Be A Sponge, Communicate Like A MOFO, and Don't Be a Dick (To Yourself) with Lindsey Kay

[0:00] what spinning plates actually feel like

Dan Korus: So how have things been?

Lindsey Kay: I mean, the super short answer that everybody has for everything is busy. but you know, it's been it's been cranking right along, chugga lugging. Yeah.

Dan Korus: What's been busy for you?

Lindsey Kay: man. You know, work-wise, which is feels like, you know, the biggest chunk of

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: my life is I I've noticed that ever since I started at West, we have so many different things that we work on at one given time that it's just like when people would talk about the spinning plates analogy, you

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: know, you probably heard that seven million times. It I actually understand it like in a different way now. So we have,

Dan Korus: What does it mean to you now?

Lindsey Kay: yeah, I mean, tons of deliverables do at any given moment. we have a lot of different programs and they all have different time. deadlines and just time periods that they're operating. So between that and also just trying to s we're still constantly, you know, last year we did a full org restructure and we closed some offices and we changed some things around. And it was it was a lot. And you know, this year we're still working through the kinks of some of those things and smoothing some things out. So sort of like on that macro level, that's always happening. It's not just that we have a lot of programs running at any given time. We're also hiring new staff and doing a lot of just adding a lot of new things. Yeah. Which is exciting, but it's a lot.

Dan Korus: Yeah. What what part is the most a lot for you?

Lindsey Kay: Mm that most a lot. You know I think it's I think the thing that is the most a lot is maybe just trying to stay on top of all of the compliance pieces of things with new systems, right? We

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: have to track so many details in everything that we do. And we're using new systems to do it now because we've been trying to sort of gradually level up just our tech, automation, improving procedure,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: all of those things that it's a lot of new, it's a lot of learning while also trying to keep up with the proverbial conveyor belt of things that have to happen. I think that's probably what spins in my head a lot. And then in in nonprofit, you're also always thinking about fundraising and revenue diversification and things like that for sustainability. So yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. You've been a non profit for pretty much forever, right?

Lindsey Kay: Pretty much forever.

Dan Korus: And and I want to ask about that, but dude, where you where are you from, Lindsay?

Lindsey Kay: Originally South Carolina.

Dan Korus: South Carolina? How long are you in South Carolina?

Lindsey Kay: I grew up there. I was there until about twenty one. And then I

Dan Korus: shoot, okay.

Lindsey Kay: then I left. I moved to Kansas for a couple years. my partner at the time was in the military. So little moving happening happened there. So I sort of had this meandering journey and eventually landed in New Mexico and put my roots down here.

Dan Korus: What's it like in South Carolina?

Lindsey Kay: Humid. It's humid. Yeah. I live in the desert now. I'm a lizard, so it's it's real humid. very

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: trees everywhere. You don't get the sky. And it South Carolina's beautiful, but you don't have like the majestic sky there the way that you do in New Mexico. Here it's just like, you know. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. It's everywhere you look and there so so there there's just more trees and there's less like horizon.

Lindsey Kay: Mm. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: I'm I grew up in the foothills. So we would see like the Blue Ridge mountains in the distance, which was kind of cool. And you're a lot closer to the ocean. So I grew up on a lot of seafood. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: nice. Okay. What are what are the people like in South Carolina?

Lindsey Kay: It's the South. So very Southern.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. is like southern hospitality a real thing?

Lindsey Kay: It is, you know. It there are different variations of Southern culture depending on like where in the South you are. And I think in South Carolina,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: you know, there's definitely a lot of people are really nice, you know, it's a lot of courtesy. but I think I would also say there's a whole lot of expected niceties and kind of curb appeal, right? You have to sort of look a certain way. Your yard has to be perfect. People are looking

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: at like the wood stain color that you use. So there there's also a lot of that, you know, that happens. But by and large, you know, people are really really nice. But it's a different, it's different.

Dan Korus: Yeah. So did you ever have did you ever like live on your own in between like eighteen to twenty one where you like had a yard? Like did you

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: ever have to maintain a yard?

Lindsey Kay: yes I did and I didn't maintain it because

Dan Korus: Ha ha

Lindsey Kay: I was that guy in the neighborhood. it was a short period of time when I was in college and I was

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: working full time and in college, so the last thing I cared about was weeding. But yeah. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

Dan Korus: Yeah. And the grass. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. And now we're in New Mexico where there isn't there's no grass, so

Lindsey Kay: I mean, yeah, God willing.

Dan Korus: I know. Yeah. I recently planted clover in my backyard and that's actually been doing really well.

Lindsey Kay: It's a much better alternative to grass. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: That's true. and I don't have to cut it and the dogs have something soft to lay down on. So that's what I'm happy about. Cool.

Lindsey Kay: Yep. I love that. I love that you did that.

Dan Korus: So what did you what did you do in college? What did you go for?

Lindsey Kay: So originally my plan was to be an art therapist.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: So yeah, I went to school. I did a lot in I majored in visual arts and minored

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: in psychology. At the time, back in the day, it was

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: not super easy to find an art therapy degree program. So you kind of had to

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: build your own, particularly for undergrads. So spent a

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: lot of time essentially in the arts program.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I'm also minored in Spanish at the time. I didn't retain as much of that as into my time now as I would have liked, but Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Now that you're in New Mexico and it would be super useful to have. Yeah, I know.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, yeah. Twenty year old Lindsay would have fared better. yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Why art therapy?

Lindsey Kay: so well, so gr this is maybe a little silly, but growing up, you know, when you're a kid, you're like, I gotta be an astronaut when I you know, whatever, you know, you have your dreams of what you wanna be.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I was kind of all over the place growing up. I would always find a new thing that I thought was really cool that I wanted to do, I wanted to be a musician,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: 'cause I grew up in in music and theater and so loved the arts

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: in general.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: But for most of my youth, I didn't think that I could draw. It was very much like performing arts type stuff. And then come junior year of high school, I had just the best art teacher in the world. And she helped me discover that I actually did have some chops for visual arts. So

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I went all in for those last couple of years of high school. I was in love with it and sort of was trying to figure out what makes sense to do with this, you know, at

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: the time. I'm 18, I'm trying to think like, okay, I have to make a living with whatever I go to school for. What

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Lindsey Kay: does that look like for an artist? so what's sort of what are different fields, right? And I was also growing up, one of the many things I entertained, you know, middle school to high school, I really loved the idea of being a criminal behaviorist. I was like,

[7:19] from art therapy to a wandering twenties

Dan Korus: Cool. Dude, cool. Cool.

Lindsey Kay: I'll work for the FBI and I'll catch these killers.

Dan Korus: huh, huh. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: obviously didn't do that. But therefore, you know, the whole field of psychology, sociology, all

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: of that was super interesting to me. And then later on, anthropology as well. So I was just kind of smushing those two together. They made sense.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: It was sort of in a a a not common job field. It seemed like it'd be interesting.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: yeah. And You know, I you know, you go to college, you're young, you're s you're kind of you weeble wobble a little bit on what you want to do. So I I did a little bit on that and then obviously I didn't end up doing that, but that wasn't by any plan. It just landed that way. Yeah. Yes.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I think that's all of us. I think that's all of us. I was interviewing someone yesterday and we were talking about the college process and they work in college admissions and they had the exact same experience where they, you know, throughout high school had dreams of wanting to do one thing and then realized that those passions and the skill set was there, but it needed to be applied in a different way because they found a new interest. What was that moment for you? Like when did you

Lindsey Kay: I've had a

Dan Korus: you know, like when were you like, Okay, it's not gonna be art therapy or criminology, you know?

Lindsey Kay: I think I've had it a couple times, honestly. Well,

Dan Korus: A couple times? Tell us. Tell me about it. Tell me about it.

Lindsey Kay: golly. I mean, when I was in school.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I definitely wrestled after my first year with how realistic is this career field? Am I gonna actually get a job as an art therapist once I like what happens? Which seems kinda early. You know, I still had three years to go, but I was really thinking about that. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: so it made me get a little wishy washy and think maybe it needs to be the other way around. Maybe I should be majoring in psychology and minoring in art. but ultimately I ended up doing the thing that was even more left field, which was I said, you know what? Actually I'll just get married and move across the country. It's fine. I'll figure it out.

Dan Korus: Okay, okay, okay.

Lindsey Kay: a lot of that had to do with I just wanted to kind of get out of town. I was ready to leave. I still felt kind of stuck in where I was and it was a quick out. We were really young. It was a very short marriage. you know, it just you know, we were young, right? We just kind of jumped into it. And I was in Kansas for a little while and I spent time between when I was in college, I was a sushi chef, did a lot of stuff in that space. When I went

Dan Korus: Ooh.

Lindsey Kay: to Kansas, I worked in veterinary clinics. So I was a vet tech for a while and then thus did a lot of animal rescue. So I thought, do I wanna do I wanna go into animal sciences? Do I want to try to be a veterinarian? man, that's a lot of school What if we move

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: again? So I think this little blip in the middle being attached to the military and being kind of having that unpredictability made it hard to land. So I kind of had a hard time figuring out what it needed to look like because I knew I needed I wanted to build a career. It was just hard to figure out what that needed to look like. Eventually, on the other side of that marriage, yeah, landing in New Mexico and really putting roots down, I started from ground zero here. I didn't have my undergrad. I didn't really have my own place to live. I had no job, didn't know anybody. there was a period of homelessness that I had to deal with. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow.

Lindsey Kay: all the while, about five months into moving here, I had wild hair up my butt and said, you know, the person I was with at that time, dealing with coming out of the military with a brain injury and PTSD, I'd been doing all this animal rescue, had a little bit. Psychology school is a little bit over here, and I thought

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I bet animals could help. What about service dogs? And what was just sort of like a pet project on the side

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: turned into a 14-year start to a nonprofit career where I built a model of care using service dogs to help support veterans and their loved ones that had PTSD and brain injuries specifically. paired with the mental health support framework. So it started out as like this thing. but

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: then there was a point where I had to say, I guess I can't work in this vet clinic anymore. I need to actually do this job full time. That's scary. Made that leap and then, you know, that then became really kind of the genesis of my my big girl trajectory.

Dan Korus: Okay, so this is this is pretty interesting. I love this. Okay, so you're thinking about art therapy in South Carolina, you start to feel cooped up to spread your wings. you go through a quick marriage with a guy who's in the military and end up in Kansas of all places. And

Lindsey Kay: Mm, mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: Kansas, Kansas was Kansas. What was it like? So there's just a bunch of tornadoes?

Lindsey Kay: Kansas was Kansas.

Dan Korus: Like, what was it like in Kansas? I do I've never been to Kansas, so like you gotta tell me about it at least a little bit.

Lindsey Kay: Well, the part that I lived in wasn't, I mean, I guess compared

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to living in a mountainous area, it was flat, but it wasn't flat the way I would imagine, or plains that I have seen since.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: it was so when we drove in for the first time, we were coming in, it was in the winter, it was like January. Everything was brown, everything was gray, it was cold. And I was just like, what have I done?

Dan Korus: Uhhuh. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: But I mean that's also that's winter.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: it's it's very rural. where we were is

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: very rural. you know, you you find your community eventually wherever you are. And it was a military town, so it's a lot of folks that were somehow attached to to the army. We were in Junction City, so it's attached to the big red one and Fort Riley.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: yeah, it was very small town America.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: we did have before I because I was only there for about two and a half years, we did have This awful tornado that barely skirted over us and then completely obliterated this small little town eight miles away called Chapman. It was devastating.

Dan Korus: Whoa.

Lindsey Kay: I remember having my friend call me in the middle of the night and said, You have got to get to cover. The clinic that I worked at had a basement where we had dog kennels. I

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: have never thrown all of my animals and like my couple precious things, I think boxes of photos or something, just thrown

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: was just literally tossing animals in my car and flew down the street to the clinic. We went all went into the basement. We ran our own dog kennel with all

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: of our pops and cats. And it sounded like a freight train going over the top, even though it didn't like actually land on us. The storm was insane. So

Dan Korus: Whoa.

Lindsey Kay: it was nuts. It was nuts. That was my yeah Kansas experience.

Dan Korus: my gosh. Yeah, we don't have that here. That'd be terrifying. Yeah, that's so that's so scary, dude.

Lindsey Kay: No. Don't it was pretty scary, yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: So you you pull the e evacuation button and you end up in New Mexico. Okay, so you get you

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Korus: get to New Mexico. Did you just have like why New Mexico? Did you have like a plan? Did you have like a friend? Were you just like, fuck it, I've seen it on a postcard, like I'm going

[14:38] landing in New Mexico with nothing

Lindsey Kay: Ha ha.

Dan Korus: there? Like did you start driving and like run out of gas in Albuquerque? Like, why New Mexico? Yeah, I know.

Lindsey Kay: That would be very bugs funny of me. Well, I had visited when I was living in

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: Kansas. I had visited with a friend, and from the moment

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: we got here, I was just like, boy, what is this magical land?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: fell in love with everything. And I had kind of decided in the back of my mind, like, this is where I want to end up.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: So then my trajectory was kind of, it wasn't a straight line. I spent some time, with a a different partner living on a exotic game ranch in Bandera, Texas. yes.

Dan Korus: Exotic game? Like is that like what's exotic game?

Lindsey Kay: different African species that lived on the the ranch. So we

Dan Korus: shit, okay.

Lindsey Kay: had Asiatic deer, antelope,

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, really just like different deer and antelope.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that yeah, some of which were there for preservation purposes and others for hunters.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: and so that was a a very interesting blip in my time. Spent time helping take

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: care of the horses and just all the different sort of things that happened there. B briefly sort of started to learn antique learn about antiques and try to broker those. That was I've always been the person that's kind of like, what's the thing? I don't know, I'll figure out the thing, I'll make it work.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah. Brokering antiques. Did you ever have like a big like antique deal, you know?

Lindsey Kay: you know, I sold a lot of graniteware. A lot of graniteware,

Dan Korus: shit, okay.

Lindsey Kay: mostly because the ranch owner had a ton of graniteware they needed to offload. So they were like, I don't know, help us sell this. Yeah. I have this giant

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Lindsay sell this grain at where Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: graniteware stove. Do you know anyone that maybe yeah?

Dan Korus: Yeah. Dang.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. so then eventually the opportunity to for us to move to New Mexico presented itself because my partner at the Times family lived in New Mexico and as soon as there was even like a crack to sneak over there, I was like, let's go. So that that's really

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: it just happened that that worked out. We were able to to and then from there it's just this is this is where I am now. So yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Dude, that's so cool. and we don't we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. but like isn't isn't New Mexico like a pretty rough place to be homeless?

Lindsey Kay: Mm.

Dan Korus: to like experience homelessness. I mean like I know the climate is more favorable than like Washington and that's where I'm from. And when we would have winners

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: up there, like we would we would have to take care of our folks on the street or else they would they would freeze.

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: You know?

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. you know, I was lucky that I well, so I I wanna first just say, and this is a social worker in me, homelessness looks a lot of different ways, right? So

Dan Korus: Yeah, say it. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: it's not necessarily always the person that you see you know, holding up the sign on the side of the street.

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: Whenever we do studies as a state, we have organizations that'll do point in time studies to see how many folks are out on the street, kind of like a census.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that are experiencing homelessness. That kind of gives us some statistics to determine like how many folks are are there actually experiencing this. But what it doesn't account

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: for are people that sleep in their cars, people

Dan Korus: Mm.

Lindsey Kay: that maybe are spending the night at some place, whether it's a shelter or their f of someone they met's house or their friend's house temporarily.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and so it's never a perfect count. And I was

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: definitely one of those folks that just kind of We we moved, so we had friends that would we would sort of bounce.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and so we were able to to kind of figure that out for a period of time until there were retirement benefits that finally kicked in from the military. I was making enough money to sort of pay for basic things, and then eventually we

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: could rent a place. But it took around a year, about a year before that happened,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: which also meant that I was starting a nonprofit. with absolute without a house or an apartment, right? And

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: without an office. And so I don't really understand it had to have been serendipity or just, I don't know, meant to be, but I don't understand why so many people trusted me when I said, Yeah,

Dan Korus: Really?

Lindsey Kay: let me talk to you about this program. I'll meet you at an Applebee's. I don't know. yeah, yeah. And they said, sure.

Dan Korus: Really? Okay, okay. So I didn't I didn't realize that starting the nonprofit overlapped with your year of trying to establish your roots. And I think that this experience is a lot more common than people want to admit, you know? so like I think it's awesome that we're talking about it, because like I love meeting executives with non-traditional backgrounds. because I well all of us well all of us in our mind have like this idea of like the Well, I graduated from UC Berkeley and then I went to got my Harvard MBA, you know, and now I'm a

Lindsey Kay: Mm, mm.

Dan Korus: a big CEO. And like like fuck that. Like it's it's just so boring. Anyways, so I I just

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. It's kinda, yeah.

Dan Korus: I love that we're just memorializing this here and like being like, no, you don't have to, you know what I mean, have that in order to be a badass leader and be successful. So I d I just want to validate that really quick. okay, so you're bouncing around and you And animals seem like a pretty big through line, you know? And you

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: first were wanted to do art therapy, and that's helping people, right? And that's helping people through

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Korus: some way. And then you spend all this time through with animals. And so art is still obviously a big passion in your life, but you're helping people with animals, not through art. and so you build a a n a service dog nonprofit. Had you ever had a service dog before? Like, did you meet a service dog that like So like why you just it just popped into your head and you were like, I'm gonna do this.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. I said, I mean, I I just well, I was watching a rescue dog respond to my partner, right? And I just was noticing some

Dan Korus: Yeah. okay.

Lindsey Kay: things that she was doing naturally and I was like, huh, that's interesting. And just did

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: a lot of research and it was truly I remember sitting in his parents' house, like the loft in their house with my computer, and I just said, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna see what happens and I made a logo I looked

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: up you know starting to build a website you know I usually build them for free before you have to pay for a domain

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: put together like a general concept and I was like I think this is it and that that's still that's still the logo today it's yeah I think that's

Dan Korus: Yeah And that was it. Dude

Lindsey Kay: it I think I think we're gonna try it and I happen to also okay yes boop boop

Dan Korus: Okay, back up, back up. Back up. Sorry. I love this. Yeah, what it what was the rescue dog doing with your partner that like what were you seeing?

Lindsey Kay: So the interesting piece of the conversation around brain injuries and any kind of trauma, right? Is

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

[21:57] what service dogs actually do for invisible disabilities

Lindsey Kay: that you're really talking about these diagnoses that are invisible. And so, you know, it's particularly when you're talking about kind of in the world of assistance animals, a lot of times people, you know, their first thought is the seeing eye dog, right? It's clear this person, they have a cane. They are blind, they have a dog to guide them. I can put this together very quickly by looking at the

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: situation. This person is in a wheelchair, they have a dog beside them. it's a service dog tracks. Great. But when you have someone that maybe has some sort of a diagnosis that prevents them that that really limits their functioning on a day-to-day basis where they need

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: that additional assistance. Whether it's a medical alert dog, a mobility assistance dog. it

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: is not always obvious what they need the dog for when you see them out in public. And so a lot of that initial, you know, trying to get this whole idea off the ground was also educating people on what these dogs are actually doing. And so when I was noticing

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: with her name was Sarge, most amazing dog that ever lived. her name was Sarge, she was a Catahoula mix,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: she would start to nudge. My partner, whenever there would be, I would notice that maybe dissociating, right? Chilly checking out. Or

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: it might be before basically as anxiety is starting to pick up, there would be these little physical cues that maybe somebody else wouldn't necessarily notice, but she would.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and those were just small things. Those maybe are not the those are usually not the full constellation, right? Of what a service dog does for someone, but they were just enough for me to ask the question. Right, that she would act different and she was really honed in on him and just what was happening with him and was pretty responsive to that. So I wanted to really

Dan Korus: huh.

Lindsey Kay: explore that. And then that sort of led into these other skills around helping with balance and recovery sequences if someone falls and it and on and on and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: on and on. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Dude, that's so cool. That like a dog can like smell or

Lindsey Kay: It was pretty neat. Yeah.

Dan Korus: sense anxiety or like building anxiety in a human and then be there for them. That's so cool. So special

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: to watch SARS work with, you know, just be around your your ex-partner.

Lindsey Kay: Mm. Mm. Yeah. It was kind of magical. Yeah. She was

Dan Korus: Okay. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: she was a magical little being.

Dan Korus: And then you were like, Okay, I'm gonna go work on service dogs for people with these invisible or or visible disabilities and impairments and just kinda help them and build build a foundation. So what did the business do exactly?

Lindsey Kay: So obviously over the course of fourteen years there's a lot of evolution in that service model as we would learn things. But essentially

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: what we were offering was service dog training. So tr we

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: would work with the client to train the dog with them. So our model was actually predicated on the idea that you're doing everything in partnership. You're not training a dog for them and handing it over to them. There was so much attached to this relationship-based model that we were developing that it had to be done in partnership.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: we always used rescue dogs, which was in and of itself its own challenge. But anytime you're working with a being, there are challenges.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: So we just had our own set. and we paired that with specific therapeutic interventions that were addressing things that would come up around PTSD and brain injury. So we would have individual therapy, group therapy, and we did things like psych education. And a lot of that would lead to suicide prevention. So eventually we did talk a lot more openly about suicide prevention as a really important tenet of of all of the work that we were doing because, you know, the rate of Folks that die by suicide that are attached to the to the military is quite high. So it was

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: definitely part of the conversation.

Dan Korus: Okay. Well this would be a good time to just like for those who are listening, if anyone like was resonating with this and they're like, shit, this would be helpful in my life. you know, can they if they're not in Albuquerque, what do they do? Where do they go find how

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: do they how do they get a rescue dog and go through this process or what sort of like resources would

Lindsey Kay: Mm.

Dan Korus: you point them towards? Or, you know, where should they go and ask for help? that's a really

Lindsey Kay: Great question.

Dan Korus: broad, broad ass question. but I think it's important to talk about.

Lindsey Kay: Well, I think I'd say a couple things. One, if you

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: are someone that needs a service animal, regardless of where you are, there's an organization called Assistance Dogs International, and it is the only

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: international accrediting body for assistance dog organizations outside of guide dogs, because those are kind of two different

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: wheelhouses, if you go to to if you look them up online, you can actually look at a directory of all of the accredited service dog organizations across the world to see who's close to you and then reach out to them. And Paws and Stripes is the organization that that I started and it is an accredited organization. For somebody that is struggling with thoughts of suicide, there are a lot of resources out there. Some are specific to certain demographics. There's the Trevor Project for LGBTQ youth. there is the veterans hotline. There's also 988, I believe it's 988, right? that you can call from wherever you are. But I would also say that if you're not somebody that fits into any of those categories, I would encourage you to consider what's called QPR, which is question, persuade, refer. It's a it's like CPR. So you want everybody to know it, except it's for how you engage with folks that might be thinking about suicide. And it is proven to help prevent suicide. Yes.

Dan Korus: let's talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about QPR. Let's teach everybody who's listening what QPR is.

Lindsey Kay: QPR. you know, it's it's so the training you can look up QPR and usually find someone to do that training for you. Oftentimes it can be free. Another

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: thing that Paws and Stripes does is they do QPR training. So you can also call them if you're in New Mexico and they'll do it for you. but it re so there's a the whole program behind it that essentially talks about s suicide. So make sure to really address any Stigmas or incorrect associations with anything that sort of shows up in that realm. And then it teaches you how to talk to folks that might be having ideation, how to ask

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: certain questions. But I would say, you know, at the end of all of it, one of the most important things to take away is always ask the question. I think people often think that if I even suggest suicide, that somehow I'm making it happen or I could provoke it. but the best thing that you can do is asking someone point blank, are you thinking about hurting yourself? Are you thinking about killing yourself? Don't pull punches. Ask the question. That is actually one of the most powerful tools that you can have to really have somebody stop and sort of in that moment, right?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: but Obviously there's a lot more to it, you know, the conversation and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: the the training is great because it really walks you through all of that. And it's a really scary thing for most folks. So it kind of helps

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: take a little bit of the the scare out of it so that you feel a little more prepared if it's something that shows up in your life.

[29:16] how to talk to someone about suicide

Dan Korus: Yeah. That's so great. Okay. And if folks wanted to know more about that, they could look up QPR and kinda they could either

Lindsey Kay: Yes.

Dan Korus: find a training or they could find some resources and be like, okay, here's my strategy for this. Okay. Dude, that's so cool. Dude, what a valuable podcast that we're we're teaching

Lindsey Kay: Yes. Question Yeah.

Dan Korus: people so much. Okay, this is this is really good. Is there anything else that you because this is an a really important topic and I don't wanna cut this one short, because I have kind of a silly question that I have next. But For, you know, finding assistance dogs, you know, some of these resources. Is there anything else you want people to know about with with this topic or anything else that you want to say about it? You don't have to have something, but

Lindsey Kay: man, I mean, I spent a lot of my life in this space, so I could really talk about a lot of things. man, all day, all day. I

Dan Korus: Yeah. I'm sure. And maybe we will. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: gosh, you know, I think maybe one thing that I'll offer.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: something that I think is really important that maybe isn't really talked about so much when we're

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: talking about veterans, people in the military.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I think that it's pretty typical of folks in our culture to really immediately ascribe sort of the label of you're a veteran, thank you for your service, you're everything that you've sacrificed for us. You sort of like immediately categorize this person as a very specific kind of person, right?

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: You're a hero, you did all these things, right? You're strong. Thank you, all of those sort of things that we attach to like patriotism, all that to a veteran. But veterans are just they're people. They're people. So all of that may be true, but there's so much more to someone who served that they bring along with them and their whole selves that I think can get sort of ignored or dismissed. And they can

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: often be sort of distilled down to sort of this trope of being a veteran and what it means to be a military veteran. hero of some kind, right?

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: It doesn't mean to say you don't feel that gratitude or that you don't have that understanding and value of what they've done in their service, but it just means that there is, it's, there's always an and. There's always an and. So when we talk about veterans, we're also talking about human beings that have all kinds of different constellations that make up their identity and that make up their lived experience. If you're talking

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: about a veteran that's LGBTQ, their experience is probably not the same. As

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: someone else that was in the military that's not. for women, it's a very different experience in the military, right? folks that

Dan Korus: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: are people of color. So, and that you could go on and on and on socioeconomic class. But the reality

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: is that the the military is also an incredibly diverse space, even though it is very uniformed, right?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: And so this is re was so relevant to the work that I was doing because I think that I see a lot of veteran organizations that tend to say, we already know who you are because you're in the military. So I'm gonna say these five things, you're gonna recognize them, and then immediately already know who you are, and that's who you are, and this is what we're gonna do. And the model of care that we built at PAS was really very specific, or sorry, it was really prioritizing. the fact that all of these folks are individuals and that we see them as more than their service. We see them as really transcending this period of time and this all of these things that they did in their life because you know they a lot of times you come out of the military and then it's well now now what? Well who am I now? Right? So yeah that's my little soapbox for that.

Dan Korus: you seem

Lindsey Kay: out.

Dan Korus: to know a lot about this. You know, and I think it's a it's a topic that we often turn a a lot of blind eyes to in the country. And I've worked with a lot of people who are veterans and

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: are trying to get the care that they need and they're really frustrated, right? 'Cause the resources just aren't there. And so

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Dan Korus: it's almost like it's like a trope, you know, and

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: that's just so unfortunate. you know, that

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: it's average for veterans to not be able to receive the care that they need easily. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: It absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, we have this whole socialized care system for veterans, but it's not easy to navigate.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: It's actually really complicated and there are tons of barriers, just is riddled with them.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: no, absolutely. I mean, I think just spending time with people that live in this world, it's its own sort of subculture, right? You sort of understand it when you live in it. And I both lived and worked in it for a very long time.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: so you know. That could look a lot of different ways for folks. but I but I would just say like the the lesson

Dan Korus: Yeah. Right.

Lindsey Kay: maybe to walk away from that is like never make an assumption about a person because everybody is an individual and they they bring up there's a so much to that iceberg of who they are. So yeah.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Okay. okay, can I ask kind of like a goofy question?

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: Okay, first of all, what's your favorite road trip snack?

Lindsey Kay: I love a hot Cheeto. I just

Dan Korus: Nice.

Lindsey Kay: do. I know that it's like, you know, my fingers are gonna get it's just you gotta be able to drive with one hand so that you can have your snack in hand, you know? Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. But it's so worth it. Yeah. Do you ever just like dump into your mouth out of the bag? And ski Yes. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay, cool. Glad we got that established. Hot Cheetos. That's good. beverage. What would you get for a beverage? Like you're coming out with hot Cheetos and

Lindsey Kay: I want the biggest, fattest iced tea that will fit in my cup holder. Just

Dan Korus: D, you're my hero.

Lindsey Kay: super cold. Yeah, that's what I want. Yep.

Dan Korus: Awesome. Okay. so you can pass this question if you want to. but it sounds like there were multiple ex military people in your past.

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: okay, got it. All right.

Lindsey Kay: Sure.

Dan Korus: And we don't like I'm not there's no there's no like judgment around

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: this. I just want to make the observation that like usually when I have an ex, my thought isn't, hmm, how can I solve their general population's problems in the future? You know, and it sounds like you had multiple X's of a similar demographic, and then you started a company and spent fourteen years becoming educated

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: and solving that same population's problems after observing like patterns of how animals, you know, and like different forms of therapy could help them. I just don't like is that correct?

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Proximity's a motherfucker.

Dan Korus: Dude, that is so like kind of you. That's so kind. I wouldn't I don't well, I don't think many people would like, you know, have a have a big life event, you know, where there's like a move associated, right? And like a change of

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: geographic location associated with a partner and then that end up not working out. Dang, what if I fix that? You know, what if I could help? That's so cool.

[36:35] from a pet project to a 14-year nonprofit

Lindsey Kay: You know I well

Dan Korus: What's with that?

Lindsey Kay: I don't think that is maybe what I was thinking, exactly all of that at the time. But what I was

Dan Korus: Okay. All right.

Lindsey Kay: what I was thinking is I am living in this world.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: Nobody outside of this experience fully gets it as a family member. Because

Dan Korus: Mm. Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: I'll also say that the family members attached to all of this are sort of the invisible sorry, invisible,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: sometimes casualty.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: to the realities of of how this can show up in someone's life. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I was 24. I was very much trying to carve my way. And

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: I had what I did know that

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I was living in. I wanted to improve our family situation at the time. And then I also really wanted to leverage just things that I knew about animals experientially, not as a professional. And I also didn't think I was going to solve any major problem to start. It was really just a this is kind of a cool idea. Let's see what happens. Maybe I

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: can help my partner. Maybe it'll help our family.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: If some other people come along, that could be even cooler. It really was that simple. And once it

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: kind of got legs, it really started sprinting. And I had to really ask myself, What does this mean? Like

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: in a as a big picture, but also for me. And I ended up just being so committed to the the folks that were coming into the program, the families that were cut that I was getting to know and the dogs, and the

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: people that were working with me on the team that it

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: was very much its own thing. It grew beyond how can this help my family pretty quickly. because that was just like the first year. And but you know, 13 more years where I was just all in. And I have had some of the most precious experiences with these folks in that time that I was just

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: really committed to that mission. It felt really important. I really got to see what those impacts looked like in real time. And it's you can't really diminish or look away from that.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. So it wasn't it wasn't Yeah, no, I see I see what you're saying. It was it was almost a curiosity at first and just a question of what if, and then it did turn

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: into something broader. so what's it what's it like trying to build a non profit? I don't like probably no one's few people have tried to build a non profit before. Like what's it like? Like what do you gotta do? You know, like when do you know you've made it, you know? Or you're at least stable and you can like let your shoulders down.

Lindsey Kay: You know, I so I'm at West now and the work that we do

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: is supporting small businesses. And I gotta tell you, it's

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: not it's not deeply different from trying to start your own small business, frankly. I mean, when you're an entrepreneur, yeah,

Dan Korus: Okay. So it's kind of the s it's si very similar. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: yeah. I feel like I see so much with our clients

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: now that I relate to in trying to start a nonprofit. I mean, it's real hard.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: It's a ton of work. You're working all the time.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: You really do have to kind of figure out how to be all in because it's it's heart work as well as hard work. And

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I mean, I would just I would go work at the clinic during the day. I would come, you know, home to wherever I was staying, and then I would just be grinding on the computer till midnight, two o'clock in the morning. You don't get paid. Same with small business. You don't get paid when you start. So I mean,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I was just doing the work for about God, a little over about a year and a half, I wanna say.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: and you have to really believe in what you're doing. So I mean, I and I did not know what I was doing, right? I was just figuring it out. I had I say to people a lot that all of my fuck-ups are really what paved my way to any of my success. That every time I

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: failed, I had to fail forward or I wasn't gonna keep going. But I failed a lot and I made a ton of mistakes.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: but you know, I think it's that tenacity piece to keep that going. But also when you have something that really does, you know, have impact. even if it's not perfect, you know,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: you keep you keep working on it. It it's gonna get there because people they start believing it. They start investing in it. I

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: think that the the initial challenges are how do you fit how do you create sustainable capital, right? For to keep it going. And then as you're growing, that means you need more funding. so having to learn the idiosyncrasies around fundraising and development, having to understand nonprofit accounting, which is very different from regular accounting, your tax, the tax implications around it. And then fast forward

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: a couple years further in, I had to realize, wait, I actually need to understand employment law in HR too. You know, it just like there's so much. so it's it's a business.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. And you're learning out of necessity. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool.

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Korus: this is kinda this is kind of a side question. This isn't necessarily about you. well maybe it is, because it you know you've you've you've been in this world for so long, but How how does someone who's starting something make it good? You know, aside from like tenacity, like how do they make it? You know, like for someone starting

Lindsey Kay: Hm.

Dan Korus: today, like what's your biggest couple pieces of advice for someone who like wants to start a small business about like something that they care about?

Lindsey Kay: man. How do make it good? I mean, I think you start with trying to be really focused. I've

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: seen some small businesses that have like all of these things that they want to do with their

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: idea, right? We're gonna have, you know, this that has this and we also offer that and da-da-da, you know. It's good to start with one thing that's strong.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: So next week I'm at a conference and I'm doing actually a presentation around ethics and business advising. And so I talk a little bit about this.

Dan Korus: awesome. Cool.

Lindsey Kay: And I've sort of been like in this mindset in preparation for that.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: But one of the things that I note is that there was a study last year that was published in an economics journal. I forget the name of it now off the top of my head, but

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: it was published saying that small businesses that work with mentors, so former small business owners or business advisors that are mentoring them, they always do better because in mentoring Mentors tend to advise small business owners to test and explore their idea and really learn as much as you can for as long as you can before you implement. So before you dive

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: right into like doing the thing or trying to procure funding for the thing, you really feel good about what that thing is. And if you invest

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that time up front, you're actually going to have better outcomes long term. So I think. that piece is really important too just because I have this great idea doesn't mean that it it actually is I'm in the right place for it. It's needed. it might be cool to me and my my bros, but it's not cool to anybody else. I in my presentation

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I talk about for example if we have if we have someone that says they want to sell green chili free burritos in New Mexico, there's not a really strong market for that here.

[43:54] how do I actually make a small business work?

Dan Korus: No, there's not.

Lindsey Kay: Right? Maybe you hate green chili, but guess what? Most people in New Mexico do not. So

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: you you want to test these things first. And I think

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: just telling people to slow down and focus first. whenever paws and stripes started, we didn't do a robust, we didn't incorporate a robust mental health support sec segment of the services we were providing. We started with just training the dog. And then we really got good at that. And then we started adding in really intentionally these other pieces so we could evolve the model to really adjust and and the other half of which takes us to the other half.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Is always be responsive. Give yourself the ability to be flexible and have some agility with whatever you're doing because markets change. You're gonna learn a grip of things along the way that you didn't anticipate. So you have to always be mindful of how can I make sure that there's some kind of capacity to adapt with new information because you're always gonna receive new information. We learned a couple years in that service dogs can be trained to do great things, but the impact is not going to be as deep if you don't have some sort of complimentary mental health component. And so then, okay, so we need to figure out how to build that in. So

Dan Korus: Yeah. Right.

Lindsey Kay: I am a huge proponent as a social worker of making sure programs and any kind of service delivery that even is somewhat on the outskirts of human services when you're serving people, even if you're just talking about a product.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that it's a business, it's not human services, always try to think about how you're being responsive because the best you're gonna have the best marketing outcomes if you're responsive to what you understand that people really need or what they really want. And it's

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: no different between nonprofit and business because you're either appealing to that market for that product or service or you're appealing to a gap. and needs in your

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: community, right? So always having that agility built in.

Dan Korus: Cool. So focused in the beginning. so that way you become some sort of a domain expert. and you're building something that works and is good and then agile after that. Okay. Dude, cool. That's good advice. ethics. Ethics in business.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: What's the talk? What's the talk about again? Ethics in

Lindsey Kay: Business advising. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: Ethics and business advising. Is that is that like a hard thing for you to give a talk about? Or is it like pretty is this like this is your bread and butter, right?

Lindsey Kay: No. Man, I okay, so

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: in my trajectory as a professional, I cut

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: my teeth learning nonprofit by doing for about 10 years. And then I finally got that undergrad. I finished that sucker up.

Dan Korus: dude, cool.

Lindsey Kay: Then I said, Hey, you know what? Let's go to grad school. Right. and I got my

Dan Korus: Yeah. Why?

Lindsey Kay: I you know, I I think I just felt like I finishing my undergrad was a really it was important to me, but it wasn't quite enough.

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: And I was introduced to social work from a macro lens. So I

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: didn't for a long time understand that there's a difference between micro social work and macro social work. Most people think of micro social work, individual therapy, someone that's working with you from that like more direct one-to-one space and macro social work is really applicable in these like nonprofit leadership spaces. So doing systems work and thinking about systems change and community impacts, organizing those sorts of things. And I when I sort of discovered this, I was like, holy shit, that is exactly what I do. That's what I do. and so it seemed like it would make sense for me to get my master's in social work, specifically in leadership and administration. So Doing that, what it's kind of done between my experience and and building a responsive programming, right, in a space serving

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: a particular demographic, really getting that education under my belt in social work. When I arrived at West, one of the things that showed up and still shows up all the time is we'll be talking about developing something or maybe a process improvement. And I am so frequently saying, Well, you know, in therapeutic session settings, we do this, this, and this. And that's actually

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: ex that's very applicable to what we're talking about here. And so I I've actually found, interestingly enough, that You know, the the work that we do in these more sort of human services therapeutic environments is really

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: very relevant to what we're doing in business advising, which I don't think is inherently identified because you're thinking about business, you're thinking about economic development, financial literacy, all of is it's very much in this category of business. But when you impact the local economy. When you can improve

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: and create a healthier economy, you actually are impacting this overall social fabric in your area that better resources communities and actually improves quality of life and all of the different areas within that system. And that is social work systems change. So it's so relevant.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah.

Lindsey Kay: And you know, ethics is something that

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: governs social workers. So

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: When we talk about social work ethics, I mean the core values are, God, this is I'm quizzing myself, but dignity and worth of a person, integrity, relationships, social

Dan Korus: That's okay. Yeah. Uhhuh. Uhhuh.

Lindsey Kay: justice, competence. and there's one other one.

Dan Korus: Got it. Yeah. That's okay. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Sorry, code of ethics, but those are the core values. You get the gist, right? all of these things are relevant in how you show up as a business advisor because at the end of the day, you're a professional serving a client in a professional space. and so I had noticed that there was a lot of There that well, there's this vacuum, I guess, in the discourse around business advising and like what does ethics look like in that space? And I feel like there are multiple ethical lenses that you can apply to that that actually enhance your ability to advise and really create a lot of clarity around those professional boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's totally.

Dan Korus: This is fascinating. I can I can tell you care a lot about this. This is so cool. This is awesome. so you know, did you did you finish this master's degree before starting at West or after?

Lindsey Kay: Got my master's two weeks before I started, it was Yeah.

Dan Korus: my god, okay, wow. Wow dude. you are just full of like these big transitions in life, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why?

Lindsey Kay: yeah. I like to do everything at once. Yeah. Just like let's get her done. Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah.

Dan Korus: Not that that's a bad thing. I'm just I'm just curious, like, you know, do you

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: after you settle somewhere, are you like, okay, that's enough's enough. I'm gonna go do this now and I do it and you know, that that happens. You know, most people

Lindsey Kay: You know, I d

Dan Korus: are like really slow and resistant to change, and

Lindsey Kay: no.

Dan Korus: don't love like change, you know, and you seem like someone who just like really grabs it by the reins and is very comfortable with that.

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Sure do. my whole life has been that. I think I'm just it's familiar.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: my whole life has been a cascade of of change and growth. And that's important to me. I don't think I maybe plan for things to happen always in the timing that they do, but you know,

[51:13] leading in an unprecedented time of uncertainty

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I I also have this feeling of like, well, there's never a good time, so let's just make it happen, right? Let's just go. Let's do this. We'll figure it out. and also the most

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get her done. Yeah. That's probably a really valuable skill to have as a as a CEO in a nonprofit space, right? Like

Lindsey Kay: My team doesn't always love it, but you know, but I have

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: to I have to listen to them, right? It's my

Dan Korus: Right.

Lindsey Kay: timeline's not always the right timeline. And that's I'm very open to that. But I will say the

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: most painful points in my life have been some of the most formative and

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: important moments for me to be who

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I am now. So, you know, things are hard some, but they're hard until they're not. Yeah.

Dan Korus: I get it. Okay. Yeah. so, you know, we wouldn't normally think I I I love that you're broadening our horizons to include, you know, this macro level of social work as helping small businesses, you know, and like helping small businesses in their communities succeed, and the strategic thinking around that. and everything that kind of goes into that. I I hadn't thought of that until now. So I think that's awesome. what do you think are some of the hard parts in trying to be a a change agent right now? especially in like, you know, the small business sector in New in in New Mexico. And you can talk more broadly if you wanted to, but

Lindsey Kay: shoot, yeah. Well, you know, I think globally trying to be a

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: change agent at all is hard because we're really living in sort of this unprecedented time of uncertainty, right? So I

Dan Korus: Okay. How so?

Lindsey Kay: think well

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I don't know, just maybe a couple things. we just

Dan Korus: Okay, got it. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: with what's going on, I mean, in in global discourse around

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: international conflict, climate change,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: super fast emerging technology that we don't fully understand, right? and all

Dan Korus: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: the while we're trying to like buy bread and and feed our families.

Dan Korus: Uh-huh. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: there are just so many enormous things happening in our world so constantly that it's overwhelming and we can't fully understand all of it at any given moment and we're just trying to live our lives, right? So I just think the environment in general is hard right now for a lot of people. we live in a day and age where we're inundated with information every second. that's intense.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: And then for nonprofits, particularly nonprofits that have public funding, government, state, local, that's been a moving target. We have had so many really intense, sudden, and at times devastating changes to our funding landscape. And also we've seen that cascade down to private donations too. People in a time of uncertainty are maybe not

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: donating and their philanthropy doesn't look the same as it has previously because they're also trying to figure out what the right answer is for them long term. So there's just a lot happening

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that sort of impacts everyone's ability to plan forward confidently, like they maybe would have five years ago. arbitrarily say five years ago, I'm not trying to mark anything on on the timeline there, but

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, so I think that, you know, being someone one of the things that I think can be incredibly difficult as a leader is it's kind of an unspoken part of your job that you have to always be the person in the room that inspires people, that motivates people,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that builds confidence in people. And that's not always super easy to do, you know. so I think really just trying to take as much data as you can to make the best informed decision at the right moment so that you don't

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: find yourself sort of treading water and trying to like paddle through what's happening because everything was happening so quickly.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: West is an organization that's advising businesses. We also have to take our own advice, right? We we have

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to also make sure that we're running our business in a way that is ensuring that we are running a healthy business and that we can stay in business, not just

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: telling y'all what you should do, right?

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: yeah.

Dan Korus: Dude. What like a constant game of just strategy every single day? Like that sounds like so stressful. how did you how

Lindsey Kay: Ha ha ha

Dan Korus: did you how'd you keep your hair on? Like Yeah, did you turn to hard drugs or

Lindsey Kay: It's still attached. let's see. I mean, I definitely have more grays. I earned that stripe.

Dan Korus: Way to go.

Lindsey Kay: You know, I'm a big picture person, so I really

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: tend to default to looking at the the whole board when making decisions as much as possible.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I it is a lot of strategy. It I I think that we all hit points where we are just exhausted. and I I think

Dan Korus: Giving up was never

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: an option. What kept you going?

Lindsey Kay: my god, the people, the people. I have been so blessed to work with West

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: and the folks there are just amazing. I love

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: my team so much. Ugh,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I could gush about them all day. I mean, truly.

Dan Korus: What's amazing about them?

Lindsey Kay: so I mean you have so yes. You know, you know. Well, they're brilliant.

Dan Korus: And I've met these people and I I love the West team. Yeah, I think I think they're great. Yeah, I do. I do. I like all. yeah, I think you guys are fantastic. Yeah, they're brilliant. Yeah. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: We have so many brilliant people, so smart. we have this really great diverse group of folks that have these different types of experiences and backgrounds and perspectives

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: on things, and they all just come together and they really help us. and we just and and and and and

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: through all of this. Our team has really grown to be so cohesive. We have shifted to this mindset that we call one West, that we say all the time, we're one West. We have different offices in different parts of the state. We have different programs we're working on. We have different roles, but we are one team. And we always

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: think about how are we working together and we're a unified front in that sense. And I've really seen that show up in just this beautiful way over the last

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: year, despite all of the things that have been hard, we have really overcome so much and we have grown so much and we've done some

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: really exciting things

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: because folks are still not afraid to come up with new cool ideas. They're not afraid

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to jump in and solve problems.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: And everybody, everybody is so passionate about serving New Mexico. And let me tell you, I freaking love New Mexico. So we get to all just nerd out about how much we love the state that we serve every day when

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: we do our work. Yeah.

Dan Korus: here's my question. So women's business centers prior to this past year had been stably funded for over thirty years. Okay. Why is and I know the answer's obvious between us, but just so ever our future policy makers know, why is funding women's business centers important?

Lindsey Kay: Holy smokes. well.

Dan Korus: Why do we need this stable funding? Like what you know what I mean? Like

[58:32] why funding women's business centers matters

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, yeah. You know, I I wanna talk about this in the context of New Mexico. and I

Dan Korus: Okay, do it.

Lindsey Kay: think because one of the things that's really special and that works incredibly well in New Mexico is that we have this really diverse ecosystem of organizations that are supporting small businesses. And you know, this is

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: SBA statistic, but ninety nine percent of our economy is small business. So we're kind of dependent. or you know what, I don't wanna use the word dependent. we are fueled. We are held up by small business. That is the heart of New Mexico. That is the heart of our economy is small business. It is so vital. and so it does take an ecosystem of organizations to do it. And Women's Business Centers West is one component of that ecosystem. I

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: use the word ecosystem not because it's sexy and what people say these days, but because I

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: think in concept it is applicable.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: In a in a food web, in an ecosystem, right, you dis disrupt one species and then it destabilizes the whole thing. because

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: it it all works together a really specific way. And I think that that is why we say this is an ecosystem. We have quite a few organizations doing very specific things that are super complementary to one another and that make it a strong network for folks to be able to start small businesses and for them to grow and thrive and sustain in the state. Women's Business Centers are we're considered an SBA resource partner. So we're funded through an SBA grant. That's the funding that you referred to that we've received for over three decades. And we work in partnership with organizations like the SBDCs, the Small Business Development Centers, VBOC, the Veteran Business Outreach Center, SCORE. and then also other non federally funded programs. We work with other CDFIs, so other lenders that lend in different capacities for different types of folks. where I think that we fit in what we do is that, you know, we really focus on working with small businesses, particularly in areas, whether we're talking geographically, demographically, industry specific. so on that maybe are under-resourced, underserved, that really have less access to some of the resources or that have unique barriers. so we have a program, we partner with the state of New Mexico, we deliver services with other partner organizations like growing up

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: New Mexico, where we support childcare businesses. We have universal child care now, but even before we had

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that. West was a partner

Dan Korus: Right.

Lindsey Kay: in helping build up this industry because we have a deficit in childcare in the state. So we need more of those businesses. And that supports

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: the economy. So people can go to work. So families can do what they need to do, right? And it's been really cost prohibitive for people to do that. So there's that. We have our Native Women Rising program where we really work specifically with folks that are in native communities. We have many of those across the state. And everyone has sort of a different constellation of needs. they're

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: in different parts of the state. They have maybe some are are looking for more opportunities to access loan funds, or maybe there's just more business development opportunities. It dip it's the whole state's diverse, right? So we're taking that into consideration and that informs a lot of the programming that we're offering. so we we complement our partners really well. We also are complimentary as a lender. We're a micro lender in a CDFI. We only lend a certain amount of money, about $500 is our smallest loan, and then we can lend up to $150,000 to folks. But those are smaller loans in terms of commercial lending.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: And so there we have partners that lend in different capacities, but we also consider ourselves a last resort lender. So maybe you're not bankable, maybe you have issues with your credit history. Maybe you have a need to do some more development within your business before you can be loan ready. All of our loans come with technical assistance, so we work with you. We're not the quick fix, we're the deep fix. We're gonna come in and we're gonna help you do the things you need to do in order to access the capital to get where you want to be, right? So we're an important piece, really a critical piece within the landscape

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: of getting businesses to the point that they can be at a different level of capital readiness. So I think

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: this is a really long answer to say

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that we've kind of found these gaps where we really slot right in to make sure

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: that as a state, we have all of these organizations that even if we can't do this thing, we have someone right here that we can take you to that'll

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: do it. And that kind of continuity of care is invaluable.

Dan Korus: Okay, so this is awesome. I muted because my dog barked. but so you're you're talking about okay, so West West isn't just for women owned small businesses. West is for a lot of things. West is for a

Lindsey Kay: Right. Yes.

Dan Korus: lot of things. Okay, and just one of the things that you were doing was that. and and it it kinda sounds like And and West also is very niched out and supplies a lot of the needs that small businesses have at different areas of their maturation.

Lindsey Kay: Yes.

Dan Korus: if you were to describe, like, and maybe this is hard, but like is is West like the lifeline, you know, like when a business is like, Hey, I need

Lindsey Kay: Mm.

Dan Korus: help, or is it at the ideation stage, or is it like at like the middle stage where like people are about to go all in, but like they're not ready yet, or is it all of them, you know, like at

Lindsey Kay: All of them.

Dan Korus: Okay, so it's all of Okay,

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: so when we're talking about businesses that are under resourced and underserved, in what ways are they under resourced and underserved? You know, like what are they missing that like West fills for them?

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, so that looks different across the board. I'll give an example though. child care businesses,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: traditionally banks may not approve a commercial loan for a child care center and the way that it might approve a commercial loan for a different kind of business, like say a a retail business or a restaurant. That's because there is a whole different array of licensing, coding, even just the the business itself, it looks totally different than another business. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: A lot of times traditional banks maybe are not as familiar with some of those idiosyncrasies and how they translate into risk, how they translate into determining whether or not they can lend. Because those are oftentimes if you want to open a center, that's a significant size commercial though.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: So That's an underserved industry. That has been an underserved industry. Obviously, our state has been really addressing the fact that it's been underserved, which is why we partner

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: with them. So it looks better today than it did two years ago. But as an example,

Dan Korus: Got it. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: you know, this is an industry that has a lot of there's a lot, there's less familiarity around what some of the very unique aspects to starting, scaling, continuing that sort of a business actually looks like. The set of risks that come with managing that kind. Business just around operations in and of itself and developing adequate programming for kids. I mean, all of that looks different, right, than other things. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: so ensuring that we are paying attention to those differences and we take the time to work with our clients because we do have the ability to do that, given that we're not just a lender, we're also a technical assistance, technical assistance provider. so that we can actually start to create other options and opportunities for how we can help. them access capital, develop skills through technical assistance so that that they they can get to the point where they can grow and scale. And that looks, you know, different ways. We we have accelerator programs, but we can also curate some capital access opportunities. Maybe it's a line of credit,

[65:51] serving rural and underserved small businesses

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: maybe it's a smaller loan to start and we stair step you up, but helping them sort of build those plans and capacity gradually and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: intentionally. I think that's one example. also just working with rural businesses. It's a different it you don't have the concentration of service providers right there in rural spaces, and this is a largely rural state.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and a lot of funding and services tend to be anchored to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, right? Because those are the larger more populous parts of the state. So we travel to rural locations. We also provide a lot of virtual services. It just depends on what is best for that area. Some folks really love it when you come in person, and that's when you're really gonna

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: make the biggest impact. So we listen to that. So I actually think that our programming, much like I talked about a lot with paws and stripes, is super responsive, right? We wanna be really responsive.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and that agility, that sort of flexibility that we've built within,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: you know, our our programming has allowed us to be really more able to serve less resourced industries, folks, parts of the state, and so on.

Dan Korus: I mean, and I I think for people who like take advantage of childcare, the needs of child care are obvious. Right. Like you like

Lindsey Kay: Sure. Yeah.

Dan Korus: you need you need childcare. And like we can't the gone are the days when a one income household like works for many families, you know? and

Lindsey Kay: Right. Right.

Dan Korus: so like childcare becomes an extremely important part of like rearing a kid. and so yeah, it would make total sense that when someone's starting that up and they're like Hey, I have everything we need to do like a childcare business, but I am not lendable through a big bank for like a big loan. Like you guys can actually help them get not only stay like get off the ground, but become ready to become lendable. Dude, that's so important.

Lindsey Kay: Hmm. Yeah. It yeah.

Dan Korus: That's so critical.

Lindsey Kay: We can also lend at a different level to help them get there too. So it's not just about technical assistance that we can also pair that with capital. And

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: that's a pretty powerful thing to be able to do both, frankly.

Dan Korus: Yeah, like I don't Yeah. Anyways, that so that seems super important. Okay, so

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Korus: the people making policy sorry, keep going.

Lindsey Kay: You know what, I I just want to maybe tack on to that too, to sort of tie two

Dan Korus: Yeah, please.

Lindsey Kay: things talking about childcare as a industry and how we support that and gaps, but also talking

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: about us as a women's business center network being one of our flagship programs and women's economic

Dan Korus: Yes. Yes.

Lindsey Kay: self-sufficiency team. I just wanna say you're right,

Dan Korus: Yes. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: we do serve everyone in a lot of capacities.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: in nineteen eighty-nine when West was founded, it was at a moment in history in the United States. When legislation,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: federal legislation changed, so that women could start and and own their own businesses without having a man cosign for them. So let that sink in for a moment. That was in our lifetime. That a woman could not just start her own business without having a man cosign until this law changed in 1989. So organizations like West started in order to make sure that those women had the resources they needed to actually do this, right?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yep.

Lindsey Kay: That's our genesis. That's also the genesis of the Federal Women's Business Center funding program through the SBA. So, West, our origins are with that really historical moment. So, we were started by women, by three women from PM, four women, and now, almost four decades later, we are led by women. Serving everyone in the state of New Mexico. We've evolved to the point where West is bigger than our origin story, and our origin story is pretty significant. But

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: we've built our capacity has been impactful enough that we have made enough of a a footprint in women's businesses that now women are leading and serving everyone. So just want to, and child care helps us do it.

Dan Korus: That is so fucking cool, dude. That's so cool. Okay, first of all, 1989 seems late. doesn't it? Like I would have that's it doesn't that seem late? Like what the fuck?

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: All right. Yeah,

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yep.

Dan Korus: so what people in nineteen eighty eight are starting their business and they're like, sorry ma'am, this could be life changing, but someone with a penis

Lindsey Kay: Mm.

Dan Korus: needs to sign on this piece of paper before we'll let you go do this.

Lindsey Kay: We think this business could be really profitable. So you're gonna have your husband

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: sign this, right? He's the actual, he's the actual owner, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so many like changes in law

Dan Korus: Okay. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: around civil rights that have happened it that are really actually not that long ago. And this is just one of those examples. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. okay, so let's let's riff on that for a little bit.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: we can women's e you said the words women's economic self sufficiency. Right? Okay.

Lindsey Kay: That's what West stands for. We don't just have an extra S because we're spicy. That's one reason, but we're

Dan Korus: What's the T?

Lindsey Kay: a team. Women's economic self-sufficiency team. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Well, I probably Yeah. Okay. Well, when you say it out loud like that, I'm like, damn it. Well, for those who don't know, like Kestrel Edge has actually done a pilot with West. and so I got to go spend an entire day with Lindsay and her team. And Lindsay walks in and like has like full sleeve tats, you know, and like has coffee and like Doc Martin's and I was like, This is the CEO, you know, I was like this is so badass. so like Lindsay's a badass in many ways. her appearance does not define her, but she does present as a very badass person. I'm just gonna put that out there. so what does what does women's economic self-sufficiency mean to y'all?

Lindsey Kay: Hmm. Well, I appreciate your sort of macro perspective on that. I do think that's relevant. especially when we think about, you know, what I just said about our origin. The idea of creating self sufficiency for women is should be just as important as for anyone of any gender. And you know, I have nerded out around concepts of feminism and how that applies in terms of creating equal access right for all people because that's what feminism is about it's about giving everyone the equal equal access to opportunity to all things

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: so it's the same and I think it makes sense that women would lead the charge in that given that you know historically to your point Economic self sufficiency has looked very different for women historically, right, than it has for men. And And then there's intersectionalities that you could also really wax poetic about. I'm trying not to go off on too many tangents because you could really talk about so much here. man. Woo! You really have, holy smokes.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah, I know. And I've like struck your I've struck your special interest. You can you can talk about whatever you want to. I'll be here as long as you want. and we can always come back in the future too. But so you know, don't feel confined.

[73:10] what women's economic self-sufficiency actually means

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, I I mean really when I say that that West has really focused on how are we filling these real gaps that exist in the system, that's really what we're talking about is how are we creating, you know, more clear, equitable oppos opportunity for folks regardless of their background, their lived experience, their socioeconomic status, their geo geography, and on and on and on. You know, when you give somebody economic self-sufficiency, when you give someone economic freedom, you open up the door for them to have a very different life. Right. So yeah, so without going too far in sort of this macro aspect, I think, you know, talking about economic opportunity for everyone is really just so important. And that is at the heart of what we mean when we say from a macro level, you know, women's economic self-sufficiency team, we want to lead the charge on that access to everyone. And then as far as it applies to sort of maybe drilling down a little bit more focused with what we do at West. I would say self-sufficiency means empowering people. We're not, you know, and and I'll call back to sort of this presentation that, you know, when I talk about ethics and business advising, it's a lot of remembering that our role as advisors, our role as teachers, as mentors, as coaches, is to work with our clients, not to work for our clients and do things for, not to decide for, not to sort of take that empowerment away because that's what that is, right? You want someone to have self-determination, which means they you want to give them as much information, as many resources and tools as you can to make their own decisions and to develop their own skills so they can do it themselves. Some of our most exciting stories that are success stories for clients are centered around these moments that folks have where they say, I needed this thing. I was able to do All of my own projections and I could figure this part out and I know that I if I do this, this, and this, that I can get there. What do you think? And we get to say, Yep, you just did your own business advising. You look look at you, right? And that's that's empowerment is

Dan Korus: Wow. That's so cool.

Lindsey Kay: giving that those that agency and

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: those resources and tools to people so that they can do for themselves. That's that's really that's the heart of women's economic self sufficiency is how that looks in play with with the people that we're we're serving. Yeah.

Dan Korus: That's awesome. Dude, that's so cool. Okay. so let's say funding disappeared, you know,

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: and let's say all funding for women's economic self sufficiency just evaporated and we decided that that was no longer like a funding priority in America. Initially it kind of seemed like policymakers just decided that like y'all would figure it out, you know, and that if it was important to the state, like the state would just like figure it out, you know? And so maybe there would be some period where y'all would figure it out and like adapt your strategy. But like if this funding disappears and this care disappears, you know, on a big level, like what would our state start to look like in like one to two years? Like what you know, like what would What would us as like average Joe Schmo walking down the street, like how what would be different in our state? Like what would we notice?

Lindsey Kay: That's a massive question for you to ask. I just holy hell. Yeah. Hmm.

Dan Korus: I'm just wondering, you know, well some people are like some people are like some people just see the numbers on the screens and they're like, let's just let's cut that, you know, but like you probably know best what most of all, like, okay, in two years, like if we cut that, what happens? You know?

Lindsey Kay: Well, I can tell you right now that all of us,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: everyone in this ecosystem that I've talked about,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: robust list of providers, we already have more people that need our services than we can serve. Okay, we are all booked out, we're all busy,

Dan Korus: Okay. Yep.

Lindsey Kay: we're all thinking about and talking about capacity. So if that's where we're living right now.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I mean the obvious immediate answer is it would be a massive strain on the existing organizations that are left. and when that happens, that means that there is some kind of a local response to how do we fix this? What do we do about this? Because everyone's gonna kind of feel that. Sometimes that means means there's some kind of mutual

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: aid organizing, like, okay, how do we how do we organize? How do we build a coalition? How do we think about this from a community level? but

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: so that can happen, but that doesn't replace lending capacity. That doesn't replace really important Teaching tools and the you know the coordinated efforts to make sure the right folks are teaching the right things, making sure that

Dan Korus: Mm.

Lindsey Kay: good information is constantly flowing in to make sure things are continual, continually maintained and relevant and up to date and accurate.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: And there's obviously all of the things that come through these programs. So I mean, I think. I think it would be an enormous strain on I mean our small businesses would definitely suffer.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: And New Mexico is no stranger to having to solve its own problems. I think that as a state,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: we've known that, you know, we have to we have to got us. We have to really think about how we're squaring ourselves away is no savior that's gonna come fix our problems for us. And this would be

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: one of those things that we would have to try to come up with a way to figure it out. it's

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: not something that would happen fast. And I definitely talk about this with folks, with funders. with folks that are in state government, just if this were to happen, it would be a major, major disruption on our state's capacity to make sure that this

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: small business network across the state has what they need. So how, you know, I would love if we could all be thinking about what that solution might look like.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, it would be really hard. It would be really hard. And I think that it would take us a while, but we would try to come up with some way to figure something out, even if it's not, you

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: know, and maybe a full on adequate replacement.

Dan Korus: Yeah. so that's what you would be doing for sure is trying to figure out, you know, how okay, how do we solve this and how do we stop the

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: bleed, you know? do you think like yeah.

Lindsey Kay: A lot of us would. I mean, yeah, we would all be smushing our heads together for sure.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I've seen I think okay, we've all like seen like the small town trope or like medium town trope or like, you know, it gets hard to like fund for small businesses to start restaurants, you know, and then you only have like the chains and so like like people just like up and quit because it gets like prohibitively difficult to have that. And so then you just don't have good food in that area. You know, or you just all your your options are McDonald's dominoes on Starbucks because those are the only operations that can afford to be there. and you know, so would the state just look like a lot more bland and you know, like shitty and less like fun? Like would we have only non-green chili burrito stands? I

Lindsey Kay: That would never fly down, and you know it.

Dan Korus: d I know, I know, I know. Yeah, I know.

Lindsey Kay: Man. Wild idea.

Dan Korus: Yeah hair heresy of me to say Yeah I know

Lindsey Kay: Poppycock. man, you know, I mm I think, yeah, to some degree, right, they're they're so sure. It's true that you have these big box

[80:29] how to pitch the ROI of small-business investment

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: stores that are maybe are better financially resourced

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to start in some of these areas, but also consider, Those sorts of operations are also first thinking, is this advantageous for us even to invest in going there? And so not always

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: that's not always the case.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Walmart or whoever, McDonald's, it may not be advantageous for them to open a location in in their view,

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: maybe in a a a part of the state that is experiencing, you know, that's rural. that doesn't have as many resources as say a larger met metropolitan area. Metropol metropol metropolis, whatever. Bigger city. Edit that out. God.

Dan Korus: Yeah, one of those. The big one. I'm gonna leave it in because I think it's funny. Well, I always say I'm gonna edit things out and I never do. Let me ask this let me ask

Lindsey Kay: Damn it. And then you don't, yeah.

Dan Korus: this question in a different way. and we can come back to this thought if you want to. But like I'm just wondering, like for policymakers or or someone who like has control of a budget somewhere, you know, and they're making a decision

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: on whether or not they're gonna fund small business help. You know, in a state or nationally, like what pain are they gonna feel at first if they decide not to fund it? You know, how are they personally gonna be impacted? That's what I wanna know. Like, how do you pitch that to them and say, like, look, this is important to you too? Is it the fact that like we do need more child care? And regardless of what state you're in, childcare's, you know, we need more demand. Is it like, do you just point to your demand and you say, Look, there are small businesses that have these needs, we fill these needs. Help us help them so that way our entire economy can get better from a macro scale. You know, like what pain do they what pain do we all feel, you know?

Lindsey Kay: I think whenever you're trying to sell something to someone like that, because that's what you're doing. You're you're selling something,

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: you you want to make sure that you're being clear about what the ROI is. What why do we want to invest in this? Yeah. I mean, yeah. You're asking for money. They gotta know why

Dan Korus: Okay, cool. So we'll talk about the money. Not the alley. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: they wanna give you that money. What's this investment gonna bring us? and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: when and it's a big lofty. I'm not gonna sell it beautifully, maybe in how I describe this, but I think you really wanna try to sell what is the systemic impact of investing

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: in this in this part of the state. If we

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: are increasing the number of jobs in in a town, if we're increasing food access, if we are investing in childcare resources, all of these things build capacity for families to access these really Basic fundamental needs for any community to thrive. And whenever you invest in the economy, we talk about nonprofit. Nonprofits come to be because there is an issue that's identified. And then here's a nonprofit that's going to work on trying to help solve that problem. Small businesses are just as capable of doing exactly that. When you introduce small businesses that are both addressing needs by creating jobs, by in putting money back into the economy.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: but also maybe it's a business model that's addressing a need in that community, like childcare, like maybe water delivery services

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: in parts of the state that have harder time accessing clean water.

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: you're addressing a you can actually address a lot of things at one time when you invest in that local economy. And that

Dan Korus: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: systemic impact looks like this across the board. We say high tides rise all ships, right? This across the board

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: improvement in everything from social determinants of health to education access to, I mean, well-being and quality of life. When you increase and when you invest in a local economy, you invest in that community, you invest in those people, and it it truly touches everything. So I I feel like to be able to really convey what that looks like and that's the ROI. I mean, that's what's really important, I think, when you're asking for that kind of investment.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. I mean, to me it seems critical. so I think I think you've sold me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I was in before I sat down though. anyways, 'cause I met your team,

Lindsey Kay: Yes. Dan's in.

Dan Korus: you know, and I was like, Wow, this is a really impressive team.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: you know, and I was just kind of blown away by some of the comments that people were making, and the energy on the day that like we got to spend with you. Like, did you were you feeling it too, or like

Lindsey Kay: yeah.

Dan Korus: yeah. what was it? Let's talk about it.

Lindsey Kay: That was really that was really cool.

Dan Korus: Just a couple more questions. But yeah, let's talk about me. this is my favorite subject. all right. So, for those who don't know, aside from being a mediocre amateur podcast interviewer, for whoever I want to talk to, we I'm also I run a business called Kestrel Edge and we do leadership and emotional intelligence training for small teams. Because I believe that being a good leader requires high degrees of emotional intelligence. And much like the recipe to run a small business, that's not something that we normally learn in the classroom. It's something that we learn on the job and we sink or swim, or maybe we never learn. But the literature is pretty clear. If you want to have a, you know, if you want to be a good leader, emotional intelligence is one of the key ingredients. And if you want to have better business outcomes, emotional intelligence and good leadership, people centered leadership will help you get there. you know, so the ROIs are kind of clear, even though it is like this invisible, you know, force that we don't often think about, you know, and it doesn't like emotional intelligence and leadership factors don't get put on a spreadsheet. And it might

Lindsey Kay: No.

Dan Korus: be an interview question that we ask about and try and suss out, but it's also not something that we can directly measure. so we've got these

Lindsey Kay: So true.

Dan Korus: ghosts in the back in the background of like business operation, you know, that affect whether or not we succeed. Much like in your journey when we were talking about, you know, your passion of keeping going every time, like, you know, you were getting pause and stripes set up. and there were all like those like, you know, failures that you talked about and you were like, Man, the only thing that kept me going is because I saw the impact that was having on people and just kept me going. and that doesn't get put on a spreadsheet either, even though it's like the number like that. it wouldn't be here if you didn't care. So we show up and your team's in a room. what was it what was it like going through a workshop with us?

Lindsey Kay: so awesome. so you know, we talked about we went through this hard period as an organization and we do these statewide staff meetings where everybody comes together and we spend a couple days together. We do some trainings, we do some presentations, we do some team building. that was gosh. It would have been a leadership a gathering of our leadership after two statewide staff meetings that we had had since we had done the rifts. And so I think we were still trying to kind of like collectively all get into a groove that felt good, that felt normal. And this day that we spent with y'all was maybe the most energy and like real. cohesion and synergy and enthusiasm that I think I saw with everybody together for a a minute

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: because we were always sort of like dealing with these things in front of us that were tough. But we got to really take time really just focusing on each other together as a team. We talk about being a team,

[87:48] why nobody could tell who the CEO was

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: but we really got to like do it and talk about it and listen to each other

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: and apply these things that you were talking to us about to what we're actually experiencing with one another, with partners and our job and so on. And I really walked away feeling super energized and just pumped and proud of my team that day. That

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: was so that was a really special experience for me. And I know that Javier and I share that sentiment. He was also feeling super pumped and Sierra

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and Katie. Yeah. So that was really lovely. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Dan Korus: They felt good. That's your C-suite team, right? That's your C-suite. Okay, cool. I want to ask, is it tough being a CEO? Okay, so like one of the things that I've been adamant about for a long time is that we do our workshops with the leaders in the room. You know, and if there's

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: a vertical of people and like you manage those people, you need to be in the room with them. Is it tough?

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, I agree.

Dan Korus: Being a leader in a room with people, you know, talking

Lindsey Kay: No.

Dan Korus: about like leadership and emotional intelligence. Some people have said it

Lindsey Kay: Hmm. I don't think it's

Dan Korus: tough. Was it tough for you?

Lindsey Kay: I don't I'm a social worker, man. I don't want to talk about let's talk let's talk about them feelings. Let's get into it. no I you know

Dan Korus: Yeah okay. Yeah. Okay, no.

Lindsey Kay: I also I've always been a leader that wants to lead with their team. I just that's how I operate. That's the way I feel most comfortable. So for me to

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: be in the room with our folks at any given point talking about anything across the spectrum of heart or fun or otherwise, always kind of feels right. It doesn't mean that I have to be at the front of it. It doesn't mean I have to be a vocal person in the room, but being in community with my team always feels like the right place. So yeah.

Dan Korus: Okay, cool. if you had any feedback for us, what would it be? Or for me.

Lindsey Kay: Didn't I send you an email?

Dan Korus: You did. It was a good one too. I liked it. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: well you're coming back in a month. So

Dan Korus: That's true.

Lindsey Kay: yeah. I def I

Dan Korus: So we'll see if I took that if I read that email. I've been tested. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: didn't have I did not have much in the way of criticism though. I really just I I was super I thought that both of you really were really thoughtful and intentional about everything that you said, the way that you showed up moment to moment. I could tell that

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: I mean y'all are exceptional at reading the room.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I appreciate the energy that y'all bring because I think it I

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: you know, I've been in different kinds of trainings like this where it can

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: be really awkward and it it feels you're either getting talked at or

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: maybe there are some things that sort of these layers that might get peeled back in some of these delicate conversations, these topics that create some like awkwardness or discomfort in the room or you don't know how to to kind of manage all of that. But I feel like there was this beautiful balance of both like here's some real evidence. Let's talk about what, you know, some objective information here. Let's talk about real human things and have an appropriate amount of vulnerability in this space.

Dan Korus: Mhm. Mm

Lindsey Kay: And then also like y'all are fucking hilarious. So we had a good time doing it. Like it's I think levity,

Dan Korus: hmm. Good. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: we we really need to put a little more value in levity because we

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: do hard shit every day. So to

Dan Korus: Right.

Lindsey Kay: be able to balance out some of these moments, I mean to be able to laugh and to have these sort of human to human experiences where we can exper we can both like talk about hard stuff but also like laugh together it again

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: in community. I mean it also made y'all incredibly relatable not just because of what you were

Dan Korus: huh.

Lindsey Kay: sharing but just you know you're

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: yeah it was great we had a and we had a good time you do not always have a good time when you talk about these things.

Dan Korus: When we do trainings and stuff. Yeah, it's good. And

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: we were we've spent a lot of time thinking about I love that we both have dogs and animals in the background. People kinda know what what we are.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yes.

Dan Korus: Dude, thank you for the compliments

Lindsey Kay: Ha ha ha.

Dan Korus: and for the feedback. That lands that's so nice of you. thank you.

Lindsey Kay: You're welcome. Potato, our dog Potato is agreeing, as you can hear. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Aww, thanks Potato. You know, one of the things that struck me when I was in the room with you and your team is that I mean we've all okay, so at large at other organizations I'm sure we've all had the experience where as soon as leadership's in the room, like everybody's a little bit more quiet.

Lindsey Kay: Mm.

Dan Korus: You know, and people kind of like pull back a little bit and they're like, my boss is in the room. I'm gonna

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: my masks are up, you know. I'm probably my most

Lindsey Kay: Right, right.

Dan Korus: masked self at work. and one of the things that struck me is that your team came in and seemed very genuine and at ease, you know, and authentic. And it didn't seem like they were wearing as many masks. And you had three different levels, maybe four different levels of team in the room. You know, there were you know, you had you, you had your C suite, you had like some directors, maybe VPs or something, and then you even had a couple people below that as well. and at all levels we had engaging conversation. we had people saying what they really thought and what they really felt. and if you walked into the room, If you if you walked into the room and only had like five to ten minutes, you wouldn't be able to tell who who the CEO was, you know, or like who the directors were. You know,

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: like you genuinely wouldn't be able to tell. I mean, like maybe you could like stereotype and like figure I don't know, like figure it out. But like you wouldn't you wouldn't know. You know what I mean? And

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, yeah.

Dan Korus: I think I think what that says to me is that You and your leaders have done an incredibly impressive job at creating a space where people can show up and be themselves. And one of the things that I think we talk about all the time is, you know, you want in a culture and an environment where people show up and you know how they feel and you know who they are and they can bring parts of themselves and be safe, you know, and like do that safely. and that is such a hard thing to do. but you've done it. You know, and so like that's why I wanted to have you back on the podcast because I just I wanted to like talk to you about it and tell you that. because I I think it's incredibly rare, you know, and I think that we would have seen that in the room if we had people who were feeling, you know, like more mass than they were already. so I just think it's really impressive. yeah, I think it's I think it's really impressive. You know?

Lindsey Kay: Man, thank you.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: I really appreciate that. I don't think it's a I mean, I think it's always something can be organic, right?

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: From thing to thing that you're having.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah, I I don't know. I is a room of again, I feel like I'm a part of a team and I want everybody to feel like they're all we're all a team together. We all have roles and responsibilities that land somewhere on an org chart, but we're all on the same team. And

[95:07] model what you want from people

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: that's really important to me. That's how I know how to show up. And I think I've just you also want to model what you want from people, right? So I'm

Dan Korus: Okay.

Lindsey Kay: I don't wanna talk at people and I I wanna also be thinking about am I doing this thing? Am I also doing this

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: thing that I need folks to do? yeah. So it it's sometimes it's a moving target. You know, we've definitely had plenty of staff meetings where it's like crickets, crickets, crickets. And I'm like, man, but that's something I think about a lot. I want people to be able

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to speak up and

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to for people who don't normally speak up to feel comfortable talking and people who take up all the space in the room to shut up for a minute and listen to their peers. And that is a

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: tenuous process sometimes to to sort of manage those things. And I do also want to say that I think it's It's also about having the right people in the right places.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: we were fortunate enough that, you know, amongst all these org changes, that this year we were able to promote some folks that have been in the organization for a long time and that have really demonstrated a lot of really important leadership where they were with their teams. And so really being able to bring them up in how they're able to to work with their teams. I think that was reflected that day too. And and some folks who have just been really grinding and working really hard and being able to move them up. But we had, I mean, three people had been promoted this year, that were in that room. So

Dan Korus: Right. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: yeah, and just connecting to people. we can't know, and it's not necessarily appropriate for us to know everything about everybody that works for you, right? And nor to know everything about me, but

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: getting a good sense of like who's who and caring about that. My favorite thing about statewide meetings when everybody is in the room is that I get to check in with people and spend a little bit of time person to person just asking how they're doing. How are they, how are things going? How is your trip? I'm so pumped that you're here. We get to do this together. And

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: yeah. Yeah, more of that is good. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Okay. you talked about your decision making process at West and how

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: you show up for small businesses. And you know, a lot of a lot of the decision making process that you went through during hard times and you made the comment like, look, as a CEO of a of like basically a small business consulting firm, we have to take our own advice too. You know, and you did. You know, you made a hard you made a hard decision. And you made a decision that maybe some other people wouldn't have made, and you made it very gracefully, and very ethically, and with the appropriate amount of badassness. And Yeah. And, you know, then you talk about as a leader, you're also talking about, okay, it's important for me to be in the room because I'm also a part of the team and I'm wondering, am I also doing this too? And am I also taking my own advice? and I think as a lot a lot of leaders miss that, right? And we think, Okay, it's as I say, you know, or as I as I you know, as I think, you know, I think you all should go to this emotional intelligence training. I'm gonna be all right though. you know what I mean? And

Lindsey Kay: Ha ha ha.

Dan Korus: so I just think it's very cool. You know, noticing that you're someone who doesn't want to prescribe anything that they're not willing to do themselves. You know? do you like Game of Thrones?

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: John Stark, you know, episode one of Game of Thrones. Yeah. what is it? Ned No, Ned Stark. Ned Stark. He's like

Lindsey Kay: You know nothing, Jon Snow. Or yeah. Ned Stark, okay, yeah.

Dan Korus: he who he who gives the centage to swing the sword. In episode one when he decapitates that dude.

Lindsey Kay: Mm. Yep.

Dan Korus: Anyways,

Lindsey Kay: I have to do my own decapitations. You're right. It's true.

Dan Korus: You have to decapitate your own foe, you know? and that's that's leadership gang. Yeah, I don't know. I

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: think it's cool. That's your that's your style, you know.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: you're with the team.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yeah, we're I mean We're all just people trying to do a thing. You know? We're all just people trying to do a thing. I don't have any dragons

Dan Korus: Yeah, good way to sum it up. It's a good sum up.

Lindsey Kay: if we're gonna keep riffing on GOT. unless you call my team dragons. There's some badass dragons actually. So maybe I do have dragons.

Dan Korus: I have three more questions, but before that I want to tell you something kind of exciting.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: so I remember at the end of the workshop, you were I was like, maybe we'll come back and like do like an art module.

Lindsey Kay: Yes.

Dan Korus: so we built it.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah

Dan Korus: it's called it's called Perspectives Through Art Taking.

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: and we're gonna we're gonna look at a bunch of art together and talk about it through the lens of like emotional intelligence perspective taking.

Lindsey Kay: man. Ooh yes,

Dan Korus: Are you excited?

Lindsey Kay: I'm gonna have to make sure I don't talk too much during that one. I'll get real excited.

Dan Korus: I I think I think it's gonna be really fun. I just saw your I like I said art and like your face lit up and you were like

Lindsey Kay: Yes. Ugh.

Dan Korus: And I was like, shit, we gotta do it. so I've been talking to two art history teachers,

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: and to like build all this content now. so we have been consulting the experts. and we've got like way too many pieces. We've got like thirty pieces, and I think I need to like

Lindsey Kay: I bet.

Dan Korus: bring it down to like ten. it's gonna be really fun. Yeah. It's gonna be really fun. I'm stoked. Yeah, I was like if

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. That sounds amazing. Yeah. my god. That's like a constantly you can do so much with that, so many different things down the road too. That's amazing. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I think it'll be really cool. We're staying agile to the needs of our market.

Lindsey Kay: That's right. It's important. Yeah. So

Dan Korus: Okay, you ready for the final three and we'll get out of here? Okay. Someone's starting their first day of work tomorrow. They've never worked at a job before. What's your advice for them?

Lindsey Kay: Uh-huh. Just sit back and pay attention. Just learn. Don't be trying to jump in. Don't be trying to get in there and like make your mark or whatever. You're a sponge, sponge, sponge, sponge. a lot of businesses and organizations don't have robust onboarding structures. So, like, let's be real about

Dan Korus: Mm.

Lindsey Kay: that. Everybody loves to do interviews and say, what does your onboarding look like? And even if you say, like, well, we have these things, it's maybe not everything you would dream of when you come in and start.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: So the best thing that you can do, regardless of what that looks like, is just pay attention. absorb and learn your environment. Learn what you know you're the person in the office next to you, you know, what they're into. And they really they love their hot Cheetos too. Maybe you take note of that. Maybe you're paying attention to, I don't know, what's the flow of of the office, not just like what you're not going to learn everything about what happens in the business or your job in day one. So maybe just take in the environment and get a sense of that and get a lay of the land, but chill, be chill. Day one should not have a lot of pressure on it. that's just part of your learning journey. So just be present.

[102:26] advice for day one, middle managers, and senior leaders

Dan Korus: Be a sponge, ask questions, and find the best toilets.

Lindsey Kay: Find the best toilets. Yeah. That's right. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: The secret ones. okay, that's really good advice. All right. For someone who's in for someone who's in middle management.

Lindsey Kay: Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: dude, were you ever in middle management? It kind of seems like you had some you were kinda at the bottom and then you just like you were just like, I'm the boss now. for that's okay. No, that's okay. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. I'm the boss now. Yeah, not really. Welcome to entrepreneurialism. Yeah, you just yeah, you start at start there. Yeah.

Dan Korus: That's all right. I think you have stakeholders and so in that way you're still between, you know, two parties. You're still managing expectations. So for

Lindsey Kay: Sure, absolutely. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: people who are in middle management or maybe like senior team leads and are, you know, kind of between a lot of things, what's your

Lindsey Kay: yeah.

Dan Korus: advice for them?

Lindsey Kay: I know that often can feel like you're just yeah being smashed in between two sort of realms of needs and expectations and issues and all of

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: the things. Yeah, that's a that's a an interesting place. I think God, this is such a boring answer.

Dan Korus: That's okay.

Lindsey Kay: Communicate like a motherfucker. I'm telling you.

Dan Korus: Hell yeah.

Lindsey Kay: You gotta go on both, you gotta be bi-directional all the time, right? So

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: communicate communicate, communicate, communicate. It doesn't matter if you think that they like that. Maybe you need it. So communicate as much as you need to.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: Ask all the questions. I think that you know, you're not just moving with or you're not just dealing with moving targets, you're dealing with dual moving targets, right? Because you wanna oversee and manage. You're also probably if you're in middle management. you're probably still learning a lot about what it means to manage. There is a difference between leading and managing. They're not necessarily the same thing. And what we get by day to day is usually managing. So

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: I there's probably like this development piece that's happening at the same time while you're trying to sort of be the quote unquote middle child on a team. So I think that you have to be super communicative for that to work. And that also means communicating you know, where you're at and what do you need. Just because you have folks that are looking to you for things, it doesn't mean that you stop doing that with whoever is your manager or supervisor. it's always important to

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: remember to self-advocate because that's only gonna help you be a better manager or leader for your team.

Dan Korus: Good advice. I don't think that's boring at all. I think that's pretty good. Yeah, I think that's great.

Lindsey Kay: Okay. I'll say one more thing.

Dan Korus: Yeah, I think that's solid. Yeah, sure.

Lindsey Kay: I think whether you're in middle management or leadership or whatever, the one of the best things that you can do is in the same sense

Dan Korus: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: that we talk about empowering your clients at West is you want to empower your team. So again, not doing four, but upskilling people to do their jobs better and to be able to be their own self-drivers and have their own initiative. You also have to build their confidence and build their skills. So what do you need in middle management so that you can keep, you know, upskilling and feel more confident? And then also what do you need to be doing and like pass it down, pass it up. Pass it down, right? Because it's easy sometimes to just do a thing, but when you teach, when you invest the time and energy in teaching somebody else how to do it, it can change the entire landscape of a work environment. I've

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: seen so many times where people sort of fall into this space of weird martyrdom: I'm the only one

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: that can do it, I can't ever take time off.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Because I have to do this thing. sure, it's easy to put yourself in this sort of single point of failure space. But if the only antidote to that is to make sure that you're sharing information, that you're teaching the people around you. And then you can prioritize this like what what are your needs so that you can kind you cannot be hating your job in six months, right? You can actually

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah.

Lindsey Kay: be doing a good job and enjoying it, not hating it.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: And then it also creates these like pathways for people to grow too. So it it it impacts things on a grander scale. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Such good advice. And like I think middle managers often overlook that they should be trying to not be needed. You know, that that's like some

Lindsey Kay: No.

Dan Korus: sort something that like they earn once they're like a VP or you know, like a you know, a senior manager or something,

Lindsey Kay: Yeah.

Dan Korus: like that's when I get to empower people and delegate. But like mm mm, you know, and if you're a middle manager who's delegating, even even like going to meetings sometimes, you know, like, hey, do you wanna you know more about this than me? Do you wanna go to this meeting for me? You know, and like we'll just talk about it after. Or like come with me a couple times and then you can go. Like, dude, what an what an important skill to be able to teach. Like you're teaching, you know, you're teaching. you're teach your coaching. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mentoring and teaching. Absolutely. Yeah. I think people maybe get scared that if they are not the only person

Dan Korus: Woo boo boo.

Lindsey Kay: that can do something, then somehow they're expendable. But I actually think the most valuable thing you can bring to a team is the capacity to build up your team. Otherwise you're actually a liability. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dan Korus: Yeah. That's cool. Okay. That's such solid advice. Yeah. Yeah. You are a liability if you're not doing that. extremely important skill. and I dude, I don't I gotta look, but I don't know if I see that on a lot of jobs. job ads. Like

Lindsey Kay: Mm.

Dan Korus: that is the that is like the proverbial job of a leader is to not be needed, you know, but like you don't

Lindsey Kay: Yes, yeah.

Dan Korus: you don't see that codified on job

Lindsey Kay: Mm mm.

Dan Korus: ads or like put anywhere of like, hey, your job is to upskill this team so that way you don't job doesn't exist anymore. and we should.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. Yeah. We should. And don't worry, it's still gonna exist 'cause that that is a target that moves. But yeah, that should absolutely

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: be how we're showing up.

Dan Korus: Okay, last one, senior leaders, people at the top. This is you. what's your advice for them?

Lindsey Kay: Don't be a dick. let's see.

Dan Korus: good advice.

Lindsey Kay: no, I so here's the thing. When you are quote unquote at the top, when you're, you know, the leader at an organization, the reality is that It's lonely. It's a lonely spot, right?

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: people say things like shit rolls downhill, but I think in a lot of ways, all roads sort of end at your role. There are a lot of, you know,

Dan Korus: Uh-huh.

Lindsey Kay: people come to you ultimately. They're they end up at you to ask, what do we do next? How do we get there? We need to get the team on board that. role of having to motivate and inspire people all the time. and really, you know, when intractable problems intractable problems arise, you're the one

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: that is one of the main points of like how do we fix this, right?

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: and so what that means is everyone comes to you, but then where do you go? Right? and then being able we talk about being vulnerable, but I think that that is that's not black and white when you're in leadership, you want to be able to be a human being, but at the same time you do have to manage what you disclose or bring with you into

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: the room and to a different level or a little more strictly, if you will, than other folks. So what I would actually say to I made the joke, don't be a dick, but don't be a dick

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: to yourself, really.

Dan Korus: Good. Okay.

Lindsey Kay: Because it's a hard, it's hard. It's lonely. And sure, you can build your peer network. That is a thing. Do it. Prioritize that. Have your people that you can go to. and Be gentle with yourself because we have to carry a lot. There are plenty of things that we have to decide and do that we actually don't have the luxury of explaining to everyone why we got there. Either because you can't, because of the law,

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Lindsey Kay: or because it's not appropriate, or you never have that opportunity. And people are always gonna write stories of their own to fill in those gaps that are probably not true. And you have to accept when you're in leadership that that is the truth you carry on your own and you Have to live with whatever perceptions sort of like manifest outside of you. it's not always fun and it's not always cute, but that's a part of the job. So having this like radical ability to not personalize, it's really tough

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: because we are, you know, emoting creatures in the world.

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsey Kay: and most of us are doing our best, right? So it's easy, I think, when you feel like you're ver your little piece of the world is on your shoulders that you feel this immense responsibility and you can be a real dick to yourself.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Lindsey Kay: so take take a breath, give yourself some grace and yeah, we're we're we're all doing our best. And that doesn't make you a bad leader or a bad person. It just makes you real. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Be a sponge, communicate like a motherfucker, and don't be a dick.

Lindsey Kay: Yeah. To yourself.

Dan Korus: What a great