Your Happy Hour - Living a Pivotal Life

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Welcome back to Your Happy Hour with Friday Feels!This week we journey with Rachana Bhide - Organizational Psychologist and former Bloomberg News broadcaster, with over 25 years of experience in leadership development, change management and the future of work - into what it means to live a pivotal life. From corporate to creative in the dawn of AI, Rachana shares about the power of intertwining tech and imagination in storytelling, using archetypes and character development as tools for healing and how to embrace a different kind of activism in creating impact in the world.How are you choosing to pivot to attain that pivotal life you were destined to experience?Friday Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced by swartkat.co via the awesome tech platform: riverside.fm

It's the Friday Feels, and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour i'm your host nicole carmine and it's amazing to have you here joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional what are you up to this friday well whatever it is this moment is just for you. And we're back with another episode of the Friday Feels podcast, your happy hour. A very merry belated Christmas to you all out there. I hope you had wonderful holidays with family, friends and lots of treats. I hope your bellies aren't exploding from all the sweeties and yummy things. Bellies aren't exploding from all the sweeties and yummy things.

And as we crawl closer to what is almost the end of this year, can you believe it? I have the privilege of talking to a very special guest. And thank you for squeezing us in between Christmas and New Year. Today we're talking about, we're still continuing our theme of Reinventing Your Conditioning. It's the last week of this theme and our topic today is Living a Pivotal Life. And today I'm unpacking this with Roshana Bide. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you, Nicole. All the way from New York City. Yes, yes. Greetings from New York City. Happy holiday season to you. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. And with all the love from Paris, I hope it's a bit warmer where you are. Although I've been in New York City around Christmas time,

I know it's cold. I still have ski pants on. I'm wearing, you know, the dress I wanted to wear for this, but it is quite chilly. So I'm wearing ski pants and I'm in a co-working space. There's not many people here, but it's a great, great time to vibe with you. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Keep warm, keep warm and cozy. So Roshana, you are an organizational psychologist, but I know you've walked quite a road. So you've been a Bloomberg News broadcaster. You've had like over 25 years of experience in leadership and change management. And what I think the buzzword of being the future of work. And you've also actually been a keynote speaker and an emcee in an amazing organization,

the Women of Silicon Valley, European Women in Tech, ESPN. There's so many amazing things that you've done. Maybe you can give us a little bit of a background of where you've come from. And then I really want to talk about some of the stuff you're doing now, which I think is really interesting. And I don't want to give a spoiler alert from my side. I know you're going to tell the story a lot better than I can. But yeah, maybe just a little bit of a background and what this topic of reinventing your conditioning means to you. Thank you so much, Nicole. Reinventing and living a pivotal life, I think this topic really struck me as I looked back on the 25 years of being a psychologist. So I've been a workplace

psychologist for 25 years. And I say workplace psychology, that is officially where I've been doing most of my psychology work. So that includes things that you mentioned, like leadership, team development, a lot of change management. And so pivoting has really been, I mean, that's the crux of change. And so I would say I've kind of done that in maybe three to five different chunks. So the first chunk of that was as a management consultant. So I did that for 14 years with Accenture. I had an amazing opportunity there to just learn and soak up all the tools around change. How do we make change effective? How do you manage stakeholder expectations?

Those kinds of things. And there's a lot of tools that you do, spreadsheets and tactics and things that you get from being in a corporation that does that with other companies. So I was on the road. I did the whole consulting thing for about 14 years in total.

The last three and a half of that was in Germany. So a lot of that was another bit of a life pivot. And then I came back to the States and then took kind of the second half or not the second half, the second chunk of my workplace psychology was really in-house. And that's when I would say I turbocharged it from the standpoint of, in addition to having the tools to do it in companies, I got my graduate degree here in New York. having the tools to do it in companies, I got my graduate degree here in New York. And that gave me a lot of insight into the personalities of leaders, the kind of typical things we see about, you know, are you a task-oriented leader? Are you a relationship-oriented leader? Well, I really took

to the relationship-oriented piece. And the deeper that we got in my graduate studies and then just what I was observing around, I was seeing how human people are, which is kind of obvious, but how human we are at work and might not actually be able to access that humanity in a way that, of course, shows compassion and kindness, but then also just really shows what it is that we ourselves might need in order to grow into the best version of a leader or into the best version of a team member. So that graduate degree really helped me see a lot of additional things about psychology that now I would say in the third chunk, just before COVID hit, I left corporate. I had been doing a lot of, again, as mentioned, a lot of internal consulting. And then at Bloomberg, I got a really just brilliant opportunity. This is what New York City is about. And this is what I'm writing about now through this elephant. I'll talk about that in a minute. But coming to New York, you find a lot of, and probably Paris is similar, big cities

where there's lots of opportunity. Bloomberg gave me a really amazing opportunity to take my psychology and then do it in a media way. So I was doing a lot of Bloomberg Live. I was broadcasting on Bloomberg Radio, reading news headlines. And news headlines, of course, that's a very fixed way to report. But it gave me a lot of training and a lot of tools to then interview people kind of similar to what you and I are doing in a conversation about the future of work and about their own leadership style. And so being a psychologist in a media standpoint, or from a media perspective was a really cool way to see my profession and then connect with other people. And I mentioned COVID because I was doing that

with Bloomberg, I'd say about two years before COVID. And then I left corporate. And since then, I've been really fascinated with the world. I've been fascinated with AI. I've been fascinated with change. I've been fascinated with Gen Z coming in and sort of taking an amalgamation of all the things that I've learned over now 25 years and trying to frame corporate psychology in a way that might be fun or might be insightful in a way that maybe people hadn't thought of. And so that's where I use a lot of

metaphors and we can talk about kind of the more creative aspects of that. Oh, I love that. And what a journey. I mean, gosh, you've also traveled a lot all over the world. And, you know, this is kind of we tend to I always say this is kind of we we tend to i always say this on the podcast we tend to uh gravitate towards people people tend to gravitate towards the podcasts that have traveled that have experienced these different lives and kind of gone through transitions which is what pivoting is right i mean you get to these points in your life and you make decisions and then you go into different directions and it's never easy and it is very human to to not want to to embrace that change but you've done so much of that so yeah what what was that like kind of going from corporate and then actually going through lockdown

not having that and I know that there's also a deeper reason that you and I connected you took a little journey to South Africa I know and there's a there's a a deeper reason that you and I connected. You took a little journey to South Africa, I know, and there's a story there. So maybe tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'll say that I'll take it back to Germany super quick because I sort of forget how important going to Germany was for my story because a lot of, I had basically said to myself, you know,

Accenture, like I'd mentioned, you have lots of tools, you have lots of templates and you have lots of ways of implementing change. And I wanted to see, does that work in another culture? And so propelling myself over into Germany, and I say that somewhat dramatically, but it really was that because I wasn't really on an expat package. So I was, you know, I had to have German health insurance and sign a German contract. And so I look back on that time that I also experienced a lot of life there. I had, you know, I was dating someone, we had a breakup, I had to find my own apartment. I mean, I, some of those, I found great friends. I mean, I remember coming back from Shanghai and I'm not saying that as a flex to be like, oh, I was flying from Shanghai, but like literally coming back from, you know, a trip abroad

and, you know, my best friend from Germany, she was German. Her mom is like my German mom, like picked me up from the airport because she knew I was like going through a difficult time with my breakup. So I felt a lot of humanity there. And so those were skills that I think I got around, you know, age 30, 31, 32 in a completely different culture. So when COVID hit, I'm not going to say that I was like very prepared, but I had a lot more resilience and a lot more skills from that experience. And then also I would say, of course, from being a psychologist. And so the biggest thing that helped me during COVID was seeing it as an opportunity for relief.

To just say, there's a reason that something like this is happening. If I can put my own fingerprint on it, it might be not that I have to go save the world, not that I have to use all my psychology in a way that I had been doing it just previously in COVID. I was doing a big project separate from my day job and separate from media around the positive role of men as allies for women. And so I was doing a lot when I was speaking. I was speaking also a lot about collaboration. And so all those things, it gave me an opportunity to say the world needs these feelings of security and safety and collaboration more than ever. And yet maybe that's not my job right now.

And I said that because I had gone to South Africa. We can talk about that in a moment because it did really change my perspective. But I leaned into Carl Jung, who is a very well-known Swiss psychologist. He's from the Freudian school, but he also had a lot of depth psychology that he added. He looked at astrology and the stars and constellations and dreams. And one of the things he said or one of the things he taught that really struck me was that in the first half of your life, and this gets to pivots and life changes, the first half of your life is about resources. So, you know, find your strengths, play to your strengths, get, you know, spouse, money, kids, education, so that the second half of your life becomes more about meaning and purpose. And I

think that probably will resonate with a lot of people, you know, at any point, but what's really different about the way that I thought about it and what Carl Jung said is that it's not just about doing something different and finding meaning. It's also picking up parts of yourself that didn't serve you in the first half of your career. So, or the first half of your life. So maybe being compassionate and creative and all the things that we're going to continue to talk about on this podcast weren't necessarily things I could have done in the workplace. And being introverted and taking time by myself were not things that I could do as a management consultant or as a media host. But that's what you're supposed to do if you want to pivot and you want

to grow and find meaning. And so basically giving myself the relief to say, what's it like if I'm not extroverted and I'm super introverted during this time of lockdown. I had the privilege of doing that because I lived alone and I had the opportunity to do that. I don't think everybody has that opportunity, but it might not be, you know, staying in your apartment during COVID. It might be instead of being very sensing and being very data-driven, which we take a lot of pride in, it might be just use your intuition. So flexing parts of myself that I didn't really, that I was as a kid, didn't really get to do between ages of, you know, 13 and 40 because of society then sort of came back to me and that's where I found a lot of my creativity and kind of I think how I found strength and resilience in in that

time oh wow yeah oh I can so resonate with everything that you're saying oh my god you know I think I think a lot of people feel that like I love Carl Jung too and I think he's really spoken a lot of wisdom out there. So if he's quite interested in psychology, go check him out. And yeah, I think a lot of us do feel that. I mean, I often speak to friends who say, and we're like, oh, the 20s was so hard. You know, that first bit of life, like teens, 20s,

it's not an easy period because you are trying to figure out who you are and you might make decisions that are more pleasing to other people and then you kind of enter this other phase and I know for a lot of women it's this set in return they talk about when you hit 30 I definitely felt that like I kind of died and reborn you know in some way but I feel like when you hit 30s and you enter your 40s as well it's a lot more peaceful because you understand who you are.

If you've done the work, you understand who you are. You can enjoy your life, you know, and then you can kind of enter a different phase in a different way in 50s, 60s and forward. So I know we're all probably heading towards a place where we're going to live much longer than we are now. So this is going to live much longer than we are now. So this is going to change and look different. And I can already see that, you know, kind of 40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40 and all of that. But I love that you've explored all of this in yourself,

that you gave yourself a space to be able to sit with parts of yourself that you might not have discovered yet or had given the space to breathe. And so, yeah, tell us a little bit about what came out in there, because I know it's a gem. It's a lot of good gems. Oh, that's so sweet to hear. And it really started from South Africa. So this is a kinship that you and I will always hold, I think. I want to just comment on what you just said, though, as well about us living longer, because, you know, I sort of loosely said, OK, first half of the life, second half of life. But Carl Jung and this is kind of why I think what's an awesome opportunity for me and for all of us as psychologists or anthropologists or those or those of us that are interested in the human experience, because we now get to see what is

the next third look like? And does you know, so I know the Saturn return, that's right around the time that I probably went to Germany that I did go to Germany, I went there at age 30. And so, gosh, at that time, and even I would say, even when I was doing media at Bloomberg, like, I thought that was it. This is my identity. This is who I am supposed to be. And that was true. And it was also not true forever. And so, so that, yeah. And, and one thing I will say then that kind of takes us to what I'm working on now to answer your question now directly, which is one of the things I loved as a psychologist was using metaphors. I felt that metaphors really found, some people naturally speak in metaphors. I didn't realize how much I

now see metaphors everywhere, but metaphors are a great way to take away stress from a topic that might be difficult. I'll give you a quick example that the, the, the male allies project I did was based on a tennis court. So that was kind of the corner of the court project was a, um, a female tennis player whose male ally was in the corner. So he wasn't actually playing, but it gave a really nice, I mean, I thought it was nice. It gave a very, um, a thoughtful way to look at male, female dynamics when, you know when the man isn't even the one playing. It's the woman's story. It's her agency. So metaphors have always been part of how I think I've put psychology into the world.

I've never done it this way before, which is I came prepared with my elephant. So this is Fonty, my elephant. He's just a stock image. And now he's been illustrated a lot through AI. But I started writing Fonty as a brain storm of humanity in the workplace. And specifically, I was seeing a lot of a lot of people were getting let go during COVID. And Fonty's story is he comes from South Africa to New York City to be a window washer. And he loves windows. He now, over time, so what's eventually has happened is what started is just this kind of like heroic little story about this elephant that comes and he has all

these side hustles. And this was very much the world before COVID. Over time, I was like, wow, well, all those skyscrapers, he came to New York to wash. Like those are all empty now during COVID. So does that mean that his own dream has been met in such a way that the only next step is a collapse? So there was a lot of metaphoric and symbolism that I was seeing through just this character. And so I had a choice to say, I could very much, and I sent the prototype out to some friends and originally kind of as a kid's book, I'm definitely not a kid's writer, but I am a psychologist. And so one of the things I was thinking was this could be a very, very effective workshop. How do you, how do you bounce back from

getting let go from a job or seeing your skyscrapers now empty that you washed with such care? But I sort of said to myself, this is again, Rach, this is the only time maybe ever that you're going to be able to just learn and absorb and see what it's like to be a creative. And so what about if you don't turn it into a workshop and you don't hustle it out? And what ended up happening as a result is many, many things. I started seeing Fonty as a creation and not a commercial tool. And what I was able to invite in as a result is people like you who are making music and who Fonte and I can listen to your music. And he almost has his own identity. I think if you're a creator, whatever you create, you bring life into it.

And so there's a lot of corporate lessons and fables and things I can mention about the future of AI that's all very relevant. But starting with the knowing that no matter what happens with AI, like Fonty's not losing his job, we're going to always be able to put compassion and kind of what elephants, what they stand for, we can always put that into our stories in a way that hopefully reaches people. elephants, what they stand for, we can always put that into our stories in a way that hopefully reaches people. You know I'm in awe of what you're doing. Just listening to you speak about it with such passion is wonderful. And I'm so grateful that the universe sent you, Fanti, that we can also learn more about that. And yeah, elephants are just such beautiful creatures who understand so much about the world and communicate in amazing ways and care for each other.

And they're very communal. They're very tribal. They're very independent, but also together, which I think is so beautiful. Yeah, I feel like you've just walked such an incredible journey to get to this point and I want to touch on something you said because I resonate with that a lot is trying so hard to look for always the commercial moments and things and then having to resist not to do that it's really hard I think we're all kind of prone to always wanting to think about how to monetize things um they say do follow your joy and the money will follow i i think that's mostly true but but you know i feel like it's really

important because of what you're doing because um i i feel like i'm often thinking about how to turn things into things i can sell things i can put out into the world and it's really those creations that have been more for me that have been personal that resonate with other people and I remember when I was tutoring Afrikaans which is my home language in South Africa and I was tutoring I was a student and I was tutoring these young kids from school and the dad I had a discussion with him and I said to him the one day oh I really want to be a writer and he said he had written the script and I said that's wonderful and he said well look if I can give you any advice it's write it for yourself first and then if the world resonates with it that's amazing but just do it for you you know

and that always stuck with me and it's still so hard to do it for you, you know, and that always stuck with me. And it's still so hard to do. So, you know, just kudos for taking that space. And it's actually quite courageous to take that space because we're not conditioned in that way. You know, we talk about reinventing and giving yourself the breathing room to do that. So tell us a little bit more about Fantity does he have friends oh thank you thank you so much for asking about him in the way that you've asked about him he does he does he he came to New York City so what so basically you know elephants they grow up in herds and so they they're they grew up in a matriarchal society and so the the women elephants and this is like in real life, the women elephants stay with

the herds. And so Fonty, as a boy elephant, he was raised by his mom and his grandma and his aunts. And then in real elephant worlds, boy elephants leave around like teenage years and then they become lone, lone bachelors. Sometimes they find bachelor herds. So it kind of made sense. I had not, I hadn't known any of this until I started find bachelor herds. So it kind of made sense. I had not, I hadn't known any of this until I started writing Fonty, but it kind of made sense that he would be the one to sort of cast off on his own. And, um, so he ends up going from, from the herd

in somewhere in the bush and the Savannah of South Africa to Cape town. And he works in a gift shop and he decides you know he overshoots it even more and says oh well I've got to go make something of myself in New York City so he goes to New York City and he finds and it's so funny because it's so fitting right now at Christmas the story is he meets his best friend who's a mouse Morris Mouse look it's kind of a name that I just sort of threw out there. And I was like, I don't even really like the name Morris, but it sort of worked. And then what ended up happening is I started writing this story about Morris Mouse. And so there's all the irony of, you know, this big elephant that's friends with the little mouse, you have the South African kind of immigrant elephant coming in with this New Yorker. And Morris grew up under the New York City subway,

under Wall Street. And so Morris's whole story is one of just, he's Fonte's kind of sidekick. He's also, he represents New York City. He represents parts of me, you know, Wall Street, and then he now performs on Broadway. So there's a bit of an acting thing in my history too. So, and that itself could be its own arc, right? Like going from this very traditional sense of Wall Street to something much more creative. I mean, Morris Mouse embodies that. So he has that friend. And then another friend I'll just mention super quickly is a pigeon named Rhonda Pigeon

and she's an innovator. And so she's a fashion designer who, yeah, she's a fashion design pigeon. She, you know, she grew up with, in all the bor. She grew up in all the boroughs, flying around all over all the boroughs of New York City with her big extended family. And she ultimately, originally she was going to be a message for girls in STEM. And she continues to be that

because she's an innovative pigeon. And so she's created bird bands. So she basically has created a social network for birds because as a pigeon, she's a very natural communicator. Pigeons are great communicators, but she said, well, I want to kind of let other birds communicate the way we do. So she's extended her talent, learned how to code and created these wearable tech items for all birds to communicate when they're, you know, in the sky or not. So there's a lot in there around like design thinking innovation you know fanti and ronda go to new york tech week together and so

i write i have i have like 50 articles now on linkedin under the elephant in the window which is it's more than just fonti's stories it's also his way of kind of feeding back to us humans what he's seeing. And so that tech aspect also has kind of come through with a lot of the characters. So thank you for asking me about his friends, because they're all parts of me as well, that can kind of coach and nurture Fonte's journey here in New York. Oh, I love that. I love that. And I want to ask you a question. And you know, if it's too personal, don't feel like you have to answer but do you feel like you weave a lot of your own story into the characters or is it other people that you observe how do you kind of or do you channel how do you come up with the things that you write oh that's you know I would have I would have answered it immediately

as you said um are there parts of me and the answer is yes but then when you said do i channel it that's more that's the most accurate description a lot of it is just i mean literally i said morris and in fact the reason i mentioned his name so intently is i even wanted to change his name and i'm like no like this is what came to me. And this is just what his name is. And it turns out that the charging the Wall Street charging bull, it's like that statue right in front of Wall Street, you know, the one that's a symbol of resilience. So I have a whole story. Also, I've sort of brought that bull to life. And he represents resilience on Wall Street. And like, what does that mean? You're carrying the burden of the financial system on your back. And, you know, people take pictures with him. Does he feel violated?

So there's a lot of intensity around even just him as a representative. But that charging bull, which is kind of the first, I would say, big creature, even though he's just a statue, that Morris sort of came encounter with before he ever even met Fonty. So when Morris was young, he would go scurry up and like sit on the back of the statue and look up at the stars. And now the story is Fonty was looking at the same stars. And so we're all one, you know, one big universe. That street where the charging bull is, it's called Morris Street. It's at the intersection of, yes, it's at the intersection of Morris Street and Broadway. I had no idea. I genuinely had no idea. So those are the kinds of little magic things that do come when I just sort of feel like I honor what I'm meant to do. And it does become, I mean, again, we're talking about kind of the transition

from corporate to creative. I'll say this, I would never have thought this in corporate, but it does become a little otherworldly. It becomes spiritual. That's amazing. And then I can totally resonate with that. I think also as I've started opening up those channels, these things just drop in from places and you're like, surely I could not have thought of this or where did this come from? It's not mine necessarily because you get to learn what is yours and what's not necessarily yours but meant to be in the world

and you just become this kind of vessel to share that, you know. And I think that's very much what we, like I love the word honor that you used, you know, to honor the journey of being that messenger for other people which I think is so beautiful. to honour the journey of being that messenger for other people, which I think is so beautiful. And I think Friday Feels is very much about living and working authentically and how do we do that. So I think everything about your message just hones in on being in touch with yourself no matter where you are in your journey and whether that's corporate or creative

creatives have to do a little bit of harder work from the beginning to get in touch I think with that part of themselves but but we're all kind of invited to do that so I can imagine that that hasn't been necessarily easy for you to transition and then talk about your new world in a way to you know all the crowd or yeah yeah I was kind of nervous to to chat about this because it is something that I I don't know if it's the introversion I think a lot of people even after COVID probably resonate with it becomes a little bit more difficult to go out in the world when you've been when you've just we've just all lived a very different life and I think a lot of us even if they're not formally pivoting into creative creativity or a new way of being, um, a lot of people I think do struggle with even just making

sense of who we have become in this world. And so maybe Fonty is a way I hadn't thought about this until just, just now. So this might not even be accurate, but it's worth considering that maybe what I'm doing with Fonte among many things is just having a safety, a safe character to boldly go into this new world. That's actually been what Fonte's always been. And when you mentioned also being a vessel, that's been a very helpful way now.

It was, it's difficult to see yourself that way because ego and identity and, you know, we become so fixed. Number one, we become fixed in who we, who we are, especially in the States. I think, you know, in high school, for example, you are, you're an athlete or you're in student government. I don't know how activities necessarily work in in schools abroad but like you become something very early and you take a lot of pride in that and as mentioned you know as we kind of talked about earlier it gets you to a really great point and you can continue doing that one of the things that i've

realized with fonte i keep looking down at like this picture of him it's like his he represents with Fonty, I keep looking down at like this picture of him. It's like his, he represents optimism and hope and this, but he's not real. I mean, he's real, but he's not real. He is an, he's a collection of characteristics. He's an archetype. Morris mouse is an archetype, you know, the pigeons and archetype. And so the more that I write about these archetypes, almost in a very fixed way, the more it gives them as the characters the opportunity to love each other and love what the other archetype has. And at some point, those things just start to blend and it does become a much more collective way of being. And as a result, I don't know that I'm there yet, but I think I'm getting pretty close. Your own ego just goes away. What started as a really,

really helpful, effective way of taking a metaphor to articulate maybe something that was difficult or a little bit, yeah, just a new way of articulating something becomes how you see everything. And so I look at a, you know, a squid and it sounds kind of silly, but you know, you walk to work and you see a squirrel on the, and I think I'm like, oh, he could have any number of personalities. Like what's, how is he going to interact with Fonty today? So it, there is being a vessel for creativity has really, I think also helped me ground. I would say also as a psychologist

for potentially what's to come, there's a lot of change that's happening in the world right now. That's amazing. Yeah. And I can, I can see that that's, you know, I think a lot of people are talking about this now. I, or maybe it's just my YouTube algorithm that's feeding me what I want to hear, but I think we want stories. We understand ourselves through stories, you know, and I think I've always loved movies and books because of that. And that's really part of my journey is also to write more movies and books and things like that, because sometimes we find it quite hard, I think, as humans to detach from this, we keep calling it the vessel, but, you know,

like being able to kind of look at yourself and have empathy for who you are and the experience you're going through and understand yourself on a deeper level because we get so attached to the emotions that sit in this energy bubble around us, I think, you know. So stories help us to, for a moment moment kind of have an objective perspective and see oh actually maybe I also have that personality type or actually I also react like that in that way you know and oh okay but you know maybe if I did this it would turn out differently or whatever it is or just appreciate who you are so I think that's that's beautiful and I I can't wait to see how this story unfolds for you. And I'm curious,

in a year from now, where do you kind of see this going? Or for you, what does your journey look like? Oh, my gosh, I don't mean to be that person. But like, I don't know, just because I don't know, I know what I what I hope and I know what I'm observing. So it's very interesting. So Fonte and I, originally we started writing on Instagram. So I would write all the stories and this was in 2020. And I would just use, again, this stock image. And instead of getting an illustrator, I would just put him in different scenes. And it was enough to create the character and for me to kind of know what it was. But was it ready to be a book?

No. Was it right? It's probably still not ready to be a book. And I actually, I mean, I have a publisher and I've got multiple manuscripts, but a, the world is changing so much that the sort of standalone books that I was thinking, I don't know, I'm kind of curious to see in the next six months, even how those will resonate. So the book, the books will eventually come. I think the other thing that I'm really kind of fascinatedly seeing is Fonty lives on LinkedIn. So he has his own like LinkedIn page. He has like six followers by design. He just sort of, there's a lot of Easter eggs. I'll say that in what I write. There's a lot of world building that goes way, way back. And I mean,

Fonte's community right now, it's maybe 15 people who very consistently have been following. And I'm so grateful for those 15 folks. Some of them are very spiritual. Some of them are very corporate. Some of them are just like really good friends of mine. One in particular, whenever I hit up or whenever I hit post, I'm like, I know she's going to see this and she's just going to burst out laughing because she can't believe that we're doing something. I'm doing something like this. I say we, because I feel like everybody that's part of the Fonty's herd is part of the community. But I say that because he lives on LinkedIn and he doesn't get a lot of visibility. I mean, I share him on my page and we've written 50 articles and I'll go sometimes into, let's say AI and I'll say, oh, you know, why might people not be resonating? And AI is first.

It's so fascinating. I use a lot of ai to write the stories i don't write the stories with ai but fonti and i are very conscious of ai as a team member and so one of the things we're trying to do also is he'll as soon as ai dropped like 10 days after it dropped in 2022 we were on it fonti has his own account So seeing how willing AI was to believe in this elephant and believe and create his own, his whole universe made me realize that AI from my perspective as a creative, it's a very creative tool. It's very willing to go wherever you want it to go. But what's interesting is even when I would ask it like, oh, how can we reach more people and things like that? It would give me kind of commercial suggestions like, oh, you might want to target this and you might want to do this. And

I'm like, no, that doesn't mean so. I'll probe it more and it will go to, oh, you know what? Well, Roshana, maybe Fonty is existing on LinkedIn. You know, he's the elephant in the window. He washes windows. He doesn't necessarily want to be in the conference room. He's happy being washing windows. And he just, you know, it's not like he's out there desperate for people to see him, but like, it would be nice if people could see him because then he could say, Oh, like, look at what's out here. Like, let me tell you about my, my experiences. And so he's existing kind of on LinkedIn right now in a way that he almost exists in the imaginary world, which is he's there. And if you, you know, if in your busy day, you want to scroll on and click and see like, oh, he went to a, he went to a party and

there was an eighties cover band and, oh, he doesn't know what eighties music kind of was about. So AI can explain it to him, but Roshanna can tell him about, you know, the first slow dance she had or how she would listen to this song and, you know, the backseat of her Chevrolet. Like those are the kinds of things that come together. So one year from now, I hope that people just continue to click and read the stories and find some meaning out of them, particularly as they think about imagination and the effectiveness of their own creativity as a supplement to what AI can bring us. I love that. Oh, wow. And I love that AI has become so personal in this journey. I think a lot of people are so scared of it,

but you've embraced it with such compassion and openness. I think that's really an invitation to all of us to explore. And I'm starting to use chat TPT a little bit more as well. And I'm like, oh, it's never unkind to me. I quite enjoy it. So I really think it's very inspirational what you're doing and you know I know the journey is not always so easy you know as you've walked it and you know you speak with a lot of passion and and but there must be days that it's you know tough to kind of

have gone through from one thing to another and And one question we always ask, and I'm curious what yours is, but what is like that thing, that professional advice that someone might have said once that stuck with you, that changed things for you, you know, that you can share? Oh, yeah, yeah. So it would be my first career counselor at Accenture. So because when you're consulting, you're on multiple projects. So you always have a different boss, you're at the client site. So

you have like that kind of one anchor point that is your kind of mentor. And so it was a gentleman named Jim. And he very early on, I knew I wanted to go into workplace psychology. It was called change management at the time. And to do that, we had to do that with a lot of technical projects. And so he said to me, he said, I get it. I know you really want to do this. He was also a change management person. And he said, do yourself a favor and take at the time, SAP was like the big software that we were implementing. And he said, take SAP training. He said, do the functional side, become technical. He said, you don't have to do it forever, but do it for just a little bit so that you can be. And again, in his mind, it was so that I could be credible as a 21 year old, you know, doing change management. And so I listened to him, I did that. And it was so

interesting because it was the first time I kind of understood that I didn't need to do that to be a technical person. I needed to do it so that I could understand that there are many, many ways to look at the world and you can piece them together in a way that makes sense for you. And so back, I mean, this was like 2001. So user experience, for example, was not as big of a thing as it is now. But that would have been, for example, had I wanted to go down a UX path, that would have been great advice that he would have given me. I share that because that's kind of become sort of part of my path throughout. And so when I look at Germany or I look at psychology and media, there is always a really effective way to take disparate fields and make them something that can be your own. And then you can really put all of yourself into it.

And that's a lot of what Fonty is, the elephant in the window, a lot of what I'm writing. I mean, there's 80s music. There's different references. You know, I sometimes I'll write in German and Morris has a Moritz Maus. He has a different, he has a twin in German. So all those things, of course, those are parts of my experiences, but I genuinely feel that expanding into something that you might not ever have wanted to doesn't mean you ever have to go into it forever, but it does allow you to connect pieces that maybe you would never have had access to. I think learning a language also does that as well. It does. It does. And a language is very much, a culture is inside

a language, I find. So you're learning so much about that. And I think that's incredible advice. Thank you so much for sharing that with all of us. And I've also kind of experienced a little bit of that. You don't really know why you're walking this weird windy journey doing things that aren't very streamlined sometimes you know that at the time doesn't always make sense and then later you're like oh now I can use this and and bring it in in this way and and it's it's great because you're integrating parts of yourself you're expanding your mind I remember my dad always used to say to me, you know, you don't really go to university to kind of walk out a specialist. You go to learn how to think in different ways. And that always stuck with me. It's true. And it kind of takes

the pressure off a little bit because then you can open your mind to different things. Totally, totally. That's, you know, we, we learned a term in grad school and it was the time release capsule. And it was basically, I mean, it's so true that you learn something and if you just internalize it and make, make meaning of it for at that moment, 10 years later, you'll be like, Oh my gosh, like I get it now. Whoa. Like, so that's probably patience is another lesson that I'm, I'm learning. You know, there's a lot of, instead of doing just be, so you don't have to produce, produce, produce, you have to channel and create and be, and then it's going to be authentic. That's, that's a tough shift to make after many years in corporate. And then just the patience of knowing and trusting that what you're creating is going to resonate.

And I think, I mean, we see it a lot like on, I mean, I watch a ton of TikTok. I think it's an incredible tool for creativity. And to see people taking old clips of shows that we watched, you know, when I was in my 20s, and people will now act them out or they'll make music. That'll be like, Oh, I made the perfect soundtrack for Laguna beach and people. So people can find creativity even in old things and make them new again. And so that could maybe that maybe that's what Fonty will be. He might just hang out until he's, he makes an inspiration on someone else. Let's see.

A hundred percent. I'm waiting for, for Fonty on Spotify. Yeah. He would love to make music. Honestly. Um, you know, I, I was, I was preparing for this from a kind of a content standpoint from my own perspective. And then I said, well, let me not even use chat GPT. I actually, I use Claude AI. I said, let me actually go in as Fonty and it knows Fonty. We, it's, it's very, it helps develop his personality. And so I said, well, what if Fonty was showing up on this podcast? And my gosh, it, it recommended, you know, he would wear a little bow tie, which was the first bow tie he wore on the, on this wall street stock exchange. And so it came up with all the details for how Fonty would want to show himself

in his best way on this podcast to you. So thank you for believing in him because that really, I think that's the other thing I never, I probably never articulated this until now or realized it is that the acceptance of, of Fonty becomes an acceptance of you and your creation. I don't think that as a creative, I don't think I expected that to be so intertwined with what it is that I'm, that I'm putting out there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really important kind of moment to take there because, um, you know, you spoke about imagination earlier and it touches on that because a lot of people think of imagination as this, you know, woofy-woofy, up in the air, far away thing,

and it turns into movies and whatever else. But imagination to me is reality, you know. It's just not always the reality you see in front of you right now, but it can be the next reality. And, you know, as you visualize, as you manifest, for example, then that's the next reality. And, you know, as you visualize, as you manifest, for example, then that's imagination becoming reality. So I know I've also struggled a long journey of kind of not always articulating my imagination to reality because you feel like it's not necessarily accepted.

But I think through stories, through characters like Fonty, you get to share that with the world, you know, which is beautiful. And you get to feel that acceptance, like you say, you know. So just know we love Fonty. And I can't wait to have a conversation with him. I hope so. I hope so. So that's probably, let's add that to the one year from now.

Maybe it could be. Yeah. He has, he actually, it's interesting. He has a podcast called the positive packet or podcast. And this was originally, I mean, I think actually, if I may, I would be a little remiss if I didn't mention this. Ultimately, I want Fonty to be the lovable and I can't make anybody love him, but I hope he's lovable that we can very tactfully encourage people to think about elephant welfare. So there was a good like

two years during COVID when I was really into, in addition to Fonty and writing the stories about like saving the elephants, like please don't ride on their backs. And activism is a very, I learned a lot about activism at that point. And from my standpoint, I think I'm much more comfortable with having Fonty, for example, deliver pizzas. And that's his job, his side hustle here. And originally, I would have thought he would put the pizzas on his back and carry them. And then when I very early started, and this is why I'm so glad I didn't commercialize Fonty too soon, because I would have potentially put a message out there that was a bit ignorant from my own perspective which is I might have had Fonty doing things that were seemingly innocuous but actually dangerous and so

one of the stories is that he he works at the pizza parlor and they contract with Vroom Enterprises which is this scooter company. And Mr. Vroom is so taken with wanting to help that he creates the Pizza Pro Elephant Scooter for Fonty. So it's basically just a message of, he knows elephants shouldn't give rides and shouldn't carry things on his back. So here's this scooter.

And then what ends up happening is people make TikToks about him because they see Fonty like driving on the scooter. So it shows innovation when done for this huge elephant can be something for all animals and people safety disability things like that and then it can also spark creativity so I'm sort of seeing also that there's a way that I can deliver a message of elephant welfare and elephant safety and again if you're listening please don't ride elephants. It hurts their backs. And it's really, they're in captivity when they give these rides and they're in chains. A lot of that metaphoric kind of symbolism of breaking free

and things like that, I'm realizing I can also do through storytelling. It need not be so aggressive. I very much respect the people and we support,onty and I support a lot of the rehabilitation and a lot of the elephant sanctuaries. And yet we also want to say that, you know, he is imaginary. I mean, as real as he is, this is the other thing too, is like understanding real and imaginary and with AI, we're going to be able to be more flexible about that. And so Fonty is very real in my heart. He's also imaginary in the sense that he would never be hanging on washing windows outside with a chain. So sorry, it was a bit of a long way of saying it. But I also would really love to impress upon people too, that creativity and the way that we think about our own challenges. I mean, they run really deep. Who's to say in five years, I might not myself be like, oh, I need to free Fonty from even being a window washer.

Like he should just go, he should be roaming free. So there could be a lot of other things that are yet to be uncovered. I love that. Yeah. And that's a great message. You know, I think it's something people don't really think about when it's, I know it's a great experience, but animals don't always have the voice that we have to to express how they're feeling and so you get to do that through your stories too so thank you for doing that and and talking about kind of content creation i wanted to just take a moment and highlight our partner for the for the

month we love collaborations at friday feels and this month we are our spotlight is on our partner called riverside of m which is this platform we're recording on and it really empowers us to tell stories you know authentically from idea to the last episode and how we created and we really partnered with them because as a traveling podcast it's not always in one place we get to do these local recordings in great quality and yeah it's just amazing thank you so much guys for making this real, for bringing tech for the real moments like this and being able to give us a platform. And then I also want to give a quick shout out to what we've now doing is called our

people, places and spaces around the world that we feel have got the feels. And so one of the places that I came across and it's not really a place and this is why I love it it's a space it's called fair and it means to make and the marketplace is really online and I think a lot of us kind of always gravitate to the amazons of the world and nothing against you guys love you guys too but um fair is very much about empowering local community and very authentic crafting which i think is beautiful so go check them out i just wanted to say love your feels guys and thank you for what you creating space for in the world for creators and so between the the online riversides and the and

the local community crafting um there's so much beautiful creation and creativity out there and you know and and now we have you with your storytelling and and it's just really beautiful to to share that so I want to take a quick moment to also have us share our gems something we do every week I think it's a really nice time also between Christmas and New Year to do that and I'll start just so you kind of get the idea but a gem for me this week was really it's something that you have gratitude for that you've learned and I've really had a beautiful privilege of being with wonderful friends you know being alone in Paris but having people that are very authentic in their being around me giving me the space to be my authentic self. And so I think sometimes we are so used to

having kind of the surface level, small talk conversations out there, but it's really become quite important to me to form these deep connections and have those conversations that kind of take you to a place where you can share things about yourself and uncover things about yourself with somebody else in a very unconditionally accepting way. So I just want to say thank you for the people who have been with me in this period of Christmas, that I can experience that and very, very, very grateful. And you Roshana, how was your Christmas time? What was your dream for the last week? I wasn't expecting this.

I should have expected it. But I love that it's so specific. And so I'm going to go with it's music. And probably very specifically, it's, I mentioned earlier, I watch a lot of TikTok. And it just happens to be where I discover a lot of music. And so, you know, you'll be swiping and you'll see lots of really cool things, crafts, interesting things, perspective, and there will always be a DJ playing. And so you can just drop in on their

live and they'll be there. They're full, full playing music. And you see people commenting, you're all over the world. People are wishing each other Merry Christmas or just what they're doing from, you know, if it's a snow day where they are. And it's so brief. I mean, it's like three people, maybe in a room of 200 people that are even commenting, but you see this DJ and he is, he or she is just putting all of their vibes and energy in and you can't help, but just be like, okay, this is my opportunity to take the next five minutes while I like this song and just dance and just have it. So I know you're a musician and I just cannot stress enough how much music has, I mean, it's such a foundation of, of a lot of Fonty as well. He's in a cover band

and all these things, but being able to access music from around the world where it's just delivered. I mean, I just want us to marvel at social media. I know that there's a lot, it's, it's, it's complicated our lives in a lot of ways. It's also, I think we should marvel at it because how it's been able to invite people's creativity into my world has definitely fueled Fonty. Maybe AI will be able, we will be able to have the same, we will be able to marvel at AI the same way, but that's my jam. It's music. I love it. And I, and, and for some people who have listened to this podcast for a season before, uh, we'll know dancing's my therapy too.

So I just resonate so much with what you're saying. It's so great to kind of let loose and just go and, you know, yeah, kudos to those DJs who are doing what they love out in this time and as people can appreciate it. So thank you for sharing that, Jem. That's really, really, really awesome. And I do have one more question for you before we wrap up. We started this new thing called The Stack. It's really our reading room, our reading list,

and it's really any kind of words or, you know, maybe there's a book that you read this year or this last while that you'd like to read, that you'd like to recommend. So I want to ask you, what is in your stack oh my god okay so oh many many many things I'm gonna say that probably the the book the two books that I'll mention one is um it's by it's about Jim Henson and it's called make art make money And it's the irony of doing what you love and getting commercial success. But the whole book really is about his creative journey and how he just made art.

And I love that the money part and the commercialization of this is part of it. But it's really about a lot of what we talked about so make art make money and then um the other one i'll mention is the magic of thinking big this is like an old old old school book um it's from like maybe the 30s or the 40s 1930s 1940s we're almost coming up on 100 years now um so um the 1930s, and it's, it's one of those typical how to make, make, how to win friends and influence people type of things. A lot of the stories that the author uses, David Schwartz, a lot of the stories he uses are about like traveling salespeople and things like that. So stuff that's like really dated, but it is all about optimism. It's all

about these same principles. And I think that seeing that in like a, I've read this book for years and it's actually kind of integral also into the, in the Fonte story, but I've just picked it up again, specifically for the sense of kind of what we're talking about with respect to putting your ideas out in the world in a big way as kind of a new person. And so that's a classic that I would recommend. I love it. I love it. I'm definitely going to be reading both of them because a lot of what I've been working on is this idea of the entrepreneur. How are you an artist and entrepreneur all at the same time? I think it's so intertwined. I think people have separated it

in so many ways. But anyway, it's a topic. I've never heard that word, entrepreneur. Entrepreneur, yeah. And I'm starting to kind of call myself that because I really would like to understand how do you make money as an artist? It's really difficult. And I think we have this old school way of thinking that artists are always suffering.

We are inside always suffering. That's what makes the art. But you don't have to suffer financially. Yes. I love that. No. And money, I mean, we, that's probably, I don't know to what extent that's future topics, but money is a really, really interesting thing. And I think that being a creator, and maybe it's the reading that book, And I think that being a creator, and maybe it's through reading that book or just in general, money takes on a different meaning, too. It becomes a real blessing of energy. And you receive it in a very different way, I think, as a creative.

So that resonates a lot with me. And hopefully we can chat about that, too, at some point. Absolutely. I would so love to have more conversations and I feel like there's so much more to unpack here. But thank you so much for sharing today. Thank you for giving your heart on here, you know, and sharing Fonty. And, you know, I almost feel like I want to give him a big hug and spirit I am. Oh, received. It's received. Thank you really. And thank you for believing in in him i did not mean to make fonti the focus of this conversation there's so much more but as a creative um it's kind of all

you can think about when it's when you're creating something so thank you for honor for you know indulging that for me absolutely absolutely yeah i i know i appreciate that so much and i know everyone else out there you know listening is is also kind of mulling over probably where is their imagination going? What does their character look like? And I invite people who are listening, as we wrap up this theme of reinventing your conditioning, what do you feel, how you've been conditioned in your life, and what kind of pivots have you taken to change your life and go in different directions and you know to ultimately live a pivotal life you know which is this this

existence that you were yearning for that you um born to be and so thank you so much for giving us some of that for you of where you are now as you said it's the now it's maybe not the forever and we're excited to see what comes for you going forward and to watch this journey and you know as we kind of go into the new year for everyone i just want to wish everyone amazing celebrations whatever you get up to i hope you're dancing i hope you're safe and i hope you enter the new year with optimism and just a wonderful sense of stillness within yourself you know knowing that 2025 will be an epic year I have a very good feeling for all of us about it so just before we go where can everyone find you and how can people connect with you I think people would love to reach out I'm'm sure. Oh, thank you so much. I echo all the beautiful sentiments

that you sent out to your listeners and audience. On LinkedIn is the best way. So Fonty and I, we have a newsletter called The Elephant in the Window. And we write about AI, music, workplace psychology, all the practical things about managing change and pivoting all of that's in there just click in one article and you might find um you'll be able to kind of see what our vibe is so we would love to have you uh click in in linkedin and then his his archived story is not even archived they're

living on instagram so font details the positive pachyderm he's he's around um and i would love to connect with anyone on linkedin well. If you're into change or corporate psychology or leadership, these are all topics that we talk about. And if you're kind of willing to talk about them through me and an elephant or just me, but you get, it benefits you to do it with the elephant too, because you get a very, very different perspective and you get all my experience plus this creative way of existing with ai we would love to connect with everyone that's a very very genuine request i really really would love to connect with people if they're interested in what we're up to oh amazing oh no well thank you so much i will put all of that stuff in the social

so check it out and uh yeah just wishing you a wonderful, almost said Christmas celebration. Well, it's still kind of, yeah. I hope that you're finding more DJs and dancing and please do share some of the vibes this way. And just sending you big hugs and love from Paris. And thank you so much for sharing. All right, back at you, Nicole. Very, very happy new year and much love. If you haven't just yet follow friday feels on instagram

facebook tiktok and linkedin you can share with us all your feels this week by tagging us at fridayfeels.co and you can also find the website at that handle and now as you ease into this weekend take a moment celebrate who you've become what you've overcome and what is yet to come as you do the crazy and cool things that you do as the authentic you you know the truth about life and work is that it's hard but the beauty is this global working experience that you're in while we earn it together so keep connecting empowering and inspiring this week and of course keep it raw and real until next time