(00:00): You're listening to the live happier longer podcast, episode 66

(00:05): yes.

(00:15): Welcome to the live happier longer podcast. This podcast is equal parts, information, inspiration, education and motivation, all dedicated to increase longevity and improving overall quality of life. I'm your host, Molly Watson, and I'm here to help you build the habits of a happier laundry life. Let's get started.

(00:37): Well, hello and welcome back to the live happier longer podcast coming to you live from Oregon rather wet and rainy Oregon today, but it has been nice, so I'm not going to complain about the weather and I am on my way to sunny California, so that could be why. Looking for a little vitamin D, so hoping this weekend I get some. This podcast is supposed to be equal parts, information, inspiration, education and motivation, and today definitely an inspirational tale for you. Talking to Amy and Nancy Harrington, they are two sisters, sisters who get along beautifully, well still midlife women who left major careers and started their own business. The pop culture, passion East is then they've taken it to another business level here in the last year and a half with passion needs to project.com. I can't wait for you to hear about this business and what it's doing for women and women owned businesses.

(01:44): They have their own podcast, a subscription box service. I think you are going to be inspired and you will really love hearing from Amy and Nancy Harrington. Hi Amy. Hi Nancy. It's so nice to have you guys on the podcast kind of finally, I'm going to say thank you so much. We're so happy to be here. Really excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah, it's a little bit of finally cause I feel like I talked to you, we, we kind of connected, we've connected in a couple of different spots via social media and I was kind of, I dunno cyberstalking you for a little bit. I felt like in trying to track you down and, um, set this up, but, and I know your schedules are very busy cause you've been busy ladies in the last few months getting something, getting your project off the ground. So gave you a little bit of an introduction before we started here, but I want to dive a little deeper into, well, let's talk first about your pop culture. Passion East is business because, or is it, it's a business, right? It was a business freelance. Yeah. Because you guys have had a pretty amazing career story, uh, experience getting to talk to some pretty

(03:00): impressive people, uh, over the last few years. Yeah. Yeah. We've been really lucky. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we both had a careers in entertainment slash marketing advertising for a long time before we decided that we wanted to work together. Amy was a big wig at Warner brothers movie studios. I did a Academy award campaigns for mere max and Fairmont classics. So all the Harvey Weinstein movies, I never met her. Um, and um, and we both sort of got burnt out at the same time. So we decided that we wanted to work together cause we just were tired of relying on people that we really couldn't rely on and we knew that we would always have each other's backs. So in 2010, we started pop culture, passionate Easters and we, um, we wrote about all kinds of different pop culture. So we, um, had clients and we had our own website, we interviewed all sorts of amazing people.

(04:10): Probably the biggest, you know, sexiest thing we did was one of our clients is television Academy. So every year we cover the red carpet at the Emmy's for them. And by that we've been able to talk to some incredible, you know, actors and movie stars to TV and movies are so similar now. Um, and we also do archival interviews for the television Academy. So we've opportunity to sit down and do three or four hour interviews with penny Marshall and Julia Louis Dreyfus and just some amazing people. So it's been a great ride. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean that, and I think on your website you have some, you were, you got to speak to Carol Burnett. We did. We, yeah. You know, there was a brief period where we were writing articles that were getting picked up by Yahoo and we got an email from them one day and they said we need someone to interview Carol Burnett, Carol Burnett, will you do it?

(05:13): We're like, it's a dream come true. So we got about 20 minutes on the phone with Carol Burnett and it was really one of the greatest 20 minutes of both of our lives. She was incredible and charming and everything we would have wanted her to be, which isn't always the case with people, you know, you always do those moments like is she going to live up to, you know, our entire child's lifetime of, of admiring her. And she really did. My favorite moments of it, and I think it kind of sums Carol up is you know, we usually when we have an interview on the phone with, with the celebrity, we call and we speak with their press person and then the press person calls and guess the celebrity on the phone and us. And so we were given a phone number and we dialed the phone number expecting to hear a publicist on the other end and the voice answers. Hello, this is Carol. Oh my gosh. It just kind of sums up how amazingly down to her she is. No, she didn't feel the need to have a person. Yeah.

(06:21): Yeah. Just incredible. I mean I know she just, she's, she's a, like you, she's an idol for me and someone that I grew up watching on television, so I can only imagine what that was like. Having her actually answered the phone would be pretty amazing. Yeah.

(06:39): There are those people that we've been fortunate to, whether it's a, you know, two minute interaction or four hour interview where you just walk away thinking like, how did I get so lucky that I get to do it? And the best part for us is that we get to do it together. Because if one of us had talked to Carol Burnett and you know, the other one didn't and we grew up literally every Saturday night, it was like, you know, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett, not going to miss a second of it. It would be really hard. But we get to be, you know, little kids again together, which is part of all of this.

(07:16): It is incredible. I mean it's, you're so fortunate and not only in that you both were kind of landed in the same space, you know, in terms of, of being interested in and working as a part of the entertainment industry. Uh, but then that you were both ready at the same time to take a leap of faith together and that it's worked out so beautifully. That is, uh, a pretty special, a pretty special sisterhood, no matter how you guys say it. Right.

(07:46): Absolutely. Yeah. I wouldn't have left my S my job had Nancy not moved here and had, you know, I probably would have stayed there unhappy for a very long time if she hadn't come out and, um, wanted to make the move herself. And it just felt so right. And, uh, it made, it made it easy in the midst of what could have been really impossible situations.

(08:13): Yeah. Okay. So you guys leave your corporate jobs, you start passion East, does pop culture, you're doing some writing, you're doing interviewing, all things are going along swimmingly and suddenly you get this. I mean, is it, tell me about when the passion needs to project became something that was top of mind for you too.

(08:38): Well, we've been thinking for awhile about um, wanting to do podcasts [inaudible] and we kept thinking about doing a pop culture podcast and it just didn't grab us. You know, we didn't want to do a podcast where it was just us talking about our opinions of things. And we were doing interviews of celebrities already and we were getting to a point where we wanted to do something a little more meaningful and, and then the hashtag me too, and time's up movements flared out and we were really feeling like we've got to do our part here. And so it really just came to us one night. We, you know, woke up in the middle of the night and had the idea and talked the next morning and said, you know, we should use our skills of interviewing people to talk to women, not about these hard and incredibly sad and really important stories, but tell the empowering powerful stories of women who decided to follow their own passions and have found success, whatever that means to them.

(09:47): And not only to share their stories, but to inspire other women to do the same thing. So we just decided, you know, we can do a podcast. There's nobody to stop us from. We don't have to get money from someone, we don't have to get anyone. All we can start this next week. So it was the end of try the beginning of December of 2017 when we had the idea and we thought, who would we want to interview? We came up with a handful of women that we admired that we didn't know and we just reached out to them. And the first week of January, 2018 we did our first interview. And you know, we ask every woman we interviewed to nominate another woman. And the spider web effect of that has been unbelievable. And we're overflowing with the number of women that we have to talk to and we're trying to just keep up.

(10:40): Isn't that? That's, that is so amazing. That's so great. And I agree with you completely. The, the power of podcasting just and the relative, a low barrier to entry in terms of being able to get started. Now that doesn't mean everybody creates a great podcast. But yeah, I mean it is something that you don't have to have a lot of skill at in the beginning. You don't have to have a lot of equipment, you don't have to have a lot of money. Um, yeah. Now point blank and you can get, you can get something and you can put your message out there into the world. So I would love to hear your opinions though. Cause one of the things that I get, at least myself I get frustrated by is that I feel like for us, for women of a certain age, podcasts are not like they're their first go to or they aren't as connected to the podcast industry and to listening to content. And I just, I, I can't imagine, cause now that I've delivered discovered podcasts and not just by doing my own but just have listened to them, I am just like, I'm a like a junkie. I mean it's sad. I'm just like I can't, I can't get enough of it. I think it's the best thing I've ever gotten, you know,

(11:54): have, and it's like free. It's like come on and what are you talking about? Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. I think, I think women are starting to catch on, but I do think it's taking a while. You know, I think it's like anything else, like it seems like it's this weird technology like I, a lot of people will see where do you find it? You know, that's like a common question and it's like, well I can understand that. You know, cause it's not like I turn on my radio or I turn on my TV and it's there, but you know, it go to iTunes or search our website for our website. There it is. So yeah, I think it's just a matter of, you know, educating people about the technology and making them not afraid of it. You know, it's like any new, like how did I use my iPhone when I first get it?

(12:42): It was like the map is going to talk to me. Yeah, yeah, sure. So, so you start the podcast, I got that idea. You've got your role in along with the podcast, talking to women, sharing their stories, interested in helping passion women who have a passion business that they have started maybe and, and found success or are. And, and I, I remember reading on your website, what I loved about the [inaudible] part of it was women you've probably never heard of. You know, cause I think that we get, there's so much, and especially in you can relate to this being in the LA scene, just the, the [inaudible] of [inaudible] media. And yeah, when people are successful or they have a lot of money, they're, you know, they're all we hear about, right. And then there's so many incredible stories of women doing incredible things and very successful by the way, you know what I mean?

(13:43): Very successful. So I love that part about your guys, finding people that, that other women will want to support that they just probably don't know about. Right. Yup. And we get to discover them too, because like, like I said, with the nomination process, it's like we have met women, we never in a million years would have found. And you know, one day we walked into, we were interviewing a woman, um, who has the, uh, a charity and we walked in, she said, Oh, you wanted me to nominate someone? We said, yeah. She said, Oh, this is Lynn. And when you're done interviewing me today, you can interview her. And we were like, we haven't prepared. We have a restructure and it takes nuclear weapons and melts them down. Sculpts peace angels. And we were like, okay, we'll figure it out. We'll do that for you. That's fine.

(14:37): Women we never would have known about. So it's exciting for us to have that opportunity to and since firing for us, you know, just as much as it is for anybody. That was, yeah. I think we oftentimes go an interview, especially if they're early morning, like, okay, you know, trying to gear ourselves up for another interview. I don't really, not in the mood today and by the time we leave, we're so hyped up because the interviews are always just so exciting and so inspiring and you know, you just, you just want to best person after hearing some of these, you know?

(15:12): Yeah. Oh, I can totally relate to that. Yeah. There's, there's, you know, as with any job, right, or anything that you do, there are moments when you are like, ah, I really don't feel like doing this. And that's scheduled and you know, that's what you're going to do. I've had the good fortune of talking to some pretty, incredibly inspiring people. Women mostly. Yeah. It's, it's just, it's so much fun. It's so much fun and you get so much out of it. And I wouldn't change that part of this for the world either. So you're chugging along with the podcast and then suddenly, which one of you gets this grand idea that you're gonna start a, uh, a physical product business out of this?

(15:56): Well, we really should give you the credit just to say, I was going to say it's neither one of us. Oh, okay. All right. Well, we, we, um, shortly after we started the podcast, we started thinking one of the things we wanted to do was have a store on our website. People could we, could it be affiliate marketers or something and have links to their products. And so we, we were thinking along those lines. And one of the women we interviewed pretty early on was named Sashi Chandran. And she, um, is the creator of T drops, which is a, um, it's a pressed tea in really cute shapes that you drop in hot water and it dissolves. There's no tea bag, there's no mess. She has a patent for it and she's a brilliant business woman. And, um, we clicked with her immediately. We loved her.

(16:47): She's been so supportive to us and we've met with her several times on and off. We've interviewed her mother who is an amazing woman. Um, and we were, we met with her one day because we knew she had a network of women who had products of other business owners. So we thought, let's talk to Sasha and see if she can connect us with some people whose products we can put on the site and try to get this ball rolling. And we sat down and told her what we wanted to do and she goes, no, you're good. You know what you should do instead is you should start a subscription box. And we went, Oh, of course we should start as soon as she was the Tory Burch fellow last year.

(17:28): So that's sort of what sparked the idea. And she was our a featured passion. He stood in the inaugural box and then our leader and our mentor and our guide and she's really great. And so, yeah, so that's what started the pack. And along the way, just doing all these interviews that have been so many amazing women that have products that, you know, we, we started hearing a lot of research about how, I forget the statistic off the top of my head, but it's some ridiculously small percentage of women owned businesses that get funding like 2% capital dollars. And so women who actually are able to have a product and have success with it, you know, that's a, that's a long road. And uh, so we really just wanted to support them. And so, you know, the subscription box was really the perfect way to do it.

(18:21): So we got credit to Sashi but the box apart by including interview content as well, because there, there are other boxes that have products by women, um, or are targeted toward women. But we wanted to tell the stories of the women whose products were in the box. So if you, if you subscribe to our box, not only do you get great products, but you know, the heart and soul of the person that it comes from and why they're passionate about this. And again, not only to promote them, but to hopefully inspire you. If you're, you know, thinking of doing something, but you're not sure you're, you know, it's worth giving it a shot. We want this box to inspire women to take a chance and follow their passion. So,

(19:08): yeah, it's wonderful. I love that. I love that whole message. And you know, you to in and of yourselves. Okay. So you have this, the passion East, a pop culture, passion used his passion. He says project. I mean, the passionate theme is pretty central to your lives here for the last several years. And what I love about that is that you guys are living examples of,

(19:36): Hmm.

(19:36): Doing it yourselves, you know, of being a passionate, uh, an example of how to run a passionate business. Right? Um, you didn't have a roadmap necessarily. You didn't know what you were, how it was going to all turn out and you went for it. And through some determination. And what I also appreciate about the two of you is your,

(19:59): you are great networkers, you

(20:02): that web that you're talking about and the whole nomination thing, but it's also creating those connections between people that makes sense, that it has, I'm sure helped you as you've grown your business. Just like you said, meeting Sashi and you know, doing that side of it, but also helping other people. So it's, you know, that's a fantastic way to learn and grow. And I would love to hear your own comments on what you feel like is passionate and important part of how you started, what you started here with the passion nations project. Are you special unicorns in this department or are you, is anybody do this? Can anybody do this with the right amount of

(20:48): grit, determination, passion. I mean you brought skillsets too, so I'm not going to ignore that, but tell me about that part of your business. Well, I think our skill sets were developed because of our passion. So, you know, when we, when we started the pop culture passion is, does, we were both sort of at a crossroads of what do we do? We had quit our jobs a few years earlier and we stumbled around for a while trying this, trying that, what are we going to do? And we actually had a, uh, a job that lasted about a year and a half or someone hired us as a team to create content for a website and it was a full time job and they, the website folded. And we found ourselves saying, you know, why don't we do that for ourselves? That we loved that, that, you know, the pop culture stuff, the writing, the producing, the, you know, it was, that was bringing in skillsets we had had from earlier, but that's when we like, we love pop culture.

(21:45): So how can we turn that into a job? So we started from the passion, you know, as we, as we developed the concept of what pop culture passion used as was, and frankly fell into things and doors opened. Um, that's when the skill skillsets came and were developed. I mean, we learned to interview people from Karen Herman who hired us at the television Academy and um, you know, we, we really, we had done a little bit of interviewing prior to that, but she really honed that skill for us. So, you know, I think to me it's finding what you're passionate about and being open to discovering where that passion leads you. Yeah, I was going to say that, that to me is, is the most important elements of it. If you asked either one of us when we were 22, what we're passionate about and where our lives are going to lead us, we never would be in this place.

(22:46): It's funny that you say we're good at networking because we're very introverted. We're very shy. And honestly up until about a year and a half, two years ago, we were terrible at networking. Um, we hated it. We are, you know, going to a cocktail party where you have to mingle with people. A lot of the time we will stand with each other and just say, I'm moving my lips. So that people think we're having a conversation. Nothing else to say to you because we've been together all day, but I don't want to stand here awkwardly. So, um, so we never in a million years, I thought that we would be spending our days excited to interview people and we were open to that becoming a new passion. It just kind of fell in our laps. We, you know, we didn't do the fallout year of yes thing, but we definitely have stretched ourselves to, if someone gives us an opportunity, we've said, let's just do it. And we've never taken on a job that we were fully prepared for. We've done a lot of Googling over the years.

(23:57): Oh my God. The first editing job we got, they would leave the rum and we would, you know, Google how manual, how do we do? Yeah. So, you know, it's partly, it's been, it's been mostly passion. It's been a lot of um, being open. It's been a lot of willingness to just teach ourselves and learn from other people and be through that. Our passions have evolved and now, and there's nothing else we want to do besides make this project a huge thing so that we can get the word out about more women so that we can connect to more women, we can inspire more women. It's really, I mean, I've never been so passionate about anything and I don't think you have either. Never.

(24:45): And I think that's really what I also want to make sure everybody hears from the two of you is that, Ew, I don't want to give away, I don't want to give away your ages, but ladies, let's, we're all in our, we're not, we're not in our twenties or thirties and we are. No, no. And so part of this conversation that I have with people all the time is living that, making the rest of your life the best of your life and never seeing a age as an obstacle. You live in an a and you've been surrounded by an entertainment culture that's definitely gears towards youth and doesn't always celebrate aging. But [inaudible] what I love is that, did it ever cross your mind? Did you even worry about it? Did you ever think, we're too old to start this work? We're too, we're too far along. We've done it? Or is it just, was it just never a question for you that you were going to start this [inaudible]

(25:42): go? It's never been a question. I mean, in all honesty, there are days where I'm tired and think, Oh, I wish I was a little younger, had a little more energy. But no, I mean, I don't think either one of us has ever let age on either end of the spectrum stop us from anything. I mean, we both, you know, I've, I've had my own business since I graduated from high school. I've always been an entrepreneur from college rather. I've always been an entrepreneur and I always just, when there was something I wanted to do, I just figured out how to do it. And Amy, you know, was one of the youngest female executives at Warner brothers and her day and you know, yeah, I became a vice president of Warner brothers when I was 27 so I was always the youngest person in the room. It's weird now where we're kind of always the oldest people in the room and I never really feel it every once in a while I think, Oh yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, I know. But no it doesn't. I want to, I think the only age thing for me is I feel maybe a little bit more like I want to get it done faster. I feel a little bit more impatient. Um, cause I want to have a lot of time to enjoy it at its height. You know, get it there so that we're, you know, we're doing our best with it and I want to be able to enjoy that for a long time. Now I still like, we have a long time, even though we're getting older.

(27:15): Yeah. No, but I, what I think is important too is the [inaudible] you mentioned like, you know, we had to Google editing, right? When you're starting a new project like this. I know when I started the buy for life and this whole new project, the podcast and the planter, all of it. Okay. I didn't know what I was doing. I was not, I didn't have a roadmap in front of me and I was, I mean, Marie Forleo says it, everything is figureoutable. You just have to do it and no matter how old you are, and I can't, I can't tell you the number of people and women that tell me, you know, Oh, I'm just not tech, I'm just not tech savvy. And I just, yep.

(27:58): So

(27:59): irritated and cross with them. And I'm like, that is the biggest bunch of hooey I've ever heard. You know, this is not, you can do anything you want to, no matter how old you are and tech savvy or not, it's figureoutable.

(28:15): Exactly. There's a YouTube video for pretty much anything we want to set your mind to it.

(28:20): Right. And a podcast right behind it. So, you know, watch the video, listen to the podcast and, and download the PDF you're going to be, you know, golden [inaudible].

(28:31): Yeah. And I, I get it. It can be scary. It can be like, Oh my God, I have no idea how to even begin, but is like their information is out there in a way that it never was before. Like I think a of our mother, um, who is long passed away, but I think God, if she were alive today, she would be on, that can be, should be age one. She'd be almost 90 and she would be on the computer all day long, should be on Facebook. She would be on with, she would like, she would just drive on it. And so I think, you know, I think letting age stumble you make you stumble over things like that is, it's unfortunate. And hopefully anyway, that's having that, you know, at that point where they feel like it's a wall for them. Hopefully hearing people like us talking about it will help them get past it.

(29:25): You know, if we can do it, anyone can. It's not like we went to engineering school, you know, or you know, not like we're road scholars didn't even go to business school. Neither one of us was a business major. You know, we were just figuring it out. And I think part of what we're, and what we love about what we're doing, and you mentioned that a little bit earlier, is we're building a community, not just of the women that we're talking to, but the women who are listening and we're trying to connect those two groups through our Facebook group page. And you know, our, what we're trying to message, we're trying to get out is even if you don't know how to do it, hopefully somebody in this group does and they can give you advice and help you do it. And we'd like to establish as this community of women who can help each other, like, I don't know how to do social media.

(30:16): What do I do? And somebody can help them. Yeah. It's funny you said you were stalking us. I wish we had known that because we were actually stalking you at the same time that, that Instagram group where we met you when we first joined, that we didn't know anything about Instagram. And a mutual friend of Stacy, um, from adventure Wednesdays. Um, she was the one that recommended that we join it and we were like, okay, let's join it and try and figure this out. And I remember it's a group for those who are listening where you all agree to follow each other and comment on each other's posts. And I remember those first 10 days of doing it, Nancy and I are have a, where do we do, how do we do that? And now it's second nature. But you know, there are these incredibly supportive communities of women like that one where everybody just wants to see everybody else succeed. You just have to open yourself up, up to being a part of it.

(31:16): Yeah. I Marvel at how much I didn't know about what I didn't know it just in, in terms of what existed in terms of support and community and, and the online business space and the support and education and all the information. It could be overwhelming, but at the same time, just as you said, the infirm, it's there and it's there for the taking and it's there for the doing and all you have to do is have a, you know, have a little passion and have a little drive and you really can do just anything in the world today because of this beautiful thing called the internet and because of all this technology and it really is, it's an incredible time to be alive. I, I'm smiling because my, my father is, uh, just, just turned 92. I think you've probably heard me talk about him on the podcast and he, he makes me smile because he, he went and got himself an iPhone because he thought he needed an upgrade on his cell phone, you know, and he want, wanted me to help him set it up so that he could twixt people. And I'm like, I'm like, is that a combination of tweeting and texting dead? Cause that's cool. It sounds like, but I don't think they really know. So

(32:41): try it. You know, God was, I'm 92 and he's still going to try to figure it out. So, well ladies, let's talk about how my listeners can get connected with you, where they can find you, where they can buy and subscribe to the passion used. Does project pack.

(32:58): The easiest way to find us as the passionate East is project.com yup. You can go there. You can find the passion. Eustis project pack is a subscription box. You can find links to the podcast. You can read a little bit more about us. You can see some of our fantastic celebrity interviews. We have a blog we, but we also have puppets. We have toward the end. Sorry, I know. I thought it was, I'm like, wow, I didn't, I didn't even know that before. I was digging around. So that's a little dirty secret. Again, for those listening, we make pop culture sock puppets in there. They're far more advanced than they sound. Check them out. Fun project down the side, which we're incorporating into the upcoming passion is just project packed. So, Oh, yay.

(33:54): But we're also on social media. Passionistaproject.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter where passions proj and then Facebook, we have a group called passion users project group, um, in addition to our Facebook page. Yeah. And like Nancy said, that's really a community that we're building, you know, women supporting women. Um, we're going to start doing Facebook live events, uh, in, in March, um, with either women we've interviewed on the podcast or women who have products in the box so that the people in the group and who subscribed to the box can have access to these brilliant and creative and very caring, generous of spirit people that we've been talking to. So the upcoming box is the theme of it is pay it forward. And it's not only all women owned businesses and female artisans, but it's also companies that either donate a portion of their sales to charities or they are a charity or in some way they're making an impact globally. So it's doubly inspiring box.

(35:07): Yeah, absolutely. I can't wait for people to check you guys out. It is. Um, it has been so much fun to get to have this interview with the two of you, Amy and Nancy Harrington. I just can't wait. Go check it out people. Passionistasproject.com. Wow. I almost made it through the whole thing without slipping up on Passionista.

(35:28): Yeah, we can show you how to Google editing. Uh, all right. I appreciate you all. Take care and thanks for being with me. Thank you so much. Thank you for all your support. We really appreciate it.

(35:43): Of course. Of course. Thanks for listening to the live happier, longer podcast. If this podcast is helping you and you'd like to go a little deeper, maybe track your progress on your habit building, you should check out our five for life planner. The planner is 13 weeks undated, and you can start literally at any time to create the habits of a happier, longer life. It'll keep you motivated and it'll keep you accountable and Hey, it's affordable. So go to shop dot five for life.co that's shop.buy for life.co and enter promo code podcast for a special discount.