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Marcus Collins: Boldly Breaking Conventions & Cultural Norms · The Bold Lounge

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Every week we'll hear from someone who has taken the lead and worked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Whether they faced challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be created.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited today to have Dr.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Marcus Collins.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: He is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's the head of strategy at Wyden in Kennedy, New York, and a clinical assistant professor of marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm from Ohio State, so I have to pause right there.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's also an inductee of the American Advertising Federation's Hall of Achievement.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Marcus.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm stoked to be here.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to jump in and really get to the bold factor, kind of your bold factor.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen you at multiple conferences, connected with you through friends on LinkedIn, and I'm really interested in learning what your definition of bold is.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sure thing.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think my definition of bold is fairly simple.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think bold is about breaking conventions.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our lives are bound by conventions of what society says is acceptable and therefore the cultural constructs of what we deem is appropriate and expect it for people like us.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So being bold is having the courage to push against those conventions and make decisions that may fall outside of those boundaries.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's an excellent definition.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when in your life did you first realize you were being bold and pushing against convention?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's easy for me to look backwards and identify it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the first sort of inflection point I realized uh was when I was in in college in undergrad.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was studying engineering because that's what one does when you did well in math and science in the 90s, especially if you're black, you're from Detroit, you went to engineering.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I went into with great vigor.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, great.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this this the conventions tell me that this is what people like me do.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: The cultural force pushed on me, telling me this is what people like me do.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: But when I got into to school in engineering, while I thought it was interesting, I didn't really see myself doing it for a living.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my grades reflected that.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until I started taking some music theory courses to offset my terrible GPA that I realized, oh, Eureka, this is what I want to do.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want to, I want to, I want to be a songwriter.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be a composer, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And make, you know, and make write love songs for a living.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and when I made that decision, and I told my parents, and I said, you must be smoking crack, that's not gonna happen.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um the my the choice I made at that time, the bold choice I made at that time was to break those conventions and that I'm gonna finish my engineering degree, but I'm going to completely invest myself into a future in music.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when I graduate, I went to the music business.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, that's the first time that I remember leveraging my agency to break the conventions of what was expected of someone like me.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very heavy concept right there.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So leveraging your agency to break the conventions that were expected of you.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: That happens to many of us probably unknowingly.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Would you agree with that?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think about like little, like little breaks in convention where I use my agency, you know, as a kid, you know, I'm a child of hip hop.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I loved hip hop as a kid, still do as an adult, right?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And like when I was remember being younger, I loved kid and play and they wore high top fades.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when all my my brother had short hair, you know, he wore wore short hair, I grew my hair out to have a high top.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the only one in my family to sort of do that.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I cut my hair to have a gumby, right?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I did all the things that were of hip hop culture.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for that culture that I subscribe my Danny to, those things were conventional.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But in my family, in my church, not so much.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as a little act of what one would say rebellion, uh, were really just me leveraging the agency, the little agency I had as a as a kid to do that that very thing.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I decided to only apply to one college in high school, just one college.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because in my mind, why would you apply to other colleges if you don't want to go to other colleges?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: If I wanted to go to Michigan, that's where I'm going to apply, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Small little acts of rebellion and rebellion against the conventions, me leveraging my agency that I think using those little small things throughout throughout my life gave me the confidence to do it as then a burgeoning adult in my uh in my adolescence during college.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: In my mind, there's a whole lot of bold in there as well.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like going, you know, against what's expected us, whether it's our parents or our coworkers or our friends or those that see us from the outside that really don't know us, like I think that's sometimes hard for people to even manage or boost up to be able to do that.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you think was in you to like say, I'm gonna do it?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I'm gonna wear my hair how I'd want, I'm gonna do what I want to do in school.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Identify there's not an alignment between what I want to do and what I'm doing.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna change it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like what stoked your fire for that?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think I gave myself permission to do it out of ignorance.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know any better.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was like because I thought, why not?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why, why, why, why should I be able to do that?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't raised with limits, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what that sounds like too.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like your parents didn't say you had limits on you either that way to think, to believe.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I credit my I credit my parents to this and sort of my my community in this, is that they sort of believed in it with me.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I if you asked me when I was a teenager, I wanted to be the fifth member of Boys to Men.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And no one in my family was like, that is a pipe dream, you idiot.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's not gonna happen.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, all right, this is your thing.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is your thing, you know, this is your thing.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt empowered to do that.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, little did I know that in my parents' mind, I was always just like one centimeter from the edge of being told no by them.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: In my mind, my parents were were pouring into me, not just my parents, but my friends, my my my family, my community.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and therefore I felt like, yeah, why not?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And even now, you know, fast forward decades later, even now I have that sense of naivety, if you will, of ignorance.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, well, why not?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why not?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that some of that is informed by the people who pour it into me.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it also is just it's just in my faith, you know.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If if if God is for you, who could be against you?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So why not?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't I move mountains?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's hard for people to do.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I always say, I wish I could bottle just do it or go for it or take that step, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because it does inherently, I think when people don't do that, I think they end up being unhappy or not as happy as they could be, or feeling misaligned or trapped.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you could throw in a bunch of things in there.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And in the connection then to, I think the culture.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you you have a book for the culture, the power behind what we buy, what we do, and who we want to be.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things in there is just unpacking that culture and our behaviors that are kind of all wrapped in that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But do you think that sometimes our own culture limits us from what we believe is possible or why not?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they talk about this in the book that our culture, those that our culture sets the conventions that dictate what's acceptable.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do people like me do?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing, culture moves forward on the basis of one simple question.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do people like me do something like this?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is yes, I do it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is no, I don't.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we do that to stay in good standings with our community.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: One of the founding fathers of sociology, a gentleman by the name of Emil Durkheim, referred to this idea as collective effervescence, which is just a beautiful phrase.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Collective effervescence.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that people who subscribe to the same culture will act in concert in an effort to promote social solidarity.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing goes in our day-to-day lives.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: People like me do something like this.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I, therefore, I wear certain clothes, I talk a certain way, I act a certain way, I worship a certain way, I go to schools, certain schools, I marry certain people, uh, how I have vacation, what I eat, and how I bury the dead.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: All these things are byproducts of the conventions that dictate the culture to which we subscribe.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And pushing against those conventions are very, very challenging.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: On one sense, pushing those conventions can promote uh social alienation, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like norms help us thwart antisocial behavior, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have uh unwritten rules, these are social norms that tell us what people like us do.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have laws that really put the finger on what you cannot do in an effort to mitigate antisocial behavior, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in our minds, because we know that there are social consequences to breaking these conventions, we go, whoo, I can't do that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I can't do that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's too scary.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: My parents will will disown me.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my friends will not be friends with me.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get excommunicated from this organization, I'll get kicked out.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And in our minds, being a part of a community, being a part of a group, that equates to survival, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: The brain is a survival mechanism, a survival machine that that helps us predict the future to keep us alive.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that that socialization, even from you know, and evolutionary anthropologists would argue that our ability to socialize is what keeps us alive, keeps us safe.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we say, okay, these conventions are what keeps me within this group of people.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will not break the conventions.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Being bold, the willingness to break those conventions are going to say, All right, I'm willing to look silly just for a second, just for a moment, in hopes that my community, my people go, that's kind of cool, Marcus.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of that's kind of dope.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm behind you on that one.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of awesome.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that for me, I felt the freedom to just push.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, granted, I didn't jump out the window.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wasn't like, I'm dropping out of school and I'm gonna move to Philadelphia and prayerfully, hopefully, God willing, I'm gonna meet Nate, Mike, Sean, Wanyer.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna despise me and go like, that's the guy we've been missing.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Come join our group.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now my parents would be like, You're you're you are smoking crack.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's not gonna happen.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, start a singing group, fine.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You guys go perform around the city, fine.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: You guys record a little bit, fine.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: What's that going to hurt?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Those outside of the conventions of what Collins's did.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was definitely the only Collins who did that.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Those outside the conventions, it didn't push too far, at least in my parents' mind, that they made that a hard and fast no.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And those little small wins, I would say, those little small convention breaks kind of gave me, one would say, as I look in the rearview mirror, gave me the feeling that I had the ability to do it in a more robust or what we say augmented way.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So there's probably a continuum of convention breaking you can do.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of the tiptoe, which is still a, you know, it could be a risk, it could be a chance you're taking, it could be extremely like you're feeling, you know, fearful or, you know, because sometimes fear comes with the unknown of not knowing what you're doing.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think bold is fearless.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't ever describe that because I actually think it's doing things knowing that you're a little scared.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have that little, you know, pit in your stomach, uh, you're gonna do something all the way up to like I'm going to do something that I have no idea.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which is there a continuum of those convention breaks within a culture?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that to your point, I love the idea that like being bold does not mean fearless because sometimes fearlessness is irresponsibility.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like I knew it was at risk, you know.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I knew it, which is why in school I finished my engineering degree, but I spent all my time in the recording studio.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I like I knew what was what was at risk.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And even when I graduated and I didn't go into the field of engineering, I went into the music business to write love songs.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I always knew, as my my mother would remind me, that I have a degree to fall back on.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've had like like I had that.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wasn't fearless.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely was concerned, I definitely had fear.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I believed I could do it, but I know it was not without risk.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right, it exists on a continuum.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: You could be extremely ambitious, right?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can say I'm gonna do uh small changes over a period of time, these sort of aggregation of marginal gains as it's referred to.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So how did it work out with boys to men?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't work out, it didn't work out.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, listen, I'm I'm still available, Nate, Mike, Sean, but Mike's not there anymore.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Sean, Nathan, and Juan.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still still available.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't work out, it didn't work out for me.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: But when I graduated, I went into the music business.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I did, I gave it a shot.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I gave it the old college try, as they say.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, writing, producing music for a living.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I wasn't making a whole bunch of money.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: My part, my business partner and I, we did a startup where we were helping develop artists, and I'm writing and producing songs for them.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what really kind of worked for us is that we were pairing up-and-coming artists with brands who wanted to partake in music.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of our business, and that was going well until it wasn't.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I did that for about five and a half years, almost six years.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know what?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I should figure out this thing called business because I don't know what I'm doing.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was an engineer after all.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to go get an MBA, came back to Michigan to study marketing at the Ross School of Business University of Michigan.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, oh, I get it.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I see what was going on now.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'm starting to understand.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went into went to go work at Apple for my internship and then did start working there my second year as well, and then went out to New York to run digital strategy for Beyonce.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm like sitting in the world of music and business, and it's making sense.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and even then, even then, this is the good part.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I assume this is the good part.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even then, I was still breaking the conventions of what people like me are supposed to do.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You go to an MBA program, you're supposed to go work for a Fortune 500 company.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's what you do.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what an MBA student does, especially at a school like Michigan.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You go work for a Fortune 500 company, you don't go work for a pop star.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: She is her own Fortune 500 company.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's right.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: But my parents were like, what are you?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand what you are doing.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because I was going, I was pushing against the the conventions.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I felt I felt very much empowered to do so.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my parents, they never told me no, because I'm a full out adult.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're gonna tell me no.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But they certainly were like, Well, maybe you ought to, perhaps you should think about maybe you should just think about work in a place like this.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And why don't you just get this kind of job?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, this isn't no, no, this is haveable, this is doable.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And fortunate enough it it was.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So what is the intersectionality of music, business, engineering?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because there is.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I I can see what that would be, but like basically what you took were things that you had in your toolbox, which some of them like were just there, like, hey, I have an engineering degree from Michigan, not too bad to have in your toolbox.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I have an MBA from Michigan.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Again, not too bad to have in your toolbox, but I really love music.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: I really like to, you know, you create love songs and be in that environment of creativity and innovation.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you worked for Apple, so another innovative company.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, what what made the intersectionality work for you and how did you amplify that in your roles and the roles that you now have today?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have the language for it then, but I certainly do now.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: What I loved about engineering, I did I did material science engineering.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the study of materials, particularly polymers, plastics.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I loved about material science engineering is the same thing I love about music and that I love about advertising, marketing communications, and teaching.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: That it's all about connecting things that normally are disparate, right?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like for plastics, these polymers, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're carbon chains that are networked together.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And because they're networked together in a certain configuration, they have a set of properties.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: They behave and perform a certain way, the same way people are with music, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you love Frank Ocean like I love Frank Ocean, or you love Boyce to Man like I love Boys to Man, I'm like, oh my god, Lee, what when did you fall in love with Boys to Man?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, when I heard Coolie High Harmony, I remember watching the video from Motel Philadelphia, oh, me too.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Best friends, right?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be best friends, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Music brings people together in a very unique way.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: No matter your walk of life, your creed, your tongue, your nationality, your ethnicity, music can connect people in an unbelievable way.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you go to a concert, you can see people working in concert, collective effervescence, like in action, like acting in concert, uh, like like like a like a flock of birds, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because of because they feel connected.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing goes with with marketing, communications, the advertising, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: The best advertising connects people together such that we use language that unites us.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: You go back to the 1999 Budweiser What's Up ad, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: The commercial ad that came out.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in those times, if I saw my buddy on the street, I go, and he didn't go, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like that ad is connecting us.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in the classroom, I'm connecting students to ideas, disparate ideas that I am that I am suturing together through interdisciplinary uh academic means to help connect students to ideas.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I've realized that what I really excited about is connecting things that normally are disparate to create net new things.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Which is bold in itself.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I think in that way, because again, it's going against a convention of what you should do or how you should teach, or how you should come into a classroom or an organization.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's a lot in there.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I think one thing that you said that's important is how you use that then, you know, how you use your understanding of the connections to create change or to create connection or to create community.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: So in your book for the culture, one of the things that whether it's the same type of shoes or the same earbuds or the messaging in a in a Budweiser commercial, those are things that connect us, and we may not, again, even know it's happening to us.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, yeah, what's exciting for me about this book, and like take time to like really read it.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: I want people to understand, like, it's a guide through actually how you can understand yourself better, you can understand others better.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm all about using culture and understanding of it for good.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you are too, like in a sense of that, like knowing like when things are off or when things may be like a learning, because everything is, you know, there's imperfections in the world, and that's actually what makes us beautiful, honestly.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like we make mistakes and we figure it out.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Subscribing to a certain culture is one of the things that you said.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do we know we're even subscribe to a culture?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, because again, I think it happens in a way that we don't even know it's happening.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make any sense?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: That makes all the sense in the world, which is exactly why I wrote the book.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's exactly why I wrote the book to empower us, yeah, to empower us with language and perspective so that we can observe these invisible forces that are pushing us one way or another.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're right.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, how do I know that I subscribe to a culture?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and ask myself, what do you believe?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: What truths, what ideologies do you hold?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then ask yourself, well, why do you believe that?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because I heard it from my parents.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And well, well, that's a community to which you are ascribed, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're born into that community, right?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or you're adopted, you were, you know, you were put into that community, right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: You were ascribed.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about all the other truths and ideologies that you hold and ask yourself where you learned that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I learned that from the church I went to.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you subscribe to that church, you decide it.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: You said, I am going to with volition say I'm gonna join this church, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the cultural characteristics of that church is now being put upon you to be normal.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you adopt the beliefs, the ideologies, and as a result, you dress a certain way, you act a certain way, you talk a certain way, you be a certain way, right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So these communities that we're part of, these cultural communities that we are part of, we join them by ascribing or subscribing our identity to them.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Sigma, I'm a part of fraternity called Five A to Sigma, and therefore the cultural characteristics or expectations of what it means to be a Sigma are now pressed upon me.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am a professor at the University of Michigan, Raw School of Business.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And because I'm in this institution and I subscribe my identity to being here, there are cultural characteristics that are being ascribed onto me.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I run strategy wide in Kennedy, New York, and that is.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Institution, there are cultural characteristics that are being they're being imputed upon me.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, because my identity is uh fixed in these places, I therefore am inclined to be influenced by them until I say, you know what, this these aren't my kind of people.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like myself.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know what, I don't like it here.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I go somewhere else to ascribe my identity.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there I am then influenced by those cultural forces.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea then is that though they happen uh subconsciously, if we are aware of them, then we have more agency to actually do something about it.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: How do you identify a cultural mismatch?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, because I think people feel it, they know it, but they don't do anything about it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm wondering like if like what are the signs of of that mismatch?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: We we we experience cognitive dissonance.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: We go, I'm doing a thing that just feels wrong in my soul, in my heart, in my being.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't feel right.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your intuition is telling you, like, ooh, Marcus, I think this is the right thing.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: That means your belief and your behavior are out of sync.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then you got to stop, take some inventory.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why are these things, why am I feeling this way?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I believe that the world is like this, and the way I'm behaving is antithetical to that belief system.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Something is wrong.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's forcing me to act this way?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because of the people that I'm around.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's because of what's expected of someone with this title, what's expected of people who work in this company, what's expected of the being this kind of parishioner, what's expected of being this kind of member, what's expected of being a part of this congregation.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then you ask yourself, okay, am I in the right congregation?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the it becomes tangible by our behaviors, or or we becomes tangible rather by how we feel about our behaviors.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's till we those two things become out of sync or incongruent, we go, oh, something is wrong.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And cognitive dissonance, it's painful.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a good feeling.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So our brains are allocate all of our energy to try to reckon to try to reconcile it.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes reconciliation means rationalization.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: We rationalize it.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: We do these, you know, mental gymnastics to make it make sense.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're when we're intentional about it and we have the language, the Rosetta Stone to talk about it, we can identify, oh, here are the cultural characteristics that are expected of me.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where things go wrong.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine with the artifacts, what we wear, and I'm fine with the language.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: The language is fine.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's the behaviors.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing that feels wrong.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why does it feel wrong?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now we can start interrogating the ideologies and the beliefs and whether those things align to our ideologies and beliefs.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a choice of rationalization, stay really probably in that same space, or you actually take action to say, I need to find another congregation to be part of.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be more aligned with my behavior and my beliefs.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to gender and culture, I'm interested in your thoughts on how that impacts particularly.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of my listeners are women and women who have, you know, really worked hard throughout their careers to be in certain spaces and places.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we still continue to work really hard.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes, you know, people like me is not always welcome.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've been bold, and I even, you know, someone said I need to slow my role on being so bold the other day.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, okay.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's bold.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bold thing to say.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was like, okay, I don't think I'll take that in.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: But it's so for me, that only like empowers me like to do more good or to do more of the things that I'm doing if I'm bothering someone in that way.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because really, my purpose is just to help people understand that there's opportunity, there's hope, there's a way to figure things out.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be a big jump.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: You could just take a step.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: But like, what does it mean to take that step?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to gender and culture, what do you think are the key takeaways for women to understand particularly?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that's a really big question, but like, how would you start to unpack it?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's the same way we've been talking about.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Again, culture is made up of characteristics, beliefs, behaviors, artifacts, and language that are expected of people who are part of certain groups of people, whether it's society at large or or smaller communities.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we affix these conventions, these expectations to groups of people.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: We expect men to be a certain way and women to be another way.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: We call those gender norms.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why are those gender norms?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what we have conceived as being normal.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when you operate outside of those norms, we go, what's wrong with her?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with him?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's not manly enough.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's too emotional because in our conventions that men shouldn't be emotional, they should hide their feelings, or you know, women should be docile, right?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And these ridiculous tropes, these unbelievably ridiculous tropes, we'd say that's so outdated.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what we mean by that is that the conventions for those thoughts were things from the past.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: We should have evolved from that, we should have outgrown these things, right?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: We say those are outdated old school mentality.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're really saying is that those are old school cultural expectations, right?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, we think about the the 1950s, right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: When men were coming back from World War II and they were claiming their their space in society.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: When men were off to war, women were doing quote unquote was considered men things, right?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were working in factories, they were leading the household, and you go, Wow, women can do this shocker.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then when men came back from war, the conventions were then sort of shifted, which is like, oh, wait a minute, hold up.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: These things are all made up, these are all constructs, they're not hard and fast rules.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't about uh this isn't about ability, this isn't about what people are are able to do.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: These are the restrictions that we put on people, whether it's because of their gender, whether it be binary or fluid, because of their race, because of their age, because their ethnicities.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: These are constructions that we as society have decided is acceptable based on the beliefs that we hold, the artifacts that are meaningful, the language that we use, the behaviors that we adopt.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we think of a relationship between culture and gender, these things are constantly in dialogue with each other because one is informed by the other.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we shift our expectations about gender through the discourse that we have, like through podcasts like this.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are engaging in the discourse that are challenging the conventions of why is that?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: What why is it that we believe women should slow their role when they're being too bold?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's ridiculous.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, yeah, that is ridiculous.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where that came from.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now you start to question your conventions, and we go, yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we should abolish that.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get rid of that.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then we start to take steps forward.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I have two daughters, Georgia and Ivy, right?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm a total girl dad.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm constantly trying to subvert the conventions that are placed on them today because of the cultural frames we have right now.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to tell them, like, no, you can do this, you can do that, you could push against that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: These things do not exist.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: They are not real, they are conventions that we have manufactured as a society, and therefore, we have the agency to push against these conventions so that you could be as bold as you want to.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So no one tells her, tells either of them, you know, 10 years from now, slow your road, girl.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the power to push against the outdated conventions.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then knowing that one person, two person, it like it does take some effort.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what I have felt like in my career is like I've sometimes at the spearhead of it, meaning I'm challenging something that happens in the corporate world or what someone does, or feeling like that's that's crossing the line for me from an ethical moral perspective, you know.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but I don't mind being the tip of the arrow, honestly, as long as we go, go, go and keep going.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there's like two people behind me, and sometimes there's 200 people behind me.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, from that perspective, it's just knowing that someone will be behind you.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, as long as you're doing it for good, you're doing it for the right.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just get tired of some of the things that are out there that just continue to be conventions that we accept.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: As this is the way it is, or that's how life is, or that's just the way it's going to be, and the world's messed up.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, well, let's do something about it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just sit on the sidelines while you're doing that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, like being able to do that and and push against those, I think is a bold piece of the effort that we need to make.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's our responsibility.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it's like our responsibility to kind of get in the mess of things.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And just it's our commitment to a better world, you know?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, from your perspective, as you kind of get into the thick of things, whether it's at work or at school, where you're teaching students, or you know, in the work that you're doing and in its book, like there's power within that dissonance, as you said.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like one of my posts that I think got a lot of hits was around Rihanna's cover that she had and Vogue.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: She's walking in front, holding her partner's hand, and he's holding the baby.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it was said he was emasculated by someone said he was emasculated by the cover.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't say that.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Someone said it for him, which is even more ridiculous.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And for some reason, she couldn't be strong and he couldn't be loving and holding their child.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, like that really ticked me off.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I like wrote, you know, for me, one of my posts that I usually don't get into the fray of it, but the response to it was really interesting just to see people respond to that because most of the people thought it was a bunch of junk, too, that anyone would say that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that's right, what scares me is there's people that believe that, that really do think that way.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so for those that are out there, like just wanting to make that change and push against it, what advice or guidance would you give to them to jump into the understanding of culture, which is what your book's about, which everyone needs to buy a copy, and then to actually, you know, putting it into action what you've learned and and pushing against some of those outdated conventions.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd say we need people like yourself who just for a moment in time are willing to look foolish.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just for a moment in time, just for a second, willing to look foolish, just for a moment, and wait for someone to say, finally, someone said it.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've been feeling that way.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was, I thought it was just me.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they go, Hey Marcus, come check this out.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's saying the exact same thing we were talking about last week.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, yes.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then they started using your language to go share with other people.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: They use your language as a proxy for the words they don't have.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: They use your bravery as a proxy for the courage that they don't have.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: It takes one person to step out first and they go, yep, I'm following that person, or I'm using that person's language, or I'm gonna co-sign that, I'm gonna reshare it, I'm gonna retweet it.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and and it's the it is the aggregate of people sort of jumping into the fray, jumping into the discourse with you that helps us change perspectives.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have to accept the fact that not everyone's going to agree.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, here I am, uh black man executive at an agency, a professor at a top 10 unit university.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's those people who are out in the world who says that I don't deserve that.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's people who believe that I should be in certain servitude, right?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't change those people's perspective.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I can't.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: The conventions of the culture to which they self-identify, that they subscribe, manufacture those belief systems.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Fine.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta preach over the dead and on to the living.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Those people are always, those people will always be a stumbling block.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: The idea is find the people who see the world the way you do and preach the gospel.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then those people will use your gospel, use your words to go recruit other people.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we start to get change that way.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Change comes from the collective meaning making that happens.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: We all say, you know what, we're not gonna accept that anymore.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're done with that.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nah, not acceptable.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna therefore make these changes.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the collective that makes those changes haveable, attainable, and tangible.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, excellent.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: One of my clients said, you know, when thoughts come in that she knows aren't aligned, she just says, dismissed.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I'm gonna use that over and over because, like, you know, there are ways to dismiss it, but you know, there are ways also to know that you're not alone in dismissing it and by stepping out, having that voice, using your agency, trying it out.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: So if you haven't tried it out, like give it a whirl, give your agency a ride, like try it out and see what happens.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, be be willing to be foolish just for a moment or feel foolish.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you may realize instantaneously that you're not the only one that feels that way, and therefore you're not foolish.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're actually bold, you're brave, you're your understanding of kind of your own convention breaking that you're you're doing, as well as you know, setting the stage for the next level of what we can be as human beings and as a community and as a country, and so on, because it's a ripple.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, amen.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And just take one step, just one small step.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to jump out the window, just one small step.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and what you realize, you go, Oh, this isn't bad.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I I could do this, I could take a bigger step and a bigger step, and so on and so on and so on.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you feel aligned with who you are, more so probably than you ever have, most likely.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you're like, oh, that feels pretty good, or whoo, a little uncomfortable, but feels still pretty good because it could be uncomfortable and good at the same time.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things can exist at the same time.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: 100% they cohabitate on a regular basis, especially in some of the worlds that we work in.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: So well, thank you so much for being on the bold lounge.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: All the details to Marcus's book and how to get a hold of him are below in the episode notes.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: I really have appreciated having you on the bold lounge.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you so much.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a pleasure.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the lead, you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with the bold people.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey.