Founder's Story - From Selling a Company to Being a Nasa Space Tester | Ep. 34 with Christina Harbridge CEO Allegory Inc

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Todays episode has a special addition of a clip from one of my favorite shows called The Passion Economy with Adam Davidson and is available wherever you get your podcasts. Each episode Adam sits down with people who have channeled their unique passions... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ibhshow/supportOur Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Inspired by Her, the podcast that will give you the inspiration, motivation, and tips for success from some of the top executives, CEOs, and influencers from around the globe. With your host, serial entrepreneur, and named one of the most influential Filipina in the world, Kate Hancock. And we are live. Hi, everyone. This is Kate. And today I have Christina Harbridge. Hi, Christina. Hi, Kate. Oh, my God. So you guys have no idea. Christina really helped me shape to be a storyteller. I have to tell you that. Yes, you're um everyone christina is the founder of allegory inc and she's a behaviorist who trains and coaches individuals teams and large groups to understand and leverage their own personal

operating system when dealing with others who may or may not be rational. Now, she's also the author of Suede, How to Communicate for Impact, which reached number one on Amazon's conflict category list. Christina, I am so happy you're here. Oh, my God. It is so good to see you. I know. It has been a while. It has.

Yeah. Now, Christina, can you tell everyone about your company? Oh my goodness. Well, what do I want to say about Allegory? Allegory is a behavioral leverage company. So I don't know, Kate, if you've ever noticed that humans can be irrational and emotional and not always listen or do the things that make us loyal to an outcome. And so Mike Tyson has this quote that says, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so what most of us have an idea, like right now, I've never done a Facebook live before. And so my physiology is a little hijacked. I'm not normal. I'm not able to behaviorally be

authentic yet. And so what we do at Allegory is we help leaders figure that out. Like how do you communicate lead when your physiology sometimes is driving based on your values or comfort levels. So Kate, I so look up to you. You and I had such amazing small moments when we first met. So part of why I'm nervous is I want to do a good job for you. And so as long as I'm thinking about that, I'm not normal. My physiology will be thrown off. So my company helps people figure that out. Like how do you perform when something happens that hijacks you or causes you to not be loyal to the real outcome that you have? Christina, I met you, I think it was 2016 in Greece.

It was in Greece it was in Greece and you're probably the only person that could bring everyone like engage in a crowd and how can you tell me how do you do that like everyone get emotional and we get all like, how can you tell, can you explain to me? It's hard to explain, but that makes you memorable. I'll never forget your talk every time. Yeah, that was a really challenging time because I had just had surgery for breast cancer. So when I arrived there, I was pretty raw and had gone through something. I have a 14-year-old son now. He was younger then.

I had just gone through my worst nightmare, thinking that something would happen to me. And so one of the things that my operating system that makes me more comfortable is just being transparent and real. So just like what I just did, like this is what's really happening. So I, for my physiology, that makes me more comfortable. And so one of the ways to engage any room is for people to figure out how in that first minute they can be in their best self. And for me, it's being transparent and real. I think I told you all a story the first eight

seconds that was a little cringy, but that makes me open. For other people, other speakers we saw in Greece, if they start in what makes them the most comfortable, the rest of it moves. Yeah. And so getting y'all to talk to each other also, I think audiences need to connect with each other, not just sit and listen to the speaker. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, Christina, I want to know you more. What was the city or town you grew up in like? Oh, fascinating question. So I was raised in Doraville, Georgia. So this is in the southern part of the United States. And I was raised by civil rights workers who were there to infiltrate. There's a government body, the Center of Disease Control. My dad was there to infiltrate that system to change how they were hiring. So I was in this very raised as a southerner, had this massive southern accent, but raised

by people who were trying to change the system down there. It was an amazing childhood. Incredible. My dad was just brilliant in the methods that he did. And a lot of what I teach are his methods of infiltration. That's amazing. Now, what kind of kid are you in high school? Oh, my gosh.

What kind of kid was I in high school? Well, there was the kid I was in high school before I started drinking. It was the one after. So the one before was very bookish, introverted, kind of dorky. And then I started going to parties and kegers. And then I got a little bit more extroverted over time. It was pretty funny graduation. My three best friends looked at me because I got an announcement for having some of the top grades in the school and they had no idea because I was picking leaves out of my hair from the kegger that we had gone to the night before. So I was kind of like the overly productive stoner. Can you tell me what was the journey like to get where you are?

Oh man. I don't want to tell too long a story. So cut me off if I go on. I love your story. So I, watching my dad and my godfather do the work that they did to make our society more equitable. They both really taught me that infiltrating systems and changing them from the inside is a really powerful way to leverage change and to make our world more equitable and just. And my godfather is a master storyteller. And so I really learned from this master watching him how storytelling is a feeling. And that is not to happen, that we don't have to just do it one way. And so I just spent my childhood watching them and went to work. My dad was sick. He had Parkinson's disease.

So I had to figure out a way to help pay for him. And I was in college and I went to work at a collection agency, a debt collection company, because they paid double minimum wage. And I couldn't believe how evil they were. They were yelling at people, screaming at people. So I decided to start a collection agency that collected debt by being nice. And my godfather and my dad were like, you have to do it. You're infiltrating a financial system that needs to be disrupted.

And so that was my first company. And we collected debt by being nice. We help people find jobs. We sent them get well cards. Whenever people called us, we just tried to help them because not everybody owed the money. Not everybody should have been paying it. We just changed the conversation. And because of that, we collected three times more and we got invited to weddings. And it really, so, so Kate, what's the number one goal of a collection call? How would you answer that? Number one goal of a collection call. Yeah. Collect money.

That's what everybody says. That was the problem. The number one goal of a collection call is to establish enough humanity and relationships so they tell you the truth, tell you what's going on so you can help them. A third of people don't know the money, so don't ask them to pay. Find out what's going on. So that's a little long-winded, but that I really geeked out on how so much of the interaction that the heroes in the call center were having, how much of that interaction was somebody just needing to feel understood. And so we started changing our methods in how we trained our team. And then I became a NASA test subject in a study at NASA. And they showed me how our physiology is driving our behavior. And so I sold the collection agency and started Allegory because I realized no one's addressing our physiology. We're being taught to use words when it's really our body and our physical. It's not psychology.

It's physical. Wow. So that's how allegory became is that long winded story. Wow. And I have one more if that's okay. Yes, absolutely. So a woman reached out to me in 2002 and said, Hey, um, do you want to help? There's only 14% of women who are in office. Will you help me train women to run for office? And so back in 2002, um, she had

started this organization called Emerge California. I got on the founding board for Emerge America. We're now in 27 States. We train democratic women to run for office. And we are back a couple of Novembers ago, like over 500 of our women ran 80% one. They won. And so that's a huge part of what we do is trying to help people get into positions of power and authority to start making the world better. That's wonderful. Now, Christina, what is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?

My favorite? This sounds kind of cheesy. It's the little small moments you and I had in Greece. You and I had never met before. We got together like two inches away from each other and just found our friend for life. Yeah. And so there's something being an entrepreneur, I get to create things, but I also get to have these deep connections with humans that seem to stay. So it gives me an opportunity to learn from humans and connect on a deep level. And that's what I love about it.

Yeah. And everyone, Christine, everyone remembers their roommate story. Can you tell, share everyone about that? We all have that the imposter syndrome I can't even say that imposter syndrome like we're not good enough remember that I don't remember which one I think you share that in Napa you talk about you have this roommate. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I think what you're talking about is a friend of mine. I think this is a story you're talking about. I have a huge self-critic.

I have this serial killer in my head that right now I keep looking at Kate, but I'm noticing I have gray hair. I've got this wicked, evil, doesn't matter what I'm noticing I have gray hair. Like I've got this like wicked, like evil. It doesn't matter what I do. Like I will not go back and look at this because she is just crazy and she's mean. And she's like punk ass. I just don't like her. So I was verbalizing myself critic to a dear friend of mine. And she says, you have like a crazy roommate in your head. Is that what you're talking about? That's exactly like you, like, hold on. You have a crazy roommate. Like you have somebody in your head, like who it's like, if you had somebody like on the couch next to you saying the crap that you

were saying to yourself, you would boot them out of your house. Like you need to wrestle and rein in your crazy roommate. And so it really stuck with me, really stuck with me that I was like, wow. And I still, you know, I have to do a lot of practices and a lot of the people we work with at Allegory have the same thing. They have this voice in their head. I was at an EO event and a speaker, EO is entrepreneurs organization for those who don't know about it. It's all entrepreneurs. They own companies. A speaker had us right on a three by five card, three things that we felt vulnerable, vulnerable or uncomfortable about. The speaker had sorted

them out and read them more than half of the responses were, I'm not good enough. I don't belong here more than half. And I'm like, that's the crazy roommate. That is like, we have this chatter that I don't know. I read somewhere that parent, the parent voice becomes a kid's inner voice. And so I kind of feel like, yeah, some of us just have this like negative self-critic and others don't have one that might need one. That's true. We talk a lot about that. Christine, she was just talking about the crazy roommate. It's just hard. How can we get away with it? It's very difficult, the imposter syndrome. Yeah, when we, sometimes with candidates that have it, when we're working with female

candidates, we'll ask them to go in a secluded place with their best friend in the world. The person who knows all their secrets knows all their ugliest bits. Cause we all have parts of us that were just like, Oh, I could have, you know, most of us are petty and we act petty sometimes. So we got stories like that. And what we say is just have your best friend stand in front of you and just say the mean things that you say to yourself out loud. And her job is to scream at you, to stop it, to yell at you viciously, to counter that voice, to get somebody to attack that voice. And I'm using female because we do this with women. And you know, the feminine energy often gets called soft. But if you step between a

panther and her baby, she's not going to put white light around you, she's going to eat you. Like that, the feminine energy that's really strong. That's what that best friend needs to do at that self critic. And we have heard from some more candidates like, damn, like when I self criticize myself, my body almost like I'm going to get yelled at. Like my friend's going to attack me. So we have a bunch of things, little hacks people can do to get their physiology to notice sooner that they're self criticizing. It's not to make it go away, but if I can notice

I'm doing it, I can shift to something else. So for me, my thing is being transparent. So I'm very uncomfortable on this call. So when I noticed I was looking at my gray hair, I admitted it. That makes me feel better. And then I, now I'm just looking at you. I'm not even paying attention to that side of my screen. Yeah. So that's one way is to notice sooner that the critic is driving and know what your pattern is to shift it. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, Christina, can you name a person who has had tremendous impact on you as a leader? Oh, there are so, you know, definitely my dad and my godfather, Shaka Muhammad, like he, he huge. But I'm going to just pick somebody current, Kimberly Ellis. So Kimberly Ellis is, she was, there's so many things I can say about her executive Director for Emerge California, but most important is she ran for Democratic Party Chair in California. And Kimberly Ellis has a way of creating a movement that lasts for decades. She is able, she has the courage to confront the brutal truth and say the thing. And she has the receipts. She does her work.

She studies. She does data. It's all based on rigor. And remember her name. She is going to be president of this country someday of the United States. She is one of the most powerful. And just working on that campaign with her and watching her ability to hold a truth and say it when everyone was too fragile to hear it. It's one of the most powerful women, humans I have ever been around. Never, ever lost the truth. 100% authentic. Wow. To have her on your program, I'm telling you, she is amazing.

I would love to have her on your program. I'm telling you, she is amazing. I would love to have her. Now, Christina, what have been the biggest challenge you've had to overcome? The self-critic is definitely one for me. You know, I'm starting to choke up saying it, it, uh, this morning it had a hold of me for like five minutes. And so that is, you know, my head is one of my biggest challenges for sure. What would be another one? I think another challenge is the ways that I think very early in my life, we had a lot of loss in our family.

And, you know, my brother Sean died when I was six. My brother Gary died when I was 15. My father had Parkinson's disease. And I created a lot of soothing mechanisms instead of grieving. I think my biggest challenge in life is loving myself for the ways that I move through that, but also unraveling sometimes my inability to feel. Do you think a soothing mechanism works or the grieving? Would you do the same thing? Somewhere in my process, I bought into this lie in the United States. I think it's in our world, but particularly in the United States,

and especially with white folks like me, is this lie that I think we were raised to just get over it. Whatever feeling you're having, don't have it here and don't have it. You need to be happy. Get over that feeling. And it's created a society of people in my view that are so damn fragile, but we look like we're not. This whole resilience thing is BS. People often use bravado to mask fragility. That's fragility. And we're seeing it happening in our country right now. We've been tolerating so much wrong because of fragility, but we act like just get over it. So I think that's my biggest challenge. And it's my mission at Allegory. My mission is to help, help all of us see that we don't have to

tolerate things. If we're uncomfortable, that's a sign that we're fixing things. It's a sign that something's going right, our discomfort. We don't need to push it away or act like it's not happening. And so right now in this country, we have some incredible protests going on of a brutal murder that we know happened. And I have a lot of fragile people in my community putting Martin Luther King posts up to try to get everybody to stop fighting. And it's like, if you follow their family on Twitter, his family on Twitter, they know what he would say now. And it's not, let's all sit still and do nothing. It's protest. So that was a long-winded answer.

But that's my biggest challenge is my own, the way that I process feelings. But it's also this idea of we all have to be uncomfortable and be okay with that for good things to happen. Discomfort's good, especially those of us who are privileged. My discomfort means things are getting better for everyone. Absolutely. Now, Christina, what did you learn about my, that I really like staying at home. I love it. I, I love being home and I often was traveling a lot. There was often a turn going on and this, this has been incredible being home and not having so much to go to. I'm highly introverted.

And so it, it helped me realize how much I do things that I don't want to do. And so I'm, I'm that I have learned quite a bit. Yeah. And what is your greatest fear and how do you manage fear? Oh man, Kate, your questions are hard. I want questions in advance. It's funny. I was just talking to my son about this this morning. I think one of my greatest fears is that I've hurt someone horribly and I'm completely unaware. And that there's this wound there and they're not willing to tell me. And I only let people in my inner circle that are willing to say the thing. I can't be close to people that quietly tolerate, you know, that, that are, we'll go talk to somebody else about something rather than

telling me directly. But it is, it does come from my greatest fear. Like right now on this call, I'm worried that sloppy language hurts someone deeply and that they're not going to tell me, and I can't clean it up or learn from it and learn that I shouldn't say that again, that it was hurtful or painful. Drives a lot of my self-critic. And I know after I get off this, I'm going to process that. I don't want to hurt people with sloppiness or lack of perspective. Beautiful. Now think back to a time that you felt transformed. How did you change and why?

A time I felt transformed. I'm trying to think of a recent time. I'll just tell you one, the first one that came to mind rather than craft it. One of the most profound experiences I have had in my life is sitting on a couch with my three, he was three or four year old son. I was in the middle of a divorce. I was trying really hard to make sure he wasn't impacted by it. And my dear, sweet little boy sat me on the couch and said, mama, we need to talk. And I was thinking, you know, what are we going to talk about? You know, does he want more Legos? Like I wasn't ready for what was about to happen. And he said, mama, when you're sad and you act like you're

happy, I know you're sad. It was one of the biggest breakthroughs around this grieving that I thought my job was to make things seem okay. When it's my job to teach my son that you can go in the depths of despair and still be okay. I was passing on this bravado sickness that I'm really trying to discount. And I looked at him and I, and I, I had a tear like fly out. I think it hit his face. I was like, honey, tell me, what do you want me to do in those moments? He grabbed my hand and he goes, mama, just cry. And then we'll go play. And I was like, oh my God, you're brilliant. The three-year-old can teach us. Yes. And to this day, I am telling you to this day,

he'll look at me sometimes and he'll be like, do you need to cry? I'll be like, no, I'm good. Okay, I'm good. Like he'll check in with me. It's been, it was, it changed my life. Completely changed my life. Oh my God.

That brings me back to memory when I was going through a divorce and my four-year-old, he was at his dad and said, you know, mom, I was thinking a lot about you. How are you doing? A four year old. What is your four year old's name and how old now? Look, he's now 13 and he's like my mama's boy. You know what happened? Two weeks ago, he told me that he wanted to live with his dad in Utah and he broke my heart. That probably the worst thing I've ever had to deal with. I mean, I took it personally. I was angry at myself.

Is that something I did? Why? You know what I mean? It's a very difficult time. I struggled for three days. Can you imagine that boy that was so close to you and decided not to live with you? How do you deal with that? But now I get a better clarity. I think he just wanted to explore. He wanted to explore different places.

I mean, it was hard. In the initial shock, it was a struggle for me. I've never cried in my entire life for three days. Yes. What a good mama. Oh, good mama. I soothe myself, but you know what? I would do the same. I would not want my mother to stop me from exploring things. I just rewired my brain. Right. And Kate And it's, Kate, I hope that, you know, one of the reasons why you have such a big following is your capacity to be real like that, that you allowed yourself to feel it and still focused on Luke, on your son, on his outcome. And I don't know that I could do that. And I'm so grateful that you shared that because that might be coming. You know, my son's 14.

We have to get our kids together because they sound very similar. My son's 14 and that can happen. You know, that's being able to stay loyal to the outcome, which is your son, rather than, you know, it had to be so hard. I took it personally. Like, is that my mother? Like, is that my, how I, how I raised her? Like, I was like trying to realize what did I do wrong? Did I not buy enough food?

Like it was so difficult. I took it so personally. And, you know, I cried for the first time in front of my forum. Like that was like a death in you. Yeah. Loyal. I thought he was my mama's boy and he's not. I was like, Oh my God, my son changed so much. So all I have to do is just embrace who he is and what he wanted to do. But how do you accept that as a mother? It took me three days. It was very difficult. That is so fast. It only took you three days. Okay. You need to teach a masterclass in that. Cause that, you know, it is, it's, it's such a

beautiful example of staying focused on the outcome instead of what we want or whatever. Yeah. Cause at the end of the day, I don't want him to feel guilty that, and that pressure of why do I have to pick one or the other? And that's the worst thing that I could do to a child. Yes. You know, fly your wings. Yes. So that was, that was very difficult, but I'm glad I see a better, I mean, I have better clarity in that department. So when you get a text from me that says we need to talk, that's what it's about. I think the key with me is I literally let myself cry like for three days until I get tired of doing it. Yeah. Just let it go. Yeah. That is the, that is both my challenge and my mission is that allowing ourselves to feel for three days without pretending it's okay is how I think we become okay.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Now, Christina, how do you generate new ideas? I am a skeptic. So in my brain, I break everything I hear. And it took me a long time. Someone said to me recently that I was oppositional, that my, whatever is everyone's doing, I do the opposite. And I really fought them on that because I'm oppositional. And then I thought about it. And my new ideas typically come from wanting to confront a truth or something really uncomfortable and trying to figure out what is the root of that, what's happening. And so a lot of our intellectual property are models so that people can see what's happening when it's happening, so that they can choose something else so that they can stay loyal to it. So most of our stuff has been created in the worst moments of my life. Wow. Yeah. Or having

someone give me advice that felt repulsive and then I fix their advice in my head. That's amazing. And so a quick example, when I had my call center I would hire all these training companies and coaches to coach me how to be a CEO and they'd tell me to do stuff that I couldn't pull off it didn't match my operating system and so I just create stuff that I can pull off or I create something for somebody that they can pull off because we're all a little bit different. General tools just don't work for everybody. Let's talk about that collection agency. Now I have a friend that's doing AI and they said they can replicate,

you know, the human being talking to the other line. Do you believe in that? Like they, it's, he claimed, he said it's 98% accurate as far as the way how AI would talk to the other person. I mean, do you think that's something AI can do? So it's funny, we help a lot of companies get funding, that's part of our business. And so AI is something we've been involved in for a while. And there's it really, so one of the challenges with AI is a lot of the testing and patterns is based on humans. And then it builds

on that. And so if let's say a collection agency wants to use AI, if they're building their patterns on collect the money, I don't think it's going to work the way ours worked because that pattern doesn't work. We built our, you know, human interactions on filling a person's basic need to feel understood. So I taught my collectors, your job is to fill their basic need to feel understood, not to ask for the money. And we had a whole thing we did about how you do that for real. You have to genuinely love the person. And then there's a lot of physiology that goes with that. So if I was building AI that did that, then yeah, it might work. But I think it's tricky because I don't know yet that ai is intelligent enough

to understand how to fill a basic need to feel understood so there's something even the humans we would train we had to teach them to feel that in their body it's not intellectual it's not an intellectual thing it's more noticing the other person and feeling where the conversation can go. So it depends. If their goal is collect the money, yeah, they could probably do a transactional AI like getting your hair cut, calling for an appointment. But human understanding, I don't think so. Not yet.

I am very curious. How do you train all your staff to be, to have empathy when they were doing the collection? That is why I started Allegory because we hired all these people and it wasn't working. And so an example I often give is there's a really good book called Radical Candor, and it has a really good concept. But if your physiology isn't feeling empathetic it's you can't that's where it all starts with a feeling so like empathy for example is a feeling it's not a strategy and a lot of trainings try to get you to do the strategy without the feeling so we had a whole training exercise we did which included this heart math machine that tested heart coherence,

teaching people to really pay attention to their physiology and teaching. We hired for empathy. So we, in an allegory, same thing. We hire for empathy. We have a whole like testing our interview. Our interviews are not a conversation. We get 14 people in a room that want the job and get them doing exercises together to show us who they are rather than tell us who they are. So in terms of answering your question, first, it's hiring people that already have that innate ability, but then it's teaching them how to feel in that moment and stay curious no matter what's going on. And it was, it was a lot of training. I could imagine. Yeah. I could imagine. I, I find out like, I have a lot of staff that's Filipino and we have them, we have, it's,

it's, it's in us. It's easier. Right. But when I hire someone else, like, Oh my God, I have to dig and dig and dig where the value is coming from. It's very difficult. It's not in their head. I mean, it's just not there. Especially in service. It's innate. So there's some talent that is innate.

And I learned that at NASA, that our bodies, the reason we go to certain careers is because our bodies naturally are great at a set of things. So we go to the career that we're naturally good at. And so hiring, you know, there's some things that take a lot of energy to be taught. And maybe that person should be doing what their genius is, not learning how to do something that's exhausting to learn. So I don't hire people that don't have empathy because I put all the effort into it. If that's not, you know,

it's better to just bring folks in that have that basic innate, innate talent. Yeah. Wow. So Aligori Inc, you just tell me what do you do in a company, in a big company? What do you do once you're there? So it really depends on why they've brought us in. So the first thing is, is we only work with about 30% of the companies that come to us. So we're very, we have a methods of change.

And we're really focused on making the world equitable, justice. Like we're really focused on humanity. So we have a whole interview process we do with companies before we go in, because we want to make sure that we're aligned on values. And then sometimes the companies hire us to help them get funding. So we do a whole thing about how you get funding. People often don't. They think that investors buy based on the deal. That's not why they buy. They're human. They're irrational like the rest of us. So we do that. We also train leaders inside businesses. Leaders get the organization they deserve. I don't know who originally said that quote, but our behavior as leaders really drives culture. So we help, we do a lot

of work inside the company. And one of the, answering your question, the first thing we do is analytics. So we have a behavioral analytics process so that we're not asking people and culture to be different than they naturally are. That's why training doesn't work. Because you tell somebody, so storytelling, everybody's teaching storytelling right now. Some people should not do storytelling. It doesn't work for them. That's not their thing.

But we keep, you know, so the first thing we do is figure, do the behavioral analytics to make sure that we're applying things that are going to naturally work inside that system. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. I agree with you. Not everyone are storyteller. Yeah. Yeah. And we also do system design. So often there's systems inside businesses that are creating the opposite behavior that the founders want. And I only mentioned that because there's a lot of people suffering, founders and entrepreneurs and leaders, and they're trying to coach their people, not realizing they have a system that's driving the opposite behavior. So do you want an example or am I talking too much?

Yes, absolutely. No, I would love it. So in my collection agency that I had, when we started, we bonused on money collected. Well, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to bonus on money collected if the goal of the call is to increase their basic need to feel understood. So we changed that to bonus on thank you cards received. You couldn't ask for them, but the person with the most thank you cards received always collected the most money. Wow. So the, we changed the system because it was the, the way that we rewarded people was driving the opposite behavior. And so a lot of companies have that their review process is driving the opposite behavior, the way that they're hiring people,

driving the opposite behavior. They say they want diversity and inclusion, and then their hiring process makes sure that they don't have that. That's crazy. That's another thing. Diversity and inclusion. Everyone pretend they're doing it, but they don't even understand that they're not doing it. Not doing it. Not doing it. Yeah. Cause diversity is a competitive advantage. It is not a nice to have. It is like, I, when I look inside companies, they are leaving so much on the, at the table by not having a diverse team. But the problem is it's not hiring diversity. It's listening to diversity. It's allowing yourself to be wrong. And a lot of, and I don't mean to offend people, but I'm a white person, so I can talk about white people. We are highly uncomfortable

when we're wrong. And if we're in a position of power, we will say, take it offline, get it away from me. And we won't have an inclusive culture to our own peril. We are missing so much deliciousness inside companies. Yeah. I can't wait to talk about more about that. I have Frances Fry, June 7th. Oh, good. Yes. So she talks about it the whole time in Harvard. And I learned so much like, oh my God, because we tend to hire people that we like who buys into our culture, but not everyone, what she was saying

is you have to embrace them even though they're not buying to the whole circle yeah yeah so and yeah and that's when the disconnect is all about because people think you're doing it but you're really not understanding diversity and inclusion the real. Way too many humans optimize for comfort. That's the problem. Our society right now, we're optimizing for comfort. That's the problem. The more comfortable we are, the more we're tolerating stuff that should be changed. So if there's a CEO listening to this, next time you're in a meeting and you hear yourself say, let's take it offline, you are missing something there. That is a moment where something magical is about to happen and your physiology is pushing

it away. Let them say it. Spend 10 minutes on that. That take it offline is a sign of fragility in the leader. They don't want it to happen then. They're pushing it away. Yeah. And you do that over time. People just stop in the leader. They don't want it to happen then. They're pushing it away. Yeah. And you do that over time. People just stop saying the thing. Yes. Yeah. I learned that. I learned that now that, you know what, say it as it is,

there's a beauty in it. I can analyze it and you know, I'm wrong, but it's hard. Like in the beginning, you don't know what you're doing. You're just like, it's my way or they have you, but that's not how it works. I know. And it doesn't make sense. Kate, it's our job to be wrong sooner. Like that's our job. Confront reality sooner and then make it better. But a lot of us lead with our physiology and we're wrong later. We want to be wrong sooner. Yeah. And the fact that we're not hearing the negative thing, you know what, instead of embracing it, well, there's some truth to what they're saying. Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Oh my God. Yes. So, um, Christina,

if you could do it all over again, would you do the same thing? Wow. If I could do it all over again, you know, it's, I, I, I think I would, you know, what I go to is I can't imagine not having my son. I can't imagine not meeting you. You know, I can't. So yeah, I would, I think I would do it a little bit differently. Um, I do think that I could have put better systems and processes in place. I think I made it pretty hard on the teams that worked with me because I wasn't really good at that. And so I can see little pieces I would have done differently, but yeah, I would do it different. I love where I am right now. And our methods of change, I'm really excited and motivated. I feel like we're at a time in society where we could really improve and change right now if people are willing to be uncomfortable. Yeah, absolutely. Now, how do you want to be remembered?

One of my deepest values as a human is how people feel about themselves when they're around me. And I would like for that, I've left people feeling loved and seen and valued as an individual, except for people who I think are evil, then I want them to feel a mirror in me, a boundary on that what they're doing is not okay. But I think for the most part, it's that people feel like they matter. And I've left that. Oh, my God. Christina, you have no idea.

Thank you so much for your time. I enjoyed talking to you. I miss you. I miss you so much. This was so hard. This was so hard. And I cannot imagine of doing my first live thing with anybody else. I just, I love you.

You are doing yours. This is you. You're elevating other people. This is such a huge, that little conversation we had in Greece. Like, I just want you to know that the, what you're leaving is the elevation of other humans using your magic and your talent. And I just am so grateful for you for doing that. Thank you. You and your son is so lucky to have you as a mama. We can talk about that. Now, Christina, where can we find you? What's the handle company oh um i am so horrible at social media so i would love help with that um so i'm on twitter um i think it's c harbridge and instagram christina harbridge christina dot harbridge and then allegory inc yeah and if you just look at our website it's all there well i gotta get better at social media, man. Well, we can talk.

Okay. Thank you so much. Lots of love, honey. Thank you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Bye. Bye.

Hi, everyone. This is Dan, producer of the show. Today, I wanted to share with you my new favorite podcast called The Passion Economy by Adam Davidson. We've included an eight-minute clip of my favorite episode at the end of this show, so make sure you stay on to check it out and enjoy the episode. Damali will tell us that the election in November 2016 was so dramatic in her life that it made her restructure her entire life. Yet she is not going to tell us ever, and I tried, how she feels about President Trump. And that tells you a lot about Damali. She is all about conflict resolution, stopping conflicts, resolving conflicts. And she knows that whoever she's talking to, bringing up the name Trump and

expressing a view is highly likely to cause conflict. And that is not what she's about. She did tell me that what spurred this change in her was this shift in our culture overall, a shift that was clearly sparked by the 2016 election. I felt like, especially in New York City, I felt like the mood in the air had changed. I felt like throughout the campaign, a lot of things that I think Americans have tried to ignore or, you know, try to avoid kind of came back to life. And I remember thinking, Adam, the world is going to need a lot of conflict resolvers now. And literally, I thought those words. And then I couldn't stop thinking that. Like every day I woke up and I thought that.

And I looked at my children and I thought that. And I looked at my children and I thought that. And I sat in my office and I thought that. So what was I doing with all these skills and not using them for the greater good? For the greater good. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a social engineer in me coming out. Right. She was a little bit, she was dormant for a bit. If you loved your job at Weiler, Deloitte, more power to you. But it just, I think it would feel like a bit of a bit. If you loved your job at Weiler, Deloitte, more power to you. But it just, I think it would feel like a bit of a bummer if you didn't use some of these other tools. I wasn't using, you know, if we are three-dimensional, if we are, let's say we have 100% of ourselves. So I felt like in each of those jobs, I was giving my all.

I was doing my best and I was doing very well. I wasn't using 100% of all of this called impassions or skills that I had because there wasn't a space to use all of that. And so what I did with my own companies, especially the first one, was to create a space to use all of my skills. To create a job. Yes. Because nobody was like, hey, you know what we want? We need an assistant general counsel for everything Damali loves doing. Yes. And is great at.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. So how does that happen? How do you – you have this really good job. It's – Yeah. I don't want to embarrass you. I'm assuming it's a really good salary and the next levels are even more.

Yes, with a lot of support internally. It was close. I could walk there from my apartment. It was great. It was great. It was great. So what do you do? How do you start thinking about your passions and what you're doing? What action do you take? at lunchtime at work, I should have gone out for lunch and I didn't. I was, again, so in,

in sconce, if you will, with, with this idea of conflict resolvers being needed immediately. And I felt like a superhero. I felt like, you know, like Superman has that sort of, you know, he takes off his shirt and there's the S. I felt like I had these skills that were needed and no one knew about them. Not that, again, I'd used them for work, but kind of where they fit in. And so I took out a legal pad. I started at work. I was sitting in my office. And I remember like writing on my legal pad, which probably looked like legal work.

And I wrote all the things I knew how to do. And it started off, I remember saying, writing like speaks different languages, travels, can negotiate X, Y, and Z. It started off like that, but then it was like this amazing brainstorming session where everything I wrote, I thought of something else. And I think it went on. It was one of those 11 by 14 legal pads. And so I went on and I remember it was like columns of work. And also I have the worst handwriting. So I couldn't even decipher everything. But I just kept going on and kept going on. And I think I had about three pages.

I still have this somewhere. I should look in one of my banker's boxes from when I packed up my office there. And I wrote everything down. And then I started to – so I had this massive list of what I knew how to do. And some of the options had subcategories. That's how I think. Subparagraph G. Yeah, subparagraph G was there. And then I started to circle what I love to do. And as I started circling what I love to do, what I saw emerge was kind of three professions,

if you will. There was the educator in me, there was the mediator in me, which clearly started back when I was a child. My first sibling was born when I was three and so I feel like I've had budding skills from the age of three onward and then, of course, there was the lawyer.

Being that I lived in New York for so many years, most people only knew me as Damali the lawyer. And so when I sat there and I actually wrote attorney, mediator, educator, and I was like, I like that. I'm going to put it on the card. So I did. I did. I didn't even have a name yet for my company. But I was like, it's going to say attorney are in exactly the boat you were in on that day. It's not that you're, you know, an accountant who hates accounting and your dream is to be a baker and you have to just fully leave one world and go to another world. I think that does happen. But more often it's you have a job and a life that's maybe it's 68% or 73% satisfying. Maybe it's scratching a lot of your itches, but it's not scratching all of them.

And that's for some people, that's okay. And for some people, that's always unbearable. But I think for a lot of people, it takes some external shock to shake you up. And it sounds like you were probably in that 68 to 73%. Like if you stayed doing that, you would not be a miserable person hating every day. But there was some soul satisfying something that was not being spoken to and being revealed to the world. And so I want – I think I'm going to call it the Damali moment when you actually do that list. So you said you started at lunch.

Was it a one-time thing? Did it take you weeks, hours? No. The elections were, what, November 4th we voted. I gave notice right after Thanksgiving. Wow. And I gave three weeks notice. And my last day, I think, was December 16th.

Wow. So this was quick. It was relatively quick. Because that's how I operate, too. Like, once I make a decision, I go for it. I just felt like, no, it was the right choice. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe.

And visit katehancock.com so you don't miss out on the next episode.