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Carleen Haylett: A One Way Ticket to Bold · The Bold Lounge

• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be able to tune in.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Get ready to be inspired.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the bold lounge.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today I have Carlene Halit, and I'm so excited to introduce you to she is the CEO and founder of Enriched HQ.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Carleen.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, good morning, Lee.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for having me.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Love what you're doing.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to share your story and your bold journey.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But just to start off, can you give just a brief introduction of you to the audience?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Carlene Haylet, and I am the founder and CEO of a company called Enriched HQ.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we are a marketplace that brings together virtual skills building and life skills activities for kids, grades four and up.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our primary mission is to bring to working parents activities that extend beyond what kids are learning in school, primarily to help kids gain knowledge and learnings that better prepare them beyond high school to enter the workforce or whatever path they choose.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And through the company, we work with very large organizations who bring this to their employee communities as either an extension of employee benefits or part of a key diversity and inclusion programs built around supporting families, particularly working women and elevating women in leadership and in the workforce.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to dig into this.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I call it the masterclass for kids.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good way to think about it.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So love to get into that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously being bold, being a founder and CEO of your own organization, there's certainly some boldness in that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: But what would be your definition of bold?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was thinking about this because I knew this was coming, this question.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things that I've become quite aware of, uh, particularly, you know, as the lockdown and the pandemic, is you know, overcoming fear and the things that are associated with that, pushing beyond those things that you're fearful of.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And generally what I found with myself is that fear really is that negative self-talk.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So pushing beyond that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I find myself procrastinating because of that fear, and then just being able to continuously be conscious of and practice pushing past that.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, once you get over it, you realize there's nothing on the other side of fear, and it, you know, it's a natural progression, but being bold enough to acknowledge that that's happening and push beyond that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's sometimes people think being bold doesn't mean you fear anything or being fearless.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's the opposite of that, honestly.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have fear, but like you said, you push through it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think on the other side of fear is opportunity.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And whether it's learning, you know, something didn't work, but I learned from it, or whether it's like, wow, I didn't know that was even possible, or didn't think they would even say yes.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I have a lot of that.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh my example the other day is I uh sent a note to Oprah.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll see.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's allowed.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I always say to myself, and I try to teach my son, you can't get to a no answer unless you ask.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of my friends has always said to me, You don't get what you don't ask for, right?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so if you don't ask for it, that's exactly it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it it's it's definitely a great definition.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: So in your life, when you think about wow, the first time I was I can remember being bold, what when was that?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what does that look like?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was probably uh, you know, there are many small moments, but if we wanted to look at one that was, you know, really transformational back in, I don't know, 2009-ish, I had previously gone through a divorce and then, you know, had taken career opportunity that was so very wrong that it just brought me to my knees.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I decided that was it.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to get out.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I sold my condo that I owned in Boston, put everything in storage, and bought a one-way ticket to Italy and ended up spending, you know, two years, you know, six or seven months traveling around, and then begged my way into a professional culinary program, um, which included working as an apprentice at a two-star Michelin restaurant in Via Reggio, which is in Tuscany on the uh Mediterranean.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I can remember the moment of leaving.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my car was filled up and I was dropping things off at storage and just crying out of fear.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't speak the language, I had never been there, and just got on that plane and went.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: What made you pick Italy?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, first of all, you're doing something that people dream about in a way, but you were doing it in a way of like you wanted to get away, you wanted to start anew or just get a fresh perspective, I'm assuming, right?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't like, hey, I'm going away to Italy, I'm so excited.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was I'm going to Italy to kind of reset because you know it's messy right now, right?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So like our our way of thinking about that is probably in a different frame of mind.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you did this in your late 30s.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was about 39.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: People don't understand this.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: She's not in her 20s doing this, which that we presume that, oh, you you have the latitude, or you only do things like that when you're in your 20s, but you know, you're almost 40 and you're you're making this decision.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do this, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, what made you pick Italy and what were you hoping from going to Italy?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Great exploration of this.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ironically, or luckily, at the time, I had a mentor who had come to visit.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm live outside of Boston.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: We took a road trip up to Maine and we were sort of sitting outside on the coast.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And my previous career choice had just the wheels had just completely fell off.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so dejected because I had been so excited working for a small consulting firm for a woman that I thought I could learn from, and it just ended up being a mess.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were sitting on this bench on the water, and he said to me, I I just personally, you know, my comment to him was like, I just can't go back into that corporate world.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just I can't bring myself.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I want to do, I don't know where what and he said, Well, what would you do?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I would probably sell my condo and pack up my stuff and go to Italy.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he handed me his phone and he said, call your realtor right now.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he made me call my realtor and tell my realtor that I wanted to put my condo on the market, and that was the end of it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I chose it, I chose Italy because growing up, my parents uh had spent a considerable amount of time there.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I had personally never been, but there was just something I can't put my finger on it, but uh something just told me that that aligned with who I was as a person, you know, the food that I like to eat, you know, pizzas.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: If I had one food for a deserted island, it would be pizza.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So from Italy specifically.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that was where that choice came from.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what a good mentor, and and you know, someone that's kind of probably pushes you to do something.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So from that perspective, sounds like that was an ingredient of it, and then a little bit of familiarity, but not a lot.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: But so you you land, and your your goal is to really soak up as much as you can, learn more about yourself.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a rediscovery of you?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So about the first six months, well, as you mentioned, you know, some familiarity.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I had my mother help me sort of map out.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I first wanted to travel the country just to see it.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So help me map out sort of the path of places that I would go and so forth.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that was about six months.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the intention there for me was really just first and foremost to chill out, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, start to learn a little bit of the language and just really sort of get my own personal strength back, right?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: That a little bit of confidence back in my ability to be able to do stuff, right?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I just I was so shaken by the previous professional experience that I just I came out of it so dejected.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So traveled around for about six months, and then during that time, you know, lots of soul searching, lots of journaling.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I loved to write.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I kept an online blog that all my friends and family back home would read.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And realizing that food is very much part of me, and I was right about Italy because one of the things that I love so much about that particular country is the connection, the absolute connectedness between, you know, location, food, religion, politics, and family.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're so intertwined, and the country has such a storied history in each of those areas, and it all can be manifested in the food within that region.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to experience it all.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I found a professional culinary school that had a very unique program where they would bring Michelin star restaurants from various regions around the country.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so for two weeks, that particular chef would teach about his regional specialties and things about the region.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a language learning, it was a cultural learning, as well as the food and history, and so went and found the chef that owned and ran it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: He thankfully spoke English, and I had the cash to pay my way into it because I wasn't a professional chef, and absolutely life-changing.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, completely life-changing.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So in that experience, like there's a lot to talk about there.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a rebuild.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think many of I I can relate to the rebuild phase.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I did that after I left my job after being completely burnt out, and really my health was suffering, my sleep, everything was suffering, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like I there's a long list.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so like I made that decision, but I didn't jump, I knew what I wanted to do.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I started the process, but I knew I couldn't just jump back into it without being true to who I am and rebuilding myself because I I say I was fractured, like I was just I needed, I needed a break, and I had to think about me and get outside and be around my friends and family and and you know, travel a little bit, you know, because I hadn't seen I haven't seen lots of people because when I did that, it was 2020, smack dab in the middle of the pandemic and those sort of thing.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you couldn't really do a lot of traveling.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I started doing you know things in the house or just because we were in New Hampshire, just being able to get outside.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I can relate to that for sure, the rebuild phase.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the power of traveling and the power of kind of not being in your home country, like I think there's some learnings in there.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's certainly some boldness, like you don't know the language, you're figuring out how to move about, and you you know it's a life-changing two years.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: What did you learn that you were surprised about in those two years about yourself?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Any surprises?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how I don't know if resilient is the best word, but resourceful, I think is it?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in Europe is different, right?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: The way that you buy a train ticket, the way that you, you know, the bathrooms work or your hotel and drive, yeah, or drive or whatever it is, everything is different.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, being put in a position where you know, every moment of every day you are learning something new, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know that when you wake up in the morning that you are going to present and be presented with an entire day's worth of things that you've never experienced before, and and getting through that and getting through it successfully and coming out the other side, you mentioned learning with you know, even the smallest nugget that that's another, you know, little piece.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll give you an example.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the blog that I wrote was I tried to be, you know, amusing, and there were times when I fell downstairs because they were built in the Etruscan period or whatever.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But at one point I was in Florence and I needed to get a haircut.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know how to say I needed a haircut.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to communicate, you know, with the stylist, I didn't know any places or whatever, and having to overcome that.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote a whole blog post about that experience, about you know what it meant and how I, you know, moved through it and stuff.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And did it work out?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Did you get it?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was great.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and there was another time I was in, I think Sorrento, and literally, like I said, fell down this huge stone stairway, and down at the bottom was this Asian couple, and not only did neither of us speak Italian, you know, they didn't speak English, and I didn't speak whatever Asian language, but there was such a kindness in them helping me, and they were tourists in a land that they didn't know, and so was I.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And who walks down Etruscan age staircases every day, you know.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which I'm sure are not flat, and I'm sure the stairs aren't even.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's the point.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just for anyone that's like thinking, like, what's the difference?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there and then these are rock from you know 400 BC or something, you know what I mean?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it sounds like a new learning every day and kind of being able to also figure out how to communicate in a new way or different way, you know, that people can still understand.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the last thing you said was really about unexpected really acts of kindness of people who don't have to be kind or you know, don't, you know, don't know you.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think those are those are some biggies in the sense of learnings.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think one of the things you said that I think is important for people to hear is that beginner piece because I think uh being a beginner or new at something, it's uh it like it's stressful at some sometimes, but I think it relieves stress more than makes stress, right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're both entrepreneurs and founders of our company, so there's stress when you're doing that, but like not having to be the expert or the you know, whatever, insert your senior title and you're the go-to, but like you're a beginner, and I talked about this uh yesterday, but there's a quote, you know, uh by Steve Jobs, but it's about really just being free of that expectation, and it's okay to like learn and figure stuff out.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like there was a lot of that in your journey.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Would you agree with that?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it I a hundred percent agree.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this, you know, I also always say wisdom comes with age, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: But just the getting to a place where you are comfortable not knowing, being able to admit I don't know how to do this.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as an entrepreneur and starting my own business, you know, I through my professional career, I've been lucky enough to do some great things from technical development, product management, marketing, and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that was really an Achilles heel for me was financial, the the modeling, the just the whole finance CFO side of a business.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't have been able to embrace the learning around that really important piece of being an entrepreneur if I hadn't gone through the experience of getting to a place of comfort where not knowing is actually really quite cool because you come out the other side with a strength, another arrow in your quiver, if you will.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And definitely I think it's a bold factor, like being comfortable not knowing is what you said.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you just are still step by step, you're doing it daily from getting a haircut to taking a class to coming home and then starting your business.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's fast forward to that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you come back, did you start your business right away, or how did you get to the point now with enriched HQ from the time that you went to Italy to that launch?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the company was launched in February of 2020.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So literally like weeks before the lockdown happened.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the impetus for the company was I'm also a single mother, unrelated to sort of all the stuff we previously talked about.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But my son was born in 2011, and I don't have a family, a nuclear family here outside of Boston to sort of rely on for care and support and so forth.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So going into that choice to become a single mother, I knew I was doing it on my own, right?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily, I was in a financial position where I could easily make that choice, where others aren't necessarily, but it was a conscious decision.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of that over the last 10 years is that I've had to meticulously craft a crazy labyrinth of support for my son because I traveled, I was in a full-time job, I was in enterprise technology.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I joke and say, you know, a strong wind and the entire thing was gonna fall apart, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Babysitters, nannies, overnight, uh, you know, all of these things.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a freaking nightmare.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the only way.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so the company that I started was the really the result of in the beginning of 2020, getting to the point of enough, I have dealt with this problem enough, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a technologist, I know that it can be fixed with technology, and it's time for me to fix it because nobody else is gonna do it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I spoke, all of the parents across those 10 years speaking to parents and families, it was a problem that they dealt with every day as well.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew there was a market for it, and so that's really where it started and has grown from there.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we launched the marketplace.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of 2020 was spent really around market research, building the initial product offering, getting ready to launch.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Middle of last year, we launched the marketplace and had some.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Subsequently sort of grown from there.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been really fantastic.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And congratulations on that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not an easy time to do that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then an unknown, again, stepping into unknown and being bold in that place.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then also saying enough.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think sometimes another way we can define being bold is we stop tolerating things we have tolerated for too long.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you could fill in the blank of, you know, and think about are there things you're tolerating today that you should just stop tolerating.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you were like tired of the, you know, the house of cards, it sounds like when it comes to kind of the organization and the coordination and the one, you know, one card falls and the whole thing, you know, you can't you can't make it work.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And there's probably a lot of people that can relate to that, especially single parents, in in the sense of, you know, what it takes to be a single parent.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you've you had a solution and then you went about creating it.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so the tell us a little bit about the marketplace.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: So just people know the information about it is below for people in the in the session notes to go to the website and to check it out.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: But what is it if you wanted to just describe it to people?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I call it the master class grades four and up, correct?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is just essentially a centralized hub of programs for enrichment programs, after school programs, virtually for kids grade four and up.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And these are things where the current educational system in the way the curriculums are built or so forth, wherever you fall on the, you know, the trajectory of is education working for our kids or not is sort of irrelevant.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there's always this notion that there are other things that parents and families want their kids to learn or be exposed to, or the child wants to learn that isn't offered by schools.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So things like public debate or introduction to entrepreneurship or introduction to investing or language and musical instruments.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what we do is we go out into the world and parents and the kids tell us the things that they're interested in.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: We go out in the world and we find the best in-class providers of those courses or those activities.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we invite them to be part of our ecosystem, and we act as the middleman for the families.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we give families a centralized place to go and find all these really awesome activities.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we, underneath, as a technology, help them easily build a comprehensive program across multiple vendors, transactions, financial interactions, and then we put them together with those vendors because another problem that we're solving for families is, you know, I live in the ed tech world every single day.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that there are all these amazing things happening in that space, right?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Options for families that didn't exist before.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, normal everyday human being parents have no idea that they exist.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have the time to go out and research it.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And now that virtual learning for all of the benefits that are associated with it is becoming far more commonplace, the world has really opened up to the options for kids.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of this, what we solve is we bring together all of these things for parents so that A, as an employee of a company, they they don't have to lose productivity or extend their working hours during a day just so that they can go find extracurricular activities for kids.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, stats will show that you know, women in particular, their workday has increased by two hours per day.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a part-time job because of responsibilities at home.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so we want to make it easy for parents to take advantage of really amazing technology advancements in learning and help them alleviate stress, stay productive at work, and better balance work and home life.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the marketplace does.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm excited for people to check that out.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not only does it create, I think, more touch points or opportunities for your children, and you don't have to figure out how to do it.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's right there going to it.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then additionally, like you may not know how to speak a certain language or to be on a debate club or to be in a club, but maybe your child wants to learn a little about it.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's kind of the boldness and just exploring and innovating and thinking.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when we're younger, we just never feel, at least I never did, like there's any barriers.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I could be whatever I wanted to be.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I could learn whatever I wanted to learn, I could check out what I wanted to learn.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: But now, like the opportunity to kind of even be able to do that in a centralized location, I think it creates efficiencies and it also gives parents a break of not having to be the expert at everything.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that we learned that during the pandemic too.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we don't have to be everything, and I think it gives people a break and parents a break too.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: So and helps with that house of cards feeling too.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like if they need something to do or need, you know, want to learn versus be, you know, scrolling or being playing video games or those types of things, they could actually be learning how to, you know, invest.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: How fun is that?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is I call it one of the pandemic silver linings is you know, the the astronomical rate uh around adoption of homeschooling as an option for kids, and you know, the the comfort level with virtual learning wherever you fall on that trajectory.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that the geographical barriers to activities to expose your kids in more things are all but eliminated through virtual learning, right?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: So my son wanted to learn how to speak Japanese.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And pre-pandemic, I might have gone on the internet and found a Japanese teacher near me, right, which wouldn't have existed, and I would have had to rush out of the office to get to pick him up, to get over there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: He now is enrolled in a Japanese language class, and the teachers that he's learning from are in Tokyo.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just an example of there's this huge opportunity now where geographic barriers are no longer an impediment.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the entire world of things that may not have been available previously to expose kids to is now at our fingertips.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that I find tremendously exciting.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: So please do check that out in the show notes and learn more about Enriched HQ.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: So let's end with, I think one of the things was you know, pushing beyond our fear.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: We started with what's your definition and being comfortable not knowing?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: What advice would you give someone who's just kind of in that zone right now, whether it be their career or their personal life, or something they want to do, or you know, they want to take a trip, go on an adventure.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: What's your advice?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, push through, I think, is you know, the logical extension of what I said, but you know, that doesn't happen overnight.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly isn't easy to do or even to get comfortable with.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: The way that it started for me after I came back from Italy was I literally started journaling every morning.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would get up in the morning and I use a guided journal from Ryan Holliday, the Stoic guy.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know him, but he has a book.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have years and years worth of them, and every day is a question.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And just sitting there for 15 minutes every single morning and journaling about these things, what I found is it did two really important things for me.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: One is it really helped me establish a sense of gratitude.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, whereas before I might, in my, you know, troubled times might call myself a victim or behave like a victim or some so forth.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the second thing is the ability to question what my head is telling me versus what my heart is telling me.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: So question that voice that says you can't, you shouldn't, you won't.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that is essentially a habit, right?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: That a muscle that needs to be built.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a process in in getting there and strengthening that.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that that would be if somebody was feeling fearful to the point like I was, that manifested itself in procrastination or just complete avoidance and you know, depression, is start small, start with a journal, start questioning every, you know, and making it part of how you show up to any situation.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly gratitude, you get back what you put out there and being thankful for, you know, I say to myself, there's food in the fridge, God love you.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like when we open our fridge a robust, like you know, it's like, okay, I'm glad I can't find a spot for the milk.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, being thankful for for the little things.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we do miss that, and we're all guilty of that.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: The building really up of the the muscle to be bold in a way.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: So building up your bold muscle and realizing that it doesn't, it doesn't have to and it shouldn't, you shouldn't think it's gonna happen overnight.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Little by little an incremental boldness in a way of like even just retraining how you're talking to yourself.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm still working on that, you know, but I it is definitely something that I'm getting better and better at the more I do it.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's a consciousness.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest thing is I I feel, and I say this to myself all the time, you know, part of these questions in Ryan's book is are you living the best life, or are you whatever with the virtues?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is generally as best as I can, but really the answer for me is am I conscious, right?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Have I gotten to a place where I'm conscious when I am and when I'm not?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: When I am kind or I'm not, or I am grateful or I'm not, or I am procrastinating because I'm fearful or I'm not.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Being conscious that that's actually going on is really the first step.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's just being honest enough to say, I don't know this and it scares me.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next step is, well, that's okay.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably gonna screw it up massively, but that's kind of cool too.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you'll learn from it.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And more out of you know, this it you'll you'll learn for something that doesn't work more so than we learn it what does work.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I've said that before too.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that just being conscious, and that's really knowing when it's you know, when those, you know, that self-talk is coming in or when some of those things are happening.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: So so I love ending on that.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been such a delight to have you on the podcast.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for sharing your story and your boldness.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited to to keep talking and learn more about your next journey.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Carlene.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you, and congratulations with everything that you're accomplishing.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: I love your mission and all that you're doing for women and and leaders to to grow in their space.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the lead, you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact on others through their unique and important stories.