ade.Zach: And we're back. Hey, Ade. That was a great interview. I really enjoyed that. The themes that kept popping up to me during your conversation were intentionality, comfort with being uncomfortable, and courage. It was really good.Ade: Uh... so I'm confused. Ed, why are you here? We're in the wrap session of the show. You can go now.Zach: Oh, you got jokes.Ade: Yeah, actually. Yes, I do. [laughs]Zach: [laughs]Ade: 'Cause y'all sound exactly alike. It is so weird.Zach: We do sound alike, which is why I knew we couldn't be interviewing, like, together. Like, I couldn't interview him. It would sound like I was having a conversation with myself.Ade: Facts.Zach: But eeriness of that aside, I love the fact that he was able to be on the show. He and I, we have these discussions all the time, and he's really the reason I'm so comfortable trying new things.Ade: Yeah. I mean, I definitely got that sense from him. During our interview, I was taken aback, and dragged, quite a few times at just how fearless he seemed to be. He made so many different transitions and changes and jumps and leaps of faith over the course of his professional career. It was actually kind of scary. Zach: Yeah. I know, right?Ade: But, like, at the same time, I think I learned that your plan doesn't need to make sense to anybody but you, right? 'Cause you're the one living your life, and--I mean, when he was talking about his parents discouraging his shifts and those transitions, I could definitely really--'cause, you know, you can't explain your plans to everybody. Sometimes people side-eye you like, "Sis, you sure?"Zach: Right, and it's all about like my dad said, following your passions and going for what you feel is right. I mean, we're here right now doing Living Corporate and embracing discomfort and uncertainty. High risk for sure, but great rewards.Ade: No, I definitely agree, and it's also interesting that your dad was definitely job-hopping and forging his own path way before it was trendy, like millennial trendy.Zach: Right, and, you know, he really wasn't wrong then, and he isn't wrong now. I mean, look, if you look at this 2014 article from Forbes, it says that employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less, and I know there's more value than just your paycheck, but also there's value in being bold and taking control of what you need to get where you believe you need to be.Ade: Right. So honestly, I'm excited for us to drop the extended interview on our Patreon. By the way, Sound Man, give me some slow jams real quick while I hit them with the super ASMR voice. Guys, check out our Patreon. You want more content, right? You want exclusive stuff? You want giveaways? You want to hang out with the Living Corporate team? I know you do, so go ahead and go join our Patreon. The link will be in the show note. Thank you.Zach: Oh, my God. [laughs]Ade: [laughs]Zach: Oh, my goodness. (laughing) Anyway, major shout out to Ed, my dad, and I hope he can join us again soon. Let's get into our next segment, okay? Favorite Things, where we talk about what our favorite things are these days.Ade: Yep. My favorite things right now are--I'm really into Miguel. I have been listening to some of my favorite Miguel songs lately non-stop. Candles in the Sun is, like, top 5, top 5, top 5 of all my favorite songs. So I've been really into his entire discography, and I've also been really into hiking. So I have a puppy, and he's a husky, and he needs a lot of, like, physical activity, and I'm training for this marathon, and just being able to get out and really be active and get outside and kind of commune with nature and exercise my hippie-dippie side has been really, really fun. Hurts sometimes 'cause my knees like, "Sis, we're getting way too old for this," but it's been--it's been really great. What about you?Zach: That's really cool. So my favorite thing right now has to be my sibling's band, keeping with the family theme of the show.Ade: Right. Why didn't you tell me you have whole rock stars in, like, your family? Like, bro, what?Zach: I know, right? And so I don't know--like, by the time this episode releases if we'll already have seen them on America's Got Talent, but yeah, I'm really, really proud of them. I love them. They're great, but yeah, so they're called NUNNABOVE. They do funk, pop--Ade: Yes.Zach: Yeah. Like, my oldest sister--my oldest little sister Cadence, she's 18, and she plays the bass and she does lead vocals, and then my second-youngest sister is Maddie, and she does keys and vocals. And then my oldest little brother Bennett plays guitar, and he also does vocals, and then my littlest sibling, my little brother Wisdom, plays drum set, and they're all great. Like, they're super talented, really cute. I love 'em. They're awesome.Ade: I want you to know that this is a setup. They had no choice but to be rock stars with names like that. Cadence? Cadence?Zach: (laughing) Yeah, Cadence.Ade: Your dad knew what he was doing. See? Setup.Zach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Strategist, strategist. And so what we'll do is we'll make sure to put their information in the show notes so you guys can check them out as well, and yeah, we'll make sure to link all that up.Ade: Awesome. And as a reminder, to see all of our Favorite Things, go to our website at living-corporate.com and click on Faves. And that's our show. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Also, don't forget to check out our Patreon at LivingCorporate as well. And that does it for us on the show. My name is Ade.Zach: And this has been Zach.Ade and Zach: Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

In this episode, Ted and Zach: Give an Unbiased Review of Gut Check Blend Espresso; Randomly Discuss Downton Abbey again, at length, Finish up Gut Check Literacy Month, Don't talk business or money, Ask: Has G-Co jumped the shark?, Have already eaten tacos

In this episode, Ted and Zach: Give an Unbiased Review of Gut Check Blend Espresso; Randomly Discuss Downton Abbey again, at length, Finish up Gut Check Literacy Month, Don't talk business or money, Ask: Has G-Co jumped the shark?, Have already eaten tacos