Work Besties Who Podcast
Benefits of having a workplace bestie:
From collaboration, support, productivity, and friendly competition, to laughter... these are just a few values of having close working friendships.
As we talk to people from different industries, we'll learn about the different types of friendships and the value they bring, all within the span of a workday."
Work Besties:-)
Work Besties Who Podcast
Plum and Sage...
What if one chance meeting changes your life?
In this episode, Kristina and Mary-Kate, the visionary co-founders of Plum and Sage, recount how these two work besties turned their serendipitous meeting on a work project into a powerful business partnership dedicated to uplifting women over 45. Listen as Claude & Jess, the hosts of work besties who podcast, delve into the significance of building authentic connections and support systems both in the workplace and personal life.
You’ll hear fascinating personal stories as Kristina and Mary-Kate discuss the lack of accessible, evidence-based information on menopause and how their friendship helped bridge that gap. They share their mission to provide dialogue starters that facilitate open conversations with friends, healthcare providers, and family members. Through anecdotes and practical advice, they highlight the importance of breaking down societal stigmas and fostering multi-generational understanding about this life-changing phase. They also offer a candid glimpse into their vision for Plum and Sage as a trusted source of advice and community support, emphasizing the importance of genuine engagement and ethical standards. With patience, intuition, and perseverance, discover how their creative ideas transformed into a thriving, supportive community for women reclaiming their vibrancy and independence.
Learn more about Plum & Sage - a movement to validate and elevate the visibility and voices of women over 45
IG - plum.and.sage
TikTok - @plum.and.sage
LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/plum-sage
Plum and Sage – Plum & Sage
Learn more about The Brauds Network - founded with simple focus: EMPOWERING and MOBILIZING women. With a focus on PEOPLE, PURPOSE and PASSION towards the success and bliss zone in life.
IG - @thebrauds
thebrauds.com
Learn more about Joanna Burish -
https://www.custerburishfinancialservices.com/team/joanna-burish
Learn more about Dr. Sheryl Spitzer-Resnick - Finding a New Way Forward
A New Way Forward (ssrmd.com)
You can watch the full episode on Youtube
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Please rate, comment and provide suggestions for upcoming episodes
Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband
Hi everyone. It's Jess and Claude. Today's episode. We are very excited to introduce two great ladies that actually were a connection from one of my work besties, carrie, so you can see that the movement is there. You know work besties helping each other. It was very interesting to see how they became friends.
Speaker 3:Jess, they were not typical work besties, right this is one of the very first that we've touched on where the relationship of work besties came about in a very different way. Instead of it being at the workplace, first it was interaction. When they were not at the same place, they worked on a project together and then from that they had this like kismet connection that brought them to come up with the idea of creating a company and working together and becoming work besties yeah, and it's also a bit like carrie right where you have while carrie was with her work, besties and her and her partner built this company, comfy Boobs.
Speaker 1:Here is the same. They have this relationship and they decided to actually build this movement.
Speaker 3:And I think it's a great example of how always be open, no matter what work projects you're working on, what kind of situations or interactions you have because you just never know when they could lead to greater things. So with that, we'll let you hear from them themselves.
Speaker 1:Work besties? I don't see it.
Speaker 3:Hello everybody. Per usual, claude is always starting with a little bit of a joke Didn't see stuff. But we're really excited today because we have some individuals on with us that have started their own company. I want to call it actually a movement. It's a company, but it's a movement as well, and I'm not going to give it away because even the name has a meaning behind it. So I'm going to let the two of them introduce themselves, but, christina, I'll let you kick it off.
Speaker 4:Oh, thank you so much. It's so nice to be here with you guys. I really listened to all. I listened to all of your podcasts and I just laughed and cried and I felt I felt like I knew you before we met. So this is just a treat. So, yes, I am Christina and I am one of the co-founders of Plum and Sage, and I also serve as our media director.
Speaker 3:Kate, do you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Sure. Again, thanks for having us here. We're psyched to be here. We've been talking about how excited we are for a while now, so thank you. I am also a co-founder of Flum and Sage with Christina. We have some other co-founders as well who aren't here today. We can chat about that. We love them, and I am a, by training and by profession, a dietician, and so I do a lot of our health and wellness content.
Speaker 3:Okay, the name is Flum and Sage. I'm kind of the background. Yes the origins are the name.
Speaker 4:So maybe I don't know if you want to kick off with that Wonderful. Thank you for asking that question. Yeah, if you saw the Instagram video you probably heard us talk about we had come up with some other great names that just didn't test. Well, I had. I was really gung ho for the one called. Did you see? There was a post that I did, that we did, where I talked about shedding the shoulds, all of the things we should do. So I thought a great name for a business would be the she shed like the shed collective or shed the should. And that one just everyone was like that sounds terrible People. One of the one of the girls was like shed the should.
Speaker 4:That sounds like you're going to take me out back and, you know, hit me or something. And then the gorgeous gray I loved, but everyone thought it was wonderful, yeah. And then what was the other one? The gorgeous gray I loved, but everyone thought it was hard to find. And then the crone collective, which I again thought it was so wonderful, but it had all these negative connotations.
Speaker 2:And so we ran over it for months and months and months and we finally settled on what Mary-Kate Plum and Sage and all of these names that you just mentioned will have a little more context once you know, once you hear what Pl and sage actually means.
Speaker 1:So how did you get that name? Then plum and sage, Like what are the meanings?
Speaker 2:It's not a juice company and it's not an interior design company, which is what most people ask me about. That's what I hear people say plum and sage. So plum is to represent the juiciness and the ripeness that we still have. The movement, the organization, the company that we're building is to elevate the visibility and support women over the age of 45, give or take there's a little margin of error in there Somebody who is outside of that baby mummy phase, not fully into considering themselves senior citizen, right in that perimenopause, into menopause, really into menopause phase. And there isn't a lot out there to support us and make sure that we have that our voices are really, really heard. So the plumness of our company is to represent that sweetness and the vitality and the. Even if we're not fecund, we're very, we're fruitful and we still have a lot to offer.
Speaker 4:And mary kate, also, I love the way you said um, it's also just a fun word to say. I remember when I like plum plum, plum. P is a nice, p is a nice letter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, christina, you, you do the sage oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 4:and then to counter that, the yin, the, the sage, because despite the brain fog and the memory lapses, we are a lot smarter than we were just a few years ago and definitely a lot wiser than we were a few decades ago. So the fresh and the wise, the sweet and the savory, and we're silly and smart, we're all these contradictions, we are not just one thing. So plum and sage is our answer to the questions we all have about this unique stage in life. We recommend products and resources, but that's the name.
Speaker 1:That is great. It's so funny because sage now it really. It's a double meaning which I love right Sage as being wise and sage as being fresh being fresh is like you're still vital. I love it.
Speaker 3:There's still so much to learn, because I think one of the things that I found so empowering about your message and your kind of core focus is, to your point, we are at a cradle. I'm I'm in that age range, but I am, and I'm in a plum. I'm wise enough to know better. I'm a plum, I'm wise enough to know better. But then at the same time, we're going through things in life that there isn't a lot of places to go to and hear about or people aren't really talking about. Like the very first thing you hit on is perimenopause.
Speaker 3:There, is not a lot out there I mean, not even a lot of doctors know about it. So that's so critical and such an important area of focus for women in that evolution of their life to really have another avenue or place to go to, because there is kind of like this black hole of where do you go, how do you find out about it?
Speaker 4:Right, right. A lot of people have a lot of questions. I mean we were just iterating on this and going gosh. I wish this. I wish that I wish someone had told me this and you just hit on exactly where we were. Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I like also is that we are plumb. You know, we still have a lot to give. We are funny. We still have a lot to give and to learn as well. So I mean, if you look at the media for them, we are not even in the bracket anymore. Right, we were just.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm only laughing because Claude and I were just giggling about that, or we were like we're, you know, we're trying to make a name for ourselves, and so are you guys and you're doing a great job. And as we continue to move in our little sphere and make a name for ourselves, we're like good for us for doing this, because people seem to think that our age doesn't care, and it's so.
Speaker 3:Not true, we're probably the ones seeking the most for information and for like-minded individuals to kind of help navigate through some of that. So I think this is like such ripe, to use a great word right time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we have the many of us have. Uh, and everything is relative. We have financial resources a little bit more than we had when we were in our 20s and 30s. We can take care of ourselves a little bit better. We may not always have the time that we have we're a little bit younger but that's.
Speaker 3:That's exactly why a resource like yours is so critical because we don't have the time to research all these things, but we need a great advocate to help us cut through the weights.
Speaker 2:one of the big, our big things is serve as a big sister. Oh, I love that yeah.
Speaker 3:So let me ask you before we go into some other topics, because I did have some questions on some of the other things you guys focus on. I loved your questions, your FAQ section, but before I get to that so you did say there's four of you what was the ethos that got the four of you together? Like, what started this? What is all that? Tell us that story?
Speaker 2:We weren't working together and became besties. We met very randomly. Christina, fill in the gaps, I'll start it. You fill in the gaps.
Speaker 4:Sure, sure, I'll hop in if I feel like something.
Speaker 2:Okay, I live on the East Coast, I live in the Boston area, christina's in the Midwest. So we're not, we're not, and to this day we still don't live in the same state or even same region of the country. I had a work project that took me to the Midwest and Christina was involved in that project. It was serendipity. There was no, no, there was. There was a middle friend of ours who kind of hooked us up, but we. The first time I met Christina was when she picked me up at the airport without having to. She just said you know what I'm around and I have some time to kill. I'll just go get this girl out of the kindness of her heart, just zipped over to the airport like it was nothing, it was quite far, and she, that is so sweet. This is something of Christina too.
Speaker 2:She's giving giving, giving, giving but we got on Christina like a house on fire. So for me like the second that we met, we did a great job with this project. We wrapped it up. We did patting ourselves on the back that. The second that we met we were like blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 4:A friendship. And you know, you've had these moments where you meet somebody and you're just like have I known you in another life? What is this? What did Anne of Green Gables, a kindred spirit, she was just so warm and loving and smart as all get out and I just, I just loved her instantly. Anyway, so we formed this friendship, a cross country friendship, which of course contained its fair share of, you know, celebrating the work we had. This friendship, a cross-country friendship which of course contained its fair share of celebrating the work we had just done.
Speaker 4:The project went really well, but then we had our share of bitching about our reproductive health and aging and perimenopause and good old menopause. I was in the thick of it the hot flashes, the night sweats, all of it. And how there wasn't any. I knew she was a dietician, so I was turning to her like, well, here's what I'm eating, I'm eating, right. I was turning to her for guidance, but there just wasn't. A couple of years ago this has changed since then but there just wasn't any good content out there for us.
Speaker 2:Right, right, like accessible relatable, like silly silly, but also like sure to be accurate and evidence-based and not hyperbolic and not salesy, like not using buzzwords to sell like a bottle of paint.
Speaker 3:No, I totally agree with that, because I think, even in today's time, you have to be careful, right, because you can.
Speaker 3:there's so many articles out there that you're reading and you get tricked into like thinking it's unbiased and then all of a sudden you're like wait, it's really pushing something. So I do think even today's times is needed. But I agree with you like, yeah, like even just a couple years ago there was like nothing like you really had to do the research on your own, or like christina did find somebody like you, mary kate, to like latch on to who has knowledge and there was a level.
Speaker 4:there was this level of public discourse like when you're pregnant you get that baby shower and a moderate pampering, but but when menopause starts and it rages and then it wanes, there's just this sort of there was this grin and bear attitude and we're like no, no, like like as if you weren't vital anymore, when it's still like a very important part of your life.
Speaker 3:I saw there was some stat that I saw recently. My background is market research, so I have a lot of weird stats, sorry. Research, so I have a lot of weird stats, sorry. But one of them was that 60% of a woman's life is in some form of menopause, where it's perimenopause or not, like you are constantly dealing with some element of it, whether or not you know it. Definitely a lot of misnomer is out there that really need to be educated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and at the same time, I don't think that you're being told in advance what is waiting for you. So you know all those rages or whatever. You know people. You think, okay, I'm going crazy. Right, all those different symptoms say, okay, something is wrong with me, not just knowing that it's part of you. Know, like nature doing their course. You know, you don't even know until it happens, and then you start talking to your friends or your workmates.
Speaker 2:Not only knowing what's coming, but knowing that there are strategies, prescriptions, lifestyle changes, there are things that you can do to not stop it but really seem to manage in a way that our moms didn't get a chance to do right and then you want to.
Speaker 1:You know how like all businesses start.
Speaker 4:So we saw this need. We were passionate about it. Hours and hours of conversation, and then we brought in two more of our friends. So we have a psychologist, a clinical psychologist, Dr Jill, and a writer, brilliant writer, creative. And here we are. We're four women with just vastly different life stories and we're across almost three decades but a really familiar, familiar midlife experiences. And we got together and we founded Plum and oh, I love it that's and that was about two years.
Speaker 3:So you guys start this company. What was your main focus when you first start and we're still figuring it out.
Speaker 2:We'll probably be figuring it out, um, even when we're like billionaires, um, but the I just had that to claude earlier today.
Speaker 3:She was like do you think we're on the right track? I'm like I don. I don't know, it's for billionaires. We'll figure that part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was and is. Our goal right now is to make sure that we are giving individuals dialogue starters, whether it be with their pals or with their healthcare provider, or even with their partner, who may not be going through the same thing because they're a different age or they're a different sex.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:I love that Dialogues and community, just to break down some of those barriers and get rid of stigmas and say, here are the questions we had. Talk to your mom. I mean, there were so many things. This project prompted me to talk to my mom about things I never thought to ask. And she's just been. She's also a dietitian, she's retired, long retired, but still has this wealth of knowledge on a clinical level and telling me this is what happened to me at this age, this is what happened to me. Oh, I could have told you that that's exactly when that happened to me.
Speaker 3:And I would never have asked. I mean, it sounds so simple, but you're right. Of course your mom would know, but it's something but it's one of those topics that you don't necessarily think to like, you go to your parents.
Speaker 1:Because you don't know.
Speaker 3:You know this is a funny one.
Speaker 4:We're hoping to shift it so that it is as commonplace as talking about all the when you get pregnant. Oh, when I was pregnant, this, this is my this and you hear everybody's first story, everybody's labor story. I got pregnant on my honeymoon. I, um, I went off the pill right before I got married and then I was just completely in shock because Oprah had said it would take, you know, nine months, nine months to a year. But I was pregnant a month after my money, my honeymoon, and I crying to my mom. I love that. You're like guideposts.
Speaker 3:I know, I know.
Speaker 4:My favorite scientific journal, oprah Magazine. But she, yeah, she said give it a year. And then I went to my mom. I was crying. Of course I wanted to have a baby, I was so excited. But I didn't even have a chance to get to know my husband and all of a sudden this happened. I didn't even have a chance to get to know my husband and all of a sudden this happened and my mom said when I called her, she said I could have told you, for women in our family it's easier than falling off a turnip truck. But I didn't even ask. You know, I didn't, I didn't ask. And now I know, and almost every one of those milestones we had our period the same time, our pregnancies were the same our miscarriages, you know, our everything has been pretty parallel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, so that's super interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 2:you know it's really cool. We've just been looking back at our moms, but we can also, should we have them? Um, look at our daughters, our nieces, you know, the younger women in our lives, and not be where the information stops right. Keep it going. We are filling our bucket and now we can spill it over to the kids under us okay, I want to correct my fact it was 40 of your life.
Speaker 3:okay, I found it 40 of your life. You will be in some form of menopause. Um, and then this is even more interesting 85 of women navigating menopause will experience some sort of significant symptom that they're not even aware is related to their menopause. So, like, right to your point, having these conversations and just making it feel like it's an okay conversation to have is so critical, because these there's a lot of women who aren't even thinking to ask, like recently I remember one of my friends came to me and she was like my right hip has been killing me and I was like, oh, have you been running more often? She's like I haven't exercised in like 20 years. So I was like not to be, like we better be going to the doctor, are you going through this? And it turns out it was literally related to her perimenopause. So it's some things that you just don't even think would have any correlation or connect and the you.
Speaker 4:I'm so glad that you said that. So, my former boss, we were not friends when we worked together and this is so interesting in the context of conversations about friendships at work and when I resigned from that position, I gave my notice and she said, oh good, now we can be friends. And I said I thought we were friends. She said no, I'm not. I'm not friends. I'm not friends with the people that work under me. But we have since become very good friends.
Speaker 4:And then fast forward to about two years ago when she started having she has a very high power job in public television I won't mention her name because she'd kill me, but she was showing up to major, major media events and forgetting people's names and she said I don't know what's going on and this and this. And I said you got to call Dr Spitzer-Resnick. So I had been interviewing Cheryl Spitzer-Resnick, this board certified menopause specialist in Madison, guiding us to start this website. My former boss gets an appointment right away to go in. Only because I had the experience of this project and doing research for this project did I have the language to say go see this person.
Speaker 4:Interestingly enough, dr Spitzer-Resnick had started a Harvard trained physician. I hope we can put her link in your bio because she has some really great articles. She had started having these symptoms at 37 and had a male provider who said something like do this, grin and bear this, and she ended up having a hysterectomy at 37 to get rid of all these symptoms which she now knows could have been managed with hormone replacement therapy. So her whole career, her whole second chapter, which is right where we are, the plum and sage right, what you did before and what you do after was because of that bad experience. So, fortunately, because of wise women like Sage, women like her and my wonderful former boss and Mary Kate and people like you guys getting the word out, this is becoming less and less a factor, because we have the script, we have the language to go and articulate to our providers. I don't think I'm crazy. This, I've heard, is a symptom. This is typical, yeah.
Speaker 3:I love that and I think the one thing I would double down on on that is if you do go see a healthcare provider and you're still not like and they don't think about that or even bring that up as a possibility.
Speaker 3:I would challenge too. Yeah, because the other fun facts I've learned over the years, too recently, is that a lot of doctors don't get knowledge on this. It's apparently one hour course of their whole curriculum is covered in this. So I do feel like, like, unless there's somebody like you, mary Kate, who's got like more of a concentration and no understanding, like there's so many doctors out there that just don't know how much I've had to learn it yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had to learn it on my own. It was not part of my curriculum. I am a teacher. Now it's at a college. It's not like in my curriculum to my students either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not, it's a missing link. So then how do you, you know, put the words out? You know you have a great website. Do you do any speeches like how do you get you know this?
Speaker 4:movement. There are four of us, obviously, but mary, kate and I are kind of the faces. We sort of just fell into this because we are less. We don't love it, but we are less camera phobic than the other two who are more content to do the research and write and stay behind the scenes. So Mary-Kate and I are like we've never done this before. Let's just do it, let's just see what sticks.
Speaker 4:We have this fabulous young 20, how old is Madeline? 23. She's just young and energetic. She's like you should try this. Just set the camera going and then I'll edit it. You just talk and I'll put it together. So for the first few times we were like oh God, this is like, this is so painful. And now we just like you saw the one at the pool last week where we're just talking and she's like let's just do that, just put it out there. So yeah, the biggest hurdle has been getting over that like we don't want it, we have to have it perfect before we put it out there. Um, when we don't. We just want to have a conversation.
Speaker 3:We want repeatable, memorable, relatable nuggets that people can kind of take greediness, and the thing that I love the most about your posts is it does feel a little raw. It doesn't feel, it just feels like I'm sitting there in the pool area or the living room or wherever you guys happen to be, and just like an observer.
Speaker 1:It's like you become part of the circle right. So it's like you're talking to, like you said earlier, Christina, like your big sister. Yes, you know, and you're there and it's very authentic and that's what people love.
Speaker 4:Well, you guys have that as well. I mean, there's nothing, no artifice, no nothing. It's just real and organic and flows.
Speaker 3:So beautiful to watch and to hear which is how best friends or sisters or just good friends in general work and operate right. Like you made a comment, christina, when you and Mary Kate met it was just like kismet, it was like you guys were almost soulmates, like you could just pick up and I feel like a lot of um, our kind of backing. What we've been trying to help support in the work environment is work. Besties are that for you. It's not just, I'd say, your support system, but it's that person that you can go to and you might not talk to them for a day, a week, a month, but you pick up right away, right um, and you feel comfortable doing it and it's not something you can force.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's kind of there it's not and you can still be friendly and friends with people you work with and people you engage with all over the place. Um, but like you know right away whether it's going to be a click and a good way, like a good solid, like oh you're, like, you're my kind of weird, like this is gonna work totally.
Speaker 1:I like to you know, for me there are like three categories in the workplace is like your co-worker, your friendly co-worker and then your work bestie, which all are needed. But you know you're not going to have the same relationship with the three of them. Right, one, yes, yes, is going to be the support and the venting and everything the others is like you know, let's have a coffee or lunch together.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, that's it right and we and mary kate said something the other day when we were talking and fill in here, mary kate, if I miss it but we don't want to just talk about the hard stuff. I'm glad that we're breaking down barriers with colon health and dryness and hot flashes and stuff. We want just talk about the hard stuff. I'm glad that we're breaking down barriers with colon health and dryness and hot flashes and stuff. We want to talk about the fun stuff too, like the sexy stuff and the embarrassing stuff. But this is a. This is a big change. It's a really big change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, oh and to add to that, it's not just we're talking a lot about the physical changes and some of the emotional, foggy kind of forgetfully changes, but then there are also the changes, um, that that don't maybe happen in the workplace. They affect you but, like when you're taking care of your parents or you're taking care of your in-laws, plus, you still have to get your kids. If you have children at home or have have reproduced, you have other people to always take care of. So this, this goes well beyond even just our physical mind and body.
Speaker 1:It's everything that we have to the how far we're stretched and the commiserating and the sharing details and supporting each other and I know, and I think also it's, that's the perfect time when we are like, you know, in our career, we are kind of doing what we are doing, but it's time where you say, well, now it's my turn, you know, it's my turn to be like exactly, it's my turn to take care of myself, to do what I want, like you did. This great website, this great movement. Jess and I are doing this podcast because this is something that now it's our turn. I recently learned a term called NATO-centric.
Speaker 4:This podcast, because this is something that now it's our turn to do our thing. I recently learned a term called NATO-centric. Have you heard this term? No, there's a lot of content on social media like me and my kids, me and my kids, kids, kids. But there's this movement of women in this age group saying it's not necessarily okay. Our kids are big, we can go live, now it's. I have been vibrant all along. There are just not resources for me, so we're kind of tapping into not just our childbearing years and after, or taking care of kids and taking care of parents after the before and the after. This transition affects all our spheres. Perfect hopping off point, mary Kate, for you to start talking about our four spheres. Maybe you want to.
Speaker 2:Four areas that we kind of wanted to address. So one of them, uh, is a sphere called, or spheres like. Our content area is growth and inspiration, which is exactly that plug, like we were trying to figure out how to broadcast that. Um, this is the time to pick up a hobby, or not even pick it up, try it like you don't have to be good at it, just try it and and then let it go if it's not gonna. It's more of a pain in the neck than fun. Um, and try things that are just like you always thought were kind of like a little weird, but now you're older and now you can try it. You don't care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's that you have that kind of that space and sometimes a little bit more time, sometimes a little more time to thrive and do that stuff Right. There are other ways that we can grow that are besides like that classic. Maybe it's the time that you want to leave or get back into spirituality or religion, or maybe you need to figure out how to get out of your own way, because you're the like. Am I the reason I have all of these empty nights ahead of me? So that's one of our major areas where we. There are a whole bunch of articles and we address a lot of stuff about that, and that's why it's awesome to have a psychologist as one of our co-founders.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. And to go back to what you were saying before, the love and connection piece is one of our. One of Dr Jill's key phrases that I've always hung on to is we are the kinship keepers, we are the relationship builders and maintainers for our families when I have. I was just on a walk with my sister yesterday. My brother-in-law is this lovely, kind, warm, dedicated dad. He doesn't put any effort into any friendships. Why? Because she maintains all the friendships. She writes the Christmas cards. She keeps that nest. Another friend of mine in book clubs, like my husband, doesn't have any friends and I need to help him learn to make friends. So love and connections is just packed with content to help us celebrate the connections that we do have, recognize when we're maybe taking too much on in that department. It's not self-help, well, it's all self-help. I guess it's just recognizing that the relationships are the things that are going to shepherd us gracefully into the next chapter, because it's not just vitamins, it's not just supplements and hormone replacement.
Speaker 1:Right, right. I think that it's even more important that friendship yeah, it becomes even so much more than when even you're younger. Yes, you always have best friend and everything, but I think that that friendship with your besties, with your best friends, with your work best friend, becomes even more important I think it kind of goes back to cloud.
Speaker 3:We talk this part we talk about and you do agree on this part. Even in the work environment, you'll, you can be friends with people of all ages, all walks of life all different experiences.
Speaker 4:I'm going to say when you're talking about friendships across generations. Two of my closest friends one is in her 60s, one is in her 70s, and I've met them through work, like they're mentors for me professionally. Um. So one of them I was impromptu came on a little post that we did about the comfy boobs. She was at work. She said, oh, I tried that thing, we were working together. She was, oh, I tried that stuff, I love it. And I was like oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and I got off the camera. I've been working with her forever. I adore her.
Speaker 4:She shares so much about her health, her relationship. I went through a divorce. She was with me every step of the way. She is happily married to this lovely man, not that the goal is to be remarried and partnered, but she just showed me that this is all going to be okay. And then my other friend in her late 60s has been divorced for 15 years and has settled into this very, very beautiful, vibrant life as a writer and a creative person and she's completely fine on her own. And there's another person showing me a way to live.
Speaker 4:So I get these amazing women that come into my circle because of my job. If I didn't have this job where I was going out and working with clients and all these studios, I can see how very lonely this stage in life would be. But thank goodness it's not and we hope to create a community. We hope to create a space one day, someday, where our network is such that you can go on and find someone in Pocatello who's interested in basket weaving and wants to talk about hot flashes Like we don't know how this is going to go, but that's the idea is that you can have. You can have a community in in the general and then a connection in the specific. That's one way.
Speaker 3:That is so beautiful. That should be your tagline.
Speaker 1:So beautiful because you know there's a need for it. Women supporting women and helping each other and supporting is just beautiful and we all need that.
Speaker 3:And to your point, christina, you don't know how and when people can help you or will be helping you. Sometimes you just become friends because of work or life or whatever. Because of work or life or whatever, and as you go through and navigate what's happening in your world, the more you're willing to share and bring these types of topics up, the more you're going to get back, and I think that's really what, at the end of the day, your main focus is Whatever you give in, you're going to get back tenfold For sure.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I know people think that they're a burden to somebody to ask for help or to ask for guidance or to ask for advice. But it feels so good to give that advice when you're asked that the reward is actually the doing. It feels good.
Speaker 4:And we've got it. We've got to get back. We've got two more spheres.
Speaker 3:Okay, I was going to say we've only got two, so what are the other two?
Speaker 2:Okay, One of them, I mean, is like we've talked about it a lot, it's our mind-body sphere. So a lot of stuff about what we've already talked about with perimenopause and the physical and the mental stuff that goes with that. I don't mean to brush over, but we've spent a lot of time chatting about that already. No-transcript, where it's time to like kind of when you need to turn inward, and this is where we share some of our favorite products and some of our favorite cozy things. That's the comfort part of things and some of our favorite, like nibbles and stuff like that. And the security is we hope to blow this out, but sources for best financial decisions. When you are not working anymore or when you're winding down that work side of your work, part of your life, where there's money, consistent money, coming in, how do you make sure that you still have that security for a long time? So that's our fourth sphere comfort and security.
Speaker 4:So it's really touching the whole part of your life Exactly and Mary-Kate, just talking about that solid financial foundation for this next chapter, that even ties back into the love and connection mean into the love and connection sphere. Because well, here's just an example. I this is really funny my ex-husband and his then girlfriend broke up my child. My child at the time was very upset because had grown quite attached to this woman. I was at work, I was talking to this woman. I was talking upset because I'd grown quite attached to this woman. I was at work, I was talking to this woman I was talking about before my friend JT, who's in her 70s, and I was telling her about this wonderful woman and how much my kid loved her. And she said you should tell her. You should tell this woman. I'm like, who reaches out to their ex-husband's ex-girlfriend. I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. So I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. So I wrote a letter to her and I thanked her for all the kindness she had showered upon my child and I. My ex was was better when he was with her and I just sent it off into the mail. She called me two days later and said let's have coffee. We've met regularly.
Speaker 4:She's a financial advisor, a really, really good one, and yeah, I'll, I'll mention her name because she has an online presence, and her name is Joanna Burrish and she has an organization called the Broads Network B-R-A-U-D-S, and it's all about empowering women not to compete with one another. So she doesn't want anybody to think, oh well, she's already doing financial planning. I can't do financial planning. No, no, no, joanna is killing it as a financial planner and she wants to tell other women who are a little curious about that. Here's five women who have done it before you. Oh, and we're not competing for men, we're not competing for jobs, we're not competing for money. We have to trust the abundance of resources in the world if we look to each other for community, and so Plum and Sage is all about the community and she is all about the power, and it's just a really neat way that that intersection happened. And I'm going to turn to her more when we can sort of flesh out that we're getting there, but she's amazing.
Speaker 3:That's amazing, I mean, christina, that's another example of how putting things out there comes back to Enfold Like you had no expectation. You just did it because you were like, if I was role reversed, I'd want the same. I'd want to know I'm sure, in addition to you now having this connection and coffee, she probably was so appreciative because I'm sure your kids really meant something to her too.
Speaker 3:It was really fun to meet her and I mean we're still in touch and I just adore her. She's wonderful, like what's the next step for you guys? Where do you see yourselves? I don't know. Six months, 12 months, what's success look like for you guys, which, I know, to your point, is going to evolve, but what are you focused on, right?
Speaker 4:now. Thank you for asking that question. We, at the very beginning, had this wonderful consultant come in who has helped a lot of other businesses launch and he said this is going to change. Your North Star is going to change. So what you need to do for this year is build your following. Lean into because at the time I was thinking I have to, I'm working with this scientist, I'm working with Jill and Mary-Kate and they're so academic and he said no, no, no, you lean into who you are, let Mary-Kate lean into who she is. Build your community, build your following, and the MVP will appear, the minimum viable product, the thing you know you need to do.
Speaker 4:And to me, we've gotten a lot of questions, a lot of written questions, about when we start talking about skincare. So much, so much interest in that. Mary Kate talks about vitamins. We get all kinds of interest in vitamins. Weight loss is kind of the low hanging fruit.
Speaker 4:But I also kind of don't want to insult. I don't want to insult women by saying that's the point. I don't believe it's the point, but you sure get a lot of questions about it and we have an expert. So what are we going to do with that? So I think where I see us, the community is built. People know who we are, people trust us and then they say what does Plum and Sage say about me finding this financial advisor? I have this question. I'm going to turn to the Plum and Sage community of experts crowdsourcing my advice for this major life decision. I've got an OBGYN. I have the beautiful Mary Claire Haver new menopause book. I've got the science. I've got the nutrition in my hand. What about this other random question I have? By that time, plum and Sage will be a trusted community where people can turn for all kinds of questions, so that is my vision.
Speaker 2:Mary Kate, you want to hop in with yours. I think that's exactly right. I think that's the end goal. It could happen in six months and it could happen in six years. I think we're working harder to make it on the faster end of things, while being realistic with what we have to work with. We also let's like. We've been talking a lot about rah-rah and helping women, and I don't mean to put that down, but we are also interested in making money, somehow Like that's, and women don't talk about that.
Speaker 1:We want to make money.
Speaker 2:So we have to figure out how to do that mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:What is the? Is it a subscription model? Is it a referral model?
Speaker 2:and I don't know say that. Just another thing that comes with being more stages. Yeah, we want to make money, so not exploiting, not doing anything unethical, but why? There's it's, it's out there for the taking. We are smart, we have something to say.
Speaker 4:Oh, we want a piece of it. Following up on the building a following thing, right when we put it out, put we opened the um, set up the instagram page. This january was when it went live and all these people came forward and said we can help you grow your following here. And I, I was approached, I'm the media director, my email, my contacts, my contacts out there, so I was getting phone calls, phone calls, phone calls we can do this and giving me all these examples of companies who had an, an Instagram account, a website, and then in six months, they had 200,000 followers. Yeah, and they do. Are they 200,000 engaged?
Speaker 2:Are they two? Are they 200,000 engaged?
Speaker 4:followers. Are they 200,000 women ages 45 to 55 who are in the thick of this life transition? No, so we are not doing the scattershot collect, collect, collect. We're going to use this template and get this hook and get all these followers. It's mindful slow. Oh look, that post that Mary Kate did about the calcium supplement, with just a little bit of animation, got a little bit more traction. Let's try more like that. That other post Mary Kate did with her mom intergenerational wisdom got more traction. We need more intergenerational wisdom, not for numbers, but for engagement and authentic communication. That's what we're doing, yeah.
Speaker 1:And again it goes back to being authentic and really go with what and staying true to yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we feel you on that. One, yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 4:You want quality over quantity and you got to just stay the course.
Speaker 3:We actually launched our site in January too, so we should have a joint birthday too, so we should have a joint birthday. You guys have any parting words that you want to share with the audience either.
Speaker 4:Maybe about working with people that are like work besties, or besties that become work buddies and how future generations maybe can, kind of similar to you guys, think about how something with a bestie could turn into something more. It never would have occurred to me that this kind of work is possible, where you can trust your intuition, work hard, clock in, earn enough money to pay your expenses, but don't let the creative spirit die. Don't like sell out that idea you had about that thing you wanted to do because you have to get this salary or that salary. Money is important. We know that Security is important as we talked about the base of Maslow's pyramid. This salary or that salary. Money is important. We know that Security is important as we talk about the base of Maslow's Pyramid. We need that security. But keep that journal alive. That thing you always wanted to do, that product you always wanted to develop the comfy boobs lady. They made this formula in their kitchen and it's so wonderful. Do that thing, do that thing that you think you can't do. You have more allies.
Speaker 2:I want to add one thing to that though yes, go for it, but also be patient, because I always hear that message. Like I just went for it. I just went for it and, like a lot of the like, the grind behind it is left out because it's not very sexy. Like the grind behind it is left out because it's not very sexy. Keep in mind that your future may entail this big, huge project, and if it's not right this second, it's okay. Keep like blowing the ember and keep it going, because it eventually could be the inferno. It's not going to happen tomorrow and it's okay if it doesn't happen tomorrow.
Speaker 4:One of my favorite books is Twyla Tharp's the Creative Habit, and you know her, she's no-transcript to it the authenticity of it, too right. I love that word.
Speaker 3:Don't take, don't take the quick exit ramp.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:Continue down the long path, because it will pay out. This was awesome.
Speaker 2:I so appreciate it. Thank you so much for meeting with us and giving us a chance to talk about ourselves.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and stay juicy.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was so cool and so refreshing and we learned a lot. What I thought was incredible is really that parallel between Plum and Sage and our company, between Plum and Sage and our company. I mean our movement, which in a way can be summed up in community, in the general connection, in the specific.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, that was my favorite part of the whole episode. I think that quote, claude, somehow needs to be incorporated into our direction.
Speaker 1:Our statement, our mission statement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, our mission statement, because I think that it summed it up so beautifully for our movement too, where we are trying to make understanding of having a work bestie as a part of the community and really building this group of people that all have that common bond. But, at the end of the day, the work besties is your connection. So, really being specific in that, I find that powering and also kind of reminded me too about how important it is to stay authentic to our positioning and reminding us that this company movement is for a reason. It's not just to get followers, it's not just to get bigger and better things, it's really to be mindful in the quality of the community.
Speaker 1:No, totally. Quality is the best.
Speaker 3:Thank you all for listening to this episode, as we always like to say to all the work besties out there. Keep supporting each other, not as good this time, but we were authentic. No-transcript.
