Baby Bird Leaves the Nest

This is an early episode where we tried to do an introduction to 2PP before we get started and it's an epic fail!! (We only tried it twice.) In the episode Shawn and Scott talk about the difficulties of letting people fail forward and letting successful people go when they need to grow.

What is 2 Parachutes Podcast?

The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!

Scott: 00:03

Hey, Sean. Hey, Sean. And hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the 2 Parachutes Podcast with Scott and Sean. As many of you already know, we think there's value in jumping into today's dynamic environment and seeing where the conversation goes. So what we do here at the 2 Parachutes Podcast is pretty similar to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and seeing where the air currents in the parachute takes us.

Scott: 00:28

We are ready to jump, so strap on your gear and jump with us. Let's, see where we land. Sean, you're gonna jump first today?

Shawn: 00:39

Sure, why not? Why not? Well, it's a big day for me. There's a lot of change in the air, so that's one of the currents to play off the metaphor. It was, as you know, I am the CEO and founder of a Virginia, Washington DC area based nonprofit organization called Coalition, and we have had a little bit of an unpredictable trajectory since President Trump issued some executive orders back in January halted or at least strategically paused foreign assistance for a time.

Shawn: 01:12

That that was a lot of the work that we were doing. And ironically, we were in that business for the same reasons that he halted the assistance was to assess it and ensure that it was a good return on investment investment for American taxpayers and their dollars. And so while it was a bit of a shock to the system, it was not necessarily unwelcome news, and we were fortunate enough actually to have survived some of that culling. Hopefully, that means that they saw value in what we were doing and that our preemptive steps to ensure that we were good stewards of US government taxpayer dollars actually won us a seat at the table in the after effect. Well, since that moment, we've downsized our staff significantly, and for the most part, we've been pretty good.

Shawn: 02:01

But one of our really, really dear founding members, who's a personal friend and in many ways, my professional daughter and sometimes personal, it has felt like daughter. She she spent some time with us during COVID. She's a young woman, out making her way now is gonna, it would appear, be leaving us. Her time with coalition is coming to an end, and as I'm sure you can imagine, that has brought up a lot of different feelings and thoughts for me that I am honestly, we're only processing. So that's the Sean you get today.

Shawn: 02:34

And so that's my leap. I

Scott: 02:39

love this metaphor, this descriptor that you use of your baby birds. And so it sounds like you got a baby bird that's ready to leave the nest.

Shawn: 02:48

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So as most parents, I think, can relate, that's a bittersweet moment, but it is one that I think has been a while coming, so I'm very excited for her in this new chapter, but also need to take a look and see where that leaves us, you know, as we continue to manage where we're at financially and programmatically.

Scott: 03:13

So as you know, I'm gonna pull a thread. You've got my brain going and I'm gonna go somewhere completely unrelated to pull in something, that I hope shakes something loose for you because I'm happiest in a conversation when I find something that is a little bit jarring, just a little bit of a shake, that causes stuff to tumble out of somebody's brain. And this is going to reveal the kind of TV I watch in the evening when I'm looking for wisdom in the bottom of a glass of some sort of beverage. There's a Netflix show, and again, this is my lack of attention to detail, which I struggle with all the time. Think it's Chef's Table is the name of the show, but the episode, which I love, and I've actually watched this episode several times just because I love the way this guy thinks, is about an Argentine chef called Francis Malman.

Scott: 04:22

And as you're talking about baby birds leaving the nest, this guy has been around the world and he has restaurants set up in a bunch of different, locations. And he talks about a number of things, but one of the things that he talks about is he never wants to hire people that have worked somewhere else because, and he doesn't call them baby birds, but it's the same sort of thing. It's because he wants to bring new people in who have passion for cooking and then expose them in the way that makes sense to him. And what he sees is as he exposes people who have passion but no knowledge to his way of cooking, some people fall away and the decor, as they sort of rise up in the pyramid, to actually running the restaurant and running the kitchen, is people who are reflective of him. And he goes, As soon as somebody succeeds, his words are, As soon as somebody succeeds in my restaurant, is actually running the kitchen, I have to fire them.

Scott: 05:37

I have to fire them. And he says, the reason is that once you succeed, the growth is gone and the last thing that he wants is for somebody to be running a restaurant and creating great dining experiences and creating wonderful food, but to have it be a job and a paycheck and a thing to do. And it's not that he wants the continued struggle, it's that he recognizes that part growing and part of fulfillment as a person is the learning the growth and the struggle. And so when you get to the top of that mountain, what you need to do is find another mountain. And he goes, It's very sad.

Scott: 06:21

And it makes him sad. It makes the person that he's firing sad. But he goes, It's just very important. And that sadness of the departure of somebody who needs to leave the nest is not a bad thing for him. It's just sad.

Scott: 06:45

And there are so many ways that this conversation can go now. We could talk about the sadness of an important thing. We can talk about what it takes to continue to grow and learn, which has been sort of kicking me around personally for the last six months. But what do you think of that? This notion of once you succeed, I have to fire you.

Scott: 07:11

Does that shift anything loose for you?

Shawn: 07:13

Yeah. I I like where he's going with that because I recognize something consistent in that model of management. What I would probably call it though is in our world, it wouldn't necessarily be like termination. What I would see it is, what a cool model to have. What I'm realizing, as you say that, is in our organization, because it's small, you know, I have a lot of, you know, still hands on interaction with people at all levels of my organization.

Shawn: 07:48

So I only recently kind of built myself a little bit of a C suite, meaning like, you know, I brought on a chief operations officer and a chief information security officer, and then me as the CEO, I kind of wear the chief strategy officer and executive officer hats. And so, you know, that what I'm realizing about that is that is a specific, you know, sort of cadre of professionals that you need in order for your organization to be functionally proficient and compliant, which is extremely important. And those are not roles that you want to fire a lot, right? But when you look at every other role that is within our organization, this is now sort of the programmatic side of things, where we get a, you know, a grant or a contract that we then support technically to implement whatever that grant or contract the scope is. And a lot of times in our context, it's security cooperation around the world.

Shawn: 08:49

So we work with the Ukrainians to improve their, you know, knowledge, cyber and research security skills. We may work with the Iraqis and the Jordanians to strengthen their cross border explosives, you know, counter trafficking capabilities, etcetera, etcetera. And where I see that model that you're describing interestingly compatible is with all of the people who staff all those other roles to do that work. Because what I see, more like a it's think of it more of like a university program where you come in, you learn all of the skills to do a certain thing. And then once you obtain those skills, you sort of graduate out of that functional role.

Shawn: 09:32

It's like a contract basis, right? Where you came in having a certain scope once you satisfied and mastered that scope. I mean, sure, you could just replicate that. I think plenty of people in the project management world, that is exactly what they do. They hone that functional professional skill and then they apply it and that's the rest of their career.

Shawn: 09:52

That's all they want to do. But if you are in a dynamic, creative type of environment, I think Coalition in many ways is compatible with that model because a lot of the work we do is so boutique. Yes, there is a certain skill set you need project management to be able to implement and do those things, but each one, each project looks so different that it doesn't feel the same. It feels, you know, one minute we can be organizing a, you know, bilateral US India semiconductor conference, the next next moment we can be, you know, implementing a regional tabletop for, you know, The Balkans, right, on some aspect of sanctions control or something. So feels very different.

Shawn: 10:36

So some creativity involved there, kind of like cooking because you're, yes, you're applying the basic functions of cooking, which is to know your ingredients, to know how to get the timing and the sequence of your recipe. But it's also very dynamic. So I could see somebody like Shana, who is the person I was referencing in the beginning, she learned all of the things. Now she can go open her own kitchen, or in this case, she can go basically be a captain of industry for herself as a consultant and work for anybody she wants to applying those amazing skill sets. She has learned everything she's going to learn from me or from Coalition.

Shawn: 11:17

And I actually think that's a really interesting way to frame sort of the temporal nature of employees in an industry. And so again, I think in this context, that feels like what's happened, you know, and she wouldn't be the first. There's been a lot of people who have come and gone before her that I would say part of what led to their departure, whether it was driven by the consultant or the contractor, because we didn't have a lot of salary W-two staff because we're small. So most of it was contract to begin with, which implies a sort of temporal nature to that mechanism, that employment mechanism. I would just say that, you know, whether it was the consultant who decided to leave, whether it was mutual or whether it was coalition decided it was time to go, I would say that probably it was because either we were diverging in terms of what we thought Wright looked like or because that person had optimized what they could get out of the organization or the organization optimized what they could get out of the individual.

Shawn: 12:33

So yes, while it wasn't a set protocol to be like, Oh, you're at the end of your time, trap door opens and you fall through. I do think that there is something there with the idea of a limited tenure.

Scott: 12:49

Yeah, and I think it's I love what you're saying because even though you haven't used this word, what I'm getting is that it needs to be organic and when you listen to Francis Mollmann, he is all organic. There is no like steel and plastic to this guy. It's all like earth growing things, metaphorically. But I think there's one thing I want to challenge and then one thing that I want to ask. The thing I want to challenge is, and what I'm struggling with is sorting the 15 different ways that I could go down, and that's just the way my brain works.

Scott: 13:36

But to kind of keep us on track, the idea that for some roles it makes sense and for some roles like security or maybe even operations that doesn't work, I'm gonna be in the disagree column for that. And certainly for security, my background is in counterintelligence, and then since I retired from the FBI, in security consulting and intelligence consulting across a range of issues. And the theme that you often see, not a 100% of the time, but a lot of the time you see when there is a security incident or an intelligence, failure is you have somebody who maybe hasn't become complacent, but who's done this for long enough that they think they know. And I'm not suggesting that you get rid of your security person or your intelligence person just to freshen things up. But I think the challenge is, what's your pipeline and how do you keep that person engaged the way you described that you're in Ukraine one week and you're in Singapore another week and it's keeping things engaging so you're continuing to figure things out with your C suite team and avoiding this notion of, Oh, I've been doing this for twenty years and so I know, versus I've been doing this for twenty years and so I should know and so I'm bad at this because I got fooled again.

Scott: 15:20

I think it's like paddling a kayak in white water. You can be the most experienced paddler in the world and still get dumped just because you're in white water. And so I think the question isn't necessarily do you get rid of somebody, particularly in a small organization where you, since you're small, you're inherently fragile, right? You don't have a deep bench that you can put people in. And to continue the cooking metaphor, when you fire somebody or somebody doesn't show up for work, what happens?

Scott: 15:56

The owner's in the kitchen and that's never a good day when the owner's in the kitchen. But my question to you is, we're talking about honing, and the interesting thing about honing, is that when you have a knife and you're honing that knife you don't just hone that knife and make it sharper and sharper and sharper infinitely. The reason you're honing that knife is because you're using it and in using it it gets dull And I think that as we are going into this cycle of we want continued refinement, we want to make sure that all the knives in our drawer are sharp, I think what a lot of people miss, and this is the piece that I want to pick your brain about really, is the part that people miss is the reason the knives get dull is because they're used. People get burned out. People think they know and then they get their ass kicked by something and then they start self doubt.

Scott: 16:57

And that's part of the CEO job role, I think, is to see where your people are in the cycle, to see when they're sharp and they can go to see when they're dull and they need to be honed. But it's recognizing that the fulfillment that comes from a development process isn't I just need to get sharper and sharper, it's that using my skill set dulls me. And so as you're using that knife, you need to keep it sharp because using dulls it and getting dull isn't bad, it means you're putting out good food, it means you're doing the things that you do with a knife. But does any of that like bang into your CEO brain because you're dealing with this on a day to day basis?

Shawn: 17:51

Well I think what highlights for me, or what comes to the forefront of my mind when you say that, is it's really essential for not just the CEO as sort of the chief leader in the organization, but for really all of your leaders that you've got working around you to be aware of that distinction, because it's really easy to be unaware or to underappreciate what that dynamic actually is saying, which is that don't confuse the dullness for something negative or like that it's a negative thing on the person, you know, who's been doing the job for many years and, you know, things are starting to get kind of worn, right? That worn means they've been doing a tremendous job. And I think that and a lot of effort has been exerted. One example of that in my context is with Shayna's imminent departure. I mean, it's actually been happening for some months now, actually, which I guess in some ways is the precursor to her realizing that it's time for her maybe to think about the next step, is that with the acquisition of my COO, who has been involved in the organization since its inception, he's just now stepping into a bigger role on the operations side, the first thing that happened was taking all the administrative burden off her and giving it to him and to me and then to divvying up a lot of what was on her administrative shoulders in addition to the programmatic stuff, which she was responsible for.

Shawn: 19:28

And so, you know, it was very easy to sort of be dissatisfied at any given moment with like, oh, man, she didn't get this or this is still not done or this is pending, you know. And in some sense, could say, using your metaphor of dull, is it didn't feel as sharp as it could have been, meaning her performance or her outputs or some, you know, any number of things. But what I am realizing in retrospect now, walking a mile in her shoes, taking on the things that she was actually doing is what I didn't realize is how sharp her blade was and how much she was cutting through that we were not seeing and that we were not dealing with. And so again, you know, I think it stands the metaphor holds in the sense that, we're kind of in a dull phase right now where, like, we're worn down and things are winding down. But it's because I mean, we did $1,800,000 in revenue last year.

Shawn: 20:29

That's not a small amount of transactions for a nonprofit of our size, which is not large from a personnel perspective. And so the burden of effort on her shoulders was disproportionately and unappreciatedly large. Like, didn't really have full visibility on that. And so what I would just say is, you know, recently things have come to my attention that make me a better leader and will make me somebody who can better appreciate the distinction for is this something that's a result of bad performance or like, you know, is this a competence or performance based issue? Or is this the natural result of running the race really hard and people are tired and it's and the job is becoming bigger than them?

Shawn: 21:15

Or it's, you know, if you're not supporting your people adequately, at some point they get run down and at some point they lose steam and at some point their performance starts slipping. It's not always their fault. But I think it's too easy for leaders to look at that situation and make a snap judgment of it's a them problem, not an Us problem, or even a me problem. And so I think that has been a great wisdom gift that I have been given as I, you know, have been working with this person now, you know, going into our sixth or seventh year. Right.

Shawn: 21:51

And I'm like, that was a valuable lesson. And I was able to express all of that to her, you know, in a conversation today, which I was like, I just want you to know that, you know, I fundamentally missed it. I didn't see how much you were doing and and like, you know, and how much work it was. And you never complained. You know what I mean?

Shawn: 22:11

And, you know, but so it told me two things. It told me how sharp our knife was and how much we were able to manage at the peak of our performance, which was at the end of last year. And it now in the aftermath of that, as we go to transition to continue rightsizing in light of recent events and new realities, it shows me where my knives are sharp and where things are dulling. And then now it's time to reassess the knives and the chopping in the knife block. Right?

Shawn: 22:36

Like, you you know, every every kitchen has a different requirement depending on what your recipes and and your sort of special specialties are. You might have different types of not and so that's giving me an opportunity to reassess what does my knife block need to look like, and then how do we go and start sharpening, you know, the ones that we don't have or have but have kind of dulled in the last year. So, yeah.

Scott: 23:00

Yeah, mean that's always a challenge when you are running a business and it's easy to feel guilty that you don't know what it's like for the day in day out is like for people who are not you in that organization. And you see, I mean that television show Undercover Boss where bosses put on these silly little disguises and go and pretend to do stuff and just see how hard and how challenging the work is that they don't understand. But I think scale comes and bites you as well. I mean, you pick your favorite huge company, there's no way that a person can know everything that's going on in an organization. And with a small business, you're not dealing with a scale problem where one person can't know, but it is amazing how quickly one person can't know.

Scott: 24:07

But as sort of going down a separate lane, I wonder how much she enjoyed the challenge and when all of that work that she was doing got taken away from her. I wonder how much of her need to move on is, wow, I used to be so busy and now I'm not really all that busy. I need to go be busy somewhere. Which is good for her even though it's good for you. If that's getting too deep in the personal aspect of this thing, yeah we don't need to go there but that's shitless for me.

Shawn: 24:55

I think, well, she is the kind of person that, she needs to be doing 50 things at once at all times. Yeah. Yeah. And she just married somebody in July who is exactly the same way, you know, and and he's actually my new CISO, my CISO, so my Chief Information Security Officer, you know, and he, you know, so they're very kindred spirits in that sense. And so I know there's a lot of things driving her decisions, but it may be that with that removal of the responsibilities that were sort of fueling her purpose potentially, that that is like, okay, well, maybe this is telling me I need to rethink next steps.

Shawn: 25:36

And so, no, I think this is all very good. I think she's a newlywed, I think their focus is gonna be on starting a family, I hope. You know what I mean? There's all sorts of great They both travel a lot internationally. I think she wants to dial some of that potentially back and as they move to relocate.

Shawn: 25:55

So there's just all sorts of things. And I just, yeah, I think all of this is to say that the scale piece that you were talking about, we did experience that from 2023 to 2024. And that point about it's easy, it's amazing how quickly, even though you still think of your organization as a startup, you know, and that you still have a fair amount of visibility on what's going on. It only took it was like a blink of an eye before all of a sudden I, you know, realized I didn't have visibility on a lot more than what I had really wanted to have visibility on. And that can be very dangerous if you especially if you aren't always surrounded by middle management that you can trust.

Shawn: 26:46

And this is not her now I'm speaking of, but there are others, I think, that were not always working in my or the organization's overarching interests, you know? And so, that criticality of making the jump from, you know, I don't remember what we made in 2023, but we'll just say half approximately of what we made in twenty twenty twenty four. It was just as it was as fast as that. It's just that small jump from, you know, 09/2000 to 1.8. And all of a sudden, I felt like by the end of twenty twenty four, we looked great on paper.

Shawn: 27:23

And if you go, you know, look at our end of year annual report that's publicly available online, because as a 501c3 nonprofit, we have to be transparent. You know, on paper, it was tremendous. It was and it was good, but underneath it all, there were some really not great dynamics that were sort of, you know, fulminating and and swirling that, without the executive orders, I have to wonder what would what would 2025 have been like? Think there would have been a lot of damage control, frankly, you know, because I think we scaled too quickly. And, yeah, and things were not not going in a in a direction that was going to be positive.

Scott: 28:11

Yeah. So, the the thing that's fascinating me is the perspective issue, Pick your metaphor, walking a mile in someone's shoes, seeing it through someone's eyes. Even if you're paying attention to that, it seems to me it's difficult to really see things from another person's perspective. But I would much prefer to talk about that than to talk about the divergent agendas. I mean, you have somebody in your organization that does not.

Scott: 28:49

Have ownership or believe in the unified direction that you're going to and is working at counter purposes that happens. It happens a lot. But it's a different issue than this really fascinating thing of you're running an organization and it's not that big of an organization and you really at some level don't know what's going on. And how do you deal with that without the self loathing and the frustration, but in a functional way that I don't need to go into the bilge of the boat and make sure that there are no cracks in the ribs if the person steering the boat or the person hauling up a sail or the person in command of the boat. So it's trust, but it's also perspective and it even pulling out of a business paradigm just in personal relationships, and not just individual personal relationships, but family and friends.

Scott: 30:06

How do you bring into your forebrain the reality that even people that you know well have a different perspective on things just because, and we've talked about this before, they're not you. And how do you use those differences to understand rather than to divide? And so I'm doing what I do, right, Sean? And we remain friends even though I jump this sort of, I go from the concrete to this esoteric thing, but the rock goes up and it comes back down to earth and it's not so esoteric when it impacts you. So what's that shake loose

Shawn: 30:49

for me? It's about being able to see different threads of a circumstance or a situation at the same time. It's like, you know, if you look at the practical sort of timeline of a startup organization and then how it evolves into, you know, a mature startup or, you know, less of a startup phase and just a young business now that's established and sort of brand name recognized, because we quickly became a brand that people recognized globally. A lot of that was because the people we started with individually were well known, and then when we coalesced into coalition, that created automatically sort of a baked in the cake audience globally, because people knew Doctor. Shah from Iraq or Doctor.

Shawn: 31:48

Isroyal from Indonesia. So we had a baked in sort of network that came with that cohesion. And so if you look at the math, it's like, okay, going from 0 to $1,800,000, there was a trend line and a trajectory that you can follow. And that's one thing to look at. That's one dynamic.

Shawn: 32:09

But then when you kind of graft onto that, what are all these other things that are happening that are, you know, happening along that line? Right. Like, you know, where you're an early startup phase and you have like it's me and three baby birds. Right. And it was literally me and a couple of 25.

Shawn: 32:29

It was, you know, that's and we won like $1,200,000 the first year. Me and three under 25s or 25, right? And so and then we were managing it and then we added some part time seasoned help. You know, so there's that piece of it. And so then you look at like, you know, skill set needed capabilities, you know, level of effort, how much time does each of these people need?

Shawn: 32:57

What? And then and that's another thing. It's like, how is your personnel configured for that phase on the timeline? And then if you dig another layer deeper, it's like, what do those individuals need? And how are they you know, how do you need to work with them to get the most out of them?

Shawn: 33:12

But also understanding that if, you know, if three quarters of your crew is 25 and under, they need coaching, they need training, they need, you know, skill development. And so, you know, you're now all of a sudden I'm wearing a bunch of hats because I'm trying to I know I can't satisfy all of that. And so we built mechanisms that leveraged the community that helped us found the organization by way of a volunteer board of directors and by way of a volunteer international advisory board. And I was really heavily engaging those people to kind of help me in that sort of mentorship incubation training phases. So I think that the key is just understanding that nothing happens in a vacuum.

Shawn: 33:56

Like lines on a chart are not static. There are so many different things that are occurring at multiple layers, like an onion, on that moment in time. And if you can keep that depth of understanding, knowing that you're not just dealing with one static thing at a time, but that there's many kinetic things happening at once, then you might have a fighting chance to perform analysis that helps you then figure out how to preserve what you've got without, like, kind of shaking upon reentry as you break speed barriers and things like that. And, we did pretty well, but I think we probably got a little bit too hot at the end of twenty twenty four. So, you know, I have to it's a weird place to be.

Shawn: 34:47

I'm a very like, you know, I'm a god girl. Like, I believe, you know, that there is a plan for me, there was a plan for coalition, and that there still is. And so when the executive orders came in January, which is not going be a popular thing for people to hear, but it solved a lot of problems for me, frankly, Scott, you know, where it kind of just stripped us down to the bare minimum. And that allowed us to learn from all of those layers and layers that were just now very kinetically like interacting. It's just imagine a bunch of little hot atoms just spinning about, you know, and it was, if we had kept on that trajectory, I believe that we would have spun off into infinity and we probably would have disintegrated.

Shawn: 35:33

So it was a forcing function to kind of stop, shed and reassess. Where we go from here, I don't yet know, because, you know, we're now losing certain people, gaining certain people, we're losing certain people, the work is staying pretty consistent. We're gonna probably come just under a million this year, which praise God, because I don't need once you break the million mark is you gotta do the whole federal single audit thing, which is an absolute, just painful, like, you know, I mean, just all all you need to know is audit, right? That says it all. So I'm just like, Let's go 900,000.

Shawn: 36:13

I don't want the 1,000,000. I'm like, We're good. And assuming nothing changes, that's what will probably be good for next year. Now, the question is, will we win any more work? Then what does that look like?

Shawn: 36:28

And if we don't, do we, like Madonna in the 80s and 90s, do we continue to reinvent ourselves? Like, I don't know. You've

Scott: 36:40

pulled another strange connection out of me, is what this podcast is all about. We're on parachutes, we're looking up at the plane, that's gone, the ground is coming up to us and who knows what the wind is gonna do. And so my oddball question to you is, were you the person I was talking to about Ted Lasso? Yes. So I had-

Shawn: 37:07

At least once.

Scott: 37:08

Yeah, and that's a TV show that, I had passed over forever. And so I started watching it the other day and I'm going through and I'm like, okay, beginning to get why it's so wildly popular, which is wonderful. And then I thought, I wonder when this is gonna come up in conversation. And it has come up in conversation right now when you said that you're a god girl and the Trump administration shutting down all these contracts was good for you. It reminds me of a scene in Ted Lasso where Rebecca, who's the owner of the soccer team, and it's funny, I'll give a little bit of detail for people like me who haven't seen it, but she's in Amsterdam and she sees this handsome dude and she gets startled and she falls into the canal and he sort of fishes her out.

Scott: 38:17

And so they have this, while her clothes are drying, they have this wonderful ongoing conversation, having dinner, having a couple of cocktails and what he shares with her is that he had a bad breakup in the previous year because the woman that he had a child with was unfaithful and it really hurt him and he was angry for a long time. And then he said this thing, which I wrote down, because I'm still journaling, and the line the character says is, It didn't happen to me, it happened for me. And I'm like, this is why I'm watching Ted Lasso because this is another thing that I can pull out of the universe and it makes sense. What I'm hearing you say is it didn't happen to you, it happened for you. It's that thing and it's not looking at a bad, event and finding a way to make it look good.

Scott: 39:35

It's looking at how you change when a thing happens to you. And you don't only change for the good in response to good events. It's great to win business, it's great to win an accolade, it's great to have success, it does change you. But the things that a lot of people would consider to not be good also change you. That's right.

Scott: 40:08

And it gives you the opportunity to go down that road of everything's bad, and that's where anger and ridicule live in our current parlance, but it's understanding that growth is neither good nor bad, it's growth. I think your perspective through your lens is such a wonderful way to process it, and it is completely aligned with the other thing that I wanted to share with you, which is I am beginning to understand why you are a good CEO, and what I see is you have this instinctive ability to do what so many CEOs struggle to do, And I see this instinctive ability in you that you know what needs to get done and you do not concern yourself with who doesn't. You concern yourself with getting it done. So when you're talking about bringing in volunteers and bringing in help and bringing this, that and the other to bear, what most people that are trying to get an organization up off the ground will do is they will stay later and come in earlier and they will do all the work because they think this is my organization, so I have to do the work. And it's the worst thing you can do because now you become the choke point.

Scott: 41:43

You have your three baby birds and they're all just out of school and now you're going to meet with each of them in this serial way to make sure that all this work is being done and when they reach their capacity, you're going to take everything over. That's the way most fledgling CEOs work and I don't get the sense that you ever struggled with that. You see what needs to be done, and you marshal resources to get it done. You don't struggle with, well, I should be doing this. I should specifically be getting my hands dirty to do this.

Scott: 42:24

And most CEOs go through a learning curve. Some never get to the point where you are, which is it just matters getting it done, the calmness that I feel that comes off of you when you're talking about this very difficult thing of how do we get this all done? I see you focused on what's important, which is the perspective disconnect and not, you never go to, well, what I need to do is get back into the metaphorical warehouse and stand in the line and make boxes.

Shawn: 43:07

Lift the crates and do the, And you

Scott: 43:10

run the forklift and stuff. You instantly go to, Wow, we need three more people in the warehouse, let's get them.

Shawn: 43:18

And

Scott: 43:22

it's how you're wired, which is why you're good at this. That's what I see. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you don't see it as, particularly significant, And that simply means to me that it's confirmation of, what I hope one day will be an old adage, and it's the Scott Olson formulation of this that your own life looks unremarkable from the inside out. But when I look at the outside in, I think this sort of innate skill that you have is remarkable because it's rare.

Shawn: 43:59

Wow, well, don't even know how to respond to that, Scott. I don't think we have time in the podcast at this point for me to do that adequately. And you know, I just appreciate deeply that level of analysis for what you see and what you're hearing. It is a little bit difficult to know because you don't, as a founder and a CEO of a startup, regardless of how many peers and professionals I had surrounding me and an executive body that was technically my boss and has been, I do get constant sort of accolades and reinforcement that you're doing a fantastic job and it always feels good, but, you know, I don't know if it's just natural. Some people might say this is a woman thing, and I don't know that that's true.

Shawn: 44:49

I've never been comfortable with that sort of gender sort of stereotyping, where we just don't value highly enough certain qualities or things that we do where we're used to downplaying. I think some would say that and some would probably say that I just don't recognize that bias in myself. But I just kind of see it as it's really hard on a day to day level. You're in the fight, you you're on the ground and it's the fog of war and you're just slogging through every day, hoping you're making the right calls and the right choices. And you don't spend a lot of time pontificating about the relative merits of what I just did.

Shawn: 45:26

You just you know, a lot of times I just would react on instinct and I would just do a quick assessment, analytical calculation of it, I'd be like, okay, we need this, so we got to do this. And so it's just, it's lovely to hear it from someone like you who is, I think as objective a third party as I can get, given that you didn't work in the organization, you weren't a part of the day to day. So you're just hearing things, you know, as I described what was happening without me ascribing any relative value to what that scenario was. It's just me explaining what happened. And so thank you for that.

Shawn: 46:02

That is powerful for me to hear. And, you know, it's you are a very important voice, you know, in in my mentor sort of hall of mentors. And so that means a lot coming from you.

Scott: 46:18

That's wonderful. And that sort of shook loose maybe the conclusion here. I agree with you. I don't think that this is a gender thing. I don't think it's a male perspective or a female perspective.

Scott: 46:33

What I do think it is, is a highly functioning lack of ego. Because when you're looking at what needs to be done, most people, including me, look at, if it needs to be done, then I need to work hard. I need to be a part of this. And you intuitively recognize that there are so many nuts and bolts that need to be put together. You don't look at it as a, how many am I gonna do so that I'm part of the team.

Scott: 47:17

You are just focused on the outcome. And yeah, it's a wonderful thing. Don't even know, if we're coming to the end of an hour, but I

Shawn: 47:30

I think we are, yeah. At 03:12, so I think we may have gone a little over today, but I think it was worth it. It was an amazing discussion.

Scott: 47:39

Yeah, and you know, it's interesting when you and I start getting quiet, that means that it's time to reflect and maybe start talking. So I don't know if you have a summary. I'm interested to know where you think this goes, sort of for you, letting a baby bird go. I don't know even how often it happened to you, but what do you think the next couple of days will be for you?

Shawn: 48:07

Well, I think for me, it's just a it is a time of reflection and a time of just making sure that just as you bring it into existence, that you shepherd it out with this great care as you bring it in, because I think how people leave an organization is as important as how they enter into it and how they feel while they're in it. And so for me, it's just going to be a lot of, you know, expressions of gratitude and how can we position you for the best departure and success as you and nobody ever leaves Coalition forever, I like to say, you know, because we are fundamentally a charitable organization, so people volunteer all the time and her new spouse will continue to work with us. And I'm sure that's not the last we've heard of her, and even in a compensated sense, we may have a need for consultants or SMEs that we bring her back to satisfy some role. But I just know that for me, it is a fitting sunset to a year of change. And I will be able to look back on 2025 with a tremendous debt of gratitude, both to, my creator and to the people who have supported us and been there for us, whether as donors, volunteers, actual paid consultants and contributors and staff.

Shawn: 49:38

And 2026 is a mystery, but it is a mystery that is mine to make of it what I will, and just making sure that every day I just remember that, you know, I have only one thing to do today and that is to follow him and everything else takes care of itself. So I will continue to do that and, you know, we will see what happens, but I am so excited for her future.

Scott: 50:04

That's so awesome. And I'll put punctuation on that summary by saying this, I think that, I mean, it is wonderful hearing you share something that is personal. And I think in today's world, we do that if it's anonymous. If we get on social media, we're hiding behind a handle, then we can scream our outrage because we don't think anybody will know it's us. And as we try and find our way in the cycle sort of to civility and dignity and staying away from ridicule, I think part of that is being open and sharing things.

Scott: 50:59

That's what we try to do here as we touch the ground after the end of an episode here, is to recognize that part of dignity and civility is integrity, sharing who we actually are as ourselves and not being embarrassed by it, but being human. So you sharing this, sharing this struggle, you didn't cancel today because you were having a bad day. That is what 2 Parachutes Podcast is about. That's what I feel our friendship is about, and that's part of what we're sharing here.

Shawn: 51:42

Thank you.

Scott: 51:47

Enjoy your, reflective time and I'll see That's you on the next one of

Shawn: 51:52

right, we'll see you next time.

Scott: 51:54

All right, see you everybody.

Shawn: 51:56

All right.