The Perfectly Imperfect Journey

On Noticing with Jeff Slater

Jeff Slater has always been a “noticer”. When he was a kid and first learned photography, he would notice a small moment, and it would forever be captured on film.  As a young adult, he paid attention to all the ways people would show up and meet their passion.  As a marketing professional, Jeff would notice the things that would inspire people and alchemize that for the benefit of the companies he worked for.  But most importantly, as a son, husband, father, colleague and friend, Jeff pays attention to how he shows up - always asking himself how he can be more loving, more kind, and more empathetic. Jeff notices all of it - the large and small things -  and he actively chooses to be present in the moment.  Please listen to Jeff’s perfectly imperfect journey - we think you’ll be inspired to do a little less doing and a little more being.  

 

Bio:

If there is one guiding principle I experienced throughout my life, it is the importance of living in the moment. 

 

I grew up in a loving family with parents, siblings, and highly supportive friends and relatives. Foundational blessings like these were gifts that helped keep me grounded and grateful. My 95-year-old mom Bea remains my most ardent life-long cheerleader. 

 

There were two catalyzing events from childhood setting me on my journey. 

 

As a young teenager, I worked with my maternal grandfather George. He was an orphan and an immigrant from Russia and came here at age ten. Poppa George became a professional photographer who learned his trade from his Uncle Henry in Newark, N.J. When I started working with him, he was my current age, sixty-eight. 

 

With my grandfather as my teacher, I witnessed the magic of photography where you can capture a moment with a camera that took less than 1/1000 of a second but could last a lifetime. From ages fourteen to twenty-four, I worked as a commercial photographer throughout high school, college, and graduate school. Photography was the creative spark that ignited my curiosity then and now. 

 

I assumed my path would lead me on my perfectly creative journey to becoming a photographer. I had no other professional life plans or goals. 

 

Around that same time in my childhood, I took my first TM or transcendental meditation class and became a lifelong meditator. I have continued this practice for more than fifty years. My balance and calm can, in part, be linked to this practice. Mindfulness and living in the moment are part of the narrative of my life's journey.

 

But the universe had other plans; to my surprise, they involved the business world, specifically marketing. 

 

When I met my future wife, she graduated from Cornell with a degree in political science and French literature. But she had a small business selling extraordinary brownies from a home kitchen in Philadelphia. (Rated by Philadelphia Magazine as the best in Philly in 1975) 

 

Together, over more than a decade, we built a multi-million-dollar business selling Rachel's Brownies nationally. We had wild moments that included lunch with President Reagan, partnering directly with Ben & Jerry to make a Rachel's Brownies Ice Cream, and TV appearances on Phil Donahue's nationally syndicated tv show. 

 

We used to kid that all our friends were doctors, architects, and lawyers – professionals. And we were college-educated brownie makers spending our day knee-deep in chocolate. We were entrepreneurs without any business experience – yet we stumbled upon success. My wife Ra El (formerly Rachel) is the most courageous, extraordinary, and inspiring human I know. We have been married for almost 45 years.

 

During the 1980s, our two magnificent daughters, Sarah and Fanny, were born. Each provided countless exquisite daily moments filled with joy, gratitude, and exhaustion. Both are remarkable women. 

 

During our daughter's early years, I realized that the more present I could be with them, the more joy was available to me in these small moments. Living in the moments, I could manage the stress and crazy entrepreneurial journey that required an astonishing amount of calm, persistence, and flexibility to handle life's daily challenges and perpetual chaos. 

 

We eventually sold our business in 1989 and moved from Philadelphia to Raleigh. During the next decade, I became the EVP of Marketing for a $400M snack food company called GoodMark Foods, which eventually was sold to ConAgra Foods, a $30B company. I worked in various senior marketing leadership positions, including a stint in a global marketing role at Nomacorc, now Vinventions, in the wine packaging industry. 

 

Today I manage a marketing consultancy called The Marketing Sage as Chief Listening Officer, providing fractional CMO services and brand strategy. My clients are startups, mid-sized private and public companies, and several billion-dollar brands. I work on strategic brand and marketing projects. I spend my days wondering how the day will bring me opportunities to be creative and helpful and to get empathy for my work. 

 

If you have a thousand hours, I will tell you about our three-and-a-half-year-old grandson Bodhi Kai. 

 

Website: https://www.themarketingsage.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreylslater/

Finding Her Mode with Kat Williford

From an early age, Kat Williford loved to create through sewing. She followed that passion into college and found herself a comfortable job with a big name fashion brand.  But something didn’t feel quite right and Kat heeded a small whisper inside herself, traveling to Hungary, in part for the adventure and in hopes of finding a more fulfilling path. She got both. And from there a new way to think about fashion was born. Kat designs for everyone, all sizes and abilities.  She keeps the planet in mind by being as sustainable as possible and her longer term strategy is to keep things small so she can continue to employ high quality people and provide customization to her customers. Join us this week to hear about Kat’s perfectly imperfect journey to find her mode. 

 

Bio:

Kat Williford is the owner and designer of Pamut Apparel. Kat took a big step out of her comfort zone when she moved to Budapest, Hungary in 2014. After falling out of love with the fashion industry during her stint as a designer at a mall brand, she was feeling directionless and unsure of her place in the fashion industry. She ended up finding fulfillment by returning to the roots of making clothing: dyeing, printing, and sewing in her little Budapest flat. Kat moved back to her hometown of Raleigh, NC in 2017, and she soon came to realize that there was a huge gap in the market for inclusively sized and customized clothing. Over the next few years, Kat worked to evolve Pamut into the brand that it is today. Kat spends most of her days in the Pamut studio with her sheltie puppy, but enjoys plenty of free time away from work thanks to her talented and dedicated team.

Website: https://www.pamutapparel.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamutapparel/

Mid-Year Reset

Remember January? 

 

Did you set some intentions for the year? 

What did you want to bring into your life? 

How’s it going?

 

Whether you’ve been diligently focused on your themes for the year or forgotten all about them, now is a great time to take another look at what you want to bring into your life.  The act of thinking about what you want, and what you’re willing to do to get there, will help you get closer to achieving your goals.  Listen in this week as we explore a mid-year reset and Sherry does some spontaneous coaching with Anne to help with her mid-year reset. 

The Scaffolding with Kat Gordon

Whether reflecting on her first mentors, encouraging her children to create strong friendship groups or starting an entire movement to support women in Creative Leadership roles, Kat Gordon lives her belief that we all need to surround ourselves with people who will help us celebrate when things are going well and be there for us when life inevitably gets tough. She calls this group her scaffolding. Kat is herself a tremendous role model for others. She started the 3% Movement, which led to an increase in female Creative Directors from 3% to almost 30%. And she’s now “walking her talk” by shifting her focus with the support of the amazing team she has assembled. Kat told us “when something gets heavy, you put it down,” Her mission remains the same, but she is streamlining the focus of her organization and is putting down the pieces that got heavy due to the pandemic.  Please listen in to hear Kat’s perfectly imperfect journey.  

 

Bio

Kat Gordon

Founder/CEO

The 3% Movement

 

Kat Gordon has been called the “triple threat” of an entrepreneur, ad woman + marketing to women expert and was named one of "30 Most Creative Women in Advertising" by BusinessInsider in 2016, "Visionary of the Year" from Advertising Age in 2018, and one of “Forty Over 40” women disrupting the world in 2014. She is the visionary behind The 3% Movement. Started as a passion project to spotlight a huge business opportunity in advertising -- the lack of female creative leadership and its impact on connecting with an overwhelmingly female marketplace -- the 3% Movement has grown exponentially since its 2012 launch: hosting events in 17 cities globally, and offering consulting and certification programs that amplify creative cultures. Today, female creative directors have gone from 3% to 29%.

 

Kat serves on the Board of The Representation Project and as an advisor to 600 & Rising, WPP and Empower Work. She is passionate about elevating the contributions of women and people of color, especially as they relate to innovation. She currently serves as "Creative Entrepreneur in Residence" at Eleven, working to rethink the creative process, workflow and client engagement to build internal cultures and external messaging that embrace everyone.

When Nothing Becomes Something with Daryan Rahimzadeh

When Daryan Rahimzadeh decided to leave Google and take time for his mental health, he wrote a lengthy LinkedIn post that he was excited to announce … “nothing.” Before his announcement, Daryan hadn’t posted on LinkedIn in a couple of years, so after his announcement went live, he didn’t think too much about it.  But turns out he absolutely struck a nerve.  With over 54,000 views and 1,800 comments to-date, Daryan’s thoughtful writing about mental health, the fact that no one is coming to rescue you, and his initial reluctance to reveal his next step was “nothing”, clearly meant something to a LOT of people.  Please listen in to hear Daryan’s perfectly imperfect journey, including his complete surprise when his “nothing” post became quite something.  

 

Bio:

Woodworker | Career Coach | Aspiring Inspirer

I'm currently living in Austin, Texas with my wife JC, but I grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I met my wife at college when we were both in school at the University of Georgia, which is more or less where the story starts for me. Leaving college, I was trying to decide between starting my career in teaching or pursuing a career in higher education/student affairs. Teaching won out, and I moved to North Carolina to teach middle school as a part of Teach for America. After two years in the classroom, I moved to Nashville to pursue a masters in organizational leadership at Vanderbilt in their education college. While in grad school, I worked as a program coordinator at the Career Center for a graduate assistantship, which was in line with an internship I had when I was in undergrad at Georgia. That job, plus some networking, helped me land my job at Google and started my journey here in Austin, where I've been since 2016. For the past 6 years I've been in a variety of recruiting functions at Google, from interview coordinating, to college talent sourcing and industry recruiting. I left Google back in January 2022 for a number of reasons, and since then I've been exploring my passions, my hobbies, my long-past-due-career-and-life goals.

 

THE LinkedIn post. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daryanrahimzadeh_after-5-years-in-a-variety-of-roles-in-the-activity-6892632008481132544-_TED 

A follow-up post on why this isn’t about recharging: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daryanrahimzadeh_i-am-not-recharging-in-fact-im-not-activity-6895147067963248640-43Om

The Enneagram Episode

We reference it all the time, and several of our guests have mentioned it … but what is this thing called “The Enneagram”? Listen in as we (both relative newbies to the amazing depths of the Enneagram!) talk about our own experiences with this system that has captured so much of our attention. At its core, the Enneagram attempts to define the unconscious habits and ways of being that we all have. There is a part of the Enneagram that is similar to a personality assessment, but it is so much more! There are 9 main personality types and 27 “subtypes.” In this episode, you will hear us use personal and well-known people or character examples to help illustrate what each main type can look like. A big caveat: we are only using famous people and movie characters as examples; one of the beautiful things about the Enneagram is that only the individual can truly determine their true type.  

If you want to know more about the enneagram, check out: https://www.integrative9.com/enneagram/ 

Or reach out to Anne or Sherry directly.

Know Justice Know Peace with Dr. Deborah Egerton

Know Justice Know Peace is the title of Dr. Deborah Egerton’s upcoming book, but it is also the way she has lived her life.  Deborah joins us this week on the podcast to share her incredible journey from child model in New York, to starting a runaway shelter in El Paso and a high school placement program in Germany, to being a thought leader on equity and inclusion.  Deborah has deep expertise in the Enneagram and believes it is a path to self knowledge, freedom, and healing our fractured society.  She has lived her life seeking justice for people around the world and works tirelessly to help people find peace within themselves.

 

Dr. Deborah Egerton, Founder and President of Trinity Transition Consultants, is an internationally respected psychologist and executive coach who is often described as an unforgettable thought-leader. Her work in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space is legendary. “Dr. E”, as she is affectionately known, is an inspirational Enneagram JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) who teaches the Enneagram for introspective self-discovery. Additionally, she has been a trailblazer in developing ways to integrate the Enneagram into her work as a social justice warrior. She facilitates career growth and personal development with individuals and organizations by focusing her efforts on respecting the uniqueness of every individual and honoring their humanity. Her goal is to cultivate a world-wide community of socially responsible cultural allies.

 

She holds a BA in Mass Communications from the University of Texas El Paso, an MA in Counseling Psychology, Webster University, and a Ph.D. in Health Sciences from Saba University, Netherlands Antilles.

Know Justice Know Peace - will be released on Sep 6, 2022 - available for pre order now on Deborah’s website:  https://www.deborahegerton.com/

Somatic Advocacy with Rebekah Rotstein

Rebekah Rotstein has always been interested in athleticism and movement: she began ice skating as a 3 year old, she took up ballet soon thereafter, worked as a student athletic trainer in college and developed a deep passion for Pilates in her 20’s. There were many times in her young life when Rebekah was away from those closest to her and she had to learn early on how to advocate for herself. When she received an osteoporosis diagnosis at 28 and her doctors wanted to put her on a course of medication that would have had detrimental effects on her body, Rebekah again had to be her own advocate - she refused the medication and dove into research to help her understand what would improve her health. She successfully took charge of her health and ultimately developed the Buff Bones system to address bone and joint health, giving all her students the ability to be their own somatic advocate.   

Bio
Rebekah Rotstein is an industry leader for Pilates, bone health and movement education. She is the founder of the Buff Bones® exercise system for bone and joint health with trained instructors in more than 30 countries. A former ballet dancer, Rebekah worked in the Sports Medicine department of Smith College as a student athletic trainer. A diagnosis of osteoporosis at age 28 motivated her to advocate for others with low bone mass and to provide innovative education and programming for them. She has presented at numerous conferences in the Pilates industry, at the International Osteoporosis Foundation Worldwide Conference and for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. Rebekah is a member of the Bone Health Working Group of the Society for Women’s Health Research, a member of the Ambassador Leadership Council for the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation, an ambassador for American Bone Health, and worked as a partner of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Women’s Health.  

Rebekah is launching a new 21-day challenge for Buff Bones® this spring! It's called "Restore and Reorganize" and it lays your foundation for a strong, resilient body regardless of osteoporosis or low bone density. It prepares you for any type of exercise and activities you do in daily life, so you can achieve proper form and avoid injuring yourself. Women in mid-life have long been ignored when it comes to workouts that meet them where they're at and where they want to be; this challenge recognizes your needs and paves the way for you to achieve your movement and bone health goals.

Links:

website:  buff-bones.com

Facebook: "Buff Bones"  (https://www.facebook.com/BuffHealthyBones)

Instagram: @gotbuffbones (https://www.instagram.com/gotbuffbones/)

                  @rebekahrotstein (https://www.instagram.com/rebekahrotstein/)

Passion and Purpose

Which is more important?  Passion or Purpose? If you Google how to be happy in work and life, you’ll find LOTS of articles about each of them. Both can be important and useful. And they’re not the same.  Passion is like a fire starter - it can get things moving. However, ultimately we come down on the side of Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.”  We think purpose is your why and can be found within. Listen in to this week’s podcast as we discuss our individual experiences with passion and purpose and give you some insight into how to get started finding you why.

Some additional info for you: 

 

From Will Smith’s (excellent!) book: Will
Purpose is the flowering of what you are.  Purpose is empowering.  Purpose contextualizes our lives. 

 

Suffering ceases to be suffering when I find meaning. - Viktor Frankl

 

Some articles related to purpose and purpose:

https://www.success.com/your-purpose-lies-at-the-intersection-of-these-3-things/ 

https://www.exceptionalfutures.com/passion-vs-purpose/

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/new-harvard-research-to-be-successful-chase-your-purpose-not-your-passion.html

Yes!! with Marney Sullivan

Marney Sullivan’s earliest memory is of the big open sky of Idaho. That experience began her journey toward embracing the mantra “be free” as she works to let go of the “shoulds” in her life. Marney has suffered some incredible tragedies which gave her a deep appreciation for the importance of leaning in with friends who are suffering and being present to her own truths. 

Join us as we hear about Marney’s incredible journey along with her perfectly imperfect path.

 

Trigger warning: This episode includes a discussion of suicide and abortion.

 

Rumi: Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.

 

Bio:

Marney Sullivan is boundlessly energetic, curious, and relentlessly authentic.  A certified yoga teacher since 2001, writer, and risk-taker, she leads insightful and inspirational classes and yoga retreats.  Marney finds purpose in assisting others to live their most magnificent lives.

She holds a BA from the University of Washington in English/ Creative Writing and a Master Certification in NLP, which she earned while guiding adolescents in the wilderness.  Marney possesses a great enthusiasm for nature, connection, her family and friends, mischief, and fun.

Marney lives and plays in the mountains in Sun Valley, Idaho with her fiancé, and their three children. She recently jumped into the real estate world and joined Berkshire Hathaway Sun Valley. She loves to help her clients find the hidden gems in the Wood River Valley and share her passion for the amazing place she lives.  

You can find more out here: 

www.marneysullivan.com

www.superstarretreats.com

www.gatheryogastudio.com