What’s In Your Toolbox

Cadre. Hi, Cadre. 12:00 on the dot in the drop top are in the drop top cruising the streets. Who is it? Who said it? They call him u s h e r r a. What am o n d? Tell me what you want to do. Rusher. Usher, raymond. Usher, raymond. Anyways, if you're too old or too young for that song, we apologize. But it was a banger when we were in high school. It was. I mean, I knew all the words. Was it 9801? Was that the album? 9801? Oh, yeah. I don't know the album, but I'm pretty sure that was it. She has the most.

I have a seal trail, trap memory. I trust everything that comes. I literally have, I think, like, 11,000 photos in my camera. What we're recording this on right now, and I remember where everything is. It's incredible. I'll be referencing a screenshot and I'll be like, I was in Maui, and, oh, that was in 2018. Yeah. And to leave you with a couple of powerful lessons that we have walked away with from staying consistent. So, as of today, we are two episodes away from reaching 100 on our podcast. So if you don't know who we are, my name is Mary.

This is my beautiful best friend in. My name is Jill. Jill. We own a company called Girls Mentorship, where we teach life and personal development skills to teen and tween girls. With that comes fun opportunities like being creators on Cadre in order to help you all really hone in on your own social emotional skills and tools. And we also have a podcast. And our podcast is called what's the lesson? WTL for short. We love a good play on words. So instead of seeing those moments in your life as WTF moments, we all know what the f stands for.

It's not food or fun. We like to take your what the bleep moments and turn them into lessons. So, WTF to WTL? And we're coming up on 100 podcast. Good afternoon, junk food junkie. Thanks for tuning into the show, junkie. So we're bringing you guys in. You guys are in the office with us at Girls mentorship hq. We are daydream believers. We sure are. Just so many play on words and songs today. But really, this achievement, this accolade, this mountain that we've been climbing has been a labor of love.

And I'm sure all of you in your life can reflect on something that you have just kept at. It could be you started a health and wellness journey and you. What the fridge? What the fudge? I love it, and you've been consistent with it, and you've seen results and you've seen some highs and some lows, some pitfalls or whatever that may be. Dan, for you, maybe it's your organizing journey. You have really kept up your organizing journey, which I'm sure has been confronting in a lot of ways for you in times where you've wanted to give up and quit on yourself.

But I think the cool thing with watching your journey and getting to know a little bit more about you is people deeply resonate with organizing and why they're organizing and what they're letting go of and getting rid of that. You've seen a major payoff from it in terms of people tuning into your own personal journey. So the consistency with that is something that we want to call out. Junk food junkie. What I know about you is your screen name. Has it been consistency with your food journey in terms of finding foods that work for you and your lifestyle?

Well, there's one thing that I definitely know about you, junk food junkie, is you are you show up, you show up. And that is whether you want to show up, whether you don't want to show up, that speaks to who you are, and whether we get to know you in person or we know you online, that speaks volumes. And what we really want to talk about today are our three biggest takeaways from recording our podcasts that we started over two years ago. It was July 2021, where we recorded our intro and outro for the first time.

And to be completely, completely honest with you, the joke now is that we had no business doing it. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We didn't have a plan. All we knew was that we wanted to run a podcast. And looking back now, I think our desire to want to do that was probably pretty superficial in terms of seeing everyone else doing it. And it has been two years, nearly 100 episodes later, 13,000 unique downloads, which is neither here nor there. We know people who have far surpassed that number.

We know people who have recorded three episodes and stopped. We are where we are based on our perseverance. But what we know now is nearly 2 hours. 2 hours, two years later is how integral this piece of our business has become to growing our business. And that's the cool part. So the three lessons, numerous. And what I want to say in this before we kick it off, find yourself in this. So it might not be starting a podcast. It might be building a relationship with your family. Family. Or maybe you haven't had a relationship with a family member and you're kind of revisiting that relationship.

So find yourself in this story as we share our top three takeaways. Because these top three takeaways can apply in all areas of your life. And they should. And they should. They should. So number one. Number one is consistency pays off. Like Mary said, we had absolutely no business starting this business. What? This business, this podcast, what we knew was that we loved to communicate, we loved to talk. We had a ton of resources, the gift of gab, and a ton of ideas. And we were like, let's just record it and put it out there and see really where it went.

And truly, if we just stopped, we wouldn't be in this position to say, how does this podcast actually work for us, and how do we celebrate the lives and the girls and the families that we've impacted so far? So has it always been pretty? No. No. Has it been challenging? Most of the weeks, literally, we still look at each other and we're like, what the h*** are we talking about? Right? Absolutely. But we know that consistency pays off. And most importantly, we've kept the promise to ourselves to keep showing up and putting content, content out there week over week.

And the consistency has also brought incredible conversations to the table that we may not have otherwise had. And I think that's a cool piece of it as well. That through our learnings, we're also getting a double dose of learning and junk food junkie. We absolutely know that you eat healthy. You wouldn't be on this platform if you didn't have a holistic approach to your life, which is obviously gaining knowledge in this way by consuming social media in a positive manner. But you sitting here on these lives and watching videos, you can't do that and then go sit at McDonald's the other 23 hours of the day.

Those two things just don't add up. So if we knew anything about you without even knowing you, we knew that your nickname had to be given, you said, by your grandpa, by someone in a sentimental way. So thanks for letting us in on what that actually means. We appreciate getting to know a little bit more about you through the process, which actually tease us up for our next point perfectly well. Couldn't have planned it out better ourselves. Number two is community really matters. So what we're experiencing, building a community here on Cadre is the exact same thing we're experiencing building a community on Instagram and TikTok.

And through our podcast, we have gotten to meet some of the most incredible guests. I mean, Jill and I have had fangirl moments time and time and time again. When we get the courage up to ask somebody to be on our podcast that we automatically think is going to say no, and they are like, absolutely appreciate the offer, and am humbled that you would even ask. We had somebody, we've read several of her books. Her name is doctor Michelle Borba. She's an expert in the child development space several times over.

And I, you know, threw up a prayer. I live, I was, I had my bon Jovi moment, and I said, I'm gonna live on a prayer. And I emailed her, and I didn't get a response. I emailed her assistant, and she didn't respond. So I went directly to the source and I emailed Michelle because I found her personal email, and she wrote back right away. She's like, really appreciate your tenacity. I will schedule right away. Let's get this thing on and popping. And she's been one of our favorite guests to date. Her episode doesn't come out for a few more weeks, but it has taught us that our community and those people who show up for us really, really matter, as well as the listeners who are actually consuming our content and giving us feedback on the conversations that they'd like to see and listen to, the topics that they would love to give to their friends and would really make a difference within their home.

It's been very cool to build a completely different podcast community based on us just saying yes when we had no business of saying yes. And the only other thing that I really want to mention in this is this cannot just be Mary and I. No way. No way. We can talk, but not that much. Yeah. And the coolest part about community is someone else connecting to what we have to say or connecting to us, and then they want to go to. To their neighbor or friend or PTA and share the message of what we're talking about.

She said PTA. Cause she just joined her local PTA. Top of mind for her. But it's the ripple, it's the teacher association. Those moms talk. It's the ripple effect. Because what she really realized in terms of being in the PTA was how toxic it was. So for her to be able to take what we talk about on the podcast and implement it into systems and conversations that they're having in the PTA, really, it showcases that ripple effect perfectly, 100%. And that conversations can be had without us being in the room.

So it's not, it's not just. It's not just us. It really is. It's all about you guys. And it's been really, really fun to cultivate and build over these last two years. Point number three is adaptation and learning. We are not experts, and I think we have done a really good job of keeping the beginner hat on throughout this entire episode of recording episodes. So throughout the journey of podcasting, which has been two years now and 100 episodes later, we don't pretend like we know anything about what we're doing.

Technically, we've gotten better. I mean, I just ordered a different mic cover and a stand to make it a little bit easier for us to be able to record. We have upgraded the platform in which we record on, but truly, the inner workings of a podcast and what we should talk about and the impact that we want to have is constantly in flow, and we're constantly learning to get better and better and better at it, which I think is cool. Just last week, we recorded our intro and our outro for the third time.

We're on our third iteration of what those, those have looked like for us because as we've continued to record and listen to our community, we've had to adapt it to the conversations in the episodes that we're actually recording. And this allows us to go first. So we are not the ones that like to be like, hey, we have it all together, we've arrived. No, we like to be the ones. We call ourselves hot leaders. Not in the like, ooh, well, in that form as well. I will absolutely say that we will totally dote on ourselves, but hot sense for humble, open and transparent.

So we want to show up imperfectly perfect while holding a standard, though. We want to make sure that our episode one sounds different than episode 100. That shows our growth, that shows that we care, that we're evolving, we're learning, we're adapting, and we're being relatable in terms of putting ourselves out there saying we've made mistakes, we've stumbled, we've missed deadlines, we've put out s***** episodes like nothing is polished and perfect. We do that and we put them out anyway. Because in that is a learning experience and it gives permission for people to be okay, give themselves grace while holding a standard to excellence.

So, just to recap, we are coming up on 100 episodes of our podcast, which we launched two years ago. And the three takeaways are consistency pays off, community matters, and you have to be willing to be adaptable and open to learning. Just like your last comment, jungfu junkie. It's an idea is to reach out to some professional female athletes to do a podcast with you to show young girls to keep reaching for their dreams. And that's a fantastic idea. We seek inspiration from everywhere we can find it, because the idea is to, yes, help girls paint the picture of what success looks like through many different areas of opportunity, whether that's a CEO, whether that's a teacher, whether that's a mom.

We want girls to know that the possibility, these are endless. And then on the other side of that, we want to help parents help their kids dream by supporting them and becoming the best, brightest, and most confident versions of themselves. So we have a lot of conversations revolving around emotional intelligence and how to beef up our skills in terms of conflict resolution and positive communication strategies. You know, as adults, we struggle with doing that. So, in turn, if we were looking at our kids trying to navigate the rough waters of friendships and critical thinking, and should I take path a or path B, they obviously need ten times the support that we do.

And that is what our podcast is all about, which ties in perfectly to this platform, because Jill and I really feel like we were put on this planet simply to help raise the group average. We want to cross paths with anyone and everyone, and in those interactions, we want to make sure that we left those people better than we found them. And that is the impact that we're here to make, regardless of the platform that we're doing it on. But these three takeaways, your consistency, the fact that your community really matters, and your ability to be adaptable and continue to learn, are something or three things that have really helped us feel supported in showing up that way.

And our challenge to all of you is taking these takeaways and applying them in your life, in your relationships, in your profession, because, truly, no one's arrived. And every single day, you can look at life as either life happening to you, or life is happening for you. And this community is killer. The Cadre community is incredible. So we would love to hear more about what spoke to you in this live and how you're putting it into action. Or maybe you've been in action and this reinspires you to be like, you know what?

Okay, I've been stuck doing this. Where have I been lacking? I've been stuck, and now I'm gonna. I'm gonna put my best foot forward and literally take it one day at a time, because that's. That's it. That's the secret sauce is just showing up, putting 1ft in front of the other, and taking it one bite at a time, because realistically, it's really easy to do all these things when the going is good, right? But we're in the valley. When we're in a valley and things are just coming at us and nothing is going right and we walk out to our car and it doesn't start because it has a flat tire.

That's when these. These things, these one, two, threes really matter and will really showcase the person that you are. Last thing before we sign off. I'm giggling because we've got this little thing behind us and that is Jill and I. Jill got that made in 2020. It's a little hand stitched Jill and then myself because she's usually rocking that top nine. If you're looking at the background of us and wondering if that's us, I just. I wanted to affirm that, yes, in fact, it was so. It's a really cute ornament etsy, you know, good old people in their creativity.

You guys are rock stars. We love you. Go out and kick a freaking transformer. Let's go kick some b*** this week. And until next week, everyone. We will see you later. Bye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye now. Goodbye. See you.