Ep 36 - The Entrepreneurship Spirit during Crisis: An inspiring conversation with Angela Engel
What happens when a successful entrepreneur is faced with crisis? And that crisis is a global pandemic... You anticipate a critical need, launch a new crowdfunding campaign, and make magic happen.
Today we hear the inspiring story of how Angela Engel, founder of The Collective Book Studio, tapped into her innate spirit as an entrepreneur and engaged her network to launch a campaign for building lifesaving PPE for her community at the start of COVID-19.
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TRANSCRIPT:
David: Today's guest and topic is someone that I'm really excited to bring on just because it taps into one of my favorite topics and that is the idea of entrepreneurship, and especially entrepreneurship that makes positive social change. So, normally our guest Angela Engel speaks on being a mom as an entrepreneur, being a small business, being a publisher for books. But this is a story that we get to push into that hasn't been told before. And it's one of great need at the beginning of the pandemic, and one where all of the entrepreneur assets that she had built and practice throughout her work journey, really set her and her whole network up to bring a significant need to her community and to the people that she cared deeply about.
Angela Engel is an entrepreneur and book publishing expert with over 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. And after working with several major publishing companies, Angela decided to go on a mission to disrupt the publishing industry by giving budding authors more agency and authority in the publishing process. So she founded The Collective Book Studio, and she provides authors with the support they need to get a book out into the world. In her very little spare time, she loves running and cooking. She lives with her three wonderful daughters, and her equally wonderful husband, Dan. So we're excited to share this story with you about how business and entrepreneurship can bring significant positive social change.
[Intro-music]
Mary: We welcome you to explore the third place with us.
David: It is an invitation to the gray space, a space where deeper connections are fostered through challenging, empowering, and engaging dialogue.
Mary: You will walk away with a deeper understanding of self, equipped to engage with others in life's complex conversations.
David: Thank you for listening.
Mary: We invite you in to the third place.
David: Well welcome Angela to the Third Place podcast. I know that I'm just so excited about this episode because it talks about the entrepreneurship spirit, and how entrepreneurship can lead to so many social changes, seeing a problem in our world, in our community, and then taking a risk and getting the community involved and putting a financial engine to it and you just go. So, you're the CEO of The Collective Books Studio, but your husband also has a business?
Angela: Yes, he does. We're both small business owners in the time of a pandemic. It's a wild ride, David.
David: Yeah. So well, I'm taking entrepreneurship risks seems like it's just part of your family's DNA. So let's just start there, you know, what is it like to be an entrepreneur in this pandemic and try to just even hang on for dear life?
Angela: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. And honestly, I'm ecstatic to even be asked this question. So, my husband and I are both business owners. He runs a boutique accounting firm, for restaurants in the time of COVID, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I run a publishing house. So we're both I would say, like artists and love the idea of creation. You know, I'm a book publisher. And I do it out of love. Like I work with artists, and I work with authors and many entrepreneurs themselves and create books. And my husband works with restaurant, small restaurant owners who are building their family businesses and their dreams. I think for both of us, we both have this love of working with people. And I think that that's what drives us as entrepreneurs. So again, I'm just ecstatic to be here. And I can't wait to dive into why we do what we do, and kind of what drives us.
Mary: But the first thing I noticed though, too, is that how interesting that both of you are sort of like bridging the gap between sort of the art world and the logic world in the work that you do that you're taking this creating a canvas for your featuring art, ultimately. Whether it's through food or through the written word, and how fascinating that you're doing it from this balanced perspective, but it does sound like a lot of work.
Angela: And we have three girls, by the way.
Mary: Oh Lord, and how old are they?
Angela: So I have almost 13 she's in seventh grade. I have another daughter who's nine. And a daughter who will be five years old very, very soon. And so, we are completely busy. But in a really fun way, I have to say. So, it's been a journey. Dan and I have been married, I think we're going on year 15 or 16 one of those two.
Mary: One of those two. So David, you know, got to chat with you earlier. And I know that there's this amazing story for us to uncover here. And it all was really at the start of COVID. Right? I'd love for you to fill in our listeners and myself on sort of what unfolded there.
Angela: Yeah. So I think, you know, both of us have been in the world of entrepreneurship for a while. So my husband started his accounting firm, his boutique accounting firm, he used to be like a manager of restaurants. He was a musician in San Francisco and kind of said, what am I doing in my early 30s, and went back to accounting school at UC Berkeley Extension. And because he had so many friends in the restaurant business, as soon as he got out of everyone's like, “Hey, can we use you? We can use an accountant in our restaurant.” And from there, it kind of grew.
And so he's been in business, like eight or nine years, but pre-pandemic, and doing really well having incredible restaurants here in the Bay Area, some really great, great restaurants. And then the pandemic hit, right? And so, all of a sudden, it was like March. And I was just watching my husband and his colleagues and his friends really scared, right in so many ways. I mean, not only the restaurant owner, but the amount of people that you're counting on that are your bartenders, and your waiters, and your hostesses, the amount of people and my husband ran payroll. And he was the CFO for so many of these restaurants. And watching my husband at the dinner table, just say to me, “Angela, you're not going to see me. I don't really understand all of what's going to be happening with the loans and the money that I'm going to have to figure out for my restaurants, but you're going to have to bear with me.”
And at the same time, I also own a business, right? Where there's no angel investor, there's no VC money to be had in a small bootstrap business. That's what's really important what I want to be talking about here. This is not Silicon Valley. This is restaurant owners. This is and what I do is book creation and working with museums working with illustrators working with food too. I've done a lot of books in the food and wine industry. So we both were like, hey, we got to hold on. And at the same time, my best friend from five years old, is an ER, ICU doc at Oakland Kaiser. And I'm up in Napa, actually, that weekend with a couple of really good friends. And that weekend, the Princess Cruise was going to land into Oakland, where we live. My husband was taking care of the girls and I was getting a Napa away weekend, which is like once in a lifetime thing.
And I'm watching on TV that Monday morning, the Princess Cruise, going into port, and my closest friend actually treated the man who had to go directly to Oakland Kaiser. And, when it hit, I just was like, I just knew, like there was like something in me that just knew that this was going to take a while to get through this pandemic. And I checked it on my friend, you know, a couple of weeks I've been I was cooking, we were bringing food, whatever. And then there was a moment when we saw and I'm my family's in New York, my mother's from Manhattan. I'm in publishing, a lot of my colleagues and good friends are in New York. And we're watching what's happening in New York, to my own family, our own friends.
And my close friend comes over and we go on a walk, and he's exhausted. Mind you, he has no children. He has a great partner and he has to take shifts, overnight shifts for women who are pregnant. He has to take shifts, he says for people who have kids because there's no school all of a sudden, like everything shut down. He's working over and over and he just loses it and he asked me if I can figure out as will and like where… I mean it was like as though I was going to own everything and be his executor. I mean we were really talking that way. He was really feeling like this was the end for him in the say that be prepared that he may not make it because he has to keep treating these patients.
And I said okay, something has to be done. And the reason he was scared for his life was because there was not enough this is really important, PPE. There was not enough N-95 to protect our frontline worker. They were asking that the N95 be cooked in an oven on low heat and take home, they were asking you to recycle your face shield that was supposed to be disposable. There was just not enough. And I felt strongly and maybe because it was my entrepreneurial spirit, maybe because it was my husband working crazy to save his own business and so many businesses here that I was like, we have to save our frontline workers. If I don't save Todd and I don't save my frontline workers, we are not going to make it like our businesses are not going to make it.
David: Well and I think that is the entrepreneurship spirit kicking in, you know, when you were describing, being in the creative space in the restaurant space, in the book space, you know, and the joke that I heard in my head, oh, it sounds like you guys just wanted a super simple stable life, right? So you obviously did not choose that path. Part of the success of being an entrepreneur is you've got to figure out how to roll with the punches and roll with them often. And you know, especially the bootstrapper version, where you're not well funded, it really is just all you got. You have to take calculated risks often so that you can stay in business and you can pivot to the market and things like that.
So you know, when I look at all of what had to happen at the beginning of the pandemic, around small businesses was that every business had to pivot immediately and all at the same time. Pivoting a business is part of the game. But I'm sure you had experiences of pivoting and pivoting often, and pivoting well and pivoting not well and learning from those things. So you needed to be able to take that energy and that skill set and apply it in a different way.
Angela: Absolutely. And you know, backing up from this, it's like when you're a small business owner, I knew guys get that from being small business owners, you know, other small business owners, right? So kind of like your tribe, right? It's like your club. So a good friend of mine owned a fabrication and upholstery factory. Okay? And she is a woman, small business located in Alameda. And she was like, out of work. All of a sudden her work overnight David, just what you said. It wasn't just the restaurant business. But it was also these fabricators and was everybody and the makers. And so what happened is, she actually put something on Facebook that was like, “Hey, I want to help. But I want to not just, you know, a lot of sellers were sewing masks, but I really want to help.”
And another one of my closest friends knew my personality, which is really business development. That's my background. So I was like dealing with my best friend as an ICU, ER doc, he's actually a dual, which is really rare. There are not many of them in the country, even who do both departments. So what happened is, this is like March. I mean, this is like a matter of 10 days, right? It's all just coming together. And I say to Jeannie, okay, I think I can figure out how to raise the funds to do this. Should we make medical face shields? And we actually snuck a prototype out of the hospital. We had several doctors from different large medical institutions, help check out our prototype. We got a DIY video from China. And we said we can do this Jeanie was like, we have to wire $6,000, to DuPont to get the Mylar and that's located in Wisconsin. And this is March. Okay?
So I was like, Well, Jeannie, I can't raise the funds and get 6000 right now, like tomorrow, but she's like, Angela, we have to get it tomorrow. Because otherwise, it's going to be taken up. And we won't be able to actually produce these face shields. So then I had to call Don, my husband, who I barely am seeing at this point. I mean, and he's like, probably just figuring out what the restaurants I was like, what are they gonna do? How are they going to pivot which they all have right sauces and to go liquors now and whatever else, they're trying to figure out. Oh, we had a restaurant selling flour, you know, you're selling your pantry off at this point, right? So I call my husband and I go, “Okay, I know this is crazy. But I need you to wire out of our business account, because we co-owners, essentially, right? I need you to wire $6,000 and send it to DuPont in Wisconsin.”
Mary: Please tell me his reaction because I know what my husband's would be and I want to hear yours.
Angela: Okay, just imagine because you're a tea maker, and you call him and you're like, this has nothing to do with books, okay? Nothing. Just trust me. He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “We’re gonna save Uncle Todd. We're gonna save him.” And he said, Okay. And David, what you're saying about the entrepreneurial spirit, is that you just have to believe you just have to. So we did.
David: Yeah, I just want to say real fast, you know, I got in the coffee industry through business coaching, and you can do everything you can to minimize all these risks. But at some point, there's always a leap of faith, you can't minimize every risk. I think what hit me with that moment was, you know, why are you doing this work? Well, your why was so crystal clear and so simple. I'm saving Uncle Todd. So that's it, you know, and then everything else builds from that?
Angela: Yeah, thank you. And Jeannie was like, how are we gonna raise it, right? And I was like, “Don't worry, we'll raise it.” So we started a GoFundMe campaign. Okay, the same day. And at first, I was like, just put it up for like, $10,000 and we'll take care of the community and it will be kind of that's what it is right? There was no part of my brain in that moment that I was going to create, over 10,000 face shields, and that I was going to raise over $36,000. And I was actually going to be giving face shields to the Navajo Nation, and to Tennessee and to Minneapolis after George Floyd was murdered. And that we were literally shipping we ship face shields to NYU Hospital in New York. There was just no idea.
So basically what happened is I launched this GoFundMe. I called a very close friend of mine, who's brilliant. Her name is Nancy Dean. And she is in terms of social media and marketing. And I said, “I need a favor. Can you create social media assets?” And she said, send me pictures, send me what you can. And she created a story for us about Uncle Todd. I have a video even and all of this stuff. And, we started sending social media assets, the hospital of not just the hospitals, but like Hayward's Fire Department, that the fire chief, we had pictures of him getting them. We had the ambulance system of Alameda County picking up face shields. It became so incredible and such a movement that we were getting, you know, phone calls. And finally, SF labor got involved and gave us a $5,000 check that was just dedicated for labor to help the makers continue the work.
Mary: Was that after the 36,000 you had raised?
Angela: That was after we raised 30,000. We raised about 30,000, in the GoFundMe. And then because there was so much need imagine all of these makers had to keep working. And they were actually working for even under minimum wage at that point. So then I had a really good friend and I just networked with his name is Rudy Gonzalez, and him and I are just good friends. And he said to me, “Angela, what do you need?” And I said I need back pay for these laborers. And he said, okay, send me a letter, get an idea. And within less than 24 hours, the board had approved it from SF labor and just said, “Here's $5,000, solely dedicated to back pay.”
Because the GoFundMe in the end, we have raw materials, right that we have to pay for, which was really what it was because all of these face shields were donation. Like we did not resell them to any of the hospitals or any of the clinics. They went to a lot of low-income clinics in Santa Clara County, and Southern California. In here in the Bay Area, that majority went here. Highland hospital, which is in Oakland was a big donor too. I really felt strongly that we had to protect our frontline workers and also the hospitals that are serving some of our frontline workers that have the most exposure, which are restaurants, David., you know what I'm saying, We're already we're in it, like because these are our people.
Mary: I just like him feeling proud to be a part of, you know, to be able to call myself an entrepreneur and to be sitting here and having that conversation with you and with David. Because I think that one thing that you've really pressed into that doesn't get talked about a lot but just the power of favors and how a lot of this work in that startup mode or that spirit is this handshake. The lack of formality is the reason why you can pivot quick is the reason why you can make something happen from the ether, right? And, how you can think a thought or feel a feeling when you see that cruise ship, have a walk that conversation like you did with Todd, and then from seemingly nothing, you manifest something and not only anticipate because clearly, you have this anticipatory feeling that I think a lot of entrepreneurs can click into. It's like, maybe it's market know-how whatever you can make it sound more grandiose than it is. But there's this intuition that was guiding you. And then it's the power of that community that you can tap into, as well.
Angela: Yeah, I think that the community is what made this successful, to be honest. Because, look, Jeannie and I were really, really good at staying in our lane. Like she was dealing with all of the make sides, right? So she was buying the Velcro. That's what she does. She's in upholstery. Right? We have an incredible video of the Mylar, getting cut by this really cool cutter in West Oakland his factory. And those connections I don't have, those are her connections because that's what she does for a living. And then what my connections were really strong at is that I was already so connected with the doctors and the hospital system, because honestly, not just Todd, but Ron Beryl, who's the head of ER at Oakland summit. And once it got out that I was doing this work, then I connected with like Alameda network, the doctors there who then oversee all of the low-income clinics.
So my role was really to the network who was going to receive it. And then we had a huge spreadsheet and who managed that is that was one of my closest friends, who is the Operations Director at Sinai Memorial Chapel. She oversees the cemeteries, unfortunately. So she's very well connected with the doctors, and what's needed there. So she managed the spreadsheet and all of the needs, and we're starting to get emails and needs from all of these hospitals. And then how we were going to disseminate them. We had drivers and volunteers. I mean, it really became a community. But I think in order to build that you almost have to have to be an entrepreneur and be doing it. Does that make sense? Like the reason I could succeed at it was that I’m doing it already in my business.
David: Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the challenges, especially startups, anyway, just in businesses, the power of networking is really so important. And this is the story, the minute it became clear, of something to do the network was energized and could rally around the idea. But when you're in the startup mode of business, you know, it's finding that balance of getting to know people putting yourself out there telling your story of your business while you're doing what you're doing. And those returns aren't right away. So you always have to just kind of balance, like, what things could get me immediate sales versus what people are just good connections. And, you know, a lot of that is a time factor as well.
But one of the things I really encourage entrepreneurs to think through as they're setting things up is to never think that you can do it by yourself. Whether you're hiring to fill the gaps, whether you're finding investors to fill the gaps, where you have partnerships or contractors, who are you? What are your skill sets? And then how do you surround yourself with people that aren't. And so that's a really great way to engage with a network so that when there is a pivot moment of a cause, like this or anything in your own business, you're able to implement that network very quickly.
Angela: Yes, correct. And I think that the fact that I wasn't a brand new startup or neither was my husband,that we could we already received thought of like what we needed was in this? I mean, essentially, if it even if it's all for good and a donation and a GoFundMe how there are so many factors. And same with Jeannie I mean, we were so good as almost co entrepreneurs here because she runs a business herself, right? So she was like, okay, how are we working on even the distribution end. And so we really were able to set up how to do that because we run businesses. And in business, you have to be able to be agile, and you have to be able to understand how you're setting up the back end. I mean, I was really lucky to be honest with my company, because my husband runs an accounting firm. And so, wiring money to manufacturers, keeping really good books, understanding records and then oh, this is really important. We actually ended up giving the GoFundMe money to a nonprofit that was already set up. So they managed all of that and we didn't out of our business.
So what happened is there's a great nonprofit here in the Bay Area that can help manage funds. And so they ended up because they pivoted, they were makers as well. So they really managed. So all I had to do is just take the GoFundMe, write a check. And then they actually managed, the hours that the makers were doing. They managed all the bills that Jeannie was sending. To be honest, that type of work my husband could not dedicate to he had to be working with the restaurants.
Mary: Yeah, of course. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking like, so you were doing all of this, while also, you know, like, I want to, like remind our listeners while also having three children at the very, very start of the pandemic. I mean, you know, there was a lot of lost expectations for everyone. So you're managing that undercurrent of feeling and running both of your businesses. And I'm sitting here really in just such all of that, too. And I've been wanting to ask, how do your kids navigate the intensity and vibration that you and your husband operate in?
Angela: I have a big personality. Like my husband always says, like, I'm 100%, Italian, and I'm 100% Jewish, like, there's no 50/50. My parents met in Manhattan, my father is 6’6. So it's like my father is a 6’6 Italian and my mother is a five-foot little tiny Jewish Israeli lady out of New York. And I kind of I'm that. Okay, so my kids are used to a loud house. My husband is an Iranian Persian Jew. And so we speaks Hebrew to my children. We speak English. Like my kids are sort of used to already sort of this dynamic that's really fun and engaging.
And I think, honestly, what they saw of their parents, as scared as we may be, honestly, the joy of watching this kind of movement of we can do anything girls. We can change lives. Change matters. So we would literally get shipments of the PPE into our garage, when it was finished because Jeannie had to close down early, the makers are exhausted, right. And so then drivers would come pull up into our garage, take it and then disseminate it to the hospitals. And my girls were watching out of the window, people coming to our house in Oakland to pick up PPE. And then this is really important. George Floyd was murdered in literally where I grew up in Minneapolis. I grew up in South Minneapolis, I went to South High. My sister was five blocks away outside picking Blackberry, she remembers the moment when George Floyd was murdered.
And, my girls live in Oakland. And there were protests and Black Lives Matter right outside of our doorway. And so I said, “Okay, girls, we're going to go out into our yard, and we're going to get a bunch of cardboards and we're going to make signs that we're going to sit here.” And you know, to my four-year-old, it was like, “Oh my God, this is really loud. This is kind of scary.” because she was listening to it. So I was like, we need to go out there. And we need to be part of this. We need to understand what we're talking about here. This is where I grew up. This is, you know, all of this cultivated into sort of when you ask Mary, I think that my girls are sort of watching their parents say they can do anything. And in some ways, I'm telling my girls, you can be anything.
And you know, we ended up shipping face shields to a children's hospital in Minnesota to Abbott hospital. Like I just started calling I called old friends from high school. I said, “Can you guys network for me?” I actually ended up getting some press in Minneapolis, and just saying how can we help you? So anyway, just this is like as you can tell, I'm really passionate about this subject. And I hope that my optimism and my passion are just infused into this story for other people.
Mary: Well, I mean, I've gotten the chills a number of times. And I think that you articulated it so well that what they witnessed was just that, that they can do anything and that you can make something of nothing. And to me, it actually is so interesting, because I think a lot of people's experience, my experience here in Colorado was pretty quiet. So your experience at the start of the pandemic feels so fiery. And we had an episode in the beginning of the Third Place podcast, we talked about how anger is a good thing and that in its nature, it's a fiery spirit and that is a creation spirit in its own right. It's creative, it's manifesting, it's doing, it's strong. So it's really, really powerful for me to hear your story and also such a different experience at the beginning and what you were creating.
David: And I think a big part of what I'm walking away from is, when you say the word entrepreneurship or think of someone as an entrepreneur, you're usually thinking of that person that's at the top, and that's organizing. But what is just oozing through this story is that I think I've changed my mind that literally, everyone can be an entrepreneur. And, that it takes everyone for entrepreneurship to work together, and to do something the way that you did. So, all of those workers engaged in entrepreneurship through you. All of the drivers engaged in entrepreneurship, all the whole network, all the people that you called, you know, the people that you went to high school with. And so they all played their role. And so that's, I think, maybe the question or the guidance that I'm curious about your thoughts on for whoever that might be listening, how would you direct them to engage in their own entrepreneurship spirit?
Angela: Yeah, I mean, for me, I think that I actually feel finding your own daily mantra is really key. So I actually needed to make sure I spent a little time every morning just for me, and then one really long morning. So every Tuesday morning at like, 5:00 AM, I would wake up, and I would go down to Lake Merritt about 5:30. And I would run the lake. And I would listen to my music. And I would repeat to myself, change starts with you all the time. Like this change starts with you. And it kept me motivated, like, Okay, if I just could, like hone into my very core, that the change is going, to begin with, me, I can do anything.
So I guess my biggest advice to entrepreneurs is, tap into that, tap into you, and what you want to do. And if you can just keep that mantra with you, you can do it ,right? And for me, I've actually just got a text today, I send out bi-monthly newsletters, book news, whatever. And this is Black History Month. And so for us as a Collective as our company, we really wanted to sell black-owned bookstores here in Cali. And I got a text it was like that was really great intention. And I texted back and I said, “These are not intentions. This is the work. It isn't one-and-done conversation.” I guess that's my thing with entrepreneurship. It is continual work.
Your intention is good, right? Like we need intention. But we actually also need to do the work. And that is probably my biggest advice to entrepreneurship is to tap into you. And know, it's going to be a lot of work. But the reward, the gratitude, the joy, I still have letters hanging on my board, the amount of… Mary when you said I took all these people as entrepreneurship well, once word came out we had more drivers than we needed. People said and wrote to me, they said, “You gave me purpose, Angela. Thank you, Jeannie and Angela.” they would want to come to my garage, they would drive they were willing to come to live in Oakland drive, wherever we wanted them to go San Jose.
You know, we had a driver who was a volunteer fireman who had kind of retired, he started taking face shields up to Northern California, where they were not going to get PPE for a long time. And those are first responders and this virus, which I think when you said Mary, it's quiet. It doesn't discriminate. It went everywhere. So that's why I think the work I hope we did was to help protect some of our quieter places so that they didn't have to feel the bigger noise that we did feel here. Don't forget Oakland, we were hit really the first.
Mary: Yeah, you saying someone shared the sentiment that you gave them purpose is really powerful for me to hear. And that I think that that's sort of you know, even though it's like it's the move from intention to doing and redoing and revisiting. The intention is that starting place, but that as an entrepreneur, we wake up every day, or we have about I'd say maybe 50 to 100 times a day that we have to remember and return to that purpose. And that oftentimes giving purpose to others, I feel like fuels our own right? And that I'm feeling like that. Now I'm like seeing you as like a 200% person and that you're 200% spirit is I think what a lot of entrepreneurs feel and you put such language to that.
And that, in order for you to sustain that contagious spirit. Though to is really twofold, returning to the purpose that you deliver, and returning to your own purpose, but also that that is only fueled by taking those moments to also honor and sustain yourself so that you can keep that percentage at the rate that you do. So I'm really elated to have had this conversation with you. And I said it's contagious. I'm an excitable person, though. Usually, I'm the excitable person and I love your spirit because I'm like, yeah, you someone step in and take it even to the next level. So, I feel kind of just like your daughters like I could do anything. And I think that's the message that has come across very, very clear. And I want to be able to let everyone know where they can find more of your work in all capacities if you'd share that.
Angela: Yes. Oh, Mary, I'm so honored. You are really a powerhouse so far to say that I've like sparked something for you today is making me just well as you can see I don't think people out of podcast can see the smile that I have on my face. So I am just active on social at The Collective Book Studio, our website, CollectiveBook.studio. Please you know, check us out. Subscribe to our newsletter like we are. Books are really fun. And we're artists, I write a very active on my blog about social change and issues. I believe words matter. I do. I believe books actually can create movements because we read important works. And it changes our paradigm, it changes our world. You know, Black voices matter. And we talk about that a lot on our journal. But artists matter. I mean, small business matters. I hope that people take this into account because this story to tell Mary there was no like, big, you know, Washington Post article about this. There was no New York Times posted. To have the moment to tell our story on your podcast actually, is a gift for me. But really truly my hat goes off to the number of hours that these makers spent to save people and to do the work too. I mean, I really am ever indebted to Jeannie and her team.
Mary: There's another round of chills. Geez, Angela. I'm leaning in closer, nobody can see us. But I'm slowly getting so close that I like I think I'm hugging you. But clearly, you’re in California, and you’re in Colorado, so.
Angela: Yeah. And I love this concept of entrepreneurial spirit, David and Mary. We didn't really talk about your own.
Mary: We'll have to bring you back.
Angela: But you know, I mean, to be honest, like you guys finding a podcast and the time and the space to do that and talk and dig into entrepreneurs is awesome and a gift. And I commend you for doing that. Mary, you said, when do I have time? I mean, I don't have time to do this. So thank you for providing that.
Mary: Well, thanks again, seriously, so much. And I know that David is just as happy as I am to have had you on here. I am not going to be surprised if you make another appearance. So I'll just plug that to our audience now. Because you're a storyteller, it's clear that you're a storyteller. Even though you obviously hold space in your producer, that kind of goes back to this initial feeling that I had, that you're bridging the gap between a lot of these two things, and you really embody that completely as into one woman. So thank you for coming on and be well.
David: Well, I hope you were inspired by that story. As much as Mary and I were next week's guests, we're going to continue the theme of entrepreneurship and this story will revolve around green energy. And throughout the whole conversation of green energy, an idea that empowers everybody. In the energy sector, it's often that a few people make a lot of money, and many people are taking advantage of it. And one of the things I love about the idea that we'll discuss next week is how this new product and this new way to look at energy really empowers everyone, equally. So stay tuned next week and we'll continue kind of this theme of social entrepreneurship. Be well.
