"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
-Robert Frost
A lot can happen in 1,029 days, and this week we check in with Holly Crowder (E021), which is still, after 134 episodes, the most-listened-to-episode in the entire 17Twenty catalog. This week we talk about empathy, stories of impact from listeners, and healing from the sharing of her story. Over the last three years there have been victories and lessons learned through season that followed. In true 17Twenty-style we talk about all of it.
Astute listeners will recall that around the time of the first recording, Holly recently announced that she was leaving her job to take a season which resulted in, among other things, her entrepreneurial journey of Unbounded Path, where Holly offers HR consulting, team building & facilitation, small group coaching, strategic planning, and one-on-one coaching for executives, leaders, and women.
You're going to love this one, folks.
|| Show Notes ||
Strategic Planning Overcoming Exhaustion, by Ruiz Co.
bitl.y/17TLIVE
Unbounded Path
holly@unboundedpath.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/holly-crowder-phr/
https://www.unboundedpath.com/
|| Fun Fact ||
According to the International Shark Attack File, there have been 16 attacks on humans since 1900, none of which were fatal.
|| Connect with Us ||
Check out all our episodes on all major streaming platforms, and further engagement with the 17Twenty crew on social media at:
https://17twenty.buzzsprout.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/17twenty
https://www.instagram.com/17twentypodcast
Grab your copy of the Mountain Mover Manual: How to Live Intentionally, Lead with Purpose, and Achieve Your Greatest Potential, by Kevin Carey
Originally in print:
https://amzn.to/441OPeH
And now available on Audible:
https://adbl.co/45YIKB2
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
-Robert Frost
A lot can happen in 1,029 days, and this week we check in with Holly Crowder (E021), which is still, after 134 episodes, the most-listened-to-episode in the entire 17Twenty catalog. This week we talk about empathy, stories of impact from listeners, and healing from the sharing of her story. Over the last three years there have been victories and lessons learned through season that followed. In true 17Twenty-style we talk about all of it.
Astute listeners will recall that around the time of the first recording, Holly recently announced that she was leaving her job to take a season which resulted in, among other things, her entrepreneurial journey of Unbounded Path, where Holly offers HR consulting, team building & facilitation, small group coaching, strategic planning, and one-on-one coaching for executives, leaders, and women.
You're going to love this one, folks.
|| Show Notes ||
Strategic Planning Overcoming Exhaustion, by Ruiz Co.
bitl.y/17TLIVE
Unbounded Path
holly@unboundedpath.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/holly-crowder-phr/
https://www.unboundedpath.com/
|| Fun Fact ||
According to the International Shark Attack File, there have been 16 attacks on humans since 1900, none of which were fatal.
|| Connect with Us ||
Check out all our episodes on all major streaming platforms, and further engagement with the 17Twenty crew on social media at:
https://17twenty.buzzsprout.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/17twenty
https://www.instagram.com/17twentypodcast
Grab your copy of the Mountain Mover Manual: How to Live Intentionally, Lead with Purpose, and Achieve Your Greatest Potential, by Kevin Carey
Originally in print:
https://amzn.to/441OPeH
And now available on Audible:
https://adbl.co/45YIKB2
Our paths are all different and they should not be limited by what we set out to do from the beginning. But really, our path is truly unbounded. It's limitless.
Stewart Shurtleff:Every single individual has a story to tell and their great stories that need to be heard.
Kevin Carey:I want every listener to know they have the ability to change the world.
Stewart Shurtleff:Welcome to the 1720 podcast.
Kevin Carey:What's up mountain movers? Welcome back to the 1720 podcast. This Friday you have an opportunity to see us live at Trinity Church with Ruiz Co. We're going to be tackling exhaustion burnout. We have a special guest. This is a free event at Trinity Church in Cedar Hill. I know registration link is on our Instagram main page and we posted last week what the agenda looks like. It's going to be unique for us. We don't really know what we're walking into, but we'll try to get some audience interaction with that. It should be a fun time.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, there was a short link that is bit. ly/17TLIVE, all caps. That's how you register. No cap no. No, actually it's all caps, no cap, right, sorry, Jerrold. Yeah, all caps, no cap. No cap. Holly's like, "hat in the world? Special guests Holly Crowderback. Welcome to the studio.
Holly Crowder:Hey guys, excited to be here today.
Stewart Shurtleff:You don't get no cap, that doesn't register with you. No, it's like the cool kid's way of saying I ain't lying Right, it is.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, but I think they're past that.
Holly Crowder:I'm not cool.
Kevin Carey:As soon as you catch up on the words oh, far from it. As soon as you catch up and start using it at Youth Ministry, they're like no, we're on this now.
Holly Crowder:I have that conversation daily with my child in the car. What?
Kevin Carey:does that mean? Because that's new to me.
Holly Crowder:It's not new to me, and I'm now showing my age.
Kevin Carey:Totally, we're old and not cool Period. Great episode y'all. Yeah, wrap it up.
Stewart Shurtleff:If you can find a definition on Urban Dictionary. It's no longer cool Like it's past. Okay.
Holly Crowder:That's I messed it then.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, totally All right. I guess that's where we wrapped this.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, let's give a proper introduction. So, holly Crowder about three years ago roughly, she joined us as a guest and it was kind of like we would see each other at Texo, acquaintance like a friend, but just like more of an acquaintance. After coming on the show has become a really, really close friend that is near and dear to both of our hearts. But just to set the stage here, so three years ago we reach out and she's doing work with a GC firm at the time and we just see all the incredible things she's doing in Texo. Don't know a ton about your story, to be quite honest, and we're like, hey, why don't you come on when we used to be proactive, stewie?
Kevin Carey:and have like you were booked like a month in advance, something like that. That's no longer a thing. As you can clearly tell, we're just in time construction.
Stewart Shurtleff:Lean, lean.
Holly Crowder:We're very lean.
Kevin Carey:Jinx. There it is Lean podcasting. We're leaning In the gap between booking you and you coming on the show. You had made the decision to resign from your position and I remember you asking hey, this has happened. I want to be transparent. Are you still interested in having me? And I'm like yeah, we're, of course. That's not why we're having you on whatsoever.
Kevin Carey:And so we unpack why we had you on, which I know we're going to break down and it becomes the most listened to episode in our catalog, 150 episodes plus later. The story is incredible. It's one of those testimonies where somebody hears it, they share it. We just watched that through. You know the background of it went from city to city, person to person, because it just resonated with so many people and it was definitely a godly moment. There was healing from it for you and for others and so many stories from it. But now we're three years ish into this journey from that episode and I think a lot of people I know I know we know the details, but we want to share all the life that's been lived since then and what has been spun up and the things that you're doing, and so we are so excited to have you back.
Holly Crowder:I'm super excited. I still can't believe it's the number one episode that yeah, it is blows my mind. Come on, Lou Corella.
Stewart Shurtleff:Are you gunning for number two?
Holly Crowder:No, it just blows my mind a little bit. I think sometimes one of your guys's things is we all have a story to tell, and some stories do impact people differently and I think it spreads around a little differently, and so I am honored that that's the case, and I'm glad that maybe my story can help somebody out there that listens.
Stewart Shurtleff:Totally. You don't know this, but your episode is the one I go back to most Because it has great breadth and it has great depth also, and so there are moments across all the things we talked about that I'll oftentimes say we recorded something with Holly about that. Go, look at the 45 minute mark. It's always something different. But I have, like this you know we've talked about it before sort of encyclopedia style recollection of everything and I'm like, oh yeah, no, there's a great, there's a great segment on onboarding people in there. It's about, you know, it's in go, you know, just, there's a great section about this. So I send people back almost three years later, back to it all the time I did two weeks ago. So it's it's don't sell any of it short Like it is wonderful and it is. The episode is great and the story is great. But to Kev's point, let's pull it forward. Let's pull it forward.
Holly Crowder:It's a long sense in the making A long sense in the making.
Stewart Shurtleff:We have been asking you to come do this. For what's a year?
Kevin Carey:Over a year, but you know it's not any of our timing.
Holly Crowder:No.
Kevin Carey:And when this episode gets reared and I don't want to go all the way to today because some of the things I don't know you could just see numbers and statistics, but I don't think we've actually debriefed on this. Like you know, husband dies from ALS and and that's the journey in crusade that you're on of, of tackling that with your family and and serving through the foundation and all that sort of stuff. But I think that was a big step for you of you know handling the adversity from it to like broadcasting out to the masses that this is where my life is, and so just want to open that up Like what, what did that do for you personally from a healing standpoint? And then outwardly, what were the stories of impact that you may have heard from listeners?
Holly Crowder:I think, honestly, I lived my story without sharing my story. Even people that I worked with on a daily basis didn't really actually know my story. I kept my my personal home life and what I was going through very close to the vest, so to speak. Um, I think being able to sit down and walk through it and and put it out there for people to hear sort of gave me the chance to like get it off my chest a little bit of what this looked like and what I was going through and trying to be all in all aspects of my life and truly not being able to do that and I think, if we think back to the timing of that 2020, going into 2021 and so many other people were experiencing a lot of those same things at the same time not ALS specific, but loss of a loved one or struggling with the health of a loved one and trying to navigate life and all of those challenges and I think that sort of resonated in a different way than maybe what I was ever thinking it was going to resonate, and I think it's given me the chance to really lean into others stories like that and have those conversations and just truly be open to hearing that and open to receiving that and not for anything other than to be somebody that can sort of understand what they might be experiencing.
Holly Crowder:So, um, I think by sharing that story, I also opened up the door for, um, the larger community of of people that I interact with that have been touched by ALS, to have a conversation about it, um, and knowing what it's like to be a caregiver with, um, somebody that you love that is going through what they're going through would be a terminal disease or just another type of illness, and so how do you respond and how can you show up for each other and things like that. So, I think, getting the platform, which was not really the original reason we started to sit down and have that conversation, it really shifted in that session of going out and people that didn't that know me very, very well, that didn't know I was going through that Like again, I kept that very sort of private for the most part, and so it was me opening the door, maybe taken down the wall a little bit, and sort of exposing myself to something that I was maybe not ready or willing to share before.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, and personally I I hadn't taken my mask off when you came on. Mine wasn't off. I don't even know if you knew my background and I'm not. I'm not telling the story to tell the story type of deal, but how many of us hide behind that mask? It was this week it wasn't the one that you said. You got gut punched by them, like what was Craig Rochelle's. We impressed people by our strengths, but we connect with them through our weaknesses. Yeah, and because we all have them.
Holly Crowder:We all have them.
Kevin Carey:We're not bold and courageous enough to share that. There's connectivity, there's healing, there's all the things from it. Yeah.
Holly Crowder:We can. We should lean into our strengths and use them for good, but we all have the weaknesses that make us who we are and make us the human that we are, and that's our human side that we need to also let others see.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, there's a element of we've said it before, there's a lot of vulnerability being a superpower and just saying, look, this is, this is who I am, and in order to interact with me, you need to know this about me. I'm not it's not me throwing a pity party or needing your sympathy, but I just want you to know that this is where I am on this. Yeah, oh, I understand that. Now I understand a little bit better why you, how you show up now and have a little bit more empathy towards all of it and understand all of that it's. It is a superpower and I think you said it. We titled the episode, but the idea, the notion that it was, it's okay to not be okay.
Holly Crowder:Yeah.
Stewart Shurtleff:Man, it's liberating, because we all live in a society where put your best clothes on and present in the best, don't you know? I don't, I didn't put that little nugget together, just right. You know what I'm saying? It's keep it together, you know that's worth it.
Holly Crowder:I think that there has been a great evolution, though, in the last several years around that notion that showing up with our mental health in the state it is and then seeking out and asking for and be willing to say that I'm struggling or I have, I'm running into something that I don't know how to get through. I think it's awesome to see that progression for people, that they're more willing to have that conversation, because we used to always live behind it so to speak, and so.
Holly Crowder:I. I freely talk about it now. Some days I show up with not the strongest sort of emotional strength and other days I show up, matt Fisher and I I'm dropping the.
Stewart Shurtleff:There it is. We didn't do it. Quota yeah.
Holly Crowder:He and I have a joke about sort of our first interaction and meeting and how he showed up versus how I showed up, and the next time we met about talking and kind of going through it again, I was the one that was not keeping it together. So I think it's important that we allow ourselves that opportunity to really lean into who we are.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, and I think you're so when what you just said like we're evolving, the evolution of vulnerability is only happening because people like you are taking a huge step forward. Oh yeah, that was a huge leap, like we were going to talk, ooh, hr. You know, like no, no, I I'm not belittling that.
Holly Crowder:Nope, no.
Kevin Carey:But compared to this, it is right Like this was big time to go through that testimony and so huge step. Healing comes from it, but not complete healing right, Every day is a journey, but what about the openness to share, Like are you at the drop of a hat, whoever needs to hear it can hear it or are you still?
Holly Crowder:I well, yes. So what I think is interesting is I'm super willing to share the story and really talk about my journey. Now you may or may not get a really put together, holly, where you may get literally the first time you've ever met me on a zoom call crying because I it. It just caught me in a way that day.
Holly Crowder:I did that a couple of weeks ago, literally the first time I've ever met this individual on a zoom meeting, and he was like well, fill me in a little bit about who you are and where you come from and why you're on this journey now, and it was one of those moments that I was like oh gosh, um, and it comes at you like a left hook.
Holly Crowder:You didn't see and it's and it's okay and I I think part of it for me is understanding that that is truly okay and that that that is who I am, that's the real me. Um, and I'm okay. Showing that Like I don't like to look at myself. Kevin Kerry likes to send pictures of me on zoom meetings, sometimes not the best looking reaction.
Kevin Carey:It only goes to you, though, on my face.
Stewart Shurtleff:Man, I've been the subject that bit before too. I do not approve, but there's nothing you can do about it Nothing.
Kevin Carey:And I'm like, oh well, just so you know, it's graduated to scare videos, so it's much worse. Sweet, great, what is it From capturing her talking on zoom calls that were a part of to now, if you turn a corner on recording on video, which also said we've been victim?
Stewart Shurtleff:of many a ton.
Holly Crowder:So I'm always like, oh, Kevin got another one.
Kevin Carey:You hear the tingling and you're like, oh, here we go With friends like these.
Holly Crowder:So yes, I'm willing, much more willing now to like lean in and have that conversation. I have it a lot with people, all kinds of interactions, but again, I may not always show up with the fully put together. Holly.
Stewart Shurtleff:So what's the, what's the reaction to that? That's a really broad question, but I guess really what I'm picking at there is the idea of you know there's an appropriate reaction and there's an inappropriate reaction and you like people do crazy things and I'm guessing you get, or have gotten, a whole variety of them Like what's the? Talk me through that Cause. What really? What I want to angle back at is like people who are receiving or listening to or, you know, having that conversation like advice for them.
Holly Crowder:Yeah, oh, most people. I think their initial is like whoa, I'm sorry, I haven't gotten any weirdly inappropriate responses. That is kind of funny. I'll have to think about that some more. But I think the big thing then is how do they then continue into that conversation if that's not what they were prepared for me to say to them, because it sometimes puts them a little off where they were at.
Holly Crowder:But I think just being open to that dialogue and saying it is okay, like I have a bigger platform now to talk about what happened in our lives and what that looks like for other people in the ALS community.
Holly Crowder:But I think part of it is by talking about it we all get the chance to heal a little bit more. So every time I share that story, every time I get to have somebody ask me more questions about what that was like, it's a chance for me to, one, get more comfortable saying it but also, two, to really like sort of continue to take that burden off of myself about what that is. So again, I think people are not understanding that. That was a little bit what we talked about earlier. You don't necessarily understand, but they certainly can feel that empathy of what loss looks like and what grief looks like. We've all experienced it in our lives, and to differing scales and differing perspectives, and I think for when you start having that conversation with somebody there oftentimes more willing to then to talk about their own grief or their own loss being from whatever perspective it's coming from. So I think the kind of the cool thing that those conversations start to do is it gives that other person permission to sort of share some of their own perspective around it.
Stewart Shurtleff:So that's a great word. Permission, right Cause you don't. That's the perfect word actually, because it's not an obligation, like I have because of the situation or because of the context or because of the conversation. I have shared this with you. Period, there's no reciprocal expectation, but you have, you now have permission that we can talk about that. If not, that's okay too. Right, man, that's the perfect word, like that's probably the perfect response of all of it too is like just to understand that, like when someone has that conversation like that with you, it's just permission. It's okay to just say, man, that's really terrible and I'm sorry that you had to experience that, and move on Like that's okay.
Stewart Shurtleff:That's it's permission for that too, but it's also permission to say me too, like my ex had. Y, and then this disease thing happened to us, so that's perfect yeah.
Holly Crowder:I think that's also true for when you're in those moments and when you're going through that too, there's times when you don't want to talk about it and you don't want to share that and you're going to keep that close. And so, making the decision when it's okay to engage in that type of conversation If you have a friend that's going through cancer diagnosis or whatnot like, don't always assume that it's okay to go question them about what they're going through and how they're feeling about it, because they may not be in the right place and space to talk about it at that moment in time.
Holly Crowder:So let them give you that permission to have that conversation. I think it's important.
Stewart Shurtleff:You want to rock paper scissors to see who goes? I was going to be paper, I was going to be scissors.
Kevin Carey:So anyway, let's another holly episode of Stewie Ramrod. Is that what happened last?
Stewart Shurtleff:time.
Kevin Carey:I wasn't even at the last one. No, that's not true. I talked to Grant Total of 38 seconds.
Stewart Shurtleff:Faults 39. Anyway, I already forgot. My question was, though so go ahead with yours.
Kevin Carey:My brains are mush. This is where we're at 150 episodes in In the ditch. Yeah, I was reflecting so much on the testimony piece and like scripture talks to you in different seasons of life and within worship music and I know like in between courses I heard this song and it's like if you have a testimony you should testify, and like there's so much truth to that Right and it doesn't have to be polished. It doesn't have to be the same each time. It doesn't matter on the reactions you get each time. You know of one specifically where I gave it and I really bummed the crowd out Like it was not the right time to do it, but you keep plowing.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, you keep plowing because there's vulnerability, accountability, impact, all the things, the evolution, but it's worth it. It's going to help somebody, yes, but I want to point out how admirable you are to me when it comes to the level of grit and resilience you've been through. I got mine right, but yours is different than mine and I may not have walked through it yet, but the keyword's yet. Like there's going to be outward tragedy that happens with people and I got to see you walk through it at a level of grace and vulnerability and transparency and levelheadedness. You know what, and I'm sure you had your rough days, there's no doubt about it. But it prepares me to get ready for the tragedies of life Like. It's not just the relatability for people in the moment, it's for the future. You're a walking example of how I need to act when those inevitable things do pop up. Thank you.
Stewart Shurtleff:Well, it's like a mentorship moment, right, because when those moments happen, you can think and I'll use you an example and it'll be a little awkward, but like, how did Holly handle that? Like I remember her doing a great job, how'd she do it? And that's no different than a classic mentor moment where you're like I was in a meeting once with Stuart and how did he handle that? Ok, this is a different twist on and mentorship that I would have never thought until Kevin Soad. He just said but setting an example for someone to pattern themselves after in those moments when they're faced with them, that's what that is.
Holly Crowder:I wouldn't have thought about that way either, but that's a really cool analogy in a way of thinking about it, because I think we all can do that for ourselves if we step back and think about it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Kevin Carey:It's like the find your tribe type of person. It's like we always say at least I always say Josh Carson's my dad, he's my dad mentor, like of man. That dude's an awesome dad. He always talks about his kids first. Someday, when I have kids, I want to be like him and like Keon's, my business mentor, like you're my grit and resilience mentor, and you don't even need that official title. I'm just watching and observing and I'm taking note. That's what I think people get wrong with tribes and mentorships. Like you got to have this piece of paper on it.
Holly Crowder:Blood oath.
Kevin Carey:Let's cut it open. Let's sign it with blood. No, just pay attention. Pay attention and get better to the people around you.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, also, you just said, josh Carson is my dad.
Kevin Carey:You just said, if you cut it and edit it, I know that's what I'm saying.
Stewart Shurtleff:That's going to be the opener to Holly's episode. Josh Carson is my dad. This is the opener.
Kevin Carey:You're not going to let me finish the sentence. No, you'll like it.
Stewart Shurtleff:That's awesome and I'm not a serious, and I'm not a serious Like you're trying to get your car to swerve out of control. Just left right, left right, left right left. We got a death rattle here.
Holly Crowder:That's not a good analogy right now teaching the teenager how to drive Ooh, how's that going? That is some stress right there. I don't know why they can't just have drivers. I'd like we used to.
Stewart Shurtleff:Why has the educational system offloaded everything to us?
Holly Crowder:We did drive in the rain the other day so it was good, successful made it home, so that was a big moment, because it's now raining and hasn't rained in months.
Stewart Shurtleff:When is your 16-year-old birthday happening, and not yours but?
Holly Crowder:November 6th.
Stewart Shurtleff:Oh, we talked about this Because William's birthday is the 7th.
Holly Crowder:Yeah, she won't be getting her license on the 6th, though. We're not ready, we're not even close. We do have an appointment sometime in the future. I don't know that we'll be ready then either.
Kevin Carey:Rain day is a good training day. Like hey look, dfw goes berserk, oh god, if you see somebody's hazards on, that means they have no trust in their own driving ability. Like, just stay clear we like.
Holly Crowder:What do we do different? It's raining today, so how do you show up and respond differently?
Kevin Carey:Yeah.
Holly Crowder:And I try to really lean into the patience as a parent that I don't often have.
Kevin Carey:Well, patience, I might not be swearing anymore with Quinn in the backseat, but she does say hurry up already, right, dad? And I'm like I still got some work left to do with my rage, you and me both. The lights green buddy, you biscuit eating bulldog.
Stewart Shurtleff:That's Quinn, from the backseat she's throwing all my swear replacements, throwing pasta at the front Like I don't know why, but she has pasta in the back. She's just trying to be relatable. Yeah, so that's a season, yeah that's a season.
Holly Crowder:That's a whole new season OK.
Stewart Shurtleff:Well, I have a funny car story. Do we want to talk about it now?
Kevin Carey:Sorry A funny car story, bring it. Yeah, so we're off. We're way off, let's go.
Stewart Shurtleff:We're in that season where everybody's getting their driver's license right. It's a kid in our orbit who got his driver's license and, within the first week, total his car.
Holly Crowder:That is like I hear about that all the time, Just got confused, like trying to turn left in an intersection.
Stewart Shurtleff:Got confused, thought maybe you needed to turn right, Lost track of the light, kind of panicked, turned left into traffic, bang, yeah, glad it wasn't, william, yeah, and I get to tell that story like hey dog, be careful. Yeah, it's no joke out there. There's no joke out there.
Holly Crowder:We talk about reversing because as I sit in campus picking up my kids, like the girls driving their cars and I'm like that's why, their car looks the way it does because they don't know what they're doing.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yes, Scratched up Tended up, oh god, it's a terrible jungle out there, man, and we're going to release our children into it. I'm going to pull us back.
Kevin Carey:That's what we do, stuart, I know.
Holly Crowder:Get us back in track.
Stewart Shurtleff:I can't stay serious anymore Get us back to the prep sheet.
Kevin Carey:So past well, and you didn't even get one. So you're soldiering this intentionally just to make this as authentic as possible. But our side of the fence has one the seasons that followed. So you made that call not to jump into anything new, but to be still. That was your goal. What did that stillness look like? How long was it before next steps took?
Holly Crowder:So I gave myself six months to do literally nothing, which seems crazy and scary and not productive, but honestly it was super productive because it gave me the chance to really clear my head and reevaluate what truly was important for me as I went forward and stepping back from a big responsibility and a stable income and all of those things, but to just be with my girls and figure out what we needed to do to heal and go forward and figure out life. Now is three versus four and I gave myself six months and so did little bits of randomness, until I started thinking about what are those parts of my career life that gave me back energy and sort of refilled my bucket, so to speak. But it was still all about the people at the end of the day. Like I love leaning in and helping people figure out what it is that they're going to do and how they're going to do it, and so took some time to sit in that for a bit and then decided that I was going to go and pursue what people told me I was doing all the time but really hadn't thought about that as my job, which was coaching, and we have coaches all throughout our lives in different phases and different types of coaches, and so went and figured out a lot of what I did for the last, however, many years was coaching, without really ever realizing that was the title of what I was doing, and so pursued that and then said, okay, I'm going to start my own business. What I'm, not, kevin, with the mountain mover facade. So for me it was a scary step.
Holly Crowder:I had really leaned into my career with a very stable sort of outlook on the way that I went about work and pursued that and so making that decision to say I'm not going to go back and tackle like a real job again, a real corporate job again, that I'm going to go and try to really just be me for myself. And some of the things that were super important to me was I wanted that control of my life and my schedule and when I could be mom and when I could be chauffeur and when I could be work colleague all wrapped up, because I felt like some of my life before had been not focused on those things. And so I went through the process to like, how do you do this and figure this out? And I started. I started on bounded path and that name comes from. As I look back in the story I always told about my own career was my path is so not straight. It's very random and stopped and started and moved around.
Holly Crowder:But my favorite poem is the Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, and then the poem is talking about the two paths and I took the one less traveled by what? For many of us, if you know that poem and read that poem, it's very much about we would think it's about making those decisions in your life. Well, I actually went and researched what he was talking about in the poem and he wrote it as a joke, which I think is kind of funny now. But it still resonates with me that our paths are all different and they should not be limited by what we set out to do from the beginning.
Holly Crowder:Maybe our path is truly unbounded, it's limitless. It is what we make of it and the decisions we make along the way and our willingness to take those opportunities. And for me, taking that step back from my bigger corporate job and leaning into the chance to take an opportunity to really try something new and do something new, but do something that made me happy and gave me excitement was super important at that phase in my life, and so that's leading me to this path that I'm on now, which is being that entrepreneur and figuring out how to manage my business and grow and all of those things, but still focused on helping those people get to where they're going on their own paths.
Stewart Shurtleff:There's a great nugget in there to come back and just double down on, which is the path is limitless.
Holly Crowder:Yeah.
Stewart Shurtleff:And I would say 95% of our listeners heard that and kind of skimmed over it, but it's worth coming back to because they think, yeah, I'm just going to do this job right here for two more years, right, and then I'm going to get promoted to that one. I see that guy, I'm going to do that one for two more years and then I'm going to do it. And there's just where you're, like on train tracks.
Holly Crowder:Yes, and we are not. We should not live our lives like we're on train tracks. It's good to have some thoughts about where you're going and what that looks like, but I think don't be afraid of what else is in front of you, even if it's a train track adjacent.
Kevin Carey:I have before we dig further in an unbounded path. I have a question on that timeline. Yeah, did you set that like I'm going to give myself six months, or were there? Did you say I'm going to give myself infinite? And then, six months later, you knew it was time.
Holly Crowder:For me, I think from a standpoint of I didn't want to sit idle for too long, meaning like when you're going through grief and loss, sometimes you need to sit and just do that right. But other aspects of that for me was that I still actually needed to, like have something out in front of me for purpose and so that I would not unfortunately not get out of bed, kind of thing.
Holly Crowder:So, I think for me I did in my head go I'm going to give myself permission to take this six months and if you don't get out of bed every day that's maybe okay. But I had girls to worry about, so had I said I'm going to take like a limitless, I don't know that I would have pulled myself out when I should have pulled myself out if I didn't give myself some kind of parameter to kind of set that stage.
Kevin Carey:That's good insight. I want to thought about that. To pull you out if you got too stuck, like that could over swing the pendulum of healing and actually be counterproductive.
Holly Crowder:And it I mean grief comes in waves and there's different stages and phases and it never fully goes away. But part of it is like just letting it become all consuming and not leaning into that, because that can be tragic.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, I can't even imagine how to articulate what I want to say or wrestle through the doing of it, but that idea that the grief deserves its time but it does not deserve all the time, and how you manage that on a completely individual basis, it is very individualized.
Stewart Shurtleff:It's just really hard. I said that like I know I can only imagine. It is just really hard to find the line and know when time is right and just kind of kind of read your emotions and know who you are and, into your point, set a backstop and say I'm going to this, is it? This is the amount of time, that, or whatever.
Holly Crowder:And I didn't do all of that by myself. I mean, I have a therapist that I see, I see a psychiatrist Like there's people and resources available for those pieces of our lives that we need help with. I participated in a grief group specific to caregivers of ALS patients and, again, because they were the only ones that truly understood, but it just was being willing to have that conversation with that group and with others and being vulnerable enough to share all the junk that was in your head. But I think for me the six months kind of was a good boundary to give myself before I started figuring it out.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, well, we, water grows. There's manifestation of things and if you don't set those boundaries you could get stuck in there. I didn't really even think about that till you started talking about it. Manifestations of mindset Absolutely, it could get you stuck there. So, unbounded path. We know your purpose, we know your coaching, we know, I think Mr Matt maybe was your first client.
Holly Crowder:He was. He was my first client.
Kevin Carey:You're not the first guest. For him to be first client. That's how Matt Fisher rolls.
Holly Crowder:He's awesome and I very much appreciate him and his friendship, more than the business, probably, actually.
Kevin Carey:Oh, totally, and you're rocking a woodhouse Stanley.
Holly Crowder:I got my cold cup.
Kevin Carey:We'll make sure it's in the picture.
Holly Crowder:Yeah, for sure.
Stewart Shurtleff:Really nice one yeah.
Kevin Carey:Thanks, matt, I'm enjoying mine too. Wait a minute. No, that's sarcasm, I don't have it. Oh, because I thought I just got left out. No, we're in the left out tree together.
Holly Crowder:Sorry, I think I might have been the first one to get one. Maybe Maybe behind his team, I don't know. We had a meeting when I think they first came in the Matt Fisher roller coaster.
Kevin Carey:we pick them up just to throw them back out.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, he's great, except for when he said take care of his friends.
Holly Crowder:I'm so sorry, Matt.
Stewart Shurtleff:It's all in good fun. It's all in good fun.
Holly Crowder:Actually, I was really excited because every young person in the world, I think, is carrying one of those around and I was like I'm not the cool person. Yet I didn't have a Stanley, so when he gave it to me I was like I'm cool.
Stewart Shurtleff:I don't think it works like that. I don't think you just like become like instant cool. You just burst my bubble I thought we were having like a real talk. I didn't know we were. Nah, it's instant, cool, it's fine. I'll cut it back to where it says instant cool, no, no we began the podcast saying how old and uncool we are.
Holly Crowder:So we got to just ride that train. I was old and uncool, and now I felt like my status went up just a tiny bit.
Kevin Carey:Unbounded path. Yeah, nah, you're cool. Now I'm cool, fair enough.
Stewart Shurtleff:There you go we can do it. Yeah absolutely I'm gonna pull this back, pull this back again.
Holly Crowder:I'm sorry, pull this back again. I'm gonna get this back out of the ditch?
Stewart Shurtleff:Who's the perfect? What do you eat? Client, client, client People call it different things. And who is it?
Holly Crowder:Client? I would say it is. They don't have to be a leader, they have to be somebody that leads, and we all lead from different places in our spaces and times in our lives. And so someone who leads, that is willing and able and desiring the opportunity to grow themselves, both personally and professionally, and is willing to do the work. When you think about the coaching, even from a sports analogy, the coach is there to really help them navigate how to get better, and I'm not the one doing the work, they're doing the work. And so I call it a co-collaborative relationship where we work in tandem to work through their issues.
Holly Crowder:I'm not giving you the answer, I don't know the answer. I mean, I know some of the answers, but I don't know your answers. And so how do we work in partnership to make that happen for them, work through their goals, work through what their roadblocks are, et cetera? So the other part of that for me is I'm really leaning into the AEC industry space.
Holly Crowder:That's where I grew up, that's where I started, that's where my knowledge is based, that's where my friends are, that's where I feel very comfortable and know that this industry has a tremendous heart to work together, especially in our area of the country, like we are moving together to make this better for the generation of builders today and the generation of builders for tomorrow. And so for me, I think that's a really unique sort of space. When you go through the coaching training, they always talk about what's your niche and like, what are you gonna focus on? And initially I was like, well, I don't, what does that even mean? But as I sort of like stepped back out of that and continue to evolve my business, knowing that this industry has so many opportunities and different forms and fashions, and so that's important to me to sort of lean in and give back to the space that gave me so much of where I've come from and who I am today.
Stewart Shurtleff:So the only thing I would add to that is that I wonder how many people don't even know they need that help. You know what I mean. Like some people are like oh yeah, that's cool versus so my brick Brad probably needs a coach, you know.
Holly Crowder:But man like we all could use one yeah that's really the point I'm angling at is like we all could use one, and what I think is also interesting is I seek it out to help me now with my business and what I'm doing. I just did a training yesterday on it from two super experienced coaches that have been doing this a much longer time than I have, and I think part of it is we have to be willing to receive that too, and so not everybody's ready, yeah, but if you are, it's an opportunity to really make yourself better and stronger as you go forward.
Stewart Shurtleff:There's a. This is my encyclopedic knowledge of the podcasting. But yeah, remember we had Kent Rabilion. Do you remember Kent? My buddy from like Producer. Yeah, my buddy from like might be my oldest friend. One of the things he said was every hero needs a guide. Yeah, that's it. You do not think you do. But every hero needs a guide.
Holly Crowder:Absolutely.
Stewart Shurtleff:And this is it. Yeah, Absolutely.
Kevin Carey:Well, and I've had a front row seat you know, I don't even know if that was on air or not Talking about the zoom pictures, because we've been on so many meetings together mountain movers and unbounded path and so you're doing individual stuff, but you're doing a lot of group stuff too, and you're beast at the group stuff.
Holly Crowder:Absolutely.
Kevin Carey:So it's not just individual coaching.
Holly Crowder:Correct. So for my sort of path itself, I spent a lot of time. I was gonna go be a teacher. That was one of the stops along my journey at one point in time.
Kevin Carey:Story checks out.
Holly Crowder:Story does check out For me, that piece of helping the groups work together and figure out what that either leadership, development or whatever the specific topic might be I get excited about that whole room of people that's like, yes, we're gonna go do this and figure this out. So I do spend probably I would say, almost half of my time might be more on team or group facilitation related items, which is super fun and exciting and it's sort of like the force multiplier, I guess, of that coaching mentality of how do you grow it in a bigger way at the same time.
Stewart Shurtleff:I don't know what the right word is here. Fake pretend with me for a minute. You get the call from an individual who says, hey, I wanna be better and I know we need help. Can you please help me? That's not exactly how it goes, but that's what is the group facilitation conversation. How does that get started? I'm calling Holly and saying what I'm even a work start.
Holly Crowder:Like part of it is you have to show up with something that you wanna work on right, so maybe it's the use of your and your.
Stewart Shurtleff:Sure raise a big problem, Big problem.
Holly Crowder:Yeah. So my job would be to pull out via asking you questions and seeking you to be thinking about it, cause you can figure out that answer, or at least give yourself some opportunity to figure out that answer. What's, either, holding you back from making that decision? What is that roadblock that's in your way? What's coming from the sideline that's might be interrupting that, all of those things. So, and then, if you step back from that, in the bigger group setting, we all show up with our own experiences and parts of our lives that help inform the way that we're going to respond in those types of settings, and so, being willing to voice that and share that in different ways, I think it's that mentorship about how did Stuart show up in that moment and, man, he handled that so well. You just did that earlier with Kevin, with giving him some kudos on a way he dealt with a situation. So we all have that ability to do that, and so it's really capturing that and putting that together.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, and it. Those ideas lay on top of different sorts of substance or subject matter, idea that's what I was getting at Like do. I call you and say, hey, we have a real bad grammar problem. Can you help me with that? Or do I call and say, hey, I don't know where we're going, I'm having trouble figuring out what's next for, and either one of those are like I you. I can help you with that. Yes, yes, that makes sense.
Holly Crowder:And I think part of it too, is if in a coaching relationship, there has to be a connection there, and so if it's not a good connection, though I'm gonna, we're gonna realize that. This isn't the right fit. And then here's somebody else. Maybe that was a better fit or is a better opportunity for you, because it's personal and I think you have to want to have conversations with this individual. Not everybody we interact with is somebody that wants to have a conversation with you.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, I think the difference that I saw you might disagree with this is the groups are broader spectrum than the individual coaching.
Kevin Carey:So like the groups are like we got this group of people. We want you to just pour into them. What topics? And then we start tackling topics and that's how her and I coordinated the coaching seems to be like these are the next up. I want you to specifically pour into this person and what I found interesting some of the times, like with people that I was coaching, they're like are we gonna ever transition to work? You know, I'm like this is, this is the work you, the byproduct will be better work.
Kevin Carey:Yes 100% Focused on you, and I think that's to your earlier question. That's where companies struggle on understanding the need for it because it doesn't. There's no pull plan. Yeah right, there's a Gantt chart. It's not a construction thing. But the problem is we're all broken in the industry, so we need if we could become better people, the product will get better Understanding the need for that, that is.
Holly Crowder:I had a client interaction or hoped him have them as a client interaction that I left going. You totally screwed that up Like they were looking for structure and a Gantt chart and a pull plan, and I was like that's not the way it works, at least for me. That's, I'm gonna respond to what the needs are that you have, and so I'm gonna show up with some thoughts around that, but really that's what it is. I'm not there. Isn't this like minutiae of steps that I'm gonna go through and do these 10 things and it's gonna work out Like that's not what it this is, and so again, I think some of it sometimes is like how the coachee wants to interact and what that starts to look like, cause it's looser than most people probably think it is. Yeah, would that be right, that's-.
Kevin Carey:But there's also coaches that dig specifically into the widget.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, that's what you were getting at. Like when are we gonna talk about work? Like that's what you were saying. Is people wanna say, well, I need your insight on how we're gonna make my budgeting projections better. Like that, oh, we're not doing that. Is that what?
Kevin Carey:that's what you're saying, kind of yeah, so like if the unbounded path product isn't specifically tackling that. I don't think people understand the absolute need for it. But you can pivot to that stuff all day, all day, all day. Yeah, easy.
Holly Crowder:And I have clients that are like, hey, this is the conversation I need to have. Can we talk through it? Absolutely.
Kevin Carey:Absolutely. Those are some of my favorite coaching sessions yeah. When they bring something and we hard pivot from my agenda.
Holly Crowder:Yes, yeah and it's again cause I think they're there to show up to get that work done, and so is it a matter of walking through how to do the work, or is it a matter of what? Is that thing in front of them? That's kind of holding them back. So I think for me the exciting part is especially leaning into individuals in our industry. Is I get to feed off of the stuff that they're bringing me? And what they're experiencing in their roles and their responsibilities.
Kevin Carey:And so you got one-on-one coaching, group workshops, facilitator of leadership meetings. And then there's, like this fourth new tier, that like evaluating a company's professional development arm. So like Texas launching right, we're killing it?
Kevin Carey:Yeah, absolutely, and there's more trainings needed and trying to figure out what those trainings look like, kind of to this conversation that we're talking about. So Hollywood was recently hired by Texo to really evaluate the needs of our industry and what we're currently doing with professional development and enhance it for the member experience. So that's super cool. I can't wait to see what that looks like going into next year and beyond.
Holly Crowder:It's exciting cause I think the cool thing is Melanie reached out and was like hey, would you help me with this?
Stewart Shurtleff:Well, to you, Melanie.
Holly Crowder:So of course absolutely, what can I do? But really having the opportunity to then go seek out those conversations with members of Texo and just listen to them Like, what do you need and where are you struggling with and how can we partner better with you to make sure that your people are getting what they need from a professional development standpoint, and so that to me is super exciting. Again, cause, thinking back to the sort of the I wanna be a teacher. How do we do that better to really keep this industry moving at the pace and need that it needs to be going? And what's also super exciting about that is every conversation I have people are excited to share that which is awesome and you get.
Stewart Shurtleff:the one of the things that's great about the association is you get all the different data points.
Stewart Shurtleff:And it's one of the you and I talked about it over the last year as we, as you, were spending time coaching people and say what were you like? What are y'all talking about? Because you get all the different data points to be able to say, hey, company A, you don't even know this is a thing, but company B is struggling with it and it's gonna be your problem in three months. Let's pre-solve, and all those different data points start to like funnel towards something that's greater than any of the single companies could solve, address, assess, et cetera on their own. That's one of the many, many values of the association. And having folks like you guys popping in and out of different companies and listening to all the different problems and amalgamating that information in your brain to like cohesively solve. It's a force multiplying superpower. There I put two together. How do you like that Today's DM.
Stewart Shurtleff:I know Bam.
Kevin Carey:That's awesome. It is a force. Texo period is a force multiplier. What she's about to do is gonna make that more exponential. Hopefully, before we spin out of that, though, plug it, we plugged it. But like contact info, how do we get a whole Holly?
Holly Crowder:Crowder. Oh, I was like what.
Stewart Shurtleff:Plug it. That's offensive. What are you talking about? I've been talking for a Shut your trap. Let's move on to the next section. Before we move on, you be quiet.
Holly Crowder:You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Obviously Holly Crowder on LinkedIn, some little dude at or whatever, but I've unbounded path is also on LinkedIn. And then I have a website, wwwunboundedpathcom, and my email is just holly at unboundedpathcom.
Kevin Carey:It was available.
Holly Crowder:Yes, Good, that is a. You know that that's a like. That whole thing is a deal like figuring out the name situation and all that.
Kevin Carey:Did you have to buy the real estate or was it an open domain? It was available.
Holly Crowder:I did a lot of like researching around, cause I knew where I wanted my name to be going and so figuring that out I had a time was good.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, I got a long email. I got a long email with unbounded-pathnetco or something.
Kevin Carey:Yes, but like she's an internet opus, that's like. What, ioio, io. How did I just over tech you? That'll never happen again.
Stewart Shurtleff:Is that what it is? Is that what IO is? Maybe I don't think that's.
Holly Crowder:I don't know what that means I know, maybe I'm atcom com.
Kevin Carey:I'm a tech moron.
Stewart Shurtleff:So internet opus, I'm going to Google that. I just over text. Do we pin that?
Kevin Carey:That's pretty awesome. Yeah, that'll never happen again. Ding, ding, it's going to be the front of your episode. Sorry.
Holly Crowder:Yes, that's okay.
Kevin Carey:I'm going to make this about me. Ha, ha, ha ha.
Stewart Shurtleff:Stewart's Googling yeah, io, the internet domain. Io is an abbreviation for input, output. Now incorrect as with respect to computer sciences.
Kevin Carey:Read it and read how about domain names?
Stewart Shurtleff:That's what this is regarding, bro.
Kevin Carey:No, no, no. Now we're completely off track.
Holly Crowder:Now she's going to watch, so they both have their phones.
Kevin Carey:These were children.
Stewart Shurtleff:Here's the good one. Why do people use theio domain? Yeah, becausecom wasn't available. That's why.
Kevin Carey:That's right, correct, because it's 8 cents compared to 8,000 to buy it from some oh my gosh Web real estate agent.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, Cyber Squadron in the Ukraine? That's probably not in the Ukraine, right.
Kevin Carey:I tried to shorten ours to M-emphasize because it's a long thing to type. There's actually an M-emphasize glass company in Europe. I was like, come on, man.
Holly Crowder:Are they a good glass company in Europe? No idea.
Kevin Carey:No idea, they're not even mountain moving. It's probably Mark and Matt, it's not.
Stewart Shurtleff:Mark and Matt in Europe, though it's like I don't know, but it's not Mark and Matt Matteo and. Yeah, there it is.
Holly Crowder:Maximus. Maximus and Matteo. They're in Italy.
Kevin Carey:Maximus and Matteo. They could probably throw down. Probably should leave them alone.
Stewart Shurtleff:And they're not doing glass. Their facades are like hand hewn stone. Yeah, you know, I don't know. I'm gonna go work there now.
Kevin Carey:Oh man.
Holly Crowder:Where are they based?
Kevin Carey:Somewhere.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yonder. Across the ocean, the coast, the Amalfi Coast, is where M-emphasize that sounds fabulous.
Holly Crowder:Yeah.
Stewart Shurtleff:You're welcome. That's really. Let's go there.
Holly Crowder:We've got a new company over there.
Kevin Carey:It's a little different than three years ago, right?
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, just like you just show up, ding dong, they're like actually you have to knock, they don't have a doorbell. It was like, yeah, come on. Hey, we're here for the facades.
Holly Crowder:Slap the spots yeah.
Stewart Shurtleff:We're here for the what. Now we're gonna work here.
Kevin Carey:Is.
Stewart Shurtleff:Matt here.
Kevin Carey:You mean Matteo, bring me Maximus, oh boy here we go ALS. Yeah, let's get back.
Stewart Shurtleff:One time I can do this. I can just 90 degrees. This, I think it was at the book launch party. Yes, I saw Holly and I was like, hey, what's up, yeah, what's up. And you're like I'm swimming across the ocean. I forget exactly what it was there's something like that and I was like, excuse me. And they're like, no, seriously, we're gonna paddle board from here to Cuba. Am I close? Yet Something like this Close.
Holly Crowder:You're on the right side of the country and I was like there's sharks and stuff, and you're like I know, but I'll be on a paddle board.
Stewart Shurtleff:And how am I close?
Holly Crowder:Yeah. So Stacy got diagnosed with ALS in 2016. And I have been part of the ALS Association Texas Chapter Board since 2019. And since 2017, we have participated in the Walk to Defeat ALS as a fundraiser to really spread awareness and raise money for those families and patients living with ALS. But the walk is like a mile and a half and we always did it. We still do it.
Holly Crowder:It's coming up in another week but I was like I need to do something a little bit bigger, more challenging, more adventurous. So my sister had said, hey, there's this paddle board event that happens every summer and you paddle board from the Bahamas to the coast of Florida For those of you that are geography challenged, that is the Atlantic Ocean. And so I said, okay, sure, let's do this. It's 80 miles across the ocean and you have to do it in less than 18 hours. Sure, no problem. I was a recreational paddle boarder when I started this adventure. I'm still a recreational paddle boarder, I think. But so, yeah, my sister and I, along with 186 other people, this past June or this most recent June, paddled from Bimini, Bahamas.
Holly Crowder:Bimini is a little tiny one of the many Bahamian islands, but it's the one that's closest actually to the coast of Florida. When the sky is clear and the lights are on, you can see Miami from not very far from off the coast, nice, which is a shuring, I'm assuming, on a paddle board.
Holly Crowder:Yeah, so Miami is like due west of Bimini kind of, and we were kind of going northwest because you wanted to catch the Gulf Stream, which is awesome. I don't remember you been finding Nemo. They were following the other stream but not the Gulf Stream, the other one, the turtles got stuck in it.
Holly Crowder:Yeah, so, but anyway. So we did this in conjunction with Piper's Angels Foundations, which is actually a Cystic Fibrosis foundation that raises money for them, but we partnered as a nonprofit team to raise money for both Cystic Fibrosis and ALS and had the most wonderfully cool and amazing experience. You leave the beach and the Bahamas at midnight and you paddle through the dark, through the night, across the ocean, and your goal is to land on the coast of Florida by snow later than 6 pm the same day, and so we practiced and we traveled back and forth to Florida to make sure we knew what we were doing. Texas is a great big state, but we live in Dallas and there's no ocean close by, and so we practiced all of our paddles for the most part in the lakes around DFW. It's not the same as the ocean Less sharks, yeah, but there's like other stuff in the water here that we tried to not fall off our paddle boards.
Stewart Shurtleff:Like hypodermic needles.
Holly Crowder:Well, there's alligators and there's those things called water moccasins and there's tires and it's not clean all the time. Needles yeah, it's a good one.
Kevin Carey:No alligators Equally dangerous.
Holly Crowder:Equally dangerous. But we, our paddle boards are big. They're 14 feet long and minus 28 inches wide. So get out there on your paddle board. And we left the coast of the Bahamas and there was a thunder and lightning, storm and fireworks as we were leaving, which was really, really cool, and it's very disorienting paddling in the ocean at night when it's not light out. But the hardest part probably was just not being able to sort of sense where the direction of the water was coming at you. There's a little bit.
Holly Crowder:But we had a boat we have, everybody has a support boat and we followed our boat and we did 30 minute rotation. So we each of us every 30 minutes. One would get on the boat, one would get back on the board, one would get on, etc. So, but then you got out into the middle of the ocean in the middle of the day and the water is just this, like amazingly beautiful cobalt blue Placid.
Stewart Shurtleff:Like.
Holly Crowder:We had parts that were the surface of the water was very, very smooth and small swells. When we left the beach it was probably three and four feet swells. We didn't have that. We had what I would say was great weather when we did it, until a storm decided to come off the coast of Florida and they're like oh, everybody's get on your boat because the weather's coming and it was thunder, lightning and wind and rain and all the things. From a safety perspective it was like no, you got to get on the boat, so we had to. Unfortunately, we didn't paddle all of our 80. We got 65 of the 80 because we had to do a little bit on our boat and then we finished the last five and some pretty choppy, yucky water because the storm had come through. But it was amazing. We signed up to do it again next year.
Stewart Shurtleff:So so get on the boat in the storm and like just roll or just boat just boat, just boat, close to the, as close we had to.
Holly Crowder:We couldn't get back in the water until we were within five miles of the beach, so Okay. So, our boat captain. She fired up the engines and we took off much faster than we had been paddling you could see that yeah. So our our fastest paddling. I think we were going seven miles an hour One.
Kevin Carey:So like to the the warning slash half joke. One of your teammates actually went super viral with a monstrosity of a hammerhead. Yeah Circling her. Yeah, really happened.
Holly Crowder:So yep, so I mean.
Stewart Shurtleff:I knew it.
Kevin Carey:You're in the ocean.
Holly Crowder:There's sharks. So we actually were lent from a good friend. Mr Steve Springer gave me his shark bands, which I don't know sharks are.
Stewart Shurtleff:I don't even know sharks were in bands.
Holly Crowder:They're not. They're not, but it's a posse of sharks on your paddle board. Yeah, there's a cool technology. Sharks, you know, have like electromagnetic senses or whatever, and so magnetized things that sort of repel the shark. So even if it was a placebo effect, I wore my shark band For sure, because when I was in and out of the water I did not want a shark to be anywhere near me.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, not going to lie.
Holly Crowder:So we had our shark bands on and we literally saw, I think, three pieces of sea life while we were out there, but one of the paddlers and her team. She was followed by a six or seven foot hammerhead I thought it was bigger than that Tall tail over here. I mean it, it's still a shark.
Kevin Carey:Yeah.
Holly Crowder:Um, we had had the. We'd been joking all week leading up to leaving the beach, though, that like hammerhead season is in May, but like but the water gets too warm. It was like 85 degree water while we were paddling. So like the water's too warm, so they had already were supposedly supposed to all have been further north in the Atlantic. Ocean except that one.
Kevin Carey:They aren't the biting type, though, are they?
Holly Crowder:They're I don't think there's been a human attack by a hammerhead, but it's a. I mean, she's like you see the fin in the video and then the fin under her. She's like, yeah, the shark was under my board and like she was very calm. I would not have been that calm.
Kevin Carey:Holly Crowder, you would have rode that hammerhead. You would have jumped in on the fin, I would have been freaking out.
Holly Crowder:My nephew was our crew and he's a wildlife dude. He loves that kind of stuff, and so he at one point is like what is that? As I'm out there paddling, I was like don't ever do that to me again. Don't ever do that again.
Stewart Shurtleff:Like you have to be much calmer than that. We're going to need a bigger boat. I'd be the worst guy to ever. I was like what's that?
Holly Crowder:This is terrible, so yeah but yeah, that was, that was my summer adventure, so that's, that is an adventure.
Stewart Shurtleff:I was like when you told me you were doing, I was like that's a terrible idea.
Holly Crowder:But okay, people, people did say are you crazy? No, it was fun, I won't tell it.
Stewart Shurtleff:What'd you say earlier? I won't tell a story, just to tell a story, but we went on a paddle as a canoeing trip in the middle of nowhere once a long time ago and I didn't want to do it really, but, like once we did it, I signed up to do it again. Yeah, because you're like, you know what that was. It was kind of awful in spots, but we had a really good time and it was, and that was setting aside it being for a really great cause.
Stewart Shurtleff:So I mean I just obviously I get it. It's a weird, awful, crazy fun challenge to undertake and you do it again because it was worth it.
Holly Crowder:Yeah, I get that we are. We actually signed up to do it so that we are giving ourselves a bigger challenge. We're going to try to do it competitively, meaning we're going to try to do it with faster time. Yeah, you are Better paddling, I'll see.
Stewart Shurtleff:You should get a. You should get a standup paddleboard that has a motor on it, like and just cheat.
Kevin Carey:The trolling motor underneath it. It's pretty silent man. She is crushing.
Stewart Shurtleff:It's all formed Upper body is doing this amazing. It's crushing.
Kevin Carey:It's a hammerhead attached to the bottom. She's wiggling right through these waves.
Stewart Shurtleff:I think the hammerhead's mouth is like on the bottom. It'd be almost impossible to get attacked by a hammerhead, right? I don't know you get rammed by him.
Holly Crowder:I don't know how they, I don't know, I don't know he's poking in the eye like it wasn't a great white, it was a hammerhead.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, it has a weird like side media.
Kevin Carey:I was like oh, you just stand front, you can't even see me.
Stewart Shurtleff:Don't get cross-eyed on me. That was a three stooge's joke. We just pantomime to three stooge's bit there. Oh my god. Sorry how are we for end everything?
Kevin Carey:Oh wow that's not the only thing. With ALS, though you got it. You got a big presentation coming. I don't know if there's any meat to that to share.
Holly Crowder:I do, um. So, like I said, I've been on the the board of the Texas chapter. So ALS this year has gone through unification of all of the state chapters, or a predominant number of the state chapters have all Unified under one now one organization. There was always one, but we all were individual chapters before. So this year's Kickoff of the unification and the what they call the mission assembly is getting hosted here in Dallas, which is Cool because the main office is in DC and but they're all coming here and so Next week I am the welcome speaker for the kickoff of the mission assembly, which is pretty exciting and nerve-wracking and whatnot. But it's another chance for one me to share my story but to really talk about the cool stuff that we're doing in Texas for patients and caregivers with ALS, and so opportunity to spread the, the, the mission and and spread awareness and Just really highlight what is happening and the good things that are starting to happen for that disease.
Holly Crowder:Als is still considered a rare disease. About 6,000 people a year get diagnosed with it, which in the grand scheme of when you think about diseases that that is pretty small. It's not the rarest of diseases, but it's it's it's not highly prevalent. The struggle is, of course, we still don't really know what causes it across the board, and there is still no cure, and so the mission is to Obviously find a cure, but really, what we're really working toward in the next Seven years is how to make ALS liveable for those that have been diagnosed with it, and that's through New medications that are coming online.
Holly Crowder:So in 2017, the first medication in 22 years had been approved by the FDA for Helping slow the progression of ALS, and since that time, there's been other drugs. A couple more have been approved by the FDA, so there's one that's specific to a genetic marker that is for predisposition of the disease, and then there's one that's another progression slowing medication, and it's actually one that I Was super excited about, because Stacy was in phase two of the trial of that drug, and when he was taking it as phase two, it was this Terrible tasting liquid like that he had drink, and so it was so terrible tasting. Everybody that came to the house that came to see him Also was like he's was like when the milk is bad kind of thing. Oh, this is terrible. You got to try it.
Holly Crowder:Oh, yeah, yeah so like everybody was like, oh, this is terrible, but it went through phase two and phase through and it had had great efficacy and so it got approved last year as one of the new drugs that's online to help patients with ALS, and so those are actually slowing it down.
Holly Crowder:Yes, and so one of the things that you think about with ALS is it's different for every person and how they experience it and where their symptoms come from, and so when you think about slowing it down, it's what aspect of it is slowing it down, and then there's reasons where you may not want to slow it down, depending on where you are in your life cycle with the disease and things like that. So it's hugely Moving forward with the, the level of research and the opportunities, but there's still so much work left to be done.
Holly Crowder:There's a ton being done right now around the technology that aids individuals with ALS, and that's from the ability to use Technology to help them communicate, to capture their voice, so that their Assistive devices using their voice versus the automated voice and stuff like that, just like the wheelchairs and the things that they have, that they've Through science and research and technology are making things better and that's really where we're moving towards is how do you make their lives livable, knowing that we're still fighting for that cure at some point, but Really helping sort of navigate that. So my role in the, the board here, is as to be that voice, that advocate, to raise awareness, to bring it to light, to share my story more. So I'm excited and like thinking about it's cool that are coming to Texas and in Texas all the things that we're doing to sort of Advance the advance, the care for for those living with the disease.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, that's. It is noble work, for sure, yeah, and it. I'm using the word altruistic a lot, but it is at this juncture altruistic work. This, yeah, like it's For someone else. Yeah completely, and it is a noble cause.
Holly Crowder:And I think so we. This will be our seventh year doing the walk, the walk as next Saturday, and so or I guess it'd be Saturday when this goes- live but Just seeing the families and the friends that come out to support those, that the, the patients that with ALS That'll come out and do the walk as well as those families. And then for families like mine, that's my opportunity for some of Stacy's friends to come back into town and just we just go walk in his memory and yeah.
Holly Crowder:Just it's a good community and it pulls together and Really driving forward to figure out how to stop this disease.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, Super proud of you. Thanks, man, so awesome all of that.
Stewart Shurtleff:Appreciate all of it, yeah, the. I have two points to close with, which usually means one or will it, or will it. Last time you were with us, you gave us a big closing nugget. What's the big takeaway? Right, that was that then, but I think it was it's okay not to be okay I think that was the big takeaway at least in my mind it was I had didn't listen back.
Stewart Shurtleff:This morning like prep for. But I think that was at least yeah. But what's the draw that forward? You know cuz you've had some experiences since then and entrepreneurial and personal and all the things. Like you got another one for us, you got another, you got another big, big takeaway.
Holly Crowder:I mean, I still believe it's it's okay to not be okay, but I also think it's okay to lean into that uncomfortable and be willing to open that door to that next opportunity. Because out of that uncomfortableness and sort of uncertainty can come I'm great clarity as you go forward and sort of figuring out what that looks like for you. Yeah, coming through the healing.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, I'll take that as a giant nugget to it's perfect. Holly M F and Crocker. That's how we ended it. Right there, it's on the prep sheet. That's. That's the facts.
Holly Crowder:Thanks guys.