From City Lights to Appalachian Nights: Emily's Journey of Healing and Cards
We're diving into the fascinating journey of Emily La Dasseur, who took a bold leap from the hustle and bustle of New York City to the serene landscapes of Berea, Kentucky, all while juggling motherhood and a career shift. Emily's story is a true testament to the idea that sometimes, you’ve got to pivot to really find your groove. After a personal upheaval, she channeled her creative spirit to launch a unique Kickstarter project, the Appalachian Spirit, which blends art, therapy, and a heartfelt connection to her roots. We chat about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the unexpected twists of personal relationships during her journey, and how she’s redefining what it means to heal through creativity. So, grab your favorite drink, kick back, and join us as we explore how Emily turned her passions into a thriving venture that resonates with folks far beyond the Appalachian region.
With a refreshing blend of humor and heartfelt reflection, Emily La Dasseur’s appearance on the Pivot Point podcast offers a fascinating glimpse into her life as a mother, artist, and entrepreneur. Emily shares her journey from the bustling streets of New York City to the picturesque landscapes of Berea, Kentucky, emphasizing the transformative power of returning to one’s roots. Her candid narrative about navigating the complexities of single parenthood while pursuing a career shift not only resonates with listeners but also showcases the strength found in vulnerability. She talks about how her experiences in various environments influenced her perspective and approach to life, highlighting a fascinating contrast between the frenetic pace of city life and the slower, more intentional rhythm of Appalachian culture.
The heart of the conversation revolves around Emily’s innovative project, the Appalachian Spirit card deck, which she developed as a means of healing and self-expression. Her storytelling captures the excitement and trepidation of launching a Kickstarter campaign, where she faced the very relatable fears of rejection and uncertainty. Emily’s journey is a testament to the power of belief in oneself and the importance of surrounding oneself with a supportive community. Her insights on the feedback loop from friends and the iterative nature of creative projects are both entertaining and informative, making the listener feel as if they are part of the process.
As the episode unfolds, Emily’s passion for her work shines through, revealing the deeper purpose behind her entrepreneurial efforts. She emphasizes the therapeutic aspect of her card deck, designed not just as a product but as a tool for connection and reflection. This episode beautifully encapsulates themes of healing, community, and the courage to pursue one’s dreams, making it a must-listen for anyone contemplating a personal or professional pivot. Emily’s engaging storytelling and authenticity remind us all that success is often rooted in our willingness to embrace change and share our stories with the world.
Takeaways:
- Emily La Dasseur's journey from New York City to Kentucky showcases the profound impact of personal choices on professional paths, especially in a post-divorce life.
- Her initiative, the Appalachian Spirit, highlights the need for representation of Appalachian culture in the wellness and mental health space through creative tools like card decks.
- The Kickstarter experience was a rollercoaster of emotions, revealing unexpected support from a wider community beyond her immediate circle of friends and family.
- Emily emphasizes the importance of a solid business plan, pointing out that practical financial literacy can empower more individuals to pursue entrepreneurship successfully.
- Navigating personal relationships can be one of the toughest challenges in entrepreneurship, often leading to unexpected shifts in one’s support system and social circles.
- Finding a balance between work and personal life is essential, and Emily shares her strategies for self-care and involving her family in her business journey.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Appalachian Spirit
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hey everybody, Parnell Woodard again with another episode of the Pivot Point.
Speaker B:Really cool episode for you guys today.
Speaker B:Joining us today is Emily La Dasseur.
Speaker B:I hope I got that kind of close.
Speaker B:Emily is from Berea, Kentucky, and she hails from a small valley town in the mountains of western North Carolina.
Speaker B:She lives there in Kentucky now with her two sons, studio art graduate of Berea College, Masters in Human Services from Eastern Kentucky University, and the founder of a Kickstarter program or a company called the Appalachian Spirit.
Speaker B:And Emily, I want you to talk about that in a minute.
Speaker B:But really fascinating background.
Speaker B:2018, she ran for public office, was elected to the Berea City Council.
Speaker B:She served there for two years.
Speaker B:Prior to public office, she held a decade long career in higher education administration in New York City.
Speaker B:So fascinating dichotomy of different cultures in New York and Kentucky and western North Carolina.
Speaker B:She also is an active court appointed special advocate.
Speaker B:So thank you for your service there in terms of supporting so many people that need some of that.
Speaker B:And welcome, Emily, to the Pivot Point.
Speaker B:So thanks, thanks for having us.
Speaker C:Thank you so much.
Speaker C:And can I just say, I love the title of the podcast.
Speaker C:I feel like my life has been a series of Pivots.
Speaker C:So perfect.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Cool.
Speaker B:No, that's great.
Speaker B:That's great.
Speaker B:You know, speaking of which, so I'll kind of jump in because I want to focus a little bit really on the Appalachian spirit.
Speaker B:So, you know, you were in New York, you had all that time.
Speaker B:What kind of inspired you to leave that world and go in and start something on your own?
Speaker C:Well, what precipitated my move back to Kentucky was after my divorce and feeling like I wanted my kids to grow up in a place that had more greenery, I needed a slower pace of life for a moment to kind of heal, even though my personality is pretty big and it suited New York very well and I miss it.
Speaker C:But raising two kids, you know, on your own, and we've been back for about 11 years now, so.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:You know, we.
Speaker B:So there was obviously a pivot point for you there as it relates to the Appalachian Spirit.
Speaker B:Was there a particular problem or passion or something you wanted to solve or pursue that kind of drove you towards that?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So I've always kind of said I wish I could find one job that just encompassed all of my unique interests and skill set.
Speaker C:And a few years ago, I was at a friend's house and they pulled out this Animal Spirit deck and I had not really been introduced to cards at all.
Speaker C:I grew up In a place where it was not allowed, that kind of thing.
Speaker C:And so when I saw the, the cards, I was like, wow, this is really cool.
Speaker C:And I kind of got into it and started collecting lots and lots of decks.
Speaker C:I have like over a hundred decks of cards now between Oracle, Archetype, Tarot, conversation cards, any number of cards.
Speaker C:And one thing that I saw in the three years since that moment going into just a Barnes and Noble was it went from one or two shelves of card decks within two years time.
Speaker C:It's like two whole sections now.
Speaker C:And I was like, you know, I started this healing journey using the card decks.
Speaker C:I would pull a card in the morning, I would journal about it, and I found it really therapeutic.
Speaker C:And then I was like, well, I'm from Appalachia, I want to heal this part of me because I spent a lot of years trying to disabuse myself of my accent, you know, use big words.
Speaker C:So no one thought I was a dumb hillbilly, you know, And I think a lot of Appalachians can relate to that.
Speaker C:And so I went looking for an Appalachian themed deck and I couldn't find one.
Speaker C:I searched Etsy, I searched Barnes, and I searched at high low, and I found like a regular playing card deck that was Appalachian inspired, but that was about it.
Speaker C:And so I think it was Toni Morrison that said, if there's a book you wish to read and it hasn't been written, then you must write it.
Speaker C:And so here we are.
Speaker C:And it's a combination of everything I am.
Speaker C:It's art, it's therapy and mental health counseling, it's writing, which I love to do as well, and it's entrepreneurship.
Speaker C:So here we are.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:So you, you make this decision to create this, this, this deck.
Speaker B:And how, where did you start from there?
Speaker B:How did you, how did you, what were the steps you took when you decided to do that?
Speaker C:Yeah, so it kind of started.
Speaker C:I have written in one of my journals where I gone back home to a conference called the Appalachian Studies Conference for work, actually.
Speaker C:And because it was so close to where I grew up, I did a little homage.
Speaker C:You know, I went and visited my dad's grave and I took pictures of the old houses where I grew up.
Speaker C:And it was during that time that I was like starting to write down card ideas.
Speaker C:But then when I got back, I just love a good Excel spreadsheet, just started dumping any kind of Appalachian iconography I could think of into an Excel and ended up with over 100 card ideas and then started sifting through and was like, well, what's really just Southern culture and what specifically Appalachian culture?
Speaker C:I wanted to make sure that I honored the indigenous people that inhabited the land before us and also be a really inclusive deck that anyone who picked it up would feel some connection to some of the cards.
Speaker C:And so there's cards inspired by different people and places in Appalachia that are inclusive and open and changing the world.
Speaker C:So I had that spreadsheet.
Speaker C:I whittled it down to 60 cards, and then I started doing their upright meanings, their reversed meanings.
Speaker C:And I also did a journal prompt for each card, which I haven't used yet.
Speaker C:And then in the next column, I added image ideas because I did use an illustrator.
Speaker C:Even though I have an art degree myself, I'm much more of a designer than an illustrator.
Speaker C:So the person I worked with had really clear direction of what kind of picture I wanted.
Speaker C:She would draw, send it to me through PDF.
Speaker C:I would be on my iPad and I would sketch over it, send it back.
Speaker C:We probably went through about 15 iterations of the cards.
Speaker B:Well, so you decide you're going to do this, and you share some of these ideas with family, friends.
Speaker B:What kind of feedback do you get from family, friends?
Speaker B:You know, when I work with folks, a lot of times, as people explore business ownership, they get a lot of pushback from family and friends.
Speaker B:They're like, oh, it's risky, or you're going to waste your money, or all sorts of different things.
Speaker B:What kind of feedback did you get from family, friends, support, resistance, anything?
Speaker B:Oh, those lines.
Speaker C:At this point, and I'm 42 at this point, my family and friends know better than to question what I want to do.
Speaker C:And I say that with love because.
Speaker C:And it was my dad who actually instilled in me from a very young age.
Speaker C:He said, anything you put your mind to, Emily, you can do.
Speaker C:And I believed him.
Speaker C:I had the audacity to believe him.
Speaker C:And so they know that once I make a decision, I execute.
Speaker C:And so it's really, are you going to be on this train or are you going to jump off at this point?
Speaker C:But there was some really positive feedback from some of my close friends.
Speaker C:I didn't share it too far out because it is an original idea that hadn't been done.
Speaker C:And it's one of those things that, as I told more people, I found out there was a lot of people who had been wanting to do this for a while.
Speaker C:And, yeah, so it was positive feedback.
Speaker C:But I got prototypes of the deck and gave them to about anywhere between 5 to 10 of my friends to just use and give me feedback and help inform, you know, of course most of that feedback was like, oh my gosh, it's so awesome.
Speaker C:But, you know, as you start using them more, some of the meetings hit better than others and I was able to go back and recalibrate some of those.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:The final.
Speaker B:How did you feel about the whole Kickstarter experience?
Speaker B:How did that work for you?
Speaker C:I was.
Speaker C:Can I curse?
Speaker C:I was scared shitless, you know, because the reason why I chose to do Kickstarter, the truth of the matter is I could have gotten a small business loan, I could have saved up my own cash to print these cards.
Speaker C:But when I was doing my own little market research, I saw that my favorite card decks started as Kickstarters.
Speaker C:Really successful Kickstarters.
Speaker B:Interesting.
Speaker C:And although I try not to compare my Kickstarter to theirs because they were really established and this was like their third deck or whatever and it's got a hundred and thousand dollars raised.
Speaker C:So I was like, there's a place for this in Kickstarter.
Speaker C:And so I made the goal something that I felt like if push came to shove, I could call up my buddies and make it happen.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Because if you don't get it all the way, if you don't make your goal, you get none of it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:And I think if I can brag a little bit, one of the things that I think I did well, that I didn't realize I was doing well was that I came to the Kickstarter with the product already finished.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So a lot of these card decks, you may support the card deck Kickstarter and not get your cards for like a year or two.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And so, you know, part of my video, my little ad video was that they're already made, I just need to print them.
Speaker C:And I did it.
Speaker C:The timeline that I chose to do it in October, which is witchy season, which, you know, those were going to be some of my target market.
Speaker C:And I knew that if I got my goal within the three week time frame that I set, I could have the decks in people's hands by the holidays.
Speaker C:And so I could also sell that point.
Speaker C:You'll have these in your hands as gifts.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker C:And so within probably a week and a half, I met the goal and then the rest was just extra so I could read.
Speaker C:But that first week especially was like, is it going to make it?
Speaker C:Is it going to make it?
Speaker C:You know?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Were there any specific, I mean, outside of Kickstarter, were there any specific resources or maybe even more so, mentors.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That really helped you navigate some of these early challenges.
Speaker C:Oh, 100%.
Speaker C:One of my best friends, Katie Starzman, she is an entrepreneur right here where I live.
Speaker C:She started a restaurant business from starting in a farmer's market and built her way up to a brick and mortar and then purchased a bigger brick and mortar later.
Speaker C:And in my full time job, I brought her in as a consultant to be a business coach to my clients at my job and have learned just an immense amount from her.
Speaker C:She's what I call a unicorn entrepreneur.
Speaker C:She's a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker C:She's published a book.
Speaker C:She's done, you know, the restaurant business, she's done a flower farm.
Speaker C:Like, she's done a ton of different things in different industries.
Speaker C:And she's just so smart and willing to bounce ideas back and forth.
Speaker C:It's really energizing to interact with her.
Speaker C:And so she really helped a lot in terms of.
Speaker C:And it's not even.
Speaker C:It wasn't like she got in there with me and helped me write it up or anything.
Speaker C:It was just having that mentor to call up and be like, I'm really nervous and like, remind you of who you are and that you can do.
Speaker C:It was just everything to me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker B:Everybody needs somebody like that that you can turn to it.
Speaker B:They're so helpful.
Speaker B:As you started this, were there any misperceptions you had before you started it?
Speaker B:Meaning, you know, was there anything that you thought was going to happen a certain way or things that maybe you thought would be easier or things that you thought were going to be really hard that you were still able to do?
Speaker C:You know, that's such an interesting question.
Speaker C:And when I was thinking about it ahead of time, I was like, I don't know if I should even say this answer, but the typical obstacles for entrepreneurship I think went pretty smoothly.
Speaker C:What I found most difficult was some of the personal relationships that changed as part of this process, which I had some practice for having run for office.
Speaker C:The circle I had started with when I started running and the circle I had when I left office were two different, completely different circles.
Speaker C:I bet I didn't expect that to happen so strongly in this scenario as well.
Speaker C:So it kind of like blindsided me that it happened again, but I was more prepared for it and was able to kind of like dust it off my shoulders and keep, keep moving.
Speaker C:But when you're in the middle of something that you feel really vulnerable and you're putting yourself and your work out there and Some of the people closest to you switch up on you.
Speaker C:It can be really hard emotionally.
Speaker C:But, yeah, like, the business side of it, the marketing, everything kind of went well.
Speaker B:That's interesting.
Speaker C:But it was that personal stuff that nobody saw behind the scenes.
Speaker C:The little bit of drama that went on that had to be navigated that you don't have the capacity for when you're in that mode.
Speaker C:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:It's interesting.
Speaker B:You said.
Speaker B:You say that.
Speaker B:I had another gentleman on the pivot point earlier, and he said to me when he decided to start his company that his network of colleagues and friends that he thought were going to be very supportive turned out not to be, but the network of people that he didn't expect anything from kind of came out of the woodwork.
Speaker B:And I was like, that's just so fascinating to hear about, you know?
Speaker B:So you're the second person to say that.
Speaker B:That's really interesting, you know, and I.
Speaker C:Really thought it was an anomaly when I was running for office, and then now it happening again.
Speaker C:I'm a firm believer.
Speaker C:Like, when I'm coaching clients now, I have a section of.
Speaker C:What I talk about with them is like, don't expect.
Speaker C:Or if you.
Speaker C:A lot of us even put our ability to succeed in the hands of those people, we give them some power.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And I remember how devastated I was when running for office.
Speaker C:And there was this certain person who I thought was going to show up for me and didn't.
Speaker C:And I hid for, like, two months because I was like, if this person isn't behind me, I'm not going to win.
Speaker C:But then when you open yourself back up, the right people show up.
Speaker C:And actually, one of those right people was Katie Starzman, who's now my mentor.
Speaker C:So it's so interesting.
Speaker C:She's still a good mentor, but, yeah, I mean, you find out that some of your closest friends are only halfway clapping for you, and it really susses out who's meant for you.
Speaker C:And if you let those folks go, too many people try to hang on to those folks.
Speaker C:I'm like, at this point, deuces, see you later, you know, But.
Speaker C:And if you let them go, it opens for those people who come out the woodwork and really show up for you.
Speaker B:Sure, sure.
Speaker B:Now, how do you manage the demands of having this business and managing time for yourself and family?
Speaker C:What is time?
Speaker C:You know, I've always been someone who has filled almost every moment of every day with something, and sometimes that something is nothing.
Speaker C:To be fair, I'm a huge Believer in meditation and journaling.
Speaker C:I've taught yoga for many years.
Speaker C:I believe in balance to all things.
Speaker C:What I found at this stage in life is I'm so much better at recognizing when I need to take a break and just taking it.
Speaker C:And that's been a shift in my mindset from scarcity to abundance.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Because a hoarder of personal time at work.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:I'm the one that I never want to take a minute off of work.
Speaker C:I save all of my time up.
Speaker C:But now at this point it's like, okay, I'm feeling tired.
Speaker C:I'm gonna take two days off and just crash out and recharge and come back and it's, it's made all the difference.
Speaker C:Now my kids, I've tried to involve them and much as I can, they're teenage boys.
Speaker C:They're like, you know, mom's not cool anymore any already, so.
Speaker C:But they do help me some.
Speaker C:I take them to the little shop where I do fulfillment and I'm usually doing that at the end of the day after work and after any evening commitments.
Speaker C:And so we run to the post office and they run in all the boxes and put them into the slots and you know, it's a family business, even though that's all they're doing.
Speaker C:But yeah, it's one of those things where I'm gonna, I've got a lot of energy anyway and it's gonna be directed at something.
Speaker C:Why not this?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Outside of the yoga, do you have any like boundaries that you've established really to help maintain that sense of balance?
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean the boundaries are really more with myself than anyone else.
Speaker C:I have no problems saying, you know, I can't make it to something.
Speaker C:It's more using my technology on my phone to turn off notifications at 11pm and, and not doom scrolling and you know, and those sorts of things.
Speaker C:So it's really about self discipline at this point and making sure that I maintain that for my mental health, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:It's so important.
Speaker B:It really is.
Speaker B:And you know, I, I wrap things up on Friday at 2:00 religiously.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker B:I have time for my wife and we have our date night on Friday night, but everything is off and you got to just kind of disconnect and be present in what, you know, other things in your life.
Speaker B:So what have you found to be the most rewarding part of having your own business or having your own product like you do?
Speaker C:I mean, outside of just creating something that feels really good and being proud of what you've created, like it takes turned out better than I could have imagined.
Speaker C:It's all these interactions that I've been having with people using the cards.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So I've been going around to bookstores and different places and giving free readings and.
Speaker C:Or part of the Kickstarter is people could purchase a spirit session, which is just me pulling cards for them.
Speaker C:But honestly, what it is, it's a life coaching session, an opportunity for me to provide a therapeutic recovery type environment for people that is healing.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So I'm sharing a gift of healing with other people and giving them a tool that they can use.
Speaker C:And, you know, I was saying to someone the other night, like, I hope everyone that leaves my table from a card reading feels really good about themselves, you know, and that's a, that's a veer from like traditional tarot and different cards.
Speaker C:It's like there's not any kind of doom and gloom.
Speaker C:You know, most of the, the meanings on the cards are really affirming or, you know, help you reflect in a way that feels good.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Interesting.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Is there, has there been a specific moment or really a milestone that made you stopping and, and go, this is why I did what I did?
Speaker C:Well, you say milestone, I'll give two examples.
Speaker C:One was during the Kickstarter and I just, I was like, really surprised at how many people that were supporting it that I didn't know.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:I really expected when you crowdfund, you know, your circle, your network is going to be a vast majority.
Speaker C:And I would say more than 2/3 of the people who support supported this Kickstarter were not people that I knew.
Speaker C:And so when I, when I saw that, I was like, I should just see where all these people are coming from.
Speaker C:So I did a map and I guess it was about at that week and a half when we made the goal and it was supporters from I think something like 34 states and four countries.
Speaker C:And I was like, wow, this is what I wanted this to be approachable to everyone.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:I didn't want it to just stay within Appalachia.
Speaker C:I wanted it to be something that, you know, anyone could relate to.
Speaker C:And then the second piece was a couple weekends ago.
Speaker C:I was at a little vendor market I was invited to and this woman sent her husband over to my table after she had come through and I'd given her a little reading and it was good time.
Speaker C:And he sat down and pulled his cards and he was asking me questions and then he just opened up to Me, he was a coal miner.
Speaker C:And so I pulled out the, the coal town card in the deck, which was meant to connect to people from coal mining cities throughout Appalachia.
Speaker C:And you know, he really opened up and he reached into his wallet and pulled out his black lung card and was telling me about, you know, that situation and that process.
Speaker C:And he was not sad, you know, like he was.
Speaker C:He was telling me how he was on the front lines with all the dust coming and breathing he was breathing in.
Speaker C:And it was just, it was as therapeutic for me as it was for him.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It's those moments for me where it's like, yeah, okay, this is what, this is why I did this.
Speaker B:Well, if you could go back and give advice to your past self, what would it be?
Speaker C:Who?
Speaker C:I think I say that I had the audacity to believe my dad, but I doubted what he said many a time.
Speaker C:And I wish I hadn't waited so long to believe in myself.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, and to figure it out sometimes, you know, no regrets.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Your life is your life.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:But I wish I had figured it out a lot sooner.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There's so many times we are our own worst enemy in terms of our own doubts and it prohibiting us from doing things that we want to try and do.
Speaker B:You know, if there's somebody that's considering, you know, taking the leap to get into business ownership, are there practical steps that you would recommend for them before doing that?
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:Part of what I do now in my full time job and what I try to advocate for is I believe whether you're an established business trying to scale or whether you're a startup, no matter where you're at, everyone needs to have a business plan and it should be well thought out, fleshed out with your projections, with practical numbers.
Speaker C:And I know people get annoyed with me that I hammer that home because there's always parts of it that we don't want to do, whether it's the finances or the market research or even the values.
Speaker C:I actually created a whole program called a biz ready program at my job now.
Speaker C:And it's meant to have that kind of trauma informed approach to help people work through those harder parts.
Speaker C:Getting your business plan together because there's so much trauma around money, personal finances.
Speaker C:And my hypothesis is that there's a lot more people equipped to be great entrepreneurs that just need a little bit, for lack of a better term, remedial help to get there.
Speaker C:And so that business plan to me is like everything.
Speaker C:Because if you can really flesh that out, you will be so much more successful.
Speaker C:You'll feel so much more comfortable in business.
Speaker C:And that would be my.
Speaker C:My one little nugget of advice.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:Flashy, but, you know, no, it's.
Speaker B:It's good counsel and, you know, it.
Speaker B:It's an uncomfortable space for a lot of people.
Speaker B:And one of my other guests had a great saying.
Speaker B:He said, get comfortable being uncomfortable because there's always new things you're going to have to deal with.
Speaker B:When you're an entrepreneur, you can't see what's coming down the road.
Speaker B:You can't.
Speaker B:Whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
Speaker B:The difference is you have the ability to choose how you want to respond to it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And whereas if you work for somebody else, when something happens to that company, you might not have the ability to make that choice.
Speaker B:Somebody else might make that choice for you.
Speaker B:So, you know, is there anything that you would counsel people on in terms of emotionally, you know, for the.
Speaker B:For the challenges that lie ahead with starting something on your own?
Speaker C:Well, one of the things I talk about in my kind of orientation call with, with folks that are trying to do business and I'm coaching them, is I explain the idea of rejection sensitivity.
Speaker C:And if you know anything about traumatized people, which at this rate, all of us have some level of trauma, but the clientele that I typically work with have experienced a whole lot of trauma, both collective and personal.
Speaker C:And when you talk about that ability to pivot, trauma makes you much more reactive rather than responsive to those obstacles.
Speaker C:And rejection sensitivity.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:I use this to talk with my colleagues.
Speaker C:When someone comes to us with a great business idea and we're not able to give them what they need and we refer them to another partner, we know that's a referral, it's no big deal.
Speaker C:But to someone who's taken the time and the energy to get up their courage to go to a reputable organization, you send them away.
Speaker C:That feels like a rejection.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And so I tried to, like, reduce anxiety while also setting some expectations.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So structure, you know, and things like that.
Speaker C:And I think I'm veering from your question, but that's.
Speaker C:That's kind of what I use.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Interesting point.
Speaker B:Interesting point.
Speaker B:As we wrap up some rapid fire, kind of fun questions, so I'm just going to rattle them off.
Speaker B:If you could have dinner with any entrepreneur, pastor, president, who would it be?
Speaker C:Stephen Bartlett.
Speaker B:Stephen Bartlett.
Speaker B:Interesting.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:One business tool or app you can't live without.
Speaker C:At this point, Shipstation is my best friend.
Speaker B:Oh, Gotcha.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:The most unconventional piece of business advice you've ever received that actually worked.
Speaker C:I don't think I've ever gotten any unconventional business advice.
Speaker B:Sometimes we don't recognize that it's unconventional.
Speaker B:I guess when we get it right.
Speaker C:Yeah, don't do it.
Speaker C:Maybe.
Speaker C:And I didn't listen.
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:If you had to describe your business in a movie title, what would it be?
Speaker C:Oh, in a movie title, like an existing movie title.
Speaker B:You can create one if you need to.
Speaker C:That would be boring title.
Speaker C:I think if I had to connect it to a movie, I'd say maybe it's a Finding Nemo type business.
Speaker B:Cool.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:And last but not least, one guilty pleasure that helps you unwind after a long day in business.
Speaker C:I shot a top shelf tequila.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker B:Emily, thanks so much for spending some time today with us.
Speaker B:Really interesting perspective on all of that too, and I really appreciate you bringing the regional aspect into it, because I think that's really important.
Speaker B:You know, we all.
Speaker B:I know we're all.
Speaker B:We all share the same country, but we all have a lot of different regional aspects and influences on us as we go.
Speaker B:So I really appreciate that perspective.
Speaker B:So, folks, Emily La Dasseur.
Speaker B:I hope I got that right.
Speaker B:Thanks very much for taking the time.
Speaker B:Parnell, Woodard, from the pivot point.
Speaker B:We'll see you guys next time.
Speaker C:Thanks.
