We continue to find more of The Luckiest People in the World as we work to help you learn how to join our community. Rebecca is a self-employed marketing consultant who had to cope with both business and personal upheaval with the advent of COVID-19. Listen to gain insight into adapting to change and finding a positive solution, building it into a plan for the future.
rebecca@goodeggconcepts.com
www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com
Diane Dayton
This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.
KC Dempster
Good morning, everybody. If we sound a little excited today, it's because Ray and I are actually back at Wildfire studios in Woodbury, New Jersey for our first on site podcast since this whole bit of nonsense began. And, you know, Ray is the luckiest guy in the world if you were to ask him, and he's nodding his head. But, you know, we talk about lucky people and one of the things we believe about lucky people is that they make their own rules and when we talk about rules, you know, from the time we're born, people are setting rules for us, it could be parents or teachers or churches or employers, you know, even the the communities and so forth. And for the for the most Part I think rules are meant to protect us and to guide us. But sometimes as we get older, they become less relevant to us there and they can actually be more restrictive. So the luckiest people in the world recognize this and they start to make their own rules, rules that are meaningful to them meaningful to their lives. And once they get comfortable with that, and they're on top of it, they are free to be themselves.
Ray Loewe
Yeah. And I am so excited to be out and about and the wonderful Taylor's scoured the studio for us, so I feel like like safe. I have my own little greeny microphone cover. It goes home with me. Okay. And wow, I bet our listeners don't have one of those. They probably don't. Okay, so the luckiest guy in the world. the luckiest people in the world are people that I've been studying for most of my adult life and I've been looking at them from the standpoint of These are exciting people to me, you know, they always seem to be doing something. That's right. They always seem to be happy. They always seem to have a glow around them. And so when I started studying them, I did it for two reasons. The first one was kind of selfish. Okay, these are the people that I wanted to hang out with. All right. The second one was kind of selfish to this was the kind of person that I wanted to be. and changing the rules is something that the luckiest people in the world handled really well. It's one of the mindsets that they seem to get control of and they don't let these darn rules get in the way they have their own little Greenie microphone caps. Okay, they do whatever it is, you know, to get out in the world and allow them to get going. And uh, we have a guest we're going to introduce in a couple seconds over here and she is definitely one of the luckiest people in the world and she doesn't let anything get in her way. Okay, so so these mindset so we're gonna To talk about today, our number one a when we introduce the Rebecca in a moment, okay, you're gonna find out that she certainly handles changing the rules, right? She doesn't like get rules getting her way, or change upset, at least not for long. She also is incredibly creative. And she always, always, always finds a positive solution for everything, okay? And when you're done, she finds a way to take what she's learned from this thing and weave it into the future. So it's not just something that put out a fire. It's something where, where she finds that creativity and makes it move forward. So we're going to do is, well, let me get my definition of, luckiest people in the world and we're taking a short break, then we're going to come back and bring in Rebecca. Okay, so So, I've developed this definition of lucky people, okay. And it's a little different than the definition because I don't think winning the lottery connotes a lucky pereson. I certainly would like to do that. Okay. But the luck we're talking about is deeper. It's that stuff that that, you know, just gets into you, and it makes life go well. So the luckiest people in the world are those people that personally design their own lives. And don't let the rules go away. They personally designed what they want. And then they take control of their lives and they go on and they live it to the fullest. So that's the definition we're going to use. And Taylor, let's take a short break. And we're going to come back and introduce Rebecca Hoffman.
Diane Dayton
You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
Ray Loewe
Okay, am I am I you are back back. Okay, so I'm Rebecca Hoffman is out there somewhere in Chicago area. I think okay. You know, the rumor has it. Yeah. This is this is like the middle of The country where everything goes right and where lucky people live, right? So hi. Say good morning, Rebecca.
Rebecca Hoffman
Good morning, Ray and KC, how are you? We're Well,
Ray Loewe
okay, so I am absolutely fascinated. The name of your company is Good Egg Concepts. Yes. Where the heck did that come from?
Rebecca Hoffman
So before there was an internet, there was just life, right? I feel like a comedy bit, right. And then the internet came along. And at some point, I was living in Miami at that time, some, there was an opportunity to create an email handle so that you could correspond with people around the world. And I said to a friend, what should my email handle be? and the person said, you know, you're a good egg, you should be the good egg, blah, blah, blah. And so I did become that and it was just my email handle, and then it became sort of a moniker and then as time wore on, my little consulting practice, I think at some point, I was doing some consulting work and my accountant said What is the name of your business? You need to register it and I said, Well, it's Good Egg Concepts and that's how it started.
Ray Loewe
So when you're driving along though, in your cross country truck outfit you under your handle is good egg.
Rebecca Hoffman
You're right. That's right. If I ever if I ever become like a cross country hauler, that will be absolutely. Cool.
Ray Loewe
Cool. So I met I met you Rebecca long ago, I think it was I think we were talking about 2012 2013, something like that. So it's been a while. And and I had a very, very unique experience. After I met you. I was introduced to you, as a marketing consultant to help me get this whole concept of the luckiest guy in The world moving. And you did something that was incredible for me. I have no idea how you did this. But I have to tell you, this has been the core of the way I'm running my business. So I told you some stories of my travel, I told you about an airplane in Africa. I told you about penguins in Antarctica. I told you about other things. And you just came back to me and you said, you know, these are great stories, but they're missing the ending. They're missing. Would you call them parables? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that's right. And all of a sudden, these stories are everywhere in my life right now and and more are coming online. So you know, I just have to thank you.
Rebecca Hoffman
Well, you're most welcome. And I can say that when I met you, I was quite taken with your stories. And as a person who works in marketing and strategic communications, and brand building, I'm always interested in storytelling because that is really the essence of every good brand, or story or position or offering. And so when we met and you told me a few of these stories, they were so unique and different. And your goal in telling them wasn't just to tell them but to also help people learn from them. It made sense to think of them as parables as teachable moments, as, you know, really great stories that a person won't forget and could easily turn around and tell another person and say, I heard a great story the way people do.
Ray Loewe
Well, they're used in almost every presentation we make. And KC is helping me write a book. And these are feature components of the book.
So So, let's tell some stories. Okay. So So, here you are, you're a business woman, you have this marketing practice. You are also a mom, how old are your kids?
Rebecca Hoffman
They are 10 years old and 13 years old.
Ray Loewe
Oh, boy. Okay. And, and we got through last year, sort of together and insane, or not insane. And all of a sudden, not only the rules change, but life changed, right? So what happened? How did you how did you treat this and I'm excited to learn about this because you're so creative. Well, so you
Rebecca Hoffman
No, it's interesting. I'm no different than anyone else. The first reaction was some combination of fear and confusion, what's going on what's happening. And from a business standpoint for the first week or two, I think it was mid March, at least in the Chicago area when we really knew that we needed to close down and hunker in and just be in our houses. I had had a sense way before that, because I kind of followed the news story from January. And so I was somewhat prepared in the home, but not emotionally prepared like everybody else. And so here we were mid March, the school just closed and then I found myself standing by a lagoon with my kids on a Friday...school had shut down and we brought some snacks to feed the ducks. And I said, I think we're going to be doing this for a while, and we're standing outside in fresh air. And you know, in that moment, I remember thinking, I wonder what this will be like. And so probably the first week or two, all the business people that I work with all my clients logically went silent.
It was like, it was like, you know, when you go outside before a storm and there's no birdsong and you drain, right? Right, no calls, no meetings, suddenly everything's just shut tight. And we, you know, I, I sent to my husband because I've been working in a private practice of my own devising for years. When the market gets rough, my business tends to go quiet. And I said, I think it's gonna be really quiet. And he said, That's okay. You know, everything comes back and fine. And so then probably seven to 10 days passed, and my phone rang. And it was one of my clients saying, Oh, we want to work on our website. And I said, not a bad idea. And the next thing you knew, we were buying ads everywhere. We were writing new copy for the website to explain how they would continue working zoom calls, suddenly, all the clients came back to life. Right, everybody realized this was the moment to shore up the digital footprint. Look at the online profiles, look at the website, look at the social media profiles and contemplate first, how they should appear. And to your point, right, what story should we tell because now we have Have a lot of people working from home who have time to read. They're not commuting in their cars. And I said to my clients, the whole stable of them, I said, you know, all that time, you would have spent commuting between meetings and in person things, that is your marketing time now. So everybody went to work, and my clients really did go to work. And actually, in some respect, I was busier than I'd ever been, which is a strange sensation in the middle of this difficult moment where people are really suffering and we don't know the directionality of things. And there's real fear. Right, the fear moved, the fear moved into more of let's let's continue to work, let's find a way and I think as human beings, we're creative, we're adaptable. It's unpleasant to have to pivot like this. But so we did. And that's what we did when we just continue and it hasn't stopped. We've been working all the way through on all kinds of creative enterprises related to the telling of why a business matters why an organization is relevant, how we can connect with audiences that would care
Ray Loewe
Did All you're clients do that?
Rebecca Hoffman
Most Yes. Okay. So and I should I should put a little asterisk. The majority of my clients are professional services type organizations like law practices, consulting practices educational, like college prep practices. So I am I'm working less with organizations that had to shut and couldn't do anything like a hair salon. Right. So So a lot of my clients could continue to work. And there was a perception, especially in the legal community and consumer community. Well, the courts are shut, we can't continue. But in fact, the courts move to zoom and, and conference calls. And in fact, a lot of legal proceedings move faster and less and less expensive because the attorneys didn't have to go and sit in the courthouses and file things and bill for that. Right. Things moved quicker. So there were some weird efficiencies that started to appear that were almost inadvertent, right.
KC Dempster
I have a friend whose divorce was done online.
Rebecca Hoffman
That's correct. So I work with A lot of divorce practices, Family Law practices and the divorces are moving very quickly if both parties were willing to do this in a kind of technologically new way, right? Unfortunately, they're trapped in the same house. They can't get out. Right? Well, not in this case. But yeah, in some instances, yes. So there were issues of, you know, concerns for domestic violence and safety concerns about alcohol and drug abuse. And I think those are still continuing because things aren't ironed out. We are more relaxed now sociologically. But from a professional standpoint, through my work, we were able to continue to advertise to people and let people know that these resources are still available, you may not be able to sit together in a room. However, the resources are still available and functioning for consumers. Yeah, that was a big message to tell. So it was a giant pivot in March and April. Okay, so which we did not we didn't expect it Right, right.
Ray Loewe
Yeah. two quick things. So So okay, you got your companies, the companies you work for going How did affect you? You personally, I mean, you know, obviously you probably weren't in the car as much What, what? what went on and what happened to your family here.
Rebecca Hoffman
So, you know, professionally I wasn't in the car. That's true. And then I had to sort of find my footing. I'm very fortunate to have a house where everyone could work. The kids have their digital school, my husband was now working from home instead of it as corporate headquarters where he normally would be, we're traveling. And suddenly our home felt like a small office, and we had to load in some additional supplies like paper and toner and really like a like a little tiny office building. So personally, it was very interesting that everyone had to find their footing and everyone did. So in our in my particular family, we all worked and we continue to work. And it's been okay, maybe better than okay.
Ray Loewe
I don't I don't know if it was okay. You were whining on the phone the other day that you couldn't go to museums.
Rebecca Hoffman
That's true. And that's a good reminder. So you know, I do think about those things. Like, what are my friends and I discussed this, like, what are the things you miss the most. And I thought at first, when all this happened, I would miss the restaurants, I would miss all of the stuff that was our normal life. And in fact, we shed our personal schedule, largely all the activities that kids would have been doing gone. all the places we might have gone to gone. But the thing that still remain that I miss the most real sort of cultural interactions, the human moments in museums, I'm one of those people who visits museums whenever I can. And it can be indoor outdoor, but I think those are still missing in our life and that you can't replace those human moments walking through Sculpture Gardens, walking through galleries, contemplating the creative output of other people when it's all digital. Maybe you can look online, it's not the same experience. Exactly. So that that's been a loss.
Ray Loewe
And feeding the ducks didn't quite do it, huh?
Rebecca Hoffman
No, but you know, feeding the ducks was pleasurable. 0became something that we look to do, right?
KC Dempster
I'm sure the ducks were very happy,
Rebecca Hoffman
very pleased with experience completely and all the stale snacks that I brought out.
Ray Loewe
Well, it cleaned out the pantry. So So how are you going to take this going forward? I mean, we all kind of learn a lesson from this. But what did you learn that you're going to take forward when I'm not going to say we return to normal I hate that word. It's the new better the new, better environment we're going to be in after this is over with.
Rebecca Hoffman
That's correct. And I think that one of the things I know as a person who works in creative space is I would tell this to my clients and it applies to us personally, which is, life is dynamic. Things are a work in progress at all times. And that iterations of experiences and things and moments are something we should look forward to. So right so it's not like, hey, when we return back to normal things will be okay. Again, right. It's more that when we emerge from this moment that we're in who knows how long This last right it's months, weeks I who knows, right?
But when we emerge from this, and we will, what will we be like, and that will be our next version. So like, you know, computer programmers called version 1.0 2.0 3.0. And I actually work with my clients frequently to say, your business marketing should be version 6.0 that you're at, and that's where you are, and you must sort of accept where you are. So if you had a business, and you had marketing, and then it shifted, you're now in version 2.0. And if after all of this happens, you go on and shift things. Again, you're in version 3.0. So we personally as a society, are going to version x point O, of whatever world we live in, and ideally, the world that we live in is the one that we try to make as nice as we can. And that, you know, that to me seems like a critical action to take both personally and professionally.
Ray Loewe
Well, cool. Well, we're unfortunately we're at the end of our time already. So you know, thank thank you for being with us. And Rebecca is certainly will One of the luckiest people in the world I would agree. And we're gonna see writing for Saturday Night Live one of these days soon.
Rebecca Hoffman
I know one of these days. Okay, that will happen right and then I'll have you in the audience with KC.
Ray Loewe
Taylor, let's take a quick break and a quick break and we'll come back with that closing remarks.
Diane Dayton
You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
KC Dempster
And here we are back again to get ready to say goodbye but I wanted to touch back to something that Ray was talking about before we brought Rebecca on and he was he was talking about the luckiest people in the world and and his definition of luck. And you know, you would be tempted to say that somebody who won the lottery was lucky. But the definitions in the in the dictionary kind of center on that that luck when we say Somebody has lucky we're referring to something that happened to them that they didn't have that came out of the blue, that they didn't have anything to do with and, and what we're trying to say is that we don't necessarily ascribe to that definition. In fact, I was at a meeting many, many years ago, and somebody said that luck is a combination of preparation and opportunity. And that makes much more sense to me. And so people who win the lottery do do some preparation, they go buy the ticket, somebody who doesn't buy a lottery ticket doesn't win the lottery. So So that's our definition of lucky people. And sometimes lucky people get hit by life events that derail them, like we just did with this pandemic. And but the lucky people, as Ray said, they, they find a way to adapt to the changes, they find a positive solution in that adaptation, and then they make it into they filter it into their plants.
Ray Loewe
Going forward, as Rebecca was saying, we're not going to go back to the way things were. We're going to go back to adaptation. 2.0 Yeah. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. So show in closing here we have a brand new website. Yeah, yeah, www and either the luckiest guy in the world or the luckiest people in the world, whichever you choose. And if you want to hang out to some extent with people like Rebecca, you got to join us on the website, you got to join our luckiest people in the world community. And you got to continue to listen to our podcast and we will be back next week with an exciting new guest. Very interesting story. Yes. So join us next week. Thank you.
Diane Dayton
Thank you for listening to changing the rules. A podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray love the luckiest guy in the world.