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The Myth of Doing Everything Right with Ashley Conway · The Seed Project

0:04
Hey, friend.
0:04
Welcome to the Seed Project.
0:06
I'm Charlotte Edwards.
0:08
I believe every thought, word, and action plants something in ourselves and the people around us.
0:14
Through stories, conversations, and a little curiosity, we'll explore how our experiences shape who we become and the influence we have on others.
0:31
Charlotte: Today, I am talking with Ashley Conway, founder of Be Weird Marketing.
0:36
Charlotte: I've had the pleasure of getting to know Ashley and I, I love her.
0:40
Charlotte: She's got a great sense of humor, a huge heart, and I thought it would be fun to have her on the podcast.
0:45
Charlotte: So Ashley, thank you for being here with me today.
0:48
Ashley Conway: I'm glad to be here.
0:49
Ashley Conway: You're always a good time, Charlotte
0:53
Charlotte: Before we get in some questions, I know that you love to read, love to play games, and so I thought we'd start with something fun.
1:01
Ashley Conway: Yes
1:02
Charlotte: Okay, so if you had an entire Saturday with nowhere you had to be, no agenda, nothing that you had to accomplish, what would you do?
1:14
Charlotte: And this is just for you.
1:15
Charlotte: You could add your kids or you could not.
1:17
Charlotte: It just depends on where you, where you wanna go with it
1:21
Ashley Conway: I love them, but let's not.
1:22
Ashley Conway: Um, I would take my husband, however,'cause he's pretty good about, like, he is not the initiator, but he will go on with any of my schemes.
1:32
Ashley Conway: And I'll tell you something I've been wanting to do.
1:34
Ashley Conway: So we do enjoy ax throwing.
1:37
Charlotte: Oh, okay
1:38
Ashley Conway: it's just...
1:39
Ashley Conway: And I have no skills.
1:40
Ashley Conway: The skills are not necessary.
1:42
Ashley Conway: Uh, but there is this place where you can do ax throwing, but you can also...
1:47
Ashley Conway: They have a smash room
1:50
Charlotte: Oh, you can let your frustrations out.
1:52
Ashley Conway: Right?
1:52
Ashley Conway: And I'm just...
1:53
Ashley Conway: And it's not even I'm a particularly frustrated person right now.
1:56
Ashley Conway: It's just, like, I can break all the rules and go into a room and just, just kinda do whatever I want, and there will be no consequences.
2:05
Ashley Conway: I just like the idea of it to be like,"Well, what would that be like?"'Cause it feels like a very bad thing to do.
2:11
Ashley Conway: You don't go around smashing things.
2:13
Ashley Conway: But in this place, it's okay.
2:16
Charlotte: Oh, that's
2:17
Ashley Conway: with that.
2:18
Ashley Conway: Um, there would definitely have to be some Italian in there somewhere.
2:22
Ashley Conway: we were just talking about this before, the...
2:25
Ashley Conway: We started recording.
2:26
Ashley Conway: But I wonder, though I'm a 40-something, I would like to go to a line dancing club.
2:31
Ashley Conway: Does Salt Lake City have one?
2:33
Ashley Conway: Unsure.
2:34
Ashley Conway: But that is my idea of a good time.
2:36
Ashley Conway: I love country music.
2:38
Ashley Conway: I like to dance.
2:39
Ashley Conway: I just think it would be fun, even for old people.
2:43
Charlotte: We're not old.
2:46
Charlotte: We're just getting started.
2:47
Charlotte: We just had our warm-up phase.
2:48
Charlotte: We're just getting started
2:50
Ashley Conway: Let's go with that.
2:51
Ashley Conway: I like your version way better than my version.
2:55
Charlotte: So do you have a favorite country song?
2:56
Charlotte: Like, what would you be...
2:57
Charlotte: Like, if you were at the line dancing
2:59
Ashley Conway: Oh,
2:59
Charlotte: a song came on, I know that's, like, a h- right on the spot, but you-
3:04
Ashley Conway: It's hard to pick is what it is.
3:05
Ashley Conway: I'll tell you this, like, so I'm like Kentucky.
3:09
Ashley Conway: I live in Utah, but I was Kentucky born and raised.
3:11
Ashley Conway: So'90s country really hits me in all the feels.
3:15
Ashley Conway: So if there was a little, if there was George Strait or something like that, I mean, I would re- really be feeling it.
3:21
Ashley Conway: Like, let's dance to this.
3:23
Ashley Conway: If I can keep it straight, I'll sing to this as well.
3:25
Ashley Conway: Like, this is gonna be a slamming good time.
3:29
Charlotte: Oh, that's awesome.
3:31
Charlotte: So you're dancing your heart away, and then how are you ending the day?
3:35
Charlotte: Is that your nighttime activity, or are you and your husband doing something later in the evening?
3:41
Ashley Conway: I would think that would have to be sort of an...
3:43
Ashley Conway: They're not gonna have it open in the middle of the day.
3:44
Ashley Conway: But that's like, I'm gonna go to a smash room.
3:47
Ashley Conway: I'm gonna go line dancing.
3:48
Ashley Conway: We're gonna have to have something low-key.
3:52
Ashley Conway: I don't have all the energy in the world, so, you know, maybe a movie or, I mean, just take me to a bookstore and let me buy a used book and read it and have a nice meal.
4:02
Ashley Conway: Not too bougie.
4:03
Ashley Conway: I'm not a bougie person, but that, that would probably be...
4:06
Ashley Conway: Like, let's end it on a low-key
4:09
Charlotte: What's your favorite type, of, genre for books?
4:13
Ashley Conway: Um, I like, like procedurals, things that are kind of in the legal area.
4:18
Ashley Conway: I like historical fiction a lot, and I also like, this is kind of a weird one, magical realism.
4:25
Ashley Conway: I, the last time I went, maybe I went to the library last weekend, and I found one that was like a combo magical realism, so there was time travel and a mystery component.
4:35
Ashley Conway: The girl goes back in time and she is like, steps in as a detective and has to solve a mystery.
4:40
Ashley Conway: And I'm like,"This is hitting all my buttons.
4:41
Ashley Conway: This could be the best book of my life."
4:45
Charlotte: Did you read it yet or have you just started it?
4:47
Ashley Conway: No, I have, I'm on a, a Kindle Unlimited trial, so I'm like, I gotta, I'm gonna use that as much as I possibly can for the next few days.
4:55
Ashley Conway: And then I have this book waiting for me.
4:56
Ashley Conway: That's how you know you have a problem, when you have, like, a waiting list of books that you're trying to get to
5:03
Charlotte: Hey, it's a good problem to have though, right?
5:05
Ashley Conway: Uh, there could be worse problems, worse vices than reading
5:11
Charlotte: So I listened to one of your podcasts.
5:14
Charlotte: Don't hate me'cause I don't remember the exact episode title, but it was back in the spring.
5:17
Charlotte: But you had talked about, a belief that you had if you, you work hard, you made good decisions, and did everything right, that life would work out the way that you expect it to.
5:29
Charlotte: And I think we all know that through lived experience, that we can have the best expectations, but that doesn't always, you know, work out the way that we have best laid plans.
5:41
Charlotte: What did you learn about pivoting maybe with your business, or whether really just your ideals and expectations of what you thought your business or your life would look like, and then how did you get to the other side where you're still learning and growing, but okay not being okay?
6:01
Ashley Conway: Yeah, and probably the thing that I need to do is rewind and tell you how that happened.
6:07
Ashley Conway: So I would say, um, my childhood, my school years, college, everything did very much go according to my plan.
6:15
Ashley Conway: I'm type A, you know?
6:16
Ashley Conway: So it was, I pick something I'm good at, I work hard at it, and things would seem to go my way.
6:24
Ashley Conway: I would get the internship, I would get the position.
6:28
Ashley Conway: Um, whatever it was, it kind of worked that way.
6:31
Ashley Conway: And so I bought into the myth of this is the American dream.
6:38
Ashley Conway: You make smart decisions, you work hard, you get the thing that you're working hard for, and that continued into adulthood, into corporate America.
6:46
Ashley Conway: It continued into my 30s.
6:50
Ashley Conway: Um, even when rough things would happen, like I had a...
6:55
Ashley Conway: My first child, my daughter, was a preemie, so she was born at 27 weeks, and she was in the NICU for 10 weeks and that whole thing.
7:02
Ashley Conway: But I still thought, because I was so naive, I'm like,"This is no big deal.
7:08
Ashley Conway: She'll be in here.
7:09
Ashley Conway: She'll learn to do the things at the same time.
7:11
Ashley Conway: She'll be out." it wasn't until, uh, 2017, around Thanksgiving, I was pregnant with my second daughter, and I went in for, like, the confirmation appointment.
7:24
Ashley Conway: Uh, the, the stick said I was pregnant, but let's go in for the first one.
7:28
Ashley Conway: And they did a physical exam, and they're like,"You have thyroid nodules.
7:33
Ashley Conway: You know, has anybody else ever mentioned this?" I'm like,"Yeah, but th- they decided it wasn't a big deal." So the long story short is, in the second trimester of my pregnancy, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer And it was literally slamming up against a wall of everything that I believed.
7:50
Ashley Conway: I was making good decisions.
7:52
Ashley Conway: I went to the gym.
7:53
Ashley Conway: I tried to eat mostly healthy.
7:55
Ashley Conway: Uh, like I was a good responsible person, right?
7:57
Ashley Conway: Like, why would this be happening to me?
8:01
Ashley Conway: I couldn't have surgery because I was too far into the pregnancy, so it was like,"You have to wait until she's born." Um, and then, you know, she was three months old before I ha- actually had my entire thyroid removed.
8:13
Ashley Conway: Um, and during that process, like my husband got laid off of work.
8:17
Ashley Conway: I was going in for my six-week post-op, and he came home, um, and he was like,"I'm getting laid off.
8:24
Ashley Conway: We've, we've gotta find something else." and we were in, uh, like Mississippi, Memphis area at that time.
8:29
Ashley Conway: So we ended up moving across the country in the middle of all that.
8:33
Ashley Conway: I had a five-month-old baby.
8:35
Ashley Conway: I still hadn't finished all of my treatment for the thyroid cancer.
8:39
Ashley Conway: It was absolute train wreck of a season, and it destroyed so much of everything I believed the way that life worked.
8:50
Ashley Conway: Uh, I had to reevaluate all of that.
8:52
Ashley Conway: And even being a person of faith who loves Jesus, I still thought, like, that's the way life should work.
8:59
Ashley Conway: I do the right things.
9:01
Ashley Conway: I believe in him.
9:01
Ashley Conway: He takes care of me, things that are true, but that doesn't mean it's, everything's gonna be roses, and it wasn't.
9:07
Ashley Conway: And so that was, um...
9:09
Ashley Conway: It was 2018 when I had my surgery, and I, even more than the physical things that I had to go through to get past that, it was the, the spiritual things and the mental things and the emotional things that really left scars that I had to work through, um, and just kind of rethink is life about?
9:30
Ashley Conway: Why am I here?
9:31
Ashley Conway: What do I believe about my life?
9:33
Ashley Conway: All of these things.
9:34
Ashley Conway: I kinda had to unlearn a whole lot
9:39
Charlotte: Gosh, that is, I don't even think I knew.
9:41
Charlotte: I was listening to you, I was like,"I don't think I knew all of that." Um, that's a lot.
9:47
Charlotte: Plus you're postpartum and you have all your hormones from being postpartum.
9:51
Charlotte: Then having cancer treatment, a baby, a cross-country move.
9:56
Charlotte: I mean, a lot in a very short amount of time.
10:01
Ashley Conway: I compartmentalized and I was in denial for most of that.
10:04
Ashley Conway: Like, everything is fine, I'm fine, let's just, what's the next thing?
10:08
Charlotte: Were you just constantly waiting for the next dumpster fire, or did you just kind of like
10:14
Ashley Conway: came after, like once we had moved here to Utah, settled in a little bit, so I started to kind of f- feel the fallout of it late 2019, 2020, um, where I'm like,"I need to go to therapy'cause I am just now getting to grieve all that I have just gone through, and I don't know that I'm doing it well on my own." So that's when I really had to go,"Okay, the physical stuff is over.
10:41
Ashley Conway: Uh, now I need to go work through kind of the damage it's done on me, um, in my mind in my heart."
10:51
Charlotte: That had to be a tough journey to go on a- and it hits you on, every different level, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally.
11:02
Charlotte: Is there one thing that you really learned from that experience or that you can say now looking back?
11:13
Ashley Conway: Oh gosh, is there one thing?
11:15
Ashley Conway: Um
11:16
Charlotte: I'm sure there's many different things, I think we all have times of joy and suffering, and I think that they can coexist.
11:28
Charlotte: In the moment, it doesn't seem like they can coexist.
11:31
Charlotte: I've had an, a, you know, a NICU baby as well, and so even with a, a NICU story, let alone add all your other layers to it, that you have the joy of having a baby, but then you also have the suffering and the grief of this isn't the way that it was supposed to happen.
11:47
Charlotte: And so in the moment, it's very hard to see that those two can coexist.
11:54
Charlotte: It's a lot more in retrospect that you can realize that Gosh, I hate to say that suffering has a purpose, but it's definitely something that makes you grow and that you do have to really dig deep to find the joy in the suffering.
12:14
Charlotte: And joy literally may be a split second or a moment, but, if you can't try to find something, or at least this is just the way that when life has thrown some very big hurdles my way, I've had to look at it in that aspect because otherwise I will just spiral and, and it would be very hard to come out of that hole
12:41
Ashley Conway: Yeah, and I think there are some things that maybe, um, are more obvious that happened.
12:46
Ashley Conway: Like, yes, I'm 100% more compassionate other people with cancer stories, toward, I mean, just other people's heartache, I am much more compassionate with, versus I would say before, I am a very get-it-done person.
13:03
Ashley Conway: so I would prioritize the getting it done over, not to an extreme, but over the actual person and their feelings and their emotions.
13:13
Ashley Conway: So that's a definite change.
13:15
Ashley Conway: I think my definition of success has changed.
13:20
Ashley Conway: Where, I mean, you just, it does put things into perspective obviously, where it's like the things that you thought were super important are not as important anymore.
13:28
Ashley Conway: But I think the main thing is I had to get comfortable with the fact that,, bad things will come.
13:38
Ashley Conway: is one of them, but it's not the only thing that will ever happen.
13:41
Ashley Conway: My life is not, I'm not immortal, I'm not infinite.
13:46
Ashley Conway: at some point, that's today or whether that's, gosh, 50 years from now, I'm going to die, and I have to get comfortable with that.
13:56
Ashley Conway: Because I can distract myself from it, I can, um, ignore it, I can, you know, just put my head in the sand, but it is a true fact that I am going to die, whether it was then or whether it's later, and how do you live that?
14:13
Ashley Conway: Like, once you come to peace with, I can look this in the face now," how does that change the everyday life that I do have?
14:21
Ashley Conway: I think that has been the biggest thing, and that's something I keep having to come back to, when things are hard or when I have a, another scan or, you know, through the years it's been like,"You need to have a PET scan.
14:34
Ashley Conway: We wanna be absolute sure," or different things like that that would pop up.
14:36
Ashley Conway: I'm like, I keep having to come back to that, that I don't know what the outcome of this,'cause I c- what the outcome will be.
14:44
Ashley Conway: 'Cause I can no longer be the person who says everything will turn out great.
14:49
Ashley Conway: This scan will be 100% clear, or this thing will 100% work out.
14:54
Ashley Conway: It doesn't always, and it's really hard to come to grips with that when you want to be hopeful and you want to be an optimist.
15:01
Ashley Conway: It's hard to say, this could not go my way." I have to be okay with that and still, um, my faith even if the outcome doesn't go my way, and also still keep a positive attitude and still be hopeful.
15:16
Ashley Conway: 'Cause that does make a difference.
15:18
Ashley Conway: I mean, I'm sure you've seen that with, you know, your background.
15:23
Charlotte: Oh, yes, definitely.
15:24
Charlotte: I think your, your mindset and your outlook on life make a huge impact, on your health, and just the way that you perceive the world If you had to go back to your younger self What would you wish that you would have known?
15:46
Charlotte: Kind of the same thing?
15:47
Charlotte: What you're saying is everything doesn't have to fit perfectly in a box and have this perfect plan, and to maybe ride the waves a little bit
15:56
Ashley Conway: like these things, they're important, and you should care, but they don't matter as much as you think they do.
16:04
Ashley Conway: Like, give yourself some grace.
16:06
Ashley Conway: Like, make some mistakes.
16:08
Ashley Conway: Do, you know, try some things you're not good at.
16:10
Ashley Conway: Like, don't be so focused on,"I have to succeed.
16:14
Ashley Conway: I have to do the b- the, be the best." So much of it was that.
16:17
Ashley Conway: I have to be the best.
16:18
Ashley Conway: I have to be the leader.
16:19
Ashley Conway: I have to make all the right choices so things will work out, you know?
16:23
Ashley Conway: I, it was so much control that I felt like I had and I had to keep in order for the outcome to be what I wanted.
16:32
Ashley Conway: And, uh, and, there, and that came with so much pressure.
16:35
Ashley Conway: Even as, like, elementary, high school student, all of that, that was so much pressure to feel like I can't screw up.
16:41
Ashley Conway: I just kinda wanna go back to her and say,"Let's screw up.
16:45
Ashley Conway: So what?
16:45
Ashley Conway: My gosh, have some fun." You know?
16:49
Ashley Conway: It was like these things in the long run, whether you have a 4.0 or you have a 3.93, it makes no difference Like, there were so many things I thought was so important and would just be the end of the world if it didn't work out.
17:04
Ashley Conway: And well, you know, almost 44-year-old Ashley knows of that.
17:09
Ashley Conway: Even the career that you want, uh, and that's been a lot of it, you know, like my career plans or whatever.
17:15
Ashley Conway: So much of that I just want to say, even if you got exactly what you wanted, it's probably not going to be enough to make you the happiest person on earth.
17:23
Ashley Conway: You're pinning all your hopes and dreams on this, but it's, it's not gonna be what you want it to be.
17:28
Ashley Conway: Let that be okay.
17:30
Ashley Conway: But I don't think I had that person in my life who had been where I wanted to go come to me and say, like,"Let me be your voice of wisdom.
17:41
Ashley Conway: Like, let me give you some perspective." And I regret that so deeply, not, reaching out and trying to make those relationships with people who were much wiser than me.
17:52
Charlotte: So that honestly kind of leads me into two questions I always ask, is do you have a s- seed that, that you think made an impact in what shaped you, who you are today?
18:05
Ashley Conway: I think there were many little seeds, not necessarily, oddly, because I am a person who loves words, so not necessarily someone who spoke something into me, There were people who I saw living, that they were setting an example, and I was just watching.
18:23
Ashley Conway: was just watching the things they were doing.
18:25
Ashley Conway: From a sixth grade teacher who, you know, saw that I wasn't really challenged, so she would give me extra projects, and she's like,"Why don't you start a school newspaper?" And I was literally printing it off of these old-school dot matrix printers, cutting them out, taping them to, like, a copy paper, and then running it through the Xerox to make our school And that is
18:47
Charlotte: So
18:48
Ashley Conway: nostalgic memory for me.
18:50
Ashley Conway: So I mean, there was her.
18:51
Ashley Conway: There were, like, my first boss out of college was fantastic, and she was everything I wanted to be.
18:58
Ashley Conway: She was a mom.
18:59
Ashley Conway: She was a career woman.
19:00
Ashley Conway: Um, she was the one to first tell me about Dave Ramsey, his whole system, which is, you know, I was nine- no, I was probably 20 when I got my first job, and that, like, changed completely the way I made decisions.
19:16
Ashley Conway: So it was like everyone connected to another person.
19:19
Ashley Conway: It was Dave Ramsey, then it was Dan Miller, and some of these people I didn't even...
19:24
Ashley Conway: Well, no, maybe I have met them, but I didn't know them well, but it was, like, the proximity to them and to what they kept pouring, just feeding myself all of this stuff, um, through podcasts or through books or through whatever, shaped the way I thought and saw the world.
19:41
Ashley Conway: So Dan Miller's probably the one that's least well-known, um, and he's, he's passed away now, but he was just unbelievable, into his 60s, still learning new things, traveling.
19:52
Ashley Conway: Him and his wife moved from Tennessee to Florida just because they wanted to change it up and do different things.
19:58
Ashley Conway: So it was, like, constantly just because you're aging, that doesn't mean life has to diminish, and I appreciate that now even m- way more than I did in my 20s.
20:09
Ashley Conway: So there were so many people like that that it was it's not one person, who poured so much into me.
20:15
Ashley Conway: It was like I took little bits from different people and kind of combined those and took that, know, into my adulthood years and s- even now, I mean, remember things that they have said 20 years ago.
20:30
Charlotte: I think that that's what's so important.
20:31
Charlotte: I think there's so many people that touch our lives in, in little ways, and that's truly what shapes us to who we are.
20:41
Charlotte: I can think back to all of my mentors and books that I've read, and, and there are little, just special little tidbits that we carry with us
20:49
Ashley Conway: It's intimidating, I think, to, like being on the other side of it.
20:53
Ashley Conway: Like, how am I pouring into other people?
20:55
Ashley Conway: And it is, um, intimidating to me to think about, I'm in marketing, so I am not a nurse, I am not a doctor, I am not a philanthropist.
21:05
Ashley Conway: Uh, like the majority of my time is not going into, let's say, p- good out into the world.
21:14
Ashley Conway: I'm gonna...
21:15
Ashley Conway: I know this is a generalization.
21:16
Ashley Conway: Um, that's intimidating to me to think about.
21:19
Ashley Conway: But if I do think about it as a seed, that feels doable.
21:24
Ashley Conway: Like, I can, say something nice to somebody or, you know, I can pay for coffee for the person behind me.
21:33
Ashley Conway: Like, I can do something little, and that feels so much more approachable to me than to start analyzing, like,"Am I making an impact on the world around me?
21:42
Ashley Conway: Oh my gosh, all I feel now is horrible."
21:46
Charlotte: No, but I think that that's a point, and it's not that it has to be philanthropy.
21:51
Charlotte: It's reading a book to one of your daughters.
21:54
Charlotte: You know, that's the whole premise is it's all these little micro moments that really shape a life.
22:02
Charlotte: You know, for me, it was, having tea parties with my grandma, like, while she's watching soap operas.
22:07
Charlotte: But those afternoons just are my, my time with her, oh, I cherish them, and I...
22:16
Charlotte: Our conversations and just some of the talks that we had.
22:19
Charlotte: And I think that that's why it does seem overwhelming,'cause people will throw out legacy, which is a hu- to me, a huge word and a lot of pressure.
22:29
Charlotte: Like, oh, what's my legacy gonna be?
22:31
Charlotte: But if I look at in an ordinary given day, you know, do I let the person in front of me that needs to turn?
22:40
Charlotte: Did I smile at the grocery store clerk that might have had a bad day?
22:46
Charlotte: I think that that's the whole point, is that we put so much pressure, and especially if you have kind of our personalities, Type A, very driven, that it seems like legacy is tied with success.
23:03
Charlotte: But it's really not.
23:05
Charlotte: It's, it's all the little seeds that we leave or all the little imprints that we leave on all the people that we encounter
23:13
Ashley Conway: Well, and I mean, I know Dolly Parton just passed, so a lot of people all over the world are coming out to say she, you know...
23:22
Ashley Conway: Obv- I mean, Dolly was huge, and she had millions of dollars to do good in the world, but there's also these people that are like,"Here's the..." I've seen it from Eminem, from Michael Buble,"Here's the letter Dolly sent me." And I'm like, that wa- that took no money.
23:36
Ashley Conway: That was something very small that I could do easily, you know, just to send a note to somebody, a card in the mail.
23:44
Ashley Conway: And I don't need to know what that meant to them or what comes out of it, but that is something I can do.
23:50
Ashley Conway: I think I just get so...
23:53
Ashley Conway: I either think it has to be big, I have to do something big, or I get so distracted, you know, by all of the little to-dos that, you know, I have to take care of this week or this particular day that those things, um, like fall by the wayside unless'cause I'm such a dork, I like schedule them.
24:10
Ashley Conway: So I do, oh my gosh, I have done this maybe 15-ish years, every month I will send a l- a handwritten card and a photo, usually of the girls, to my parents, my husband's parents, and I have, we have one grandparent still living, my grandmother.
24:28
Ashley Conway: So every single month, and some months I'm like,"I have nothing to say." Um, but every month I send them a card and a picture, and it, half the time it doesn't mean anything for me'cause that's just another to-do, but to them it means the world.
24:43
Ashley Conway: I feel like that's, that's a Brad Paisley song.
24:45
Ashley Conway: You know?
24:47
Ashley Conway: Like it's, to me you are the world, even to you, you felt like you weren't
24:53
Charlotte: Right, and it's just all those little small gestures.
24:57
Charlotte: Okay, so which leads me to my next question.
25:00
Charlotte: If you were gonna plant a seed in someone listening that you, they might carry with them, what would it be?
25:13
Ashley Conway: Plant a seed.
25:14
Ashley Conway: Hmm
25:20
Charlotte: Don't put pressure on yourself
25:24
Ashley Conway: I think, and this is a message I need to give to myself is too, at this point, live in a weird time politically, um, technologically with AI.
25:37
Ashley Conway: We l- it, it's a noisy place that we live in.
25:41
Ashley Conway: It can just be a hard time in the world to be a person, and that is completely separate from what's going on in your own life.
25:54
Ashley Conway: You know, whether you have health challenges or financial challenges or, you know, whatever it is that you lay in bed at night and, um, think about before you go to sleep, we all have those things.
26:03
Ashley Conway: It is not easy to be a person sometimes.
26:06
Ashley Conway: Um, and I think it does take effort to be people who are grateful and content with what we have and where we are, and to also...
26:19
Ashley Conway: so to be grateful and content in the present, but to also look to the future and say, things...
26:26
Ashley Conway: Good is here now, but good is also coming." And I think that's a fight that we have to fight every single day, but we get the choice as to how we're- the perspective we're gonna have, how we're gonna look at our own lives and our own days.
26:39
Ashley Conway: So I'm gonna choose to be grateful and content even when things don't look like I want them to, I'm gonna choose to be hopeful that, um, God's got this, and He has good plans for me, and I'm gonna lean into that, and I'm gonna believe it, and I'm gonna have faith and trust that good things are ahead.
26:55
Ashley Conway: shoot, if that isn't a message that I need to play to myself single day.
27:01
Charlotte: Oh, it's beautiful.
27:02
Charlotte: I think, I think it's a lesson for all of us.
27:05
Charlotte: It's really easy to get caught up in the outside noise, and then the outside noise gets in your head, and then it's doubts and fears and anxieties, and it can just create such a cascade of emotions.
27:25
Charlotte: And so to constantly be checking back in with yourself and realize it's still a good day, I'm here living, breathing, there's plenty of beauty in the world, and that it will continue to be that way
27:41
Ashley Conway: Yeah, and for me, I mean, I work from home, I'm, my girls are at school, my husband's at work, I'm by myself a lot, so it's easy to get into a spiral of like, you know, stinkin' thinkin', as they would say, and you just keep going through that loop.
27:55
Ashley Conway: And sometimes I do need to go get around other people or go outside or get out of here and try to get, try to check myself really,'cause it's like my own thinking is not taking me anywhere good.
28:07
Ashley Conway: So I'm either going to have to put in something good if I wanna read the Bible or an uplifting book or listen to a podcast.
28:13
Ashley Conway: I mean, it's like you have to know when you are headed no place good and head that off before it turns into weeks of, um, you're just kind of down in the gutter mentally
28:27
Charlotte: I'm gonna pivot a little bit here because I want, to ask you about Be Weird Marketing.
28:35
Charlotte: But before I get, where people can find you and things like that, I love the name, but I'm also very curious what it means to you besides marketing.
28:45
Charlotte: What does Be Weird mean to you?
28:49
Charlotte: What made you decide to say,"This is the company that I'm gonna create"?
28:55
Ashley Conway: Uh, and oddly enough, I think I chose that around 2011, so it's been here a little while.
29:02
Ashley Conway: it definitely rang true from a business perspective, like you have to do things differently.
29:06
Ashley Conway: Um, but I mean, that rings true personally, like we have to be or brave enough to go against convention.
29:16
Ashley Conway: even if that's not taking an action that is against what everybody else is doing, let's think in a way that is counter-cultural or at least question ourselves.
29:27
Ashley Conway: Or it could be something as simple as, um, the beliefs that you have carried in from your childhood.
29:34
Ashley Conway: Um, like this is a dumb one, like in our...
29:36
Ashley Conway: In my house growing up, it was you use Tide, you use Jif.
29:40
Ashley Conway: Like there were certain, you know, those are
29:42
Charlotte: It's
29:43
Ashley Conway: you buy,
29:43
Charlotte: yeah
29:44
Ashley Conway: but there are certain things that you believe, certain things that you do.
29:47
Ashley Conway: My mom was a stickler about make your bed every day, and let me tell you, that was the first one that I was like, this really necessary?" But it's like question...
29:57
Ashley Conway: is never a bad practice to question the things that we believe, to question what we think is black and white.
30:04
Ashley Conway: I feel like with age and wisdom, you start to learn, um, some of those things, not all of those things.
30:10
Ashley Conway: Some of those things are now gray.
30:14
Ashley Conway: Um, and I, so I think that is definitely true on the side of like don't just...
30:19
Ashley Conway: And shoot, we live in the internet world.
30:20
Ashley Conway: Don't believe everything you read.
30:22
Ashley Conway: Don't believe everything everybody else is doing.
30:24
Ashley Conway: Don't believe just even because you love somebody that what they're saying is what you should do.
30:30
Ashley Conway: that pulled over in the marketing side very much because, my gosh, all of us marketing experts are everywhere, and we are all jumping in your face saying,"No, this is the way to do it.
30:43
Ashley Conway: This is the magic pill.
30:44
Ashley Conway: This is get, this will get you follower..." You know, whatever it is.
30:50
Ashley Conway: and I think that is a bunch of crap honestly.
30:53
Ashley Conway: It's like there is no one-size-fits-all because you are different as a, an, a business owner.
31:01
Ashley Conway: Your business is different.
31:02
Ashley Conway: The people you serve is different.
31:03
Ashley Conway: What you offer is different.
31:05
Ashley Conway: Everything, when you put all those things together, is completely unique.
31:09
Ashley Conway: It's like a fingerprint compared to the business owner next to you, and that matters.
31:13
Ashley Conway: If you hate and despise social media, let's find the way so you're not on there all the time.
31:19
Ashley Conway: And that's probably not the most popular advice, and I'm fine with that because it actually brings me joy to be weird.
31:30
Charlotte: What would you say is your weirdest characteristic?
31:34
Ashley Conway: Weirdest characteristic.
31:37
Ashley Conway: Um, hmm.
31:41
Ashley Conway: That is a good one.
31:43
Charlotte: هبزي
31:45
Ashley Conway: I don't know, I feel like I straddle the...
31:48
Ashley Conway: 'Cause I have, you know, been in the South most of my adult life, I don't always feel like a traditional Southerner.
31:56
Charlotte: Угу.
31:56
Ashley Conway: I don't like the word y'all.
31:58
Ashley Conway: I don't mind if anybody else use it.
31:59
Ashley Conway: I don't use it.
32:01
Ashley Conway: Um, I feel like I straddle the two camps a little.
32:04
Ashley Conway: Like, I appreciate the South, my Southern upbringing, um, the friendliness, the, the food, all of it.
32:11
Ashley Conway: Uh, but I also don't wanna be like, necessarily given all of the, uh, preconceived notions people have about Southerners.
32:20
Ashley Conway: Like, whatever it is, growing up, you know, in Kentucky, you were either University of Louisville fan or University of Kentucky fan, and unless you live in Louisville, everyone's a Kentucky fan.
32:30
Ashley Conway: Even as a kid, I'm like,"I despise Kentucky,"'cause this is, like, cultish, and it would make me crazy when everybody is, like, wearing all this stuff and going wild, and I'm like,"I refuse.
32:40
Ashley Conway: I can't stand this team." So I would root against them, and I still do, and I'm proud of it.
32:47
Charlotte: Hey, SEC runs deep
32:52
Ashley Conway: It does.
32:53
Ashley Conway: I know I've probably offended, I don't know how many Kentucky listeners you have, but I've probably offended 90% of those people.
33:00
Ashley Conway: It's okay, I will still sleep tonight.
33:03
Charlotte: Oh my gosh.
33:03
Ashley Conway: Come at me Wildcats
33:05
Charlotte: You're cracking me up.
33:09
Charlotte: Okay, real quick, I'm, I'm gonna loop back to what you said about your brand.
33:12
Charlotte: So did you try...
33:13
Charlotte: Are you a Jif, a Jif person, or did you jump the and get a Skippy?
33:17
Ashley Conway: Oh, no, no.
33:18
Ashley Conway: What is Skippy?
33:19
Charlotte: I just wanted to say I'm a Jif lover through and through so when you actually said you were going through, what you grew up on, and it's crazy because I won't eat anything besides Jif.
33:30
Charlotte: And so I was kinda giggling when you actually said that because did you jump ship and go to Skippy?
33:36
Ashley Conway: Absolutely.
33:37
Ashley Conway: Now I do like the Sam's Club Member's Mark kind of thing.
33:40
Ashley Conway: We will do that, but no.
33:42
Ashley Conway: The products I kinda stuck with, it was more the things of like, um, where my parents and I differed or like, how do we feel about tattoos?
33:50
Ashley Conway: And, you know, it's the deeper conversations that I...
33:54
Ashley Conway: And a lot of it was, you know, faith-based, and I'm like,"I'm okay that we don't agree on this, and you should be okay, too.
34:00
Ashley Conway: It's all right."
34:02
Charlotte: Mm-hmm.
34:03
Charlotte: Okay
34:04
Ashley Conway: once you're an adult, once you're in your 40s, you have your own family, don't, you don't have to agree with your parents anymore.
34:10
Ashley Conway: And are some things that I have, she may listen to this, um, that I just decide,"I'm not going to tell my mom this for her own good.
34:18
Ashley Conway: It would do her no good in the world for her to know that I do things this way.
34:24
Ashley Conway: It would keep her up at night, and it's not worth it."
34:29
Charlotte: Oh gosh, you crack me up.
34:31
Charlotte: So if people wanted to find you and find Be Weird Marketing, where's the best place?
34:37
Ashley Conway: So the places I'm probably most active would be either LinkedIn, you can find me at Ashley Conway Be Weird, or also Facebook.
34:44
Ashley Conway: I know it is like for old, old people with walkers, but everybody just still likes to connect on Facebook, so that's where I'm at
34:54
Charlotte: You keep putting us in the grave.
34:56
Charlotte: I just have to say, like, you keep...
34:59
Charlotte: I'm older than you, and I am not in a walker, and I don't intend to be in anytime soon
35:04
Ashley Conway: Girl, Facebook is not popular anymore ex- except for the older crowd.
35:09
Ashley Conway: It's TikTok and Instagram, and I know that, but I'm like,"Well, know your peers.
35:13
Ashley Conway: If you want your peers, you're gonna hang out on Facebook."
35:21
Charlotte: Well, this has been fun, and I love this conversation.
35:24
Charlotte: I love getting to know you more and more, you shine such a bright light, I really appreciate you, your willingness to come on and share your seeds with everybody.
35:34
Ashley Conway: Thanks
35:41
Thanks for spending a little time with me today.
35:44
And remember, you're always planting something, so pay attention because it matters.
35:50
Until next time, thanks for being here