The Keri Croft Show
The Keri Croft Show
SZN 4, EP-11 Nancy Kramer on Trailblazing Through Tech and Trauma
Nancy Kramer aka Kramer, founder of Resource Ammirati and current Chief Evangelist Officer at IBM, shares her remarkable journey from landing Apple as her first client at 26, to building one of the most successful women-owned marketing agencies in the country.
But what makes Kramer truly inspiring is how she carries herself as a flawed and approachable human. Her transparency about navigating professional triumphs alongside personal struggles offers powerful lessons in resilience, self-discovery and embracing one's unique "inner genius." And it doesn't hurt that her laugh is as infectious as her personality.
You will leave this conversation believing you can do anything—because you can! Subscribe now for more stories that will transform how you think about success, healing and what's possible when you finally embrace your authentic self.
Hey there you beautiful badass. Welcome to the Keri Croft Show. I'm your host, keri Croft, delivering you stories that get you pumped up and feeling like the unstoppable savage that you are. So grab your coffee, put on your game face and let's do this thing. Baby Ready to elevate your self-care game?
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Speaker 1:Today I have the pleasure of sitting down with a woman who built a company that quietly shaped some of the biggest brands in the world. With a woman who built a company that quietly shaped some of the biggest brands in the world. Nancy Kramer, aka Kramer, is a powerhouse entrepreneur who, in 1981, founded one of the most successful women-owned marketing agencies in the country, resource Amarati, right here in Columbus, ohio, and at just 26 years old, she landed Apple as her very first client Not impressive at all, by the way. Over the next few decades, she worked with giants like Victoria's Secret and in 2016, she sold her company to IBM, where she continues to lead and inspire as chief evangelist officer for IBM. But beyond the boardrooms and big deals, what makes Nancy truly extraordinary is how she carries herself as a flawed and approachable human being and her transparency about that. In the early 2000s, when the dot-com bubble burst and her company's revenues plummeted by 70% in 90 days, she was also going through a divorce and raising two daughters and a son as a single mom. Those were indeed the darkest of times, and even now, after everything she's achieved, nancy is still very much on a quest to deepen her relationship with herself, to keep searching, growing and staying malleable in life and love.
Speaker 1:So here's my hope for this conversation that someone out there may be sitting at home feeling stuck, overwhelmed or like they're carrying way too much. Here's a piece of Nancy's story and adds it to their own arsenal. I want you to leave this conversation thinking that you can do anything, because you can, and Nancy is the perfect person to inspire you to shoot for the moon. Nancy Kramer, welcome to the Keri Croft Show. Well, thank you, I'm very excited to have you here. I'm super pumped to be here. I wasn't expecting you I knew you were a beautiful woman but I wasn't expecting you to give hot vibes. I'm serious, understated.
Speaker 1:I got to get credit where it's due. Understated like sophisticated young. You're giving a lot of things and you're also giving hair. Model, so we got to start with that. You have really good hair, thank you, which I'm super pissed about. Model so we got to start with that. You have really good hair, thank you, which I'm super pissed about. Do you know, for me, one thing I've always wanted big time is just your hair. Basically, do you get compliments on your hair all the time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess so, especially for my age, because I'll be 70 this year. Which is so awesome and so you know to have this much hair because it tends to thin. I think as you age, yours certainly has not.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of being 70 this year, let's park for that. You and I talked about this a little bit I think, whenever you turn that next number and obviously the higher it gets right there's a thing with it. There's a mix of heaviness and gratitude. So what are you feeling?
Speaker 3:mix of heaviness and gratitude. So what are you feeling? Well, it started last year, about a month before my 69th birthday which I just think is a dumb number to be 69 for all the obvious reasons and I started getting kind of depressed about the fact that in 13 months I'm going to be effing 70. I mean 70. And so I wallowed for a while and then I was like snap out of it, Kramer. I mean seriously, just snap out of it. You're healthy, You're, you know, engaged, You're curious, you know I have this fabulous family, you know a fabulous life. Just snap out of it.
Speaker 3:And I started talking to some friends that are also turning 70. And we started talking about what's our 30 year plan, what's our? Well, my one friend, Tani Crane, wants to make it our 50 year plan. But what's our 30 year plan? How do we want to live our life for the next 30 years? And, of course, just like everyone, we want to be as healthy and as vibrant as an engaged as possible. And so what are the? Like everyone, we want to be as healthy and as vibrant and engaged as possible. And so what are the things that we're doing? So we're sharing a lot of things, that we're learning and reading and really focusing on what we can do to, you know, live as fully as we possibly can as we age. But I have to say, getting old really rocks, because you learn so much shit that you don't know when you're younger and you're just like super comfortable with a whole bunch of things that were really uncomfortable when you were younger and I I really love it on a lot of levels.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree with that more. I think too, talking about aging in a way that isn't this doom and gloom. It's similar to me like when you talk about death in our country, especially how it's. Of course it's hard and it's all these things, but you look at other countries, the way they celebrate things differently. We have to start talking about the aging process in a way that is like I do feel so much better in so many different ways and you do learn so much. So like shifting that narrative a little bit. I can see it out there. I can see people who are starting to have more conversations about it. It's okay to talk about you know it's like menopause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same thing. Yeah, no one. I mean, you would never hear anyone talk about menopause. You know it's. It's like we're talking about this shit now, especially the complexities of being a woman.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally no, we ain't basic out there, no, Like the other, like the other gender, as much as they'd like to pretend that we are Right, we are complex, so let's honor it and celebrate it and talk about it, say it loud, say it proud.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm fascinated, fascinated by you in so many different ways and I want to start off with just putting myself in your shoes at 26. You know, you met these two guys. You were in radio sales. I won't make you go through the whole thing. You can Google, you know. Do the Google machine. Next thing, you know you're working with Apple. You didn't know like okay, they're going to be like one of the biggest, if not the most impactful company. When you were there, what was it like? Steve Jobs was 20 something. He and I were the same age. Yeah, were people smoking cigs in the conference room. Like how many females were there?
Speaker 3:Like. Can you give some imagery around what that looked and felt like in the beginning? Yeah, I would say that it was mostly a male culture, a lot, a lot, a lot of men. I would say maybe 10, at the most 20% women, and they were mostly in marketing, not really in engineering, software, product engineering or any of that. But I would go to Apple's corporate headquarters in Cupertino every other week, sometimes every week, from Columbus in those early years and I loved it.
Speaker 3:It was a campus They've moved now, but it was a campus of buildings, like three-story buildings that was rather nondescript. But inside they were anything but nondescript, you know, open before anybody was having open floor plans. The creative offices were in this beautiful cool warehouse space with really high ceilings and there was a buzz, a constant buzz. It's as if you were plugged into an electrical socket day in and day out. And we were on a mission and that mission was to have everyone in the world have a personal computer, which in 1981 and 1982, like computers, were not something that everyone had. They were kept in clean rooms and no one was to access them. So people thought I was nuts. They thought I was nuts to leave my job in radio sales to work with this company that was named after a piece of fruit and actually was going to like who's going to use? People would ask me who's going to use a computer. They literally thought it was really stupid. But in my heart I felt such a connection. I felt like there've been some things along my on my life journey that I have felt like I had to do. I just couldn't not do them, and that was one of them.
Speaker 3:And working with Apple was just the gift of a lifetime. I worked with Steve Jobs. I was on the launch team of the Macintosh, launch team of the Lisa, which was preceded the Macintosh. It was really quite extraordinary. But they weren't smoking cigarettes. There was a grand piano in the lobby of the Macintosh building. The Macintosh building had all the cool stuff in it pressed juices before there was pressed juices, sushi before there was sushi. All the cool foods. People working 24 seven sleeping at the office, very casual On a good day. People were wearing shoes Anything that you could think of. That would be iconic California environment. That's what Apple was like.
Speaker 1:And you knew you were on a rocket ship.
Speaker 3:I didn't know it would become what it was going to become. I didn't know Steve Jobs was going to become what he became. I mean there was a time that the company came close to going out of business. I mean, one of the situations I was in a planning meeting, a creative team meeting, and I had the opportunity, because of the way Apple worked, that I would be in meetings with some of the most iconic advertising people in history, like Lee Clow, Steve Hayden I mean these amazing people, and we were in an ideation session with Shia Day and we were talking about what was Apple going to do. And this was when Steve was gone.
Speaker 3:So what was Apple going to do to combat Windows 95? And because Windows 95, which was introduced by Mac, by Microsoft, mimicked the graphical user interface which you know. Before that you had to like type in DOS. You know back whatever. I never learned how to use any of that, but you had to. You know it was a revolution for Microsoft to have this new Windows 95 interface which basically mimicked what the Macintosh did, and Apple had lost its way. Steve had been gone for about 10 years and everybody was talking about you. They're what Microsoft was doing to launch it and what are we going to do to counterbalance it? And I stood up and I pounded the table and I said there's only one thing that we can do to combat what Microsoft's doing, and that is to bring Steve Jobs back into this company.
Speaker 1:You did Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. What was the like? Jaw drop, mic drop, kind of Did anybody was there a slow clap? Yeah, and then and then it happened, and then it happened.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only person who ever said that, but I was so emphatic about thinking our way out of this. There's no way to get out of this. You need him back here. There's no way.
Speaker 1:He's the guy yeah he was the guy and again, you know, speaking of Steve Jobs, I'm trying to think. You know he's your age, so he's 26 when it started. He gets kicked out, then leaves for what? Maybe 10 years or less? What did you see different when he came back? Like, was he better when he came back or was he?
Speaker 2:kind of the same.
Speaker 1:He was more refined, more self-aware.
Speaker 3:More grounded, very focused. I think that the company's trajectory might have been different had that not happened. I really am a believer that everything happens for a reason. I happened to be at Apple the day that he was fired. At Apple, the day that he was fired, I was standing in the Macintosh building with all the people around us and the person came out and said Steve Jobs has been fired by the board of directors, he's left. And it was just. I felt like somebody had died and I just started crying. I just felt like, oh my God, the vision, the soul of this company is leaving. How can this happen? I mean, this was really, really challenging. And so, in that time period, different leaders, different CEOs came in and none of them had. I mean, they were just not right. They just weren't right. The company really lost itself and literally in 1995, we thought the company might go out of business.
Speaker 1:What was the first conversation you had with Steve after you found out that he was gone?
Speaker 3:I just sent him a note. I did not have a conversation with him, I just sent him a note about what he was doing at next and um you know my support yeah, because it probably felt very for him like a death in a way yeah, really challenging to process, so what?
Speaker 1:did you? Because here's how I see it. I see it like everybody was working so hard there wasn't really like a bro culture, so was was there a lot? Anything that you can remember like somebody doing that they'd be canceled for today, like behaviors or things that were the norm, or like sexual harassment of any kind. I mean, here you are, this like really good looking female There'd have to be. I mean, I worked in corporate America, like you know, in the nineties, and I, I mean I worked in corporate America, like you know, in the 90s, and I mean there's some stuff going on there. Can you remember any of that? Or was it just more business all the time? Like everyone was just heads down?
Speaker 3:No, I mean there was a lot of, you know there was a lot of drugs there was, you know, drugs and alcohol, and I mean I wasn't an Apple employee, so some of that I wouldn't have necessarily had exposure to. But you know, there were different people that had reputations for being very loose, I guess, or aggressive with women, but no more than probably any corporate typical kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, was Steve jobs like a hot guy, like was he like a sexy guy?
Speaker 3:or was he just such a prick that that didn't even work, cause I, I, um, I thought he was fabulous.
Speaker 1:I thought he was fabulous. I think he was super handsome.
Speaker 3:I thought he, I thought he was really, I thought he was fabulous, I think he was super handsome.
Speaker 1:I thought he was really you know really handsome.
Speaker 3:And then I, just I was fascinated when I read his Is now a good time for me to tell you that I made out with him. Oh, stop it, stop it.
Speaker 1:Hold on, hold on, kate, kate, read my pulse, my pulse, my pulse. Cpr. That's what I'm talking about over delivery did you seriously make out with? Steve jobs.
Speaker 3:Was he a good kisser? Yes, yeah, I didn't sleep with him, though which is kind of like. I kind of like in my life. I'm like, oh, I kind of regret that, but why did I do that? Oh, I thought I was married.
Speaker 1:I know I thought you're going to say you regret. You kid that you made out?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, no, I know I say so.
Speaker 1:Speaking of being married, your first husband, when did you meet him along this path? I was in college at Ohio State, okay, so you guys were college sweethearts. Do you think your success was that like the main driver? Or when you look back now, you guys were so young You're like, okay, there were like obvious things that just weren't going to work, that we don't see at the time, or maybe was it a hybrid.
Speaker 3:I didn't really want to get married. I got married because I thought I had to. I got married for religious reasons. I got married. He was the first person I ever had intimate relationships with. I was raised in a very, very Catholic household uber Catholic household. I went to Catholic school. My mother was a convert, so I called her an uber Catholic. So I went to Catholic school. My mother was a convert, so I called her an uber Catholic. So she was like even overly Catholic.
Speaker 3:And when I was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college at Ohio State because I'm a first generation college graduate I didn't know that there was any other school you could go to. I literally had no idea. But I was working at Kroger as a cashier, which I did to put myself through school at Ohio State. I was living back at home that summer and my boyfriend then soon-to-be husband was living in Cleveland and I was writing him a letter. And when I was working at my shift at Kroger my mother went into my bedroom and read that letter and in that letter she figured out that we had slept together and my mother proceeded to try to overdose on Valium.
Speaker 3:And so when I got home that night from my Kroger shift at like 11 o'clock I walk into our family kitchen and my father at 1461 Kennard Road on the east side of Columbus. I walk in the door and it was all. The lights were out, my father was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a unfiltered camel with a bourbon on the rocks, and usually when that was the case, my mom would be sitting there with them. They called it their nightclub, which was they couldn't afford to go out and I was like where's mom? And my father said what had happened and he said your mother should not have gone through your things and you shouldn't have done that. It was never, ever discussed and my father died 17 years later, my mother died 30 some years later and it was never discussed.
Speaker 3:But it was that feeling of this, like super Catholic, you know, that guilt, and I thought I was a sinner and this was the only way I could rectify it. And so I have very vivid memories of the wedding, not really wanting to do it, crying that night, sobbing that night unconsolably, and so it, you know, and he's a wonderful person, and we had a lot of things in common, you know, we did triathlons together, we renovated a house in German village. Together we got a dog, we had three fabulous children. I mean so many wonderful things in my life. He's a wonderful person. I talked to him last week and I talked to his.
Speaker 3:It just wasn't what I wanted and eventually my body caught up with me. My body caught up with me, and that was at that moment when the business was plummeting and I was having all kinds of health issues driving myself to the emergency room on a Saturday night hooked up to, you know, ekg and CAT scan, you know I thought I was having a heart attack or a stroke or whatever panic, panic, anxiety attacks, and that happened multiple times. And so I finally, working in therapy, got myself to a place where I could face and accept myself for this situation and forgive myself for the situation, but I knew I had to change.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that. By the way, there's so many things that I'm feeling from that. The one thing I was going to ask you and I think you kind of answered it for me but in one of your interviews you made a point to say I didn't want to be like my mom, and I feel that how did she show you love? How did you feel loved?
Speaker 3:by her. I didn't. I didn't feel love, I felt competition. I think that my mom I just have an older brother, it was just the two of us and my mom stayed at home and my father worked at Keebler and I would come home from school and I would walk in the door and I'd say, what did you do all day? And she would recite this litany of household chores and I would say, well, that sounds boring and I just thought there's this world out there, like the planet Earth, like, why are you spending your time doing this?
Speaker 3:Like I felt this very early visceral feeling that there had to be more to life than doing laundry. That was one part of the equation. But my mother, she would say to me on multiple occasions let's hope we find someone to marry you someday who's gonna take care of you. So that's another dimension to all of this. And the other dimension is the fact that my mother used to jokingly, but not call me her dumb blonde and my brother and my mother both would tease me calling me stupid dumb blonde, but they said it so much that I absorb it. I absorbed it. Like there are times today in some of the things that I'm doing at IBM that are like mind blowing. You know stuff on quantum cryptography, and I'm like, I'm not a dumb blonde, I'm not a dumb blonde, but I feel like it in this moment, dumb blonde, but I feel like it in this moment. So you know, it's still here. It is, however, many years later.
Speaker 3:So it was, and so I think my mom felt as though I was going to have an opportunity to have a life she didn't have, and she was an only child. She told me repeatedly that her parents did not want her. Her name was Marion and it was spelled as if it was a boy, not a girl, and so she said my parents wanted a boy, they didn't want a girl. So my mother never felt love from her parents. But three days before my mother died, I was sitting with her and she looked me in the eyes and she said you know, I'm really proud of you and I love you. There wasn't any, but there wasn't any sense of judgment, and it was, and I love you. It wasn't, there wasn't any, but there wasn't any sense of judgment, and it was really the first time I felt that from her, when you come up as a child, in whatever environment you're in, and you think your parents hung the moon.
Speaker 1:And I think it's the moment when you realize your parents are only capable of what they were or weren't given Like when you saw that your mom was never shown love then you look at it reflectively and you go well, of course, right. But I think what's so powerful about that is that you realize it's not me, and I think until you can get there with your parents like your, your upbringing and your parents, I think you're always suffering and and I think that's for me personally seeing my parents as human beings and understanding how they were raised. They're just one person on this earth just trying to make it and they're everything to you.
Speaker 3:I went through intense therapy. I hadn't been to a therapist ever in my life until I was in my mid 40s and I did intense therapy every week for a very long period of time. I just recently went back to therapy. It was in my 40s, you know, looking back at that episode when I was, you know, still in college, and what she did, I didn't realize, of course I had. No, I thought it was all me.
Speaker 3:This is what I did, my behaviors caused my mother to do this, and my therapist said that trying to reconcile that is one of the hardest things you have to do. You know, when someone tries to hurt themselves because of something you did, it's a really hard thing to get through. But I I mean what? What an extraordinary experience to be able to talk about it, because it amplifies, you know, the importance of having the ability to really love yourself, and I didn't learn to love myself until I went through therapy and it's still a challenge every day.
Speaker 3:And all the external things that are happening, that you know day, all the inputs that you're getting externally, impact that internal life and that love of self and our natural, you know, universal thing that we share is this like self-judgment. We're not good enough. We're suck, you know, and we all share that, and listening to some of your episodes, I heard that from so many of your guests and all of us, no matter who you are, we all have that and it's something I have to. You know, work on every day. So did you feel love from your dad?
Speaker 1:I did, she had a good I did, I had a great relationship with my dad.
Speaker 3:My, uh, my. As I said, my father worked for Keebler. He was one of seven kids. He was very funny and I loved when he would invite me to go to the grocery stores to like when I I was five years old, to go put like at the time when somebody who worked for Keebler would go and literally put the product on the shelves at the grocery store. They have those big red Zest-A-Cracker boxes and it's like Nance, come on, we're going to IGA. And it's like I put on my saddle shoes and go across the linoleum floor in our kitchen and hop in the car with them and drive a few blocks to the IGA.
Speaker 3:And my father, who was in both World War II and Korea, I think he felt like there had to always be an enemy because this was the kind of the world that he lived in. And so he taught me when I was five years old that Nabisco his arch competitor of Keebler Cookie, who's made Oreo cookies ago, his arch competitor of Keebler Cookie who's made Oreo cookies they were bad and they were evil, and no kid should eat Oreo cookies because they were poison and it was really bad for them. That's what my father told me.
Speaker 2:I mean like a great sense of humor.
Speaker 3:So we would be at the grocery store and I'd be helping him undo the box and put the boxes on the shelf and then the store manager come over and talk to Bob Kramer Everybody loved Bob Kramer and he'd be distracted and I would walk over to where the Oreo cookies were and I would look around and I would find the packages and I would stick my fingers and break the packages up and crush the cookies Because I thought if I crushed them nobody would eat them and it would be better for my dad, oh my God, love you.
Speaker 1:I mean, that is really cute, did he like find out?
Speaker 3:I mean, he kind of looked at me. I think he knew exactly what I was doing, but again, we never talked about it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:I mean like acknowledging that it's I'm. I'm not condoning that people should.
Speaker 2:Let's not go bust open stuff at the grocery store. Being a realtor here means being part of a community. I'm more than just a business card. I'm someone you'll see around town. I build trust with my clients because I care about this community and the people in it. Ready to take that next step? Let's do it together. Text me at 614-314-1355.
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Speaker 1:that there was not even a place for you to bring it up? Yeah, yes, and so everyone just went business as usual. Mom started doing laundry, dad was doing kibler and you were just doing your thing. Yeah, and I know so many people can relate to that, especially people in Catholic households, where you just do not talk about the stuff.
Speaker 3:No, no, and as a little kid I my therapist has identified that she thinks that I was probably one of these kids, that there were done some studies about babies that are, like, really impacted by loud sounds or lights or whatever, and then others that don't have any of that and we've decided that I'm one that gets like. I cried when the vacuum cleaner was, you know, like running in the house, the visual, the artifacts that are associated with the Catholic church. You know there's a lot of open wounds, there's thorns in people and people hanging from crucifixes and dying and people with flames at their feet and I literally would wake up as a kid thinking that I was going to burn in hell. I would have an image of what I thought the devil looked like and I would see flames around my feet as a kid and that's what I thought my fate would be if I did anything wrong. I was going to burn in hell.
Speaker 1:I mean heavy.
Speaker 3:It's heavy, it's heavy.
Speaker 1:I mean, so many people are going to be listening like yep heard that. Yeah, you know it's I mean.
Speaker 3:my therapist said, nancy, most people don't take that stuff literally, and I'd be like, well, I did.
Speaker 1:I would disagree. I think you know, having a son right now who's almost six and a half, he takes a lot of things quite literally. Like just yesterday I said he had some like something green and we were on the way to school. I'm like you've got something on you and then I turn around and I go, I think you're turning into a leprechaun, and if you would have seen his face, he's like what? And I go, you might have gold coins come out of your ears by the end of today. You better make sure to like be careful. He was like so distraught.
Speaker 1:I mean, they take everything literally you're saying so I want to go back into when you, your body was catching up with you. You got into this marriage. There's all kinds of things internally happening with you, but what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Did you like finally sit down with him and say I can't do this anymore? Did he say the gig is up, you're miserable? Like how did that happen?
Speaker 3:It went over a long period of time. I'd have these episodic I would like muster all my courage up and have an episodic conversation and then kind of like with what happened in my house. Then it wouldn't be talked about Like, then it would be back to three kids, back to the logistics of everyday life. I told him that we just had to. You know, we said we were going to separate to see what that was like. But it was, it was over, it was over and so we bought a house a block away from our house that I still live in here in Grandview, told the kids really worst day of my life, took them over there so they could see it. But it took another couple of years for us to finalize everything. But it was just that my body was so this anxiety. I was taking antidepressants, I was really strung out. I was walking around the office with a heart monitor strapped to me.
Speaker 1:Everybody was freaked out, you know, and it's interesting how we all think we can outsmart our bodies, you can't outsmart whatever's going on. You can stuff it and stuff it. If you had an actual container and you were stuffing something in it over and over and over again, you inevitably are like okay, that shit's getting full, we got a problem here Houston. Like, okay, the same thing happens with your heart, your soul, your spirit. You can't outsmart it, you really can't.
Speaker 1:And it's fascinating how we all try to do that and so many people today in this world we live in are still apprehensive about the T word, therapy, the stigma. Oh, if you're going, I can't believe you're going. I can't believe you're not going to therapy, honey, I think. Another misconception people have, especially married couples. You feel like you have to be at some really in the red zone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So how did you then? So okay, divorce is over, you're raising three kids, you have this really successful company. How did you hold it all down, you?
Speaker 3:know, I don't know, you know, I just you just kind of power through it. When I went through the business plummeting by 70% in 90 days and then we merged into another company, which was a disaster, and then we bought ourselves out of that company, merged into another company which was a disaster, and then we bought ourselves out of that company. When I bought myself out of that company, I enlisted the help of my right-hand person, kelly Mooney, who had been in the business for about 10 years, and I made her a partner. She took on more responsibility and so that kind of helped me get to where I needed to go in my personal life, and so I would say that was really pivotal in terms of like just navigating through that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm moving on to a completely different topic, but one that I love, which is Columbus Ohio and my love for Columbus Ohio, and I feel like Columbus is starting to get the shine that maybe it deserves, and doing this show has really uncovered just so many people, the goodness, the brilliant entrepreneurs the creatives the vibes are.
Speaker 1:I mean, everybody's giving really great vibes and I just want to be one of the people carrying a torch for the city. And what I like about you. I like a lot of things about you, but you know, a lot of times when you get older it's like you look and you're like, oh, I can't believe it. What is this chat GPT thing? And you're like you're the opposite.
Speaker 1:You're like I can't believe people think it's weird that a car drives itself Like, because look at you, you've been a visionary since day one. Right Like before Apple was Apple, you were getting the concept of having the computer. Now here we are. You have that mindset right. So what do you think like in terms of Columbus, Ohio, and what are you the most excited about?
Speaker 3:Well, there's a number of different things. There's a number of different things. I've been a member of the Columbus Partnership for a long time, which is an organization of the different CEOs in the community, and so it's a combination of people that are more the corporate people and then there's, like what I would call an entrepreneur class, people that are founders, that are running family businesses, that are deeply rooted here, versus people that come in to run one of our corporations and then aren't from here and then they leave, and so I think it's kind of a healthy mix and that group works very closely with the public, you know, with the mayor and the county and all that kind of stuff. And so, primarily, economic development, workforce development. What can we do to really raise the quality of life? What can we do to help Columbus flourish? And Les Wexner and John Wolf are the founders of the Columbus Partnership. They had this vision probably almost 30 years ago. We're so fortunate for the groundwork that they, that they laid on on on that, and I think a combination of you know someone with like less, who is quite the visionary and the belief that virtually anything is possible and the belief that, um, my husband is from Cleveland, and when we were sitting at something shortly after he, he moved here and he said oh my God, everyone in Columbus believes their best days are ahead of them.
Speaker 3:In Cleveland, everyone believes they're trying to recapture what was they used to. You know, they were thought they were going to be the Chicago of the Midwest and the oil and standard oil and all that kind of stuff, and they're still trying to claw back to what was in Cleveland. And that's not the belief of Columbus. No one is thinking, oh, we need to go, we need to reclaim our past. Everyone is kind of like there's a universal focus on the future and I think that that attitude permeates the city and the spirit and I think that that is what we're seeing. And the more people who come, the more they, you know, they feel that. I just had breakfast yesterday with somebody who moved from Baltimore. She was talking and we were with Doug Ullman also, who's from Pelotonia, who moved here from Austin 10 years ago, and we were just talking about like, this is such a great place for people to be and the spirit is. You can feel it. You can feel the energy.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Doug Allman Love Doug Bigger. Shout out to Doug Allman's mom.
Speaker 2:Diana she's my bestie?
Speaker 1:Oh, she is. Yeah. So he, back before I was in this studio, he came to my house. I had this in my office and I waited until he got there. I was like, can we call your mom? Like I think she's really cool. He's like, really, I'm like, yeah, let's call her. So he called her and she's on the show, and so I bought a couple of pieces of her art. I just think she's like she's the bees knees. Speaking of your husband, let's talk about him for a minute. Who captured this heart of yours? What is he like? Give me, like a you know, a little commercial on this guy.
Speaker 3:Well, we worked together. He came into the business and I think that my relationship I mean my relationship was platonic for many years and I just I felt like I could tell him anything like literally. I never met anyone that I felt I could tell anything like literally, I just pooped or whatever you know I mean I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my cup runneth over here, my cup runneth over with love for this one.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be. I'm just, you know, I'm gonna be in a depression because I feel like now we are friends and then you leave, and then I'm just twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to return somehow.
Speaker 3:I mean, that was later in our relationship.
Speaker 2:Oh my, God you are something I love it.
Speaker 1:You haven't dropped an F-bomb yet. I will say Well, give us time.
Speaker 3:So he has three children and was a single father as well, and we literally have two children that are 31, two that are 34, and two that are 36. And we have just an incredible life. And he lived in Cleveland. He moved up there to take care of his kids and we were married. He moved up there to take care of his kids and we were married and he and I lived apart for four years while we were married because we didn't want our youngest children to be uprooted and have to give up anything, and so we've always been be in a divorced family, and so I know to this day his kids are number one and he knows that my kids are number one. I mean we started a conversation in the late 90s and it's never stopped. I mean literally never stopped. We drove on Sunday back to Ohio from Martha's Vineyard and we were in the car for 11 hours and talked the whole time. Oh wow, oh yeah, like literally we I mean it is a constant conversation.
Speaker 1:I love that, yeah, and, and so I think too, the transparency, the communication and how you and I were talking, and you said I think we're going to need to go to therapy.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. Well, we were talking about every January we do a vision day, which was something that we learned from our business coach and friend, debbie Phillips, and she taught us we would do these with her and her partner, and then it got to the point where we could facilitate the same thing ourselves, and so for the last decade or so, we've been doing this every January, and there was one point this January where I was the scribe in front of a big white you know post-it note easel and taking notes and drawing things of personal. You know all the different, you know different parts of our lives. What do we want to do? What are we going to focus on, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3:We started talking about Columbus and Martha's Vineyard and where we're going to spend time or not spend time and which has been an ongoing topic, and I felt like, in the moment, I heard Christopher say something in a way that I hadn't. He had said it before, but I hadn't heard it in the way that he was expressing it and so I said you know, I think we're going to need to go to therapy on this, like we're going to need, like we're do a really good job at facilitating these things between us, but this is one where I think we're going to need help.
Speaker 1:Therapy doesn't have to be this scary negative thing. It's actually a helpful. It's almost like a mediation, because that's really what relationships are are just negotiations, like you're constantly balancing wants, needs, and so having that help sometimes is so great to just move through the juggernaut.
Speaker 3:So helpful. It's been really powerful. We've gone separately, we've gone together. It's been really powerful because we had never done that, we had never done therapy together, so it's been a real gift.
Speaker 1:Can we switch gears to like the superficial? So I need to know what your skincare routine is first.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you guys are drinking over there in grandview like do you have something.
Speaker 1:You know what? All the all the rage right now is beef tallow. Have you heard of that? What is that? It's like a. It's some kind of fat or something from an animal and it's like gives that sort of like glowy it's. Everybody's talking about it. It's I haven't yet to order it yet, but but what do you do? Can't do it.
Speaker 3:We have both Christopher and I have Alpha Gal. Which is this allergic reaction to anything from a mammal? Oh so which is a tick-borne illness that's making its way through the country?
Speaker 2:Really yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's bad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, what do you put on your face? I put whatever my stepdaughter tells me to. Eleanor, the oldest of the family, is like our master skincare routine person. She will tell you exactly what to use and how many steps, and she's doing it with her baby. And it's amazing Like we just do whatever Eleanor tells us to do and then I'll do whatever they tell me at Bosco to do.
Speaker 1:I buy stuff at Bosco. Kate, she's my girl. I love Bosco. I know I saw. I heard the.
Speaker 2:I heard the advertising and.
Speaker 1:I heard her session too. Yeah, they're the greatest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're so wonderful so what about?
Speaker 1:you know what are you eating, cause you're fit as a fiddle, you look good and you are you pretty regimented with your food.
Speaker 3:I am. I am. I have issues with my stomach. I've had a ruptured colon and so diverticulitis. I have to be careful about what I eat and now I can't have any meat. I wasn't really eating meat anyway, but I have a pretty clean diet and I have for a long time diet and I have for a long time. I've been working with a functional medicine doctor for about 10 years she's not based here, her name's Dr Laura Lyle. She's from Ohio, her parents live in Bucyrus and she has a pharmacy degree from Ohio State and an MD from Ohio State, and I met her on Martha's Vineyard, go Figure and work with her remotely, and so she has her eye on hormone replacement therapy supplement. Um, I just had my my dna, all my genes like laid out that I had a two-hour meeting about everything that's going on in my genes and then like adjusting my supplements as a result and what my diet should be, and all this I was what was the biggest thing that blew your mind?
Speaker 3:Well, there was one thing that really bothered me is that I have one of the and it doesn't mean you're going to get it, you know, as she likes to say, but I have one. You can either have two variants or one, and I have one variant for Alzheimer's, um. So that was kind of a disappointment and it was funny because Christopher did the same thing and he was convinced I keep forgetting things. I know I have Alzheimer, I know, and he had his read a week before me. He's like no, I have nothing. And then I'm thinking I'm fit, I'm this, I'm that, I'm going to be fine.
Speaker 1:And then I was like, well, that's where the balance comes in, because I love part of me loves like having a dashboard and like knowing where you can prevent things and get ahead of things is so great, it makes you feel some sense of control. And then there's a line where you're like, okay, do I know too much Because that may never impact you at all? But now it's sitting rent free somewhere in a corner. You know it's like the balance of things. We have so much information today.
Speaker 3:You know it's like the balance of things. We have so much information. Today I've really upped my protein and I've added a morning meal, which I was never hungry in the morning, but I'm just trying to get more protein. I've run since I was a kid. I've been a runner since I was a kid. It's very meditative for me. I mean, I go like three miles and I work out with Jordan Sugarman three times a week, do Pilates. I was there this morning. I love that. And I'm adding weights as you age. That upper body weight weight for women, being able to really, you know, retain your muscle is super important. It's the largest organ that we have. It protects all of our, everything in us, and so I'm really trying to focus on that. What's your vice? What's my vice?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, you like drink lots of wine, take a gummy, no popcorn Popcorn yeah, like that lesser evil popcorn, that's sweet well, you like drink lots of wine, take a gummy. Oh, popcorn, popcorn, yeah, like that lesser evil popcorn, that's sweet, god, you're good. I had some last night.
Speaker 1:That feels like a real treat to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, maybe tequila.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, give me something.
Speaker 3:Okay, tequila. Oh, so you'll drink some tequila with me sometime?
Speaker 1:Yeah, straight, because I'm already see this is the part of the program where I figure out a way to see you again, so it's like you're going to drink some tequila with me sometime. Okay, okay and yay-ho, yeah, okay, perfect, yeah, perfect, yeah. I still am dead from the making out with Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3:I don't think I've heard one other thing you've said this whole time, but I don't want to leave you wishing you would have said something else. One of the things that I have focused on for the last several years is this notion of that we have an inner genius, and I've always thought that it makes so much sense. All of our DNA is different. Why wouldn't each one of us be different inside in our soul? And it was actually something that ancient Romans, native American Indians it was very much a thought of those cultures that we each have a unique inner genius and how that calibrates how you show up in the world. I mean giving yourself permission to let that shine.
Speaker 3:My biggest love is when I have the opportunity to help that inner genius in someone shine. I feel as though the role of leadership is to really make space for that to come out. And over the entire 35 years of the business, the thing that gives me the greatest joy is those times when the people had the opportunity to let that come out and let that shine. Whether they felt the courage to come out, whether they felt the courage to change gender, whether they felt the courage to participate in some like crazy thing that we were doing in the business and just let loose. That is what I just love that so much, and today that's the thing that I love the most, and so I hope people can let their inner genius come through and realize that every day it takes work to allow people to see that, to have the courage to show up and the psychological safety that's necessary for that.
Speaker 3:You know, there's a really great book called Four Stages of Psychological Safety. It's super easy read, but I felt as though I think Timothy Clark is the author that talks about psychological safety, and I think that that's what we need in the world, and right now we're just being bombarded with a lot of things that make us feel really unsafe. They make us scared, very nervous, very panicky and really trying to navigate. That is a very big challenge for so many people right now, including me.
Speaker 1:Can you help me bring out my inner genius? Here's what we're going to do. Tequila, you me inner genius Done. Thank you so much. Oh, my pleasure. Keri, you have really made my entire probably month. This was more than I could have asked for, so thank you so much. I'm so glad.
Speaker 3:You're the best. Well, I think you're the best. I think what you're doing, I love listening to the show. I was up and down to Cleveland on Monday. I was listening to all the different things. It was just so fun and I learned about so many people that I didn't know.
Speaker 1:And now I want to meet, and now I'm like we're going to do an event That'd be so cool. It's actually part of the plan. It's part of the plan. Oh, that would be so fun. And you're invited. You have to. I'm going to. I want to be invited, I'm going to, and if you're still out there following your girl, follow me on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and until next time, keep moving. Baby 3, 2, 1.
