Beyond the Brand: Creating People-First Organizations with Nader Safina

In this powerful episode of Operational Harmony, we dive deep with Nader Safina, founder of Black Ribbit, into the revolutionary intersection of company culture and branding. From questioning traditional job descriptions to navigating the complexities of hybrid work environments, Nader shares invaluable insights on creating truly people-first organizations.

Discover how modern workplaces are evolving, why traditional hiring practices need an overhaul, and the importance of authentic company culture in today's business landscape. Whether you're a leader, employee, or entrepreneur, this conversation offers practical wisdom for creating more harmonious and effective work environments.

Timestamps in comments below 👇

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Nader Safinya
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Speaker 2: [00:00:00] My name is, Naina. I am the, founder and principal of Black Ribbon. We are a culture branding agency, and what that means is that we help companies become people first organizations.

Speaker 2: Who are inherently and cohesively answering the questions, why would anyone wanna buy from us and why would anyone wanna work for us? And we do that through a unique model that, I created, which is, designing the company, excuse me, the, customer facing brand and the employee facing brand at the same time, and really giving both sides a reason to want to interact and engage with that organization.

Speaker 3: Welcome. 

Speaker 4: Thank 

Speaker 3: How do you start the process, like when you first get a new client, how does that start off and how do you build that? Because I've done some net, I do, digital marketing and stuff like that. But building that like front facing and employee facing [00:01:00] thing seems more difficult than that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually a good question. So normally, as you sort of alluded to right now, if you're talking about branding, marketing, sales, even leadership, they're primarily, if not exclusively focused on the customer experience to the point where they almost neglect the employee experience.

Speaker 2: And then you have, change management, hr, recruiting coaches and so on, focused on the employee experience. And these two sides almost never talk. So the gap that I identified a few years ago that really became apparent after, co during and after Covid was this just. Canyons size gap between a company's culture and its branding.

Speaker 2: So essentially the market is not getting what the market sees. And this is very apparent in the moment that someone applies for a job. The experience that they're expecting once they apply for a job is not what they [00:02:00] actually get. What they read about the company's values and so on, is not what they experience.

Speaker 2: And in fact, I have a question to pose you and everybody. When is the last time you read a job description and re the, it actually spoke about your quality of life. When's the last time you read a job description that described how that job will impact your quality of life as opposed to how you are gonna impact the company and how you are gonna, what your role is gonna be and how you are gonna help the company, but the other way around.

Speaker 2: So when you ask about the process, the first thing we do is just simply ask questions. Just understand, you how both sides of the, organization perceive the brand in question, how they feel about it, how they interact with it, and how, the experiences that they have with the organization make them feel as both a customer and or an employee.

Speaker 2: And as a [00:03:00] human, 

Speaker 3: My experience with, job descriptions is you'll do this, this, and this, plus do anything else we want you to do. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Basically that's really enjoy those kind of things. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Essentially, I mean, basically that's what it is. If they're talking about. Often they'll throw in benefits at the end of the job description.

Speaker 2: There'll be like, you'll get, if it's a full-time gig, for example, it'll be like, you'll get a 401k, you'll get such and such under, the laws of whatever. This is an equal opportunity's job, but it never talks about how it's going to actually impact your life. can you picture yourself where, what your life is gonna be like in three years if you take this job?

Speaker 2: And what's interesting is that the way that job descriptions are normally posed, you are, as the applicant we're so trained to not even notice it. But, as the applicant, you are reading it as a project. You're like, Ooh, yeah, this [00:04:00] sounds like a really cool gig. And you're not even thinking about like, what's gonna happen after the 12th month, or, by the time 24 months has gone by.

Speaker 2: And they don't talk about career ladders. They don't talk about stepping stones. They don't talk about training. They don't talk about how your family's going to be impacted by how your personal life's gonna be impacted by it. It, they, it never does that. And I find that fascinating. I find that very interesting.

Speaker 3: And I feel like you could screen a lot of, not just applicants, but also position yourself in a way that's really putting people first. If you were to simply just re just adjust the language of your job descriptions would change a lot of perceptions about you as a company. 

How do you get them to so for me, getting a client to do it the way I want them to do it is sometimes like, the old blacksmith ripping a tooth out of somebody's mouth because. It is that [00:05:00] difficult. Not because I'm bad at saying, Hey, this is what we need to do, but it's, the reluctance of somebody to change how they've always done it.

Speaker 3: So how do you handle those kind of moments where somebody's beating back, not because it's a bad idea or anything, but it's, I've always done it this way. Yeah. This is the right way to do it type deal. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. That is usually the point of friction is that people are definitely reluctant to change anyway, just inherently.

Speaker 2: Something this big can just feel so daunting and scary. It comes from the research, honestly. The research is our greatest tool. Otherwise everything is just an opinion, right? If you can't lean into the data is showing that, then. Then it becomes a, he said, she said thing, and, everyone then you can go, well, why would we change it?

Speaker 2: We've always been doing it that in this way. And when the second someone says, why would we change it? You have an answer. You say, [00:06:00] because we just did all this work and we did all this research. And not only, is the, it's one thing to say the market is showing this, and, trends are showing that.

Speaker 2: And, your competitors are doing this and everyone else in your category is doing it this way. Then the same response is actually still allowed. You can be like, well, we're not them and we've always done it like this, so why would we do it like that? And that's when the the qualitative internal studies really become valuable because you go, well, you as the leadership perceive your organization in this way, and you think that it's working in a certain way and yet.

Speaker 2: That is not resonating with your entire staff, or at least like 90% of your staff or whatever. Mm-hmm. And you can say, you know, we inter, we actually interviewed a sample of your staff, let's say 30 people, in addition to serving, the entire organization where we got like 87 [00:07:00] re percent response rate. And on top of that we did observational studies, we walked around your organization, you know, we followed people around, we shadowed them, we saw how they were working and so on, and so on and so on.

Speaker 2: And then all that data compiled is a real reflection of what's actually going on. And that's the response you give. And at that point, then it's like, well, I'm not really telling you what to do here. I'm just telling you, showing you what the data suggests. And whether you act on it or not, at this point is up to you.

Speaker 2: And if you don't, well I can tell you with great confidence that nothing's gonna change. And the sort of contention that you're experiencing today is either gonna get worse or continue to stay the same, but it's certainly not gonna get better. I can guarantee you that. So that's the position that we take and that I take in that argument.

Speaker 3: Okay. That makes sense. So kind of [00:08:00] parallel to that, when you're, and I don't know if it's parallel to that, but the whole, hiring process. 

Speaker 3: I personally haven't applied to a job in a very long time 'cause I'll work for myself and I'm not filling out a job application 'cause I don't wanna, but, you do hear about people trying to get hired and they're filling out all these, forms 

Speaker 2: and intake forms. Yeah. The forms and stuff. 

Speaker 3: But also, so there's a couple of pain points that I've heard about in, just, from my side of things. So one of the pain points that I get that I've heard about is that when applying, there's videos about this where it goes, please attach your CV and then the next, and then you hit next after you've done that. And it's like, okay, now fill in all your experience. God. Yeah, 

Speaker 4: I know. 

Speaker 3: Stop.

Speaker 3: I don't know. But the rage that, that fills me with just saying it, nevermind actually [00:09:00] having to do with like, I don't know how some people don't throw their computers out the window for having to do that, a lot to try to get a job. So why did they do that? Is there a reason or is it just because they wanna be a pain in the neck?

Speaker 2: So, man, that's such a good question. I think. So the reason from a technical, standpoint is, that there's a machine on the other side that's reading the applications, so it's looking for specific keywords and so on. And it's not sophisticated enough to digest an uploaded PDF because A PDF could be, written in various formats or saved out in different, and when I say formats, I mean like layouts and fonts and designs and things like that.

Speaker 2: So their intake, system might not be sophisticated enough to handle that. Now, the reason that's stupid is because that current systems can digest, A PDF [00:10:00] in any format, in any sort of layout or anything. You upload, use chat, EPT or Claude as an example, sort of. Into those systems, they can 98% of the time read it pretty damn accurately.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: Regardless of how it's set up or anything, they actually know how to create the hierarchy of what's going on without header tags or any sort of labels on the backend. So my, in my experience and, from what I understand, those systems are simply old. They're simply archaic and they haven't been updated.

Speaker 2: And that is something that needs to be addressed. It needs to be updated so that it creates a more efficient application system. Because you're right, I feel the same way. It enrages me when I upload it and then I go to the thing and it's asking me literally the same stuff, and now I have to type everything out or copy and paste it.

Speaker 2: And you're like, that's one. What if I'm applying to, [00:11:00] you know, like I did in 2021 to 460 jobs in six months and getting like no responses. I got one interview after which that job was no longer even available, and then I got like 26 rejections, which were all clearly from some sort of robot. And then, so what is that?

Speaker 2: 27 out of 460. So like 430, nothing, just no response. And, making me feel like I was in some black void with no mirrors, making me feel totally insane. And you know, you want to do that thing where you're uploading and typing and uploading and typing 400 times, I mean, that's insane.

Speaker 2: And then, add to the fact that the application systems that to which you are referring, they're putting like required. You don't even have a choice to skip them. You have to fill it out. And you don't know, like, is it necessary, is it not necessary? I just uploaded my [00:12:00] CV anyway.

Speaker 2: Why are you asking me again? So before anything even happens as an applicant, you're just like pissed off. You're like, mm-hmm do I even wanna continue down this path? Is it even worth my time? Then you start looking at the job description again. You're like, is this worth my time? Should I just go to a LinkedIn, profile with the easy apply attached to it, and just do that instead?

Speaker 2: And then, you know that, that's when you start going down these routes of self-doubt and self-questioning, and you're like, is it worth it? Is it not worth it? Am I worth it? Am I not worth it? And so these points of friction and horrible design just create unnecessary stress in the applicant's. Sort of existence and they go down these traps of self-doubt, which is just not cool, man.

Speaker 2: It's totally unnecessary. And it could be designed in such a more people centered sort of way where you're not only concerned but [00:13:00] empathetic for the applicant's experience and wanting to make sure that anyone who's gonna be, viable or, you know, suitable for this role is actually applying because you want that person to apply.

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: The other stories I've heard are from interviews. So you've got the people who do interviews very, very well and like you want to keep those people, obviously I'm not talking about them. Then you have the ones where the interviewer person doing the interviewing is late. They don't have the right paperwork that they need.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Or this company has set it up so you have to talk to seven people before they can even remotely give you an answer. I don't know about you, but I don't have the time or the want to go interview seven times with a company just to go, oh, we decided to go in another way. If you even get that. 

Speaker 4: [00:14:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2: 'cause there are a lot of companies, like you just said, where even if you do the interview, they just ghost. They don't say, Hey, we weren't able to get, you know, you in a spot, you'll be kept in for another six months. If we have another thing, we'll contact you. None of that kind of information gets shared, but that used to be, so what needs to change there? 

Yeah, that's a really, valid point as well. And my response to that is actually goes down, to the purpose behind the organization, the purpose behind the role, the purpose for, the job itself. And, because look, if you can give a valid reason, a valid, useful reason as to why it takes four months, six months to hire somebody and why they have to go through seven people, then maybe you can justify it.

Speaker 2: But if you're going to justify it and you're gonna have a valid reason, then the [00:15:00] interviewee needs to know what the hell is going on, and they need to expect that length of time, and they need to understand that's the only way that this job, not only is it gonna be worth their time if they make it to the end, but that there's a reason that leadership in the organization requires it to be as such, and that role needs to fit those parameters.

Speaker 2: Because there are certain roles that absolutely do not need you to go through seven people and six months of interviews and tests and questions and whatever. And for you to put your life on hold for half a year because this job is just so worth it. It's just, it just depends. It depends. I, there's no straight answer for that.

Speaker 2: And the reason that, like what we do, what I, why I do what I do is to be able to give reason to those, to those processes and to evaluate that process and to see if it's actually necessary for somebody to go through seven people in this organization for this type of role. If you're talking about a role that [00:16:00] I don't know, impacts actual human lives, perhaps it is necessary if it's, depending on the type of role that it is, if it's impacting,

Speaker 2: Administration or, some sort of like executive role in, in an a administrative sort of company. You need basically a strong sense of character and to understand that this person can jive with this organization from a point of personality and chemistry. And then the rest is technical.

Speaker 2: And if they have the prowess, then why not bring them on? That should take maybe a couple weeks. And then of course the size of the organization, responsibilities and so on also impact those kinds of processes. But it's important that everything is laid out in the open. You said something that resonated with me is, you'll get through the five months only to find out that we're gonna go in another direction.

Speaker 2: There needs to be consistent points of communication throughout that six months. 'cause that's [00:17:00] insane for anybody. To be sitting around for a hundred and what, 70 days waiting to see if you're gonna get the job or not. And you know, in the meantime what's happening if tho that same applicant is applying to other jobs and they're doing it much faster and they're going through the rounds quicker, they offer them the job faster because they find out that this person is actually valuable and they're good talent and all that, and you're gonna miss out on that opportunity anyway as the other organization.

Speaker 2: So it's honestly, it's not a simple straight answer because it depends on the organization, on why it exists, the experiences they're trying to create and the values that they hold. One thing that I can say across the board though is that transparency goes a long way and does put people ahead of everything else to make sure that their lives are not completely disrupted while you're trying to make a decision in the background.

Speaker 3: So [00:18:00] what are some, I don't know if I wanna say stories, because some of that's kind of confidential, I'm guessing. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: What are some hurdles you've overcome, like within yourself, within your business, within, you know, going to somebody else's business and finally getting them to like, break the chains of, but we've always done it. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I can talk about, myself with that for sure. We always fall into, as leaders of our own lives, as it were, we fall into the traps of regular, of familiarity as it were, right? Like we become either too comfortable or unable to see other possibilities or other options because, not because, we're inherently against them, but just because we don't want to, it feels too risky or too unsafe or, you know, it, one sentiment that I believe [00:19:00] is across the board, you can, either agree or disagree is, we become so well versed in our own ways that we're just like, you know, there shouldn't be another way.

Speaker 2: Or, moreover, this is actually one of the most common ones, is like we put in so much work into a certain thing. You know, you put in so much time and effort and work and. When it gets to a point where it's just not working and it's not succeeding in the way that you want, you just don't wanna believe that all your effort was for nothing.

Speaker 2: But to say that it's for nothing is also an absolutism. And it's not to say that it was for nothing, because if you can sort of look at it from a lens of I did everything I could to make this thing work, and it still doesn't, that means you learn something from that. And all that effort brought you to a point where you can literally say, okay, this is just not working in the way that I thought it would.

Speaker 2: And it's time to [00:20:00] readjust or reevaluate. And I did this with my own processes. I did this with my own model. My signature model is called the inside outside In model. There was a period where that model took, almost eight months to implement, to deliver, each. It's a four phase model. Each phase took two months to complete.

Speaker 2: Which is very long. Eight months is more than half a year. That's a long time. It's a very heavy investment. It's a heavy investment from the client, from my own team and so on. It, it bogs down my pipeline on, how many people we can work with at a time and so on, and like how many people it requires to actually design this thing and so on and so on and so on and so on.

Speaker 2: And over time I kept readdressing it and readjusting it and reassessing it. And now it's a four month process. And we've increased the delivery time, we've increased the value, we've reduced the time it takes to do it, and everyone's happier for it. [00:21:00] And as a result, internally, my team has become more efficient.

Speaker 2: Our processes have become more efficient. And the way that we addressed that was to just step back and. Look at our own values again, like our own branding. What is it that we value as an organization, as a team, as a people? And, are we consistently living those values? And when the answer is no, when you have those values set in stone, you can answer that question very simply.

Speaker 2: And I think anytime I've fallen into these, I've hit these walls, even with clients and other organizations, that's why I go back to the research. I wanna make sure that what they value is actually being applied across the board. And it's not this, you know, you know, the old, the parents model.

Speaker 2: Like you, you do, as I say, not as I do. And like make sure that you're living [00:22:00] your values and that you're actually embodying them. And that when you talk about, well, this is how we've always done it. Take a step back and be like, but why have you always done it like that? And you can't say, because that's all, that's the way we've always done it.

Speaker 2: You have to say, because we value X, Y, and Z and we want people to experience A, B, and C. If you can't answer a why question with that response, then you need to reassess what you're doing. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't think, because I said so has ever been a valid argument.

Speaker 2: You say that. No, absolutely not. Ironically, even in military, 'cause you know, one might say, well, that's what it's like in the military. The military, there's no questions. You just do what you're told. But that's not even true because they also can lean into. Why do we do it like this?

Speaker 2: Because [00:23:00] we value X, Y, and Z and we want people to experience A, B, and C. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: They have a very resolute, in fact, the military is an interesting case study when it comes to branding and organization and policy and process. Because they are so bound by a value system. They're so bounded by a value system that they do embody it, that they do live it.

Speaker 2: Even ex-military still embodies the values of that they learned and grew up with, and were trained in from their time in the military. And it's something so resolute that it's so evident and felt across the board. Even if you're not in the military or even, agree with the military or its ways or otherwise, you'd have to be.

Speaker 2: It's very, thick not to see that, they are bound by a set of values. And it's not because I told you so. It's because we want to experience a certain thing and to raise a [00:24:00] certain kind of person and to create a certain kind of person and experience. Therefore, we do it this way. 

Speaker 3: Yep. Once a marine.

Speaker 3: Always a marine. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And they all eat crayons, so it's fine. , some marines lean into that. They'll actually have the crayons in their pocket, and if they meet another marine, they'll be like, okay, what's your favorite flavor?

Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you ask them why the crayons, they'll still give you the line because we value this and we wanna experience that.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: But like the people who fought fight next to each other, who are always, you know, there for each other in the, on the ship, on the battlefield, wherever they are, they grow connections.

Speaker 3: And then when they go to the next thing, it just kind of like, oh, you're a marine. You are in that same situations. I got you covered [00:25:00] too. They're always reaching out and trying to help. Some people do fall through the tracks and stuff, but I was a military brat, so 

Speaker 4: yeah, 

Speaker 3: okay. So are did you have a book? 

Speaker 2: No, I'm actually working on one. 

Speaker 3: Oh, okay. 

Speaker 2: I have a podcast. What is that 

Speaker 3: gonna be ready? 

Speaker 2: The goal is to have it published by the spring. 

Speaker 3: Okay. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And what is it gonna be about? 

Speaker 2: It's about all this, in essence to become a culture brand and what that means and how, what steps need to be taken to even be, begin to accomplish that.

Speaker 2: And where it all started, which, where the ideal started with me, which was during CVID. And, the emphasis that put on the gap between the employee and the employer relationship, the emphasis it put on self-care, how the US as usual, pushed that notion off the cliff and it became, in my words, selfish care.[00:26:00] 

Speaker 2: And, exacerbated the individualistic mindset of this nation and this society where it became all about me. And the notion that self-care is actually about being able to take care of yourself in order to take care of others so that you can exist in a, sort of cohesive environment and manner so that you're not, it's not about self-care, is not about individualism.

Speaker 2: In fact, it's about being in a healthy state of mind, in a healthy body, in a healthy capacity, so that you're available so that you're capable, so that you're able, to be a human, to be, what you need to be, to serve others, to serve yourself, to serve your family, and so on. And that's when the great resignation came about, right in 2021, where people were .

Speaker 2: Leaving their work on mass. And it became this, I'm not being taken care of. What about my needs? What about my needs? And the two-sided narrative was just [00:27:00] broken. It be, it was lost because it was like, okay, you're bailing on people because your needs are being not being met, but you have no sense in what's that, what that's doing to the person on whom you're bailing.

Speaker 2: And that could be said for anything, any two relationships. And but the positive side of that was that it's shown a big, bright light on, the problem with leadership and management and how management was actually acting like that. Management was like, we need you to do this and we need you to do that, and this is what you're gonna do for us, and so on and so on.

Speaker 2: And never talking about what they're gonna do for their employees and, that's what emphasized this narrative, and that's what sort of prompted this whole direction that I've been taking. 

Speaker 3: Okay. You have a podcast? 

Speaker 2: I do have a podcast. Yeah. It's called, frog Talk. It's actually also about all this stuff.

Speaker 2: It's the same thing. It's about branding and the modern workplace and, [00:28:00] talking about employee wellbeing and how company culture impacts, a person's personal life to the point where I've spoken with, couples like marriage counselors and such, because again, like even in our conversation, just now, I, we barely touched on like the personal side of what all this does.

Speaker 2: What all this means. Like what does this mean for a person's personal life? We talked about it in the job description and so on, but. it's interesting to see the perspective of someone who deals with people in their personal, environment as opposed to just the organizational environment, in the organizational environment.

Speaker 2: That's what we talk about all the time. We're talking about the workspace, but we don't talk about how that impacts, like what they take home with them. When they have a crappy day at work, how does that impact the home life? Or on the other hand, if they have a great day at work, how does that impact the home life?

Speaker 2: I've heard stories of, we're putting in [00:29:00] programs where the, a person's spouse, like an employee's spouse is calling leadership and thanking them for creating such a great environment to where you know, their partner is coming home feeling good and they can actually separate home in life, or at least if it's harmonious, then that's what it is.

Speaker 2: It's a place where everyone feels like they're contributing in a positive way. 

Speaker 3: Switching to the more personal side of things, I know from experience, not with corporate life, but I know that if I have a bad day while I'm sitting at this computer, because, everybody wanted things when they wanted them.

Speaker 3: And they wanted it. Now. Like if I have five people call me and they all want this thing done right now, and I'm going, well, you're gonna have to wait. You're not the person line. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Then I know that like I can go to my friend who I vent to and she's like, why are you yelling at [00:30:00] me? And I'm like, I'm not yelling at you.

Speaker 3: I'm just agitated. I get that part because like, it's still, why do I have to do this? And I, it's my own fault because it's something I agreed to do. Right. Like it's my own fault in this case, but having it be somebody else, like a manager calling on your day off and saying, you have to come in. Oh yeah.

Speaker 3: You're the only one available. I'm not available. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. You 

Speaker 3: know, so how do you cross that gap and make sure that people, maybe you're not okay per se, but like are having less of that yelling at somebody to vent off everything after they get home, because things are better or at least more smooth at work than they used to be.

Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. That's a really good question. So one of the things that we like to emphasize, when we develop and design these programs is actually understanding [00:31:00] a person's, like the employee lifestyle. Because, for example, we talk, there's a big talk about, the generation gap in the workforce.

Speaker 2: There's never been a time where there's been a larger gap between the oldest generation and the youngest generation. And, to the point where they can't even communicate with each other. They don't speak the same language. And, but more so than that, what's more impactful, in terms of how an employee behaves their, and their interactions and dynamics with the workplace is lifestyle and personality.

Speaker 2: Because you could have people from two, separated by two generations with the same personality and the same lifestyle. They could both have, for example, two single women, have sort of the same social lifestyle. One might be in her forties, the other one might be in her twenties.

Speaker 2: Or same with two single men, or conversely, two men who have two kids and a partner. One is [00:32:00] 28, the other one is 50. But there's some similarities in those two individuals. And, so the way that we address that is by essentially setting up, policies for, creating boundaries and understanding what, what kind of personalities require, what kind of environments and what kind of work settings.

Speaker 2: And remember, we're also talking about, work environments that might implement hybrid, like working from home and remote style workplaces, whereas some organizations don't even, it's not even a question of allowing one or the other. They're not. It's not a work from home situation. if you're a factory worker or an assembly line worker or some sort of, researcher or r and d kind of person where you have to be in a laboratory setting or factory setting, or otherwise you don't have the capacity to work from home anyway.

Speaker 2: So how do you mitigate that through a communication strategy [00:33:00] and a, communication policy that allows for one, the ability to vent when you need to at work, to the right people to have an outlet for complaints or, any sort of negative reinforcement or negative stimulation or environment or otherwise.

Speaker 2: And, I can't speak to how people should behave in their home life. That's something that they need to sort of figure out. Whether it's through an actual professional counselor or just through experimentation with themselves or reading books or otherwise, all I know is that, for example, if we're talking about working from home, if you live in a single bedroom apartment, you just can't, your lifestyle doesn't afford you the luxuries of having two bedrooms, a separate office or otherwise, and you're living inside your house with your kids and your family and your dogs and everything.

Speaker 2: Well, working in that environment for eight hours a day, nine hours a day sucks, [00:34:00] no matter how you slice it. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: That sucks. Anyway, I can attest to that and then if you have like a separate office kind of a situation in your home where you can close the doors and physically separate yourself.

Speaker 2: From all the goings on in your life, your spouse or your kids or whatever, and you set rules and you say from nine to 12 every morning you can't come in here. And then from one to six you can't come in here, I'll come out, maybe every, for 15 minutes here and there, and we can spend some time together that's on you.

Speaker 2: But as far as, and that's, it is what it is. That's something not everyone can control. And it's just a consequence of cost, of living economic situations or otherwise. But as far as the work life is concerned and the workplace is concerned, we're very much about understanding who the employees are, what kind of personalities they have, what kind of lifestyles they have, what kind of home life they have, so that we can in fact create a [00:35:00] work environment that accommodates those parameters while ensuring that they have enough ownership and,

Speaker 2: to create the motivation and the visibility that they require in order to do the best work that they can so that when they go home, they're not carrying a whole bunch of, stress and load and whatever weight on their back from the workday that they can actually disconnect. 

Speaker 3: Talking about corporate life, I have trouble with, because like I said, I've never been in corporate life.

Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the closest I came to that is working for Walmart and yeah, that didn't go well. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, 

Speaker 3: But, the big thing that, one of the bigger things that I have heard is, employees don't leave jobs. They leave managers. 

Speaker 4: Managers. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: How do you guys, do you have any.

Speaker 3: Things that you do to try to check the management for being that kind of a person, that somebody is fleeing [00:36:00] the job for that person because of that person, and like maybe training or something to help the managers to be able to figure out the stuff. 

Speaker 2: A hundred percent, absolutely. So before I speak on that, even if you're working for yourself as a freelancer, the most important thing honestly is boundaries and being able to manage your time, right?

Speaker 2: Like, you know, this, because time management one is huge. Like I years ago, so I came up in, sort of corporate as it were. And so I learned about, the, we had a 10 to six workday, actually. It was kind of the best hours ever, but it was 10 to six. There was even times when I took on, meant more roles, not for more pay.

Speaker 2: I was just given more roles. And, I was working 12 hour days for a while, like from seven to seven. And even though the workday started at 10, I was there three hours before everybody and I left an hour after everyone else, that kind of a thing. And [00:37:00] that didn't last very long to the point where I put my foot down and I went straight to the top.

Speaker 2: I went to the CEO and the owner of the company and I was like, this is not sustainable. This is stupid. Like you guys, you need to hire people for these other roles. I can't sustain this. It's not, I'm gonna burn out so fast. It's been four months and this is already crazy. And I was working every other Saturday as well because of the various, departments I was running.

Speaker 2: As an individual, as an independent, it's important to be able to set those boundaries. And now even as a business owner now today, running a company, I work, I still work 60 hours a week on average, but I'm giving myself cutoffs. So I work from eight in the morning till 6:00 PM and then from Sunday through Friday and Saturday, I don't work.

Speaker 2: And this is something that I've made a rule around this and I've told my team, I've told my clients, I say, I do not, I am offline [00:38:00] from 6:00 PM until 8:00 AM every day. So if you hit me up in the middle of the night, I'm not gonna get back to you and to the point where until the next morning, I will get back to you first thing in the morning.

Speaker 2: But you have to wait at least 10 hours. And then, my company is run the same way. So we'll say. And it's, again, it's because of the, well, for the wellbeing of my team. I'm like, I am not, we're not a 24 hour agency here. I'm not gonna tell my people to be available 24 hours a day. You have open access to us, but our response time is within the windows of when we're available, which is either 10 hours a day, I mean, which is 10 hours a day.

Speaker 2: So that's it. And as far as training managers, absolutely. The programs that we put in place, are with the intention of ensuring that they're putting together a culture of retention, a culture that's desirable, an environment that people want to be a part of. Answering that original question, [00:39:00] why would anyone wanna work here?

Speaker 2: And, by instilling those programs and processes and dynamics we'll bring in, because Black Rivet ourselves, we don't employ coaches. But our, our extended network and our team is connected to, executive coaches, personal coaches, leadership coaches, and otherwise who come in, when it's suitable to implement the program that we put together.

Speaker 2: And as you know, every coach is not suitable for every environment. When we put in a certain kind of program for, to, cultivate a certain kind of culture, then we bring in the suitable coach that, that possesses that mindset and embodies that type of leadership who can very easily manage or coach those managers to, shift their mindset and start embodying those values.

Speaker 2: Because, and I think you and I talked about this last time, but those changes come from the top. It's a bottom, it's a top, down [00:40:00] approach. If leadership doesn't embody. So what we were saying earlier, you do what? I say, no, not as I do. If the leadership is not embodying the values they're trying to instill, then nothing's gonna happen anyway.

Speaker 2: There won't be any change.

Speaker 3: I know that you, either today or when we discussed before, said that you had some problems. Obviously you filled out 460 something. Yeah. So, how did you overcome being turned down or ignored that much? Because I know I get ignored for five minutes and I'm going to go claws somebody up. Not really.

Speaker 3: I don't. But where I'm like, okay, now you have to pay attention to me 'cause I'm right here and you're gonna pay attention to me. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. So, God, Nikki, that is such a good question. I can't even like pinpoint, a moment or a turning point or something because it was a period where I honestly [00:41:00] just felt like, I felt psychotic.

Speaker 2: You know? I just felt crazy. It felt, talk about being, feeling invisible. And then, as a human, I need feedback. Human, we as humans need feedback to adjust, to change, to react and so on. As a designer, I require it. Like I go absolutely nuts when I don't have feedback.

Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know what to do here. I'm gonna just keep doing what I'm doing until, there's something breaks that pattern. And I go, oh, okay, this is what I should be doing instead. And it's just, you know, 'cause otherwise I'm like, as my strategist and designer brain is like, there's no reason to change until there's a reason to change.

Speaker 2: So unless I have that reason, I'm gonna keep doing it the way that I'm doing it. And people are going, you know, why don't you do it this way or do it that way, or try that. I'm like, why? And they're like, I can't give you a reason. I'm like, then I'm not gonna try it. [00:42:00] So when it came to looking for jobs, it was the same thing.

Speaker 2: And I'm going, well, do I change my cv? Do I change my resume? Do I change any of this? I don't know. Do, would I change it? I'm not getting any feedback. I don't know if it's good or bad, or. Whatever, to the point where recruiters were like, no, your resume is awesome. It's so perfect and blah, blah, blah. Your history is great and you have all this experience and you have a degree and blah, dah, dah, dah.

Speaker 2: And I'm like, clearly it's not perfect 'cause I don't know what perfect means in your world, but perfect in my world means at least I'd get a response. So getting over that man was not, I don't think it was like a active thing. I think it was just continue, just persisting, just doing what I was doing.

Speaker 2: Trying to get feedback from other people, like friends and colleagues. One of my friends, like you were saying, like he really came through for me. He was just there for [00:43:00] me. And he's a professional, so he had a lot of useful feedback. It didn't help me get a job, but at least it helped me feel sane and feel, seen at least.

Speaker 2: And then eventually, you know what I did actually, I got off the computer, I went outside, and I actually like started networking in the old school way. Like I went in, I joined a couple groups. Some friends here in Houston hit me up and invited me to their networking groups, and I started meeting people.

Speaker 2: Getting feedback in the field really helped me out, just like interacting. I mean, it was 2021, so it was still kind of early after covid and people were just shaking off the cobwebs. But, that really helped just being out there. I mean, I don't, you know, I think as people, whether we're introverts or otherwise, there comes a time when if you're around like-minded people, you miss it when you haven't had it in a [00:44:00] long time.

Speaker 2: If there are people that you can connect with and you can talk to in the same language, with the same themes and values, you're like, man, I've been in front of this screen for too long. I need to get out. And you don't even realize it because you become so encompassed in it and in rap, wrapped up in it that you don't even realize it until you're out there and you're like, oh my God, there's this whole other world out here that I forgot about.

Speaker 2: And ironically, when you're interacting with 12 people, you sometimes get more value than trying to interact with 10,000 strangers. I don't know if that answered your question, but it was like, it certainly wasn't one moment in time. It was a process of things. 

Speaker 3: So for me, I had a big turning point in my mental health because I went from not being able, like. I broke, I had something big happen. I 

Speaker: mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: Can honestly say I broke my brain, went into a thousand pieces and somebody [00:45:00] would ask, look, I know tech, right? Like, I can get on a computer, I can do all the things. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: I can do a lot of different things. I can't code, don't ask me to do that, but I can slap together a computer faster than, you know, and I can do things on the computer without it being a problem.

Speaker 3: And so I had somebody give me tasks to do because he couldn't do it. And so I would get this task and it basically was get the contacts outta Google. Yeah. Okay. This is gonna take 17 years in a day. 'cause like I had, I was getting overwhelmed by just thinking about doing it. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: And so it took forever to do things.

Speaker 3: And then I finally moved to a situation where things weren't happening, there shouldn't have been happening in the first place. And things just kind of calmed down. And once things were calm, my brain kind of switched on. Like somebody finally hit the light switch and I was just kind of like, oh, okay.[00:46:00] 

Speaker 3: Like it didn't fix anything. That's not when everything was fixed. Yeah. But it switched back on and I went from not being able to do anything to now I need to do everything so that I'm not stuck back in that black void of my brain. Right, 

Speaker 4: right. I don't 

Speaker 3: want to be in that. And I started working for that person who had been giving me the little tasks and slowly bit by bit I was able to do more and more and more and faster and.

Speaker 3: You know? 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Pretty soon I was like, Hey, I'm an actual worker bee. And so that's kind of how I started out because it was just, yeah, I can do that. Sure. Yeah. I'll go figure out how to actually do it now. And for me, the only times I have ever not wanted to work with somebody is when they started yelling.

Speaker 4: [00:47:00] Yeah, sure. I 

Speaker 3: don't like being yelled at. It's just this thing. And most of the time, at least from what I've seen, the person yelling is yelling because they haven't listened to what you've said. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's good. They let you 

Speaker 3: finish your sentence. Everything would be explained. And that 20 minute tantrum didn't need to happen.

Speaker 3: And I am really not the person to 20 minute tantrum at, because I'm just sitting there going, okay, baby. 

Speaker: Yeah, you 

Speaker 3: gonna shut up? Yet?

Speaker 3: That's when you stop 

Speaker 3: listening. You're like, well, I'm not thing at this point, I'm not participating in this 

Speaker 3: because like 

Speaker 2: all, 

Speaker 3: every once in a while I'll throw in a, you're not listening to me. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. 

Speaker 3: Because they're not listening. 

Speaker 2: When did you start working for yourself then? How long ago was that?

Speaker 2: It's 

Speaker 3: been, I've always worked for, well, not [00:48:00] always, but since I got my brain back, I worked for myself. 

Speaker 4: Right. 

Speaker 3: And I'll tell people, that's what I say. I say I, when I got my brain back, I started actually working for myself because yes, I was working for that one person. Then it turned into him, his company and another company.

Speaker 3: And then that one big company went away. And you know, I started grow, you know, okay, well now I need to network because now I need other people to work for. And so that kind of started that whole thing for me because I'm not used to networking. Yeah. My original person, I still work with him and he is great at word of mouth and he will literally be like, Hey Nikki, I heard from this person that they need X, Y, z.

Speaker 3: I told him that he could call you and you do it. Thanks. Maybe did you say that he would pay me? And he, sometimes he's like, no, no, this is a church friend, so it's free. [00:49:00] But, other friends, he's like, oh no, I told them that they'd have to pay you, that you'd have to work that out with them. I'm like, great, thanks.

Speaker 3: But, yeah, don't refer 

Speaker 2: my free services, please.

Speaker 3: We had that conversation. Yeah. He hasn't done that since then. Because I was like, after the third free person, I was like, Dave, 

Speaker 4: yeah. 

Speaker 3: Are you going to start paying me extra every time somebody like this comes along? And he's like, wait, what? I'm like, I can't keep working for free, my dude. And he was like, that makes sense.

Speaker 3: Bless his heart. 

Speaker 4: So 

Speaker 3: like, there's that big difference between customer like clients or I never know what to call people. I'm like, yeah, my customer client. It's fine. It's the person who pays me to do what I do. It's fine. Whatever, Mike. It's a, 

Speaker 2: it's a cluster, 

Speaker 3: it's a customer. Yep. Because [00:50:00] like some people are like, well, if they're a customer then they're always right.

Speaker 3: And I'm like, no, my people know that they are not always right because I will tell them, wait, what did you just say? Yeah. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Because I have that freedom. I am very grateful to have that freedom. Right. 

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. '

Speaker 3: cause I wouldn't, like, I did work in, what did I, it was called Roy Rogers. So like a McDonald's type thing.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. But it was all like rodeo themed. 

Speaker 4: Oh, okay. I don't even 

Speaker 3: know if it's still there. I have no idea. But, you know, you have a customer that comes up, they feel entitled 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: For you to act a certain way and they're gonna act as trashy as possible. . I don't handle people like that. I don't want to, the people I work with are people that I feel I can talk to and like we both understand where we're at in things.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Not to mention when you're, I mean, [00:51:00] look, at the end of the day, if you're offering a service, service oriented gig, that's your name on the line too. At the end of the day, if you're just, 'cause you know, the client wants something and they think they're right and you know better because you're the expert and they hired an expert.

Speaker 2: I think we as experts should do everything in our power to make sure that, the output is the way that we believe is best for the client because that's gonna be a better outcome for them, which will be a better outcome for us. And that's the argument that I think is often lost And, because your reputation is on the line. If you deliver poor work because someone told you to do that and you just didn't wanna argue or whatever, then that's gonna fall on you anyway. They're gonna get pissed at you. They're gonna say they wasted a bunch of money. And you know, this as well as I do, our industry is not, does not have a good reputation.

Speaker 2: And that's, there's a lot of accountability, self-accountability that [00:52:00] needs to be taken there. But it's there, it's two sides of the same coin. I do my best to make sure that my industry, the branding and communications and marketing industry does not have another stain on it.

Speaker 2: On its back because I wasn't able to deliver properly, or I was dishonest, or I wasn't transparent enough. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. And 

Speaker 2: that's, that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes because you need, we want the money, or you need the money, or whatever. And you have to be like, you know what? This isn't gonna work out because if we go about it this way, then I won't be able to deliver what I need to deliver in order for you to succeed.

Speaker 2: And you're gonna think it was my fault. And, I'd rather just, tell you to wait or do it later when you can afford it or send you somewhere that's gonna take better care of you. 

Speaker 3: The big thing for me is I don't do things how people expect them to be done. Sure. I do them the right way. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And while the right way for me is my right way with my, I don't really think of me having a reputation.

Speaker 3: I'm [00:53:00] not that big. I don't have that big of a head like whatever. But it's more my values because I'm not gonna be lying to anybody. I'm not going to be saying, I did one thing and do another. It's not that kind of a thing, but like, if somebody says, well, you have to take step 1, 2, 3, and I'm like, no, I don't.

Speaker 3: I know to get this project on the way, I'm being asked to do it. I need to do it. A, B, C. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And that will get the thing that they actually want and not what they think they want. And so I'll kind of go do that, but not in a way that is sneaky or underhanded. I'm just going, okay, so this is what you're saying, but this is what the contract says.

Speaker 3: This is what the contract says you wanted. Right. And now you're doing this. Like, I've had those conversations. The one, the thing for me is I, after experience, can now tell the type of person I want to work with. 

Speaker 4: Sure. So 

Speaker 3: you have the people you can, I'm not saying you have to be buddy, buddy with everybody you work [00:54:00] with, although I No.

Speaker 3: Quite the opposite. Yeah. I do tend to create friendships with some of the people I'm working with because I go into like every bit of their business. Like my hands are in all the pies. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Just because I work with people who are smaller businesses and they need that kind of a thing, networking for a corporation where my fingers being in all the pies would cause legal problems.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that, I think that dynamic does change and shift with the size of the company, especially, you know, if you're working, that to say that you don't have a reputation, in my opinion, is just false because you do with those people, you have a reputation with those people.

Speaker 2: It doesn't mean you're world famous necessarily. It just means that, you know, there is a network of people that know who you are and, if it ever came down to you starting to burn bridges with any of them, that would get around. 

Speaker 4: [00:55:00] Yeah. 

Speaker 2: And that would affect you as a person and your business.

Speaker 2: And, the dynamic absolutely does shift between different sized companies. I personally, I like to work with the business owner. The business founder, even if it's a bigger company. I want to make sure that I'm working with the leadership team, because I can't do what, I'm trying to do with this whole culture branding, application if I'm not talking to leadership because the buck will stop at whoever I'm working with. And then that thing that I'm talking about with putting a stain on our industry, that's when that happens because leadership won't adopt the program that I took all this time to build with the person that I'm building it with on their side, and I'm going, but it's your responsibility to make sure you get buy-in from.

Speaker 2: The people up top. Have you done that yet? They should be part of this whole process, and that's happened. I've worked with [00:56:00] clients where that didn't happen. And then what happens? The program that I deliver doesn't get bought in. It doesn't get adopted, it doesn't get applied. They start Frankenstein it with like old models and old stuff.

Speaker 2: And now nothing looks, and now everything is broken. Now there's no purpose whatsoever. I, and I say, you should have just stuck with the, I always say it's like buying a new suit and not wearing it or like deciding to just wear the coat for a year. And then after a year you're like, wait, didn't this come with a set of pants?

Speaker 2: And you go buy the, you go grab the set of pants and now they don't match anymore. And I'm like, you should have just stuck with the old suit. At least it matched and people knew what the hell you were trying to do. Now it's, you've got this mismatched, mismatched suit. Which half of it looks worn in and the other half looks brand new and nobody knows what you're trying to do.

Speaker 3: Very, that's a very interesting way to describe that.

Speaker 3: So, um, kind of along that, I have also [00:57:00] figured out who I don't wanna work with. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Right. There are some personalities that like, I can catch it at the beginning when I'm first talking to them and they'll be like, oh, well I'm gonna do this, this, and this, and you're gonna do that, that, that. So I started working with somebody and right at the beginning it was, well, you're gonna be learning how to do everything the first month or two, so I'm gonna pay you less for the first month or two.

Speaker 3: Oh, wow. And I'm like. 

Speaker 2: That's not a thing. 

Speaker 3: No, it's actually usually the opposite.

Speaker 3: Usually you pay more for the first couple of months, like what are you talking about? And then like the things I do, like I don't want to be attached to only one company. You don't wanna just work for one person. Yeah. I would get bored to tears and there wouldn't [00:58:00] be enough in my mind anyway for me to do that is different.

Speaker 3: That would make it so that I wouldn't start like, oh, I'm not doing that. That's boring. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: You know? 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: So, but he kept saying, oh, well eventually you'll just have to drop some of your old clients and just start working for me. And I'm just sitting there going, no, that's not how this is gonna work. And then he asked me my opinion on something, which a lot of people do stupidly.

Speaker 3: Because if you ask me my opinion, I'm gonna tell it to you. 

Speaker 3: Please do not think that I am going to sweeten it up with sugar. Yeah. Because I am not, I am, I'm not mean. Or at least I don't try to be mean. But I can be pretty blunt when I, sure. You know, it's not meant in a mean way or any of that. I'm not that person.

Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I'm just a little bit blunt. Oh, your face is weird. Like, that's not blunt. [00:59:00] That's rude. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a difference. 

But he asked me my opinion on something and I got the, well, at first, honestly, I thought it was stupid. It is 90% of the time when somebody wants me to start doing something brand new, I'm looking at it like, oh, this is gonna be stupid.

Speaker 3: I don't even wanna do this. This is not gonna be helpful at all. Especially because. Everything sounds weird when you're first hearing about it, right? Like, you first hear about the Bible and you're going, that's a weird book. A lot of weird things happen in there. But at the same time, there's like good things that happen in there.

Speaker 3: You gotta find them, but they're there. And so I was like, but, and then he starts yelling,

Speaker 3: you're not listening. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, 

Speaker 3: yeah. You didn't let me finish. You're not listening [01:00:00] like, right. Not at me. 

Speaker 2: Well, the thing is you're Sorry, go ahead. 

Speaker 3: So finally he stops yelling, okay, go ahead. And I finished it off and he was like, oh.

Speaker 3: You said to me,

Speaker 3: Know that I am strange, but gee, just fi let me finish what I'm saying before you Yeah, sure. Like, climb down my throat. 

Speaker 2: The thing with, hearing it's funny what you said about hearing new things. It's if you, you know, if someone's telling you something you've never heard before, then that person needs to be open to whatever you're gonna respond with.

Speaker 2: That's sort of the point, right? If it's new information, if then it's going to be followed up with either, oh, I totally get it, or I have a bunch of questions. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: You know, and it's one or the other. It's never one thing. It's either this or it's either that. Sometimes that's [01:01:00] why, if you say something that's totally outlandish to someone and they're like, oh my God, I totally get it.

Speaker 2: That's a really good feeling. 

Speaker 4: Because you're 

Speaker 2: like, oh my, what? The thing I came up with landed. That's awesome. On the other hand, you might say something totally outlandish to somebody that they've never heard of before, and they'll go, okay, but what about this? Or what about that? Or, I don't agree with this, or I don't agree with that.

Speaker 2: And you have to be ready for that. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean anything. All that means is that they need clarification or they want to talk about it, or they don't understand it and they wanna understand it, you know? And if they don't agree and just walk away, then you don't need to be interacting with that person anyway.

Speaker 3: So, I mean, that's like somebody is saying, oh, there's this new thing I heard, it's I before E except after C. And I'm like, okay, that sounds weird. [01:02:00] What about neighbor? Oh, well that's an exception. How many of those are there? And then they do that whole paragraph thing. Yeah. And you're going, I'm not using that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Then you go down the the rabbit hole of the English language.

Speaker 3: It's really interesting, really quick,

Speaker 2: like what, why is the past tense of Sikh sought?

Speaker 3: How should you really call, what should you really call more than one octopus? Because there are words that some people say, I. The end of sounding very not safe for work. No, I know the 

Speaker 2: plural of octopus is actually cacti.

Speaker 3: I use the safer [01:03:00] octopi instead of the the one, but, um, 

Speaker 4: I do too actually. 

Speaker 3: It's just like the English language is a whole conver that's a whole lecture. Like, holy cow. It gets me sometimes. But there's words like read, read, read all that. They spelled exactly the same way. But like if you spoken English enough and you're reading it, you know which way to pronounce it when you're reading it.

Speaker 3: Because of 

Speaker 2: the con it's con, that's when I say context is literally everything. Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: Without 

Speaker 2: context, nothing has meaning, but then like, lead and Led, led and led to lead to, to have lead. Or to chew on lead is two different or Well, 

Speaker 3: there's lead. It's a metal. You have your lead. Yeah. There's lead is a metal and then you 

Speaker 2: have lead.

Speaker 2: Yeah. To have lead people. I lead so and so down the stream. Yeah, it's [01:04:00] a crazy, on the other hand, it's also one of the most forgiving languages. That's why, if that's why, if you're learning English, you can already start communicating because it doesn't, you don't have to speak it perfectly.

Speaker 2: In fact, you can speak it quite imperfectly. You can put words pretty much anywhere in a sentence. In any shape or in any, order and people will still understand what you're saying. That's why it's a perfect, well, it might 

Speaker 4: take a second. 

Speaker 2: It might take a second, 

Speaker 4: but if, 

Speaker 2: like I, for example, I grew up internationally.

Speaker 2: I have an ear for, you know, thick accents and broken languages and so on. And, I can quickly understand what people are saying in broken English. But other languages, you know, French, German, actually Persian is quite forgiving as well, but there are many lang like Spanish. It's, if you're not speaking it correctly, people don't know what the hell you're saying and that's why English is like the [01:05:00] perfect language, especially American English is perfect for marketing.

Speaker 2: You'll find it in European languages. The French use English in their marketing. The Germans use English in their marketing. Because it's forgiving and it's punchy and you can cut it up and crop it and do all kinds of things with it grammatically and correctly.

Speaker 2: It's a very weird con confusing language.

Speaker 3: The guy I came with, right. Um, when I first started playing Sea of Thieves with him, which is a game where you are a pirate, obviously Sea of Thieve. 

Speaker 3: And, you have your own ship and you go sail around to different islands and do different things. Right. Well, he was trying to teach me how to lunge.

Speaker 3: They kept calling it luge. And when he was first talking about it, I was like, wait, what did you just say? Because he's Panamanian. So his first language is Spanish. 

Speaker 3: And but [01:06:00] he learned English right beside it when he was young. So he does not have the usual accent. I was like. I really just have an aneurysm.

Speaker 3: What did you say? Yeah, he said slu. I'm like, no. Luge is like a winter sport. I don't think you know what winter is, so I don't think you know what that is, but this is not that. And it took me a while and I taught, I mean, and not in a condescending way, but like, he'd go to say lunge and he'd say luge.

Speaker 3: Like, no, remember lunge? 

Speaker 4: Yeah. Right. 

Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. And then he'd say it and like he was actively learning it. Yeah. It wasn't like that. And now every now, every once in a while I'll mess up the word because That's 

Speaker 4: awesome. 

Speaker 3: That's me. And he's like, I did not take that much time to learn that word, just for you to start screwing it up.

Speaker 2: That's good. That's a sweet interaction. Yeah. Language is a whole other thing. I [01:07:00] prefer it if people corrected me instead of telling me that. It's funny the way that I say it, like when I was learning German, for example, when I was in Germany and trying to speak German, people would either, they'd either be like specifically, women more so than men.

Speaker 2: But they were like, it's so cute the way you pronounce that, or, that's so funny. I'm like, that's not helpful. Like, tell me how to actually say it. Or if you understand what I'm saying, just respond back, in German. And then, you know, I would lean into like, I could stand here all day and make fun of your English.

Speaker 2: I'm actually one either just responding to you in English or, correcting you. And to your point, not in a way that's trying to be mean. I want you to speak correctly so that you feel good about your language. Mm-hmm. So that you can communicate. Language is the thing I'm very sensitive with.

Speaker 2: It's one of the things that people are super sensitive with. Don't make fun of someone [01:08:00] trying to speak another language. It's fucking hard. It's really difficult. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. And, oh no, when I was in middle school, I didn't wanna have to take home Eck, don't wanna bake anything. I didn't wanna take art.

Speaker 3: 'cause screw that. I can't draw my stick figures look anorexic. What do you want me to do? I did not wanna take shop. I mean, and I'm aging myself because I don't think shop is even a thing. Yeah, 

Speaker 2: right. I don't think it's a thing, but,

Speaker 3: but like, I'm in my early forties. Like this is not like I'm 110.

Speaker 3: I'm not fifties, sixties or whatever. I'm early forties. I was born in 81. Okay? 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: But my middle school still had a, the thing where you had to like build a birdhouse or whatever, and I was not interested. 

Speaker 4: Right. Super 

Speaker 3: terrified of the table saw was gonna take my fingers off. No, thank you very much.

Speaker 3: So I had to get special permission and I started taking French. Yeah. I took French for two [01:09:00] work. Two years. Two years. I took French, guaranteed. I got by with a C both years.

Speaker 3: But the big thing for me. Because it was hard trying to figure out French. But like I can, if I'm, if I come across, you know, some writing, I can kind of go, oh, that's French, that's Spanish. Because my teacher taught both. And so sometimes we'd come in the room and we'd understand some of the words on the board, because French and Spanish have similar words.

Speaker 2: They're similar. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Like, just like, there's some words that if you say 'em in English, everybody around the world can understand, like emergency or something like that. 

Speaker 4: Right. 

Speaker 3: But so that's perfectly fine. But we come in and we'd notice every once in a while that there were words that were similar. I like none of the words connecting it made.

Speaker 4: Right. 

Speaker 3: And that's because it wasn't French, it was Spanish. So we were just [01:10:00] kind of like, and so, you know, we had that conversation. Languages can be, just slightly different and be completely different Sure. To the people who, have them. But I don't remember Jack. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: From that course I remember.

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Like I can do some of those numbers, but not all of them. Like,

Speaker 4: yeah, 

Speaker 3: let's butcher up some French with English accents type thing. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: That's something, yeah. Sorry. It's very hard. It's very, very hard to learn another language and so I'm, I am super impressed by anybody who knows more than one language because I couldn't do it. So I'm super impressed.

Speaker 3: But the big thing for me and why I correct people when they're speaking a language that may not be their first, or it's may not be their fifth, but it's coming from a place where if I'm speaking English and somebody [01:11:00] corrects my word, I'm like, oh yeah, thank God that's the word I was looking for. Right.

Speaker 3: But. So I wanna make sure they have that. Also, I have this thing where I don't like to feel stupid. Yeah. And when I first started reading, I was at a first grade reading level in sixth grade and I got into reading, had that dictionary next to my book. 'cause I didn't know what none of them words meant, but it was a process.

Speaker 3: Um, but the big thing for me was people would sometimes correct my words when I went to say something. And I had learned that word from what I was reading. So I didn't have a problem with it. But I thought arrogant was a rogan for some reason. Ha, 

Speaker 4: okay. Like, 

Speaker 3: like it was there. I said it like that for years.

Speaker 2: And no one Correct. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Nobody corrected me. They all just kinda looked at me like I was saying something weird, but like, I didn't [01:12:00] catch it. And. Eventually I had to do an IQ test and that word was one of them. And the guy was like, oh, so do you know what this word means? And I was like, yeah.

Speaker 3: And I told him the meaning of the word. And he goes, okay, can you pronounce it? And I was like, sure. And I said it. And he goes, wait, how did you pronounce that? And I said it again. And he went, just so you know, it's arrogant. And I went, oh, you sound kind of arrogant, but okay, thank you. Yeah. 

Speaker 2: And 

Speaker 3: you know, you're like, I knew meaning.

Speaker 2: Yeah, right. 

Speaker 3: You know, he wasn't doing it from a place of, I wanna help you. It was, he sound like an idiot. He's word. And I'm like, and then after you learned that, like for years, you've said this to people and they've just kinda went like, yeah, whatever. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: That doesn't give you that all good of a feeling.

Speaker 3: 'cause now you know, all them people think you're a moron. When it was just, you learned that word from a book, not from actually speaking to people who used it. 

Speaker 2: [01:13:00] Yeah, absolutely. I get it's, I get annoyed with the accent thing too, when people are like, oh, he's not saying it right, because it's supposed to be pronounced this way.

Speaker 2: A rogan is not an accent thing. That's straight up mispronouncing the word. Yeah. But like the, like when the French get all arrogant about that's not how you say that. I'm like, do you understand what he's saying? And they go, yeah, perfectly. I'm like, then that's how you say that. Don't worry about the accent, dude.

Speaker 2: Like everybody has, I get, people are like, I don't have an accent. I'm like, everybody has an accent. Everybody, literally every human on the planet has an accent. And for you to say, I don't have an accent, just means you've never left the vicinity of your home, like where you grew up. And to like, to be, it's just like such a weird thing to say, I don't have an accent.

Speaker 2: Like Yeah, you do. You have the [01:14:00] accent of where you came from. That's what that accent is. 

Speaker 3: Oh, I have a kind of neutral accent, I'm guessing because I grew up all over the US so I speak English in a way that tells you that I've spoken it my entire life. Yeah. But I am not southern. I say some southern words because I did live in parts of it for a while.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But I grew up all over the place. Like when I moved from Boston to Maryland, I got picked on because of my Boston accent. Because, I could pl my car and ho yard and it was fine. But now, I moved to Maryland and all of a sudden, well that's no good. Yeah.

Speaker 3: You, you sound funny. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I got 

Speaker 3: rid of it 

Speaker 2: in, in the global sense. You have an American accent. 

Speaker 2: That's what you have within the us. I think neutral is a good word because like even me, I have a muddled accent. I have like, I'll even pronounce the same word in different [01:15:00] ways.

Speaker 2: Sometimes I'll say water, other times I'll say water, if I'm speaking too fast or whatever. And like, it's just how it ha it comes outta my face. And it's just depends. Like comfortable is an interesting word. 'cause some people say comfortable. Some people say comfortable.

Speaker 2: And then I say comfortable and like there was a period when I used to say comfortable and then I got made fun of for that. And like I had a girlfriend who would laugh at me every time I said it. And then I started hearing it and I would start laughing and I'm like, what is comfortable? Where does that even come from?

Speaker 2: And I realized it was an east coast thing. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. And 

Speaker 2: And then I started just shifting it. So now I say comfortable and but then sometimes I'll say comfortable and but at the end of the day, it's somewhat American accent. If I travel outside of the US everyone's like, okay, you're American.

Speaker 2: But in the US sometimes people are like, where are you from? Your accent's interesting. I'm like, yeah, well [01:16:00] that's interesting, but okay, whatever. 

Speaker 3: So I say aunt, 

Speaker 4: yeah. Instead 

Speaker 3: of aunt. 

Speaker 4: I say aunt because 

Speaker 3: I was raised by somebody whose opinion was aunt is your relative aunt is a bug. You are not calling my sister an A bug.

Speaker 3: Right. So you're gonna call her your aunt. 

Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, I say, and, I don't know why either. Like, I don't know why. I think it's some something I learned growing up and it just stuck. 

Speaker 3: A lot of people do. Every once in a while I'll come across somebody on YouTube who, when they're speaking, they say aunt, most people say Ant and I'm just like, they're not a bug.

Speaker 2: Dumb 

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just, it's interesting. I think giving, again, going back to just learning languages, I, for me, I'm just very sensitive to it and like giving people the space and confidence to just try to speak it is huge. 

Speaker 4: Because 

Speaker 2: It's a confidence thing, even when you're learning it.

Speaker 2: You, you [01:17:00] like speak it in class and then you don't speak it in context unless you have the guts to do it. Unless you're like an extroverted, sort of gutsy person. But many people will only keep it to themselves and keep it in class and they won't speak it outside because they're nervous. And I think as the recipient, you know, there are some cultures who deeply appreciate that you're trying and they'll help you through it.

Speaker 2: They're like, I love that you're trying to speak my language. It's respectful. I have a French friend who refuses to speak to me in English and I love that. Like he just, and I'll sometimes speak to him in English if I can't find my words 'cause I'm basically fluent, but I just don't speak it enough.

Speaker 2: So it goes and comes and goes. And then, so I'll sometimes speak to him in English and he'll just respond in French. And so he'll just keep speaking to me in French. And I keep push, he keeps pushing me to speak in French. I even had another friend who, we had an agreement where I would only speak in [01:18:00] French and he would only speak in English 'cause he was trying to learn, improve his English.

Speaker 2: And I was trying to improve my French. So I was like, I only speak French and you only speak in English. And he was like, great. And then people would watch us talk to each other and he's speaking in English when I'm speaking in French. It was really fun. That's 

Speaker 3: wild conversation. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Do you have any final thoughts?

Speaker 2: No. This was actually really fun. I had a good time with you. Thank you. No, I don't have any final thoughts.