April 24, 2020
Transcript
Crystal Washington: Hello, I’m Crystal Washington, Technology Strategist, and Futurist
Karen McCullough: and I’m Karen McCullough, the millennial evangelist who helps you deal with change. And today we want you to rethink it forward
Crystal Washington: And by rethinking it forward, we mean that there are things that have worked for all of us in the past that aren’t going to work for us in the future. And if we’re, to be real honest, you’re not even necessarily working for us right now.
Karen McCullough: well, it’s fun Friday, so I love it. So we got this idea to tell you our fun story because we call ourselves the wonder twins sometimes. And so this is about the wonder twins uniting and how they collaborated and they got together, right? So I’m going to take you back. I’ll start it off. I’m going to take you back to 2009 in the middle of the recession. 2009 I had just published a book with my daughter, Meredith.
It was called the seven women project and it was just going out and it was self-published and one Sunday morning I was on the Facebook, that’s what I called it back in 2009 and a woman named crystal Washington, they got a hold of the book and she started, I didn’t know who this woman was. Oh yeah, that’s a Relic that’s going to be worth a lot someday. And she posted on Facebook how great the book was. And I started seeing my sales that morning going up on Amazon and I freaked out. I said, who is this woman? But back then I wasn’t smart enough to eat. I think I thanked her. Um, and that was it. A week later, synchronicity happened. We were at the exact same networking event and she came up to me and she said, I read your book and I think that you should make each of the seven women of character on Twitter.
Karen McCullough: And I said, who are you? No one back in 2009 gave me any free ideas. Everybody would charge me for that one. And I knew we had to become friends. Okay. We’re looking at us. We’re so totally different generations.
Crystal Washington: Yes. But wait, there’s one part you left out that was interesting. Currently, you looked into me and you saw my website and at the time I had a marketing firm and, and you notice that I did some speaking, I had like this little tab for speaking, speaking for like honorariums student. And that’s when basically people buy you like a fish dinner or something. Right. And, and Karen said after I’d given her that Twitter tip, she said, you know, I looked at your website, sit and I see that you want to be a professional speaker. And Karen had already been doing it for, I don’t know, maybe 10 years at that point. And she said I’m going to make you into a professional speaker. And I’m thinking, okay lady,
Karen McCullough: you know what, II didn’t know how we got to that because I do remember you as a marketing guru. And I thought, wow, she’s a guru. She’s going to help me. So I’m thinking we’ll have her become a speaker. And in the meantime she’s going to teach me all this social stuff, right? Yeah. And it, worked.
Crystal Washington: I mean in the end you became so social media savvy and you crafted like literally, I mean you took me on the short course to speaking what would normally take someone probably seven years. You got me there in like under a year to, to get to a certain point. And I think what you said was really key is the fact that we had different skill sets and different perspectives and we were just learning from each other the whole time.
Karen McCullough: It was so amazing to me because I had never reached out to somebody. I would always kind of been a little bit intimidated by the technology, but we clicked and we’re different in every way imaginable and I want it. Yeah. I was so glad because I didn’t remember how I got you on that stage, but we opened a company back then called social Trinity’s. This was Crystal’s idea and we taught mostly baby boomers, the opportunities of social media on live on a stage. And uh, it worked for a long time. Well, not really that long because when it really started working, Crystal was so good as a speaker that she told me in her little millennial way that she was done with social communities. She was going up on her own. Talk about millennials quitting on you. I could have done that for years. It was over. It was fun.
Crystal Washington: It was a lot of fun. Uh, but it was just a lot of work putting on live events, but it was very lucrative. So it was a great partnership, which that’s why Karen probably thought I was crazy because when I ended it, we were making a lot of money.
Karen McCullough: Oh, it was like pulling the plug, but a, so now let’s go to today. Well, let’s actually go to a month ago, a month ago, I am in my house panicking because I’m wondering where am I going to go? What am I going to do? I’ve got to learn how to do all of this technology. And I got a call.
Crystal Washington: Yeah. I called Karen and I had been thinking, I was like, you know, there are all these people that are in need of just practical advice. You know we’ve, we’ve been through different things in our own businesses and our own lives and we both have your strategic approaches to things though. And we’re fun and we’re silly and we’re fun dynamic. And so, yeah, I was like, I wonder if Karen would be interested in us putting together like some videos and podcasts. So that’s when I called her,
Karen McCullough: she called and she chose me and I thought, I mean, I thought this whole story though and I thought it’s a circle. We’ve come because I, to be honest with you, I didn’t know what I was going to do and I’m not that good on this. Although every day I’m doing things that I’m learning and I’m excited about doing this. But I wouldn’t have been if I didn’t get the call, I didn’t get the call that she actually came into my life again and we’re creating something that’s new and different.
Crystal Washington: Yeah. And we’re both learning along the way. Um, I know for me you’re, you have much stronger writing skills than I do and you’re more creative and funny. So like if people see the thumbnails of our videos on YouTube, you’ll see the progression and you’ll be able to tell the exact point where Karen started submitting thumbnail ideas cause that’s when they got fun and funny. Right? So I think, you know, we both pull from different knowledge sets and it makes us richer and in the process.
Karen McCullough: So today I think that so many of us, and it could be any generation, I don’t think it’s just baby boomers, but I think all of us out there are afraid of technology. I think that there’s a fear because we’re going to have to do things very differently. And what I want to say is if you can find help and if you’re, if you are good at technology, maybe this is your chance to help someone else. Because I think it’s that when we begin to collaborate when we begin to really look at the generations to look at our differences and realize that there is someone out there that is very different than we are and together we can make something much bigger than we could individually.
Crystal Washington: Just have fun in the process. I would hope that, you know, Karen, can I issue a challenge is okay if we challenge her. So I want to challenge everyone. It can be around technology, can be around anything. Find someone right now who is pretty different than you, but you have fun with it. Because Karen and I, we, we laugh and giggle the whole time we were together. Please understand we have so much fun. Find someone that’s really different than you and find some kind of way to collaborate. Find some kind of way to learn from them. Even if it’s just hanging out on, on, you know, playing Headspace or some type of game on an app. I don’t care but just connect with someone who’s very different than you to just kind of learn something new.
Karen McCullough: I think so. So have a great weekend. Everybody go out there and collaborate and put your ideas down below and we will see you again next Monday.