Tina Wells: Harmonizing Your Work and Life

25:40What I would say is you got to get to know it and you have to get to know everything about it and figure it out. And I don't think it's going to replace. I think it can enhance, but I think it would be detrimental to any writer to ignore what's happening and just think that it's not going to have a huge impact on the entire industry. Just for the record, I am a writer also. And I think that chat GPT has made me two or three times more efficient as a writer, like no question in my mind. And everybody's afraid of this situation where it writes the book for you. And that's total bullshit is it is the ultimate research assistant.

26:23It is second only to madison nismar as a research assistant i have madison gpt and chat gpt so and i have amazing editors and that's what i said i'm like they're not going to replace these amazing incredible editors who push the content and maybe it'll help you get your first draft done but when those editors get there and rip it to shreds and make it a book you know it can only to do but so much but I agree I think it really for me I feel like it'll help me do more you know I look at my process now and how I would love to write more and have so many more books and series out there serving different groups of readers and it's hard to replicate myself and my writing partner and so again I think it's understanding how it can really enhance what we're doing but I have to have the idea I have to have the thought of what I want to talk about and I have to have a voice and a way I write and a way I communicate at a tool like that can only really be helpful Last night, I have access to Bard already, and I also have access to ChatGPT4.

27:26So I asked both of them the same question, which is, what should I ask Tina Wells in a podcast interview? And I'm not using one question. Every question was along the lines of, what kind of challenges did you face in your career? what was the most exciting development in your career it's like npr on steroids kind of questions so believe me if chat gpt4 had said ask her what joe biden should do about tiktok i would be in the hospital with cardiac arrest this morning where we would be postponing this one more time but anyway so now you're 42 or 43 years old black female and you started at 16 and did you ever encounter imposter syndrome and if you did how did you get over it so guy i'm going to be very honest with you no i want you to lie

28:36oh goodness I'm trying to be serious now you're making me laugh but yeah I told you I'm the oldest of six and every February my father would make us black history coloring books he would print out this black and white sheet that had a bio of really incredible African Americans and we would like make fun of like oh my gosh here's dad again with these coloring books and I realized You know, a much older age, the impact of seeing the best of who we were and how that was a big part of my family culture and the storytelling, what we were allowed to consume and allowed to watch and not allowed to watch.

29:11And my parents very seriously saying, this is how we want to raise our children. You know, I have five siblings who are all college educated, all in different career trajectories. I have a sister who became a dean before she was 40. I have a brother who had a number one song in billboard shorts, I think by the time he was 30. So I come from a really accomplished family. So I didn't have imposter syndrome, I would say, until the last two years when I took a turn and got into manufacturing. And I absolutely had imposter syndrome because what I had to learn to manufacture and get a product in stores, there is no faking it till you make it in that field.

29:50You know, and I'm a marketer. We can spin things, twist it, add a little sparkle. We could polish some things up. You can't like polish something up through customs, right? It either is what it is, like the formula either is what it is. There's no being cute to get a product into the US. That was the first time I remember literally having a moment of, are these people crazy at Target? Why are they letting me do this? I don't even think anyone should trust me to do that. Like, this is absolutely insane. And I think my mind was blown that every day I have friends who, whether they're scientists, they work in these highly regulated industries that have very specific do this or don't do that, where you actually can't be 95 % correct.

30:30You have to be 100 % correct. So I've absolutely over the last two years had imposter syndrome and one because I had to learn something I just didn't know. And when you are an expert at something for the majority of your career, I really thought who after 40 decides to completely change what they do and to know nothing and have to learn all of this. And now that I'm on brand too, I don't feel like so much of an imposter. I feel like I've learned and I know so much, but I definitely had two years. And that was that those were the toughest two years of my life to wake up every day and say, I don't know what I'm going to deal with today.

31:03And I don't know the answer. And I'm not used to that. Well, and so how did you get through it? A lot of funny text messages with friends, a lot of venting to friends, a lot of asking questions. It was for me a level of vulnerability I didn't like. Again, my whole career, I would come in and show up with the answer for people. That millennial whisperer is here. She's going to fix this. And I had more questions than I had answers to questions for a few years. And that was really difficult. And the honest truth is I dealt with it with advice Oprah has given very publicly. I think it's brilliant advice, which is to do the next right thing, right?

31:40For the first time in my life, I knew where I wanted things to go, but I didn't have the willpower every day to will it to the end. I only had the willpower to just get to the next step. And I didn't know what was going to happen at that next step. Every day in my mind, I was like, and this could be the end because I might run out of steam and I can't do this anymore. And it would just, one thing would propel me forward or I would get a sample of my product in the mail and say, okay, I'm excited now. Like the creative part of the job that I love would come back in a way that would say, okay, I can do the next step.

32:10But it was a couple years of not fully seeing the entire process for sure. So your advice to people is what? Do the next right thing? Take the little victories, make little steps. Understand where you want to end up. Don't have the expectation that you have to run the marathon in the day. And that was me, was I have to get this marathon done in this day and I have to do a marathon every day. And I realized, actually, I'm training for one and I'm learning how to run and I'm learning how to do this new thing. And then I'm going to get to the finish line. But my expectation was I could just do it and like that, get there.

32:44And that was not reality at all. A few months ago, we interviewed a woman who was diagnosed with ALS nine years ago. Typically, you get diagnosed and you die in two years. She's lived nine. And when she was diagnosed, she made it a life goal to run a marathon or finish a marathon in all 50 states. Wow. And last year she did it. So if you ever want to be connected to someone who has knowledge about marathons, I have the world's best person for you. Apparently the world's most inspiring person too. I'm deaf, right? And when I tell people that, like sympathetic and empathetic with me, and then I think, what would I rather be, deaf or with ALS?

33:33ALS. You think Steve Jobs wouldn't rather be deaf and alive than here, but have pancreatic cancer? So it's all relative. I don't know how we got on that topic. Anyway, now, believe it or not, we're going to get closer to your book. So first question, first question from your book is, I want you to explain the difference between joy and happiness. Yes. Going back to the last few years of my life, really from the time I think when I talk in the book about my dad getting sick, I really started to understand joy versus happiness. And the real idea is happiness is temporal, right? And there are a lot of things outside of our control with happiness.

34:15Something happens, it makes us happy or not happy, where joy is a state we choose to exist in, right? And I learned so much about joy from my dad when he had gone into heart failure, then realized he was going to have to live his life with this device called an LVAD. And for me, obviously, I was deeply unhappy about it. And then I watched my dad show up as the same person. And my dad is a very joyful person, no matter what's happening. How are you doing? I'm great. And I would take him to the doctor. He's not great. A, B, and C is going on. But my dad is like, my daughter's here. It's a sunny day.

34:50I had tea this morning. I'm great. And I really started to think watching him. And in that particular year, spending so much time in the hospital and every time saying an encouraging, inspiring word to someone else. And I thought, wow, this is what it means to live in a state of joy when you don't let your outside circumstance determine how you're going to show up, how you're going to treat other people. For me, if I were in that situation, I, knowing myself at that time in my life, wouldn't have been able to show up at all in the way my dad did. and I really started to think about what I want to do is create joy and in my line that's why I have this like everything bag that has the phrase create joy on it it's a constant reminder because we cannot control the things that make us happy but we can start to build some controls around how we can create joy for ourselves.

35:40The myth of work-life balance so you have a long diatribe about work-life balance. And I completely, utterly agree. Don't get me wrong. So what's wrong with this concept of work-life balance? I think what we're all realizing, and we definitely have realized it after a pandemic, is the idea of just adding more stuff on the scale. Yeah, it keeps it balanced, but do you really want to have a ton of work and a ton of play and a ton of work and a ton of play? And you're doing this all the time, just adding more, adding more, adding more. when in reality, what we're seeking is a life that works for us.

36:21However, we put language to it, right? I want time with my partner, time with my family, and I want to do the work that I love, right? I don't want to have to sacrifice between the two. So what does that look like? During the pandemic, when we're all home together, we're on Zoom, and then what do we do? Have a break and go have a meal together as a family. That's something that hadn't really existed for quite some time. and we couldn't really put the language around, well, I like this feeling, you know, and people tell us we should work at a time and then carve out other time to do personal things.

36:53But what if I need to take a call on the way to picking my son up from practice? Why shouldn't I be able to do that? And so I think we all started feeling this way. And then you hear about people not wanting return to the office. I don't think that people didn't want to return to their work. I think they didn't want to return to the way they had to work. And I think they just weren't the same people going back into offices. We need a new way of talking about this. I'm certainly not the first person to bring up the idea of work-life harmony, but what I hope I can do is provide people with a framework to actually achieve it.

37:25And what's that framework? I think the framework is really one. A lot of what I talk about in the book is taking a minute to quiet yourself and ask, what do I really want? Because we start creating a bunch of things and we don't really know why we want them. So a big part of the book, it might take you through a four phase approach that I call the elevation approach that starts with preparation and inspiration and recreation and transformation. And I tell the story about how I got into burnout and I was constantly doing two out of the four things and never could really get myself to a place of realizing or transforming because I was always burning out.

38:05So while it's important to bring in recreation and play and all of those things. If you don't know what you want and why you want it, you are just really kind of like the hamster on the treadmill. You're just running the race and you don't know where you're going, why you're going there. You have to give yourself some direction. But part, again, it goes back to even our earlier conversation around authenticity, really being honest with yourself about what you want. And I think society tells us we should want so many things, you know, and I'm a marketer who definitely recognizes all of the messages that we have crafted.

38:37We've crafted very specific messages for women. We've crafted very specific messages for men. We have them set up in very specific ways for specific reasons. And what we're all saying collectively is those labels no longer fit us. We no longer want to be defined in certain ways. And we're in this very interesting time when the labels we've been given don't match the lives we want to live. And we don't know how to quite reconcile that. And so then you have people that just call everything woke. And I remember at one point saying, what is woke these days? Is it a catch-all for whatever we don't feel comfortable with?

39:12We just call it woke, wokeness. But in reality, it's like, no, we've just mislabeled a lot of things. And people are finally standing up and saying, I reject the label. I reject the idea that I have to be nine to five, or I reject the idea that I can't take a paternity leave. And so we're in this very interesting place, which I love. Obviously, I'm the kind of marketer that loves to see people mix it up and I love to see consumers and people take back their power and people are saying well I don't want to work like that well then I won't come to your company I know my value and my skill set and I don't want to do that and that's the area of discomfort we're having where people are just saying I reject the idea that I have to do things this way that it's been prescripted to me and I want to do something completely different.

39:54At the foundation of what you just said is good goal setting so you now have a moral obligation to explain how to set goals yes well guy i absolutely have to tell you i have a planner at target that takes you through how to set smart goals although it's in the book as well Touche. Touche. Because I believe in giving people tools, okay, to realize these things. And I'll be honest and say, when I start creating these tools in my mind, and I do think as marketers, we have to create things with a person in mind. I would always give my clients that advice, name that person who has the attributes and who are you trying to serve.

40:43and I thought about a lot of my friends who had chosen to either step away from their careers for some time to raise their children or they felt overscheduled or overworked and they said I don't have time to realize goals and what happens we sit down with these frameworks that are like spend two hours a day and it's like you've lost me there right on average women are doing an additional 30 hours of caregiving per week with a full-time job so the way you set goals you don't need hours and hours. You need to be smart about it. There's a framework about being really specific, making sure things can be measurable and actionable and having a time stamp to them.

41:19They're realistic. And then you have a timeline. And when you get into that framework, what I'm actually doing, you might even start to dub me like the dream killer, because I do write fiction and I am very creative in that way. But I do not think we should have any fiction involved in the goals we want for our life because we don't have time for that. if you in your mind if you spend so much time thinking about this imaginary bakery you're going to open up but in reality when you start to go through the elevation approach you get to the first step preparation and you realize that isn't feasible you know the awesome thing that happens you let go of something that is not serving you and you open up space for the thing that can fill that time so I do really believe in being very disciplined around your goal setting and your goal planning because we spend a lot of time you know and it's very culturally driven like You can have the life that you want.

42:08Dream, have a vision board, a dream. And you know what we're doing? We're putting these things there that can't become a reality for our life because of choices we are making. And it is okay to want what you want, but it's not okay to be unrealistic about it. And then unrealistically goal plan around it because you're just wasting a lot of time that you don't have. Up next on Remarkable People. I believe people are more than the job that they have, you know? oh, and I really think about how am I benefiting you in your life? How are you benefiting me? What's the reciprocity? And we have to stop being on a mission to collect people, then serve us and not think about how we're in service to other people and what we have to offer.

42:52Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world. They provide practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable. If you live in the U.S. or Canada, text 831-609-0628 to get notified of each new episode. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. One of the things I didn't quite understand is I understand the steps of preparation, inspiration, recreation, and transformation. there are you proud that i i can just rip those four things off from your book and i just want more information of going from preparation to inspiration so in preparation now i form this goal but why do i need inspiration i mean if i have this goal shouldn't i just go out there and do it.

43:57Why do I need external inspiration? Shouldn't I be self-driven to do this? So, Guy, think about some of the greatest entrepreneurs we know who were self-driven. And then what did they do? They made an MVP. And then what did they do? They let people beta test it. And then what did they do from that beta test? They corrected and kept innovating until they got to the product that was revolutionary and changed so many of our lives, right? And so, it's almost like I'm inviting you to create your MVP because it's, again, when you socialize it with people who have knowledge, that is the key point. Too often we do our research and then where do we go?

44:36To our friend to say, I want to open a bakery. And what does the friend say? Get it girl. Yeah. Instead of going to a bakery owner who's like, I'm going to tell you these five things you need to know. I remember in my early thirties, I was thinking about selling my agency and I'd done all the prep work. I knew a lot of the answers. And I went to a friend who had done the very thing I wanted to do. And she very clearly said, I'm going to define for you what this looks like year one through five. Year one, it's great. Year two, you're cruising. Year three, not feeling so good. Year four, you want out.

45:10And you got to stay for the end of that year. When she really broke it down, someone who knew what I was trying to do, I said, oh, that is not for me. And here's all the other things you need to know. If I had just gone to friends who were here to cheer me on, I wouldn't need inspiration. I would have gone and done the thing and it would have been the wrong decision. And so I will tell you, inspiration is hard if you do it the right way, because it's about checking your math. You've gotten curious, you know your numbers. It is now checking it with people who are doing the thing you want to do.

45:39And that's the key in that phase. Don't socialize and go have drinks with your friends. That's a ritual you're doing. That's in recreation. This is going to the people who know what you are trying to do and getting really clear on what I think I learned in preparation. Is it really true in inspiration? Whoa.

46:00Tell me how you really feel. Now do you see why you need recreation after that? You need a break. I do. I do. Because you're putting yourself through the ringer. I need recreation after this podcast. Madison and I will go surfing. So I loved your concept of rituals. And we had, I would say, maybe the world's greatest ritual whisperer, which is Julia Cameron. And so like you, she really believes in rituals. So I want you to explain why rituals are necessary. I think rituals are necessary because they ground us. and a lot of what I'm talking about in my book is a very practical approach. I want you to do the thing you need to accomplish in your life and I am going to be that real talk friend.

46:52I am not your hype woman. I'm not here to make you spend one ounce of any of your time on a path that's not meant for you because you're wasting time being the person you need to be and what I love about rituals is it's a way of grounding yourself wherever you are and as you bring more into your life and things and you start to create the work-life harmony you're looking for there might be a moment where you imagine like getting swept away by a wave what I'm trying to do is ground you and say for me no matter where I am in the world I love a hot drink in the morning it could be coffee it could be chai it could be a lot of things I love the idea of taking that time to create that thing for me.

47:30I love drawing a bath or doing different things. And I have a life where sometimes I can be all over the world, different time zones. I love finding a way to connect with my siblings. I have a brother who lives in Italy, who's been there for over 12 years. And I have another brother who's wherever he is in the world. And we have to find a ritual to ground us. My friends, I talk about my supper club. I was with them last night, where we had one day that we would commit per month. We're all busy in our careers, one meal per month, we commit to each other, right? And so those are the things that really bring us back to who we are when we're on this path of all the things we're trying to introduce into our lives.

48:05And so I think they're really important to remind us of who we are. There are even rituals I have that I feel really connect me to my ancestors in a way, like my grandmother, my great aunt, if I'm preparing a tea or something to keep me healthy. And I remember my aunt did that when I was younger and made it for me what I was feeling under the weather, right? And so somehow we've got to find the right rituals that really do bring you back to who you really are at the core that has nothing to do with your work. Another thing I love from your book is this belief that you should deposit before you withdraw.

48:41And why is that? Yeah, so almost it's like we're having a full circle moment when you asked me how I got into Target. That goes back to what I talk about with how I view relationships. And I really deeply believe this. You know, I'm in a process right now where I'm on tour and doing things. And when you are launching a book, people tell you, you go out and you ask a million people for everything in the world. And I said, I'm not doing that. Everyone's very, but this is how it's done. I said, no, I have written a book about how I have to make a deposit before I make a withdrawal. And it's incredibly important to me to be in integrity with what I'm writing and how I'm teaching people.

49:16And I think the response is different. You know, I think that just the idea that I want to serve and I want to give before I receive, it just sets you up in a different way. I talk also about hating the idea of networking because to me, networking means I look at who you are and your role and title. I assign value to that and then I go after you for that value. Do you want to be dealt with that way? Why are we teaching people this? Instead of just saying, I'm interested in you as a person. Again, I am a researcher who is generally interested in people for who they are. And then I decide we're friends.

49:52And I can't tell you guys how many times in my life someone has said, can you connect me to this person? I'm like, I don't think I know them. And it's like, oh, they're your LinkedIn connection, right? Because they tell me the role that company, can you connect me to the CMO? So I don't think I know that person. Then I look at him like, oh, you mean my friend, Diane, the girl that I met at a girls camp in the summer, and we went to an 80s prom and we made, oh, that's my friend. Oh, right. She's not Goldman, but she's just my fret and that's literally how i look at things because i believe people are more than the job that they have you know and i really think about how am i benefiting you in your life how are you benefiting me what's the reciprocity and we have to stop being on a mission to collect people then serve us and not think about how we're in service to other people and what we have to offer well i guess i shouldn't ask you to introduce me to oprah to get on this podcast but but you know what i am perfectly willing to connect you to any of our previous guests just fyi okay see you have a really great deposit so you're not asking for that big of withdrawal but when people just text me like can you give my book to oprah no like when i was able to work and produce the super soul 100 i got to do that in service of this bigger idea that oprah had to really elevate humanity through all these amazing people.

51:13I learned a lot about reciprocity and I learned a lot in that season of working with her and the team about how people just, unbelievable the withdrawals people would make, not even thinking that she needed the deposit. That was what was really remarkable to watch in that process. Sometimes we take people's humanity away because they have such a big role in how we see them in the world and don't realize they're also person and don't want to be looked at as a transaction. And I think we see that in a lot of people, right? They become larger than life and we don't allow them to be human beings. And I am often troubled when I see that.

51:51So just so people truly understand this, you're not suggesting that you make a deposit with the expectation that this is an investment for a withdrawal someday no so imagine if i had said i'm gonna get to know my friend kim because one day she's going to introduce me to someone at target who's going to change my life no i just became friends with him because i just like her you know what i mean and we had common interests and we did things together and we traveled together and because we had long conversations of making investments into each other she understood my heart i'll tell you this too guy she knew before I knew where I needed to transition in my career because she knew me.

52:31So I wouldn't have even known what to ask her for. And that's what's so great about really cultivating real relationships. I was almost too scared to go for what I wanted because I'd become good at a thing. This was my gig. I would have never thought to connect to that person at Target to even expand what was possible because I wasn't in a place to do that. And so I think it's really about being authentic, not collecting people, just getting to know people who you genuinely like. And then seeing, that's why I talk a lot about the idea of friend tours and not trying to have a mentor, but getting a group of people where you have different skill sets and you're going to challenge and be accountable to each other.

53:10And it was in that accountability and in that peer group that I was able to get to my next step. But it's all about authentic relationships. This is my last kind of two question collection. Okay. The second question is going to throw you back in the deep end. But the first question is in the shallow end. So the first question is, what is your advice to a teenage black girl listening to this podcast? Oh goodness. my advice is to do your own research about who you are and where you come from to not let any outside societal force impact how you view yourself really understand this most critical thing for you to understand at this place in your life is how to filter out other people's projections of who you are.

54:06You are not responsible to those projections. You are not responsible to anyone else's interpretation of who you are. You know, you have to make your own path and understand. One, you have to understand the game, whatever game you're participating in and playing. You want to understand the rules of engagement and how you need to show up. But I have a phrase I would say often, which is I can't take that on, right? And understanding and being really conscious of, if I am taking on an idea you have, let's say, of angry black woman, well, I'm not angry. I am black, and I am a woman, and I have an opinion, but if you translate that as angry black woman, I actually don't have to take that on, and I don't have to internalize that.

54:46So I think the most critical thing to know as that teenage girl is you have power, and don't let anyone teach you your history. Know it for yourself. I was very fortunate to have two parents who took on that responsibility of teaching us black history and I you can see in how we show up in our careers and in our life that that was incredibly important create your own filtering system don't let anyone instill your joy show up happy and joyful and really do what you need to do to protect your emotions and protect how the outside world might view you you couldn't ask for a better segue to my last question which is what if this black teenage girl now says I'm finding it so hard to learn about black history and culture because I live in Florida or I live in Texas or my school board has taken all the books out of my library what am I supposed to do Tina so I would tell her I went to a very lovely Presbyterian private school where I got an incredible education.

55:50But one of the things they decided to teach us was that black people should be happy that they were slaves because at least they got to hear the gospel. Are you kidding me? I am not kidding. But you know where I was very fortunate? I came home and we had conversations at the dinner table about what we were learning at school. And my parents filtered that right out and very clearly explained. And so I think that what my parents taught us is like outside of this house, people might have a lot of ideas about who we are. We are going to teach you who you are. And I'll never forget that because culture is so strong.

56:27But whoever is a part of that tribe, we have to do a better job as tribe members. You know, I write middle grade fiction focused on representation for that specific reason. Because I want children to be able to understand who they are. And I want to give that tool to parents. So I think parents, all of us aunts, uncles, we've got to get very involved in helping our children understand who they are and stop giving so much credence and noise to people who very specifically want to be seen as taking that away for very specific political agendas. Right. And again, I'm a marketer. I'm viewing this in a cynical, very different way where I'm looking at time and saying it is so critical, especially at those younger years for children to be taught their history.

57:11But if we can go back to the beginning of time, right, as storytellers, how was our history translated? It was oral, right? Our families would sit down and say, here's who you are. Here's where you come from. Here's how you got here. And that's a tradition that needs to continue for all of us. Here's who you are. And within that family, have that completely reinforced as well. Wait, can we just back up for 60 seconds here? So you come home from school. You tell your parents this story. and your parents don't say you're transferring or i'm gonna call up the president of the school and just jump up and down on the table they absolutely dealt with it privately but here's what i really appreciate about my parents they understood that that school was the tip of the iceberg for what my real life would be like and so what my parents were very clear about is this is not going away so you kids need to understand how to show up fully as who you are and you need to understand this it is unfair what happens to people who look like us in this world is not fair and now we are going to teach you how to be the best version of yourself but you cannot fall apart at someone else's interpretation of who you are we need to reinforce who you are so taking me away from that school wouldn't cease racism in my life.

58:32You know what I mean? Now I just understood from a young age, I can trust my parents to tell me who I am. I can go back to that school and say, actually, that's not correct. And it's so funny. I see it in my niece. She is so clear about who she is, how she shows up, when something's fair, when it's not fair. And I see it rise up in her and this strength and confidence that I realize now I had that from my parents as well, you know, and it's my sister and it's us reinforcing and her being able to ask questions and not avoiding the tough questions, but removing me from that environment wouldn't have helped.

59:06And now I'm just this tough woman who it's like, you can say what you want, it's going to roll off me, but I needed to have those experiences to train those muscles so that those words and things could roll off of me and not destroy my day or my afternoon. And now it's just like having Teflon and saying, here we go again, moving on, not allowing it to be so destructive. I love that they minimized it. And I learned later that they definitely had words with those teachers and principals and made it clear. But it also wasn't brought to me like, and we went to the school, it was, and I liked the way they handled it.

59:40Because if you think that every time someone's going to show up and fight your battles, they just taught me how to really comport myself so that I could deal in these situations. And there are a lot of those pressure situations, you know, and I've been, I'm an entrepreneur guy. If I'm honest, I've been outside of that system for the last two years when I've seen how people are treated, I'm like, are you kidding me? Somebody asked you questions about your hair. Like there are things that happen that I can't even believe happened to black people in the workplace. And as an entrepreneur, I built my own company.

1:00:10I built my own infrastructure and not really existed there. And so, you know, I credit my parents a lot with what they did. But yes, I can see how one might think they should have just taken me out of the school. Wow. Did you see that story about school principal got fired because they showed a picture of David, the sculpture, naked? So that's porn. And so the principal got fired. You can't make this shit up. You really. I hope that parents who are that involved in getting teachers fired are just as involved in teaching their children at home. and teaching them the values and history and things that they need to know.

1:00:48And there's a lot, again, a lot of noise going on, but it's incredibly important. The values that are modeled in the home are what the kids are picking up. And I can see that from going into classrooms and interacting with young readers. And there's a lot of deflection. And again, I wrote a book asking you to really look at yourself honestly, have an honest conversation. I think you build the case that what some of these politicians are doing now is going to have the exact opposite effect of what they want and what they think is going to happen. It's going to be the mother of unintended consequences.

1:01:27Oh, absolutely. It gives me, I will say, this is the one petty thing I will say, it gives me immense pleasure to watch them go out and think that they are crusading and doing something amazing. And I'm like, you have no clue what's coming back for you. That is going to backfire in a way. And guess what? You're not even going to be in the workforce when all of the things that are going to happen start happening. It has no ramifications or implications for you. And that's the scariest thing for me, I think, with any politician of different ages is you're creating policies and you're coming up with ideas and theories that ultimately are not going to impact your future.

1:02:05And that is really difficult. If you're a CEO of a company and you do something, it could impact your bonus. You want it to go well. We are allowing people to just create things that they can walk away from and then not have to deal with the consequences. So I think in general, there's some issues there. But yeah, I do take a little pleasure in thinking it's not going to end up how you think it is, but keep going with that talk of yours. Well, until this podcast, I had two Republican listeners and I just lost them, but that's okay. So this has been just remarkable. And because you're a marketer and I'm a marketer, which is the highest calling, I give you this opportunity, just picture book.

1:02:52I love it. At the end, when I'm exhausted of all the big questions, it's now talk about the book. It's very smart. The Elevation Approach is for anyone who really thinks work-life balance doesn't work, who is searching for something new, but also for the person who is trying to figure out how to make their dreams reality and really how to bring to life the life that they want. And it's also an invitation to take a minute, pause, get to know yourself in this season, get to understand what you want and have really a foolproof plan to help you get there. Thanks for listening to today's podcast with the remarkable Tina Wells.

1:03:33We hope you enjoyed listening to our insights about marketing, entrepreneurship and work life harmony. Tina's journey is a testament to the power of hard work, dedication and vision. Until next time, keep learning, growing, and chasing your dreams. My thanks to Jeff C., Peg Fitzpatrick, Shannon Hernandez, Alexis Nishimura, Luis Magana, and the drop-in queen of Santa Cruz, who dominates Jax, Madison Nesmer. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

1:04:16This is Remarkable People.