Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Pull up a seat at our table, where badass women from all walks of life—fashion, beauty, design, music, philanthropy, art, and more—come together to share honest stories, serve truths, and dig into the realities of modern womanhood.
Johanna Almstead:
Hi, everyone. I am menu planning for my next guest and man is my next guest busy. She is doing so much in the world, and so I really want to plan a thoughtful dinner that is just going to be easy and straightforward and nourishing, but still feel really luxurious and make her feel like a VIP guest in my home.
So we're going to start out with just a gorgeous cheese platter with beautiful fruit, sliced apples, grapes, some beautiful nice fresh bread. I'm going to have a Stilton cheese, I'm going to have a Camembert. I'm going to do, I like an old, just like aged cheddar, delicious, yummy. And maybe some Manchego, which I love with a grape. I'm going to do a little fig jam and a little quince paste and just some nice crispy crackers and like good salty crackers. And I like a crunchy cracker, I don't like a soft cracker. I like soft bread with a crunchy cracker.
Anyway, with that, I'm going to serve some bubbles. I think I might start with a Cremont. I was actually inspired by one of my other guests who mentioned Cremont and I was like, "Oh, yeah, I haven't had that in a while." So we're going to start with a Cremont with our beautiful cheeses.
And then for dinner, I'm going to do like spring, healthy, nourishing, but still feeling delightful. We're going to do a baked salmon with lemon and dill. On the side, I'm going to serve a farro salad with roasted veggies, some feta and lemon. It's just going to be like really earthy deliciousness.
And I'm trying to get better at dessert, right? And you know I always forget dessert. And I'm certainly not asking this person to bring dessert because she is so busy that I can't. So again, guys, I'm not a pastry chef, so I'm going to go simple. I've been buying just gorgeous citrus lately, so I think I'm going to do just a platter of just gorgeous sliced citrus. I'm going to do tangerines, I'm going to do blood oranges, some grapefruits, and I'm going to make a homemade whipped cream, which by the way, I don't know why we ever buy regular whipped cream. Once you make it from homemade, it's so good and it's so simple. And just some little baby, beautiful shortbread cookies on the side. Just simple, but just like something that feels nice. But again, it's like nourishing to our bodies and our souls and kind of refreshing.
We're going to get some tunes going tonight because this guest is so fun and I think it's going to be just a really fun night. So I'm going to get some, do some Erykah Badu. I'm going to do some Jill Scott, maybe some D'Angelo, maybe a little Maxwell. Yeah, got some vibes, some grooves going on.
I cannot wait for you guys to meet her. I cannot wait for you to learn from her and be inspired from her. She is just delightful, so let's dig in.
Hello, everyone and welcome to Eat My Words. I'm really excited about this conversation today because my guest has started a company and made it her personal mission to fix a problem that is very close to my heart. She is a former big tech executive who started her career at Meta and was a professor of rhetoric, which I need to learn more about what is a professor of rhetoric, at USC, who is now the founder and CEO of tendercare, a platform that helps family caregivers organize information, coordinate care, and connect with trusted professionals. She is also an active member of her communities, having served on the boards of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and the Asia Society. She is also a daughter who manages the care of her elderly father with early onset Alzheimer's from across the country. No easy feat. She is a mom. She is a stepmom. She is a chicken mom. She is a dog mom. She is a partner. And I'm very lucky to say she is a new friend to me. Shauna Sweeney, welcome to Eat My Words.
Shauna Sweeney:
What an intro. So glad to be here. The best.
Johanna Almstead:
Thank you for taking the time to spend this time with me because I know you are in full mom, startup tech life, all of it. Chicken mom, all the things.
Shauna Sweeney:
So many things.
Johanna Almstead:
I like to tell our listeners how we know each other and ours is a little bit of a hiccupy start because I was introduced to you by our mutual friend and former guest on this podcast, Lorenza Golden, and she'd been telling me about you and your work for months. And we finally got a date on the books to meet for coffee, and then I completely dropped the ball, which it is very unlike me, so it's very ... I can't get over it. I flaked on our meeting because I was sick with the flu and my husband's car had broken down and I was like literally a hot mess. And I was sweating and texting you and I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I just ... It completely left me."
Anyway, you were so kind and you were so gracious with me. And then we finally did get to meet and I was so instantly impressed and inspired by not only your vision because yes, your vision, your energy and your true positivity, I think that feels rare these days. So I was very, very moved by that when I met you. So thank you for not being mean to me when I totally stood you up and thank you for joining me here today.
Shauna Sweeney:
It was definitely like the meet-cute moment, but there was also, let's not forget at my favorite coffee shop. So I did get a coffee out of the deal.
Johanna Almstead:
Right. There you go.
Shauna Sweeney:
And also, you were being a caregiver. You're taking care of your family. How can I possibly fault you for that? We've all been there before. It's crazy. The minute that kids get sick, your husband gets sick. There's no possible way to-
Johanna Almstead:
Everything [inaudible 00:05:46].
Shauna Sweeney:
... hold it all together. So I'm happy to be there and be your backstop for you to know that it's okay when things like that happen.
Johanna Almstead:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I feel like I spent so much of my early career hiding that part of myself, really, really trying to keep all the balls in the air and never admit how hard it was and never admit the stuff that was going on in one place or the other. And it feels good actually now to be able to live in a little bit more of a, I wouldn't say-
Shauna Sweeney:
Reality.
Johanna Almstead:
... balance, but reality, authenticity for sure.
Shauna Sweeney:
But none of us are in balance. We're all just constantly juggling. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
No, no balance. So I always kind of like to start with a question of where did your journey begin? Because it's always so interesting to me to see what people say, because some people go all the way back to birth. Some people go to their grandparents. Some people go to a job that they took. So I would love to know from you where you would say your journey began.
Shauna Sweeney:
I have a photo on my desk and it's of my great-grandma, Grace. She was my first best friend and she was also my babysitter. She lived in San Francisco, Chinatown. And my dad raised me as a single parent, and so my great-grandma was really very present in my life in ways that some people are lucky enough to have their grandparents present, but I was really spending a lot of time with my great-grandma.
And she was just the coolest. She was just so cool. It didn't matter that we had 90 years age difference. I loved her point of view, I loved how she looked at the world, the stories she told me.
And I think for me, two things started there. One was this understanding that those who are older than us can really be our friends, really be our friends. And I think that changed my perspective on what it means to get old. I just thought my great-grandma was the coolest person in the world, I couldn't wait to be just like her.
But also because I grew up in a household where I didn't have a mom around, my dad and I really learned to take care of each other. And I learned, almost from the same time I was learning everything else about the world, what it meant to step into this much bigger role of responsibility and thinking about what is my part in making sure everything runs.
And I think that's really where my outlook started to coalesce. Of course, there's a million other things, but I think that particular combination, one, having just this kick-ass great grandma and just knowing I hit the jackpot with someone like this in my life and wanting to do everything I could for her. And also what it meant like to be growing up in a little bit of an atypical situation with I couldn't really be a kid kid in the same way. And I think that informed a ton of choices that I made down the road.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. I would imagine just the idea of being just you and your dad together, like sort of this little team, that must really inform the choices you make.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. In some ways, it's by necessity, you just have to get it done, and so you're not thinking about what's not there. It's like, "Okay, this is the team I'm on and we've got to figure this out." But it's also empowering, right? I think I was given opportunities very, very young to understand what I was capable of and to really lean into that in ways that probably would not have been available to me in a more structured environment. Like my dad did the best he could-
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 00:09:08] all those things for you, you wouldn't know [inaudible 00:09:10].
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. I was like, "Hey, turns out I can sign the parent consent form for the field trip. Who knew?" So I think in a lot of ways it also helped me gain a certain steady footing for how I moved through the world. Having so many of those early lessons of like, "Hey, here's this adult in the room who's relying on me as a real team member in keeping things going." And I seem to be doing an okay job of it, not always, but I seem to be doing an okay job of it, so what else can I do?
Johanna Almstead:
Wow. And were you conscious of that then or is that more that you're seeing that in hindsight? Or did you really in that moment be like, "I can really do all this"?
Shauna Sweeney:
I look back on photos of myself. It's funny because it's like the pre-digital era, right? So you only have all these Kodak printed films. And I'm just this scrappy kid. I've got a broken arm and I'm in my softball shirt and my bangs my dad must have cut are going at a horizontal and I just look like this little urchin. So I don't know. It's hard for me to remember what my mindset was, but I can certainly see photos of myself and I'm just like tough. I look tough. Completely ridiculous, but I have to imagine just looking at my face, that was sort of my mindset, which is like, I got this.
Johanna Almstead:
You got this. I'm self-sufficient.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
I can do this. Yeah. That's huge. And what a gift, right?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, it is. It's such a gift. I never lived in a household in which I wasn't told I wasn't able to do something. That's wild now that I've got kids, because I'm constantly trying to keep them safe. I'm like, "Oh, God, please get down from that," or, "Please put that away." And that was not the house I was raised in. My dad was a ship captain, he was off on ships all the time. I was kind of given free run of the place, so I was just wild. So who knows? Who knows what that's created now, but it's definitely an unorthodox upbringing.
Johanna Almstead:
I would say it's an unorthodox, but it's also a superpower probably. But that must be hard as a modern parent now, like where we live. We live sort of in this place where we're like, everyone's pretty coddled, our children are protected. And I don't know, that must be a hard record scratch in your brain, no?
Shauna Sweeney:
I feel like in some degree, probably so many parents are up against this. You want to give your kids the childhood you didn't have. So for me, there's this huge drive of like, I want structure, I want support, I want safety, I want order and routine for my kids, because those are some very clearly things that I just really lived in the absence of. So there is always sometimes those moments of like, "Is this good for them?" You're raising a completely different human. They're already their own person, but now you're raising them in this completely different environment. But I think that's the pattern we all play. We all kind of try and drop in and fill in the things that we wished we'd had when we were little.
Johanna Almstead:
For sure. Okay, so you grow up with your dad and your great-grandmother?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Great-grandmother. Yeah. And then you make it through high school. What do you do after school? What do you do next?
Shauna Sweeney:
After school, I wasn't ready to grow up. I went to college, but I went to college nearby my home. I was only 30 minutes away, I went to UC Berkeley. And I had grown up in Marin County, which is in NorCal, like just north of Golden Gate Bridge. And loved my dad, but we probably had a codependent relationship on each other because he would just be at my house every ... It felt like every Friday and Saturday during college. And I was like, "All right, let's go. Let's go out to dinner." And I was like, "Man, I feel like I'm just in this sustained adolescence. This is not right. College is supposed to be about spreading your wings." And I was like, "I got to get out of here, man."
So I love learning. I feel like I'm a sponge for just learning new things. So I was like, "You know what? I'm going to try and go to grad school. This feels like the right next move. I'm not done with college yet, so I'm going to apply somewhere a little farther away." And I applied to USC. At the time, I was really interested in nonfiction and journalism.
And I got into USC and then something really cool happened. I was expecting to be a grad student, but then I got a call in the summer before going from college to grad school and it was the faculty or the department over there, the undergraduate department, asking if I actually wanted to teach at USC. And in exchange, they'd foot the bill for my grad school, which was great for me because I was on the hook for that myself. And they were going to give me two classes in an undergraduate for rhetoric, which is essentially just critical thinking. So before I knew it, I went from being an undergrad to teaching undergrad in like two months.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my goodness.
Shauna Sweeney:
Which was wild. I'm only like 22 and I had some people in my class who were in their mid-30s. It was really crazy. I like to call that my growing up period. I didn't expect it.
Johanna Almstead:
You all of a sudden had to put your big girl pants on.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 00:14:08].
Shauna Sweeney:
I went to Target. I got a bunch of adult sweaters. I was like, "I think this is what someone who has a lot of knowledge looks like," and showed up for work over there. And I really do think that formed a lot of the rest of my professional life because my first real job was in academia and it was in helping to explain things to very bright, very smart, young adults and taking the beat to make sure that everybody understands why we're doing what we're doing, why it matters, how to learn it. That's always really informed how I think about building a team or building a company. It comes from more of a teacher mindset than it does from anything else because I ended up working there for, I think it was like four or five years as a professor, which was, it was so much fun. Really, really cool. So that was really my next big chapter.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my goodness. It's so true too. Even when you and I sat down for coffee, you started teaching me things right away.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's true. You're like, "I didn't ask for this lesson. Thank you."
Johanna Almstead:
No, I did actually. I was like, "This is amazing. I need to know more." That's so interesting though and think about how that ... Well, I would be interested to hear actually how it differs from the tech mindset, but I think about my industry, there wasn't a lot of that sort of teaching mentality. It was a lot of throw someone to the wolves and see how they-
Shauna Sweeney:
See if they survived.
Johanna Almstead:
... figure it out, baptism by fire kind of mentality.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, man. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So then when did you make ... So what happened next after you left being a professor?
Shauna Sweeney:
Well, I was actually with an ex at the time who had been accepted into an international med school, and so he was moving to the West Indies. So we kind of had this moment or this milestone in our relationship, which was, okay, I could keep going my separate way down the academia road, or I could go on this wild adventure of just sort of throwing caution to the wind and moving to the West Indies.
And after a few meetings with me, you can imagine what I chose, which is like, how do you turn down an invitation from the universe to go and do this crazy kooky thing? So I was like, "Okay, this sounds like a great idea. I'm just going to go blow up my career and go move to a random tiny island and try and figure it out." So I did that.
And I was living in a tiny surf shack, like a concrete surf shack where there was maybe about like two inch gap between the concrete and the roof. So it was just sort of like a free for all for geckos and mosquitoes and like whatever. I know way too much about sort of the flora and fauna of the tropics at this point. But I lived there, it was beautiful. And very quickly, living with a poor med student, had to figure out what was I going to do from this random remote island in the middle of nowhere for a job and what transferable skills did I have? So that was like an interesting chapter of like, huh, I've now gotten myself into this like really wild situation where there's no actual real industry on this island. I'm going to have to figure this out and try and cobble together a job out here in the middle of nowhere.
Johanna Almstead:
And what did you do?
Shauna Sweeney:
What anyone does when you have like no options, you just start calling your friends, asking a lot of questions. Because I had been interested in journalism, I had been a fact-checker over at Outside Magazine back in the day, and so I was like, "Well, these guys are adventurous. They'll have some good tips for me. What should I be doing?" And they had actually just featured this amazing explorer on their cover who's from this like very, very famous banking family, a very old, old English banking family. And he's just constantly doing adventures and doing different things. And they're like, "You should call him. I know he's always got different projects."
They made an introduction and I called him up and he was like, in this perfect British accent and everything, he's like, "Yeah, do you want to work for me?" I was like, "Yeah, I do." So that began my experience of working out in the middle of this tropical island for this very posh, very cool English company that was trying to do all kinds of corporate social responsibility in the Amazon. He built a boat out of 15,000 plastic water bottles and sailed it from-
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, yes. I've heard about him.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, from San Francisco to Sydney. So just a number of different crazy adventures. So that was my day job while I was out there in the middle of [inaudible 00:18:37].
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, it was really [inaudible 00:18:38].
Johanna Almstead:
You say, when I asked what you did, you were like, "What anyone would do." But I don't know if everyone would do that, right? I think a lot of people would be like, "I was supposed to figure this out and now I'm on this island and now I'm just going to ..." I think they'd be afraid or embarrassed or shy or something to ask around for help, you know?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh my God. [inaudible 00:19:03].
Johanna Almstead:
And connections for ideas.
Shauna Sweeney:
Afraid and embarrassed all the time. I'm still afraid and embarrassed, right? I don't know if that ever goes away. I think that's just unfortunately a part of the human experience. That's what I've come to conclude with my therapist, at least. But I think you kind of have to find a way to get past that because you can be afraid and embarrassed and not do anything, or you can be afraid and embarrassed and still do a bunch of stuff, and at least one or two of the things are going to work out.
Johanna Almstead:
That is a lesson I feel like I've only recently consciously learned. I think I actually was doing it a lot when I was younger and just wasn't as conscious of it. And now I'm like the whole do it anyway thing. Yes, be afraid, be embarrassed, do it anyway. I look back at some of the decisions I made, and I did do it anyway, but I think as I got older, I got more cautious, more afraid, more thoughtful.
Shauna Sweeney:
Why do you think that is?
Johanna Almstead:
Worried about what you think, more to lose, I guess. You know?
Shauna Sweeney:
More to lose. Totally. I know, it starts stacking up in our own heads. It starts occupying rent, right? All the things that we can't lose.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
One of the best things that ever happened to me was being a poor intern in Santa Fe at Outside Magazine, living off of nothing. I think I was like a 40 hour a week job. This is before there were actual laws, like employment laws. And this was deeply not cool, but I think I earned like $200 a month there. So I was like the most broke you could possibly be. And I had the best time of my life, the best time.
And I remember the lesson I took from that was, wow, if I could be on paper doing so poorly right now and have so little and yet feel so satisfied and so fueled by the life choices I've made, what does that tell me about making more choices that on paper might seem really crazy? And I think that that really changed what I felt like was possible at that point because I realized maybe the game of what's good on paper is actually not the game at all. And maybe there's this whole other game of fulfillment to be going after that you need to be developing your muscle to really see, that's not going to be immediately apparent to you. And I think it really did change what I felt like was possible of doing with my life, having had that experience of making $200 a month and working probably 60 hours a week, if I'm going to be honest, and still feeling really, really satisfied with all of it.
Johanna Almstead:
Really fulfilled. Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. My credit card didn't love it, but I had a great time.
Johanna Almstead:
So I don't want to veer off too much because I want to keep in your journey, but I do want to ask now, because I deal with this as a parent now, right? You were in that situation out of sheer life, right? The situation you were brought up in, it wasn't like your dad was withholding anything from you. It was like this was the life you were living and you were surviving and you were doing and you were making those choices. And like now I imagine your children are having a different kind of childhood where if they were making $200 a month, you would probably be subsidizing it or making sure they had an apartment or like all these things. And I think about like, what do we do now as parents to allow our children to have those experiences? Because I think the experience would have been different from you if someone was like floating your life, right?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. I know. you never really want to coddle your kids. I think you rob them of their own ability to understand what they're capable of. So you have to be really careful. I'm constantly straddling this because you also don't want them to get hurt, right?
Johanna Almstead:
Right.
Shauna Sweeney:
So I don't know if there's a right answer for this. I think it feels like they're kind of this speeding train, right? They're growing and they're getting smarter all the time and you're just trying to race to catch up with them. There's not enough time to be deliberate about all of this. And maybe that's the point. Maybe we're not supposed to be so deliberate about all of it. Maybe it's like hey, everybody-
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 00:23:12].
Shauna Sweeney:
... does it differently and like trust yourself, you're going to figure it out. And they start acting like total A holes and like clearly we've gone a step too far and we've overcoddled them and it's time to pull it back. I don't know if it's like, here's the guidebook, here's the policy, here's how ... Each kid's going to be so different and you're going to be able to know, like parents know their kids. You're going to be able to know if there's some course correction that's required.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. I think about it all the time because I think about some of the most formative experiences in my life were because I was struggling and I was like having to pay my rent and I was like doing all these crazy jobs and meeting all these extraordinary people because I had to get a job and all this stuff. And also like some of the scariest positions I put myself in were probably also because I need money.
Shauna Sweeney:
I'm glad I'm still alive. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. And I'm like, "Okay, well I want them to have that first chunk of experiences, but I really don't want them to have that second chunk of experiences."
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
And I think about it a lot. It's like it's a hard line to walk, I think.
Shauna Sweeney:
It is. And I think even just talking about it and talking about it with others is a really good way to figure out where's your edge, what are others doing that feel like, "Hey, that's okay."
It's funny, I come from tech and a lot of us who come from tech do this. I was like, "No screens. My kid's not going to be screens. I've come up from the ad world. I understand this isn't going to be good for them." And then I was talking to another mom who's like, "Hey, some of the best bonding I've done with my kids is just Sunday morning everybody piles into bed and we all just watch movies or cartoons together. And it's this awesome experience." And I was like, "Well, when you put it that way, shoot, the screens are fine."
And I think just even trading this information and figuring it out and recalibrating and understanding balance on some of this is probably the best we can possibly do for them. And then some of this is going to be like, they're on their own. They're going to need to figure this out. They've been-
Shauna Sweeney:
... them. And then some of this is going to be like, they're on their own. They're going to need to figure this out. They've been given this one wild life to do with what they want. And some of that's not going to involve us. And in fact, even if we want to do what's best for them, they're not going to listen to us, right?
Johanna Almstead:
Right. I also think what I'm learning, too, especially with the tech thing, is it's not black and white. It's not easy for it to be black and white. Tech is such a part of our lives. And I remember I was similar. My kids went to Montessori. They also went to this school. Kids went to this Montessori school, and they had little blocks, and they wore their indoor shoes and they did all this stuff. And then they went to school and they started learning on iPads. And I was like, again. And I was like, oh, my God, what do you mean they're not physically writing and they're not reading books? And trust me, I still have issues with it. But it is also the world we live in. And so, are you doing your children a disservice by not? It's just this constant ... I'm always in this constant flux. And my kids are older now and I realize like, you know what? We can just keep changing. The game keeps changing, so we can keep changing the rules.
Shauna Sweeney:
Totally. Totally. The stories that my great-grandma would raise me with is what it was like for her as a little girl when she was raised without electricity. And when there weren't cars in San Francisco, when it was all horses, and it smelled like horse poo everywhere. And how different it was by the time she had become this much older woman and was explaining the world to me. And I think that also grounded me, which is change is inevitable. Of course, all of these things are going to be changing. They have already changed in front of us so many times. I remember my dad with his pager and the... Do you remember payphones?
Johanna Almstead:
Yes.
Shauna Sweeney:
And he had to stop by the side of the road and go call at a payphone. I'm like, "Can you imagine?" Do you remember MathQuest, all those printouts?
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, my God, yes, because I lived in LA and I would literally print out my directions every time I was going somewhere.
Shauna Sweeney:
Right? And so, they would not even know what we're talking about if we tried to explain that to them now. So, I think it's like some of this is just go with the flow, just know it's going to keep changing, too. So, pick up what works and don't worry about it too much.
Johanna Almstead:
I think it's interesting that you had this experience with this legit explorer. Like, what the fuck? Who's an explorer anymore in these days? And then you went to the tech world, which is sort of the new explorers. Did you have a step in between what happened after the tropics?
Shauna Sweeney:
Well, I was still looking for how could I make this work. Because he was on this really, really crazy regimented journey of changing over for residency. For anyone who's been in medical school, you understand it's like this really crazy zone. So, I was like, okay, I got to figure out what are my transferable skills. What can I actually do for a job where I'm kind of on the move? And so, I started to think about, okay, well, I know how to tell stories. There is this whole other body of work, which is telling stories for businesses. And so, what does this look like to go into PR? Because so many of these PR agencies are always desperate for talent and for bringing people in who can jump on new accounts, things like that. So, I actually started working at a PR agency that had a whole bunch of tech clients.
And so, that was my real entree into this industry. And at that time it was like boom town. Facebook was on the ascendant. They were hitting a billion users. And so, it was a really exciting time to be telling the story of what this was doing to society. What did this mean? What was the opportunity? And so, my first step was into a PR agency and really working with some of these companies, like Uber, like Facebook. And I fell in love with what was happening over there. It felt like the new gold rush.
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 00:28:38].
Shauna Sweeney:
Totally. And such a magnet for talented people. They were really good. I have to give them credit at bringing in Pulitzer Prize winners, and people who had invented the field of machine learning, and all of these interesting people who could just be your coworkers. And so, that's when I was like, "Oh, this is cool. I want to be a part of this." And then when Facebook came to me, and asked if I would actually head up this whole new department and program that they were putting together, that was a pretty obvious no-brainer. I was going to take that one and run with it.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. That was probably a good decision?
Shauna Sweeney:
There we go. And so started my crazy foray, going deeper into the tech kingdom. Which is really just like, I think it's just a new kind of way of talking about invention and inventors. There's inventors all over the place, but there's quite a few that are in tech these days.
Johanna Almstead:
It struck me so much, though, when we were talking the other day about your mindset, and the mindset with which you worked there, and most people did. And what was fostered there was so different than the industry that I grew up in. And it's weird when you think about the fashion world and you think about creativity. There's all these wildly creative, incredible people, but there's not the same capacity for risk taking and failure that I feel like you guys, you people in tech were expected to. That was really, really ingrained in you and part of your culture. And I've been thinking about that so much since we had that conversation of just like how that forms so much of how you approach your work and decisions you make on a regular basis, if you're being pushed always to fail.
You're pushed to risk it and fail because that's where you're going to get invention. And I'm a little bit envious of that because I think that I was raised in an industry that's very different. And yes, there's people that are taking risks and stuff, but it's a different level of comfort with risk taking and failure.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. I mean, it's a pursuit of perfection really in fashion, so it's a very different north star. It was truly ingrained in the culture. Literally, I think the motto was fail faster. It's accelerate towards failure and that being a good thing, which you learn your edges on that. It still doesn't feel good to fail, by the way. I don't think it ever does. But once you accept that that's part of the process, it's also part of the process of writing or creation at all. One of my favorite books is Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott. If you've read it, so good. She's amazing.
Johanna Almstead:
Love that book.
Shauna Sweeney:
But just the idea, you're never going to get to good if you're not okay with doing a first shitty draft. That is just a part of the experience and everybody has to go through it. It's not just you. It's still hard.
Johanna Almstead:
And that the creation is part of the deal. I just actually watched this clip, I think it was Sir Ian McKellen. It looks like it's like a graduation speech or something. I'm not really sure, but he basically is talking to an auditorium of students. And he says, "I want you all to go home and I want you to write a six line poem. And you all have to do it and you can't think too much about it and you have to do it." And he's like, "And then I want you to rip it up and I want you to throw it in the fire." And he says, "Because the result is not the thing. The experience you have created, you have become a creator in that moment. And that's the lesson and that's what you have to know, rather than the results."
Shauna Sweeney:
Cool.
Johanna Almstead:
And I was like, oh, man, yeah, I have goosebumps just saying it.
Shauna Sweeney:
So cool.
Johanna Almstead:
And he's local too. I feel like I saw him Brooklyn once.
Shauna Sweeney:
Really?
Johanna Almstead:
I think he is. Yeah. I remember freaking out. I was at brunch and I was like... I was taking photos over my shoulder. He's super hot cool. I'm being really respectful, but I'm also obsessed.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, exactly. 100%. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. So, you have many, many years. How long did you stay at Facebook then Meta?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, God, I think I was there seven years, eight years, way longer than I expected to. I mean, up until that point, I was part of the generation that's like, we hop from place to place.
Johanna Almstead:
Seven years was a long time.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, that was way longer. And the reality was I just loved my boss so much. She was just the coolest. The really lucky break of working at Facebook was that I was in this cabal of Amazonian Wonder Women who were all just breadwinners, and absolute dynamos and so confident. And they surrounded me. They all had these large teams and were the most incredible examples of what I felt like strong, powerful women in this industry could look like. And it was a total high to work and be coming up in an environment like that with so many of these role models. I'd never seen anything like it before. It was just fantastic. And so, I ended up staying there for a really long time.
My boss was the witness at my wedding. It just got so close and it felt like we were getting away with murder, because I was so happy. And it was so wonderful to work in a space that felt so positive. It made it really hard to leave, even when I knew it was time to leave to go and build my company. I didn't want to because it was just a wonderful working environment, specifically working for my boss. So, it was very bittersweet when I finally ended up leaving.
Johanna Almstead:
So, tell us about that. How did you do it? How did you finally make that decision?
Shauna Sweeney:
The best advice I ever got was from an amazing, amazing leader. I won't mention her name because she's very well known. She's like, "The best time to make a career change is in maternity leave." So, I had gotten pregnant with my four and a half year old. And she was like, "The best thing you can possibly do is go out, have your baby, bond, have a great time, and then hit it hard on the other side by going and starting fresh." Because either way, you're going to have to do so much work to climb out and get back in... The startup costs of that are serious either way. And so, it's a great time to make a move.
Johanna Almstead:
I would never think that. And when you said that, I was like, "This woman is insane. How did you even do that?" But I think so much about my experience. Again, I had been at a company for seven years, same thing. Didn't have any kids, went and had kids and the climbing out of that was so brutal. And part of the reason why it was so brutal is I had been working there with my heart and soul with everything I had, and so that was the way they were used to me working. And you don't know how to change gears when all of a sudden you can't work the same way. You just physically can't because you have a human body.
Shauna Sweeney:
You can't. That's rough.
Johanna Almstead:
And so, I think about that. And now that you say it like that, I'm like, oh, my God, it kind of is brilliant because then you start fresh and you're building something from a new perspective, which you can never know until you've done the thing, which is push the baby out of your body or get the baby wherever. However the baby comes to you, right?
Shauna Sweeney:
God, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
You think you're going to know it all, you think you're going to be able to do all these things and then you can't. And then the only way you can know to do it is just once you've gone through it, right?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, my God. It's wild.
Johanna Almstead:
It's wild. Okay. So, you're on maternity leave, you have your baby and-
Shauna Sweeney:
I have my baby and we're not given many times. We are just constant masters of the juggle and it's not different for us at work either. And maternity leave is such a cool vibe shift, because suddenly you're just as busy. You're even more sleep-deprived, you're more exhausted, but you're not on this treadmill of like meeting, meeting, meeting, to do list, check things off, do this, do this. And so, it was a really cool moment that doesn't come along as often as I wish it did in our adult lives. For me to just take a step back, and really slow down, and think about what do I want for my working life. What does this look like? Which direction am I headed? What do I really want to get good at? These are not things we have time to ask ourselves often.
We're usually just feeling bad about not getting farther through our to do list. And so, it was really cool to take that time. And also, how cool is it? I mean, my company gave me six months off from maternity leave, so got to give them credit where credit's due. That's just not a thing. And so, it was a really good long period of time to figure this out. And during that period of time, I realized I was sitting with this huge problem, with what it was like to take care of my dad. And this body of knowledge, very specific knowledge of what is required to do this well when someone gets really sick.
Johanna Almstead:
So, let's just pause there for the people who don't know your story yet. Your dad was diagnosed with very early onset Alzheimer's. And so, at this point when you had your baby, how long had he been sick?
Shauna Sweeney:
For a while. Really, for a while. With Alzheimer's, it kind of creeps in too. The family knows something's not right.
Johanna Almstead:
There's no start date.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. And you don't want there to be a start date, so we all sort of cover it up. It's like, oh, Dad's just getting a little long-winded or he's telling that story again or it's such an airhead. He forgot.
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 00:38:03].
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, exactly. So there's like a couple years where there was like, oh, Dad's not-
Johanna Almstead:
Fishy. Fishy behavior.
Shauna Sweeney:
Fishy. Yeah, exactly. And then eventually, it got to the point where it was a really hard conversation actually. My dad's a ship captain. And he had the most amazing job. It's like top gun of the ocean, but it's also a really dangerous, high responsibility job. And it got to the point where he passed his annual physical and I was like, "Dad, you need to tell them about some of the stuff that the family's noticing. You need to tell them." Because he'd already passed it. And my biggest fear at that point was he's going to run some ship into the bridge. And this is going to be horrible for everyone and we got to stop that from happening. And that was really hard because you're still in coverup zone.
So, credit to him. He went back and he told the doctor. And they were like, "Oh, let me do some more tests and see what's going on." And that's when it came back, he had early onset Alzheimer's. And I had been working at Facebook at that point for probably five years already, and this was really hard. Everything changes on the other side of a diagnosis like that. It means everything's going to have to change. He can't drive anymore. There's all kinds of things that start to take a ripple effect. And because my dad didn't have a partner, what we quickly realized together is that almost everything about your life has to migrate to someone else to take over.
There's no more paying your taxes. There's no more buying groceries. There's no more even managing a credit card after a little while. And so, that was a really jarring experience for me, going from being like, "Ooh, I like tech. I'm just moving around in this really cool tech world, doing my own thing and exploring and creating." To being like, "Oh, life just got really serious for both of us and my whole life is changing alongside his." Yeah, that sucks. It sucks so hard.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. And he was still well enough though at that point to be able to have these discussions with you?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, he was in so much denial. He didn't want to believe it. He was like, "I'm going to get a second opinion. I'm not sick." And at that point, you're already thinking fuzzy. You're not in your right mind all the way. It takes a long time for this to build up the plaque in your brain before it even really starts to express itself. So, no, he was in denial, didn't want it to be true. And this is a guy who'd beat all the odds on almost everything, so why wouldn't he beat the odds on this? So, this was a very difficult experience of me having to be the adult in the room while he was... Even up until really the end, I don't think he ever fully acknowledged like, "Hey, I'm sick and I've got this disease." It was kind of like a slow slide into being more childlike.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. It's interesting because my mom has dementia. And I actually don't really talk about this on this podcast very often, but she still doesn't know she's sick. She would never accept that she was sick. So, we all did this weird song and dance around her, because every time I would try to talk to her about her being sick, she would get really combative with me. It was like the only time she would get really combative with me. And so, we just took this other tact of doing the things behind the scenes. So, the fact that you were able to have this very forthright discussion with your dad, while impossible and painful, I'm sure it's just such a different experience than what I had. And I'm sorry you had to go through that. It's really hard.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. Your experience sounds equally hard. That sounds hard to have to suspend reality. And there's so much micromanagement of that, to preserve someone's experience more important than your own in that.
Johanna Almstead:
We still do it. We still do it.
Shauna Sweeney:
It's so hard. It's like a heartbreaker of a disease. It just sucks for everybody involved. It's not easy on anybody. It's my biggest fear. I'm like, "Oh, my God, I don't want to do this to my kids. This is horrible." But basically, what ended up happening was I'm so loyal to my dad. My dad was an amazing parent. And so, I was okay with doing the hard thing for him. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be here for you. I'm going to do this. I'm going to show up for you in this, even when I don't want to, even when I just want nothing to do with this. And I wish I could be anyone but me right now."
And so, I did that with him. And I learned all of this crazy body of knowledge that you probably have too, of like all of these legal documents that I didn't know existed that I needed. And all of this management of medications and new specialties that I had never had in my life before, like neurologists now that we're constantly talking to. And now I'm understanding all about the ALZ Association, and trying to figure out what are the best practices around diet, and all of this stuff that I'm slowly becoming an expert in.
Johanna Almstead:
Unwillingly or unwanting to be.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. I was like, thanks for the thing I really wish I did not know anything about. I look at other people who have healthy parents and I'm like, "God, you have such a gift. You have such a gift."
Johanna Almstead:
I know. And is it wild for you? I have this experience where I can't believe it. When I talk to somebody who is... My mom is now 80. She just turned 83 and has been very sick for many years now, so it's been a while. But when I talk to someone who's in their eighties or their nineties and they're sharp as a tack, I literally have a hard time wrapping my head around it. And I'm so jealous.
Shauna Sweeney:
Me too.
Johanna Almstead:
I get really jealous. Me too.
Shauna Sweeney:
All my friends are like, "Oh, so-and-so is with grandparents tonight." I'm like, "I don't have that. There is no grandparents here. That's not an option." And this idea of this intergenerational, sort of everybody's in it and supporting each other. God, I feel like I've got my nose pressed up against the window glass when I hear my friends like that. I'm like, "That just seems so fantastic and amazing." I'll never that experience.
Johanna Almstead:
I put it on the pickup line at school, when I'll be picking my kids up from school and there'll be grandparents in the line and I get so jealous.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, I know. It's like we didn't win that lottery.
Johanna Almstead:
No, we didn't.
Shauna Sweeney:
Which is okay. You can't win them all, right?
Johanna Almstead:
Right.
Shauna Sweeney:
But yeah. So, it was basically like, shoot, I've just now become an expert on this horrible thing that is going to be horrible for so many other people and I already know that-
Johanna Almstead:
It's going to be horrible in your life for a very long time, which I think is part of the beauty in what you're doing now is that you're taking something that has been... I don't know, at least the feeling I have is like, this is going to go on for a really long time.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, it is. It is.
Johanna Almstead:
I think it's pretty amazing that you were able to say like, "Okay, this is something I'm going to have to live with for a really long time and I know a lot about."
Shauna Sweeney:
I wish I could say I was that conscious about it, like, "Oh, this is going to be another decade." I think that would drive me crazy. It's more just like, "Well, this sucks today, so how do I make this suck a little less today?" It's like crunches. You don't want to know that you're about to do 50 of them. You just do the one you need to do right now and then hope to God that you're going to be able to do the next one after that. So, I don't like to think about it in too long term. I just think, okay, right now, it feels really good to be building technology, helping other people go through parts that I recognize, parts that I know I've had to go through with my own family.
That feels like a good thing to do for other people. And a good use of my working life to really spend on building in this space and making this less painful for other people. So, it's a little bit of an alchemy in that. And selfishly, it just makes it less painful for me.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. I mean, we talked a bit about this idea of having a greater mission, which I think also probably having worked for a legit explorer and then having worked for the tech world, where there was these big, big, audacious missions. I think about that must feel really good. That must feel good to have that.
Shauna Sweeney:
It does, but then it also comes with its own insecurity, because it's so easy to be on a Tuesday like this and focused on this big mission, when I have my kids who are tugging on my sleeve for me to get off the camera and go pay attention to them and play with them. And equally, I worry that it's a distraction from the things that really matter, which are right in front of me. And it's easy to be like, well, there's this big purposeful work. And so, it justifies not being present in certain ways. And so, it's a tug of war all the time. And maybe this is just the modern experience of what it's like to be moms, and to be trying to create and build ,is like, you always wish you could be in multiple places at once and you can't. And so, the big tragedy is always the place you're not in when you're wherever you are.
Johanna Almstead:
I say that 10 times a day. I just wish there were four of me. If there were four of me, it'd be great. I'm fine.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. And so, maybe that's part of this, is just surrendering to the fact that maybe we just need to stop feeling bad about the places we're not in.
Johanna Almstead:
Well, so we just did this episode a couple weeks ago on shame in women, with this incredible writer, Melissa Petro, who makes the argument in her book that shame and the shame that women feel is essentially like a societal patriarchal issue. That we are automatically set up to fail and the system is not supporting all the things we're trying to do, the four of us that need to be in four different places. And so, automatically, we're going to fail and then we're going to feel bad about it. And her argument is very interesting because it was basically like... So, it's part memoir, but part research book. And she does all this research with women from all walks of life. So, she's got CEOs, she's got stay at home moms, she's got bus drivers, she's got cleaning people. She's got every walk of life and every level of like, what do you want to say, achievement or success or exposure to big worlds or small worlds, whatever it is.
And literally, shame is shame, is shame. So, the stay at home mom who can't finish her laundry and get it done because she's overwhelmed, feels shame about that. Or the mom who is working and can't be at the school play feels shame about that. And the child of alcoholics feels shame about that. And that that's feeling, no matter what it is that's causing the shame in women, is the same feeling.
Shauna Sweeney:
Wild. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Isn't that wild?
Shauna Sweeney:
It's so crazy when you start to think about some of this stuff as like system failures that we just internalize and you're like...
Johanna Almstead:
Right. I mean, I was just thinking, as you were saying, having that time on your maternity leave to be able to think. I just had a friend this weekend, who's a dear, dear friend who's American, but has been living in the UK for the last several years. And she is not a parent yet, wants to be. But just got back from two weeks in Thailand and then was talking to me about how in June she's taking a "sabbatical" because she wants to remain curious. So, she's going to take cooking classes, and she's going to do this and she's going to do that. And I was like, "Do you understand?" And I have friends who live in the UK whose maternity leave was a year. And then they went back like three days a week and then were... I had a friend who was like, "I couldn't get the work done that I wanted to get done in three days a week, so I took on another day. I went for four."
Johanna Almstead:
That I wanted to get done in three days a week. So I took on another day. I went for four. There was just structurally, there was just so much more support.
Shauna Sweeney:
Wow.
Johanna Almstead:
And their kids go to before care and aftercare and they're fed wholesome meals. And I kept looking at her. My brain was exploding because I hadn't been there in a while. I used to work in the UK all the time and I knew it all, but I hadn't been reminded of it in a while. And I was like, damned, we really are not set up to thrive here.
Shauna Sweeney:
No, I know. Well, it's a system that's biased towards productivity, right?
Johanna Almstead:
Right.
Shauna Sweeney:
And the craziest part is we've never been more productive. And yet, each time that all of these tools, like the moment we're living in now, all these AI tools get unleashed, the actual feeling that you see reported back is like, I'm more behind than ever. And so you expect all of this to then somehow ease up that experience of ours of like, "Oh, maybe I'll have a breath, now. I'll be able to relax." But the overall system is really built to just maximize as much productivity out of us as humanly possible.
So to your point, I think this is the board that we are playing on. And so the minute you start to name that and realize that you can start to set some of your own rules on it, but it's really hard to do because I think there's a tendency to just internalize all of this and think it's a me thing rather than, "Oh, no, this is the play that we're all walking with."
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, this is the playing field we're on and this is how it goes. And these are the rules." Right?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
And if you want to be in it, you got to follow the rules. I have this moment where I was like, I'm trying to disconnect a little bit and I'm trying to get more thoughtful about my tech hygiene and I'm trying to get more hours of uninterrupted work or whatever. And so I'm like trying new tricks and things. And I had this moment where I was trying to turn off my phone to do solid, deep work. And I did. And then I went straight from there to pick up my child from a sporting thing. And four different parents were like, "Well, did you see the thing?"
And I was like, "What are you talking about?"
And they were like... We're also on 700 different fucking apps for all the different fucking sports. Why can't everyone just do one you tech when you're ready? When you've got this done and going, can we do something about sports?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, sports.
Johanna Almstead:
But they're like, "Do you not have your notifications on?"
I'm like, "Well, I do have my notifications, but I actually turn my phone off because."
And they're like, "Well, they're the things and you need the brown penny for the thing and you have to have it by tomorrow." And you're like fuck. Fuck, I tried. I just tried to take two hours and I've already fucked up my kids and I've already made them lose the tournament that they're about to go to and I've already failed as a mom.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh my God, that sounds so stressful.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. And I'm like, this is tech that's supposed to be making our lives easier, but all it is, is just creating this pace at which we're just trying to catch our breath.
Shauna Sweeney:
I know. Yeah, it's impossible. It's an impossible game. I actually think it's a team sport, too. The only way to do this. And everyone who's doing this really well, they generally have a team behind them. And I think it's a total misnomer or a myth that you can do this solo. You really need a backstop with real help against this.
Johanna Almstead:
With many backstops.
Shauna Sweeney:
Many backstops. Exactly. It's just impossible. So I don't know if that's going to go away. I think the reality is we're doing a lot, all of us, especially in this zone, this chapter in particular, when you're taking care of your family, you're taking care of your kids, you're in your marriage, you're running around, you're trying to make sure that you're living a full life for yourself. There's not a lot of room for all of that. And so part of me just wonders if this is our era in which this is just going to be hard for a little while and that's a part of this. And the illusion is the idea that somehow, it's going to be easy if we just say the right spell or have the right incantation. Maybe it's just hard right now because-
Johanna Almstead:
Maybe the fairy godmother actually is going to come and help us.
Shauna Sweeney:
Right? And like everything, it changes, and eventually it won't be hard, probably for some sad reasons. Our parents aren't going to be around forever. And our kids are growing older every day. We see it. And so things start to ease up a little bit. But in this zone, maybe this is in the workout class, this is the hard zone where it's like, okay, we're going to go really, really hard and everyone's going to hate the instructor right now for a second.
Johanna Almstead:
Well, and I think also of, we're also going to be okay with talking about it. We're also going to be like, okay, this is really hard and I'm not going to pretend anymore that it's not hard and I'm not going to pretend that I'm enjoying it.
Shauna Sweeney:
Totally. It's so interesting, the whole pretending things are not hard. We have really done this to ourselves. I was thinking about this and I was actually thinking about the dangerous impact of social media sometimes. And of course everyone says that, but it's dangerous in very specific ways, which is, I think we all think about it like a photo album. And what do you put in photo albums? You put all of the memories you cherish, the things that you're really proud of, the things that you want to be able to go back and savor. That's what a photo album is. And we've had these before, but the problem now is that now we're all participating in seeing each other's photo albums. So now we're seeing all of these like really beautiful moments in everyone's lives and we're thinking, oh, everyone else must have this figured out. They must have this easier than me. What's wrong with me? Why is this so hard? Why is there this unfolded laundry in my corner that's been here for two weeks? And I think we collectively create this pressure on our social structures.
So I'm thinking a lot about that. I'm like, well, maybe I won't put those photo album moments out in the same way. Maybe I'll go back to having that just be a photo album for my family. So I'm not accidentally putting some of that pressure on someone else that I don't even mean to. Right?
Johanna Almstead:
Right.
Shauna Sweeney:
And we can sort of collectively start to ease out of this myth that everything is easy for all of us.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, I agree. I think that I already feel the difference in how when I was still in a very, very high pressure corporate environment, there was no conversation about how hard it was. It was like, yeah, okay, sorry, go ahead. Yep, go. Yep. Hard? Okay. Well, who fucking cares? Got shit to do, get on a plane. And so I do feel like at least now there's conversation around it and part of the reason I do this podcast is to have these kind of conversations. And so I'm hoping that maybe in turn, the shame part goes away, too, right?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
So it's like if we can educate the next generation that this is hard, this may be the game we're playing, we're going to try not to put those pressures on each other by maybe not doing the highlight reel all the time.
Shauna Sweeney:
Right.
Johanna Almstead:
And then we're also going to say like, "Oh, by the way, this shit is hard. This is not sunshine and roses." There's wonderful moments and there's great creativity and there's great love and there's great expansion and all these wonderful things, and there's all this other stuff that is really, really hard.
Shauna Sweeney:
I know, I know. It is really hard. I want to start talking to some older women too and be like, "Does it get less hard?" What do we have to look forward to here? Is this just going to get less hard?
Johanna Almstead:
I do think it'll get less hard. I think it'll get different hard. I think there'll be different things that are hard, right? But I do think maybe, I hope.
So I want to ask, because I think this will be an interesting question for you because you had this unconventional childhood. In your mind when you were that scrappy kid with the crooked bangs and the sling on your arm, did you have a picture in your mind of what grownup success or what having it all would look like or did you have anything in your mind back then?
Shauna Sweeney:
It was a very unorthodox experience. I was raised by a bunch of ship captains, and truly, that's who I hung out with. I was on big giant freight ships and cargo ships and around tables with 30 sea captains. So it was a very different experience. And then even when I was in school, I was playing sports and I was in soccer and it was mostly the dads who were there. So in many ways, and I'm just even thinking about this now with you asking the question, I'm not shocked that I went into venture backed technology, which is a majority male. It's a very male-
Johanna Almstead:
You had so many dudes.
Shauna Sweeney:
So many dudes, the whole thing, venture capitalists and founders, they're all dudes. So it's probably because that was what I was familiar with growing up and I was like, "Oh, okay. I guess maybe this is what this looks like." I knew I never wanted to be on the ships, though. That was for sure, for sure. They smelled like gas and you go in there and there's like 300 guys who've been at sea for like three months and I was like, "I want none of this. This is just a bad situation." So I knew that wasn't going to be my future.
But I think success and a picture of success, it goes back to my kids. I think what I could see in my mind, and I didn't really picture this all the time, but I knew instinctually what I wanted was to give my kids this more flushed out picture of what partnership could look like and stability and safety. And there's so much about living in our area in Lewisboro that it's just so meant for giving kids a really great childhood running in the woods and spending time with their friends and not quite the same level of vigilance you see in the city. And so this feels a lot like what I had always hoped for already. I think the challenge for me is savoring it, not letting it pass so fast and not being so worried about the to do list or what's going wrong at work that I don't notice what is right in front of me, which is like what I had, I think as a little girl, always hoped for. Even if I couldn't have it as a little girl, I can have it as an adult woman.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Oh, that's so beautiful.
Shauna Sweeney:
I got to remember that.
Johanna Almstead:
You have to play this on repeat in your car.
Shauna Sweeney:
Exactly.
Johanna Almstead:
So you have four kids, your mom and stepmom to four kids.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yes.
Johanna Almstead:
Aging in range from little baby-baby under a year old to teenagers. I want to know now that you're trying to savor these moments now that you've had the experience of parenting/step-parenting these older kids and trying to savor your babies and also launching a startup in the middle of it all when your kids are old enough to listen to this podcast, I'm not sure they're our target audience right now, what do you want them to know about this time?
Shauna Sweeney:
Such a great question. I think I want them to be proud that their mom could go out and meet the big hairy problem with humor and with dedication and intention and do that through my actions, like very mundane daily actions, not some wild one big push, but really committing to going out and helping people and using my life not just for my own personal gain, which is always nice, but also to really make a serious contribution towards a problem that I know so many other people like our own family are going to face, and that your life can be an act of love towards really making something just a little bit better and that this is possible and that this was, they had a front row seat to this. I think even if a little bit of that comes through for them and the regular, "Oh God, here goes mom, running your mouth again." That would be awesome. Do you hear that, kids? That's what I've been doing all this time that I'm too busy.
Johanna Almstead:
So let's talk about some of the sacrifices that you have made because you have worked your butt off, you have done big things, you continue to do big things every day. You have maintained caring for your dad, caring for your children, caring for your stepchildren, for your partner. What do you sacrifice?
Shauna Sweeney:
First, my teeth, this one's very tangible. You know how many dentist appointments I have to book in my family? Like so many cleanings and you name it. And I am so embarrassed to say this. I went like two and a half years without doing a single dentist appointment for myself. And so my dentist was very upset with me when I finally got in there a couple months ago. So that's the first one, which is probably an indicator of also just my own maintenance of health. It's really easy for that to fall to the end of the list when you have so many other people you're responsible for. So that's the first one.
Another sacrifice, I had a pretty cush job in big tech, very comfortable. I was part of what I like to think of as like probably like a dwindling, pretty cozy middle class. You can take your kids on the vacation and save for retirement. Not everybody's lucky enough to do that these days. And it was a really big mental sacrifice to have to decide this problem was big enough for me to say goodbye to all of that and leave that to go work on something that any person in their right mind knows that starting a startup is like 99% odds that it's not going to work out and you still have to somehow find your way to do it anyway. So I took a look at all the stability and all the equity I had built up in working in a place for so many years and poof, kissed it goodbye. So that was a big sacrifice.
And then there's smaller sacrifices. Sometimes I have to work really late at night after the kids are asleep and that could be time that I could be spending with my husband that I'm not, just spending on my computer. And so there are the tiny little sacrifices that add up over time. And that's not always easy. I don't always want to do that either. So I have to find my way into that and find my way to show up and be willing to send the last email, do the last strategy doc, whatever the thing is.
Johanna Almstead:
Where do you find that? Where do you find that energy? What do you tap into?
Shauna Sweeney:
It's really hard. Sometimes I really don't want to do it. It depends. I got to move into different spaces or try different things depending on where I'm at. It's easier when the sun is out and things are beautiful. It's hard in the winter. I'm like, oh, this is just the life of misery I've signed myself up to.
Johanna Almstead:
But I'm supposed to be hibernating right now. I'm not supposed to be sending emails. I'm supposed to be resting and getting fat.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, exactly. You know what I found? This is a pro tip for anyone else out there. I found if you can do something while procrastinating that's still a net positive for your life, that's a good thing. So I'll like clear out a whole bunch of junk mail or something when I don't want to send an email because then either way, I'm winning.
Johanna Almstead:
I empty the dishwasher.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. Yeah. Right You're like, okay, I just [inaudible 01:05:19] to do this.
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 01:05:20] in the dishwasher so much, but I also hate whatever I'm supposed to be doing. And so I'm like, "Well, at least if I do one."
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. And then it's like, okay, that was a net positive. You've made some sort of incremental progress towards something. So finding ways to positively procrastinate is a good trick I'm starting to lean into.
Johanna Almstead:
I like that. I have never really thought about it consciously, but now that you say it, I do that. I do the dishwasher.
Okay. You've had lots of achievements. What would you say is one that you're most proud of?
Shauna Sweeney:
You know what I'm most proud of? It's not an external achievement because those are ultimately pretty empty. I don't know if you've felt this way, but you get something, like some award or something and it's a let-down. It's like, "Oh, is this all?" This doesn't make me feel any more fulfilled by life. The thing I'm most proud of is that, for the most part, I'm pretty good about this. I tell my dad I love him every night on FaceTime and it's not always a long conversation, but I let him know how much I love him and how loved he is. And I've brought my kids into that and they all say, "I love you" to him. And that consistent practice of even showing up when I'm tired, when I'm on a train, when I'm on my way to dinner, when there's a million other things to be doing and still finding a way back to him, that is something I'm really proud of.
Johanna Almstead:
That's really beautiful. That one got me. What is something that you've once believed about yourself that you've since outgrown?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, that's a really good one. I'm like, I haven't grown enough. I feel like I need to grow so much more. Man, I think that I used to think I needed to be liked, and I thought that was really important and it was really uncomfortable for me when someone didn't like me. And so I would do everything I could to avoid being disliked, even if it meant trying to put myself into a corner or not really be my authentic self. And I don't know if it's the era I'm in, but I'm just like, it's better for us all to know. If you don't like me and I don't like you, good.
Johanna Almstead:
Let's just call a spade a spade, shall we?
Shauna Sweeney:
This is a big world. We don't need to be in each other's orbits. You do you, I do me. That's new. And sometimes I think about that, I'm like, oh God, have I just become this super gruff person by, maybe this is because I've built a business. I don't know. I think life is really short and you get more aware of that as we go on. And the more you can carve out your time and the people in your life that you have intentionally brought there, I think it's a good thing for everybody.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, I agree. That was a big one for me, too. That was for me, that took a lot of unlearning, too. It took me a lot of like, I was raised as a Presbyterian minister's daughter, like people, make people like you. Literally, your dad's job's dependent on it. And then I was a PR person, so people had to like me, right?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
It took a lot of unlearning to get to that place, but it's very-
Shauna Sweeney:
Do you think you're there now?
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's huge.
Johanna Almstead:
I'm still not comfortable being like, "I don't like you." I don't really have that. And I don't love when someone doesn't like me, but I don't think about it as much, number one. And I don't, to your point, I have such clarity around what matters to me and who I want to spend my time with, and so it has given me the ability to make very clear boundaries. And so that, I've gotten really good at.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's amazing. It's still difficult.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, it's not easy. It's definitely not easy.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. So I'm still working on it, but that's like, this is the direction I'm moving into.
Johanna Almstead:
I like this direction for you. I feel good about it.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, me too.
Johanna Almstead:
What are you dreaming about these days? I feel very strongly about women, especially mothers, especially people building businesses or working in businesses. Do you dream? Do you have time to dream? Are you allowing yourself to dream? A lot of stuff that could suck your dream energy right now.
Shauna Sweeney:
These are all great questions.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, good.
Shauna Sweeney:
I found, I don't know if it's having babies or what, but my sleep is much lighter now. I don't have that deep REM sleep the way that I used to. I miss it where you just have these intense, vivid dreams. I automatically wake up now at six and I'm ready and I'm like listening for the kids. So I don't get a lot of that dream energy from sleep per se, but I dream during the day. And some of my outlets, my creative outlets are gardening. I just love gardening so much. I love getting deeper into it, looking at how different plants grow, learning more about how they grow together. And then also just the delight of even them producing. We live in such an abundant zone to grow things in. So I'm super into dreaming about garden scapes and what you can create out of the earth and how do you design that? That's a lot of fun.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, I love that for you. You have to listen to the episode we had Mary Berry, who's a gardener and garden coach.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, yes.
Johanna Almstead:
And she's extraordinary.
Shauna Sweeney:
She is. She actually helped me design my garden.
Johanna Almstead:
Did she? Oh, small world. This is so fun. Isn't she the best?
Shauna Sweeney:
She is. She's the best.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh. Okay. So other than gardening, how else do you nourish yourself?
Shauna Sweeney:
Outside of gardening, I have a book club. I love, there's some incredible women that I'm a part of this tiny little book club with, and we always show up for each other. And it's so fun to be doing something that's so not productive, if you will. I love being stubbornly unproductive. It's really fun. So I love being part of that book club and I don't do a lot else. There's not a lot of room right now for anything else, right?
Johanna Almstead:
This is why I ask the question because we're not always great at doing it for ourselves because we're nourishing everybody else.
Shauna Sweeney:
I know. There's not a ton of time for that. I love going to yoga. Yoga is fantastic. It's a real mind clearing, body clearing, especially after having had a baby. It's really nice to sink back into my own bones again. So I try and go at least two times a week. That's a big gift for myself.
Johanna Almstead:
Good. I'm glad you're doing that. Okay. This has been a very long discussion, but we are now at the very, very exciting time of the lightning round of silly questions.
Shauna Sweeney:
I can't wait.
Johanna Almstead:
Many of them are food related, but they're not all food related, but this is part you don't have to think about. This is just no right answer. Just what comes to you first. Favorite comfort food?
Shauna Sweeney:
Haribo gummies.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, do you have particular shape?
Shauna Sweeney:
I really like silly snakes. I'm into those these days.
Johanna Almstead:
My daughter loves those.
Shauna Sweeney:
But you can't eat too many of them. Your tongue gets messed up by the end of the bag, so be careful out there. But they're delicious.
Johanna Almstead:
What is something, other than building businesses and parenting that you are really good at?
Shauna Sweeney:
I am an advanced scuba diver.
Johanna Almstead:
Whoa.
Shauna Sweeney:
I love getting underneath the water and visiting different places and seeing shipwrecks and all kinds of stuff.
Johanna Almstead:
Is this back from your days with the explorer man?
Shauna Sweeney:
No, this is just a whole other separate hobby. I wish I got to do it more, to be honest. It's hard because when you're pregnant, you can't scuba dive. So that really threw a wrench in those plans. But I love scuba diving. And I don't even know if you can really be good at it, but I don't mess anything up. So I guess that-
Johanna Almstead:
No, I think you're brilliant at it.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
You're successful at it. What is something you're really bad at?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, decluttering. I don't see clutter. It just builds up around me. I don't see it. It drags my husband crazy. So that's always been a weak point. I'm just not a super regimented person about throwing things away.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, that's rough. I know. Favorite word?
Shauna Sweeney:
Hyperbole.
Johanna Almstead:
Whoa, I like that one.
Shauna Sweeney:
What's your favorite word?
Johanna Almstead:
Today, I would say it's serendipity.
Shauna Sweeney:
Ah, that's a beautiful one.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. It changes, though. Changes every ... Some people ask me and some people don't. And so I'm always like, oh. But today it feels like serendipity. I've been having a lot of moments of serendipity lately and it looks really nice. And I just think it's a pretty ... I like the way it sounds and the way it looks. Least favorite food?
Shauna Sweeney:
Wasabi.
Johanna Almstead:
Really?
Shauna Sweeney:
I can't handle it. So gross. It gets in your nose. It starts burning the inside of your nose.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes, it does.
Shauna Sweeney:
Don't like it. How about you?
Johanna Almstead:
Oh, truffle. I hate truffles.
Shauna Sweeney:
Really? Oh, man. I don't love them, but I don't hate them.
Johanna Almstead:
I'm in really fancy foodie situations a lot and the smell of them makes me want to gag and it's awful because people are so excited about them.
Shauna Sweeney:
Of course, you want some?
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 01:14:54] gloves on and they start shaving it and putting it. They're like, "You can have it on this and you can have that." I'm like, "Get the heck away from me with that."
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, that's so funny. Oh, that's hilarious.
Johanna Almstead:
It ruins everything for me. Don't put that shit on my fries.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's so funny.
Johanna Almstead:
I don't like it. It ruins everything for me.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, that's hilarious.
Johanna Almstead:
Like, don't put that shit on my fries. Don't put that shit on my pasta. No way. But I appreciate the digging for it and the dogs and the things. And I love a pomp and circumstance moment. I love all the hoopla around it.
Shauna Sweeney:
And then the shaving on everybody's plate.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, totally.
Johanna Almstead:
We were at Daniel one night for dinner and it was truffle season.
Shauna Sweeney:
They're big on truffle.
Johanna Almstead:
Their truffle service is extraordinary.
Shauna Sweeney:
Insane.
Johanna Almstead:
There's a silver cart and it's domed and it's got, there's all things and people are putting all kinds of equipment on and then this fancy silver shaver and it's like all these things. And I was like, I love all that. I just think it's amazing, but do not want to ingest it at all. Okay. Least favorite word?
Shauna Sweeney:
No.
Johanna Almstead:
I like that. You mentioned it earlier, but I don't know if it's definitely, I don't want to put words in your mouth. Best piece of advice you've ever received?
Shauna Sweeney:
It's kind of a tie. My dad was so good at these. Am I allowed to say two or do I have to do one?
Johanna Almstead:
Yes.
Shauna Sweeney:
Okay, okay.
Johanna Almstead:
No. There's like a judge that comes in.
Shauna Sweeney:
All right. You know you're doing something right when you're the stupidest person in the room. I like that one.
Johanna Almstead:
I love that.
Shauna Sweeney:
And then, you don't need their approval.
Johanna Almstead:
I really love that. Were those both from your dad?
Shauna Sweeney:
Those from my dad.
Johanna Almstead:
Wise man. Very wise man. Okay. If your personality were a flavor, what would it be?
Shauna Sweeney:
Pickle juice.
Johanna Almstead:
I used to drink it as a kid.
Shauna Sweeney:
I did too. I did too. It's so good.
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 01:16:39] like, your mouth?
Shauna Sweeney:
Little tart.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my God. I love that one so much. Dill pickle juice or sweet pickle juice?
Shauna Sweeney:
Dill pickle juice.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
I used to sit and eat when I was, I wasn't really allowed to watch much TV, but I was allowed to watch one show or something and I would sit and eat the entire jar of the Vlasic spears.
Shauna Sweeney:
So good. They're like light greens. Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Lime, lime green. And then I would chug the juice. I'm getting that feeling in my mouth just talking about it.
Shauna Sweeney:
So good.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. Last supper, you're just graduating to the next round, what are you eating tonight?
Shauna Sweeney:
Maybe lamb hand pulled noodles. Well, it depends. Is it a cold night? I guess it's tonight. It's tonight.
Johanna Almstead:
It can be whatever you want.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, yeah. Some sort of big steaming bowl of noodles. That would be my last meal.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Are you drinking anything with those noodles?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh yeah. Why do I leave things out on the table? I mean, of course I should. What am I talking about? Maybe a really, really ridiculously nice bottle of wine.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. Red wine, white wine?
Shauna Sweeney:
Red wine. I don't remember what the name of it, but it's this tiny vineyard in Spain. It's my husband's favorite vineyard and wine maker. And this guy is like a purist. I know we have some downstairs. I got them for him for an anniversary at some point, so maybe I'd crack that one up and I'd steal it back.
Johanna Almstead:
All right. I like it. With your big steaming noodles.
Shauna Sweeney:
Noodles, yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
Love it. Sounds so good. Have you had a moment in your life where you've had to eat your words?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, many.
Johanna Almstead:
Any that you'd like to share?
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, God. I mean, one that just comes out to me that I regret so much, it was right when my dad got diagnosed and there was this amazing coworker of mine and we were planning this big program together. And I was just not my best self and I was showing up not as my best self. And he was going through what the designs for the event were going to be. And I don't even remember exactly what I said, but it was something to the like, "This isn't good enough. This needs to be redone." And it changed our relationship completely after that one meeting. And I tried to apologize and it still didn't fix it. And it makes me sad that I couldn't contain my anger and my grief and keep it in its right place and that it spilled over into that meeting. I wish I could go back and eat my words.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Oof, that's hard. I'm sorry.
Shauna Sweeney:
I was like, "Wow, I was such an. Why did I do that? Why?" It wasn't his fault that my dad got Alzheimer's, but at that point it was the whole world's fault. It was very bad.
Johanna Almstead:
I was going to say, sometimes it just feels like it's all everyone's fault and you can't see past it.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, exactly.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay. If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life, you don't have to worry about it sustaining you nutritionally. It's just like a magical world where it's going to do whatever. What would you eat all day every day?
Shauna Sweeney:
I'm a big fan of sushi, really, really good sushi. It feels good. It feels good to eat. You never feel yucky afterwards. That'd be pretty cool. Especially if I don't have to worry about depleting the seafood in the ocean and it's just sort of this unlimited amount of sushi. That would be cool.
Johanna Almstead:
Unlimited amounts of sushi.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
And someone to make it for you, hopefully.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, for sure.
Johanna Almstead:
Where is your happy place?
Shauna Sweeney:
I think it's breakfast on a Saturday morning with my family. It's pretty good.
Johanna Almstead:
I love that.
Shauna Sweeney:
How about yours?
Johanna Almstead:
I mean, I have a couple. I have bigger ones. There's a specific beach on an island that I grew up going to that I am weirdly happy at. I start bouncing and energetically it shifts everything. It's actually where my dad's ashes are. He's off that beach.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, wow.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. So that beach is my real deal happy place. But I just moved back into a newly renovated house that I'm really, really happy in in my backyard and my dog.
Shauna Sweeney:
You made it. Oh, so good.
Johanna Almstead:
So I do live in my happy place also, which is great.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. A physical place, that's right. Maybe sunset in Santa Fe. I have not shown my husband that one day I can't wait to bring him. He's never been. And it's just the most insane, most amazing sunset that lasts forever and ever. And it's like you can't help but just feel like you're part of some miracle when you see it.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
It's pretty good. I got to get back there.
Johanna Almstead:
I used to go to Ghost Ranch as a kid.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, so beautiful.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
So beautiful. Yeah. Southwest. There's something about it, man.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. It's crazy. Okay. What did you have for dinner last night?
Shauna Sweeney:
Last night we had some grilled chicken, some rice left over from what my four-year-old ate and some steamed spinach and a hard-boiled egg. Not very epicurean. It's called Monday night throw it together.
Johanna Almstead:
Listen, there's people who are like, "I ate a half of a dino nugget and four Jolly Ranchers." So listen, yours is pretty balanced. Got a lot of protein in there.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, thanks. Yeah. These are always throwaway. It's like, that's the one thing I'm really looking forward to in retirement, I can't wait, time with food.
Johanna Almstead:
Yes.
Shauna Sweeney:
There is something so sensual about really preparing food. I can't wait to get back to that. Right now it is definitely an afterthought. That's a big miss.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Maybe you can start to try to build just a little bit in. It doesn't have to be all the time and it doesn't have to be giant long things, but maybe-
Shauna Sweeney:
Just a little.
Johanna Almstead:
Like one thing. Yeah. That's one thing I have to say that helps me is if I invite people over for dinner, it forces me, not on a Tuesday night, we're all too busy. But on a weekend, if I'm like, let's have some of our favorite people over and just forces me to just be like, "You're going to take the time, you're going to grocery shop, you're going to plan this and you're going to cook nice food and you're going to savor it." So that's sort of my trick.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. Well, that's great where it's like, okay, now I force this situation upon myself and so now I have no excuse.
Johanna Almstead:
I can't just order pizza because that would be stupid.
Shauna Sweeney:
That would be lame. Yeah, exactly. I like this. I think that's good. Okay.
Johanna Almstead:
When I'm feeling like I'm a little angsty, that's one of my things I do is I'm like, "Let's get a dinner on the books and nourish ourselves."
Shauna Sweeney:
This is a good pro tip. Okay, I'm doing this. And especially now that it's getting to be summer, you can do alfresco, dining in the garden. I'm going to do it by [inaudible 01:23:15].
Johanna Almstead:
It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be fancy. It can just be time. It's just a little bit of time that you have to spend and some thoughtfulness. And then it's nourishing to you physically and emotionally if you're spending time with people you love.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. And how can you argue with that? Just sitting around the same table, enjoying life together. We all have to do more of that.
Johanna Almstead:
I think let's make you a goal that you should try to do that once a month.
Shauna Sweeney:
I like this. I like this. Okay.
Johanna Almstead:
And I will do it at my house for you too. You'll come to my house and I'll nourish you.
Shauna Sweeney:
I know. I need to see how it's done by the master. I'm like, "Wait, how does one do this?"
Johanna Almstead:
Watch and learn. And then I'm like, "Oh sorry, I flaked. I ordered pizza."
Shauna Sweeney:
And I'd be like, "Girl, I'm here. I'm bringing some Nebbiolo. We got this. Sounds delicious."
Johanna Almstead:
We got this. Okay. What do you wear when you feel like you need to take on the world? Like, you have a big meeting with investors or a hot date or a big presentation or something, what do you put on your body?
Shauna Sweeney:
You know what's so interesting? I used to love fashion so much, especially working in big tech. So much of that was going out and to going to big events. And so I really got into fashion at that point. And then I went through this weird zone into COVID where I was building a business and it was all just like, I felt like a little hermit crab behind my desk and I really wasn't really thinking about fashion at all. And even now, I think I've almost over rotated. It's almost like an afterthought. I feel like I know how weird that is, but I understand why founders like Mark Zuckerberg just bought like 30 shirts and were just like, whatever.
Johanna Almstead:
Steve Jobs had the uniform too. Yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. And just threw them on because you're just sort of like in constant motion. But I do occasionally dress up. And when I do, it's less about what I'm actually wearing and more about how I feel in it. And especially coming out of postpartum, it's really hard to feel comfortable in your regular clothes because none of them fit you. They're all different sizes and you look funny in them and things that you thought would fit don't fit. So it's kind of a weird relationship to clothes. So I think right now it's something that's a little forgiving and is a little stretchy, but still kind of makes me feel like, "Oh, I still got it." I'm still kind of put together and I can show up and not have part of my brain thinking like, "Oh, do I look okay? Is there something wrong with how I look?" If I have zero of that in my head and I can just drop in and enjoy the experience, whatever I've put on that day is probably the right thing.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, that's a powerful outfit. That's good. Okay. Most memorable meal you've ever had.
Shauna Sweeney:
I've had so many memorable meals. Oh my God. There's been some good ones.
Johanna Almstead:
It doesn't have to be the most. You can say one of the [inaudible 01:26:03].
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. One that was really, really cool actually happened at Blue Hill. It was right after my dad got diagnosed and it was his birthday and he had been making a habit of coming out to visit me on his birthday. And we would do a little celebration every year and we were kind of in that weird zone of like, "Okay, what do we do about this?" I dropped a note to Dan Barber. I knew it was Saturday and it was like probably impossible, but this was probably my dad's last visit out to New York City. And is there any way that he could get us a table?
Johanna Almstead:
Did you know him from before?
Shauna Sweeney:
I knew Dan because I'd been there before and I just love food. And they got us the nicest table in the house that night. And Dan stayed and he brought me and my dad and my younger brother and my husband back into the kitchen. And he had said, "I was waiting here for you guys to finish your meal to say hello before heading back to the city, to the Blue Hill in the city." And being able to roll the red carpet out for my dad like that was such a marvelous meal, so last minute. I'm always going to be grateful to him for that. That was pretty special.
Johanna Almstead:
It's a magical moment. That's beautiful.
Shauna Sweeney:
It was pretty cool.
Johanna Almstead:
That makes me like him a lot.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah. I was like, "That's a cool thing to do."
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. Okay. Go to coping mechanism on a bad day. So shit is going sideways, a kid is sick, investor's pissed, your computer breaks, whatever it is. What do you do?
Shauna Sweeney:
I kind of become an avoidant, I think. I kind of find myself going tunnel vision into reading. I'm an avid newsreader. I'll go and I'll read the newspaper, which isn't always great for my mental health, but I'll kind of tune out a little bit and things start to go a little bit internal at that point to the point where I don't notice. Even if I'm physically in the room, I've mentally retreated. How about you?
Johanna Almstead:
I mean, I definitely have the go to scroll moment. I go to Instagram and just start scrolling mindlessly. If I can, if shit is real sideways and if I can, which is very rare, I will try to lay down and meditate.
Shauna Sweeney:
Good for you.
Johanna Almstead:
But it's not very often. And it's like cheating meditating that I actually do TM meditation, but I don't set a timer and I let myself fall asleep.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's awesome.
Johanna Almstead:
Because when shit is going sideways, it's usually because I'm sleep-deprived. I feel like that's often like they go hand in hand.
Shauna Sweeney:
Always.
Johanna Almstead:
I just can't cope. So if I can, if I can shut down or if I can't even let myself fall asleep, but if I can try to at least close my eyes for 20 minutes and just like reset, but that's not as often as it I would like it to be. Although, I have this like really chic, it's like a nap cot. It's like Scandinavian. It was like ridiculously expensive and I put it in my office and I actually... My office is in a separate building out of my house and if I can, I'll actually just try to, even for five minutes, I'll just lay down.
Shauna Sweeney:
Oh, that's an amazing way to reset your nervous system.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, because I get real whacked out.
Shauna Sweeney:
Me too. And it's a nervous system response. You go into fight or flight, you can't help it. And then you're now into a whole different zone and it's very hard to reign that back in again. I like the idea of just laying down. I've heard also just like putting your hand on your heart, sort of giving yourself a hug. I've never done it before, but I've heard this is a good tool. I'm going to try it next time. I feel like I'm constantly overwhelmed though. And I'm just in a state of like, how do I set my day to be slightly less overwhelmed? What do I need to do to get there?
Johanna Almstead:
Well, it's funny because in asking this question, it made me realize I didn't really have a good coping mechanism. I was like, I just jammed through it. I just like, full steam of head, act crazy and shit goes wrong. And I'm like, "Maybe I should think about this a little bit more." And mine is always, it's funny, there's times even when I did this last night, I was like, real cranky and it was homework time and dinner time and I still had work to do and I just like needed, and I was like, "I need to go upstairs and I need to put on my pajamas." It was like way too early. It was like seven o'clock. I was like, "I need these clothes off my body and I need to be laying flat." I didn't have to be there for very long. I just needed to lay on my bed. I put my heating pad on my back and I was just like, 10 minutes. I just need no one to talk to me for 10 minutes.
Shauna Sweeney:
Wow, that sounds amazing. I kind of want to do that. That's a good one to pull.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah. And you just like, it's like I'm super sensitive to noises, I'm super sensitive to light. I'm like a...
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah.
Johanna Almstead:
And so it like closing my eyes and laying my body down are two of the fastest way, I always say it's like a motherboard when you're like... Everything shuts down. Yeah, that's like the kind of quickest and most effective for me.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's a good... I'm going to try that. I'm borrowing this one. I need that. It's almost like a self-timeout.
Johanna Almstead:
Yeah, you just got to go sit in the corner for a minute. I just need like five minutes. I need 10 minutes to just like lay my body physically down because I also realized that like I physically carry stress in places and so I'll be like, everything hurts. And then when you lay down, you're like, "Okay, okay."
Shauna Sweeney:
"I can do this."
Johanna Almstead:
[inaudible 01:31:16]. Okay. We're almost done. Dream dinner party guest list, dead or alive. Who's coming to your party?
Shauna Sweeney:
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Johanna Almstead:
So good, so good.
Shauna Sweeney:
Good dinner guest, good stories. Maybe Zelda too, just for a little crazy in the mix. That'd be really fun. Better alive. I think Jensen Huang, the guy who started NVIDIA, he just seems like a really cool dad. He's just cool dad energy. And I feel like he has a lot to say about life. I follow some of his stuff on Instagram and I'm like, "You're cool. That'd be cool to talk to you." And then maybe Leonardo da Vinci. I feel like just such a cool person invented so many crazy things.
Johanna Almstead:
So many things in his brain. Yeah, yeah.
Shauna Sweeney:
I just saw this one which was like a stick bridge and I was like, "Who thinks of this stuff? How? How did you come up with this crazy stick bridge? Was this just a Tuesday for you?" I think he'd be cool because what would he bring? That'd be interesting. And then maybe like Martha Stewart or someone like that. Someone like super local who has all the tea on what's going on in the area.
Johanna Almstead:
Dream.
Shauna Sweeney:
And you, you need to be there too.
Johanna Almstead:
Okay, thanks.
Shauna Sweeney:
Let's just have this super weird dinner party.
Johanna Almstead:
I mean, I am all for it. So here for this. Leonardo, meet Martha. Martha, da Vinci. She's like, "Oh no, I've known him in a past life." Okay, okay. My last serious question is, what is one thing you know for sure right now here in this moment? You don't have to have known it yesterday. You do not need to know what tomorrow. What is one thing you know right now? What feels true to you?
Shauna Sweeney:
This one's going to be kind of dark, but it's not. Okay?
Johanna Almstead:
That's okay.
Shauna Sweeney:
We're all going to die.
Johanna Almstead:
Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed at that.
Shauna Sweeney:
I mean, it's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. We are all going to die and you don't know how much time you have left. So remember that and then filter what you're choosing to spend your time on.
Johanna Almstead:
That's beautiful. Did you see Come See Me in the Good Light? Do you know about [inaudible 01:33:38]?
Shauna Sweeney:
No.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my God.
Shauna Sweeney:
Is it good?
Johanna Almstead:
You must.
Shauna Sweeney:
Okay, done.
Johanna Almstead:
So it's Andrea Gibson, she's like a non-binary poet, but she's like a rockstar poet, married to Megan Falley, who's also a poet. It's basically Andrea's diagnosed with stage four cancer and it's the last year of their life. And it is talk about taking each moment and not taking anything for granted and letting this be the lesson that you don't, we are all going to die. And it is so extraordinary. It was actually nominated for an Oscar. It didn't win, but it won at Sundance. It is-
Shauna Sweeney:
Done. I'm watching it this week. I can't wait.
Johanna Almstead:
It's like, be ready to sob your head off, but it's awesome.
Shauna Sweeney:
It sounds good.
Johanna Almstead:
Such a good reminder. I think also for the, you keep saying like, "I want to make sure I'm not missing the moments and I want to make sure I'm paying attention and all that stuff." It'll be a good reminder.
Shauna Sweeney:
That's good.
Johanna Almstead:
Can you please tell the nice people who are listening, where they can find you and where they can find more information about tendercare, where they can find tendercare, all the things?
Shauna Sweeney:
Of course, of course. Come and find us, be part of our community. You can find us at trytendercare.com. You can find us on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok at trytendercare. We give completely free tools to families to find help on the other side of a diagnosis, an unexpected trip to the ER, trip to the hospital. This is where you go for what comes next on the other side. We help you with education and free tools to get prepared and also to understand what local services are in your or your loved one's area on all kinds of different things that you may or may not have already known about. And we try to proactively put those into your hands so you can have a plan and make really great choices for how you care for yourself or for your loved ones.
Johanna Almstead:
Amazing. Two things I think that people should know. One is that you guys have a very, very serious vetting procedure to make sure that all the people that are on your site or all the providers that are on your site are thoroughly vetted by you guys. So that's something that's really important to know. And everybody should go on and get their, what is it called, the emergency ID?
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, your free tenderID.
Johanna Almstead:
Your tenderID, which is basically, it's a little thing that EMT and hospital workers can scan and they'll know all your medications and anything, who they're supposed to call and all the things. So everyone, whether you're caring for someone older or not, everyone should have that.
Shauna Sweeney:
Yeah, it's true. And you can give these to your parents. You can put them in their wallet or their purse. And this is everything that a paramedic needs to give someone the best possible care. They only have 10 minutes to figure it out and it's a hunt to figure out who this person is, who do you call? Which hospital do you take them to? Do they have any allergies? And then the coolest part about it is this QR code. So the minute that it's scanned, it also alerts anyone else you have on the account that there's been an emergency. And so it's important for you to know about that versus finding out three days later that your loved ones-
Johanna Almstead:
And even people who are young and healthy should have this. Make your partners have it. You should have it for yourself and it's free-
Shauna Sweeney:
It's free.
Johanna Almstead:
On tendercare.com.
Shauna Sweeney:
There you go. Exactly. I'm like, "And this episode is sponsored by trytendercare.com. Thank you.
Johanna Almstead:
Here we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for-
Shauna Sweeney:
Thank you.
Johanna Almstead:
Spending so much time with me. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your brilliance and your insight and your positivity. And I'm so very grateful for this time that we've had together. So thank you so much.
Shauna Sweeney:
Thank you for just making safe space for all of us who feel all these things and making sure that we all know there's more of us out there and that we're all going through this together. And for the gift you've given me, which is once a month, make a dinner party. It's a good challenge. I'm going to see how well I can stick to it.
Johanna Almstead:
Oh my gosh. I could talk to her all day. I just adore her and I adore her mind and I adore her positivity and her heart. If you guys enjoyed this, please share it with your friends. If somebody you know is looking for inspiration or just like to smile, I feel like this is the episode to share with them. You can always share it over Instagram. You can share it over TikTok. You can share it over email or text. All you have to do is copy the link in the media player and paste it into whichever vehicle of communication you would like. Every time you share an episode with someone, it helps us tremendously. So thank you, thank you, thank you in advance for doing that. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you. If you'd like to in advance, leave us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Music.
That would be huge. We would really, really appreciate it. And as always, we're so grateful that you keep tuning in. It's just amazing to us. And if you're not doing so already, please follow us on social media. We are at Eat My Words The Podcast at both TikTok and Instagram. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, and I will catch you on the next one. This podcast has been created and directed by me, Johanna Almstead. Our producer is Sophy Drouin. Our audio editor is Isabel Robertson, and our brand manager is Mila Boujnah.