Lisa D. Foster | Believing in Yourself, Bag Lady Storytelling, & Changing Expectations to Change the World

Born into a Jewish family directly impacted my the Holocaust, today’s guest was an introverted youth, disinterested in school, and lacked direction and purpose. Equipped with the love of reading, she was able to throw off others low expectations, believe in herself, learn to write her own story, and start an $8-million per year company in less than 4 years by becoming a “bag lady”. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy watching or listening to this remarkable episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, the Lisa D. Foster story!

GUEST BIO: 

Lisa D. Foster is a business coach, speaker and author whose mission is to help managers lead high performing teams through emotional intelligence. In 2005, she founded 1 Bag at a Time, Inc., a first-to-market reusable grocery bag company. She left her job as a high school English teacher to became a purpose driven eco-entrepreneur and pioneer in the fight against single-use plastic. Her company ranked in the top three bag suppliers in the US during her leadership and reusable bag use in the US rose from 3% to over 60% by 2017 when she sold it. As a coach, she shares her expertise in leadership and emotional intelligence with her clients and inspires others to make a difference in their communities and organizations.

FEATURED QUOTE(S): 

• “Whatever is best for you, is best for me.” – Lisa Foster

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• Buy My House Guru, Cash Home Buyers in the Pensacola, FL area, 1(850)616-6377
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SHOW NOTES:  SPECIAL OFFERS, LINKS, GUEST CONTACT INFO, & OTHER RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lisadfostercoach.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-d-foster-coach/

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• Special 10% off coaching for the first three months. To redeem, make sure to mention “I heard you on the Remarkable People Podcast” and use promo code, “RPP4Me” when you reach out to Lisa.
   

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Lisa Foster | Believing in Yourself, Bag Lady Storytelling, & Changing Expectations to Change the World | S5 E80

Hello friends! Welcome to this week's remarkable episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, The Lisa Foster story!

This week I am excited. First thing is I had COVID so I wanted to apologize to you for having to skip a couple of weeks of the podcast. Now, if you're binge listening or just tuning in maybe weeks ago or weeks in the future, you don't know what I'm talking.

But if you're a regular listener waiting for the weekly episode, my apologies, I have had COVID, which isn't the end of the world, [00:01:00] but I felt like trash. I was very tired. Thank the Lord for his healing, a strong body ivermectin hydroxychloroquine and time now I'm better and ready to go. So in this episode, we have li.

Lisa has been great to communicate with super flexible patient. She's a girl you're going to hear about that is from Jewish origin. Growing up in Utah has the Holocaust directly in her family's history, learned a ton about life. And even though like us, she had struggled. She shows us how she overcame those struggles.

She was super introverted for instance, and she didn't want to share and communicate. And now she learned how to communicate. She took how she wasn't even a good student didn't care about school, but she had a passion for learning and reading. Ends up going to the college of her dreams, which we'll [00:02:00] learn about she left California.

It was warm, it wasn't cold. So she ends up going to one of the two schools she heard about, and then how she gets her degree becomes an English teacher, goes on a journey with her husband to Australia to film a movie he was making and her whole mind was changed. With a narrative with a question with a small part of a bigger story.

So Lisa's journey is truly remarkable. You're going to hear how she raised an $8 million a year company from nothing. All sorts of life advice. We go deep. We go wide. We go everywhere in between, in this journey, you're really going to like this episode. So get your pen and paper stick around to the end because Lisa is going to give you a special offer.

And then when it's all said and done, if we apply what we're learning, we're just going to be better people. And help the world be a better place. [00:03:00] So I'm David Pascoe alone. Welcome to this week's episode. The Lisa Foster story. Enjoy.

Part 3 INTERVIEW Lisa Foster Believing in Yourself, The Power of Storytelling, and Changing Expectations to Change the World: Hey, Lisa, how are you today? Very good. How are you, David? I am so much better. I was just telling the listeners a little bit about you. What they're here for today. A little bit about coven, how he had so many obstacles to get to this interview. So I am super pumped to talk with you and for you to share your remarkable story.

So you ready to go? I'm ready to go. Thanks. All right. Awesome. So our listeners know, but if you're new to the show, this is how it works. Lisa is going to take some time and share with us, her life story in chronological order from birth to today, she's going to throw the highs, the lows, the pretty, the ugly and the pretty ugly, right.

But she's also going to, she's also going to share with us the practical steps she took to overcome and achieve. So you can too. So Lisa is sharing her time with us [00:04:00] graciously. So you and I can grow. And then we're going to get to the other part of the show. Where's Lisa today. And then Lisa is going to explain to us where she is today and where she's heading.

So you and I can help her. So everybody helps each other. So that's what it's all about. So, Lisa, at this time, I'm going to mute my mic. Please take us through your remarkable story. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to start at the beginning. So I was born in salt lake city, Utah. I am a nice Jewish girl from salt lake city, which is sometimes a conversation stopper.

No one really knows what to say to that. Actually there were a lot of Jews in Utah at the time. When my great, my, my great grandparents came to talk in the late 18 hundreds. When you talk [00:05:00] applied for statehood in the 1850s, there was religious affiliation for most states that the separation of church and state was only at the federal level.

And you kind of knew it was not going to be favorable to apply as a Mormon state. So they declared themselves a land of religious freedom and people who were, who were fleeing the religious persecution of the pogroms, like my great grandparents in the late 18 hundreds that I'm going to the land of religious freedom, Utah.

And that's how they ended up there. My grandmother and my grandfather were both born there. So on my dad's side, I'm a third generation Utah. And my mom actually is a Holocaust survivor, was my mom passed away about five years ago. She was born in Warsaw. [00:06:00] Did Jewish parents there. And her father was in the army.

The Polish army was defeated in a few days. They were really technologically outmaneuvered by the Nazis and we'll really superior med air power and tanks, which the polls didn't. So he was she lost just to clarify, not, oh, can you hear me okay? Yep. Well, I was just saying, just to clarify, they weren't superior as a nation.

They were superior in technology. That's what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. No, they had superior. Their army has superior firepower. Yeah, absolutely. I just want to make sure it's clear because you absolutely are representing your history and your people. And if there's anyone who has the bias, listening bias is wrong.

There's one race, the human race, but we [00:07:00] have a real history and that's what Lisa's talking about. And I just want to make sure nobody's sitting there with a bias bigotry in their head. Nobody is superior than anybody else, but at that time, the technology was like sticks to tanks. So it was a huge, huge margin of difference.

That's correct. And thank you for that clarification. You're a hundred percent, right. Morally, they were not superior personally. They were not superior. It's just that their technology. Yeah, I don't want to cut you off. I knew what you meant, but if there's one person listening in over 90 countries that listened to our podcast, I just want to make that crystal clear Polish, German, Italian American, any country, or from one race, the human race, nobody superior.

Despite what? The government and any religion there. There's no, there's no superiority. There. All religions are equal. We all had that spiritual sentence. [00:08:00] Alright. I'll I'll keep going. And then so my mother's mother saw that she was going to her chances of survival were diminishing. And when my mom was age four, she gave her up to a Catholic family who really at risk of their own life, took her in as their own child and raised her. My mother's mother was killed in the wars uprising within months of her giving her up.

And it was a really courageous act. I sometimes, you know, when I had a four year old, I have two kids myself. And when I had a four year old thinking, how could I give this child to somebody? You know what I have had that strength? So that was like a real model of strength to be able to do that. And we're really lucky because my mom did survive an after the war for her mother's brother was living in the house.

Sounds that she had survived and brought her to the U S and she came [00:09:00] to Denver and yeah, so that and my parents met. And so that's, that's where my parents come from. So I have a lot of strength from who my parents are, you know, my, my mom as a survivor and my dad, as you know a small businessman from Utah, you know, generations back and you know, just a sense of, you know, how business is done, how families stick together, and a sense of survival were all skills that I have drawn on my whole life in business and in my life.

So I'm really grateful for my the gifts given from my parents.

So Elisa, let's stop there for a second and make that a talking point. I grew up American outside of Boston, but I was first-generation for the majority of my family [00:10:00] when we grew up that bond, that knit, that family, that, you know, whatever happens inside the doors is different than what happens outside of the doors.

And you, you were alluding to that and mentioning that what was the mindset after people have been such, such persecution and they've been absolutely without provocation or doing anything wrong, you know, your grandmother had to give up her own child to keep your family going, but then how that came to America, what was that like?

Like what was in bread and you from the beginning instilled in you about family and closeness, you know, it's a really interesting question. As a Holocaust survivor, she had been through so much really. She was, she grew up on, on, on the front lines of a war, right? With people shooting. She just watched people be shot in the street.

And that creates a lot of trauma [00:11:00] by the time. I mean, my mom is, is quite remarkable herself. She You know, at age four, she's given up at age 11, the war is over and she goes to Denver, Colorado. She was bright, actually, her, the guy who took her in was an engineering fellow student of her father.

And when they were in bunkers all those years for days and days and months on end and in shelters you had a little girl there who was kind of smart and he taught her math. So they found out when she got here, she was far ahead of her peers in math. Now, of course she didn't know any English, she flunked English, but she was way ahead in math.

And she got, she actually got into college, but she coming here at 11, you don't know anything. And six years, seven years [00:12:00] later, you're in college. Right. And that's where she met my dad and she never graduated. She met, my dad, got married and went and had kids. But she had had so much trauma. She really locked it down.

So we never talked about it. It was never talked about. And actually like even the Vietnam war, which was going on at that point was never talked about in my house. And I looked back and I think, you know, my dad was protecting my mom, those images that played out on a lot of people's television sets in their living room, you know, Which affected everybody was never on in our living room ever, because I think she just had too much trauma to really go into that.

You know, there'll be watching that again so soon. So there was a lot that was not said in my, in my health school. But how do they interact like that? Like right there, [00:13:00] the loyalty and the dedication, the love your father was like, I'm going to protect my wife and we're just not going to have images of this kind of hate in our home.

So what, what kind of other, what did you pick up that you've carried through to today from that type of family oriented family support upbringing? Well, I guess I just step ahead a few years and just say my parents did get divorced. So he was very protective of her on the one hand. But on the other hand, there was definitely tension and mistrust and and difficulty.

And I think, you know, not talking about things that silence and locking things down, one of the lessons that I've learned, and it took me a long time to learn it is that, you know, when you don't talk about things, what you do is you add shame to whatever is happening. And when you start talking about things, you unwind that shame, shame.

It really is that thing [00:14:00] of. The things we don't talk about. The feeling of it's just too shameful to talk about. And that in itself is really damaging. And I've, I've learned that when you talk about even the problem, the violence, that the issues of the day, whatever they are, being able to be open about things and to communicate about things is so useful in, okay.

And being able to learn how to feel. Okay. It's when you say a topic is taboo that I find it very damaging. We should just talk about it. So do you find yourself today, like your default state, is it to openly share and walk through things or is it to keep it to yourself and you have to force yourself to communicate?

I'm a lot better. I'm I'm really, I mean, I'm fortunate. My, my husband is so good at just being open and [00:15:00] communicating. When I first met him, you know, we just fell in love that he was like, he would talk about things. I'd be like, Nope, you just talk about everything. Is that possible? But we've been together for a long time and I was like, you know, it's just such a better way to go through life.

You just don't, there's not so much psychic energy in pulling things back that you don't want to talk about. And just being free and being honest and being authentic and saying, yeah, that's how I feel. Is just a real gift. And, and so I, I don't hold back anymore. I I'm, I'm pretty on board with being, I am who I am, my experiences are what they are and that's made me who I am.

And then, all right. So if I'm hearing you correctly, by communicating and by sharing your feelings and by being real, you [00:16:00] found freedom. You don't have to feel ashamed anymore and you let things go and move on. Is that correct? Yeah, but that, you know, but that was not how I was born. You know, that was not our household.

So, you know, my dad was protecting my mom by, by not having those, those images on TV. But in my house, emotions were a bad thing. You know, if you got emotional, you know, I, I would be told you're, you're getting emotional go to your room. So if I got excited about something, I could be sent to my room. If I got angry, I had two siblings, we got angry, or we fighting over something.

We got sent to a room and we learned to lock down our emotions pretty tight, because you just got sent to your room a lot. And I'm an emotional person. So I was really pretty silent for a long time. I didn't talk about anything as a, you know, a lot as a kid. And [00:17:00] I, there wasn't a lot of encouragement.

I might, I mean, it was a really loving household. I knew I was very loved. I didn't hurt for anything. We had what we needed. We were sent to a good school, but no one ever asked, did you do your homework? If we got an, a, on a report card, we got a dollar, but that was about it. That was the only real talk about school.

We weren't asked. What did you learn today at school? What are you learning? If I did well, or if I didn't do well, it really didn't matter. I flunked actually blunt science in sixth grade, like an F on the report card. My parents had gotten divorced. I got to a new school. They wanted me to do a report. I had no skills to do that report from where I was coming from and I just didn't do it.

And that, that teacher said, well, they say, you know, you [00:18:00] can, I'll help you do it, you know? And, and I'll help you through. And I thought to myself, sitting with some strange science teacher and getting through it, like that was not ha, he said, if you don't, I'll have to flunk you. I said, pick me up. That sounds great.

So and when VRF arrived in my, you know, I knew it was there in the envelope at home and I knew my mom's not, and I knew my dad's not. And no one ever said anything. Yeah. A word. And then I actually had some issues the next semester in Florence history. No one is. And so the, the message that I took home that I took away from that experience was like, what grades don't matter?

They don't ask you about your homework. They don't ask you about school. They don't, they don't really expect much of you. And that's another lesson that I've really, really learned is how [00:19:00] damaging it is to have low expectations. Because if people, when people don't expect you to do much, it's really hard to expect it of yourself.

Right. And this is a cultural book. I see now that in our culture, we use this as a weapon because you're not going to rise up. If somebody convinces you, you're not worthy of writing up of rising up. And we have like, kind of an epidemic. Some people call it imposter syndrome. And just that sense of I'm not good enough is so pervasive.

When actually we are good enough, like we should all be asking, well, why not? What, why aren't I good enough. We are good enough. We have to believe in ourselves. If our society doesn't believe in us, it's really important to believe in [00:20:00] yourself. Right. And, and just, don't let other people's expectations you down.

Really. It is about rising up and doing what you know, in your heart you can do. Yeah. And let's talk. So you have to, what I think are great key life lessons, and let's break these down. We have listeners all over right now, connecting like, wow. I understand exactly what we used to saying about you know, communicating how it's so hard.

I know I need to do it. So let's just back up. You went from a place where if you were emotional at all, go to your room and now you're like with your husband, you're seeing the proper healthy is you talk about everything and work through it. What are some steps that you saw work in your life that can help someone struggling with that today?

A lot of it really is [00:21:00] And, you know, I learned slowly a lot of it. I learned first from books before I learned it from other people. I was not encouraged to do well at school, but I, I read a lot. And when I started to learn what stories meant, when I got to college, I became an English, an English major.

I understood what stories meant. I understood how to read them. And I understood myself as a story, what my story was and owning my own story and going back and thinking about how my dad treated my mom going back and putting together two and two, you know, how they treated me with emotions and thinking, well, gosh, maybe emotions aren't the problem.

Right. But I had to really own that sense of like, well, I was, I was sort of sent to my room for my emotions and thinking they were bad and thinking they were shameful. [00:22:00] And then you have to just start to question some of those things, but you have to really own the story before you can question them.

And so I would just say, you know, my first step is really put together your story from the very, very beginning. How were you treated? What was useful? How was that helping you? How was that hurting you? How does that. And thinking about what you really believe in yourself, what can you do? Like what go of what somebody else is telling you you can do or should do should is like one of those terrible words it's so judging, right?

It's just, if someone's been telling you, you should do this and you should do that. They're judging you, like let go of other people's judgment, really tune in to what you know is right inside of you. And just that know [00:23:00] your story know what's right for you. And I love how you presented that because so many times, even within places, you wouldn't expect it.

I keep hearing, especially the last five years, lower your expectations, put them on the ground. That way you're not disappointed. That is such BS. And it's so unbiblical yet. You hear it out of people who call themselves Christians and they're in the church, leading churches. And I'm thinking to myself, there's nowhere in the Bible where Jesus says lower your expectations, but you know, lower your standards so everybody can get above the stick.

That's crap that doesn't work in school. That doesn't work in work that doesn't work in life. It's complete fallacy still while I understand what they're trying to communicate is don't set yourself [00:24:00] up for emotional failure. Sometimes. No, a dad should be a dad. A mom should be a mom, a husband, and a wife should be a husband and wife.

So there are standards. There are, what's the word I'm looking for. Basic freaking life standards and principles, okay. That every human should respect and live up to. So I love how you mentioned that, but then you also have the balance. When these other ignorant people are judging you legitimately judging you.

Cause there's a difference between friendship and good judgment and being judged. And that's, that's another huge fallacy. As soon as you'd say, Hey, like I got a buddy and I'm like, Hey man, you really think you should be doing that. That's unhealthy. That's not, that's good judgment. Cause I love my friend.

That's not being judgmental. So I love how you had that balance between. Skeaping standards for [00:25:00] yourself. But when other people are putting ridiculous standards, you're like disregard what they say default to you and God. So talk about that a little bit, because that is something that we need. It doesn't matter what nation you're in.

You look at the politics in Canada right now. You look at the politics in America, in Italy, in Australia, people have lost their mind. There is no common sense and what actions are being taken in our governments across the world. So talk about this because it's very important. Talk about setting expectations and where you find that balance, please.

Lisa. Oh, look, I, I I'm, this is really near and dear to my heart, this idea of really allowing yourself to reach right. And allowing yourself and believing in yourself sometimes. I don't know if you [00:26:00] read these books about all these celebrities and it's always like, well, my mom told me I could be anything.

You know, like when they were in second grade or third grade or something, we don't all grow up like that. Right. We don't all grow up with somebody saying you can be anything. But what I would say to all of your listeners all around the world, you can be anything. The only thing stopping you is. Right.

Just believe in yourself. And, and sometimes you can't believe in yourself, but sometimes the first step is like, well, why not? Why can't die? And I think that's really the stuff of heroes is just to say, well, why can't die? And yeah, sometimes you are going to run up against social warms, but those are often norms that are designed to keep you down.

You know, you talked a little bit David about the politics of where all this is kind of, I think that we are [00:27:00] in H huge, a massive global shift and it scares a lot of people. There's a lot of people who don't want the changes that are coming and they're scared. And I get that right. I can be compassionate with them and understand their view.

But these changes, yes, we have a really, we have people from all over the world who are achieving things that they never could before, because they have a cell phone. Right? Honestly, when I started my business, I was an English teacher, but I had an internet connection and a computer and a cell phone. And let me tell you and spreadsheets and imagine what we do for spreadsheets.

When I was in college, you weren't even allowed to have a calculator. In an exam for a math exam, you had to do long division [00:28:00] by hand. If you just made a little stint airy, the one or something you are not doing well, but it was like, you knew how to do it. Oh, you need a calculator. You know, just believe in yourself and use the technology and ask why can't on because I really believe you can't.

And, and I, I want to be respectful to the people who are afraid, but if they're afraid of new people and kind of fuck, I didn't really afraid of competing. You know, they've been on top for a long time. There's a certain class of people who've been on top for a long time and they haven't had to compete with the entire world.

And now we're going to open it up and we aren't going to all have to compete. It doesn't [00:29:00] mean everybody gets a smaller piece of the pie. If we all work together, we grow the time. There is enough pie for everyone, right. Breed is a problem. Shutting other people down is the problem. If we all work together, That's when economies actually grow there really literally is more for everyone when economies grow.

And that means working together, bringing down the barriers understanding other people and being inclusive, including everybody not discriminating, whether it's women, men, your religion, as we talked about your, your, where you come from the color of your skin, that doesn't matter, right? What you bring [00:30:00] your, your attitude your skills, your knowledge, what you can do.

You may not even know what you can do yet. Right? Give it a try. You've got every, we all have these amazing tools at our fingertips in our phone. Now it's, it's amazing what you can do, but you have to let go of other people's opinions about what you can't do, right? You have to really believe in yourself.

Yeah. And we're going to get to what God allowed you to achieve what you were alluding to, which is amazing. And you guys are going to love this story. What Lisa did But going back to believing in yourself, it's like everything else. There's, there's a lot of people, that's a taboo message and that's wrong.

And Hey, forgive me. I live near the Navy base or if you're listening and right now is just military convoy going over my condo. So I apologize for the background noise if you're hearing that. [00:31:00] But when I was trying to get at is believing in yourself is a good godly characteristic. If it's balanced, like I have these gifts and ability because God gave them to me.

David fought a bear and a lion. He wasn't afraid of Goliath because he knew God gave him the abilities. That's how we need to be. We need to be confident. We need to be assertive. We need to believe in ourselves because all of us will be abandoned and alone at some point in life. And nobody's going to be there to pick you up.

They're only there to kick you down. So yeah. So when we get to those points, just like Lisa is saying, you have to have that personal relationship. God, you have to have that inner strength that says, if everybody's against me, that's fine. I got God for me. This is what he told me to do. Let's do it. So I love what you're saying.

And he said, thank you so much. But there's so many people out there that get beat down and then they're told [00:32:00] that, oh, you're selfish. If you believe in yourself, if you put your gas mask on first, you're, you're wrong. You're selfish. If you go to the gym. That's wrong. Now, if you're in the gym four hours a day, that probably is wrong.

But if you're going to the gym to stay healthy, you're taking care of yourself. So you can take care of your spouse and your children and your employees. So you have to take care of yourself. Right. You know, I, I think you're a hundred percent, right. I, you know, I, I really talk about, you know, look, pride is a sin, right?

Yeah. The seven deadly sins, we all know pride is a sin, but pride is when you really are selfish, when you really are putting yourself over other people. And when you say to somebody else, oh, you can't do that. Oh, you should lower your, that actually is your pride keeping other people down. Right. And there's a big difference between pride and self-esteem so forth.

[00:33:00] Competence, you can be competent without ever putting anyone down. You really don't need to judge somebody. If they want to go to the gym for four hours, you know, everybody's different. They're going to do, they're going to do what they're going to do. I'm not going to judge them. Right. I'm going to just say, yeah.

You know, if, even if you're unhealthy, right. Well, what is leading you? Like, I'm curious. I want to know. 'cause I feel like they, they feel bad about themselves if they are doing, you know, if they're smoking or if they aren't working out or things like that. Those, I think that comes from not feeling good about yourself.

Insane. And so I have compassion for that. Yeah. I think, you know what, I'm going to bring this up. I want to hear your thoughts on it. [00:34:00] I was under the impression my whole life, the pride was on the best. And then when I was in college, someone gave me a book called the Calvary road. One of the greatest books I've ever read outside of the Bible, very small book.

Like I don't think there's a chapter that's more than 10 pages. And I couldn't read more than one chapter a day because it was just so powerful. But that book explained how pride it's like the eye in the middle of pride. Anytime we bring attention to ourselves. So most people interpret prize. I'm the best.

But if you have the mindset, I'm the worst or I'm no good. That's actually a former pride and that's something God really convicted me with. Cause I thought I'm a functional idiot. I have no value. And I was like looking at myself in that kind of pride. So would you think with your experience with that definition fit or do you think it is isolated to lifting yourself?

[00:35:00] I just use different language because I do think it's confusing and you're right. This word pride, you know, people will say, oh, you should be proud of yourself. You should have pride in what you do. And while that's true, there's a certain, there's just a limit, right? If you just, if you think of pride, like on a bell curve, right.

If you don't have any sense of self-worth, well, you're not going to do anything. You're not going to believe in yourself. And if you've got too much, you're arrogant. Right? And so there is like this zone in the middle where I feel like I believe in myself, I'm not going to tell anyone else what to do. I will lift them up.

I'm not arrogant, but I'm no slump, right? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not nothing. I'm not everything I am. [00:36:00] That's enough. That's all I need to be is the best version of myself. That's all I ever want to be. I don't want to be anybody else. I don't want to be something I'm not, but I do want to be the best version of myself.

I have compassion for people. I have a hard time with that either on the arrogant side or on the low self-esteem side, I'd rather have compassion.

Yup. And I love how you talk about that gauge where the balance is in the middle left is crazy, right? It's crazy. And it, that goes along with the Bible, the Bible says a false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. That balance is where we want to be. And we all fall off, you know, their gauge moves constantly.

Right. But that's exactly what Lisa's saying is where we want to be. We want to have that good, healthy balance. So if you think you're the best thing in the world, or if you think you're a, floormat you're wrong [00:37:00] now we need the balance. Yeah. That's, that's so good. Well, let's talk about this. We, we talked a little bit about your childhood.

So anything we miss that's significant or important about your childhood that we haven't talked about, it carries over into the story of your growing up adolescents, teens, you know, college and where you are today. What have we missed in the Lisa story? I think the only thing is the importance of stories to me and how I learned to use stories as like such a powerful tool.

I think storytelling is really important. It's really important to how I succeeded. But understanding what a story meant and how to use a story, because storytelling is, it's one of those things it's in every single Every single culture ever. Right? One of the earliest [00:38:00] human activities was storytelling is really ancient.

And it serves as really important role of explaining us to ourselves. And I really, you know, I read everything, but it wasn't until college that I really understood how to read a story. So the first day I went to Brooklyn, Hey, before you go there, we talked about this privately on our pre-call. How did you get into reading?

Cause you talked about how your parents didn't give you expectations really for school. You don't like, it doesn't matter if I fail or succeed, I get a dollar for an a, or I can slack off all semester, get an F and nobody says anything, right? Oh like a doll was nothing. It didn't matter either way. How did you get a love for reading?

Because that's something I, you hear every day, you know, like every day I hate to read, I hate your, you have adult say, I hate to read. Oh, but there's so much freedom and [00:39:00] power and reading. So where did that come from in Lisa's life? You know, I think it did come from, you know, early childhood when there was so much locked down and I was a bundle of energy and I think they just said, just sit down.

And I found books very easily, very early on in my. I read everything I could ever get my hands on from the early days of my life. And it was one of the things I was faced for. I was only paid by my parents like, oh, those are little leader, you know? So that, that was encouragement that I loved. So I did that.

I think it's how I got into college. I didn't do very well on my grades, but I had a crazy good vocabulary because I was literally, by the time I was in high school, I was reading all of Hemingway, all the Faulkner DA's Lawrence, like all the British writers. Like I would literally anything, I got my hands on.

And I [00:40:00] didn't really think about stories or what they meant until I got to college. And when I realized that these characters are archetypes, they show us the arc, the arc of a certain kind of a character and what those character strengths or weaknesses or mistakes can do. I started to realize they were teaching everything.

I learned everything from stories. And when I learned how to read a, a book, suddenly I realized that is my education. Right. I'm really kind of, in some ways I think about myself as self-taught. I, I didn't have a lot of good friendships growing up. I was pretty locked down and didn't get social until later in life.

Because I couldn't express [00:41:00] myself. I couldn't even find my voice. I spent most of high school, like hardly saying anything. And it takes a lot of psychic energy to take an active mind and like shut it down. But I was reading everything and I started to understand and own the story and understand how stories showed me the way.

And I learned, you know, that tragedy and feeling sad is the way we let go of things that we need to let go of. And that there are tragic heroes that, that help us let go of what we need to let go of and find the new way forward. You know, I knew, I learned about mythic heroes and this became part of my, of how I approached my business.

Right. Myths. These figures that are like, like impossible figures [00:42:00] I started to realize are actually figuratively the merging of two cultures. So the, the example I like to give is really early in early days, like a hundred gatherer cultures When language was just beginning to form, we'll get evidence of Colts, animal coats, those bird Colts, and Wolf coat coats and the bear Colts.

And then when horses were domesticated, we had course calls. Cause that was like their new guy. Right. They're just trying to figure out how this world works. And you know, we don't know what happened when the people of the horse Colts wrote up and met the people of the bird Colts who were, you know, idolize the Eagles, soaring above everything else.

We don't know if they fought or whatever, but what we do know is that after a while, what we get on [00:43:00] in the caves is a picture of a horse with weeds. And this is the picture merging in imagination, two cultures merging together. In fact, what is important transportation flight, the flight of the imagination, but the flight of hooves on the Prairie, right.

And, and finding a way to come together and agree on something. And those were all really instructive for me for how to become the hero of my own life. You know, deciding for myself what kind of year do I want to be? You know? And that's part of believing in myself. Well, if I can own my story, I can write down.

And I can say, well, here's where I'm going to go next. And that became a really powerful tool to be able to see my life as a story, own that story and decide what the next chapter is.

Yeah. [00:44:00] And that's so many great figures in history that you stories to communicate. I mean, the greatest of all Jesus use stories and parables, of course, you're a kid, you hear ASAPS, fables so powerful and they tell you about life. They're explaining you to yourself. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So during this process of stories, you're seeing a connection of letting go and healing and you know, they always say every great story has the same characteristics, the same pieces, but it's just organized differently.

So talk about letting go. That's something that people, myself included have such a hard time with you're hurt something, tragic, something traumatic happens in your life. What have you learned about letting go the process of letting go for our listeners who are just really they've [00:45:00] been wronged? What have you learned least about letting go so they can heal?

Yeah. I, you know what I've really learned about letting go is that first you have to feel it. You have to feel the same. It's hard to let go. It's hard to let go of things. You valued things that you know, where you come from. All of that. And look at as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, there was a lot of trauma.

There was a lot of loss, an enormous amount of loss in my mother's life. And for a long time, she couldn't talk about it. She couldn't think about it. She wrote down her story. When I, when I had my children, she wrote her story. I know most of what happened to her because she wrote it and she would write every day and come to my house.

And she said, I printed it. I didn't even save it on my computer. She had a very early computer way back. And she would give me 10 or 15 pages [00:46:00] and I was typing it into my computer going, oh my gosh, you know, all the trauma that she experienced, but what she, and she would cry every day. She would come and she would say here, and she would cry and I would hold her and just hold space for her to be sad.

But I'll tell you when she finished her story and now suddenly her truth was out there and she could share it with me and my, my siblings with her children, but also with her grandchildren who she didn't know how much time she would have with them. And she knew her story was going to live and that they would understand what she survived to be.

And that was so powerfully healing. So I would just say, tell the story and feel the sadness. And, you know, even with morning, like when my mom passed away, I had a real hard time with it. I really did. I had six months [00:47:00] where I was in a complete funk, but you just have to feel it. And you have to trust your body is processing that and it will shift.

It will shift. You have to give it space. If you don't, if you lock it down, if you say I'm not going to be sad, I'm going to be strong. If you don't feel it, that feeling that, that you're supposed to feel it. Right. So it gets stuck because you're not expressing it. You're not crying. It's, there's something sad and you should cry.

You're not going to be sad forever. Just trust it. You're not going to be snapped forever. It is being sad is the process of letting go. And after a while you'll realize, okay, I'm sad, but now I don't want to be sad anymore. Now I'm ready to see what's next. And then you're free. But if you bottle it up, you're never free.[00:48:00]

Yeah. And let me ask you this. I was literally just having a conversation about this topic with.

And I don't want people to be mad at me, but it's something that needs to be said. Then you can tell me what your thoughts are

all over the world. This is an issue. But especially in America, pharmaceutical companies run the country, they run the politicians and they bribe them. They own them. It's disgusting. We are taught. You have a problem. You take a drug that has never been around the history of the world, and it's not healthy.

Now. I'm not saying there's not a place for drugs. I'm not saying some people don't need certain drugs, but when you're taking 17 drugs a day, there's a big problem. And what Lisa just said is to let go, you're going to tell your story. You're going to [00:49:00] feel the pain. And if you're doping yourself and I don't care if it's from the doctor or if it's from somebody in the corner, if you're taking drugs, you're doping yourself.

It's just going to perpetuate the real problem. Cause you're treating the symptoms. That's how I feel. What are your thoughts on that, Lisa? I think, I think you're, you're right. Like if you are taking it to not feel something and again, whether that's alcohol or something else or something in the doc, if you're taking a drug, not to feel.

That's going to get in your way. Ultimately, it's just going to bottle you up. It's going to lead to more drugs and the pharmaceutical companies will have a heyday with you and you're serving their needs. They're not serving your needs. We get afraid of our feelings and and we're told to be strong.

But [00:50:00] sometimes it's just better. You know, a friend of mine who's really wise said to me, the thing about feelings is to feel them just feel them and trusted. I, I do think, and I will say the only caveat to what you said is that certain people with a diagnosable disorder, if you're bipolar, or if you have NetApp, you know, if you're really in a kind of depression that is beyond right beyond just sadness, like there's sadness and then there's depression.

So if you really are in a, have a diagnosable disorder, mental disorder that you probably do need to be treated and that too can be freeing because it frees you from the grip of a chemical imbalance. And I think we have to think about the emotions as a physical thing that you do have to process through.

Just like we processed [00:51:00] through our food and our air cycles in and out, our emotions are a living, breathing thing and they come in, we express them and they come out and we're healthier for it. Just like we're healthy for eating, right. And just like, we're healthy for breathing deeply. And, and it's a part of us.

And so, you know, you've got to keep them in balance. You've got to trust them. You've kind of think about them. Wow. Why am I feeling that way? Connect it to the story. What is happening to make you feel you you'll be smarter. You'll be smarter about how you, how you do that. You know, if you're in a toxic relationship and there's somebody who's making you feel bad all the time, whoever that toxic person is, they're in pain.

You can forgive them. You can let them go, but you don't have to stay in a relationship that beats you down. You don't, sometimes you have to let go of [00:52:00] certain people in your life and it's sad and you can feel sad about it and feel sorry for them. You can feel compassion but you don't need them. You can move forward in a positive way.

But you do have to really take care of your emotional self. The way we take care of our physical.

Yeah. And I agree with you completely. You remind me of one of our guests S George Hoffman, fantastic guy, but he was clinically diagnosed with bipolar. But if you look at the course of people diagnosed with what he has, this is the life down he's he's, but he took a balanced approach. He did take pharmaceuticals to get them better, but then he also had biblical meditation and he did exercise and he keeps that honest flowing communication.

He's got now a wife and a daughter. [00:53:00] So if you go back and listen to his story, if you haven't listened to it already, I mean, the guy should have been in a psychiatric ward, run off and locked in there for the rest of his life. And now that guy's writing books, helping people thriving has an amazing life.

Hasn't had an outbreak and think it was like 30 years. Wow. So imagine somebody with bipolar all these different clinical disorders. So that's what I'm saying. I think you and I are on the same page. There has to be a balance. I'm not saying all drugs are bad, right. But what I will say is you shouldn't use it as a crutch or a cure, and you should do everything you can to heal.

And the ultimate goal is to get off everything. And some people it's not possible. Right. I really, for the people I've met in my personal. I don't want Facebook fact checkers, right. In my personal life, the people I met who actually have reality or hate not look like a clown in office and tell people what to think.

Those people, almost every [00:54:00] one of them has got well and stable and get off the drugs. It's, it's, there's very few people who legitimately have a medical issue, but you're right. It's all about balance. It's all about perspective. So let's go back to you though. You have a girl who loves reading doesn't care about school.

How does she get to college? You know, how did that happen? Yeah, I think I just got very lucky, honestly. I do think all of that reading, it made me a good writer. It gave me a great book. You Larry, I scored really well on the sat. I had bad grades, but I scored well on the sat. And there was just that magical moment where I had one college counseling session.

My parents never asked me about, I went to boarding school. Eventually I did go to boarding school, which I think was really stabilizing for me. There were more rules in my, [00:55:00] in my boarding school than there were at home. And that was a really stable place for me. But and they didn't have grades. I went to the Putney school.

It's on a farm in Vermont. I was really lucky to go there. Just really lucky that they didn't bother me with grades. And I did B was able to sort myself out, but as a senior, I go in and it's in Vermont and it it's maybe October and the guy looked at me and, and I didn't know him. I'd never met him before.

And he said, well, where do you want to go to college? And I was thinking, because I had frostbite on my toes and I had frostbite on my fingers and I thought California, like honestly, came out, like, why don't we just go to college in California? Oh, at least be warm. And he goes, okay. And he looked down at my record and he goes, you have the points to get into Berkeley.

And I don't know how, I think it was the sat. [00:56:00] And I said, okay. And he goes, do you want to apply anywhere else? I said Stanford, because it was the only other school in California I ever heard of. So I applied to two schools in California. I got into one. I did not get into Stanford. And I went to Berkeley and it was the best place for me ever.

Like I was, the English department was second old to Yale and they were brilliant and fascinating. And I learned to own stories and I could read as much as I wanted. And suddenly that was a strength, not a distraction from my life because when I was a kid, reading was a distraction from everything else.

But now suddenly the stories were, were part of what I could do. And the first part of my career, I was in England. I was a high school English teacher. Actually. I got a PhD in English after college, and then I got married and I had two kids. And then I was an English teacher for awhile. So that really stood me in [00:57:00] good stead.

And I was, even after I got, had my kids, I kept teaching and I was the first working mother in my home. A lot of the other women in my family worked until they had kids. And then they quit and I was expected to quit, but I just didn't quit. That was kind of, I just kept going. And that I got encouragement from my, my professors who said, you should be in this program.

You don't need to quit. We'll find a way. And they, they did. They found a way to help me get through that program, even with kids even I'm just really grateful for the people who were encouraging in that program to get me in. And for me to understand how that works to balance work and life. And my kids were so proud of their mom as a teacher, you know, it was really, they were so thrilled and I, I was lucky to be able to [00:58:00] be around them a lot because, you know, I, I could leave at three o'clock my school, my, my job was done when their job was on.

I had roughly the same. Vacations they did. So that worked out pretty well when my kids were young to spend a lot of time with them, but still be a working mom. Yeah. And there's something to be said for that. I'm, I'm not a public school model supporter, but I worked in a college and I taught, and it was great having the same schedule as my kids.

You have the whole summer off together and you can spend a ton of family time. So for the mental welfare of the teachers, I think it's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great career for balance, you know, work, life balance, especially when your kids a little. Yeah. So now you're in school, you get a degree. You're working tickets between there and today.

Okay. Well [00:59:00] so I married and I'm married right out of college. My husband is a movie producer. It took me 10 years to be able to say that sentence without busting out laughing because I was likely, I think my, my high school would have voted me least likely to marry a movie producer. He was terrific.

And and what types of movies, if you want me to ask him, what types of movies does he produce? He's produced some movies. You would probably know. He produced sleep, listening to. Phenomenon, a little small thing called sleepless in Seattle. And do you know tin cup? I'm not sure if that was a trap if that traveled, but that's Kevin Costner and Rene Russo.

That's exactly right. Yep. And he did the soloist actually speaking about mental illness, the soloist with Jamie [01:00:00] Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. About the homeless musician on the streets of LA. That was a pretty amazing life changing film actually fricking because he got involved in the issue of homelessness after that, that was shot on the streets of LA on skid row.

And he is chairman of the board of one of the largest homeless homelessness services agency in Los Angeles. He has really taken that up as his, the service he gives back is he works with people who and help us try to lift people up off the streets. So he did the soloist, he did a movie called denial, which is a movie about a Holocaust denier and bringing him to court and making sure it was basically, he put the Holocaust on, on [01:01:00] on.

On trial. And it was really important to make sure that people understood, yes, the Holocaust didn't happen. And that sounds like people laugh, but that's a serious issue. There's kids going through school today being told it never happened. It's a lie. I'm like, this is insanity. That it's so far fetched recorded history, every country of the atrocities that Hitler and the Nazi party did.

And now they're trying to say it didn't happen. It's crazy. Right. And so many people died fighting that war and it really, it really desecrates the memory of the people who defeated that kind of evil. To say that it didn't happen and look, there's climate deniers now, too. People say climate change isn't happening.

I mean, look, if anyone who remembers what the, the, the weather was like three, four decades ago and [01:02:00] it's just not the same really. It's not, we all feel it in our bones and the denial of those important things. Just yeah, that gets my moral center. Yeah. I think there's a huge difference between that.

And this is why if you want to argue, what's real and what's fake with client. That's an argument, data science cycles, that stuff that can be researched and argued both ways. This part about the Holocaust is that's fact it happened millions of people were involved, but people are trying to evil. People are trying to erase history because if you don't know history, you're bound to repeat it.

So that's why I'm like, if somebody wants to think the earth is flat around or whatever, if they want to think about climate change or not climate change, whatever. But if they're seeing that history did not happen and they're rewriting history, [01:03:00] there are terrorists and there are anti human. So that's why to me, it's like saying I bumped into somebody by accident and I stabbed them 37 times in the face.

See what I'm saying to me, that's like a huge difference. So I'm so thankful your husband made that movie. Yeah, he really did. And and, and, and I'll just, you know, and, and I agree with you that there are arguments and climate is really complicated and you can take a little bit and, and try to show up.

But frankly, look, if you really look at the history and you start looking at the millions of years of history in this, on this planet, right? Water has been like a thousand feet long. And the ice age, it was a thousand feet lower. I live on Martha's vineyard in the last ice age. Martha's vineyard was connected to the, on dry land to the mainland.[01:04:00]

That water is now a thousand feet deep. But water has also been higher. And when the, the dinosaurs were here 16, million years ago, when the dinosaurs were around water was all about all the water that was in the ice caps had melted, and it was hundreds of feet, higher, hundreds of feet higher.

And you imagine what will happen. And all those, when the, when the dinosaurs died, their bodies got buried under dust from literally 16 million years and they became compressed. And that is why we call it fossil fuels. Those are the fossils of dinosaurs. We are letting that was a natural form. God's way of carbon sequestration.

And we have spent the last two centuries, you know, [01:05:00] century and a half digging all that up and releasing it back into the air. Our, our water is expected to rise a foot in the next couple of decades, but it could go a lot. And I think this is very dangerous thinking to say, you can argue either way, because we are talking about people's lives.

And if water one foot is one thing, 30 feet, imagine how many people will die. If water is 30 feet higher, how much land we lose? It's I have to really think about, do we want to let that natural God-given carbon sequestration out of the ground anymore? And that that's a more issue to mention. Yeah. I had a guest, Tom Bowman on the podcast and that's his whole, his whole purpose is climate change.

And we didn't agree in [01:06:00] every aspect, but I'm like you, I think you need to be responsible and everything God gave you. And we need to be wise with the resources and like Tom and I discussed the data. He's going to interpret it differently than almond interpreted or you're going to interpret it. But the things we know are right.

And the things we know are true, we just got to do it. And we got to make sure that we're being just stewards. So obviously when people are like pouring, you know, like oil companies, it's a joke. They pour so many chemicals in the ocean every day and they get a slap on the wrist. Fine. It's like a dollar to them.

So it's like, there's still, there is still oil drilling. Do you know, we have, we have subsidies for Exxon and shell and mobile. All of those there's subsidized. Yeah. We'll have to get into that in another podcast episode. I want to get back to your story and I'm not [01:07:00] the, it's not that this isn't important.

It's just that it's so frustrating and we're not going to solve the world's problems. So let's encourage people with your story and going back to your husband, he sounds like he's a remarkable guy too. Cause those aren't like small, no name, low budget movies. Those are huge global hits. So let's start tying things up.

So climate change we're shelf that your husband, is he still actively making movies or is he not making movies anymore? What's it. And I'll get to that in a minute. So I will tell you, I was an English teacher. I was an English teacher and he's making some movies here and there. And then one day he comes to me and my my kids were just, I had one who was one in eighth grade and one in 10th grade.

And he said, Hey, I've got this movie in Australia. Why don't we take the kids out of school and go to Australia for six months?

I was like, all right. I mean, that just sounded like a great family adventure. We always wanted to do something and get our kids [01:08:00] that global view of life, you know, and what a great life experience that would be to go for a semester somewhere. So the school is great. My school said to me, if there is a job, when you come back, you can apply.

But I'd been teaching there for nine years and I thought I was fired, but I put my family first. Good for you. That's the right decision. I mean, if I have to get another job, I'll get another job, but I'm not getting another family and he's going, and he can't commute from Australia, so we're all going.

So we all went down there and I decided like, so Gary made sleepless in Seattle and Nora Ephron on that told me this great story. She said that when she was a little girl and her mom was in the hospital, having her baby sister for grandmother, took her out to lunch and she was kind of upset. Cause she kind of liked things the way they were.

She wasn't sure about [01:09:00] having another little sister around and the grandmother said, well, you know, if you're going to be a big sister, you should be the best big sister ever new can be that you can be the best you might as well be the best because it's going to happen. And that was for life philosophy.

Right? If you're going to be something you might as well be the best, try your very hardest to be the best. And Nora was like an excellent. She is like, all right, I'm going to this big sister thing. I'm going to kill it. So I kind of took that philosophy and I, I, I spun it to Australia because I hadn't been a stay at home mom ever.

And I didn't know what a stay at home mom. But I was like, I'm going to find out I'm going to be the best. Stay at home mom in Australia. Like I'm just going to be the best. And I go there and on the first day we go to the grocery store and I'm going to stock up. And because I know there's going to be hot breakfast.

That's part of being the best mom. Right. We got to [01:10:00] get food in the house and I get to the checkout stand and my, my jet lag is kicking in and we're all exhausted. And the checkout, the woman at the checkout stand says, would you like a bag? And I'm thinking that is the dumbest, like in my mind, my first thought is that is absurd.

Of course, I want a bag. How am I going to get out of this? But I remembered, I had pledged to be the best day at home mom. So I looked around before I said anything. I just looked around, what does she expect of me? And we talked about expectations and how powerful they are, you know, that social capital and expectations.

And the woman in front of me had all of her books, these packed into these kind of green bags that stood up and they look like canvas a little bit. And then the woman behind me had an armful of those bags. And I realized I was expected to say, [01:11:00] oh no, that's all right. I brought my own, but of course I didn't have my own.

Luckily I see a stack of these. For 99 cents Australian, which is 75 cents American. I'm like, okay, we can do that. Right. I said, oh, I'll take a few of these. So I grabbed a couple, what am on the belt? Put my groceries in these two bags. And they were lighter. If they were easier to carry, I didn't go back and forth from my house to the kitchen, from the car to the kitchen.

I just had everything in these two bags and it all came in a one trip and I thought, well, that's easy. And then I feel that my fridge and I realized I hadn't filled out my trash can. And I thought, well, that's good. I didn't need all that packaging and size all those bags because what are you going to do with them?

And some sites, you have to find a place to put all those bags. And hopefully we use some of them, but there's usually more than you can ever reuse. It was so wasteful. And I was like, no. So I stick the bags by the [01:12:00] front door. And when my kids came home from school, they said, oh, Hey, can I have one of these for my gym stuff?

And I'm like, yeah, you can have one. You know, they were 99 cents. So I got two more and I stuck to by the door a couple of days later, Gary says, Hey, can I have one of these for my scripts? Because he was carrying paper splits around before they were iPad, you know, PDFs. And I'm like, sure, you have as many as you want.

So we had six or eight of those and we loved Australia. It was fantastic. It was, we saw koala bears and kangaroos and wallabies. We made such good friends and the food was that we loved it, but when it came time to leave six months later, I said to Gary, the thing that I can't live without now are these bags.

And I started to think about, you know, why, why aren't we doing it? And I talked to a friend of mine. She goes, the, the government [01:13:00] made a whole push. And I discovered this a report that Australia had done its findings are widely accepted about what the impact of all those bags were. It was America was using a billion bags a day at the

2005, five. Okay. I just want to make sure we have a timeline spiel like me and you growing up, this wasn't even really a discussion and now you're in Australia and it's like literally changing your life. So that's why I just want to make sure we put a timeline in it. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember back in the eighties, you know, when I was a young mom and I was thinking, you know, these plastic bags came out and everyone said they were so bad for the environment, but they were so much better than the paper bags.

Cause they didn't rip. And if you're walking your groceries home and I was living in New York city then for a year and I'm like those plastic bags, a little lightsaber because it was bad weather and you had [01:14:00] to get your Postmates home. But then the sheer number of them was Mormons. And I started to learn what the impacts were, how many, like there was enough petroleum in 14 bags to drive your car a mile.

And we were taking on average 10 per person. So if you've got two people in your house, you've got enough plastic bag to drive it far a mile, and you're using them for 10 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, and then you're throwing it away. And it seemed like a terrible waste. Why were we taking all of our Portfolium and throwing it away like that?

If that's a precious resource, why are we throwing it away? A billion of them a day. So it did, it stopped making sense to me, all that waste and what we have to do, where we were doing $40 billion a year in cleanup costs the us alone, $40 [01:15:00] billion a year. And it's like, wait a minute. Who's paying that. Yeah.

And what does that include? Like when you say the cleanup cost, is that pick it up on the road, pulling a sewers, all of it. That w that's the estimated cost of pulling them off the beach, pulling them out of, they get jammed in recycling, you know, and, and with the money we spent trying to get them up off our roadsides.

Yes, about a third of them were estimated to escape trash collections. We're talking about a third of a billion bags every day into our environment. Now this was 2005. And I don't know if you remember, but I remember when I came back from Australia, I realized suddenly there were bags everywhere they were watching over.

You could just see them like walking over the roadways every single day, they were blue right up to my house. And I'm like, oh my gosh. They're like, they're [01:16:00] talking to me. Yeah. And yeah, no, I mean, you see them to this day, you'll be driving. They'll be flying up in a treeing and Conda branch and they're everywhere.

And let me ask you this a question. I want you to get through the story and hit the key points, but I'm immediately thinking, so when, when it's appropriate to answer this, please answer this. Cause I'm a guy. I go to the grocery store, I get 15 bags. I come back to my condo, unload, everything, put all the bags in one bag.

And then I use those a little trash cans around my house. Right. But I always, all of them. Do you use all of them dated? Like the honest, you're using 15 bags every single week. And how much stress do you have? Yeah. No, that's just, it I'm like, I will literally take the bags, put them in one bag, use them and then I don't buy trash bags.

That's how I operate because I'm a super, okay. I don't know. You're not explaining myself cause I'm not cheap. Like if we went out to. I mean, I'd buy dinner for everybody [01:17:00] and have fun and not think twice, but if I bought, but I'm not wasteful, but if I bought myself a burger at a fast food restaurant and I was by myself, I'd be pissed off at myself for spending $2.

Right. But so I always try to reuse stuff, but the thought that was always stuck in my head about plastic bags. Is it, does it, how does it dissolve at the dump or is it just in my locking? Everything in, so that's literally the question I want you to answer. I put trash in it. Disgusting stuff could be organic, could be non-organic.

And then I tie that back, shut thrown in the dumpster. The dumpster gets picked up at the trash. The trash is in a big pile. What happened? And then what happens then? And that's part of the cost of it. David, we are, we are we are landfilling billions of bags and everything else that we are throw away society, all those single use plastic, anything, plastic or [01:18:00] plastic, anything we are landfilling and we pay, it costs us a lot of money.

Our governments pick up that trash, put it in big pits. A landfill is just a big field. That's been hollowed out, filled with concrete. So it doesn't go back into our, into our land. And we're just maintaining those big ships. It takes a lot of manpower. It takes a lot of land. And that's part of the cost of it, besides just pulling them out of the roadway and they get stuck in everything.

And there's a lot that we don't get, even though we're trying to clean them up, we've got a third of them onto those, those trees and electrical wires and things like that. And they are, they break up into tiny, tiny pieces. The wind, the sun, the rain will break them up into tiny little bits into the gutter and wash them into the ocean.

[01:19:00] Just tiny bits. So if you put like, theoretically the ocean front swirl around in a big, it's like a big toll toilet bowl, but there's no flush. It's just swirling against the, the, the the shores of our continents, right? So theoretically, you put a rubber ducky, you know, in, in San Francisco, San Francisco or Santa Monica, right?

And let it swirl around would take 12 years for it to slow in smaller and smaller circles and get to the center of the ocean. Until we had blasted everything that fell into the ocean would biodegrade. And the center of the ocean was pristine. Everything had biodegraded before that thing, but with the advent of plastic, it does not, we don't know how many thousands of years it stays.

So what we get in the middle of our oceans, this is called the great Pacific garbage patch. We can read a lot about it, but the north Pacific dire. The Pacific is filled [01:20:00] with plastic, these tiny plastic bits, more or less sloshing around with water. Cause they're tiny. By the time they get there, they're broken down into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces.

We put collectively around the world, the equivalent of a dump trucks worth of plastic into our ocean every minute, three minutes. It's insane

globally. But the oceans belongs to everybody and scientists expect there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. Now can you and this isn't I seriously like when I think plastic, you burn plastic at reeks, right? How do you properly, let's say you just got this monster scoop. You scoop it all out now.

How do you [01:21:00] deal with it properly? You can't scoop because you was scoop out all the fish. You would leave a sterile ocean. You will destroy it by scooping it. I would just use that as an example, dump truck of trash. You have a dump truck of plastic. Can it be remelted and reuse? Is it just no good, well burn away or in the ozone?

Like I've heard people say if you burn stuff, you know, the. Actual fumes and the gasses will burn a hole in the ozone. So how do you properly even deal with this plaque? Yeah, we landfill it. That is the best way that that's our best choice is not a very good choice. The best thing, really the best thing is when you say reduce, reuse and recycle, it's a hierarchy, you should reduce your plastic.

You just shouldn't be using as much, right? If you think of a reusable bag, and this is what I got hooked on, right? This, that kind of waste just hit my moral center. [01:22:00] It was wrong. We should, I was ashamed of America blowing away. So many bags. Every day I had already done a plastics in 2002, Australia was getting rid of plastic bags without, without attacks in 2005.

Just by changing the question at checkout. If you came up with three things to a checkout stand, they would not offer you a bag and they would offer you a bag if you had more than three things, but they would say, would you like about that expectations rather than saying paper or plastic, the default was you should bring your own.

And that changing that question was really powerful. And that's another one of those things that I learned as an entrepreneur. When you change the question, sometimes you change everything. Sometimes you. You've been asking the wrong question, paper or plastic was the wrong question because paper [01:23:00] bags to four times the emissions of a plastic bag four times.

And then if they're recycled and we're trucking them around us, trucking costs, 80% of them were still ending up in landfill, even though they're recyclable, but people had to recycling them 80% and then we have to put them in. So if we want to keep making plastic and putting it in landfill, we're just going to have bigger and bigger landfill.

We have to pay for that. There's a cost to all of this. Every time you throw something away, there is no away. There's only here. Every piece of plastic that's ever been made that straw you use at your eighth grade birthday party. Yeah, it is somewhere. It is in a landfill or broken up into little bits on a gutter, somewhere washed into the ocean or somewhere in between.

It is here somewhere, all this plastic. So [01:24:00] I think we have to be mindful about our Bastic and use it. It's not a cheap thing that you throw away. It is a precious resource. It comes from our petroleum. These are precious resources. We should be reusing. Yeah. And I like that, you know, people listening to this podcast, some of her like.

Some people are like, oh, I'm absolutely doing everything I can to be adjust steward of the environment. There's other people. Like, I don't think it's a real issue. So there's people all over the board listening to this, don't forget what you know, I'm getting there. That's where I'm getting. It doesn't matter if you believe in climate change or not.

We're all God's creatures. And this is a planet he gave us. And whether it was around 60 million years or how I believe, 6,000 years, the fact is it's our planet. And if we have this planet, like just talking to you, you're saying things [01:25:00] and you're explaining the way that I've never thought of them. And there's no reason why I can't buy like 10 bags and bring them to the grocery store.

There's literally no reason. So when we're done talking, next time I go to the grocery store, buy and reusable bags, and then I'm going to keep reusing them. So, but then now I run to this next question is, okay. So do I buy plastic bags now for my big trash cans? Like, are, is there a better solution for that?

So like, if we were to be real practical, like, okay, I may not have the calling to change the world. In this area like you do, but I want to do my daily part. So for me and the listeners like me who want to do our daily part, what are some tips you have for us? Like, cause you, by paper, you said that's four times more emissions and you're killing trees.

We buy plastic, it lasts forever and it, it flies up and goes in the ocean. So what are the alternatives you suggest? So reusable bags are definitely the way to go. And if you think about what, you know, how to align your attach bag, think [01:26:00] about what's in your trash. How much are you throwing away? One of the statistics that also blew my mind at the time is me over produce our food, right?

We've produced a week, throw away a third of our food. Organic. I remember being in Italy, you have to try a recycle for organic, just the food waste. Then you have the paper, the new, the glass, they were fanatical. Like they went way too far with it, but they actually had organic. Exactly what you're saying.

Cause people wasted so much food that's if you think about like being stewards, right? God gives us, we have the amazing miracle of like you're going of sun and water and you get apples and vegetables and fruit and we take care of our animals. We get meat. And if you take care of them, humanely it's, this is a cycle we can all do.

Right. But why are we taking a third of [01:27:00] what is. And throwing it into a landfill, a landfill, right? Why aren't we putting a back that should, that is our organic waste. That is valuable. That is the earth, the soil. So instead of putting it back, composting it and giving ourselves rich, beautiful soil for the next round of, of growing season, right?

We're putting it in a landfill and then we're putting chemicals on our fields and this is not a sustainable, this is not the way the earth wants to be unique and have a planet that is it's supposed to be cycling. The thing, the tree doesn't want the leads every year, it goes down, that's the trees, boom.

The tree drops what it wants to eat. And it's been doing that for thousands of years without our help. [01:28:00] But when we interrupt that and take a third of it and start putting it into landfill, now we have to pay for that. And now we're producing things. We don't want it to be into, back into our environment.

And we're taking the things that we do want back in the environment and we're putting it into landfill and it just doesn't make sense except to go back in the earth. Anything that's. You should recognize it use as little as possible. It's toxin. This toxin let's use as little as possible and reuse it.

It's a precious resource to don't just throw it away and think, oh, it's gone. It's not gone. It's still here. And you're paying for it in your taxes. Yeah. And it's a whole other aspect we live being from outside of Boston, Milford, mass [01:29:00] recycling. There is a completely different picture than recycling and Pensacola, Florida.

And then a lot of people trust the government is taking what they're paying for in the counties and doing what they're told, but how many counties are completely lying and they're just taking the money and putting the same as your trash. Super frustrating. Super like to me, it just makes me furious. But again, that's another podcast.

I don't want to bring you off on a political topic, even though it's very important. So you go to Australia, you see this whole different mindset, like you said, it's just the way they phrase the questions that made you think as a consumer, take us from there to the story of your, the business. So I learned about the impacts and I came back at all, like to talk about was bad.

So, you know, people are like, how was Australia? Like reusable bags, reusable bags. It was like [01:30:00] crazy. They're like, well, what about koala bears? Yeah, they were really cute, but the reusable bags were like life-changing and and one day I kept saying, you know, America, we have to go reusable. We have to do it.

And a friend of mine to said, no up, we don't have to do anything. You are obsessed, you have to do something. And when she said that, I was like, it was just one of those moments where someone says something to you. That just feels true. Right. It just hits you. And you re I realized I had to do something. I really did have to do something.

So I started thinking about what, what I could do right now. I don't like asking people for money, so I wasn't going to do a nonprofit. And any way people couldn't go reusable if we didn't have reusable bags here. So I started a company to sell reusable bags. And basically my only expectation, I didn't know, I'd make any money, but I told my husband, I promised not to [01:31:00] lose any money or maybe not much.

And I promised, but I, I just, I wanted people to go reusable and and, and see how easy that wasn't their life, how their life was better and cleaner and less waste. And how good you could feel about that. Right. And 99 cent bag. I, I developed a story. I started with storytelling and I told this the tragic life of a plastic bag, you know, used to pretend minutes, discarded forever, breaking up into little bits, going into the ocean.

Those plastic bits are coming back on our plate that come back and our fish that come back in our food and we're eating them and it's affecting our health. Now. It's not just our wallets, it's our health. The microplastics it's, they are really very toxic. And and I just, I just realized, you know, I have to do a swipe, told that story, and then I told this [01:32:00] mythical new story of a new bag that makes zero waste for two years.

And now when you say all the story, now, when you say told the story, did you have commercials made? Was it just your dialogue and conversation? W where was this story being shared? So I started, I mean, I wasn't English teacher, so I literally started making cold calls on the faculty, on the parking, on the stairway, overlooking the faculty parking lot.

I would teach first, second and third period that I had a fourth period break and I'd go on the faculty staircase and I would cold call small stores across America. And I would tell the story of plastics. I would say I've got a new bag from from a new technological fabric. It makes no waste for two years and it cost 99 cents.

And I had for a cold calling list, I had more than half of people who [01:33:00] wanted a sample and the sample started turning into orders. I ordered bags. I found a fantastic supplier, which is a whole other story, but she was like one of my best, best friends. I started supplying bags from her. We just, it's just kind of a miracle that we found each other, but we were best friends and partners in, in business for many years.

And I was selling bags in very small amounts at first, but I hit a hockey stick curve. I just hit a moment. And it's that message of me there. And I went to expo west, which is the largest natural foods expo. And I just wandered around somebody sponsored a bag for me, a badge, so I could get in.

And I started talking and telling that story to everybody. And I did it at a pitch, a media pitch event. I got coverage. I S it just started [01:34:00] getting picked up on day three of that event. It was on the loudspeaker that attendings were allowed no more than seven plastic bags every day, because people were wandering around with 20.

They would get a plastic bag from every vendor getting samples. And then suddenly there was this huge opium is right there and it just started to spill out. So I just told anybody who would listen, I would call people up. I would talk to, but it was, it was really a tipping point. You know there was just, I hit a hockey stick curve.

I sold a quarter of a million bags that first year in business, I quit teaching. I sold 2 million bags my second year and I sold eight, nine beds my third year. And it was hanging on to your hat. I did have a website and people were calling me and I just wrote orders as fast [01:35:00] as I could write them for the first five years of my business.

And just tried to keep up and get good at logistics and good at delivering on my promises to my customers. And that's just how I saw it. I just sat there and delivered what I promised. That's incredible. And so you started the business in 2007. What year was that? 2005. And from 2005 to 2010, you were doing 8 million.

That is awesome and incredible. And for a business model, everybody dreams of that, right? It's a dream, but it kind of feels like a nightmare. Like first of all, you need to cashflow it. And that was a crazy moment. And There was just a lot going on. And

So when you had this huge growth in business, there's just as many, if not more businesses that go out of business from hypergrowth, as there are from business, we were struggling for customers. [01:36:00] How did you handle it? Going from a teacher, a wife and mother to now you're running a very successful in a high-end business.

Yeah, I mean, I'm really grateful that I had the technology, the technological tools, right. I was using spreadsheets to track everything. I was using QuickBooks to track the money. And I was, I, I did, I got to this point, I got to my two biggest. Purchase orders that first year I suddenly had one from Ralph's and one from vitamin cottage in Denver for a hundred thousand bags.

And I, and I was working really hard to process those when I pressed them and I placed them and then I realized I had to pay for them. And then they would arrive here. It took a while to get them to arrive in America. And then once I got it to my customer, I still had to wait 30 days. And I [01:37:00] was like, holy moly, what am I going to do?

Like, I don't have that kind of money to pay my supplier and wait for three months for that to come in. So I told Gary, I told my husband, I was like, we can, I said, I can go to the bank and take the, my purchase orders, or we can put our life savings in there. And and he said, let me think about it for a few days.

And honestly, like, I'm so grateful that he believed in me and ultimately he backed me and we did, and we put our life savings in there. And I said, when I get paid back, because he saw the purchase orders that I was getting from my clients and the purchase orders that I was sending to my supplier. And I said, I'm making money.

Right. You make with a product like that, you make that tiny bit on each one. But when it starts to be hundreds of thousands or millions of bags, it's, it's a pretty decent pizza, right? When a lot [01:38:00] of it went into, you know, the kind of having a company then, and having people truckers and warehouse workers, and it just kept taking bites out of it, but it all worked out fine.

I'm not a millionaire. Right. But I took my little slice of the pie, which is all I needed. And but I'm really lucky that he believed in me and he's always believed in me. And he said, just go for it. We'll do it. And the bank would have done it too. If I brought in my, that would have been legit and maybe it would have fueled my growth as an entrepreneur and kept me more grounded in, you know, doing the kind of reporting I should be doing.

But frankly, when you're going from like zero to 8 million bags in two or three years, you don't have time to do the reporting. Like, it's all like, just keep going. You've got a machine, you just have to feed the beast. And eventually it did take me two years before I ever, even though I [01:39:00] was, it wasn't until I was doing 8 million, we've got kind of plateaued that I could even take a salary.

I didn't even take a salary for those first four years. Everything that came in, went back into the business. I took nothing. Keep your head down a lot. Yeah. And people who've never experienced that. It's, it's hard to wrap their mind around. Yeah, but it's a real phenomenon. Like when you're running a business, that doesn't mean you're rich and successful.

There's so many small business owners who are the heartbeat and backbone of America. And yet they live a harder life than most people because they're killing themselves to do it. So yeah, everybody sees the end result, but the average overnight success, you know, if you're listening and not watching, I'm doing air quotes.

Right. But the average overnight success takes eight to 11 years. So there is no such thing as an overnight success. Maybe that one moment you get the check, but it took eight years to get there. So when you were doing this, you have a huge learning curve. [01:40:00] There's a lot of fear. I mean, you're, you're putting your life savings at risk because what if there was, yeah.

Cause again, to clarify these bags, were they branded to the customer specifications? Were they branded to your only so-so Lisa's telling us that she actually put the customer's logo on there or customer's message. That's what my first customer has all said to me. They said, if it's a bag, it's got our name.

Exactly. So when you think of reused. You can't reuse a bag at Wegmans that came from stop and shop. You know what I mean? People do all the time. People do all the time. No, no, no, no, not the consumer. I'm seeing, if you got a big order that was returned or there was something they weren't happy with. Like you did everything, right.

But your manufacturer let you down the quality wasn't there and you have a hundred thousand dollars return. That's a massive loss. That's just a straight up [01:41:00] loss. So you had pressure. It wasn't just, whew. Everything's great. Right. It was a lot of pressure. I mean, I, and that is a hundred percent where I put my focus for those first years and it was working with China.

Right. And it was the whole focus was about getting a quality product out of China. So we had a very strict protocol for checking an order came in from a customer. I got it. I sent it to my supplier, the supplier sensitive, a factory, the factory had to take a photo, which came back to my supplier to me, to the ultimate customers.

Is this what you order? Are you going to sign off on this? Nothing got run at a factory that a customer didn't okay. The prototype, right. It's in prototype everything. And that took a lot of time, but that was our quality control. And that was super, super important. [01:42:00] I worked really hard. It took us a year or really almost two years to lock down a system to make sure we were getting a consistent color.

Because if you say, okay, it's a Navy blue bag. Well, there's a range of maybe blue, right? There's lighter and darker. And we had to lock down, this is what maybe B, and this is what green is. And they were, you know, we carried maybe 20 colors or twenty-five colors, but every time it came in, it was exactly the same color because we locked down those color formulas.

So quality consultant. I went to my supplier and I always said to her in China, I said, whatever is bad for you is bad for me. I want you to be paying your workers fairly because quality is number one. So your people have to have enough to give me the kind of quality that I need to deliver because David you're exactly right.

If I [01:43:00] deliver a bunch of garbage to my clients and they say, sorry, we're not taking it. That's a huge pit. That's a huge hit. We can't do that. Right. You have to run a tight ship. Grocery bags are one of those things. You just make a few pennies per bag is, is the profit, right? So there's not a lot of margin for error.

We really locked down quality control and I worked very hard and I would. The moral thing, you know, I started it from a moral center and I really want to make sure that I was doing the right thing by the people in China too. And I had monitoring and had really good monitoring by verite and they would interview the workers in China and in the factory, but they would also talk to them on their way, home, away from the factory when they were more likely to to divulge any abuses.

And I found out [01:44:00] at first that they were not being paid properly. They weren't being paid overtime. They weren't always getting paid for what they did. So I worked with them and the factory owners, they're, they're just they're entrepreneurs too. They're just trying to figure things out on their own. So we had to hold them to account and I paid for accounting services to go in there and teach them how to do correct books and pay their workers fairly.

And that worked really well for them. But at one point, so I did, and that was a couple of years. And then I was going to get like a great, you know, a report that just showed that they were being paid. Barely the safety measures were there. It was clean and safe in that factory. And I got the report and it said there was an underage worker and I was four or five because you know, child labor was, I know.

Tolerance policy than me, right. [01:45:00] Category. And I call my supplier and she go, wow. You know, we do have a worker she's a little bit young, but she's living her sister and her mom, they just came out of the country side and she has her sister's face. And I was like, that made no sense to me. She has her sister's Facebook you're talking about.

And I called the, the, the, the person who was at verite, who, who did the report. And she said, yeah, here's what happened. This family came out of the country side. The legal age for finishing school is 16, but the legal age to work, it's 17. So there's this little gap year. And this is a mom who came out of the country.

I keep saying that because she was probably there's a one child. There was one child rule there in China. And a woman with two daughters was not producing an heir. And she probably had the [01:46:00] second child trying to produce a male heir. And she was probably not treated very well. And sometimes it was a second wife or a third wife until somebody does produce an heir.

And the one who's not producing errors or boys is not treated very well. And she left. As soon as that second daughter was finished with school and she was bringing her daughter. So the city, they wouldn't have to rely on a rural Lords places that they're living anymore. She was teaching her daughter skills and bringing them up into the middle class, but those are middle-class jobs and they would be able to make their own living those bulls, but they were sharing one set of papers because you can only get one set of papers per mom.

So if there were two kids, they were sharing, that's why she kept saying she has her sister's face. And the factory offered to fire him and give me the report that I wanted. And I was like, [01:47:00] you can't fire her. What is she gonna do? Is she, she's not going to send home like she has to work. And what is the mom going to do with the 16 year old?

And she has to go to work, like, how is that going to work? And this was really the hardest decision I ever made in business in my life because I had put a lot of money, get trying to get a clean report. And it was, it seemed to me to cool the fire, her, she didn't exist legally for no fault of her own and she didn't deserve to be fired.

It's not her fault. So we found out when her birthday was, and I said, all right, I'm going to get a report the next day after her birthday. And we let it, it felt to me like it was better for me to take that hit and pay for another wait and pay for another report because the quality. You know, this gets back to what you were talking about.

Quality. It comes from treating people with respect and treating people right. [01:48:00] And paying them. Right. And I was always insistent. We treat everybody, everybody along that supply chain, we treat them right. And we treat them with respect and they have a right to their minimum wage. And I was really, really worked hard to deliver on my promise for my supply chain.

And I, I, all those times when I was producing, you know, eight selling eight, nine bags a year, it's not about me. It's about all those workers. You know, I was feeding a lot of families in China. I was feeding a lot of families in America. We had truckers, we had warehouse people. We had people in my office.

This was a machine that was driving the economy. Right. We were, I was doing my part for the economy. And I got my little piece of the pie and that was fine. I was happy to do that, but, and I did do well. I did. [01:49:00] I told Gary when I started, I, I hope to double my teacher salary and actually by the end of it, I, I had tripled my teacher's salary.

Oh, but you, you, you made more money doing what's right. And helping the world. So that's, I mean, you can't ask for much more than that. Right? I did right by my family. I did. Right. By the way. That's awesome. Now, so let's do this between your birth and between where you are today. Is there anything we've missed that you want to cover?

Any key points, any messages, any kind of encouragement for our audience between there and today before we get into today to where you're headed in the future? I th I think that's it. I think we got it. You know, being guided by your heart listening to yourself, believing in yourself tell your own story and control of your story.

I [01:50:00] think we really did it. Awesome. Then let's talk about where's Lisa today. Where are you today and where are you heading? How can we help you get there? Well, I over the winter of COVID, I hunkered down and I told my story formally, and I've written a book and it's being published. So my book comes out, it's called bad lady.

That's the title. And the subtitle is how I started a business for a greener world and changed the way America shops. It's coming out on April 22nd. And writing my story again, it was just a really great way of owning the arc of my own story and looking where I was. And I tell some stories, a lot of stuff about business in there and my business mistakes, and I made a lot of them.

And I'm, I'm just as honest [01:51:00] about my mistakes, because that's how I learned. Right? Some people think that if you, if you admit a mistake, you're weak. But actually when you're admitting a mistake, you're actually stronger when you say, okay, I made that mistake and now learning, right. That's a strength.

So I tell my story, I tell my business mistakes, what I did, right. What I did wrong. And I'm really excited to have this come out into the world when I sold my business. I did have, I sold my business in 2017. I just felt like I was done. Like I had done what I needed to do. And I launched as a business coach and I really lean into emotional intelligence, which is really a fancy way of being people centered, driven by purpose, driven by your heart.

And I think that that's, that was really the secret to [01:52:00] what drove me to success was that I always look inward to my heart. Is this the right thing to do? Being driven by my heart and being driven by my purpose of reducing waste. And those things really guided me. So I tell my story and yeah, take a look at my stories.

It's going to be, it should be on preview by the time this comes out. I would, well, I don't know. It should be on preview on pre-order on Amazon. By March 1st, it's not even on Amazon yet. This is all really new, but it's coming out for earth day. So we've got it on the fast track. I'm really excited to share it for people who are concerned about the earth, learn about, you know, bags and learn what I did in business.

And if you want to be the kind of person who, if you want some inspiration for how you can make a difference in your world and start a business to make your world better. [01:53:00] My book helps you find a blueprint for how to think like that, how to move forward, how to believe in yourself and believe in your mission and write a mission statement and stay true to it.

And yeah, we can all change the world. Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to getting a copy myself and renewed. I'm excited. The bag lady or bag lady or the bag lady.

Bag lady. And then we'll probably release this episode before then, but we'll also put a link in the show notes. So when it comes out, we'll put that Amazon link in there. So if you're listening to this two years from now, just check out the show notes as always click on the link. You got it. Well, Lisa, it's been a true honor and pleasure.

You truly are a remarkable woman. Is there anything else we haven't covered that we want to, you want to cover today? Any last thoughts for our listeners? You want to leave with them? I think we've covered [01:54:00] most of everything I've learned. There's so many good lessons in my book, but I'm so thankful David, that, you know, you've taken the time today to listen to those, those little moments in my life that have put me on the right path.

And and just listening to myself and listening to you. And I'm just want to connect with, you know, people like you who see the pathway and, you know, understand that we're all individuals we have to believe in ourselves and and, and go from there. So lift other people up with everybody. Yeah.

And I mean, it, I mean, it totally sincerely after this conversation, next time at the store, I'm going to go or actually, maybe that's a suggestion. I'm going to go buy reusable backs. Boom. Done. Way I can help. Are [01:55:00] all bags treated equal? Do you have a website still? Where I know you said you sold your company, but where should I be looking?

Cause one of my things is I don't want to pay, even if it's a buck or two bucks, I don't want to buy in the bag falls apart. So I'm buying a piece of trash that goes in the trash, right? Where's a good place to buy a, I agree. So my my bat, my company was called one bag at a time. And the guy who bought my company still sells bags to ACE hardware and true value of hardware.

So you can get a one bag at a time bag that I I've had people call me or write me after six or eight years saying my, my 99 cent bag after six or eight years has finally fallen apart. And I'm going to go get another one. So a really quality bag go to ASR, go to true value. Those are nationwide. He's got other the co-op they'll.

He also does a lot of pull-ups. So go to your local co-op and find one bag at a time bags. They're really great [01:56:00] quality for a buck. It's a really nice bag and we really do care about the quality and work to make it work for our ultimate customers and people like you and people like your listeners and go out and get a couple of beds.

And you'll see, you know, interesting. You know, you said you use all those bags, all this trash, the bags are the trash, right? If you start to think about the packaging. And just reduce your packaging. You could probably, without trying very hard, reduce your trash by him. You want the stuff inside the packaging, just leave the packaging.

You don't need the bag. The bag is just pressed, right? So if you think of it that way, get what you want. Don't get the packaging don't want. And you'll find that there's just less to throw away. And that's a kind of world for everyone. Yeah. And it [01:57:00] all really legitimately does add up. I mean, a couple bags here, a couple bags there it's like money.

You don't look at your bank account and your checking and see like all these huge purchases that drained it. I mean, it's not huge purchases, everyday little things. It's all the times you're eating out. All that little stuff adds up. So likewise bags, oh, there we go. We just, one little change in our life.

Not a big deal, but it can make a big impact. So thank you so much, Lisa. I appreciate your time. I look forward to continuing the relationship and your husband's a whole other story, but I had no idea your husband had those blockbuster movies under his belt. That's crazy exciting. Cause my, the new one coming out called finest kind one word finest time.

So look for that next ball. That's his new one. It's an amazing, amazing story. So. It's not, but it's inspired by it's written by Brian [01:58:00] Helgeland. Who's an Oscar winning writer who wrote LA confidential and mystic river and abundant, according to a bunch of great, amazing. And this really is inspired by his own life, coming out of a fishing community in Bedford, scallop fishing community and becoming the person his he was the first person in his family to go to college.

And he's become an amazing writer, but this movie really pays homage to the light of those, the people who work hard and bring us our food every day out of the ocean and onto our plates. And it's it's a crime thriller. There's a lot of excitement going on, but at the heart of it is the relationship between a father and a son.

And I get teary thinking about the story. It's a pretty amazing story. So finest kind of look for that on your screen next [01:59:00] should be out in November, December, and he's still out there making great films. I just, you know, I have so much appreciation for him and his support for me and he's, he's always been rock solid.

So That's fantastic. I'm so happy for you. And I'm thankful that you shared your time with us today. So for our community, if you want to reach out to Lisa, check out the show notes, we put her contact info in there. If you want to get a high quality reusable bag, one bag at a time ACE value or true value in north America.

Great places to go. But other than that, thank you again, Lisa, for being on the show. If you need anything, please reach out to us as a community, but for our community members, call Lisa, contact her, keep the dialogue going and let's just do what we can to be just stewards of the world. God gave us.

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much, David. Thank you. All right. Have a great day. And to our listeners, remember our [02:00:00] slogan is listen, do repeat for life. So don't just listen to this great information. Lisa gave you do it repeated each day. She can have a great life in this world in attorney com. I'm Dave Pasch alone.

This is a remarkable podcast. Thanks and see you next week. Ciao.