Geeking Out with Trish Fontanilla – Part 2

0:00:01 - Felicia Jadczak Hey Rachel

0:00:02 - Rachel Murray Hey Felicia,

0:00:03 - Felicia Jadczak I'm just giggling because literally moments before we started, we hit a button and we have a little chat AI thing in our document and it started going wild and telling me how to collaborate on Google Docs and I was like no, this is not what I need.

0:00:26 - Rachel Murray You know, this is AI. Now, this is. We live with robots. They're going to just take over.

0:00:31 - Felicia Jadczak Well, nice that they only they're telling what's happening. Right now I'm not worried, for a little bit at least, because the robot was dumb.

0:00:40 - Rachel Murray Oh, don't you worry, those robots are going to get smart. You know and this is a premature conversation, I wasn't going to bring it up, but I do think in future we are going to be talking about AI and D.

0:00:49 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for it. Yeah, I feel like you and I just need to have like a whole podcast just on our own about that, because it is fascinating.

0:01:00 - Rachel Murray I mean, I remember when the conversation that we talked about that ages ago, just around, not even AI, but just like just technology right, being just so biased because of the people who created it. And I my little rant for the day. I will not go as long as we did last time because that was wild, but I will just say like I do think about sometimes with like Siri and Google and Alexa, like they're all female voices yes, I know you can change them, but first of all is the lady voice and then people are just like really angry at the lady voice and then, I think, just translate so nicely over to people just hating women.

0:01:33 - Felicia Jadczak Well, I guess it's like the classic. Is it correlation or causation, as my stats professor would ask us in school?

0:01:40 - Rachel Murray Solid question. Solid, solid question. But yeah, like I do wonder sometimes, like what is? They were the gender neutral voice which I remember Microsoft talking that they were going to do. I don't know if they ever implemented it, but I remember they were talking about having a gender neutral voice.

0:01:54 - Felicia Jadczak What is a gender neutral voice? Is that like a robot voice Like?

0:01:58 - Rachel Murray Maybe Go here. Oh, I see a new career for you, am I?

0:02:04 - Felicia Jadczak the new voice of AI. Microsoft, call me, microsoft call me.

0:02:10 - Rachel Murray There you go. Oh my gosh, that was wild. If we didn't lose people just from that, then speed.

0:02:16 - Felicia Jadczak When you lose people. The robots have come to us and we're going to get so many views and listens on this thing.

0:02:21 - Rachel Murray It's actually not even us talking. It's actually we're just robots.

0:02:25 - Felicia Jadczak That's how good the technology is going to be Well but here actually, to put another spin on it, what we are actually hearing is not even like you and I aren't even hearing the same thing, right, like I'm literally hearing you filtered through robots because I have hearing aids and so you know, every time I switch a hearing aid provider or like not provider, a manufacturer like I hear differently because the machinery is different. So who even knows? We are all robots.

0:02:51 - Rachel Murray We're all robots. Yes, well, we're all meet bags. I don't know if we're all robots. That's true, actually. That's why we sound differently in our inside versus when we hear ourselves recorded. We got them for the bone conduction.

0:03:01 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, I just went to my audiologist yesterday to do my annual check and that's why I was thinking about this, because I have a particular manufacturer for my current hearing aids and they support it. But she was saying how that different manufacturers like you sound different because it's different machinery, it's different processing equipment. You know and I've definitely experienced this over the years as I've had different hearing aids is it always takes a little bit of time for my brain to adjust if I get a new set, because the brain has to start, like understanding how it processes the sound and a lot of times what does happen is when I get a new set of hearing aids which is usually around like every five years or so, is for the first like anywhere from like a day to a week or so, I literally sound like a robot and I hate it so much because I do sound like a robot to myself and I think it's the same with eyeglasses too.

0:03:51 - Rachel Murray When you get a new prescription, it's like I adjust to it. Yeah, perception, weird. All right, well, let's just do this. We're we promise you that we're going to keep it short, so we're keeping it short. I'm so excited for this part two situation. If you were there for part one, go back and listen now that you need to, but you can't think you do.

0:04:08 - Felicia Jadczak I think you do. You have to stop everything. Don't even continue. Pause. Go back, listen to part one first, then come back Just or not, because you know or not, it's fine.

0:04:19 - Rachel Murray It's like we're going to really be able to do anything about it. But this one we're actually. This is the first one where we're actually putting it on YouTube as well. So what you're listening to right now, if you're listening to this, this will not be on video, this is audio. Only because we're wearing different outfits, the whole thing. I don't have that kind of time to put that stuff together, so, but the actual interview is going to be online on our YouTube, which we can find us at shaking sound, as always. But what happened in this interview?

0:04:50 - Felicia Jadczak part two Felicia Well, we had so much fun, we just kind of kept it going. So we had a whole set of questions that we did not get into in part one because we just were chatting so much. So we continue with where we think we left off, but actually we had no idea. So if you are doing like a one to listen and you notice that we repeated the question, that's why, because who's got time for that? But we kept talking about community. We talked more about personal branding, volunteering and a lot more, and we might do more in the future. So, if you like it, keep a look out for it. Dish with Trish.

0:05:24 - Rachel Murray Yeah, and it's worth noting, too, that we are also on the Spotify, which we're not on before, but it seems like they're getting their act, together with the whole podcasting thing. We're still not fans of the whole thing, mr Rogan $200 million, but you know, the person who made that choice got fired, so I feel good about it. All right, let's do this All right onwards.

0:05:56 - Felicia Jadczak All right, so we're back. This is part two of an ongoing series. I don't know.

0:06:02 - Trish Fontanilla Have you ever had a part two with someone before? I feel like.

0:06:05 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, you're not the first, but you're the best.

0:06:10 - Trish Fontanilla I'm the dishiest, I'll say that.

0:06:12 - Felicia Jadczak Definitely are the dishiest. Yeah, we were just chatting about names. I'm like we got to start recording, so anyway, we're back with Trish Fontanella. I got the name right this time, right, fontanella.

0:06:22 - Trish Fontanilla All right Listeners. I am pumping my hands in the air because I forget that this is an audio platform.

0:06:30 - Rachel Murray Like you, just don't care.

0:06:31 - Trish Fontanilla And I very like I use my hands a lot, so I have to like talk about it audio wise.

0:06:38 - Rachel Murray Yeah, that's a really smart thing to do. I never realized how much I waved my hands until other people told me. And then I've ever seen myself on video and I don't care for it, but I do. I'm with you on the.

0:06:49 - Trish Fontanilla I very much care for your hand gestures.

0:06:52 - Felicia Jadczak So, oh, thank you, I'm into it too and I'm like you know what, if there are listeners out there who want to see it, like you know, we could reset up our Patreon. Like let's do it, yeah, Well.

0:07:03 - Rachel Murray I mean sneaky peeky into future us, because I think we need to start making these YouTube videos in future. I haven't.

0:07:09 - Trish Fontanilla I know I haven't talked to him.

0:07:11 - Rachel Murray I haven't know, but I think influencers. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but you know well.

0:07:16 - Trish Fontanilla YouTube apparently is from like what I've been listening to with around creators is like the best platform as far as comp goes between all the other social platforms.

0:07:26 - Rachel Murray So yes, I've been trying to get us out there, but it's hard. We have a very shy crew. I had to Well.

0:07:35 - Trish Fontanilla I mean. I'm supposed to be the one behind the scenes Someone was on a video the other day, so yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, exactly.

0:07:45 - Rachel Murray I was like I am on here, if I can do this, if I can shake my head in disapproval of the latest SCOTUS trash news, I think anyone can.

0:07:56 - Trish Fontanilla And then I think that video should be a part of the Patreon. Like we can request that, because there are certain videos that I think about, like Michelle Yeo from Crazy Rajasins. I want to like feel ashamed. I'll just like picture her being like you will never be enough, and then I'll like okay, I have to fix things so people can like get a video of Rachel shaming them if they're like being this is taking a turn.

0:08:19 - Felicia Jadczak I'm like is this like an only fans now Like what's happening? Well, this is a conversation.

0:08:27 - Rachel Murray Can we talk about shame for a second, not to get on with that or anything. Yeah, let's talk about shame. Hashtag Renee Brown. No well, it's an interesting topic that you bring up and it goes to identity also, which I know in the Asian culture, as you were just referring to, right, and as you probably know I'm also listeners.

0:08:50 - Trish Fontanilla I'm wearing an American girl. I feel like we need to video to release the video.

0:08:55 - Rachel Murray This is the video. This is our first YouTube video. I think it might be. I'm here.

0:08:59 - Felicia Jadczak You know it's funny. So I know I do want to hear what you were about to say, Rachel, but I just want to let you and everyone know that I was on a little early and I was like, oh yeah, this zoom has like these makeup filters, so I was like giving myself different eyebrows and stuff. So I decided not to do that.

0:09:13 - Trish Fontanilla But that's okay, you don't need to. Your perfect as is. Your eyebrows are amazing.

0:09:18 - Felicia Jadczak I was going to say, and they're not filters. See, I'm like proving that.

0:09:23 - Trish Fontanilla Just putting your background filter and I'm like no, you can see my like random stuff on my teas, that's not like a hundred percent going to be the first.

0:09:32 - Rachel Murray Yeah, what were you saying, you?

0:09:33 - Felicia Jadczak were talking about identity shame. Yeah, yeah. So the Asian?

0:09:38 - Rachel Murray culture, right, shame is obviously is a big part of it, which is what Trish was just talking about, and in the Jewish culture, shame is also a very big part, and so a fun fact that I like to share occasionally in moments like this is when I was a freshman in college, there was a language requirement. I went to Brandeis, which is a predominantly Jewish school. I'm actually half Jewish. I'm not and I wasn't raised at matters neither here nor there, but I'm half Irish and Catholics also know about a thing or two about shame. But my language requirement. I decided to take you something easy, you know, like Japanese. So I took Japanese and there was the woman would come in and she was an older Japanese woman and she would just start speaking to you in Japanese and then you would respond right, but then as soon as you weren't able to respond well, she would just like bar her head down and shame and shake her head and walk away. It was like literally the most devastating, traumatic, and I'm just like.

0:10:40 - Trish Fontanilla I'm not used to the like. I know people are. Some people have the like. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Like my parents would really lay out why they would support like there wasn't a passive aggressive thing. It was an aggressive aggressive.

0:10:55 - Felicia Jadczak Oh God, can I just tell you all like it's not even a recovered memory, it's a memory that I like keep with me. But I grew up playing the violin. My parents are really big into having us all play musical instruments, and so we used to have to like go off and practice for you know, an hour or whatever a day. And I remember I must have been like eight, seven, eight years old, like very young, and I was like I don't want to play violin. So I went into my room and I closed the door and I just didn't do it and I pretended that I did. My mom obviously found out. I had no idea how she did, but you know, I'm sure she had her ways and it wasn't that big of a dupe that I did. So she sat me down and said I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed, and it like like shriveled up my soul and I remember being like how do I fix this? And she was like you can't, oh.

0:11:40 - Rachel Murray God, you can't you can. Oh God, I'm still thinking about that today.

0:11:47 - Felicia Jadczak That was, like I don't know, 30 years ago.

0:11:50 - Rachel Murray That's okay, my mom just dropped some knowledge on me, just as I saw her just like a few weeks ago when I was in Boston and she was like yeah, you know, in high school you were so diligent, you would always immediately go into your room and just study and do your homework all afternoon. You just were so focused in your room to studying and studying. I was like girl, I was watching a lot of MTV up in that space. Those are a lot of Pearl Jam.

0:12:17 - Trish Fontanilla So I just thought it was funny. Yeah, because we convinced our parents because I'm the youngest of four, and they were like, oh, we need to get a computer because Trish wants it. And I was like my brother is using me and my parents are like the same. You're like you're always on your computer doing work and I'm like I was on ICQ, I was in chat rooms.

0:12:35 - Felicia Jadczak Oh the AIM. I was like CSL age sex location Everyone was 13. Oh my God, in retrospect I realized that was not true.

0:12:45 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, that's how I got into start. I think last time we talked about kind of like we didn't go further back, but I was creating like websites and tripod and GF city is amazing and doing stuff, and I'm signed up for this marketing platform and I think it was before they really had age requirements on like giving out knowledge, if you're like a teenager a teenager, because I think I was 12 or 13. The first startup I ever worked with was in high school, so I'd answered this survey online and I thought I was like a method actor. So I was the understudy for the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz at school.

0:13:20 - Felicia Jadczak Yes.

0:13:21 - Trish Fontanilla So I answered all the survey. It was like a survey for teen girls and I answered all of the questions in like Ozzie and speak I'd like, type things like as in like the cowardly lion. Then the woman wrote back and was like do you live in Southern California? Because we're looking for an intern to work out our startup. I do not live there, but it was like.

0:13:43 - Felicia Jadczak I live in a magical land called Oz, but I live in-.

0:13:46 - Trish Fontanilla Oh my God. No, I said New Jersey because that's Same same. It was same same. They paid me in cashier checks and swag to write it was around 2000 survey and Injuries and Horowitz had invested in them and they tanks like every other startup around the 2000s. But Jennifer Aniston was like they're like girl, like on other woman spokeswoman. I wrote like random teen copy. They would like send me something and it'd be like a Motorola campaign to like add teen words and I'm like oh my God, hey cool, you're probably getting so underpaid for that value that you're giving them.

I, and it is hilarious because I was a teenager and didn't know how banks work and I didn't want to tell my parents that I had this random job I found on the internet, because they were also like, what is you should be studying? Like, what are you doing right now? My brother had to cash the checks for me and he got a cut out of the checks and so, like so many, but I got like the Crouching Tiger, hidden Dragon, like film, book and like random stickers and I was like oh my gosh, I'm living the life.

0:14:55 - Rachel Murray That's amazing $30.

0:14:57 - Trish Fontanilla And they were like 10 or 13, whatever it's so well Entrepreneurial from the beginning, taking a cut out of it.

0:15:06 - Rachel Murray So look, so does Stripe. You know, that's just the way things work.

0:15:09 - Felicia Jadczak I mean, he wasn't really your manager, but he was your facilitator.

0:15:13 - Trish Fontanilla He was most definitely not my manager.

0:15:15 - Felicia Jadczak You needed someone to cash those checks. I mean, come on.

0:15:19 - Rachel Murray Well, it's perfect. I cannot believe that, like I feel like we're going to actually get into any of the questions that we yeah, let's do it, let's get into some questions, but I feel like it's nice. I mean, you're such an entrepreneur, but, felicia, you had a follow up question, did you not? Oh, no, maybe I made this up.

0:15:34 - Felicia Jadczak One of us had a follow up question. I don't remember who it was, but we were-.

0:15:38 - Trish Fontanilla I don't know either when we left off part one.

0:15:40 - Felicia Jadczak We were just talking about community. Yeah, so you had been talking to us about, like companies or the tools of the heroes utility bell. I don't know if you remember any of that, but we wrote notes about what you said A little bit, a little bit, and then one of us said we have a follow up question. I don't remember, but what I did want to maybe get into maybe this is the follow up question was how does workplace community tie into what we think about? Oh, yeah, we talked about battle, but, yeah, because you're not, especially now, folks aren't necessarily tied to an office, and I know for me, working in tech in the mid 2000s or whatever those years are called the 2010s, the teens, I don't know it was all about the office and the swag and the views and the food and very physical, like location based. So, yeah, maybe we can start there if you have any thoughts.

0:16:32 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, I mean I think you know really big company is. At least they used to have community managers that were just for employees and it's different from HR and maybe they reported to people ops. I know people that were doing it, but we've never talked about like chain of command or anything like that, but I think it's something that's really important. Something in my last job that we had was doughnuts, which is an extension you can add to Slack and it randomly pairs you up with you know folks every week and I was one of the cool nerds that at the end of the year I was one of like the top three that met with people and was like sending, because you can meet with someone and you can send them a compliment, and it was just a really good because I joined my last campaign. I joined during the pandemic and we were distributed and so I'm like, okay, how do I get to know people were small enough. I forget how many we were, maybe like 70. And then when I was left we remember like a hundred, but big enough that there was going to be people I was just not going to get to know or talk to, and especially when people are running meetings, you know there isn't like. We took what like 15 minutes for a banter at the beginning of this, and that doesn't happen in a workplace meeting and you don't get to learn all the things unless you happen to be the person that comes in early and the meeting was early and someone asked about your weekend. Otherwise, meetings now are just for the content and not to say that all meetings need to have that. But there is that missing of like. When you show up to a meeting, someone's like oh, I see you're drinking Seltzer, I love Seltzer. Or like you look Tanner, and it's like, oh, I went to the beat. There's all these things you can talk about that are missing within. So that is even just. I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.

When it comes to employee community, that's just how do you make sure that we're connecting with other people? You know right now. But I think employee community is like that person that is coming up with events and not necessarily it's like hey, not everybody here drinks, we shouldn't have all happy hours, we should have coffee chats. We should get like coming up with actual programming. I'm not in it enough to know the differentiators, because Rachel actually just said there's employee experience managers. So there's people that do different things. I don't know how they would differentiate that kind of stuff, but for me, community folks are always about the people, and so there might be people that are actually doing the stats of like, okay, if you read events, like how many people are coming up to it Other CMs don't do that, but you know the focus if you have a big enough team to have all those different titles.

I think it's actually like going into the community and like, because I always used to go to happy hours and like, yeah, it's a catch off, you don't drink, then you don't have to drink, and then actually talk to people that don't drink. They're like I actually don't feel comfortable going to happy hours. I'm like, oh, because I someone says drink, I don't drink at all happy hours and I just feel comfortable. But I know other people have other stuff going through their brains and you don't find that out unless you talked to other people. So I think it's just as employee community stuff is just as important. I think I'm trying to remember we're talking about the first time, but when I do customer journey maps, I also talk about employee experience. So it's good to figure out those different pieces of not just what your customers want, but also how your employees feel about the work that they're doing and how they're connecting to customers in a joyful way, but also in a way that that helps products innovate and move forward Two things.

0:19:41 - Felicia Jadczak First, we definitely have used Donut before too. So when our community, the Estria community, was on Slack, still before the pandemic, we had installed Donut and I don't know if you remember this, rachel, but I joined the channel just to see what it was and then it like immediately matched me with somebody and I was like, oh no, I didn't want to do this. I ended up meeting the person. We met up in Somerville somewhere. It was totally great. Oh, you met up in person. Yeah Well, because this was before the pandemic, so in a different world, a different time.

Yeah, so it was like this woman, one of our community members, and she lived near me.

So we like met up at Winter Hill Brewing Company, like one Friday and, just like you know, had a little chit chat.

But I remember being like, oh no, I just went to look, I didn't want to actually engage, but I engaged anyway, and then I immediately like removed myself from the channel because I didn't want to talk to people Not that I don't love talking to people, but anyway, side note. So, but the other thing I wanted to follow up on with what you were just talking about is I think it's interesting when you have. I don't want to call like warring communities, but communities within the same umbrella that may not necessarily have the same like resources or agendas or viewpoints, because I think for a lot of companies where they have their employee base and then they also have an external community, I've seen that happen, where sometimes the community is sort of like goes off in one direction and the company is like, oh, we don't want to do that or we don't care about that or we're not supporting that, and then that can become kind of a little bit of like a tug of war between employees.

0:21:06 - Trish Fontanilla That needs big yeah, exactly.

0:21:07 - Felicia Jadczak So I'm just curious, like if you've come up with that or seen that or you know all on that.

0:21:12 - Trish Fontanilla Oh yeah, all the time. I mean, I think it's funny. So there's Community Manager Appreciation Day in January, and I forget what it's, one maybe the fourth Monday or something like that and they recently changed it to Community Manager Development Day. They changed it to something that sounded like, oh, we're not just here to celebrate each other. But I'm like, why can't we just celebrate each other? Like, why not, you know? So they want to make it more active, which is fine.

So the creators in the universe don't come for me, but I think there is that constant peace because, you know, I think it's between when you think about people's different goals just within the company. You know, an engineer's goal is to finish a sprint and finish a product. Marketers goals to get eyes on something, salesperson's goals to close the eyes, and sometimes those things conflict. And I think a lot of it comes with timing and people's different goals and they're not collaborating. And maybe their leadership team isn't collaborating. And I think with communities sometimes, like I think community should be its own, like department, but most companies obviously don't set it that way and there's different people. I've reported to a COO, I've reported to a CEO, I've reported to CMO, and they all have different goals for what the company should be. So it does make community a little bit hard because people do want to see something happen.

Now. Any community building work if you just even look at community building work within a town you have to invest in people. You can't just think about it as a bank all the time. You know we're talking about social capital. People immediately want to set the bank and they're like let's extract, like let's take money on. It's like you didn't even put money in yet, dude, you're like you're in the red. So I think that's where you know things kind of conflict as people launch community almost too late when they like need something as opposed to.

I know not everyone can afford to do this, but my very first startup, I was like one of the first hires out in the community before we launched the product, to even just see what our people, people that might be in our ecosystem, people that might be customers, what they were thinking, what they were buying and what they were using. Again, going back to the utility belt, we're not the only thing, but people immediately want to launch communities to serve some like. We want them immediately to give us something back and I think warring. Depending on what kind of company you work at, maybe warring is their butting heads. It can be a thing, especially a startup. Obviously you have only a certain amount of runway, so you know things need to happen quickly. But if it is going to be community and not just customer service or something like, it needs to have a deeper purpose and that takes, like any movement, that takes time, which is tough for a lot of, especially executives, to like think about.

0:23:49 - Rachel Murray I'm curious to know like I go back and forth. I'm like one minute, I'm like community is the most important, it's needed, like we can feel like the pandemic is over. Everybody wants to get in person. And then, on the other side, I'm like people are just, I think, become more introverted and like are scared of everything. Well, how have you seen like community evolve, particularly since the pandemic?

0:24:08 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, I think the kind of the resounding thing I think among community professionals and just people in general is like niche communities, so it's no longer I mean sometimes I will go to a broad spectrum tech community, but it is very small percentage of the time that I will do that and if I do it I'm probably bringing a student or someone that like and I'm helping introduce them and it's less about me. But people now want to be like. I want to meet people like me that live in the city, that work in tech and are women of color, like. They're just like. Let me hit multiple boxes so that we have multiple things in common and we can just start talking about stuff versus oh, here's this one thing, we're all living in Boston Great and it's like, but there's so many different people that live. There's moms or single people, there's like just so many people that wear so many hats and I think now people are like I want to meet someone that is an elder millennial that works in Boston, that works in like there's just things that take off the box and that way you can just jump into conversation. There's a woman I met the other day that, like Asian American woman, she works in government, so it's in a lot of spaces where she's the only one.

So we talked about that. We're both singles. We talked about that Like there was just layers, that for someone, if I was meeting someone else for the first time that didn't have as many checkboxes as me on it, it would take. I would never ask them other color, but it'd be just so surface level. And we're kind of done with that surface level stuff. Because that is what everything the past few years is like. I hope you're like all this, like are you okay? I'm okay, are you feeling sad? Yeah, me too. The world is ending Like it's just the same conversation over and over again and I'm like that is important. Let's have those conversations. But also like, how do you feel as a single person? That is navigate, like just something that is even further than skin deep, like let's get into it. Let's talk about trauma.

0:26:05 - Rachel Murray Well, yeah, and I think for it. I think what you're getting to is like also the value, like creating real value as opposed to just showing up, and maybe it is going to be valuable, maybe it's not going to be valuable. I think people are also valuing their time a lot more, so they're making choices to go to places. It's got to be a clear value add, whether it is like I need to connect with someone that has shares my identity so we can get rid of trauma, or I need to get something else out of it. Whatever, that is got to be really clear.

0:26:33 - Felicia Jadczak Do you think that it's also partially because now, like we're in a, you know, post pandemic world, people are like I could die if I go to this event, so it better be worth it?

0:26:43 - Trish Fontanilla Or is that like too extreme? I think for some people? Yes, that definitely was my thought. I hadn't gone to a conference. I think last year, 2022, was my first big conference. I went to a smaller conference in 2021. That was maybe 50 people and I think there are parts. I think I was mass and then half mass part of it they had asked for people to be vaccinated. So there's certain like there's choices that were made, but I think the valuing of time or Rachel was talking about, I mean it's always been a thing. If you have any kind of marketing sense, you know you always talk about when we say paying attention, like that is their current, like you're paying for ads, but they are paying with their time.

And people forget about that, and so even you know going back. So I just talked about all my personal stuff abs but I'm going back to companies, you know. Again, it's like I don't want to talk about your product all the time. What would be helpful is talking about how to pitch your product to my boss in a grander shell of how do I present executives and then use your product as an example.

Right, so it's not like I don't want to talk about your product all the time. Talk about how do I get promoted, you know like what are the other things around the human that are using your product. So then we talked about this last time the lawn chair. Like I don't want to talk about lawn chairs, let's talk about semi-amim, about all like the things I started buying during the pandemic and how to like secondhand, like there's other things around it that you could get away with pre-pandemic. You could get away with potentially having a lawn chair community. I don't know, I feel bad.

0:28:21 - Felicia Jadczak We're really coming for lawn chairs here.

0:28:23 - Rachel Murray The big lawn chair is not going to be supporting this podcast.

0:28:26 - Felicia Jadczak I feel like we're going to get so much hate from the lawn chair community that we didn't even know is out there.

0:28:31 - Trish Fontanilla So, but I want them to do well and I want them to extend to like home, goods and life and finding the right co-working chair, and maybe you could get launched Like there's just so many things that people are just so centered on themselves or companies are so centered on themselves. Yeah, you do best when you collaborate, when you see people as whole humans and appeal to that like in that way, versus how do I get my product into your household? To like what are their things? Like what brings you joy within your room? And like how can we, you know, connect with other products and like other, like the people don't mind it if they feel like they're being appealed to as a human versus a number.

0:29:11 - Felicia Jadczak And that's like such a great segue to our next question for you, because, as you were talking, I was actually I know Rachel is going to probably remember this. I'm not going to name the company they are a company who shall not be named but one of our worst SGO community events ever and this is a long time ago was we told this company exactly what you were talking about. Hey, this is not a pitch for you to have people just come work here, because obviously that's why people are coming they want to check you out. So please don't just pitch at them, for you know, however long like these are smart people and they did not listen to us and the whole thing was just an extended pitch for coming to work at the company and it was the worst event that we've had. I mean, not the worst, but like one of the worst that we've had from a content perspective, because our community events were just about that and they still are. You know, around.

Okay, obviously companies are hosting for a reason, but let's connect on things that we're interested in and all the other stuff will be made so much better because it's not going to be like super obvious in your face. Like you know, here's a job application to walk in the door, kind of thing. But speaking of community events, you were a speaker recently, our first in person SGO event since 2020, which is wild, and you get this really awesome talk and that's actually what prompted us to be like, oh my god, we have to get you on the podcast, because how, how have we not done this before? But your talk was titled a former perfectionist's guide to personal brand. So let's maybe shift into the brand space. So tell us more, like you know, why should people be thinking about their personal brand and maybe even like where the idea come from for you for the talk?

0:30:46 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, I mean, I think it's most of my ideas. Are people telling me things? Sorry, that's like so real, like my ideas are when people give me that it's one of those things for, like, you've been waiting for the vocabulary even though you've been doing the thing I don't mean to say that I'm stealing people's ideas.

0:31:05 - Felicia Jadczak No that's like such a better way to say it.

0:31:07 - Trish Fontanilla Thank you, for we're inspired where it's like community manager, for example, was like never a title when we were in college and coming up. But now that we y'all have been in community, you're like, oh, this person that worked in student life was totally a community manager. Or this person that worked was in whatever, my company oh my gosh, they knew everybody and they're always connecting folks like they were totally community manager. But I would never have put that title or I would never have come up with that, until someone said, oh, you should think about going into community management, which is like is that an activist? Like I'm so confused at what that means, so personal brand I'm trying to even think of this.

The presentation that I did. The thing that people have brought up the most is I had my tripod page up and it had letters that were up, down, up down. I'm like this is key, like 90s, and I had the java script that everybody had, which is you could pick the color on the page. You know. Coming up, I think, especially for me, there was an idea of what professional looked like. It was a pantsuit, it was slicked back hair or straightened hair, it was, I don't know, just acting adult, whatever that means. And so when I first had my first office job, which was not right out of college, maybe it was my early tour, I don't forget maybe 23, 24, like I showed up in heels and like a skirt and a button-down shirt, the button-down shirt and the black skirt and the heels that is in like every stock photo of woman in office.

0:32:38 - Felicia Jadczak Like having traumatic flashbacks right now and also like we're recording this on like one of the hottest days of the year in the Boston area in West Shateria. And you mentioned straight hair and oh my God, yes, that's why the amount of like If this is on.

0:32:51 - Trish Fontanilla YouTube. It's the hair, how to go up. I shared that me and the other day and Flesha reacted to it on Instagram of I didn't actually know I had curly, like I have wavy hair, and I didn't know I had it for the longest time because it like Asian women were not supposed to have wavy hair and so I would just like brush it and it'd be so crazy, oh 100%.

And then my hot tools in high school and burned the crap out of it because I wasn't using heat protected. And then I didn't start wearing my hair natural until probably my late 20s, when my hairstylist was, like, did you know that your hair is wavy? Do you mean, like, cut it so that you can, like, have wavy hair? And I was like, what are you talking about?

0:33:29 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, I have such a similar experience Like do you know, the reason why I realized my hair was curly Is because when I studied abroad, in France, I like ran out of my hair stuff and so I started using something, whatever it was, and then I think I was like air drying my hair and I was like my hair is curly. It was just like wild to me. I had no idea I burned the shit out of my hair because I was just blow drying it every day like blow dry, blow dry, blow dry.

0:33:55 - Rachel Murray Well, you were taught to do that.

0:33:57 - Trish Fontanilla Yes but also and just that's what like Teen Magazine and YM and Cosmotalton, like they all had. It's like the hair and especially, oh, I should have worn my Sandra O shirt today because she also was like Asian woman, curly hair, like, oh, that's a thing. Let me do it because it's like no representation for Asian women, right, because that's the thing is like With wavy hair.

0:34:17 - Felicia Jadczak You know, because, like for me, seeing a lot of like Indian women and like that kind of media, it's all like really long, glorious, glossy hair and braids. And I still remember and actually I don't even know if you'll remember this, rachel, this is right when we first met but I had told my hairstylist I want to grow my hair out because I want to do like all these cool braids. So that was seeing on Pinterest in you know, the mid 2000s, and I remember she was like you can't do that because your hair will not like grow longer than it is right now. And I was like challenge accepted. So when we first met I had like really long hair. It did.

They're trying to grow it out. And she was right, god damn it. Like it just kept growing at a certain point. And then I was like, blow drying it and blow drying it and it would just like have a little like curl at the end, and so finally I cut it and I was like, well, I guess this is just it and that is totally fine. I loved having shorter hair, but when I grew up my mom would send me to the barber to get my hair cut, and so I was always having like really, really, really short hair. So I just didn't even know what my hair was at all. But my mom has curly hair and she just didn't even tell me.

0:35:22 - Trish Fontanilla My mom does not. It's somewhere in the universe. I mean, we talked about this first episode, colin. Is it like Spanish, filipino, something in the universe? So I think like working so higher.

I think it was very much like coming off what I should be kind of looking like, and people dress down for summer and things. But I think I was just ingrained in my head the multi layer of being a woman a pink and purple color, showing up in spaces, trying to be comfortable, etc. And then even getting into tech where every person there and I tell this story. My challenge is much more diverse now, but when I was there in 2011, I would take phone calls in the bathroom because no women would come in and the general uniform was jeans and a blue button down shirt, and outside of work I was like purple hue tights, like I'm wearing clothes backwards because I don't like the way they look, like I always Punky Brewster was always like a show that I watched.

So I'm like, oh, I'm just growing up, punky Brewster, I'm always trying to fit in different places, and then I think just being hired for my voice and realizing, oh wait, like I bring something different and unique to the table and this is why I'm getting hired, versus me trying to fit into different spaces. Because that first job, which is a video job, my boss was like, oh, I saw some of your videos. I was recording this like Boston Wayne's World Ask video show and where I was just like unapologetically myself and then showing up in different spaces, like a little bit more buttoned up, and people were like who are you? And I'm like I don't know who I am, but getting feedback from people when I was being myself and being in safe spaces, being in brave spaces, that were like, oh my gosh, I love your personal brand. And I'm like, oh, cool, cool.

So like when you tell people about my personal brand, like what do you say? And I'm not even being this is fishing for compliments Like, what words do you say? Like I, actually, when I was doing the career transition from higher ed to startups, I actually posted on social hey, if you've been following me for a while, because I had a bunch of people on Twitter. I didn't have my face, I didn't have my full name, would you mind like answering a few questions for me? And I reached out to people that I'd just been talking to on the internet and I was like hey, what do you think I do for a living? Or like, what do you think I could be doing for a living based on my social media personality, because I'm more me here than I am at work and so I'm trying to put this all together. So people are like I really like your personal brand. I'm like, wow, like what?

0:37:47 - Rachel Murray is that. Should we all be doing? That, like, just post a bunch on Instagram and then, like, ask our friends what we should be doing?

0:37:52 - Trish Fontanilla I actually think it's a great idea, focus grouping your followers, but I thought it was really great, like RAP old Twitter, but it was really wonderful to just like. There were some people early on, so I think the first like I actually went to a podcasting event in like 2009 or something, 2008, 2009. Yeah, it was called PodCamp and some marketers had run it and I didn't know who, anybody was in the ecosystem at all. So I'd be talking to these people and people would be like, do you know who you just talked to? Like I literally do not know.

0:38:28 - Rachel Murray You just talked to Mark Marin. You had no idea, yeah.

0:38:32 - Trish Fontanilla You were like I guess, tell me about it. Yeah, yeah, like there was this person. I'm not going to name drop them anymore because I don't actually know what their situation is now and I'm like always careful about.

Oh I mean I think they're an okay person, but I don't like to sit like we're not friends and I don't mean that in like a bachelorette way, I just mean that I'm like I don't know what their up to these days and so I don't actually just want to drop their name and associate whatever. So there's this influencer there was wearing an orange soda t-shirt, so OVS, in a room of people. I'm going to go up to that person and be like I like orange soda.

We talked about orange soda for like 20 minutes and someone was like do you know who that is? And I was like he really likes orange soda.

0:39:08 - Felicia Jadczak Really orange soda guy. Obviously Now we're totally not like about to Google like orange soda t-shirt 2009 pod camp.

0:39:16 - Trish Fontanilla I probably wrote a blog post. I have oh my God, if it's still up, there's probably a tumble I wrote a Tumblr blog post about it and it said is my noob and 00B showing? So I mean that was really great because, again, like I feel like if we ask our friends, I hope everybody out there, if you ask your friends, they're going to be like, yeah, everything, you're like all the stuff. And I was like I love my friends, but I just want people that like don't actually know my person, because people did not know I worked in high red.

People assumed I worked in music because of one of the early startups I had been collaborating with was bands in town. I would post about music all the time. I would post about art because I was like at Emerson, all anything creative arts. So people were like you should be doing all these things. It was like a good like test because these people owed me nothing. I mean maybe some people that I would get them free tickets or something or whatever, but I was like y'all owe me nothing. They may never even be in person. Who do you think I am as a human? And it was really awesome. I was like waking up some of the responses the other day Someone was like you need to get on LinkedIn. And I was like, well, I think I will LinkedIn and Cal, but should I even be doing anything there? And they're like, yes, you need to get really great at LinkedIn.

0:40:26 - Felicia Jadczak And I was like that's funny because I remember going to a talk years ago and this was when LinkedIn was really it was still big now, obviously, but it was pretty big at that point and they were talking about networking and one of the panelists asked the group who here? Is there anyone here who's not on LinkedIn? And people raised their hands and I was truly shocked, it feels like. So why? I'll think about the life before LinkedIn, but there was totally life before LinkedIn.

0:40:50 - Rachel Murray So and I so feel that I felt that like in my Soul, trish, when you were just like so good.

0:40:58 - Trish Fontanilla That's how I feel about all of it and now, when LinkedIn is now a little bit of a free-for-all, but I think is because it was like oh, what professional things can I be talking about on the spot form Versus. Like I work and I am a professional, so what I talk about can technically go wherever it wants, because I'm the person that's doing the work. If I want to talk about cats, I mean, I think I could talk about cats because there's definitely cat community. Like there's so many things that you can tie into Again, differentiate you, you know, when you're looking at a bunch of different folks like who do I work with? It's like okay, this person actually talks about activism and like in a way that is important for our brand, so like let's take that to a consideration.

Or like, oh, all they post about on Twitter is Like customer complaints and now they're applying for a customer experience job. Like, is that the right person, you know? So I think that's figuring out how to play, but that I mean a society. But it's also like me trying to be comfortable in my skin, which didn't happen to my 30s. So there's that other piece of it, too is like the societal piece. But then there's also the like growing up as an awkward teen girl and forever feeling like an awkward teen girl.

0:42:11 - Rachel Murray Congratulations for feeling comfortable in your own skin at the young age of in your 30s. Ps. I'm still working on it, so, okay, personal brand alright. So now you're on LinkedIn, living your best life, living my best life. Why don't we switch gears a little bit? Because and this foolish had to actually put this question in and it so I didn't know much about your Volunteer experience, but I would love to learn about that.

0:42:36 - Trish Fontanilla Oh, this is like all the things talk about personal brand.

0:42:39 - Felicia Jadczak I feel like this is something that sticks out in my mind when I think about you is like you're volunteering, so nice.

0:42:43 - Trish Fontanilla Thanks, yeah, so volunteering, so in Boston, I mean, I think it's really important to me because, honestly, let's like we'll get into this a little bit of is the people pleasing piece of it. And I gave the stock, I think, with someone at Boston cares at one point because they were like, why do you volunteer? I'm like, honestly, back in the day when I just didn't had no self-esteem and I was like, well, I don't want to do anything for me, but other people are great, so I'm gonna do things for other people, and like that's when I started volunteering as a teenager and it is this like I know people are like, oh, you're doing something for other people, but like when you do stuff for others, there's a little heart of a gym zoom for the audience. But what I think when you are helping other people, like there is some endorphins or stuff that happens. I do think it helps you get to know yourself in a lot of ways.

When I was transitioning in between jobs, I looked at my volunteer work and was like, okay, what kind of volunteer roles do I like to do? Oh, sometimes I go in and I'm comfortable being an individual contributor and I'm also comfortable in places that I've been a lot where I can like delegate different things and so for me, I mean, I'm obsessed with Boston and so I'm a volunteer leader at Boston cares, which is the largest volunteer action center in New England, and essentially they work with nonprofit schools and organizations I think over 150 of them in Greater Boston and they pair people up for one-off volunteer opportunities. So if you want to volunteer at community servings, which is primarily meal delivery service for people that are homebound with illnesses so AIDS, hiv, cancer is severe diabetes, etc. You can volunteer there one day and the next day you can volunteer a woman's lunch place and that is also food for women. They also do career advice. They do a bunch of stuff there. So it's really cool because it is these one-off volunteer opportunities, especially when I started getting involved with them in my 20s. You like, I don't know if I'm gonna live here for a long period of time, so I don't want to go through like a three-month orientation, but these you can kind of just drop, drop it and go, and I'm obsessed with food, so most of the things I do Are around food. So there's that.

And then pre pandemic, actually in January 2020 and 2018, I was doing disaster relief work in places that were devastated by hurricanes and it was Not funny necessarily, but like not funny. Ha ha, funny, like that In January 2020. I was wearing an N95 in these places and there was no running water, so we were like purelling our hands. We're using pipes, so I take showers and stuff, and I was like I can't wait to get home, not when we were there for a long time, yeah, and I was like and now I actually ended up donating.

I had so many N95 masks left over. I ended up donating them to NGH because they were like. Someone in our building was like if anybody has any extra N95s, and I was like I just came from a disaster relief area and I randomly have all these N95s.

0:45:35 - Rachel Murray Well, it's so good that climate change is over, so we don't have to worry about any more disaster relief issues.

0:45:40 - Trish Fontanilla So I was in the Bahamas in 2020 and they were like what is it? Five is the highest. And they're like we ranked it five. It was actually higher than that because it just devastated the one in st Thomas. I went to 2018. It was 100% of the population was impacted, whether it was like something kind of felt like not everybody wasn't leveled and it's also like perspective interesting. Like the guy that was my cab driver To the site I think it was st Thomas was like where do you live? And I was like Boston. He was like, oh, I could never shovel though.

0:46:14 - Felicia Jadczak Oh god, it's like dude your house gets leveled like every year annually.

0:46:19 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, but it's sunny here and it's all this stuff. It's value system.

0:46:24 - Felicia Jadczak Sun was way over snow. Yeah, I mean, it comes with a lot of other stuff.

0:46:29 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah and it's such an interesting perspective, thing of like oh my gosh, I can't, Like I would be so devastated because I have a lot of stuff I liked and he is like I just don't have a lot of stuff. Yeah and as long as I have my people. I have my people and I'm like good for you, like I'll take the snow, thanks, so much.

0:46:48 - Felicia Jadczak No, and my stuff for me, you know.

0:46:49 - Trish Fontanilla Going back to Boston care is like it's been the best way to get to know the city. I volunteered in every like neighborhood in Boston and you just get to see different perspectives of how people are. There's all this stuff that we're dealing with in tech, but like systemically, like how can we be just even I have, thankfully, always found food and figured how to get food, but I can see how much not having money for food, transportation etc. Can take up so much of your brain that you're not out normally. You know like a new job. And then people are like, oh, just get a new job.

Like I saw Trish do it. She was working. I was working like hourly jobs and then I got into hiring and I'm like, yeah, but like I had some privileges there. And I was like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I had some privileges there. Man, like I was not, you know, taking care of families. I wasn't thinking about other things. So I think like the best way to get to know the city is to volunteer so you can like see Even just the green spaces, like there's a butterfly garden in back bay, like what you know, like that's cool, didn't know that was a thing. There's a teaching garden out by um, see their shaman or ashmont. I was like that's awesome that the neighbors Take care of it and spy the tea, but it's done by the neighbor, so it's just a way to get to know your neighbors and things, but it's become something they're like. It's more of a habit than like oh my gosh, I need to do this thing now.

0:48:09 - Rachel Murray That's so lovely. I literally talk about it and I feel like I don't volunteer In this community nearly enough, and so you're very inspiring. I know Phyllis, she's also got a huge heart because a lot in her neighborhood too, you can show up with money. Well, yeah.

0:48:28 - Trish Fontanilla So we do it's hard.

0:48:29 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, like people, yeah volunteering means, like you have to be like weeding a garden, but there's a lot of ways to be a volunteer.

0:48:36 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, yeah, I know like food pantries in particular, people are like oh, what do they need? I'm like give them money, because they will know what goods they need. Do not give them like the tuna that you don't want anymore on the salad dressing, especially a lot of these Really active food banks that are trying to work with immigrant families or refugee families and they're trying to buy things that they are used to cooking and if they get a bunch of canned goods or they get like lettuce or things that they just don't regularly eat, yeah, it does not actually help these people come through with money.

If you don't want to come, yeah, no money. I mean honestly.

0:49:12 - Felicia Jadczak I remember my last job. We used to do like company sponsored volunteer days and we would go to the food bank in Boston pretty regularly, which is a humongous organization, and I always remember that they would tell us like hey, food is fine, but like they have a lot of sources for like mass amounts of food, they were like what we actually really need is like feminine products, because people need like tampons and pads and nobody ever Donates that stuff like underwear, and so I've always tried to like you know how like in my neighborhood they do like usually once or twice a year, like the mailman will come and like collect donations of like canned goods and stuff. So I always throw in like my extra tampons or like you know a couple new packs of pads or whatever, just because like that's the kind of stuff that like nobody donates but it's so important.

0:49:57 - Trish Fontanilla So important Coffee too. Coffee's like no one donates coffee because it's a more expensive item. Yeah, but it's like yo, I'm a recreational coffee drinker, but you're a social coffee drinker, I'm a social coffee drinker.

0:50:13 - Felicia Jadczak I'm a necessity needed to win. Oh, she's a full on addict.

0:50:16 - Trish Fontanilla Well, my fun fact was there's another, an Instagram video of like someone asking for time off and then getting denied. And then there's just someone that's going hey, bloss, can I go on a smoke break? And while the person's just trying to get a vacation day, the person's going on like three smoke breaks. So I don't smoke, I don't get coffee, and when I was an, I mean I'm still single, but like when I was in higher ed, I was single. So I'm like I have no reason to leave, I have no family members to pick up, I don't have any coffee or smoking addictions and I guess you could do it now.

But I just felt so weird being like I'm going to go for a walk for, like air, mental health, like that was just not a thing, right. So I would just go get coffee because and come back with coffee, because that was my way to get like a five, ten minute break In a way that, like now I think, if you, I'm like, oh, I posted this actually when I my last campaign slack. I'm like, hey, I've been on the computer all day, I'm going on a 20 minute.

Literally, people are like they're like, oh my gosh, great. That actually reminds me I need to get up from my computer too, and it was just like wasn't a thing. So, anyway, coffee. When I tell people like, because time is money, so it's like you can volunteer yourself, you can donate, you can share if you don't have time to donate now, but I mean it's don't have time to volunteer now, but you have volunteered in the past, say, hey, I had an amazing time doing this share there on their social media, like there's so many different ways.

0:51:40 - Rachel Murray No, I lied. Actually I do donate, I donate blood.

0:51:43 - Felicia Jadczak That's so important, that is so important.

0:51:47 - Rachel Murray Thank you, I don't do that.

0:51:51 - Trish Fontanilla You know. But, Rachel, you know what you probably do. You probably talk to you and give advice to people and don't get paid to do it.

0:51:58 - Rachel Murray You're so high as a multiple because I love sharing my own opinions and thoughts.

0:52:03 - Felicia Jadczak Listen, you can volunteer and.

0:52:04 - Trish Fontanilla I'll cheer you're motive, like the mentoring piece is important. The you know doing nice things for your neighbors is important, like there's so many.

0:52:13 - Felicia Jadczak I like to do stuff just to meet people because, like, yeah, friends that aren't like connected to my house, there's not organizational volunteering that people Probably do, like in their communities, in their churches and their company.

0:52:27 - Trish Fontanilla Like there's things that people do. They're like, oh, I just do it because I was like raised to do it. It's like, no, you're actually Anytime you're not being paid, you're volunteering, unless it's. Don't ever tell my mother that, because I always am like I should get paid for the things. I feel like the administrative assistant for my family. So. But I think people just we do so much for each other and our friends and like we don't consider volunteering, but you are Volunteering your time. That's a good.

0:52:51 - Rachel Murray That's actually a great point, for me for sure, but hopefully for the listeners as well.

0:52:57 - Felicia Jadczak We're all doing something to help other people, but we only have a couple minutes left, while Probably what I want to ask you about before we we start wrapping up is you haven't even mentioned One of the biggest things I think of when I think of you, which is boss Filipinos. Oh yeah, I do too many things.

0:53:16 - Trish Fontanilla But they don't seem like too many things. But then I see people's eyes glaze over when I do talk about the things that I do. So then there's that so boss Filipino, so boss will use is a Filipino community group in Boston. It has also had some like wavy times for the past few years because pre pandemic we were doing restaurant takeovers during pop-ups because there aren't any Filipino restaurants in Boston. So we were doing these, you know, plated dinners in different Boston restaurants. Sadly, some of the ones that were collaborated closed during the pandemic. We highlight folks. So for Asian American, native Hawaiian, pacific Islander Heritage Month, we highlighted folks every day and we had a podcast but our podcast person left, so I'm actually trying to get that going again, but it was a way to.

I think, as an Asian person, you know, when I see Asian representation I don't always see Filipinos represented and I think that is for a variety of reasons. Some people don't consider Filipinos Asians, some of them consider them Pacific Islanders, and one of the big trends for me is if I don't see something's happening, I wait a period of time hoping someone else will do it and then I get so Fresherated that I need to go and do it. So I started it with some co-founders six years ago and my goal at some point and now I think that we're coming up a little bit for areas to have the Filipino festival in Boston, because there are a bunch of Filipino folks within spaces. They're just not shining a light on themselves in a way that I've tried to do with Baselopinas, because I'll always reach out to people and they're like oh there's. I think as an immigrant kid, you're just like keep your head down. Not that you're not special, but it just like work really hard and someone will recognize you and you'll get something at some point, but not now, at some point like when you're retired or whatever. And I'm like no, you're actually doing some cool stuff right now. Even if you're not working on the thing you wanna work on, talk about it so you can find people to work on it with you. So it's been really fun to meet.

I started off with like tell me about your other Filipino friend. And it's been just fun highlighting folks. I had someone both folks were biracial and I highlighted someone that is not Filipino presenting, and their co-worker saw and was like I'm Filipino too, and so it's been really fun to just highlight different people around Boston that are working on cool things, but also students, because I want students to feel comfortable here again, even though we don't have restaurants, there are pockets of us reach out, connect. So that is like the other. I'm always waving my Filipino. I don't have a visible Filipino flag anywhere, actually, but I'm always silently waving it, waving it in spirit, yeah.

0:56:08 - Felicia Jadczak Maybe in like post-production, yeah, yeah.

0:56:11 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, we would have done it.

0:56:13 - Rachel Murray Yeah, see it, someone wants to put a Filipino flag. Yeah, right there, you got the spot for it and everything. That's perfect. Consider it done. Well, we are like basic at a time, but we can always ask our favorite number one question, even though I feel like we've got, but I don't know. Can we dare you to say what you get out about? That is nothing that you've already talked about.

0:56:33 - Trish Fontanilla I haven't talked about pie yet, right?

0:56:36 - Felicia Jadczak No, let's do. This Pie is really important to me. Again, a huge thing that we haven't talked about.

0:56:41 - Rachel Murray Wait, are we talking about the number or are we talking about the food?

0:56:44 - Trish Fontanilla No, I mean we have to a little bit because we are in Massachusetts, or some of us are Massachusetts, rachel.

0:56:51 - Rachel Murray There's a biotech community here, yeah.

0:56:55 - Trish Fontanilla I'm obsessed with pie. I can talk about it a lot. There's a lot of controversies on what constitutes a pie. Some people don't believe pies can be pies if they don't have the crust on like the full crust on top.

Well, that does not include me. My favorite pie is coconut cream pie. My second favorite local pie is Petsey pie's chocolate bourbon pecan pie. Both of them do not have that crust on top and so for pie purists, I technically my two favorite pies are technically not pies, but that is that.

And then on my very first startup, when someone would start on their first day of work, they would always have because I was the first employee their favorite pie would be on their desk because I would ask them during their interview process and people always thought it was like some personality test and I'd be like no, legit, like what's your favorite pie? And one time a guy had heard that I do this and so he picked a pie called Shoe Fly Pie, which is only made by the Amish, and I had it commissioned because he didn't think I could get it. I had a pie commissioned and it was on his desk on his first day. So I'm very, I'm obsessed with pie. I can tell what you do for a living potentially by what kind of pies you like. What.

0:58:10 - Felicia Jadczak Really? No, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I thought that was a little bit more Wait. I have another question, though, too, but I want to know, like, if the pie that isn't covered isn't a pie, then what is it? That's what I asked.

0:58:24 - Rachel Murray They're like it's dessert, it's a calzone, I'm like what it's a calzone. So I'm going to chat this to you all and I encourage our listeners. Slash now watchers to Google. Type in cuberulecom C-U-B-E-R-U-L-E. It all started about like is a hot dog, a sandwich.

0:58:44 - Felicia Jadczak Oh yeah.

0:58:46 - Rachel Murray That's a tough one, and so this is like you hit on the same like little button in my brain when you were talking about that. I was like I think pies are a calzone.

0:58:53 - Trish Fontanilla So quickly. How I tell people's jobs is because I've asked so many people what their favorite pie is and I've just according to Trish's personal data. Yeah, I want to hear it.

And also if you find me on LinkedIn, I'm at the very top. I say capture. My human capture is if we do not know each other, I need to know that you least looked at my profile and that we're going to have a meaningful conversation. So please mention your favorite pie or who you like we're referenced or whatever. So, based on my data of people that I've talked to and asked for their favorite pies a lot of CEOs, and so that's why I'm saying a lot, I'm not a psychic, I'm not like going to whatever. So a lot of CEOs like Apple Pie with something ice cream, salt cheese, something, but it's like Apple Pie and Swarm. Yes, look it up on the internet. Y'all Okay. A lot of salespeople like KeyLime Pie. A lot of engineers like Strawberry Roo Bar Pie. This is so wild.

You're like, oh, I'm blowing my brain right now and I found a lot of like customer focused folks like things that have fruits in them.

0:59:58 - Rachel Murray So now you all know that Boston Cream Pie isn't even a pie. That truly is not a pie.

1:00:05 - Felicia Jadczak So I know that's because I went and I had it. We were worried about the lawn chair community and we got to be working on a pie, too Big pie.

1:00:12 - Trish Fontanilla I am an equal opportunity and I tell this to a lot of people because, like, I've given talks in Europe and I'm like meat pies count for me, Meat pies If you're in the Midwest. I'm like pizza pie, like people that use pie for pizza. That would be deep dish. Yeah, I just want people to. I want to say what's your favorite pie? I want you to take that and what does pie mean to you? And tell me what your favorite pie. And then there are people like I don't like pie and I'm like I don't know if we can be friends, Like you're a sociopath basically.

Like you can't even be. Like I like pie, like 3.1 for everyone, like people, every time something but I. But everybody has a memory. I feel like with pie or those freaking, those like handheld pies.

1:00:58 - Rachel Murray Yeah, yeah, little hand pies.

1:00:59 - Trish Fontanilla Either from McDonald's or whatever, that one that used to be the grocery store like Entomans or whatever. Yes, like everybody has a pie memory, and if you do not, I know that you're an alien like from outer space, so wait.

1:01:13 - Rachel Murray So what's your favorite pie? Well, she told us Coconut cream pie.

1:01:16 - Trish Fontanilla That's what I did.

1:01:17 - Rachel Murray I already forgot there was so much that happened between the time you told us to now. I literally my brain, I was going.

1:01:22 - Felicia Jadczak I literally took notes on the back end.

1:01:25 - Rachel Murray We did.

1:01:26 - Trish Fontanilla We talked about almost my entire life, so that's not true. We didn't get to do some things with it?

1:01:34 - Felicia Jadczak There's some unexplored areas, but so much.

1:01:36 - Trish Fontanilla No, there are for sure.

1:01:38 - Felicia Jadczak What's your favorite pie, Rachel? I don't think I know this.

1:01:40 - Rachel Murray Yeah, I will say I eat pie but I'm not like, oh my God, pie kind of person. But there is a pie that's out here in a town called Julian, which tries to be New England in Southern California, because it has little apple orchards and stuff, and so they make a pie and it is a. It's a cherry apple crumble pie which is delicious, so it's like I'll crumble on top and the cherry makes a little, because I find apple pie too sweet, so the cherry makes it a little bit tart and then, yeah, I like me some vanilla ice cream up on that as well. That's the next.

1:02:11 - Trish Fontanilla This is the piece too is sometimes people do that Like I don't know my favorite pie is and like tell me like a pie, like something just around pie, because on LinkedIn what happens is people will be like I don't know if I really love pie, but my grandmother in South Carolina, and they just will tell me a story and that humanizes them outside of work and I now just have the story about their grandmother and eating pies on a porch in South Carolina. Like that is just. I like the story piece that comes from pie.

1:02:42 - Rachel Murray I love that. That's so sweet yeah.

1:02:47 - Felicia Jadczak I think I have like two, so with the story lens hat on. I really like pumpkin pie, but it's got to be like the kind that my mom makes, which my husband we had a big fight about this last year, actually, because I said I would make pumpkin pie, and the way she makes it is she buys the graham cracker crust from the store in like the pre-made shell, and then she makes it with condensed milk for years.

1:03:13 - Rachel Murray That's what I do.

1:03:14 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah. So like her line which is so funny is she'd be like there's no sugar in this. And I'm like yeah, but there's freaking condensed milk. Condensed milk please, basically liquid sugar, but it's got to have the graham cracker crust that's pre-made from the store. And we had a fight about this in my household last year because my husband was like it's not good, you need to make like real crust. And I was like no, trust me, it's good. And anyway I was right in the end.

1:03:36 - Rachel Murray But no, that's so interesting. I know you have another pie, but I have to say I feel like an idiot because I also forgot that pumpkin pie is like legitimately, like I don't know why. Is it because I live in Southern California now that I forgot about Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie?

1:03:48 - Trish Fontanilla It could be a seasonal. It is a favorite.

1:03:51 - Rachel Murray I would literally eat it right now, like now, I want a piece of pumpkin pie, but I will say don't do it with graham cracker crust, I do it with regular frozen crust, but the same thing. That's acceptable too, but like my, like memory and a lot of whipped cream a lot of that is yeah, which that is acceptable.

1:04:05 - Felicia Jadczak I'm like totally acceptable. Yes, that's like a standard. But then the other one that I really like is I really like lemon stuff, so like a lemon custard, lemon meringue, whatever kind of pie is my other go to?

1:04:16 - Rachel Murray So yeah, yeah, I love this. I'm like hungry now.

1:04:20 - Trish Fontanilla I know I definitely going to eat after this.

1:04:22 - Rachel Murray Yeah, this is amazing, so I'm so excited this is going to be up on YouTube.

1:04:28 - Felicia Jadczak I knew I should have left the filters on. You look perfect. You know I was playing around with it because I was like, let me see like how much I can push the limit.

1:04:36 - Rachel Murray Do you want to do it right now? Do you actually? I do? You have two minutes.

1:04:40 - Trish Fontanilla You have like the best eyebrows too, she does.

1:04:43 - Felicia Jadczak I don't know what you're talking about. Thank you, but just wait.

1:04:45 - Trish Fontanilla She does.

1:04:46 - Felicia Jadczak What happens when I so?

1:04:47 - Rachel Murray I'll tell you, I got my eyebrows redone a billion years ago I did electrolysis, so you only need to do it once. But I'll tell you the reason. Why is because I started in tech and I started I never knew glasses until I worked on a computer. All the time I put on glasses and then all of a sudden I felt like I looked like Groucho Marx. I was like what just happened and I got that done. So that's my, that's my shame story. When they're on now.

1:05:11 - Felicia Jadczak Oh. I'm saying right, like it looks pretty natural.

1:05:13 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, it does, it does look natural, but I also really like your eyebrows. Yeah, I think.

1:05:19 - Rachel Murray Oh, I love when you did that and then break. That's amazing. That was a good time. Yeah, the internet. This was great, trish, thank you so much.

1:05:31 - Trish Fontanilla Thank you for having me, thanks for talking to me about so many things over the course of two hours. Your listeners and viewers Now, and viewers, thank you for coming on this journey with us. This was really fun. I mean, this was, I feel, like one of the most fun podcasts is. I appreciate, like I feel like I just start sweating when people, when it's just all on me. But y'all shared some of your stories as well, and I like the conversation piece of it. Oh, thank you.

1:06:03 - Rachel Murray Well, you're just feeling this isn't going to be the last time we see you. I'm like we probably have more to talk about.

1:06:08 - Felicia Jadczak But I will say it's sort of like thank you for the compliment that you just gave us, but I will say for myself I won't speak for Rachel. It's also because I love to talk about myself, so I'm and I also love talking about feeling Away from you, yeah.

1:06:23 - Trish Fontanilla I'm happy to. We can have a whole segment. If you want, call the dish with Trish, because I've always wanted to do that, something like that, and I'll like, come on and I'll like have I don't have papers, I have, like books. I'm like, oh, today we're going to talk about Look at all these, look how much I I'm so into this.

1:06:40 - Felicia Jadczak Look at those notes. Ok, I know.

1:06:42 - Trish Fontanilla This one actually is range. So why generalists triumph in a specialized world? So I'll plug that.

1:06:50 - Rachel Murray And then this is we want to talk about.

1:06:53 - Felicia Jadczak David Selma.

1:06:54 - Trish Fontanilla Senties has a what we build with power.

1:06:57 - Felicia Jadczak Yes, what's on my Kindle? I haven't started. I've presented.

1:07:01 - Trish Fontanilla This is how dedicated I have. I preordered the book because support, but then I also got the audio book because I'm not always great at reading books. So I will listen to the audio book and then tag things and foreign things in here.

1:07:13 - Rachel Murray Love, Love, love, love, love Trish. Ok, yeah, we're definitely Amazing.

1:07:18 - Felicia Jadczak The dish with Trish. You heard of her first. The dish with Trish.

1:07:22 - Rachel Murray Maybe it's just a YouTube series.

1:07:23 - Trish Fontanilla Yeah, subscribe, yeah, pay. She geeks out, subscribe, patreon, subscribe wherever Pressure. I love when they do that. It's like your professionals. Yeah, exactly the great word.

1:07:36 - Rachel Murray We'll get it all done in post.

1:07:40 - Felicia Jadczak Sure right, never All right, Thank you, thank you.

1:07:47 - Rachel Murray Yay, we literally with as we mentioned, we're like should we just have Trish on for like she might be like superstar guests all star With Trish.

1:07:56 - Felicia Jadczak I'm here for it. I really am.

1:07:58 - Rachel Murray Yeah, she's a delight, and we just have, as always, a few notes before you run away, just some upcoming stuff.

1:08:07 - Felicia Jadczak So we're not doing a webinar this August, if you are listening to this before August. So just take a little summer break and then sign up for our next webinar, which is coming up in September, and the topic will be integrating embodiment and somatics into your DEI work, which will be presented by Fatima D'Anche, one of our fabulous folks on the team. We have a Get a Job you Love Summit in September as well, and then in October our webinar style will be a little bit different. It's going to be an Ask SGO Live, more of a conversation style with myself and one or two of the other folks on the facilitation team. So check those out.

1:08:40 - Rachel Murray Yes, and just quick note, this is actually coming out August 2. So we good, it's OK. Wait, you still have time. We're embracing our awkward. We don't know what's happening. I'm truly in a time machine. I don't know what's happening. I know it's very exciting, yes. So thank you so much for listening and please don't forget to rate, share and subscribe. It does make a really huge difference in the reach of this podcast and, by extension, this work, so make sure to tune in for our next episode in just two little weeks.

1:09:09 - Felicia Jadczak And if you're looking to further your own knowledge and gain support alongside other incredible people, join our free community. We're going to get a welcoming built-in support system grounded in the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. We'll have access to bonus episodes, additional resources, courses, webinars, coaching and so much more. So check that out at risetogethershegeeksoutcom. All right.

1:09:32 - Trish Fontanilla Bye MUSIC.

Transcribed by https://podium.page