Highly recommend *accidentally* meeting your heros

If my husband wasn’t there to bare witness, I would have thought my partaking of Colorado’s favorite export during a fantastic show at Red Rocks Thursday night had some lingering effects and I was hallucinating.

But let’s start a few days back:

“What are your recommendations for book or pods to help me with my mindset?” Read the text that came in from one of my girlfriends while I was sitting on a flight into Denver where I spent the past few soul resetting days with my husband Michael. Since having kids, we have tried to prioritize quick one to three day resets to catch up with each other (and our sanities) at least annually but often times more. Microdosing vacays has worked well for us- it alleviates the pressure of having to closely organize our kids schedules ahead of time which is a vacation in and of itself. If they miss one event? No biggie. Don’t preplan meals and they have ice cream for lunch 2 days in a row? So be it. We grab a carry on, tight hugs to the littles, and an abundance of gratitude for the grands and walk out the door as pretty close to worry free as you can as a modern parent. We get to turn our conversations from the day to day to the bigger picture themes and it is simply the best.

I referred my friend Dan Gilbert and Malcom Gladwell, both whom are go to resources for a mental shift of the nondescript variety.

“Slightly different direction, but anything Lynne Twist can always change my attitude.” I followed up with including a link to the Soul of Money.

I was introduced to Lynne Twist via the source that has brought so many inspirational and thought provoking voices into my life and last weeks featured hero, Elise Loehnen. She interviewed Lynne years back on “Transforming your Relationship with Money,” a topic I am constantly grappling with. When starting my own business at 26, I was fueled exclusively by the desire to dodge having a “normal” job. I didn’t think about the income aspect or how mentally challenging the non- salaried life is. There is no one there to say “that’s not enough” or “that’s too much.” No one warned me about the mental turmoil that comes from being so grateful to live in a first world country where I’ve never had to think about if my trash was getting picked up each week or if the traffic signals systematically ensuring my safety would be maintained countered by the sharp pain that comes with writing a large lump sum check out of my earnings to the government each April. Money always felt like something I would never have a relationship with. I could simply jump paycheck lilypad to paycheck lilypad, safe to see another day without a “real” job. But I didn’t want to be ashamed of money, I didn’t want to live fearful that the dangers of the dollar would take hold of my soul and turn me into someone who’s bank account status was the top data point of their worth. I have people in my life that have modeled to me how I did NOT want to feel about money. I didn’t want to be wasteful and cavalier but I didn’t want to be a hoarder either? Inspiration around cultivating a positive relationship with money is hard to come by, so as soon as I completed that first podcast episode with Lynne, I typed her name into the podcast search bar to find every other interview I could get my ears on. Her stories move me to tears. She speaks of her on the ground experiences with mothers in Ethiopia who had held their babies as they died of starvation and having to turn around and consult with some of the wealthiest wives in America a short while later. She was able to bridge the wealth and fulfillment gap between these two sets of women: the Americans struggling to find meaning and purpose in their lives filled with convenience and the grieving mothers trying to find any way to ensure future generations don’t have to feel the unfathomable pain they lived through. My memory isn’t clearly focused on the exact details but they way I remember the story going is: The Americans invested in the Ethipoian women, sending them to school so they could get degrees and have incoming earning jobs to help secure not only them, but other women in their country. Every time I think about this story Lynne tells so eloquently, I weep. I crave to have that ability to not bury my head in the sand when it comes to finances but to see them as a tool and opportunity to recirculate them to others who do not have the same access I do. You can read Lynne’s bio on your own because it is so vast and brimming to the top of inspirational experiences and actions. She’s worked with Mother Theresa in Calcutta, Maya Angelou, Deepak Chopra, Oprah, just to skim the surface. She is quite possibly the most inspirational person I have come across in modern times.

Over the past few weeks a topic I keep swirling around in my personal journal and trying to flush out a way to expand on it publicly is how I find inspiration and model to my children to do the same? There has been much chatter post release of the book the Anxious Generation on best practices for parenting the new frontier of social media and digital communication. To be fair, I have not read Anxious Generation but I have seen enough shares on Instagram stories of the clips from an Atlantic article about the book to get the gist. Kids mental health is on a sharp decline as screen time is on the rise. While the call to action’s of withholding social media and smart phones until later in teen-dom are fantastic, my fear, as someone who keeps a pulse on emerging tech, is that thinking about this issue in its current iteration is putting a bandaid on a dam. As technology gets easier, faster, and even more rapidly changing than anything we have seen in the past, it’s challenging to even hypothesize on what the next big thing alluring our kids in the next 5 years (but probably less to be frank) will be. What can I do to help my children on a personal level? What tools can I help them sharpen that can withstand whatever the attention grabbing gadget du jour is?

For me, avoiding the traps of easy-to-digest “inspirational” type content that is a wrapper around some sort of sales pitch is paramount to staying creative and growing as an employer, mom, wife, friend. I really think at the root of my desire to work with modern creatives is simply that I live for the second hand high that only comes from being in the rooms with people putting work out into the world they are SO passionate about. I love to see the way different brains work and what they are driven by. Being able to share someone else’s beautiful and unique worldview is one of life’s greatest treasures that feels harder and harder to come by these days. I want to show my children what it looks like for me to seek inspiration and how to support those that inspire me. Now that my daughter is getting older, any chance I can to take her to art shows, small business pop ups, or really any chance to see creativity on display IRL I do. Last week, we were able to bring her to her first concert, not just for the sole purpose of wanting her to love live music like her dad and I do, but I wanted her to experience the thrill of live performance and see if it strikes inspiration in her. Creativity laid bare. It was so beautiful to watch her mesmerized by the artistry of the show.

I love to talk out with her why I buy what I buy, who I buy it from, what being a small business owner has done for our family and why I like to pay it forward and reinvest in other modern creatives. I want my children to be able to have the opportunity that I was able to have- to start my own business that not only was able to give me flexibility and financial benefits but also to do the same for others. But like so many things we are watching slip away right now, I am scared that opportunity might be a thing of the past as well if we don’t reexamine our relationship with who we consume from. I am a big believer that education leads to empowerment which is fueling my current work to educate consumers on just how much power they have in where they spend their money. About how differently it looks when it is spent at a large mass manufactured entity as opposed to a small business with owners who deeply care about the employees they are stewards of and communities they are rooted in. I want to educate and empower modern small business owners to keep up the exhausting trail we are on of constantly having to pivot and evolve because it is SO worth it. The feeling that comes with looking at your team of people that are able to have meaningful employment as a result of pushing your own boundaries of what you think you are capable of is a close second to having children. And I want more good, lovely, creative people to feel that power and keep being an inspiration to the ones one step behind.

Which brings me to sitting at the Denver airport yesterday morning, laptop open, happy to have a chance to catch up on all I missed at work at my company, Amor. The team is drumming up a new affiliate program that we want to be more of a dual approach. We want to find people that appreciate the way we do business and share it with their audiences and in turn we do the same. The team was firing off amazing ideas on our slack and I was laughing at Brittany’s back stories on how the nice guy that set up our new affiliate tracking app was so lovely and Canadian and had a dog. This is the culture that I am just so damn proud of. A team that goes out of their way to connect with every person in the Amor ecosystem- not just the clients. I was sitting there in a moment of gratitude on how rare it is to be genuinely excited to catch up on work after a few days away and how I know I am supposed to help more people do the same. But it’s hard?? And out of my comfort zone? I love my small but mighty crew of consulting clients so much but I am not in the game to have people long term- I want to be able to happily say “you don’t need me any more! Your oxygen mask is properly on, now go help others do the same!” I would like to have more people to serve with my hacks and tips and tricks that have helped me so much. But I just can’t get over the cringe mountain as my lovely client Courtney talks about so often to put myself out there farther than my inner circle.

As I sat at the little shared work table waiting for our flight, I snapped a pic of our work slack thread trying to come up with a caption for an instastory that wouldn’t sound braggadocious about being on vacation and how much I love catching up on work after a reset. I couldn’t come up with anything so I abandoned the task as I typically do and quickly glanced up to see who had occupied the seat in front of my at the tiny table.

Readers, if I were you I would think this next part was made up. And I will take no offense if you do because I would be cozied up in that same boat next to you.

But as I gazed up to see my new table mate it was none other than:

LYNNE FREAKING TWIST.

I did a double take. There’s no way. Fortunately her bag was on the table with her name tag hanging off the side. Without thinking, I reached out and touched her hand and exclaimed wide eyed and probably slightly deranged looking, “YOU ARE LYNNE TWIST?!” Fortunately, Lynne is as lovely as she seems in her interviews and giggled at my shock instead of running away.

“I am!” she exclaimed, “and who are you?”

After I rambled, I am certain very ineloquently, for minutes about how much her work means to me and how inspirational she is to me, she asked me about what I do. I told her about the company I started 10 years ago and how much it means to me to be an employer and hold my own as a modern small business owner. I laid out my dreams to want to inspire more modern creatives and educate consumers on their power to shape the future with where they spend. She listened so intently and looked up my store online while we were chatting and commented how cute and happy everything was. She encouraged me to keep up my dreams of helping other creatives find their passions and expand on them. She told me she was headed to Asheville to spend a week with her team at Pachamama Alliance to tackle new ways of reversing climate change. “Are you on my flight?” she asked. For a brief second I wanted to say yes just to have more time to stand in line with her but I had to admit that I was headed to the other Carolina. On her parting words she told me not to buy into the media narrative of doom and gloom and how she feels more hopeful than ever. “We got ourselves into this mess and we can get ourselves out, I absolutely know it!” And she blew me a kiss as she walked away.

Michael walked up and asked who my friend was I had been chatting with so intently for an early morning flight post having more than our share of wine the night before.

“Just one of the most inspirational voices alive”

I sat on the plane processing for the entirety of the flight. Fretting over a non existent version of reality where she didn’t sit right in front of me and just a couple of seats over or if I never would have looked up! The chances for that once in a lifetime encounter were so slim and could have very easily been missed! Why didn’t I snap a pic?? DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN??

Today, I am just soaking up the universe’s very direct answer to my ask for more inspiration. I hope that it inspires you to seek out the ways you want to feel motivated and find people living life in such a way it can inspire your 4 minute mile.

I have a strong feeling you will be hearing more from me and I am so grateful you have taken the time to listen.

“you have a new subscriber on substack” is one of my very favorite things to see in my inbox these days so if you would like to subscribe to my work for free I would be overjoyed to occupy space in your inbox!